Intramural Flag Football MG scores early, often, beats TRANS, 33-0 [1998-10-16] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- Rob Howard scored three touchdowns leading the Medical Group to a 33-0 shutout victory over the Transportation Squadron in second-round intramural football playoff action Wednesday night. The first half of the game was completely dominated by the Medics, with Jason Belcher scoring the first touchdown only five minutes into the contest. Craig Satchell followed up the play by running the ball in for an extra two points. Not long after, Steven Hyppolite found the end zone for the second touchdown of the game. The Medics finished the first half with a 20-0 lead as Howard also scored. In the second half, Howard scored two more touchdowns. An additional extra point brought the final score to a total of 33 for the Medics. "When we're on our game we play really well," said Medics coach Jamey Pierson, "We really played as a team." As for hopes of going to the championship this year, coach Pierson said, "We'd like to get in it again and win it all this time." The Medics romp began a trifecta of shutouts as the Component Repair Squadron defeated the Support Group, 12-0 and Supply bounced the Logistics Support Squadron 20-0. The winning teams all advanced to the third round of playoff action. The championship contest is scheduled for Tuesday. Local incentive flight offers new perspective [1998-11-06] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- Systems were checked, lap belts were strapped, engines roared, and eyes were wide open as six young airmen embarked on what for the most of them, was their first military flight aboard one of Dover Air Force Base's C-5 Galaxy aircraft. The flight was an air refueling training mission which had been additionally tasked as an incentive flight. The incentive flight program allows outstanding Dover Team members, not involved in flying career fields, to see what the flying part of our mission is really like. "I think it expands their visibility a little bit more on what's involved with flying, because they start first thing in the morning with the aircrew," said Chief Master Sgt. Jay Gross, 436th Operations Group superintendent and current administrator of the incentive flight program. "They get to see a little bit of what the aircrew goes through and what they have to do to prepare for a flight." The program was started several months ago by Command Chief Master Sgt. Jeffrey Lewin and Chief Master Sgt. Kenneth Powell, 436th 0G. They started researching the program back in March or April. It's been running now since about June, said Gross. Airmen are hand selected for the mission through their chain of command, said Gross. "The selection process is done through the group superintendents." "This last flight, I called the aerial port and told the first sergeant they're allocated one slot for the incentive flight. Then I let the first sergeant within the squadron do the selection. I believe they selected their Airman of the Quarter." It's not just airmen who are selected for the incentive flights either. "Anybody is eligible," said Gross, "including civilians." Those selected for the flight will see, for the most part, what an aircrew goes through on a typical flight. "It's a chance to let them see how many people are involved in the process. You start at the flying squadron and see what the loadmasters, pilots and engineers do to get ready," said Gross. Additionally, the program helps members not involved in flying related jobs realize how complex the mission is and how their own efforts fit in. "From aerial port loading operations and fleet services, to life support and maintenance, you see all the people that are involved in launching just one airplane," said Gross. "A lot of things have to be coordinated and put together. It helps an individual get a perspective of how important their little piece of the pie is in getting that airplane off the ground and on its way to where it needs to go." "It was good for an airman that doesn't spend much or any time on the flight line in the course of duty, to see what Dover's mission is," said Airmen 1st Class Jonathan Spreadbury, 436th Medical Operations Squadron, one of the six airmen selected to go on the flight. "Flying on the flight deck and hearing what the crew is doing, it's very different, as opposed to a 747." The next incentive flight, a night refueling mission, is scheduled Nov. 23. If things go as planned, the incentive flight program will continue to reward deserving team members at Dover. "The most important thing is that we're recognizing our people for the job they're doing," said Gross. "This is one way we can recognize our top performers and say thanks for the time, work and effort they put in." Super Port assists in hurricane relief effort [1998-11-20] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- Whether it's hauling a shipment of troops and equipment to Southwest Asia, or moving a load of humanitarian relief supplies to hurricane victims in Central America, it's all part of the job for the 486th Aerial Port Squadron here. The aerial port received approximately 250 tons of supplies Nov. 12 and 13, the equivalent of two fully loaded C-5 Galaxies. The squadron palletized the aid, which ranged from food and clothing to badly needed medical supplies. "All the humanitarian aid that came in was processed that night and ready to go," said Lt. Col. Paul Curtis, 436th Aerial Port Squadron commander. "That was in addition to supporting Phoenix Scorpion III and doing our regular work. We were pulling people from staff areas and offices just to handle this all at once." "I'm normally a safety guy," said Staff Sgt. Kevin Routzahn, 486th Aerial Port Squadron. "Cargo comes through here every day, you don't know where it's going. But, whenever it comes through and you know you're actually helping people, the flood stricken, it puts faces with the work. It puts pride with what you do." "I think they rather enjoyed it," said Curtis. "They volunteered to do it. And not just military, we had our civilians helping as well." I've never seen everyone work so hard. I was impressed," said Joseph Reilly, a 436th APS civilian material handler. "It was organized and non-stop. I don't know how we did it, but I felt good about it. We worked hard." "It's a good morale thing. It allows us to work together as a team and enjoy doing something a little different. It pulls the whole Port together," said Curtis. "It's incredible," said Brian Mulligan, of the New York Catholic Health Care Network, an organization involved with providing relief to Central American disaster areas. "We would not have been able to get our supplies down there without the military. The other option would have been a private ship. It would have taken seven to ten days in sea time. "The immediacy and coordination was fantastic in our view," Mulligan continued. "I think that the crew at Dover was very helpful in helping us to prioritize the movement of supplies. They ensured medical supplies were shipped out first even though they were on the last truck to arrive." In spite of the effort, Mulligan said there is still much work to be done. "It may take in upwards of 30 years to get the region back on track," he said. But the Dover APS is ready for the challenge. "The military's goal is defending the country and supporting the objectives of the United States," Curtis said. "It's national policy. In this case, national policy was humanitarian relief to a national ally. It's part of the mission. "This mission falls under the Denton Program and makes moving this type of cargo part of the job we do," Curtis said, referring to a 1985 amendment to the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act. "It allows the Department of Defense to transport humanitarian assistance by air or sea on a space-available basis free of charge. "Under this program, relief comes from all over the country," Curtis continued. "The government supplies the transportation, the manpower and the facilities. People donate the food, the medicine and the clothing. And a lot of it's from private citizens, out of peoples' closets and pantries." Efforts like this are not easy. It takes a lot of effort and teamwork to make it happen. "The Port is pretty much known as the 'Can do squadron,"' said Curtis. "We're well known for the amount of volume we ship, how fast we move things and how efficient our process is, so a lot of this humanitarian effort will come through here. We have motivated and dedicated people and we can get the job done efficiently and effectively. That's why they send it to the Super Port." 436th SUPS encourages members to turn in deployment gear [1998-12-18] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- It happens to most of us. You think you put three pairs of socks into the dryer and you only get two and a half pairs back out. It's bothersome to say the least. The dryer doesn't really eat them. It's simply a break in the chain of accountability. The 436th Supply Squadron is very much in tune with how personal accountability can affect mission readiness, and how certain circumstances can influence how closely accountability is maintained. For example, SUPS is responsible for issuing necessary and accountable equipment such as chemical masks, to deployable units. The squadron sometimes issues that equipment to units ahead of time. Units may then put that equipment into the hands of individuals within their squadrons in order to more effectively store it. When that happens, said Lt. Col. Edward Skibinski, SUPS commander, you are lengthening the accountability trail. The emphasis on the importance of tracking that equipment becomes fuzzy. "When somebody PCSs out, the gas mask they were given becomes the last thing on their mind, as a result," said Senior Master Sgt. Barbara Campbell, 436th Supply Squadron, "people leave them in the trunk of their car or in their apartment." Accountability is also impeded when the equipment is not from your unit. Equipment can easily be forgotten or misplaced when members from other bases come through without necessary items and Dover Air Force Base must supply that equipment to them. "We recently had two airmen come through who did not have their chemical ensembles," said Skibinski. "They were tall people, but they only had medium ensembles. Their unit probably only had that size when they left. We signed some gear out to them, and we ran it out to the airplane. I have no doubt that equipment will get back into the supply system, but probably not here. Dover will show a shortage for that equipment." "Funding then becomes a big issue," said Skibinski. "Less accountability leads to misplaced equipment and ultimately that takes money out of the pot for quality of life issues at Dover." There are solutions being considered to address the problem. "The wing is looking to set up a consolidated deployment operations center. The Aircraft Generation Squadron is moving into their new squadron operations building, and we're looking at moving the Personnel Readiness Unit into Building 582. Wing members would process out through there as a one stop shop; when they return they would process back in through there to return their items," said Skibinski. Ultimately, deployable individuals can contribute to the solution, said Skibinski. "The Air Force is becoming a mobile force, an expeditionary force. We are not forward basing as many troops as we did in years past. We rely on personal and organizational equipment to be mobile. People need to be ready personally with their shots, their weapons training, and their personal gear. The gear needs to be in good condition and of sufficient quantity. People need to be vigilant and have to remember when you sign that hand receipt you are accountable for that gear. It's really is an awareness issue." Civil Engineer Squadron spreads a little Christmas cheer [1998-12-18] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- A good 200 toys, some with wrapping, some without, are piled under a tree that reaches at least half way to the top of the atrium in the building housing the 436th Civil Engineer Squadron. These gifts, intended for numerous children, mostly nice, but perhaps some just a little bit naughty, aren't from Santa. But the children will never know that. For the last nine years, said Mary-Lou Hagelberg, coordinator of the "Adopt-A-Child" program, the members of the 436th CES have been providing toys to the children of CE airmen. "Mainly it's for our senior airmen and below and their children," said Hagelberg. Hagelberg and her husband, Master Sgt. (ret.) Paul Hagelberg came up with the idea nearly a decade ago. "We both work at CE. This was a way for him to give something back after 27 years of active duty," said Hagelberg. CE airmen are selected for the program by members in their chain-of-command. "The first sergeant gives us a list of names," said Hagelberg. "He comes up with a list or their supervisors suggest them. "We put a number for each child on the list. We put their age and whether they are a boy or girl. Then we distribute the list to all the shops and the flights in the squadron. They will call up and say 'Give me number four, the two year old boy!'" After a shop or flight chooses a child to sponsor, they are required to provide at least six gifts for that child, said Hagelberg. "The entire squadron participates," said Master Sgt. Ricardo Rodriguez, 436th Civil Engineer First Sergeant. "Every flight volunteers to sponsor a child. Everybody takes it pretty seriously, and not everybody goes out and buys gifts. A lot of people hand-craft gifts, like toy airplanes and hand- made baby quilts for the dolls." This year, some 22 children and their parents will benefit from the generosity of CE members. "There are so many people that struggle during the holidays," said Tech. Sgt. Carrie Dobos, co-coordinator of the program for eight of it's nine years. "The parents appreciate it." "We really do appreciate it. It's a wonderful feeling," said Senior Airman Kimberly McKinney, a mother of two children. "When you have just one income, as in my case, CE provides almost 90 percent of my presents. In the first year it was almost 100 percent. I couldn't afford anything. I've been here for three Christmases. Every Christmas CES has provided gifts. The CES cares for each other so much." Really, the Adopt-A-Child program is as much about the children who receive the gifts as it is about their parents, active, hard-working members of the CES. "I think the squadron is a bunch of unsung heroes. And I know I'm getting on the soap box here," laughed Hagelberg, "but these kids bust their behinds fixing sewer pipes and leaking roofs. This is just our way of saying thank you, our way of saying 'We care about you.'" "We want to spread the Christmas cheer and take care of each other around the squadron," said Rodriguez. "You know, this is just a small thing we can do for our families here in CE. It's funny that Year of the Family is coming about just this year, because we've had Year of the Family here in CE for nine years." Base gears up for air show [1999-01-15] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- The countdown to Dover Air Force Base's 1999 air show, "A Celebration of Airlift," began this month with a visit from the Navy's premier aerial demonstration team, the Blue Angels advance team. Marine Corps Maj. Bruce Shank, the Blue Angel's event's coordinator and Navy Lt. Keith Hoskins, the Blue Angels' narrator, arrived at Dover AFB in an FA18-b Hornet, a plane similar to the one that will be used by the Blue Angels in their May 15-16 air show here. The purpose of the visit was twofold. First, the team wanted to get a feel for the local airspace, and second, the team wanted to brief local air show planners about the requirements of the Blue Angels team. "This was really a chance to come to the base and familiarize them- selves with the surroundings," said Maj. Frank Smolinsky, 436th Airlift Wing, Public Affairs chief. "As they flew in, they circled the base several times. That was done on purpose to get a good view of the airfield, see how it is laid out, and locate visible obstructions that the team would need to be aware of the day of the show." Checking out the lay of the land and getting a feel for the air space is important. Sometimes, said Hoskins, they discover an area is too crowded with obstacles such as buildings or power lines, "and those areas are just inappropriate for an air show." "Once the team landed, they met with the wing air show committee to begin preliminary discussions about the requirements of the Blue Angels, so that we could begin planning, and purchasing the things they need for their performance," said Smolinsky. The air show committee, made up of representatives from the 436th and 5 12th Airlift Wings, is responsible for putting the show together. The committee is divided into up into subcommittees responsible for everything from taking care of the Blue Angel's billeting arrangements, to concessions and trash pickup after the air show, said Smolinsky. "They met to discuss operational issues like crowd control, parking, fueling, show line and crowd line," said Maj. Mickie S. Ho, the wing air show director. "Additionally, the Blue Angels wanted to talk to the Federal Aviation Administration and other points of contact at the base to relay their requirements for their portion of the air show." The in depth and intense planning for the event will allow the Blue Angels to come to Dover Air Force Base and do their job, without having to sweat small details. "For instance," said Smolinsky, "getting smoke oil for the show, arranging parking and refueling for the planes, and reserving accommodations for the Blue Angels team are all issues which need to be dealt with. Every detail of the Blue Angels arrival and stay here at Dover will be handled by the Dover team. All the Blue Angels will have to do is show up, unpack, get in a jet and fly." "Planning for the arrival of the Blue Angels will take a lot of organization from every group on base," said Smolinsky. "From crowd control and event security which will be provided by the Security Forces Squadron, to the ground support provided by the Aircraft Generation Squadron, the air show will involve every part of the wing in some way. "It helps showcase the excellence, talents, and professionalism of the entire Dover Team," said Ho. "All agencies on base will be involved. This is not a one-squadron show. The services squadron, maintenance squadrons, the flying squadrons and the reserves are just some of the agencies that will be represented. It really is a Dover Team effort." Dover AFB's air show May 15-16 will showcase some of the best elements of the military. "It really shows the taxpayers what they are paying for," said Ho. And from the military as a whole, "it will be a small token of thanks to the public for their sup- port." A Dover air show web site has been established and can be reached off the Dover AFB web page, located at www.dover.af.mil. It will be updated as new information and details are confirmed. CSAF meets troops, addresses key issues [1999-01-29] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- The Air Force chief of staff visited here Jan. 22 to meet with troops and to field questions on several key issues affecting the Total Force. During his visit, Gen. Michael E. Ryan addressed several topics, including retirement benefits, the 21st Century Air Force, and the mission of the Dover Air Force Base and it 36 C-5 Galaxy aircraft. "One of the issues that arose, as part of the need to retain quality people, was the change in the retirement system that happened in 1986," said Ryan, during a media opportunity here. "We want to make sure that we return the retirement system to the 1986 level. This is people, after 20 years of service, where we sent them overseas multiple times, where they were separated from their families, where we've put them in harm's way, get the same retirement that the people got before 1986. And that is 50 percent, as opposed to the 40 percent they would be getting now." Ryan said President Clinton supports the idea of returning retirement benefits to a pre-1986 level, allowing retirees to receive retirement pay equivalent to 50 percent of their active duty pay. Currently, the plan states retirees will receive retirement pay amounting to only 40 percent of active duty pay. The current plans affect those members who joined the service after October 1986. While the changes in the retirement plan won't affect service members until 2006, the promise of less pay to retirees has consequences on the service today. According to Ryan, affected members and their families are making decisions today about whether they should leave the Air Force now, or stay until retirement. Ryan also touched on methods of creating a more powerful and mission ready Air Force, for the 21st century. First, Ryan covered funding issues. "We came forward and asked the administration for $5 billion a year more for the United States Air Force, because we need it," said Ryan. "Come look at our forces that we have deployed, at our forces stationed overseas. Then tell me we don't need to help those folks do their mission better." In addition to funding issues, Ryan explained the concept of base "robusting" as a method of building a stronger, more mission ready Air Force. "We have to 'robust' some of our bases," said Ryan, "to allow us to continue the operations tempo that we have, and have been experiencing over the last few years. As we respond to Bosnia's, southern Asia's and Iraq's, we have to go forward and bed down those temporary operating locations. We have to take the capability to do that forward with our existing bases. That leaves our bases back home thin." "Part of robusting our bases has to do with putting about 5,000 more manpower slots into those bases that support forward rotations and forward security. The Air Force has too many infrastructures. Our forces are spread too thin around the United States, and we need to consolidate. Quite honestly, I believe we need several base closures, and we will not be able to do that unless we have a base closure and realignment act out of Congress," said Ryan. "We want to turn around the dips in readiness we have now; we need to make this Air Force ready for the 21st century." Finally, Ryan discussed the current and future mission of Dover AFB, and the C-5 Galaxy aircraft. "Dover is one of our hubs on the East Coast of the United States, and it is a critical airlift hub for our C-5 aircraft. There is a great synergism here between the active and reserve forces who together perform this mission," said Ryan. "It's a great base, a great bunch of folks, and a great community. The Air Force is proud to be able to serve here." "The future role is that it's going to be around for another 40 years," said Ryan of the C-5 Galaxy aircraft. "It is an airplane with some unique capabilities that we don't have in the rest of the fleet. We will continue to work very hard on modernizing the C-5. We have avionics modernization and some reliability and maintainability capabilities we're going to put into the air- plane to raise its mission capabilities. In this bud-get we're presenting to congress this year, you'll find a substantial increase in funding for the C-5, to enhance it's capability." Ryan testified Jan. 20 before the House Armed Services Committee. There, he requested an additional $5 billion a year, over the next six years, so the service could maintain mission readiness. The Department of Defense will release its budget Monday. Eagle Wing responds to in-flight emergency [1999-02-05] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- The Eagle Wing's ability to quickly respond to emergency situations was put to the test Saturday. The action unfolded when one of Dover Air Force Base's C-5 Galaxy aircraft, with a crew from the 3rd Airlift Squadron, and flying a routine training mission, alerted the Command Post their landing gear was not functioning properly, and declared an in-flight emergency. "We started out with two landing gear problems, actually," said Senior Master Sgt. Timothy Reuning, a C-5 Galaxy systems expert with the 436th Airlift Wing Standards and Evaluation Squadron, and a key player in the assembled Battle Staff which helped troubleshoot the problem. "Initially when the air crew tried to retract the gear, one of the left main landing gear remained in transit, which means it is neither up nor down. The flight manual calls for the flight engineer to go down and look at the gear itself through an inspection port," said Reuning. "What the flight engineer looks for is mechanical damage, and there was no sign of mechanical damage. At the same time, one of the right landing gear did not indicate down and locked." According to Reuning, the aircraft would have been severely damaged had it attempted to land with its landing gear problems. "The gears were perpendicular to the runway," said Reuning. "The worse-case scenario would have been to rip that wheel assembly off, and the plane would have lost braking and broke its hydraulic lines." While the lives of the fight crew were not in danger, according to Col. Felix M. Grieder, 436th Airlift Wing commander, the performance of everyone involved shows that the Eagle Wing is primed for any situation that comes along. When the commend post was informed of the situation, Grieder decided to activate the wing's Baffle Staff. The Battle Staff is made up from wing staff agency representatives and group commanders; to include 512th Airlift Wing representatives if needed. It's purpose is to direct wing emergency response actions. "In this case, based on the situation, I decided it was serious enough to warrant Battle Staff activation. I asked for the group commanders to come in, as well as representatives from Public Affairs and Wing Safety. We got together on short notice Saturday morning," said Grieder. The Battle Staff gathered at the Command Post and began looking for solutions to deal with the problem. Fortunately, one of the problems had already been solved. The flight crew was able to fix the problem with the right aft main landing gear before the Baffle Staff had actually assembled. "The fix was non-standard, it wasn't in the book," said Reuning. "The crew came up with a work around procedure and asked me if it made sense. We reviewed the landing gear schematic and decided to give it a try and that fixed the problem." While the problem with the right aft main landing gear had been corrected, the left aft main landing gear remained an issue to be solved before the plane could land. In order to correct the landing gear failure, the Battle Staff contacted several sources via conference call to discuss possible solutions to the problem. "We got with Lockheed, the manufacturer of the C-5 and with Kelly AFB, which is the depot. We got two engineers on the phone and again reviewed what had already taken place and what steps the crew had already taken. They got out their electrical, hydraulic and mechanical schematics and reviewed those," said Reuning. Meanwhile, the C-5 continued to circle the base, making several passes so wing emergency personnel could visually inspect the landing gear. "Keeping the plane airborne, to burn off excess fuel is standard procedure for an aircraft experiencing an in-flight emergency," said Lt. Col. Mark Juscius, 436th Airlift Wing Safety chief. "In this case it was the right thing to do, to reduce the weight of the aircraft and minimize damage to the airframe if it was forced to land with its damaged landing gear." After nearly five hours of constant communication between Lockheed, the flight crew, members of the Battle Staff and Kelly AFB, a solution to the problem was found, and the left aft main landing gear was returned to its correct position so the C-5 could land safely. "The air crew depressurized the hydraulic system for the landing gear and the auxiliary power unit start accumulator and then repressurized the systems," said Reuning. "Shortly after- wards, the gear extended normally." The swift actions of the air crew, Battle Staff and wing emergency personnel in the face of unusual circumstances impressed the Eagle Wing commander. "The team troubleshot this and went through the emergency procedures just as they were trained to do, proving they are ready for any situation that may occur. They came up with an innovative solution which led to a success in getting the landing gear down," said Grieder. "I am very impressed with the performance of all those involved, their ability to work together, and their ability to problem solve. Situations like this show the Eagle Wing is ready to respond to any given situation." Air Force IDEA program benefits all [1999-02-26] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- You've just pulled out of the parking lot at your office and onto the street. A car, not necessarily speeding, has just missed broadsiding you. This isn't the first time this has happened to you. In fact, you've heard others in your office say the same thing. "There needs to be a stop sign here!," you think to yourself. Or perhaps you have repaired that one particular part from a C-5 just one too many times. You know why it breaks and how it breaks. You also know that if a different part were used, it could save the Air Force time and more importantly, it could save the Air Force money. Since October 1997, Dover Air Force Base has been participating in the Innovative Development through Employee Awareness (IDEA) program, said Staff Sgt. Omar B. Then, IDEA analyst with the 436th Airlift Wing Manpower and Quality Office. The Air Force wide program encourages members to submit their ideas, with the hope the ideas will help save the Air Force money, which in turn will help the Air Force modernize itself. "The main purpose of the IDEA program is to solicit money-saving and work-saving programs from individuals in the field," said Then. "Primarily, it is things that will make them do their jobs better; perhaps they are an expert in their jobs and they look at their job and think 'it doesn't make sense that we do it this way' and then they come up with a better way." As an added incentive to the program, individuals submitting an idea that is approved and accepted by the Air Force are monetarily rewarded. "There are two types of ideas which may receive awards: tangible and intangible," said Then. "For the intangible idea, the award is $200 if it is approved. An approved tangible idea will get you a maximum of $10,000, based on a 15 percent first year savings." For example, a recent idea from Staff Sgt. John M. Hroncich 436th Equipment Maintenance Squadron, resulted in an improvement to a C-5 strobe light subassembly. The result to Dover Air Force Base was a first year saving of approximately $262,000 and $10,000 to Hroncich. When a member has an improvement or suggestion, it is up to them to fill out the proper form in order to submit it. Members should speak to their supervisor for assistance with finding and filling out the proper forms. "Once the supervisor fills out and signs the Air Force Form 1000, they send it on to 436th Airlift Wing Manpower and Quality Office," said Then. "Once it comes into our possession it is an IDEA. It could be approved, or disapproved. From us it goes to the office of primary responsibility or the squadrons for evaluation." While Then noted that the majority of IDEA suggestions last year came from the logistics community, you don't have to be part of the Logistics Group to make a suggestion and reap the benefits of having your idea approved. "Everybody can submit," said Then, although he noted that not everybody can get paid for it. The program appears to be working well for Dover Air Force Base and for the Air Force. For fiscal year 1998, the IDEA program saved Dover Air Force Base $159,000 and saved the Air Force more than $150 million. In turn, the Air Force awarded a total of $4.3 million dollars to IDEA participants with approved ideas. "Anybody out there can do it, even though most people think it is a hassle," said Staff Sgt. Jon Wedel, an instructor with the 373rd Training Squadron, and "prolific contributor to the IDEA program," according to Then. "If you take the time to research an idea, you can do it," said Wedel, who has more than 20 IDEA approvals under his belt. "In addition to the money, the program gives young airmen the chance to be recognized by their commanders in a good light." For more information about the IDEA program, contact the Manpower and Quality office at 677- 6691. Eagle Wing commander discusses wing priorities for the coming year [1999-03-12] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- The 436th Airlift Wing commander has announced the 1999 Eagle Wing Initiatives for personnel assigned to Dover Air Force Base. According to Col. Felix M. Grieder, the wing's top priority for 1999 will be a renewed focus on family, fitness and readiness. "Everybody is part of a family," said Grieder, as he explained the Air Force concept of family. "Whether you are an 18-year-old single airman living in the dormitory, or a sergeant with a family living in the family housing area, we want to take care of everyone here and we want everyone to consider Dover Air Force Base as a family. "Our theme of family coincides nicely with Air Mobility Commands Year of the Family," said Grieder. "So it was not by accident that family is a priority. I consider this an important concept that will affect everybody at Dover Air Force Base, not just traditional military families." Grieder highlighted some of the more recent examples of the family atmosphere here at Dover Air Force Base. "For the single airmen in the dormitory we had 'Operation Cookie Drop,'" said Grieder. "That was an initiative by the Year of the Family committee. Due to their efforts, and the efforts of our First Sergeants, they saw to it the airmen in the dormitories had cookies delivered before Christmas. Over 400 half-dozen packages of cookies were distributed." Additional family initiatives at Dover AFB included the construction of several family oriented recreational sites on base and in the housing areas. "You'll see a lot of things geared towards family members, such as the new playground across from the passenger terminal and some new playground equipment in the family housing area. There will also be a rollerblading facility by the Youth Center," said the Eagle Wing commander. "You're going to be seeing a lot of things where you think 'This is really going to improve life here at Dover Air Force Base.'" The concept of family provides Dover Team members with a very real sense of strength through unity, but physical strength, fitness and good health, all critical to Dover's mission, are all things which must come from the individual. Grieder said several recent construction projects here have helped shape the face of fitness at Dover AFB and are providing more opportunities for Dover Team members to push themselves toward being fit. "For fitness, you'll see several things. Our civil engineers recently completed a jogging trail from the south gate area out to the Air Mobility Command Museum. It is a six-foot-wide jogging trail and I encourage people to go out and use it," said Grieder. "Our fitness center will reopen March 30," said Grieder "Additionally, a motivated team of civil engineers recently completed the renovation of the Health and Wellness Center. This is yet another opportunity for our people to use health and fitness equipment." The colonel also noted fitness involves more than equipment and facilities. "It also goes into the health aspects. I We want our people to be healthier," said Grieder. "For instance, we have a very aggressive campaign to reduce the number of smokers at Dover Air Force Base. We want to reduce the number of tobacco users here by at least one third." Grieder explained some of the changes at Dover AFB concerning tobacco use. "Last year, we went to smoke-free dormitories. Now we are entering a phase where we will designate some family housing units as smoke free. We're not going to be moving families, but as buildings become vacant due to changes of station and separations, we're going to look at those buildings where we already have a number of nonsmoking families, and convert them to smoke-free facilities." The wing commander also noted there are tobacco cessation classes available at the Health and Wellness Center. While family and fitness are both important to the Air Force mission, one doesn't have to look farther than the front page of the local newspaper to see the mission readiness of our service is fast becoming a major issue. "There are three different aspects to readiness," said Grieder "The people need to be ready, the equipment needs to be ready, and the people need to be well trained for the mission." Grieder elaborated, "In order to deploy, members need to have their affairs in order. This means having shot records up to date and having the proper equipment and uniforms to take with you. We also need to make sure those people are properly trained. "Are they trained at the minimum level? Or are people trained to be proficient so they can go and do the job?" asked Grieder. "We are looking for more than just currency; we are looking for proficiency." The Eagle Wing has scheduled several exercises to help members become more proficient in their training. "We have, an Operational Readiness Exercise scheduled for late April in preparation for June's Operational Readiness Inspection. Between the two we will have smaller readiness exercises, and also a 'Haunted House,' where people will have a chance to try out their chemical warfare training." Grieder said the April ORE would be larger than the February's ORE, and will involve more Dover Team members. "All members will focus on the exercise. Everybody will be in Battle Dress Uniform and will focus on their part of the readiness mission. Everybody will be focused on training. "I hope and have every reason to believe these initiatives will improve our readiness posture, the ability to do our mission, and the quality of life for our people," said Grieder. "Our families are important and we are committed to taking care of them. We will continue to seek ways to improve the fitness of the people assigned to the Eagle Wing. And in our preparation for June's ORI, we will stress training our people for the tasks they face in meeting our mission anywhere in the world." 3rd AS, OSS take Intramural Basketball Championship with 54-39 win against EMS [1999-03-26] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- The combined squad from the 3rd Airlift Squadron and the Operations Support Squadron beat out the Equipment Maintenance Squadron in what turned out to be a futile game of catch-up for EMS at the base Intramural Basketball Championship Game at the Sports and Fitness Center, March 18. 3AS/OSS began their path to victory when 3AS/OSS scored the game's first 3 points just a minute and 20 seconds into the game. It took nearly 3 additional minutes before EMS retaliated with their first score in the game, bringing the game score to 3-2. The rest of the first half was tight. EMS moved ahead of 3AS/OSS twice, at one point, a three-pointer put EMS ahead of 3AS/OSS with a 14-11 lead. Unfortunately, that lead would end up being the largest, and last lead the EMS would have during the game. The last moments of the first half left no questions about who was destined to win the championship. With a well-established 5 point, 20-15 lead, 3AS/OSS managed to squeeze in yet another 4 points, two sunk by 3A5/OSS captain Millard C. Finch Jr. The first half closed out with an 24-28 lead for the 3AS/OSS. The second half of the game was dominated more by free throws and fouls than by anything else, with the 25 of the 51 points scored in the second half shot from the free-throw line. Two of those free throws were from 3AS/OSS, and were shot with a mere 1 second left on the game clock. That tense finish gave SAS/OSS a 54-39 game lead over EMS, and brought the team it's trophy. "I feel real good about this," said a proud, 3AS/OSS coach. "This is the third time we won the championship and it feels good. If we have the same team, I think we can win again next year." Dover Air Force Base writes new policy on tobacco use [1999-04-02] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- Some major changes are on the way for users of tobacco at Dover Air Force Base. A new policy from the wing commander was recently briefed to squadron commanders. The new policy more clearly defines what behaviors will be tolerated by users of tobacco, in addition to where and when tobacco use is permitted. While the Air Force already has an official policy on tobacco use, Air Force Instruction 40-102, the Eagle Wing has made a decision to localize that policy with it's own instruction. The supplement leaves less room for misinterpretation of the Air Force policy. "This policy clarifies the expectations of Dover a little more," said Maj. Diana Curtis, Health Promotions Manager at the Health and Wellness Center. "The Air Force policy has been left open in certain areas, to allow installation commanders to emphasize their own ideas on the policy." According to Curtis, the most obvious change in the policy states "The Air Force will no longer designate non-tobacco use areas. All areas will be considered tobacco free..." What this means is that members will not be allowed to use tobacco products anywhere on base except in areas specifically designated as tobacco use areas. "The AFI states installation commanders or squadron commanders designate a tobacco use area," said Curtis, "those areas designated for tobacco use will be clearly marked." The wing policy makes it clear that outdoor tobacco use will be limited to designated tobacco use areas only. "Even when you are out of uniform, on the weekends, or are just hanging around the dorms, you need to be in the designated tobacco use areas," said Curtis. For clarification, the policy also states members in uniform will not use tobacco products while walking, or while riding a bicycle. The rules for tobacco use indoors have also been clarified. "There are only three areas on base that allow indoor tobacco use," said Curtis. "Those areas are the Bowling Center, the Global Activities and Community Center, and the Landings. And there are specific areas within those locations that have been set aside for tobacco use." According to Curtis, smoking in base housing is still permitted, but the idea of completely eliminating smoking in those has been discussed. Curtis also added that since "tobacco" includes chewing tobacco as well as cigarettes, the rules will apply equally to both. "This means users of smokeless tobacco are not permitted to use it indoors, they must use it outdoors, in the designated areas," said Curtis. While the new policy may seem to some to be too strict, it is not the strictest in the Air Force. According to Curtis, some commands, such as Air Education and Training Command, enforce a 100 percent non-tobacco use policy for students during duty hours. "We are not breaking new ground with this supplement," said Curtis, "others have done it already." "The Air Force wants its members to quit the tobacco habit mainly because of the detrimental health effects, some short term, and quite a bit of which are long term. Heart disease and cancer rates are higher in smokers," said Curtis. Dr. Thomas D. Fadell Luna, 436th Aerospace Medicine Squadron commander, says tobacco users, specifically smokers, effect mission readiness. "We know in the medical group that smokers spend a lot more time in sick call than do non-smokers," said Luna. "We know fliers who smoke spend a lot more time on non-flying status due to illness than do non-smoking fliers." "The Air Force has about 29.3 percent tobacco users among active duty members. We would like to take two to four percent off of that," said Curtis. "The ultimate long rang goal, however, is a tobacco-free Air Force." Dover Air Force Base MARE goes well [1999-04-09] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- Dover Air Force Base recently completed a Major Accident Response Exercise. The exercise began around 9 a.m. Friday when crash phones rang, announcing a Dover C-5 was having trouble with an engine. The exercise escalated to a simulated crash of the C-5 Galaxy aircraft, with injuries and casualties. The MARE, involving numerous civilian organizations, along with base organizations, tested the wing's ability to respond to a major on-base accident, said Chief Master Sgt. Rene Simard, 436th Airlift Wing Plans and Programs. According to Simard, the process was really intended to be a learning process for military and civilian disaster response teams to gauge how they might work together in a real world situation. "This was the first time many of us actually had to work with our civilian counterparts, the overwhelming consensus was that it went very well," said Simard. "The off-base agencies integrated very well with our folks and everybody had a great attitude." "I think it's very important that we worked together with civilians," said Airman 1st Class Jonathan Spreadbury, 436th Medical Group and MARE participant. "The planes landing here can carry hundreds of people. I don't think our medical group could handle something that large. We would rely on the civilians to help us. All the major inpatient facilities are downtown." Simard said, "Our goal was to walk through the process. We hope to do something similar in the next three to six months. Next time we will make it more of a challenge, with as little notice as possible. That will make it more of a challenge for everyone involved in the exercise." 436th Medical Group takes nine AMC level awards [1999-04-16] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- Col. Patricia A. Buck, 436th Medical Group commander always knew her staff were some of the best in the Air Mobility Command. Her beliefs were recently substantiated when the Medical Group received nine Air Mobility Command level awards for 1998. "I'm extremely proud of the men and women of the 436th Medical Group. Their hard work, professionalism, and dedication to helping others is evident in the high quality of care they provide day in and day out," said Buck. "These awards reinforce what we already knew. They are the best of the best." Recipients of the awards included three members from the Dental Squadron, three from the Aerospace Medicine Squadron, and three from the Medical Operations Squadron. Master Sgt. Kevin Vegas, 436th Dental Squadron superintendent, received the AMC award for Senior NCO of the year. Vegas" leadership of an eleven member team, aiding the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in the forensic identification of 22 casualties from a terrorist bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya and a helicopter crash at Nellis Air Force Base, contributed to his receiving the award. Tech. Sgt. Ursula Young being named Dental NCO of the Year is partially due to her work reducing the number of Dover AFB personnel not qualified for worldwide service due to dental health to less than 1 percent. The acceptable level set by AMC is five percent. Senior Airman Rebecca Taylor was named AMC Dental Airman of the Year for her exceptional clerical work and management of the Records and Reception Section during the six weeks absence of the Noncommissioned Officer In Charge. "One reason for the outstanding performance of the Dental Squadron may be its commitment to the enlisted force," said Capt. Elaine Dekker, 436th Medical Group Executive officer "The Dental Squadron seems to have carried out the idea of ACM's Year of the Enlisted Force, beyond just a year." In the Medical Operations Squadron, Staff Sgt. Eric Cisney was named Physical Therapy Craftsman of the Year. Some of Cisney's achievements include the creation of a new gym program, allowing one-on-one instruction on gym equipment. The program decreased patient time in the Physical Therapy Clinic and allowed patients more independence. Cisney was also involved with the Delaware State Senior Olympics Program; his instruction provided an environment, which produced zero injuries for more than 100 participants. Capt. Catherine E. McGowan, a physical therapist from the 436th Medical Operations Squadron ,was named AMC Physical Therapist of the Year for her contribution to the recent high scores on the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations and Health Service Inspection inspections. McGowen prepared participants for the inspections by conducting mock survey inspections of primary teams. McGowen was also involved in the organization of Medical Group Spouse's orientation for the Year of the Family Capt. Judith Hughs, a nurse, gained recognition as AMC Nurse of the Year partly for her reorganization of the drug list for the Minor Procedure Unit. The improvement minimizes the waste of unused drugs, and improves efficiency of drug administration for nurses who rotate through the MPU. Hughs has also volunteered to teach a class on pain management at a local hospital. "Each one of these people do their job with excellence every single day," said Lt. Col. Janice I. Lee, 436th Medical Operations Squadron commander. "They are very involved with community activities in the city and the state. Each is an energetic person looking for ways to do things better. It is a validation of what we have known all along that we have excellent people here that work very hard, it is nice to see them recognized." In addition to the Medical Operations Squadron and the Dental Squadron, the 436th Medical Group as honored to have another squadron, the Aerospace Medicine Squadron, receive high honors. Senior Airman Kora G. Parks, named AMC Medical Readiness Airman of the Year, was honored in part for her ability to perform under pressure. During Phoenix Scorpion II and Phoenix Banner her coordination of the Global Reach Laydown Team deployment enabled medical clearances and weapons issuance to be performed efficiently, ensuring the team and equipment were ready to deploy ahead of time. Airman 1st Class Sarah Byron was named AMC Public Health Airman of the Year, for her work safeguarding pregnant workers at Dover AFB. Her awareness of safety issues allowed for the identification of dangerous work environments for pregnant workers and the subsequent relocation of three workers for the duration of their pregnancies. For her work with civilian work force records, Airman 1st Class Stacey S. Bonk was named AMC Aeromedical Airman of the Year. Bonk's participation in the audit of civilian medical records led to the retirement of more than 1000 files, improving record manageability and simplifying record keeping duties for coworkers. Quality performance is not limited to these nine 436th Medical Group team members, quality really is evident throughout the entire Medical Group. "We're fortunate to have a lot of young people doing super things for the Air Force and for their community," said Senior Master Sgt. Alan Wilkerson, 436th Medical Group superintendent. "For our folks to have achieved this level of recognition is significant and noteworthy of their dedication to the 436 Airlift Wing and to all of our patients and clientele." New commander for 436th Logistics Group [1999-04-23] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- Col. Donald H. Stokes, Jr. assumed command of the 436th Logistics Group from Col. Timothy T. Turner, in a ceremony held Monday at Building 709. Turner relinquished command to Stokes to accept an assignment as Chief of the Traffic Management Division, HQ USAF/ILTT at the Pentagon. Stokes, a native of Hot Springs, Ark., earned a bachelor's degree in Aviation Management from Auburn University, Auburn, Ala., and a Master of Arts degree in Public Administration from Webster College, St. Louis, Mo. His career includes assignments command of two squadrons at Altos Air Force Base, Oklahoma, and Deputy Logistics Group Commander, 51st Fighter Wing, Osan Air Base, Korea. Most recently, Stokes was assigned NAF Chief, Logistics Division, 19th Air Force, Randolph Air Force Base, 'Texas. Stokes awards and decorations include the Meritorious Service Medal with six oak leaf clusters, an Air Force Commendation Medal, and Air Force Achievement Medal, and a Vietnam Service Medal with three service stars. As commander of the 436th Logistics Group, Stokes will be responsible for providing complete on/off equipment maintenance, supply, fuels, transportation and contracting support for 36 C-S aircraft and 7,500 personnel assigned to the 436th Airlift Wing, the 512th Airlift Wing, and 17 tenant units, and will manage off station logistics support for five Air Mobility Command European forward operating locations. Dover C-5 Galaxy first tested in AMC for Y2K compliance [1999-04-23] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- One of Dover Air Force Base's 36 C-B Galaxy Aircraft was recently tested to ensure it was Y2K compliant. The aircraft was the first in Air Mobility Command to undergo such a test. Y2K, short for "Year 2000," has become a buzzword for problems created when older computer systems fail to recognize the coming millennium as 2000, and instead, because of outdated programming, misinterpret it as 1900. The tests, conducted on the ground as well as in the air, were designed to ensure the C-5's systems would be able to deal with the date change, or "roll-over" from 1999 to 2000. "This mission was intended to demonstrate the C-5 is Y2K compliant," said Capt. Huck Richard, 33rd Test Squadron, C-5 Test Director for AMC. "The C-5 was flown for the first time in a simulated Y2K environment. The tests involved watching the computer run through normal routines while in that environment." A total of nine tests were performed on the C-5, using seven significant dates. According to AMC documentation, each date has the potential to cause specific computer problems with the C-5's systems. Ground tests were performed with the aid of a testing van, loaded with special equipment designed to assist in aircraft testing. "We did seven tests on the ground, where we loaded the date and allowed it to turn over," said Capt. Michael Pakiz, 3rd Airlift Squadron. "The test van can be hooked into the plane to simulate a Global Positioning Satellite. The computer has a wire in the back that hooks into where the GPS antenna is usually input. It tricks the airplane. The airplane thinks it has a GPS satellite with a time signal, but really it is just the computer in the van simulating the GPS." While the C-5's systems are hooked into the test van, crew members were able to watch the significant dates "rollover" and then test key C-5 systems. "The two systems we were concerned with were the new navigation computer and the MADAR II maintenance computer," said Huck. "All the dates and times were accurately processed by those systems and were checked without any flaws." Once ground tests were completed, the plane was actually flown, and put through two of the same tests it had already passed on the ground. During the flight tests, the plane flew without the aid of any GPS, real or simulated. According to Pakiz, flight test dates were Dec. 31, 1999 to Jan 1, 2000 as well as February 28, 2000 to February 29, 2000. The first date is significant because that is when the year changes from 1999 to 2000. Noncompliant systems would erroneously change the date from 1999 to 1900. The second test date is significant because 2000 is a leap year. According to Huck, the plane performed without a hitch. "The aircraft we evaluated, performed effectively in a simulated Y2K environment, we will be ready for the challenges faced by AMC in the next millennium." C-133 Cargomaster returning to Dover Air Force Base [1999-05-14] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- Nearly three decades ago, Senior Master Sgt. Hank Baker, a flight engineer, regularly flew in and out of Dover Air Force Base aboard a C-133 Cargomaster. Baker has long since retired, and the C-133 was replaced by the C-5 back in 1971. But with the help of some of his old C-133 crew members, the Air Mobility Command Museum, and a C-5 Galaxy, Baker plans on returning the C-133 to a permanent home at the Air Mobility Command Museum here. "For me, this is the returning of an old friend," said Baker. "This is a challenge in my life that I want to have remembered in history." The AMC Museum began looking for a C-133 for its displays nearly nine years ago, said Mike Leister, AMC Museum director. The museum located a C-133 on display at the Strategic Air Command Museum in Nebraska. But the plane was inoperable, and the plane could not fly on its own into Dover. "It is such a large plane, and it could not be transported over the road," said Leister. "But we found out that the C-133 could be dismantled." According to Leister, the plan is to dismantle the plane and transport the pieces to Dover AFB inside a C-5 aircraft from Travis AFB in California. "We figure it will take about three trips inside the C-5 aircraft," said Leister. The Douglas C-133 Cargomaster, which made its debut at Dover AFB in August of 1958, is important to Dover AFB because it was the first aircraft designed to haul outsized cargo, specifically, Atlas Missiles. Its presence has contributed significantly to Dover's mission today. "This airplane was instrumental in making Dover Air Force Base the hub of heavy Air Force," said Baker. "It demonstrated Dover's ability to support a heavy airlift style airplane. So when these airplanes were retired in 1971, it was natural to follow them with another heavy airlift aircraft, the C-5." "Had it not been for the C-133 and the C-124 being stationed here and starting the heavy airlift, it is very unlikely the C-5 would have come here," added Tech. Sgt. (ret.) Bob Jones, a retired C-133 Loadmaster. "It may have gone elsewhere. And then it is likely that Dover Air Force Base might not be around!" Plans to get the C-133 to the AMC Museum have come along nicely. "We are at the point where we have contracted with the person who will take the aircraft apart and place it into the C-5. We've got the Air Force willing to supply the airplane, and Dover Air Force Base to supply the people to fly the C-5," said Baker. According to Leister, the last hurdle is gathering funds to put the plane back together. "We have enough funds to dismantle the plane," said Leister, "and we have the means to. get the plane to Dover Air Force Base, but we just don't have all the cash we need to put the plane back together." While the C-133 Association is still trying to locate funds to reassemble their plane, their plans to get the plane back to Dover and put back together are undaunted. "There is so much left to do, with the cost of equipment to reassemble the plane," said Jay Schmukler, C-133 Association president. "Fortunately we've had very generous people that have helped us so far. And when that plane arrives, we are going to put it into tip-top shape." The return of the C-133 to the AMC Museum here will complete a sort of cycle at Dover AFB. "A total of 50 C-133s were built," said Scmukler. "Dover received the first of those planes off the assembly line. The plane we are getting is the last production model C-133. Dover had the first, now we will have the last. In retrospect it is kind of unique." If you would like to assist the C-133 Association in returning the C-133 to the AMC Museum, contact the C-133 Association at 302-697-9058. Dover Team assists FBI on mission to Kosovo region [1999-06-25] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- The U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes, and an FBI investigative response team left Dover Air Force Base Monday headed for Kosovo to investigate possible war crimes committed by Serbian Forces during the recent conflict in the area. The FBI agents, along with more than 100,000 pounds of equipment were transported on a Dover C-5 Galaxy in support of a request by the Department of State to assist the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in the investigation of war crimes in the Kosovo region. "Dover is helping us now with an airlift of about 50 FBI agents," said Paul Malett, deputy commander of the mission to Kosovo. "We are accompanied by several representatives from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology two representatives from the Physicians for Humanity, a military doctor, two emergency medical technicians, and two investigative evidence response teams." The team was also accompanied by a small security contingent. "Our Dover Team air crews and support personnel played a major role in helping secure the peace in Kosovo," said Col. Erwin Lessel, 436th Operations Group commander. "Now that the bombing campaign is over, we are actively supporting the airlift needs of our peacekeeping forces." As part of the NATO brokered peace agreement, several countries currently share the responsibility of maintaining the peace in Kosovo, each protecting a particular sector of the region. According to Malett, each sector has sites where potential atrocities have occurred. The United States, along with Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and the United Kingdom, in close cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, headquarters in the Hague will be examining those sites for evidence. In Kosovo, the team's job will be to survey sites of possible mass atrocities in their assigned sector, and begin the collection and preservation of evidence. Malett says the investigative agents will attempt to determine the age, gender and cause of death of the victims found at these various sites. The evidence is intended to lead toward a case building against those that have committed war crimes in the region. According to Malett, while international investigations are not new to the FBI, this case is unique because it is the first time the FBI has investigated war crimes. This is an atypical mission," said Malett. "While we have been involved with the East Africa investigations, the Khobar investigations, and a number of other investigations, this is unique. It's unique because we are investigating crimes against citizens other than those of the United States. This is a crime against humanity. I think that is a source of responsibility and pride for the FBI, because we are part of that. This is an unprecedented move for us. "I think this is important, not just what the FBI is doing, but what all of the cooperating countries are doing," said Malett. This is people demonstrating a cooperative effort for a moral right. There is not much of a cloudy issue there. We all know what's right, and we all know with the extinction of the ethnic cleansing, or however you want to euphemize mass killings, is morally outrageous. The FBI has a part of the greater good, has a part of democracy, and has a part of the responsibility to bring those responsible before a tribunal." SAV Team evaluates DAFB Y2K readiness Dover Team, base prepared for date rollover [1999-09-24] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- A Staff Assistance Visit Team was here Sept. 14 and 15 to evaluate Dover Air Force Base for Year 2000 readiness. The team, from Air Mobility Command HQ, evaluated key areas in the Logistics Group, the Operations Group, the Civil Engineer Squadron, the Communications Squadron and the Wing Y2K office for Y2K preparedness. This was the team's second visit. During their initial visit in January, the team had evaluated the Y2K compliance of computers and other equipment. During this visit, the team focused on how Dover Air Force Base planned to deal with problems that may arise from the Y2K rollover. "This time," said Capt. Brent Glass, 436th Communications Squadron and Wing Y2K Office, Officer in Charge, "we are beyond infrastructure." The team looked at consequence management plans, pre-contingency checklists and community outreach. Consequence management is the way the base will identify any Y2K outages and institute corrective action to ensure normal base operations. According to Glass, a pre-contingency checklist is a list of concerns a group will need to address before the Y2K rollover occurs. "Development of these pre-contingency checklists is key to Y2K readiness," said Glass. "The Security Forces Squadron and Supply Squadron's checklists were cited as examples for the rest of the base to use." An example of one concern addressed on the pre-contingency list is manning. "For instance, before, during and after the Y2K rollover, the Y2K Crisis Action Team will need to be staffed," said Glass. In addition, there will be CES "ride out" teams on stand-by to deal with issues as they arise. "These teams will be ready to handle utility outages and other problems," said Staff Sgt. John Tipton, Noncommissioned Officer in Charge, Wing Y2K Office. Backup power is another example of what the SAV team was looking at from the pre-contingency checklist. According to HQ AMC/Civil Engineer guidance, areas on base which need generator power in the case of an electrical failure should be determined. "The base has already identified the mission critical facilities, and they already have generator backup," said Glass. The last area the SAV team looked at was the base's commitment on community. outreach. Because power, as well as other utilities, come into Dover Air Force Base from off-base, base Y2K officials have been working to ensure those services will remain stable throughout the Y2K turnover and beyond. "We are continually working with our of base partners to ensure all the utilities and services we gain from them are going to be available January 1st," said Col. Charles F. Schreck, 436th Support Group commander, and wing focal point for all Y2K activities. Preparations to meet requirements set forth by HQ/AMC are ongoing. "We've had close to 70 individuals as part of the Y2K working group, a field grade officer from every group, and a significant number of individuals working for nearly a year to ensure we are fully Y2K compliant. They have done an outstanding job," said Schreck. "The areas identified by the SAV team as a potential problem have already been identified by the Y2K team. Those issues are being worked by the wing Y2K team, but there can always be some small glitches," said Schreck. Even if those glitches turn out to be more than glitches, the Dover Air Force Base mission will continue. "If we do have outages in base systems such as power or computers, we can continue our mission manually," said Schreck. "The airplanes are still capable of being flown. They have been tested, as have other areas such as cargo, maintenance and the passenger terminal." "We are absolutely ready," said Schreck. "We feel certain the Eagle Wing is ready to execute the mission on January 1." DAFB inspected for appearance, beautification competition [1999-10-01] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- A team of inspectors from Headquarters Air Mobility Command visited Dover Air Force Base Sept.22-24 as part of AMC's Base Appearance Competition. Dover Air Force Base is one of eleven AMC bases in the continental United States in competition for the $200,000 in operations and maintenance funds awarded to the winning base. The team inspected Dover Air Force Base for general appearance, maintenance and housekeeping. Additionally, the team inspected to assured the base was in compliance with AMC building standards and regulations "The team specified what types of buildings they wanted to see," said Maj. Kyle Hicks, 436th Civil Engineer Squadron. "The focus for this year was on customer service and family oriented organizations, because this is AMC's Year of the Family." The team toured 15 family related facilities on base, including the base theater, the passenger terminal, the Child Development Center, the Family Support Center, and the Youth Center. The inspectors were looking for general upkeep, and good design. They were also looking for good flow in customer service areas to ensure customers knew where to go for help when they entered a facility, said Hicks, The team also visited all the dormitory facilities on base. "One of the things the team was looking for was a home-like environment," said Master Sgt. Angela Swartz, the Base Dormitory Supervisor, and a member of the 436th Civil Engineer Squadron. In preparation for the visit, dormitories dressed up the dorms to make them more hospitable. "We have wanted to make the dorms more like a campus, as opposed to an institution," said Swartz. Dormitory residents have appreciated the changes to their homes, "The common areas in our dorms were remodeled," said Airman Rodney Mosser, 436th Aircraft Generation Squadron. "It feels more like home now." Base Appearance Competition Team members also looked at the exteriors of all buildings on base, looking for architectural integration and appropriateness of buildings to their missions. "They look at design as well as color schemes to make sure they are in accordance with AMC guidelines for base appearance," said Hicks. In preparation for the inspection, the mulch groundcover around many facilities was replaced with red rock. "The red rock is easier to maintain, lasts longer, and over time, it costs less," said Hicks. "The red rocks will become the new base standard for Dover." According to Hicks, the addition of red rock around base facilities was the only major project done in preparation for the inspection. "There were some minor things," said Hicks. "We replaced and fixed some ceiling tiles, and some curbing. We also did some touch up painting." "I think they were impressed with our base," said Hicks. "We gave a good showing. Because Dover Air Force Base gets so many distinguished visitors due to the Super Port and the Port Mortuary, the base is always in tip-top shape, not just when the base appearance team comes to visit. We always try to keep a high standard at our base." Base schools score well on DSTP [1999-10-22] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- The results of the Delaware State Testing Program were recently released, and Dover Air Force Base schools did well in many areas. The DSTP tests, administered in the Spring of 1999 to third, fifth, eighth and tenth grade students measured their abilities in reading, writing and mathematics. Students at base schools attained some of the highest scores in the state. Fifth and eighth graders at base schools, along with students at Dover High School, which serves Dover Air Force Base, were among the top five highest scoring schools in the state on the mathematics portion of the test. All three base schools had students scoring amongst the top ten schools in the state for the reading portion of the test. For the writing portion of the test, the fifth graders at Welch Elementary School, did better than any other fifth graders in Delaware. But that result is really no surprise for base school instructors. "They learn to write through every grade level," said Al Bratten, a fifth grade teacher at Welch Elementary School. "We've made an integrated curriculum, which includes writing. It is no longer enough to have the right answer. They must be able explain how they got their answer." "And writing helps kids get their thoughts together in some cohesive order," said Sue George, also a fifth grade instructor at Welch Elementary. George explained that intensive writing is part of every course work for nearly every subject, from mathematics to social studies. "One of the best teaching strategies in the past ten years has been the emphasis on the writing process, said Franni Melda, Welch Elementary School principal. The increase of writing in the classroom is not the only explanation for student's academic performance, however. Another factor may be the teacher to student ratio at base schools. "If you're in a class with 21 or 22 kids, as opposed to a class with 30 kids, the teacher has more opportunity to meet with those kids that need a little extra help," said Melda. "Those students who are experiencing some difficulties can then get the help they need." A change in the learning process has also had an effect on student performance. Lynn Kilgore, Arnold Elementary School principal, explained the shift in the educational system. 'Twenty years ago, learning facts was enough, today, the amount of factual information available doubles every 18 months. It is not possible for students to learn all the facts today," explained Kilgore. "There has been a shift in the educational paradigm; students must now be problem solvers. They must know how to find the facts on their own. They must learn to learn." "There is now an emphasis on cognitive learning skills. Students are not asked to do as much rote memorization as they had in the past," said Paul Van Horn, Dover Air Force Base Middle School principal. The increase in reading, the high teacher to student ratio, and the shift in the learning process have all empowered students at base schools to perform better on the state's standardized tests. But perhaps the most important factor influencing students at base schools is not in the classroom at all. "Parents remain closely involved in the learning process," said George. "And because of the unique home situations, we do not have a lot of social problems here. At least one person in the family has some respect for authority, as a result, the kids get along much better here." 436th AW receives new enlisted leader [1999-11-05] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- No fanfare, no parade, and that's just the way he likes it. Chief Master Sgt. William A. Scott became the 436th Airlift Wing command chief master sergeant Oct. 28 when he arrived at Dover Air Force Base from Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany. Scott is the second chief master sergeant to hold the position, replacing Chief Master Sergeant Jeffrey Lewin who retired in August. Previously, Chief Scott was assigned in Germany as a Field Training Detachment Chief for Air Education and Training Command, where he was responsible for providing training to enlisted maintainers who are tasked with keeping the Air Force fleet of aircraft in the air. As the Eagle Wing's command chief, Scott is responsible for voicing the concerns of more than 3,000 enlisted members and their families to the wing commander, and it's a job he looks forward to. "There's nothing here for me to gain personally," Scott said. "I've made chief, the Air Force isn't going to promote me again. I'm here to help the people in the wing, and make Dover a better place." Scott believes he can best do that by getting out and meeting the constituency he represents. "I hope to meet as many of the enlisted members on base as I can, and help them with any problems they might have," the 26-year Air Force veteran said. "I'm here for them, they can come to me anytime and talk about anything they need to talk about. My door is always open." The new command chief master sergeant says he has no preconceptions about what needs to be accomplished during his tenure here at Dover. The bottom line for him is leaving the base better off for his having served here. "I need to get around and see what needs to be worked on and take on one project at a time," Scott said. "I'm here to be the eyes and ears of the commander, and a voice for our enlisted members. When an issue of importance comes up, we'll work it together." Scott and Gilbert have worked together twice in the past, and Scott says he has an outstanding relationship with the Wing Commander. "Colonel Gilbert and I go back a few bases," Scott said. "He and I were stationed together at Malmstrom Force Base in Montana, where he was my squadron commander in the 91st Air Refueling Squadron. He caught up to me again at McConnell, where he was the Operations Group commander. As we left Kansas, we left on the same day, he told me that if he ever got a wing, I'd get a phone call. That's how I was selected and that's why I'm here." Chief Scott plans to hold an Enlisted Call sometime in the near future. He looks forward to the open forum where he can address first-hand the concerns of the base's enlisted corps. "Everyone can come out and take some potshots at me," he said with a small laugh. "That's the best way I have to get a feel for what's going on with our people. Hopefully, I'll also be able to pass on some important information. Sometimes our lower ranking folks don't get a chance to hear what's going on about issues that affect them." Scott looks forward to the challenge of serving as the command chief for the only active duty all C-5 base in the Air Force. "Until two days ago, I'd never seen this base in the daylight," Scott said. "I've passed through here a couple of times while I was TDY, but never during the day, and it was busy then. I've been told there's a rich history here and that this is one of the busiest bases in the Air Force. I know the men and women who are stationed here must work awful hard to keep the mission going, and I'll work hard to serve their interests well while I'm here." Wing demonstrates its preparedness for Y2K [1999-11-12] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- Dover Air Base experienced a planned power outage Tuesday as part of a Y2K readiness exercise. The power was turned off to test the base's ability to operate during an unlikely potential power outage due to the year 2000 rollover, midnight Dec. 31. The date presents a potential problem because some computer chips controlling power systems may contain a programming error causing them to interpret the date 2000 as 1900. The 436th Civil Engineer Squadron began shutting down base power about an hour after the start of the duty day, and most base facilities experienced a total power loss from 9 a.m. to noon. "At 8:15 a.m. we shut down power in the dorms," said 1st Lt. William Flood, Base Y2K Office. "The Fitness Center and Communications Squadron storage area were shut off around 8:30 a.m. At 9 a.m., we shut down the base's main circuits." The exercise was conducted during the duty day so the outage would affect as many base operations as possible, to test their ability to operate without electricity. Base offices and facilities were able to function when portions of the base electrical grid were shut off. "Every squadron has a contingency plan to relocate as needed, to one of their own facilities that has backup power," said Flood. "For instance, the 3rd and 9th airlift squadrons relocated to the Base Operations building to continue their operations." Another squadron, the 436th Mission Support Squadron, relocated to Building 203 during the power outage. "The training we have been working on up until the exercise went smoothly," said Senior Airman Darren James, 436th Mission Support Squadron, Personal Readiness Unit. "We went in and did what we needed to do. We did orders manually for 65 people; there was no work stoppage." "Our section has been preparing for nearly a full year," he said. "We came up with Y2K procedures, and implemented a Y2K book for in house use. This exercise showed our procedures are in place and ready to go." While the majority of base facilities were without power during the three-hour exercise, some facilities did maintain power. According to the Base Y2K Office, certain facilities, such as the Commissary; the Base Exchange, the Child Development Center and the Patterson Dinning Facility were intentionally left on. Base Housing also retained full power during the simulated outage. Other base facilities had power because they are equipped with backup generators. According to civil engineers, nearly 60-mission critical facilities on base are equipped with such generators. These facilities include the 436th Security Forces Squadron, the firehouse, the command post, base weather, base operations, the control tower, airfield lighting, the hospital, various sewage and water pumps, and the base telephone system. While the base power outage exercise demonstrated to Dover Team members the potential the Y2K glitch could have on Dover Air Force Base, according to Flood, base residents should not be concerned. "Although unlikely, the worst case scenario is the power goes out and stays out," said Flood. "But we will be able to continue the mission. The base and the Air Force in general, have spent months preparing for Y2K. People will need to use common sense and follow the information guide we have created." The information guide contains checklists base residents can use to prepare for potential Y2K problems. It will be available at the Y2K Town Hall Meeting Wednesday from 7-9 p.m. at Welch Elementary School. The meeting will open with remarks from Col. Neal Mills, 436th Airlift Wing vice commander, and will feature community representatives from the Dover City Manager's Office, fire, sewer, electric and police services, the Federal Credit Union, Fort Sill National Bank, Bell Atlantic, Bay Health, the American Red Cross, and base finance. Col. Frank Schreck, 436th Support Group commander, will discuss how the base plans to house and feed base residents in the case of an extended power outage. "We feel sure this town hall meeting will be extremely informative and I encourage all Dover Team members and their families to attend," said Flood. Local AFSA donates money to veterans [1999-11-26] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- The Dover Air Force Base chapter of the Air Force Sergeants Association presented a $200 check to the Veterans Administration Hospital, Elsmere, Del. "The funds will be used for recreational purposes for hospital residents," said Chief Master Sgt. Herbert Schlecht, Jr., project coordinator. "The money can be used to purchase CD's, or used toward a bowling outing for the residents," said Shlecht. The AFSA decided to donate money to the hospital as part of a Veteran's Day observance. "We have retired, as well as active duty members in the AFSA," said Schlecht. "We all felt this would be a great opportunity to give back to the veterans that served." The AFSA did more than donate money during their Veteran's Day visit to the hospital. "We took donations of books as well as personal items such is shaving cream and talcum powder," said Schlecht. '"We also brought baked goods, cookies, end cakes donated by volunteers from base." Additionally, volunteers traveled to the hospital to represent the Dover Team, and visit with patients. "We went up with about 30 volunteers representing the Dover community. There were civil servants, airmen and chiefs," said Schlecht. "We all spent time talking with veterans." While this is the first time the AFSA has gone to the VA Hospital for a visit, this won't be the last time Dover Team members will be able to visit with veterans from the hospital. "We're setting up a visit to Dover Dec. 16," said Schlecht. "About 20 patients will be coming down with volunteers from the hospital. We are going to have lunch at the Landings, see the working dogs demo, tour the Air Mobility Command Museum, and tour a C-5 aircraft." Dover Team members wishing to learn more about the Air Force Sergeants Association, or who would like to assist with the December visit from the Veteran's Hospital, may contact Chief Master Sgt. (sel.) Tom Chalk at 6774304, or Chief Master Sgt. Herbert Schlecht, Jr., at 677-4390. CES 'Adopt a Child' Program provides toys to children of squadron's airmen [1999-12-10] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- There's a lot of toys under the Christmas tree at the 486th Civil Engineer Squadron this year. The toys aren't early gifts from Santa Claus, however. They've all been donated by various offices and flights within the CES, as part of the squadron's "Adopt-A-Child" program. The program, now in its tenth year, provides toys and gifts for the children of airmen in the squadron. "Mainly it's for our senior airmen and below and their children," said Mary-Lou Hagelberg. Hagelberg, and her husband Master Sgt. (ret.) Paul Hagelberg, are the originators of the program. "We both work at CE, and this was a way for him to give something back after 27 years of active duty service," said Hagelberg. Airmen are selected for the program by members of their chain-of-command, and the names of their children are passed on to program coordinators. "We put a number for each child on the list. We put their age and whether they are a boy or girl. Then we distribute the list to all the shops and the flights in the squadron," said Hagelberg. Offices and flights then choose individual children from the list, and sponsor those children by purchasing gifts for them. This year there are more than 30 children on the list. Parents who are part of the program really appreciate the effort their squadron put into the program. "I like this program a lot. It gives young airmen the chance to give things to their children that they might not be able to," said Senior Airman Eli Waldon, 436th CES. Waldon's two children will find a few gifts from the CES squadron under the tree this year. "It feels pretty good that the squadron pulls together to help out the airman. Every office pulls together to collect items," said Waldon. "We'll be able to get the kids a few more items than we would be able to without it," said Master Sgt. David Gunderman, 436th CES first sergeant, has been with the squadron since August. "I've never seen something like this at the squadron level," said Gunderman. "This is the first time I have been part of something like this. It really gives me a good feeling. It is a pleasure to be part of an organization that takes it to heart when they say 'everyone is part of the CE team.' The Giving Tree is one way in the Civil Engineer Squadron that we show we really do care." Really, the Adopt-A-Child program is as much about the children who receive the gifts as it is about their parents, active, hard-working members of the CES. "I think the squadron is filled with unsung heroes. I know I'm getting on the soap box here," laughed Hagelberg, "but these kids bust their behinds fixing sewer pipes and leaking roofs. This is just our way of saying thank you, our way of saying 'We care about you.'" Dover Team members get STEP promotion; Wing commander delivers stripes over holidays [2000-01-07] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- While many Eagle Wing members feigned surprise as they unwrapped ties or fruit cakes this past Christmas Day, three enlisted members received a real surprise they will not soon forget. Staff Sgt. Brian Bossio, a dog handler with the 436th Security Forces Squadron, Tech. Sgt. Joe A. Gahan, a jet engine mechanic assigned to the 436th Component Repair Squadron, and Master Sgt. Richard A. Brewer, noncommissioned officer in charge of anti-terrorism with the 436th SFS, were all greeted Christmas Day with STEP promotions. Col. S. Taco Gilbert III, 436th Airlift Wing Commander, and Chief Master Sgt. Bill A. Scott, 436th Airlift Wing Command Chief Master Sergeant, delivered the stripes to the three at their homes. The Stripes for Exceptional Performers program is designed to meet those unique situations where in the commander's judgment, an individual clearly deserves a promotion. Under this special program, commanders of major commands, field operating agencies and senior officers within organizations with a large enlisted population, may promote a limited number of airmen with exceptional potential to staff sergeant through master sergeant. Promotees were both surprised and excited when they learned they were promoted. "This is great," said Brewer. "It's the best Christmas present I could have had." "I was at home, and my wife saw Chief Scott outside through the window," said Brewer. "My wife and I met the chief at the door. Colonel Gilbert came forward and said I was out of uniform." Brewer then learned what the commander meant by out of uniform. He was given a brand new set of master sergeant stripes and was told they would need to be sewn to his BDUs in order that he be in proper uniform the next duty day. Tech. Sgt. Gahan, promoted from staff sergeant, works in the jet engine facility on base. His wife is a familiar face in the check-out line at the Patterson Dining facility. Both were shocked when they learned Gahan would be promoted to technical sergeant. According to Chief Scott, it is best to have both the STEP promotee and their spouse available when the new stripes are presented. Trouble brewed when Chief Scott and Colonel Gilbert learned Gahan's wife was at work and would not be available to witness the step promotion. "Well, they came over to the house and I was in boxers and a tank top," laughed Gahan. "They asked if my wife was there, but my wife was at work. They said they would come back later." Gahan subsequently called his wife home from work. The two feared there may have been some sort of trouble. Both were surprised, however, when Chief Scott and Colonel Gilbert reappeared with new technical sergeant stripes to be sewn to his uniform. "What a shock," said Gahan. "I didn't even know I had been put in for the promotion." Gahan still seems a little shaken by the whole event, but says his job will probably be unaffected by the new rank. He does plan to use the pay raise associated with the promotion to bolster his savings, and perhaps look into getting a new car. Staff Sgt. Brian Bossio, a drug dog handler with the 436th SFS, had a schedule that would make it difficult to get him his new stripes with a suitable audience available to enjoy the surprise with him. "I never would have anticipated it would be so hard to hand out stripes," said Gilbert. "I knew he would be working Christmas day. So I figured we would swing by his home Christmas Eve. I wanted the family to be part of this." "The chief and I went over about 8:30 Christmas Eve. There was nobody home but him.," said Gilbert. "I tried to explain why I was knocking on his door on Christmas Eve, but all I could say was hello. I left him quite confused." After making three failed attempts to meet Bossio on the flight line to present him with the new staff sergeant stripes, Gilbert decided on an unusual method to guarantee Bossio a large crowd of his peers for a Christmas Day presentation of the new stripes. "Like all wing commander,s homes these days, I have a duress alarm on my home. I knew how to generate a crowd," laughed Gilbert. " I went in, and hit the duress alarm. It generated more blue lights than you could imagine would be possible on Christmas morning. We got a crowd, and then called Senior Airman Bossio over and presented him with his new stripes." Bossio was quite surprised at the event. "The Colonel set off the duress alarm and had security forces respond. I was a response force leader there," said Bossio. "Colonel Gilbert had another security forces officer pin the new stripes on to my sleeve." Bossio is prepared for what comes with the extra stripe. "I will now have more responsibility," said Bossio. "There will be more of a leadership role, and my job will become more demanding." 436th Airlift Wing commander holds first Commander's Call of the Year [2000-01-14] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- Col. S. Taco Gilbert III, 436th Airlift Wing commander, held his first Commander's Call of the year, Jan. 5 at the Base Theater. Gilbert addressed many issues during the nearly two-hour session, including changes to Dover's mission, C-5 modernization, and the importance of education. "There are a few changes proposed for the way we fly our missions around here," said Gilbert. "Everyone is very aware of the challenges of getting the C-5 in the air, keeping it in the air until it traverses the globe, then making it home again. "Tactical Airlift Command and Control headquarters, the taskers for our aircraft missions, have seen the amount of time we spend chasing broken aircraft around the globe," he said. "What they are planning to do is go to a 'hub and spoke operation,"' said Gilbert. According to Gilbert, the hub and spoke operation will result in a change in Dover Air Force Base's missions. Instead of flying to many locations around the world, Dover C-5s will fly primarily across the Atlantic to a central location in Europe, most likely Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Smaller aircraft will then move cargo to secondary locations. "This will allow us to consolidate the maintenance and support for C-5s at Ramstein, minimizing the amount of time we spend sending people put to the far corners of the globe chasing broken aircraft," said Gilbert. Although there was initial concern about the effect the proposed changes would have on Dover flying hours, Gilbert said there will he no decrease in flying hours for Dover air crew members. "TACC assures us that will not be a problem." In addition to a change in the flying mission, Gilbert told troops there would be a very positive change in the amount of parts and money available to fix the C-5 Galaxy. Gilbert credited the change to Dover Team members' efforts during William Cohen's, Secretary of Defense, recent visit to Dover. "When I brought Mr. Cohen into the Cann Bird (A C-5 which is routinely cannibalized for parts to be used on other aircraft) I didn't do any talking," said Gilbert. "I introduced him to the Cann Bird monitors and they took him through their airplane. When he walked through that plane, his eyes got huge. "The story you told ensured millions of dollars of appropriated funds will continue to flow into the C-5," said Gilbert. "You were able to tell the Secretary of Defense how important that money was to us. Your work produced $230 million in parts for our airplanes out there. Good work," said Gilbert. Gilbert also spoke about the importance of both military and college education. "I'd like for Dover to have a surge in promotion statistics. In order for that to happen I need your help," said Gilbert. "The most important thing for you to do to make that happen is to do your job and do it right. The second most important thing to do is to study." "It not only makes you more productive in the job you are doing now," said Gilbert, "but it also prepares you for life outside the Air Force. Even those of you that elect to trade in the blue uniform early, I would like to see you be successful in what you choose to do after you leave. It is a great economy out there, but it is a great economy for educated people. Educated means you have, a diploma of some kind. We don't always make it easy in the Air Force, but we make it easier than a lot of employers out there." During his commander's call, Gilbert spoke about many other issues as well, including efforts to reduce DUIs, changes to Basic Allowance for Housing, quality of base housing and changes in the pay scale. Gilbert plans to conduct Commander's Calls once a quarter. Keep Children's Smiles Healthy in 2000 [2000-02-11] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- A beautiful smile starts with healthy teeth, and healthy teeth start with good brushing habits learned as a child. Parents should take the time to teach children how to properly brush, floss and care for their teeth. Establishing an everyday routine as a child can help children become adults with healthy teeth and gums. Focusing on teaching children and parents how to care for children's teeth is the goal of February's National Children's Dental Health Month. "The way children care for their bodies today will have an impact on their health far into the new center," said Captain Elizabeth Beck, a dentist with the 436th Dental Squadron. "The good news for parents is that preventive dental care has dramatically improved the oral health of American children." According to Beck, it is now possible for many children to reach adulthood without ever experiencing tooth decay. Dental tips for parents and caregivers: -Take your child to see the dentist regularly, beginning by the child's first birthday -Put only water in a child's nap time or bedtime bottle -Start brushing as soon as the child's first tooth appears -Begin flossing when two teeth begin to touch -Brush and floss your child's teeth daily until the child can be taught to do this alone -Make certain your child gets the fluoride needed for decay-resistant teeth -Ask your dentist or the 436th Medical Group family practice or pediatric physicians how this should be done. It is also a good idea to ask your dentist about dental sealants. Dental sealants are thin protective barriers applied to teeth that shield the chewing surface of back teeth against tooth decay. As part of National Children's Dental Health Month, the 436th Dental Squadron will provide information to both parents and children to assist them in effective oral hygiene. One such program brings dental squadron members into the classroom to educate children about good dental practices. "We present kids with toothbrushes, stickers, mouth mirrors, and talk to them about brushing their teeth, healthy foods and how, to take care of their teeth," said Staff Sgt. April Kantner, 436th Dental Squadron. "Most kids will also get to see a video." Another exciting portion of the dental squadron's schedule of activities includes the annual presentation of a dental play that educates children on good dental care. The play, featuring such characters as Princess Cuspid and King Molar, shows the perils of eating unhealthy foods, and their effect on teeth. "The play has different things in it about unhealthy foods and unhealthy things they should try to stay away from, like smoking and candy bars. They learn the end result of choosing candy over healthy snacks could be cavities," said Kantner. "The children are real receptive to the play. When they see the evil cavity guy come out they get kind of scared, and they cheer for Princess Cuspid when she gets saved by the dentist." The play is geared to children in kindergarten through 3rd grade. "Good oral health practices should begin in infancy. In your child's early years, you must provide this care," said Beck. "Later, you will need to instruct, monitor and motivate your child to help maintain good oral health habits." "Attitudes and habits established at an early age are critical in maintaining good oral health throughout life," said Beck. Black letter initial flight AGS crew puts up first 'perfect' aircraft in nearly two years [2000-03-24] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- Airmen with the 436th/512th Aircraft Generation Squadron spend all day on the Dover Air Force Base flight line correcting problems, or discrepancies, with the C-5 Galaxy Aircraft. Usually by flight time, most aircraft still have "delayed discrepancies" listed in their AFTO 781 forms binder. These discrepancies do not affect the safety or flight capability of the aircraft. What would happen though, if an aircraft were to go up without any discrepancies at all? Recently, that very thing happened when the first Dover AFB C-5 Galaxy left the ground with "Black Letter Initial Status." A feat that hasn't been accomplished in nearly two years for the base. The black letter initial status refers to initials on the aircraft's discrepancy report which indicates the aircraft has no outstanding discrepancies, or repairs to be made, said Charles E. Twitchell, 512th AGS C-5 crew chief. Black initial status doesn't happen by accident though, it takes hard work by all involved to make it happen. "Finding parts on base, knowing where to go, and knowing how to fix things yourself is how we did it," said Twitchell. Twitchell, who works day shift, was assisted in this accomplishment by four other Dover Team members, including Air Reserve Technician Joseph R. Moore, Airman 1st Class Mark Dexter, Senior Airman Michael Scales Jr., and Senior Airman Chris Moyer, now a Flying Crew Chief. "For instance, we had an engine with the cowl doors opened up. There was a rivet missing. In order to fix that rivet, we would have to drop the door, put a rivet in, and then put the door back on," said Twitchell. "Such a discrepancy would usually be fixed in down time, for heavy maintenance. But with the aggressiveness of this crew, we wouldn't wait. We took it down ourselves, fixed it and put it back up." While such a minor discrepancy repair may have been delayed for up to six months by another crew, Twitchell and his crew took the time to fix it themselves. It is that type of initiative and dedication that enabled these AGS maintainers to take the C-5 bearing tail number #85-50003 to black letter initial status. (See the main story at Keeping Dover's mammoth C-5 Galaxys in the air... The 436th AGS.) Keeping Dover's mammoth C-5 Galaxys in the air... The 436th Aircraft Generation Squadron [2000-03-24] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- There are airmen on the Dover Air Force Base flight line just about every minute of every day of the year. They're there when the sun's up and it's 110 degrees in the shade. They're there in the middle of a pitch black winter night when the wind screams across two miles of ice cold runway over frozen fingertips clutching a torque wrench down into a loose BDU sleeve. The more than 700 troops of the 436th/512th Aircraft Generation Squadron are about as close to the mission as you can get without actually being loaded aboard one of Dover's 36 C-5 Galaxy Aircraft as a piece of cargo. These are the airmen who maintain the huge aircraft that represent our base, keeping them fit for flight and mission ready at all times. AGS troops start off their day like many remember technical school. Airman 1st Class Justin Pratt, 436th AGS, APG, also known as a crew chief, explains, "We start out each day with a roll call in formation." During formation, AGS troops are briefed by the Shift Supervisor on what types of problems the aircraft are having. Problems, also called discrepancies, can range from engine failures to inability to accept power from an external generator, to failed sensors. Discrepancies are listed by the aircraft's tail number, the identifying number printed on the C-5's signature "T-Tail." Discrepancies are quickly doled out to airmen qualified in unique specialties, and the troops are then dismissed to gather necessary equipment at CTK, or Consolidated Tool Kits, and are then free to head out to individual planes to make them flight capable and mission ready. The C-5 is a complicated piece of equipment; repairs must be made by qualified AGS airmen who specialize in the systems unique to the aircraft. According to Capt. Dennis Dabney, 436th AGS, Maintenance Supervisor, there are five unique areas where AGS troops can specialize. These specialties include: • JETS, or Aerospace Propulsion, which specializes in the repair and maintenance of jet engines aboard the C-5 • AFIN, or Aircraft Guidance and Control, which specializes in much of the control equipment found in the cockpit • ELEN, or Electric and Environmental Systems, which specializes in electrical systems aboard the aircraft as well as heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems • HYDRAULICS, or Aircraft Pneudraulic Systems, which deals with all hydraulics aboard the aircraft • CNAD, or Aircraft Communications and Navigation Systems, which deals with communications and navigation equipment After checking in at the aircraft, individual specialists go to work immediately. The first job of the day for Airman 1st Class Rodney Mosser, 436th AGS, ELEN, was to correct an aircraft electrical problem. A C-5 had been listed as "not accepting external power." According to Mosser, this meant the aircraft would not power up when plugged into a power generator outside the aircraft. "I knew what the problem was because it was listed in the aircraft's discrepancy forms," said Mosser. An aircraft's discrepancy forms stay with the aircraft at all times, and document the aircraft's recent maintenance history. Mosser works swing shift on the flightline. The diagnosis for the aircraft had been made by the day shift, but Mosser was ultimately tasked to repair the discrepancy. "The problem was with a bus tie contactor," explained Mosser, who has been with AGS for less than a year. "A bus tie contactor distributes power from either an internal or an external power source to the rest of the plane." Under the eye of supervisor Senior Airman Frank S. Gach, Mosser was able to correct the discrepancy in less than an hour. Sure of his work, Mosser went so far as to close up the access panel, and tidy up his workspace before the fix had been confirmed. When the external power generator was properly switched on, the inside of the aircraft lit up like a Christmas tree; the fix was good. Senior Airmen James Diliberto, 436th AGS, AFIN, stood nearly 50 feet above the runway on a steel tower known as a B-2 Stand. The wind was blowing 12 mph, and the wind chill was a nippy 18 degrees. While removing a Signal Acquisition Remote from a panel on the underside of the C-5's behemoth wing, a shivering Diliberto explained the SAR is a device that gathers information from various electronic sensors on and around the jet engine and transmits that information to a maintenance computer in the cockpit. Despite the frigid air, Diliberto didn't complain for a second about the cold weather. Instead, he made it perfectly clear that this was the job for him. "I love aircraft," said Diliberto, a Long Island, N.Y. native, with a tell-tale accent. "I love working on aircraft and I love the C-5 airframe." Performing maintenance on the aircraft is not Diliberto's only passion, though. He says he is currently working on his private pilot's license and one day hopes to fly military aircraft, not just maintain them. "That is my ultimate goal," said Diliberto. For now, though, he is happy maintaining the advanced flight control, and instrumentation equipment aboard the C-5. "I love what I do," said Diliberto. "If you love what you do, that's the most important thing." Similar sentiments were expressed by first termer Airman 1st Class Daniel Maylone, 436th AGS, JETS. "This is what I wanted to do before I got into the Air Force," said Maylone. "I love working on engines." Maylone explained his job is primarily to maintain the four sophisticated TF-39-1C Turbofan engines which provide thrust for the C-5, as well as to maintain the Auxiliary Power Units located at the rear of the aircraft. The APUs can provide electricity to the aircraft while on the ground, and also provide "bleed air" which aids in starting up the four jet engines. New to the career field, Maylone explained how he might go about solving an engine problem aboard a C-5. "The crew chief and a 7-level will ultimately decide what's wrong with an engine," explained Maylone. "For instance, an engine could have a bad margin, a bad turbine inlet temperature." Staff Sgt. Robert J. Deline, 436th AGS, explained that by using the outside temperature, the atmospheric pressure, and a pre-printed table as a guideline, specialists can determine what the correct range is for the turbine inlet temperature. If the temperature slips outside that margin, it would be indicative of an engine problem. "We usually try to trim the engine, or give it a tune up," said Maylone. In addition to the five specialties, there is another specialty, "Crew Chief." Crew chiefs perform general care on the plane, to include handling fueling, oil, and changing light bulbs. The most important part of being a crew chief, according to Staff Sgt. John Ryan, 436th AGS C-5 Crew Chief, is coordinating repair work on the plane. "We coordinate all the maintenance aboard the plane," said Ryan. "We make the maintenance run smoother and safer." "We may have a specialist working the hydraulics system, servicing hydraulic fluid, oil and preparing the aircraft for flight. That specialist may need to raise or lower a flap, " said Ryan. "At the same time, another specialist aboard the aircraft may be in a position where it would be dangerous for that flap to move." Ryan explained that part of his job as crew chief is to make sure such conflicts never happen. In addition to ground based crew chiefs, there is also an elite corps of FCC or Flying Crew Chiefs who maintain aircraft on missions all over the world. While the aircraft is deployed, they perform crew chief duties and coordinate Maintenance Recovery Teams with HQ AMC if there's a problem far from home. These members of the AGS team stay on the road over 120 days a year. All other AGS specialists may deploy as well, to support presidential support missions and humanitarian relief missions. Additionally, AGS troops deploy as part of maintenance recovery teams. Like much of the Air Force, the 436th/512th AGS attempts to do more with less. Senior Master Sgt. Michael Morrow, 436th AGS Flightline Superintendent, known to many AGS flightline troops only by his radio handle, "ARCHER 2," explained. "These folks do an incredible job," said Morrow. "We worked with 1,200 people four years ago. Today, we do with only half of that. The aircraft can't get the same tender loving care they did back then, but the aircraft keep flying. Our airmen keep it working by working together." Through the efforts of Chief Master Sergeant Michael McClellan, 436th AGS Maintenance Superintendent, AGS was able to combine its troops into one, unified force that could work more efficiently. As little as 6 months ago, the squadron had been divided into a "red side" and a "blue side." "The change has paid tremendous dividends to us. We have a much better utilization of manpower now," said Morrow. Efficiency is all-important to AGS, because AGS is one part of the mission where the operations tempo never seems to die off. Whether it is humanitarian missions to Africa, airlift missions in support of the president, or wartime contingency in the far corners of the globe, if something is going on in the world where military airlift is needed, AGS will feel the pinch. "You pretty much can tell if it's going to be a busy day by watching the news," laughed Morrow. "These troops, I can't say enough about working with these young troops. It's like a big team. Everyone pitches in here," said Morrow. But that's not the best part of the job for Morrow. "When you get those engines started, and the plane you've been working on taxi's out onto the runway, that's job satisfaction. And all these guys know that." Lt. Col. Robert E. Hamm Jr., 436th AGS Commander adds, "25 percent of strategic airlift comes from Dover nothing happens unless something moves and nothing moves unless these guys are doing their job 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, through cold, wind, heat, rain whatever. It's not only AGS, its all seven Logistics Group squadrons working everyday to get these jets off the ground." (See the sidebar to this story, which features AGS troops who produced a Black Letter Initial Flight.) Government computers are not ours Misuse can lead to UCMJ actions [2000-03-31] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- The Internet and e-mail has made it possible for hundreds of thousands of service members all over the world to stay in touch with each other, with friends and family members at home. But these new tools have pitfalls. At the same time it is possible to send a quick hello back home to mom, it is also possible to misuse the military computer network. Such misuses include the intentional transfer, storage or viewing of sexually explicit information; transfer of or receiving of large, non-work related files through the e-mail or through the Web; the use of chat rooms or any real-time chat software; or the use of military networks for personal profit or gain. According to Senior Airman Jennifer Peterson, 436th Communications Squadron, Network Security Administration, inappropriate material includes anything that could be found offensive to anyone. Examples include anything pornographic, dirty jokes, or anything possibly considered offensive. According to Peterson, when users receive such material in their e-mail, there are appropriate steps to take. "Users who receive e-mails containing inappropriate content should save the e-mail, call the help desk and ask them what to do," said Peterson. "Do not forward it to anyone unless the help desk asks." Peterson said the communications squadron does not scan through e-mail for inappropriate content, but that doesn't mean abusers won't be found. "Most people who send inappropriate e-mail get caught," said Peterson. "One way you get caught is to download pictures over the network," said Capt. Michael Safko, 436th Legal office. "When those large files clog the network systems, the Communications Squadron is keyed into the material being downloaded. Another way is when users send inappropriate content to a user who is offended by it." One reason for the proliferation of inappropriate information on base networks is the advent of the Web. The Web gives users access to millions of pages of information and graphics. Not all of this information is appropriate for viewing on military computer networks, however. According to Peterson, sites known to contain information not necessary to the Dover mission are blocked out by special security software maintained by the communications squadron. Users of the Web are warned they have attempted to access an inappropriate Web page when they see the "Access Denied" Web page in their Web browser. "Right now, there are about 3,000 sites blocked," said Peterson, "and the security check is running all the time. When people surf the internet, the Communications Squadron can see everything they do on their individual computers, and where they search." Government computer users need to use common sense when deciding if something is appropriate. If there is a question, it probably is not appropriate. What is important to remember is the computer networks on Dover Air Force Base are government systems. "People should realize when they use a government computer network, they are subject to monitoring" said Safko. "If we get word somebody has sent a dirty joke or a pornographic picture across the e-mail, we can charge that individual with Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice," said Safko. "The range of punishments depends on the severity of offence. The circumstances could warrant a letter of reprimand, an Article 15, or even a court martial." "Recently, a particular squadron had a number of individuals involved in sending pornography over the e-mail," said Safko. "Each of them received an Article 15, and the punishments included forfeitures of pay and loss of rank." In light of the legal ramifications of misusing government computers, it is clear what direction system users should take. "The bottom line is that the government system is a tool to help you do government work," said Safko. "If you misuse it, you'll get caught, and when you get caught, career damaging consequences can occur." Building relationships: New program matches families with their own primary care manager [2000-04-21] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- Years ago, health care was simpler. Each family had a family doctor. Bills were paid directly to the family doctor. In some cases, the family doctor even made house calls to the home of patients sick in bed. Today, health care is more complex. There are more options. There are sometimes confusing billing options, scores of specialists in every field, and a dizzying array of health care acronyms, buzzwords and jargon. The 436th Medical Group is trying to change part of that. Beginning May, members will be assigned to an individual Primary Care Manager, a person who takes care of or personally arranges all the care needed by a member or member's family. The new system will eliminate the team concept of health care currently in place at Dover Air Force Base. "There will be no more Gold Team, Blue Team or Galaxy Team," said Col. Janice I. Lee, 436th Medical Operations Squadron commander. The new system ensures members can look forward to seeing the same PCM each time they require scheduled medical care, said Lee. "For example," said Lee, "If I am your PCM, and you call Sierra Military Health to make an appointment at the Dover Clinic, Sierra will call up a schedule of my appointments. Only if I have nothing available, will they look for anybody else to provide care for you." According to Lee, members were matched up with the PCM they had seen most frequently in the past. Additionally, the 436th Medical Group attempted to ensure all family members were matched with the same PCM, although because of manning and special circumstances, matching an entire family to one PCM may not be possible. Lee pointed out that members have the option to change their PCM if they choose. "People still have a choice," said Lee. "If members prefer a different PCM, and if we are able to do it, we will honor the request." The change in health care at Dover Air Force Base is part of a program being implemented at all Department of Defense health care centers because of a new directive from the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs. However, Dover Air Force Base has actually been planning the change in advance of the recent announcement. Lee explained the program returns the patient/doctor relationship she became familiar with during her Air Force medical training. "When I was training, you had to have an impaneled group of patients that belonged to you," said Lee. "These were your patients. You had a real sense of ownership, both on the part of the PCM, and on the part of the patient." "When I got to Dover, it was my number one goal for my tenure here to get impanelment of patients to an individual PCM," said Lee. With that goal in mind, the 436th Medical Group began looking for ways to match individual members with individual PCMs. "Because of what we were doing at Dover, we were already ahead of the game," said Lee. "The efforts we began putting into this program, well in advance of this new directive, will make us the first military facility in all of DoD to come on line with this new program." The change to one PCM per member will provide valuable benefits to both members and PCMs, said Lee. "For the patient, they will primarily deal with the same person each time they need care," said Lee. "They will deal with someone familiar with their history and their background. Less time will be spent explaining problems of the past, and more time will be spent dealing with current problems." Dover Team members agree with the observation. "It's a wonderful idea," said Senior Airman Agnes Gause, 436th Aerial Port Squadron. Gause has two children, her husband works in the Security Forces Squadron. "My older daughter just had a rash," said Gause, "We've seen three or four different doctors. Each doctor said it was something different. If it was just one doctor, I could call back and he would be better able to help me out. "My younger daughter is now getting the same rash," added Gause. "It is the same problem with her, we get more than one story. It would be wonderful to have one name and one number to call when there is a problem. " Dover Team PCMs are just as enthusiastic of the change. "I've been at Dover for a year now, and not having a panel of patients has been the most frustrating year of my practice. I am looking forward to this change," said Dr. Duncan Hughes, 436th Medical Operations Squadron. "This is going to be a huge benefit to the patient population and to the providers. For providers, this will improve ownership of patients. You will know those are your patients and they will follow up with you. It really improves continuity of care for patients." The switch from the team health care concept to the one PCM per member concept is scheduled to begin May 3. "On that day, the switch will get flipped in the computer," said Lee. "Sierra Military Health will begin seeing those matches in the computer when they go to make appointments." A complete changeover to the new system is expected by May 12. The 436th Medical Group will notify members of their new PCM assignments. "We will send out a letter to members. If anyone does not receive a letter, they should contact us," said Lee. "If the letter addresses some members of the family and not others, they should contact us." Lee noted that only those members enrolled in TRICARE Prime or TRICARE Senior Prime will be assigned to a primary PCM. Members who have chosen the TRICARE Standard or TRICARE Extra option, may continue to receive space-available care. Members should contact the 436th Medical Group at 677-2973 for information about the new PCM assignment system, or for information about changing assignments. While the intricacies of the modern day health care system remain confusing to many, the 436th Medical Group is doing what it can to alleviate confusion through familiarity. Members will receive better health care because they will have their own PCM who is familiar with them, familiar with their families, and familiar with their families health history. Just plane history: Air Mobility Command Museum showcases airlift, Dover history [2000-04-28] DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- Technology and the modern Air Force move forward so fast, it is often difficult to remember what came before us. For young airmen it is even more difficult to remember the Air Force's rich history, heroes and the trend setters of years past. Locally, we are very fortunate Dover Air Force Base is home to the Air Mobility Command Museum, an Air Force supported facility here that keeps alive and recognizes Dover AFB, airlift, and tanker/refueler history. "Our mission is to preserve the history of airlift and air refueling aircraft," said Mike Leister, Air Mobility Command Museum director. "We try to do that by preserving not only the aircraft, but also the stories of the people that served on them and flew them, and also the memorabilia and artifacts that have to do with military history." The Air Mobility Command Museum opened to the public in 1986 and is located in a refurbished aircraft hanger at the south end of base. The hanger is, itself a piece of history, serving as the site of the U.S. Army/Air Forces Rocket Test Center during World War II. The museum receives nearly 50,000 visitors a year from all over the world. "We see people from all over," said Lt. Col. (ret.) Harry Heist, a former airlift pilot and a volunteer at the museum. "There are tour buses, schools groups, JROTC students and veterans organizations who come through. We have had visitors from downtown Dover and visitors from as far away as Japan and China. Usually, the museum is one of the spots the wing commander will visit if he has a distinguished visitor on base." "We are the most visited museum in central Delaware," said Leister. "People come from all over the United States, and all over the world. One lady actually came into New York from South Africa, rented a car, and drove here to the museum because she had seen our museum's Web site." Visitors come to the museum to see the vast array of airlift history offered. The museum houses displays honoring the contributions of the Tuskeegee Airmen, and those participating in the Berlin Airlift. There are also collections of documents, photos and film. Additionally, visitors to the museum can see various uniforms, weapons and other military items. Some of the most impressive pieces at the museum, however, are the restored military aircraft. The AMC museum is home to nearly two dozen such aircraft, and all are related to Dover AFB, or military airlift history. Some of the aircraft even have unique histories that extend beyond wartime. "Our C-54 is a very famous and important aircraft in our history," said Leister. "It was actually given to us by the FBI. The Air Force gave it to the FBI to use as a sky-marshal trainer, a program in the 1970s where they trained guards to fly on aircraft because hijacking was a big problem. When the FBI was finished with the aircraft, they were going to cut it up into scrap, but instead they gave it to us and we were able to save the plane." All aircraft in the museum are either donated to the museum by private individuals, or are acquired as aircraft are retired. "Our PT-17 was actually donated by a local crop-duster that knew we needed one for our collection," said Leister. "He actually gave it to the Air Force. Most of the other aircraft are retired out of inventory after their service life is complete." The museum has plans to add two additional aircraft to its collection in the near future. These aircraft include a KC-97 Stratofreighter, recently acquired from Beale AFB, Calif., and a Douglas C-133 Cargomaster, which made its debut at Dover AFB in August of 1958. In addition to adding new aircraft to the collection, the museum plans on adding more hands-on exhibits to make the museum more educational and friendly to children in the civilian community. "We're working now towards building more hands-on activities for kids," said Leister. "We have educational exhibits coming in next year that show children what aircraft are made of, teach them about lift, thrust and drag, the things that effect aircraft and how they fly." Educating children and the local community is a big part of the museum's mission. "One of the important things we do is to act as a window for the community, for the Air Force," said Leister. "Most people don't get to see what an active Air Force base looks like. They don't know about the military, other than what they see on television. The TV is really not a good reflection of the military." The Air Mobility Command Museum is the largest museum in Central Delaware and is really one of the gems of Dover Air Force Base. The museum depends almost entirely on volunteers to accomplish its work. The museum encourages anybody who can find time to volunteer their services to help preserve the airlift portion of Air Force history. "The best way to get involved is to come and volunteer," said Heist. "Most of the volunteers here are retired, and do anything from restoring aircraft, to giving tours, to aircraft maintenance, archiving, to working in the museum store. Some hard-core volunteers put in as much as 40 hours a week." "If it were not for the volunteers, there would be no museum," said Heist. The Air Force has changed much in just 52 years. The AMC Museum teaches young airmen of their rich military heritage, showcases the Air Force to the local community, and provides veterans a place to remember the history they were a part of. If there were no museum, there would be fewer ways to pass on this history.
Runway closure causes minor disturbance to PCSing military members [2000-06-16] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- There will be a temporary silence in Misawa, as Misawa Air Base shuts down its only runway for repairs. During the weeklong closure, U.S. military, Japanese Self-Defense Force, and commercial air traffic will be suspended or rerouted to Aomori or other airports. Aside from the noticeable absence of roaring jet engines, the June 30-July 6 closure will have little effect on most base residents. Individuals needing air travel to and from Misawa Air Base however, will be effected by changes to their travel plans. "Basically, the airport for that time will be Aomori," said Tech. Sgt. Martin Molina, noncommissioned officer in charge of Passenger Travel. "Right now we are booking people in and out of Aomori." Air travel for Air Force personnel making permanent changes of station into or out of Misawa Air Base, will be routed through Aomori Airport, about an hour and a half drive north west of Misawa. Individuals who are planning vacation time during the scheduled closure of the runway should be aware they will need to schedule flights from another airport, and may have to provide their own transportation. Individuals PCSing to Misawa should be alerted to the change by their sponsors. However, according to Capt. Barry Cole, 35th Military Personnel Flight, runway closure coordinator, there will be at least one individual from Misawa in the Aomori Airport to greet arriving individuals. In order to complete the connection between Aomori and Misawa, the 35th Transportation Squadron and the 35th Services Squadron have coordinated to provide shuttle service to and from Aomori. "The transportation and services squadron have put together a schedule for the shuttle between Misawa and Aomori Airport," said Cole. "Right now the schedule is tentative, but those looking for answers about the shuttle service may call the transportation squadron for more information." The shuttle ride is free, and it will pick up and drop off passengers at the Misawa Inn. Those wishing to utilize the free bus service to or from Aomori should contact the Travel Management Office or the transportation squadron. "This closure will be a minor inconvenience," said Cole, "we're asking if folks don't have to travel, they don't. But people will still be able to come or go if they need to during this time." Three Misawans earn ROTC scholarships [2000-07-14] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- Three enlisted, two airmen and a technical sergeant, have earned the right to trade in their blue stripes for the opportunity to be leaders, as Air Force second lieutenants. The three were selected for ROTC in the Spring Board Tech. Sgt. Christopher L. Reese, 35th Maintenance Squadron, Munitions Flight is one of those selected to tear the stripes from his BDUs and turn them in for gold bars. Reese, a twelve year technical sergeant, responsible for handling and accountability of aircraft munitions here at Misawa Air Base, had his sight set on leadership from an early point in his enlisted career. "When I first came in as enlisted, I wanted to become a chief," said Reese. "I have been TDY a lot of places; a lot of people look at how I handle people and tell me I should become an officer. I always said I wanted to be a chief, but they say 'you will be a better officer.'" With the encouragement of his contemporaries and supervisors, Reese made the decision to join the ranks of the Air Forces Officer Corps. "They said 'you will be able to lead, you have the potential, why not stretch that potential?'" said Reese. "I said they may be right, if they can see it in me, I need to look a little closer at myself. With God on my side, I put the package in and tried it out." Reese initiated the steps to earn him a spot in the Air Force's Professional Officer Course Early Release Program. The program allows enlisted members such as Reese, with some college, to apply for an early release from the Air Force to enter AFROTC at a college of their choice. After attaining their degree, program participants return to the Air Force with a commission as a second lieutenant. "You separate from the Air Force for two years, lose all your benefits, all you have is the GI bill," said Reese. "You go to the school of your choice with the ROTC course. You have to finish your degree and keep a GPA of C+ or above. Then you come back in with your commission." Reese seems undaunted by the challenges waiting for him at Florida International University, where he will pursue a major in business management. "I can't fail," said Reese. "The door is wide open. God opened it for me. I just have to do my part, but the door is open for me." Senior Airman John Fogle, 301st Intelligence Squadron will also be joining the ranks of commissioned Air Force leaders in the coming years. Like Reese, he too has always had plans to be a leader, and to do more. "I actually thought about being an officer even before I came in the Air Force," said Fogle. "My father is a chief master sergeant. He said that this would be the way to go. I came in enlisted first because I wanted to test that out. But I as soon as I got out of technical school I was going to try out for commissioning programs." After filling out the correct paperwork with the Base Education Office, and ensuring all requirements were met, Fogle was accepted into the Airman Scholarship and Commissioning Program. The program offers active duty airmen the opportunity to become an officer and earn an undergraduate degree as an Air Force ROTC cadet. Air Force ROTC Type II scholarships are awarded to those accepted into the program. Fogle, who has been in the Air Force for nearly three years now, plans to study physics at the University of Arizona, and is fairly sure of how he is going to apply that once he slips back into his blues. "I'd like to take on more responsibility, as a leader...to be in charge of a squadron one day," said Fogle. And I definitely want to do research and development. I know I can do that as an officer, and with a degree." Airmen interested in becoming an officer through one of the many commissioning programs available, should visit the base education office. "Now is a good time for commissioning," said Jeffrey Allen, 35th Mission Support Squadron Education Office commander. "Career wise, being an officer is significant for some. There is a financial impact, officers do make more money than enlisted troops. You can broaden your career. I think first of all you need to visit the Education Office and get information about all programs available, and talk with a counselor. Now is a great time for enlisted people to compete for these enlisted slots." Firefighters spread message to residents [2000-07-28] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- Forever it seems, civilians, and military members have put their faith in local fire departments to respond quickly to destructive fires in their homes, to protect their possessions and their lives, and to keep them safe. Recently, the 35th Civil Engineer Squadron, Fire Protection Flight has returned some of that faith with the implementation of Firefighters Active In the Housing Areas or FAITHA program. "Once a week, a fire truck will drive around base and go into the housing areas," explained Chief Master Sgt. Mark T. Giuliano, 35th Fire Protection Flight fire chief. "Firefighters will knock on the doors of residences and politely ask to come into the home to check smoke detectors, inspect fire extinguishers, pass out fire safety literature, and check for 911 stickers on the phones as well as 'Don't Leave Cooking Unattended' apple-shaped stickers." Firefighters will also discuss what to do if cooking fires occur in the home and will make themselves available to answer questions occupants may have concerning fire prevention or fire safety. Giuliano explained the program is very similar to what Air Force fire protection flights had done in years past. "Years ago, we had plenty of manpower, we had people in the fire prevention office assigned to conduct in-home visits, unfortunately, as the Air Force restructured and manpower was reduced, that particular function of the fire prevention office went away and mass fire prevention briefings were instituted." According to Giuliano, Pacific Air Force bases have experienced almost twice the amount of fires this year as they did last year. "Misawa has had seven unattended cooking fires in the last fiscal year, three have caused substantial damage." In response to the fire incident increases, PACAF has asked fire chiefs at its bases to think about new ways to spread the fire prevention and safety message. "They have asked fire chiefs to be more progressive and aggressive in spreading the fire prevention message," said Giuliano. "I started thinking about how to better educate the public." "FAITHA is a progressive program which puts firefighters out in the community to spread the fire prevention message and the safety message," said Giuliano. "Usually a firefighter is reactionary. There is a fire, we respond to your house and put it out. This is the firemen being proactive. We are trying to prevent the fire from starting in the first place." While the program is not based on a new concept, it is currently the only program of its kind in PACAF. "This is our attempt to be proactive, getting the fire prevention and safety message out into the community. Nobody in PACAF is doing this, just us," said Giuliano. "This is going to be a model program for them I am sure. We have forwarded information about the program to PACAF fire officials and they are excited about it. If we can show a reduction in unattended cooking fires, I am sure this is going to be a PACAF standard." The FAITHA program had its first run only last week, but Giuliano hopes the program will cut the number of unattended cooking fires in half. "We're not going to hit every home in a three month period. This is spread out over the course of a couple years," said Giuliano. "If we come to your house and little Johnny next door sees the fire truck there, we are hoping he will tell his mother and that she will ask 'What's going on?' and we will have the opportunity to tell her what we are doing. Maybe she will think about fire safety in her own home as well, or be curious and ask questions." While a fireman may eventually step off the truck and knock at your home's door, Giuliano is quick to the point out that the FAITHA program is voluntary. "If we come to your home and knock on the door and you don't want us to come in, for whatever reason, the firefighter will say thanks for your time and will turn around. This is not a home inspection, this is a courtesy visit to spread the message of fire safety in the home," said Giuliano. "If a family wants somebody to check their smoke detectors, all they have to do is call the Fire Prevention Office at 226-4055 and we'd be happy to come out and look." News release program recognizes Misawans [2000-08-11] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- Military members can be recognized in their hometown newspapers through the Army and Air Force Hometown News Release Program. Members are recognized for accomplishments by filling out Department of Defense Form 2266. Once completely filled out, the form is e-mailed to or dropped of at the Public Affairs office in Building 504, where it is finalized and sent to the Army and Air Force Hometown News. Hometown news staff service construct a stories from information provided on the DD Form 2266, and the story is forwarded to newspapers within the military member's hometown. Accomplishments that can be highlighted included sewing on of ranks E-3 and higher; arrival at Misawa Air Base; reenlistments; retirements; receipt of a college degree; soldier/airman/NCO of the month, quarter, year at all levels of command; direct commissions; suggestion awards of $50 or more; selection for service-funded, degree-producing programs and assumption of command at all levels. By submitting hometown news releases, supervisors can instill pride in both military members and families at home. At the same time, the releases bolster support for the U.S. Air Force and help recruiting efforts. There are many other ways to be recognized with the Army/Air Force Hometown News Release Program. Call the 35th Fighter Wing Public Affairs Office at 226-3705 for more information. DD Form 2266 is available at www.dior.whs.mil/icdhome/forminfo/FormInfoPage1374.htm F-16 pilots: flying to keep Misawa mission-ready [2000-08-18] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- Another mid-work-week briefing and the speaker at the front of the room is droning on and on about the new office paper-handling procedures. It's not long, however, before you hear the sound of a jet engine gearing up. As the windows start to rattle, briefing attendees groan. In your mind, you hear the voice of a crusty old noncommissioned officer, retired before he could see you sew on your first stripes, tell you exactly what the sound was. That's the sound of freedom, airman. Misawa Air Base launches nearly 36 F-16 aircraft each duty day. The sorties flown are essential, because they keep our pilots sharp and ready to perform Misawa Air Base's mission. According to Capt. Paul Carlton, a pilot with the 13th Fighter Squadron, that mission is SEAD, or Suppression Of Enemy Air Defenses. "I fly the F-16 for Misawa, using the [aircraft] generally for SEAD or Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses, which generally involves shooting the High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile," said Carlton. "My job is to support the guys dropping bombs, to prevent them from being shot or from being killed, whether that be defending them from air-to-air or surface-to-air threats. The Air Force's job is to put bombs on target, [Misawa pilots] are a support asset to that role." Being able to perform the mission at any time requires Misawa pilots be highly skilled in the SEAD mission. This requires pilots to engage in many types of training. "We try to break [training] down into a building block approach," said Capt. Brook Leonard, a 13th Fighter Squadron pilot. "First, there are the basic air-to-air fundamentals. Then we'll train in the more tactical flying. We'll go out there and just do target practice. Then we'll have a more involved scenario where there might be bad guys shooting at us so we'll come up with a plan on how best to attack them while they're flying out there." Other training keeps pilots sharp on their secondary job, dropping bombs. Pilots regularly use Ripsaw Range, a training range approximately ten miles north of Misawa, for target practice. Training for Misawa pilots is an ongoing, year-round process. "You are required to fly a certain number of sorties a year. We call it the Ready Air Crew Program," explained Leonard. "We have to do so many air-to-air, so many air-to-ground, and so many tactical sorties. Every day I try to get better. You can never say you are fully trained." From an observer standpoint, it may seem pilots do nothing but fly the F-16, an aircraft capable of breaking the speed of sound. The misconception doesn't sit well with some pilots. "I think that the biggest misunderstood point," said Leonard. "A lot of people think we just show up and go fly and hang out. There is a tremendous amount of preparation involved. "For instance, for every sortie I fly it takes me eight or nine hours of additional time to mission plan. Mission planning, depending on how complicated the sortie is, can take one hour to three hours. The briefing takes about one hour. Going out and starting up the plane and getting ready to go out to the end of the runway takes about an hour," explained Leonard. "Then you get about an hour of flying. After that, about an hour to get back to the building and get out of your equipment. Then about two to three hours in debrief." With all the time spent learning about what they will be doing in the air, getting suited up, preparing to fly, and debriefing, pilots are really not left with that much time in the air at all. According to Carlton, an individual pilot spends less than ten hours a week actually in the air. "We fly somewhere between three and six hours a week," said Carlton. At the same time pilots are preparing to fly or are discussing what they did during their flight, they are actually performing additional, non-flying duties. Carlton serves as an Electronic Combat Pilot, responsible for ensuring radar detection and evasion equipment on all Misawa F-16s remains current. Additionally, he serves as a scheduler for other pilots. Leonard serves as the Chief of Wing Weapons. He leads a shop of pilots who support the wing commander and the Operations Group commander in weapons and tactics issues. Additionally, he serves as an instructor pilot. Pilots don't do all the work on flying missions, however. Sortie generation is heavily dependent on the many Operations Group and Logistics Group maintenance troops who prepare the aircraft for flight. Their efforts are not lost on the pilots. "Those guys, they are the ones that make it happen," said Leonard. "I talk about the amount of prep time I have, there is at least that amount of prep time for like ten other people. About ten other people putting in those hours to make sure the aircraft is ready. That starts with the crew chief, who basically preps the jet and launches me out. Then there are the people that support the avionics or the fuels guys that bring us gas every day. There is a tremendous support structure; for every sortie you see, there are perhaps thirty people you can pat on the back and say 'thanks for helping out.'" While there is a vast amount of work involved for both the pilots and the maintenance crews in performing Misawa's F-16 mission, the pilots still do enjoy an edge when it comes to payback on their efforts. "If it's a gorgeous blue sky day, it's so fun to fly around down at low altitudes. Once we get [to the training areas] we can do anything we want inside the training space," said Leonard. "It's pretty much being able to control your world," said Carlton. "You can see forever, and everything is there at your hands to be able to do what you need to do. This is one of those jobs you can't believe they pay you to do." "In the course of day-to-day business, what we do involves a high degree of risk. It takes a team of dedicated pilots and professional maintenance and support technicians to mitigate that risk. In the end, however, when the time comes to perform in combat, this team becomes lethal! The service these warriors provide for our country and for our fellow comrades in arms...is priceless," said Col. Michael Lepper, 35th Operations Group commander. Base holds first NCO seminar [2000-08-25] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- Staff sergeants from Misawa Air Base recently completed the first run of the Noncommissioned Officer Professional Development Seminar. The three-day seminar, taught entirely by volunteer senior noncommissioned officers, is the first of its kind at Misawa AB. "Chief Finklea, along with other senior noncommissioned officers, felt the junior tier of NCOs needed some instruction during that time between Airman Leadership School and the NCO Academy," said Master Sgt. Herbert L. Shirlee, program director of the NCO Professional Development Seminar. "What we found is there are a lot of staff sergeants on base who haven't attended a professional military education course in maybe ten years. This is a stepping stone to bridge that gap between PME courses." According to Shirlee, the seminar is meant as a PME refresher course. "We offer instruction on NCO responsibilities, leadership, mentorship, counseling, conducting feedback, and writing EPRs," said Shirlee. "In most of the feedback from this first course, the students say they learned a lot from just interacting with the instructors. They learned a lot dealing with each other as well." Because the seminar is less structured than ALS, staff sergeants from around the base had the time and forum to freely discuss supervisory issues unique to their situations. "We could communicate, the seminar was very informal," said Staff Sgt. Robert Jett, a recent attendee of the seminar. "There was the ability to communicate with each other. If some other sergeant would disagree with somebody, he could raise his hand and make his point. The senior noncommissioned officers would guide us with how they would do things." A relaxed academic environment was part of the plan for the seminar, designed to allow the free flow of information and ideas, without a fear of getting in trouble. "I've encouraged academic freedom and non-attribution," said Chief Master Sgt. Anthony Finklea, 35th Fighter Wing, command chief. "Statements, disagreements, and other comments made during the course will be safeguarded through the practice of non-attribution, though it must be tempered by good judgment." NCOs who attended the seemed positive about the seminar. "What I liked were the different ideas from different instructors, and getting to know different staff sergeants out there," said Staff Sgt. Ivy Bell, 35h Mission Support Squadron, a two-year staff sergeant. "We were able with talk to each other, and they didn't hinder us or stop us." "I'm still a young supervisor," said Bell. "I can give my subordinates more now that I have taken the refresher course. The more I learn the better I will be." For one staff sergeant, attending the seminar even helped him reconsider his plans to separate from the Air Force. "The economy was pretty strong and I was going to get out try to better myself," said Staff Sgt. Christopher Mercedo, 35th Security Forces Squadron. "The class [instructors] were mostly senior leaders and they told us what the Air Force was going to be in the future and how staff sergeants will have a greater responsibility with new airmen coming in, and with retention," said Mercedo. "Seeing how much the Air Force had done for me, I [chose] to stay in." According to Shirlee, participation in the seminar is voluntary, though it is highly encouraged, and first sergeants will generally contact those who are eligible to attend the seminar. The next Noncommissioned Officer Professional Development Course will be held September 11-13. Base Air Festival entertains Japanese [2000-09-22] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- Despite the gray overcast skies and a few sprinkles of rain, more than 120,000 visitors made a pilgrimage to the Misawa the Air Base flight line Sunday. The throng of visitors came to see exactly what the United States Air Force, the Japan Air Self Defense Force and the United States Navy do here each day. The crowds appeared outside the main gate well before they were opened to the general public, at 7 a.m. They came from as far as Tokyo to see the teamwork demonstrated by the joint and bi-lateral services assigned at Misawa Air Base. "These people came not only to see the aircraft, but to see, perhaps, the only examples of Americana they have ever seen," said Maj. Claudia M. Foss, 35th Fighter Wing chief of public affairs. "Some of these people have never met an American before, and they were interested in everything they could see, the clothes we wear, the music we listen to, the aircraft our military flies and the food we eat." Air Festival visitors seemed particularly interested in American style food, as evidenced by both the large number of pizza boxes carried around the flight line as early as 8:15 a.m., and the line at the pizza booth that stretched half a city block nearly the entire length of the festival. The festival was marked by appearances from several military aircraft and demo teams. The lineup included a demonstration by the Pacific Air Force's F-16 demonstration team, several fly-bys from JASDF's powerful F-4 aircraft, and a demo by the Navy's agile F/A-18 fighters. Aircraft were not the only things available to entertain crowds. In addition to flying military equipment, the Japan Ground Self Defense Force displayed much of its military hardware, including a surface to air missile launcher, a bazooka, and a several pieces of fire fighting equipment. While powerful military equipment was available to entertain base visitors, there were also appearances by the Japan Air Self Defense Force's Northern Air Defense Force Band and the United States Air Force's Strolling Strings. Planning for the 2001 Air Festival is already underway. Gas Price Graphic [2000-09-22] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- Commissary rearranges products [2000-09-29] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- The Misawa Air Base Commissary finished a complete reset of its inventory Monday, and reopened with a new look Tuesday morning. The purpose of the two-day commissary closure was to re-merchandise the entire inventory to make products more accessible to consumers. Karen Ochsner, Misawa Air Base Commissary store director explained the changes. "This procedure is done every three to four years to keep current with market trends," said Ochsner. "About half of the products in the store were relocated. Commodities were reassembled in a more efficient and logical order. The changes included giving more space to high volume items, this allows us to provide even better service to the community. "By giving more room to certain commodities we gain needed holding power on the shelves," said Ochsner. "We hope the flow pattern will be more consistent with current market trends and allow us to carry a variety of products that the customers want. This will allow us to continue to bring in new items." While the placement of many favorite products has changed, customers needn't worry about not being able to find the products they are looking for. "We will provide maps showing exact locations of all products to reduce the need to hunt for your special product," said Ochsner. "I would like to compliment the hard work and efforts of the food industry, Dana Nickless, the reset specialist, for his help and guidance and all the dedicated employees that gave their spare time to make the reset a success," Ochsner said. To thank customers for their patience during the closure, the commissary will be offering special prices on various products Saturday. Town Hall meeting answers questions, informs base members [2000-09-29] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- More than 100 people attended Tuesday night's Town Hall Meeting at the Tohoku Enlisted Club. The Town Hall Meeting is a base-wide forum allowing base residents to speak directly with base leaders about issues affecting them and their families. Tuesday's meeting was hosted by Brig. Gen. Chip Utterback, Misawa Air Base and 35th Fighter Wing commander. Senior leaders from the 35th Support Group, as well as representatives from base schools, the Army Air Force Exchange Service and the Defense Commissary Agency were available to answer questions and provide information. The open-forum gathering kicked off shortly after 6:30 p.m. with an introduction by Utterback, who formally welcomed attendees and radio listeners to the event. Other senior leaders followed, highlighting topics they felt were of significance to members. Notable was a briefing by Capt. Allan Conkey 35th Security Forces concerning the recent changes in the base's Japanese Compulsory Insurance policies. Members were told they must now keep the JCI on their vehicles current at all times. From the Naval Air Facility, attendees learned NAF has recently upgraded its movie channel, cable channel 24. Capt. Richard High, NAF Misawa commander, explained the channel now shows movies 24 hours a day. Concerns over R rated movies playing at times when children could watch were also addressed. Movies carrying the R rating will now only play between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. Misawa AAFES General Manager George Bass addressed the recent increase in gasoline prices. Bass explained AAFES purchases gasoline from the U.S. Department of Defense Fuel Depot. He told attendees the price increase in AAFES gasoline is due to a price increase for AAFES. AAFES will now sell gasoline at $1.62 a gallon, though AAFES gas stations still provide the lowest priced gasoline in the area. To soften the blow to consumers, AAFES has made coupons available which may reduce the price of gasoline to as low as $1.37 a gallon. Bass also spoke of developments in the food court area at the Base Exchange. Changes include the addition of a Charlie's Steakery sandwich shop, the addition of an A&W Root Beer outlet to replace Frank's Franks, and the consolidation or renovation of other AAFES contracted concessions in the Food Court. Additional upgrades include a children's playground in the glass-enclosed area between the food court and the Commissary. Exchange customers can expect to see changes sometime next year. When base senior leaders and agency representatives had concluded their briefings, the floor was opened to meeting attendees. Under the coordination of radio personalities and technicians from the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, the agency responsible for broadcasting the meeting on radio AM 1575, meeting attendees were able to voice their concerns and comments directly to base leaders. Questions addressed the time limits on users of AAFES contracted dial-up Internet access, the availability of event tickets to day-shift workers, base playground safety and modernization, sanitation practices in base food facilities, the location of U.S. Post Office mailboxes, the rules concerning E-1s through E-4s living off base, and construction in the 800 housing area. Other topics included base cable contracts, air-conditioning, the base skate park, and kennel services for the pets of service members. After nearly two hours of discussion, the meeting was closed. Meeting attendees unsatisfied with answers from base officials were promised follow-up information, and those members who had submitted questions during the event by either e-mail or telephone were promised answers as well. Many questions will be answered in upcoming issues of the Northern Light. Base members unable to attend the meeting have several options available to get their concerns addressed by base leadership. While the chain-of-command should always be the first tool used by military members, at Misawa Air Base there is also the commander's call in radio show. The one-hour radio show airs the last Friday of each month, from 8 to 9 a.m. on AM 1575. Base members may also find answers by addressing their questions to the Commander's Action Line, at 226-3700. Café Mokuteki offers 24-hour-dining, expanded menu, delivery service [2000-10-06] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- Those wishing to satisfy a late night craving for chicken wings, or those just looking for polite conversation with a friendly face in the middle of the night, needn't look further than the recently reopened Café Mokuteki located near the base bowling alley. Café Mokuteki recently held a grand reopening party to celebrate its new 24-hour schedule, its new menu and its new delivery service. "I think being open 24-hours will provide a service that this base has needed for a long time," said David Huston, Café Mokuteki manager. "Service members can come in at any time and get anything they want off the menu. If you're a third-shift worker and get off of work at nine o'clock at night you can come in and get a nice hot breakfast, 24-hours a day." Café Mokuteki made the transition to a 24-hour eatery in response to requests from many base members who have found themselves hankering for a snack in the middle of the night. "The 35th Services Squadron requires one facility to stay open 24-hours for shift workers," said Huston. "We are directly involved with the services and we felt we could do this with the lowest cost factor, we also thought 'we can do this right.'" Café Mokuteki serves up everything from steaming hot espresso and sizzling hot burgers, to crisp salads and ice-cold smoothie drinks, all to support the diverse tastes of Misawa Air Base. In that tradition, Café Mokuteki has added even more items to its eclectic menu. "We've completely redone the menu," said Huston. "We've added cheese steak sandwiches, chicken cheese steak sandwiches, taco pizza, and a variety of desert pizzas. For breakfast we've added fruitcakes, which is basically a pancake rolled up with fruit filling and whipped cream, we've added the breakfast burrito and hard-boiled eggs for the healthy menu. We also have a soup-of-the-day now and chili. We have something for everybody." In addition to the late hours and the expanded menu, Café Mokuteki offers another option to base residents that makes enjoying Café Mokuteki fare even easier. The diner now offers deliver service. "As of Sunday we started delivery service," said Huston. " We deliver from 5 p.m. to midnight, seven days a week, on the main base. When this gets out of the experimental stage, we will expand to the entire base." The new delivery service may eventually prove to be a real service to many service members who may not be able to get away from their work centers to grab a bite to eat. "I know a big supporter of our delivery service is the hospital," said Huston. "Some of them don't get their lunch until 11:30 p.m. at night, and they cannot leave. If they order a pizza early, it will be cold when they eat. We can deliver hot and fresh when they have their lunch." Café Mokuteki delivers virtually the entire menu between 5 p.m. and midnight. Huston added there is an eight-dollar minimum on delivery orders. For delivery service on the main base, call 222-6392. One patron, Senior Airman John H. Collins a shift worker with Detachment 3, 18th Intelligence Squadron, is sure to benefit from the new hours at Café Mokuteki. "I work late, when I'm sitting at my [work station] and I get a craving for something to eat, there isn't anywhere to go. Everything is closed," said Collins. "I would have to go off base late at night and find someplace open...and if you don't have yen, you don't eat." With the new 24-hour schedule at Café Mokuteki, Collins now has an option that is just a little closer to home and work. For those worried about not having the right currency to pay for their dinner, the Café Mokuteki takes yen, dollars and even the club card. The new hours, the extended menu and the delivery service at Café Mokuteki are just one of the many ways Misawa Air Base leaders are working to respond to the needs of base residents, and to improve the quality of life here. Nearly 100 Japanese come to Misawa for international soccer, basketball competition [2000-10-06] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- Nearly 100 Japanese from Kazuno in the Akita Prefecture came to Misawa Sunday to compete in or watch soccer and basketball games with American athletes from the Misawa Air Base community. The Japanese teams consisted of high school, junior high school and adult athletes. Nearly 60 American athletes, consisting of junior high, high school and adult athletes competed as well. The event was organized by Robert Cabral, the Navy varsity soccer coach. "This has been going on for about two years now," said Cabral. "We go [to Kazuno] in the spring, they come here in the fall." The some 160 participants gathered at the high school parking lot around 10:30 a.m. Sunday. From there, they got down to business and participated in a full day of truly international competition. The event is as much about a cultural exchange as it is about the games of soccer and basketball. "When they come to our base here they get a little taste of America," said Cabral. "When we visit their city, we get a little taste of Japan." Because the game is so popular, there are plans to continue with the exchange. "The kids want us to do this all the time, and adults want us to keep doing this on a regular basis," said Cabral. "We've already been invited to go back in the spring, the [Japanese] want us to bring a baseball team to play their junior high team." Misawa family member paints mural, finds new friends in Misawa City [2000-10-06] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- Fran Bussard, a dependent at Misawa Air Base for less than two months now, is already making friends in the City of Misawa, using nothing but a paint brush. Bussard recently applied for work here on base, she offered potential employers an experienced artist with a fairly large portfolio. "I do have an extensive background in art and design," said Bussard. "I'm also used to working under deadlines, having ten years experience in advertising art and direction." Less than a month after applying for work, a representative of the City of Misawa approached the Family Support Center, asking for assistance. They needed a skilled artist to paint a mural for the Misawa Patio Festival at Ms. Veedol Plaza in downtown Misawa. That's when Bussard got the call. "I didn't have any idea this would happen," said Bussard. "When Family Services called to ask me if I could do the job, I knew immediately that God had just opened the door of opportunity to me." The job required Bussard to paint a large mural at Ms. Veedol Plaza. The mural was to be one of two at the festival, and it had to be done within a week. Bussard's mural covered four separate walls, each of them 10-feet tall. The second mural, painted by Takada Munenori, an English-Japanese interpreter with the 35th Security Forces Squadron. Because the theme of the festival is "The American Old West," Bussard's mural would have to reflect some part of that theme. "A Day in the Life of a Cowboy" is the one I painted," said Bussard. The immense mural features several different aspects of a cowboy's life and many symbols of the Old West, including camp fires, spurs, and cattle roping. Bussard said she hoped to make new friends upon arriving in Japan, and she believes this artistic act is just what she'd been hoping for. "I had never painted a mural before, but I painted this mural because it has been the desire of my heart since we arrived here six weeks ago, to make Japanese friends and to work with them as well," said Bussard. "It was great fun working with the group at the Chamber of Commerce and I deeply appreciate the confidence that Baba Toshiyuki, the events coordinator for the Chamber of Commerce placed in me," said Bussard. For those wishing to view the murals, or participate in the festivities, the 10-day Misawa Patio Festival runs through Monday, and is located at Ms. Veedol Plaza in downtown Misawa. Center deals with domestic violence [2000-10-20] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- This month, military and civilian communities observed Domestic Violence Awareness Month. The entire month is dedicated to increasing awareness of the problems of domestic violence and looking at ways to stop the problem. "There is no excuse for domestic violence," said Deborah A. Carr, Family Advocacy Outreach manager. "This month is about heightening the public's awareness of domestic violence and its effect on society." The Family Advocacy program here is responsible for educating the base population about preventing, identifying and reporting abuse. "We regularly hold classes, lectures and seminars on domestic violence," said Carr. During Domestic Violence Awareness month, the center holds additional classes focused on several particular issues. "During October we held the Family Support Center/Family Advocacy sponsored 'Marriage doesn't have to be a ball and chain seminar' and also 'The Dating Game' at the Teen Center," said Carr. "We will also hold the Purple Ribbon campaign at the BX, Friday." "Domestic violence is a learned pattern of behavior used by one person in a relationship to control the other person," said Carr. "The partners may be married or not married, living together, separated or dating." Domestic violence is more than just physical abuse-it covers an entire spectrum of abuse. "Examples of domestic violence include actual or threatened physical harm, sexual assault, stalking, intimidation, emotional abuse, mind games, name-calling, put-downs, or economic abuse by withholding money or being prevented from getting money," said Carr. Domestic violence education is important because much abuse goes unreported by victims. "Often victims don't think of themselves as abused," said Carr. "Many don't see the things their partners do to them as abusive, nor do they see them as a pattern." While Carr said women are most often the victims of abuse, they are not the only victims if there are children in an abusive home. "The children may be suffering from emotional abuse, possible neglect or physical abuse," said Carr. "Most children who live with abuse become victims or abusers as adults." "Domestic violence shouldn't happen to anyone," said Carr. "It does though, when it does, Family Advocacy is there to help." Supply notches 28-0 victory during weekend pounding of engineers [2000-10-20] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- The 35th Supply Squadron flag football team pasted the 35th Civil Engineer Squadron 28-0, Saturday at the main base football field during intramural flag football play. SUPS coach Gregory Coleman said much of the credit for the team's win goes to quarterback Joe "Wheels" Riley. "His ability to scramble around in the pocket allowed him to see down field better and react to what the defense gave him," said Coleman. Additionally, Coleman gave credit to defensive menace Sherman Foreman. "He was able to disrupt the CES quarterback during crucial downs of the game," said Coleman. While the SUPS team managed to post 28 points during the game and kept the engineer squadron from ever reaching pay dirt, Coleman admitted there was at least one tense moment during the game. "CES posed its greatest threat at the end of the first half," said Coleman. "They were able to pick up two first downs and almost scored on [a pass] from the quarterback." "This was the most complete game we've played this season, because our offense was able to score on almost every possession," the coach said. Misawa sergeant garners Air Force leadership award [2000-12-20] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- The Air Force is quick to recognize the best in its ranks. One way the service recognizes outstanding leaders is with the Capt. Lance P. Sijan Award. The Sijan Award was created in 1981 to recognize people assigned to organizations at wing level and below who demonstrate outstanding leadership abilities. Senior Master Sgt. Lee Allen Gorrell, operations superintendent for the 301st Intelligence Squadron, is Misawa's most recent winner of the award. Gorrell, along with three other Air Force members, will travel to the Pentagon in March to receive the award. Air Force Gen. Michael E. Ryan, Air Force Chief of Staff, will present the award to the sergeant. Gorrell learned he won the award a little more than a week ago. Maj. Gen. Orville Wright, commander of the Air Intelligence Agency, informed Gorrell of the honor. Being informed of his receipt of the award struck a chord with the intelligence troop. "It's a supreme honor and quite humbling," said Gorrell. "Capt. Sijan was a great American Hero." Correll has excelled in his leadership role through reading, self education and observation. "I am always observing leaders in action and do a great deal of professional reading about leadership. Military heroes, civilian and political leaders, the PME and even dead Greek philosophers can reveal some clues to become a better leader," said Gorrell. "The key is to never stop trying to improve your leadership style." "Leaders who don't adapt, change and improve their leadership styles are like football teams that never change their playbook; they lose every game," he said. "The profession of arms is not a game; it's about people's lives and the sovereignty of the United States." Gorrell's leadership mission involves the delivery of information to the commander of the Joint Forces Air Component, ensuring the ability to make informed decisions in employing air power components. Gorrel's commander lauded his performance, crediting his leadership ability as one reason troops under his supervision have flourished, becoming award winners at the national, Air Force, wing, group and unit levels. The leadership award is named for Capt. Lance P. Sijan, an Air Force Academy graduate and posthumous Medal of Honor recipient. During the Vietnam war, Sijan evaded the North Vietnamese for six weeks after being shot down in November 1967. He died while in captivity in Vietnam. The last member of Misawa to be recognized for leadership with the Sijan Award was Lt. Col. P.K. White, in 1998. During his tenure at Misawa, White served as commander of the 18th Fighter Squadron. MCOC airman selected for SOAR scholarship [2001-01-19] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- An airman from the Misawa Cryptologic Operations Center was recently selected as a recipient for a scholarship from the Scholarships for Outstanding Airman to ROTC program. Senior Airman Tanya Barnhart, who's job designates her as a signal intelligence analyst, currently works as a an executive for the MCOC commander. Her selection under the program guarantees an uncapped scholarship to a school of her choice and a guaranteed commission upon graduation. Only about 15% of those receiving SOAR scholarships will get uncapped scholarships. Barnhart, who already has some college hours, plans to finish school with a psychology degree and return to the intelligence career field as a commissioned officer. "I hope I'll be like the officers I have been able to work with at the MCOC," said Barnhart. "I have had great officer and enlisted role models here. People work really hard to take care of us." Her commander has similar praise for her. "While there is no doubt [Senior Airman Barnhart] would continue to serve in a variety of leadership positions as a future NCO, it is this dominant trait, leadership, that will guarantee her success as an Air Force Officer," said Col. Dennis Mitzel, 373rd Intelligence Group commander While Barnhart's receipt of the SOAR scholarship will be of great value to her personal career and development her outlook remains in line with Air Force core values. "The Air Force has been great for me," said Barnhart. "I hope to be great for it too." CES garners multiple service-level awards [2001-01-19] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- Misawa's 35th Civil Engineer Squadron is the winner of three Air Force-level awards. The operations flight took the Major General Clifton D. Wright Award, the water treatment plant's Kenji Taneichi claimed the Outstanding Civil Engineer Civilian Technician of the Year Award, and the fire protection flight won the Chief Master Sgt. Ralph Sanborn Award. While it is not unheard of for a squadron to take three Air Force level awards, it is not commonplace. "I went through the awards announcement last week and we are the only base in the Air Force to win three Air Force-level CE awards," said Lt. Col. Timothy Gaffney, 35th Civil Engineering Squadron commander. "This is truly an outstanding accomplishment, one I am truly proud of" The CES operations flight is made up of more than 400 people and is responsible for the operation and maintenance of base facilities and infrastructure systems. These systems include base power generators, water and waste-water systems, airfield/pavement maintenance, snow removal, plumbing, heating/air conditioning, carpentry and electrical distribution in base buildings and a slew of behind-the-scene responsibilities that keep the day-to-day operations going. The flight was named the best civil engineer operations flight in the Air Force for such accomplishments as its energy use reduction program that reduced energy use on base by as much as 30%. The savings to the base was nearly $145,000. I'm extremely elated of receiving the award since it recognizes what each and everyone from the operations flight accomplished throughout the year," said Maj. D.J. Junio, 35th CES operations flight commander. "It is a testament to the many great things the CE operations folks do ... not just military, but civilians as well." Junio highlighted the significance of the award. Be proud of this accomplishment," Junio told his troops. "This award recognizes your outstanding efforts throughout the year." Today, this week, this month and this year, you can say something no other civil engineer in the Air Force working in an operations flight can say," said Junio. "You can truly say you are the best in the Air Force at what you do." One member of the flight who can be doubly proud is Kenji Taneichi, civilian foreman of the waste water treatment plants on base. He has been at Misawa for nearly 16 years and was recently named the Air Force's outstanding civil engineer civilian technician of the year. Taneichi was named the best in the Air Force for his management of four wastewater treatment plants at Misawa. The plants treated in excess of 30 million gallons of waste water a month without a single violation of the Japanese Environmental Governing Standards. Taneichi is also noted for his initiative; for the 2000 air show, he volunteered to escort contractors onto the base for placement of nearly 200 portable toilets. While proud of his accomplishment, Taneichi remains humble. "I am very happy--very very, happy," said Taneichi. In celebration of the award, Taneichi's family treated him to a party at a local sushi bar. More than one flight in the squadron was recognized this year. The fire protection flight received recognition for being the best fire protection flight in the Air Force. The flight, made up of more than 80 members, responded to some 475 emergency calls last year, protecting nearly $2 billion in resources. Additionally, the flight received recognition for their response to a KC-135 that skidded off the runway and became entangled in overrun netting. Flight members swiftly removed passengers from the aircraft and freed the aircraft. Additional accomplishments by the flight included the search and rescue of a downed skier during a blizzard and the rescue of a construction worker who was trapped in an .underground storage tank. "For me and my staff, this is the culmination of our work for two years. This is a phenomenal accomplishment," said Chief Master Sgt. Mark T. Giuliano, 35th Fire Protection Flight fire chief. The flight was recognized as much for being reactive as for being proactive. The flight's Firefighters Active In the Housing Areas, or FAITHA, program is one that made them the best fire protection flight in the Air Force. "Once a week, a fire truck will drive around base and go into the housing areas," explained Giuliano. "Firefighters will knock on the doors of residences and politely ask to come into the home to check smoke detectors, inspect fire extinguishers, pass out fire safety literature, and check for 911 stickers on the phones. "Nobody in PACAF is doing this, just us," he said. "This is going to be a model program for them I am sure." USS Safeguard searches for downed F-16s [2001-01-26] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- The USS Safeguard arrived at Hachinohe port Saturday as the first stop on its way to the Sea of Japan. As a search and rescue ship, the USS Safeguard has been tasked by the Air Force to look for the two F-16 aircraft downed over the Sea of Japan. The two aircraft collided while participating in Operation Keen Sword in November. One pilot, Col. Michael Lepper, 35th Operations Group, ejected safely from his aircraft. Capt. Warren Sneed, the second pilot, was deemed lost at sea and declared dead after an extensive two-day search. The USS Safeguard arrived in Hachinohe to load the Orion Search System. This system consists of a high-tech sonar device and is equipped with cameras and floodlights, which can be towed behind a search and rescue ship for the purpose of locating underwater objects. The system can detect objects under the water up to 20,000 feet. The entire Orion system was flown to Misawa from Maryland, and was transported to Hachinohe on five flat-bed trailers. The Safeguard and its crew of 108 active duty Navy personnel and nine civilian personnel, spent nearly four days in port loading the equipment and preparing for their mission. "We’re loading the Orion sonar scan equipment. We will do a refueling at sea," said Lt. Cmdr. Ross Mitchell, Commander, USS Safeguard. "When we are done we will take a day of transit to get to the search site. We will search as long as we need to, but now we have a month in our schedule." The ship left Hachinohe Tuesday to sail north to the Sea of Japan. Upon arrival, the crew will begin search operations for the two downed F-16s. "We have two estimated search areas to go out and search. We will report back to the Air Force what we found, and what the debris field looks like," said Mitchell. If the aircraft are found, Brig. Gen. David Clary, the Safety Investigation Board president, is expected to make a decision on whether any salvage attempt will be made. Prior to making his decision, Clary will first be briefed on what has been found, the expected difficulty of any recovery attempt, and what resources would be required to make the attempt. If a decision is made to attempt salvage operations, the earliest those operations could take place would be mid-to-late February. Ship continues search for F-16s [2001-02-02] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- The USS Safeguard, the ship tasked to search for the two downed F-16 aircraft from Misawa, has begun the search. The Navy search and rescue ship is looking for two Misawa F-16s that went into the Sea of Japan in November of last year. "The USS Safeguard arrived on station near Oshima Island at around noon on Jan. 24 and began bathymetric runs," said Brig. Gen. David Clary, president of the safety investigation board. "These runs were made to confirm bottom depth relative to their charts, and to ensure the actual survey runs could be conducted without damaging the equipment." If the aircraft are found, Clary is expected to make a decision on whether any salvage attempt will be made. Prior to making his decision, he will first be briefed on what has been found the expected difficulty of any recovery attempt, and what resources would be required to make the attempt. If a decision is made to attempt salvage operations, the earliest those operations could take place would be mid-to-late February. Search for downed F-16 aircraft terminated [2001-02-16] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- The search for the two F-16 aircraft that collided over the Sea of Japan Nov. 13, 2000 is complete. No wreckage was found in the month-long search. Brig. Gen. Chip Utterback, 35th Fighter Wing commander, announced the decision to call off the search today after consulting with Brig. Gen. David. Clary, Safety Investigation Board president. According to Utterback, the decision to call off the search is based on several factors, including ocean floor terrain, weather, safety, and the probability of finding the aircraft. The underwater landscape where the aircraft may have settled following their collision was relatively uncharted before the USS Safeguard began its search. "We have learned the terrain at the search area is extremely challenging," said Utterback, "the slope is steep along the side of Oshima Island. In some areas, the water is more than 8000 feet deep. The terrain consists of extremely rugged-trenches, valleys, spires and overhangs." "Even if we had found the aircraft the subsurface environmental conditions and the resultant dangers might have made it impossible to recover the aircraft," said Utterback. Misawa Air Base institutes new community standards [2001-02-16] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- Misawa Air Base released the revised Misawa Air Base Community Standards, January 12. The standard defines some of the behavior expected of Misawa Air Base residents and some of the behavior that is not. "We have included some new things in the policy," said Col. Vic Vaccaro, 35th Support Group, commander, "but most of the things have just been updated, improved or expanded to eliminate any confusion in the standard." According to Vaccaro, some of the major changes in 35th Fighter Wing Instruction 36-2901, or the Misawa Air Base Community Standards include policy changes for personal weapons, alcohol and tobacco, earring wear and recreational safety issues such as scooter use or swimming. For weapons owners there two significant changes in Misawa Air Base policy. According to Vaccaro, both pellet and BB guns are strictly forbidden on Misawa Air Base. "We have some individuals on base come pretty close to getting severely injured with a pellet gun," said Vaccaro. "We saw this as a problem area and felt we needed to introduce this into the community standards." The prohibition is new to the base standard. Additional policy involves the number of weapons residents are allowed to keep while in Japan. "Military housing residents may store no more than three weapons in base housing or in the Security Force's armory," said Lt. Col. Arthur Anderson, 35th Support Group, deputy commander. "Those in the dorms or living off base may keep up to three in the armory." According to Anderson, the types of weapons that may be stored are actually limited by the types of weapon allowed into the Japan when members change station to Misawa. For tobacco users at Misawa Air Base, there have been changes concerning both the purchase and use of tobacco products. One major change involves tobacco use by local teens. "Minors will no longer be able to purchase or use tobacco products," said Anderson. "We have always had a policy where you can't buy tobacco products if you are under 18. The issue now is that it is going to be a violation of community standards if you are using them as well." "Some kids had gotten around the old rules by having their parents or a friend who is 18 or older buy for them," said Anderson. "The thing is they are not going to be able to use it now. " For those of age, changes in the tobacco policy at Misawa include where members may use tobacco. "We already know that you cannot smoke in base facilities, but the new standard says smoking is banned within 50 feet of all facilities on base...that change is going to drive people to change their habits," said Anderson. Air Force instructions generally allow commanders some leeway in their interpretation. While a commander may not choose to disregard any Air Force instruction, a commander may choose to reinforce, update or supplement an existing Air Force instruction with their own policy. One example involves the wear of earrings by male members at Misawa Air Base. "We currently have a policy about prohibiting earring wear [by males] on base," said Anderson. "The new policy actually codifies in the community standard that earring wear for males will be prohibited off base as well." While the new policy makes no mention of tongue or body piercings, Anderson points out that when the base instruction does not specifically cover an issue, members are to refer to the Air Force level instruction, AFI 36-2903, the standards of appearance instruction. The new scooter craze has not gone unnoticed in base policy. Use of the tiny aluminum two-wheeled devices has been added to the types of equipment requiring users to wear safety gear. At the same time scooters have been added to the list of recreational equipment requiring wear of safety gear, the amount of safety gear required has actually been reduced. Helmets are now required for skateboarders, scooter riders, roller skaters and inline skaters; safety equipment such as knee and elbow pads is strongly recommended, but not required. During summer months, members have been prohibited from swimming in the Pacific Ocean between Hachinohe and the north-east tip of the Shimokita Peninsula. The new community standard makes an exception to this rule. Base residents and other SOFA status members may now swim at the Misawa Veedol Beach, south on Route 338, adjacent to the Misawa Fishing port. Swimming activities are allowed here only when a lifeguard is present. The newly updated base policy covers many areas. Base residents who are concerned about how the policy affects them should review changes to the policy. "It is an individual responsibility of each individual to know what is in the community standard, to read them and understand them" noted Vaccaro. "If you go to the Misawa Web page, you can link right into those standards. We also have a quick-reference pamphlet we hand out to newcomers." "We want to be sure to keep the community safe and free from hazard," said Vaccaro, regarding the significance of the new standard. "I encourage everyone in the community to pick up a copy of the standards and read them. I think the community wants a little structured guidance on what is expected of them. Once you put it down in writing, people understand it better and this helps make our community a better place to live." Base runway set to close for repair starting mid June [2001-03-16] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- The Misawa Air Base runway is set to close June 11 at 12 a.m. and reopen June 18 at 12 a.m. to repair the critically degraded first 1,200 feet of asphalt pavement on the runway's west end. During the closure, no military or commercial aircraft will use the runway. This ensures the runway can safely be repaired in a timely manner, said base officials. Plans are underway to find alternate arrival and departure points for all travelers during the closure. According to Brig. Gen. Chip Utterback, 35th Fighter Wing and Misawa Air Base installation commander, many factors were considered in selecting an appropriate closure date. These factors include the mission and weather patterns, as well as contractor, equipment and crew availability. "Early selection of the runway repair date is necessary to allow proper coordination with airfield users, airfield management, contracting elements and engineering personnel," he said. "Additionally, early coordination with the contractor allows advance scheduling of highly specialized airfield paving equipment. "We regret any inconvenience the closure may cause to those who use our runway," said Utterback. "However, it is important the runway repair be completed so we can ensure continued safe operations for both commercial and military flights both into and out of Misawa Air Base." The general stressed that people need to plan ahead for the closure, in particular the travel needs of incoming and outgoing personnel during this time frame. Air Force tasks USS Safeguard to recover F-16 [2001-04-20] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- The USS Safeguard, based at Fleet Activities Sasebo, Japan, is leaving for northern Japan. The ship is expected to arrive in Hachinohe port today. The U.S. Navy ship, tasked by request from the U.S. Air Force, is coming to northern Japan to conduct recovery operations on the F-16 aircraft that crashed April 3 into the Pacific Ocean near Ripsaw Range. Ripsaw Range, a joint-use training range, is located approximately 12 miles north of Misawa. Initial recovery plans for F-16 wreckage include items off the critical component recovery list. The list, compiled by the Air Force, includes such items as the engine, the flight/data recorders, the ejection seats, and the external stores. The list will be updated as needed. More of the wreckage may eventually be recovered. Before operations begin, salvage crews and Air Force officials will collect data concerning the exact coordinates of the F-16 crash, make plans to ensure a clean recovery with little environmental impact and annotate the location of fishing nets and other marine obstacles in the area to ensure minimal damage to local fishing equipment. Additional considerations include operations in the shallow water near the recovery site. Shallow water in the recovery area may prevent the USS Safeguard from mooring over some of the items. A lightweight dive system will be onboard the ship for use in this instance. The LWDS will be operated from one of ship's 35-foot workboats to facilitate recovery efforts away from the ship. Safeguard locates aircraft engine [2001-04-27] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- The USS Safeguard, a Navy salvage vessel, continues to conduct salvage operations off the shore of Ripsaw Range, approximately 10 miles north of Misawa. The U.S. Navy ship is conducting operations for the F-16 aircraft that crashed April 3 into the Pacific Ocean, after training at the range. The Safeguard is anchored about 1000 yards from the shore. Navy deep sea divers have conducted underwater searches for aircraft debris. Later, divers go back to these sites, and depending on the size of the aircraft debris, will rig the piece so it may be pulled back onto the Safeguard. To date, found wreckage includes the jet engine, some fuel storage tanks, wing sections, portions of the fuselage, various portions of the aircraft's instrumentation, the gun barrel and part of the gun system assembly. In order to minimize the environmental impact by fuel or oil release during recovery, both absorbant pads and absorbant booms were used to contain any possible leakage. Initial recovery plans for F-16 wreckage salvage include recovering the flight/data recorders, the ejection seats, and the external fuel tanks. Most of the wreckage should eventually be recovered. Public Health office ensures sanitation, provides education, information to Tent City [2001-09-14] INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- For most residents on rotation here as part of Operation Northern Watch, the tent city at the far end of the installation is not a bad place to live. While turning a five-man temper tent into a home is left to the discretion of the occupants, the Public Health office is left to ensure infrastructure and common areas in the tent city meet military sanitation and health standards and to make sure residents are informed on local health issues. Edip Kabaharnup, a public health technician with the 39th Public Health office, is assigned to work public health issues in Tent City. "My general purpose is to keep the Tent City area clean, sanitized and free of insects," said Kabaharnup. "I provide sanitary inspections for the public facilities such as the latrines, showers and kitchen areas." To ensure healthy air in the tents, the office monitors tent ventilation systems. "By request of the flight surgeon, we do an inspection inside the tents; especially in the air circulation ducts to monitor for dust, mold or mildew growth," said Kabaharnup. In the past, there have been problems with mold and mildew in tent ventilation systems. This buildup was causing upper respiratory infections in tent residents. In addition to the standard sanitary inspections, the Public Health office monitors and controls insect populations and their habitats in Tent City. "I monitor the tent areas for grass, vegetation and insect population," said Kabaharnup. By reducing vegetation, weeds and grasses around the tent areas, the Public Health office has made great strides in improving the health and quality of life for Tent City residents. "When we took the grass out of the area, we reduced the insects by some 90 percent," said Kabaharnup. "We had seen a lot of insect bites in the May-July time frame. By getting rid of the vegetation, we got rid of the insects as well as the snakes." Kabaharnup said snakes in the region are mostly harmless grass or house snakes, but there are some poisonous snakes in the area, including the viper. The Public Health office recommends reacting as though all snakes are poisonous and to move away from them. Inspecting Tent City for sanitary violations and ensuring the area is pest free are not the only duties of the Public Health office. The office also provides information for newly arrived troops about local health issues. Tech. Sgt. Brian Jacob, ONW Public Health office, deployed from Wilford Hall Medical Center, Lackland Air Force Base, explains. "The biggest thing we have that would cover almost all of the questions about local food safety concerns is common sense. Hot food must be hot. If it's hot enough for you to blow on before you eat it, then it's hot enough to kill most of the types of bacteria that could lead to a food-borne illness. Cold foods must be cold. If you go to a restaurant and you order 'plate x' and it comes to you and it's lukewarm, then you have the right to take that back and say this is not hot enough [or cold enough.]" According to Air Force food handling directives, proper temperature for food is either above 140 degrees or below 41 degrees. Foods left between 41 and 140 degrees for longer than four hours are at prime growth conditions for bacteria. "You find these bacteria all over," said Jacob. "But food handling practices are different here than in other places. We are not used to that. When we get to a different part of the world where the food handling practices are different, our body has to adjust. Most of the time that means your body responds with gastro-intestinal problems. Once your body gets used to it, then those problems will go away." For those with questions or concerns, stop by the CTF clinic near the morale tent in Tent City. The clinic is open 9 to 11 a.m. on flying days and 3 to 5 p.m. every day. The clinic is considering expanding it's hours in the future. For severe cases, the emergency room at the 39th Medical Group is open 24 hours a day; their number is 6-6666. AWACS is commander's eye in the sky [2001-09-18] INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- From the desert floor, more than 25,000 feet below, it's merely a speck in the sky. But the airborne warning and control system (AWACS) aircraft is actually a flying command center that provides all-weather surveillance, command, control and communications functions to ground based coalition commanders. It is a modified Boeing 707/320 airframe retrofitted with a 30-foot radar dome and a multi-million dollar complement of radar and computing equipment. For the 960th Expeditionary Airborne Air Control Squadron, a new squadron based at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, Operation Northern Watch is their first deployment. Their mission: provide real-time information to the ONW command center about all aircraft flying in and around Northern Iraq. They come dangerously close to Iraq when performing their mission. "Our ultimate goal in this theater is to enforce the northern no-fly-zone and United Nations Security Council resolutions. Our focus is to concentrate on Iraq and ensure they don't fly in the no-fly-zone," said Maj. David Goosman, an electronic combat officer with the 960th. "We are providing surveillance of the area. We scope it out." "I use electronic support measures to detect off-board emissions of aircraft and ground emitters. I provide imminent threat warning to aircraft in the theater," said Goosman. On his large computer screen, Goosman monitors both air and ground radar emissions. If somebody turns on their radar, from either a hostile aircraft or from a ground based radar station, it shows up as lines on a map on his screen. Such radars can be used to target coalition aircraft with surface-to-air missiles. "The Security Council resolutions indicate that the Iraqis are not allowed to use any of their integrated air defense assets north of the 36th parallel," explained Goosman. "If they do, I will detect that on my scope." "I can detect if they have made an early warning radar or a target acquisition radar active," said Goosman. "The fact is, if they have their radar on, they intend to shoot us; that is a hostile intent." Much equipment aboard the aircraft is used to identify what shows up as electronic blips representing real aircraft in the ONW area of responsibility. The blips can be identified as coalition aircraft, hostile aircraft, or even commercial aircraft. With this knowledge, the AWACS crew assists ground commanders in controlling the aircraft in their airspace like pieces on a three dimensional chess board. "We basically are looking at enemy aircraft to see if there is any suspicious activity," explained Capt. David Kirkendall, a weapons control officer. "Our presence here provides the big look. We will detect early on if anybody is violating the no-fly-zone, and we provide that to the fighters that are in the air and on the ground so they can react appropriately. We really have the god's-eye view here." Misawa pilot does first combat assignment at Incirlik [2001-09-21] INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- Career aspirations can change a dozen times through grade school, high school and college. Some want to be a doctor, or a fireman, or a policeman, or a rock'n'roll star. But 1st Lt. Shawna Ng-A-Qui, now an F-16 pilot, didn't have any of that confusion about what she wanted to do as a kid. "I have always wanted to be a fighter pilot," confirmed Ng-A-Qui, "ever since I was in fourth grade, it's something I always wanted to do." Ng-A-Qui, a Midwesterner with South American roots, says that while she had no specific heroes or role models in mind when she chose her career as a pilot, she did look to all fighter pilots and astronauts as examples of what she would like to become. In high school, Ng-A-Qui served as a member of the Civil Air Patrol and achieved the rank of Cadet Lt. Col., perhaps an indicator of her role as an adult. She remembers, as a freshman, the onset of the Persian Gulf War, which eventually spurred operations such as Operation Northern Watch. "I have been hearing about Iraq for about ten years," said Ng-A-Qui. "I was a freshman in high school then. But that was a conflict we kind of thought would end." Besides the CAP, Ng-A-Qui spent time running track, playing soccer and volleyball, and working to get into the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. By 1998, Ng-A-Qui graduated from the Academy with a degree in engineering. Her first assignment as an Air Force pilot took her to Misawa AB at the northern tip of Japan. Her unit of F-16CJ fighter aircraft recently spent three months at Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, as part of Aerospace Expeditionary Force 5. AEF 5 at ONW was her first "real world" assignment, and she has been targeted by hostile fire. "It's not really as scary as you think it might be," said Ng-A-Qui of the experience. "The first time you see it though, it is an eye-opener," confides Ng-A-Qui. "But I haven't had anything real close to me." Ng-A-Qui gives U.S. military hardware partial credit for her successful evasion of anti-aircraft fire. "I feel really safe in the jet," she says of her aircraft. "It has great capabilities and self-protection systems." Ng-A-Qui's commander credits mostly her. "She performed magnificently," said Lt. Col. Joel Malone, 13th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron commander. "She is the first female pilot to fly a combat mission for Misawa's 35th Fighter Wing. This was her first real world, she was fired upon, and she fired back. She certainly did her job." Ng-A-Qui is a wingman in her squadron but looks forward to advancing. "While I am a wingman, I would like to be that person that people want to have on their wing. I would eventually like to become a flight lead, though, and then maybe go to weapons school," said Ng-A-Qui. As a flight lead, Ng-A-Qui would move from being a follower amongst her fellow pilots to being a leader. But for now, she works on crafting her skill as a pilot and at being a member of a team she has great respect for. "We are such a team here," said Ng-A-Qui, "I think the people that I respect the most, those that have been pilots a lot longer than me, are the people that don't have to say they are good. They are the people that, when you fly with them, they know they are good, they know the weapons system, they know the threat and they know how to fly. When you fly with them, you are in awe." Keeping cool under pressure [2001-09-25] INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- About 100 yards off the main drag is a nondescript building bearing a sign which stirs the imagination. "Cryogenic storage," it declares. For the last year or so, news magazines have used photos of test tubes being pulled from icy cryogenic storage vats to hype stories ranging from stem cell research to cloning. Television has shown us bug-eyed aliens cold stored in the basements of clandestine military installations and wealthy eccentrics who froze their heads for posterity. Senior Airman Marc Colbary, 86th Supply Squadron, Ramstein Air Base, Germany explained there was no such mysterious mission at the Incirlik facility. Just mission-oriented work. Colbary is deployed here as part of Operation Northern Watch and works at the 39th Supply Squadron's cryogenic storage facility. The unit provides gasses in both their liquid and natural states to various organizations around the base. U.S. military aircraft are their biggest customer, of course. "They use oxygen on the planes. You have to have oxygen there because the pilots breathe that oxygen," explained Colbary. "Oxygen is stored in a liquid form, because if it is compressed in a liquid form you can transport and store more of it," said Senior Airman Jesse Palacios, 3rd Logistics Support Squadron, Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska. Palacios is also deployed here as part of ONW. The unit also stores liquid nitrogen. Aircraft maintenance crews convert the liquid nitrogen back into a gas on the flightline. The properties of the gas make it ideal for filling aircraft tires, struts and landing gear. The gasses are stored in large, 5,000-gallon tanks. The tanks are actually double-walled to increase their insulating properties, similar to a Thermos bottle. Insulation is important because the liquids tend to turn quickly back to gas. "It is boiling from the time it is made. We cannot keep it cold enough. From the time it is made, we are losing product," said Senior Airman David Mayer, 39th Supply Squadron. When frozen, the gasses are about -300 F. This makes working with them fairly dangerous. The extreme cold can cause severe damage to the skin. Squadron members take special precautions to deal with the extremely low temperature as well as to deal with each gas's unique dangers. "We wear a white suit to cover our uniform because a fuel residue on our uniforms could be a hazard. We wear a rubber apron, a full face shield, and wool gloves with a leather glove over the top," explained Palacios. Besides the cold, each gas has its own unique dangers. Oxygen is highly reactive. Squadron members are careful to not allow the oxygen to come into contact with any oils or greases can pose asphyxiation problems. When needed, a gas like liquid nitrogen, also called LN2, is transferred into a service cart, which is then sent to the fightline for crew chiefs to deliver to the aircraft. For both Colbary and Palacios, ONW is their first deployment and their first time working with a non-training mission. But the change doesn't affect their work. "This is business as usual," said Palacios. "It is the same thing every day, the same mind set." "And you always do your job the right way, every single time anyway," added Colbary. "So it doesn't matter what the mission is." Tanker helps extend missions [2001-09-28] INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- No vehicle, with the exception of a few submarines, can run forever without taking on fuel. And while the operator of an automobile can simply pull off to the side if he fails to fuel up, an aircraft doesn't have such a luxury. Such a restriction could hamper critical airborne missions. Fortunately, U.S. military aircraft flying missions over Northern Iraq as part of Operation Northern Watch needn't worry about those restrictions. "Our mission is to provide fuel for air refueling and to extend the range and the duration of the missions we participate in," said Maj. Paul LoBue, 150th Air Refueling Squadron, McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey. LoBue, a member of the New Jersey Air National Guard, is a full time pilot. As a civilian, he flies a Boeing 737 moving passengers from one part of the country to the other. As a member of the U.S. Armed Forces, he flies a KC-135 Stratotanker. The KC-135 is essentially a flying gas station that takes fuel to aircraft already in the air. It holds around 32,000 gallons of fuel, enough gas to drive the average automobile around the earth nearly 36 times. Aircraft needing fuel align themselves under the KC-135 and wait for the boom operator to attach a fuel line to their craft. The duration of a mid-air refueling would depend on the aircraft. "It depends on how much fuel we are giving them," said Capt. Bill Liess, a KC-135 commander with the 141st Air Refueling Squadron. "It could take a half-hour or so with a C-5 or a bomber. It could take five to 10 minutes on a fighter." Liess is also with the New Jersey Air National Guard. When he is not in a green flight suit, he flies for the civilian transportation sector as commander of an MD-80 passenger aircraft. Both LoBue and Liess served time in the active duty Air Force before embarking on a civilian pilot career. LoBue served for some ten years as both a refueler and as a reconnaissance pilot. He saw military action in the Middle East more than a decade ago as a part of Operation Desert Storm. Liess has served for nearly as long. While the technical aspects of flying remain the same, there are some differences between commanding a military aircraft and a commercial aircraft. "Well, the principles of flying are the same, but the rules under which you operate are entirely different," said Liess. "The FAA guides things very closely for airline travel. There is very little discretion on the part of the crew for many things. In the military world, the pilot has a lot more latitude in how he operates the aircraft." The significance of recent events in the U.S. as well as being in an area so close to a perceived enemy is not lost on the two pilots, who will return to civilian flying duty after their ONW rotation. "It's good to feel I have a place, and some ability at least in the future to combat the threat," said Liess. "It feels good to contribute to the efforts," agreed Lobue. "We are going to go on, airlines may suffer a little bit, but ultimately, I have faith in the American people to demonstrate resilience and to get back to business," said Liess. Royal Air Force airloadmaster sees world, wants to see more [2001-10-05] INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- After nearly 30 years of military service, participation in two wars, and well over a year of their life spent airborne, most people would be ready to hang up their uniform and call it quits. Master Airloadmaster (warrant officer equivalent) Cassy Jones, 101st Squadron, VC-10 Training Flight, has no intention of quitting. She has been with the Royal Air Force for 28 years and has some 8,500 hours flying time under her wings. "And I hope I do my 10,000 hours before I get out of the service," said Jones. She has 8 more years to reach her goal, which she claims is plenty of time. Jones is an airloadmaster by trade. She deployed here with her unit in support of Operation Northern Watch. While in Turkey, she served mainly aboard the VC-10 refueler aircraft, where she works as a steward. "My job here is to look out for any passengers we have aboard and, if there is an emergency, to help them out. I also feed the crew and passengers as well," said Jones. Serving up egg and bacon sandwiches to the flight crew is not her primary job though. "My principal job aboard cargo aircraft is as a loadmaster," she explained. "The loadmaster is the weight and balance expert. We make sure the aircraft takes off within the center of gravity." When at her home station, RAF Brize Norton, Jones teaches others how to do these jobs. "What I do is instruct," said Jones. "When people come through the system, if they have not done the air crew job before as either a loadmaster or a steward, or if they come from another aircraft, I am in charge of the small training cell that teaches them. We actually do the flying training for any loadmasters and stewards." Jones has been an instructor for some five and a half years. Service is not mandatory in the RAF, but Jones left school at around 20, worked for a bit, and then joined the RAF. She says the family was excited with her move. "They thought it was great. When I first qualified in my other job my parents came to my initial passing out parade [similar to pass and review.] I was just a little young girl with dark hair," said Jones. Her initial job in the service was in an administrative position. "And then they came to my brevet presentation, when I got my wings. They thought that was great as well." It was about 1980 when Jones first went airborne. She's been all over the world, which fit in neatly with her original plan. "I joined up to travel mainly. I have seen many countries and some great people," said Jones. "I've been to the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, India, the Caribbean, Alaska and Iceland. There are many more places I want to go, but I have been really lucky." At one point, she had the honor of flying with England's greatest distinguished visitor. "I flew with the Queen," said Jones. "She was going out to Guyana. We also took her to Nassau in the Bahamas and to Belize. I was in the front galley with the stewards. I met her [the Queen] and had to curtsey as well and present her with a pen and stuff like that. My mother was very proud. She is very patriotic, pro-monarchy." Jones has seen the hard side of the military as well. She has been part of the campaign in the Falklands War, she flew cargo missions during the Gulf War, she did her part in enforcing the no-fly-zone over Northern Iraq, and she realizes recent events in New York City may take her to even more conflict. "Well, we are on the knife-edge of some sort of war," said Jones, "that has been made very clear. It could have been London. We have seen terrorism for years; we have seen it in our own country. This is not new to us." Despite the possibility of seeing more conflict during her career, her outlook remains positive. "Every country needs a military force - probably more so now than ever before with the terrorism we have," Jones said. "It is important now to just control the problems we have in the world. And being in the military, people play a part in that. You know if I have to go fly with a crew somewhere, so be it, that is what I am there for. Until somebody says training stops, I will continue doing my training." New Jersey Air National Guard troops serve, supply [2001-10-05] INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- New Jersey Air National Guard members deployed here for a two-week rotation to provide valuable support to the 39th Supply Squadron and in turn aid the Operation Northern Watch mission. "We are here to assist the 39th with the different functions within the supply squadron," said New Jersey Air National Guard Tech. Sgt. Joseph Salanitro, 108th Supply Squadron, McGuire Air Force Base, NJ. As a civilian, Salanitro works as a corrections officer for the state of New Jersey. "We keep the bad guys off the streets. I work in the department where the real bad boys are in 24-hour lockup, where escorts are done by two officers and cuffs," said Salanitro At ONW, Salanitro fills parts requests in the storage area of the 39th Combat Operations Support Flight supply warehouse. Guard members are not new to the flight. In fact, they are a regular addition to the unit. "They are here in direct support of ONW, and they are a vital component to what we do here at the 39th Supply Squadron," said 1st Lt. Ryan Bakazan, 39th Supply Squadron Combat Operations Support Flight Commander. The flight commander believes the ability to integrate individuals from other military units into his flight is important to his unit and to the Air Force. The smooth integration of multiple Air Force units locally shows what will be done Air Force-wide. "The president has instituted a call-up of not only Air National Guard members but also Air Force Reserve members. Here we demonstrate we are able to harmoniously blend the ANG people with the permanent party people along with the AEF augmentees. What we are able to do here is indicative of what the Air Force is able to do Air Force-wide by utilizing the total force concept," said Bakazan. Guard members also feel they are well integrated into the active force. "I have been to Spain, Italy and here. Sometimes, you do catch some active duty that are unhappy when the Air National Guard shows up," said Salanitro. "But our supervisor here is very supportive of us and receptive to us. In turn, we give him 100 percent." Giving 100 percent is not unusual for the Guard members, especially when they understand the importance of their job. "I am essential to some of those planes that cannot get off the ground. I am the beginning part of that cycle," said Staff Sgt. Jonathan Barnes, 108th Supply Squadron. Barnes works at the start of the supply chain where military supply meets the civilian contract shippers. "Right now I work in the receiving element," said Barnes. "We receive packages from the outside vendors and prepare them to go wherever they need to go. It could be anything from plane parts to hazardous materials. It will either go into supply or to whomever needs the part." "And we each contribute in a sense, by putting in our little part," said Senior Airman Jose Mencia, 108th Supply Squadron. "This is a team effort from the pilots to the warehouse support to the guys in the shops needed to keep the planes flying. We just feel that if we can contribute whatever we can here, we are contributing to the mission." Engineers 'BEEF' up Tent City [2001-10-12] INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- There aren't many places here in Tent City where this unit hasn't left it's mark. Examples include the monolithic slabs that protect Tent City residents from shrapnel, the humming air conditioners that lull them to sleep at night, the convenient 120-volt electric outlets that power their shavers, or even, perhaps, the unit logos stamped into the chunks of sidewalk near their tents. The tell-tale logo of PRIME BEEF, a bull, is the symbol of a unique brand of craftsman. There are some 26 individuals with the Prime Base Engineering Emergency Force working to keep the infrastructure that houses and shelters Operation Northern Watch personnel in good order. According to Senior Master Sgt. Art Brown, 786th Civil Engineer Squadron, Ramstein Air Base, Germany and PRIME BEEF team chief, most of these people are on a three-month rotation from Ramstein. There are also National Guard members and one augmentee from Charleston Air Force Base with the team. These PRIME BEEF team members perform a dizzying array of jobs to keep Tent City working smoothly. "The number of jobs we work here includes structural work, power systems maintenance, power production facility maintenance, installation and maintenance of utilities, and heavy equipment operation," said Brown. "In addition, we help move and secure barriers to assist with force protection." In fact, when in Tent City, it's hard to not see the craft of PRIME BEEF personnel. "When you're sitting around chilling on your front porch, and you look around, that's us. Everything you can see," said Senior Airman Robert Stimson, a heating, ventilation and air conditioning specialist with the 786th CES. ONW is Stimson's first non-training mission. Stimson spends most days working to ensure ONW members living in tents keep cool. "People will make a service call and say, 'my AC is not working and this is where I live.' We grab our tools and head out on the job," said Stimson. "Usually we can get out there in 30 minutes to an hour." Stimson said the number of calls he gets would decrease if tent dwellers didn't overwork their environmental control units. "There is a temperature adjustment that says increase/decrease. People take those knobs and turn them all the way past where they are supposed to go. Eventually, the coil gets frost on it and it basically turns into a ball of ice. Then they have no air conditioning," said Stimson. According to Stimson, personnel should not turn their ECU's control knob past the 'C' in the word "decrease," which is printed above the knob. Providing power to such equipment as an ECU or the outlets inside tents here is the job of another team, the power crew. Staff Sgt. Helen Yankovich, an electrician with the 786th CES, is part of the power crew. They are charged with taking commercial power and distributing it throughout Tent City. "We distribute it for lights, your convenience outlets, bathrooms, security lighting and perimeter lighting," said Yankovich. For Yankovich, the most common service call is flipping breakers back on after tent residents plug in unauthorized items such as curling irons or cook tops. Yankovich feels her role at ONW has a direct influence on the misison. "My job is making an improvement for everyone else. I do everything I can to provide creature comfort. At the end of the day we can see what we have done, and we know it directly enhances somebody's morale. That gives everybody that extra oomph to get their job done," said Yankovich. For all civil engineer squadron members, PRIME BEEF is the chance to do their CE job outside the training environment at a real-world contingency. "When we go PRIME BEEF, we are really doing what our mission is as CE. We deploy to a forward base, and we build a bare base or maintain a bare-base area. This is what we are trained to do," said Brown. "We bed down personnel so they can maintain aircraft so they can go fight and win." "This is as real as it gets," added Yankovich. "This is why we joined up - to defend America. I am proud to be a part of that." Morale Tent lets troops keep connected [2001-10-19] INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- Recent changes in the global political environment have caused great concern for family members who wonder about deployed loved ones. Likewise, deployed service members worry about family members back home. The Morale Tent here tries to eliminate that distance and keep families in touch. While the tent offers services ranging from movie rental to T-shirt sales, the most popular of the amenities remains the bank of telephones allowing military members to call home and the nearly 30 computers providing e-mail access to members wanting to send a quick letter or a digital photo to a loved one. The 39th Mission Support Squadron Family Support Center annex provides e-mail services to support their Separation and Reunion program. "This program is designed to keep deployed people in contact with loved ones. It also helps make the reunion, the coming home, go a little smoother," said Bill Koch, 39th Mission Support Squadron lead customer service representative for the FSC annex. "Members might expect to jump back [to their regular life] as if it were one day. But even a 90-day rotation is a significant disruption." Koch figures around 800 people a day come in to use the e-mail computers to stay in touch with their families. In addition to the computers there are also video conference phones that allow individuals to call home and see their loved ones on a TV screen. "Once the connection is made," said Koch, "then you can actually see hubby and junior at the other end." The tent even makes children's books available so deployed members can read a bedtime story to their children back at home. Between the phones and the computers, there is ample opportunity to stay in touch. "There is no reason members should not be in contact with their family while they are here," said Koch. Morale Tent visitors seem to appreciate the convenience and the services provided. "I come to keep in contact with my friends and family," said Airman 1st Class Kenneth Jamison, a crew chief with the 493rd Fighter Squadron, Lakenheath Air Base, England. "This really gives people a break and gets their mind off the work. "When you find you are coming to live in Tent City, you don't think things will be that nice, but that's not the case at all." Master Sgt. David Keck, fuels technician, 18th Supply Squadron, Luke Air Force Base, Ariz. agreed. "It is a lot nicer than I thought. And it is convenient, too. My troops use it a lot. Until you get here, you don't know - it's a lot nicer than you expect." Keck visits the Morale Tent to use the Internet or to rent movies. Tech Sgt. Michael Koen, hydraulics technician, 100th Aircraft Generation Squadron, Mildenhall Air Base, England, tries to call his family three times a week or more. "This is awesome. I come here and watch some TV or use the telephones and call my family," said Koen. "I call daily if I can, to catch up on the news. This is a crucial service. It makes us less stressed out." And like his Tent City neighbors, Koen feels the reality of the Morale Tent and Tent City is better than the myth. "A lot of people get upset with the idea of a tent city, but they don't understand how it really is. Guys who have never been here before show up and are impressed with how the services they offer here can make a difference." Security Forces sergeant gets in trenches, relates [2001-10-19] INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- So what makes a good cop anyway? Tech. Sgt. Wallace Warren, 325th Security Forces Squadron, Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, has some insight. "He'll make a schedule for some 35 people. But instead of being top dog, he'll pull duty himself, taking a job at the lowest post," said Warren. "He works on the principal that if younger troops can do it, so can he. There is nothing he would ask his troops to do that he wouldn't do himself." Warren, the NCOIC of security forces personnel who are on temporary duty here as part of Operation Northern Watch, is actually talking about one of his own troops, Staff. Sgt. Paul Evans. Evans is here from the 72nd Security Forces Squadron, Tinker Air Force Base, Okla. and serves as flight chief for a flight of 35 security forces personnel. His job is to schedule deployed Security Forces personnel for the posts they stand and to direct them to the military assets they should protect. "Sergeant Evans really works to develop a rapport with his troops," said Warren. "He tries to spend 15-20 minutes a day with each person he works with. And, usually within a week, he knows everybody in his flight. He knows their weak areas and their strong areas and he becomes aware of their problems. He comes to know them as an individual." Taking care of the troops is simply part of the job for Evans. "You have got to take care of your people and to look out for each other. Whether you are an E-5 or an E-1, you have to never forget where you came from as far as the posts you have worked," said Evans. "It can be something as simple as getting water to those needing it. That seems very simple to most people, but if you are out there on the ramp and it's 100 degrees, it is important," said Evans. "People may take it for granted they can open up a refrigerator and there it is, but if you are out on the ramp and by yourself it may not be available to you." Part of taking care of the troops also means working with them and seeing the job from their perspective even if you have done it yourself before. "If you are working a gate and are a young troop, you may see a Security Forces NCO and think, 'He won't work this kind of post. He'll just drive by in an air-conditioned car and wave at me and tell me to take care,'" said Evans. "I have already been there, and that's why I say you don't forget where you came from. If you are in the trenches with them, with the troops, they can always respect that. They can appreciate the fact you are out there understanding what they are going through." Evans regularly schedules himself for 14-hour shifts for the very purpose of getting in the trenches with his troops. While he hasn't always been in the Air Force, Evans has been with the military for most of his adult life. He joined the Army National Guard out of high school where he served as an infantryman for almost three years. "That was a lot of fun in the guard," admitted Evans. But he eventually chose the active duty Air Force for his lifetime career. He has seen a lot of the world during his nearly 12 years of active duty service as an Air Force cop. He has served in Croatia, Korea, Germany, Kuwait, Turkey and the United States. In that time he has learned a lot about being with security forces. In particular, he has learned the universal nature of his job. "I can imagine that a police officer out of Moscow deals with the same things that a police officer out of Minneapolis deals with," said Evans. "It is somewhat unbelievable, but that is the same anywhere I have been," he said. "Even with the Turkish Air Force security forces, right down the line, we all see the same kind of complaints and problems." Evans wants to be a career airman, to put in a full 20 years. And he has specific goals to meet in his remaining time. But after he retires, he says he has some different plans. "As far as career goals, that is to do the best I can do and to see new bases, new experiences and new operations," said Evans, who will sew on another stripe in the coming months. "But after retirement, I think I want to be a teacher." Being a teacher, an instructor, is not too far out of line for Evans. He already seems to be training, even as a Security Forces member. His pupils are the airmen who work for him. "You teach them the bigger picture. You teach them to understand the planes go out there and win the war for us," said Evans. "You let them know their role in that, that we are part of the same team and part of the same service and we support each other. We guard those who work on the planes and fly the planes so they can go and do their jobs." For his students, his troops, he has words he asks them to live and work by. And as a man who can get down in the trenches and work alongside those he takes charge of, he seems to have followed his own advice. "Take pride in your job, strive to do something better, give 110 percent," said Evans. "If you are not satisfied or not certain, ask a question to get total understanding because you are dealing with weapons and with people every day. You need to be honest and to ask questions, to be inquiring and to have enough courage to say when you are wrong. Even after 12 years in the Air Force, I am still learning." RIC provides picture perfect intelligence to ONW commanders [2001-10-26] INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- The right weapon systems and the right people are important when dealing with the adversary. But knowing your enemy is just as important. That's the role of military intelligence. The Royal Air Force's 41 Squadron, Reconnaissance Intelligence Center is one such example of military intelligence, and it is key to the Operation Northern Watch mission. "We're tasked by an element of the C-2 [Intelligence Directorate] in the Combined Air Operations Center. They decide on a daily basis what targets the Jaguars are going to fly against to produce imagery," said Squadron Leader Peter Hughes, 41 Squadron, RIC, Coltishall, England. "It is our role to look at that imagery and to exploit it and report on what we see." Hughes heads up a team of about eight individuals whose job is to extract information recovered from reconnaissance missions over Iraq. The Jaguar aircraft perform these missions, carrying with them a special information package attached to their underside. "The Jaguar Reconnaissance Pod is a digital pod that creates an electro-optical image recorded onto tape. When the airplane lands, the tapes are pulled out, rushed into the RIC and downloaded into the system," said Hughes. The JRP scans the ground under the aircraft much like a desktop scanner reads information off a photograph - one line at a time. The information is recorded onto tape for processing on the ground, Hughes said. The advanced system the RIC uses to process imagery is called the Ground Imagery Exploitation System. It is a combination of high-powered computers and video equipment built by the same company that built the JRP. RIC team members load tapes taken from the JRP into the GIES. With the system, team members can scan through video footage, zoom in on portions of the footage and analyze what they see. "We are looking for dispositions of Iraqi forces in the north of Iraq to monitor what they are doing. We can see armored vehicles, tanks, and air defense equipment," said Hughes. "Additionally, we are looking to assist with force protection of ONW assets." "It's best when you can see air defense weapons, if you find a weapon firing against our aircraft," said Sgt. Kevin Smith, 41 Squadron, RIC, an intelligence analyst. Using the controls of the GIES, Smith scans across a continuous image of Iraqi ground space while a separate monitor shows the corresponding digital map. There are mere dots on his imaging screen, hardly identifiable as anything more than rocks. But Smith can identify them like he identifies nearly everything else on the screen. "We can tell these are people," Smith said, as he points out the way they cluster together and how long their shadow stretches. "We can't tell if they are male or female though." Based on the needs of ONW commanders, the RIC can rapidly relay photographic intelligence information to the CAOC. In addition, the unit puts together a more detailed final product, produced on a daily basis. That report is a combination of text and images and is sent out to the multi-national forces participating in ONW. "In a lot of ways, we are the eyes of the command. We allow them to see what is on the ground, and that assists with how they manage the operation," said Hughes. Marine's military ambition spurred by duty to country [2001-10-26] INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- "There's nothing like the good old United States," said the seasoned Marine Corps sergeant major, a veteran of deployments to nearly a dozen countries. Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. Pablino Sanchez, VMAQ1, Marine Corps Air Station, Cherry Point, N.C. is here in support of Operation Northern Watch. He has served with the United States Marine Corps for nearly 30 years now and has been to Japan, Albania, Tunisia, Italy, Spain, France, Korea, the Philippines, Turkey, Greece and Israel. But for him, home is the East Coast of the United States. "My roots are now in North Carolina, close to the Marines," said Sanchez. He is stationed at the Marine Corps Air Station, Cherry Point, North Carolina. He lives there with his two boys and his wife Dawn, a Marine Corps gunnery sergeant. The dual-military household works well for the family. "Being in the Marine Corps and being on the road, I figured if I married a Marine, she would know what I am all about. She understands. She is back home taking care of the boys and I am forward deployed," said Sanchez. "When she has been forward deployed, I have been back taking care of things. It works out for both of us." Sanchez admits his boys might not be so cheery about the situation. "You can imagine what my boys feel. They have a gunny sergeant for a mother and a sergeant major for a father, so they are pretty regimented by now. They either clean that room up or secure that liberty," joked Sanchez. While Sanchez's wife serves in an administrative position at the MCAS Headquarters at Cherry Point, he serves as the sergeant major for VMAQ1, the unit that flies the EA-6B Prowler aircraft. He is responsible for the morale and personnel issues for more than 150 troops in his unit. Sanchez joined the service around the time a Navy helicopter pulled the last few Marines in Vietnam off the roof of the U.S. embassy is Saigon. The effects of that conflict left a mark on him. "I grew up in the '60s and the '70s. Vietnam was a major issue then. It was on TV all the time," said Sanchez. "I figured it was my duty to serve my country and do what I had to do. That's why I had to join the Marine Corps. Giving my country part of my time was the right thing to do." Of course, it wasn't just the war that could pull a young man out of his parents home into a life of service. Sanchez has five brothers, all of whom chose to serve in the military. "I had many brothers in the service - three in the Marine Corps and two in the Army - but I am the only one that made it a career," said Sanchez. In the Marines, Sanchez served for 14 years as an aircraft electrician, specializing on the Harrier aircraft. He also served as a senior instructor for the Harrier weapons system. Around the time he became a first sergeant, he embarked on a nearly six-year experience with a Marine Expeditionary Unit, a ground combat unit. "I think my most exciting time was in the ground element. I grew up in aviation, so I had always thought grunts didn't know what they were doing. But after being attached with the ground side for approximately six years, I learned there are some intelligent Marines out there," said Sanchez. "I went there with an aviation background, and I had to rely on those young Marines to teach me those weapon systems that I had only read about but hadn't had the opportunity to touch. "Any Marine who can lead a patrol out there in enemy territory and bring those Marines back safe has a lot of leadership, courage and planning ability. Those Marines out there operating those weapon systems really know what's going on." Sanchez has seen a lot of changes in the way the services conduct their business. "Technology has brought us a long way. It has saved time for us and made jobs easier for all the services. This is a change for the better. With the technology, you need fewer Marines, sailors and airmen to do a job that used to take more than what we have today," said Sanchez. "My only concern is that if something should happen, and we lose that plug, it is going to affect a lot of people." Despite his concern, he knows his Marines have got that angle covered. "Of course the Marine Corps has a different role because we do have ground forces. They will train to go in and do their mission regardless. Even with the technology and weapon systems there is a possibility to lose lives," said Sanchez. "It boils down to the training and leadership when it comes to what happens on the battlefield. "Every Marine is a rifleman first. When you go through boot camp, that is the first thing they teach you. If the technology was unplugged, and everything went down, you have to resort to combat arms. The Marine Corps teaches you that." Retirement is not far off for this leader. For a career after the service he plans to stay near the Marines in North Carolina and, for a change, be his own boss. "I thought a lot about it, and I want to go into business for myself. I have done my share for the country and I look forward to working for myself, to keeping myself occupied," said Sanchez. While retired, he knows his Corps will never be far away. "Most Marines realize that no matter what you do, when you give the Marine Corps six or eight years, you are always going to be a Marine," said Sanchez. "I can be out and run across somebody that was in the Marine Corps. As soon as you find out he has been a Marine, the conversation starts. Before you know it, it's like you have known each other all your lives and you are brothers and you trade phone numbers and you keep in touch." With that type of universal camaraderie, Sanchez can be with the Marines at home in North Carolina or wherever his travels take him. Wild Weasels provide safe passage for coalition aircraft [2001-10-31] INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- Aircraft with a very diverse range of missions fly here as part of Operation Northern Watch. Like a prize fighter surrounds himself with a posse of bodyguards to clear his path as he moves through the crowd towards the fight, so too do these aircraft require an escort to ensure their flight path is kept clear of enemy attacks from the ground. "Our job is to make the environment more permissive for other aircraft to enforce the no-fly-zone," said "Zot", 14th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron commander, Misawa Air Base, Japan. Zot and his unit are here on a three-month deployment as part of ONW. Their aircraft, the F-16CJ, performs the Wild Weasel mission and provides suppression of enemy air defenses for coalition aircraft. "We perform our mission here by suppressing ground threats or enemy integrated air defense systems. What we do is basically provide a safe passage for other aircraft to do their jobs; we keep the path clear," said Zot. The F-16CJ aircraft uses the high speed anti-radiation missile, or HARM, to perform its task. The HARM can detect enemy radar emissions. When fired, the missile will hone in on an enemy radar target and destroy it. Sometimes, the mere threat of the HARM missile will force enemy radar operators to shut down their systems. Either way, without radar, enemy air defenses become all but useless, providing a safer area for other jets to operate. This is the unit's first time at ONW, and they have trained extensively for the mission. Earlier this year, the unit deployed to Red Flag, a multi-national training exercise at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. "Training at Red Flag prepares us for the worst," said "Bull," an F-16 pilot in the 14th EFS. "The adversaries we fight at Red Flag are our own people - the best trained people in the world. The situations we get into are very intense, focused, highly concentrated threats. What we see there is a little more than what we may see anywhere else. When you come to this kind of environment, having had that experience, you feel very prepared. And it is exciting to finally get the opportunity to do what we trained for." This is Bull's first real mission outside of training, and he is aware of the dangers of flying a combat mission. "There is a realization when you fly that you are no longer training, that the people on the ground are actually trying to shoot at you and that if they miss it is not because they were trying to miss," said Bull. "These things are always in the back of your mind, but you try to just go out and do the mission." Squadron's double couples team up on F-16 maintenance [2001-11-02] INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- Everybody in the Air Force is part of a team - one big team of individuals and a few couples as well. It's unusual for those few couples to be in the same squadron, even rarer for them to hold the same job, and almost unheard of for them to be on deployment together in the same location. Senior airmen Jason Via and Margarethe Via, 555th Fighter Squadron, Aviano Air Base, Italy, are one of those couples. They are both F-16 crewchiefs with Aviano's "Triple Nickel" squadron and are deployed here as part of Operation Northern Watch. Being in the same squadron proves quite a benefit to the couple. "If they had put one of us in another fighter squadron, we would be separated probably six or seven months a year," said Margarethe. "We would spend half a year away from each other." If they hadn't been in the same squadron, they may not have even met. They met at work and have been married some 13 months, celebrating their first anniversary here. The Via's, however, aren't the only couple within the squadron. Senior airmen Wess and Cecilia Sullivan also work to keep Air Force fighters fit and mission ready. He is an avionics specialist, and she is a weapons specialist. "We met at our last base, Shaw AFB in South Carolina, through mutual friends," said Wess. The two will have their one-year anniversary in January, and they find the arrangement convenient. "It makes getting to work pretty easy," said Wess. "And our schedule is usually the same," added Cecilia. "You can go in at the same time and get off work at the same time." Working together is not all it seems though. "We do work different jobs," said Wess. "Though we work the same shift, we rarely get to see each other throughout the day, except for down time, and we stay pretty busy." Capt. Tim Coger, the Triple Nickel's maintenance officer, points out that despite the convenience of being a couple within the squadron, the mission takes top priority. "As a supervisor, I have to look at each person individually and at what they contribute to the squadron's sortie generation effort. With the Air Force's emphasis on quality of life, decisions are made that will try to keep these couples together as much as possible. Happier people are more productive. But if the mission dictates splitting them up, that will come first, and the Sullivan's and the Via's understand that is the case." Being married and working in the same workplace provides more than just a chance to be together with your spouse though. It can have a positive effect on the mission. For the Via's, there is the lighthearted competition common amongst crewchiefs. "I guess there probably is a little bit of competition," said Margarethe. "But that has never been a problem." "It's actually helpful," said Jason. "It pushes us to be that much better. If I look at her and she is doing something and I am not, then I am going to do that and vice-versa. It makes us both better crew chiefs. "There is always constant competition amongst crew chiefs," Jason explained, "it is about the upkeep of the aircraft, the cleanliness, the discrepancies you have against it, how well you perform maintenance on it, and how fast you are at doing certain jobs." While the statistics for such performance are not posted for all to see, crew chiefs can pull up statistics on individual aircraft. "You can pull those numbers up and see that your aircraft was reliable 95 percent of the time and that makes us feel good," Jason said. There are challenges for a married couple as well. Keeping separate friends is one example. "I have been at Aviano for four years and so have a lot of the guys that are here now," said Jason. "So we have been friends for four years. Maybe these guys want you to go out and do something, but your wife wants to do something else. You have to decide what is more important." Besides keeping separate friends, sometimes there are difficulties with the perceptions of others in the squadron. "There are some people that feel married couples shouldn't be in the same squadron, that think you should have to experience that separation, to know what it feels like to be away from your spouse," said Cecilia. That's not the case with everyone in the Triple Nickel, though. "Mostly they just say how lucky we are," said Wess. Fuels keeps fliers flying, drivers from walking [2001-11-06] INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- What's keeping an F-16 up in the air is virtually the same thing keeping a 12-passenger van moving distinguished visitors from one side of the base to the other or keeping the generators at the base exchange humming during a power outage. And it all comes from the same place. "We provide fuel to aircraft, AAFES, aerospace ground equipment, any type of vehicle on the base and transient aircraft," said Staff Sgt. Marklus Henley, 92nd Supply Squadron, Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington. Henley, the night-shift distribution supervisor at the 39th Supply Squadron's fuels flight is on temporary assignment here in support of Operation Northern Watch. The fuels flight stores, handles and distributes three types of fuel products here, including JP-8 or jet fuel, diesel fuel and standard unleaded gasoline. Additionally, in other parts of the base, the unit handles liquid oxygen and nitrogen storage and distribution. The fuel arrives here via pipeline. Before it can be used by the base, it is filtered and subjected to laboratory testing to ensure it meets military standards. The fuel is eventually pushed to a storage yard. From there it is distributed via trucks, which can carry as much as 6,000 gallons of fuel, or by underground distribution lines terminating in panographs for refueling large aircraft. The panograph is a rigid metal hose with several swivels allowing it to be pulled out to aircraft. The unit handles all fuel on base, but mostly it works to service the large volume of military aircraft handled by the flightline. Most fuels technicians on temporary assignment as part of Operation Northern Watch work the night shift. "We have a 24-hour mission here," said Senior Airman Robert Searcy, a mobile distribution operator with the 18th Logistics Readiness Squadron, Kadena Air Base, Japan. "Basically we work nights to get fuel to the aircraft so they can take off in the morning." Of course, the unit's 24-hour mission helps in emergencies as well. "If somebody is hurt real bad and they need to get out, there is a redball situation," said Henely. "In a redball, we will know before the plane hits the ground. We wait out there and are prepared to refuel them," said Searcy. On a regular night, the unit moves an estimated 300,000 gallons of fuel, ensuring that not only are the aircraft on the flightline ready to fly their missions the next day but that everybody else on the base can drive to work the next morning. "Without fuel, all the maintainers, all the pilots, all the ammunition troops, and all the security forces with their M-16s would be walking," laughed Henely. "Without fuel, everybody is a pedestrian." PERSCO: 100% Accountability key [2001-11-09] INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- It's nice to know someone, besides your family, cares about you and where you are when you deploy. The Operation Northern Watch Personnel Support for Contingency Operations unit here cares. In fact, that is their primary job. "Our biggest thing is accountability," said Staff Sgt. Alberto Ceja, 99th Mission Support Squadron, Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, PERSCO representative. "We account for everybody that comes through here." "If we don't have accountability, we drop everything," said Senior Airman Amber Hughes, a PERSCO representative from the 27th Mission Support Squadron, Cannon Air Force Base. "No matter what we have to do, accountability remains the most important thing." Accountability means at least two things at an operation like ONW. First, it means everybody coming onto the base for the first time as part of ONW will essentially be marked present. The compilation of that list of names and respective units is called an alpha roster and is manufactured daily. The list can serve as a locator for every US military member on base involved with ONW. PERSCO uses various means to ensure the accuracy of their list and to keep it updated. PERSCO will do just about anything to maintain that number. That may mean going out themselves to visually verify a person exists or calling every first sergeant and asking them to do head counts in their unit. "Fortunately, we have had really good cooperation with the first sergeants here," said Hughes. Accountability for people on base is only part of the job though. Flagging those who are supposed to be here but who haven't arrived is also important. Fortunately, if someone is supposed to have reported for duty here but hasn't, the problem usually identifies itself. "A first sergeant would want to know where his inbound person is," said Ceja, "and the person who is being replaced by that person and is due to get out of here would also start to wonder." PERSCO is concerned with more than headcounts though. There is also an issue of paperwork when military members arrive on station - and the matter of ensuring its currency. Ceja understands how paperwork could arrive with inaccurate information. He explained military members sometimes complete forms, like the emergency data card, at the last minute. As a result, the data may be less than accurate. "They say they will fix it later, but you must make sure all your paperwork is correct before you come here," Ceja. Huges explains why currency and especially accuracy in military forms like the Air Force Form 93, or emergency data card, is important. "Your paperwork has to be updated when you come here in case we have to notify your next of kin. And of course, if something happens, I have to know where you are," said Hughes. "Exactly," added Ceja, "we couldn't ever contact a wife or son and say we don't know where you are." PERSCO cares about knowing where you are because they know your family cares, too. CAOC knows all, controls all of ONW mission [2001-11-16] INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- This supreme control room isn't nearly as ominous as the one infiltrated by an incorrigible hacker in the 1983 movie "War Games." There isn't even a computer here capable of starting a nuclear war. But while the Combined Air Operations Center here does sport the domineering visual displays, what makes it important is its role in Operation Northern Watch. "The CAOC is responsible for the command and control of the ONW forces. We plan, execute and then assess the effectiveness of the ONW mission on a daily basis," said the Combined Forces Air Component Commander. His call sign is "Buck." "We plan the missions ONW flies, in terms of putting the right forces and the right package of aircraft together, to go and do the mission everyday." Essentially, the CAOC develops the air tasking order which directs what coalition aircraft will fly for a particular mission, determines when they fly, and drives the operation that takes place. Buck explained the role of the big projection screens on the front wall of the CAOC control center. "The screens are there to provide essential information to us while we do the mission," explained Buck. "We have various intelligence and information gathering systems out there that pull in information about various elements of Iraqi air defense systems. Additionally, we can see where our aircraft are and where they are going, as well as other things that contribute to the mission so that we can provide command and control of coalition aircraft from here." To man the CAOC, resources are pulled from many different functional areas. One role to be filled is that of the MADDOG, short-hand for mission director. "The MADDOG is responsible for running the mission for me, and he is a very experienced pilot or weapons system officer," said Buck. "He is responsible for coordinating the various elements of the mission." "Grinner", with the 25 Fighter Squadron, Royal Air Force Leeming, UK, is one of four MADDOGs working at the CAOC. At his home station, Grinner is a Tornado pilot. As one of four MADDOGs, he draws on his piloting experience when directing a mission. "We are operators and we have done the [flying] job. What we can do with our flying experience is ask, 'If I was in the cockpit now, what information would I actually like to know? And what information can I sideline until it gets a bit quieter?' Our flying experience really comes into it." Seeing the command and control side of an overall mission gives him perspective on his flying job as well. "It is very interesting to actually see what goes on in the command and control side," said Grinner. "When you fly, sometimes you wonder where the direction is coming from and sometimes where bum decisions come from. "I think this gives you more of an appreciation that there is a lot more going on than you think. When you are flying a mission, as a formation commander, all your responsibility is for a few aircraft within a whole operation. All you are concerned about is completing your little mission within that bigger mission. Sometimes you wonder why they ask you to do something. When you work in command and control, it becomes apparent, because you have the big picture. You don't have that all the time when you are in your cockpit." Gathering and disseminating relevant intelligence before and during the mission is important because it allows pilots and crew to safely and effectively carry out their mission. That is the role of "Ferris", an intelligence weapons and tactics officer with the 27th Operations Support Squadron, Cannon Air Force Base, NM. "I provide direct intelligence support to this operation," said Ferris. "That means I ensure the crews are briefed on the threats they will face, on Iraqi tactics, and on how they will affect the operation. Additionally, I keep the aircraft and the CFACC informed on any changes that are taking place inside of Iraq. That means I update them on threat movements. "Basically we fuse intelligence from multiple sources and ensure the pilots are updated on any activity we witness. They are getting up-to-the-minute updates." Besides the mission director and the intelligence officer, there are a host of other positions at the CAOC that ensure the mission is carried out smoothly. "This is a small operation in terms of numbers of people overall in the CAOC, but there are a lot of moving parts," said Buck. "We have a chief of combat plans and people that do scheduling for take-off times and refueling times, and we have technicians that put it all together into an air tasking order. On the floor itself, we have an electronic warfare officer who looks at all the things that go on in the electronic spectrum that could impact our mission. He advises me on how to respond to those things. I have an intelligence officer who is an experienced targeteer and weapons officer and his assistant. We have a search and rescue liaison. Additionally we have Turkish liaisons who help us coordinate with the host nation." With that many people on the floor, things can get pretty intense. "I'd say every day is a pretty exciting day here. There is a lot of flying activity south of the 36th parallel that we have to monitor all the time and be prepared for, should they decide to be aggressive and come north," said Buck. "It's is never dull on the floor." Master sergeant returns to first base; visits past [2001-11-16] INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- "When I grew up," said Master Sgt. Patrick Calton, lead production superintendent, 67th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, Kadena Air Base, Japan, "I wanted to do just what I'm doing right now." "My father is retired Air Force. My brother was in the Navy, and my sister was in the Air Force," he said. "Growing up, my dad worked on aircraft as a structural maintenance technician, and growing up, I made models of aircraft and hung them up in my bedroom. I have always been fascinated with flying and aircraft." As lead production superintendent - or "pro-super" - Calton's charge includes some 90 individuals who maintain the F-15 fighter aircraft here. He directs their efforts, provides guidance in their work, and even works to ensure their well-being. "My primary mission is to ensure for every ONW mission I put the required number of jets into the air," said Calton. "I am responsible for all the maintenance that goes on, for making sure the people are taken care of, that they are fed, and for ensuring they have what they need to do their job." This isn't the first time Calton has worked on the Incirlik flightline. In fact, in 1982, then-Airman Calton worked here as part of transient alert. This was actually his first base of assignment. "It was way different then," said Calton. "The alley started at the railroad tracks. There were only two restaurants and a handful of shops. Most of the shops were in Adana. I lived in the village, with a Turkish family. "They are still there. I have already visited them, and I try to see them once a week. What's cool is that my landlord's son was about a year and a half old when I left. I just saw him off; he is going to Ankara to go to college." After his initial tour here, Calton returned to the United States. There he was assigned for the first time as a crewchief to a single airframe. "I went from Incirlik to Myrtle Beach Air Force Base, Florida, and worked the A-10 aircraft for nine and a half years. When they shut down Myrtle Beach AFB I went to Tyndall AFB and was there for nine years on the F-15," said Calton. Recently, he changed station again; this time to Japan. He has a plan for the rest of his time in the Air Force - a plan that gives him even more troops to take care of. "I plan on making senior master sergeant this time and chief before I get out. Actually, my ultimate goal is to be the chief enlisted manager of a fighter squadron," said Calton. He knows the key to attaining that goal as well. "Once the aircraft break the ground and go, they are up for some time," said Calton. He points to a pack in the back of his vehicle. "In that backpack there are my promotion fitness exams. I find one of these quiet aircraft pads and study." He also has plans for after his military service. "I love the outdoors. I love to fish, hunt and play golf. If all my financial stuff goes as planned, I may have to bag groceries at the commissary every once in a while, but that will be it. But really, fishing, hunting and playing golf is all I will do." According to Calton though, he loves the Air Force, and he doesn't plan on bagging groceries any time soon. "I am staying in until they tell me to leave, or until I win the lottery. Whichever comes first," said Calton. "It isn't just the job that I love; it's that this is a family. It is just like the TV ads say, this is a way of life - and I like this way of life." Chock, check, go: EOR airmen perform last critical tasks before flight [2001-11-23] INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- A handful of airmen wait in a government vehicle near the end of the runway here. As two F-16 aircraft taxi towards the arming area, the crew moves out to meet them. The crewchief martials the first plane into position and then stops it. Crewmembers put chocks under the tires, and the tires are inspected for any apparent damage. Then the chocks are removed, the plane is moved forward, rechocked, and the tires are rechecked. The procedure is just the first part of a routine repeated by other crews, on other Air Force fighter aircraft, at the same time. The apparent redundancy is not really redundant at all. It's just part of the thoroughness exhibited by the end of runway crews here. Staff Sgt. John Yarbrough, crew chief, 14th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, Misawa Air Base, Japan, explained. "When stopped, the plane has one portion of tire touching the pavement. The only way to check that [portion] is to have the jet roll forward," said Yarbrough. Yarbrough is part of a team of weapons troops and crewchiefs from the various fighter units deployed to Operation Northern Watch. These aircraft specialists are part of the end of runway crew. Their job is to arm an aircraft's weapons systems and perform final aircraft checks before the aircraft launches. Once an aircraft is chocked, the crewchief and an assistant do final checks on the aircraft. They make sure all the aircraft body panels are closed, they check fluid levels and they check for fluid leaks under the aircraft. At the same time the aircraft is being looked over, weapons crews are arming the aircraft's weapons systems. This is similar to taking the safety off a rifle. "Basically, we pull pins and make sure the missiles are set to 'arm,'" said Staff Sgt. Larry Clyburn, weapons technician, 555th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, Aviano Air Base, Italy. "There are some keys that must be turned, but that's about it." In addition to arming the weapons, the crew ensures missiles and bombs are firmly attached to the aircraft. "We look to ensure everything is properly loaded and safe. That means we check if the weapons are loaded properly and locked on the aircraft. You can shake them a little to check, but there are certain checks for each missile," said Tech. Sgt. Mark Dulac, weapons technician, 67th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, Kadena Air Base, Japan. Senior Airman Jedidiah Marrs, a weapons technician with the 14th EFS, explained how he and his partner ensure they don't miss anything on the aircraft as they prepare it for launch. "I'll start on one side, and he'll start on the other. Then we cross over and cross check each other. If I say my side is good, but I have missed something, he can catch it, and vice-versa," said Marrs. The EOR area can be busy prior to an ONW mission. Some half-dozen aircraft with accompanying ground crews, from multiple squadrons, multiple services and even multiple countries, can be lined up waiting to be armed. In spite of the apparent confusion, the crews know how to make sense of it all. "We have a game plan," said Clyburn, "and we know how many aircraft will come through. We also know the routine because we've been here almost 90 days." Cooperation between the units helps make things smooth as well. "When these guys get out there, they work as a team. With the different fighter squadrons and different services represented, there are rivalries," said Tech. Sgt. Matthew Becker, quality assurance, 555th EFS. "But during launches and recoveries, that is put aside. They know there is no time to be messing around out there." After a final check and after weapons systems are armed, aircraft are released by their EOR ground crew to the tower's control. EOR is more than just another mark on a checklist for aircraft before flight though. "I think the EOR crews really downplay what it is they do," said Chief Master Sgt. Les Brown, Barksdale Air Force Base, La. Brown is the EOR program manager for ONW. "There are a lot of critical tasks that have to be completed on an aircraft before it can fly. EOR is the last critical task that must be completed, and that is important." ONW sponsors help students cut a rug [2001-11-30] INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- Military members deployed here as part of Operation Northern Watch sometimes find they have few options, or more exactly, few meaningful options, to occupy their time during the 90-day rotations. Fortunately, the students of the 8th grade class at Incirlik-American High School have presented themselves as an opportunity for ONW members to do something worthwhile in their off time. ONW has been assigned as the class' "sponsor," and volunteers are needed to fill the role. "This is something that has been going on for a while. Each year, the 39th Wing designates an organization to be the sponsor for each grade level," said Amy Perry, social studies instructor and 8th grade class advisor. "The sponsor basically helps out with chaperoning and also helps to facilitate various events throughout the year." In the past, the class had been less than excited by their sponsors. "Last year we did have a sponsor but we never saw them at all. When these kids were 7th graders we didn't have any field trips or dances because we didn't have any chaperones," said Perry. "When students were running for student elections they were all saying we had to have more activities this year, that they didn't want to have another year like last year." Student government must work, because this year, ONW volunteers have made a great showing for the class. They have helped the 8th grade class hold a school dance and take a field trip to the base movie theater. Without ONW assistance, the events might not have been possible. "With this level of force protection, where the kids are very limited in what they can do, it is nice to have school activities where we can provide the kids with an outlet, a release," said Perry. The students are well aware of the fact. "It's been great, and I'm glad the chaperones were there," said 8th grader Natasha Hancock. "We wouldn't have been able to have it without them." According to Perry, there is another 8th grade dance in the works, and volunteers will be needed to make that happen. Students themselves have other ideas about how to utilize their sponsors. "I think it would be cool to go to Aqualand," said 8th grader, Seth Swenson, referring to water park in the local area. "And we would like to have a lock-in maybe," said Hancock. Swenson agreed. "You can't leave and you stay up all night. We're going to be able to play games and watch movies." For more information on how to be an ONW sponsor for the 8th grade class, contact Staff Sgt. Gerald Taplin at 6-1151. TDY escorts make Hodja Village, base, safer for all [2001-11-30] INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- Security here is paramount to the mission; even more so now in light of recent events. Maintaining that security falls into the hands of multiple organizations, the most prominent of which are the joint security forces stationed here. Security also falls into the hands of a less likely group; these individuals are assigned to the 39th Air and Space Expeditionary Wing as escorts. According to Master Sgt. Gil Olay, escort program coordinator, 39th Civil Engineer Squadron, there are nearly 30 such escorts on base. Their rank is generally staff sergeant or below, and their jobs include providing security patrols in the Hodja Village area and providing door guard and ID checking services to Hodja Village service facilities and the Combined Task Force headquarters building. The majority of escorts assigned here, however, pull vehicle escort duty. One such escort is Senior Airman Michael Shipman, avionics specialist, 494th Fighter Squadron, RAF Lakenheath, England. "I escort vehicles -- whether it be cement trucks or dump-trucks around base and make sure they go where they are supposed to be going and then come right back," said Shipman. "Also, I escort anybody who needs to go out to the flightline. For the most part this keeps me busy. I haven't had too many dull periods." According to Olay, escorts such as Shipman come from career fields and air bases all over the world. The 39th ASEW puts out ads across the Air Force asking for volunteers, and local base Personal Readiness Units forward the message to local units. Those responding to the ads, those who volunteer, do so for various reasons. "First, many come to reenlist," said Olay. Those choosing to reenlist at Incirlik Air Base are eligible for the tax free benefits on reenlistment bonuses. Besides the bonus, there is also the travel to a foreign location which makes this temporary assignment a plus. According to Olay, a great majority of the escorts have never been TDY or have never been overseas. The 45 day escort TDY is a great first chance to see the world. "That's one of the main reasons I volunteered to come to this assignment was to get overseas," said Airman 1st Class Angel Duke, dental technician, 355th Dental Squadron, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz. "Dental technicians don't really get that many of these opportunities. I wanted a change of pace, and I love being overseas. This is so different." Money and travel are not the only reasons airmen choose to take volunteer escort duty here. "There are also those that just say they love to serve their country," said Olay. "They say this is what we are here for." ONW rotation brings new leader [2001-12-07] INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- Taking over the senior enlisted advisor position for nearly 1,500 people is a lot of responsibility, but nothing nearly 30 years of Air Force experience can't handle. Chief Master Sgt. Wayne Galloway, 52nd Equipment Maintenance Squadron, Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, recently took over the position of senior enlisted advisor for Operation Northern Watch. During his 90-day rotation at ONW, he will serve as the Combined Task Force first sergeant, an advisor to many acting first sergeants assigned here and the enlisted advisor to the U.S. ONW co-commander. At non-contingency operations, such a position is held by a command chief master sergeant. Though Galloway is not technically a command chief, like a command chief, while deployed here his job is to advise those new to the first sergeant position. "A lot of the first sergeants here at ONW are not diamond wearing first sergeants. They are doing this as an additional duty while deployed," said Galloway. "I think that is why they bring us in here, to be the advisor to those folks who haven't served as a first sergeant before." Like the work in his own position, Galloway said he understands during an operation such as ONW, Air Force members are called upon to go beyond what they normally do. Galloway has served in the U.S. Air Force for some 27 years. He has served at Allied Force and Operation Southern Watch among other temporary duty assignments and has also served twice in both Germany and Korea. He joined the Air Force in 1974, as the conflict in Vietnam came to a close. He could have been drafted at 18, but missed being called up. That didn't prevent him from eventually donning the Air Force blues, though. "It was right at the end of the draft when I signed up," said Galloway. "I was lucky enough to not get drafted, but I still wanted to be in the military. I wanted to serve, and the Air Force seemed like the service to join; it offered a lot of what I was looking for." At school, Galloway had seen some of his buddies from high school taken away to fight, never to return. Perhaps the loss ignited a fire in the then 22-year-old Tennessee native. "I saw a lot of friends go off to Vietnam," said Galloway, "and I did lose a couple of friends that went. They were a few years older than me and I think that increased the patriotism in me... so patriotism was calling me." As a new airman, Galloway started his active-duty career not far from where all airmen make the change from rainbow colored civilian to camouflaged airmen; he was assigned to medical administration at Wilford Hall Medical Center, Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. He served the medical corps for some 16 years before taking on the role of a first sergeant. He finds the role challenging. "It is not an easy job. It is a challenging job being able to keep people on an even keel, trying to keep discipline forthright in everybody's mind and letting everybody know what the mission is," said Galloway. "Of course, different squadrons pose different challenges." While Galloway said he expected to see little of the difficulty typically encountered by command chiefs while serving at ONW, he did offer advice for those newly under his watch. "You have to be respectful of neighbors," said Galloway of Hodja Village tent dwellers. "You have to be respectful of their privacy and off time. It is very close quarters here and privacy is hard to come by in a tent. We want people to recognize that. Also we want people to keep the noise levels down. If I had to put it in a simple sentence I'd say respect your neighbors." After 27 years in military service, Galloway says he has no immediate plans for after retirement, though he projects some sort of employment is in the future. "I'll work, I'm just not sure how hard," laughed Galloway. "I'll be looking for a no stress job." "When I finish the assignment in Germany I will be close to the 30 year mark and I will finish my career there," said Galloway. "I am going to retire in Spokane, Washington. My wife and I bought a house there a few years ago and we both like the area." While he does plan on retiring from the service, Galloway says recent events have done nothing but strengthen his purpose for being in the service in the first place. He was in Germany at the time the World Trade Centers were destroyed in New York. "To watch something like that on TV, just moments after it happened, it sends some different thoughts through your mind," said Galloway. "To see America attacked like that gives you a purpose. It makes you proud to be in uniform when something like that happens." He also says events may give reason to others to choose the military as he did. "There are probably more reasons to be in the military now then there have been in a couple of years," said Galloway. "The military is highly respected now. I think the people of the United States are looking to us now to be their protectors. I think there are lots of reasons to join the service today, but patriotism still tops my list though." Drunk Driving: No reason to be - SADD [2002-02-02] MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- Zero tolerance is the official policy on driving drunk at Misawa; there are no excuses accepted for those caught driving under the influence. And while this doesn’t mean those who enjoy having a drink should go without, it does mean they should do so responsibly. Fortunately, the base has a program in place, an extra line of defense, to make sure those who have had too much to drink do not choose to get behind the wheel. Services and SCREAM Against Drunk Driving, or SSADD, fills that role. The program is a joint effort between the 35th Services Squadron and the Singles Creating Real Events At Misawa organization. Airman 1st Class Lisa Stewart, president of SCREAM and originator of the program said SSADD provides rides home to members of the community so they don’t drink and drive. The SSADD program is a well-organized system where those who feel they would be driving if offered no alternative, can call for a lift in lieu of making the wrong choice, she said. The program runs weekend evenings to early mornings and employs two shifts of volunteers. The first shift runs from 11 p.m. through 2 a.m., the second shift runs 2 to 5 a.m. Each shift requires three volunteers, one as a dispatcher, one as a driver and one as a "wingman." Stewart explained, "The driver and the wingman go together in the van as a buddy system to pick up the passenger." Program coordinators also like to have a standby person for each shift in the event a scheduled volunteer is sick. Those needing a designated driver during the first shift contact the SSADD dispatcher at 222-9512. They catch a ride from either the club or the front gate, to their home. During the second shift, after 2 a.m., those needing a designated driver are sure to find the SSADD van at the front gate. ‘‘People know what the van looks like, said Stewart. "There is a SSADD logo and a 35th Services Squadron logo on the side of the van, and our people have green windbreakers to distinguish themselves as volunteers." Takers on the safe ride home would be mistaken to think they’re getting in the car with somebody that puts their noses up at drinkers and partiers. Program volunteers run the gamut of the Misawa community. "Everybody does the driving. There are officers and enlisted. And a lot of times, people don’t know who is driving so they don’t have to feel intimidated because and the driver is an officer," said Stewart. "We have had people volunteer that used the program before and then say ‘you have given me a ride home a few times and so I want to help out." Stewart also notes the anonymity of the program. "We don’t take names," she said, "And we want people to know that this is comfortable and safe." "Our goal is to get somebody home safe, not to ask questions," said Master Sgt. Steven Beckman, the SSADD program’s enlisted advisor. "This way if my little girl has been out babysitting, and she is on her way home, I know she is safe." While the SSADD program has provided immeasurable benefit to nearly 1,500 riders since it began in May 2001, the program provides benefits to program volunteers as well. "Volunteers receive a free meal for their work. They also are allowed free soft drinks, courtesy of the services squadron," said Stewart. "It’s just a couple hours for an enlisted performance report bullet, or really, just to feel good that you did something for the community." Benefits extend to more than individuals though; the program provides a way for other base organizations to compete in community based activities. As part of the program, base squadrons provide volunteers to the program. Squadrons with the most number of volunteer hours each month get to claim a traveling plaque for the month, highlights their squadron’s dedication to the SSADD program. "We had one commander who simply took out a bounty on that plaque," said Beckman. "He told his people he wanted that plaque in his orderly room. And they were going to get it. That is the epitome of team work." While SSADD isn’t willing to say for sure if they have actually saved any lives with their community efforts, they do believe they have made themselves an option in an important decision. "I am sure we ye helped people out in making the decision on whether they should drive" said Stewart, "maybe they’ll just catch a ride tonight instead of making that wrong decision, that bad decision they’ll regret for the rest of their career. Air Force Special Operations loadmasters laid to rest in Arlington [2002-07-12] WASHINGTON -- Two special operations loadmasters were laid to rest today at Arlington National Cemetery. Tech. Sgt. Sean M. Corlew, 37, of Thousand Oaks, Calf. and Staff Sgt. Anissa A. Shero, 31, of Grafton, W. Va., were both assigned to the 15th Special Operations Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Fla. The two were part of a 10 person crew aboard an Air Force MC-130H aircraft. The aircraft crashed June 12, 2002 during takeoff in the Paktika province of Afghanistan. Army Sgt. 1st Class Peter P. Tycz II, 32, of Tonawanda, N.Y., also died in the crash. Corlew participated in many operations, including Just Cause, Desert Shield, Desert Storm and Enduring Freedom. Since enlisting in the Air Force in 1985, he served at Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark., McChord AFB, Wash., and Kadena Air Base, Japan. While stationed in Japan, and while participating in a training exercise near Guam, Corlew participated in the rescue of a Micronesian family whose boat had been lost at sea. Corlew is the recipient of four Air Medals, two Aerial Achievement Medals and two Air Force Commendation Medals. He is survived by his wife Amy, son Preston, daughter Miranda, father Richard, mother Jackie, sister Jennifer, brother Scott, and sister Michele Fornairo. Shero participated in Operation X-MAS Wish through December 2001. The operation delivered some 5,735 pounds of goods to orphans in Honduras. Shero had over 2,300 flight hours with some 60 combat hours. She is the recipient of an Air Medal, an Air Force Commendation Medal and two Air Force Achievement Medals. She is survived by husband Nathan, stepdaughter Jessica, father James Shuttleworth, mother Mary Shuttleworth, brother James Shuttleworth, grandmother Mary Shuttleworth, and grandmother Edith Kenney. The two were buried with full military honors with family, friends and co-workers in attendance. “[They] were absolutely the best loadmasters and professional noncommissioned officers” said Lt. Col. Frank Fields, 15th SOS commander at an earlier memorial ceremony at Hurlburt Field. “Our heartfelt sympathies go out to their families. All Air Commandos are deeply saddened by their loss.” The cause of the crash is not known at this time, although officials say it does not appear to be the result of hostile fire. The incident is under investigation. Pioneering Tuskeegee Airman laid to rest in Arlington [2002-07-17] WASHINGTON -- Friends, family, military and retired military, gathered today to pay tribute to and to lay to rest an Air Force pioneer. Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Jr., the first African-American Air Force general officer, was remembered with a memorial service today at the Bolling Air Force Base Chapel here. After the ceremony, he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. Davis, 89, died July 4 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. As the memorial began, the Bolling chapel teemed with the red jackets worn by many former Tuskeegee Airmen. The Tuskeegee Airmen made up the segregated, all African-American Army-Air Corps fighter and bomber units that served flawlessly during World War II; Davis had been their commander. Dr. Alan Gropman, Chairman, Grand Strategy Department, National Defense University, delivered the eulogy to those gathered. “Gen. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. is an American hero,” said Gropman. “We call those who demonstrate physical courage heroes because they risk their lives for something bigger than themselves. “Gen. Davis risked his life for his nation, for his people and also for his country. He believed all his adult life in racial integration and thought he could bring this essential reform to America once World War II began. If he demonstrated blacks could fly and fight and lead with the same skill and courage as whites, a notion foreign to white America of 1941, he believed he could destroy the myth of racial inferiority. “The Tuskeegee Airman shared his vision and courage, and he and they succeeded.” Davis’ nephew, Judge L. Scott Melville, spoke on the attributes of respect, dignity and honor, and how Davis worked to earn them. “Black men, brown men, yellow men, red men and women of all colors could not acquire those attributes through birth, they had to earn them,” said Melville. “Ben understood these rules of the American politics, and he was determined to overcome them. Not by demonstrating, not by denouncing, not by complaining, not by whining, but by succeeding. He was determined to succeed. This is what motivated him. He tried to instill in each of his officers the need to show by example that they were just as good as anybody else, and maybe even better.” Following the memorial service, Davis’ body was taken to Arlington National Cemetery. As is military tradition for those who’ve achieved such rank as Davis, a horse pulled his casket on a carriage, called a caisson, to the gravesite. Former members of the Tuskeegee Airmen served as honorary pall bearers. During the Arlington service, the spit and polish Air Force honor guard rendered the traditional courtesies to the hero passed, a cannon salute, the lone bugler and the passing of the military burial flag to the next of kin. Davis’ memory was also honored with a heritage flyover, including a Tuskeegee Airman P-51, F-16s and F-15s. Military pilots followed off with execution of the missing man formation, traditionally reserved for military aviators killed in the line of duty. Davis is survived by his sister, Elnora D. McLendon, and by many nieces and nephews. SECAF, CSAF: Gender irrelevant to mission accomplishment [2002-07-22] WASHINGTON -- The importance of women in today’s Air Force is not lost on Air Force senior leadership. In fact, said the service’s chief of staff recently, women have played key roles in the Air Force’s performance over the past decade. “We've won three wars in the last 10 years,” said Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. John P. Jumper during an interview taped for the July 22 and Aug. 5 editions of Air Force Television News. “We had plenty of women not just flying the airplanes, but fixing the airplanes, guarding the gate and in all roles.” According to Air Force Personnel Center demographics, the population of women in the Air Force has increased from 33,000 in 1975 to more than 70,000. As a result, women now serve in nearly every Air Force career field, including such traditionally male-dominated career fields as aircraft maintenance. “I visited some [B-1 Lancers] overseas in the gulf,” said Secretary of the Air Force Dr. James G. Roche. “I remember a young mechanic…I said, ‘How about these engines?’ She said, ‘If you say anything bad about these engines, you deal with me.’ And I looked down at her with her three stripes, and I said, ‘Yes, ma'am!’ “Absolutely impressive.” The number of women in the cockpit has also increased. The 458 female pilots account for about 3.7 percent of the total pilots in the service. Less than 10 years ago, that figure was only 1.6 percent. Jumper, a command pilot with more than 4,000 flying hours, commented specifically on the role of the female pilots he has flown with, and the irrelevance of gender to the pilot career field. “I've flown against some of the [female] fighter pilots before, and they do a magnificent job,” he said. “If you want to fly an airplane, and that's your passion, it shouldn't matter what your gender is.” Roche agreed. “The intellectual content of what we do is so high that [gender] makes no difference,” the secretary said. “(We have) a force where there is room for people based on their merit.” SECAF, CSAF: Today’s young airmen flying high [2002-07-26] WASHINGTON -- Air Force senior leaders are confident in the ability of young airmen to fit in and perform in today’s Air Force, even if they look and dress differently than in years passed. While multicolored hair, unusual dress, tattoos or piercings may be off-putting to some, the Air Force’s two top leaders said in an interview taped for the Aug. 5 edition of Air Force Television News that they believe this new generation possesses the potential to become quality airmen. “I go to Lackland (Air Force Base, Texas) from time to time, and I look at these youngsters,” said Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. John P. Jumper. “You see the same scene almost every time: a newly admitted airman in his bright new blue uniform, standing in front of his mother saying, ‘Yes, Mom, it is me.’” “(Then) the dad (says), ‘It can't be you. You looked like a kid who fell down the stairs with his tackle box in his hand when I left you off, and now look at you. You're standing up tall and straight. You're saying ma'am and sir. You're respectful. Who is this? What have you done with my kid?’” Some of those tall-standing airmen faced some tough challenges growing up but have now found a home with the Air Force, Jumper said. “You go around and talk to these youngsters; many of them come from backgrounds that are not something I can identify with,” Jumper said. “When you ask them about themselves, they'll tell you, ‘Somebody took me by the earlobe and pushed me toward the Air Force, and it saved my life. I was on a slippery slope. I was in this terrible situation. I was going nowhere. I was ruined. I had no potential.’ “People will tell you, ‘This is the first time anybody's ever told me they're proud of what I did. My training instructor handed me a coin and called me an airman. I'm so proud of what I'm doing. For the first time my parents are proud of me,’” Jumper recalled. That diversity of background and circumstance of new, incoming airmen may very well be what makes the force so strong, said Secretary of the Air Force Dr. James G. Roche. “Our airmen look like America: a lot of young men, a lot of young girls, black Americans, Asian-Americans, all kinds of Americans. It's just terrific,” Roche said. “It makes you realize that if we draw on everybody in this country, the whole population, we are probably going to be unbeatable for a long, long time.” There should be no fear that today’s young people, whoever they may be or wherever they may have come from, are not going to be able to serve their Air Force as well as those that came before them, Jumper said. “I tell the older audiences I talk to, the World War II generation, (to) have faith,” Jumper said. “You think this is…the generation that was raised to not respect anything or to disrespect everything. But when you go out there and you expose them to a little pride, a little motivation, and some strong leadership, human nature takes over. Once you experience that pride you never turn back. “These are the kids we see out there when we travel, and I couldn't be more proud to be at the helm of this great Air Force.” General releases new reading list [2002-07-29] WASHINGTON -- The chief of staff of the Air Force recently released his list of suggested books for Air Force people. The latest Chief of Staff Reading List is a departure from past lists in that it is not broken up by rank. “It's appropriate for Air Force members of all grades to pursue it, as their time permits,” said Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. John P. Jumper. “Also, it is my conviction that it's useful for the generals to know what the young troops are reading and vice versa.” The books were chosen because of their relevance to current issues affecting the Air Force. “For the challenges the U.S. Air Force faces today, I have given priority to books regarding: the recent past as more lesson-filled than the distant past, the transformation challenges we have overcome and those that we still face, and a look to the future for clues to the asymmetrical vulnerabilities that await us,” Jumper said. The list, available online, currently includes about 14 titles. Book topics range from Osama BinLaden to the struggle between Pakistan and India. “It is my intention that the course content within our professional military education system will be based in appropriate measure on the materials these books address,” Jumper said. The new CSAF reading list is available at: http://www.af.mil/lib/csafbook/index.shtml. Readers will soon be able to find the books at their base libraries, and the books will also be made available through the Air Force’s institutional schools at Air University. SECAF, CSAF: People are Air Force’s most valued asset [2002-07-29] WASHINGTON -- As Air Force leaders continue to make transformation a top priority, they have not forgotten that the service’s most important asset is people. “Very few people, unless they run large organizations, realize the most expensive and valued resource you have is your people,” said Secretary of the Air Force Dr. James G. Roche in a recent interview taped with Air Force Television News. “In our business, if we lose a mechanic with 14 years experience in radar, we can't go and hire someone from another air force,” Roche said. “We have to grow another one. It's unbelievably expensive. “Each of these people are highly valued resources,” he said. “That's why we're adamant about how we house our personnel, our promotion system, and our education system.” What do Air Force people possess that make them so valuable in senior leaders’ eyes? According to Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. John P. Jumper, it is dedication to duty. “Nobody asked me any questions about Stop-Loss or, ‘Why am I here? When am I going home?’” Jumper said of those serving in Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. “I saw some magnificent airmen out there doing unbelievable things. “I recall a young (civil engineer) officer, commanding this unit building a giant ramp over there in the (Persian Gulf) region,” Jumper said. “It turns out he was National Guard. He worked for a highway department in one of our states. “There was no way we were going to pry that guy out of uniform until that job was done. And he didn't care how long it took; he was so proud he was going to stay there until it was finished. “I've been doing this for 36 years now,” Jumper said, “and every time I (visit with airmen in the field) I get surprised all over again at the level of commitment and dedication.” To view the current edition of AFTV News covering transformation and people, visit the AFTV News Web site. Respect, communication key in SECAF, CSAF relationship [2002-07-31] WASHINGTON -- When the two highest-ranking Air Force leaders took their posts last year, they found they had something in common: a great respect for the other’s professionalism and experience. Secretary of the Air Force Dr. James G. Roche and Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. John P. Jumper commented on their impressions of one another and their working relationship during a recent interview taped for Air Force Television News. “I'll tell you what's great for the United States Air Force: to have a secretary who, first of all, has commanded (in the Navy),” Jumper said. ”Then (Roche) goes out into the public sector, has experience on Capitol Hill, then goes out into big industry and has extensive experience in (the) defense industry. “So there's not much that he hasn’t experienced in the many things…that touch the way the Air Force operates on a day-to-day basis.” Roche said the general is one of the finest officers he has ever worked with. “I'm a retired naval officer, so military officers are not strange to me,” Roche said. “I think his professionalism, knowledge, operational experience, wit and his caring (are) terrific, and I find him to be a superlative partner. I'm delighted to have a chance to serve alongside of him.” Roche and Jumper both took their senior-level Air Force posts within a few months of each other. According to Jumper, this benefited their working relationship by allowing them to build a leadership foundation together. “We didn't come in (during) the middle of the other guy's agenda, so we were able to create our own agenda for the Air Force, our own vision,” Jumper said. “We're able to shape it. And now we're out there working on making it happen.” “(That means) we both have an opportunity to do what we can to bring our talents to bear to this Air Force,” Roche said. “It makes our job easier, it makes life easier, and it's the way to do business.” Open communication between the two leaders, and an expectation of open communication from subordinates, bolsters the relationship between the two, and that is a benefit to the decision-making process and to the Air Force as a whole, Roche said. “We believe that good ideas come from all kinds of places,” Roche said. “We're trying to create an environment where we have the right kind of challenge prior to a decision being made, and then a cheery ’yes, sir’ once the decision is made. We do it with each other, we do it with our colleagues close to us here, and we expect the whole Air Force to be that way.” “Exactly right,” Jumper said. “We have what we call ‘briefing room rules.’ In the flying business, the briefing room is the place where you critique with some vigor each other's performance in a very honest and open way. When you walk out of the briefing room, everybody's friends again, but when you're in there you're pretty honest about what needs to be said.” “We're close enough that we can have meaningful dialogue,” Roche added. The segment about their leadership positions will appear in the Aug. 5 edition of AFTV News. New lodging program helps guarantee rooms [2002-08-02] WASHINGTON -- Military travelers will soon be required to consider government-contracted hotels before others when traveling inside the continental United States. The new requirement, set to begin about Nov. 1, is part of the Federal Premier Lodging Program, run by the General Services Administration. The FPLP benefits travelers by contracting with hotels in key cities where federal employees do business to guarantee a specific number of available rooms at a specific price. "The federal travel regulation will require you look at FPLP properties first," said Patrick McConnell, program manager for the FPLP. "Under the per diem process, you were not guaranteed a room. What FPLP does is get properties to guarantee rooms, especially where we compete with corporate and leisure travel." Hotels wanting an FPLP contract are required to meet certain safety and accessibility requirements, as well as have a restaurant nearby. If a traveler feels the establishment does not meet his or her mission requirements, finds that the FPLP hotel is full, or finds a less-expensive place to stay, he or she may book reservations elsewhere, McConnell said. "[This is the] best way to meet laws requiring federal employees to stay in motels and hotels that meet the Federal Emergency Management Agency's fire and safety requirements," McConnell said. When all contracts with lodging facilities have been finalized, the program will be in about 75 cities. The FPLP Web site lists lodging facilities currently contracted with the FPLP. Changes made to officer promotion system [2002-08-06] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force has made changes to officer promotion opportunities for upcoming boards and to the data presented on the selection brief available to board members. During the Oct. 3 promotion boards, those looking for promotion to O-4 will find the promotion opportunities, or the maximum number of individuals each board may select to be promoted, higher than in the past. The promotion board for O-4 can now promote the number of officers equal to 95 percent of the number in the promotion zone for line officers, lawyers and medical service corps officers. That number is up from 90 percent during the last board. Additionally, promotion opportunities for some competitive categories during the upcoming O-5 board will also increase. According to Maj. Sandra Edens of the Air Force office of officer promotions at the Pentagon, the increase in promotion opportunity allows the Air Force to adjust long-term force strength and to come closer to meeting its goals for those in field grade officer positions. Along with the changes for O-4 promotion boards, officer selection briefs used in all boards meeting as early as August will no longer contain references to race, ethnicity or gender, as directed by Secretary of the Air Force Dr. James G. Roche in the recently approved Memorandum of Instruction for officer selection boards. "Removal of race, ethnicity and gender information from the officer selection brief more accurately reflects the Air Force's officer promotion board process, to be fair and equitable to all individuals meeting the board, " said Maj. Isaac Davidson of the Air Force office of officer promotion, evaluation and separation policy. Identity theft criminals can steal lives [2002-08-13] WASHINGTON -- Air Force members need to be cautious with personal information, said agents from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations headquarters at Andrews Air Force Base, Md. Information, including Social Security number, bank account and credit card numbers, account passwords, telephone numbers and addresses, are collected by some criminals to commit fraud. Of primary concern to the AFOSI is identity theft, a crime in which a criminal gathers personal information about a person, through theft or by the victim volunteering such information. The criminal then uses that information to apply for loans or credit cards, or uses the victim's credit card numbers to make unauthorized purchases. When a person's identity is stolen, the damage done to credit and financial histories can be immeasurable and extremely difficult to repair, especially when dealing with creditors who want the person to pay for things he or she may never have bought. "You have to be very quick to remedy the situation once you realize your identity has been stolen," said AFOSI Special Agent Tom Mulconry. "They become you. Anything they do reflects on your credit. They can charge up all kinds of bills, and they don't have to pay, but you do. You say (to creditors), 'I didn't make those charges,' but they show you, 'It says Joe Blow here. Aren't you Joe Blow? If that's your (Social Security number), and that's your address, then it's you.'" Criminals committing identity theft both lie and steal to get information. In a recent scam, perpetrators faxed or e-mailed phony Internal Revenue Service forms to potential victims asking for personal data. According to an IRS press release, one such phony form is labeled "W-9095, Application Form for Certificate Status/Ownership for Withholding Tax." The form requests personal data frequently used to prove identity, including passport number and mother's maiden name. It also asks for sensitive financial data such as bank account numbers, passwords and personal identification numbers that can be used to gain access to the accounts. "Whatever the ploy is, their ultimate goal is to solicit that type of information from you," said Special Agent Rob Shilaikis. While it is true a person can become a victim of identity theft through his or her own carelessness, Air Force people can become victims through other people's carelessness as well. "What makes Air Force members sometimes more susceptible is that sometimes duty rosters or alpha rosters can be mishandled, or taken for private use, and can be sold to people who want to propagate these types of crimes," said Special Agent Kevin Chen. "Lots of times all the information you need to steal somebody's identity can be found on an alpha roster or a recall roster." The AFOSI uses education as a preventative measure to help keep Air Force members from falling victim to identity theft. "What we try to do is to put this information out there," Shilaikis said. "If somebody is trying to solicit your (Social Security) or bank account numbers, or any personal information, don't give it to them. You have to verify who these people are that are contacting you." Additionally, information security is important to protecting one's own identity and the identities of others, Mulconry said. A misplaced alpha roster at work, or failure to shred important paperwork before throwing it in the trash, may cause real trouble, he said. "Get a home shredder, they are inexpensive," Mulconry said. "Shred anything that has a Social Security or bank number on it." Air Force saving money on software upgrades [2002-08-23] WASHINGTON -- Quick thinking on the part of Air Force communications officials will save the service more than $9 million and provide a number of organizations with upgraded computer-server maintenance software as well. A joint initiative by the Air Force's commercial information technology product area directorate at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base, Ala., and the Air Force directorate of communications operations calls for purchasing Microsoft Upgrade Advantage in bulk numbers. This action is being praised in Pentagon circles a win-win situation for everyone involved. Among the organizations that will benefit directly from the idea are Air Force Space Command, Air Combat Command, Pacific Air Forces and Air Force Materiel Command. By purchasing Upgrade Advantage, Air Force organizations already running older server software can get the latest version for far less than if they bought it off the shelf. Microsoft imposed a July 31 deadline earlier in the year as part of a change to its software maintenance agreement. After that date, organizations with an older version of the software would have had to re-buy their license before they could purchase software maintenance, as well as miss out on the discount through the corporation. Officials met the deadline. But according to Sandra Emrich of the directorate of communications, this initiative is not just about beating a deadline. It is about cooperation and the pooling of funds from Air Force major commands. "We were able to get the MAJCOMs to come together and cooperate," Emrich said. "Some of the MAJCOMs had a lot of money, and when that money is brought together, you can leverage the price down for everyone." Most MAJCOMs purchase software independently of each other, according to Emrich. However, this time they came together to make a large-scale purchase, essentially working as an Air Force enterprise, like a large corporation. Businesses like Microsoft often offer discounts and benefits to large corporations. "MAJCOMs need to put on their Air Force hat and see how much they can benefit by helping each other," she said. "If we do (software purchases) at Air Force level, we make it easy for them to reap the benefit of working together for the Air Force as a whole." Other organizations that participated in the buy were the Air Force Personnel Center at Randolph AFB, Texas; the Air Force Weather Agency at Offutt AFB, Neb.; the Standard Systems Group at Maxwell AFB; and the 75th Communications Squadron at Hill AFB, Utah. Task force records Air Force's successes, mistakes in OEF [2002-08-29] WASHINGTON -- Task force records Air Force's successes, mistakes in OEFEven before the first bombs dropped in Afghanistan, the Air Force had an operation in place to ensure the lessons learned there would remain long after the war on terrorism had ended. Task Force Enduring Look was conceived less than two weeks after the destruction of the World Trade Center towers. Directed by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper, the task force's mission is to document the Air Force's efforts in the war on terrorism -- including both the successes and the mistakes -- and to ensure those lessons are available for generations to come. The task force, said its director, has a three-fold purpose. "First and foremost," said Col. Fred Wieners, "is to support the warfighter. That's everybody from that young airman to the four-star combatant commander. We also want to tell the Air Force story; and, we also need to properly recognize those lessons that we need to learn." The task force collects its data from many sources, including some 500 secure military Internet sites, other branches of the military, and points of contact at the different Air Force major commands, Wieners said. Enduring Look officials collect briefings, operations orders, deployment orders, and anything that can be put online. The most important source of information, however, can't be shipped over wire or satellite. The airmen at the tip of the spear -- on the ground in Afghanistan -- should be directly consulted, said Wieners. "We feel these reports have to be written by airmen, for airmen, so we take trips into Afghanistan, and we talk to everyone there, from the senior-ranking Air Force commander to the men and women on the flightline, in services, or in security forces," he said. "You will find the real truth and the real lessons the closer to the tip of the spear that you go. We ask them 'What worked?' 'What didn't?' And 'If you could recommend one thing to the chief of staff of the United States Air Force, what would that be?'" The task force intends to do in real time what similar task forces from other wars and military operations have done in months, and sometimes years, after the end of the conflict, Wieners said. Besides the chronological, day-to-day reports of what is happening with the war effort, they produce reports containing information useful to commanders in the field today. Report topics include austere basing, global mobility, special operations forces, the collapse of the Taliban, and the air and space expeditionary force, specifically addressing what works and what does not. One valuable lesson success story in Afghanistan was the ability of the Air Force to provide base operations support facilities early on. "There is a tendency to want to put iron down first -- those weapons we can use to do harm to the enemy," Wieners said. "But it is important to find that right balance to ensure your people can survive, so that they can operate. It is a difficult challenge, especially at austere basing, as we saw in Central Asia. "We accepted tremendous risks when this nation was attacked, and that was one of them. But this shows the mettle of our people. They adapted to the situation." Wieners said the real success stories during Operation Enduring Freedom are all about versatility and flexibility. "The real story and success to Enduring Freedom comes from having that versatile, flexible and expeditionary force that can rapidly deploy and seize the initiative," he said. "The folks at the tip of the spear would not be there, and we could not sustain them without the efforts of all the E-2s through E-5s in our Air Force who got the job done." From the aerial port specialists to the security forces people to the civil engineers, Enduring Look will reflect that the support has been outstanding, Wieners said. Whenever a key question has come up, there have been airmen waiting with an answer. "Who is setting up the tent city, or providing the water and the sanitation so that we can operate?" Wieners asked. "Who is doing the runway repair? At one base, a Red Horse team put down enough gravel for a ramp, enough material that you could build a road from the Pentagon to Langley Air Force Base, Va. These are awesome accomplishments. What other country could go halfway around the world and do that?" The records will reflect, he said, that the accomplishments are a direct result of the caliber of people on the job. "The ingenuity and flexibility, not to mention the brute-force level of effort, is always the war-winning quality our people bring to the fight," Wieners said. New guidelines for augmentee program allow flexibility [2002-09-06] WASHINGTON -- Air Force commanders now have more flexibility in running base augmentee programs as a result of recent changes by personnel officials at the Pentagon. The Resource Augmentation Duty, or READY, program was replaced Aug. 1 with a voluntary set of guidelines, a move meant to help commanders develop their own version, said Bill Ray of the office of readiness and joint matters in the Air Force directorate of personnel. "Each installation is different in its structure and physical layout," he said. "One augmentee program [designed] to fit all produced many inefficiencies. This change allows commanders to set up a program that runs effectively for their organization." Formerly a mandatory program, READY gave commanders a means to identify, train and track personnel to meet short-term augmentee needs for installation-level exercises, contingencies, wartime, and emergency situations. The new guidelines contained in Air Force Pamphlet 10-243, which replaces Air Force Instruction 10-217, are based on experience with the former READY program, Ray said. "We did not want to lose the knowledge we gained through the READY program," Ray said. "Lessons learned from the READY program are captured in AFPAM 10-243 and are available for commanders to use at their discretion." The elimination of the former program is not likely to affect the number of bases that continue to use augmentees, he said, adding that many airmen will notice no change at all. "Most commanders realize they need an augmentation program," Ray said. "Rescinding [the READY program] does not negate that need. It simply eliminates the required standardized structure throughout the Air Force." Crisis teams still helping Pentagon people [2002-09-13] WASHINGTON -- One year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, teams of military mental health professionals continue to help Pentagon personnel remain ready for duty. Following the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon, the military mental health professionals at the Pentagon's DiLorenzo TRICARE Health Clinic formed crisis intervention stress management teams to help employees deal with stress related to the attack, said Capt. Bernetta Lane, a registered nurse with the clinic. "The CISM teams provided as much assistance as possible to those who experienced the crisis," Lane said. "The teams stood up immediately after Sept. 11 and provided around-the-clock intervention and stress-management counseling." The teams offered a wide variety of services, according to Army Lt. Col. Dermot Cotter, a psychiatrist with the Pentagon's Fit-to-Win Wellness Clinic. "We looked after the bereaved, offered group and family intervention, fostered social support, and provided education on stress responses, traumatic reminders, coping and risk factors," Cotter said. "We also offered coping-skills training and fostered social interaction to try to get them to talk about the situation with others." The teams, made up of military social workers, nurses, psychiatrists and counselors, worked toward the goal of contacting everybody affected by the attack, said Lt. Col. Steven Vieira, director of the wellness clinic. "We were able to make 100-percent contact," Vieira said. "We let everybody affected know about the services we offer." Lane said it was a multifaceted effort to publicize the service. "We advertised through fliers and posters, and even through the law enforcement of the Pentagon," she said. "We told them because they are the first ones to see people as they come in to the building. If somebody had a question, they could point them in the right direction." Besides marketing, the team also met face-to-face with those who may have needed help but did not know where to look. "We worked with a lot of groups. We were invited to a lot of office meetings where we would provide information and tell them about the services we provide," Cotter said. "This was an outreach thing, so in addition to the walk-in clinic, we went around the Pentagon and to outside offices where people had been displaced." The immediacy that spurred the creation of the CISM teams last year has largely subsided, but the teams continue to work because longer work hours and increased ops tempo spurred by the terrorist attacks continue. And there are other, more surprising sources of stress, Vieira said. "(People) get stress from spouses, kids, bills and from balancing civilian life with military life," Vieira said. "When you go to war, a lot of that is taken care of, but here, you must balance a war-like ops tempo with what's going on at home." Fortunately, Vieira said, it is a situation that most commanders are ready for. "I believe the commanders are aware of this, and I think because of that, they have been judicious when an individual's plate is full and he needs time off," Vieira said. "When do you think your people have had too much? How do you rotate your crews? All these things are 'stressors.' If you max your people out for too long, they will break. This is the kind of education we provide to commanders." Cotter said that while the CISM teams' assistance helped military members deal with the stress generated by the Sept. 11 attack, some of the credit belongs to the military members themselves. "The resilience of the people here was enhanced by their generally high degree of motivation and their intelligence," Cotter said. "They are mentally healthy to begin with, so getting back to normal has simply been a matter of education about stress, with a little counseling added in for good measure." Customs agents looking closely at military mail [2002-09-20] WASHINGTON -- Nearly all of the military mail arriving from overseas is now being checked by U.S. Customs agents because of recent increases in contraband. The Air Force's chief of postal policy said all packages coming from overseas locations are subject to inspections by customs agents, but recent discoveries have necessitated a closer look. "U.S. Customs in Chicago started identifying nonmailable items coming through the mail from overseas post offices," Bob Eichholz said. "The more they found, the more they started keying in on Army and Air Force post offices in the contingency areas." According to Eichholz, customs agents have found items that violate customs laws, postal regulations and military regulations. "They have been finding things like rifles, bayonets and shell casings with the primer still in, which is still an explosive, even though it is small," Eichholz said. "Some of the other stuff they found could be in violation of standing orders at the originating locations, such as war trophies and souvenirs." Continued use of the military postal service to transport dangerous or illegal items into the United States will result in an inconvenience for all that use the system, he said. "We prefer to move mail along (by) the quickest means possible, but it could slow the mail down if misuse of the system got extreme," he said. "You could end up with further restrictions on mail -- sizewise or content." The military uses a system of both military and commercial airlines to carry military mail back into the United States, he said, adding that commercial carriers are not willing to carry dangerous items. "Commercial airlines have a requirement to provide safe flights to their passengers," he said. "So we have to police ourselves, to make sure our customers don't mail things that they aren't supposed to (mail). We don't want the Federal Aviation Administration or commercial carriers to start putting restrictions on our mail." Eichholz said part of the problem may be that military members are not aware of the rules. "When guys go out in support of the (air and space expeditionary force), they might not get much of a postal briefing until they get there," he said. "Then it depends on how in-depth it is. What we are trying to do is let people know at the major command level to let their people know before they go on deployment to check the postal bulletins and find out the 'dos and don'ts of the mail system." Additionally, Eichholz said, knowing what paperwork to use can be key to ensuring items make it to their destination. "I guess there is a market for antique weapons over there," Eichholz said. "Some of this stuff is mailable, but you have to have the right forms through the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Customs finds a lot of stuff that could be mailable, but it isn't accompanied by the right documents." Maintenance group focusing on core competencies [2002-09-26] WASHINGTON -- Wings around the Air Force are creating maintenance groups as part of a move toward the new combat wing organization structure. The changes are in accordance with a recent directive by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper that maintenance groups be stood up and have attained initial operational capability by Oct. 1. The new maintenance groups will replace existing logistics groups and will concentrate on performing core maintenance tasks: fixing aircraft and generating sorties, said the chief of Air Force base-level maintenance policy. "One of the reasons for the change to the new combat wing organization was to focus each of the groups in the wing on their core capability," said Maj. A. Neal Robinson. "We didn't want the operations group commander to worry about both flying and fixing aircraft or have the logistics group commander worry about just one part of maintenance. The purpose of the maintenance group is to focus on maintaining aircraft and balancing sortie production with the long-term health of aging fleets." The maintenance group structure will meet three objectives associated with the new combat wing organization, Robinson said. "We hope to bring all of maintenance under one career maintenance professional, to allow the maintenance group to focus on its core competency, maintaining aircraft and generating sorties, and to better support the expeditionary air and space concept," he said. One benefit of moving all maintainers under one maintenance professional is enhanced mentorship, Robinson said. "Bringing maintenance under a maintenance professional has benefits in terms of how you control maintenance and in setting priorities, but it also facilitates mentoring for both officers and enlisted members," Robinson said. "You will have a colonel who has grown up in the maintenance world, and he or she will be able to teach the nuances of maintenance to new officers. Also, maintenance officers can expect a clear career progression within one group. In terms of enlisted folks, the same parallel exists," he said. According to Robinson, the creation of maintenance groups has involved organizational and administrative changes. Two such adjustments are that the logistics support squadron will be renamed the maintenance operations squadron, and that flightline aircraft maintainers and their associated support personnel currently assigned to flying squadrons will be reassigned to the newly created aircraft maintenance squadrons. Maintenance specialists currently assigned to either component or equipment maintenance squadrons will remain in those squadrons if the total number of specialists exceeds 700. For wings with less than 700 off-aircraft maintenance personnel, a single maintenance squadron will be formed. One issue addressed during the planning of the restructuring was the relationship between aircraft operators and the maintenance personnel who work within their flying squadrons, Robinson said. "We knew early on that the connection between operations and maintenance must remain strong," he said. "One of the concerns we had was that if you segregate the groups, you may lose the teamwork and synergy that's created between those organizations. But over the past few months, there was a concerted effort to keep them teamed. Operators and maintainers will train and fight together." According to Robinson, on-aircraft maintenance personnel will be assigned to aircraft maintenance units within the new aircraft maintenance squadron. Each AMU will be aligned with a flying squadron and will carry that squadron's colors and number designator. "Your AMU will be assigned to the AMXS, but you will directly team with the fighter squadron," Robinson said. "If your AMU supports the 27th Fighter Squadron, your AMU will be designated the 27th AMU. That's one way to keep them connected." New logistics squadron serves as focal point for distribution [2002-09-26] WASHINGTON -- Supply, transportation and logistics planning airmen will not only be sharing break rooms, orderly rooms and conference rooms soon. They will be sharing their squadron commander as well. Two of the larger squadrons on Air Force bases, supply and transportation, and an additional unit pulled from the logistics support squadron, the logistics plans flight, will retire. The people assigned to those units will provide the foundation for the new logistics readiness squadron. Most Air Force bases are expected to have stood up the new squadron by Oct. 1. The change comes as a result of the Chief of Staff of the Air Force Logistics Review, which began in the fall of 1999. The lead action officer for the creation and implementation of the new squadron said the goal was to find a single point of contact for expeditionary logistics and combat readiness capability. Early CLR initiatives, said Lt. Col. Linda Dahl, focused on separate logistics support processes. "We started out with the goal of creating a single distribution authority, a single point of contact for distribution at the wing," she said. "The concept was for the wing commander to be able to point to somebody and say, 'What's up?' And that somebody would know what the order status was, what the movement status was, and what the warehousing status was." The new squadron meets that objective and then some, she said. As the single installation readiness authority, the LRS will be divided into six functional flights: distribution, readiness, management and systems, traffic management, vehicle management, and fuels. The LRS Action Team developed the new flights by looking at core processes performed by those working within the old organizations. "First we identified all the transportation, supply and logistics plans core processes and aligned like processes into groupings," the colonel said. "Those groupings became flights." Each new flight draws on the skills of airmen and officers from one or more of the old organizations. Integration is the key, Dahl said, allowing the new organization to provide core competencies critical to the air and space expeditionary force construct. The LRS will fully integrate planning and control for contingencies, distribution and materiel management. The result, she said, will be a wing able to respond to AEF taskings without missing a step in deploying themselves and creating an operating location at the other end. Dahl said the goal was to eliminate redundant processes. Each of the three organizations had their own unique cultures, identities and ways of doing things, and the Air Force kept only the best processes and methods. "Transportation typically had a base training manager, but supply used a person who would be pulled out of (his or her Air Force specialty code) work to handle training for the squadron," she said. "By putting the two squadrons together, supply benefits by having the resource of that training manager." Those in transportation benefit from the merger as well. "Supply had a very mature funds management program, because they had the stock control, and they had their (operations and maintenance). They had manpower allotted to do that," Dahl said. "In the transportation world, budget management and resource management was an additional duty. By combining the capabilities from both areas, we have manpower to do those jobs." The effectiveness of the LRS structure has already withstood real-world strain. In fact, it has already received accolades from commanders whose bases were LRS test sites. Six bases -- Langley Air Force Base, Va.; Ellsworth AFB, S.D.; Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany; Kadena AB, Japan; Little Rock AFB, Ark.; McGuire AFB, N.J.; and Fairchild AFB, Wash. -- stood up test squadrons on Sept. 1, 2001. "In the first monthly reports that came in, wing commanders heralded the readiness flight," Dahl said. "They said, 'What a change this has made.' The planners and executors were working together creating a truly strong team that got the mission done." Transition to the new LRS structure will pose some short-term challenges such as orderly room restructuring and the relocation of some personnel, as well as cosmetic changes like new squadron patches, hats, and building signs. But the short-term difficulties will be worth the payoff in the end, Dahl said. "You know, change is always hard," she said. "Once all this settles down, you are going to see the efficiencies of a single point of contact for senior leadership for all activities associated with materiel management, distribution and deployment. That is our goal." Veterans giving free phone cards to airmen [2002-09-27] WASHINGTON -- Servicemembers who have served overseas in the past are once again giving assistance to those currently serving overseas. The Veterans of Foreign Wars Foundation, through the Air Force Aid Society, is providing phone cards and other items to overseas Air Force members and to their families at home. This is the fourth consecutive year the VFW Foundation has conducted the program, called "Operation Uplink." The cards will also be given to members of the other military branches and their families. The administrator of corporate and foundation development for the VFW Foundation said the program provides a growing and viable service to those who need it the most. "Operation Uplink has provided more than a million cards over three years to the military," Mike Meyer said. "This holiday season, Operation Uplink will join with Wal-Mart's Good Works Program, Hallmark and Federal Express to deliver one of these cards to every active-duty military person stationed overseas." The phone cards should be available in family support centers and from personnel support for contingency operations, or PERSCO, teams in time for the holiday season, he said. The cards will be made available overseas through an agreement with Federal Express. Besides phone cards, the VFW Foundation provides other items distributed to the military members and their families, such as cookies, playing cards, puzzles, books on tape, writing kits, bulletin boards, birthday candles and toys. The ability and willingness of the VFW to support today's military people was not lost on retired Lt. Gen. Mike McGinty, chief executive officer of AFAS, which serves as a gateway to the Air Force for organizations wanting to provide assistance. "They have access to a lot of -- I call them 'goodies' -- items that companies have taken off the market or have an excess of," McGinty said. "VFW has offered to ship those goodies to us so we can share them with the troops and their families." The primary reason the VFW provides this type of support to the armed forces, Meyer said, is because they understand the needs of military members serving overseas. "We are also cognizant of the needs of their families when those veterans are gone and they are serving," Meyer said. It all comes down to assuring the military member that his or her family is taken care of back home, so that he or she can concentrate on the mission, he said. "We feel that if a veteran's family is 100 percent taken care of, they can support their family member who is overseas," Meyer said. "As a result, the servicemember will know his family is taken care of, and he will feel better about serving his country." Guard, Reserve forces cope with active-duty extension [2002-10-02] WASHINGTON -- For Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard troops, the jab "weekend warrior" lost relevance long ago. As many as 14,000 such troops, more than 60 percent of them in the security forces career field, have been on active duty for more than a year now as a result of the war on terrorism. Recently, Reserve and Guard troops learned they would remain on active duty for another year. Staff Sgt. Jeffrey Lee, a security forces specialist with the ANG's 177th Security Forces Squadron in Atlantic City, N.J., was called to active duty the same evening the World Trade Center towers came down in New York City. "I graduated (from) the police academy just last summer," said Lee, who had just started his civilian career as a police officer with the Margate, N.J., police department. "I spent three months on the street and then Sept. 11 came. I was activated that night." With one year of active-duty service already under his belt, more time than he has spent in his civilian career, news of the one-year extension to his tour did not surprise him. "Throughout the year they said there was a good possibility we are going to be out here for a second year, but I was not disappointed," Lee said. "I want to be released from active duty, but I knew when I enlisted that if the country needed me in a time of war, I would be called up for however long they needed." The requirement to get back to the civilian sector is offset by strong, positive feelings about what he is doing while on active duty, Lee said. "This is my contribution to the war on terrorism," Lee said. "I'm helping keep this base, the state of New Jersey and the country safe. We go out and we're guarding these aircraft and making sure they can take off when they are needed." Still, he said, there is the call to get back to his civilian job. "This is my job as a member of the U.S. Air Force," Lee said. "But I have a strong desire to get back to the police department, because I am so new on the job." Others in Lee's unit feel the same way when considering what they left behind as part of their civilian career. "Well you can't help but feel guilty that somebody else is back in your job pulling your weight," said Master Sgt. Michael Francis, noncommissioned officer in charge of anti-terrorism and investigation for the 177th SFS. "But the overall responsibility we have trained for is needed here, and that's paramount." Francis is also with the Margate Police Department. While he has been on active duty, he has used his position as a senior NCO and leader to help younger Guard troops deal with the pressure of being on active duty for so long. "You try to be a sounding board and listen to their problems," said Francis. "I allow them to voice their emotions, and I also share with them my experience as a young patrolman, and how my career is on hold now, like theirs is." While Lee and Francis admit there is a strong desire to finish up with their duty to the Air Force and go back to work as police officers in the civilian sector, they understand their civilian jobs will be there for them when they get back. "(I know) my civilian employers back me up." Lee said. "It makes me feel a lot better knowing that if I'm out here for two years, I'll have a job when I get back. My job as a police officer is still going to be there." Air Force pilots participate in historic flight [2002-10-08] NAGS HEAD, N.C. -- Two Air Force pilots, some spruce wood, a little cotton fabric and a lot of wind are helping re-create history. Maj. Dawn Dunlop and Capt. Jim Alexander were given the opportunity to fly a replica of the Wright brothers' 1902 glider here Oct. 4 to 8. Dunlop is an F-15 Eagle pilot currently assigned to the Pentagon, and Alexander is an MC-130P Combat Shadow pilot with the 9th Special Operations Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Fla. The glider, an exact replica of Orville and Wilbur Wright's original craft, was built by the Wright Brothers Aeroplane Company, a nonprofit organization based in West Milton, Ohio. The organization is made up of aviators, historians and educators. The exhibition at Jockey's Ridge State Park, about five miles south of Kitty Hawk, was designed to accomplish several objectives, said Louis Chmiel, one of the chief builders of the plane. "The intent is to draw attention to important things that happened before December of 1903 and (to the fact that) this is the culmination of the years (the Wright brothers) spent working to understand flight control," Chmiel said. "When they left here in 1902 and went back to Dayton, they knew they understood control, and the next thing they were doing was to motorize it." Since 1999, the organization has built and flown several replicas of the Wright brothers' aircraft. The group uses the same materials the brothers used to build their gliders: spruce and ash wood, tightly woven cotton fabric and a lot of handcrafted hardware. The director of the company said the main reason for the project is a deep passion for flying. "The simplest reason (I do this) is that I love to fly and I love to teach," said Nick Engler. "The Wright Brothers Aeroplane Company is an educational institution. We are here to tell the Wright story. That is the best way to create 'seed corn' for aviation (and) to get kids interested." The 36-foot-long glider has no cockpit. The pilot lies down on a cross bar, exposed to the elements, and uses body movement to control the craft. The 1902 model is significant, Engler said, because it is the first aircraft to provide three axes of control - roll, pitch and yaw -- to the pilot. The pilot can control roll, tipping the wings; pitch, raising and lowering the nose; and yaw, rotating the aircraft as though it were turning left or right while still on the ground. "This was the world's first controllable airplane," Engler said. "Everything that has flown successfully since 1902 has had roll, pitch and yaw control. This was the first machine ever to have that." The Wright brothers' contribution to aviation and the historical significance of the re-enactment of the 1902 flight was not lost on the two Air Force pilots that participated. "When you fly out on (temporary duty), that view you see from the airplane, you take that for granted now," Dunlop said. "But the Wright brothers made that possible. They gave that to us. The military, and the Air Force, saw the value of aviation. We learned to exploit that value." Alexander agreed, noting the quick evolution of airpower over the years. "In 1909 the Wright brothers made the first military flyer that was sold to the Army Signal Corps," he said. "And you can see that we have gone from the 1909 Wright Flyer to the F-22 (Raptor) in less than 100 years. That's pretty amazing." Despite some early reservations about flying the replica, the experience turned out to be a positive one for Alexander. "I had visions of face planting (crashing) initially, but it was also a great thrill," he said. "I couldn't believe I was actually flying it. Once the air started moving over the wings, I could tell I had (control of the glider). There was this cool feeling, the same one I get when I lift off in a C-130." The flights in the glider were considerably shorter - both in terms of time and distance - than those in the MC-130s Alexander normally flies. "My longest flight was about 210 feet, about 400 feet short of the Wright brothers' flight in this glider. I think the highest I got was about 15 feet," Alexander said. "The sensation is pretty short lived because the flights are so short. You get the time to make one control input and see the aircraft react to it, and then you are pretty much transitioning to a landing phase." In December, the Air Force and the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission will begin a yearlong celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers' first powered flight on Dec. 17, 1903. Cyber warriors protect Air Force computer network [2002-10-10] WASHINGTON -- Air Force computer systems around the globe are kept safe from viruses and unauthorized users by a dedicated group of computer network defenders. Because the Air Force computer network is a weapons system and is under constant attack by viruses and illegal entry attempts by adversaries, defending that weapons system has become an ongoing war, said the director of operations for the 33rd Information Operations Squadron, home of the Air Force Computer Emergency Response Team at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. "We believe we are on the front lines of the cyber war every day," said Lt. Col. Rob Kaufman. "Our crews are well-trained, motivated and committed to stopping network intrusions and viruses." AFCERT has strong allies in its fight to protect the global Air Force computer network, he said. "In this fight, we are not alone," Kaufman said. "Fellow computer network defenders at major command network operations and security centers and base-level network control centers are in the fight with us. Together we are able to fight off malicious hackers that range from the nuisance 'script kiddies' to the professional hackers." Kaufman and other cyber warriors use an arsenal of software and hardware to defend the Air Force computer network. "We have a sensor out there at every single one of our bases and even some non-Air Force bases," Kaufman said. "That is our primary defensive mechanism." Computer experts at Lackland's Air Force Information Warfare Center developed the current sensor platform, which has been acknowledged as a "one-of-a-kind" capability second to none. The sensors scan network traffic for virus signatures -- telltale strings of ones and zeros that indicate the presence of malicious logic. When they find such a string, AFCERT moves quickly to let everybody know about it. "What we will do is put out advisories to the field so they will understand what an exploit or vulnerability can do to a computer and what mitigating steps they can take to protect themselves," Kaufman said. "If the threat is very bad and we think it is a system-wide type of threat, we will release a time compliance network order, which directs field units on what steps to take to protect themselves." AFCERT monitors the network traffic for some 500,000 Air Force computers, he said. Those machines generate around 10 billion network events each year, including e-mail messages, Web page views, telnet sessions and other network traffic. That opportunity allows AFCERT to be the first to come in contact with a lot of potential viruses. "We can actually get viruses 'in the wild,' tear them down and see what they do," Kaufman said. "We reverse engineer the viruses and, based on what we see in those viruses, we are able to build alert strings for our sensor so we can get an indication or warning when a new virus comes out. It also allows us to develop countermeasures for those viruses." In addition, countermeasure engineers at the Air Force Information Warfare Center help develop more robust and long-term solutions against the emerging threats, he said. Those countermeasures and alert strings are not just sent to local bases. Sometimes they are sent to commercial anti-virus software developers so they can be added to the global database of computer viruses. In this way, Kaufman said, results of AFCERT's work reach beyond the Air Force. "There is a community of interest out there that will feed information to commercial vendors, and we have specifically fed them information that they have not seen elsewhere," he said. "We have identified technical threats and have passed them off to commercial vendors so they can protect the nation." Although more than 100 individuals at AFCERT work in conjunction with major command NOSCs, base-level NCC personnel, the Air Force Information Warfare Center, and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations to secure Air Force computer systems worldwide, Kaufman said the computer user is still the key to network defense. "Air Force computer users can help by using strong passwords and by ensuring their anti-virus software is current on both their work machines and home machines," Kaufman said. "They should only open attachments they are expecting and ensure new systems are properly configured and patched to the latest revision levels." AFCERT's efforts to defend the Air Force network are proving successful, he added. "Three years ago, we had close to 10,000 Air Force computers that were compromised with viruses. That was about the time the Melissa virus came out. It was a very bad situation," Kaufman said. "In 2001, we had fewer than 700 Air Force computers compromised by viruses and the number is down even more in 2002." Kaufman said he believes AFCERT is ready to handle future threats as well. "Like fighting an air war, the cyber environment is extremely dynamic," he said. "It is changing constantly as technology improves and new vulnerabilities and tactics are discovered." Air Force communications, intelligence and engineering professionals understand the dynamic nature of the network, and Kaufman said he believes they are equipped to deal with whatever comes along. "We are trained to do the in-depth analysis, event correlation, incident response, and countermeasure development necessary to secure our networks," he said. "Every hour of every day, we Air Force network defenders are standing watch." Senior leaders expand Air Force anthrax vaccine program [2002-10-11] WASHINGTON -- Air Force senior leaders recently approved expansion of the Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program within the service, meaning more servicemembers will be asked to roll up their sleeves in the near future. The Air Force Anthrax Vaccine Implementation Plan is being distributed to commanders Oct. 11, said Maj. Linda Bonnel of the Air Force Medical Operations Agency. "Installations are to implement the Air Force plan immediately and expand anthrax vaccination to include Priority II personnel," Bonnel said. Priority II personnel are military members, emergency-essential Department of Defense civilians and specified contractors assigned or deployed to designated higher-threat areas for more than 15 consecutive days, Bonnel said. Priority I personnel, who recently began receiving the vaccine, include those in designated special mission units and anthrax vaccine manufacturing and DOD research personnel. Higher-threat areas include countries primarily in Southwest Asia, the major said. Individuals who fall within the Priority II description will be notified of their need for the anthrax vaccine, Bonnel said. The public health office at each installation will maintain a complete list of the most current higher-threat areas and will ensure troops receive all required force health protection measures prior to deployment. "The health and safety of our troops is our No. 1 concern," Bonnel said. "Vaccination offers a layer of protection -- in addition to antibiotics and other measures -- that is needed for certain members of the armed forces." The Food and Drug Administration has determined that the current anthrax vaccine is safe and effective in protecting against all forms of anthrax infection, a scientific conclusion that was recently supported by the Institute of Medicine, Bonnel said. The FDA-licensed schedule for the anthrax vaccine calls for doses at intervals of two and four weeks after the initial dose, followed by doses at the six, 12 and 18 month points, plus annual boosters. Individuals who had previously started the anthrax vaccine series will pick up with the next dose due, Bonnel said. The AVIP was first started in 1998, primarily for those personnel assigned or deployed to Southwest Asia and Korea. Since that time, the program has undergone a number of changes. Most recently, administration of the vaccine has been restricted to a relatively small number of personnel as part of a slowdown due to production and supply issues. Since these issues have been resolved, the program is being reintroduced per recent DOD policy. For more information about the anthrax vaccine, check the official DOD Web site at http://www.anthrax.mil. Air Force seeks improved retention through GI Bill test program [2002-10-24] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force will soon begin testing a retention tool designed to help some servicemembers provide for their family's education. As part of the Montgomery GI Bill Transferability Test Program, members working in selected critical career fields will be able to transfer a portion of their MGIB benefits to one or more family members. Both commissioned and enlisted members will be eligible. Senior Master Sgt. Joey Walker, chief of retention policy for the Air Force directorate of learning force development, said the program gives servicemembers another great reason to sign on the dotted line. "There are many factors that influence a person's decision to stay in the Air Force," Walker said. "This is a great initiative we can use to target (Air Force career fields) experiencing low retention." For enlisted members to take advantage of this targeted re-enlistment benefit, they must re-enlist between Oct. 1 and Sep. 30, 2003, have between six and 12 years time-in-service, already be eligible for MGIB benefits and work in one of the selected critical Air Force specialties. The career fields for enlisted members include linguists, firefighters and communications computer system programmers. Officer career fields include developmental engineers, scientists and civil engineers. To be eligible, these officers must meet the same time-in-service requirement as enlisted members, agree to incur a four-year active-duty service commitment during fiscal 2003 and already be eligible for MGIB benefits. Air Force members meeting the eligibility criteria for the test program will be able to transfer up to 18 months of their MGIB benefits to their spouse, children or a combination of both. Implementation plans for the proposed policy are being reviewed by officials at the Air Force Personnel Center, so the program has not yet been activated; however, servicemembers who meet the criteria and who have already extended their service commitment will be eligible for the benefit. "The program is not active yet because we have not sent implementation procedures out to the field," said Jim Sweizer, chief of the voluntary education branch for the Air Force directorate of learning and force development. "But everybody who meets the criteria and who extends (his or her) active-duty service commitment during fiscal 2003 is still eligible for this benefit." All those taking advantage of the benefits of the test program will eventually be surveyed to determine the weight of the MGIB transferability option on their decision to extend their time in service. The results of the survey will help determine the continuation of the program. Servicemembers wanting more information about the Montgomery GI Bill Transferability Test Program should contact their local education office. Repatriated pilot laid to rest [2002-10-25] WASHINGTON -- An Air Force fighter pilot missing in action during the Vietnam War was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery on Oct. 25. Capt. Jefferson S. Dotson of Pound, Va., served during the Vietnam War with the 416th Tactical Fighter Squadron from Tuy Hoa Air Base, Republic of South Vietnam. Dotson graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1966. He entered the Air Force in 1967 and deployed to South Vietnam the following year. Early Aug. 9, 1969, then-1st Lt. Dotson and fellow pilot Capt. Lee Gourley embarked on a forward air control mission in an F-100F Super Sabre to collect intelligence information along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Around 9:30 a.m., Gourley radioed in the aircraft's position, the two pilots' last contact with their unit. Some two hours later, their aircraft was declared missing. Search and rescue operations were conducted for the next two days without success. Dotson was officially declared dead by the Air Force on April 26, 1976. He had been missing in action for nearly seven years and would have been 31 years old. In December 2001, the U.S. government returned what were believed to be the remains of Dotson and Goruley. DNA tests confirmed those beliefs. Dotson is survived by his mother, Margery Lee Dotson; his daughter, Crista Renee Dotson Plikat; his two sisters, Barbara Elkins and Sheila Cantrell; his brother, Otis Edward Dotson; and his former wife, Mary Ann Hollyfield Dotson Goetzel. New Information Management Tool software now available [2002-11-05] WASHINGTON -- A new software tool designed to improve the efficiency of the Air Force information system is now available across the service. The new Information Management Tool viewer software from PureEdge Solutions Inc. is a replacement to the long-used FormFlow form filler software and is available from local computer system administrators. According to Carolyn Watkins-Taylor, the Air Force Departmental Publishing Office director, users do not have to worry whether their computers will be able to support the new software. In fact, the program requires very little hard-drive space - about six megabytes or half of what FormFlow required - and can be installed as a stand-alone program or as a plug-in to a web browser, she said. "The IMT software is just a small plug-in," she said. "It has a very small footprint." Users familiar with FormFlow will notice the new software stores the IMT, along with the user's data, as a single computer file. This is a departure from the FormFlow model, where a user often had as many as five saved files to represent one electronic form. Because the IMT software stores the user's data and the IMT in one file, the user will be able to easily e-mail that file to others. In fact, the PureEdge software has e-mail capability built in. "That's called ad-hoc routing," Watkins-Taylor said. "You can e-mail an IMT to another user, and (he or she) can e-mail it back to you." The IMT viewer has a built-in spell-check system with a user dictionary, which allows users to build their own dictionary of common Air Force terms. The software also has improved text-editing capability. "The text-editing capability is like it would be in Microsoft Word," Watkins-Taylor said. "And we specifically asked for the spell check. A lot of people wanted to ensure we had that." Another feature of the IMT software is that it is equipped to handle digital signatures. When the Air Force implements digital document signing, users will be able to "sign" an IMT without a pen, using their password and their common access card instead. One thing that will remain the same during the transition to the new software is the appearance of the IMTs. "An IMT will look just like the FormFlow form, only it will be using IMT technology," Watkins-Taylor said. Some 18,000 Air Force forms are being converted from the FormFlow format to the new IMT format. According to Watkins-Taylor, the conversion of forms is projected to be complete by February 2003. Many IMTs are now available on the Air Force's e-publishing website, and new ones are added as they are converted. While conversion is the top priority, FormFlow is not going to disappear anytime soon, she said. "We are not taking FormFlow away from anyone," Watkins-Taylor said. "The FormFlow Filler software can still be used to open archived documents. In fact, we are planning to keep the FormFlow forms up on the e-publishing website, in a separate archived section." As part of the first phase, electronic forms will be converted to IMTs and will closely resemble the FormFlow version. Subsequent phases will include ad-hoc routing, digital signatures and interactive interfaces. New strategy globalizes Air Force information [2002-11-08] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force is changing the way it manages information, according to a recently released document by the service's chief information officer. John M. Gilligan said the 2002 Air Force Information Strategy is designed to standardize the way the Air Force uses the ever-increasing volume of information it generates in the performance of its mission. "This is a document that helps galvanize the Air Force toward a consistent approach on how we want to use and manage information," Gilligan said. "Another motivator for the information strategy is that information is becoming an increasingly important part of our ability to conduct our Air Force missions, warfighting in particular." The overriding idea presented in the strategy is that the Air Force will create a single, global, integrated digital network that is available to all members who need information. The network would provide what information is necessary, where it is necessary and when it is necessary. "In order for us to be able to effectively leverage information, all Air Force members need to have access," Gilligan said. "Not only will we have a ubiquitous network, but everyone will have access to it." For warfighters, a global network will mean quicker access to targeting, weather and intelligence information. One example is the linking of the equipment used to find bombing targets. In Afghanistan, special operations members on horseback used laser range finders to pinpoint targets. They used the global positioning system to find their own coordinates and then manually calculated the coordinates of the target. That information was then radioed in to an operations center that relayed it to an aircraft. With a global network, the various electronic systems used in that chain of information could be made to work together, Gilligan said. "We had not thought to link the laser range finder to the GPS receiver to a data link capability," he said. "An example we can now demonstrate in the field is that the special operations person clicks on the laser range finder and then, within milliseconds, that information is in the cockpit. That is going to speed up the ability to prosecute time sensitive targets by many minutes." The Air Force's global network will benefit more than just the warfighter, Gilligan said. For example, maintenance information for aircraft, or even video footage of complex repair techniques, will someday be available online. Maintainers would be able to access that information with a handheld computer from anywhere in the world. Additionally, because personnel, medical and financial information will be available globally and around-the-clock, Air Force members will be able to accomplish actions in those areas, regardless of their own location, Gilligan said. "In the future, when airmen want to perform personnel or finance actions, they will no longer go to the personnel flight or down to the finance office. They will do the majority of that online, 24-hours a day, with self-service capabilities," Gilligan said. "Physical location will no longer be a limit. If you are at home, in the office, or in the field, you will be able to access the information and perform those services." Eight bases add chiropractic services to medical facilities [2002-11-08] WASHINGTON -- Eight Air Force medical treatment facilities added chiropractic medicine, and others will follow suit in the future. Chiropractic medicine became available to the Air Force in 1995, after Congress directed the Department of Defense to test the feasibility of providing that service at its facilities. The findings directly resulted in Congress making chiropractic medicine a permanent benefit for active-duty military members, according to the director of the Air Force chiropractic program. "Over the next five years we will gradually increase the availability of chiropractic services across the Air Force," said Lt. Col. (Dr.) Robert Manaker. "A similar thing is happening across the Army and the Navy. This is a tri-service program." Chiropractic medicine uses a hands-on technique to correct misalignments of joints in the body. "Chiropractic helps by essentially realigning joints to their normal alignment," Manaker said. "A misalignment in your spine can cause the muscles around it to begin to have pain, to spasm or to cramp up. What chiropractors find is that if you realign those vertebrae, that can help decrease your pain." Active-duty military members wanting to see the chiropractor at their local military treatment facility will need to first be seen by their own primary care provider, the doctor said. "To see the chiropractor, you need to get a referral," Manaker said. "As a primary care provider, if I have sent you to an orthopedist and he thinks you could benefit from a chiropractor, he could also make the referral." Military members who would like to see a chiropractor can be referred to any one of the DOD facilities that currently employ a chiropractor. For now, however, they will not be able to seek treatment from off-base private-practice chiropractors. "If there isn't one at your base, you do not have the option of going off base to find a chiropractor," Manaker said. If your military medical treatment facility has no chiropractor, your primary care provider can still refer you to a chiropractor at another military facility in the local area that has one, the doctor said. Currently, the eight Air Force medical treatment facilities that offer chiropractic services to active-duty members include facilities at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas; Offutt AFB, Neb.; Travis AFB, Calif.; Scott AFB, Ill., Keesler AFB, Miss.; Andrews AFB, Md.; Langley AFB, Va.; and the U.S. Air Force Academy, Colo. The Air Force is working to increase the number of facilities offering the service, Manaker said. "We wanted to get this benefit out to the most active-duty members that we could," he said. "We are looking at places where there are multiple bases or where there are the greatest number of active-duty members, and putting chiropractors there first." The Air Force is hiring chiropractors to work in areas with the largest Air Force populations first, Manaker said. By 2007, the majority of Air Force active-duty members should have access to a chiropractor either at their own base or at a base nearby. New support unit designed to increase readiness [2002-11-12] WASHINGTON -- Support groups at Air Force bases worldwide are being reorganized into a new organizational structure: the mission support group. The change is part of an overall reorganization called the combat wing organization, a result of the 2000 Chief of Staff Logistics Review. The new groups will bring additional capability to the Air Force, said the chief of Air Force doctrine, concepts and war games. "This is not your father's support group," Col. Connie Morrow said. "This new structure embodies agile combat support in line with the chief of staff's vision for the air and space expeditionary force. The MSG makes it possible to employ ACS capabilities to open and establish the base as well as provide for sustainment of base operating capabilities. Those capabilities are key to the success of the AEF operational task forces." The MSG brings together under one commander critical expeditionary combat support planning and execution resources, including the new logistics readiness squadron, contracting, communications, civil engineers, services, security forces and personnel. According to Morrow, this change gives the Air Force the command structure, responsibility, authority and resources to prepare the battle space. It creates the operating location, positions the fighting force, sustains and protects the force during operations, and then recovers and reconstitutes the force. "The MSG, at the lowest level, is the organization that will provide the capability to do this," Morrow said. "We are creating the ability for people to generate weapons and weapons systems. That is at the heart of the air and space expeditionary force." Col. Fred Wieners, director of Task Force Enduring Look, said the lessons learned from Operation Enduring Freedom will be key to the new organization. "There is a tendency to want to put iron down first - those weapons we can use to do harm to the enemy," Wieners said. "But it is important to find that right balance to ensure your people can survive, so that they can operate. It is a difficult challenge, especially at austere basing, as we saw in Central Asia." Morrow said she believes the MSG can provide that balance, and the ability to overcome that challenge. "We will put mission support, the critical mission-readiness capabilities, on the ground first, and then flow the iron in behind it," Morrow said. "The people who are responsible for creating an operating location are the same people who are going to be planning for how you create an operating location. The MSG is going to be able to turn that patch of desert into an aerospace combat operating location." The end result, she said, will be increased readiness, which is always the top priority. "It will translate itself as our ability to be ready to do our job as soon as we hit the base at the forward operating location," she said. "Additionally, it will reduce our learning curve - that spin-up time when you arrive." Nearly 90 percent of Air Force installations had made the transformation to the MSG structure as of Nov. 1. Air Force strengthens commitment to Native American businesses [2002-11-18] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force recently strengthened its commitment to Native American and tribally owned firms. Joseph Diamond, director of the Air Force office of small and disadvantaged business utilization, signed a memorandum Nov. 13 expanding the scope of the office's Native American Small Business Initiative. "The NASBI calls for focused outreach and training, matching requirements with capabilities and leveraging partnerships in order to enhance opportunities for Native American and tribally held firms to compete for Air Force contracts," Diamond said. The office of small and disadvantaged business utilization directs Air Force efforts to ensure small, minority-owned and woman-owned businesses are given a fair chance to compete for Air Force contracts. Originally, NASBI was aimed at increasing the use of Montana- and Wyoming-based Native American firms in Air Force contract awards. The program was expanded in 2001 to include California, Florida, Oklahoma, Texas and Washington. The 2003 expansion of the initiative increases program coverage to the entire United States. Efforts to support the broadening of the initiative are the responsibility of local Air Force small business offices. "The driving force of this initiative is our local small business offices," said Dr. Patricia Luna, NASB program coordinator. "(That is) where the real work gets done, where the contract opportunities are and where our small business specialists are committed to (ensuring) Native American and tribally held firms receive contracts." According to Luna, Native American and tribally held firms are currently supporting the Air Force in a variety of areas such as information technology, manufacturing and construction, as well as military base operations. Air Force contracts awarded to Native American and tribally held firms totaled nearly $450 million in 2002. Postal agency sets holiday mailing dates, policies [2002-11-22] WASHINGTON -- "The first advice is to mail early," said Ed Larson, MPSA operations chief. "Check with your local post office for the recommended mailing dates. In each country there will be slightly different dates." The recommended mail deadlines for sending mail from the U.S. to all overseas APO/FPO addressees for the holidays are: - Space available mail: Nov. 27. - Parcel Airlift Mail: Dec. 4. - First-class mail, letters and cards and priority mail: Dec. 11. According to the United States Air Forces in Europe air postal squadron, these dates also apply to mail leaving USAFE installations for the United States. For mail leaving Pacific Air Forces installations, the following mailing deadlines should be observed: - Space available mail: Nov. 22 from Okinawa, Australia and Thailand; Nov. 23 from mainland Japan; and Dec. 4 from South Korea. - Parcel Airlift Mail: Nov. 29 from Okinawa, Australia and Thailand; Nov. 30 from mainland Japan; and Dec. 4 from South Korea. - First-class mail, letters and cards and priority mail: Dec. 6 from Okinawa and Thailand; Dec. 7 from mainland Japan; Dec. 9 from Australia; and Dec. 11 from South Korea. Additional mailing dates or updates are available at local military postal facilities. Those mailing packages need to be aware that customs forms are required on all international mail, Larson said. "I would advise people to pick up customs forms prior to sealing their packages," Larson said. "That way you can be very specific on the form. Also, check with the local post office for a list of items that are not mailable." While the United States has restrictions on mailing items such as poisons and weapons, other countries have their own restrictions for what can be mailed, Larson said. "Mail to Middle Eastern countries can't contain anything contrary to the Islamic faith," Larson said. "Tobacco is not mailable to certain locations and coffee is not mailable to Germany. Service members overseas should know the restrictions for their area and provide that information to their correspondents and family members." Larson also said mailing powdered substances, while not specifically prohibited, could cause delay in mail processing if the powder were to leak out of the packaging. Additionally, for the second year, the MPSA will not support Operation Dear Abby or "Any Servicemember" mailing programs. "These programs were cancelled in October 2001, not only because of the saturation of the mail pipeline that they cause, but more importantly because of the risk or concern for bio-terrorism articles in the mail," Larson said. According to Larson, MPSA encourages military members to support the publicly available Web sites that allow the American public to write supportive letters to service members. Liaison officer expedites releasing imagery [2002-12-02] WASHINGTON -- The world's news media will soon have more pictures and video products available to them. Civilian media needing photography or video footage of Air Force activities now have an advocate in Capt. Derek Fletcher, the career visual information specialist who recently assumed the task of bridging the Air Force's public affairs and VI communities. Col. Alvina Mitchell, the Air Force media operations division chief at the Pentagon, said the addition of an officer to handle such responsibilities greatly improves the service's efficiency in providing visual products to the press. "Captain Fletcher assists us with several areas, particularly in better coordinating our needs for imagery with combat camera assets locally and in the field," Mitchell said. As the visual communications liaison officer on the Air Force press desk, Fletcher works hand-in-hand with PA specialists to fulfill the media's need for Air Force imagery. The relationship is already paying off in the form of increased coverage of Air Force activities. "This morning, Fox News called," Fletcher said. "They wanted some video of the Predator aircraft; they had seen Predator footage on Air Force Television News. I called the Air Force News Agency and got the contact information for that footage so we could provide it to the media." Fletcher can also contact combat camera units in the field and let them know there is a demand for certain types of footage. "You can imagine the clamor for photography of the Predator aircraft and Hellfire missile," Fletcher said. Fletcher worked nearly seven years in the field with combat camera on a dozen deployments. He said his knowledge of the VI community is the most valuable asset he brings to the press desk. "I know who to contact for anything concerning imagery," Fletcher said. "I know who to contact to get people up in a chase plane to get fresh footage of the Predator. I can get the media their images faster, and I can get them the right image. I can call the videographers and tell them exactly what we are looking for, because I speak their language." Fletcher said another way he helps provide imagery to the press is simply knowing where to look for imagery that already exists. "PA often doesn't know what combat camera has been shooting," Fletcher said. "Just the other day, one of the press desk people wanted B-2 (Spirit) shelter video. They believed it didn't even exist. I called Whiteman Air Force Base (Mo.) and asked the VI people if they had any B-2 shelter video. They said, 'Sure, we have tons of it.' It's just a matter of knowing where to look." When Fletcher is not fulfilling media and press desk requests for Air Force imagery, he is busy building new contacts with VI and combat camera detachments out in the field. "Right now I am making new contacts," Fletcher said. "I am finding out who's taking what imagery and where. I've talked to the Air Mobility Command and Air Combat Command combat camera people to find out where they are deployed. I've talked to combat camera (people) in Sarajevo and in Southwest Asia. I am trying to give them a heads-up, to let them know I am here." In the future, Fletcher believes there can be a better way to get the freshest imagery flowing from the field and into the hands of the press. Part of that plan, he said, will be for the VI and the PA communities to work to together in the field. "We can have a PA person in the field who works with the combat cameraman," Fletcher said. "Images could be cleared right then and there. Then the images could be sent directly to the press desk, and we could get them out to the media." Mitchell said creating such a synergy between combat camera and public affairs will prove beneficial to both the civilian media and the Air Force. "Providing timely and quality imagery enhances the media's products and makes their coverage more interesting and comprehensive," Mitchell said. "The benefit of this strikes at the very heart of PA -- telling the Air Force story. If the Air Force expects to tell its story to a mass audience, we must put it in a visual format to reach a younger generation." Air Force eliminates paperwork, saves money [2002-12-05] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force is saving time and money by streamlining the paperwork involved in environmental cleanup efforts. The Air Force has eliminated a document called the land use control plan by including its contents in another document, the record of decision, said Maureen Koetz, the deputy assistant secretary of environment, safety and occupational health for the service. Like other federal agencies, the Air Force is held accountable for the chemicals, solvents, fuels, oils and other products it spills into the ground, Koetz said. The process for cleaning up such spills involves a studies-and-investigations phase that is capped off with a record of decision, a report that is the culmination of all the studies, Koetz said. The record of decision explains the results of the initial studies and explains how the site will be cleaned up. The initial investigation phase can be lengthy. "We do know that on average, from the initial preliminary assessment to the time of the record of decision, it is taking about 12 years in the Air Force," Koetz said. If the cleanup leaves residual amounts of contamination in place, federal regulators may require an additional set of documents. The documents, called land use control plans, describe what can and cannot be done with the land following a cleanup. The contents of the land use control plan, Koetz said, are legally enforceable and failure to comply with their contents is fineable. According to Koetz, the development of a land use control plan is both costly and time consuming. The additional studies and the cost of the technical writers, regulators and scientists needed to produce the documents, must be paid for by the Air Force. "What the EPA wanted was a very elaborate set of documents," Koetz said. "We said, 'Why don't you just say what needs to be done? Do you have to put a fence around it? Can you not dig? Tell us, EPA, what do we have to do? We will write it in the ROD, and we will make sure that is the case. We will memorialize things in documents that already exist.'" Merging land-use stipulations from the land-use control plan into the ROD is an example of a performance-based initiative, she said. By concentrating on a result, instead of producing documentation, the Air Force has improved a process and saved both time and money. A good example of how the practice benefited the Air Force can be seen at Travis Air Force Base, Calif., she said. "We successfully negotiated the Travis record of decision and eliminated the need for a separate land use control plan," Koetz said. "We were able to come to this agreement on the phone in 15 minutes. Our goal is to go through the whole (cleanup) process and see where (performance management) can be useful." Electric vehicles helping reduce use of petroleum fuels [2002-12-09] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force is using less petroleum products in California now thanks to a donation by a major automotive corporation. The first of 112 electric vehicles donated by Global Electric Motorcars, a subsidiary of DaimlerChrysler, were delivered to four California Air Force installations in October. The street-legal electric vehicles can be used in situations where a lightweight sedan or pickup truck is normally used, said Lt. Col. William Fisher, chief of the Air Force vehicle policy team here. "They can be used to shuttle people around the base for administrative duties and are perfect for use by a small civil engineer or maintenance team," Fisher said. "You can put a tool box in one of these vehicles with the bed on them, have a small bench stock available, and roll out there and do repairs." Many tasks do not require the larger vehicles available in the Air Force vehicle inventory, according to Senior Master Sgt. Rex Curry, superintendent of Air Force vehicle maintenance policy and procedures. In the past, he said, Air Force members had no choice but to use larger vehicles. "In a lot of places, you have supply and administrative folks who go to the military personnel flight and back to supply or to the base service store to pick up supplies," Curry said. "That does not require a quarter-ton or half-ton pickup. The idea (with the electric vehicle) is that we get accustomed to these electric vehicles and reduce our need to drive larger, petroleum-burning vehicles." The zero-emission vehicles being used at Vandenberg, Edwards and Los Angeles Air Force bases, as well as for Onizuka Air Force Station, are in line with the Air Force's efforts to reduce use of petroleum products. In accordance with the Energy Policy Act and Executive Order 13149, signed by former President Clinton in April 2000, federal agencies are required to acquire alternative-fuel vehicles and reduce the use of petroleum products through the use of alternative fuels. Fisher said the Air Force is responding to this order by using electric, compressed natural gas, E-85 Flex-Fuel and bio-diesel vehicles. "The time for alternative fuel use is here," Fisher said. "There is a lot of stuff in industry going on to get us out of petroleum-burning vehicles. In the next 10 to 15 years, you are going to see some significant changes in how we transport ourselves, what platforms we use to transport ourselves in and what engine technology we use to transport ourselves." The 112 electric vehicles are just a part of the Air Force's overall effort to reduce dependence on petroleum products, Fisher said. "This helps us to reduce petroleum consumption and helps displace some of our less fuel-efficient vehicles," Fisher said. "In the long run, we will reduce the amount of petroleum use on these bases. We have to come to terms with this as a nation, because energy security is a big issue." Veterans History Project listens, remembers [2002-12-13] WASHINGTON -- American veterans have always had great stories to tell, and there have always been those eager to listen. Now, thanks to the Library of Congress American Folklife Center and more than 521 partner organizations, the stories will live on for future generations to experience, long after the veterans themselves are gone. The Veterans History Project is an effort to archive the oral and written histories -- the personal stories -- of America's war veterans. The project does not limit itself to just the accounts of men in uniform, said the project's director. "The goal is to create a new national collection of the firsthand accounts of veterans' personal experiences during war time," Ellen McCulloch-Lovell said. "Also, we accept the memories and stories of civilians who helped to support us during wartime -- civilians who served in support of the armed forces. That includes all branches and also includes the Coast Guard and the WWII merchant marine." The project was officially created in October 2000, with a unanimous vote from the U.S. Congress. The time was right for Congress to make such a move, Lovell said, because the number of World War II-era veterans were passing away at a rate of nearly half-a-million a year. "It came at the right time for some of the members of Congress who are veterans," Lovell said. "Also, some of the popular media may have also been a help. 'The Greatest Generation,' and 'Saving Private Ryan' really increased people's awareness that the WWII generation wasn't always going to be with us -- that when somebody dies, their story dies with them." The Veterans History Project collects the oral and written histories of veterans from all 20th century wars -- World War I through the Persian Gulf War. The histories are typically recorded on audio or videotape, Lovell said. The VHP staff does not conduct the interviews themselves, however. "Congress asked the Library of Congress and the American Folklife Center to create this new national project and to involve Americans in learning from each other," Lovell said. "The idea is that volunteers, members of the military, neighbors and family members would identify veterans and then interview them -- that they would learn through the interview as well as help create this collection." Conducting such an interview is not difficult, Lovell said. To make the process less confusing, the VHP has created kits to help volunteers help veterans organize their thoughts, and conduct the interview. The project has distributed 100,000 such kits to date. The information in the kit is also available on the project's Web site. Besides video and audio interviews, the VHP collects other items that can be used to illustrate the stories of America's veterans. "Right now we have about 15,000 items in our collection," Lovell said. "An item would include a whole photo album, or maybe a whole collection of letters, or a reel of Super-8 film -- a lot of stuff." To date, the VHP has collected information from more than 4,000 veterans from all branches of the military, including nearly 400 Air Force and Army Air Corps veterans, according to Lovell. Retired Lt. Col. Frank Ernest Lund, a Korean War F-86 pilot, was one such veteran. Lund was contacted by his nephew and asked to give an interview as part of a school project. "My nephew called and said he had a school project. Part of that project was an interview with Korean War veterans or WWII veterans," Lund said. "He asked me if I'd participate, and I didn't mind it at all. I would say all in all I was excited to talk about it." Lund, who retired from the Air Force Reserve in 1977, said the interview was right in line with his own personal interest in history and the military. "I've taken a big interest in the military, and my collection of scrapbooks and pictures and all that kind of stuff is pretty vast," Lund said. "I also have articles about the Korean War and books about the Korean war. It is kind of fascinating to me." Another veteran, retired Maj. E. Ernest Waymon, a B-24 pilot in World War II, had his history written before anybody approached him for an interview. Nearly a dozen years ago, Waymon wrote a book documenting his experiences in a World War II German prisoner-of-war camp. "I wrote that book originally for my son and daughter so they would know what I did in the military," Waymon said. "What little I had written can give an insight into the prison camp -- that's the reason it was written -- and to explain what I went through during that time." A copy of his book was Waymon's contribution to the history project. While the project is ongoing, some of the material collected is already available to the public for research and learning. "This will be a collection that will be accessible to the public," Lovell said. "Portions of it will be digitized and available on the Web site. We are also looking for other venues, such as exhibitions, where people can see the material." Centennial of Flight kicks off year of festivities [2002-12-17] WASHINGTON -- A yearlong recognition of aviation began here Dec. 17 with the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission's national kickoff. Among those in attendance were a retired member of the Tuskegee Airmen and a former Air Force pilot who flew with the Flying Tigers during World War II. Wilbur and Orville Wright flew the first powered aircraft Dec. 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, N.C. Ninety-nine years later the Centennial of Flight Commission began a one-year celebration of aviation that will lead up to the 100-year anniversary of the Wrights' historic flight. It was significant, said the chairman of the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission, that the kickoff of the celebration was held at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. "Nine years ago, a dream began to take shape in Dayton, Ohio, to pay tribute to two men whose dream to fly changed our world," said retired Marine Corps Gen. J.R. Dailey, commission chairman and director of the museum. "The stories of the Wright brothers and the pioneers of flight who followed them are filled with determination, innovation and compassion. Today, it is fitting that we begin this celebration in a place that is filled with highpoints of that spirit - a spirit we hope to rekindle across the nation." Other speakers included leaders of modern aviation such as Sean O'Keefe, administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; Marion Blakey, administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, and Michael Jackson, deputy director of the Department of Transportation. Actor John Travolta served as master of ceremonies for the event. Travolta is a licensed jet pilot who has logged almost 5,000 hours in the cockpit. Included among the dozen aviation pioneers honored at the event were retired Col. Charles E. McGee, who represented the Tuskegee Airmen. McGee served some 30 years in the Air Force and flew more than 400 combat missions in three wars. "I fell in love with flying," McGee said. "It was a chance to go from the prop age into the jet age." Other individuals recognized at the event included retired Brig. Gen. David Lee Hill, a member of the Flying Tigers World War II group; Air Force shuttle pilot Col. Pamela Melroy; Dr. Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon; Edsel B. Ford II, representing Henry Ford; Sen. John Glenn; Amy Kleppner, representing Amelia Earhart; Amanda Wright Lane, representing the Wright Brothers; and Erik Lindbergh, representing Charles Lindbergh. Simultaneous kickoff events were held near Kitty Hawk, N.C., and in Dayton, Ohio. Near Kitty Hawk, a daylong anniversary tribute was held at the site of the Wrights' first flight, the Wright Brothers National Memorial, located in what is now known as Kill Devil Hills. Among the speakers were North Carolina Governor Michael F. Easley and Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command. Among the events at the scene of the first flight, surviving members of the family of John T. Daniels, one of the few eyewitnesses to the flight, placed a wreath at the foot of a monument commemorating the event. In Dayton, the Wright brothers' great-grandnephew, Stephen Wright, and other family members, laid a memorial wreath at the Wright Memorial on Wright Brothers Hill, located on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The National Park Service dedicated a new visitor center overlooking the field where the brothers perfected their invention of the airplane. Congress funds more than $2 billion in construction projects [2003-01-07] WASHINGTON -- Congress approved more than $2 billion to fund Air Force construction projects over the next year. The fiscal 2003 National Defense Authorization Act includes $1.3 billion in funding for Air Force military construction, including dormitories, fitness centers, force protection projects and operational infrastructure projects. An additional $689 million in funding was approved for construction or improvement of military family housing. According to the Air Force engineering division chief, $339 million of that funding will be used to construct infrastructure for new mission or mission realignment related construction. "New missions (mean) missions for new weapons systems, such as the F/A-22 (Raptor) or C-17 (Globemaster III)," Col. Andrew Scrafford said. "(The F/A-22) is an entirely new mission -- you are going from an F-15 (Eagle) at Langley Air Force Base, (Va.,) to F/A-22s." At Langley and Nellis AFB, Nev., more than $40 million will be used for F/A-22 support. That money, explained Scrafford, goes to build infrastructure to support the new weapons systems. "Usually hangars and squadron operations facilities," he said. Besides funding construction projects for new or realigned missions, the act authorizes nearly $125 million for dormitory construction at nine bases in the continental United States and one in South Korea. Nearly $50 million will be used for environmental projects, and $34 million will be used to fund construction of or improvement to fitness facilities at Andersen AFB, Guam; Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England; and Hanscom AFB, Mass. In all, about $1.07 billion is authorized for funding the more than 100 active-duty Air Force military construction projects slated to begin in fiscal 2003. But not all money authorized will be used to fund military construction projects at active-duty bases, Scrafford said. Funding is also targeted for the Air National Guard and the Air Force Reserve. More than $204 million is aimed at construction projects that include infrastructure supporting the KC-135 Stratotanker at Sioux Gateway Airport in Sioux City, Iowa, and C-17 infrastructure at Jackson, Miss., International Airport. "They don't have those aircraft at those locations at this time," Scrafford said. "So bedding those new weapons systems down is going to take some military construction funds. That's why we consider it (a) new mission or force realignment -- it is a change to the way in which current installations operate." The Air Force Reserve component will see more than $85 million for new construction projects. Overall, the fiscal 2003 Air Force military construction program includes 145 projects in 36 states, the District of Columbia, and nine foreign countries or territories. Construction will begin within the fiscal year on most of the projects, Scrafford said. "We have had a good history of having the project (contracts) awarded within the year," he said. "Whether or not the project actually starts depends on the major command. Within the next 18 months all awarded projects will be under construction, but within the first year we expect construction to have started on 50 to 75 percent of the projects." Besides operational and military construction, the act authorizes nearly $690 million for construction of family housing, said Col. James P. Holland, division chief for Air Force housing. Receipt of that money, he explained, is based on the Air Force family housing master plan. "Currently the plan is laid out to replace or improve all of our Air Force housing by 2010," Holland said. "Our fiscal 2003 budget is based on that, so normally we receive funding at or above that." The fiscal 2003 money, Holland said, will be used to construct or improve housing at some 29 Air Force installations worldwide. "We're going to wind up replacing 2,079 houses and constructing 115 new houses in 2003," Holland said. Air Force transforms, merges property operations [2003-01-08] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force recently created a new agency to handle all of its real estate transactions. The Air Force Real Property Agency resulted from the merging of two agencies: the Air Force Base Conversion Agency and the Air Force Real Estate division. The move, said the director of the AFRPA, is expected to improve the effectiveness of Air Force real estate operations across the force. "Merging these functions creates the synergy needed to meet Air Force mission capability," said Albert Lowas. "By that we mean to take the expertise of the active Air Force real estate people and merge them with what was AFBCA, so we can do a better job of using that real estate asset to support the Air Force mission." Before the merger, Lowas said, the Air Force Real Estate division handled the sale and purchase of real estate to meet the needs of active service installations. Such property sales might have included abandoned missile silos or housing areas that were no longer needed. The same division would also have handled the purchase of land if an active installation needed a bombing range or needed to expand a runway. In contrast, Lowas said, the AFBCA was responsible only for converting of Air Force installations being closed under the Base Realignment and Closure Act. "The AFBCA handled the property disposal for bases closed in the four rounds of BRAC," said Lowas, who was head of the former AFBCA. "We worked with the local communities on what their disposal plan would be. We would do the environmental cleanup, we took care of the buildings so they would not deteriorate, and then we would dispose of the property." The AFBCA did not simply sell off Air Force installations closed under BRAC. Instead, Lowas said, the service worked to ensure that local communities that surrounded those installations would be able to thrive as they had when the base was active. "We tried to replace that economic engine of the air base and the air wing with new jobs," Lowas said. "Even before the base was closed we were working with the wing commander so a warehouse could be leased, or we could start joint use on the runway, or we could start to use the hangars and have commercial enterprise come in and start to use the base." During its existence, the AFBCA used that methodology to convert 32 Air Force installations to civilian use. That experience, Lowas said, will be brought to bear upon all Air Force real estate transactions. "With AFRPA, we are going to take that experience of working with local communities and transform how we do property disposal on other Air Force installations, to make it the proverbial win-win, for us and for the local community," Lowas said. The Air Force, Lowas said, is transforming the way it conducts real estate business. "It's all about being good neighbors and working to ensure everyone's interests are being considered," Lowas said. "Old practices have to be evaluated, and new ones more conducive to the 21st century must be incorporated. "We are transforming the way we do Air Force real property acquisition and disposal. We are looking beyond the boundary of the base into the larger community to balance everyone's needs: the Air Force's and the community's," he said. Logistics center recognized for pollution-prevention excellence [2003-01-10] ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. -- The Warner Robins Air Logistics Center is the recipient of the Gen. Thomas D. White Pollution Prevention for Team Excellence Award for fiscal 2002, Air Force officials announced recently. The award is presented to installations with outstanding pollution-prevention programs. The WR-ALC team will be recognized with a trophy at a May 7 ceremony in Washington. This will be the fourth time in the past decade the Robins team has been recognized for pollution prevention. One of the reasons for WR-ALC's selection was the base's reduction of methylene chloride, one of the chemicals on the Environmental Protection Agency's toxic release inventory. The installation's 15 percent reduction in use of the compound, used to remove paint from aircraft parts, is due in part to implementation of a new paint- "One process we are using now is the FlashJet depainting system, a combination of a xenon flash lamp and carbon dioxide pellets," said Mary Kicklighter, chief of Robins' environmental quality division. The system, she said, generates high-intensity energy from fluorescent bulbs to heat up the paint on aircraft parts. The energy turns the paint into ash, while the pellets clean the surface and keep it cool. Built into this robotic system is a high-powered vacuum to collect the ash and filter out any contaminants, exhausting only carbon dioxide and water. Richard Slife, FlashJet project engineer, said the process is the safest way to remove paint and is environmentally friendly. Another factor in the award was a reduction in Robins' solid waste stream. The base diverted nearly 2,300 tons of paper and cardboard waste from the local landfills through recycling programs. In addition, the base removed all yard and horse-stable waste from the solid waste stream and initiated a contract to use on-base compost to enhance base landscaping. Robins will compete for Department of Defense-level recognition against winners of the other service's environmental awards. Surgery increases vision, readiness [2003-01-13] WASHINGTON -- In little more than a year's time, the Air Force has improved mission readiness with a program designed to eliminate the need for contact lenses and glasses. The Air Force Warfighter Photorefractive Keratectomy Program went active at the end of 2001. The program provides PRK surgery to all Air Force servicemembers who qualify -- surgery that in most cases eliminates the need for glasses or contact lenses, said the program's director. "Nearly 100 percent of our patients do not need glasses to see after this procedure," said Lt. Col. Robert E. Smith, chief of cornea and refractive surgery at Wilford Hall Medical Center here. Smith is also the Air Force surgeon general's refractive surgery consultant. "That's at least 20/40 vision, what I call 'get around' vision. The vision we really strive for though is 20/20 or better. Our chances of getting that kind of vision (with this surgery) is 85 to 90 percent," Smith said. In some cases, said Smith, the surgery can only improve a person's vision enough to get them off corrective lenses most of the time. He said that while the surgery cannot completely free everybody from glasses or contacts, it can reduce nearly everyone's dependence on them. Since the program began, the Air Force has eliminated the need for or reduced the dependence on glasses for more than 4,000 servicemembers. According to the Air Force Surgeon General's office, the purpose for the program is to increase the readiness of warfighters by eliminating the need for glasses or contact lenses. Smith said corrective lenses can be a hindrance in the field or in the cockpit. "We are increasing the readiness aspect of our warfighters by reducing their dependence on glasses and contact lenses," Smith said. "Right now we have a lot of folks out there in the desert who use chemical gear, who use night-vision goggles or other optical devices, or who do a lot of different things that can be impeded by glasses and inserts." Removing that impedance, Smith said, is the true goal of the Air Force Warfighter PRK Program. "Glasses and contacts, we learned in Desert Storm, don't do well out in the desert," Smith said. "If we can reduce our warfighters dependence on spectacles, they become better warfighters. That is the ultimate goal of refractive surgery in the Air Force. This is not cosmetic surgery." Currently, there are five locations where Air Force people can get the PRK procedure, including Wilford Hall Medical Center; Travis Air Force Base, Calif.; the U.S. Air Force Academy, Colo.; Keesler AFB, Miss.; and Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. While the Air Force does not reimburse members if they receive the surgery from civilian doctors, there are a few other Defense Department centers where the surgery is available, he said. "We are a tri-service treatment team," Smith said. "This means that we treat not only eligible Air Force members, but also Army and Navy members as well. That (treatment) is reciprocated at most of the DOD refractive surgery centers. The Army and Navy both have a similar program." While the majority of Air Force members can seek the PRK treatment at nearly every DOD treatment facility, Smith said Air Force pilots and boom operators must go to Wilford Hall. Other aviators can go to any of the other warfighter treatment centers. The PRK procedure is, according to Smith, quick, painless and unobtrusive, involving use of an "excimer laser" to remove anywhere from 5 to 20 percent of the cornea -- no more that the thickness of three human hairs. "Basically we need to remove the top layer of the cornea," he said. "We use a polisher to do that, and then we do the laser treatment. All of this is painless. The polisher part takes about five seconds. The laser procedure takes anywhere from 10 to 40 seconds. Then we put a soft contact lens on your eye, and we are done. The total time for the procedure is about one minute per eye." The soft contact lens reduces discomfort after surgery and helps the eye heal during a three- to four-day recovery period, Smith said. According to Smith, Air Force members should start at their local medical facility's Web page if they think the procedure may be right for them. "Everybody is not a candidate for refractive surgery," Smith said. "About two out of every 10 who come for surgery are eliminated because their corneas aren't quite normal. But the overall goal is (to) treat as many qualified candidates as possible. "Go to your local optometrist and get the application package. They will also do the initial screening. If that exam meets qualifications, then we bring the individual in for another complete refractive surgery exam. If everything looks good, they can get the surgery." Air Force moves to institutionalize enterprise architecture [2003-01-16] WASHINGTON -- Leaders of the Air Force's information technology, warfighting integration and operations communities took a major step recently to further the service's transformation efforts by creating the Air Force enterprise architecture council structure. Enterprise architecture is a formal process designed to better integrate the systems that support all Air Force activities, said Charlie Martinez, the Air Force's deputy chief architect on the Air Force chief information officer's staff. "An enterprise architecture approach is somewhat akin to the 'city plans' that many large cities use to guide improvements to their transportation, water supply and sewage systems," Martinez said. "In the Air Force's case, what the leaders hope to accomplish is to transform the Air Force's warfighting, combat support and business information systems into a seamless integrated whole." The key to the Air Force's approach is establishment of a set of councils to oversee the Air Force's enterprise architecture development. Rather than one "super structure," the Air Force will use an integrated patchwork of separate architectures that span all mission areas. The structure included 13 architecture councils that address the areas of combat operations, space operations, mobility operations, special operations, weather, air traffic management, installation and logistics, health services, personnel, acquisition, financial management, modeling and simulation, and infostructure. In addition, the charter established the Enterprise Architecture Integration Council, of which the other councils are a part, to oversee and coordinate the integrated activities of the councils. "This formal body is unique ... in the Department of Defense and will permit centralized control and decentralized execution," Martinez said. According to Martinez, each council will document key processes within their functional areas, identify the types of information and information flows needed to support their key processes, and determine the current and future information systems needed to support them. They will also ensure that the processes, information, flows and systems are consistent and interoperable within their own functional areas and with those of other related functional areas throughout the Air Force. One warfighting process often cited by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper as critically needing effective integration is the "kill chain." The kill chain refers to the series of steps that start with identifying a target and end with finally dropping a bomb on that target. A variety of information technology assets, such as communications links, databases, software applications and computer hardware, are used to convey or process the kill-chain information. The role of the architecture councils is to ensure that combination of IT assets work together seamlessly in support of the kill-chain process, Martinez said. One major reason for developing the enterprise architecture, Martinez said, is financial. "A lot of the motivating force is to save money," he said. "If you look at the military budget you see that one of the largest line items is manpower. Anytime we can consolidate or streamline processes and save manpower, we save money. "Many Air Force processes were created when we had to do things manually. Now that we are in the information age, we may be able to completely change the processes themselves, making them more efficient and effective." Martinez said that perhaps the best reason for developing an enterprise architecture is to improve the consistency, accuracy and timeliness of the information the Air Force must share. "Eventually, and most importantly, I think our new approach will result in more effective use of our resources and better information on which to make decisions," he said. "That alone makes the enterprise architecture an absolute necessity for the future of our Air Force." Airmen give visitors an inside look at Pentagon [2003-01-17] WASHINGTON -- Some of the Air Force's sharpest airmen are helping the Pentagon make a good first impression. They are part of the Pentagon tour program, showcasing the building, its people and its history for visitors from around the world. Its purpose, said the noncommissioned officer in charge of the program's 35 members, is to give the public an inside look at the Department of Defense. "This is an outreach program," said Master Sgt. Kenneth Williams. "We reach out to the public to show them the Department of Defense, some of the history of this building and also what we do here day to day." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld started the Pentagon tour program during his first term in office in 1976. It uses enlisted members from all four armed services and the U.S. Coast Guard. The Air Force chooses its representatives for the program from the Air Force Honor Guard at Bolling Air Force Base, D.C. Airman 1st Class Robert Green is one honor guard member chosen from among his peers to represent the Air Force at the Pentagon. Green, who like other airmen in the program remains a member of the Air Force Honor Guard, served at Bolling AFB for two years before he was chosen for Pentagon duty. That time, he said, was spent perfecting his craft. "I was actually a (pallbearer) for two years," Green said. "I carried caskets in Arlington cemetery. When I was at the top of the element for (pallbearers), I submitted an application for Pentagon tour duty." Williams said such a career progression is typical of those who come to work for him. "You have to be a member of your service's honor guard first," Williams said. "Normally you are chosen after you demonstrate superiority in performance of your specialty. Most of our troop's specialty is fire party, pallbearer or a colors troop -- those that carry our nation's colors. Once they have risen to the top of their specialty in their honor guard, we have them apply here." Being the best of the best is important, because as a Pentagon tour guide, there are more than just other military members to look good for, Green said. "You have to be pretty straight-edged. They are not just going to send anybody over here," Green said. "For a lot of people who receive these tours, this is their first image of the military." Becoming a tour guide at the Pentagon requires a two-week training course. Part of that involves the memorization of a nearly 30-page script that details the mission of the DOD, the missions of the services and items of interest at the Pentagon. A common sight in the Pentagon halls is that of a tour guide in training, reading the 90-minute narration to an imaginary group of tourists. Making the one-and-a-half-mile tour route all the more difficult is the fact that the guides walk the tour backward so they are facing their tour group. "I recorded my voice onto a tape and fell asleep to that script," Green said, explaining how he memorized the words. "I actually slept with headphones on." After guides pass their final exam, having shown they know the official script, they are allowed to personalize their tour. "A lot of them are proud of their own branch of service, so a lot of times they take a lot of pride once they get to whatever corridor their branch of service is in," Williams said. "We don't mind them ad-libbing somewhat." The guides must also do a little preparation on their own to answer the barrage of questions from visitors. "They ask how many rolls of toilet paper are used in the building each day, or how many light bulbs there are -- all kinds of factual stuff," said Senior Airman Carlos Centeno, a one-year veteran with the program. "As a result, we end up doing a lot of research on our own." However, giving tours is not all trivia. Green and Centeno explained that tour guides must set the tone before the tour passes through the security checkpoints at the entrance to the building. "We tell them how to line up and where they need to stand," Centeno said. "We give a lot of direction." Green said it is all in the name of security awareness, as well as decorum. "We want to get their attention," Green said. "This is the Pentagon, a federal office building. We want to let them know that before they come in, so they are (respectful) as we go through the executive corridors." Since Sept. 11, 2001, the general public is no longer offered tours of the Pentagon. But schools, educational institutions and other select organizations can arrange tours by calling the Pentagon Tour Office at (703) 695-1776. Artists document Air Force history with art [2003-01-24] WASHINGTON -- First-time visitors to the Pentagon might expect to see star-studded generals and high-tech "war rooms." What they might not expect is that the walls of this 60-year-old building not only frame its famous catacomb hallways, but also double as an art gallery. The Air Force Art Program is responsible for acquiring and managing this dizzying array of Air Force-related artwork. The program, which began in 1950, has amassed more than 8,000 pieces of art -- mostly paintings -- that document aircraft, people, battles and locations significant to Air Force history. Some of those paintings, said the program's director, are older than the Air Force itself. "Some of the oldest pieces we have in the collection were donated by the Rockefellers -- art by Henry Farre," Russell Kirk said. "Those paintings date back to the early 1900s. Farre was one of the first aviation documenters for warfare." The first 800 or so paintings, Kirk said, were donated to the Air Force collection by the Army when the program first began. The remainder of the works were done mostly at the request of the Air Force and were donated to the collection by the artists themselves. The Air Force Art Program does not buy art. Rather, the program coordinates with various agencies to get artists out of the studio and in the field, embedding them with Air Force units so they can photograph, sketch and collect other source material they will need to produce a painting. The Air Force essentially sends them on a temporary-duty assignment for the purpose of producing art. "When these artists go out on a trip, the purpose is to give them a better understanding of the Air Force mission," Kirk said. Each artist typically belongs to one of a number of official organizations, including the Societies of Illustrators of New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as the Midwest Air Force Artists and the Southwest Air Force Artists. Each society reviews its members' work before offering them as gifts and then makes a formal presentation to the Air Force once every two years at the Air Force Art Program's presentation held on Andrews Air Force Base, Md. The presentation is co-hosted by the secretary and chief of staff of the Air Force. Program participants are not novices, Kirk said. Some demand five-figure prices for their work when they sell to civilian patrons. That they choose to donate some of their work to the Air Force, however, is no surprise. "One reason is just the feeling of patriotism," said John Witt, an artist who has been doing work for the program since the early 1980s. "These artists love their country and support their armed services. Many, like myself, are former military and have experience doing art for the services. When the call comes, they are willing to do it. Even if that is during their vacation time, or if they are freelance and they have to stop what they are working on to complete the job." Witt is currently working on a painting for the program featuring a youthful Staff Sgt. Henry "Red" Erwin, a World War II Medal of Honor recipient. Erwin, at great danger to himself, picked up a burning phosphorous bomb that had ignited inside his B-29 Superfortress aircraft and threw it out a cockpit window. Erwin's face and body were severely burned from handling the device, but his actions saved the aircraft and crew. One difficulty in completing this most current work is ensuring the historical accuracy of what he portrays, Witt said. There was little documentation or source material on which to base his work. "Getting the research has been hard," he said. "There was only one small photo of him before he had been burned. I've been (looking) to find what that phosphorous bomb looks like, but I can't find it. Right now in the painting, he is holding what looks like an oatmeal can." Often times the artists are on their own when doing a historical piece, Witt said. "(Sometimes) there is no photo to copy from," Witt said. "You have to do it all from imagination. It's a lot of reference, and you've got to make sure all your references are accurate. It's a good three months of solid work. You can't take on any other assignments. I've got other people who want to be painted, but I can't do anything until I get this done." When completed, the painting will be on display at the Enlisted Research Library on the Maxwell Air Force Base Gunter Annex in Alabama. The library will be dedicated in honor of the recently deceased Erwin. While most works held by the Air Force Art Program are currently on display at the Pentagon or at major command headquarters around the globe, all the works are available for viewing by the public on the program's Web site. Additionally, the Air Force has work on public display at the Richmond Aviation Museum and at the Mighty 8th Air Force Museum in Georgia. The program is currently working with the College Park Museum in Arlington, Va., to display some works there. It is at these public displays where Air Force art really has the most impact, Kirk said. "This artwork tells of the Air Force's different missions and stories, and I've seen the kids who are looking at (the exhibits)," Kirk said. "Those kids are 5 and 10 years old, and they are captivated by them. Or there is a guy who is 80-some years old, and he's looking at a painting of a B-20, and he's back there. You talk to him about it, and he has all this history to tell you. It's all about history, and it's all about telling the story of our rich heritage." Officials emphasize caution with APO addresses [2003-01-30] WASHINGTON -- World events have Air Force postal officials re-emphasizing the need for security when using the military mail system. In particular, postal officials are concerned that airmen might not use an appropriate amount of discretion when distributing their overseas mailing addresses. While the Air Force is emphasizing that people keep a short leash on their APO addresses, officials recognize that the American public wants to show support for its troops. Fortunately, said Eichholz, there are avenues where people can do just that without jeopardizing their security. Those programs, according to DOD officials, were eliminated because they created an avenue to introduce biological, chemical or explosive materials into the military mail system, putting people in danger. At the same time, the programs left the sources of such material virtually untraceable. Air Force officials have identified other potential vulnerabilities in the system. Those include Web sites that ask for overseas mailing addresses, publicly available sign-up sheets for phone cards or other goods to be sent overseas, said Bob Eichholz, the director of Air Force postal policy. It also includes local community efforts to gather up homemade goods and materials that can be sent from anonymous individuals to an APO address provided by a well-meaning servicemember. "These are all well-intended programs to support the military," Eichholz said. "In the past those programs worked well, but today the same programs open us up to attacks from unknown sources. We have to take as many safeguards as we can to protect our mail system." Postal officials recommend that people be as prudent with their APO addresses as possible -- limiting where they post their address and to whom they hand it out. "We recommend ... that members not just give out and advertise their APO addresses," Eichholz said. "Keep it for your business purposes and for your correspondence, but don't advertise it on a Web site." He said there are some Web sites asking for people's addresses. On other Web sites, people leave their address to get a pen pal. "We recommend people don't do that," Eichholz said. "You don't know where that mail is coming from or who has access to that address. You need to safeguard your APO address a little bit." To reduce the vulnerability of using the mail system as a means to attack military people abroad, the Department of Defense officially suspended all "any servicemember"-type mail programs in late 2000. Those programs allowed the general public to address letters and care packages to "any servicemember," and those items would in turn be delivered to military people serving overseas. "First, they've got the electronic 'any servicemember' programs," Eichholz said. "Also, you can support the United Services Organization and the Red Cross. Both organizations go overseas to help and support the troops. You can also help by supporting the various aid societies." Audit agency ensures efficient use of resources [2003-02-06] WASHINGTON -- A recent reorganization of the Air Force Audit Agency will help it ensure the service is making the most efficient use of its resources, Pentagon officials said this week. The agency is responsible for providing Air Force leaders with auditing services, the results of which let officials at all levels know if their unit is meeting its own goals, said Kenneth Gregory, deputy auditor general. "We serve all levels of the Air Force management and provide independent, objective and constructive evaluations," Gregory said. "We could look at financial activities in the Air Force, or we could look at program results. What we are really looking at is how well the Air Force is executing the programs that have been established, are they on track to achieve the objective results that have been set?" The reorganization creates three audit "centers of excellence" for performing Air Force-wide audits, Gregory said. The acquisition and logistics audits directorate at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is responsible for audits in supply, maintenance, acquisition, competitive sourcing, foreign military sales, research and development, and test and evaluation. The financial and systems audits directorate at March Air Reserve Base, Calif., focuses on financial management, financial support, information systems development, information systems security and communications. The support and personnel audits directorate at Brooks City-Base, Texas, assumed audit responsibilities for work in the personnel, training, services, health care, air and space operations, and engineering and environmental areas. Audits assist the Air Force in ensuring funds are spent efficiently and effectively, Gregory said. "In the past decade, the auditor general's office has identified an average of $1 billion a year where the Air Force could potentially redirect funds to better meet mission requirements," he said. "For example, audits can help ensure the Air Force is buying the right spare parts, in the appropriate quantities and at the best value price." Auditors monitor contracts to determine whether the Air Force receives goods and services at the right price, quantity and quality. Also, auditors continually monitor Air Force funds to ensure obligations of those funds are valid and in compliance with fiscal law requirements. In 2002, the auditor general's office more than doubled the $1 billion average, discovering nearly $2.4 billion the Air Force could put to better use. "It was a very significant year for us," Gregory said. To put that number in perspective, those funds amount to approximately 2.4 percent of the overall Air Force budget for fiscal 2003 -- around $107 billion. The total cost for providing the auditing work to the Air Force, said Mike Barbino, assistant deputy auditor general, comes to around $67 million a year -- a 35:1 return on investment. Software improves accuracy, quickens air war planning [2003-02-07] WASHINGTON -- A new technology designed to save time and reduce errors in air warfare planning will make its debut in Southwest Asia -- if the United States moves to disarm Iraq. The master air attack plan toolkit is a Web-based software application developed to help war planners in an air operations center produce a master air attack plan. The MAAP is the foundation for the air tasking order -- essentially the marching orders for fighter, attack and bomber aircraft in theater. In years past, computers have played a more extensive role in the process of producing the MAAP. But largely, the process still involved a lot of manual information shuffling -- grease pencils and transparencies, paper maps and printouts. The process, said the commander of the Air Force's Command and Control Battlelab at Hurlburt Field, Fla., was daunting. "The idea for this started with the Persian Gulf War and with Bosnia while preparing the master air attack plan," said Col. Jon Krenkel. "That process was very manual and very labor intensive. You would have to take a complete set of targets and a complete set of assets including airplanes available, the munitions that they had, where they were coming from, where they had to go to, and try to tie all that together in a coherent logical manner." The battlelab is a small technical community responsible for finding innovative ways to improve Air Force command and control support of joint operations. According to Krenkel, the lab developed the MAAP toolkit in response to the difficulties of creating it manually. "What we have done is take a software tool called the Web Enabled Temporal Analysis System and added some business rules," Krenkel said. "That enabled us to do everything that used to be done by hand and with yellow 'stickies,' and do it instead with a computer." The toolkit looks into existing real-time databases provided by other AOC cells. Those include, among other things, weather information, theater maps, lists of available aircraft, lists of available munitions and lists of potential targets provided by the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance communities. These databases are updated continuously and the MAAP toolkit produces a near real-time visual representation of them on screen. In a typical scenario, Krenkel said, the toolkit might display a map of the theater. Using a list of coordinates provided by the ISR community, the toolkit would highlight those targets on the map. To the side would be separate windows containing lists of available aircraft and available munitions. Beneath the map would be another window displaying "packages" -- pairings of multiple aircraft with select munitions. Planners use the MAAP toolkit to build packages by dragging and dropping assets, aircraft and munitions from one menu to the other, Krenkel explained. Then they can assign packages, a time and a target. As a target is assigned to a package, its color changes on the map. As aircraft are assigned to a package, their numbers are deducted from the availability lists. One benefit of the MAAP toolkit is that it eliminates the potential for errors, said Lt. Col. Douglas Combs, chief of concepts execution division for the battlelab. "You are basically taking the human out of the loop," Combs said. "You don't have the opportunity for error, you are just manipulating (data), putting it into a different package and sending it on its way. If it is correct in the database, then it is correct on the other end." Besides reducing errors, the speed at which the MAAP can be completed is also improved, Combs said. "That's what we realized at 2002 Joint Expeditionary Forces Experiment at Nellis Air Force Base, (Nev.)," Combs said. "We were able to take a 24-hour cycle, 12 hours for MAAP and 12 hours for ATO production, and run them concurrently. Pretty much by the end of the exercise we were getting them done in, from start to finish, around eight hours." The process of reviewing the final MAAP to ensure it is really what war planners were looking for is also improved by the MAAP toolkit, he said. The toolkit allows users to watch the entire plan unfold like a film, Combs said. Animated aircraft on the screen move slowly across the map toward their target. Each is "launched" to coordinate with their scheduled takeoff times and moves across the screen in sync with all the other aircraft. Additionally, each moves at a speed commensurate with its real-world speed. Planners can watch their plan played out on screen before it is turned into an ATO and sent out to units. Krenkel said he believes it will perform equally well in a real world situation as it did at the JEFX. "This (use in Southwest Asia) would be first time this system will be used in an actual combat situation," he said. "But we are confident it will perform well if the need arises." Unit commanders get more control of leave program [2003-02-14] RANDOLPH AIR FORCE BASE, Texas -- A recent policy change returns the authority to unit commanders to approve permissive temporary duty and terminal leave of more than 90 days. The Air Force's current instruction on military leave requires members wanting a combination of permissive TDY and terminal leave of more than 90 days to seek approval at group or wing level. It is that portion of Air Force Instruction 36-3003 that will be modified, said Master Sgt. Donald Taylor, Air Force leave program manager at the Air Force Personnel Center here. "Instead of pushing approval paperwork up to the wing commander," Taylor said, "this policy change puts that approval authority back down to the unit commander." Permissive TDY, often granted in conjunction with terminal leave, is leave granted at the discretion of a commander to retiring airman and some separating airmen to look for a new home or job, Taylor said. Terminal leave is simply a period of regular leave that ends on the same day as a person's separation or retirement date. The current policy will not actually be reworded to reflect the change. Instead, Taylor explained, portions of the current instruction will be deleted. "The leave program has always been the unit commander's responsibility," Taylor said. "By taking those sections out of the AFI, it puts the entire program back on the unit commander, where we feel it should be." The change is necessary because an increasing number of Air Force people are reaching retirement or separation dates with large amounts of accrued leave. That can happen when individuals are sent on long deployments where taking leave is not possible, Taylor said. They return from such a deployment and expect to take all their leave, along with some permissive TDY, before leaving the military. However, when airmen accrue significant leave by not taking it as it is given to them, it constitutes a misuse of the benefits Congress has given to servicemembers, he said. "Congress' intent is for people to use leave as they accrue it," Taylor said. "If you look at the AFI, it highly recommends that everybody take at least a 14-day leave period for rest and relaxation each year. Those other 16 days should be taken intermittently throughout the year as needed. We shouldn't have people with 30 or 60 or 90 days on the books, but we do." Airmen are normally permitted to have up to 60 days of leave "on the books" at the end of each fiscal year -- Sept. 30. People with more than 60 days of leave accrued typically lose those extra days on Oct. 1. Exceptions to that policy include people who had been directly supporting contingency operations. In these cases, they may apply for special leave accrual to restore up to 90 days of accrued leave. Any leave approved in excess of 60 days under this program must be taken within three fiscal years. Another option for people approaching separation or retirement dates with more leave than they will be able to take is to sell back leave, Taylor said. But they may sell only a total of 60 days of leave back to the government during their career. Group investigates Air Force sexual assault policies [2003-02-21] WASHINGTON -- Several members of a working group created by the secretary of the Air Force to review the service's sexual assault policies began gathering information here Feb. 19. Dr. James G. Roche recently directed the Air Force's general counsel to lead the group looking at how the service deals with sexual assault at the officer training programs, with particular emphasis on the Air Force Academy. The group will report their findings and recommendations to the secretary and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper. "The intent of the working group is to provide the secretary of the Air Force the information he needs to put in place whatever new policies and programs are necessary that will support both human dignity and basic justice," said Air Force spokesperson Valerie L. Burkes at the Pentagon. While the academy has had a program in place to address such issues since 1993, recent cadet complaints suggested a review is now appropriate, Burkes said. According to the school's commandant of cadets, when dealing with sexual assault, the academy's programs begin with prevention. "Prevention is truly the heart of our program," Brig. Gen. S. Taco Gilbert III said. "Although victim support is an essential part and has received a lot of attention as of late, we focus a lot of our attention on prevention, and that starts on day one at the academy." Students are given a booklet on their first day titled "Wing Tips," essentially their first schoolbook while at the institution. Last summer, information was added to the book so that the first page discusses sexual harassment and discrimination, Gilbert said. On the second page is a cadets' "bill of rights" which delves further into inappropriate requests and unwanted sexual advances. First-year human relations and sexual assault education programs at the academy range from general information about sexual assault and awareness, to a class titled "Street Smarts," where cadets learn how not to be a victim. If those precautions fail to prevent a sexual assault from taking place, the academy presents a wide variety of avenues for reporting the alleged crime, the general said. "There are a variety of means where a cadet can report harassment, sexual assault or rape," Gilbert said. "It depends on the individual cadet and their preferences as to which avenue they want to take. "If they desire to go talk to a chaplain, we have chaplains available. If they desire to talk to a medical professional, they can go to the medical group and we have medical professionals available. If they desire to talk to a professional counselor, we have those available," he said. Beyond the emotional and physical support programs, Gilbert said the academy is committed to providing justice for cadets who fall victim to sexual crimes. "A victim can go through their chain of command, or to the security forces, or the Air Force Office of Special Investigations to report those problems," Gilbert said. "In those cases where women want to prosecute, I will always investigate. When there is evidence, I will always take the harshest possible action I can as a commander because this is an important issue to me." Burkes echoed the general's words, saying the Air Force has zero tolerance for sexual assault. "We encourage victims to report incidents so they can get the support and care they need and, consistent with justice, offenders can be dealt with appropriately," she said. Protocol, aide de camp special duties move [2003-02-27] WASHINGTON -- By May, the special-duty positions of protocol officer and aide de camp will become regular duty as part of the Air Force services career field. Those officers holding these positions will gain a new Air Force specialty code -- 34M -- services April 30. The change is part of an Air Force move to integrate some special-duty positions with larger and somewhat similar career fields, said the chief of education and training for the services career field at the Pentagon. "Particularly with protocol, you often work with the honor guard, with nonappropriated funding issues and with the club on a regular basis," Maj. Tony Millican said. "So many of the things protocol deals with already involve services. Also, for aides de camp, they regularly work with lodging, clubs and the base protocol offices in their efforts to support general officers." The move provides the resources of an established career field to the hiring authorities of protocol and aide de camp positions, Millican said. After the integration, the services assignment manager at the Air Force Personnel Center at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas, will become responsible for recommending officers to fill protocol and aide de camp positions, with many of those officers eventually coming from the services career field. "By integrating protocol and aide de camp with services, we've provided a regular growth track for the officers who will become protocol officers or aides de camp," Millican said. The services community recently created a training course for new protocol officers. The one-week course is held at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, and covers, among other things, ceremonies, funding, meetings, conferences, flightline protocol and protocol in the deployed environment. "This course, developed by protocol officers from Air Force major commands, is the first of its kind," Millican said. "Each command's chief of protocol provided substantial input to the course." Another benefit of the integration is that other career fields will no longer routinely give up their own officers to fill protocol and aide de camp positions, Millican said. "The way it has worked in the past is that other career fields have felt taxed by the obligation to fill protocol positions in addition to their own requirements," Millican said. "They had to take those officers 'out of hide,' so to speak. Those career fields will be relieved now that they won't routinely lose those officers to fill protocol positions." Millican said there are 135 protocol positions and 31 aide de camp positions to fill Air Force-wide. In order to fill most of those positions, the services community will need to increase the size of its pool of officers. "Long term, we anticipate that accessions and voluntary cross flows will provide services with enough officers to fill all of the positions," he said. "Before the integration, there were 293 services officer positions. After the integration there will be around 459." Air Force discusses infrastructure budget with Senate [2003-03-05] WASHINGTON -- Congressional testimony by the assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, environment and logistics March 4 included plans for sustaining overseas facilities and support of new missions and weapons systems. But, Nelson F. Gibbs' presentation to a Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on military construction highlighted more than just the structures needed to keep planes in the air and their support mechanisms in place. Quality-of-life initiatives such as dormitories and base housing improvements needed to sustain hundreds of thousands of men and women in blue were on the docket as well. "Our budget request reflects the Air Force's continuing commitment to taking care of its people and their families," Gibbs said. "Their welfare is a critical factor to overall Air Force combat readiness. The family housing program, dormitory program and other quality-of-life initiatives reflect a commitment by the Air Force to provide its people with the facilities they deserve." Monies requested in the fiscal 2004 budget include the construction of more than 2,000 family housing units at 18 bases. The funding also will be used to improve about 1,500 housing units at an additional eight bases and will support the privatization of nearly 7,000 housing units at another seven bases. The budget also includes substantial funding for the Air Force's efforts to improve housing for unaccompanied airmen. "To improve the quality of life of the Air Force unmarried junior enlisted members, the Air Force is requesting $200 million for its fiscal 2004 dormitory program which consists of nine enlisted dormitories in stateside bases and two at overseas bases," Gibbs said. Quality-of-life improvements in the proposed budget also include provisions for fitness centers at six Air Force installations worldwide. In addition, Gibbs said, sustainment of facilities overseas makes up about 11 percent of the total Air Force physical infrastructure. The budget request includes repairs and upkeep for facilities in both the European and Pacific theaters -- 22 projects with a total cost of more than $170 million. Also included in the proposal was $273 million to fund infrastructure construction for new or relocated missions, including support for the F/A-22 Raptor and the C-17 Globemaster III programs. Construction of infrastructure for other weapons systems, those that are either new to the Air Force or are transitioning to another facility, is also included in the budget. Such systems include the Global Hawk, the C-130J, the Joint Strike Fighter, and combat search and rescue support for Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz. AQ implementing force development [2003-03-06] WASHINGTON -- A milestone was reached when the Air Force's first officer development team met recently at the Pentagon. The teams are a central part of implementing the Air Force's Total Force Development concept. The concept is outlined in the November edition of the Chief's Sight Picture, said Lt. Col. Mark Hays, chief of the scientist and engineer function management team at the Pentagon. The office of the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition is responsible for the service's scientists and engineers. Office officials convened a panel recently to discuss the career paths of scientists in the rank of lieutenant colonel. The 10 senior officers who sat on the panel were pulled from the Air Force-wide acquisition community and included studies and analysis scientists, operations research scientists, behavioral scientists, physicists and a chemist. The effort drew the praise of the executive agent for the deputy chief of staff for personnel's Force Development implementation plan. "As part of making force development happen, the acquisition community has consistently been on the leading edge," said Lt. Col. Richard McGivern. "The pioneering work that AQ is doing is incredibly valuable to helping the rest of the functional communities hit the ground running." Hays agreed, adding that the knowledge and experience of senior officers is paramount to the process. "Having seasoned senior officers provide career advice to ... junior officers is key to ensuring the officers' careers take them where they want to go and to where the Air Force needs them to go," Hays said. The teams, generally one for each Air Force specialty, consist of panels of senior officers who provide guidance to the development process. An element of the development teams is the assignment teams, so they are integral to this process, Hays said. The overall objective is to best meet the needs of the Air Force while working to meet those of the individual, he added. "Basically, an officer, working with his or her chain of supervision, is going to have a form they fill out, an enhanced preference worksheet," Hays said. "Eventually, it will come to an officer development team who will look at the officer's records, evaluate them, and then give the chain of supervision and the officer personalized feedback on their development." This will provide people ample opportunity to discuss their goals with their leadership, he said. "The critical thing is to complete the entire feedback loop between the individual, chain of supervision and the development team. In the past, we were not getting this done," Hays said. "The Air Force has requirements for majors, for lieutenant colonels, for colonels and for generals. We have the responsibility to develop people to fill those roles. The development teams are going to do just that." Officers should decide early in their careers if they want to become Air Force leaders or if they want to become technical experts in their field, Hays said. Helping officers make those decisions is a key role of the development teams. "If an individual rolls in as a physicist and says, 'Great, I'm an officer and I want to be a senior officer,' we need that officer to know that if the track he or she may be on is too narrow, too specific or too deep within their field, they are probably going to max out at lieutenant colonel," Hays said. "The development teams will tell them that they may need to get that doctorate degree, or branch out into management and strive for leadership positions and to do things where you work with people. You must take paths to develop yourself. That's how you will reach your goal." Air Force officials state that all Air Force career fields will have development teams in place by December. The exact scope of what the development teams will do is still being decided, McGivern said. Similar programs for civilian, enlisted and Reserve personnel are currently being developed using the knowledge gained by the officers. Memo serving as officer career guide [2003-03-07] WASHINGTON -- A recent memorandum from the secretary of the Air Force regarding the selection process for general officers could very well serve as a guide to all officers -- regardless of rank -- as they chart out their careers. The memorandum is one of a series of initiatives designed to help explain how officials intend to incorporate deliberate force development throughout the Air Force. In the memorandum, Dr. James G. Roche discussed the instructions he gives to promotion boards before they consider an individual for promotion to brigadier or major general. He asked all Air Force officers to consider those requirements set out in the instructions. "As I was reviewing the instructions for a recent general officers board, it occurred to me that you might be interested in what I was telling a board about the kind of officers that should become generals," the secretary said in the memorandum. "I encourage you to discuss this with your mentors." Among the qualities the secretary looks for are a proven ability to be proactive rather than reactive, a breadth of career experiences and an understanding of the expeditionary air and space force concept. In addition, he said, general officer selectees are those known for making things happen. "The Air Force needs officers who can conceptualize, chart strategies and formulate policies, as opposed to merely organizing solutions to problems," Roche said. "The board should find those officers who provided the direction and force that shaped outcomes rather than reacted successfully to a series of events." The secretary also stressed the need for officers to possess a variety of backgrounds, strengths and levels of operational and technical expertise. Such a background includes experience in administrative, support and technical positions. For line officers, joint-duty experience is a significant factor. And where appropriate, he explained, command experience remained an important consideration. He stressed that the Air Force focus on force development will help meet requirements for these leaders and better meet the developmental needs. "For those eligible to command, demonstrated performance as a commander is, and will continue to be, a key factor in selection for advancement," Roche said. Finally, the secretary identified a keen understanding of and commitment to the expeditionary air and space force concept as an important trait to have. In particular, he said, officers vying for general must be able to explain the value of air and space capabilities, must have an understanding of the Air Force's contribution to overall national security and must understand each Air Force individual's contribution to the overall EAF concept. "An understanding of the full spectrum of expeditionary air and space force and air and space operation is a cornerstone for selection to general officer grade ... the Air Force needs general officers that can lead the Air Force through the evolutionary change as an air and space force," the secretary said. "To support this effort, the Air Force needs leaders who ... don't just do, but who also can conceptualize what needs to be done." Those potential leaders can be identified in part as officers who are comfortable with change, who are creative and who are flexible, Roche added. "Above all, promotion boards look for officers with a commitment to air and space power and the Air Force as an institution, rather than a particular organization or community within it." Child-care test program provides peace of mind [2003-03-11] WASHINGTON -- Airmen who use base child-care facilities no longer need to take a day off of work when their children are too sick to stay with others. A test program began recently at 25 Air Force installations designating a special-care provider for children who are mildly ill -- children who would, under Air Force rules, not be allowed to stay in base child-care facilities with healthy children. "In the past, parents have had to either take leave or find another care setting and pay additional costs when their children had a mild illness," said Beverly Houston, family member program specialist in the Air Force services directorate at the Pentagon. "This program will allow the parent to still perform their military duty and avoid the cost of additional child-care." Under the program, a private-care provider at each base was selected by the family child-care panel and specially trained to deal with mildly ill children. Additionally, during the selection process, the Air Force looked first to those providers who already had special skills. "We looked for people who may be a registered nurse or another specialized provider," Houston said. When children who are already in base child-care become sick, their parents pick them up and take them to the special-care provider until they are well enough to be in their regular child-care setting again. Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., is one of the first Air Force installations to begin the program. Parents who took advantage of it were happy with the care and convenience provided. "I am glad I could bring my child," said Staff Sgt. Mindy Sarratt, one of the first users of the program at Keesler AFB. "The mildly ill care provider is great with my children and makes me feel comfortable leaving them in her care." Col. Lyndsay Stauffer, a first time user of the Keesler program, had similar compliments. "This brings me peace of mind," Stauffer said. If the program proves successful during the five-month test phase and additional funding is approved, Air Force services will expand the program to all installations where it is needed. The other test bases for the program include Andrews AFB, Md.; Bolling AFB, D.C.; Edwards AFB, Calif.; Elmendorf AFB, Alaska; Hickam AFB, Hawaii; Hulburt Field, Fla. (also serving Eglin AFB, Fla.); Kadena Air Base, Japan; Kirtland AFB, N.M.; Lackland AFB, Texas; Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England; Langley AFB, Va.; Little Rock AFB, Ark.; MacDill AFB, Fla.; McChord AFB, Wash.; McGuire AFB, N.J.; Misawa AB, Japan; Nellis AFB, Nev.; Peterson AFB, Colo.; Ramstein AB, Germany; Scott AFB, Ill.; Tinker AFB, Okla.; Travis AFB, Calif.; Vandenberg AFB, Calif.; and Yokota AB, Japan. Women aviators gather for film premier [2003-03-12] ARLINGTON, Va. -- More than 200 people gathered at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery on March 10 to view the premier of the film "Above & Beyond: 100 Years of Women In Aviation." Among those in attendance were Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper and Lt. Gen. Leslie F. Kenne, deputy chief of staff for warfighting integration, who served as key speaker at the event. The film chronicles the contributions of women to aviation from 1903 to the present and highlights such contributors to aviation as Katharine Wright, sister of the Wright brothers; Eileen Collins, the first female space shuttle commander; and the more than 1,000 World War II Women Airforce Service Pilots. The premier of the film, part of a year-long celebration leading up to the 100-year anniversary of the first successful powered flight, also coincides with the Women's History Month. Kenne, who has civilian flying experience, began by telling the crowd that she was honored to be part of the festivities. "I'm really pleased to be part of the centennial of flight program and to introduce tonight's screening," Kenne said. "In the film you will see women of varied backgrounds, races, economic backgrounds, some young and some not so young. You will see that at times women had to overcome barriers to reach the same goal they shared with many men -- the passion to fly. It is not surprising that we here tonight honor the women in World War II and others in the field of aviation." The World War II women aviators Kenne spoke of were the Women Airforce Service Pilots. Between 1942 and 1944, more than 1,000 women flew military aircraft inside the United States to compensate for a shortage of male pilots -- pilots who had gone overseas to fight in World War II. "These women, the WASP, who came from all types of backgrounds, responded in a time of national emergency due to love of their country and passion to fly," Kenne said. "During their time, the WASP delivered more than 12,000 aircraft and logged over 60 million miles of flying." Nearly two dozen WASP were in attendance at the premier of the film, including Dorothy Lucas, whose duties during the war included towing aerial targets. "I towed targets for the male cadets," Lucas said. "There was an enlisted man in the back seat, a young boy like I was a young girl -- and this target was on the end of a cable that weighed about 600 pounds, so you couldn't do any acrobatics with all that weight back there. This boy had to unroll the thing on the cable and it went way out the back of the ship. The target was a flag, and the cadets made their passes at the flag. That's how they learned aerial gunnery." Lucas said she joined up with the WASP out of duty to country. "I was here in Washington, working at the Pentagon and going to night school," Lucas said. "I had two brothers in the service. Everybody was in uniform. I wanted to do something." Betty Shipley was another WASP who attended the premier. Shipley joined because of her fascination with flying. "At the entrance to Riverside, Calif., there was a bridge," Shipley said. "When I was 12 years old, a man had his wife stand on that bridge, and he flew under that bridge with an airplane. That really impressed me, and that is what made me want to fly -- that and the fact that my brother was a Navy pilot." During her stint as a WASP, Shipley flew several aircraft. "The biggest one I flew was an AT-6," Shipley said. "When we were in training, every class was different. We were the first ones to fly an AT-6. We had started with a 120-horsepower plane and then we went to a Steerman 220-horsepower plane. Finally we jumped to an AT-6, which was a 650-horsepower plane." The plane must have seemed larger than life to Shipley, who had had been formally trained as a schoolteacher. "It was a big airplane, and I was little," Shipley said. "It took two cushions under me and two cushions behind me to reach full right rudder. I was so small." Later, Shipley was able to put to good use her formal skills as a schoolteacher. She trained pilots with the 1st Mexican Fighter Group in aircraft instrumentation. Stories like those of Shipley and Lucas are featured in the film, which will be shown as a regular feature at the WIMSA Memorial during March. Extending beyond Women's History Month, the film will be part of a series of related centennial of flight activities. Air Force leaders explain effect of encroachment [2003-03-14] WASHINGTON -- Two Air Force leaders testified before Congress on March 13 about the effects of environmental encroachment on the service's mission. In separate testimonies, Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Robert H. "Doc" Foglesong and Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Installations, Environment and Logistics Nelson F. Gibbs explained recent proposed changes to environmental laws by Department of Defense agencies. Those changes ask for clarification in certain laws as they apply to the military and are intended in part as a way to deal with environmental encroachment. Environmental encroachment occurs when the military's ability to perform its mission is affected by environmental laws, Gibbs told the House Armed Services Committee subcommittee on readiness. "Currently, 78 federally listed, threatened and endangered species occupy substantial portions of the approximately 9 million acres of Air Force property," Gibbs wrote. In one example, at the Barry M. Goldwater Range in Arizona, the Air Force monitors the movements of the endangered Sonoran Pronghorn. If that particular species is spotted near a target , the live missions projected for that target are diverted or canceled. Other forms of environmental encroachment occur when compliance with clean air laws means new missions cannot come to an Air Force installation, or when commercial and residential development on properties around an installation are cause for the Air Force to completely change its existing mission, Gibbs said. Gibbs emphasized to the subcommittee members that the service is doing its part to preserve the environment. He explained that environmental stewardship and the Air Force mission can, and do, coexist. "The Air Force is a very good guardian of our natural resources, and we believe this is not a case of competing, but rather of working together rationally to ensure that we get the best of both," Gibbs said. The general later echoed that sentiment to the subcommittee when he explained the balance between the Air Force mission and the need to be environmentally conscious. "I think we have been good stewards of our environment," Foglesong said, "bBut we also have this balancing act of trying to be good stewards of readiness for our sons and daughters. I don't see those two things as incompatible." To ensure Air Force pilots are mission ready, the service must make sure adequate training ranges are available, he said. "I will say that our ranges are absolutely fundamental, in fact even critical, to our success," Foglesong said. "I was recently in the Persian Gulf and had been talking with one of the fighter pilots who had just returned from a mission and had just dropped a 500-pound bomb on a gun emplacement that had been shooting at him. "He told me, 'General, this isn't my first rodeo.' He had had the opportunity to drop 500-pound bombs before and had trained to do this. The procedures and techniques that he used on our ranges were incredibly useful to him. His story helped me focus on why our range spaces are absolutely critical to us." Lack of clarity in current environmental laws has the potential to put range use, and consequently pilot readiness, at risk, Foglesong added. "Our range space is under scrutiny every day," Foglesong said. "Unless we have some clarification in the current status of the laws, our concern is that we will shrink and shrink and shrink, when we actually need the ranges we have now and possibly even more." Survey will help servicemembers, families [2003-03-17] WASHINGTON -- A survey designed to gauge the Air Force's success in building communities is set for distribution in early April. The 2003 Community Assessment Survey will be sent out servicewide, said the Air Force's director of family advocacy research and the project officer for the survey. He added that the Air Force will use the survey results to learn how to help its people better. "We want to find out what people really need and what would help them make their communities and their lives in the Air Force better," said Maj. James D. Whitworth. "The assessment goes out to active-duty members and to their spouses as well as some Reserve members and spouses." Variations of the assessment have been conducted once every 24 to 30 months since 1993. This year, the total number of people who will be asked to take the assessment is around 1,800 at each of 85 Air Force installations worldwide. Those taking the survey will be randomly chosen, and the survey is completely anonymous. Questions on the assessment, Whitworth said, cover basic needs by asking about "key areas necessary for building strong communities." "These areas include a person's sense of community, family adaptation, safety, spiritual well-being, health and well-being, economic well-being and preparedness," he said. Questions on the assessment ask about the availability of community resources and about how connected, or a part of the community, people feel they are. For example, one question asks if people feel there are enough places on their installation to spend time with co-workers after duty hours. Another asks about relationships with supervisors. Assessment results, Whitworth said, will not fall on deaf ears. In fact, bases have used past results to make changes in the services they provide on base and even in the services and options available to people off base. "There was one (installation) where they identified that spouse employment was a real problem," Whitworth said. "The spouses had indicated on the community assessment that there were just no jobs, and so the base leadership was able to target that issue. The installation was able to get some businesses to relocate to (its) installation and as a result there was a 15 percent increase in spouse employment from one assessment to the next." Whitworth said the key to the success of the assessments is that Air Force leaders will be better able to help their people help themselves. "We've found the most powerful way to help people is to help their informal networks -- to help people to establish more and better friendships, to help them to get to know their neighbors and get involved in their community," Whitworth said. For example, he said, an Air Force community in Germany used the survey to help alleviate the isolation of younger, enlisted families who lived in apartment-style homes. "What the team did was to set up picnics and other activities in the stairways and in the hallways of those apartment buildings," he said. "That solution helped create more friendships among the people who lived there." Active-duty people will be notified by e-mail, while spouses will be notified by postal mail. Airmen can complete the assessment on a designated Web site, while spouses have the option of completing it on paper. The effectiveness of the assessment depends totally on participants' willingness to accurately complete it, Whitworth said. It is designed to take less than 20 minutes to complete. "Our goal is to make improvements in building stronger communities without guessing, so we need to know people's thoughts and needs," he said. "If people don't tell us what they need or identify areas where we can improve or what the problems are, it will be much harder to reach our goal. We urge all active duty and family members who receive these assessments to take the time to complete the assessment and to help us strengthen our Air Force communities. This assessment is their chance to do that." Official discusses BRAC with Congress [2003-03-19] WASHINGTON -- In congressional testimony March 18, the assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, environment and logistics discussed the service's successes and roadblocks in dealing with the base realignment and closure process. Nelson F. Gibbs told the Senate Appropriations Committee subcommittee on military construction that the Air Force is proud of its record working on the BRAC process. "There have been 22 closures and 19 realignments," Gibbs said. "Over 87,000 acres will eventually be transferred back to local communities. Over 60 percent of those acres have already been transferred and another 30 percent of them are currently in long-term lease." Gibbs' testimony, and the testimony of other service assistant secretaries, was given as the Department of Defense moves toward a fifth round of BRAC. "We believe past BRAC practices have been a success, and we believe that we are prepared to move forward with the 2005 round for the disposal of properties in a very expeditious manner," Gibbs said. However, he said, the process used to transfer land out of the Air Force's possession has made the transfer slow. The process requires the Air Force to first check with other military departments to see if they need the land and, after that, to check with other federal agencies. "In the case of transference, one of the largest delays ... has been in dealing with other federal agencies," Gibbs said. "Then, moving on to the local agencies, the things that have caused us the greatest difficulty are cases where the local community has been unable to come to a conclusion relatively quickly as to what they want done with the properties. "In this business, the longer it takes, the more difficult it becomes as positions become entrenched," he said. Gibbs also discussed the Air Force ideology and methodology for cleaning up any environmental pollution before property is transferred out of the service's control. "We have entered into an agreement in Colorado where, effectively, the cleanup is being undertaken by a private contractor," Gibbs said. "This is a methodology that has turned out to be very effective there, and I think we will find it to be used more and more." The Air Force is using performance-based contracting when it comes to the cleanups, Gibbs said. In such a process, everybody involved agrees on what the outcome of a cleanup should look like, as opposed to how it should actually be done. Leaders tell Congress relationships key in war on terrorism [2003-03-21] WASHINGTON -- Leaders from the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve Command spoke to members of Congress on March 19 on the personnel issues their organizations face in fighting the global war on terrorism. Lt. Gen. Daniel James III, the director of the Air National Guard, told the Senate Armed Services Committee subcommittee on military personnel that relationships were key to the success the Guard has had during recent call-ups. "The close relationships that we have maintained with our members, their families and their employers are key to their successes and reliability during the global war on terrorism," James said. Family relationships, James said, were of critical importance. "With deployments at historically high levels, we must also keep a watchful eye over the families they leave behind," James said. "The post 9-11 challenges and operations tempo of the Air National Guard not only increased our reliance on our people, but ultimately placed increased pressure on families. We continue to recognize the importance of families as key tenets of readiness and retention." In the same vein, Maj. Gen. John J. Batbie Jr., vice commander of the Air Force Reserve Command, told committee members the Reserve component has been working over the past 12 years to improve its relationship with servicemembers and their families, helping them deal with the stress of deployment. "Since Desert Storm, we have added in a bunch of full-time folks and part-time people we can call up," Batbie said. "Last year we called up 29 family support people to manage some of those issues. We decided to team up the medical, family support and chaplain people to be there when those deployed to Afghanistan started coming home -- to be there should any issues pop up." James thanked committee members for passing legislation to increase accession bonuses to $8,000 and extend the usage period for the Montgomery GI Bill to 14 years, two measures which he said help the Guard with recruiting and retention efforts. "We believe that both of these programs pay and will pay the Air National Guard significant dividends in the years to come," James said. At the same time, James said that the Guard is facing a challenge in retaining mid-level airmen -- those skilled servicemembers who are between six and 12 years in their careers. He told panel members an increase in retention bonuses may help keep them in. "Our retention is the lowest in the mid-career airmen category," James said. "Currently, reenlistment bonuses in critical specialties are capped at $5,000. We believe a more appropriate limit will be $10,000. This will help us to sustain our readiness posture for rapid mobilization and deployment requirements in today's operations tempo." Committee members asked James about the status of guardsmen at Robins Air Force Base, Ga., where airmen and equipment from the Air National Guard's 116th Bomb Wing and Air Combat Command's 93rd Air Control Wing have come together to form the 116th ACW, marking the first time guardsmen and active duty units have been paired in such a way. While there are still issues to be worked out, such as legal chains of command and ownership of aircraft, the plan is working very well, James said. "This is the first time that the ANG and the active component have combined in what we call the blended unit, and it has been successful," James said. "We have had to coordinate a number of different issues because it is a first time, but I find the morale is very high." Air war turns focus to republican guard [2003-03-25] WASHINGTON -- As the U.S.-led war against the Iraqi regime nears the one-week mark, officials from U.S. Central Command said March 25 that coalition air forces have begun narrowing their focus. Maj. Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., CENTCOM director of operations, told reporters during a press briefing at the command's forward headquarters in Qatar that air power forces would redirect their attention to the most elite of Saddam Hussein's military units. "The air component will fly over 1,400 combat and combat support missions over Iraq today, paying particular attention to the Iraqi republican gard," Renuart said. "We will also focus on key regime command and control facilities." In northern Iraq, Kurds have expressed concern about the use of chemical weapons by the Iraqi republican guard and regular army units. Renuart explained that coalition air forces are expending "a fair amount of energy" in an attempt to destroy anything that would adversely affect the Kurds in that region. "Things like multiple-launch rocket systems have been key targets for us in the areas occupied by the regular army and republican guard units in the north," Renuart said. Cumulative efforts to deal with the republican guard elsewhere have also proven effective, Renuart said. "I think we are having a substantial effect," Renuart said. "There are a number of pieces of tanks and artillery pieces and those sorts of things being destroyed. That's happening in hundreds of sorties every day. I think what you will see in the end is that many of those tank revetments are filled with junk, because of the precision and the ability of the air power." The effects of the weather have been somewhat of an obstacle in the coalition's efforts to destroy republican guard targets. Renuart explained that the dynamic nature of the coalition forces have allowed them to overcome that obstacle. "Weather has an impact on the battlefield with high winds, rain and thunderstorms," Renuart said. "Certainly the weather and the blowing sand does effect the (Apache helicopters), but this is an integrated, a synergistic approach. We have the flexibility to be able to refocus additional airpower that can use the kinds of precision weapons that are not hampered by the weather in order to continue to strike these targets. "While we may not have helicopter pressure or ground pressure at a particular point on the battlefield, we continue to balance special and air operations on that force," Renuart said. Additionally, the wide disbursement of the republican guard has not proven to be too great of a challenge, Renuert explained. "In terms of forces being spread out, certainly they are displayed in a wide area," he said. "On the other hand, we have the most sophisticated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in the world. It is working well to give us those locations and allowing us to continue to target." SECDEF: Air strikes not aimed at civilians [2003-03-25] WASHINGTON -- U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld lauded the air coalition's unsurpassed ability to avoid collateral damage during a March 25 press conference in the Pentagon. Speaking directly to Iraqi civilians about the intent of coalition air strikes, the secretary said that there can be no mistake about the coalition's intent. "By now you have seen and know that coalition air strikes are not aimed at you. They are aimed at the regime of Saddam Hussein," Rumsfeld said. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff echoed those comments later in the press conference. "The air campaign is continuing well," said Gen. Richard B. Myers. "We flew nearly 1,000 sorties over Iraq (March 24), most against republican guard units, and conducted close-air support for the ground advancement in the south and the special forces in the west." According to earlier reports by U.S. Central Command officials, similar air strikes were planned for March 25. Coalition forces intended to conduct more than 1,400 sorties against republican guard units and weapon systems that could be used to deliver chemical weapons. According to Rumsfeld, there is no reason to believe the trend will not continue in the future. "We have total dominance of the air," Rumsfeld said. "It is not air superiority -- it is dominance. (The Iraqi military has) not put an airplane up." Pilots say training prepared them for combat [2003-03-26] WASHINGTON -- Pilots flying combat missions over Iraq in recent days are saying that the real-world operations there are validating their years of training. The comments came from a March 26 teleconference in which pilots and other members of the 363rd Air Expeditionary Wing at an undisclosed location described recent operations to reporters here. One KC-10 Extender pilot said that what he is experiencing now is exactly what his training prepared him for. "I have flown some missions during (Operation) Enduring Freedom over Afghanistan, but the pace was not as intensive as it is here," said Maj. Darron, who like the other pilots in the teleconference, asked that his full name be withheld. "Also, there are a lot of airplanes in the sky and more people shooting back here. But we have trained for this. "I've been flying the KC-10 for a long time, and that's what training does. It really mimics what could possibly happen when you get into action or combat, " said Darron, who's deployed from Travis Air Force Base, Calif. In some cases, the training scenarios are actually more difficult than real-world situations, according to Capt. Paul, an F-16 Fighting Falcon pilot deployed from Misawa Air Base, Japan. "Red Flag (a training exercise in Nevada) is a lot more intense than this," Paul said. "At Red Flag, the adversaries were a heck of a lot better." Paul's mission is suppression of enemy air defenses -- knocking out enemy ground-based weaponry such as anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles. "There's been lots of AAA and surface-to-air missiles," Paul said. "And we've been doing lots of suppression of enemy air defenses the last few days. I would say it is a moderate threat. As you have seen on TV, it is pretty thick around Baghdad. But that's the only real threat -- Baghdad." This is Paul's first time flying in actual combat and his first time being fired upon by enemy anti-aircraft weaponry. "It's sort of surreal, sort of nerve racking," he said. "It kind of ticks you off really." But when the weapons do start flying past his wingtips, Paul said he thinks back to his training. "Flying in combat, actually getting to do what you have trained for years and years to do, ... is the real thing," Paul said. "It's not difficult and is a lot more exciting than expected." Experience levels vary in Operation Iraqi Freedom [2003-03-29] WASHINGTON -- The level of experience of Air Force members currently deployed to the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing at an undisclosed location in Southwest Asia runs the gamut, from battle-tested veteran to bright-eyed teenager. But whether they are new to the game or have seen it all before, the mission must go on. Maj. Scott Lambe, an F-16 Fighting Falcon pilot with the South Carolina Air National Guard, has been flying F-16 aircraft for 11 years. He has been to SWA before and says that in terms of what the Iraqis are dishing up for F-16 pilots in Operation Iraqi Freedom, not much has changed. "This is the same type of stuff we have seen before," Lambe said during a teleconference with reporters here March 28. "We are taking fire from the people below, but our group has a lot of experience with this so we keep everything in perspective. We are just working hard to keep our guys safe and to support the guys on the ground." Lambe's mission is the suppression of enemy air defenses. In order to clear a safe flight path for other aircraft, he uses the weapons aboard the F-16CJ aircraft to take out enemy surface-to-air missile sites. He said in the last 11 years, he has seen a lot of changes in the tools available to him to perform his mission. "Back then, we were going after surface-to-air sights with basically dumb bombs," Lambe said. "We were basically looking through our heads-up display to drop the bomb. We've had quite a few improvements. "Now, our airplane is a jack-of-all-trades," he said. "We carry the high-speed anti-radiation missile. Any surface-to-air radar that comes up, we are able to target them (and) suppress them to keep them from targeting our strike package. We are also using the Global Positioning System-guided weapons -- the joint defense attack munitions -- which give us the ability to do precise strikes based on coordinates given to us. There is a tremendous amount of capability with the airplane to do all the roles -- to do escort, to strike targets on the ground and to do the air-to-air mission, should that come up." To date, there has been no need for the air-to-air mission over Iraq. Iraqi air forces have yet to launch any aircraft against coalition aircraft; however, that fact does not keep Lambe from remaining cautious. "They have had a lot of years looking at us and to learn from us," Lambe said. "Whether they are getting smarter or not, we give them the benefit of the doubt. They may still have a lot they haven't shown us yet." While the major is apt to directly engage enemy forces on any given day, Airman 1st Class Shannon Murphy is more likely to view the action from a distance. The 19-year-old native of Washington state works in the wing's command post, fielding messages passed through on the effort against the Iraqi regime. "We are the focal point for the commanders," Murphy said during the same teleconference. "We are the first to know if something is coming our way, and we are the first to get word out to the base." Except for the familiarity with her job that she brought with her, everything she sees in SWA is new to her. When Operation Desert Shield began in 1991, she was 9 years old. "This is my first deployment and essentially (the) first war that I can really remember," she said. Despite the newness of it all, and the horrors and realities associated with war, the airman is able to keep it all in perspective. "My job is not difficult, but it requires quick reaction," Murphy said. "This is very real over here, and very different. But it is a good experience." Coalition air strikes weaken Republican Guard [2003-03-31] WASHINGTON -- Air strikes continue to weaken Iraqi Republican Guard forces, the vice director for operations on the Joint Staff told reporters during a March 31 press briefing at the Pentagon. Army Maj. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal said coalition air forces have used 3,000 precision-guided weapons since March 28, many against the Iraqi Republican Guard. "We have been running a tremendous number of sorties, primarily against the Republican Guard divisions," McChrystal said. "And we are using an awful lot of munitions. U.S. and British aircraft flew nearly 1,000 missions over Iraq on March 30, targeting Republican Guard divisions and command and control facilities, he said. "We are seeing significant degradation." In addition, the general said Republican Guard forces appear to be on the move. "We think they are moving to reinforce other forces that have already been significantly degraded," he said. "We see some very significant weakening and it will reach a tipping point in some of their formations." That point will come when Republican Guard forces have been so decimated that they cease to function as military units, he said. And it does not necessarily require 100 percent of the forces to be destroyed. "Once you start to take a certain percentage of a force like that down, particularly a mechanized or armored force, the systems start to break down -- the resupply systems, the maintenance systems and the command and control," McChrystal said. "It doesn't always require taking a unit down to zero percent to make it ineffective." Congress ponders exchange merger [2003-04-03] WASHINGTON -- Department of Defense leaders met with the House Armed Services Committee subcommittee on total force April 2 to discuss the future of the department's three exchange services. Of specific interest was a potential merger of the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, the Navy Exchange and the Marine Corps Exchange. Recently, DOD officials considered consolidating the three organizations as a potential cost-cutting measure. Lt. Gen. Michael E. Zettler, Air Force deputy chief of staff for installations and logistics, who also serves as the chairman of DOD's Commissary Operating Board, said reducing operational costs is always an important topic for programs that cater to the morale and welfare of military people and their families. In the case of exchange services, there appears to be opportunities to do just that. "We don't need three distribution systems, or three information technology systems," he said. "I think there is an opportunity to continue the benefit for our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, and reduce the cost." According to Zettler, the importance of the benefits provided by exchange services cannot be overstated. First, they provide goods to servicemembers worldwide in places that commercial businesses often cannot go. Second, money from the non-profit exchange services is fed back into local morale, welfare and recreation funds in the form of dividends. But financial projections for all three exchanges predict a reduction in those dividends, he said. And the cost savings generated by consolidating the three exchanges may be one way to get those dividends back on track. "It may not be the only way, and it will be a difficult way," he said. "But it is one way to do that." Army Maj. Gen. Kathryn G. Frost, AAFES commander, believes the consolidation of the three exchanges will succeed, but will require all three services to work together toward a common goal. "I know consolidation can work," Frost said. "Whether or not it will work depends on how we plan and implement it. It has to be a very collaborative effort, and we have to work together to make that happen." Charles S. Abell, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, stressed that there are no immediate plans to make any changes to the way the exchange services operate. Instead, DOD officials will develop a plan over the next 24 months and will then present that plan to Congress for approval, he said. Regardless of whatever decision is made, the goal will remain the same. "That bottom line has to be translated back into dividends that come back to the services in the form of MWR," Zettler said. "The bottom line is to take care of the troops." Air Force discusses information technology with Congress [2003-04-04] WASHINGTON -- Department of Defense leaders met with the House Armed Services Committee subcommittee on terrorism, unconventional threats and capabilities April 3 to discuss the role of information technology on mission capability. "The Air Force is undergoing the most significant transformation in its relatively short history," said John M. Gilligan, the Air Force chief information officer. "This transformation is largely based on how we use information and information technology to increase our operational effectiveness." Examples include increasing the power of older weapons systems, Gilligan said. He cited the B-52 Stratofortress. "In Afghanistan, information technology permitted us to combine precision-guided munitions and rapid target identification to turn the Cold War-era B-52 bomber into an effective platform for performing close-air support for a small number of special forces on the ground," Gilligan said. Gilligan told the subcommittee that information technology does more than improve the effectiveness of every one of the service's warfighting systems. It also ensures efficiency and cost savings when the service deploys. "In support of the (air and space expeditionary force) construct, we deploy forces and equipment worldwide, leaving many of the support functions at home," Gilligan said. "Moving information rather than people reduces the airlift and logistics required, as well as the cost of operations." Another example of the increased efficiency brought on by information technology is the creation of the Air Force Global Combat Support System, which combines more than a hundred IT functions that go beyond personnel issues. "The online capabilities organize over 50 combat logistics services such as aircraft maintenance, status and spare parts ordering and tracking, as well as over 100 self-service capabilities for personnel, pay, medical and other support functions," Gilligan said. "By leveraging commercial Internet technology and changing our operational paradigm, we are getting Air Force members out of the customer service lines and back on the flightline." Gilligan explained to the subcommittee some of the problems the service encounters as a result of its strong dependence on information technology, such as keeping quality people to make the systems work. "Retaining our highly skilled workforce in a competitive industrial market environment is a continuing challenge for us," Gilligan said. "We are using a variety of methods, including bonuses, to retain our experienced personnel. In parallel, we are also looking to leverage industry capability to perform some information technology functions currently performed in-house." Several subcommittee members asked questions regarding how the services are protecting their IT systems from attacks. Of particular concerns were situations where information is compromised and where there is denial of service. The Air Force is finding solutions to these problems, Gilligan told the group. "We continue to work to enhance the tools, processes and personnel skills that we use to protect our systems and networks," Gilligan said. "We know that our adversaries are working hard to exploit vulnerabilities and disrupt our military networks. In 2002, we monitored 4.4 billion suspicious connections -- a fourfold increase over 2001." According to Gilligan, of those 4.4 billion suspicious connections, about 93 actually resulted in a compromise of information or denial of service -- about the same as in 2001. U.S., Poland finalize deal on F-16s [2003-04-22] WASHINGTON -- This month's signing of a military hardware deal with Poland is expected to kick off a long-term relationship between the United States and the former Warsaw Pact nation, according to Air Force officials. On April 18, Polish officials signed a deal to purchase 48 new F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft from the United States, a deal reportedly worth nearly $3.6 billion. But that dollar figure is secondary to the real value of the deal, said the Air Force International Affairs' Europe, NATO and Eurasia division chief. "Yes, a very beneficial side effect of this is the industrial benefits for the ... firms involved," Col. Rod Shaw said. "But this is about access, influence and interoperability for our expeditionary Air Force. When we sell aircraft, support and weapons, that is a means to an end. This aircraft systems sale becomes a centerpiece for a strategic relationship that will span 25 years or more -- the lifespan of this aircraft." Key to that relationship will be opportunities for Poland's military to participate in exercises with the United States and the other 18 NATO nations, Shaw said. Currently, nine nations in that alliance fly the F-16. They include Belgium, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Turkey, Greece and the United States. "We envision that after Poland is proficient at flying and maintaining (the F-16), we would want them to take their operational capability to a new level through participation in exercises like Red Flag and Cope Thunder," Shaw said. Also key to the relationship, and perhaps more important, is the ability for Polish forces to participate in NATO operations, he said. In the past, the militaries of some nations in the alliance could not meet the airpower requirements of the combined forces air component commander. With the new hardware purchase, Poland will be able to meet those requirements. "They won't be there today or tomorrow," Shaw said. "It will take them a while to learn to fly and maintain -- but they won't be limited by the capability of their airplane." For the Polish military, the deal includes more than the actual airframe. Also included is support equipment and training for Polish pilots and maintenance crews. Pilots will be trained by airmen from the Air National Guard's 162nd Fighter Wing at Tucson International Airport, Ariz., Shaw said. Maintainers will also train with 162nd FW airmen and with specialists from the aircraft's manufacturer, Lockheed-Martin. "The concept is a well established one for us called 'training the trainer,'" Shaw said. "We will train the initial cadre of pilots and maintainers, and they will go back and train their follow-on personnel." According to Shaw, the foundations for this deal began seven years ago when the Polish military began looking for a new fighter aircraft. As is typical for such a purchase, the country looked at several options. Sweden and France also offered alternatives -- Sweden with the JAS-39 Gripen and France with the Mirage 2000-5. The United States is expected to deliver the first of 48 Block 52 F-16s in 2006. There will be a total of 36 F-16C models and 12 of the F-16D two-seater models. Space program pioneers meet AF leaders [2003-04-30] BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, D.C. -- The father of the Air Force space program and a key leader in the development of weapons systems such as the Minuteman missile assembled former colleagues here April 23 to 27 for the annual meeting of the "Old Timers." Retired Gen. Bernard A. Schriever led the intercontinental ballistic missile development teams that many credit with keeping the United States one step ahead of the Soviet Union during the Cold War years. This year’s event included a private "staff meeting" for the teams’ members, a briefing on current operations by airmen of the directorate of space operations and integration, and a presentation of certificates by Schriever to the members of the group. Many of the same engineers and scientists who were handpicked by Schriever, including six retired Air Force generals, attended this year’s event and were joined by several leaders of today’s Air Force. Being in the midst of those who paved the way for the Air Force’s current successes -- men and women with legendary names, responsible for historic achievements -- was a remarkable experience, said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper. "It’s a bit intimidating to see these many faces who you're finally able to put names to, names that have followed you around your whole career,” he said. Speaking to the group about recent victories in Afghanistan and Iraq, Jumper said "all that you see is a product of what you do in space. You guys started it all." Schriever, now 92, was hesitant to personally take credit for the early advances, opting instead to recognize his fellow “Old Timers.” "I was fortunate to be with people who got things done,” he said. “It's hard to find anyone to beat what we accomplished. We have one hell of a team, people who can really solve and answer problems. I had the good fortune to have been involved with a number of those early on. “We have what it takes to win." Schriever and his teams of hand-picked engineers and scientists met secretly in an Inglewood, Calif., schoolhouse in 1954 to discuss the direction of their program -- a move designed to avoid detection by potential Soviet spies. They were ultimately responsible for the development of the Atlas, Titan, Thor and Minuteman missile programs, as well as spy and communication satellite programs such as Midas, Corona, Agena and Pioneer. Others attending the reunion included: Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. Lance W. Lord, commander of Air Force Space Command; Gen. Lester Lyles, commander of Air Force Materiel Command; and Maj. Gen. Judd Blaisdell, Air Force director of space operations and integration. Air Force starts assessment survey [2003-05-01] WASHINGTON -- After a short delay because of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the 2003 Air Force Community Assessment survey is under way. According to the director of family advocacy research, the agency responsible for conducting the assessment, the survey is now being sent out to more than 180,000 randomly chosen active-duty and Reserve airmen and their spouses. Maj. James D. Whitworth said Air Force officials will use results from the assessment to learn how to better help airmen and their families. Questions on the assessment are written to help leaders at Air Force installations gain insight into how people feel about their communities and the services provided within those communities, Whitworth said. Airmen can complete the survey via the World Wide Web. Spouses have the option of completing it on the Web or on paper. The assessment will take less than 20 minutes to complete, Whitworth said. According to Whitworth, the effectiveness of the assessment depends on participants’ willingness to accurately complete it. “We want to make improvements in our communities without guessing,” Whitworth said. “We need to know people’s thoughts and needs. If people don’t tell us what they need or what their problems are, we can’t help them. This assessment is their chance to do that." Pin honors parents, bolsters support [2003-05-05] WASHINGTON -- A new program will help airmen honor those who are often their biggest supporters -- their parents. All uniformed airmen can now sign their parents up to receive a new lapel pin. The pins are about three-fourths inch square and feature a silver letter "P" cradled within the Air Force symbol. A personalized letter to the parents from Secretary of the Air Force Dr. James G. Roche and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper will accompany the pins. “We could not protect America’s freedom without the incredible people who are willing to carry on the Air Force tradition,” the letter reads. "As the proud parents of one of those airmen, your support continues to be critical to our ongoing efforts and makes a real difference to our country." "This is a way to build and maintain public support for the global war on terrorism," said Brig. Gen. Edward Tonini, director of Your Guardians of Freedom, the Pentagon office responsible for the parent pin effort. "Demographically, the people most likely to wear the pin with the greatest amount of pride -- to church, to Rotary Club meetings or to the grocery store -- are our parents. "By wearing this pin, parents will let you know of the pride they have in you," Tonini said. "When they wear that pin out, their friends will ask about it. Your parents will tell them about you and your service, and how proud they are of you." Those who would like their parents to receive a pin can sign up at the Your Guardians of Freedom Web site at http://www.yourguardiansoffreedom.com. Signing up will require airmen to enter the names and addresses of up to two parents or parental figures, Tonini said. The program is voluntary and comes at no cost to those participating. The distribution of the parent pin and accompanying letters is the second major effort by the relatively new Your Guardians of Freedom office. The first was the employer pin campaign, started in November 2002, in which pins featuring an "E" and personalized letters are sent to the civilian employers of Air National guardsmen and reservists. Both pin programs are contemporary adaptations of public support campaigns carried out during World War II. The Your Guardians of Freedom program is designed to continue those traditions by ensuring the continued support of Air Force activities by those who do not wear the blue uniform, but stand behind those who do, Tonini said. "Your Guardians of Freedom is an outreach program targeted at what we consider the core constituencies that the Air Force requires to do its work," Tonini said. "If we are going to keep people in the Air Force ... we need programs targeted at their families … and their extended families. In the case of the Reserve and Guard, that also includes civilian employers.” The employer pin program is ongoing, and reservists and guardsmen can still sign their employers up at the Your Guardians of Freedom Web site. "In the Air Force, we tend to use the term 'force multiplier,'" Tonini said. "These programs aren't force multipliers, but rather, support multipliers all around the country.” Air Force nursing corps meeting challenges [2003-05-05] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force assistant surgeon general for nursing services met with the Senate Appropriations Committee subcommittee on defense April 30 to discuss the current state of the nursing corps. "As we vigorously execute our mission at home and abroad, Air Force nurses and enlisted nursing personnel are meeting the increasing challenges with great professionalism and distinction," said Brig. Gen. Barbara Brannon. During her testimony, the general assured senators the Air Force nursing corps is overcoming challenges wherever they occur. One such challenge is the development of a more joint medical effort. "Medical teams from all three services have worked together very smoothly in the operational environment, and the patient hand-offs are virtually seamless," Brannon said. "The teamwork has been phenomenal." Brannon also told senators the Air Force is looking to increase the overall skill level of the nursing corps. Nearly 79 percent of Air Force nurses are company grade officers, she said. To maintain an appropriate number of nurses in the right grade, the Air Force initiated a top down study of the nursing corps. "Early data shows a significant need to increase field grade authorizations," Brannon said. "A byproduct of this increase would be a greater promotion opportunity, bringing it more in line with other Air Force officers. " In regards to retention and recruiting efforts, Brannon said the Air Force fell only 104 nurses below the 3,974 authorized last year -- better than they had expected. She explained the relatively small gap was because of an unusually low rate of separation. Regardless, the nursing corps continues to look for new, more effective recruiting methods, she said. "We are currently working with our sister services to fund an increased accession bonus for a four-year commitment and exploring the feasibility of an accession bonus for nurses who choose a three-year obligation," Brannon said. An increase in nurses within the Air Force also benefits enlisted troops, Brannon said. "We also recognize the need to increase our enlisted medics’ participation in baccalaureate nursing programs," Brannon said. "We are exploring a variety of scholarship and stipend initiatives to make it easier for enlisted personnel to earn a BSN and be commissioned into the nurse corps." Official: Ranges important to success [2003-05-08] WASHINGTON -- Training ranges are vital to the Air Force’s success on the battlefield, Air Combat Command’s chief of ranges, airfields and airspace operations told a congressional committee May 6. Col. Frank DiGiovanni's testimony was part of a fact gathering effort by the House Resources Committee as it considers legislation that will change various environmental laws. If approved, the changes could affect the way Department of Defense officials manage training ranges. "We are constantly upgrading and reconfiguring our ranges," DiGiovanni told committee members. "Prior to Operation Enduring Freedom, we built new target sets that resembled Taliban caves and their encampments. These were used to prepare our aircrew members for combat operations just prior to their deployment to Afghanistan." In another example, DiGiovanni explained how bomber and fighter aircrews used Air Force ranges in Nevada to develop new tactics for use in urban warfare and against Scud missile systems. That training helped prepare pilots for combat in Iraq, DiGiovanni said. "The effectiveness of these tactics was graphically demonstrated when an Air Force (B-1B Lancer) dropped four Joint Direct Attack Munitions on a Baghdad restaurant suspected to be a Saddam Hussein hideout," DiGiovanni said. In both examples, the colonel said the Air Force maintained environmental stewardship using approved natural resource management plans. "In these two examples, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service-approved plans provided us the flexibility to rapidly respond to worldwide contingencies, while protecting threatened and endangered species, through a carefully thought out planning process," DiGiovanni said. DOD officials submitted legislation to Congress called the Range and Readiness Preservation Initiative. The initiative, in part, asks legislators to make environmental laws more specific, along with providing more leeway in how it manages environmental issues on its training ranges critical to military readiness. "Continued access to these national training ranges is essential to our airmen going into combat with the unique confidence that they are the finest trained air force in the world," DiGiovanni said. "Our measure of success is simple: we want a lethal, combat-survivable warfighter who will come home when the hostilities are over." Arlington chaplains provide spiritual support [2003-05-08] WASHINGTON -- More than 280,000 people are buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Another 25 are added to those ranks each day. For the organization charged with providing spiritual support to those left behind when a veteran passes away, those numbers can add up to a hectic schedule. But according to the head of the Air Force's Arlington Chaplaincy, it is a vitally important function requiring absolute and undivided attention, each and every time. "When somebody has to be buried, one of the rites of the church is for burial. We are here to provide those religious services for people," said Chaplain (Col.) Richard K. Hum. "We provide religious rites and services for Air Force members and their dependents.” The Air Force has three Protestant chaplains at Arlington National Cemetery. The chaplaincy also has contracts with both a Jewish rabbi and a Catholic priest. For other faiths, the chaplaincy makes recommendations to family members on where to find somebody to perform services. Whatever the faith of the person being buried, the chaplains do their best to accommodate families’ needs, Hum said. "Our standard of care is to call the family at least seven days in advance of the funeral to express our condolences, to answer questions about the service we are going to do, and to gather information from them," Hum said. "At that time, the family may also tell us the types of hymns they would like us to use in the chapel services, and also various poems or scripture they would like us to use. Whatever the family says, we will try to do." For some families, attending a funeral at Arlington National Cemetery may be the first time they have had any contact with the military, the chaplain said. "Some families come here, and they don't recognize the military or even the difference between the Army, the Navy and the Air Force," Hum said. "But they are touched by what the military is still willing to do for their loved ones, even after 50 years. We are still willing to say thank you, and that what their father or grandfather has done is important. We needed them, and as a result of their service, we have the freedoms we have today." The chaplains at Arlington also perform traditional chaplain roles, Hum said. The chaplains minister to both the relatives of the deceased and to active-duty airmen. "When we make contact with the families, it requires us to sometimes do bereavement or grief counseling,” Hums said. “I talked to a lady just the other day whose husband was being buried here. The two had been married for 65 years. She was sick and wasn't able to come to the funeral. So, it takes some time to be able to talk with people, and in some cases, to pray with people over the phone." The chaplains also have a counseling role at their home unit, the 11th Operations Group at Bolling Air Force Base, D.C. "While our primary job is here at the cemetery, we are also attached to the 11th OG," Hum said. "We do visitation of the Air Force Band and the Air Force Honor Guard, who are also part of the 11th OG. We go over and spend time with those units each week and do counseling with them as well." Two enlisted airmen are also assigned to the cemetery to carry out the many functions typically associated with a military unit, Hum said. "We have all kind of administrative duties here, like any other military unit,” Hum said. "The enlisted chaplain assistants here also serve as escorts for the Arlington Ladies." The Arlington Ladies are volunteers who attend funerals at the cemetery to ensure no military member is buried without somebody in attendance. The roots of the program date to 1948, when then-Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg and his wife noticed airmen were being buried with only the chaplain and an honor guard member in attendance. Today, there are Arlington Ladies for the Air Force, Army and Navy. At military funerals, it is the deceased who is most visibly honored with music, prayer and traditional military ceremony. But often, the military chaplains themselves feel honored, Hum admitted. "As chaplains, it is a great honor and privilege to be able to preside over these services," Hum said. "In a lot of cases you have people (who) have served their country many years ago. We as chaplains are often the final military person to speak to their families. And we tell them, ‘your country is very thankful for the service of your husband, your father, your grandfather.’ It is our job to convey that message, and we think it is a great privilege." Zettler: People first in reconstituting force [2003-05-15] WASHINGTON -- As the dust of Operation Iraqi Freedom settles, the Air Force installations and logistics community is turning its attention to the challenge that lies ahead: readying the service for the next big contingency. Replenishing the materiel and equipment reserved for wartime use, rebuilding the munitions stockpile and repairing equipment are key priorities, said Lt. Gen. Michael E. Zettler, deputy chief of staff for installations and logistics at the Pentagon. However, first and foremost Air Force officials are taking care of their people. "The IL team deployed upward of 30,000 of them,” Zettler said. “We have to allow all of them to get home and to recuperate.” Many of those deployed had to delay on-the-job training and the fulfillment of other military education requirements, Zettler said. Part of reconstitution involves getting them back on track. Then there is the matter of re-establishing the air and space expeditionary force schedule so people have some sort of predictability in their lives, he added. "Air Force (leaders are) working very hard to have a drawdown plan for the people who are deployed and to return us to AEF capability status,” he said. Replenishing war-reserve materiel is also key, Zettler said. That includes everything from firetrucks and general-purpose vehicles to tents and shower facilities. "We deployed the equipment out of storage," Zettler said. "Now we’re going to reconstitute it. We are going to put it back into a storage condition so it is ready for another conflict." Some equipment can be repaired, cleaned and placed back into storage, Zettler said. Other items must be replaced with new items. That includes munitions, he said, which are critical to preparing the Air Force for another conflict. During OIF, the Air Force dropped nearly 4,700 Joint Direct Attack Munitions, nearly 5,000 guided bombs and about 1,000 wing-corrected munitions dispensers. Part of reconstitution is the replacement of the individual parts used to assemble those munitions. Individual parts are manufactured by civilian contractors and include such elements as nose cones, bomb bodies, fuses, tail fins and guidance kits. "We will look at what we dropped and what it has done to our overall inventory, and then we will program money to go purchase replacement weapons to meet future requirements," Zettler said. Finally, reconstitution means returning Air Force equipment to prewar standards, Zettler said. That includes everything from aircraft to communications equipment. "Our airplanes have performed extraordinarily well, and our people have taken great care of them," Zettler said. "But as they return to their home stations, we need to make sure we've addressed all the issues of corrosion and collection of sand in some of those systems." The dust and sand encountered in Southwest Asia is not just a problem for aircraft maintainers, Zettler said. "Sand gets in everything," he said. "The maintenance people for all the different equipment have to make an assessment of what type of cleaning their equipment needs. With aircraft, they tend to it on a daily basis. “For communications equipment, you go in and do maintenance by trying to remove dust and sand with pressurized air. Some you will never get out, but over time it works itself out," he said. The people and equipment of IL are getting the force ready for the next contingency, Zettler said. “In the end game, our equipment performed well because our professional force provided such great maintenance over the long haul,” he said. “Now, our comm, civil engineers, maintenance, supply, trans and services folks will work with the log planners to rebuild the total force.” Bandwidth increasing for some bases [2003-05-20] WASHINGTON -- The Department of Defense is planning to beef up Internet access at 92 military installations by the end of fiscal 2004 as part of the global information grid bandwidth expansion project. A little over a third of those installations will be Air Force bases, said John M. Gilligan, the service's chief information officer. So many of the installations are Air Force bases because the service supports many different intelligence facilities and headquarters’ organizations, Gilligan said. The bases include larger locations inside the continental United States and a number of installations overseas. "Overseas bases are the ones that are most critical, where it is a little harder to get bandwidth," Gilligan said. "We can always get bandwidth within the United States. You just have to buy (it)." Bandwidth is a term used to describe the amount of information that can be transferred over a network. Networks made of copper wire, such as telephone lines, are considerably slower than those made entirely of fiber-optic cable. The purpose of the expansion project is to get enough fiber-optic connections to the selected bases to support a transmission rate of about 10 gigabits per second, Gilligan said. In practical terms, this means the bases will get a transmission rate of almost two CD-ROMs’ worth of data per second. "Bandwidth will cease to be a constraint (for the bases when the project is complete),” Gilligan said. “That is really the objective." Rather than install or lease new fiber-optic lines, Gilligan said DOD will buy fiber-optic cables that are already in the ground. Owning the network will provide some benefit to the military. "The network will be much more secure and much more robust,” Gilligan said. “That is kind of the reason we put this effort together." Another part of the project is ensuring those 92 bases are wired for redundancy, he said. At some locations today, there may be only one line providing Internet capability to an entire installation. If for some reason that line were severed, the entire base would lose connectivity. The expansion project will ensure bases have multiple points of entry for network connectivity. "That way, if you lose one link, you will have other links available," Gilligan said. NATO chaplain chiefs build relationships [2003-06-20] WASHINGTON -- For the first time in 12 years, the chiefs of NATO nations' air forces' chaplaincies have come to the United States for their annual conference. The weeklong NATO Allied Air Force Chief of Chaplains Consultative Conference, held jointly at both the Pentagon and Andrews Air Force Base, Md., ended June 20. It is held each year to build relationships between the chaplaincies, said the chief of the Air Force chaplain service. "We want to build relationships with our NATO partners," Chap. (Maj. Gen.) Lorraine Potter said. "I think for us, that is the reason the (U.S. Air Force) chief of staff would host this." While there is a yearly conference for all NATO chaplain chiefs, regardless of branch of service, the allied air forces chaplain chiefs choose to meet independently because of the unique differences between the air forces and the other service branches. "In the air forces, you do have the responsibility of war, but we are not usually involved with eyeball-to-eyeball or hand-to-hand combat," Potter said. "You are usually at a distance. The other thing is the responsibility that some of our folks have because of the kinds of weapons and machinery that we use. The issues are different for us." Chaplain chiefs from the air forces of 14 of the 19 NATO nations attended the conference. In addition, senior military chaplains from both Lithuania and Romania attended. Those two nations are preparing to enter the alliance. The chaplains shared ideas and viewpoints on religious tolerance, their responsibilities to commanders and their responsibilities to the troops. Potter said the U.S. Air Force serves as a working model of how to accommodate other faiths. "The other chaplaincies are looking at our model and asking how we accommodate other faiths and how we work together," Potter said. "This is an opportunity to show the uniqueness of America and our religious freedom. There is a miracle in our chaplains. We have very strong people who are passionate about their faith, yet they can minister to people who believe differently than they do. We are modeling respect for individuals and for other religions. (Other NATO chaplains) want to learn about that." Recent world events were also covered at the conference, Potter said. Chaplains discussed how to help military members deal with the ethical and moral questions posed by conflicts such as the war in Iraq. Cooperation is what Potter said most of the chaplains will take away from the conference. "The most important thing is that we have met other persons from other countries, and we have started to build relationships," she said. "When necessary, we can call on each other. The world is too big not to cooperate." Former academy leader to retire [2003-07-11] WASHINGTON -- The former superintendent of the U.S. Air Force Academy will retire from active-duty service effective Sept. 1. The announcement of Lt. Gen. John R. Dallager’s retirement came from Air Force officials at the Pentagon on July 10. It followed a decision by Secretary of the Air Force Dr. James G. Roche and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper. A written statement from the secretary included a stipulation that Dallager retire as a major general, which is with two stars instead of three. Lt. Gen. John W. Rosa Jr., formerly deputy director of current operations for the Joint Staff, took command at the academy July 9. Dallager has been reassigned to Peterson Air Force Base, Colo. In the statement, Roche noted Dallager’s 34-year career, adding that the general had served the nation “with honor, integrity and distinction.” But he also said Dallager should have worked more aggressively to find solutions to a recent series of allegations of sexual assault. “General Dallager did not exercise the degree of leadership in this situation that we expect of our commanders,” Roche said. “Consequently, we could not support his retirement in the grade of lieutenant general.” Dallager graduated from the academy in 1969 with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. He is a command pilot with more than 2,900 hours in the F-4 Phantom II, A-10 Thunderbolt II and F-15 Eagle aircraft. He accumulated more than 600 combat hours over Southeast Asia, Southwest Asia and Bosnia. Pentagon is scene of major exercise [2003-07-25] WASHINGTON -- Fire trucks, ambulances and police cars from Arlington, Va., and nearby Fort Meyer sped into the Pentagon’s south parking lot early July 23. There was no emergency, however. These agencies were there to participate in the Pentagon's chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear exercise called Gallant Fox. Within minutes, military and municipal fire teams routed hoses, attached the trucks to the city water supply, and established triage and chemical decontamination stations. Soon afterward, people in military and civilian dress emerged from the Pentagon -- some wearing gas masks. Many of the 100 "victims" were exercise volunteers from the American Red Cross, said John Jester, the director of the Pentagon Force Protection Agency. Their role was to react to a simulated chemical-weapons attack. “In this exercise, there was an explosion and a truck that released an agent, later determined to be a nerve agent," said Jester. “Victims overcome by the agent were taken through the decontamination area and washed down." The purpose of the exercise was to allow military and civilian emergency response units to coordinate their actions in a real-world scenario during an actual duty day at the Pentagon. "This exercise is a culmination of many months of work with Arlington County," said Jester. "We work with them daily. This exercise ensures certain protocols are working.” According to Jester, the PFPA coordinated with seven agencies to make the exercise flow. Those agencies included fire, emergency medical service and police units from Arlington County; health professionals from the Pentagon's DiLorenzo health clinic; the Virginia State Police; units from the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Pentagon building maintenance workers. New to the exercise were the emergency escape masks and hoods worn by some of the exercise participants. “This is the first time the masks are being used in an exercise," said Pentagon spokesman Glenn Flood. "The emergency escape mask is good for an hour ... to get you to a safe zone.” The hood and mask combination comes packaged in a kit with a plastic escape suit and gloves. Within the last year, each Pentagon employee received a kit. Additional masks are positioned in public areas around the Pentagon. All Pentagon employees participated in a training class to learn to use the mask. After the exercise, there was a meeting where participants reviewed exercise performance. The lessons learned will affect future exercises, said Army Col. Armondo Lopez, the director of the PFPA's chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear directorate. "Those things we have done well, we will continue to practice," said Lopez. "For the things we have not done well, we will continue to emphasize that portion in our exercises." New pamphlet explains transformation [2003-08-05] WASHINGTON -- Transformation is on the mind of every Air Force leader, but for many airmen, understanding the Air Force's plan for transformation proves difficult. The Air Force hopes a new 20-page booklet called "The Edge" will explain the concept of transformation to the service's uniformed airmen and civilian employees, a Pentagon official said. "One of the things we wanted to do was tie together all the aspects of the ‘Transformation Flight Plan’ into a logical definition that everyone could understand," said Maj. Gen. Ronald J. Bath, director of strategic planning. "We wanted to put together something that conveys Air Force Chief of Staff General John P. Jumper and Secretary of the Air Force Dr. James G. Roche's message, and conveys that the Air Force has always been transformational just by its cultural nature." The Transformation Flight Plan is the Air Force's roadmap for transformation, as mandated by the September 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review. "The Edge is an encapsulation of that plan," Bath said. "Readers will be able to grasp that the Air Force is squarely behind transformational concepts and that we have identified our definition of transformation and what the three pillars of transformation are." The Edge explains and gives examples of the three pillars: organizations, new technologies and operational concepts. According to a preface explaining organizational adaptations that contribute to transformation, "The process of transformation begins and ends with our people by allowing us to tailor our organizations to enhance concepts of operations to evolving technology.” The Edge states that current force development efforts and the creation of the directorate of homeland security are both examples indicative of the organizational adaptations. New technological objectives such as directed-energy weapons and greater stealth technology are given as examples of transformational technological advances. Operational concepts such as global response, global mobility and global strike are also contributors. The Edge states it is the merger of CONOPS along with technological advances and newly tailored organizations that will yield a near order of magnitude increase in combat effectiveness. “We are shifting from threat-based planning to capabilities-based planning with specific emphasis on joint relationships,” Bath said. Approximately 2,000 copies of The Edge have been distributed to all Air Force major commands, agencies and offices, but the document is not just for airmen, the general said. "The Edge also has a target audience of our service brethren in the Army and Navy, so that when they develop their next plans for transformation we can merge toward joint transformation as part of a team," Bath said. Airmen recognized for dispute resolution [2003-08-11] WASHINGTON -- Air Force legal teams have earned a unique award for excellence in alternate-dispute resolution. The American Bar Association presented the Lawyers as Problem Solvers Award to the Air Force at a conference in San Francisco on Aug. 8. In the past, the award was given only to individuals. This year the association chose an organization as well as an individual to receive the award. "The American Bar Association dispute-resolution department is holding up the Department of the Air Force legal team as an exemplar for public- and private-sector legal departments to emulate," said Joseph M. McDade, Air Force deputy general council for dispute resolution. ADR is a structured method of resolving conflicts, McDade said. Instead of going to court, parties involved in a conflict work with a trained arbitrator to reach a conclusion. With this program, that conclusion often comes more quickly and at less cost to the Air Force. In one example, McDade said, the Air Force was in conflict with an aircraft-maintenance contractor. When it appeared that legal action was imminent and litigation could take as long as five years, the Air Force chose to implement an ADR solution instead of going to court. "Air Force (officials) put a lot of effort into this (solution)," McDade said. "We got an ADR process in place and solved this in months rather than years. ... The most important (things) to the warfighter (are) that the aircraft were able to support the mission in Afghanistan and there were no operational issues in Operation Iraqi Freedom." Besides the time saved in reaching a conclusion, the Air Force also saved money by avoiding nearly five years of costly litigation. The service also avoided nearly $94 million in liability to the contractor, McDade said. ADR is used throughout both the public and private sector to solve disputes, but within the federal government, McDade said, the Air Force stands out. "No other agencies use ADR with as much breadth as the Air Force," he said. Both sides of the Air Force’s legal team -- the judge advocate general corps and the Air Force general council -- use ADR to handle contract disputes, labor-management issues and equal-employment-opportunity issues. The Air Force has about 460 trained ADR mediators -- more than any other federal agency. The Air Force also has the only senior-executive positions dedicated to ADR within the Department of Defense. Shuttle investigation gives airmen knowledge [2003-08-11] WASHINGTON -- Following the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in February, NASA officials activated a 13-member board to determine the cause of the accident. Three of those board members are bluesuiters. They said they believe some of the lessons learned while working with NASA can be brought back with them to the Air Force. "There is a lot of process, surveillance and inspection ... issues involved in how NASA does its business that I know we will bring back to how we do business in the Air Force," said Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hess, Air Force chief of safety. The airmen may also bring back to the Air Force some of the technical expertise regarding the aging process of space vehicles, according to officials. Unlike the Air Force, which uses an expendable launch vehicle, NASA uses a reusable launch vehicle -- the space shuttle. The effect of aging on the shuttle provides valuable information for future Air Force development projects according to another board member. "Just as we have aging aircraft, there are aging spacecraft," said Maj. Gen. John Barry, director of plans and programs at Air Force Materiel Command. "We are learning a lot of things on aging, and those things will eventually be applied ... as we start building the space maneuvering vehicles and space operating vehicles of the future. Those kinds of lessons ... will be instrumental in helping the military develop these vehicles of the future." While the Air Force will take home some valuable information as a result of its participation on the board, it also brings to the table some valuable Air Force corporate knowledge. "I've participated in a dozen investigations, including both aircraft and spacecraft," said Brig. Gen. Duane W. Deal, 21st Space Wing commander. "(Another) thing we bring to the (Columbia Accident Investigation Board) is aviation experience, particularly with the support staff we brought in." While the support staff used by board members are not strictly part of the board, their expertise and contributions were important to the investigation, according to officials. Deal said as many as 12 airmen and six Air Force civilians have assisted during the investigation. This includes people from the Air Force Safety Center at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., an engineer from the Air Force Academy and researchers skilled in metallurgy, thermodynamics and design issues from Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. NASA officials said they did not plan for the space-shuttle program to last beyond 10 years, but the project has been going on now for more than 20, with plans to go on even longer. The Air Force has years of experience in dealing with and extending the life of aging aircraft. Some of that knowledge, Barry said, can be transferred to NASA. "There are a lot of lessons that the Air Force has learned about aging aircraft that can be applied here," Barry said. While technical knowledge is important in determining the cause of the Columbia accident, the board is doing more than that, Deal said. "Our most important (job) was ... to help prevent (another) accident," he said. "That involves looking at the entire shuttle system and components and seeing what type of problems they have." Some of those problems, Deal said, involve chains of communication within NASA. "The good news is that the Air Force already does (those) things very well," he said. "We have good communication between the various systems. If one wing in the Air Force has a problem with an F-16 (Fighting Falcon), every other wing that works with F-16s will hear about it almost instantaneously.” The final decision of the board concerning the cause of the Columbia accident will be in the board's final report, which will be released Aug. 26. Officials release fitness-test details [2003-08-18] WASHINGTON -- Beginning next year, Air Force officials will implement a new fitness test completely different than what airmen today are familiar with. The more functional test will include a 1.5-mile timed run, a muscular-fitness test of push-ups and crunches and a body composition test. It is designed to measure the general health of airmen, said Maj. Lisa Schmidt, chief of health promotions operations at the Air Force surgeon general’s office. "The goal is to have a healthy, fit force that can deploy at any time," Schmidt said. "Our goal is to prevent the onset of diseases such as heart attacks, stroke, high-blood pressure and high cholesterol. Basically, it is about keeping members healthy so they will perform optimally, in-garrison and deployed. Healthy members are more heat-, stress- and fatigue-tolerant, and less prone to illness and injury." To measure airmen’s overall fitness, Schmidt’s office and a panel of health and fitness experts developed a three-component measurement system that looks at aerobic fitness, body composition and muscular fitness, she said. An airman's performance in each of the three component areas will earn points. They can earn a maximum of 50 points on the aerobic portion of the test, 30 points on the body composition portion and 20 on the muscular fitness portion. The total number of points earned on the fitness test will put the airman into one of four categories: 90 or greater is excellent, 75 to 89.9 is good, 70 to 74.9 is marginal, and less than 70 is poor, Schmidt said. “Scores based on health provide an opportunity for earlier intervention,” Schmidt said. "If somebody scores in the marginal or poor category, we know they are at higher risk for disease. Therefore, we intervene with education and more frequent testing to monitor their progress." People scoring marginal on the test will attend a two-hour healthy-living workshop that focuses on lifestyle behavior, time management and fitness education, Schmidt said. Intervention for people scoring in the poor category involves the healthy-living workshop, an individualized exercise program and a weight-loss program for those who exceed body fat standards. It also involves mandatory exercise five days a week, she said. The test for body composition is still being finalized, but it will measure how much body fat a person has, Schmidt said. Tests for other components of the fitness standard have already been determined. A 1.5-mile run will determine aerobic fitness. Airmen who are not medically cleared to run will take the cycle-ergometry test. Muscular fitness will be determined by both push-ups and crunches, which will be similar to those done in conjunction with the cycle-ergometry test. Airmen’s scores on the new fitness test will also determine how often they need to retest. People scoring “good” or “excellent” will retest after a year, while those scoring “marginal” will retest after six-months. Airmen scoring “poor” will retest after 90 days. Just how many push-ups and crunches airmen will have to do, or how fast they will have to run, has yet to be finalized. Schmidt’s office has developed draft charts for the composite score. The fitness standards on the draft charts are tailored to both age and gender. While the charts are not available yet, airmen who are not already involved in some sort of exercise program should begin now, Schmidt said. "If you are not doing anything now and have concerns, see your doctor first," she said. "Begin slowly with an aerobic-exercise program such as running, jogging, swimming or biking, working up to at least 30 minutes on most days of the week. Muscular fitness and flexibility also need to be part of a balanced fitness program. If you have questions about starting a fitness program, you can contact your local (health and wellness center). They can help develop a program that’s right for you.” Fitness experts: Start training now [2003-08-28] WASHINGTON -- Air Force fitness experts say airmen must begin preparations now if they want to pass the new fitness evaluations in January. "They need to start training today for year-round fitness to meet mission readiness. They must include running, push-ups and crunches into their program," said Sylvia Goff, an exercise physiologist at the Bolling Air Force Base, D.C., health and wellness center. The new Air Force fitness evaluation program, which will replace the cycle ergometry test for most airmen, involves running, push-ups, crunches and a measurement of body composition. Goff said the new fitness standard may cause concern for airmen who have not been to the gym for some time, or who may have never gone. "There are several concerns," Goff said. "Some are afraid that they will not be able to meet the … standard because many don't exercise on a regular basis. Others are concerned about injury they may receive from running." Tammy DeCoux, the program manager for the Air Force Services Agency’s fitness and sports office, said airmen do not need to be concerned about the safety of running -- if they do it correctly. "Running is not an inherently dangerous activity," DeCoux said. "A running program should be entered into slowly at first, with increasing progression of intensity and duration as conditioning occurs. Mild injuries caused by running are often due to things such as inadequate warm up, cool down or stretching; improper technique; poor running shoes; and over-training." Shin splints, a common ailment associated with new runners, is an inflammation of the tibia. Symptoms include pain in the front portion of the lower leg. DeCoux said the injury is caused by overuse and the shock from running on hard surfaces. "The harder the running surface, the greater the shock," she said. Treatment includes rest and ice, if needed, DeCoux said. Prevention involves varying your running surface, proper stretching, proper shoes and conditioning. Airmen who are completely unfamiliar with physical training and conditioning, or with proper diet and weight-loss techniques, can find help on base. Local health and wellness centers, as well as fitness centers, can play a key part in helping airmen prepare their bodies for the demands of the new fitness standards, said DeCoux. "It is the role of the (health and wellness centers) to develop fitness programs for both individuals and for units," DeCoux said. "Base fitness centers can provide … the equipment and guidance needed to carry out those fitness programs. Additionally, we have fitness experts in the centers to help individuals train, one-on-one." Goff said wellness centers also offer programs on nutrition, healthy eating, sensible weight loss, tobacco cessation, remedial strength and aerobic training. For airmen who want to start preparing for the running portion of the fitness evaluation, Goff recommends combining walking and running. "Alternate running and walking until you are able to sustain a run," she said. "Some will be able to sustain the run a lot sooner than others. Once you can sustain the run, you want to increase your speed by no more than 10 percent per week." People who have been sedentary for an extended period of time or those who have health risk factors should obtain a physician's clearance before beginning an exercise program of any kind, she said. Air Force office studies aging aircraft [2003-08-29] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force has created an office within the installations and logistics directorate to assess the future of its aging aircraft fleet. Air Force Secretary Dr. James G. Roche asked Lt. Gen. Michael E. Zettler, Air Force deputy chief of staff for installations and logistics, to come up with a process to provide senior leaders with an unbiased assessment of the service's aircraft inventory, similar to the Navy's process for retiring ships. In answer to that directive, Air Force Aeronautical Systems Center, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, invented the Fleet Viability Board process, and continues to support the Air Staff function. Board officials will coordinate the studies on particular airframes and make recommendations to service leaders about the future of those airframes within the Air Force. In the past, the Air Force had no official system for determining when aircraft should be retired from service. The board itself is not a decision-making body, Crowley said. In fact, the board’s recommendations will be presented as unbiased factual statements about an airframe. "In terms of a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down,’ we will probably not do that," Crowley said. "Instead, we will likely use words like, 'It looks like the airframe has X amount of life in it.'" Board officials are developing the processes they will use to assess a particular fleet. However, they will examine maintenance and depot records, as well as the cost of continuing to fly a type of aircraft and the effectiveness of its weapons systems. "They might find more corrosion and fatigue damage at the depots," said Richard Mutzman, the board’s chief engineer. "You can look at those types of discoveries and look at … what kinds of activities will be needed to keep that aircraft viable and airworthy and what the costs associated with that are." The board will consist of full-time technical engineers, cost analysts and sustainment logisticians, and part-time senior executive service-level civilians from the same functional areas. The senior members of the board may also include advisers from sister services, industry, government and academia, Crowley said. "Finding the best (people) to serve as senior board members is critical," Crowley said. "(They) will eventually review and sign the reports that make recommendations about the future of various aircraft. "I want to have highly regarded people reviewing the report, so when it goes before senior leadership, they will feel comfortable that our information is unbaised and can be used to make the best decisions for the American taxpayer," he said. According to Crowley, the board will be fully staffed by Oct. 1, when they will begin assessing the viability of the C-5A Galaxy. He said he expects that process to take four months. MRE menu debuts new items [2003-09-04] WASHINGTON -- Servicemembers in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere will soon have several new MRE options to choose from for their deployed-dining pleasure. The newest meals, ready-to-eat, feature three new entrée items: pot roast with vegetables, barbecue pork ribs and vegetable manicotti. The menu also includes clam chowder, both peanut butter and crispy M&Ms, almond poppy seed pound cake, pumpkin pound cake, chocolate mint cookies and vanilla waffle-sandwich cookies. The new entrée additions come at a cost, according to Defense Logistics Agency spokesman Jack Hooper. "We are dropping three menu items that were found to be less popular than others," Hooper said. "We will continue working with military members who are consuming the products -- finding their likes and dislikes -- and adjusting as necessary." Jamaican pork chops, pasta with Alfredo sauce and beef with mushrooms are no longer on the MRE menu. Research into the popularity of menu items came from all branches of the military, said George Miller, director of Air Force Food Services. Air Force Services Agency officials are responsible for providing the Air Force input when decisions are being made on new MRE items. "We get a lot of feedback from end-of-tour surveys and from after-action reports," Miller said. Air Force feedback came mostly from the service's largest consumers of MREs -- the special-operations community, air-combat controllers, elements of the civil-engineering community such as Prime Beef and Red Horse, and Prime Ribs from Air Force Services. While feedback from all services is what ultimately influences changes to the MRE lineup, Miller said the Air Force was instrumental to the addition of a couple of MRE items. "We had a lot of input into some of the new snack items, (like) the cheese spread with bacon and the jalapeno cheese spread," he said. The jalapeno cheese spread first appeared in the MRE in 1996. If all goes according to plan, Miller said bacon-cheese spread should appear in MRE pouches sometime next year. MREs are designed to provide a complete nutritional meal for servicemembers while in the field, Miller said. They are also designed to be a certain weight and size. There is always discussion on how to balance those two requirements and still maintain palatability. "The bottle of hot sauce has some weight to it," Miller said. "We asked if we could add something more nutritious than hot sauce to the MRE. Maybe increase the size of the entrée or add a fruit module such as raisins -- anything to replace that hot sauce for nutritional value." Palatability won out in this case, even though the alternative might have been nutritionally better for the troops. Troops in the field nearly threatened to go on a hunger strike if they did not get their hot sauce, he said. "They don't care if you put raisins or a candy bar or anything else in there, they aren't going to eat (the MRE) without that hot sauce," he said. The newest MRE menu lineup features the familiar bottle of hot sauce in 15 of the 24 menus. Production of the latest MREs began in June. They will be made available for immediate use by military services. Academy panel: Problem-causers a minority [2003-09-11] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department's Air Force Academy Review Panel met Sept. 5 to discuss issues related to its investigation of sexual misconduct allegations at the institution. While the panelists concluded there were problems at the school and that the leaders failed to recognize those problems, they also recognized that the problem-causers at the school were a minority. "We want to make sure that people understand we are talking about a very small number of cadets who have caused these problems," said Tillie Fowler, the panel’s chairwoman. "I think one of the things we were all impressed with was the extremely high caliber of men and women who are cadets at the Air Force Academy. They are very concerned that they are getting painted with this brush because of the really reprehensible actions of the few.” Part of the panel's investigation into culture and climate involved review of surveys that had been conducted by the academy since 1991. The results of those surveys indicated trouble at the school, said panel member Dr. Sally Satel. "The data were indicative of several problems," Satel said. "(One) point was the reluctance of a good number of women and men to discuss instances of sexual harassment. Another point was a reluctance to discuss or report illegal alcohol consumption." About 40 percent of sexual assaults had allegedly involved alcohol, Satel said. She also said the surveys showed about 20 percent of cadets at the school had some sort of objection to females being allowed into the academy. The panel was also concerned that while the surveys showed there were issues at the school, the administration had rejected the findings. "The survey findings were, interestingly, repeatedly rejected by the academy and the dean as invalid, yet these surveys continued to be performed year after year without changing appreciably in their methodology," Satel said. "This is something we have been very concerned about." The surveys had been rejected because academy administrators said they felt the survey methodology and sampling methodology may have invalidated the results. But the overall message in the surveys should have been enough to raise concern amongst school officials, said Laura Miller, a social scientist on the panel. "I would concur that the numbers are problematic," Miller said. "But as far as commanders’ interest in needing to know if there was a problem ... there was certainly enough information and enough validity in these surveys to indicate a problem existed and something needed to be done about it." "We do want to make it clear that ... we are trying to deal with is how we can change that culture and climate, and deal with those bad apples who are causing the problems," Fowler said. The panel's findings will be formally presented to the secretary of defense Sept. 22. Officials set holiday mailing dates, policies [2003-09-12] WASHINGTON -- The dates for mailing items to and from overseas locations in time for the holidays are fast approaching, and Military Postal Service Agency officials have suggestions for ensuring packages and letters arrive on time. In fact, customers who mail early may save money and still have an on-time delivery, said Mark J. DeDomenic, chief of operations at the agency. "As we get closer to Christmas, the mail volumes get higher, and therefore mail takes longer to be delivered,” he said. The recommended mail deadlines for sending mail from the United Sates to all overseas military mailing addressees for the holidays are: • Parcel post: Nov. 13 • Space-available mail: Nov. 28 • Parcel-airlift mail: Dec. 4 • Priority and first-class letters or cards: Dec. 11 DeDomenic said these dates can also be observed by customers sending mail from overseas locations to the United States. Customs forms are required on all international mail, and shipments should be properly packaged before sending them overseas, DeDomenic said. "Customers should always remember to ensure they package their parcels in strong boxes and use a lot of packing material," DeDomenic said. "Popcorn or newspaper makes for great packaging material." He also suggested customers use a nylon-fiber reinforced tape to bundle up their packages. "Keep in mind that packages going to military addresses overseas are handled many times and travel long distances. Therefore strong boxes and good internal packing is important," DeDomenic said. While the United States has restrictions on mailing items such as poisons and weapons, other countries have their own restrictions for what can be mailed, DeDomenic said. Postal customers need to consider the length of the journey overseas and the final destination when considering what to send. "I would advise customers to not mail perishable items and to ensure they do not mail things such as batteries, hazardous materials or weapons," DeDomenic said. "Items such as coffee or tobacco are restricted to certain locations. If there is any doubt as to the mailability of particular items, customers should always check with their local post office." Because of security restrictions, mass-mailing operations such as Operation Dear Abby or the "Any Servicemember" mailing program are not being supported by the agency, DeDomenic said. Postal agency officials encourage servicemembers to support the publicly available Web sites that allow the American public to write supportive letters to them. AF offers multilingual thank you [2003-09-12] WASHINGTON -- Airmen whose parents speak languages other than English can now order Air Force Parent Pins with accompanying cards translated into one of 100 languages. The new Your Guardians of Freedom initiative is an extension of the Parent-Pin program called “E Pluribus Unum.” The Latin term comes from the great seal of the United States and means, "out of many, one," said the program’s director, Brig. Gen. Edward Tonini. "We try to take a lot of what we do in this program from history," Tonini said. "E pluribus unum comes from our founding fathers. It evokes both the strength that America derives from the diversity of its citizens and the strength that our Air Force derives from the diversity of its airmen." In the first four months of the Parent-Pin program, more than 200,000 parents or parental figures received the lapel pins and personalized cards from Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper and Secretary of the Air Force Dr. James G. Roche. Tonini said the idea for E Pluribus Unum came shortly after the program kicked off in early May. "It started very early on in the program with an e-mail from a lieutenant colonel in Arizona," Tonini said. "He thought the program was magnificent but said his father spoke only Spanish, and it would be so much more meaningful to his father to receive the card in Spanish. Over the next few weeks, we got a hundred of those kinds of letters.” Even before launching E Pluribus Unum, members of the Your Guardians of Freedom office received more than 1,000 requests for cards in 40 different languages, according to Tonini. About 70 percent of those requests were for Spanish. Office officials teamed with people from the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., and other commercial agencies to translate the original card into 100 different languages, Tonini said. The purpose for offering the letter in so many languages is community outreach, according to Tonini. “The Air Force Parent-Pin program is designed to acknowledge the parents and parental figures whose support continues to be critical to America’s airmen,” Tonini said. “When your parents wear these pins, their friends will ask about it. Your parents will tell them about you and your service, and how proud they are of you. This is a real ‘support mutliplier,’ and that support is just as important if your parents or parental figures don’t speak English. "There is a lot to be gained for the Air Force in terms of communicating with the huge number of people in the United States whose primary language is other than English," Tonini said. "If we can make an impression in a non-English speaking family by translating the letter, then we believe that is a positive thing. This is a true diversity outreach program." Some of the languages required as many as a dozen different versions to account for the different types of family situations that can be encountered and the ways the different languages handle things like gender, according to Tonini. The linguistic challenges of translating so many letters did not change the meaning of the message, however. "There are some slight changes, where languages treat things differently," Tonini said. "You have to do that in many of the languages, but it is the same letter." “As part of E Pluribus Unum, we’ve designed an interactive section of our Web site where you can see the phrase ‘Thank Your Parents’ morph from English into more than 100 languages,” said Capt. David L. Englin, the office’s deputy director. “The site also provides a summary of each language -- how many people speak it, where it’s spoken, some of the history of the language, that sort of thing. We hope it becomes an entertaining resource for airmen, students, teachers and anyone interested in foreign languages and cultures.” E Pluribus Unum is the third major effort for the office. Besides the Parent-Pin program, the ongoing Employer-Pin program kicked off Nov. 8. More than 87,000 pins and personalized letters from Roche and Jumper have been sent to civilian employers of Guard and Reserve airmen. The lapel pins are contemporary adaptations of the World War II “E” flags that were used to recognize companies for efficient-war production. The modern-day programs are designed to recognize and strengthen the military, community and family partnerships that are critical to the Air Force’s ability to wage the global war on terrorism. The pins are about three-fourths inch square and feature a silver letter “E” or "P" cradled within the Air Force symbol. Those who would like their parents to receive the Parent Pin and letter, in any of 100 languages, can sign up at the Your Guardians of Freedom Web site. Registration will require airmen to enter the names and addresses of up to two parents or parental figures, Tonini said. The program is voluntary and comes at no cost to those participating. Roche receives Order of the Sword [2003-09-15] ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md. -- Secretary of the Air Force Dr. James G. Roche was inducted into the Order of the Sword during a ceremony here Sept. 13. Roche became the eighth Air Force-level inductee into the order, and the second secretary, since the "Royal Order of the Sword" ceremony was revised, updated and adopted by Air Force noncommissioned officers in 1967. Among the crowd of more than 800 present at the ceremony were former Secretary F. Whitten Peters, himself an Order of the Sword inductee, and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper. A number of former chief master sergeants of the Air Force also attended the event and were joined by the man who currently holds the position. "The thoughts that come to mind are those that speak of a great compassion and care he has for our airmen," said Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force Gerald R. Murray. "It is a common sight to see our secretary surrounded by airmen at a base or a venue asking them how they are, what concerns they have and what can be done better in our Air Force. “Airmen know that when he asks, he also listens, and when warranted, he acts to make changes to make … lives better and help us to do our mission more efficiently,” Murray said. During the ceremony, Roche was presented with a copy of the citation, a painting by German artist Hans Roth featuring images of the secretary during his tenure with the Air Force, and a scroll with the names of those who attended. He also received a symbolic "Alfonso the 10th"-style sword, crafted in Toledo, Spain. "Fellow airmen, I am genuinely humbled to stand before you tonight and accept this honor," Roche said. "I can assure you that tonight, your decision to honor me with this modern order of chivalry has left me at quite a loss to express my profound sense of pride, humility and also delight.” Roche also praised the enlisted force for the work they do for the Air Force and for the country. "The success of our Air Force in accomplishing our mission, and the rightful position of respect that we hold in the hearts and minds of the American people, is because of you, and the more than 700,000 active duty, Guard and reservists you represent," Roche said. "The American people trust your competence in conflict. Can there be a higher level of trust? I can't think of one." One of the secretary’s accomplishments during his tenure with the Air Force was allowing senior enlisted airmen to enroll in the Air Force Institute of Technology. He also struck an agreement with Army officials to provide the Air Force with nearly 8,000 Army guardsmen to backfill critically short security requirements, as well as secured 100-percent tuition assistance for airmen. He allowed first sergeants to extend their special duty tour beyond three years and established a new standard for junior-enlisted dormitories. Roche's induction into the Order of the Sword comes as members of Congress begin to consider his nomination to become Secretary of the Army. President George W. Bush announced his decision to nominate Roche for the Army’s top post May 7. The Order of the Sword, a military ceremony, has been conducted since its original inception in 1522. It is conducted by noncommissioned officers to honor those who have made significant contributions to the enlisted corps. Some AEF airmen will deploy longer [2003-09-16] WASHINGTON -- Air Force officials have determined that some airmen in Air and Space Expeditionary Force Blue will remain deployed longer than the scheduled 120 days. Blue is the first of two transitional AEFs designed to bring the schedule back to a normal rotation. Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom forced the service into a contingency mode, breaking the normal steady-state deployment schedule. Members of AEF Blue deployed in July for a scheduled 120 days. Airmen assigned to AEF Silver are set to replace Blue in November. Officials expect the deployment schedule to be back on track by March. About 22,000 airmen are deployed for AEF Blue -- about one in 10 will remain deployed longer than others, according to Maj. Gen. Timothy A. Peppe, special assistant for AEF matters at the Pentagon. "Those folks are in what we term our stressed career fields," Peppe said. "About 2,300 people may be gone longer than 120 days. "Primarily it is security forces who are extended,” he said. “Some of the others may include air traffic control, civil engineering, services, medical and intelligence personnel." Currently, AEF Center officials at Langley Air Force Base, Va., are working with combatant commanders and their Air Force components to size AEF Silver, the general said. Requirements are now just above 17,000, with more work to be done. The general acknowledged the extra effort, but pointed out the purpose of the two AEFs is to put the Air Force back into the regular "battle rhythm." The Air Force battle rhythm was designed to provide continuity and predictability to the airmen who support Air Force steady-state commitments around the globe. Such commitments would have included operations like Operation Northern Watch, but could be used to provide Air Force capability wherever it is needed, Peppe said. In January, AEF 7 and AEF 8 airmen were actively supporting Air Force commitments around the globe. When it became clear there was need for a force buildup to support operations in Iraq, the Air Force "froze" them in place, effectively making their return-home date indefinite. As operational needs increased, the Air Force tapped into more AEFs, taking from each successive force package only what was needed, Peppe said. By the time it was all over, every AEF had been affected to some degree. "We literally had some people from every AEF deployed (to) Iraq in some capacity," Peppe said. "We ended up deploying about 50,000 (airmen) and identified another 60,000 who could have gone." Those airmen identified to support earlier operations, but who never actually deployed, are manning AEF Silver. It is the remaining 60,000 "could-have-gone" airmen who were assigned to Blue and Silver. When AEF Silver’s scheduled deployment ends, airmen assigned to AEF 7 and AEF 8 will be vulnerable for deployment as the Air Force re-establishes its battle rhythm. "An AEF is built to be used for whatever the nation asks it to do," Peppe said. "It can be for an exercise, a contingency or a full-up war. It can be used for anything." Global chiefs discuss air power [2003-09-16] WASHINGTON -- More than 90 air power leaders from around the world convened here to interact with each other, members of Congress, national dignitaries, industry leaders and diplomats. The last Global Air Chiefs Conference, held in Las Vegas in 1997, was during the Air Force's 50th anniversary. This year's conference was called in recognition of the 100th anniversary of powered flight, said forum moderator Willard H. Mitchell, former deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for international affairs. First to address the air chiefs was Air Marshal Jonah Domfa Wuyep, the air staff chief for the Nigerian air force. He provided an African perspective on security cooperation. Wuyep's said that Africa may be the "weakest link" in the war on terrorism. "The basic reason for Africa being the weakest link is that there is a lack of capacity in most countries' militaries to effectively contribute more than men to any peacekeeping operations," Wuyep said. Even then, Wuyep said, African nations often lack an ability to provide those men with proper military training. He asked that larger military nations be more aware of the fact. Wuyep also addressed the emergence of multilateralism after the fall of the Soviet Union. "The disappearance of the Soviet Union as a superpower and the emergence of many sovereign states gave a flip to the shift toward multilateralism in world affairs," he said. The 1991 Gulf War, the Balkans and East Timor are examples of successes achieved by multilateral partnerships, according to Wuyep. Air Chief Marshall Kaleem Saadat, the air staff chief for the Pakistani air force, also spoke. He began by echoing a sentiment expressed earlier by Wuyep on the growing gap between American airpower and that of its closest allies. "Even within the developed world," Saddat said, "the airpower capability of the United States overshadows all other developed nations." Saddat also spoke about the relationship between Pakistan and the United States before and after Operation Iraqi Freedom. "Pakistani - American relations, which (have) had (their) fair share of ups and downs and after 1990 had been on a downward spiral, experienced a sudden and remarkable upswing," Saadat said. "Despite domestic opposition based partly on religious sentiments, as Afghanistan is a fellow Muslim country, Pakistan has remained a steadfast ally (of the United States)." The GACC, which is being held in conjunction with the 2003 Air Force Association Conference, will feature other presentations by air power leaders. Those presentations will feature topics like the future of combined combat and combat training, Persian Gulf regional issues, coalition warfare, small country expeditionary force perspectives and the diversification of the Japan air self defense force mission. Jumper addresses global chiefs [2003-09-17] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force’s top uniformed leader addressed more than 90 air chiefs from around the globe Sept. 16 as part of the Air Force Association's Airpower Symposium. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper's comments covered a broad range of topics, including the making of today's heroes, the importance of unmanned aerial vehicles and the regaining of the service's expeditionary heritage. Jumper said that early in airpower history, when that responsibility was still relegated to the Army, the role was expeditionary. "We started off with an expeditionary Air Force, dating back to (World War I) in the early expeditionary force of Gen. John "Black Jack" Pershing," Jumper said. "We watched James H. Doolittle (Gen. James H. Doolittle) take bombers off the deck of a carrier … We watched bold airmen deploy down into North Africa." That expeditionary role deteriorated following World War II as the military and the Air Force settled into their Cold War roles, Jumper said. "We faced one giant adversary, and we stayed planted in one place,” the general said. “Our expeditionary roots eroded for a while.” About 40 years later, that expeditionary nature began to creep back into the service as a result of contingencies that demanded an expeditionary force, Jumper said. Such contingencies began to appear in the early 1990s. "Operation Desert Storm provided the need for an expeditionary air force and sent us to reclaim our heritage," Jumper said. "We today observe the success of our airmen in conflicts throughout that volatile decade of the 90s, in Bosnia and in Kosovo." Jumper said today's Air Force, like the expeditionary air force of the past, is making its own heroes. "We called (World War II) heroes 'the Greatest Generation,' but we (are making) our own 'Greatest Generation' today," Jumper said. "In this recent conflict, one hero who comes to mind is Capt. Kim Campbell, who had her A-10 (Thunderbolt II) badly shot up while working with the 3rd Infantry Division. With a complete hydraulic failure, she was able to take her plane back into Kuwait and put it on the ground. "That is an act of heroism that is characteristic of the outstanding airmen we deal with, day-in and day-out,” he said. Another such example, Jumper said, is the retired Air Force pilot who came back to duty when he realized the importance of the mission he had done during his active service. "Lt. Col. Muck Brown is an A-10 pilot," Jumper said. "He has a son, Nick, who serves in the 10th Mountain Division of the U.S. Army. During the recent war in Afghanistan, Muck's son wrote to him and told him how important the A-10s were to the operation of the 10th Mountain Division. Nick told his dad that seeing the A-10s in action made him understand why his dad was so passionate about his work for so many years." Finally, Jumper talked about the expansion of the role of unmanned aerial vehicles. In Iraq, Jumper said, the Air Force found new applications for the Global Hawk. "We found new ways to think about Global Hawk, about the Combined Air Operations Center and about (the RC-135) Rivet Joint," Jumper said. "And we found occasion to put the Global Hawk up over the Medina Division, south of Baghdad. The Global Hawk was seeing down through a dust storm where you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. But the Global Hawk could, and the (E-8C) Joint Stars could, and the B-1 (Lancer), with its ground moving target radar could." By integrating technology, taking intelligence from the Global Hawk and merging it with that from other intelligence assets, coalition forces were able to pinpoint the exact locations of enemy targets, Jumper said. The technology allowed the Air Force to see through a sandstorm that had some media outlets claiming a timeout in coalition activities. "The enemy made the mistake of thinking we couldn't see him any better then he could see us, and that was a tragic mistake for the Medina Division," Jumper said. "I had to smile when I thought of the news commentators talking about a 'pause.' I was wishing at that moment I could ask the Medina Division commander if he thought there was a pause, as thousands of sorties a day came down on them." AF plans to fill first sergeant slots [2003-10-20] WASHINGTON -- Before the end of the year, Air Force officials will have taken the first step toward eliminating a 10-percent manning shortfall in first sergeant billets. In November, as part of the new First Sergeant Selection Process, Air Force officials expect to release a list of master sergeants selected as candidates for first sergeant special duty, said Senior Master Sgt. Chris Anthony. He is the first sergeant special-duty manager at the Pentagon. Those selected under the new process will account for nearly 33 percent of graduates from the First Sergeant Academy at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., Anthony said. They will begin attending the school in May. "That one-third is not an arbitrary number," Anthony said. "It is based on volunteer rates. Over the last year or so, the volunteers only filled about two-thirds of our requirements." The Air Force requirement for new first sergeants is reflected in the number of slots allocated in the First Sergeant Academy each year -- a little more than 300. Anthony said declining numbers of first sergeant volunteers left more than 100 empty desks at the school last year. Empty desks at the school translate to empty first sergeant billets around the force. About 130, or 10 percent, of the nearly 1,300 units needing first sergeants are currently doing without. That is an unacceptable statistic, said the Air Force's highest-ranking enlisted member. "First sergeant manning and decreasing class enrollments at the First Sergeant Academy have become a concern," said Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force Gerald R. Murray. "Since the beginning of 2000, first sergeant manning has steadily decreased from 96 to 89 percent, while the rank structure has become significantly imbalanced. I believe anything less than 100-percent manning is unacceptable to properly lead and care for our enlisted force." The prevalence of those empty enlisted leadership positions is one reason the Air Force moved toward selecting some first sergeants, Anthony said. "First sergeant is a special duty," Anthony said. "But it is also a leadership position. We don't have vacant squadron commander positions in the Air Force. If somebody doesn't volunteer to go be a commander then the Air Force selects somebody. We do the same thing with command chiefs. Now we will do it with first sergeants." One reason for the declining number of volunteers for first sergeant duty is a fear that it will affect a person’s promotion ability. Anthony said that fear is unfounded. "There is a perception of reduced promotions," Anthony said. "But we promote at the same level as other Air Force (specialties). The reality is that you have the same opportunity to get promoted as a first sergeant as you do anywhere else." The difference, Anthony said, is in the quality of people a person must compete with for that promotion. "The competition is a little different," Anthony said. "As a first sergeant, you are in a special duty where you are competing against other first sergeants, all with stellar records. We don't bring in anything less than outstanding noncommissioned officers in this job. That tends to make the competition a little tougher." Simply having completed a tour as a first sergeant increases your chances of promotion when returning to your primary career field, he said. "For those (who) depart first sergeant duty after three years, it is a big career enhancer for them," Anthony said. "Our numbers show that 87 percent of master sergeants who return to their primary (specialty) after having performed first sergeant duty get promoted to senior master sergeant the first time testing. Promotion boards look favorably on first sergeant experience." Anthony said the list released in November will contain about 400 names. Of those 400, about 120 will eventually become first sergeants. Continuing at that rate, he said, the Air Force can expect to be 100-percent manned for first sergeants by about 2006. Cleanup process gets DOD support [2003-10-20] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force gained Department of Defense support in October for an environmental-cleanup approach that may accelerate progress at as many as 24 Air Force sites. The new method involves merging land-use control actions into records of decision, said Maureen Koetz, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for environment, safety and occupational health. The record is a document that explains how service officials intend to clean up contaminants in the environment, Koetz said. It is essentially the conclusion of a series of studies and investigations that often takes more than a decade to complete. "What the Air Force is planning to do is incorporate (its) performance actions for maintaining land-use controls right into the record of decision -- an enforceable document under the law," Koetz said. Nevertheless, the record is not the final step before actually cleaning a site. As part of a cleanup, Air Force officials agree with regulators in many cases as to land-use controls. These controls specify what restrictions, if any, will be placed on a site during and/or after it is cleaned. By merging land-use controls into the record of decision, Koetz said, the Air Force is bringing its environmental cleanup process more in step with the White House administrator’s results-oriented approach to government. Instead of focusing on administrative processes, the service can begin to focus on performance and achieving results. "We would prefer to have our agreement with environmental regulators right up front and come to terms with exactly what it is we are expected to do to fulfill our responsibilities," Koetz said. "This is really where the major transformation is taking place.” Officials want to take the focus away from submitting documents, Koetz said. They want to make the objectives, and actions required to meet them, to be the main responsibility. The Air Force has had success working with Environmental Protection Agency officials to combine the land-use controls and record of decision at two cleanup sites: Travis Air Force Base, Calif., and Hanscom AFB, Mass. Officials now hope to apply that same process to as many as 24 records of decision that until now have been delayed because of differences with regulators and DOD. Moseley discusses reconstitution [2003-10-22] WASHINGTON -- Department of Defense leaders met with the House Armed Services Committee subcommittee on readiness Oct. 21 to discuss force reconstitution. Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley told committee members that reconstitution is one of the Air Force's top concerns. "Our No. 1 task is to continue the global war on terrorism while reconstituting this force," Moseley said. "You will hear loud and clear that America's armed forces have a plan for this important task." Reconstitution means replenishing materials and munitions expended during operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, repairing any damaged aircraft, replacing any destroyed equipment, and ensuring that airmen are caught up on critical training requirements, Moseley said. The Air Force, he said, has a four-part plan to accomplish force reconstitution. The plan includes getting the air and space expeditionary force battle rhythm back into normal rotation and restoring equipment to a combat-effective state. It also incorporates OEF and OIF lessons into existing platforms and equips forces currently engaged in stability operations with the tools necessary to accomplish their mission. Moseley emphasized that training was key to getting the Air Force back into its regular operations tempo. "To resume this tempo, we must focus on reconstituting capabilities, not just commodities," he said. "Beyond just equipment, the Air Force warfighting capabilities will depend on a continued emphasis on advanced joint composite force training and maintaining a sustained battle rhythm for the entire force." While capabilities from nearly all of the 10 AEFs had been tapped to carry out operations for OEF and OIF, Moseley said he expected that most of the force would be back to regular operations tempo by early 2004. "Resetting and reconstituting this force will be challenging," Moseley said. "However, by March we expect our fighter and bomber force will be ready to resume normal rotation, and we will have completed the repositioning of our war-reserve stock. By March, we also expect that most of our deployable equipment and consumables will be reconstituted." The special assistant for air and space expeditionary forces, Maj. Gen. Timothy A. Peppe, said earlier this year that AEF rotations will be back on schedule by that time as well. Not all of the force will be back to normal operations tempo by March, Moseley said. Because of sustained combat operations and high demand, expeditionary combat-support units, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets, and security forces will not meet the deadline. "It will take the continued hard work and innovation of our airmen to mitigate these delays and ready us as quickly as possible," Moseley told committee members. Of interest to some committee members was if the Air Force planned on reconstituting the KC-135 Stratotanker fleet. "As the air commander for both OEF and OIF, I can tell you that the tankers were the backbone for the joint and combined effort," Moseley said. "To reconstitute this fleet is going to require some hard work and newer airplanes." The Air Force is working on a plan to lease as many as 100 new tankers to replace tankers currently in service -- some that date back to the 1950s. Under the lease option, the Air Force can field the new fleet of tankers more quickly than with a traditional procurement plan. The plan to lease tankers is drawing some criticism from Capitol Hill, however, because of a perception that it is more costly to taxpayers. Wargame offers insight into future [2003-10-24] WASHINGTON -- An Air Force-sponsored wargame promises to be not only leaner than similar events in the past, but more dynamic and efficient as well. The 2004 Future Capabilities Game is scheduled for Jan. 11 to 16 at the Air Force Wargaming Institute at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala. It will test four future Air Force capabilities, said Col. Allison Hickey, the director of the future concepts and transformation division at the Pentagon. "In the past, these games were often monolithic and very expensive events, with up to 500 people participating," Hickey said. "We are trying to make wargaming, from a strategic-planning perspective, more dynamic and responsive. Our games in the future, to include this one, will be leaner and faster. They will also require less spin-up time but generate better results." The Air Force's futures wargame is held every other year, Hickey said. The wargame is a tabletop activity where war-planning strategists from the Air Force, sister services and U.S. allies come together to play out wartime scenarios as they might occur in 2020. In doing this, they use future concepts and technology. In the first scenario, the blue team, which represents U.S. allies, is given "baseline" capabilities the Air Force predicts it will have by 2020 based on the most current planning and transformation roadmaps. The red team, representing a potential adversary, will be equipped based on the Air Force's best predictions, said Lt. Col. Rand Miller, the director of the wargame. Miller said the two teams will independently plan their portion of a war scenario, using only the capabilities they were assigned. Afterward, they come together to do battle. After planning, the teams come face to face," Miller said. "The blue team will brief red on what they plan on doing. The red team will brief blue. It goes back and forth. What we are looking to get out of that is the discussion itself. When the scenario assessor has heard enough discussion, he will tell them how he saw that portion play out." The second scenario is much like the first. The exception is that the blue team will be equipped with "forward-leaning" capabilities the Air Force does not currently have implemented, but may have in some stage of development. For the 2004 wargame, that will include network-centric operations, unmanned vehicles, persistence area dominance and directed energy, Miller said. Comparing the outcome of the first scenario to the outcome of the second scenario is really the purpose of the futures wargame. By studying the "what ifs" generated by an outcome based on possible future capabilities, Air Force officials can decide if they need to rethink their plans on how to invest their money, Miller said. "The futures wargame is about 'what ifs,'" Miller said. "What if we invested our money differently and came up with one force as opposed to another? What if we really leaned forward and did some forward-reaching things that changed the way we look in 2020? How would the enemy play against us then? “If one concept plays much stronger, then maybe we need to reconsider it -- or maybe not. That's what the wargame is for," he said. Waist size reflects whole health [2003-10-30] WASHINGTON -- The waist-measurement portion of the Air Force's new fitness standard serves as a gauge for total health, said the Air Force chief of health promotion operations. “The waist measurement is used to determine visceral or intra-abdominal fat,” said Maj. Lisa Schmidt. Air Force officials chose this measurement because there is ample evidence that links an increase in visceral fat with an increase in risk for disease. "When we looked at developing health-based standards, we reviewed a lot of literature of the best ways to predict health risks for members, and abdominal circumference kept surfacing," Schmidt said. "With more abdominal fat, you have more risk for diabetes, heart disease, stroke and some types of cancer." Agencies like the American Medical Association and the National Institute of Health have produced such studies, Schmidt said. Individuals can perform the measurement on themselves by using a tape measure, she said. The measurement is taken with the tape wrapped around the abdomen above the right iliac crest, or right above the top of the right hip bone, while ensuring the loop created by the tape remains parallel to the floor. The measurement is taken the same way for both males and females. Air Force officials use two tables for measuring waists, one for males and one for females, Schmidt said. There are no variations in regards to height or age. "The risk for disease is independent of your height," Schmidt said. "Other things considered, if you are 5 foot 2 inches tall or you are 6 foot 2 inches tall, your risk for disease is the same if you have a 40-inch waist. The same applies with your age. If you are 20 years old or 50 years old, the risk is the same based on waist measurements." Additionally, unlike other body parts, the size of the waist does not grow proportionally with height, Schmidt said. "As you get taller, it isn't as if you grow out as well," Schmidt said. "It is not proportional growth. The area you are measuring does not include any bone." While there is no variance allowed for height when it comes to waist measurements, it is important to consider the fitness evaluation as a whole in regards to the total-fitness score, Schmidt said. "When you look at the fitness score, it is a composite score," Schmidt said. "If you have a 20-year-old and a 50-year-old, both with a 39-inch waist, they are going to get the same points for abdominal circumference. However, that 20-year-old is going to have to run faster and do more crunches and more pushups to get the same composite score as the 50-year-old." For airmen who have measured their waists and determined they are not within an acceptable range, there is hope, she said. Visceral fat is generally the first to go when people begin an exercise program. While it may take several months of running, crunches and weight lifting to knock an inch or two off the waist circumference, that effort pays off in more than just the one or two points gained on the waist-measurement portion of the evaluation, Schmidt said. "A lot of airmen will look at the chart and say it is difficult to lose an inch in abdominal circumference, and that they only get a point for it," Schmidt said. "But if you are engaged in some kind of program to lose that inch and to gain that point, some aerobic and fitness program, then in the process of gaining that extra point for waist measure you will improve your performance on the running and strength portions. They are all interrelated. This is about total health." Airmen who look at the chart for the first time become fixated on the top numbers for their age group -- those numbers needed to score a perfect 100 on the evaluation, Schmidt said. She said airmen should concentrate instead on getting a “good” or “excellent” fitness score. The expectation is not for most airmen to achieve a perfect score. The expectation is for everyone to participate in a regular fitness program, which will result in improvements in overall fitness, she said. AF releasing new fitness instruction [2003-12-08] WASHINGTON -- One of the most noticeable changes to the Air Force’s new fitness program is that it will be defined by an operational rather than a medical instruction. The change shows that senior leaders consider fitness an important part of operational readiness, said Maj. Lisa Schmidt, the Air Force chief of health promotions operations. “As we support the aerospace expeditionary force and the environments we now deploy to, fitness becomes a readiness issue,” Schmidt said. “If a person is fit, they are going to be able to tolerate austere environments, the fatigue and the temperature changes.” The full text of the Air Force’s new fitness instruction will be available to the force before Jan. 1, she said. The planned release comes less than five months after the service’s highest ranking officer told airmen there would be changes in the way the Air Force looked at physical fitness. “The amount of energy we devote to our fitness programs is not consistent with the growing demand of our warrior culture,” wrote Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper in his July Sight Picture. “It’s time to change that.” Besides making physical fitness a readiness requirement, the new instruction also puts an emphasis on commander involvement in unit fitness programs. “If you look at the July Sight Picture, General Jumper says fitness is a commander’s responsibility,” Schmidt said. “This instruction puts more responsibility on the commander, not the medical community.” Among other things, the instruction requires unit and squadron commanders to implement and maintain a unit physical-training program and to offer the program at least three times a week. The instruction also details methodology for conducting fitness evaluations. Schmidt said the instructions for conducting the push-up and crunch portions of the evaluation should be no surprise to airmen. They are the same instructions that have been used at the end of the cycle-ergometry test for the last two years. “The only change is that the push-ups and crunches will be evaluated for one minute, instead of two minutes,” Schmidt said. The instruction also specifies how to conduct the aerobic portion of the test. Airmen will run on an outdoor course approved by the wing commander. During inclement weather, an indoor running track may be used. Treadmills will not be authorized for fitness evaluations. The new fitness instruction takes effect Jan. 1, and will make obsolete the current fitness and weight-management instructions, Air Force Instruction 40-501 and AFI 40-502. Smithsonian opens new facility [2003-12-11] CHANTILLY, Va. -- One of the most popular museums of the Smithsonian Institution here celebrated its expansion with a day honoring military aviation veterans. Military aviators from conflicts as far back as World War II were invited to the "Salute to Military Aviation Veterans" Dec. 9, at the National Air and Space Museum's new Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. The center is located in Chantilly Va., less than 30 miles from the museum's flagship building in Washington. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, addressed event attendees. "For a century, America's aviation veterans have bravely explored and expanded the limits of air power," Myers said. "They made America an air power -- the most innovative and respected in the world today." Examples of that air power, both old and new, were on display. Among the 82 aircraft shown were the B-29 Superfortress “Enola Gay,” the space shuttle Enterprise, an SR-71 Blackbird, a test model of the Joint Strike Fighter and the Concorde. The aviation hangar at the heart of the center is nearly 10 stories tall and the length of three football fields. Aircraft are displayed at floor level and suspended from the ceiling at various heights. Visitors can view the collection from the floor or any of several catwalks that crisscross the hangar. Eventually, the center will house 200 aircraft, 135 space artifacts and thousands of smaller aviation-related items. Nearly 80 percent of the air and space museum's aircraft will be put on display at the center. Some World War II aviation veterans in attendance were amazed at the array of aircraft on display and said they enjoyed the opportunity to revisit the aircraft they had flown nearly 60 years before. Retired Lt. Col. Milton W. Sanders joined the Army Air Corps in 1941 and flew 116 missions over Europe. He has 8,000 career flying hours, with more than 1,000 in the P-47. He said he was amazed at the size of the center. "This is fantastic," Sanders said. "It's going to take you a week to really go through the place." Sanders, now 86 and in a wheelchair, was accompanied by his son and granddaughter. He took them to see the P-47D Thunderbolt. "The P-47 was the most fantastic aircraft the Air Force ever had," he said. Sanders said he remembers a mission he flew in the P-47 near the Loire River in southern France. "About 20,000 soldiers from the German army were on foot coming from Italy back to Germany," he said. "It was our job to suppress them." Under the barrage of artillery the P-47 threw down, it did not take long for the Germans to surrender, he said. "That was the first time an army of that size surrendered to air power alone," Sanders said. George Baker served in the Army Air Corps in the Pacific from 1940 to 1946. He was in training at Hickam Field, Hawaii, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He said the displays bring back memories for him, but hopes they will give something to younger generations as well. "This is great and is incredibly educational," Baker said. "I hope they bring all the school kids here to see what aviation is all about. School kids today don't really know much about the history of flying." Retired Col. Bob Shawn, a B-29 pilot with nearly 18,000 hours in the cockpit during his 30-year career, agreed with Baker. "The kids need to learn about World War II as well," Shawn said. He wore an early Army Air Corps uniform to the event. "Some of the schoolbooks today have only a few pages on that war. I don't understand how they can reduce a war that took six years to fight into just a few pages." It is to men like Shawn, Baker and Sanders that America owes a debt of gratitude for the freedom we enjoy, Myers told the crowd of nearly 4,000 attendees. "In 100 years, in only one century, we've come from the Wright Flyer to this airplane before us," Myers said, pointing to the experimental version of the Joint Strike Fighter on display. "(We've gone) from canvas and hope, to stealth and a little magic. It's all because brave American military aviators, brave Americans who risked their lives and limb, (who) slipped the surly bonds of Earth risking all to keep America free." Myers also acknowledged the contributions of modern-day aviators who were also in the audience. "We must remember that American aviators and the rest of our armed forces and our coalition partners are engaged in the war on terror," Myers said. "I am very proud of those defending liberty today with courage and skill, in today's armed forces. It was the dedication and vision and determination of America's aviation veterans that really made contributions to America's freedom in the last century right through to today. That spirit lives on in one continuum as we fight this war on terrorism." The center opens to the public Dec. 15. The opening coincides with celebrations marking the 100-year anniversary of the first powered flight near Kitty Hawk, N.C. Crowds gather for re-enactment [2003-12-18] KILL DEVIL HILLS, N.C. -- More than 34,200 people stood in mud, the cold and rain, and under gray sky to witness the climax of a yearlong celebration. The event was not even something original or new, but something that had been done before -- exactly 100 years before. The crowd gathered to watch a re-enactment of Orville and Wilbur Wright’s first powered flight that took place Dec. 17, 1903, at 10:35 a.m. at that very location -- now a national park in the brothers’ honor. The re-enactment was the finale of the centennial of flight celebration that consisted of aviation-related events held in locations across the United States. The centerpiece of the re-enactment was a reproduction of the Wright brothers’ original 1903 flyer. The 605-pound, 440-foot-wide aircraft of mostly wood, fabric and aluminum, was equipped with a four-cylinder, 12-horsepower engine and two handcrafted wooden propellers. The craft was exact in every detail to the Wright brothers’ original flyer and was built by The Wright Experience, of Warrenton, Va. The goal of the Experimental Aviation Association, the organization that commissioned construction of the aircraft, was to re-enact the Wright brothers’ original flight exactly 100 years after it happened. They hoped to use an exact reproduction of the craft, fly it in the same location the brothers had and conduct the flight at exactly the same time the Wright brothers had. Unfortunately, the weather was not the same as the Wright brothers had a century before. Weather was the one factor in the equation that the association, who had been so precise in all other regards, was unable to control. The crowd in the bleachers was disappointed when they learned the craft would not fly at 10:35, because of a lack of wind. The muddy, 800-foot-wide circular field where the flight was to take place remained empty. But, like the Wright brothers themselves, the aircrew was persistent. Around noon, the reproduction Wright flyer rolled out into the field. After nearly a half-hour of preparations and several attempts to start the craft’s twin propellers, the two-stroke motor sputtered to a start. The crowd exploded into cheers. Several minutes later, the ground crew pushed the craft down the 180 feet of wooden rail that had been laid across the muddy field. Near the end of the rail, the nose of the flyer lifted up and the craft lifted nearly six inches off the ground. Unfortunately, the wind was not strong enough to take the aircraft on the 12-second flight the Wright brothers experienced 100 years ago. The crew did not consider their attempt a failure. They later said they had flown the craft several times before, preparing for the event. Their efforts, the lessons they had learned in trying, the event attendance and the approval of the crowd meant they had been successful. “I’m not disappointed at all,” said Ken Hyde, the flyer’s builder. “I would have liked like to have shown people we could fly. I would have liked to have flown [it]. But we have created an awareness of the Wright brothers here.” Hyde said the crowds have been amazing the past four days. “It’s amazing the number of people who have come here to join us,” he said. Bush: Wright qualities define nation [2003-12-18] KILL DEVIL HILLS, N.C. -- Gray skys, chilly air and pouring rain did not dampen the sprit of an enthusiastic crowd here Dec. 17 as they awaited the arrival of the event’s most anticipated guest speaker. President George W. Bush was scheduled to address the crowd at the Wright Brothers National Memorial on Dec. 17, the last day of the yearlong centennial of flight celebration. Around 9:20 a.m., the thunderous roar of five Marine Corps helicopters cut through the sounds of patriotic music, crowd noise and the reverberation of public-service announcements. Heads turned toward the aircraft above the tree line just west of the stage. Despite miserable weather and rumors he would not show, the president had arrived. Following an introduction by Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, the president took the stage. “For as long as there is human flight, we will honor the achievement on a cold morning on the outer banks of North Carolina, by two young brothers, Orville and Wilbur Wright,” Bush said. The achievements of the two brothers came after considerable hard work and the demonstration of some qualities that Americans today still posses and can still be proud of, Bush said. “We take special pride in their qualities of discipline, persistence, optimism and imagination,” Bush said of the brothers. “Those traits still define our nation. We still rely on men and women who overcome the odds and take the big chance, with no advantage but their own ingenuity and the opportunity of a free country.” Those traits have paid off in dividends for the United States over the last century, Bush said. They made the country the first in powered flight and kept it at the head of the pack in all areas of aviation. “These past hundred years have had supersonic flight (and) frequent space travel,” Bush said. “(Now) the Voyager One spacecraft is moving at 39,000 miles per hour toward the outer edge of our solar system. By our skill and daring, America has excelled in every area of aviation and space travel. Our national commitment remains firm: We will continue to lead the world in flight.” While Bush did say the United States was committed to a future of continued excellence in air and space technology, he told the crowd the day was for remembering the past. “This day is one for recalling an heroic event in the history of our nation and in the story of mankind,” Bush said. “Here at the Wright Brothers National (Memorial), we remember one small machine, and we honor the giants who flew it.” More airmen may live off base [2004-01-06] WASHINGTON -- A change in how the Air Force figures unaccompanied housing requirements will call for fewer dormitory rooms -- meaning more airmen could move off base in the future. Under the new policy, which took effect Jan. 1, the Air Force must provide dormitory housing for unaccompanied E-1s through E-3s and E-4s with less than three years of service. Previously, the Air Force maintained dorm spaces for all unaccompanied airmen below E-5. The policy change is designed to make the number of dorm rooms the Air Force must have available more predictable, said Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force Gerald R. Murray. "It is easier to base a construction policy on years in service as opposed to rank within the service," Chief Murray said. "We feel this construction policy will give us the best predictability." Basing dorm room requirements on how many airmen are a certain rank is like "hitting a moving target," Chief Murray said. The problem lies in the wide range of time it takes for senior airmen to graduate to the noncommissioned officer grade. "It currently takes an average of 4.6 years until our airmen sew on staff sergeant, but it used to be as high as six years," Chief Murray said. "Some take as much as seven or eight years time." Calculating how long it takes an airman to reach E-4 is not nearly as unpredictable. Most airmen reach E-4 within four years -- some in as little as two with a below-the-zone promotion. That combination of rank, time in service and predictability makes the three-year senior airman the ideal cutoff point, Chief Murray said. "Our standard will be that we will provide housing for airmen with up to three years service, and at that point, if dormitories are not available, our policy will provide other options for them," Chief Murray said. Basic Allowance for Housing rates are now set high enough that a senior airman should be able to obtain adequate housing downtown, without paying a lot of out-of-pocket costs, Chief Murray said. That trend will continue, and by 2005, BAH is expected to pay 100 percent of off-base housing costs. "Today we believe that our young airmen have the pay and allowance to go into the downtown areas and afford good-quality homes," Chief Murray said. Leaders do first official PT test [2004-01-08] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force’s most senior leaders, both officer and enlisted, completed their fitness evaluations Jan. 7 at the Bolling Air Force Base Wellness Center. The group was among the first in the Air Force to have their physical fitness evaluated using the service’s new fitness standard. Under the standard, fitness evaluations now include body composition, strength and aerobic fitness measurements. Nearly 60 Air Force general officers, led by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper, were evaluated. The chief master sergeants were evaluated later in the afternoon. While it is unusual for so many senior leaders to be together at once for a fitness evaluation, General Jumper said the gathering served a purpose. “We want everybody to know that when I say commanders are responsible for fitness, it starts at the top,” said the general. “We have gotten all the Air Force leadership in the Washington area out at one time. Hopefully this demonstrates that leading from the top really means leading from the top.” General Jumper said he expects commanders around the service to follow his example and to participate in leading their airmen toward a more fit force. “I expect squadron commanders to be out in front of their squadrons, group commanders to be out in front of their groups, and wing commanders to be out in front of their wings as we go through this test cycle,” General Jumper said. “I expect the whole Air Force to test and I expect that we all are going to pass.” The evaluations also represented the culmination of more than a year’s worth of work in developing a new fitness standard for the Air Force. The service had been using the same gauge of fitness -- the cycle ergometry test -- for more than a decade. The new evaluation is more fitting of the demands put on airmen in today’s expeditionary climate, General Jumper said. “We are all over the world and in all sorts of climates,” General Jumper said. “If you talk to the combat controllers, who during Operation Enduring Freedom were up at the top of 14,000-foot mountains with 100 pounds of gear, it becomes quite evident we need to be fit -- fit to fight is the term we use.” Actually becoming fit to fight, and maintaining that fitness, is a similar process regardless of where an airman is stationed in the world, said Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force Gerald R. Murray before leading nearly 40 chiefs through warm-up exercises before their evaluation. “Our efforts to develop a holistic approach to fitness -- that includes aerobics, body composition and strength -- has given us something that can be maintained anywhere we are,” Chief Murray said. “It is nice to have great gymnasiums and facilities and equipment, but we don’t need those to maintain our fitness. You can maintain fitness at deployed locations or at home.” Chief Murray also said he is impressed with the fitness efforts already under way at Air Force installations around the force. “I am extremely pleased with what is coming together here and with our Air Force, as we see the culture is already being changed," Chief Murray said. "Wings are already out running together. That momentum will be important to us through this year as we evaluate the new standards, the way people approach them and the programs that are being developed to help us meet them.” AF committing 2,000 airmen to war [2004-01-13] WASHINGTON -- Airmen vulnerable to deploy as part of the Silver Air and Space Expeditionary Force but not originally asked to go, could end up going after all. In a message sent to the major commands in late December, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper said continuing efforts in the war on terrorism have created a need for additional support in some areas. The Air Force, he said, would be providing some of the support to fill that need. "Ongoing warfighter requirements compel the Air Force to continue surge operations in some functional areas … to ensure national military objectives are met," General Jumper said. "The secretary of defense has tasked us to find innovative solutions to this national challenge. Major commands and wings are encouraged to dig deep into their resources and develop risk mitigation plans to make these forces available." One of the possible solutions involves the use of “joint-sourcing” to fill needed positions. That means all the services will work together to meet the requirements. The effort will touch many across the Air Force, said Col. Michael Scott, chief of War Plans Organization. "This of course affects the entire Air Force to a certain degree, but more so in the agile combat support arena," Colonel Scott said. "By that I mean our engineers, firefighters, air traffic control, security forces, medical, communications and transportation folks." Nearly 2,000 airmen in those support areas will be called upon to help the Air Force meet the joint-sourcing challenge, the colonel said. Most of the 2,000 airmen will come out of already scheduled AEFs and should already know they are in or approaching their deployment eligibility window, said Col. Buck Jones, deputy director for air and space expeditionary force matters. "Once you get down to the individual level, they may not know they are going to fill one of these requirements, but they do know they are part of the Silver AEF and are still susceptible. They may also come from AEF 7/8 or AEF 9/10," Colonel Jones said. Many troops could expect to be deployed for about 90 days, but some, in stressed fields, could expect a 179-day rotation, Colonel Jones said. Despite the continued surge in operations, Colonel Jones said most of the Air Force could expect a return to the AEF battle rhythm by March. "We still will deploy AEF 7/8 very close to on schedule," Colonel Jones said. "The vast majority of the Air Force is returning to the AEF battle rhythm starting with AEF 7/8 in March." The Air Force battle rhythm refers to the scheduled rotation of the 10 AEFs over the course of a 15-month cycle. The AEF schedule is projected out until 2010 and is designed to provide stability and predictability to airmen supporting Air Force commitments worldwide. While there may be a predicted return to the AEF battle rhythm, Colonel Jones said things may never be the same as they were before operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. "Since the AEF was first established, world events have not stayed static," Colonel Jones said. "I'm not sure anybody envisions us returning to an old steady-state Operation Northern Watch/Operation Southern Watch type of situation around the world. The requirements are going to be fluid and dynamic." Fortunately the Air Force has tool for handling unpredictable requirements -- the AEF, Colonel Jones said. "Over the next few months, the Air Force will deliver on its promise to help meet the joint-sourcing requirements for operations in Southwest Asia," Colonel Jones said. "It is the AEF, doing what it is designed to do, that makes that possible. Once again, the AEF is demonstrating its inherent ability to flex and to adapt." Five servicemembers laid to rest [2004-01-21] ARLINGTON, Va. -- Five veterans of the war on terror were laid to rest Jan. 21 in Arlington National Cemetery. The five military members -- four from the Air Force and one from the Army -- were aboard an MH-53M Pave Low helicopter when it crashed in Afghanistan Nov. 23 while supporting Operation Mountain Resolve, part of Operation Enduring Freedom. Among those laid to rest were: • Maj. Steven Plumhoff, 33, of Neshanic Station, N.J. Major Plumhoff was assigned to the 58th Special Operations Wing at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. • Army Sgt. Major Phillip R. Albert, 41, of Terryville, Conn. He was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, N.Y. • Master Sgt. William J. Kerwood, 37, of Houston, Mo. He was assigned to the 20th Special Operations Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Fla. • Tech. Sgt. Howard A. Walters, 33, of Port Huron, Mich. He was assigned to the 20th Special Operations Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Fla. • Staff Sgt. Thomas A. Walkup Jr., 25, of Millville, N.J. He was assigned to the 20th Special Operations Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Fla. "Five brave young men who gave their lives not only (for) their country, but (for) their friends and family, to keep them free," said Chaplain (Col.) David E. Boyles about the value of their sacrifice. Secretary of the Air Force Dr. James G. Roche and Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force Gerald R. Murray attended the ceremony. Changes in law environmental friendly [2004-01-26] WASHINGTON -- Portions of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal 2004 make it easier for the Air Force to execute its mission while protecting the environment at the same time. The act includes language allowing the National Fish and Wildlife Service to legally consider measures that may already be in place at an Air Force installation when making a decision about how best to protect endangered species, Maureen Koetz said. She is the deputy assistant secretary of environment, safety and occupational health. "This enables us to manage species effectively through our Integrated Natural Resources Management Plans without having to be concerned about critical habitat zoning coming in and removing larger tracts of land from our ability to use them," Ms. Koetz said. The Air Force has INRMPs in place at its installations, she said. When developing an INRMP, plan authors take into account the needs of endangered species and the needs of the Air Force. With an INRMP in place, endangered species are able to thrive while at the same time, the Air Force is able to carry out its readiness mission. "An INRMP allows us to preplan and pre-position how we are going to utilize our resources," Ms. Koetz said. An INRMP also takes into account such things as archeological sites, biodiversity, bio-habitats and wetlands, Ms. Koetz said. "We look at the whole site picture and identify the parts we will use for military activity and areas we will maintain for conservation status, and we will make those things work together," she said. Before the act, recognizing the effectiveness of an INRMP was not an official option for the Fish and Wildlife Service, though officials did consider the plans as part of their own internal policy. Federal environmental laws directed the service to use methods such as zoning the portions of a military installation where endangered species are present as critical habitat. A critical habitat designation puts restrictions and limitations on how Air Force land can be used, Ms. Koetz said. The result is that the Air Force may be denied access to its resources. "A critical habitat designation or another requirement that compels us to set our land aside for something other than a military readiness use essentially … acts as a limitation," Ms Koetz said. "It's no different than if somebody came along and declared your backyard to be [a] playground for the entire neighborhood. Then it is zoned differently. Then you have to reorganize how you use your backyard because society has come along and changed how it is to be used." That denial of resources, she said, leads to operational risks, reduction of available space and limitations on training and readiness activities. To compensate, the Air Force must pay for relocation of activities, and must rent or purchase equipment that can be used in smaller places. More than just readiness activities can be affected by critical habitat. Simple day-to-day maintenance activities can also be affected, said Lt. Col. Alan R. Holck, Air Force conservation program manager. In California, the presence of vernal pools could have had large portions of two installations declared as critical habitat, he said. Vernal pools are areas that fill with water on a seasonal basis, Colonel Holck said. During the time the pools have water in them, unique flowers and invertebrates such as the fairy shrimp spring to life. "At Travis Air Force Base in California, FWS proposed that nearly all of the installation -- short of the runways -- be marked as critical habitat to protect the vernal pools," Colonel Holck said. "Included in that was base housing. To do things like yard and grounds maintenance you would have had to get permission from FWS." At California’s Beale AFB, only 25 percent of the installation would have fallen under critical habitat. "We convinced FWS and the local wildlife agencies that we could manage and protect the pools ourselves and still carry out the mission," Colonel Holck said. "We didn't need the restrictions that critical habitat would place on us to successfully manage these species." With the changes under NDAA '04, the FWS can now consider Air Force INRMPs an effective method for managing endangered species. This change allows the Air Force and other Department of Defense activities to continue acting as investors in the environment. "Most people, including many environmental organizations, don't understand the valuable environmental equity that has been created by the way DOD manages its lands," Ms. Koetz said. "We are investors in our environment -- equity developers. It is precisely because the Air Force or the Army or the Navy put a fence around a certain area and maintain it as a military installation that there are extraordinarily valuable biodiversity, wetland, groundwater recharge, and coastal ecosystem resources that continue to exist and be available." Fleet Viability Board provides longevity assessment [2004-02-03] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force's newly created Fleet Viability Board will begin assessment of the KC-135E/R Stratotanker in April. The Air Force Fleet Viability Board stood up in August and was created in response to a directive from Secretary of the Air Force Dr. James G. Roche to create an agency that could provide senior leaders with an unbiased assessment of the service's aircraft fleet longevity. Despite recent controversy and discussion surrounding that tanker fleet, the assessment will remain impartial and fair, said the board's director, Col. Francis P. Crowley. "The Fleet Viability Board looks to have total impartiality and objectivity in doing an assessment," Colonel Crowley said. "We don't seek to prove anybody's point. What we are looking for is the best answer for our national defense and for the American taxpayer." Colonel Crowley also said that having operational control of the process at a high level – the Air Force’s Installations and Logistics Directorate at the Pentagon – and the personal integrity of each board member ensures honest and impartial assessment. "Secretary Roche asked the Air Force deputy chief of staff, Installations and Logistics, and the Air Force Materiel Command to come up with a process, similar to the Navy's process for retiring ships, to be used on our aircraft," Colonel Crowley said. Although different from the Navy’s process, which focuses on seaworthiness, the Air Force Fleet Viability Board was the result of this collaboration. The board is still working on its first assessment of the C-5A Galaxy. That project began in October and will conclude in March. Because the C-5A assessment was the first, it was used as a learning tool to develop the assessment process. It will serve as a template for future assessments, Colonel Crowley said. "The C-5A is a prototype assessment and all follow-on assessments will improve upon that assessment process," he said. Until recently, board members did not know what their next assessment project would be, because there had not been an official list produced. Colonel Crowley said the board was involved in making suggestions about which aircraft should be assessed. "(Board members) did make assessment recommendations to senior leaders," Colonel Crowley said. "To do that we went to various groups of people, including technical experts among various engineering specialties and asked which fleets they were most concerned with. We looked at structural service life remaining, any identified corrosion or stress fatigue issues, non-mission capable rates, maintenance man-hours per flying hours, modification costs per aircraft and how the aircraft ranked in various sorting of the data. This analysis resulted in the board recommending the KC-135E/R as a follow-on assessment to the C-5A.” In January, the secretary of the Air Force signed off on the official assessment list. That list includes the KC-135E/R, the A-10 Thunderbolt II, the F-16 Block 10/15 and the B-52H Stratofortress. Colonel Crowley said the goal of the board is to assess three aircraft a year. Human factor is primary cause of aviation mishaps [2004-02-13] WASHINGTON -- The "human factor" is the primary cause of military aircraft mishaps. That testimony by Air Force Chief of Safety Maj. Gen. Kenneth W. Hess came as part of a congressional hearing on military aviation safety, Feb. 11, where safety directors from all four service branches testified before the House Armed Services Committee. The general told committee members that "task saturation" is one example of how the human factor can be responsible for mishaps. "Task saturation is a big deal in some of these mishaps," General Hess said. "As the situation becomes critical and the aviator (starts) to load-shed, they can … get themselves (in) trouble. Anything we can do to bring up the situational awareness in the machine itself will help prevent that kind (of) misprioritization." General Hess said developmental technology, such as the tactile vest, improvements in the types of information being brought into cockpits, and better ground-based training are all going to help the Air Force deal with the human factor. "Our simulation technology has moved from very mechanical, in-the-box kinds of simulators to distributed training where you are bringing many different elements,” General Hess said. “(As a result) you are able to experience a lot of concentrated work before you ever get into the cockpit. I think that will (help) with the (issue of) task saturation." In May 2003, the secretary of defense challenged the military services to reduce the number of mishaps by 50 percent over two years. General Hess said the Air Force is ready to accept the challenge. "Over the past 10 years the Air Force has lost more than 300 airmen and nearly 250 aircraft valued at about $11 billion," General Hess said. "These aviation accidents could have been prevented. The Air Force fully endorses Secretary (Donald) Rumsfeld's 50-percent reduction goal as a beginning." The general said that a 10-year analysis of Air Force aviation mishaps revealed three areas where the service will focus its safety improvement efforts: controlled flight into terrain; power plant failures, and; mid-air collisions and loss of control in flight. He also said that improvements in safety must start at the lowest level. "We realize that real change starts at the grass-roots level," General Hess said. "Commanders and supervisors, the leaders, are accountable for safety practices and must take action to reduce the rates. Clearly, safety must be a priority for everyone." Despite multiple questions, the Air Force and other service safety representatives maintained that aging aircraft fleets are not a cause of aviation mishaps. General Hess said all aircraft are held to the same standards of airworthiness and that even the oldest aircraft in the Air Force fleet, the KC-135 Stratotanker, has an extremely low mishap rate of about .35 per 100,000 hours of flight time. But the general also explained to committee members that asking whether an aircraft is safe despite its age and asking if it is cost-effective to continue maintaining such an aircraft yields different answers. "The Air Force is going to maintain the flight safety standards of that airplane at whatever cost is required to keep it safe as long as it is in the inventory," General Hess said. "The flight safety standards will not be compromised.” However, the general said, when comparing the cost benefit of taking an aging KC-135 to the maintenance depot to how much useful life is left in the machine, one can draw a different conclusion. While aviation safety was the primary focus of the congressional hearing, General Hess did tell committee members that mishaps on the ground, particularly those involving automobiles, are more problematic to the Air Force than aviation-related mishaps. "We work the motor vehicle problem as hard, or harder, because each of the services is affected more by the slaughter on our nation's highways than we are by problems we confront on the aviation side," General Hess said. Air Force ready for 2005 BRAC [2004-02-13] WASHINGTON -- The Department of Defense published in the Federal Register on Feb. 12 the criteria that will be used in selecting installations for the 2005 round of base realignment and closure. Air Force Director of Installations, Environment and Logistics Nelson F. Gibbs spoke that same morning to the House Appropriations Committee subcommittee on military construction about the state of the Air Force's BRAC program. "Air Force professionals at all levels have made great progress to prepare for BRAC 2005," Mr. Gibbs told the committee in his prepared testimony. That preparation, Mr. Gibbs said, involved the creation of an Air Force office for basing and infrastructure analysis to act as the focal point for Air Force BRAC 2005 efforts. The major commands followed suit, creating their own offices to support the process, he said. "Today, there are (more than) 150 full and part-time Air Force professionals engaged in preparing for BRAC 2005," Mr. Gibbs said. Lessons learned from previous rounds of BRAC will help the Air Force better deal with property that may be affected by the BRAC 2005 round, Mr. Gibbs said. "The Air Force has made significant progress in transitioning the installations identified for closure or realignment in previous rounds of BRAC," he said. "Turning to BRAC's past, the Air Force continues to work with local reuse authorities and other property recipients at each realigned and closed base from the four previous rounds of BRAC to transfer property.” Most importantly, Mr. Gibbs said, the Air Force will be better prepared through the BRAC 2005 process to deed property faster than in previous BRAC rounds. The Air Force is currently in the process of disposing of more than 87,000 acres at 32 locations, Mr. Gibbs said. He also told committee members that despite what may be said on the Internet, referring to a fake story that has been circulating for some weeks, no decisions have been made as to what bases will be closed or realigned. "No one can know the department of the Air Force's basing structure requirements for the 21st century until the BRAC 2005 process is finished," Mr. Gibbs said. "(Air Force officials affirm) … that regardless of what may have been published on the World Wide Web, there is no Air Force BRAC list." Gibbs said the final list of base closure recommendations will not be available until after May 2005. Free software must be returned [2004-02-20] WASHINGTON -- Air Force people who have received a promotional copy of a popular office productivity software suite, are instructed to return it to the sender. The Microsoft Corporation sent promotional copies of its popular "Office" software to a half million customers -- some in the Air Force. The commercial value of those software packages, more than $500 each, exceeds Joint Ethics Regulation limits for personal gifts, said John M. Gilligan, Air Force chief information officer. "Our ethical regulations govern the acceptance of gifts from those who do business with us," Mr. Gilligan said. "The value of those packages is well in excess of what Air Force members can accept, in particular since we are customers of Microsoft. In the public sector we are not allowed to accept that type of gift." Mr. Gilligan said Air Force members who received the promotional software are obligated to return it to Microsoft. People may return the software by re-sealing the packaging, marking it "refused delivery -- return to sender" and taking it to the post office. Mr. Gilligan said if the post office refuses to take the packages, they can be turned in to local communications squadrons. "Our installation communications squadrons will be collecting the packages and mailing them back as a group," Mr. Gilligan said. The policies regarding acceptance of gifts are in place to protect the Air Force from undue influence by organizations it does business with. Mr. Gilligan said the principal desktop productivity suite used in the Air Force comes from Microsoft. He also said the service is in negotiations with the company for additional product licenses. While it is unethical for employees of the public sector to accept gifts, Mr. Gilligan said the Air Force does not believe Microsoft had any ill intent. "This was simply a marketing campaign that Microsoft undertook where they failed to understand the impact of sending free sample software to government employees," Mr. Gilligan said. "I think it was just an oversight by not realizing the ethical restrictions we are under." Air Force brings DFAS airmen back on base [2004-02-20] WASHINGTON -- To improve its total-force personnel posture, the Air Force will move nearly 400 airmen assigned to the Defense Finance and Accounting Service back to base-level comptroller squadrons. Airmen working in Department of Defense billets like DFAS support the overall military mission, but do not directly support the Air Force's day-to-day business. The Air Force is looking to get some of those airmen back, said Michael Montelongo, assistant secretary of the Air Force for financial management and comptroller. "The Air Force, which only comprises 26 percent of DOD's total military force, discovered it was filling a disproportionate percentage of DOD's military billets with airmen," Mr. Montelongo said. "We’ve requested that some of these airmen return to the Air Force from the various joint and DOD agencies; DFAS is only one of them." Mr. Montelongo said the Air Force will eventually regain nearly 400 airmen currently working at DFAS. The Air Force stopped assigning airmen to DFAS in 2003. Airmen currently at the agency should have about two years on average left of their assignments before they are moved back to the Air Force. When those airmen do return to an Air Force job, they can expect to be working in finance-related jobs, Mr. Montelongo said. "The plan is to have all of these airmen return to fill shortages, particularly in the mid-career grades, in Air Force unit-level comptroller squadrons and to support deployment taskings," he said. "Although we are not retraining out of the financial management specialty in general, affected airmen may voluntarily request retraining. For now, this action doesn’t require anyone to retrain." The moves within the finance community are expected to be complete by the end of fiscal 2005, Mr. Montelongo said. Raptor program still flies [2004-02-25] WASHINGTON -- Air Force officials said they will continue with the F/A-22 Raptor program. Fervor over the Army's cancellation of the $6.9 billion Comanche helicopter program Feb. 23 raised questions about the future of the Air Force's F/A-22, said the director of Air Force combat force capability requirements. Col. Kurt Dittmer said the Air Force still has big plans for the multirole, supersonic, stealth fighter. "[For] anything the U.S. military wants to do in the future, its lead effort is going to be the F/A-22," Colonel Dittmer said. "We think it offers a significant transformation capability for all services. It will get you into the air space to let you do what you want to do." The F/A-22’s speed and stealth make it more survivable in a high-threat environment than other stealth aircraft such as the F-117 Nighthawk or the B-2 Spirit, the colonel said. While the F/A-22 brings new capability to the air war, it also extends the capability of existing aircraft, he said. "The F-117 and B-2 are limited to flying at night," Colonel Dittmer said. "They are low-observable to radar, but don't have the ability to defend themselves against air threats. The F/A-22 has air-to-air ordnance and has the capability to survive in the high-threat battle space. It can take out those threats in the daytime, and that allows the F-117 and B-2 to fly in the daytime. The F/A-22 changes our stealth to a 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week capable force." The F/A-22 also brings a joint capability to the table, meaning all the services will benefit from its abilities. Other branches of the military will bring significant capabilities of their own to the battle space, but Colonel Dittmer said the Air Force must first establish air dominance for that to happen. "We gain access for everybody,” Colonel Dittmer said. “Any future combat operations in high threat environment are going to require that we first establish air dominance. The F/A-22 will be the first thing combatant commanders ask for." The Air Force has received more than 20 F/A-22s, the colonel said. Those are currently at Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla.; Edwards AFB, Calif.; and Nellis AFB, Nev., and are being used for testing and to train Air Force pilots. The Air Force plans to purchase nearly 300 Raptors. The first operational F/A-22 squadron should stand up in December 2005, at Langley AFB, Va. Air Force leader discusses U.S. space program [2004-02-26] WASHINGTON -- The executive agent for space testified before the House Armed Services Committee subcommittee on strategic forces Feb. 25 on the status of America's space program. Undersecretary of the Air Force Peter B. Teets, who is also the director of the National Reconnaissance Office, told committee members that he had five priorities for the national space effort in 2004. Those efforts, he said, included: • Achieving mission success in operations and acquisition. • Developing and maintaining a team of space professionals. • Integrating space capabilities for national intelligence and warfighting. • Producing solutions for challenging national security problems. • Ensuring freedom of action in space. "These priorities have shaped the fiscal 2005 budget for our space programs and I see substantial improvements in capabilities in every mission area as we re-capitalize our space assets in the years ahead," Mr. Teets told committee members. "The funding requested in the president's budget allows us to evolve capabilities … while planned investments in new systems will provide significant increases in performance, supporting the full range of intelligence and military operations to include the global war on terrorism." The United States is pursuing two major initiatives as part of its space program, Mr. Teets told committee members. The first is the transformational communications architecture, which will be made possible by the Transformational Communications Satellite. Mr. Teets said that satellite will greatly improve the level of communications experienced by warfighters on the ground. "The TSAT will be a revolutionary change in satellite communications for the warfighter and for national intelligence users," Mr. Teets said. "It allows our fighting forces to have near real-time intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance at their fingertips and provides unprecedented connectivity with Internet-like capability that extends the global information grid to deployed and mobile users worldwide." Mr. Teets said he expects the first satellite to be launched in 2011. The second major initiative of the U.S. space program is development of space-based radar. The SBR program will provide persistent surveillance, on demand. That means the ability to see nearly anywhere on Earth, at any time day or night, through clouds or sand storms, Mr. Teets said. "Since radar has the unique capability of being able to see through clouds, to be able to image or do surface moving target indications at night, you can see the effects that you can achieve by having some persistence in your surveillance activities," Mr. Teets said. "That is the big driving factor behind the desire to have a SBR capability." Also discussed during the testimony was the development and implementation of a new space systems acquisition program, now under Air Force Space Command, and the status of the space-based infrared system. The SBIRS is designed to be a follow on to the defense support program, a series of satellites used to detect strategic missile attacks. Portal provides information, access, instant messaging [2004-03-01] WASHINGTON -- Air Force senior leaders have asked that all airmen sign up for a new Web-based technology that promises to streamline access to information across the force -- the Air Force Portal. In a December information technology initiatives memo, Secretary of the Air Force Dr. James G. Roche and Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. John P. Jumper asked that all airmen sign up for an Air Force Portal account as soon as possible. “The Air Force Portal will be the airman’s interface to all services and information needed to perform his or her job," the memo stated. Airmen may register for access to the portal by logging onto the Web site at https://www.my.af.mil and clicking on the self-registration link. The registration process is self-guided. The portal is a Web-based system developed to incorporate as many Air Force information applications as possible. The result of such an integration is that systems such as the virtual military personnel flight or functional area applications, such as a munitions ordering or parts tracking system, would all be accessible from one Web site, said Lt. Col Dan Hausauer, portal integration division chief. "The long-term vision is that the majority of applications and content will come through the Air Force Portal," Colonel Hausauer said. "Today there are hundreds of applications that are either accessible through the portal or are actually within the framework of the portal. In fact, the portal has the capability right now to house applications or to link to them on their current environment, wherever they are." The key benefit to such an integration is the idea of a single user login. Once a user logs in, the portal itself authenticates a user into the application. This means that with each new application integrated into the portal, users will have one less Web address, login name and password to remember, Colonel Hausauer said. "You can log into the portal with a single user name and password, and from there, these users can get to their applications without having to reauthenticate," Colonel Hausauer said. "Some users within the logistics community have told me that in the past they've had (more than) 50 user names and password combinations, and now they need only one." The logistics community has done the most to integrate their applications into the portal and to integrate the system into their own processes, Colonel Hausauer said. Besides logistics applications, other applications such as myPay and LeaveWeb are soon to follow. A recent change to the portal makes it even easier for users to get access. Now, users can access the system from any Internet-connected computer at home, at work or on the road, Colonel Hausauer said. When users are on temporary duty, the portal makes it easy to stay in contact with co-workers at their permanent duty stations in real-time. The portal now includes an instant messaging system similar to those found on the dot-com side of the Internet. The Air Force Instant Messenger was used most recently during operations in Southwest Asia, Colonel Hausauer said. "When the war kicked off, a lot of people on the front lines had difficulty getting to phone lines," Colonel Hausauer said. "People with network connectivity were using AFIM to do their job, like ordering mission-essential parts for aircraft or ‘IMing’ back to their home station in the United States to ask for assistance." During those operations, AFIM had been set up to interface with commercial messaging systems so deployed airmen could communicate with friends and family on their "buddy lists." That capability has been temporarily disabled, but Colonel Hausauer said it would return following a security review. For every application that has already been assimilated into the portal framework, there may be many others that have not, Colonel Hausauer said. One way to expedite their integration is for those most familiar with those systems to speak up, and ask for them to be incorporated into the portal. "A challenge for us is to get owners to come to us with their applications and to work with us to integrate them into the portal," Colonel Hausauer said. "We can make our security layer work for them, plus give them the benefit of the single user login. We also look to users to insist upon having the applications they use brought to the portal. Users need to ask their (leaders) if they can make that happen." Besides providing an integrated interface to existing Air Force applications, the portal provides functionality of its own. The portal includes a "white pages" section that lists everybody in the Air Force. It includes personalization features that lets users adjust the presentation to suit their needs. The system even allows users to upload favorites from their desktop computers, so those frequently used Web addresses are available from anywhere in the world. As more systems are brought into the portal, the Air Force moves closer to its overall vision for a Net-centric force. "The Air Force vision is to bring a virtual desktop to the airman and to bring all the applications you need to do your job to that desktop," Colonel Hausauer said. "You will have the ability to access them all with one login name and password, they will all work together seamlessly, and you will be able to access them from anywhere. That is the future." Air Force: Manpower unevenly distributed [2004-03-03] WASHINGTON -- Air Force leaders said manpower within the service is unevenly distributed. While testifying March 2 before the Senate Armed Services Committee subcommittee on personnel, Michael L. Dominguez said the service is in the process of rebalancing its manpower resources. He is the assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs. "(We) have developed a comprehensive, coherent human-resources plan that will guide our efforts to relieve the stress on our force and to transform that force so it can more effectively meet the demands of the global war on terrorism," Mr. Dominguez said. Part of the unbalance in manpower resources is that there are not enough airmen assigned to the jobs the Air Force needs done, said Lt. Gen. Richard Brown III, the deputy chief of staff for personnel. "Currently, we have too many people in some career fields, and at the same time, we don't have enough in others," General Brown said. "We are going to take steps to shape our force as we get back to our authorized strength. We need to do this smartly and need to avoid Draconian measures that break faith with our people. Our goal, if possible, is to give every airman the possibility to stay in the Air Force." A key component of the reorganization begins with an emphasis on an Air Force core competency: developing airmen. Education and training will be a focus of the reorganization plan. "Over the past year, the Air Force has implemented a new method of developing our force," General Brown said. "Force development combines focused assignments, and education and training opportunities to prepare our people to accomplish the mission of the Air Force. Rather than allowing chance or happenstance to guide an airman's experience, we take a deliberate approach to develop officers, enlisted and civilians throughout the total force." The Department of Defense's National Security Personnel System’s approval was also critical to the manpower reorganization. The system's flexibility, Mr. Dominguez said, allows the Air Force to modernize its civilian personnel management system and to expedite military-to-civilian job conversions. "The (new system) is a critical component of our plan," Mr. Dominguez said. "The modern management concepts included in that plan provide flexibility and agility needed to integrate our civilians … fully, completely and seamlessly into our total force." In response to questions about over-dependence on Air Force Reserve forces, Mr. Dominguez told committee members he did not think the reserve component was being unduly tasked. "(Reserve airmen) are totally integrated into what we do, and we cannot do our job without them," Mr. Dominguez said. "We are not overusing them. There are elements of that force that we are (working) pretty hard, but they are not being overused." Also discussed during the testimony were service efforts to support families of deployed airmen, benefits for the Guard and Reserve, retention, benefits of selective re-enlistment bonuses and the beginning of the expeditionary force. F/A-22 required for deep strike against enemy threats [2004-03-05] WASHINGTON -- Maintaining deep-strike capability is critical to future warfighting operations. In a March 3 testimony before the House Armed Services Committee subcommittee on projection forces, Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley said the Air Force must continue to maintain its deep-strike capability. "(Deep strike) must be defined as the capability to achieve the desired effects rapidly and persistently upon any target set in any environment, anywhere, at any time," General Moseley said. "Simply said, we must continue to be able to hold any enemy target set at risk at any point on the Earth." For an operation like Iraqi Freedom, General Moseley told committee members that the Air Force's ability to strike was in part because of American presence in the region for nearly 12 years and U.S. access to nearby bases. In testimony submitted for the record, the general said that type of access might not always be available to the U.S. military. "We are unlikely to encounter such a luxury in subsequent conflicts," General Moseley said. "In the future, we will require deep-strike capabilities to penetrate and engage high-value targets during the first minutes of hostilities anywhere in the battlespace. "Against the most advanced current and future enemy anti-access threats, the F/A-22 [Raptor] will be required," he said. "Combining stealth and supercruise, the F/A-22 will destroy these systems -- pave the way for penetrating F-117 [Nighthawks] and B-2 [Spirits] -- and support follow-on operations by our nonstealthy bomber and legacy fighter-bomber fleets." Committee members asked the panel of witnesses, which included both military and Department of Defense advisers, about the threat posed to U.S. long-range capability in Iraq by military hardware produced in Russia or China. Such hardware included the SA-12, a tactical surface-to-air missile system with anti-ballistic missile capabilities. General Moseley said such systems were unlikely to surface in Iraq. "The opportunity for the bigger systems, the strategic systems that are such a threat to long-range strike capability … I don't see as a threat … in Iraq," General Moseley said. The systems, he said, are too large and too expensive to be used by opposition groups there. By some estimates, systems such as the SA-10 or SA-12 may cost as much as $300 million to acquire. Both the initial cost, and the training and support required to sustain such systems would be prohibitive the general said. One concern of the committee was the possibility of U.S. technology being leaked to adversaries because of liberal licensing of Joint Strike Fighter technology to subcontractors. General Moseley said the JSF program office is aware of the issue. "The JSF is a critical niche in our portfolio, is a critical backfill to many of our aging systems and is a compliment to the F/A-22," General Moseley said. "The (F/A-22) program office is acutely aware … of our sensitivities on the protection of software, source code, and key and emerging technologies. We believe … the way ahead on this is to build this airplane the way we have it laid out and to be ever vigilant to the challenge (of security)." Also discussed was the need for intelligence in the field, the ability of the services to replenish munitions at a fast enough rate and the Air Force's need for a new tanker aircraft. One committee member asked if the requirement for a new Air Force tanker was invalid or "made up." General Moseley assured committee members the requirement was very valid. "Yes we need a new tanker, and yes we cannot operate these (KC-135 Stratotankers) at the level we have in the past," General Moseley said. "I am the operating commander from two campaigns. I could not take the KC-135E and, in fact, said ‘Do not deploy it, I do not want it over here.’" General Moseley was the first combined air forces component commander for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Walking Shield helps American Indians [2004-03-05] WASHINGTON -- For 10 years now, the Air Force has helped house and provide assistance to American Indians living on reservations in the United States through its participation in Operation Walking Shield. The Air Force deputy assistant secretary for installations, Fred Kuhn, co-chaired the OWS Management Conference recently in Las Vegas. According to OWS program director and creator, Phil Walking Shield Stevens, conference attendees planned for OWS activities during the next 24 months. "We did a review of each project to make sure everybody was ready to perform the missions coming in the spring," Mr. Stevens said. "We have to assure all the materials are available for the military. This was a management conference between tribal members and the military to make sure everybody was ready to go." According to Mr. Kuhn, the program teams federal agencies with American Indian groups to help improve living conditions on American Indian reservations. Air Force participation includes donating surplus military-housing units and supplies, developing infrastructure and administering medical care. The program also provides training opportunities to military members. "The program is an endeavor on the part of the many federal agencies and in particular the Department of Defense, to assist Native American tribes in the United States," Mr. Kuhn said. "When you go to a reservation, you find great opportunities for bare-base training, in particular for Airmen involved in civil engineering." Since the program's inception, the Air Force has donated 885 surplus military-family housing units to American Indians. The homes came from Grand Forks and Minot Air Force bases in North Dakota, and Malmstrom AFB, Mont. The Air Force would have had to pay more than $6 million to have the homes demolished and the debris hauled away, Mr. Kuhn said. By donating the homes, that cost was avoided. The homes now belong to tribes in North and South Dakota, Minnesota and Montana. The arrival of the new homes changed the lives of those who now live in them, said Mr. Stevens. "The families in those homes are extremely grateful for the support the Air Force has provided," Mr. Stevens said. "In some of the cases, these families may have had as many as nine people in a one-room building. They were all jammed together in a house that was about 280 square feet. They are now in one of the Air Force homes that is about 1,300 square feet, and they are absolutely delighted with the situation." Today, as many as 5,000 American Indians are living in the homes the Air Force provided. But the homes did not arrive at the reservations ready-for-occupancy. The homes needed running water, electricity and sewage lines. Because Air Force civil engineers do that work for a living, fitting the transplanted homes with utilities provided an opportunity for them to exercise their skills. "When those houses get to the reservations, you can't just plop them down," Mr. Kuhn said. "You have to hook them up to sewers, electricity and other utilities. You have to put them on a foundation. Military personnel, in particular our Guard and Reserve personnel, assisted the Native Americans in doing that." American Indian reservations are in some of the most remote areas of the country. They are in wilderness areas, deserts and arctic regions. Being able to conduct military training in such diverse areas prepares Airmen for deployments to similar areas overseas, said Mr. Kuhn. Besides infrastructure support and free housing, the Air Force and its sister services provide much-needed medical service to people living on reservations. "Air Force medics, doctors, nurses and dentists have helped, in joint environments, to provide health care to over 60,000 Native Americans," Mr. Stevens said. Houses and medical care are the most obvious benefits of having Airmen participate in OWS, but there are benefits beyond the obvious. Simply having Airmen there swinging hammers, pouring cement, installing plumbing, and exuding confidence and discipline, has an effect on young American Indians. "These young Native Americans see these young Airmen with technical skills, with expertise, with focus and with direction," Mr. Kuhn said. "As they watch an Airman with a welding torch, they learn how it operates. They gain a tremendous skill base. They are also seeing a role model and think they can maybe get there someday. I think that is one of the things that senior leadership of those tribes sees." Showcasing the skills of Airmen in front of young American Indians demonstrates what can be achieved by enlisting in the military. Mr. Kuhn said it helps with recruiting. Mr. Stevens agrees. "Almost every young Native American joins the military," Mr. Stevens said. "It is a way to get off the reservation and see what the world is like. "The Native American's have the highest enlistment record of any group in the (United States)," he said. "I have seen a lot of bronze stars, silver stars and purple hearts on the reservations." The familiarity of American Indians with the military was important in getting the services to participate in OWS. "When I first started this program, the military asked if Native Americans would be welcoming," Mr. Stevens said. "I told them that some of these men have fought on the island of Iwo Jima. They bled on the battlefields of Europe. They died in the jungles of Vietnam. They fought right next to some of the people that are in the military today. Now they need the military to come out there and help them get decent homes for them and their family. They would welcome the military." Moseley: Airmen doing tremendous work [2004-03-10] WASHINGTON -- During operations in Iraq, the Air Force experienced some of the highest mission-capable rates in recent history, said the service’s vice chief of staff. Gen. T. Michael Moseley spoke before a Senate Armed Service Committee subcommittee on readiness and management support March 9, directly crediting Airmen for the extremely high rates during Operation Iraqi Freedom. "Our Airmen have done some tremendous work in terms of readiness," General Moseley said. "During the conflict last year, we enjoyed our highest active overall mission-capable rates in six years." The mission-capable rate refers to the number of aircraft ready to fly at any time. The general told committee members the Air Force hit many readiness milestones in 2003. "Our aggregate mission-capable rates for fiscal 2003 were 75.9 percent," General Moseley said. "Our fighter fleet is up almost 2 percent since fiscal 2001, and our B-1 [Lancers] produced the best mission-capable and supply rates in history." The general also told senators that spare-parts shortages had been reduced, the number of aircraft in the depots was down and aggregate cannibalization rates were the lowest since 1995. Cannibalization occurs when parts needed to repair one aircraft are taken from another. Air Force officials are now working to reconstitute after intense operations in Southwest Asia, General Moseley said. Reconstitution efforts involve the replenishment of munitions and vehicles, and the refitting of such elements as fuel bladders, tents and expeditionary combat support. The general said reconstitution also involves the maintenance and readiness of the service's No. 1 weapons system: Airmen. "Beyond just equipment, our warfighting capabilities depend on training and a sustainable battle rhythm for the entire force," General Moseley said. "At the peak of Operation Iraqi Freedom, we had eight equivalents of our 10 (air and space) expeditionary forces deployed. We now have three deployed. But our steady state desire is for two." Air Force officials had previously predicted the service would return to its normal battle rhythm by March 2004. General Moseley said that only 90 percent has returned to sustainable battle rhythm. Those still surging include "low-density, high-demand" assets like combat support, intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance, and security forces. General Moseley also discussed efforts to put Airmen back into jobs only they can do, and the importance of joint training and ranges that are set up for joint use. The potential effects of fiscal 2005 budget requests not being met in their entirety and the effects of aging aircraft on readiness were also mentioned. "Aging aircraft issues continue to present us with a problem of fewer assets being available at ever-increasing costs," General Moseley said. "If we want to ensure air and space dominance in future engagements, we must recapitalize and modernize our assets. Today our average fleet has approximately 23 years in service. Some, like our KC-135 [Stratotankers], average as much as 43 years in service." The general said that aging fleets are vulnerable to many problems, including previously unknown technical issues and the disappearance of vendors that in the past have supported the fleets. The diminished readiness of some aircraft affects more than just the Air Force, General Moseley said. "These assets are invaluable … in the case of the tankers. Since we tank the world, they are a vital air commander's asset as well as a key enabler for our Navy, Marine and coalition partners," General Moseley said. Air Force avoiding Draconian measures while shaping force [2004-03-11] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force will try to avoid "adverse consequences" while reducing its end strength during the next few years. During testimony before the House Armed Services Committee subcommittee on total force, the Air Force's deputy chief of staff for personnel discussed the service's plans for force shaping. The Air Force is above its authorized end strength but will be smart in efforts to reduce its size, said Lt. Gen. Richard E. "Tex" Brown III. "We need to be prudent in the speed and magnitude we use to make changes to avoid unintended adverse consequences," General Brown said. "As we carefully look at what each component brings to the fight, we are working to ensure the best capabilities are retained and nurtured." There are currently more Airmen in the ranks than the 360,000 authorized by Congress. As Air Force officials work to reduce that number, they will try to avoid using the same force-reduction techniques used in the early 1970s and early 1990s after the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars -- measures they characterize as "Draconian." "Draconian measures are things … where we did reduction in force, or … selective early retirement boards," General Brown said. "We told people they would retire. We reduced the force by putting them out before their time or their desires. We want to avoid that." While the Air Force may be above its authorized end strength, there are career fields that are stressed -- meaning there simply are not enough Airmen doing certain jobs. One example of a stressed career field would be security forces. In other career fields, there are too many Airmen, General Brown said. Airmen do retire and separate on their own accord, and that contributes to bringing down the total end strength. But instead of Air Force officials bringing in new Airmen to fill critically short career fields, they will fill those slots with Airmen already in the force. "To be good stewards (of taxpayer money), we must get back to authorized end strength," General Brown said. "We don't want to use SERBs or RIFs to do that. So we are looking at some cross-training opportunities. We will take Airman that are in overage career fields and cross train them to career fields that are short. That is shaping our force, and we will try to do that in the next two years." Another aspect of force shaping is the military-to-civilian conversion. As many as 4,700 jobs held by bluesuiters could be converted to civilian or contractor jobs during the next few years -- though the conversion rate might not be one-to-one. General Brown characterized the types of jobs targeted for conversion as "administrative" or "back-shop." "Certainly places and agencies that are not warfighters, that are not going into the front, are candidates to become military-to-civilian conversions," General Brown said. "(That frees) more people to go into bluesuiter positions, and that's shaping the force." Also discussed at the testimony were Airmen’s roles in Army “units of employment," sharing resources across the total force, and Army National Guard Soldiers guarding Air Force gates at stateside installations. Mentors program gives officers someone to look up to [2004-03-18] WASHINGTON -- Every officer or officer candidate needs someone to look up to, someone he or she can talk with about career development and being a professional and becoming a leader. For more than 20 years, Air Force Cadet/Officer Mentor Action Program volunteers have provided officers with that someone. The program matches up officers with mentors -- officers who have Air Force experience to share. The program serves officers of all grades, said Brig. Gen. Henry Taylor, national president of the program. "The focus is on our junior officers, and certainly they make up a large percent of our membership," General Taylor said. "We have involvement from colonels on down. Our basic context is that every officer is a mentor, and that we want to see every officer mentored." The program is an officially recognized Air Force activity with 21 chapters across the service. Officers at each chapter conduct visits to local Air Force ROTC detachments to offer guidance to cadets. General Taylor said the chapters also hold fellowship luncheons, feature professional speakers and facilitate the pairing of mentors with protégés. Protégés are paired with officers in similar career fields, where they can learn from the mentor's military experience and hone their professional skills. But it is not just the protégés that benefit from the program, said Col. James Johnson, president of the Pentagon chapter. "The mentor experiences true selflessness," Colonel Johnson said. "Giving of one’s self, to teach, to train and to encourage fellow officers or cadets will replicate itself in other parts of an officer's life. It provides intangible benefits, including the personal satisfaction of contributing to the development of future leaders of the Air Force." The program began as part of an Army mentorship program called ROCKS, named after its founder, Army Gen. Roscoe "Rock" Cartwright. In 1983, the Air Force joined the program, ensuring the message of mentorship was provided to Air Force ROTC detachments. Two years later, the Air Force split from the Army program so it could focus entirely on Air Force ROTC cadets. In 1989, the Air Force ROCKS program was officially recognized by the Air Force and renamed AFCOMAP. Program officials will hold an awards banquet March 20 at Bolling Air Force Base, D.C., to recognize program achievers from 2003. Honorees include: • President's Award: Majs. George Govan and Gloria Porter both of the Pentagon Chapter. • Lt. Col. Thomas L. Bain Leadership Award: Maj. Traci R. Madison from Robins AFB, Ga. • The General Daniel "Chappie" James Award: Capt. Demetrius M. Wilson from Travis AFB, Calif. • The Distinguished Service Award: Capt. Felisa Wilson from Robins. • Brig. Gen. William E. Stevens Award: The Golden Gate Chapter at Travis. • Individual Membership Recruiting Award: Maj. Vivian P. Dennis from Robins. • Air Force ROTC Outstanding Cadet Award: Cadet Jeffry Harnly from Travis. • High School Cadet Leadership Award: Cadet Col. Mary Renae Conley from Travis. Ethics regulations guide Airmen in political activities [2004-03-24] WASHINGTON -- With less than nine months until the next federal election, political activity is heating up in the nation's capital and around the country. Airmen may want to get involved in what are some of the most fundamental activities of American democracy: campaigning and politicking. But as employees of the federal government, servicemembers must ensure their participation in political activities does not violate government ethics regulations, said Melinda Loftin, the Air Force associate general counsel for fiscal and administrative law. "Members of the armed services are encouraged to carry out their obligation of citizenship by voting," Ms. Loftin said. "But while on active duty, they are prohibited from engaging in certain political activities." Servicemembers cannot participate in the management of partisan politics or be part of a political campaign or convention, Ms. Loftin said. They cannot be a candidate for political office, conduct political opinion surveys, march or ride in partisan parades or participate in organized efforts to transport voters to the polls. The restrictions on what a servicemember can do may seem numerous, but they serve an important purpose. They are meant to assure the American public that agents of the government, such as servicemembers, do not have undue influence on the American electoral process, officials said. "The theory behind this is a separation between partisan-political activities and the federal government," Ms. Loftin said. "This is crucial when involving the armed forces because of the need for public confidence in civilian control of the military. If an Airman was wearing a uniform and engaging in political activities, it might give the appearance of an endorsement for a particular candidate by the armed forces." Servicemembers can express their personal opinions on candidates for office, but they must ensure their opinions are a reflection of themselves and not of the military. Airmen may join political clubs, attend political meetings and rallies as a spectator when not in uniform and make contributions to political organizations. They may also display bumper stickers (but not large signs) on their personal vehicles and sign petitions to put candidates on the ballot, Ms. Loftin said. Servicemembers may also participate in what is perhaps the most important political activity, Ms. Loftin said. "Members on active duty may register to vote, they may vote, and [they] are in fact encouraged to vote," she said. Servicemembers are allowed to vote while in uniform. Issues involving federal employees and political activities are embodied in several publications, including the Joint Ethics Regulation. Airmen with questions about what political activities they may participate in or with general questions about military ethics standards should contact their base legal office. Air Force seeks to eliminate inadequate housing [2004-03-30] WASHINGTON -- Air Force senior leaders spoke with members of Congress on March 30 about the service’s requests for military construction funding in the fiscal 2005 budget. In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee subcommittee on military construction, the Air Force civil engineer, Maj. Gen. L. Dean Fox, told senators the commitments reflected in the budget request are similar to those of the previous year. "The Air Force continues to … invest wisely in installations from which we project air and space power, take care of our people and their families with adequate housing and quality-of-life improvements and sustain the public trust through prudent environmental management," General Fox said. Air Force officials requested $2.6 billion for total-force military construction and military-family housing and an additional $2.2 billion for sustainment, restoration and modernization funds. The total Air Force budget request is more than $4.8 billion. According to prepared testimony, the Air Force's budget request is higher than the previous year -- that includes an increase of $200 million for military-family housing. Air Force officials said they expect to use some of that money -- a total of about $1.6 billion -- to meet its goal of eliminating all inadequate military-family housing in the United States by 2008. Portions of that funding will also be used to provide more than 2,200 housing units at 16 installations, to improve more than 1,300 units at six bases, and to support privatization of more than 6,800 units at six bases. The privatization process means the Air Force would no longer own military family housing, but it would instead work with contractors to have housing privately owned. The Air Force then arranges to have Airmen rent or lease the units directly from the private owners. The cost for maintenance of the units falls on the shoulders of the private owners. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas asked if the Air Force had considered proposals by local governments in Germany to privatize military-family housing there. The assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, environments and logistics, Nelson F. Gibbs, told the senator the Air Force was aware of the proposals and was considering it. "We would encourage them to go even beyond the build-to-lease program and to go into what would look more similar to privatization that we do (in the United States)," Mr. Gibbs said. "That would be for them to construct housing and put it at our disposal in exchange for the allowance for quarters over there. They have been apprehensive because of the increased risk. But we want to talk with them about the success it has enjoyed here and to try to convince them to consider that in addition to the build-to-lease program." Funding to continue work on the Air Force's dormitory master plan is also in the budget request. "Just as we are committed to provide adequate housing for families, we have a comprehensive program to house our unaccompanied junior enlisted personnel," General Fox said. "The Air Force is well on its way in implementing (that plan.)" The three-phase plan involves eliminating facilities with group latrines and eliminating the deficit of dormitory rooms. The plan also includes conversion or replacement of existing dormitory rooms at the end of their useful life with rooms that meet the new Air Force-dormitory standard. General Fox said the Air Force has already completed the first phase of that plan. Also discussed at the senate hearing was the meaning of "excess capacity" in relation to base realignment and closure, Air Force monies being spent on environmental remediation and the locations of new C-17 Globemaster III missions. Air Force wants new human-resources system [2004-04-02] WASHINGTON -- In testimony before Congress on March 31, the Air Force chief information officer said the service would like to accelerate development of a new joint personnel system. Air Force Chief Information Officer John M. Gilligan told members of the House Armed Services Committee subcommittee on terrorism, unconventional threats and capabilities, that the service supports accelerating the Defense Integrated Military Human-Resource System by as much as two years. "What we are trying to do is to accelerate our implementation of (the system)," Mr. Gilligan said. "It was previously scheduled for 2007. We would like it to be in 2005, if possible." The system is a commercially developed software system that will replace older personnel and pay computer applications in the Department of Defense and in the component services, he said. For instance, it will eventually replace the Defense Finance and Accounting Service's Defense Joint Military Pay System -- the application responsible for handling pay for all military members. The new system will also replace the Military Personnel Data System, an Air Force human resources system. The system will provide information about all servicemembers to senior leaders, including duty status, current location, readiness status, pay grade, and information and projections on promotion. Essentially, the new system will not just replace old applications, but combine them. It is that synergy the Air Force is most interested in, Mr. Gilligan told committee members. "(Intergrating) pay and personnel is very important to us," Mr. Gilligan said. "Today we don't have an integrated pay and personnel system in the Air Force. DFAS provides the pay system; we provide the personnel system. There are a lot of problems at that interface." Mr. Gilligan stressed that the new system will not do everything that was done by the systems it is likely to replace. Instead it will provide the most common human resources and pay functions to all services. While it is possible the system could expand allowing more functionality, Air Force officials are interested in seeing it fielded sooner rather than later, he said. "We are in a position … where today we do not want to delay (it)," Mr. Gilligan said. "If expanding (the system) would cause it to be delayed, we don't vote for that. We are not anxious to do is see it delayed any further. Air Force recognized for ethics program [2004-04-08] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force was recognized April 7 at the Pentagon for outstanding achievement in developing and managing its ethics program. Marilyn L. Glynn, acting director and general council of the Office of Government Ethics, presented the 2004 Outstanding Ethics Program Award to Secretary of the Air Force Dr. James G. Roche. "Your ethics staff has done an outstanding job of establishing a program that exemplifies the integrity that is the hallmark of the Air Force," Ms. Glynn said. "One of the most important things your office has done is build a strong ethical culture within the Air Force." The program is one of 12 federal programs recognized this year. Selection was based on a review during 2003. Ms. Glynn said experts found the Air Force way of doing things went beyond what was expected of federal agencies. "You have ethics training that goes way beyond the minimum requirements," Ms. Glynn said. "You have Web-based training for your employees. You do face-to-face training with senior executive service (members), general officers and higher-level political appointees. You have points of contact within offices that help establish a means of communicating ethics information to various components. Other agencies don't have anything even close to that." Secretary Roche said that having the ethics program is not enough. People must understand why they need to act ethically, he said. "We have to have people willing to participate in the program who will understand that the program is designed to help them and to help the United States Air Force," Secretary Roche said. "Ethics is a philosophy of how you do your business and how you deal with people and how you view your responsibilities. When there is an ethical lapse by any one of us, it hurts and taints us all." Software helps Airmen track fitness progress [2004-04-09] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force recently released a tool to help Airmen keep track of their fitness efforts. The Air Force Fitness Management System is available to all Airmen through the Air Force Portal. The system provides a history of their fitness scores and allows unit fitness managers to enter new scores. It is now the official method to track fitness progress within the Air Force, said Maj. Maureen Harback, the system’s program coordinator. "The purpose of the (system) is to track fitness-assessment results and provide data to commanders,” Major Harback said. The system is intended for active-duty, Guard and Reserve Airmen. The system will keep a history of each Airman's fitness scores. The data is not stored on paper in an Airman’s record or even on a computer at an Airman’s installation, but rather in an Air Force-wide database. This allows fitness scores to travel with Airmen automatically as they change stations. The universal availability of the data helps ensure Airmen stay current on their fitness assessments, Major Harback said. "If an Airman transfers to another base and is not current on their fitness assessment, they will show up as not current in the (system),” Major Harback said. “Unit fitness program managers and commanders will then need to take action on those members." Many units are still doing monthly practice assessments so Airmen can get themselves into shape for an official assessment. The system does not record practice assessments, but it does include a calculator allowing Airmen to enter in numbers from their practice assessments to see how they would score, Major Harback said. "Airmen will have better visibility of their fitness over time, and they can take actions to address their deficiencies or continue working on their strengths," she said. This fall, commanders will be able to generate reports to track an Airman’s progress through education and intervention programs, Major Harback said. Travel cardholders have online-payment option [2004-04-13] WASHINGTON -- Airmen with government travel cards can now make payments to their accounts online. The “MyEasyPayment” system allows Airmen with government travel cards to pay off residual or unexpected charges not covered by split disbursement payments, said Josephine Davis, the Air Force banking liaison officer. "Split disbursement of travel card payments is mandatory for military members and by default for civilians, but there are unavoidable situations when the split-disbursed amount does not cover your total charges," Ms. Davis said. Airmen are required to use their government cards for airline tickets, hotels and rental cars for military travel. They may also use their cards to purchase meals and to get cash for incidental expenses. When Airmen return from travel, they file a voucher so they can be reimbursed for their expenses. That payment, or disbursement, is split between the Airmen's personal-checking account and their travel-card account. Airmen are responsible for indicating how much money should be sent to the travel-card account. If there is a miscalculation of the amount owed on the travel card, there can be residual or unexpected charges still owed. An example of an unexpected or residual charge is when an Airman makes a purchase overseas and the exchange rate changes before the merchant processes the charge, Ms. Davis said. "There could be additional money owed there," she said. "Instead of the transaction costing $50, it may now cost $52. Another example is when Airmen lose receipts and forget about charges on their cards. Despite those types of errors, Ms. Davis said Airmen are still responsible for paying off their accounts in full. "Just like with any other credit card, it is our responsibility to know what we owe," Ms. Davis said. "Sometimes you need to call the bank and find out what you need to pay. This system gives you the opportunity to make those payments." Airmen with questions about being reimbursed for unexpected or residual charges on their accounts should contact their military travel pay office, Ms. Davis said. Travelers may need to file an amended travel voucher if they feel they are owed money. The payment system is available at www.myeasypayment.com. To use the system, cardholders need to know the amount they want to pay on the card, the card’s account number and security code, and their checking account and bank routing numbers. Ms. Davis said cardholders can check their account balance by calling the toll-free number on the back of the card. Foundation seeking inputs for Air Force memorial [2004-04-14] WASHINGTON -- Air Force Memorial Foundation officials are seeking ideas for inscriptions to be placed at the new memorial site. The official groundbreaking will take place Sept. 15 at the memorial site, just southwest of the Pentagon. The focal point of the Air Force memorial will be a 270-foot monument featuring three spires that point toward space, said retired Maj. Gen. Edward F. Grillo, Air Force Memorial Foundation president. “To many, these spires conjure images of a missile or space launch, the Thunderbird’s ‘bomb burst’ formation or a somber (missing)-man flyover of Arlington National Cemetery,” General Grillo said. “Many also see it as a bold representation of the three core values of today’s Air Force: Integrity first, service before self and excellence in all we do.” The site will also include a parade ground, an 8-foot-high rendering of the Air Force Honor Guard designed to “honor the values and traditions of our Air Force,” two 55-foot-long granite walls and an area called “Walls of Reflection.” The walls -- seven translucent glass panels arranged around a square center area -- are to bear inscriptions, the general said. Two granite walls, one to the north and one to the south of the parade ground, will also bear inscriptions. The memorial foundation has formed several committees to develop ideas for what inscriptions or images will be placed on those walls. Retired Gen. John A. Shaud, a longtime member of the Air Force Memorial Foundation’s site and design committee, along with General Grillo, will complete the inscription process. The committee wants ideas for inscriptions from Airmen and anybody else who has an interest in the service, General Grillo said. "Anybody can submit," General Grillo said. "That includes those currently serving, those who have served in the past, and those people who simply have a love of the Air Force." One suggestion came from the daughter of a lieutenant colonel who flew in the Berlin Airlift, the General Grillo said. "She said her father was proud of his service and that she would like to see something about that operation included at the memorial," the general said. Suggestions for inscriptions can address specific ideas. They can include images and quotes, as well as thoughts on the categorical groupings or broader themes that should be recognized with inscriptions, General Grillo said. Concerning past contributions, General Grillo said “you can't just look back to 1947 when the Air Force was officially created. Instead, you must go back as far as 1907 and look at those people that came before us and set the foundation for what we are today." Suggestions for inscriptions at the memorial can be e-mailed to the inscription committee at afmf@airforcememorial.org. Online system reduces trips to education office [2004-04-20] WASHINGTON -- Four features now available under the Air Force's virtual education system give Airmen more control of their academic pursuits. The Air Force Virtual Education Center is a Web-based system available to the total force that allows Airmen to do many of the things online that once required a trip to a base education office. Airmen with accounts on the virtual center can now update personal data through the system, including rank, duty phone, and e-mail and postal mailing addresses. New features allow users to view a complete history of their enrollment in courses taken using tuition assistance. Users will also be able to access a list of notifications concerning missing grades and payment suspenses, and they can check Defense Activity for Non-Traditional Education Support and College-Level Examination Program test results. The virtual center came online in early 2003 and was designed to streamline the process of participating in off-duty education, said Jim Sweizer, Air Force chief of voluntary education. "The system is taking all the things we used to do in the old days on paper and trying to move them into the virtual world," he said. "This is part of a customer service transformation." The center’s development is in line with similar developments in the civilian world. Being able to make payments online or to conduct business without leaving your home is something Airmen are familiar with and demand, Mr. Sweizer said. "This is about convenience," he said. "Today you can pay bills in one place instead of running around to all locations, and that is a timesaver for consumers. In the Air Force, the better customer service you can provide, the better it is for the student. (The virtual center) is about better customer service." One of the most apparent benefits to customer service is the center’s tight integration with the Community College of the Air Force, Mr. Sweizer said. "Airmen can view their CCAF academic progress reports on the system," he said. "That process used to take six to eight weeks when done with a paper request … . Today, (students) can go on the (virtual center) and immediately see what they need to complete their coursework." The center also makes it easier for Airmen to have their CCAF transcripts sent to other universities. Mr. Sweizer said the CCAF sends out as many as 65,000 transcripts a year to various schools. "It was also a paper intensive process in the past," he said. Sending out a transcript from CCAF to another school could have taken as many as six weeks when it was done entirely through paper mail and handwritten forms. With the virtual center, he said, the Air Force has reduced that process time to 24 hours. While the virtual center does not currently allow Airmen to apply for tuition assistance online, officials said it soon will. In fact, application for tuition assistance will be a focal point on the site. "The primary reason an Airman visits the education center is to start or continue college," Mr. Sweizer said. "The key component of that is tuition assistance. We fully fund tuition … the goal is to have them sit at a computer and be able to apply for tuition assistance in the virtual world." From a military computer, Airmen can sign up for an account at https://afvec.langley.af.mil. ASVAB changes will not mean lower standards [2004-04-21] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force will adjust the cutoff score used to gauge new recruits taking the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery in July. The change -- from 40 to 36 -- does not mean the Air Force is lowering its standards, said Tina Strickland, chief of Air Force testing policy and research integration. "We don't want people to think we are lowering the standard of quality coming into the Air Force," Ms. Strickland said. "It appears that way because 36 is lower than 40, but it will still be the same quality of applicants we are accepting into the Air Force today." The change in cutoff is because Department of Defense officials are “renorming” the test, Ms. Strickland said. Test takers get a raw score -- the number of questions scored correctly. But, Ms. Strickland said, DOD officials are more interested in where the test taker stacks up against a sample, or "normative," group of test takers. A population of 18- to-25-year-olds who took the test in 1980 is currently considered to be the normative group. The test’s score reported is actually a percentile, or a number indicating how many people the test taker scored higher than, Ms. Strickland said. If a recruit takes the test today and scores an 85 that actually means he did better on the test than 85 percent of the test takers in the 1980 group. Ms. Strickland said the reason for the renorming is that the applicant population sampled in 1980 is no longer representative of today’s applicants. "Potential servicemembers in the last 20 years, simply put, have gotten smarter," Ms. Strickland said. "So the scores have shifted." Beginning July 1, the DOD will renorm the test to reflect that shift. As a result, the same test scored on July 1 would get a slightly lower score than if it was scored June 30. "You may have gotten the same number of questions right, and your aptitude is the same -- everything is the same actually -- but your score converts to the new score scale," Ms. Strickland said. "Some people think we are lowering standards because of the renorming, but we are not," Ms. Strickland said. "We will be enlisting the same quality servicemembers on July 1 as … on June 30." Besides the change in cutoff numbers for enlistees, Air Force officials will change the numbers already in the system for active-duty Airmen. "To keep everybody consistent, we are going to convert everybody's numbers," Ms. Strickland said. "So your (score) and your maintenance, administrative, general and electronic scores will all be converted to be on the new scale." Ms. Strickland said the change will go unnoticed by most Airmen. Prevention, screening allow Airmen to come home healthy [2004-04-29] WASHINGTON -- Surgeons general from the Army, Navy and Air Force testified before Congress on April 28 on the status of health care in the services. Air Force Surgeon General Lt. Gen. (Dr.) George Peach Taylor Jr. spoke to members of the Senate Appropriations Committee defense subcommittee. He said the Air Force's predeployment efforts at disease prevention and in-the-field disease identification systems are allowing Airmen to return from deployments healthier than ever. "Our people are coming back in better health because of individual disease-prevention efforts, but also because of the incredible deployment health-surveillance program that we have fielded," Dr. Taylor said. "From our preventive aerospace medicine teams to our biological augmentation teams, we are helping to protect the area of responsibility from biological and environmental threats." Dr. Taylor told senators the Air Force is using equipment that can identify disease-causing pathogens in about two hours. In coming years, he said, Air Force officials hope to use even better equipment to identify disease before it can cause serious illness. "We hope to reduce the time even further, through new, more advanced -- indeed, break-through -- genome-based technologies," he said. The senate panel asked about shortages of doctors, nurses and dentists within the reserve components of the services. Dr. Taylor said the shortage may be due in part to the difficulty of running a medical practice coupled with the potential of being deployed more than a quarter of a year at a time. "It is difficult in today's medical practice," Dr. Taylor said. "Many of the providers operate close to the margin. Taking them out for long periods of time can often destroy a practice. We are trying to work ways where we can bring them on deck for short periods of time through a volunteer system so they can work perhaps 30 days every couple of years. Certainly pay and environment of care is an aspect." Senators also asked about the increase in eye and limb injuries seen coming off the battlefield. The increase is, in part, because of the improvement of protective gear -- body armor -- for the chest and abdomen, said Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. (Dr.) James B. Peake. While the gear goes a long way to improve the chance a wounded servicemember will survive what in the past might have been a fatal injury, it does not protect the limbs and eyes. A person who, in the past may not have lived through an injury, can live today -- but finds he or she is without sight or limbs, he said. All three service surgeons general said that developing better protection for the head, eyes and limbs is critical, and they are actively working with body armor-designers to address the physical requirements. Presence policy helps define expeditionary force [2004-05-03] WASHINGTON -- The secretary of the Air Force recently signed a policy clearly defining the structure and role of the air and space expeditionary force within the joint warfare environment. The Air and Space Expeditionary Force Presence Policy, among other things, defines AEF, outlines its command structure and explains how its capabilities will be served up to joint combatant commanders, said Brig. Gen. William L. Holland. He is the director of air and space expeditionary force matters. "This policy is the overarching document that guides the Air Force through what we've been doing for the last couple of years," General Holland said. "It codifies those processes, and the policy that guides those processes, in how the Air Force organizes, trains and equips to meet combatant commander's requirements." The policy now allows combatant commanders to ask the Air Force for services in terms of capability. In the past, they would present their needs in terms of units, aircraft or numbers of people, the general said. "Perhaps the combatant commander has a requirement for close-air support," General Holland said. "Depending on the background of the combatant commander and his staff, they may automatically think of the A-10 [Thunderbolt II]." Having a combatant commander ask for a specific type of aircraft, or even a specific unit, can be taxing on the Air Force, the general said. For example, if a combatant commander has priority and asks for a specific Air Force unit, the unit may be pulled away from work it is already engaged in. "If they ask for an A-10 and we don't have one available, it becomes a matter of taking it from somewhere else -- so then somebody else's needs may go unfulfilled," the general said. General Holland said it would be more efficient for the commander to say what capability he or she needs and to then let the Air Force decide how best to provide it. The policy allows that to happen. The policy will soon be available to all Airmen on the Air Force's publishing Web site. The general said he hopes Airmen will take the time to read the document, because it explains in full what the service has been asking them to do for so long. "(It) will provide Airmen with the strategic vision of why they are being asked to do what they are being asked to do," he said. "We have a lot of smart folks out there who will do just about anything if they understand why. Senior leaders are always looking for a better way of explaining it to them, and the (policy) helps us with that." The policy also solidifies what Air Force leaders have been talking about for years, the general said. It turns what before had seemed to many a concept or an idea, into something leaders can point to. "The AEF is no longer a concept; it is a reality," General Holland said. "It is so because we have been doing it and have been successful at doing it.” Exhibit illustrates French, American cooperation [2004-05-04] WINDSOR LOCKS, Conn. -- The Air Force's vice chief of staff participated in the dedication of an exhibit here May 1 that honored some of the first Americans to fly aerial-combat missions. The exhibit, at the New England Air Museum at Bradley International Airport, commemorates the heroism of American aviators who flew for France during World War I as part of the Lafayette Escadrille and the Lafayette Flying Corps. The participation of those Americans in military cooperation with France is a tradition that continues into modern times, said Gen. T. Michael Moseley. "Every one of the Allies shared in the pain of (World War I)," General Moseley said. "For the band of brothers that were the French and American aviators, the pain would form a bond that for us here today we can still be proud of. Whether we are talking about (World War II operations), Desert Storm, Allied Force, Deliberate Force, or [in] the sky over Afghanistan today, the bonds of integration between American and French aviators are no different today." The Lafayette Escadrille formed nearly 88 years ago. The unit was made up of about 38 American aviators who volunteered their service to France. At the time, Europe was embroiled in World War I and the United States had not yet decided to offer assistance to its Allies there. The aviators of that unit were the first Americans to fly aerial combat missions. The Lafayette Flying Corps refers in general to American aviators who volunteered to fly for France in several French flying units from 1916 to 1918. French officials dedicated a memorial in 1928 in Marnes-la-Coquette, France, to honor the members of the Lafayette Escadrille and Flying Corps. Until now, however, there was no place in the United States dedicated to the squadron or other American aviators who flew for France in the war. General Moseley said the exhibit here was a fitting testament to the memory that first served America's Allies in Europe. "This (is) a fitting tribute to the heroes who volunteered to serve a greater calling and epitomize the American fighting spirit," General Moseley said. "Just as the unit's namesake, Lafayette, stood with Washington from Valley Forge to Yorktown, the men of the Lafayette Escadrille stood by the French. This display mirrors the Lafayette Escadrille memorial established after the war, just outside Paris." At the dedication, General Moseley posthumously awarded the Purple Heart to Lafayette Escadrille Ace, Maj. G. Raoul Lufbery. Major Lufbery died in aerial combat over France in May 1918. Descendants of Major Lufbery were at the ceremony to receive the award. Future total-force concept aims to increase combat capability [2004-05-28] WASHINGTON -- Active-duty Airmen, guardsmen and reservists working together to support the Air Force mission in a war zone such as Iraq or Afghanistan is not unusual. However, in a concept being studied at the Air Warfare Center, Airmen from all components will work together supporting the Air Force's RQ/MQ-1 Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle mission at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. The move is the latest by Air Force officials to increase combat effectiveness by leveraging one unit's capabilities off another's. While the overall concept is called future total force, implementation still defies definition, said the Air Force director of strategic planning. "You can call them blended, integrated, merged, affiliated, associated or even partnered units," said Maj. Gen. Ronald J. Bath. "When you say any one of those terms, it means one thing to one person and one thing to another. But whatever you call them, this is about change -- looking to the future and transformation." The partnership at Nellis AFB came about because the base had a shortfall in manning, and the closest pool of guardsmen to the base was in California. "In order to get those California guardsmen down to help the Nellis AFB shortfall, we had to come up with a creative plan that would build a blended unit," General Bath said. The California Air National Guard Airmen would cross state lines to serve in Nevada. That plan involved reconciling laws governing the federal government's operation of its military with laws governing the states' operation of their militias. Future total force being considered at Nellis AFB represents one of the three pillars of transformation under the Air Force's transformation flight plan, General Bath said. "The Air Force identifies transformation as three things: technology, concepts of operation, and changes in organization," he said. "Future total force is a conceptual framework for how to increase combat capability by using active-duty, Guard, Reserve and civilian forces in a different way. It is a piece of organizational change." Another example of transformational organizational change under the future total-force concept is occurring at Robins AFB, Ga. Less than two years ago, the Air National Guard's 116th Bomb Wing and Air Combat Command's 93rd Air Control Wing merged to form the 116th ACW. The merger increased the combat effectiveness and organizational efficiency of the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System at the base, the general said. That increase in effectiveness became the push for the Air Force to look for new ways to apply the future total-force concept. "The Robins issue became the catalyst for coming up with new ideas," General Bath said. "We needed to come up with new ways to (use) the forces we will still maintain as the iron and missions shift. Now we have a lot of templates we are looking at. Robins and Nellis are just two of them." One template Air Force officials are looking at is completely new. While all states have Air National Guard units, not all states have active-duty components. There are some places where it may be possible to insert active-duty people into what had been exclusively a guardsman's world, General Bath said. "This would involve moving active-duty people to a Guard location and having them live (in) the community, and blend into the community, as opposed to having the big base infrastructure we are used to," General Bath said. "Burlington, Vt., is one of the places we have been looking at," he said. "Burlington has an F-16 [Fighting Falcon] unit with enough ramp and infrastructure capacity for more planes. We are looking at possibly moving active-duty aircrews [and] maintainers to Vermont and having a unit up there that has more airplanes than are just in the Vermont ANG." Such a plan would involve active-duty families living entirely within the community, without the standard infrastructure provided by an Air Force base, General Bath said. Under one proposal, grocery shopping would be done on the economy, with Airmen using a special "commissary card" to buy groceries and then being reimbursed for the difference. The integration being considered in Vermont is not entirely farfetched, the general said, just part of the future total-force concept. "I think that over time, all of this integration will evolve. It is part of an evolutionary process," General Bath said. Commanders must lead efforts to combat sexual assaults [2004-06-04] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force director of manpower and reserve affairs testified June 3 before Congress during a hearing on sexual-assault prevention and response within the armed forces. Michael L. Dominguez told members of the House Armed Service Committee total force subcommittee about efforts the service had made to solve the problem of sexual assault within the Air Force. "Air Force leaders have been working this problem hard for the last 18 months," Mr. Dominguez said. "Our efforts began in January 2003 (when Secretary of the Air Force James G. Roche received) an e-mail from an Air Force Academy cadet victim. Air Force leaders moved decisively … to correct problems at our academy through the ‘Agenda for Change.’" The directives embodied in the Agenda for Change, which began in late March 2003, were designed to ensure the academy is a safe, secure environment for cadets. The directives came in the wake of a series of reports of sexual assault at the Colorado Springs, Colo., institution. Mr. Dominguez also told committee members the service had launched an Air Force-wide investigation into its sexual-assault policies, practices and programs. "Air Force assessment teams visited 85 installations including (those in) Southwest Asia," Mr. Dominguez said. "We reached out to over 100,000 personnel through interviews, surveys and focus groups. Even before our assessment was complete, Secretary Roche and (Air Force Chief of Staff) Gen. John P. Jumper reacted to correct discovered deficiencies." One of the efforts initiated by the Air Force's two most senior leaders was the establishment of improved procedures to coordinate support and assistance for sexual-assault victims. Those improvements, Mr. Dominguez said, were modeled off a program already in place at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. He said the results of the assessment were consistent with the findings of a task force led by Ellen Embrey, deputy assistant secretary of defense for force health protection and readiness, and with data from research sponsored by the Department of Justice. Mr. Dominguez highlighted for committee members key findings from the Air Force assessment. "Sexual assault covers a broader range of behaviors than rape," he said. "Violent assault by strangers does occur, but the larger sexual-assault problem involves young people who know each other. Alcohol is frequently a factor." One committee member suggested the combination of alcohol and young servicemembers with "raging hormones" allowed for potentially "explosive" situations. There was agreement at the hearing among service witnesses and legislators that education was key to creating a culture change within the services that would bring about a solution to sexual assaults in the military. Mr. Dominguez told committee members that commanders would be central to such a culture change. "Our attack on sexual assault must be a broad-spectrum campaign aimed at changing or eliminating attitudes, behaviors and beliefs that can be exploited by sexual offenders," Mr. Dominguez said. "Changing culture will require a long-term sustained effort by all of us. In the armed forces, commanders are, will and must be at the center of the change effort." Mr. Dominguez also said the assessment indicated there are sometimes complex circumstances that make it very difficult to prove and prosecute sexual offenders. "Perpetrators often don’t meet society's stereotypes and are therefore difficult to detect," Mr. Dominguez said. "Finally, barriers to the reporting of crimes by the victims are substantial." Also central to the hearing was discussion about the Uniform Code of Military Justice. One congresswoman referred to the code's Article 120, titled "Rape and Carnal Knowledge," as "anachronistic," saying it was no longer adequate. The momentum for discussing the effectiveness of the UCMJ in regard to sexual assault is a bill that aims to amend Article 120 with the intent of bringing military sexual-assault crimes into parallel with federal sexual-assault crimes. The bill, titled the "Military Sexual Assault Crimes Revision Act of 2004," was introduced in the House on April 1 by Rep. Loretta Sanchez of California. Despite claims the UCMJ may be inadequate in providing prosecutors the muscle needed to bring justice to bear upon sexual offenders, Mr. Dominguez told committee members there are law enforcers who believe the code is even more powerful than what is available to some civilian authorities. He cited a case in Wichita Falls, Texas, the community surrounding Sheppard AFB, where law enforcement favors sexual offenders being prosecuted under the military justice system over prosecution in the civil courts. "The sheriff of Wichita Falls … knows the UCMJ provides our commanders a richer menu of tools to be able to deal out justice than he has available to him," Mr. Dominguez said. Also discussed in the hearing were the resources available to sexual-assault victims in deployed locations, and the relationship between sexual abuse of prisoners in Iraq and sexual assaults within the ranks. Service witnesses agreed to provide legislators with a breakdown of what resources are available to victims in deployed locations. That breakdown would include information about the availability of rape counseling services, abortion services for rape victims, "rape kits" for collecting crucial DNA evidence for use in the prosecution of sexual offenders and "emergency birth control." Rep. John M. McHugh of New York, the subcommittee chairmen, told service witnesses he believed the military had reached a crucial point in the process of eliminating sexual assaults within the services. "We are at a crisis point here, at a juncture," said Rep. McHugh. "I think we are in real danger of losing the faith and trust of the female contingent of the U.S. military. That would be a catastrophe. We must have in our hearts the intent to do the right thing." Standard AEF deployment length stretches to 120 days [2004-06-04] WASHINGTON -- Most Airmen scheduled to deploy in upcoming air and space expeditionary force packages will see their orders expand from 90 to 120 days. The change in deployment length will begin with AEF cycle 5 in September. Those who deploy as part of AEF 1 and 2 should prepare for a 120-day deployment. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper announced the change in his “Sight Picture” on June 4. The reason for the change is that the requirement for deployable forces is not expected to decrease in the foreseeable future, he said. "Simply put, the demands on our deployable forces have not diminished and are not expected to decline for some time," the general wrote. "Further, the Air Force component commander in the Central Command area of operations has asked us to deploy people for longer tour lengths to allow greater continuity for expeditionary commanders in the field." To help extend tour lengths to 120 days, the entire AEF cycle was adjusted. The new cycle, now 20 months in length, allows for a four-month eligibility window and a 16-month training window. General Jumper also said he intends to increase the pool of Airmen eligible for deployment. Currently, the Air Force has about 272,000 Airmen earmarked as deployment-eligible. "I have asked all of our major commands to aggressively review the assumptions upon which they exclude Airmen from our AEFs and take immediate steps to maximize those postured (for deployment)," the general said. The changes to the AEF cycle, while possibly difficult for some, should be considered by all Airmen as part of their commitment to the Air Force, General Jumper said. "Let me be perfectly clear -- in our Air Force, every Airman is expeditionary, every Airman will know (his or her) place in the AEF system, and every Airman will be prepared to support the combatant commander, whether deployed, in (the continental United States) via reachback, or employed at home station," General Jumper said. Airmen currently deployed as part of AEF 7 and 8 and AEF 9 and 10 will still be held to the 90-day deployment schedule. Inspection team allows flying mission to continue unencumbered [2004-06-25] SOUTHWEST ASIA -- A four-man team of aircraft specialists arrived in theater in late May to ensure C-130s assigned at one forward deployed location would meet the deadline on a depot-directed inspection. The depot sent out a time compliance technical order to all units with C-130 aircraft directing that the airframes be inspected for damage or corrosion on portions of the wing structure. "In this case the inspection was for cracks in the center wing pipe, where the center wing and outer wing join together," said Capt. David Drummond, the C-130 systems engineer that led the team. Captain Drummond's team included SSgt. Robert Lewis, who performs non-destructive inspections on C-130s, and SSgt. William Walsh and Senior Airman Justin Furman, both perform aircraft structural maintenance. Because the team deployed specifically to perform the TCTO inspection, regular maintainers at the forward deployed location were able to continue doing their regular jobs. The commander of the expeditionary maintenance group at the location said that had he used his own maintainers to perform the inspection, it might have affected the ongoing mission. "It would have been less people to do the work we already do here to support the flying," said Col. John Stankowski. "This was maintenance above and beyond normally what we are manned to do. I can't say it would have happened all the time, but it would have happened where some jobs might not have gotten done if our folks had been pulled to do this TCTO." During the inspection, Capt. Drummond's team looked specifically at the center wing to outer wing joint on both sides of the airframe in addition to the lower wing panels. He said the team found corrosion or damage on five aircraft. "We have been finding corrosion on the rainbow fittings," he said. "The big thing we found was a lot of cracks on the wing plank and on the rainbow fitting as well. Five airplanes had cracks here. We sent four of them home." Capt. Drummond's team repaired the remaining aircraft. "I specifically stop-drilled one of the aircraft," said SrA. Walsh. "It's possible (the crack) could have continued to run and cracked the wing further." SrA. Walsh said that stop-drilling is one fix for a crack in a wing component. He explained that by drilling a hole where the crack ends, you could prevent it from spreading further. Additionally, he said a sealing compound is used to fill the crack. One benefit of having a C-130 engineer, an inspector and a repair crew on scene at the same time to work on the TCTO was that questions about the direction of repairs could be handled within the team. Without an engineer present to sign off on possible fixes, the team would have had to wait more than 24 hours for those answers to come back from the United States. That type of delay could leave planes on the ground, instead of flying their missions, said Col. Stankowski. "It could have taken twice as long to get the answers back — maybe three times as long," he said. "So instead of us knowing within hours that a plane would be good to go, we would have had to leave it disassembled. This team brought with them both the manpower and the brainpower to get the job done — they worked some miracles for us." Perhaps the best indicator of that miracle is that the C-130s were able to continue their mission unimpeded while the inspection was taking place, Colonel Stankowski said. "The amazing thing is, beyond getting airplanes off the ground on time, is that the flying squadron was able to continually eliminate the backlog of cargo in the theater while this TCTO was going on," Col. Stankowski said. "Their mission to move cargo and people. If you have a backlog and you are doing this TCTO and you are able to continue to reduce that backlog, then the mission is getting done." General revises clothing policy for Airmen deploying to SWA [2004-06-29] SOUTHWEST ASIA -- All Airmen deploying to the Central Command area of responsibility must now ensure the clothing they pack is in step with a recent dress and appearance policy revision now in effect. The most significant change requires Airmen to wear either desert camouflage uniforms or physical training gear while on an Air Force installation in Southwest Asia, said Lt. Gen. Buck Buchanan, U.S. Central Command Air Forces commander. When the Air Force physical training uniform is made available, it and DCUs will be the only authorized clothing for Airmen assigned to units in theater, unless they are specifically authorized to wear something else, the general said. General Buchanan’s new policy ensures the Airmen’s attire portrays a positive military image and supports the area’s force-protection posture. “As a military community, we are increasingly taking on the role of U.S. ambassadors,” General Buchanan wrote in the policy letter. “We must also ensure protection of our forces. Accordingly, I have reviewed proper order and discipline requirements and force-protection policies, in regards to dress and appearance, to ensure every possible step has been taken to portray a positive military image and to protect the personnel assigned to this command.” At Army installations in the region, the Army dress and appearance requirements, which parallel the new CENTAF policies, will be the standard for deployed Airmen. Because the Air Force PT uniform is still in development, Airmen are authorized to wear civilian-style PT gear as long as it is conservative, professional and with only minimal and appropriate decoration. Shirts must have sleeves and be predominantly a solid color. Shorts must reach to the mid or lower thigh and can not be made of spandex, the general said. For duty-related tasks that require civilian clothing, for military travel in and out of the theater, and for locations where Airmen are authorized to leave the installation for cultural or recreational activities, they must wear conservative clothing. The policy defines "conservative" as sleeved shirts and dress pants or jeans, which fit properly and are a solid, dark color and are in good repair. Shoes should also be conservative and sturdy. Well-maintained sneakers or hiking boots are recommended while open-toed shoes, sandals and "flip-flops" are prohibited. The policy gives installation commanders the leeway to authorize people to wear civilian clothing for specific official duties or visits, special activities and specialized PT such as swimming, weight lifting, basketball and volleyball. The clothing authorized in these instances will be conservative as defined and posted by installation commanders. A new policy letter specifically states that Airmen deploying to the AOR should bring only a “minimum amount of civilian clothing,” defined as no more than two dress outfits and/or two casual outfits, not including standard or specialized PT gear. “How military members present themselves both on and off duty continues to be an important part of the effect our presence has at locations across the globe,” General Buchanan said. “This policy ensures our Airmen’s dress and appearance give the same professional impression that their tireless accomplishment of the mission does every day. And as importantly, the conservative, low profile it creates reinforces our force-protection goals and operations in the theater.” Airmen deploying can get more information or a copy of the policy letter at their local military personnel flight. New group commander likens role to mayor [2004-07-09] SOUTHWEST ASIA -- Colonel Lyndon S. Anderson assumed command of the 379th Expeditionary Mission Support Group from Colonel Neil E. Rader, in a ceremony here July 2. For his next assignment Col. Rader will serve as chief of the Anti-terrorism and Force Protection Division, Joint Security Directorate at Headquarters U.S. Central Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Fla. Colonel Anderson formerly led the Directorate for Operational Plans and Joint Force Development at the Pentagon. Colonel Anderson will serve a one-year tour as commander of the 379th EMSG. The group is responsible for force protection, construction and facility maintenance, contracting and contractors, telephone and computer networks as well as radio communications, personnel, services, fuels, and transportation. “We touch a little bit of everything,” Colonel Anderson said of the support group. “I like to think of what I do in terms of being the mayor of a little city.” According to Colonel Anderson, one of the challenges he faces as the new “mayor” is getting so many different Airmen from so many locations around the force to work together. “Our biggest challenge is integrating the vast number of experts we get from throughout the Air Force into a cohesive organization that can best support the mission,” he said. The colonel pointed out that even within one deployed flight, individuals might not know each other. “We don’t get entire squadrons here,” he said. “Gelling those people together and pointing them all in one direction, that is the challenge.” A native of Fla., Colonel Anderson enlisted in the Air Force in March 1981 and was assigned to F. E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo., as a missile systems analyst for the Minuteman III nuclear weapon system. He earned a commission through Officer Training School in March 1985. His first assignment as an officer was at the 7th Bombardment Wing, Carswell Air Force Base, Texas. There, he held multiple flight-level command positions within the 7th Organizational Maintenance Squadron. Colonel Anderson’s awards and decorations include the Defense Superior Service Medal; the Meritorious Service Medal with four oak leaf clusters and the Air Force Commendation Medal with one oak leaf cluster. New maintenance group commander taps supervisors to do the right thing [2004-07-16] SOUTHWEST ASIA -- Colonel Rob Burnett Jr. assumed command of the 379th Expeditionary Maintenance Group from Col. John Stankowski in a ceremony here Wednesday. Colonel Burnett formerly served as deputy commander of the 347th Maintenance Group, Moody Air Force Base, Ga. He will serve a one-year tour as commander of the 379th EMXG. The new group commander is responsible for three maintenance squadrons. Colonel Burnett’s first impression of the base was like that of many others upon seeing the installation for the first time. “My first impression is that this is a busy place, with a lot going on,” he said. “Also, it’s hot… very hot. It was hot in Georgia, but not this hot.” More important than weather was the colonel’s first impression of the men and women he now commands. He said his perception is that the group is well run and managed. Still, the colonel said he sees challenges in commanding an expeditionary group. One of those challenges, he said, is the schooling of rotational Airmen in the expeditionary way of doing business. “We have so many people rotating in and out,” he said. “Our biggest challenge is getting people acclimated and getting people used to the way we operate. There is a pretty steep learning curve for folks coming in and they have to learn it fast.” The colonel’s solution for getting those Airmen ready to work in the fast-paced expeditionary environment is not novel — but it is pure Air Force. “We’re going to work with supervisors to make sure people do things the right way,” the colonel said. “What I’m talking about is ensuring we utilize the technical orders and making sure people know how to follow that guidance. I want our Airmen to work to meet the mission requirements and at the same time maintain maintenance discipline.” Colonel Burnett said he didn’t think the men and women of the 379th EMXG would have any problems meeting his expectations. “We have the best people in the world in our Air Force,” he said. “Those people are our enlisted folks.” A native of South Carolina, Colonel Burnett received his commission in 1980 through the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps at the Citadel in Charleston, S.C. After training at the aircraft maintenance officers course at Chanute Air Force Base, Ill., the colonel took an assignment at the 437th Military Airlift Wing, Charleston AFB, S.C. Since leaving South Carolina, Colonel Burnett has served in Germany, at two command headquarters and at numerous Air Mobility Command and Air Combat Command installations. Desert Hawk gives security forces an eye in sky [2004-07-23] SOUTHWEST ASIA -- Airmen at one forward deployed location — engaged daily in a routine of work, chow and picking up laundry — may not think to look up in the sky. But if they did look up, they would see something looking right back at them. Flying at about 300 feet above the ground is a small foam aircraft with a built in video camera. But the plane isn’t there to spy on Airmen as they go about their efforts to support the war on terrorism. Instead, it’s on its way to the perimeter of the installation, where it will fly about looking for suspicious activity. The craft serves as an eye in the sky for the force protection personnel deployed here; it’s another layer of security, a deterrent — it is the Desert Hawk. “We fly the Desert Hawk at different times of the month, depending on what’s occurring in the local area,” said Senior Master Sgt. Nicholas Liberti, the Security Forces Operations Superintendent. “Desert Hawk is part of the Force Protection Airborne Surveillance System and is a force protection multiplier for the installation. It is a layer of defense that provides early-warning and detection ability.” Physically, the Desert Hawk is not a big aircraft. It has a wingspan of about 52 inches, is less than three feet long and weighs around seven pounds. Its mission is pretty big, though. “Without the Desert Hawk, we would have less ability to provide security against the man-portable air defense systems threat to the base,” Sergeant Liberti said. “That’s what this aircraft is designed to do, control the MANPADS threat.” Essentially, the Desert Hawk is keeping an eye out for bad guys with access to MANPADS. MANPADS are fairly easy-to-obtain, shoulder-launched weapon systems that have the capability to destroy or damage U.S. and Coalition aircraft. Should the Desert Hawk see such a threat, local security forces respond with the right level of force. “If the Desert Hawk does happen to fly over something, we can spot it at that moment and then dispatch Guardian units out to assess the situation,” Sergeant Liberti said. The FPASS program is run entirely by enlisted Airmen. Maintenance on the craft, launch and recovery efforts and even piloting of the bird are handled by specially trained volunteers from the Security Forces career field. While FPASS program team members are still regular security forces, their program is a departure from the normal flight duties, said Staff Sgt. Nancy Gonzalez, FPASS program lead. “What we do is very different from regular security forces work,” Sergeant Gonzalez said. “But we still get to carry a weapon.” Sergeant Gonzalez has about 17 Desert Hawk flights under her belt. She said her favorite part of the job is putting the plane in the air. “I think the launching and landing of the plane is the best part,” she said. “You hook it up to a bungee cord, stretch it out and let it go.” According to Sergeant Gonzalez, it takes two Airmen to launch the Desert Hawk — a pilot and a copilot. The pilot holds the aircraft about five feet off the ground. The copilot attaches the end of a bungee cord to plane and then walks away, stretching the cord tight and charging it with just the right amount of potential energy to launch the tiny plane into the air. The copilot wears a vest and helmet just in case the plane should launch into his chest instead of climb skyward. The plane doesn’t start out with the engine running, however. That doesn’t happen until after it’s shot into the air. “After we launch, and it goes over fifty feet per second, the motor engages,” Sergeant Gonzalez said. “After that, it flies itself on the path you have programmed.” The plane’s battery power and tiny propeller can keep the craft in the air for approximately 60 minutes, she said. The main body of the Desert Hawk is made of high-density foam and costs about 300 dollars. If it needs repair to its frame, it’s Sergeant Gonzalez or members of her team that do the repair. “They do their own work on the bird if it breaks,” Sergeant Liberti said. “They put the pieces back together and use glue or tape — whatever it takes to keep it flying. They do all the maintenance.” The team doesn’t do repairs to the mechanics of the plane, however. It’s the inner workings of the plane — the cameras, computers, servo motors and mechanical parts — that bring the cost to about $30,000 dollars. Sergeant Gonzalez said problems with the inner workings of the craft are repaired by the manufacturer. The Desert Hawk sees a lot in the sky both day and night. In fact, there are two models of the plane. The first is equipped with a small digital camera that looks similar to what computer users may have on top of their monitor. The camera transmits images via radio wave back to the ground control station. There, Sergeant Gonzalez and her copilot can watch the images on a small video screen and record them to video tape. Another Desert Hawk model is equipped with an infrared camera. Like a Security Forces Airman with a set of night vision goggles, the nighttime Desert Hawk can see in the dark. “The plane provides real-time footage, day or night, of the exterior of the base,” Sergeant Gonzalez said. The Desert Hawk has many of the same features as a larger aircraft. It has wings and flaps. It’s got a tail, a motor and a propeller. What it doesn’t have is a “stick” in the cockpit. Of course, on a plane this small there is no cockpit either. Control of the aircraft comes from a portable ground control station. Instead of flying with manual inputs by a pilot, the Desert Hawk flies a predetermined route programmed in to its onboard control system with the aid of a laptop computer. “You program a flight into the computer, indicating where you want it to go,” Sergeant Gonzalez said. Using an onboard global positioning system receiver, the Desert Hawk is able to keep itself on the course Sergeant Gonzalez programmed it to fly. That means that the operator on the ground isn’t really telling the craft where to go once it’s in the air. But that doesn’t mean she couldn’t reprogram it in mid-flight. In fact, being able to do so is critical to the Desert Hawk mission. “I don’t steer the plane,” Sergeant Gonzalez said. “But if I see something suspicious I can program it to go elsewhere. I can also have it hover over head and move the camera to view.” Landing the Desert Hawk is a bit different than landing a regular airplane, because it has no wheels. Instead of coming in for a traditional landing, it comes in for what amounts to a controlled crash. Sergeant Gonzalez must ensure the wind, terrain and angle of descent are all correct and may have to do several passes before the plane can be brought home safely. Still, should the craft come down hard, it is pretty tough. “It has Kevlar protection on it,” Sergeant Liberti said. “But when it quits flying, it falls like a rock.” The Desert Hawk is not as expensive, or as sophisticated as its bigger siblings, the Global Hawk or the Predator. It can’t fly as far and it can’t deliver munitions. But its mission is as important to ground based security forces in deployed locations as the bigger craft are to the Air Force as a whole. “This is nothing on the grand scale of the other UAVs,” Sergeant Liberti said. “Still, this is an extremely important program. It is another layer of security on the base. It is a deterrent. It is another set of eyes that can detect potential hostile activity.” Deployed senior noncommissioned officers offered course in leadership [2004-07-30] SOUTHWEST ASIA -- Future senior noncommissioned officers at one forward deployed location were recently given an opportunity that until now might have been available only to those at their home stations. Earlier this week, 26 master sergeant selectees attended the first Senior Noncommissioned Officer Symposium held in the U.S. Central Command Air Forces' area of responsibility. The symposium was designed to help technical sergeants gain a better understanding of the responsibilities that come with being a member of the top three enlisted ranks, said Master Sgt. Carolyn S. Starkweather, president of the local Top Four group and symposium coordinator. "When a person joins the SNCO Corps, the expectations of their supervisors, peers and subordinates change," Sergeant Starkweather said. "This symposium was designed to give these future master sergeants the opportunity to learn what those new expectations are." One of the most inspiring moments of the symposium came from the most unexpected place — the junior enlisted members that sat on the Network 15 panel, said Master Sgt. Jeffery Martin, the Top Four vice president and symposium co-coordinator. Network 15 is an enlisted group that represents members in the ranks E-1 through E-5. "During the Network 15 panel, an Airman told these future senior NCOs that an Airman's maximum effort will be done at a noncommissioned officer's minimum standard," Sergeant Martin said. "It was so profound and so simplistic — and he was right. If NCOs want their Airmen to perform to high standards, they must set high standards. If they take one thing away from this symposium, I hope this is it." Getting Airmen to perform the mission to the highest standards is critical, Sergeant Martin explained, because for senior NCOs it is not their own performance that reflects on them, but the performance of their subordinates. "You are not judged on your work any longer," he said. "You are judged on how your people do their work." Symposiums offered to new SNCO selectees at their home stations would last as many as five days. Though the deployed version of the symposium was shorter — just a day and a half long — it didn't skimp on the important things symposium coordinators felt needed to be covered. "We had four panels to provide our students the opportunity to learn what was expected of them by their commanders, first sergeants, subordinates and chiefs from across the wing," Sergeant Starkweather said. "We also invited the wing commander and command chief to give their perspective on what is expected of SNCOs." The symposium also included visits by key wing staff offices like military equal opportunity and the judge advocate as well as a lecture by the Office of Special Investigations about the key security concerns senior NCOs need to be aware of. In deployed locations, mission constraints have sometimes kept units from offering a senior NCO symposium to master sergeant selectees. Members of the local Top Four felt it was important to offer technical sergeants the seminar before they took on their new responsibilities, Sergeant Martin said. "For some NCOs, it may have been two or three years since they attended the NCO academy," Sergeant Martin said. "This symposium "re-blues" you and helps you get ready to be the manager, the shop chief or the section head of your unit. It is important because it gives SNCO selectees a snapshot of what is coming for them. If we didn't offer this symposium, we would be doing our master sergeant selectees a real disservice." To ensure technical sergeants on future deployments can benefit from the work they did, Sergeants Starkweather and Martin made sure to document their efforts. "We put all the presentations on a CD, along with other information that would be helpful," Sergeant Starkweather said. "We are making a continuity binder to be left with the command chief so it can be done next year. And we are including critiques from this class, to help tailor the next seminar to their needs. The biggest challenge will be finding someone willing to do this, because this is the right thing to do." Deployed painter makes gray barriers her canvas [2004-08-06] SOUTHWEST ASIA -- Thousands of concrete barriers dot the landscape at one forward deployed location. While some bear graffiti, a few are graced with art intended to last as long as Coalition forces work at the installation. Airman 1st Class Shrett Lettinhand, 379th Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron, is one of the artists whose barrier paintings are intended to last. She is a security forces troop who hit her one year time-in-service mark about the same time she deployed to Southwest Asia. By the time she goes home, following a six-month tour in the region, she'll have spent a third of her career in DCUs and left a mark that Coalition partners and base visitors will be seeing for years to come. "Basically, I paint a lot of stuff for the cop squadron," Airmen Lettinhand said. "I did two murals at the main gate -- those were requested by the base commander. I also painted the security forces barrier." Her work at the entrance to the installation features a welcome message for visitors and a security forces logo. At the front of the security forces compound, she painted a welcome sign. Airmen Lettinhand paints on "Jersey barriers." The barriers are huge, upright concrete slabs used as a barricades and as dividers on roads. They take their name from where they were first used, the New Jersey Turnpike. Locally, the barriers are seen around parking lots, entry control points, on the flight line and around high-security facilities. The barriers are usually gray or white. Right now, Airmen Lettinhand is working on an additional piece for her squadron. It will feature four original designs of hers. Each one, a comic book-style figure, represents a different flight within the 379th ESFS. She said she is influenced by comic books. "I'm into traditional type comics like Spawn, Spiderman, Punisher and stuff like that," Airman Lettinhand said. "That's where I get my regular drawing style, from comics." Airman Lettinhand said she is also influenced by more traditional painters like Edouard Manet and Leonardo DaVinci. Before she heads back to her home station, she hopes to finish her biggest project yet, a mural at one of the clubs at the installation. "At the Heritage Club I am doing 21 barriers with one theme… a tropical theme," she said. "In the center of (each barrier) is every squadron symbol." The mural will feature palm trees and camels over a colorful purple and orange dusk sky. At the center of each barrier will be a squadron logo. To finish the mural, and to do all of her work, Airmen Lettinhand works at night. She says the extreme temperatures force her to work after hours. "It's too hot in the day," she said. Temperatures can reach as high as 120 degrees in the region. "The paint would dry up in the can, so I can only work at night." Besides painting public art on barriers, Airmen Lettinhand works in oils, pencil, computer graphics and sculpture. While on deployment to Southwest Asia, she has even dabbled in body art. She's designed a lot of tattoos for her fellow deployed Airmen. "Everyone asks me about tattoos," she said. "I draw a lot of tattoos. The weirdest one was a punk rocker. But that's the thing, custom tattoos. Nobody wants to pick a tattoo off a wall when another guy has the same thing." "At the Heritage Club I am doing 21 barriers with one theme… a tropical theme," she said. "In the center of (each barrier) is every squadron symbol." Airman Lettinhand said she advises her patrons to wait until they get home to get the tattoos she drew put on to their bodies. "I tell them the sun here isn't good for tattoos," she said. While Airman Lettinhand has no official training in art, she did take art classes throughout high school and then took a nine month course in computer graphics after graduation. She said that after her Air Force enlistment, she plans to get a master's degree in art, and become an instructor at the university level. She says she'll start working on her college education when she redeploys and scoffs at the notion it may be too difficult for her to take classes while being a cop. "If you want it -- cop or not -- you have twelve hours a day to yourself," she said. "Nobody says you can't bring the books out there. People use that excuse, but you can do it." Survival equipment keeps pilots afloat [2004-08-15] SOUTHWEST ASIA -- Airmen in a back shop at one forward deployed location do work that goes largely unnoticed by everyone but pilots in the face of disaster. Members of the survival equipment shop are responsible for testing and maintaining the parachutes, rafts, escape slides, life preservers, survival suits and other equipment needed by pilots and flight crews should they have to land before their airplane does. “We’re the last to let you down … that’s our motto,” said Staff Sgt. Kelly Dawson, a survival equipment specialist with the 379th Expeditionary Maintenance Squadron. The survival equipment shop recently moved into new facilities that offer the team more space to complete their mission. “We used to be at the F-15 phase dock, where the JSTARS are,” Sergeant Dawson said. “Our space over there was probably two-thirds the size of the parachute room we have today. Now we can do parachutes in one room and flotation devices in another.” Parachutes are probably the most visible product to come out of the survival equipment shop. The packs are opened on a long table in the new inspection room so individual components like the harness, lines, canopy and pilot chute can be inspected for damage. Each line is checked to ensure there are no tears or frays. “If a line is damaged, we may have to send the parachute back to the manufacturer or even retire it,” said Senior Airman Jesse Struk, 379th EMXS. After a technician inspects and repacks a parachute, he signs his name to it. That signature is a guarantee to a pilot that his parachute will work when he needs it. “From technical school onward this is a pressure issue,” Sergeant Dawson said. “If any of our equipment fails for pilots, especially if they die, we can pretty much sign our career away.” That kind of pressure might keep some people awake at nights. But if you do your job right, Sergeant Dawson said, there is no need for stress. “If you do everything by the technical order, you shouldn’t have to worry, that’s your relief right there,” he said. “ If you don’t follow the TO, that’s when you worry.” An orange raft, about 20 feet across and that seats as many people, lays deflated and in a heap on the floor of the new survival equipment shop. The raft is one of four that would normally be stowed under the wing of a C-130 aircraft. Tech. Sgt. Kraig Schroeder, 379th EMXS, hooks the nozzle of an air compressor into the raft. It takes about 10 minutes to fill the raft with the compressor. If the raft were actually deployed from the underside of a C-130 in an emergency, it would fill much quicker. “With the carbon dioxide cylinder installed, it could inflate in as little as 30 seconds,” Sergeant Schroeder said. The raft is left inflated for up to four hours to ensure it maintains pressure. After the inspection, technicians deflate the craft and fold it into a bag. The bag must fit neatly into a metal form that matches the cavity in the wing of the C-130 where the raft will be kept. The rafts are inspected once a year, Sergeant Schroeder said. The survival equipment shop also tests the smaller rafts used by fighter pilots. The smaller rafts are equipped with an inflatable top designed to keep pilots warm until they are rescued. The top isn’t automatically filled by the attached CO2 container, however. Pilots must fill it using their lungs. Staff Sgt. Jessee Patterson said that to expedite a pilot’s rescue at sea, the underside of the inflatable top is colored day-glo orange. “They can open the flap to let rescuers find them out in the ocean,” he said. “If they don’t want to be seen by enemy aircraft, they can close the cover and hide between the waves.” While not packing parachutes or inflating life rafts, the men and women of the survival equipment shop put to use one of the skills they learned in technical school — sewing. “We sew gravity suits and vests for pilots so they don’t pass out when they do maneuvers,” said Schroeder. “We also spend three months in technical school sewing parachutes and flotation equipment.” They don’t always sew survival equipment, however. As a part of the fabrication flight, survival equipment specialists can be tasked to sew just about anything. “I spent five years at Andrews Air Force Base,” Sergeant Schroeder said. “Most of our job there was sewing. We made interiors for Air Force One and all the other planes.” Sergeant Dawson said the sewing part of the job is a welcome departure from the by-the-book procedures usually involved with survival equipment. “With all the equipment we maintain, we go by the technical order,” Sergeant Dawson said. “But with these other projects, it’s all about your ability. There is no technical order for some of that stuff.” Sergeants Dawson and Schroeder say they may sew anything from soundproofing for C-130 aircraft to covers for conference room tables. “It kind of brings out your creative side,” Sergeant Dawson said. “Somebody comes in with an idea and gives you measurements and you are kind of responsible for drawing the diagram and manufacturing what they wanted. Later, when they see how you implemented the idea, they are pretty happy.” Still, gratitude garnered from making a camouflage cover for a conference room table doesn’t compare to that which comes from somebody who’s life you may very well have saved by packing their parachute correctly, or ensuring their survival suit didn’t have a hole in it. “You can really see somebody’s appreciation when they tell you ‘if you hadn’t done your job right, I wouldn’t be here today,’” Sergeant Dawson said. PT helps Coalition partners stay fit [2004-08-22] SOUTHWEST ASIA -- Airmen who want to get in shape, have fun and meet members of the Coalition couldn’t get a better opportunity than a fitness class that offers all three of those things. The class, called “Combat Aerobics,” is taught by Coalition members, including a British physical training instructor and an American security forces specialist. “What we offer is a fun way to get in shape,” said U. S. Air Force Master Sgt. Jeffery Martin, one of the class instructors. “We offer a variety of routines and a total body workout.” Bronwyn Howell, also a leader for the class, said the course is one more fitness option for deployed troops. “We tried to add a new physical training option for our guys here, to help increase the range of fitness opportunities, “ she said. “This is designed to help people improve their overall level of fitness.” With three instructors, each leading the class participants on a different night of the week, the fitness routines always vary, said the United Kingdom’s instructor, Royal Air Force Corporal David Worboys. “Every session is different,” he said. “ It doesn’t look structured, but it is designed to maximize participation. Everybody encourages each other during the class. We sometimes use weights, steppers or medicine balls. But really, we don’t need a lot of equipment to do what we do.” The main portion of the class involves a lot of traditional exercises that don’t require any equipment other than a mat. Class participants do a lot of pushups, running, squats, and crunches. One night, class participants paired up to complete their exercises in a circuit-training format. While one partner did a set of exercises, the other ran. When one’s set of exercises were completed, the two switched. The partners went back and forth for a little over 30 minutes, until each had completed 100 crunches, 81 squats, 64 pushups and a myriad of other exercises. “Everything hurts the next day,” said RAF Sgt. Richard Gibbon, a regular at the class. “This is my main fitness program while I am here. And this is brilliant, really, it brings us together like a big family.” While a big benefit of the class is that it brings together Coalition partners for some multi-national physical training, the primary goal is to get people healthy. “This is an easy way to get a lot of people fit in a small space,” said RAF Corporal Worboys, “We are trying to help people lose weight and maintain an overall level of fitness.” Sergeant Martin said the class helps Airmen meet a fitness goal that’s been on most people’s minds since late last year. “According to the Air Force policy, you are supposed to be given time during the duty day to do fitness, but sometimes that can’t happen,” he said. “In less than an hour here, we can give you the total body workout you are going to need to pass the physical training standard set by the Air Force.” Until recently, the class had been held in the former “Camp Andy” portion of the installation. At that time, as many as 30 individuals would show up to participate in the class. After the class moved, the number of participants dwindled down to less than ten. Sergeant Martin said that decrease in numbers is unfortunate, because the value of the class increases as more people participate. “Everybody works together here to increase their overall fitness,” Sergeant Martin said. “The more people we have participating, the more encouragement we have to push people forward to do better.” Anybody can participate in the Combat Aerobics course. It is offered three times a week, Saturdays, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1830, at the RED HORSE pad at the far back corner of Coalition Compound. Humidity is key in keeping cool [2004-08-29] SOUTHWEST ASIA -- During the hottest hours of the day, technicians in the medical group here step outside to take three measurements that impact operations base-wide. Those three measurements are used to calculate the wet bulb globe temperature, a number used to set work-rest cycles for the base. The WBGT is more relevant than a simple temperature measurement because it includes a key factor in the body's ability to cool itself, said Lt. Col. (Dr.) Brian P. Hayes, Chief of Aerospace Medicine here. "The WBGT is important because it takes humidity into account," he said. Humidity or water vapor in the air is important because it affects the way the human body regulates its internal temperature, Colonel Hayes said. "Our bodies are designed to keep us at an internal temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit," Colonel Hayes said. "One of the most effective ways to do that is to sweat. When the humidity is low, sweat evaporates and you get evaporative cooling." As humidity rises, evaporation becomes less effective at cooling the body. In a high-humidity environment, water in a puddle stays around longer, a towel doesn't dry, a swimmer just out of the pool stays wet, and sweat simply beads up on the skin until it rolls off the body, Colonel Hayes said. "Part of the challenge we face here is that a lot of our warriors have spent time at Prince Sultan Air Base or other bases in the AOR, and are under the impression they will experience the same conditions here as they did there," Colonel Hayes said. "If you talk to them, they say they didn't sweat at PSAB. But they did sweat there … it just evaporated quickly. They have like ten percent humidity at PSAB. Here, it is more like 85 percent. We have phenomenal humidity here." Above a certain humidity level, the body loses its ability to cool off through perspiration, Colonel Hayes said. "In this environment, once you get above 75 percent humidity, your body's ability to cool by evaporation drops dramatically," he said. "It becomes a very ineffective way to cool yourself. This has been a big challenge for us, to change that mindset. Folks say that you just need to drink more water because then you sweat and cool off. Here, in many ways, the only way to get the body cool is to get into an air conditioned environment." The WGBT is released every two hours during the daytime in order to alert commanders to outside conditions. When the WGBT exceeds 90 degrees, the Heat Stress Category is set to 5, the highest level. Commanders with Airmen most susceptible to heat related illness -- those working outdoors in direct sunlight -- are advised to work them in modified shifts, so they have adequate time to cool off. When the body cannot cool off, the result can be heat related illnesses like heat exhaustion. Symptoms of heat exhaustion are dizziness, lightheadedness, weakness, mood change, upset stomach, vomiting and fainting. More dangerous than heat exhaustion is heat stroke. Symptoms of heat stroke are similar to those of heat exhaustion, with one primary difference. With heat stroke, the body usually stops sweating. "Heat stroke is when the body gives up on regulating its own temperature," Colonel Hayes said. "When your body gives up, your core temperature begins to climb." As the body's temperature rises from its average 98.6 F, the potential for internal damage increases. During a typical "warm-up" routine before exercise, the body's core temperature can raise by as much as one point -- which is average too. The medical community considers a core temperature of 101 F to be fever condition, though not necessarily life threatening. At about 104 F, a little over 5 degrees above normal, the body can start to cook itself from the inside out. "You start seeing organ damage around 104 F," Colonel Hayes said. "Your organs are made out of protein, like an egg. Imagine throwing it into a frying pan. All those organs start cooking." Colonel Hayes said about 50 percent of those that get heat stroke will die. "That is why it is so critical when you see somebody go down on the flightline to act quickly," he said. "You can put ice under their armpits, around the neck and near the groin -- areas where there are major circulation points and where the blood vessels are close to the surface. And you have to get them off the tarmac. Get them off that surface and ice them down. If not ice, then cold water." One key to day-to-day survival in a high temperature environment is acclimatization. Acclimatization is the process your body goes through as it gets used to performing normal functions in a new environment. In a high temperature environment, the body takes about 10-14 days to fully adapt itself. "One way you acclimate is that you sweat sooner," Colonel Hayes said. "When Airmen first get here, and they are not acclimated, it takes longer for the body to start sweating to cool itself. Roughly over a two-week period, you begin to sweat sooner. Also, the composition of the sweat changes." Sweat isn't just water. Typically, the body leaks out electrolytes in sweat. Electrolytes -- often mentioned during television ads for sports drinks -- are really just different types of salt. The salts are dissolved in the blood and are contained in all cells. Some electrolytes include sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium. The body uses electrolytes as conductors, to carry the electrical impulses needed to control the contraction of the heart and other muscles. As the body becomes acclimated to its new, hotter environment, it learns to retain those electrolytes instead of leaking them out. A dangerous imbalance in electrolyte levels can occur when the moisture and electrolytes lost through perspiration are replaced with only water. The condition, called water toxicity poisoning, is seen most often in athletes, though one case was seen in late 1999 with the death of Air Force basic trainee Micah Schindler. The condition is easily preventable, however. Airmen need simply replace the electrolytes they lose through perspiration. "We suggest that Airmen drink about one bottle of sports drink to every two bottles of water," Colonel Hayes said. "Also, eating right and eating often help maintain electrolyte levels in the body. Airmen here are given ample opportunity to eat well." Over the last year, Colonel Hayes said, the medical group has worked to make sure base agencies with Airmen at the highest risk for heat related illnesses can use operational funds to purchase sports drinks for their Airmen. "That is just one of the many efforts base leadership has taken to look out for our Airmen and to reduce the incidents of heat related illness," Colonel Hayes said. "Airmen need to work to protect themselves from heat related illness as well." Blood in, blood out: Life giving fluid transport [2004-09-05] SOUTHWEST ASIA -- When generals plan for war, they know they're going to need bombs, bullets and beds. One thing they hope they don't need, but definitely want on hand, is blood. Blood for most of United States Central Command Air Forces' area of responsibility is distributed by the 379th Expeditionary Medical Group Blood Transshipment Center. The facility is really just a K-Span structure with a walk-in cooler and a deep freeze, but the center receives from the United States all the blood that's going to be distributed in the AOR, said 1st Lt. Dan Vince Cruz, the lab officer at the facility. "We orchestrate the receipt, storage and distribution of blood products in the AOR," Lieutenant Vince Cruz said. "There is a person at the Combined Air Operations Center called the Joint Blood Program Officer Forward. He coordinates movement of blood throughout the AOR. He makes sure the levels are right. If Djibouti is not using a lot of blood, he decreases their level. If somebody attacks there, he increases their level of blood. We adjust the levels all the time." The center regularly ships blood to both Balad and Talill in Iraq, to Kuwait, to Djibouti and to other areas in the AOR. The BTC doesn't really store whole blood, the kind drawn straight out of a donor's arm. Instead, the center stores "packed red cells," a condensed version of blood, with most of the liquid removed. The reason blood is condensed is that few people need a transfusion of "whole blood," Lieutenant Vince Cruz said. "Nobody uses whole blood," he said. "What people do need depends on the injury, however. If somebody is bleeding out a whole bunch, you want to give them the red blood cells, because that is the oxygen carrying component of blood. If you are oozing out blood and can't control bleeding, they may give you platelets. If you are a burn victim, they will give you plasma." Whole blood is actually turned into many products. The BTC maintains supplies of packed red cells, plasma, and "cryoprecipitate." Plasma is pale and yellow in color and is mostly water. Cryoprecipitate is a kind of clotting factor that can help the body to stop bleeding. While blood cells are stored in a refrigerator and are not frozen, the plasma and cryoprecipitate are stored in a special freezer at -40 C. Blood comes from the flightline packed in boxes that haven't changed in design since the Korean War. The boxes help protect blood that may have to travel as many as 20 hours from the East Coast to get in theater. To ensure the safety of the supply, each box is equipped with a special indicator that permanently changes color if the contents ever go above a certain temperature. "We get whole palettes of blood in from the flightline," Lieutenant Vince Cruz said. "It's shipped from McGuire Air Force Base, and each box is packed with ice, so it's good for 48 hours. If the temperature ever goes out of range, the indicator will turn blue. That's how we know it's a bad shipment and that we have to get rid of it." During transit, blood must be stored at less than 10 C, Lieutenant Vince Cruz said. During storage in his coolers, it must be held at less than 6 C. But temperature is not the only concern for Airmen at the BTC. They also have a system in place to ensure that blood was properly handled during shipment, and that it was not tampered with. "Two people check each box of blood against a manifest," Lieutenant Vince Cruz said. "The blood has to be in the same order as the manifest. We can tell if it has been tampered with, or if it was treated roughly during shipment, because the blood will get mixed up." When blood comes in to the center, it is already in the tiny plastic bags that would hang from an IV rack as it is put into a patient. Each "unit" of blood is about 450 milliliters. Lieutenant Vince Cruz said the BTC can store about 3,000 units of blood, meaning the facility has nearly a 360 gallon capacity. Each unit of blood comes with numerous barcodes attached. One barcode tracks when the blood was made, another tells where it came from, yet another tells the blood type. Each code on each unit is scanned during in-processing. The numbers go into a computer that is part of a network called the Theater Defense Blood Standard System. The system tracks every unit of blood from the moment it is drawn from a person, to the moment it is put into another. "If you donated blood five times over the last few years, and the sixth time you donate they find out you have hepatitis A, they can go back to all the people that received your blood and notify their doctor that they got blood for a person that tested positive for hepatitis," Lieutenant Vince Cruz said. The meticulous system the BTC uses to verify the safety of the blood it receives is not unique, Lieutenant Vince Cruz said. "Everybody packs blood and receives blood the same way," he said. "When it's ready to leave here, we'll pack it up the same way as we received it. That way, we can help those at the receiving end ensure the blood they get from us is as safe as it was when we sent it out." Total Force provides CAS to troops in Najaf [2004-09-12] SOUTHWEST ASIA -- Just last month, crewmembers aboard an American helicopter were wounded when the craft was shot down over the Iraqi city of Najaf. The helicopter was shot down August 5 by the militia of Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Crewmembers were evacuated, but the event marked the beginning of three weeks of intense ground fighting in the Islamic holy city. Aircraft from the 134th and 336th Expeditionary Fighter Squadrons at one forward deployed location, provided air support to the Army and Marine Corps ground troops in Najaf as they tried to liberate the city and an important Islamic mosque, the Imam Ali Shrine, from the clutches of al-Sadr's Mehdi army. "Our two squadrons spent 21 days over Najaf," said Lt. Col. "K-9". "We got there at the start of hostilities, which for us was the shoot down of the helicopter. We were there to support American ground troops working to get al-Sadr out of the city." Colonel "K-9" is commander of the 336th EFS, an F-15 squadron. He and his unit are deployed from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C. The 134th EFS commander, an Air National Guardsman from Vermont, had flown over the city the day prior to the downing of the helicopter. He said he had initially thought his activities there that day spelled the end violence in the city. "August 4th was the first day I was over Najaf," Lt. Col. "TJ" said. "A Marine unit had just moved in, and I had gotten called because there was an ambush set up and we actually found enemy forces on top of a roof. Our aircraft did a couple shows-of-force and they ran away. We thought 'Najaf is over,' but the very next day, things got a lot worse." A "show-of-force" maneuver simply means aircraft fly low over enemy forces, make a lot of noise, and perhaps shoot off some flares - essentially airborne saber rattling. The intent is to show enemy forces the air power presence in the area, and to perhaps scare them away or get them to surrender. Colonel "TJ" commands a squadron of F-16 aircraft deployed from Air National Guard units across the middle to eastern United States. His team includes pilots from Vermont; Atlantic City, New Jersey; and Fort Wayne, Indiana. The aircraft from the 336th and 134th EFS provided close air support for ground units in Najaf. The role is something F-15E pilots, while not entirely unfamiliar with, are not generally used to flying in combat. "It's a little different fight than what we train for," said Captain "Stump", an F-15E pilot from Seymour Johnson AFB. "Traditionally, the F-15E is an interdiction platform. We fly deep into enemy territory and strike targets that have strategic implications. In this fight, we flew in very close proximity to friendly forces and provided close air support. That's something we didn't traditionally train to do in earlier missions." Friendly forces in this case are American foot soldiers doing actual combat on the ground. They carry M-16s, and ride in HUMVEES, tanks or Bradley fighting vehicles. They get in close to the enemy and take fire. One military asset that goes with them into battle is the Air Force supplied Joint Terminal Air Controller. "No other Air Force in the world could do what we do," Colonel "K-9" said. "Nobody else can launch a fighter and get our aircrew to the fight with the right ordnance, fuel and proper training to support the ground commander. It takes lots and lots of training to work in an urban environment with a JTAC and destroy or disrupt what the ground commander wants. Nobody else can put a fighter above a JTAC - all you know is that he is an American and that is it. He has had his training, and you know it is good. You have had yours. He can talk us on to a palm tree in the middle of a city. It's that accurate." A JTAC is an Airman that travels with ground units and is trained to call in support from Air Force assets loitering in the area. Captain "Stump" said once aircraft from his unit arrived at their assigned area above the city, they tuned their radios in to ground frequencies to get an understanding of what they would be needed to do. "You go to your area and you turn on the radio and start listening to the chatter," Captain "Stump" said. "You listen to what's going on between the aircraft already there and the JTACs. As you do that, you build situational awareness. You let the JTAC know who you are, how long you can stay, and what your ordnance is." Once the JTAC in the area is aware of the presence of a new aircraft, that plane becomes a tool in the arsenal of the ground troops he is embedded with. "They have artillery, they carry weapons, they have embedded firepower - we give them air power," Captain "Stump" said. Lt. Col. "Stoli", an F-16 pilot from Fort Wayne, Indiana, was asked to provide close air support for a unit that wanted to move forward, but were impeded by sniper fire. "The mission we dropped on was in support of a ground team," Colonel "Stoli" said. "They requested an air strike to suppress the enemy fire coming from this building, plus a lot of enemy troops were in this building. My wingman and I dropped one 500 pound GBU-12 each. The JTAC wanted us to attack it again, so we came back with another GBU-12. Later, we came back around and I dropped a JDAM on it. That bomb didn't go off, but it went right through the hole where it was supposed to go." Both the GBU-12 and the JDAM are considered "smart bombs." The guided bomb unit is laser guided. The joint direct attack munition is GPS guided. By adding intelligence to weapons, the accuracy of a bomb drop is increased, and the cost of putting bombs on target decreases. Colonel "Stoli" said that while the building didn't implode due to the bombs he dropped on it, him and his wingman had achieved a partial success for the JTAC and troops on the ground. "I'm sure they would have liked for us to level that building," Colonel "Stoli" said. "While that didn't happen, we did take out the top two floors, and more important, we stopped the sniper fire coming from that building." When Colonel "Stoli" returned to his flying unit, video footage of his bombing had already been shown on U.S. news channels. "My coworkers had made a screensaver out of it on our computer," Colonel "Stoli" said. One of Captain "Stump's" experiences over Najaf involved both strafing and bomb dropping. Flying with his wingman they were asked to help eliminate Mehdi personnel entrenched in the cemetery that surrounds the city. The cemetery, the largest in Islam, is rumored to contain relatives of Mohammed. "We had enemy personnel hiding in the cemetery, in underground shelters and in mausoleums," Captain "Stump" said. "There was a bus in the cemetery with enemy personnel in it. Because we were concerned about collateral damage, we didn't want to put a GBU-12 into that bus. We wanted to limit the effects on the cemetery. They asked for a strafe." Captain "Stump" said the flight lead for his mission conducted the strafing, and then headed back to base. Enemy personnel dispersed from the area and started moving north through the cemetery. "We stayed on the scene and monitored those guys and talked directly to an unmanned aerial vehicle - the Predator," Captain "Stump" said. "The Predator gave us point-outs on where the enemy personnel were moving throughout the cemetery. The JTAC told us to destroy those personnel, with an interest in minimizing the effects to the cemetery. We chose to strafe again." This time, militia members hid in underground shelters in the cemetery. "The JTAC had two enemy positions with underground hideouts and asked us to drop bombs there," Captain "Stump" said. "We dropped two GBU-12 on those hideouts, again, adjusting the attack axis for friendlies and the mosque." Paying attention to where the bombs fell and where they strafed, to ensure they didn't destroy any part of the Iman Ali Shrine mosque and didn't do irreparable damage to the cemetery, was on the mind of all the pilots who flew there. Respecting holy Islamic sites is key in ensuring a win in the war on terrorism, because it re-confirms for Muslims that America is fighting terrorists, not Islam. "At the forefront of our mind is not killing friendlies or innocent people," Captain "Stump" said. "We try to do everything we can to support the friendlies, while minimizing damage to the holy sites - and that's not propaganda, I believe that from the bottom of my heart. The more we destroy of their holy sites, the more they rally around the damage we do." In addition to providing CAS for ground troops, pilots from the 336th and 134th provided intelligence to JTACs. Called non-traditional intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance or "armed reconnaissance," war birds from the two units were able to loiter in the area and provide a "God's-eye-view" of the area to JTACs on the ground. "Not only did we drop bombs, strafe and do shows-of-force, but we did a lot of finding and locating enemy of positions," Colonel "K-9" said. "That's nontraditional ISR from our platforms and pods - looking down and saying something looks weird, perhaps a congregation of four or five guys with rocket propelled grenades. We pass that information to the JTAC and he passes it to the ground commander." Colonel "TJ" was able to locate the source of enemy mortar fire. By giving that information to the JTAC on the ground, he was able to secure clearance attack. "I was orbiting over the cemetery and I knew where the friendlies were - just north of the city, just south of the cemetery," Colonel "TJ" said. "I look down and saw mortars going off just inside the Marine's perimeter. They started screaming about getting hit, and that it came from the south. So I looked south and found where the mortars were coming from. Minutes later, they cleared me to drop a bomb there on those coordinates. Then they see where the guys are shooting from, and five minutes later we put bombs on that building as well. Then all the firing stops. And that's what we did for 21 days. We would find the source of enemy fire and eliminate it." The 336th and the 134th EFS are from two different parts of the Air Force. The 336th pilots and aircraft are active duty and come from Seymour Johnson AFB, N.C. Those from the 134th come from various ANG units in the central to eastern United States. In the past, there has sometimes been a conflict of cultures between active duty and Guard components. But, as evidenced in the air battles over Najaf, that appears to be a thing of the past as these two parts of the Total Force worked together seamlessly, say the two commanders. "Here we have an active duty squadron and Air National Guard squadron working in the same building," Colonel "K-9" said. "We are set up in the same shop, we work out of the same area, we share duties, and we have mixed fighter force operations standards so we fight as an element if required. Together we have dropped a lot of iron in support of our land component." Captain "Stump" said he has seen a change in the way active and Guard units work together. "The Guard guys here are some of the sharpest guys I've seen in any one unit," Captain "Stump" said. "They have a lot of experience and they have shared it with the younger guys. In the past, I've seen healthy competition between active duty, Guard and Reserve pilots. I've also seen some negative competition. But here, I'd say there wasn't a lot of competition. It was just teamwork here. Everyone here recognized we are supporting assets here to help the Army and the Marines. We do everything we can to help the 18-year-old on the ground with a rifle." Bombloaders part of the team too Pilots don't ever do the mission all by themselves. Back at base, hundreds of maintainers keep fighter aircraft in top condition. Somebody fuels the plane, and somebody even puts the pilot in his seat before the mission. Airmen 1st Class Scott Sanchez and Courtney Dorsey are weapons loaders in Southwest Asia. Their job is to load bombs and other munitions onto the F-15 Strike Eagle before its missions. Both are deployed from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C. Airman Sanchez, who joined the Air Force shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, is on his second deployment to Southwest Asia. He says activities here are not as busy as they were the last time he was in theater, but are definitely more busy than back in the States. "Back home, we do load barn once a month, and load just to show we know how," Airman Sanchez said. "Here, I've loaded probably 100 bombs, but that's not as many as I loaded last year." Airman Sanchez admits he really hasn't kept count of the bombs he loaded on this tour. Experienced bomb loaders probably don't do that. Airman Dorsey is on his first deployment overseas. He says he's loaded about 30 bombs while in theater, and prefers to see them gone when the planes come home. "I like to see the racks empty when the planes come back," he said. "That means we've done our job." Both Airman Dorsey and Sanchez are aware of their contribution to the mission, and say they are happy to be part of it. "I like being part of the action," Airman Dorsey said. "I like being able to contribute to it." "I know we help the ground troops a lot," Airman Sanchez said. "That's what we hear from our captain… we're helping out the ground troops whether we believe it our not." (The pilots in this story are identified by their call signs only at their request.) Roche, Jumper ‘wear test’ Osprey [2004-10-12] MARINE CORPS AIR STATION NEW RIVER, N.C. -- The Air Force's top two leaders got up close and personal Oct. 8 with what may become the service's latest special operations asset. Secretary of the Air Force Dr. James G. Roche and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper flew in a Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey. General Jumper served as pilot of one craft, and Secretary Roche as a passenger in another. Air Force officials plan to purchase as many as 50 CV-22s, a variation of the Marine Corps MV-22. Secretary Roche said the service already has plans for the aircraft within the special operation community. Officials are looking for applications in search and rescue operations and open to potential applications elsewhere. "This plane can do things we never could do before, like give advantages to our Air Force special operations folks for infiltration or exfiltration," Secretary Roche said. "We are also going to take a look at this plane as a long-range combat search and rescue asset." The secretary said the performance of the aircraft -- its speed and relative quietness compared to a helicopter -- opens up all kinds of possibilities for potential application in the Air Force. "We see new concepts of operations because we can have our folks get in very close without tipping off (the enemy) with the noise -- you don't have the advance sound you get from a regular helicopter," Secretary Roche said. "It leads you to think of things you can do that might have been difficult in the past." The V-22 is a "tilt-rotor" aircraft designed by Boeing with partner Bell Helicopter Textron. When turned toward the sky the two wing-mounted rotors on the craft allow for a vertical takeoff like a helicopter. When turned forward, the craft flies as an airplane. The aircraft is capable of switching between the modes at any time. Army Gen. Bryan D. Brown, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, also flew aboard one of the craft, though he did not land with the plane. Instead, the general jumped out of the back with a team of special operations parachutists. "It was a great jump," General Brown said. "This is the first time I have been in the V-22, and it is a very impressive aircraft with great performance. It will be valuable in the special operations community. We look forward to getting it." General Brown said the speed of the V-22, compared to that of a traditional helicopter, is a primary benefit of the craft. "I flew helicopters in Vietnam, and we flew at 90 knots," he said. “I flew helicopters in [Operation] Desert Storm, and we flew at 120 knots. In over 20 years, we gained only 30 knots. (The V-22) changed that dramatically. We were cruising around today at over 240 knots. That gives us a lot of range and reduces our requirements for logistics and for tankers." The general also said he felt it was important for him to get firsthand experience with the airplane so he could let those in his command know how important the aircraft will be to the special operations community. "It's important I was able to get out and see this for myself, to fly in it and to have it demonstrated to me," the general said. "I'll be able to go back and tell our folks just exactly how well the program is going, how well the testing is going and what great performance we get out of the aircraft. I hope this says that we think this is an important piece of equipment for the future of special operations." The V-22 Osprey program is a joint venture between the Marine Corps and the Air Force. Secretary Roche told a contingent of Marines gathered here that he was pleased with the work they have done to move the V-22 program forward. He also said he was impressed with the joint effort between Marines and Airmen. "What you have done in the last two years is really noteworthy," Secretary Roche said. "You have taken a program people thought was a dead duck and turned it into something that is causing us to think of new (concepts of operations. This) is a Marine Corps aircraft, under the Department of the Navy, with a program manager who is an Air Force officer and crews that are mixed between Air Force and Marines -- on behalf of a lot of us in the Air Force, our compliments to this Air Force and Marines team." The CV-22 will replace the MH-53J Pave Low helicopter and augment the MC-130 fleet in special operations missions. The purchase date of the 50 CV-22 has not been determined. Postal agency sets overseas holiday mailing dates, policies [2004-10-14] WASHINGTON -- The dates for mailing items to and from overseas locations in time for the holidays are fast approaching, and officials at the Military Postal Service Agency here have suggestions for ensuring packages and letters arrive on time. "If packages are mailed earlier, it may be possible to use space-available mail or parcel post service, which would result in less expensive postage rates," said Mark J. DeDomenic, the agency’s chief of operations. As the holidays approach, mail volumes get higher, and it takes longer for packages to get through the system, Mr. DeDomenic said. The recommended deadlines for sending mail from the United States to all overseas military mailing addressees for the holidays are listed below. • Parcel post: Nov. 13. • Space-available mail: Nov. 27. • Parcel airlift mail: Dec. 4. • Priority and first-class letters/cards: Dec. 11 (Dec. 6 for APO 093). • Express mail military service: Dec. 20 (Not applicable for APO 093). Mr. DeDomenic said these dates can also be observed by customers sending mail from overseas locations to the United States, and that all dates may vary depending on location. "Customers should contact their local military post office overseas get exact dates," Mr. DeDomenic said. People mailing packages need to be aware that customs forms are required on all international mail, and that shipments should be properly packaged before sending them overseas, Mr. DeDomenic said. "Always use strong boxes with plenty of packing material, such as newspaper or popcorn," he said. "Strapping or reinforced tape is strongly recommended. Ensure fragile items are packed tightly and individually wrapped in bubble wrap." Postal services in the United States and foreign nations have restrictions on what can be mailed in or out of the country. Mr. DeDomenic said postal customers need to consider these restrictions and also the length of the journey when mailing items overseas. "Generally speaking, anything that would cause harm to other mail, equipment or mail handlers, or anything that is hazardous to an aircraft in-flight is nonmailable," Mr. DeDomenic said. "Customers should check with their local military post office for specific regulations. In general, plants, some food items such as meats, alcohol, hazardous materials and flammable goods may not be mailed." Also critical to getting packages overseas on time is ensuring they have the correct mailing address. The No. 1 reason for delayed delivery of mail is improper or incomplete addresses, Mr. DeDomenic said. He said people sending mail to an overseas APO or FPO, should not use the geographical location. For example, do not use Baghdad, Iraq, on the address. This will cause the mail to be placed into the international mail system and may cause severe delays. Because of security restrictions, mass-mailing operations such as Operation Dear Abby or the "Any Servicemember" mailing programs are not being supported by the agency, Mr. DeDomenic said. Agency officials encourage servicemembers to support the publicly available Web sites that allow the American public to write supportive letters to them. Drug testing program targets those most likely to use [2004-10-21] WASHINGTON -- A recent change to the Air Force's drug testing program aims to further reduce the number of substance abusers by targeting Airmen most likely to use them. The Air Force began its "Smart Testing" program Oct. 1, at three major commands. Under the program, individuals in the group shown to most likely use illicit drugs are being tested at a higher frequency than the rest of the population. That target group includes those in the ranks of airman basic through senior airman and first and second lieutenants, said Col. Wayne Talcott, community protection division chief of the Air Force Medical Support Agency at Brooks City-Base, Texas. "What we are really trying to do with Smart Testing is target the portion of our population that has the highest prevalence of drug use," he said. "That is basically 18-25 year olds." Colonel Talcott said Department of Defense research shows the target group is four times more likely to have a positive urinalysis than the remainder of the force. He also said that while the group makes up only 40 percent of the Air Force's total end strength, they are responsible for 86 percent of positive drug tests. As part of Smart Testing, the Air Force will increase the number of random drug tests it performs on the target group to equal the number of people in the group, said Colonel Talcott. "We have already started Smart Testing at three major commands," he said. "Slowly, through the rest of October and into November you'll see Smart Testing across the Air Force." The Air Force previously used a test rate of 64 percent per year, Colonel Talcott said. This means that of 376,900 Airmen, about 241,220 drug tests would be performed during the course of the year. In October, the test rate for the target group increased, though it remained at 64 percent for the rest of the people. Colonel Talcott said the system is fair because names are chosen at random by computer. "We have a software program that has a listing of all the active duty (Airmen) that are subject to drug testing," Colonel Talcott said. "The software selects names randomly for the numbers of tests we intend to run." He also said that after a name is selected for drug testing, it is immediately put back into the system. "That's often called 'selection with replacement,’" Colonel Talcott said. "That means that once you have been selected and tested, your name goes right back in the hopper for the next time they pull names." Because names are put back into the system and because they are drawn randomly, individuals cannot predict when they will be tested, or how many times they will be tested during the year, Colonel Talcott said. For Airmen in the target group, what they can predict is that they are more likely to be tested now than they were in the past. Deployed Airmen getting new physical training uniform first [2004-11-04] WASHINGTON -- When the Air Force chief of staff announced a new fitness standard in July 2003, he promised Airmen a new physical training uniform in which to prepare. That new uniform is now ready, and Airmen serving in Southwest Asia will be the first to get them, said Senior Master Sgt. Jacqueline Dean, the Air Force uniform board superintendent. "The beginning of October is when the first shipment really went out," Sergeant Dean said. "(Gen. John P. Jumper) wanted us to target Airmen in Southwest Asia as the first recipients of this uniform. Some Airmen will receive the uniforms as early as the middle of November." Officials at U.S. Central Command Air Forces designated 13 locations in their area of responsibility as needing the uniforms, Sergeant Dean said. "For force protection issues, CENTAF (officials) wanted Airmen to be in a standardized uniform," Sergeant Dean said. "Additionally, all of the other services in the region are requiring their servicemembers to be in service-unique PT gear when they are not in another uniform." The new unisex uniform can be worn off-the-shelf, requiring no modifications. It consists of a T-shirt, a pair of shorts and a two-piece nylon running suit. With the exception of the grey T-shirt, the entire ensemble is navy blue. It was designed with comfort and safety in mind, officials said. "One of the biggest directions from (General Jumper) was that it had plenty of reflectivity," Sergeant Dean said. The uniform has enough reflective material on it to ensure wearers are visible from any direction. The running suit top, a kind of lightweight coat similar to what is being used by cadets at the Air Force Academy, features wide reflective stripes that form a 'V' across the wearer's chest and back. Seams on the pants are trimmed with reflective piping, while the shorts feature both a reflective 'V' and an Air Force logo. The T-shirt has the Air Force logo on both the front and back. Wear testing for the uniform began in January at Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash., and Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. Three hundred Airmen tested the uniforms for both comfort and usability. "The Air Force Clothing Office first did fit tests to make sure the patterns were correct, then went back to talk to individuals to find what they liked and didn't like about the uniforms," Sergeant Dean said. "In one case we found the lining was too long, in another case, the shorts were too full. Appropriate modifications were made based on their input. That all took place and concluded around March." Besides reflectivity, some key features of the uniform include two pockets in the shorts; one for a military identification card and one for a key; zippers on the running pants to make it easier to slip them on over a pair of shoes, zippers on the running jacket to aid in ventilation; and a hood in the collar of the jacket. Total cost for the new uniform is around $125. Enlisted Airmen will be given an increase in their yearly clothing allowance to purchase the uniform, those in basic military training will be issued the gear, and officers will be required to purchase the uniform with their own funds. The uniforms will eventually be available for sale in military clothing sales stores. "We are hoping to start seeing some of the PT uniforms stateside in the January or February timeframe," Sergeant Dean said. "For now, the distribution plan revolves around those on deployment." Sergeant Dean said there is not yet an official mandatory wear date for the uniform. When Air Force officials do set the date, Airmen will be required to maintain a complete uniform in much the same way they do their battle dress uniforms and blues. Airmen can see the guidelines for wearing the new uniform at www.af.mil/news/wear_policy.pdf. Military family support professionals gather [2004-11-05] WASHINGTON -- Directors of family support centers from across the Air Force gathered nearby in Landsdowne, Va., to discuss how to better serve Airmen and their loved ones. The weeklong conference, Strengthening the Home Front, focused on two areas: integrating the Air Force One Source program into base activities, and reaching out to squadron commanders, said Linda Olivia Smith, chief of Air Force family matters. "Our focus has been, traditionally, that members come to the (centers) when they need assistance," Ms. Smith said. "Now we are asking our (staffs) to go out into the squadrons and communities so they can actually touch the people we would like to support and serve. "That is a large shift from where we were four years ago," Ms. Smith said. "We have made a shift to being a resource for (leaders). We have found that what keeps leaders up at night is not how well their people are trained, but the personal issues of their members and how to help them deal with those issues. It is our responsibility to ensure we provide just-in-time resources and prevention programs to the servicemembers and their families so our Airmen can remain focused on their mission." Air Force officials recently extended the reach of family support centers with the Air Force One Source program, a round-the-clock resource available to all servicemembers and their families. Much of the Washington conference focused on educating the directors about the program and how to integrate the new resource into their own programs, Ms. Smith said. The Air Force One Source has a Web site and a toll-free number. “They are available all day, year round," Ms. Smith said. "This extends (our) capability beyond the duty day so we can respond to the needs of our families when the needs arise." The phone line, (800) 342-9647, is manned with consultants familiar with military issues and needs. Additionally, they are aware of the resources available to military members in their region. The service is available in English and Spanish to all active-duty, Reserve and National Guard servicemembers and their families. The services can also be translated into more than 140 other languages. The Web site is www.airforceonesource.com. Paper LES program shredded to make way for digital delivery [2004-11-08] WASHINGTON -- Airmen will get one less piece of mail now that the Defense Finance and Accounting Service stopped sending paper leave and earnings statements this month. Airmen will not go without the critical information the LES provides because it is now available via the service’s myPay Web site, said Colonel Patrick Coe, director of the Air Force Accounting and Finance Office. "You can now access this information anywhere you have access to a computer," Colonel Coe said. "And most of the active-duty force already has a PIN for myPay. " The information in the electronic LES is the same as the old, but the Air Force is looking for ways to expand and make the electronic version easier to use. "Currently we are testing a 'smart LES' for civilians and hope to make it available to Airmen in the future,” he said. "This is an LES where you can click on some of the blocks, and a window comes up to explain the contents of the block." The Air Force asked DFAS officials to stop providing the paper version to save nearly $4 million a year in printing and mailing costs. Another motive, Colonel Coe said, was to familiarize Airmen with the functions available on the site. "Turning off the paper LES requires people to go out to the Web site to (get) information," Colonel Coe said. "This will expose them to (other functions)such as changing their allotments or looking at Thrift Savings Plan data." Airmen can turn the paper version back on through myPay, but Air Force policy is that they receive it electronically. The option may be removed in the future. "We are looking for the active-duty force to get used to a Web-based service," Colonel Coe said. "When we do our personal finances, how often do we walk into a financial institution like a bank? We do these things online. This really is a smart way to go -- the way of the future. The electronic LES is the first step." The myPay Web site is online at https://mypay.dfas.mil, or through the Air Force Portal at https://my.af.mil.> AF participates in Veterans Day tribute at Redskins' game [2004-11-15] LANDOVER, Md. -- Thousands of sports fans and patriots were entertained here Nov. 14 by the Washington Redskins and Cincinnati Bengals football teams and the U.S. Air Force. The day's main attraction was the Redskins' battle against the Bengals, but as part of a tribute to American military veterans, the Air Force participated in the pre-game activities and halftime show in the stadium. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper kicked off Air Force participation at the event by witnessing the pre-game coin toss. Cincinnati won the toss and chose to receive. Following the coin toss, members of the Air Force Honor Guard from Bolling Air Force Base, D.C., presented the colors. Maj. Katherine Strus, with the Air Force's legislative liaison office at the Pentagon, sang the national anthem before the game. During the last few bars of the anthem, a four-ship formation of F-15 Eagles from Langley Air Force Base, Va., performed a flyover. "Singing for the Washington Redskins on Veterans Day was more incredible than I could have ever imagined," Major Strus said. "It's giving something back to active-duty (Airmen), and a way to say thank you to so many veterans and family members -- many of which (veterans) never came home." Following the flyover, the aircraft landed at nearby Andrews AFB and the pilots traveled to the stadium. At halftime the pilots and crew chiefs of the F-15s, along with General Jumper and his wife, were introduced to the crowd. The crew chiefs included Staff Sgts. Randall Helton, Dennis Wild and Dustin Ossman, and Senior Airman Avery Johnston. The flyover pilots were Lt. Col. Robert DeStasio, Maj. David Toogood and Capts. Henry Schantz and Jason Stinchcomb. The pilots and crew were all assigned to the 71st Fighter Squadron at Langley. Halftime entertainment was provided by the Air Force Band's Singing Sergeants. The Redskins ultimately lost, 17-10. Air Force working to fix pay issues [2004-11-19] WASHINGTON -- In testimony before Congress on Nov. 18, the Air Force's finance director said there are issues with the service's pay system, but officials are tackling them. Michael Montelongo, assistant secretary of the Air Force for financial management, told the Senate Armed Services Committee subcommittee on readiness and management support that Air Force officials are using an approach similar to the Army’s to deal with pay issues involving reservists and guardsmen. "(We are) bringing together the different (areas) involved in the total-pay process," Mr. Montelongo said. "We set up a (council) where we … work on three areas: integrating the people involved in the process, making sure our processes are as integrated as possible and doing some of the near-term fixes in our personnel (and) pay systems so that we mitigate ... pay problems." These areas include the Air Force's personnel and finance communities and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, the Department of Defense-level agency responsible for paying every American servicemember. In the past, pay issues have risen from disconnects between at least two of those areas -- those internal to the Air Force. Total money to an Airman, beyond base pay, is based on entitlements -- meaning a pay is calculated by actions taken by both the finance and personnel Airmen. The failure of one to report in a timely manner to the other that an Airmen has been deployed could result in a pay issue. Nevertheless, Air Force officials’ work to bridge the gap has alleviated some of the problems. "While we still have some issues, we are managing those, and they are not at the alarm level," Mr. Montelongo said. Also key is a push to accelerate implementation of the Defense Integrated Military Human-Resource System, he said. It is intended to replace and combine older personnel and pay computer systems in the DOD and in the component services. It will eventually replace DFAS's Defense Joint Military Pay System and the Air Force’s Military Personnel Data System. Jumper: AEF has been successful [2004-11-19] WASHINGTON -- Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper told House Armed Services Committee members that while reconstitution of air expeditionary forces is not moving as quickly as expected, the concept is battle-proven. The Air Force's highest-ranking uniformed member testified before the House of Representatives on Nov. 17 on the current state of the service. "Last February, when I sat in front of this committee, we talked about the reconstitution of our air expeditionary forces and the fact that we were in the midst of experimenting to see if the AEF concept actually worked," General Jumper told more than 30 legislators. "I can report our ability to pull eight of our 10 AEFs forward to engage in major combat operations, and then reset those, has been a success." General Jumper also explained to legislators how the Air Force recently increased the AEF deployment length. "We have (extended) our deployment time from 90 to 120 days," he said. "We have about 80 percent of our force on 120-day rotation. About 20 percent of the high-demand forces are on rotations (lasting) up to one year." The general told committee members that while visiting deployed Airmen and troops of their sister services, he picked up on a common theme. "I have been to Iraq and visited the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines over there," General Jumper said. "The singular message I bring back from them is 'let's not quit until we are done.' They believe that. They are dedicated to the mission they are engaged in over there and want to see it through." Committee members asked about retention and recruiting numbers. General Jumper said the Air Force has been very successful. "We are enjoying excellent results in our recruiting and retention," General Jumper said. "As a matter of fact, one of the problems is that our end strength is more than it should be. We will spend the next year working down to our authorized end strength of 360,000." Efforts to reduce the total Air Force to the authorized end strength are part of the service's force-shaping initiative. Force shaping includes reduction through retirement or separation, but it also involves moving Airmen from career fields with overages into career fields with shortages. Air Force officials have been quick to say that while they work to pare down membership, they will keep in mind the desires of those affected. "In order to keep from breaking faith with those who want to stay in the Air Force, we are going to take most of this from our initial recruiting," General Jumper said. "We have a plan to do that; I think it is going to work. I don't want to kick out any Airmen who want to stay. They have shown us great loyalty, and I want to return that loyalty to them." Finally, General Jumper commented on the departure of Secretary of the Air Force Dr. James G. Roche. Secretary Roche announced his resignation Nov. 16. "I must say I am very proud to have served with Dr. Roche during his tenure," General Jumper said. "I have never seen anyone who cared more about the nation's Airmen than Dr. Roche.” New IMAX film a first for the Air Force [2004-11-24] WASHINGTON -- If you have never been part of a Red Flag exercise, you can at least watch the movie. The IMAX film "Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag" premiers Dec. 2 at the Smithsonian Museum, Udvar-Hazy Center, near here. The movie is the first large format film to showcase the U.S. Air Force. The film is directed by veteran film maker Stephen Low. In the new movie, viewers follow Capt. John Stratton, an F-15 Eagle fighter pilot, as he participates in a two-week long Red Flag exercise at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. A typical exercise pits “friendly” blue forces against “hostile” red forces in mock combat situations. Blue forces are made up of units from the U.S Air Force and its sister services as well as units from American allies. Red forces are composed of aircrews from Red Flag's adversary tactics division, who fly the F-16 Fighting Falcon. "Fighter Pilot" covers more than just the flying part of a Red Flag. The film also covers those people who put aircraft in the air and those who support the Air Force mission: engine mechanics, crew chiefs, firefighters, and even those who get up early to do the morning "FOD walk." IMAX films rival the standard movie theater experience in both picture and sound quality. The film itself is about 10 times larger than what is used in a regular movie theater. The extra size means more picture information, which translates to a larger, clearer image on the screen. IMAX movie screens can be up to eight stories tall. Sound quality at an IMAX theater is unsurpassed. The setup includes 44 speakers grouped into six clusters behind the screen and at the rear of the theater. The setup allows viewers to hear with absolute clarity everything from the roar of a jet engine to the sound of a pin dropping. Beginning Dec. 4, the film will be shown at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. The film opens to the general public Dec. 11. Show locations, information about the film, and a five-minute preview are all available online at www.fighterpilotfilm.com. New EEO process optimizes complaint resolution [2004-11-29] WASHINGTON -- Air Force officials recently implemented a more streamlined process to help civilians resolve discrimination issues in their workplace. The new process, called the “compressed orderly rapid equitable” process, became available to civilians Oct. 1. The process is expected to greatly expedite resolution of workplace discrimination complaints, said Rita Looney, director of the Air Force civilian appellate review office. "This process will benefit the Air Force by taking less time to come to closure on complaints, allowing the employee, the management officials and the Air Force overall to get back to its mission," she said. The pilot program combines two steps of the original equal employment opportunity process into one shorter step, Ms. Looney said. The current federal complaint process involves both an investigation and hearing. Together, those could take as many as 360 days. Under the new process, the two are tied together and shortened to as few as 127 days. Successful alternative dispute resolution attempts offered in the program’s first phase can further cut complaint resolution time. When a civilian wants to file a discrimination complaint, he or she may choose either the new process or the established one, Ms. Looney said. Additionally, at any point in the new process, civilians may opt out and return to a comparable point in the traditional process. The Air Force is one of three military agencies authorized by Congress and the Department of Defense to develop and test alternate EEO complaint processes. The other agencies are the Defense Logistics Agency and the Defense Commissary Agency. All three agencies were granted permission to develop pilot programs under guidelines set in the fiscal 2001 National Defense Authorization Act. After the programs are tested, they will be evaluated for their effectiveness. "The effectiveness of the (new) process and pilot programs developed by other agencies will be evaluated by the DOD, the Government Accountability Office and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission," Ms. Looney said. "Ultimately, our study could reflect positively on the whole federal government." The new process will be limited to 31 bases for the first six months. It will be tested for two years, with an option to extend for an additional year. Fighter pilot film about teamwork, thrill of flight [2004-12-03] CHANTILLY, Va. -- Civilians and Airmen alike can get breathtaking insight into parts of the Air Force they may not have seen before. The IMAX film "Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag," premiered Dec. 2 at the National Air and Space Museum here. Filmgoers got an inside look at one of the Air Force's largest training exercises, called "Red Flag." But the film is about more than an exercise, said Lt. Gen. Stephen G. Wood, Air Force deputy chief of staff for plans and programs. "This movie is about our Air Force and what it means to be in the Air Force," General Wood said. "The title is 'Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag,' but it is really about the whole Air Force. That pilot wouldn't be in the air without the maintainers, support personnel or (firefighters)." Red Flag exercises are run by the Airmen of the Air Warfare Center at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. General Wood was the director of the center during the making of the film. A typical Red Flag exercise pits “friendly” blue forces against “hostile” red forces in mock combat situations to test the mettle of pilots and support crews. Blue forces are made up of units from the Air Force and its sister services, as well as units from American allies. Red forces are composed of Red Flag's adversary tactics division, whose pilots fly F-16 Fighting Falcons. Capt. John Stratton is an F-15 Eagle pilot assigned to Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., and the "star" of the film -- a young pilot who had never before been to a Red Flag exercise. The captain narrates much of the film, providing insight into what drives him as a pilot. At the beginning of the film, viewers learn the captain's grandfather was a Marine Corps fighter pilot in World War II and served as a role model and hero for him in his youth. Captain Stratton came to the Red Flag exercise with aspirations of proving himself, of being a hero and of "winning." But what he learns during the course of the film, and what he conveys through his narration, is that Red Flag is not about being a hero. Rather, it is about being part of a team of Airmen that come together to complete the mission. "What I take away from my experience is the realization that we are all part of the greater team of the Air Force," Captain Stratton said. That team includes the pilots, mission planners, engine mechanics, firefighters, search and recovery teams and anybody else who wears the Air Force uniform. The film is full of breathtaking scenery. The audience is treated to a rollercoaster-like ride through the valleys and mountains of the Nevada desert -- the range where most of Red Flag takes place. But the film takes plenty of diversions into areas where most people enamored with the thrill of flight might not have thought about. Filmgoers see Airmen building bombs that will be loaded on blue force aircraft. They see a team of engine specialists repairing a damaged jet engine and then reinstalling it onto an aircraft. They see firefighters training to pull pilots from a burning aircraft. At one point during the film, viewers get a close-up of a technical sergeant removing a stone from a crevice on the flightline. A voiceover explains the dangers of foreign objects being sucked into aircraft engines. The camera tilts and pulls back to reveal an entire line of Airmen pulling debris off the flightline. With the music, the scenery and the camera angle, an early morning "FOD walk" never looked so cool, and it is apparent no job is too small at Red Flag. "While I was at Red Flag, I came to appreciate the idea that I was part of a team," the captain said. "It was sobering. We go to Red Flag as a team, we go to war as a team, and we fight as a team. I really hope people take that away as well." "Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag" was directed by veteran film maker Stephen Low. Mr. Low said one of the challenges of making the film was finding a way to compress the massive scale of what happens at a Red Flag so moviegoers could see it all on screen and understand it. "How were we ever going to get in the middle of a 600-mile-an-hour air war with 125 aircraft of all types at every conceivable altitude … and taking place over many square miles of desert?" he asked. "I don't think we knew when we started how much we had bitten off." But Mr. Low said Air Force officials, with the help of people at the Boeing Corporation, ensured the film could be made. "(They) were committed to making a great film," he said. Also challenging was ensuring the film was true to life, he said. "(The) pilot and everybody wanted it to be absolutely real -- none of this in a fake cockpit in a studio," he said. "Pilots wanted real dogfights, with real aircraft fighting it out." General Wood said he also wanted it to be real. There is a lot of action in the movie, a lot of close-ups and a lot of white-knuckle twists and turns. What is not in the film is unrealistic flying for the purpose of thrilling the viewer. "There is no hot-dogging in the Air Force," General Wood said. "There will be scenes, because of the magnification, that I hope are very exciting. But there is nothing in there that we don't practice day-to-day in training for conflict. "I was concerned they were going to make this into something it wasn't. But I know the fliers in it performed superbly and by-the-book, and I hope people walk away with a pride and respect for the Air Force," he said. The film will be showing in as many as 70 IMAX theaters around the United States over the next year. For more information about the movie and to find local theaters that show the film, visit www.fighterpilotfilm.com. Amputee pilot back in the cockpit [2004-12-06] WASHINGTON -- Most people would have thought Lt. Col. Andrew Lourake would never see the inside of an Air Force cockpit again, at least not as a pilot. The colonel was injured in a motorcycle accident in the fall of 1998. Infection following surgery to repair a broken bone left him with few choices but to have his left leg amputated above the knee three years after the crash. Despite the overwhelming odds stacked against him, he said he was determined to get back into the cockpit and return to his Air Force job. He got his wish six years after the accident and now is flying and walking with the aid of an artificial limb. Colonel Lourake logged in his first operational mission in a C-20 aircraft recently during a roundtrip flight from Andrews Air Force Base, Md., to Boston with Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper. The colonel, who has more than 4,000 flying hours, served as the co-pilot. “It feels pretty awesome," Colonel Lourake said. "Today was the first day I flew in the right seat, so I had to work all the co-pilot duties. I hadn't done that in a long time, because all my training was done from the left seat. So this time around was essentially another new experience, but everything came back to me pretty (quickly). "I'm elated; you can't hardly wipe the smile off my face," he said. "This is what I've done most of my life. My whole Air Force career has been airplanes. And I had it taken away from me because of an accident and a microorganism. I had to fight to get back to it, to prove I could fly an airplane again at this level." When he is not in the cockpit, Colonel Lourake spends time with his wife visiting amputees at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center here. Many of those servicemembers have lost limbs as a result of the war on terrorism. They go to center to be fitted for prosthetics and learn to use them. Colonel Lourake uses his perspective as a military officer, pilot and amputee to let the patients know they can have a future. "I was in their position at one point," Colonel Lourake said. "You can go out there and lead a very normal life with the help of prosthetics, but you don't really get that feeling when you are in a hospital bed, drugged up and in a lot of pain." Colonel Lourake said once he shows bed-bound servicemembers he too is an amputee and that there can be life after an amputation, they start to trust him a little. "That's what my wife and I bring to the table for them -- credibility," he said. "I pull up my pant leg and have them look at my artificial leg. That's a good feeling, because then they open up, and we form a bond. Then I can show them that life can be normal, six months down the road, once they get fitted into a prosthetic." Just one day after his return to operational flying, Colonel Lourake participated in the ground breaking of a new $10 million treatment center for amputees at Walter Reed. The goal of the Military Amputee Training Center staff will be to return amputees as close as possible to their "pre-injury level of tactical athleticism," officials said. "It's going to be a great leap forward in amputee care," Colonel Lourake said. "It's especially needed now that we have so many (servicemembers) coming home from the war with lost limbs." Colonel Lourake will no doubt be there to meet many of them and let them know it is possible to be normal again. Air Force merging information technology offices [2004-12-09] TYSONS CORNER, Va. -- The secretary of the Air Force announced Dec. 7 plans to consolidate three headquarters-level organizations under one commander. The offices of warfighting integration, the chief information officer and communications operations will be reorganized into the office of networks and warfighting integration-chief information officer, in an effort to best integrate current and emerging technologies with warfighting operations, Air Force Secretary Dr. James G. Roche said. "Warfighters and decision makers are dependant on information that is generated and shared across networks worldwide," the secretary said. "To best leverage current and emerging technologies with warfighting requirements, we are moving to establish a new organization. We will see better information technology support to (them)." Secretary Roche said plans for the reorganization will be available by the new year. Implementation of the reorganization would happen around spring. Air Force officials said they plan for the director of the new structure to be a lieutenant general with a career Senior Executive Service civilian as the deputy. The secretary's announcement came during an information technology conference here where leaders from around the Air Force and the information technology industry gathered to discuss the service's vision for streamlining the warfighting process. The theme of the one-day conference was "Shortening the kill chain through seamless integration." In the Air Force command and control community, "kill chain" refers to the series of events leading from identification of a potential target to the ultimate destruction or "kill" of that target. The target could be a building, a cave, a convoy or a communications tower. "The kill chain (is) the most fundamental process in the battle space," said Maj. Gen. Marc Rogers, Air Force Materiel Command’s director of transformation. "We need to focus on things in the back end. It's about a touch of the screen (and getting) understandable information to the deciders at all levels and doing that rapidly. We will attack the time barrier to become faster, more capable and more efficient, and do it inside the enemy's reaction time." Other key messages from Air Force leaders to industry included ensuring that new systems be compatible between U.S. military services and America’s allies, finding ways to effectively and accurately differentiate between data and decision-quality information, and getting decision-quality information to decision makers as quickly as possible. The Air Force's chief information officer emphasized the importance the Air Force puts on information in modern warfighting. "Increasingly, it's less about the technology to move and manipulate bits or to store them," John M. Gilligan said. "It's more about managing the information and providing the information such that it can provide to our operators the ability to make informed decisions. "Information now needs to be managed for the common good and treated as a capability," he said. "Information is an enabler, and increasingly, having information is the capability needed to act decisively in an operation." New agreement will strengthen network security [2004-12-15] WASHINGTON -- In an initiative to secure computers and networks worldwide, Air Force officials entered into an agreement with Microsoft to purchase software and support for more than a half-million computers. Under the agreement, in partnership with Dell Computer Corp., all existing Air Force software and support contracts will be combined into one. The resulting contract will affect about 525,000 computers, officials said. By purchasing software for the whole service under one licensing agreement, the Air Force will save $100 million over the course of the contract, they said. But, the real intent of the contract consolidation is not to save money, but to improve security on the Air Force network and to protect the integrity of the valuable information that travels on it, said John M. Gilligan, the Air Force's chief information officer. "The major driver for us is security," Mr. Gilligan said. "Our warfighters recognize that as we come to depend on this network, it has to be available. If there is a potential of disruption to the network, then all of the sudden this competitive edge we have of leveraging information technology just disappears." "Today (the Air Force has) a lot of separate contracts; the software is configured separately by each of the contracts and by each of the local installations, so we have thousands of separate configurations," Mr. Gilligan said. As many as 38 separate contracts, managed by the major commands, have been in effect at one time, he said. Such dissimilarity between computers and networks makes it difficult to centrally manage the Air Force network, Mr. Gilligan said. While installing security patches to desktop computers today can be done automatically in some locations, in most places the work must be done by technicians installing updates one computer at a time. That method is costly and time consuming, he said. "It takes months, literally, in most cases (to install a security patch)," Mr. Gilligan said. In an ideal situation, every machine would be exactly the same, making it easy for network managers to discover problems, devise solutions and apply fixes, he said. The new information technology initiative aims to move the Air Force in that direction. Once the changeover is complete, updates can be made automatically to all computers at once, Mr. Gilligan said. The decision to update or not would be centralized, and the fix would be "pushed" out over the Air Force network to every computer attached. Centralizing computer management also means a savings in terms of manpower requirements, Mr. Gilligan said. There are about 50,000 people in the Air Force sustaining networks, servers and desktops, he said. Through common configurations, the automatic distribution of patches and the consolidation of help desks, those people can be freed up to work on other tasks. Another part of the Air Force's agreement will provide for low-cost software for Airmen to use on their personal computers. For a little more than $20, Airmen will have the option of getting a copy of Microsoft Office for use on their home computers, Mr. Gilligan said. Airmen will receive notification through their major commands as how best to take advantage of the low-cost software purchase, he said. Portal allows Airmen to chat with friends, family [2004-12-20] WASHINGTON -- Airmen at home station or a deployed location can now send instant messages to their friends or loved ones whenever they have access to the Internet. The Air Force recently implemented the "Friends and Family Instant Messenger" program, available through the Air Force Portal. Now, besides using the system to connect with other Airmen on work-related projects, users can chat online with non-Air Force friends or family members, said Lt. Col. Joe Besselman, the program director for global combat support systems at Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass. "There was a dual purpose for (the instant messenger)," Colonel Besselman said. "Instant messaging has been a commercialization and socialization phenomenon in the commercial sector. Air Force leaders wanted to give that to Airmen, and to have that available in their work unit so they could chat with one another socially and also accomplish the mission. They also wanted to give deployed (Airmen) the capability to talk with their families back home." Air Force Special Operations Command was chosen to debut this capability for the Air Force following a two-month test period. Lt. Gen. Michael W. Wooley, AFSOC commander, notified the command’s Airmen in his holiday video, available through the Air Force Portal. “I’m proud to introduce a new Air Force Portal real-time chat tool to help those deployed reach back and talk to their loved ones anytime, anyplace,” General Wooley said. “We honor your sacrifice, and this is just one thing that we can do to support you.” Feedback from the testing period has been enthusiastically positive. The mother of one deployed staff sergeant said the service “has made a big difference in my life. Having the peace of mind of knowing that your loved one is safe on a day-to-day basis is priceless.” Colonel Besselman said supply Airmen use the instant messaging of the portal to help move mission critical parts in and out of war theaters. Some National Guard Airmen are also using the chat to conduct recalls. The Air Force has offered instant messaging through the portal for more than two years though the chat was limited to Airmen and civilian employees only. Under the new program, Airmen "sponsor" friends or family onto the portal by entering their e-mail addresses into the system. The portal then generates e-mails inviting them to log on and get their own specially configured account. Airmen can have up to five people added to the system, Colonel Besselman said. "Five people is an adjustable number," he said. "Based on the feedback ... and the scaling requirements of the infrastructure, we could change that number." One challenge faced by the Air Force information technology community when trying to open up the portal to non-Airmen was ensuring the network would remain safe from the viruses and malicious code so prevalent on the commercial side of the Internet. Initially, Air Force officials allowed the system to interface with commercial chat packages. But commercial messaging software often allows users to send images and attachments to other chatters. Those attachments could be infected with viruses or other malicious logic. The Air Force system is for text-only chats. "It doesn't allow you to embed images or sounds or documents, where somebody could have put malicious code," Colonel Besselman said. The Air Force uses a commercially designed real-time chat program to power the program. The software, while tailored to the Air Force's specific needs, is also in use by the Army, the Navy, and the Department of Homeland Security. The software does not need to be downloaded to users’ computers; it is entirely Web-based, Colonel Besselman said. "If you are using a modern browser, that's all you need to use the chat," he said. Another concern for Air Force leaders about opening the portal to friends and family had been that individuals sponsored could chat with people they did not know. "We didn't want people to use the (system) because they've got nothing else to do, or to be trolling around looking for lonely hearts to talk to," Colonel Besselman said. "We wanted to provide the ability for friends and family members to talk with specific people on the network." Friends or family members will not have the same access to the portal that Airmen have, but they will get limited access to the messenger. "The (program) allows family members or friends a way to get an Air Force Portal account, but all they see is (the instant messenger)," Colonel Besselman said. "This doesn't give them all the power of the portal, but just a scaled back version.” Within the system, it only allows visitors to see if their Air Force sponsors are logged on, he said. Other concerns about the system have also been addressed. Recently, ranks were added to "screen names" to ensure Airmen knew who they were talking to when online. "We added rank in there so people know your name and rank and where you are," Colonel Besselman said. "It helps make sure people are operating within the guidelines of the Air Force when they talk to somebody." Chat on the portal is also encrypted, to prevent those outside the network from tapping into a conversation. "A husband and wife can feel comfortable having a one-on-one conversation, because it is secured and encrypted," Colonel Besselman said. To use the online chat, Airmen first need to get an Air Force Portal account. To sign up, visit https://www.my.af.mil. 'Andro' supplement off limits in new year [2005-01-04] WASHINGTON -- Airmen who take androstenedione to increase muscle mass will soon have to ditch the supplement and just do extra repetitions at the gym. Under a new law that takes effect Jan. 20, the prohormone androstenedione will be classified as a Schedule III controlled substance. Schedule III substances are those defined by the government as having a potential for abuse. The drug, commonly called "andro," is used by bodybuilders to help build mass, said Col. (Dr.) Vincent F. Carr, the Air Force's chief consultant for internal medicine services. “Andro includes a number of compounds which altogether are a precursor to the male hormone testosterone," Dr. Carr said. "Folks take this to bulk up their muscles and increase their ability to weight lift and to gain endurance for their exercise programs." Other drugs listed as Schedule III substances include the anesthetic ketamine, called "Special K" by the club-goers who use it; testosterone, and forms of codeine and morphine. Once ingested, Dr. Carr said, androstenedione is converted to testosterone. Testosterone is responsible for developing such male characteristics as muscle size and body hair. For androstenedione to create muscle mass, a user must take it in an amount that also causes side effects that are damaging to his or her health. "Part of the problem is that if you take large amounts of androstenedione over a long period of time, you have the potential to develop liver disease, liver failure, heart disease, kidney disease and an acceleration of hardening of the arteries," Dr. Carr said. "For ladies, it may block some of the female hormones, so they may experience symptoms such as male-pattern baldness." Because androstenedione creates artificial levels of testosterone in the body, natural production of the hormone can be reduced. Slowing the normal production of testosterone also affects a user's body. "A male may find that because he doesn't have normal testosterone production, his testicles get smaller," Dr. Carr said. Use of androstenedione is also known to reduce sperm count in men and to reduce breast size in women. The drug may also have psychological effects. "One of the biggest problems that gets users into trouble is that aggressive behavior manifests itself," Dr. Carr said. "They get into fights, and that could have a major effect on the work environment." Androstenedione is found in many bodybuilding supplements that are available in nutrition and fitness stores. But Lt. Col. Ronald L. Blakely, the staff food and drug safety officer for the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, said the products are no longer available in AAFES stores. "Due to health concerns, the four dietary supplements that contained androstenedione … were phased out by December 2002," Colonel Blakely said. "AAFES' direct store operations never offered nor-androstenedione supplements, also known as ‘nor-andro’ supplements." Colonel Blakely also said that General Nutrition Center concessions no longer sell "andro" or "nor-andro" products. On Jan. 20, androstenedione may no longer be legally purchased. It will also be illegal to use the prohormone, even if it was purchased before then. Use, possession, or distribution of androstenedione after Jan. 20 will be a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Airman making ‘inaugural’ performance [2005-01-06] WASHINGTON -- When Tech. Sgt. Bradley Bennett sings the national anthem Jan. 20 at the presidential inauguration here, it will be a first for both him and the Air Force. "This will be the first time in history that the Air Force has had such a performing role at the inauguration," said Sen. Trent Lott, Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies chairman. "We're excited (he) will be participating. (This) has got to be one of the most memorable moments of the whole (event.)" The inauguration will also be different in that the committee, at the request of the White House, has included more military involvement in the ceremonies. "The recognition that will go to the military will be more than usual; that is the president's choice. This is about a vision of the future of America, but also a way to express our appreciation for what our military is doing around the world," Senator Lott said. As a member of the Air Force Band's "Singing Sergeants" based at Bolling Air Force Base, D.C., Sergeant Bennett said his being chosen to sing the anthem at the inauguration is special. "It's a tremendous honor to be chosen for this, and it is very humbling," he said. While Sergeant Bennett will be the first Airman to sing the national anthem at a presidential inauguration, it will not be the first time the Kent, Ohio, native has performed the song before President Bush. "I was chosen for the Memorial Day commemoration in 2003 at Arlington National Cemetery," Sergeant Bennett said. "President Bush was there as well as many other dignitaries." The Singing Sergeants, with Sergeant Bennett, performed together earlier this year for President Reagan's funeral and at a Washington Redskins football game. While many might be worried about performing in front of the president, Sergeant Bennett said he remains confident in his ability. "I am not concerned about this. I am excited and honored to do this, and I am looking forward to this," he said. "It is part of my job and something I have had the honor of doing many times for many events. (Because) this is larger in scale and international in nature, it's not 'business as usual,' but I treat every performance the same and prepare for them equally." Sergeant Bradley is a tenor vocalist and began his Air Force career five years ago. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in music, specializing in vocal performance, from Kent State University, Ohio, in 1996. He is a two-time winner of the Tuesday Music Club’s scholarship competition and was recipient of the Irene Beamer Memorial Scholarship. Information on the Air Force Band and the Singing Sergeants is available online at www.usafband.com. Campaign brings hope to Airmen [2005-01-07] WASHINGTON -- A new initiative by the Air Force chaplain’s office aims to bring to Airmen something that cannot be issued -- hope. Air Force chaplain service officials kicked off a year-long and service-wide "Campaign of Hope" Jan. 3, said Chaplain (Col.) Bob Page, of the chaplain’s office. The campaign started with a day of prayer and fasting Chaplain Page said. The actual day varied from base to base. “We believe prayer has a lot to do with finding hope," he said. The campaign came as a response to an increase in suicides among junior enlisted Airmen. "There has been a tragic rise in the suicide rate, particularly among (airmen first class and senior airmen)," Chaplain Page said. "Not only with (them), but across the board there has been a rise in suicide rates, and we are deeply concerned about that. For every person who feels hopeless and in despair to the point of taking his or her life, it is a great tragedy and a loss to all of us. "There are many pressures on our Airmen and their families, especially with deployments," he said. "Building and maintaining good relationships is difficult. One of the things about our Airmen is that they value relationships so much -- family and close friends. What happens when a relationship seems to be breaking apart, when there seems to be no hope for that relationship? Does that mean there is no hope at all?" Air Force chaplains, he said, want to help answer those questions for Airmen struggling with them. "We want to be a counterbalance to what some are experiencing as hopelessness," Chaplain Page said. "We are asking how we can focus some significant, caring ministry on that group.” Part of that ministry involves sponsorship of what Chaplain Page calls "hope tours." "This would be chapel-sponsored, (United Service Organization-style) morale tours," he said. "We would bring great singers, speakers and entertainers to bring a message of hope and encouragement to troops and their families." As part of the campaign, chaplain service officials will be asking chaplains in the field what is working best for them as they minister to Airmen. "We are initiating something called the Chief of Chaplains Grant Program," Chaplain Page said. "We are calling on wing chapel teams to look at the needs on their base, particularly among (young Airmen) and ask where can (the teams) serve them and bring hope into their lives. We will fund the best of those proposals and share their ideas across the Air Force." The grant program will fund retreats for couples, programs to strengthen marriages and other initiatives to teach relationship building-skills to Airmen. Gala honors those who serve [2005-01-19] WASHINGTON -- Those who fight America’s wars were entertained by their own and by celebrities at an invitation-only event in the heart of the Nation’s capital. More than 7,500 Airmen, Soldiers, Sailors and Marines gathered at a state-of-the-art sports and entertainment facility here Jan. 18 to be honored for their service during a 55th Presidential Inauguration kickoff event titled "Saluting Those Who Serve." Troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan were able to watch the event via satellite. Honored guests of the event included President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura; Vice President Richard B. Cheney and his wife, Lynne; former President George H. W. Bush and his wife, Barbara; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the four joint chiefs of staff. The musical and entertainment-loaded salute, emceed by actor Kelsey Grammer, began with a series of performances by military bands and honor guards from all four services. Included in the opening set were performances by the "President's Own" Marine Corps Band. The group performed patriotic music as well as a medley of the various services' songs, including the Air Force song. The Air Force's "Airmen of Note" band and the Air Force Honor Guard Drill team were among the military entertainers. Following the military-themed music and displays, Mr. Grammer presented the first celebrity act of the event, country music artist John Michael Montgomery. Mr. Montgomery sang "Letters from Home," from his recent album of the same title. The song reveals the inner voice of a deployed Soldier after getting a letter from his parents: "I fold it up and put it in my shirt, pick up my gun and get back to work, and it keeps me drivin' on, waitin' on letters from home," he sang. Other entertainers included Gloria Estefan and Darryl Worley, as well as taped TV appearances by talk show hosts Jay Leno and David Letterman. Comedian Darrell Hammond of "Saturday Night Live" drew laughs from the crowd with impersonations of former President William J. Clinton and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. Joking aside, Mr. Hammond told gathered military guests that Americans are indebted to them for what they enjoy. "We civilians … we get to experience God’s miracle of freedom because of you," he said. Peppered amongst the country music acts and comedy were monologues by entertainers who read from actual correspondence between deployed servicemembers and their loved ones back home. The letters were dated as early as the Civil War and as recent as Operation Iraqi Freedom. Perhaps the most moving monologue of the day came from former President George H.W. Bush. He stood center stage and recounted a war experience of his own during World War II, telling about his experience of bailing out of an aircraft over water and his subsequent rescue by a Navy submarine. The finale of the event was President Bush's address to the crowd. "Whether you serve in the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, Marines or Coast Guard, each of you has stepped forward to serve," the president said. "You have risked your lives in faraway mountains and arid deserts, in perilous skies and on the high seas, to defend liberty and to free those trapped by tyranny." The president told the crowd that freedom is spreading across the globe because of their efforts. "The promise of liberty is spreading across the world," he said. "In the last four years, more than 50 million people have joined the ranks of the free. The people of Afghanistan have thrown off an outlaw regime and chosen a president in the first free elections in that nation's 5,000-year history. And in coming days, the Iraqi people will have their chance to go to the polls. "These are landmark events in the history of liberty. And none of it would have been possible without the courage and the determination of the United States armed forces," he said. The freedom America's military services provide, he said, protect not just Americans today, but Americans in the future. "Your sacrifice has made it possible for our children and grandchildren to grow up in a safer world," he said. Still, the president said, there is danger. And it is America's servicemembers who would face that danger -- and make it go away. "We still face terrorist enemies who wish to harm our people and are seeking weapons that would allow them to kill on an unprecedented scale," he said. "These enemies must be stopped, and you are the ones who will stop them." Airmen honor president during inaugural parade [2005-01-21] WASHINGTON -- Thousands of people lined Pennsylvania Avenue on Jan. 20, waiting for the passing of the presidential motorcade during the inaugural parade. Two things were immediately apparent to people attending the event. The first was the overwhelming amount of security, and second was the large contingent of servicemembers. Security at any public event featuring the president is always high. Secret Service agents paced back and forth at their posts, hundreds of civilian law enforcement officers from around the country stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the street, and countersnipers, dressed in black, dotted rooftops of the white marble federal buildings that surrounded the parade route. Nearly 900 Airmen wearing service dress stood at attention on both sides of the parade route near the Canadian Embassy to render honors to the president as he rode by. This year, President George W. Bush asked the military to play a more prominent role in the inauguration. But, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Gerald R. Murray said, the military has always been involved in the inaugural events. "The military has been part of presidential inauguration from the very first one with President George Washington," he said. "The military actually escorted General Washington to be installed as the new president. Along the way, the military gave him great honors, which in many ways set the foundation for much of what we do today." After a short delay in the start of the parade, President Bush’s motorcade, an armada of jet-black limousines and sport utility vehicles, passed in front of where the first few Airmen were already standing at attention. From presidential supporters in the crowd came cheers. From Airmen standing on the street, some less than 50 feet from the president, came sharp salutes –- a courtesy they have paid countless times before, but perhaps never to someone of such importance. As the president continued down Pennsylvania Avenue, servicemembers from other branches of the armed forces repeated the gesture, Chief Murray said. "Today we have a very ceremonial role in this, as do the other branches of the service," he said. "Each branch of the service will have Sailors, Marines, Soldiers and Coast Guardsmen here. They will be in place to render their honors to the president as he goes from the Capitol to the White House as part of this parade route." Chief Murray was on hand at the event as a parade commentator, to let those in the immediate area know what was happening with the parade and who was passing by in the motorcade. "My role here is to be one of the emcees for this area -- the Air Force cordon," Chief Murray said. "Ed Clements, a radio broadcaster from Texas and a friend of the president, and our very own Senior Airman Anthony Plyler, a broadcaster with the Armed Forces Network, are the primary narrators. I'll just be adding a bit of my military perspective." The 2005 inauguration would be the first for the many Airmen who joined the Air Force after Sept. 11, 2001. Chief Murray said for those Airmen, and for others, participating in the event was a chance to render honors to the president and to be part of history. "This is only the 55th presidential inauguration," Chief Murray said. "Our Airmen are taking a part in history today. To be a part of the inauguration, the swearing in and the parade -- there could not be anything greater for our Airmen." The 2004 election was one of the most watched in American history. The debates were fierce, the campaigning was nonstop, and the voting margins were predicted to be slim. Everybody took a side. But, Chief Murray said, the Air Force's role in the inauguration is not political at all. "We are here to support our commander in chief," he said. "That commander in chief is the person that is elected by the people of the United States of America. Politics has nothing to do with this whatsoever." The inaugural parade lasted for two hours, and it included marching bands and honor guard units from every military service, and representatives from Air Force District of Washington and the Air Force Academy. F/A-22 passes initial operational test, evaluation [2005-02-01] WASHINGTON -- The results of a recently released Air Force study bode well for the future of the F/A-22 Raptor, officials said. The Raptor demonstrated “overwhelmingly effective” warfighting capability according to the initial operational test and evaluation report released by Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center officials at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. Every new system the Air Force acquires must undergo testing by the center, the service’s independent testing agency. Testing for the F/A-22 began in late April and was conducted primarily at the Nevada Test and Training Range. Additional tests were performed in simulators at a facility in Marietta, Ga., officials said. The tests are done to determine both the operational effectiveness and the suitability of the weapons system. The tests assess four critical issues identified by the warfighter: lethality, survivability, deployability, and maintainability. The determination of an aircraft’s operational effectiveness is based on the aircraft’s combat capability, officials said. During this testing, the Air Force flew as many as four F/A-22s in a variety of airborne simulated combat scenarios. According to the report, the F/A-22 performed more than two times better than the F-15C Eagle aircraft in similar tests. Additionally, the report states no adversary aircraft survived engagement with the F/A-22. For operational performance, the report deemed the Raptor “effective.” “The Raptor operated against all adversaries with virtual impunity,” said Maj. Gen. Richard B.H. "Rick" Lewis, Air Force program executive officer for the F/A-22. “The ground-based systems couldn’t engage the Raptor, and no adversary aircraft survived. That is air dominance, and that’s exactly what the Raptor was designed to give us.” The F/A-22 scored slightly less in the way of suitability. The center rated the aircraft “potentially suitable.” Suitability tests rate the ease at which the aircraft can be deployed and maintained. The center identified a number of suitability deficiencies in the F/A-22, which Air Force officials said they are already working to correct. Air Force officials said the rating indicates the progress the aircraft continues to make as it goes to initial operational capability. This December, the Raptor is expected to reach initial operational capability, which is the ability to conduct combat operations worldwide. Aviation conference offers opportunity to network [2005-02-08] WASHINGTON -- For the 16th time in as many years, women involved in aviation will gather to network and discuss issues surrounding their chosen industry. The 16th Annual International Women in Aviation Conference runs March 10 to 12 in Dallas. The event is a great opportunity for both women and men involved in aviation to network and further develop their professional careers, said Chris Patterakis, special assistant to the secretary of the Air Force for community relations. "Women in Aviation International is a staunch supporter of aviation interests," Mr. Patterakis said. "The group has members who are engineers, female astronauts, students and pilots. It's an all-aviation oriented organization. Women involved in it are looking for networking opportunities and are also involved in helping provide scholarship opportunities." Speakers at this year's conference include the chief executive officer of Southwest Airlines, Colleen Barrett; B-1B Lancer pilot Capt. Kim Black; air show performer Chandy Clanton; chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, Ellen Engleman Connors; aviation humorist Ralph Hood; and aviation pioneer, retired Gen. Charles E. Yeager. The conference includes a trade show with more than 120 companies, a job fair exhibit, more than 40 educational seminars and numerous networking opportunities. Women in Aviation International officials will also honor the annual Pioneer Hall of Fame inductees and scholarship recipients. The Air Force benefits from the partnership with the organization by having access to an untapped pool of diverse individuals with an interest in aviation, officials said. "The best Air Force in the world requires a stable accession pipeline providing critical skills in areas such as pilots (and) aviation, medical and science and engineering to accomplish its air and space-centric mission," officials said. "Changing demographics have led to increased competition within the public and private sectors for scarce diversity resources. The Air Force needs a diverse accessions pool of talent to develop its total workforce." As part of an agreement between the Air Force and the organization, Airmen who sign up for the conference will be given a free one-year membership in the organization and a subscription to its magazine. For more information, visit www.wai.org. Inspector General investigates eight Air Force contracts [2005-02-15] WASHINGTON -- Eight Air Force defense contracts not previously identified for in-depth review have been referred to the Department of Defense inspector general for investigation. The referral resulted from a review by Defense Contract Management Agency officials of 407 contracts under the control of or influenced by former Air Force acquisition official Darleen Druyun. She previously pleaded guilty to violating laws affecting personal and financial interests related to job negotiations with the Boeing Co. while a government employee. Ms. Druyun was sentenced to nine months in federal prison in November. The criminal case raised alarms about her involvement in numerous Air Force contracts. Air Force and DOD acquisition officials were concerned that contracts that fell under Ms. Druyun's influence might have been tainted. As a result, they asked the contract management agency to examine all Air Force acquisition actions executed or influenced by Ms. Druyun during her tenure from 1993 to 2002. The agency review identified eight contracts with suspicious anomalies, besides seven others already being investigated by Defense Department inspector general at Air Force and DOD request. Air Force officials said they are cooperating with DOD officials to ensure the eight additional contracts, worth more than $3 billion, are further investigated for any wrongdoing or improper influence by Ms. Druyun. "The Air Force will continue to work closely with the organizations reviewing and investigating Ms. Druyun's contracting actions while she was the principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition," said Shirley Curry, an Air Force spokeswoman. "We were outraged by her illegal actions and will work diligently to support the resolution of these issues." The contracts, awarded between 1998 and 2002, cover Air Force operations and support missions on land, in air and in space. They include the National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System -- Conical Microwave Imager Sensor; C-5 Galaxy Avionics Modernization Program; the Financial Information Resource System; C-22 Replacement Program; 60K Tunner Program Contractor Logistics; KC-135 Stratotanker Programmed Depot Maintenance; F-16 Fighting Falcon Mission Training Center; and the C-40 Lease and Purchase Program. Finance begins transformation [2005-02-15] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force financial management community formally kicked off the operational phase of its transformation effort Feb. 2 at a conference in San Antonio. The conference highlighted the "six lanes" of financial transformation planned for the service in the next decade, which emphasize customer service, said Michael Montelongo, assistant secretary of the Air Force for financial management and comptroller. "The conference is symbolic in a way," he said. "We effectively dropped the gavel of change from strategic planning to what we call the operational phase of transformation. Primarily, that means the kickoff of the implementation of our service delivery model." The six lanes of transformation are: • Restructuring financial services. • Enhancing resource adviser positions. • Developing a cost analysis center of expertise. • Enhancing support to warfighters. • Restructuring Air Staff-level budget processes. • Developing a training mechanism to support the transformation effort. Financial services is the area Airmen perhaps are most familiar with. This is where transactions occur. A "transaction" is the series of paperwork and button-pushing events when an Airman needs just about anything done at his or her base finance office. A transaction could be the filing of a travel voucher, adjusting an allotment or correcting a pay error. It is the processing of these transactions, said Roger Bick, director of financial management strategic planning and transformation, where the Air Force financial management community starts its transformation efforts. "If you leave base housing, a form is taken to finance (specialists) so they can start your basic allowance for housing," Mr. Bick said. "That's a transaction. We want to systemically evolve those processes. Instead, housing (officials) could put a code into a computer when you leave, and then a form wouldn’t be hand carried anywhere. That reduces the cost to our Air Force." Relationships between the finance office and other Air Force communities are also ripe for development, Mr. Bick said. "You may go into (the finance office) because you are short $100 in your paycheck," he said. "They'll tell you it's because the personnel system didn't do 'X' -- perhaps they didn't start your entitlement. You say ‘thank you’ and go to personnel. You stand in the personnel line, and they tell you to check with finance. “Such a runaround is not uncommon,” Mr. Bick said. "It happens to a whole lot of people," he said. "That's a 'stovepipe,' where communities in the Air Force look amongst their own and don't cross-correlate with each other to best serve the customer. “Because we have grown inside our own communities, we haven't evolved as quickly as we could have if we had worked together a long time ago," he said. Streamlining shop-to-shop processes and transactions is only part of the solution, Mr. Bick said. Also on the agenda is the development of finance call centers where Airmen can ask questions and get most of their financial issues resolved. Those call centers would be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. "In the future, we expect finance and personnel to be together when it makes sense," he said. "In the call center, personnel (officials) might be right there with us.” “Many transactions happening in today's finance office would disappear in the future,” Mr. Bick said. “Online systems like MyPay, Leave Web and Virtual (Military Personnel Flight) already allow Airmen to handle many of their needs from any computer with an Internet connection. “Systems take time to evolve, but we are very much committed to moving toward a common goal," he said. With call centers, Airmen may never have to see the inside of a finance office again. That, Mr. Bick said, frees them from standing in line and allows them to spend more time on mission requirements. Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force testifies at new quality of life committee [2005-02-17] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force’s most senior enlisted Airmen testified Feb. 16 before the new House Appropriations Committee subcommittee on military quality of life and veterans’ affairs. Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Gerald R. Murray discussed quality of life issues, including morale, housing privatization, the value of Department of Defense schools, deployments and weight allowance increases. "The morale we have today is one of commitment and determination that I have not seen the likes of since I have been in the service," Chief Murray told legislators. "It is focused on the mission; it is not about having fun or the good times.” Chief Murray said that commitment is driven in part by the support of the American public and much of the morale has been driven by the influx of patriotic Airmen who signed up for service after Sep. 11. "There is a new energy coming into the force today, that is these young Americans -- since our nation was attacked -- who have chosen to join our military service," Chief Murray said. "Even when they see there are Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines being killed or wounded, they are volunteering to serve their nation." Chief Murray said the largest quality of life complaint was childcare followed by adequate housing. The Air Force has begun privatizing base housing at many stateside locations. The process involves private contractors building new homes on federal property. The homes can then be rented by military families using their basic allowance for housing. Chief Murray said the program is working well for Airmen. "Where we have built the new homes, there is no question that our Airmen will live on the base, verses downtown, due to the quality of those homes," he said. "It is only where we have the inadequate housing that the Airmen will take their BAH and move downtown." Congressmen asked the service chiefs about the importance of Department of Defense Dependant Schools. Chief Murray said his own children have been in many types of schools during his service, but that the DODDS system has provided for him the best option. "(My children) have been overseas, they have been stateside, they have been in Department of Defense schools," he said. "They have been in the very best of schools across the nations, and have been in some of the very worst schools. But one of the things you are always guaranteed in DODDS schools is consistency." Part of that consistency is a curriculum that matches up, grade by grade, across the DODDS system. Because of a standardized curriculum, students who are forced to move can expect to reenter a DOD school and pick up their studies where they left off. That consistency provides much needed stability to children. Another key stability factor for families is to know when a military member is going to deploy. Chief Murray said the Air Expeditionary Force system continues to provide families with that predictability. "Our AEF process is based on a 120-day deployment, in a 20-month cycle," Chief Murray said. "One of the things it does is provide predictability to the family. When you can tell a family when a member is going to deploy and when they are going to come home, then that is certainly something that de-stresses a lot of things for the family." One quality of life issue the service chiefs raised in unison to legislators was increasing the weight allowances for permanent moves. Often, when military families make a permanent change of station, they are forced to eliminate some of their belongings due to the weight restrictions on government-funded moves. "All you have to do is go into our housing areas and you will find things on the street that you would not normally get rid of, or that you would not give away,” said the Chief. "If you ask us very directly 'would you increase our weight allowance,' I would say yes we would." Congressmen also asked about recruiting and retention. Chief Murray said while the Air Force has fallen short of its goal to retain as many as 75 percent of second term Airmen, the service is excelling in other areas. "We are meeting our recruiting goals and our retention goals," the Chief said. "For first term Airmen, 55 percent is our goal. We are over 60 percent. For career Airmen our goal is 95 percent, we are right on that goal." The subcommittee on military quality of life and veterans’ affairs is a recent addition to the House Appropriations Committee, said the subcommittee chairman, Rep. James T. Walsh of New York. “(This) is not just an expanded military construction subcommittee,” said Chairman Walsh. “It was created to think more holistically about quality of life of military members and veterans. “If we do our jobs, and we take our responsibilities seriously to make sure your people are well cared for and valued, and that worries of family and those responsibilities are taken care of, our (military members) will do a better job," he said. "They will be safer. They will hopefully sleep better at night. I think that is what this committee is really about.” Air Force identifies non-vol candidates for first sergeant duty [2005-03-03] WASHINGTON -- Air Force officials have identified Airmen as candidates for first sergeant duty for the second time in two years through a nonvolunteer process. Historically, first sergeants were chosen from a pool of volunteers. But in recent years, there has not been a sufficient number of volunteers to keep the positions filled, officials said. The Air Force has more than 1,200 first sergeant positions worldwide. Each year, roughly one-third of those positions must be refilled because incumbents either retire or return to their career specialty. To close the gap, Air Force officials have identified 368 master sergeants from across the service as candidates for retraining as first sergeants. Each candidate meets minimum requirements for first sergeant duty, including fewer than 18 years of service, a score of five on his or her last five performance reports and completion of the Senior Noncommissioned Officer Academy. Each candidate also will be interviewed by his or her unit commander and respective command chief master sergeant to ensure suitability for the position. Of the 368 candidates identified, as many as 120 will eventually be chosen and can expect to begin training as early as July. The First Sergeant Academy at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., is responsible for training new first sergeants and has the capacity to train about 350 a year. Unfortunately, the number of volunteers is predicted to fill only about two-thirds of those slots, officials said. Air Force officials want to keep that pipeline full, but historically they have had trouble because of the lack of volunteers, said Senior Master Sgt. Chris Anthony, the Air Force's first sergeant special-duty manager. "If you go out and talk to master sergeants, there is a large percentage who will consider it, and a lot will go out and do it," he said. "But what the issue has been is that we don't actively recruit new first sergeants. In the past, first sergeants were never compelled to recruit their replacements. Over the past couple of years, we’ve made great progress toward changing that mind-set, but we still have a ways to go." Sergeant Anthony said many master sergeants have actually considered becoming first sergeants, but they were never encouraged effectively enough to get them to sign up. "Once somebody took the time to talk to them, they were actually interested," he said. "We feel pretty strongly (that) there are enough people out there who want to do this, but we just haven't been encouraging them enough." In fact, when word hit the street that the Air Force had identified 368 Airmen as candidates, Sergeant Anthony said people began calling and e-mailing him to volunteer. Last year, Air Force officials identified about 290 people to retrain into first sergeant duty. For various reasons, about 60 of those were not recommended by their commanders. Of the remaining 230 people, he said, 73 said that being a first sergeant was something they really wanted to do and were classified as volunteers. "Once (we) explained to them what the job entailed and what the benefits were for them and their career, they were excited about the job and said it was something they thought they would want," Sergeant Anthony said. "Last year, we really had only about 47 people who were selected for first sergeant duty who had not volunteered. The Air Force prefers to fill all the slots with volunteers, but we are not compromising when we select individuals to do the job. Reports from commanders and command chiefs in the field indicate, with rare exception, that those (nonvolunteers) last year are performing at the same level as the volunteers. “(One command chief) recently told me that he couldn’t tell the difference from the volunteers and ‘volun-tolds’ and is pleased with the performance of all his first sergeants,” Sergeant Anthony said. "Volunteers are still the primary way we man this career field," he said. "And we encourage anyone who meets the qualifications, and who has the desire, to apply." Teets discusses recapitalization, death benefit, core values [2005-03-04] WASHINGTON -- The acting secretary of the Air Force spoke on Capitol Hill March 2 about recapitalizing aging systems, the death gratuity and recent problems within the service. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Peter B. Teets explained the importance of modernizing the service's fleet of aging aircraft. "The Air Force's No. 1 challenge is to recapitalize our aging systems," Mr. Teets said. "Our aircraft fleet averages 23 years old -- ranging from fairly young F-117 (Nighthawks) and B-2 (Spirits), to venerable B-52 (Stratofortresses) and KC-135 (Stratotankers). Flightline and depot maintenance crews work magic to keep many of our legacy aircraft flying, but we cannot fly those planes forever." Mr. Teets told senators that it is clear the Air Force's fleet needs to be modernized and that the service is already making headway in achieving that goal. "The F/A-22 (Raptor), for example, will recapitalize our F-15 (Eagles); the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will recapitalize our F-16 (Fighting Falcons) and A-10 (Thunderbolt II) combat capabilities; and the C-130J (Hercules) will modernize our intratheater airlift," he said. In recent weeks, cuts to the F/A-22 program appeared in the president's fiscal 2006 budget. Mr. Teets said the Air Force will continue to focus on the aircraft, however, and will build a case for continuation of the program. "This is going to be one of the key items studied in the Quadrennial Defense Review," Mr. Teets said. "The budget we have suggested in fiscal 2006 does not decrease the flow of manufacturing F/A-22s." Another prime topic discussed was proposed changes to death benefits. New legislation on Capitol Hill aims to increase benefits to families of those killed while in military service. One bill would raise the military's death gratuity to families from $12,000 to $100,000 and will increase the payout from the Service Members Group Life Insurance policy to $400,000. The cash increases are just part of a total benefits package to survivors. "This death gratuity . . . is part of a total benefits package," he said. "I'd like to see what that total benefits package is. I've heard rough numbers calculated that say the death benefit is several million dollars, cumulative over a period of time. “I think the benefit is attractive and good; I'd like to try and understand what is the magnitude of the cost. We will have to defer something else in order to pay that cost," he said. The acting secretary also touched on recent controversies affecting the Air Force. Mr. Teets told legislators he felt it was important to be open and honest with both Congress and the public about the Air Force's own internal and ethical issues. "We must be forthright about some of our recent problems," he said. "The Air Force has suffered from the misdeeds of a few. Acquisition improprieties, problems at the Air Force Academy and other issues weigh on us all. "Air Force leaders have a strong obligation to ensure our trust within our ranks, within the Congress and with the American people. I am pledged to this aim, and to the core values that guide us: integrity first, service before self and excellence in all we do." Air Force reaches privatization milestone [2005-03-08] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force recently surpassed the 10,000-home milestone in its military family housing privatization program. In February, Air Force officials closed a deal privatizing more than 1,300 homes at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii. This means the Air Force now has more than 10,900 privatized homes. The privatization deal at Hickam is the 13th the Air Force has entered into. Air Force officials closed their first military family housing privatization deal at Lackland AFB, Texas, in August 1998. About 420 homes at the base were privatized. Today, those homes have a 96.6 percent occupancy rate. Following Lackland, deals closed at Robins AFB, Ga.; Dyess AFB, Texas; and Elmendorf AFB, Alaska. Today, construction at all four of the bases is complete, creating more than 2,300 new or renovated homes for Air Force families. Families living in those homes appear to like where they live, said Col. Bob Griffin, Air Force housing division chief. "We survey our customers on a quarterly basis," he said. "For Lackland, Robins, Dyess and Elmendorf, we see very good customer satisfaction. Not in just the housing, but in the responsiveness of the developer," he said. Over the next four years, through use of local community housing, privatization and traditional military construction, service officials plan to reduce the Air Force’s worldwide housing inventory of more than 107,000 to about 86,000, with about 60,000 in the United States. Officials expect nearly three-quarters of stateside homes will be privatized, Colonel Griffin said. Before the Air Force privatizes any housing, it first calculates needs based on mission requirements and manning projections, the colonel said. "By the end of 2009, we expect to privatize 72 percent, or about 45,500 of our U.S. based housing inventory," he said. Privatization means the Air Force allows private developers to take ownership of military family housing on installations. While the Air Force will still own the land, the developers will own the homes, maintain and upgrade them. Funding to pay developer costs are provided by collecting rent from the housing occupants. Today, about 59,000 homes worldwide are deemed "inadequate" by Air Force standards. An "inadequate" home is generally defined as a home that fails to meet Air Force size, condition and functionality criteria. Air Force officials plan to bring those homes up to standard through the privatization process. "Privatization will allow us to leverage dollars we have in the program in order to provide more quality housing faster," he said. "If we were trying to fix our inventory through traditional military construction and maintenance, we would need about $5.6 billion to achieve our goals." Developers who enter into a privatization deal agree to bring homes up to Air Force standards through new construction or renovations within a very short development period. While each deal is unique, across the program the developers have provided $9 for every Air Force dollar spent providing Airmen with newer, better homes, Colonel Griffin said. "When we talk to the privatization developer, we tell (him or her) what we would tear down, what we would renovate and also how many new houses we need to build," he said. "We price out what it would cost to do that if the government was going to build it." When developers submit proposals on the project, they let Air Force officials know what upgrades will cost. Oftentimes, the contractor offers more than what the Air Force is asking for, but at a lower price. "The developers who get these deals are meeting our requirements, within financing parameters, and exceeding them by bringing in desired features and enhancements," he said. Some of those enhancements include new homes versus renovations, lawn care at no charge to the resident, community centers, swimming pools, basketball courts, walking trails and parks. "These are additional features like you would see off base but aren't always provided to people on a military base," Colonel Griffin said. "When a privatization developer comes in, (he or she brings) the whole thing. (Developers) provide the house we ask for, or more, and also add in more things because they are trying to build a community and get people to move in." Airmen who choose to live on base in privatized homes will collect basic allowance for housing, the same as those who choose to live off base. They will in turn pay the allowance to the developer in the form of rent. The rent for privatized homes will be set so that, along with average utility costs, the Airman’s allowance will safely cover it, Colonel Griffin said. "The only way a member might have to pay out of pocket is where utility bills are concerned," he said. "We will have forecasted the average cost of utilities for a particular home and built it into the rent payment. If a member goes into a house and is spending a lot more, or consuming a lot more energy than what we forecast, then there is a possibility (he or she) would have to pay more." One motive behind privatizing military family housing is the Air Force does not have to pay to maintain the homes or keep them up to standard -- the developer does. And because developers enter into 50-year privatization deals with their own money, the best way for them to recoup their investment is to ensure the homes remain attractive to military families, Colonel Griffin said. "We do not guarantee the property manager a tenant," he said. "It is up to them to (market) their houses alongside any other commercially available house out there to Airmen and their families." If a developer is not attracting tenants into housing for other reasons, such as a change in mission at a particular base, Air Force officials will allow them to broaden the pool of potential tenants, Colonel Griffin said. "The target population for privatized housing is active-duty military members, but that is not the only group allowed to live in those homes," he said. "The Air Force allows developers to rent to other groups through a process called a 'waterfall.' When there is a shortage of active-duty Airmen to rent the homes, developers may fill empty housing units with reservists, Air National Guardsmen, government civilians or military retirees." Failing that, developers may even rent the homes to civilians, though Colonel Griffin said they would need to pass a security screening. Air Force surgeon general testifies on four health effects [2005-03-10] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force surgeon general spoke before Congress on March 3 on the state of medical care for servicemembers serving in the war on terrorism. Air Force Surgeon General Lt. Gen. (Dr.) George Peach Taylor Jr. told members of the House Armed Services Committee subcommittee on military personnel that the Air Force has done an exceptional job throughout operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom of providing health care to Airmen and members of its sister services. "We attribute our success to our focus on four health effects, which are providing care to casualties, ensuring a fit and healthy force, preventing illness and injury, and enhancing human performance," Dr. Taylor said. Dr. Taylor told legislators the Air Force's mobile expeditionary medical support units have been the linchpin of the ground mission to care for military casualties, and air transport teams have made great strides in reducing the time it takes to return casualties back to the United States for advanced medical care. "We now have more than 600 medics in 10 deployed locations, (including) a large theater hospital in Balad, Iraq, and two smaller hospitals in Kirkuk and Bagdhad International Airport," he said. "Just as in the States, these serve as regional medical facilities for all services. Our critical care air transport teams have made possible an astonishing turn-around time as short as 36 hours from the battleground to stateside medical care -- unheard of even a decade ago." Part of the Air Force's commitment to Airmen’s health is ensuring they are healthy and fit to fight before they deploy, while on deployment and upon their return home, Dr. Taylor said. In submitted testimony, the doctor told legislators the Air Force's annual preventative health assessments ensure each Airman is fit before he or she deploys. And when Airmen arrive in theater, he said, their health is tracked by the service's preventative medicine teams. "(They) identify, assess, control and counter the full spectrum of existing health threats and hazards, greatly enhancing our ability to prevent illness and injury," he said. Air Force officials also ensure Airmen come home healthy, with a post-deployment screening for each one, Dr. Taylor said. "During the post-deployment process, we ensure that each returning individual has a face-to-face health assessment with a trained health-care provider," he said. Air Force officials have conducted nearly 100,000 post-deployment screenings since January 2003. Of those assessments, Dr. Taylor said less than 10 percent required follow-up referrals for medical or dental health concerns. Dr. Taylor also told legislators Air Force officials are using cutting-edge research and development to find ways to improve safety for deployed Airmen and to enhance their warfighting performance. Air Force officials are working on converting common tap or surface water into intravenous solutions in the field and producing medical-grade oxygen on site, so heavy oxygen cylinders do not need to be transported, surgeon general officials said. Additionally, they are working to create vision devices that allow Airmen to see to the theoretical limit of the human eye. If successful, they said, it will provide pilots and warriors with the ability to see twice as far as an adversary. Teets tells Congress lasers-based communications coming [2005-03-11] WASHINGTON -- The military's senior adviser on space testified before Congress on March 8. Peter B. Teets, who serves as both the acting secretary of the Air Force and the Department of Defense's executive agent for space, spoke to the House Armed Services Committee subcommittee on strategic forces about the importance of programs like space radar and the transformational communications satellite. "I believe there is a strong need for us to provide persistent intelligence collection to combatant commanders day and night in all weather conditions," Mr. Teets said. "Only space radar can do that. In open areas and in denied areas, space radar can provide us with persistent intelligence collection." Providing that persistent intelligence to commanders in the field will require a constellation of satellites launched into space. Each satellite will use radar to take pictures of the earth, through any kind of weather, to provide both military and civilian intelligence communities information about what is happening on the ground and over the hill ahead, officials said. Mr. Teets said he recently directed the restructure of the Space Radar program, consolidating it in the Washington D.C. area, to create a tighter-knit community between the civilian and military agencies that will benefit from it. "We have restructured the space radar program in a way that will allow us to move forward in a team sense -- military community and intelligence community -- to use the same satellites to provide information for warfighting operations as well as for intelligence analysis," he said. "I think our restructured space radar program will indeed allow us to achieve those goals." One short term goal of the program is to demonstrate the capability of the system by launching a quarter-scale model satellite by 2008. The knowledge learned from that launch and from working with the satellite during its test phase will help the program develop larger operational systems, Mr. Teets said. "It will mature the technology," he said. "The transmitter/receiver we will use in the demo satellites will be used for the full operationally capable satellites as well. We will demonstrate that technology and demonstrate the cost of producing roughly a quarter-scale model spacecraft. We will have a high confidence then of what it will cost us to ultimately field the operationally responsive satellite." Mr. Teets said the department plans for the first space radar satellite to be launched in 2015. Also critical to the DOD space program is development of the Transformational Communications Satellite program. This program will create larger bandwidth for use by the DOD in both war and peace time. Bandwidth describes how much electronic information can be passed through a communications device at any time. More bandwidth means more information, and a greater capacity to serve more people at one time, Mr. Teets said. "The bandwidth we talk about is enormously important," he said. "We are going to be able to serve this communications on the move. We will have to service thousands of users simultaneously around the globe." New developments in communications include laser communications -- the exchange of information between two points on a beam of light. Mr. Teets told Congressmen the DOD had conducted a test of the concept in New Mexico. The experiment had been successful, he said, because it showed the possibility of laser communications between both space and a ground station and space and a flying aircraft. With the advent of transformational satellite program combined with laser communications, the Department of Defense will gain an enormous increase in bandwidth, Mr. Teets said. "Today our satellites are operating with higher bandwidth of about a factor of 10 than they were just a few years ago," he said. "We will get another factor of 10 when advanced extremely high frequency launches along with wide-band gap filler. And there is a third order of magnitude of bandwidth increase when we go to laser communications." That bandwidth will be used by Soldiers in the field to get the critical information they need to do their job and to stay ahead of the enemy, Mr. Teets said. "When somebody wants a map of the area in front of (him), that can be requested in a way that will have enough bandwidth capability to get that map to him in seconds," he said. While the satellite program is in development, DOD officials use commercially procured bandwidth to conduct some operations. Mr. Teets told lawmakers the services have agreed to come together to work on developing policy to define its use of that bandwidth. Air Force Portal provides reduced sign-on to myPay [2005-03-15] WASHINGTON -- Airmen have one less password to remember thanks to a new link between the Air Force Portal and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service myPay Web site. With much of the Air Force transitioning from face-to-face customer service to online self-help Web sites, many Airmen are left with several passwords, login names and Web addresses to remember. For Airmen, the Air Force Portal has eliminated much of the trouble of remembering all those passwords and login names. And recently, designers of the portal and DFAS maintainers teamed up to enable Airmen to remember one less password. Airmen can now have the portal remember their login name and password for myPay, the DFAS online site for pay information, leave and earnings statements, tax forms and allotments. The change makes it easier for Airmen to access their information online, and is another example of how the portal is making life easier for Airmen to get the information they need, said Richard P. Gustafson, Air Force financial management chief information officer. "This has made easy access to pay information available to all Airmen across the entire community," Mr. Gustafson said. "Integration of applications such as myPay is just one example of the power of the Air Force Portal to our organization. Each new capability that is added increases the value of the portal and makes our lives just a little easier." To take advantage of the new feature, portal users must already have an active myPay account. After logging on to the portal, users can click "Applications" on the right side of the screen and then scroll down to "myPay (E/MSS)." When they click the myPay link, the portal will create a dialogue box to help guide them through the setup process. Setup requires entering the user’s login ID and PIN for myPay. Once set up, users need only log into the portal and click the myPay link to get instant access to their pay information. Having to remember many user passwords is one of the reasons the portal was created. The idea is called "reduced sign-on" and the portal does it for myriad Air Force information applications and Web sites. Reduced sign-on is beneficial because it eliminates the need for multiple passwords and login names, and it provides a single and consistent login interface and deters the most common threat to network security -- users writing down their passwords, Mr. Gustafson said. Visit the Air Force Portal at http://my.af.mil. CSAF: Raptor, Eurofighter complementary [2005-03-22] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force chief of staff added to his 5,000-plus flying hours with familiarization flights in both the F/A-22 Raptor and the Eurofighter aircraft. Gen. John P. Jumper said the Eurofighter is both agile and sophisticated, but is still difficult to compare to the F/A-22 Raptor. He is the only person to have flown both aircraft. "They are different kinds of airplanes to start with," the general said. "It's like asking us to compare a NASCAR car with a Formula 1 car. They are both exciting in different ways, but they are designed for different levels of performance." The Raptor is the latest addition to the Air Force combat aircraft inventory. The Eurofighter is a combat fighter aircraft designed and produced as a joint effort by several European countries. Despite being designed for different missions, General Jumper said the Eurofighter and the Raptor are equally high-tech aircraft. "The Eurofighter is certainly, as far as smoothness of controls and the ability to pull (and sustain high G forces), very impressive," he said. "That is what it was designed to do, especially the version I flew, with the avionics, the color moving map displays, etc. -- all absolutely top notch. The maneuverability of the airplane in close-in combat was also very impressive." The F/A-22 performs in much the same way as the Eurofighter, General Jumper said. But it has additional capabilities that allow it to perform the Air Force's unique missions. "The F/A-22 Raptor has stealth and supercruise," he said. "It has the ability to penetrate virtually undetected because of (those) capabilities. It is designed to be a penetrating airplane. It can maneuver with the best of them if it has to, but what you want to be able to do is get into contested airspace no matter where it is." General Jumper said he believes the Eurofighter and the Raptor will help America's allies and the Air Force each perform their part of the overall mission as they work together to execute the war on terror. "We do things in a complementary way," he said. "We have been to war with our allies in Desert Storm, in Kosovo and more recently in Afghanistan and Iraq. We all have our roles to play, and the role of the U.S. Air Force is in many ways to kick down the door and make sure the airspace is available for people to do whatever it is they want to do in the air or on the ground under that airspace." One advantage of having flown the Eurofighter, General Jumper said, is that it allows him to get first-hand knowledge of technology U.S. allies use and to see how America's handiwork stacks up. He said he believes the two aircraft are running neck-and-neck, but America must always be vigilant to ensure it stays on the cutting edge of aviation technology. "You can see the technology that is out there compared with ours," he said. "You see the avionics and all of the great progress that has been made. You make sure you are not too complacent, because the technology that they have is very competitive with technology that we have." Congress hears testimony on manpower, recruiting [2005-03-22] WASHINGTON -- By the end of the year, the Air Force will have reduced its number of personnel to the congressionally mandated limit, said the service's deputy chief of staff for personnel during testimony on Capitol Hill on March 16. While speaking before the House Armed Services Committee subcommittee on personnel, Lt. Gen. Roger A. Brady discussed end strength, as well as enlistment bonuses, retention, recruiting and recruit quality. "We are on target to meet end strength by the end of fiscal 2005," General Brady said. "We will continue to bring balance to the force through right-sizing and shaping specific career specialties and overall officer and enlisted skill sets." The general told lawmakers Air Force officials are using all tools available to help bring down the numbers. Some of those tools include career job reservations, retraining, Palace Chase and the Blue to Green program. Palace Chase allows Airmen the option of separating from active duty early if they agree to serve in a Reserve position. The Blue to Green program allows Airmen to transition to the Army. General Brady explained to committee members that the Air Force's primary tool for force shaping is retraining. Service officials are attempting to retrain as many Airmen as possible from career fields with overages to those that are stressed, he said. Legislators asked personnel directors from all the services about enlistment bonuses and selective re-enlistment bonuses. They expressed concerns that the individuals who receive them could eventually interpret bonuses as a sort of entitlement. General Brady explained the importance of bonuses, but said the service has started to limit the number of career fields that receive them. "This is a dynamic world in the personnel business, and we have to remain competitive," he said. "We also have to make sure that this doesn't become an entitlements program, and if people in the Air Force think it is, then they have been steadily disabused of that notion recently." In the last two years, the Air Force has gone from 44 career fields that get initial enlistment bonuses to only 12, the general said. Additionally, the service recently dropped the number of Air Force Specialty Codes that receive selective re-enlistment bonuses from 62 to 32. The reduction amounts to a savings of $132 million, he said. Selective re-enlistment bonuses are used by the Air Force to help retain those people with skills that are highly desired in the civilian world. General Brady said the Air Force needs to retain the ability to adjust SRBs to keep Airmen in those critical fields despite the lure of the civilian job market. "We have some critical skills we are short in," he said. "To remain competitive, we need the flexibility to respond rapidly so that we don't pay bonuses we don't need and we do pay those we do need." The war on terrorism, officials said, has made it difficult, but not impossible, for some services to achieve their recruiting goals. Because services have to work harder to meet those goals, some legislators said they fear the standards of quality for new recruits could be ignored and that there would be an impact on the types of individuals allowed into the ranks. General Brady said those fears are unfounded. "We have not seen an impact at all," he said. "Our quality has remained high, and this year may be a little higher because we are recruiting for the toughest skills to get." Raptor important tool in maintaining air dominance [2005-03-23] WASHINGTON -- Critics of the F/A-22 Raptor claim the aircraft is a "Cold War weapons system," but the Air Force chief of staff said it is a critical tool in maintaining air dominance. "The Cold War ended, but the airplanes that were built to fight in the Cold War are still in production and have been delivered around the world," Gen. John P. Jumper said. "Even more formidable for us, they were also constructing a new generation of surface-to-air missiles. Those missiles have also been built and their designs advanced, and they are also being delivered around the world." The Cold War may be over, but the weapons designed to fight it are still in production and in the hands of America's enemies -- both known and unknown. It is that unchecked proliferation of weapons systems that could one day threaten America's air superiority, he said. "It is not the Cold War, but these systems that were being built for the Cold War are still being advanced today and are being proliferated around the world to create contested airspace," General Jumper said. "We must be able to access and operate in that contested airspace." The general said the F/A-22 will help the Air Force secure that air space. With the F/A-22, the B-52 Stratofortress or any other aircraft in the inventory, the ability to adapt is critical. General Jumper said versatility is key in keeping the Air Force fleet modern and ready to fight. "What we have to understand is that the inventory we have in the Air Force today is going to be with us 15 years from now," he said. "We don't just do away with a whole inventory and replace it, so we had better figure out how to make this inventory work in the environments where we exist." One example of that versatility is the B-52. It was designed more than half a century ago to fight the Cold War. Today, it is performing modern missions and proves indispensable in the war on terror, General Jumper said. "The B-52 was built in the 1950s to drop nuclear weapons into the old Soviet Union," he said. "Right now we have a laser designator pod on the B-52, we can load it up with laser-guided weapons, and it goes around able to do anything from interdiction to fixed target destruction of communications nodes to close-air support." The B-52 and other aircraft will have greater access to those targets in the future because of the F/A-22, General Jumper said. With its stealth and supercruise characteristics, it will be able to precede other aircraft into combat zones to clear out any threats. Those advanced abilities allow Air Force warfighters to modify its air dominance tactics as needed. "We adapt to the situation," the general said, "and young (and) technically proficient people figure out how to make these things relevant in the environment we are in." Those technically proficient young people include the Airmen who have been tasked with maintaining the F/A-22. General Jumper said that in the Raptor, those Airmen have been given an aircraft that is easier to maintain than aircraft of the past. "When you go around the F/A-22 Raptor, you see all the crew chiefs and the mechanics doing the Toyota leap with how happy they are with what they've got," he said. The F/A-22 includes an automated diagnostics system that tells maintainers what is wrong with the airplane and an engine that has all of the accessible hydraulics lines on the bottom side so it is easier to maintain, General Jumper said. Additionally, he said, the aircraft is designed to be maintained with only a small number of tools. The general said the Raptor, with its versatility and maintainability, is a vital component in the Air Force's air-dominance arsenal of the future. Officials recognize company for contributions to war on terror [2005-03-23] WASHINGTON -- Air Force officials recognized FedEx for the company's support to the military during the war on terror with a brief surprise ceremony at the Pentagon on March 22. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper presented Frederick W. Smith, FedEx chief executive officer, with a certificate of appreciation and an Air Force chief of staff medallion. The general told Mr. Smith Air Force officials recognize the company has gone beyond the call of duty in much of the support it has provided to the military. "We have a great appreciation for all that FedEx does for us out there," General Jumper said. "We know that you do a lot of things that don't really benefit you economically, and you do it because it's for the troops." Mr. Smith responded by crediting the many employees of FedEx, citing their pride in serving the military. "I want you to know I accept this on behalf of the 250,000 men and women who make up the FedEx team," Mr. Smith said. "We are very proud to be a small part of the system that supports you. Our participation ... has always been a great source of pride to us." Mr. Smith also said businesses like FedEx depend on the freedom and protection the military provides. "Our company couldn't exist without the security that you provide the world and certainly (to) American interests," he said. "All of us in commercial business appreciate your service and the sacrifices many of you make defending us." Air Force officials recognized the shipping company for the many efforts it made outside its contractual obligations to the Air Force. For instance, FedEx began providing shipping services to Iraq in May 2003, even though the company had not provided service to the country before. That work was not part of an Air Force contract until October 2004. To minimize potential terrorist threats, and outside of any contract specification, Air Force officials requested FedEx use citizens of either America or allied nations to deliver packages in high threat areas. FedEx complied with the request. Normally, the company would hire personnel from the local population to conduct those deliveries. Finally, to help the Air Force deliver much needed supplies for both operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, FedEx agreed to carry what are categorized as "dangerous goods" -- items like batteries and flammables. The company's willingness to transport such supplies freed up military transport for other uses. Teets: Air Force's biggest challenge is recapitalizing the fleet [2005-03-25] WASHINGTON -- During a roundtable discussion at the Pentagon March 22, the acting secretary of the Air Force discussed space, the F/A-22 Raptor and business ethics. Peter B. Teets retired from public service March 25. He held additional titles, including Department of Defense executive agent for space and director of the National Reconnaissance Office. During the roundtable, held just before his departure, Mr. Teets told reporters that his government work has been rewarding, but demanding. "We have a wonderful team in the national space arena. I have built some strong friendships and relationships, and I will miss them," Mr. Teets said. "I have found this job to be very demanding, but very rewarding. (It is) rewarding in the sense that I think our national space systems are making a huge difference in the way we are able to conduct intelligence and warfighting operations." During his tenure as DOD's executive agent for space, Mr. Teets had his hand in several key programs, including space radar, the space-based infrared system, the advanced extremely high frequency satellite system and the transformational communications architecture. Space radar is designed to give ground commanders of all services an eye-in-the-sky view of what is on the ground around them or over a mountain top. The system will be able to produce high-quality synthetic aperture radar imagery, as well as surface moving target indications, Mr. Teets said. The space radar program has suffered scrutiny on Capitol Hill, but Mr. Teets said he has responded to that scrutiny with positive actions to streamline the program and move it forward. "One of the things we have done this year for the space radar system is propose that we have a national radar collection system that will serve both the needs of the (Central Intelligence Agency) and the Department of Defense," he said. The first operational satellite of the system will be fielded about 2015, Mr. Teets said. As part of an effort to restructure the space radar program, Mr. Teets directed the program's headquarters be moved to Washington D.C. The move, he said, will facilitate better communications and cooperation between the agencies involved. The space-based infrared system network of satellites is meant to replace the aging defense support program, part of the nation's defense against strategic missile launches. Mr. Teets said the capability the new system provides far exceeds that of the older satellite program. "DSP has the capability to detect a strategic missile launch," Mr. Teets said. "(SBIRS), when it gets into orbit, will provide capability to do that job and more." Mr. Teets said the new system can calculate state vectors for where strategic missiles are going, will look into a theater battle space and identify when short-range ballistic missiles are launched, will pick up scud missile launches, and can identify fighter aircraft when they turn on their afterburner. "(SBIRS) is an order of magnitude capability over what DSP would have been," he said. The new program also has faced scrutiny on Capitol Hill. The program went over its initial budget of about $4 billion. Today, the total cost of the program is nearly $10 billion. Mr. Teets said improper structuring of the program and technical problems with satellite sensors caused the cost overages. Besides space, Mr. Teets said the biggest challenge facing the Air Force in the near future is the recapitalization of its assets. Nearly all the aircraft, including the space assets, will have to be replaced in the next 15 to 20 years. "Clearly at the top of that list is the tanker issue," Mr. Teets said. "Our tanker average age is 45 years. You don't fly on 45-year-old commercial airplanes, that's for sure. But we provide an air bridge with 45-year-old tankers." Mr. Teets credits maintainers and depots for maintaining the KC-135 Stratotanker so the Air Force can maintain the air bridge between the United States and Europe and forward-deployed locations. Recapitalization affects more than tankers, he said. The service must also work to recapitalize fighter and airlift aircraft, as well as space systems. "We have tankers, and not too far behind are fighters," he said. "We are flying F-15 (Eagles) that are 30 years old. And we have lift requirements. It's true the C-17 (Globemaster III) is a remarkable aircraft, but the mobility requirements we find ourselves in are pressing. And don't forget about space. ... All of those efforts are going to put pressure on the budget." One effort to recapitalize the fighter fleet includes the F/A-22 Raptor program. That program recently was cut in the presidential budget, but Mr. Teets said this year's Quadrennial Defense Review will re-emphasize the Air Force's need for a modern fighter aircraft. "The (budget) cut back the number of F/A-22s that would be bought ... to about 180," he said. "That will be addressed in the QDR. The Air Force has said there is a need in the long term for 381 F/A-22s, and it had quite a strong analytical underpinning that will talk about why 381 F/A-22s are needed to support 10 (air and space expeditionary forces) and deliver the kind of combat capability we are going to need in the long-term future." Mr. Teets said the Air Force's future total-force concept predicts that the Raptor is destined to replace many fighter aircraft, as well as attack aircraft already in the fleet. "(The concept) envisions a time out there when 381 F/A-22s could replace all 750 F-15s, plus all 50 or 60 F-117 (Nighthawks), plus some portion of the A-10 (Thunderbolt IIs)," he said. "There is a smart way of doing this, which will end up with a more capable Air Force with fewer aircraft. That's what QDR is going to be all about." In the last year, both the Air Force and one of the service's primary defense contractors have undergone much scrutiny for ethics related issues -- mostly because of improper conduct with contract negotiation. Mr. Teets said he believes the focus on those activities has heightened awareness of business ethics, and that it has had an effect across the aerospace industry. "There is a lot of strong attention being given across the industry to ethical conduct and behavior," he said. "What Boeing has been through ... has certainly been observed by other companies in the industry and probably has stimulated them to accentuate their own internal ethics programs. In that sense, we probably have stronger ethical behavior and programs within our industry than what we have had before. Fighters flying new missions, Airmen serving jointly [2005-04-01] WASHINGTON -- In the war on terrorism, both aircraft and Airmen are performing missions nobody ever thought they would, a U.S. Central Command official said. Air Force fighter aircraft are performing intelligence missions today that they have not in the past, said Lt. Gen. Lance L. Smith, CENTCOM’s deputy commander. "We are using fighters in a way that I don't think has always been envisioned, at least not by the fighter community," he said. “We have very good sensors on the airplanes. As they fly in both Afghanistan and Iraq, in many cases, they are using those sensors to try and provide situational awareness to people on the ground." General Smith said the aircraft are protecting high-powered electrical lines and oil pipelines, as well as providing support to special operations forces while providing top cover and intelligence to troops on the ground. "What you have up there is a thinking, capable individual with a situational awareness that he can communicate to folks on the ground," General Smith said. "He can (also) take action because he is armed and capable of going after whatever target happens to be down there. That is a critical use of a manned (aircraft)." Some Airmen also are performing missions they may never have thought they would do. They are filling traditional Army roles like truck driver or prison guard. General Smith said those Airmen are performing superbly, though sometimes they are a little shaken by the things they have experienced. "I have met a number of the truck drivers, right after they had their first experience having real bombs blowing up," he said. "They now know what an improvised explosive device looks like and sounds like, and they are pretty wide-eyed. But, they are also very professional and proud of what they are doing. And, they are doing an extraordinary job." Immediately following Sept. 11, 2001, the Air Force received assistance from the Army to fill shortfalls in security forces positions; Soldiers then stood as gate guards at air bases around the world. Today, Airmen return the favor by filling manning shortages in the Army. "As you know, the Army is stretched right now with the number of forces they have around the world, and our guys have done a great job of helping out," General Smith said. "But because our guys are helping out, some of the Army troops are able to get up there and do what they are better trained to do." This Army is the type of joint-service partnership General Smith said he has seen throughout the command. "What we are seeing over there in jointness at the tactical level is the wave of the future," he said. "If you were to go to Balad (Air Base, Iraq), for instance, and look at the joint operations support squadron or the air base ground defense organizations, you'll see Airmen sitting next to Soldiers, and you can't tell the difference." Airmen, Soldiers, Marines and Sailors are eating, living and working together throughout the region, General Smith said. It is the kind of jointness he expects will continue long after conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have subsided. "Together they are able to do things I don't think we could do independently," he said. "(The jointness) is working effectively, and our goal is -- when this winds down -- to continue that effort and train to fight like that." General Smith said the positive effects of joint-service operations are important, however, he said there are benefits of keeping the services independent of one another. "There is great wisdom in having the separate services and the tension that is created between them as they look at things from a different perspective," he said. "But there are clearly places we have to be in the same building, looking at the same scope." Still, the effectiveness achieved by seamless joint operations and by the mission readiness of Airmen and all the sister services is what is making the missions in Iraq a success for our armed forces, General Smith said. "We are winning over there. We are winning because of the great young men and women performing the mission every day," he said. "They are the future leaders of our country. We are developing young men and women with skills and leadership capabilities that will serve our nation well into the future." Air Force aggressively meeting challenges [2005-04-08] WASHINGTON -- The two senior leaders of the Air Force spoke April 6 on Capitol Hill about budget cuts, the service's commitment to meeting end strength requirements, total force integration and fleet recapitalization. During testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee subcommittee on defense, Acting Secretary of the Air Force Michael L. Dominguez told Senators the Air Force has taken steps already to adjust for a Fiscal 2005 budget cut of $3 billion dollars. "We have recently directed the Air Force to cut back on peacetime and readiness training operations to conserve funds," he said. "But cutting back alone cannot close the $3 billion gap in our operations and maintenance account. We are also short some $700 million in our military personnel account, and there, too, cutting back will not close the gap." Mr. Dominguez asked lawmakers to act quickly on supplemental budget requests to help the Air Force meet its financial needs. The Air Force has been working for some time to reduce its active duty end strength -- the total number of Airmen on active duty. Congress says the service may have no more than 359,000 Airmen on active duty. Through "force shaping" and reductions in recruiting, the Air Force has been able to bring its end strength down to within three percent of its allowance, said Mr. Dominguez. "We have been working the problem pretty aggressively for a couple years," said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper. "But our biggest gains are from the one we resisted having to make, making a nosedive in recruiting." The general said the Air Force has cut active duty accessions by half in order to meet the end strength requirement. "From October to February we essentially shut down recruiting," he told legislators. Other efforts to reduce end strength include retraining Airmen from overage career fields into those that are stressed and allowing Airmen to transfer into the Army through the "Blue to Green" program. General Jumper said he expects the Air Force to return to full recruiting efforts in the next fiscal year, and that the service will meet its end strength requirement by the beginning of Fiscal 2006. Cuts in end strength won't affect the Air National Guard, General Jumper told lawmakers. In fact, the relevance and importance of Guard and Reserve units is increasing as the Air Force realigns missions to integrate reserve components into its operations. "We have been involved in making sure the Guard is participating in the missions that are in demand in our Air Force as the active duty also transforms itself," he said. "Not just the flying mission, but space, unmanned aerial vehicles, (and others). We want the Guard and Reserve to participate in all of those. We also want to make sure that wherever we can, we have active and Guard working together." One example of that total force initiative is the Air Force's Community-Basing program, General Jumper told lawmakers. The first test of that program in Burlington, Vt., will put active duty Airmen into the civilian community where they will work hand in hand with Guardsmen as part of the Vermont Air National Guard's 158th Fighter Wing. General Jumper said he believes the program will prove a success. "I have a feeling this model will be in demand in other places," he said. Mr. Dominguez and General Jumper said their primary concern today is the age of the service's aircraft fleet. "Our tanker force and portions of the C-130 fleet are over 40 years old," General Jumper said. "And some 2,000 of the 6,000 airplanes in the Air Force are now under some sort of a flight restriction, mainly due to aging considerations. We need to put emphasis on this." "The urgency of recapitalizing the tanker fleet I think grows every day," said General Jumper. "If I lose sleep over one thing at night, it is the aging and corrosion concerns, especially in our tanker fleet." Dominguez: Recapitalization No. 1 priority [2005-04-12] WASHINGTON -- Modernizing the Air Force’s aging systems is the No. 1 priority for the service’s acting secretary. Michael L. Dominguez recently gained the responsibility as acting secretary of the Air Force, besides his other duty as assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs. "The thing that I see as most critical right now is to recapitalize the force," he said. "That means to try and figure out the balance between deploying advanced weapon systems, like the F/A-22 (Raptor), C-17 (Globemaster III) and a new constellation of satellites, and keeping the old things flying.” The Air Force is currently involved in several efforts to modernize its equipment. Some examples include the F/A-22 replacing some of the F-15 Eagle fleet, and replacing the Defense Satellite Program constellation -- the nation's first warning against strategic missile launch -- with the more advanced Space-Based Infrared System. "The problem with modernization is that the upfront investment cost is just awesome," he said. "You say, ‘How can we afford to do that?’ And it's so tempting (to say), ‘We'll just keep those tankers going a couple more years.’ And what you don't see is if you continue to do that year, after year, after year, you finally end up in a place where you're going to have a catastrophe." Besides the tanker fleet, Air Force officials said they want at least 380 F/A-22s to fulfill their plans for modernizing the fighter fleet. But, recent budget cuts to the program leave the question of just how many of the aircraft the Air Force will ultimately get, Mr. Dominguez said. "That's a subject that we're wrestling with right now in the Department of Defense," he said. "The F/A-22 guarantees air dominance, and if you don't have air dominance then most (other) capabilities are interesting but irrelevant.” Recapitalization may be the No. 1 priority, but Mr. Dominguez outlined four other priorities beginning with meeting the fiscal challenges the service faces. The Air Force lost an additional $3 billion after cuts in the president's fiscal 2005 budget. Mr. Dominguez said the cuts will make it tougher for the Air Force to do its job, but not impossible. "That one is going to be really tough," he said. "We're going to have to really ratchet back on some things in this fiscal year." Some cuts may curtail peacetime expenditures, which could include training, temporary-duty missions and moves, Mr. Dominguez said. But despite the cuts, he said Air Force officials would press on with operations. "It won't be pretty, but we're not going to be out of business, and we won't fail meeting our mission obligations," he said. "We will fight the war. There will be some difficult things, but it won't damage us permanently." Continuing to make the force the right size with the right mix of skills is another priority for the acting secretary. “We have gotten our force size back to where it should be in terms of the active component, but we’re decidedly less successful in the shaping,” Mr. Dominguez said. “We’ve made progress and expanded some career fields that are stressed. But we’re still going to have the perennial stressed career fields like (intelligence) and special (operations).” He said that while leaders Air Force-wide have been very creative and engaged in force shaping, there is some work left to do. “It’s a tough problem,” Mr. Dominguez said. “It’s just tough and slow.” Mr. Dominguez’ fourth priority is to sustain momentum in the Air Force’s transformation. “The Air Force has been the leader in transformation in the DOD, and we're going to continue that,” he said. “But we're going to extend that transformation into the business practices and processes so that we are fast, agile, flexible and adaptable to meet the demands of the global war on terror.” He said the National Security Personnel System and the continued journey to improve the air and space expeditionary force are two examples of sustaining momentum in Air Force business practices. His other priority is restoring trust and confidence with Airmen, the American people and Congress. In the past several years, the Air Force has dealt with several issues where people have failed to live up to the service's core values. Mr. Dominguez said restoring trust involves being honest about what happened and being open with those investigating the issues. "The first thing we can do is be knowledgeable of the facts," he said. "The facts are that the people who violated our core values have been held accountable. In the acquisition case, for example, there are two people involved. One was an Air Force (executive), the other was a person from industry, and now they're both in jail." Mr. Dominguez said Air Force officials have been forthright with information about the acquisition process to help aid investigators in their efforts. "Many of these investigations into acquisitions, we have asked for," he said. "So we are open. We're inviting scrutiny. We're saying look at us, and we'll show you how we do things." It is unclear how long Mr. Dominguez will fill the role of acting Air Force secretary. A permanent replacement requires a nomination by the president and a confirmation by the Senate. But, Mr. Dominguez said he is proud to serve with the active, Guard, Reserve and civilian members of the Air Force. “I compliment the people of the Air Force today and the great visionary leaders that you've had before,” he said. “The leaders who preceded us left us this legacy, and it's our challenge today to preserve it for those who will come after. “We have challenges. But you have the (leaders) in the United States Air Force to be able to figure the path through, to chart our course for the future and to get us there,” Mr. Dominguez said. “We're the greatest air and space force in history, the greatest one on the planet. We will provide the air dominance,” he said. “We will dominate the global commons of air and space for the benefit of the nation. Those things are guaranteed, they are assured, and they’re going to happen.” Dominguez: Unethical behavior an affront to all hardworking Airmen [2005-04-15] WASHINGTON -- Unethical behavior by any person on the Air Force team is an affront to all Airmen and a breech of trust with the American people, said the service's senior leader. Michael L. Dominguez, acting secretary of the Air Force discussed Air Force acquisition programs and the ethics of spending taxpayers’ money during testimony April 15 before the Senate Armed Services Committee subcommittee on airland. "I take any breech of integrity and trust seriously," Mr. Dominguez said. "I am deeply concerned that Air Force leaders and acquisition officials have lost the confidence of the members of this committee. I intend to address these issues forthright." Some of those issues involve initial negotiations on the cost of leasing tankers to replace KC-135 Stratotankers, pricing on the small diameter bomb and the cost of the C-130 Hercules avionics modernization program. Many of those contracts fell under the watch of former Air Force acquisition official Darleen Druyun. In late 2004, Ms. Druyun was convicted and sentenced to nine months in jail for some of her criminal actions. Mr. Dominguez said the Air Force would not let that happen again. "We must take all necessary steps to avoid abuse of trust such as those committed by Ms. Darleen Druyun," he said. "We are working closely with Mr. Michael Wynne, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, to pursue what he called ‘aggressive action’ to understand what may have contributed to this situation and how to protect against such problems in the future." In the early 1990s, in an effort to streamline Department of Defense acquisition, certain levels of acquisition oversight were eliminated. Some senators asked Mr. Dominguez if he thought perhaps the effort had gone too far in eliminating that oversight, and if it may have lead to accrual of too much power by Ms. Druyun. "The commercial business practices were much in vogue (at the time)," said Mr. Dominguez of experiments to streamline acquisition. "A lot of the structure, the rigor and discipline, the checks and balances did come out of the department, and it looks pretty clearly like we did go too far." Today, Air Force officials are cooperating fully with investigative agencies looking into questionable contracts, Mr. Dominguez said. He said they have, in many cases, implemented stricter oversight procedures, even before investigative agencies have completed their reports. "Air Force leaders are now cooperating fully with 48 different investigations by eight different agencies," he said. "We have not waited for all those to be completed before taking corrective measures. We are improving our acquisition oversight, and we are restructuring decision-making authority so that no one person exercises consolidated authority without effective oversight." Also at issue were concerns about the nature of the commercial contract to purchase the J-model C-130 aircraft. This type of contract does not allow the Air Force or Congress to know as much about the costs of building the plane, as it would know if purchases were done under traditional government acquisition. "I have concluded as (Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. John P. Jumper) has concluded that we were not able to appropriately defend the taxpayers’ interest here in this particular contract structure, so we are going to change that," Mr. Dominguez said. As recently as April 12, Air Force officials worked with the manufacturer Lockheed Martin, to convert the contract to a traditional government acquisition contract. Also related to the C-130J are costs associated with canceling the program. Besides contract cancellation costs exceeding $380 million, there is speculation that canceling that program may increase the cost of another unrelated aircraft program, the F/A-22 Raptor. Such cost increases may be because of shared overhead between the two programs, Mr. Dominguez said. "There are overhead costs shared across the manufacture of these aircraft," he said. "When you lose one of the product lines, the overhead doesn't shrink proportionately, so there is a marginal effect in the other product lines. It is a cost-accounting issue." Commanders get sexual-assault prevention, response help [2005-04-18] WASHINGTON -- The new sexual assault response coordinator at Air Force bases will help commanders improve response to sexual assault. As part of an effort to curtail sexual assaults within the ranks, DOD officials directed the services to appoint a coordinator at all appropriate levels of command. The coordinator is responsible for orchestrating efforts among agencies working on sexual-assault cases, managing sexual-assault education and other prevention efforts on a military base. He or she also trains victim advocates and assigns them to sexual-assault victims. Having a coordinator at all military installations provides a continuity ensuring a sexual-assault victim from any service will know who to go to no matter where he or she is stationed or deployed to, said Charlene Bradley, the Air Force's Sexual Assault Task Force leader. "We have a more joint environment now, so if there is an incident, and they are on an Army fort, they need to know where to go to -- and the place to go is the (coordinator)," Ms. Bradley said. "That will be the same across (the Department of Defense). Within the Air Force, the coordinator will report directly to the vice wing commander, Ms. Bradley said. Depending on the location, a GS-12 civilian or military officer will fill the positions. Civilian coordinators will have education and experience in social work giving them a better understanding of sexual assault and trauma, and all coordinators will receive centralized training before taking on the new role. Victim advocates will assist the coordinator. These advocates are trained and appointed by the coordinator to work directly with sexual-assault victims to provide care and assistance. "The victim advocate is a liaison with the system," Ms. Bradley said. "(He or she) will look after the victim. Once a victim comes and says (he or she has) been assaulted, the assigned advocate will know who to go to for help. He or she will know what appointments need to be made and with whom." The volunteer position of victim advocates will either be filled by servicemembers or Air Force civilians. Military advocates will have their training and status as a volunteer annotated in their records so they can serve as advocates while deployed, Ms. Bradley said. Once a coordinator is assigned to an installation, servicemembers at all levels will be aware of the position. When a victim reports a sexual assault to a commander, the police, a supervisor or the medical community, everybody will be expected to know the coordinator needs to be notified. As part of implementing the DOD's directives, Air Force officials also are working on a prevention program that includes adding training to all levels of professional military education. Air Education and Training Command officials are developing appropriate training modules to be added to Air Force accession programs at basic military training, ROTC detachments and Officer Training School. Ultimately, all Airmen will learn what the service's position is on sexual assault and what the definition of sexual assault is, officials said. They will receive the training at the onset of their careers and will receive reoccurring training on sexual assault at their bases, before deployments and during PME classes. The Air Force has five main focus areas in its efforts related to sexual assault, Mrs. Bradley said. They are: policy and leadership, prevention through training, providing responsive victim care, enhancing reporting through avenues of restricted and unrestricted reporting, and improving prevention and response in the deployed environment. "Our significant goal is prevention," she said. "We're going to do everything we can to prevent sexual assaults from happening through understanding the crime and the consequences, emphasizing respect and our core values in our training. But if it happens, we intend to make sure the victim gets the care (he or she needs) to heal." Policy offers confidentiality to sexual-assault victims [2005-04-18] WASHINGTON -- A new Department of Defense policy allows sexual-assault victims to confidentially report crimes against them. In a March memorandum to service secretaries, DOD officials directed all military branches implement restricted (confidential) reporting withing 90 days. The policy allows victims of sexual assault to seek care under restricted reporting procedures, without triggering an investigation or having their name, or the name of their assailant reported up through their chain of command. Under the new policy, victims will be able to talk with the sexual assault response coordinator, a victim advocate or certain medics. In the past, only chaplains could provide confidentiality. This ensures victims of sexual assault get the medical care, counseling and victim advocacy they need following a sexual assault, even if they are not ready to deal with the investigative and legal aspects of reporting a crime, officials said. “As we implement this policy, training is critical … for commanders, supervisors, first responders and the entire force,” said Charlene Bradley, the Air Force’s Sexual Assault Task Force leader. “Everyone must understand the two avenues for reporting -- restricted and unrestricted -- and the importance of each to the victim and the mission.” Many times, victims of sexual assault are not immediately ready to report what happened to them, officials said. There are perceived and real barriers to reporting that exist in society and the military -- chief among those being the perceived lack of privacy and confidentiality. "When you deal with military victims, there are many things they consider before reporting," she said. "People are proud of being in the military, and one of the perceptions is that if the commander knows you have been sexually assaulted, he or she may think your effectiveness is reduced by that experience." Airmen at their home station might fear reporting a sexual assault will lead co-workers, a supervisor or commander to think differently about them or even question their behavior, Ms. Bradley said. While deployed or in training, they also fear being sent home and missing out on the opportunity to complete their mission. While the names of sexual-assault victims will be withheld from commanders under the new restricted reporting procedure, the fact a sexual assault has occurred will be provided to commanders to assist them to assess the climate and increase prevention efforts. Guard, Reserve leaders testify on Capitol Hill [2005-04-21] WASHINGTON -- The directors of the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve testified April 20 on readiness and management support before the Senate Armed Services Committee subcommittee. Lt. Gen. Daniel James III, Air National Guard director, told senators he sees positive benefits to the community basing concept. "I look forward to a day when we will have community basing and we will have members coming to (a Guard base) and living in the community and flying there," he said. "That would impact the community in a positive way." Community basing is currently being tested in Burlington, Vt. There, active-duty Airmen live among the local community, on the economy, and report daily to work with Airmen of the Vermont Air National Guard's 158th Fighter Wing. General James said he believes community basing can help the active-duty component of the Air Force by pairing younger troops with those who have more experience. "Community basing is a way of balancing the needs of the Air Force in terms of their skill levels," he said. "(Guard units) have very experienced people. About 62 percent of our people are at a 7 skill level or higher. The majority of (active-duty maintainers) are 3-levels." One concern of Air National Guard officials is ensuring their units continue to have missions to perform after the next round of base realignment and closure and after new airplanes have worked their way into the fleet and pushed out older aircraft. Some Guard units have older versions of F-16 Falcons. Those planes will eventually be retired from the Air Force, leaving those units looking for something to do. "We want to make sure after the BRAC that if we don't have new airplanes to replace those that (are retired), that we have new missions to replace those that (are eliminated)," the general said. "Otherwise we can get in a situation where units would be uncovered -- they wouldn't have a Federal mission. We are going to work hard to get missions to those units that lose aircraft." General James also told senators that Guard units need Congress' continued support to fund their activities. He said that while their primary mission is to defend America, Guard units also have another role -- responding to the needs of their states. "Homeland defense is our primary mission," General James said. "But we also want to make sure we have the capabilities when our governors call on us to respond to natural disasters or man-made emergencies." Lt. Gen. John A. Bradley, Air Force Reserve commander, said that while re-enlistment bonuses are good, he believes there is another reason for good retention numbers in the Reserves. "On the issue of bonuses, they work, certainly, but I do believe there is an element of service that is keeping our people in," he said. "They are very proud of what they are doing. They enjoy their jobs and units, and they believe they are contributing to something that is very good." The pay parity issue between active duty and reserve component Airmen was raised by some senators. Sometimes guardsmen or reservists, when called from their civilian jobs, will take less pay while serving than when they are working for their civilian employer. Many civilian employers will make up that pay difference out of pocket. The federal government, however, does not make up the pay difference for federal employees who also serve as part of a reserve service component. There is legislation on Capitol Hill to change that. "On the pay parity, it is an issue, but I believe the best quality of life is keeping somebody alive," General Bradley told senators. "I think the inequities it brings on between folks who are mobilized and active component folks is not helpful," he said. "I would rather spend money that we could get for the continued equipment improvements you have given us in the past, and continuing to do those unfunded items to give us greater combat capability. I think that's where we should put the money, to properly equip our people." Quadrennial Defense Review focuses on future [2005-04-25] WASHINGTON -- The four capabilities the Air Force brings to the joint warfighting environment will be the focus of the service's contribution to the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review. Officials in the office of the secretary of defense produce the Quadrennial Defense Review every four years with input from the services. The report details to Congress the anticipated needs of the Defense Department out to about the year 2020. "The QDR is important to all of the services, … because it looks at what capabilities we have today verses what capabilities we are going to need in the future," said Maj. Gen. Ronald J. Bath, Air Force director of strategic planning. "We do an analysis of that and make (decisions) as to where we are going to invest DOD dollars so that we make sure we have those capabilities when we need them." The Air Force brings three major operational capabilities to the joint warfighting environment, General Bath said. Those capabilities include global mobility, rapid strike, and persistent command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance -- or "C4ISR." "Those are the three things we tout as being unique to the Air Force," he said. "But there is one other thing. That is the assets we call our people -- the incredibly ingenious force of Airmen (who) can take those other things and make them applicable wherever and whenever." Those capabilities together allow the Air Force to contribute to joint air dominance -- control of air and space over any battlefield in any part of the world. "Air dominance guarantees that whenever we put a Soldier or a Marine on the ground or a Sailor on the seas, the (sky) above him will be safe, and that we will control that," the general said. Part of maintaining that air dominance is ensuring the Air Force has the right tools to do the job. One of those tools is the F/A-22 Raptor, General Bath said. "The F/A-22 is part of joint air dominance, as is recapitalizing the force," he said. "One of the things that came about with (the budget) was the decision to stop production of the F/A-22 in 2008. That would mean we have fewer (aircraft)." Air Force officials said they expect to purchase as many as 381 F/A-22 Raptors, though DOD Program Budget Decision 753 has directed that number be cut back to 179. The F/A-22 Raptor is a multirole fighter and attack aircraft expected to replace all F-15 Eagle aircraft as well as some of the F-117A Nighthawk and A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft. General Bath said the secretary of defense said everything is "back on the table" for the QDR, and he thinks the Air Force can get those planes back in the budget. "But we think through this QDR, with everything on the table, our number will stand and the F/A-22 production line will run longer," he said. Also part of the QDR is the Air Force's focus on "Future Total Force." This concept means a smaller, but more capable Air Force in both people and aircraft. It also focuses on finding new ways to use Guard and Reserve units. "We know we are going to come down in the total number of airplanes," General Bath said. "We are also moving toward an all stealth and all precision force. As that changes, some of the missions will change. We are also looking at changing the way we utilize the Guard and Reserve. We are not looking at drawing down the numbers of people in the Guard and Reserve, but we are going to have to use them differently. Some of the missions are going to change, some will shift to those missions that are becoming more important as the times are changing." Technology unites Airmen in matrimony [2005-04-27] WASHINGTON -- Nearly 7,000 miles of desert and ocean could not keep two Airmen from tying the knot. Maj. Heather Villasenor, who is at a forward-deployed location in Southwest Asia, married Lt. Col. Michael Bryant on April 26. The wedding was held in Southwest Asia -- and Virginia. Colonel Bryant, the Joint Staff target operations chief, showed up at his lawyer's office in McLean, Va., dressed in his Air Force blues and armed with a calling card to pay for the long-distance call. "I'm standing in the hallway of the trailer I live in," said Major Villasenor from her deployed location. "There (are) 10 people here in my wedding party -- my commanding officer, my close personal friends since I've been here and people from back home in my old unit." After the call was placed and Major Villasenor was on speakerphone, Virginia attorney Conrad Marshall conducted a quick wedding ceremony over the telephone. Shortly after, the two Air Force officers were married. "When it first started, I was getting emotional," Colonel Bryant said. "But this is the right thing for both of us. She is going to be really happy about it, and so am I. It's a happy day for both of us." Major Villasenor said she would have liked for her mother to be present at the speedy telephone wedding, but she knows her mom understands the needs of the military come first. "Well, my mom is really happy, and she just wants me to be happy too," she said. "She knows it's tough in the military, but she wants what's best for me." Major Villasenor, a senior intelligence duty officer, calls Texas her home. Her husband, Colonel Bryant, is a native of Middleboro, Mass. They met at a party here in early 2004. The two travel in close circles, as they both work in the intelligence community. And it was not too long after they met that they started talking about getting married, Major Villasenor said. "We officially got engaged in October 2004, but we were talking about it well before then," she said. "We were probably talking about it just three months after we met." Plans for a wedding had to be put on hold when Major Villasenor deployed. But in February, her fiancée learned he had been selected for promotion to colonel. Along with that promotion he received a new assignment, this time in Germany. He wanted to make sure they married in time to ensure the two could both get assignments to Stuttgart, Germany together under the joint spouse rules. "They are sending me to European Command,” Colonel Bryant said. "I will move this summer, and in order for her to move with me under the joint spouse rules, we have to be married. So we didn't want to wait until she got back." Most people have not considered getting married over the phone. In fact, it is not even possible in most places. But Colonel Bryant said a phone conversation with a friend of his -- his wife's director of operations -- let him know that it was possible. "He said you know you can (get married) over the phone," Colonel Bryant said. "I started looking around and called the county courthouse, and they give me a list of names of people (who) do weddings." Colonel Bryant contacted Mr. Marshall for more information about how two people might get married under Virginia law, but not be physically together for the ceremony. "It turns out that he is the (person who) many years ago got this process approved," Colonel Bryant said. In the 1970s, Mr. Marshall was one of four lawyers in the county who performed weddings. He said he was privy to many requests for weddings between people who could not be in the same place at the same time. That is what prompted him to investigate the matter further. The Virginia attorney general's opinion was that under the Virginia law at the time, it was permissible for two people to get married over the telephone, Mr. Marshall said. "They gave us a favorable opinion, saying it was perfectly legal, just as long as we could identify who was on the other end," he said. "That's why we had the commanding officer there." Armed with the knowledge, Colonel Bryant needed only to get the necessary paperwork signed and filed in the county courthouse. "The main thing we were anxious about was getting the forms back and forth from her to here," Colonel Bryant said. He said it was a little nerve racking trying to get legal documents to Southwest Asia and back to get them signed and notarized. Once all the documents were signed, the wedding proceeded. Mr. Marshall said he has performed more than 40 such weddings over the past 30 years, some in Korea, Japan and the Middle East. "I even did a wedding in Baghdad over the phone about a month ago," he said. Major Villasenor will return to the United States in mid-May. The couple has a traditional wedding ceremony planned for July. Two Airmen among recipients of military service award [2005-04-29] WASHINGTON -- Two Airmen were among the six recipients of the annual Government Employees Insurance Company Military Service Awards. For 17 years, GEICO has recognized servicemembers from all branches of the service -- including the Guard and Reserve -- for work in drug and alcohol abuse prevention, fire and safety prevention, and traffic safety and accident prevention. Senior Master Sgt. Charles Funkhouser, of the 374th Fire Protection Squadron at Yokota Air Base, Japan, won the award for his efforts related to fire prevention and safety. While stationed at Beale Air Force Base, Calif., Sergeant Funkhouser installed more than 200 smoke detectors in one day. He also trained hundreds of local firefighters and is credited for developing a sophisticated fire and rescue training simulator. Sergeant Funkhouser could not attend the April 25 award ceremony here because he is deployed to Iraq, but his wife attended on his behalf. He said in an e-mail interview he was surprised and honored by the award. "I was surprised to say the least," he said. "I was just happy to be named Air Combat Command's selection. Winning at Air Force level was surreal. I didn’t think I would win the award. There are many firefighters around the Air Force (who) have accomplished much more than I. But I am honored to represent them." The award-winning sergeant said safety is something within everybody's control, and that everybody must do their part. "Fire safety for the most part is something we all have control over. I have seen the devastating results of people losing their belongings or someone they loved," he said. "Any chance to prevent that from happening makes the effort worthwhile." Master Sgt. Kenneth Baldwin, of the 944th Fighter Wing’s safety office at Luke AFB, Ariz., was selected as a winner among reservists for his efforts in traffic safety and traffic accident prevention. Sergeant Baldwin conducted monthly local traffic safety training for more than 500 people the past five years, resulting in zero accidents. He was also recognized for his efforts in driver education and for his active involvement in the Delaware Safe Kids coalition -- an organization dedicated to bicycle safety awareness. Sergeant Baldwin also said he was surprised to be selected. "I couldn't believe it; it didn't seem real," he said. “Even when we flew in here it didn't seem real. I've been fortunate in my military career to work for some great bosses and great staffs in the safety offices I've worked in. It's very humbling to receive an individual award like this and really, the folks I worked with deserve to be up here with me." Sergeant Baldwin's work in traffic safety spans both his careers -- as an Airman and as a civilian in Arizona. Arizona has three of the top five cities in the nation known for people running red lights, he said. "It is very dangerous, and people die every day there,” he said. “In my civilian job, one of my co-workers lost his daughter on prom night (to someone who ran a red light,) and he established the Red Means Stop Coalition. I asked if I could take his program out to the Reserve units and educate our troops as they are coming in." He said he believes his efforts in bringing that education to his unit have been successful, as there have been no losses because of traffic accidents. Today, both Airmen work in different parts of the world and in different components of the Air Force. But the two have a history together. They were both stationed at Dover AFB, Del., in the 1990s. Sergeant Funkhouser worked in the fire station, and Sergeant Baldwin worked in the 436th Airlift Wing’s safety office. Neither was surprised the other had won the award. "I am not surprised at his selection, because he is tops in his field," Sergeant Funkhouser said of Sergeant Baldwin. Sergeant Baldwin said seeing Sergeant Funkhouser's name on the list of award winners brings back memories of working at Dover. "When we got the list of names, I looked and saw (his) name on there," Sergeant Baldwin said. "Right away it brings back welcome memories of working at Dover with him. We worked hand-in-hand when we were stationed there." Sergeants Baldwin and Funkhouser were awarded with commemorative plaques and $2,500 honorariums from the GEICO Philanthropic Foundation. Census helps define future joint officer [2005-05-12] WASHINGTON -- More than 7,000 Air Force officers in all ranks soon will be asked to complete a census that will be used to help decide what defines “joint.” The secretary of defense is working on a Congressionally mandated review of joint management and tasked each service to identify officer positions that could be considered joint. This includes positions that would benefit from having an officer with previous joint experience, education or training; or those that would provide an officer with joint experience. These positions were identified without regard to current law or policy constraints, and could include characteristics such as multinational and interagency interaction, as well as the traditional multiservice. As a result of this initial process, Air Force officials identified about 7,100 positions. Together, all the services, defense and joint organizations submitted about 35,000. Each of the services will receive specific passwords associated with the selected positions. For the Air Force, those passwords will then be distributed though command channels at each of the major commands to Airmen sitting in the identified billets. They will be required to complete a Web-based census that asks specific questions related to their job. The Air Force is allotted two weeks to complete the census. "The Department of Defense is looking for the characteristics of joint billets," said Lt. Col. Jim Davis, classification and joint officer matters policy branch’s Air Force assignments chief. "We intend to have any officers in these pre-identified billets take the census in order to gain an idea of what competencies are associated with their billet. If the individual cannot be contacted, or the billet is empty, we expect the supervisor, or someone with knowledge of the position's responsibilities to complete the census. The census is accessible worldwide, however, so the incumbent should complete the survey if at all possible." The census can be filled out on any Web-enabled computer and should take about 15 minutes to complete, Colonel Davis said. Department of Defense officials’ goal is 100-percent participation in the census to ensure the validity of the information gathered, he said. "The Department of Defense has invested heavily in a time-sensitive contract to gather this important census data within a two-week period," Colonel Davis said. "There will be no extension to complete this census, analyze the results and make recommendations to Congress. It's crucial that those personnel selected to complete the census do so immediately." Once the census is completed, the information gathered will be used for analysis and modeling to help determine the characteristics of future joint positions. With this future joint definition, the Air Force and other services can then predict future needs, and DOD can craft policy and legislation to better manage the joint force. Airmen allowed to show service colors while traveling [2005-05-13] WASHINGTON -- A new Air Force policy gives Airmen the choice to show their colors when traveling to and from deployment locations. Airmen traveling to and from the U.S. Central Command Air Forces' area of responsibility have been, until recently, required to wear civilian clothing on flights in and out of the area. Under a new policy, Airmen now have the option to wear their desert combat uniform on those flights. The policy change came after suggestions to both the chief of staff and chief master sergeant of the Air Force, said Senior Master Sgt. Dana Athnos, the Air Force's uniform board superintendent. "This started with queries to Air Force senior (leaders) as they toured the AOR," Sergeant Athnos said. "This was about pride. Other services were coming home in uniform and experiencing tremendous support along the way from the American public. Our Airmen were in civilian clothes, and people didn't readily recognize them as Air Force personnel. They simply want the country to know they are proud of their service too." The new policy allows Airmen to wear their uniforms when traveling inside the United States to their port of departure, so long as they fly aboard a U.S.-based airline. Airmen may also wear their uniforms when traveling to the AOR if they are flying on a military or chartered commercial aircraft. The same rules apply when Airmen come home. One concern for policy makers is that Airmen remember to conduct themselves as true Air Force professionals. Sergeant Athnos said Airmen are reminded that their uniforms must always be clean and serviceable; they must be in compliance with dress and appearance instructions and always conduct themselves in a manner befitting the Air Force. Some Airmen might want to wear their uniforms when traveling to a deployed location, but are afraid of drawing unnecessary attention to themselves. Sergeant Athnos said U.S. airports have plenty of security, and that the Air Force has historically allowed or even required Airmen to be in uniform when aboard aircraft. "Besides, if you were in civilian clothes, you would still have your web gear and your mobility bags with you, and you are still hanging around the (United Services Organization)," she said. "It's not a secret that you are in the military." Also, part of the policy is a requirement that Airmen carry a change of civilian clothes with them if they choose to wear a uniform, and a clean uniform if they choose to wear civilian clothes. That kind of preparedness allows Airmen to adjust their appearance should the situation demand it. Donation provides mobility, honors Jumper [2005-05-13] WASHINGTON -- In honor of Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. John P. Jumper and his wife, Ellen, the Ford Motor company donated two wheelchair accessible vans to Walter Reed Army Medical Center during a ceremony May 12 at the Pentagon. Edsel B. Ford II, of the company’s board of directors, said they donated the vehicles honoring General Jumper's commitment to ensuring freedom to all Americans. "General Jumper has given the better part of four decades of his life to making certain that America enjoys the openness and freedoms -- including the freedom of industry -- that we have come to take for granted," Mr. Ford said. "One of the things I admire most about him, and about Ellen, is they routinely work with military hospitals to appreciate, encourage and restore those who have paid for our freedom with their health and well-being. That is the mark of a true hero." The two vans, a Ford Econoline and a Ford Freestar, were both modified to be wheelchair accessible. One of the vans has special equipment installed on the driver's side to allow those without legs to drive the vehicle. It will be used by people at the medical center to help military amputees learn to drive again, said Army Maj. Gen. Kenneth L. Farmer, commanding general of the North Atlantic Regional Medical Command and Walter Reed. "Part of rehabilitation and recuperation is helping (injured servicemembers) to relearn activities of daily living, often using adaptive technology," he said. "These two specially equipped vans will not just provide transportation, they will also provide training platforms for that adaptive technology to relearn to drive a vehicle." General Jumper said he believes the goal of the medical center, and of medical care, should be to get injured servicemembers back in uniform, and said the two new vans are tools to accomplish that goal. "The objective of medical care is rehabilitation, and if at all possible, to get (servicemembers) back to their units and get them serving again," he said. "What we have here in the form of these two vehicles is a vote for rehabilitation, and it is a powerful vote we take very seriously." New directorate merges information technology [2005-05-16] WASHINGTON -- Air Force leaders marked the standup of an organization designed to be the single focal point for information technology policy formulation and execution to best integrate current technologies. This helps meet the Air Force chief of staff’s vision of "shortening the kill chain," which refers to the series of events leading from identification of a potential target to the ultimate destruction or "kill" of that target. The target could be a building, a cave, a convoy or a communications tower. Three existing Air Force IT organizations were merged May 10 to create the Office of Warfighting Integration and Chief Information Officer, or SAF/XC. Those organizations included the Deputy Chief of Staff, Warfighting Integration; Air Force Chief Information Officer and the Directorate of Communications Operations. "Clearly what you will see out of this organization is a single source for information technology in the Air Force, from policy formulation to execution," said Lt. Gen. William T. Hobbins, chief of the new organization. Creating this single source for information technology was important because information and communications superiority are critical to winning the nation's wars, said acting Secretary of the Air Force Michael L. Dominguez. "From the simple black telephone on everybody's desk to the flying bundle of fiber optics we call the F/A-22 (Raptor), communications and information are absolutely essential to everything we do," he said. "Our mission is to fight and win the nation's wars as an integral part of the joint force, so it makes sense to merge the functions most responsible for integrating communications and information for warfighting effects." The new organization consists of three directorates: policy, planning and resources; operations and support integration; and information, services and integration. General Hobbins said the new organization brings responsibility for performance of as many as 233 functional activities under one umbrella group. Vehicle operators named 'team of the year' [2005-05-23] WASHINGTON -- The Army has traditionally provided protection for supply and munitions convoys in Iraq and Afghanistan, but when manning shortages made it tough for Soldiers to fulfill that role, the Air Force provided help. As many as 25 percent of Airmen in the vehicle operations career field were specially trained to assist in convoy operations in Southwest Asia. Those Airmen now operate outside the traditional roles of their career field by providing security and support to convoys supporting the war on terrorism. Their primary mission is to escort and protect convoys through some of the most dangerous areas in Iraq. Airmen from the vehicle operations career field have driven more than 3.1 million miles, completed nearly 3,100 convoy missions and encountered more than 370 incidents such as ambushes, improvised explosive devices, and mortar and rocket-powered grenade attacks. For their ability to adapt, the vehicle operations career field has been named the "2005 Team of the Year" by the Air Force Association. Each year, the association selects a specific enlisted career field for recognition, and the Air Force then chooses five Airmen who best represent that field. This year's five representatives are: • Master Sgt. Dennis Ross from Bolling Air Force Base, D.C. • Tech. Sgt. Jason Hohenstreiter from Minot AFB, N.D. • Staff Sgt. Amelia Solomon from Royal Air Force Mildenhall, England. • Senior Airman Joshua Powell from Eielson AFB, Alaska. • Senior Airman John Chege from Langley AFB, Va. The team was honored in a May 17 ceremony. Each Airman was selected to represent the vehicle operations career field because of their technical expertise, leadership and inspiration to their co-workers. The activities that earned each Airman his or her spot as a career-field representative spanned an entire year, and each Airman shares at least two things in common with another. First, they are deemed excellent performers by their supervisors and commanders; and second, they each participated in convoy operations while deployed supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Before participating in convoy operations, vehicle operations Airmen required additional training from Soldiers. That training, conducted at Fort Eustis, Va., and Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., taught Airmen the skills they would need to protect supply lines. "Initially, we had minimal training in convoy operations," Sergeant Ross said. "But the training from the Army was very dedicated and hands-on. It included how to set up a convoy, the tactics, techniques and procedures associated with a convoy, and how to handle different threats and different enemy contacts." The Soldiers also taught Airmen how to handle weapons that many had never seen before. "Of course there were the crew-served weapons," Sergeant Ross said. "That is something that none of us had experienced in this career field." Vehicle operations Airmen were trained to use, among other things, a .50-caliber M-2 heavy machine gun, an M-240B medium machine gun, an M-249 squad automatic weapon and an MK-19 grenade launcher. Airman Powell said he thought he would never use these kinds of weapons, or even participate in the kind of battle that would require them when he signed up for the Air Force. "Yes, it's all part of a job you kind of expect, but never think you'll actually have to go," he said. “I can say my first deployment was a great learning experience, and it makes you realize what you have at home. It makes you appreciate life a lot more." Airman Powell took some fire in Iraq and gave some back to those trying to stop his convoy as it traveled through Fallujah. His role that day, as a gunner in a gun truck, was to help protect the rest of the trucks in the convoy. The convoy -- one that usually takes two days to complete -- had stopped in Fallujah for the night. The team got hit as they were preparing to leave the city. "We were fired upon several times while I was in Iraq," he said. "But the one I remember well, the biggest one, was in Fallujah. We were in that firefight for 10 to 15 minutes. They started to fire on the front of the convoy to start with. I fired back. I was on the M-249 that night, the squad automatic weapon. I put a lot of lead downrange." With Airman Powell and others manning the guns, the convoy was able to leave the city and continue its mission. He said the experience let him know the importance of his role there. "There is more adrenaline running through your body than you can ever imagine, knowing you have got this gun and there are probably 80 people in the convoy that rely on your support," he said. Sergeant Solomon also provided support to the convoy as a driver and as a dispatcher of about 1,240 gun trucks for more than 320 tactical convoys. She drove more than 50,000 miles through hostile territory, moving more than 86 million pounds of cargo. On one of those trips, while serving as truck commander, Sergeant Solomon encountered the very threat that makes convoy operators shudder -- and keeps parents awake at night. "We had picked up some fuel and were going back north to deliver it," she said. "One of the maps said the road was blocked so we had to take another route. We got hit there. An improvised explosive device went off a couple of trucks ahead. My truck ended up rear-ending a fuel tanker and my head went through the windshield." Sergeant Solomon suffered fractures in her upper body and was eventually taken to Germany for treatment. Nevertheless, she returned to Iraq and continued to serve her tour. She earned a Purple Heart for her injuries. She is back in the U.S. now, but she said she will serve in Iraq again if she has to. "I never thought I'd be on the road in Iraq driving convoys, or even in Iraq at all," she said. "But yes, I'd go back." Airman Chege, a native of Nairobi, Kenya, had lived in the United States for about year before enlisting in the Air Force. He had been in the Air Force a little more than a year when he was deployed to Iraq to participate in convoy operations there. While on a mission to Forward Operating Base Speicher, his vehicle hit a roadside bomb that wounded him and the vehicle commander, and killed the gunner. "On that day we had to wake up early to head out," Airman Chege said. "We left about 4 a.m. We had problems on the road because we had some old trucks that broke down, and that really slowed us down." Airman Chege said that at about 9 a.m. they decided the convoy needed to take a detour to avoid going into a town that was particularly difficult to travel through. The detour itself was also known to be somewhat dangerous. "On that day, they put an IED right before the detour," he said. "It exploded behind the rear tire of my truck." Shrapnel from the explosion pierced Airman Chege's body from behind and came out through the front of his body. The explosion killed the vehicle gunner, Staff Sgt. Dustin Peters, and the driver of the vehicle behind Airman Chege. Despite his injuries, Airman Chege was able to return gunfire on a suspected suicide bomber and eliminate further threat to the convoy. After that, he had to leave the truck. "I was able to make a couple of steps and then I collapsed," he said. Airman Chege was awarded a Purple Heart for his injury and an Army Commendation Medal for his actions. More than 4,000 Airmen make up the vehicle operations career field, including active duty, guardsmen and reservists. Since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, two of those Airmen have been killed while performing convoy operations in Iraq. Sergeant Peters, 25, of El Dorado, Kan., was killed July 11 while serving in Iraq. Airman 1st Class Carl Anderson Jr., 21, of Georgetown, S.C., was killed Aug. 29 near Mosul, Iraq, by a roadside bomb. The five Airmen chosen to represent the career field were selected for their excellence while deployed and at home. But Sergeant Hohenstreiter said the entire career field, including those two that made the ultimate sacrifice in performance of their duties, is responsible for being chosen as team of the year. "Not only did vehicle operations perform well with the mission in Iraq, but there was no faltering back stateside either," he said. "We maintained our steady-state commitments while about a quarter of our career field went to Iraq to assist in the Army mission. Yet our mission back in the states still succeeded -- the parts were still delivered -- and there was no faltering." BRAC changes to medicine focus on care, training, research [2005-06-06] WASHINGTON -- Airmen bound for a career in the Air Force Medical Service will start off by training in a joint environment if all Base Realignment and Closure recommendations are approved. The changes will not completely homogenize training for enlisted medical specialists, but they will allow all the services to share resources, said the chairman for the medical joint cross service group for BRAC 2005. "The recommendation is to move all Air Force medical training out of Shepherd Air Force Base, Texas, to Fort Sam Houston, Texas," said Air Force Surgeon General Lt. Gen. (Dr.) George Peach Taylor Jr. "That's where the Army school house is." Part of that recommendation is that Navy officials also move their enlisted medical training to San Antonio. "Think of it as a university campus, with a Navy college, an Air Force college and an Army college for enlisted training," Dr. Taylor said. "They will be able to share resources, lab and class space, and teaching and administrative staff. They will work together, like we do in wartime." The general also said each service, while working together to train its medics, would still maintain unique training tracks for its people. Airmen will still train to the Air Force's unique mission. "The challenge is to put the curriculums together, look for the common areas, and not lose the fact these are still Airmen in training," he said. "They will not be purple medics; they will be Airmen medics." Besides its focus on military medical training facilities, the joint cross service group also looked for ways to optimize how the services provide medical care and conduct biomedical research. All services conduct various forms of biomedical research. The general said the group felt it best to merge much of that research into joint activities. "We recommended the creation of joint centers of excellence," the general said. "This means bringing together the best research and development, and acquisition professionals from the Army, Navy and Air Force and putting them in a location that makes the best possible sense." The general said the group suggested the creation of six joint centers of excellence to conduct biomedical research. Those centers include an aerospace medicine center at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio; a chemical defense center at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.; a biological defense center at Fort Detrick, Md.; and center for battlefield health and trauma at Fort Sam Houston. The group also recommended realigning the availability of medical care at facilities nationwide. This included recommendations to realign Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and medical facilities in San Antonio. "In the National Capitol Region, our group felt we didn't need four hospitals," the general said. "A wise investment would be to have two military hospitals in the nation's capital. Our recommendation is to have a 165-bed hospital at Fort Belvoir, Va., and create the new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center by building up the Bethesda campus. We expect these to all be jointly staffed." Currently, the four hospitals in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area are Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Md., Malcolm Grow Medical Center at Andrews AFB, Md., and the DeWitt Army Community Hospital at Fort Belvoir. The general said infrastructure already in place at the Bethesda Naval facility, and the age of infrastructure at Walter Reed make the Bethesda site an ideal location for development of a larger, more modern joint medical facility. Recommendations by other BRAC joint cross service groups will increase the size of Fort Belvoir, an already busy military community just south of Washington, D.C., making that location ideal for the region's second military hospital. The group also recommended realignment of medical care facilities in the San Antonio region. Most notably, the group suggested inpatient care at Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland AFB, Texas, be moved to Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston. "We suggested that instead of running another hospital at Lackland, we install a new, almost 500,000 square foot ambulatory surgery center and outpatient facility," he said. "Combined with new construction at Brooke Army Medical Center, this will rebuild the medical infrastructure in San Antonio and make it ready for the 21st century military." Despite the suggested realignments to improve the DOD's medical infrastructure, Dr. Taylor said what matters most has not changed. "Nothing in the basic recommendations that came out of our group changed the level of care we can provide," he said. "It is the same care, but maybe in a new location. In many places, we recommended closing inpatient care, but we wanted simply to move that care to a neighboring facility or a civilian facility." Even in the communities outside Cannon AFB, N.M. and Ellsworth AFB, S.D., where there is a recommendation to close the entire base, plans are in the works to ensure military retirees in the area are taken care of. "In those places where the BRAC commission recommends closing, we are working with Tricare contractors to ensure there is a good transition plan for retirees," he said. Dr. Taylor also said that none of the recommendations of his joint cross service group are final until BRAC recommendations are approved by the president and Congress this fall. Air Force leaders testify on IG tanker lease report [2005-06-08] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force's two most senior leaders testified June 7 on Capitol Hill about the Service's efforts to recapitalize its fleet of refueler aircraft. Michael L. Dominguez, acting secretary of the Air Force, and Gen. John P. Jumper, Air Force chief of staff, both answered questions for the Senate Armed Service Committee concerning findings in a Department of Defense inspector general's report on the Air Force's KC-767A tanker lease program. The KC-767A tanker lease program had been the Air Force's partial solution to jump-start the replacement of the service's fleet of 400 ageing KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refuelers. Some of those aircraft are now more than 40 years old. The original plan was to lease up to 100 commercial 767 aircraft from the Boeing Co. and have them modified to serve as tanker aircraft, to include extra tanks and refueling booms. The program encountered roadblocks on Capitol Hill as members of Congress questioned the need for new tankers, the Air Force's and DOD's interpretation and application of DOD acquisition directives, and the service's dealings with the defense contractor, Boeing. Because of these issues, the program was never initiated, and no contract was signed nor was any money paid to Boeing. Despite concerns over the tanker lease proposal, the Air Force and the Senate alike believe the ageing KC-135 fleet needs to be replaced. General Jumper told senators on the committee he knows firsthand the problems with the tankers. He visited Tinker Air Force Base, Okla., to view the aircraft and to investigate their corrosion problems. "What I saw there was, quite frankly, of concern to me," General Jumper said. "There were ageing aircraft problems I thought needed to be addressed. My recommendation at the time was to begin recapitalization as quickly as possible." The general also told senators that his role in the Air Force is to show there is a need for the aircraft, not to determine how the service should get them. "I am responsible for the requirement part of the Air Force," he said. "After (Sept. 11, 2001) I saw an instant surge in tanker utilization. I looked at a fleet that was more than 40 years old. If we began recapitalization immediately, we would be flying the airplanes when (the current aircraft) were 70 years old. I honestly thought it was time to get on with the recapitalization. I had no methods in mind when the lease proposal was advanced. I never had it in mind to do anything that was not beneficial to the nation." The nearly 300 page review of the program, which was directed by the Senate committee, attempts to determine what happened with the lease program, who was accountable and what actions must be taken to prevent it from happening again. The IG analyzed e-mails and memorandums from Boeing and the Air Force and interviewed 88 people from both the DOD and the Air Force who were involved in the lease program to determine what happened and who was accountable. Several e-mails sent by Air Force senior leaders during development and negotiation of the contract made their way into the report. Some of those messages contained language and were of a tone deemed disrespectful to the Senate. Air Force leaders apologized for those messages. "I want to … on behalf of the men and women of the United States Air Force, apologize to the committee, in particular to (Sen. John McCain,) for the unprofessional nature of many of our e-mails that are published in the DOD inspector's report. The tone in those e-mails is certainly unwarranted by the motivation of Senator McCain and his staff," Mr. Dominguez said. General Jumper also said the comments did not bear out the standards of professionalism expected of the Air Force and are not what he expects of Air Force bluesuiters. "These comments were unprofessional and not worthy of a great Air Force that has members out there performing," he said. "I require a higher standard of them than we demonstrated ourselves in that report." Gallant Fox III brings first responders to Pentagon [2005-06-09] ARLINGTON, Va. -- A dozen bodies lay strewn on a patch of grass near the bus stop outside the Pentagon on June 8. Some of them cried out for help. Nearby, that help was quickly arriving. Firetrucks, ambulances and other first responders arrived on the scene from local municipalities, including Arlington, Fairfax and Alexandria, Va., and responders from Maryland and Washington, D.C. This was no tragedy, however. Instead, first responders from around the region had been invited by the Pentagon Force Protection Agency to participate in Gallant Fox III, an exercise preparing them to respond to a real tragedy. "This is the largest (exercise) we have held so far, with the largest number of participants and the largest number of simultaneous incidents happening in Arlington County and at the Pentagon reservation," said Brett Eaton, information and communications officer for Washington Headquarters Services. "The intent is to improve the connectivity and coordination between participating agencies." As part of the Gallant Fox III exercise, armed assailants attempted to gain access to the Pentagon. Simulated gunfire from that scenario kicked off the exercise. Another scenario involved a suicide bomber on one of the buses that services the Pentagon. Other scenarios played out at the Navy Annex near the Pentagon and at one of the leased office spaces in nearby Crystal City. About a dozen municipal and federal agencies from around the National Capital Region supplied firefighters, firefighting equipment and vehicles, police officers, ambulances and emergency medical technicians for the exercise. Getting hundreds of participants to communicate might seem like an impediment to a successful exercise, but really, it was the purpose of the exercise, said Bob Gray, Arlington County Fire Department battalion chief. "What we get a chance to do here is try out our communications mechanisms and our actual service mechanisms, to make sure they work together for a real incident," he said. The event also gave first responders a chance to meet each other before a truly demanding situation arises. "First responders get a knowledge of where they would actually go in a real word event and get to see each other face to face to see who they have been talking to on the phone and who they would work with in a real emergency," Mr. Eaton said. The Gallant Fox III exercise kicked off at the Pentagon at about 10 a.m. and ran until 2 that afternoon. Exercise participants attended a hotwash following the exercise to discuss what went right and what could be improved, said John Jester, Pentagon Force Protection Agency chief. "We learn a lot from these exercises," he said. "You look at command and control issues. You're looking at communications issues. You are looking at issues of training for individuals. And you only learn these things when you exercise. You can't do them in your mind." Face-to-face counseling available to Airmen, families [2005-06-17] WASHINGTON -- Sometimes an Airman needs someone to talk to, and although his or her supervisor or friends are available, they are not always the right ones to listen. The Air Force, as part of a larger effort within the Department of Defense, offers Airmen a professional, private, face-to-face counseling as part of the Air Force OneSource program. "Air Force OneSource is part of the total system of support that is available at all Air Force bases," said Brenda Liston, Air Force family matters chief. "It is available to active duty, Reserve and National Guard members, whether they are activated or not." The OneSource program has been available for more than a year now and provides Airmen and their families with information and referral services for education, medical, financial, deployment, return and reunion issues. In July, the program will be expanded to include face-to-face counseling services for Airmen and their families. The program makes free counseling services available to help Airmen and their families deal with marital and relationship problems, deployment or redeployment stress, grief and other nonclinical issues. "This even includes couples counseling for Airmen (who) are single and having relationship issues," Ms. Liston said. "It is easily accessible for our Air Force people dealing with family issues such as returning from deployment, reintegration, grief counseling, couple's concerns or any number of issues a couple, an Airman or a family member would like to speak with a counselor about." Any active-duty Airman, reservist or guardsman or their immediate family members can access the service, Ms. Liston said. "It is available to anyone carrying a military identification card -- family or Airmen, active or reserve, activated or not," she said. "Even if you aren't married, you can take your nearest and dearest to talk with a counselor about relationship issues." Airmen who want to take advantage of the service need only call the Air Force OneSource telephone number to talk to an online consultant. The consultant will take demographic data from the Airman, make an assessment of the issue he or she has, and then help the Airman choose the best course of action. The service can also be accessed by visiting local family support centers. If counseling is needed, a consultant will help the Airman set up an appointment with a licensed civilian counselor in the local community. The service comes at no cost to servicemembers and their families, and Airmen are entitled to up to six counseling sessions per issue. Counseling services are available for nonclinical issues only, however. The service does not handle medical issues involving alcoholism, depression, drug abuse or abuse in the family. In those cases, Airmen will be put in contact with appropriate military agencies. The service also has an obligation to report instances of drug use or physical abuse to the authorities. In all other situations, Ms. Liston said, Airmen can expect the same level of privacy they would with base agencies. "The face-to-face counseling program is filling a gap we have had for years," Ms. Liston said. "There is clinical counseling available now through Tricare or mental health, but they have never done nonclinical counseling before." Helping Airmen and their families deal with problems before those problems escalate not only helps Airmen, it helps get the mission accomplished, Ms. Liston said. "A lot of times issues that become really difficult and (affect the) mission started out with a small issue, like how to readjust when you come home from deployment," she said. "Problems can be resolved at the lower level before they escalate into real problems." Air Force OneSource is available anytime by phone in the United States at (800) 707-5784, internationally at (800) 7075-7844 or collect at (484) 530-5913. The program is also available in Spanish at (800) 375-5971 and to the deaf or hard of hearing, via TTY/TDD at (800) 346-9188. Airmen may also visit the program Web site at www.airforceonesource.com. The site requires customers to log on by using “airforce” as the user ID and “ready” as the password. Report: Academy grapples with religion in the public forum [2005-06-22] WASHINGTON -- A team looking at the religious climate of the Air Force Academy found an institution grappling with a challenge that is the subject of significant debate in the public arena. Part of the problem appears to be a lack of operational guidance as to what is and is not acceptable in the area of religious expression, they found. That is but one of the findings of the group sent to investigate allegations of religious intolerance at the Colorado institution, said Lt. Gen. Roger A. Brady, Air Force deputy chief of staff for personnel. "There is a lack of operational guidance that tells commanders and senior supervisors exactly what is appropriate in regard to free exercise of religion," the general said. “There were some faculty and staff, in efforts that were probably well-intentioned, who expressed their faith in ways that were inappropriate for somebody in a position of authority.” The Department of Defense and the Air Force both have policies that address discrimination, accommodation and the requirement to not restrict the free exercise of religion, but operational guidance as to what is acceptable in the area of religious expression is lacking, General Brady said. "What are the considerations commanders must take into account when they decide where and when it is appropriate to have a public prayer, for instance?" he asked. "There is no cookbook answer that applies to every situation, but we need to provide commanders and supervisors a framework of considerations they can use to make decisions in this area." Air Force officials are working to fill the academy’s need for that guidance, the general said. General Brady was chosen by Michael L. Dominguez, acting secretary of the Air Force, to lead the team of 16 people to the academy in May to conduct an investigation into allegations of religious intolerance at the school. The team met in open sessions with more than 300 people, including the superintendent, training wing commander, dean of faculty, director of athletics, and other staff, faculty and cadets. Besides noting a lack of guidance and finding instances of questionable religious expression on the part of some faculty and staff, the general said the team observed that the school in some cases was not accommodating enough to students of minority faiths. “It is not that minority cadets cannot get accommodation,” he said, “but that the academy was not addressing the issue up front, such as including holy days on the calendar. So in some cases, it made cadets feel like the academy was not as sensitive to those needs, and was putting the burden on the cadet to ask for the accommodation." Finally, the team found that some of the situations that lead to a perception of religious intolerance at the school come from the youth and inexperience of some members of the student body, General Brady said. "We found there was a certain amount of behavior on the part of some 18-to-22-year-olds that is less than it should be,” he said. That behavior included religious slurs, jokes and disparaging remarks made by some cadets. “That is neither surprising nor acceptable,” he said. “We bring about 1,300 new young Americans into the academy every year. Some come from very diverse environments, but some of them have never lived with anybody who sounds different or looks different or believes differently than they do. Sometimes they react in ways that are not acceptable in our Air Force.” General Brady said cadets indicated religious slurs and jokes have decreased at the academy over the past few years. To further bolster that trend, and in light of recent attention on religious issues, the academy has created a new program specifically designed to help young cadets of any background become more aware of the diversity around them. The Respecting Spiritual Values of all People program has been in place for a few months. "This program, which is new, tells cadets that people believe different things and come from different places,” the general said. “We must respect that diversity in our force and use it as a strength in our force." Respecting diversity in all areas is critical to the future of the military, General Brady said, especially in light of its expeditionary mission in the war on terrorism. "The United States Air Force, and the United States military at large, cannot afford to operate in any other way than be respectful of cultural differences,” he said. “We must respect each other and respect and understand our coalition partners who may be of different cultures. It is not only the right thing to do, it’s an operational imperative.” New Air Force adviser chosen for values, vision [2005-06-27] WASHINGTON -- Air Force officials have created a new adviser position to help ensure the Air Force's core values are integrated into all aspects of the service's operating concepts, policies and vision. Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff, former national director of the Interreligious Affairs for the American Jewish Committee, was named special assistant to the secretary of the Air Force and to the chief of staff for values and vision June 24. Rabbi Resnicoff began work June 27 and will report directly to the secretary, but will also advise the Air Force chief of staff. In his new position, Rabbi Resnicoff's immediate focus will be to advise Michael L. Dominguez, acting secretary of the Air Force, on how best to implement the recommendations from the Headquarters Review Group and the National Conference on Ministry to the Armed Forces regarding the religious climate at the U.S. Air Force Academy. The academy recently underwent review by a group sent by Mr. Dominguez to investigate allegations of religious intolerance. The group produced a report that made recommendations on how to improve the climate at the school. Mr. Dominguez said Rabbi Resnicoff is the right person to help implement those recommendations and to help the Air Force ensure core values are present throughout the service. "Rabbi Resnicoff is the right person at the right time," Mr. Dominguez said. "His unique combination of military service and interfaith experience, combined with being a recognized authority on ethics and values, make him uniquely suited to help us as we strengthen and reaffirm our commitment to our Air Force core values." The rabbi will have the additional responsibility of reviewing Air Force values-based programs, initiatives, policies and doctrine. These include anything related to character development or the building of Air Force leaders, honor codes, military and civilian equal opportunity programs and military ethics. He will be responsible for ensuring these programs are on the same "sheet of music" as Air Force core values. Rabbi Resnicoff, a retired Navy captain, began his military career on the rivers of Vietnam's Mekong Delta and retired while assigned as command chaplain for U.S. European Command. He is one of a small group of Vietnam veterans who helped create the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, based on the vision that the time had come "To Heal the Nation." He delivered the closing prayer at its dedication. The rabbi is active with many organizations and is on the board of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs. His numerous honors include the Defense Superior Service Medal, and the Chapel of Four Chaplains Hall of Heroes Gold Medallion. The Air Force adviser position was created under the Department of Defense's Highly Qualified Experts Program, first unveiled in March 2004. The program allows the department to use as many as 2,500 people who are characterized as "highly qualified experts" -- those individuals possessing uncommon, special knowledge or skills in a particular occupational field and who are regarded by others as an authority or practitioner of unusual competence and skill. Individuals hired under the program would not perform ongoing DOD work, but would satisfy emerging and relatively short-term, nonpermanent requirements. Resnicoff: Taking oath involves personal change [2005-06-30] WASHINGTON -- When individuals take an oath to enter military service, a change happens in who they are and what their obligations are. For Airmen, that change must involve a shift from the personal goals of a civilian to the greater goals of the Air Force, with an emphasis on the core values, said Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff, special assistant to the Air Force secretary and chief of staff for values and vision. "When you raise your hand, take that oath and put on that uniform, you really do change from the situation of a citizen, from whom we would want a contribution to democracy and freedom, to putting your life on the line and total commitment," he said. "It means setting aside some personal agendas while you are part of a team facing greater issues that threaten us all." Michael L. Dominguez, acting secretary of the Air Force, recently appointed Rabbi Resnicoff to review Air Force values-based programs, initiatives, policies and doctrine to ensure these areas are consistent with the Air Force core values. "The idea of having a core values-based structure that will help us with decisions and policies throughout the Air Force is something we are taking very seriously," Rabbi Resnicoff said. One thing the rabbi said he hopes to strengthen in the Air Force is an Airman's dependence on the core values -- integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all we do -- in their personal decision-making process. "When you have had a difficult decision that involved ethics and values, how much time did you think about the Air Force core values to make that decision?" he asked. "I would like to get to the point where a man or woman in uniform who needs to make an ethical, moral or values decision can take a test using our core values." The rabbi said he recognizes that Airmen have different values and beliefs, and he does not expect them to abandon those values or beliefs when they enter the service. He said the Air Force core values need to be integrated into the value system of every Airman. "We do not expect everybody in the Air Force to have the same values," he said. "We are talking about core values. We have identified three of them. Those values are required, and without them, you shouldn't be in the Air Force." Rabbi Resnicoff, who assumed his current position June 27, will focus his initial efforts on issues related to religious issues at the Air Force Academy, Colo. The academy was recently reviewed by a team sent to investigate allegations of religious intolerance. The team produced a report that made recommendations on how to improve the religious climate at the school. Rabbi Resnicoff will advise senior Air Force leaders on how to implement those recommendations. Leaders need guidance on religious discussions [2005-06-30] WASHINGTON -- Bluesuiters in leadership positions need more guidance and education about when and where it is appropriate to discuss their faith. That testimony from Lt. Gen. Roger A. Brady, Air Force deputy chief of staff for personnel, came June 28 before the House Armed Service Committee military personnel subcommittee. The general appeared before the committee to discuss recent religious respect issues at the Air Force Academy, Colo. "We need to teach people in authority that when they are really expressive about their faith, particularly in areas where faith is not the discussion or issue,” the general said, “they can put people that are subordinate to them in compromising or untenable positions" The academy recently underwent review by a team sent to investigate allegations of religious intolerance at the school. While the report uncovered no systemic religious intolerance, some cadets reported that some leaders had occasionally discussed their faith at inappropriate times or in inappropriate ways. Other cadets reported more egregious displays of religious intolerance on the part of some cadets. The issue has sparked much recent debate on Capitol Hill, though General Brady testified that some issues might be less debatable than others. "About egregious behavior such as slurs or disparaging remarks, nobody will debate that with you," the general said. "But what I can say or not say in terms of an expression of my faith is a more difficult issue. That said, we have to provide better guidance to our commanders and senior supervisors on this subject." General Brady said it would be difficult for Air Force officials to make a list of "do’s and don’ts" that commanders could use to determine when it is appropriate to discuss faith, or bring it into the workplace. "Historically, there has been a reluctance to jump into that well and start making lists of ‘this is what you can do,’" he said. "You will always leave something out." However, the general said commanders can ask themselves questions to determine the appropriateness of religious discussion. Such questions may revolve around what type of relationship people have with those they are talking to. Airmen talking to their peers may have more leeway than those talking to subordinates. Michael L. Dominguez, acting secretary of the Air Force, recently named Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff the special assistant to the Air Force secretary and chief of staff for values and vision. Rabbi Resnicoff said his most immediate task will be to advise Mr. Dominguez on how best to implement recommendations made regarding the religious climate at the academy. Part of his work will be to develop specific guidance about expressions of personal religious beliefs. The forthcoming guidance will emphasize mutual respect and the wingman culture fundamental to all Airmen, officials said. Air Force takes part in joint training transformation [2005-07-01] WASHINGTON -- Linking aircraft simulators with live forces and simulators of other services have been the Air Force’s most visible contributions to the Department of Defense's joint training transformation effort. DOD has been working to make training for war a team effort, pushing the four services -- who often train separately in their own exercises -- to come together to share resources, training space and experience, said Dr. Paul Mayberry, deputy undersecretary of defense for readiness. "Training transformation is really very simple," he said. "It is making sure we follow the credo of ‘training the way we intend to fight.’ And we fight as a joint team, with multinational and interagency partners." Dr. Mayberry said the department's training transformation has manifested itself in three capabilities. First is the joint knowledge development and distribution capability. That capability focuses on getting information to people out in the field, letting them "reach back" from the field to get the information they need, and synchronizing the information contained in training among the services. Second is the joint assessment and enabling capability where the department asks what is being done for warfighters and determines if it is enough and how to enhance future training, he said. "The joint enabling capability is about asking what we have done for units and individuals -- and does it make a difference," Dr. Mayberry said. "It is also about asking what kind of new technologies are out there that are able to revolutionize training." The third capability is the joint national training capability. "That's how we really pull together service exercises and apply an appropriate level of joint context to those training events," he said. One example of the department's effort to make training more joint-oriented is Joint Red Flag 2005 at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. U.S. Joint Forces Command designated the Air Force’s Air Combat Command as the event’s lead and executive agent. "We brought together the 12th Air Force, the 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command and the 4th Infantry Division, and the exercises that they represented -- the Joint Red Flag and the Roving Sands events," Dr. Mayberry said. "We really blended them together in terms of an integrated joint event. It was the largest distributed mission operation exercise that we have ever had in a joint context." Distributed mission operations was originally an Air Force effort to tie together its own aircraft simulators across vast geographic boundaries to allow pilots in one location to fly virtual training missions with pilots anywhere in the world. The technology allows for a kind of vast, simulated air war where pilots fly training sorties in aircraft mission training centers. The effort has been expanded to include inputs from live aircraft already in flight and aircraft simulators from other services, combined with computer-generated aircraft and threats, to create a true live-virtual-constructive training exercise. At Joint Red Flag, the Air Force brought together about 32 different training sites and more than 18 different types of simulators at these sites, Dr. Mayberry said. In other locations, the Air Force has found ways to bring Soldiers, who wear simulation devices on their head, into the virtual war. "The best scenario I saw was down at Hurlburt Field, Florida, where they had a gunship (simulator) that was able to provide close-air support for troops that had ‘heads-up goggles’ at Fort Benning, Georgia, and they were flying over a scenario that was at Fort Polk, Louisiana," Dr. Mayberry said. "Pilots, flying in their mock-up, were able to see the ground and the flashings and the interactions, and the troops on the ground were able to make the calls for fire." Blending together that kind of simulation has been the Air Force's main contribution to the Department of Defense's joint training transformation effort and is a key part of the future of joint training, Dr. Mayberry said. "The Air Force and each of the services are going to have to blend together the live opportunities of aircraft into a seamless environment with the simulators -- the virtual force -- and really wrap around that the complexities that can be brought by constructive or computer-generated forces," Dr. Mayberry said. "This notion of a seamless live forces and virtual constructive environment, I think, is not only where the Air Force is going to have to go, but also each of the other services." Air Force changes fitness test criteria [2005-07-06] WASHINGTON -- Air Force officials are making a few changes to the physical fitness test used to assess the fitness of Airmen. In January 2004, the Air Force underwent a major change in the way it looked at fitness. As part of the Fit to Fight program, the service adopted a more stringent physical fitness assessment that measures aerobic fitness, physical strength/endurance and body composition. Now, 18 months into the program, senior leaders are ready to tweak the assessment to make it even better, said Lt. Gen. (Dr.) George Peach Taylor Jr., Air Force surgeon general. "We have gotten together a group of scientists and done surveys asking folks if they like the assessment and are there issues with it," Dr. Taylor said. "This last year we brought an update to Corona and are now in the middle of updating a few changes to the Air Force instruction that defines the fitness evaluation." Updates to AFI 10-248 will include a change in how body composition is measured, a new table for the running portion of the test that takes into account the runner's elevation, and a change in the number of days an Airman must wait before retesting after having scored in the marginal category. Under the original fitness evaluation, body composition scores were based on abdominal circumference only. The updated AFI will now direct that body composition also be measured using body mass index. BMI is calculated by dividing weight in pounds by height in inches squared, and multiplying the result by 703. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, those with a BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 are considered to be normal. Those with a BMI of 25 or above are considered overweight. Under the updated AFI, Airmen with a BMI of less than 25 will earn the full 30 points for body composition. For Airmen who score a BMI 25 and above, Dr. Taylor said the results of the waist measurement would be used to calculate their test score. "That will still be an important measure of their health," he said. "Waist measure is closely related to increased risk for metabolic syndrome, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease. Fat distribution is the critical indicator, as opposed to weight." For those who score marginal, between 70 and 74.9 points, the Air Force plans to correct the time to retest at 90 days; currently, retest for marginal category is 180 days. This will be consistent with the retest time for poor scores, those less than 70. Changes to the AFI will also include adjustment for those at high-altitude installations. This applies to those at installations with an elevation of 5,000 feet or greater, Dr. Taylor said. "We'll use the formula for altitude calculations recommended by the National Collegiate Athletic Association," he said. The Air Force continues to look at ways to improve the fitness evaluation and remains committed to the Fit to Fight program, Dr. Taylor said, because the program has proven successful. "Participation at fitness centers is up 30 percent now," he said. "And if you go to the field, like in Iraq or Afghanistan, you will find a continued focus on health." The assessment is not the focus of the fitness program, but a tool to assess the commander’s fitness training program. “I want to make very clear that my focus is not on passing a fitness test once a year,” said Gen. John P. Jumper, Air Force chief of staff, in his Oct. 17, 2003, Chief’s Sight Picture. “More important, we are changing the culture of the Air Force. This is about our preparedness to deploy and fight. It’s about warriors. It is about instilling an expectation that makes fitness a daily standard -- an essential part of your service." Dr. Taylor said he hopes the changes to the AFI will be made by late August or early September. Innovative techniques help Air Force meet manning goals [2005-07-20] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force deputy chief of staff for personnel told lawmakers July 19 the service would meet its end-strength requirement by the end of the fiscal year. In March, Lt. Gen. Roger A. Brady told lawmakers the service would meet its end-strength goal by end of the fiscal year. "End strength" is the limit set by Congress on the number of people the military can have on active duty. For the Air Force, that number is about 360,000. The general made the announcement before the House Armed Services Committee subcommittee on personnel, where he also talked about service end strength, recruiting and force shaping. "We are now at authorized end strength," General Brady said. "And we will continue to bring balance to the force by rightsizing and shaping specific career specialties and overall officer and enlisted skill sets." The Air Force reduced its end strength by adjusting the shape and size of the force. Instead of separating Airmen who did not want to leave the service, officials adjusted the overall size of the Air Force by slowing down recruiting -- the number of new accessions into the service -- and shifting active-duty Airmen from skills that had overages to those that had shortages. "As we returned to our authorized end strength, relief has flowed to our overstressed career fields," General Brady said. "We are doing this prudently, by identifying specialties and specific year groups within those specialties where we have more people than we need. At the same time we are correcting our skill imbalances by realigning manpower and expanding training pipelines." General Brady also said the Air Force uses programs like Palace Chase and Blue to Green to move Airmen from active duty to the Reserves or to the Army. The service is also working to regain Airmen from jobs that are "outside" the Air Force, the general told lawmakers. Those jobs might be joint-service billets or jobs with defense agencies that don't necessarily require a uniformed person to do the work. "We are taking a hard look at where our people serve," he said. "We have Airmen serving outside the Air Force who don't deploy with an air (and space) expeditionary force. With military-to-civilian conversions, we are returning some of these Airmen to Air Force positions." Through military-to-civilian conversions, as many as 4,700 jobs held by Airmen could be converted to civilian or contractor positions during the next few years, though the conversion rate might not be one-to-one. Many of the jobs targeted for conversion are characterized as "administrative" or "back shop." Some lawmakers expressed concern about the Air Force meeting its recruiting goals. General Brady assured them the Air Force had no problem meeting its goals for 2005. "For fiscal … 2005, we will access nearly 19,000 enlisted active-duty members and just over 5,000 active-duty officers," he said. "In fact, we are now complete for fiscal 2005." While the Air Force met its recruiting goal for 2005, General Brady said the military needs to be aware of issues in the civilian world that may cause recruiting problems in the future. "Two things combine to hurt us," he said. "A constant barrage of negative press and a reduced ability to have access to young people to tell our stories to in schools." Negative press about the military and the war in Iraq may leave "influencers" of potential recruits with mixed feelings about military service. Those influencers include parents, advisers and coaches of potential, military-aged Americans. If the influencers do not understand the military, they may advise those who want to join that it is not a good idea. "We must continue this level of awareness among potential Airmen by keeping public schools and colleges open to our recruiters," General Brady said. "Ours is a recruited force, which means we must be competitive in the national marketplace to both recruit and retain people." Future Total Force outlined on Capitol Hill [2005-07-21] WASHINGTON -- There will be no "gap" between the end of assigned missions for Air National Guard units and the beginning of their replacement missions. In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee on July 20, the director of Air Force plans and programs told legislators the service is working hard to find replacement missions for Air National Guard units that may lose their flying mission as a result of the current Base Realignment and Closure recommendations. "We have a tough job ahead of us, establishing new missions for these areas," said Lt. Gen. Stephen G. Wood. "(But) we are committed not to gap between areas. If we have a unit that is going to lose its aircraft and transition to a new mission, we want to bring those aircraft down at the same rate we train for the new mission." Some legislators said they feared that without the draw of an aircraft for local communities to rally around and for potential Airmen to be interested in, it would be difficult to retain existing guardsmen and to recruit new ones. But General Wood said the Air Force is more than just airplanes, and said he hoped existing Guardsmen would be willing to participate in new, critical missions. "The Air Force is more than flying aircraft," he said. "We are a space force. We are a cyber force. There are new, engaging missions out there that we need to prepare for the future. It is our hope that these outstanding Airmen transition to these new jobs." In recommendations to BRAC commissioners, Air Force officials have asked to close some Guard and active-duty bases. Other selected bases are recommended for realignment -- existing missions may be lost altogether or moved to other bases. In some locations, new missions would be brought in to replace missions lost. The Air Force plan to realign missions and organizations is outlined in the service's Future Total Force concept. The concept’s aim is to strengthen the Air Force by creating synergies between active duty and reserve component units. "(This) involves change, and we all know change isn't easy," General Wood said. "The Air Force is facing incredible challenges today, and the path we take now will shape our collective shared future." The general said the Future Total Force plan includes two key aspects. First is a change to the force structure. This involves a plan to divest the service of older aircraft and replace them with newer aircraft. One such newer aircraft is the F/A-22 Raptor. The second part of the FTF plan involves changing the organizational structure of the total Air Force. The "total force" includes active duty Air Force, Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve units. These changes will involve the pairing of active duty units with reserve component units to help maximize the benefits that each brings to the fight. While General Wood said the total force has already been working together for most of the Air Force's history, he expects FTF to yield even greater results. "Under our plan we will take this integration to the next level by expanding both the scope and the number of associate units using the lessons learned over the past 40 years," he said. "We will see the experience of our young active duty airmen … grow significantly under the mentoring of skilled Air National Guard maintenance experts." Better than aviation education is a really cool patch [2005-08-05] FORT A.P. HILL, Va. -- About 43,000 Boy Scouts departed this Army installation Aug. 3 after 10 days of scouting, camping and learning. As part of the 2005 National Scout Jamboree, Boy Scouts nationwide gathered to make new friends, practice their scouting skills and earn "merit badges." Thanks to retired Lt. Col. Tom Sawner, a former pilot, about 1,000 of those young men left the Jamboree with a new merit badge and a greater appreciation and understanding of aviation. The aviation merit badge is particularly difficult to get, Colonel Sawner said, because the resources needed to complete the requirements for the badge are not often available to Scouts at home. But at the Jamboree, Scout leaders have worked hard to make those resources available to the young men who want to earn this unique patch. "Where else could you pull together as many Air Force pilots as you can here?" Colonel Sawner asked. "Back home, maybe (a Boy Scout troop) has access to one. Here we have about 20." To earn the aviation merit badge, Scouts are required to sit through a two-hour course to learn the basics of aviation, conduct interviews with pilots and certified flight instructors and demonstrate their knowledge of flight by pointing out and explaining the parts of an aircraft. They also write several reports on what they have learned, and take a short test to verify their knowledge. "It was definitely a challenge to figure out and remember and get to know all these things," said Scout Josh Curry of Boy Scout Troop 106, near Warren, Maine. "I basically knew nothing about aviation when I came here. I knew how airplanes were run, but I knew none of the terms which I know now." Colonel Sawner was a Boy Scout himself, and earned his aviation merit badge when he was 13 years old. He is a 1976 graduate of the Air Force Academy and his first assignment was as an F-4 Phantom pilot. He retired from active duty service in 1999, but has been helping Boy Scouts learn about aviation for 20 years -- attending his first Scout Jamboree as an educator in 1985. At the aviation merit badge tent on the "Merit Badge Midway" here, Colonel Sawner led a contingent of aviation educators including retired and active-duty Air Force fighter and tanker pilots, civilian pilots, certified flight instructors and one Navy pilot. Together, they helped Scouts learn about what keeps an aircraft in the air, while keeping the learning environment exciting. "They like hearing fighter pilot stories," Colonel Sawner said. "It keeps them awake in the class." Josh said working with the pilots was both educational and fun. "Interacting with the Air Force people was a lot of fun because they taught me how all the engines worked, what all the parts were, the burners, where the fuel comes in and about each kind of engine," he said after earning his aviation badge. "I learned a lot about different airplanes and it was a lot of fun." The Scouts who completed all the requirements are authorized to wear the aviation merit badge on their badge sash at special Boy Scout events. For those who do complete the requirements, Colonel Sawner also gives them a special Jamboree patch, featuring a B-2 Spirit bomber. Only those Scouts who earned the merit badge at the Jamboree get that patch. "We always have a special patch for them," Colonel Sawner said. "Boy Scouts are just obsessed with getting patches. This is one of the big ones they like, and they love that it is a B-2 and an Air Force airplane." Scouts who earn merit badges during their 10-day stay here leave the Jamboree with more than just a few patches or the right to wear a new badge, Colonel Sawner said. "The merit badges are set up to introduce them to the basics of a subject, whether it is leather work, metallurgy, engineering or aviation," he said. "We have found if you give them a basic understanding of something, for many of them, it is the spark that leads them into a career in aviation, whether it be in the Air Force, the commercial sector or just for private aviation. Here they get a skill they use for the rest of their life." Five Airmen -- brothers in fight for freedom [2005-08-11] ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY, Va. -- The remains of five Airmen, brothers in arms to bring freedom to the nation of Iraq, were buried here Aug. 11 with full military honors. They were Maj. William Downs, 6th Special Operations Squadron, Hurlburt Field, Fla.; Capt. Jeremy Fresques, 23rd Special Tactics Squadron, Hurlburt Field; Capt. Derek Argel, 23rd STS; Iraqi Air Force Capt. Ali Hussam Abass Alrubaeye, 3rd Squadron, Kirkuk Air Base, Iraq; and Staff Sgt. Casey Crate, 23rd STS. The Airmen died May 30 near Jalula, Iraq, when their Iraqi Air Force Comp Air 7SL, a six-seat single-engine aircraft, crashed in the eastern Diyala province near the Iranian border. Major Downs and Captain Abass piloted the aircraft, while captains Fresques and Argel, and Sergeant Crate surveyed potential emergency landing fields. Airmen from the 6th SOS, including Major Downs, are attached to the recently formed Iraqi Air Force 3rd Squadron to advise the new Iraqi air unit, to help train their maintainers and to help them stand up that squadron. The May 30 mission the five Airmen participated in is not unlike similar missions that other branches of the U.S. military are involved with all over Iraq. The intent is to help Iraqi military members and police forces gain the experience they will need to take the reigns of their country and provide the stability needed to ensure freedom takes root there, said Lt. Gen. Michael W. Wooley, commander of Air Force Special Operations Command. "It is important what these Airmen were doing, and very similar to what the Army is doing with the Iraqi ground forces and the Iraqi police force," General Wooley said. "It is a mission of ours that we have been given, not just to AFSOC, but to all the Air Force members that are deployed over there with the various units. It is our duty and the coalition's duty to ensure that the Iraqi military is capable of continuing on with the missions of defending their borders." While the crew aboard the aircraft was multinational, they were united by airmanship and dedication to a common mission, General Wooley said. "This was a tragic accident and we continue to send our thoughts and prayers out to the families of both the Iraqi pilot and the American Airmen who were affected by this accident," he said. "But in a way, this brings Airmen closer together. There is a certain bond that Airmen have, and when you go into battle together, when you go through trying situations together, it tends to make that bond even stronger." Lt. Col. Al Phillips, 6th SOS, a friend of Captain Abass, recounted one of those trying situations, a time when the two experienced difficulty with their aircraft and were forced to land unexpectedly. "We were coming from Baghdad back to Kirkuk and were approximately 25 nautical miles from Kirkuk when we experienced an engine flameout," Colonel Phillips said. "We had to land on a dirt road next to some farmers' fields." The two pilots watched as farmers and other members of the local population approached the aircraft in their vehicles. Had Captain Abass been alone or with another Iraqi pilot, the situation might not have presented any difficulty, Colonel Phillips said. But at that time, the appearance of an American, especially an American military member, might have been trouble for both pilots. "Captain Abbas didn't think we could evade without being seen, and if the local populace, the farmers, or whoever showed up at the aircraft (and) saw me, he wasn't sure how they might react," Colonel Philips said. At Captain Abbas' recommendation, Colonel Phillips ducked out of site and began making calls to rescue forces while the captain talked with the local people and set their minds at ease. "I thought, considering the situation we were in, that to think of this and to have the courage to actually suggest it and to speak it, it was incredible," Colonel Phillips said. "I owed him an incredible debt." Later, Colonel Philips said, the captain explained his motive. "Captain Abbas made the comment afterwards, and I feel this is true of everyone," Colonel Phillips said. "He said we're all brothers in the struggle for freedom. He was just implying that I'm his brother and he is my brother, that we are in this together and that we work together as a team. That's just the way I believe everybody feels." Col. Kenneth Rodriguez, 720th Special Tactics Group commander, knew the Airmen from the 23rd STS -- their squadron is assigned to his group at Hurlburt Field. The colonel had visited the three, and others from their unit in March, just two months prior to their deaths. "I knew them all well, and to a man, all three of them were outstanding individuals," Colonel Rodriguez said. "They were good at what they did. They were good operators, good leaders and superb teammates who put the welfare of the team in front of themselves." Colonel Rodriguez said all five Airmen aboard the plane that day shared more in common than just their aviator status. He said they shared a common vision, a vision that is shared by all coalition partners. "These five men, they were fighting for what they believed in," he said. "They believed in freedom for their country and they believed in eliminating terrorism." They were so strong in their shared beliefs, the colonel said, they were willing to take risks that they knew could be life threatening. "They and the other men and women who take this risk do that because they believe the risk is justified by the cause, and that is the case of freedom and freedom from terrorism," he said. Colonel Rodriguez said he knows there are no words that can truly console the families of the Airmen, and no words that can replace what has been lost. But he said the families need to know their loved ones did not die in vain. "All you can do is say they were fighting for what they believed in and their life had purpose and meaning," he said. The identifiable remains of each Airman involved in the incident, including those of Captain Abass, were returned to their families for interment. It is those remains that were unidentifiable that were buried, as a group, in Arlington National Cemetery. The grave marker will list the names of all five Airmen. In honor of each fallen military member, Gen. John P. Jumper, Air Force chief of staff; Maj. Gen. Kamal Abdul-Sattar Barzanjy, Iraqi Air Force commander; Lt. Gen. Lance L. Smith, commander of U.S. Central Command; and Lt. Gen. Michael W. Wooley, commander of Air Force Special Operations Command, presented an American flag to the American families in attendance and an Iraq flag to Captain Abass' family. Total force shares capabilities [2005-08-18] WASHINGTON -- The assistant secretary of the Air Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs told a panel of Base Realignment and Closure commissioners the Air Force would change its size and modify its missions. The Air Force will become smaller in terms of the number of aircraft the service keeps. If the Air Force's BRAC recommendations are approved, the Air Force's fighter force will shrink by about 20 percent overall, Michael L. Dominguez said. "Legacy aircraft designed in the 1970s and largely built in the 1980s are not the aircraft that will guarantee global dominance for the Air Force … into the middle part of the 21st century," Mr. Dominguez said. "We have to right-size our flying squadrons for efficiency and effectiveness. We looked through the inventory of aircraft, regardless of the component to whom they are assigned, and divested the oldest, least capable aircraft." Mr. Dominguez also told commissioners the Air National Guard is part of that process. "At points throughout the (BRAC) process, we have shared with Guard and Reserve (leaders) the factors bringing change to the Air Force, the nature of that change, the imperatives we would apply in adapting to that change, our strategy for addressing those imperatives and the likely results," Mr. Dominguez said While some Guard units will lose flying missions, Mr. Dominguez said some of those installations will continue to have a mission to provide expeditionary combat support as part of their federal mission, and at the same time be able to continue to perform a homeland security mission at home while providing support to their governors. "The concept of enclaves as opposed to shutting down facilities and closing down National Guard units came out of the National Guard participants in our BRAC executive committee staff," Mr. Dominguez said. "They said we need to make sure governors have assets to use in their homeland defense mission in their disaster recovery, in their firefighting, in their riot control, in their need to protect critical infrastructure and also have command and control capabilities." It is around those enclaves, Mr. Dominguez said, that the Air Force will build emerging missions. Those missions include space, expeditionary combat support to austere locations, and command, control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. New flag-folding script focuses on history, AF significance [2005-08-18] WASHINGTON -- Air Force leaders recently approved a new script that can be read during flag-folding ceremonies. Though there are no official ceremonies in the Air Force that require a script to be read when a flag is folded, unofficial ceremonies such as retirements often do, said Lt. Col. Samuel Hudspath, Air Force protocol chief. "We have had a tradition within the Air Force of individuals requesting that a flag be folded, with words, at their retirement ceremony," he said. "This new script was prepared by Air Force services to provide Air Force recognized words to be used at those times." There is no shortage of scripts available that can be read aloud during a flag folding, but many of those scripts are religious in nature and also ascribe meaning to the individual folds put into the flag. One of the oldest of those scripts is attributed to an anonymous chaplain at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Individuals who hear those scripts end up attributing the contents of the script to the U.S. Air Force. But the reality is that neither Congress, nor federal laws related to the flag, assign any special meaning to the individual folds. Colonel Hudspath said that was the primary motive for creating a new flag-folding script. "Our intent was to move away from giving meaning, or appearing to give meaning, to the folds of the flag and to just speak to the importance of the flag in U.S. Air Force history," he said. The new script, approved in July, focuses on flag history and the significance of the flag within the Air Force: "Today, our flag flies on constellations of Air Force satellites that circle our globe, and on the fin flash of our aircraft in harms way in every corner of the world. Indeed, it flies in the heart of every Airman who serves our great nation. The sun never sets on our Air Force, nor on the flag we so proudly cherish," the new script reads. The new script is available at base protocol offices for use by anybody who wants to lend significance to a flag folding, Colonel Hudspath said. The script will not be used at retreats or funerals, as those are silent ceremonies. "These ceremonies are meaningful to individuals, especially at their retirement," he said. "We wanted to offer a script, containing factual information, that shows respect for the flag and expresses our gratitude for those individuals who protect our country, both at home and abroad." By October, officials said the Air Force will make a video available to protocol offices and honor guard units that demonstrates a flag-folding ceremony using the new script. Sexual assault prevention film must-see for Airmen [2005-08-26] WASHINGTON -- A new training video recently distributed to the Air Force through vice wing commanders is required viewing for all Airmen. All Airmen must view the new video, entitled "Targeting Sexual Assault," by Nov. 1. It is part of a larger Air Force campaign to educate Airmen about the realities of sexual assault, the prevention responsibilities of every Airman, and the efforts the Air Force is making to enhance prevention and response capabilities, said Charlene Bradley, who led the Air Force task force review and program development. The training video features important messages by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper, Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force Gerald R. Murray, and Lt. Gen. Roger A. Brady, deputy chief of staff of the Air Force for personnel. Those senior leader messages focus heavily on Air Force core values, on the "Wingman" concept and on respect for each other. "We must ensure that every Airman understands that sexual assault is a crime and an egregious breech of our core values," General Brady said. "Our respect for ourselves, each other and our Air Force, are principles in our core values, principles violated when Airmen take advantage of other Airmen." As part of an introduction to the training portion of the video, General Jumper tells commanders and Airmen what he wants them to take away from the film. "I want every Airmen to know what sexual assault is and how to report it," he said. "I want commanders and supervisors to support a policy and foster a climate that encourages reporting and cares for victims when they do report. And I want commanders to take appropriate action when sexual assault has occurred." The main training portion of the video is a dramatization of a rape scenario, where mutual friends introduce two Airmen to each other. The fact the two know each other is an important part of the film, Ms. Bradley said, because it helps dispel one of the most common myths about rape. "The biggest myth is that rapists wear ski mask and jump out of bushes -- that they are the only rapists," Ms. Bradley said. The reality is that the majority of rapists are nonstranger rapists -- someone the victim knows. The video will help educate Airmen about that fact, and will also help dispel other myths about rape, said Claudia Bayliff, the new Air Force Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program chief. "Statistics show approximately 85 percent of rapists are somebody known to the victim," Ms. Bayliff explained. "Another myth about rape is that the victim is somehow responsible, the victim provoked it or caused it. In addition, many think that nonstranger rapes are just a 'miscommunication,' or that they are caused by too much alcohol. What we are trying to show with the video is that these non-stranger rapes are usually premeditated." The video also helps viewers understand the role of facilitators and bystanders -- individuals who either consciously perpetuate an environment that enables non-stranger rapists to function, by offering encouragement and failing to act, or by having knowledge and failing to intervene. The goal is to teach Airmen how to intervene to protect each other. Also part of the training film is a discussion on the Air Force's implementation of the Department of Defense's restricted reporting policy, and the Air Force's new Sexual Assault Response Coordinator program. The training video is part of a larger Air Force program to reduce sexual assault through education and awareness. The program includes five major initiatives that focus on strong leadership and clear and integrated policy; prevention through education and training; improved care for victims; improved reporting procedures for victims; and ensuring new initiatives translate to the deployed environment. "The Air Force is engaging in institutional change on this issue at a profound level," Ms. Bayliff said. "In all my years of working on this issue, I have never seen anything like this. This is a huge institutional change that is really unprecedented." Air Force MASF last stop for some hurricane victims [2005-09-04] LOUIS ARMSTRONG NEW ORLEANS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, La. -- Usually, this airport is pretty sterile. With waxed floors and fresh air, everybody moves through quickly and nobody plans staying long. That was before Hurricane Katrina. Now, instead of businessmen and vacationers, a different kind of traveler packs the airport -- evacuees trying to catch a plane out. Among them are many people who are sick or injured during the hurricane. But a total force team of Airmen are helping get the sick and injured out of the airport at a steady clip of about 1,500 every 24 hours. “I have made two trips to Iraq,” said Lt. Col. (Dr.) Wayne Olsen of the 433rd Air Evacuation Squadron at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. “The mass casualties here are worse than I’ve ever seen. Worse than Iraq. “I don’t know how many people are here, but for every 100 people I move, another 200 show up,” he said. To keep up with the numbers, an Air Force medical rapid response force is operating a 25-bed hospital with emergency and surgical capabilities. There is also a mental health team and a dental team operating at the airport. Plus, there is a 60-person mobile aeromedical staging facility from Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland set up in an airport concourse and providing support and medical care to patients awaiting evacuation. This is the last stop for patients -- many on stretchers -- before they board a plane, Dr. Olsen said. “We’re staging patients and taking them out of this concourse to the C-130 (Hercules),” he said. Capt. Edward Greer, a flight nurse, said a team of medics provides patients last-minute care. They tend to their needs, provide fluids and keep them company. “We provide medical intervention and stabilization,” Dr. Olsen said. “And we have been moving large loads of people.” Then specialists from several civilian agencies move patients to the aircraft. Patients come from multiple areas outside the airport. The people arrive by bus and ambulance and go through a triage procedure before being sent to the staging facility. Then they get a flight to a hospital. “And there are lines and lines of helicopters coming in,” to help fly them out, Dr. Olson said. Just outside one of the terminals, in a place where most common people never get to venture, there are more helicopters lined up than most people will ever see in a lifetime. Some are from Air Force Special Operations Command, and there are many Navy and Army helicopters. Also on the busy tarmac are Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard aircraft and civilian helicopters. They line up after having been to New Orleans. Each helicopter brings patients plucked from a staging area inside the city. As soon as they unload them -- families, nursing home patients, children and even a dog or two -- they leap into the air and head back to perhaps the worst natural disaster area the United States has seen. The helicopters have been rotating in and out of the city nonstop since Aug. 30, and they will not stop until the relief operation is over. “Once they get off the helicopter, they are triaged,” Dr. Olsen said. “That is happening downstairs in the baggage claim area.” Dr. Olsen said sometimes there are about 500 people in the triage area at one time. The worst of the patients make their way through triage and into the staging facility, in preparation for departure via airplane to any number of hospitals in the United States. Most of the patients are from nursing homes and hospitals and are in dire straits. “We are clearing out the nursing homes,” the doctor said. “Those patients are extremely ill. Many haven’t had water or food. Some are on dialysis and haven’t had treatment for days. We are seeing the results of that.” One of the friendly Airmen some patients see before their medevac flight is that of flight nurse Maj. Stacia Belyeu. On Aug. 30, Major Belyeu, of the 452nd Air Medical Evacuation Squadron at March Air Reserve Base, Calif., got her call to duty. “I saw it on the news and wondered if we’d get a call, and we did. And I was ready,” she said. The major has family and friends in New Orleans, and she lived there for three years. So the job is more personal. “What happened to the people of New Orleans, I think, is horrendous and sad,” she said. “I still know people who live here, but they were able to leave.” Major Belyeu will take some of the elderly and infirm on stretchers out of New Orleans. It will be a relatively short flight, to Ellington Field, Texas, which is near Houston. Hundreds of evacuees are already there. “This is what I’ve trained to do, and this is what I like to do,” said the major, a reservist who is a nurse in civilian life. “For me, the flight nurse is a different kind of nurse and it is something I really cherish and enjoy doing.” She will get many chances to do her job before the Air Force ends its support to the region. Rumsfeld, Myers visit New Orleans airport [2005-09-04] LOUIS ARMSTRONG NEW ORLEANS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, La. -- The secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff visited here to witness efforts to evacuate thousands this struggling city. Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers toured the airport and visited with some of the more than 1,000 servicemembers living and working at the besieged airport. The servicemembers are working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide relief and to evacuate people -- many sick and wounded -- from the city. Staff Sgt. W. Lance Boekenoogen, a logistics specialist with the 152nd Medical Group in Reno, Nev., got to talk briefly with the two leaders. Then General Myers presented the sergeant with a coin. The sergeant later said he had been thrilled to meet the U.S. military's highest ranking leaders. To date, the Air Force has participated in moving more than 13,000 people from the airport to locations nationwide. Offutt services crew provides comfort to hurricane victims [2005-09-05] LOUIS ARMSTRONG NEW ORLEANS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, La. -- Some Airmen may wear the uniform for quite a while before they truly learn what it means to be in the Air Force. But for Airman 1st Class Keith Torgersen, it only took 10 months. Airman Torgersen is a services specialist with the 55th Services Squadron. He, and about 20 of his peers from Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., arrived here Sept. 2 to support the Federal Emergency Management Agency's effort to evacuate civilians from New Orleans. While Airman Torgersen didn't participate in the actual evacuation process, he provided much needed support to evacuees upon their arrival at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport here, a major staging area for moving evacuees out of the city. "Mostly I was handing out water to people who needed it," he said. Supporting victims of Hurricane Katrina was the first temporary duty of his short 10-month Air Force career. For him, it was an eye opener, and maybe even the moment when he first realized what it truly means to serve your country. "It makes you feel like you're accomplishing something great," he said of the work he did. Senior Airman Michele Gaines, 55th SVS, also helped out with handing out water. But her experience as a mother of two left her more suited to help out the many infants that came with their parents from the flooded city. "We helped out with the babies," she said. "It was kind of sad, being a mom, to see kids who've had no food and water for a few days. It's kind of hard." One particular child will probably stick in Airman Gaine's mind for some time. She is a prematurely born infant, a twin with a medical condition that had gone unattended for too long. "They had one child that had a shunt, and the shunt was swollen," Airman Gaines said. "She and her family had been stuck on a bridge for a few days. They were medically evacuated out of here though. We helped out with that." Airman Gaines said the girl's twin was fine. Senior Airman Stacy Pitts, 55th SVS, also helped out with the babies she found waiting with their parents to evacuate the city. "When I was helping out, mostly with the babies, I enjoyed doing that," she said. "When they bring the babies in they looked like they were dehydrated or needed diapers. That's what I did yesterday and the day before." Airman Pitts has been in the Air Force a bit longer than her two team members, almost six years now, and was recently selected for promotion to staff sergeant. She has deployed twice to Southwest Asia so far, but that didn't prepare her for helping with the New Orleans evacuation. "Just seeing these people sick and homeless and stuff, it wasn't a good sight," she said. "It was something I couldn't handle when I first got here, but you adjust to it." The Airmen from the 55th SVS won't be handing out water for much longer, though. They were just helping out people of a larger team move an unusually large number of people through the airport, said Master Kem Redic, 55th SVS team leader. The services team does have another mission here. "We will be setting up a base camp that will provide food service and lodging capability," he said. "Actually, part of our team is out doing a site survey (now.)" The tent city will provide hot meals and lodging to the many Airmen who are helping out here. Sergeant Redic said he knows his crew is up to the task, because they performed so well when they first hit the ground, doing tasks they were never trained to do. "When you are called upon and you roll into a situation like this, you just roll up your sleeves and jump in wherever you can," he said. "They are a real young crew here, but I couldn't be more proud of them. They really showed they are true professionals." Airmen evacuate hurricane victims [2005-09-06] LOUIS ARMSTRONG NEW ORLEANS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, La. -- Three Airmen flew their first humanitarian mission together here as part of the effort to evacuate Hurricane Katrina victims. After the storm hit New Orleans on Aug. 29, tens of thousands of residents there were left behind, trapped by the floodwater. They had little food and drinking water and no electricity. As part of an effort by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, military helicopters plucked those people out of the city and brought them here. Once here, evacuees were put on military flights out of the city. Their destinations varied, but at the end of their trip they would find food, water and a place to sleep. First Lt. Neil Senkowski, a C-17 Globemaster III pilot from the 7th Airlift Squadron at McChord Air Force Base, Wash., was the co-pilot on one mission to take evacuees to Austin, Texas. The lieutenant has been flying the C-17 for less than a year and recently returned from an overseas mission. He and his team were on crew rest when they got a call to participate in relief operations. It would be his first humanitarian mission. He said the crew jumped at the chance to participate. "We were pretty excited to get this mission first of all," he said. "We had just gotten back from a regular mission, and normally we get days off when we come back. But we were pretty excited to get this mission, so we didn't worry about that." For Airman 1st Class Jon Wessling, a loadmaster, it would also be his first humanitarian mission. "I was excited and actually went down and asked if I could get on the flight to go down there," he said. "I felt really bad for them down there and wanted to go down and help out." The crew left McChord on Sep. 3, bound first for Pope AFB, N.C., to pick up an Army unit, then to New Orleans to pick up evacuees. The C-17 boarded 141 passengers. "It was a mixed crowd, everybody you could imagine," Airmen Wessling said. "There were young people, old people and sick people. There was one guy with an injury to his face with a bandage over his eye. There were dogs and cats and birds." Staff Sgt. Ken Harp, a loadmaster with the 7th AS, has been in the Air Force for 11 years and had not been on a humanitarian mission before. He said he had prepared himself for what he thought he would see in New Orleans, but was taken aback by the reality of it. "I was pretty much set mentally on it and expected it to resemble third-world countries," he said. "But some of it hit me harder when I saw the children and the old people. They are leaving a life, the only thing they have never known. I'm not a real religious person, but I tried to give them something to hold on to, I tried to tell them God will take care of them." The C-17 is primarily a cargo plane for hauling trucks, tanks and other gear. In that configuration, it is not usually used for moving passengers. Many of the evacuees had to sit on the floor of the cargo hold. Loadmasters used waist restraints and tethers to secure passengers safely to the floor. The elderly were allowed to sit in seats, Sergeant Harp said. "I was helping an (elderly) lady into her seat. I told her, 'Raise your arms, Grandma. I'm going to put this seatbelt on you,'" he said. "She looked at me and she goes, 'This is my first time ever flying.' She kind of giggled a little bit. But she giggled through her fear. She was definitely scared. That was another challenge, the fear. Some have never flown." After the aircraft launched, Airmen Wessling stayed with the passengers and talked with them to keep them company. "Some of them are happy we were there," he said. "Some angry we didn't come sooner. But a lot were just sad and were crying when we took off because they are leaving their home." After arriving in Austin, the plane was met by a barrage of people willing to help the arrivals from New Orleans. "The support there was crazy," Lieutenant Senkowski said. "You could tell when taxiing in they had hundreds of volunteers there. From the cockpit we could see people swarming the aircraft after we parked." The Austin volunteers provided much-needed comfort to passengers as they deplaned, Sergeant Harp said. "As soon as they got off the jet, there was water, snack bags and wheelchairs for the older people," he said. "We asked for seven wheelchairs, but I guarantee 30 showed up. I'd say about 200 people greeted these people as they got off the aircraft. They were excited to be somewhere where they would be taken care of." Participating in a humanitarian mission is something Lieutenant Senkowski said he will probably always remember. Many Americans will watch the events in New Orleans unfold on their television, from the comfort of their home. But few will be able to do what they really want, the lieutenant said -- actually do something to help. "This is one of those things where people say it's why you join the military," Lieutenant Senkowski said. "You grow up and you normally watch the news and can't do much about what's going on. That's how we were, at home or on missions, watching this happen. To be able to actually get home in time to do a mission is exactly what you want to be able to do, to help out." Combat communications squadron hooks up tent city [2005-09-07] LOUIS ARMSTRONG NEW ORLEANS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, La. -- One combat communications squadron convoyed more than 600 miles to provide support to an Air Force tent city here. More than 100 Airmen with the 33rd Combat Communications Squadron from Tinker Air Force Base, Okla., arrived here Sept. 5 with more than 30 military vehicles after having spent more than 40 hours on the road, said Maj. Paula Gregory, the unit's commander. "It was a haul, but airlift is at a premium these days," she said. The squadron convoyed to New Orleans to be part of ongoing operations supporting the Hurricane Katrina disaster. For almost a week after the storm, hundreds of Airmen slept and ate prepackaged meals here to help with the evacuation of flood victims who had been trapped in the city. But now, the movement of evacuees from New Orleans has slowed to a trickle, and the Air Force mission here is changing. Airmen have moved from the airport terminals to a newly built tent city just south of the airport. Crews from the 33rd CCS will provide communications support to that tent city, Major Gregory said. "For the whole group here we will provide voice and data services and any communications capability they need," she said. "There will be Internet and DSN capabilities. We'll offer both unclassified and classified voice and data." The major said her group will also establish land-mobile radio service and the ability for the command post to speak with aircraft. Two satellite dishes the squadron brought with them will connect them to the outside world. Together, the two satellite dishes can provide a two-way communications rate of about 12 megabytes per second. Most of the communications capability provided by the group will be limited to a tent hospital and an "industrial area" in the tent city, which will comprise offices and maintenance tents. Major Gregory said the group is thinking about providing some of that communications capability to Airmen. "We were talking with group leaders about that," she said. "Once we get the mission set up we will coordinate with services about setting up a morale tent with phones and Internet." Major Gregory said she expected to have communications capability ready for distribution in the city within 36 hours -- just a few hours short of what it took to convoy here. Recapitalization highlighted at AFA conference [2005-09-13] WASHINGTON -- Modernizing and investing in the aircraft inventory and technology is an ongoing process that will never go away, said the Air Force's senior-most civilian and military leaders. During the Air Force Association's 2005 Air and Space Conference and Technology Exposition here Sept. 12, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley and acting Secretary of the Air Force Pete Geren discussed recapitalization of the Air Force aircraft inventory. Mr. Geren said the process of recapitalization and modernization can never be finished. "Even if we buy everything we are planning to buy over the next five years, we will still have the oldest (inventory) in the history of the Air Force," he said. "If you fast forward 20 years from now, the CSAF and the SECAF will still be working that problem. “It's particularly critical now because of the age of the (inventory) and the length of time it's been since we have made these kinds of investments, but it will never go away,” the acting secretary said. “There will never be a time where I believe we can be complacent about the need for investment in new technology." Of particular concern today is the Air Force's aging inventory of KC-135 Stratotankers, with an average age of 44 years. General Moseley said it is critical to replace that inventory, as it is the backbone of global reach. "There is nothing we do... without tankers," he said. "The tanker provides the entire joint team (with) reach. Whether you are refueling aircraft off of five carrier battle groups at the peak of Operation Iraqi Freedom, or assets out of the North Arabian Sea at the peak of Operation Enduring Freedom where the targets are 600 miles from a carrier deck, you need the tankers. And you need them to be reliable and to be there." In the past year, Air Force efforts to replace the KC-135 have been delayed because of controversy surrounding the service's acquisition efforts. Mr. Geren said that controversy is in the past now, but the need for a new tanker remains, and the Air Force is committed to working with Congress to find ways to recapitalize the inventory. "(We) recognize in the past there were problems … but we are looking ahead," Mr. Geren said. "We need the program to move ahead. We are committed to recapitalization of the tanker (inventory). We are committed to a transparent process and committed to regaining the confidence of the congress and the American public." Also part of the recapitalization effort are fighter aircraft like the F-15 Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon and A-10 Thunderbolt II. The Air Force has plans to replace the current fighter inventory with aircraft like the F/A-22 Raptor and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Fighter, tanker and cargo aircraft all bring different capabilities to the table, but when they get older, they create similar problems for the Air Force, General Moseley said. "With an aging inventory that begins to cost you more money, you have less operational readiness and less opportunity to deploy the force," the general said. "That's a big deal with us, and it's one of the things that keeps me up at night." Geren: AF fighting three wars [2005-09-13] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force is now fighting three "wars," said the service's senior-most civilian leader. Those three wars are the war on terrorism, the effort to provide disaster relief in the United States, and the push for reform of the Air Force acquisition process, said Pete Geren, acting Secretary of the Air Force, during the Air Force Association's 2005 Air and Space Conference and Technology Exposition here Sept. 12. Mr. Geren said the Air Force is engaged in the war on terrorism 24 hours a day, but many Americans do not see the service's contributions to that fight. "Our support for the global war on terror has been so dependable and successful, to the general public it is almost invisible," he said. The acting secretary assured Airmen gathered at the conference that the Air Force is still engaged in that fight. "Iraq and Afghanistan are seen by the public as Army operations now that the major combat is over," he said. "But the Air Force continues to play a vital role." Mr. Geren said while fighting the war on terrorism, both terrorists and the Air Force have evolved in the way they do business. One example includes the use of the F-16 Fighting Falcon as surveillance aircraft. He said Air National Guard units are using F-16s equipped with targeting pods to target and track enemy weapons and to even track enemy movements. "In some cases, (they are) even spotlighting them with their laser designators, which, while invisible to the insurgents, are clear as day to Soldiers equipped with night-vision goggles," he said. Also a sign of Air Force adaptability is Airmen moving supplies throughout Iraq. Today, Airmen are running some of the supply convoys on the ground, a job traditionally done by the Army. He said there are as many as 2,500 Airmen in Iraq and Afghanistan filling traditional Army billets as drivers, security personnel, communications specialists and fuels technicians. "That's the joint force in action," Mr. Geren said. "Each of those Airmen frees up a Soldier to fill Army-specific billets." In the air, the Air Force is providing more airlift support with C-17 Globemaster III and C-130 Hercules aircraft to reduce the number of ground convoys needed, he said. Airmen are also filling nontraditional roles outside of combat zones. At home and abroad, the Air Force is committed to providing disaster relief, Mr. Geren said. Airmen flew about 1,300 sorties supporting disaster relief for victims of the tsunami in Southeast Asia. In the United States, he said, the Air Force is providing equivalent support to victims along the Gulf Coast. There are as many as 8,000 active duty, Guard and Reserve Airmen working alongside other services and relief agencies to save lives and relieve suffering in the wake of the hurricane. "Our expeditionary nature makes us quick to respond, and your Air Force -- our total force -- (is) a critical part of that joint effort," Mr. Geren said. Airmen working to support relief operations in the gulf region have conducted more than 5,000 rescues, treated more than 6,000 patients in New Orleans, and evacuated more than 27,000 people to safety, he said. Finally, the acting secretary discussed the Air Force's acquisition process. During the past year, the service has been the subject of much scrutiny on Capitol Hill over its acquisition practices. In fact, one senior Air Force official received jail time as a result of inappropriate acquisition activities. Mr. Geren said those issues have led the Air Force to look at new ways of conducting business. "Shortcomings in the way we define and execute our acquisition programs, along with the shameful actions by one of our own, have left us more determined than ever to reform our acquisition process," he said. Mr. Geren said some of the recent problems stem from efforts in the past to streamline the acquisition process by purchasing major systems commercially. Part of that effort also reduced oversight into purchasing. "Doing so, rather than using the traditional acquisition process, meant we could get systems to the field faster," he said. But he also said the Air Force is working now to fix those problems. "We are reducing the number of commercial purchases and are working with the office of the secretary of defense to update procedures for buying commercial items," he said. "Our biggest challenge is instilling greater discipline into the traditional acquisition process." Another solution to the acquisition problem, and something critical to all three wars the Air Force is fighting, is a focus on core values, he said. "In the end, all three of our struggles depend on one thing: the skill, dedication and integrity of our Airmen and their devotion to our core values -- integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all we do." Senior leaders address key issues at conference [2005-09-14] WASHINGTON -- Air Force senior leaders answered questions on topics ranging from the buildup of military power in China to the status of Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., during an open panel discussion here Sept. 13. Six Air Force major command commanders joined Gen. T. Michael Moseley, Air Force chief of staff, to field those questions as part of a four-star forum during the Air Force Association's 2005 Air and Space Conference and Technology Exposition. The generals answered questions from a crowd of several hundred civilians and Airmen. Mobility and tanker studies General Moseley fielded the first question about the status of the air mobility and tanker analysis-of-alternatives studies. He said the air mobility study is now working its way through the Pentagon and includes options for the C-5 Galaxy and the C-130 Hercules aircraft. The study discusses how to properly work the avionics modernization and reliability enhancement and re-engining programs for the C-5, and includes a separate study that discusses problems with the C-130E center wing box and whether that problem could appear in the C-130H. That study also includes discussion on the emerging requirement for a light cargo aircraft. "Out of our experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, I think all of us agree there is some utility in having an aircraft that you can get in and out (of an airfield with a runway) that is about 2,000 or 2,500 feet," General Moseley said. "(If) you can carry two pallets or so and 25 or 30 people … think how useful something like that would be down in the Gulf Coast." The general also discussed the analysis of alternatives for the Air Force tanker replacement program. The AOA is working its way through the Pentagon, and presents several possibilities for how the Air Force can deal with its ageing tanker fleet. "Those options are across the board, from re-engining, from new procurement, to big tankers, medium tankers, across the board options," the general said. "I don't think there is anybody … who would disagree that the key to global mobility; global intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; and global strike, on the air breathing side, is the tanker." The China question Gen. Paul V. Hester, commander of Pacific Air Forces, addressed concerns about the recent military buildup in China. The general said it is impossible to know exactly what China's military is capable of in terms of purchasing power, because the U.S. doesn't know what their budget is. He did say the U.S. is capable of gleaning information about that country's military prowess based on the purchases they make from defense suppliers around the globe and the types of research and development they are doing. General Hester also said it is important for the Air Force to make a determination as to China's long-range plans in the Pacific, and whether they will be an ally in keeping stability in the region or present themselves as rising threat. "That will keep both our intelligence analysts as well as commanders awake at night trying to figure that out," he said. "A misstep in the region will have us in a position where we will be behind." For the United States, General Hester said that officials must work with another growing military power in the region, India, to learn how to support them. Additionally, he said the U.S. must continue work to solidify relations with South Korea and Japan. Hurricane Katrina Hurricane Katrina decimated areas in the southern United States along the Gulf of Mexico. In Mississippi, Keesler Air Force Base, a major training installation for new Airmen, was decimated by winds and water. That installation was shut down after the storm, and formal training conducted there has temporarily stopped. General William R. Looney III, commander of Air Education and Training Command, had visited Keesler twice since the storm. He discussed what is going on at Keesler today, and what will happen in the near future. "(Keesler) has been referred to as a battle zone," he said. "The vast majority of the trees had come down … power was off. There was potable water, which was encouraging, but just about everything else was gone." Training was halted, and more than 1,000 students were evacuated from the installation after the storm, though several hundred were kept at the base as part of the cleanup effort. Several hundred more volunteered to stay, to take part in the cleanup, but were ultimately evacuated. "That's the kind of young Americans we are developing in the U.S. Air Force today," the general said. Recovery work at the base, aided by a Red Horse squadron, resulted in power being returned, air conditioning, and water in the dining halls, all in less than six days, the general said. "It still looks like it has had a rough time, but it is amazing the progress that has been made," he said. Portions of the base, in particular the new buildings at the center of the installation that include student dorms and educational facilities, were left virtually untouched by the hurricane. Those new facilities had been built to withstand storms like Katrina. The general said he expects selected classes to begin again sometime next week, mostly for students training in certain critical fields. General Looney also said he expects to have full training back up in about two months, though there may be difficulty in securing billeting arrangements for permanent party instructors and support personnel. The Total Force Today, the Air Force is involved in the middle of the global war on terrorism, fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, and poised to defend the United States against attack as part of Operation Noble Eagle, said General Moseley. The Air Force is also fighting forest fires, flying hurricane missions and helping with recovery efforts in the Gulf Coast region. That effort does not rest solely on the shoulders of the active duty force, rather, it is a shared effort, he said. He took time to allay suspicions that there are really three Air Forces in the United States, and reinforced the idea that the work done by the flying component of the U.S. military is truly a Total Force effort. "There is a bit of urban myth out there that there is a split between the Guard, the Reserve and the active component. But I don't believe that," General Moseley said. "We are not separate tribes, we are one Air Force. "We are doing this as a Total Force," he said. "And no other air force in the world could do the things you do and that our magnificent Airmen do out there every day." Ensuring the Total Force -- active duty, Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve -- can work together with the greatest efficiency is a challenge, especially with the age of the Air Force aircraft inventory, he said. "We are sitting on the oldest inventory in the history of the Air Force, with the requirement to conduct all these ops simultaneously while recapitalizing and modernizing," the general said. "The reality is we will have less equipment, and the equipment we have got, needs to be replaced." Part of keeping the Total Force efficient and viable means making changes in force structure and expanding synergies by consolidating flying assets. That is part of the purpose of both the 2005 round of Base Realignment and Closure and Future Total Force initiatives. General Moseley said FTF is not about one particular component of the Total Force, but rather, about making things better. "It is not about the active duty Air Force, or the Reserve or the Guard, it is about what's right for the country and what's right for the Total Force," he said. Unmanned aerial vehicles The roles of unmanned aerial vehicles such as the Global Hawk and the MQ-1 Predator are becoming increasingly more important, said General Ronald E. Keys, commander of Air Combat Command. He said as fast as the UAVs are being built they are being put downrange. One reason for the increased importance of a UAV like the Predator is that its use has expanded beyond its original intent. The craft was originally designed as an Intelligence/Surveillance/Reconnaissance aircraft, but it can now be weaponized and has become an integral part of the Air Force arsenal. "They are one of those things where if you had 1,000 of them, I don't think you'd have enough," General Keys said. The challenge however is not in having more Predators, but in getting the information they provide to the right people, in particular, the soldier on the ground, he said. "That's why we have linked up more technology with the UAV … to allow us to get that streaming video down to the (Soldier) on the ground to let them know what's around the corner before they go around the corner," the general said. The Global Hawk is still in operational testing, with about 4,000 combat hours. It is in high demand in the Central Command area of operations, but General Keys said its use could extend to other areas, especially in conducting ISR over the broad expanses of ocean in the Pacific region. "The staring, ruthless persistence these UAVs bring to us, make them particularly suited to that," General Keys said. UAVs also make ideal missions for Guard and Reserve units, he said. Guard and Reserve units involved in UAV missions can be mobilized locally, conducting most of the flying and ISR portions of the mission from their home station. Only a small contingent of Airmen would need to be sent forward to launch and recover those aircraft. Users can log on to Portal with common access card [2005-09-21] WASHINGTON -- Users can now log on to the Air Force Portal using their common access card and personal identification number. This latest change to the Air Force Portal means fewer passwords for users to remember and leads to greater security for Air Force networks, said Maj. David Gindhart of the Air Force warfighting integration and chief information officer directorate at the Pentagon. "We have gone to a newer, easier, more secure way of logging into the Air Force Portal," Major Gindhart said. "The beauty of the CAC login is that it requires you to physically have (a CAC) issued through the proper authorities, and then you have to have the PIN. So it's a two-factor authentication, much stronger than the user ID and password combination." Major Gindhart said getting the Air Force Portal to recognize your CAC is easy. Users should go to the Portal Web site at https://www.my.af.mil and click the "New/existing users start here" link under the "Register Now with CAC" heading. "It'll take a few minutes to associate your CAC with your user ID and password," the major said. "In the background it'll take about 30 minutes for the software to update. From there on out you use the CAC to log in." If users need to log into the Portal from home or any machine without a CAC reader, they will still be able to log in with their password and ID combination, he said. When users use their CAC to access the Portal, they will continue to have access to the reduced sign-on access applications they have set up, such as the Virtual Military Personnel Flight, myPay, Air Force Personnel Center secure, Air Force Virtual Education Center, the fitness management system and more. The Portal will continue to change and improve as the DOD updates requirements for network user authentication, Major Gindhart said. "Where the Portal goes depends on where the DOD goes with identification mechanisms," he said. "Cleary, things like biometrics are the future -- whether it be finger, thumb or retinal scan. Those are things they are looking at." Air Force programs help families rebuild post-Katrina [2005-09-22] WASHINGTON -- Hurricane Katrina is long gone, but civilians and Airmen are still picking up the pieces of their devastated lives. The Air Force helped many civilians in the aftermath of that storm, but it also made sure to take care of its own through Air Force OneSource, family and child development centers and the Air Force Aid Society, said Brenda Liston, Air Force family matters chief. "The Air Force is providing more than half a million (dollars) in Air Force Aid Society assistance to bridge the time of need from the loss of whatever their home had, to reestablishing that home," Ms. Liston said. “We also are providing now, and have provided for weeks after the storm, meals in some of our family centers on base or at some of the recreation centers on base." Ensuring families are taken care of is not only important to the families, but to accomplishing the Air Force's larger mission. Ms. Liston said she understand the Air Force's core value of service before self, but also understands that holding true to that value can be tough when balanced against concern for loved ones. "I think we all know (Airmen) can't do their job the way they should if they are worried about their family," she said. "There is service before self, that has got to happen, and that is why we are here. But can you do it if you are worried about your family and their basic needs? There needs to be the Air Force concern and involvement." Air Force officials are concerned and involved in the lives of families affected by Hurricane Katrina. Today, families who once lived at Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., are scattered around the country, living in hotels, on Air Force bases or with relatives. Air Force programs support those displaced families with "safe-haven allowances." A safe-haven allowance is special compensation the Air Force provides to families that are evacuated from an installation. The allowances help them find food and lodging in the aftermath of disasters like Hurricane Katrina. The amount of the safe-haven allowance is based on family size and other unique factors. The security the allowances bring to a family allows Airmen to get on with the mission, knowing their loved ones are OK, said Senior Master Sgt. William Barauskas, Air Force chief of travel and contingency policy. Airmen at home station are taking care of the mission and cleaning up while the family is taken care of at a safe haven, Sergeant Barauskas said. Families can receive the monetary safe-haven allowance for up to 180 days. The vast network of family support centers at Air Force bases worldwide has also kicked in to help support displaced families of servicemembers. These centers help find clothing for families who may not have taken enough when they evacuated, and helped provide school supplies for children who must now return to a classroom in a new environment. Through programs provided by base family support centers, child development centers and through the Air Force OneSource support line, Airmen and their families receive assistance on how to tap into resources available through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Air Force Aid Society and American Red Cross. Airmen can also learn how to file paperwork and submit claims to their insurance companies -- all programs designed to bring life back to normal. "The Air Force takes care of (its) families," Ms. Liston said. "There is always a worry when you have a family and you can't be right there with them. But thank goodness we have so many resources to support those families." Air Force OneSource is available anytime by phone in the United States at (800) 707-5784, internationally at (800) 7075-7844 or collect at (484) 530-5913. The program is also available in Spanish at (800) 375-5971 and to the hearing-impaired, via TTY/TDD at (800) 346-9188. Airmen may also visit the program Web site at www.airforceonesource.com. The site requires customers to log on by using “airforce” as the user ID and “ready” as the password. Volunteers give comfort by sewing [2005-10-03] ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Sewing circles are not a thing of the past. On Tuesday nights, in a suburb just outside of Washington, D.C., a half-dozen women -- sometimes more -- gather to talk about their week, share a few laughs and sew. They are not sewing for themselves or their families, however. They are volunteers of the relatively new "Sew Much Comfort" program that began earlier this year. Together, they help modify clothing for use by servicemembers in military hospitals nationwide. Most servicemembers return from an overseas deployment in one piece, but some are not so lucky. Improvised explosive devices, land mines, grenades and weapons fire all contribute to loss of life and limb for American servicemembers abroad. Those who do return home after having lost limbs or suffering burns to their bodies often face long recoveries in military hospitals. "You cannot go to one of these hospitals and talk to one of these Soldiers and not be moved and not want to do everything in your power to help," said Maj. Sandra Edens, an Air Force reservist assigned to the Pentagon and a Sew Much Comfort volunteer. She also serves as program coordinator for the East Coast region. "This is something I do -- I sew," Major Edens said. "You can take out your checkbook and write a check, but this is something I can sit down and put a little of myself into." For some military patients, a long stay in the hospital means wearing nothing but hospital gowns for a long time. Medical equipment, like a fixator on a damaged leg, makes it impossible to put on a pair of pants. And for those with burns on their bodies, pulling on a shirt can prove very painful, Major Edens said. "With burn victims, their skin is very sensitive," she said. "And a fixator is an external brace, like a metal halo. It's big, and you can't put your foot through a normal pant leg." Sew Much Comfort volunteers modify civilian clothing to circumvent those issues. Seams are ripped out of shirts, shorts, pants and underwear. In their place, volunteers put fabric fasteners or snaps, depending on the individual needs of a servicemember, Major Edens said. The adjustments to the clothes allow servicemembers burdened with medical equipment or burns to put on a regular pair of pants or shirt and toss the hospital gown aside, if only for a few hours. It also makes it easier for them to get dressed without assistance. "With the openings in the modified clothing, you can kind of drape it around instead of having to move and manipulate into the clothing," Major Edens said. "It's all about trying to make them more comfortable, and help them dress themselves. It just gives them more independence." Master Sgt. Yvette Smith, a reservist at Bolling Air Force Base, D.C., volunteers about three hours a week with the Sew Much Comfort program. She recently underwent treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center where she encountered injured servicemembers who had returned from overseas. "I wished I could do something to help them," she said. "For me, it was about being able to do something, to give back a little bit, and to make somebody's life a little bit easier. “I know we are just making shorts and pants, but these guys have been through so much,” she added. “With these little pieces, I hope I can help a little bit. That's what I get out of this -- to help one troop that came back injured." Sew Much Comfort takes requests for specially modified clothing through the program's Web site and from nurses or family members. Also, program volunteers who deliver clothing to those in need talk to other patients. "They are really good about talking to them," Major Edens said. "If they see somebody new who has an injury, they talk to them about what they need. We also take extra stuff and leave it with points of contact at the hospitals to distribute as needed." Requests even come from servicemembers themselves through e-mail, especially when they want to leave the hospital to spend time with their families, said Capt. Angie Robertson, a Sew Much Comfort volunteer assigned to the Pentagon. "We had this one guy e-mail us who wanted a pair of shorts so he could go to Disney World with his family, which was pretty cool," Captain Robertson said. Captain Robertson volunteered for the Sew Much Comfort program to give something back to her country. But in doing so, she said she found something more. When she signed up to help out, she did not know any of the other volunteers. Now that they have worked together, they know each other well. "That’s fun, because you create a sisterhood. (It is) a bonding moment for us as we are doing something good for our country," she said. The Sew Much Comfort program began in early 2005 through the efforts of Ginger Dosedel, wife of Lt. Col. Stefan Dosedel. Mrs. Dosedel runs the program from their home near Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. Volunteers for the program are located in several locations throughout the United States, including Iowa, Florida, Colorado and Alabama. There is even an additional group in Washington, D.C. Since February, the program has provided between 1,500 and 2,000 items to injured servicemembers. Major Edens said the program currently needs money, volunteers to sew clothing and donations of civilian clothing like shirts, sweatshirts, pants and underwear. Clothing donations should be new and in large sizes. Volunteers interested in Sew Much Comfort, or those wanting to make donations can find out more information at http://sewmuchcomfort.org. Capability assessment helps AF prepare for future [2005-10-05] WASHINGTON -- Air Force leaders use a future capabilities assessment to assist in planning for 2025 and beyond. More than 100 participants from the Air Force's planning, operations, research and development communities gathered Oct. 4 in Herndon, Va., to play out scenarios that may threaten the United States in years to come. Together, those leaders discussed how the Air Force of the future will defend America against threats with the tools it has now. They also discussed what new tools the Air Force will need to fight future threats, said Col. Gail Wojtowicz, division chief for future concepts and transformation of the Air Force plans and programs directorate. "We are looking at the 2025 time frame and asking what does the Air Force look like 20 years from now," she said. "In the next 20 years, we don't know exactly what it is we will be doing, but we know there are some challenges that we will have to focus on fixing." This year, those gathered at the assessment focused on two key areas the Air Force believes it can improve: long-range strike capabilities and persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Long-range strike capability is the ability to reach out across the globe and hit a target. That could mean a gravity weapon used by today’s aircraft, or it could mean use of a space weapon 25 years from now. "Long range strike is the key to everything for us," Colonel Wojtowicz said. "We don't do it as well as we'd like, but we do it better than everybody on the globe. If I want to do long-range strike against country X, today it may be a B-2 [Spirit] delivering a gravity weapon. Twenty years from now it may be a space weapon. So I am calling space command, and they are going to go ahead and put hardware on targets. Our challenge is we need to reach across different stovepipes in the Air Force." Colonel Wojtowicz also said long-range strike could mean a computer attack on an enemy's command and control networks, or use of a high-powered microwave for the purpose of disrupting network systems. Persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance is the ability to monitor an enemy 24 hours a day with an unblinking eye. It is a capability the Air Force is going to need in the future and something discussed at the assessment to end Oct. 6. "You are going to have to be able to stare in order to find the things we are looking for," Colonel Wojtowicz said. "If you can't find where the nuclear weapons are, if you don't have the eyes to do that, there is no way you can affect it later on." During the assessment, participants were given scenarios to play out that involve finding nuclear weapons inside enemy territory. Persistent ISR may be one capability they discover they will need to locate that weapon. Today, the Air Force has not fully developed persistent ISR that allows it to look deep inside enemy territory. Unmanned aerial vehicles that fly along a nation's borders cannot peer deep enough inside to see what the Air Force needs to see. In space, orbiting satellites’ revisit rate is not enough to provide persistent ISR, and there are places where satellites cannot operate in a geosynchronous orbit. One solution to providing persistent ISR includes balloons floating in "near space," an area about 18 miles above the surface. That is significantly higher than where a UAV may fly, but not as high as a satellite. "Currently what we have is weather balloons," Colonel Wojtowicz said. "You have things that look down (with) cameras or we can use them as a communications relay point. Something that high up gives you an incredible amount of range that you can see." In the past, the future's capability assessment has been called a "war game." Today, it is more of a guided strategic discussion about the Air Force's future capabilities. Participants are challenged with any number of future wartime scenarios and will be called upon to find solutions to those scenarios. "These are challenges we have to have our senior leaders address today, so we have the tools to affect these things 20 years down the road," Colonel Wojtowicz said. Air Force named executive agent for Katrina-related funds [2005-10-05] WASHINGTON -- In a recent memorandum, defense officials named the Air Force as the executive agent for Hurricane Katrina funding. As the executive agent, Air Force officials will ensure services within the Department of Defense are reimbursed for expenses incurred while providing Hurricane Katrina relief support, said John Vonglis, acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for financial management and comptroller. "It is financial management oversight for the reimbursable phase of Katrina," Mr. Vonglis said. "When we do work as a department for the benefit of the victims of Katrina, we have to get reimbursed for it. (We) would then have to seek out those funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the Department of Homeland Security, or whoever is going to provide those funds. "When FEMA tasks a DOD organization to perform a mission, reimbursable agreements need to put in place, costs tracked and FEMA must be billed," Mr. Vonglis added. "As executive agent we are ensuring those processes are in place and sound financial practices are followed. "We are mostly trying to act as a clearing house for the departments that go through one focal point, and that focal point is the Air Force," Mr. Vonglis said. It is expected that the Air Force, as executive agent, will recoup as much as $1.6 billion back into the DOD. The fact that the Air Force was chosen to act as executive agent for that funding is a positive reflection of the service and the quality of the work it can provide, Mr. Vonglis said. "I think it is just another display of what the Air Force can do and its capabilities," he said. "It is reflective of our superb skill in financial management, our people skills, our processes and our systems." Moseley: We are moving towards interdependence with sister services [2005-10-13] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force’s future path requires more jointness and interdependence between the total force, sister services and coalition partners. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley spoke Oct. 11 about this vision for the future of the Air Force, but began with a vision of its recent past. The Air Force has been at war now for nearly 15 years, he said. Conflict kicked off in January 1991 in Iraq and Kuwait with Operation Desert Storm. Since then, the general said, the Air Force has been continuously engaged in places like the no-fly zones over Iraq, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan -- and once again, Iraq. "This is the most combat experienced American air force we've had since the end of World War II," General Moseley said. The Air Force’s newly appointed military leader said he doesn't see a break in that trend. In fact, he thinks demands on the Air Force, its sister services and America's coalition partners will go on for a long time. "This country is at war, and we are at war with a very adaptive, very lethal opponent," he said. "It is my sense that we will be in a global war on terrorism for our lifetime. This is a long war -- it will ebb and flow. We will deal with this as a joint team, we will deal with this as a coalition team with international partners, and we will deal with this as an interagency team." Working in the joint environment will force the Air Force to find new ways to work together with sister services and to share resources that in the past they may not have. In fact, it wasn't until recently that interdependence between military services began to take on a more important role, the general said. "We've truly evolved beyond just staying out of each others way, or de-conflicting activity," he said. "Up until Desert Storm, we made an art out of de-conflicting. In the Desert Storm time frame, we began to integrate a bit -- to not just stay out of each other's way. We worked very hard on integration." Finding ways to improve integration is one of General Moseley's priorities for his tenure as chief of staff. Some examples of that include a light cargo aircraft the Air Force is looking into with the Army, and the sharing of aerial surveillance aircraft, like the Global Hawk, with the Navy. "It makes perfect sense to continue to continue to partner, even in a more aggressive way, with land component, maritime component, and special operations component activities," General Moseley said. "We have lots and lots of data to show this is the right way to do it." Moseley: Air Force needs to bolster intelligence cadre [2005-10-20] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force can do a better job training and maintaining the Airmen that gather, process and distribute military intelligence, the Air Force chief of staff said. Gen. T. Michael Moseley said there are not enough Airmen working in military intelligence. And the Air Force must do a better job ensuring the intelligence troops it has are equipped to work in multinational and joint environments. When it gets the right people to fill intelligence jobs, the general said the Air Force must ask itself if it has matched the right conditions to the skills needed. This is an area in which the service can improve, he said. General Moseley said the Air Force should focus on developing the regional and operational skills in all its intelligence Airmen. "I believe we can do better in our languages. And I believe we can do better on experiences," he said. "And I believe we can do better inside the interagency and in the joint world to grow intelligence officers that are more flexible and adaptive in this global war on terrorism." The general said moving Airmen -- like between operational, staff and joint positions -- would better prepare them to become leaders in their career fields. This would best prepare them for working in combined and joint environments. Military intelligence is critical to military operations, General Moseley said. Military intelligence Airmen gather information about America's enemies during peacetime and wartime. They analyze and package the information for military leaders, commanders and war planners. This helps them develop military operations or policy. "Intelligence today is an incredible force multiplier,” the general said. “Because with good intelligence, almost all things are possible." The military cannot afford bad intelligence, he said. So the future of this vital community depends on the Air Force being able to develop a cadre that is something beyond “where we've been in the past,” he said. To do that, the service must be able to teach, mentor, expose and develop its people. “That's one of the challenges that I'm working real time to make happen," the general said. Air Force must stay the course with FTF, AEF [2005-11-02] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force must transform through Future Total Force and stay the course with the Air and Space Expeditionary Force concept, said the directors of the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard. The Future Total Force concept is the Air Force's plan to better integrate the Air National Guard, Air Force Reserve and active duty components. While some of the changes proposed under the FTF concept have caused concern within the Air Force reserve component community, FTF must still happen, said the chief of Air Force Reserve and commander of Air Force Reserve Command, Lt. Gen. John A. Bradley. "FTF creates turmoil for people, but it is the right thing to do," he said. "The FTF is going to help us organize our Air Force and help get the active duty, the ANG, and Air Force Reserve in the right mixture of equipment and personnel across America. We will be a better Air Force 10-15 years from now because of the hard work we are doing today." Under the FTF plan, some missions, including aircraft missions, may be eliminated or moved to other installations. One reason for those kind of moves is to reduce the inefficiencies that come from maintaining many small units of aircraft, said General Bradley. "We are trying to get the right number of airplanes on our bases so we don't have small enclaves of airplanes. It is inefficient, not economical," he said. "Looking at the future, we need to have the right number of fighters, tankers, and (airlift aircraft) on our bases." The Air Force has also worked to develop new missions for units that may lose missions. These new missions involve space, satellites, monitoring of space objects and unmanned aerial vehicles. "We are trying hard to get them another job, because we want to keep these people," General Bradley said. Also part of the future of the Air Force is continuation of the AEF concept. The concept has been in place now for more than a decade. Changing it now may cause trouble with recruiting and retention, said Air National Guard director, Lt. Gen. Daniel James III. "I'm hearing a lot of talk, and it really concerns me that people are talking about changing the AEF," General James said. "We have a system that … has worked for us for the last ten-plus years. I think it is a mistake to approach a system that works in one of the services and try to mold it into a system so that we look like the others." General James said modifying AEF rotations too much, to coincide with sister service rotations, would have a negative impact on volunteerism in the Air National Guard. SECAF: Integrity first [2005-11-04] WASHINGTON -- The newly confirmed Secretary of the Air Force has set a strong emphasis on both individual and organizational responsibility and accountability -- one of his goals for his tenure. "We have to … continuously emphasize the integrity of purpose and integrity of the individual," Secretary Michael W. Wynne said. "The Air Force core values are … to be revered." Accountability is nothing new to the Air Force. It is inherent in the service's core values -- values memorized and recited by Airmen from their first few days in military training. "If you think about it and move through them in a deliberate way, 'integrity first' is a very good way of saying let's be accountable for our actions and let's set personal standards and adhere to them," Secretary Wynne said. Accountability in the Air Force stretches across many areas, from the individual actions of Airmen in the workplace to actions taken by those in the acquisition community that spend taxpayer dollars to equip the Air Force, said Secretary Wynne. The secretary is looking to "put in place a governance and transparency so that we foster a process oversight that maybe we never had before. Say what you are going to do, and do what you say. Set a standard and then adhere to the standard. I think in (most places) it is already there," the Secretary said. In the past few years, there have been several issues that have caused some to question the service's commitment to its core values. Secretary Wynne says the formula for regaining and keeping confidence in the Air Force is simple. "If we can sustain the mutual respect and integrity, and have people accountable to the standard, we will drive away a lot of our critics," he said. "Our critics will become bored with people who set high standards and then adhere to those high standards." Mr. Wynne was sworn in as the 21st Secretary of the Air Force Nov. 3 during a ceremony at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo. Wynne: Air Force needs more joint role [2005-11-08] WASHINGTON -- Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne said as the Air Force evolves to a new global war on terrorism era he wants it to participate in more joint operations. The Air Force is operating “as a joint service, right now -- today," the secretary said. But he said the service needs to foster a more joint approach. "Looking to take missions instead of … waiting to be asked,” said the secretary, who took office Nov. 3. “This is a change we are going to go through over time. I think we need to be ready for it." Currently, the Air Force deploys more than 300 aircraft and 24,000 Airmen in support of the war on terror. This includes providing air mobility and refueling, indirect fire, security missions and training, tactical communications, contracting, close air support, intelligence, aeromedical evacuation and convoy operations in Iraq. But the secretary wants Airmen to do more. Instead of “waiting to be joint,” Mr. Wynne wants the Air Force to be “aggressively pursuing joint." "Aggressively pursuing joint is different,” he said. “We have been very patient, frankly, in (asking) should our lane be essentially the lane we have been in." Mr. Wynne said, now the question is whether the Air Force should encroach more on unfamiliar territory and begin to ask “can we do that job?” "Our quest for more jointness should also be inventive,” he said. He has two goals aimed at helping the Air Force move towards more joint operations. The first is persistent situational awareness. The second is development of trained and battle-ready Airmen. "The trained and battle-ready Airmen has to do with -- are we training our Airmen to be joint, both in the noncommissioned officer ranks and within the officer ranks?" Secretary Wynne asked. "Can we train better to facilitate joint, as we think about the Air Force in the future? I think we need to take a look at that in a very different way." Persistent situational awareness is always being aware of what is going on both inside and outside the battle space, he said. That includes everything from keeping the lines of communication open to the warfighter, to knowing at all times the state of maintenance on weapons systems, to knowing how much money is left in the budget. Tuskegee Airmen get Air Force update [2005-11-15] WASHINGTON -- Members of the famed Tuskegee Airmen visited the Pentagon to learn about today's Air Force and visit with the secretary of defense. The Airmen visited Nov. 10. One pioneering Airman, retired Lt. Col. Howard Baugh, took time to reflect on the changes in the military since the day he joined in 1942. "Back in the '40s and prior to that, the military services of the United States were the most racist and segregated segment of our society," Colonel Baugh said. "Today, it is the most fair and integrated segment of our society. “And the Armed Forces are leading the rest of society in acceptance and tolerance of diversity in our society," he said. Today, the colonel said, the military brings together all segments of society -- blending the boundaries of race, religion and ethnicity. "They learn together, they live together, and they realize after a while that the differences in people are small, few and insignificant," he said. During their Airmen listen to Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. John D. W. Corley discuss the priorities of today's Air Force. One of those priorities is maintaining a healthy and modern aircraft fleet. General Corley said as Air Force aircraft age, it becomes more difficult and more costly to provide air power to the joint force. "Our adversaries ... in the world are investing in things new and are starting to approach parity with us in things aviation," General Corley said. "We can't let that stand." General Corley also discussed the Air Force’s contributions to the joint fight in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world. "We are not just deployed and conducting combat operations in (the Central Command area of responsibility) of Iraq and Afghanistan," he said. "We are doing it all over the world today. “We are flying satellites, 24/7, 365 days a year,” he said. “We have forward deployed presence all the way to the Pacific and across every inch of this globe. We are going to continue with that struggle, and are going to continue to underpin this nation and its ability to fight the war." General Corley said that to date, the Air Force has flown more than 200,000 sorties in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and more than 130,000 sorties in support of Operation Enduring Freedom -- and dropped more than 20,000 bombs. The Tuskegee Airmen had lunch with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and toured the Pentagon. The Tuskegee Airmen formed in 1941 when the Army Air Force began a program to train black Americans as military pilots at Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute. Supplemental deployment health assessment starts in December [2005-11-30] WASHINGTON -- Airmen returning from deployment now have two opportunities to let healthcare workers know of their mental and physical health status. Beginning in December, the Air Force will require all Airmen returning from deployments to complete a post-deployment health reassessment. The PDHRA needs to be completed between 90 and 180 days after returning home from a deployment. The PDHRA complements the post-deployment health assessment, which Airmen complete at the end of their deployments. The PDHRA is another layer of assessment meant to capture information about mental and physical health issues that may not have materialized immediately upon a return home, said Lt. Col. Jim Favret, the clinical consultant to the Air Force Surgeon General for the biomedical science corps. "The PDHRA enhances the existing procedures we have to monitor the health of our Airmen," he said. "It is an additional tool we are about to put in place to check the health of our Airmen after deployment." On paper, the PDHRA is a four-page Department of Defense form called DD2900. That document is already available online. But Airmen will not fill out the paper form. Instead, some 90 days after returning from overseas, their unit deployment manager will send them a link to a Web-based version of the form. The results of an Airman's PDHRA will be sent to his or her medical treatment facility for review. At the Airman's request, or as the result of a determination made by someone reviewing their assessment, an Airman may be called in to discuss potential health concerns with a medical professional. "If folks indicate they are experiencing some symptoms, then they will have an opportunity to meet with a health care provider who will do a more in-depth assessment," Colonel Favret said. "Then we will provide them with follow-up care if it is needed." The PDHRA gathers information from Airmen about their current health status with questions similar to what might be filled out when visiting a doctor's office. For instance, the assessment provides a list of symptoms Airmen can select. There are also questions about injuries or wounds sustained during deployment and potential exposure to environmental hazards. The assessment also asks questions about an Airman's interaction with his or her family, use of alcohol, and experiences while on deployment. "Have you had any experience that was so frightening, horrible, or upsetting that, in the past month, you felt numb or detached from others, activities, or your surroundings?" one question asks. "This PDHRA has a lot more focus on mental health issues," Colonel Favret said. "The Air Force wants to send the message to folks that it is perfectly normal that at different points in our lives we have mental health concerns, especially after a stressful deployment, and that it is okay to acknowledge that and to seek help." While the PDHRA is not a substitute for a consultation with a medical professional, it is another opportunity for Airmen to let the Air Force know about their health status. And it is another opportunity to catch something serious before it can escalate. "The health of servicemembers is a critical part of being mission ready," Colonel Favret said. "I think this will help Airmen by giving them an opportunity to express concerns and problems they are having and have them addressed by a health care provider as they emerge." The paper version of the PDHRA can be found at: www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/infomgt/forms/forminfo/forminfopage3292.html. Conference paves way for efficient Air Force [2005-12-13] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force is looking to civilian companies to find ways to streamline itself, eliminate waste and save money in the process. Civilian companies like General Electric and Toyota have been successfully using process improvement programs to cut waste and increase efficiency. Now the Air Force plans to adapt some of that thinking to benefit its own activities. During a Dec. 13 to 14 conference at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Air Force leaders will plan the service's effort to become leaner. Lean is a business process strategy that aims to eliminate waste, save time and money and refocus the Air Force's resources on its core mission, said Michael L. Dominguez, assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs. "We have got to continue to deliver our combat capabilities every day around the globe. And they have got to be done in a standard way and have got to be done with absolute safety and precision," Mr. Dominguez said. "We are going to bring in Air Force leadership to try and build that implementation process." Mr. Dominguez said attendees will spend the first day of the conference learning about the concept’s principles and application. The second day, they will discuss how they may apply what they have learned. "We will do that by balancing (our) needs with the need for innovation and imagination and for streamlining processes and changing how we operate," Mr. Dominguez said. "At the same time, (we will be) inventing the governing process. That is the principal task of this gathering of Air Force leaders." Fundamental to some of the processes is eliminating waste -- anything that does not add value to what is being produced. In the Air Force, it is anything that does not add value to the core mission or is not closely connected to the core mission. Determining what adds value to a process is crucial to optimizing the process. Some practitioners may make a "spaghetti diagram" of a maintenance process, or any process, and include all the steps taken to achieve the end result -- like a mission-ready B-2 Spirit, for example. They then ask what steps are actually adding value to the end result, and which steps could be removed. "You look at the mechanic who is doing the value added work on the shop floor and you are mapping the steps they go through, including walking to tool control, getting materials, and how efficiently the work is organized," said Col. Paul Dunbar, the Air Force deputy director for innovation and transformation. "We ask, ‘Have we done things efficiently in the way we have set that up? Are our folks who are doing the value-added work also the hunters and gatherers for tools and information and materials? Are we bringing that support to them?’" the colonel said. Faced with those question, Colonel Dunbar said, “You can redesign a work process so an Airmen whose expertise is taking care of a B-2 can focus on the value-added work of doing that and are not standing in line for tools or filling out forms. That type of thinking results in work getting done faster, more efficiently and with less waste. And that saves money.” The Air Force started implementing optimization practices in the late 1990s in air logistics centers and other aircraft maintenance areas. For example, at the Warner-Robins Air Logistics Center, Robins Air Force Base, Ga., it reduced the number of days to move a C-5 Galaxy through the overhaul process from 339 to 171. The time savings was realized, in part, by reducing travel time for mechanics by as much as 60 percent. That freed up one dock to overhaul additional aircraft. There were other examples of streamlining. McChord Air Force Base, Wash., reduced cycle time in the Galaxy wheel and tire shop by 67 percent. Isochronal inspection time on the Galaxy at Dover AFB, Del., was cut from 33 to 19 days, saving about $300,000 per aircraft. And Langley AFB, Va. and Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, reduced F-15 Eagle phase inspection time by 30 percent. To date, optimization practices have been applied mostly in the maintenance arena. But Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne wants it to spread throughout the Air Force to business, contracting, medical, personnel and other "white collar" work. Major command vice commanders at the conference will be the front-line fighters in implementing such practices throughout the Air Force. The Air Force will make some of the streamlining decisions. But in large part, decisions on how to apply such practices will come from major command leaders, and even individual Airmen who are actually involved in the work of the Air Force, Mr. Dominguez said. "There is innovation at the major commands and at the wings," Mr. Dominguez said. "Those Airmen out there know where time and money is wasted and how the job could be done better." This isn't the first time the Air Force has looked at the way it does business to find ways to streamline. In the early 1990s, the Air Force adopted Total Quality Management, sometimes referred to as "Quality Air Force." TQM and the lean processes are in some ways similar, Mr. Dominguez said. "The goals of TQM and a lean continuous process improvement are the same in that sense," he said. "Let's remove waste. Let's remove inefficiency. Let's take steps out of the process that don't actually add value and are legacies of the past. “The concepts are similar,” he said. “They are about being the best national security value for the dollar anywhere on the planet. The techniques or approach is going to be significantly different, however." Mr. Dominguez said some of the TQM effects may have had the desired result, but he acknowledges that the process may have left a bad taste in the mouths of some Air Force leaders. Instead new efficiency practices will put the mission of the Air Force at the center and will result in a leaner Air Force -- but one that makes it easier for Airmen to do their job, Mr. Dominguez said. "Combat capability is at the heart of this," he said. "Part of that combat capability is the work life and the quality of the work life of the Airmen, military and civilian, active, National Guard and Air Force Reserve, who are doing that work. We are going to wring cost and inefficiency out of the system, but we are not going to make their lives harder. We are not going to balance the books on the backs of Airmen." Colonel Dunbar believes the Air Force is well suited to adapt to process improvement practices. He said they are about efficiency and about setting and maintaining standards, while also keeping the primary focus on the core mission. "This isn't just about bringing in business practices and treating the Air Force like a business," Colonel Dunbar said. "This is bringing in tools and principles of how we do work and how we eliminate waste in a way that fits our culture -- and this can fit us.” The colonel said, “This is about standards and best practices, and we understand that because we are a culture of compliance. We understand standards and we've got a training system we can leverage.” Wynne: Instill Airmen with opportunity for change [2005-12-14] WASHINGTON -- The secretary of the Air Force said the service will embark on an effort to improve itself by using private sector developed process optimization tools to become more efficient. Two optimization tools are Lean and Six Sigma. Corporations like Toyota and General Electric have used them to catapult themselves to the top of their industries. At conference at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., on Dec. 14, Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne told major commands vice commanders he understands that accepting change in the Air Force would be difficult. Organizations that are in many ways already excellent often have a difficult time understanding how they can improve, he said. "It is the most difficult process to absorb in a successful organization," he said. "Because that organization, as an organization, has little understanding of why their success needs to be altered." Secretary Wynne told the conference attendees they were chosen to be the first to learn about the Air Force's efforts to improve itself because they were most suited to accepting change, seeing what needed to be changed, and ultimately implementing change. "You walk into an organization, being the type-A personalities that you are, and the first thing when you look around you say, ‘What needs change around here?," he said. "That's why you are here, and why I can't have you delegate this down. Others may not see change the way you do. The other thing about this is I need for you to pass down and infect people with the opportunity for change. This is about open season on process." Secretary Wynne said he understand some Airmen may believe that tools like Lean and Six Sigma are only for commercial businesses. But even the Air Force can benefit from applying the lessons that business has learned, he said. "Some think, 'Lean and Six Sigma ... that applies to a corporation. We are not a corporation. We are a service organization,'" Secretary Wynne said. "And they are right. We are a service. Learning to do that service better, more effectively, is what we are all about. Making sure we don't waste a single Airman doing something that he shouldn't be doing is where it's at." Applying tools like Lean and Six Sigma to the Air Force is about eliminating waste and finding optimal tolerances for processes so the Air Force can seek excellence in what it does. Teaching senior leaders to build a better Air Force using those tools is the purpose of the conference, Mr. Wynne said. "We are here because we need a more effective organization to address the trials and tribulations of the future," he said. "We are here because we need to deliver a more efficient and effective Air Force on behalf of the taxpayer." Before turning the conference over to other Air Force leaders experienced with tools like Lean and Six Sigma, Secretary Wynne asked conference attendees to imagine themselves as kings or queens for a day. He asked them to imagine what they would change immediately about their organizations, or the organizations above them, if they only had the power. "If you were king or queen for a day, would you reduce the number of people in a combined air operations center?" he said. "Would you shorten up the lines of command authority? "Do your mission better," he said. "That is what I want to hear from you, and that is what this is all about." Air Force makes changes to BAH policy [2005-12-16] WASHINGTON -- Beginning in January, the Air Force and the other military services will eliminate geographic rate protection for the basic allowance for housing. Over the last five years, geographic rate protection meant BAH rates around military communities could never drop, even when estimates for median housing costs in an area suggested they should. Under the current system, new arrivals at an installation would receive the protected BAH rate, even if housing rates in the area had dropped and adequate housing was available for them at a lower cost. In 2006, BAH rates will fluctuate yearly based on housing cost estimates made from data collected regionally by military housing offices. The budget-conscious move by the Department of Defense is designed to save money at a time when resources are tight. Under the new system, people who remain in an area will never see a lowering of their individual BAH rate. That policy, called individual rate protection, is designed to ensure Airmen and other military members who have already established homes aren't faced with a cut in their BAH rate. Individual rate protection is designed to protect Airmen when the median housing rates in an area drop but landlords don't lower rents to match them. Individual rate protection ensures Airmen will always receive ample funding to remain in the homes they have established, and at the same time provides DOD a common-sense way to fund that allowance. But the policy will create situations where two military members of the same rank and with the same dependent status may receive different BAH rates. Individual rate protection allows in-place members to keep their BAH rate for a region while BAH rates in the area may fall. So a newcomer can get the same quality of housing at a lower cost. "When you signed your lease, you were locked into a rate in a housing market that had a higher cost, on average," said Capt. Charles Parada, chief of the Air Force's basic allowance for housing program. "But a newcomer could face a lower-cost market." Captain Parada says whatever BAH rate a member receives at a new duty station will be fair. "The new BAH program will always allow you to afford adequate housing for your grade and dependency status in the current market," he said. Captain Parada also said that all members in a region are entitled to increases in the BAH rate as they occur. Besides changes to rate protection, there are two additional changes to BAH coming for the Air Force and other services in the 2006. The first is the elimination of the BAH differential for members living off base. The second is a change to in-transit BAH rates for new Airmen. "What members will be paid now is a BAH rate with dependents, versus the BAH differential," Captain Parada said. "In most cases, the new rate will be an increase for members, though in some areas it may be lower." The BAH differential is a flat rate, based on grade, paid to members who are paying court-ordered child support. In 2006, the differential will no longer exist for members residing off base. Instead, they will receive the BAH with-dependents rate, even if they have no dependents in their home. Because the BAH with-dependents rate fluctuates region to region, some members in low-cost housing markets may receive less money than they had with the flat-rate BAH differential, though the situation occurs in few areas, Captain Parada said. The BAH differential rate will also be eliminated outside the United States. But there, members receive an overseas housing allowance, or OHA, instead of the Stateside BAH. Like in the United States, with the elimination of the BAH differential, members overseas residing off base will begin receiving the OHA with-dependent rate. But unlike in the United States, overseas members do not always receive the full OHA. Instead, they receive only that amount they spend on rent. For those members, it will be impossible to extract the extra benefit provided by an OHA with-dependent rate to use toward child support. Captain Parada said the move was the best possible solution found by DOD to provide the best benefit to the most members. "All four services had to come to an agreement on these issues, to find a solution most equitable for the most members," he said. "This was the best solution to benefit most members." Under the new plan for BAH differential, members entitled to the differential will continue to receive it if they live in government quarters. A final change to military BAH policy involves new military members who are traveling from their initial training location to their first duty station. When new accessions to the Air Force travel from their initial training location to their first duty station, they are said to be "in transit." Most new Airmen who are single receive the BAH II rate, commonly called "BAH in transit." Like the BAH differential, BAH II is a flat rate, tied only to a member's rank. Today, almost all new unaccompanied Airmen receive the BAH II rate as they travel to their first duty station. That group of Airmen includes officer training school graduates (non-prior service) and basic trainees. The exception has been Airmen coming out of the Air Force Academy. Those new officers, upon graduation, received the full BAH rate based on housing costs in Colorado Springs, Colo., the location of the school. In 2006, Air Force Academy graduates will begin receiving only the BAH II rate until they arrive at their new duty station. That change was based on what other services were paying to their service academy graduates and on a general perception of equity among all military members, Captain Parada said. "All accessions will now be treated equally across the Air Force and across all services," Captain Parada said. "DOD decided to unify the policy so everybody was doing the same thing. They decided they will pay the Academy folks the BAH II rate in line with other services and other accessions." Captain Parada said that under the new policy, new members with dependents continue to be entitled to full BAH. Members with questions on BAH payments should visit the BAH website at: https://secureapp2.hqda.pentagon.mil/perdiem Members with questions on the process used to set BAH rates should contact their local housing office. An e-mail account has been set up to take questions: BAH.hotline@pentagon.af.mil. Implementation of BRAC begins this year [2005-12-27] WASHINGTON -- Now that the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure commission has approved, modified or disapproved the Office of the Secretary of Defense's recommendations for the 2005 round of base realignment and closure, the individual services must plan the implementation of those recommendations. The Air Force will be responsible, or will be "the business manager," for planning implementation of 63 BRAC recommendations. Col. James P. Holland, director of the Air Force's BRAC program management office, is spearheading that effort. His office "stood up" in October and is chartered to work through Sept 15, 2011. That is the official date when the Air Force is required by law to have implemented the approved recommendations. "In simple terms, BRAC PMO is to implement the recommendations handed down by the BRAC commission," Colonel Holland said. "That involves many things ... relocating the missions as the commission directs ... and moving people and resources." Some recommendations involve moving aircraft from one installation to another. Planning for that, Colonel Holland said, might be one of the easier tasks facing the BRAC PMO, especially if it is just a few aircraft to be moved to an installation that already supports them. "The easiest part is actually moving the aircraft, and we do that at the very end," he said. "For instance, within the Air National Guard it is something just as simple as moving three to six jets from one location to another." But most of the approved BRAC recommendations will not be so easy to implement. For instance, some installations might not yet be ready to support their new missions. "We have to look at the ability of the facilities and the installation as a whole to be able to accept the new missions," Colonel Holland said. "We look at the support facilities, housing, medical care, child care, physical fitness facilities, commissary and exchanges, for instance. Can the community as a whole -- not only on the base, but also the external community -- accept these new missions in a timely manner?" Organizations similar to the BRAC PMO exist, by law, in the other services as well. Another challenge of implementing BRAC will be to work with those organizations to implement BRAC changes that involve multiple services, Colonel Holland said. The Air Force has 63 recommendations it is responsible for planning, and many of them involve more than just the Air Force. The BRAC PMO must work with the other services to plan those, Colonel Holland said. "One of our goals was to increase jointness," Colonel Holland said of BRAC. "So we are doing many (projects) with the Army and the Navy." For instance, the 7th Special Forces Group, currently headquartered at Fort Bragg, N.C., will be moved to Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. "That will involve moving approximately 1,300 U.S. Army troops onto Eglin Air Force Base," Colonel Holland said. The BRAC PMO must help pave the way for Eglin to accept that new mission, and it will work hand-in-hand with the Army to ensure a smooth transition, he said. Of course, BRAC PMO members will not be involved in the exacting, detailed planning for constructing a new building at a base to house a new unit. And it will not plan where individual Airmen will live, or what building they will move to or even when they will travel to their new location. That kind of detailed planning will be left to the subordinate units most affected by the approved BRAC recommendation. The job of the BRAC PMO will be to set general guidelines, plan timetables, set deadlines and manage funding to ensure the moves happen correctly. "What we do is build the program action directive," Colonel Holland said. "The (directive) lays out the overarching guidance ... and the requirements (units) must implement as they develop their specific plans to execute the movements and beddowns of new missions." The BRAC PMO is currently developing the program action directive, which is the overarching guidance for implementing the movements, he said. Out of the PADs for the 63 approved BRAC recommendations, he expects implementation of some will begin in early 2006. "The first thing we will do in large part will be looking at the facility requirements," he said. "We will begin the planning and design requirements for the military construction projects ... that will begin in fiscal 2007. We will also start moving aircraft and some personnel in 2007." While the federal BRAC laws say the BRAC PMO must exist until 2011, the reality is it will probably be around much longer. Some BRAC recommendations require disposal of Air Force property, which involves addressing environmental issues. How those issues are addressed will depend on the condition of the properties and the methods used to dispose of them. The Air Force may then be responsible for cleaning up that property to meet Environmental Protection Agency guidelines. And that cleanup effort may last long after 2011. The BRAC PMO will remain until all those cleanups are complete. President Bush thanks Pentagon troops for service [2006-01-04] WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush greeted a handful of Airmen today after wrapping up discussion with top Department of Defense leaders about the war in Iraq. Airmen, Soldiers, Sailors and Marines lined a hallway near the Pentagon office of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for the meeting. Staff Sgt. David Kolcun, who works in the office of the Air Force Surgeon General, was one of the Airmen who met the president. "I was so nervous,” he said. "The Secret Service was talking to us and keeping it lively.” Sergeant Kolcun said the president was cordial and thanked each military member for his or her service. Sergeant Kolcun thanked the president for his service. "I told him I also appreciate what he was doing," Sergeant Kolcun said. Sergeant Kolcun said, “It was pretty neat” that he was able to "shake the hand of the commander in chief -- and not just in a crowd -- but a one-on-one handshake." Senior Airman Erik Nelson, an Air Force Honor Guard and a Pentagon tour guide, also met the president. "I asked if he'd watch the University of Texas-University of South California (Rose Bowl) game today," Airman Nelson said. "He said he had a feeling the ‘Horns’ might pull it off." Airman Nelson, as part of his job, regularly meets high-ranking military officials. During his Pentagon tour, he’s met the Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley and Secretary Rumsfeld. He also got to meet then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. (ret.)Richard B. Myers and then Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. (ret.) John P. Jumper. Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace also shook hands with the troops. Air Force improving production with Smart Operations 21 [2006-01-09] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force used the best parts of several civilian efficiency programs to develop an Air Force-unique process-improvement program called "Smart Operations 21," Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne said. The program will take the Air Force forward in a journey of self-improvement, the secretary said at a conference at Andrews Air Force Base, Md. The process will help improve the Air Force’s product-development process. "The name came from a convocation of the senior operators in the field who thought we could continue our journey into higher quality and better performance by using a term that would relate to airfield operations, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations, unmanned aerial vehicle operations or cyberspace operations," he said. "So Air Force Smart Operations 21 is the ideal project name for this journey we are embarking on," he said. The program is based on both Lean and Six Sigma business process improvement tools. These tools were developed chiefly in the private sector to focus on increasing value to customers, save time and money, reduce waste and improve quality. A process is made lean by re-engineering it to eliminate steps that add no value to the end product or by combining process steps to save time. For instance, moving tools and supplies closer to a work area to reduce the number of footsteps workers must take to complete their jobs. It is also about minimizing "batch and queue" processes. In manufacturing, a raw material may need to pass through several workstations before it becomes a final product. The initial workstation may drill a single hole or make a single cut in a batch of several thousand pieces of raw material. The semi-finished parts then go into a queue, waiting for the next step in the process. Once the part is cut or drilled, it loses its value as raw material, but has gained no value as a final product. So, it becomes a financial liability. A leaner process would attempt to move each part through the system in one pass, if possible, to eliminate warehousing of unfinished parts. Six Sigma deals primarily with quality control and tolerances. If one step in a manufacturing process requires a board be "cut to eight feet," an employee might spend too much time lining up raw material at a cutting station to ensure the goal is met. Six Sigma has manufacturer ask customers to be clearer about what is truly needed. If a deviation of a half-inch is acceptable to the customer, then the worker will be able to cut more boards in less time. That produces less reject boards that end up in a scrap bin. The process saves money for both the manufacturer and the customer. Six Sigma has users look at many areas of a process to determine what a customer truly needs, and to then make determinations about when and where it is appropriate to spend more money to achieve higher levels of perfection. Secretary Wynne said the Air Force will use Smart Operations 21 to increase the efficiency of the processes it uses to develop its own products. In some places, Air Force people already have that mindset, he said. For years, air logistics centers have improved their workflow by employing some of the tools that make up Smart Operations 21, said Maj. Gen. Kevin J. Sullivan. He is the commander of the Ogden Air Logistics Center at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. At the conference, General Sullivan said the Ogden center has processes in place to save time and money, and to give customers what they really want -- faster turnaround on their aircraft. The general said things are moving away from a traditional batch and queue process for aircraft repair. Optimizing workflow has helped the center decrease the time it takes to get an airplane back in the air. By creating work cells -- where aircraft move through at a pace of one every two days -- the center eliminated having large numbers of aircraft lined up waiting for somebody to get to them to apply the next step in the process. "What we really had going on was historic batch processing for these airplanes," General Sullivan said. Now aircraft move quickly from cell to cell. Paying attention to individual processes optimized work within a cell. Tools and parts are made available to workers locally, so they don't have to travel to get them, he said. "Think of your technician as a surgeon," General Sullivan said. "Give him all the tools and supplies he needs to work on the airplane so he doesn’t have to leave the airplane." One thing the general implemented was rolling supply bins. A later improvement was the introduction of parts vending machines. They allow parts to be sold on an as-needed basis. That way, the center does not have to warehouse parts. "We don’t pay for those parts until the worker puts in their number to get the part," he said. "Not only are we getting consumables out to the work site, but we don’t pay for that inventory." Col. Samuel Cox, who commands the 436th Airlift Wing at Dover AFB, Del., applied similar thinking to isochronal inspections for the base’s fleet of C-5 Galaxy aircraft. The inspection process had never really been engineered, the colonel said. Over the years, new requirements were simply tacked on to the end of the process without regard to the time needed to meet the new requirement. If repairing one C-5 part takes 10 days, and the repair doesn't begin until the 10th day of the inspection, then the aircraft can't be back on the flightline until the 20th day, the colonel said. The isochronal inspection process was re-engineered. "In the end we completely re-flowed the process, with the long lead items at the front end," Colonel Cox said. "The first thing that happens now is everybody in the ISO dock tears into the panels -- it’s a collective effort -- and they can identify the long lead time items." Reducing the time it takes to fix a C-5 means it spends more time doing its job. "We need to have those airplanes out there flying missions, not in the ISO dock," he said. While developed mostly in the private sector, the two business process improvement tools serve as the foundation for Smart Operations 21. Secretary Wynne said the Air Force needs a strategy to understand and optimize the basic processes around which it organizes. Smart Operations 21 will be the centerpiece of the strategy, he said. Air Force looks to be best in acquisition [2006-01-12] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force hopes to be the model within the Department of Defense for how best to procure goods and acquire weapons systems. "Five years from now, (we want) people to consider the Air Force the premier acquisition service in the DOD ... that we are heads and shoulders above everybody else in how we buy products and deliver products to the warfighter," said Kenneth Miller, special assistant to the secretary of the Air Force for acquisition governance and transparency. Much of the responsibility of getting the Air Force to that point will fall on the shoulders of Mr. Miller, who was hired in September. Though he doesn't work in Air Force acquisition, he has nearly 30 years of experience in Navy acquisition. Mr. Miller says achieving premier acquisition status will require the Air Force to make a commitment to acquisition governance and transparency. "A lot of people ask me, ‘What do you really mean by governance on the acquisition side?’" he said. "What we are looking at is trying to make sure, from a process standpoint, that we have a way of learning how we do our business across the entire Air Force." If the acquisition community at one installation is doing something well, that needs to be shared across the Air Force so all those in acquisition can benefit, he said. "We have a lot of different pieces across the Air Force that do acquisition today," he said. "But we don't have a very good process to glean the goodness that may be going on in one activity, and share that across the board. So we are going to be looking at some integrating processes for the future." While acquisition governance is about spreading good ideas within the Air Force, transparency is about letting those on the outside know how the service is purchasing of goods, services and weapons systems. "We want to be real clear on what we are doing, and to be very honest and open with the way we are looking at our acquisition business," Mr. Miller said. "But one of the challenges we have in the Air Force right now is that our overall credibility with sharing information and being forthright in where we are in procurement has really suffered greatly." In the past several years, the Air Force has experienced credibility problems on Capitol Hill that involve such things as the replacement for the KC-135 Stratotanker and the C-130 Hercules modification project, he said. While Mr. Miller said it might not be possible to completely eliminate the circumstances that created some of those problems, it is the service's responsibility to recognize those problems earlier and take actions to correct them. "One of the big challenges for DOD and Congress is the right degree of oversight and review you have in the future, especially on ethics, people and standards and how they approach disclosure," Mr. Miller said. "I don’t think you will ever get away from where your people make mistakes ... (but) what is important is that you have an adequate set of processes in place to recognize them." Mr. Miller's role within the Air Force would be to help develop those processes. "In order to improve our overall credibility, we are going the extra mile in trying to be more open and engaging, more proactive, and preemptive in how we do acquisition business," he said. Part of that effort is making sure the Air Force is the first to spread news about itself, whether that news is good or bad. If the Air Force were in the process of developing a weapons system, for example, and the system experienced failures during testing and evaluation, Mr. Miller said it would be best to pass that information on as soon as possible to Capitol Hill and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. "In the past, we would try to be very deliberate about getting as much information as possible before we start to share with people what had happened," he said. "The problem with that is we have found that our competitors, or people who are not supportive of a certain program, find out about bad news as fast as anybody." Those people then pass bad news to Congress, OSD or the media, before the Air Force has gathered all its information. "Almost immediately our credibility is at zero, because (Congress) heard about our problem two or three weeks before we gave them all the information," Mr. Miller said. One solution to that problem is to understand that it is ok for the Air Force to begin sharing information even before it has all the facts, or even has a completely right answer, Mr. Miller said. "In this business (with) the complexity of the things we are dealing with, the first answer is not always the total answer," Mr. Miller said. "It is about 80 percent right. The big challenge I have had is telling people that it is ok to share information that is 80 percent right -- but understand it is not the last time I will talk to you about a particular issue." Being able to share information as soon as it happens, rather than waiting to gather facts that can come later, allows the Air Force to establish greater credibility with Congress and the American people, he said. "So instead of waiting, we will be the first to tell you, and we will tell you the facts, the way we see it today," he said. "What we are trying to establish with our stakeholders is a credible dialogue back and forth. I will communicate with you on a routine basis on the progress we are having on a program, so people know what we are doing." Air Force to replace combat search and rescue helicopters [2006-01-18] WASHINGTON -- Sometime around 2012, downed U.S. military pilots will be recovered by Air Force combat search and rescue teams sporting a new helicopter -- something being developed now as the CSAR-X. The CSAR-X will ultimately replace 101 HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters, which now serve as the primary platform for Air Force CSAR teams to recover downed pilots and imperiled members of American and allied armed forces. The CSAR-X program is the replacement for the ageing HH-60 fleet. The current fleet's size and availability for combatant commander’s use need to be enhanced, said Lt. Col. Michael T. Healy, deputy division chief for mobility, combat search and rescue, and special operations requirements. "The HH-60 also has capability shortfalls, predominantly in range and in cabin size," he said. "It is just fundamentally too small of an aircraft to do the mission we are asking it to do." The HH-60 replacement doesn't have to be a helicopter, though a Fiscal 2002 analysis of alternatives determined that a helicopter would probably be the most cost effective answer to Air Force Special Operations Command's call for a new airframe. Today, the Air Force is considering proposals to replace the HH-60. Those proposals are all based on currently existing helicopters that will be modified to meet the Air Force's needs. "We will select that which has the most benefit and cost effective solution and will then take that decision forward, meet a milestone decision with the defense acquisition board and award a contract in Fiscal 2006," said Lt. Col. Dave Morgan, Combat Search and Rescue program element monitor for Air Force acquisition. The acquisition strategy takes an existing aircraft and adds the capabilities needed for the CSAR mission. Building a new search and rescue platform on top of an existing airframe will bring the new hardware to pararescuemen sooner, and will be more cost effective, Colonel Morgan said. The CSAR-X requirements will makeup for many of the shortfalls of the HH-60, most notably the aircraft's size. "If (the HH-60) were fundamentally a bigger aircraft, there would be other things we could do to it, such as improving the engines and adding different systems on to it that could meet our requirements," Colonel Healy said. "But when you have an aircraft that small you just can't add any more to it, there is no more room." Colonel Healy said that, “no matter which candidate wins CSAR-X, it will include room for more specialized equipment and -- perhaps even more critical -- for more injured passengers who need to be rescued.” An increase in cabin size was a requirement that was developed by direct involvement with the CSAR community; specifically with pararescuemen that fly in the HH-60. The cabin size requirement was so important, Colonel Healy said, that the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, chaired by then Vice Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace, elevated it to the level of "key performance parameter" The effective space in the cargo area of an HH-60 allows for only one injured person on a stretcher. In the new CSAR-X, pararescuemen will have room for four stretchers. In the past, CSAR rescuers in an HH-60 have been forced to leave equipment behind at a landing zone in order to accommodate extra passengers. In addition to more space for survivors, the CSAR-X will include seats for pararescuemen -- a feature absent in the HH-60. The CSAR-X will also include features such as an auto hover mode that will shoot approaches and do landings without pilots having to touch the controls. These kinds of additions will help aid pilots during landing under brownout conditions. Requirements for the CSAR-X also specify it be able to travel greater distances to a landing zone. The HH-60 can fly out about 160 nautical miles; perform a 30-minute rescue operation, and then return. The CSAR-X will eventually double that range to some 325 nautical miles. The new CSAR-X aircraft will be added to the CSAR force until the force reaches the required number of helicopters - 141. At that time, the HH-60’s will begin to be retired, providing more needed capability to units that now operate with less than what they need. The benefit the new airframe will extend beyond the Air Force. The combat search and rescue capability provided by Air Force Special Operations Command benefits all services in an increasingly joint military. That fact was reemphasized when the Joint Requirements Oversight Council validated the requirement for the aircraft, Colonel Healy said. "They made a very strong statement that this is a critical capability for our combatant commanders all over the world," he said. "We can go places others can't. The CSAR-X is a very efficient and interdependent way to exercise this capability -- so we can rescue those Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and downed Airmen. This has a lot of joint impact." The Air Force expects to begin purchasing the new aircraft by Fiscal 2009, with delivery by Fiscal 2011 and operational capability by Fiscal 2012. The cost of the new system is not yet determined because it will be based on the final source selection, Colonel Morgan said. Leasing option increases Air Force land value [2006-01-20] WASHINGTON -- Underutilized Air Force land does not need to sit idle any longer. The Air Force Real Property Agency converts underutilized land and infrastructure into real value for the Air Force, installations and communities through the enhanced use leasing option, officials said. "Enhanced use leasing is a tool we use to manage underutilized property or infrastructure at Air Force locations," said Kathryn Halvorson, director of the Air Force Real Property Agency. "It is basically taking underutilized land, buildings or infrastructure on a base and leasing that to an interested public or private party." On Jan. 6, Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., entered into the first Air Force EUL with the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, an engineering school. The school will utilize about eight acres of property the Air Force was not using. On the property, the school will build a research facility. It will serve as a branch of their main campus and will allow students' access to scientists working at Kirtland’s Air Force Research Lab. "They bring their students into the lab environment, and those students are learning leading technologies that the Air Force is developing for space," Ms. Halvorson said. The facility could become the centerpiece of a nearly 300-acre research and technology park that will serve the Air Force, the university and the local community. The park could provide as many as 15,000 jobs, and would foster both professional and educational relationships between students, academics and scientists at the Air Force lab, she said. In any lease, the tenant re-imburses the landowner for property use. With an enhanced use lease, reimbursement could be cash or in-kind consideration such as a new construction project. In exchange for use of its land, the university may fund new on-base construction or may help remodel existing facilities. "I think many commanders will start to hear how the Kirtland commander got a building built in the middle of his base as payment in-kind for underutilized land," Ms. Halvorson said. "When they realize they may have underutilized land, this program will start to spread across the Air Force." The Kirtland lease is one of many being planned for the Air Force. The Air Force has more than 20 enhanced use leases in development at different locations including Hill AFB, Utah; Patrick AFB, Fla.; Tinker AFB, Okla.; and Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. Air Combat Command is even considering leasing out approximately 6,000 acres of radar facilities currently in caretaker status, to be used to generate renewable energy. The high altitude of those locations makes them ideal for wind farms. "They are on the tops of mountains and this makes it an ideal location for renewable energy power windmills," Ms. Halvorson said. "Next month, we are going to have an industry day where we work with the renewable power people to find out who would be interested in leasing this land and to see what kind of payment ACC would garner from that in terms of in-kind consideration." When the Air Force enters into a lease, it ensures all its needs are met, and the agreement does not conflict with its mission in any way. "We put our terms of use right up front when we are developing that lease," Ms. Halvorson said. "We set our terms and conditions for developing, and those terms ensure what the tenet wants to do is compatible with the mission of the installation. "The potential for EUL is really limitless," Ms. Halvorson said. "It's all about looking at Air Force property and assets to see how we can unlock the value of them and return it to the warfighter." Chilean air force receives F-16 Peace Puma [2006-01-30] WASHINGTON -- The delivery of two new F-16 Peace Puma aircraft from the United States to Chile Jan. 24 kicks off a promising era of interoperability between the two nations. Over the next 10 months, the Chilean air force will receive eight additional F-16 C and D model aircraft from the contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. The 10 aircraft sale, munitions and maintenance -- all part of the "Peace Puma" program -- is worth $547 million. The Air Force worked with the Chilean government, the Chilean air force and the defense contractor to broker the aircraft sale as the latest improvement in the long-term relationship between the two nations' air forces, said Bruce S. Lemkin, Air Force deputy undersecretary for international affairs. Included in the purchase are joint direct attack munitions, or JDAMs, AIM-9 heat-seeking missiles, and advanced medium range air-to-air missiles, or AMRAAMs. The Air Force will conduct F-16 flying training with Chilean pilots. In addition, "train-the-trainer" instruction will enable the Chileans to train their own pilots. The Air Force and contractor will also provide maintenance training, Mr. Lemkin said. "These are state-of-the-art aircraft and will provide great capability for Chile, and will also provide interoperability with us. These are the same airplanes the U.S. Air Force flies," he said. "These F-16s will become the centerpiece of a 30-year or more relationship between the U.S. Air Force and the Chilean air force." The long-term relationship comes not only from operating common hardware, but also from the experiences of Airmen working together throughout their careers, Mr. Lemkin said. "We will be training together, operating together, flying together and learning from one another," Mr. Lemkin said. "There is no substitute for the relationship that results when a captain from the Chilean air force is in F-16 training with a captain from the U.S. Air Force, and 20 years later they are both generals. That becomes the most essential element of an air force to air force relationship -- the human element." Headquarters Air Force realigns similar to 'J-staff' model [2006-01-30] WASHINGTON -- The staff functions at Headquarters Air Force, major commands and warfighting headquarters will soon all share the same "A-staff" structure. By Feb. 1, the Air Staff at Headquarters Air Force here will adopt an organizational structure that closely mirrors the Army's "G-staff," the Navy's "N-staff" and the joint "J-staff." The effort will help the Air Force optimize internal communications and communicate more efficiently with other services, said Brig. Gen. Marshall K. Sabol, the Air Force director for manpower, organization and resources. "This change will enhance our warfighting capability and help our communications both horizontally and vertically in the Air Force, as well as with those on the joint staff and the office of the secretary of defense," General Sabol said. "As we operate in deployed and joint environments, our communication will also be more effective and efficient." The affected Air Force functions will be re-named and re-aligned so similar functions at all levels are referred to by the same name. Those same functional groupings will closely match other services and the joint staff. At Headquarters Air Force, the deputy chief of staff for manpower and personnel is now called "AF/DP." Under the reorganization, he will be referred to as "the A1." The A1 in the Air Force is responsible for plans and policies covering all military life cycles and civilian personnel management. Changes at major commands and warfighter headquarters’ levels that have not yet adopted the A-staff structure will follow suit by May 1. Similar functions at all levels will be "re-mapped" to nine standardized A-staff areas of responsibility. Those areas include: • A1 - Manpower and Personnel • A2 - Intelligence • A3 - Air, Space and Information Operations • A4 - Logistics • A5 - Plans and Requirements • A6 - Communications • A7 - Installations and Mission Support • A8 - Strategic Plans and Programs • A9 - Analyses, Assessments and Lessons Learned By adopting this staff structure, the Air Force will eliminate the difficulty sometimes encountered when leadership at one headquarters attempts to contact functional counterparts at another headquarters. "Back in November, if I were to try to get a hold of a person that dealt with manpower issues, one command might call that the A5M, another the XPM, and still another the DPM," General Sabol said. "That is very confusing. And even if you were to compare phonebooks, not one of them looks the same. This reorganization will change that." General Sabol said, there have been concerns in the field the reorganization would equate to job loss. The reorganization will neither create nor eliminate jobs, he said. What the reorganization will do is make it easier for Airmen to do their jobs, both within the Air Force and the joint environment. "Whether you are at work, deployed or even working from home, this will make it easier for you to do your work," he said. "Wherever you are, you are going to know who to talk to and how to communicate. " As part of the A-Staff structure, the Air Force assistant vice chief of staff will also serve as the director of staff. This title allows for better association with the joint staff and other services. Retaining the assistant vice chief of staff nomenclature is required to fulfill the representational role the person plays in dealing with attaches and communication to foreign contingents while representing the chief of staff. Not all functions of the Air Staff will be affected by the reorganization. The reorganization will not change special staff offices assigned to the Secretary of the Air Force and will not filter down to the wing level. Sergeant thanks Congress for helping keep her team together [2006-02-01] WASHINGTON -- As the president spoke to the nation during the State of the Union address, an Airman sat in the gallery, dressed in blues, displaying the combat medals she earned in Iraq. America's most prominent leaders were gathered in one room on Capitol Hill for the annual speech Jan. 31. Sitting attentively at her feet, the Airman's German shepherd attended the speech too. Tech. Sgt. Jamie Dana is an Air Force security forces specialist and military working dog handler. In June she was severely injured by an improvised explosive device while on duty in Iraq with her military dog, Rex. The dog also sustained minor injuries. Because of her injuries, Sergeant Dana will soon leave the Air Force. But she didn't want to leave Rex behind -- they were a team, she said. The president and some members of Congress helped make it possible for her to adopt Rex. Originally, law prohibited the adoption because Rex was still considered useful to the military. Recognizing the need to do the right thing, congressional leaders quickly drafted legislation, clearing the road to make the adoption possible. With the president's signature, Rex became her dog. Sergeant Dana, Rex and her husband, Staff Sgt. Michael Dana, visited Capitol Hill here to thank the members of Congress and Air Force leaders who helped her adopt Rex, and to attend the State of the Union address. "They all were there for me, they never backed down," she said. "They were there for me every step of the way. And, they believed in me and they fought for what I believe in, as I fight for what they believe in." While on Capitol Hill, Sergeant Dana visited with the congressmen who were key in helping her adopt Rex -- Virginia Sen. John Warner and Reps. John Peterson and John Murtha from her home state of Pennsylvania. Sergeant Dana said it meant a lot to meet the members of Congress and the military leaders who helped make her adoption possible. "It means more to me than I can really say, because these people went to bat for me, they fought for me and they made some of my dreams come true," she said. "And just to get the chance to meet them, and shake their hands, and give them the heartfelt 'thank you' that I feel -- that overrides any other feelings I have." Sergeant Dana hopes to attend veterinary school after she leaves the Air Force. She said she doesn't regret having served in the Air Force and said others should take the opportunity to serve as well. "Being in the military is not just a job, it gets in your blood," she said. "You really believe what you are fighting for in the military. I for one think everyone should experience the military at least once in their lives. I wouldn't change it for the world. If I could go back to Iraq today, I would. I believe in what we are fighting for, and I believe in our leadership there." Rex, Sergeant Dana and her husband also met the president. C-5 Galaxy aircraft engine test successful [2006-02-08] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force reached a milestone last month in the effort to modernize its C-5 Galaxy fleet. A successful test of newly mounted C-5 engines occurred Jan. 21 at a Lockheed Martin facility in Marietta, Ga. The test was part of the C-5 Reliability Enhancement and Re-engining Program, or RERP, said Col. John Brunderman, Air Force mobility division chief for global reach programs. "They were able to start the engines, show that the electronics worked, show the thrust reverses deployed, run it up to full power and control the engines," Colonel Brunderman said. "That is a very significant milestone that demonstrates to us that the technical risk in C-5 RERP is pretty low. From this point on, it is some very minor adjustments and tweaks." The RERP is the second part of a two-phase C-5 modernization program helping the aircraft achieve a mission-capable rate of at least 75 percent during wartime. During the RERP, a C-5 is fitted with more efficient General Electric F138-GE-100 engines. The aircraft also receives approximately 70 other modifications, which increases its reliability, the colonel said. Eventually, 112 C-5A, C-5B and C-5C model aircraft will go through the two-phase upgrade. Before a C-5 goes through RERP, it must first go through the Avionics Modernization Program, also known as AMP. This program overhauls the C-5 flightdeck and prepares the aircraft to receive the more modern engines. "AMP puts a digital backbone into the aircraft," Colonel Brunderman said. "It replaces a lot of legacy analog dial systems that are no longer supportable and are getting unreliable and puts them into a digital format. AMP also allows the aircraft to interface with the digital controls on the new engines that come in the RERP phase." The Air Force has 15 C-5s that have completed or are in the process of receiving AMP modifications. Three of these are currently being modified to the RERP configuration at Lockheed Martin’s plant in Marietta, Ga. The recent engine-run test was conducted on the first of these three aircraft. After completing the entire modernization program, the C-5s will be renamed the C-5M Galaxy aircraft. The C-5M won't be faster, but it will be more robust and powerful than the A and B models, Colonel Brunderman said. "It will provide us with the ability to take off with heavier loads, on shorter runways, to climb to altitude faster, to save on fuel, to fly at higher altitudes, to make it into various air tracks to and from Europe and mix with all the international commercial traffic," he said. The modifications also make the aircraft less prone to maintenance failures, meaning the aircraft can spend less time being repaired and more time flying missions, he said. Taking an aircraft that is invaluable to the Air Force and making it better means the Air Force will be better able to support the warfighter well into the future, Colonel Brunderman said. "The C-5 Galaxy is an integral part of our overall mobility system which includes the C-17 Globemaster III aircraft as well as the C-130 Hercules aircraft," Colonel Brunderman said. "A particular benefit of the C-5 is its outsize and oversize capability -- we can move M1 ABRAMS tanks, helicopters and other things that will not fit on the C-130. "The C-5 is the largest aircraft in the U.S. inventory and increasing its efficiency will benefit the entire military," he said. Colonel Brunderman said he expects all 112 C-5s in the Air Force will be fitted with new engines by 2020, and the efficiency realized by the modifications will pay for the program by 2029. Air Force regains decision authority on acquisition programs [2006-02-15] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force recently regained oversight authority on some of the acquisition programs taken from it more than 10 months ago. The Department of Defense returned major milestone decision authority to the Air Force on 10 of 21 acquisition programs in January. The DOD had taken that authority from the Air Force in March, amid concerns over a service leadership void and Air Force acquisition practices. At the time program oversight was transferred to the office of the secretary of defense, or OSD, the Air Force had no confirmed secretary, undersecretary or assistant secretary for acquisition. The service had also experienced issues on Capitol Hill over some of its acquisition practices, said Lt. Gen. Donald J. Hoffman, Air Force military deputy for acquisition. "The Air Force has had a series of acquisition episodes regarding the management and oversight of some of our programs," he said. "You couple that with the gaps in leadership and it is was prudent for the OSD to make sure that a clear message was sent that they have solid control of defense acquisition programs." It was determined by the then undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, Michael W. Wynne, that oversight for 21 Air Force Acquisition Category 1C programs would be moved to OSD. Acquisition category 1 programs are the highest level and most expensive programs. Oversight for those programs typically rests with the services having the most interest, but it remains at the discretion of the OSD to take control of those programs when appropriate. "They will let the services run programs unless there is a significant joint aspect to the program, there is a high mount of interest in the program or they want to keep control of it," General Hoffman said. "OSD can say at any time that a program is of high enough interest that they want to have oversight at their level." While the Air Force still has no civilian assistant secretary for acquisition, the service does now have a confirmed secretary and undersecretary. The Air Force has also made strides in acquisition transparency, General Hoffman said. "Ever since the Darleen Druyun conviction -- where she did jail time for inappropriate use of her power and position to influence acquisition decisions -- we have been committed to transparency," he said. "We want everybody in the system to understand how we make decisions, what those decisions are, and what problems and challenges our programs have." Mrs. Druyun improperly negotiated employment with the Boeing Company while employed as an Air Force acquisition official and negotiating with Boeing on behalf of the Air Force. While under control of the OSD, the 21 Air Force acquisition programs were still managed almost entirely by the Air Force, General Hoffman said. "After OSD took control of the programs, their day-to-day management did not change at all," he said. "We continued all the program management activity. It is who makes that milestone decision on a major event that changed." Major decision points, called "milestone decisions," are the points in an acquisition program where major changes are to be made. The move from a research and development phase to full scale production of an aircraft would be a milestone decision. "The OSD has recognized we have the right leadership in place now to properly conduct and oversee these programs," the general said. Among the 10 programs that were returned to the Air Force are the Joint Primary Aircraft Training System; the C-130 Aircraft Avionics Modernization Program; the Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile; and the C-5 Aircraft Reliability Enhancement and Re-engining Program. The 11 remaining programs still under OSD control involve space programs. Those programs include the Space-Based Infrared System Program, High Component; the Minuteman III Propulsion Replacement Program; the Transformational Communications Satellite Program; and the Wideband communications satellite system. The space programs will remain under the control of the OSD for an undetermined amount of time, General Hoffman said. Air Force seeks new tanker [2006-03-03] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force wants a new refueler aircraft, something commercially available now, which can be modified to replace the existing KC-135 Stratotanker fleet. That testimony came from Air Force leaders associated with the tanker replacement program, Feb. 28 in front of the House Armed Services Committee subcommittee on projection forces. When prompted by congressional members, Lt. Gen. Donald J. Hoffman, the military deputy for Air Force acquisition, provided a personal opinion that his first choice would be to replace the service's fleet of aging KC-135s with a new airplane. "It should be a new aircraft, a commercial derivative, and I think we ought to buy one kind," he said. "The first 100 (should) all look the same." The general said he has no opinion on who should manufacture the plane, only that the new aircraft be the same as each other in both size and design. General Hoffman told congressional members his second choice for recapitalizing the tanker fleet would be to modernize the current KC-135 fleet, which involves converting existing KC-135E models to KC-135R models. But one problem with modernizing KC-135E aircraft is that even with the work that goes into converting them to KC-135Rs, there are still structural problems not addressed and some capabilities lacking. Various estimates of the lifespan of the KC-135 project the retire date out as late as 2040, but as the aircraft get older, the Air Force discovers more things wrong with the aircraft. That decreases the projected lifespan of the "Eisenhower-era" tankers, many of which were built in the late 1950s to early 1960s. "These airplanes continue to get older, and as they get older we continue to find things on them, (so) their time of usefulness will move closer to us," said Lt. Gen. Christopher Kelly, Air Mobility Command vice commander. "These particular airplanes, although they provide us with a good deal of service, are not modern airplanes and they do not give us the capability we would want to have in modern airplanes." As the aircraft has no defensive capabilities, its limitations make it difficult to use in the desert, General Kelly said. Additionally, the Air Force would like to use its tanker fleet for work other than refueling, such as moving passengers and cargo. The Air Force would also like to offer both boom and drogue refueling capability with its primary tanker fleet, something the KC-135 can not now do. "We would like to address those issues in a new acquisition if we were allowed to do that," General Kelly said. "From an operational point of view, the increased capability you'd get from a modern airplane with floors, doors, defensive systems, the ability to refuel itself and the ability to provide a drogue refueling and a boom refueling to receivers, would be a better investment than just re-engining the E models." Air Force leaders testify on processes used to combat costs [2006-03-03] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force has seen a rise in the cost of doing business, Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne told members of the House Armed Services Committee during testimony March 1. "We are experiencing unyielding second order effects that continue to drain our top line -- we are exhausting all our assets at a much higher rate than forecasted," the secretary said. Some of those costs involve expanding personnel benefits and rising health-care costs. Operational and maintenance costs have also risen, he said. However, the secretary told members of the congressional committee the Air Force has found ways to deal with some rising costs. "To reign in personnel costs, we are using total force integration," the secretary said. "This has exposed redundancies to capitalize on as we continue to operationalize the Guard and Reserve." Besides better using Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve forces, the service has also implemented Air Force Smart Operations 21. The program is an Air Force developed mix of private sector practices designed to optimize business processes and to save money. "We have instituted AFSO21 -- smarter and leaner operations," he said. "No process is immune from this Air Force-wide critical review. Efficiency from AFSO21, total force integration and lessons learned from 15 years under fire permit an end strength reduction of 40,000 full-time equivalents over the future year defense plan." The Air Force is planning to reduce its end strength by as many as 40,000 people over the next few years. Some congressional members asked how that is possible, considering the stress on the military because of the global war on terrorism. Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. T. Michael Moseley explained that because of efficiencies from new equipment and new processes, the Air Force can do the same amount of work with fewer people. He cited past force reductions, such as replacing telephone operators with automated switching systems and contracting out vehicle fleet maintenance technicians. Both are examples of how the Air Force reduced its end strength. "There are natural efficiencies as we modernize and recapitalize where we can come down on this," the general said. "So to have extra people just to have them, I'm not sure is the right sight picture." Secretary Wynne also asked Congress to lift restrictions on when the service is allowed to retire military aircraft. Maintenance costs on some aircraft are high. Allowing the Air Force to retire those aircraft would save the service money. General Moseley also told committee members that he looked forward to expanding the mission of unmanned aerial vehicles, such as the MQ-1 Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, beyond their current role. "And I'm a big fan of looking at applications that include something that look a whole lot like a bomber, that may be unmanned," the general said. "Something that has range and persistence and payload that can penetrate airspace and continue to hold targets at risk." Also of interest to committee members was the role of the F-22A Raptor aircraft, now into initial operational capability at Langley Air Force Base, Va. General Moseley told committee members the aircraft is performing flawlessly and is central to the Air Force's role as the world's dominate air power. "We've flown (the F-22A) in Operation Noble Eagle missions over the Capitol and the East Coast. We have plans to take it out of the continental United States in the spring," the general said. "You begin a joint fight with air dominance. Whether it is a surface maritime or a surface land component, that's what you have to do. And that's what (the F-22A) will do." General Moseley and Secretary Wynne also discussed the Air Force's efforts to recapitalize on the KC-135 Stratotanker, the development of a joint cargo aircraft with the Army, and a stronger emphasis on foreign language and cultural skills to be developed in the Air Force. "Next academic year at Maxwell, every person that goes through the Senior Noncommissioned Officer Academy, Air Command and Staff, and Air War College will take one of four languages: Arabic, Chinese, Spanish or French and focus on regional studies," General Moseley said. The general also said he is working with the State Department to get some of the graduates of those courses into foreign embassies to help develop foreign cultural skills in Airmen. Air Force Judge Advocate Corps streamlines operations [2006-03-07] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force's Judge Advocate General’s Corps has a plan to optimize their operations for the 21st century, and move out on Air Force Smart Operations 21. In a recent interview, Maj. Gen. Jack L. Rives, the Air Force's new judge advocate general, said the service's JAG Corps will begin transforming their own legal operations to better meet new Air Force requirements -- JAG Corps 21. "The Air Force is making dramatic changes to posture itself for the future," General Rives said. "As part of that process, the chief of staff challenged the JAG Corps to redesign itself to complement Air Force initiatives and to transform legal operations to better align with new Air Force requirements. "We can do this because the secretary and the chief have enabled us to be as agile as the most innovative private sector business," General Rives said. One of the biggest JAG Corps changes will be development of field support centers in a number of key areas, including claims processing; education and information; operations and international law; labor law; contract law; contract litigation; and environmental law. The most visible field support center for Airmen will be the claims field support center. "Throughout the history of the Air Force, people have gone to the base legal office to file a household goods claim," General Rives said. "Currently, two or more claims specialists work at bases all across the Air Force. We will transform to one claims center to handle the personnel claims for Airmen throughout the Air Force.” Modeling the best practices from private industry, the general plans to consolidate claims expertise at one location, provide support 24 hours a day, and develop Internet-based claims processing programs with toll-free telephone access to better serve Airmen in the field. This will make it easier for Airmen to file their claims and ultimately, they will see payments in their accounts that much sooner. General Rives expects the claims field support center to be fully operational as early as 2008. The other field support centers will be located a various places throughout the Air Force and will be staffed by experts in particular legal fields. "The FSC concept will enable us to move from a model where every wing legal office had to have experts in complicated areas of the law, to a model where base JAGs reach back to an FSC for tailored specialized advice," General Rives said. The wing’s chief lawyer -- the staff judge advocate -- will still have responsibility for providing legal advice on all matters to the wing commander and commanders in the field. His or her ability to provide this advice, however, will be enhanced by an immediate reachback capability to field support center manned with subject matter experts. Legal experts at the centers will provide advice to lawyers at local JAG offices throughout the Air Force. As needed, they could also travel to bases to provide additional support on-site. General Rives said the Air Force will begin work building the centers immediately. Most of the changes planned under JAG Corps 21 will be invisible to Airmen and commanders, General Rives said. But all the changes will streamline and modernize the way Air Force JAGs do business. One example is the elimination of the five field judiciary circuits, regional boundaries within which prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges try cases. Three circuits are in the United States and the others are in the Pacific and Europe. The geographic boundaries present unnecessary obstacles and overhead for the court-martial process. The JAG Corps 21 initiatives will eliminate these obstacles. "We are doing away with the circuits because they are artificial boundaries," General Rives said. "Without those boundaries, we can use the judges and prosecutors where they are needed, in a more timely and efficient manner. We do it to a limited degree now, but by eliminating regional circuits, we can do it much more effectively." Today, base JAG offices have a court reporter whose primary duty is to record court-marital activities. It is demanding and highly technical work. But if a base goes several months without a court-martial, the court reporter's specialty skills are not used. The general said he believes the JAG Corps can better serve Air Force needs by consolidating the court reporters under the field operating agency that is aligned with the trial judiciary instead of individual wing legal offices. "By centralizing control of court reporters and standardizing training and processes, we can get cases to trial sooner and speed up post-trial processing," he said. "The overall result will be faster resolution of cases, which is always in the best interests of both an accused and the Air Force." The JAG Corps 21 process is also examining its role in supporting new and evolving Air Force missions such as stability operations and cyberspace operations, and identifying areas that will better support the deployed commander. "As with the basic concept behind the field support centers, it’s all about providing better support to commanders in the field to give them the legal effect necessary to perform the mission," General Rives said. Joint Strike Fighter program crucial to future air dominance [2006-03-20] WASHINGTON -- Keeping the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program on track is important because the Air Force needs to replace aging aircraft and it is an important complement to the F-22A Raptor aircraft. That Capitol Hill testimony came March 16 from Lt. Gen. Carrol H. "Howie" Chandler, deputy chief of staff for Air Force air, space, and information operations, plans and requirements. "The Air Force has been very successful with what we call the high/low mix," the general said. "The F-15, for example, is high end. (It has) fewer numbers and is more expensive because of its capabilities. The F-16 is the low end of the mix -- more affordable, more numbers, optimized for air-to-ground vice the air-to-air mission of the F-15." The general told members of the House Armed Services Committee subcommittee on tactical air and land forces that the Air Force meant for there to be a similar relationship between the F-22A and the F-35 aircraft, both "fifth generation" fighters. "The two are very complementary to each other because of the optimization of the F-22A for air-to-air (combat), and its ability to suppress or defeat enemy air defenses. The Joint Strike Fighter is optimized for air-to-surface and its ability to strike hard ... (with the) persistent numbers that we would like to buy of the aircraft," he said. "It is very important to us." General Chandler also said aging aircraft are a reason to push forward with the JSF program. The new aircraft will relieve the increasing cost of maintaining an older fleet, while at the same time bring new capabilities to the Air Force. "As we attempt to maintain the aging fleet that we have today -- as you know that becomes very expensive," he said. "We are able to sustain high mission-capable rates today because of the young men and women maintaining those aircraft. As the aircraft get older ... they are going to have to work harder to make those airplanes fly at the same rate." As part of the fiscal 2007 president's budget, the Air Force recommends termination of the Joint Strike Fighter F-136 engine development program. General Chandler said the cancellation will provide cost savings through fiscal 2011. The program was meant to provide a mixed engine to the F-35 fleet, with F-136 engines from one manufacturer and F-135 engines from another. In written testimony, the general said the Department of Defense concluded that a single engine supplier provides the best balance of risk and cost based upon recent experience with engine development for the F-22A and F/A-18 E/F. He said the current F-135 engine continues to meet JSF performance requirements, but conceded that in the past the Air Force has had success with maintaining two engines for one airframe. "That success ... stems primarily to contractor performance -- the contractor performed better under competition," he said. "And there were fleet operations issues, in that you were buying an insurance policy against a mass grounding of the fleet." That "insurance policy" came at a cost, however. The general said the Air Force feels the costs are not worth the benefit to the Air Force to have a fleet of aircraft with different, competing engines. "You pay for that insurance policy in terms of additional supply lines and additional training for your people," he said. "If you look at where we are today with the F-119 engine (in the F-22A), and you look at the other competing issues that we have in the department with trying to fund other programs, and you look at the reliability and the safety that we have developed with this program, you can make a prudent decision that says you can save the money that you would spend on the second engine." The F-136 is a General Electric engine developed in partnership with Rolls Royce. The Air Force wants to use the Pratt and Whitney F-135 engine for the F-35 aircraft. That engine is also developed in partnership with Rolls Royce. The F-22A aircraft is currently fitted with an F-119 engine, also developed by Pratt and Whitney. Committee members were also concerned with encroachment issues. Encroachment is when communities surrounding a military installation build closer and closer to an airfield or training area and civilian interests begin to compete with military training efforts. The general said the Air Force works with communities to prevent encroachment. "Encroachment is always an issue ... we work very closely with the communities so we don't endanger people as we try to train as realistically as we can," he said. Civil Air Patrol volunteers affected by hurricanes [2006-03-22] WASHINGTON -- During Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, hundreds of aircraft flew missions to evacuate the stranded residents of New Orleans. But, it wasn't just military aircraft running rescue missions in the congested skies above the hurricane-stricken region. Members of America's Civil Air Patrol also provided support to the agencies working there. "We did a lot of spotting of survivors on rooftops and relaying that information to the emergency operations center," said CAP Col. Rock Palermo. "We also found suitable landing zones for helicopters as well and did aerial photography." Colonel Palermo is a civilian pilot and a lawyer in Lake Charles, La., about 200 miles west of New Orleans. Immediately following Hurricane Katrina, he was asked to volunteer his efforts in New Orleans as part of CAP operations there. While he did some flying during the relief efforts of Katrina, he mostly took pictures out of the back of a CAP aircraft. Those pictures were immediately transferred to a laptop computer, then to a phone, a satellite, and back down to an end-user. Sometimes pictures were in the hands of local, state, or federal agencies within minutes of the shutter release, he said. Much of that photography was of schools and hospitals. The CAP also took pictures for National Guard aircraft that needed to scope out potential landing zones, flew key disaster relief personnel around the region, and spotted stranded citizens on rooftops so helicopters could rescue them. CAP pilots don't fly expensive military aircraft, but typically use civilian-grade passenger aircraft, like the Cessna 172 or 182. Those aircraft are suited to fly lower to the ground. That, coupled with a CAP pilot's familiarity with their region of responsibility, makes CAP an obvious choice to scout in disaster areas inside the United Sates. "When we get a call to go look at Tulane University or the Touro Hospital, we know where those locations are," Colonel Palermo said. "We can fly low and slow over them and take the photographs we know are important to the end user. So, our low and slow aircraft are of great benefit to the country and they are efficient." Important work The CAP isn't usually involved in something as large as Hurricane Katrina or Hurricane Rita work. Many CAP missions are usually specific to their region and may involve hunting downed aircraft. Out West, for instance, the CAP may search for lost skiers or hikers. In Louisiana, they may be more involved in finding hunters or fisherman. Around New Orleans, CAP does work spotting hazmat spills around the many chemical plants there. Running missions like those at Katrina are not usual, said CAP Maj. Cole Flournoy of Shreveport, La. "The Katrina experience has dwarfed anything I have done in the Civil Air Patrol," he said. "Going to look for downed aircraft and turning off emergency locator transmitters that have gone off by accident -- that is a lot of what we do. The critical need for emergency services from the CAP and other agencies in south Louisiana and Mississippi called for a rapid and extensive mobilization of all our resources, not only from the Louisiana Wing of the CAP, but from the CAP nationwide.” As a civilian, Major Flournoy, who holds a doctorate in psychology, is the director of a mental health program for prison inmates in Caddo Parish, La. He is rated as an airline transport pilot with 3,000 flying hours in civilian aircraft and also serves as a check pilot and instructor pilot in the CAP. During the war in Vietnam, he was in the U.S. Naval Air Reserves and performed maintenance work on Douglas A4 Skyhawks aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Bon Homme Richard in the Gulf of Tonkin. Most Americans watched Katrina unfold on their television sets. But few of them went to New Orleans to participate in the relief efforts. But Major Flournoy said he knew he'd be going to help out when he first saw the devastation unfold on the news. "Seeing the flooding on television was certainly spellbinding," he said. "Even though I've been to New Orleans many times, watching the physical devastation and suffering on television was a surreal experience. I knew the CAP would need to serve in some capacity. So, I got permission from my employer to take whatever time was necessary to support. "Once we arrived at our mission base in Baton Rouge three days after the hurricane, we immediately started flying a variety of missions," Major Flournoy said. "We flew General Honore’s helicopter crew back and forth between an Army base near Hattiesburg, Miss., and Naval Air Station New Orleans. We flew the Louisiana State University Board of Regents over LSU New Orleans to assess damage, we flew photo missions for several school boards for damage reconnaissance of schools in the disaster area, and we flew numerous first responders in and out of New Orleans. "One interesting flight for us was the evacuation of several firefighters to Dallas," he said. "One firefighter would not leave his pet tropical fish behind so we strapped down his aquarium on the floor of the aircraft. The worried firefighter and fish all arrived safely in Dallas with only a minimum of splashing around!" Actually flying over New Orleans was even more eye-opening than seeing it on the television, especially for those that have been in, worked in or lived in the historic river town. "One of the most eerie feelings was the fact that as far as you could see, these neighborhoods were underwater," Colonel Palermo said. "On television, you see maybe one or two neighborhoods. But from 1,000 feet, you see hundreds of these neighborhoods, and you know that all of them would have to be bulldozed because water was up to the rooftop. And that water was staying there and it wasn't receding." "The aerial missions performed by the pilots and other aircrew members could not have been done without the many dedicated CAP members who served as staff members on the ground," Major Flournoy added. "From operations staff, to chaplains, to food service and laundry, those members are the unsung heroes of the CAP effort, in my opinion. Without their tireless efforts and thoughtfulness, these missions would not have been possible." Dangerous flying Colonel Palermo was never in the military. He learned to fly while in law school, and his flying instructor encouraged him to dedicate some of his free time to the CAP. But the colonel says he imagines that what was going on over New Orleans was akin to something you might see in air war. Safely negotiating all the aircraft, he says, was overwhelming. "What was surreal about it was the number of aircraft," he said. "I've never been in a war operation. But I can't imagine any more aircraft that existed than what existed in New Orleans after the storm." After Katrina, there were hundreds of aircraft performing various missions over New Orleans. And many of them were on their own, insofar as tower control, said Major Flournoy. To alleviate the congestion, the Air Force had an E-3 Sentry (AWACS) aircraft in the air, and the CAP put up their own aircraft to make sense of the flying going on below. "Since there were no control towers on the ground in New Orleans, some of the coordination of our flights had to be done by what we call 'High Bird,'" Major Flournoy said. "I'd fly at 3,000 to 4,000 feet and talk to all the other CAP aircraft in the air in the area to make sure they were okay and to relay messages." "This was some of the most dangerous flying I've ever done, mainly because of obstacles and other aircraft. You really had to look out for yourself," he said. "There were no radar advisories. Everyone in the flight crew had to keep a sharp eye out for other aircraft, especially the numerous rescue helicopters.“ In their own backyard When federal troops respond, it is often to an overseas location -- to areas far beyond what most Airmen would refer to as home. In New Orleans, some of the very people that helped were already familiar with the area, had worked there or even lived there. And when Rita hit just a month later, some of those who flew Katrina missions had to go home to take care of the disasters in their own backyards. Colonel Palermo spent nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina directing the local emergency operations center in his home town of Lake Charles. He was drafted as operations section chief and later deputy director because of his past disaster management experience. As a result of the work he did there, he didn't get a chance to go back to his own home, which suffered great damage from the winds of Hurricane Rita. "I had a big water oak that crashed in to my home," he said. "I didn't see it for a couple of weeks after the storm. I was busy with the emergency ops staff coordinating the distribution of food, water, generators, fuel and ice." While the colonel stayed in the operations center, his wife got a chance to make it back and assess the damage to their home. "It was very emotional for her and somewhat disheartening for me," he said. "But there wasn’t a lot I could do about it -- me and tools don't particularly work well together. But I am a fairly good manager for emergency operations. The best thing for me to do was try to help as many people as possible. I had to carry on with the operations." Colonel Palermo said that other areas in Lake Charles were also severely damaged. "A lot of our own members could not respond because their own homes were devastated," he said. "There is a long way to go as far as recovery in South West Louisiana...Katrina gets all the attention and for good reason. But Hurricane Rita did equally destroy livelihoods and parts of the economy that we have yet to recover from." CAP brings skills The CAP is a corporation, funded by the federal government, with federally purchased aircraft. It is meant to serve local governments in times of crisis, and to serve, in certain circumstances, as an auxiliary to the U.S. Air Force. But it is the people of the CAP, almost entirely volunteers that really contribute to what CAP brings to the table in any emergency situation. During hurricane Katrina and Rita relief and recovery efforts, the CAP flew some 984 sorties. Ground personnel conducted more than 100 missions in support of the effort, and overall members put in over 11,000 hours toward the effort. "We all have skills and think our skills can be used to protect human lives and mitigate disasters," Colonel Palermo said. "And we use our skills in CAP to help those in need, whether it be flying as aviators or photographers or radio communicators. All those skills can be brought to bear as force multipliers for state, local or federal agencies." Air Force, Army to purchase small cargo aircraft [2006-03-30] WASHINGTON -- By 2010, both the Army and the Air Force may be flying the same aircraft to provide airlift inside places like Afghanistan and Iraq. The Secretary of Defense has given approval for the Army and the Air Force to work together to purchase those aircraft. The Army has been calling it a "Future Cargo Aircraft," while the Air Force calls it a "Light Cargo Aircraft." But ultimately, those names will be gone in favor of "Joint Cargo Aircraft." And it won't just be the name that is the same. The Joint Cargo Aircraft will be a small aircraft developed for both the Army and the Air Force. It will be smaller than the Air Force's C-130 Hercules, but larger than the Army's C-23 Sherpa. Most likely, the aircraft will be a variant of an aircraft already available in the civilian sector, and the manufacturer will modify it for military use. "What we are not going to do is go out and build, from the bottom up, a new airplane and take six or seven years to get it in the field," said Army Brig. Gen. Stephen Mundt, director of Army aviation. "We are looking for something to fill this capability gap now. We have issues with the airframe we have." Purchasing an aircraft already being manufactured by a contractor would ensure a lower cost acquisition and a speedier delivery of the capability. Both the services agree the selection will be based on speed, range, capacity, and the ability to land on unimproved runways or in more austere locations. "We have always focused on the same goal – to provide the combatant commanders with the tools they need to do the mission, and in the process of developing new capabilities, be good stewards of our taxpayer’s money," said Brig. Gen. Andrew S. Dichter, Air Force deputy director for joint integration. "By adopting a common platform, we believe we are doing just this." Both services say they expect delivery of the aircraft to the Army to begin in 2008, with "source selection," that is the choice of the manufacturer, to be made by December 2006. The Air Force should take delivery of its first aircraft in 2010. There have been discussions about the purchase of nearly 150 of the aircraft, though that number could change based on any number of factors, including what is determined to be the unified commanders' requirements. "At this point, there is general agreement the Army will proceed with about 75 aircraft," General Dichter said. "The Air Force will pick up, using the Army's initial requirement, to round out the fleet at about 145 aircraft. Ongoing studies (will) further refine the requirement. The acquisition authorities are the ultimate decision makers, however." For years, the Army has used the C-23 Sherpa, the C-12 Huron and the C-26 Metroliner to provide "organic" intratheater airlift. "Intratheater" means inside a theater of operations. For example, anything meant to fly exclusively inside Iraq today would be intratheater. "Organic" means exclusive to a service -- the Army using Army aircraft to move Army supplies and people between Army units is considered organic. The Army uses the Sherpa and other rotor-wing assets to move goods "the last tactical mile," the final distance between far out Army depots and the troops scattered in the field in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, General Mundt said. The Army's Sherpa fleet is getting old, though. At the same time, the aircraft is no longer meeting the new demands of the Army mission. The plane is not pressurized, for instance, so it has altitude restrictions. In addition, the aircraft has a short range that makes it difficult to get into the Southwest Asia theater of operations. General Mundt said that because the aircraft isn't pressurized, it cannot be used for medical evacuation missions. Additionally, the aircraft is not large enough to carry a standard Air Force cargo pallet. So pallets need to be broken down and reconfigured for use on the Sherpa. The Air Force also needs new lightweight intratheater airlift. The Air Force has used the C-130 to do intratheater airlift for over 40 years now. But the aircraft is often too large for some aircraft movements today in support of the global war on terrorism. The aircraft is frequently not carrying capacity loads, especially when something is needed immediately. There is a significant cost associated with loading up a C-130 with just one pallet of supplies, or 10 people to move when it can carry almost five times that amount. A smaller plane would be ideal to move small amounts of cargo and personnel with the kind of immediacy needed. "In our experience in Afghanistan, where we have dispersed strongholds of U.S. forces, we don't have a good infrastructure with highways and roads and safe travel," General Dichter said. "That caused us to pause and look at how we do business and ask, 'Is there something here for both our services?' Yes, we see a place for the Air Force to embrace this mission and be part of it." Evidence of the Air Force's need for light intratheater airlift capability came during Hurricane Katrina support efforts in and around New Orleans. Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. T. Michael Moseley realized the Air Force would have been able to put to good use an aircraft that can move a small amount of cargo a short distance from unimproved runways. In the case of Katrina, of course, it wasn't unimproved runways, but damaged runways -- those covered with water and debris from the storm. "Our senior leaders see a need for these aircraft," General Dichter said. "That is based on the commitments we have around the world. We are also sensitive to what we saw with Hurricane Katrina disaster relief and the emerging role of U.S. Northern Command and the homeland defense mission." The Army and the Air Force had been working separately to develop a small-capacity, intratheater airlift capability. But the Department of Defense asked the services to work together to develop the capability jointly. By October, the services will realize that cooperation when they stand up a Joint Program Office in Huntsville, Ala., to address their similar needs. Both services agree they look forward to develop this Joint capability. For the Army, it means they will maintain and improve on their ability to move Army supplies out to the very troops that will use them: providing munitions, supplies, and personnel support to soldiers scattered out to the farthest reaches of the global war on terrorism. For the Air Force, it means improved responsiveness, flexibility and quality of service to the joint warfighter by pushing supplies out past established, improved runways. It means a new ability to do light cargo and personnel movements inside a theater of operations, and during humanitarian missions in the United States. And, it means doing those things at a cost far lower than what is now possible with the C-130 or the C-17. Air Force finds cost savings for Raptor with multi-year purchasing [2006-03-31] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force believes it can save nearly $500 million by going to multi-year procurement with the next 60 F-22A Raptor aircraft. The Air Force has asked Congress to approve multi-year funding for the remaining 60 Raptors it plans to purchase over the next three fiscal years. Multi-year funding enables the contractor to purchase supplies and parts in quantity and thus at lower prices. By using this approach, the Air Force believes it can realize a 5 percent savings on the total cost of the remaining aircraft purchases, said Lt. Gen. Donald J. Hoffman, Air Force military deputy for acquisition, during a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee subcommittee on air/land. "Multi-year funding is the best value for the taxpayer's dollars," he told committee members. "With the right negotiating strategy and the right permissions from the Congress and the office of the secretary of defense, we can save the taxpayer about $400 to $500 million dollars by doing multi-year verses three distinct lots." Multi-year purchase of aircraft has been done often in the past once manufacturing designs stabilize, as they have for the Raptor. But due to budget constraints, the number of aircraft the Air Force can afford to be manufactured has dropped to 20 aircraft a year -- the manufacturer can actually produce more than 20 per year. In most manufacturing processes, there is an efficiency realized by making more of something rather than less. Because the Air Force has reduced the production rate of the Raptor to 20 per year, the cost of each plane will go up. The Air Force believes the savings realized by multi-year procurement will help offset the cost increase from the reduced production rate. "There are potential savings, we think, by doing a multi-year verses three separate buys," the general said. "We're going to cost avoid what that spike would be by lowering the production rate." The Air Force is also working with the Department of Defense to reduce costs in the Fiscal Year 2007 budget by switching to "split funding" for the remaining 60 Raptors. With split funding, which has not been done before with aircraft production, the service will ask for money over a total of three years instead of two for each lot. The first year it will ask for advance procurement funding, and in subsequent years it will ask for the remainder of needed procurement funds. By splitting up the funding for each block of 20 aircraft, the Air Force frees up funds for other DOD priorities in the FY '07 defense budget. "The benefit of split funding is that it frees up other resources in the near-term and you pay it back in the out years," General Hoffman said. General Hoffman also discussed with senators the issue of an improperly made part for the F-22A. One subcontractor for the aircraft incorrectly heat-treated a part during the manufacturing process. The heat-treating process was meant to help the part resist propagation of cracks. The general said the Air Force is studying the issue and has determined that it does not pose a safety risk. Consequently, the Air Force has not restricted F-22 operations. "We will continue to study and monitor issues associated with this," he said. "Whether or not it has an effect on the long term sustainment of the aircraft, we don't know. It does not pose a safety risk." The Air Force currently has committed funding for 123 Raptors. Over the next four years, it plans to ask Congress to fund buying 60 more aircraft, for a total of 183. The last of those will be delivered around December 2011. Air Force expects to choose tanker contractor by mid-2007 [2006-03-31] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force hopes to have a contractor selected for a KC-135 Stratotanker replacement by mid-2007. Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne told members of the aerospace industry March 30 the service is hoping to make a source selection for the KC-135 aircraft by the middle of 2007. The Air Force would then embark on an estimated 31-year purchasing program to replace its tanker fleet. The Air Force hopes to release a request for proposal -- an invitation for aircraft manufacturers to offer to build the tanker -- by September. Following that, the Air Force would choose an aircraft contractor from those who expressed interest, and would then award a contract. "I hope we are buying into platforms that are already largely designed," the secretary said. "And there should be fairly minimal turn to get us a (qualified) airplane, which I am convinced can be done within 36 to 48 months. So that is when I expect to actually get a new tanker under way." The secretary said he expects the service to buy about 15 to 20 replacement tankers a year. He said that at that rate, by the time the last KC-135 was replaced, it could be as old as 80 years. The Air Force is also trying to reduce the number of aircraft in the fleet through retirement. At a time when the service is stressed because of the war on terror, it might seem appropriate to keep those aircraft. But the secretary said reducing the amount of airframes that need to be maintained, thus freeing up resources, is the right move. "In industry, when you know your equipment is not being replaced on the schedule that you accepted and you are using it at a higher rate than you anticipated, there is only one thing to do and that is kind of what we are doing," he said. "It is the outcome that I think is absolutely mandatory. And with increasing the capability of each of our acquisitions...it makes a lot of sense." Some of that increase in capability and technology of Air Force aircraft involves their interface with air traffic control systems. In the United States, the secretary said, air traffic control systems on the ground need to be upgraded and modernized to take advantage of the capabilities available on newer aircraft. This new technology in the cockpit and on the ground helps make congested airspace safer and allows Air Force aircraft to better coordinate with controls while flying on civilian routes. One such example is at Hancock Field in New York, where MQ-1 Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicles will be based. The Air Force is working with the Federal Aviation Administration and with industry to develop new systems, such as the Next Generation Air Transportation System, to modernize air traffic control in the United States. "If we are ever going to think about introducing unmanned vehicles into this airspace, they have to follow exactly the same rules of engagement as would a manned vehicle," the secretary said. "We now need to consider all the implications of what is happening to our traffic here in domestic airspace." Finally, the secretary told aerospace industry members that they and the Air Force must work together to get systems fielded faster and cheaper, by resisting the push to load them with the latest technology. The secretary said that when aircraft and satellites are being developed, there is often a push to bring on board the latest technology. That push, he said, lengthens development time, brings the cost of those systems up, and many times causes the cost of the systems to go beyond what was initially budgeted. "I think in the future we are very concerned with piling on technology," he said. "We have watched our systems spiral out of control. So I and (Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. T. Michael Moseley) are absolutely convinced we need to go with the baseline configuration with our aircraft and our satellites, and stop this continuous growth and trying to push technologies into the system." Network passwords will soon be a thing of the past [2006-04-11] WASHINGTON -- Airmen have been carrying around some pretty high-tech identification cards in their wallets for quite a while now. That technology will soon be put to good use. For many, the Common Access Card, or "CAC," is just a replacement for the green military ID card used for so many years. But the card can be used for more than getting Airmen past gate security. The cards carry digital "certificates" that allow a user to more securely identify themselves to a computer network. It is that secure networking capability the Air Force expects to begin taking advantage of, said Lt. Gen. Michael W. Peterson, the Air Force chief of warfighting integration and chief information officer. "So much of our warfighting capability is inherent to our networks, and our ability to go to war relies on our networks," the general said. "We have absolutely got to lock the networks down. Passwords and usernames are no longer sufficient against the sophisticated hackers that are out there. It is time to move on to the common access card, and use the embedded technology on their microchips." By July, the Air Force expects that nearly 80 percent of Airmen and Air Force civilians will use their CAC to log in to their NIPRNet, or "Non-secure Internet Protocol Router Network," accounts at work. Once fully implemented, users can forget their network account names and passwords. Instead, they will log in to work computers by sliding their CAC into readers and entering a personal identification number. The need to have a physical product, a card, to get into the network, provides a level of security beyond the traditional password and login name combination, General Peterson said. "It is something you have in your hand and something you know, instead of two things you know," General Peterson said. Because the CAC also serves as a military ID and is used to gain physical access to Air Force installations and resources, Airmen know how important it is to protect it. General Peterson said he believes the emphasis Airmen put on protecting their CAC from loss will translate to protecting the Air Force network when they begin using it to log in there. The common access card is not unique to the Department of Defense. Similar cards are used throughout the civilian world and government agencies, both in the United States and other countries. The technology is similar to the "Security Identity Module" or SIM chips used in cellular phones. The microchips on CACs hold about 65,000 characters of information, equivalent to about two and a half copies of the United States Constitution. The unique digital certificates stored on the CAC are of critical importance. Those certificates are used to confirm the identity of cardholders to Air Force computer networks. The same certificates also allow Airmen to digitally sign and encrypt e-mail messages. In addition to certificates, the cards also store a member's full name, e-mail address, date of birth, gender, blood type, organ donor status, military exchange and commissary status, and meal plan status. While a fingerprint was taken at the time the cards were issued, that data is not actually stored on the card, but rather in an online database. All the information is protected by a personal identification number. While not all computer systems in the Air Force will require Airmen to use a CAC for login, most eventually will. The change, said General Peterson, is part of the future of network security, and is important to protecting the Air Force's vast warfighting network. "This is about identity management and rights management on the network and making sure that warfighting system is available when we need it," General Peterson said. "This is a quantum step in securing our networks. But I believe 24 months from now we will all simply look at this as the way we do business." General Peterson said that the Air Force is aware that not all users of Air Force computer networks possess a CAC, especially in overseas locations. He also said that some computer systems, such as those aboard Air Force aircraft, do not possess the ability to utilize a CAC. The Air Force information technology community is working on solutions to those challenges. Air Force committed to unmanned aerial vehicle development [2006-04-14] WASHINGTON -- Unmanned aerial vehicles are successfully transforming the way the Air Force does business, and the service is committed to supporting and developing more of them. Innovative UAV tactics have transformed the battle space as witnessed in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Maj. Gen. Stanley Gorenc, Air Force deputy chief of staff for air and space operations, at testimony before the House Armed Services Committee subcommittee on tactical air and land forces April 6. "UAVs are transforming the way Air Force and the joint team fight, and are a critical component of the future joint force," the general said. "UAVs give us operational capability in persistent and precise ways while offering the promise of even more capability in the future. "The Department of Defense has embraced the distinctive capabilities unmanned systems bring to the joint fight, and the Air Force stands firmly behind this endeavor," General Gorenc said. "UAVs not only provide persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, but also enable accurate and timely direct and indirect fire," he said. "Their success has led combatant commanders to request them in ever greater numbers and we are doing our best to make sure that we meet their requirements." The MQ-1 Predator A is leading the way in reconnaissance and imagery, General Gorenc said. In written testimony to the committee, the general outlined the UAV's capabilities and the Air Force's plans for it. "(The Predator) is flying missions around the clock every day," he said. "Armed with Hellfire missiles and equipped with electro-optical, infrared and laser designator sensors, the Predator shortens the sensor-to-shooter timeline because the sensor can also be the shooter." The capabilities of the aircraft have made it desirable for commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan, General Gorenc said. "Combatant commanders’ unceasing demands for additional Predator orbits, I think, should be viewed as a testament to that transformational system's utility and success," he said. "The Air Force's Predator employment has been a resounding success in the global war on terror." General Gorenc said the Air Force plans to meet the increasing demand by expanding mission capability to nine orbits and by growing that to 12 orbits by the end of 2006. The Air Force also uses the MQ-9 Predator B, an aircraft billed as a "hunter-killer." The system is being designed to perform not just reconnaissance missions, but also to deploy weapons such as the joint direct attack munition and the small-diameter bomb. It will also have the capability to self-designate for Hellfire missiles and laser-guided bombs. General Gorenc said the MQ-9 and MQ-1 are at different stages of development and have different missions, but that the Air Force is committed to fielding the MQ-9. "We are looking at various options to accelerate development and testing to ensure the warfighter receives an effective and sustainable system as rapidly as possible," he said. He also said the Air Force is working to develop a "family-of-systems" concept to manage smaller UAVs such as the hand-launched Desert Hawk. Exercise prepares academy students for cyber warfare [2006-04-19] WASHINGTON -- In an obscure office park midway between Baltimore and Washington, about 50 men and women use laptop computers to break into networks at the nation's military service academies. When one of them is successful at penetrating a networked computer, they get up and ring a bell. "We hit a remote desktop on a workstation," one hacker proclaims. Everybody in the room breaks into applause, like the whole issue of national security is just a game -- and it is. The event was the 2006 Annual Cyber Defense Exercise, April 10 to 14, in Elkridge, Md. In its sixth year, the CDX is about helping future protectors of military networks -- students in the nation's military academies -- learn more about what they will be faced with when they get out of school. "This exercise mirrors what they will see in the real world," said Maj. Thomas Augustine, the exercise director. "It's also about best practices in securing your networks, so that only the right people have the information they need, when they need it." Major Augustine works at the National Security Agency and is assigned to the 70th Intelligence Support Squadron at Fort Meade, Md. As part of the CDX, participants were divided into three cells: • Blue Cell participants included students of computer science and related fields at the nation's military service academies. Their role was to defend the military network. • Red Cell participants played the aggressors. They came from the National Security Agency and various service network security groups such as the Air Force Information Warfare Center, the Navy Information Operations Command and the Marine Corps Network Operations and Security Command. • White Cell participants, also seasoned network professionals, acted as exercise proctors, referees and scorekeepers. The exercise, like many military exercises, involved a hypothetical scenario. During the CDX, Blue Cell members played as if they were "deployed" to a South American country and were participating in counterterrorism efforts. While there, they defended a network built using both U.S. military and host nation equipment. The reality of the exercise was that Blue Cell participants -- students from the Naval Academy, Military Academy, Air Force Academy, Merchant Marine Academy, Coast Guard Academy and Air Force Institute of Technology -- were at their respective schools, and were playing between classes. Exercise coordinators, members of the White Cell, pre-built computer networks and installed software on the computers and then sent those out to the academies. Students, many majoring in computer science or related fields, had two weeks prior to the start of the exercise to prepare the networks. One part of that preparation involved setting up the networks; another involved finding pitfalls installed by exercise coordinators. That could mean deleting extraneous accounts or ensuring passwords weren't set to "password." For Red Cell members, the exercise was about breaking in and taking control of the Blue Cell networks. Red Cell members used computing tools to guess passwords, reveal information that was supposed to be private, take administrative control of Blue Cell computers, deface web pages, perform "denial of service" attacks and break through network firewalls. Senior Airman Quinn Carman, a full-time Air National Guardsman with the 177th Information Aggressor Squadron at McConnell Air Force Base, Kan., was one Red Cell member responsible for breaking into Blue Cell computers at the Air Force Academy. While Airman Carman's team was able to cause trouble for network administrators at the Colorado Springs, Colo. school, he said he was impressed with what the students there were doing. The Red Cell was able to deface the Air Force Academy's Blue Cell Web page, and had been performing denial-of-service attacks as well, Airman Carman said. But, the cell had been unable to penetrate the Academy's firewall or take administrative control of any computers. "The Academy has been doing really well," he said. "Somebody there must be real good with setting up firewalls." During the exercise, Red Cell teams used open source software, available freely on the Internet, to perpetrate network attacks against Blue Cell members, Major Augustine said. "It's amazing what's out there," he said of the large amount of network-cracking tools available to the public. Cadet 2nd Class Thomas Griesemer and Cadet 1st Class Christopher Patten, students at the Air Force Academy, both participating in the CDX, said their coursework at the school helped prepare them for the exercise and for the dynamic nature of defending Air Force networks. "What we are learning is not just the specifics, but how to research methods to secure our networks," Cadet Griesemer said. "The classes do give us a kind of general overview, and let us know where to look on the network," Cadet Patten said. "But everything changes year to year." The exercise was fun and valuable to their training, both said. To score the exercise, Blue Cell teams each began with 50,000 points. During the exercise, those points were either reduced or increased, based on the network attacks they became vulnerable to or were able to defend themselves against. During the course of the exercise, Blue Cell participants were also required to file reports on the status of their network. Points were taken away if their reports were not complete or less than accurate. The U.S. Naval Academy won the 2005 Cyber Defense Exercise, receiving a trophy from the NSA to display for a year in a common area on the campus. This year's exercise winner will be announced April 21. (The Air Force Academy won the trophy.) Air Force earns three DOD environmental awards [2006-05-05] WASHINGTON -- Three Air Force installations received awards for their environmental stewardship at a Pentagon ceremony May 3. Dyess Air Force Base, Texas; Tinker AFB, Okla.; and Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, earned 2005 Secretary of Defense Environmental awards. Representatives from each base were at the ceremony to receive a trophy. The Air Force took three of nine Secretary of Defense environmental awards. During the award ceremony, Marcus Peacock, the deputy administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, commended the efforts of all nine award winners. "For decades now the (Department of Defense) has worked both to defend our country, and to protect our natural resources," Mr. Peacock said. "These two goals are compatible and they both strengthen our nation. I congratulate today's award winners and nominees for the work they have done in serving as a model for others in work that will follow." Dyess won the team award for environmental quality. As part of their environmental efforts in 2005, Dyess implemented a new environmental management system that resulted in reductions in waste generation and emissions. The base also formed a partnership with the host city of Abilene, Texas, to recycle residential hazardous chemicals. In 2005, Dyess AFB increased its purchases of environmentally friendly products by 6 percent, and additionally was able to reduce energy consumption on the base, harmful air emissions and water usage. Those reductions resulted in a savings of $750,000. Tinker took the installation award for pollution prevention. Part of the base's pollution prevention efforts included optimization of its industrial water treatment plant. That resulted in a 3,450-ton reduction of hazardous waste. The base also was recognized for innovative methods to recycle hazardous chemicals and materials. These included recycling more than 57,000 gallons per year of machine coolant, saving $107,000 annually. More than 200 tons of hazardous chemicals and materials are now diverted each year. The base also was able to divert more than 40 tons of metal sludge from landfills through recycling. At Wright-Patterson, the C-17 Globemaster III pollution prevention integrated product team took the team award for environmental excellence in weapon system acquisition. The C-17 team's mission is to eliminate or reduce the use of hazardous materials on the C-17 and to initiate proper management of hazardous materials throughout the aircraft’s life cycle. As part of that effort, the team developed a heat-resistant, environmentally friendly coating to protect titanium slats on the aircraft wings. The team also will be responsible for implementing more environmentally friendly methods of applying paint to the aircraft. That method, involving a roller method, was developed at Charleston AFB, S.C. Air Force plans for cleaner, greener future [2006-05-10] WASHINGTON -- In the 1980s, firefighter training was straightforward: light a fire and see how quickly and safely it can be extinguished. So in fire-training pits at Air Force bases around the world, jet fuel was regularly sprayed onto old aircraft carcasses and the surrounding ground. The fuel was ignited and firefighters practiced their firefighting and rescue techniques. While that kind of training is valuable, the techniques created environmental problems the Air Force is dealing with today. "The rains would come and wash that fuel into the infield of the runway," said Maj. Gen. L. Dean Fox, the Air Force civil engineer. When unburned jet fuel seeps into the ground after a rain, it can create underground fuel plumes that can contaminate groundwater. In addition to the environmental problems associated with firefighter training, the Air Force used underground, single-walled fuel tanks to store jet fuel. Over time, some of those tanks corroded and allowed fuel to seep into the ground. Aircraft maintainers would rinse industrial solvents off a flightline and the solvent usually ended up in the ground. These practices seem inconceivable today; at that time they were considered standard industry practice. The Air Force is ultimately responsible for cleaning up environmental damage resulting from its operations. Before a base can be closed under the Base Realignment and Closure process, for instance, the Air Force must address any contamination issues. Active Air Force bases are not exempt from environmental regulations and must remain regulator-compliant. Though restoration and remediation actions are expensive, they must be completed to protect human health and the environment and comply with environmental laws. "We characterize the restoration program as cleaning up legacy contamination," General Fox said. "The Air Force doesn’t use those legacy practices today and will not use them in the future. Instead, we plan ahead for how we will deal with contamination, by minimizing or even eliminating pollution in the first place. "We are more proactive in using different, non-contaminating fuels for our live-fire training, for instance. And we don't install single-wall underground storage tanks anymore," the general said. "The Air Force is constantly looking for new ways to minimize the risk of contamination. Industry methods of construction and standard practices of today are far more environmentally friendly than they were in the past." Today, the Air Force's environmental efforts are wide-ranging. As a result of new industry practices and the availability of innovative technology, the service practices safer handling of contaminants, purchases fewer hazardous materials, manages hazardous material more strictly, recycles, purchases renewable energy and acts as good stewards of Air Force lands and the threatened and endangered species that live on them, the general said. The Air Force has evolved to a more environmentally friendly organization, a service that manages its lands wisely and protects resources so it can continue to train and fight. "We have come a long way, and a lot of it was through the foresight of our environmentally conscious leaders in the late 1980s and early 1990s," General Fox said. Back then, the Air Force had nearly 250 "open enforcement actions" it was forced to deal with. These were violations of environmental regulations that the Air Force had to address to be compliant. "We went hard after cleaning up underground storage tanks, fire training facilities, wastewater treatment plants and a lot of the major infrastructure items that caused us to be out of compliance with environmental law," he said. "We actually bought out those requirements in the 1993 and 1994 construction programs." Those early Air Force cleanup activities reduced the number of enforcement actions from 250 to about 30 a year. Of course, there are always new contaminants to be cleaned up and new contaminated sites being discovered. The Air Force will address those as well. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Defense have given the Air Force until 2014 to complete investigations and begin cleanup of contaminated sites it knows about today. But General Fox said the Air Force has found ways to expedite that process so land can be remediated more quickly. "Between us and the EPA, we are the experts on how to clean up hydrocarbon fuel-contaminated sites," General Fox said. "We know how to clean that up. So rather than study the sites for many years, we streamline the process and get on with the cleanup." The general said the Air Force will group sites together so they can be cleaned up at the same time. And the service will also rely on experienced contractors to perform cleanup actions "For the future, what you will see is that we will beat the goals laid out for us by DOD," General Fox said. "That means a cleaner environment, with some of those sites being cleaned up earlier. It also means a financial savings for the Air Force, and it means we are getting on with business in a proactive posture." Maintaining environmental compliance means the Air Force must continue to be smart in the way it manages potential contaminants and hazardous materials. It must plan ahead and make environmental stewardship every Airman's job. "We want to work with the environmental regulators to avoid becoming violators," General Fox said. "We know the law; we know what we have to comply with. Environmental stewardship is not an engineer responsibility; it is everybody's responsibility. "It is very important for us and in everything we do -- from an operations standpoint, from a logistics standpoint, from a day-to-day training standpoint -- so that we continue to protect our nation’s precious natural resources to enhance our capabilities for future operations," General Fox said. Smart Operations 21 office formed at Pentagon [2006-05-11] WASHINGTON -- In February, Air Force leaders created a new program office at the Pentagon that will take the lead in optimizing the way the Air Force conducts its mission. The Air Force Smart Operations 21 office, created in response to an initiative by Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne, will look at process improvement across the service. The new office provides top-level guidance for implementing AFSO21 initiatives. These initiatives will enhance a mindset in the Air Force that is already geared toward innovation, said Brig. Gen. S. Taco Gilbert III, director of the Air Force Smart Operations 21 office. "The Air Force has always fostered a culture of innovation," General Gilbert said. "We are trying to take that culture of innovation to the next level, where we look at all the processes involved in what we do. We look at not doing ‘more with less,’ but at being smarter about the way we are doing business -- eliminating work that is unnecessary. We have tried to capture lessons learned from industry and government agencies involved in process improvement." Senior leaders designed the program specifically for the Air Force, and it is based on similar industry process improvement practices like Lean, Six Sigma and Theory of Constraints. "Air Force Smart Operations 21 is a term coined by Air Force senior leadership to represent not only a program to institutionalize continuous process improvement, but also to describe a new way of thinking about the Air Force," General Gilbert said. "We want to be smart about the things we do for the future." Process improvement involves looking at the way something is done, from beginning to end, and determining how it can be done better. By outlining a process, people can then look for redundancies and "non-value added work" to eliminate. Non-value added work is that which adds nothing to a process. Examples could be forms that are filled out unnecessarily, or excessive travel to get replacement parts when it would be more practical to house those replacement parts at a work center, General Gilbert said. Even after teams apply initiatives to a process and improve it, there is still more work to do, General Gilbert said. Every process can continue to be improved and more waste can always be found. Continual process improvement is the nature of AFSO21. "This isn't about a one-time pass and you’re done," he said. "It’s a continual process. After you go through once, you then examine the same process again and again. Generally, you find every process will require review four or five times and each time you find more to eliminate or that can be streamlined." General Gilbert said Air Force leaders have identified 10 main processes divided into three areas: governing, core and enabling. The processes are: planning and executing strategic initiatives, managing processes and programs, developing and sustaining warfighting capability, deploying personnel and materials, conducting kinetic and related operations, conducting non-kinetic and related operations, caring for people, providing information support systems, caring for infrastructure and managing financial resources. Each of the processes has several sub-processes. In actuality, there could be thousands or tens of thousands of actual processes used in the Air Force to accomplish specific parts of the overall mission. Each one, no matter how small or large, can be improved, General Gilbert said. "Every process we have needs to be improved," he said. "Even in world-class organizations, you find that 60 to 70 percent of the activity in a particular process is waste -- activity that doesn't add value to the overall output." The Air Force logistics community has been applying AFSO21-type improvements to its own processes for years now, long before the Air Force decided to initiate AFSO21. That community found great success in applying Lean practices to processes like depot maintenance and engine repair, General Gilbert said. For instance, in KC-135 Stratotanker depot maintenance, Air Force Materiel Command returned an additional 100 aircraft to the operational fleet by applying AFSO21 practices. With C-5 Galaxy aircraft, they reduced overhaul time from 339 days to just 171 days. At U.S. Air Forces Europe, the commander chartered a team to look at consolidated telephone operations. The command employed 77 telephone operators, including some working under a $600,000 contract at Incirlik Air Base, Turkey. The team looked at the full range of processes associated with telephone operations and found ways to consolidate and streamline them. The result was to eliminate inefficiencies through consolidation, reduce the manpower requirement to 65 operators and eliminate the need for the Incirlik contract, General Gilbert said. The process improvements will not only produce $2.4 million in savings over the next seven years, they will also generate better standardization and services across the command. While such an improvement proves an immediate benefit to the command’s telephone operations, a larger benefit is realized when considering where those savings can be applied, General Gilbert said. "The real benefit from changing those processes is seen when you look at what it means for USAFE operations in general," he said. "If we can cut down on the contract and operations costs in a variety of these areas, we’re talking about real savings that will translate into increased combat capability for the future." By using AFSO21 initiatives, process times can be reduced, so work can be done more quickly. And by reducing waste in processes, resources like money, time and people can be freed up to do other work, General Gilbert said. The AFSO21 office is in the process of creating the guidance for implementing continual process improvement across the service. In addition at each major command and Air Staff function, there is a colonel or brigadier general designated to support AFSO21 operations and initiatives. The office will also help develop training for those who need it, as well as create ways to ensure the AFSO21 mindset is encouraged throughout the entire Air Force, he said. General Gilbert said that while formal implementation of AFSO21 practices across the Air Force have just begun, he doesn't believe it will be short-lived or ineffective as other process improvement programs have been in the past. "We have found that even skeptics, after they have participated in an AFSO21 event, come away convinced there is real possibility here, that there was a return on investment and that they had an impact," he said. "AFSO21 is about a mindset for the 21st century. This is not a short-term program -- it is a program to fundamentally change the culture of the Air Force for the long haul." Alternate fuel-powered B-52 to fly in September [2006-05-15] WASHINGTON -- This year, the Air Force will test fly a B-52 Stratofortress that is powered in part by fuel derived from natural gas. The Air Force Research Laboratory's propulsion directorate, a part of Air Force Materiel Command, is providing technical assistance to the test flight scheduled for September at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. The bomber will fly with two of its eight jet engines using a specially blended fuel made of conventional petroleum-derived JP-8 and a Fischer-Tropsch jet fuel produced from natural gas. The experiment is part of the Department of Defense's Assured Fuel Initiative, an effort to develop secure domestic sources for the military's energy needs. Alternative jet fuels can be produced from domestically available hydrocarbon products like natural gas, coal and shale using the Fischer-Tropsch process, which was developed in Germany in the early 1920s. Gasification can convert any hydrocarbon feedstock (raw material required for an industrial process) into a synthesis gas that can then, through the Fischer-Tropsch process, be converted into any number of liquid fuel products. The cost of using Fischer-Tropsch has been cost-prohibitive until now. Today's petroleum prices are making liquid fuels derived from the process more cost-competitive, said Maj. Timothy Schulteis, Air Force propulsion program element monitor. "The recent rise in cost of fuel has brought us to where many think we are now at the break-even point," he said. An additional advantage is that the United States can reduce its dependence on foreign petroleum by using domestic feedstock such as coal to create liquid fuel. "One of the primary things we are looking at is using a coal-based fuel for aviation use," he said. "One of the big advantages of that is we have a large domestic source for coal-based fuel." The United States has perhaps the largest reserve of coal in the world. That abundance of coal, and the Fischer-Tropsch process, could put the United States on the path to a more secure energy future. "If there is anything you can do to increase the assured access to a fuel, that is going to be a great benefit," Major Schulteis said. "It is a national security issue to have access to fuel. The other side of that is, with an assured source, you reduce (price) fluctuations so you have stable planning and budgeting." Since this is an experimental program, the September B-52 test flight will not run entirely on fuel derived through the Fischer-Tropsch process. While two of the aircraft's eight engines will run on a blend of JP-8 and liquid fuel derived from natural gas, the remaining six engines will run on traditional JP-8 jet fuel. The fuel derived from natural gas is virtually identical to that which could be derived from coal. The test flight is just one experiment the propulsion lab will engage in before the Air Force sees a new fuel for its aircraft. "This is kind of the initial step, (to say) we have proven we can fly it on an aircraft," Major Schulteis said. There are many issues to go through for the certification and qualification effort. Air Force engines are specially designed to work with the current blend of JP-8 the service purchases. That fuel is held to high standards so it doesn't damage the engines it runs in. Any new fuel that goes in Air Force engines would have to meet similar criteria, Major Schulteis said. Jet fuels produced via the Fischer-Tropsch process are chemically similar to petroleum-derived fuels. The propulsion directorate is conducting experiments to assure the fuel is fit-for-purpose for use in aircraft and will conduct tests to demonstrate engine performance, high-temperature stability, low-temperature properties and compatibility with aircraft systems. National Capital Region first responders train for Pentagon disaster [2006-05-18] WASHINGTON -- First responders from around the nation's capital gathered at the Pentagon May 17 to practice their disaster response capabilities during the Gallant Fox 06 exercise. This year, as part of Gallant Fox, volunteers from the American Red Cross donned battle dress uniforms and played the part of victims of an anthrax attack on the Pentagon. Officials from area fire, emergency medical service, and police departments; military members; and members of the Pentagon Force Protection Agency participated in the exercise, which included decontamination and medical processing of exercise "victims." Gallant Fox is an opportunity to put training to the test for those who would be first to get involved in handling a disaster situation, said Jim Aiken, a spokesman with the Pentagon Force Protection Agency. "The value is twofold," he said. "One, you get to practice the procedures you have developed for this kind of incident. And two, you get to meet your counterparts to find out who you would meet on the field in this kind of incident. You get to know them and build trust and confidence in their ability to do their job, and they in you." Around 11 a.m., exercise victims of an anthrax attack filed out into the north parking lot at the Pentagon, where first responders were pre-staged to handle decontamination. "The people who are coming out, who are contaminated, are taking their clothes off, which takes a large amount of the contamination off," Mr. Aiken said. "We send them through the shower and get them to wash their hair and body, so all of the anthrax they could possibly get off, is off." While exercise participants were not actually exposed to any anthrax spores, the exercise served to test how well local first responders would be able to process the decontamination of affected individuals. Exercise coordinators watched to see how thoroughly first responders adhered to decontamination procedures, and how quickly "victims" could be decontaminated. The anthrax attack victims were put through the decontamination process, which involved removing most of their clothes and going through a portable shower unit. A real attack would require all clothing to be removed for proper decontamination. If the Pentagon were actually the target of an anthrax attack, there could be a larger number of victims that might need to be decontaminated instead of just the 60 exercise participants. But the procedures during the exercise wouldn't be much different than what would happen in real life, Mr. Aiken said. "We hope we wouldn't do a whole lot different than what we are doing here," he said. "We are going to deal with each individual as though he or she were contaminated." Following decontamination, the victims were triaged. In a real-world anthrax attack, everybody who could possibly have been affected would be treated with some medication as a precautionary measure from the anthrax spores they might have inhaled. "We want to make sure that the people here, if it is really a possibility, have the protection they need to go home comfortably and that their families are comfortable with the situation," said Dr. Reuben K. Varghese, health director for the Arlington County Public Health Division. Tests for actual anthrax infections would be used to determine if additional actions are necessary, he said. "You have time while the confirmatory tests come back and it allows the military as well as local public health to stand up efforts to do something larger, if we need it," Dr. Varghese said. Some of the victims of the mock anthrax attack were instructed to act out symptoms of someone who was acutely affected by anthrax spores. Some coughed, some choked, some complained of chest pains, and two had seizures. Those victims were given immediate care on site and some were transported to local area hospitals. Lt. Col. (Dr.) Marilyn D. Perry acted as the on-scene medical director for the exercise. She and a team of enlisted coworkers from the Pentagon's DiLorenzo Tricare Health Clinic handled distribution of initial anthrax medicines and arranged for transport to area hospitals for those affected most by the anthrax spores. Dr. Perry said by participating in the exercise, she and her team hoped to learn and improve their patient triage procedures during a disaster and how to better navigate through the construction at the Pentagon if a real emergency happened. She also said she hoped to become more acquainted with working with local civilian first responders during an emergency. "I think we learned how to work more in conjunction with our Arlington counterparts," she said. "And they really do a fantastic job. They are the people to transport (victims) out that we need to depend on." The total exercise lasted less than two hours, but the cooperation between local area first responders further strengthened the District of Colombia area's ability to respond to a disaster, said James Schwartz, Arlington County Fire Department chief. "I think this morning represents another great opportunity for the Pentagon and the region's resources -- public health, fire, EMS -- to work together and flesh out some of the issues that remain challenges for us," he said. "We want to make sure, as we go forward in the planning, that both the Pentagon and the county plans are integrated, we understand what the other is doing, and we work together, as in the past. We have identified issues we think need continued work, but we are very pleased with the outcome." Some of those issues, he said, involve command and control, communications between agencies and how to handle mass patient decontaminations during adverse weather conditions. "This is the best-prepared region in the country," he said. "The level of collaboration among jurisdictions, among major entities like the Pentagon, and across the professional boundaries like fire, EMS and law enforcement, you will find no better example in the entire country than what is going on here." Technology improvements keep information flowing to warfighter [2006-05-22] WASHINGTON -- During the recent Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., the Air Force demonstrated new technology that provides warfighters with greater connectivity and more timely information. During the exercise, the Air Force tested the Battlefield Airborne Communications Node. The system is an experiment in network connectivity featuring radio communications devices aboard an RB-57 Canberra aircraft. On the ground, Rapid Attack Information Dissemination-Execution Relay vehicles -- Army HUMVEEs with communications equipment -- act as ground stations for the BACN aircraft. The RAIDER ground unit can support up to 500 warfighters, and a BACN itself can support up to 50 RAIDER vehicles. Thus, a single BACN gives communications and bandwidth support to as many as 25,000 warfighters, including cellular phone support. "Pairing RAIDER and BACN units could provide warfighters in Southwest Asia with unprecedented connectivity across a mix of communications devices," said Lt. Gen. Michael W. Peterson, chief of warfighting integration and chief information officer for the Air Force. "It’s a highly effective gateway," he said. "You immediately connect your ground forces, air forces and, as the next generation space forces come online, advanced extremely high frequency and transformational satellite communications." Besides BACN, the Air Force and Army are experimenting with high altitude, long-loiter radio capabilities. Putting a radio transponder unit on a weather balloon, at an altitude between 65,000 and 90,000 feet, provides a radio relay point for forces on the ground. For about $7,000 dollars the long-loiter radio experiment demonstrated the potential to provide cost effective network communications capabilities to distant special operations forces. "They were networked back to the special operations liaison element in the Air and Space Operations Center," General Peterson said. "They said they wanted access to the network. They were using (Secret Internet Protocol Router Network), instant messaging, chat rooms, email and information services to Hurlburt Field (Fla.) where their ASOC is located. It worked perfectly and demonstrated how this experiment will pay huge dividends." Systems like BACN and long-loiter radio can put groundbreaking communications and information capabilities into the hands of warfighters. Technologies like these are important for the military, and the Air Force puts emphasis on making them available. "I can't tell you how many articles I read or speeches I heard from Army and Marine lieutenant colonels that felt like they were on their own when they left garrison; the information flow just stopped," General Peterson said. The Air Force’s goal is to "...take this environment, where information doesn't stop, and (our) Airmen have what they need and get it out to the warfighter," he said. IT modernization: Leveraging the power of information [2006-05-22] WASHINGTON -- Since January, the Air Force has been busy modernizing itself through the Secretary of the Air Force initiatives embodied in Air Force Smart Operations 21. The Air Force's communications and information community is part of that modernization effort. Their focus is on restructuring information resources to ensure the Air Force leverages the power of information, information sharing and cyberspace, said Lt. Gen. Michael W. Peterson, the Air Force’s chief of warfighting integration and chief information officer. "As we go through transformation and look for ways to recapitalize our force, we will play a role in the Air Force’s transformation from speed, stealth and precision, to cyberspace and the power of knowledge-based operations," General Peterson said. "Industry has given us great roadmaps with proven techniques, technologies and process developments that can also change the tooth-to-tail ratio. We will use efforts like Lean re-engineering, and all the AFSO21 initiatives. We have proven models to follow." One of the changes proposed by General Peterson involves finding ways to optimize the software applications used by Airmen to accomplish daily tasks. Software applications used in the Air Force today accomplish a myriad of tasks: changing pay information, adding the name of a new family member to an Airman's personnel records, ordering parts or fuel for an aircraft, storing maintenance records for a fighter jet, manifesting an individual on a flight or transmitting targeting coordinates for a missile strike. In fact, the Air Force has more than 19,000 such applications in use today. And each of those applications resides in thousands of systems across the service. The multitude of applications -- many developed independently of each other -- often create more work for Airmen. One example involves Airmen working as recruiters. General Peterson said when recruiters want to bring a person into the Air Force they must first ensure a slot is available for the recruit in technical training school. Once a recruit is entered into the personnel system, it will save time and improve personal tracking and training preparation when their desired job -- and thus the technical school they will need to attend – is automatically cross-matched against available slots in the schools. "Instead, we must enter your name and identification information into the technical training system," he said. Recruiters must essentially enter information twice -- once into a personnel system and once into a technical training school system. That extra work takes unnecessary time. "That’s only a small and simple example -- there are many more, with increasing complexity. These are the sort of redundancies and inefficiencies our initiatives will solve," he said. "Here’s the real advantage we’re targeting -- getting our information technology systems to do more work, so our Airmen can focus on their core mission.” Many applications Airmen use for their job do not communicate with each other and do not use common data formats. In many areas, information does not traverse seamlessly across systems and their applications. Instead, data must be reentered into a secondary system. An Airman with a new dependant must work with the personnel flight to update Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System, or DEERS, then, give the same information to the finance experts to adjust their pay and taxes. "We can simplify personal, finance, flightline, medical, logistics -- these processes have limitations that affect our efficiency and warfighting capabilities” General Peterson said. "It should be simple to track down a replacement part and simple to make changes to your personnel record. "We have too many people involved in these processes, and you and I spend a lot of time going around an Air Force base, or waiting on a phone to accomplish a fairly simple task," he said. "Whether it is service to you as an individual, or on the job putting things at your fingertips so you don't have to go into search mode, we’re tackling these problems, often with industry-proven capabilities and processes." One stopgap solution used for years to get individual applications to share information was to write unique "links" between them. "We have 19,000 applications across the Air Force, and often to get two applications to share data, we must build software to serve as a link," he said. "If I have an application that shares data with 20 other applications, that's 20 links. And if one of those applications interfaces with another 20, that's 40 more links to develop and manage. The numbers just spiral -- the complexity is enormous." The Air Force is working on all applications sharing and exchanging data centrally, from a secure and trusted source. With shared data, critical applications across the Air Force become more effective and efficient. General Peterson highlights the potential savings saying, "as we migrate from 19,000 applications to less than 2,000 -- our goal by fiscal year 2012 – the cost of maintaining our software spirals dramatically downward." The resources required to maintain the systems will drop significantly. This modernization is already in progress. General Peterson said that in the past, the munitions community needed more than a dozen forms to move a weapon onto an aircraft and then put it back into inventory if it wasn't used. That volume of paperwork meant that roughly 15 extra people had to deploy with the unit. Today, he said, the munitions community developed smarter applications that work in conjunction with the acquisition community to make ordering and loading bombs less paperwork intensive. "It is automated, based on smart systems and radio frequency identifiers, and it tells the Air and Space Operations Center how many munitions are remaining and informs the acquisition community when to reorder," General Peterson said. "Instead of doing paperwork, it modernizes the process. Now, the munitions community accomplishes the same job with 15 less people." That kind of modernization could be applied to hundreds of information-intensive processes across the Air Force. In the future, when an aircraft maintainer inputs the requirement for new aircraft parts the application used may alert other systems to order spare parts. Or, when an Airman has a baby, and the medical technician enters a record for the newborn, the hospital’s computer system automatically updates the personnel system with new dependant information and the finance system is queried for any pay and tax changes. This information system modernization will not happen all at once, General Peterson said. The changes must be carefully developed and coordinated through teams of professionals from all functional areas. "Years from now, our people will think this is the way we have always done things," he said. "When you go online for information or to accomplish a task there will be a community of interest that can help you with answers. Online searches will result in the right number or accurate, useful responses, instead of getting the thousands, or hundreds of thousand possibilities, like we get today. Those IT modernization efforts are on the way – these are really exciting improvements!" Redeployment survey shows most Airmen return healthy [2006-05-23] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force has reassessed about 12,500 Airmen since December after they returned from deployment and found most of those Airmen to be healthy. At the close of 2005, the Air Force began asking Airmen who returned from deployment to places like Afghanistan and Iraq to complete a post-deployment health reassessment survey or PDHRA. The assessment, mandated by the Department of Defense, is the second health survey military members must take after completing an overseas deployment. The first is taken at the end of a deployment. The PDHRA is taken anywhere between 90 to 180 days after returning home. The PDHRA survey is online and takes about 15 minutes to complete. The survey asks questions about an Airman's mental and physical well-being after his or her deployment, and is designed to determine if the Airman needs additional medical care from the Air Force, said Lt. Col. Jim Favret, the clinical consultant to the Air Force surgeon general for the biomedical sciences corps. "The primary reason for the PDHRA is that we want an opportunity to address health concerns that may emerge after a deployment," Colonel Favret said. "So we want to give people an opportunity to let us know if they have health problems related to their deployment. " The colonel also said the survey serves a readiness purpose. Being fit, both physically and mentally, is part of an Airman's commitment to the Air Force. "This is also a readiness issue," he said. "We are constantly monitoring the health of Airmen because part of our job as Airmen is being fit enough to deploy. This is just another sequence in how we do that." According to Colonel Favret, fewer than half of those completing the PDHRA have claimed any kind of medical complications, and most of those are minor. "Right now, about 40 percent of the folks filling it out express some health-care concern," he said. "They are contacted and followed up on, and it kind of goes from there. A provider meets with them or talks to them and does further assessment to see what they can do for them." The colonel said many of those who need further assistance claim some sort of minor physical problem, such as a runny nose, fever, headaches or muscle aches. About 20 percent of all deployment returnees report psychological concerns. "Most of those, fortunately, are mild," he said. "And we are getting very few people expressing post-traumatic stress disorder concerns. Most are mild depressive symptoms or loss of interest in activities, kind of in the normal range." Post-traumatic stress disorder is a psychiatric disorder that occurs after exposure to highly traumatic experiences, such as combat, personal assault or natural disasters. Symptoms range from severe nightmares and flashbacks, to insomnia and increasing social isolation. Colonel Favret said less than half a percent of Airmen have reported symptoms that point to post-traumatic stress disorder. Right now, Colonel Favret says he sees no changes coming for the questions on the PDHRA. But he did say Air Force officials will attempt to adjust the way they interpret the answers on the survey to avoid having unnecessary impact on the lives of Airmen. "We are trying to get the sensitivity of the survey right," he said. "We want to make sure we are catching as many folks as possible, but on the other hand, we don't want to burden people by making them come in for appointments if they don't need to be seen." Airmen who have returned recently from deployment should fill out the PDHRA between 90 to 180 days of returning home. But the Air Force would like all Airmen who have been deployed since Sept. 11, 2001, to complete a PDHRA. "The way we have been doing it is to have the unit deployment manager contact people to fill it out," he said. "But folks shouldn't wait to be contacted. Anybody that has been deployed can go online to fill it out." The Web site for the PDHRA is at www.afchips.brooks.af.mil/pdhra. Users should ensure their Web browser security settings are correct before taking the survey. Using Internet Explorer, go to "tools," then "internet options," then "advanced." Under the "security" header, ensure "Use TLS 1.0" is checked. Personnel reliability program personnel must make a medical appointment to take the PDHRA in person. 2007 budget completes dorm recapitalization funding [2006-05-25] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force's fiscal 2007 budget request will complete the funding needed to replace inadequate dormitories for Airmen. During recent testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on military construction and veterans affairs, William C. "Bill" Anderson, assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, environment and logistics, discussed military construction, base realignment and closure, and environmental stewardship. The secretary told senators that taking care of and developing Airmen is one of the service's priorities, and that housing for Airmen in particular is important. In that area, he said, the Air Force is making great strides. "Our total force military construction, family housing sustainment, restoration and modernization programs are paramount to supporting operational requirements and maintaining the suitable quality of life for our men and women in uniform and their families," he said. "One program that is particularly successful for the troops is eliminating inadequate dorms." Mr. Anderson told senators that the Air Force is making its final request for funding to finish the dormitory recapitalization program. "The budget request before you will complete the funding of those efforts," he said. The 2007 budget request also completes funding for stateside family housing recapitalization and furthers the service's efforts to modernize overseas housing, Mr. Anderson said. In places such as Ramstein and Spangdahlem air bases in Germany, the Air Force is looking at replacing homes through build-to-lease options, military construction and privatization. The service is also working with local government officials to meet housing needs in those places, he said. The Air Force is in the process of implementing decisions made as part of the 2005 round of BRAC. The service is responsible for paying for that implementation. "Our military construction and realignment and closure programs are vital to optimizing our weapons systems capabilities and effects," he said. "The latest round of base realignment and closures will provide more opportunities to improve our Air Force. Our BRAC activities for fiscal 2006 and 2007 are fully funded, and we have begun implementation of these actions." Mr. Anderson also said the Air Force is meeting its environmental obligations. "Being good stewards of the environment is another way we develop and care for our Airmen," Mr. Anderson said. "The Air Force is testing and evaluating, purchasing and using green technologies with alternative non-hazardous technology in aircraft painting, de-icing and other operational areas to reduce the generation of waste and eliminate worker exposure to hazardous substances." The Air Force continues to be the largest purchaser of renewable energy in the federal government, he said. The service also uses or is experimenting with ethanol, geothermal energy and other renewable power sources. New technology could bring more accuracy, speed to target acquisition [2006-05-26] WASHINGTON -- At this moment, above the theater of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, American data sensors of all types are collecting information and intelligence about what is happening on the ground. What happens to the collected data afterward depends largely on the sensor's specific owner and their mission. It could be reviewed immediately, or it could be stored for later use. What is for sure is that terabytes of information, wherever it comes from, often goes unused -- left on a secure hard drive until it is no longer timely or even relevant to anyone. The Air Force is now engaged in an experiment to take all that data and make use of it the moment it comes off sensors. During the Northern Edge Exercise this June in Alaska, the Air Force and Pacific Air Forces will test a developmental system that does just that: the Global Net Centric Surveillance and Targeting system. Data collected from sources such as unmanned aerial vehicles, the E-8C Joint Stars, the RC-135 Rivet Joint, electro-optical sensors, synthetic aperture radar sensors, signals intelligence sensors, and various other data sensors, are all likely candidates to be fed into GNCST. The GNCST system can take information, near real-time, from a nearly unlimited set of data sensors, and process it into useable information for the warfighter, said Maj. Gen. Gregory H. Power, Air Force Director of Operations and Support Integration. "With GNCST, a lot of platforms and capabilities will be fusing their data into one single funnel, and GNCST is at the bottom of the funnel," he said. "It takes all that information in, and through algorithms, is able to digest and disseminate very quickly and very accurately, the position of something like a (Surface-to-Air Missile) site." The system uses a web-based interface. An end user, on a secured computer network, might access the system and ask it to locate any SAMs that appeared in a specific region within the last 45 minutes. The GNCST system would then respond, in as little as a few seconds, with target coordinates for those SAMs. That type of responsiveness and accuracy would be of great use to pilots, General Power said. "If we had a sortie that was going to attack a target, GNCST might identify a mobile SAM system that had moved into the area as the aircraft took off," General Power said. "Of course, the pilot would not know about that. But by having GNCST and being able to digest that data -- getting it accurately and fast -- that data would be available for the air operations center to pass to the pilot. This really is a kind of life saving technology that, once fully developed, is really going to give us an edge on the battlefield." The Air Force processes much of its intelligence information by using manpower. But, humans who process intelligence information cannot work as fast as or process as much data as machines. "A human being processing the data we are talking about here -- it could take, in some cases days, sometimes even weeks," General Power said. "This machine-to-machine interface we will have with GNCST will allow us to do it in seconds, minutes at most. And the timeliness and accuracy of the information is the value we bring to the warfighter." The GNCST system was developed primarily to locate SAM sites, but GNCST can be trained to find any number of potential threats, from SCUD missiles to tanks. Complex computer algorithms allow the system to look at nearly any kind of raw sensor data and locate threats. And as the GNCST system develops, those algorithms can be trained to recognize any number of new threats. "In the future, this target set will grow to eventually include all threats," General Power said. "The database will be a living document, if you will. The list of threat systems will continuously be changing; as new systems are developed they too will be added to the database." The GNCST system could even find "non-threat systems," General Power said. One concern with allowing a computer to pick a target is the fear of removing the "human element" from the kill chain. In the Air Force command and control community, "kill chain" refers to the series of events leading from identification of a potential target to the ultimate destruction or "kill" of that target. The target could be a building, a cave, a convoy or a communications tower. While the kill chain can be shortened through the use of computers, at the end, there is always a human element that makes the final decision to employ force, General Power said. That will not be eliminated with implementation of GNCST. "Just like in any execution decision, there will be rules of engagement on scenarios," he said. "Once the concept of operations is developed, there will be certain checks and balances in it. The final element is the executing human being -- the pilot on the sortie -- at the end of the kill chain that will have the final say on if they drop on the target." Development of the GNCST system, called "Gun Coast" by those involved with the project, is spearheaded by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Partners in the project include the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. and the United States Strategic Command. While the system is only in development now, General Power said he hopes the Air Force signs on for the system. The system's performance at Northern Edge will figure into the Air Force's decision to become more involved in the technology. "This technology has a lot of promise, and we want to see it developed," General Power said. "We are pretty optimistic that it will succeed." "GNCST will bring intelligence information with more accuracy in a much shorter time period than currently possible," he added. "It means we can find and accurately locate bad guys in a much shorter period of time, and hopefully prevent them from causing harm to friendly forces -- in other words saving friendly lives." General Moseley knighted for contributions to international relations [2006-05-31] WASHINGTON -- Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. T. Michael Moseley was knighted during a ceremony at the British Embassy here May 30. The honorary knighthood, at the suggestion of Queen Elizabeth II, stems from the general's contributions to United States-United Kingdom relations while he served as commander of the air war over Afghanistan and Iraq at the onset of the war on terrorism. General Moseley learned he would receive the award in January. He said he was both honored and surprised that the United Kingdom has chosen him for the recognition. "It is, of course, a great honor to be recognized in this way," he said. "It's really a tribute to the outstanding cooperation between our two great countries and, of course, a tribute to the historic and continuing relationship between the Royal Air Force and the United States Air Force. I am humbled to represent our wonderful Airmen and I am honored to be considered for this recognition." The general will be given the honorary title "Knight Commander of the British Empire," and will be a member of the Order of the British Empire. Other Americans with honorary knighthoods include: retired Army Gen. and President Dwight D. Eisenhower; President Ronald Reagan; retired Gen. James H. Doolittle; retired Gen. Carl Spaatz; retired Gen. Brent Scowcroft; retired Army Gen. Tommy Franks and retired Army Gen. and former Secretary of State Colin Powell. King George V created the Order of the British Empire in 1917, during World War I. The only criterion for being included in the order is valuable service to the British Empire. There are more than 100,000 living members of the order throughout the world. Every four years, members may attend a service at the order's chapel in the Crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. Balancing capability portfolios key to Air Force success [2006-06-19] WASHINGTON -- Every day, news headlines tout successes of the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan, but seldom make mention of Air Force contributions. Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. John D. W. Corley told lawmakers and defense industry insiders on Capitol Hill June 14 that that lack of coverage doesn't mean the Air Force isn't contributing to the war on terrorism. "While the headlines don't really talk about Air Force fighters, I need you to understand that Airmen are a critical part (of the war on terrorism) -- from space, to fighters, to strike, to C4ISR, to mobility," he said. "We need to continue to remain strong and continue to remain viable." But in order for the Air Force to remain a strong, viable force in the war on terror, it must work to recapitalize its fleet of aging aircraft, General Corley said. The Air Force maintains three "portfolios" of aircraft, and each performs a separate task, the general said. Those portfolios include strike aircraft; mobility aircraft; and command, control, computers, communication, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or C4ISR, aircraft. Strike aircraft include the F-16 Fighting Falcon, F-15 Eagle, F-22 Raptor, B-1B Lancer, B-2 Spirit and B-52 Stratofortress. "This is the portfolio that brought us the effects of the (Abu Mousab al Zarqawi) attack -- rapidly, anywhere on the globe, to include non-permissive environments," he said. "That's what the United States Air Force does for you, that's what (it) brings to this president and this nation. We can hold targets at risk anywhere on this globe, at any time." But aircraft in the strike portfolio are aging, and it is increasingly more expensive to maintain the capability those aircraft provide. That is money that could be better spent on newer aircraft that deliver more capability than the older ones, General Corley said. "Some of those aircraft need to begin to retire, so we can stop spending money on (them) and begin to modernize and provide the appropriate tools for those youth of our Air Force to be able to use in the future," he said. The Air Force wants to retire 18 B-52s in the 2007 president's budget, and an additional 20 in the 2008 budget. He said combatant commanders support retirement of those aircraft. The Air Force also plans to replace fighter aircraft such as the F-16 and the F-15 with the F-35 and the F-22 respectively. The capability the F-22 brings to the fight far eclipses the capability of the F-15 it is supposed to replace. It leaves some asking whether that kind of capability is necessary. During Exercise Northern Edge 2006 in Alaska in early June, for instance, the F-22 was pitted against as many as 40 "enemy aircraft" during simulated battles. The Raptor achieved a 108-to-zero kill ratio. General Corley said that while some may question the need for that much capability, he believes it is necessary. "I don't want our nation's sons and daughters to be in the last airplane with the last missile, to go against the last enemy aircraft, with the hope that we will come out on top," he said. "I do want our forces to be incredibly capable and to be overwhelming in that battle." In the mobility portfolio are aircraft like the C-17 Globemaster III, KC-135 Stratotanker and C-130 Hercules. General Corley would like to see more C-17 aircraft in the Air Force fleet, but says that the mobility portfolio must be balanced. That means dealing with aging aircraft such as the KC-135 and the C-130. Today, 29 C-130 aircraft are restricted from flying, General Corley said. By the end of fiscal '06, that number will increase to 33. "They are at the end of their useful life," General Corley said. "(They have) 35,000 baseline flying hours and it would cost us $27 million just to begin to fix the wings on these aircraft. Do you want to spend that kind of money, doing wing repair and other upgrades on an aging aircraft that is already at the terminal phase of its flight hours?" General Corley said he would rather spend that money on new J model C-130s and the new joint cargo aircraft, a small airframe to be built in cooperation with Army, that would be used for intratheater airlift. "New aircraft are the ones that will relieve some of the pressures in terms of intratheater airlift," he said. "They will be the ones that help us with those convoys and improvised explosive device exposure. They will be the ones that will give us increasing capability in terms of consequence management." An aircraft such as the joint cargo aircraft could be used in place of conducting convoy operations in Iraq. It also could be used to provide relief supplies in disaster-stricken areas inside the United States. The Air Force also is looking for a replacement for the KC-135 tanker aircraft. General Corley said as many as 43 of the Air Force's KC-135 fleet cannot currently fly, yet the service continues to spend money on them. "It would cost us about $45 million per aircraft as we add up the cost of (operations and maintenance funds) and upgrades to those aircraft to keep them on the books," he said. "We have got to shift our investment strategy and move it to where the investment dollars that this nation provides for us can yield the greatest military utility and combat capability for the nation." Even if the Air Force moves forward with a tanker replacement program, the last aging KC-135 tanker wouldn't be replaced for years. The current KC-135 fleet is, on average, 45 years old. The potential pilot of the last tanker to be replaced, General Corley said, hasn't even been born yet. "Is that the tool that we want to refuel the fighters that have to be airborne over the cities inside of our nation in defense of our homeland?" he asked. In addition to changing the makeup of the strike and mobility portfolios, the Air Force is also looking for ways to balance out the C4ISR portfolio. That includes aircraft such as the MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicle, MQ-4 Global Hawk UAV and the U-2S Dragon Lady aircraft. The general asked how many U-2s should be maintained, in light of the increasing capability of the Global Hawk aircraft. Whatever decisions are made about balancing the number of aircraft within each of the portfolios, General Corley said he is concerned about leaving a proper mix of capability to a younger generation of Airmen. "I think we have to be prepared for long war, and it will be the war that is shared not just by me, but will be shared by my daughter and my sons when they become a part of this," he said. " I want to leave them with a legacy of the right tools, properly equipped, to be able to continue to do what you have blessed me with in this nation, which are the right people and the right things in terms of equipment." General Corley also emphasized that what is right in terms of tools and equipment is not something the Air Force has arrived at independently. He said those decisions are made in partnership with the Congress, the Department of Defense, the other services and the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve components. "(This) has been debated amongst the services, with the combatant commanders and with civilian leadership," he said. "And I think it is important to stress that this is not just an Air Force wish list." Warfighting integration reduces inaccuracy, inefficiency [2006-06-19] WASHINGTON -- Over the next decade, the Air Force will continue to use information technology to leverage the capability of its people and weapons systems. During a conference here June 13, Lt. Gen. Michael W. Peterson, Air Force chief of warfighting integration and chief information officer, told members of the civilian information technology industry about the Air Force's success in employment of IT and its plans for the future. General Peterson said the Air Force already had stealthy, precise weapons systems and the best Airmen in the world, but by adding IT to that mix, the service was able to make its assets more efficient and powerful. The concept of using IT to reap greater benefits from Air Force weapons and people is warfighting integration. One example of warfighting integration is the link between ground troops and airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms such as the MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicle. "Today, (a) Soldier, Marine or an Airman on the ground can look at a terminal and watch what a Predator is observing from overhead," General Peterson said. "(They) can also talk to an AC-130 gunship. The gunship can see what is happening on the Predator. Before it even arrives on scene, the gunship has situational awareness. This has changed things dramatically." In the past, information did not move seamlessly between sensor and operator, or computer to computer. Data had to be moved on paper or by telephone, and then keyed back into a new system -- a process informally referred to as "thumping." That made for inefficiencies and inaccuracies, the general said. The Air Force needed to find ways to move that data machine to machine, and take the human element out of the picture wherever possible. The general said the Air Force cannot afford to wait for data to be "thumped" into a system any longer. "It takes too long to do that," he said. "The moment a signals intelligence unit or sensor picks up information that something is operating in the area, it needs to be passed to the next step in the process. You have to take it to the next level." An example of the next level is linking ground crews to Predator aircraft and then taking the same information and linking it to warplanning and targeting systems. "We may ask a Predator to go look at hide sites. Perhaps, we have identified potential hide sites so we know where to look," he said. "When we find it, it's not somebody on the ground that has found the target, it's somebody back at Langley Air Force Base (Va.) or at Beale AFB (Calif.) that actually found it. With the data processing capability we have, we know where that is on a map with enough accuracy to hand it off to an air crew to start the targeting process." General Peterson said this kind of technology was able to help the Air Force to locate and kill al-Qaeda terrorist leader Abu Mousab al Zarqawi on June 7. "That is exactly what happened when we went after (Zarqawi)," he said. "We knew he was in the area. Because we knew to expect that kind of target to pop up, we placed a continuous string of aircraft in motion. We could have picked any of them to go prosecute the target. That's what warfighting integration is all about, moving from a manual, step-by-step approach with seams and gaps, to a continuous flow seamlessly moving from sensing, to acquiring, to finishing the target." Warfighting integration is also about improving processes to reduce the number of people and the amount of time needed to do a job. During the 2006 Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment, or JEFX, at Nellis AFB, Nev., the Air Force was able to use an integrated database to plan air-tasking orders. Combat planners were able to complete in four and a half hours what in the past took longer than 10. These kinds of efficiencies will ultimately reduce the number of people needed to do combat support, and represent a real cost savings to the Air Force, General Peterson said. Also at JEFX, the general said war planners were able to use network connectivity to reduce the amount of time it took to correct inaccuracies. "In the middle of the JEFX, we (got) a chat note from somebody at Hill AFB, (Utah). He says you 'fat fingered' the fuel load for the F-16 -- we'd missed a zero. At that stage in the past, it would have been too bad. We would've had to fix it on the fly." The error would have required a series of phone calls and messages to stop the chain of events once operational decisions are made and sent out to the force. Fixing the problem could go as far as contacting those at base level locations planning tanker flights and loading fuel onto the aircraft. It could take days to complete the paper to correct such a mistake. And if the error had been significant, it might have meant canceling a flight. At JEFX, the use of an integrated database meant an incorrect number could be changed immediately and the changes would cascade down through the system to all affected parties. The mistake could be corrected on the spot and the mission would never be affected. "When we changed the fuel load on that F-16, it changed every related factor and we didn't have to go back and do anything," he said. "We published the air tasking order without making another input. No problems. That is the sort of power you find when you get everybody on the same enterprise services bus. You can see information and you don't have to guess." Part of warfighting integration is the creation of an enterprise-wide services bus, a kind of central connecting point for all the computer-based applications the Air Force uses. By using common services -- keeping shared data in the same location, or using the same name for the same piece of data in different applications -- all software will be able to share information seamlessly, eliminating the need for Airmen to manually move data from one system to the next. By integrating software solutions, the Air Force expects to reduce the number of applications it uses from 19,000 to less than 10,000 over the next seven years. F-22 excels at establishing air dominance [2006-06-23] WASHINGTON -- Beginning with Lot 7 production of the F-22 Raptor, the Air Force hopes to enter into a cost-saving, multi-year procurement contract with the aircraft and engine manufacturer. According to Maj. Gen. Richard B.H. "Rick" Lewis, Air Force executive officer for the F-22 program, a multi-year procurement contract could mean a $225 million cost avoidance for the Air Force. "Is that substantial? To me that is," General Lewis said. "To the taxpayer, a quarter of a billion savings on 60 airplanes is huge." Lots 7, 8 and 9 of the F-22 will each produce about 20 aircraft, for a total of 60 over the course of six years. The last jet would be delivered around 2011. Due to Department of Defense budget constraints, the Air Force was directed to purchase fewer aircraft in these lots than what the manufacturer is actually capable of producing. That slowdown of production would mean a cost increase for each individual jet, one that would be mitigated, in part, by the savings realized with multi-year procurement. Under multi-year procurement, some funding for all three lots of aircraft would be given to the manufacturer in advance under economic order quantity purchase, allowing it to buy materials and parts in bulk to reap a savings. General Lewis said multi-year procurement could save the Air Force as much as $3.7 million per aircraft. By the end of Lot 6 production of the F-22, the Air Force and manufacturer will have worked out all the major design changes to the Raptor and integrated those changes into design plans for lots 7, 8 and 9. According to General Lewis, there should be no more changes to the aircraft until the service wants to produce a B model. Cost savings, and now the stability in design, make lots 7, 8 and 9 of the F-22 program ideal candidates for multi-year procurement, General Lewis said. "I contend there has never been a program better prepared for a multi-year contract," he said. The Air Force now has funding for up to 183 F-22 aircraft, which will be distributed among seven squadrons. But General Lewis makes no secret of the fact the Air Force would like to see even more Raptors. Today there are about 23 Air Force fighter squadrons, supported by more than 800 aircraft that are currently flying air-to-air, destruction of enemy air defenses, suppression of enemy air defenses and strategic attack missions. Those missions are performed by aircraft such as the F-15 Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon and F-117A Nighthawk. General Lewis said he believes about 381 F-22s could do those same missions. "We think we can replace all of those, reduce our force structure and have more capability in the future with 10 squadrons of F-22s," he said. "When you look at the training, the combat-coded and the attrition reserve that you have for 40 years of having this airplane around, that's where we come up with 381. Right now we are happy to get our seven squadrons funded, but the requirement is greater than seven. We need 10 squadrons." General Lewis said that if the aircraft manufacturer were to shut down the production line for the Raptor, it would be unlikely the Air Force could ever get more. "Once production shuts down, that's basically it," he said. "You can't go back and start this thing up 10 years from now and get more in order to carry out 40 years. So we are concerned about that." One roadblock to more Raptors is the aircraft's high cost. Estimates for the fighter jet range from as little as $132 million to as much as $312 million. So far, the Air Force has invested as much as $28 billion in the Raptor's research, development and testing. That money, referred to as a "sunk cost," is already spent and is separate from money used for future decision-making, including procuring a copy of the jet. By the time all 183 jets have been purchased, around $28 billion will have been spent on research and development. An additional $34 billion will have been spent on actually procuring the aircraft. That's about $62 billion for the total program cost. Divided out, that's comes to about $338 million per aircraft. But the reality is, if the Air Force wanted to buy just one more jet, it would cost the taxpayer less than half that amount. The current cost for a single copy of an F-22 stands at about $137 million. And that number has dropped by 23 percent since Lot 3 procurement, General Lewis said. "The cost of the airplane is going down," he said. "And the next 100 aircraft, if I am allowed to buy another 100 aircraft ... the average fly-away cost would be $116 million per airplane." The F-22 Raptor is not an inexpensive fighter jet. But it brings to the fight a capability that eclipses that of legacy aircraft such as the F-15, F-16, F-117, the Navy's F-18 Hornet and even the yet-to-fly F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. "Even without stealth, this is the world's best fighter," General Lewis said. "The F-22, its ability with speed and maneuverability, is unprecedented. The problem with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in establishing air dominance is that you have to buy two or three to replace the F-22, because it only has half the weapons load, and it doesn't have the speed. You can't replace (the F-22) one-for-one with an F-35 or any other legacy fighter such as the F-15E." During Exercise Northern Edge 2006 in Alaska in early June, the F-22 proved its mettle against as many as 40 "enemy aircraft" during simulated battles. The Raptor achieved a 108-to-zero kill ratio at that exercise. But the capabilities of the F-22 go beyond what it can do. It is also able to help other aircraft do better. "When you are outnumbered on the battlefield -- the F-22 helps the F-18 and the F-15s increase their performance," General Lewis said. "It gives them more situational awareness, and allows them to get their expenditures because you can't kill all these airplanes with just the weapons aboard the F-22. It takes the F-15's and F-18's weapons. It was very successful, (in its) ability to get everybody to integrate." One role the F-22 is particularly good at, General Lewis said, is establishing air dominance. This means making airspace above an area safe for other aircraft to come in do their mission. The F-22 is superb at performing air-to-air combat and eliminating surface-to-air missiles. In fact, the F-22 is capable of dealing with both of those threats at the same time. "Because of its stealth and its speed, it is unique in that category, in that it allows us to establish air dominance," General Lewis said. "It goes after the aircraft, the SAMs, and the cruise missiles. And it can do it all at the same time. The legacy (aircraft) can do any one of those, kind of okay, but they can't survive in contested airspace. They can first try to take care of the aircraft, then they can work on the SAMs. But the F-22 has demonstrated, last year in (final operational testing and evaluation), that we can do that simultaneously." Of particular interest to the Air Force is the F-22's ability to deal with "double digit SAMs." A double digit SAM, Air Force parlance for Russian-designed mobile surface-to-air missiles, is so named for the two digit designator in their NATO reporting name. The Russian-designed S-300P Angara, for instance, is designated "SA-10" by NATO countries. The "S-300PMU Favorit" is designated the "SA-20." Both Russia and China manufacture these weapons systems, and they are readily available on the market. These weapons are highly mobile and pose a threat to Air Force legacy aircraft such as the F-15 and F-16. "It's a huge problem in the future if you think about a double digit SAM. A double digit SAM is equivalent to our (phased array tracking intercept of target missiles)," General Lewis said. "As you know, PATRIOTs shot down some of our own friendlies. And the friendlies knew they were being targeted by the PATRIOT. They tried the best they could and they still got shot down. That is the future if there are double digit SAMs in that environment. You have got to go in there and kill them. If you can't kill them, you will be denied air space. That is what we envision." Recently, the Air Force and the aircraft manufacturer have been dealing with F-22 design issues. Those issues include changes to the canopy actuator, the air recharge system, the nose gear retraction system, the forward boom heat treatment and several structural retrofits. The total cost to make these repairs to the existing fleet of Raptors comes to about $105 million. These issues will be corrected in the production line for lots 6 to 9. Air Force, Army agree on plans for joint cargo aircraft [2006-06-27] WASHINGTON -- With the signing of a memorandum of agreement June 20, the vice chiefs of staff of the Air Force and the Army have agreed on a way ahead for converging the service's independent acquisition programs for a joint cargo aircraft. Both the Air Force and the Army independently pursued options for a smaller cargo aircraft to fly intratheater airlift missions. In late 2005, the Department of Defense directed the Army's "Future Cargo Aircraft" program and the Air Force's "Light Cargo Aircraft" program be merged into the single "Joint Cargo Aircraft" program. The agreement, signed by Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. John D. W. Corley and Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Richard A. Cody, spells out how the two services will pursue the new joint program and how each service will use their version of the aircraft. In March 2005, the Joint Requirements Oversight Council approved the Army's Initial Capabilities Document. That document identified the Army's capability gap in organic airlift. Brig. Gen. Andrew S. Dichter, Air Force deputy director for joint integration, said the JROC recognizes the joint cargo aircraft as a good option to fill the Army's organic airlift need and the Air Force's requirement to provide intratheater airlift in support of all Services. The memorandum of agreement, he said, is an important next step in filling both service's missions. "They believe (the joint cargo aircraft) is an important capability to fill Army's organic lift," he said. "And for the Air Force we have an intratheater capability gap looming. "So the bottom line is we are here together to tell you our two services recognize the importance of this mission, we are working together collaboratively and it is an important event today to reach this agreement," General Dichter said. In the agreement, the Air Force and Army agree on key components of how the program will be run, to include roles and missions, command and control, sustainment, doctrine, standardization and training and integrated testing. Part of the memorandum of agreement defined the roles of the JCA within each service. For the Army, the aircraft will provide intratheater organic airlift. "The Army's Future Cargo Aircraft's primary mission is on-demand transport of time-sensitive/mission-critical cargo and key personnel to forward deployed Army units operating in a joint operations area," the agreement reads. For the Air Force, the JCA will provide the service with the capability to provide intratheater airlift full time as part of the "common user pool," that is, to serve all services in theater. The Army's version of the JCA could also be used as part of the common user pool when it is not supporting Army organic airlift needs. The agreement also spells out how many aircraft will be purchased. Initially, the services will procure 145 JCAs. The Air Force will get 70 of those aircraft, the Army will take 75. That number could change in the future, however, based on the needs of the services and the effects of that aircraft on the intratheater distribution system, said Army Brig. Gen. Stephen Mundt, director of Army aviation. "If the Air Force is flying an airplane that does things that their current fleet does not do today, based on these key performance parameters, it will change the distribution system on the battle field," he said. "The question is: how much will it change it?" Also in the memorandum is an agreement between the Air Force and the Army to develop a joint training strategy to ensure both Air Force and Army crewmembers receive standardized initial training on the aircraft. The joint cargo aircraft will be a small aircraft developed for both the Army and the Air Force. It will be smaller than the Air Force's C-130 Hercules, but larger than the Army's C-23 Sherpa. Most likely, the aircraft will be a variant of an aircraft already available in the civilian sector and the manufacturer will modify it for military use. Academy making strides in sexual assault prevention [2006-06-30] WASHINGTON -- In 2003, the Air Force Academy faced negative attention from the press and drew the ire of parents and lawmakers alike because victims of sexual assault at the school who reported their cases were not given appropriate attention. The academy's commandant of cadets, Brig. Gen. Susan Y. Desjardins, told lawmakers that since that time, leaders at the Colorado Springs, Colo., institution have made great progress toward better addressing sexual assault and violence at their school. She testified June 27 before the House Committee on Government Reform subcommittee on national security, emerging threats and international relations. "The Air Force Academy has come a long way in addressing sexual assault and violence since the events of 2003 and before," she said. "We have changed and institutionalized processes that make victim care our first priority." General Desjardins said leaders at the Air Force Academy have focused their efforts in three areas: prevention, cultural change and victim care. "In order to prevent sexual assault, we first had to understand sexual assault as a continuum of inappropriate behaviors that are contrary to the concepts of honor and service that we in the Air Force have embraced through our core values," she said. Those behaviors range from sexual harassment to physical sexual violence. General Desjardins said the school used experts like Dr. David Lisak of the University of Massachusetts in Boston to help students and faculty at the school better understand the nature of sexual assault crimes, the conditions under which they occur and methods the community can use to prevent sexual assaults. That education, she said, has helped create a cultural change at the school. Nearly 150 hours of coursework, spread out through a cadet's four years at the school, are dedicated to character and leadership development, she said. More than 55 of those hours are devoted to lessons featuring respect as the baseline for topics such as substance abuse, accountability and human relations, including sexual assault and harassment training. "Our education and training programs focus on helping cadets internalize and respect their identity, and that of all their fellow cadets, as members of our United States Air Force," she said. Some of the greatest strides at the school have been made in victim care, General Desjardins said. In 2003, the academy established the Academy Response Team. It is made up of a victim's advocate, a sexual assault response coordinator and members of the Office of Special Investigations and judge advocate general. The ART is under the supervision of the training wing vice commander. "The program we developed here subsequently was adapted Air Force-wide, then by DOD for all military installations," said Johnny Whitaker, Air Force Academy director of communications. "Our ART was the basis for the sexual assault response coordinator programs in place today." The school, the Air Force and the entire Department of Defense also now follow guidelines set forth by DOD officials that allow for confidential reporting. Confidential reporting allows sexual assault victims to report a crime anonymously, while at the same time getting the care and treatment they need. "We strongly supported a confidential reporting option to allow victims to come forward and receive care without automatically triggering a law enforcement investigation -- while maintaining that option for them," General Desjardins said during her testimony. Through agreements with local agencies, the school provides a range of services to ensure confidentiality and preservation of evidence for victims, so they will be encouraged to report crimes, and so that perpetrators can eventually be held accountable for their actions During the 2005-2006 school year, there have been a handful of restricted reports filed with the USAFA SARC, General Desjardins said. "This is good news as an indicator of trust and confidence in our reporting system and the treatment of victims as a first priority," she said. While the academy has made great strides in sexual assault education and prevention, and has done a great deal to improve victim care, General Desjardins said the school has a long way to go. "And I can't overstate how important it is to make this change and continue to shine this light," she said. "This is not one of those problems that will go away. We always have to keep our focus on it and I am optimistic that we are making good changes, but we have a long way to go. We have a very long way to go." Five military members show off their arms at Nationals' game [2006-07-06] WASHINGTON -- On a sweltering hot day in the nation's capitol, five members of the armed forces were given the chance to take part in a Major League baseball game festivity. Representatives from the Air Force, Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard each threw out a ceremonial "first pitch" before the July 2 Washington Nationals' game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. The event was part of the July 4th weekend's "Military Appreciation Day" activities at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium here. Before game-related events kicked off, more than a dozen young men and women were sworn in to the armed forces by Army Brig. Gen. Arthur M. Bartell, Joint Staff vice director for operational plans and joint force development, Washington, D.C. Following a performance of the national anthem by the Air Force Singing Sergeants, the service members took turns throwing their pitch to Nationals' pitcher Michael O'Conner. Senior Airman Joseph G. Buzanowski, a public affairs specialist with Detachment 16 Air Force News Agency in Washington, D.C., represented the Air Force. Before the game, he practiced pitching with a rubber ball at his Arlington Va. office, but was still a little anxious when he took the field. "To be honest, I was a little nervous going down there, I mean here we are in front of the entire stadium of baseball fans, and representing the (Air Force) amongst the other services," he said. "But we all pulled through, we all did well, we all got it to the plate -- I think that was the main goal." Airman Buzanowski is from Long Island, N.Y. and has been a baseball fan his entire life. He said the event is something he'll remember throughout his career. "It's been a fantastic experience," he said. "To actually get to come down here and represent the Air Force and throw out a first pitch is something I'll remember forever -- I'll even have the ball to prove it." Army Staff Sgt. Jody Belzer, 289th military police company, Fort Meyer, Va.; Marine Corps First Sgt. Bobby Barnett, Henderson Hall Company first sergeant, Washington, D.C.; Navy Hospital Corpsman Second Class Roberto Medrano, National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Md.; Air Force Senior Airman Joseph G. Buzanowski, Detachment 16, Air Force News, Washington, D.C.; and Coast Guard Second Class Petty Officer Seth Cockram, headquarters U.S. Coast Guard, all participated in the event. Each Department of Defense member chosen to participate in the event is a veteran of either operation Enduring Freedom or Iraqi Freedom. While Coast Guard Petty Officer Cockram did not deploy in support of those operations, he did participate in relief operations for Hurricane Katrina. All participants were allowed to keep the pitched ball as a souvenir. The Washington Nationals beat the Tampa Bay Devil Rays 6-2. Air Force, Army tell industry networks will be similar [2006-07-13] TYSONS CORNER, Va. -- Air Force and Army officials say their plans for network modernization are similar to one another. Army Lt. Gen. Steven Boutelle, the Army chief information officer, and Lt. Gen. Michael W. Peterson, Air Force chief of warfighting integration and chief information officer, spoke at a conference for information technology professionals July 11. "If General Boutelle and I set our architectures down beside each other, and our vision for where we are going, I think the difference you'd see is that his slides have a green tinge," General Peterson said. "Otherwise, we are in sync. We want industry to know that." Across the Department of Defense, the services are working to synchronize their respective operational and support networks. Eventually, the services' individual networks -- the Army with "LandWarNet," the Air Force with "ConstellationNet," and the Navy with "FORCENet" -- will all be tied together as part of DOD's Global Information Grid, or GIG, expansion project. The GIG expansion project aims to bring increased bandwidth to all areas of the military -- aircraft, foxholes, special forces and sustaining bases. That type of integration requires each service to ensure their portions of the GIG are compatible. The services have agreed to run their networks with an "internet protocol," or IP, architecture. That was one message the two generals had for civilian industry leaders who will in all likelihood be responsible for constructing those military networks. Another message was that implementation of the GIG, the "transport," would bring a whole new spate of problems involving data synchronization. Particularly, in order to realize the synergy of having every system connected to every other system, the resources on those systems would have to speak a standard language and be able to share data seamlessly. That isn't the case today. "That is a very onerous process to go into legacy systems, look at the data they are generating...then tie it to a transport and then tie it to another system," General Boutelle said. "Some things become very ugly when the transport comes to it. We need to be quickly shifting our focus to a single data strategy, and I think we have one. The Joint Staff and Office of the Secretary of Defense have agreed upon a data strategy, and data elements and symbology, so these (systems) will interoperate seamlessly." Solving the data synchronization problem is something experts in the Army, Navy and Air Force will have to work on in order to fully leverage the GIG's overall potential. "This is not a job for the people in the IT community alone," General Peterson said. "This is very much about functional communities having to do some very rigorous work in defining the data, in terms of what data they require and then describing it in terms of taxonomy, naming conventions, etc. That's the path we are on. "It's not just about business systems; it's about delivering operational capabilities," General Peterson said. "It is a five- or six-year journey, but we are on our way to making that happen across the Air Force." Air Force meeting requirements for F-22 multi-year funding [2006-07-26] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force will meet all requirements to proceed with multi-year funding on purchasing of the last 60 F-22 Raptor aircraft. During a July 26 testimony before the Senate Armed Service Committee air-land subcommittee, Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne said the service has met five of six legislative requirements for proceeding with multi-year funding on the F-22 aircraft. "The one I lack, really, is the authorization from the Congress," Secretary Wynne said. "I believe we have met five out of the six, the sixth being the funding, which I intend to meet in the fiscal year 2008 program objective memorandum." In order to proceed with multi-year funding on the F-22, the Air Force must meet the six criteria laid out in Title 10 U.S. Code, Section 2306B. That part of the law requires the Air Force to show the multi-year contract promotes national security, the number of aircraft required is stable, the aircraft design is stable, the contract will result in substantial savings, the costs estimates for the contract and cost avoidance are realistic, and be able to provide stable funding throughout the contract period. Lots 7, 8 and 9 of the F-22 will each produce about 20 aircraft, for a total of 60 over the course of six years. The last jet would be delivered around 2011. Due to Department of Defense budget constraints, the Air Force was directed to purchase fewer aircraft in these lots than what the manufacturer is actually capable of producing. That slowdown of production would mean a cost increase for each individual jet, one that would be mitigated, in part, by the savings realized with multi-year procurement. Under multi-year procurement, some funding for all three lots of aircraft would be given to the manufacturer in advance under economic order quantity purchase, allowing it to buy materials and parts in bulk to reap a savings. The Air Force could save as much as $3.7 million per aircraft under the plan. The Air Force asked Congress to approve multi-year funding for the remaining 60 Raptors it plans to purchase over the next three fiscal years. Both houses of Congress have already approved the request. New utility uniform on track for distribution [2006-08-01] WASHINGTON -- The new Airman Battle Uniform is moving into production and on track for distribution to deploying Airmen next summer. Patterns have been finalized and are being run through production to ensure sizing and garment construction as well as preparing for assembly-line operations, said Senior Master Sgt. Dana Athnos, the Air Force uniform board superintendent. Senior leaders want the warfighters to get the first ABUs, and Airmen deploying in the air and space expeditionary cycle 7/8 in May 2007 will receive two sets each of the new ABU and the current deployment uniform, the Desert Combat Uniform. Airmen embedded with Army units will get four ABU sets which lets them blend in more with their service counterparts. While the Army and the Air Force combat will look similar from a distance, the Air Force distinctive pattern includes a slate-blue shade in addition to foliage green, desert sand and urban gray shades. The pattern is pixilated or "digital" like the Marine Corps and Army but is based on a pixilated Vietnam-era tiger stripe pattern. While the ABU has been in production for about four and a half years, the Air Force has had numerous hurdles to overcome. The ABU is the first utility uniform designed in both male and female sizes to replace the DCU and "woodland" patterned Battle Dress Uniform. The ABU will be worn in the desert, stateside bases and in environments for which the BDU was originally designed. And it has been redesigned from the largely unpopular blue-tiger striped pattern initially fielded, most recently with additions of extra pockets, after feedback Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley got when he was visiting Airmen in Southwest Asia. Considering the final changes and configurations were made this past January and the ABU will begin rolling off the assembly line in January 2007, Sergeant Athnos said the ABU is on track and moving forward as planned. After distribution to Airmen deploying next summer, Airmen in basic training will be issued the ABU beginning in October 2007. Once that distribution system is in place, the ABU will be available in AAFES outlets for purchase. The expected mandatory wear date for the ABU is 2011. Wynne: We are logisticians of information [2006-08-02] WASHINGTON -- As does its enemies, the Air Force considers cyberspace a warfighting domain. The Air Force has always been in the business of flying and fighting in the air, and in past decades, has included space in that mission. This year the Air Force expanded its mission to include cyberspace -- the domain of information -- said Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne, during the Senior Leadership Orientation Course here July 31. Both the secretary and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley addressed SLOC attendees. "You always wonder what it is to be 'netcentric,'" said Secretary Wynne. "I think it's a warfighting domain. I see our enemies think it's a warfighting domain. So let's make it an Air Force domain." Air Force officials cemented cyberspace into its mission statement after realizing the service was already heavily involved in the transport, packaging and protection of valuable warfighting information. "It turns out, we are the logisticians of information," Secretary Wynne said. "We pick it up everywhere, we send it through space, we get it up there -- like a pachinko machine -- through our satellite network, and back down to the ground station. (We put it) into the hands of the commander, just in time, and we figured we have to defend it." The protection and maintenance of information systems involves defending the nodes of cyberspace to include the satellite dishes, satellites, routers and the development and deployment of new satellite systems. The Air Force designs, deploys and defends information systems for the joint warfighter and for itself, Secretary Wynne said. "We are netcentric, and we actually deliver and we depend upon cyberspace to get this done," he said. "We put a lot of trust in the messages we receive and the targeting we get ... because we drop stuff from way up there, and we shoot from huge distances (away). We need to trust the messaging traffic and imagery and geolocators when they come over our network." Taking on the domain of cyberspace will not pull resources from other missions, Secretary Wynne said, because the Air Force already has as many resources committed to cyberspace it needs and will simply focus on the ones it has. "I found out we have over 20,000 people working in cyberspace," he said. "We are now ... trying to figure out how to organize, train and equip (them). We always did. But it was more of just a pickup game. Now it is becoming more organized." "With the chief of staff's support, we are moving in that direction," he said. "We are doing a lot of scouting, feeling around and forward looking. This is a domain the Air Force could now be dominating." The secretary also addressed potential concerns about cutting manpower, or force shaping, during wartime. He said force shaping efforts will result in better managed resources that can be redirected at other areas of concern for the Air Force, including recapitalization of the aircraft fleet. "We have got to figure out how to make sure the people who are here in 2015 to 2020 have the best equipment for the next fight," Secretary Wynne said. "We need to offer this nation the maximum number of options so (it) can deter, defeat and dissuade any enemy over the next period of time." General Moseley discussed the Air Force's efforts to posture itself for success in both the war on terrorism and in future wars, while trying to avoid mistakes it has made in the past. The general told course attendees the air forces of the past have failed because they did not understand their enemies, they were not interdependent with a joint team, they didn't increase training and infrastructure to support their fights, and because they didn't begin their fights with the right amount of aircraft, munitions or support. The priorities and initiatives of today's Air Force, General Moseley said, are designed to ensure the service doesn't repeat the past. The three priorities today include prosecuting the war on terrorism, developing and caring for Airmen and their families, and recapitalizing and modernizing the air and space inventory. The Air Force has 67 specific "executable initiatives" to help it achieve its priorities, General Moseley said. Those initiatives include ensuring 100 percent of uniform-wearing Airmen are in an aerospace expeditionary force bucket, enhancing combat skills training during basic military training, finalizing total force integration efforts, and expediting the acquisition process on programs like the KC-X, F-22 and the joint cargo aircraft. The SLOC is held each year to help colonels selected for promotion transition into their role as a general officer. PACAF leaders see flash of future in Georgia [2006-08-04] WASHINGTON -- Senior leaders from Pacific Air Forces toured the F-22 Raptor production facility here Aug. 3 and got a look at the command's first 5th-generation fighter aircraft. Raptor 4087, bearing "AK" on its tail, is bound for Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska. It will be the first of 36 Raptors, in two squadrons, to be assigned to the installation. Gen. Paul V. Hester, PACAF commander, and others from PACAF gathered at the Lockheed-Martin facility here for a ceremonial unveiling of the tail flash on Raptor 4087. While the aircraft is still in production, it is expected to roll off the assembly line and be ready for delivery in Feb. 2007. Initially, the aircraft will go to Langley AFB, Va. for pilot and maintainer training. "Just like we did when we introduced the F-15 Eagle to the Air Force -- when we did a Ready Eagle program -- we are going to do a Ready Raptor program at Langley AFB," General Hester said. "We are going to take our F-22s to Langley, sit on the ramp, learn from them -- maintenance operations as well as pilot operations -- and then in about 8 months we will deploy our first six or so Raptors to Alaska " General Hester said PACAF pilots and maintainers will be fully prepared to utilize the aircraft in early 2008, when he declares initial operational capability. "This is a great opportunity for PACAF," General Hester said. "And we're very excited about our first (Raptor.)" Already, F-22 Raptors flying at the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley AFB are bringing exceptional combat capability to the Air Force, General Hester said. New F-22s, beginning with Raptor 4087, will now bring that same capability to the Pacific. Those capabilities include the ability to "supercruise," or fly above the speed of sound without the use of afterburners. The F-22 also has stealth capabilities, featuring a radar signature the size of a small bird. In combat, the Raptor also excels at both air-to-air and air-to-ground combat, and is capable of performing the two missions at the same time, something no Air Force legacy aircraft is capable of. The F-22 also brings to the fight the ability to integrate, through datalinking, Air Force legacy aircraft such as the A-10 Thunderbolt II, the F-16 Fighting Falcon, and the F-15. "It takes all that technology, sucks in all that data from the battlefield, and passes that data to other legacy systems that do not have the stealth characteristics, and do not have supercruise characteristics," General Hester said. "It positions them better, alerts them to danger better, targets them against targets faster, and allows them to be more successful on the battlefield," he said. "And as it does those things for legacy systems inside the Air Force, it does those same things for legacy systems in other parts of our services, in our Harriers, in our F-18s and in the airplanes other services fly." Pacific Air Forces will eventually get three squadrons of F-22 aircraft. Two of those squadrons will be at Elmendorf AFB, the third will be at Hickam AFB, Hawaii. AFSO21 Leans out uniform development [2006-08-15] WASHINGTON -- In January, a limited number of the new Air Force utility uniforms will roll off production lines. Their arrival will mark the end of a nearly five-year development cycle. Lessons learned from development of the Airman Battle Uniform will be applied to the Air Force's next uniform project, the "Heritage Coat," a potential replacement for the current service dress coat. In just the last six months of ABU development, the Air Force began applying principles of Air Force Smart Operations 21 to the uniform development process. The process -- from the time the chief of staff of the Air Force decides there needs to be a new uniform to the moment it is available to an Airman -- was ripe for the kind of optimization AFSO21 can provide, said Col. Paul Price, of the Air Force Uniform Board. "The uniform process is definitely an enterprise system, and by that I mean there are multiple players who participate in the uniform process," he said. "The reason it is a good AFSO21 candidate is because of the synchronization and interaction between the players and their roles and responsibilities. AFSO21 can identify the processes and then allow you to streamline them to increase efficiency." In April 2006, Air Force officials conducted a rapid improvement event, or RIE, that looked at the entire uniform development process. An RIE, also known as a "Lean" event or "Kaizen" event, is the foundation of Lean process improvement and is a critical part of AFSO21. An RIE focuses on eliminating waste from a process while improving its productivity. Members of Air Force Manpower and Personnel, or A1; the Army and Air Force Exchange Service; Air Force Office of Financial Management; Defense Logistics Agency; and the Aeronautical Systems Center, including the Air Force Clothing Office, all key in development and distribution of uniforms, gathered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, to participate in the event. "During that enterprise look, we developed a schedule to drill down into the different pieces of the uniform process," Colonel Price said. The team also mapped out the current uniform development process, he said. The RIE team identified four interdependent processes in the uniform acquisition enterprise that would need individual RIEs. Those areas included requirements and funding, uniform research and development, issue item procurement and optional item procurement. The first of those RIEs, concerning funding and requirements, was held June 26 to 30. "What I found with the uniform process," Colonel Price said, "is that it was very splintered. There were redundancies and gaps. Uniform requirements were not well defined, documented or stable." Without defined requirements, what was needed was always changing, Colonel Price said. And that uncertainty increases cost and the time it takes to complete a uniform. Another discovery was the lack of continuity between uniform boards and the data they create. "We've had uniform boards in the past, but the results of those boards are all kept in file cabinets in notebooks," he said. "So we identified a big need for creating an electronic automated repository for past uniform board decisions." The members of the June RIE determined such a repository would facilitate managing the data that would be maintained and archived for future boards. Part of that system would allow uniform board members to log in to an automated "virtual board" to participate electronically. The virtual board also would allow Airmen in the field to provide input to the uniform board, without having to wait for major commands to ask for their input, and without having to go through the Innovative Development through Employee Awareness, or IDEA program. Colonel Price also said he noticed the uniform process did not have a single program element manager to oversee the money aspects of developing a new uniform. "Depending on the type of uniform item, who is going to be issued it, and how they were going to be issued it, determines what pot of money it will come out of," he said. "That process is very splintered right now." Two of the largest developments of the June RIE include the creation of the Uniform Enterprise Working Group, or UEWG, and a change in the scope of the Air Force Uniform Board. According to Colonel Price, the RIE team proposed reducing the scope of the AFUB such that it addresses only wear policy issues, and then streamline it by conducting meetings electronically on a quarterly basis, versus meeting annually. The UEWG, staffed by members of all key organizations in uniform development, will meet at least monthly to ensure money is being spent correctly, goals are prioritized and that uniform development is on track. The Air Force will hold an additional three RIEs to further investigate the uniform development process. Those RIEs will focus on research and development, DLA issue procurement, and AAFES optional procurement. Colonel Price said he expects those RIEs to be completed by the summer of 2007. Even with the completion of those final events, the uniform development process will not be completely "optimized." Part of AFSO21 is "continual process improvement." That means there always will be a need to look deeper into a process to eliminate more waste and inefficiency. But with completion of the first application of AFSO21 to the uniform process, Colonel Price believes the Air Force already will gain a better process. "You will see a faster process, and you will also see more efficiencies in the system," he said. "Senior leaders are going to have the ability to make better decisions, and I think there's going to be much more deliberate decision making, very specific decision making. There also will be a much more defined, codified, documented process that will allow us to make better and more timely decisions." Electronic travel system streamlines business process [2006-08-31] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force has completed deployment of a new computerized travel system at all its major installations. The Defense Travel System was installed Aug. 10 at Los Angeles Air Force Base, Calif., marking the end of a nearly three-year deployment of the system to bases in both the United States and overseas, said Lt. Col. Gary Nanfito, the military assistant to the assistant secretary of the Air Force for financial management and comptroller, and previously the chief of travel re-engineering. "We have now brought DTS to 81 major Air Force installations in the United States," he said. The new system, used by all branches of the military, makes it easier for Airmen to create orders for common business travel. "DTS is a fully integrated financial management system that allows a traveler to set up their travel reservations and estimate the expenses they will incur," he said. "It basically prepares a travel order for the member." With DTS, a process that used to take days to complete on paper and required multiple in-person trips to the finance office, can now be done online at one Web site. Airmen can create a travel authorization and book airline tickets, lodging and rental cars from one location. Once they digitally sign the documents with their Common Access Card, the authorization is electronically routed to approving officials. "Once the member goes through and signs the authorization and the approving official approves it -- the orders are done," Colonel Nanfito said. "You don't have to go to finance anymore to get the orders certified. This expedites the task of processing travel orders and reduces the traffic in the local finance office." When a traveler returns to their home station following duty travel, DTS simplifies the process of filing a travel voucher. With DTS, the entire process of filing a voucher, including submitting travel receipts, is all done online. The system allows the user to either scan in their receipts and upload them to DTS, or fax them to the DTS system, which then scans and uploads them to a user's DTS account for the intended voucher. "Once all that is in there, you can digitally sign your voucher and it goes off to the approving official," Colonel Nanfito said. "Within a few days of the approving official signing the document, you will be paid." Payment, too, is electronic with split disbursement directly to the individual charge card and personal bank account. The DTS system was mandated by the Department of Defense for all agencies within the Department. In 2003, the Air Force served as a test base for the system when DTS was installed at Ellsworth AFB, S.D. After the test was proven successful, the DOD, the Air Force, and other branches of the service began installing DTS at bases across the entire DOD. Today, DTS is in use at more than 8,750 sites worldwide, and has processed more than 2.5 million travel authorizations and 2.1 million travel vouchers. While DTS does eliminate a lot of paperwork and footwork in the travel process, the system does not yet cover all aspects of military travel. Right now, the system is used primarily for business travel. DTS does not work for traditional Air National Guard members or Air Force reservists. The system is also not yet able to process permanent change of station travel orders or contingency travel, such as travel to support the war on terrorism as part of an AEF rotation. Colonel Nanfito said DOD is working to get those types of travel into DTS. "The goal is to have all types of travel," he said. "The Air Force is working very hard with the DTS program management office to get deployment travel, permanent duty travel and traditional Air National Guardsmen and Air Force reservists included in the DTS system." Today, the Air Force, the other services and the entire DOD are working to optimize business practices. That effort, Colonel Nanfito said, is what made transition to DTS such a logical step. "It was time to leverage automation and technology," he said. "It was time to take what was a very paper- and labor-intensive process, and to streamline it and make it simplified and as cost-efficient. DTS has taken out a lot of the labor intensive manual steps and built a system that streamlines travel. There have been challenges, no doubt. But the system itself is improving every day and the main goal is to make it more user friendly." Plan for cyberspace available in near future [2006-09-05] MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, Ala. -- Air Force leaders soon will define the service's plan for cyberspace. "I would expect, in a matter of weeks, to see us rolling out what I would call a cyberspace campaign plan on where we are going to go next," said Lt. Gen. Michael W. Peterson, chief of warfighting integration and Air Force chief information officer, during a telephone media conference held here. General Peterson said Air Force senior leaders had been "very active and demanding" of him and the service's information technology community to better define Air Force roles and capabilities in the cyberspace domain. "The Air Force, as an entity, recognized how critical the cyberspace domain was to everything else we did, and (also) recognized we had to put the same emphasis in the cyberspace domain as we did in the space domain and before that, the air domain," he said. "As the Air Force embraces this mission area and this domain of operations, somebody may (say) the Air Force is probably the lead for cyberspace. But we are not there yet." Today, the Air Force is working on moving its own information systems into alignment with the office of the secretary of defense's data strategy. The OSD's strategy requires the services to make information visible and available, tagging information with "metadata" to make it discoverable by users, making information accessible through posting to shared spaces, and enabling a "many-to-many" standard for information exchange. The difficulty with compliance lies in the number of legacy data systems the Air Force is already relying on -- systems not necessarily compliant with OSD's net-centric data strategy, General Peterson said. "We cannot take the key and turn off what we are doing today, harvest the resources and go build something new," he said. "These (systems and applications) will have to run in parallel until they can converge quicker, certainly better." The Air Force is moving quickly towards convergence, the general added, especially in its air operations centers. "The Air Force has done some terrific experimentation with our air and space operations centers in particular," he said. "We have built an underlying architecture delivering services as a data architecture that is enforceable and meets the OSD standards." Next year, the Air Force will test its increased compliance when it demonstrates the Theater Battle Management Core System at U.S. Strategic Command's air operations center. "We have offered to show (General James E. Cartwright) how he can leverage what we have already spent money on to run his command and control," General Peterson said. While not strictly part of OSD's net-centric data strategy, the Air Force also is working on adoption of Internet Protocol version 6, or IPv6. The next generation of the protocol that runs the Internet, IPv6 provides a significant increase in the number of IP addresses available. Today, using IPv4, the Internet is limited to about 4.3 billion unique IP addresses. The new standard provides nearly 50 octillion (octillion = 10 to the 27th power) addresses for each person on Earth. The federal government has mandated its agencies, including DOD, be IPv6-compliant by 2008. General Peterson said the Air Force is already moving toward compliance. "The OSD has been developing an overarching implementation plan (and) we are in lock step with where they are going," General Peterson said. "But the real issue is going to come as applications are developed and built requiring IPv6 capability. We will make certain our architecture is ready as applications emerge. We will have basic capability by 2008." Officer promotion board changes take effect Jan. 1 [2006-09-06] WASHINGTON -- The secretary of the Air Force has approved changes to the format of the selection brief presented to officer promotion boards to begin Jan. 1. Air Force officials will implement three changes to officer selection briefs, or OSBs; two changes deal with presentation of data related to developmental education with a third change deals with deployment history. The OSB is a single sheet of paper that summarizes an officer's career. It is an important document in an officer selection record, or OSR. The OSR is presented to a selection board when an officer is being reviewed for promotion. The OSR contains, in addition to the OSB, such items as performance reports, training reports, decorations and a promotion recommendation form. The OSB is intended to be an overview of what is inside the OSR, said Col. Philip Odom, the chief of Air Force Military Force Shaping Policy. "It is essentially a summary of an officer's career -- some would call it a snapshot -- in a format that is quickly reviewed by a board member," Colonel Odom said. "A board member can look at the OSB and get an idea of where an officer's career is by looking at their job titles and duty descriptions, and whether or not they have completed developmental education." Beginning in January, OSBs will no longer list the name of a school an officer attended as part of their developmental education. Instead, under the education heading, the brief will indicate only the level of education attained along with its completion date. In the civilian world, colleges and universities often make a determination about the caliber of an applicant before accepting them as a student. Applicants who are accepted to the most prestigious schools, and who later graduate, are often looked upon more favorably than those who graduated from lesser known schools. In the Air Force, however, officers selected for developmental education have little input into the school they attend. Often their schools and the coursework they will participate in are chosen for them. By eliminating school names from the developmental education portion of the OSB, the Air Force hopes to change a culture that in the past has put too much emphasis on the school attended rather than the fact the officer completed the appropriate level of professional military education. "This gets into the issue of getting away from the pedigree of the school attended," Colonel Odom said. "Historical experiences are that officers that go in residence to a better known school -- such as the National Defense University or the Naval Post Graduate School -- that those schools represent a quality cut of the officer. This is an attempt to move away from that mindset. If an officer is selected for senior developmental education, wherever they go, that is significant. You have to change the established mindset of the force." A second change to the OSB, also related to developmental education, is the addition of the "declined with prejudice" statement. That statement will display on an OSB if an officer has declined to attend developmental education in their last year of eligibility (if they were a select). "When you are identified and designated to go do developmental education, the Air Force is saying we need you to go do that education, because in the future we need the skill sets you are going to acquire," Colonel Odom said. "By declining to attend, you are telling the Air Force you don't want to participate anymore, that you are not really a team player any longer. It is important for a selection board to know an individual has elected not to play." In April, the Air Force began asking officers to sign a letter when they declined an opportunity to attend developmental education. Since that time, the letter of declination has been included in an officer's OSR. But the OSB has not reflected the declination. Instead, the OSB continued to say the officer had been selected for developmental education. Changes to the OSB will rectify the disparity. Colonel Odom said officers who cannot attend developmental education due to operational reasons will not see "declined with prejudice" on their OSBs. Rather, their OSB will identify them as being "operationally deferred." The final change to the OSB involves an officer's deployment history. Under the deployment history heading, the OSB will now reflect the location of an officer's contingency and exercise deployments. In the past, only the date and level of command during a CED deployment was displayed. The OSB will now indicate if the deployment was overseas or in the United States. Location will be indicated with either an "OS" or a "US" designator to protect against revealing the location of classified deployment locations. Changes to the OSB will not necessarily affect promotion numbers, because selection board members will continue to closely review records as they have in the past to make promotion decisions. Leaders at all levels must be aware of AFSO 21 efforts [2006-09-12] ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md. -- General officers gathered here Sept. 6 to present their plans for streamlining the processes that govern the Air Force. As part of Air Force Smart Operations 21, or AFSO 21, the Air Force Smart Operations Process Council, made up of senior Air Force leaders, guides and integrates the transformation of the Air Force's core processes. Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne told council members he expected this fourth meeting of the group would be more than discussion. "We are going to try and narrow the options down, identify the overlaps, listen to the process owners, talk about the things they have run into that are blockades, and see if we can assist them as a council in resolving them," he said. The Air Force Process Council and the AFSO 21 office have identified 10 main processes" that drive the Air Force. Those processes include planning and execution of initiatives; managing programs and processes; developing warfighters; developing and sustaining warfighting systems; deployment and distribution; conducting air, space and cyber operations; caring for people; providing information technology support; providing infrastructure; and managing financial resources. Each of the 10 main processes has been assigned a senior leader process owner. The process owners are responsible to the council and will lead cross-functional teams to optimize improvements of the main process assigned to them. Each main process has many sub-processes that reach all the way down to work centers at Air Force bases around the world. Eventually, these subprocesses also will be optimized. Secretary Wynne said that at the top levels of the Air Force, major process owners must be aware of what is happening at the lowest level, so that relevant work being done there not only is recognized, but also is absorbed and applied as part of AFSO 21. "It is frustrating to people who are doing things at the subordinate level to find out their accomplishment did not contribute to the overall process goals of the organization," he said. "They feel a frustration because their particular thing was a sideline to the main event. As we move this process along, some of you will actually begin to recognize those things going on at base level, and at the wing level, that are actually positively contributing." Secretary Wynne said it is the role of main process owners to ensure that base level work is included in the more macro level work being conducted at Headquarters Air Force level. "Now we are talking about organizing the strategic part of the Air Force," he said. "And some of you are working in processes where you can clearly see what your line folks have been working on. Our job is really to bring these into alignment." AFSO 21 is designed to fully embed continuous process improvement into the Air Force way of doing business. By using civilian industry methods such as Lean techniques, Six Sigma and theory of constraints methods, Air Force leaders believe they can save billions of dollars and allow the service to more efficiently deliver air, space and cyberspace power. Changes to acquisition processes reduce delivery time [2006-09-14] WASHINGTON -- Changes in the Air Force's acquisition community have already resulted in quicker delivery of capability to the warfighter, according to the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition. The Air Force acquisition community is changing the way it does business to deliver capability faster and at a lower cost, said Sue Payton during testimony Sept. 7 before the House Appropriations Committee defense subcommittee. "The Air Force understands 21st century challenges must be met by continued leverage of our nation's technology leadership to counter the future threats in this rapidly changing world," she said. "Everything we do in Air Force acquisition is dedicated to getting an operational, suitable, effective, best-value and affordable product to the warfighter, in the least amount of time." Ms. Payton told legislators that in order to better serve the warfighter, the Air Force has made changes to its acquisition process. One of those changes includes development of a rapid response assessment committee to evaluate acquisition requirements before a final capability development document is produced. To aid in risk management and decision making on critical aspects of selected acquisition programs, the Air Force has established both an acquisition strategy panel and an Air Force review board. "The senior level boards provide comprehensive reviews with appropriate checks and balances before major decisions are made," Ms. Payton said. "The (boards) tend to get at the systemic problems." Ms. Payton also said the Air Force now considers sustainment of new acquisitions early on in the process, to calculate those costs sooner rather than later. "This allows us to get the technical data necessary to support operations for sources of repair decisions in the future," she said. Already, changes in the acquisition community have resulted in some successes for the Air Force, Ms. Payton said. With the small diameter bomb, the Air Force ensured design and technology for the weapon was matured during the competitive process, instead of after a contractor was selected. Also, the Air Force established realistic program baselines at the onset. Those efforts ensured a more rapid delivery of that weapon to the warfighter, Ms. Payton said. "This allowed us to provide the required assets to the field one month ahead of schedule, and to give commanders additional combat options as the units are getting ready to reply," she said. When the United States Central Command Air Forces commander wanted to deliver smaller sized weapons, with the same accuracy as that of the GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munition, the Air Force acquisition community responded. The new weapon would need to kill a target as effectively as the GBU-31 JDAM, but work in a smaller area and cause less collateral damage. Air Force acquisition officials eventually delivered the 500-pound GBU-38 JDAM guided bomb. "Pressing forward with these new processes, our acquisition team was able to rapidly analyze, test and field this capability in 43 days for the F-15E Strike Eagle and in 52 days for the F-16 Fighting Falcon," she said. "As you may recall, it was the F-16, employed with this new GBU-38, that eliminated al Qaeda terrorist Abu Mousab al Zarqawi." In past years, the Air Force has been the subject of much scrutiny on Capitol Hill over its acquisition practices. In fact, one senior Air Force official received jail time as a result of inappropriate acquisition activities. Ms. Payton said the Air Force acquisition community is now beyond those kinds of problems. "I am convinced that the men and women of the Air Force, in this acquisition community, are committed to restoring public confidence and credibility in the acquisition process and our products," she said. AMC commander: Global mobility aircraft saving lives in Iraq [2006-09-27] WASHINGTON -- Mobility aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan are helping keep Soldiers, Airmen, Marines and Sailors out of harm's way. During the Air Force Association's 2006 Air and Space Conference and Technology Exposition here Sept. 26, Gen. Duncan J. McNabb, Air Mobility Command commander, said C-130 Hercules aircraft are now performing missions that used to be performed by military members on the ground. Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the commander of U.S. Central Command, had asked AMC to help find a way to get supply convoys off the roads, General McNabb said. The much-needed, slow-moving convoys have proven easy targets for insurgents in Iraq. The general told conference attendees AMC had a solution. "We started using the C-130s," he said. "We are going to carry everybody by air now. We are not going to do any buses. We had 63 C-130s in theater and they just started doing all the routes that used to be done traditionally by ground convoy or buses. Then we said we'll get C-130s to carry passengers and we will institute theater direct delivery." According to General McNabb, by using C-130s to move cargo that used to be moved by ground convoys, the Air Force has taken some 9,000 personnel a month out of harm' way. General McNabb also said AMC has started using C-5 Galaxy and C-17 Globemaster III aircraft to move heavy equipment formerly moved on the ground. The Air Force now has used its cargo aircraft to move as much as 63,000 tons of armored vehicles. The Air Force also placed two C-17 squadrons -- about 20 aircraft -- on 120-day rotation in the United States Central Command Air Forces area of responsibility, General McNabb said. Those C-17s now are experiencing more wear and tear than would be expected under normal operations. While flying time has started to decrease, the number of landings and take offs has increased to almost three times that of what was expected. General McNabb said Congress has recognized the increased usage and responded. "The Congress just (approved) that appropriation of the 10 C-17s, because we made that case," he said. "The wear and tear on the C-17s is very real. It is the wartime use that really got us." At the same time the Air Force is preventing loss of life by finding new, safer ways to move cargo, it also is saving lives by finding more innovative ways to move the military people who do get injured back to the United States. In the past, the Air Force used dedicated aircraft to move injured people out of theater. Today, special support pallets are used for patients. Those pallets can be loaded on any available aircraft that is headed home. That increased flexibility has improved the chances that injured personnel will survive. "Now we get them to the doctor or a facility, maybe the only place in the world where you can save their lives," General McNabb said. During the Vietnam conflict, it took as many as 30 days to move injured patients back to the United States. During Desert Storm, that time was reduced to 10 days. Today, that time has been reduced to just three days. "Time is what saves people," General McNabb said. Getting aircraft from all services into theater is one of the key missions of AMC. Many aircraft use the nearly 9,000-mile "air bridge," maintained by AMC tanker aircraft, to get to the CENTAF area of responsibility. General McNabb said the refueling mission is important to the joint fight, so it is critical the Air Force move to recapitalize the tanker fleet. "It's one of those things only our country can do, but what an amazing difference it made," General McNabb said. "AMC tankers bring the fuel to the fight and enable global power, there is no question, and that is why this new tanker becomes so important." The new tankers the Air Force wants will bring more than just refueling to the mission. The replacement tanker will have cargo capacity, situational awareness, self-defense capability and the ability to conduct both probe and drogue refueling during the same sortie. The new aircraft also will be able to give and receive fuel, General McNabb said. "Right now, when a KC-135 Stratotanker has taken care of all its customers, it will bring its (remaining) fuel back," he said. "We have a number of KC-135s that land with between 35,000 and 40,000 pounds of fuel on the airplane." General McNabb said he would like to find a way to keep that fuel up in the air and "in the fight," instead of bringing it back home. While the Air Force does have some 60 KC-10 Extender aircraft that can take on extra fuel from a KC-135, the general said he'd like to increase the number of aircraft with that capability. "If we have a number of new tankers with that capability, you can imagine how we change our concept of operations," he said. Finally, General McNabb addressed the Joint Cargo Aircraft, a program it is developing hand-in-hand with the U.S. Army. The JCA will have about half the cargo capacity of the C-130 aircraft, but will be more agile. Both the Air Force and the Army agree the JCA will bring three capabilities to the fight. First, the JCA will be able to do short takeoffs and landings. Second, the JCA will provide "persistence." Because of its smaller cargo capacity, it can more efficiently move smaller loads of supplies and people to forward locations. Third, the JCA will fill a need revealed during relief efforts in New Orleans -- it will have the ability to react quickly and operate from unimproved runways. "The JCA fits a niche I think kind of evolved over time because of what we are doing in the GWOT," General McNabb said. F-35 centerpiece for international partnership [2006-09-28] WASHINGTON -- The F-35 Lightning II aircraft brings new capability to the Air Force, but also serves as a centerpiece for international cooperation. During the Air Force Association's 2006 Air and Space Conference and Technology Exposition here Sept. 26, Brig. Gen. Charles R. Davis, deputy program executive officer for the F-35 Lightning II program office said the F-35 has been great for coalition-building among partner nations. "If you think about a coalition that covers that much of the globe, that can operate fairly seamlessly between each other -- that is a very powerful tool for all the nations involved and presents a new dimension in warfighting capability," he said. "We are only beginning to think about what that brings to our partners and allies." In addition to the United States, the F-35 program has eight other partners. Those partners include the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Australia, Norway, Denmark and Canada. Additionally, both Israel and Singapore have come aboard as security cooperative participants. "We are finding out that the F-35, a tool of the Department of Defense, is becoming a tool of the Department of State," General Davis said. "The discussions we are having with these countries, amongst the U.S. services, about budgets and interoperability and technology sharing and everything, has really pushed the comfort zone of the DOD about how it brings allies into acquisition programs. This is a very unique aspect of (the F-35)." General Davis said after the F-35 begins operations, he believes even more nations will want to come on board. Many will want to replace their ageing F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft, as the Air Force will do. More than 4,000 F-16s have been sold to allied nations. "We do look at the possibility the F-35 will expand beyond the partnership," General Davis said. "That is where we would like to take the program. To open up the opportunity to put the F-35 in a lot of countries." The F-35 will be produced in three variants, including a standard-take-off-and-landing version, a short-take-off-and-landing version and a carrier variant for use by the Navy. The F-35 will fly both suppression of enemy air defenses and destruction of enemy air defenses missions. Additionally, it can fly counter-air, strategic attack, close air support and defensive counter-air missions. "(The F-35) provides a very broad range of flexibility to combatant commanders out there," General Davis said. "If you think about the fact you can launch a day-1 platform off either a Marine amphibious ship, a United Kingdom amphibious ship, certainly a Navy carrier, or a base in Europe, the United States or Asia -- that is a lot of capability and flexibility to the combatant commander that he does not have now. This is going to be a big benefit of what (the F-35) will bring to the arena once we start to field it." General Davis said the Air Force will have initial operational capability on the F-35 in 2013. Right now, the United States military will purchase about 2,400 F-35s. Partner countries will purchase 500 to 600 total. Air Force undertaking initiatives to transform presentation of forces [2006-09-28] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force has changed direction in its effort to fulfill its legal requirements to organize, train and equip a flying force. During the Air Force Association's 2006 Air and Space Conference and Technology Exposition here Sept. 27, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley explained how the Air Force has undertaken new initiatives to continue providing air power to the joint fight. "We have a responsibility to the nation to provide for the common defense," he said. "And we have undertaken a host of initiatives that are transforming the way this Air Force sees itself and presents forces. Our efforts focus on improving our ability to provide global intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, global mobility and global strike for the nation of the future." According to Title Ten of U.S. Code, the Air Force is responsible for, among other things, organizing, supplying and equipping a force to fulfill the current and future operational requirements of the unified and specified combatant commands. General Moseley said the Air Force has undertaken several initiatives to support those requirements. As part of an Air Force organizational initiative, the Air Expeditionary Force Center merged under the Air Force Personnel Center to create synergies that help the Air Force better serve combatant commanders, General Moseley said. Another organizational change involves a reduction in Air Force Specialty Codes. The reduction will merge many career fields, forcing Airmen to pick up new skill, and making them more valuable when they deploy. General Moseley said he believes the Air Force can reduce the number of AFSCs from 263 to about 100. In addition to organizational changes, General Moseley said the Air Force has put a new emphasis on ensuring Airmen are equipped with the right skills to fight in the 21st century. "Any air force is a collection of professional airmen, and our success hinges on the training we give these people," General Moseley said. "We must educate and train each and every one of them because we depend on their resourcefulness, imagination, creativity, adaptability, and versatility. We are emphasizing integrated training scenarios that challenge Airmen to use all of the tools, tactics, techniques and procedures available to them in the domains of air, space, and cyberspace" As part of a training initiative, the Air Force has modified basic training to put greater emphasis on warfighting skills, General Moseley said. "Our future capabilities depend on building better joint and coalition Airmen," he said. "We have extended basic military training so we could now focus more than ever on these expeditionary skills. We have also expanded the technical schools." The general also said there is talk of a new battlefield training school which will offer one-stop instruction on ground combat skills for combat rescue, pararescue, special tactics, combat controllers, terminal air controllers, special operations, weather and combat communications. Training opportunities also have been made for those already in the Air Force. At Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, the Air Force has created a single air, space and mobility warfare center, and a single Air Force weapons school that merges and crosses all the warfighting domains, General Moseley said. "We also have created the Joint Air-to-Ground Operations Group at Nellis, to include a much more robust Air Warrior program to improve joint operations with our ground forces," he said. "We have combined the conventional and special operations training and developed an urban close air support concept of operations." The Air Force also has expanded the joint aggressor program at Nellis AFB and at Eielson AFB, Alaska. An additional squadron of F-15 Eagles at Nellis AFB, and a planned additional F-16 Fighting Falcon squadron at Eielson AFB beginning next year, will work with an expanded Joint Red Flag program that includes Red Flag Nellis and Red Flag Alaska. "(This) gives us a team of professional threat exploiters, analysts and adversaries to fight as a single air, space and cyberspace component," General Moseley said. "The emphasis is on equipping and training our Airmen as we expect them to fight." While the Air Force is required to organize and train Airmen, it also is required to provide those Airmen with the right tools to do their jobs. General Moseley said the Air Force has not forgotten that requirement. "We will never forget that we must properly equip Airmen with robust, cutting edge capabilities and technologies as we look out into the 21st century," he said. The general said the Air Force is, through retirement and acquisition efforts, shaping itself into a fundamentally different service than it has been in the past. Over the next ten years, the Air Force will have 10 percent fewer fighters and about five percent fewer airlift platforms. At the same time, the service will, among other things, experience a 20 percent increase in combat rescue capability, a 30 percent increase in long-range strike capability, a 10 percent increase in refueling capability and a 20 percent increase in new ISR platforms, General Moseley said. "We absolutely have to make these changes to be prepared for any eventuality," he said. Today, the Air Force is maxing out its aircraft capability and the increase translates directly into decreased combat effectiveness, General Moseley said. "We are investing in new aircraft, spacecraft and cyberspace systems, and equipment to expand these capabilities and really do some amazing things in the future," he said. "This recapitalization and modernization is both critical and monumental." The effort, he said, involves replacing the 117 aircraft lost in combat contingencies and training since September 11, 2001 and if allowed, retiring some 953 aircraft over the next five years. It also involves purchasing new capability to replace the old. "We cannot afford to replace these aircraft 1 for 1," General Moseley said, "But we can actually upgrade the inventory with these new systems. Selectively modifying and modernizing legacy aircraft is also in our glide path to retain these aircraft and their operational relevance." General Moseley said the Air Force issued the draft request for proposal for the KC-135 Stratotanker replacement on Sept. 25. He said he hopes to get source selection for the tanker in July 2007. The general also said he is optimistic the Congress will authorize full funding for the Joint Cargo Aircraft and will approve multi-year procurement for the F-22 Raptor. Air Force will get new bomber, upgrades to fighters [2006-09-28] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force is looking to get a "next generation" long-range bomber by 2018, according to the commander of Air Combat Command. During the Air Force Association's 2006 Air and Space Conference and Technology Exposition here Sept. 27, Gen. Ronald E. Keys, the ACC commander, told reporters the command is funded for a bomber, and it likely would be put together using some of the same advanced technology currently in the B-2 Spirit, the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Lightning II. "We have a lot of those technologies and you put those together into something that will look much like what you know as an airplane," he said. "And you can make a next generation long range strike (aircraft.) In order to make 2018, you have to use the far end of the technology you have your hands on." The general said the Air Force would not see the next "great leap" in bomber technology until around the 2030 to 2040 timeframe. Then, he said, the Air Force may see "hypersonic" capability -- aircraft capable of flying at a speed of about Mach 5. For other weapons systems that use hypersonic technology, the general said the command would have to consider cost verses benefit before making a commitment to buy. "Hypersonics are cool things, but what do I get out of it," he asked. "If I am there, with my persistent force, I can engage anything in seven minutes. If I had hypersonics, it would get me down to three minutes. But the people I want to kill can get away in the first two minutes. Am I willing to pay x billions of dollars for hypersonic weapons that don't solve my problem? Those are the harsh decisions we have to make when people come to us with great technology." Hypersonic weapons are being researched by the U.S. military today. The weapons can travel at speeds above Mach 5 and can generally hit any target on Earth within hours of being launched. General Keys said ACC is interested in the weapons and is researching things such as the types of engines required, the kinds of metals that would needed, the kinds of rules that would be applied to their use and how weapons could be launched off hypersonic platforms. While General Keys said he wasn't ready to commit to hypersonic weapons immediately, he did not rule them out. "I want a hypersonic thing to do a specific thing at a price I can afford with technical risks I am willing to take," he said. With the F-22, and with the F-35 on the horizon, the Air Force must consider when it will phase out the F-15 Eagle and F-16 Fighting Falcon programs. For now, General Keys said the Air Force will keep many of these aircraft around. General Keys said ACC plans to upgrade about 178 of the command's best F-15 aircraft with the electronically scanned array antennas radar. Additionally, the command plans to upgrade other F-15s with the joint helmet mounted cuing system. For the F-16 aircraft, ACC has invested in service-life extensions and is finishing up on the common configuration improvement program for the Block 40 and Block 50 F-16s. The general said the upgrades will allow those aircraft to do suppression missions and use advanced targeting pods. Air Force leaders to discuss new Cyber Command [2006-10-05] WASHINGTON -- Air Force leaders are gathering in early November to discuss plans for creation of a new command, one chartered with flying and fighting in cyber space. Cyberspace became an official Air Force domain, like air and space, on Dec. 7, 2005, when Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne and Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. T. Michael Moseley introduced a new mission statement. In a letter to Airmen, they said the new mission was to "deliver sovereign options for the defense of the United States of America and its global interests -- to fly and fight in air, space and cyberspace." Now, Air Force leaders are planning to stand up a new "cyber command," to be responsible for fighting in that domain, said General Moseley. "To deliver the full spectrum of effects we will evolve a coherent enterprise, with warfighting ethos, ready to execute any mission in peace, crisis and war," the general said. "We will foster a force of 21st century warriors, capable of delivering the full spectrum of kinetic and non-kinetic, lethal and non-lethal effects across all three domains. This is why we are standing up an operational command for cyberspace, capable of functioning as a supported or supporting component of the joint force." Air Force leaders begin planning for the new cyber command Nov. 16 at the Cyber Summit. During the summit, Air Force leaders will chart a way ahead for the Air Force's role in cyberspace, also called the cyber domain, said Dr. Lani Kass, director of the Air Force Cyberspace Task Force. "The chief of staff of the Air Force is going to gather his senior officers and talk about the new domain, in which, according to our mission, we are going to fly and fight," she said. "Our objective is to come out with a course, a vector, that will set us up for transforming our Air Force, to get us ready for the fight of the 21st century." According to Dr. Kass, cyberspace is neither a mission nor an operation. Instead, cyberspace is a strategic, operational and tactical warfighting domain -- a place in which the Air Force or other services can fight. "The domain is defined by the electromagnetic spectrum," Dr. Kass said. "It's a domain just like air, space, land and sea. It is a domain in and through which we deliver effects -- fly and fight, attack and defend -- and conduct operations to obtain our national interests." The cyber domain includes all the places an electron travels. The electron, which is part of the atom, can travel from one atom to the next. This concept is key to electronic communication and energy transmission. An electron may travel from a cell phone to a cell tower, for instance. The path the electron takes, the shape of its path, the speed it travels, and the direction it travels are all critical to ensuring the cell phone works and that a usable signal is received. As part of a signal, an electron can travel from a handheld computer to a reception tower, over a wire to a telephone, to a television through an antenna, from a radio transmitter to radio, and from computer to computer as part of a network. The electron can also travel, as part of energy transmission, from a microwave oven to popcorn seeds to make them pop, from generators over a wire to a light bulb, and from an X-ray machine through bone to a detection plate to make an image for a doctor to review. The places where the electron travels is the cyber domain, or cyberspace. And the ability to deliver a full range of cyber effects -- to detect, deter, deceive, disrupt, defend, deny, and defeat any signal or electron transmission -- is the essence of fighting in cyberspace. In the United States, Americans depend on the cyber domain for nearly everything they do. The cyber domain is the "center of gravity" for all aspects of national power, including economic, financial, technical, diplomatic and military might, Dr. Kass said. "Cyberspace is something on which, as a technologically advanced nation, the United States is hugely dependent," Dr. Kass said. "You use your ATM card, you use your cell phone and you go to an Internet cafe. If somebody is pregnant, they go have a sonogram. If they are sick, they have an X-ray or an MRI. All those things are in cyberspace. Our life has become totally bounded, dependent on cyberspace. Therefore, the importance of that domain is not only for how we fight, but also for our way of life." Failure to control and dominate the cyber domain could be catastrophic, both at home and on the battlefield, Dr. Kass said. An enemy who wanted to inflict damage on the United States could use the cyber domain to penetrate any number of online systems. Once they have gained access, they might be able to delete or manipulate information to create an effect. "Picture for a second that you are trying to fix an aircraft and all the information in your computerized manuals has been corrupted and you begin to put things together backward," Dr. Kass said. The attacks of 9/11 illustrate another kind of effect that can be inflicted through the use of the cyber domain. The terrorists responsible for the attacks used global positioning system receivers to guide planes into the towers in New York. They trained on aircraft simulators, they used the Internet to recruit participants, and they transferred money to fund their activities electronically. In Iraq today, America's enemies are using the cyber domain and improvised explosive devices to inflict damage on American Soldiers, Marines, Sailors and Airmen. "We just commemorated the 10th anniversary of Khobar Towers," Dr. Kass said. "What the enemy used for that occasion, and what the enemy is using in Iraq every single day, is the radio frequency spectrum for remotely detonated devices." The Air Force now dominates both air and space above a theater of operations, so it has "cross-domain dominance" there. But the Air Force must gain dominance in cyberspace as well, because cyberspace superiority is now a prerequisite to effective operations in all other warfighting domains. The U.S. military's control of air, land, sea and space depends entirely on communication and transmission of energy in its various forms. For the Air Force and its sister services, continued dominance in their respective domains means establishing cross-domain dominance across air, space, land, sea and now cyber. "Cross-domain dominance means being able to deliver effects in all domains at the same time, at the speed of sound and at the speed of light," Dr. Kass said. "We cannot afford to allow an enemy to achieve cross-domain dominance before us. This is the nature of the transformational mission the chief and the secretary gave us." While the Air Force develops mastery of the cyber domain, America's enemies are quickly becoming more adept in their own use of the domain, in part, because of the low cost of fighting there. "Enemies who cannot match us on land, at sea, in the air, or in space, are exploiting the fact that in cyberspace you have a very low entry cost," Dr. Kass said. "Low cost is what makes that domain extremely attractive to nations, criminal and terrorist organizations who could not possibly attack the United States symmetrically. All you need to do is buy a laptop or a cell phone. As a matter of fact, you can just go to an Internet café and not even buy that stuff. You can buy yourself a phone card and you can cause high-impact effects." Until recently, the Air Force had not named cyberspace as a separate warfighting domain or said it would fly and fight there. But now that the Air Force has recognized cyber as a warfighting domain, it will begin specific planning on how it can conduct both defensive and offensive actions there. "What I see in the future is true cross-domain integration, to deliver effects, like we deliver in air and space, where the commander has at his disposal, truly sovereign options, as stated in our mission, which is the ability to do whatever we want, wherever we want, whenever we want, and however we want -- kinetically, and nonkinetically and at the speed of sound and at the speed of light," Dr. Kass said. The Air Force is still working on what exactly it means to fight in the cyber domain. While the Air Force knows some of what it wants to accomplish -- things similar to what it is doing already in air and space, for instance -- there remain challenges to working in the new domain. "One of the most important things we do, in and for cyberspace, is enable the kill chain," Dr. Kass said. "It allows us to help find, fix and finish the targets we are after. The problem is finding the target. Most of the enemies are hiding in plain sight." Finding an enemy in the cyber domain means sifting through the huge amount of data there. In the United States, or above a battle space, there are thousands of signals, and most of those are "friendly." The challenge is identifying the signal of someone that means to do harm. "If you could use the cyber domain, this river of ones and zeros, to pinpoint where the bad guy is and who he is talking to, so you can get not only the small fish but get all his best friends and maybe his boss, then you are using cyber to its full capacity," Dr. Kass said. "That is a lot of data there, and the trick is to find him in that huge flow of information, that one piece that will allow you to find him, fix him in place, or track him if he moves." Being able to discern what is a friendly signal and what is an enemy signal is one of the challenges the Air Force faces as it moves into the cyber domain. While the Air Force works on that challenge, it is also working to define which Airmen will be the ones to conduct cyber operations, what kind of training they will need, and what exactly their job will be. "One of the issues we are going to be discussing is who is the cyberwarrior," Dr. Kass said. "What will he or she need to be able to do? What kind of educational skills, what kind of technical skills, what kind of training, and what kind of career path do we need to offer to those kids who are coming into our Air Force and wanting to fly and fight not only in air and space, but also in cyberspace." Dr. Kass said the Air Force doesn't believe it will have trouble finding Airmen to fill the role of cyberwarrior, however. "Kids today live on the Internet, they establish an alternative reality there," she said. "Getting those kids interested in doing something amazing in our Air Force across the electromagnetic spectrum should be easy. This is new and exciting -- where people who love to interact in the high-tech arena, for example, can generate significant effects for the defense of the United States." Like in other domains, the Air Force will probably conduct more than just defensive operations. Fighting in cyberspace also means conducting offensive operations. It is unclear now exactly what will constitute an offensive cyber operation, but it is likely the effects the Air Force will eventually bring to bear upon America's enemies will look much like the effects America's enemies bring to bear upon America. "Imagine, hypothetically, if I could substitute -- instead of the picture of a beheading on a terrorist Web site, a picture of Captain Kangaroo or an MTV show," Dr. Kass theorized. "Maybe I could break that cycle of recruiting more guys that want to come to our home and kill us." Army Air Corps weatherman honored for D-Day contributions [2006-10-07] WASHINGTON -- A former member of the Army Air Corps was honored here Oct. 6 by members of the Air Force weather community for his contributions to the World War II D-Day invasion. Dr. Eugene Levine was 18 years old when he was drafted into the Army. During his time with the Army, Dr. Levine served as a combat weather observer for the 82nd Airborne Division and crewmember aboard glider aircraft. Dr. Levine was also instrumental in delivering communications equipment to the 82nd Airborne Division during the D-Day invasion of France, June 6, 1944. During the ceremony, Brig. Gen. Lawrence Stutzriem, the director of Air Force weather operations, addressed Dr. Levine's family, speaking highly of the former Army private. "Your husband and your father, to the Air Force weather community, is a hero," General Stutzriem said. "You need to know that." During the ceremony, Dr. Levine was presented with an American flag, a shadow box, an assortment of military coins and a 60th anniversary D-Day medallion. Dr. Levine said he was honored by the attention given by members of the Air Force weather community. "It means a tremendous amount, because it's an occasion that only comes once, once in my lifetime," he said. "And to have all these feelings of appreciation for what I did, I have to think back and appreciate everyone coming here and listening to me and my history during WWII. It has just been a marvelous occasion. It couldn't be better." Dr. Levine also said he is impressed with today's technical advancements made in weather forecasting and the professionalism and dedication of today's Air Force weather community. The presentation of mementos and honor bestowed upon him came more than two years late. Originally, the doctor was going to be honored at an international commemoration of D-Day in Europe. In 2004, some 60 years after the Allied invasion of France, the U.S. Army Europe served as host to the 60th Anniversary of D-Day Commemoration Ceremony. Many military units, including the Air Force's 7th Weather Squadron, participated in the event. As part of the 7th WS's contribution, Staff Sgts. John Lee and Joel Decker participated in a re-enactment of the D-Day airborne assault. The two sergeants parachuted into St. Mere Eglise, France. During the jump, Sergeant Lee carried a U.S. flag, a 60th anniversary D-Day medallion and an assortment of coins and memorabilia. The flag and medallion were intended to be presented to Dr. Levine, but he was unable to attend the event. Sergeant Lee and Sergeant Decker, both members of the Air Force weather community, were instrumental in rescheduling the ceremony for the "hero." Air Force focused on three priorities [2006-10-12] WASHINGTON -- Amidst fighting the war on terrorism, the Air Force remains focused on its top three priorities. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley said the Air Force is concerned primarily with fighting and winning the long war against global terrorism and militant extremism, taking care of our Airmen and their families and the overall recapitalization and modernization of aging, obsolete aircraft and spacecraft. The war on terrorism began after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. But the Air Force has been engaged in continuous battle for much longer than the recent conflict, General Moseley said. "We've been doing this in the Arabian Gulf in large numbers since August of 1990 when the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing deployed into the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia for Operation Desert Shield," said General Moseley. "The Air Force has never left the Middle East. It is critical for us all to understand the following: the Air Force has been in continual combat since that time -- 16 straight years through operations Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Northern Watch, Southern Watch, Vigilant Warrior, Desert Fox and now operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. "In fact," General Moseley said, "we've been fighting in Afghanistan 14 months longer than the United States fought World War II. Think about that for a bit!" He also said that, "while conducting these Middle East operations, it's critical to understand that the Air Force has also conducted simultaneous combat ops in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo and over Serbia. No other component or service can say that." "Out of all this continued combat experience comes an incredible wealth of training, deployment, rotation, expeditionary and true combat lessons learned and an opportunity to capture things that work, reject things that don't work, and take those things on board in a programmatic and fielding sense to ensure we're providing the most modern and most combat effective training and equipment possible," General Moseley said. "And we are doing this while we are transforming, while fighting a global war, and while operating the oldest inventory of aircraft in the Air Force's history." As the Air Force continues to be engaged in the war on terrorism, the service is changing the way it develops and trains Airmen, so they are better-prepared to fight the war, and so the service delivers a better prepared force to combatant commanders. Those changes in personnel development begin in Air Force basic training, General Moseley said. "Every new Airman now gets a rifle, every new Airman will qualify with that weapon, and every new Airman soon will qualify with a pistol," he said. "We're not folding as many socks at BMT any more. We are looking at what it takes to better prepare our people to operate in an expeditionary Air Force engaged in a global war on terrorism that will likely last a generation, and that's a huge set of challenges and opportunities for us." General Moseley also said the Air Force is changing the way the service conducts occupational training. In coming years, the Air Force will consolidate many officer and enlisted career fields, resulting in Airmen with a broader set of related skills. Technical schools also will put a new emphasis on warrior skills. "We will focus the technical schools on expeditionary skills, and focus the technical schools on what our new Airmen need to learn ... inside that family of Air Force specialty codes, because at the end-of-the-day ... these Airmen will have to be prepared to fight across all spectrums of conflict. That's our job," he said. Also of concern to the Air Force is the requirement to recapitalize its fleet of aging, obsolete aircraft and spacecraft. "As the Air Force executes its annual budget authority and develops its long term programs, the money is divided into one of four general areas; personnel, operations/maintenance, infrastructure/MILCON and investments," said General Moseley. "In the past the investment accounts or the seed corn to recapitalize and modernize has taken a back seat. "That is exactly why we are operating the oldest inventory of aircraft and spacecraft in the history of the Air Force," he said. "When I (first) put this uniform on, as a cadet at Texas A&M University, the average age of the Air Force aircraft inventory was a little over eight years. That average age today is 24 and a half years. Or said another way, the aging trend on our equipment is in the wrong direction." The Air Force is on track today to replace its fleet of aging, 1950s, President Eisenhower-era, KC-135 Stratotanker aircraft, but no tanker replacement has yet been selected. General Moseley said once a selection is made, he expects the last KC-135R will still be around for an additional 30 plus years as the new aircraft are delivered to squadron service. "We will keep them around for a while because the (KC-X tanker replacement) won't deliver fast enough to divest ourselves of those airplanes in the short term," he said. "The Airman who flies or crews that last KC-135R has likely not been born yet. In fact, the mom of that Airman may not have been born yet. This is the cycle we must break." Another issue facing the Air Force with regard to its fleet of aircraft is maintaining the older aircraft it would like to retire. Congressional legislation has specifically precluded the Air Force from retiring aircraft it no longer needs. These congressional restrictions on retiring obsolete aircraft include the C-5, KC-135E, C-130E, F-117A, U-2, and the B-52. "Some 15 percent of our inventory is restricted from retirement by congressional language," he said. "The annual cost to maintain those aging aircraft increases as the aircraft get older. And, as the threat continues to evolve, these older aircraft become less combat capable and certainly less survivable. To help us turn this trend around we are working hard with the various committees, staff and members on the Hill to provide relief from the restrictive language, and we're now seeing some support." General Moseley believes the Air Force needs the flexibility to manage its own inventory as it pursues its massive modernization program. "Our recapitalization efforts are both monumental and critical for us to be able to defend the nation and provide the joint team with air, space and cyberspace dominance in the 21st century," General Moseley said. "Although we make it look easy, it's not. The air and space dominance we've guaranteed our ground and maritime forces for more than 50 years requires incredibly hard work from our Airmen, who deserve cutting-edge equipment to meet the challenges of the 21st century." Those challenges begin with war fighting, but do not end there. General Moseley expects the Air Force to continue to be engaged around the world in an array of operations that demand Airmen and their equipment be more adaptive, more responsive and more expeditionary than ever. "Our modernized inventory will complement the training initiatives we're pursuing for the nearly 700,000 active-duty Airmen, Reservists, Guardsman and civilians in the Air Force," said General Moseley. "Our Airmen are national treasures," he said. "It's amazing what they make possible and we owe it to them to ensure their success." Air Force meets recruiting goal for seventh straight year [2006-10-13] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force met its recruiting goal for the seventh year in a row, but still faces challenges, said officials Oct. 12. In fiscal 2006, the Air Force brought in 30,889 individuals, exceeding its target by 130 Airmen, said Brig. Gen. Suzanne M. Vautrinot, commander of Air Force Recruiting Service. "We've had an extraordinarily successful year, not just in bringing the right number of people in, but we brought in the right number, the right quality, with the right skill sets, at exactly the right time," she said. General Vautrinot said the Air Force also met goal to put new Airmen into critical enlisted jobs such as pararescue, combat control, linguists and certain health professions. The general said she believes recent Air Force marketing strategies such as the real-life testimonies of Airmen that have been featured on television and on the Air Force's "Do Something Amazing" Web site have contributed to the solid recruitment numbers. "I think they are effective because it is not about selling anything," she said. "It is about telling a story. (It) is an amazing thing. Two years ago, this young person was in high school, and now he is disarming bombs with robotics. The ad campaign ... tells people what Airmen every single day are doing. People say 'Wow, I can do that.'" As part of the "Do Something Amazing" campaign, Airmen describe their part of the Air Force mission on camera. Those testimonies are featured on television and online. The Air Force has filmed about 24 of the testimonies, but plans to add more. General Vautrinot said the Web site has already generated some 200,000 visits. Those visits often lead visitors to the primary recruiting Web site, where potential Airmen can talk to Air Force recruiters. While the Air Force has had great success in meeting its recruiting goals over the past seven years, General Vautrinot said the service is still having problems in certain areas. In particular, the Air Force is having problems recruiting nurses, physicians and dentists. Part of the problem is the exceedingly long process of vetting medical professionals for acceptance into the Air Force, she explained. "When these people graduate from their schools, they need a job," she said. "If the county and the city and private industry can hire them faster, then they are not going to wait around for a job in the Air Force." The Air Force recently used Air Force Smart Operations 21 to streamline its process for accepting medical professionals. "What we have been able to do is take about five months out of the process," she said. "Basically, we did away with a board process that was very long term and tedious, and pretty much came to the same conclusion our consultants did. We also had the help of (the Office of the Secretary of Defense) because they shortened their timelines, as did the Air Staff, in the processing of these health professionals." The Air Force also is using bonuses and scholarships to help recruit more medical professionals into the service. Finally, General Vautrinot said there might be a misconception that the Air Force is not hiring. "There is this misconception that because the Air Force is force shaping, that somehow we are not hiring," she said. "We are absolutely hiring." General Vautrinot said the Air Force is now focusing its hiring on individuals who exhibit exceptional academic and physical prowess as well as strong aptitudes for science, engineering, math and linguistics. Tanker hits top of the charts for recapitalization priority [2006-10-13] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force's new No. 1 procurement priority is the KC-X tanker, replacing the F-22 Raptor. "Our priorities for procurement are the following," said Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. T. Michael Moseley. "The KC-X, the new tanker, is No. 1. CSAR-X, the new combat rescue helicopter, is No. 2. Our space-based early warning and communications satellites are No 3. The F-35 (Lightning II) is No. 4. And the next generation long range strike bomber is No. 5." During discussions with newspaper reporters here Oct. 12, General Moseley said the F-22 program has stabilized. The Air Force recently secured multi-year procurement funding for the Raptor from Congress. That funding would affect Raptor purchases until about 2012. Now that the Air Force is secure in the number of Raptors it will purchase, and in the price it will pay for them, it has shifted its procurement priorities, the chief of staff said. General Moseley said the replacement for the KC-135 Stratotanker has moved up to the top position for procurement priority because of its enabling effect on all other strategic capabilities of the Air Force. "In this global business we're in, the single point of failure of an air bridge, or the single point failure for global intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or the single point failure for global strike is the tanker," he said. "To be able to bridge the Atlantic, to be able to bridge the Pacific, or to be able to let business in the theater be persistent business in the theater, it's the tanker." Air Force Drill Team demonstrates precision at Memorial Dedication [2006-10-14] WASHINGTON -- With the new Air Force Memorial looming nearby, hundreds of spectators, both civilian and military, gathered in a Pentagon parking lot here to witness the precision maneuvers of the Air Force Honor Guard Drill Team. The drill team's performance was but one of a series of events surrounding the dedication of the new Air Force Memorial Oct. 14. Their performance featured a professionally choreographed sequence of show-stopping weapon movements, precise tosses, complex weapon exchanges, and a walk-through-the-gauntlet of spinning weapons. Wyman Bess, of Dallas, Texas, watched the event with his wife, Arlene. Mr. Bess is a retired Air Force technical sergeant. He retired in 1974. He and his wife have been together for 49 years now. Both Mr. and Mrs. Bess said they enjoyed the performance. "It was excellent," he said of their performance. "It is fabulous to see them perform. The Airmen on the drill team put a lot of hours into what they do." He said the precision of the performance was the most appealing aspect of the drill. Mr. Bess said the trip from Texas to Washington, D.C. was a long one, but it was worth it to see the memorial. "I've been a supporter of this since memorial since its inception," he said. "I wanted to be here for the dedication and to see the memorial." He said he is impressed with the new memorial, in particular, because the design doesn't focus on one particular form of air or space travel, but instead simply evokes a feeling of flight. "I like the concept of the memorial because the Air Force is into space now," he said. "You can't lock that memorial into a specific style of aircraft." The Air Force Honor Guard Drill Team travels America and the world to inspire Air Force awareness among military and civilian audiences alike. The team personifies the teamwork, professionalism and discipline of every Airmen through precision drill maneuvers and representation. The team has existed for more than 40 years and has visited all 50 states in addition to many foreign countries. Air Force swears in new recruits during memorial dedication events [2006-10-14] WASHINGTON -- As the Air Force recognized its own history with the dedication of a new memorial here, dozens of young men and women also marked the beginning of their own history with the Air Force. As part of activities surrounding the dedication of the Air Force's new memorial, some 90 young men and women rose their right hand and were sworn in to the United States Air Force. With the new Air Force Memorial and the Pentagon nearby, Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. T. Michael Moseley, along with the Director of the Air National Guard, Lt. Gen. Craig R. McKinley, and Chief of Air Force Reserve, Lt. Gen. John A. Bradley, administered the oath of enlistment. Later, General Moseley thanked both the enlistees and their families for the sacrifice they were making. "You've joined the worlds finest Air Force," he said. "Thank you, thank your families, thank you for what you just committed to do, and thank you for joining this Air Force." General Moseley promised the parents of the new Airmen that their children would be taken care of. "We will take care of these people," he said. "We know they are national treasures and we know they are treasures to you. They just joined the world's finest Air Force. Our job in this Air Force is to fly and fight, we will take care of them, teach them how to do that, and take them to unlimited horizons. They will be limited only by their own creativity." Gervais Jeffrie, a new Air Force recruit, will be a security forces specialist in the Air Force, but said she hopes to eventually be a drill sergeant. When considering a career in the Air Force, however, she did consider other possibilities "I was kind of like, I want to jump out of planes," she said. "Then I wanted to yell at people." Ms. Jeffrie said she was impressed with the events surrounding her swearing in. "I think this is pretty tight, actually," she said. She was also impressed the Chief of Staff of the Air Force had administered the oath of enlistment to her and fellow recruits. Despite the pomp and circumstance surrounding the event, Ms. Jeffrie said she knew service to the Air Force would be tough, but she was ready for the challenge. "I'm going to do my best," she said. "I'm gonna work hard and do my best, that's all I can do." For the Air Force, the new recruits inducted into the service during the Air Force Memorial Dedication events likely mark the beginning of yet another successful year of meeting its recruiting goals. In Fiscal 2006, the Air Force exceeded its recruiting goal by some 130 Airmen. This is the seventh year the Air Force has met or exceeded that goal. According to Air Force officials, the Air Force is now focusing its recruiting goals on hiring individuals who exhibit exceptional academic and physical prowess, as well as strong aptitudes for science, engineering, math and linguistics. The service's new memorial, dedicated Oct.14, 2006, comes at the beginning of a year-long series of commemoratory events leading up to the Air Force's 60th anniversary, Sept. 18, 2007. The memorial is meant to honor the millions of men and women who have served in the Air Force since it was created, Sept. 18, 1947. The memorial is also meant to commemorate the contributions of those who served in the many predecessor organizations that were combined to create the Air Force. Those organizations include the aeronautical division and aviation section of the U.S. Signal Corps; the Secretary of War's division of military aeronautics; the Army Air Service; the U.S. Army Air Corps; and the U.S. Army Air Forces. In all, more than 54,000 individuals have died in combat while serving in the Air Force and the organizations that were combined to create it. The Memorial honors the memory of those individuals, the service of Airmen today, and the service of Airmen in the future. The Air Force Memorial, while not inside the District of Columbia, is within walking distance of both the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery. From the Memorial site, visitors can see the Pentagon, the Washington Monument, and the dome of the U.S. Capitol Building. The Memorial's spires can be seen on the horizon from miles away. The predominate feature of the Air Force Memorial is a set of three stainless steel spires that jut from the ground, the tallest of which reaches some 270 feet into the air. The spires are meant to represent the Air Force's three core values as well as the "total force," which include members of the active duty Air Force, the Air National Guard, and the Air Force Reserve. Visually, the three spires remind visitors of the smoke trails left by aircraft of the Air Force Thunderbird Demonstration Team when they perform the "bomb burst" maneuver. The Memorial also includes a bronze statue that features four Air Force Honor Guard members, two granite inscription walls, a parade ground area, and a glass wall with engravings illustrating the "missing man" aircraft formation. The Air Force Memorial was designed by the late architect, James Ingo Freed. Inside Washington, D.C., his designs include the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, the Washington Opera House, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Memorial represents military air power of the United States [2006-10-14] WASHINGTON -- The spires of the Air Force memorial represent the air power component of the most powerful force in the world. Teshoma Hailu is a taxi cab driver in Arlington, Va. He came to the United States in 1975, with his wife, to escape political issues in his home country and to pursue educational opportunities here. Today, he has a Bachelor's degree in education and is a citizen of the United States. Mr. Hailu has watched as the spires of the Air Force Memorial were assembled here and raised slowly over the Arlington skyline. He says the memorial illustrates the power of the United States. "It indicates the military power of the United States aviation service," he said. "We are the number one world power, in military, manpower, and economics. Everything. There is nothing in the world like the United States." Earlier in the week, Mr. Hailu had seen Air Force aircraft flying over the memorial to practice for the dedication here Oct. 14. He says he knows those same aircraft are there to protect him and wife. "They protect us against attack from outsiders, he said, "They can fight for the United States." Many of those who attended the dedication of the Air Force Memorial might not have ever had the experience of living in another country where freedom was available to all citizens. Mr. Hailu left Ethiopia, in part, to escape the communism there. Today, and in the past, he said, he defends his choice to come to the United States. "I used to quarrel with my friends," he said. "They would say this is a capitalist country. I told them go to the Soviet Union and try to find work there. Who forces you to stay here in the United States? You have to appreciate what we have here in America." The Air Force Memorial, dedicated Oct.14, 2006, comes at the beginning of a year-long series of commemoratory events leading up to the Air Force's 60th anniversary, Sept. 18, 2007. The memorial is meant to honor the millions of men and women who have served in the Air Force since it was created, Sept. 18, 1947. It is also meant to commemorate the contributions of those who served in the many predecessor organizations that were combined to create the Air Force. Those organizations include the aeronautical division and aviation section of the U.S. Signal Corps; the Secretary of War's division of military aeronautics; the Army Air Service; the U.S. Army Air Corps; and the U.S. Army Air Forces. In all, more than 54,000 individuals have died in combat while serving in the Air Force and the organizations that were combined to create it. The memorial honors the memory of those individuals, the service of Airmen today, and the service of Airmen in the future. The Air Force Memorial, while not inside the District of Columbia, is within walking distance of both the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery. From the memorial site, visitors can see the Pentagon, the Washington Monument, and the dome of the U.S. Capitol Building. The Memorial's spires can be seen on the horizon from miles away. The predominate feature of the Air Force Memorial is a set of three stainless steel spires that jut from the ground, the tallest of which reaches some 270 feet into the air. The spires are meant to represent the Air Force's three core values as well as the "total force," which include members of the active duty Air Force, the Air National Guard, and the Air Force Reserve. Visually, the three spires remind visitors of the smoke trails left by aircraft of the Air Force Thunderbird Demonstration Team when they perform the "bomb burst" maneuver. The memorial also includes a bronze statue that features four Air Force Honor Guard members, two granite inscription walls, a parade ground area, and a glass wall with engravings illustrating the "missing man" aircraft formation. The Air Force Memorial was designed by the late architect, James Ingo Freed. Inside Washington, D.C., his designs include the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, the Washington Opera House, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Young people capable of much responsibility [2006-10-14] WASHINGTON -- With historical aircraft flying overhead, and the newly dedicated Air Force Memorial nearby, one World War II veteran said that no matter how irresponsible young people today may sometimes seem, it has been shown they can step up and shoulder a burden much greater than themselves. Russell Neatrour, a veteran of WWII, flew the B-24 Liberator aircraft over Germany as early as 1944. At the time, he was about 22 years old. "I think today -- we were 22 then, and responsible for a million dollar airplane," Mr. Neatrour said. Noting that while young people, both then and now, often shirk responsibility, when they need to, they can step up and do what needs to be done. "We proved that they can be responsible when they have to be," he said. Mr. Neatrour and his wife Nona Allen of eight years now live in Seabring, Fla. The two traveled together to Washington, D.C. so he could participate in the yearly reunion of the 2nd Air Division and to witness the dedication of the Air Force Memorial. During WWII, Mr. Neatrour served as part of the 453rd, Bomb Group, under the 2nd Air Division, during the war. He flew 34 missions, dropping bombs over Germany. "If I had flown one more, I would have come home," he said. "But the war ended first." During his 34 missions, Mr. Neatrour said he never lost a single crew member. By the time he arrived in the European theater, the Luftwaffe had been pretty much eliminated, he said. "What we had to worry about, really, was flack," he said. "And there was a lot of flack. I saw one kid, back in the bomb days, off of our right wing. He took flack. He broke in half and went down into the clouds and I saw three chutes open." Mr. Neatrour said he knew the memorial was going to be dedicated, and had looked forward to seeing it. He also said he knows today's Air Force is still relevant and important. "I think it's a great outfit," he said. "I had a grandson that was in, but he got out. I told him I thought getting out was a bad idea." Country musician Lee Ann Womack headlines at Air Force Memorial dedication [2006-10-14] WASHINGTON -- With both the newly dedicated Air Force Memorial and the Pentagon looming nearby, country music vocalist LeeAnn Womack belted out tunes that both entertained and bolstered already present sentiments of patriotism. Ms. Womack's performance in a parking lot of the Pentagon here began shortly after the Air Force finished a ceremony to dedicate its new memorial here Oct. 14. The star told attendees of the free concert that she was proud her performance could be included as part of the important Air Force event. "I'm so proud to be here today," she said, during a break in her set. Byron Ater, of Ashburn, Va. said that while he is not a country music fan, he thought it was an appropriate event for dedication of the Air Force memorial. "This just shows that the public now supports the Air Force," he said. "The public cares, not like when I joined the service." Mr. Ater served in the Air Force from 1972 until his retirement in 1992. He retired as a master sergeant and served both as an electronic countermeasures technician and a later as a lab technician. When he joined the Air Force in 1972, during the closing of the Vietnam Conflict, he said the public did not support the military as they do today. Ms. Womack has said she has taken inspiration for her singing and music career from other stars like Tammy Wynette, Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynne. Her music includes hits such as "I Hope You Dance," "Never Again, Again," and "A Little Past Little Rock." In 2005, her song "I May Hate Myself In the Morning" was named single of the year by the Country Music Association, and her album "There's More Where That Came From" was named album of the year. Until now, the Air Force was the only service of the United States military without a memorial of its own in the nation's capital. The service's new memorial, dedicated Oct.14, 2006, comes at the beginning of a year-long series of commemoratory events leading up to the Air Force's 60th anniversary, Sept. 18, 2007. The Memorial is meant to honor the millions of men and women who have served in the Air Force since it was created, Sept. 18, 1947. The Memorial is also meant to commemorate the contributions of those who served in the many predecessor organizations that were combined to create the Air Force. Those organizations include the aeronautical division and aviation section of the U.S. Signal Corps; the Secretary of War's division of military aeronautics; the Army Air Service; the U.S. Army Air Corps; and the U.S. Army Air Forces. In all, more than 54,000 individuals have died in combat while serving in the Air Force and the organizations that were combined to create it. The Memorial honors the memory of those individuals, the service of Airmen today, and the service of Airmen in the future. The Air Force Memorial, while not inside the District of Columbia, is within walking distance of both the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery. From the Memorial site, visitors can see the Pentagon, the Washington Monument, and the dome of the U.S. Capitol Building. The Memorial's spires can be seen on the horizon from miles away. The predominate feature of the Air Force Memorial is a set of three stainless steel spires that jut from the ground, the tallest of which reaches some 270 feet into the air. The spires are meant to represent the Air Force's three core values as well as the "total force," which include members of the active duty Air Force, the Air National Guard, and the Air Force Reserve. Visually, the three spires remind visitors of the smoke trails left by aircraft of the Air Force Thunderbird Demonstration Team when they perform the "bomb burst" maneuver. The Memorial also includes a bronze statue that features four Air Force Honor Guard members, two granite inscription walls, a parade ground area, and a glass wall with engravings illustrating the "missing man" aircraft formation. The Air Force Memorial was designed by the late architect, James Ingo Freed. Inside Washington, D.C., his designs include the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, the Washington Opera House, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. All-enlisted crew pilots historic aircraft over memorial [2006-10-14] WASHINGTON -- As spectators at the Air Force Memorial dedication events looked skyward to an airborne parade of both modern and historic military aircraft, it probably didn't occur to them that one of the flying crews represented something special. The B-24 Liberator was but one of perhaps a dozen military aircraft, both active and retired, to fly over the Air Force Memorial here Oct. 14. But the Liberator was the only aircraft overhead to feature a crew made up entirely of active duty enlisted members. Chief Master Sgt. Fred Lewis of the Tactical Air Control Center at Scott Air Force Base, Ill. piloted the plane. The chief has been in the Air Force about 28 years and earned his pilot's license as an Airman. Today, the chief spends some of his free time as a pilot with the Collings Foundation of Stowe, Mass., which is involved in preserving historic aircraft and helping members of the general public learn more about aviation history. Chief Lewis's father was an enlisted radio operator aboard the B-24 when it was still flying with the Air Force. The chief said his father, like many other enlisted fliers, was very young at the time and bore a lot of responsibility in carrying out their flying duties. It was that memory, he said, that inspired him to invite an all-enlisted crew to participate in the Air Force Memorial flyover. "I thought it would be appropriate to get an all-enlisted crew out here," he said. "I think a lot about all the young kids who flew in these planes. And I hope when we fly this aircraft over the memorial, there are a lot of veterans there, and the spirit of those kids is with them." Chief Lewis also said he believes the Air Force Memorial represents, in part, the support the United States has for today's Air Force. When he joined the Air Force in the mid-1970's, the United States had just come out of the Vietnam conflict. Many in America, he said, did not support those who chose military service. But the dedication of the Air Force Memorial demonstrates a change in public opinion. "The Air Force Memorial represents a coming of age," he said. "Those in the Air Force now have the support of the nation, and there are a lot of sacrifices of our predecessors represented here at the memorial." Silent, contemplative act serves as closing for Air Force Memorial dedication [2006-10-15] ARLINGTON, Va. -- With just a day having passed since introducing its new memorial to the world, the Air Force completed one final commemorative act, one likely to set the tone for the Memorial for decades to come. On the morning of Oct. 15 and in a setting more silent and solemn than the dedication activities of the day prior, Air Force leaders and members of the Air Force Memorial Foundation laid a single wreath atop the star that lies between the three spires of the Air Force Memorial. The wreath laying is the first official function to occur at the Air Force Memorial. "The Air Force Memorial honors all who have served the nation in the Air Force and its predecessor organizations," said Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne. "It is therefore most appropriate that the first official Air Force function on this site be a memorial service to our fallen Airmen." Over 54,000 Airmen have died in service to the Air Force and the predecessor organization that were combined to create it. "This memorial, overlooking... Arlington National Cemetery, the nation's alter of freedom, remembers and honors the spirit of those Airmen departed, and reaffirms our commitment to the defense of this great nation," Secretary Wynne said. During the wreath laying ceremony, four Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft flew the "missing man" formation over the Memorial. The formation involves four aircraft flying with an apparent gap in the formation where there should be a fifth aircraft. During the formation, one aircraft abruptly pulls away from the others. Historically, the formation is used to honor pilots lost in battle. Until now, the Air Force was the only service of the United States military without a memorial of its own in the nation's capital. The service's new memorial, dedicated Oct.14, 2006, comes at the beginning of a year-long series of commemoratory events leading up to the Air Force's 60th anniversary, Sept. 18, 2007. The Memorial is meant to honor the millions of men and women who have served in the Air Force since it was created, Sept. 18, 1947. It is also meant to commemorate the contributions of those who served in the many predecessor organizations that were combined to create the Air Force. Those organizations include the aeronautical division and aviation section of the U.S. Signal Corps; the Secretary of War's division of military aeronautics; the Army Air Service; the U.S. Army Air Corps; and the U.S. Army Air Forces. In all, more than 54,000 individuals have died in combat while serving in the Air Force and the organizations that were combined to create it. The Memorial honors the memory of those individuals, the service of Airmen today and the service of Airmen in the future. The Air Force Memorial, while not inside the District of Columbia, is within walking distance of both the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery. From the site, visitors can see the Pentagon, the Washington Monument and the dome of the U.S. Capitol Building. The predominate feature of the Air Force Memorial is a set of three stainless steel spires that jut from the ground, the tallest of which reaches 270 feet into the air. The spires are meant to represent the Air Force's three core values as well as the "total force," which include members of the active duty Air Force, the Air National Guard and the Air Force Reserve. Visually, the three spires remind visitors of the smoke trails left by aircraft of the Air Force Thunderbird Demonstration Team when they perform the "bomb burst" maneuver. The Memorial also includes a bronze statue that features four Air Force Honor Guard members, two granite inscription walls, a parade ground area and a glass wall with engravings illustrating the "missing man" aircraft formation. The Air Force Memorial was designed by the late architect, James Ingo Freed who also designed the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, the Washington Opera House, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. Couple honored with Fisher award [2006-10-27] WASHINGTON -- A husband and wife have been honored for their support of the military in Bangor, Maine. Harry Rideout and Sharon Rideout are the 2005 recipients of the Zachary Fisher and Elizabeth Fisher Distinguished Civilian Humanitarian Award. The two were honored during a ceremony at the Pentagon Oct. 26. Together, the Rideouts created the Bangor Greeters Group at Bangor International Airport, Maine. The all-volunteer group greets Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines as they pass through the airport, either going to or returning from overseas deployments. Since the group began in May 2003, they have touched the lives more than 200,000 U.S. military members. In addition to welcoming members home and wishing them well as they deploy, the group also lends returning members cellular phones so they can call loved ones as they step off their airplanes. The group also was instrumental in creating a welcome facility at the airport where troops can relax before deploying or can wait for a ride upon returning to the United States. The Rideouts also headed the clean-up of the home of a Soldier and his family after it was destroyed by fire. In another effort, they led the distribution of flannel shirts and sweatshirts to veterans in the Togus Medical Center in Augusta, Maine. Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne said the Rideout's contributions to troop morale is in line with the Department of Defense's own priorities. "Our young men and women are our No. 1 priority in the Department of Defense," he said. "And when I see great Americans like the Rideouts taking it upon themselves to support (servicemembers), it makes me very proud to also be in service to this nation." While speaking at the ceremony, Mrs. Rideout said she and her husband appreciated the honor but shifted focus from their contributions to those of U.S. Military members. "It has always been a pleasure to thank a Soldier, to thank a member of our United States military for (his or her) service to our country. (They) are keeping America safe, and we appreciate it so much," she said. "We are very honored, and very humbled, and grateful for this award. But we want you to know this is not about us. It is about the members, and the men and women in our Army, our Air Force, our Navy and our Marine Corps, those who have served, those who are serving, and those who will serve." In 1996, the Department of Defense service secretaries created the Fisher award in honor of Zachary and Elizabeth Fisher who contributed extensively to the support and welfare of members of the armed services. The Fishers are best known as founders of the Fisher House, which is special lodging for military families with sick or injured loved ones. The responsibility for administration and presentation of the Fisher award rotates among the services each year. All service branches vote on the final recipient, and all services can make nominations. This year, the Air Force was responsible for the presentation. Air Force "road show" ensures senior leaders share common message [2006-11-03] WASHINGTON -- Air Force senior officers and enlisted leaders are taking the Air Force story on the road across the country. Recently, Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. T. Michael Moseley said that by actively engaging civilians and the press, senior leaders could help Americans better understand the Air Force goals, priorities and missions. "America's Airmen are engaged in this fight in Southwest Asia, the United States and around the world," General Moseley said. "It's important for Americans to remember that Airmen have been in combat in Southwest Asia (or the Middle East) for more than 16 years now. Our leaders must continue to communicate to Americans, the media and Congress the invaluable role Airmen play each day." As part of the strategic outreach plan called the "Air Force Road Show," Air Force leaders will be participating each month in different kinds of communications efforts. Leaders at all levels including wing, numbered Air Force, major command, and center commanders, as well as command chief master sergeants, will participate monthly in as many as six independent communications activities focused on different audiences. Those activities include one speaking engagement aimed at Airmen, two engagements aimed at civilian media and three engagements aimed at civilian audiences. One of the objectives of the plan is create more opportunities for Air Force leaders to speak with and meet with members of the "non-choir" public -- that is, members of the public who are not in the Air Force, don't live near an Air Force base, and don't know anyone who has served in or is serving in the Air Force. Another part of the plan is to provide a common set of messages, themes and topics for leadership to use when communicating with Airmen, the public and the media. While senior leaders around the Air Force already make speeches in public and conduct interviews with the media, they often focus entirely on their own local issues. When a base commander speaks at a local civic event, for instance, they may only discuss what is happening at their base. As part of the Road Show plan, those same leaders will now include in their speeches and media engagements a set of common messages, themes and topics relevant to the entire Air Force. The Road Show plan aims to increase Air Force leaders' public outreach efforts and is designed to help them convey common messages and themes. General Moseley said he hopes implementation of the Road Show effort will create better public awareness of the heroic accomplishments, efforts, and sacrifices America's Airmen make every day. "We need to ensure Airmen, the public, Congress and the media all understand our Air Force priorities--winning the global war on terrorism, developing our Airmen, and recapitalizing our aging air and space inventories," the general said. "The Road Show plan will help us get there." Under the Road Show plan, senior leaders speaking to the media and the general public will discuss topics such as force shaping, recapitalization, budget efforts, global strike, global mobility, cyberspace and Air Force contributions to operations Noble Eagle, Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. 8th Air Force to become new cyber command [2006-11-03] WASHINGTON -- During a media conference here Nov. 2, Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne said the 8th Air Force would become the new Air Force Cyberspace Command. "I am announcing the steps the Air Force is taking towards establishing an Air Force Cyberspace Command," the secretary said. "The new Cyberspace Command is designated as the 8th Air Force... under the leadership of (Lt. Gen. Robert J. Elder Jr.) He will develop the force by reaching across all Air Force commands to draw appropriate leaders and appropriate personnel." Secretary Wynne said the 67th Network Warfare Wing, now under 8th Air Force, and other elements already within the 8th, would provide "the center of mass" for the nascent Cyberspace Command. The secretary also said Air Combat Command, Air Force Space Command and Air Force Materiel Command are working to develop the new Cyberspace Command, while Air Force personnel specialists are working to develop educational plans and career paths for those Airmen that will work within the new command. "The aim is to develop a major command that stands alongside Air Force Space Command and Air Combat Command as the provider of forces that the President, combatant commanders and the American people can rely on for preserving the freedom of access and commerce, in air, space and now cyberspace," Secretary Wynne said. Air Force leaders will begin detailed planning for the new Cyberspace Command Nov. 16 at the Cyber Summit. During the summit, Air Force leaders will chart a way ahead for the Air Force's role in cyberspace, also called the cyber domain. Click here to view the Interdependent Fight video "How We Fight." Click here to view the text of Secretary Wynne's speech, "Cyberspace as a Domain In which the Air Force Flies and Fights." C-130 crew honored with Mackay Trophy [2006-11-07] WASHINGTON -- Five C-130 Hercules crewmembers were recognized during a ceremony in Arlington, Va., Nov. 6 by the Air Force and the National Aeronautic Association when they were presented with the 2005 Clarence Mackay Trophy. Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. John D. W. Corley presented the trophy to Maj. Michael Frame, pilot; Maj. Brian Lewis, instructor pilot; Senior Master Sgt. John Spillane, instructor loadmaster; Master Sgt. Thomas Lee, instructor flight engineer; and Master Sgt. Corey Turner, instructor loadmaster. In February 2005, the five Airmen were assigned to the 777th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron in Iraq. Part of that unit's mission was to assist in training aircrewmembers in the new Iraqi Air Force. On Feb. 12, 2005, the five were chosen to participate as trainers on an operational mission to transport Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi from Baghdad International Airport to al Sulaymania civil airport near Kirkuk, Iraq. As part of mission "Train 60," the five American Airmen served as trainers aboard an Iraqi C-130 flown by an all-Iraqi crew. "This was the first Iraqi mission to move their prime minister," said Sergeant Spillane. "(It was) our equivalent to Air Force One. They took the prime minister up to meet Iraqi Kurds in the northern part of the country, to engage them, to get them to have a buy-in on the first national vote. It was historic." The mission might have been relatively routine, but about half-hour into the flight, the crew encountered poor weather that forced them to fly lower that what the Iraqi crew was used to. Additional problems were encountered at the airfield in Kirkuk. There, the newly built airfield had no tower communications, so the Iraqi crew had no way to know if they were supposed to land there. The Air Force crew used visual clues on the ground to determine they were cleared for landing. "As we approached the airfield, we saw a red carpet laid out and a band there, so we confirmed we were in the right spot," Sergeant Spillane said. Other crewmembers said the navigation system on the aircraft also helped to confirm the crew had taken the aircraft to the right location. Also problematic was the fact that the landing strip at the airfield was not complete. There were major gaps in the pavement that prevented the aircraft from landing there. The Air Force crew consulted with the Iraqi prime minister to see what he wanted to do. "We asked the prime minister if he wanted to continue on his airplane, to land there, as it was an Iraqi airplane. He said 'I have to do this,'" Sergeant Spillane said. At that point, Major Frame took the stick and landed the aircraft on a taxiway rather than the runway, completing the mission. He later said that despite the difficulty in the mission, he thought the entire crew performed superbly. "Everybody was on their A-game that day," Major Frame said. "Everything that happened was dealt with in the most professional manner. Nobody could have done anything better than the way we did it that day. We helped to improve some of the Iraqis' capability. They got to see some things they had never seen before, they got to see some of the capability of the C-130E. In the overall picture, it is going to improve the way they do things." During the award presentation ceremony, General Corley said the crew's contributions to building democracy in Iraq is on par with what America's founders were doing in the 1700's, at the beginning of democracy in the United States. "If you turn the clock back to 1776 and you think about some of the founding fathers, they were fighting for the democratic experiment, because they wanted to give it a chance," he said. "When we think about Train 60 and you think about the members here tonight, what were they fighting for? They were fighting to give democracy a chance. Tonight may be just a small point in history, it may be a small time in our lives, but is an essential piece, in my mind, of aviation history and of the vision of democracy. It is a story of bravery, a story of professionalism, it is a story about hope." The Clarence Mackay Trophy was first presented in 1912 to then Lt. Henry "Hap" Arnold. The trophy has also been awarded to such legends of aviation as Capt. Edward V. Rickenbacker, Capt. Charles E. Yeager, and Lt. James H. Doolittle. The trophy itself was designed by New York City-based jeweler Tiffany & Company and is made from silver and gold with a mahogany base. The trophy is valued at $1.5 million dollars and is kept on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. Cyber Summit begins at Pentagon Nov. 16 [2006-11-15] WASHINGTON -- Air Force leaders will gather at the Pentagon Nov. 16 to discuss the way ahead for the Air Force's role in cyberspace. During the Cyber Summit, leaders from the Air Force intelligence, space, communications, combat air forces and other communities will discuss the way ahead as the Air Force continues to operationalize cyberspace as a warfighting domain. Cyberspace became an official Air Force domain, like air and space, on Dec. 7, 2005, when Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley introduced a new Air Force mission statement that included the words "to fly and fight in air, space, and cyberspace." Structure was added when Secretary Wynne announced Nov. 2 that 8th Air Force, headquartered at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., was named as the service's operational "cyber command," responsible for fighting in that domain. "The aim is to develop a major command that stands alongside Air Force Space Command and Air Combat Command, as the providers of forces that the president, combatant commanders, and the American people can rely on for preserving the freedom of access and commerce, in air, space and now cyberspace," Secretary Wynne said. Unmanned vehicle provides reusable test capabilities in space [2006-11-17] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force is working on a space vehicle that will allow government scientists to transport advanced technology into orbit, test its capability there, then bring it home to see how it fared in the harsh environment of space. The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle is similar to the space shuttle, except it's about a fourth the size and unmanned. The OTV can return from space on its own, said Lt. Col. Kevin Walker, an Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office program manager. "All you do from the ground is send up the command for it to de-orbit, then stand back and it de-orbits itself," he said. "The OTV gets itself ready for re-entry, descends through the atmosphere, lines up on the runway, puts down its landing gear ... and it does on its own." The vehicle will land at either Vandenberg or Edwards Air Force bases in California. The OTV will serve as a test platform for satellites and other space technologies. The vehicle allows satellite sensors, subsystems, components and associated technology to be transported into the environment where they will be used -- space. Scientists will prepare components in the OTV's experiment bay, and then the craft is launched into space aboard an Atlas V launch vehicle. Once in space, the OTV begins testing its payload. Colonel Walker said the doors aboard the craft could simply open, exposing the experiment bay, or mission scientists could design more elaborate experiments. "You could design something to extend itself out of the experiment bay, or have it on a retractable arm, or it could just stay inside the bay," Colonel Walker said. "The OTV is a very flexible space test platform for any number of various experiments." Being able to test parts in their actual operational environment will allow scientists to better judge how those parts will perform when deployed, so fewer redundancies may occur in future satellites. "Rather than build unproven components into a high-cost satellite, with multiple layers of redundancy to make sure they work -- you can use the OTV to get those components into space to see how they respond to the environment, and make sure they work the way they were designed," Colonel Walker said. "When the OTV returns to Earth, you can inspect the tested component and use that information to potentially alter your design." The Air Force's Rapid Capabilities Office has been tasked with acquiring, testing and demonstrating the OTV. Colonel Walker said much of the X-37B system vehicle is now being built and will soon move into a testing phase. "We are getting into the subsystem and systems-wide testing, which will go on for about the next year," he said. "We are projecting our first launch for the beginning of 2008." After a few flight tests in space, the OTV should be ready to begin experimentation in orbit, Colonel Walker said. "The first flight or two will be to check out the OTV itself to make sure it works the way it is designed to," he said. "After that, you get into the realm of using it as a reusable space test platform -- putting space components into its experimental bay and taking them to space for testing." Though the OTV is designed to provide a testing platform for new space technologies, it is made up of several advanced, untested technologies itself. Randy Walden, RCO deputy and technical director, said there are a number of cutting-edge technologies on the OTV besides the auto de-orbit capability. It has new thermal protection tiles underneath and high-temperature components and seals throughout that need to be proven in orbit. "There will be a great deal of extremely useful data coming from the OTV on its first flights,' said Mr. Walden. "Our plan is to share this data with other government agencies such as NASA." The X-37 program, originally a NASA initiative, was transferred to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in 2004. The Air Force's X-37B program builds upon the early development and testing conducted by NASA, DARPA and the Air Force Research Laboratory. "We are honored to be developing this unique space platform," said David Hamilton, Jr., RCO director, "and very excited about the potential benefits to future space programs." Air Force, industry must partner to create synth-fuel demand [2006-11-17] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force must partner with the civilian aviation industry to create a stronger demand for alternative fuel sources. During a conference of defense industry representatives here Nov. 14, Michael Aimone, Air Force assistant deputy chief of staff for logistics, installations and mission support, explained how the Air Force is looking for ways to get more of the fuel it uses from domestic sources. Within the federal government, the Air Force is the single largest user of energy, and some 80 percent of that energy is aviation fuel for aircraft -- about 3 billion gallons a year. "If we want to get to an assured domestic source of supply, using coal, oil, shale, and bio-mass, then we need to find a way to take that ... and liquefy it for aviation use," he said. "We have conducted three demonstration flights in the B-52 (Stratofortress) earlier this year and proved to ourselves that the logistics systems as well as the flight systems can handle the synth-fuel blend." Alternative fuels like those used in the B-52 experiment can be produced from domestically available hydrocarbon products like natural gas, coal and shale. Gasification can convert any hydrocarbon feedstock (raw material required for an industrial process) into a synthesis gas that can then be converted into any number of liquid fuel products. In addition to the roughly 3 billion gallons of jet fuel a year used by the Air Force, the civilian aviation industry consumes 12 to 13 billion gallons a year. Mr. Aimone said if the use of alternative fuels is to move forward, users of the fuels must partner together to create a demand for it. "The best way to bring an industry together is to partner with the other industries that use aviation fuel and bring a total requirement of about 16 billion gallons a year to the marketplace, as opposed to the two or three that the Air Force might bring," he said. Besides looking for alternative fuel sources, Air Force officials are also looking into ways to reduce the service's overall use of jet fuel through waste reduction. "We waste a lot of energy flying around certain countries because they will not give us over-flight permission," he explained. "Over the last five months we have worked aggressively with the various aviation sectors to be able to get some streamlined diplomatic clearance processes." The Air Force has also made changes to how much fuel can remain in a KC-135 Stratotanker when it lands. In the past, those aircraft may have had to dump fuel before landing. "Can we raise the landing limits on the KC-135, so the airplanes can come back heavier? Sure we can," he said. "We did it this year. (It's part of) a series of conservation initiatives, some of them pretty obvious when you think about it." New aggressor units expand training capabilities [2006-11-17] WASHINGTON -- Unit changes at Nellis and Eielson Air Force bases have resulted in two wings that, together, create better opportunities for Air Force pilots to train for combat against potential adversaries. In January, the 65th Aggressor Squadron was reactivated under the 57th Adversary Tactics Group at Nellis AFB, Nevada. The 65th AGRS, an F-15 Eagle unit, is a sister squadron to the existing 64th AGRS, an F-16 Fighting Falcon unit. About 2,300 miles north of Nellis, at Eielson AFB, Alaska, the 354th Operations Group is also adding an aggressor squadron. There, the 18th Fighter Squadron is preparing to swap its current fleet of Block-40 F-16 Fighting Falcons for the Block-30 version. In October 2007, the unit will change its name to the 18th AGRS. An aggressor squadron such as the 65th AGRS acts as a training aid for other military pilots. Aggressor squadron aircraft are flown by pilots specially trained to act as enemy aircraft during air combat exercises. While Air Force aggressor pilots fly aircraft such as the F-16 and the F-15, during exercises they fly as though they are in adversary aircraft, and they only use aircraft capabilities that would be available to enemy pilots. The most visible use of that training comes during exercises called "Red Flag - Nellis" and "Red Flag - Alaska." In those exercises, "friendly" blue forces -- the participating units -- fly against "hostile" red forces -- the aggressor squadrons -- in mock combat situations. In the past, only Nellis hosted Red Flag exercises. With two Air Force bases now hosting the exercises, there are more opportunities for mission-ready pilots to test their combat mettle in lifelike air-to-air scenarios. And though the two Red Flag exercises are held in different parts of the country, they both provide the same level of training to pilots who attend, said Brig. Gen. David J. Scott, commander of the 354th Fighter Wing at Eielson. "They're not going to be identical, they're not going to be perfectly the same -- what they're going to be is complementary and compatible," he said. "And what we mean by that is you can go to either one of them and get the full spectrum. If a Spangdahlem (pilot) shows up at Nellis or at Eielson, it won't matter. The T-shirt may be a different color, but it will be the same training." The full spectrum of training includes more than just training against enemy aircraft. The 527th and 26th Space Aggressor Squadrons at Schriever AFB, Colo., replicate enemy threats to space-based systems while the 177th Information Aggressor Squadron at McConnell AFB, Kan., replicates hostile threats to information systems. These units round out the 57th ATG's ability to present a complete array of threats to friendly forces -- air, ground, space and cyberspace. In December, the group's 507th Combat Training Squadron will become the 507th Air Defense Aggressor Squadron. The redesignated squadron will focus on operating ground-based elements of an "enemy" integrated air defense system including early warning, ground-controlled intercept and acquisition radars, and surface-to-air missile systems. While Eielson will not be adding similar squadrons to its 354th OG, the units will be shared between both Red Flag - Nellis and Red Flag - Alaska, adding new dimensions to the exercise, said Col. Terrence J. O'Shaughnessy, commander of the 57th ATG. "What we are trying to do is put all our adversary forces under one umbrella -- to get the synergy of having multi-discipline folks together in one effort -- so when we present a threat we don't present it in one dimension, but in an integrated fashion," he said. "We'll have our surface-to-air threat, our air threat, the information operations side, (the) advanced electronic warfare issues, and even our space aggressors, to try to present what we call the complete enemy target set." Red Flag exercises are attended by pilots and ground crews alike. And with the addition of Red Flag - Alaska, there are now more opportunities for pilots and ground crews to train. Air Force, Navy, and allied air forces participate in the exercises. Everybody who attends a Red Flag will now be challenged by the variety of new capabilities that have been included with the addition of the new types of aggressor units. But the primary goal of Red Flag remains the same -- to ensure that mission-ready pilots are made as sharp as possible in a controlled, safe environment, before they are sent out to fight America's real-world battles, General Scott said. "If you look back through history, during the first 10 sorties in a war, if (pilots) hadn't had any training, that's when they suffered the highest losses," he said. "What we want to do is get the young wingman across very intense-type scenarios so he already has those in his hip pocket. So when he does go to Iraq, Afghanistan or wherever we send him, he has that and has already lived under those kinds of high-intensity, stressful situations." Officials to conduct foreign language skills survey [2006-11-27] WASHINGTON -- Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley recently approved a survey to identify the foreign language capability inherent in the Air Force. The purpose of the on-line survey is to allow Air Force officials to get a better understanding of the foreign language skills already in the force, so they can better determine the language skills that must be developed for tomorrow's operational missions. "The Air Force is actively engaged in operations all over the world, the most visible being those supporting the global war on terror," General Moseley said. "An important lesson we continue to learn is that the ability to speak a foreign language is a critical war-fighting skill. We found that many Airmen have foreign language skills that have not been documented, so we are canvassing the force to more accurately determine our resident foreign language capability." General Moseley has made completion of the survey mandatory for all enlisted members and for officers in the grades lieutenant colonel and below. The survey presents Airmen with a list of languages. Airmen are asked to identify which of those languages they have skills in, and to what degree they possess those skills. If an Airman demonstrates sufficient skill in a language of strategic value to the Air Force, that Airman may be able to qualify for foreign language proficiency pay. Sufficient skill in a single language can raise an Airman's pay by as much as $500 per month. Airmen with skills in multiple strategic languages can earn as much as $1,000 per month. Airmen should contact their military personnel flight testing office to sign up to take a defense language proficiency test if they want to see if they are eligible for FLPP. Each Airman will receive a link to the survey via e-mail. Survey officials encourage the recipient to access the survey using the link in the e-mail. If for some reason an Airman does not receive a link, he or she may access the survey at this generic restricted Air Force Survey Web site: LINK Personnel accountability key during emergencies [2006-11-28] WASHINGTON -- A new Air Force Instruction places more responsibility for personnel accountability on the shoulders of individual Airmen. Air Force Instruction 10-218, Personnel Accountability in Conjunction With Natural Disasters or National Emergencies, published Oct. 31, 2006, details how an Airman should go about contacting his leadership if forced to evacuate after a natural disaster or terrorist event. In the wake of a natural disaster, a terrorist attack, or any event that could separate an Airman from his or her unit, an Airman is required to use "all mechanisms available" to communicate his whereabouts to his unit control center or base command post. If it is not possible to contact a unit by telephone, an Airman must contact Headquarters Air Force Personnel Center at (800) 435-9941 to report his whereabouts. Another option for an Airman is to register his location at the National Disaster Registry Web Application at https://www.afpc.randolph.af.mil. The new instruction also requires each Airman to maintain "realistic and actionable" plans that detail what actions an Airman will take before, during and after a disaster or crisis. The plans must take into account both the military member and his dependants, and should be filed with an Airman's unit, said Maj. Timothy McIsaac from Air Force Personnel Readiness. "After an earthquake, a hurricane or a terrorist attack, for instance, there may not be an opportunity to let your commander know where you plan to go," Major McIsaac said. "The time to plan is beforehand, and those plans need to be on file." A unit commander may now require every Airman to keep a plan for him and his family on file, the same as is done with an emergency locator card, Major McIsaac said. Those plans could be as simple as listing the names and telephone numbers of family members, friends or others a member may turn to in an emergency. In addition to spelling out the responsibilities of individual active duty Airmen in the wake of a disaster or crisis, the instruction also outlines the responsibilities Air National Guardsmen, Air Force reservists, Air Force civilians, and chain-of-command members all the way from the wing commander down to individual Airmen. Air Force Instruction 10-218 can be found online at: http://www.e-publishing.af.mil/pubfiles/af/10/afi10-218/afi10-218.pdf. Air Force: Expeditious recognition for expeditionary Airmen [2006-12-07] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force deputy chief of staff for personnel told lawmakers Dec. 6 the service makes it a priority to recognize the contributions of its Airmen. "In war, our top priorities are to win and take care of our people," said Lt. Gen. Roger A. Brady, before the House Armed Services Committee military personnel subcommittee. "An integral part of taking care of our people is timely and appropriate recognition of our Airmen." Lawmakers had expressed concerns that during the war on terrorism, which began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. military has not recognized enough of its members with the traditional military decorations such as the Silver Star, the Bronze Star with valor, the Navy or Air Force Cross, and the Medal of Honor. There also were concerns that the military services, when they did recognize military members, were not doing so in a timely or appropriate manner. Legislators felt that for military members killed in action, decorations should be awarded as soon possible, so family members could know of a soldier's decorations at the time of the funeral instead of months or years afterwards. General Brady told lawmakers the Air Force is in fact recognizing the more than 278,217 Airmen who have served or are currently serving in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility. Since Airmen began deploying to the CENTCOM AOR in October 2001, the Air Force has awarded two Air Force Crosses; 34 Silver Stars; 698 Distinguished Flying Crosses, 164 of those with valor; and 3849 Bronze Star Medals, 285 of those with valor. The general said Air Force decorations below the Bronze Star level are processed in as few as 81 days. For Bronze Stars, the award takes about 116 days on average. Other higher-level awards, like the Silver Star, take longer. But that award is processed on average in six months. "Your Air Force's total force is a fully-engaged member of an interdependent joint team fighting the war on terror," General Brady said. "We are absolutely committed to ensuring appropriate recognition is given for the incredible service and sacrifice of America's Airmen." 2006 suicide numbers not start of trend [2006-12-07] -- The number of suicides among Airmen in fiscal 2006 rose about 14 percent above a ten year average for the service, but the increase is not likely the start of a trend, an Air Force official said. "The suicide rate for 2006 is most indicative of the random variations year-to-year of suicides," said Lt. Col. Steven Pflanz of the Air Force Medical Operations Agency suicide prevention office. The Air Force measures suicides in terms of deaths per 100,000 Airmen. The suicide rate for 2004 was 15.2. In 2005, the rate dropped to 7.8. And in 2006, it rose again to 11.4. But the service's average for the 10-year period beginning in FY 1997 is just 10,- a 28 percent decrease in suicides from the previous decade. The Air Force has had more success in reducing suicides that any other organization or group in the world. That decrease is due largely to implementation of the Air Force's suicide prevention program in 1996, said Colonel Pflanz. "The Air Force has had a lot of success in reducing suicides over the last decade with our suicide prevention program," he said. "Much of the rest of the world and the country look to the Air Force suicide prevention program as a model for preventing suicide at the community level." The colonel said that in the Air Force, the suicide prevention program is successful because it is community driven. "Suicide prevention is a community responsibility," he said. "The wing commander and wing psychiatrist don't know everyone who is in distress, so if we wait until people get to their offices, we are going to miss the boat. Our program asks that Airmen of all ranks be looking for folks who are having trouble every day, so we can bring assistance to them as early as possible." The result of the Air Force suicide prevention program was a 28 percent decrease in suicide rates in the decade following its implementation. "If we had a drug that reduced the death due to an illness by 28 percent, it would be flying off the shelves," Colonel Pflanz said. "Yet, that is what our suicide prevention program is doing." Senator urges military budget increases [2006-12-13] WASHINGTON -- During a farewell speech in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee Dec. 7, Sen. Jim Talent (R-MO) said legislators must substantially increase military budgets over the coming decade if the U.S. military is to keep its edge. "There can be no doubt that without a substantial increase in procurement spending beginning now and sustained over the next five to 10 years -- an increase, I suggest to the Senate today, that must be measured not in billions but in tens of billions of dollars above current estimates every year -- our military will be set back for a generation," said Senator Talent, the junior senator from Missouri. Senator Talent said the increase in budget he proposes must be used to fund, among other things, new ships for the Navy, ground combat and support vehicles for the Army, and aircraft for the Air Force. "The Air Force must buy large numbers of the (F-22 Raptor)," he said. "That is our new air-superiority fighter. We must maintain the ability to have complete air superiority over any combat theater." The senator also said the Air Force must be funded to buy "large numbers" of F-35 Lightning II or equivalent aircraft, buy out its airlift requirement, build a new generation of tankers and design and build a long-range strike bomber to replace the B-52 Stratofortress. Airmen challenged to make better choices [2006-12-13] WASHINGTON -- "Work hard and play smart" may soon be a new mantra for Airmen after duty hours. In February, the Air Force kicked off a new program titled "Culture of Responsible Choices." The program, called CoRC for short, is more of a change in mindset than an actual new formal program. It is a mindset where all Airmen and people in AF organizations are asked to rethink how they do business and conduct their lives to ensure their decisions lead to safe and healthy outcomes. Responsible choices are an integral part of Air Force culture, and CoRC emphasizes personal responsibility and accountability for decision-making and behavior on and off duty. Air Force senior leaders would like Airmen to help each other make better choices in their leisure activities and personal lives, said Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force Lt. Gen. Arthur Lichte. "We have Airmen who sometimes make poor decisions and (engage in) high-risk behavior, which results in mission impairment and many other problems that impact good morale and discipline in the unit," he said. "With this program we call CoRC -- if you can think of it as a mindset of how people should be thinking when it comes to making risky behavior decisions -- we want individuals to make the right choice." The Air Force-level CoRC program is cousin to a successful program at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo. called "0-0-1-3." That stands for "zero underage drinking, zero driving under the influence, one drink an hour, and never more than three drinks at an event." The 0-0-1-3 program significantly reduced alcohol related incidents at F.E. Warren AFB, and Air Force senior leaders wanted to transplant that success throughout the service, but chose to broaden the scope of the program when doing so. With CoRC, Air Force leaders hope to change the way Airmen think about the whole specturm of issues, from drinking and drug use on the one hand to healthy fitness behavior; sound financial management; vigorous suicide prevention; effective sexual assault response and prevention; and safe practices at work, at home, and on vacation. The idea is to help Airmen stay healthy, safe, and in uniform, General Lichte said. "I want that 18 to 25 year old Airmen to be a 45-year-old chief (master sergeant) some day," he said. "But when you make bad choices, sometimes you are not going to get that opportunity. And the same for the young officers." Implementation of the CoRC program involves, in part, having commanders use their services squadrons to create more opportunities for Airmen to engage in non-alcohol centered activities. In addition, some activities would be planned later at night, from 9:30 at night into the morning, for instance, times when young Airmen who stay up late on the weekend are looking for something to do. "When you look at the base in particular, bases on Friday night may not have a lot to offer to that young Airmen who is now pumped up and ready to go party," General Lichte said. "This CoRC kind of tries to give that individual Airman alternatives and other things to do." Ideas could include midnight basketball, late-night movies at the base theater, or inter-installation video game competitions. Alcohol may or may not be part of an event, but if it is, it will not be the focus or the center of the event. While an emphasis on finding alternatives to alcohol use plays a large part in the CoRC program, the program really is about helping Airmen make better decisions in all the things they do, said General Lichte. "There are a lot of times when you are young (you feel) you're going to live forever," he said. "You feel very strong, and (that) you can do anything, and nothing is going to harm you. Then all of the sudden you make a bad choice and find out you are not invincible. What we want to do is make sure all our young Airmen understand that they can be hurt. And so we want to make sure we take care of them. It goes back to the wingman concept." Airmen and commanders can find out more about the CoRC program at the program Web site: http://www.afcrossroads.com/websites/corc.cfm. Roll Call to help supervisors keep Airmen in the know [2006-12-18] WASHINGTON -- A new weekly publication titled "Roll Call" is designed to help shop- and office-level supervisors explain complex, yet important Air Force issues to their Airmen during daily or weekly meetings. Roll Call is a one-page print product, posted online every Friday. It covers one or two topics, in full sentences, and is written so supervisors can read it to their Airmen during morning roll calls or weekly gatherings. "Our Air Force is going through tremendous changes now, all while we continue to fight the war on terror," said Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force Rodney J. McKinley. "Making sure our Airmen understand why these changes are happening and what it will mean to them on a unit and an individual level is vital. The added advantage of Roll Call is getting work sections to take a few minutes out of their fast-paced operations tempo and actually look each other in the eye while they discuss issues facing our force." Roll Call will fill information voids by tackling complex, Air Force-level issues such as "transformation," "recapitalization," "force shaping," and "Smart Operations 21," and explaining them in common, everyday language. "This new weekly Air Force 'Roll Call' product provides supervisors with information and straight answers," said Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. T. Michael Moseley. "To be most effective, we need every commander and supervisor to print it out and discuss it with your Airmen." While there are currently many avenues for information to get from Headquarters Air Force in Washington to the field, feedback suggests that much of that information is either not reaching junior Airmen and officers, or it is not translating in ways that make the information meaningful to them. "The goals of Roll Call are three fold: to keep our Airmen informed on current issues, clear up confusion and dispel rumors, and provide additional face-to-face communication between supervisors and their teams," General Moseley said. Air Force may hold RIF board if goal not met [2007-01-05] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force will convene an officer reduction in force board in June if it fails to meet its force-shaping goal, said the service's senior most officer for manpower and personnel. "While the goal has been to reduce active-duty end strength through voluntary programs where possible, if at the end of the extended Voluntary Separation Pay application window the (fiscal year) 2007 goal has not been reached, the remaining losses will be achieved through an officer RIF board in June 2007," said Lt. Gen. Roger A. Brady, Air Force deputy chief of staff for manpower and personnel. The window for officers to voluntarily separate from the Air Force with the VSP option has been extended to March 31. As of Dec. 28, the service had approved just over 1,800 applicants for the program. Officers seeking more information about VSP can call the Air Force Personnel Center contact center at 800-616-3775, or visit its web site. General Brady said the RIF board would consider Air Force officers with six to 12 years of active commissioned service in overage career fields from six year groups: 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000 and 2001. The RIF board process is expected to achieve approximately 1,000 officer reductions. Officers not selected for retention will be separated by Jan. 29, 2008. Force shaping is not simply about reducing numbers, however. The Air Force will also ensure that it has the right number of officers and enlisted, with the right rank, in the right career fields. "The Air Force is in transition and we must focus on optimizing our force structure," General Brady said. "Through voluntary separations, attrition, adjustments to accessions, retraining, and a RIF board, we can ensure we have the number of officers we need, in the right career fields, and with the right level of expertise. I encourage all commanders to conduct frank discussions with their officers concerning their vulnerability for the RIF board." In 2004, the Air Force had 372,000 active-duty Airmen. Today, the service has about 347,300. Through force shaping, the goal is to reduce that number by another 31,000 to about 316,000 by fiscal year 2009. In fiscal year 2007 alone, the Air Force has over 5,500 projected officer losses (about 70 percent of the goal) and 16,500 projected enlisted losses (almost 50 percent of the goal). These losses reflect the combination of targeted force shaping and normal attrition, which total over 30,000 each year. Dashboard tool allows snapshot of organizational status [2007-01-18] WASHINGTON -- Air Force officials are rolling out a Web-based financial management tool this summer designed to help commanders and other Air Force decision makers. By summer 2007, the Air Force's Financial Management Dashboard will be available online through the Air Force Portal. This is a Web-based "dashboard" application that gathers financial information from multiple authoritative sources and then presents that information back to users in usable formats, said Richard P. Gustafson, an Air Force financial management chief information officer. "The FM Dashboard is a way to present data and information to decision makers in a meaningful format," he said. "The secretary's vision is actionable information presented consistently throughout the management chain." The new tool will be available for users from base-level all the way up to Headquarters Air Force level, Mr. Gustafson said. Each user's experience with the tool will be different, because at each level of resource management, a user has different levels of responsibility. When users log into the system, they will have access to any number of metrics, designed at headquarters level, that are unique to their level of management. These preprogrammed metrics could show, at a glance, the status of funds in a commander's budget, other account balances, unit flying hour costs or the status of contract execution. "This allows decision makers to see their information and to make better management decisions," Mr. Gustafson said. "And this will get better over time. The real power will come when it is mixed with other things, like personnel and logistics. Then it can provide everything a commander needs to know to answer 'What is the health of my organization?'" Airmen to see combat medal in April [2007-01-26] WASHINGTON -- Since the Air Force started manning convoy operations in support of the war on terror, more Airmen have had an opportunity to put their rifle training to use in real-world scenarios. Today, explosive ordnance disposal and security forces Airmen, along with those performing in-lieu-of taskings, have joined battlefield Airmen working "outside the wire" in Iraq and Afghanistan and are regularly involved in combat situations as part of their duty...all alongside their fellow Airmen that continue to engage in daily combat, delivering decisive effects from the air! "We are a warfighting Air Force," said Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. T. Michael Moseley. "Our Airmen are doing amazing things in combat operations every single day, both within their core competencies as Airmen, delivering those effects from the air and now on the surface as part of the joint fight." It is for those Airmen involved in combat operations, on the ground and in the air, that the Air Force has created the Air Force Combat Action Medal, said Gen. Roger A. Brady, deputy chief of staff for manpower and personnel. "There are people coming under enemy fire, but we do not have an Air Force way to recognize the reality of their experience," General Brady said. "So General Moseley has asked us to develop an appropriate recognition, a combat medal, and we have done that." To develop criteria for the award and to get a better understanding of what Airmen were looking for in combat recognition, the Air Force consulted with combat-experienced Airmen. "We gathered feedback from Airmen; active duty, Air National Guard, and Air Force Reserve members who've been in combat (in the air and on the surface) -- some who've received combat recognition from other services, and some who haven't," said Maj. Randall Smith, chief of the Air Force uniforms and recognition branch. "Their feedback was critical in ensuring the recognition we developed met General Moseley's requirements. We also heard from Air Force senior leadership, both officer and enlisted." General Moseley often meets with Airmen in the field and has frequently called a variety of Airmen to Washington to sit down with him - to get their personal feedback and input. He said "it is important to hear the opinion of Airmen about the AFCAM because the medal is a reflection of the warfighting culture of the United States Air Force and everything we hold dear." "Combat is a part of our culture and our heritage," General Moseley said. "Our Airmen know this intrinsically and reinforce it through their actions. This award is a way to visibly highlight that part of being an Airman." General Brady said the AFCAM will be unveiled sometime in April. Then, as part of the unveiling ceremony, some Airmen will be awarded the new medal. At that time, the Air Force will begin to process additional applications for the award. In order for an Airman to wear the AFCAM, a narrative explanation of the Airman's involvement in combat activities must be submitted by a person with first-hand knowledge of the incident. The application will be processed through the chain of command and eventually be approved or disapproved by the Commander of Air Force Forces (COMAFFOR). The AFCAM is for Airmen that have directly participated in active combat, either in the air or on the ground, as part of their official duty. Airmen serving as a crew member on a C130 providing key support to Coalition forces or Airmen servicing as a convoy escort operation that takes fire, for instance, would be eligible to apply for the award. "This is for people who are in combat as a part of their duty," General Brady said. "If you are walking across the base at Balad and you are injured by a mortar, you will likely get the Purple Heart. You may even get a Bronze Star, depending on your performance in your duties. But that scenario would not lead to the award of the AFCAM." The AFCAM will be the highest-level Air Force individual award to not earn points under the Weighted Airmen Promotion System, said Major Smith. "There was a strong consensus that this recognition should not be tied to promotion points, but should be tied to a meaning greater than that," the major said. Airman will wear the AFCAM on the mess dress uniform. The ribbon for the AFCAM can be worn on the blue or service dress uniform. These uniforms are usually worn for ceremonies or other duties where it is appropriate to highlight individual achievements. There will be no patch or badge equivalent for wear on the utility uniforms worn for daily duties and deployments; the emphasis in these cases is better placed on the mission and the team, above self. Air Force to implement second DOS rollback [2007-01-26] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force has adjusted its force-shaping numbers in response to better-than-expected retention rates in fiscal year 2006. In a message dated Jan. 26, officials said the Air Force must cut 3,090 Airmen by Sept. 30 in order to meet this year's force shaping goals. The Air Force will use three personnel programs to help meet the goal. Those programs involve an extension of the limited active duty service commitment, or LADSC, waiver for technical and master sergeants to retire, a second wave of date-of-separation rollbacks, and a limited number of LADSC waivers for Airmen with 6 to 11 years of service in some career fields to voluntarily separate. Last year, the Air Force offered LADSC waivers for some master and technical sergeants. The waivers allowed those Airmen to retire earlier than normal. But so far, only 524 Airmen had been approved for that program, short of the Air Force's goals. In response, the window to apply for the program has been extended. Airmen may now apply for this program until April 30, but they must choose a retirement date that is no later than Sept. 1, 2007. The Air Force will conduct a second round of DOS rollbacks. Under this program, some Airmen will be separated from the service earlier than they expected. Airmen who have less than 14 years of service or more than 20 years of service, and who are currently serving on a control roster, have declined retainability for an assignment, have declined training or are serving suspended punishment pursuant to an Article 15, can be selected for the DOS rollback. The DOS rollback program will give many Airmen a new separation date of Aug. 1, 2007. Airmen from all Air Force specialty codes can be affected by this program. Finally, the Air Force is offering LADSC waivers to Airmen in certain career fields who have more than six but less than 11 years of service. Under this program, the Air Force will waive an Airman's service commitment so he or she may separate early. A limited number of waivers will be granted, and Airmen who elect to participate in the program must choose a separation date of Sept. 29, 2007 or earlier. Airmen in 23 control AFSCs are eligible for the LADSC waiver separation program: 2A0X1A, 2A0X1C, 2A6X1A, 2E1X1, 2E2X1, 2E6X2, 2E6X3, 2F0X1, 2S0X1, 2T0X1, 2T3X5, 3A0X1, 3C0X1, 3C0X2, 3C2X1, 3E0X1, 3S0X1, 3V0X1, 4P0X1, 4T0X1, 4Y0X1, 6F0X1 and 8M0X0. Bronze Star recipient chosen to attend State of Union Address [2007-01-26] WASHINGTON -- When President Bush addressed the nation Jan. 23 for his annual State of the Union address, Airmen around the world listened via television, radio or the Internet. But one Airman watched from inside the U.S. Capitol building where the president gave his speech. Tech. Sgt. Michelle Barefield, an explosive ordnance disposal specialist assigned to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., was invited to attend the State of the Union address as a guest of the president. She was one of five military members, one from each service, to attend. Sergeant Barefield, her husband and her older daughter began their time in the Nation's Capital with a trip to the White House where they met with senior White House staffers. Later, she was transported to the U.S. Capitol Building to listen to the president's address. She sat in a special seating area with First Lady Laura Bush. "The best part for me was meeting Mrs. Cheney and Mrs. Bush," Sergeant Barefield said. "They were very pleasant and asked all kinds of questions. They made us feel welcome, definitely." Sergeant Barefield was chosen to attend the address in part for her performance a year earlier while deployed to Iraq. Within days of arriving in the country, she and her EOD unit were dispatched to dispose of an improvised explosive device. During that mission, an IED exploded killing one of her teammates and injuring another. In response to the explosion, Sergeant Barefield put her military training into action. She immediately provided first aid to the injured Airman and then took control of the scene. She organized the sweep for additional hazards, ran the post-blast analysis of the device and oversaw the recovery of her fallen comrade's remains. That first tragedy was but harbinger of things to come for Sergeant Barefield in Iraq. During her deployment she endured three separate attacks, took part in a gun battle with insurgents and managed the scene after the death of her EOD comrade. She received the Bronze Star for her actions in Iraq. In all three situations she reacted with skill and professionalism, something she attributes to her military training. "Everything I learned in my career was useful in those situations," she said. "I was one of the lucky ones, I came out unscathed. The training ... regardless of what you think of training in peacetime at home station ... can apply when you are put in a situation like that." Sergeant Barefield also said she thinks it is important for her and others to pass their experiences on to new Airmen so they can be prepared for their time overseas. "I want to tell new Airmen coming into EOD especially: talk to the people who have gone over there and see what they experienced and learn from then," she said. "You never really know what you will encounter. Even going through the training before hand, you can't imagine how it is going to be. So if you talk to people who have been there you may be more prepared." Tanker recapitalization proposal released [2007-01-30] WASHINGTON -- Air Force leaders officially released a request for proposal for a replacement tanker aircraft Jan. 30. The RFP is the official invitation to manufacturers to begin making offers to build a replacement for the Air Force's aging "Eisenhower-era" fleet of KC-135 Stratotankers, said Sue Payton, the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition. "This is a major milestone in fair, open and transparent dialogue that we have been involved in since the request for information was sent out in April of 2006," she said. "We are confident it will allow us to fulfill the Air Force's No. 1 acquisition priority." The Air Force's No. 1 acquisition priority is a replacement for the KC-135, as laid out late last year by Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the Air Force chief of staff. Other priorities include a new combat rescue helicopter, space-based early warning and communications satellites, the F-35 Lightning II and the next-generation, long-range strike bomber. Ms. Payton said she expects to have a tanker contract in place before the end of the year, and that competition for the contract will be fair for all involved. "The RFP has laid the groundwork for a fair and open competition that will ensure a thorough evaluation of any proposal we receive," she said. "We remain committed to a full and open competition. The KC-X is our No. 1 acquisition priority for the Air Force, and we will continue to conduct this competition in a very deliberate and open manner." Ms. Payton said she expects the Air Force could see the first operational fleet of new tankers by 2013. SECAF town hall meeting: Every Airman an ambassador [2007-02-02] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne spoke in front of a packed house January 31 during his town hall meeting at the Pentagon. During the meeting, the secretary discussed some of the issues facing the Air Force today as well as its strengths and his goals for 2007. One issue included the ages of the Air Force's aircraft. "When I reentered (the Air Force) last year, the average age of our equipment was 24 years old," he said. "That's all of our fleet. Many of them are essentially bumping up against age limits." The secretary said aircraft like the F-15 Eagle are now on flight restriction, prohibited during training from going above certain speeds because of potential danger to the pilot. He also said that type of restriction, due to the age of the aircraft, is detrimental to Air Force readiness. "When you restrict that in peacetime, you restrict training," he said. "That would be like training to be an Indy 500 racecar driver at 100 miles an hour, knowing full well you will be going 175 miles an hour when you get on the track. It is just not the same." Despite such restrictions, the secretary told gathered Airmen their Air Force was the best in the world. "Why is your Air Force so great then? Because you -- the maintainers and sustainers of our Air Force -- are performing magnificently," he said. "The performers, the sustainers, and maintainers, are taking the old equipment and making it relevant today." The secretary said he realized that Airmen could not continue to sustain today's ageing equipment indefinitely. He said the service is making efforts to recapitalize to ensure tomorrow's Airmen are equipped to fight any enemy, anywhere, anytime. "We are about making sure that within our constrained resource set, we are going to set our sights on bringing (forward) this new and high technology equipment, because that is what your Air Force does," he said. "We bring high technology equipment and we change the face of warfare." Also during the town hall meeting, the secretary discussed his "goal card" for 2007. Many of the goals are a continuation of those he expressed early on in his tenure: fostering mutual respect and integrity; sustaining air, space and cyberspace capabilities; open, transparent business practices; and fostering AFSO21 across the Air Force. But this year, he has added a new goal: "Every Airman an ambassador to all we meet and serve." "It turns out, even in our community in the United States, people look at us as ambassadors of our Air Force," the secretary said. Some Airmen may mistake those in high visibility positions, like Thunderbird pilots or wing commanders, as being the only representatives of the service. But actually, all Airmen are ambassadors of the Air Force the secretary said. "The ambassadors for our Air Force are us, every one of us," he said. "Without a doubt when we are at Osan on a bike trip, at Kunsan taking a tour, or at Misawa and a local is taking us diving, they interact with us and come away with a feeling about the Air Force. They can come away with good feelings or come away with bad feelings. At the end of the day, it is up to you. That is where I say: Every Airman is an ambassador." Air Force FY 2008 budget includes pay raise, new facilities [2007-02-05] WASHINGTON -- In the president's fiscal 2008 budget, released Feb. 5, Air Force leaders are asking Congress for about $110.7 billion dollars. The Air Force budget request, about $6.2 billion more than it received in FY07, is divided into three primary areas: people, readiness and modernization and recapitalization. About 5 percent of the total budget goes toward infrastructure, said Maj. Gen. Frank R. Faykes, Air Force military deputy to the assistant secretary for budget. Taking care of Airmen is one of the top three priorities for Air Force leaders, and this year, nearly a third of the budget, about $36 billion dollars, goes toward that goal. In fact, this year Air Force leaders have asked for about $1.3 billion dollars more than the service received last year to fund personnel costs. "We have a 3 percent pay raise for military and civilian Airmen next year, and as you know, we have 670,000 Airmen in our Air Force -- officer, enlisted and civilian Airmen," he said. "Everybody will get a 3 percent pay raise. Also, basic allowance for housing goes up about 4 percent." Winning the war on terrorism is certainly another priority for Air Force leaders. This year, they are asking Congress for about $30.6 billion dollars in readiness funds to help the service prepare Airmen to fight the war on terrorism. That request is about $3.2 billion more than the service received the year prior. "Readiness is key to fighting and winning the (war on terrorism) today," General Faykes said. "We look at the readiness, the operations and maintenance account, as that direct funding that allows us to prepare, to train, and then to deploy to fight the global war on terror." The Air Force readiness accounts are meant to pay for things like funding flying operations at bases, security forces squadrons, operating vehicle fleets, and communications systems. This is the money that allows day-to-day operations and training to go on at Air Force bases around the world. "That readiness funding that operates and maintains our basic infrastructure at our home bases is very critical to the success of the United States Air Force in providing air dominance to the combatant commanders," General Faykes said. Modernization is also a key priority of the Air Force, and it is reflected in the service's $38.9 billion dollar modernization and recapitalization budget request. This request is about $2.3 billion dollars more than the service received in FY07. The money will fund the Air Force's efforts to buy new, more modern aircraft. "This is where we're going to bring on additional aircraft such as the F-22 Raptor, the F-35 Lightning II and the new combat search and rescue helicopter," General Faykes said, "and our number one priority in acquisition, to begin recapitalizing our tanker fleet." The Air Force's tanker fleet, about 500 KC-135 Stratotanker aircraft, averages about 45 years old. On Jan. 30, Air Force officials released a request for proposal for the tanker replacement. The RFP is the official invitation to manufacturers to begin making offers to build a replacement for the aging "Eisenhower-era" fleet of KC-135s. In the FY08 budget, Air Force officials project they will spend about $18.4 billion on research, development, testing and evaluation. They also will spend about $20.5 billion dollars on procuring new aircraft, missiles, equipment and ammunition. Most areas of the Air Force's FY08 budget request show increases over the FY07 outlay. But this year, officials are asking for less money for infrastructure than what was received in FY07. Last year, the Air Force received $5.8 billion dollars, this year officials are asking for just $5.2 billion. That money is used for military construction, facility maintenance, implementing directives under the Base Realignment and Closure act, and military housing. "One area where we have a decline is in the military construction program, due to the significant pressures on our budget in FY08," General Faykes said. "We've reduced our military construction program by about $300 million, but we still are able to build (some) new military construction projects." The general said Air Force officials will build some new dormitories, a new child development center and a new fitness center in FY08. He also said there are new fire training facilities in the plan as well. General Faykes also said Air Force officials will continue to privatize Air Force housing, and that the service would be entirely out of "inadequate" housing in the United States by FY08, and in the entire Air Force by FY09. "We're privatizing housing across the Air Force," the general said. "The Air Force has about 88,000 housing units on its bases. That's the equivalent of 1.5 times the number of rooms that the Doubletree Hotel chain has, so it's a big deal for us to ensure that every Airman, whether you're working in the most northern tier base or one of the most southern tier bases or if you're working at a base overseas where you may be assigned, lives in adequate housing." Some of those "significant pressures" on the budget include increases in fuel and personnel costs, General Faykes said. "Our personnel costs have increased about 50 percent in the last ten years while at the same time our end strength is coming down 8 percent," he said. "So the cost of our people in terms of pay, health care and those types of entitlements have gone up fairly significantly for the Air Force." Air Force leaders, like the rest of Americans, also must contend with the rising cost of petroleum. "Just as you would see in your own car with gas prices, the Air Force is seeing a significant cost of fuel increases of about 9 percent," he said. "For the Air Force, that's significant because we are the biggest consumer of aviation fuel within the Department of Defense. So for every ten dollar increase in the price of oil, that costs the Air Force $600 million dollars." In response to the increase in fuel prices, Air Force officals have budgeted some $35 million dollars to research alternative fuels. "We are looking at alternative fuels across the FYDP of about $35 million," General Faykes said. "We're starting with an effort first to certify our engines. We have successfully flown the B-52 Stratofortress with all eight engines on alternative fuels. In FY08 we will continue to certify all of our engines to fly on alternative fuels and then significantly begin investing in purchasing those fuels." The general also said the Air Force has been a good steward of energy conservation for many years. The Air Force is the largest purchaser of "green energy" in the U.S. government. This, and the Air Force's research into alternative fuels, will help Air Force leaders reduce operating costs. "We think that is the path for the future," General Faykes said. "It begins to get America off of its total reliance on foreign fuel, and also it drives down the cost of operating our own systems." The Air Force's FY08 budget is but a part of the president's overall budget for the United States. Once the president's budget leaves the White House, it must be approved or disapproved, in part or in whole, by Congress. Portions of the budget for the Air Force or any other federal agency can be increased or decreased by Congress. Lawmakers will try to have the budget approved before October 1, 2007, the beginning of FY08. ABU wear policy effective immediately [2007-02-09] WASHINGTON -- Air Force officials at the Pentagon released the wear policy for the new Airman Battle Uniform Feb. 7. The policy comes in time to help many of the Airmen deploying to the AOR in May, as these Airmen will be among the first to get the ABU. Further ABU distribution plans will be based on production capability. The new policy addresses uniform care, uniform wear, uniform accessories, and use of tactical items that don't match the ABU's color pattern. From the beginning of the utility uniform redesign process, Air Force leaders have said they hoped to make it easier for Airmen to take care of their uniforms. The uniform care instructions in the new policy reflect the emphasis on ease of care. Generally, the policy indicates that the uniform should be wash and wear. "Wash in warm water ... tumble dry, permanent press cycle, remove immediately from dryer and fold flat or place on rustproof hanger," the instruction recommends. It also says the uniform could be air dried on a hanger. According to the new policy, the ABU is not to be starched or "hot pressed" in a commercial laundry. According to the new policy, Airmen will wear "sand colored" T-shirts under their ABU coat. The T-shirts may be v-neck, crew neck or "athletic style." Additionally, Airmen may wear self-purchased T-shirts made of material other than what is issued. Specifically, "moisture wicking fabrics" and "cotton/poly blends" are authorized as long as they are sand colored and the manufacturer's logo is not visible. The Air Force has chosen to use the Army universal camouflage pattern for tactical items. The policy authorizes AOR wear or use of tactical items and field items only in the Army universal camouflage pattern or the desert camouflage uniform pattern. Tactical items include such things as body armor, modular lightweight load-carrying equipment, canteen covers, helmet covers, etc. Tan combat boots are authorized with the ABU until the "foliage green" boots become available. The phase out date for the tan boot and the mandatory wear date for the green boot have not yet been set. The mandatory wear date for the ABU -- the date when all Airmen should be wearing the uniform -- is Oct. 1, 2011. Fighting in cyberspace means cyber domain dominance [2007-02-28] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force officially announced creation of the new Cyberspace Command late last year. Now, just four months later, the command's leaders are talking about the way ahead. The Air Force's operational Cyberspace Command, also known as 8th Air Force, is commanded by Lt. Gen. Robert J. Elder. He said as part of an effort to develop better understanding of the cyberspace domain, elements of the command recently engaged in mock battle with aggressors and tactical experts from the Air Warfare Center at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. "For us, one of the big things was understanding what the cyberspace domain is and then what operations in cyberspace means," General Elder said. "We actually played cyberspace in a futures scenario and looked at how cyberspace could be used to enhance our contributions to a joint fight." Though most of the details of the exercise were classified, the general did say it was beneficial. "We found a number of different areas where this idea of warfighting in the cyberspace domain really takes hold," he said. One of the primary goals of the new command will be to invoke a culture shift on what technologies are included in cyberspace and their broad warfighting and civil implications. Currently, many believe cyberspace is simply the Internet. The National Military Strategy for Cyberspace Operations defines cyberspace as "domain characterized by the use of electronics and the electromagnetic spectrum to store, modify, and exchange date via networked systems and associated physical infrastructures." The general said the Air Force has had to develop a more concrete idea of what it means to fly and fight in cyberspace. He said the command has been focusing on four key areas that help define its role as laid out in the Air Force's mission statement. "First, we must control the domain," he said. "This is about operational freedom of action. We have to be able to protect the electromagnetic spectrum we use to communicate with each other, for example. We have to protect the electronics that we use to establish that domain and we have to protect those networks. Conversely we want to have the capability to deny those things to our adversaries." Secondly, the Air Force will use cyberspace to integrate operations across the other warfighting domains. "Cross-domain operations allow us to tie sensors together so we can bring in data from multiple sources, fuse it together and establish the situational awareness," he said. "That awareness is used in decision support systems so that a commander can make a decision -- a warfighting decision -- and exercise command and control over operations being conducted." Thirdly, the Air Force will conduct offensive operations in cyberspace in much the same way as its adversaries. "We might use cyberspace to go after an integrated air defense system or a command and control system that belongs to an adversary, or even go after some of their actual combat systems," he said. "We can disrupt a combat system by disrupting a sensor or disrupting the links that work in the sensor." Finally, he said, the cyberspace will be used as an enabling operation to support its ability to do intelligence or influence operations." The Cyberspace Command also is working with Air Education and Training Command to develop Airmen into the "cyber warriors" that will man the new command elements, General Elder said. "We want to define what this career path looks like for a cyber warrior or cyber operator, and secondly, to figure out how to build the training and development program." One of the challenges in developing and standing up the Cyberspace Command, the general said, is defining cyberspace and warfare in cyberspace. "This is a warfighting domain and it is on par with the other physical domains," he said. "We have been working with the Air Force Doctrine Center to develop initial doctrine. We have developed an initial concept for warfighting in cyberspace that is now out for coordination. And we have been looking at, both in 2009 and 2010, the program changes that might allow us to really expand our capabilities to fight in that domain." The new Cyberspace Command also is spearheading efforts to better protect the Air Force's networks, because, General Elder said, the networks are the foundation for superiority not just in cyber but the other physical domains. "We have actually been doing quite a bit of work now to try to secure our own network," he said. "Just like in your ability to do any type of air or terrestrial operation where you must have air superiority, for us, that means we really do need to have the networks secured. Network security is the foundation for cyberspace superiority. So we have been working a number of things that allow us to better protect our networks." General Elder will meet with Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley in March to further discuss implementation of the Cyberspace Command. Better intel boosts Air Force munitions drops, sorties flown [2007-03-06] WASHINGTON -- In 2006, the Air Force dropped more than 1,700 munitions in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. A year earlier, the Air Force dropped only 176 munitions as part of that same operation. The increase is due to better intelligence, said Lt. Gen. Gary L. North, the U.S. Central Command Air Forces commander. "Our capability to gather intelligence on the enemy's intentions continues to increase," the general said during a recent Pentagon media event. "We have got better intelligence, we are finding the enemy, the enemy is presenting himself, and we are able to take the fight to him." Cooperation between U.S. military, local militaries and civilian populations is one of the reasons for better U.S. intelligence about insurgents in the region, the general said. "We have great collaboration with the Iraqi forces and the Afghani forces, and good portions of the Iraqi people are fed up with what is going on and they want stability and so they are helping us," he said. "There is what we would call an equivalent of a '1-800' call line where people who have information on insurgents can call in, and they do." To further intelligence operations in the region, General North said the Air Force is looking for improved capability to provide full motion. "Full motion video and the ability to download full motion video, is very important to our current fight, and will be to future fights," he said. "The ability to take from a platform, whether a bomber or fighter, and be able to transmit what the pilot or sensor operator or offensive or defensive systems operator is seeing and put that into the hands of the ground commander, so you have a complete common picture -- that is an incredible capacity. We are working to integrate full motion video and downlink capability into our targeting pod so we can put that picture -- basically, the 'John Madden view' -- from the ground to the air and the air back to he ground." General North also said the Air Force is ready to support any surge that may be required in the CENTAF area of operations. "We will meet whatever is required," he said. "Right now, we are meeting the requirements of the ground commander, and if we have to increase, either in airlift or in fighter or bomber capability, I'm sized appropriately to do that. My goal is that the ground commander doesn't come to me and say 'I need you to do more of this,' because I (will) have already anticipated their requirements and established the support effort and the overhead effort." Being able to meet the mission requirements in Afghanistan and Iraq is nothing new for the Air Force, said General North. In fact, the Air Force has been meeting those requirements for about 17 years. "We've got over 23,000 Airmen today, some 4,500 of those are in non-traditional roles outside of the wire, doing battlefield airmen tasks in support of ground forces," he said. "Will we be as the Air Force, size appropriate? You bet. We have been doing this in the AOR since 1990." Improv team to help Airmen uncross ‘Sex Signals’ [2007-03-22] BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. -- The improvisational team Catharsis Productions presents "Sex Signals" Tuesday, March 27, at 2 p.m. at the Edward H. White Community Center. The "Sex Signals" performance combines both scripted and improvisational material, using audience participation, to create a funny and engaging show that addresses the often confusing signals men and women can send while interacting with each other. During the performance, audience members watch the actors play out dating scenarios. Then the audience is asked to provide input as to how scenarios should continue. The results are nearly always funny, but the intent of the show is to address more important issues. "This is an interactive comedy. It is funny, it is fun, it is creative and it is engaging," said Julie Kaplan, the 11th Wing Sexual Assault Response Coordinator. "But the show goes from the miscommunications and assumptions we make about the opposite sex, to how they can turn into criminal behavior and trauma." Sex Signals does cover the confusing and sometimes funny results of the miscommunication that happens between men and women. But it also discusses more serious issues, like sexual assault. The Sex Signals show has been seen on college campuses across the United States and at all the military service academies. It is geared to an 18 and older crowd. To read more about Sex Signals, or to watch a clip of past performances, visit the Web site at: www.catharsisproductions.com. Blood drive saves lives locally, abroad [2007-03-22] BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. -- The Air Force District of Washington hosted a blood drive at the Edward H. White Community Center here Tuesday to provide blood and blood products to the Armed Services Blood Bank Center. Most of the blood from the collection, like other blood collected by the Center, is headed overseas to support troops injured fighting the global war on terror as part of operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. Having an ample supply of blood is critical to keeping injured troops alive, said Maj. Gen. Robert L. Smolen, commander of the Air Force District of Washington. "The medical people there tell us this blood is critical to save lives," he said. "They go through a lot of blood during surgeries, for instance, so this really is a life saving product." The Armed Services Blood Bank is a joint service operation based at Bethesda Naval Medical Center in Maryland. The Center is responsible for collecting blood in and around the National Capitol Region and then distributing that blood first to support the global war on terror, and second to area military hospitals like Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., Malcolm Grow Medical Center at Andrews Air Force Base and Bethesda Naval Medical Center in Maryland. A unit of blood from a single donor, about 450ml, can mean the difference between life and death for a Soldier, Airman, Marine or Sailor who has been injured overseas, said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Corey Jenkins, who ran the blood drive. Military members stateside should take every opportunity available to them to donate blood, whether they support the war or not. "If you want to support our mission overseas, donating blood is a good way to start," he said. "A lot of military members are able to come home from overseas because somebody here donated blood. Whether you are opposed to the war or not, it is Americans over there fighting, and this is one way to support them." Commander Jenkins also said a single unit of blood can actually save as many as two lives, because once it has been tested for diseases like HIV and hepatitis, it can be split into both red blood cells and plasma -- two products the center would like to make more of. The center collects about 600 units of blood a month, but it wants to collect about 800. "We really do need more people to come out and donate blood when we have these drives," he said. Class prepares kids to stay 'Home Alone' [2007-03-29] BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. -- In the family film "Home Alone," the 8-year-old character played by then child star Macaulay Culkin is accidentally left behind in his Chicago home while his family goes on vacation. During the time it takes for his parents to return for him, young Macaulay is forced to defend his family's home against two burglars intent on stealing everything of value. While it is unlikely such a scenario could happen on Bolling Air Force Base, there are still many challenges a young person could face when they are left alone at home for the first time. In order to ensure children are prepared for those challenges, Bolling Air Force Base offers the "Home Alone" class to youth aged 9 to 12 years old. The "Home Alone" class is for those children that might be left at home alone for a few hours or more due to their parent's work schedule or even because their parents would like to go out to dinner. The class helps ensure youth are prepared for the responsibility of being alone in a home, and are equipped to handle any emergencies that may arise, said Paddy Lynn, the Youth Center program director and class instructor. "If you have a 9 and 12 year old, and they are home fixing something to eat, and one slices themselves, or one eats and starts choking, who do they call, do they know the number?" she asked. "That's one of the many scenarios that we try to cover with them." Lynn said the course uses role playing and guided discussion to help kids learn about what to do when somebody comes to the door, how to answer the phone, who to call if there is a fire or other emergency, and even how to deal with the peer pressure that may come from friends to do things that are inappropriate when mom and dad are away -- things like smoking, drinking, or even not going home at all if parents won't be there after school is out. Class attendees are given a checklist to take home after the class that they should complete with their parents. The list includes such things as knowing how to shut off the water or electricity, if need be. It also includes making sure that kids who are going to be alone for a few hours know what the house rules are, something maybe even more important than what can be taught in class, Lynn said. "This role playing helps out," she said, "But they know what their parents want them to do." The "Home Alone" class is next offered April 6, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the base Youth Center. The class is free of charge. Policy change allows Airmen to take leave with special liberty [2007-03-29] BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. -- Recent changes to Department of Defense policy allow Airmen and other members of the Armed Forces to take special liberty -- also called "pass" -- from their commander in conjunction with regular leave. The new policy removes the requirement that there be a duty day between special liberty and leave. Special liberty is time away from work, granted by a commander, that doesn't count against an Airman's leave days. Such liberty might be a reward for outstanding performance or graduation from professional military education said Maj. Jason Kobylski, director of the 11th Wing Financial Management office. "It's for simple little things like when commanders have challenges for physical fitness, and they might reward individuals who meet or exceed by giving a day off," he said. Major Kobylski said the change makes it easier for Airmen to use the special days their commander gives them to prepare for their own official leave time -- to prepare the house before going on vacation, or to finish shopping before going home for Christmas. "The new policy allows members to take that day in conjunction with leave, so they can get stuff done first, then go on leave," he said. "It's a morale and quality of life thing." Though the policy change did remove the need to have a duty day between special liberty and leave, the requirement is still in place that Airmen begin and end their leave in the local area. If an Airman wants to be out of the local area for the duration of their special liberty and not return before the start of their leave, then the entire time, leave plus special liberty, will be charged as leave. According to a recent Air Force memorandum, the new policy also affects Air National Guard members serving in an active guard⁄reserve status or Guard members serving on statutory tours for more than 30 consecutive days. The Department of Defense changed the policy last November, and those changes will be incorporated into the next update to DoD instruction 1327.6. The changes will also be incorporated into appropriate Air Force Instructions. Fitness advisor in a box helps Airmen pass fitness tests [2007-03-29] BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. -- For some Airmen, hitting the gym can be a little intimidating. There' s a lot of equipment there, a lot of technique that needs to be learned, and a lot of dedication and planning needed to make any real progress. Fortunately, there's a way the novice -- or the less organized -- can chart a course to a more fit physique, and it doesn't require charts, detailed workout planning, numbers, or existing mastery of all the equipment in the gym. The Bolling Fitness Center has had "The Fitness Advisor" on board for about a year and a half now. The advisor is not a person, but rather some software coupled with sophisticated computer equipment that ties together much of the strength and cardio training equipment at the Center, said Jerry Nelms, a fitness specialist. "Fitness Advisor is a comprehensive exercise prescription and tracking network," he said. "It's a network whereby we track the cardiovascular and the strength training of different individuals." The Fitness Advisor system includes a central computerized kiosk, and radio-controlled computer panels attached to the various pieces of exercise equipment in the Center. Once a part of the Fitness Advisor network, users log in at the kiosk at the front of the gym. There, they receive a pre-planned exercise routine that could include strength training, cardiovascular training, or both. The routine, also called a "prescription" is based on the personal goals users set for themselves when they were first put into the system. As a user moves to each piece of equipment while completing their exercise routine, a control panel there lets them know how much they should be lifting in a particular set, the number of repetitions they should complete and how fast they should lift them. All of this is recorded into a central computer for each user, so the user can focus on exercising -- not keeping the books. As users continue to use the Fitness Advisor system, their exercise routines are upgraded based on their past performance. Nearly every user of the system should move toward success, Nelms said. "If you follow it step by step, you are guaranteed to improve cardiovascular and strength-wise," he said. "You are guaranteed to lose body fat and to tone your body by following the program." Nelms is one of the specialists at the Center that helps input new members into the Fitness Advisor system and also helps them become familiar with all the equipment. He often helps Airmen who have been entered into the Fitness Improvement Program because of substandard scores on the Air Force Fitness test. "The majority of the people that come through, they are a little hesitant because they are in the FIP," he said. "But the majority of them, when they finally see the light is when they go through the program, when we take them through and show them." He says one of the benefits to his job is when an Airmen who has been on the FIP has success with the Fitness Advisor and comes back to tell him about it. "I get a tickle out of somebody coming back and telling me, 'hey, I passed my fitness test,'" he said. "It's intangible, but it's a reward you feel good about all over." The Fitness Advisor is free to use for all Airmen, or anybody allowed to use the Bolling Fitness Center. Users must be 12 years or older to enroll. Bolling community cleans up the neighborhood [2007-04-05] BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. -- More than 100 people from the Bolling Air Force Base and Anacostia Naval Station community gathered here March 31 to tidy up the more than 1.5 miles of Potomac River shoreline that runs along the western edge of base. Second Lt. Collin Polt, with the 11th Wing Civil Engineer Squadron, spearheaded the Bolling effort to remove rubbish from the shore of the river and to make the area look nicer for the many people that use the walking path bordering the water. "This effort makes this nicer for the people that live on the waterfront here, but also for the base as a whole," he said. "It's kind of a jogging path, people walk or push their kids in a stroller - it's more of an aesthetic appeal out here. People have come out here to clean up their living area." The cleanup effort at Bolling was but one of many Potomac cleanup efforts organized for the March 31 weekend by the Alice Ferguson Foundation. This year represents 19 years the organization has orchestrated cleanups along the river. According to the group's Web site, cleanup efforts this year involved some 4,082 volunteers at 363 sites, who collectively pulled some 103 tons of trash from the banks of the river. That number includes more than 900 tires, and more than 92,000 recyclable beverage containers. This is the third year Bolling AFB has contributed to that cleanup effort. Lieutenant Polt said that for him, the effort is more than just about appearances along the river, however. "I grew up in Northern Maryland, so I am kind of familiar with the watershed issues, and they've had a lot of pollution problems," he said. "At one point you couldn't even fish in the Potomac. I think the more people that actually come out and see the area, the more people will want to come help clean up." Much of the trash pulled from the river was plastic bottles and foam, said one cleanup participant, Chaplain (Capt.) Ken Fisher of the Arlington National Cemetery Chaplaincy, who also fished a sock from the river using a tree branch. "There's a lot of plastic bottles, a lot of drink bottles - lots of bottles," he said. "If people would just put their bottles in the trash can, the trash receptacle, it would save a lot of work for everybody." The chaplain said taking care of the environment is everybody's responsibility. "I think our environment is one of the most precious things we have to protect," he said. "And it is our responsibility to keep it clean. So I'm doing my part." Lindsey Lette, a childcare provider on base, was also out participating in the river cleanup. She said she uses the path along the river daily to walk her dogs, to walk with her husband Staff Sgt. Nathanial Lette, or to take her children out. "When you see the stuff out here when you walk at night, you can't really do anything about it," she said. "So an opportunity to clean up where you live is awesome." Chief Petty Officer Cheryl Barton works at the Chief of Navy Chaplains office at the Navy Annex in Arlington, Va. While not assigned to Bolling Air Force Base, she said she used to run her physical training test along the river, and felt compelled to participate in the cleanup effort when she heard about it. She also says she knows first hand the effects of trash floating in the river. "I'm pulling so much plastic out of the water," she said. "My dad lost an engine on a boat because of plastic and he'd be proud to see me out here now pulling this out of the water." Gate changes improve traffic flow at Andrews [2007-04-05] ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md. -- Changes to the entry gates at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., will improve traffic flow and make it easier for security forces Airmen there to implement anti-terrorism and force protection measures. The Andrews Air Force Base 316th Wing Civil Engineer and Security Forces squadrons have worked together for the last two years to improve security at three of the base's gates and to optimize traffic flow. The cost of the improvements are about $18 million dollars, said Larry Carson, the deputy base civil engineer at Andrews. "The gate projects will increase the traffic flow capacity at the gates, while enhancing our ability to make anti-terrorism inspections," he said. "The improvements also provide security forces squadron Airmen with protection from the weather and extreme elements." Four gates at Andrews have changes scheduled over the next two to three weeks. Those gates include the Main Gate, the North Gate, the Virginia Gate and the new Pearl Harbor Commercial Gate. The base's Main Gate, at the intersection of Allentown Road and Suitland Road, will close April 23, until completion of construction in August. The gate, upon reopening, will be for personally-owned vehicles only. The base Visitor Center, located at the Main Gate, will remain open during the gate closure. Visitors to Andrews AFB can still go to the Main Gate, complete paperwork at the Visitor Center, then drive back off the base and enter at another gate. During the closure of the Main Gate, the new roads built for the facility will be connected to existing, older roads. Main Gate improvements include upgrades of roads, drainage, lighting and traffic control. Also included are a random inspection canopy area, permanent security watch stations, a new Visitor Control Center and a four-lane identification-check station. The base's Virginia Gate, at the intersection of Old Alexander Ferry Road and Virginia Avenue, will open April 16 to POV traffic only. The gate will be open from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily. Beginning April 23, the gate will remain open 24 hours a day. Improvements to the Virginia Gate include a new identification card check station, a permanent security watch station, and lighting and infrastructure changes. Also included are two inbound lanes and two outbound lanes. The base's North Gate, near the intersection of Suitland Parkway and Pennsylvania Avenue, will implement one-way entry or exit during rush hours beginning April 16. The gate will serve POV traffic only. Between the hours of 6 and 9 a.m., traffic can enter the base at the North Gate. From 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., traffic can exit the base. Beginning April 23, the gate will again change operating procedures. At that time, traffic can travel both directions full time. The gate will also remain open from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily. The Pearl Harbor Gate, near the intersection of Pearl Harbor Drive and Dower House Road, will open April 16 to commercial traffic only. The gate remains open 24 hours a day. Improvements at the gate allow for a doubling of commercial traffic onto the base. At the same time, improvements allow for increased security checks of all traffic. Also new during the closure of the Main Gate, is a "pedestrian gate" located near the West Gate by the 316th Wing Headquarters building. The gate is located near a public transportation stop outside the base, and will allow individuals who have come to Andrews AFB by city bus to enter the base. The gate operating hours will be 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. until the reopening of the Main Gate. Air Force Band kicks off Summer Concert Series at Memorial [2007-04-05] BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. -- The Air Force Band heralds in its annual Summer Concert Series of events in the nation's capital with an Air Force Review, April 14, at the Air Force Memorial. Each summer, the band performs a series of free shows, their Summer Concert Series, at places like the steps of the U.S. Capitol building, the National Air and Space Museum and the National Sylvan Theater. The band will conduct as many as 40 of those performances this summer. With the opening of the Air Force Memorial in Arlington, Va., the band has found a new venue where they can conduct their performances. Capt. Michael Murray, flight commander of the United States Air Force Band, said he hopes the band's music will help bring more people to the Memorial, and that the Memorial will help bring more people to the music. "For me, it really hit that first weekend when we did the Memorial dedication -- to be a part of the initial ceremonial aspect of its opening was very special," he said. "Everybody knows about the Navy Memorial and about Iwo Jima, they've been here for a long time and they've had that history. But it wasn't until recently that the youngest service, the Air Force, had its own hallowed ground. Now we will be able to share that venue with the general public, and hopefully we can use our music to help increase the number of people who go there to see that incredible structure." The band's summer series of events actually begins Friday, June 1, at 8 p.m. at the Air Force Memorial. But the Air Force Ceremonial Brass Band will hold a pre-summer season performance there, April 14 at 5 p.m. The event, the Air Force Review, will be hosted by Maj. Gen. Bob Smolen, Commander of the Air Force District of Washington. The review will also feature performances by the Air Force Honor Guard, said Capt. Derek Ketelsen, Director of Operations for the Air Force Honor Guard. "The Honor Guard and Air Force Band are performing together on multiple occasions this summer, but for the Air Force Review, it will be more on a grand scale," he said. "We'll have about 100 Ceremonial Guardsmen out there, in formation. We'll have a big formation that will march on and do a sequence, and during part of the performance our drill team will march into position and do a 16-man show that lasts about 15 minutes. " Captain Ketelsen will act as "Commander of Troops" during the Air Force Review. He said the performance of the Honor Guard is as much to entertain the audience as it is to showcase the excellence of the Air Force through its precise drill movements. "The team's mission is to recruit, retain, and inspire Airmen and the public," he said. "That's what we try to capture each time we go out there. I think we're effective in that target." The Air Force Band actually consists of seven unique performing ensembles, including the Air Force Strings, Airmen of Note, the Ceremonial Brass, the Concert Band, Max Impact, Silver Wings and the Singing Sergeants. Each of those bands will perform at least once during the Summer Concert Series, helping showcase the Air Force's excellence to the millions of Americans that visit Washington, D.C., each year, said Captain Murray. "We are the public face of the Air Force, and for John Q. Tourist, they may live in an area where there isn't an Air Force base for hundreds of miles, so there isn't any Air Force representation," he said. "If we can showcase for them the precision of the Air Force Drill Team and the excellence of the music, and after the show we can talk with them, well, that's where we have the opportunity to influence hearts and minds." Tuskegee Airmen honored at Capitol [2007-04-05] WASHINGTON -- More than 300 members of the Tuskegee Airmen were honored March 29 in the U.S. Capitol building's Rotunda with the nation's top civilian award -- the Congressional Gold Medal. Representatives of the highest levels of American government gathered at the Capitol to recognize the contributions of the men and women that made up the Tuskegee Airmen. Among those included in the ceremony were President of the United States George W. Bush; Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Carl Levin; Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Charles B. Rangel. Senator Levin and Representative Rangel ensured legislation passed through both the Senate and the House so Congress could honor the Tuskegee Airmen. Senator Levin praised the Airmen for what they brought to the fight, telling them their place in history had been assured by their own actions. "Your place in history was not established by the medal you will receive, it was assured when as young men, you put on the uniform of this nation and defended this nation, and demonstrated your faith in what this nation could become," he said. President Bush thanked the Airmen and told them of the experience of a WWII pilot he knows -- his father. He said his father's unit was a good unit, but wasn't expected to face the same challenges the Tuskegee Airmen did. "Nobody told them they were a credit to their race and nobody refused to return their salute," he said. President Bush didn't hesitate to throw up a salute of his own, however. "On behalf of the office I hold, and the country that honors you, I salute you for your service to the United States of America," he said. The Congressional Gold Medal was presented by President Bush, Nancy Pelosi and President pro tempore of the United States Senate Robert C. Byrd. Following the presentation, Dr. Roscoe Brown Jr., one of the many Tuskegee Airmen present at the event, thanked legislators for making the award possible. "We are so overjoyed at the acceptance of the Congressional Gold Medal and we want to thank the Congress, Senator Levin, Congressman Rangel, and both the House and the Senate for voting unanimously to award this medal collectively to the pilots, the bombardiers, the navigators, the mechanics, the ground officers, and the....men and women who served in the Tuskegee Airmen," he said. The Tuskegee Airmen were an all-black flying unit that fought during World War II. Their success in the face of the enemy flew in the face of both American and military culture as well. With racism and segregation rampant at the time, few believed black men could fly or could perform well in war. The Tuskegee Airmen's record in WWII proved everybody wrong, and paved the war for integration of the military following the war. Telling their story is their story [2007-04-12] WASHINGTON -- The folks at The Veterans History Project, part of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, make it their mission to tell the story of America's military veterans. The VHP personnel don't actually tell the story themselves, however. Veterans tell their own stories. Instead, the Project provides guidance for those who record the stories of veterans, and then provides archival services for them. The Project also makes some of those stories available on their Web site for Americans to read, watch and listen to. Today, the VHP exists to collect the stories of America's war veterans and to make them available to military members, families, researchers, school children, and all Americans, said Program Director Bob Patrick. "The purpose is to provide a kind of ground-level look at what happens during war -- from the good, to the not-so-good, to the tedious nature of war -- and allow viewers to experience it in first person context," Patrick said. "Too often we have war told to us through historians. There is nothing wrong with that, but it kind of gets filtered down through the eyes of historians or somebody's report or something like that. But hearing it first hand, you really kind of appreciate it from another aspect what the war is all about." The VHP uses volunteer "interviewers" that go out into their own communities and ask military veterans to talk about their military histories. Those sessions are recorded onto video tape and sent back to the Project along with any other documentation, photography or correspondence veterans are willing to donate, Patrick said. "It is a voluntary effort nationwide that goes out and collects these either audio or video interviews, as well as other documentation that veteran's may have of a personal nature, such as diaries, memoirs or photographs," Patrick said. During the interviews, interviewers try to elicit as much of a veteran's military experience as possible, not just dates and places, but experiences, personal feelings and motivations for doing the things they did. "We tell people it is as easy as having a conversation at a kitchen table, and in a lot of ways, that is how a lot of these interviews are done," Patrick said. "We like to get their military experience from beginning to end. What motivated them to get into the military in the first place and what were their experiences in basic training? Inevitably, the question we ask at the end is: What did your military service mean to you, and how did it reflect your life? Most will say, particularly the WWII generation, that it was an important thing." One common theme from interviewees, especially amongst World War II veterans, is that their military experience took them from their home and showed them a world they would never have seen had they not enlisted, Patrick said. "It put them into a new environment," Patrick said. "That is what WWII did for people all over the country. From farm boys in Iowa to the guys from Brooklyn, to the guys out West -- it completely lifted them up and threw them in with people from around the country, took them overseas, and to places they've never seen before. From that respect, it was a life changing experience." Another common theme among WWII veterans, Patrick said, is humility. "The WWII guys are pretty humble," he said. "You ask them what they did and they say they didn't do anything. And you get to talking to them and they tell you they hit the beach at Normandy, they fought through the hedgerows, or were a ball turret gunner in a B-17. They say they didn't do anything, but they did quite a bit." The VHP has now collected about 50,000 histories from military veterans as far back as World War I, though only about 45,000 of those histories have yet to be cataloged and archived. About two-thirds of the collection consists of accounts from WWII veterans. The Project has put special emphasis on those veterans, in part because fewer and fewer of them are around, and their numbers are dwindling -- just over 3 million veterans from that war are still alive today, said Patrick. In the future, the Project will shift focus to later wars, as those veterans are now getting older as well. "We are losing just under 1,000 WWII veterans a day," Patrick said. "And a lot of those guys fought in Korea as well. That is the next wave of veterans we are going to lose. So we are probably going to be focusing on Korea and Vietnam vets next. In a couple of years we will commemorate the 50th anniversary of American's involvement in Vietnam. That will bring some focus on things." Still, the Project does collect histories from modern day veterans. The collection includes some 300 interviews from veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And Airmen today are encouraged to submit their own histories. But if they are not yet ready to do that, they can still assist the Project by encouraging their own family members or friends who are veterans to participate -- because military veterans have a special way of getting other military veterans to talk about their own war experiences, Patrick said. "We've talked to people who say a veteran won't talk to them, but will talk to their nephew who has been in the military," he said. "It's kind of this 'you understand' thing. As a military veteran, you have some understanding of what I went through because you've been in the military. Airmen can talk to the veterans in their family -- everybody can talk to the veterans in their family -- but veteran to veteran. They can help them tell their stories, which are still very relevant." The VHP is a congressionally mandated program that began in 2000, the result of legislative action sponsored by Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.). "Congressman Kind was literally sitting in his back yard with his dad and uncle at a family picnic, and the dad and uncle started swapping war stories," Patrick said. "A lot of the things he had never heard before. So he got his video camera out to record them, so the kids would have them. The light kind of went on for him that these stories are happening all over the country, and that these stories are important to hold on to." The Library of Congress, like other libraries around the world, struggles to find a place in the new information age -- competing with the immediacy and instant access of the Internet, said Patrick. To that end, the VHP has taken some of the more that 45,000 histories already recorded and digitized them for publication online at the Project's Web site at http://www.loc.gov⁄vets. "We are trying to make it accessible through our Web site where you can go in and see and hear these interviews and see the accompanying documents," Patrick said. "That is how we are trying to push it out, to make it accessible." The cost of converting those histories to digital format is formidable, Patrick said. And so far, only about 4,000 have been posted online. Most will remain in paper archives or on VHS cassette tape for historians to research. Despite the restrictive cost, every veteran that has done an interview will have a searchable military history data sheet available on the Project's Web site. In that way, researches can at least find a veteran by name, and then go to the Library of Congress personally to view the video interview and supporting materials. Patrick says he estimates that only about 5 percent of the collection will be entirely digitized. CES lieutenant, wife convert old home to ’green house’ [2007-04-12] LAUREL, Md. -- With the price of energy rising, the cost of heating or cooling a home -- of keeping the lights on even -- goes up as well. One Bolling Air Force Base lieutenant and his wife have a strategy to combat those rising costs. They're making their new house "green." Bolling's 2nd Lt. Collin Polt, a project engineer with the 11th Civil Engineer Squadron, and his wife Julie, a graphic artist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, bought a house in Laurel, Md., in September of last year. Their new home, an early 20th century Eastlake Stick-style house, needed a lot of work. "Yes, it certainly is a fixer-upper," Julie said of the new place. Former owners of the house had done some "work" there -- and hadn't really done their best at it either, Lieutenant Polt said. "It had kind of a Hollywood makeover," he said. "They put up new sheet rock and that kind of stuff to make it look more pretty on the inside. But they kind of covered up a lot of the problems with the house. After we moved in we started taking stuff out that we weren't too crazy about. And as we pulled more and more away, we discovered more and more issues." Before buying the new home, Lieutenant Polt had taken a class at Dover Air Force Base on "deconstruction." Part of that is learning how to reduce construction waste. From that course, he said, he developed a more personal interest in the subject of both waste reduction and energy efficiency. That, in part, is what prompted him and Julie to redesign their new home with some of those techniques in mind. "The class struck me as incredibly interesting," he said. "The Army has been really good at this. They are slowly reducing waste on several of their bases so they can achieve zero waste output. So that was amazing to me that you can even do that. Also, to see the variety of products coming on the market for energy savings and energy reduction, especially now with the presidential order out for energy reduction. It was me being really interested in that and in wanting to apply these techniques and really kind of test them out and see how they work that got us started." Now, Lieutenant Polt and wife Julie Polt are working to build energy savings and construction waste reduction measures into as many aspects of their remodeling project as possible. "The energy efficiency is a big part of it, if for nothing else to be responsible with the energy we are using, but also to kind of cut back on the rising cost of gas and electricity," he said. "Any savings is beneficial." One of the biggest energy improving savings that has gone in to their new home is new insulation. "As we dismantled the older section of the house, we found there wasn't any insulation at all," Julie said. "So, just coming across things like that, that we take for granted now, and being able to add that in to this home, is a big goal." In the parts of the home where no insulation currently existed, Lieutenant Polt decided to try "closed cell foam" insulation. That's the kind of insulation spray that expands to fill the gaps. That kind of insulation is especially suited for such an old home, he said. "It ends up sealing quite a bit," he said. "Back then, they didn't have a lot of the same construction techniques and materials they have now. So it is very open construction, a lot of leaks and holes and stuff. That closed cell foam ended up sealing it up. That is something we took a heavy look in to. It is considerably more expensive than the fiberglass insulation, but it does provide a huge energy savings in that we are not heating the outside." Also on the energy saving list is reduction in electrical costs though natural light use and dimmer switches. A new type of skylight they are looking at is better at "directing" light than traditional skylights. They are considering such a product for the smaller, enclosed areas of the home. "Because it directs light more than just a regular skylight, you can kind of not have the lights on all the time," he said. "Especially in small rooms like a bathroom or a closet where you would normally turn on the light to use. You can eliminate the need for a light in that room in the daytime. That's one less light to turn on." Julie says electricity is not the only thing that can be conserved. More efficient fixtures in the bathrooms and kitchen also mean a reduction in water waste. "We'll reduce the flow of the water that comes through shower heads and faucets with the types of fixtures we install," she said. "So you can also save by making simple choices with the type of hardware you install." Lieutenant Polt said other considerations for the house include special shades in rooms that face the sun, so as to block out the sun entirely when nobody is using a room. Also, they are considering more energy efficient windows, more strategic placement of ventilation ducts, conversion of some appliances from electric to gas, and dimmer switches on the lighting. How much savings can be realized from all those changes? The lieutenant says they could nearly cut their energy bill in half. "As far as actual cost savings, we are shooting for anywhere from 40 percent on," he said. "It is a little bit high of a goal. But with the condition of the house when we moved in, it is not unreasonable. We were at one month where it was a $400 dollar heating and electric bill. But between gas and electric, I think the biggest savings will come for us in the electricity." Because Lieutenant Polt and Julie moved into their home in October, they have a good set of winter energy bills to serve as a baseline for making before and after comparisons. By October 2007, they will be able to compare their new energy bills to the old ones and see if their changes paid off. "Beyond measuring the actual amount of gas you use, the easy way to monitor it is to look at your bill," Lieutenant Polt said. "If it shows less consumption, it will be reflected in the cost savings. So we will be able to compare last October's bill to next October's bill and see a noticeable difference. At least that's the goal." While Lieutenant Polt and Julie are working to build energy savings in to their home, they are also working to reduce the amount of construction waste they generate from the tear down. "Even more than energy savings, for this project, is the materials we are putting into the house, as far as salvage and reuse goes," Lieutenant Polt said. "It is sometimes a little more complicated than you'd really like to make it, but what we are trying to do is use a lot of salvage materials." To that end, the couple reuses as much wood from the deconstruction as they can in the new construction. They also reuse whatever hardware they find in older parts of the house that is still salvageable. "There is a lot of literal recycling going on," he said. He also said that when they have to buy new construction materials, floor tile for instance, they try to buy surplus or overage from other construction projects. A local Baltimore-based retailer buys overage materials from construction companies and then resells them. "Rather than that stuff landing up in a landfill, or being dumped on the side of the road, they will resell it," he said. "So we are trying to use as much material from there as we can and we are trying to reuse stuff we have taken off of the house. When we tore out and gutted the house we saved as much lumber and leftover pieces and hardware that we could salvage." He also said that when they do new construction, they try to build minimal, so that in the future, if something needs to be taken out, there is not as much waste. "You make sure everything meets codes and is up to standards -- and in most places, what we have done actually exceeds code," he said. "But at the same time, we are not overusing wood -- where we can, use one stud, not use two kind of idea. So should something in the future need to be taken apart, there is not a lot of waste involved." In addition to the energy savings they are introducing and the waste reduction measures they are taking when remodeling their home, the couple must also ensure the house maintains its historic charm. It is in a historic district in Laurel, and there are rules there about ensuring changes to the exterior of a home are historically accurate and within the context of the neighborhood. So paint colors and exterior woodwork on the home must all be submitted for approval. "I absolutely love the style of that time period and I love the bright colors," Julie said. "I have been working on the renderings to present to the historic society, with all of the changes that we are going to make to the exterior of the house. So, just kind of having the goal in mind is exciting, and seeing where we will be able to take this is exciting. I'm eager to see all the finishes, but that is quite a while off." The couple believes they can have the rough construction on the house complete by summertime. But the total project, with all the finishes and flooring included, should take about 18 months. For now, they are living in a single room of the home left untouched by all the construction. "We are sleeping and living in that room while the rest of the house is slowly being torn apart," Lieutenant Polt said. "When you go downstairs to use the bathroom you have to walk across tools and wood and sawdust and all that. We tried to keep one of the rooms available. We are eventually going to redo it, but for now, we left it untouched." Lieutenant Polt said he has history in his family of remodeling, construction and architecture. And the schoolwork that prepared him to be a civil engineer comes in handy, as well. For Julie, however, the experience of tearing down the home you live in and rebuilding it, even for the better, is not so familiar. "This is all new to me," she said. "I like to help out when I can, I like learning about it as we go along. But I say the best part is when you are out there working all day and you can see the progress in front of you, that is very rewarding." Airmen may be eligible for tax relief [2007-04-12] BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. -- Tuesday is tax day across the United States. By 11 p.m. that day, thousands of Americans will line up at area post offices to mail tax forms by the midnight deadline. But some Airmen may not be ready to file their tax return. For those Airmen, the IRS can grant a six-month extension after completion of IRS Form 4868, said Capt. Hanna Yang, Bolling tax center officer in charge. "For people that need an extension, you can paper file or electronically file an extension," she said. "If you paper file an extension, be sure your mail package is postmarked on or before April 17." Captain Yang said the extension allows Airmen to file their taxes as late as October 15. But if you owe money, she said, there are repercussions for filing an extension. "If you believe you owe, and don't have all your papers ready, then file an extension, but you will still be subject to interest and penalties," she said. For Airmen that have served in a combat zone or a qualified hazardous duty area, who were deployed overseas away from their permanent duty station in support of operations in a qualified hazardous duty area, or served in any number of other qualifying capacities, the tax filing date is extended. Those Airmen can visit the Bolling legal office after the April 17 deadline to discuss options for filing with a tax advisor, Captain Yang said. For Airmen who know they will receive money back from the government, there are no penalties for filing after the April 17 deadline, even without an extension. But Airmen shouldn't wait more than three years to claim that money, Captain Yang said. There is a three year statute of limitations on those funds, and after that time, the money stays with the government. This year, the IRS has approximately $2.2 billion in tax return money from the 2003 tax filing year, left unclaimed by some 1.75 million Americans. About $8.5 million of that money belongs to some 9,700 military members who didn't file a tax return for that year. The median check amount for those returns is $785 dollars. That money must be claimed by filing a 2003 tax form, available on the IRS Web site, no later than April 17. Changes planned for ISR community [2007-04-16] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force director of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, or ISR, recently discussed his plans for improving the service's ISR capabilities. During a recent roundtable with members of the press, Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula laid out his plans for overhauling the service's ISR functions. The general has served as the Air Force deputy chief of staff for ISR or A2, for about six months, and took the position just months after it was created. "I want to manage ISR from a capabilities-based perspective," he said. "Organizationally, I want to treat Air Force intelligence as an Air Force-wide enterprise. And personnel-wise, we need to reconstruct our bench of Air Force senior intelligence officers so we can viably compete for joint and interagency positions." The general said that upon taking his position as the Air Force A2, he asked for a diagram of the service's ISR organizational relationships. What he found was a convoluted set of relationships. The complexity of the organization left seams in ISR capability, unclear lines of responsibility, and lack of a clear advocate for the Air Force ISR capability. "The way we do business today is that we define ISR capability by individual program elements," he said. "The net result is a tendency to drive a disjointed approach to ISR. We have the potential for the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, and in fact, that has happened." Recently, the Air Force was upgrading software for the Distributed Common Ground System, a global processing system that provides analysis and distribution of intelligence data from anywhere on the planet. The software upgrade for the system ended up being incompatible with the new sensors aboard U-2 and Global Hawk aircraft. The incompatibility was unexpected, the general said, and may now take as many as 20 months and $17 million to fix. To prevent those kinds of mishaps in the future, General Deptula is creating a position that will integrate ISR assets and manage them as capability areas. "It is too big a bridge to cross to try to change the way OSD manages by program element," the general said. "But I am going to put in place an ISR capability integrator, not dissimilar to a program manager for each set of ISR capabilities." General Deptula said he also plans to realign the command structure for intelligence agencies currently within the Air Force. "I want to align Air Force intelligence so there are coherent lines of responsibility and authority for the intelligence function, and make sure it is treated as an Air Force-wide enterprise," he said. To that end, the Air Force Intelligence Agency and its subordinate units, with the exception of the Air Force Information Operations Center, will move from under Air Combat Command and become a field operating agency of A2. The agency will be renamed the "Air Force ISR Command." The target date for the transformation is March 1, the general said. The AFIOC will remain with ACC as part of the 8th Air Force's Cyber Command. The move is significant, with chains of command being changed. Manpower will remain in place however, the general said. But the changes will streamline presentation of Air Force ISR capabilities for national and joint users, as well as establish intelligence as an Air Force-wide enterprise. Finally, General Deptula said he is planning to develop a "bench" of senior-level ISR officers to provide more Air Force visibility in joint, and national intelligence community positions. The general said that today, the Air Force is not adequately represented in senior ISR positions in joint, national or combatant commander billets. In fact, the Air Force has not held a combatant commander J2 position in more than five years, he said. "(This) is not good for the joint or national community," he said. "Our combatant commanders need to be served by an air perspective." The general asked Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the Air Force chief of staff, to expand the number of Air Force intelligence general officer billets, and General Deptula plans to ensure those officers are properly trained and postured as desirable candidates for joint and national senior intelligence positions. Personal fitness goals, one step at a time [2007-04-19] BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. -- Achieving your fitness goals, or even getting started on a fit lifestyle, doesn't need to be hard -- if you do it one step at a time. Airmen in the Bolling community are now working towards their own fitness goals under the "Step Your Way to Fitness" program. Program participants are grouped into teams of three, and are each given pedometers to wear on their hips. Individual participants are challenged to do 10,000 steps a day, while as teams, they compete for prizes, said Isaac Melendez, director of the Bolling Fitness Center. "This is a walking program, but anything you do, from walking to going on the elliptical, cross training or stepping machines counts, so long as the pedometer is registering on your waist and you are moving," he said. "This program is for everybody, to get people moving. And the team element has been a good motivating factor. You can see people out on Bolling walking with their teams." Maj. Pamela Howard-Whitehurst, with the Air Force Concept of Operations office in Roslyn, Va., lives on Bolling Air Force Base. She says if she hasn't gotten her 10,000 steps in by the end of the duty day, she finishes up after work, with her family. "I check my pedometer when I get home from work, and if I haven't done what I'm supposed to do, then I go out walking with my kids," she said. "But I've been walking from the Metro every day. And I've been paying more attention to the walking I'm doing." Master Sgt. Cachyrel Ainslie, 11th Logistics Readiness Squadron, gets her daily steps in addition to the physical training her unit does three times a week. She says with the weather getting better it'll be easier for her, and her team, to reach their goals. "I'm not at my goal yet," she said. "With the cold weather, I haven't been as aggressive as I could be. But with the weather changing now and it starting to get beautiful outside, I will be." The "Step Your Way to Fitness" program began April 8 and runs until May 5. Teams report their weekly scores to the fitness center each Monday. Winning teams receive prizes such as bags, hats and shirts, Melendez said. The top five teams will win. For more information on the "Step Your Way to Fitness" program, contact Isaac Melendez at the Bolling Fitness Center. Bolling cancer survivor wants to study sharks to cure others [2007-04-19] BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. -- Sometime in March 2006, a school yard game of tag down in San Antonio led to a little boy with a busted nose. That kind of right-of-passage injury happens all the time -- a broken nose, a busted arm, a skinned knee. But for Keeghan Barry, 10 years old at the time, that broken nose was probably the best bad thing that could have happened to him. After just a few hours in the emergency room at Wilford Hall Medical Center, the hospital on Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, Keeghan got to go home. The doctors told his parents, Maj. Michael Barry, and mom, Shannon Barry, that at his age, his nose was mostly cartilage. And that meant he'd likely heal up on his own without any complication. But it wasn't long before there were complications for Keeghan. "Two or three weeks later he started getting sent home from school almost every day," said Shannon. "It was nausea or headaches in the morning. Some days I wouldn't send him to school, because he woke up complaining of headaches. So I took him to his primary care physician." The second visit to Wilford Hall yielded a prescription for allergy medication and doctor's orders were to call back if things didn't change. And things didn't change, they just seemed to get worse, Shannon said. The family doctor finally ordered an MRI exam, short for "magnetic resonance imaging," of Keeghan's head. During the MRI, technicians asked for approval to inject a dye into Keeghan to provide better contrast on the scan. That particular procedure wasn't something his doctor had discussed, and Shannon was initially apprehensive about giving approval. "The doctor hadn't said anything about that, so I almost told them no," she said. "And Keeghan was afraid of needles. But finally I gave in. He got the injection, and got back in the MRI machine." Following the exam, the radiologist pulled Shannon aside to talk with her. "He acted like I was going to completely freak out, and he guided me into a chair," she said. "In a stern voice, he looked at me and said 'Mrs. Barry, your son has a brain tumor.'" The MRI for suspected complications related to a broken nose, had tipped doctors off to a much greater threat. The doctor hadn't even said the word "cancer" yet. It would take further tests to reveal that. But Shannon ran from the hospital to her husband, who was out in the parking lot, and broke the news. She said she doesn't remember exactly how her daughter, Mackenzie Barry, known as "Maxx" to her family, found out. "So much of it is blank now. I don't remember if I told Maxx again, or if she heard me tell Mike about Keeghan's brain tumor," she said. "But she backed away from me and I had to chase her down -- to keep walking after her to grab a hold of her and hug her. She wanted to go home, so I called a friend to come get her." Keeghan was admitted first to the emergency room and then to the pediatric intensive care unit at the hospital there. That was April 20, just a year ago, when he found out he had the tumor. It wasn't but five days later, April 25, that Keeghan had his first surgery to excise the tumor from his brain. At the time, he, doctors, and his parents, all believed the tumor was benign. But after tests had been run on what was removed from his head during the surgery, the family learned that the tumor was not benign. It was cancer, the real thing, in this case called an anaplastic astrocytoma. So on April 28, Keeghan was going to need yet another surgery. The family was shell-shocked by the news. But Keeghan was the strong one, his mother said. "We were a mess, in tears, having to tell him he had to have a second surgery," she said. "But he got angry with us, he started lecturing us. He said we have to fight together. 'You have to support me and I have to support you and I am going to beat this even if I have to do it cell by cell.' All of us in the room were like, who is this kid?" That wasn't the first time Keeghan had taken charge of his own illness. "I told the neurosurgeon at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center that I don't want people making it seem like I'm a child when they talk to me," Keeghan said. "I wanted them telling me what was going on. I want to know the risks and benefits of what they are going to do. Because I have a right to know." His parents had tried to tell doctors that Keeghan was a little smarter than they might expect. "We warn doctors, he's not the typical 10 year old," said Major Barry. "And they take what we say with a grain of salt. But every time the doctor directed the conversation towards us, we told them to talk to him." Keeghan was even allowed to co-signed his informed consent forms along with his parents. After the second brain surgery, Keeghan underwent a minor surgery to install a medical device in his body. The device, a kind of port, makes it easier for doctors to administer chemotherapy medication and other injections. But by mid-July, just about three months after Keeghan learned of his tumor, doctors said they suspected the tumor in his head was gone. It was at that time the family made their move to Washington, D.C. Major Barry had been offered a job at Bolling Air Force Base well before anybody knew about Keeghan's cancer. But when he became sick, the Air Force had offered to change the assignment and keep the family in San Antonio, near his doctors. Major Barry let Keeghan make the choice, and his choice was to go to Washington. "I'd heard about the Smithsonian," Keeghan said, explaining why he chose Washington over San Antonio. Museums and aquariums are two things he said he's interested in, and two things you can find in the D.C., area. In January, Keeghan had a fourth, and hopefully final brain surgery to repair a hematoma that had developed in his head. His father said that surgery was normal, as the hematoma was the result of a natural reaction by his body after the tumor was removed. With all the surgeries done, there are still treatments, tests and injections that Keeghan needs. In fact, he owns a necklace that documents the medical treatment he's endured as a result of his cancer, and adds a different style bead for each procedure he undergoes. Among other things, he's collected four flower beads to represent his surgeries; 20 star beads to represent the MRI, CT, EEG, and MRA tests he's undergone; and 58 fish beads to represent the times doctors put chemotherapy drugs into his injection port. He doesn't usually wear the necklace, however. It hangs on the wall, because it's about 12 feet long, with a total of 352 beads, representing a total of 29 different types of medical procedures. He said he isn't afraid of needles anymore. Now Keeghan's a pro on the chemotherapy and brain surgery circuit. His own experience and his knowledge gleaned from talking with doctors and doing research on the Internet have made him something of an expert amongst other kids he meets that have been newly diagnosed with cancer. "I talk to them about my tumor," he said. "Most of them rely on their parents to tell them what kind of treatment they are getting, but I can tell them what I'm getting and they seem surprised that I know this. I like getting to talk with other kids that are going through the same thing as me -- and asking them about what they think of it." Keeghan's even got his sister convinced he's an expert. "Ever since this thing started, he has been 10-times smarter," said Maxx. "He knows more about the human brain than any other 11 year old." It was doctors that removed the cancer from Keeghan's brain. But the Barry family said they largely depended on each other for support through the ordeal. Maxx, for instance, said it's her job to be the shoulder to cry on for everybody else. "My job basically is to keep everybody happy," she said. "I'm the rock. Everybody else cries on my shoulder." Her father agreed. "Maxx doesn't cry till everybody else is done," he said. "She has been the rock of this family. She has been amazing, now, as a teenager." Shannon said her family of four has always been tight. "We have always called ourselves the 'Fantastic Four,'" she said. "Even before this, it's always been about the four of us. We've got each other's back. That's our biggest constant." Major Barry also credits the Air Force and the other services involved in the joint service medical care that helped save his son's life. "The Army, Air Force and Navy have done phenomenal work with Keeghan," he said. "The Air Force, for instance, including his primary care manager staying on top of it. And his neurologist at Wilford Hall was an Army doc. He laid it out very clear for everyone to understand, he was a phenomenal doctor. And also the physical therapist at Bethesda." The Air Force was also very accommodating insofar as flexibility and support, he said. After the Air Force learned of Keeghan's cancer, they offered to let him take another job in San Antonio, so the family could stay there close to the doctors. Shannon said Keeghan is still in a kind of "maintenance" chemotherapy now, and his hair isn't falling out anymore. Now he has more time now to pursue his own interests, which include sharks, animals, video games with his sister and his rock collection. Keeghan said he wants to be a marine biologist when he grows up, primarily to study sharks. When he was younger, he learned on television that sharks are remarkably resistant to diseases like cancer. It was then that he set an ironic goal for himself. "Since I was 5," he said, "I've had the goal to find a cure for cancer." (Note: Keeghan Barry was diagnosed with a brain tumor in April 2006. He died August 31, 2008. He was 12.) At the foot of greatness [2007-04-19] ARLINGTON, Va. -- Scott Hahn is a middle school student from the eighth-grade class at Los Flores Middle School, Orange County, Ca. He visited the Air Force Memorial here April 13, along with 100 other members of his class, as part of a field trip to several of the historical sites along the Mid-Atlantic. Scott had never been to Washington, D.C., before, and many in his class were seeing such things as the Capitol Building, Arlington National Cemetery, the Vietnam Wall, and the Korean War Memorial for the first time. He said he was impressed that what he had seen on the trip so far was matching up with his lessons in school. "I like it a lot," he said. "There's a lot of history here, and it's kind of cool to see all the stuff we are learning about, to see it in person." Before a trip to the Pentagon, the class stopped to view the Air Force Memorial. He said he was impressed with what the memorial represents. "It's cool they are getting the respect they deserve," he said of Airmen. "They work so hard. My family, my dad's whole side of the family, was in the military. He was in the Navy for more than 20 years. And his dad was in for 24 years in the Air Force." Scott said he's also thinking of joining the military, though he's not sure yet if it should be the Marines or the Air Force. But he wants to join, "definitely," he said. Dennis Orgeron is the class's history instructor. He said this was his eighth time to Washington as part of the class trip. "Every year, we bring a group of eighth graders here, as part of their studies," he said. "We have about 495 eighth graders. And each year we bring about 100 kids that want to come and spend a week of their spring break in Philadelphia, Gettysburg, Harpers Ferry and here in Washington." Orgeron said the students were most impressed both by the size of Washington and its architecture. "I think they are amazed by government buildings, and somebody told me yesterday while we were at Arlington National Cemetery, by the size of the city itself," he said. "They had no idea that is was so spread out and everything is so massive." Also impressive, he said, was that his students were making a connection between the kinds of things they are seeing in Washington and what it means to be an American. "One kid stood there at Arlington National Cemetery, as the driver told us about grave sites, and was just teary eyed and a little emotional," he said. "We also had several students that participated in a wreath laying. It was emotional to look at the kids and see that they recognize the sacrifices that people make. I think all of that comes together and gives them a better understating of where we live and what we are doing here." Despite eight trips to Washington, D.C., and having family in the area, Orgeron had never seen the Air Force Memorial before. "Last time we were here was a year ago," he said. "So it is the first time we've been here to the Memorial. This is beautiful, it's amazing." The Air Force Memorial was dedicated Oct. 14, 2006, in Arlington, Va. Summer 2007 is the first tourist season the memorial is open for visitors. 11th CE squadron deploys to Eagle Flag [2007-04-19] BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. -- More than 25 members of the 11th Civil Engineer Squadron deployed Wednesday to Naval Air Engineering Station, Lakehurst, N.J., to participate in the Air Force exercise Eagle Flag. The nine-day Air Force-level exercise, run by the Air Force's Expeditionary Operations School, is designed to ensure Airmen are prepared to open and establish air bases in austere forward operating environments. Capt. Tracy Horan, 11th CES, will command the deployed Airmen during the exercise. "During the exercise, we will provide total civil engineer support for a bare base bed down of approximately 375 personnel specializing in civil engineering, communications, logistics, medical, and services," said Captain Horan. "Additionally we will be putting a plan together for a camp that can support 2,200 personnel." Captain Horan said the 11th CES will act as the lead civil engineer squadron during the exercise. "I will be the civil engineer commander for the exercise," she said. "This requires me to oversee all civil engineers participating from six Air Force bases around the country." During Eagle Flag, Airmen will practice the skills needed to set up and establish an air base, and achieve initial operating capability. The exercise is considered a "final rehearsal" for expeditionary combat support personnel, before actually deploying as part of the Air Expeditionary Force. Airmen from the 11th CES will return to Bolling Air Force Base April 27, at the conclusion of the exercise. Chili Bowl, Serving D.C. for almost 50 years [2007-04-26] WASHINGTON -- In 1958, Ben Ali and Virginia Ali opened Ben's Chili Bowl restaurant on U Street NW. Now just short of its 50th anniversary, the restaurant, known best for its half-smoke with chili, is a D.C. landmark and destination for tourists from all over the country. Through the ups and downs of the Shaw neighborhood it resides in -- race riots, crime, and the construction of a new Metro station there -- Ben's Chili Bowl has endured. Today, Shaw is a revitalized, eclectic, diverse neighborhood. And when visitors to the area exit the Metro station there, one of the first things they see is Ben's. While Ben and Virginia have now retired, their two sons, Kamal "Ben Jr." Ali and Nizam Ali, run the family business -- though Virginia regularly shows up behind the counter to visit with customers. The menu at the restaurant is anchored by it's three classic "core" items: the chili dog, the chili half-smoke and the chili burger. Like Ben's, the "half-smoke" is itself a D.C. thing. The tasty sausage, half beef and half pork, in a natural casing, is seldom found outside the D.C., metro area, said Kamal. "The chili half-smoke is a signature item from the standpoint of that it is unique to Washington," he said. "When they do some surveys and ask what's the signature dish of Washington, D.C., they came up with the chili half-smoke. If you go to New York City, or any other city in America, you won't find it." He does concede, however, that the half-smoke has established itself in several corners of Baltimore. The most popular dishes with regular customers, by far, are the chili half-smokes, the cheese fries and the shakes. Kamal said it's easy to pick out newcomers or tourists by what they order. "We kind of know who the tourists are when they come in here and order a bowl of chili, because they notice the name is 'Ben's Chili Bowl,'" he said. "But we're not famous for the bowls of chili. We're famous for the chili dog, chili smokes and the chili burger." Terri Johnson, a D.C. resident and professional accountant, has been coming to Ben's for most of her life. "I been coming for about 15 or 20 years now," she said. "It's a long time, a very long time. But growing up in Washington, D.C., you know Ben's Chili Bowl." Johnson's friend, Gwen Jones, a project manager for a local phone company, was also eating the half-smoke. She brought her daughter, Mickayla, who enjoys the french fries. "This is a friendly community establishment that's been around for years," Jones said. "And my husband loves this place too, so we come here a lot." Jones said she's seen several celebrities at Ben's over the years, including Malcolm-Jamal Warner, former D.C. mayor Anthony Williams and former D.C. mayor Marion Barry. One of the most famous celebrities to regularly come to Ben's, and perhaps its biggest advocate, is comedian Bill Cosby, who would bring his wife Camille in on dates in the early 1960s, Kamal said. "Everybody knows Bill Cosby, he's our best spokesman. It's like he works here, he shows up, puts his apron on, and entertains the crowd," he said. Celebrities aside, Kamal said the customer base at the Chili Bowl is very diverse, perhaps due to its location atop a Metro station and it's late operating hours. "We get D.C. government workers here and dignitaries, as well as the party crowd late at night after the clubs are out," he said. "We also get the tourists and the families -- we get a little bit of everybody, a cross section of Washington." Ben's Chili Bowl hasn't changed much over the years. The Formica countertops, the stools and the other decor is largely the same as it was in the 1950s. The menu hasn't changed much either -- it still revolves around the key menu items, though Kamal did add breakfast to the menu about 15 years ago, as well as vegetarian chili. He says the vegetarian chili looks and tastes the same as the regular chili. Perhaps the reluctance to change too quickly is one of the keys to the restaurants success, though Kamal said it's got something to do with the personality of the location. "I think this place in particular, there is some magic to this location," he said. "I don't think I could duplicate this business across the street. There is some magic to the grease on the walls, the old Formica countertops, and the stools." Ben's Chili Bowl is located at 1213 U St. NW in Washington, above the U Street⁄African-Amer Civil War Memorial⁄Cardozo Metro station. They stay open late: 2 a.m. during the week, and 4 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Sundays they are open 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Retired Air Force colonels ‘storm’ the Hill, visit Memorial [2007-04-26] ARLINGTON, Va. -- Retired Air Force colonels Covert A. SoulË Jr. and Michael H. Wieland visited Washington, D.C., April 20 to meet with congressional representatives and senators from the state of Illinois. In addition to discussing pay raise issues for military members, the two, representatives of the Illinois Council of Chapters of the Military Officers Association of America, "stormed" Capitol Hill to discuss the Survivor Benefit Plan-Dependency and Indemnity Compensation offset. The SBP-DIC issue involves two different payments to military spouses. The SBP is a special insurance purchased by retirees, voluntarily, to provide a portion of their retired pay to a surviving spouse. The DIC is special compensation to a surviving spouse whose sponsor died as a result of service in Armed Forces. Currently, if a surviving spouse is entitled to both an SBP and a DIC payment, the government docks the SBP payment, dollar-for-dollar, for the DIC. "What we were trying to do was get rid of the SBP-DIC offset," Colonel SoulË said. "Say I get a service disability and I pass away, they dock my wife's SBP dollar-for-dollar for the DIC -- which is not right. SBP is an insurance, DIC is a disability from service." While in Washington, the colonels visited the Air Force Memorial with their wives. The two were both donors to the Memorial project, and they were seeing it in person for the first time. "I think the Memorial is awesome," said Colonel Wieland, who is currently the president of the Illinois Council of Chapters, MOAA. "I've been taking pictures of it since I saw it. It really stands out on the skyline too, which is really neat. Everybody else has a memorial, so we should have one too." Both Colonel SoulË and Colonel Wieland were aircraft navigators during their military service, and both served time in Vietnam. Colonel SoulË flew aboard the O-2 Skymaster aircraft in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969. Colonel Wieland flew in the EC-47 aircraft over Vietnam, and in later years served at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., as part of the 89th Military Airlift Wing. While he never had the opportunity to fly aboard Air Force One, he did say he once flew with then Vice President Walter Mondale aboard Air Force Two during a trip to Panama. Civil Engineer Squadron hone deployment skills at Eagle Flag [2007-04-26] LAKEHURST NAVAL AIR STATION, N.J. -- Some 26 Airmen from the 11th Civil Engineer Squadron "deployed" to Lakehurst Naval Air Station, N.J., April 18, to participate in Eagle Flag, an exercise designed to give support personnel experience working with other support personnel while coordinating and executing the setup of a bare base. Capt. Tracy Horan, 11th CES, acted as the deputy commander during the exercise. She helped oversee the work of about 40 civil engineer Airmen, including those from Bolling, from Air Force bases around the Air Force. She said the exercise gets those Airmen experience in working with others and with working in a host nation environment. "Participation in the exercise is actually a good measure of coordinating with other functions," she said. "This is the way to go in the field and to integrate it with other functions, in terms of having to negotiate things with the communications squadron, such as getting radios keyed, and the ability to deal with host nation restrictions." Airmen involved in the Eagle Flag exercise were told they had deployed to the fictional country of "Chimaera." Upon arrival there, they found an empty field. It was the job of civil engineer troops, logistics planners and others, to turn the empty field into an operational air base. Eagle Flag is not a civil engineer exercise, but an exercise for support personnel. It's a test tube environment where they can practice working together before they have to go out and do the real thing. Captain Horan said building the base up involves creating a plan, having the plan approved, and then working with logisticians to bring equipment and supplies into the bare base environment so that the base can be built up. "They try to make this similar to what we might be doing in Iraq or Afghanistan, in building up a bare base," she said. "You come in to nothing and you start from scratch -- everything down to airflow, in getting the equipment in from an intermediate base, to making sure you identify what's on there, and then getting it when you need it." During Eagle Flag, Airmen get the chance to practice what they already know, but also the chance to do other things they might be called on to do while deployed. Senior Airman John Graham, 11th CES, is a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning specialist. He said the exercise has given him good practice for what he already knows, but has also given him new experience, as well. "This is definitely good experience in building tents," he said. "But I also got to do part of security. I was stationed at a defensive fighting position, so I got some experience there as well." As more equipment poured in to the fictional country of Chimaera, Graham said he would spend less time guarding the perimeter and putting up tents, and more time installing air conditioning units and similar equipment. "We have M-80 boilers we're going to put in the shower⁄shave units," he said. "That's a deployable boiler that heats water up for when you shower, and it can also be used in deployable kitchens." Tech. Sgt. Robert Sheipline, 11th Wing CES, said he's getting some leadership experience at Eagle Flag that he hasn't had yet. "This thing's geared for leadership, to learn to set up a base camp," he said. "I'm hoping to get some leadership skills here. Before, I was a follower out here, being told what to do. Now I'm out here leading people. My job is to teach people how to set up the camp right, I'm here to motivate and train. But this is a learning experience -- no matter who it is, or what rank you are." Sergeant Sheipline said he thinks there'll be about 150 tents set up on the camp. Some of those tents will be wired for electricity. There will also be mobile kitchens, generators, and "shower⁄shave" units with hot water. Airmen from the 11th CES return to Bolling, April 27, at the conclusion of the exercise. Hill murder trial begins at Bolling [2007-04-26] BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. -- The court martial of Airman Calvin Hill, accused of murdering Airman 1st Class Ashley Turner, began in a court room here Wednesday. Airman Turner died around 11 p.m., Aug. 14, 2005, in a hospital on Naval Air Station Keflavik, Iceland. She had been found earlier in the evening by Staff Sgt. Jerrod Sunderland, bludgeoned and in a pool of her own blood, on the floor of the recreation room of her dormitory. Airman Hill has been charged with premeditating the death. Both Airman Turner and Airman Hill were assigned to the 56th Rescue Squadron at the time. Opening statements in the trial were set to begin Wednesday morning, but were bumped to later in the afternoon, after prosecutors asked Judge (Col.) William Burd of the possibility of moving the trial to Iceland. Prosecutors wanted to be able to call on a witness, Ms. Vannee Youbanphout, a native of Iceland. Youbanphout had been the girlfriend of Airman Hill during his tour in Iceland, but she has refused to come to the United States to testify in the trial. Prosecutors hoped to move the trial to Iceland so as to include her testimony. Judge Burd adjourned the court until Wednesday afternoon, so prosecutors could inquire about moving the trial overseas. When the court came back in session, around 1 p.m., prosecutors and the defense had come to an agreement that portions of testimony by Youbanphout, from a related Article 32 hearing, could be admitted in lieu of her actually being present in the court room. Following the announcement of that agreement, Maj. Matthew Stoffel gave the opening statement for the prosecution to a jury of 14 Airmen, both enlisted and officer. He said that during the coming trial, they would hear testimony that Airman Hill had been under investigation for stealing money from Airman Turner, pulling as much as $2,700 dollars from her accounts through an ATM. He said video recordings taken during the ATM transaction proved it was Airman Hill that had taken money from the account. He also said Airman Hill was facing a court martial related to those crimes, and that Airman Turner would have been a witness. Major Stoffel told the jury they would hear testimony related to Airman Hill's incarceration in a military prison in Manheim, Germany. There, Major Stoffel said, Airman Hill admitted his crimes, and details of those crimes, to his cellmate. Part of that admission, he said, was that Airman Hill had revealed his motive for the killing -- to keep Airman Turner from testifying against him in the thefts. Major Stoffel told the jury that all signs of guilt pointed to one person, the accused, Airman Calvin Hill. Capt. Gwendolyn Beitz gave opening statements for the defense. The captain said the Naval Criminal Investigative Service had rushed to claim Airman Hill as the perpetrator of the crime -- which she said was tragic. But she also said the service had no initial reason to suspect him for the crime, and that following the arrest, they had embarked on a "quest" to prove themselves right, and had conducted a "sloppy," "stilted" and "blinded" investigation. The captain also pointed out that Airman Hill's cellmate in Manheim had changed his story several times about Airman Hill's admissions to him, and at one point had admitted that he had lied. Additionally, the captain said details surrounding what should have been a key piece of evidence, Airman Turner's electronic pass card, helped disprove the government's case. The pass card, much like those used in hotels, is used by Airmen at the Keflavik installation to enter their rooms and recreation area in the dormitory. The captain said time codes generated by Airman Turner's card did not mesh with the facts presented by the government. Captain Beitz also discussed Airman Turner's boyfriend, Staff Sgt. Ronald Ellis, who was under watch for criminal activities involving illegal drug sales. Sergeant Ellis had involved Airman Turner in some of those same drug related activities, Captain Beitz said. And while he had made a deal with the government for reduced punishment, in exchange for a promise to stay out of further trouble, he continued to be involved in some of those same criminal activities. The captain suggested that a "loud" and public breakup between Sergeant Ellis and Airman Turner, and Airman Turner's knowledge of Sergeant Ellis' continued criminal activities, was enough motive to make Airman Ellis suspect as the killer. She urged the jury to "listen carefully" to the testimony and to not rush to judgment. The court martial of Airman Calvin Hill is expected to last several weeks. If convicted of the murder, he could face life in prison or the death penalty. Airmen, civilians honored during AFDW awards [2007-04-26] BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. -- Nearly 300 gathered at the Bolling Clubs Tuesday night as attendees of the first Air Force District of Washington Awards Ceremony. The event was held to honor the best and brightest performers, both civilian and military, within the District, in 2006. During the ceremony, 10 winners were chosen from 38 nominees in 10 categories. The host of the event, Maj. Gen. Robert L. Smolen, Commander, Air Force District of Washington, expressed pride in both the award winners and the nominees. "I feel very fortunate because I know personally just about every one that was either nominated or won tonight," he said. "I am very proud of each and every one of you. Any one of those nominees is a winner. And I know how tough it was, because I saw the packages, trying to figure out how we pick just one from every category." Award winners included: • Airman: Senior Airman Victoria Herron, 79th Medical Wing, Andrews Air Force Base, Md. • Noncommissioned Officer: Staff Sgt. Leah Franciso, 316th Wing, Andrews AFB • Senior Noncommissioned Officer: Senior Master Sgt. Robert Rodewald, 11th Wing, Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C. • Company Grade Officer: 1st Lt. Thomas Eckel, 316th Wing • Civilian Category I: Ms. Wanda Griggs, 11th Wing • Civilian Category II: Mr. Wesley Beemer, 11th Wing • Civilian Category III: Ms. Patricia Gray, 316th Wing • Civilian Volunteer: Mr. Michael Zdobysz, 11th Wing • Military Volunteer: Master Sgt. Brian Woodbury, 844th Communications Group, Bolling AFB • 1st Sergeant: Senior Master Sgt. Ishraph Mohammed, 11th Wing The general also commented on the difficulty of the AFDW mission, and it's importance to both the Air Force and the nation. "This is a very fast, dynamic, and moving area in the Washington, D.C., area," he said. "I know everybody is working really hard to perform the very tough mission we have -- but we control the forces that guard the crown gems of the empire. And I think we should all be very proud of the role we play, not only here in the nation's capital, but what we contribute to the Air Force as a whole. I salute each of the winners and all of you." During the dinner portion of the evening, ceremony attendees were entertained with live musical selections from the Air Force Band's "Strolling Strings." And before the award presentation, the Band's "Airmen of Note" played a musical tribute to all award nominees. The AFDW acts as the single voice for the Air Force within the National Capitol Region. Together with the Military District of Washington and the Naval District of Washington, AFDW provides for the defense of the nation's capital, in addition to providing military support in the Washington, D.C., area when needed. Overhaul in the works: Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability gets facelift [2007-05-01] WASHINGTON -- Providing fighting forces the most accurate intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance information is nothing new to the military. In the late 1700s, the French used hot air balloons to gather military information as they fought their revolution. The Union Army used balloons during the Civil War. And the first spindly aircraft over the World War I battlefield flew observation missions. That makes the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance one of the oldest missions in the military. On today's battlefield, nothing is more important. It is just as important in peacekeeping, counterterrorism and counterdrug operations and disaster and humanitarian relief. The Air Force's ISR role is ever increasing and the service's top intelligence officer said the Air Force needs to overhaul the way it does that mission. Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, the deputy chief of staff for intelligence, wants to effect changes that will make the Air Force's ISR capabilities the best available. He also wants to provide intelligence officers more leadership potential. "I want to manage ISR from a capabilities-based perspective," he said. "Organizationally, I want to treat Air Force intelligence as an Air Force-wide enterprise. And personnel-wise, we need to reconstruct our bench of Air Force senior intelligence officers so we can viably compete for joint and interagency positions." When he took the intelligence helm, the general asked for a diagram of how the service's ISR organization interacted. He found convoluted relationships. He said the complexity of the organization left seams in ISR capability, unclear lines of responsibility and a lack of a clear advocate for Air Force ISR capability. "The way we do business today is that we define ISR capability by individual program elements. The net result is a tendency to drive a disjointed approach to ISR. We have the potential for the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, and in fact, that has happened," he said. For example, the Air Force was upgrading software for the Distributed Common Ground System, a global processing system that provides analysis and distribution of intelligence data from anywhere on the planet. The software ended up being incompatible with the new sensors aboard U-2 and Global Hawk aircraft. The incompatibility was unexpected, and it may now take as many as 20 months and $17 million to fix the problem. To prevent those kinds of mistakes in the future, General Deptula is creating a position to integrate ISR assets and manage them as capability areas. "It is too big a bridge to cross to try to change the way [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] manages by program element," the general said. "But I am going to put in place an ISR capability integrator, not dissimilar to a program manager, for each set of ISR capabilities." General Deptula plans to group the command structure for all Air Force intelligence agencies. "I want to align Air Force intelligence so there are coherent lines of responsibility and authority for the intelligence function, and make sure that it is treated as an Air Force-wide enterprise," he said. That means making some key moves. The Air Force Intelligence Agency at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, and its subordinate units -- with the exception of the Air Force Information Operations Center -- will move from under Air Combat Command to become a field operating agency for the deputy chief of staff for intelligence. The agency will be renamed Air Force ISR Command. The transformation was set to take place March 1, the general said. The Air Force Information Operations Center, also at Lackland, will remain with Air Combat Command as part of the 8th Air Force Cyber Command at Barksdale AFB, La. The move is significant, with a switch in chains of command. But its people will remain in place, the general said. The changes will streamline the presentation of Air Force ISR capabilities for national and joint users, as well as establish intelligence as an Air Force-wide enterprise. The general also said that today, the Air Force is not adequately represented in senior ISR positions in joint, national or combatant commander billets. In fact, an Airman has not held a component command intelligence post in more than five years. "(This) is not good for the joint or national community," he said. "Our combatant commanders need to be served by an air perspective." General Deptula has also asked Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley to expand the number of Air Force intelligence general officer billets. General Deptula plans to ensure those officers get the training needed for them to be candidates for future joint and national senior intelligence positions. Revealing exhibit in Rosslyn, fascinating, educational [2007-05-03] ARLINGTON, Va. -- While it's too early to be Halloween, some of the exhibits on display at the "Dome" in Arlington, Va., might look right at home in a haunted house. There, amidst spotlights and educational material, are entire human bodies posed, without clothes, and without their skin. But these are not props. They are real human bodies that have been donated for educational use, and they are part of "Bodies ... the Exhibition," a traveling exhibit that showcases, in rare form, perhaps the greatest machine on Earth -- the human body. Bodies ... the Exhibition, features real human bodies, and in some cases parts of the body, that have been preserved using a special polymerization process which removes all fluids and replaces them with a polymer. The bodies then take on a rubbery kind of feel, and are essentially preserved indefinitely. The exhibit is divided up into sections based on different systems in the body: nervous, respiratory, circulatory and muscular, for instance. Within each section, specimens are on display that highlight relevant portions of the body. Also in each section are ample amounts of reading material, and even a dedicated staff member that can answer questions about the exhibit and about the various systems of the body. In the section featuring the circulatory system, for instance, an entire human body is displayed inside a glass case that shows only the blood vessels. That specimen was prepared using "corrosion casting." The body was prepared by filling the circulatory system with a colored silicone material, while the rest of the tissue was removed with a special enzyme -- a process that take months to happen. The effect is amazing -- creating what appears to be a 3-D sculpture of the human body, made entirely of red lace. It is impossible to look at the specimen and not recognize the shape of the lungs, or the heart, outlined only by the blood vessels that once served them. Or to realize the incredible amount of blood the brain must require. Despite what might seem a bit creepy upon first consideration, the exhibit is both educational and fascinating, even for young children, said Cheryl Mure, the director of education for the exhibit. "I think this is an amazing exhibition for children," she said. "Children as young as four years old come into Bodies ... the Exhibition, and they are amazed, and their eyes open wide when they look at these bodies. The first thing they say is 'oh look, there's my heart, there's my leg.'" The exhibit is now drawing in school groups, senior groups, and tourists alike. Even those who home school have come in to view the exhibit, citing the education opportunity as something too good to miss. L.A. Brickner, of Ellicott City, Md., home schools her kids, twin 13-year-old boys, and an older son, 15. She said what was there was something so far beyond what was available in books, that she didn't want to miss it. "I thought this is an amazing lesson in the human body," she said. "It's much more than what you could see from animation or books. It's also not going to be here forever, so it's important to get down here." Brickner said she expected that she wouldn't be too affected by what Bodies ... has to offer, but she felt differently when she arrived at the gallery. "I wasn't expecting I'd have any kind of reaction to that it is actually human beings. I thought I could be clinical about it, and picture it as art," she said. "But I had immediately a strong sense that these are people, it hit me right away, and it makes it much more real. You see these as people, not art." Brickner's son, Kai Filipczak, 15, was impressed with the nervous system display. "I thought the spinal cord and vertebrae are well done and interesting," he said. "It's fascinating. You never think about the stuff that actually goes on in your body, it's all under your awareness." Mure said the exhibit is carefully crafted to ensure viewers understand that what is on display are real human bodies, so that they can act appropriately. "This is a museum quality exhibition, so it is very referential, and people are very quiet as they are viewing it," she said. "It's pretty with the light and the colors, and it makes people feel more comfortable here. It also sets an atmosphere of respect for what they are looking at." Mure said she hopes viewers of Bodies ... the Exhibition come away with a greater appreciation of the human body and its complexity, and also a greater respect and desire to care for their own bodies. "We hope that an outcome of visiting Bodies ... the Exhibition is that you have new respect for your own body and a new commitment for taking care of your body," she said. " We have one body we are born with and that we die with and we need to understand it and take care of it." Bodies ... is what it says it is, real human bodies, on exhibit. The bodies have no clothing, and they remain "anatomically correct." Additionally, there are portions of the exhibit that may raise some eyebrows, including the portion on fetal development. Nevertheless, Mure says that portion of the exhibit remains one of the most talked about and popular, especially with children. "It is the gallery kids remember the most, and it is the gallery that impacts moms the most," she said. "They have a very emotional reactions to it, and it is something they remember. When children go into that gallery, we get uptight as adults -- we gasp. But when they go in, guess what they say? 'Was I that small? Is that what I looked like? I can't believe that that was me.' They see themselves in that gallery, and it is memorable." Bodies ... the Exhibition offers a military discount of 20 percent, on up to four tickets, to buyers with a military ID card. Regular ticket prices for adults are $26.50, children 4-12 are $18, and senior citizens are $21. The exhibit is open 10 a.m. - 7 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday, and 10 a.m. - 10 p.m. Thursday through Saturday. The exhibit is open through October at The Dome in the Rosslyn neighborhood of Arlington, Va., at 1101 Wilson Blvd. It is walking distance from the Rosslyn Metro station, off the Orange Line. AFDW looking for good ideas to bury in ground [2007-05-03] BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. -- The Air Force District of Washington Committee for the Air Force's 60th Anniversary is looking for a few good ideas to stick into a hole in the ground. The Committee, responsible for orchestrating the events to surround the Air Force's 60th birthday in September, is planning time capsules for both Bolling and Andrews Air Force bases. "As we were brainstorming for ideas, the concept came up through the Committee to do some kind of a time capsule," said Master Sgt. Ivan Idrobo, the project officer for the time capsule subcommittee. "It's basically about having something in the future to represent what Bolling Air Force Base stands for today." The time capsule will be opened in September 2047, exactly 100 years after the official standing-up of the United States Air Force. The idea of the time capsule is to create a connection between the past and the future, Sergeant Idrobo said. "This is so there is some kind of connection between what the future is, and how things have changed from now to then," he said. "When you put something away and kind of forget it for a long time, then you reopen it, you discover all the old memories that either you or somebody else might have experienced during that time. This is to mainly remember the past and see how it connects to the future." Right now, the committee doesn't have any specific plans about what to put into the time capsule. Instead, they are relying on Airmen to make those suggestions. "Photographs, documentation, maybe uniforms, and any kind of symbol of how Bolling has changed through the years are all good ideas," Sergeant Idrobo said. Airmen should submit their suggestions about what they think should go into the time capsule by the end of May. Suggestions can be forwarded to Staff Sgt. Twana Harden. All suggestions concerning the time capsule will be voted on by 11th Wing leadership at a wing standup conference. The Airmen making the top 10 suggestions will win special prizes, and the Airman with the No. 1 suggestion will be photographed with the presiding officer at the time capsule ceremony, July 9. The burial will coincide with the opening of the new main gate. The time capsule itself is a gel-coated, waterproof, acid proof, airtight container that has roughly 1.5 cubic feet of space. The Committee has already selected a site for its burial, near the base flagpole on MacDill Boulevard, though that site must meet approval by the base civil engineer. "Once the 11th Civil Engineer Squadron determines the area we want to bury it in is safe to proceed, then will come in and dig the hole out and we will do our ceremony," Sergeant Idrobo said. Following the burial of the capsule, a medallion will be placed on top to mark its location and open date. "That is going to tell everybody that walks by and sees it what the time capsule is," Sergeant Idrobo said. But before that can happen, Airmen need to think about what should go in to the time capsule, and make their suggestions to the committee, he said. "We are hoping some word of mouth going through the base will generate some good ideas," Sergeant Idrobo said. "Because of the changes to be made due to Base Realignment and Closure, Bolling might be going away or might change dramatically. We want good representation in the time capsule of what day-to-day life at Bolling AFB is like in 2007." California retirees, vets, visit Memorial [2007-05-03] ARLINGTON, Va. -- Two Army veterans and their wives visited the Air Force Memorial April 24, as part of a "Sons in Retirement" group tour of the nation's capital. Robert Nelson of San Jose, Calif., served in the Army from 1959 to 1961, narrowly missing a tour in Vietnam. "I was drafted, and it was right before Vietnam," he said. "I was sitting there with my knees knocking." Nelson served as an ordnance technician in the Army, reaching the rank of Private First Class. "I could never stay out of trouble," he joked. After his service, he became a high school teacher. This was his first trip to Washington, D.C. "We came to see Washington, D.C., and all the history that's here," he said. "I think this is awesome, and I wish I had a camera to catch it all." Nelson's wife, Darleen Nelson, a retired legal secretary, had been to the city in 1980, with their then 10-year-old son. But the city still thrills her. "I love everything here, it is an overwhelming experience," she said. Andy Orndac, also an Army veteran, agreed. "There is so much history here, so many things we've been seeing in newspapers and on television -- the buildings and everything," he said. Orndac served in the Army from 1953 to 1955, he missed a tour in Korea. "When I finished basic training, they were doing peace talks in Korea," he said. "So I ended up going to Germany instead -- I lucked out." Orndac and his wife, Loretta, were visiting Washington for the first time as part of the tour they were on. She said overall, Washington was "well worth the trip." Andy was impressed with the White House and the Air Force Memorial. "I saw in the paper the Air Force had just finished the Memorial," he said. "I think the memorial is great -- it's just beautiful." AFDW honors administrative professionals [2007-05-03] BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. -- Members of the Air Force District of Washington community gathered April 25 at the Bolling Club for a lunch and ceremony to honor winners of the 2006 Outstanding Civilian Administrative Professional Awards. There are more than 500 administrative professionals within AFDW who support senior executives, general officers, and other directors, managers and executives of all ranks and grades. Three winners were chosen from 24 nominees in three categories. Those winners include: Entry Level: Kimberly A. Person, Office of the Air Force Judge Advocate Intermediate Level: Susan J. Pedersen, Office of Air Force Acquisition Executive Level: Andrew J. Stephens, 11th Wing History Office The Outstanding Civilian Administrative Professional Award was created in 2000 to replace the "Secretary of the Year" award. This year's award ceremony was conducted on Administrative Professionals Day, April 25, during Administrative Professionals Week, which is the last full week of April. Andrews AFDW to be centerpiece of AFDW [2007-05-03] ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md. -- The Air Force District of Washington began its move to Andrews Air Force Base Monday, with the majority of the command staff making the transition to the new headquarters there. Over the next six weeks, the remainder of the staff will follow, said Maj. Gen. Bob Smolen, AFDW commander. "There will be a handful of people that will remain at Bolling, because they almost exclusively deal with things at Bolling, or people that regularly work at Bolling, but most of the staff will move to Andrews," he said. That AFDW has about 300 "core" Airmen on its staff, but about 500 Airmen from the 844th Communications Group are included. The 844th CG, which provides communications and information support to Air Force National Capitol Region warfighters, will also move to Andrews Air Force Base. General Smolen said the move is about strategically placing AFDW members to better serve the National Capitol Region. "Philosophically, Bolling will be the more administrative of the two bases," he said. "Andrews, with its two flight lines and medical facilities, enables us to have a platform so if anything bad happens in downtown Washington, D.C., or in the metropolitan area, we would be a little bit away from that and be able to provide additional support." Right now, AFDW, the Army's Military District of Washington, and the Naval District of Washington are all located in the downtown area. General Smolen said that amounted to putting all those resources in one basket. "They are all within a homerun hit of the new baseball stadium," he said. "If something bad happened, we'd all be stuck right there in the middle. This move affords us the opportunity to really expand out -- we have got some space here. With BRAC, and with the force relocation from some of the people downtown, we're going to robust all of Andrews AFB, and hopefully it will be our centerpiece." The AFDW acts as the single voice for the Air Force within the National Capitol Region. Together with the Military District of Washington and the Naval District of Washington, AFDW provides for the defense of the nation's capital, in addition to providing military support in the Washington, D.C., area when needed. Air Force, Korea War vet, visits memorial [2007-05-10] ARLINGTON, Va. -- In 1949, Benny Nagro, 19, was looking for some excitement, so he decided to transition from the Navy Reserve to the "regular" or active-duty Navy. "Since they didn't ever pull my (reserve) squadron, I went down to enlist in the regular Navy," said Nagro, a Washington, D.C., native. But Nagro said Navy recruiters in a Washington, D.C., recruiting station near the White House weren't biting, so he left. "I walked out -- I had my Marine Corps buddy with me from high school -- and we saw a big sign that said 'Join the Air Force!,'" he said. "It was a new service then. They had blue uniforms, and we went in and talked to the sergeant. He piled it on, man. He said they'd give me a haircut, and a room and all that stuff. So I signed up." A lot of others must have decided to join the fledging Air Force at the same time, because basic training facilities at Lackland were packed, Nagro said. "By the time we got down to Texas -- we had a troop train -- they had so many people down there at Lackland that we didn't really have any place to sleep," Nagro said. "We slept on the gymnasium floor. They said don't bring any clothes, just bring a toothbrush and one pair of underwear." Nagro said he'd done an interview with the Air Force Band at Bolling Air Force Base. He'd been in the band in high school, and the Air Force wanted him to do largely the same thing while in uniform. "They wanted me in the band, and they wanted me to stay in Washington," he said. "I told them I was born and raised here, and I didn't want to stay here!" Instead of staying at Bolling, Nagro was sent to Hill Air Force Base, Utah, to serve as part of the 549th Air Force Band as a percussionist. "We marched there in the street and the people thought we were postman," he said. It wasn't long before the Air Force was looking for volunteers to go overseas. Nagro was more than willing to go -- to Europe. "They asked for volunteers to go overseas, and I said I'd be glad to go to Europe, I'll volunteer. I always wanted to go to Europe," he said. "But they sent me to Korea instead." Nagro served in Korea from August 1951 to August 1952. He was part of the 5th Air Force in Seoul. "It was tough there," he said. "There was a war going on, we had artillery fire. You'd see the guns going off at night, and the airplanes -- Bedcheck Charlie (Polikarpov U-2 or Po-2) and all that dropping hand grenades or something, keeping you awake. They gave me a carbine with no ammo and a helmet with no liner. They put us on guard duty. Sometimes one guy wouldn't show up and then you're standing there by yourself, during an air raid." During his time in Korea, Nagro played with the Air Force Band all over South Korea, also pulling additional duty as a guard. After Korea, Nagro was moved to Vance Air Force Base, Okla. He stayed there, at a training command, until the Korean War was over in 1953. Following the Korean War, Nagro worked in real estate and also as a public servant in Prince George's County, as a building code enforcement officer. He also attended the University of Maryland to pursue a degree in journalism and public relations. He is retired now, and lives in Temple Hills, Md. Nagro visited the Air Force Memorial for the second time, May 8, with his American Legion post and a friend from the Marines. He said he's glad for both the Korean War Memorial and the addition of a memorial to honor Airmen. "They really needed one," he said. "It's very inspiring." Metal giant at Hains Point to move down river [2007-05-10] WASHINGTON -- For 27 years now, a 100-foot metal giant has struggled to escape the ground at the end of East Potomac Park, also called Hains Point, in Washington, D.C. He just may accomplish that goal this summer -- only to be buried again four miles south as part of the National Harbor Project in Prince George's County, Md. The metal giant, more commonly known as the statue "The Awakening," by American sculptor J. Seward Johnson, has been on display at Hains Point since March 1980. The installation there features five separate pieces, arranged to give the appearance of a 100-foot giant man, who has been buried, waking from his sleep and struggling to escape from the ground. The statue was initially placed there, on National Park Service land, on a temporary basis. But it has become an attraction for tourists and locals alike since it first arrived. "I've brought visitors from out of town, and they just have a wonderful time here, playing on this statue," said Bob Curry, a Springfield, Va., resident, who has been in the D.C., area since 1961. "It's really a marvelous piece of work. This is a great place for a busload of kids to scream and yell and carry on. It's also startling to look at, the first time you see it." Curry brought his grandson, Rowan Langston, to see the statue. It was the boy's second visit to Hains Point. Rowan said the best part of visiting the statue is "climbing on his head." Curry also said Hains Point, in general, is a great place for family gatherings and picnics. "We come down here to watch the river when it comes up," he said. "In the summer time, we also picnic here. It's nice to have a picnic here, and you almost always meet folks from out of town. I like this place because there is a freedom about it, and you don't have to wait in line." The statue proves popular with adults and children alike. Children often climb the giant's bended knee and slide down its leg. Others attempt to climb its 17-foot arm. In just a few months, however, it is expected the statue will be removed from National Park Service land and moved down river to a commercial site in Prince George's County, Md. The statue was sold for $750,000 to the developer of a shopping, dining, hotel, residential and office space complex on the Potomac River. While the statue has been a great attraction at Hains Point for many years now, it was never actually owned by the National Park Service, said Bill Line, spokesman for the National Park Service in the Washington Metropolitan area. "The bottom line is, the 'Awakening' sculpture, as everybody has come to know it, was never the property of the National Park Service," he said. "Seward Johnson had an agreement with park services. We would be the caretaker of it. But he has owned it, with the understanding that if he sold it, he could do so. It was only a matter of when." This summer, the five-piece statue will be moved down river to its new location. But while the statue may be gone, plenty of recreational opportunities will remain at Hains Point, Line said. "Where do I start?" Line asked. "There's all different variety of things to do there." Line said competitive bicyclists use the park daily for training, because it is relatively flat. Inline skaters also find the park popular, he said, as do those who fly kites. Hains Point also houses an outdoor Olympic sized swimming pool, an 18-hole golf course, a miniature golf course and 32 tennis courts -- 16 of which are indoors. "Many members of Congress play there," Line added. The park is also a popular place for such things as family reunions and wedding photos. From Hains Point, visitors can see Bolling Air Force Base, Reagan National Airport, and the National War College on Fort McNair. Hains Point is also a good alternative, in the spring, for viewing the cherry blossoms, Line said. "We purposefully direct people off of the Tidal Basin, because it is so jam packed with people," Line said. "We want them to see the cherry blossoms, but there are 1,800 cherry trees that literally line Ohio Drive, the entire way of Hains Point." The park is also a good spot for fisherman, Line added. "On a daily basis, unless it freezes over, plenty of people are fishing down there," he said. Fishermen regularly line the perimeter of the park, fishing for rockfish, herring, catfish or bass. Todd Lee, a welder for the city of Washington, D.C., goes out to Hains Point three times a month for the fishing. "I've been fishing here for about 15 years now," he said. "It's relaxing, for real. Mainly I get catfish and rockfish. But right now it's rockfish season. There's also herring. They're pretty good too. I get them for my father. You get them and salt them down." The rockfish and herring are spawning now, Lee said, and that increases the number of fish available in the water. "The rockfish just come through to spawn," he said. "If you stand around you'll see two or three hundred come through. You'll see big schools of them. But after that, I probably won't be back to next March." Lee cleans the fish he catches right there at river's edge, because, he said, he doesn't have the luxury of time when he gets back home. "Once I get home, I have a big 'honey do' list, so I usually clean them here," he said." He also said the herring can be used as bait for other fish. "That's what the big rockfish like." Hains Point is open 24-hours a day. So Line said the park also sees a fair share of couples on dates, who want to enjoy the view the park affords of the surrounding area. "There's a lot of couples down there smooching," Line said. "But people in government, who work long hours, also go down there many times in the evening." While the statue "The Awakening" will be moving soon, the park site is already approved by Congress to hold a memorial of some sort, Line said, though nothing yet is planned. Hains Point, and "The Awakening," can be reached by traveling south on I-395, and taking the Ohio Dr. exit, the first exit after crossing the Francis Case Memorial Bridge. The statue is located at the end of the park. Retired colonel, in service for nearly 40 years, makes first visit [2007-05-17] ARLINGTON, Va. -- Retired Air Force Col. Jim Russell visited the Air Force Memorial for the first time May 14, even though he has been in Washington, D.C., for about eight years now. He still works for the Air Force, some 36 years after he entered service in 1971, as a missile officer at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D. "I spent that part of the Vietnam era, 1971-1975, underground in South Dakota," he said. "We were part of the triad, the nuclear deterrent. My job as the deputy, and later as the commander, was to have command over 10 Minuteman II ICBMs, a secondary responsibility for another 10, and then the ability to interface with another 30. So between all of us on alert at any given time, we had responsibility for 50 ICBMs. We knew why we were there and what we'd be called upon to do if we had to do it." The nuclear "triad" refers to the United States three levels of nuclear capability: intercontinental ballistic missiles, strategic bombers, such as the B-52 Stratofortress, and ballistic missile submarines. Today, Russell serves the Air Force as part of the Air Force Legal Operations Agency, a tenant unit at Bolling Air Force Base. His own father served as a pilot in the Army Air Corps during World War II. "He was a P-51 Mustang pilot, and was shot down shortly after D-day," Russell said. "He spent the rest of the (war) as a prisoner of war in Germany." Russell said his dad continued to serve until retirement in 1973, long after the Army Air Corps became the independent Air Force in 1947. His dad's service, he said, had some influence on his own decision to serve for so long. "All of us have a need to be part of something bigger than we are," he said. "And I had grown up in a military family, so it was kind of an easy thing to do." After just four years as a missile officer, the Air Force offered to send Russell to law school at the University of Houston, so he could come back to the service as a judge advocate. Russell served as a JAG for nearly 26 years, in places such as Moody Air Force Base, Ga.; the now shuttered High Wickham Air Station, England; U.S. Air Forces, U.S. Central Command at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C.; and a year deployment to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as the staff judge advocate for Joint Task Force-South West Asia. Russell said one of the reasons he stayed in the Air Force so long, and why he continues to serve at Bolling as a Department of Defense civilian, is the people in the Air Force. "The people, the jobs, it was the main reason I was happy to stay on and was glad I had the opportunity to continue to work," he said. "It's a job I understand, working with people I thoroughly enjoy, admire and respect. It's also a mission I believe in. So those things made it easy for me to continue to do that." Being in Washington, D.C., it is hard to miss the Air Force Memorial, and Russell said he has seen it from afar many times during travel between Bolling and the Pentagon. "I have seen it a lot," he said. "But this is the first time I have physically come up here and walked the grounds. Of course, you can see it from Bolling, and I come to the Pentagon a lot. It worked out today I was able to come here. It's a very impressive thing. And they've did a superb job of capturing the Air Force." Crime at lowest rate, users be wary on Internet [2007-05-17] BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. -- Crime is at it's lowest rate in 30 years, but Internet-related crimes and identity theft are rising, said Terri Kelly, of the National Crime Prevention Council. "About 10 million households were victims (of identity theft) during the first six months of 2006," she said. "That's a pretty daunting thing to think about when we didn't even address this crime in any fundamental way in terms of our awareness in the general public, as little as three to five years ago." On average, the cost to victims of identity theft came to more than $6,000, though that figure doesn't include the cost of reestablishing credit, Kelly said. "That figure doesn't touch on the dozens or more hours people spend reestablishing their credit history in a more positive way -- money is just one piece of that," she said. Kelly is managing director of community outreach and government relations for NCPC, the agency responsible for introducing "McGruff the Crime Dog" into public awareness some 30 years ago. She visited Bolling Air Force Base May 14 to discuss Internet safety, including online identity theft. According to Kelly, the most common victims of identity theft include 18-29 year olds. The reason for that, she said, is that age group has just begun moving from their parent's home, has just begun setting up credit and accounts, and tends to be more casual with how they release personal information. "We want to make people aware, so they can be a little less casual in how they secure their personal information," she said. "Some stuff is called personal information, because it should be kept personal and private." Kelly made suggestions on how Airmen and their families could prevent themselves from becoming victims of identity theft. Some of those suggestions included not using credit cards on Web sites unless those Web sites are encrypted; reviewing credit reports at least once a year; securing outgoing postal mail by putting it in a locked box, when possible; cleaning or sanitizing computer hard drives of financial and personal information before sending computers out for service or selling them; canceling credit cards that haven't been used for six months; and shredding important documents and unsolicited mail before throwing those things away. "People actually do that dumpster diving thing -- digging through people's trash," she said. "Some of that stuff, you don't necessarily know without opening it, if it may be an unsolicited credit card application or financial application -- a pre-approved whatever. If you don't go so far as to open it, to find that out, and wholesale throw it away, those documents may be being taken and used to destroy somebody's credit." Kelly also made suggestions on how Airmen can protect their children from online predators. "One of the things we are most worried about at NCPC, is that 1 in 5 kids admits to having been solicited online in some way -- and by that I mean sexually solicited," she said. "That includes comments they didn't understand, or that they may have come to understand. That's a pretty daunting thing. The more important part about that, is that most of those kids also said they didn't tell anybody." Kelly said that she believes the Internet is a great and powerful tool for youth, but that youth must be educated that many of the same rules that apply to the real world also apply online. She said frank discussions with kids about the logic of giving out information about themselves online is a good defense. "The easiest way is to be really concrete," she said. "If you were in the middle of the mall, would you go up and say 'hi, my name's Terri, I'm 11 and this is where I go to elementary school?' No. Who you want to be talking to or intend to be talking to online, you can't verify because they are not in front of you. In that situation, they are a stranger because you haven't been introduced to them in a way that helps you get familiarity with them, and in a way you can trust." Bricks, ballet, back hoes at National Building Museum [2007-05-17] WASHINGTON -- Ballet isn't for everybody, but occasionally, exceptions can be made. This Sunday, on G Street in Washington, D.C., the National Building Museum is hosting a ballet that features music from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, and choreographed performances by dance artists, ballet students and construction equipment. "Imagine giant backhoes, and earth movers, being choreographed with ballet dancers to Swan Lake," said Sarah Rice, family programs coordinator at the museum. "I think it really appeals to dad. It has massive earth movers, but there are ballet dancers interacting with them." The performance, entitled "Pas de Dirt," lasts 15 minutes, and will run three times, at 2 p.m., 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. It's also free, like many of the exhibits inside the museum. The National Building Museum was founded in 1980 to celebrate and explore American achievements in architecture, engineering, design, urban planning and construction. "I think it appeals to anybody, because the built environment is our mission," said Rice. "'The world we build for ourselves' is sort of our tagline, and I think that is a concept that applies to all of us, because we all inhabit the built environment. So what we try to do through our exhibitions is showcase wonderful achievements in that, from world class architects to how things work, to the way things look and why they look the way they do." One of the long running exhibits at the museum involves Washington, D.C., itself. As part of the exhibit, visitors can see how the federal city was originally designed, see how it looks today, and learn about some of the decisions that affected how the city has changed. Also part of that exhibit are scale models of buildings like the U.S. Capitol and the White House. And unlike other museums, patrons are encouraged to touch and explore the exhibits. "We like to call ourselves a place of doing," Rice said. "Many of our exhibitions are family friendly, so we encourage families to come and explore them on their own. That's one of the great things about this museum. All of our family programs involve people, where you are active or either involved in critical thinking or you are able to do hands on stuff, or you create something to take home. It is very active." In April 2006, the museum added an exhibit space for children ages 2 to 6. In the "Building Zone," young children, accompanied by their parents, can engage in construction play, as though they were builders. "Folks can come and have an imaginative place, all about the built environment," Rice said. "We've got giant Legos, bricks, a playhouse, construction trucks, and a dress up station where you can pretend you are a construction worker." In June, the museum will host author and illustrator David Macaulay, author of such books as "Cathedral," "Mosque," "Pyramid," "City" and "Underground." The books, illustrated with pen and ink line art, document the construction of various, monumental types or architecture. Macaulay will be on hand, June 23, to kick off an exhibition entitled "David Macaulay: The Art of Drawing Architecture." "Macaulay will be here, talking with the audience and doing book signing," Rice said. "Also there will be lots of interactive exercises, chalk artists on the sidewalk, caricature artists, kid-themed workshops, adult-themed workshops and dancers." The exhibit, which runs through January 2008 will look at Macaulay's process and product of drawing the built environment. It will also include hands-on activity areas within the exhibition where families can go through the show, learn and see, and then sit down and try to do some of the drawing exercises in the style of Macaulay's work. Most of the activities at the museum are hands on, and family friendly. Weekends at the museum include "art carts," where groups, ages 5 and up, can get involved in half-hour long programs that explore such things as bridge building or arch and truss construction. The museum also runs a design apprenticeship program for D.C. teens who are interested in engineering, architecture and design. A more adult exhibit is the recent "Green House," which includes an indoor mock-up of a home that is built with an emphasis on sustainable architecture and design. "This is where we are saying the Earth is a resource we need to take good care of and what is a way we can do that through building and sustainable design," said Rice. Perhaps one of the greatest draws at the National Building Museum is the museum building itself. The building was originally designed in 1881 by Army General Montgomery C. Meigs, to serve the U.S. Pension Office. It was meant to house a pension office that needed to be expanded to serve the veterans who had served in the Civil War. The building is constructed of 15 million bricks, and features some of the largest indoor columns in the world in its "Great Hall." The hall measure 316 feet by 116 feet by 159 feet tall at its peak, and is supported by columns measuring 75 feet high, 8 feet in diameter, and 25 foot in circumference. Each of the columns is built of 70,000 bricks. Rice said the monumental size of the hall impresses the 23,000 school kids that visit the museum each year. "The first thing they are struck with is the awesomeness of the space and how monumental it is and how it makes them feel so small -- in a cool way," she said. The National Building Museum is located above the Judiciary Square Metro station, on the Red Line. It is open Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. U.S. Postal Service unveils new stamps at air show [2007-05-24] ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. -- As part of the opening ceremony, May 18, of last weekend's Joint Service Open House at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., a representative of the U.S. Postal Service unveiled two new stamps that feature the military aircraft responsible for transporting the President of the United States. The two stamps, painted by aviation artist William Phillips, feature Air Force One and Marine One, said David Failor, executive director of Stamp Services for the United States Postal Service. "William is one of America's premier aviation artists, who has done a lot of work for us over the years," Failor said. "And together, (USPS art director Philip Gordon) and Bill did a wonderful job of depicting these two iconic aircraft on this tiny little piece of paper we call a postage stamp." Failor said he believes the works do more than simply represent aircraft, they represent what it means to be in the military. "This month, 45 years ago, Gen. Douglas MacArthur made his famous farewell address to the nation in which he summed up what he thought the essence of military service: duty, honor and country," Failor said. "He said he didn't possess the brilliance of metaphor to say what all those words meant. But today, we hope to find a little bit of that brilliance, not in a metaphor, but in the shiny steel of two aircraft -- two aircraft that represent both the power of the presidency and the extraordinary military professionals who stand behind that power and epitomize the meaning of duty, honor and country." Col. Margaret H. Woodward, 89th Airlift Wing commander, said the Air Force One stamp is a fitting tribute to Air Force One and what it represents. "I can think of no better way to honor Air Force One than on a stamp issued by the USPS," she said. "This stamp will serve as a lasting reminder of service to our nation, and also serves to remind future generations of Americans how privileged they are to live in the land of the free and home of the brave." The 89th Airlift Wing, located at Andrews AFB, Md., is responsible for operation of Air Force One. The unveiling of the two stamps was part of the kickoff ceremony of the 2006 Joint Services Open House at Andrews AFB. Maj. Gen. Robert L. Smolen, Air Force District of Washington commander, told attendees that the open house, while on an Air Force Base, was actually a joint event meant to highlight the contributions of all branches of the Armed Forces. "This is a joint operation, and you will see the fine hardware and technology that our sister services have brought," he told ceremony attendees. "Every bit of that is important to the missions we have to perform. There is nothing we do today worldwide that we can do individually. Each of our services contributes in a unique and innovative way to make it all happen." The general also said that even more important than the hardware on display at the show, were the people that operate that equipment. "It's America's sons and daughters that are defending, with our allies, with contractors, and with civilians, the freedoms we all enjoy," he said. "The real jewels of our empire are in those people that are operating those very systems." The Air Force One stamp is valued at $4.60, and will be available for sending Priority Mail packages. The Marine One stamp is valued at $16.25, and will be available for Express Mail packages. Both should become available in June. Korean War Federation member visits Memorial [2007-05-24] ARLINGTON, Va. -- Dae-O Som, a visitor to the United States from South Korea, wandered the grounds of the Air Force Memorial May 18, looking at the inscriptions that document past Air Force campaigns and marveling at the spires. But this visit to the Memorial wasn't the first time he'd been in Washington, D.C., however. "Around 10 years ago, I visited Arlington National Cemetery by myself," Som said. "It was very strange for me when I found the tomb for somebody who had died in a battle in the Korean War. As soon as I found his tomb, I couldn't move. The tears came down -- I couldn't control myself. It was a very difficult experience for me." Since that time, Som has become a part of the United Nations Peace Forces of the Korean War Memorial Federation, and currently serves as the organization's vice president. The Federation was created to honor Korean War veterans all over the world, he said. "We try to contact them, to invite them to Korea and to honor them, to thank them, and to elevate the meaning of the Korean War," he said. Members of the Federation are now engaged in a tour of countries that had sent soldiers to South Korea during the war there. The group recently held a ceremony at the Korean War Memorial in downtown Washington. "Around 30 American Korean War veterans were there to have that ceremony," he said. "There were also Koreans who fought during the Korean War, about 30 old men, that are living here now. They joined with us, and we had a wonderful day, followed by a banquet here." Som was just a boy, around 6 or 7 years old, when war broke out on the Korean peninsula. He said he remembers the military members that came through his village to help defend his country. "I was at that time a little boy, and I saw many American soldiers, and many other soldiers that came to our country, many with large weapons," he said. "So, even when I was so young, we were very familiar with soldiers." Som also remembers when American aircraft flew over his village, and the messages they brought to his people. "When we saw American fighters and bombers, or sometimes the B-29 (Superfortress), sometime the planes had good news for us," he said. "They dropped small fliers, that floated down to the people. They said what is going on, and North Korea is now retreating, and we can now have hope. It was this kind of good, hopeful fliers we received, when the airplanes were passing." When Som meets American Korean War veterans now, or veterans from other countries that fought in the Korean War, he tells them he is grateful for the sacrifices they made to ensure his own freedom, and his country's successes over the last half a century. "First of all, without their sacrifice, Korea couldn't stand. Today, it has succeeded very much," he said. "My personal feeling about the Korean War is that many American soldiers came to Korea and they sacrificed, around 40,000, during the Korean War. They came to fight and they passed away, they had fallen in our small country, and they didn't even know what country that was before then. We, the Korean people, must honor the U.N. peace forces who fought for Korea." Som said he is also impressed that America sends soldiers to other countries to help secure freedom in those places, as well. During a recent trip to Luxembourg, for instance, he came across the grave of American Army General George S. Patton, a key figure in World War II. "I found General Patton's tomb and his men, about 3,500 soldiers were there, buried there, and I was so shocked," he said. "Those men who sacrificed so deeply for the world, they sacrificed so much to protect the world, for peace. Not only Korea, but Europe. They are sleeping there now, in that place, away from their home country." During his time in the nation's capital, Som stayed in a hotel near the Air Force Memorial. He said he noticed the memorial from that vantage point, and it inspired him to investigate further. "I saw this construction here, from the hotel. What's this, I asked. I was so curious," he said. "So I came out here the other day, with some Korean tourists, and I find out -- this is so wonderful you know? I saw every corner of this memorial. We found many Korean War inscriptions, and the Korean tourists felt they must salute here." Som returned to Korea the day after his visit to the Air Force Memorial, but he will continue his travel to those countries that that sent soldiers to South Korea to fight there. In June, he will visit the Philippines, Thailand and Ethiopia. Rolling Thunder XX rides for POW/MIA awareness [2007-05-24] WASHINGTON -- For the 20th year now, the Rolling Thunder motorcycle rally will come through Washington, D.C., to promote awareness of prisoners of war, military members that have gone missing in action and veterans' issues. Each year, since 1988, military veterans and veteran supporters have rolled into Washington, D.C., on motorcycles, as a demonstration of their commitment to veterans' issues, and as a reminder to the nation's leaders that they must not forget America's lost war fighters, said Artie Muller, executive director of Rolling Thunder, Inc. "This is not a ride, it is a demonstration," he said. "We started this for the POW⁄MIA issue. For all past wars, a lot of live Americans have been left behind. My friends and myself wanted to do something about this." What they did was organize a motorcycle run that over the last 20 years has grown from about 2,500 participants to an estimated 400,000 last year. "It just gets bigger and bigger each year," Muller said. "This year it will be astronomical." This year, motorcyclists from all over the country will again converge on Washington, D.C., and gather Sunday morning at the Pentagon, for another run through the nation's capital. Bikers will begin leaving the Pentagon around noon, travel around the National Mall, past the U.S. Capitol, and then to the Vietnam Memorial. While many in this year's rally are members of Rolling Thunder veteran support chapters from around the country, membership in the organization, or even status as a veteran, is not a prerequisite for participation. "If anybody is interested, you are welcome to ride," Muller said. "If you love your freedom, come ride with the veterans." Muller said participants in the ride come from all over the United States, as well as from countries like Australia, England, France, Germany, Norway and South Korea. Riders from Bolling Air Force Base, Andrews Air Force Base, and other military installations in the National Capital Region will ride this year, for the second time, as part of the Green Knight Mentorship and Riding Club at Andrews AFB, said Club President Tech. Sgt. Brian McLeod, 316th Logistics Readiness Squadron. "We're kind of a mixture of the Air Force from Bolling and Andrews AFB, and the Pentagon, as well as some Navy and Army folks," he said. "I believe we are one of the only motorcycle clubs for the military in the area." Last year was the group's first ride in Rolling Thunder, and also the first year for the club. They now have nearly 40 members in the group. Motorcyclists choose to ride in the Rolling Thunder rally for many reasons. Sergeant McLeod said he rides because of his relationship with the military. "Considering we are all in the military, this could happen to any one of us," he said. "This is definitely a great cause." Sergeant McLeod also said he wears a POW⁄MIA bracelet that bears the name of a military member with his own last name. Though he said he has no relationship to the lost soldier, he does feel it is a reason for him to participate in the rally. "I think everybody has somebody in the back of their mind that kind of encourages them to do something like this," he said. Christopher M. Orbits, 11th Wing Safety Office, will also ride in this year's Rolling Thunder demonstration. He said he'll be keeping the three currently lost U.S. Army soldiers in mind as he rides. "Look at the three soldiers missing now, just on the news yesterday -- we have soldiers looking for them," he said. "They won't stop till they find them, and this ride kind of brings that to the forefront." The three U.S. Army soldiers: Pfc. Joseph J. Anzack Jr., 20, of Torrance, Calif., Spc. Alex R. Jimenez, 25, of Lawrence, Mass., and Pvt. Byron W. Fouty, 19, of Waterford, Mich., all went missing earlier this month. "This ride is one way to educate the public and let people know of our POW⁄MIAs, and things we can do in the future to make life easier for them," Sergeant Orbits said. This year, Sergeant Orbits will ride with his father and a friend of the family, both Air Force veterans. Sergeant Orbits is also getting ready for a deployment to Iraq. When he returns, he said, he will join up with the Green Knight Mentorship and Riding Club. Tech. Sgt. Lester Nelson, 11th Civil Engineer Squadron, rode in the demonstration last year, but won't be riding this year. Instead, he'll be on foot, providing security for motorcyclists as they cross the bridge into Washington. "We're going to kind of line the bridge to keep observers from running around the bikes," he said. "Observers want to reach out and slap hands with the riders." Sergeant Nelson said one reason he participates in the event is his family's history with the military. His grandfather was in the Navy in World War I, his father was in the Army in World War II, his mother was in the Nurses Corps, and his second oldest brother is a retired Air Force Master Sergeant. Last year was Sergeant McLeod's first ride in Rolling Thunder. He said after the ride, he has a better understanding of why they call the event "Rolling Thunder." "That many people riding their cycles, it sounds just like thunder, and the noise doesn't stop for hours," he said. "You kind of get done with it and think 'what in the world did I just do?' And that's kind of a powerful feeling." Bud Day biographer signs autographs at library [2007-05-24] BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. -- Author Robert Coram visited the Bolling Library May 23 to sign copies of his new book, "American Patriot - The Life and Wars of Colonel Bud Day." Retired Col. George E. Bud Day, served his country in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II. Following that war, he earned a law degree and joined the National Guard. But by 1951, he'd been called again to active duty for service in the Korean War. Colonel Day served in Korea as an F-84 Thundercat pilot, and later as a pilot in Vietnam. It was there he was captured, not once, but twice, by the North Vietnamese. When Colonel Day returned from Vietnam, after six years in captivity, he chose to return to flying status. He didn't retire until 1977. Colonel Day is the recipient of the Medal of Honor, awarded for his bravery during his captivity. He is also the most decorated living officer today, said Coram. "Bud Day is America's most decorated living officer, and most decorated American since Douglas MacArthur," Coram said. "He has about 50 combat medals, some 70 medals in all. He is the very best of what we are as a people." After a successful release of his biography of Air Force Col. John Boyd, entitled "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War," Coram said he was contracted to write two additional books, both military biographies. "A number of ideas and possible candidates were mentioned to me, but Colonel Day was the only one that had that extra quality -- a moral component," Coram said. "It would be more than a list of his accomplishments. It would be a man who showed great integrity and moral courage, at a time when he could have gone any one of several ways." Coram contacted Colonel Day, who at 82 years old, runs a law firm in Florida, and spent the next three-and-a-half years working with him on the biography. Coram said there are lessons from Colonel Day's story, even for Airmen today. "Well, the fact a person is in the military means they are in the profession of arms, he is a warrior. No matter what his AFSC, he can go to war and can find himself in harm's way," Coram said. "When that happens, he needs to know the standard, how high is the bar? What should be his behavior? Bud Day is the man that set the bar, he set the example." Coram said after an Airmen reads Colonel Day's story, they would want their own actions in wartime to mirror his. "They would do what is expected of them because it is upholding not only the honor of the country, but of their fellow Air Force members," Coram said. "They would do what is expected." Presidential words etched in stone at Memorial [2007-05-31] ARLINGTON, Va. -- Most Washingtonians thought the Air Force Memorial was finished when it was dedicated last October. But there was still work left to be done. During his speech at the dedication, Oct. 14, 2006, President Bush said the Memorial will be the place Airman could visit to contemplate their contributions to America's freedom. "A soldier can walk the battlefields where he once fought; a Marine can walk the beaches he once stormed; but an Airman can never visit the patch of sky he raced across on a mission to defend freedom," the President said. "And so it's fitting that, from this day forward, the men and women of the Air Force will have this memorial, a place here on the ground that recognizes their achievements and sacrifices in the skies above." It is that quote that stone carver Marcel Mächler was adding, letter by letter, to a granite wall along the entry path to the Memorial, May 24. "It's a huge quote, I think they picked the biggest they could find," joked Mächler. Originally from Germany, Mächler now owns his own stone carving and sculpture company, headquartered in Twin Peaks, Ca. He was responsible for most of the stone carving done at the Memorial, from the names of the donors, to the campaigns the Air Force fought in, to the image of the Medal of Honor. Mächler used a combination of old carving techniques and new technology to get the president's words onto the Memorial. "What I did was had everything laid out on the computer, including the outlines and such, and spacing," he said. "Then I traced it out on the stone -- scratched it in with a carbide tipped needle." To cut the letters into the granite, he used a compressed air cylinder to drive a pneumatic chisel with a carbide tip. The pneumatic tool allowed him to work much faster than if he'd used just a hammer. Doing it the old fashioned way, he said, would take him six times as long. And he was on a deadline for the project. "I'm going to try to have it done by Memorial Day," he said. He'd been working 12 hours days since May 21 to complete the project. Each letter in the quote must be cut out of the granite face with the same sharply defined corners and center bevel as every other letter, Mächler said. But some letters come faster than others. "For an 'I,' it's just a few minutes," he said. "For an 'M,' it takes four times as much." But the speed of the air chisel doesn't change the concentration Mächler needs to complete his task. Concentration and control are as important to the job as the chisel, he said, because there's no easy way to fix something once its carved in stone. "When you go slow enough, you are in control," he said. "When you go too fast, you are out of control. You have to be good at this, and just do it right. And you have to stay in control, be patient, and just do everything once ... because we can't do it twice." Mächler picked up his craft when he was 21 years old, in the early 1980s. He had been pursuing an education at a German university at the time, and said he was unsure of what he really wanted to do with his life or where he wanted to go. One seemingly trivial incident at the time made him pause to consider what he should do next. "I had a flat tire on my bicycle and I couldn't fix it," he said. "And I thought I have to learn something with my hands. I'm a little far removed from reality if I think about society and how people should live and I can't even work with my hands. So I thought I'd do an apprenticeship." His love of nature made him consider some sort of craft with wood or stone, he said. But a lot of his friends were already doing carpentry or furniture building, so he chose to be different. "I did a stone carver apprenticeship in Germany," he said. "The three years apprenticeship was very important, and I learned a lot." During the apprenticeship, Mächler learned more than just lettering. He also learned to carve such things as fireplaces and statuary. The Web site for Mächler's business features much of his work since the end of his apprenticeship, such as gargoyles, fireplaces, fountains, letter carving, and even work at both the Ronald Reagan and the George H.W. Bush presidential libraries. "The George Bush senior library has a three foot presidential seal," he said. "That is carved in black granite, is three feet in diameter with a one inch deep cut, and has an eagle, the arrows, and leaves." Mächler said the work of the stone carver is important because it is evident throughout human life -- from birth to death. "It really entails a lot of human life, from the baptismal font to the grave stone -- really, stone carving goes a long way toward human life," he said. "It also has a kind of symbolism too, because it's one of the oldest crafts in the world. It has this tradition, it goes along with the Air Force too, with the heritage." Airmen honored for earning CCAF degrees [2007-05-31] BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. -- Several hundred members of the Bolling Air Force Base community gathered May 24 at the Bolling Officers Club to honor those who had earned degrees from the Community College of the Air Force and other schools. Some 76 Airmen from both Bolling AFB and the Pentagon have recently graduated from the CCAF. They were joined by seven Airmen who earned degrees from Central Texas College and 22 Airmen who earned degrees from University of Maryland University College. Col. Kurt F. Neubauer, 11th Wing Commander, told graduates that the knowledge they gained by studying to earn their degrees was of great benefit to the Air Force. "Knowledge is power. For the folks that are wearing the blue suit of the United States Air Force, knowledge is a force multiplier," he said. "That is what separates our enlisted force from the rest of the world. That is what makes you the finest." Colonel Neubauer also asked graduates to recognize the family members, supervisors and co-workers around them who helped make their academic achievements possible. He said that while earning their degrees was an individual achievement, it was not an individual effort. Chief Master Sgt. Michael A. Smith, 11th Mission Support Group superintendent, acting as keynote speaker for the graduation ceremony, challenged each graduate to recognize their own destiny. "Today graduates, I want each of you to say yes to your destiny," he said. "And by saying yes to your destiny, you may inspire someone else to reach their destiny." Chief Smith also told the graduates he believed they were each destined for greatness, and asked them to explore in their own lives the ingredients that would turn their hopes into plans, and that which seems impossible into the possible. During the graduation ceremony, five Airmen were singled out for recognition of their academic accomplishments as recipients of three separate awards. Recipient of the Gen. Lester Lyles Scholarship Award, presented by the Air Force Association, was Tech. Sgt. Lisa R. Rodier. Sergeant Rodier was given a $500 dollar scholarship check. A representative of the Association of Old Crows, the electronic warfare professional association, awarded Senior Airman Chanh C. Le a check as part of its enlisted tuition grant program. Airman Le's wife was on hand to receive the check. Finally, three Airmen were recipients of the Pitsenbarger Award, awarded by the Air Force Association. The Pitsenbarger Award provides a single grant of $500 dollars to qualifying graduates of the CCAF who plan to pursue a baccalaureate degree. Recipients of the award included Staff Sgt. Steven W. Hawkins, Staff Sgt. Christina M. Taylor and Staff. Sgt. Joshua S. Kennedy. Sergeant Kennedy, a manpower analyst, has served in the Air Force for five years now. He recently earned two CCAF degrees, one in human resource management and one in information systems technology. He said his CCAF degrees are stepping stones to greater academic achievements. "It's a beginning step in the rest of my education," he said. "I'll be going on to Towson University and pursuing my bachelor's degree in business administration." Sergeant Kennedy hopes to return to the Air Force, as an officer, after earning his bachelor's degree. Bolling Airmen experience Asian culture at expo [2007-05-31] BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. -- Members of the Bolling Air Force Base community sampled some of the finer parts of Asian culture May 30 at the Edward H. White Community Center. The event was the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month expo, the cap to a month-long recognition of the contributions Americans of Asian or Pacific Islander descent have made in the United States. Col. Kurt F. Neubauer, 11th Wing commander, told expo attendees that he expected for them to take away from the event a greater understanding of the diversity of the United States and contributions of Asians and Pacific Islanders. "When you look at a coin or any of our currency, you see 'E Pluribus Unum,'" he said. "What that means is, out of many, one. We all contribute, we are all the building blocks of American society. This is a way to show appreciation for the contributions of Asian Pacific Americans in the building of the country." Senior Master Sgt. Robin McConnell served as the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month coordinator for the 11th Wing. She said her goal for the expo was to allow as many people as possible to sample Asian culture and at the same time, to engage and entertain them. "I wanted to bring this to Bolling just a little bit differently," she said. "We wanted this to be a cultural expo, with a little more entertainment, and kind of keep things moving. In the past, some things kind of bogged down a little bit. We wanted people to come out, whatever it takes, even if it's their stomach, and to learn about the people they work with, and the people they serve with." The expo kicked off with a sampling of food from several different countries in Asia, including curried coconut chicken from Thailand, chicken negimaki from Japan, spring rolls from Vietnam, pork barbeque ribs from India, lo mein from China and pork adobo from the Philippines. Joseph McGowan, son of Chief Master Sgt. Albert McGowan, 11th Mission Support Squadron, said the food sampling was his favorite part of the expo. He also said the Asian country that interests him the most is Japan. "The food to me is interesting, also their style and their art," he said. "They also made up Naruto, a ninja on Cartoon Network. It used to be in Japan for several years when I lived there, so I got interested in that." The McGowan family lived at Misawa Air Base for about 22 months, beginning in 2000, Joseph said. "There's lots of snow there, but I liked the people in the area," he said. "They are really kind." Joseph also said he does taekwondo, a form of martial arts that comes from Korea. He said he's achieved a green belt level in the sport, and plans to use it only to protect himself. "I learned it for self-defense," he said. "And I'm pretty good at it." The expo also featured martial arts demonstrations, dancers, and a fashion show that featured garments from the Philippines, Korea, China, India, Hawaii and Japan. Meeya O'Dell and Kai O'Dell, the daughter and son of Tech. Sgt. John O'Dell, 11th Contracting Squadron, modeled native youth clothing from Japan. Meeya wore a yukata, a casual form of the kimono, while Kai wore a jin bei, consisting of a cotton top and shorts. Sergeant O'Dell, who was recently named 11th Wing Noncommissioned Officer of the Quarter, said the event was a great learning experience for his kids. "It's really about awareness for the kids, to be aware of their culture and other people's culture as well," he said. Sergeant O'Dell's wife, Yumi O'Dell, is a native of Japan. The two met while he was stationed at Yokota AB, near Tokyo. She said the expo was well done, but she had been worried about her children's performance as fashion models. "I was nervous because of the kids," she said. "They did good though, I'm happy about that. I almost cried!" Both Meeya and Kai are fluent in English and Japanese, said Yumi. Staff Sergeant James Blakley, 11th Security Force Squadron, was a volunteer with the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month committee. His father is from the United States, and an Army veteran, and his mother is a native of Korea. He said the expo helps participants better see the diversity in the United States. "This teaches different aspects of America," he said. "America is a melting pot, and there are many different influences and inputs that make our society better." Asian Pacific American Heritage Month is celebrated each year in May. Swift’s hot ride turns heads [2007-05-31] BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. -- Curtis Swift's 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air is a real head turner. While he polished some of the chrome under its hood in the parking lot of the Edward H. White Community Center here, Airmen and civilians alike paused to take a gander at the shiny blue and white antique. "I have always loved old cars," Swift said. "I was born in 1958, and some of my earliest memories from back home were from my dad's junk yard, where he had mid-1950s Fords sitting there, a 1936 Ford and a couple of Model As. I was just always fascinated by the old cars. I come by it naturally, I guess." Swift, a program advisor at the Defense Intelligence Agency, bought the car in September 2005. Since then, he's invested about $6,000 dollars in the car, mostly on mechanical gear, including a new carburetor, distributor and steering unit. He said he has a special affinity for the 1956 model. "The '55-'57 Chevy kind of revolutionized hotrods way back in the day," he said. "They were such a popular vehicle that they were everywhere. The kids that had one would hotrod them around and stuff like that. So as I was growing up, they were very prevalent. My favorite happened to be the '56. The body is almost the same as the '55, but the difference is the grill work, the bumper, and the bullet-style taillights. There is just a bit more style to this. She was always just the prettiest of the bunch to me." He doesn't show his car now, he says, because he's too particular about the condition it is in. He said there's going to have to be changes before he's willing to enter it into any kind of car show. "I don't show it because I am nit picky about cars that are shown," he said. His own car had a few rust spots he was forced to repair, and he's not convinced that it's yet show ready. But that will all change after he puts the car through a complete makeover. "My intention with this is to probably, in another three years, find a place to take it apart, strip it down to the frame, and put it back together again after I've cleaned and fixed and painted and redone everything," he said. "At that time, I can fix all the chips of paint and dings. And anything that is old I'll either have it re-chromed, or I'll replace it. There are shops everywhere that do re-chroming." Such a seemingly formidable task is made easier, he said, by the simplicity of the way the car was originally assembled. "For the most part, everything is pretty much bolted on," he said. "So it all comes off pretty easily. The old cars are much, much more easy to work on. Even the grill work is bolted on, or screwed down in some places." One thing no makeover will fix, however, is the car's appetite. "Around town, it gets about 9 or ten miles to the gallon," he said. "On the highway, about 17 miles to the gallon." At that rate, a roundtrip drive to the Pentagon might cost just a little over $7. But that's not going to make Swift sell his Bel Air. "I told people when I bought it, it is mine," he said. "I have no intention of getting rid of it." Swift is also working on rebuilding a 1979 Pontiac Trans Am, which he bought during his six years of service in the Air Force. "The Trans Am I've owned since 1983," he said. "I've never parted with it. " Most days, Swift drives his a 2002 Ford Crown Victoria to work. He likes the style of that car, too. "I like it because it looks like a police cruiser," he said. A sauce for nearly every day of the year [2007-06-07] WASHINGTON -- If you like spicy food, and nothing in the condiment aisle at the commissary gives you quite the burn you're looking for, a trip to the Eastern Market neighborhood may be in order. Brennan Proctor runs the Uncle Brutha's Hot Sauce Emporium just off the Eastern Market Metro line. There, he peddles his own award winning "Uncle Brutha's Hot Sauce," in addition to more than 300 other specialty hot sauces, marinades, rubs and seasonings. But when you walk into the place, it's clear that hot sauce is the focus of the now year-old operation. Along the walls of the store, wooden shelves feature hundreds of sauces, some with unique bottle shapes, and each with its own unique label design. Some feature clever names, like "Jalapeno Death Sauce," "Colon Cleaner" and "Acid Rain." Visitors to the store, looking for something to spice up a burger or chili, are free to sample most of the sauces, though some customers eventually find a sauce's bite really is as bad as its bark. "We have our hot sauce tasting bar, which is always open," Proctor said. "On the weekends, when we get the bulk of our traffic, people ask what is the hottest stuff we have -- nothing's too hot for them. They make a beeline for Ben and Jerry's after we give them a shot of 'Predator' or 'Mad Dog 357,' so we've done a little bit to boost their business there a couple of doors down." The stars in the hot sauce lineup, however, are Proctor's own: Uncle Brutha's Fire Sauce No. 10 and Fire Sauce No. 9. He started work on the No. 10 sauce nearly 20 years ago. "It all started with creating a sauce for hot wings, back in the latter part of the 1980s," Proctor said. "My co-workers and I liked to go to happy hour all the time and order hot wings. We never really liked the ones we got, so we were doing pot lucks in the office. And they put me up to making hot wings. Everybody made a little something, but I was the hot wing guy." To create his own wing sauce, Proctor said he first experimented with using blends of other prepared sauces, and then packing in an additional punch by adding his own fresh ingredients. When his recipe proved popular, he set his sights on a totally original creation. "The next time I made hot wings, I made it a goal to try to reach the same end result by using all original ingredients, from scratch," he said. "I analyzed all the products I had used and figured out kind of a starting point for ingredients." His new, totally original sauce, made him a popular man. At least it made his wings popular. "Everybody was just going crazy about it," he said. "I was on everybody's invite list to come to parties, as long as I brought the hot wings. I got a little offended by that at first, because I was like are you inviting me or the hot wings? It was hot wings ... plus Brennon." Proctor said he spent about 10 years perfecting the sauce, and that is partly where the name came from. It also came from the heat level he hoped to achieve with his creation. "No. 10 was the first sauce, and that name came from the fact I was shooting for a higher heat level -- like on a scale of 10," he said. "But always with the intention of flavor. Heat without flavor is pointless. You want to taste the flavor and feel the heat." Proctor said the "Uncle Brutha" part of the name comes from he and his sister teasing each other as kids. He was the "brutha," he said, and she was the "sista." "And when she had her baby, I became Uncle Brutha," he said. In 2004, Proctor began selling his sauce at a stand in Eastern Market, and later experimented with a vending station in Dewey and Rehoboth beaches in Delaware. "I brought a collection of different sauces, got there at 3 or 4 a.m., and would get all set up like a mini store," he said. "People just went nuts. They thought it was a good idea, and they loved to peruse the different (sauce) names -- some are pretty comical and racy." It didn't take long for Proctor to realize that his idea of making and selling his own hot sauce, and selling additional sauces might be a good idea. He opened his storefront operation near Eastern Market in May 2006, and now has a pretty steady stream of customers. "I have regular visitors each week who have to have their regular fix of Uncle Brutha's," he said. "I've been accused of being a hot sauce pusher, and creating hot sauce addicts -- Uncle Brutha addicts. And we even said we'd have to get an Uncle Brutha's anonymous going here." Now that his unique business is going so well, Proctor said it's time to shift back to his original goal of expanding his sauce brand beyond the local area. "It's been about a year getting the store together here," he said. "And it's time to shift the focus back to our primary objective, which is to get Uncle Brutha national, on the shelves, in as many stores across the country as we can." Currently, Uncle Brutha's No. 10 and No. 9 are available in Whole Foods Markets and other local retailers in the National Capitol Region, as well as online at Proctor's own Web site and Amazon.com. The sauce has not gone unnoticed in the highly specialized and competitive hot sauce market, either. Both his No. 10 and No. 9 sauce have won multiple awards. "The first award was from a competition sponsored by Chili Pepper Magazine, a national publication," he said. "Then in 2005, we were chosen hot sauce manufacturer of the year by the Cajun Hot Sauce Festival in New Iberia, La." That last award was a real surprise to Proctor. The Cajun Hot Sauce Festival is held nearby to the legendary Louisiana-based hot sauce manufacturer, McIlhenny Co., makers of the Tabasco brand. "It was right in Tabasco's back yard," he said. "I was shocked when I got the news. I was hoping for something. But never expected to be named hot sauce manufacturer of the year." For now, Proctor said he's going to work on pushing his award winning sauce, at both his own store and at others. He's also got plans to expand his own product line. "We got some stuff in the works, including other types of hot sauces and other things we are working on," he said, though wouldn't elaborate. Uncle Brutha's Hot Sauce Emporium is located at 323 7th Street SE, Washington, DC 20003. It can also be reached by Metro, at the Eastern Market Metro station. Bolling Barracudas are gearing up for another summer season [2007-06-07] BOLLING AFB, Washington, D.C. -- The Bolling Barracudas Swim Team is kicking off their 25th summer season this year, and practices and recruitment for the team are under way. Amy Rogers, the team's summer coach, said the Barracudas are looking now for more participants for the team, especially those looking to have fun and meet new friends. "We definitely need more swimmers," Rogers said. "The more people the better. I want to help them kick off their love of swimming. We don't need everybody to be racing in the divisional meets, but just so long as you have people. You can make friends, parents can meet other parents, and you can get the kids out doing something." Dana Rigg, 13 years old, is a member of the Barracudas. She said the camaraderie of the team is one reason she chooses to participate. "I like swimming because it's so much fun, being part of a team and getting to participate with everybody," she said. "At the meets, we go cheer for everybody. Even if you don't make your fastest time, it's still fun being with everybody." Dana also participates in a USA Swim Team, and participates in the Barracudas as a way to keep herself in shape, to work on her technique, and to meet her goals for her own swimming performance. "I'd like to get faster," she said. "Everybody likes to get faster. But mostly, it's just for fun." Dana also said she thinks she could find a future in swimming, beyond the Barracudas. "I think this is probably my sport," she said. "I'd like to go as far as I can." According to Lt. Col. Glenn O. Wright, president of the organization that runs the Barracuda swim team, the organization is really about helping youth learn to be better swimmers, or even helping kids learn to swim in the first place. "The developmental path is, if they never swam before and they can barely tread water, we have them get time with Coach Jamie Hooper. She goes one-on-one with them and gets them to the point where they can swim the length of the pool," he said. "Then they go in as a team and they join the team practice. It's less supervision then." Colonel Wright said that due to the nature of the military, some of the younger kids may never have been taught to swim. "This is a developmental team, made for kids who have never swam before," he said. "For most of these kids, it's their first year to go and swim." For kids that don't know how to swim, participation in the Mini Barracudas will help them accomplish the bare minimum needed to participate in the team. "The minimum requirement for the swim team is they need to be able to swim the length of the pool, with side breathing, and then swim back, without stopping," Coach Hooper said. Once school is out for the summer, the Barracuda swim team will meet six times a week for practices, usually for a little over an hour. Those practices include four morning practices, and two evening practices. Colonel Wright said he asks kids to make at least four of the practices. While in the pool, during either the winter season or the summer season, the Barracudas are guided by trained swimmers, Colonel Wright said. Coach Amy Rogers, the team's summer coach, is a certified Water Safety Instructor. Coach Jamie Hooper, the team's winter coach, is a certified USA Swim Coach. During practices, members are divided into different skill levels. Practice begins with warm up laps, where the most junior members swim about 50 yards in the pool. The more experienced swimmers go about 300 yards. After warm up, the team concentrates on improving their swimming techniques and the kinds of things they might do in a swim meet. "We usually try to incorporate kicking, freestyle and one other stroke," Coach Rogers said. "The kids are very hard workers, very good listeners, and they try their best." During the actual training portion of the swim practice, the most experienced of the swimmers might be asked to swim as many as 2,000 yards. That's 40 laps in the pool, or just over a mile of swimming -- the most advanced swimmers are only 13 years old. "For our best swimmers, that is the highest standard," Coach Rogers said. Outside swimming practice, the team competes in the Prince-Mont Swim League. The league brings together swim teams in Prince George's County, Montgomery County, parts of Washington, D.C., and Charles County, Colonel Wright said. The league is divided into several bands, from A to G, with the A-level swimmers being the best. "The A level is literally the Michael Phelps kind of swimmers," Colonel Wright said. "And it goes down to G. We put ourselves in G. As a developmental team, a lot of our kids are first-year swimmers. It's not all competitive. We are focusing on getting kids so they can swim well." Still, the efforts of kids participating in the Barracudas do not go unnoticed. "At the end of the season, they get medals for certain things," Colonel Wright said. "And at every meet we give out ribbons, it's the same thing as at a track meet." Thomas Berthe, 10 years old, has participated in several swim meets with the Barracudas, and has scored well several times. Last year, he made it to the league divisional. He says winning becomes old hat after a while. "The first time it's like 'oh my God!' But then it's like, OK, I won," he said. "And then the last couple of times, it's like, I got that over with ... move on to the next thing." Thomas and his family will be soon making a permanent change of station to Alabama. He said he hopes to continue with his swimming there. "If the base has a swim team, I'll swim," he said. While the Bolling Barracudas Swim Team does compete, participation is mostly about swimmers competing against themselves, not against others, said Coach Rogers. "At the end of the season, mostly I hope they each improve on their own time, if they couldn't make it the whole way, that they can now make it the whole way," she said. "And basically that they are having fun and they do their personal best." The Bolling Barracudas Swim Team accepts children of all ages and of any skill level. RAF veteran, WWII survivor visit Memorial [2007-06-07] BOLLING AFB, Washington, D.C. -- David Higgins, and wife Paulette Higgins, visited the Air Force Memorial May 31. While viewing the Memorial, the two reflected on their unique experiences with the military and with American Airmen. David, originally from Scotland, served in the British Royal Air Force for about 14 years, beginning in 1951. He began his career at the RAF's technical college, then transferred to his first assignment. It was there he served in a radar unit alongside American Airmen. "I was stationed in Germany, from 1952 to 1955, in a small town called Winterburg," David said. "On the same site, we had four Americans in a small signal unit. We were a radar unit, and the American site was for wireless signal." While the two independent units did work for a common cause, David said it was in the off duty time where they were able to meet up, swap stories and learn about each other. "We'd intermingle ... food and stuff," he said. "And their rations were different than our rations, so we'd switch and get something different." After Germany, David went to Singapore. While there, he participated in operations to support the defense of British possessions in Borneo from being taken by then Indonesian President Sukarno. After service in the Royal Air Force, David emigrated to Canada and became a citizen there. It was in Canada that he met his wife Paulette, in Montreal. Later, work with a Canadian company brought him to the United States. The two have lived in the Washington, D.C., area for about 18 years now. While David was originally from Scotland, Paulette came from France. During World War II, she and her family lived in Normandy, about 12 miles from some of the shoreline where Allies invaded to reclaim German occupied France on June 6, 1944. Paulette said she and her family had hidden themselves during that invasion. "My father built a hole with my brothers -- because they knew something was happening," she said. "We went under on the fourth of June. Early in the morning we went down in the hole and we stayed there until the first American came through." She said the first American they saw was an African-American soldier. Paulette said in her small village, her family had never before seen a black man. "He came with his rifle, and bayonet at the end of his rifle and a hand grenade," she said. "He took the blanket from the hole, and asked my parents if we were hiding Germans. And my parents said no. I remember he gave us the Lifesaver candy, and I always remember this candy." Paulette said after her family escaped from their hand-dug bunker, they returned to their farm. It was there they met an American Airman. "The first plane that crashed over the farm, the pilot was very badly injured," Paulette said. "So my mother took a sheet and put (it) around his arm." At that time, Paulette said, her family had possessed very little to offer. The family barely had food. The Germans, during their occupation, had taken everything from them. But the American Airman, she said, repaid their favor. "He said to my mother, I want to give you that parachute, for your daughters," she said. "And my mom, since we had nothing left -- everything was taken away -- my mother had three dresses made, because we had three girls. For our first communion, my mother had three dresses made out of the parachute." While visiting the Memorial, David and Paulette brought along Paulette's sister, Marie Renouf. David said the three had made a tour of many of the memorials in the District, including the World War II Memorial and the Roosevelt Memorial. The Air Force Memorial, he said, is overwhelming. "I think this is just fantastic," he said. "It makes me dizzy just looking at it. It is amazing. I think all the memorials are." Army vet, wife, visit Air Force Memorial [2007-06-14] ARLINGTON, Va. -- Vic Kassing is a veteran of the Korean War. He joined the Army in 1953 because he felt he owed something to his country. "When I got out of high school I had a job but I also felt I had an obligation to my country," he said. "So I volunteered for the draft. I wanted to help my country, I wanted to go -- and I did." His girlfriend at the time, and now wife, Mary Kassing, said she agreed it was something Vic had to do. "We had talked about him volunteering," she said. "A lot of our friends were going too. So at that time, when you are young, that seems all right to do." At 20 years old, Kassing shipped off to Army basic training at Fort Bliss, Texas, and was trained afterward as a radar operator. His first and only assignment was to the 97th Anti Aircraft Artillery Battalion in Tachikowa, Japan. "Mine was a critical military operational specialty at the time," Kassing said. "Our position was -- my position -- was to be a radar operator to synchronize the big anti-aircraft guns to let them know where the enemy was at in the air. They were in Japan, but we were getting enemy planes there." Kassing said he had been lucky during his stint in the military because he didn't go to Korea. Some of his friends from basic training did, however. But to his knowledge, all of those made it back home in one piece. "They were extremely lucky," he said. Following the war, Kassing returned to the United States and picked up right where he'd left off. "I had my orders to come home, as the war was over," he said. "I went back to my old job, and got married two weeks later. I worked for a guy that owned a lumber company until 1972, and then bought the place. I've owned it ever since." Kassing said he still works at the lumber company he owns, but now his three sons run the business. Vic and Mary are both from Mt. Sterling, Ill., and have lived there nearly their entire lives. The two visited the Air Force Memorial June 7. It was their first trip to Washington, D.C., though Mary said they came mainly to see the Korean War Memorial. "It's very touching to see the expression of those faces as they are on patrol," she said. "It brought a tear to my eye." But Vic said seeing the Air Force Memorial was inescapable. "This memorial is something," he said. "We've been here a couple days now. We've driven by a half dozen times, and I couldn't wait to get up here to see it and get pictures." 11th CES: Privatization is about choice for Airmen [2007-06-14] BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. -- The housing privatization effort at Bolling Air Force Base is, in part, about saving the Air Force money by transferring responsibility for maintaining homes to a private developer. But the privatization deal is also about giving Airman choices in family housing. "When an Airman considers housing for his family, maybe location is more important than size," said 11th Civil Engineer Squadron commander, Lt. Col. Thomas Carroll. "Or maybe size is more important than location -- we do have a lot of folks that choose to live way out in Manassas, for instance. But if an Airman is satisfied with a space on base, and they like the neighborhood, they can choose that. The whole point of privatization is that the Air Force has adopted this policy of free choice." As part of that policy of choice, all Airmen at Bolling, except those required to live in the dormitories, will receive a basic allowance for housing. With that money, they can choose to rent housing that is available on the installation, or they can choose to take their BAH and rent housing off base, Colonel Carroll said. Airmen who choose housing on base will pay most of their BAH to the privatization developer in the form of rent. Rent for the housing unit a member lives in will equal their authorized BAH, minus 110 percent of the average utility rate for their style of housing unit. That remaining portion of an Airman's BAH is meant to be paid to utility companies. In all, Colonel Carroll said, under privatization, an Airman can expect to see zero net change in their income. Privatization means the Air Force allows private developers to take ownership of military family housing. While the Air Force will still own the land under those homes, the private developers will own the housing units. By transferring ownership to a private developer, the Air Force is no longer responsible for maintaining homes or keeping them up to standards. Instead, the developer takes on those responsibilities. Because developers enter into 50-year privatization deals with their own money, the best way for them to recoup their investment is to ensure the homes remain attractive to military families, Colonel Carroll said. "We believe that a well maintained home that is kept to standards and is adequately modernized for today's modern family, translates directly to improved quality of life," Colonel Carroll said. "One of General Moseley's priorities is taking care of Airmen, and quality of life in housing is one way we are properly taking care of our Airmen." Despite the Air Force's best efforts to maintain the high standards it has set for base housing, the service is not in the business of renting and maintaining property -- it is in the business of maintaining, training and equipping an airborne war-fighting force. "We are at the mercy of Congress to determine the quality of our housing, so sometimes houses may not be the quality we want them to be, due to competing priorities," Colonel Carroll said. "But under privatization, it is in the developer's best interest to keep those houses up to standards and attractive to renters, so they can keep them occupied and keep their income stream intact. So we believe private developers can and will do a better job of ensuring base housing meets our high standards." Colonel Carroll also pointed out that most civilian housing developers don't have government oversight, but the developers who will manage housing at Bolling will. If the developer fails to maintain houses at Bolling to Air Force standards, they will be in breech of their contract. "We are not going to let them turn this into a slum," Colonel Carroll said. Today, there are 1,343 existing housing units on Bolling. Of those, 815 will be demolished as part of the privatization deal. The developer will also build 141 new homes. At the completion of the privatization, there will be 669 housing units available for rent. Most of the homes to be demolished are in the Hickham Village and Doolittle Park housing areas, as well as the housing area immediately to the west of Chappie James Boulevard as Airmen enter Bolling through the South Gate. Some of the homes along Westover Avenue will also be demolished, while 24 of the homes there -- designated as part of an historical district -- will be remodeled. In addition to building new housing at Bolling, the developer will also provide a community gathering center and two new outdoor swimming pools. While Bolling will eventually have 669 housing units available on base for rent -- a decision made by the developer to exceed Bolling requirements -- the Air Force actually determined 627 units would meet its needs. Those needs were determined by studying the projected population of Bolling, based on its current and future mission; the current demand for base housing at Bolling; and the availability and attractiveness of housing in the local civilian market. Colonel Carroll said the studies showed that 627 homes would be enough to meet the future housing needs at Bolling. "We have more than 1,300 housing units on this base, and our current housing occupancy rate is at 88 percent occupied, with a near non-existent waiting list," he said. "In the past, we've used all sorts of stop-gap solutions to keep these houses occupied. But what we found was our people started choosing to live off base, and our occupancy rate started to drop. The statistical facts prove we don't need the number of houses we currently have." The market analysis studies used to determine housing needs at Bolling are conducted every three years, Colonel Carroll said. If in the future those studies show more housing is needed, there will be room to build on Bolling. Hickham Village will be the first housing area to be demolished, and Airmen must begin to move out of their homes by September. Airmen living in that housing area -- about 127 families -- were recently surveyed about their intentions once they are forced to leave their homes there. Colonel Carroll said about 98 of those families indicated they would like to stay on base. "I have enough housing on base now to accommodate all of them," he said. "But some will have to move to Doolittle Park, which is also slated for demolition. Depending on how long they are staying at Bolling, they may have to move twice. But we are trying to minimize telling people they have to leave base, if they want to stay." Colonel Carroll said Airmen who are forced to move from their current base housing unit will move at the government's expense, whether they choose to move into another base housing unit, or they choose to move to an off base residence. At a recent town hall meeting, some Bolling residents expressed concern that the privatization deal would allow non-military civilians to move into Bolling base housing. Within the privatization deal, there is a clause, sometimes referred to as a "waterfall," that allows the developer to rent on-base homes to non-Air Force tenants. Before that can happen, however, the housing occupancy rate for the 627 homes the Air Force required under the agreement, must drop below 95 percent for more than a month. That means about 32 homes must sit empty for more than 30 days before the developer can rent to the "second tier" of potential occupants. That "second tier" consists of military families from the Air Force's sister services. But the developer has chosen to provide 42 more homes than the Air Force actually asked for. Because of those additional homes, the vacancy rate required to rent to non-Air Force members actually rises. With 669 homes to be available on base, more than one in 10 must lie vacant before the contractor can rent to anyone besides Air Force families. Other tiers in the "waterfall" clause include military retirees, employees of the Department of Defense, and employees of other federal agencies. Base housing occupancy must fall below specific thresholds before any of those communities can be tapped into as potential renters. Only the last tier of the "waterfall" clause includes the general civilian population. Also during the town hall meeting, some residents expressed concern over rental costs for members living in homes not designated for their pay grade. The Bolling Housing Office attempts to ensure Airmen are moved into homes deemed grade-appropriate. But on occasion, it has been necessary to allow Airmen to move into homes that are not designed for their pay grade, Colonel Carroll said. When base occupancy rates are extremely low, for instance, the Housing Office may offer a junior noncommissioned officer the opportunity to move into a home designed for a senior NCO, as incentive to keep him on base. Likewise, if a senior NCO comes to Bolling and grade-appropriate housing is not available, she may be willing to move her family into a unit designed for a lower pay grade. Despite the occasional situation where an Airman is living in a base housing unit that is not designed for their pay grade, rental costs will not be adjusted to compensate for any perceived housing discrepancies. Rental costs for all Airmen in base housing will be calculated the same way, Colonel Carroll said. "Under the housing privatization deal, rent is equal to BAH, no matter where you live," he said. "The financials of this deal are written to allow a certain degree of flexibility into the system and still have the project be viable." Colonel Carroll pointed out that while housing units at Bolling may be flagged locally for a specific pay grade, the unit may actually exceed the standards the Air Force has set for that pay grade. He said that trend is likely to continue under privatization. Bolling base housing residents will eventually be expected to sign a lease with the developer. Colonel Carroll said that lease signing is likely to happen in August, after the privatization deal is finally closed. He also said members will have "military clauses" in their leases that allows them to end their leases prematurely, and without penalty, in the event of a permanent change of station. Forced moved, he said, would also release members from their housing leases. Air Force Band contender for AFA arts award [2007-06-15] BOLLING AFB, Washington, D.C. -- The Air Force Band is a contender for the Air Force Association's 2007 Gill Robb Wilson Award. Each year, the award is given by the Association to the nominee who made the most outstanding contribution in the field of arts and letters. Past winners of the award have included James Ingo Freed, Victoria Clarke, Charles Krauthammer, Ted Koppel, AIRMAN Magazine and Edward R. Murrow. Chief Master Sgt. Lucille Snell, director of personnel acquisitions for the Air Force Band, said she believes the Band has gone above and beyond others who may have put in for the award. "We've done a ton of stuff, and made some very significant contributions last year that nobody else in the Air Force is making," she said. Some of the Band's contributions in 2006 include participation in the State Funeral for President Gerald Ford. Participation in that event, Chief Snell said, exposed some half a billion people to the Air Force. In the 2006, the Band also developed a new Web site that reached more than 480,000 visitors. The site, among other things, allows visitors to download Air Force music. The chief said last year, some 800,000 music files were downloaded from the Web site by a worldwide audience -- the equivalent to about 80,000 compact discs. The band also participated in more than 800 funerals at Arlington National Cemetery. Chief Snell said she is confident the Air Force Band performed well enough last year to be named recipient of the award. "I don't know who our competition is," she said. "But they are going to have to be good to beat us." AF aviator recounts participation in rescue operation [2007-06-18] ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md. -- On Monday at the base theater, members of the Andrews Air Force Base community were treated to a special screening of the film "Rescue Dawn." The film chronicles the experience of Navy Lt. Dieter Dengler during his escape from a prisoner of war camp during the Vietnam conflict. In the audience was Col. (ret.) Eugene P. Deatrick, who was seeing the film for the first time. Colonel Deatrick was instrumental in the rescue of Lieutenant Dengler. Just a little over 41 years ago, Lieutenant Dengler was a pilot with the Navy's Attack Squadron 145. During a mission, Feb. 1, 1966, the lieutenant's aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire and he crashed into the jungle in Laos. Lieutenant Dengler was subsequently captured by Laotian communists and was kept in a prison camp and tortured for several months. Lieutenant Dengler and fellow prisoners eventually broke free from the camp and escaped into the surrounding jungle. While on the bank of a stream, Lieutenant Dengler made efforts to make himself visible to friendly air forces that might fly overhead. At the time, then Lieutenant Colonel Deatrick, an A-1E Skyraider pilot, was participating in a bombing mission that would take him to the north Vietnamese border, near Laos. It was during this run, Colonel Deatrick said, that he spotted something unusual. "As I went by, there was a big rock that came about three quarters of the way across the stream and there was a native down there waving a white banner at me, and I just happened to catch his eye," he said. "I've long said I'll never know what made me go back, because natives normally aren't waving at airplanes going over with a load of bombs on them. And I came back and he was still there. So I called my wingman and I asked him to take a look. He said it looked like he has an SOS written on the rock." During the Vietnam conflict, the Air Force routinely dropped flares over potential bombing targets. Each of the flares, capable of lighting up the night sky to allow bombers to see their targets, was suspended from a parachute. After the flares were spent, the flare canister and parachute were left on the jungle floor. "What Dieter had done, after he escaped, was he'd been picking up parachute flares that we used for night bombing," Colonel Deatrick said. "He had a whole bunch of them with him. So he wrote as well as he could this SOS on the rock, using the parachutes." Colonel Deatrick and his wingman contacted their headquarters to ask if they knew of anybody that had been shot down in the area, but learned there was no intelligence that indicated that. "After a lot of thought, we finally got permission to see if we could go in and pick him up, mainly because he had an SOS," he said. "We got a Jolly Green Giant (HH-3E helicopter) and I escorted him in and he dropped his penetrator, and the guy got aboard. And I was sweating it out because I thought if he gets aboard and the thing blows up -- well, we didn't know who he was. They got him aboard and I asked if they knew who he was, They told me that he claimed to be a Navy pilot who had been shot down six months before." Later, back at Da Nang Air Base, Colonel Deatrick saw that the rescue helicopter had landed and an ambulance was there to take care of Lieutenant Dengler. But Colonel Deatrick didn't get to meet the man he had spotted on the riverbank. "They kept it quiet for three months because they didn't want anybody to know that six of them had gotten out of the camp," Colonel Deatrick said. It wasn't until the following year that Colonel Deatrick got to visit with Lieutenant Dengler. "They took him to (Naval Air Station North Island, Calif.)," he said. "I found out where he was and wrote him a letter. My wife, Zane Deatrick, actually met him first. His mother was flown over from Germany. And Zane was there when she landed. I met Dieter when I came home in February 1967." Though Colonel Deatrick played a key role in the rescue of Lieutenant Dengler, he claims the rescue was more the will of the divine than an effort on his own part. "I'd like to say finding him was due to outstanding airmanship, but God intervened in this one and (Dengler) was just fortunate," Colonel Deatrick said. "And whatever this film is, it is a dedication to what Dieter did. He was a very unique and a very unusual gentleman." Colonel Deatrick spent much of his Air Force career as a test pilot, and retired from the service in 1974. He said he spent his time after his military service as a consultant. Lieutenant Dengler was born in Germany, in 1938. He came to New York City, at 18, with the hope of becoming a pilot. He first joined the Air Force, and later, after college and attaining his American citizenship, he joined the Navy as a pilot. Lieutenant Dengler died of Lou Gehrig's Disease in 2001; he is buried now in Arlington National Cemetery. The film, "Rescue Dawn," starring Christian Bale and Steve Zahn, is scheduled to open July 4. Tax season volunteers honored for efforts [2007-06-22] ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md. -- Members of the Andrews community gathered June 15 at the Andrews Wing Rotunda, to honor those who helped Airmen prepare for the 2006 income tax filing date as part of the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program. Some 64 Airmen and Sailors from the Andrews community helped Airmen file more than 700 federal and nearly 500 state income tax forms during this filing season. Altogether, Airmen received $1,414,892 dollars in both federal and state tax returns as a result of efforts by VITA volunteers. Mel Harding, of the Internal Revenue Service, said the work the volunteers did for their fellow servicemembers was honorable. "Today we take time to acknowledge the service provided this tax season by the VITA representative at Andrews," he said. "These gallant individuals sacrificed their time and talents to assist their fellow service men and women in preparing free tax returns. (Their) extraordinary contribution made this filing season a success by helping to deliver quality service to (their) fellow service members." Tech. Sgt. Kathryn R. Jensen, 1st Helicopter Squadron, Life Support technician, was one of the volunteers for the VITA program. She said this year, changes in the software for filing taxes allowed her to be more flexible as a volunteer. "This year the tax program software was much more mobile because it could be accessed from any computer with a web connection," she said. "I tried to make use of that mobility. I developed a sort of 'tax center on the go.' Customers made appointments with me to do taxes where they worked, lived, or felt like meeting and at a time that was convenient to both of us. This enabled me to fit a few people in here and there when my schedule was tight or even work in the evening when the legal office was closed." Sergeant Jenson said her system was especially helpful for Airmen with children. "By scheduling an appointment with me, they were saved from sitting in the waiting area right through the kids' nap or snack times, which is hard on everyone," she said. All 64 volunteers received certificates that documented their contributions to the 2006 tax filing season. A dozen of those volunteers were also presented additional recognition for going above and beyond what was required of them. BBQ shack serves Team Andrews for nearly 20 years [2007-07-06] ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md. -- A tiny little dining establishment on the east side of Andrews has been serving up homemade barbecue for nearly 20 years now. But the place, Loretta's Barbecue, is easily missed. It looks as if a trailer had partially melted into the ground and reinforced with paint, a wooden overhang and a walk-in cooler. But what Loretta's lacks in style, it makes up in taste. The most popular dish there, the pulled pork sandwich, regularly has customers lined up to the curb. The popularity of the food is renowned, claims the proprietor, Loretta Windsor. Pilots and aircrews from around the country come into Andrews and send runners to her barbecue shack to pick up their fix. "When they fly in, they show up here and say 'we just flew in from California and we heard about your barbeque,'" she said. "And once a month, a guy comes in from Arkansas, he flies up here and gets a pound. When folks land here, they come over and bring a crowd with them." Loretta's was originally called "Denny's Real Pit BBQ." It opened on base in 1989, under a contract with the 316th Services Squadron. "Denny and a friend started out with a 'roach coach' here," she said. "It originally started with just that, a little trailer, and two people were working it. From there, Denny built on." Improvements to the place amounted to a small addition to the side of an existing trailer, a walk-in meat cooler, a wooden overhang and some picnic tables. Recently, Ms. Windsor took over the place from Denny and changed the name to match her own. She'd been working for Denny since 1991, just two years after he opened shop. She said she took over the business because she had enjoyed serving the Andrews community for so long. "Well, I loved what I was doing, so I wanted to stay," she said. "I'm a people person and I love the customers." The change in name hasn't changed the quality of the barbecue, however. After nearly 16 years of making lunch for the Andrews community, Ms. Windsor is well versed in how to prepare the meat and how to make the sauce. "Denny showed me before he left," she said of the recipe for the homemade barbecue sauce they use. "People want to know, but it's always been tradition that Denny said not to tell it. We don't disclose our sauce." The menu at Loretta's includes pulled pork, chicken, sweet tea, baked beans, coleslaw, macaroni salad and chips. And the prices aren't bad. A lunchtime customer can get barbecued chicken -- two legs and two thighs -- for only $3.25. The lunch menu also includes a pork barbecue sandwich, chips and a drink for only $5 dollars -- it's one of the most popular orders, Ms. Windsor said. Senior Airman Patrick Stout, a reservist called to Active Duty, works in the ramp section of the 69th Aerial Port Squadron. He said when he first showed up at Andrews he'd been unaware there was a barbecue place on base. A friend told him about it. "I didn't know this was here," he said. "I had a friend that asked if I wanted to go to the barbeque shack, and I figured it was some place off base." Airman Stout said he's recently become a regular at Loretta's. "I've eaten four times here this week," he said. "Most of the time I get the minced pork sandwich and the macaroni salad. I've had the same thing four days in a row now." Despite the repetition, he was ready for something different after having been deployed. "I've been in Germany, so I've had schnitzel and Taco Bell and McDonald's, and I got tired of all that stuff," he said. "So it's a nice change, and they make great food here." Loretta's Barbecue is under contract with the 316 SVS to provide food services to Team Andrews. Ms. Windsor said money from the business goes to support youth programs on base. Loretta's will undergo some upgrades this summer. Those changes include new paint, new tables and some flowers. But Ms. Windsor said the changes won't be too drastic because she knows the look of the place is part of its charm. "You don't want to change it too much," she said. Loretta's Barbecue is on the east side of Andrews, where East Perimeter Road meets Fetchet Avenue. Loretta's is open from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., and serves breakfast until 9 a.m. Walter Reed Commander Promoted to Surgeon General [2007-12-12] WASHINGTON -- Both officers and enlisted from the Army's Washington-area medical community gathered Tuesday at the Pentagon for the promotion ceremony of Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, who assumed the position of surgeon general of the Army at the same time. Lt. Gen. Schoomaker will assume command of the U.S. Army Medical Command during a ceremony Thursday in San Antonio, Texas. He will be dual-hatted as both surgeon general of the Army and commander of the U.S. Army Medical Command. Earlier Tuesday, the general relinquished command of the North Atlantic Regional Medical Command and Walter Reed Army Medical Center to Maj. Gen. Carla Hawley-Bowland. Before the promotion ceremony, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. commented on Lt. Gen. Schoomaker's career, his most recent assignment as commander of both NARMC and WRAMC and his role in improving the image of Army medicine. "General Schoomaker has been not only a participant, but a leader, in helping the Army correct the perception that we don't care about our wounded Soldiers," Gen. Casey said. "I rode up on a bus with a group of wounded Soldiers to the Army-Navy game and everyone on that bus said they had seen significant improvements in what is going on at Walter Reed over the time that he's been there. General Schoomaker is a man of competent clarity and experience, but most importantly, leadership." Lt. Gen. Schoomaker told attendees of the ceremony, including his brother, former Chief of Staff of the Army retired Gen. Peter J. Shoomaker, that he was honored to have been promoted and chosen as the 42nd Army Surgeon General. "I am deeply humbled and profoundly grateful to be honored with the privilege to serve as your surgeon general and to serve as your advocate for the health and the wellbeing of our Soldiers and their Families," he said. "I will work to protect them from disease and illness and to restore them to health when misfortune or violence, wrought by the enemies of this nation, does them harm. I will be tireless in my efforts to allow them to live long and stay young in mind, body and spirit." General Schoomaker received Senate confirmation to be the 42nd Army Surgeon General Nov. 1. Army Creates New Branch for Logistics Officers [2007-12-14] WASHINGTON -- The Army plans to develop a new corps of multifunctional logisticians with creation of the new logistics branch. Today, captains from transportation, quartermaster and ordnance branches must complete the Combined Logistics Captains Career Course or the Reserve-Component Captains Career Course. Beginning Jan. 1, all officers completing that coursework will gain a new primary military operational specialty, 90A, that indicates their competence in all three logistics areas, said Maj. Gen. Mitchell H. Stevenson, commanding general of the United States Army Combined Arms Support Command. "In the 21st century, we need logistics officers who are multifunctional -- officers not just focused on particular fields in logistics, but who are competent in all those fields," he said. By joining the officers of the three logistics regiments into one branch, officers will expand and broaden their abilities to meet the needs of the modular Army, Maj. Gen. Stevenson said. "No longer is it enough to be skilled in one particular area," he said. "We have got to be good across the board. And the more senior you get, the more we are going to focus you on enterprise organizations -- where you are thinking not in terms of what is going on in your particular area or operation, but knowing how the entire supply chain works. You'll need to understand the effects of one part of the chain on another part of the chain." Maj. Gen. Stevenson said what the Army is doing with logistics officers is similar to what private industry is doing with its own supply-chain managers. "The commercial industry is now hiring and training supply-chain managers," he said. "And our logisticians also need to be supply-chain managers. They must understand things like distribution centers, such as what the Defense Logistics Agency runs for all the services, and how they impact our ability to support operations in the middle of Northern Iraq." The Army has chosen to begin development of officers into multifunction logisticians at the grade of captain. Maj. Gen. Stevenson said the decision was made to start multifunctional training at the grade of captain because it is at that level where officers become exposed to units that require them to be much more diverse in their capabilities. "What we find is that by the time you make full colonel, about 75 percent of the positions in the Army call for multifunctional expertise," he said. "At the grade of captain, that number is already at about 50 percent." Maj. Gen. Stevenson said captains from all components of the Army, including the Army National Guard and Army Reserve, will be affected by the creation of the Logistics Branch and the development of multifunction logistics officers. "From the beginning, we knew that whatever we did, we wanted to ensure it applied across the board, because we have one total Army," he said. "Given the way we use the reserve components these days, and plan to into the future, it is important that all officers are trained and developed the same." Currently, there are three Army logistics schools: the Quartermaster School at Fort Lee, Va.; the Transportation School at Fort Eustis, Va. and the Ordnance School at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md. As part of a directive from the Base Realignment and Closure Commission, all three schools must be consolidated at Fort Lee by 2011. Training for officers in the Logistics Branch will occur there. While the Army will create the new logistics branch to merge officers in the three existing logistics branches -- transportation, quartermaster and ordnance -- those branches will not be eliminated. The Army will still have those career fields for our enlisted Soldiers and Warrant Officers. Additionally, lieutenants may continue to enter the Army in one of those three branches. Evacuated Soldiers Now Get Immediate Combat Injury Pay [2007-12-17] WASHINGTON -- When Soldiers are evacuated from a combat zone due to a combat-related injury, they no longer need to wait 30 days to begin receiving their Combat-Related Injury Rehabilitation Pay. Now, CIP kicks in immediately, ensuring troops continue to receive an additional $430 dollars a month, even while they are recovering in a military hospital. The change is more in line with what Congress envisioned when the program was created, said Craig Taylor, Combat Injury Pay program coordinator. "This will alleviate the hardship of the stopping of the hostile combat pay when a Soldier is medically evacuated from the theater of operation," Mr. Taylor said. "Soldiers medically evacuated out of theater up until now had to wait one to two months to see the CIP in their pay, and that is counter to what the Congress intended for the program." Military members may be entitled to receive special benefits such as hostile fire pay, hazardous duty pay and imminent danger pay while deployed to places such as Iraq or Afghanistan. That pay can add up to $430 dollars a month. Military Families often plan their finances around that special pay continuing for the duration of a deployment. But when a military member is forced to leave the combat zone for medical reasons, that pay stops. The CIP is meant to alleviate the hardship caused by that unexpected loss of income. Active-duty Soldiers who receive CIP will see this benefit annotated on their Leave and Earnings Statement as "Fly Deck Pay." National Guard and Reserve personnel will see it annotated as, "Other Credits," with an explanation in the remarks section. Soldiers who believe they may be eligible to receive CIP should contact their Warrior Transition Unit chain of command, local Wounded in Action DFAS representative, or call 1-800-237-1336. Army to Get More Stryker NBC Recon Vehicles [2007-12-20] WASHINGTON -- The Army now has authorization to purchase 95 more Stryker nuclear, biological and chemical reconnaissance vehicles, in addition to 10 already in Iraq and several others used for testing and training. During a press conference Dec. 19 at the Pentagon, Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Spoehr, chief, U.S. Army Chemical Corps, said existing NBCRVs have proven important for Army commanders in the field and that the Army requested and received approval to purchase more of them. "The Stryker NBCRV represents a powerful tool for commanders to protect U.S. interests from weapons of mass destruction," Brig. Gen. Spoehr said. "And this month, after careful consideration, the Department of Defense gave the authorization for 95 more Stryker NBCRVs." For now, the NBCRV is in low-rate initial production, but the Army eventually hopes to have as many as 355 NBCRVs. The Stryker NBCRV is an NBC testing lab on wheels. It is intended as a replacement for the Fox NBC Reconnaissance System and demonstrates improvement in several key areas over the Fox. It also provides improved communication to ground commanders, said Brig. Gen. Spoehr. "The Stryker NBCRV represents a vast increase in capability over its predecessor, the Fox, in terms of biological sensing, accuracy, speed, lethality, survivability and digital communications -- it is a true leap ahead," he said. "The Stryker NBCRV gives combatant commanders an unmatched capability to sense, mark and warn U.S. forces about weapons of mass destruction threats in near real time." The NBCRV, as a moving NBC sensor, provides to ground commanders information about where it is safe to move their Soldiers. The vehicle could be used, for instance, to determine the safest route for troop movement or for supplies. Spc. Christopher A. Case, a chemical operations specialist with the 23rd Chemical Battalion, Fort Lewis, Wash., was on hand at the Pentagon to discuss the capabilities of the NBCRV and to enlighten civilian press about the features of the vehicle. He says he believes the Army was right to ask for more NBCRVs. "This is a good vehicle, with a lot of sensors and a lot of capability," he said. "It can run in multiple situations and purposes. For example, one of the better capabilities it has over the Fox is the weapons system. Instead of being mounted and outside of the vehicle, you have a remote weapon system. You sit inside the vehicle with a joystick and aim a .50 cal machinegun. At the same time, you remain protected inside a pressurized compartment even if there is a chemical environment on the outside." The NBCRV features a suite of nuclear, chemical and biological sensors that enable it to test for a wide range of contaminants that could prove hazardous for ground troops. One such feature is a set of two tiny rubber wheels on robotic arms that roll along the ground behind the vehicle. As the NBCRV moves, the wheels automatically lift up off the ground and transfer to an external sensor any dust they have accumulated. In turn, the sensor determines if that dust contains any potential contaminates. The effect of such a sensor is that the vehicle doesn't have to stop moving to do spot checks along a route. "While we are rolling down the route, the wheels come up to the probe, then it gets vaporized and put into a sensor," Spc. Case said. "So instead of having to stop each time, we can keep rolling until we get a hit." Another feature of the NBCRV is its automated connection to a larger communications grid. That connection makes the vehicle a moving, net-centric warfare enabled sensor that can clear routes for ground troops or alert commanders to places where they shouldn't send their Soldiers without appropriate protection. "When this thing runs into a contaminate, it plugs that information into a preformatted message without anybody even touching it," Brig. Gen. Spoehr said. "It includes weather data, the time and the location in that message. The vehicle commander simply needs to press a button and that information is out there on the grid for everybody else to see. All you have to do is push one button and a ground or operation commander's situational awareness will be populated with knowledge of that hazardous material." Being able to put that kind of information on tap for commanders is what makes the NBCRV a key component in ensuring Soldiers remain safe and effective while executing their mission, General Spoehr said. Pop Artist Sends 'Gift of Music' to Troops [2007-12-21] WASHINGTON -- In keeping with the holiday season, musician John Ondrasik sends the gift of music to Soldiers overseas and stateside. The album "For the Troops," released Nov. 27, is a compilation that features music from such acts as Billy Joel, Brooks & Dunn, Los Lonely Boys, Goo Goo Dolls, Jewel and Sarah McLachlan, as well as Mr. Ondrasik's own "Five for Fighting." About 200,000 copies of the album were put on compact disc -- many given directly to service members during United Service Organization tours featuring Mr. Ondrasik. But the music from the album is also available for download on the Army Air Force Exchange Service website at www.aafes.com. The music is free for service members. Mr. Ondrasik said he was inspired to put the album together for service members after having been asked to participate in something similar by other musicians. "I was actually asked to write a forward to and contribute a song to a group of local musicians who were sending music to people in Afghanistan and Iraq," he said. "I thought, what a great idea; so I got out my Rolodex and called a few friends in the music industry. Six months later, here we are with the CD." While Mr. Ondrasik said he personally has no connection to the military, he is grateful for the freedoms uniformed members of the military protect. "As a songwriter, I make my living on freedom of speech," he said. "The troops ensure that freedom for me, and for my kids. So I do have an appreciation for freedoms and liberty as a songwriter." Mr. Ondrasik has performed for military members in such places as Japan and Guam, as well as locations stateside. The location that had the most impact on him, however, was Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba -- also known as "Gitmo." "Gitmo was an education for me, to look through the fence and see the Cuban guards, to see dirt not free, to have beers with the guards who guard the detainees and to sing on Cuban shores 100 yards from Camp Delta," he said. "All that stuff brings reality to your face." Following USO shows, Mr. Ondrasik hands out the compilation CD to concertgoers. He says military members are always impressed with the array of music on the album. "Their first response is are they really the real singers," he said. "They can't believe it's the real artists. But look at artists we have. These are some of most popular artists, with the biggest hits, to be given for free as a thank you to the military, and the troops love it. Their families love it. Music has the power to be a powerful force for morale and mental health, and it's exciting to see their reaction." While military members may be impressed with the collection of songs on "For the Troops," Mr. Ondrasik himself remains impressed with what Soldiers, Airmen, Sailors and Marines do for a living. "What astounds me is they are humble," he said. "They think they are just doing their job. But that's a job few of us civilians could do. To say they are doing an amazing job is understatement." Doggone cute [2008-01-01] WASHINGTON -- The cat's out of the bag: winners of the Office of the Inspector General's contest to find the cutest pet include Triumph, a long-haired mini-dachsund, owned by Maj. William Flynn, Office for Congressional and Public Affairs; and Spike, an Abyssinian cat, owned by LaAnna Mraz and Jerry Mraz, Directorate for Human Intelligence. As part of a Combined Federal Campaign fundraising effort, members of the IG, led by staff director Theresa Romano, hosted a contest that allowed pets owned by DIA employees to compete for the title of "Cutest Pet." About 125 employees entered their cats and dogs in the contest. Photos of those pets were posted in the DIAC lobby where nearly 1,200 DIA employees voted for their favorites. So many votes were cast, and the votes were close, Romano said, it was decided to award first, second and third place prizes in each category. All the winners received gift cards to a local pet supply store. A dog trainer outside of DIA, Romano originated the idea for the contest as a fundraiser for CFC. "As a dog trainer, I know people who own pets are rabid about them," she said. "And they are also generous. I didn't know what to expect, but I was amazed that people were as generous as they were, even those that didn't have a dog in the race. The contest was amazingly successful." Those who entered pets in the contest, and those that voted, were asked to make donations to the IG's contribution to CFC. Overall, the event raised about $2,300 -- 100 percent of which was donated to the campaign as general CFC funds. Deadline for Freedom Award Nominations Approaching [2008-01-09] WASHINGTON -- The deadline for servicemembers in the National Guard and Reserve to nominate their employers for the 2008 Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award is fast approaching. The nomination deadline for that award is Jan. 21. The Employer Support Freedom Award is designed to serve as recognition of the support civilian employers give to reserve-component servicemembers. Some civilian employers, for instance, might continue to provide a certain amount of pay to servicemembers, even when they have deployed. That compensation fills the income gap sometimes created when servicemembers switch from working for their civilian companies to working for the military because of a deployment. But Air National Guard Lt. Col. Michelle Barrett, spokesperson for the ESRG, said the award is not just about money. "This is about the things that make the most impact," she said. "It's the care packages, the coworkers that step up and help a family left behind, the fence that gets fixed while a Soldier, Sailor, Airman, Marine or Coast Guardsman is deployed. Those are some of the things the selection committee looks at." The nomination form asks servicemembers to rate their employers' performance in areas such as pay policies, benefits and leave policies, family support, deployed member support and hiring preferences. Lt. Col. Barrett said reserve-component servicemembers should take the time to nominate deserving civilian employers because sometimes those employers are unaware if their personnel policies regarding military members are having any effect on their employees. "I think the biggest thing is that this lets employers know that what they do for Guard and Reserve employees is being recognized," she said. "There are a lot of good stories out there and we need to hear them and we need servicemembers to tell them." Recipients of the Employer Support Freedom Award will attend a ceremony Sept. 18 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C. As part of their visit to the Nation's capital, employers will also visit with President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. "For employers, this is a big deal," Lt. Col. Barrett said. "This event gets a lot of media coverage, and the dinner is attended by members of Congress, members of the Senate, and senior military members. But this is also a chance for leaders of the winning companies to meet some of the people that work for them -- people they might never have met before -- especially in the bigger companies." Servicemembers in the reserve components can nominate their civilian employers at the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve Web site at www.esgr.mil. Active First Program Helping Army Meet Recruiting Goals [2008-01-11] WASHINGTON -- During a press conference Thursday at the Pentagon, the Army's senior leader said the National Guard's "Active First" program has contributed to the Army staying on-target to reach recruitment goals. "Last month we announced our plans to accelerate end-strength growth to achieve our 74,000 increase by 2010," said Secretary of the Army Pete Geren. "We're on track to meet that goal. And if trends continue, we will exceed it. Active First deserves growing credit for helping us meet that goal." More than 500 recruits have enlisted under Active First since the pilot initiative began Oct. 1. Under the program, young men and women are recruited by the National Guard to complete a term of service in both the Active and National Guard components of the Army. Those recruits are paid bonuses based on the duration of the active service commitment they choose to accept. Secretary Geren has set a goal of 1,600 enlistments for the program in Fiscal 2008. Lt. Gen. Clyde A. Vaughn, director of the Army National Guard, said he believes the service will have no trouble meeting that goal because of the trust the American public has in the National Guard and because of the care the Army provides to its Soldiers. "The Secretary has tasked us with a goal of 1,600 and that is not going to be hard," he said. "It's about trust, it's about reaching out with that big force that we have got out there with recruiters and recruiting the home team. The big thing about the National Guard, the big thing about the Army, is we want to take youngsters and put them up on that first step and help them all the way through. That's where you get the private, personal mentorship and the care to make sure that you graduate and come out the other end." Four Soldiers who enlisted under the Active First program attended the press conference. Those Soldiers include Pvt. Michael Raleigh Fehl, of Porter, Minn.; Pvt. Damien L. Jones, of Jennings, Mo.; Pfc. Matt Millen, of Overland Park, Kan.; and Pvt. Jonathan Wight, of Lavonia, Ga. Secretary Geren said those Soldiers represent both the relationship between the National Guard and the Army; and what the National Guard is capable of doing with its strong community ties. "These recruits exemplify the best of Active First -- they are the people behind the numbers," he said. "Active First is a great partnership; it shows we are one Army -- the National Guard and Active components working together. The National Guard is helping recruit people to help grow the all-volunteer force. It has its own contacts in the community all over America, and it is these contacts, and the trust the communities of America have in the National Guard, that has enabled this program to get off the ground with such great strength. This partnership is bearing great fruit for our total Army." A career path for a Soldier under the Active First program might begin with six months in a National Guard unit in his or her hometown. The Soldier would then enter basic training followed by 30, 36, or 48 months of active duty. At the completion of active-duty service, Soldiers return to their National Guard unit and serve one weekend per month and two weeks a year until they complete a total of eight years of military service. Depending on their choice of active-duty service time, a Soldier could receive bonuses totaling as much as $60,000. In November, Pvt. Wight enlisted under the Active First program. He chose a 36-month tour in the active Army and will train as a military policeman. He said one of the reasons he chose to enlist is the opportunity it affords him to serve his country. But he also said the Army was simply the best deal of the options he explored. "After I checked out the real world, the Army was number one on my list," he said. "There are so many things the Army is doing as far as bonuses, training and equipment. I mean, it's a hundred billion things." Another benefit Wight focused on while making his decision to enlist was the support both the Army and the National Guard would provide to his growing family. He and his wife Jessica raise their daughter together and have another child on the way. "The Army is going to take care of me and them as well," he said. "It means a better lifestyle for our family." Wight also said he knows his service in the Army will provide benefits for him even after he takes off the uniform for the last time. "I chose the military police, and they will give me the best training possible," he said. "After that, if I decide to get out, I can put my resume in anywhere and go from there. That was one of the number one things. Plus, you just can't find everything the Army offers anywhere else -- I wouldn't trade it for the world." Pvt. Fehl ships out for Army basic training Jan. 30. He chose the 30-month option for active service and will train to work in field artillery. While impressed with the opportunities the Army offered him, he said family history had a lot to do with his decision to enlist. "My grandpa served in World War II," he said. "Before that, his dad was in. And my dad was in too. We just have a lot of history in the Army. I just kind of want to make my family proud and to follow in the footsteps of everybody else." Another opportunity influencing Fehl's decision to enlist was the chance to leave his hometown of Porter, Minn., with a population of only 300 and a scarcity of good job opportunities. "I mean, I kind of wanted the experience -- to go out, to get out of a smaller town like Porter -- it's 300 people, you know? There's not too many jobs a guy can get around there," he said. "I wanted to join the military, and I got out of my town. I got the best of both worlds." Sgt. Jared Golde,.Fehl's recruiter, said stories like Fehl's are common. "When you are in a small town, like up in Porter, there really are no active-duty installations around," he said. "So the National Guard is kind of the primary military that is visible. Then you get families like Mike's. They have multiple generations of active service and they want their son to be part of that family history." The Active First program, Sgt. Golde said, has helped him as a recruiter because it allows him to offer something other services cannot. "Some of the active-duty service commitment the program offers -- 30 or 36 months, for instance -- are less than what the active duty side can offer," he said. "They can serve for only two and half years and then get to come back home -- that's usually not an option for most branches. And not only do they get exceptional training as a result of their service, but they also receive a large bonus." The Active First program is available to service-eligible men and women in all 54 states and territories. All Soldiers who enlisted under the Active First program may choose, at the end of their active-duty service commitment, to re-enlist in the active component or to continue service in the National Guard. The Army estimates about 30 percent of Soldiers enlisted under the program will choose to remain on active duty. Soldiers enlisting in the program may choose from more than 50 different military occupational specialties, ranging from infantrymen to administrative positions. In January 2007, President George W. Bush approved Army plans to increase its end strength by more than 74,000 Soldiers. The Army initially planned to spread that increase out over five years and to meet it's goal by 2012. In October, the Army announced it had changed the target date to 2010. The Army plans to meet that goal with increased retention efforts and recruitment programs such as Active First. Vice Chief Credits Training for Aviation Record [2008-01-14] WASHINGTON -- The Army's vice chief of staff said the Army's aviation safety record in 2 million flight hours supporting the war on terror over the last six years can be attributed to good training. During the closing address at the Association of the U.S. Army's aviation symposium Jan. 11, Gen. Richard A. Cody said, "When I count the number of maintenance-related accidents we've had in Iraq and Afghanistan -- only two that have caused class A mishaps -- I think of the training we have down at Fort Eustis, the training we have down at Fort Rucker and the investment we have made in the NCOs of aviation. It tells me we have got great people watching over our young mechanics who work 24 hours a day sometimes, to keep this type of operations tempo up." The general also credited quality training for the Army aviation community's ability to sustain its operations tempo in Iraq and Afghanistan. "You can't just rotate formations in and out of combat every 12 months -- 10 active-duty brigades rotating in and out of combat every year, some on 15-month tours -- unless you have great training," he said. Cody also told attendees of the symposium, civilians and military members alike, that he wants to ensure the Army's latest aviation programs -- the UH-60M Black Hawk and the CH-47F Chinook upgrades -- are in the hands of Soldiers soon for use in combat. Features of the UH-60M Black Hawk upgrade include a new digital avionics suite, compatibility with the Army's Future Combat System and improved lift capability. The CH-47F Chinook upgrades bring greater speed, a digital cockpit, and modifications to the airframe to reduce vibrations. "Our challenge is we have to keep moving. We have to keep the (Chinook F Model) program on course, we have to keep the (Black Hawk M Model) program on course," he said. "We want to get both of those aircraft into combat here with the 159th Combat Aviation Brigade replacing the 101st CAB." The general also said he wants to get the ARH-70 program moving so the Army can begin retiring the aging OH-58D Kiowa Warrior, though he did say the upgrades to the OH-58D would continue to keep the aircraft safe until the ARH-70 comes online. The ARH-70A, in development now, includes a modern, common avionics architecture system, digital glass cockpit, full-color multifunction displays, night vision capability and plug-and-play capability for networks or systems of systems. The Army expects to procure more than 500 of the aircraft as a replacement for the Kiowa Warrior. Army Aims to Better Identify Soldiers with Brain Injuries [2008-01-17] WASHINGTON -- The Army released a report Jan. 17 that outlines how the service can better identify and help Soldiers who have suffered traumatic brain injuries. The report contains some 47 recommendations to help the Army better prevent, screen, diagnose, treat and research traumatic brain injury, said Brig. Gen. Donald Bradshaw, who led the task force charged with investigatig TBI. "Our report indicates that, like our civilian counterparts, the Army has done well in the identifying and treatment of severe or penetrating traumatic brain injury, but is challenged to understand, diagnose and treat personnel who have suffered short-term or persistent symptoms of mild TBI," he said. "The task force identified opportunities for improvement as well as best practice guidelines." The general said 80 percent of those who suffer from mild TBI, commonly known as a concussion, recover completely. Some 10 to 20 percent of Soldiers and Marines returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with experience in combat, may have suffered symptoms consistent with mild TBI. Today, eight of the recommendations made by the task force have already been implemented, said Col. Judith Ruiz, Deputy Director Rehabilitation and Reintegration, Office of the Surgeon General. "We have made significant progress to take care of Soldiers and to standardize practices across the Army medical department," she said. Some of the recommendations that have already been implemented include: • Working with inter-agency and civilian groups to better define TBI • Implementing in-theater TBI screening and documentation for all Soldiers exposed to brain injury inducing trauma • Adding TBI specific questions to the various deployment-related health assessments • Developing a proposal on the appropriate functions of a "TBI Center of Excellence" • Proposing the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center as the core of the new center of excellence • Optimizing the positioning of clinical, educational and research activities • Centralizing the evaluation of the scientific merit, clinical utility, and priority of new treatment strategies, devices or interventions • Adapting the Military Acute Concussion Evaluation overprint as an approved Department of the Army form to document mild TBI closest to the point of injury Col. Ruiz said 31 additional recommendations are in progress, four are planned, and four are in the process of being transferred to other agencies. For Soldiers in theater, the most common cause of brain injury is a blast, such as from an improvised explosive device. But sometimes such blasts do not cause visible external injuries. "Brain injury does not have to have outside symptoms, such as bleeding," said Brig. Gen. Bradshaw. "It may, but doesn't have to. That is one of the compounding things -- folks may look totally normal, but be dazed." Because some victims of an IED or other blast do not have external injures, they may feel they have not been injured at all -- even if they did sustain a mild TBI. "It's hard to identify TBI when Soldiers don't come forward and don't identify," said Brig. Gen. Bradshaw. "Some of the actions that have been taken (include) a very big ongoing education process for leaders, Soldiers and family members." The Army launched the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder/Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Chain Teaching program last year to help Soldiers better identify the signs and symptoms of PTSD/MTBI and to reinforce the collective responsibility to take care of each other. The Army is also working to educate the civilian medical community about mild TBI so that the Soldiers in the Reserve components, who may not have full-time access to military medical care, can also be identified, said Col. Jonathan Jaffin, Deputy Commander, U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command. "One of the things we are concerned with, and was one of the points behind the whole chain teaching, was trying to get the message out to the country, not just the active duty force, Guard and Reserve," he said. "(We wanted) the country, including providers throughout the country, to be aware of mild TBI and concussions and the long-term symptoms that some people may be having." Brig. Gen Bradshaw said Army leadership at all levels is committed to the good health and wellbeing of all Soldiers, and is now proactively addressing the issue of TBI. "Continued research in this area can only help us more clearly understand the medical impacts of the war and the best ways to prevent, recognize and treat Soldiers with TBI," he said. Chief Outlines Plan to Get Army Back in Balance [2008-01-17] WASHINGTON -- After six years of war in the Middle East, the Army is out of balance, said the service's senior military leader. "Things aren't as we would like them," said Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. "But certainly, by no stretch of the imagination, are we a hollow Army -- or a broken Army. But it is out of balance. And out of balance means that we are so consumed by current operations that we can't do the things we need to do to prepare ourselves organizationally or institutionally. We are at a point where we are having difficulty sustaining an all volunteer force." Speaking Jan. 16 during a breakfast sponsored by the Association of the U.S. Army, General Casey said any problems with the Army are fixable, with the right kind support. "This is not an impossible position, particularly with the support of Congress and the American people," he said. "And we have a plan to put ourselves back in balance. But it is going to take three or four years. And we have to do four things: sustain, prepare, reset and transform." Gen. Casey told attendees at the breakfast session that the Army has been leaning heavily on, and will continue to lean heavily on it's mid-level officers and noncommissioned officer corps. "One of the major elements holding this Army together in a very difficult time is our noncommissioned officer corps," he said. "They are absolutely magnificent. So we kind of need to sustain that and we need the resources to do it." Part of that sustainment of the NCO corps, he said, involves recruiting efforts. But it also involves providing support to NCOs and their families, through initiatives such as the Army Family Covenant, to ensure retention of quality enlisted members. "We have put our money where our mouth is. In the 2008 budget there are 1.4 billion dollars for Soldiers and Families. That's about double what we normally do." The general also said the Army must ensure those who fight the global war on terror are equipped to fight that war. For the Army, that means ensuring Soldiers have the right training and equipment to do their jobs. "We are also absolutely committed to making sure that every Soldier that goes in harms way is well trained, well equipped and has what they need to be able to accomplish the mission," he said. Resetting the Army means reconstituting or replacing lost, ageing or spent equipment and materials. It's also about ensuring Soldiers themselves have the time they need to recuperate from the fighting and deployments. General Casey said Army senior leaders are working hard to ensure the service can replace what has been expended during six years of fighting the GWOT. "Reset is about money -- the money to reset this force," he said. "If you don't reset you will start to see hollowness emerging in the force. So it is the difference between a hollow force and a flexible and versatile force. We can also not look the other way when it comes to fixing Soldiers and Families when they come back. That means equipment, and training...rest and recuperation. The second deployment is harder than the first. And the third is harder than the second -- it wears on you." The Army must also prepare for the future. The general said he believes the Army will not see a break in conflict in the near future, and America's Soldiers must be prepared for continued persistent conflict around the world. Additionally, he said, changes in warfare and in the causes of terrorism will force change in the Army. "We are at war with a global extremist terrorist network," he said. "As I look at the future, I see a long-term ideological struggle. And I see that struggle fueled by global trends, because they create a breeding ground for recruitment in these extremist networks." Some of those global trends include modern technology and globalization. "Clearly (globalization) is enhancing prosperity around the globe," he said. "But there is a negative side: that prosperity is not necessarily evenly distributed. Look at South America, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. There are various estimates, but by 2015, 2.8 billion people around the world will be below the poverty level." It is that poverty, the general said, that will help fuel the ideology that feeds terrorist networks. Warfare in the future will also differ from the conventional warfare America's forces are trained to fight. "I see a conflict that is a mix of irregular warfare and conventional warfare," he said. "I see it being fought in a lot of urban areas. Sixty percent of the world is expected to live in cities by about 2020. We were going to fight in cities. And it's going to be fought more with non-state actors and individual groups." Fighting those non-state actors, he said, will be more difficult even that fighting the most difficult of conventional wars. "When you are fighting non-state actors, it gets a little more difficult because they are not bound by rules of warfare. They are not bound by the rules we use," he said. Changes in warfare mean the Army as an institution will have to adapt, General Casey said, in both the way it trains to fight and in the way it operates as an institution. "The force has to be agile -- agile in its ability to deploy quickly to change missions quickly," he said. "But also it must be institutionally agile. Everything from getting the right equipment to the Soldiers as quickly as they can, to how we train and develop leaders. And we are not very agile as an institution now. Our institutions were designed for an early a pre-Sept. 11 Army." One of the steps the Army is undertaking to improve the institution's ability to be agile in the 21st Century is the development of a new FM 3.0 manual. This capstone doctrine manual will revolutionize the manner in which the Army conducts operations., officials said. Most importantly, they said, it will elevate stability operations as missions that need to be conducted simultaneously along with offense and defense. Army Testing Privatized Housing for Unaccompanied Soldiers [2008-01-29] WASHINGTON -- As part of the Residential Communities Initiative, the Army is privatizing housing for Soldiers and their families, and a pilot program under RCI is also providing billeting for unaccompanied NCOs and officers. At five installations -- Fort Irwin, Calf.; Fort Drum, N.Y.; Fort Stewart, Ga.; Fort Bragg, N.C.; and Fort Bliss, Texas -- the Army's commercial partners under RCI are building privatized apartments for unaccompanied Soldiers. On Fort Irwin, 200 new apartments fill a gap in the commercial housing market off post, said Ivan Bolden, the Army's public and private initiatives and competitive sourcing division chief for RCI. "Before we begin, we look out into the economy to see if there is something that is adequate, that meets the standard and is affordable," said Bolden. "If there is nothing there, like at Fort Irwin, then you can do some pilot programs like this one." The apartments at Fort Irwin are occupied by single Soldiers -- sergeant first class and above -- that would normally be allowed to move off post on their own. Those Soldiers pay rent to the private owners of the apartments using their basic allowance for housing. Deals for privatized apartments at Fort Drum, Fort Bragg and Fort Stewart all closed in the last seven months, and the privatization deal at Fort Bliss is expected to close this year. By the end of 2009, the Army expects to have some 1,400 one- and two-bedroom apartments available under the program. Currently, the privatized apartments for unaccompanied Soldiers is part of a pilot project, similar to how RCI began in the mid-1990s. Bolden said any further expansion of the program would require an assessment of its initial success and further approval by the Army. "We will look at how the program goes, do a study, and probably at some point in a couple of years go back to the Army and show them the results and the lessons learned. Then we will make recommendations," he said. Under RCI, private companies lease the land military housing is on, and then buy the homes. Those companies then remodel the homes or tear them down and build new ones. The homes are then occupied by Soldiers and their families who use their basic allowance for housing to pay the rent. The Army has been privatizing homes under RCI since about 1998, Bolden said. The program helps the Army avoid the cost of replacing inadequate housing and at the same time eliminates housing deficits when there are gaps in the commercial housing market. "We realized we had about a $7-billion backlog of maintenance and repair costs in Army housing," Bolden said. "And with the different challenges in the Army, you can only do so much with the budget. Unfortunately, commanders had to fight for base operations dollars. When you measure that against beans and bullets, or training, you know we didn't come up as high on the priority list." The Army is currently on track to meet its goal of privatizing some 88,000 Army family housing units -- representing about 99 percent of all Army family housing in the United States -- by 2016. "At the end of 2007, we had about 35 to 37,000 homes left that are deemed inadequate," said Bolden. "We'll be out of that by 2016. Right now we've got over 13 homes a day coming online, and those are brand new homes." Army Meeting 2008 Recruiting Goals [2008-01-31] WASHINGTON -- The Army is on track to meet its fiscal 2008 recruiting goal of 80,000 new active-duty Soldiers, said the U.S. Army Recruiting Command's top officer. During testimony this morning before the Senate Armed Services Committee's military personnel subcommittee, Maj. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, USAREC commander, told lawmakers his command is also working to help the Army Reserve meet its number. "We are slightly behind established monthly objectives for the Army Reserve," he said. "But we are aggressively working with the Army leadership to develop the way ahead to achieve our Army Reserve mission for this year." This year, the Army Reserve hopes to meet a recruiting goal of 26,500 new Soldiers. Maj. Gen. Bostick said one of the difficulties in meeting recruiting goals is the "incredibly challenging" recruiting environment. "Less than three out of 10 of our nation's youth are fully qualified for service in the Army due to disqualifying medical conditions, criminal records, lack of education credentials or low aptitude test scores," he said. Likely exacerbating the issue: the war in Afghanistan and Iraq and its affect on "influencers" of potential recruits. "Today, parents and influencers are less likely to encourage their family members and other young adults to join the military," the general said. "Propensity -- the desire to enlist in the armed forces -- is at its lowest point in two decades." Nevertheless, last year some 170,000 Americans stepped forward to enlist in the Army, Army National Guard and Army Reserve. Additionally, the general said, Soldiers -- even those who are serving in or have served in combat -- are re-enlisting. "Our volunteer Soldiers are re-enlisting because they believe in their nation; they believe in their flag and they believe in each other," he told senators. The Army has transformed the recruiting command, restructuring its 41 recruiting battalions and modifying their respective areas of responsibility. The restructuring reduced the size of larger battalions, while increasing the size of some of the smaller ones. This corrected imbalances in mission responsibilities, Bostick said. The restructuring also included the formation of two brigades: a special missions brigade to handle administrative functions, logistics and special missions for subordinate brigades; and a medical brigade to provide command and control for the five medical recruiting battalions. In the medical community, the Army is now ahead by 122 accessions this year compared to last year, the general said, indicating that changes made to the medical recruiting structure have been positive. "This effort will ensure we have the right levels of emphasis and expertise working this critically important mission," he said. "This remains one of our most challenging areas, but we are making significant progress." The Army follows Department of Defense guidelines about the quality of civilians that can be recruited into the Army. For instance, at least 90 percent of recruits must have a high school diploma, 60 percent of recruits must score in the I-IIIA category or better on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery and no more than 4 percent can score category IV on the enlistment test. In fiscal 2007, the Army fell short of the goal of ensuring that 90 percent of its recruits had a high school diploma. Instead, in fiscal 2007, only about 79 percent of recruits held diplomas. Nevertheless, the general said, the Army is recruiting quality Soldiers. "All Soldiers in our Army are qualified to serve," he said. "And field commanders are very pleased with the men and women now serving in their formations -- some of whom are not high school diploma graduates or may have received a waiver to serve in our Army." The general pointed out that about 90 percent of Soldiers in the Army have a high school diploma, compared to a national average of between 70 and 80 percent. In some areas, he said, that number is less than 50 percent. Despite the difficult recruiting environment, Bostick told senators he believed Army recruiters could meet the challenge of maintaining a quality volunteer Army and asked lawmakers for their continued support. "I am confident our recruiters will maximize the resources you have given them in order to achieve our mission," he said. " While public support for our Soldiers remains strong, we need more Americans to step forward and serve our nation -- a nation at war. I thank you for your commitment to assist Army recruiting, and ask for your continued support to encourage Americans to answer our nation's call to duty." Commission says Guard, Reserves Must Be Backbone of Homeland Ops [2008-02-01] WASHINGTON -- The Department of Defense must improve its capabilities and readiness so the military can take a primary role in response to major catastrophes inside the United States, according to a report released to Congress Thursday. The Commission on the National Guard and Reserves provided Congress with recommendations on how DOD can be better prepared to protect the people and territory of the United States. "The Department of Defense must be fully prepared to protect American lives and property in the homeland," the report says. "This is a responsibility that is equal in priority to its combat responsibilities." As part of DOD, the report says, the National Guard and Reserves must play the lead role in supporting the Department of Homeland Security, other federal agencies and states in addressing threats against the United States. According to the commission, DOD's role in providing for homeland defense is part of the department's policy, but there is no recognition of that role in law. In fact, the commission's report suggests lawmakers seem "reluctant" to acknowledge that the DOD is, because of its size and resources, the organization best suited to respond to catastrophes inside the United States. In support of that assessment, the commission recommends Congress codify the DOD's responsibility to provide support for civil authorities -- suggesting statutory language acknowledge that responding to natural and man-made disasters in the homeland is a core competency of the department. The commission also says the DOD should be responsible for providing the "bulk of the response to major catastrophes." The commission also said the National Guard and the Reserves should play the lead role in DOD operations in the United States. "Congress should mandate that the National Guard and Reserves have the lead role in and form the backbone of DOD operations in the homeland," the report says. "Furthermore, DOD should assign the National Guard and Reserves homeland defense and civil support as a core competency consistent with their required warfighting taskings and capabilities." The commission also argues for better integration of the reserve component with the Department of Homeland Security, noting that DHS does not yet include adequate Guard leadership to ensure the best kinds of cooperation and integration between the two agencies. "DHS and DOD need to act and act quickly to ensure that DOD is ready to respond, particularly to catastrophic events, in the homeland," the report says. The Guard should also have broader leadership roles at U.S. Northern Command, the commission found, saying that a majority of command billets at the command should be filled by leaders possessing "reserve qualifications and credentials." The report also suggests Congress amend laws to allow service secretaries, during man-made or natural disasters, to involuntarily mobilize federal reserve components for up to 60 days in a four-month period and 120 days in a two-year period. 2009 Budget Request Includes Funding for 43,000 End Strength Increase [2008-02-05] WASHINGTON -- The Army's budget request went forward to Congress Feb. 4 as part of President George W. Bush's fiscal 2009 budget. The request includes funding for an across-the-board pay raise of 3.4 percent and money to increase the service's end strength by 43,000 Soldiers. The request for the Department of Defense base budget this year exceeded $515 billion, including some $140.7 billion for the Army -- an increase of about $11.8 billion over what Congress enacted for the service in 2008. Included in that budget is about $51 billion for military personnel expenses, $40.2 billion for operations and maintenance spending, and $24.6 billion for procurement. The Army's $51.8 billion request for military personnel funding represents a sizable increase over last year's request. That stems mainly from in increase in end-strength of about 43,000 Soldiers for a total of about 532,400 by the end of fiscal 2009. In past years, funding for those extra Soldiers has been included in the supplemental budget request. Also part of the personnel budget is an increase in National Guard end-strength of about 1,300, an across-the-board pay raise of about 3.4 percent and funding for other incentive programs. Many incentive programs to support recruiting and retention, however, will be included in the supplemental budget request, said Lt. Gen. David Melcher, the military deputy for budget to the assistant secretary of the Army for Financial Management and Comptroller. "This budget supports many of the incentives that support the all-volunteer force, (including) the pay raise, although I will tell you that not all incentives for recruiting and retention are contained in the base (budget)," he said. "A pretty sizable amount of incentives are in the supplemental funding, attributable to the fact that in this particular period of time, given the stresses we are under, we are having to pay a little bit more incentives to folks to come in and retain." Army operations and maintenance funding in the 2009 budget request comes in at about $40 billion. That funding supports recruiting and training, maintenance of equipment, and quality of life initiatives such as child care, youth programs and community services, Melcher said. "These are some real increases in the amount of operations and maintenance funding available to the Army. Some of the things these accounts are doing is supporting the readiness of the forces and our combined arms training strategy," he said. "They support ten rotations at the National Training Center, ten rotations at the Joint Readiness Training Center, 8 rotations at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center and also fund our battle command training program. Also rolled in the account is funding for base operations and support." The general said the greatest preponderance of the Army's operations and maintenance funding will be in the supplemental budget. The Army has asked for about $24.6 billion for procurement funding in fiscal 2009. Included in that is about $6 billion for tactical and support vehicles, $5 billion for new aircraft, $5.3 billion for communications and electronics, and $3.6 billion for weapons and tracked vehicles. Some of the funding for aircraft has come from termination of the Comanche program, Melcher said, adding the Army has tried to keep those funds in the budget. In the fiscal 2009 budget, the Army funds about 28 Army reconnaissance helicopters to replace the ageing HH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter, 63 UH-60M/HH60-M Black Hawk helicopters, seven C-27J Joint Cargo Aircraft, 32 AH-64 Apache helicopter upgrades and conversions, and 36 UH-72A Lakota Light Utility Helicopters. The service will also pay for the conversion of 23 CH-47D Chinook helicopters into F models and will also buy an additional 16 new Chinooks. "There's a lot of money in here for Army aviation, which is of course needed and appreciated," Melcher said. The Army has also wants to fund 108 Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles and two additional battalions of Patriot-3 to give the Army a total of 15. "This gives us a sustainable rotational base upon which to implement our Army force generation model," Melcher said. The fiscal 2009 budget request includes $3.9 billion for weapons and tracked combat vehicle funding. That includes about $330 million in Future Combat Systems procurement -- a difference from past years where most FCS funding was for research, development, testing and evaluation, Melcher said. "This is one of the things you begin to see in the '09 budget," he said. "Whereas FCS was previously mostly an RDT&E venture -- and there is still about $3.3 billion in RDT&E -- this year you begin to see about $330 million in procurement, which is principally oriented to the Non-Line-of-Sight Cannon and also some spinout we are looking to procure in order to test -- first at Fort Bliss with the evaluation task force we have forming down there, and then later to go into units." Additional weapons and tracked combat vehicle funding is aimed at Strykers -- including mobile gun systems for Strykers -- and the nuclear, biological and chemical reconnaissance vehicle. The Army also hopes to procure Abrams system enhancements and 21 additional M-2A3 Bradley vehicles. In fiscal 2009, the Army will pay for an additional 5,000 Humvees, night vision devices, thermal weapons sights and funding for the Warfighter Information Network - Tactical. One of the largest increases in the Army's budget request is funding for facilities. The total Army facilities funding request amounts to about $11.3 billion. That money covers about $5.4 billion for military construction, $1.3 billion for Army family housing and $4.5 billion for construction related to Base Realignment and Closure. "If you add that all up, it's really a pretty big year," Melcher said. "This is a big year for the Army, because we are trying to meet the BRAC timeline and get it done by fiscal 2011. We also have a pretty sizable plus-up to military construction -- a lot of that attributable to `Grow the Army.'" The general also said the Army is on track with housing privatization and expects to privatize some 2,400 housing units in fiscal 2009. "That brings the Army to about 86,000 homes that will have been privatized by the end of fiscal 2009," he said. "On balance, it has been a real success story for the Army and we are giving a better quality of life to Soldiers and families living in these quarters." Army Partners with KU for Wounded Warrior Education [2008-02-06] WASHINGTON -- The Army and the University of Kansas struck up a partnership that will allow wounded Soldiers to earn a master's degree at the school and to apply what they have learned inside the Army's own academic community. Secretary of the Army Pete Geren and Chancellor Robert Hemenway of the University of Kansas announced the "Wounded Warrior Education Initiative" today on the campus of the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. "There's so much pent-up generosity out there in the American public," Secretary Geren said. "Americans want to step up and do something for our Soldiers. "And Chancellor Robert Hemenway had a good idea - let's develop this partnership, to help Soldiers that want to continue their education. Let's figure out a way to make this work to help these Soldiers continue professionally, to pursue their professional and educational dreams." Soldiers and those medically retired who are part of the Wounded Warrior Program are eligible to participate in the new education initiative. They must already have a baccalaureate degree and must also be physically and mentally prepared to attend school. Under the pilot program, participants will complete their master's degree at the University of Kansas, while the Army picks up the tab for that education. "The welcome mat is out at KU," Chancellor Hemenway said. "I look forward to having a great group of Soldiers among us and we will do everything in our power to help them succeed. This is an exceptional program; it is good for the Army because the Army will retain talent and the spirit of courage. It is good for KU, (because) we are determined to do what we can as a public university, known for supporting Soldiers, to contribute to the larger purposes to which the Army and these men and women have given so much." At the completion of their degree program, graduates would take jobs as faculty or staff at the Army's Command and General Staff College or Combined Arms Center here. Those Soldiers who are still on active duty would remain on active duty, while those retired due to injury would serve as civilian instructors. The program is one way the Army can stem the loss of military knowledge, education and experience that comes when wounded Soldiers leave the service, officials said. By helping wounded Soldiers complete their master's degree, the Army can keep some of that corporate knowledge in house. Participation in the pilot program now has been offered to eight initial candidates: retired Spc. Michael Hogg; Capt. Tim Hornik; Capt. Kristin Facer; Capt. Gates Brown; retired Capt. Michael Reynolds; retired Capt. Wesley E. Fine; Staff Sgt. Thomas Davis and retired 1st Lt. Jason Gladney. All eight Soldiers were injured in combat while serving in Iraq and all received Purple Hearts. If these wounded warriors choose to complete their education at the University of Kansas, they will take jobs at CGCS, filling positions already identified by the school and applying their own education and personal experience to benefit students enrolled there. Those wishing to participate in the Wounded Warrior Education Initiative must have been wounded in the war on terror and have a campaign medal. They may be either active duty, or medically retired active-component or reserve-component Soldiers. Depending on the success of the Wounded Warrior Education Initiative, officials said the program may be expanded to include other civilian universities, other Army institutions of learning or even other branches of service. "I want to thank KU for stepping up and setting up an opportunity for these fine Soldiers," Secretary Geren said. "The people of Kansas have always been great to the U.S. Army, whether at Fort Riley or at Fort Leavenworth - they are neighbors helping neighbors." Geren Says Soldiers Moved Heaven and Earth to Repair Army Medicine [2008-02-08] WASHINGTON -- The Army Medical Command has done much since the Army was shaken by revelations that Soldiers weren't getting the best treatment possible at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. "After the problems surfaced at Walter Reed last year, we took a hard look at how we handled what we called medical holdover," said Secretary of the Army Pete Geren. "We learned it wasn't well structured and it wasn't well supervised. We saw the population, because of the war, increase dramatically. And we hadn't increased the staffing to accommodate the additional demand on the service." The secretary said the Army's response to what was revealed at Walter Reed was swift, because, he said, it is part of Army culture for Soldiers to take care of each other. "I think if you look at what the Army Medical Command has done in the last few months, we have a lot to be proud of," he said. "Soldiers take care of Soldiers. When our Soldiers learned there were some that hadn't done that, it was like a shock through the system. Soldiers stepped up and moved heaven and earth to build a new system -- really from scratch." The Warrior Transition Unit is that new system. For wounded Soldiers, the WTU serves as a focal point for receiving the medical care they need to transition back into their Army unit or in to the Veteran Affairs health and benefits system as a civilian. There are 35 WTUs across the Army now serving nearly 9,000 wounded Soldiers. The secretary said Soldiers assigned to the WTU at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., told him they were impressed with the care they receive at the unit. During a Feb. 6 visit to Munson Army Health Center at Fort Leavenworth, Secretary Geren talked with Soldiers assigned to the Warrior Transition Unit there. "The Soldiers I met with today felt very positive," he said. "They had some suggestions on things we could do to improve the system, but overwhelmingly they said the system has gotten better over this past year. They feel pretty good about the way things are going." One of those Soldiers is Spc. Ernest Kendall, a transportation specialist with the 1st Sustainment Brigade at Fort Riley, Kan. Kendall suffered from a heart problem while deployed to Kuwait with his unit in April 2008. After a medical evacuation to Germany, Kendall was moved to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Later, he was moved back to Kansas and into the WTU at Fort Leavenworth. He says he has seen a range of care in Army medicine and is impressed with what he is experiencing at the Fort Leavenworth WTU. "I was at Walter Reed in the old medical hold for a while," he said. "They were in the process of the changeover then, so I got to see both sides. I saw the medical-hold unit then, and I get to see the new system -- the WTU -- as it is now. And I can say it is definitely a 100-percent improvement. This is the best thing the Army has come up with for a wounded Soldier." While assigned to the WTU, Kendall attends community college and continues to work for the Army. "I work over at the Gentry Medical Clinic because I do have medical skills on the civilian side, and they are letting me utilize those," he said. "The primary mission in this unit is to heal, and of course after you start to get better, your capacity goes up. So I can do a job now. But I'm not quite fit enough to go back with my unit, to go overseas. So they are letting me do what I can do, which is good." Sgt. 1st Class Tony Snook is a mess sergeant, but during a deployment to Kuwait, he served as a future operations noncommissioned officer with the 377th Theater Support Command. "I went with the British liaison officer of Task Force Gator and accompanied him to Basra, Iraq," Snook said. "I was injured getting into a concrete bunker during a rocket attack on the British contingency operating base there. I injured my back and my neck." Snook, who has served in the Army since 1978, is now assigned to the WTU at Fort Leavenworth while the Army helps him recover from his injuries. He said he knows what the Army is offering him now in the way recovery care differs greatly from what his acquaintances would have experienced when he enlisted. "In 1978 I was a young kid, and most of the guys in the unit I went in had been in Vietnam," he said. "Some had been in World War II and were still around, and the Korean war too. We had a number of Korean war veterans. I know they didn't get the treatment anywhere close to what we are getting today, I can honestly say." Back in 1981, Snook attended Airborne School at Fort Benning, Ga. He was injured there during a parachute jump. He says when he went to seek medical care from that injury, the wait had been several months "The treatment I got there -- I was on a waiting list for like four months," he said. "It was new procedure, a CAT scan or MRI -- we'd never heard of it. But I had to wait months to have them look at my cracked hip." Now he says, the Army has stepped up and is taking better care of wounded Soldiers, and he let Secretary Geren know. "They are taking very good care of us here," Snook told the secretary about the WTU. "I have no complaints." Secretary Geren said he is not surprised that Soldiers assigned to the Fort Leavenworth WTU are happy with the care they are getting. "This is an excellent facility," he said. "And the people here take great pride in what they do. The Army core value is to never leave a fallen comrade. That isn't just words on the wall, it is in the DNA of the Army -- Soldiers step up to take care of Soldiers." Secretary Geren also said the Army is expanding services and seeking additional mental health professionals to stem the tide of suicides among Soldiers. "Suicides have gone up every year," he said. "And last year was the highest level we have had since we have been keeping track in 1980. As an Army we have been working hard to address this, by expanding mental health services and trying to add additional personnel and additional training for the Soldiers, those in the chain of command, chaplains and mental health professionals." The secretary said the Army is facing challenges in fighting the rise of suicides in the service. Those challenges include getting rid of the stigma Soldiers associate with seeking mental health services and the lack of availability of mental health professionals. "When a Soldier is having a problem, a mental problem or an emotional problem, they (must) feel comfortable coming forward to get help," he said. "We do have a program called Army One Source where a Soldier can get confidential help. It's not as good as person-to-person, but it is a way to provide counseling through a confidential setting. We are working awfully hard -- but we are not satisfied with where we are today." Pushing Men out of Airplanes Kept Him in Army [2008-02-15] WASHINGTON -- Back in 1971, then 2nd Lt. Jim Campbell began paying off the four years of Army service debt he incurred when he accepted an ROTC scholarship. He worked then as a platoon leader inside the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C. He also pulled time as a jumpmaster, making sure Soldiers getting ready to parachute from an aircraft were actually safe to go. He acted as the final check on a Soldier before they plummeted back to Earth. "I remember the first time those doors opened on an aircraft, and every eye in that aircraft looks at you and the other jumpmaster," said Campbell. "It dawned on me then that the lives of those young men were in my hands, and I had to get it right -- and I loved it. It hooked me, because I loved the responsibility of being in charge of Soldier's lives. I love that challenge. That's why I stayed a Soldier all these years." Nearly 37 years later, Lt. Gen. Campbell, who served last as the director of the Army staff at the Pentagon, reflected on an Army that has changed much since the time he first donned his uniform. In 1973, for instance, the U.S. military eliminated the draft. But the Army still employed many Soldiers that had entered the service involuntarily. "The first time as a platoon leader, I told the platoon sergeant I'd been looking things over and felt we needed to go to the field the next week," Campbell said. "He came back later and said the men had voted and didn't want to go -- it was a different time then." Today, the Army is made of volunteers -- people that want to wear the uniform and want to serve their country. Campbell said that has made a difference in the kind of Soldier that serves today. "People ask me if we should go back to the draft, and my answer is that we should not," he said. "I want to be in something where people want to be there with me. And what I see in the U.S. Army today, across the board, is quality. Young noncommissioned officers, halfway around the world, are making life and death decisions. What that means to the Army is we are going to have the most combat- experienced Army we have ever had. They are incredibly smart, gifted, and talented men and women out there -- the best I have ever seen." Changes implemented in the Army since about 2004 have made the service more modular and easier to manage than it has been in the past, Campbell said. Today, for instance, a commander from one unit can easily command another unit. "I can be the commander of the 10th Mountain Division going into Iraq today and I'd be commanding brigades from the 101st Airborne Division, 25th Infantry Division, and 3rd ID, because they are all 'plug and play'," Campbell said. "It gives you incredible flexibility as a commander." In the past, Campbell said, such units were different in makeup and training standards. That made interoperability between units difficult. "Looking back at the Army I grew up in, every unit was different," he said. "If you had two light outfits, they weren't the same. If you had heavy outfits, they weren't the same either. I credit General Schoomaker with being the father of the modularity concept. His thought was if we can get these outfits looking the same, same structure, same manning, then they become kind of like plug and play. It gives you incredible flexibility, in savings, in maintenance and in adaptability." That advance in organization, he said, has increased the power of the Army. "In my opinion, the modular formation, the brigade combat teams, are so much more lethal, powerful, potent, than the formations we had before," he said. The Army also now keeps those units together when they deploy, something that had not happened for units deployed to places like Vietnam. "I think one of the biggest difficulties during the Vietnam conflict was a series of individual replacements -- stability in the ranks," he said. "You could be in a rifle company and a week wouldn't go by where you wouldn't have a replacement come in or somebody go home because their 12 months was over. You had this constant in and out in your unit." Today, he says, Army units train, deploy and fight together. And the Army is working hard to ensure that even when individual Soldiers change units, they are still allowed to have 12 months of time back home to train and recover. That is one way the Army is now taking better care of its Soldiers, the general said. Looking to the future of the Army, Campbell said the service must continue to focus on the full spectrum of military operations. The Army must continue to fight the kinds of wars being fought now in Iraq, but must also be ready for the kinds of wars America has fought in the past, in places like Vietnam, Korea and Europe. Now he says, the Army is almost totally focused on counter-insurgency operations. "In order for us to restore the strategic flexibility of our nation, and Army, we need to get more of our formation able to do the full-spectrum operations," he said. "You have no choice but to be prepared. In my opinion, that is the most powerful part of the U.S. Army, the potential we have to exert the power we need to exert. We have to be trained for that high-end spectrum fight -- we owe it to the American people to be prepared." For junior officers just entering service, Campbell says the best way for them to succeed is to realize what it is they are in the Army to do. And that reason, he said, is the same for every officer. "The reason you exist is to serve Soldiers - that's it," he said. "Every action, deed and word has to be to serve those Soldiers, to make sure they are trained to do their jobs. The best leader is the guy that is out there trying with his Soldiers. When it gets colder, when it gets wetter, when it gets more dangerous, that's when that leader is most important, and that's where he's got to be." Campbell retires March 1, after having served nearly 37 years in the Army. He has no specific plans yet for post-retirement employment, but says he will travel south to watch spring training with the Atlanta Braves. Army Realizes Energy Savings with Housing Privatization [2008-02-20] WASHINGTON -- Where Army housing has been privatized, the service has found energy usage has dropped by as much as 10 percent. In Army privatized family housing under the Residential Communities Initiative, some Soldiers are now getting a statement each month that lets them know how much gas and electricity their families have consumed. Soldiers must pay out-of-pocket for the amount of energy their families use beyond a baseline. The "Soldiers Responsible for Their Utilities" program is responsible for the decrease in energy consumption. "As a result of this, where we are actually doing live bill, we have noticed a 10-percent decrease in the amount of energy consumption," said Ivan Bolden, the Army's public and private initiatives and competitive sourcing division chief for RCI. In privatized homes, the commercial partners and the Army have worked together to set a baseline for energy consumption. The baseline is an estimate of the amount of energy occupants in a home should use, based on such things as the size of the home, its age, the number of occupants and the season. Soldiers whose families meet this baseline pay nothing at all. But Soldiers whose families exceed the baseline beyond 5 percent must pay for that extra energy. Soldiers whose families have energy conservation strategies in place and end up using less energy than what is expected will get a rebate check. "About a third of soldiers are falling in the middle, a third are getting checks or rebates and the other third are having to pay," said Bolden. "So all in all, about 66 percent are not paying or are getting a rebate." As of December 2007, there are homes at Fort Carson, Col.; Fort Hood, Texas; Fort Lewis, Wash.; Fort Meade, Md.; Fort Campbell, Ky.; Fort Belvoir, Va.; and Fort Irwin, Calif. that are being billed in this way for energy usage. Other installations are currently "mock billing" Soldiers for their utilities. Those Soldiers get a statement each month letting them know how much energy they consumed, how much they went over the baseline and how much they might have owed for that over- consumption. Mock billing allows Soldiers time to adjust their energy usage habits and to get used to the idea of having to pay for over-consumption. Mock billing periods usually last from six months to a year before residents are switched to actual billing. Today, about 15,000 privatized homes are either being billed or mock billed. That number represents about 20 percent of Army privatized homes. Bolden said some residents have been concerned that money saved by their own energy conservation efforts is actually being pocketed by privatization partners. But the money, he said, is actually going back into their communities in the form of new homes and amenities. The program also has protections built in to shelter occupants of privatized homes from price fluctuations in the energy market, and from usage spikes due to unusual weather. Soldiers who are living on the economy don't have such protections. "About 70 percent of Soldiers live off post and are responsible for their utilities each month," Bolden said. "If there is a hike in the rate, they have to pay for that. With this program, we are simply asking for Soldiers to be responsible for their usage." Bolden said the "Soldiers Responsible for Their Utilities" program is in response to a 1998 policy by the Office of the Secretary of Defense. "You know, if you don't get an electric bill or gas bill, you leave the lights on or you have the air conditioning on and the windows open because you want fresh air," Bolden said. "When you looked at the energy bill for housing, every year it was going up and up. The SECDEF decided we must put some kind of discipline on this." According to Bolden, Soldiers with children or spouses in the Exceptional Family Member Program may be eligible to have their energy usage baseline adjusted, depending on their situation. Stability Operations Now Part of Army’s Core Mission [2008-02-25] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers have been in Iraq keeping the peace, battling insurgents, protecting civilians and helping to rebuild that country for nearly five years. The Army now recognizes that work, called "stability operations," as part of a Soldier's core mission and made it so in the new field manual for operations, FM 3-0, which will be released later this week. The change comes because the U.S. government has identified that failed and failing states are breeding grounds for terrorists and insurgents, said Lt. Col. James H. Boozell, an Army G3 branch chief for the stability operations and irregular warfare division at the Pentagon. "When local government can't provide the civil security and civil control necessary for its people, terrorists are allowed to thrive," he said. "If we stabilize governance, it will provide the level of civil security and control that disallows the growth of terrorism and insurgency." Inside the new operations manual, the Army elevates the status of stability operations, putting it on par with the two traditional core Army missions: offensive and defense operations. But stability operations are not new for the Army, Boozell said. "We have actually been doing stability operations for over 200 years," he said. "But responsibility for lead agency was never assigned; it was never incorporated by United States government agencies. Now, the Department of State has been assigned responsibility for the conduct of stability operations; the military will support. In contested environments, the Army will conduct those operations until it is safe for civilian officials to enter the country, but the State Department will continue to provide guidance, Boozell said. By adding stability operations as a third core mission, the Army indoctrinates what it is doing now in Iraq and Afghanistan, and what it has done in the past in places like Bosnia/Herzegovina, Somalia, Haiti and Kosovo. When combat operations subside, it has a further mandate to create conditions where additional elements of U.S. national power can be applied to help create stable governments and economies. Stability operations consist of five "lines of effort," including: civil security, civil control, support to governance, provision of essential services, and support to infrastructure and economic development. Those lines of effort mean the Army might provide security in the civilian community until a legitimate civil government is able to assume that responsibility for itself. The Army will help governments rebuild judiciary and corrections systems, provide shelter for persons displaced by war activities, help prevent the spread of epidemic disease, and assist in developing public infrastructure such as roads, railways, airports and telecommunications systems. "The Army will work to help establish micro-economic programs to stimulate the economy, stand up police forces and correctional institutions and begin re-establishment of the judicial process," Boozell said. The Army will also have to redefine what it means when it talks about a successful operation, he said. In the past, success meant the culmination of a successful offensive operation -- that may no longer be the case, Boozell pointed out. "Now that we have a third core mission, it causes us to re-evaluate what is success," Boozell said . "In the case where we are going to do a stability operation, success is no longer the ability to remove the enemy. Success is now the host nation's ability to govern and protect itself." Army Acquisition Efforts Contribute to Economic Boom in Iraq [2008-02-26] WASHINGTON -- The Army acquisition community's efforts in Iraq have contributed to an economic boom in the country, and reflect the service's core mission of stability operations. Dean G. Popps, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, made that statement during the opening session of the Association of the U.S. Army's winter symposium. He explained how Army acquisition had inherited responsibility for reconstruction and relief programs worth some $18 billion, and said the Army's management of those programs has transformed both the acquisition community and Iraq. "During that period of 2003 to 2007, the Army acquisition group, acquisition, logistics and technology, along with the great institution known as the Army Corps of Engineers, committed, obligated and disbursed against 4,400-plus projects in Iraq," Popps said. "I would submit to you that that was the largest Army program ever." The result of the Army's distribution and management of those funds has transformed Iraq, Popps said. "It has contributed to a boom in Iraq, an economic boom," he said. "That's 3 million barrels of oil a day, demand for electricity up five-fold. Now Baghdad and other parts of the country have 18-20 hours a day of electricity. And in Iraq, a person who used to make two dollars a day now makes $2,000 a month." Managing those programs also transformed the agency beyond its role of managing large-scale acquisition programs and developing policy. "That was an organizational transition," he said. "I don't think anyone could have imagined, at 9/11, that an organization would transform itself into expeditionary contracting and expeditionary reconstruction, right from a headquarters element." Future Combat Vehicles to be Hybrid Electric [2008-02-28] FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- The firing platform for the Army's first new vehicle type in decades will start rolling off the production line this winter, under the service's modernization program: Future Combat Systems. The firing platform that is now being produced is for the Mounted Combat System 120mm cannon. The Mounted Combat System is one of eight new Manned Ground Vehicle types. Like the other seven MGV types, the cannon is a hybrid-electric powered vehicle. "The first cannon that rolls out, and every Manned Ground Vehicle, is going to be hybrid electric," said FCS Program Manager Maj. Gen. Charles Cartwright, during a session at the Association of the U.S. Army's Institute of Land Warfare Winter Symposium and Exposition here. "Coming off the engine is about 420 kilowatts of power, which means now, for the first time, you are looking at all-electric vehicles. We'll have fiber optics inside vehicles, and the capability of bringing sensor communications -- which all use electrical power -- inside these platforms for the very first time." The other seven FCS Manned Ground Vehicles are: • command and control vehicle, • reconnaissance and surveillance vehicle • infantry carrier vehicle • non-line-of-sight cannon (NLOS-C) • non-line-of-sight mortar (NLOS-M) • medical vehicle-evacuation and medical vehicle-treatment • recovery and maintenance vehicle All eight MGV types will be powered by electric motors. The electric motors, in turn, will be powered by batteries, which are charged by diesel motors and generators. As technology matures, the engine will rely solely on fuel cells for power, Cartwright said. "The engine's on the side," he noted. "So we start out fully hybrid electric. Then one day, when they say fuel cells are ready, we pull out the engine, and in that place goes the fuel cell capability to produce the energy to power the battery that now propels the vehicle." Army officials said the high level of electrical power generated by the MGVs is necessary to provide advanced capabilities to Soldiers. Current Army vehicle types lack sufficient power output because they are not electrically powered. Cartwright also briefed session attendees on the remarkable progress made to date with other key FCS technologies, including the Non-Line-Of-Sight Launch System. "Two weeks ago we got our non-live-round, C-130 airdrop certification from the Air Force," he said. "In about a year ... we'll go back and get our live round [certification], and it will give us the capability to airdrop a complete 15-round missile pod from a C-130 Hercules." The NLOS-LS is a deployable launch system, capable of launching 15 precision attack missiles The NLOS-LS is self-contained, highly deployable and remotely controlled. Because it can be quickly deployed with minimal logistical support, the NLOS-LS is ideally suited for operations in distant and austere 21st-Century environments, Army officials said. Cartwright said both urban unmanned ground sensors and tactical unmanned ground sensors have been delivered to the Army Evaluation Task Force at Ft. Bliss for Soldier evaluation. The urban UGS is designed to be a "left behind" asset for constant, 24-7 surveillance. Soldiers could leave an urban UGS in a house that they cleared, and thereby eliminate the need for a Soldier to stay behind and monitor that structure. The UGS would alert the Soldiers to the re-emergence of enemy combatants or insurgents. Tactical UGS includes specialty classifications for conducting intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations and chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear testing. Both classes of UGS are designed to be carried by Soldiers on their person. Conference attendees were also briefed about recent Soldier exercises involving the FCS Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle, or SUGV, and the FCS Class I Unmanned Aerial System, known as UAS. Gregg Martin, vice president and program manager, FCS, the Boeing Company, also discussed advances in Future Combat Systems. He told conference attendees the small unmanned ground vehicle has already been involved in several Soldier exercises. "We actually went through (with Army guidance) an acceleration of both the lighter-weight (roughly 30-pound) SUGV and the Class 1 UAS, [which] we call Block 0," said Greg Martin, the Boeing Company's FCS vice president and general manager. "We've accelerated those capabilities... for a closer evaluation by the AETF." Eleven Class-1, Block-0 Unmanned Aerial Systems have been built, and five have been delivered. Moreover, three of 25 SUGVs, have been delivered, Martin said. They are going through Soldier training now," he added. "We'll deliver the rest of those new FCS systems in the April timeframe; they will then go though a Soldier evaluation around July." When the Army adjusted the FCS program, it dropped the Class 2 UAS from the lineup. The laser designator capabilities from that vehicle were then added to the Class 1 UAS. The addition of that capability required redesign of the Class 1 UAS engine to account for the additional weight of the laser designator. The Class IV UAV, a joint Army-Navy program, will take delivery of its sensor package within the next two years, Martin said. The FCS network also is coming along nicely, Army and industry officials said. The network has five layers: sensors, applications, services, transport and standards. Ground mobile radios are part of the transport layer and are being used by Soldiers in the field today. "On radio side we have GMRs out in the field, working well," Martin said. "Those radios are pre-engineering developmental models; we get PDMs in the late 2009 time frame." "We also have handheld, manpack, and small form-fit radios that are going through their paces. We are actually starting integration of HMS radio with our Class 1 vehicle in anticipation of ... testing this summer." The System of Systems Common Operating Environment (SOSCOE), an operating system for FCS, is part of the network service layer. "We're at roughly 70 percent complete on the application build of SoSCOE," Martin said. SOSCOE is "performing very well on the application side. We're about 40 percent through our software development, so we just completed integration of Build 1, which accounts for about a third of the software. "Build 2 is about another third of the software," Martin said. "We've broken that up into Build 2-early and Build 2-final. Build 2-early will start to drop in the April timeframe, and start the integration process throughout the summer. So, great progress on the application side." Army officials said they have adopted a phased development approach for FCS. This allows for the resolution of problems and technical challenges well before these problems and challenges can disrupt the Army's entire FCS modernization effort. Soldiers More Than Understand Full-Spectrum Operations [2008-02-29] FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- The Army's new operations manual, FM 3-0, defines full- spectrum operations and includes stability operations as part of the Army's core mission. During a session at the Association of the United States Army's Institute of Land Warfare Winter Symposium and Exposition here, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Richard A. Cody said Soldiers are already applying in theater what is contained in that field manual. From development of the Stryker Brigade Combat Teams -- to the development, application and refinement of counterinsurgency operations -- the Army is a leader in full-spectrum operations, the general said. "The Army has lead the joint force into the 21st century, and wields full-spectrum operations against traditional and irregular threats in complex environments," Cody said. "If you read FM 3-0, the operational lessons learned will leap off the page to you. But they are not lessons learned unless they are applied," he said. "Having just returned from theater, I can say unequivocally, our Soldiers and our leaders don't just get full-spectrum operations, they are damn good at it." During his visit to Iraq and Afghanistan, the general said he had the opportunity to re-enlist some 300 Soldiers, hand out hundreds of coins; and to pin on silver stars, combat infantryman badges, combat action badges and combat medical badges. Above all, he said, he was impressed with Soldiers' selflessness. "These Soldiers told me their stories," he said. "And every Soldier's story was deeply impressive. But if I could paraphrase them, they talked about their buddies more than they talked about themselves. They talked about the heroics of their partners and how much they trusted each other." The general visited Iraq and Afghanistan, he said, to inspire Soldiers and to boost morale. It was he, however, that was inspired by the Soldiers, he said. "These young Soldiers will never know not just how proud I was of them, but how much I wanted to join them," he said. "I went to Iraq and Afghanistan to check on the troops and to inspire them, but it was they that inspired me. "They bear this difficult mission for all of us, make incredible personal sacrifices, and witness friends and buddies getting wounded. They do it because they love this nation. They do it because they believe in this mission -- they see the big picture -- and they know the importance of victory for this nation and for this world." The general said he asks himself daily if he is doing all he can to support Soldiers and their families, and if he is showing the same moral courage that he saw daily in the eyes of Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. "The answer to those questions must be yes," he said. "Then I ask myself am I living my life as an American that is worthy of the sacrifices of our young Soldiers." PEO Soldier: Modernization at Good Value [2008-03-04] WASHINGTON -- The Army is now modernizing what Soldiers wear, carry and fight with at a rate faster than at any time in history. "Modernization is occurring at mach speed in the Soldier's world," said Brig. Gen. Robert M. Brown, Program Executive Officer, Soldier, and commanding general, U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center, during a session at the Association of the United States Army's Institute of Land Warfare Winter Symposium and Exposition in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. 400 Programs Underway The general said body armor has undergone nine changes in the past four years, while the helmet has undergone four changes in the past three years. And today, PEO Soldier is fielding a brigade with the 4th Infantry Division with a computer chip in the helmet to monitor the effects of blast and overpressure on mild traumatic brain injury. "We are modernizing the Soldier faster than we have at any time in the U.S. Army," he said. "It is our belief that the U.S. Army Soldier today is the most survivable, lethal, capable Soldier in the history of warfare. We need to keep it that way and we need to improve it." PEO Soldier views the Soldier as part of an integrated system, and ensures that the Soldier and everything he or she wears or carries works together as part of that integrated system. While the technology PEO delivers to the Soldier is groundbreaking, so is the amount of money being spent to put that technology in Soldiers' hands. Brown told generals and defense industry insiders at the symposium that he believed the cost of equipping Soldiers with the best technology is worth it. "We are spending much more on the U.S. Soldier than we ever have before -- is that a good value?" Brown asked. "If you believe that fewer Soldiers, doing more, and coming home alive is a good value -- then this is a bargain. It'd be a bargain at two or three times the price." Some of the 400 programs championed by PEO Soldier include the Land Warrior system, the body armor program and the M-4 Carbine rifle. M-4 Carbine "All the scientific test results show the M-4 Carbine is a world-class weapon," said Brown. "And in many applications, it performs better than its peers." The M-4 Carbine can replace such weapons as the M-3 submachine gun, the M-9 pistol, and the M-16A2 rifle. The weapon brings improved firepower compared to the weapons it replaces, and is a pound lighter than the M-16. General Brown said surveys on the M4 show Soldiers have high confidence in the weapon and that it will remain the Army's primary weapon until the technologies PMO Soldier is currently working on have matured. The general said the rifle has undergone some 68 substantive changes since it was first fielded: "the M-4 Carbine is not your dad's M-4 Carbine." Body Armor For protecting Soldiers, PEO Soldier has brought on what Brown says is the best armor available today. "We know that because we live-fire test every single solution," he said. "We don't give a solution to the Soldier unless it's passed the live-fire test. We know it because it's battle proven. We have vignette upon vignette of the body armor performing well beyond specification. And we have continually improved that body armor." The most recent improvements to Soldier's body armor includes the fielding of the improved outer tactical vest. The side-opening vest increases soft ballistic coverage and adjusts for better comfort. The vest also includes an emergency quick-release that allows Soldiers to remove the vest in emergency situations. Depending on the size of the vest, the weight of the body armor system has been decreased by as much as 3.8 pounds. Land Warrior System Finally, Brown discussed the Land Warrior system, an integrated digital fighting system that improves situational awareness and survivability for dismounted Soldiers. The system provides digital imagery and GPS location information that provides Soldiers exact locations of enemies or improvised explosive devices. The Land Warrior system was sent in to battle in spring 2007 with the 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, 4th (Stryker) Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. "The 4-9th `Manchus' requested to take this system with them to Iraq in their deployment," Brown said. "As it turns out they have been very pleased with the performance of that system, and I think one of the things that pleases them most is the rapid improvement in the system." In September 2006, about half a year before the "Manchus" prepared to deploy, the Ground Warrior system underwent user testing. Then, the system weighed 17 pounds. "That's far too much for a dismounted infantryman," Brown said. "But with feedback from the Manchus, we were able to knock that weight down in a very short period of time from 17 to 10 pounds. They took it into battle; the reliability was very high, and they found out they like all the situational awareness capabilities it brought to the table." Even as the Manchus used the system in Iraq, PEO Soldier worked to further reduce the weight of the system. The weight has been dropped to seven pounds, and Brown said they expect to reduce it even further. Brown also said other Army units are interested in the system, and the Army is working with the Marine Corps with the expectation they too will be interested in the future. New Combat Chow Options Previewed at Pentagon [2008-03-06] WASHINGTON -- Retired Soldiers, modern-day warfighters, television news reporters and Department of Defense civilians lined up March 5 to get a little taste of life in the combat zone. Secretary of the Army Pete Geren hosted a "combat feeding demonstration" at the Pentagon where representatives of the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research Development and Engineering Center offered up samples of the latest developments in combat chow. The secretary said the development of better food and better ways to deliver and prepare that food in combat is important, because taking care of Soldiers means feeding them right. "An Army travels on its stomach," the secretary said. "In this era of persistent conflict, in an era where we have to anticipate that we are going to deploy Soldiers around the world -- combat feeding is an essential part of sustaining our Soldiers that are in the fight. It is a key part of their quality of life." The demonstration featured a history of various combat feeding options dating from the Civil War through Desert Storm. It also highlighted the technology, quality, taste and variety of combat food options currently being developed or newly fielded by the Army. One of those new options is the "First Strike Ration." The new ration is about the size and weight of the brown-packaged "MREs," officially called "Meal, Ready-To-Eat, Individual" in military nomenclature. But the FSR provides the nutritional value of three meals at about the same weight and bulk as a single MRE. Additionally, the FSR contains only food items that can be eaten on the move and that require no heating or preparation, said Jeremy Whitsitt, a spokesman for the labs at Natick. "All the components are eat-out-of-hand, easily accessible and individually wrapped," he said. "Soldiers can rip it open, put everything in their cargo pocket and move out." The FSR contains items like beef jerky, nut and fruit mixtures, energy bars and crackers. The 2,900-calorie ration also includes non-perishable pre-made sandwiches or sealed pouches of chunk chicken or chunk tuna. Natick researches were motivated to develop the FSR in response to the "field stripping" trend commonly associated with the MRE. "One of the concepts that drove this was the field stripping phenomenon," Whitsitt said. "Soldiers throw out portions of the MRE they don't want because it's too heavy to carry, it's too bulky or they don't like them." Whitsett said field stripping of MREs was a concern because those meals are nutritionally balanced as they are. They are designed to provide the right amount of calories, fats, proteins, vitamins and minerals that an active Soldier needs. Tossing portions of the meal meant losing some of that nutritional balance. He said efforts were made to educate Soldiers about the need to eat the entire MRE, but those efforts were in vain. He said Soldiers field strip MREs for practical reasons that -- in typical Soldier fashion -- put the mission before themselves. "It's about mobility, basically. They keep the things they can carry while they are marching," he said. "And you don't have time to eat a 30-minute meal, or even a 15-minute meal, when you're on patrol. That's why we designed the FSR, it's a product that makes it possible to eat on the move." Also on display at the demonstration was the "Unitized Group Ration-Express." The UGR-E feeds about 18 Soldiers and is designed to provide a hot, group meal, in as little as 30 minutes. The UGR-E requires no mobile field kitchen, no power, no water and no equipment. "This is designed for Soldiers serving in a remote location or at a forward operating base," Whitsitt said. "All the warfighter has to do is pull a tab and in 30 minutes they have meals for 18 Soldiers. It's a completely nutritious and balanced meal." The UGR-E contains four sealed plastic trays containing an entrée, vegetable, starch and dessert. The trays are assembled in a box interspersed with chemical heaters similar to the ones found in MREs. By pulling a tab on the unit, a Soldier releases a saline solution into the container that activates the heaters. In as little as 30 minutes, Soldiers have a hot meal. "People are loving them," said Whitsitt of the UGR-E. "There's nothing like a group meal to break up that monotony and to change things up a little bit." Whitsitt said initial contracts for the UGR-E called for about 50,000 units a year. Now, he said, demand is about 50,000 a month. Food sampling was also part of the combat feeding demonstration. Attendees were treated to lunch or breakfast items from the Meal, Ready-to-Eat; Unitized Group Ration; and First Strike Ration feeding systems. Most of the food items offered have yet to be fielded, including: Mediterranean chicken, southwest beef & black beans, garlic mashed potatoes, beef brisket, chicken stir-fry and chocolate cappuccino cake. Among the attendees were several retired Soldiers from the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington, D.C. Sgt. 1st Class (ret.) Bernard Hipchen served in Army medicine during the Korean War, enlisting in 1954. He said combat rations then required some getting used to. "It was powdered eggs and powdered milk back then," he said. "After you were eating it for a few months, then it started tasting good." The combat rations he sampled at the Pentagon required no such adjustment time, however. "This food is awesome, just awesome," he said. Army, State Department Partner on Stability Operations [2008-03-07] WASHINGTON -- When it comes to conducting stability operations, a new core mission for Soldiers, the Army won't be going it alone. "For the mechanism of stability, there are four dimensions," said Maj. Gen. David A. Fastabend, Army director of strategy, plans and policy, for the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff. "You need to be able to compel, control, influence and support. All of these things have to work together. But this cannot be a military function, and certainly not solely an Army function, but an operation that requires all elements of national of power." Elements of national power include agencies that exert diplomatic, international, military or economic power. One element of national power the Army will work alongside is the U.S. Department of State. As part of it's contribution to stability operations, the State Department will create a cadre of skilled civilians that can deploy, when needed, to countries in crisis, said Ambassador John E. Herbst, coordinator for the Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization, U.S. Department of State. "This is a significant capability that would greatly enhance our national security," he said. "We've seen a need for trained and skilled civilians operating as teams in current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. We would be able, in a crisis, to deploy anywhere from 900 to 1,200 civilians to operate command and control systems for all civilian operations within two months of a decision." That deployable cadre of civilians would possess skills useful in a country where the government is not properly functioning: engineers, policemen, judges, corrections officials, lawyers, public administrators, public health officials and city planners to name a few. Many of those civilians would be employed by either the State Department, United States Agency for International Development or other agencies. Some would need to be able to deploy in as few as 48 hours. Other civilians involved in the program would be part of a "Civilian Reserve Corps," made of volunteers from local and state governments. Those individuals would sign on for a four- year obligation to serve for up to one year, if called upon. Soldiers participating in stability operations will also need to possess skills other than those needed for warfighting, including securing local populations and infrastructure, providing civil control, and developing infrastructure. The Army's Training and Doctrine Command along with headquarters Department of the Army are working now to develop tactics, techniques and procedures to better prepare Soldiers for conducting stability operations. Bush on 5 Years: Removing Saddam Right Decision [2008-03-19] WASHINGTON -- Five years ago, American forces marched into Iraq to liberate that nation. Today, President George W. Bush affirmed the decision was the right one. "Five years into this battle, there is an understandable debate over whether the war was worth fighting, whether the fight is worth winning, and whether we can win it," Bush told a gathering of military members at the Pentagon. "The answers are clear to me: Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision -- and this is a fight America can and must win." The president also told the gathered military members that their contributions to the war efforts in Iraq have not gone unnoticed, and that he was in fact proud of their hard work and sacrifice in the country. "The men and women who crossed into Iraq five years ago removed a tyrant, liberated a country, and rescued millions from unspeakable horrors," Bush said. "Some of those troops are with us today, and you need to know that the American people are proud of your accomplishment -- and so is the commander in chief." The President told those gathered that once they had liberated the Iraqi people from the oppressive regime of Saddam Hussein, his soldiers retreated, took off their uniforms, and blended in with insurgents to help prevent the spread of freedom across Iraq. "Former regime elements took off their uniforms and faded into the countryside to fight the emergence of a free Iraq," he said. "They were joined by foreign terrorists who were seeking to stop the advance of liberty in the Middle East and seeking to establish safe havens from which to plot new attacks across the world." In spite of the efforts of former regime members and terrorists to prevent freedom from taking root in Iraq, American forces, aided by coalition partners, have helped the Iraqi people stake a claim in democracy, and have helped them recover from life under the dictatorial rule of Hussein. "And as they've battled the terrorists and extremists in Iraq, they have helped the Iraqi people reclaim their nation, and helped a young democracy rise from the rubble of Saddam Hussein's tyranny," Bush said. Next month, military leaders will come to Washington, D.C., to testify before lawmakers on Capitol Hill about the status of the war in Iraq. President Bush said only after those military leaders, the commanders, have made their recommendation, will he make decisions about the number of troops that should continue in Iraq. "Any further drawdown will be based on conditions on the ground and the recommendations of our commanders -- and they must not jeopardize the hard-fought gains our troops and civilians have made over the past year," he said. President Bush said that pulling out of Iraq too soon could allow terrorists to regain a foothold there, to build safe havens, and to strengthen their resolve to destroy freedom in Iraq, the United States and in other free nations. "If we were to allow our enemies to prevail in Iraq, the violence that is now declining would accelerate -- and Iraq would descend into chaos," he said. "Out of such chaos in Iraq, the terrorist movement could emerge emboldened -- with new recruits, new resources, and an even greater determination to dominate the region and harm America." In order to prevent terrorists from again taking root in Iraq, President Bush resolved to continue the fight and to continue to do what is necessary to ensure freedom in Iraq and to ensure that America stays safe. "Throughout the war on terror, we have fought the enemy on every single battlefront," he said. "And so long as the terrorist danger remains, the United States of America will continue to fight the enemy wherever it makes its stand." Reserve Centennial Headlines April Soldiers Magazine [2008-03-21] WASHINGTON -- The April edition of Soldiers Magazine, on the presses now, recognizes a century of service by the U.S. Army Reserve. Retired Col. Randy Pullen presents the history of the Army Reserve, from its humble beginnings in 1908 with only 160 medical officers, to its current state of almost 200,000 Soldiers. "Over its 100-year history the Army Reserve has evolved from a much smaller version of the active Army to a force that compliments the total force with combat support, combat service support and training capabilities," writes Pullen. Maj. John Nolan highlights the major deployments of modern Reserve Soldiers beginning with mobilization immediately following Sept. 11, 2001. Reservists are now serving in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Djibouti, Kenya, Bosnia and Ethiopia, Nolan writes. And while there, Soldiers perform an array of missions including aviation, engineering, maintenance, logistics, medical and intelligence support. Gary Sheftick writes about the path ahead for the Army Reserve and some cutting-edge initiatives. His interview with Lt. Gen. Jack C. Stultz covers the Army Reserve's budding partnership with industry and some proposals that may affect its Force Generation model. "Transforming the Army Reserve into an 'operational force' includes forging a partnership with American businesses to share not only talent, but eventually health care, retirement plans and training as well," he discloses. TRADOC's John Harlow discusses the recent release of the Army's new field manual for operations, FM 3-0. The manual represents the first major update of Army capstone doctrine since Sept. 11, 2001, he writes. "FM 3-0 institutionalizes simultaneous offensive, defensive, and stability or civil-support operations as the core of the Army's doctrine," writes Harlow. "The concept of full spectrum operations, first introduced in the 2001 manual, still represents a major shift in Army doctrine -- forces must be able to address the civil situation at all times." Also in the April edition of Soldiers, a glimpse at the life of an Army mechanic; efforts by Soldiers in Korea to clean up an oil spill; wildlife relocation efforts at Fort Lewis, Wash.; wildlife management at Fort Benning, Ga.; and a 2008 Earth Day poster. Read it all in the latest edition of Soldiers Magazine, available the first week of April. Center Brings Lessons from Field to Soldiers [2008-03-25] WASHINGTON -- One Soldier's insight into how things can be done better in the combat zone today can save time or even the life of another Soldier in the combat zone tomorrow. Making sure those insights are documented and disbursed across the Army is the role of the Center for Army Lessons Learned at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. "We are the one place that every Soldier and every commander can come to get the information they need to win the war on terrorism and survive on the battlefield," said CALL director, Col. Steve Mains. "Soldiers can come to our Web site and we will either have the information or we will get the information for them." CALL gathers and documents the "lessons" learned by Soldiers as they do their jobs, then distributes that information to other Soldiers. CALL makes nearly all of those lessons available on the Web site it maintains at http://call.army.mil. The center also publishes books and manuals and staffs a research division that answers Soldiers' questions via e-mail. An answer to nearly every question imaginable is available to Soldiers through CALL's research division. There, researchers take questions via e-mail and turn answers around to requestors sometimes in as little as a few hours. Questions from Soldiers in the United Sates are typically answered in three days, for deployed Soldiers, it usually takes only two days. Lynn Rolf is a research analyst for CALL. He answers questions from the field on subjects ranging from sand particles in Iraq to caring for goats and other animals in Afghanistan. The goat question came from a Soldier whose unit was using pack animals in the mountains of Afghanistan, and he did not have personal knowledge on how to take care of those animals. "Some guys have never had a pet, or they don't know how to treat a horse, mule or a goat," Rolf said. "But I'm a country boy from Oklahoma, and I know how to deal with horses -- it's my expertise." Rolf said he helped the Soldier locate Army field manuals on the subject of pack animal use, forwarded information from previous units that have used pack animals in Afghanistan and also gave him information from his own experience as well, including how to keep animals in shape, how to load them, and how to use them safely. Information from CALL is also distributed to Soldiers via the center's many published books and manuals. One of the most popular of those manuals is called "The First 100 Days -- Tactics, Techniques and Procedures." "We found there was a small rise in the number of casualties in a unit in the first 100 days of a deployment," Mains said. "Then things kind of settled down after that and the numbers were pretty stable." Mains said experts at CALL wanted to learn about and document what it is that Soldiers know on their 300th day of combat that they didn't know during their first 100 days. To produce "The First 100 Days," Mains said CALL interviewed some 1,700 Soldiers, commanders and staff to find out what they learned and what they wished they knew before they deployed. "What do Soldiers know that keeps them alive, or what did their buddies do wrong that caused problems for them," Mains asked. "We wanted to know so we could transfer that knowledge to Soldiers before they deploy." What the center learned by talking to Soldiers was not surprising, Mains said. "It comes down to basic soldiering: doing the things your noncommissioned tells you to do, to the standard. It's a pretty straightforward thing," he said. Complacency is a key factor in combat injuries as well -- Soldiers get bored with established routines. Soldiers may experience days without incident and expect the peace to continue, so they become less careful in their routines. "You patrolled yesterday, cleaned your weapon, checked your weapon, and it worked. And it's been under your control since then, so you feel you don't need to check it today before you go on patrol -- that's kind of that complacency," he said. The "First 100 Days" handbook also includes tips from combat-experienced Soldiers about detecting improvised explosive devices, avoiding sniper attacks, reacting to ambushes and the importance of becoming familiar with the environment. "It takes a while for a unit to figure out what the kind of subtle signals are in the environment -- things like if suddenly the street has fewer people on it, maybe they know something and maybe then something is going to happen," said Mains. "Those sorts of indicators would maybe not be obvious to somebody when they get into theater." A lot of the information in "The First 100 Days" is what Mains calls "tacit knowledge," information that exists only in a Soldier's head -- knowledge that comes from experiences and is often difficult to impart on other Soldiers. "It is things a guy knows instinctively and does instinctively that aren't really written down someplace," Mains said. "We want to get that knowledge out of the Soldiers and put it into a form so other Soldiers can access it." One of the primary ways CALL gathers lessons learned is by deploying as many as 20 liaison officers to the field to work directly with unit commanders, staff officers and unit personnel, said Maj. Tyrone Martin, a former director of the LNO program at CALL. "The idea is that the LNO is attached to an organization not to become a staff officer, but to completely integrate with the staff," he said. "We tell our guys the best way to describe you is you are an investigative journalist -- within the realm of the military's rules and command structure." The LNOs deploy with collection plans, based on trends CALL is interested in investigating. Those trends could include methods units are using to defeat improvised explosive devices, how units are working with local sheikhs and imams, or what kinds of issues units are facing when working with the new mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles. "We expect the LNOs to take those collection plans and make it their own, to chase down those leads like a journalist would," said Martin. Martin said that on occasion, an LNO deploys and discovers that what CALL wanted him to investigate was "all wrong." Such was the case when one officer deployed to Iraq. "The trend we thought existed, didn't," Martin said. "When he got there he said hey, there is nothing here for me to collect. What else do you have?" The trip was not wasted, however. That LNO was able to participate in visits to provincial reconstruction teams as part of an audit group with the State Department and Multi-National Force-Iraq, Martin said. "He visited every province in Iraq, every provincial reconstruction team, and wrote a handbook that is now used by the State Department," Martin said. "If you have the right guy on the ground at the right time, it is perfect." Today, CALL sends LNOs with more than one collection plan, in case the primary plan turns out to be unusable, said Martin. "We even learn our own lessons." Martin said CALL looks for field-grade officers or senior NCOs with multi-discipline backgrounds, the ability to think broadly, and good writing skills to serve as LNOs. "The number one thing they have to be is charismatic," he said. "Because, like a journalist, you have to be able to gain the trust of the people you are talking to. Breadth of experience helps them with that. Lt. Col. Scott Fowler served as a liaison officer for CALL with the 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq. While in theater, his collection plan had him focusing on learning more about how the 3rd ID was conducting information operations. In Iraq, he witnessed how brigade-level IO officers were building bridges between Sunni and Shia sheikhs. They would bring the two sides together for meetings, in a safe environment, where everybody could have their voices heard. "Brigade IO officers would bring the sheikhs, local police, local army and media together and hold meetings there at the forward operating base," Fowler said. "Everybody got to speak. There was yelling and arguing, but no violence. That was one way the IO officer was helpful at his level. If he can keep them having a dialogue, he is reducing the kinetic strikes they make against each other. It's about keeping the peace so the economy can take off." Fowler also witnessed creation of the "Iraqi Media Division" within the 3rd ID. By paying special attention to Iraqi media, the division ensured the good news stories happening in Iraq made their way to Iraqi television, radio and print publications as soon as possible. "We'd pick them up in the morning and have them back to Baghdad by 1 p.m., and the story was on the news that evening," Fowler said. "You want to show them the good stuff. When the host nation sees the good stuff on the news, they see that the Coalition forces are doing something good for them." Fowler said as Iraqi media were given more attention, and the good-news message of what Coalition forces in Iraq were accomplishing was being pushed out to the Iraqi people, the number of attacks against Coalition forces was going down. "Iraqi fence sitters were maybe saying they should support the government of Iraq and Coalition forces," Fowler said. "I personally witnessed former terrorists having meetings with battalion commanders. They say we know where Al-Qaeda is and we'll show you if you back us up. The people that were former terrorists were turning against terrorists -- I think IO was part of that. The lesson learned there is if you have a good concept of IO, it makes things better in your sector." Secretary Recognizes Best Recruiters, Career Counselors [2008-03-26] WASHINGTON -- Six Soldiers were honored today for their contributions to the health of the Army's all-volunteer fighting force. Secretary of the Army Pete Geren hosted the 2007 Secretary of the Army Career Counselor and Recruiter of the Year Awards at the Pentagon. "We are a nation long at war, in our seventh year at war in Afghanistan, and this month in our fifth year in Iraq. That is the third-longest war in our nation's history and the longest war we have ever fought with an all-volunteer force," Geren said. "We now have a recruiting environment that has to be as tough as we've ever faced." Geren said the Army has found the propensity to enlist among young people has gone down, and the inclination for "influencers" such as parents, teachers and mentors to support a young person's decision to enlist or re-enlist has also gone down. Despite the recruiting environment, the Army needs recruiters and career counselors to meet their goals so the Army can continue to do its job, Geren said. "As an all-volunteer force, the health of the force, and in fact the very existence of the force depends on our recruiters and our career counselors," he said. "And today we recognize those recruiters and career counselors that are the best of the best." Those recognized during the award ceremony are: • Staff Sgt. Gary W. Norris, Army Career Counselor of the Year • Sgt. 1st Class Gregory Witzleb, Reserve Component Career Counselor of the Year • Sgt. 1st Class Sherri M. Roundtree, Army Recruiter of the Year • Sgt. 1st Class Ricky L. Webb, Army Reserve Recruiter of the Year • Sgt. 1st Class Ricardo RamosLopez, Army Reserve Career Counselor of the Year • Sgt. 1st Class Brad A. Bond, Army National Guard Recruiter/Retention Noncommissioned Officer of the Year Six Honored for Journalistic Excellence at Public Affairs Worldwide [2008-04-01] MCCLAIN, Va. -- Four Soldiers and two Department of the Army Civilians were recognized March 31 for excellence in Army journalism. During the 2008 Worldwide Public Affairs Symposium, Secretary of the Army Pete Geren presented plaques to six of the winners of the 2007 Keith L. Ware awards. The winners honored during the symposium include: • The Paul D. Savanuck Military Print Journalist of the Year award: Staff Sgt. Mike Pryor, Fort Bragg, N.C. • The John T. Anderson Military Broadcast Journalist of the Year award: Staff Sgt. Jose Colon, American Forces Network-Bavaria • The Moss-Holland Civilian Print Journalist of the Year award: Mike Glasch, Fort Jackson, S.C. • The Civilian Broadcast Journalist of the Year award: Tony McKinney, AFN-Bavaria • The "Rising Star" for Outstanding New Writer award: Spc. Jeffrey Ledesma, Fort Hood, Texas • The "Rising Star" for Outstanding New Broadcaster award: Spc. Nathan Jones, AFN-Bavaria These six represent but a few of the many winners of the Army's 2007 Maj. Gen. Keith L. Ware Journalism Awards Competition. The competition recognizes military and civilian employee print and broadcast practitioners for journalistic excellence in furthering the objectives of the Department of the Army internal-information program. Award winners of the 2007 journalism awards will now move forward to compete against journalists from other services in the Department of Defense's Thomas Jefferson awards competition. Detainees Treated Fairly Says New Guantanamo Deputy [2008-04-07] WASHINGTON -- The recently appointed deputy commander of Joint Task Force - Guantanamo said he knows why many have a hard time letting go of misconceptions about detainee treatment at the facility. Despite those misconception, Brig. Gen. Greg Zanetti said, detainees from the war on terror held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are being treated fairly. "I understand why people are reluctant to say (we) are really telling the truth here -- we all remember Abu Ghraib -- it hit us pretty hard," he said. "But we are going to make sure we conduct our operations in a safe and transparent way and it is going to be transparent to the world. So every week we are bringing down some human rights groups. They see every detainee and they talk with them." Conditions at Guantanamo for detainees are not necessarily pleasant, the general said; after all, they are detainees and suspected terrorists. But the conditions are not inhumane, either and detainees are not being abused. "The detainees are treated as a detainee should be, so it's not palatial -- they don't have Bowflex machines or hot tubs -- but at the same time, are they mistreated or abused? No. So the only way we can show that is to have people come down and look at the place." Zanetti said detainees at Guantanamo get as many as 5,000 calories a day of food to eat, so much so that in the past some had to be put on diets because they were "becoming obese." The detainees also read a newsletter, in multiple languages, that covers such things as Middle East politics, soccer scores and economics. For Soldiers working as guards at Guantanamo, often called "Gitmo" for short, the job can be both physically and mentally demanding. Zanetti said guards in the detention facilities there regularly work 12-hour days, sometimes more than that. "They do have a tough job. It's a 12-hour shift that starts at 6 in the morning and ends at 6 at night," he said. "But you know, you never start your day at 6. The guys get up at 4:30, quarter to 5. Then they get to the camps, get their briefs, and then they start walking the blocks. These Soldiers and Sailors walk eight to 11 miles a day, putting eyes on the detainees every one to three minutes." It's not just the grueling schedule that is tough, or the physical training, or the time on their feet, Zanetti said. The job is dangerous because the detainees themselves are dangerous, he said. "Inside the detention facility we have all the makings of an al Qaeda cell," said Zanetti. "We are holding financiers, spiritual leaders, military leaders, trigger pullers, bomb makers and so on. They have a remarkable way of forming cells, where they have their own operations daily and we have our operations daily." And those detainees keep guards on their toes, with threats and physical assaults. Zanetti said he hears about it from the guards themselves during morning battle update briefings. During the morning "BUB," guards report on detainee activity against them, including a detainee who "balled up feces" and threw it at a guard's chest, with a follow-up warning that next time it would be "in the face." Another detainee was reported to have bit a guard on the arm so hard that he had to be sent to the medical facility for evaluation, and yet another, after threatening a female guard with rape, told her he'd kill her and her family when he "got out." Guards must keep their eyes on detainees for a number of reasons. It's not just for their own security, or even for intelligence gathering. It's also because the detainees pose a risk to themselves, Zanetti said. "The detainees often want to commit self harm," Zanetti said. "And we don't want them to commit self harm. It's one of the odd parts about Guantanamo Bay. When in a time of war do we strive to keep the enemy alive while the enemy strives to hurt himself? But this is what those guards do, and they do it in a professional way every day." At it's peak occupancy, the detention facility at Guantanamo held as many as 800 detainees. That was back in 2002. Today, that number has dropped to about 275. Many of those released have been sent back to their home countries. Some of those detainees are awaiting a hearing by a military commission that will try them for the crimes they are accused of. "Many are probably familiar with the Nuremberg trials, post World War II, when we put the Nazis on trial for war crimes," Zanetti said. "This is the modern-day version, somewhat, of the Nuremberg trials." JTF-GTMO doesn't actually run the tribunals there, instead, that task falls on the Office of Military Commissions, said Zanetti. "We at JTF-GTMO think of ourselves as the stage hands." The task force manages the detention facility, sets up the courtroom, and runs communications and logistics support there. They also provide the security. While the task force doesn't play a direct role in bringing justice to detainees, Zanetti said he is proud of the fact that the United States is playing it fair with them. "If this were any other country in the world the rights being afforded to these detainees would be unheard of," he said. "I am rather proud of that. We are going to lengths to give fair trials, with the right of appeal all the way to the Supreme Court." Soldier Body Armor was Tested, General Says [2008-04-11] WASHINGTON -- Despite reports to the contrary, the body armor being used by Soldiers today in Iraq has been rigorously tested. During testimony before the House Armed Services Committee subcommittee on air and land forces, Lt. Gen. N. Ross Thompson III, military deputy to the acting Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics And Technology, told committee members that a misinterpretation of the Federal Acquisition Regulation had led some to believe body armor issued to Soldiers had not been properly tested before it was fielded. "The Army has tested all of the body armor and all of the body armor that is issued to the Soldiers today has passed the rigorous test and it is the best body armor that is available in the world today; and I can say that without qualification," Thompson said. "Of all high-priority programs, force protection is our number one priority." Both Thompson and Lt. Gen. Stephen M. Speakes, deputy chief Of staff, G-8, met with lawmakers April 10 to discuss Army acquisition programs and strategy. The two discussed such issues as equipping the Reserve component, Army transformation and Future Combat Systems. Lawmakers asked what the Army is doing to ensure Soldiers in the Army National Guard and Army Reserve are equipped at the same level as the active-duty Army. Speakes said the Army has recognized the importance of the reserve components and takes seriously the requirement to equip them. "Those are two key components of our force that are never more important than they are today," he said. "We count on them from the stance of homeland defense and as part of our operational force." The general told congressmen that the Army has developed plans to eliminate "evil" practices of the past, such as the cascading of used but serviceable equipment from the active component into the reserve. "That was a negative practice for a bunch of reasons," he said. "We now send new equipment to whatever unit is in the transformation process or is getting ready to go to war. It treats everybody equally in regard to their access to equipment." In submitted testimony, Speakes said the Army has made "historic strides" in improving the quantity and quality of equipment provided to reserve components. The Army will field more than 518,000 items to the Army National Guard and Army Reserve during a two-year period that began in January. That represents some 46 percent of all Army distributions, he said. "The equipment they are receiving is materially improving the capability of the Army Guard to conduct Homeland Security and Homeland Defense missions," he said. Speakes also said Army transformation to the modular design creates a single standard for all components of the service. "We now have one measuring stick to use for everybody." Completion of that modernization, across the entire Army, is expected by 2013. By 2011, the Army expects to field "Spin Out 1" of Future Combat System technology. That technology includes the Non-Line of Sight Launch System, Urban Unattended Ground Sensors, Tactical Unattended Ground Sensors, and FCS Network Integration Kits for Abrams, Bradley, and Humvee platforms. Those systems, said Thompson, are key to the Army's transformation efforts. "We are a high technology Army and we have a comprehensive strategy to modernize," he said. "Our FCS ... is the foundation of our Army transformation and really the cornerstone of the Army's future modular force." 12-Month Deployments to Reduce Stress, Build Depth [2008-04-21] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers can now look forward to less time away from their families as the Army finalizes plans for shortened deployment lengths in support of the war on terror. With the decision by President George W. Bush April 12, the Army will return to 12- month deployments after Aug. 1, said Lt. Gen. James D. Thurman, deputy chief of staff of the Army for G-3 (Operations). He said the shortened tour lengths would be good for both Soldiers and the Army. "It's going to help us begin to restore the balance that we need to do in the Army," he said. "That will help us reduce that stress and strain on our Soldiers and their families. It will also help us by continuing to build that strategic depth back in the Army." The change refers now only to the active component of the Army, and will help bring the Army back to a "1 to 1" ratio of deployment time to dwell time -- the period of time following a deployment that allows a unit to reset and re-equip. The general said the Army wants to increase dwell time. "Ideally, we want to push that out to 15 to 18 months," he said. "We want to get to 18 months because that will allow us to start building back to the full-spectrum capability we need -- we are a counter-insurgency based force." Some units are now at 15 months dwell time, the general said. But not the entire Army. "It depends on what kind of formation you are in," he said. By Fiscal 2011, the Army could attain 24 months of dwell time for each year deployed, Thurman said, but added the Army has a longer dwell time planned beyond that. "The ultimate goal that we have in the Army is to get to a one and three," he said. "But I don't see that happening now, based on current demands -- because demand does exceed supply." The Army National Guard and Army Reserve are under a 12-month mobilization policy. Pre- and post- mobilization times are built in to that 12 months. The ultimate goal for the Guard and Reserve is to have one year deployed and 5 years at home, he said. To achieve a 24-month dwell time by FY11, the Army will need 15 BCTs in the active component that are always ready to deploy. The National Guard will also need to provide four to five ready-to-deploy brigades to make that happen. The change to 12-month deployments will take affect for Soldiers deploying after Aug. 1. Those Soldiers currently deployed, and those deploying prior to the August date, will deploy for their already scheduled tour lengths. CSA: Guard, Reserve Serve as Connection Between Army, Society [2008-04-23] WASHINGTON -- Americans maintain a connection to the military through the Soldiers that come from their own communities, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. said. During a presentation April 23 at Georgetown University, Gen. Casey said the American public maintains a very real connection to the war on terror through friends and neighbors that deploy as part of the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve -- ensuring that America's military does not become an isolated society. "Our connection is the Guard and the Reserve -- Guard and Reserve units from all over the country are deploying, and have been since Sept. 11," he said. "That is a connection. As these Soldiers come and go for their mission, that affects the whole United States." The presentation, entitled "Meeting the Challenges of Persistent Conflict in the 21st Century," was hosted by the Center for Peace and Security Studies and the Georgetown Lecture Fund. The general is a 1970 graduate of the university, earning a bachelor of science degree there in international relations. Casey spoke to a crowd of students and Reserve Officer Training Corps cadets from the school about the developing trends that will shape the global environment in coming years, and how America's military must be ready to adapt. Those trends involve globalization, technology and population demographics. "There is no question that the impact of globalization is bringing prosperity to people around the world," the general said. "Unfortunately, that prosperity is unequally distributed." In places like South America, the Middle East and South Asia, the effects of globalization are not as positive as they are in other places, the general said. "What we see emerging is the potential of a 'have' and 'have-not' culture," he said, adding that estimates say about 2.3 billion people will live below the poverty level by 2030. "These have-not groups are much more susceptible to recruiting" by terrorist organizations, he said. The emergence and the distribution of technology is also a trend America's military must stay abreast of, he said. "The same technology that is allowing knowledge to be brought to anybody with a computer and a hookup anywhere in the world, is also being used by terrorists to export terror around the globe," he said. Population demographics are also "working in the wrong direction," the general said. The population of some developing nations are expected to double by 2020, "adding to the already difficult situation ... governments have in supporting their populations." By 2030, 60 percent of the world is expected to live in cities, Casey said. "That says a lot to us in the Army about where we will operate." For the U.S. military to operate in that environment, it must operate with all the elements of national power behind it, including those that exert diplomatic, international or economic power, Casey said. The U.S. military must also be able to work with indigenous forces in the areas it operates. "No great power has ever prevailed in a counterinsurgency without ... a partner," he said. "We are actively working that in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a different intellectual challenge because doing something yourself is always easier than getting somebody else to do it." The general told audience members the U.S. Army is working now to build a force that is capable of operating in what will be a changed environment in the 21st century. "As we look to the future, taking into consideration persistent conflict and the nature of conflict in the 21st century, we are working to build an agile -- both individually and institutionally -- campaign quality army, with the ability to sustain operations over a period of years to accomplish our national objectives," he said. Problems Corrected at Fort Bragg Dorms [2008-04-30] WASHINGTON -- The poor conditions in a barracks at Fort Bragg, N.C. have largely been corrected, said an Army general responsible for maintaining such facilities. "Most of those shortfalls have been corrected, as a matter of fact, they were corrected two weeks ago and there are some things that are still ongoing," said Brig. Gen. Dennis E. Rogers, deputy director of operations, Army Installation Management Command. On April 28, the parent of a Soldier recently returned from Afghanistan posted to an online video sharing Web site pictures of the Soldier's barracks at Fort Bragg. The barracks were shown to be in poor condition, including peeling paint, rusted pipes and stairwell handrails, mold and missing ceiling tiles. The most visually shocking image displayed was that of a uniformed Soldier standing inside a utility sink, using a plunger on a bathroom floor drain. The floor had nearly three inches of standing water, presumably from backed up toilets. In the video, the father of the Soldier asked viewers to contact their congressmen to affect change at the barracks. Rogers met April 29, with reporters at the Pentagon to discuss the conditions of the barracks at Fort Bragg and how the service has worked and has been working, to correct the problems. He told reporters he takes responsibility for conditions at the barracks. "I am the director of operations and facilities for Installation Management Command and it is my responsibility for maintaining barracks throughout the Army," he said. "In that role, I assume responsibility for the shortfalls in barracks maintenance referenced in the video. We let our Soldiers down, and that's not like us. That is not how we want America's sons and daughters to live." Despite conditions shown on the video, the barracks in question were already in the process of being renovated. Rogers told reporters the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system in the building was new, and that furniture in Soldiers' individual rooms and the rooms themselves were also new and in good condition. Additionally, conditions shown in the video were actually corrected before the video was released. The flooded bathroom floor, for instance, was remedied as soon as it was reported. There are 23 more buildings at Fort Bragg similar to the one seen on the video, each built in the 1950's, during the Korean War. All of those buildings are scheduled to be taken "out of the inventory" in next five years, as new barracks come on line. The older barracks, while still occupied, are currently meeting Army standards for "health, life and welfare," Rogers said. Senior leadership in the Army has directed all barracks, Army-wide, be walked through to determine if they are meeting Army standards. Those inspecting the facilities will be looking for conditions similar to what was seen at Fort Bragg. A final report on those findings should be compiled by next week, Rogers said, but so far nothing similar is being found in other barracks. "This past weekend we directed that the garrisons throughout the Army, inspect, check, look at all the barracks to look for issues like this," he said. "What we have found is that Soldiers are living in conditions that ... are meeting Army standards. We have not seen anything that would lead us to the conclusion that those kinds of conditions exist." The general did say that if conditions are found anywhere that would affect the health, safety or welfare of Soldiers, garrison commanders have been directed to fix those issues "right there, on the spot." The Army's Installation Management command leadership has also directed the establishment of a Senior Noncommissioned Officer Forum, chaired by INCOM Command Sergeant Major, Command Sergeant Major Debora Strickland, to provide NCO perspective on the condition of Soldier living conditions Army-wide. Despite problems with some barracks at Fort Bragg, as many as 80 percent of single Soldiers in the 82nd Airborne at the installation are living in new barracks, Rogers said. New barracks include "suite" like living quarters for Soldiers, where bathrooms and kitchenettes are shared with only a few others. Ladies of Arlington Never Miss Final Salute [2008-05-05] WASHINGTON -- During a recent Army funeral at Arlington National Cemetery, a woman escorted by a member of the Army's 3rd U.S. Infantry (The Old Guard), stood silently near the gravesite. Not related to the Soldier being interred that day, she is one of about 65 women, known as the Arlington Ladies, who volunteer to attend Army funerals held at the nation's most hallowed cemetery. So every time a Soldier is buried there, an Arlington Lady is present. They attend funerals in the heat, in the snow and in the rain. They are present for the burial of the youngest Soldier who was killed during his first tour in Iraq and for the World War II-era Soldier who spent his last years in the Old Soldiers Home in Washington, D.C. The Arlington Ladies stand a silent vigil at funerals attended by dozens of mourners and at funerals where a Soldier has no next of kin - no friends present to render a final salute. In fact, that is the very reason they attend funerals. Since 1973, the Arlington Ladies have ensured that no Soldier - old or young - is ever buried alone. The idea for the Arlington Ladies came about when Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg noticed no friends or relatives were on hand for some Air Force funerals. When he told wife, Gladys, of his concerns, she mobilized members of the Officers Wives Club to begin attending funerals. In 1973 Julia Abrams, the wife of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Creighton Abrams Jr., became concerned about Soldiers being buried at Arlington Cemetery without family or friends present and established the Arlington Ladies. Today, the Air Force, the Army and the Navy all have Arlington Ladies who perform similar duties at the cemetery for members of their respective services. Many times it's the older Soldiers, the ones who served in Korea and World War II, who have no one to attend their funerals. Nancy Graves, an Arlington Lady since 1978, said she has attended several funerals where there are no family members or friends present at a Soldier's burial. Besides honoring the Soldiers who are buried at Arlington, the ladies also extend to grieving family members the sympathy of the Army chief of staff and the entire Army family, said Margaret Mensch, Arlington Ladies chairwoman. "We've been accused of being professional mourners, but that isn't true," she said. "I fight that perception all the time. What we're doing is paying homage to Soldiers who have given their lives for our country." Each month Mensch creates a schedule, assigning two volunteers for each day a burial will be performed. The volunteers learn the day before how many funerals they will attend and who will be interred, either in the ground or in the cemetery's columbarium. Arlington National Cemetery holds as many as 100 funerals a week, Monday through Friday. That's about 20 funerals a day. In recent years, that number has risen even higher. About half of the funerals are for Soldiers, and they are split between the two Arlington Ladies on duty each day. Graves has lost count of the number of funerals she's attended over the past 30 years, she said. Today, eight to 10 Soldiers are interred daily. "So we each attend five funerals a day, on average," she said. When the Arlington Ladies began attending funerals some 35 years ago, they attended alone. But later they felt, as did the Army, that they needed to be made a more official part of the ceremony. So today Arlington Ladies attend the funerals with a military escort from the Army's Old Guard. Pfc. Lyle Eagle is a member of the Old Guard and often escorts the Arlington Ladies. He also is a scheduler for other escorts. Soldiers who perform escort duty respect the Arlington Ladies, but are usually cautious at first, he said. That's because some of them are the wives of high-ranking officers and, as military partners, have witnessed decades of military history. After working with the ladies for a while, the escorts are able to relax a bit and talk more informally, Lyle said. It is then that they learn about some of the Army history the ladies are privy to. "For some funerals you have a few moments in the vehicle to talk to the ladies. They tell stories about their husbands' exploits, how the Army used to be and how it has changed over the years," Lyle said. The Army escort and the Arlington lady meet before each funeral at the cemetery's administration building and travel together, often with the military chaplain who will perform services, to a Soldier's gravesite. They wait together near the burial site for the Soldier's casket to arrive, and then walk together to the burial site. There they wait silently, she holding his arm until the moment when the folded flag is presented to the deceased Soldier's next of kin. It is at that moment the Arlington lady steps forward and breaks her silence. She approaches the widow, widower or grieving mother and father, and offers words of condolence. Then she presents the loved one a card from the Army chief of staff and his wife and a card from the Arlington Ladies. Arlington Ladies may also have words of their own for the family members with whom they interact. Barbara Benson has been volunteering with the Arlington Ladies for 33 years and is the longest-serving Arlington Lady. She feels a special connection with older military wives who have lost their husbands and often asks them about their relationships, she said. "I always try to add something personal, especially for a much older woman," she said. "I always ask how long they were married. They like to tell you they were married 50 or 60 years." Benson was a former Soldier herself, serving as a flight nurse after World War II. Her own husband, Col. George Benson (Ret.), died in December. Another Arlington Lady, a friend, comforted her at the funeral. Following the Arlington Lady's portion of the ceremony, she steps back to her escort and remains silent for the remainder of the ceremony - she looks straight ahead and always maintains her dignity. While her portion of the ceremony is small, it is meaningful - for she represents to family members the entire Army family. Chaplain (Maj.) David Baum said presiding over funerals at Arlington is an honor and each respective funeral helps loved ones grieve. "The ceremony is a beautiful event to help families honor their loved ones," he said. "I think it reminds them that the Soldier who died was part of something very important: service to his nation," Baum said. Because the Arlington Ladies are all former or current military spouses, "they help to put a family face on the ceremony," he added. "They remind us that military service is often a family experience. Their presence brings home the fact that the entire Army family shares in their loss." Arlington Ladies volunteer for the service for many reasons - patriotism, honor and selfless service among them. Some of the ladies have felt part of the Army for the many years their husbands served and some served themselves. Those ladies want to continue that service to the Army for as long as they can. Benson said she participates so she can continue to serve Soldiers, even 60 years after her own service at the end of World War II. "I don't know how to say it really," she said. "I guess because I identify with Soldiers. That was my life for 31 years. So it just seems like the natural thing to do." The Arlington Ladies serve, they say, because it is an honor for them to let families know the Army has not forgotten the service their loved one gave to the United States. And their service, like that of the Soldiers they honor, is representative of the Army's value of selfless service. Army Has Not Lowered Soldier Recruiting Standards [2008-05-06] WASHINGTON -- Despite a rise in conduct waivers offered to recruits last year, Army officials emphasized the service is not lowering its standards -- explaining that circumstances surrounding each case and the recent behavior of those recruits earned them a second look. "First off, every Soldier that comes into the Army is fully qualified for the job they take," said Lt. Col. Val Siegfried, the Army branch chief for enlisted accessions. "Second, we're not letting murderers in and we're not letting in sexual predators." In fact, Siegfried says, the Soldiers let into the ranks with conduct waivers are of the same caliber as Soldiers without those waivers, and by some measure, Soldiers with conduct waivers perform even better than their counterparts. The Army's G-1 recently conducted a study of enlistees accessed from FY03-FY06. The study compared 258,270 Soldiers who did not need conduct waivers and 17,961 who did. Waivers are required for recruits with felonies, traffic violations, or non-traffic- related violations. The study did find differences between the two groups. For instance, the conduct waiver population re-enlisted at a higher rate. The conduct waiver Soldiers also earned a higher ratio of valorous awards and combat badges -- 13.87 percent compared to 12.73 percent. Additionally, the conduct waiver population included more high school graduates, higher scores on the ASVAB, and fewer Soldiers scoring in the "Cat 4" range on that test. However, the Army also found that Soldiers who required conduct waivers had higher losses in six of nine "adverse loss categories." That included a .27 percent loss rate for alcohol rehabilitation failure verses the non-waiver population's loss rate of .12 percent; a misconduct rate of 5.95 percent verses the non-waiver population of 3.55 percent; and a desertion rate of 4.26 percent compared to 3.59 percent. However, the attrition due to personality disorders, entry-level performance or unsatisfactory performance for Soldiers with waivers was less than their non-waiver counterparts. In all, the study shows that the differences between Soldiers that came in with conduct waivers and those that did not are negligible -- the Army lost about 2.3 more Soldiers per 100 due to "adverse losses" than it did among the non-waiver population. "Statistically, it is kind of insignificant," Siegfried said. The process for granting conduct waivers is tightly controlled, Siegfried said. For starters, individuals who have committed murder or sexually violent crimes, or those who have been convicted for dealing drugs or who are themselves dependent on drugs or alcohol, are automatically excluded from consideration for service. The Army also excludes those individuals who have charges pending against them or who are on probation or parole. Today's All-Volunteer Army no longer takes those who have been ordered to join the military by the court in lieu of prosecution -- that means no more Soldiers who signed up to avoid going to jail. Siegfried said the Army enlists only those individuals deemed capable of serving honorably -- including those who may have committed some wrongdoing in the past, but who have repaid their debt to society and have since made something of themselves. "We're letting in people who made mistakes in their youth, who paid their penance for those mistakes and who have been able to prove to the Army that they merit a second chance and we can use them," Siegfried said. "We look at the full, whole person concept. We realize these individuals have made mistakes, but we evaluate what have they done after the mistake was made." For a recruit with a felony on his record, his enlistment waiver must run a gauntlet of 10 individuals, including a general officer, before it can be approved, Siegfried said. For those with misdemeanors on their record, their waivers must be approved by up to six individuals. Those charged with, but not convicted of a felony, must have their waivers processed as though they were convicted. "If that person gets in a fight in high school, and a shoe was their 'deadly weapon' -- in today's environment the cops come and haul them down to the police station and charge them with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Then they go to court and they do 10 hours of community service," Siegfried said. "We still treat that as aggravated assault." Last year, the Army let in some 511 recruits that required a conduct waiver for felony crimes. Some of those felony crimes include: • A 12-year-old, "trying to mimic a bee keeper using smoke to calm down bees in a hive," lit a bee hive on fire, which caught the tree on fire, which then burned the siding of a house. Because of the classification of arson as a felony, he must get a waiver. • A 13-year-old male was arrested after school officials discovered a letter that contained anti-Semitic comments, purportedly written by the subject. It was later determined that the subject's twin brother had written the letter, but only after the adjudication of the offense. • A 14-year-old male was charged for having consensual intercourse with his 14-year-old girlfriend. • A 14-year-old male was driving his parent's automobile without their knowledge. A friend, riding on top of the car, was thrown from the roof of the vehicle. He later died from his injuries. The driver was convicted of vehicular manslaughter. Times are tough for recruiters today, Siegfried said. In recent years, the number of recruits that are "fully qualified" to enter any branch of military service has dwindled. The Army looks at a population of young Americans between the ages of 17 and 24 as its "ideal candidate" for recruitment. In the United States, that includes about 31.5 million potential Soldiers. But that population of 31.5 million dwindles quickly -- to about 8.4 million -- when the Army takes in to account the many factors that affect Soldier quality: obesity, medical issues, drug dependency, criminal history, and substandard aptitude based on the Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery. "We are looking at about 31.5 million people out there in America, but only 3 out of 10 of those are fully qualified to come in the Army," Siegfried said. Within that group of potential Soldiers, there is also the issue of propensity to enlist -- do they even want to come in to the military. "We are fighting two wars now, and the propensity to enlist is at an all-time low," Siegfried said. "Only about 9 percent of the people want to come in." The influencers of those potential recruits -- the parents, teachers, coaches, councilors or pastors -- are also less likely to encourage military service. "They have a yellow ribbon on their car, and they are proud of the other people's kids who serve," Siegfried said. "But they are less likely to tell their own kids they need to contribute to their Nation through military service." When young men and women are lined up at the recruiter's door, it's easy to take the ones with no criminal background, impeccable grades in high school, good health, good physical fitness and good credit scores -- the basic screening criteria, Siegfried said. But a difficult recruiting environment does not mean the Army lowers its standards to meet its recruiting goals. Instead, the Army works harder to find out the actual circumstances behind the past of a recruit in order to show he or she is going to be good for the Army, Siegfried said. For the Army, it's worth it to put in the extra effort to uncover the details behind a potential Soldier's background. It means the Army gets to enlist more good Soldiers, and for young American's who have made a mistake in the past, it provides them an opportunity that most of society is unwilling to offer -- a chance to redeem themselves . "There are some guys out there that have made mistakes in their lives and fixed their mistakes," Siegfried said. "Now they are doing great things. You look at this, overall, they are reenlisting more, getting promoted quicker and answering the Nation's Call to Duty with exemplary service in combat. These individuals serve as a sterling reminder to us all that America is the place of second chances." Chicago-area Entrepreneurs Get Inside Story on Army [2008-05-22] WASHINGTON -- "This is very much a captain's war -- a sergeant's war," the director of the Army staff told entrepreneurs from the Chicago area at the Pentagon Wednesday. The Army hosted members of the Chicago-area chapter of the Entrepreneurs' Organization for a "fly-in visit" in which the community business leaders met with Army leaders to learn about the status of the service, and how the Army is executing the war on terror. They also heard from Lt. Gen. David H. Huntoon Jr., director of the Army staff. During a lunch in the Pentagon, Huntoon said it is the junior officers and NCOs who make a difference in the war on terror. "There are opportunities for them to make decisions on their own -- life and death decisions. When you have a sense of that -- to make those kinds of decisions and to be supported by your chain of command -- you don't want to leave that kind of atmosphere. It is exciting, it is empowering, and it makes you feel you are doing the right thing." Huntoon also discussed the Army's recruiting and retention challenges, telling the entrepreneurs the Army has found only 3 in 10 young Americans are suited for Army service. Many are excluded, he said, due to criminal pasts that cannot be waived, or due to health concerns such as asthma or obesity. He also said the Army is concerned about retaining Soldiers. Saying that multiple deployments have put a strain on Soldiers who would like to start a family as well as those who already have families. "We recruit Soldiers and retain families and it is family members that vote on whether the service member stays in the profession," the general said. Dale Boehm, of Brookfield, Wis., was one of the 14 entrepreneurs to attend the fly-in. One of his employees at Caspian Technology Concepts, LLC, is an Army Reserve member who will soon deploy to Iraq for the second time. Boehm said he's concerned about his employee and his family. He's also concerned about how multiple deployments could affect his business. "What are we doing to make sure we don't have to deploy troops two or three times? I am seeing first-hand what that is doing to a family and my business," Boehm said. "He's a major component of what I do, day-to-day. We're going to have to figure out how to fill that gap while he's gone. And there's also that period of time not knowing what's happening to him." Jonathan B. Smith, of WhisprWave, a company that manufactures equipment to prevent shoreline erosion, was interested in getting a more complete perspective on the war on terror. "It's interesting to get the military perspective verses the perspective that's in the newspaper on a daily basis," he said. "It's nice to get some balance." He also said Huntoon is typical of many chief executive officers he meets in his business, "they are worried about their people, and retention, more than the bottom line," he said. John Allegretti runs a commercial real estate company, CMZ Properties, LLC. He is also developing cargo pallets made from bio-resin that contain embedded RFID tags. He is currently working to sell those same pallets to the Army. He said his time visiting the Pentagon was fascinating. "I hope to get a better understanding of why we do what we do and have a better understanding of the connection between military and civilians," he said of his visit. "The information we receive in the general public is somewhat different than what we are hearing today. I'd like to know the meaning behind the why, the when and the where. He also said he recognizes that the decisions being made by those at the Pentagon are decisions he made, in part. "This is interesting to know why we are doing what we are doing," he said. "And this is a 'we,' because we elected the people that are telling these people what to do -- so it's a collective decision." During their visit to the Pentagon, the 14 members of the Chicago-area chapter of the Entrepreneurs' Organization took a tour of the Pentagon, attended a Twilight Tattoo at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., and visited with Army leaders ranging from a major to a lieutenant general. While the Army provided the entrepreneurs with an inside perspective of how the Army is completing its mission in Iraq, the Army also asked something of the entrepreneurs. "As an employer, support that Guardsman or Reservist as much as you can," said Maj. Jeffrey Weinhofer, recently assigned to the Pentagon after a tour as a military advisor in Iraq. "If you have relatives or friends interested in military service, certainly don't discourage them. Please talk about your visit to the Pentagon and the military folks you talked with." First FCS Manned Vehicle to Make Public Debut [2008-05-30] WASHINGTON -- The first of the manned ground vehicles in Future Combat Systems will be unveiled in the week leading up to the Army's 233rd birthday, June 14. Prototype 1 of the Non Line of Sight-Cannon will make its first public appearance on the National Mall directly in front of the U.S. Capitol Building, June 11. A total of eight such prototypes will eventually be delivered to Yuma Proving Grounds, Arizona, by 2009. The first five of those will be delivered by December 2008, the remaining three in early 2009. At Yuma, Army testers from the Army Test and Evaluation Command, will put the eight prototype NLOS-C vehicles through rigorous, detail-oriented testing, to ensure they meet performance requirements, said Lt. Col. Robert McVay, product manager for the NLOS-C. "At Yuma they will do mobility, safety, reliability and gun firing," he said. "What the 2008 prototype does for the Army is give us the ability to actually do real platform testing of the new technology -- of the hybrid electric drive, the traction drive subsystem, the hydrauneumatic suspension, the band track and the new 440kW power generator." The eight prototypes will come in two configurations. The first five are an earlier configuration of the weapons system and chassis. The final three prototypes -- the system development and demonstration design variants. It is that variant that is expected to eventually be produced. The NLOS-C brings to the battlespace a 155mm, 38-caliber cannon, fully automated armament system. The system is designed to improve the survivability of both itself and its two-man crew and can operate in a range of environmental conditions. The NLOS-C is also designed to work in concert with other FCS manned ground vehicles to include the XM1204 Non Line of Sight-Mortar; XM1202 Mounted Combat System; XM1208 Medical Vehicle-Treatment and XM1207 Medical Vehicle-Evacuation; XM1205 Recovery and Maintenance Vehicle; XM1201 Reconnaissance and Surveillance Vehicles; XM1206 Infantry Carrier Vehicle; and XM1209 Command and Control Vehicle. All eight of the FCS manned combat vehicles are mounted on nearly the same chassis -- they share more than 80 percent compatibility across the family of vehicles. They are unique in that they are electrically powered. A diesel engine on board turns a generator, which in turn charges batteries, which in turn powers electric motors that drive the tracks. In fact, the entire vehicle is electrically powered. While at Yuma, it is primarily the chassis and the relationship between the chassis and mission module that will be evaluated. The mission module for the NLOS-C, a 38-caliber, 155-mm howitzer, has already been tested extensively at Yuma, independent of the chassis. "That is the end-state gun, it has finished firing over 2,000 rounds since October 2006, as part of the gun development program," McVay said. "The mission module is approaching the 90-plus percent threshold. For the chassis -- this is the first time the Army will take a full hybrid-electric, independent semi-active suspension system and mate it with a mission module and run it into tests." The testing at Yuma will put two years of testing on the chassis before a critical design review for the MGV family is performed in 2010. "This will have impact for the other seven vehicles because it allows us to learn what works and what doesn't work before we build the other prototypes that get delivered in 2011," he said. McVay said by 2010, the Army expects to take delivery of the first six "special interest program platform" NLOS-C vehicles at Fort Bliss, Texas. There, the Army Evaluation Task Force will begin its testing and development of tactics, techniques, procedures and doctrine for the vehicle. The task force is scheduled to receive six vehicles a year, between 2010 and 2012 -- for a total of 18. The Army expects to see prototype vehicles for other FCS MGVs beginning in 2011. And by 2014, it's likely the NLOS-C will have reached full operational capability, and will be ready for fielding to combat units. Birthday Book to Help Youth Better Understand Army [2008-06-03] WASHINGTON -- A new book by Army Youth Services was published to help children better understand Army history and their role in the greater Army Family. As part of a Secretary of the Army-directed initiative to include Army children in the service's 233rd birthday celebration, Army Morale, Welfare and Recreation Command's Child Youth Services developed a new book titled "Happy Birthday U.S. Army!" The simple book, less than 25 pages, is heavy on pictures, graphics and Army history. The birthday-themed narrative involves a young boy discussing the birthday of his grandfather and the similarities between his immediate family and the larger Army family of which he is also a part. The book was co-written by Donna M. McGrath and Mary Ellen Pratt, both with Army Youth Services. Their intent was to impart on youth the breadth of Army history, the importance of the contributions of their military parents, and their own place in the Army Family, said McGrath, Army child and youth sports and fitness manager. "We wanted to highlight for young children the importance of what their parents are doing in the Army, the richness of Army history, and their part in this huge wonderful organization," she said. "And who else loves a birthday and birthday cake as much as children? So why not have a celebration of the Army's birthday that includes the total Army family? That's what this is all about." Youth at Fort Myer, Va., near the Pentagon, will be among the first to receive copies of the free book, June 9. It is then that Secretary of the Army, Pete Geren, is scheduled to read the book to children gathered at the installation's Child Development Center. Following the reading, children will be given a copy of the book to take home. Army CYS has prepared some 60,000 copies of the book for distribution to youth on garrisons worldwide. It is expected each garrison will hold functions similar to the one to be held at Fort Myer -- with local community leaders or mentorship figures reading the book to children -- during the week leading up to the Army's June 14 birthday. Both Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., and Sgt. Maj. of the Army Kenneth O. Preston will participate in similar readings in the National Capitol Region. Casey is expected to present the book to Army youth at Fort Belvoir, Va., while Preston will read to youth at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, D.C. While the book is aimed primarily at children, McGrath said she thinks the book will help others see the Army cares about military families and military youth. "We want the Soldiers and the rest of America to know the Army takes care of kids," she said. "The Army has made unprecedented investments in Child Development Centers and youth programs, to include child and youth services programs, summer programs and respite care." That kind of attention to military children and military Families is important, she said, because military Families are an important part of the Army's internal support system. "Military Families have been an integral part of the Army's 233-year history," she said. "They are resilient and will remain Army Strong, even through this period of increased deployment cycles. They do that, in part, because of the support provided to them by the Army Family Covenant initiatives." Army Recognizes 85 Organizations for Logistics Excellence [2008-06-04] ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Hundreds of members of the Army's logistics community gathered to be recognized for their contributions to the Army during the 2008 Combined Logistics Excellence Awards ceremony and banquet June 3. Soldiers and Army civilians representing 85 winning and runner-up organizations were present at the ceremony to receive plaques on behalf of their organizations. Awards were offered for excellence in maintenance, deployment and supply. Winners were chosen from across the total Army -- to include Active, National Guard and Reserve components. Lt. Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody, deputy chief of staff, G-4, presided over the ceremony. Before announcing the ceremony's guest speaker, she told logistics Soldiers the Army is proud of them. "There is something about being in a room surrounded by a bunch of winners -- it just feels really good," she said. "Our Army is extremely proud of you and so am I. To all of you, you represent what is good about our Army." Lt. Gen. Stephen M. Speakes, deputy chief of staff, G-8, spoke to the Soldiers and Army civilians, commenting on what they had done for the Army and comparing them to the logisticians who kept Soldiers supplied during World War II. "You have to go back to WWII to see an Army that has sustained combat formation, in combat, the way you have -- (to find an Army) to be able to compare and contrast what you have achieved. That is no small tribute to your accomplishments." Among the units named winners during the ceremony was the 180th Transportation Battalion, 4th Sustainment Brigade, 13th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary), III Corps, from Fort Hood, Texas. The battalion was named winner of the Deployment Excellence, Active Duty Supporting Unit award. Staff Sgt. Jose Latorre was in Washington to receive the award on behalf of his unit. He said teamwork amongst his peers is primarily responsible for the unit winning its award. "We have been preparing for several months with the deployments we handle in the Fort Hood area," he said. "We have deployed several divisions. The last deployment we did was for the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. On the last rotation it was the 31st Infantry Division. Our teamwork, our organization, has been very tight -- which is why we have been so successful in deploying so many big divisions -- like 4th ID and 1st Cavalry. This is the cream of the crop." The U.S. Property and Fiscal Office, Camp Douglas, Wis., was named winner of the Supply Excellence, National Guard, Supply Support Activity award. Warrant Officer Duane Streeck, a warehouse supervisor there, received the award on behalf of his unit. The USPFO at Camp Douglas runs a supply warehouse for the State of Wisconsin National Guard. The unit issues new equipment in addition to taking in old and unserviceable equipment for turn-in to depots or the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office. Streek also said teamwork between the Guardsmen there is responsible for helping the unit win its award. "Among the people we have working for us, everybody is committed to the job we have to do," he said. "There's only 11 of us, so without the teamwork we have, we wouldn't be able to accomplish our mission." Representatives of the winners of the Combined Logistics Excellence Award were treated to a day in Washington, D.C., to a tour of the Pentagon, and to VIP seating at the Twilight Tattoo. Secretary Begins Army Birthday With Myer Youth [2008-06-09] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of the Army Pete Geren stepped away from his desk at the Pentagon for a few moments, June 9, to spend time with some of the youngest members of the Army Family. The secretary visited the Child Development Center at Fort Myer, Va., just minutes from the Pentagon, to read to the children there a new book by Army Youth Services titled "Happy Birthday Army." "I'm so glad I could be here today, and share this occasion with you," Geren told a room full of tiny, squirming Americans. "The Army is how many years old this week? It's 233 years old. And a whole lot has happened in those 233 years. And you are all a part of that -- that great history." This year, the Secretary has directed that youth be included in more of the Army's birthday celebrations. One reason for that, he said, is that the children of American Soldiers are an integral part of the Army Family, and thus, part of Army history. "Every year we stop and celebrate the history of the Army -- this year it is the 233rd birthday, and the children are an important part of that history," he said. "They are part of the Army family, and they are part of the great citizens who are standing up and being part of the Army Family during this difficult time for us. We want them to know how much we appreciate them." The simple book, less than 25 pages, is heavy on pictures, graphics and Army history. The birthday-themed narrative involves a young boy discussing the birthday of his grandfather and the similarities between his immediate family and the larger Army Family of which he is also a part. "We want our children in the Army to appreciate the history of the Army and appreciate how much they are a part of the history of the Army," Geren said. "When we look at the contributions our Soldiers and their families make, our children are a very important part of that, and we want them to celebrate with us." Book co-authors Donna M. McGrath and Mary Ellen Pratt, both with Army Youth Services, say the intent of the book is to impart on youth the breadth of Army history, the importance of the contributions of their military parents, and their own place in the Army Family. "We wanted to highlight for young children the importance of what their parents are doing in the Army, the richness of Army history, and their part in this huge wonderful organization," McGrath said. Following the reading of the book, children sang "happy birthday," sang the Army Song and enjoyed cake with Secretary Geren. Each child was also given a copy of the book to take home. Army CYS has prepared some 60,000 copies of the book for distribution to youth on garrisons worldwide. Each garrison is expected to hold functions similar to the one at Fort Myer -- with local community leaders or mentorship figures reading the book to children -- during the week leading up to the Army's June 14 birthday. NLOS-C Unveiled on Capitol Hill [2008-06-12] WASHINGTON -- The very first of many Future Combat System vehicles was unveiled June 11 on Capitol Hill for viewing by lawmakers, members of the press and taxpayers alike. Prototype 1 of the Non-Line of Sight Cannon, one of the eight manned ground vehicles within Future Combat Systems, was displayed on the National Mall in front of the U.S. Capitol Building. A total of eight such prototypes will eventually be delivered to Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz., by 2010. The first five of those will be delivered by December 2008, the remaining three in early 2009. Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. said the arrival of the vehicle was a significant milestone in the FCS timeline. "We've been talking and briefing and telling people about the FCS for a long time," the general said. "Right here today, it is real. After a decade of hard work, planning and effort, the FCS is real." The FCS is also relevant to Army operations today, the general said. The NLOS-C is manned by only two Soldiers, half the number required for the M109A6 Paladin, the system it replaces. And the cannon is capable of precision targeting, at a greater range than the Paladin, and from a more protected position. "That gives it relevance in both irregular and regular warfare," he said. The drive system for the NLOS-C is hybrid-electric and contains a Diesel engine that powers a generator, which charges batteries that in turn power the electric motors that drive the rubber tracks. The vehicle essentially runs on JP-8, but there is no drive shaft off the Diesel engine. The entire vehicle is electrically powered off the generator and batteries. "The first time I saw one of these in California, I was looking for the drive shaft -- but instead it was a black cable," Casey said. The electricity generated on the NLOS-C powers not just the drive motors but also the array of electrical systems on board, including radio transmitters and computers for the FCS network, motors that drive the gun, and the systems that provide automatic loading for munitions on board the system -- ensuring that Soldiers no longer need to handle the heavy shells and charges used by the system's howitzer weapon, said Lt. Col. Steve Fusinetti, the capabilities manger for FCS with the Army Training and Doctrine Command. "This thing is completely automated, and the automation system does not get tired," he said. "This is a two-man crew that never has to do the manual labor of touching the rounds like they do in a current force Paladin. Every single step is automated and the men sit in the crew compartment in the front and everything is done for them." One of the most important capabilities of the NLOS-C is its ability to act as both a node within the FCS network and a relay station as well. The network will allow commanders, detached from the NLOS-C, to know where the cannon is, how much fuel is on board, what its capabilities are, and how many rounds are still on board. Brigade commanders can view that information and the information of all other FCS systems in range and be able to make decisions on how to use them, said Col. Bryan McVeigh, project manager for manned systems integration FCS brigade combat team. "The computer system can look through and see four mounted combat systems on the ground and three NLOS-C in range," he said. "It knows how much ammunition is on each vehicle, what its range is and where the enemy is. It can then figure out, of all the assets in the brigade -- NLOS-LS, mounted combat vehicle, the NLOS-C, for instance -- which one it wants to pick to engage a target." The projectiles for the NLOS-C each weigh 100 pounds, and the system has a firing range of about 30 kilometers. Maj. Vince Tolbert, a program manager with the Future Combat Systems Brigade Combat Team, says changes made to the projectiles and charges that are at the very heart of the NLOS-C make it safer and easier for Soldiers to operate while making it more lethal for those on the wrong end of the cannon. "The NLOS-C uses a Modular Artillery Charge System, a new propellant the Army came out with after doing away with bagged propellant," he said. "It's ignited using a laser, which ignites the propellant, which is more reliable than the primer that we used to use for the artillery." The MACS is a completely sealed plastic canister that sits behind the 100-pound projectile the NLOS-C fires. The charge has a hole on each side that is sealed over with a plastic film. Instead of a firing pin igniting the charge, a laser now does the job. "You can put the propellant in either way, and you don't have to worry about the propellant getting wet anymore," Tolbert said. The NLOS-C is expected to be fielded to combat units by 2017. Tech Demo Part of Army Birthday at Pentagon [2008-06-13] WASHINGTON -- Visitors to the Pentagon were treated June 13 to a look at a prototype of the Non-Line of Sight Cannon. Prototype 1 of the NLOS-C was on display in the south Pentagon parking. With the engine on the vehicle running, and hot air shooting from the rear exhaust vents, the turret and cannon aboard the weapons system spun around and moved through the automated sequences needed to fire one of its 100-pound projectiles. The NLOS-C is part of Future Combat Systems. The prototype on display at the Pentagon is the first of eight such vehicles that will be delivered to Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz., by 2010. Other pieces of FCS hardware on display at the Pentagon included the Multifunctional Utility/Logistics and Equipment vehicle, the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle and several Tactical Unattended Ground Sensors. Soldiers from the Training and Doctrine Command demonstrated capabilities of the FCS, including the NLOS-C, by conducting a hardware and software simulation of the system for Soldiers, Army senior leaders and members of the press. Also at the demonstration were young civilians and current Soldiers scheduled to enlist or re-enlist as part of the Army's birthday celebrations in the Pentagon courtyard. The simulation used dozens of computers and involved more than eight Soldiers simulating those who would be in an FCS Command and Control Vehicle and an NLOS-C. Sgt. 1st Class Harrison Jackson served as the "vehicle commander" of the simulated NLOS-C. He has served in the Army since 1986, comes from an artillery background, and has combat experience in the M-109A5 "Paladin." He says the NLOS-C will enhance the war fight for Soldiers by making their jobs easier. "When you think about artillery, they have a lot of manual labor right now, insofar as lifting rounds -- but all that's going to go away," he said. "It takes nine Soldiers now in a Paladin. With the NLOS-C you've reduced that to two Soldiers. And the Soldiers don't touch anything -- that's the luxury of this. And the response time, as seen in the demo, is much better." Staff Sgt. Stephen Card, an infantryman, was at the Pentagon to re-enlist. He's already served 10 years and two tours in Afghanistan. Before the ceremony in the Pentagon courtyard, he was able to look at some of the FCS equipment that might be fielded in the next few years -- particularly the Class I and Class IV Unmanned Air Vehicles. "The UAV keeps you from having to go into something almost blind," he said. "The biggest thing we have now in urban environments is you never know what's around the corner. You start running down a street going after something -- some objective -- and what is around corner 'A' to your left is your immediate threat. But you never think about that, because you are focused on something further down the line. So anything that gives us a feed on what is going on around us is great." He said technology in the field now -- like the Force XXI Battlefield Command Brigade and Below, called FBCB2 or "Blue Force Tracker" -- is good. But doesn't deliver what he expects FCS will be able to do. "The leadership has the FBCB2, but we are not really getting live imagery of what is really going on," he said, noting that sometimes the latest intelligence is either being routed through the system via e-mail or is not coming at all due to communications outages. FCS hardware, like the Class I UAV, will be fielded down to the platoon level, putting control of real-time imagery into the hands of Soldiers like Card. "That stuff I saw -- it's on the ground, we're controlling it, and it provides real-time imagery without having to put ourselves in danger -- and that's great," he said. Minnesota Guard Recruiters Top of Nation [2008-06-18] ROSEVILLE, Minn. -- The Minnesota Army National Guard Recruiting and Retention Battalion has already beaten its goal for the year -- with more than three months to spare. The battalion has recruited about 1,700 new Soldiers since Oct. 1, well over the unit's mission goal, said Lt. Col. Jake Kulzer, the units commander. "Right now we're at about 180 percent of our assigned mission, so we are crushing that," he said. "And that's what makes us No. 1. Also, with the new Active First program, we're putting more folks in than anybody else in the country." Kulzer said Guard recruiters in Minnesota have put 170 Soldiers into the Army through the Active First program. Under that program, which began in October, young men and women are recruited by the National Guard to complete a term of service in both the Active and National Guard components of the Army. Those recruits are paid bonuses based on the duration of the active-service commitment they choose to accept. Secretary of the Army Pete Geren visited the recruiting battalion, Monday, after having been in Minnesota to sign an Army community covenant in the state's capital, St. Paul. Kulzer said he explained to the secretary why he thought his battalion of 98 recruiters, spread across 72 locations in the state, was able to achieve the phenomenal recruiting rates that put them in the No. 1 recruiting spot within the Army National Guard. "Well, we have been working really hard," he said. "And we have a tremendous noncommissioned officer corps. My NCOs have also been in a long time, they are smart, and they know how to make mission." Kulzer also credits the community, the local media and the state government for creating an environment that is conducive to Army recruiting. "Post-9/11, we got a tremendous amount of media coverage, and the coverage here is pro-Soldier -- so we are a highly respected organization in this state, whether people support the war or not," Kulzer said. "And while the community sees us deploy overseas and do a good job there, they also see us responding to state emergencies and disasters locally. So community support of Soldiers here is tremendous." Credit for the Minnesota recruiting and retention battalion's success also goes to the recruits themselves, Kulzer said. "This generation of folks are patriotic folks and want to be part of something bigger than themselves," he said. "We're primarily a non-prior-service market, so we recruit a lot of recent high-school grads. They are great folks, they are intelligent and they turn out to be great Soldiers." Iraqi army shows great growth in year [2008-06-26] WASHINGTON -- The Iraqi army has grown by 60 percent in the last year, and stands now at nearly 180,000 soldiers. The army is also now training its own soldiers, and its effectiveness in combat has allowed it to concentrate more on improving logistics and supply chains. Brig. Gen. Steven L. Salazar said that during the last year, the Iraqi army has built up internal momentum and has taken the reins for themselves on many soldier training functions. "More and more the Iraqis are doing training for themselves now," Salazar said. He serves as deputy commanding general, Coalition Army Advisory Training Team, Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq. The organization is responsible for training and equipping the Iraqi army. "Basic training is conducted by the Iraqi army, military occupational specialty qualification training is conducted by the Iraqi army, and noncommissioned officer training -- at all three levels -- is being conducted by the Iraqi army now," he added. The NCO training conducted now in Iraq includes a corporal's course, a sergeant's course, and a squad leader's course. New to the regiment is a master instructor course also taught by Iraqi army NCOs. Similarly, officer courses are also being conducted by the Iraqi army. New equipment is pouring into the Iraqi army, including weapons, radios and transportation. At the Iraqi Army Service Support Institute, level-3 maintenance and support soldiers are now being trained to repair that new equipment. "Those soldiers will tell you they can take an entire Humvee apart down to nothing and put it back together," he said. "They can take generators apart and put them back together as well. And at the bomb disposal school they are taking damaged robots -- part of the bomb disposal companies in the Iraqi army -- and completely repairing them and putting them back into the fight." Soon, said Salazar, the new army will also engage in collective unit training. The Warfighter Program will take battalions of Iraqi army soldiers out of the fight and into centers where they can conduct "home station training" in much the same way U.S. Soldiers do. "This is really a milestone I think, and the beginning of something big as we transition from the counter-insurgency fight to ultimately an army that is conducting training," Salazar said. Taking time to train is a kind of luxury for Iraqi soldiers, who have been embroiled in the fight. But it is their efforts, said Salazar, that enabled them to create that opportunity. "We have been so busy with fighting the insurgency that there really has been little or no time for conducting training at a larger organizational level," he said. "But thanks to the success of the Iraqi operations, which has created such a low-level of violence, we are at now ready for (the Warfighter Program.)" During upcoming unit training, Iraqi soldiers may have the opportunity to use some of the new equipment the army has procured, including 80,000 new M-16 rifles; 8,500 refurbished Humvee vehicles; and more than 12,000 Single-Channel Ground-Air Radio Systems, or SINGARS radios. The systems have been procured either through the Iraqi Security Forces Fund, or through foreign military sales. But the new equipment has great impact on the way the Iraqi army operates and is perceived by the public. It also has a great effect on soldier morale, Salazar said. "When you see a group of Iraqi soldiers driving around in a Humvee, and they get to operate it with their own markings on it, the Iraqi flag on it, it does a tremendous amount for the pride of the Iraqi soldier and consequently his performance," Salazar said. "It also has a tremendous impact on the local population as they see their soldiers operating this kind of professional modern equipment. So what these purchases do for the Iraqi army are really tremendous." Salazar said the Iraqi army has shown more independence in conducting large operations in places like Basra, Sadr City, Mosul and Al Amara. But the service still must work on two key areas. The first, he said is enabler elements. "We built a tremendous maneuver capability with considerable combat power in the Iraqi army based on the number of battalions and brigades -- up to 13 divisions," he said. "We still need to grow those enablers, such as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance formations and engineer formations." Salazar also said the Iraqi army must work on stronger logistics. To aid in that effort, the coalition is working to provide logistics facilities for each Iraqi army division. They are also in the process of building national depots, including the Taji National Depot to provide national-level maintenance, and the Taji National Supply Depot. "Those are in the process of being built and will be complete by and large by the end of this year," he said. "We expect self sustainment, in terms of logistics by the middle of 2009." Despite growing pains, Salazar said the Iraqi army is impressive and that those soldiers are driven by many of the same things as American soldiers. "I think the Iraqi army has been tremendously successful," he said. "You can see evidence of that by the successful operations taking place -- there is still a considerable threat out there. And in many aspects those soldiers are much like the American soldiers. They have a sense of duty and country, also a sense of economics and an aspiration for opportunity. I think what most Iraqis see is opportunity to serve their nation and to support their families." FCS capability accelerated for infantry [2008-06-26] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers in Infantry Brigade Combat Teams now get the first crack at Future Combat System technology, Army officials said during a news conference at the Pentagon June 26. That capability, initially meant to be delivered first to Heavy Brigade Combat teams, will now be delivered to IBCTs by fiscal year 2011 -- three years earlier than previously planned. The changes come after Army studies showed it was infantry units who were highest in demand in Afghanistan and Iraq, and infantry units with the most capability requests. "As a result of capability gaps found in these IBCTs, the Army is accelerating the FCS complementary programs to provide capability to infantry units first," said Lt. Gen. Michael A. Vane, director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center. "These capabilities will increase their capability and survivability in offense, defense and stability operations." Included in the equipment meant to be fielded to Soldiers is the Tactical and Urban Unattended Ground Sensors, the Non Line of Sight-Launch System, the Class I Unmanned Airial Vehicle, the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle and network kits for the Humvee platform. Also closely associated with this initial 2011 spinout of FCS equipment will be the Ground Soldier Ensemble. Though the ensemble is not part of the FCS lineup, it does contribute to Soldier effectiveness, and it will be accelerated so it can coincide with the FCS spinout. "A key part of this is enabling the Soldier, so part of this decision is to take the Ground Soldier Ensemble -- the kit that enables the Soldier to be brought into the network -- to bring that developmental timeline in line with the FCS program," said Lt. Gen. N. Ross Thompson III, military deputy to the acting assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology. Thompson also said the change in schedule would not change FCS program costs. Lt. Gen. Stephen M. Speakes, deputy chief of staff for programs and Army G8, said the change will have a dramatic affect on the way Soldiers today can fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. "This re-evaluation is based on seven years of sustained combat," he said. "We believe that the change materially improves upon the capabilities we will provide to Soldiers, and has direct relevance to the current war fight." Life on the DMZ [2008-06-29] SEOUL -- Seoul, South Korea, is a huge city - some 10.3 million Koreans live there amongst modern skyscrapers, ancient temples, endless fields of high-rise apartment complexes and an expansive network of subways and trains. Travel north out of the city, along the Han river, however, and the landscape changes as skyscrapers are replaced by farmland. There are new elements there as well: rolls of concertina wire and guard posts stretched along the Han, warning signs, and "bridges" over the highway filled with rocks and explosives -- when blown they provide roadblocks to any advance toward Seoul from the north. Those changes in landscape occur as you move closer to the demilitarized zone, and Joint Security Area, just 35 miles north of Seoul. The DMZ is the heavily guarded strip of land, about 2.5 miles wide and 150 miles long, that divides North Korea from South Korea. The JSA is a small parcel of land within the DMZ, located near Panmunjeom village, where leaders of both countries can meet on neutral ground. On the South Korean side of the JSA, the United Nations Command Security Battalion-Joint Security Area Battalion, provides security. The battalion is commanded by a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and is manned by some 650 troops - about 90 percent South Korean and 10 percent U.S. military. "The UNCSB-JSA is a unique unit," said Command Sgt. Maj. Daniel Ciarrocchi, senior enlisted advisor for the UNCSB-JSA. "The UNCSBJSA is a combination battalion, it's the only one of its kind. This is a reflection of the ongoing transformation of the forces in South Korea. All of the Soldiers assigned to the unit are handpicked, and they all go through an extensive evaluation process before assignment to the JSA." The UNCSB-JSA's mission is also unique. The battalion is responsible for securing the Military Armistice Commission Headquarters area, protecting United Nations Command and Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission personnel, and for protecting all visitors to the JSA. The battalion also protects the residents of the nearby farming village of Tae Song Dong, which lies inside the DMZ. "The battalion is responsible for implementing civil affairs and security within this unique village," Ciarrocchi said. "The residents there live under some very severe restrictions: they must be in the village by nightfall, and inside their homes with the doors and windows secure by midnight. We carry out our responsibilities through a security platoon that guards the village 24 hours a day. During the day, they provide security for the farmers while they work in the fields. At night they guard the village itself while the residents sleep." Ciarrocchi said the Soldiers assigned to the UNCSB-JSA come face-to-face with the North Korean military on a daily basis, either inside the JSA or while on patrol along the DMZ. And while hostilities between the two nations have been on hold since an armistice was signed in 1953, the two countries are still, technically, at war. The kind of tension that reality creates means that Soldiers working within the JSA and the DMZ must always be on guard. "You can't get complacent, you have to be ready, you have to maintain a readiness posture every day and prepare for anything that might occur," Ciarrocchi said. "Anything that has happened in the JSA, in our sector or anywhere along the DMZ, has been spontaneous." Events do happen at the DMZ. In 1976, two U.S. Army officers, Maj. Arthur Bonifas and 1st Lt. Mark Barrett, were involved in a tree-trimming operation near the military demarcation line that runs down the center of the DMZ. The two were killed by North Koreans after refusing to comply with demands by the North Koreans to stop trimming the trees. Just eight years later, in 1984, a citizen of the Soviet Union was inside the JSA. He attempted to cross the MDL from North Korea to South Korea - to defect. In the process of trying to stop him, North Korean troops killed an American Soldier. Because UNCSB-JSA Soldiers and North Korean military forces routinely come face to face, there are rules to prevent incidents like these from happening again, said Ciarrocchi. An incident in the JSA involves somebody who crosses the MDL without authorization from either the north or south, he said. "But we have protocols and rules of engagement to address that. We take contingencies into consideration as we do our mission planning. Should an incident arise within our sector, we want to end it favorably, and deescalate the situation if at all possible." Most days in the JSA and on the DMZ are not so eventful, and Soldiers of the UNCSB-JSA dedicate time to training to ensure they're ready in case something does happen. They do physical training - including combatives and tae kwon do - six days per week. The battalion also trains in marksmanship, and focuses on platoon- and squad-level battle drills and live-fire exercises. American Soldiers are assigned to the UNCSB-JSA in year-long rotations, and Ciarrocchi said he believes the opportunity allows Soldiers to leave Korea with a real sense of what freedom is all about. "If you were to come up here to the DMZ and stand here at night, you would see the darkness on the North Korean side, and then the lights from the south from Seoul," he said. "When you look north you see how austere and undeveloped North Korea is. Soldiers see that and get an appreciation for why they are here and serving in Korea." Soldiers in Korea get full-spectrum training [2008-06-29] SEOUL -- Soldiers assigned to Korea don't just have the opportunity to live in one of the fastest growing, technologically advanced countries in the world. They also get a military assignment where Army training is second to none, and that will fully prepare them for any follow-on assignment they take. In Korea, Soldiers must be prepared to fight a war at a moment's notice. The North Korean army has been massed above the demilitarized zone since the cessation of fighting between the United Nations and communist North Korea in 1953. At any moment the North Koreans could decide to resume that fight. "There is a real danger, a palpable danger every day from the North Koreans," said Command Sgt. Maj. Robert Winzenried, the command sergeant major for U.S. Forces Korea and 8th U.S. Army. "Nobody can really say for sure that one day Kim Jung Il's not going to decide that that's the day to do it and go. So we do have to be prepared for that." A resumption of fighting with North Korea would look more like a conventional "Cold War" kind of fight than the counterinsurgency that is happening today in Iraq. Such a fight would require Soldiers to be knowledgeable in the full spectrum of operations - defensive, offensive and stability - outlined in the Army's recently released Operations Field Manual 3-0. The offensive portion of that fight would draw on more than the counterinsurgency skills Soldiers are applying now in Iraq. The fight would include infantry operations, heavy artillery operations, tank and Bradley warfare, airborne warfare and eventually even counterinsurgency operations - so that's exactly the type of training the 2nd Infantry is doing today, Winzenried said. "In a lot of places they can't do tank table eight or tank table 12, which is a tank or Bradley unit's big gunnery operation," he said. "In a lot of places they just don't have the capability or the time to train that way." At the Joint Warrior Training Center in Korea, Soldiers can practice live-fire training exercises, either offensively or defensively. And because there is limited training space, Soldiers there use virtual training to create larger scenarios, allowing more Soldiers to train. "You can be doing a company live-fire training fight against the North Korean hordes as they come over the DMZ, while on a simulation, the battalion-level, brigade-level, or even the division-level can be fighting simultaneously, just like they would in combat," Winzenried said. "It gives them an opportunity to train in a limited space, using all the capabilities we have. It's very high speed." Exercises like Key Resolve, Foal Eagle and Ulchi Freedom Guardian test the mettle of Soldiers in Korea. The exercises are both command-post exercises, which simulate battle, and intensive military exercises with people and tanks on the ground, and helicopters and airplanes in the air. Key Resolve and Foal Eagle test U.S. forces in Korea, as well as the Korean military's ability to defend the southern half of the peninsula. "That's where we practice if North Korea invaded, what our response would be and how we would resupply and how we would bring people in, boats, ships, all of those types of things - so it's a very big exercise," Winzenried said. "At the Soldier level, they get the opportunity to see the big war fight piece. When you're a private in a squad out doing patrol, you only see a very tiny piece of the big picture. When you go to one of these big exercises and you get to see the big picture of the war fight, it gives you a different perspective on what's going on. It makes it a little more real to you." In Korea, Soldiers don't fight alone, they fight a joint fight. So training and exercises involve servicemembers from the Seventh Air Force and the U.S. Naval Forces Korea. But American forces alone are not responsible for defending Korea. That responsibility is also shared with the ROK military. "You have to fight with the Koreans," Wizenreid said. "You have to learn how to interact and operate with coalition partners. It's kind of hard to simulate that in the States. But here you have to do that, so that's another facet of the training here that really is awesome." In Korea, the Army trains on the entire range of warfighting skills - because Soldiers there must be ready for war. When the war in Iraq is over, all Soldiers will need to brush up on the entire range of skills the Army spells out in its operations doctrine - because the next war might require them, Wizenreid said. "One thing we've always done well is that we've learned and fought the war we're fighting right now, but we don't do a good job sometimes of preparing for the next war that might come down the road," Wizenreid said. "So this is the last place in the Army where we can train to the full spectrum of combat." The 2nd Inf. Div.'s Command Sgt. Maj. Brian Stall said division Soldiers are busy keeping those conventional warfare skills sharp. "There's not a day that goes by that a unit's not out in the field honing its Soldiers' skills," he said. "Just because you're in Korea doesn't mean the training stops. We're the only division that's focused on a full-spectrum combat mission. Other divisions are presently focused on counterinsurgency, because they are the force providers in Afghanistan and Iraq. We owe it to our bigger Army to maintain those core mission- essential requirements." While full-scale invasion from the north is always a very real possibility, with the U.S. military fighting alongside the ROK army, U.S. commanders are confident they already know what the outcome of such a move by North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il would be. "If North Korea attacks, there is no question about the outcome, none at all," said Lt. Gen. Joseph Fil, 8th Army commander and chief of staff of USFK. "This will be a victory for the Alliance, no doubt about it. And the outcome for North Korea is unquestioned." The readiness of American Soldiers in Korea doesn't just act as protection against an attack from the north. It also acts as a deterrent, Fil said, because the North Koreans are well aware of America's readiness in Korea - and that readiness comes from training. "The presence of American forces - well trained, well led and well prepared - on the Asian mainland deters the North Koreans," Fil said. "It also provides stability to the rest of the region, just as it has in Europe and Japan. So I think it makes a huge difference. Training is just absolutely essential to our readiness." Transformation in Korea [2008-06-29] SEOUL -- For more than half a century now, since the cessation of fighting between North and South Korea, American Soldiers have taken the lead role in the stand-off between South Korea and its communist neighbors to the north. Today, it is an American four-star general who heads both the South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command and U.S. Forces, Korea, which are responsible for maintaining a defensive posture. He is ultimately responsible for the defense of the country, and has operational control over both U.S. military members there and members of the Korean military most closely involved with defending the nation against invasion from the north.in Korea But the U.S. military is transforming its role in Korea, and those changes will especially affect the nearly 20,000 Soldiers stationed there, said Lt. Gen. Joseph Fil, 8th Army commander and chief of staff of USFK. "It's a transformation at many levels," he said. "But first of all, it is a transformation in the command and control." As part of the transformation, the Army will relinquish to the Republic of Korea army its leadership role in the demilitarized zone in the north. Most importantly, the responsibility for the defense of Korea will be passed to its largest stakeholders - the South Koreans. That transfer of operational control is currently expected to take place in April 2012. In place of the combined forces command, the Koreans will stand up their own headquarters, under the ROK's joint chiefs of staff. The United States will, in turn, stand up a Korea Command in the country to provide support. "The Koreans will be autonomous and will be supported by our forces, not combined with them" said Fil. Right now, the Army is working with the Korean army to help it prepare for the change of responsibility, now just four years away. Combined U.S.-ROK military exercises will test the strength and preparedness of the ROK army. The results of those exercises will be studied, to learn where the Koreans have excelled, and where they can do better, Fil said. "We have had a whole series of exercises to help us and them prepare for this," Fil said. "We will see some things we like and things we don't like. And through the after-action review process, we will make changes." Fil said the Koreans are looking forward to the change and have long been excited about taking the reins from the United States. "They have embraced it and they want it," he said. "For 55 years now, we've actually had a combined force where Americans were commanding the Korean forces. They will be commanding themselves now." The U.S. military won't leave Korea, however. Instead, it will change its footprint in the tiny country. By 2012, much of the 2nd Inf. Div., now tasked as the first line of defense against a North Korean invasion, will move from installations like Camp Casey and Camp Red Cloud to U.S. Army Garrison Humphreys, about 40 miles south of Seoul. Additionally, the United States will likely return much, if not all, of U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan - in the heart of Seoul - to the Korean government. At USAG Humphreys, construction is already underway for the move. In addition to housing operational facilities that will enable the Army to support Koreans in their defense, USAG Humphreys will also include facilities to support military families. There are new schools, childcare centers, gymnasiums, playgrounds, dining facilities and family housing. The new infrastructure is being put in place because the Army plans on changing two things about a Soldier's assignment to Korea. First, tour lengths will be "normalized," as they are in other locations. Instead of one year, they will be three years. Second, instead of telling Soldiers they must leave their families back in the States, they will be allowed to bring them along, Fil said. "This is a hard-work tour, but it's not a hardship tour. It's a great place to be assigned. We seek to make this be the dream assignment for Soldiers," he said. Enlistment marks 35th year of volunteer Army [2008-07-01] WASHINGTON -- Some 31 Americans pledged or re-pledged themselves to service in the U.S. Army Tuesday during a ceremony at the Pentagon to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the all-volunteer force. A total of 16 Soldiers and 15 young civilians or "future Soldiers," participated in the ceremony in the Pentagon courtyard marking the day in 1973 that established the all-volunteer Army. Since then, the U.S. Army has been manned by those who volunteered to serve, not by those drafted into service. "Today we celebrate two occasions, your enlistment or re-enlistment; and the anniversary of the all-volunteer force," said Secretary of the Army Pete Geren. "Two celebrations made possible because men and women like you stood up and said here am I, send me. I can tell you, when you look around you today and see who stands behind you and who stands with you, you know you do not stand alone." Today, over 1 million Soldiers serve in the U.S. Army, in both the active and reserve components, the secretary said. Along with those Soldiers are more than 200,000 Army civilians, over 200,000 Army contractors and more than 600,000 Army family members. As those 31 Americans prepare to embark on their journey in the Army, or to continue serving, their efforts will contribute to the best professional Army in the world today, the secretary said. "Today you join or rejoin, the best led, best trained, best equipped Army on the face of the earth," he said. "Thank you for your commitment, you are the greatest of this generation and we pledge our best to you and your families. And we celebrate today the 35th anniversary of what you are -- a national treasure, an all-volunteer force." After administering the oath of enlistment, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. congratulated those enlistees and re-enlistees, and thanked them for their service to the Army. He also reflected back to his early days, as a lieutenant, and his perceptions of the new all-volunteer force concept. "I can remember back in the early days of the 1970s as this program began to unfold," the general said. "Lt. Casey and his sergeants were wrestling then with these notions that were sure to undermine the discipline of this great organization: beer in the mess hall, brand new furniture in the barracks, and no longer having to sign in and sign out to go on pass." Then Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. William C. Westmoreland and Secretary of the Army Stanley R. Resor had a vision of how the Army should work, he said. They believed the changes they made would instill discipline in a force and help create a more disciplined Army than what existed after the Vietnam War. "And not surprisingly, the chief was right and Lt. Casey didn't quite get it right," he said. "The force that has grown from those humble beginnings is the most resilient, combat-seasoned, professional force the world has ever seen -- and you are joining that force today." The general said he knows there is much speculation as to why Soldiers choose to enlist in the Army, but he has his own ideas about why young Americans make the decision and then choose to stay. "I believe it is because first of all, men and women like these believe in the values and ideals this country stands for," he said. "They believe they can make a difference in the word at a critical time in our nation's history. And they are quite proud to be part of an organization that is resoundingly the best in the world at what it does." Evan Shamon, a graduate of Garfield High School and a resident of Woodbridge, Va., is one of those that chose to serve his nation in a critical time. "For once in my life I wanted to do something for the experience," he said, also saying a stint in the Army promises to open his eyes to the rest of the world. "I've stayed in the U.S. my whole life and have never been overseas. This gives me the opportunity to do that, to meet people, to make friends and to see things." While in the Army, he plans to work in signals intelligence. The job was made available to him because of his high scores on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. Shamon had also been party of the International Baccalaureate program while in high school -- a series of advanced coursework designed to broaden the minds of participating students. Shamon said he met some resistance from his friends about joining the Army, but not a lot. He said his friends know what it means when he commits. "For me it's pretty easy, my friends know once I decide I'm going to do something, I do it, I stick with it -- there's no deterring me," he said. That kind of dedication is what Shamon said he'll bring to the Army once he's in uniform. "I bring the dedication and the service," he said. "When I do my job, I do it to the best of my abilities. And I'm always striving to better myself." DOD sets joint standards for enlistee waivers [2008-07-02] WASHINGTON -- The Department of Defense has now set standards for how individual services will offer conduct waivers to those it recruits. The new policy, announced during a press briefing Wednesday at the Pentagon, standardizes how the Army and other services classify offenses, how many offenses a recruit may have committed before requiring a waiver, and in what combination those offenses may have been committed. "Terms like felony and misdemeanor get confounding. What is a felony in one state is not in another. And what is a misdemeanor is the same thing," said Bill Carr, deputy under secretary of defense for military personnel policy. Now the department has classified individual offenses into four categories. The classification for each of those offenses is based on how "most states" classify the offense. If an offense like grand theft auto is a felony in most states, it would be classified as "major misconduct," Carr said. "It's not correct to call it a felony, because it is not always a felony," he said. "But because it is a felony in most states, we will call it major misconduct. And that is the most egregious type of transgression that we want to look at." Other categories include "misconduct," which would be offenses that in most states are classified as misdemeanors; "non-traffic," such as not depositing change at a toll booth; and "traffic offensives." "There are four groupings the department will recognize in terms of gravity," he said. "Now that we know the terms, how many of them can you have?" Some examples of what will require all services to seek waivers: • One major misconduct requires a waiver • Two misconducts requires a waiver • One misconduct, along with four non-traffic offenses, requires a waiver Carr said services are free to create their own policies that are stricter than what DOD has standardized. He also said the department has found that problems with recruits are more likely to happen with those that have a pattern of minor offenses than with those that have only a single major misconduct offense. The DOD has also created standard codes that describe the particulars of an offence. Recruiters, he said, would enter those standardized codes on enlistment records. "With codes we can determine downstream performance and attrition and determine if something is a problem," he said. The Army's G-1 recently conducted a study of enlistees accessed from FY03-FY06. The study compared 258,270 Soldiers who did not need conduct waivers and 17,961 who did, said Lt. Col. Val Siegfried, the Army G-1 branch chief for enlisted accessions, during an earlier interview. The study did find differences between the two groups. For instance, the conduct waiver population re-enlisted at a higher rate. The conduct waiver Soldiers also earned a higher ratio of valorous awards and combat badges -- 13.87 percent compared to 12.73 percent. Additionally, the conduct waiver population included more high-school graduates, higher scores on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, and fewer Soldiers scoring in the "Cat 4" range on the ASVAB test. However, the Army also found that Soldiers who required conduct waivers had higher losses in six of nine "adverse loss categories." That included a .27-percent loss rate for alcohol rehabilitation failure verses the non-waiver population's loss rate of .12 percent; a misconduct rate of 5.95 percent verses the non-waiver population of 3.55 percent; and a desertion rate of 4.26 percent compared to 3.59 percent. However, the attrition due to personality disorders, entry-level performance or unsatisfactory performance for Soldiers with waivers was less than their non-waiver counterparts. In all, the study showed that the differences between Soldiers that came in with conduct waivers and those that did not are negligible -- the Army lost about 2.3 more Soldiers per 100 due to "adverse losses" than it did among the non-waiver population. "Statistically, it is kind of insignificant," Siegfried said. Transition team experience makes officers competitive for promotion [2008-07-03] WASHINGTON -- The chief of staff of the Army recently acknowledged the importance of service by Army officers on military transition and provincial reconstruction teams in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Soldiers that serve on our transition teams and our provincial reconstruction teams are developing exactly the type of knowledge, skills and abilities that are vital for our Army to be effective in an era of persistent conflict," said Gen. George W. Casey Jr. in a recent memo. The general backed up his words by instructing the boards who review officer records for promotion or for selection to command to consider service on TTs or PRTs as equivalent to other branch-specific "key developmental" positions such as battalion operations or battalion executive officer. The move both recognizes the importance of transition team service and helps alleviate concern on the part of some majors that a tour of duty within a transition team might adversely affect the career path they have charted for themselves, said Lt. Col. Steve Warren, a career manager with the U.S. Army Human Resources Command. "There is hesitance in the field about going on TTs because officers are nervous that the time they spend on TTs is time away from their basic branch, and that this will then disadvantage them from promotion," he said. "This message removes that." As a result of the chief of staff's directions, past and present officers that served 12 months as a major on a transition team or provincial reconstruction team will be recognized by future selection boards to have spent time in a key and developmental position that broadened them outside their normal basic branch of assignment. "Depth of experience is good, but the chief of staff is now communicating that breadth is important and a TT or PRT is the exact type of broadening experience we desire for our officers," said Col. Jeff Lieb, chief of the maneuvers, fires and effects division. "As always, an officer's performance in critical jobs is more important then quantity of time spent in KD jobs." By recognizing the importance of transition teams and the skills officers develop while serving on them, the Army hopes to build a more seasoned, capable and diverse officer corps that is better prepared for combat in future operations, said Casey. "The tasks associated with transition teams, from direct combat to stability operations, will be a major part of full spectrum engagement in theaters of interest now and for the foreseeable future," he said. "I want to ensure that the officers that lead these teams are recognized and given the credit they deserve." The chief of staff's message also adds transition team command slots to the list of potential positions to be filled by lieutenant colonels on a Centralized Selection List. The command billets of as many as 35 transition teams have now been identified. "Because the success of these teams requires our best leaders, I have directed the Army Human Resources Command to award Centralized Selection List credit for lieutenant colonels serving specifically in the TT Commander positions that have direct leadership responsibility for a training/transition team," Casey said. To comply with his directions, a new CSL sub-category called "Combat Arms Operations" is being created. The sub-category is open to eligible maneuver, fires and effects officers as well as foreign area officers. The sub-category will come under the Operations category and will be effective with the Fiscal Year 2010 CSL in September. Training tool deploying for first time in August [2008-07-17] GRAFENWOER, Germany -- A team in Germany is preparing to deploy a tool in early August that promises to make training easier, more efficient, and more meaningful for units preparing for Iraq. The Exportable Instrumentation System is a portable set of equipment that tracks player and equipment movement during exercises and records their activity and communications for use during the after-action review process. In August, the Instrumentation Training Analysis Computer Simulations and Support Center -- part of the Joint Multinational Readiness Center -- will for the first time deploy the EIS to Hammelburg, Germany to be part of a mission readiness exercise there involving the 172nd Infantry Brigade from Schweinfurt, Germany. Participating from the brigade will be the 1st Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment; 3rd Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment; 2nd Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment; 1st Battalion, 77th Field Artillery Regiment; and the 9th Engineer Battalion. A total of about 700 Soldiers will participate in the MRE and will be the first to use the complete EIS. "During the exercise, Soldiers at Hammelburg will be responsible for security, for convoy operations, and for everything they will be responsible for when they go downrange to Iraq," said Dave Caples, ITACSS operations officer. "For this exercise, the EIS will provide a means of expanding the battle space, challenging the Brigade to maintain logistical support, communications and C2 with a unit that is geographically separated from the headquarters element." The 172nd is expected to conduct a six-day MRE using the EIS, and will be disbursed across three locations, including Hammelburg, Grafenwoehr, and Hohenfels, Germany. The headquarters element of the brigade will be located in Hohenfels while the 3-66 AR will be located in Hammelburg -- about 125 miles away. The disbursed units will all be tied together during the exercise by the the EIS. The EIS consists of several pieces of portable equipment, including the "Global Hawk" containers that contain the computers that run the system; several hard shelters called HELAMS that house workstations for analysts; and several remote base stations that can be placed around a training range to act as signal repeaters to feed information back into EIS. Individual Soldiers may be asked to wear instrumented personnel detection devices so that EIS analysts can see where they are on the range, and vehicles involved in the MRE will be outfitted with MILES II equipment that allows the EIS to track their whereabouts, their expenditure of munitions, and their fuel usage. In all, the EIS can monitor some 800 inputs participating in the exercise. During an exercise, the system allows for analysis of Soldier's actions, the communication between Soldiers and their headquarters, and the implementation of logistics support to Soldiers and equipment, Caples said. The EIS also contains a sophisticated facility where Soldiers and their commanders can conduct the after action review process, aided by video captured by EIS during the exercise and by inputs from analysts. In all, the 172nd will be the first to benefit from the advanced technology ITACSS has assembled to enhance Soldier training. "We are the only place in the world that has something like this," Caples said. "The EIS is meant to deploy anywhere in the world. We give these guys the flexibility to do a whole lot of things simultaneously, and I think it will enhance the training immensely." While there are similar, non-portable systems already at Army combat training centers, the EIS is mobile, and can be taken anywhere in the world. It is the only system of its kind in the Army today, and JMRC will use it to take its training capability on the road to other training ranges in Germany, or anywhere in the world. Caples said it is the Army's intent to assemble another EIS for use inside the continental United States, but doesn't expect that system to be ready until 2011. JTF-East training rotating from Romania to Bulgaria [2008-07-24] MIHAIL KOGALNICEANU AIR BASE, Romania -- About 900 U.S. Soldiers are now beginning their final week of training with Romanian troops at ranges in the eastern half of this former Warsaw Pact nation. The month-long training at MK Air Base, under Joint Task Force-East, has already included an airborne operation, live-fire exercises at squad level, military operations in urban terrain, joint patrolling, situational training exercises, and medical training. The training under JTF-E is part of an initiative to strengthen relationships between the United States and its Eastern European allies, officials said. They said this is the second year training has been facilitated by JTF-E -- the first rotation, a "proof of principle" demonstration, happened last year. This month's training in Romania is actually the first part of this year's JTF-E rotation. Beginning in August, JTF-E will facilitate multi-national training for additional U.S. Soldiers in Bulgaria. Training there will last until November. The training in Romania involved Soldiers from U.S. installations in Germany, along with members of the New Mexico National Guard and the Utah National Guard. Also included were 280 soldiers from the Romanian Army's 21st Mountain Battalion and 200 soldiers from the Bulgarian Army's 10th Company, 5th Infantry Battalion. Spc. Eric Trujillo and Sgt. Adam Ortega, part of the New Mexico National Guard, were among those participating in military operations on urban terrain training at Babadag Training Area -- a range about 35 miles northwest of MK Airbase. During the training, their units entered an area held by an opposing force -- played by Romanian soldiers -- and attempted to secure the area and capture a high-value target. To accomplish their mission, the Soldiers used weapons similar to what they might use in Iraq, but were instead loaded with "simmunitions," non-lethal projectiles with a paintball-type marker. Trujillo said the Romanians made worthy foes. "As the OPFOR, our opponents out there -- they gave us a run for our money," Trujillo said. In fact, the Romanians performed their role as the opposing force so well, the New Mexico unit was unable to acquire their target. But that didn't stop the unit from performing well in the other areas of their mission. "We didn't get our suspect, but we did good," Ortega said. "We moved as a good element across the field, clearing the buildings we had to do, and pushed through this whole village and we did good." Ortega said he thinks the training in Romania is good for units who will deploy downrange, and he should know, he recently returned from Iraq. "It's really good three-dimensional warfare here; we are out in the open and we get to practice our 360-security all the time, every movement we make," he said. "We always have to be watching to our left, to our right, to our rear. And it's good -- especially for these new guys." Right now, the presence of the U.S. military in Romania and Bulgaria is small, but the Army is constructing billeting, unit operations, maintenance support, and recreation facilities on the former 34th Mechanized Brigade Base to support and house about 1,700 Soldiers, said George Bostick, the deputy commander of JTF-E. "We are building a permanent forward operating station here," Bostick said. "It's important for us for the quality of life for the Soldier. If we are going to be here over an extended length of time, we have to get them out of bunk beds. We are building an installation -- a kaserne -- like we have in Germany for our Soldiers. At the end of the 2008 round of training, JTF-E will begin planning next year's training and will continue to work on developing and maintaining facilities in both Romania and Bulgaria, Bostick said, including improved support facilities for Soldiers. Sexual assault prevention policy to focus on changing social norms [2008-07-31] WASHINGTON -- The Army plans to launch new initiatives for the prevention of sexual assault during a summit this September in Washington, D.C. "The outcome of this summit will define our future prevention strategy and drive our way ahead for the campaign we will launch," said Col. Eddie Stephens, deputy director of Human Resources Policy, during a media roundtable, July 30, at the Pentagon. Specific details on the kinds of tactics the Army might introduce that could help the service curb instances of sexual assault and rape in the ranks were few, as the Army is still developing those tactics. But Stephens did say the overall strategy for sexual assault prevention was headed in a new direction. "The effort is intended to change behavior, change influences on behavior, and over the long term, change the culture of our organization so our folks are adopting the traditional values we hold key to this institution we call the Army," Stephens said. At the summit will be representatives from the Army's Training and Doctrine Command. The command will be revising all of its training this fall to incorporate into it the prevention of sexual assault, said Carolyn Collins, the program manager for the Army's sexual assault and prevention response program. "It's not only for our professional military education, but also our first responder training," she said. "And we are looking at training from the earliest possible point we can engage -- from senior ROTC, to junior ROTC, to the academy, to the new recruits -- even before they hit the ground." Stephens said the Army has noticed in some communities that the definition of what is acceptable behavior between men and women may no longer be acceptable within the Army community. "One of the things that have become apparent to us is that the cohort of Soldiers that we bring in the Army every year has changed," he said. "Societal norms and negative influences have changed in this population. Their norms are not like their father's or grandfather's norms of what is acceptable behavior in this society." A Soldier, he said, may bring into the Army ideas he learned in high school about what is appropriate behavior between men and women. "A young Soldier, 18- or 19-years-old, comes into the Army and has been in an environment with his peers, and with the influences upon him, where he believes that inappropriately touching a female is acceptable," he said. "She may have not complained about it, because of her influences and her social norms -- where in high school this happens all the time. But in the Army, that is sexual assault." The solution, Stephens said, is reeducating Soldiers to the Army value system. "You take the opportunity to reeducate, based on the Army values -- respect," he said. "We use the Army values as a benchmark and show that what was normal to them doesn't fit with our value system. And again we work to change people's attitudes and influence their behavior." Some of the negative influences that might lead young men and women to develop behavioral attitudes that are contrary to Army values might include music, music videos, video games, advertising and information on the internet, Collins said. "We're not going to be able to cut Soldiers off from those influences," she said. "But that is not our intent. Our intent is educating them. What we're driving towards, is for Soldiers to be educated and have an understanding of what this crime is and isn't -- there are a lot of myths out there." Collins said youth seek approval from each other before they seek approval from authority, and that this trend will also drive the Army's efforts to curb sexual assault. "We see things like the recent story where the young ladies did the bullying action -- the assaults -- then posted that on the Web site," Collins said. "What they are looking for is validation. Are their actions acceptable? Are they going to be held accountable by their peers? We know with our youth market that is coming in the Army, that they are driven by peer-to-peer accountability. That is their largest influencer. We have to look at that as we move our program forward." It is that peer-to-peer influence the Army hopes to leverage, through top-down education and information, to help ensure Soldiers live up to the Army values, Stephens said. "Through our research and feedback, Soldiers are telling us how best to communicate with them. We are looking at social networking. Whether it is a social networking site like YouTube or Face Book, a lot of the communication among people in that age group is anonymous," he said. "They feel validation through their anonymous ability to communicate with and maintain friendships with folks online." Stephens also said smaller social groups are a good way to communicate new information to Soldiers. "We know that face-to-face, in small group settings -- not necessarily overtly focused on a military sense, but on a social sense -- allows folks to communicate, provide feedback, and become involved," he said. "If we can provide an alternative focus on something that is wholesome verses something that is negative, we think there's more of a tendency for our folks to become involved." Army releases message announcing new service uniform [2008-08-21] WASHINGTON -- Out with the old, in with the blue. The Army has made it official; the green service uniform, which has defined the service since the mid-1950s, is on the outs. In place of the green uniform will be a variation of the blue uniform, something many Soldiers already own. Official word on the new "Army Service Uniform," or ASU, was released Aug. 20 in a message to all Army activities. The message defines the wear policy and the "bridging" strategy for transition to the new uniform. "It's a culmination of transformation efforts that started in 2004," said Sgt. Maj. of the Army Kenneth O. Preston of the new ASU. "We had three 'Class A' style uniforms, all the same style jacket, with just a different color -- the policies on how we wore accoutrements on them were different. We asked the question -- if we wear one only, which would it be? And the blue uniform was the most popular of the three." The new ASU coat, similar to the existing blue coat, will be made of a wrinkle-resistant material and will have a more "athletic" cut. Other changes to the uniform include authorization of a combat service identification badge to recognize combat service, overseas service bars authorized on the jacket sleeve for both enlisted Soldiers and officers, the wear of distinctive unit insignia on the shoulder loops of the blue coat for enlisted Soldiers, authorizing paratroopers to wear the black jump boots with the blue ASU, and the decision to transition to a new short sleeve and long sleeve white shirt with shoulder loops. It is also permissible for enlisted Soldiers to wear both overseas service bars and service stripes on the new blue ASU coat. Officers and Soldiers in the grade of corporal and above will additionally wear a gold braid on their slacks to indicate leadership roles. "That is kind of a right of passage as you transition from being a (junior) enlisted soldier to a noncommissioned officer," Preston said of the gold braid. New items for the ASU will be available in military clothing sales after July 2009. Soldiers will be expected to possess the entire uniform by July 2014. The two key components of the uniform, the coat and slacks, are expected to cost around $140, with modifications bringing the total cost to $200. Enlisted Soldiers will receive an increase in their annual uniform allowance to help offset the cost of the uniform. Army school helps recruits meet requirement for enlistment [2008-09-02] WASHINGTON -- The Army is nearing capacity on it's basic training preparatory school at Fort Jackson, S.C. The Army Preparatory School, which opened Aug.4, will reach its operating capacity of 240 students within the next two weeks, officials projected. The APS helps young Americans prepare for and earn a Certificate of General Educational Development, commonly referred to as a GED, so they may move on to basic combat training. Entry into the Army depends on enlistees having earned a GED, or a high school-level or higher diploma. Students without these credentials -- categorized as "Tier III" -- cannot enlist. In an effort to improve recruitment numbers, the Army has been authorized to enlist some of those Tier III students. "The Department of Defense has allowed us to contract these Soldiers in as Tier III enlistees," said Lt. Col. Val Siegfried, Army branch chief for enlisted accessions. "After four weeks of school, if they earn their GED, DOD is letting us recode them as a Tier II so they may move on to basic training." Students at APS are actually Soldiers, either E-1 or E-2 depending on their enlistment contract. They may spend as many as four weeks at the school studying and preparing to take the GED tests. In order to move on from the school and into basic combat training, they must test for and earn the GED certificate in two tries. For students, the school is simply an extra step between the military entrance processing station where they swear in and the first day of actual training at basic combat training. "We give them a detour here; instead of sending them to basic training, they come to my school," said Capt. Brian Gaddis, company commander, Army Preparatory School. "We educate them during our four-week program and at the end they test and get their GED." Soldiers enrolled at the APS wear uniforms, get up early, do physical training, and go to class. They spend their evenings studying. Preparing for their GED test is the main focus of the school, said Gaddis. "Our focus here is to hurry up and get them to basic training," Gaddis said. "All these Soldiers have a desire to get there -- to begin life in the Army as everybody knows it." In the schoolhouse, students are not so much instructed, but lead in self instruction. Students work mostly on their own and at their own pace. "Our program is more of an independent adult education study," Gaddis said. "For the majority of the class, the teacher is not standing up giving instructions. Everybody is working at their own pace. The instructors are giving Soldiers assignments and going around to answer questions or offer assistance." Soldiers that enter the APS take the Test of Adult Basic Education so school officials may have a better understanding of their abilities. Then students focus on those areas they are weakest in. Students who demonstrate that they would be ready to take their GED test immediately are offered that option so they may get to BCT even faster. "Theoretically, they could spend less than a week in class here -- if they come to us ready to test out already," Gaddis said. "Of our very first students that graduated here -- one graduated in his second week, and two graduated in their first week. We don't keep them any longer than we have to." In addition to the education curriculum, students at APS are taught some military education as well. Those classes, said Gaddis, helps better prepare them for their eventual entry into the Army. "We do throw in a one-hour military class every day," he said. "We include everything from drilling ceremony to first aid to basic map reading. We do the military class for a couple reasons. One is to get them out of the classroom and clear their head -- let them take a break. Eight hours a day in the classroom is tough. "We also do the military class as part of the Soldierization process. Those who join the Army don't envision themselves in a classroom doing math, they see themselves learning the skills every Soldier needs for combat. We want to give them a taste of that to remind them they are still Soldiers, and to also instill that discipline." But Gaddis said the real focus of APS is to get Soldiers ready to take the GED so they may move on to BCT. And thus far, he said, the school has been successful. "We've got a 100-percent success rate right now," he said. "We've had 18 Soldiers test, and 18 Soldiers pass. So I think we're on track to have a real high success rate here." Soldiers spend their first three days of APS going through a sort of in-processing for the Army. They get identification cards, an initial uniform issue and a haircut. It's the same kind of in-processing Soldiers go through before the real training begins at BCT. When Soldiers leave APS, they are mixed with other Soldiers with whom they will endure BCT -- right after those Soldiers complete their in-processing. The transition is seamless, Gaddis said. But for some, it won't be entirely transparent. Soldiers from APS have already spent a month in the Army, learning the ways of the service, getting up early, standing at attention, and learning rank and protocol. "When these guys finally get to BCT, they are going to benefit from being here for a month -- I truly believe that," Gaddis said. "If nothing else, they have learned to stand at parade rest and at attention. And with the physical training, while we don't focus on them being PT studs, we do focus on them learning really proper form." The Army's APS is about getting more quality recruits into the service, said Siegfried. Those enrolled in APS have no issues -- save for lack of a high school diploma or GED -- that would prevent them from joining the Army. The recruits have no criminal background or medical issues. They also score adequate numbers on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. The only thing missing, said Siegfried, is the GED that will allow them to join. "Last year, only about three out of 10 young Americans were qualified to come in the Army," said Siegfried. "And it's weight, health, lack of education or character issues that are causing the problems. And the problem is going to get worse. But we're doing something about it -- we're going out and getting people, bringing them up to the standard, and putting them in the Army." Army discusses 25 years of progress with families [2008-09-05] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of the Army Pete Geren recently took time to reflect on the progress the Army has made in the 25 years since the beginning of the Army Family Action Plan. "This is an important opportunity for us to look back on 25 years of the AFAP," Geren said. "The Army over the last several years has been stepping up to this challenge and doing everything we can to provide Army families with the quality of life that is comparable to the quality of their service. But we recognize there is more to do." Delores Johnson, director of Family Programs for the Family, Moral Welfare and Recreation Command; Secretary Geren, and the spouses of several Soldiers met Sept. 4 to answer questions for bloggers about how the Army cares for Soldiers, their families, and veterans. Bloggers asked about how the Army helps Soldiers who are geographically separated from Army or Veterans Administration treatment facilities. They asked how the Army aids families of Soldiers afflicted with post traumatic stress disorder; how the Army might deal with the influx of Soldiers who could come back from Iraq and Afghanistan if the war were ended today; and how the Army could better include parents of Soldiers in the Army family. Some veterans are geographically separated from the military or VA facilities that can provide them medical services, if needed. Becky Pillsbury, wife of Maj. Gen. John Pillsbury, said a program called "Still Serving Veterans," based in Huntsville, Ala., aims to help those veterans connect to the services they need. "We travel to them," said Pillsbury of the program. "We wrap our arms around the entire family and we provide counseling, and have gotten them into the VA system. And it used to be six months; we now have it less than a month." Pillsbury said the program helps provide those geographically separated Soldiers with getting their homes handicapped accessible, their cars handicapped accessible and even helps them get college educations completed in their own homes. The Army helps Soldiers returning from the war on terror who are suffering from PTSD or traumatic brain injury. But often, military spouses need assistance as well. Sometimes just to learn to better deal with afflicted spouses. "Through their Family Readiness Groups, we can provide information and training on what the surgeon general has developed, in terms of Battlemind," said Johnson. "So, I think the first strategy is to be able to take some of those courses that are offered through FRGs, so they understand a little bit more about what kind of injuries are the result of the war -- whether that's mild brain injury or PTSD, because these are conditions that we've not -- at least this generation of spouses -- had to face in the kind of volume that we're facing it now." Johnson said it's important for spouses to understand what mild brain injury is, and for spouses to be able to identify and to play a key role in encouraging their Soldiers to seek assistance with PTSD, if needed. Some three quarters of a million individuals have deployed to support the global war on terror, some more than once. Right now, nearly 150,000 -- from all branches of the military -- are deployed. Were they all to return at once, systems in place now for dealing with their medical and psychological needs would be strained, Geren said. "If the war were to end tomorrow and all of a sudden 150,000 Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines came home, there's no doubt it would stress the system in a number of ways," he said. "But the system is being tested now and we're shaping the system to meet the needs. We're also looking at the next 20 years as an era of persistent engagement, persistent deployment, and persistent conflict -- so we're trying to shape the Army to meet the needs of an Army that is consistently deployed." The secretary said the Army must accept what is the status now -- so many deployed -- as the "new normal" for the service. "We're not going to go back to the 1990s and a garrison-based Army," he said. "We're going to continue to be a deployment Army -- an expeditionary Army -- and that's causing transformation of the entire Army in how we educate our Soldiers." Some of that transformation, for instance, includes how to handle health-care needs of Guard and Reserve members that are so geographically dispersed when they return home. Some Soldiers have no families -- except for their parents. Military mothers and fathers want to be more involved in their Soldier's lives, one blogger said. Parents can become part of a virtual Family Readiness Group to stay better connected to their Soldiers and the military family, said Johnson. And many FRGs in the Guard and Reserve, she said, are now run by parents. "Those parents have tremendous insight," Johnson said. "They have a lot that they have told us about what needs to happen, because they're the ones closest to the Soldier that's deployed." Army celebrates century of military aviation [2008-09-08] ARLINGTON, Va. -- The Army kicked off a celebration recognizing 100 years of military aviation during a Sept. 6 ceremony at Fort Myer, Va. Despite heavy rains and flooded streets due to Tropical Storm Hanna, hundreds turned out to Conmy Hall to see the first public starting of the engine on a replica of the 1908 Wright Model A. The original of that aircraft flew Sept. 3, 1908 at Fort Myer. That flight was the first in a series that led to a $30,000 Army contract awarded to the Wright brothers in July 1909 for the first military airplane. In attendance at the ceremony Saturday were the families of Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright; Lt. Benjamin Foulois, who established the Army's first flight detachment; and 1st Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge, the first military aviation fatality. Ceremony hosts included Rep. James Moran of Virginia's 8th district, retired Maj. Gen. Carl H. McNair, and Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli. "Your ancestor's sacrifices to our nation can never be fully measured and will never be forgotten," Chiarelli told the gathered families of the Army's aviation pioneers. "We gather today to give credit to these men, 100 years past -- where the sound of Orville Wright's propeller first pierced the Fort Myer September air -- proving that he could fly the Wright flyer to specifications demanded by the Army." At the time, Chiarelli said, the "key performance parameters" Orville Wright needed to demonstrate in order to meet Army contract specifications included flying for at least an hour, flying with two men aboard his aircraft, and flying at a speed of 40 miles an hour. "Orville Wright succeeded, and a new high ground emerged," Chiarelli said. "It was one of the historic achievements of modern history. New ideas of warfare rapidly flourished." The Wright Model A replica was displayed in the center of Conmy Hall, under spotlights and surrounded by elements of the 3rd U.S. Infantry (The Old Guard) and the U.S. Army Band, "Pershing's Own." Following Chiarelli's speech, builders of the aircraft approached it and spun the propellers to start its engine. The plane's single engine spun its wooden propellers and filled the hall with a sound not heard on the installation for 100 years. It was the first time the replica's engine had been started as part of a public demonstration, an honor the builder's had saved for the Army's celebration of military aviation. Just a moment later, the builders powered the engine down, and the roar of the engine was replaced with the thunder of applause. Scott Rawlings -- a project leader for construction of the replica aircraft and a team member of "The Wright Experience," the group that built it -- said the team is attempting to relearn what the Wrights accomplished by doing just what they did. "The Wrights were pioneers, and they established aviation as we know it," he said. "We're trying to follow in their footsteps. We're trying to document what the Wright brothers did, and how they did it. We are going back, systematically, 100 years behind them and rebuilding all their aircraft. What we are trying to do is document it for further generations." Rawlings said there are no blueprints for the Wright Model A aircraft. Instead, there are photographs, journals, written documents and eye witness reports on how it was put together and the materials used. The Wright Experience, he said, uses modern technology and research to discern exactly how the Wright brothers built their aircraft. "It takes a lot of artisans, and we take photographs and overlay them with a computer- aided design program and then look a them from different angles," he said. "There are no blueprints, but we do a lot of research and find the original materials, all through their journals. Then we bring it all together. If we build it exactly as they did -- we expect it to behave as their aircraft did." Rawlings said the next stop for the Wright Model A is the National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia. Col. Laura J. Richardson, the Fort Myer garrison commander, is also a UH-60 Black Hawk pilot. She said she didn't learn the role her installation played in military aviation until she was well on her way to taking command there. Part of the celebration at Fort Myer was to help others learn of that important part of the installation's history. "We are here promoting education and learning about our history," she said. "But also promoting math and science, for our younger kids. And I think it is also important to showcase what the military has to offer and important to have a good working relationship with your community." During the celebration of the 100-year anniversary of military aviation, Fort Myer opened its gates to the general public. It was the first time the installation had an Open House, Richardson said. In addition to the display of the 1908 Wright Model A, there were information kiosks set up where visitors could practice "flying" the aircraft on a simulator, and also see how it was designed. Retired Navy Lt. Cdr. Dave Gedra and son Steve Gedra, a 5th grader, were two that braved the rain to attend the event. Steve, a video-game expert, soccer player and Cub Scout from Fairfax, Va., tried his hand at the Wright Flyer simulator. He laid on his stomach and maneuvered an on-screen aircraft with a large wooden control stick. "It was hard," he conceded. Steve's father, who has only piloted a boat for the Navy, said it was his wife that noticed the centennial of military aviation event in their base newspaper. He said he knew he and his son had to check it out. "It's a great event," he said. "It's a shame the weather didn't cooperate -- but this is an important milestone to acknowledge and celebrate. Aviation, across the services, is critical to the capabilities we have." Pentagon employee recounts experience in wake of terrorist attack [2008-09-10] WASHINGTON -- The oily black smoke that filled the corridors of the Pentagon "was almost like something that was alive," said a survivor of the terrorist attack there Sept. 11, 2001. "There was a concussion -- if you've ever been in an explosion before or the blast of a munition -- there's pressure on your chest and body," said Danny G.I. Pummill, director of operations for the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Medical and Health Oversight. "I got knocked out of my desk. And there were lots of flame, lots of fire. And there was large black ugly smoke ... We were down at the end of the hall watching it come down the hallway and it's like long tentacles and spreading out." Then a lieutenant colonel in the Army, Pummill continues to work in the building today as a Department of the Army civilian. He was one of the many individuals that were in the Pentagon when it was attacked seven years ago, and one that also plans to attend the opening Pentagon Memorial Sept. 11, 2008, just north of the building. Pummill works now, as he did back then, for the Army's G-1. That's the agency responsible for oversight of such things as manpower, hiring, recruiting, retention, bonuses, health affairs, medical issues, and civilian oversight. When the Pentagon was attacked, Pummill had only been in the building, or for that matter in Washington, for about two weeks. "It was a little strange working here in the Pentagon, in the big city, after having been at Fort Riley, Kan.," he said. " His office then was about 100 yards from where the aircraft hit the northwest side of the building, near "corridor 4." That morning, he said, started off like any other morning at the Pentagon -- with a meeting. "The sergeant major was excited, it was about military education and a program called eArmyU, where all Soldiers would be allowed to take college courses 24/7 via a laptop that the government would provide," Pummill said. "He asked if it was okay if he took the meeting -- I said no problem." Forgoing a meeting he might have attended, Pummill stayed in his office working on other things. He said the secretary came in to his office and told him and his office mates that an airplane had struck one of the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. They all went across the hall to find a television to watch. "The boss was out of town - on a hunting trip in Alaska for polar bear, so we went in to his office and watched the first plane go in to the building," he said. Later, after returning to their office, another person came in and told them of a plane flying into the World Trade Center towers. There was confusion with the message. "We thought they were talking about the plane we'd been seeing on the TV already, and we didn't think too much about it," Pummill said. But the confusion was short lived. About 30 seconds later, Pummill said, the ceiling in his office collapsed, and the floor came up. "Flames and smoke went past our open door in the hallway," he said. "A couple of people in the office were hurt. One of the majors was cut by flying glass -- we had glass doors at the time. And we had no idea what it was. We thought it was maybe because they were doing construction -- that a gas tank had been left on and there had been an explosion or something." Pummill assisted in getting the people out of his immediate area, then grabbed some noncommissioned officers and went office-to-office looking for people that might need help. "There were a lot of frightened and confused people," he said. "Mostly we were gathering them up and sending them out along the opposite side of the E-ring so they could find an exit." They did another sweep of the offices in their area, and then noticed injured people, people with burns, moving through the side hallways. "There was a small restaurant down here at the time called Redskins," he said. "We went in there and pulled bottled water off the shelf and kind of poured it over the burns of the wounded people and stuff," he said. In the restaurant, Pummill met up with a colonel in the Marine Corps. The two officers took fire extinguishers to go back and rescue more people. He said they sprayed the extinguishers in an attempt to push back the flames and smoke so they could move forward. But each advance meant another extinguisher expended and they had to go back to find another. "We took our shirts off and wet them with water on the floor and wrapped them around our face and tried again, but we couldn't get down there," Pummill said. Then, he said, a door opened in the hallway, and eight or nine people in suits, mostly clean, entered the hallway. "A gentleman in the center of the group told us we need to leave the building," Pummill said. "I said no sir, there's people, we need to get to them. He asked if we knew what happened. The Marine colonel snapped to attention and said no sir, we don't. And I said it didn't matter, we needed to get back down there. The gentleman who was addressing us asked if I knew who he was -- I said no I didn't." Pummill said he learned it was then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He explained to Pummill and his companion what had happened, that the smoke was toxic, and that there were firemen, police and emergency workers now on scene at the Pentagon and that it was time for them to let the professionals do their jobs. Pummill said he didn't get home that night to his wife until about 10 p.m. The next day, though, he was back at work. The Army G-1 had set up operations in a different part of the city -- to continue with the mission. Due to a medical issue, Pummill was unable to take another command position in the Army, as he had at his prior assignment at Fort Riley. Instead, he said, he continued on at the Pentagon. And when the time came for him to retire, the Army asked him to continue on there as a Department of the Army civilian. When he explains why he would want to stay on at the Pentagon, to continue on to work in the building after so many lives were lost, and after such a traumatic personal experience, Pummill looks to a memorial set up in a Pentagon hallway near the Army G-1. It features pictures of those G-1 employees who died as a result of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. "If you look at the board, two of these guys were my office mates: Sgt. Maj. Lacey Ivory and I shared a desk. (Lt. Col.) Stephen Hyland was my best friend. (Lt. Col.) Kip Taylor's dad was my PMS at college. Everybody knows everybody. And pretty much most of the military on here I knew. Everybody knows Lt. Gen. Timothy Maude. "You kind of owe it to them, owe it to the country. And how can you not do this when we are fighting a war. This is the only job now, as far as I'm concerned." G-1, Pentagon employees remember 9/11 fallen [2008-09-12] WASHINGTON -- One survivor of the attack on the Pentagon said she couldn't cry for more than two years after the event -- and today, it still seems unreal. "Why did this happen -- it was so unnecessary for so many people to die," said Mary Lou Bradley, who works for the Army's G-1. "It took me a long time to come to terms with it. For two and a half years I could not cry -- seven years later it feels like it's a bad dream and I'm going to wake up tomorrow in 2001 and everybody will be here." Bradley was among the many who gathered during a ceremony Sept. 11 to remember the 29 Soldiers and civilians who were lost from the Army's G-1 and Office of the Assitant Secretary of the Army (Manpower and Reserve Affairs) during the terrorist attack seven years ago. Lt. Gen. Michael D. Rochelle, the deputy chief of staff for G-1, spoke to the dozens of Soldiers, Army civilians and family members gathered near the G-1 offices in the Pentagon. "United in purpose, we continue to grieve for the victims of September 11, and feel for families and friends who lost loved one," he said. "We will long remember the heroes who emerged from the tragedies of those attacks, and will fight the good fight against a global network of terrorism for as long as it takes to end its threat to America and all civilized nations." The G-1 now maintains a memorial to those lost during the terrorist attack. It features the names of those lost, their photos, and the date. During the memorial ceremony, a wreath was placed in front of the memorial. Lois Stevens, a friend and coworker of Bradley, has worked in the Pentagon for more than 30 years now. She said walking past the G-1 and M&RA memorial gives her pause -- time to reflect on those of her coworkers she remembers. "You remember the last thing that a person said to you," she said. "It's a reminder -- I like that memorial very much. One lady, Marian Serva, was our congressional person. When the congressional season gets going, really going -- I'm kind of thinking, oh Marian, help us out. And I miss her. I talked to her that morning. You think about each one every day." Bradley has also visited the new Pentagon Memorial, which is right outside the offices of the Army G-1. She said the memorial is a good place to sit and think, to remember those who were lost. "If you go out there its very peaceful, even when the planes fly over, its not really loud," she said. "And you can sit out there and think. I went out the other day, and went through almost the whole memorial looking for the benches for nine G-1 people. I found them. I sat out there and -- you remember the people when they were alive. You remember the good things about them. I think that's what the purpose of the memorial is. You can reflect." Two Army libraries named best in federal government [2008-09-16] WASHINGTON -- Two Army libraries took half of the federal library awards for 2007 -- including both the large library of the year and the small library of the year awards. The large library award went to the Combined Arms Research Library at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. The small library of the year award to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center Library, in Landstuhl, Germany. Representatives of those libraries, including Edwin Burgess, CARL director and Conny Camerer, LRMC librarian, attended an awards ceremony Sept. 12 at the Library of Congress. The two later visited the Pentagon, where their organizations were again recognized for excellence by Lt. Gen. Michael D. Rochelle, deputy chief of staff, G-1. "I am a huge fan of the value that librarians bring to the table," the general said. "I have tremendous respect for the research ability, the spirit of support and cooperation and the science in general. This is no small event that we are witnessing here for both Landstuhl and for the Combined Arms Center." The library at Fort Leavenworth, which supports the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College there, houses some 400,000 books, about 200,000 documents, and supports some 8,000 students, faculty, scholars and staff. It was recognized in part for its use of technology. Evidence the library is satisfying its customer base is demonstrated by a 28-percent increase in use of its database and a 76-percent increase to searches in its online public access catalog. The Landstuhl Regional Medical Center Library has been recognized for its unique world-class research facility, specializing in medical and dental medicine and serving numerous additional military medical facilities in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The library serves some 3,000 medical professionals and has improved service to them by providing customers with exceptionally fast turnaround on locating hard-to-find research material. "Fast document delivery is the key to success in my library," Camerer said. "Mostly people request articles, and we work diligently to provide full text documentation. While we are 6,000 miles away from the continental United States, sometimes it takes only a half hour to get a document. We're like a portal -- an information gateway." Burgess said that providing information to those not actually in the library is also becoming important. More and more, he said, information requests are coming from the outside. "The networking and the transfer of information is more important," he said. "Speed of that is important too. In the past, libraries mainly served people in their walls. That is now becoming less and less true. Today, we still serve people within our walls, but it is quite routine to get requests for information from the theater." Despite the growth of the Internet and information resources like Wikipedia, Burgess said he doesn't think brick and mortar libraries are going anywhere, and will remain important -- especially to researchers such as the ones both his and Camerer's libraries serve. "One thing a library can do is give you filtered information," he said. "We can ensure it comes from a good source. If you go to Wikipedia for example, you have a perfectly good article by some guy -- that may or may not know squat. If you go to Conny's library and ask what a squamous cell melanoma is, you will not get an answer from some guy." "What you'll get is a peer-reviewed article -- solid information," Camerer said. Burgess has been an Army librarian for nearly four decades now, Camerer has been doing the same for some 15 years. She said representing the LMRC and having her library named the best small library in the federal government has been a real highlight for her. "This is probably the highest recognition I've received in my life," she said. "And to be recognized by the G-1 of the Army is tremendous." Final housing privatization partners chosen [2008-09-23] WASHINGTON -- The final partners have been chosen to team up with the Army in its housing privatization venture. The partners will work with the Army to privatize housing, under the Residential Communities Initiative, at seven more installations. Those installations include Fort Sill, Okla.; Fort Wainwright, Alaska; Fort Greely, Alaska; Fort Huachuca, Ariz.; Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz.; Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md. and Fort Richardson, Alaska. The Army first transferred Soldier housing to the private sector in 1999 at Fort Carson, Colo. That property was developed under RCI as a single project, and like follow-on RCI projects, the land there was transferred as part of a 50-year lease. Since that time, the Army has transferred an additional 37 properties to the private sector. By March 2010, the last of the RCI properties, family housing at Fort Richardson, will be handed over to the private sector for development. Those last seven properties will be developed as four different projects. RCI is the Army's program to privatize housing across the continental United States. By 2020, as many as 89,000 new or renovated homes will be made available to Soldiers through the RCI's housing portfolio. The RCI private sector partners will collect rent from the Soldiers who will live in them and provide the maintenance services for the homes and yards "When the smoke settles, it'll be around 97 percent of Army's housing around the United States that is privatized," said Geoffrey G. Prosch, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for installations and environment, adding that the Army has already transferred to RCI partners housing operations at 38 installations. Four employees who helped develop the partnerships that are allowing the Army to rebuild its housing portfolio through RCI were recognized Sept. 19 at the Pentagon. Rhonda Q. Hayes, Matt Keiser, Jim Rich and Bill Mysliwiec received the Army Commanders Award for Civilian Service Medal from Prosch during a small ceremony. The four were recognized for, among other things, selecting RCI partners for the Army by using the request for qualifications acquisition process and for the enviable record of awarding contracts for 35 RCI projects that resulted in no successful protests. "This record of success is a model for the military and one that has resulted in Soldiers and their families receiving new homes sooner rather than later," Prosch said. The RFQ acquisition process reduces time and costs for both the Army and private sector developers. The process allows the Army to choose a potential partner based on key abilities the service thinks will be needed in order to accomplish a job -- such as building or remodeling homes, or planning and managing a housing community. "We looked at a number of criteria in our selection process," said Rhonda Q. Hayes, Director Transaction Management for the Office of Energy and Partnership. "We looked at experience in development, ability to finance the deal, past performance, their use of small businesses, and their preliminary concept and proposed design of the installation." The RFQ process differs from the request for proposal process in that RFQ seeks out a partner first, based on qualifications, and then develops the plan of action with the partner. In the RFP process, the Army develops the plan of action on its own, followed by a request for proposal from the private sector to determine who can complete that plan at the lowest cost. Under the process used by RCI, the Army and the partner develop community development plans together. "With RFQ, we are selecting a quality partner, not a scope of work. We choose the partner that will sit down with us and identify that scope of work," Hayes said. "It's a collaborative plan we have worked with the private sector to develop and they do it better than we do." Prosch commented, "When I came onboard with the Army, the service had between a $6 and $7 billion dollar backlog of unfinanced requirements for maintaining military family housing. Now the Army's portfolio of homes, one of the largest in the nation, is on track to being first rate -- and the Army accomplished it through privatization at a fraction of the cost of what it would have taken in MILCON dollars." "The Army has contributed a little less than a billion dollars in equity to our development partners," he said. "And in return we've received over 10 billion dollars in initial development scope. That's an 11-to-one ratio. That's phenomenal in the construction industry. And it's allowed us, at all these 45 installations at the same time, to move out simultaneously and rapidly recapitalize our housing." RCI is beneficial for both Soldiers and the Army. For Soldiers it means their homes will be better maintained by a private contractor that is competing with the rest of the private sector for their dollars. For the Army, it is means fewer MILCON dollars must be requested, and also means an indirect boost in mission readiness. "Taking care of Soldiers, families and quality of life directly affects retention," Prosch remarked. "We have transformed as an Army. Today, over half our Soldiers are married. If you are going to be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan every other year, it's a real readiness issue to know your family is being taken care of. You can keep your head focused on the battle knowing they are being taken care of very well." Soldiers learn lessons in transition at H-3 conference [2008-10-01] MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. -- About 250 injured or ill Soldiers participated in a workshop last week to prepare themselves for either retention in the Army or transition to the civilian world. The "Heal, Help, Hire" or "H-3" training workshop as it is called, was held for the third time Sept. 22 to 27, hosted by the Installation Management Command, in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Attendees at the training site included Soldiers who are presently in the Medical Evaluation Board process from injuries, illnesses or conditions sustained in the Global War on Terrorism. At the workshop, Soldiers learned about the benefits, entitlements, accommodations and opportunities available to them as they transition. What all the Soldiers had in common was the need to prepare for a change -- from where they are, to where they can choose to go. Some Soldiers --after going before an Army medical board that will determine next steps and options -- perhaps will go into a different career field/MOS, back to their unit or transition out of the active Army. The H-3 conference has been designed to poise and prepare both groups for the changes and choices afforded to them, officials said. "Our objective is to provide access and opportunity for training, knowledge and resources [they need] to make fully informed decisions -- said Michael Lariosa, the H-3 program manager." "The Army wants to assist Soldiers with their transition. If that means becoming a veteran, civilian employee or being retained in the Army in another occupation with assistive technology and retraining -- we will make sure that happens by ensuring they receive the appropriate process and POCs." During the H-3 conference, Soldiers and their spouses attended workshops conducted by subject matter experts and representatives from private sector, federal agencies, resource and service providers to learn about benefits, education, medical treatment and job-placement assistance. "[The speakers] put out a lot of information we were not getting elsewhere," said Staff Sgt. Kandi Temple, who is currently assigned to the Warrior Transition Unit at Hunter Army Airfield at Fort Stewart, Ga. They provided a lot of inspiration, too, she said. "Every Soldier in a WTU should be able to come to one of these [conferences]." Temple, a former member of the 30th Military Police Battalion's Criminal Investigation Division, suffers from progressive damage to her body, the result, she said, of marching with a rucksack on her back that contained as much as half her bodyweight. She won't be staying in the Army, but will try to get into civilian law enforcement. She'll no longer be able to do detective work, but would like to be an instructor and is using her time in the WTU to prepare for that transition. "I've used my time in the WTU to finish two degrees I started working on before I joined the military," she said, adding that the WTU Cadre supports her efforts to prepare herself for the day she's no longer in the active Army. "If I wanted to go to the local police department, my squad leader encourages me to do that, because it'll help me when I get out of the Army." Spc. Michelle Frasier was part of the Special Troops Battalion for the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Ga. Her husband, also a Soldier, is currently in Iraq. She is now also part of the WTU at Hunter Army Airfield because of physical conditions involving her feet. "I've gone before the [medical-evaluation] board to get my job changed. I'll be a mental- health specialist in the Army, said Frasier, who plans to complete coursework toward that goal and then seek a commission. She said the H-3 conference provides great support and opportunities both to Soldiers, who will eventually become civilians, and to those who will stay in the service. "The networking here is phenomenal," she said. Many Soldiers, who are preparing to leave the service and didn't know what to do next, will now know what their next steps must be. "When I get to be an NCO, I'll be able to help those Soldiers," she said. The H-3 conference included a resume lab that helps Soldiers convert the military language they use to describe their Army jobs into language a commercial company's human-resources manager could understand, said Naomi Lynch, Chief of the Army Career and Alumni Program Office at headquarters, Installation Management Command. "How do you take the job of a forward scout and turn that into civilian terms?" asked Lynch. She had earlier helped a Soldier do just that. "He said he'd go out and make sure other Soldiers were safe, and that he'd report where the enemy was. Well, that's a great opportunity if you're thinking of working for Border Patrol or looking at intern positions at the FBI or other federal security forces. He said he'd never thought of that. Lynch said it is important for Soldiers in transition to give them credit for what they contributed to the Army. Oftentimes, she said, Soldiers simply consider what they do as "doing their job." But really, she said, what they have done for the Army can be translated into civilian terms, and in order to do that, Soldiers must learn to be comfortable taking credit for serving their country. Soldiers at the H-3 conference were also able to participate in the "transition resource center," where representatives of 45 various federal agencies, civilian companies, assistive-technology companies, healthcare providers, universities and schools provided Soldiers with information about their options in the civilian world. "It looks like a job fair, but it's much more than that," Lariosa said. Both the resume lab and the transition resource center were resources Staff Sgt. James Kirby, a Maryland native, hoped to take advantage of while attending the H-3 conference. "I really don't have a plan right now, that's why I'm here at the conference to get which direction to go," he said. "They are going to help me set up a resume, let me talk to employers and turn my resume into them. That'll help me get in the door and help me get a civilian life down the road." Kirby has collectively served in the active Army, the National Guard or Army Reserve for 23 years. Today he is assigned to the Community-Based Warrior Transition Unit in Virginia Beach, Va. His injuries stem from an incident in 2005, when, as a member of the Maryland National Guard, he was activated to serve in Iraq. "I was servicing one of the vehicles in the motor pool there and the tire came off. The weight of it overwhelmed me, destroying my shoulder, my back and my left knee," he said. A medical-evaluation board let Kirby know his time in the Army would be over, but he said he doesn't believe the Army is throwing him out -- quite the opposite. "Since I got back, this Virginia unit has been the best ally of an injured Soldier," he said. "[Its members] have guided me and let me know they are going to take care of me, and help me find a job before I get out. They have been giving me the answers I need. They are not throwing me out; they are helping me process to the civilian side." It's not just Kirby who is impressed with the CBWTU in Virginia and the importance and significance of the H-3 conference. His wife is also impressed. "She has been appreciative that we have this," he said. "When Vietnam was going on they didn't have this. This shows that the military cares about its own. They are looking at us and asking if we are being taken care of, that's all I've heard since I entered the program. About 13 conference attendees represented the WTU at Fort Gordon, Ga. Among them was Lt. Col. Michael Washington, commander of the unit's Company A, and four other members of the WTU cadre. Washington said he is impressed with the progress the Army has made in helping injured or ill Soldiers transition from either one Army job to another, or to a civilian career. "The Army has put everything in place to assist them with finding work," he said. "The resources are there, the support networks are there. And it continues to evolve for the better." Soldiers compete to be named best at warrior competition [2008-10-03] FORT LEE, Va. -- Two dozen of the Army's best Soldiers descended on Fort Lee, Va., Sept. 29, to battle it out for the titles of Soldier and Noncommissioned Officer of the Year. The Soldiers competed in the weeklong "Best Warrior Competition," which includes events designed to test their mettle in areas like land navigation and physical fitness as well as their knowledge of various warrior tasks and battle drills. Master Sgt. Derrick Williams, noncommissioned officer in charge of the competition, said everything asked of the Soldiers involved in the competition is something they will need to know to be the most effective they can be in real-world battle situations. "Everything they will be doing here is taken from warrior tasks and battle drills," Williams said. "It's all based on real-world situations like in Iraq and Afghanistan." Two Soldiers from each of 12 Army major commands participated in the competition, a junior enlisted Soldier as well as a noncommissioned officer. The junior enlisted Soldiers compete for the title of Soldier of the Year, while the NCOs compete for the title of NCO of the Year. In order to enter the competition at Army-level, the Soldiers had to face multiple levels of competition from brigade level all the way up to command level. That much competition and training means the Soldiers who made it to Fort Lee are ready to compete, Williams said. "To get to this level, they have to be prepared," he said. "And once they leave here they will have a good idea how to go back and train their own Soldiers and be better prepared to deploy." Spc. Michael Moore, with Alpha Detachment, 1st Space Company, 1st Space Battalion in Stuttgart, Germany is at Fort Lee representing United States Army Space and Missile Defense Command. He said he's trained hard for the competition and feels he'll do well against the other competitors. "Training has been difficult, but I feel I'm in top form right now," he said. "Everything about me has improved, and I think these boards are a great chance to improve on everything Soldier-wise." Moore said of the various events involved in the competition, he feels he'll do best at the administrative board and weapons qualification. Soldiers at the competition have to qualify twice on the M-4 Carbine rifle, once in the daytime and once at night. "I usually shot marksman before I started this process," Moore said. "With the amount of training I've done -- I've shot so many rounds it's ridiculous -- I've improved to expert and my confidence has gone up." An NCO in Moore's unit, Sgt. 1st Class Wilfredo Cabili, helped him prepare for the various levels of competition needed to make it to the Best Warrior Competition. Cabili said Moore has progressed much since they first met. "It makes me really proud to see him come up from where I first met him to where he is at right now -- it's leaps and bounds from where he began," Cabili said. "The hardest part was getting his physical training score where it needed to be. But he dedicated a lot of time and effort to that because he's a motivated Soldier, so he made it easy for me." Spc. Lisa Morales is with the 40th Expeditionary Signal Battalion at Fort Huachuca, Ariz. She's confident she'll max out on the physical training test as well as the weapons qualification. "Those are my two strong events," she said. Though she is somewhat worried about participating in the combatives portion of the competition. "I am a little apprehensive. Being I'm the smallest one here, and the only female, I might get tossed around a little bit -- but I think I can handle myself." Morales is unique among the 24 competitors in that she is the only female Soldier competing. But she says she's more focused on the competition than her uniqueness as a competitor. "Right now I'm very proud and very humbled at the same time. There's a lot of people that would like to be where I am right now -- a lot of people that didn't get to compete for the position I'm in," she said. "Everything we are doing in these competitions reflect what we're going through over there (Middle East,) whether it be Humvee rollover training or reflexive fire or the combat shoot. Even hand-to-hand combatives -- you never know where that might come in to play in Iraq or Afghanistan." Sgt. 1st Class Steven Kroll, Bravo Company, 4/1 Special Warfare Training Group (Airborne), teaches more than 50 weapons at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, Fort Bragg, N.C. He's competing for the title of NCO of the Year and says the competition highlights the things that are truly important for Soldiers throughout the Army to know. "The events are definitely warrior-oriented, to say the least," he said. "And they are extremely relevant in today's situations that we as Soldiers find ourselves in. It's the same basic building blocks I stress to my own Soldiers -- that you have to have the basics before you do anything else. There's probably a group of 20 tasks in my opinion that Soldiers absolutely need to know -- to do the basics of shoot move and communicate and certainly these tasks are some of them." Kroll also said that meeting other Soldiers deemed the best in their commands is a good learning experience, because it allows him to see how other parts of the Army do things. "The competitive spirit that is going on here is great," he said. "Being able to come here and talk with everybody and learn what everybody else is doing in the Army is a real interesting experience. You get to see the different commands and how they operate." Back at Fort Bragg, Kroll teaches weapons to Soldiers passing through the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, so he said he's got the weapons portion of the competition down. "The weapons assembly/disassembly is definitely one of my strong points," he said. "I teach more than 50 different weapons, so I think I've got it. Also the land navigation I'm looking forward to." Back home, he has a wife and four kids rooting for him, as well as his parents who he says remain curious about what it is he does for the Army. "That's my little fan club," he said. The Best Warrior Competition finished Friday with a "mystery event," which required competitors be prepared for anything. Winners of the Best Warrior competition will be announced Oct. 6 at the Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. The two Soldiers chosen as the best among the 24 competitors will get prizes, some money and some time off. They go back to their duty station, but will be called upon over the course of the year by the sergeant major of the Army to participate in Army events and to act as goodwill ambassadors for the Army. "This is a training tool that showcases Soldiers to the rest of the world, not just the Army family," said Williams. "Their hometowns will get newsletters and will see them on film. High schools will see them -- it's out in the public and it is a big public relations thing. But what the Soldiers will take back with them are things they don't normally do in their unit, and incorporate those things into their training." Whether he wins or loses, Moore said he'll look back at his experience competing in the Best Warrior competition as a personal gain. "It's an honor to compete at this level," he said. "Making it this far has been extremely tough; it's been a challenge the entire way, but I've grown professionally and personally, just from competing. And I think it's going to be great to take this experience back to my future Soldiers and help them develop as I did." Army Secretary announces 'Year of NCO' at AUSA meeting [2008-10-06] WASHINGTON -- During his keynote address at the opening of the 2008 Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition, Secretary of the Army Pete Geren announced that 2009 would be "the Year Of The Noncommissioned Officer." "At the front of every Army mission in the United States or overseas, you'll find a non-commissioned officer," he said. "They know their mission, they know their equipment, but most importantly, they know their Soldiers." The secretary said that during the year, the Army will accelerate NCO development of strategic initiatives, develop new initiatives that enhance the training, education, capability, and utilization of the NCO corps, showcase the NCO story to the Army and the American people, and honor the sacrifices and celebrate contributions of the NCO Corps, past and present. "Today's NCO operates autonomously, and always with confidence and competence," he said. "Our NCOs are empowered and trusted like no other NCO in the world, and most advanced armies in the world today are going to school on our model." More than 3,000 Soldiers, civilians and military personnel from allied nations gathered Oct. 6 for the opening of the 2008 AUSA meeting. The opening event of the three-day meeting, themed "America's Army: The Strength of the Nation," featured music, reflection on the history of the Army, presentation of AUSA awards and Secretary Geren's address. Due to a changing administration, the secretary said this has been a year of "lasts" for him: last budget to prepare, last time representing the service at an Army-Navy game, last time talking with Soldiers as their secretary, and last time addressing an AUSA meeting. He told the gathered crowd he's talked about people -- those Soldiers, Army families and civilians that make up the Army. "I came to the Pentagon late summer of 2001, and I was in the Pentagon the morning of 9/11," he said. "And for seven years, I've watched Soldiers go off to war, and watched their families stand with them. I've been inspired by the service of our Soldiers, and humbled by the sacrifice of their families -- spouses and kids, moms and dads. And it's the privilege of a lifetime to work with and for Soldiers and Army families." The first priority of the Army, Geren said, are the loved ones in harm's way. "They are front of mind 24 hours a day, and we're committed to meeting with urgency the ever-changing life and death needs and demands of our Soldiers in Afghanistan and in Iraq," Geren said. "And not just meet their needs and meet the evolving threats, but anticipate, and do everything we can to get ahead of the threat. And care for those who have borne the battle, and their loved ones. These are moral duties of the highest order for our nation and our Army." The secretary also talked about an often unseen portion of the military -- those who deliver goods and services to the fighting force: the Army logisticians. "We have 250,000 Soldiers in 80 countries, and we've been at war for seven years, with 140,000 Soldiers in theater today," he said. "Nobody ever asks, who feeds those guys? Our logisticians are victims of their own success. Their work is so good it is invisible -- it's a given. Wherever our Army goes, whatever our Soldiers need, whenever they need it, they get it. The miracle of Army logistics." According to Geren, the Army logistics community repairs over 14,000 vehicles every year -- a number equal to the number of yellow cabs in New York City. They also move more than 700,000 personnel in and out of theater, equal to the entire population of Charlotte, N.C. And each day, he said, Army logisticians provide 750,000 meals in Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq. They also dispense enough fuel in theater to fill up 750,000 cars -- nearly four times the number of vehicles registered in Washington, D.C. "We talked much about the surge -- 15,000 more Soldiers in Iraq -- but nobody ever mentioned that Army logisticians would serve 45,000 more meals each day, and ship 120,000 more gallons of water each day," he said. "Army logisticians -- invisible, because they're so good at what they do, and absolutely indispensable." During the course of Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, over 619 sustainment and support Soldiers have given their lives, the secretary said. Secretary Geren also pointed out the historic anniversaries the Army has celebrated in 2008, including the 25th anniversary of the Army Family Action Plan, the 30th anniversary of the disestablishment of the Women's Army Corps, and the 60th anniversary of the integration of the U.S. military. "Sixty years ago, our Army did not stand as one," he said. "It was not a single band of brothers, rather, a collection of bands of brothers divided by race." The policy then, he said, was that the Army was separate, but "hardly equal." "(It was a) cruel irony of our nation sending Soldiers to fight for freedom against the Germans -- yet affording privileges to white German prisoners of war held in the United States that were denied to the African-American Soldiers who guarded them," the secretary said. On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981, declaring "there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin." "With the stroke of a pen, President Truman launched the Army on the path to the color-blind institution we know today," Geren said. "The Army moved slowly and stubbornly at first, but now stands as the model for equal opportunity in our nation. Today, we have an Army where the only colors that matter are red, white, and blue." Geren also took time to reiterate another priority of the Army -- the elimination of sexual assault within the ranks. "The brothers and sisters of our Army must be able to count on each other, wherever they are, in the battlefield or in the barracks, and whenever, on duty or off, no matter the cost," he said. "We will create a climate of zero tolerance for gender-based misconduct -- in attitude, word, and deed, and become fully, as our values demand, a band of brothers and sisters." During the opening ceremony of the exposition, retired Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, AUSA president, named the recipients of the annual AUSA awards. Recipients of the awards include: • Gen. Creighton W. Abrams Medal: retired Maj. Gen. John A. Hemphill, Steilacoom, Wash. • Maj. Gen. Anthony J. Drexel Biddle Medal: Col. Michael T. Plummer, Watertown, N.Y. • Lt. Gen. Raymond S. McLain Medal: Maj. Gen. William H. Wade II, Sacramento, Cal. • Maj. Gen. James Earl Rudder Medal: Maj. Gen. Craig Bambrough, South Riding, Va. • Sgt. Maj. Of the Army William G. Bainbridge Noncommissioned Officer Medal: Command Sgt. Maj. Mark C. Avery, El Paso, Texas • The AUSA Department of the Army Civilian of the Year Award: Allen Tyree, Las Cruces, N.M • The AUSA Newell Rubbermaid Volunteer Family of the Year Award: Lt. Col. Ronald Rallis and Sherry Rallis; daughters Jessica and Katrina; sons Ronald Jr., Nicholas and Justus; Fullerton, Cal. The AUSA meeting runs through Wednesday. Two Reserve component Soldiers named Army's best warriors [2008-10-06] WASHINGTON -- Two Soldiers, both from the reserve components, were named the Army's best warriors during the 2008 Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition here. Staff Sgt. Michael T. Noyce Merino, Army National Guard, was named the Army's Noncommissioned Officer of the Year. Spc. David R. Obray, U.S. Army Reserve, was named Soldier of the Year. The two Soldiers, along with 22 of their peers -- a total of two Soldiers from each of 12 Army major commands -- competed for the titles during the "Army's Best Warrior Competition" Sept. 29 to Oct. 30 at Fort Lee, Va. The competition is in its seventh year, the first was held in 2002. While this is not the first time a member of the reserve component has won -- two years ago an activated Army Reserve specialist won Soldier of the Year while competing for United States Army, Europe -- this is the first that both the NCO and Soldier of the Year came from the reserve components. "This is a direct reflection of the goodness of what the National Guard and Army Reserve provides for the Army," said Sgt. Maj. of the Army Kenneth O. Preston. "It's the civilian-acquired skills, the education, that our Soldiers, our Citizen-Soldiers bring to the fight every day that makes us who we are." The week-long competition includes events designed to test a Soldier's mettle in areas like land navigation and physical fitness as well as their knowledge of various warrior tasks and battle drills. Overall, the competition asks Soldiers to show their ability to complete the tasks most often needed in battle in Iraq and Afghanistan. Challenges from the competition are drawn from real-life scenarios in the global war on terror. "Each year what we have tried to do is take the competition and improve on what we have done in the past, and improve from a perspective of what are our Soldiers and leaders doing out there every day in combat operations," said Preston. He also said the Army-level competition, and the smaller company- and battalion-level competitions Soldiers must compete in to get to Army level, are designed to get competitors to concentrate on the knowledge and skills needed to become better leaders and Soldiers. "What they do is promote self-development and self-study and it gets our young Soldiers and NCOs really getting into and studying doctrine and becoming subject-matter experts in their professions," Preston said. "I'm very proud of what these warriors have accomplished and all the ones that competed in the competition." Both Noyce Merino and Obray said they were honored to have competed in the Best Warrior Competition -- along with some of the best Soldiers in the Army. "A lot of competitors, especially the NCOs, were just extremely skilled Soldiers," Noyce Merino said. "I felt honored to be competing against them. Now that I have won the competition, I feel it is my responsibility to represent them and all the Soldiers in the active Army and the Guard." He said that upon beginning the competition, he found it exactly as he expected it to be, based on the preparation he had done in advance. "I read about it when I first came to the Army -- I imagined what it would be like to compete in something like this," he said. "When I got there I had kind of an idea what it would look like. I also talked to the person that represented the National Guard last year and got all the information from him that I could. He told me about his experience. I felt I was prepared. I definitely felt challenged." Obray said he knows he hasn't seen the last of the Soldiers he competed against. "My fellow competitors were outstanding individuals and there is no doubt I will see them again," he said. "From the beginning my mindset was this is a lot of training and I looked forward to brining it back to my unit." Both Soldiers said they had fun and learned a lot during the Best Warrior Competition, each citing different portions of the competition as their favorite challenge. "The most fun was the moving and shooting," said Noyce Merino. "We had one (event) where we had to move a casualty to cover and then fire from different protective barriers and in different positions and moving targets. And that was the one I enjoyed the most. The most realistic part was the medical trauma lane. I saw a lot of elements in that that I've seen on my deployments -- in real life. I was real glad they had something to simulate that." Obray said he felt the competition effectively simulated what is going on overseas in the global war on terror. For him, the biggest challenge was mastering the weapons the Army uses. "Being relatively new to the Army I had a difficult time remembering how all the different pieces of the weapons assembled, so that was my biggest challenge," he said. During a press conference following the announcement of their win, Merino and Obray talked about some of their perspectives on Soldiering today, and changes in the Army. Merino said seven years of war has made better the NCO leadership on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. "What I've seen is that there are a lot more veterans now -- a lot of the guys I've (deployed) with are on their second, third or even fourth time over there," he said. "And now you are getting the experience from previous deployments that is flowing over and you are seeing veteran leadership. Veteran NCO leadership and veteran Soldiers -- the entire force is improving." Obray said that better equipment is flowing through the Army and that is improving his ability to do his job. "The technology improvements, different equipment I've used, has helped the Army evolve -- and become a more effective fighting force," he said. "Whether it is safety equipment or equipment I use on my drill weekends, it helps with the nation's mission. As a mechanic we've had some upgrades in our tools -- so I've become more effective with my time. Now I don't have to spend time looking for the right equipment -- I have a toolkit I can take out with me now." The two also talked about social issues facing the Army today, including suicide prevention and sexual assault. "I've been in the Army for three years now," Obray said. "And from the beginning of my enlistment I've seen (suicide) awareness promoted, what are the correct channels to deal with problems you might be having if you are looking at a decision of that magnitude. But also, just information on how to handle that sort of decision." Merino said that in the Army, sexual assault is not tolerated. And that while the issue is heavily discussed at the highest levels of the Army, the message has effectively filtered down into the realm of the most junior Soldiers. "We see every Soldier, everybody that is in uniform, as part of a brotherhood," Noyce Merino said. "Sexual assault is a violation of that trust we have. There is no leeway for that, no place for that. We don't accept that, we don't condone it. Every Soldier we've come across knows what the standards are, and knows what is expected of them -- and sexual assault is not tolerated in any way." Prior to announcement of the winners of the Best Warrior Competition, Soldiers in attendance at the lunch heard from Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli. The general told the gathered Best Warrior competitors, junior enlisted, noncommissioned officers -- all Soldiers -- that the Army owes them a debt of gratitude. "There can be no higher honor than to serve with you and your families," he said. "For that I thank you as one Soldier to another. We who serve you owe you a debt of gratitude." But the general also said those Soldiers owe something to the Army and to the nation: to pass on their expertise in order to sustain the excellence of the force. "It's important -- vitally important -- an imperative -- that you take what you've learned from seven years of continuous combat -- what you've learned about leading Soldiers on today's modern battlefield -- to talk about it, to write about it, and to share the lessons, the burdens, and the possibilities," he said. "Only through your experience will we get better. Because only through your experience will we get stronger. Because only through your experiences will we get smarter." As winners of the Best Warrior Competition, Noyce Merino and Obray will both get prizes, money and time off of work. The two will return to their duty stations, but will be called upon over the course of the year by the sergeant major of the Army to participate in Army events and to act as goodwill ambassadors for the Army. Chief says NCO corps glue holding Army together [2008-10-08] WASHINGTON -- During an address at the 2008 Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey said the noncommissioned officer corps is what keeps the Army together. "As I travel around the Army and I look at what we've accomplished over the past seven years at war, it's clearer and clearer to me that it is our noncommissioned officer corps that is providing the glue that's not only holding this force together at a difficult time, but enabling us to accomplish the near impossible every day," he said. "And that's why next year we will celebrate their contributions to our Army." During a keynote address at the opening of the 2008 AUSA annual meeting and exposition, which runs Oct. 6-8, Secretary of the Army Pete Geren declared 2009 as "the Year of the Noncommissioned Officer." During the year, the Army will accelerate NCO development of strategic initiatives, develop new initiatives that enhance the training, education, capability, and utilization of the NCO corps, showcase the NCO story to the Army and the American people, and honor the sacrifices and celebrate contributions of the NCO corps, past and present. Gen. Casey spoke during the "Eisenhower Luncheon" at the AUSA event, to an audience of Soldiers, civilians, and foreign military members. He used the opportunity to provide an update on the status of the Army. He spoke first on the sacrifices made and honors earned by Soldiers during the seven-year conflict, saying more than 1 million Soldiers have deployed to combat and 4,700 have sacrificed their lives in service. While deployed, more than 11,000 Soldiers have earned decorations for valor, including two Medals of Honor, 14 Distinguished Service Crosses and more than 500 Silver Stars. "That our Soldiers and families so willingly sacrifice to preserve our way of life and to secure a better future for others says much about the Army's strength -- a strength that comes from our values, from our warrior ethos and from our people," he said. Casey focused the remainder of his remarks on what he said are the two most frequently asked questions of him as chief of staff: how is the Army doing, and what is the future of the Army. Last year, he said the Army was "out of balance." He took the opportunity to explain what he meant by the assessment. "The demand for our forces exceeded the sustainable supply, and we lacked sufficient strategic flexibility to respond to other contingencies as rapidly as we would like," he said. "We were unable to provide a sustainable deployment tempo for our Soldiers and families. Our support systems, designed for a pre-9/11 peacetime Army, were stretched and stressed by the demands of repeated deployments. Overall, we were consuming our readiness as fast as we were building it." The Army initiated a plan to restore that balance, Casey said. The plan was founded on four imperatives: sustaining Soldiers and families; preparing Soldiers for conflict; resetting the force upon return; and transforming the Army. Implementing the imperatives would require several years, he said. Casey said over the next three years, the Army will attempt to grow to 1.1 million people, establish a balance between deployments and time at home, substantially complete the modular reorganization and rebalancing of the force, complete the requirements spelled out under the Base Realignment and Closure Act of 2005 and fully implement the Army Force Generation model. He said the Army has already made significant progress on achieving the goals. Last year nearly 300,000 men and women enlisted or re-enlisted in the Army, Casey said. Additionally, the Army achieved a near 90-percent retention rate for Soldiers. The Army also implemented the Army Family Covenant. And to help Soldiers injured in wartime make a transition to civilian life or to new careers in the Army, some 35 "warrior transition units" were established across the force. "We set out to reduce the stigma wrongly associated with post-traumatic stress and mild traumatic brain injury," he said. "We continue to work hard at demystifying and simplifying the physical disability processes for our wounded warriors." Last year, the Army -- during wartime -- grew to 76 brigade combat teams and nearly 225 enabling brigades, Casey said. This increase in combat capability enables the Army to increase at-home time, allowing Soldiers to better prepare for war. He also said both the president and the secretary of Defense support reduction in deployments from 15 months to 12 months. A pilot reset program was initiated at 13 units last year. Under the program, active units are allowed six months and reserve-component units allowed 12 months with no readiness expectations and no Army-directed training following a deployment. "(Those) units can focus on reorganizing, education, property accountability, services and on reconnecting with their families," Casey said. At the end of the allotted time period, the Army will fill those units with the personnel and equipment they need to begin training for future missions, he said. "Given the very positive feedback so far, we plan to extend this program to 20 units in the next year, and to all resetting units by 2011," he said. For the future, Casey said he sees extended persistent conflict, dominated by warfare that is "decidedly different than the character of conflict" that has predominated his career. "I believe we should expect to deal with a range of diverse actors; frequently non-state actors, sometimes operating covertly or as proxies for states," he said. "These folks won't be bound by internationally recognized norms of behavior, and they'll be resistant to traditional means of deterrence. We should expect them to confront us asymmetrically to avoid our strengths." He said the enemies of the United States will increasingly work amongst civilian populations to both gain their support and to avoid detection -- to hide amongst civilians. "I believe the norm for us will be sustained operations in tough terrain and sprawling cities, challenging multicultural environments, and increased complexity for our leaders," he said. The future, general Casey said, will require the Army to continue to develop its capabilities. The Army should focus on developing the six characteristics he believes land forces should posses. Forces should be versatile, expeditionary, agile, lethal, sustainable and interoperable. Army a mighty engine says former secretary of state [2008-10-09] WASHINGTON -- Despite concerns about a balance between what it is being asked to do and what it can indefinitely sustain, the Army remains strong, said former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright. "The Army remains a mighty engine blessed by quality leaders and high morale," she said during the closing dinner, Oct. 9, at the 2008 Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition. "But even the mightiest engine needs maintenance from time to time." Albright said the incoming president must take into account the needs of the Army when considering how to move forward in Iraq and how to build a game plan for Afghanistan. "These countries are difficult places to fight because the enemy wears no uniform and the social and political landscape is treacherous," she said. "The result has been a roller coaster with victory intertwined with setbacks. Throughout, our armed forces have performed magnificently." Albright said she had been concerned that Soldiers and their leaders were worn out from the fight, but found otherwise. "I was told that younger Soldiers are full of enthusiasm and anxious to succeed in their mission, proud of their jobs and expecting to win," she said, adding that senior officers as well shared that enthusiasm. Albright told Soldiers, civilians and foreign military officers at the dinner that while the United States needs the Navy to protect the seas and the Air Force to protect the air, it is becoming more apparent that the kind of warfighter that will be needed in the future will be the terrestrial, land-based forces made up of Soldiers, Marines and special forces. "The world is constantly changing and the Army has changed with it," Albright said as she closed her address. "What matters even more is what has not changed, your professionalism, your sense of honor, commitment to duty, spirit, and love for the United Stats of America. You are without question the strength of our nation." During the dinner, Albright was honored by AUSA as recipient of the George C. Marshall Medal. The medal recognized her more than 30 years of public service, her contributions to national security, and her efforts to expand and modernize NATO. "She dedicated her career to promoting American interests and values across the world," the award citation read. "In her role as a trusted presidential advisor, her contributions to national security dialogue and her stance in building strategic alliances has shaped America's foreign policy." Albright served as secretary of state from January 1997 to January 2001. Today she serves as a professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Army Material Command garners six awards for process improvement [2008-10-14] WASHINGTON -- The Army Materiel Command claimed six Shingo Prizes in 2008 and other commands received a variety of process-improvement awards at the Pentagon Friday. During the awards ceremony at the Pentagon Hall of Heroes, six organizations within AMC were honored with the Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing, sometimes referred to as the "Nobel Prize of manufacturing." The Shingo Prize has been awarded each year since 1988 by the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. The AMC organizations were recognized for their implementation of Lean and Six Sigma principles. Gen. Benjamin S. Griffin, AMC commander, said developing better Lean processes has been a journey for AMC that has resulted in both savings for the Army and better service to AMC's customers. "We know there are significant savings due to Lean -- tremendous dollar savings, we can quantify that," he said. "But at the end of the day, it's meant to (provide) better support to our customers in the field. That's what this is all about." Griffin said improvements in AMC's manufacturing processes through implementation of Lean and Six Sigma processes have made doing business with the Army more enticing to private sector companies. "When I first came to the command there were two major corporations that looked at me and said 'general, if you were more efficient we would do business with you. You are not efficient so we won't do business with you in your depots and arsenals,'" he said. "Today both those companies do business with us. During the ceremony, the Army also handed out its own awards for implementation of Lean and Six Sigma process improvement. That the Army is now handing out such awards is evidence the service has made headway in institutionalizing Lean and Six Sigma practices, said Lt. Gen. Robert E. Durbin, special assistant to the chief of staff of the Army for enterprise management. "We are at a critical juncture in our Army's LSS deployment," he said. "The important step of institutionalizing Lean/Six Sigma to achieve the enterprise-level deployment maturity requires building internal self sustainment capability. Recognizing the successful efforts of these process-improvement practitioners today, demonstrates we are well on our way in achieving that internal institutional self sustainment capability." The awards presented at the ceremony include: 2008 Lean Six Sigma Non-Gated Project Team Award • Anniston Army Depot • Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, Installation Management 2008 Lean Six Sigma Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control/Design for Lean Six Sigma Project Team Award • U.S. Army Garrison - Alaska • Communications Electronics Command, Life Cycle Management Command • Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, Installation Management • U.S. Army Europe Organizational Deployment Award • Office of the Surgeon General, U.S. Army Medical Command 2008 Shingo Prize Silver Medallion Recipients • Red River Army Depot - Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck Production Team, Texarkana TX 2008 Shingo Prize Bronze Medallion Recipients • Letterkenny Army Depot - Biological Integrated Detection System, Chambersburg, Pa. • Red River Army Depot - PATRIOT Missile Team, Texarkana, Texas • Red River Army Depot - Tactical Trailer Team, Texarkana, Texas • Tobyhanna Army Depot, AN/ASM-189 Maintenance Electronic Shop Van, Tobyhanna, Pa. • Tobyhanna Army Depot - AN/TYQ-23 Command and Control System, Tobyhanna, Pa. Both Lean and Six Sigma are business process improvement tools developed chiefly in the private sector to focus on increasing value to customers, saving time and money, reducing waste and improving product quality. A process can be made Lean by re-engineering it to eliminate steps that add no value to the end product, officials said. They said Six Sigma deals primarily with eliminating defects and errors in manufacturing. Soldiers using FCS systems responsible for increased funding [2008-10-15] WASHINGTON -- The testing of Future Combat Systems equipment and testimonials from Soldiers using it may have helped the program receive full funding for the first time. President George W. Bush signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009 Oct. 12. The new bill includes some $3.6 billion in funding for FCS, the full amount asked for by the Army. This is the first time Congress has fully funded the Army's FCS request. "I think it's very notable we received full funding," said Lt. Gen. Stephen M. Speakes, deputy chief of staff for G-8, during a conference here Oct. 8. "And we think it's a factor that we have capabilities in the hands of Soldiers ... where our critics and supporters alike can talk to the Soldier who is a combat-hardened veteran, (and) who does have a unique perspective about what their needs were that were unmet when they were last in combat." Speakes said moving away from presentations and slideshows and allowing both FCS supporters and detractors to see the Spin Out-1 equipment in the hands of Soldiers has allowed everybody to get a more realistic view of what FCS is about. It "has had a powerful affirmative affect in instilling confidence that the Army has it right, with delivery capability on time and on target," Speakes said. "And this (is) absolutely essential to the needs of the Army today and tomorrow that we continue to support this program." Though there is no FCS equipment currently in either Iraq or Afghanistan, there is "surrogate" equipment there -- about 25 Micro Air Vehicles in the hands of the 25th Infantry Division and also about 1,500 Pacbot robots. The MAV is similar in appearance to the FCS's Class 1, Block 20 unmanned aerial vehicle. And though it lacks some of the communications capability the FCS UAV will have, it was developed from FCS technology, officials point out. The Pacbot is similar to the FCS unmanned ground vehicle, though it is heavier and lacks the ability to communicate with the FCS network. It too was developed from FCS technology. Actual FCS technology is now in the hands of Soldiers at the Army Evaluation Task Force at Fort Bliss, Texas. Equipment there includes the actual Class 1, Block 0 UAV, the SUGV, the Non-Line of Sight Launch System and kits to network Humvees to the FCS network. While not part of FCS, but instead a complimentary system, the Ground Soldier ensemble, from PEO Soldier, is also at the AETF. The ensemble will eventually hook Soldiers into the FCS network -- making Soldiers themselves a future combat system. Soldiers at the AETF have already conducted testing on FCS equipment while acting as a heavy brigade combat team. Now they are resetting to test as an infantry unit. That testing leads up to "limited user testing" in summer 2009. The LUT is the brigade-size test that will prove usability of the equipment and pave the way to the "milestone C" decision which officials say will allow the program to move toward production of equipment for fielding in 2011 with infantry brigades. "That will eventually lead to the production testing in 2011 that goes to the first Infantry Brigade Combat Team," said FCS Program Manager Maj. Gen. Charles Cartwright. "Once that IBCT is done, we will ramp up to about four IBCTs, both active and Guard, across the Army to finish out all the IBCTs." Eventually, as many as 43 IBCTs across the Army and National Guard will be equipped with the FCS components included in "Spin Out 1" of FCS -- the equipment currently in testing at AETF. By 2015, officials expect the first FCS Brigade Combat Team to be equipped with the full slate of FCS equipment, including its manned and unmanned vehicles, its UAVs, and its network. Until that time, additional components will be pushed out to the force, including such things as Multifunctional Utility/Logistics and Equipment, known as MULE, and the Class IV UAV. New AFRICOM faces challenges, says Army analyst [2008-10-17] WASHINGTON -- As the newly formed U.S. Africa Command prepares to do business, the military must change the way it thinks about security there says a senior Army analyst. The challenges for security in Africa affect the United States, but the way Africans view security is different than the way Americans traditionally see it, said Maj. Shannon Beebe, a senior Africa analyst under the Army's Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, G-2. The Army's effective participation in AFRICOM will require a better understanding of how Africans see security on their continent, Beebe said. "When you start looking at the security metrics in Africa, you can't measure them the way we traditionally have," Beebe said, explaining that the size and posture of their military and equipment should not be the measuring stick. "The metrics of security in Africa include secondary school enrollment, how many people are getting immunizations, the health of the population, and how many of the people are living in poverty." Beebe said that in the United States, security usually involves state sovereignty, and the protection of territorial borders, infrastructure, technology and economic systems. To find out what security meant for those living in the nations of Africa, Beebe, a political scientist by trade, had to talk directly with the people there. Working at the request of former Chief of Staff of the Army retired Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, Beebe traveled to more than 14 countries in Africa to gather insight into what Africans believe is important for their security. He talked with diplomats, foreign ministers, military attachés, academics, non-governmental organizations working on the continent, and even a couple of taxicab drivers. "My job was not to tell them what security was supposed to be, but to listen," Beebe said. "Not try to make our view of security look right for them, but to understand what they say is relevant for them." One takeaway quote from the research illustrates a clear difference between the U.S. idea of security and what is important to Africans. "You Americans are always looking for terrorists and weapons of mass destruction," said one African diplomat. "We have those here in Africa. Our terrorism is HIV/AIDS, malaria, and poverty. We have weapons of mass destruction, too. It is an AK-47 carried by a child. And this plays itself out daily in Africa in an unforgiving environment we cannot control." Beebe said to participate in AFRICOM, the Army will need to shift its thinking away from the state-centric and focus more on a human-based security. "That is a tremendous paradigm shift," Beebe said. "And this falls really outside our comfort zone. Our system, our military, is designed to defend and to protect... It is designed to protect and train against threats -- kinetic type threats. What you face in Africa are conditions, not threats, conditions that are in essence creeping vulnerabilities." It is those "creeping vulnerabilities" that convert to traditional threats for the United States, Beebe said, threats that can be mitigated by eliminating threats to human security in Africa. "The goal of peace and security and prosperity on the African continent translates directly to peace and security and prosperity in the United States," Beebe said. "With hard security issues, you're looking at terrorism issues, and at the youth bulges over there, that are a tremendous haven for recruitment of terrorists and trans-national criminal organizations. If you are looking at softer security questions, such as development -- an African continent that is stable and prosperous means more markets for the United States and means greater opportunities for international business and integration in the global society." Beebe said the U.S. military in Africa, through AFRICOM, will likely work with willing nations there to help better develop their militaries, and will contribute to security in Africa. But the biggest challenge, he said, will be learning to work more closely with the non-military groups there to attack the problems causing human security issues in Africa. "You cannot be secure and you cannot be prosperous when you are worried about health issues, when you are worried about dying of starvation, when you are worried about the poverty and when you are worried about the instabilities from rebel groups," Beebe said. "To get that requires more than a military presence -- it requires the comparative advantages of the NGO community, private industry, and some in the academic community," Beebe said. "That's why it's so critical to work together. That's the challenge of the 21st century, and certainly the challenge of African security and African development." Language company first in Army [2008-10-22] WASHINGTON -- The recently formed 51st Translator Interpreter Company at Fort Irwin, Calif., is the first unit of its kind in the Army. The company, which officially unfurls its flag Oct. 23, provides uniform-wearing interpreters and translators to units deploying to places like Iraq and Afghanistan. While not yet fully manned, the unit will eventually include more than 140 native speakers of languages like Arabic, Farsi, Pashtu, Kurdish and Dari. Stateside, the Soldiers of the 51st TICO provide cultural and language training to the brigade combat teams that rotate to the National Training Center. Overseas, those same Soldiers work as translators and interpreters. Right now, the 51st has about 120 Soldiers assigned, with about 90 of those working in theater. "The mission over there will be to finally permanently have a 09L capability in foreign languages, so we are looking at a very high proficiency in foreign languages," said Errol Smith, the assistant deputy for foreign language programs at the Pentagon. "Given they are native in those languages they provide a lot of cultural awareness skills to the Army." The 51st TICO is manned by Soldiers from the relatively new military occupational specialty, 09 Lima. The 09L MOS is filled with native or "heritage" speakers of the languages the Army deems important for current missions. Heritage speakers have been speaking a particular language their entire lives, in the home or in school. Soldiers in the unit are often recruited from communities in the United States where many of the residents speak the same foreign language and share a common ethnic background. "They've grown up in the U.S., and grew up speaking their mother's tongue, though many have never been to their mother's nation of birth," said Col. John Bird, director of training development and support, U.S. Army Intelligence Center, Fort Huachuca, Ariz. What heritage speakers bring to the Army is real-life familiarity with the nuances of a language and the cultures that speak it -- something school-trained linguists often cannot do. "An 09L can walk into a room and identify by body language and gestures whether it is a safe environment for his commander," Smith said. Having knowledge of the culture of those that speak a language doesn't just help with formalities and how to shake hands -- it also serves to save the lives of Soldiers and civilians. Smith noted one situation in Iraq where the knowledge of a trusted 09L kept the Army from making a mistake that might have cost lives. "Intelligence (was) monitoring a section of the city and noticed a lot of action in a cemetery," he said. "An operation to raid the cemetery was about to kick off when an 09L noticed what was about to happen and told everybody to stand down. It was a holy day, and on that holy day the Iraqis go visit the relatives that passed on -- that bit of cultural knowledge played a huge role in preventing embarrassment." Smith also said having native Arabic speakers in the ranks helps the Army endear itself to the civilian populations it works within. The positive aspects of those relationships are borne out in lives saved. "A teenage boy in Iraq approached a patrolling 09L and asked 'how is it that you look like one of us and speak like one of us but are one of them?' The Soldier explained he was born and raised there, emigrated to America, and is back to help build schools, provide water, and provide security," Smith said. "The next time the Soldier was patrolling in the street the teenage boy came up to him again, had warmed up to him, and gave him information, a warning, to not go into a section of the city. A task force went in there later and apprehended about 80 insurgents." That 09Ls wear the Army uniform is a plus to commanders as well. Contracted translators and interpreters are not actually in the Army. But an 09L who wears the Army uniform is subject to the same operating schedules as other Soldiers and is also subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, something commanders appreciate, said Brig. Gen. Richard C. Longo, director of training in the Army's Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans, G-3/5/7. "(Commanders) are much more comfortable with an interpreter that is also a Soldier standing next to them, rather than somebody that may have been contracted," he said. Soldiers recruited to work as 09Ls come from places where there are large Arab-American populations: Dearborn, Mich., Washington, D.C., Southern California, Miami, New York, New Jersey, Texas and the Chicago area, for instance. And about 75 percent of the 09L Soldiers are green card holders, not American citizens. But they still must pass rigorous security and background checks to be accepted into the program. "First thing is a counter-intelligence screening," Smith said. "That's a requirement for the MOS -- they have to pass that." The Soldiers accepted into the program can also volunteer for additional investigation, including a polygraph and some biometrics work -- volunteering for that allows them limited access authorization. With that, Smith said, they are authorized access to some classified material while in theater. Smith said the Army is not having trouble finding Soldiers to fill the billets at the 51st TICO or within the ranks of the 09L MOS. Last year, he said, the Army met its 09L recruiting goal by 117 percent, the year before by 100 percent, and the year before that with 130 percent. "There is a nationwide recruiting effort, and we have certainly built a very strong relationship with the Arab-American community as far as reaching out to them," Smith said. "Overall we have done well in this program. Sometime in 2009, the Army will stand up a second TICO. The 52nd TICO will be at Fort Polk, La., home of the Joint Readiness Training Center. Smith said the new company will likely help with the increasing demand from theater for 09Ls. "This is one of the most significant pieces to having language capability in theater, because they offer critical skills to our commanders in theater and their skills have saved lives on the ground," Smith said. "And commanders have screamed for more." The standup of the 51st TICO is only part of the Army's emphasis on language integration into the force. The Army is now working to have every Soldier contribute in some way to the its language capability. "We can't afford to train every Soldier in the Army to be a certified linguist, but we can't afford not to have everybody in the Army understand cultural awareness, and maybe some rudimentary language capability," said Longo. "We as an Army are committed to cultural and language programs. What we are looking for is the right blend of culture and language in our units. And that right blend is defined as: some people have to be experts, and everybody has to know something." The general said some 178,000 Soldiers have signed up to use the Rosetta Stone language learning software available online through Army Knowledge Online. And the Army has also developed programs for Reserve Officer Training Corps cadets who are interested in taking language courses. Cadets who contracted after Aug. 8 of this year can participate in the Army's Critical Language Incentive Pay program. Those cadets can earn between $100 and $250 dollars a month, based on the level of the language course they take in college. For Soldiers already in the force, they may now use the tuition assistance program to take language courses, even if they are not pursuing a degree. NIMH to study factors that cause suicide [2008-10-24] WASHINGTON -- The Army has asked the National Institute of Mental Health to conduct a study to get to the root causes of why Soldiers commit suicide. Secretary of the Army Pete Geren, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. and Thomas R. Insel, director, National Institute of Mental Health, signed a memorandum of agreement Oct. 23 that spells out the nature of the study. Under the MOA, the NIMH will conduct research for the Army that will evaluate the many factors that contribute to suicide. The end result will be for the Army to use the study to develop strategies to prevent suicides. "The National Institute of Mental Health has the world's finest researchers in mental health," said Geren. "We are pleased to partner with them in our ongoing efforts to prevent the tragedy of suicide. This collaboration offers an opportunity to make great advances in the understanding of suicide and develop prevention programs and practices." During the study, which is expected to last five years, the NIMH may interview Soldiers, their families and their parents. The study will include the active-duty force in addition to the National Guard and Army Reserve. The Army has seen a steady increase in suicides in recent years. In 2007, there were 115 suicides in the active duty-Army, more than any year since the start of the first Persian Gulf War. The Army considers one suicide one too many, said Casey, adding that the service is working to reduce the number of suicides. "The Army is committed to providing the best resources for suicide awareness, intervention, prevention and follow-up care - all of which are critical in helping Soldiers and family members prevent unnecessary loss of life," Casey said. Army awards development contracts for JLTV [2008-10-29] WASHINGTON -- The Army announced today the awarding of three contracts for technology development on the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. Together, the three contracts are worth a combined total of approximately $166 million. They have been awarded to: BAE Systems Land & Armament Systems -- Ground Systems Division, Santa Clara, Calif.; General Tactical Vehicles (A Joint Venture of General Dynamics Land Systems, Inc. and AM General, LLC), Sterling Heights, Mich.; and Lockheed Martin Systems Integration -- Owego; Owego, N.Y. The JLTV is a joint program between the Army, the Marine Corps and U.S. Special Operations Command, where the Army has been designated as the lead agency. The JTLV family of vehicles will provide the Joint Services with a balance between three key factors: performance, payload and protection, said Col. John Myers, Project Manager for the Army's Joint Combat Support Services. At the same time, the JLTV must remain transportable and provide expeditionary mobility, said Lt. Col. Wolfgang Petermann, JLTV product manager for the Army, located at Selfridge Air National Guard Base, Mich. He explained that the JLTV will replace a portion of the Humvee fleet, but it is not meant to serve as a direct replacement for that vehicle. The technology development phase specified by the contracts will last 27 months, during which time contractors must each develop seven prototype vehicles to represent the three payload categories required by the JLTV program.. Contractors must also develop companion prototype trailers that meet many of the same requirements as the JLTV in terms of mobility, transportability and payload. The three JLTV payload categories include sub-configurations to, among other things, carry infantry, perform reconnaissance, act as command and control vehicles carry heavy guns and serve as an ambulance. During the TD phase, vehicle armor, ballistic hulls, vehicles and trailers will undergo performance and reliability testing, including assessments from joint warfighters, added Lt. Col. Ben Garza, JLTV Program Manager for the Marine Corps located at Quantico, Va. With their prototypes, contractors must demonstrate a "family of vehicles" approach across the three payload categories. The vehicles must share a commonality of components, and demonstrate technical maturity, requirements achievability and integration capabilities. "We are confident that we will successfully achieve JLTV requirements, and we are eagerly looking forward to demonstrating the technical capabilities during the TD phase," Petermann said. While the winners of the contracts will ultimately produce refined prototypes of the JLTV and its companion trailers at the end of the TD phase, Myers said the Army's current intention is to hold another full and open competition for the System Development and Demonstration (SDD) phase which will allow all interested parties to compete. Right now, the Army, Marine Corps and SOC are refining their respective tactical vehicle strategies, therefore a final planned quantity has not yet been determined, Petermann said. However, for production cost-estimating and other analyses, the request for proposals included a projected production quantity of approximately 60,000 systems to be delivered over an eight-year span. Digital University: Training without sweating [2008-11-01] GRAFENWOEHR, Germany -- Soldiers don't always have to carry a weapon, crawl into an M-1126 Stryker ICV, don their interceptor body armor, or even break a sweat to train. "At the Joint Multinational Training Command, a suite of fully exportable training tools - live, virtual and constructive, are available for Soldiers and coalition partners to use for training on tactical systems they may need to use downrange," said Lt. Col. J.D. Koch, director of operations at the Joint Multinational Simulations Center. "Instead of sending our Soldiers to the States for sustainment training on critical Army Battle Command Systems, the units can relocate their Soldiers to a location of their choice, bring their computers or use ours, and get the training they need more cost effectively." Since Digital University's inception in July 2007, nearly 3,000 Soldiers have been trained on any number of tactical systems, including the Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System, the Maneuver Control System, the Command Post of the Future, the Distributed Common Ground System-Army, and Blue Force Tracker. The JMTC, which is the command for the JMSC, Joint Multinational Readiness Center, JMTC Directorate of Training, NCO Academy and U.S. Army Garrison-Grafenwoehr, has individual assets that provide training resources for live, virtual and constructive Soldier-training experiences, all under the direction of a single commander. They can be used as a combined unit or individually. Each unit works with the staff to determine their training needs and how best to optimize it. "Not all Soldiers have rotated through a unit with Blue Force Tracker," said David Pippin, the Battle Command system specialist who manages the Digital University. "It's a fairly new system in the last six years, but they will encounter it in theater. Because it's operator-level training here, they will be able to go to a unit and know the system. It relieves the burden on the squad leaders, platoon sergeants and other section leaders to teach them downrange." The system is critical for operations in theater. It allows for friendly force identification, communications and situational awareness inside vehicles such as a Humvee or a Stryker. When Soldiers receive the training before deployment, they don't spend time in theater accomplishing something that could be done ahead of time in garrison, said Pippin. Digital University provides both individual and collective training for deploying units and replacement Soldiers headed downrange. It also helps train Soldiers for pre-deployment mission rehearsals, command post exercises and NATO exercises. The school provides an inexpensive and conveniently located solution for commanders to ensure their Soldiers stay current on important tactical systems. "We support the unit's training sustainment," Pippin said. "If Soldiers don't continually use a system, they forget it. Just like if you do a difficult task in Microsoft Office once a year, you may forget how you did it and you will need to do it again. The more often you do it, the fresher it stays in your mind." One unique aspect of Digital University is its proximity to other JMTC assets. That proximity allows assets like the Digital University to be shared across a wider spectrum of Soldiers. Recently, the school was offered as an asset to the Noncommissioned Officer Academy at Grafenwoehr. "That's one of those unique things - the NCO academy, the JMSC - all under one commander," Pippin said. "We can reach out and touch that academy and say we have these assets over here that will help you and help our Soldiers. If we weren't under one commander that would be more difficult." Soldiers get in the game with DISE [2008-11-01] BABADAG, Romania -- Imagine an exercise where Soldiers move around in full body armor, storm into Military Operations on Urban Terrain sites, travel in Humvees or Strykers, fire their weapons at "enemy" combatants, call in support from Army helicopters, encounter improvised explosive devices, conduct convoy operations, and maybe even take a simulated bullet. During an after-action review, Soldiers watch the entire exercise re-created on a video screen in full-color, 3-D computer animation. A presenter zooms in on an individual participant, represented as a tiny animated Soldier. The Soldier's actual name and rank are displayed above the avatar as it retraces every step and action made by the real Soldier it represents. Shots fired are recorded and recreated on screen with colored lines from shooter to target. The terrain, the buildings, the vehicles and the aircraft are all faithfully reproduced. The presenter can watch any player or vehicle, at any time during the exercise, from any angle or distance. That type of after-action review process takes place now at the Babadag training facility, about 30 miles north of Mihail Kogalniceanu Airbase, Romania, courtesy of the Training Support Activity Europe, part of the Joint Multinational Training Command at Grafenwoehr, Germany. The JMTC, the Army's trainers in Europe, packaged the training and deployed it as part of the Joint Task Force-East training exercise, a monthlong, multinational exercise between U.S. Soldiers stationed in Germany, along with members of the New Mexico and Utah National Guard, and soldiers of the Romanian army's 21st Mountain Battalion and the Bulgarian army's 10th Company, 5th Infantry Battalion. Soldiers at Babadag train on firing ranges, conduct MOUT training, and participate in exercises where they and much of the equipment they use can be instrumented with the "Deployable Instrumentation System, Europe," commonly called DISE. The DISE is basically an instrumentation system for Soldiers, their weapons and their equipment. With DISE, Soldiers' weapons are equipped with a laser that sends out a beam when they fire, not unlike the Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System, or MILES. And like MILES, Soldiers also wear an array of sensors that allow other Soldiers to "kill" them during training. The DISE vest Soldiers wear also includes a Global Positioning System receiver, a computer that identifies the Soldier who wears it, and a radio that broadcasts user telemetry to an array of antennas around training ranges. The vest also comes equipped with a speaker that allows the onboard computer to keep wearers informed about their status in the exercise. "You have a little computer with a loudspeaker on there," said Doug Meckley, the DISE mission coordinator. "Audio cues let you know what the heck's going on -- so when you get shot it can tell you if you are killed or injured." It's not only Soldiers who are instrumented with DISE. Vehicles and aircraft can also transmit location and position information into the system. "DISE can instrument just about anything," Meckley said. "You can put it on any kind of vehicle, from Romanian or Bulgarian trucks to OPFOR vehicles to Polish tanks." At the core of DISE is its computer system that can track the position and firing activities of some 1,200 Soldiers engaged in an exercise over a training space as large as 1,600 square kilometers (nearly 1,000 square miles). While the exercise is underway, indicators for each player move about a computer screen in real time. They are plotted against backgrounds featuring the actual terrain Soldiers are training on. When Soldiers go into a building, sensors can track their every move, inside or outside, and relay that information directly to the DISE. The buildings themselves are constructed virtually inside the DISE computer. The screen looks similar to a video game, and Meckley said that is appropriate because the Soldiers themselves are very much in tune with game playing. "A guy that knows how to do video games, and knows how to hook up his game machine - he's an ideal candidate for a Soldier to use DISE. That means about 50 percent of the Army would make a great DISE Soldier," he said. During exercises, controllers can zoom in on any Soldier from any angle. They can also see when the Soldier has fired his weapon. And when a Soldier "kills" another Soldier during an exercise, the laser itself transmits information about the shooter to sensors on the target. In that way, controllers can see, on screen, which Soldier fired the shot, and which Soldier was hit and where. When a Soldier on the ground fires his weapon and hits a target, color-coded lines appear on the DISE laptop to indicate the relationship between shooter and target. "If I hit you, you are going to see a line drawn out on the screen," Meckley said. "If it's a pink-coded guy shooting a blue-coded guy, you're going to see a pink line go out there. The system also reports fratricide. And when a Soldier gets killed, you see an 'X' through him." With past systems, such as MILES, Soldiers could cheat the system during training, even when "killed" sensor vests would issue an audible alert to let them know they'd been hit. But the system didn't prevent them from continuing to fire their weapons to kill off other players. Some Soldiers even opted to reset their sensor vests by removing and replacing the batteries. That's no longer possible with DISE. "The system is very sophisticated. If you're dead, you can still shoot people, but that laser's not 'killing' anybody anymore," Meckley said. "And if you were seriously wounded, and the system recognizes that you're running around too much and you're playing John Wayne, it'll kill you after 15 minutes because you're bleeding out." During an actual exercise, commanders and exercise controllers are able to watch the scenarios play out on a computer screen. After all, the DISE allows them an overview of every Soldier and vehicle position. But the real value of the DISE comes after the exercise is over - during the after-action review process, where Soldiers can watch their performance on screen and discuss it with other Soldiers in their unit. "When you see these battles, you say, 'Gosh, that was so frustrating! I wanted to do this, I wanted to do that,'" Mackley said. "It creates a need for Soldiers and leaders to ask how they would do something better in the real world. In one word, when they see themselves doing something stupid, well you can look to Homer Simpson when he says 'd'oh!'" But as Soldiers and their leaders review the electronic recording of their performance on the DISE, they also learn from the things Soldiers did right, Mackley said. "When they get somebody, they maneuvered right and they chopped up the OPFOR out there, they'll all say, 'Yeah, look at him, man! He's taking out everybody!'" Mackley said. "Then everyone says he's the hero for the day and what did he do right, how did we set him up for success? How can we replicate that down range?" Grafenwoehr shoot house: Like an action movie set [2008-11-01] GRAFENWOEHR, Germany -- At the Grafenwoehr Training Area in southern Germany, Soldiers train in a "shoot house" unlike any in the Army. The Joint Multinational Training Command, the Army's training arm in Europe, manages and maintains a one-story, 10-room, roofless building that sits beneath a massive cover from which high-intensity lights and video cameras hang. U.S. troops and coalition partners use the training facility to prepare for real-world missions downrange in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's like a movie set: lights, cameras, action. Practice makes perfect. Soldiers prepare to gain entry by kicking down a door, or breaching the entrance using explosives. They shout orders to each other, room by room, with guns blazing. From above, the directors - commanders and training supervisors - stand on catwalks orchestrating proper movements. They coach, mentor and watch as their troops practice over and over again what they've been trained to do: secure each room one at a time, do it quickly, capture any high-value targets and make sure nobody gets hurt in the process. "The advantage to the catwalk is that leadership can look from up there and see how Soldiers are clearing the rooms and correct them on stuff before they go into live fire," said Sgt. Maj. Troy Nattress, director of training for the JMTC. "For unit command and unit leadership, the shoot house is a training aid. The commanders know their unit better than anybody else and what training they need to conduct. So we don't tell them how to train, but we assist them in meeting their training objectives." In the shoot house, Soldiers can perform dry runs without ammunition, or use either blanks or live ammunition. Observers are not allowed on the catwalks while live ammunition is being used. It takes just a minute before the shooting finally stops. Soldiers assess their performance, looking around at what they've shot to see if they've killed any non-combatants, and collecting anything that might be of value to the intelligence community, such as cell phones, laptops or documentation. Soldiers then get the low-down from their platoon leaders on how they did. Did they check their corners? Did they move fast enough? Could they have communicated better? Did anybody get shot who shouldn't have? After the training is over, they'll get an after-action review that features videos of them from above, moving into each room. No Soldier is safe from the camera's eye, in daylight or darkness. Each Soldier's performance is on display, and everyone can see exactly what they did right, and what they did wrong. After watching the footage, Soldiers are quick to adapt their actions so they can be ready for the next training session, or ready to do it for real in Iraq. "The best thing about the shoot house is the cameras," said Staff Sgt. Kevin Terry, with the 2-28 Infantry in Grafenwoehr. "The guys that are new come in and think they are doing good. But you come back and watch it on videotape and you see the small mistakes they make that would get somebody killed. And you see the places they can improve themselves by watching the videos, by clearing the corners - all the small things they don't see when they are doing it because they are in a hurry trying to clear the house and shoot the bad guys." The shoot house in Grafenwoehr is one of the most advanced, if not the most advanced in the world. For starters, it's a live-fire shoot house. Soldiers armed with real guns kick down the doors and fire real bullets - the kind that'll kill you - into the walls and into the mannequins that occupy the rooms. The walls are made of five layers: wood, steel, concrete, steel and wood. The steel and concrete keep bullets from penetrating the walls and hurting a Soldier in the next room. The outer wood layer, which needs regular replacement, prevents bullets from ricocheting off the steel walls and back at the Soldiers. In the rooms themselves are full-size mannequins wired to fall over when hit with a bullet. Each is tethered to control boxes in the rooms, located above the red "no fire" line. And each can be placed where needed to best simulate the kinds of training scenarios commanders want their Soldiers to encounter. "When they get hit they will fall," said Sgt. 1st Class Thorsten Lamm, a range control officer and infantry branch noncommissioned officer at the range. "What's awesome about these simulated targets is that when they fall, unlike a paper target, you have to get out of their way. It's not just a paper target, it's a body you have to deal with." Soldiers are expected to shoot only at the mannequins that are "armed." Those setting up the training can go in before each run through the shoot house and place a weapon into the hands of a mannequin if they want it to represent a hostile force. They can also remove a weapon already there if they want it to be unarmed. "If you hit him then, guess what? You go to jail," Lamm said. "Because he doesn't have a weapon." So Soldiers need to be on their toes in the shoot house. They must also remember to check fallen mannequins for cell phones, identification or anything else that might be useful in intelligence gathering. Day and night video cameras hang from the ceiling, keeping an eye on every room. They, along with the mannequins, are hooked into a separate facility where government contractors run the shoot house and after-action review. They record each iteration through the shoot house, trip the mannequins manually when Soldiers are using blank rounds, and choose the sound effects to play over the loud speakers during training sessions: a woman screaming, an alarm going off, the sounds of gunfire or the call to prayer in Arabic. In addition to being high-tech, the shoot house is also safe. No Soldiers have been killed there during training since its opening in October 2007. "When you go through and do a live shoot, all this is live, and all of it is safe," Lamm said. "I've been through hundreds of iterations since I started here and nothing has happened." The lessons learned there are meant to ensure that Soldiers know their jobs well enough to keep themselves alive when they go downrange - where every shot fired is meant to kill, the walls are made of plaster and wood, and the "mannequins" shoot back. 1st Lt. Keith Gauthier, with the 2/28 Mortar Platoon in Grafenwoehr, has been to Iraq before, and is preparing his unit to deploy again near the end of the year. He said he thinks what happens in the shoot house and at the other ranges at Grafenwoehr is helpful in getting his junior Soldiers ready for the fight. "We were in Baghdad for a lot of the urban combat and a lot of the houses where shooting happened," he said. "If I can just get our guys where we are working together, where we are not aiming at each other when we come in a room - to have muzzle awareness so they are not bringing up their weapon and aiming at a friendly - that'll help. And the shoot house helps with that." Terry said it's the realism of the shoot house that makes it so effective in preparing Soldiers to go down range. "The realism is the best part, and I think most people work better with the hands-on experience instead of people telling you," he said. "And with the cameras, when the guys actually see themselves mess up they can say they won't do that again - and that really helps." Star Wars training for downrange action! [2008-11-01] HOHENFELS, Germany -- Before deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan, American Soldiers and coalition partners regularly choose to train at state-of-the-art ranges and facilities managed and maintained by Europe's Joint Multinational Training Command's Grafenwoehr and Hohenfels training areas. The command is responsible for the largest training area in Europe and has about 18 training support centers, including sites in Italy and Kosovo. The training environment includes live, virtual and simulated training on more than 44 modern, computerized, live-fire ranges and can support current and future expeditionary forces composed of airborne, artillery, aviation and infantry components. "We do home-station training and simulation training," said Capt. Junel Jeffrey, a spokeswoman for the Joint Multinational Readiness Center. The JMRC, under JMTC, plans, coordinates and executes mission-rehearsal exercises to prepare units for major combat, counter-insurgency, security and stability operations in European Command and Central Command areas of operations. "We train from a Soldier level all the way to the brigade level. And it is important to point out that in addition to all those things, our location really adds another dimension: our unique ability to train and coexists with multinational and coalition forces," Jeffrey said. "That really separates us from our stateside combat training centers." The training area at Hohenfels, known as the "box," is about 10 by 20 kilometers in size. The remainder of the site is peppered with caves, simulated towns, firing ranges, military operations in urban terrain sites where Soldiers can learn how to secure buildings, and even an improvised explosive device lane, so Soldiers can learn to spot and neutralize IEDs. "When we are engaged in a mission-readiness exercise, the towns come alive with the civilians that work there and who live there throughout the time we are training," Jeffrey said. "They have bakeries, they have coffee shops. And that adds a different dimension of realism that a lot of time the Soldiers wouldn't see unless they come here." Commanders bring their units to Hohenfels to get them prepared for deployment. They bring along with them a set of training goals they hope to achieve during their time there. The JMRC staff doesn't conduct the training at Hohenfels, rather, they facilitate it. It's the unit commanders who are responsible for training their Soldiers. But JMRC provides the facilities and observers/ controllers, or O/Cs, who can help commanders meet their training goals. "Soldiers come here with a set of validation tasks, things their brigade commander or their corps commander says they have to be able to do before they go down range," said Dave Caples, the Instrumentation Training Analysis Computer Simulations and Support Center operations officer. "If the O/Cs are comfortable with the training that occurred, and they know the unit is prepared to accomplish each one of those validation tasks, then they are happy with what they have given them." The handful of O/C teams at Hohenfels includes those to help train brigade staffs, and those who train Soldiers in maneuvers, fire support, aviation and engineering. There's even a team designated to work with the Air Force when they participate in training. The training areas at Hohenfels are also manned by actors, played by both German nationals and members of the 1st Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, who serve as the opposing force. Together, the groups simulate civilian authority figures such as the police, both government officials and non-government agencies, the media, members of the local population, clergymen, linguists, terrorists and belligerents. Role-players are even outfitted with costumes. "In addition to our standard set of civilians on the battlefield for major rotations, we will also bring in as many as 500 Arabic-speaking civilians from around Germany," Caples said. "Their role is primarily to populate those towns to give Soldiers an even more realistic view of what is going on in theater. Those civilians are complete with clothing from the area." During and after training, the O/ Cs help commanders conduct afteraction reviews with their Soldiers to help them learn from their training experience, so they can avoid repeating those same mistakes when the bullets are real. Commanders and the O/Cs may choose to conduct old-school "green book" AARs -- where the notes they've taken reside in governmentissued paper ledgers, and the lessons to be learned are read aloud and illustrated with slideshows featuring excerpts from dry military doctrine. But at Hohenfels, the secret to conducting an AAR with sticking power is also the key to making the training they conduct there some of the best in Europe: technology. When Soldiers participate in training on the ranges at Hohenfels, they, their equipment, and the facilities they train in are instrumented with some of the best training technology in the Army. The ITACSS team, working out of Building 100 at Hohenfels, is at the center of all that technology. "We can track up to 2000 vehicles and personnel with only one second latency -- near real time," Caples said. "And we can see where they are going, so if they make a wrong move, we know." The Soldiers who train at the ranges at Hohenfels are equipped with harnesses that allow technicians and analysts to know where they are on the training ranges, via integrated GPS. Video cameras provide live video feeds of what Soldiers are doing in training villages, shoot houses and MOUT sites. Trained videographers and photographers, part of the VIPER unit, get in close with the cameras to document key activities. Recording devices log radio traffic between commanders and their Soldiers. Nearly all this technology is connected to Building 100, also called "The Star Wars Building," through fiber optics and the training area's radio towers. On computer screens, analysts can track vehicle locations, locations of participating aircraft, which Soldiers were shot, and who shot them. And when the training is over for the day -- or just for the moment -- that information: video, audio and telemetry collected from Soldiers and vehicles, can be recalled to produce AARs that allow Soldiers to see exactly what they did, when they did it, who they did it to, and if they did it according to their commander's plan. "We can record everything that the units are talking about. This is a very important tool in the data collection process," Caples said. "If there were some command and control issues, for instance, somebody may say, 'Hey you said this,' and another says, 'No I didn't.' Well, we can say, 'Yes you did.' We can go back, a week or two after, and pull that audio out of the archive and put it into the AAR. That normally makes for very good feedback." And when training is over and units go back to their home stations, they can easily remember what they learned on the training ranges at Hohenfels. The unit there makes a takehome package for commanders, that includes much of the information recorded during their training, and all the assessments of that training. "We want to make realistic training for these guys, and then provide them at the end with some constructive feedback on what they should have done or could have done and how they can train when they go back to home station," Caples said. "That's really key for us. When they leave here we give them a take-home package with all the AARs and executive summaries from the O/Cs. We also include all the references to doctrine that were used during the after-action review. It is a good package for them to take home and continue with their training." JMRC doesn't just train American Soldiers in Germany. They bring members of allied militaries to the training as well, including countries like the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, France, Croatia, the Netherlands, Poland, Italy, Spain, Afghanistan, Bulgaria and Romania, and equipment and trainers can be sent anywhere, anytime. The JMTC exports training tools to coalition partners in their countries too. As part of the Georgia Sustainment Security Operation Program, the JMTC has trained about 2,400 Georgian troops in little more than 24 months. The program is part of an initiative to strengthen relationships between the two nations. By inviting militaries of other nations to participate in training, JMTC ensures that not only are American Soldiers getting to train against the full spectrum of military operations, but they are also learning to fight alongside those they may fight alongside in real-world conflicts. The Army is also helping to build greater relationships with allied countries. "There is a lot in the news about multinational forces sending their people down range," Jeffrey said. "One of the important things here is that we want to make sure that the first time that we work together is not when we actually get there. Our training here at JMRC kind of exposes both sides, U.S. Soldiers and multinational soldiers, to the challenges of working together." The technology at Hohenfels is now being exported to other areas outside the Joint Multinational Training Command footprint. The ITACSS team recently deployed a tool that takes the capability of Building 100 and makes it portable. The Exportable Instrumentation System is a portable set of equipment that, like Building 100, tracks player and equipment movement during exercises and records their activity and communications for use during the after-action review process. The EIS was deployed in its entirety for the first time in August 2008 to Hammelburg, Germany, to be part of a MRE there. The system consists of several pieces of portable equipment, including the "Global Hawk" containers which house the computers that run the system; several hard shelters called Herdside Expandable Light Air-Mobile Shelters, that house workstations for analysts; and several remote base stations that can be placed around a training range to act as signal repeaters, feeding information back into EIS. "We are the only place in the world that has something like this," Caples said. "The EIS is meant to deploy anywhere in the world. We give these guys the flexibility to do a whole lot of things simultaneously, and I think it will enhance the training immensely." With the facilities and technology available at Hohenfels, JMRC can provide Soldiers some of the most realistic training available in the Army; in some cases, providing even more than what might ever be seen in the real world -- anything to prepare Soldiers to do their job correctly, and safely, said Lt. Col. Daniel Redden, JMRC chief of operations. "We literally give them the worst possible day they will ever have in theater, stuff they may never, ever see," said Redden. "We make it the worst -- everything. You've got a senator coming to visit, 15 IEDs today, X number of Soldiers hurt and killed, the local population is rioting. There is virtually nothing we cannot think of to throw at them. That's the way units get better. When we talk to privates on the ground, they say this is some of the best training they ever got. The feedback is great." New Army office focuses on energy diversity, security [2008-11-04] WASHINGTON -- The Army recently established the Energy and Partnership Office to not only conserve energy, but also to reduce the Army's dependence on the civilian power grid. Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Energy and Partnerships Paul Bollinger serves as head of the office. As the Army's senior energy executive, Bollinger is responsible for implementing the service's energy security strategy on an enterprise approach. "If we were attacked, or there was a terrible act of nature -- and our Soldiers were called out into the community to either defend or protect -- they need their installation operating," Bollinger said. "You also have critical infrastructure there, hospitals, communications, you may have munitions, and you may need electricity to pump fuel." Energy security means that an Army installation can still provide power to its most critical operations, even if the civilian power grid is completely down. For the Army to accomplish that, it first needs to know the total energy consumption of each installation as a baseline, Bollinger said. It must determine the most important parts of the mission that need to be powered. Those two pieces of information, coupled with an effort to reduce energy usage through improved efficiency, is how he said the Army plans to gain energy security on its installations. "We're at the starting line right now for most installations," Bollinger said. "However, we have six installations with coal-fired power plants, so they may be energy secure already." Right now the Army is conducting studies to determine how much energy is being used on its installations. "What we have to do is come up with the baselines or the benchmarks for our energy activities," Bollinger said. "That should include the consumption rate at all installations and what programs are in place to reduce consumption and utilize alternative energy resources. In addition, there are federal laws that require all of our buildings to be metered by 2012. All new Army buildings are metered, but we have some work to do in order to get older buildings retrofitted for meters." Bollinger also said the Army is working to meet the federal requirement in Executive Order 13423 to reduce energy consumption by 3% per year for 10 years. He said leadership at the Army's Installation Management Command is making great strides in this area, but hopes that the new Army energy initiative will give their efforts a major boost. Reducing energy usage and increasing energy efficiency on Army posts are not enough to provide energy security, however. Army bases must also be able to generate their own power for their most critical missions, if called on to do so. Developing facilities that can power the needs of the Army and at the same time draw on renewable resources is something the Army isn't going to tackle alone. "This is a partnership with the private sector," Bollinger said. "We are inviting them to come in and assist us in reaching our goal of energy security. The Army is taking a leadership role and is committed to making our installations energy secure and reducing greenhouse gas emissions -- we call that smart energy." The Army currently has several ongoing energy projects, including the solar projects at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, and Fort Carson, Colo., and large-scale energy-management programs at Fort Hood, Texas. Recently, Secretary of the Army Pete Geren announced several pilot energy projects: the development of a 500-megawatt solar thermal plant at Fort Irwin, Calif.; a 30Mw geothermal plant at Hawthorne Army Depot, Nev.; and biomass-to-fuel demonstrations at six Army posts; a giant Energy Savings Performance Contract for an entire installation; and, the purchase of 4,000 Neighborhood Electric Vehicles, or NEVs, that will be sent to 44 installations. The secretary also said he wants the Army to look at wind energy and nuclear power to make garrisons' energy secure. "We have to be able to protect our country regardless of the situation," Bollinger said. "There may be a premium paid for energy security, but it is a premium with a huge payback when it comes to defending our country." The Energy and Partnership Office implements policy set by the Army's recently established Senior Energy Council. The council focuses on energy and how to minimize its impact on warfighting capability and operational effectiveness both in theater and in the United States. The goal is to reduce energy consumption, increase energy efficiency and provide energy security for the Army. The council is co-chaired by the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations and Environment Keith Eastin and Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli. Warrior Care: Survivability begins with Soldier [2008-11-07] WASHINGTON -- "The progress that has been made in taking care of our Soldiers and the increasing survivability of Soldiers starts with the Soldier," said Secretary of the Army Pete Geren. Geren and others from the Army's medical community gathered Nov. 7 at the Pentagon to discuss the current status of warrior care and the progress that has been made in caring for injured Soldiers. The event marked the beginning of "Warrior Care Month," an official month-long recognition by the Department of Defense and military services of their efforts to take care of wounded, ill and injured warriors. Soldiers in the Army are taught self-aid and buddy care and this is a prime factor in the 90-percent survivability rate of combat-injured Soldiers, said Maj. Gen. Patricia D. Horoho, commanding general of the Western Regional Medical Command, and chief of the Army nurse corps. "Every single Soldier is trained in self-aid and buddy-aid," said Horoho. "We do that so we have force multipliers across the entire theater of operations. They have the skills to save lives." Horoho also said advances in the medical equipment Soldiers carry with them in the field have contributed to their ability to help themselves and others. The medical kits distributed now to Soldiers include equipment to ensure continued breathing for Soldiers with chest wounds, various bandages and a new tourniquet that can be applied with only one hand. The Army has found that placing a greater emphasis on keeping open breathing passages and stemming blood loss have led to increases in survivability, Horoho said. The tourniquet in particular has been getting recognition from wounded Soldiers who have said it was instrumental in their survival. "Almost every single one said it was either them placing the tourniquet on themselves or a battle buddy doing it for them which is what saved their lives," she said. The Army is also testing medical products such as Combat Gauze and WoundStat as additional methods of reducing blood loss. Training for professional Army medics is also a contributing factor to the success rate of Soldiers injured in battle, Horoho said. "We've looked at ensuring we have highly trained combat medics -- the 68W -- every platoon has one 68W assigned," she said. "They are trained to national registry EMTB standards and that is augmented by advanced combat trauma training. That gives them an advanced skill set to make a difference in the lives of all warriors ... within that first ten minutes." The general said the Army has worked to improve upon the civilian sector's concept of the "golden hour" of trauma care, where the best way to guarantee survivability is to get the most critical care to a patient within the first hour of an injury. She said the Army has recast that concept as the "platinum ten minutes." When Soldiers get back to the United States they receive "level-4" medical care in stateside facilities like Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. But following that kind of care, they may move to one of 36 Warrior Transition Units across the United States. It is in the WTUs that the Army has made great strides in assuring Soldiers don't just "get well" but that they get back on track with their lives -- either transitioning successfully back into the Army, or moving back into the civilian world, according to Brig. Gen. Gary H. Cheek, director, Warrior Care and Transition. There are more than 11,000 Soldiers currently in Warrior Transition Units or community-based Warrior Transition Units, Cheek said. "Each one is a Soldier with a unique medical condition, with unique goals and aspirations," he said. The Army has found success with those Soldiers by assigning each a triad of care. That includes a squad leader, a nurse case manager to manage medical appointments and schedule medical care, and a primary care provider to oversee managing multiple medical conditions. "That triad works with the Soldier to optimize their medical care," Cheek said. "It's a great system we have set up and the Army has a lot to be proud of." But Cheek also said the service has a way to go to make him happy in the way it delivers care to Soldiers. "We want to work on improving on performance of the organization," he said, saying the Army wants to make service provided to Soldiers in the WTUs more predictable to Soldiers and their families. "We can do that by improving performance in administration and making Soldiers the centerpiece of this." Army looks to new technology for possible follow-on to M-4 [2008-11-13] WASHINGTON -- Army and industry leaders gathered Thursday to exchange information about the latest advances in small-arms technology. The Army released a Request for Information Aug. 22 asking the weapons industry to see the latest, state-of-the-art, small-arms technology. Industry representatives brought examples of that technology to an invitation-only industry day here to show Secretary of the Army Pete Geren and representatives of the Army's Program Executive Office-Soldier. The industry day was meant to allow military decision makers, including those from the Air Force and the Marine Corps, to get a look at what technology is available from weapons manufacturers in the way of small-arms -- in particular, for something that could be a follow-on to the M-4 carbine. The Army is not ready today to buy new individual weapons for Soldiers beyond the M-4, said Col. Douglas A. Tamilio, project manager for Soldier Weapons. In fact, Secretary Geren said the Army recently completed a purchase of 473,000 M-4 carbines. Geren said he is impressed with the M-4, and that the Army will continue to rely on industry to provide Soldiers with the best capabilities available. "We are committed to the right capability and weapons for our Soldiers," the secretary said, while addressing industry leaders. He also said the Army would likely continue to purchase the M-4. But a changing threat environment means that in order to continue to provide Soldiers with the best weaponry, the Army must continue to look at the latest options for weapons, Tamilio said. "We want to make sure we have the best capability for our Soldiers," he said. "So we've got to get a good feel for what is out there." Tamilio said proliferation of better weapons and better body armor amongst America's enemies means the Army must also look for better weapons. To that end, the secretary of the Army has directed the Army's Training and Doctrine Command to create a requirements document for a new individual weapon for Soldiers. That requirements document is expected to clear the Joint Requirements Oversight Committee next summer and a Request For Proposal might be released in September 2009, Tamilio said. With the release of an RFP, arms manufactures will compete to sell the Army a follow-on to the M-4. During the industry day, more than a dozen weapons manufacturers -- including Smith and Wesson, Sig Sauer, and Colt Defense -- displayed their latest weapons technology for Army officials. Later, representatives from each vendor met with Army officials to discuss their wares. Outgoing general: FCS success credit to evaluators [2008-11-14] WASHINGTON -- The Army Evaluation Task Force at Fort Bliss, Texas, is "making Future Combat Systems happen," said the outgoing FCS program manager. Maj. Gen. Charles Cartwright has served as the program manager for FCS since June 2004 and will retire from the Army in December. He will be replaced by Maj. Gen. John R. Bartley, now program executive officer for combat support and combat service support. During his last public address concerning FCS, Cartwright said the AETF is at the very center of FCS's developmental success. "It wouldn't be possible without the help of the AETF task force," Cartwright said during a Nov. 11 presentation sponsored by the Association of the United Sates Army. "They really are the heart and soul, and really have become the brains of the FCS program. It's been amazing watching (them) in the two years since they have stood up and the capabilities they now have down there." The AETF, also known as 5th Brigade, 1st Armored Division, includes many combat-veteran Soldiers tasked to test and evaluate the ease-of-use and efficacy of Army equipment. The Soldiers in the AETF have been to theater and know what is needed there and how the equipment they have been asked to test will be received by Soldiers in combat, Cartwright said. He said what they provide to the developers of FCS is combat-proven insight and knowledge about how to improve new Army systems. "They are not only testing it, they are helping me do design iterations on this equipment," Cartwright said. "We are designing equipment based on what they are telling me they want it to do in combat -- not a defense contractor and not a guy like me in the acquisition career -- but based on what they want it to do in combat." The general said in the last two years, major design changes have been made to the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle as a result of evaluation by AETF. Additionally, more than 500 changes have been made to FCS software due to AETF suggestions. "I waited a long time for the AETF," Cartwright said. "What they are giving us in the design world we have never had before. That concept of the AETF is key to how we build the future. It includes how do we build the network, how do we build platforms and how do you fight, including what are the tactics and techniques. The AETF is really the key to how do we build toward the future." In the four and a half years he's served as the program manager for FCS, Cartwright said the biggest challenge he's faced has been the integration of the many programmatic phases of the FCS program, while at the same time continuing to actually produce equipment. "There are a lot of things you have to do when you manage a program -- political, budgetary, programming, what do you build, what don't you build," he said. "It is keeping everybody executing -- focused on delivering the equipment, that is challenging." For the new PEO of FCS, Cartwright has one word of advice: "execute." "We will go though national defense policies, and strategies, and the Quadrennial Defense Review -- meanwhile the program is still building," Cartwright said. "Congress fully funded you in FY09 and they expect us to execute, and that's what we are going to do." New EW career field to 'blind enemy' with science [2008-11-17] WASHINGTON -- By 2010 the Army expects to have more than 1,500 Soldiers trained in the art of "blinding and deafening" America's enemies by wielding the radio spectrum as a weapon. The Army has in the past relied heavily on both the Navy and the Air Force for their electronic warfare capability, said Col. Laurie G. Buckhout, the Army's chief of electronic warfare. But the service plans to remedy that by creating a new electronic warfare career field for officers, warrant officers and enlisted members. "We're going to be able to protect ourselves from spectrum-using threats, which we can't really do for ourselves today," said Buckhout. "We have the Air Force and the Navy doing that for us now and that is getting a little old for them and old for us. We want to be able to attack, blind, deafen and isolate the enemy before he does it to us." The Army doesn't really plan on making anybody actually blind or deaf. Instead, it plans on providing Soldiers with the training and equipment they need to effectively wage war within the radio spectrum and to apply fires on that new battlefield that can destroy the ability of the enemy to communicate amongst themselves. "Electronic warfare is the new battlefield, it's our new domain," said Buckhout. To man the guns on that new battlefield, in both offensive and defensive roles, the Army is creating the 29-series career field for electronic warfare operators and officers. The Army recently pushed seven officers through a new pilot course at Fort Sill, Okla., a course that will qualify those Soldiers to carry the designation of electronic warfare officer, should Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. sign off on a Force Design Update sometime next month. But it's not just officers the Army plans to train. New courses are now being developed for both enlisted Soldiers and for warrant officers. The Army expects to initially man the electronic warfare career field with some 1,511 Soldiers in the rank of sergeant and above. Students are expected to attend classes and become part of the electronic warfare community by 2010. The new graduates will man positions in Army operations sections, not in intelligence sections, where electronic warfare-types have served in the past, Buckhout said. "That is a huge change for the Army and it is revolutionary in the way the Army is now looking at holistic electronic warfare -- we're waging war on the spectrum. It's not just for the intelligence community anymore." The Army does currently have two additional skill-identifier courses in electronic warfare, including the Electronic Warfare Planners course taught at Fort Sill and the Counter RCIED (Remote Control Improvised Explosive Device) Electronic Warfare course to teach CREW operators to use the improvised explosive device-jamming technology. But neither course really trains Soldiers for a career using EW as an offensive weapon. While CREW is a component of electronic warfare, it is a self-defense measure, not an offensive weapon, Buckhout said. "It's not blinding and deafening the enemy," she said. "It's just kind of protecting yourself. Just like in a foxhole -- only a moving foxhole because we have a protective bubble around us. And that's no way to fight. You're still defensively operating on the battlefield, rather than offensively." The new career field and a new way to fight with electronic warfare will change all that, Buckhout said. Instead of limiting EW to gathering intelligence or disabling an IED, the Army will use EW as a weapon to inflict damage on the enemy, said Buckhout. "With EW, you can suppress IEDs, you can stop communications, and you can do suppression of air defenses so you can stop people from shooting at you," she said. "To stop their radars from finding you, you can do radar suppression. You can also use the spectrum to jam or screw up or deceive them on their GPS. Imagine enemy aviators flying and all of the sudden they have no GPS -- that'll screw them up. You can also take out enemy formations the same way, by taking out their radars and sensors and their battle command." It's no surprise that Soldiers already involved in artillery and other offensive attack-related career fields are showing up and asking to be part of the EW community. "A lot of fires guys want to be part of this, because electronic attack is a form of fires," said Buckhout. "It is going out and attacking something, and you have to consider battle space, trajectory, targeting, and the effects you want. All these things are done with electronics. So it's the fires and the field artillery guys that are all over this, and they are doing a really good job." One possible roadblock to moving the Army further forward with EW is getting everybody on board and getting them to understand. "The other services are ahead of us in some ways, in terms of airborne capabilities -- the Navy and the Air Force in particular," Buckhout said. "The Army is entrenched - it's like trying to bring tanks in to the old cavalry guys, that fight Patton had back in the 30s. It's not just horses anymore, there's a whole new capability out there, a whole new threat. We need to be able to achieve parity -- we have to get past the horse cavalry mentality." Login changes to bolster AKO security [2008-11-19] WASHINGTON -- Operators of the Army's Web-based information portal "Army Knowledge Online" plan to implement new security procedures on the system as early as January. When logging into the security-improved AKO, users will be presented with three questions they must correctly answer before being allowed to continue. The questions are designed to be difficult for anyone but the users themselves to answer, said Lt. Col. Ken Fritzsche, chief of operations for AKO. "What AKO tries to do is provide a layer of protection, so in addition to just using a password, you can supply answers to questions about yourself," he said. "Who was your first teacher, the first person you kissed? It'll be answers known only by you. So when you log in and provide those answers, we have at AKO a very high sense of security that you are who you claim to be." To prepare each user for the new security protocol, the AKO system will present each user with a list of 20 questions. The user then chooses to provide answers to 15 of those questions. In subsequent logins, AKO will present three of those questions to the user, with multiple-choice answers. Users will need to choose the correct answer in order to log in, said Fritzsche. "Why do we offer the questions? Because the questions are one more layer of security that defeat keystroke loggers," Fritzsche said. "Keystroke loggers are probably one of the most popular methods used by known bad guys to capture credentials. So the new security credentials are used to help defeat keystroke logging." "Keystroke loggers" are pieces of software installed on computers -- possibly by those wishing to gain illegal access to DOD networks -- that record the keys pressed on a computer's keyboard. It is easy for someone who has installed a keystroke logger to use captured information to access a person's account. The addition of random information -- such as the keystrokes needed to answer randomly chosen multiple-choice questions -- makes it more difficult to record and reproduce a valid login sequence, Fritzsche said. In addition to providing e-mail, chat and directory services to more than 2 million users, AKO also provides pass-through user authentication to hundreds of other Army computer systems. While directly logging into AKO will require users to answer three questions, Fritzsche said it will be at the discretion of other system owners to take advantage of the new security measure that AKO offers. Policy change allows experienced Soldiers to serve longer [2008-11-21] WASHINGTON -- A recent extension of retention control points means Soldiers in the rank of staff sergeant and above will be allowed to serve the Army longer, should they desire. An All Army Activities message, or ALARACT, dated Nov. 8, spelled out the changes to retention control points. The changes, which became effective Nov. 1, increase RCPs for E-6s and above by as many as three years in some cases. The ALARACT also changes the maximum age for enlisted Soldiers to 62 years. The increase in RCP -- called "high year of tenure" in the Air Force and Navy -- is a force-shaping measure meant to allow experienced noncommissioned officers to stay in the Army longer. "This is not designed to address any specific shortage," said Master Sgt. Patrick Johnson, retention operations NCO with Army G-1 at the Pentagon. "Rather, it is to provide an avenue for our experienced NCOs to stay in longer if they wish, and to stabilize the force longer. It's good for the Army and good for readiness." The change to RCP applies to active-duty Army Soldiers and to reserve-component Soldiers in the Active Guard Reserve program. Changes have been made to the RCP for Soldiers in the grade of E-6 and above, and include: • Staff Sergeant, 23 years • Staff Sergeant (Promotable), 26 years • Sergeant First Class, 26 years • Sergeant First Class (Promotable), 29 years • First Sergeant/Master Sergeant, 29 years • First Sergeant/Master Sergeant (Promotable), 32 years • Command Sergeant Major/SGM, 32 years The RCP defines the maximum time a Soldier may stay in the Army at a certain rank. For instance, the RCP for a promotable staff sergeant is now 26 years -- up from 24. If a Soldier in the rank of staff sergeant has served 26 years and hasn't been promoted to sergeant first class, he or she must retire. The ALARACT additionally says a Soldier must leave Army service at the time of their RCP or age 62, whichever of the two comes first. Johnson said that the change to the RCP does not mean a Soldier must now stay in the Army longer. In fact, Soldiers may apply for retirement any time after becoming eligible. Army science conference to focus on 'disruptive technology' [2008-11-25] WASHINGTON -- Research that may one day help better train Soldiers, along with helping them heal both physically and psychologically, will be showcased at the 26th Army Science Conference Dec. 1-4 in Orlando, Fla. Dr. John Parmentola, director for Army research and laboratory management, said this year the Army has chosen to focus the conference on what it believes will lead to "disruptive technology." "At the Army Science Conference we are showcasing seven areas we believe will give rise to disruptive technologies for our Soldiers in the future," he said. "It is not just the individual areas themselves, but it is also the synergy that exists among these areas." A disruptive technology radically changes the way things have been done in the past: the telephone over the telegraph, digital photography over film, desktop publishing over traditional publishing and the automobile and tuck over rail transportation. One of the seven areas of research the Army will showcase at the conference is neuroscience. Parmentola said understanding how the brain works -- the primary focus of the study of neuroscience research -- is important because it leads to development of better training for Soldiers as well as better diagnosis of both traumatic brain injuries and post traumatic stress disorder. "We are trying to utilize the capabilities of neuroscience through various types of brain scans to try to identify objective measures that will enable us to understand when a Soldier has suffered from PTSD or for example TBI," he said. The Army is funding research that measures how the impact of a shock wave from something like an improvised explosive device might affect both a Soldier's skull and brain, Parmentola said. At the Medical College of Georgia, work by Professor Joe Tsien, funded in part by the Army, is looking at how the brain stores memories. "(Tsien) and his colleagues developed a technique where they were able to go into the hippocampus of a mouse and actually study a particular region that stores episodic memories," Parmentola said. The team created for the mouse a series of traumatic events, including a simulated close-call with a "bird of prey," and was later able to "erase" the memories from the mouse's memory. "If somebody was put through an extremely traumatic situation where this was reoccurring and causing this person to not be able to function properly -- it's always a possibility of trying to help people deal with these memories through a mechanism like this," Parmentola said, "This kind of research is helping us understand how the brain works." Parmentola also said neuroscience research leads to better training for Soldiers. "The Army trains 500,000 Soldiers every year and there is a significant diversity of learning abilities among those 500,000 human beings," said Parmentola. "What we are after is to develop better ways of training them so they can all be trained up to certain skill levels." Other Army-funded research aimed at improving Soldier training involves immersive technology, Parmentola said. "That's about creating virtual worlds that are essentially indistinguishable from reality," he said. "One of the key challenges we have in that area is to create virtual humans. Of course the work of neuroscience plays a key role in trying to create virtual humans that, for all intents and purposes, act and interact just like humans." Researchers at the Institute for Creative Technologies, a research institute of the University of Southern California, work to develop virtual worlds that are indistinguishable from reality, Parmentola said. Parmentola said ICT collaborates with the gaming industry in California and with Hollywood to create realistic virtual scenarios that can better help Soldiers train. Those virtual worlds don't just help Soldiers to be prepared to fight better when they get to the battlefront, they can also make it easier for Soldiers to recover from the psychological scars they might suffer while fighting there. "We have been using virtual environments -- pioneered out at the ICT -- to try to see if there are ways, through using training environments, to essentially heal or suppress the episodic memories that Soldiers have when they undergo PTSD," Parmentola said. He explained that researchers found that Soldiers who have suffered from PTSD can be helped by repeated and controlled exposure to environments similar to what they saw in theater. "We are finding is that by putting Soldiers that have suffered PTSD through similar experiences that occurred when they acquired the disorder -- virtual environments where we create explosions and things like that -- we found that a repetitive type of therapy winds up suppressing these episodic memories," Parmentola said. The Army also funds research that may seem like science fiction, but is in fact science reality. Researchers participating in a collaboration between Wake Forest University, N.C., and the University of Pittsburgh are just some of the scientists doing work now on regenerative tissue research -- the growing of new tissue, even entire body parts, for use in both animals and humans. "The really exciting area we have been perusing is trying to re-grow organs and hopefully with time, actual limbs," Parmentola said. "We've re-grown bladders, for example. We've repaired the uterine walls of women who have had uterine damage. It sounds like far-out stuff, but it is stuff that is happening." The Army Science Conference will focus on seven areas of research, including neuroscience, autonomous systems, biotechnology, immersive technology, nanotechnology, network science, and quantum information science. Armed Forces Inaugural Committee: Servicemembers to help usher in new president [2008-11-26] WASHINGTON -- Every four years the United States elects a president, and each time, members of the armed forces have participated in the inaugural events. Military participation dates back to the inauguration of George Washington. On April 20, 1789, Soldiers, local militias and war veterans escorted the president to his swearing-in, then held in New York City. Today, the Department of Defense stands up the Armed Forces Inaugural Committee well in advance of each presidential election. The members of the AFIC, a committee of Joint Forces Headquarters, National Capital Region, orchestrate the participation of today's military in inaugural events. During the 10-day period, January 15-24, the military provides ceremonial support to the presidential inauguration with musical units, marching bands, color guards, salute batteries and honor cordons. The AFIC itself will eventually be made up of more than 700 military personnel. But by inauguration day, as many as 5,000 servicemembers will be ready to participate. Their presence and activities are coordinated by the AFIC. The AFIC works with two other committees to plan the events that surround the inauguration of the president. The first, the Presidential Inaugural Committee, a non-profit organization that is formed after the general election and represents the president-elect, plans and funds the parade following the swearing-in of the president and the evening's celebratory balls. The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies plans the actual inauguration event. The AFIC itself works with both committees, lending support wherever a military presence is needed. "What we do is provide ceremonial support to those two organizations, where they ask, and within Department of Defense guidelines," said Sgt. Maj. Brian S. Picerno, who serves as the senior enlisted advisor for AFIC members. It is his role to take care of the more than 700 military members, including more than 200 Soldiers, who will eventually be part of AFIC. Despite the AFIC's proximity and participation in what is a very political process, Picerno is quick to point out that AFIC itself is a non-political, non-partisan committee-without an opinion about who wins the election. "We are totally non-political," he said. "We don't even discuss it in here. People may discuss it outside of work, but it's pretty much one of the rules we established when we came here: we are not here to influence or discuss-we're here to support the president-elect once he is selected." The AFIC stands up well in advance of the inauguration. As early as December 2007, more than a year before the 2009 inauguration, members of the AFIC were already being moved into temporary offices at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. In June, the group moved to its "permanent" headquarters, the Mary E. Switzer Memorial Building, also in Washington. There, members of the AFIC set up the new headquarters, which will serve the committee until it is disbanded after the inauguration. "We had to bring troops in here to get us set up," said Picerno. "There's a whole lot of work in getting us from Fort McNair to here-furniture, transportation, the infrastructure itself. There were no telephones, no networks. There were literally hundreds of manhours needed to set all that up." Sergeant Richard P. Grossman volunteered for the AFIC and reported in December. He is stationed out of Fort McNair and serves as a senior supply sergeant for the Center for Military History there. At AFIC, he serves as the property book non-commissioned officer-in-charge, accounting for all property owned or borrowed by AFIC. He helped convert the AFIC headquarters from a bare-bones facility to a fully functioning military operation. "There's a lot of planning that goes into this," he said. "The neatest part of it all is seeing how it goes from nothing to something. When we started here, we had four walls and a roof-there was no furniture, no equipment, nothing." In addition to the furniture that was brought in, AFIC also brought in some 254 computers for its staff, and another 118 are on the way. None of those computers could be networked because there were no network cables running though the 50-year-old Switzer Building. Specialist Darian J. Whittaker, stationed at Fort Dietrich, Md., helped install those networks, and now provides communications, information technology, and help desk support to AFIC. He said so far the work hasn't been tough. "I'm enjoying this so far, it's not too hard," Whittaker said. "Plus, this is an opportunity of a lifetime-why pass it up?" The AFIC, like other joint operations, follows something similar to the general staff system used by the Army. There's an AFIC-1, for instance, that performs personnel functions. Specialist Aaron C. Allen, a personnel clerk from Fort Myer, Va., volunteered to be part of the AFIC. He said he's been challenged by the joint nature of the assignment. "The hard part for me is the different way each service conducts their evaluations and boards," he said. Despite being a temporary assignment, participation in AFIC does last more than a year for many involved. Those Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen will need to have their personnel records maintained during the temporary duty, and many will also earn awards or promotions. For Allen, having so many services involved makes it difficult to do a job that he had once done only for fellow Soldiers. But the experience is helping him learn, he said. "Each service has its own way how they word things," he said. "When I first started here at AFIC I was just thinking Army. I was sending stuff back to the Air Force saying it was wrong, but in actuality it's how the Air Force does it. That's the biggest thing for me, the joint thinking ... how every service is tailored and thinking more than just Army. This is my first time working in a joint environment and that's what sold me is to get the experience working with joint services at this young point in my career." Allen said he'll be taking back some of that joint experience to his home station, where he'll try to impart some of his new knowledge to those around him. "This is like a once-in-a-lifetime experience, to come in as an E-4," he said. "I usually don't have that much responsibility, but to get that responsibility here and to learn to manage and take care of things-that helps build my career. I can take that back to Fort Myer and teach those below me and above me what I've learned, I hope, because some of them may have never worked in the joint environment." The AFIC-3 coordinates security operations among participating military units and with other federal agencies, in addition to providing credentialing to those who participate in inaugural events. And the military, through the AFIC-4, provides logistics support, including transportation for members of the PIC, other VIPs and members of the president-elect's family. The military's expertise in protocol makes them ideal candidates for providing transportation support. Also, said Picerno, providing transportation support gives the military a certain amount of visibility-so it's of benefit to the military to participate. More importantly, the military can, and is, accustomed to working people day or night-something that will need to happen during events surrounding the inauguration. "Our people are trained on all kinds of routes," Picerno said. "We'll be using Blue Force Tracker and all kinds of communications in case there are accidents or emergencies." Communications support for the AFIC, to include more than the computers they use in their offices, such as the radios and other communications networks needed for coordinating so many personnel, is provided by the AFIC-6. Staff Sgt. Jose I. Ramirez, a communications noncommissioned officer stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, will provide communications support to military personnel on the ground who need to keep in touch with the inauguration day command center. "My job is going to be to make sure everybody has their communications equipment and that it is working," he said. "If it goes down, I've got to fix it." Ramirez said he realizes the significance of working as part of AFIC, but for now he is more impressed with what he is learning and what he can take back to his unit. "I'll get a lot of experience out of this, what I've done as far as the networks," he said. "There's distribution of assets and the managing and supervising of the Tactical Operations Center group. Yeah, I'm working for AFIC, but I'm focused now on my day-to-day job and not worrying about who gets elected." During "game day," Ramirez will likely be assigned to work in the forward command post at the corner of 3rd and Pennsylvania Ave., in Washington. There, he'll monitor communications and networks from the command trailer-and have a good view of the parade. He said the opportunity to work at AFIC has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for him. "A lot of Soldiers get tired of the field, of the deployments," he said. "But sometimes there's opportunities that Soldiers don't know about. Before this, I had no idea the AFIC even existed. But every four years there's an opportunity for Soldiers of all ranks and specialties to come up here and fill a position and be here in the nation's capital-and that's a pretty nice perk for being a servicemember." Language program gives Soldiers head start on deployment [2008-12-09] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Language Institute has developed a "Headstart" program to help deploying troops gain skills in Arabic, Pashto and Dari -- languages spoken in Iraq and Afghanistan. With conflicts ongoing in these two nations, there's a need for at least some Soldiers to have knowledge of the languages spoken there. A recent study by the House Armed Services Committee highlighted the need for increased language capability in the armed forces. "Only a small part of today's military is proficient in a foreign language and until recently there has been no comprehensive, systematic approach to develop cultural expertise," committee members wrote in their report. The Defense Language Institute's "Headstart" program is one path that can help Soldiers develop language skills. Headstart is a computer-based, self-directed language learning program aimed at military members getting ready to deploy. The program offers lessons in five languages, including Dari, Pashto, Persian Farsi, Mandarin Chinese, and the dialect of Arabic used in Iraq. The self-guided program takes between 80 to 100 hours to complete. After completing the course, Soldiers should be able to hit the ground in a new country with enough language skills to conduct business and have limited communication with civilians in the local language, according to the DLI commandant. "You'd be able to take care of the survival-needs level of speaking requirements," said Col. Sue Ann Sundusky, commandant, Defense Language Institute, Foreign Language Center. "Even effectively conduct conversations and ask questions about a broad range of topics and understand a significant amount of the answers coming back. You'd certainly be able to communicate if you worked through the program." Sandusky said Headstart begins like every language program, in that all new language learners will need to learn numbers, colors, quantities, key verbs and key verb constructs. But the Headstart language program is designed primarily for military members on military missions and so the program is designed from that perspective. "It's basic language learning in a military context," she said. "Every beginning student learns to count, and the basic military language student needs to learn to count too -- but we can contextualize that in a way that it is meaningful. What are you counting? Are you counting money, houses, people in a crowd?" Each Headstart language program is made up of two sections, including "sounds and script" and "military." The sound and script portion of the program involves 10 modules that help Soldiers learn the four "modalities" of the language, including reading, writing, speaking and listening in the target language. Module 1 of the Dari language program, spoken in Afghanistan, introduces students to the letters of the alphabet, and breaks those characters down by letters that are similar to the English alphabet, and letters that require students to learn a new sound. Subsequent modules introduce country names, telling time, weather, making appointments and topography. The lessons are broken into different interactive games involving word-matching using the Dari language script. The second portion of the Dari language software, which is military themed, involves speaking and listening. Soldiers using the program will learn key phrases that might be used in the situations they could encounter in Iraq. In one module, users learn phrases and questions related to landmarks. "What city is this?" "This is Kandahar." "What is the name of this village?" "This village is Asad Khyl." When DLI developed the Headstart program, the faculty put special emphasis on the military application of language, said Pamela Combacau, dean of technology integration at DLI. "The main reason we are developing this is that there is a need for this and there is nothing like this," Combacau said. "There is a need to train on language in specific military situations, and since our Soldiers are warfighters, they don't have time to go through general global knowledge. This is a program for a specific purpose, not to teach a general language, but for the specific purpose for predeployment." The lessons in the military portion show questions and phrases in English and in Dari script. The program also shows transliterated phrases, where the Dari words are spelled out in Latin letters, so students can better learn to pronounce the words. And on the screen, a digitally animated "avatar," either a Soldier in battle gear or an Afghan civilian, speaks each phrase or question aloud. Within each module there are various steps, each presenting a different way to learn to speak Dari, each requires users to listen to the avatar speak and then determine what has been said. The entire Headstart program is computer-based, involving various matching games, avatars, and speaking and listening skills. "They try to capture a little bit of the excitement of video games in the sense that they have the avatar and you interact with it. It's to take advantage of the fact the current generation of young Soldiers are computer savvy and would be bored with something not cutting edge," Sandusky said. "And there is real good substantive language learning methodology in this program. It allows you to gain a little bit of familiarization in all four modalities" The Headstart program also includes links to online "field support modules" at http://fieldsupport.lingnet.org, that cover an array of cultural topics on nearly 40 countries. The cultural information is produced by members of the DLI staff and is largely original material, said Combacau. All five language version of Headstart are available from the DLI's Website at http://fieldsupport.lingnet.org/products/headstart/ and are also available on CD-ROM. Nearly a million copies of the Iraqi Arabic and Dari language programs have been distributed so far. Thousands lay wreaths across America [2008-12-15] ARLINGTON, Va. -- Thousands showed up on a crisp Saturday morning here -- some from as far as Maine -- to lay wreaths at the headstones of those buried in Arlington National Cemetery. The event was the 17th annual "Wreaths Across America," where thousands of volunteers come out to ANC as well as more than 125 other cemeteries across the United States, to lay more than 100,000 wreaths at the bases of the headstones of American's war veterans. "It is because of these people that we have everything we have," said Karen Worcester, of the Worcester Wreath Company, in remarks that opened the event at ANC. "When all the wreaths are gone, walk by every one of them and then go by the section that didn't get the wreaths and say thank you and realize what an important part of our country this is. We are all here because we are all Americans, we love our country and we are so appreciative of what we have and why we have it." For 17 years, the Worcester Wreath Company -- Morrill Worcester and Laura Worcester -- has donated wreaths to the cemetery to decorate the white headstones of American veterans buried there. In 1992, the company donated just over 5,000 wreaths to the cemetery. This year the company donated more than 17,000 wreaths -- some going to other cemeteries, but as many as 10,000 that were designated for Arlington. And next year the company plans to send additional wreaths. "I'm very proud this thing has grown to where it is now," Morrill said. Afraid the large crowd of volunteers wouldn't feel as though they were able to do enough, due to the limited number of wreaths available -- he promised to deliver more wreaths to the cemetery the following year. "We are going to do another truckload of wreaths next year, so it'll be three loads," Morrill said. That amount comes to some 16,000 wreaths to be placed at Arlington. After words by Secretary of Veterans Affairs James B. Peake, and John C. Metzler Jr., the superintendent of Arlington National Cemetery, volunteers gathered at the back of two tractor trailer trucks to help unload the 10,000 wreaths and to place one at each of the headstones in Section 12 of the cemetery. According to Metzler, in that section of the cemetery are buried 10 Medal of Honor recipients, including five from World War II, three from the Korean War, one from the Civil War, and one from the Spanish-American War. Additionally, Michael Strank -- one of the six Marines photographed raising the American flag on Iwo Jima -- is also buried in section 12. Nathan Blevins, son of Air Force Senior Master Sgt. Robert Blevins, was one of the first to place a wreath on a headstone. He said why he agreed to come to the event on such a cold day. "To pray for the people that have died," he said, while laying a wreath at the foot of the stone. Josh Danis, an 11th grader from Portland, Maine, came to the cemetery with his grandfather, Ralph Danis, of Arundel, Maine, and a Korean War-era veteran who served with the 3rd Infantry Regiment, the Old Guard. "I came to lay the wreath, to look around some, and to see the changing of the guard," Josh said, explaining why he made the long road trip from Portland to Arlington. "He also just likes his grandpa," the older Danis said, putting his arm around him. The two laid a wreath together at a veteran's headstone. Solar power helping light streets of Iraq [2008-12-16] WASHINGTON -- Mostly desert and a lot of sun, it makes sense there's a place for solar power in Iraq. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Iraqi government are using solar energy to light the dark streets of Baghdad, Basra, Fallujah, Kharma and Sakalaweyah. "The lights that we installed have an 80-watt panel on them, a lead-acid battery and a 18-watt fluorescent light bulb on them," said John Offen, an engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. "To date, we've installed about a little over 800 of them, and they're operating just fine. And we still have about 600-700 more to go. The city of Fallujah didn't have power at night and this was an easy way to light up the streets that didn't depend upon any remote source of power." It was actually the Marines that paid to have those lights installed there, Offen said, to help Marines on patrol feel a little safer at night. If the lights have had any effect on crime in the city though, Offen can't say. "As far as getting any feedback from the city to see if there's been a noticeable improvement in the safety and security, we don't have that direct information," he said. "But the level of violence, the level of bad activity had definitely been on the decrease -- whether that's related to the solar panels or not, we're not really sure." In Baghdad, Iraq's Ministry of Electricity has installed some 5,000 solar-powered streetlights, and there are plans to install more, said Dr. Ali Allak, a bilingual, cultural advisor and solar energy expert with the Army Corps of Engineers. "The message is spreading, and hopefully the use of solar street lighting will increase," he said. "And it is primarily because, at the moment, the streets of Baghdad are dark." The Corps of Engineers is also looking into solar energy solutions for Iraqi homes, Allak said, something individual residences could use to increase the amount of electricity they have access to, and also the amount of time they have to access it. "At the moment we're working on 20 units to be installed in various parts of Baghdad," he said. "We want to monitor the performance and make sure that the claims that are made by the companies are justified before we can recommend them and before we can take them a stage further." The system under consideration will provide 2.68 kilowatts of energy, Allak said, and could provide some 12 hours of electricity a day to Iraqi homes. "That should satisfy most of the needs of an average Iraqi household," he said. "This will not, obviously, operate an air-conditioning system, but it will ... operate a ceiling fan. It will operate the television or the lights when necessary, the washing machine, et cetera. It will liberate the average Iraqi from having to source out diesel or petrol." For now the program is in testing, with no homes yet benefitting from the solar-power systems. But the benefits of such a system, and solar power in general, include eliminating the need to purchase power, profiting from feeding electricity back into the local power grid, and even dissipated risk from terrorist threat, Allak said. "It's virtually vandal-proof," he said, "because you can't go exploding every house in the country." Start-up costs of solar-power installations can be high, admitted Allak. He estimates the initial cost per watt for solar power is about $4 dollars. For conventional systems that use fossil fuels, it could be less than half that. But when considering continued costs such as maintenance and fuel, the costs of both systems eventually converge. "The cost of producing electricity by solar energy becomes viable if one takes into consideration that they are maintenance-free, there are no moving parts in a solar panel, and there is no need for any fossil fuels," Allak said. "These are the main reasons that solar panels or solar energy has been used in Iraq, not to mention people are still aware of the pollution and the environmental situation -- but that's a secondary aspect at the moment. It's the lack of electricity that is causing the use of solar panels for generating electricity." Language, cultural learning important to Army mission [2008-12-17] WASHINGTON -- The Army should be on target with its language and cultural capabilities within five to 10 years. By then, every Soldier should have a broad competence in cultural knowledge and should posses at least some rudimentary capability in a foreign language. Other Soldiers would posses expertise in both language and a particular area of cultural studies, said Brig. Gen. Richard C. Longo, director of training in the Army's Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Plans and Training, G-3/5/7. "A successful Army is where we have in our units a blending of this broad general capability amongst most people, coupled with the expertise among a few," Longo said, saying that should happen within five to 10 years. A report released in November by the House Armed Services Committee reviewed the Department of Defense's efforts to develop language capability in the armed forces. The report suggested that while DOD had set goals to create "foundational language and cultural skills" in the armed forces, the individual services seemed satisfied with focusing simply on developing cultural capabilities. "The difference between the Department's goal and the Services' approach calls into question whether the two even agree on what they are trying to accomplish," the report said. "The Department must work more closely with the Services to achieve a common understanding of the language skills needed in today's force." Longo said the Army is working to develop cultural capability but is also working to develop language capability. In particular, the Army is focusing on its "targeted language list" which includes such languages as Arabic, Pashto, Dari, Urdu, Chinese, some languages spoken in Africa, and even French. "Each of the languages is a difficult language to learn," Longo said. "And not all of us have the propensity to learn Arabic. So we try to attack that a couple of different ways. I've said it before that it is easier to take a linguist and train him to be a Soldier than it is to take a Soldier and train him to be a linguist. And the Army knows that." The Army now has programs to teach new languages to Soldiers, and programs to entice native language speakers to join the Army. The 09 Lima program, for instance, is one of the programs designed to pull native language speakers into the Army and put them into uniform. "Instead of training a Soldier to be a linguist, we have somebody that understands the language already and maybe more importantly the culture -- and we train them to be a Soldier," Longo said. The 09L program pulls "heritage" speakers who are already Americans into the Army and into the 09L military occupational specialty. Heritage speakers have been speaking a particular language their entire lives, in the home or in school. Soldiers in the MOS are often recruited from communities in the United States where many of the residents speak the same foreign language and share a common ethnic background. In October, the first company of 09L Soldiers, the 51st Translator Interpreter Company, stood up at Fort Irwin, Calif. The unit will eventually include more than 140 native speakers of languages like Arabic, Farsi, Pashto, Kurdish and Dari. Another program still in development will be designed to get highly qualified native speakers and Health Care Professionals into uniform is the Military Accessions Vital to National Interest (MAVNI) program. Based upon Department of Defense (DOD) guidance the Army is developing a test program to offer non-immigrant alien native speakers and health care professionals the opportunity to serve in the Army. "We said if you want to join the Army, we will make that happen," Longo said. "And the goodness of this is, as this program gets bigger, there are maybe one or two people of these in every organization. We try to spread them out." Soldiers already in the Army are also being incited to learn language on their own and with the help of the Army. The Army recently endorsed a DOD policy which provides Tuition Assistance to all soldiers who take postsecondary language courses offered by an accredited body, even if it is not part of a degree plan. In the past, Soldiers on active duty needed to pursue a degree program to qualify for TA educational funding. Today, Soldiers can receive TA funding without pursuing a degree program, if they are taking language courses. Soldiers are also being asked to self-identify their own language capability to the Army if they have not already let the Army know. "How many people out there have a language capability that haven't been tested," Longo asked. "We as an Army might not be aware if we have 500 Tagalog speakers. We don't know, but we probably do. Would that be useful to know that? Yes, it would." Longo said the Army is now going through a process to identify language capabilities at whatever level, for all Soldiers. "We need an inventory of what language capability that we have," he said. Students in the Reserve Officer Training Corps are also targeted for language development. In fact, in August, Longo said, the Army kicked off a program where ROTC cadets are offered increased pay if they opt to take a foreign language while in school. Students are paid monthly based on the level of language course they are taking. For Soldiers already in the force, the Army offers, free-of-charge access to the commercial language-learning software, "Rosetta Stone." That software is available through Army Knowledge Online. The incentive for taking those language courses and doing well in them may be increased promotion opportunity for Soldiers, Longo said. "If all other things are equal and one guy is a master linguist and another isn't, who do you promote?" Longo asked. But Longo also said providing Soldiers with cultural capability is critical. That means teaching Soldiers that there are other belief systems in the world besides their own -- making sure when Soldiers interact with civilians in other nations they are sensitive to the differences. "We provide Soldiers with a universal cultural awareness," he said. "It's a series of lessons that say there is more to the world than just Peoria, Ill. These are the broad things that people care about in other cultures. These are the things that, though seemingly inoffensive in the United States, are generally offensive outside the United States." Over time, he said, as Soldiers develop professionally, they will get increased and more targeted cultural awareness training. That, he said, coupled with language skills, is something the Army realizes as important to its own mission. "Regardless of what style of operation we are going to do, whether it be a major combat operation or irregular warfare -- for the foreseeable future we are going to operate amongst the people," Longo said. "That is fundamental to our doctrine. If you are going to operate amongst the people, then, to have any hope of doing that in a way that supports your objectives rather than undermines them, you have to have a cultural sensitivity and some language expertise, in order to communicate." More Soldiers now eligible for TSGLI [2008-12-19] WASHINGTON -- More Soldiers who have been traumatically injured in combat, or even in a car accident stateside, may now be eligible for up to $100,000 to help adjust to life following their injury. The Traumatic Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance is a supplemental insurance program included in a Soldier's SGLI that provides a tax-free payment to Soldiers in the event they suffer traumatic injuries, such as severe burns or loss-of-limb. The types of injuries that qualify for TSGLI were recently expanded, resulting in more Soldiers being able to benefit under the program. "The expansion came about as a result of a review conducted by the Veterans Administration of the TSGLI program," said Capt. Nathan Black, officer in charge of TSGLI. "They spoke with each branch of service, medical professionals, those awarded and denied TSGLI, and others in the wounded warrior lifecycle. From this process, they were able to determine expanded loss definitions and additional losses that would allow for more Soldiers to benefit from TSGLI." For example, under the new guidelines, a Soldier may receive $50,000 for paralysis of one limb; previous rules required paralysis of two or more limbs. Additionally, the new rules state a Soldier who sustains 2nd-degree burns over 20 percent or more of his body or face is entitled to $100,000. Under the former requirements, Soldiers must have sustained 3rd-degree burns over 30 percent of their body or face. The new guidelines also include limb salvage, and allow Soldiers $50,000 for loss of sight that has lasted 120 days for each eye rather than total and permanent loss in both. The complete schedule of losses under TSGLI can be found at www.tsgli.army.mil Payments under TSGLI are per event, and Soldiers who have multiple injuries may receive more than one payment, but no more than the maximum $100,000 per event. Additionally, Black said the changes to TSGLI are retroactive. The TSGLI office is conducting a re-look initiative for any Soldier that was previously denied or received less than the maximum payment amount of $100,000. There is no need for a Soldier to resubmit a claim unless there is new additional supporting documentation to support the case, Black said. The TSGLI office will contact those that are approved under the new guidelines. "The TSGLI expansion," said Black, "is another example of how we continue to enhance our program to better meet the needs of our Soldiers and their families." Soldiers, civilians get pay increase in new year [2008-12-30] WASHINGTON -- There'll be something extra in everybody's paycheck come January. Active-duty personnel will draw an across-the-board 3.9 percent pay raise beginning Jan. 1. A sergeant with five years of service, for instance, will see an increase in monthly base salary of about $88 dollars. A captain with nine years of service would see nearly $200 per month extra. The 2009 military pay tables can be found at: http://www.dfas.mil/militarypay/militarypaytables/2009MilitaryPayTables.pdf. Pay raises aren't limited to military personnel, however. Civilian employees under both the General Schedule and National Security Personnel System pay plans are also receiving pay raises. Civilians under the GS system get an across-the-board pay raise of 2.9 percent in 2009. Civilians under the NSPS pay system will see an increase of 1.74 percent and can earn additional performance-based salary increases through the NSPS "pay pool" process. Additionally, all civilian employees rate a locality pay, which is based on the cost-of-living in their employment market. Locality pay rates for 2009 range from about 13.86 percent to 34.35 percent of an employee's base pay. Army.mil gets facelift in new year [2009-01-12] WASHINGTON -- The official Web site of the United States Army began sporting a new look Jan. 16. The new site features a graphic redesign, a new "subdued" color palette, and a downplaying of page graphic elements so user focus will be on content and not flashy graphics. Billed as a "refresh" of the "official homepage of the United States Army," the newly designed Army.mil is more than just a change to the look and feel of the site, however. The new Army.mil also includes software to ensure more streamlined delivery of video content, additional servers to host content closer to the user, expanded image galleries, an increased emphasis on visual products, and streamlined navigation menus to help users find information more quickly. "We wanted to make it easier for visitors to find what they wanted on the site," said Lt. Col. Kevin Arata, director of the Army's online and social media division. "We also wanted to focus more on visual content and new media." Each print story page on the site will now feature larger photographs at the top of the page. Articles with multiple photos will automatically display "slide shows" to make it easier for users to see all images associated with a story. The Army's official Web site has hosted video content for several years now, but Arata said the site was having difficulty handling the bandwidth associated with video content. The site redesign will feature software that makes it easier to stream video content to the user. The site will also utilize multiple servers strategically placed around the world, so bandwidth-intensive content is located closer to the user. Due to the new video software, video content can now also be higher quality. And users can share the best of those videos with friends and family via mail-to options and URLs that allow users to embed video into their own Web pages. "The neat thing," Arata said, "is that if I want to share a video I find on Army.mil with my dad, I can easily do that now." The refresh of Army.mil will also features links on content that allow users to tag stories and video pieces using social bookmarking links like Delicious, Digg and Reddit. The January refresh is just a foreshadowing of even better things to come for Army.mil, Arata said. "The refreshed Web site launched in January is the first step in what will ultimately be a totally redesigned Web site launched in October 2009," he said. "The Web site in October will incorporate the latest in technology to ensure we have a world-class Web site for our world-class Army." Army receives first six NEVs [2009-01-13] WASHINGTON -- The Army accepted it's first six "neighborhood electric vehicles" during a ceremony Jan. 12 at Fort Myer, Va. Delivery of the six tiny battery-powered NEVs, each about the size of a golf cart, represents the beginning of a leasing action by the Army to obtain more than 4,000 of the vehicles. Secretary of the Army Pete Geren said the service will receive a total of 800 NEVs in 2009, and an additional 1,600 of the vehicles in both 2010 and 2011. The vehicles will help the Army save money in both vehicle purchase and in fuel savings, he said. Though there will be a small cost associated with installing infrastructure to charge the vehicles -- about $800,000 total -- that cost will be eclipsed by the savings, he said. "It will be offset multiple times by the reduction and consumption of 11.5 million gallons of gasoline over the six-year life of these vehicles," Geren said. "And this acquisition of 4,000 NEVs will allow the Army to meet 42 percent of the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act requirement for a two percent annual petroleum consumption reduction through 2015." The Army's acquisition of the NEVs constitutes not just the largest acquisition of electric vehicles for the military, but also the largest acquisition of electric vehicles in the United States, Geren said. "The importance of today's roll-out of the NEVs and my involvement, is to show industry that the Army is serious about reducing energy consumption, increasing energy efficiency, (and) exploring alternative fuels and energy, while creating a culture of energy awareness throughout the Army," Geren said. The acquisition of the NEVs also helps the Army "go green" by preventing the release of some 218.5 million pounds of carbon dioxide into the environment, the secretary said. The initial contract for 4,000 leased NEVs will cost less than the gasoline-powered vehicles they replace -- $3,300 less than a gasoline powered sedan, for instance, and $13,000 less than a hybrid vehicle, Geren said. For now, the Army plans to lease as many as 4,000 of the NEVs through the General Service Administration. The GSA has placed an announcement on its Web site, FedBizOps.Gov, to solicit additional manufacturers for the vehicles. The NEVs will be used to replace non-tactical vehicles only, Geren said. "The Army operates almost 68,000 non-tactical vehicles," he said. "Approximately 28,000 of those are sedans or light trucks -- these vehicles are good candidates for replacement by additional or other varieties of electric vehicles." The first of the NEVs have been manufactured by the Global Electric Motorcars division of the Chrysler Corporation. The vehicles come in several variants, including passenger vehicles and cargo-carrying vehicles -- the largest of which carries a payload up to 1,450 pounds. The NEVs are street-legal in nearly all 50 states on roads with speed limits of 35 mph or less. The cars can travel approximately 30 miles on one eight-hour charge, and according to a GEM press release, the comparative per mile fuel cost is about two cents. "We're going to save a lot of energy with these," said Lt. Col. Cameron A. Leiker, garrison headquarters command, battalion commander at Fort Myer. "I can imagine seeing these with boxes on the back for guys that do repair work on post. You know there's a lot of places you can go with 30 miles on a post like this." Former CJCS portrait unveiled at Pentagon [2009-01-13] WASHINGTON -- The portrait of a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was unveiled Jan. 13 during a ceremony at the Pentagon. Retired Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from Sept. 2005 to August 2007. His portrait, painted by artist and former Marine Peter E. Egeli, was unveiled during a ceremony attended by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael G. Mullen, former CJCS retired Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other current and former high-ranking civilian executives and officers. Prior to the unveiling of the painting, Pace thanked Rumsfeld for nominating him for the chairman position, and also reflected on some of the decisions he made while serving. "I've had 15 months to think about what has gone right and what hasn't ... I certainly made some wrong recommendations, that if I could take them back and change them, I would -- given the knowledge of today," Pace said. "But also, given the exact same data, at the exact same time in history, I would give the exact same advice." Pace also expressed the loss he feels for the camaraderie experienced by those who serve in uniform. "I miss it," he said. "I miss being able to reach out and touch those in uniform. If I could find a way to serve the nation again, I would." The portrait of Pace places the former senior military leader on a simple red background where he looks back at the viewer. The painting will be displayed in a corridor of the Pentagon along with portraits of other former chairmen. Army prepared for inaugural contingencies [2009-01-16] WASHINGTON -- As the nation prepares to welcome a new president, the Army stands ready to assist civilian law enforcement and first responders inside the National Capital Region. While military participation in the Jan. 20 inauguration is largely ceremonial -- a full 2/3 of military members involved in inauguration-related activities will be involved in the parade or other ceremonial events -- another 2,500 military members are on standby to provide support if things go wrong. 911 Engineers Soldiers from the Army's 911th U.S. Army Technical Rescue Engineer Company out of Fort Belvoir, Va., for instance, are poised to help first responders rescue those trapped in collapsed building should such an incident occur during inaugural activities. "If a building were to fall down, we'd go in to shore it up and basically stabilize the building," said Sgt. Robert Huffman, 911th EC. "If the air is bad we're going to go in on air, if not just with respirators -- whatever we need to do to extricate the people. It's very similar to what firemen do." Huffman, who's been in the Army going on four years now, says the 911th EC uses tools like concrete saws, wood chainsaws, torches, exothermic torches, breathing apparatus, shoring equipment and trenching equipment to conduct their rescues. The 911th EC trains with state, local and federal agencies, to include the Federal Emergency Management Agency Urban Search and Rescue Teams, to develop and maintain the most advanced skills in the field. "We always try to simulate real-world emergencies with the force," said Staff Sgt. Donald Nolan, 911th EC. "We use fog machines to simulate smoke, and our confined spaces and collapsed structures are all mock -- so there is no risk. But out Soldiers go through crawl, walk, and run stages with training. It's all very intensive and it takes months to hone." Participating Soldiers from the 911th EC will be stationed in and around the National Capital Region waiting to assist. "We're posted at a heightened state of readiness -- on order to deploy and conduct technical rescue if needed," said Capt. David Dietz, commander of the 911th. He said his unit will have a "fairly robust package" of assets available to provide support to civilian agencies if they are tasked to assist. Sniffing out danger Sgt. Malkia Litaker, with the 947th Military Police Detachment at Fort Myer, Va., is one of many Army military working dog handlers who will be tasked to augment security during inaugural activities. Litaker and her military working dog, Gerko, work together to seek out potential explosives. She said Gerko can detect up to nine different chemical scents that might indicate the presence of explosives. "We make sure everything is safe for all the people in the area and the president," she said. "We are just doing detection." Prior to the inauguration, Litaker said she didn't know exactly what kind of support she'd be asked to provide, but she remembers the last inauguration she worked -- in January 2005 and expects to do the same kind of work this year. "Last inauguration we were at the convention center, we swept the entire convention center for explosives," she said. "The last inauguration -- it was a lot of fun doing that, and I was glad to be part of that -- this one too." Joint effort: three-pronged Servicemembers from the Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy and Coast Guard are all participating in the inauguration as part of Joint Force Headquarters - National Capitol Region. The headquarters acts as a single point of contact between the capabilities of the armed forces in the NCR and civilian law enforcement, first responders, and other federal response agencies. "Our medics who will be out supporting the parade along the parade route, will be able to respond to a situation in support of the incident commander very quickly," said Maj. Gen. Richard J. Rowe Jr., commander of both Joint Force Headquarters - National Capitol Region and the Army's Military District of Washington. Rowe also said JFHQ-NCR provides a chemical, biological radiological, nuclear and high-yield explosive consequence management capability to the inaugural events, including the Marine's Chemical Biological Incident Response Force, II Marine Expeditionary Force. The general said the 7,500 servicemembers in JFHQ-NCR have three roles during the inauguration, including providing ceremonial support, providing specific DOD capabilities to federal agencies in charge of inaugural events, and being prepared for a consequence management requirement should something happen that causes people to be injured. Rowe said the JFHQ-NCR is ready to provide whatever support is needed for the inauguration -- mostly because servicemembers have practiced for the many possibilities that could happen. "We have every two weeks a tabletop exercise that takes a look at our region, takes a look at a situation: infrastructure collapse, train derailment, loss of power supply, communications incident, incident within Metro, crowd control, crowd management incidents, medical incidents or contaminants," he said. "You have to force yourself to try to think through what some people might say the unthinkable -- but to try to think what combinations of things could happen. We are very well prepared. We are ready to do a wonderful event. I believe our head is in this, we are committed to this, and we are prepared." Servicemembers have ball at inaugural event [2009-01-21] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen and military spouses attended the Commander in Chief Ball, Jan. 20, at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. The event -- one of many surrounding the 2009 presidential inauguration -- featured food, dancing, and performances by musicians Jon Bon Jovi and "American Idol" Jordan Sparks. Attendees at the ball included servicemembers from both the active duty and reserve components as well as members who had been injured in the War on Terror. The ball was one of 10 attended by President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. Obama's address to attendees at the ball was the first time he was able to directly address such a large audience of military members as president. For servicemembers, it was the first time they had been directly addressed by their new commander in chief. "It is wonderful to be surrounded by some of the very best and bravest Americans," Obama said. "Know that as president I will have no greater honor or responsibility than serving as your commander in chief." The president said that even while attendees at the ball were enjoying an evening of festivities, there were members of the U.S. military around the world that were in harm's way. He also said service and sacrifice are not limited to those in uniform. "Every time a servicemember deploys, there is an empty seat at the table back home -- and a family that has to bear an extra burden," the president said. "That's why Michelle has spent so much time in the last few months working with our military families. That's why tonight, we don't just salute our troops, we salute the military family that has earned the respect of a grateful nation." The new president also told servicemembers that he is grateful for the work they do for the United States and that they have the support of his administration. "Going forward, you will have our support and our respect," he said. "You will have a great secretary of Defense in Robert M. Gates, you will have a great secretary of Veterans Affairs in General Eric K. Shinseki. And every single day that I am in the White House, I will try to serve you as well as you are serving the United States of America." During his time at the ball, the president also spoke via teleconference to Afghanistan with Soldiers deployed there from the Illinois National Guard's 33rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team. He told those Soldiers he was proud of their service. Sgt. Luis Rosa-Valentin is a wounded Soldier now assigned to a Warrior Transition Unit at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He was part of the 4th Infantry Division, 1-66 Armor Regiment when he was injured in Iraq in April 2008 -- just days before his 25th birthday. He and his wife of five years, America, attended the ball together. "This is actually really cool," Rosa-Valentin said of attending the ball. "There's some big names here and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens. Seeing the president will be the best part of this tonight, as I am truly interested in hearing what he has to say." His wife, America, was interested in knowing what the new president will do with Soldiers now in Iraq. "I'm more interested in seeing what Obama has planned with taking them out," America said. "You know, I'm wife to an injured Soldier as well as a friend to a widow. I know both sides of this: being the wife of an injured Soldier and my best friend's husband was killed in Iraq. I want to know what he has in store for the troops. Will he take them out?" Sgts. Rudolfo Agustin and Jeremy Sandoval both work at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. The two, along with Sandoval's wife, Jasmine, attended the ball together. "We met Barack Obama yesterday, at Walter Reed," Agustin said. " He came by on an unscheduled visit to see wounded Soldiers." "He wasn't even sworn in yet, and yet he was still making the effort to come see the guys who were wounded," Sandoval said. Sgt. Maj. of the Army Kenneth O. Preston was one of five service senior enlisted advisors to attend the ball. He said that the ball, now being held for the second time, is an honor for all servicemembers. "It is a great honor, the CINC Ball, as it showcases all our servicemembers -- recognizing them for their service, sacrifice and contributions," Preston said. "We brought in a big group of wounded warriors from Walter Reed, Bethesda and the Military District of Washington area -- this is an opportunity to honor them and their service." Preston also said that while the ball is part of the inaugural celebration, it is not a display of politics for the military, because the armed services are apolitical. "Regardless of what political party the president comes from, when he or she is sworn into office, they become the commander in chief of military forces," Preston said. "And by our constitution, it is our civilian leadership that is in charge of the military. That's the beauty of our country, of our military -- what you saw today at the inauguration was a peaceful transition of power from the outgoing president and political party to an incoming president and political party. But from a military perspective, you will see no change in operations or command and control -- the Army, as our song goes, the Army keeps rolling along." Army testing cannon for FCS Mounted Combat System [2009-01-26] ABERDEEN, Md. -- The lightweight Future Combat Systems XM-360 120mm cannon -- designed to sit atop the new Mounted Combat System -- was test-fired here Jan. 22. The XM-1202 Mounted Combat System is one of eight new vehicle types that the Army is developing through its FCS modernization program. The FCS vehicles will be lighter and more mobile than current Army combat vehicles; yet officials promise they will have greater lethality and survivability. Lighter and more survivable vehicles are required to combat a growing array of new and more sophisticated threats, officials here said. Greater speed and mobility, coupled with better surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, can enhance operational effectiveness, while improving survivability, they said. Composite FCS armor, for instance, which is being developed at Aberdeen, provides better armor protection at significantly less mass and weight. "This will change the nature of warfare," said Rick Crozby, an official with the Combined Test Organization for the FCS Brigade Combat Team at Aberdeen. "With these new [FCS] technologies, our Soldiers will have the ability to checkmate their enemies before their enemies even know that they're there." FCS is being developed at dozens of test and development sites nationwide, and some of the significant work is being done at Aberdeen. Maj. Cliff Calhoun, assistant product manager for the Mounted Combat System, said the test-firing is one of several that would occur over a few days that would bring the total number of firing trials for the cannon to 1,000. The weapon, he said, is significant because it is as powerful as the one mounted on the M1-A2 Abrams tank -- also a 120mm gun -- but comes in with significant savings in weight and provides automation that will help prevent the loss of lives. "The Mounted Combat System is going to feature an automatic ammunition handling system," Calhoun explained. "Our current force Abrams has a crew of four men -- a gunner, tank commander, driver and loader. On the MCS, there's a crew of three men -- an automated loader takes care of that loading function. So instead of having four Soldiers in harm's way, only three Soldiers are in harm's way with the MCS." The MCS carries up to 27 shells that are for a mechanized loader to pull into the cannon. The automated system means that Soldiers do not need to hand-load the heavy shells. Coupled with other FCS technology, the MCS will also bring beyond-line-of-sight capability to the battlefield, Calhoun said. "In the current force, a tank can engage everything it can see out to about three kilometers -- if you can see it you can engage it," he said. "With the MCS, you are going to be able to -- through the network -- engage targets beyond line-of-sight." The FCS constellation of equipment includes two unmanned aerial vehicles -- the XM-156 Class I UAV and the XM- 57 Class IV UAV. Either of those could be beyond the line-of-sight of the MCS, spotting potential threats, and then feed targeting information into the FCS network for use by MCS commanders. "If we have an enemy vehicle on the far side of a terrain feature, for example, the network will be able to send imagery back to the MCS and we can engage and destroy in distances exceeding 10 kilometers," Calhoun said. The armament on the MCS mission module is also going to be lighter, as a result of carbon-fiber composites and an aluminum frame construction, said Edward Hyland, of Benét Labs. "Our main goal was that we wanted all the performance of a current gun, but in a lightweight compact package," Hyland said. "To do that we looked at the entire design of the gun, at every part, and asked how can we make it lighter and push it to the edge." Hyland said the Army, in cooperation with defense contractor General Dynamics, looked at new high-strength gun steels, lightweight alloys, titanium, aluminum, and carbon-fiber composites. "The barrel on the Abrams tank is over 2500 pounds," Hyland said. "Using these high- strength steels and carbon-fiber composites, we've taken off over 800 pounds from that. (The MCS gun) weighs a little over 1,700 pounds -- 800 pounds lighter than the Abrams. That's just the gun barrel. We did the same thing with the breech assembly and the recoil assembly. Overall the net weight savings is well over 2,000 pounds, actually 2,400 to 2,500 pounds lighter than the current gun -- yet it has all the capabilities of that gun." Hyland said a gun as powerful as the 120mm cannon needed to be modified to reduce recoil, so it would be compatible with the lightweight MCS vehicle. "What we had to do was drop the recoil forces so we could fire from a lightweight platform," Hyland said. "We did that in two ways. We added a muzzle break to the gun tube and also optimized recoil system -- like a shock absorber on a car. We've optimized it for this lightweight platform." Hyland said that modifications to the cannon did not make it any less effective or accurate, and that in the last three or four years of testing, they have demonstrated the gun has met accuracy, recoil and weight requirements for FCS. The recent series of test-firings of the XM-360 120mm cannon will bring the system to technology readiness level 6, which means the system has been demonstrated in a "relevant environment" and represents a "major step up in a technology's demonstrated readiness." Army striving to decrease sexual assault, increase reporting [2009-01-27] WASHINGTON -- Through its Sexual Harassment and Assault Prevention and Response Program, the Army hopes to change command climates to make victims of sexual assault feel more comfortable reporting the crime. During a meeting with members of the press Jan. 26, Secretary of the Army Pete Geren discussed the Army's efforts to reduce sexual assault within the ranks, a crime he said that is not just an assault on a person, but on the whole Army. "Since Sept. 11, 2001, we've had 1,800 Soldiers that have been punished for sexually assaulting a fellow Soldier," Geren said. "Soldier-on-Soldier violence, blue-on-blue -- sexual assault is a crime everywhere, but in the Army it is a crime that is more than just a crime against the victim. In the Army it is a crime against the core values that bind our Army together." Sexual assault is one of the most underreported crimes in the United States and in the Army as well, said Carolyn Collins, program manager of the Army's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program. Through the SAPR program, the Army hopes to change the cultural climate so Soldiers who are victims of sexual assault will be more likely to report the crime. "The last couple of years we have seen a bit of a plateau in the reporting, but ... we are certainly still having convictions of sexual assault," Collins said. "We know we are not where we want to be yet. We are looking to increase our propensity to report, and bring down the actual number of assaults. We are looking to close that gap. We want to raise the number of reports so we can get more investigated, and hold offenders accountable for those actions, and we want to reduce the number." The Army is also doing more to ensure that when Soldiers report a sexual assault, the crime is properly investigated and prosecuted. Secretary Geren has approved funding to provide 15 special victim prosecutors -- that's additional personnel billets within the judge advocate general corps that will be filled from within the ranks by those that have proven themselves as especially effective prosecutors and who also have experience in sexual assault prosecution. "They will focus exclusively on those cases, and on training the balance of our prosecutorial and defense force on those kinds of cases," said Maj. Gen. Scott Black, judge advocate general of the U.S. Army. "They will have previous experience, and special training as well. The idea is to pick people who are ... very very good in the prosecutorial function, and then ... have experience in this particular area of prosecution. We are identifying them now." Black said those special prosecutors would come from the JAG ranks, would serve for a minimum of three-year tours, and would be positioned at installations such as Fort Bragg, N.C. and Fort Hood, Texas, where there are large concentrations of Soldiers. Brig. Gen. Rodney Johnson, the provost marshal general of the Army, said the service will add an additional 30 special investigators to be assigned at 22 of the Army's largest installations to assist Criminal Investigation Command agents in investigating sexual assault crimes. Those investigators, Johnson said, would provide insight into how civilian juries look at sexual assault cases and what kinds of evidence are needed to prosecute. The investigators would also look at sexual predator and victim behavior and the scientific perspective of sexual assault investigation. An additional seven "highly qualified experts" are also coming aboard, Johnson said, to provide training and assistance to CID agents. "We in CID already have highly skilled agents investigating these crimes," Johnson said. "But bringing the civilian expertise onboard will simply be a valuable tool to glean insight and a fresh perspective in many areas. Our special agents and supervisors will be working shoulder-to-shoulder with those highly qualified experts on our most challenging and complex cases." Black said there are already four of those experts on board, with the remaining to be brought in by mid-February. Army addresses rising suicide rate, highest in four years [2009-01-29] WASHINGTON -- The number of suicides in the Army has risen again, for the fourth year in a row, and the problem is being addressed with an Army-wide "stand-down" and chain-teaching program. The Army experienced 128 confirmed suicides in 2008, up from 115 in 2007, said Army leaders during a media roundtable Jan. 29. An additional 15 deaths are being investigated as suspected suicides, though Army experts say experience has shown that as many as 90 percent of suspected suicides are eventually classified as confirmed. "The numbers represent tragedies that have taken place across our Army," said Secretary of the Army Pete Geren. Adding that the Army is doing all it can to address the problem. "Every suicide is a tragedy we take personally in the Army." The secretary said if the Army is to succeed in counteracting the rising trend in suicides in the service, all components of the Army -- including the active-duty, Reserve and National Guard components -- must work together and also work with other organizations such as the Veteran's Administration. To facilitate that collaboration, he appointed Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli to lead those efforts. "We felt it was necessary to have a central figure at the top ranks of the Army to reach across those components and bring about the kind of progress we hope to achieve," Geren said. Chiarelli said the Army must work quickly to reduce the trend of suicides in the Army, saying that if the suspected suicides did in fact turn out to be confirmed suicides, the Army's rate for suicides would rise to about 20.2 per 100,000 individuals. "That number is particularly noteworthy, because the last reported numbers from the Center for Disease Control -- which lags behind, was 19.2," Chiarelli said. "That's important because the Army has always had a suicide rate quite a few numbers below the CDC rate -- the average American rate." Chiarelli has directed an Army "stand-down" to address the problem, between Feb. 15 and March 15. During that time, he said, commanders will take time to direct the problem "head on," the general said, adding that the service is prepositioning materials for commanders to use when talking with Soldiers. The general also said the Army would follow the stand-down with a chain-teaching program -- an Army method used to ensure every individual Soldier has been exposed to new material -- during the 120-day period after March 15. "The second thing that is absolutely critical is to reach out to Soldiers and tell them it is not wrong to reach out for help," Chiarelli said. "We have to change our culture." In the past, he said, it has been a culture in all the military services, that accessing mental health resources was detrimental to a servicemember's career. "That is something we have got to turn around," he said. "We are committed to doing that. And that is all leaders -- review what they have done in the past, what has helped us in the past -- and continue to do those. At the same time, to reach out to their Soldiers and make sure there is no stigma." The Army's stand-down will include training to help Soldiers recognize suicidal behavior in their fellow Soldiers, as well as teach them techniques to intervene. While Secretary Geren has said the Army is unsure exactly why the numbers of suicides have risen over the last four years, Chiarelli said stress was probably a factor. "There is no doubt in my mind that stress is a factor in this trend we are seeing," Chiarelli said. He also added that about a third of the suicides were amongst those deployed, a third were amongst those who had returned from deployment, and a third were amongst those who have had no history of deployment. Army leaders also said that traditionally it has been both relationship and financial problems that have contributed to Soldier suicides -- and that increased deployment lengths then may contribute to suicides by adding additional stress on families and relationships. Secretary Geren said when tour lengths were increased to 15 months, the Army worked to alleviate some of the stress that would be created between Soldiers and their families by adding additional funding to Army family programs. "That's when we started trying to hire additional mental health workers, when we started putting additional resources into family support -- trying to reduce stress on the families and the stress on the Soldier who is worrying about the family back home," Geren said. "You saw a tremendous reallocation of resources within the Army budget." Geren said the Army has changed the family support budget from $700 million to nearly $1.5 billion. "We saw the stress, we recognized it, and we started putting resources to that challenge," he said. "I can tell you, senior leadership knew -- we could feel the pressure -- and we started moving resources to address those issues." In October, Army senior leaders signed a memorandum of agreement with the National Institute of Mental Health to conduct a study to get to the root causes of why Soldiers commit suicide. Under the MOA, the NIMH will conduct research for the Army that will evaluate the many factors that contribute to suicide. The results of the study will be used by the Army to develop strategies to prevent suicides. The study is expected to last five years, during which time the NIMH may interview Soldiers, their families and their parents. The study will include the active-duty force in addition to the National Guard and Army Reserve. Army to look at providing more space for Soldiers' gear [2009-01-30] ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Time off for Soldiers to grieve the loss of a loved one, official photos for all Soldiers in the event they are killed in battle, and a place for Soldiers in barracks to keep their gear. Those are some of the topics Army senior leaders will now focus on as a result of the 2009 Army Family Action Plan conference. The Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation Command hosted the 2009 AFAP conference here Jan. 26-30. The week-long conference is the final step in a process where issues identified at installation level -- and seen to affect all families and Soldiers -- are elevated all the way up to Army senior leadership. This year, eight different workgroups collaborated at the AFAP conference to decide which issues were significant enough to present to Army senior leaders during the conference's last day "report out session." Senior leaders voted on which five of those issues would become the focus of increased attention. As a result of recommendations during the conference, Army leaders in the coming months will look into providing a new permissive TDY category to Soldiers who have lost a loved one -- a so-called "bereavement permissive TDY" category. Today, Soldiers must take chargeable leave or request a pass in the death of an immediate family member. "Insufficient time for grieving the loss of a family member and administering responsibilities impacts the Soldier's and family's ability to mourn and recover from a traumatic loss," read the final report of the benefits and entitlements work group. In the past, there have been instances where Soldiers who have died while serving overseas have not had suitable photographs to serve in memorial ceremonies or to provide to the media. Recently, the civilian press reported that in the case of two Soldiers who had been killed in Iraq, the Army unit had provided a doctored photo of one of the Soldiers because a more suitable photo could not be found. "Official photographs are not required for all Soldiers," read the final report of the Force Support Work Group. "There is no official photograph available to the media that provides a professional head and shoulder view of the Soldier with individual achievements. Personal photos have been used in the media to identify Soldiers. But inappropriate or grainy photos do not accurately reflect the professionalism of the Army or the Soldier." The work group recommended the Army require professional or semi-professional head shots for all Soldiers. That suggestion will be researched now by senior Army leaders. Other suggestions by work groups that were accepted for further study by the Army include: • Providing secure storage space for single Soldiers living in barracks • Increasing the number of medical providers in military treatment facilities to decrease the amount of time it takes Soldiers and family members to see a provider • Providing standardized respite care for Wounded Warrior caregivers. "Primary caregivers are vital in the life of a Wounded Warrior and in their recovery," said Rosie Babin, mother and caregiver of a wounded Soldier. "But commonly, the demands of caregiving cause burnout and compassion fatigue. Statistics show that caregivers who provide care 36 or more hours weekly are more likely than non-caregivers to experience depression or anxiety -- for spouses, the rate is six times higher." Babin's Family Support Work Group recommended the Army provide uniform availability of standardized respite care to all caregivers of Wounded Warriors. Respite care means providing support to the caregiver -- providing them with the time they need to take care of themselves so they can continue to provide care to their Soldiers. "By providing temporary relief from the demands of daily assistance to Wounded Warriors -- who typically have complex chronic medical conditions and functional ability -- caregivers can continue to provide maximum support and care," Babin said. Chief of Staff of the Army George W. Casey Jr. thanked conference participants for the suggestions they had brought to his attention, and discussed with them the challenges the Army is tackling now to help relieve some of the stresses faced by today's Army families. The general told attendees that the Army is "out of balance," and that one of the imperatives that must be met to get the Army back into balance is the sustaining of Soldiers and their families. "That's the number one thing we have to do," the general said. "The volunteer force is a national treasure. And the work we are doing on the Army Family Covenant is an important part of our effort to sustain this force." The general also said that preparing Soldiers for war is one of the imperatives, and that increasing dwell time at home station is a significant part of that preparation. "The most important thing we can do to prepare folks is to increase the time that Soldiers spend at home between deployments," he said. "And one of the major elements of the plan to get ourselves back in balance is to increase the size of the Army over the next three years." Increasing the size of the Army means more Soldiers to deploy and less deployment demand on each Soldier. Casey said he planned to have the Army's growth plan completed by 2010 -- but recruiting and retention have made it possible to meet those growth objectives this year. "If you hold demand steady, and you increase our growth, then over the next three years what you see is (that) the average dwell time gradually improves," Casey said. Casey said the Army was operating at less than one year dwell time per one year deployed time when it was using 15-month deployment cycles. Now, he said, the Army is deploying Soldiers for 12 months. This year, he said, he expects the dwell time to increase to nearly 18 months, and in 2010 to actually reach 18 months. By 2011, he said, it will reach 24 months -- if demand stays steady. "Time that Soldiers spend at home is important for a lot of reasons," Casey said. "It is important for them and for you so that they reconstitute themselves -- and the family. Second, it gives them time to start working on other things, and third, it gives us time to get them the equipment and the people they need to get ready for what they are doing next." The Army hosted the first AFAP conference in 1983. Since then, the efforts on the part of conference attendees have resulted in the resolution of some 435 issues. Recommendations to Army senior leadership by AFAP conference attendees have resulted in 107 legislative changes, 154 policy changes, and 173 programs and services improved. Army pulls body armor, despite assertion of safety [2009-02-02] WASHINGTON -- The Army is collecting more than 16,000 sets of body armor ballistic inserts, even though it considers those inserts to be fully capable of doing the job they were designed to do. The action involves 16,413 sets of Enhanced Small Arms Protective Insert plates, or 32,826 plates in total, a mere 1.68 percent of the Army's total inventory of 1.9 million ESAPI plates. The results of "first article tests" on the effectiveness of three designs of ballistic inserts -- the M3D2S2, MP2S2, and M4D2 designs -- are being questioned by the Department of Defense Inspector General. However, both the Army, who conducted the tests, and the office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, who independently assessed and verified the results, disagree with the DOD IG's report. "The government's pre-eminent, independent authority on testing and evaluation is the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation," said Brig. Gen. Peter N. Fuller, of Program Executive Officer, Soldier and commanding general of the Soldier Systems Center. "DOT&E examined the Army's testing of the armor plates referred to in the IG report and determined that the plates passed the tests. In clear, unequivocal language, DOT&E declared that 'the three designs meet the performance specification in place at the time of each test.'" Because there is disagreement between the DOD IG and DOT&E -- both offices of the Department of Defense -- about the effectiveness of the ballistic inserts, Secretary of the Army Pete Geren has asked the deputy secretary of Defense to adjudicate the opposing viewpoints. The Army maintains the ballistic inserts issued to Soldiers are effective, and do in fact provide protection for Soldiers who wear them. However, in order to ensure Soldiers maintain confidence in the body armor issued to them, the Army has agreed to collect the plates until the issue is further reviewed. "Based on DOT&E's evaluation of the testing, the Army considers the armor plates in question to be safe," Fuller said. "Nonetheless, out of an abundance of caution, the plates are being collected to ensure continued confidence in the Army's commitment to the safety of our Soldiers. In the DOD IG report dated Jan. 29, the IG says testing on some of the inserts was not properly conducted. "First article testing for Army Contract 0040 (W91CRB-04-D-0040) was not consistently conducted or scored in accordance with contract terms, conditions, and specifications," the report reads. "Consequently, we believe three of the eight ballistic insert designs that passed first article testing actually failed." The DOD/IG's conclusion does not mean the inserts are unsafe, however. "We did not review the safety of the ballistic inserts," the report read. "Therefore, we did not determine whether these inserts provide the protection intended." What the IG's report did, however, is question the reliability of testing on the inserts -- in effect discrediting both the results of the tests conducted by the Army, and independent assessment and verification of those tests by DOT&E. "As a result, the Army does not have assurance that all inserts purchased under Contract 0040 provide the level of protection required by the contract," the report reads. The Army actually conducted tests on 21 body armor designs, concluding that eight passed and 13 failed. The DOD IG's report disputes that finding, saying an additional three of the designs that received passes by the Army should have also failed. Soldier testifies to Congress on body armor [2009-02-05] WASHINGTON -- During testimony on Capitol Hill regarding force protection programs, Feb. 4, an Army staff sergeant had the opportunity to let members of Congress know about some of the challenges faced by Soldiers in Iraq. Staff Sgt. Fred Rowe of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) testified before the House Armed Services Committee's joint session of the air and land forces subcommittee and the seapower and expeditionary forces subcommittee. Rowe is currently assigned to the 3-187th Infantry at Fort Campbell, Ky. Rowe told Congressmen that in Iraq, he was saved by the body armor he wears, and said that he and the Soldiers he knows feel confident their protective gear is capable of protecting them. "I took three rounds to the chest -- with body armor," Rowe said. "All three rounds were stopped by the plates. It hurt, but I was still mission capable. I was still able to do my job. And once I got my breath back, I was breathing fine and I was thanking the good Lord above that everything was all right." Rowe said he knows the ballistic plates in his protective gear are designed to hold up to a volley of three shots -- and the gear he wore met that standard. "Some of the times when a bullet hits, it ricochets off, and sometimes they imprint and mushroom up. Supposedly it holds up for three shots -- it did for me. But if you get hit once, you replace it," he said. Rowe also told Congressmen that the body armor he wore in Iraq was sometimes too heavy and bulky for the specific mission he was performing. "It comes to a point where you are more mission incapable of doing our job or you're more at risk or vulnerable with all the equipment on," Rowe said of the body armor. "There's times I've been on a mission where I could have gotten out of the firefight a lot quicker and I could have handled business a lot easier if I was able to be more mobile or be more effective with less weight." While the Army leaves it up to commanders to decide what protective gear is required for their Soldiers, Rowe told lawmakers it would be best if those closest to a particular mission could make the call. "I think it should be left up to the commanders or to the independent leaders on the ground to decide what kind of armor we need to take out -- or if we can downgrade," he said. Rowe, who's served as both an infantryman and a sniper during his two deployments to Iraq, said that sometimes Soldiers are tempted to take off pieces of body armor -- at increased risk to themselves -- to make themselves more mobile and agile. "There's a risk all Soldiers are willing to take," he said. "I think that (in) certain situations -- mission dependant -- as Soldiers we would be happy to take off some of the body armor to be more mission capable, more mobile on the ground, more flexible, faster." Army leaders say the weight of protective gear worn by both Soldiers and Marines is heavy on their minds, and they are working to find solutions to the problem. "It is this tradeoff between effectiveness and weight," said Maj. Gen. Robert P. Lennox, assistant deputy chief of staff, G-3/5/7. "How are we going to be able to have lighter capabilities that still allow our Soldiers to do our mission -- we struggle with that and struggle with that in some of the decisions." The general told lawmakers he was willing to further discuss the kinds of decisions the Army faces in a closed session. Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Michael Brogan, Marine Corps Systems Command, program executive officer, MRAP Joint Program Office, told lawmakers he has asked manufacturers to look into developing lighter protective gear for Marines and Soldiers. "This is an area where we need some additional science and technology research conducted," he said. "I have implored (manufacturers) to develop the materials that will allow us to go from hard ceramic plates -- to something that may involve carbon tubes or nano-technology that can significantly reduce the weight. Currently that technology does not exist. There is limited work being done in government laboratories, but today we do not have that technological breakthrough we need to significantly lighten the load." Recently, Secretary of the Army Pete Geren made the decision to identify and collect 16,413 sets of Enhanced Small Arms Protective Insert plates. The inserts are being collected in response to a dispute between the Army, the Department of Defense Inspector General and the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation over adherence to testing standards on the plates. The Defense IG questioned testing procedures for three of the eight ballistic inserts that passed "first article tests" by the Army. However, the director of Operational Test and Evaluation, who independently assessed and verified the results, determined that the plates passed the tests. Brig. Gen. Peter N. Fuller, the commanding general of the Soldier Systems Center, Program Executive Office Soldier, told lawmakers the Army is working to correct issues that would have led to disputes over testing procedures, but that the plates issued to Soldiers are in fact safe. "We never issued defective body armor," Fuller said. "We might have had process issues. We've cleaned up these process issues, and we are moving forward to continue to straighten this out -- but Soldiers have the best body armor by far." Female flag officers honor first woman four-star [2009-02-09] WASHINGTON -- More than 50 retired and current female general and flag officers attended a lunch in honor of Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody, Saturday, at the Women in Military Service for America memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. In November, Dunwoody became the first female officer in U.S. military history to earn a fourth star. She currently serves as commander, U.S. Army Materiel Command. Attending the lunch were other "firsts," including retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Jeanne M. Holm, the first female officer to achieve the rank of major general; retired Vice Adm. Patricia A. Tracey, the first female officer to earn a third star; and retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Carol A. Mutter, the first female officer to be nominated for a third star. The lunch event was hosted by Women's Memorial Foundation president, retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Wilma L. Vaught She said that female veterans who come to visit the WIMSA memorial are proud of their service, and are now proud to see a female officer promoted to the military's highest rank. "Having been involved with the memorial for the past 21 years, I have seen the pride of women who served in World War I, World War II and those who served today," she said. "Now I hear the excitement in their voices and in the words they wrote about (Dunwoody's) selection to four-star. It meant something to all of them -- almost like they were promoted too. And so it is something special for every one of them." Dunwoody told attending generals that breaking barriers is nothing new for the armed forces. "We all know that breaking barriers, shattering glass ceilings, brass ceilings, and rewriting history, is nothing new for the armed forces. Especially for ... pioneers like General Hays, General Holm, Admiral Tracey and General Mutter," she said. "We've all led the way, and in leading, you've given us all something, all women who seek to serve their country, a gift beyond measure -- that's the gift of limitless opportunity. Your courage, your trailblazing, your devotion to our country stands out not just for women, but for all who are proud to wear the uniform." Dunwoody went on to say that in the armed forces, the services do not care about background, or where a service member comes from -- but only for where that person has the potential to go. "We are living proof that we are part of a joint fighting force that values consistent performance, willingness to learn, capacity for growth, and most importantly, potential to lead," Dunwoody said. "And when the opportunity was there, everyone in this room responded." The new general also said that passing leadership skills down to junior officers is the responsibility of every leader, officer and enlisted member, male or female. "It is critical and incumbent on us as leaders throughout the chain of command to continue to encourage, mentor, and coach men and women as they come up through the ranks," she said. Dunwoody also said that despite their advances in the armed forces, women in service today still face challenges -- but not challenges the Army isn't already working hard to address. "We have to ensure that each and every Soldier is treated with dignity and respect -- we have had challenges with dignity and respect -- and we have had challenges with sexual assault issues, which we are now addressing with great vigor," Dunwoody said. Diversity panel meets on Capitol Hill [2009-02-11] WASHINGTON -- Eight future, current and former Soldiers gathered on Capitol Hill Feb. 10 to offer insight and reflection on diversity in today's Army. The eight-person "Army Diversity Panel" met in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill to discuss and take questions from members of Congress and their staff. Included among the panelists were Brig. Gen. Belinda Pinckney, director, Army Diversity Office and Lt. Gen. Michael D. Rochelle, deputy chief of staff, Army G-1. Rochelle said his inspiration for joining the Army, despite his father being a Navy Chief Petty Officer, was actually his uncle, "a romping, stomping airborne infantryman from Korea." "He had me doing parachute landing falls in the backyard as a 5- and 6-year-old," Rochelle said. "He said something to me, though, that he probably would never remember having said. He said in order to be respected as being good, you have to be twice as good. I remembered that." The general conceded that his uncle's reference for how hard African-American Soldiers in the U.S. Army must work to be recognized was dated -- it was the 1950s then. "I did find that, no kidding, that I had to be just about twice as good to be respected as being good," Rochelle said, after having entered the Army himself in the early 1970s. "But that has dissipated over the years. It has dissipated because those who have gone before us have paid prices to allow us therefore to stand on their shoulders." The Army still has room to grow in terms of diversity, said Pinckney. Today, the number of African Americans and other minorities in senior officer positions does not yet match that of the overall American population. This, she said, is something the Army is working on through a human capital strategy that includes looking at accessions, retention and mentoring strategies in the service. "The chief of staff of the Army and the secretary of the Army would like to see, when we look up, when people look up, diverse representation at all levels," she said. "That is why I say we have work to do in that area. The end game is when we stop talking about it and it becomes a way of life -- we're not there yet." In addition to generals Rochelle and Pinckney, the panel included cadets David White and Nichole Myers from West Point; Brig. Gen. Arnold Gordon-Bray, deputy commanding general, U.S. Army Cadet Corps; retired Brig. Gen. Leo A. Brooks, the Boeing Company; 1st Sgt. Steven J. Colbert, the Old Guard; and retired Master Sgt. Mark "Ranger" Jones, president, the Ranger Group. Post-9/11 G.I. Bill could mean cost-free college for Soldiers, families [2009-02-12] WASHINGTON -- A full ride to college is on the way for qualified Soldiers and veterans. The "Post-9/11 Veteran's Education Assistance Act Of 2008," sometimes called the "Post-9/11 G.I. Bill," paves the way for thousands of qualified Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen Marines and military veterans to get a complete four-year degree at no cost to themselves. Soldiers and veterans can begin applying for benefits under the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill beginning Aug. 1. Benefits from the program can be paid out for a total of 36 months. Under a typical degree program, where students attend school for nine months at a time and are then off during the summer months, the plan would allow veterans to get a four-year degree while attending school in residence. "We've moved from a program that pays in essence a flat rate to individuals, to a program that is based on what it is actually costing an individual to go to college," said Keith Wilson, director of education services for Veteran's Affairs. Under the Montgomery G.I. Bill program, the VA sent out individual checks to recipients, and recipients used the money any way they saw fit: for tuition, housing, food, etc., Wilson said. But the payment was not based on how much their tuition cost. "It was up to the individual to come up with whatever additional money they needed to go to school, if any." Wilson said. The new program changes all that. The Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, Wilson said, pays for tuition by sending payments directly to the school. It also pays for student housing by sending a payment to the student. An additional payment for books and supplies also goes directly to the student. With the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, a Soldier may be entitled to tuition payments equal to the cost of the most expensive public, undergraduate, in-state tuition and fees in his or her home state. For instance: a student learns that the most expensive public state school in the state of their home of record costs $1,250 for a semester of courses. If the student opts to attend a private school instead, that school will receive up to $1,250 a semester for tuition. "Potentially, a student can get up to the full cost of tuition for the school they attend," Wilson said. Tuition is not the only benefit extended to potential college-goers. For students attending school more than half the time, the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill also pays housing costs, up to a rate equivalent to the Basic Allowance for Housing rate for an E-5 with dependents in the ZIP code where the school is located. If a student attends school in Charlotte, N.C, for instance, the BAH rate in the area for an E-5 with dependants is $1,179. The student would then receive that much money for rent each month -- even if he or she has no dependents. Students are also entitled to a yearly stipend of up to $1,000 to cover the cost of books and supplies, and students from highly rural areas who are transferring to a school may also be entitled to a one-time payment of $500. Soldiers on active duty may tap in to the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill and apply benefits toward tuition. However, active-duty Soldiers are not entitled to receive the housing allowance from the program, nor the books and supplies stipend. Perhaps one of the best-known benefits of the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill is the ability to transfer the benefits to one's dependents. "For a lot of folks, that's a key issue," Wilson said of the change. "That section of the bill was specifically designed as a retention tool. And it is set up for those individuals who have served 6 years in the Armed Forces and agree to serve an additional period of service after Aug. 1, 2009." The details of who may transfer benefits to their family members, however, are being set by the military services, not the Veterans Administration. That policy has not yet been determined. Unlike the MGIB, which required Soldiers to pay up to $1,200 to participate, the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill requires no such payment. All Soldiers who served after Sept. 11, 2001 may qualify for some or all of the benefits, depending on how long they served. Additionally, the program also serves National Guard and Reserve servicemembers, depending on how much time they were mobilized for active duty. "There are different tiers of benefit payment, depending on how much active service you have," Wilson said, "How many months of active service you have after 9/11. The lowest level is for those that have between 90 days and six months of active service after 9/11." "The percentages go on up until you reach the point where you have 36 months of active duty -- and those individuals qualify for 100 percent of everything," Wilson said. Soldiers who invested in the MGIB by paying the $1,200 buy-in for the program, and who elect to participate in the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, will be refunded a proportional amount of their buy-in, after all entitlement under the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill is used. Those who do not use all their entitlement under the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, do not receive a refund of their MGIB buy-in. Additionally, those who paid into the $600 MGIB "buy-up" program, which increased the benefits under MGIB, will not receive a refund for that money. Wilson said that the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill is not the only game in town for Soldiers. There are other programs the VA still administers that can help Soldiers get their education, including the MGIB (active duty), the MGIB (selective reserve), and the Reserve Educational Assistance Program. About 400,000 individuals were taking advantage of those programs in fiscal year 2008. "VA's previous programs are still available," he said. "They are still in existence, it is just that we have a fourth program we are administering now. Individuals do need to clearly understand their educational goals as well as understand all available programs to ensure they make the best use of their educational opportunities. For many people, they are going to receive a higher benefit under this program than they would have received in the other programs that we still continue to administer. Potentially, a lot more people will find college affordable." Wilson said it is important to understand the new program may not be the program best suited for an individual's needs. Such factors as type of training and availability of other educational assistance are important factors to consider before deciding which program to use, he said. There are limits on what kinds of education a student can get with the benefits of the new Post-9/11 G.I. Bill. For instance, the benefits can only be used for graduate and undergraduate degrees, and vocational/technical training. And all training must be taken at an institute of higher learning. "The new program does not cover all the kinds of training the older programs do," Wilson said. "For instance, on-the-job training, apprenticeship training, or flight training -- those types of things are only covered under the MGIB, not the new program." Benefits under the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill can be used for all levels of degree programs, however. The program allows Soldiers to earn a second degree, a master's degree or even a doctorate. About 8 percent of the MGIB beneficiaries use the program toward graduate training, Wilson said. Soldiers or veterans who bought into the MGIB and who have already tapped into that program can still transfer the remainder of their benefits to the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill program, Wilson said. Both programs offer 36 months of "eligibility," which means that a Soldier or veteran can draw benefits for 36 months from one program or the other. "If I use 30 months under program A (MGIB), I can transition to program B (the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill) and get six months of coverage there," Wilson said. NCO throws bank robber for loop in Texas [2009-02-13] WASHINGTON -- Master Sgt. Donald Murrah probably didn't think he'd have a real exciting day last June when he went to the Wells Fargo Bank in Fort Worth, Texas, to do a routine errand, and instead became instrumental in thwarting a robbery. The retired sergeant -- now a Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps instructor at Haltom High School in Haltom City, Texas -- chose the bank's parking lot as a meeting point where he could lend some personal military gear to a friend and retired Soldier, 1st Sgt. David Long. "After I gave him the gear, he and I sat around there for a bit to chat," said Murrah. It was during their chat, just before noon that morning, that Murrah and Long noticed a suspicious character entering the bank. "I had seen him get out of a taxi cab and walk up to the bank -- this guy," Murrah said. "And he was wearing a jacket, long pants, and a hat. But in Texas in June it's real hot outside." Murrah told his friend that something was out of the ordinary and they'd better pay attention to what was going on. "We have to keep an eye on this guy, something is not right here," Murrah said to his friend. "As we stood outside and were talking, we saw a lady walk out real quick. Then I was telling the first sergeant that I think (the guy) robbed the bank. I said we'd watch and see what he does when he came out." The suspicious looking fellow was 57-year-old Larry Don Enos. And Murrah's suspicions were correct. Enos had indeed robbed the bank, using a 32- caliber semi-automatic pistol. According to a U.S. Department of Justice report, Enos, who had been wearing a disguise that consisted of, among other things, sunglasses, a wig and a false beard and mustache, had pointed his weapon at the bank manager and demanded money. After bank employees complied with the request, Enos had also asked the bank manager to drive him away from the bank. The bank manager opted instead to give the robber keys to his own vehicle along with instructions as to where the vehicle was parked. "So he came out and he was trying to open a car," Murrah said. "I was on the south side of the building and he walked out on the north side and I could see him after he passed the building he was trying to get into the car." Murrah said that Enos appeared to struggle trying to enter the vehicle. He learned later the bank manager had intentionally misdirected the robber to the wrong car -- presumably to buy enough time for the police to arrive. But the robber still needed to get away, and the line of occupied vehicles waiting for the ATM and drive-through teller window looked like a likely prospect for his escape. Enos first approached a woman at the bank's drive-up ATM. As he made demands on the woman in the car, Murrah had already started moving toward the robber. "He tried to carjack her, but she drove off," Murrah said. "At that time I was just about up to him. After that, he went to the next lane (of vehicles)." Murrah must have moved a little too close to Enos for the robber's comfort, and that's when Enos pointed the gun at Murrah. "I ducked behind a concrete pillar," Murrah said, adding that it wasn't the first time he'd had a gun pointed at him. The robber moved on to a sports utility vehicle in the drive-through teller's lane, driven by a woman with two children in the car. According to the DOJ report, Enos pointed the gun at the driver, about 12 inches from her face, and told her to get out. She told him there were children in the car, but, the report said, Enos told the driver he didn't care. It was at that point Enos' bank-robbing adventure came to a surprise ending. "He got to the van and was about to carjack a lady and her two kids," Murrrah said. "He kind of had his body halfway in the van and I grabbed him by the collar. You know in Judo how you do a hip toss. I knew I had to get him off his feet. And that's the only way I'd have any leverage because he had a gun. "I grabbed him by the collar, one hand on each side of his collar and tossed him over my left side. He landed on the ground, the money fell out of the bag, and I held him down and held his right hand down that had the gun in it and I pried his fingers loose. We just waited for the Fort Worth police to get there then -- it seemed like a matter of seconds." Murrah said it was partly Army training and partly the martial arts courses he'd taken in Korea that allowed him to do what he did that day in Texas. "The Army always tells you to pay attention to detail," Murrah said. "I guess that's one habit I picked up -- I always look for that. And you have to care for the safety of others. They always taught us in the Army: take care of your Soldiers -- mission first and take care of Soldiers so they can take care of the mission." Still, Murrah said he was in disbelief after what he'd done. "After it happened I couldn't believe what I did," he said. "I thought that was kind of stupid -- a guy had a gun and I chased after him and I didn't have a gun. My adrenaline was going so bad ... it took a couple of hours to calm down before I could write my police statement." For his part in the robbery, Enos pleaded guilty to bank robbery, two counts of using or carrying a firearm during a crime of violence, and one count of carjacking, the DOJ report said. Enos faced a maximum sentence of life in prison and a $1 million dollar fine. While awaiting a sentencing hearing scheduled for Dec. 15, 2008, he died on Oct. 14. For his actions, Murrah received recognition from the Fort Worth Police Department, and will receive the Soldiers Medal during a ceremony Feb. 18 at Haltom High School where he works. Loss of units in Europe would affect 'partnership capacity' [2009-02-18] WASHINGTON -- The scheduled loss of two heavy brigades from U.S. Army European Command could hinder the command's ability to continue building partnerships on the continent. Gen. Carter F. Ham, commanding general, U.S. Army Europe and Seventh Army, told reporters during a briefing Tuesday at the Pentagon that losing those two brigades would impact USAREUR capabilities. "I have recommended to my operational boss (Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, U.S. European Command) that we revisit those decisions and it is my estimation that in order to accomplish the mission we have that we need a different force posture in Europe than is currently proposed," Ham said. The Army in Europe is now about 42,000 men and women. By 2013 or 2014, Ham said, the plan is to reduce to about 32,000. That Army, he said, would be based on two brigade combat teams: one Stryker and one airborne. Two heavy brigade combat teams are scheduled to leave Europe in 2012-2013. Right now, Ham said, no decision has been made to reverse the move of those two units out of Europe. So for now, Ham said, he is preparing for their loss. But he has emphasized that the longer the Army goes toward moving those forces out of Europe, the harder it will be and the more costly it will be to keep them were the decision to be reversed. "The challenge is the longer we go, of course, if the decision is changed, then it's more difficult -- probably more costly to change the decision," Ham said. "So a sooner decision would obviously be beneficial." The loss of the two brigades, including the 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division in Schweinfurt, Germany, and the 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division, based in Baumholder, coupled with demand for forces in Iraq and Afghanistan staying at current levels, will hinder USAREUR's ability to build partnerships in Europe, Ham said. "I think if we stay on the current time line and the pace of deployments, operational deployments, does not diminish, then we'll continue to have -- I will continue to have an inability to support the Building Partner Capacity missions to the degree that I think is necessary," Ham said. "So that would be the first and foremost mission that would -- that would be affected by that." Building "partnership capacity" between the United States and European nations through combined military exercises has been a key focus for USAREUR, the general said. "That's a real and vital mission for us," Ham said, noting the changes that have happened on the continent since his departure nearly a decade ago. "Just about everything we do has a multinational flavor to it." The Army in Europe conducts combined training with the armies of other nations, including Bulgaria and Romania. This summer, he said, the command has major multinational training planned. "It is larger in scale than it has been in previous years and we think that is an important consideration," he said. "If our current plans hold, we'll cycle a number of U.S. companies through both Romania and Bulgaria under battalion-level leadership to partner with the Bulgarians and the Romanians for the training that will occur roughly from July through October. So a larger presence and for a longer period of time -- we think that's a good thing." He also said USAREUR is in dialogues with those two nations about what other countries would be good candidates to include in training, to immediately participate in observer status, and later with actual troop participation. He said training in Bulgaria and Romania allows the Army to do more than in Germany, due to spectrum management there and to the size of training areas. Should the need for an increase of forces in Afghanistan arise, Ham said, USAREUR would be postured to provide forces as needed. "We all are aware of the request by (Gen. David D. McKiernan, commander, International Security Assistance Force and commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan) for additional forces for Afghanistan," Ham said. " We're also aware that that's under consideration here. And at some point those decisions will be made as to whether additional forces and how many and what type will -- and what timelines would deploy." Most Europe-based Army forces are now deploying to Iraq, Ham said. A change in where forces would go would necessitate a change in training in Europe. Most tactical training for Army units in Europe is done at the training center at Hohenfels, Ham said. It is there that changes would need to be made to support increased deployments to Afghanistan. "It's simply changing signage from Arabic to Pashtu or to Dari; a little bit of changing in the clothing that the role-players wear, those kinds of things," Ham said. "More problematic for us is the language capability. We've found that the geography -- the topography is less important than having the right role-players in -- with the right backgrounds so that the unit that's going through its training can exercise all of its intelligence systems, all of its collection systems with the appropriate language being spoken and with the appropriate familial and tribal connections." The kind of restructuring needed to support that training is "well underway," the general said. The general also talked about the Army's plans to modify the service's footprint in Europe to five central locations. Accomplishing that involves the return of the 1st Armored Division Headquarters and two heavy brigade combat teams to the United States in addition to the deactivation of V Corps in July. "That would leave us with five enduring communities in Europe," Ham said. "The biggest challenge in all of that at present is the consolidation of the Airborne Brigade Combat Team in Italy. Construction of that facility is -- I should say the demolition of the site in preparation for construction is now under way. The Italian government's been hugely supportive of that." The rising suicide rate in the Army is also of concern to Ham. He said one of the challenges he has is ensuring that new commanders assigned to units rotated back from Iraq temper training schedules for their units until Soldiers have had time to settle back in. In that way, he said, he hopes to get a handle on one of the causes of suicide in the Army -- the high operations tempo. "They have to allow their unit to catch their breath," he said. "Even if the Soldiers are new to the unit, they likely have previous deployments. And so we've got to get some time. So programs that focus on families, focus on soldier well-being; you've seen some discussion about Battlemind and Warrior Adventure Quest and those kinds of things. Most of that, if we can get time, gives us a better opportunity." An increase in dwell time for Soldiers to about 24 months is on the horizon, Ham said. "If you assume that current force demand, then much of it then revolves around how rapidly can you grow the Army," Ham said. The Army plans to increase its end strength by some 74,200 Soldiers across the total force. Tied up in that effort, Ham said, is funding, construction, retention and recruiting. "So I think probably -- we're probably at least a couple years away from getting to 24 months dwell." Were force demand to stay the same in Iraq and to increase in Afghanistan, Ham said, current dwell time of 12 months may not decrease -- but, he said, he believes the goal is to keep the demand where it is now and, as the Army grows, Soldiers can have additional dwell time. "That dwell time not only helps us in the human dimension, it also helps us get back into this balance of full-spectrum capabilities that we have," Ham said. "(So) that we don't have to keep training units exclusively for counterinsurgency operations and we can start getting some more training in and provide the capability to the nation that we are supposed to." Army seeks language, medical skills from non-citizens [2009-02-23] WASHINGTON -- The Army plans to fill shortages in critical language and medical billets with "legally present non-citizens." Under the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest pilot recruiting program -- a Department of Defense-wide initiative -- the Secretary of Defense has authorized the Army to recruit up to 890 individuals who are living legally in the United States but who are not citizens. Through service to the Army, those individuals may be able to earn citizenship. To participate in the MAVNI program, individuals must possess skills needed to fill billets where the Army has identified shortages. The Army has identified shortages in foreign language skills and specific professional medical skills, said Dr. Naomi Verdugo, who serves as the assistant deputy for recruiting for the assistant secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. "We've never, until this program, had a way to access highly educated non-citizens who are here legally but don't have Green Cards," said Verdugo. "We're targeting this group, mainly because they fill two important critical needs: healthcare skills and language and culture skills. That's two groups that are hard for us to get." With the MAVNI program, the Army is looking for individuals that can speak languages such as Bengali, Hungarian, Lao, Nepalese, Somali, Urdu or Yoruba. In fact, there are 35 different languages the Army is looking for. To fill medical billets, the Army is looking for pediatricians, family practice doctors, oral surgeons, urologists, plastic surgeons, dentists, microbiologists, and operating room nurses, in addition to nearly 30 other specialties. Through the MAVNI program, the Army plans to bring in 557 individuals with language skills and 333 individuals with medical skills. Verdugo said all medical professionals that are brought in under the MAVNI program must be licensed to practice their skill in the United States. All those brought in under MAVNI must also be skilled in English. The Army will find recruits with language skills through the New York City recruiting battalion only, due to the high level of foreign language speakers in that region. For those with medical skills, the Army will pull from across the United States. Verdugo said the Army isn't officially advertising the MAVNI program, but expects it to be successful through word of mouth. "We are kind of expecting them to come in with no advertising for this program," she said. "We are reaching out to immigration attorneys, they will in turn inform their clients. And some hospitals have also expressed interest in helping us to get citizenship for their doctors." Those brought into the Army under the MAVNI program are entitled to apply for American citizenship, and their applications for citizenship will be expedited. Nevertheless, those that apply for citizenship as a result of service in the Army and are subsequently declined for citizenship, may be subject to dismissal from the Army. United States laws 10 USC Sec. 504 and 8 USC Sec. 1440 spell out when non-citizens may join the U.S. military and how they may apply for citizenship as a result of that service. Applicants for the MAVNI program must meet specific criteria before they can be accepted into the Army. For instance, the legality of each applicant will be verified through the Department of Homeland Security before the individual is accepted into the Army. Additionally, each enlistee will be subject to the same stringent background checks and security screenings all Army enlistees undergo. Applicants to MAVNI must also meet or exceed typical recruiting standards for the Army. For instance, all accepted into the Army through MAVNI must have a high school diploma, score above average -- over 50th percentile -- on the Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery, and must not be in need of a waiver for conduct. The MAVNI program is a pilot program -- which means it is a test. The deadline to declare a desire to participate in the program is Dec. 31. After the pilot program has concluded, the Army and other participating services will track the progress of participants and share that information with the Department of Defense. "We will be collecting data and outcome measures of how these folks do in the military," Verdugo said. "Every other month we will assess that data to determine what it is telling us. At the end of the one-year pilot, or after we reach the program capacity, we will sit down with DOD and look at what comes next." AER helps Soldiers with interest-free loans, grants -- rates among top charities for efficiency [2009-02-24] WASHINGTON -- Army Emergency Relief, which begins its annual campaign next week, provided more than $252 million in assistance to more than a quarter million Soldiers and family members between 2003 and 2007. The AER bills itself as "the Army's own emergency financial assistance organization." It assists Soldiers with interest-free loans, grants and tuition money for family members. Money for the program comes from voluntary donations by Soldiers and civilians, and from investments made by AER. In fact, each year, AER provides more aid to Soldiers than what was collected through donations -- the remainder of the money comes from the dividends paid on investments made by AER. "When people ask me what amount of the dollar they donate to AER is actually spent on Soldiers, I can tell them that in 2007, we spent about $1.84 of that dollar on program costs," said Andrew H. Cohen, deputy director for finance and treasurer, Army Emergency Relief. AER maintains sufficient resources to invest -- ensures there is always enough money to pay to Soldiers in need. At one point, the total value of AER investments peaked at about $297 million. Today AER's investments are worth about $190 million. That money, Cohen said, is an insurance policy to ensure that AER always has the money it needs to help Soldiers were a major unforeseen crisis occur, such as a large mobilization. "The investment capital represents the body of funds that has grown over the years from when AER ran surpluses," Cohen said. "That money is not just sitting there. It is earning a revenue stream allowing us to operate over and above what we get from donations. It represents seed money and investments. And that money can be used for anything, such as a mass casualty event where a lot of people need a lot of money. During the Gulf War, for instance, we went from $25 to $45 million of assistance in a matter of months." Cohen pointed out that while the investment capital is earning additional funds for AER, it is still available to help Soldiers when needed. "It's not held in reserve -- it's available for use," he said." Every Soldier that has a valid need has gotten assistance, so the needs of our Soldiers are being met." In fact, the AER's ability to manage its funds in a way that provides the most assistance to Soldiers has earned AER its third consecutive "4-star rating" from Charity Navigator, for "its ability to efficiently manage and grow its finances." Charity Navigator further stated: "Only 10 percent of the charities we've rated have received at least three consecutive 4-star evaluations, indicating that 'Army Emergency Relief consistently executes its mission in a fiscally responsible way and outperforms most other charities in America.'" The AER is not about giving money away, but rather meeting the emergency needs of Soldiers and their families. It accomplishes this mission by providing interest free loans and grants as appropriate. Cohen said assistance is provided as loans when a Soldier has the ability to repay and grants when repayment would cause a future hardship. Unlike most charitable non profit organizations AER clientele, Soldiers, have an income and the ability to repay their no interest loans, which is in turn is made available to other Soldiers. And they don't want a handout -- they are simply in need of funds for unexpected emergencies. "The bulk of financial assistance is traditionally for rent, mortgages, housing, personally owned vehicle repair, or travel under emergency leave conditions," Cohen said. "For instance, a recruiter and his family might get stationed in Los Angeles. And while he gets a basic allowance for housing, he might not have the money he needs for expensive rental deposits or start-up costs to move into a home there. That is where AER could help." Another example, Cohen said, is a family renting a home where the landlord fails to make mortgage payments. That family could find the home is being foreclosed on by the bank. "They might find they've got a week to get out of the house and find a new place to live," Cohen said. "That's another case where AER could help out with emergency moving funds, in the form of an interest-free loan." Last year, AER provided $83 million to 72,000 Soldiers and Families. About 24 percent of that amount was in the form of tax-free grants and 76 percent was for interest-free loans. Between Jan. 1, 2003 and Dec. 31, 2007, AER paid out a total of over $252 million. The majority of that was in the form of interest-free loans. About $63 million -- as reported in a recent story by the Associated Press -- was given away in the form of grants for such things as tuition for qualifying family members, emergency travel for Soldiers who are in hardship situations for when their loved ones die, and for aid to the widows and orphans of fallen Soldiers. "Widows and orphans automatically get grants," Cohen said. But the bulk of money provided by AER is in the form of interest-free loans, Cohen said. And of the loans given out, some 95 percent of Soldiers pay the money back. "This is about Soldiers helping Soldiers," Cohen said. "If Soldiers know you need help to get through a financial bind, they're going to help - and again, they willingly repay these no interest loan so that the money can help the next Soldier." The AER works very closely with the Army and with a Soldier's chain of command to ensure that much needed funds get where they need to go. "Unit leadership needs to be aware of when Soldiers are experiencing problems" Cohen said. Both AER and the Army believe there is a moral imperative to take care of the Soldier -- and knowing when a Soldier needs assistance and helping them to get that assistance is part of that. When a Soldier needs financial assistance, they may also need other kinds of help -- If leaders are unaware of a problem they cannot be part of the solution and provide the required help." While Soldiers must pay back the interest-free loans they are offered by AER, they have actually come out ahead by talking first with their chain of command to seek relief through AER," Cohen said. Were Soldiers to go to other lenders, a "payday loan" lender for instance, they may pay an annual percentage rate of up to 36 percent. For a $1,000 loan over the course of two weeks, that amounts to a mere $13 in interest. But the 36-percent APR cap was instituted by federal law as part of the Fiscal Year 2007 Military Authorization Act. Prior to that, payday lenders were charging as much as an 800-percent APR on loans. Prior to 2007, the same $1,000 loan over the course of two weeks could have cost a Soldier more than $300 in interest. Dual focus of Army scientists yields spinouts [2009-02-26] WASHINGTON -- The Army has a dual focus in its development of science and technology: modernization for the future and accelerating technology for today's warfighter. During the Association of the United States Army's Institute of Land Warfare Winter Symposium and Exposition, Feb. 25-27, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Dr. Thomas H. Killion, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for Research and Technology, and the Army's chief scientist, explained how the Army is doing research and development in technology that will help the Soldier fight better in the future and in the near term. "We are always focused on the future, in terms of looking at the boundaries of what technology can do and how it will enable our future Soldiers," Killion said. "Doing basic and applied research, and advanced technology development to really explore what is feasible, what is possible in terms of demonstrating, and then demonstrating prototypes of that capability, are phases we go through in technology development." Killion said the Army is concerned with getting technology out to the field as soon as possible, even if the larger systems that technology is part of are not ready to be fielded. "Because we are at war, we have to look at how we accelerate the delivery of that technology and take advantage of what we know now about technology and create capabilities that we give to Soldiers today," Killion said. A "spinout" of technology means that parts of larger systems may be ready to field, even if the larger system is not ready yet. Some of the unmanned vehicles in use now, derived from technology developed for Future Combat Systems, are examples of spinout technology currently in use. "It's not just about delivering FCS sometime in the future; it's about bringing technology forward that we have developed for FCS and putting it in the hands of Soldiers today, something we are doing right now," Killion said. Some examples that support the current war are unmanned systems. Robotics, for instance, like the UAV, which have been around for decades. "They are being used on a broad basis today," he said. "(And are) critical to maintain situational awareness for Soldiers." Also included in FCS spinout technology are the ground robots in use. In years prior, those unmanned ground vehicles were not prevalent in the force, now they permeate the Army. "They were not deployed in numbers -- if you go out in the field today there are thousands of them -- on the order of 10,000 or so, doing significant tasks," Killion said. The scientist also said that putting that technology out to the field doesn't just help Soldiers. Having technology it in the field also helps scientists that developed that technology in the first place, because of the valuable feedback from Soldiers that use it. "It's amazing the kind of feedback we get back from our Soldiers -- on what they were doing with the robots and on some of the challenges they were having in terms of the technology that we need to improve to provide additional capability to make them more reliable and effective in the jobs they are doing," Killion said. "(Soldiers) look at unmanned systems as just as important as manned systems." The Army is working today to tackle problems that are plaguing Soldiers in the field, including finding ways to reduce the weight of technology that Soldiers are being asked to carry or may be asked to carry in the future. As technology increases, and as the Army ensures Soldiers are more connected to networks, the amount of gear they will carry will increase. And the weight of those systems can be reduced, for instance, by decreasing the weight of display technology and by reducing the number of batteries that Soldiers must carry. "The Soldier is burdened because we are giving him greater situational awareness -- he is part of a network of information," Killion said. "Today we give them a personal data assistant, essentially like a Blackberry, but it tends to be somewhat heavy and uses a lot of batteries. It also has a glass display that happens to break if dropped, even if ruggedized." A response to that technological challenge is the flexible display the Army is developing in conjunction with industry and academia. The flexible displays are similar to the displays on the Sony Reader or the Amazon Kindle. "It arranges molecules so they either reflect light or don't reflect light," Killion said. "Depending on how many molecules, you can get different shades of grey. It's a very low power consumption display. Once you orient those molecules, you don't have to apply any further power." Once an image is put on to the flexible display, the image stays put, even if the power is disconnected. So unlike liquid crystal displays, continuous power is not needed. Power is only needed if the image needs to be changed again. In that way, power use for the flexible displays is minimized. Additionally, the flexible displays don't need to contain glass, meaning they can be curled and flexed without damaging them. They will ultimately be part of information tools that are far more durable than what is currently available, Killion said. Killion showed a video that illustrated the durability of the current flexible displays. A metal ram smashed several times into the display device with what appeared to be a force great enough to smash a typical LCD. But the flexible display remained undamaged. "Try doing that with your Blackberry," Killion said. "That's why you want a capability like a flexible display. It's lighter weight, lower power, and very rugged for use in the field. That's the essential idea." "We see a real need to drive down the power demands, increase the ruggedness and reduce the weight of displays we give to our Soldiers or even that we put into our systems," Killion said. "And we need to push the state of the art in terms of what can be done with such displays so we can provide displays that have the necessary characteristics in terms of resolution, brightness, and color that is not available in the commercial marketplace right now." Killion said such flexible displays could be wrapped around a Soldier's arm or even built into the fabric of his uniform. Supplying power for all the new technology is a critical problem for the Army, Killion said, especially for dismounted Soldiers -- who ultimately must carry the technology and the weight that goes with the related power supplies. The Army is looking into ways to solve the problem though reduction in need for power and for improved portable power technology. "We've improved the chemistry of batteries and provided rechargeable systems that use the rollout solar cells to recharge them, to reduce the burden on the Soldier to have to carry multiple sets of batteries," Killion said. "Like a map it can be rolled up in your backpack, and when you need it you unroll it and hook it into batteries and get a recharge." Killion also said the Army is looking into technologies such as fuel cells or hybrid electric. "If you talk about the kinds of power systems we are going to field in the future, it's likely to be hybrid electric, to some degree because of energy efficiency," he said. "We can drive down fuel consumption, but an even bigger factor is that we have to have larger and larger amounts of electricity to support all of the electronic and computing systems we are putting into our vehicles. We are definitely a high-tech Army today and are becoming more high-tech. We are becoming more dependent on the support to those systems." In its quest to create the technology it needs for today and tomorrow, Killion said the Army is not on its own. He said the Army invests in important defense technology with other Department of Defense agencies such as the Navy, the Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA. Outside DOD, Killion said the Army partners with the Department of Energy, the national labs and with academia and industry. "The Army cannot sustain the base of science and technology that is needed for our future capabilities on its own," Killion said. "We have to depend in part on the investments of others. And those investments are affecting the technology that is available to us." Next war will begin in cyberspace, experts predict [2009-02-27] WASHINGTON -- Networks that were once separated will soon be melded together, requiring a combined effort to defend the information flow, Defense cyberspace experts said Thursday. "Network-centric warfare means it is all connected today," said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Harry Raduege Jr., now chairman of the Deloitte Center for Network Innovation and director of Deloitte & Touche LLP. "No longer are we looking individually at military departments and agencies going it alone," Raduege said. "It has to be an integrated, coordinated effort across the Department of Defense and the intelligence community." Raduege spoke during a panel discussion before an audience of Soldiers, foreign military officers and members of the defense industry Feb. 26, at the Association of the United States Army's Institute of Land Warfare Winter Symposium and Exposition in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Discussion by panel members focused on cyberspace, information warfare, and electronic warfare. Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, moderated the panel. "Network convergence: that is one of the most important things that is going to happen to us as an Army, as a military community, and as a nation," Alexander said. "When we talk about network convergence, if you think about what is happening on the global network, the change is significant -- order of magnitude changes every three or four years." The general said the Army must work to train warriors to fight in the cyber environment. "What we need from the Army is we train Soldiers how to operate in a network environment, how to do the collection, how to do the attack, how to do the defense, so they can operate in an FCS (Future Combat Systems) environment while their adversaries are doing the same things," he said. The next war will begin in cyberspace, Alexander said. "If you think about it, phase zero of the next war, I think, is going to be in this domain," he said. "Phase zero will be in cyberspace first. And that is where we have to win. We cannot afford to lose that." Alexander also said Soldiers need to be aware that the enemy is watching them, even if they think they aren't worth looking at. "What you say ... what you type, others can get. And there are other ways that the enemy can come at you. You need to think about cyberspace as a form of warfare that can be used against you, to collect on you, to target you, to blow up devices around you, and to initiate those devices," Alexander said. "You are vulnerable -- don't think they are not interested in you. There are 1.3 billion Chinese. They are interested in what we do and say, and when we are in the field, the adversary is very interested." Timothy L. Thomas, senior analyst, United States Army Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., spoke about the advances the Chinese have made in cyber and information warfare. "How good are these guys? They really and truly do look at us and really and truly do understand us," he said. "If you get to Beijing or Shanghai, take a visit to a Peoples Liberation Army military bookstore. You will be stunned at the number of Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine and Coast Guard manuals that have been translated into Chinese and are available for sale." Thomas said the Chinese have applied strategies to their use of cyberspace that are very different than what Americans are familiar with. "Here's a thought most Americans won't be familiar with: how do you use a packet of electrons as a stratagem? And what is a stratagem? It is an attempt to deceive someone, to deceive their perception," he said. Thomas said the Chinese may apply a strategy like "kill with a borrowed sword," to their use of cyber warfare. Such an attack may involve running packets of information through one nation to attack another. They may also combine '"make noise in the east, attack in the west" with another stratagem "exhaust the enemy at the gate, attack him at your ease." "You might have an onslaught of scans on the Pentagon, when really the focus was Silicon Valley," Thomas said. "They are really adept at using packets of electrons in ways that we might not think." Thomas said there are two important things about Chinese thought processes that should keep Americans up at night. "One well-known Chinese strategist wrote that borders and resources no longer matter," he said. "What matters is financial flows. The more China buys up our debt, the more influence they may have in this arena -- we need to keep a close eye out here." The second thing, he said, is that the Chinese view strategy differently than Americans view strategy. Where Americans may summarize strategy as "ends, ways and means," he said the Chinese look at things differently. "They look at the world ... or a battlefield situation in a comprehensive way," he said. "What they do is assess the objective factors they see. This might be our science and technology level, this might be how much of our budget we spend on defense, this might be where our forces are located. These are objective factors. Then, subjectively, they look at how do you manipulate these things. This is to them the essence of strategy." Raduege said that the threat from cyberspace is real, and that there are already real-world examples that can be looked at for study. Such attacks, he said, include the Russian cyber attack prior to invasion of Chechnya in 2002 and cyber attacks against Estonia in 2007. "That is when cyber attacks were used but without physical aggression," Raduege said. "And Kyrgyzstan -- just earlier this year -- a directed denial of service attack shutting down two out of four of their ISPs for 10 days or so, where they lost 80 percent of their Internet capability to the west. "Those are threats, they are real, and it is happening," Raduege said. "It is out there." Vice chief: Army pushing power to lowest level [2009-03-03] WASHINGTON -- The Army should be focusing on three key areas in the short term said the service's vice chief of staff. During the Association of the United States Army's Institute of Land Warfare Winter Symposium and Exposition, Feb. 25-27, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli said the Army should focus on connectivity, commonality and survivability. With the rise of the "strategic corporal" -- the junior noncommissioned officer that makes game-changing decisions in the field -- it is imperative that even the junior-most Soldier in the field have as much information as he needs to do his job, Chiarelli said. "Information is power, and we need to make sure we are pushing power down to the lowest levels on the battlefield, where it is most needed," he said. "It is no longer realistic to assume all or even the majority of game-changing decisions will be made at senior levels of command; to the contrary, those decisions are more often made by the individual Soldier on the ground. We are committed to the network and to networking every Soldier." Over the last few years the Army has developed new technology to help push more information to the Soldiers that need it most, the general said. In 2004, for instance, the 1st Cavalry Division deployed to Iraq with Command Post of the Future. "In one year, commanding a division in Baghdad, because of CPOF, there was not a single time that I called a brigade commander to my command post to issue an operations order," Chiarelli said. "We did it all over the collaboration network of CPOF." The Tactical Ground Reporting System is also empowering Soldiers, according to the vice chief of staff. The TIGR is a multimedia system for Soldiers at platoon level and allows for sharing information such as digital photos, voice recordings and GPS tracking. The TIGR is now arming Soldiers from 17 combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan with the information they need to do their jobs, Chiarelli said. Among combat systems, a lack of commonality causes problems for the Army, Chiarelli said. "You can look at five different vehicles and find five different chassis, engines, drive trains -- you name it," he said. The result of that is increased cost and a "heavier load" across the force. "If you want to see something that affects deployability, look at our lack of commonality." But in some systems, the Army has reaped the benefits of commonality. One such system is the Stryker family of vehicles, which includes about 10 vehicles in all. Some of those vehicles include the Mobile Gun System, the Reconnaissance Vehicle, the Fire Support Vehicle and the NBC Reconnaissance Vehicle. Each of the 10 vehicles in the Stryker family is built on a common platform and shares common parts. "This basic commonality has significantly enhanced the efficiency and effectiveness of the overall system," he said. When certain parts of a combat vehicle break, the vehicle can be marked "deadlined," meaning it is not available for Soldiers to use. But some 70 percent of the parts that could deadline a Stryker vehicle are common across the family of vehicles. Because of that commonality, if a part must be replaced on one Stryker vehicle, the chances of it being available locally are greatly improved -- meaning vehicle mechanics don't have to wait for a part to come in. "This has greatly reduced both cost and wait time for units on the ground," Chiarelli said. "Stryker has provided a great model for how we might further increase commonality across areas in the Army." The general said that Stryker is just one great example of how commonality has improved efficiency for the Army. Another example, he said, is the Future Combat Systems family of vehicles. Those eight vehicles will share even greater commonality than the Stryker. Protecting Soldiers -- providing survivability -- is also a priority for the Army, Chiarelli said. "It's easy to make a case for deployability on this side of the next war; however, once the next war begins, survivability will arguably become an even bigger priority," he said. "In the near term we must ensure we are not sacrificing one in the fervent pursuit of the other." The general said he recently spent time at the Army research labs at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md. There, the Army is researching the next generation of armor. "I saw incredible armor protection technology currently under development," he said. "And I am truly amazed at all that has been accomplished in recent years and promises to be accomplished in the future to improve survivability on the battlefield." Survivability is critical across the Army, and the service has learned "important lessons" about the value of protection while fighting the war on terror in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The promise of better survivability increases both the confidence and capability of Soldiers, Chiarelli said. One sign of the Army's commitment to providing survivability to Soldiers is the success of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle. Last week, the general said, the 10,000th MRAP in theater arrived at Camp Liberty in Iraq. "In less than two years, this vehicle has saved an untold number of arms, legs and lives," he added. The general also emphasized that while he is in support of a deployable force, he doesn't believe that expeditionary quality should come at the cost of protecting the lives of Soldiers. "Let there be no doubt, I am for a deployable and expeditionary force -- but I cannot in good conscious sacrifice the incredible advantage we have made in passive protection material and composites -- advantages that have allowed our Soldiers to walk away from the effects of the (explosively formed penetrators) hidden in trashcans in downtown Baghdad, or an (improvised explosive device) buried under a road in Afghanistan," he said. The general also said that in modern warfare, active protection systems must be built. But those systems, he said, must be in addition to, not in lieu of, the best passive protection systems that can be provided to Soldiers. First female 4-star credits diversity for strength of Army [2009-03-06] WASHINGTON -- Diversity is one of the strengths of the Army, and as an organization, it is one of the best at leveraging that diversity, said the service's first four-star female general. "Your Army considers diversity a strength -- and we proudly lead the nation in offering equal opportunity to all," said Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody commander, U.S. Army Materiel Command. "Our Army is nourished and energized by the diversity of the men and women in our formations. And women today are contributing at every level and on every battlefield." Dunwoody spoke March 6 at a lunch for female Reserve Officer Training Corps and U.S. Military Academy cadets at the U.S. Capitol Visitor's Center in Washington, D.C. She was introduced by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works. The lunch followed discussion panels involving sexual assault and opportunities for women in the Army. The three events were held in recognition of Women's History Month. Dunwoody told the gathered cadets that "diversity" is more than having different kinds of people - it also means having different perspectives. "It is not only having some of each, but is (about) having the voices of each heard at the table," she said. "This is the true value of diversity. The best solutions and the best decisions will be made because we will have leveraged the strength and power that diversity brings to the entire team. More than ever before, we need to understand the complexities of the problems we face. The consequences of not doing that are far too great." Dunwoody made history when on Nov. 14 she became the first woman in the U.S. military to attain the rank of four-star general. The general told the cadets at the lunch to remember the female officers that came before them who pushed through the ranks to achieve notable "firsts" for women in the military. Such notable women across the Department of Defense include: Brig. Gen. Anna Mae Hays, the first in DOD to enter the general officer ranks; Air Force Maj. Gen. Jeanne M. Holm, the first to earn a second star; Vice Adm. Patricia A. Tracey, the first to earn a third star; and Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Carol A. Mutter, the first to be nominated for a third star. "As we celebrate Women's History Month, we must not forget those who have gone before us," Dunwoody told the cadets. "But let's also recognize that we know the current and future leaders sitting here in this room will continue to build on our proud legacy -- a legacy earned by our pioneers -- women who knew no fear, and by women who risked everything they had to serve their country." The general told the room of cadets that she had faith in their ability to succeed individually and to bring talent to the Army. She also told them their time in service, as Army officers, would be a challenge worth meeting. "You are the next generation of our military leaders and I have no doubt you'll bring incredible energy, incredible talent and incredible capabilities to this Army," she said. "You'll find our Army a place where you'll be challenged, a place of unlimited opportunities, and a place where you can truly make a difference for our nation. For you cadets who are getting ready to embark on this journey: fasten your seatbelts, work hard, challenge the institution, and brace yourselves for a wild ride." Earlier in the morning, the cadets attended two panels with speakers from across the Army. Panel discussion topics included one on sexual assault and another one on opportunities for women in the Army. Several questions from female cadets involved the restriction on female Soldiers from serving in certain combat roles. Lt. Gen. Michael D. Rochelle, deputy chief of staff for G-1, told cadets he believed one day those restrictions could be lifted, but that it would need to be further investigated by the Department of Defense. "Will that ever happen? Perhaps," Rochelle said. "That's not the policy today, however." Today, women can serve in 93 percent of Army occupations and they make up about 15 percent of the active Army. Immersive technology melds Hollywood, warrior training [2009-03-10] WASHINGTON -- Training technology development in California has demonstrated the possibility of having Soldiers walk through virtual environments that contain both real-world objects and simulated characters. The Army has enlisted the help of the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California to push the limits of technology to create better, more immersive training environments for Soldiers. The "FlatWorld Wide Area Mixed Reality" demonstration was a 3-D gaming environment that didn't require Soldiers to wear a visor that would tether them to a computer. The environment melds concepts of stagecraft from Hollywood, including real-world props, with technology and projection screens, to make a virtual world Soldiers can move around in and interact with. "We have walls where the outside is projected in. Where you can have virtual humans interact with you in the spaces, or where you can project bullet holes onto the walls," said Dr. Randall Hill Jr., executive director of ICT. "It is enabling Soldiers to make decisions under stress, to practice, and to get experiences they wouldn't normally get in the school house or even in their unit before they deploy." Hill said it is possible to track a Soldier's movement throughout the environment and to then manipulate the environment based on the position of the Soldier. Eventually, he said, it may be possible to create infinitely sized virtual training areas inside a finite training space. By changing the content on the life-size training screens, for example, Soldiers could cycle through the same training environment multiple times, but always see a new scenario or simulated environment. The ICT is located in Los Angeles, Calif., near Hollywood -- the heart of America's entertainment industry. The Institute is, said Hill, a "nexus" between the entertainment industry, academia and the Army. "We believe the key here is engagement," Hill said. "That's where the entertainment industry comes in and that's where we are trying to bring that capability in -- the technologies that we are developing to support interactive digital media for the purpose of training and for actually a lot of other uses too." Many projects at ICT are "people-focused," Hill said. One of the most visible, now being used by Army Accessions Command, is the "Sergeant Star" program. Sergeant Star first appeared on the goarmy.com Web site as a non-animated character that answers questions for site visitors. The ICT team was asked to turn Sergeant Star into something more. Now, the virtual-NCO is available "in person" at Future Farmers of America events, NASCAR races and other venues where the Army reaches out to audiences for recruiting. Sergeant Star is projected at full size on a screen and can interact with potential Army recruits, answering questions about life in the Army, enlistment opportunities, and jobs in uniform. Hill said Sergeant Star is a demonstration of the kind of "autonomous characters" ICT wants to include in virtual training environments -- characters that students can have meaningful interaction with. "It's about being about to have a conversation with them, a social interaction with these characters," he said. The characters can reason about the environment, express emotion and communicate through not only speech, but also gesture, he said. "We want to give them the ability to perceive you and your gestures and facial expressions." Hill said the Army could use more advanced versions of characters like Sergeant Star as training coaches or even as virtual patients where Soldiers are being trained to interact with somebody who may be a sexual assault victim. Other ICT projects include the ELECT BiLAT social simulation. The immersive simulation allows Soldiers to learn negotiation skills with Iraqi leaders, where the student must pay special attention to cultural sensitivities and must negotiate a "win-win" agreement between both parties. New task force to focus on protective gear [2009-03-13] WASHINGTON -- A new Army task force is focused on ensuring continuity and synchronization across the procurement process for Soldier protective gear. Task Force Soldier Protection, announced March 12 during a media roundtable at the Pentagon, falls under Program Executive Office Soldier -- an Army agency responsible for developing, procuring, fielding and sustaining virtually all things carried and worn by Soldiers. Al Dassonville heads up the new task force. "I look forward to the challenge of running this task force -- synchronizing all of our resources across the Department of Defense -- to make sure we maintain the highest standards for our Soldier protective equipment and to ensure we have got all the appropriate resources synchronized to bring the best world-class equipment to Soldiers," Dassonville said. The new task force will ensure that Army standards and policies for procurement of Soldier protective gear -- including such things as body armor, helmets and eyewear -- are followed across the entire chain of agencies and organizations involved in fielding such equipment. "We are trying to ensure we maintain synchronized and well-communicated and well-integrated actions associated with Soldier protection items," said Brig. Gen. Peter N. Fuller, Program Executive Officer Soldier. "We are stepping up the game." According to Dassonville, top priorities for the task force include ensuring that contracting, testing and quality control of protective gear are conducted appropriately and efficiently; and ensuring that quality control continues to follow Army standards across all agencies involved in procurement of protective gear. "It is easy enough to write a standard," Dassonville said. "It is one thing to write it -- it is another thing to go back and make sure everybody involved in the process understands it and does it. That is the other part that this task force is going to do." Across the Department of Defense, there are multiple organizations involved with getting a new idea for Soldier protective gear into the hands of a Soldier, Fuller said. He explained that from the inception of a new piece of gear to the placing of that gear into a Soldier's hands, there are agencies that develop items, write contracts, produce equipment and test it. Not all of those organizations are strictly Army organizations. But the goal of Task Force Soldier Protection is to ensure they all know what their mission is, and that they all are following the same set of strict Army guidelines for Soldier protective gear, Fuller said. "The point of TFSP is to synchronize and integrate all the stakeholders working on Soldier protection items," said Fuller. "We want to make sure everybody is working on the same thing and understands what the left and right are doing in relation to what they are working on. The Army wants to ensure that the highest standards are consistently applied to all processes related to Soldiers' survivability equipment." Task Force Soldier Protection is currently intended as a temporary organization. In June, the results of the task force will be reviewed, officials said. A decision to dissolve or continue the task force will be made at that time. Army cooks aim for speed, flavor, skill in culinary competition [2009-03-16] FORT LEE, Va. -- Like a scene from "Iron Chef" or perhaps "Hell's Kitchen," Soldiers in whites scrambled against the clock to prepare meals for patrons they knew would eat only a bite before waving it away. The Soldiers were Army cooks participating in the 34th Army Culinary Arts Competition, March 2-13, at Fort Lee, Va. The event -- the Student Skills Competition -- was one of many challenges during a two-week competition to recognize the best of military cooks. With staggered starting times, each of 10 teams of four military cooks -- nine representing the Army and one from the Coast Guard -- competed against the clock to prepare a four-course meal for four. Each had had 90 minutes to prepare, plate and serve an appetizer, a salad, an entrée and a dessert. The "diners" included judges from the American Culinary Federation, who ranked each teams' offerings on timeliness, taste and presentation. Pacing back and forth from kitchen to kitchen were roving judges who took note of how individual cooks used their knives, chopped their vegetables, and maintained food safety. "It's chopping, slicing, cutting -- you better know how to do it, because the judges check every detail," said Pfc. Heriberto Cruzmejia, of the Fort Bliss team. "Everything has to be perfect. Everything the same length. Perfect. Everything. They got me on that." Cruzmejia said the most important part of the competition was timing. "You have to be quick, you have to know your stuff," he said. "You have to know what you're doing or you will be lost out there and lose all your time." The event was grueling, with team members mopping sweat from their foreheads, shouting out orders, bumping into each other, occasionally jumping back from flame-ups on the stove top and always checking the clock. All the while, teams worked to turn out pastries, salads, and dishes with names like "Paupiettes de Sole a la Trouvillaise" and "Poulet Sauté Bercy" -- all recipes pulled from the classic French guide to cooking "Escoffier: Le Guide Culinaire." The book in itself is a challenge, said Chief Warrant Officer 4 Travis Smith, a food advisor at the 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kan. "It's like the bible of French cooking," Smith said. "It's very specific. You look up one recipe in there and all of the sudden you find yourself -- it's referring you to like five or six other recipes. And each one of those refers you to another recipe or two. So you learn about 15 recipes just by making one dish in Escoffier." Smith didn't actually participate in the Student Skills event, though he was on the Fort Riley team. Instead he served as an advisor -- bringing his years of experience with him. He originally came to Fort Lee to compete for the U.S. Army Culinary Arts Team in 1991, and at one point in his career was responsible for management of the culinary arts program at Fort Lee, within the crafts skills training branch. He's participated in the competition off and on since then, and said students participating in the Student Skills Competition have to exhibit competency in a number of skill areas. "They have to exhibit a high level of skill in knife skills, butchery skills, proper cooking techniques and methods, proper doneness, flavor, taste, texture, food service, proper temperature, excellent organization and timing skills, team work and hygiene -- it's a variety of things," he said. The competition is challenging for young Soldiers who serve as Army cooks. "It's heart pounding," said Pfc. Matthew Hendriks, of the U.S. Army Europe team. "It's fun though -- it's exhilarating. I've never been this nervous." Hendriks has been in the Army for less than a year, and actually left culinary school on Fort Lee in August 2008 for his first assignment in Manheim, Germany. "If you told me then I was going to be here for this I'd probably have laughed," he said, saying while in AIT he'd only heard about the competition. But he also says he has a passion for cooking and plans to make a career out of it. "Army is the career I want to do, and as far as culinary arts, I want to take it to its furthest point," he said. "I usually walk down the spice aisle and I just pick something -- I can spend an hour in the spices aisle -- but my girl hates it." Spc. Christopher Bohn was part of the Hawaii team, which eventually won the Student Team Skills Competition. He said the team had to work through some challenges to complete their dinner service on time. "There's the pressure -- watching the judges look over you with their little notepads -- that really throws you off," he said. "And the oven failed us, that slowed a lot of things down. But you are supposed to monitor throughout with your thermometers." The team also operated without their planned leadership, because the team leader they expected to be on hand for the competition was "under the weather." Still, Bohn said, the team pulled together for the competition. Their team work eventually gave them the win. "It's our ability to work together and to yell at each other and accept it as constructive criticism," he said. "We love each other like brothers and sisters." The team's menu included sole, a "decent spring green salad," and a chicken dish, Bohn said. "The pièce de résistance is definitely the chicken roulade and sausage," Bohn said, adding that the team went through their routine twice to get it down. Bohn said he plans to be an Army lifer, and hopes to go on to run an officer's club or his own restaurant after his service. In addition to the Student Skills competition, the two-week culinary event featured more than 40 different categories of competition that touched on such things as ice carving, pastry, nutrition, cooking knowledge and field cooking, said Lt. Col. Rob Barnes, director of the Army Center of Excellence, Subsistence at Fort Lee. "We used the containerized kitchen -- our Soldier teams come out and cook five-star meals from a field kitchen," he said. The public was invited to partake of the food cooked by Soldiers in the field cooking competition -- though the meals were different than the fare normally served in the field. "Once you walked into the tent you'd think you were in a five-star restaurant," he said. "The public completely enjoyed it." Barnes said the competition at Fort Lee, home of the Army's Culinary School, is designed to improve the overall food service program for the Army. "They take some of these things they learned to make their dining facilities better," he said. "Also to get them to show more appreciation to the Soldiers. When the warfighter is out there in the field, the one thing that means the most to them is when they eat their food. They may be tired, they may miss their loved ones -- but I'm telling you, if that food is spot on, that saved the day." The ultimate winner at the 34th U.S. Army Culinary Arts Competition was the team from Fort Bragg, N.C., which won its ninth installation of the year award as part of the competition. Other winners in the competition included: • Armed Forces Chef of the Year: CS1 Michael Edwards, U.S. Navy • Armed Forces Junior Chef of the Year: Spc. Javier Muniz, Fort Bragg, N.C. • Field Cooking Competition: Team Hawaii, 1st Place; Fort Bragg, N.C., 2nd Place; U.S. Coast Guard, 3rd Place • Student Team Skills Competition: Team Hawaii, 1st Place (Spc. Christopher Bohn, Spc. Ashley Schei, Spc. Christopher Bates, Pfc. Fernando Martinez) • Nutritional Hot Food Challenge: Fort Bragg. N.C. • Baron H. Galand Culinary Knowledge Bowl: Fort Bragg, N.C., 1st Place; Team Hawaii, 2nd Place; Fort Riley, Kan., 3rd Place • Best Ice Carving in Show: Staff Sgt. Jose Hernandez, Puerto Rico • Best Exhibit in Show (Cat A, Cold Platter): CW4 Travis Smith, Fort Riley, Kan. • Best Exhibit in Show (Cat B, Cold Appetizers): Sgt. 1st Class Clinton Francis, Team Hawaii • Best Exhibit in Show (Cat. C, Patisserie/Confectionery): Sgt. Orlando Serna, Fort Bragg, N.C. • Best Exhibit in Show (Cat. D, Showpiece): Sgt. Sean Dubois, Team Hawaii • Most Artistic Exhibit in Show: Sgt. Orlando Serna, Fort Bragg, N.C. • Best Team Buffet Table (Cat E): Team Hawaii • Best in Class - Contemporary Cooking (Cat K): CW4 Travis Smith, Fort Riley, Kan.; Sgt. Michelle Carville, Fort Myer, Va. • Best in Class - Contemporary Pastry (Cat P): Sgt. Orlando Serna, Fort Bragg, N.C. • Army Senior Enlisted Aide of the Year: Sgt. 1st Class Amir Ahmad, Independent • Army Junior Enlisted Aide of the Year: Sgt. Michelle Carville, Fort Myer, Va. GAO report mischaracterizes Army efforts on FCS [2009-03-16] WASHINGTON -- Army leaders question the findings in a report released by the U.S. Government Accountability Office concerning the service's Future Combat Systems. In a report dated March 12, the GAO says FCS technology has not yet reached appropriate levels of maturity, that not enough product testing has been demonstrated and that the program is over budget. Army generals involved in the program dispute the findings. "Inside the GAO report they mention a $21 billion cost increase and because the report has just been issued, I don't know how they came up with the $21 billion," said Lt. Gen. N. Ross Thompson, military deputy to the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology. "One of the things we have to get addressed with GAO is the basis in which they calculated that. I can't explain their $21 billion." Thompson says overages are closer to about 6.5 percent of the total program cost of about $159 billion. He cites several factors for those increases, including technology spinouts, putting the capability into the infantry brigade combat team starting in 2011, four 4 program restructures, an increase in quantities of end items, adjustments based on lessons learned in theater, the impact of inflation and increases in capability. The general also said the Army believes the technology levels in FCS are not lagging, as the GAO report suggests. "We think the technologies are where they need to be," Thompson said. Of the 44 key technologies in FCS, Thompson said 35 are currently at technology readiness level 6, and that that level has been verified by independent technology experts. According to the Department of Defense's Defense Acquisition Guidebook, a TRL 6 indicates a technology has, among other things, been "tested in a relevant environment" and "represents a major step up in a technology's demonstrated readiness." The general said five more technologies in FCS are under evaluation now, and four more will be evaluated by June. "Our expectation that all 44 of those technologies will be at the right TRL -- 6 or higher than 6 -- in order to begin to do the integration," Thompson said. Finally, the report claims that FCS technology has not been sufficiently demonstrated, without adequate testing. "I think they are really mischaracterizing what we have done so far," Thompson said. "For example, this year alone there are 203 test events in FCS. In 2008 there were 178 test events, in 2007, 217 test events. We are doing extensive testing. I have pages and pages of scheduled test events here. We've done an incremental approach, we are testing as we go, we do have Soldiers involved in testing -- that was the whole purpose of the Army standing up a brigade capability at Fort Bliss -- the Army Evaluation Task Force -- that has Soldiers in the loop helping us do some of the testing to get some of those lessons learned." The general said the GAO is not giving the Army credit for the testing it is doing leading up to the important decisions that will be made in regards to FCS. Stop-Loss stops in January, Army leaders say [2009-03-18] WASHINGTON -- The Army plans to phase out its reliance on stop-loss by January, leaders say. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates announced Thursday a phased plan to begin cutting off stop-loss later this year. During a discussion with members of the press, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Rochelle, deputy chief of staff for Personnel, G-1, discussed the Army's plan to implement the phased reduction in use of the program that involuntarily extends Soldiers beyond the end of their enlistment or retirement dates in units deploying to combat areas. "It has been a vital tool that has allowed the Army to sustain cohesive operational forces that train and serve together through their deployments," Rochelle said. The general said the president's recent announcement of a troop drawdown in Iraq, a gradual restoration of balance between deployments, and an increase in the size of the Army have given the service the opportunity to reduce stop-loss. Rochelle said the number of Soldiers affected by stop-loss will be reduced, in a phased approach, across all components of the Army. The Army Reserve will begin mobilizing units without stop-loss in August, he said. For the National Guard, that will happen in September. For the active-duty Army, the change will happen in January. "This is great news for the Army family," Rochelle said. "Limiting stop-loss balances our need for unit effectiveness with the impact on individual Soldiers and their families." Rochelle also said the Army will implement a special congressionally approved payment for Soldiers currently affected by stop-loss. Soldiers who are under stop-loss this month will begin receiving a $500 per month payment on top of their regular pay for the months they serve on stop-loss. That payment will begin with their March pay, which Soldiers see in their April 1 check. The congressional approval also allows the Army to retroactively pay Soldiers as far back as Oct. 1, 2008 for time served under stop-loss. Most Soldiers that qualify to receive the retroactive payments will receive that money in May or June as a lump-sum payment, Rochelle said. Additionally, the $500 per month payments for stop-loss time served in a combat tax-exclusion zone will not be taxed, said Col. Larry Lock, Army director of compensation and entitlements. The funds Congress appropriated for stop-loss pay are only for Fiscal Year 2009, which runs Oct. 1, 2008 through Sept. 30, 2009. Future funding is being discussed. Rochelle pointed out that there is risk associated in eliminating the use of stop-loss, such as an unexpected demand for forces beyond what the Army anticipates. But he said such things as the projected reduction of forces in Iraq will mitigate that risk. "Let's not diminish the significance of the reduction in demand, anticipated as a result of the drawdown in Iraq. The anticipated reduction in demand, recently announced by President Obama, is a major factor," Rochelle said. He added that were demand not so high for Army forces around the world, the Army would eliminate stop-loss "tomorrow." An additional factor in the Army's ability to pare down its use of stop-loss is that the service was able to meet its resize objectives ahead of schedule. "The Army has now achieved its end strength growth to its (547,400) end strength, three years ahead of schedule," Rochelle said. "We were on track and projected to achieve that growth through 2012 -- we are there now." Thirdly, he said, is the Army's enterprise-wide approach to match up accessions, individual training and leader development training with the Army's Force Generation. Rochelle said the Army will create a policy to offer incentives to Soldiers to encourage them to extend their enlistment beyond their date of separation in order to allow them to stay with their unit for the duration of a deployment. Those incentives would most likely be financial, said Maj. Gen. Gina Farrisee, director of personnel management. "I think it would be safe to say they will be monetary incentives, but the policy has not been written yet as to what the incentives will be," she said. "We would offer incentives for people to extend through the deployment. We currently do not offer extensions. You may re-enlist, and re-enlist only. We would now offer incentives to extend through the deployment and we hope that that would help to continue to fill the unit as needed." There are currently around 13,000 Soldiers affected by stop-loss within all three components of the Army. According to Army officials, the active component has some 7,307 affected; the National Guard has 4,458 affected Soldiers; and in the Army Reserve, 1,452 Soldiers are affected. Stop-loss is spelled out in Title 10, United States Code, Section 12305(a). The law allowing the military services to implement stop-loss has not changed, and the Army may again use the policy in the future if extraordinary needs require it. USFK commander tells senators tours in Korea to be ‘normalized’ [2009-03-19] WASHINGTON -- Quality of life for Soldiers and their families is one of three key priorities for the commander of United States Forces Korea. "Our goal is to make Korea the assignment of choice for all servicemembers and their families," Gen. Walter L. Sharp told the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday. "Our implementation of tour normalization, which is normal three-year tours for a majority of our accompanied service members, will significantly increase our war-fighting capability, and improve the quality of life for our personnel by eliminating long and unnecessary separation from their families," said Sharp, who also heads the United Nations Command in Korea and commands the Republic of Korea-United States Combined Forces Command. In December, accompanied tour lengths were increased from two to three years for servicemembers assigned to Pyeongtaek, Osan, Daegu, Chinhae, and Seoul, Sharp said. The U.S. Army Garrison-Yongsan relocation program underway now in South Korea will move servicemembers stationed in Seoul to Camp Humphries -- an installation about 40 miles south of the Korean capital. There the Army is making great efforts to construct "world class" facilities for Soldiers and their families, Sharp said. Additionally, a land partnership program will move the 2nd Infantry Division south of the Han River. The two programs will also improve quality of life for servicemembers and families, Sharp said. While the general emphasized quality of life initiatives in Korea, he said his first two priorities were quality training and continued development of the relationship between the United States and the Republic of Korea. "My first priority as commander is to maintain trained, ready and disciplined combined and joint command forces that are prepared to fight and win in any potential conflict," said Sharp. The general also said he is committed to continuing to strengthen the alliance between South Korea and the United States. "The U.S. and the Korean forces are adapting to the changing conditions in this dynamic region and are transforming to a more modern and capable force," he said. "This will enable the Republic of Korea forces to attain wartime operational control on April 17, 2012. An enduring U.S. force presence in Korea after operational control transfer will ensure a strong alliance that is fully capable of maintaining security in this critical part of the world." The general said he is confident the transfer of operational control to Korea in 2012 will be successful, saying that the country's military has developed greatly since he had last been stationed there. "The professionalism and the capability that has improved over those 10-11 years is absolutely phenomenal," he said. "They track and abide by and believe in our training, the way we train our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines. They work through the after-action review systems, and they have really got a strong capability now, especially in their ground forces, in order to be ... prepared for any sort of contingency. I am absolutely confident that when they take command of the war fight, and take command of that on April 17, 2012, they will be ready for that." Of concern to senators on the committee was a possible rocket launch by North Korea, sometime between April 4 and 9. The launch is supposedly of a satellite, but senators were concerned about the possibility of it instead being a missile, and that in fact, the launch was simply part of a larger effort to further develop the North Korean missile program. Sharp said that such a launch, be it a missile test or even a satellite launch, would be in violation of United Nations rules. "If North Korea launches any sort of ballistic missiles, as they claim they will do ... it is against U.N. Security Council resolution 1718 which specifically says North Korea will not conduct any future nuclear tests or launch of a ballistic missile," he said. The general also said that the threat posed by North Korea is real, and it is felt in South Korea. "The threat of having the capability to be able to deliver any sort of warhead anywhere in the world would be a threat," he said. U.S. Pacific Command commander Admiral Timothy J. Keating, also in attendance at the hearing, assured senators the United States possesses capability to ensure with "high probability" that were North Korea to ever launch an armed missile at either South Korea or the United States, that that missile could be destroyed. Sharp pointed out that the last time the North Koreans launched a ballistic missile, they also launched additional missiles. "The last time when they tried to launch a Taepodong-2, about the same time they also launched about six other missiles," Sharp said. "We are watching very closely to see what else they will do -- and we are prepared for that." Sharp said North Korea has more than 800 missiles, and that the U.S. has about 64 Patriots on the Korean peninsula. He told senators that the military in Korea could use more. "We are working hard to make sure that the ballistic missile defense -- the Patriots -- are properly linked together, that we have the intelligence to properly cue, and that we have them positioned at the right places to be able to defend our most critical war fighting assets," he said. "But it does leave other areas uncovered. Both we and the Republic of Korea could use more and we are working hard at that." The general said actions by North Korean dictator Kim Yong Il are meant to show that he is in control, and that the missile launch may be part of a way to advertise to other nations that may be interested in such technology. The general also said that North Korea maintains a "military first" policy that supersedes taking care of its people, and that Kim Yong Il's primary motives are ensuring the continuation of his regime and getting concessions from the international community. Soldiers may better handle trauma with resilience training [2009-03-23] WASHINGTON -- The Army can mitigate the effects of post traumatic stress disorder by training Soldiers to be more mentally resilient in advance, an Army doctor said Monday. "You come across an event and you interpret it based on whatever strengths, weaknesses or baggage you show up in the Army with," said Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, director of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, Office of the G-3/5/7. "If we could improve the resilience of the people before they had some adverse event, we might very well be able to have them view it as adverse -- but not traumatic." During a panel discussion March 23 at the Reserve Officer Association in Washington, D.C., Dr. Cornum discussed the importance of "Comprehensive Soldier Fitness" -- the idea that Soldiers must be both physically and mentally fit if they are going to be their best on the battlefield. She said many that have reported traumatic events do report PTSD-related issues, such as nightmares, but many also report positive outcomes as well -- something she calls "Post Traumatic Growth." Those outcomes include such things as enhanced self confidence, enhanced leadership, personal strength, spiritual growth or a greater appreciation of life. More Soldiers could be equipped ahead of time to deal with traumatic events, so they can avoid the problems associated with PTSD, she said. "The best way to treat a 'death-by-heart-attack' is not CPR," she said. "The best way is to prevent the heart attack. It's a lifestyle and culture change. And that's how we should look at mental health. Look at it with a preventative model and enhanced health model, not a 'waiting-till-we-need-therapy' model. That's what Comprehensive Soldier Fitness is setting out to do." She said that Comprehensive Soldier Fitness is about increasing the resiliency of Soldiers by developing all the dimensions of a Soldier, including the physical, emotional, social, spiritual and family elements. Cornum said a "Global Assessment Tool" is under development by the Army now to help assess all five elements of a Soldier's fitness. The GAT is expected to be delivered across the Army this year, she said, and it's in a pilot status now. "Based on this, you get an individual training program," Cornum said. And after that, if needed, Soldiers can be referred to intervention programs that can help them strengthen their fitness needs -- whether those be psychological or physical. Multi-service winners honored at Woman's History Month event [2009-03-24] WASHINGTON -- Ten servicemembers and civilians were honored as part of the Department of Defense Women's History Month Observance and Awards Program, March 19. "For generations, women across our great land have helped make our country stronger and better," said Gail H. McGinn, deputy undersecretary of defense for plans. "They have improved our communities and played a vital role in achieving justice and equal rights for all our citizens. The DOD joins our nation to recognize the many contributions women make to our society and ensure that the history of American women is recognized." The servicemembers were honored as winners of the 2009 Foreign Language and Science, Engineering and Math Role Model Award. The ceremony was held at the Women in Military Service to America Memorial at the gates of Arlington National Cemetery. Army Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, director, Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, gave the keynote address at the event. The general said during her years as a junior officer, she had been largely unaware of the challenges women had faced in military service prior to her arrival. She said it was those who came before her who carved the path. "We really need to recognize and celebrate those ladies who just kind of went through uncharted territory with machetes," Cornum said. "People like me who come after that think that path has always been there -- and it just has not been. I really did not appreciate that until somewhat recently." Many women are recognized as "firsts" in the military, Cornum said -- first female general officer, first female commander of a unit, first female four-star general. Cornum said she believes many women don't want to be firsts, but rather just hope to progress in their career. "As a jockey in my other life -- I didn't want to be the first girl on a horse to get across the finish line," she said. "I wanted my horse to get across. It didn't matter to me the gender of the jockeys behind me." Cornum also said that there are many who could be the best at what they do, but that it is simply a matter of letting those people compete. "We will then invariably get the best performance for the entire force," she said. Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Andrea Lynn Sacchetti was one of the 10 award winners recognized at the ceremony. She has served in uniform for 13 years and has been a helicopter pilot for the Coast Guard for about a decade. She said that the women of the Coast Guard who came before her have paved the way, allowing her to progress in her own career. "There are a lot of women who have done a lot of things before me, so it gave me the opportunities to do the things I want to do with my job," she said. Sacchetti does mostly search and rescue for the Coast Guard, she said. She was nominated for the award in part for her service in the Arctic, where she was hand-picked to lead the Coast Guard's first land-based, forward-operating location in the region during Operation Salliq. "I was chosen to be the senior aviator for the Coast Guard's first forward-operating location base up in Barrow, Alaska -- I ran an aviation detachment up there," she said. "We are doing research to see what kind of Cost Guard assets we may or may not need to place up in the Arctic as a result of sea ice moving away from the land." In the Arctic, she said, dangers include both weather and indigenous animals. "The weather can be unpredictable, and in the Arctic you have to worry about predators as well, if you do have to do an emergency landing," she said. Sacchetti said she expects next to serve in a staff job or as an operations officer. Army Lt. Col. Felicia Langel was another of those chosen to be honored at the ceremony. She is a veterinary corps officer and holds a PhD in biomedical research. She works now at the Uniformed Services University, but also served at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md. There, she studied both anthrax and Q Fever. Langel also worked to help both grade school and high school students develop a better appreciation for both science and math by bringing them into the laboratory and exposing them to science and technology that many students would not see until college-level courses. "For the younger students it's very basic chemistry and biology," she said. "But what we try to do is put it in a real world scenario so they can appreciate there is a value to learning science -- so it's not just science text books, but a real life application for science. In fact, we expose them to experimental procedures that usually people learn in college." She said sometimes the concepts are a little advanced for some young students, but the goal is not to teach them science but give them an appreciation for it -- to spark an interest and show them they can do it too. "It's not important to us if some is over their heads or not, what we are trying to do is excite them about the possibilities and to just see a glimmer of comprehension -- it is rewarding for us," she said. Langel said she hopes now to become a professor at the Uniformed Services University, and would like to continue working with youth as well. The full list of winners for the event includes: • Army, Military: Lt. Col. Felicia Langel • Army, Civilian: Christina Brantley • Navy, Military: Lt. Cmdr. Cheryll H. Hawthorne • Navy, Civilian: Camille Destafney • Marine Corps: Maj. Denise Garcia • Air Force: Maj. Ramsamooj J. Reyes • National Guard Bureau: Army Lt. Col. Susan I. Pangelinan • Coast Guard: Lt. Cmdr. Andrea Lynn Sacchetti • Defense Threat Reduction Agency: Irene Nehonov • Defense Contract Management Agency: Julie Harmon Military, civilian partnerships needed for stability [2009-03-30] WASHINGTON -- Re-establishing and maintaining a safe and secure environment following conflict is something the Army has done since its beginnings, but something it acknowledges it can no longer do alone. "I think you'll see in the manual we continually talk about the need for a comprehensive approach," said Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, commander, Combined Arms Center, Fort Leavenworth, Kan., during a March 27 panel discussion at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. The discussion involved Army Field Manual 3-07, "Stability Operations," which was released in October. The panel included Michèle Flournoy, undersecretary of defense for policy; Carlos Pascual, vice president and director, foreign policy, the Brookings Institution; and Janine Davidson, assistant professor, George Mason University, nonresident fellow, the Brookings Institution. "The military has an incredible destructive capability and that is the core mission of what we exist for and we should not lose that," Caldwell said. "Whenever we can increase the civilian capacity to work in a comprehensive manner with us -- that is what we would prefer to do." With the February 2008 edition of the Army operations manual, FM 3-0, the Army elevated the status of "stability operations," putting it on par with the two traditional core Army missions: offensive and defensive operations. In October, the Army published the latest edition of FM 3-07, the document that defines stability operations. Caldwell said the Army realizes it must work in conjunction with civilian agencies of the U.S. government in addition to non-governmental organizations to accomplish the goals set forth in FM 3-07. "The military is really not interested in taking on any of the civilian functions and capabilities, but rather augment them as required so they can be much more effective and efficient in what they are trying to achieve," Caldwell said. "I think you would find most of us wanting to see an increase in civilian capability and capacity so they can in fact be in greater numbers out there so that we can operate and work in a comprehensive manner. Because that is what it is going to take -- again, the military is necessary, but it is not sufficient." The skills needed to conduct stability operations, "soft power," are those not commonly found in the military, Caldwell told an audience of servicemembers, academics, and reporters. Instead, he said, the military must work in partnership with non-military organizations to accomplish stability -- FM 3-07 spells out those relationships. "This manual - this stability operations doctrine - is even more unique, focusing on skills and capabilities not typically resident in our military forces," he said. "These soft power skills - rebuilding and reforming the institutions of government, revitalizing fragile economies, restoring social well-being ... are drawn from the contributions of a number of different sources: the other departments and agencies of our government, the development community, the humanitarian community, our allies and friends, even the private sector." In the future, Caldwell said, it will be important for the Army and the military to develop partnerships with non-military agencies to ensure U.S. national government policies to create peace can be attained. "We need to learn to train as we operate," he said. "We operate in a comprehensive manner and we have for many years. We have always done it and yet for some reason we tend to neglect that and forget it after the fact. We can't do it this time. The intent of this manual is to codify in Army doctrine how critically important that is. "In the years ahead -- as we look to 2015, 2025 -- when we see the threats and the challenges that will be out there, they will only be able to be dealt with if it is done in a comprehensive manner." A penny saved is a lesson learned [2009-03-31] WASHINGTON -- It's almost never a bad idea to kneel down and pick up a penny you find on the sidewalk -- it's even a better idea to pick up that nickel, dime or quarter. Sgt. 1st Class Scott Humphrey, an Army Reserve career counselor and his family picked up on that idea years ago and regularly go on walks near their home in Fort Wadsworth, on Staten Island, N.Y., to look for lost change. "It is important that we do the walks we do as a family," Humphrey said, adding that the money they find is small, but important. "When you look at it in its simplest form, a penny can make all the difference in the world." Humphrey, his wife Barbara Humphrey, and their two daughters, 11-year-old Brianna and 6-year-old Karen, have turned pennies, other found change, and even the occasional bill into more than $1,100 dollars over the past three and a half years. In fact, since they started in October 2005, they've collected an average of 88 cents a day. "The reason we started picking up change and showing the children the money we find, is so they learn the value of money early on," said Barbara. "Our goal is to kind of teach them a lesson. Whenever they look at change, or receive money ... and when they start to work, they know the value of money. And when they go to a store with a $20 bill, they will ask, is it really worth it to get this?" Mostly during warming weather, the Humphrey family goes out together to look for change, Barbara said. It's a family event, meant to get time together, to get exercise and to find as many lucky pennies as possible. "It can actually become a cute hobby," Barbara said. "The four of us when we go out on walks and things like that, we actually spend family time together. It is also a bit of a way to lose weight. We walk for miles now. It is not even just us walking around the block -- we also get to talk, and the kids get excited about it." The two girls bring backpacks and a bottle hand sanitizer along on their expeditions. "The girls will take a backpack on the way, and there's a kit with some Purell in there. Some change is pretty dirty," Barbara said. "Money is dirty in itself, so everybody has their own survival pack." It's a tie between Humphrey and Brianna for who collects the most change, Barbara said. Dad can find coins even when well hidden, and Brianna has a knack for spotting paper money from a distance. "Scott will find change in very strange places, like we can pass by construction sites where they have brick dust and he can spot a penny or a dime in that kind of environment," she said. "We have names for finding change like that.'In the wild' means it was a hard penny or dime to locate because of the camouflage. And my daughter Brianna will spot coins or dollar bills from very far away." Barbara actually started the family off on their expeditions to find change when she was in college in 2005 earning her degree in English literature. It was there, she said, she recognized the disparity between her fellow students' willingness to complain about lack of pocket money and their reluctance to bend over and pick up a nickel. "A lot of adults were going to school full time and complained about not having money," she said. "Meanwhile, I kept finding pennies, dimes and nickels on the floor. I was like you know what, what would happen if I would just start picking them up -- not spending it -- and just chronicled the daily finds?" So Barbara started a blog at http://www.changepot.blogspot.com to document her daily income of dropped coins. "At the end of the day, everybody comes to me with their change and they will say I found this in the parking lot, I found this under a soda machine," she said. "Then I kind of mix it all together and put it on the blog." Whether the finding of pocket change drove the blogging more than the blogging drove the desire to find change is uncertain, but Barbara said when the family hit an apparent psychological milestone of $100 in change, the girls really took notice. "The children were like why don't we go out to eat," she said. "They wanted to do different things with the money. And after a while, we started noticing that once we hit $100, $200 came much easier -- then $300 and $400." The total of found change listed in "Changepot," as of March 31, is about $1,116.60 -- with about $84 of that found since the beginning of Fiscal Year 2009. Barbara said she tallies the change found in line with the federal government's fiscal years, which run Oct. 1 - Sept. 31 -- noting they are a military family, after all. That found change isn't going to end up buying a new flat-screen television, or shoes or even a fancy dinner at an expensive Manhattan restaurant, the Humphreys say. Barbara admits that even though the family collected it, they don't believe it's really "their" money. 'We are looking at different charities," she said. "And we are looking to stay local. It's a karma thing; we feel it isn't our money and we want to help whoever needs it most -- we want to donate." And really, going out as a family to find change is more important than adding change to the bank account anyway, she said. "It really isn't about finding the change -- it's about keeping the family together," she said. "Now we have a hobby we can do. The change jar in itself is a vehicle for change for everyone -- and it's a valuable lesson on how the economy directly impacts Americans and how as much as they complain they have no money, if you do something as small as picking up a coin every time you see one -- in four years you'll have over $1,100 dollars." 'Military Saves' encourages Soldiers to build nest egg [2009-04-02] WASHINGTON -- Financial security at home can mean one less distraction from the mission downrange. "Imagine deploying, or going out to training -- and what is in the back of your mind is how are you going to pay your mortgage, or is your family going to get evicted while you are deployed," said Michael A. Wood, Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation command, and the Army liaison to the Military Saves program. "You are not going to be focused on the mission. Financial literacy is a readiness issue." Having your financial situation in order, in part by committing to a savings plan, can contribute to mission readiness, Wood said. To help Soldiers make that happen, the Army participates in the Department of Defense-sponsored "Military Saves" program, which encourages Soldiers to become financially literate and to save their money. The Military Saves program asks participants to take a pledge to commit to financial security through savings, reducing debt and building wealth. Soldiers can learn more about Military Saves through the campaign's Web site at www.militarysaves.org. "We use the Military Saves campaign as an opportunity to reinforce, encourage, motivate and educate Soldiers on ways to increase savings," Wood said. Military Saves is primarily a campaign to motivate servicemembers and their families to save money each month, and to additionally encourage unit leadership to persuade members to participate in automatic savings plans. The campaign is supported by all four branches of military service, the Department of Defense, banks and other financial institutions, as well as agencies such as the Army Emergency Relief, the Air Force Aid Society and the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society. Military Saves is part of the larger America Saves campaign. The two programs are operated by the non-profit Consumer Federation of America. The program is also a partner in the Department of Defense Financial Readiness Campaign. Military Saves was developed and tested by the CFA and the military services before being launched throughout the DOD in February 2007. In addition to asking Soldiers to commit to saving, the campaign provides on its Web site information about where Soldiers can learn more about both saving and investing their money. The program also sponsors four campaign weeks a year dedicated to different aspects of financial preparedness, including a week dedicated to saving and investing, a week for teaching youth about the importance of saving, a week dedicated to debit reduction, and a week dedicated to preparing for retirement. Wood said that during those campaign weeks, booths may be set up at commissaries or post exchanges to pass on important financial information to Soldiers. During the last Military Saves informational week, which ended March 1, the Military Saves campaign also added 6,800 new Soldiers who made the commitment to be better savers of their money, Wood said. "And our goal is to increase that each quarter," he added. Wood also said the Army offers its own programs to help Soldiers save and to help them learn how to better manage their money. At Army Community Service centers, financial readiness program managers help educate Soldiers about better money management, he said. "We have certified councilors located in the facilities to educate Soldiers on the different venues, savings accounts, certificates of deposit, offers from local credit unions, mutual funds, bonds and any other number of ways you can do better than just a savings account," Wood said. He also said that even before savings begins, Soldiers can better learn to manage their income stream by learning to build a budget, reduce their debits and pay their bills on time. "You also have to have some goals, long term goals, and also individual and family specific goals," he said. For Soldiers who are deployed, there is the Savings Deposit Program. That program offers Soldiers the opportunity to earn up to ten percent on funds deposited while deployed -- a rate of return much higher than what many banks are now offering. Wood said the program is underutilized and that's unfortunate because Soldiers earn additional pay while deployed that could be painlessly invested. "Soldiers have been enduring repeated back to back deployments over the last few years," he said. "While they are deployed there is a lot of additional pay that is affiliated with that deployment -- hostile fire pay for instance -- a lot of that is tax free." He said when Soldiers get back from deployment, there may be a "nest egg" that has built up, and that sometimes Soldiers are tempted to spend that on things they want rather than need. "When they receive those amounts of money they want to go out and spend," he said. "What we want to try to focus Soldiers on is that you don't have to have it today. If you put a little bit of your savings away each month, and if you intend on making the Army a career, you will have a tremendous nest egg." The time to start saving is now, Wood said, and anybody can do it. "It is never too late to save and you're never too old to start saving," he said. "Each year you should write down your savings goals. And if you accomplish just one of them that puts you in a better place than you are today." Army aims to reduce greenhouse gases, 'carbon bootprint' [2009-04-06] WASHINGTON -- The Army has embarked on a service-wide effort to measure its "carbon bootprint," with the aim of reducing the effect it has on the environment while at the same time optimizing its use of fossil fuels. The Army recently completed a proof-of-concept study at 12 installations to measure the amount of greenhouse gases it puts into the environment as a result of its activities. The total amount of gasses put into the environment by an organization constitutes its "carbon footprint." The study looked at emissions that included water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and chlorofluorocarbons. The most predominate of those emissions are carbon dioxide and then methane, said Tad Davis, the deputy undersecretary of the Army for environment, safety, and occupational health. The greenhouse gas proof-of-concept study was conducted at Fort Carson, Colo.; Fort Benning, Ga.; Letterkenny Army Depot, Pa.; Fort Indiantown Gap, Pa.; Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.; Redstone Arsenal, Ala.; Fort Drum, N.Y.; Schofield Barracks, Hawaii; Fort Rucker, Ala.; Fort Campbell, Ky.; Fort Hood, Texas; and Fort Stewart, Ga., said Davis. "It's a crosswalk of different kinds of installations in the Army," Davis said. From that proof of concept, the Army has kicked off a series of similar studies at all Army installations. Those studies categorize the greenhouse gasses produced by the activities of an installation into three "scopes," Davis said. Emissions of buildings, on-post generators, tactical vehicles including tanks and helicopters, and non-tactical vehicles, including privately owned vehicles and government vehicles are included in Scope 1, Davis said. Scope 2 includes greenhouse gas emissions that are the result of energy used on an installation but produced off the installation. "The vast majority of energy that we use on our installations is actually produced through hydro sources, through coal-fired steam generation ... then turned into electricity," he said. "Scope 2 is that off-post-produced electricity that is consumed on the installation." Finally, Scope 3 measures emissions from contractor-related activities on an installation and also emissions related to things like employee travel. For a Soldier traveling on temporary duty, for instance, the Army would calculate the greenhouse gas emissions generated by his travel. In the proof-of-concept study completed at Fort Carson, results showed more than half of the greenhouse gas emissions calculated are Scope 2 emissions -- emissions that are the result of off-installation-generated power. Scope 1 emissions totaled about 41 percent and Scope 3 emissions accounted for about 7 percent of the emissions at Carson. Numbers at Fort Benning were similar, he said. The numbers from the first 12 installations measured, along with numbers from the remainder of installations in the continental United States and its territories -- which are expected to be complete in May -- will be used to find ways for the Army to optimize its energy use and reduce those emissions, Davis said. "We are going to look at what are the correlations and how we can achieve reduction of greenhouse gasses through implementation of our energy program," he said. The Bush administration put into place a directive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by some 30 percent by 2015, Davis said. And the Army is working to meet that goal -- though he said the service remains mindful that the current administration could change the goal or the target date. Reducing the amount of carbon the Army puts into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels will require a reduction in the use of fossil fuels, Davis said. That can be accomplished by finding non-fossil-fuel sources of energy to power the Army mission and also by making more efficient those parts of the mission that will continue to rely on fossil fuels. A reduction in fuel use also results in decreased mission cost to the Army and in increased safety for Soldiers, Davis said. "If we are able to reduce the amount of energy consumed, then that is going to probably reduce the amount of fuel that is going to be used -- in the case of the forward deployed forces, we are able to reduce the convoys and the resupply which is one of the primary targets of a lot of the IEDs and ambushes taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan," Davis said. Reduction in energy use, and subsequent reduction in greenhouse gases can come from finding new sources of energy and also by reducing the energy the Army uses through efficiency. At Fort Carson, for instance, the Army partnered with a local energy provider to do an enhanced-use lease there. The energy provider built a photovoltaic solar array on top of a closed landfill. That site now provides energy to some 540 homes, Davis said. "That's a very visible way we can address looking at more renewable sources of energy verses the non-renewable sources which produce greenhouse gasses," Davis said. Congressional staffers, Soldiers mingle on firing range [2009-04-08] WASHINGTON -- Congressional staffers got a chance, April 8, to interact with Soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard) and fire a weapon often used in operations, the M-4 carbine. The event was an Army Weapons Day on Capitol Hill. In the Capitol Hill Police firing range in the basement of the Rayburn House Office Building here, more than 300 staff members from congressional and committee offices tried on Soldier body armor, looked through night-vision scopes, and fired 10 shots on the M-4 carbine individual Soldier weapon. "It was fun," said Meredith Liberty, from the Office of Oversight and Government Reform. "I didn't do very well -- I only got 41 out of 100 -- but I shot his (the target's) arm off." The staffers were given a standard target used by members of the Capitol Police that features "suspect" profile and were asked to fire 10 shots. Participants were given points based on how they did, and later in the evening, were invited to attend a social event where the best shooters were given prizes and all participants and Soldiers could enjoy pizza and beverages. Jeff Champagne, a staffer for Congressman Ron Klein of Florida, had shot weapons before. He said he's fired 22-caliber weapons, in addition to 12-, 16- and 20-guage shotguns. He also was able to participate last year in a similar event where he fired the M-4 carbine. This year, he said, he scored 100 points on the target. "It was a solid group," he said, adding that he scored better this year than he did the last time the Army held the event. "Last year I feel like it wasn't calibrated for me," he joked. Garett Donovan, one of Champagne's coworkers, has also done some shooting and scored a 91 on the target, though he did say he's never shot with an M-4 before. "Outside of the clay pigeons, 22s and stuff like that -- never an M-4 though," he said. "You get a little more respect for the equipment -- you feel it in your shoulder." Spc. Kevin Redman, a military policeman with the 3rd Infantry, was on hand at the firing range to demonstrate Soldier equipment to civilian participants. "I was showing them the night-vision goggles that attach to the helmet, basically trying to show them how it works and what you do with it -- we drive with it and shoot with it." Redman said he thinks interacting with Soldiers will give the civilian participants a new perspective on the Army. "I think civilians have a general understating of what Soldiers do -- but maybe not the physical side of it, like the equipment and wearing the gear," he said. Redman's counterpart, Spc. Jeff Madden, also a military policeman, agreed. "Hopefully they just see a different side of things, to see what the Soldiers are doing and to know what is going on out there," he said. Col. Chris Hughes, director of the Army's congressional liaison office on Capitol Hill, said helping congressional staffers learn more about the Army is exactly the purpose of the day at the range. "It gives them a chance to talk with young Soldiers who are very professional," Hughes said. "And it's about how professional those Soldiers are that are coaching them through that. They will learn who my guys are, learn a little bit more about the Army and they are a little more comfortable coming to talk to us." Hughes' office is responsible for helping members of the Army communicate with members of Congress, and also for helping members of Congress communicate with members of the Army. His office also helps congressional offices answer constituent questions about the Army. Last year, the colonel said, his office assisted in more than 47,000 inquires from constituents to members of Congress. By providing some exposure to the Army for congressional staff members during events like Army Weapons Day, Hughes said it makes it easier for both his office and the offices of members of Congress to do their jobs. "For them to know who we are, for us to interact with them, and for them to get exposed a little bit to the Army, makes answering those constituent questions easier and more efficient," Hughes said. "On Capitol Hill, it's all about building relationships." ‘Mobile USO’ will allow group to better serve Soldiers [2009-04-23] WASHINGTON -- A vehicle recently donated to the United Service Organizations here will help the volunteer-driven group better serve military members and their families. "This is truly going to change how our USO works," said Elaine Rogers, president, USO of Metropolitan Washington. "We have 13 locations around the metro area, all in airports and enlisted housing areas -- but we haven't been able to go out to the troops." The donation, a large van dubbed the "Mobile USO," is essentially a mobile kitchen and entertainment facility with the capacity to serve up to 500 people at once. It has two ovens, a triple sink with running water, onboard generators, a refrigerator, flat-screen television sets, a sound system, videogame consoles and a well-stocked food pantry. The idea is to roll into an active training area at an installation not currently served with a permanent USO facility, and bring some cheer to the servicemembers training there, Rogers said. Rogers spoke during a celebratory ribbon-cutting in the parking lot of the Pentagon April 23. There, USO officers, service members, and representatives of the Boeing Company gathered to officially hand over the donation from the Boeing Company to the USO of Metropolitan Washington. "This gives us the mobility to go to all the bases in the area," Rogers said. "It's going to be able to provide so many services." Rogers estimated that USO Metropolitan Washington, armed with the Mobile USO, will be able to increase the service it provides by as much as 30 percent. Sloan D. Gibson, president and chief executive officer of USO, said he's impressed with the work the USO of Metropolitan Washington does, saying it is the "flagship" region of the USO. He said the Mobile USO will help the Washington region of the USO better carry out the mission of the larger USO. "It's great to get out to where troops can't get to a USO center," Sloan said. "Their faces just light up. What we try to do is find ways to serve more and do it better -- this provides that capability -- it grows capacity." The USO supports Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen around the world by providing morale, welfare and recreation-type services. The USO of Metropolitan Washington focuses on those military installations in and around the National Capitol Region, to include installations in Maryland, in the District of Columbia, and military installations as far south as Richmond, Va., said Rogers. The USO also provides "homecoming" services to Soldiers returning from overseas through its USO facilities at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. Kids encouraged to participate in disaster preparedness [2009-04-27] WASHINGTON -- Hurricane season will blow in soon and families need to be prepared. "Now is the time to make your plan if you don't have one, or rehearse your old plan," said Jim Platt, deputy director of the Army Protection Division. "And to make sure you've got everything in your kit you need and most importantly to double-check your evacuation route so your family knows where to go -- and not just from your home." Ensuring families are prepared for emergencies is one of the roles of the Army Protection Division, and it does so through the Ready Army program. 'We realize preparing for an emergency is the responsibility for every Soldier, family member, Department of the Army civilian and contractor," said Jim Platt. "So we want to make sure in the 'Ready Army' program we give them the tools they need to get prepared, to make a kit, and to survive any emergency." The Ready Army program, which began in September 2008, is designed to prepare the entire Army family at installations and communities across the nation and around the world for all potential hazards, natural and man made. This year, the Ready Army program is sponsoring a new program, "Prepared Kids," the aim of which is to get younger family members involved in the discussion about how to be ready for disasters. "To make sure families are involved we are (providing) the kids with some fun activities to get them involved so that they talk to their parents," Platt said. "It opens an avenue so they can talk to their parents and become the impetus for getting the program started." This year, kids aged 7-18 can participate in the Prepared Kids Competition. The idea is for Army children and teens to share their ideas for preparing for emergencies by creating individual works that highlight preparedness. Children and teens can submit such things as a poem or song lyrics they have written, a short video, a poster, T-shirt or bookmark design, a personal story of experiencing an emergency, an essay or creative novella, a 30-second public service announcement for radio or television, a preparedness game, a drawing, sculpture or musical piece; or even computer software they have written. "Anywhere their imagination takes them, they can use to submit to the program, with the intent of helping other kids get ready," Platt said. "When you get the kids involved in this, it opens up a dialogue with parents and gets parents thinking about readiness." Being prepared for an emergency such as a hurricane, a flood, a fire or a tornado means planning as a family, Platt said. Families must have the tools ready if an emergency happens, having everyone know what the plan is, and having everyone well-versed in how to execute that plan. "If all the families out there take our advice, get a kit, get prepared and rehearse a plan -- then we have done our job," Platt said. "Then, when a Soldier is deployed, they won't be worried about their families being able to survive in an incident." Platt said that family readiness for emergencies is important to Army readiness, because a deployed Soldier worried about his family back home might not have his mind on the mission. "The worst-case scenario is we have a hurricane come in and it comes to one of our bases and we have a brigade combat team from that base that is deployed, and now that Soldier is sitting in Fallujah wondering if their family is okay," Platt said. "If before they left, they went through the rehearsals, then they know their family knows how to get out of the area and knows where to go -- it will take a lot off their minds and allow them to concentrate on what is happening where they are." More information on the "Ready Army" and the Prepared Kids competition be found at http://ready.army.mil. Winners will be announced in September and will be recognized for their contributions as well as have their winning submission featured on the Ready Army Web site. Surgeon general: No cause for alarm with swine flu [2009-04-28] WASHINGTON -- While emphasizing caution, the surgeon general of the Army said there's no reason to be alarmed by swine flu. "It's important for you all to understand that there is no cause for panic or alarm," wrote Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, U.S. Army surgeon general in his blog. "Antiviral drugs are available in the event you become ill; and there are preventive measures you can take to stay healthy." The swine flu virus has been confirmed in such places as Mexico, the United States, New Zealand, Canada, Spain and the United Kingdom. There have been deaths in Mexico. The swine flu usually occurs in pigs, though certain strains can be passed to humans -- and from human to human. "The most recent cases of swine flu appear to have the ability to be passed from person to person and have resulted in a number of cases in the United States as well as widespread disease in certain parts of Mexico," Schoomaker said. "It is likely that this swine flu will spread to many if not all parts of the United States." The symptoms of swine flu are similar to other kinds of flu, including fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. In some cases, there may also be vomiting and diarrhea. The swine flu is passed from person to person much like other forms of the flu, Schoomaker said. "Most people catch swine flu the same way they catch the regular flu," he said. "You can catch swine flu by coming in contact with droplets from infected people after they sneeze or cough. This can occur by being in the path of a sneeze or cough or touching something that has those droplets on it and then touching your mouth, nose or eyes." Medication like Tamiflu and Relenza can treat the swine flu, Schoomaker said. These medications are not available over the counter, however, but by doctor's prescription. "If you have swine flu and need treatment, treatment should start within two days after you begin to feel sick," Schoomaker said. Those with chronic medical conditions are at risk for more severe illness from the swine flu, he said. According to Schoomaker, neither the Army nor the overall military population are showing any unusual spike in illness that might indicate swine flu. Additionally, the general said, he and other senior medical officials in the joint community are staying abreast of the issue in order to keep the force healthy. "Rest assured that my staff and I are working the swine flu issue closely with the Joint Staff surgeon, the assistant secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, the other military services, Health and Human Services, and Centers for Disease Control and Preventive Medicine," Schoomaker said. Deployed service members are at no increased risk of infection, according to information released by the Surgeon General's Office. The Army Medical Command recommends Soldiers and their families avoid contracting the swine flu by avoiding those who already have the flu, and by washing their hands often. "If you think you have swine flu, contact your health care provider. He or she will be able to determine if you need testing or treatment," Schoomaker said. Event challenges Soldiers to get finances in order [2009-04-29] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers were challenged to get their personal finances in order and to learn to be better savers of their money during a Department of Defense-sponsored 'Financial Readiness Challenge,' April 28, at Fort Myer, Va. The day-long event included a presentation by keynote speaker and author Larry Winget, known as "the pit bull of personal development," in addition to multiple personal finance seminars, one-on-one sessions with financial advisors, and a gallery of exhibitors that included representatives from Military One Source, Thrift Savings Plan and Military Saves. The event gave servicemembers contact with professionals who provided information on budgets and spending plans, credit management, debt elimination, car buying, housing loans and foreclosures, savings and investments, and financial, estate and retirement planning. "Our goal is to get all servicemembers a financial plan," said Frank Emery, of the Secretary of Defense's Military, Community and Family Policy Office -- the agency that promoted the event. "That makes sense because that is one less thing servicemembers have to worry about when they deploy. Our philosophy is financial readiness equals mission readiness." If a Soldier deploys without his personal or financial issues accounted for, he might not be focused on the mission -- and that can affect other Soldiers, said Staff Sgt. Joel Crespo. "It affects his ability ... 110 percent actually," Crespo said. "Because he is worried about his financial distress, not his mission. He could put the lives of others in danger worrying about the distresses back at home with his family." Crespo said there are many resources available on an Army installation that can help Soldiers get on the path to financial security so they can avoid the kinds of problems that are impossible to fix when deployed. "With those resources out there, if he takes advantage of them -- the information out there -- it will set him up for success and allow him to do his job more efficiently," Crespo said. Crespo also said noncommissioned officers are themselves a resource Soldiers can go to in order to learn more about saving money and getting their finances in shape. "As an NCO, you can always teach a Soldier about saving money for the long term," Crespo said. "Soldiers get caught in situations where they don't have enough money in their bank accounts, they have vehicles that break down, or financial hardships because they don't have money put away or they don't have enough information on how to save and invest. I think that's one of the main factors we can definitely look at as far as teaching young Soldiers." The Financial Readiness Challenge Campaign is scheduled to visit Fort Hood, Texas in July; Fort Carson, Colo., Fort Sill, Okla., and Walter Reed Army Medical Center in September; and Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. in October. Land gift to university means opportunity for Fort Hood families [2009-04-30] WASHINGTON -- The Army officially gave more than one square mile of land from Fort Hood to Texas A&M University during a ceremony in the Capitol Building here April 30. For the university, the land will mean a new campus near Fort Hood: Texas A&M University-Central Texas. For the Army, the new campus means use of classroom space and better educational and job opportunities for those families assigned to Fort Hood. "The long-term payoff for the Army is going to be the educational opportunity that our Soldiers and their families, their spouses and their kids, are going to have at their doorstep," said Secretary of the Army Pete Geren. Geren added that the new relationships that will form as a result of Texas A&M building a campus outside its gates will simply build on the more than a century-long relationship that already exists between the Army and Texas A&M. "It builds on a shared rich history that Texas A&M and the Army have -- it goes back to the founding of Texas A&M -- Texas A.M.C. This builds on that rich history and it's an important initiative for Texas A&M to be able (to bring) this great institute to central Texas." Geren signed, along with Texas A&M System Chancellor Michael D. McKinney, an official document that transferred the Army land -- about 662 acres in all -- to the school. McKinney expressed gratitude to the Army for the transfer. "From the A&M system I have to say thank you to Fort Hood," McKinney said. "Partners with the Army -- we have been, we will always be. We appreciate you allowing us to be partners with you." Currently, Tarleton State University-Central Texas, finds a home in Killeen, where Fort Hood is located. Tarleton has been part of the Texas A&M system since 1917. After satisfying a requirement by Texas lawmakers to increase its student population, the school will be allowed to become an independent university under the Texas A&M system, and will change its name to Texas A&M University-Central Texas. The land transfer by the Army is a necessary part of that transformation. Congressman Chet Edwards was on hand to witness the signing of the land transfer. The congressman's district is home to Texas A&M's main campus located in College Station, Texas. He said the handover was a winning situation for both the Army and for central Texas. "(It's) a win for Army Soldiers and their families who will have an opportunity to get a world-class education at an affordable price right there in the backyard at Fort Hood," Edwards said. "(It's) a win for central Texas because having a higher education institution of this caliber is always a great investment in a community's future." Edwards also thanked Geren for his leadership in the effort to transfer land to the school. Walter Reed marks one century of Soldier care [2009-05-01] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of the Army Pete Geren and leaders of the Army medical community gathered at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., to celebrate the 100th anniversary of military medical care there. The hospital first opened its doors to patients 100 years ago -- May 1, 1909 -- and initially admitted just 12 patients. Today, the hospital, with many new buildings around it's campus, admits nearly 10,000 patients a year -- including Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, retirees and military family members. Geren said the recognition was not really about the building, but rather about the military servicemembers who have worked at the institution for 100 years now to provide world-class care to servicemembers who have been injured. "We're not here to honor bricks and mortar," Geren said. "But to honor men and women who devote their lives to the service of others. Today, in much of America, medical care is all about business. Army medicine is all about service -- it always has been. Today we honor a century of that service." The current Walter Reed facilities in Washington, D.C., are scheduled to close in 2011 as a result of the Base Realignment and Closure Act of 2005. But the capabilities and treatment provided at the Washington campus will be moved to nearby Bethesda, Md., where Geren said the standard of care will continue as it has for the last 100 years. "In 2011 when we close this facility, both its name and its legacy will live on at the new Walter Reed National Medical Center in Bethesda," Geren said. "The men and women who are Walter Reed will continue their outstanding service." Surgeon General of the Army Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker said that over the last 100 years, the hospital has contributed much to medicine through the work done there, including work in plastic surgery, prosthetics, burn care, battlefield psychiatry, kidney disease, and vaccine research. "(Walter Reed Army Medical Center) led the development of more vaccines than probably any other single institution of medicine in the world," Schoomaker said. "It's estimated that half of all vaccines used on travelers around the world today were developed out of Army military medicine." On the lawn of the hospital, bordering Georgia Ave., several hundred Soldiers had gathered to hear the speeches of Geren, Schoomaker and others, and to listen to the music of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps. One Soldier, Pvt. Abraham Odisho, an infantryman, didn't make it down in time to hear the speeches. Accompanied by his mother and wearing a Walter Reed football team tee-shirt and a hat bearing the patch of the 25th Infantry Division, "Tropic Lighting," Odisho rolled out the front door of the hospital in a new wheelchair. Amidst the chaos of ceremony attendees lining up for cake and punch, most who had attended the event didn't notice Odisho. But he represents everything Geren and Schoomaker said about the importance of Walter Reed. Odisho, 20 years old, was admitted to Walter Reed after an injury sustained in Ad Dawr, Iraq, on March 27. "I was the driver for the last truck -- and we were hit by an RKG-3 anti-tank grenade," Odisho said. "The grenade came from the passenger's door, went under my right foot, took off some skin from my right foot and then split my left shin in half. I'm just glad to be alive." After a stop at Speicher Contingency Operating Base, where doctors amputated Odisho's left leg below the knee, and a layover at both Balad and Germany, Odisho found himself at Walter Reed on March 29 -- just two days after the incident. "It was really quick," he said. Odisho said the care he's gotten so far from the Army and from Walter Reed has been good. "They've helped a lot," he said. "Everything I've needed, they've given to me." He says he expects to be up walking on crutches within a week and expects to eventually get an advanced prosthetic to fit his leg. "I figure medicine has come a long way," Odisho said. "Especially for amputees -- there's prosthetics now they have you'd never believed they existed." With his new prosthetic leg, Odisho said he'll finish out the military contract he signed up for just 11 months ago. "I'm gonna try to finish out my four years," he said, "And probably gonna have to re-class -- probably can't be in infantry anymore. I want to do something in intelligence or anything like that." DoD undersecretary: Army may be asked to prevent war [2009-05-05] WASHINGTON -- In the new security environment, Soldiers need to develop skills that will allow them to prevent a war from happening, said one senior DoD official. "In the future, the U.S. military is just as likely to be asked to prevent war rather than make it," said Michèle Flournoy, under secretary of Defense for Policy. Before an audience of Soldiers and civilians attending an Army Leader Forum, May 4, at the Pentagon, Flournoy explained challenges to the United States in the new security environment, insights on strategies to deal with those new challenges, and the effects on the Army. A weak or collapsing nation is one of the emerging security challenges faced by the United States, Flournoy said, saying that weak states can pose a threat to U.S. interests. "Weak states increasingly struggle to meet the basic needs of their populations; and those that cannot become increasingly unstable," she said. "We see an increased potential for these states to fail or to have ungoverned spaces within them -- and these can be fertile ground for terrorists, organized crime and lawlessness." The Army must develop Soldiers who are able to help build capacity in weak nation states, Flournoy said. This means Soldiers prepared to do more than fight war in these areas, but who are ready with skills needed to prevent war and the failure of states. "Troops will often find themselves working alongside civilians," she said, or partnering with coalition or host nations. "Every Soldier needs to be part warfighter, part diplomat, part social engineer, and part entrepreneur. The ability to move, shoot and communicate will remain important, but so will the ability to mediate disputes, mentor local security forces and win the trust of community leaders." The Department of Defense's director of policy said in the future, the U.S. must also do better at using elements of "soft power" before resorting to the hard-power options provided by the military. "U.S. engagement has to be smarter, and by that I mean we must be more proactive in our use of soft power ... and more selective in the where, when and how of the use of our military might," Flournoy said. Flournoy also said the government must work toward better inter-agency cooperation and work to build, develop and reward diplomats that are experts at applying soft power. The observation was one of the strategies Flournoy discussed to deal with the emerging security challenges faced by the United States. "Recognize that military power is necessary, but not sufficient, to deal with many of these 21st century challenges," Flournoy said. "The U.S. will continue to need a strong military second to none -- but complex problems demand solutions that integrate all the instruments of national power. "We need to take whole-government approaches to security issues. This will require major reform in our inter-agency process, as well as a more balanced investment in national security interests. We do need to invest more in the State Department's capacity, particularly their capacity to deploy civilians in an expeditionary manner to do critical functions abroad." Some other challenges cited by Flournoy include an increased struggle with extremism around the world that is further aided by emerging technology. "We now face a long global struggle against violent extremism," she said. "The emergence of al Qaeda and associated groups is perhaps the most vivid case in point. Revolutions in communications and transportation technology now enable such organizations to recruit and operate trans-nationally, challenging states in increasingly significant ways." Proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction also pose a problem, Flournoy said, including recent developments with both North Korea and Iran. She also said that there is increasing risk from non-state actors who are finding ways to obtain WMDs. Finding a way to relate to China's growing dominance is another challenge in the changing security environment, Flournoy said. As China becomes more powerful, the United States must learn to work with the Chinese on issues such as the economy or the environment, while at the same time being poised to respond to whatever risks come from their increasing military power. "We now face the challenge of simultaneously engaging and hedging against a rising China," Flournoy said, noting the rise in the country's military capability, including cyber, anti-satellite, and anti-ship capabilities. Flournoy offered several observations on how the United States might deal with new security challenges. "U.S. strategy must be grounded in pragmatism rather than ideology," she said. "We need a clear-eyed assessment of the challenges and the opportunities we face in the new security environment and our objectives must be realistic and derived from -- rooted in -- our core national interests." She said the United States must be a leader and continue to be engaged in world affairs, particularly in critical regions of the world. "Neo-isolationism is simply not an option for us," Flournoy said. "In this very connected world, events far from our borders can have enormous impacts on domestic wellbeing." Flournoy also said the United States must be an example of adherence to international law and conduct. "The United States must exemplify respect for the rule of law," she said. "We have to stop invoking American exceptionalism and return to a historical role as champion of the role of law both domestically and internationally. We must abide by the treaties and norms we helped put into place after World War II and we must lead efforts to adapt the international order and institutions to new realities like transnational terrorism." Members of Congress affected by experience as military spouses [2009-05-07] WASHINGTON -- Two members of Congress who've lived the life of a military spouse say the experience has better helped them understand the military family and helps them connect better with those who serve. "Since being married to him, I understand the stresses that military families go through," said Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, congresswoman from Arizona's 8th district. Giffords' husband is Navy Capt. Mark E. Kelly, an astronaut, who currently is assigned at Johnson Space Center, Houston Texas. Kelly works on the space shuttle and has spent nearly 40 days in space -- he's served as pilot on STS-108 in 2001 and STS-121 in 2006, and was Space Shuttle Discovery's commander on STS-124 in 2008. He spends a lot of time training in Texas while Giffords remains in either Washington, D.C. or Arizona. "We try to see each other if possible twice a month. That's our goal. But it's been more like once every three weeks," she said. "But I am very proud of what he does -- he serves his country with great honor and great distinction." Giffords serves on the House Armed Services Committee, where she is responsible for helping make decisions that affect the entire Department of Defense. She said her short time as a military spouse -- she and her husband have only been together since 2007 -- has given her better insight to the lives of both military members and their spouses. "As a woman on the Armed Services Committee and a military spouse, it provides me a unique perspective," she said. "(I'm) able to visit our troops in theater and have a conversation (with them,) not about how the weapons systems are working or not necessarily how the operation is going, but what is happening back at home. How are the kids? How is the spouse doing? " Giffords said she believes that communities can do more to help military families, on a person-to-person level, in the school systems, and also with the mental health issues for military members and their spouses. "I feel very strongly that counseling should be made available to Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, spouses and family members that are struggling because of maybe post traumatic stress disorder, maybe traumatic brain injury or maybe the stress of just being deployed," she said. "And I am concerned about the divorce rate, about domestic violence rate, and the suicide rate. Those are problems we as a community cannot ignore." Both Giffords and husband Capt. Mark E. Kelly are serving their country though -- she in the Congress and he in space. She said she's proud of the work he does and proud to serve. "Both of us are really honored to serve our nation," she said. Rep. Thomas Rooney, of Florida's 16th district, is also a former military spouse -- though it'd be more appropriate to say he was half of a dual-military household. Both he and his wife, Tara Rooney, began serving in the Army in 2000 as part of the Judge Advocate Corps, after the two attended law school together. "We got married after law school and decided to join," Rooney said, saying a recruiter had convinced them the opportunities for advancement and exciting cases were greater in the Army than in the civilian world. The two served first at Fort Hood, Texas, where he was part of the 1st Cavalry Division and she was in III Corps. "She was probably the most squared-away judge advocate that I ever met," he said. "Very attention-to-detail oriented and she was a great legal assistance attorney." The two took a second assignment in New York at West Point, where Rooney served as an instructor of law and wife Tara switched to the Reserves. While Rooney was half of a military couple, his interactions with other military families at both his assignments have brought him a perspective that many others don't have. "Seeing what the spouses had to go through, supporting their spouse whether male or female, watching some of them deploy, and just becoming a support system with the rest of our friends that we either went through basic with or were stationed with -- especially spouses with small children -- it was very hard," Rooney said. "I think that what spouses go through in the modern era is certainly something I am very comfortable with, which is why I want to be on the subcommittee for personnel. You want people to want to be in the military. You want spouses to be happy -- to be happy their better half served in the military. It should not be an encumbrance at all." Military spouses, he added are "probably the most unsung hero part of the military." Rooney said he is working on legislation now that helps military spouses better deal with some of the stresses they face when Soldiers come home -- specifically dealing with PTSD. "Our bill would make it a lot easier to identify what the needs are of each individual warfighter when they get home," he said. "A large part of it was to assist the spouses who really have to deal with it in a way they probably never anticipated. "I think the first or second bill I sponsored was directly written because of my concern for military spouses -- with PTSD. I talked to a lot of women who when their husband got home, whatever level of stress they may have had, they were not ready to deal with that. And so I just thought if as a Congress we can make it easier on them by making (more accessible) whatever care the returning warfighter is going to get ... then all the better." Army budget considers Soldiers, families, training [2009-05-12] WASHINGTON -- For fiscal year 2010, the Army has requested in its base budget $142 billion dollars for a range of expenditures that include a focus on taking care of Soldiers and their families. Also significant in the budget request, forwarded last week by the president to Congress, are items that have been trimmed. Portions of Future Combat Systems have been cut, for instance, as has the Army's ownership of the Joint Cargo Aircraft. And both enlistment and re-enlistment bonuses have been reduced. "One of the main themes is taking care of families and Soldiers," said William H. Campbell, acting director, Army Budget Office. "That's a theme both the secretary of Defense, the secretary of the Army, and the chief of staff of the Army have emphasized as we built this budget." Included in those family- and Soldier-friendly budget requests are funding for Soldier programs, wounded warrior programs, increases to child care centers and services, and an increase in family-support activities. Also included are increases in the quality of facilities, Campbell said. The costs of providing for such things as warfighter and family services; childcare and youth programs; morale, welfare, and recreation; and voluntary education/tuition assistance are part of a more than $40 billion operations and maintenance expenditure. Those O&M funds also include recruiting, training, and maintenance of equipment, facilities and infrastructure. The budget also includes provisions that will affect the wallets of Soldiers and Department of the Army civilians -- a pay increase of 2.9 percent for Soldiers and 2 percent for civilians, said Lt. Gen. Edgar E. Stanton III, military deputy for budget. This year there's funding in the military personnel budget for 547,400 active-duty Soldiers, 358,200 Army National Guardsmen, and 205,000 Reserve Soldiers. With the increases in Soldier funding, the Army has met its growth goals. More Soldiers in the mix translates to more time at home and more robust training, according to Stanton. "The Army in all three components has achieved its projected strength levels and we will stay at those strength levels both in the short term and the mid-term," Stanton said. "The focus now will be on utilizing the Army Force Generation model as we hope to increase dwell and reduce deployed time. That will allow us to refocus training for the full spectrum operations as opposed to the current emphasis on COIN (Counter-Insurgency)." Campbell also said the Secretary of Defense decided to not stand up three additional brigades and to instead use those Soldiers to bolster the manning of other units. "That will help fill out units," Campbell said. "It'll decrease the need to cross-level between units as forces begin to deploy. And combined with a structured delivered drawdown plan that will reduce demand, we should see an increase in dwell time for units." Re-enlistment bonuses have gone down from 2009 to 2010 because of the success of the Army in both re-enlistment and recruitment, said Campbell. "We still have some moneys in the budget for re-enlistment bonuses -- but there is a decrease in the budget for bonus payments," he said. From FCS, the entire line of manned ground vehicles -- eight systems all based on a common chassis -- have been canceled. "(Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates') guidance ... directs that the Army will restructure its Future Combat Systems," Stanton said. "This includes halting the development and production of the manned ground vehicles and directs that the Army relook at the requirement for the vehicle in the context of the current fight as well as the future fight and come forward with a new concept for an MGV." Stanton said Gates, Secretary of the Army Pete Geren, and Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. have directed research into a new manned ground vehicle be completed by the Army's Training and Doctrine Command. Despite the loss of FCS's MGVs, the fruits of the work done by researchers will continue to be pushed to the field through "spinouts," Stanton said. "We will roll out the spinouts, these are tactical unmanned sensors, unmanned aerial sensors and the non-line-of-sight launch system," Stanton said. "That technology, as it comes to fruition, will be rolled out to all brigade combat teams and done so in an accelerated manner. We will do it to all 73 BCTs and not just 15 BCTs. We are going to start in 2011 and finish in about 2025. It's going to take time, clearly, to get to all 73." Also significant about the FY 2010 budget cycle is that both the base budget and the $83 billion "Overseas Contingency Operations" budget were submitted at the same time -- in prior years that OCO budget was called a "supplemental" and was submitted after the base Army budget. The base budget is specifically for funding training and equipping of the Army. The OCO budget is meant to address expenses related to actual Army operations. ROTC cadets become Army officers at Georgetown ceremony [2009-05-15] WASHINGTON -- Twenty-six Reserve Officer Training Corps cadets from Georgetown University's "Hoya Battalion," were sworn in to service to the Army, May 15, by the Army's highest ranking officer. Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., himself a graduate of the school and former member of the school's ROTC cadet corps, spoke to the cadets before commissioning them as second lieutenants. "You're terrific young scholars, athletes and leaders -- and our country needs you to be all of these," Casey said. The general also spoke to the cadets about the Army they would soon enter. "You're joining an organization that is already the best in the world at what it does," he said. "An organization that has been at war for nearly eight years. A combat-seasoned, all-volunteer force that believes our freedoms are worth defending." Casey told the cadets their training, their schooling and the values they brought from home would all be put to the test once they entered service. "In a short time I have no doubt you will face tough situations," the general said, saying that the values they learned from their parents and the training they will get from the Army will keep them grounded. "You will do the right thing and you will set and uphold standards while you are doing your missions. And your subordinates will render respect to you sight unseen. And once you reach your first assignment and you realize these terrific combat-seasoned Soldiers depend on you, you will vow never to let them down and you will embody what we call the warrior ethos." Casey asked the cadets to raise their hands, and administered the officer oath to them. This year, more than 4,500 ROTC cadets -- part of 272 programs located at colleges and universities throughout the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico -- will accept commissions as second lieutenants into the Army. "The ROTC is our largest source of commissioned officers, and frankly, because of the number of colleges that have ROTC programs, it gives us great diversity from across the country," Casey said. "That's one of the strengths of the ROTC program." The general also said the ROTC program brings youth to Army leadership. "They bring new life -- it's a new injection of youth and every organization needs that regularly," he said. "People always ask you what level of command did you like the most. Mine was battalion command, because that's where you dealt with these brand new lieutenants. And you shape them and mold them into effective and vibrant officers." The new second lieutenants will graduate from several Washington D.C. area schools, including Georgetown University, American University, Catholic University of America and George Washington University. Chief discusses plan to increase dwell time [2009-05-18] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers could find themselves with as much as 24 months time between deployments if plans for military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan come to fruition. During testimony before the House Armed Service Committee May 14, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. told lawmakers Soldiers could see as much as two years dwell time by 2011 "In 2007, based on what I thought the force structure would be over the next four years, I thought we wouldn't get quite to one year out, two years back by 2011," Casey said. "If we execute the president's Iraq drawdown plan, and I have no reason to doubt we will, we will actually do better and actually get to the 1/2 or even better ratio -- we have to do that." With a two-to-one dwell time to deployment ratio, Soldiers would spend more time at home training and with their families than they would downrange, Casey said. Fixing that ratio is part of correcting a lack of balance in the Army, he said. "The most important thing we can do to get back in balance is to increase the time our Soldiers spend at home," Casey said. "Dwell time, the time spent at home, is important for several reasons. First, it gives our Soldiers time to recover from combat tours -- and 12 months is not enough." The general also said increased dwell time allows Soldiers to prepare for their next mission, as well as different kinds of missions. Casey and Secretary of the Army Pete Geren were on Capitol Hill to discuss the Army's Fiscal 2010 budget request with Congress. The manpower portion of that budget reflects the Army's recent success in meeting a directive from the last administration -- increasing the number of Soldiers across the Army. Success with that goal has a direct impact on Soldiers serving now in Iraq, Casey said. "It allows us to begin coming off stop loss this year," Casey said. For the Army Reserve, units will begin deploying without stop loss in August, he told lawmakers. For the Guard, in September, and for the active-duty Army, in January. The new budget will not fund development of eight manned ground vehicles that were part of the Army's Future Combat Systems. "I was not able to convince the Secretary of Defense we had incorporated enough of the lessons learned from current operations we were in, into that MGV," Casey said. As a result, the Army has stopped developing the current MGV and will start over with a new vehicle. "We expect to come back and have a new concept design after Labor Day," Casey said. The general said he expects that a new vehicle concept could be proposed, and developed and out to the force in five to seven years -- along the same timeline that it was going to take to get the MGV to Soldiers. The general said the Army has had great success with fielding the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle in Iraq and Afghanistan. "One of the most significant things that's happened over the last year is the infusion of about 10,000 MRAPs into theater," Casey said. "I've talked to Soldiers in Afghanistan -- sometimes they gripe a little about it being hard to drive off the road. But anybody that has been in an MRAP and had an improvised explosive device go off under them and lived -- is a convert." Army wants to be good neighbors in Colorado [2009-05-20] WASHINGTON -- The Army won't resort to eminent domain to acquire land for the expansion of the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site in Colorado. During testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee May 19, Secretary of the Army Pete Geren told lawmakers the Army would work with willing sellers in order to expand the training area in southeastern Colorado. "We have committed that we only want to work with willing sellers," Geren told lawmakers. "We will not use eminent domain." The training area, about 235,000 acres in size, is managed by Fort Carson and allows for battalion and brigade maneuver training exercises. The Army hopes to expand the size of that training area, located about 100 miles southeast of Fort Carson. "The expansion of Piñon Canyon is important to us long-term. Fort Carson, when you look at the training range available to it, it does not meet our doctrinal requirements," Geren said. "That means that the brigades at Fort Carson often have to travel elsewhere and that's expensive in order to accomplish that training." Originally, the Army had hoped to expand the training area by more than 400,000 acres. Geren says that is no longer the plan, but rather, the Army will work with local land owners to see what can be done. "We're talking about a number considerably less than that," Geren said. "The exact number of acres ... still remains to be determined," he said, adding that it will be "heavily influenced by the number of willing sellers or lessors that would be willing to come forward." There is opposition to expansion of the training area by some landowners in the area surrounding the existing site. The secretary acknowledged that the Army wants to work more closely with those landowners to find a solution. "We got off on the wrong foot with the landowners in the Piñon Canyon area and I acknowledge that," Geren said. "I'd like us to be able to punch the reset button and start over. The Army has a great, long, rich history with the state of Colorado. You all have been full partners in the growth at Fort Carson. I'd like to see us take a pause and do a better job of listening to the land owners and see if we can't figure out a way to move ahead in a win-win fashion." Geren said that development of the training area can have benefit to both the Army and the areas surrounding the training site. "The development of Piñon Canyon, properly done, could bring some economic development to a part of the state that is economically depressed," Geren said. "We want to be a good neighbor, we want to have this willingly embraced by the landowners, that's the only way it works long-term." 'Real Warriors' takes aim at mental health stigma [2009-05-21] WASHINGTON -- A new Department of Defense campaign aims to minimize, if not eliminate the stigma attached to seeking mental-health assistance. "The Real Warriors Campaign" is sponsored by the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury. The campaign is designed to help servicemembers overcome the stigma associated with seeking psychological help and encourage servicemembers to seek out help when they need it. Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, surgeon general of the Army and commander of U.S. Army Medical Command, explained that the Army works hard to encourage Soldiers to overcome the stigma associated with seeking out mental-health assistance. "One of our challenges is to lower the stigma of (Soldiers) getting follow-on counseling," Schoomaker said during a media roundtable Wednesday. "We are working in every venue we can to do that. The Army leadership, recognizing that stigma is a major part of that, has undertaken in the last two years very aggressive top-to-bottom sensitization and education of the force." Some of that education has apparently worked. Results of a Mental Health Advisory Team survey from 2004 indicate some 41 percent of respondents would avoid seeking psychological health services because it would be "too embarrassing." By 2007, only 32 percent of respondents felt that way. Likewise, in 2004, some 65 percent of respondents believed seeking such services would make them "be seen as weak," while in 2007, that number dropped to less than half. Schoomaker said when Soldiers return from deployment, they can experience symptoms from experiences they endure in combat -- and those symptoms are normal human reactions, and nothing to be ashamed of. "Human beings exposed to trauma in life have fairly high frequency of developing symptoms later on. It's a normal human reaction," Schoomaker said. "You are not going crazy. It doesn't mean you are going to have a lifetime disability. It means you need sometimes to have some help and counseling, to prevent a longer and more resistant disorder we call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder -- that is a persistence of these symptoms that begin to interrupt and interfere with life." The Real Warriors Campaign uses social networking, radio, television, posters, flyers, and a Web site to reach active-duty servicemembers, military veterans, members of the National Guard and the Reserve, as well as family members and health professionals. The campaign features stories of real service members who have sought treatment and are continuing to serve. The marketing campaign is designed to change the opinions of Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines about what it means to seek out psychological health treatment, so that eventually, those servicemembers will be as comfortable seeking out assistance for mental health issues as they are seeking out assistance with physical issues. "Real Warriors know that seeking care is a sign of strength that benefits themselves, their families and their units and Services," reads the campaign literature. That literature, and more information is available on the Real Warriors Web site at www.realwarriors.net. Humvee still made in America [2009-06-03] WASHINGTON -- The military's High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, also known as a "HMMWV" or a "Humvee," will continue to be made in the United States, by an American-owned company. The recent announcement that Detroit-based General Motors will sell their Hummer brand of vehicles to Chinese-based Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company, has no bearing on the U.S. military's Humvee. "The Army's Humvee and the civilian Hummer look similar and share a common appearance," said spokesman Lt. Col. Martin Downie. "But the rights to produce those two different vehicles are no longer owned by the same company." Humvee manufacturer AM General is an American company based in South Bend, Ind. The company produced the first 55,000 Humvees for the Army in 1985. The company continues today to produce the Humvee for the military. In the early 1990s, AM General began producing a civilian version of the Humvee, calling it a "Hummer." But by the late 1990s, AM General had sold the Hummer name to General Motors. While GM will sell the Hummer nameplate to Sichuan Tengzhong, the military's Humvee, its designs, unique performance capabilities and technologies will continue to be owned by, and the vehicle produced by, AM General. Wounded warrior graduates warrant officer school [2009-06-11] WASHINGTON -- Since sustaining an injury in Iraq nearly five years ago, a lot has changed for then-Staff Sgt. Johnathan W. Holsey. He lost his left leg below the knee and got a prosthetic, he's gone snowboarding for the first time, run a marathon, and he's made Army history as the first Army amputee to pin on warrant officer bars. Now WO1 Holsey, a Human Resources Technician, said upon entering the Warrant Officer School at Fort Rucker, Ala., that he tried not to think about the historical significance of being the first amputee to go to through the school and to focus instead on the training. "I just went into it as any other candidate going through school," he said. "But I was pretty excited, and going through the program I was kind of nervous." Holsey was injured in Iraq in November 2004 while deployed with the 1-503 Infantry Regiment, part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team. During a convoy, an improvised explosive device injured him and other vehicle occupants. Holsey lost his left leg below the knee and spent a year and a half at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. After leaving Walter Reed and later attending the Basic Noncommissioned Officers Course, Holsey and a friend decided together to try to become warrant officers. "We did it together, as a team and hoped we'd get picked up together," he said. Although his friend wasn't selected to attend Warrant Officer school, Holsey said she remained supportive of him throughout. "She always encourages me to this day to look forward, and she said she will try again." Going through Warrant Officer School with a prosthetic proved a challenge for Holsey, but he said the school made almost no accommodations for him -- no changes to the curriculum, for instance -- and required him to go through the same difficult training as the others attending -- something Holsey said he appreciated. "They made no exceptions -- my profile was like everybody else's profile. I had to do physical training with my classmates," he said, though he said he walked during the PT instead of ran. "Other than that, they made no exceptions and they treated me like everybody else. And that's one of the best things about it -- even though I'm an injured soldier, I'm still a Soldier -- that was the most important about the whole situation. Even though we're injured, we are Soldiers." But while the school didn't lighten the load to help him make it through, other Soldiers lent a hand where they thought it would help --something he said he also appreciated. During the first week of classes at the school, as the students were running, one Soldier offered assistance Holsey said he was initially reluctant to take. "I had my running leg on and I had my prosthetic in my hand and a Soldier came up behind me and tapped me on the back saying I can carry that for you," Holsey said, saying he initially declined. But later, as they were going towards a hill, the Soldier offered again. "Anytime we ran from one place to another, they would carry my prosthetic for me. They told me first week, if you need help, don't hesitate to ask. Stuff like that is empowering." Halsey's presence at the school, and the knowledge ahead of time that he, as an amputee, would be attending, was not unknown amongst Soldiers who were eligible to apply for the warrant officer rank. Halsey said he met two such people in school with him who told him they were inspired by his story. One Soldier even told him she had put in her package for the school after having read his story. "Somebody I've never seen," he said. She told him "if you can do it I can do it." He also learned the girlfriend of another Soldier had clipped an article about him and given it to him, "He said he took that article to work and that was inspiration to him to get off the couch, start running and going to the gym. He actually completed warrant officer school with me." With a WO1 bar on his Army Combat Uniform, Halsey said he's ready to head off to his next assignment as part of the Criminal Investigation Command at Fort Gillam, Ga., and to fulfill his obligations as an officer. He said he hopes that as an amputee and as a warrant officer, he can inspire other Soldiers. He also hopes he continues to be seen as an active, contributing part of the Army -- not just a symbol of the war or of the Army's commitment to Soldiers. "We don't want to just sit behind a desk," he says, speaking for all amputees. "We don't want you to just give us jobs where we're just here, to be a symbol of the war. We still want to get out there. We still want to fight. We still want to be a part of the Army." And the privileges of what he earned are also not lost on Halsey -- something he recognized when he received his first salute as a newly minted warrant officer. 'I went to work Monday and it was the first time I was actually saluted," he said. "He stood up and saluted me. At that point it was real this was happening -- it's a good feeling, and it comes with a lot of responsibilities. I'm here to serve a purpose and to inspire others too. One of the things they taught us in school: it's entirely different being an officer. There's a lot of things that'll be new to me, but I'll figure those things out as it goes." Web standards order opens some social networking sites in CONUS [2009-06-12] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers at some Army installations can now view their Facebook pages on Army networks. A recent operations order from both the 93rd Signal Brigade out of Fort Eustis, Va. and the 106th Signal Brigade, out of Fort Sam Houston, Texas, instructed Directors of Information Management to modify Web filtering software to allow access to several social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Vimeo. Additionally, DOIMs were instructed to allow access to Web-based email sites. The 93rd Signal Brigade and sister brigade, the 106th Signal Brigade, are subordinate to the 7th Signal Command, Fort Gordon, Ga. The 7th Signal Command stood up in August 2008 to assure network access to Army forces inside the continental United States. The 7th's two subordinate brigades divide responsibility for that mission into two areas of responsibility: the 93rd manages the eastern portion of the United States, while the 106th manages the western portion. The 7th Signal Command, a new command, currently has operational control over only those network assets on Installation Management Command managed installations and facilities. The May operational order affects only installations in the continental United States, and only those managed by IMCOM. Network responsibility for installations managed by other commands and activities such as Army Materiel Command and Army Medical Command will come at a later date, said Stephen Bullock, strategic communications officer for the 7th Signal Command. "The Army is in the process of building an enterprise network, part of that is the IMCOM DOIMs," he said. "Ultimately, all DOIMS will be part of the Global Network Enterprise Construct." Prior to the issuance of the command, policies varied about which Web sites were accessible on Army networks. Col. Ed Morris, chief of staff of 7th Signal Command, said the operations order standardizes web access across the command's AOR. "I don't see this as real earth shaking," Morris said. "What you are seeing is the manifestation of 7th Signal Command applying a consistent set of standards." The policies in place that restrict access to some Web sites serve to ensure network security, information security and uninterrupted network access to those using network services for operational needs. "Army Regulation 25-1 specifies that government computing systems are to be used to conduct official business and for other authorized purposes," Bullock said. "This helps avoid compromises or disruptions to service." Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations, under U.S. Strategic Command, is the ultimate authority for which Web sites must be blocked on military networks. In the operations order released by the 93rd and 106th Signal Brigades, 11 Web sites were listed as needing to be blocked. That direction came from JTF-GNO, said Col. Jim Garrison, 93rd Signal Brigade commander. "Those sites are blocked by JTF-GNO -- a higher level of network management -- the Brigade order is a reinforcement of a previously published JTF-GNO directive, that's why access to those 11 sites is denied," Garrison said. The commander said the unblocking of some social networking sites was in keeping with direction from Army senior leaders to have Soldiers tell the Army story. "This order first and foremost is about establishing web-filtering standards. However, it was crafted deliberately to meet the intent of Secretary of the Army and the Chief of Staff of the Army, who are encouraging Soldiers to tell their stories and maintain contact with the American people. Leveraging social media is an effective way to tell the Army story." Army, U.K. forces successful in future network interoperability testing [2009-06-12] WASHINGTON -- Both representatives of the U.S. Army and the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence have said recent Army Brigade Combat Team Modernization network interoperability tests between the two partner nations have proven successful. The recently concluded Multinational Experiment 3.0, held at Fort Monmouth, N.J., tested the ability of the networks of U.K. forces and Army forces to communicate with each other effectively, and to pass data and other messages to each other. "I thought it was extremely successful," said Maj. Troy Crosby, Network System Integration Program Office lead. "We actually did more than I thought we were going to be able to do during the experiment. We achieved our objectives and met all of our goals. Overall it was a great success." "The experiment went really well," said U.K. Lt. Col. David Raleigh, R Signals U.K. Ministry of Defence. "We're into that post-experiments analysis phase. And it was vast amounts of data that was gathered during experiment. We're looking forward to analyzing the experimental data and then moving forward potentially to an MNE 4.0 next year sometime and taking this a step further." Crosby said that during the exercise, subcomponents of the network's System of Systems, Common Operating Environments, or SOSCOE, performed effectively at communicating information between U.S. and U.K. networks. "Within the interoperability services, it was able to handle and translate all of the U.K. Ministry of Defence messages pretty seamlessly," Crosby said. "Obviously, every now and then you get a hiccup, and one of the engineers would have to go back into something, but accuracy rates were extremely high, we were able to take in all their messages and distribute them within the network." The SOSCOE is the operating system for the network that will tie together Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance capabilities for all Army Brigade Combat Teams. The interoperability services is one of two portions of SOSCOE that were tested during MNE 3.0. The interoperability services is a suite of services that enables SOSCOE to take in messages from U.S. and joint C4ISR systems and translate them into something that can be distributed within the Brigade Combat Team. The other major service suite tested as part of MNE 3.0 was the SOSCOE communications services. "Within that suite we leveraged a lot of information assurance, a lot of the network management," Crosby said. "A lot of the data passing went through there, mainly to assure that proper transmission and receipt of the information occurred on both sides. It performed rather well." Also tested for interoperability at MNE 3.0 was the Army's Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below, or FBCB2. That system is designed, among other things, to allow commanders to differentiate between friendly and enemy forces. "We leverage that system for call for fires," Crosby said. Within the experiment, a call for fire was made and the BCT system decided which capabilities, U.S. or U.K., were best able to handle the request. "At a certain point the decision within the system would be made, who is the most efficient fire affecter to strike that target, and then the message would be given to execute and be carried out," Crosby said. For the experiment, the system was configured so the U.K. forces would be charged with handling the request for a call for fire, Crosby said. "It would then be transmitted to the U.K. network, and at that point the U.K. forces would go ahead and take on that mission and execute it and strike the target," Crosby said. "It added a little bit of complexity within the technical call for fire thread. But it's a show to the power of the dissemination of data at that lower tactical brigade and a low level of being able to utilize either nations indirect fire and call for fire support within a battle space environment." During MNE 3.0, the Army and the U.K. experimented with exchanging data between various levels of command down to the company level -- Crosby said below that would be issues with data throughput availability, and dealing with that challenge was not the focus of the exercise. "We're very focused on ... can the ones and zeros be passed between the two nations," Crosby said. "So that is really where we are focused within the experiment we just executed." Crosby said the United States is looking into a Multinational Experiment 4.0. with the U.K., possibly in Summer 2010. PEO Soldier showcases gear at Pentagon [2009-06-16] WASHINGTON -- A water-cooled vest can take the heat off in Iraq -- making Soldiers more comfortable, and extending mission times. As part of an Army birthday-related event June 12, in the Pentagon courtyard, representatives of Program Executive Office Soldier displayed to visitors some of the technologies they are fielding or plan to field -- including a water-cooled vest, a lighter machine gun, and a common control panel for unmanned vehicles. Scott Senter, of PEO Soldier's Mounted Soldier System Program, displayed a micro-climate cooling system for mounted Soldiers, similar to one already used as part of the Air Warrior system. "It'll allow the drivers, commanders and gunners and the scouts to wear a vest underneath the body armor that will allow them to run longer missions than they are today so their body will stay at a constant cool temperature in hot vehicles when they are standing up out of turrets," said Senter. "It'll keep their body at a constant 68 to 70 degrees instead of being at 112 that we were seeing when we were deployed." The one-pound vest is lined with coils of tubing through which cold water is circulated. The chiller is a small metal box that can be mounted inside a vehicle next to the turret or driver's compartment. Soldiers connect the vest to the chiller via a quick connect cable. "We had it deployed with the 4-9 Infantry Battalion in Iraq with the Strykers, for the drivers only," Senter said. "And it's being put out in Abrams and Bradley (now). They love it. They don't want to leave without it. If it's not working or functioning, they make sure it is before they go out for a mission." Chaplain Col. Dan Minjares tried on the vest, saying it makes a noticeable difference. "You can feel the difference right away, even through your shirt," he said. "But you'd wear this underneath your shirt -- it'd be really good. It's not real heavy either, so it's not adding to the weight you carry." Senter said keeping Soldiers cool in the desert heat isn't just about comfort, it's about their mission as well. Soldiers lose the ability to concentrate when they are overheated. "With this, keeping you cooled down during the mission, your situational awareness will stay peak," Senter said. For pilots who are already using the cooling system, the cooling effects of the equipment has enabled them to increase mission time. "Pilots were able to do an hour to an hour-and-a-half mission," Senter said. "Now they can go to five or five-and-a-half hours." Reducing the heat is only one challenge PEO Soldiers is trying to accomplish for Soldiers in Iraq. Reducing the load is another -- and less weight affects Soldiers in any climate. Brig. Gen. Peter N. Fuller is the Program Executive Officer, Soldier, at Fort Belvoir, Va. He said the focus for PEO Soldier is not just on reducing the weight of body armor, but on modernizing all Soldier equipment to make it lighter and more effective. "For the average Soldier, there is such a variation difference in what they are carrying. We've seen 100 pounds to 150 pounds," Fuller said. "We're just trying to get any area we can to reduce their weight. This is a modernization effort. As we modernize the Soldier, we are trying to improve the capability, which also lightens them and gives them better capability. We are trying everything. Modernization is sometimes a lighter system, sometimes just an improvement, sometimes both." Lt. Col. Mike Ascura, product manager for Army crew-served weapons, discussed the XM-806 lightweight .50-caliber machine gun, saying the weapon is lighter and easier to acquire a target with than the M-2. "It's an experimental weapon, in development, that is supposed to be augmenting M-2," Ascura said. "We've incorporated that technology into the lightweight .50-caliber machine gun. For instance this .50-caliber now has a fixed headspace and timing. And what that means is that you don't have to gauge the barrel every time you change the barrel." The biggest difference between the XM-806 and the M-2 is the weight. The XM-806 weighs about 40 pounds. The M-2, by contrast, weighs more than twice that. And the recoil on the M-2 is about 1,000 pounds, for the XM-806, about 250 pounds, Ascura said. "What this means for a Soldier is that he can actually fire this lightweight machine gun and use a fire control device that will accurately guide him to the target in the first three rounds," Ascura said. The weapon is still in development, the colonel said, adding that PEO Soldier plans to field it sometime in 2012. Out in the field now Soldiers are already using unmanned aerial vehicles and small unmanned ground vehicles -- known as SUGVs -- as well as various sensors. Controlling all those devices remotely may eventually fall on the shoulders of Soldiers wearing the common controller developed by PEO Soldier. The controller consists of a computer and radio tied to a hand-held controller and will eventually control up to 17 different weapons platforms. "Whatever I'm operating, it will give me a live feed," said Staff Sgt. Bernard Arroyo with the Army Evaluation Task Force at Fort Bliss, Texas. "It'll give me the status on the vehicle, the speed and the battery life. It'll also feed information from the squad level all the way to the brigade tactical operations center." Arroyo has used the common controller during experiments down in Texas to control the SUGV, among other things. "We did operations there -- route clearance -- out of the back of our Bradleys," he said. "We'd drop the ramp and send the robot out and the guy was wearing this. We did route clearance, sending the robot out to check for possible improvised explosive devices. And we ran into some wires, so we did wire-breaching operations too." Right now, the whole controller weighs about 30 pounds -- it's both bulky and hot too. But Arroyo said he knows that the controller is destined to get lighter and leaner for Soldiers. "We are upgrading, and eventually it'll weigh 12 pounds," he said. "It won't hang outside the modular lightweight load-carrying equipment vest, it'll be inside the vest, integrated inside the vest where you can't see the cables or boxes." While the controller is heavy and bulky now, Arroyo said the benefit to Soldiers is clear, the device allows a Soldier to send his eyes and ears out on the back of a machine. "It definitely gives you situational awareness -- and it's definitely better to send a robot than a Soldier," he said. "And you can send this out before you send human life out -- that's the whole purpose." Army taking first steps to replace cancelled manned ground vehicle [2009-06-17] WASHINGTON -- The Army is committed to providing Soldiers with a new ground combat vehicle, despite the recent cancellation of the eight manned ground vehicles from the Future Combat Systems program. Army leaders hosted a symposium to develop requirements for a new vehicle, June 15, at the National Defense University on Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. Attendees at the forum included Army commanders, retired general officers, representatives from think tanks and enlisted Soldiers. "It's a wide variety of diverse individuals with experiences in combat, experiences in combat development, experiences in strategic operations and operational concept development -- we've got a lot of people," said Brig. Gen. Michael T. Harrison Sr., director, joint and futures, Army G-8. Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli requested the "blue-ribbon panel" event, Harrison said, to gather "thoughts, ideas and perspectives" on what the Army needed in a new ground combat vehicle. Harrison said it was important to include a variety of people in the panels because diversity of insight would mean a more robust vehicle for Soldiers. "We have the end user in mind here, and the end user is the Soldier," Harrison said. "That Soldier is represented here today by some of the platoon sergeants and command sergeants major that serve in combat formations throughout the Army. They have a perspective that is real and that is current." The one-day meeting with Army and civilian participants featured breakout sessions in six areas related to a new ground combat vehicle, including operational environments, platform characteristics, platform threats, realistic future requirements, networking considerations, and differences between a commercial-off-the-shelf vehicle verses an entirely researched and developed vehicle. Information and ideas gathered at the blue-ribbon panel may eventually be used in Army Training and Doctrine Command's recommended requirements document for the ground combat vehicle. TRADOC is expected to deliver that recommended requirements document by Labor Day, and if approved, the document will kick off the acquisition process that will eventually put a new ground combat vehicle into the hands of Soldiers. "Ideally, as we look at requirements documentation, it is reasonable to assume we may have this available to the force within a five-to-seven-year time frame," Harrison said. "We think it is doable, and we have support of the senior Army leadership and the secretary of Defense." Just what the new ground combat vehicle might look like remains to be seen, though Chiarelli told members of the Senate, June 16, that technology in the new vehicle would likely borrow from technology the Army has developed for the cancelled FCS MGVs. "We are working very hard to pull all those things we learned in the FCS MGV program -- that is not money that has been wasted," Chiarelli said. "All things we will use and look at for integration into the ground combat vehicle." Chiarelli also said the GCV could be more than just one vehicle. "I would not be surprised if we didn't see a family of vehicles that may include an indirect-fire capability," Chiarelli said. "We are very pleased with the (Secretary of Defense's) commitment to an Army modernization plan and to a GCV. And the chief of staff of the Army and the secretary of the Army have charged us with moving ahead and fielding something to our forces within five to seven years, and we are well into the planning to do that right now." Soldiers can find housing online [2009-06-18] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers looking for an easy way to find safe, reputable housing at their new duty station -- before they arrive -- can visit their local housing office and ask for information about the Automated Housing Referral Network. The AHRN is a Department of Defense-sponsored Web site that directs servicemembers preparing for a permanent change of station to housing vacancies in the vicinity of their new duty stations. "It's convenient, and for the most part, Soldiers like that they can look at this at their own leisure and see addresses and go out there and look ahead of time," said Estrella Martinez, the Housing Services chief at Fort Bliss, Texas. Martinez said as many as 300 Soldiers at the Texas installation have found housing through AHRN. For Soldiers looking for housing, they can log into the site from anywhere in the world and search for apartments or homes for rent in the local area around their new duty station. Prices, locations and photos are available on the site, as is contact information. "You can search all types of ways: by bedroom size, zip code, square footage, rental amount, etc.," Martinez said. "And it's easy to use. When they do get to the Web site and are new to using it, they get to looking at housing in about five minutes." Properties on the site undergo the same kind of scrutiny they would undergo if they were to be referred to Soldiers by housing office personnel during an office visit. "We actually do monitoring of the properties on there -- all the properties that are listed," Martinez said. "If we find something suspicious, like rent is too low, we go look to see if it is an okay property to make sure a Soldier in Germany is not going to get tricked by fake pictures." Martinez said that most landlords who use the site are honest, and are glad to be able to advertise for free to the military audience. "There's a good response from property managers -- they know this is a Department of Defense Web site for Soldiers to go on and look for rentals," Martinez said. "Everybody likes having military rent from Soldiers. And it looks good in the community. Some landlords say that within days they had calls." The AHRN Web site is free for both Soldiers looking for a good place to live, and for landlords who want to rent their properties to members of the military. Soldiers interested in beginning the process of finding housing before leaving their current duty station can start their search by logging into the AHRN Web site at: www.ahrn.com. Army's increased emphasis on safety has reduced accidental deaths since 2005 [2009-06-23] WASHINGTON -- In the past several years, Army efforts to increase safety has decreased the number of Soldier deaths due to off-duty activities such as motorcycling. "We've made considerable progress in the last four to five years -- 2005 was probably our pinnacle ... in which we had the most fatalities and accidents as a military service," said Tad Davis, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for Environment, Safety and Occupational Health, during a roundtable with bloggers, June 19. Davis said that since combat operations began in 2001, the number of accidents resulting in deaths had climbed continuously -- peaking in 2005. That year, the Army lost 299 Soldiers due to accidental, non-combat deaths -- 144 of those were due to loss of life in personally owned vehicles. "Subsequent to that, we published the first-ever Army strategic plan for safety and occupational health -- bringing together those two important areas for the very first time, (and) establishing long-term strategic goals for the Army in a way that would resonate at every level for the command and require commands down to the battalion or installation level to develop their own safety and occupational health plan to focus on their own particular needs," Davis said. Since 2005, Davis said the Army has made progress in decreasing the number of accidental fatalities. Since 2005, the numbers have dropped from 299, to 209 in 2008. "I think we made significant progress, steadily since 2005," he said. "Areas that continue to be the greatest concern for us in terms of fatalities and injuries due to accidents are off-duty, related to personally owned vehicles and motorcycles." Last year, Davis said, the Army lost 51 Soldiers due to motorcycle accidents. This year, the Army has lost 21, where it had lost 33 at the same time last year -- he attributes Army efforts for the decline. "We think we have the right mix of programs, both online and hands-on programs, that our Soldiers and civilians go through to receive certification training on motorcycle operations, as well as mentorship programs and motorcycle clubs that really enhance the skills they learn -- so we are making progress in that particular area," he said. The Army is also experiencing about 16 percent less fatalities due to sedans, sports utility vehicles and small trucks, Davis said. "I think it's a good thing, but we don't want to stop there." Davis said in an effort to further curb accident-related casualties and fatalities, the service has put "expanded emphasis" on the battle-buddy concept, and is also working to change cultures in organizations so that everyone in an organization understands their roles in promoting and ensuring safety. The Army also now uses the Travel Risk Planning System, or TRiPS, to help Soldiers plan travel for vacations and extended pass. "Where are the risks associated with the Soldier who is going on a four-day pass starting on Thursday at midnight and he is going to St. Louis, Mo. from Fort Bragg, N.C. -- what doesn't fit within that picture?," Davis said. "TRiPS has become an integral part of what we are trying to do to enhance the understanding of some of the risks (taken) by the Soldiers." Davis also said it's important for Soldiers to realize that an emphasis on safety while off duty in civilian clothing is as important as operational safety when in uniform and on duty -- because the loss of a Soldier while he's on pass has the same impact on a unit and fellow Soldiers as the loss of a Soldier while on duty. "It's important, regardless of what we are doing, whether it is a Saturday night or it's on a deployment, or getting ready to go on an airborne operation at Fort Bragg," Davis said. Rules spelled out for G.I. Bill transferability [2009-06-23] WASHINGTON -- Beginning June 29, Soldiers can go online and elect to transfer their Post-9/11 G.I. Bill benefits to their spouse or children. Rules for transferring educational benefits under the "Post-9/11 Veteran's Education Assistance Act Of 2008," sometimes called the "Post-9/11 G.I. Bill," were spelled out June 23 by Bob Clark, the Department of Defense's assistant director for accession policy and military personnel policy. According to Clark, Soldiers will be able to transfer benefits to dependents only if they are active or Select Reserve on Aug. 1. The benefit cannot be transferred by those serving in the Individual Ready Reserve, who are retired, or who are separated on that date. Additionally, under the transferability rules, a Soldier must have served six years and must commit to serve an additional four years. Soldiers can elect to transfer benefits to family members beginning June 29, through the Transferability of Educational Benefits Web site at https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/TEB. After Soldiers make those elections, the Army will verify and approve the election and assign the four-year commitment, if required. Following that approval, a Soldier's family member can then apply for benefits through the Veterans Administration Web site. According to Clark, it is recommended that Soldiers add all family members as potential beneficiaries of their Post-9/11 G.I. Bill benefits. Once a Soldier has retired or separated from the Army, they can no longer add new family members as potential beneficiaries. Under the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, thousands of qualified Soldiers or family members of qualifying Soldiers will have the opportunity to go to college at no cost to them. Soldiers, Army veterans, and family members of qualifying Soldiers can begin using benefits under the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill beginning Aug. 1. Benefits from the program can be paid out for a total of 36 months. Under a typical degree program, where students attend school for nine months at a time and are then off during the summer months, the plan could allow veterans to get a four-year degree while attending school in residence. With the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, tuition payments are sent directly to the school. Additional payments for books and supplies go directly to students. Tuition is not the only benefit extended to potential college-goers. For students attending school more than half the time, the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill also pays housing costs, up to a rate equivalent to the Basic Allowance for Housing rate for an E-5 with dependents in the ZIP code where the school is located. Students are also entitled to a yearly stipend of up to $1,000 to cover the cost of books and supplies, and students from highly rural areas who are transferring to a school may also be entitled to a one-time payment of $500. Soldiers on active duty may tap in to the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill and apply benefits toward tuition. However, active-duty Soldiers are not entitled to receive the housing allowance from the program, nor the books and supplies stipend. Benefits under the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill can be used for all levels of degree programs. The program allows Soldiers to earn a second degree, a master's degree or even a doctorate. Soldiers meeting the eligibility requirements to transfer benefits to their family members already exceed the requirements to earn 100-percent of the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill benefits. Soldiers who have served less than the time required to earn 100-percent of the benefit under the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill may receive benefits at a prorated amount. The amount of active service members have after 9/11 determines what percentage of benefits they can receive under the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill. Army limits re-enlistment options for rest of fiscal year [2009-07-01] WASHINGTON -- In an effort to slow the momentum of what has been an exceptionally productive year in recruiting and retention, the Army has limited re-enlistment options during the last three months of fiscal year 2009. "Due to the Army's great success in growing the force and meeting and exceeding our retention mission, the Army has been taking steps to slow retention and overproduction for the remainder of the fiscal year," said Sgt. Maj. Dean Drummond, Army Senior Career Counselor, G-1 Army Retention. "These steps have included reductions in retention bonuses, reductions in the number of military occupational specialties eligible for a selective re-enlistment bonus, suspension of the retention mission and most recently, two-year re-enlistments." In a DA retention policy message released June 25, the Army spelled out changes to re-enlistment option eligibility. According to the policy message, if Soldiers want to re-enlist between June 27 and Sept. 30, they may be limited to a two-year re-enlistment under the "Regular Army Re-enlistment" option. By the beginning of fiscal year 2010, which begins Oct. 1, the Army will rescind the policy memo and reinstate all regular re-enlistment options, Drummond said. "The total concept of what we are doing, keeping five options available for Soldiers, is not going to change," Drummond said. "What this does is just eliminate the options that they may have been able to receive for the remainder of this year and move them until Oct. 1." The four re-enlistment options off the table until the end of the fiscal year include the current station stabilization re-enlistment, the Army training re-enlistment, the overseas assignment re-enlistment, and the CONUS station-of-choice re-enlistment. According to the policy message, there are exceptions to the temporary policy. Soldiers scheduled to return before Oct. 31 from overseas contingency operations such as Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom are exempt and are entitled to all re-enlistment options. "It does not affect those units," Drummond said. "We have a number of units out there from the brigade combat teams all the way down to battalion and company levels with unit identification codes that are deployed. Those Soldiers that are out there are eligible to receive all options as if nothing has changed -- as long as they are redeploying prior to Oct. 31." Additional exemptions from the temporary policy include Soldiers in over-manned career fields. They may re-enlist for three or more years in order to meet the retainability requirements for moving into a new career field. Soldiers in the rank of staff sergeant and above, who have 10 or more years service, are required to re-enlist under the provisions of the indefinite re-enlistment program. Additionally, Soldiers participating in the bonus extension and retraining program, known as BEAR, can re-enlist in accordance with their program agreement. The temporary policy has the effect of stopping re-enlistment bonuses for some -- as a requirement for those bonuses is a three-year or more re-enlistment. Soldiers hoping to reenlist and receive such a bonus, if they meet the requirements to receive a reenlistment bonus, will have to wait until the new fiscal year begins and reenlist then. Some Soldiers who want to re-enlist, however, will be forced to re-enlist during the last quarter of fiscal year 2009, because their re-enlistment window -- though a full two years long -- will end during that period. Those Soldiers will have to re-enlist for two years, and then re-enlist again inside the new fiscal year if they want to stay in longer. "But most of the Soldiers that have waited to the last minute have re-enlisted prior to this message going out," Drummond said. "So it only affects those who have been on the wire." Drummond said even those Soldiers will still be able to eventually get a re-enlistment bonus. "If you've done two years and you re-enlist for six years, you are actually in sense adding four more years," Drummond said. "But that's all you'll get a bonus for is four more years, not six." Army 'deadly serious' about replacement ground vehicle [2009-07-02] WASHINGTON -- After cancellation of its Future Combat Systems program, the Army continues to focus on modernization of the force and a replacement for the canceled Manned Ground Vehicle. "We've got our very best people working on it," said Lt. Gen. Stephen M. Speakes, deputy chief of staff, Army G-8. "We're doing everything we can to reflect the lessons of combat, we're deadly serious about getting this as right as we can." The result of a recent Acquisition Decision Memorandum spelled the end of the Army's expensive modernization strategy, FCS. The ADM gutted the program of its eight centerpiece "manned ground vehicles." "There was a commitment to Army modernization, there was a specific objection to individual programs that were part of Army modernization, and so, for example, the MGV did not enjoy the support of the senior leadership in the DoD," Speakes said. "We are getting a do-over." There's no disagreement, however, that the Army needs a new ground vehicle. "The Army's got about 16,000 fighting vehicles -- Bradleys, tanks, 113s, howitzers," said Lt. Gen. N. Ross Thompson, the military deputy for the Army Acquisition Executive. "At some point in time the Army's got to modernize those 16,000 fighting vehicles for the future or we are going to put Soldiers in harm's way if we don't do that." The Army is working now to develop a new ground vehicle -- the Ground Combat Vehicle -- that is meant to fill the need for a more modern ground vehicle. Currently, operational requirements for such a vehicle are being developed by the Army's Training and Doctrine Command. The Army is also focused on modernization through the "spinout" technology from the FCS program. Spinouts from FCS include such things as the non-line-of-sight launch system, the tactical unmanned ground sensors, the urban unattended ground sensors, the class-1 UAV, the small unmanned ground vehicle and the network integration kit. Those technologies will be part of the set of spinouts to the first seven infantry brigade combat teams. Also part of Army modernization, Speakes said, is to better include the mine resistant ambush protected vehicle into the Army. That vehicle, he said, has proven combat effective and a better plan must be developed to fit it in to BCTs. "Our challenge is clear, which is to take a vehicle that's been proven in combat and now over the course of the days and months ahead, develop a specific blueprint for how we're going to do that for the future," Speakes said. Craddock: NATO must find better ways for nations to participate [2009-07-10] WASHINGTON -- Options exist to help members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization better meet their obligations within the alliance, said the former NATO commander, who left the post less than two weeks ago. Gen. John Craddock, the recent NATO supreme allied commander Europe and former commander of U.S. European Command, spoke July 9 at the Reserve Officers Association in Washington, D.C., as part of a presentation by the Heritage Foundation titled "NATO and Afghanistan: Equitable Burden Sharing." The general addressed concerns that some NATO nations weren't as active in the alliance as others, in particular, to commitments in Afghanistan. He also suggested ways NATO could help member nations be more active in the alliance, including the development of shared NATO resources and the expansion of the NATO mission to include non-military, nation-building activities. Craddock said that NATO can do more to enable member nations to provide support -- to meet their commitments to the alliance. "We as an alliance need to make it easier for individual nations to make those contributions," he said. "We need to help nations financially who are willing to deploy to an operational theater." Such assistance could come, he said, through the use of common or shared resources -- including a funding system that could reduce the strain on national defense budgets. "We must bring new modern interoperable capabilities to the nations of the alliance, and also collectively to the alliance itself," he said. "I think we should further explore the acquisition of the commonly owned assets." Even more, he said, NATO could redefine its mission in such a way as to enable some nations to participate in non-military ways. "The vast majority of the new and emerging threats that we face collectively: transnational terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, piracy, energy security, mass migration, cyber attack -- these cannot be defeated by military means alone," he said. Those threats to national security call for international solutions built on international partnerships and cooperation, he said. "When we plan for the operations of today and tomorrow, perhaps NATO should ask whether it can provide capabilities outside the military domain," he said. "I would suggest that it is perhaps time for NATO to consider a greater role in areas that are traditionally non-military. Future transformation could be more comprehensive in nature, enabling the alliance to participate more actively in new tasks, tasks such as nation-building, and the construction of systems of justice and good government." The role of the United States, he said, is to continue building partner capacity in NATO -- to assist partner and member nations in building what they have to contribute to increasing demands by the alliance. "We currently provide essential support to our multi-national operations by building partner capacity," he said. "We must expand our efforts to assist allies in increasing their capabilities. The multinational operations we conduct today, and the one that we will conduct tomorrow, can succeed only if allies work together effectively. Interoperability and increased partner capacity are indeed essential." Craddock also discussed the perception that some NATO nations did not seem as committed to the alliance's operations as others -- particularly when it involved Afghanistan. "I believe that our European allies play an important and invaluable role in Afghanistan and other NATO operations," Craddock said. "But I also believe that we have issues to resolve. We as an alliance have remained well short of our agreed-upon statement of requirements in the Afghan theater. And also in Afghanistan, our NATO forces are riddled with caveats which restrict the flexible employment of the military force." But the general fell short of accusing any particular nation of not doing its part. "To simply say that our allies don't pull their weight in Afghanistan, I believe, is an oversimplification," he said. Craddock said NATO asks member nations to commit 2-percent of their gross national product to defense, but that today, only a handful of member nations meet that goal, and that in the future he expects the number of countries meeting that expectation to drop even further. "I think today that number is four; it was six this time a year ago and it may well be two within six months," he said. "Those are the current trends." In Afghanistan, Craddock said, some nations participating there have restrictions on troops -- restrictions that limit their ability to contribute to the goals of the alliance. The general explained that nations not as active in NATO can be divided into two categories: those who cannot participate as fully as expected, and those that will not. "The United States has spent a lot of time, effort and resources developing our military as a powerful force, with a wide spectrum of cutting-edge capabilities and highly trained units to conduct military operations whenever and wherever we're called for," he said. "But not all of our allies have the resources to develop similar force strength and similar capabilities." Those nations with limited resources, he said, may instead focus on very specific, specialized capabilities they can bring to the fight. Their commitment, with limited, niche capabilities, must not be interpreted as being less committed, he said. "Some nations are strong in certain areas and are weak in other areas. Some lack certain capabilities altogether," he said. "We must not look at specialization as a shortcoming. Rather, for many, it is a sensible way to increase alliance capability in total. By encouraging nations to focus their efforts in different capability areas, we can benefit as an alliance from the law of comparative advantage." The general also said that during the Cold War, many nations focused on building defensive forces to protect their own borders. The end of the cold war, and new requirements from NATO, have meant that nations must transform their militaries to support expeditionary operations. But recent conflict between Russia and Georgia, he said, have been cause for some nations to reconsider their rapid transformation to an expeditionary force. Providing an expeditionary force is also expensive, Craddock said. And for some nations, the logistical cost of deploying a force commensurate with their military's size is prohibitively expensive. "Due to NATO's cost-lie-where-they-fall policy, the costs of deployment fall to individual nations committing and deploying to the theater," he said. "For a larger nation, such as the United States, we are able to benefit from economies of scale as we've realized logistics costs. Contrarily, the logistics tail for a smaller force contingent in Afghanistan is proportionately much more significant than for that of a larger force." Some nations, he said, may also be unwilling to support all NATO operations because of political pressure and because of a government's inability to communicate to its own population the importance of participation in some actions that aren't readily seen as important to its own national security. "The decision of a nation to deploy military force, putting its sons and daughters in harm's way, and expending national treasure, is not and should not be an easy decision," he said. "We must remember that even the Article V guarantee of NATO provides only that a nation take action it deems necessary in restoring and maintaining security -- it is a national decision." Currently, NATO is asking member countries to provide resources to the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, to K4 in Kosovo, to a headquarters in Bosnia, to Operation Active Endeavour in the Mediterranean, to training missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, to a counter-piracy mission in the Gulf of Aden, and to the NATO response force. He said a national government, in making a decision to commit to those requests, must consider national will inside its borders and how to sell providing support to the populace that elected it. "It must consider public opinion as it endeavors to deploy its military force," he said. "In some nations, public support for the operation in Afghanistan is quite limited." Still, the general said, he believes each nation in NATO has a responsibility to the alliance and to communicate to its people the importance of the military action it has committed to NATO. Leaders, he said, must not be followers. "To lead rather than follow polling data on public opinion," he said. "Politically, this can be a real challenge for European nations -- when a coalition government's hold on power rests with a single seat in parliament, that government may be more than a bit tentative in vocalizing unpopular positions." Finally, Craddock said operations in Afghanistan need more support from NATO countries if the goals of the alliance are to be met. "The ISAF mission, in Afghanistan in particular, needs increased commitment by individual NATO allies and partners to enable meaningful progress toward objectives," Craddock said. 'Beans, bullets and BTUs' define Army energy security [2009-07-16] WASHINGTON -- The Army will soon be the largest fleet owner of both low-speed electric vehicles and hybrid-electric vehicles. "That will have significant impact on our fuel consumption at our installations," said Dr. Kevin T. Geiss, program director for energy and partnerships in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations and Environment. Geiss said orders are in now for an additional 800 low-speed electric vehicles, formerly called "neighborhood electric vehicles" by the Army. The purchase is part of a plan to add 4,000 of the LSEVs to the Army over three years. The Army is getting an additional 502 hybrid vehicles for installations as well. The vehicle purchases are part of a larger plan by the Army to focus on energy security, Geiss said. The plan also includes a solar project at Fort Irwin, Calif., and a geothermal project at Hawthorne, Nev. Geiss said the Army should know soon who the civilian developer will be for the Fort Irwin project, and that a memorandum of agreement with the Navy is now being finalized for the 30Mw geothermal project in Nevada. "Our goal there is to by the end of the summer or early fall, have the request for proposal on the street and have the industry day to get the developer for that project," Geiss said. The Army's plans for energy security include such things as electric and hybrid vehicles, micro-grids for more efficient power distribution, reductions in consumption of energy on installations, certification of tactical vehicles for alternative fuel use, and partnerships with industry to build power-production capacity. Ensuring the Army has enough energy, when and where it needs it, is an important consideration when prosecuting both training missions and contingency operations overseas, Geiss said. And efforts to provide that energy, so the mission can continue uninterrupted, focus on five key components: surety, sufficiency, supply, sustainability and survivability. "All of those things are important to us for energy security," he said. He modified a Marine Corps motto, "beans, bullets and bandages," to include "BTUs" or British thermal units -- a unit for measuring energy. "Think of the concept of beans, bullets and BTUs," he said. "Most people are familiar with the beans and bullets -- but beans, bullets and BTUs, I think, focuses us on the vital importance of energy for the Army and our missions." Right now, Geiss said, neither the Army nor the United States is in a place where it can claim it has energy security. "I would say energy security is an end state," he said. "If we were able to satisfy those five key requirements at our installations and our deployed operations, and with our weapons systems, then we would achieve a state of energy security. I don't think that the nation is in an energy-secure state at this point." Inside the United States, the Army has to consider what happens if the civilian electric grid, on which it depends for its power needs, should go down. Plans for that event, and the ability to continue operations unimpeded are at the center of the Army's energy security concerns in the United States. Solutions could involve equipping every installation with its own power-generating capability -- a natural gas power plant, for instance. But the cost for that, Geiss said, is prohibitive. Additionally, there are community, state and federal restrictions about what kinds of things can be done. Instead, Geiss said, the solution involves looking at both power production and reducing energy consumption. Reduction involves identifying what power consumption on an installation is mission critical and also taking measures to be more efficient in energy use. The Army is conducting ongoing studies to determine the nature of energy use at its installations. For reduction of energy use, the Army must now comply with the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, that says all new and remodeled facilities must be off fossil fuels by 2030. Additional legislation mandates a decrease in consumption of 3 percent a year for a period of 10 years. By 2015, Geiss said, the Army will have achieved a reduction of about 30 percent. For generation of power on an installation, the Army will look to partner with industry to develop renewable energy production capability. Last year the Army established the Energy and Partnerships Office to facilitate those kinds of developments. "The Army does not have the funds internally to accomplish all this," Geiss said. "We can't fund all the geothermal plants, all the wind farms, all the solar farms, to get us the power and energy that we need. It's going to require a partnership with industry." Partnerships with industry mean looking for investors and the right locations around the country to develop projects that will benefit both the Army and the developer. "We can generate large projects that will provide us with power, as well as an economic case for the developer being able to sell some of that power off to the grid," Geiss said. Ongoing Army energy projects include the solar projects at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, and Fort Carson, Colo., and large-scale energy-management programs at Fort Hood, Texas. There is also the development of a 500-megawatt solar thermal plant at Fort Irwin, Calif.; a 30Mw geothermal plant at Hawthorne Army Depot, Nev.; and biomass-to-fuel demonstrations at six Army posts. Overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan, energy security is also important for contingency operations and for weapons systems. The Army needs continuous, uninterrupted power for its forward operating bases. Added to the mix in forward locations is the exponential increase in the cost of fuel. While fuel prices rose at the pumps in the United States last year, the price for fuel used by forces in Iraq and Afghanistan rose as well. But there, the cost of the fuel itself is eclipsed by the cost of getting it to where it is needed. "Last year, the big deal was the price of fuel," Geiss said. "You go from $2 a gallon to $4 a gallon -- so we are doubling our costs. But that's really the tip of the iceberg as far as how much it really costs to get a gallon of fuel to an operating base or some other operating location." The "fully burdened" cost of fuel accounts for the cost of transporting it to where it is needed, Geiss said. And moving fuel by convoy or even airlift is expensive. "In some places you have to fly it in by plane or by helicopter and drop off bladders of fuel," he said. "Those costs can be an additional $20, $40 or even $200 a gallon. To complete that mission with weapons a system in a remote location in Afghanistan, for a week, you (might) need 1,000 gallons. For us to get that in there, it's going to cost us maybe $200 a gallon. So that's $200,000." In some places, Geiss said, analysts have estimated the fully burdened cost of fuel might even be as high as $1,000 per gallon. Energy consumed by a combat vehicle may not even be for actual mobility of the vehicle, Geiss said, but instead to run the systems onboard the vehicle, including the communications equipment and the cooling systems to protect the electronics onboard. One combat vehicle, Geiss said, operates an 800-horsepower power plant -- of which only 200 horsepower are used for mobility. The rest is to power the vehicle's subsystems. "What is it cooling? Electronics and sensors, some for the engine," Geiss said. "That's how significant this other stuff is." In January, the Defense Science Board released a report titled "More Fight, Less Fuel," that focused on the fully burdened cost of fuel. Addressing the issue means changing the way Soldiers operate at forward operating bases, and even the way weapons systems are designed. Applying spray foam insulation to a tent can reduce energy costs related to climate control by as much as 50 percent. That was determined though research conducted at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif. Also at the NTC, the Army has demonstrated microgrid technology that can better manage and reduce energy consumption at forward deployed locations. "At an FOB, electricity is generated by a generator," Geiss said. "You fill it up and turn it on and they go 24/7 -- whether you need all the power being generated or not." With micro-grid technology, generators are linked together and equipped with computer-controlled intelligence. The system is aware of the total power demand and can turn generators on or off to meet that demand. "If you are turning the generator off instead of running it when you are not using all the power, it's pretty simple," he said. "The savings estimates are 25-40 percent. But you have to have the intelligent systems to do that." The culture of Soldiers themselves also has to change, Geiss said. He said Soldiers must realize that the price of fuel needed for survival at FOBs is paid not only in dollars, but in lives and mission resources to get it there. Outgoing secretary lauds Soldiers, families, NCOs [2009-07-17] WASHINGTON -- In his last days as the Army's 20th secretary, Pete Geren opened up about issues he faced during his tenure, including the challenge of an ongoing war, advancing medical care for Soldiers, and the importance of families. Secretary of the Army Pete Geren took office March 9, 2007 in the midst of two wars -- one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. Geren said that the Army's performance in those wars, as an all-volunteer force, is noteworthy because those conflicts are the longest wars the Army has ever fought using an all-volunteer force. "Most people never believed you could conduct an extended war with an all-volunteer force -- and the extraordinary Soldiers and families we have, have proven those people wrong," he said. During that time, Soldiers have remained committed to the fight and their families have remained supportive of their Soldiers. Geren said in the future, Americans will look back and remember those sacrifices. "When we look over the last eight years, that's what people will remember most about the Army -- how our Army stepped up and responded to the challenge of our nation at war," he said. "Our Soldiers have responded with great distinction, as have their families." During his time as secretary, Geren developed programs like the Army Family Covenant, the Army Community Covenant and Warrior Transition Units. He also was responsible for directing Army and national attention to the contributions of noncommissioned officers by designating 2009 as "The Year of the NCO." With the Year of the NCO, Geren said he hoped to build recognition for the contributions NCOs make to the Army. He also hoped to better inform Congress of their importance and additionally hoped to increase professional development opportunities. "We are halfway through the year now and I hope the NCOs understand how much we appreciate what they do," Geren said. "They are the backbone of our Army. Most militaries around the world don't have the same level of professionalism and responsibility in their NCO corps. But our NCOs are the glue that have held this Army together during this critically important time in our nation's history." As secretary, Geren dealt with the fallout from the revelation that outpatient care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., was inadequate. His leadership changed the way the Army delivers outpatient care to Soldiers through development of Warrior Transition Units. "An area we changed a great deal over the last couple of years has been outpatient care," Geren said. "The need for outpatient care has grown considerably over the last several years, so the development of the Warrior Transition Unit is a way to deliver outpatient care. We have 36 of those around the country and around the Army system. It is a completely new approach to taking care of outpatients -- it is better organized, and it is focused on the needs of outpatients." The secretary said he believes WTUs will end up being a model for other services. Through development of the Army Community Covenant and the Army Family Covenant, Geren institutionalized both the service's commitment to be good partners in the communities where it resides and its recognition of the family's contributions to the mission. "Our Soldiers can't do their jobs if their families are not able to stand and support them," he said. "We've got a different Army than we did 30-40 years ago. More than half the Army is married. There are 700-800,000 kids in Army families. Their Soldier/loved ones are going to far-off places, risking their lives, and giving their lives in some places. We as a country have a duty to those families." As part of the Army Family Covenant, Army funding to family programs doubled from $700 million to $1.4 billion. The funding provides for increased family programs, childcare for spouses when Soldiers deploy, and youth and recreational programs. Despite his contributions to the Army while serving as its secretary, Geren remains humble. "I'm one of many people working with the Army to support all these various initiatives," he said. "I consider this opportunity I've had to work with the Army, with Soldiers and civilians and Army families, to really be the most rewarding period in my life. I'm like one of the 299 million Americans that have this great debt to all that wear the uniform -- and I am proud of having an opportunity over these three-and-a-half years to be part of the American public's support of Soldiers and families." Geren says that after his departure, it is the Soldiers he will miss the most -- interacting with them on a day-to-day basis, and working alongside them. "When I came into the Army, it was like I stepped iside the frame of a Norman Rockwell painting," he said. "I saw there are wonderful men and women that are in the Army -- they love their country, care deeply about service, and they believe in something greater than themselves. More than anything else I'll come away from this experience with a great appreciation for the ethics and the values of the Army. It's really an island of idealism in an otherwise 'me first' world today. It's really been uplifting and inspiring to work with Soldiers, and the mission focus they have is contagious." In the future, Geren said, the Army will continue to face challenges -- but he said the Army will continue to focus on supporting the family, continue to evolve healthcare, and can expect to continue to face the challenges of supporting Soldiers in overseas operations. "How do we support those 140,000-150,000 Soldiers that are deployed around the world to get them what they need, when they need it, and make sure the bureaucracy doesn't stand in the way of responding to their immediate needs?" Geren asked. "I see the continuing years as a continuation of what we have worked on for these many years since 9/11." President Barack Obama recently announced his selection of the next Army secretary, Rep. John M. McHugh of New York. Geren said he has been friends with McHugh for a long time, and expects McHugh will perform well as the new secretary. "He brings tremendous experience to the job," Geren said. "I was very excited for him and for the Army when the president made the choice he did. My successor brings more experience to this job than I brought to the job. He's going to hit the ground running." Chief tells outgoing secretary, 'you are one of us' [2009-07-17] WASHINGTON -- During a ceremony July 16 at the Pentagon, Chief of Staff of the Army George W. Casey Jr. shared thoughts about the man who has served as his boss for more than two years. Outgoing secretary of the Army, Pete Geren, served as secretary since March 9, 2007. Before an audience of several hundred Army officers, enlisted, and civilian employees, Casey recognized Geren's character and humility. "He's a man of character and he is a man of integrity," Casey said. "But it really struck me -- and he'll tell you, 'I never served, I was never a Soldier.' He was apprehensive whether he would be accepted into our ranks." But the general went on to let the outgoing secretary know that his devotion to the Army and to Soldiers, and his belief in Army ideals, had endeared him to those he served. "As I've watched you, you are the quiet professional that we all aspire to be," Casey said. "We like to do the hard, right things. We like to do them to an exacting standard that makes us feel like we've done the right thing. And we like to do it without a lot of arm waving. And that's what I saw with you. And so Pete, you're one of us. You may not think that, but you're one of us -- the quiet professional." Casey credited Geren for initiating efforts to curb sexual assault and suicide in the ranks and for developing programs such as the Army Family Covenant, the Army Community Covenant, and the Year of the NCO. Both Casey and Sgt. Maj. of the Army Kenneth O. Preston took turns at the podium to let Geren know the effect he had on the force. Preston highlighted key contributions made by the secretary to Soldier and family well-being. "The secretary's concern for our Soldiers and families took him to posts, camps and stations around the world," Preston said. "He wanted to look our Soldiers in the eye and hear their stories of success and understand their concerns first hand." Preston said he accompanied the secretary around the Army to visit Soldiers in Warrior Transition Units, a new construct developed to facilitate the transfer of injured Soldiers back into the force or into civilian life. "In every case, the secretary met personally with Soldiers and their families," Preston said. "In very open and candid discussions, he wanted to understand how we as an Army are doing in caring for their immediate and future needs in all aspects of their lives -- not just medical." Preston also focused on the development of both the Army Family Covenant and the Army Community Covenant. "Both of these initiatives are a legacy of support that will endure with the Army throughout our history," Preston said. As part of the Army Family Covenant, Army funding to family programs doubled from $700 million to $1.4 billion. The funding provides for increased family programs, childcare for spouses when Soldiers deploy, and youth and recreational programs. Preston also touched on the secretary's contributions to development of the noncommissioned officer corps. During his time as secretary, Geren was responsible for directing Army and national attention to the contributions of noncommissioned officers by designating 2009 as "the Year of the NCO." Part of that effort was to increase career development of NCOs. "He committed his support to additional funding for new initiatives, and at our request, his support of accelerating the implementation of existing NCO development initiatives," Preston said. One of those initiatives, the NCO career tracker, is now on course to test as a pilot program for the Army in November, Preston said, with full implementation expected in 2010. "It'll provide lifelong learning opportunity for all Soldiers regardless of rank," Preston said. Finally, Preston addressed the secretary directly -- expressing his gratitude for the time they served together. "Sir, your contributions will live on in the annals of Army history," he said. "Your care, concern, mentorship and leadership will be missed. On behalf of approximately 430,000 NCOs from all three components: thank you." Geren himself took the opportunity to address the Soldiers he has served for more than two years, telling them he is impressed by their service and by the dedication of their families. "Working for Soldiers and families has truly been the most rewarding experience of my life, and I thank all of you for letting me work with you, it really has been a privilege," Geren said. Geren said his knowledge of the Army and Soldiers began his second week at the Pentagon, back in September 2001, when he served as a special assistant to the Secretary of Defense. With the terrorist attack on the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, Geren said he began watching Soldiers. "That day I watched Soldiers go to the sound of that explosion -- and for nearly eight years, I've watched Soldiers," he said. "I've watched you go off to war. And I have watched your families stand with you every step of the way. I've been truly inspired by your service, by your capacious sense of mission, and humbled by the sacrifice of your families." The secretary likened the Army to a Norman Rockwell painting. "It's a world of unabashed patriotism, of humility, and selfless service," Geren said. "The Army is a cynic-free zone -- a world so different than the 'me first' culture that is so much of the world today. Working for you and with you, and for your families, has truly been the privilege of my lifetime. I thank all of you -- from the bottom of my heart -- for what you do, and thank your families for what they do. It is the Soldier -- Army Strong -- God bless you." New campaign streamers available now for unit flags [2009-07-22] WASHINGTON -- Five new campaign streamers have been approved for use on Army and unit flags. Three streamers represent named campaigns in Iraq, and two represent named campaigns in Afghanistan. The named-campaign streamers replace the non-specific Iraq and Afghanistan streamers that may already be on unit colors. Battle streamers typically hang from unit flags to let unit members and others know what military campaigns a unit has participated in. "A Soldier joining a unit may have not been there for a campaign, but there is a lot of pride that goes into joining a unit that has been battle tested," said Maj. Dan Allen, with the Army's Human Resources Command. "When you stand behind that flag in formation and there are streamers hanging off it -- everybody knows that your unit has been battle tested. There is a history that passes down to the new Soldiers." Units with campaign participation credit for Operation Enduring Freedom may be authorized to display the "Liberation of Afghanistan" streamer, dated Sept. 11 - Nov. 30, 2001. They may also fly the Afghanistan "Consolidation I" streamer, dated Dec. 1, 2001 - Sept. 30, 2006. Another Afghanistan campaign streamer, "Consolidation II" covers an open-ended period that begins Oct. 1, 2006. It is not yet authorized to hang on flags. For those units with campaign participation credit in Operation Iraqi Freedom, they may be able to display any of three streamers. The "Liberation of Iraq" streamer covers the period March 19 - May 1, 2003. The "Transition of Iraq" streamer covers the period May 2, 2003 - June 28, 2004, and the "Iraqi Governance" streamer covers the period June 29, 2004 - Dec. 15, 2005. An additional streamer, "Nation Resolution," covers the open-ended period beginning Dec. 16, 2005. It is not yet authorized to hang on flags. The Army recognizes more than 180 campaign streamers that can be attached to the Army flag. They cover Army actions starting with the Battle of Lexington, in 1775, which is the first battle of the Revolutionary War, up through the latest campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. "They recognize a unit's participation during a period of time while they are serving in combat," said Lt. Col. Stephen Harmon, acting chief of military awards branch, Army Human Resources Command. "And the Soldiers get a campaign medal that corresponds to the streamer." The Iraq campaign streamers are all the same colors and each bears the name of the campaign. Likewise with the Afghanistan campaign streamers. The colors are the same used to make the ribbon on corresponding campaign medals, and on ribbons worn on the class A uniform. The colors have significance. According to the Army's Institute of Heraldry Web site, the colors in the Iraq campaign streamer correspond to those of the Iraqi flag. Green is the traditional color for Islam, red honors the fighting courage for the pursuit of freedom, white denotes generosity and black exemplifies success. For the Afghanistan campaign streamer, the ribbon reflects the colors of the new Afghanistan flag, while the red, white and blue at its center represents the United States and its allies. Campaign streamers are available to qualified units at no cost. Specifics on how to obtain campaign streamers are spelled out in MILPER Message Number 09-120, available on Army Knowledge Online. Vice chief pleased with insights toward new combat vehicle [2009-07-23] WASHINGTON -- A month after Army experts first gathered to discuss requirements for a new ground combat vehicle, their insights from that forum were presented to the Army's vice chief of staff -- and were met with approval. "The distinguished participants provided the Army with excellent input," said Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli. "I could not be more pleased with their participation and interest in their work across the Army and DoD." In June, a "blue ribbon panel" of Army officers, retired general officers, representatives from think tanks and enlisted Soldiers met for the first time at the National Defense University on Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., to discuss the requirements for a new ground combat vehicle. The panel's more than 50 participants considered such things as the operational environment the vehicle would operate in, the characteristics of the platform, anticipated threats, as well as network issues. The meeting there was unusual in that it was the first time the Army had gathered such a group to provide input into a major weapons system purchase. "It's a wide variety of diverse individuals with experiences in combat, experiences in combat development, experiences in strategic operations and operational concept development -- we've got a lot of people," said Brig. Gen. Michael T. Harrison Sr., director, joint and futures, Army G-8. Since then, insights from that meeting have been distilled and reviewed by experts at the Army's Training and Doctrine Command. On July 16, the executive board from the blue ribbon panel, along with Chiarelli, the board's director, met with representatives from TRADOC to hear their opinions on what was discussed back in June at NDU. Experts from TRADOC presented 24 "major insights" they had distilled from the first meeting of the blue ribbon panel. Those major insights will be used by TRADOC to develop a "requirements document" that will be presented to the secretary of the Army in September. That document, if approved by the secretary, will be one of the first major steps in purchasing a new ground combat vehicle for the Army. It is expected the Army will see the first GCV within five to seven years. Chiarelli also said the GCV could be more than just one vehicle. "I would not be surprised if we didn't see a family of vehicles that may include an indirect-fire capability," Chiarelli said. "We are very pleased with the (secretary of Defense's) commitment to an Army modernization plan and to a GCV. And the chief of staff of the Army and the secretary of the Army have charged us with moving ahead and fielding something to our forces within five to seven years, and we are well into the planning to do that right now." Evaluation task force will continue beyond FCS cancellation [2009-07-24] WASHINGTON -- Both the Army Evaluation Task Force, and parent organization, the Future Force Integration Directorate, are expected to continue on despite the cancellation of the program they were designed to support. Both the FFID and the AETF were designed to support development of the Army's recently canceled Future Combat System's program. But during a July 24 media roundtable at the Pentagon, Maj. Gen. James Terry, director of Training and Doctrine Command's Future Force Integration Directorate, said he expects both organizations to press on with support to the Army's current modernization efforts. "Essentially what we do is move past FCS and we are looking at, more broadly, Army modernization," the general said. Terry, who will soon move on to command the 10th Mountain Division (Light) at Fort Drum, N.Y., told reporters that right now the FFID has switched focus and is looking at ways to modernize Army brigade combat teams using existing programs of record and spinouts from the canceled FCS. The general also said he expects the technology for the Army's "Ground Soldier Ensemble" to enter limited user testing in summer, 2010. "It'll be (to a) battalion with three companies -- as I understand it there'll be some competitive prototyping that goes on before that," he said. "So we'll have essentially multiple sets from different prototypes, then we'll go into the test to determine the best of the prototypes." The GSE is meant to provide situational awareness to dismounted Soldiers through the use of technology and connection to the network. The system involves graphic displays, access to mapping information, and radios to attach Soldiers to higher headquarters. The general said one of the goals for GSC is to make it lighter for Soldiers. Terry also said the Army is working to further develop a replacement for the manned ground vehicle: the ground combat vehicle. "We are working mightily on developing the requirements and the concept behind ground combat vehicle," he said. "The SECDEF gave us homework to do on our combat vehicles and that's exactly what we are doing. It's a large part of our BCT modernization plan that's out there." He said he expects plans for the ground combat vehicle to be delivered to the secretary of the Army before Labor Day. Transition program rolls out welcome mat for wounded Soldiers [2009-07-27] WASHINGTON -- Injured Soldiers looking to transition back to civilian life have long been able to start with the Army Career and Alumni Program -- but for wounded warriors who didn't know that, ACAP recently rolled out a virtual welcome mat to remind them. In June, the Army Career and Alumni Program added a wounded warrior "path" to their Web site. The new path is designed to help wounded Soldiers make the transition from life in uniform to life as a civilian through education, information and counseling. "Wounded Soldiers have always been able to go to ACAP," said Chief Warrant Officer Linda Wellman, the deputy to the director of the Army Career and Alumni Program. "But until now, there's been no special outreach toward wounded warriors. The new path specifies how ACAP can be helpful to them when it's time to transition to civilian life. It also lets them know that we're available to help family members also." Wellman said ACAP can help wounded Soldiers find jobs with employers specifically looking to hire wounded Soldiers, for instance. "We have a Web site for those employers who have said they'd like to hire wounded warriors, and who have asked how they can get connected with them," Wellman said. "That Web site connection is through the wounded warrior path." Wellman said in the past, she understood that some wounded Soldiers might not have known that the benefits of ACAP were for all Soldiers. The addition of a "Wounded Warrior" path to the ACAP Web site is meant to address that misconception. "If I'm a Soldier in a wheelchair, I might think that ACAP is only working with guys in the infantry -- and that they can't help me get a job," she said. "That's not true. Any person who has worn a uniform and is leaving the Army can benefit from the services at ACAP, from a two-star general to a private." The ACAP program also works with the Army Wounded Warrior Program, better known as AW2, and the Warrior Transition Units to ensure that wounded Soldiers know about the services ACAP provides and that it is available to them. "If a wounded warrior has hooked up with AW2, their career counselor will direct them back to ACAP to get help with their résumé," Wellman said, adding that ACAP has counselors in about 20 Soldier Family Assistance Centers around the Army. The Army Career Alumni Program has been around for nearly 20 years now, and exists to help Soldiers transition into civilian life. The program helps Soldiers with interviewing skills, "dressing for success," and learning to translate what they've done in the military into language that will impress civilian employers on a résumé. Any Soldier, wounded or not, can find out more information about the Army Career Alumni Program online at their Web site at www.acap.army.mil. Vice says mental health more than stopping suicides [2009-07-31] WASHINGTON -- The Army must go beyond preventing Soldier suicides, and take a look at addressing other symptoms of a force struggling with eight years of persistent conflict, said the service's vice chief. During testimony July 29, before the House Armed Services military personnel subcommittee, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli told lawmakers the Army is concerned with not only suicides, but also acts of violence, increased use of alcohol, drug abuse, infidelity and reckless driving. "We've been at war for nearly eight years," Chiarelli said. "That has undeniably put a strain on our people and our equipment. Unfortunately, in a growing segment of the Army's population, we have seen increased stress and anxiety manifest itself through high-risk behavior, including acts of violence, excessive use of alcohol, drug abuse, and reckless driving." In the most extreme cases, however, Soldiers commit suicide. And the Army has seen an increase in Soldiers taking their own lives. In 2008, 140 Soldiers in the active-duty Army took their own lives. That puts the 2008 active-duty suicide rate at 20.2 per 100,000 -- the highest ever for the Army and, for the first time, higher than the civilian rate. In order to better understand the rise in suicides, the Army asked the National Institute of Mental Health to study its causes in the ranks. The study commissioned by the Army will focus on behavioral health, psychological resilience, suicide risk, suicide-related behaviors, and suicide deaths across the active and reserve components. Chiarelli told lawmakers he thinks limited time at home between deployments is one cause of stress for Soldiers and families and that increasing dwell time is a solution. "I think the thing that would give us a leg up on this, that would help us out so much, is to increase the amount of dwell time that our Soldiers have at home," Chiarelli said. "There is no doubt in my mind that this reduced dwell time -- is causing a tremendous amount of stress on the force, on Soldiers, and on families. And I have to believe the NIMH will identify that early as one of the stressors that is affecting us." Chiarelli also told lawmakers the Army has several initiatives to improve the psychological wellness of Soldiers. "Secretary of the Army Pete Geren and Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. consciously made the decision to expand our efforts to improve the overall behavioral health and well being of the force," Chiarelli said. "Ultimately, we want to get left of this very serious problem. And to do so we must improve the resiliency of our Soldiers and their family members. In the past the Army's approach was primarily reactive. That has changed today -- it is in fact proactive." Part of that proactive approach to Soldier well being is the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Program, Chiarelli told legislators. The program is meant to begin for Soldiers in basic training and continue throughout their career. In written testimony to the Congress, Chiarelli wrote that the CSF program is designed to raise "mental fitness" to the same level the Army considers physical fitness. "We recognize people come into the Army with a very diverse range of experiences, strengths and vulnerabilities in their mental as well as physical condition," he said. "Studies have shown that mental and emotional strength are just as important as physical strength to the safety and well being of our Soldiers." Chiarelli said he believed that there is an uptick in substance abuse problems in the Army as a result of ongoing stressors on the force. The Army has responded to that with an increase in substance abuse counselors, and recently, a pilot program at one installation to allow Soldiers to self-identify for alcohol abuse without the knowledge of their command. "We've set up special hours, after-duty hours on Saturdays and Sundays where these appointments can be made where a Soldier who self-refers can go in and get the care and counseling he needs and hopefully head off a problem before we end up in the reactive mode," Chiarelli said. By the end of August, he added, the pilot program will be expanded to three installations. The Army is also looking at a Web-based program to deliver care to Soldiers, Chiarelli told lawmakers. A special "Web-Care" program would provide "online 'real-time' counseling via video, e-mail, live chat, or instant messaging." The general also said part of helping Soldiers is making it permissible for them to help themselves -- that means changing the culture so Soldiers are not ashamed to seek out mental health care. Chiarelli said recent assessments in theater have shown more Soldiers are willing to seek out mental health care without the concern that it is perceived as weakness or that it will affect their careers. "We are committed to getting the message out to Soldiers that it is okay to get help," Chiarelli said. "We are making progress." For first time, medical recruiter named best [2009-08-05] WASHINGTON -- The Army's best recruiters and career counselors were honored during a ceremony Aug. 5, at the Pentagon for their contributions to the all-volunteer force. This year, for the first time, a medical recruiter was named Army recruiter of the year. "It was an honor -- I don't think they took us as seriously as maybe we would have liked them to," said Sgt. 1st Class Anika Anderson-Hack, 5th Medical Recruiting Battalion, and Army Recruiter of the Year. "So I think it was a bit of a surprise to them that a medical recruiter would actually bring home the hardware." Anderson-Hack's job is to get medical professionals to join the Army. That means doctors, nurses and dentists -- people who already have college degrees and are looking for jobs in the civilian world. "We have a difficult mission because we have to find medical professionals and get them to want to serve their country," she said. "Most of the people in a medical career are there because they want to serve somebody. We have to convince them to give that service to Soldiers." In 2008, Anderson-Hack was able to convince 12 civilians to become Army medical officers. That was double the mission that was given to her. And this year, she's on target again for her mission and hopes to again get 200 percent of her target. "The Army doesn't stop needing doctors and nurses," she said. "So I can't stop providing them." Sgt. 1st Class Shateria Rahming, Miami Recruiting Battalion, was named Army Reserve Recruiter of the Year. She said convincing high school graduates to consider the Army is no problem -- it's the parents that need convincing. "You have that mom and dad saying, no, my child is not going in the Army," she said. "(I) have to tell them my story -- what the Army has done for me and what it can do for their child." Talking about college money helps too, she said. Some kids want to join up with the Reserve so they can have the money to go to school, because there's just no other way to make college happen. "I tell the kids I can pay for your college and you can serve in the Reserve part time," she said. And for parents, "Some of them you say, this is what your kid wants to do. He's not getting that scholarship...let him go to school. I have to be as honest as possible with the parents." During the ceremony to honor the award recipients, Secretary of the Army Pete Geren commented on how important recruiting and retention are for the Army. "Recruiting and retention are two sides of the same coin, and are critically important to the health of our Army," he said. Geren said the Army this year will recruit some 150,000 Soldiers into the active-duty force, the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard. To get those recruits, the Army must compete with industry for the best -- the top 30 percent of young Americans -- to fill its ranks. "It's the same young people everybody in industry is after," Geren said. "They have a lot of choices and we are able to attract them into this Army because they want to be a part of something greater than themselves and because we have our outstanding recruiters out there." Those recognized during the award ceremony were: • Sgt. 1st Class Anika Anderson-Hack, Army Recruiter of the Year • Sgt. 1st Class Strate V. Flessas, Army Career Counselor of the Year • Sgt. 1st Class Shateria Rahming, Army Reserve Recruiter of the Year • Sgt. 1st Class Boris O. Cornejo, Army Reserve Career Counselor of the Year • Sgt. 1st Class Gonzalo L. Fernandez, Army National Guard Recruiter/Retention Noncommissioned Officer of the Year • Sgt. 1st Class Theresa J. Lambert, Army Reserve-Component Career Counselor of the Year Army on track to power Fort Irwin with sunshine [2009-08-07] WASHINGTON -- Out in California, the Army has chosen a developer to build a 500-megawatt solar power plant that will provide Fort Irwin with "energy security." Through an enhanced use lease, the Army will hand over about 14,000 acres of Fort Irwin, in the Mojave Desert, to commercial developers Clark Enterprises of Bethesda, Md., and Acciona Solar Power of Henderson, Nev. Together, the two companies form "Irwin Energy Security Partners LLC." The proposal submitted by the partnership includes both concentrated solar thermal and photovoltaic technology, with an estimated capacity of up to 1,000 Mw, which exceeds the Army requirement. Clark-Acciona will be responsible for developing the project and for footing the bill for its construction -- estimated now at about $1.5 billion dollars. Neither the government, nor the Army, will pay for development of the project, but will instead collect rent in-kind for use of the land it leases to the developer. Right now, the Army Corps of Engineers has chosen which company will get to participate in the EUL -- though the lease is not yet signed. "This is the very first step in that process, we've selected a developer and we are beginning essentially a negotiation process and a due diligence with that developer," said Thomas M. Kretzschmar, senior program manager, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He said before the actual EUL can be signed, developmental, environmental, regulatory issues must be dealt with. For the Army, the development of a 500 Mw or greater power plant on Fort Irwin means the installation -- which uses an estimated 35 Mw at peak usage -- will have power even when the civilian power grid, or the sun, goes offline. "This project is for energy security," said Dr. Kevin T. Geiss, program director for energy security in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations and Environment. "Whether we have that the first day the electrons start flowing or not, is yet to be seen. But at the end of the day, once we complete the proposed project here, there would certainly be a mechanism to maintain the flow of electricity even when the sun goes down." The 500 Mw facility will be built in phases, with a project end date expected around 2022. But Phase 1A of the project, with a completion of around 2014, is expected to provide enough power to sustain Fort Irwin. Additionally, the Army will benefit from the development of the facility because the developer will pay rent on the land, and will pay "in-kind," as opposed to cash. This allows the Army to use the payment immediately, with rent being paid in the form of services that can be used for operations and maintenance items for which there is no funding. For the Clark-Acciona team, the land the Army is offering as part of the EUL is ideal for manufacturing renewable energy and selling it to the civilian grid. "There is an excellent solar resource in the Mojave desert," Kretzschmar said. In addition to location, there's water available to develop solar-thermal power, and also the availability of nearby high-power transmission lines so the developer can sell power to the utility company. The developer has proposed a facility that can deliver 1,000 Mw of power. For comparison, a Department of the Interior Web site says the Hoover Dam has a capacity of 2,080 Mw -- just over double what Clark-Acciona has proposed. Fort Irwin will use only a fraction of that at peak usage. "Anything more than that would be sold off base," Kretzschmar said. "And there's a ready market for their electricity off post." Soldiers can find a sympathetic ear online, through TRIAP [2009-08-07] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers who need somebody to talk to, any time of the day or night, can turn to the TRICARE Assistance Program. As a pilot program that kicked off Aug. 1, TRIAP allows Soldiers to use a telephone, a computer, or even a computer with video conferencing capabilities, to communicate directly with licensed counselors about stress management issues, family difficulties and pressures, family separations and deployments, relationships and marital issues, parent/child communication, or any personal problems that might adversely impact work performance, health, or well-being. The TRIAP service is available day or night, year round, at no cost to Soldiers, is confidential, and doesn't get reported to a Soldier's command, said Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli. "I am very excited that our Soldiers and family members can now access care from the comfort and privacy of their own home, if necessary, and the processes are in motion to move us through a phased approach to eventually get to where Soldiers and family members can access truly comprehensive behavior health care at home," Chiarelli said. No records are kept of when a Soldier uses the services provided by TRIAP. Additionally, if Soldiers are using TRIAP, and they need more advanced mental-health services, the online licensed counselors will assist them in setting up such an appointment. Each region of the three regions of TRICARE has developed its own version of the TRIAP pilot program. These individual programs can be accessed on each region's Web site as listed below: • TRICARE North Region • TRICARE South Region • TRICARE West Region The TRIAP program uses commercial communications applications like Skype or iChat to connect Soldiers face-to-face with counselors. To take full advantage of the service, Soldiers must have the correct software and hardware on their computer. Face-to-face counseling services, for instance, would require a video camera. Also part of the initiative by TRICARE to place more emphasis on mental health, is the expansion of its Telemental Health Network. Under that expansion, about 251 locations are available as of Aug. 1 where TRICARE beneficiaries can visit via teleconference with a professional mental-health-care provider, such as a therapist, or psychologist, and participate in a session. Sessions under Telemental Health must be scheduled like any appointment, and are fully documented and placed into a patient's records. "I believe we have taken a very important first step in getting behavioral healthcare to Soldiers and family members who might not have received it otherwise, because of stigma or geographical separation," Chiarelli said. The general said he imagines a day when an entire nationwide network of behavioral health providers could be available to provide one-on-one counseling to Soldiers in a brigade that just returned from deployment. "I could set up a gymnasium, when a brigade came back, that had 250 computer stations in it, and up in to row one, seat one, as that brigade flows through, goes the brigade commander, sitting next to him the sergeant major, then the entire brigade chain of command, followed by the Soldiers of the brigade, getting a no-kidding, real mental health evaluation after a 12-month rotation, " Chiarelli said. BOSS marks 20 years with new logo at conference [2009-08-11] LEESBURG, Va. -- Soldiers and Army civilians kicked off the 2009 Better Opportunities for Single Soldiers annual conference Monday with recognition of the organization's 20-year existence, a new logo and a birthday cake. "We've come a long way" said Brig. Gen. Reuben D. Jones, commander, Army Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation Command, of the 20 years the BOSS program has been in existence. "Look at the influence you are having. And we've got to set the table for the next decade. We're going to do that with your creativity, your innovation, and your dedication to keep BOSS in front of leaders." Nearly 250 BOSS program leaders and advisors from around the Army -- mostly Soldiers -- gathered for the conference, just outside Washington. During the opening of the conference, Sgt. Danielle Colson, Department of the Army BOSS representative, revealed the organization's new logo. "The new design is a departure from the previous design," Colson said. "The paint splatter gives an impression of spontaneity, and with the blending of the colors, it represents unity." The BOSS program focuses on quality of life, recreation and leisure, and community service opportunities for single Soldiers. Attendees recognized the "birthday" of the organization with cake, song and balloons, before beginning a five-day conference where they will attend seminars and network with one another in order to improve implementation of the BOSS program at their home installations. "Our main objective here is to have the BOSS triad teams here -- the command sergeant majors, the BOSS presidents, and the Morale, Welfare and Recreation advisors -- come together for training opportunities, networking and sharing their ideas and commonalities," said Robert Lattanzi, BOSS program manager. Lattanzi said the conference offers nearly 50 educational seminars for BOSS program leaders, including sessions on marketing, budgeting and leadership. "Our objective is to have them sharing new ideas, taking action on their new ideas, and then bringing them back to their garrisons and implementing them in their communities," Lattanzi said. Command Sgt. Maj. Abe Vega, FMWRC, challenged conference attendees to seek more support from Army leadership and to better reach out to geographically dispersed Soldiers. "How do we get the program so it is easy for them to avail themselves of the program," asked Vega. "How do we got BOSS linked to the warriors in the Warrior Transition Units? How do we get to those Soldiers just back from deployment? I ask you to think about that and see what we can do at the local camps, posts and stations to kind of reach out." He also challenged BOSS leaders to seek out better and continuing support from their local Army leadership. "We've made huge progress bridging the gap so far between the mission who owns the Soldiers and the garrison who is responsible for the program," Vega said. "We need to make the program so it transcends us, so that we get this type of engagement across the board continuously, so we can make the program better. What else can we do as a program to have some forcing mechanisms out there to get some of that support that we so much need?" Carolyn Collins, manager of the Army's Sexual Harassment and Assault Prevention and Response Program, known as SHARP, also addressed conference attendees during the opening sessions. Recently, the Army's sexual assault prevention campaign, "I A.M. Strong" became the first official sponsor of BOSS. Collins said Soldiers within BOSS are seen as key to moving the I A.M. Strong message. "We see you as tactical-level influencers within your community," Collins said. "You are truly talking to your fellow Soldiers every day. Please let us know about your ideas; we are excited about the partnership and if you have ideas we would love to hear them. And thanks for letting us be your first sponsor." Colson said that Army leadership felt it was time for BOSS program presidents to get recognition for their volunteer work, and that such a program would be revealed during the five-day conference. "We have a new incentive program for our BOSS presidents," she said. "They bust their butts for the single Soldiers and they are not properly recognized. We want to make sure, at the Department of the Army staff, that we get that recognition to them and we let them know they are appreciated." During the conference, the procedures to nominate a BOSS president for a recognition award will be spelled out in detail, Colson said. Colson also said she hoped that BOSS presidents, civilian MWR advisors and command sergeant majors who attended the conference would go back to their installations with a fresh perspective on BOSS and would be armed with new tools to implement the program at their home stations. "I hope we've turned up that fire in their heart, and now it's a torch," she said. "They are going to leave here motivated and ready to take over the world at their installations. We're the voice of the singe Soldier; we are the connection between the command and the lowest level, and we get stuff done. It's Soldiers helping Soldiers." Soldiers learn to impart mental toughness on others [2009-08-19] WASHINGTON -- Some 50 Soldiers will finish up "master resilience training" today in Philadelphia -- part of the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program. Master resilience training, taught by experts from the University of Pennsylvania, is a "teaching the teachers" kind of thing. Close to 100 Soldiers have gone through some iteration of the training so far, and another course is planned for November. Eventually, the noncommissioned officers that attended the course will go back to their home units and teach "resiliency" to their unit's Soldiers or basic trainees. "They're learning all the different thinking skills, and how to impart them to other people," said Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, director of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness. Cornum said resiliency is a way of thinking that allows Soldiers not to fall into self-defeating traps. It takes a developed and resilient mind, she said, to put money problems, relationship issues, health issues, or tragedy on the battlefield into perspective, so a Soldier can continue with the mission and with life. "Resilience is a way of thinking -- you apply optimistic thinking to a problem," she said. "It is really a difference between, for instance, when you invite somebody for a date and they say no, resilient people think 'their loss -- I'll do better next time.' What they don't think is 'nobody will ever like me. I'm worthless.' That's really what it is. It teaches you to remember that problems are temporary, that they are local." Cornum said some people naturally make the right decisions or develop the right potential outcomes for situations in their lives. But for others, resilient thinking will have to be learned. "There's a pile of people out there that just pick the first thing that comes to mind," she said. Soldiers taking the master resiliency course in Philadelphia are unit leaders or even drill sergeants, and will take what they learn back to their units to impart that knowledge on others, Cornum said. "Our intention is to have every platoon sergeant and every drill sergeant to have gone through this," Cornum said. "It's really like part of what you do when you take somebody to the range, or when you are teaching somebody how to have confidence about going into the gas chamber. It is also about teaching by example in an operational environment, how to deal with fear, and disappointment. It's tools, thinking tools, how not to fall into thinking traps or catastrophic thinking." Resiliency, or mental toughness, is part of the Army's larger "Comprehensive Soldier Fitness" program, that aims to ensure Soldiers are as mentally tough as they are physically tough. Cornum said Soldiers will be taught resiliency in basic training by master resilience trainers, who themselves have gone through courses like the one taught in Philadelphia. Additionally, she said, Soldiers will develop mental toughness through self-guided learning, based on assessments they will take online during basic training and every two years afterward. Mental fitness, she said, is like physical fitness; life-long and ongoing. "It is something you are going to start when you come into the Army; if you are already in, you start in the middle of your career," she said. "And it is a long-term process. It is not something that you can do once, any more than you can get physically fit by one trip to the gym. This is not an individual single event. It is a way of looking at your psychological health as important as your physical health." Pilot program allows Soldier self-referral for alcohol treatment [2009-08-20] WASHINGTON -- A pilot program underway now at some Army installations allows Soldiers who think they might have a problem with alcohol to seek out help without risk to their careers. The Confidential Alcohol Treatment and Education Pilot program allows Soldiers to self-refer into, and seek treatment from the Army Substance Abuse Program, for problems with alcohol abuse, without having their chain of command notified. "What this allows Soldiers to do is to come in on their own before they have an incident to see whether they have a problem or not," said Dr. Jim Slobodzien, acting clinical director of the ASAP at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. "It's a time for us to do some brief counseling. Or, if we do an in-depth assessment and we do diagnose them with abuse or dependence -- to get them the proper treatment." The Army will conduct the CATEP program at three installations, including Schofield Barracks, Hawaii; Fort Lewis, Wash. and Fort Richardson, Alaska. The program runs through Feb. 24, 2010. In recent years, the Army has seen an increase in use of alcohol amongst Soldiers, said Chief of Staff of the Army George W. Casey Jr. "We've been at war for nearly eight years," the general said. "That has undeniably put a strain on our people and our equipment. Unfortunately, in a growing segment of the Army's population, we have seen increased stress and anxiety manifest itself through high risk behavior, including acts of violence, excess use of alcohol, drug abuse, and reckless driving." Soldiers are often cautioned about coming forward for help because seeking help may carry a stigma of "weakness" and because being marked as having problems with alcohol can be damaging to a Soldier's career. The CATEP program is designed to allow most Soldiers to seek help without damaging their career due to delayed promotions or inability to reenlist, and to do so without their command's knowledge. "Their command is not informed," Casey said. "We've set up special hours, after duty hours on Saturdays and Sundays, where these appointments can be made where a Soldier who self-refers can go in and get the care and counseling he needs and hopefully head off a problem before we end up in the reactive mode." While the CATEP program is currently only a pilot, the information collected from the program will eventually allow Army leaders to determine if the availability of confidentiality in treatment actually encourages more Soldiers to self-refer. The CATEP program began at Schofield Barracks in early July, and Slobodzien said since inception, approximately 31 percent of those referred to the ASAP have been CATEP eligible. "I've been working with the ASAP program for 14 years and I think this is one of the major positive improvements in the program and I would like to see it go Army-wide," he said. "My hope is Soldiers come in before they are hitting bottom and having the DUI or spouse-related incidents." Most, but not all Soldiers are eligible for the program. Not eligible for the program are those Soldiers involved in an alcohol or drug-related incident, who have a referral to treatment from their commander, who did not complete a previous ASAP rehabilitation due to deployment, who tested positive for illicit use in a unit urine drug screen, or who sought treatment for drug abuse within the past 12 months. For Soldiers currently assigned to the personal reliability program and certain military occupational specialties, e.g., aviation, health care, parachute rigger, etc., Army regulations still require command notification upon enrollment at the ASAP clinic, but they can still benefit from the career protections that the CATEP offers, and are encouraged to participate. Army aims to stop flow of paper money to Iraq, Afghanistan [2009-08-25] WASHINGTON -- The United States hasn't gone cashless quite yet, but in Afghanistan and Iraq, that's the goal -- at least when it comes to the way the Army plans to conduct business there. Brig. Gen. Phillip E. McGhee, director of Resource Management for U.S. Army Forces, U.S. Central Command, said by the beginning of the fiscal year, Oct. 1, the Army will go cashless in theater when writing up contracts with local vendors. Instead of paying those it does business with in U.S. currency, the Army will pay the vendors via electronic funds transfer through the banks of Afghanistan or Iraq. "What we are going to do effective Oct. 1, is we will write the contracts in U.S. dollars and they will be paid through the Iraqi and Afghan banking system in local currency -- that's huge," McGhee said, adding that by mid-August, the contracts will be written in local currency. Today, the Army brings about $42 million in cash into theater each month. That's down from about $192 million in cash each month last year. Back in 2003, the Army brought in as much as $400 million a month in American currency. "The reason you did it was because Iraq and Afghanistan didn't have banking systems that you could get money out of it, or do transfers," McGhee said. "So there was a necessity to have cash on the battlefield." McGhee said the Army loaded those millions of dollars in currency onto pallets in the United States and flew it to Kuwait, where it was broken down for distribution into theater. At the lowest levels, money was handed out the back of mine resistant ambush protected vehicles to the contractors the Department of Defense did business with. "We actually outfitted MRAPs as Wells Fargo/Brinks trucks and moved cash around the battlefield like that, because it is dangerous out there," McGhee said. But as banking systems in Iraq and Afghanistan have matured, due to the efforts of the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Treasury and other nations, some banks in theater are now approved for business with the Army. And that means instead of bringing cash into theater, the Army can now deposit money into banks electronically and pay contractors via electronic funds transfer. And contractors can pay their own workers via funds transfer as well. Less U.S. currency floating around, and more money moving through the banking systems to fill accounts, means less cost for the Army to do business in theater, reduced risk of providing cash to facilitate insurgent operations, and increased confidence in the local currency and banking system, McGhee said. "When you're using U.S. dollars on the battlefield, there's George Washington, Hamilton, and Lincoln. That's not an Afghan face, that's a U.S. face on it," McGhee said. "Instead you have an Afghani and Dinar -- and now you start to build confidence in their currency and in their systems. That is what we are attempting to do." Conducting business electronically also saves the Army money, McGhee said. Bringing cash into theater is expensive, due to the security risks involved and the cost of transportation. Spread out over the number of payments the Army currently makes, the cost of dealing in cash is about $32 dollars a payment. "An electronic funds transfer costs us about $2.50," McGhee said, saying the move to EFT will save the Army about $20 million a year. Electronic payments are also about safety. Insurgents like to work with paper money, McGhee said, especially American currency. "You see on the news where they kick down doors, they pull weapons out, pull explosives out, and they pull U.S. currency out," McGhee said. "U.S. currency is the currency of choice for Al-Qaeda and insurgents because you can use those U.S. dollars anywhere in the world. We are reducing that source of funds for Al-Qaeda." On Capitol Hill, female Soldiers discuss equality [2009-08-26] WASHINGTON -- The Army and the Congressional Woman's Caucus on Issues teamed up Aug. 26 on Capitol Hill for a Women's Equality Day presentation titled "Women NCOs in the U.S. Army." The Army panel was made of three female noncommissioned officers and one female commissioned officer. They discussed being women in uniform, their time in the Army, and their reasons for joining the service. Sgt. Maj. Barbara Henson, with the Asymmetric Warfare Group at Fort Meade, Md., said over the years she has seen changes in the way women are treated in the Army. Evidence of that, she said, is the difference between her first experience at Fort Bragg, N.C., as a young Soldier, and her experience there years later as a first sergeant. "The difference in those eight years was phenomenal," she said. "The first day I was at Fort Bragg as a Soldier, I showed up with another female, and we were the first two females that platoon had seen -- we were not welcomed at all. They felt that now their platoon was not going to be as hooah as the other ones." Growing up the only girl with six older brothers, she said their attitude didn't faze her, however. "They expected a lot of us and we preformed and we were accepted." Years later, coming back as a first sergeant, she said things were different. "The company had male commands the whole time I was a first sergeant and both of them accepted me as their partner in command," she said. "And the Soldiers -- and I only had two female Soldiers in a company of 126 -- they completely accepted me as their first sergeant. I do think there was a difference in those times I was at Fort Bragg." 1st Sgt. Sylvia Rios-Holcomb, of Battle Company, Warrior Transition Brigade, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, D.C., said any changes she's seen over her 20 years of service have been more subtle. "I can't say I have seen significant or drastic changes from 20 years ago when I joined the Army, maybe because they have happened gradually," Holcomb said. "But I will say that we have been more accepted. "I have seen myself in larger groups interacting with males, and being able to prove myself, as a female Soldier. For the most part, I can hang with the big guys -- I will be the first to say I cannot hang with them in everything they do -- but I think that women in the military have gone a long ways to prove that some of us can actually do some of the extraordinary things that our male counterparts can do." As to whether the Army can stand to make improvements in how female Soldiers fit into the force, Rios-Holcomb cites an infallible source: her mother. "Mom always told me there is room for improvement," she said. "But I do think the Army is better today compared to what it was 40 to 50 years ago, because it has given me an opportunity. And I can only imagine where we'll be 20 years from now -- we are taking strides and we are making progress as an organization. I am happy with where we have come today." Maj. Jennifer A. Reynolds, now with the Army Office of the Chief of Legislative Liaison, is an Black Hawk pilot by trade. She shared a love of flying with her grandfather, also an Army pilot. As a pilot, she flew both supplies and people around in Iraq. At one point, she was even responsible for moving Saddam Hussein from his confinement area to his trial location. She said as a female pilot, she expected reactions from male Soldiers that never came. "We'd fly in there, I'm all of 5-foot three-inches -- I'd get out of my aircraft and have to put my hair back up because it wouldn't fit in my helmet," she said. "Their first impression of me is this short person who has to put her hair back up. And the first times we went in there I expected a negative reaction. But I never got it, ever." Most of her experiences as a woman in the Army have been like that. She said equality for women in the Army begins with a female Soldier's ability to prove her mettle -- same as the male Soldiers. "Men expect men and women to prove themselves equally," she said. "You have to prove yourselves to the Soldiers. I've worked with a lot of women and they are up to the job." Army expects H1N1 vaccine in October [2009-09-03] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers and families can expect to get two flu shots this year. In addition to the conventional flu shot administered each fall, the H1N1 or "Swine Flu" vaccine should be available by mid-October, said Col. Deborah Knickerbocker, chief of Emergency Preparedness and Response, the Office of the Surgeon General and Army Medical Command. Knickerbocker spoke during the Army Emergency Management Conference, Sept. 1, at the Pentagon. The conference coincided with the start of National Preparedness Month. Getting flu shots, in addition to taking measures to prevent exposure to the virus or spreading the virus is part of preparedness, Knickerbocker said. And it is important to maintaining mission readiness. "When Soldiers and family members take care of themselves and prepare, they not only help the Army be more resilient, they help the local communities they are in be more resilient," she said. "There's going to be vaccine, and there's going to be enough to go around," Knickerbocker said. "Everybody is going to get their shots." Knickerbocker said the H1N1 vaccine will be distributed to Soldiers, families and other beneficiaries mostly through primary care providers. "They'll get their seasonal shots, and the H1N1 shot, as soon as they become available," Knickerbocker said. Along with the vaccinations, Knickerbocker recommends a number of common-sense measures to prevent the spread of H1N1. "Just teaching people about how easy it is to prevent disease by washing our hands, and cough- and sneeze-hygiene and etiquette, it's pretty simple," she said. "Part of what we need to do is instill in the culture of the military -- which does not really usually think this way -- to stay home when you are sick. If you go to work sick, you'll make office mates sick, or squad mates." The H1N1 virus has made headlines because it's a "novel" virus, Knickerbocker said. "We haven't seen the virus before. And when we have a virus that people have not been exposed to before, we have no immunity to it," Knickerbocker said. Many of the deaths from H1N1 occurred in Mexico, and in those already immuno-compromised, so the virus gained notoriety, Knickerbocker said. But the effects of the virus have not been what was expected -- not even as bad as seasonal flu. "The message has been sent out there that this particular virus is not as virulent as we had been planning for with the H5N1, not as virulent as the seasonal flu," she said. "And seasonal influenza kills about 36,000 in this country each year." Knickerbocker said that while Soldiers can expect to get vaccinated for both the seasonal flu and the H1N1 flu virus, the Army does not expect the H1N1 to have damaging effects on the Army. "I don't think the Army is worried about this particular H1N1 virus. If it stays at the level of severity that it is now, which it is mild, it should have no more effect on operations than the seasonal flu does," she said. "But we have to take care during flu season to try to prevent getting ill, and staying home if we are ill, to prevent operational impact." Pentagon civilians reflect on 9/11 at year-old memorial [2009-09-10] WASHINGTON -- On the eve of the eight-year anniversary of 9/11, Pentagon employees who witnessed that tragedy first-hand took time to reflect from inside the memorial built to commemorate that day. Mary Lou Bradley and Aline V. Tyler, both Department of the Army civilians with Army G-1, spent the latter portion of their lunch hour sitting on and walking amongst the 184 granite and stainless steel benches that represent the victims of the attack on the Pentagon. Both Bradley and Tyler had been in the building the day the plane hit. "When the plane came though, I felt the building move off the foundation," said Tyler, a Pentagon employee for 21 years now. "It threw me on the ground. Then I was looking -- it was smoke, like a cloud. It was the E-ring wall. It frightened the life out of me. I didn't know what to do. Then the military came out and came to my rescue -- the Soldier could tell by my expression that I was in a state of shock." But eight years later the day was beautiful: blue skies, puffy white clouds and temperatures in the 70s. Bradley and Tyler were talking, remembering friends, and enjoying the tranquility of the new memorial, dedicated just one year ago. "This is absolutely beautiful out here," said Bradley, who's worked at the Pentagon since 1982. "I just felt like I wanted to come out here today. This memorial is beautiful -- it's a tribute to all the people who lost their lives on 9/11, both on the plane and in the Pentagon." Tyler visits the memorial after work, she said, often with friends. "Sometimes I come with another person that experienced 9/11 and we will sit back and talk and -- it's peaceful listening to the water and sitting on the bench. It gives you closure," she said. "The trees are growing and it puts a smile on my face when I come out here. And the water has life to it, it seems like." Bradley sat with Tyler on a bench bearing the name of a friend lost in the terrorist attack. Col. Kip P. Taylor had been the executive officer for Lt. Gen. Timothy J. Maude, then the Army deputy chief for staff personnel. Both officers were lost in the attack. "He was a really nice guy," Bradley said of Taylor. "He had a nice sense of humor. He had one of these personalities where he just had friends all over the world and the office. People would come back to see him. I really liked him and got to know him." Remembering friends is why Bradley said it's important to come out to the memorial. She's recently been troubled by health issues and requires a walker now to get around -- so walking the distance to the memorial is difficult. But, she said, it's important. "It's hard for me to get around now, but I suggested coming out today," she said. "It's nice to come out here; it's peaceful; you get a chance to reflect, and we still miss them and wish they were here with us." Iraqi generals say their soldiers ready, well-trained [2009-09-16] WASHINGTON -- Iraqi soldiers have been well trained and are prepared to defend Iraq, say two of the nation's generals. During a visit to Washington, D.C., Sept. 14, Iraqi Staff Maj. Gen. Mohammed Al-Askari, with the Iraqi Ministry of Defense and Iraqi Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta, with Baghdad operations, spoke about the current status of the Iraqi military and the impact of U.S.-led training on force readiness. "The Iraqi forces are conducting their jobs in an exemplary manner," Atta said. "This is testimony that they have received good training from U.S forces. We are confident that all the training they received before will only enhance their execution out there in the field, and are looking forward for more." When the U.S. withdrew security forces from Iraqi cities in June, Atta said many didn't believe Iraqi forces could hold their own, and fill the security gap left by departing Americans. But he said Iraqi forces have performed as trained. "The Iraqi forces did a great job after the drawdown of the U.S. forces from Baghdad and all cities," Atta said. "It was quite a challenge. A lot of people thought Iraqi forces were not up to task and up to speed -- but they are proven wrong. Iraqi forces did a great job." Now that American security forces have begun the long transition out of Iraq, Al-Askari said Iraqi security forces will increase their counter-terrorism efforts. "As you know, terrorism targets innocent civilians, they never target military and police institutions," he said. "So what our approach is -- is to double up our intelligence networks and most importantly we need the support of the public. With these two, we will be able to face terrorism -- and it's an ongoing battle." Atta also said that despite the efforts of terrorists, Iraqi security forces have been able to meet their recruiting goals. "Terrorist groups and militias have always targeted the recruitment in our Iraqi Security Forces ranks," Atta said. "But we have faced this challenge and we fought back, and we did not allow them to succeed in their goal of trying to minimize our recruitment." Recently, Iraqi officials discovered that the nation's military owns jet fighter aircraft -- a total of 19 jets, including both MiG-19s and MiG-23s. Those aircraft are currently stored in Serbia. Al-Askari said former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had signed a contract with that nation to have maintenance performed on the aircraft -- and that getting them back now is not just about regaining equipment, but about accountability to Iraqi taxpayers. "This is a question of principals, not a question of jet fighters only," Al-Askari said. "Saddam Hussein signed a contract with the Serbian government a few years ago to maintain (the aircraft). We view these as goods of the Iraqi people, of taxpayers -- of the Republic of Iraq." Al-Askari said a delegation was sent to Serbia to inquire about the aircraft. "They were well received," he said. "Our stand right now, at this point is, if they are able to fix them and maintain them, then we will be more than happy to take them back as we lack air defense capabilities. If not, we will find ways of selling them, or finding other ways of benefiting from them. But again, our stand here, is to bring back what belongs to the Iraqi people." New cammo pattern may blend in better in Afghanistan [2009-09-17] WASHINGTON -- Servicemembers fighting in Afghanistan will soon see two new test camouflage patterns on the backs of fellow Soldiers. By the end of September, the Army will begin shipping uniforms with the "MultiCam" and "Universal Camouflage Pattern - Delta" to two yet-unnamed battalions that will serve rotations in Afghanistan -- one pattern each. Additionally, the Army will provide "ghillie suits," in the MultiCam pattern, to authorized units. Soldiers, about 2,000 in all, will test out the uniforms to see how effective the camouflage patterns are at providing concealment in the varying terrain of Afghanistan. The Army will gather feedback from Soldiers wearing the uniforms and use that, along with other testing and evaluation, to make a decision to produce and field alternative uniforms and operational clothing and individual equipment to some units serving as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. "I think we will make decisions in Afghanistan in the January time frame, and also we will have finished the picture study," said Col. William E. Cole, a project manager with PM Soldier Protection and Individual Equipment. Program Executive Office Soldier, the agency responsible for developing the uniforms, will additionally test the efficacy of several other camouflage patterns in Afghanistan -- though those will not be handed out to Soldiers there. "That will determine what other uniform options they could have in Afghanistan," Cole added. "So to the commanders in Afghanistan, we'll be able to show them the data and say here's what we found, different results in different areas with different uniforms, what would you like to do? And of course we will support the commanders." Cole said after a decision is made about fielding an optional camouflage pattern to commanders, uniforms bearing that pattern could be available in a relatively short time. "We'd start fielding the first units easily within six months of the decision," Cole said. Were new uniforms to be introduced, Cole said, they would be the same as what Soldiers are already wearing -- the ACU. It would be the camouflage printed on the fabric that would change. And the new uniforms would be an option for commanders -- something available were field conditions to warrant it. "As a material provider, I want to be responsive to the Soldiers I support," Cole said. "I want to give commanders options, I want to be responsive to Soldiers. That is what we were trying to do -- we're working to give (them) more options." The "MultiCam" pattern, one of the two to be issued in Afghanistan, is actually a commercial product and bears similarities to what was featured on the now discontinued "Battle Dress Uniform." The "Universal Camouflage Pattern - Delta," is similar to what Soldiers are wearing now, with the addition of the color "Coyote Brown." Ten best technologies recognized by Army [2009-09-21] WASHINGTON -- Combat gauze, the Common Remotely Operated Weapons System, and a new machine-gun cradle were among technologies recognized by U.S. Army Materiel Command during the "Top Ten Great Inventions of 2008" event at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City here. The event, held yearly since 2002, celebrates the best technological advances in the Army. Criteria for being selected includes impact on Army capability, potential for benefit outside the Army and inventiveness. Additionally, all the technology nominated must have been fielded during 2008. It's actually Soldiers in theater who pick the winners. "We have Soldier panels, from the active divisions of the Army ... review all the nominations and vote on them," Donald W. Matts Jr., of Army Research Development and Engineering Command, who headed up the "Top Ten" program this year. This year it was Soldiers from the 1st Armored Division, the 82nd Airborne Division, and the 25th Infantry Division who participated in the voting, Matts said. "Each of the winners gets a trophy and plaque for their team, and even the ones that haven't won in the top ten -- they are winners too -- they've all fielded products the Soldiers are using in the field today." The Common Remotely Operated Weapons System, or CROWS, was one of the 10 chosen this year as the best. The system amounts to a gun, mounted on a remotely controlled swivel, with multiple cameras. What it does is keep Soldiers inside a vehicle, while the remotely controlled weapon does the dangerous work on the outside -- exposed to insurgents and their improvised explosive devises. "It's all about Soldier protection," said Michael Scott, of RDECOM. "It definitely saves Soldiers lives. The thought is to get the Soldier under armor and let him fire his weapon from the safety of being buttoned up in the vehicle." The CROWS is now on more than 700 vehicles in both Iraq and Afghanistan, including the mine resistant ambush protected vehicle, the humvee and the Abrams tank, Scott said. New systems are being fielded at a rate of about 20 a week. With that exposure in the field, Scott said, evidence has come back that shows it does what it's meant to do -- save lives. "With IED blasts, this system has come back basically in a bucket," he said. "If a Soldier was up there out of the hatch and his gun up on a pencil mount, he would be taking the shrapnel, not the system. So, the feedback is pretty good." Also protecting Soldiers is a new set of armor for the MRAP. The "Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle Expedient Armor Program Add-on-Armor Kit," or MEAP (AoA), was meant to protect MRAPs from explosively formed penetrators. The EFP is a new, deadlier weapon employed by insurgents, said Debbie DiCesare with the Tank Automotive Research Development and Engineering Center. "We have a charge to provide protection against medium explosively formed penetrators in theater in Iraq," she said. "And it's a particularly lethal threat." DiCesare and her team, without manufacturer-provided engineering data for MRAP, devised for the vehicles a new form of protection to save Soldiers' lives. "We fabricated the parts and integrated it onto the vehicle and did all that in six weeks," she said. A lot of testing went into the armor stateside, and today it's fitted to some 550 vehicles. But DiCesare said the real measure of success comes from the field. "In my mind, it's when you get the e-mail back from the Soldier that says thanks for doing this, because it saved my life," DeCesare said is the best reward. "We've gotten e-mails and some letters. That's probably the most rewarding part." When Soldiers do get hurt, there's Combat Gauze -- an inexpensive, lightweight, effective way to stop arterial bleeding. The gauze is impregnated with kaolin, a type of clay, known for the way it helps the body clot faster -- and stop bleeding. "It's a hemostatic dressing, a very simple device, easy to use," said Dr. Michael Dubick, Army Institute of Surgical Research. "The important thing is that unlike other products that have been deployed, this one will stop an arterial hemorrhage. It's effective, and it seems to be safe." Fielding on the Combat Gauze is pretty new now, Dubick said, and not a lot has come back from theater. But Dubick says he's heard of at least one report from Soldiers that it was effective -- and three additional reports from civilian trauma centers, who are also using it. A total of ten technologies were named this year as the 'Top Ten Greatest Inventions of 2008." Each team was presented with a trophy and a plaque, commemorating their effort. The winning technologies and teams include: • XM-153 Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station (CROWS); U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center • Projectile Detection Cueing (PDCue)- Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station (CROWS) Lightning; U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center • Light Machine Gun & Medium Machine Gun Cradle; U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center • Overhead Cover for Objective Gunner Protection Kit; U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center • Enhanced Mobile Rapid Aerostat Initial Deployment Vehicle; U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development, and Engineering Center • Whisper; U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center • Combat Gauze for Treating Hemorrhage in Injured Soldiers; U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research • Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected Armor Weight Reduction Spiral Program; U.S. Army Research Laboratory • Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Expedient Armor Program Add-on-Armor Kit; U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center • One System Remote Video Terminal A-kit; U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center FEMA: Best emergency response is preparation [2009-09-22] WASHINGTON -- As National Preparedness Month draws to a close, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency says the best way for Soldiers to contribute to emergency response is to prepare themselves and their families for disasters before they happen. "To be prepared and to respond effectively to a disaster, each of us has to take responsibility to do our part and make sure our families are ready and that we are prepared so that we can do our mission," said William Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Fugate said there's several ways that families can be prepared for a disaster. A good starting point, he said, is reading either the FEMA Web site at www.ready.gov, or the Army Web site at www.ready.army.mil. Both Web sites highlight having effective family communication plans for times of disaster. "We have to make sure our plans, our communications plans, are in place, so that no matter where we are at, our family knows what the plan is and we are able to do the things we need to do as well as perform our functions when our country needs us," Fugate said. Plans should cover what happens if families are together when disaster strikes, and what should happen if families are not together -- when parents are at work and kids are at school, for instance. "What happens if a disaster happens when you are deployed, you are at work, or you are on training?" Fugate asked. "Does your family know what to do? I think we tend to look at our families, that when a disaster strikes, we are going to be together -- it may not be." Military families and military commanders must also work hand-in-hand with local civilian communities on emergency and disaster preparedness, Fugate said, because many times, military families are a part of the very communities they serve. "I think it is important that base commanders look at the threats in their communities, look at their community emergency management plan, and build that team between themselves and their civilian counterparts," Fugate said. "Our dependents and our families are not always on base -- they oftentimes live in the communities we serve." When Soldiers have emergency plans in place for themselves and their families, they'll be more ready to participate in providing emergency support to their communities during floods, blizzards or other kinds of disasters that Army may be asked to provide support on, Fugate said. The military participates in disaster assistance in the United States through U.S. Northern Command, when called upon by FEMA to participate. "The Army is a key component of that," Fugate said. "The better prepared the base installations are, and the Soldiers that live in those communities are to take care of themselves and their families, but also support the local community, the better off we are to perform our primary missions." Vaccine shows promise in preventing HIV [2009-09-24] WASHINGTON -- An Army-sponsored study has shown that administration of a specific combination of vaccines can reduce the potential to contract HIV by 31.2 percent. As part of the RV144 HIV vaccine study, 16,395 adult men and women in Thailand were given either a placebo or the "prime boost" combination of the vaccine ALVAC(R) HIV and the vaccine AIDSVAX(R) B/E. All participants were given counseling on how to avoid getting HIV. During the three-year study, participants were routinely tested for HIV. By the end, a total of 74 recipients who had received the placebo contracted HIV, while only 51 of the vaccine recipients contracted the virus. The results of the study indicate that the vaccine is 31.2 percent effective in preventing acquisition of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, the Army surgeon general, and commander of the U.S. Army Medical Command, said the results of the study are important, but modest. "I'm pleased and proud to announce the results of the trial, which for the first time ever, have shown that it is possible for a vaccine to reduce the risk of HIV infection in humans," he said. "Although the level of protection is modest, at 31-percent efficacy, the study represents a major scientific achievement." Schoomaker went on to say the Army's interest in the study is concurrent with its longstanding interest in protecting all servicemembers from infectious diseases. "Military medicine is interested in research that improves global health and makes the world safer for everyone, including our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen," he said. "The results of this trial opens new doors, answers some questions and poses many additional questions. This is truly a great moment for world medicine and for the global human family." Col. Jerome Kim, an infectious disease expert, and the U.S. Army HIV Vaccine Product Manager at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Division of Retrovirology, said researchers will now try to understand why the vaccine worked in some people. "Additional studies are clearly needed to better understand how this vaccine regimen reduced the risk of HIV infection," he said. "The collaborators are meeting with outside experts to attempt to understand why the vaccine worked. The data derived from these analyses should drive the science and the discussions and hopefully allow us to move expeditiously to an effective preventative vaccine." The combination of vaccines used during the RV144 study was shown to be effective against subtype B and subtype E of HIV, which are the most prevalent subtypes of the virus in Thailand. Kim said right now, researchers don't know if the combination of vaccines would have the same effect in other parts of the world, such as on the African continent, where other subtypes of the virus are prevalent. "Whether this will work in other parts of the world with different subtypes of HIV or in populations at different risk of HIV infection, is not known," he said. The study also showed that while some participants were prevented from contracting the virus, the vaccine did not have an effect on the severity of contracted HIV infections, said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "One of the most important and intriguing findings of the Thai trial, is that the vaccine regimen prevented HIV acquisition among a modest proportion of vaccinated participants, yet failed to affect viral load in vaccine recipients who later became infected," Fauci said. "This clearly begs the question of whether the protective immune responses that prevent infection are related to those that control viral load." The three-year study was conducted as a partnership between the Army, the Thai Ministry of Public Health, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Sanofi Pasteur, and Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases. Army honors Gold Star Mothers at Pentagon [2009-09-28] WASHINGTON -- More than 20 Gold Star mothers met Friday at the Pentagon in the Hall of Heroes for recognition by Army senior leaders prior to the national "Gold Star Mother's Day" on Sunday. "As Gold Star Mothers, you made an ultimate sacrifice in the service of your nation," said Lt. Gen. David H. Huntoon Jr., director of the Army staff. "You perpetuate by your service this noble cause for which your children died. And in your quest, you set such a remarkable example for all of us in the face of such tragic loss, an example which inspires us each and every day." Gold Star Mothers are those who have lost a son or daughter in military service. The organization began in 1936. In the United States, the last Sunday of September is officially designated as "Gold Star Mother's Day." During the recognition ceremony, Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh presented Ruth V. Stonesifer, national president of the American Gold Star Mothers, with a letter recognizing the importance of the Gold Star Mothers. The letter was signed by McHugh, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. and Sgt. Maj. of the Army Kenneth O. Preston. Stonesifer lost her son, Pfc. Kristofor T. Stonesifer, on Oct. 19, 2001. He was killed in action when his UH-60 crashed during a mission in Pakistan. When her son died, she said, she'd been unaware of the existence of the Gold Star Mothers. It was her other son, a recently retired warrant officer, who clued her in on the possibility of being a Gold Star Mother. "I was holding my grandson, a little baby, and he said we're going to apply for your Gold Star pin," she said. "I said gee, what's that?" Stonesifer said she searched on the internet for more information about the organization that she would eventually become president of. "I sent for an application and joined, and the very first meeting I had was with three Vietnam moms," Stonesifer said. "They took me out to lunch. They just had the most amazing gift to give me, with their 30 years experience of going down this journey before me. I'm very proud to be associated with these great moms, I learn from them and I am inspired by them every day." The Army recognition ceremony Friday at the Pentagon was a kickoff to a weekend-long series of events for the Gold Star Mothers. The mothers attended a banquet Saturday at Fort Myer, Va. On Sunday, the mothers laid a wreath at the Vietnam Wall; attended a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery with a speech by Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki; attended a wreath laying at the Tomb of the Unknowns; and held an open house at the Gold Star Mothers National Headquarters. On Monday, the mothers visited the Smithsonian Institution to view the restored Star Spangled Banner. Soldiers telling PTSD stories will decrease treatment stigma [2009-09-30] WASHINGTON -- It will take Soldiers telling about their successful treatment of post traumatic stress disorder to begin breaking down the stigma that prevents other troops from seeking care, said Brig. Gen. Colleen McGuire. During a panel presentation called "Surviving and Thriving in Harm's Way," Sept. 25 at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., McGuire spoke about suicide, PTSD, and the social stigma that prevents Soldiers with PTSD from stepping forward to get treated. The general serves as director of the Army Suicide Prevention Task Force. "Soldiers are going to wait until somebody tells their story -- who is still in the Army -- and then watch their progression and their career to see what happens with them," she told presentation attendees. "They are going to want to see if what you are telling them is real. And until we turn that around, it is going to be awhile, and we have to be consistent in the message that stigma is ignorance." Suicide can be the result of PTSD, and McGuire said the Army has experienced a rise in the number of suicides. She said traditionally, the Army is below a comparable civilian segment of the population for suicides. And while the most recent Center for Disease Control studies available for suicide in the civilian population is from 2006, McGuire said she believes the Army has now exceeded the civilian population. "Unless they exponentially increased, hugely, we have now surpassed what is expected out there in the community," she said. Still McGuire said, America has a resilient Army. Last year, about 140 Soldiers committed Suicide, out of a population of 700,000 Soldiers. "When you look at the number of Soldiers that committed suicide given the population ... we have a resilient Army, we have a strong Army," she said, adding there is another set of Soldiers -- those engaging in risky behavior -- that goes unknown. "I don't know the number in between -- those engaged in risky behavior that may be accumulating over time, the alcohol, the infidelities ... even sleep deprivation is a risky behavior that compounded over time could result in suicide." McGuire said she hopes that eventually Soldier culture will change to allow Soldiers to seek out the help they need, and for Soldiers to develop and emphasize mental fitness within the Army in the same way they develop physical fitness. "That is the approach we need to take in dealing with this," she said. Hiking for the people [2009-10-01] SOTO CANO AIR BASE, Honduras -- Not everybody in Honduras goes hungry, but many do. The tiny country is one of the poorest in Central America, with more than one in four Hondurans unemployed. As part of monthly "chapel hikes" out of Soto Cano Air Base, Honduras, Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines-all part of Joint Task Force-Bravo-volunteer their personal time to bring food to families in the surrounding communities, and often sweets and toys for the children as well. "We do the hikes so we can continue to get the message out that the U.S. military, and Soto Cano Air Base, is interested in the lives of the Hondurans locally and interested in helping improve their way of life," said Air Force Capt. Tony King, chaplain for JTF-B. The hikes take servicemembers out to areas of the community where the services Americans often take for granted are not present-running water and sewers, to name a few. On a Friday afternoon before one such hike in May, servicemembers gathered at the annex of the installation chapel to prepare for the event. Food (including rice, dried beans, sardines, sugar and cooking oil) had been purchased with donations from parishioners. Volunteers created approximately 200 bags containing the food staples so each servicemember on the hike would be able to carry something to waiting Hondurans. The following morning, servicemembers gathered outside the chapel, each grabbing a bag of food to carry with them on the march. Participants included about 120 U.S. military members, about 30 from the Honduran military, and 10 representatives from nearby Comayagua City Hall. Four busses carried the volunteers to a site roughly eight miles from the air base, where participants began a nearly two-mile hike up a mountainside to a soccer field 2,400 feet above sea level-a climb of about 926 feet. There, several hundred Hondurans from the nearby village of Planes de la Nueva Esperanza awaited their arrival. "The higher the elevation they live in, the needier they are, the less they have," said King, who shepherded the volunteers up the hill. "That's why we are focusing on going up into the hills to deliver the food." King said the mayor of the nearby town, Comayagua, suggested the location, as it is in his area of responsibility. "We've asked him to help us find areas of the most needy in his area," King said. "This was the one on the top of the list." Servicemembers lined up along the outside of the soccer field with their donations. Hondurans lined up as well, one-to-one with the volunteers, allowing participants to meet face-to-face with a Honduran head of family, shake their hand, and pass a bag of food. Children weren't left out either. Command Sgt. Maj. Eloy H. Alcivar, the senior enlisted for JTF-B, yelled in Spanish for the "niños" to gather near him. They too lined up and awaited treats from servicemembers. Dozens of Soldiers moved forward to provide toys, articles of clothing and candy to children bearing smiling faces and outstretched hands. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Bill Flores, a supply noncommissioned officer in charge at JTF-B, said he attends the chapel hikes because during his time in Honduras he is reminded of his own history and that of his family in Mexico. "Personally, I come from an indigenous background, which is what these people are, a lot of them," Flores said. "I still have family in Mexico. And I just arrived in Honduras three weeks ago. From seeing the scenery here a little bit, it reminds me a lot of how my family still lives down there-very poor. They will build houses out of pallets or anything they can get their hands on. To me, it is very personal." Flores said joining the military has provided him with a lot of opportunities, and participating in the chapel hikes while assigned to Soto Cano is one way to repay that debt. "I came up here to help out those that don't have enough," he said, "especially the things we take for granted-to give those things back to them-and showing them that Americans are good people, that we are here to help." Flores sat with some of the family heads who came from a nearby village to meet with servicemembers at the soccer field. A native Spanish speaker, he said the Hondurans were thankful for the food they got from the servicemembers who participated. "They are thankful for anything, any little thing we can give them they are thankful for," he said. One of the women there explained that the food in the village is produced by the men who live there, and while there is enough food to sustain life, the variety of what's available leaves something to be desired. "There's enough for the year, if you want beans and corn every day," the woman said, "but no meat." Daily sustenance might include a corn tortilla with beans. For chicken, she said, they must travel fairly far, and even for chili peppers they must go to the market in Comayagua. "There's a bus that comes through every now and then, and they will just hop on and go into town," Flores explained. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Fernando Garcia, an air traffic controller for JTF-B, participated in several chapel hikes during his Soto Cano tour. The late-May hike would likely be his last, he said, because he was preparing for a permanent change of station. He said he brought many personal items he'd gathered in Soto Cano that he'd no longer need with him on the hike. "I'm about ready to PCS, so I brought pretty much a lot of clothes I had in my dorm," Garcia said. "It was worth the walk, it's a little sweat to help out a couple people. Once you see the smile on the person's face, that makes it worth it. No matter how long the walk is, it's worth it." Spc. Joseph Iwaskey, a JTF-B chaplain assistant agreed that the uphill hike was tough-but said it's for a good cause. "Charity can be rough," he said, "but it was worth it. It's a good cause, and I wanted to help the Honduran people-to bring them food. This kind of charity doesn't happen a lot for them." Chapel hikes aren't the only kind of charity that happens out of Soto Cano, King said. And Honduras is an area ripe for opportunity to do good work. "There's a lot of different needs out there. Not just food, but construction projects too-Habitat for Humanity is big, so I plan on helping with that," he said. "There's a lot of opportunity here, and the Honduran people are friendly and they are open to the help and that's good." Although the food delivered to Honduran villagers during the hike was purchased from money donated during chapel services at Soto Cano, the hikers themselves weren't necessarily chapel-goers, King said-an indication that the willingness to help runs across the spectrum of belief systems. "We got a lot more people that show up to this than what show up to regular services," King said. "Regardless of their religion or their religious beliefs, I think military members and Americans generally have a desire to help people." Soldiers bring care to people in need [2009-10-01] SOTO CANO AIR BASE, Honduras -- Providing medical care to the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines assigned to Soto Cano Air Base, Honduras, is one part of the mission of the Joint Task Force-Bravo Medical Element. The JTF-B MEDEL also facilitates humanitarian operations that provide medical and dental care to host-nation civilians living in U.S. Southern Command's area of responsibility. "We support JTF-B and USSOUTHCOM throughout their area of focus-the Caribbean and Latin America-usually through medical readiness training exercises or medical readiness exercises. We also support them in humanitarian assistance projects," said Dr. (Col.) Otto F.W. Boneta, director of the Medical Element at JTF-B. The JTF-B MEDEL hosts rotations of military doctors, dentists, and other military medical personnel from the United States-many times from the National Guard or from stateside medical centers-on two-week medical readiness training exercises, or MEDRETEs. The MEDRETEs bring skilled military medical personnel who provide free dental care and medical assessment and treatment to the most rural areas of Honduras and other parts of Central and South America, including the Dominican Republic, Panama, Nicaragua, Colombia and Costa Rica. "They come down here to get more experience conducting and executing medical operations. They also see medical cases that we don't normally see in the United States," Boneta said. "So it is very educational and beneficial for our doctors to come down here and see those things. It is beneficial for the local patients who might not ever get seen by a doctor." Dr. (Lt. Col.) Joel Rossen, a pediatric nephrologist from San Antonio, specializes in treating kidney disease in children. He said the austere environment that military medical personnel experience in Honduras and other parts of Central and South America helps prepare them for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. "This is part of the training mission for the residents to get them exposed to deployment," Rossen said. "We go out into the villages and there's a lot of hiking. We also set up a clinic, and that gives us practice for Iraq or Afghanistan." Dr. (Capt.) Domenick Nardi, an Army pediatric resident out of Fort Sam Houston, Texas, said working in Honduras as part of a JTF-B-sponsored MEDRETE also helps prepare military medical personnel for military disaster-response operations. "We are often called upon to do not only our military mission, but to help with humanitarian missions around the world, when actual disasters strike," Nardi said. "So I think being in the situation helps to prepare for that." Nardi said while he was in Honduras, he learned how to work in a spartan environment, how to organize the delivery of medical care, and also how to work hand-in-hand with the Honduran government to deliver medi-cal care in remote locations. "In the areas around Marcala and La Paz, we hiked out into the mountains with guides on a daily basis. We went to rural areas with no indoor plumbing or running water-it was mud shacks made from handmade mud bricks," Nardi said. "We've learned how the medicine is delivered in that austere environment, and also to help the Honduran government bring medical care and better nutrition to their more poverty-stricken rural areas." More than just routine medical and dental care, JTF-B also has a surgical team that provides vital treatments to impoverished civilians in Honduras. While the team can provide surgical care to JTF-B servicemembers if needed, their main focus is to help the locals, bringing the time, experience and equipment needed to provide surgical care. "Their real mission is to provide host-nation support at the two local hospitals, two to three days a week," Boneta said. "We go there and do surgery and provide all of the medical supplies, expendables, and reusable stuff that we can sterilize and bring back here. And we work with the Honduran surgeons." Boneta said some of the most common specialties requested by USSOUTHCOM partner nations include ophthalmology, orthopedics, urology and gynecology. "There is a big needed for orthopedic surgery, especially for hand surgery," Boneta said. "There is a lot of machete use here and they get extensive machete injuries, so they are requiring medical reconstruction. Also (plastic surgery) is needed for cleft lip and palate, which is a disfiguring congenital problem. If we can fix that in a patient, it would be life-changing." At the Hospital Roberto Suazo Cordova in La Paz, a city about seven miles from Soto Cano Air Base, Hondurans from the city, the mountain villages, and the surrounding farms line up for medical care outside the hospital doors, and wait on curbs or benches. Unlike in the United States, the hospital at La Paz lacks the lingering smell of disinfectant. It's short on staff, equipment, medicine, supplies and adequate funding. What it's not short on are patients needing treatment. Dr. (Lt. Col.) Shaun Price is one of the surgeons assigned to JTF-B who sees, first-hand, the challenges and benefits of the medical efforts in Honduras. "So far this morning we've done two cholecystectomys, which is removal of the gall bladder," he said. "Typically, we do those procedures for gallstones, which can cause pain in the abdomen. Sometimes the gallbladder can get inflamed." Price said in the United States, laparoscopic surgery is typically done to remove the gall bladder-that involves the insertion of equipment that allows the surgeon to work in a less invasive way. But the equipment is expensive and not available in Honduras, so the surgery there must be done in a more traditional, though equally effective way. For him, that means getting practice in a surgical technique he does not often do. "From a personal standpoint, I am actually learning to perform open cholecystectomys through very, very tiny incisions that we don't typically utilize back in the United States," he said. "So I am gaining some technical expertise by being here." Because equipment and supplies are severely limited, the surgical team from JTF-B brings many of its own supplies to the hospital. Price said the kinds of resources lacking in the Honduran hospital are those often taken for granted by surgeons in the United States. "We practice in a somewhat austere environment by coming to these places," he said. "We become very fastidious in the use of our resources in these facilities. This is what we would probably encounter in a field environment, and a disaster relief kind of situation." While the Honduran hospital is lacking in supplies, it's not lacking in experience. Price said that Honduran doctors are well-trained professionals, and that he learns from them as they learn from him. It's not a matter of skill, he said, it's a matter of money. "Being here I have found that we are very fortunate in the United States and that a lot of the supplies that we as surgeons take for granted and consider disposable, the Hondurans don't have access to on a regular basis," Price said. "What we provide to them is not necessarily skill-because they are all very knowledgeable and skilled surgeons in their own right. What we do is provide supplies that the surgeons utilize during their cases." Price said that his surgical team typically handles eight to 15 cases a week. Over time, he said, they'll probably manage almost 100 cases. The head of surgery at the hospital, Dr. Blanca Dermith, is appreciative of both the supplies the JTF-B surgeons bring and the care they provide. As she is the only surgeon permanently assigned at the hospital, she is keenly aware of the value of the teams. "The most important thing is that we can operate on very poor people who otherwise don't have an opportunity to undergo surgery," Dermith said. "And these Soldiers bring the surgical sets. And anything left at the end of the day I can use for my night shift." Dermith also said the assistance of skilled surgeons from JTF-B means that her hospital can see more patients-and that means the wait time for patients is less. "Patients come from everywhere," she said. "And patients like to come here because I can book up to six or eight cases a day. And appointments from the initial visit are not that far away." Recently, Dermith said, the Honduran Ministry of Health recognized her hospital for its increased efficiency in providing surgical care to patients-in part, due to assistance from JTF-B surgical teams. "We have a very high productivity rate for surgery, compared to other hospitals," she said. "The patients say let's go have surgery at La Paz, because they have no wait time." Beyond medical, dental and surgical care, the JTF-B teams are also helping the Hondurans with preventative treatment including AIDS education and screening and nutritional surveys. Working with the Honduran government, the teams assess the nutritional status and needs of both children and adults, as well as ways to address those deficiencies. One such effort involves distributing "sprinkles" to women of child-bearing age. The sprinkles are a package of micronutrients that can be added to food to help civilians better meet their nutritional needs. Dr. (Capt.) Rachael Dawson, who specializes in pediatrics, supported the ongoing nutritional study. "We're part of the team that is studying the nutritional deficiencies and vitamin deficiencies of the children in certain areas," she said. "We're doing surveys and checking for anemia and giving medications as needed." Dawson said the studies also involve looking for trends in birth defects that are linked to not having enough folic acid in the diet. "Hopefully we can see a trend towards less birth defects if they are taking the sprinkles," she said. Dr. Terri Kemmer, a former Army doctor, now works at South Dakota State University. She is one of the co-coordinators of the nutritional program, and said the program will provide important information to the Honduran government to help its population. "The Ministry of Health uses the data to prioritize their use of limited resources," she said. "Additionally, the World Food Program and UNICEF can use the information to direct their programs in the country to the areas most in need. They will basically take the information and work within those regions to expand programs." She said that in Honduras, their studies have found that many children are going without the nutrition they need, limiting their ability to grow. "We are finding prevalence of (growth) stunting extremely high-anywhere from 50 to 80 percent of the population," she said. In Honduras and other parts of Central and South America, the JTF-B medical teams gain valuable experience and prepare themselves for missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, while providing vital medical, dental and surgical care to local civilians . "All of us are in medicine because we want to help people," Boneta said. "And being able to go out and help those people that need it-that is particularly rewarding. We want to be good neighbors. We want to help them prosper. We want to help them have a more secure environment. If they have a secure environment and they prosper, in the long run, it will be good for America too." Fighting floods, drugs in Central, South America [2009-10-01] SOTO CANO AIR BASE, Honduras -- Nearly a quarter of the 1,100 individuals employed in the American section of Soto Cano Air Base, Honduras, are Soldiers. And like the foreign nationals, American contractors, Sailors, Marines and Airmen stationed there, they support the mission of Joint Task Force-Bravo. The work Joint Task Force-Bravo performs is one part of U.S. Southern Command's mission in Central and South America. The task force conducts joint, combined and interagency operations in the region, enhancing both security and the development of democracy. Additionally, the task force supports humanitarian efforts in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility, and participates in counter-narcotics operations there. "We are really USSOUTHCOM's forward presence in Central and South America," said Col. Richard A. Juergens, JTF-B commander. "Most of our work is partnership-type work, where we're building relationships. And in a lot of cases, we're maintaining relationships that we have had for many years here. But we're also here to quickly respond to humanitarian situations and disasters." Out of Soto Cano, the members of JTF-B-through 1st Battalion, 228th Aviation Regiment; JTF-B Medical Element; the Army Forces Battalion and other components-are involved in several missions, including providing humanitarian relief, aiding in the fight against narcotics trafficking, and providing medical and dental treatment to civilians. In November 2008, for instance, flooding ravaged both Costa Rica and Panama. Members of JTF-B were there to provide assistance to the victims of that natural disaster, said Lt. Col. Will Cristy, commander of the 1-228th. "With Panama, we started off with a couple of Black Hawks. Then it grew, we ended up sending a couple of Chinooks to Panama City," he said. "It started with the Bocas del Toro region of Panama with the Black Hawks. It expanded to Panama City, because that's where most of the relief supplies were. When Costa Rica requested assistance, we sent still more people. When it was all said and done, we had seven helicopters, and the 1-228th had upwards of 50 people-and JTF-B brought in 20 to 25." Cristy said the 1-228th provided airlift of some 300,000 pounds of supplies in the affected region and helped rescue civilians stranded by floodwaters as well. "The big thing at first was life, limb or eyesight situations," he said. "They extracted I think four people in the first few days-some injured children and a pregnant woman-things like that. Then it shifted into transporting relief supplies: food, medicine and blankets." Lieutenant Col. Richard Somers serves as commander of the Army Forces Battalion, part of JTF-B. The battalion provides, among other things, communications and refueling support to JTF-B. During the flooding in Panama and Costa Rica, Somers was the ground commander for U.S. forces performing relief operations in the area. He said the U.S. wasn't in charge of the relief operations, but was instead a partner. "It wasn't a U.S.-led mission, it was a pan-American-led mission," he said. "We had people there from Colombia and from international organizations bringing supplies as well. It was a great opportunity to work with all these different agencies and people." Working with Panamanians and Costa Ricans to provide disaster relief support yields results that Somers said he sees when he talks to citizens of the Central and South American countries. "One of the Panamanians told me, no matter how much trouble the world gives the U.S., every time something happens, it was always the U.S. that was there in Panama helping out," Somers said. "So the people were very appreciative of everything we did." As part of its USSOUTHCOM mission, members of JTF-B also participate in counter-narcotics operations-helping to stem the movement of illegal drugs throughout the region. Just as JTF-B works in concert with other countries on humanitarian assistance efforts, it also partners with host countries and other governmental organizations on its counter-narcotics mission. "Counter-narcotics is one of the combined, joint, interagency missions that is so much a part of Joint Task Force Bravo's daily activity," Juergens said. The ground teams that participate in the counter-narcotic missions include a mix of interagency partners and host-nation police or military, for instance. When JTF-B discovers aircraft in the region that may be involved in the drug trade, they respond in a variety of ways in conjunction with interagency partners. Juergens said the counter-narcotics missions call for experienced personnel, due to the challenges involved. "This mission set is one of the more complicated that we execute in Central America," he said. "Because of this we pick our most experienced crews while executing a vigorous training program to prepare newly assigned aviators to meet the demanding mission requirements." Working at Soto Cano Air Base as part of JTF-B means working in partnership with the host nations, not doing things for them, said Cristy. "It's important when talking to the Soldiers that they understand that this is a partnership here," he said. "We're not here in spite of these people, we are here to work with these people. There are very smart people down here, and they are very capable. But we have a lot of resources-that's one of our advantages. If they had the money we had, they'd be flying helicopters all over this place-and they'd be good at it too. They are smart guys, and they are fit." Juergens said that the joint, combined and interagency nature of the JTF-B mission is a boon to young Soldiers who work as part of the task force. Soto Cano is one of the few places in the Army where junior enlisted can get such experiences early in their careers. "Our young Soldiers are getting to interface with the other services at a very young age here, and it's just great to watch," he said. "Above and beyond that, one of the unique things about JTF-B is the interagency component of the mission. When you get involved in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, you are going to be working with folks from the State Department, the country team, the embassy, and from the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. Young Soldiers don't especially have that interface at an early stage in their career with other entities of government-but they certainly get it here." On top of that, Cristy said, working as part of JTF-B provides the opportunity for Soldiers to demonstrate the professionalism expected from them. "The Soldiers that come here and work for us are just amazing," he said. "We work some pretty good hours here: five-and-half to six days a week. And we just do amazing things. I saw it when I went to the desert and I see it here too. Every generation talks about the next generation and how soft they are. We talk about the 'video game kids'-but they are amazing. When it comes time to do the job, they are amazing. There are great young Americans down here representing their nation." McHugh: 'Failure is not an option' [2009-10-05] WASHINGTON -- The way ahead in Iraq and Afghanistan will be tough, but America's Soldiers can handle it, said Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh. During the Oct. 5 opening of the Association of the United States Army 2009 Annual Meeting, which runs through Oct. 7 in Washington, D.C., the new Army secretary spoke to an auditorium of thousands of Soldiers, saying he believes they can meet the challenges that face them. "The days ahead are of great challenge," he said. "But I can tell you this as well: failure is not an option. We will, we can, we must succeed, and as more than 230 years of the history of this great U.S. Army has shown you, the men and women who put that uniform on will be equal to this challenge as long as we stand by them." McHugh then introduced the event's keynote speaker, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates. The defense secretary spoke about what DOD is doing for Soldiers, what it needs to do in the future, and where the Army needs to go in the future. First, he spoke about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, mentioning first the recent changes in Iraq, where responsibility for security in cities was handed over to host nation forces. "That was a significant step," Gates said, saying that the U.S. will continue to reduce its presence leading up to elections next year -- as it shifts to an advisory role. The secretary also noted successes in Iraq, notably the reduction of violence there. "General Odierno said last week violence is down 85 percent over the past two years, an accomplishment made possible by the hard work and sacrifices of many thousands of Soldiers," Gates said. At the same time, Gates said, Afghanistan has been on a "different and worrisome trajectory," with violence up 60 percent from last year. The secretary said he believes the changes President Obama makes regarding Afghanistan will be some of the most "important of his presidency." He also said that as the military considers the future, he is prepared to continue to get Soldiers what they need. "IEDs remain the number one cause of casualties in Afghanistan," Gates said. "Let there be no doubt, as long as our troops are in harm's way, the DoD will do everything it can to destroy the IED networks and protect those heroes in the fight." To that end, Gates said he's sent additional intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to Afghanistan, including advanced drones and new platforms, such as the MC-12. Additionally, he said, more explosive ordnance disposal teams are on their way to Afghanistan, and MRAPs designed for Afghanistan were delivered to theater last week. "In the next year we will field thousands of these lifesaving vehicles," Gates said. The secretary said that the Army has surpassed its recruiting goal, but that he has authorized additional force strength, temporarily, for an increase of some 22,000 Soldiers to get though the current "high demand period." He said the new Soldiers will not add additional force structure, but will fill out units the Army already has. "The goal is to end stop-loss and increase dwell time," he said. In recent history, Gates said, the Army has seen new concepts in theater. In particular, he said, there's the "Advise and Assist Brigade," whose functions include a traditional strike role, as well as an advisory role, and command and control. "By the end of next year we plan for the Iraq mission to be composed almost entirely of AABs, and the expectation is that sometime down the road the same will be true in Afghanistan," he said. The secretary also said he noticed a shift in the kinds of military leaders in theater -- those that now must play multiple roles outside traditional military roles. "They are playing the roles of warrior, diplomat, mayor, economist, city engineer, and tribal liaison -- often at the same time," Gates said. "(We) must ensure that that kind of mental agility, entrepreneurial spirit and independent judgment required to be effective downrange, carries over to future assignments." The secretary said those Soldiers must be allowed to play a role in the larger Army to prepare it for wars of the future. During his address, the secretary also mentioned changes to the GI Bill, efforts to curb suicide, continued efforts to help those Soldiers who have been injured in combat, and his commitment to the ground combat vehicle program. Prior to remarks by the secretary of Defense and the secretary of the Army, the AUSA 2009 opening ceremony featured a presentation of the colors by the 3rd U.S. Infantry (the Old Guard), and an invocation by the chaplain from the Military District of Washington. The event also featured a multi-media and live-action presentation of the history of the noncommissioned officer, beginning with the role of the NCO in the Revolutionary War. The historical presentation featured Soldiers from the Old Guard and was part of recognition of the Year of the Noncommissioned Officer, which kicked off at last year's AUSA conference. CSA says Army will balance mission, troops for Afghanistan [2009-10-06] WASHINGTON -- Army leaders will work to provide the forces necessary to be successful in Afghanistan, while at the same time attempting to balance that demand with the needs of Soldiers and families, said the service's senior-most officer. "Looking us in the face are decisions yet to be made about Afghanistan," said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. "It will impact on us, but I can also tell you that I will do in the next few weeks what you would expect of any of our Army leaders: I will balance mission and men. And I will work with the other service chiefs to provide the forces necessary for success in the current conflict, while balancing that with the needs of our Soldiers and families." Casey spoke during the "Eisenhower Luncheon" at the Association of the United States Army 2009 Annual Meeting and Exposition. The chief spoke to an audience of several thousand Soldiers, civilians, and foreign military members. He used the opportunity to provide an update on the status of the Army, discussing the Army's successes and efforts to put itself back in balance -- including the importance of increasing dwell time for Soldiers. "The most important element of getting ourselves back in balance is to improve dwell," the general said. Adding to an improvement in dwell time are recent draw downs in Iraq, though unknowns about the Army's future in Afghanistan may affect dwell time in unexpected ways, the chief said. Casey said he wants to move the active force to a rotational cycle of almost one year deployed and two years at home station, and to move the reserve component to a 1:4 ratio by 2011. "I am pleased with the progress we have made as an Army, and I believe we will continue to move along those lines and we will get very close to our objectives here by 2011," Casey said. The chief also highlighted additional progress the Army has made putting itself back into balance. He began with Army efforts to sustain Soldiers and their families -- including the recently renewed "Army Family Covenant," now starting its third year. The general said he met with Army family members to discuss how the service is doing on execution of the Army Family Covenant -- he said he got "mixed reviews" in some areas, but generally "families see a positive trend in what we are doing for them," the general said. "We are absolutely committed to delivering on the family covenant." The general also talked about the Army's growth in end strength. In 2007, he said, the Army was told to increase end strength of the active force by about 65,000, and the Guard and Reserve forces to increase by about 9,000. The Army had until 2012 to complete that growth, but actually completed it by May 2009. "That will have a great effect on the long-term health of this force," he said. He also said that, even as the Army worked to complete that growth, Army leaders knew it would not be enough to sustain the Army at the current demand on forces. This July, he said, an additional, temporary adjustment to end strength was approved, allowing the Army to increase by some 22,000 Soldiers. "With Secretary Gate's support, he allowed us to grow the active force by another 22,000 Soldiers, on a temporary basis, so we could effectively man the units that we are sending in harm's way and come off of stop-loss," Casey said. He said the Army has already met those additional goals for this year, with a growth of about 5,000 Soldiers. "We are in very good shape on the growth and even though we have a few more units to build, I am very pleased with our progress in that area," Casey said. The Army is also rebalancing through conversion to a modular force, and rebalancing forces away from Cold War skills to skills more important in today's conflicts. In that area, the chief said, the Army has come a long way. "We are almost 90 percent done with converting" to modular brigades, he said. "That is a huge accomplishment. "We are about two-thirds of the way through rebalancing the force -- moving away from Cold War skills to skills more relevant in the 21st century. Taken together those represent the largest reorganization of the Army since WWII." Base realignment and closure, as a result of the 2005 BRAC, is also bringing the Army into balance, the chief said. He said some 380,000 Soldiers and civilians will be affected. "The positive side of this is the quality of our installations has already and will continue to increase substantially," he said. "You cannot go on an Army installation without seeing cranes. That is a great boon to our Soldiers and families." The Army's Force Generation Model is another key factor in putting the Army in balance, the chief said. The ARFORGEN determines how the service can present forces to combatant commanders -- and also affects dwell time for Soldiers. The model the chief presented allows for an active Army that deploys for one year and is back at home station for two. For the reserve component, that ratio is 1:4. Soldiers would be at any time in a "reset" phase, a "train-ready" phase, or an "available" phase. The model provides at any time a corps headquarters, five division headquarters, 20 brigade combat teams and 92,000 enablers. That force pool would be shared between active and reserve components, the chief said. The chief also said that Soldiers in the "train-ready" phase could be pulled for unexpected needs -- something the Army cannot currently do. "This is the Army we are building, and we are organizing our Army along these lines so that we can prepare versatile forces that are ready for full-spectrum operations in unexpected contingencies, at a tempo that is sustainable for an all-volunteer force," he said. "It will cause significant internal change in the Army to do this effectively, and we have been working on that for several years. Casey also spent time discussing Army modernization efforts, the efforts of the Training and Doctrine Command to restructure the Army's modernization strategy, efforts to incorporate Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles know as MRAPs into the force, and efforts to bring a new infantry fighting vehicle into the force within a five to seven-year time period. "I know it's tough, but we will work with the Department of Defense and Congress to deliver the best capabilities to Soldiers," Casey said. Newly trained counter-IED teams deploy to Afghanistan [2009-10-13] WASHINGTON -- Servicemembers who participated in the first state-side training program for joint counter-IED teams have just arrived in Afghanistan for a year-long assignment. The Tidal Sun pilot program trained servicemembers to work as part of counter-IED teams to gather information and evidence from improvised explosive device event sites -- locations where IEDs have exploded or were discovered -- and then send that information to higher headquarters for further analysis. The pilot training program ran Aug. 30 - Sept. 20 and was conducted by the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization's Joint Center of Excellence at the Army's National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif. "The goal of these teams is to be able to ... learn about who might have built and placed the device and any other tell-tale things," said Marine Corps Col. Christopher Mahoney, chief of staff of the JIEDDO JCOE. "That will enable us to go back in the process and prevent similar devices from similar people under similar circumstances from being emplaced in the first place. "The long and short of it is, we don't want the explosion to ever happen. These teams are going to be a great enabler to do that." Mahoney said that as part of Tidal Sun, both American servicemembers and NATO partners were trained to gather physical evidence from a site, such as pieces of bombs, circuit boards, or evidence of explosives, to analyze it and to then send it off for further analysis. Instructors for Tidal Sun included experienced agents from Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. "Part of the power potential of this program is collaborating with our NATO allies and inter-agency partners," Mahoney said. "And using the immense experience offered by Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents in our training program, for example, gives us a perspective and a depth of knowledge that the Department of Defense simply does not have. This type of partnering is a major key to success, no question." New information discovered about the tactics of the networks of individuals that planted the IEDs can then be sent downstream to help those in theater better discover IEDs before they explode and cause injury or death. While counter-IED teams already exist, are currently serving in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the teams have until now been assembled in theater from servicemembers who sometimes trained for the task of tactical site exploitation on the job, in theater. This is the first time those bound to work on a counter-IED team have been gathered together stateside, before deployment, and formally trained for the job they would perform in theater, said Command Sgt. Maj. Todd Burnett, JIEDDO. "We brought them all together and kind of put them in a team environment before they go into theater," Burnett said. "This time we wanted to create a program where we bring them together in a training environment and teach them the stuff -- to do tactical site exploitation, to do finger printing, to exploit a site where there's been an IED event." The counter-IED teams are made up of members from all services: Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force. Having servicemembers work together in a training environment prior to deployment means they'll be better able to work together once in theater, Burnett said. Burnett said JEIDDO leadership was pleased with the way training played out as part of Tidal Sun. "This was a pilot program, we liked how it worked, so that's what we'll do -- hence forth we'll bring them all together," he said. In Afghanistan, Burnett said, the counter-IED teams will be officially assigned to Task Force Paladin, the counter-IED command in that theater. But the individuals who attended the pilot iteration of the training conducted at Fort Irwin will actually be attached to and will serve units within the 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division -- which is already deployed into theater. AKO 'Go Mobile' to give users virtual desktop in backpack [2009-10-13] WASHINGTON -- By January, Soldiers on the go will be able to do just about anything they do now on their desktop computer if they're issued portable equipment attached to a cell phone. Users of the "Go Mobile" system will be able to use the Internet and authenticate to the Army Knowledge Online/Defense Knowledge Online Web portal through a smart phone, using cellular data services, just about anywhere in the world they can get a signal. "This is a capability to reach out and do business in a mobile environment," said Col. Earl Noble, project manager for the AKO/DKO Web portal. Army Knowledge Online developed the "Go Mobile" system -- now in initial operational capability -- which combines software on AKO with a cellular phone and optional portable hardware that includes such things as a smart card reader, printer, projector, dumb terminal, head-up display goggles, and solar recharging capability. The Go Mobile system started with an upgrade to the AKO/DKO system that gives users secure PDA or smart-phone access to its services, applications and data. That access includes such things as e-mail, calendar, address book, assigned tasks, contacts, video, documents, portal pages and other network services. Added to that are new, third-party equipment items that allow users to function on the road in much the same way they function in garrison. At the heart of Go Mobile system is a smart phone that runs a mobile version of the Microsoft Windows operating system. The addition of an optional dumb terminal gives users a larger screen and keyboard to look at and type on, while the actual computing power remains on the phone. "Everything you see on the phone you see displayed on the screen," Noble said. "It's like a surrogate laptop, where your phone is the computing device." Also optional, though necessary to authenticate to AKO/DKO, is a wireless smart card reader that allows users to authenticate to Army networks using their common access card. Other additional equipment that's part of the Go Mobile system: a printer, a set of goggles a user can wear to create the equivalent of a 50-inch display, multiple options to recharge the system's batteries using solar panels, and a cigarette package-size mobile projector to give presentations wherever the user needs to present information. "Our telemedicine folks are planning to procure these so they can do briefings in mud huts in Africa and teach people about AIDS prevention," Noble said. All the equipment together could fit easily into a backpack. And right now, there's two solar recharging options available as part of the Go Mobile system. First is a battery with three blades that fan out to reveal solar panels, and second is a backpack with built-in solar panels on the rear. Both can be used to charge the equipment that is part of the Go Mobile system. Access to a compatible and participating cellular data network is required for full use of the Go Mobile system, and Noble said the Go Mobile team is working to ensure that access is available wherever users want to go. "Your data plans you can buy based on where you are going to be in the world," he said. "We have a worldwide focus and we have connections to all the major cell carries around the globe." Currently the Go Mobile system is in testing and is limited to less than 100 users. Noble said by January, the program will be "open to the world." Army meets recruiting goals for quantity, quality [2009-10-14] WASHINGTON -- The Army and other services met their recruiting goals in fiscal year 2009, many exceeding both numeric goals and quality benchmarks for new recruits. "We are pleased to report that for the first time, since the advent of the all-volunteer force, all of the military components -- active and reserve -- met their number as well as their quality goals," said Bill Carr, the deputy under secretary of Defense for military personnel policy during an Oct. 13 press conference at the Pentagon. "That's the first time that's been achieved for every component since the start of the all-volunteer force in 1973." All branches of the service, as well as their respective Guard and Reserve components, met or exceeded recruiting numbers for the period between Oct. 1, 2008 and Sept. 30, 2009. For the active Army, that meant 70,045 accessions in that time period -- or 108 percent of its goal of 65,000 new Soldiers. The Army National Guard met 100-percent of its goal, the Army Reserve exceeded its goal, achieving 105 percent. The "quality" component of last year's recruiting success refers to both the education level of new recruits and their performance on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, a subset of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB. The Department of Defense set a benchmark for services, stating that 90 percent or greater of new recruits should have a high-school diploma. Last year, some 95 percent of Army active-duty recruits had a high-school diploma or greater. The reserve components of the Army also exceeded that standard. Additionally, in FY 2009, 66 percent of new Soldiers in the Army scored at the 50th percentile or higher on the AFQT -- the DoD benchmark being 60 percent. Again, both reserve components, like the active Army, exceeded that goal. While the economic downturn has contributed to recruiting numbers, Maj. Gen. Donald M. Campbell Jr., commander, Army Recruiting Command, also said having the right number of recruiters -- across all components -- contributed to Army success in FY 2009. "I think the most important thing that helps us with success -- whether you're talking money, resources, or advertising --- is having the right number of recruiters, Soldiers, on the ground," he said. "That's what it really comes down to." Campbell said there were more than 8,000 recruiters in the field in FY 2009, across all components of the Army. Together, those recruiters brought in about 162,000 new Soldiers. Campbell also said that waivers, for such things as misconduct, have gone down 37 percent. For FY 2008, there were about 370 adult misconduct waivers, he said. For FY 2009, that number was about 220. "I think what we are seeing is a good trend in the Army, that we are able to continue to recruit young men and women," he said. "And we see waivers on our side going down." Agreement signed at Fort Irwin to create solar power [2009-10-16] WASHINGTON -- The Army signed a memorandum of agreement Oct. 15, for an enhanced-use lease to begin development of a 500-megawatt solar power plant at Fort Irwin, Calif. The agreement -- with Clark Energy Group of Arlington, Va., and Acciona Solar Power of Henderson, Nev. -- will allow the commercial developers to use land at Fort Irwin to construct a solar power plant there between 2013 and 2022. The facility will provide power to both the civilian power grid in California, and to Fort Irwin, home of the Army's National Training Center. The EUL is an agreement where the Army will provide to the developers, for as many as 50 years, up to 14,000 acres of land. In return, the Army receives rent for the land through cash or in-kind services. Construction of the project provides "energy security" for the Army, said Brig. Gen. Robert B. Abrams, commander of the National Training Center. He explained that energy security means that even in the event of a collapse of the civilian power grid, power stays on at Fort Irwin -- allowing the Army to continue its mission there. "It is mission-essential our mission here must continue, regardless of energy conditions in California or southern California," Abrams said. "So in terms of enhancing energy security for Fort Irwin ... this is a key capability for us. In times of uncertainty, sometimes in the future when there may be some uncertainty with power availability, this is absolute insurance we will be able to continue our mission to prepare and train forces for deployment." Abrams said that even on the "worst day in August," Fort Irwin needs about 28 MW of power. With a 500-MW solar facility on the installation, the remainder of that power generation can be sold to the civilian power grid, Abrams said. The civilian developers of the property will construct a facility with both concentrated solar thermal and photovoltaic technology. Clark-Acciona will be responsible for developing the project and for footing the bill for its construction -- estimated now at about $1.5 billion. Neither the government, nor the Army, will pay for development of the project, but will instead collect rent in-kind for use of the land it leases to the developer. The 500-MW facility will be built in phases, with a project end date expected around 2022. But Phase 1A of the project, with a completion of around 2014, is expected to provide enough power to sustain Fort Irwin. It could be two years before construction of the project can begin at the Fort Irwin site. Until then, developers must go through a "comprehensive environmental evaluation of the project," said Francis J. Coen, managing director, Clark Energy Group. Project developers at Fort Irwin believe that, after developing the 500-MW facility as required, per the deal with the Army, future development could lead to a 1,000-MW facility. Army says body armor safe, despite GAO report [2009-10-16] WASHINGTON -- Testing anomalies cited in an Oct. 16 Government Accountability Office report on body armor do not mean the plates are unsafe, said Brig. Gen. Peter N. Fuller, program executive officer for the organization that fields new equipment to Soldiers. During a media conference Oct. 16, at the Pentagon, just hours after release of the GAO report, Fuller said that the 85,000 "X Small Arms Protective Inserts" of interest in the report have not been fielded to Soldiers and are in storage, and that the plates now in Soldiers' use are safe. "We have the best body armor by far," said Fuller of PEO Soldier, "And we appreciate the oversight we get from organizations such as GAO, because what they do is ensure we provide the very best to our Soldiers." Fuller said the Army has worked closely with GAO and other organizations to improve testing and evaluation in the acquisition process, and that the Army has in fact made improvements. The GAO report, he said, points out pains the Army has had with improvements in its evaluation and testing processes. "The challenge we are having with this GAO audit report is they are challenging our processes, and I think what we are really identifying is we have had an evolution of processes and we need to better articulate what we are doing there," he said. The 85,000 XSAPI inserts are ceramic plates that fit into tactical vests for wear by Soldiers to provide protection against projectiles and fragmentation. The GAO report questions adherence of the Army to some testing protocols when evaluating the plates. "Overall reliability and repeatability of the test results are uncertain," the report said. Fuller said the Army is conducting additional testing on the plates to document their safety in compliance with standards. Phase II testing, he said, has already been conducted, and Phase III testing will start in November. "We told GAO ... we told the Hill yesterday, we are interested in taking all this data, the Phase II testing, Phase III testing, the additional surveillance testing -- wrap it all up in one report and provide it back to the Hill," Fuller said. Fuller said he hopes to articulate to both GAO and Capitol Hill that there have been challenges with Army testing protocols, but that the armor is in fact safe. Fuller said that Phase II testing on both plate designs in question have shown a "very high statistical confidence interval." "They are fantastic plates," Fuller said. Army librarian honored as best in federal government [2009-10-22] WASHINGTON -- An Army librarian was named Federal Librarian of the Year for 2008 during a ceremony Oct. 22, at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Dr. Verlene Herrington, chief, U.S. Army Military Intelligence Library, Fort Huachuca, Ariz., received the award during the opening of a forum by the Federal Library and Information Center Committee. Herrington has run the library at Fort Huachuca, which serves the intelligence community there, since 2003. She was nominated for the award, in part, for her work in 2008 in obtaining funding for, assisting in the design of, and overseeing the million-dollar renovation project of her library. Today, the library at Fort Huachuca averages 700 on-sight visitors daily -- an increase in attendance of more than 30 percent in fiscal year 2008. Herrington additionally spearheaded expansion of library services by inviting the foreign language center to relocate to the heart of the campus, and having classified networking terminals installed and available for Soldiers to do classified research. "I had a rare opportunity to create a library from scratch -- most librarians never get to do that," Herrington said about her experience at the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Library. When she began there, the library was little more than an empty warehouse. "I started with nothing except books on the floor. No air conditioning, no computers, no customers. It was a wonderful opportunity for my staff and me to create what we thought our customers would want." Serving customers and meeting their needs is what being a good librarian is all about, Herrington said. "I think that what makes this library different is that we created this for the young Soldier," she said. "We didn't create this from the mindset of a librarian. What do these young Soldiers -- the millennial generation -- want in information services? This library is fun, full of color and action. It's high-tech, it's noisy, it's busy. Last year our circulation went up 80 percent. The library has been successful beyond my wildest dreams. Part of it is because we truly love our customers." Maj. Gen. John M. Custer, commanding, U.S. Army Intelligence Center and Fort Huachuca, addressed attendees at the ceremony -- federal librarians -- about how Herrington has developed the library at Fort Huachuca to meet the needs of Soldiers and how she remains flexible in serving the needs of Soldiers there. "The key to being a librarian today, in my estimation, is flexibility," Custer said. "And Dr. Harrington embodies that. She has created an incredible center, not just a library. Libraries have to respond to the customer, and librarians have to know their clientele, that's why she has been so successful. That's why she is so incredibly agile and flexible." Soldiers affect brigade modernization [2009-10-23] WASHINGTON -- Ground sensors that are part of the Army Brigade Combat Team Modernization program were recently overhauled in line with input from Soldiers. The Tactical-Unattended Ground Sensors, or T-UGS, are a set of rugged electronic sensors that allow Soldiers to monitor an area from a distance through a wireless computer network. After evaluating those sensors in late 2008 during a preliminary limited user test, Soldiers at the Army Evaluation Task Force at Fort Bliss, Texas, made suggestions that led to modifications by the manufacturer -- changing both the size and shape of the sensors. "We took these out there, me and my Soldiers, we set them up, and we used them," said Sgt. Tucker Platt, an AETF Soldier, about the older generation of T-UGS sensors that he and his team tested during the evaluation. "We let Textron know that they are bulky and hard to carry around." Manufacturer Textron responded with a new set of T-UGS that look completely different than what Platt and his fellow Soldiers originally tested. "Now we have a detached camera that we can move around and hook to any platform," Platt said. "And we didn't like the size and we needed something easier to carry and easier to hide. So they gave us this box basically, low-profile and you can pack it away easily." The manufacturer was able to respond to suggestions from AETF Soldiers in record time, as well, said Paul Mehney, a spokesman with the Army Brigade Combat Team Modernization program. "We were able to turn with Textron, turn a new design around in a matter of about six months and get it back down to these guys, which frankly is pretty amazing," he said. Platt is a squad leader with AETF, has been in the Army for four years now, and served in Iraq prior to his work as part of the AETF. He said he never expected in his career to have such an impact on how the Army will conduct business. "This will directly affect the future Army," he said. "And it feels good to know that what we're doing now and what we are testing is going to benefit and possibly save Soldiers' lives in the future." If Platt deploys again to Iraq, he says the equipment he and his Soldiers tested as part of the AETF is something he thinks would add to Soldier effectiveness in theater. "I definitely want to take this stuff with me," he said. The T-UGS system includes several pieces of equipment that can be carried in a Soldier's rucksack. The system offers the ability to transmit visual, audio and seismic information into a theater-wide wireless network that will allow Soldiers to monitor where they've been without having to leave Soldiers behind. The sensors are part of the "Increment 1" set of equipment that will be fielded to a total of seven brigade combat teams beginning in 2011. That set of equipment includes both Tactical-Unattended Ground Sensors, Urban-Unattended Ground Sensors that can be placed inside buildings, the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle, the Class I Unmanned Air Vehicle, the B-Kit, which adds network capability to the Humvee, and the Non-Line of Sight Launch System. Staff Sgt. John Benton also serves as part of the AETF and was responsible for working with the NLOS-LS, a containerized launch unit containing 15 precision attack missiles paired with a joint fires control system. The system is helicopter-sling-loadable and air droppable and can launch missiles up to 40 kilometers. Benton said the system's accuracy, when it is first fielded in 2011, is going to bring indirect fire capability to theater -- something not used now. "In combat now we don't use indirect because there is too much collateral damage," he said. "But with this piece of equipment, I am able to attack a lot more targets with the commander saying it is okay because the collateral damage is so limited. It'll go in, attack that target with precision, destroy that target and that's the end of it. It won't take out a whole building or whole block or have a whole lot of collateral damage." Also, Benton said, the NLOS-LS brings the indirect fire capability down a notch in the command structure -- providing to battalion commanders something that had before been available only to brigade commanders. "Normally you can only get this approved through brigade, but what we have seen looking at it, is actually attaching this to battalion level and letting that battalion commander use these at his own will," Benton said. "You can say you have three boxes, this is how much ammo you'll have -- do what you want to do with it. That gives a commander a great amount of power to reach out to his sector, because these things cover 40 clicks." At the AETF, Benton manages computing systems for the NLOS-LS during evaluations. He said he feels the responsibility of ensuring the equipment is right before it get out to the larger Army. "We take pride in that," Benton said. "We have to know what we're doing, that way whoever gets this equipment down the line knows it's ready to go, and they'll be squared away, and they can save more lives that way." The first of seven brigades will get those Increment 1 capabilities in 2011, two brigades will get the capabilities in 2012, and four additional brigades will receive them in 2013, officials said. After 2013, officials expect the Army will field Increment 2 capabilities to brigades. That package of capabilities includes the Class IV UAV, two unmanned vehicles, and a common equipment controller. Additionally, Increment 2 includes upgraded versions of what came in Increment 1. The AETF, also known as 5th Brigade, 1st Armored Division, includes many combat-veteran Soldiers tasked to test and evaluate the ease-of-use and efficacy of Army equipment. Maj. Gen. John R. Bartley, program executive officer, integration, directs the Army's brigade combat team modernization efforts. He said the work done by Soldiers as part of the AETF is key to developing modernization to the Army. "I refer to them as the Army's test pilots. They test it out before putting it in the hands of Soldiers," Bartley said. "The ability to have the Soldier use it in an operational environment and for them to give feedback to us ... is absolutely essential." G-8: Army must show taxpayers value, especially in recession [2009-10-29] WASHINGTON -- During the current economic downturn, the Army must show both Congress and the American taxpayer that it is getting value for every dollar it receives, said the Army's outgoing G-8. Lt. Gen. Stephen M. Speakes, the Army's deputy chief of staff for programs, offered insight into budgets, modernization and programming during his last media roundtable Oct. 27. Speakes has served as an Army officer for 35 years, on the G-8 staff since August 2004, and as the Army's G-8 since December 2006. His last day at the Pentagon is Nov. 2, and he officially retires Jan. 1. As G-8, he has been responsible for integrating Army funding, fielding, and equipping actions. He's had oversight of the Center for Army Analysis, the Army Quadrennial Defense Review Office, Program Analysis & Evaluation, and Force Development. The outgoing general said he doesn't expect any large budget increases for the Army, as it has had in past years. But he also said the character of the American people would prevent there from being any decrease in support for Soldiers. "We may not have much growth, but we better not have decline. The American public is just too responsible for that," he said, saying that continued investment in the military is a "shared American value." Future modernization and growth programs, Speakes said, come with trade-offs, meaning that for each new program the Army wants to develop, it must consider what else might have to be cut back or eliminated. "There is no free ride for any program," Speaks said, saying that now, the military, the Army, is in "zero-sum analysis," where any new programs could mean another program has to be made more efficient or eliminated. During his tenure as the Army's G-8, Speakes witnessed the cancellation of a large portion of the Army's modernization program -- the manned ground vehicle component of Future Combat Systems. The remainder of FCS programs were spun into Army Brigade Combat Team Modernization. But Speakes said the cancellation of that program was both a low point for him, and an opportunity for the Army to shine as it recovered from the cancellation. "I think the feeling that your ultimate boss did not believe your system was contributing was a tough realization," he said of the cancellation of the program in Spring of 2009. But the Army's efforts following that cancellation, he said, are a proud moment. The Army and the DoD together "have made a remarkable effort to develop a unified vision for what the right kind of modernization ought to be, and we are now moving in a direction that will get us the legitimacy we will so desperately need for systems and capabilities that are going to be of enormous value for this Army of persistent engagement and conflict," Speakes said. Two lessons drawn from FCS, Speakes said, are that programs must have a direct link to benefiting Soldiers, and they must deliver on a timeline to benefit Soldiers now. "The very first issue is, can you show a direct relationship between the capability you are talking about and a figurative Soldier in combat," Speakes said. "If you can't draw a direct relationship between that Soldier you are thinking about and the capability -- you lose." Secondly, Speakes said, delivery time for new programs must be quick enough to benefit those who need it now. "If we can master that, then we are going to get support and buy in," Speakes said. "The days of talking about -- at least when we are in war -- 'I've got a vision for the force in 2030,' is irrelevant. And we were actually doing that. In today's war, if you're not talking about capabilities in 12-24 months, you're dead -- your program does not survive." The Army is developing a new ground vehicle, the Ground Combat Vehicle, that will fill the capability gap the FCS MGV was meant to fill. It is expected to be delivered in five to seven years, Speakes said. And while specific designs of the vehicle are yet unclear, he did say two things are driving its development: mobility and protection. "Today's battlefield is 360, top and bottom and side and rear," he said. "This new platform has to be configured for this 360-degree threat." When Speakes retires next month, he leaves behind in the Army two sons who currently serve as officers. One recently redeployed, and one is currently serving in Iraq. Maj. Gen Robert P. Lennox, director, Quadrennial Defense Review, G-8, will serve as the new G-8. Westphal: leader among public servants [2009-11-02] WASHINGTON -- The new under secretary of the Army is above the fray of Washington politics, and is a true civil servant, said the secretary of Army. "Prestige and power can be very fickle companions," said Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh. "But there are those individuals who don't care about that, people who don't play that time-tested but perhaps not-so-true Washington game. Instead, they are public servants ... people who are motivated by a deep sense of appreciation for our system of democracy and who principally hold in their hearts and in their minds their admiration for our men and women in uniform." McHugh spoke before an audience of Army civilians and Soldiers during a swearing-in ceremony, Oct. 30 at the Pentagon, for Under Secretary of the Army Joseph W. Westphal. He said he counted the new under secretary amongst those public servants he holds in high regard. "From everything I know about Dr. Westphal, he is not just one of those individuals, he is a leader amongst them," McHugh said. After speaking, McHugh administered the oath of office to Westphal, and then turned the podium over to the under secretary. "To be really successful in these jobs -- (with) the people we are partnered with, we have to have trust and confidence in them and we have to have a friendship with them," Westphal said. "I don't think you can really be successful together and accomplish things if you don't have that relationship." The under secretary told attendees, which included his family, members of congress, and past Army civilian and military leaders, that he enjoyed the kind of professional working relationship with McHugh that is necessary to accomplish the mission of running the Army. "There is a great bond between us -- confidence, trust and friendship -- that I think makes our ability to deliver for the secretary of defense and for the president, very, very good work at the end of the day," Westphal said. Westphal now serves as the 30th under secretary of the Army. He comes from a background of service in both academia and government. He served as the assistant secretary of the Army for civil works from 1998 to 2001, and in 2001, served as acting secretary of the Army. Army officially welcomes new secretary [2009-11-03] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh was formally welcomed into the Army family during an arrival ceremony here Nov. 2. McHugh, formerly the ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, was sworn in as the 21st secretary of the Army, Sept. 21, after having been nominated for the position by President Obama and confirmed by the senate. The ceremony, held in Fort Myer's Conmy Hall, featured the Army's 3rd Infantry Regiment, the Old Guard, and was attended by McHugh's family, his mother, former Secretary of the Army Pete Geren, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, and Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. "While in Congress, John devoted himself to supporting the men and women of the U.S. military," Casey said of the new secretary. The former congressman served those in New York's 23rd district -- home of Fort Drum. Now, Casey said, the former congressman is focusing on the entire Army. "I feel lucky to have Secretary McHugh on board because he has seen first-hand the stress and strain our Soldiers are facing after eight years of war," Casey said. Casey said McHugh has traveled to Iraq 10 times, and to Afghanistan four times, to visit with Soldiers. The general said the secretary has made a commitment to make taking care of Soldiers a priority. "In his July confirmation hearing, he said his first priority would be to engage in a constant search for better ways to provide Soldiers and their families the support they so richly deserve -- and he's already moved out to make that happen," Casey said. The general said thus far, the new secretary has announced implementation of the $125 million Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program, meant to build resiliency in and enhance the performance of Soldiers. McHugh has also re-signed the Army Family Covenant. "It's our pledge to provide support and services to our Army family, commensurate with the quality of their service that they provide to this country every day," Casey said. McHugh pledged as secretary to continue efforts to balance the Army and to continue to focus on quality of life issues and to help strengthen families. "Our future readiness will require that we continue to modernize and adapt our institutions and transform Soldier and leader development," McHugh said. "Our mission, No. 1, must be to ensure that our Soldiers are provided a quality of life that is equal to their extraordinary sacrifices -- I am committed to securing and maintaining the fundamentals that keep our Army strong: strong Soldiers and strong families, and the enduring foundations that sustain them both." Adjutant general says every absentee vote counts [2009-11-04] WASHINGTON -- A Soldier's vote by absentee ballot counts, and is counted every single time, said the Army's adjutant general and senior voting officer. "The law requires all the election officials across our great country to count every vote, even if it comes in late," said Brig. Gen. Richard P. Mustion. "They have to count every ballot as it is received. Our vote does count, and it makes a difference." When serving in a contingency operation overseas, at an Army garrison in Europe or Asia or even inside the United States, but too far from their home of record, Soldiers who vote do so by absentee ballot. Making that process easy and accessible is the job of those who work for the Army's voting assistance program. "Our objective is that every Soldier and eligible family member is afforded the opportunity to vote, and that they are given the opportunity to exercise that," Mustion said. "Around the world, our Soldiers have the opportunity to vote, and we have an infrastructure and a system in place to allow that to happen." That system includes as many as 5,000 voting assistance officers in units around the world, Mustion said. The VAO is there to assist Soldiers in registering to vote and in getting their absentee ballot. The first part of getting an absentee ballot is filling out an SF-76 Federal Post Card Application, which is available both online or through a voting assistance officer. The form requires Soldiers to have both their home address and their current mailing address -- such as their mailing address where they are deployed. Soldiers mail the completed form to the proper election officials in the state or territory of their home of record. A VAO can help Soldiers and eligible family members in finding that address. After receiving the FPCA, voting officials in a Soldier's home of record will send back the appropriate voting material to allow Soldiers to vote in whatever elections requested, including national elections for president, elections for senator or congressman, or even elections for local state offices. "I believe it is important that we all exercise our right to vote," said Mustion. "It affords us the opportunity to influence those things we care deeply about and for our voice and our vote to be heard. Voting is a right that we all have and it is our inherent responsibility to exercise that right to vote so that we can help shape those key issues that face our nation." For more information on how to vote while overseas, Soldiers may visit the Federal Voting Assistance Program Web site at http://www.fvap.gov/, or contact their local voting assistance officer. The next federal election is Nov. 2, 2010. McHugh, Casey, entire Army family stand with Fort Hood after unthinkable tragedy [2009-11-07] WASHINGTON -- After a moment of silence for those killed in the shootings Nov. 5, at Fort Hood, Texas, Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh and Chief of Staff of the Army George W. Casey Jr. addressed Soldiers, family members and the press. "I tell you candidly, this was a kick in the gut -- not only for the Fort Hood community, but also for the entire Army," Casey said during the press conference Nov. 6, at Fort Hood. At about 1:30 p.m., Nov. 5, Maj. Hasan Nidal Malik, an Army psychiatrist, allegedly fired shots into the Soldiers Readiness Processing Center on Fort Hood. The shooting resulted in 13 dead and some 30 others injured. Most of the casualties were Soldiers preparing for deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. "This is a time for the Army family to stand together, this is a time for 'Army Strong' to mean what it says -- and this is a time to know that we are working every moment to ensure that their safety and security is met to the highest possible degree," McHugh said. McHugh, Casey and Casey's wife spent the day at Fort Hood. The three visited the SRP center where the shooting occurred, visited with law enforcement officials investigating the incident, and met with doctors at the Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center to discuss the status of those injured. They also met with members of the 36h Engineer Brigade in a chapel on base. Members of the unit were victims of the shooting. "That's a group of Soldiers that had an extraordinarily tough day amongst so many Soldiers who had a tough day," said McHugh of the unit. Within the 36th, four were killed and 11 were wounded. "We tried to do our best to try to talk about how the Army family will stand with them," McHugh said. "Our thoughts and prayers are with those of the fallen." The general relayed anecdotes he'd heard regarding the tragedy. One story, for instance, involved medics attending a graduation ceremony in a building near where the shooting occurred. Those medics responded to the sounds of the gunfire so they could help those in need. Another story involved a young private who had been nearby in his truck. Upon hearing the gunshots, he enlisted the aid of friends and brought four of the wounded to the hospital emergency room. "The stories of courage and heroism I heard today make me proud to be a leader of this great Army," Casey said. "I am very proud, not only of the men and women here at Fort Hood, but of our whole Army. We take care of our own, we will grieve as a family, and we will maintain our focus on our missions around the world." Both Casey and McHugh discussed Army efforts to better understand and better deal with post traumatic stress disorder, suicide, and domestic violence. The Army has commissioned a study on the causes of suicide among Soldiers, for instance. And in October, it kicked off the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program, which is designed to help Soldiers develop mental strength in the way they develop physical strength. Asked about his concerns for a potential backlash against Muslim Soldiers serving in the Army now -- based on the Muslim background of the alleged shooter -- Casey said he's aware that could be a problem and he's asked commanders to ask Soldiers to not draw conclusions. "I wouldn't say I fear it, but one of the reasons I told our leaders to keep their people informed and not rush to judgment or speculate until the investigation comes out, is I do worry slightly about a potential backlash, and we have to be concerned about that," he said. The general also said he wants commanders and Soldiers to stay focused on the mission, and that the "full resources of the Army and the DoD" are behind the Fort Hood community. President says nation will always remember Fort Hood casualties [2009-11-10] WASHINGTON -- The nation will long remember those who were killed during the Nov. 5 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, President Barack Obama said during a memorial service there this afternoon. "Here is what you must also know," he told grieving family members and friends of those lost. "Your loved ones endure through the life of our nation. Their memory will be honored in the places they lived and by the people they touched. Their life's work is our security and the freedom that we all too often take for granted." At about 1:30 p.m. Nov. 5, Maj. Hasan Nidal Malik, an Army psychiatrist, allegedly fired shots into the Soldiers Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood, Texas. Soldiers in the center were processing for deployment to both Iraq and Afghanistan. The shooting resulted in 13 dead and some 30 injured. All but one of those killed were Soldiers. "These men and women came from all parts of the country," Obama said. "Some have long careers in the military. Some signed up to serve in the shadow of 9/11. Some have known intense combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, and some cared for those did. Their lives speak to the strength, the dignity, the decency of those who serve. And that is how they will be remembered." The memory of those lost will be rekindled every time an American enjoys the subtle pleasures of life in a free nation, the president said. "Every evening that the sun sets on a tranquil town, every dawn that a flag is unfurled, every moment that an American enjoys life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- that is their legacy," the president said. The president also told those attending the memorial service there is no justification for the crimes that were committed, and that the killer will know justice. "No faith justifies these murderous and craven acts," he said. "No just and loving God looks upon them with favor. For what he has done we know that the killer will be met with justice, in this world and the next." The president also addressed the continued fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, on the eve of Veteran's Day, acknowledged the service of all those who serve. "Tomorrow is Veterans Day, and it is a chance to pause and pay tribute," he said. "As we honor the many generations that have served, all of us, every single American, must acknowledge that this generation has more than proved itself the equal of those who have come before. We need not look to the past for greatness, because it is before our very eyes." Twelve Soldiers and one retired Soldier died Nov. 5 as a result of the shooting. Those individuals include: • Lt. Col. Juanita L. Warman, 55, of Havre De Grace, Md. She was assigned to the 1908th Medical Company, Independence, Mo. • Maj. Libardo Caraveo, 52, of Woodbridge, Va. He was assigned to the 467th Medical Detachment, Madison, Wis. • Capt. John P. Gaffaney, 54, of San Diego, Calif. He was assigned to the 1908th Medical Company, Independence, Mo. • Capt. Russell Seager, 51, of Racine, Wis. He was assigned to the 467th Medical Company, Madison, Wis. • Staff Sgt. Justin Decrow, 32, of Plymouth, Ind. He was assigned to the 16th Signal Company, 62nd Signal Battalion, 11th Signal Brigade, Fort Hood, Texas. • Sgt. Amy Krueger, 29, of Kiel, Wis. She was assigned to the 467th Medical Company, Madison, Wis. • Spc. Jason Hunt, 22, of Tillman, Okla. He was assigned to the 1st Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. • Spc. Frederick Greene, 29, of Mountain City, Tenn. He was assigned to the 510th Engineer Company, 20th Engineer Battalion, Fort Hood, Texas. • Pfc. Aaron Nemelka, 19, of West Jordan, Utah. He was assigned to the 510th Engineer Company, 20th Engineer Battalion, Fort Hood, Texas. • Pfc. Michael Pearson, 22, of Bolinbrook, Ill. He was assigned to the 510th Engineer Company, 20th Engineer Battalion, Fort Hood, Texas. • Spc. Kham Xiong, 23, of St. Paul, Minn. He was assigned to the Forward Support Company, 20th Engineer Battalion, Fort Hood, Texas. • Pvt. Francheska Velez, 21, of Chicago, Ill. She was assigned to the 15th Combat Support Battalion, Fort Hood, Texas. • Chief Warrant Officer retired Michael Cahill of Cameron, Texas. He was a civilian employee on Fort Hood. Soldiers learning to 'bounce back' in Philly [2009-11-16] WASHINGTON -- In Philadelphia, the Army is equipping Soldiers with a new tool designed to help them better deal with the psychological effects of combat that can lead to post traumatic stress disorder. A group of 155 noncommissioned officers are attending the first official "master resilience training" program Nov. 8-19. The training is part of the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program and was developed from the University of Pennsylvania's resilience program. Three past groups of Soldiers attended related training as the UPenn program was modified to meet Army needs. "This is the first really full-scale MRT course; the culmination of a lot of work," said Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, director of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness. "And we truly believe this is instrumental in improving ... the psychological fitness of the force." The current 10-day course, still put on by professionals from UPenn in conjunction with the Army, is designed to equip Soldiers with the skills needed to teach other Soldiers how to better weather traumatic events -- be they money problems, relationship problems, or the horrors of combat. 'Life lessons' "The title misleads you, but when you get it broken down, you see that all this is, is life lessons," said Staff Sgt. David Breeden, an MRT student and an Army drill sergeant who "makes infantrymen" through a One Station Unit Training program at Fort Benning, Ga. "If you can relate to the individual you can help the individual." Breeden's been to both Iraq and Afghanistan and says that in combat, every Soldier needs to be on their game. A Soldier that's got personal issues, or issues coping with the stress of combat, may be a liability to his unit, he said. The Soldier that can cope is the Soldier that is resilient. "If you are in combat you have to be able to decompress," Breeden said. "Some Soldiers just are brittle. They don't have that resiliency factor of being able to bounce back from a traumatic event -- and it does cause issues. That Soldier can no longer help with being a team player, and the team has to turn around and help that individual and it takes away from team readiness." Helping potentially brittle Soldiers become Soldiers more likely to "bounce back" from or cope with stressful events -- such as witnessing the death of a friend or a child in combat, financial issues, or the potential disintegration of a relationship back home -- is the goal of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness. And teaching those skills to Soldiers will be the job of NCOs who attend master resilience training courses like the one in Philadelphia. Moving bell curve to right Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman, a psychologist, and director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said the goal of CSF is to improve the resilience of all Soldiers in the Army. He said graphing the human response to adversity produces a curve much like the plot for test scores in nearly any classroom. "The response to high adversity, to trauma, in human beings, is bell shaped," Seligman said. "On the extreme left you have people who collapse. We call it PTSD, depression, anxiety, divorce, substance abuse and suicide. The center of the curve is normal human resilience -- the normal response to human adversity is to come back to where you were. And over on the right-hand side of the curve, very important, is what's called post-traumatic growth." Inside the Army, Seligman wants to adjust the shape of that curve by equipping Soldiers with the tools needed to be more resilient to psychological trauma. "The question is, what should the Army be doing by way of helping our Soldiers who are probably in for a decade of persistent warfare," Seligman said. "To my mind, it is to move the whole curve to the right ... moving the whole distribution toward higher fitness." Avoiding 'thinking traps' Course leaders, including Seligman and Dr. Karen Reivich, help to move that curve to the right by "building mental toughness." That involves skills like avoiding thinking traps, detecting "icebergs," and learning to put things into perspective. "We teach people to recognize the most catastrophic, unrealistic things they say to themselves when adversity strikes," Seligman said. "We teach them to argue against the most catastrophic thoughts; realistically, to put them into perspective. This is a well-defined technique that's been validated with tens-of-thousands of people in cognitive therapy procedures." Part of MRT also involves helping Soldiers identify their strengths and how to use them to their advantage. "We found that when people work from their highest strengths, as opposed to trying to remediate weaknesses, they do better," Seligman said. Learning to control thought Sgt. 1st Class Rebekah James, with the 743rd Military Intelligence Battalion, Buckley Air Force Base, Colo., has been in uniform for 14 years now and served in Afghanistan in 2008. She explained that she learned "thinking traps" can often include jumping to conclusions. "You call your wife or girlfriend or whatever, and she doesn't answer the phone five times in a row," James said, saying a Soldier might conclude that she's cheating on him. "But that's jumping to conclusions, and you don't have facts you need. But thinking is not fixed, it can be changed -- the way we handle our thoughts -- we can actually control them. We can choose how to react and what emotions to use when confronted with an event." Learning to deal better with emotions and with reactions to an "activating event" is what Soldiers will learn as part of MRT. And they will also learn to teach that to other Soldiers in their units. Seligman said he's aware that a course where "feelings" are discussed might not appeal to Soldiers -- but he says Soldier's that have taken the course have recognized its value. "One of the things we worried about when we started the pilot work was that these tough sergeants would say 'oh this is girly, touchy-feely stuff, we don't want it,'" Seligman said. "And what we've been getting is, 'this toughens us.' "The heart of resilience training is not like a lot of the psychological touchy-feely-huggy stuff. Rather, it's when adversity strikes, how can you respond to adversity with increased resilience -- coming back, and not collapsing." Both Breeden and James say they believe they'll find use for MRT at their home units -- even in their homes. "I believe this will be a great tool in warrior leaders course for new leaders coming into a leadership position," Breeden said. "It helps to refine the tools you have. Some things I'll be able to use in my job and some things at home as a father and as a husband." James said she sees benefit in taking what she learns in Philadelphia back to her home unit and passing it on to Soldiers. "The skills I'm learning here are imperative to being a good leader," she said. "I think once I get back to my unit, by having these tools, and talking to my Soldiers, I'll be able to use these skill sets to better help them become resilient themselves." Suicide numbers may top 2008, but progress being made [2009-11-18] WASHINGTON -- The suicide rate among Soldiers serving on active duty in 2009 is expected to exceed that of 2008 -- a statistic the Army doesn't take lightly, said Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli. "We are most certainly going to end the year higher than last year," Chiarelli said. "Obviously we would prefer not to have another suicide this year, or in the years that follow. But we know that will not be the case. This is horrible -- and I do not want to downplay the significance of these numbers in any way." During a press briefing at the Pentagon Nov. 17, Chiarelli told reporters that as of Nov. 16, the Army had 140 suicides on its books for Soldiers serving on active duty -- though some of those are still under investigation. The Army had 16 potential suicides in October, all of which are still under investigation, DoD announced Friday. In September, the Army had seven suicides; three of which are not confirmed and four still under investigation. The Army had experienced 140 confirmed suicides in 2008. If Army suicide rates for 2009 exceed those of 2008, it will be the fifth year in row the numbers have risen. The numbers for 2008 also gave the Army, for the first time, a suicide rate higher than that of a comparable civilian population. Chiarelli also said the Army experienced 71 suicides for Soldiers not on active duty. Chiarelli said most of the suicides, as many as a third of them, occurred in the first two months of the year and that, despite the numbers, he believes the Army is making progress in its efforts to curb suicide. "It is important to put these numbers in context and to talk about why we believe, despite these numbers, that we are making some progress," Chiarelli said. "Since March, the general trend line, with the exception of a couple of months, has been down." The general attributes that decline to Army actions to inform and educate Soldiers and leaders on the issue -- and he cites leader involvement for Army progress in suicide. Chiarelli said the Army has several initiatives designed to help curb suicides. The biggest, he said, is the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program, which the Army kicked off in October. "It is an investment in the readiness of our force," Chiarelli said. The aim of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness is to help Soldiers put the same emphasis on mental strength and resilience that they put on physical strength. The Army has implemented additional programs that are aimed at psychological well-being. Among those are the pilot TRICARE Assistance Program and the Telemental Health Network -- both designed to let Soldiers and family members seek assistance via the Internet or telephone. At Tripler Army Medical Center, Hawaii, the general said the Army was able to provide all members of a redeploying unit with a post-deployment mental-health screening that involved actual mental-health professionals. Some Soldiers saw a health professional face-to-face, others did it via computer. "We took a battalion, returning from theater, and gave 100 percent of the Soldiers in that battalion mental-health evaluations," the general said. The mass screening resulted in "a higher ... rate for mental health issues that we believe we caught earlier because of a 20 to 30-minute evaluation." Follow-up evaluations will be provided to Soldiers between 90-180 days after coming home, he said, to "identify those individuals that may be having trouble with reintegration." The advent of telemedicine is beneficial for the Army, Chiarelli said, because the service is struggling, like much of the civilian population, to find both mental-health and substance-abuse counselors. He said he'd ideally like to see in the Army the addition of as many as 300 substance-abuse counselors and 800 mental health counselors. "I need more substance-abuse counselors in my posts, camps and stations," he said. In 2008, the Army asked the National Institute of Mental Health to conduct a study to get to the root causes of suicide in the Army. During the study, which is expected to last five years, the NIMH may interview Soldiers, their families and their parents. The study will include the active-duty force in addition to the National Guard and Army Reserve. Chiarelli said in early December, he will meet with NIMH officials to get an early briefing on the study and will use that information to help better steer Army efforts to curb suicides. Until then, the general said, the Army is still at a loss to explain why Soldiers commit suicide. With the exception of a relationship between suicides and Soldiers who are geographically separated from military installations, Chiarelli has said the Army still has found no single factor that can be used to predict suicides. "There are no easy answers or solutions," the general said of trying to curb suicides. "And although we have made changes to Army policy based on many of the lessons learned, we still haven't found any statistically significant causal linkage that would allow us to effectively predict human behavior." Chiarelli said the Army is concerned with an increase in suicides at Fort Campbell, Ky.; Fort Stewart, Ga.; and Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. Additionally, he said, the Army is studying why suicide rates are down at Fort Hood, Texas; Fort Bragg, N.C. and Fort Drum, N.Y. Female servicemembers to get unique care package [2009-11-19] WASHINGTON -- The United Services Organization has sent out a lot of care packages over the years, but they've never put together a "for women only" kit -- until now. Congressional staffers and members of Congress participated in a USO-sponsored event Nov. 18 on Capitol Hill to build some 2,000 care packages that contain items specifically targeted at female servicemembers. "We're going to do something different today, something that's never been done before," said USO President Sloan D. Gibson. "We're going to assemble USO care packages explicitly for our women -- for servicewomen that are serving in forward-deployed locations around the world." Sloan said as many as 15 percent of servicemembers in the active component and 18 percent in the reserve component are women. "They have needs and interests that are very unique and we are going to meet many of those needs with these new care packages that we have designed just for women," Sloan said. Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, said when Americans perform small acts like assembling a care package, that kindness does not go unnoticed by servicemembers. "As a military mom, I have seen first-hand how acts of kindness and service, like today's effort, can improve the life of a servicemember," she said. "These are small acts, but like the veterans and volunteers who greeted my son when he touched base on U.S. soil after a year's deployment in Iraq -- they mean so much to our servicemembers." Biden also said that women serving today are continuing in a long tradition of women supporting the armed forces. "Women have always played a critical role in supporting our nation's defense and security and their role will only continue to evolve and grow in the future," she said. "I want to salute all the women around this country and the world who are doing their part to keep our country safe." The care packages contained many items typical in care packages for servicemembers: hand wipes, sanitizer and food products for instance. But the packages also contained some items specifically targeted at female servicemembers, including two cosmetic products courtesy of Maybelline and a copy of the November issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine. Deborah Marquardt, vice president of integrated marketing communications for Maybelline New York & Garnier, said even in a war zone, women like to be themselves. "We want to support the brave women in uniform and we know how important the little things in life are -- beauty," she said. "Women intrinsically understand beauty and it can change their whole outlook to get a new lipstick or a mascara. Women like to feel like women no matter where they are and what context. I think anything that helps you feel like yourself and reminds you of back home and gives you confidence ... is important, no matter what the context." Donna Kalajian-Lagani, publisher of Cosmopolitan Magazine, said female servicemembers epitomize the magazine's credo. "We're so thrilled to be here for the female troops," she said. "Cosmo's whole credo is about being fun, fearless and female, and I can't think of a better word to use for our troops around the world than to say they are the most fearless and most brave." Kalajian-Lagani also said she doesn't think female servicemembers will have a problem finding time to enjoy the little slice of home being sent abroad specifically for them. "There's always time for Cosmo, and there's always time for being fun, fearless and female and giving yourself a little treat," she said. "Whether that little treat is putting on a lipstick or opening up your favorite magazine, like Cosmo." HooahMail means speedy delivery of letters to Afghanistan [2009-11-23] WASHINGTON -- The Army's HooahMail program makes it possible for friends and family members to put a paper letter and photograph into the hands of their loved ones in Afghanistan, in some cases, on the same day it's sent. The one-year pilot program is scheduled to begin Dec. 1 and makes use of the Internet combined with physical mail delivery to create a hybrid mail system that can get letters into the hands of Soldiers in remote locations much faster than regular mail delivery alone. "This gives Soldiers actual printed correspondence that is sent from their family members that they can take out on a mission with them and read and reread again," said Bill Hilsher, Army postal program manager. Family members that want to send a letter and a photograph to a Soldier in Afghanistan would log into the program's Web site at www.hooahmail.us. There, they type in their message and attach a digital photo. They also add delivery information for their Soldier, as though they were addressing a paper envelope. Their electronic letter is sent via the Internet to one of 10 locations in Afghanistan where special equipment will automatically print it, fold it, stuff it into an envelope, address it, and seal it. The sealed envelopes are then placed into the regular intra-theater APO mail delivery system. Hilsher said depending on where Soldiers are in Afghanistan, the paper letter from home could be in their hands the same day as mother sent it, or it could take as many as four days. A paper letter sent directly from the states takes much longer, Hilsher said. "Compared to traditional mail ... it reduces it from an average of 14 days down to same-day or next-day, ready for delivery," he said. The HooahMail program is free for family members and friends, and is available for Soldiers in Afghanistan only. Hilsher said the Army postal service expects the program to benefit the service during the holiday season, when it typically sees increases in mail traffic. "During the holiday season, that's your busiest time and this is going to augment that system," he said. "It'll give friends and families a way to send a message to their loved ones in a timely manner for the holiday season." Hilsher also said he thinks the improved delivery time will have a positive effect on Soldier morale. Service for the Army's HooahMail pilot program is provided by "SuperLetter," which provides similar services to the British military for its "e-Bluey" program and the U.S. Marine Corps for its "Motomail" program. Pilot program allows officers to switch career track [2009-11-25] WASHINGTON -- A new test program will allow some officers to transfer into a new branch or functional area. The Officer Service Management Pilot Program allows officers who meet the rank, time-in-service, and career field criteria to be considered for acceptance into a new branch or functional area. Regular Army captains or captains promotable, with less than nine years of active federal commissioned service, may participate in the OSMPP. Regular Army majors with less than 14 years of AFCS may also participate. The program is designed to help the Army balance out the officer force by moving officers from overmanned career fields to undermanned career fields, said Lt. Col. Eric Brunken, Army Human Resources Command, chief retention branch, leader development division. Brunken also said the program serves as a retention tool for officers. "Primarily, that is a matter of job satisfaction," he said. "The officer, because he gets to voluntarily pick his branch, gets to go into a branch that he feels more comfortable or more excited about going into." Brunken said the Army will convene quarterly panels to approve or disapprove officer applications for branch/functional area transfers. The first such panel, for the second quarter of fiscal year 2010, meets Feb. 1-5. Those officers that wish to request a transfer into a new branch or functional area under the program must complete a DA Form 4187 and submit it before Dec. 31, Brunken said. Two MILPER messages, 09-243 and 09-259, address the OSMPP. The first describes the program and details basic requirements for participation. The second lists the specific details for applying to the 2nd QTR/FY10 panel. In particular, the second message spells out the branch and functional areas/year group combinations for officers that are eligible to participate in the program. It also lists the branch and functional areas/year group combinations that are available as choices to be transferred into. If officers apply for the program and are not chosen the first time, or they do not see that a branch or functional area they are interested in is available, they can apply again to a later panel, Brunken said. "It's not a one-time shot," he said. "If officers see a branch they want to go into, and it is not available this time, they should look again in May or in October. Eventually there will be an opportunity to branch transfer into something they want to do." It is expected the Army will offer additional OSMPP opportunities in both May and October 2010. Afghanistan surge won't change plans to up dwell time [2009-12-03] WASHINGTON -- A 30,000 boots-on-the-ground increase in Afghanistan will not change the Army's plans to cut Stop Loss, stabilize deployment lengths or increase dwell time for Soldiers. In a message to Army leaders, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. said the impact from the increase "will not be as significant" as Soldiers might think. The general said that due to the 70,000-Soldier increase the Army has experienced over the last five years, the addition of 30,000 servicemembers in Afghanistan would be able to happen without the Army needing to go to 15-month deployments, without decreasing dwell time at home station below 12 months, and without halting the plan to come off stop loss. The general also said that if the Iraq drawdown continues, the Army will move closer to its goals for dwell time -- increasing the time troops spend at home between deployments -- eventually reaching a 1:2 dwell time for active-duty Soldiers, and a 1:4 dwell time for reserve-component Soldiers. "Even with the increase ordered by the president, we estimate that about 70 percent of the active component will reach these goals by 2011," he wrote. "The remainder of the force will continue to see their dwell rate increase and should meet these goals by 2012." During a speech Dec. 1 at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., President Barack Obama announced the increase of 30,000 servicemembers to support the 68,000 already in Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. "It is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan," Obama said. "After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan." Criteria for a drawdown would include the ability of the Afghans to provide security for their own country, said David S. Sedney, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia. "There's the criteria that we'll be looking for, and it'll be a district-by-district, province-by-province process," Sedney said in a Blogger's Roundtable Tuesday night. Equipping the Afghans to provide that security, said Brig. Gen. John Nicholson, director of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Coordination Cell, Joint Staff, would be the role of both American Soldiers and Coalition partners. "We are also, with these additional forces, going to act as a critical catalyst to accelerate their development," Nicholson said of the Afghan Army. New Army.mil to deliver headlines readers want [2009-12-04] WASHINGTON -- Beginning Friday, visitors to Army.mil will experience a new level of Web customization and personalization never seen before on a military Web site. The team behind the Army's Web presence has redesigned the service's premier Web site, www.Army.mil, with the end-user in mind. Visitors to the site will be able to choose what kind of information they want to see on the front page and have the latest information that meets their criteria presented to them first, every time they visit. The redesign of the site began more than a year ago, when the Army's Web team began brainstorming on how to meet a directive from then-Secretary of the Army Pete Geren to create a Web site to showcase a "world-class Army." "The Web team came together to come up with ideas for how they would create a world-class site, and they came up with the idea of a customizable Web site -- which is the first in the services to provide that," said Patricia Downs, deputy director of the Army's Online and Social Media Division. Downs said the level of customization now possible on the Army.mil site is new inside the Department of Defense. No other site has offered all users, both military and the general public, the ability to log into a site and customize information delivery and appearance options and then save those customizations for reuse on subsequent visits. It took nearly 16 months for the team of Web developers, designers and content editors to create that capability, Downs said. "I'm very proud of them, and of what they've accomplished," she said of the team. "The next step is to get the word out about the site." To take advantage of the features on the new site, users will first need to log in using credentials from AKO, or from select non-military Web sites such as Google, Yahoo! or AOL. Once logged in, users can personalize their Army.mil experience by adding and configuring any number of "widgets," each of which allows them to view different kinds of information from different sources. "The best thing about Army.mil is that it's using the content that I want ... so that it's right there when I log in, all the time," said Meghan K. McCormick, Army.mil social media strategist and content manager. One of the widgets that allows that to happen, for example, pulls headlines from other military service's Web sites, including the Air Force, the Marine Corps and the Navy. An additional widget allows users to display on their customized page those Army news headlines that come from their particular unit. The RSS feed widget will allow users to display news headlines from virtually any source on their personalized Army.mil page. "Every day, I try to read CNN -- so if I wanted, I could pull in CNN's news feed," McCormick said. Other available widgets provide access to information posted by Army organizations on such social networking sites as Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and YouTube. And another provides Army-related videos and Army newscasts. "We are tailoring it to our audience," McCormick said. "The people coming to Army.mil -- they are looking at these social media sites, and they want to see Army social media." Each widget users add to their page can be customized, and placed anywhere on the page, so that each user's interaction with Army.mil is personalized to their liking. "It allows anybody to come in and create a page that is customizable," McCormick said. Initially, there'll be a total of 20 widgets available on the new Army.mil, but the team behind the redesign is working to add more, to make the Army.mil experience even more user-friendly and more able to deliver the information Soldiers want when they want it. "We are looking at widgets to help people be more productive -- to do their daily tasks," McCormick said. To access the new features of Army.mil, visitors to the site should look for the login box that will be featured there beginning Dec. 4. Soldiers may log in using their existing AKO account login name and password. Those without AKO accounts, or those who would rather not use their AKO accounts, may log in to the site using a Google, Yahoo! or AIM password. Last U.S. WWI vet fights for national memorial [2009-12-04] WASHINGTON -- A push is underway to designate a national memorial to those who fought in World War I -- among those asking for such a memorial is the last remaining American veteran from that war. "I think it's an excellent idea," said Frank W. Buckles, the 108-year-old World War I corporal who serves as honorary chairman of the World War I Memorial Foundation, about a memorial to remember the Great War. "There should be no question about it." Two competing pieces of legislation for a national memorial to remember veterans of World War I are now moving through Congress. One piece of legislation would name the existing Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Mo., as a national monument to veterans of the first world war. The other legislation, known as the "Frank Buckles World War I Memorial Act," would rededicate a memorial already in Washington, D.C. Proponents of both pieces of legislation were on Capitol Hill, Dec. 3, to provide testimony before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, subcommittee on national parks. Buckles, who enlisted in the Army in 1917 at age 16, was in attendance at the hearing where the three senators who introduced the bill bearing his name gave testimony concerning dedicating a memorial in Washington. "I think it is fitting that all the great wars of the 20th century have their place on the National Mall, so people, when they come here to pay their respects and to honor and pay tribute to those who served in all those great conflicts ... also have the opportunity to honor the veterans of World War I," said Sen. John Thune. The Buckles act would rededicate as a national memorial the existing "District of Columbia War Memorial," which was built by citizens of the District of Columbia to commemorate their own who served in World War I. That memorial, dedicated by President Herbert Hoover in 1931, sits on the National Mall near the World War II Memorial, the Korean War Memorial, and the Vietnam War Memorial. "In terms of a World War I memorial, I don't think there could be a better place," said Sen. Jim Webb. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II, of Missouri, spoke on behalf of the bill introduced by Missouri senators Claire McCaskill and Christopher Bond. That bill would designate the Liberty Memorial and the National World War I Museum in Kansas City, Mo., as the "National World War I Memorial." The Liberty Memorial was built in 1926 with funds collected from citizens of Kansas City and was meant to represent all Americans that fought in the war, Cleaver said. "The Liberty Memorial was built not as a municipal memorial, but as the national memorial, which is why 100,000 people, including all five leaders of the allied forces gathered (there) for the beginning and opening," he said. "This is a national monument." The bill Cleaver supports says no federal funds will be used to maintain the memorial. Instead, he said, citizens of Kansas City have agreed to maintain the memorial. "This was something that our community will continue to give for the nation," he said. "We assume the responsibility completely, and we hope that you would see fit to give the people of Kansas City the opportunity to continue to spend their own money to preserve something for the nation." Wreaths at Pentagon Memorial may begin new tradition [2009-12-14] WASHINGTON -- On the western side of the Pentagon, at the memorial to those who died during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, volunteers had mounted 184 evergreen wreaths on the fence -- one for each person who died there. The wreaths are identical to those which have been placed for years now on graves at nearby Arlington National Cemetery. This year, for the first time, they are being used to honor those who were killed as part of the Sept. 11 attacks. "Why we're here and why we're including the victims of 9/11 (is) because they are casualties of the war on terror -- no different than any other war we have been to," said Morrill Worcester, of the Worcester Wreath Company, during a ceremony Dec. 11 at the Pentagon Memorial. "We just don't ever want to forget these people, that's why we are doing what we are doing." Worcester's business, the Worcester Wreath Company, has been placing wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery since 1992 -- most recently through the charity Worcester started, "Wreaths Across America." This year, for the first time, the company, along with corporate sponsor Wal-Mart, donated some 3,000 wreaths to be placed at all three 9/11 sites: the Pentagon; Battery Park, near the World Trade Center site in New York City; and Shanksville, Pa., where flight 93 crashed into the ground. "It's to acknowledge, honor and remember those losses that day," said Kathryn T. Cross, a Gold Star Mother and volunteer for Wreaths Across America. It was Cross who contacted Worcester and asked if she could get wreaths to honor those killed during the 9/11 attacks. Between Worcester and sponsor Wal-Mart, Cross was able to get the wreaths to place at the 9/11 locations. "This is due to the efforts of a lot of people that helped to make this possible," Cross said. "I did this from a mother's heart. But this is for all of them, and most significantly, this is for those who you cannot see, that are not with us today." Jim Laychak, president of the Pentagon Memorial Fund, said he hopes the wreaths will become a permanent tradition at the site. "I remember Karen Van Lengen, who was at the time the dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, talked about looking forward to seeing what types of traditions and rituals that would develop after the memorial was built," Laychak said. " I hope that this -- the wreaths coming here during this very special season -- is one of those special rituals that will continue in years to come." Volunteers lay 15,000 wreaths at Arlington Cemetery [2009-12-15] WASHINGTON -- Volunteers placed some 15,000 wreaths on headstones at Arlington National Cemetery, Dec. 12, as part of a tradition that has continued now for 18 years. Thousands of volunteers, including servicemembers, and young people from scouting and cadet programs, braved the early morning cold for the opportunity to place an evergreen wreath on a grave marker at the nation's most well-known military cemetery. The wreaths placed at Arlington were provided by the non-profit "Wreaths Across America" program, which this year gathered some 150,000 wreaths for placement at more than 400 state and national cemeteries across the United States. The program was started by Morrill Worcester, of the Worcester Wreath Company. He began laying wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery in 1992. While many of the 150,000 wreaths were paid for by contributions from individuals and businesses, the Worcester Wreath Company itself continues to be a major contributor to the program. In 2008, for instance, the company donated more than 25,000 wreaths. "Your act of kindness has spurred a movement across this entire country," Maj. Gen. Karl R. Horst, commander, Military District of Washington, told Worcester and his wife, Karen. The general also thanked the thousands that had gathered at the cemetery to volunteer their time to place wreaths on the stones. "For some of you this may be the first time you visited Arlington National Cemetery," he said. "We appreciate you being here today to help honor our veterans and those that have made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of this great country." Karen Worcester also addressed those volunteers, saying the placement of the wreaths there was more than holiday decoration, but an opportunity to teach youth about sacrifice, American history and family. "These are families here, they are not stones, they are not graves," she said. "These are our families, this is our history and we need to take that and teach that to our children -- that this is their history, to hang on to it hold it, and always remember. We as a nation cannot go forward with any good sense of planning if we don't know what we've left behind. That's why we are here." After opening statements, volunteers pulled wreaths from three tractor trailers in the cemetery and laid them against the headstones. Veterans get international thanks for service at Bulge [2009-12-18] WASHINGTON -- On the 65th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, veterans of that conflict were recognized by the countries whose freedom they helped secure. On Dec. 16, 1944, the Germans launched an offensive through the Ardennes Mountains region of Belgium, France and Luxembourg. More than 800,000 American Soldiers fought back, and became participants in the largest single battle in U.S. Army history. After nine days of fighting, and nearly 90,000 casualties, American Soldiers had kept Germany from reaching its goal: capturing Antwerp, Belgium, and putting themselves in a position to force Allies into a peace treaty favorable to the Axis. More than 60 veterans from the Battle of the Bulge came to Washington, D.C., to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the battle. The veterans visited the White House, the Embassy of Luxembourg and the residence of the Belgian Ambassador. On Dec. 16 -- the 65th anniversary of the start of the battle -- the former Soldiers gathered at Fort Myer, Va., to watch a presentation by Soldiers of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard). There, Belgian Minister of Defense, Pieter De Crem, addressed the veterans, and conveyed to them the gratitude of his country. "To all of you here present, to those who came over the ocean, young men and women, to rescue us -- to those who were in the Ardennes, and in the Battle of the Bulge, in those terrible circumstances -- I want to express before you our profound respect and thank them from the bottom of our hearts for their extraordinary engagement," De Crem said. "We owe you our liberty." The minister went on to say the friendship between his nation and the United States would be enduring. "Long live our common determination for the protection of our shared values," he said. "Long live our deep and everlasting friendship between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Belgium." Nicolas Mackel, deputy chief of mission, Embassy of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, also spoke to the veterans, saying his countrymen are aware of the sacrifices so many young Americans made during World War II to protect freedom in Europe. "I have grown up being taught by my parents, by my grandparents, by my school teachers, about young, brave Americans who had to set aside their daily lives to come and liberate our country," Mackel said. "Like all Luxembourgers, I know that too many of your comrades did not make it back to their loved ones and were deprived of living out their dreams." Mackel said the memory of what Americans did in Europe during World War II, and especially at the Battle of the Bulge, would not be forgotten by Luxembourgers. "Like your resilience 65 years ago in the face of enemy power did not falter, our dedication to the memory of your deeds has not faltered since -- and it never will," Mackel said. "By holding out in those foxholes in the coldest of winters, you contributed decisively to bring about the final defeat of the Nazi ideology. You thus helped to bring back freedom and liberty to a whole. For this, as a Luxembourger, and in my own name, I would like to thank you very much." Darrell B. Carter, of Glenn Allen, Calif., served as part of the 99th Infantry Division at the Battle of the Bulge. He said he was impressed with the performance of the Old Guard. "I appreciate it, and I'm a little surprised at the detail of that performance we saw," he said. He also said he was impressed by the gratitude expressed by both the Belgian and Luxembourgian representatives. "I certainly appreciate that," he said. "They were the object of the attack, certainly, and we were in the way." Al Rosenzweig, a veteran who served with the 78th Infantry Division at the Battle of the Bulge, was also impressed with the international recognition of his service. "They were nice to us, the people in Luxembourg and the people in Belgium," Rosenzweig said. "I think it's a wonderful thing. The people in Belgium and Luxembourg will always be friends of the United States." Rosenzweig was just 18 when he served in Europe as part of the force that helped defeat the Nazis at the Battle of the Bulge. He remembers that the battle was a surprise to all of them. "At the time of the battle we were in a little town called Rotgen; we were the only division in Germany," Rosenzweig said. "We relieved the 8th division in the Hurtgen Forest -- that was on the extreme flank of the bulge. We had been in position about five days to a week when the bulge hit. We were told when we went into the sector that it was all quiet and that nothing was going on and everything has been secure up until this point -- and then all hell broke loose after that." As part of his combat experience, Rosenzweig said he suffered only from the extreme cold -- something he still feels today. "We were undersupplied at the time, and we didn't expect the weather to be like it was. I had no overshoes. I got frozen feet and frozen hands -- that was about the worst of my injuries, still feeling them -- twisted hands and feet," he said, showing his bent fingers. "But I'm alive and we have a lot of our beloved veterans here." Rosenzweig said he's been participating in veteran reunions since the end of the war. Following the presentation at Fort Myer, the World War II veterans traveled to nearby Arlington National Cemetery, where De Crem and Mackel laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns. The old Soldiers themselves also laid a wreath there, and then traveled on to the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. Recognizing problem biggest step toward fixing suicides [2009-12-19] WASHINGTON -- In 2008, the Army experienced for the first time, suicide rates higher than the civilian population. In the same year, the Army entered an agreement with the National Institute of Mental Health to find out why. While the NIMH study will take five years to complete, the institute recently met with Army leaders to provide some preliminary insights, said Brig. Gen. Colleen McGuire, director, Suicide Prevention Task Force. One finding was that some 53 percent of the American population that replicated the Army population has had some level of mental or behavioral illness, McGuire said. That includes such things as alcohol problems, eating disorders, depression or anxiety. "We can probably assume that's the same in our own population," she said. Additionally, McGuire said, NIMH has said those with post traumatic stress disorder are six times more likely to commit suicide -- and those individuals, she said, often take as many as 12 years before seeking help. "Unfortunately, in that period of time, before they finally recognize they have PTSD and seek treatment, there has probably been some attempts at self medication," she said. In November, the Army experienced 12 potential suicides. That's two less than in October -- and while McGuire said the monthly suicide rate for the Army has trended down since the beginning of the year, 2009's number are expected to be even higher than 2008's numbers -- coming in at 156. The exact causes of suicide in the Army are numerous and hard to pin down -- and it's not just Soldiers that have deployed. Some 30 percent of Army suicides are those that have never deployed, McGuire said. There's also relationship issues, financial issues, substance abuse issues and UCMJ problems. "All of these things spiral to the point where they are trying to find some emotional relief," she said. "And that comes in the form of flawed thinking that results in their own death. It's hard to label any one variable as the cause." McGuire said the Army isn't waiting for the results from NIMH or the 2009 suicide numbers to start attacking the problem. "Probably the most important step the Army took this year was the recognition by the Army leadership that we did in fact have a problem," she said. Getting leadership involved, from the top level down to NCOs at company level is also important McGuire said. "The one thing we need to do is empower the noncommissioned officers and our young leaders, particularly at the company level, to really know their Soldiers, but then also to inform them of the resources available to them," McGuire said. And there's a lot of resources, McGuire said, more than 400 programs Army-wide designed to help stressed Soldiers, family members and civilians. In fact, there may be so many it's overwhelming, and the Army is going to fix that. "What they would like ideally is to have somebody with a laser pointer and point a direction -- you go this direction or you go to this office and this is what you need," she said. "Instead, what we have done in the Army and even with non-profit organizations, everybody else that wants to help -- is we provide a flood light. And they are blinded by the opportunities and resources available to them." The Army has queried installations about their programs, asked about funding, effectiveness, etc. When installations meet the response deadline for the query, a report detailing the programs and their effectiveness will be generated, sometime in March 2010, to ensure effectiveness and eliminate redundancies, McGuire said. Also standing in the way of preventing suicides in the Army -- convincing Soldiers that it's okay to say they need help. "Soldiers learn best by what they see," McGuire said. "And until they see leadership seeking help, or if they see some of their peers seek help, and there appears not to be retribution or negative effect with that, then we will turn that corner." Wounded veterans real winners at D.C. bowl game [2009-12-30] WASHINGTON -- The UCLA Bruins beat the Temple Owls, 30-21, in the EagleBank Bowl, Dec. 29, at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. But the real winners of the event were wounded Soldiers, Marines, Sailors and Airmen who benefit by involvement with the bowl game's charity partner "The Wounded Warrior Project." "We are privileged to be the charity partner this year," said Steve Gerrish, with the Wounded Warrior Project. "The mission of the Wounded Warrior Project is to honor and empower warriors and we have got a vast array of programs and services to help warriors and their families during their recovery and rehabilitation and transition." By being named as a charity partner of the bowl game, the Wounded Warrior Project received two television commercials for their program during the national telecast of the game, a large banner in the end zone at the stadium, and multiple announcements over the loud speakers at the game -- all designed to further awareness of the project. Steve Beck, executive director of EagleBank Bowl, explained why he felt the Wounded Warrior Project was a great choice for partnering with the EagleBank Bowl. "My colleagues and I had the opportunity to visit Walter Reed hospital a couple of weeks ago and see what the wounded warriors are going through, and how they get them back on their feet and make them active members of society," Beck said. "It is truly amazing and it is a very emotional and passionate thing to be involved with them." WWP representatives will also participate in special events in Washington, D.C., throughout the year as they did during game, beginning with the coin toss. Ryan Lamke was one of the wounded warriors that participated in the coin toss at the start of the game. Lamke was a corporal in the Marine Corps and served as an infantry assault man in Iraq. While in Fallujah, Iraq in 2005, he sustained traumatic brain injury, orthopedic injuries to his left arm and post traumatic stress disorder. Lamke was medically retired from the Marine Corps, and says that his involvement with the Wounded Warrior Project helped him move on after his injuries. "I had no idea what kind of employment I was going to have," Lamke said of his post-military life. "And then one day I received an e-mail from a man named Ryan Kules -- who at the time was running our warriors-to-work program -- informing me about possible job opportunities here in the D.C. area." Lamke, a D.C.-area native, said the Wounded Warrior Project helped him find a job -- with the WWP itself. He now works with wounded warriors at both Bethesda Naval Hospital and at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Participating in the coin toss at the game was something he never thought he'd do. "Growing up in the D.C. area, obviously, RFK stadium holds a special place in my heart," he said. "Growing up as a little kid in the stands watching the Redskins play -- and having a chance today to go out on the field and stand down there where some of the greatest Redskins once stood is a great honor." Sgt. Maj. of the Army Kenneth O. Preston was on the field during the coin toss, and also visited with some of those that attended the game. He recently returned from a visit to Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait and said it's refreshing to come home and see the kind of support for Soldiers that is evidenced by the relationship between EagleBank Bowl and the Wounded Warrior Project. "To see this kind of support for our wounded warriors back home, it just really shows that America stands behind them, and what they are doing out there as volunteers," Preston said. "For all of our wounded warriors, it really brings the recognition they deserve for their service and for the sacrifice they and their families have made. And it is very humbling to see Americans -- like Eagle Bank -- come out to support wounded warriors." Army seeks additional CAB to reach dwell goal [2010-01-06] WASHINGTON -- In order to meet the Army's dwell-time goal, the service will add a new combat aviation brigade. "That's coming out of resources we already have; we are still wrestling with where that's going to go, where that's going to stand up," said Maj. Gen. James O. Barclay III, commanding general of the Aviation Center of Excellence and Fort Rucker, Ala. "That will help some in the fight," he said. "That's one of the small steps we are taking as we are trying to align and ensure with all (components) that we can meet and try to get at what General Casey's goal is: one to two." Barclay spoke to an audience of Army aviation and defense aviation industry professionals during the Association of the United States Army's Institute of Land Warfare Army Aviation Symposium and Exposition, Jan. 5-7 in Arlington, Va. The Army now has 11 active-duty CABs and the reserve components have eight. Barclay said meeting Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey's goal of 24 months home for every 12 months deployed is difficult with the current number of CABs, and the current demand for eight CABs to support Iraq and Afghanistan. Barclay also said continued development and employment of the Army Force Generation model will help Army aviation meet the goal of keeping Soldiers home for longer. Since the onset of combat in Afghanistan and also in Iraq, Army aviation has racked up more than 3.5 million flight hours, Barclay said. "That ought to say a lot about what we have been able to do with our aviation forces and the fleets and the airframes -- but more importantly what the Soldiers and the aviators and maintainers have been able to do in about the last eight years that we have been at war," Barclay said. The general added that not all the aviation hours were manned aviation, but in fact include those from unmanned aerial systems as well -- and not all flown by aviators. "I think that's one of the things that's important to note, is that the UAS has become a more important aspect of what we do every day and it has become more integrated into the war fight," he said. "Most of those hours are controlled by your brigade combat teams and fires brigades. Those are the units that are utilizing them and flying and getting the benefit from those platforms." Despite plans to withdraw from Iraq, Barclay said he doesn't expect the number of hours flown by Army aviation to decrease. "As we look at the drawdown in Iraq we are not seeing as many aviation units on the drawdown chart as we are seeing some of the other units on the drawdown chart," Barclay said. "If you look at those operations tempos -- in the 50 to 60 hours every month on the different types of airframes -- we don't see it coming down right now." Special Operations aviation eyes faster transport [2010-01-08] WASHINGTON -- Army Special Operations aviation needs faster helicopters to meet the speed and range requirements needed to conduct operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the 160th SOAR commander. Col. Clayton M. Hutmacher, commander, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), discussed regiment initiatives during the Association of the United States Army's Institute of Land Warfare Army Aviation Symposium and Exposition, Jan. 5-7 in Arlington, Va. "I think the way ahead for us is we have go to break that 120-knot barrier," he said. "For us, some of these targets that we are trying to range -- strategic targets -- basing is a big problem for us --trying to get close enough to that target. And we are looking to go farther, faster and carry more stuff." In Afghanistan and Iraq, speed and range are critical to conducting the special operations mission, Hutmacher said. "If you look at the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is a nonlinear battlefield," he said. "I think speed, while maybe not realized by the operations at large -- that speed and range are very important when you are dealing with non-state actors and fleeting targets. I think Army aviation would be well served by starting to look at that a little bit more." Hutmacher mentioned two aircraft, the Piasecki Speedhawk and Sikorsky X-2, as examples of the kind of capability he's looking for. While Hutmacher didn't specifically say the two airframes were the ones the Army needed -- he did say their kind of capability was what he thought the Army special operations community needed. "Speed and range are essential for the SOF community," he said. The colonel also said special operations would need to partner with the larger Army aviation community to get those capabilities. "What I am looking for is a capability," he said. "We are very interested in partnering with the conventional force to try and find a common air frame -- quite frankly we can't do it without you." Hutmacher also discussed pursuit of a hostile-fire indicator system for Special Forces aviation. "We have a suite of radio-frequency countermeasures on the aircraft," he said. "But what's shooting us down -- what's killing us on the battlefield and what's killing conventional aviation -- are small arms and rocket-propelled grenades and we are aggressively pursuing a solution. We have a pretty aggressive plan to get after that threat." To illustrate the need for better small-arms protection for Special Operations aviators, he cited a recent mission where three MH-47 Chinook helicopters took heavy enemy fire. "During infil and exfil they had 42 ... RPGs shot at the aircraft, multiple frag damage," he said. "Our aircrews ... they expended 18,000 rounds addressing that threat. It's hard to find these guys when they are in the hedges and undercover -- they are not stupid. So we are looking for that HFI system to get integrated onto our airframes." More unmanned aircraft needed at company level [2010-01-11] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers need the tactical advantages their unmanned aircraft systems provide to be integrated into their units, so they aren't forced to endure lengthy approval chains that can cost lives, according to UAS experts. "Most of the living and dying is going on in squad, platoon and company level in this fight. So you have to give those Soldiers what they need, when they need it. And they need it all the time," said Glenn A. Rizzi, deputy director and senior technical advisor of the United States Army Unmanned Aircraft Systems Center of Excellence at Fort Rucker, Ala. Rizzi spoke during the Association of the United States Army's Institute of Land Warfare Army Aviation Symposium and Exposition, Jan. 5-7 in Arlington, Va. He said approval chains for unmanned aerial vehicle support can be lengthy, taking time that tactical units on the ground and in the fight cannot afford. "They don't have time, when they need UAS support, to ... carry it up to the Joint Force Air Component Commander, ask for a Predator, and then have it go through that decision loop and then have it repositioned," Rizzi said. "They need it there, and they need it there 24/7." What Soldiers need, Rizzi said, is UAS support that is built into their combat units -- unmanned aerial systems owned by the Army, flown by the Army, to provide support to the Army's ground units -- who are actually in the fight -- when they need it. "You need organic systems," he said. Sgt. Michael Arons serves as an instructor with the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Training Battalion at Fort Huachuca, Ariz. He served with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, with the Shadow platoon in Iraq from 2005-2006. He also served in Afghanistan in 2008. His experience there with a then non-weaponized MQ-1C Warrior illustrates the need for the Army to keep control of UAS aviation close to where the Soldiers are. "We were flying down (main supply route) 1, Ohio, in Afghanistan, just doing a route scan, and we see three guys emplacing IEDs," Arons said. "Had we not been there, who would have know what could have happened -- an MRAP (could have) run by there and get blown up. People's lives are at stake." Arons' team called in air support -- an F-15 Eagle dropped a bomb there -- but two of the three enemy escaped and Arons was able to follow them -- track them -- using the MQ-1C. "We followed those two guys," he said. "And we have two different lasers on our payload. We have a designator -- we illuminated the house these guys ran to." Ultimately, Soldiers were able to enter that house and find what was there -- a large weapons cache. "Had we not been there, all these weapons would have been used against U.S. forces -- against allied forces," Arons said. Col. Christopher B. Carlile, director, United States Army Unmanned Aircraft Systems Center of Excellence, said Army UASs have flown some 1 million combat hours during the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Army is now training some 2,000 UAS operators, maintainers and instructor pilots a year. He said similar UAS success stories reported in the news, like that of Arons, are often the result of Army unmanned aviation. "When you see an article that's written, that says X, Y and Z were executed by drones ... understand that you are more than likely, in upwards of 80 percent of those cases, dealing with Army UAS doing those," Carlile said. The colonel said Army UAS aviation is changing the war the Army does business. "The way that infantryman, up until now, found out what was on the back side of that building was when he had fire coming from it," Carlile said. Now, systems like the Raven give Soldiers the ability to see where they couldn't see before. "They could take that and fly it and put it up above and see if there was an ambush on the other side of the street, in real time," he said. "This has truly revolutionized the way we fight warfare at the tactical level." Sgt. 1st Class Brian Miller now serves with the Directorate of Evaluation and Standardization, at Fort Rucker, Ala. He's deployed as an infantryman in Afghanistan, to Kosovo, and twice with unmanned aircraft systems in support of special operations forces. Miller says he sees the need for organic Army UAS because it can save time for Soldiers and because UAS support can work round-the-clock, without tiring. In Afghanistan, for instance, Soldiers are placing ground sensors to cover areas where they can't patrol on foot -- because the landscape is larger than the number of boots-on-ground can support. Response time to a sensor hit can be shortened with a UAS. "If I get a hit on the sensor, it's a lot for me to spin up an aircraft crew and get them to go out there and fly their Blackhawk or Chinook or Apache out there and see what's going on," Miller said. "But I've already got a UAS up -- some for 24 hours. A lot of stuff for us is what we call a swing of the camera. I can see about a 10 kilometer range in all areas. I don't have a perfect view at 10 kilometers, but I have enough that I can see what it is and start working my way over to that area of operations." Providing quick UAS support to Soldiers, with both weaponized and un-weaponized systems, is critical, Carlile said, because organic UAS is about supporting the Soldier. "Their whole intent is to support the guys they eat dinner with every night," Carlile said. "The ones they sleep in the same tactical assembly area with." While UAS support can come from outside -- sometimes from the other side of the world -- having in-house, organic UAS support, flown by Soldiers actually involved in the fight, is best, said Rizzi. "Through planning, through after action review, they know the commander's intent, they fly that ground every day," Rizzi said. "They understand the subtle intricacies of daily life, they know how the fight changes over time very subtly, and so they are most effective." "You cannot have the same situational awareness 8,000 miles away," Carlile said. "It just does not exist." Army iPhone download among top 25 free news apps [2010-01-12] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers and others can now read the latest Army news on their iPhones, thanks to a new application by the team that developed the Army's Web site, www.Army.mil. The new iPhone application was launched in December, and is available for free from the iTunes application store or by visiting the Army.Mil Mobile site. "The Army developed the iPhone application to put U.S. Army stories, images and videos in the hand of users," said Patricia Downs, deputy director of the Army's Online and Social Media Division. "It allows Soldiers and their family members to save their favorite content and to share it over Facebook, Twitter and e-mail. The application also offers several entertainment and informational sections." The application provides users the latest Army news headlines from around the globe, and allows readers to choose which news feeds they want to receive, including those from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Pacific, as well as news concerning health issues, Army science and technology, the Army National Guard and Army Reserve and news headlines from the Army News Service in Washington, D.C. Also available on the iPhone is the daily "Stand-To!" This is a daily compendium of news, information and context for Army leaders. In addition, a complete archive of Soldiers magazine, as far back as 2002, is available through the iPhone application. The iPhone's wide screen and multimedia capabilities don't go to waste just reading text either. The new application provides access to both Army video and still imagery, including content hosted on the Army's Flickr feed and YouTube page. And for those who want to relive the greatest moments of Soldiers Radio News, podcasts of the show are also available through the application. Social media is at the heart of the new Army.mil, which was revealed in early December. The emphasis on social media carries over to the Army's portable application as well. Users of the iPhone app have access to the Army Live Blog, Twitter feed, and Facebook page. The application also serves as a digital pocket almanac and includes information about Army uniforms, military rank, Army weapons systems and even the words and music for the Army song. And for those interested enough in the Army to have the application on their iPhone, but not yet wearing the uniform, the new application can even help users find a local recruiter. "I would have to say that the most exciting feature offered on the Army app is the 'Find A Recruiter' section," Downs said. "Just enter your zip code in the app and it will then bring up a recruiting station in your area instantaneously. It's as simple as that." Since the application's launch in late December, it has been downloaded more than 20,000 times, and remains in the top 25 of free news applications, Downs said. New law means spouse can claim same home state as servicemember [2010-01-14] WASHINGTON -- New legislation, signed by the president in November, allows military spouses to establish a permanent residence and carry it with them though each change of station. The Military Spouses Residency Relief Act enables military spouses to do what their servicemembers have long been able to do -- claim and maintain residency in one home state, pay income taxes only to that state, and vote as a resident of that state, for the duration of their military career, without regard to where they are stationed. "The purpose was to allow the spouse to maintain the same domicile as the servicemember," said Mary M. Benzinger, senior attorney, Pentagon Army and Air Force Legal Assistance Office. The benefit of having both husband and wife be able to establish and maintain domiciliary status in the same state -- and carry that status wherever they go as a result of military PCS -- is two-fold. First, it simplifies paperwork. In the past, spouses would have to re-establish residency in whatever state they moved to as part of a PCS. They had to pay income tax to that state if they worked, register their vehicle there, and get a driver's license there. Additionally, if their servicemember maintained permanent domiciliary status in another state, the two might have to file state income taxes separately. "It allows them to establish a domicile, and carry it with them, every time they PCS, and not do what you hear a lot of: where the servicemember stays a resident of Texas his whole career, and she (the spouse) has to be a domiciliary of every place the servicemember is stationed," Benzinger said. "That's what happened before this. You could never have a constant domicile. You had to be a resident of whatever state you were living in." Second, in many cases, military members have opted to continue to maintain domiciliary status in one of the states that do not have state income tax: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, Wyoming, New Hampshire and Tennessee. Those servicemembers do not pay state income tax. The new act would allow military spouses who have been present in one of those states -- and established domiciliary status there -- to maintain that status along with their servicemember spouse, and to then also not pay state income tax. What the act does not allow, however, is for a spouse to "pick" a state where they can claim domiciliary status. Establishing domiciliary status in a state, in nearly every case, requires that the spouse has lived in the state. "You cannot pick," Benzinger. "You have to synch up, by physical presence and intent to remain." Being able to adequately defend a claim of residency of one state -- especially if doing so to avoid paying income taxes in the state where a spouse is currently living and working -- might require more than prior residence. It could also require, among other things, showing intent to return there, land ownership, driver's licenses, car registration or having voted there. Additionally, the act does not mean military spouses do not need to pay state income tax. If the state where a spouse maintains domiciliary status under the new act requires civilian residents to pay state income tax, then they must as well. This includes those states where the requirement to pay state income tax by a servicemember changes if a servicemember doesn't actually live in the state while serving. The MSRAA, a federal law, does not convey to civilian spouses the benefits extended to servicemembers by individual states. The MSRRA amendment applies retroactively to tax year 2009. This means that for some spouses -- those that can show they met the requirements for domiciliary status for a state they did not live in during 2009 -- those spouses may be able to get back tax withholdings from the state where they lived and worked. The MSRRA is relatively new, and many states have yet to figure out how to deal with military spouse taxpayers who may want refunds, Benzinger said. Additionally, she said while states have in the past been relatively forgiving when considering for tax purposes the claims of non-state residence by uniformed servicemembers, they might not be so forgiving of civilian spouses. Before changing or claiming a different state of residence on any forms, Benzinger said servicemembers and their spouses should seek legal advice. "The real solution is to go see your legal assistance attorney on your installation," Benzinger said. Army programs battle increase in suicides [2010-01-15] WASHINGTON -- Statistics for December suicides in the Army were released today, and show as many as 10 potential suicides amongst active-duty Soldiers. The December numbers bring total active-duty Army suicides for 2009 to a potential 160, up from 140 in 2008 -- a 14-percent increase. But for now, 46 of last year's potential suicides are still under investigation. Increases in Soldier suicides have driven efforts in the Army to get a handle on why suicides are occurring and how they can be stopped. During the 2010 Department of Defense/Veterans Administration Suicide Prevention Conference in Washington, D.C., Walter Morales, the Army suicide prevention program manager, said during 2009 the Army's greatest effort was in getting various service organizations to work together toward the shared goal of combating suicide. "I think the most important thing that we have done for the entire Army is to synchronize our efforts," he said "There's a lot of people doing a lot of great things all over the place, but the mere fact that we said: let's have a group of experts at Army level to synchronize and integrate every single service policy and program out there, I think has paid great dividends." The Army Suicide Prevention Program, headed by Morales, is part of the Army Suicide Prevention Task Force, which stood up in March 2009. Having existed only 10 months, Morales said it's still too early yet to tell if Army efforts are successful. "As we evaluate this and continue to push those services, those programs and policies down the line, I am confident we will see the effects of the great efforts of the Army team," he said. The biggest challenge to combating suicide, Morales said, is combating the "stigma" that keeps Soldiers from seeking the kind of professional assistance that could help them deal with the problems that lead to suicide. "Stigma, it is a high-level issue for the secretary of the Army on down," he said. "We have to nail it. I know stigma has been with all the services for hundreds of years. We are not going to turn this on a dime, but we are turning every rock, if you will, to see how we can eliminate the stigma for our Soldiers." For Soldiers, the stigma against seeking help for mental health issues -- help that could prevent Soldiers from choosing suicide as an option -- stems from two issues. First, there is the perception that seeking mental health assistance, or having evidence of mental health treatment in their records could affect promotions or job opportunities. This is especially true for Soldiers with jobs requiring a security clearance, Morales said. In the past, one particular question on security clearance application SF-86 led some to believe that having participated in mental health counseling could affect their clearance. Today, "question 21" has been changed to make it clear that having mental help assistance doesn't necessarily affect a Soldier's ability to get a clearance, Morales said. "Information about normal grief and family counseling does not need to be provided to in the questionnaire," Morales said. A second contributor to the stigma against seeking mental health is the perception that seeking mental health assistance is a sign of weakness. "The Soldiers feel a lack of worthiness if they go out and say they need help," Morales said. "We need to approach that with the leadership to make sure that the culture is such that it promotes the person to come out and be open about it." In only 10 months of work, Morales told those at the suicide prevention conference, the Army has done much to achieve its goal of reducing Soldier suicide. He said a lot of work was put into revising Army Regulations 600-63, health promotion and DA PAM 600-24, health promotion, risk reduction and suicide prevention. Also, he said, the Army developed two videos, "Shoulder to Shoulder: No Soldier Stands Alone" which was used in the first Army stand-down/chain teaching related to suicide, and the interactive video "Beyond the Front." The Army is also working on a new video, "Home Front," which deals with issues that affect Soldiers who are not deployed. Also this year, the Army implemented a pilot program, the Confidential Alcohol Treatment and Education Pilot, that allows Soldiers at three locations to self-report to the Army Substance Abuse Program without commander notification. The intent is to find if more Soldiers with alcohol-related problems will seek help if they are confident that help will not affect their careers. Morales said there's more that has to be done before the Army can reach its goal of no suicides in the service. "Our ultimate goal is to eliminate suicide in the service, but there are steps in between -- so I will say we continue to work diligently with everybody that has a stake in providing resources to people, with the ultimate goal to eliminate suicides," he said. Army invites 14,000 IRR Soldiers to readiness musters in 2010 [2010-01-22] WASHINGTON -- The Army kicks off another year of readiness musters, Jan. 23, for some 14,000 Soldiers in the Individual Ready Reserve. The readiness muster in Phoenix, Ariz., the first of 19 this year, will help the Army keep track of Soldiers in the IRR, while at the same time it will help those Soldiers stay abreast of the benefits and opportunities available to them. "The bull's-eye we're hitting are the administrative and medical updates, that's the reason we have the musters," said Brig. Gen. William D. R. Waff, deputy commanding general, U.S. Army Human Resources Command. "And with the readiness musters we really add to that so that Soldiers understand what their benefits are. There's also options to learn about federal employment or to become part of active Reserve units." All military personnel enter service for a period of eight years -- it's in the contracts they sign, Waff said. Those eight years can be carved up in multiple ways. Many Soldiers, for instance, will serve four years active duty and then separate from active service and serve the remaining four years of their eight-year "military service obligation" in the IRR. There's about 60,000 Soldiers currently in the IRR, Waff said. They do not drill, wear uniforms, comply with the UCMJ, or even get paid. But once a year, many are called up to "muster," so the Army can ensure the accuracy of their administrative and medical data. First-year IRR Soldiers will be called to one-on-one musters with career counselors, Waff said. Others called to the readiness muster won't just stand in line to update their records, he said. They also learn about benefits and opportunities available to them as both IRR members and veterans. At the Jan. 23 muster at the Veterans Affairs Health Care Facility in Phoenix, Ariz., IRR Soldiers can meet with representatives from the Civilian Human Resources Agency to discuss employment as Army civilians, for instance. Those Soldiers can also learn about opportunities available in the selective Reserve and about medical benefits available to qualified Soldiers through the VA. Soldiers in the IRR are not entirely unaware of the many benefits and opportunities available to them -- such as the five-point veteran's preference toward federal employment -- Waff said. Many times they've been told, they just don't remember. "You can tell somebody something three times by mail or e-mail, but when you get them in person and their eyes lock on it, with somebody that can explain the second- and third-order effects of that, that's when they finally say 'oh I didn't know I had this as a benefit ' or 'wow this is a good deal,'" Waff said. Soldiers who attend a muster are paid $200 for their time. Army and other services maintain the IRR so that they will have a pool of trained servicemembers, that if needed, can be recalled. In fiscal year 2007, for instance, the Army recalled 3,400 Soldiers from the IRR. Some went overseas and others served stateside. In FY 2008, that number crept up to 4,400. Of those, 1,100 went to Iraq and 400 to Afghanistan. In FY 2009, 7,000 Soldiers were called up from the IRR. Of those, 1,400 went to Iraq and 550 went to Afghanistan. In the first quarter of FY 2010, which runs Oct. 1 - Dec. 31, 2009, nearly 3,000 Soldiers were called up from the IRR to fill critical slots in the Army. The numbers for how many went to Iraq and how many to Afghanistan are not yet available. The FY 2010 Army readiness musters are as follows: • Jan. 23: Phoenix, Ariz. • Feb. 6: Fort Knox, Ky. • Feb. 27-28: Los Angeles, Calif. • Mar. 6: Puerto Rico • Mar. 13: Tampa, Fla. • Mar. 20: Houston, Texas • Mar. 27: Atlanta, Ga. • Apr. 10-11: Arlington Heights, Ill. • Apr. 24-25: Philadelphia, Pa. • May. 1-2: New York, N.Y. • May. 22-24: Minneapolis, Minn. • Jun. 5: Tacoma, Wash. • Jun. 26-27: Dallas, Texas • Jul. 17: Temple, Texas • Jul. 24: .Boston, Mass. • Jul. 31: Fayetteville, N.C. • Aug. 7: Denver, Colo. • Aug. 14-15: Fort Meade, Md. • Aug. 28: Ann Arbor, Mich. Soldiers attend State of Union address [2010-01-28] WASHINGTON -- While many watched President Barack Obama's first State of the Union address from their homes, several former Soldiers and a current one had seats near the first lady inside the U.S. Capitol Building. Among those who sat with Michelle Obama during the speech were Sgt. 1st Class Andrew Rubin; Spc. Scott Vycital, now medically retired; and former Soldiers Kimberly Munley and Mark Todd, both of whom now work at Fort Hood, Texas. An Army Ranger assigned to the 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, Rubin returned in December from Iraq. It was his sixth time deployed to the region, including tours in Afghanistan. Just hours before the State of the Union, Rubin said if given the opportunity before or after the address to shake the president's hand and speak with him for a moment, he'd tell the president about what it means for him to serve in the Army. "This country has a rich tradition of people fighting wars to defend the freedom of this country," Rubin said. "It's an honor to go to war for their country and fight for our freedom. Not everybody does it." While saying he didn't want to try to predict ahead of time what the president would say in his speech, Rubin said he hoped there would be words indicating continued support for those who serve. "As a serviceman, we are fighting the global war on terrorism in two different countries," Rubin said. "Anybody who is over there wants to hear that the troops will continue to be supported, that there will be funding for equipment, and that we will be supported overseas." During his most recent deployment, Rubin was shot while attempting to rescue a fellow Ranger in As Sadiyah. For his actions there, Rubin was awarded the Bronze Star with Valor. "One of my guys was shot in the leg," Rubin said. "I'm on the next street over getting ready to move on a target building and we heard the gunshots. We ran to their location, and they were under heavy gunfire." Without thinking of their own safety, Rubin and his medic ran to the position of his downed Soldier to provide assistance. Rubin said considering the immediate safety and recovery of his fallen team member is second nature for him. "That's one of my guys -- I'd give my life up for my men," he said. "Once I found out he was shot and I heard him screaming in pain, there was no decision making. It was move to his position now and save his life." "Every one of my guys deserved a bronze start that night," Rubin said. Spc. Scott Vycital, now medically retired, was also chosen to sit with the first lady at the president's address. He said he thinks that after having been wounded in Iraq in 2004 -- sustaining injuries that led to deafness in one ear and paralysis on the side of his face, in addition to complications from post traumatic stress disorder -- his experiences with military medicine, Veterans Affairs and with veteran's support groups makes him knowledgeable about how wounded servicemembers can get better and move on with life. "After being wounded in Iraq, I've been able to utilize a number of federal benefits ..." he said. Those benefits enabled recovery, he said, and helped him get home loans and find a career. As a beneficiary of programs to help wounded veterans, he said he hoped the president would discuss continued support of those same programs. "My heart lies in veterans services, and seeing that disabled veterans receive the opportunities that I've been lucky enough to receive," he said. In February 2004, Vycital said his life took a serious turn with the injuries he sustained in Iraq. "I thought I was capable of carrying on my own and that didn't turn out to be the case," he said. "I needed a helping hand -- a shoulder to lean on. After a number of years searching, I finally got that help. I hope other veterans that are coming home and have these terrible injuries can get the same help I did. These organizations -- we need to make sure they stay here and are even expanded." Since leaving the Army in 2004, just months after his Iraqi injuries, Vycital has experienced the lows of PTSD, the struggle to find the courage to seek help -- with the urging of his wife, Jarah -- and finally, completion of a degree program at Colorado State University in December 2008. Today, with the help of the Army's Wounded Warrior program, the Veterans Affairs, and the National Organization on Disability, he works as a financial specialist with the Federal Highway Administration. Also sitting with the first lady were Fort Hood Police Officers Kimberly Munley and Mark Todd. Both helped stop a shooting spree in November at Hood by downing Maj. Nidal M. Hasan in an exchange of gunfire. Munley -- a former Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Operations specialist in the Army -- is currently a federal officer serving on the Special Reaction Team for the Fort Hood Police Department. In November, she was wounded in the gun battle with Hasan but reportedly kept firing. Todd enlisted in the Army as a military policeman in 1985. He was selected to attend Military Working Dog Handlers Course and later served as a K-9 handler at Fort Devens, Mass.: Fort Polk, La., and Wurezburg, Germany. His last two assignments were Grafenwoehr, Germany and Fort Hood, Texas. In 2007, he joined the Directorate of Emergency Services at Fort Hood and is currently the lead police officer for the Military Working Dog Branch there. Surgeon general: Improving medevac times requires balancing act [2010-01-29] WASHINGTON -- Speeding up critical medical-evacuation times in Iraq and Afghanistan must be balanced against flight crew safety, said the Army's surgeon general. Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, also commander of the U.S. Army Medical Command, spoke Thursday to an audience of military medical professionals during the 2010 Military Health Systems conference, about the challenge of decreasing medevac response times. "Where to put our helicopters and all the support crews and the aircraft they fly is really a delicate balancing act, because it balances the risk of putting care providers and medevac crews at risk to the enemy and to the elements and balances that with the risk of loss of life, limb or eyesight, if the evacuation is excessively prolonged," Schoomaker said. Now, Schoomaker said, the Joint Theater Trauma Registry and the Joint Theater Trauma System are engaged in an analysis of medevac times. "This is an effort to minimize the evacuation time for casualties in a highly dispersed force which is subjected in Afghanistan to what has been described as the 'tyranny of terrain and weather,'" he said. Schoomaker said the only way to fully understand the risks is to know the outcomes of the care provided to those servicemembers assisted by medevac teams, and to know based on injury type. "We are analyzing this by injury type, across a very wide range of missions," he said. The general also said that improving combat care for servicemembers in the field involves improvements in equipment, like recent advances in the Improved First Aid Kit fielded to Soldiers -- which now includes the combat application tourniquet, for instance. Also important is the development of new tactics, techniques and procedures for Soldiers -- that means the capture and dissemination of knowledge about practices in the field. "The key to improving combat casualty care is the use of knowledge, which is derived from sound science and good data," he said. "Much of what we have done to improve outcomes hasn't been material products. They've been the way we've done things, rather than just the materials we've applied to them." Schoomaker said Army medicine is involved in continues process improvement, even as combat wages on in both Iraq and Afghanistan. FY11 budget includes $400 million for re-enlistment bonuses [2010-02-02] WASHINGTON -- The Army revealed its Fiscal Year 2011 budgets Feb. 1, including $143 billion to fund training and sustainment of the total force, and an additional $102 billion to fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. During a budget briefing at the Pentagon, Lt. Gen. Edgar E. Stanton III, the Army's military deputy for budget, detailed the overall rationale behind items in the Army's portion of the Department of Defense's FY11 budget requests that will go forward to President Barack Obama. That rationale included the Army's budget priorities. "The Army leaders have focused on caring for our people -- that's our Soldiers, our families and our civilians," Stanton said. "We focus on training and equipping Soldiers and units for the current fight and then we revitalize our people -- the entire gamut of people, Soldiers and civilians -- for whatever the next development might be." Stanton said priorities for the FY11 base budget also include continuing with both the transformation and the modernization of the Army. The Army presented three budgets: a $143-billion base budget, which supports the Army's mission to train and equip Soldiers; a $102-billion overseas contingency operations budget, meant to sustain and support ongoing operations; and a $20-billion supplemental budget, meant to augment last year's budget. The FY11 budget includes some $59 billion toward military personnel -- 41 percent of the total base budget request. That request includes a 1.4-percent military pay raise, a 3.9-percent increase in housing allowances and a 3.4-percent increase in subsistence allowances. Also included were some $400 million for supplemental re-enlistment bonuses. The base budget for military personnel that will go forward to the president supports an active-duty end strength of 547,400, an Army National Guard end strength of 358,200, and an Army Reserve end strength of 205,000. The overseas contingency operations budget also funds a temporary end-strength increase of 22,000 Soldiers. For Army operations and maintenance, the FY11 base budget includes $43.9 billion. That includes recruiting and training the all-volunteer force and funding programs such as the Army Family Covenant and Comprehensive Soldier Fitness. The O&M budget also funds increases in training programs, combat training centers and the depot maintenance program. The FY11 budget includes funding for procurement and modernization -- more than $21 billion -- for purchase of aircraft, missiles, ammunition, weapons and tracked vehicles. In FY11, for instance, the budget includes $1.3 billion for 48 UH-60M Black Hawk utility helicopters and 24 HH-60M Black Hawk medical helicopters. The budget also provides $1.1 billion for transition of CH-47 Chinooks from "D" models to "F" models. The Army also plans to add to its unmanned-aerial-systems fleet, including about $459 million for the addition of 26 MQ-1 Sky Warrior Extended Range Multi-Purpose Unmanned Aerial Systems. In FY11, the Army will cease to purchase new Humvee vehicles, as the service has met its purchase goals for the vehicle. "We have reached the Army acquisition objective for Humvees -- we're there sooner than we expected for two reasons," Stanton said. "One is we have fewer losses and washouts in Iraq. Also with the Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, all-terrain vehicle and other MRAP variants that have been procured and made available to the Army, we have less uses for the humvee. We envision the humvee to be an enduring part of the Army fleet." Stanton said the humvee production line will remain open for others to purchase. The $20-billion supplemental request for FY10 that was forwarded to the president includes $1.7 billion for military personnel, and also supports two new Army combat aviation brigades. Stanton said the exact way those CABs will get aircraft is still being determined. "There is procurement of aircraft here -- how we will end up distributing the aircraft between the twelfth CAB and the thirteenth CAB and other Army competing requirements for aircraft support has yet to be determined," Stanton said. QDR reveals Army on target for energy security [2010-02-05] WASHINGTON -- Language in the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, released Feb. 1, supports the Army's ongoing efforts to achieve energy security. The review "resonates very well with what the Army has been promoting over the last year, and what our strategy is," said Dr. Kevin T. Geiss, program director for energy security in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations and Environment. The QDR is produced every four years, as directed by Congress. It is a self-assessment of the Department of Defense, and a review of the department's strategy and priorities. The 2010 QDR reveals the department's insights on how the security environment is affected by climate change and energy availability and consumption. Geiss said he believes the DOD's language in the report is in tune with what the Army has already been practicing in its efforts to achieve energy security. "The first thing I would say is, they are singing our song," Geiss said. "We are very pleased to see how OSD is defining what energy security is. It is not just the supply piece, it is what if the grid fails, and also cyber security. It's being able to maintain and defend those logistical tails of fuel in theater. It's making sure those new technologies we are deploying are not breaking down, or that they are providing a sufficient amount to maintain our critical functions." In the effort to bolster energy security, the Army is making efforts at places like Fort Irwin, Calif., and Hawthorne, Nev. In those places, the Army has engaged in projects designed to strengthen energy security -- to reduce the installation's reliance on the civilian power grid, while at the same time finding ways to reduce overall power use and to also ensure that critical missions are not hampered in any way. At Fort Irwin, the Army -- in partnership with industry -- has embarked on a long-term project to build a 500-megawatt solar power plant that will help ensure energy security to the installation. Last year, the Army named the developer for the project, and that developer has now put together a preliminary plan on how the project will be completed, Geiss said. "I believe the Corps of Engineers is in receipt of that formal plan that will lay out, over the timeframe of the project, which phases or which aspects of the project will be done when," Geiss said. After the final plan is submitted and approved, there will be an environmental evaluation of the project before it can proceed. That's expected to take 18 months. A 30-megawatt geothermal power plant is also in the works at Hawthorne Army Depot, Nev., Geiss said. "Right now we are looking at the development through a power purchase agreement," he said. "They would finance the project and we'd agree to buy a certain amount of power over a certain period of time." The Army's efforts at finding security are also evident in the ongoing transformation of its 70,000-vehicle non-tactical fleet. More than 500 hybrid vehicles are currently in use, the QDR acknowledges, and the service is in the process of acquiring 4,000 low-speed electrical vehicles at state-side installations to cut down on fuel costs. "With the LSEV, the six-year leasing contract allows Army to save over 111,000 tons of (carbon dioxide) emissions and about 11 million gallons of fossil fuel not burned," Geiss said. The QDR also reiterates that DOD will implement the requirement set forth in the 2009 National Defense Authorization Act that the Secretary of Defense must include consideration for the "fully burdened cost of fuel" when considering purchases of new capabilities, for instance. The fully burdened cost of fuel means not just what fuel costs at the point of sale, but also the cost incurred getting the fuel to where it will be used. That means the cost of moving that fuel in convoy, the cost of security to protect that convoy, and the cost in risk to lives while running such a convoy. "As we look at acquisition of new weapons systems, the (Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology) put out a memo last year that they have to consider energy productivity in the acquisition of all new weapons systems," Geiss said. "They also have to consider the fully burdened cost of energy." Also revealed Feb. 1: the Army's Fiscal Year 2011 budget includes money marked for energy-security projects. These funds are part of military construction, as well as installation sustainment, restoration, and modernization, Geiss said. He explained that the Army Corps of Engineers is transforming military construction to follow energy-efficient design standards. "MILCON can potentially have the biggest impact on what it is going to cost us for utilities in the long run," Geiss said. "Making that investment in that facility when it is built, and confirming that it is built to the design that will incorporate these standards, will impact how much it is going to cost to heat and cool and provide electricity for that facility for the lifecycle of that facility." Efforts toward energy efficiency in new construction include such things as incorporation of renewable and alternative generation, like building-integrated photovoltaic cells and solar walls, which is a way to pre-heat air as it comes into a building, Geiss said. Geiss said the budget contains funding for the Energy Conservation Investment Program, and for research projects such as small tactical grid systems, lightweight flexible photovoltaics, and advanced cogeneration systems. The grid systems tie generators together for more efficiency. Flexible photovoltaics create solar energy, and cogeneration systems can reclaim heat produced by generators and use it for additional purposes. Soldiers to get new cammo pattern for wear in Afghanistan [2010-02-20] WASHINGTON -- Starting this summer, Soldiers sent to fight in Afghanistan will wear an Army Combat Uniform with the "MultiCam" pattern instead of the standard-issue universal camouflage pattern. Secretary of the Army John McHugh made that announcement Feb. 19, after the service conducted a rigorous four-month evaluation of various uniform patterns to determine what could best protect Soldiers in Afghanistan. The new uniforms are of the same material and cut that Soldiers are already wearing in the Army Combat Uniform or ACU. It is the camouflage printed on the fabric that will be different. The change allows commanders in Afghanistan to have more options in deciding how best to equip their Soldiers. "As a material provider, I want to be responsive to the Soldiers I support," said Col. William E. Cole, project manager for Soldier Protection and Individual Equipment. "I want to give commanders options, I want to be responsive to Soldiers. That is what we were trying to do -- we're working to give (them) more options." The uniforms bearing the new pattern, like the latest ACUs, are fire resistant. They are officially called the Fire Resistant Army Combat Uniform. The decision to use the MultiCam pattern came after the Army evaluated its effectiveness at providing camouflage protection in Iraq. That was done, in part, by consulting with nearly 750 Soldiers who had deployed to Afghanistan. Those Soldiers participated in a "photo simulation" study administered by the Army. Additionally, feedback from Soldiers who have already worn the uniform in Afghanistan was used to make the final decision. About 2,000 Soldiers were involved in tests to see how effective patterns such as MultiCam and UCP-Delta were at providing concealment in the varying terrain of Afghanistan. Ban on USB devices in Army remains -- for now [2010-02-20] WASHINGTON -- The ban on using USB devices on military computers remains, for now, in the Army -- despite a partial lift of the original ban by U.S. Strategic Command. USSTRATCOM issued a tasking order to services and concerned parties, Feb. 12, that allows the services to loosen restrictions on use of USB and flash media devices. Individual services, however, may continue the ban until they feel their networks are adequately equipped to deal with the threats posed by the portable storage devices. The official word from the Army Global Network Operations Security Center is "we are currently conducting mission analysis in order to provide guidance for the Army's safe return of thumb drives and flash media." According to the AGNOSC, there are conditions that must be met prior to the lift of the ban. Those conditions include, but are not limited to ensuring that users are only using government-approved and purchased devices and that Army networks are properly configured. The U.S. Strategic Command implemented a ban on USB storage devices in November 2008, to include such things as memory sticks, thumb drives, and camera memory cards. That ban was partially lifted by their tasking order Feb. 12. The USSTRATCOM commander has "approved a Communications Tasking Order directing that the limited use of memory sticks, thumb drives, and camera memory cards (commonly called 'flash media,') be restored on Department of Defense computers after the verified implementation of certain procedures and operational practices," according to guidance from the U.S. Strategic Command. The procedures are meant to ensure that malicious code that can be present on USB memory devices is prevented from infecting DoD computers. "Until all conditions are met, the ban on the use of removable flash drives will remain," said AGNOSC. $1.9 billion in research to focus on protecting Soldiers [2010-02-25] WASHINGTON -- The Army's fiscal 2011 science and technology budget that recently went forward for approval tops out at $1.9 billion and includes funding for advanced medical and force-protection research efforts. Dr. Thomas H. Killion, the deputy assistant secretary of the Army for research and technology, spoke Feb. 24 at the 2010 Association of the United States Army's Institute of Land Warfare Winter Symposium and Exposition, here. Before an audience of Soldiers, Army civilians and defense industry professionals, Killion stressed how important it is to develop technology "as fast as we can and put it in the hands of Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines. We ask them to do a hard job every day and we need to give them the tools to do it." The current vision of Army science and technology, Killion said, is focused on both the future and the current fight. "We have to be about the current fight," he said. "We have to look at how do we take advantage of the great technology that is available today and bring that to bear rapidly and provide it to the Soldiers." Killion is responsible for management of science and technology investments for the Army. In order to bring technology to the field -- to put it in the hands of Soldiers -- he hands responsibility off to several entities, including partners in industry. "We work with you to help develop and demonstrate the technology and then you can bring that to bear with your industrial capability and manufacturing capability when you offer that back to the Army, to those that go and buy the technology," Killion said, addressing defense industry professionals in the audience. "It's a critical partnership." Killion also addressed the Army's budget for research. About $1.9 billion has been requested for Army research and development next year. "Our job is to try and take that, with your cooperation, and focus it on areas that really matter for the Army. That is our challenge," he said. "The good news is the science and technology budget over the last several cycles of our budget plan, has increased," he said. "And there has been a real push from DoD ... to increase our investment in basic and applied research." Killion said the Army must maintain important science and technology development and research if it is to have the fruits of that kind of research available for Soldiers to use in the future. "We have to have the technology on the shelf if we are going to take it off the shelf when the time comes," he said. Areas of investment the budget addresses include deployable force protection, medical research and infrared technology, for instance. "We have had the luxury of being ahead of the game, with regard to the rest of the world, in IR technology," he said. "We need to invest to stay ahead of the game. We own the night, but there are lots of competitors out there." Included in the $1.9 billion for research is more than $400 million that is focused on force protection -- Soldier armor, for instance. Also, some $136 million for command, control, computers and communications research. And about $129 million to develop better intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability. As much as $407 million is marked for basic research. Also included, $174 million for medical research, that includes Army efforts in regenerative medicine. Regenerative medicine involves such things as building new body parts using tissue from a patient. The Army is working on building new muscles for Soldiers, for instance, new skin for burn patients, and growing body parts like ears and fingers. "This is absolutely phenomenal technology," Killion said "They've actually grown a functional bladder and inserted it into a human subject. It's the kind of technology that will make a difference for not only our own Soldiers, but for the general civilian population." Killion also addressed cancellation of the Future Combat Systems program, saying that while the program is no more, research from the program continues to provide value to the Army. "The work they did in materials characterization, in design of new tools for modeling, penetration dynamics, blast protection, etc., allowed us to develop new classes of material and rapidly bring them to bear to enhance the protection capability on the MRAP," he said. "So one set of investments led to improvements on current capabilities." Army to balance Iraq drawdown, reset for least impact on Soldiers [2010-02-26] FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- The process of drawing down and resetting equipment in Iraq to meet the 2011 pull-out deadline set by the president must not affect Soldier dwell time, according to the Army's top logisticians. Part of the drawdown means moving equipment now in Iraq out of country and placing it elsewhere -- in the United States or in another theater of operations, such as Afghanistan. Part of that means reset -- the equipment moved may need to be replaced, recapitalized, or repaired, for instance, depending on what will happen to it. Also part of the reset process is ensuring Soldiers have time to recuperate from deployment, said Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody, commander, Army Materiel Command. "We have to remember that is the dwell time for our Soldiers," Dunwoody said to members of the press, Feb. 25, at the 2010 Association of the United States Army's Institute of Land Warfare Winter Symposium and Exposition in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "They come back, they need time to be integrated with their families, get on vacation, get rest, and get reintegrated after a deployment of a year of deployment or longer," she said. "Our job after that reset period can't be one that's disruptive." Dunwoody said that efforts to take back equipment from units, or to field it back to them, must not interfere with dwell -- the time Soldiers spend at home. Synchronization of the equipment reset process, across the Army, and matching that up against the Army's force generation model -- ARFORGEN -- can ensure that Soldiers get reset just like the equipment they use in theater, she said. "We are trying to adapt the way we reset to allow us to do that," Dunwoody said. "Take the equipment back early and then redeliver it back at the end of their dwell time. Knowing what units are in reset, knowing which units are in training and available, and knowing which ones are deployed, allows us to focus the resources we have based on where they are in the ARFORGEN cycle." Lt. Gen. James H. Pillsbury, deputy commander of the U.S. Army Materiel Command, now leads the Responsible Reset Task Force, out of Camp Arifjan, Kuwait. The task force has been asked to tackle the complex challenge of managing the reset of equipment in Iraq. Equipment in Iraq includes tens of thousands of containers and vehicles, as well as millions of pieces of equipment. One of the challenges faced in Iraq, Pillsbury said, was a large amount of equipment not accounted for -- making it difficult to keep track of. "Drawdown challenges are many," he said. "When we first started, the Army Field Support Brigade in Iraq started receiving equipment -- a lot of it was not brought to record." A lot of equipment, Pillsbury said, was not on Army books. But that has been fixed now, as equipment at forward operating bases is now accounted for in property books. "We are finding that equipment brought to our yards in preparation for the withdrawal -- in most cases, have been brought to record," Pillsbury said. Pillsbury said the Army is now doing a "fabulous job" in bringing down rolling stock -- Army vehicles -- from Iraq, for instance. "About six to eight months ago, the metric was established to bring out 1,500 pieces of rolling stock a month," he said. The Army has exceeded that goal every month, he said. Right now, Pillsbury said, the Army is on target to meet the drawdown goals. "The velocity is there to get the necessary equipment out on the timelines that the president has established," he said. One final destination for some equipment, Pillsbury said, is foreign military sales -- the transfer of equipment in theater to the militaries of coalition partners. The general said the process to move those things into sales has been smooth. "Gen. Chris Tucker at U.S. Army Security Assistance Command ... has done a marvelous job of expediting the FMS process," he said. "That process needed to be leaned -- it was and it is and continues to be." One second-tier effect of the drawdown in Iraq is dealing with the non-standard equipment in the country -- Army-owned equipment that was purchased specifically for use in theater, but that the Army doesn't really know how to use elsewhere. Some 5,000 different types of equipment exist, Dunwoody said. "We have a lot of capability out there that doesn't reside on our documents," Dunwoody said. "What we are doing with the help of Training and Doctrine Command, and the department, now that we have visibility of those non-standard items, is get determination of whether it is an enduring capability, whether it is something that goes into stocks for future operations, something to be disposed, or something to be transferred." In the recent fiscal year 2011 budget that went forward to congress, some $11 billion was marked for the reset process, said Lt. Gen. Mitchell H. Stevenson, deputy chief of staff, G-4. "We are well funded, no complaints this year or next if Congress passes the budget," Stevenson said. "But certainly that which has gone forward from OSD, we are happy with, and we can execute the mission with that amount of money." Stevenson said the drawdown mission in Iraq is going as planned. "In every measureable way, whether it is number of bases, number of vehicles, number of containers, number of supply support activities, number of people -- we are ahead of the plan developed many months ago,' he said. "And so you should feel really good about that." Army solicits proposals for new combat vehicle [2010-03-02] WASHINGTON -- The Army released a request for proposal for the Ground Combat Vehicle Feb. 25 -- marking an official start for defense contractors to begin competing for the right to build the service's next combat vehicle. Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli said the new vehicle will not be simply a rehash of the cancelled Future Combat Systems, but a relevant combat vehicle based on Army experiences in combat. "This is a vehicle here that takes into account the lessons of eight years of war. It is not just FCS warmed over," said Chiarelli, during a video teleconference, Feb. 25, with attendees at the Association of the United States Army's Institute of Land Warfare Winter Symposium and Exposition in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The general said key performance parameters for the vehicle include, among other things, full-spectrum capability, net-readiness, and mobility. It should have the operational mobility of the Stryker and underbelly protection of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, or MRAP, according to the Brigade Combat Team Modernization Plan released Feb. 19. Chiarelli said the Army is hoping for "three solid proposals" on the RFP -- those proposals must be in by April 26. The Army will then award technology development contracts to bidders in September -- marking milestone A in the GCV development process. Contract awardees will then enter the technology development phase that runs through December 2012. Ultimately, Chiarelli said, the Army expects to award a low-rate initial production contract for the GCV by March 2016, and achieve initial operational capability in the second quarter of 2019. Chiarelli said adaptability to the operational environment is key for the GCV. "It will allow commanders to make a determination on what level of protection they need on that vehicle based on the enemy situation they find themselves in," he said. Chiarelli also discussed the nature of America's enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan, countering claims they are less than capable adversaries. "They are truly formidable adversaries," Chiarelli said. "But because they are not state-sponsored, many dismiss them as not being worthy opponents. There are those, and I'd argue too many, who somehow think because they are terrorists, they are not as capable opponents as we have fought in past conflicts." The general also pointed out the enemy's adeptness at passing information to its lowest foot soldiers. "The enemy is very, very good," Chiarelli said. "In fact, he has done a much better job, in some instances, in pushing information down to the tactical edge -- his tactical edge. He doesn't have the same security requirements that we do, in doing that. But he has been more than willing to push that information down, using technology." The enemy's lack of information security, however, is a weakness that can be exploited by the Army, Chiarelli said. "The fact that he lacks some of that security has in many ways allowed us to track him down," he said. "We end up catching or killing many of his fighters as a result. But he is willing to accept those losses." The general also said the way the Army has operated has changed, as Soldiers at the farthest reaches of the battlefield are today providing as much information upstream to commanders as commanders are pushing information downstream. The change has resulted in a need to move decision-making responsibility closer to the Soldier. "I believed you had a period (in the past) when decision making basically flowed from the top on down," he said. "Orders were given to the different levels of the chain of command. Today, we see as much information being passed up, from the edge, as we see being passed down from above. Whereas before we had decision making, very strict decision making, today, we have commanders who provide intent to Soldiers that are down on the edge." Facilitating the faster, more secure flow of information is something Chiarelli said the Army is working on by developing its information network, including the "Everything over Internet Protocol" concept. Sniper rifle improvements to see testing this spring [2010-03-03] WASHINGTON -- Candidates for an improved version of the Army's sniper rifle -- the M-24 -- are expected to go into testing this spring after industry reveals their efforts this month. Industry was challenged to improve the M-24 sniper rifle, a weapon that has been in service since the 1980s, to make it more accurate and to make it more adjustable to the Soldier's needs, said Col. Douglas A. Tamilio, project manager, Soldier Weapons. "So the Soldier, the sniper, can conform it to his body -- we'll have an adjustable stock, adjustable cheek welds," Tamilio said. "This weapons system has a five-round internal magazine. We're asking industry to do something better -- five-to-ten round external magazines." The Army has also asked industry to improve the scope for the M-24, and that means zoom from 3x to 25x magnification, with a reticle that adjusts when the user changes magnification. Also, he said, add Picatinny rails for mounting sensors and optics. The M-24 now is chambered for a 7.62mm round with a range to about 800 meters, Tamilio said. But he added that when the Army designed the weapon, it also accommodated a larger round, the .300 Win Mag. He said the improved M-24 will take advantage of that capability in order to realize greater accuracy. It's expected the four industry competitors will supply their four improved M-24 candidates by March 11. Those will go into competitive tests in the spring. The Army will down select to a producer in the summer, and start fielding the improved M-24 to Army snipers in the fall. Improving the M-24 will involve turning existing weapons over to a contractor and modifying that weapon. It's expected that turnaround time for that process will be 30 days. The M-24 is not the only weapon PEO Soldier is looking to improve. In fact, the Army is taking a dual approach to getting a better carbine in the hands of Soldiers. The Army is looking to improve upon the M-4 Carbine currently fielded to Soldiers, through the M-4 Carbine Improvement Program. The Army is also asking industry to consider making a better, follow-on carbine, through the Individual Carbine Competition. Tamilio said the Army is asking industry to find a way to make the M-4 Carbine easier for Soldiers to maintain, and to also improve its durability, accuracy and reliability. The M-4 is already enjoying an improvement fielded to Soldiers now in Iraq and Afghanistan: a less jam-prone magazine. "It's a significant improvement over the other magazines we've fielded," Tamilio said. "What that means to our Soldiers is, it's more reliable every time the weapon feeds into the chamber -- it's going to present itself in the same manner, consistently." The new magazine is already fielded to Soldiers in combat overseas, and it features an improved spring and follower in the magazine that doesn't allow the magazine to jam. The Army will now field the magazine to Soldiers stateside as they prepare to deploy. "The Army's goal is to issue every Soldier seven of these," he said, saying the service is producing more than a quarter million a month. Army-driven improvements aside, the Army is in the final process of releasing to the field instructions to show Soldiers how best to camouflage their weapons using spray paint. "We should issue out in the next couple of months an advisory message, I'll put it in PS Magazine, and we'll get it to the field and say hey it's okay to spray paint your weapon and here's how to do it," Tamilio said. The instructions, he said, would include tips on paint choice to avoid generating toxic fumes from an overheated barrel, and tips to avoid paint in areas that could hamper the weapon's performance, or that could damage components like optics. While an instruction on how to spray paint weapons for camouflage purposes is being released, authority to do so still comes from a Soldier's command, Tamilio said. Weapons aren't the only systems the Army is improving. By the end of the month, three defense contractors are expected to deliver 60-each Ground Soldier System packages to the Army for testing. The GSS is an integrated dismounted Soldier situational awareness system for use during combat operations. The system is currently in development and is based on lessons learned from development of the Ground Warrior system, said Col. Will Riggins, program manager, Soldier Warrior. With the release of the testing equipment from contractors, the Army will, in a few months, go into developmental testing and limited user operational testing with the systems. Ultimately one contractor will be chosen to build the system. To date, Riggins said contractors have developed their competing versions of the GSS with input from both the Army and from Soldiers with combat experience. "All three have taken that Soldier feedback to heart and we have seen the changes during this development period," he said. "The light bulb started to come on when they heard it from a young Soldier who just got back from Afghanistan or from Iraq." Soldiers who used earlier demonstration versions of the GSS complained of bulk and weight. Now, Riggins said, the contractors have responded, "they are going to cut down on that bulk." Riggins also said the Army is "in the final phase right now of being able to drop that cable" that connects a helicopter pilot's head gear to an aircraft's intercom system. The Aircraft Wireless Intercom System allows pilots to attach to the helicopter's intercom system without cables that can be cumbersome and potentially dangerous. "That's going to be a very much improved capability and it's going to improve safety for us," Riggins said. The AWIS is now actually being installed on UH-60 Black Hawks at Fort Belvoir, Va. for evaluation purposes. Riggins said eventually, the wireless systems would incorporate NSA-grade voice encryption to let voice data pass into Army networks in theater. Army approaches million unmanned flying hours [2010-03-05] WASHINGTON -- The Army is fast approaching one million hours of unmanned aviation flight with its unmanned aerial systems. "Right now it looks like we'll hit probably 1 million total hours sometime next month," said Col. Christopher B. Carlile, director, U.S. Army Unmanned Aircraft Systems Center of Excellence. "But it'll take us to around September or October before we'll hit one million hours in support of combat operations." The colonel said about 90 percent of the Army's unmanned flying hours are in support of combat. The Army aviation community will recognize the milestone in late May with displays at the Pentagon and the Smithsonian Museum in Washington. Speaking to an audience of Soldiers and defense-industry professionals last week during the 2010 Association of the United States Army's Institute of Land Warfare Winter Symposium and Exposition in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Carlile said the Army is prepared for growth in use of unmanned aerial systems and for broadening their mission sets. "Today we are probably 99 percent-plus for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance roles for UAS," he said. "Though in the future, there will be new roles." The colonel said those new roles could include communications relays, sustainment and cargo, for instance. Training is ramping up for more UAS support as well. Out at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., the Army runs a joint training installation for UAS operators and maintainers. There, they train Soldiers, Sailors and Marines. Carlile said the Army is expected to see an increase in Soldiers that need to be trained at the facility. "Today we will train, in Fiscal Year 2010, about 800," he said. "By 2018, our requirement is over 3,000 operators." Unlike other services, the Army finds placing enlisted servicemembers at the controls of a UAS to be most effective, and Carlile said that is not likely to change. "Army enlisted UAS operators are fully capable and well trained to do anything you give them to do, and it'll shock you when you hear how many hours of operation they have," he said. Carlile said the Army puts aircraft like the RQ-7 Shadow and the Raven in the lowest units, keeping their ISR capability close to the commanders who will need it. "One of the greatest things we did was place the Shadow platoon in the brigade combat team in the early days," he said. "It allowed our infantry and our armor officers to realize the potential and know they owned it and know they were going to get it when they asked for it." Aviation is a complex business, prone to mishap, Carlile said, and the Army has found ways to minimize that by allowing technology in the UAS to do "what it does best." "What we found is that when the Army adapted that methodology to go toward an automated method to let the equipment do what it does best -- let it come up with automated take off and landing strategy -- what we have seen, it would shock you." The colonel said that human error accidents and incidents are now nearing the single- digit mark now. Despite successes of UAS in Iraq and Afghanistan, late in 2009 it was reported in the press that the Defense Department had confirmed that insurgents could intercept unencrypted video feeds from UAS. On Capitol Hill, Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh was queried about UAS security by Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama. McHugh said he felt confident about the current status of Army systems. "The Army greatly values, and commanders feel very strongly, about the Army's need to have these capabilities particularly at a strategic level," the secretary said. "All the services recognized that potential vulnerability early on and have reacted aggressively to it, and we feel comfortable with the systems in place." Congress hears Army won't field ineffective gear [2010-03-12] WASHINGTON -- There's still room for improvement with equipment that will be fielded to Soldiers as part of enhanced brigade combat team modernization, but equipment will not go to the field if it is ineffective. Lt. Gen. William N. Phillips, military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, told members of the House Armed Service Committee air and land forces subcommittee, March 10, that the Army wants to get technology to the Soldiers as fast as possible, but realizes some equipment that makes up Increment 1 isn't as ready as other equipment. "We know that within those packages ... each item may not be as mature as the other items," Phillips said. "We are not going to field anything that is not suitable, effective, on the field of battle for our Soldiers." The Army recently got approval from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to proceed with Low Rate Initial Production on one set of equipment. Increment 1 systems include the Network Integration Kit, the Class I Unmanned Aerial System, the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle, Urban-Unattended Ground Sensors, and Tactical-Unattended Ground Sensors. Issues with some Increment 1 equipment include noise and sensor weight, for instance. "Some of them are about almost twice the weight they should be," Phillips said of sensors in the package. He also said that the Class 1 UAV has issues with noise. "It's a noisy system that we need to reduce the decibels on the field of battle." But Philips said Soldiers like the capability the equipment provides. "The current Class 1 UAV weighs about 17 pounds, it provides a hover-stare capability," he said. "Soldiers like this system, it provides great intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability, great situational awareness of what's happening on the battlefield." The Army will conduct more testing on equipment included in Increment 1, before moving ahead with plans to equip a second and third BCT with the equipment. Eventually, a total of nine BCTs are expected to see the Increment 1 set equipment, though Lt. Gen. Robert P. Lennox, deputy chief of staff, G-8, said fielding of that technology won't happen unless it is ready. "We think we are on a path to demonstrate those capabilities -- that we can accomplish those capabilities. I want to ensure this committee that if the capabilities do not measure up, we will not go forward with those capabilities and we will not put them in the hands of our Soldiers," he said. Lennox and Philips also discussed Army efforts to address the hazards of improvised explosive devices in theater, reducing the weight of equipment on Soldiers, further development of the M-4 Carbine and efforts to find a follow-on carbine. Army to reach 1:2 dwell in 2011, vice says [2010-03-17] WASHINGTON -- The Army's vice chief of staff said by 2011, Soldiers should find themselves spending twice as much time at home station as they do deployed. "2011 is definitely a transition year for the U.S. Army -- that is a year we see ourselves getting back into balance," said Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli. "We define balance as 12 months deployed, 24 months or greater at home. That's the interim goal for us in 2011." The general told the House Armed Forces Committee readiness subcommittee March 16 that it will likely be the larger part of the Army that will reach that goal next year, but Soldiers with some military occupational specialties, such as Soldiers in aviation, might reach it later. Chiarelli was on Capitol Hill to discuss the Army's $107.3-billion Fiscal Year 2011 base and overseas contingency operations budget request for operations and maintenance. Lawmakers asked the four vice service chiefs in attendance at the hearing about the increasing cost of weapons purchases. Chiarelli said the Army is looking at weapons systems now in "portfolios" to get a clearer picture of where it may be paying for things it might not need. "If you take any single system and look at it individually, you can make a pretty strong argument that it is required," he said. "But if you take and look at them in a portfolio of common systems -- example: precision munitions -- you will find that there are probably systems that we ... made precision that don't need to be precision, or don't need to be at the numbers that we've bought them at." The general cited as an example a round for a 155mm cannon that might cost $650 dollars. Adding precision technology to that round could increase its cost, over its lifetime, to about $78,000. "It's time ... we step back and look ... at these systems in a portfolio and see where we might not be able to find efficiency," he said. The general also discussed the numbers of mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles Soldiers have for training purposes, efforts to ensure there are plenty of MRAPs going to Afghanistan, and plans to reset the MRAP after it is no longer needed in either Iraq or Afghanistan. "We have over 500 MRAPs that are in the training base today," the general said. "And at the same time we are trying to do a balance (with) what is needed downrange -- we don't have any yet that have come out of Iraq that have not been needed in Afghanistan -- even the larger models." The general said the Army is "a little nervous" about the number of MRAPs in the United States for training, versus being used operationally, but that the Army has been able so far to pull this off. He said MRAP training simulators, such as at Camp Shelby, are a "partial solution." He also said the Army is working to get more MRAPs to meet its needs. Also, he said, when MRAPs are no longer needed for Iraq and Afghanistan, they will become part of the regular Army. "MRAP vehicles will in fact be moved into our formations," he said. "We have over 3,000 MRAP vehicles that will be part of our (table of organization and equipment), particularly in combat service and combat service support brigades. And we will be establishing a number of sets of MRAPs that will be available for units that go into an environment that requires the MRAP vehicle. We do plan to reset them -- and that started the process that we are starting at Red River now." The Army initiated a pilot program to make Red River Army Depot in Texas the source of repair for three of the Army's MRAP variants. This year there will be 53 MRAPs in the program. "That is going to significantly improve the maintenance and reset of MRAPs coming back," Chiarelli said. The general also told legislators he expects the Army to be in reset for up to three years after leaving Iraq and Afghanistan. New language-training detachments preparing Soldiers for Afghanistan [2010-03-18] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers at Fort Campbell, Ky., and Fort Carson, Colo., are now taking language courses that will better prepare them to meet the demands of operations in Afghanistan. Since Feb.1, more than 70 Soldiers at Fort Campbell have studied either Dari or Pashto in advance of their upcoming deployments to Afghanistan. At Fort Carson, 270 Soldiers began learning Dari, March 8. It's expected some 70 Soldiers will begin Dari instruction in early April at Fort Drum, N.Y. The three installations now host "Campaign Continuity Language Training Detachments." The detachments are the result of a partnership between the operational Army and the Defense Language Institute. The pilot program is a direct response to requirements put forth by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan, to put more "language-enabled" Soldiers on the ground there. "His goal is to have one leader in every platoon or platoon-sized element that will interact with the Afghan population who is familiar enough with the Dari language to go beyond the 'hellos' and 'thank yous' and platitudes -- but to instead have rudimentary conversations," said Lt. Col. Stephen J. Maranian, executive officer for the Army training directorate, G-3/5/7. The three detachments were built with funding from the Joint Staff from the overseas contingency operations budget. Maranian said money is allocated already for fiscal years 2011-2015 to expand the program to more installations. Right now the DLI detachments are staffed with native-language speaking DLI contractors as the instructors, and Department of the Army civilians as local program managers. The language-training capability won't be exclusive to just the Army either, he said, but will be available to other services. The first iteration of the course at Fort Carson lasts seven weeks, because when the first day of class kicked off there, students didn't have as much time to train before their deployment. But the second iteration of classes there, along with the classes being taught now at Fort Campbell, and the classes to be taught at Fort Drum, are 16 weeks long. Maranian said 16 weeks is based on data that suggests students -- who take a course structured like the CCLTD -- can achieve results in that amount of time which will meet the theater commander's needs. "We're comfortable that at that duration, with chain of command emphasis and student commitment, we're going to get a really good product," he said. McChrystal asked, in a November 2009 memorandum, that each "platoon, or like sized organization" that will have regular contact with the population of Afghanistan should have "at least one leader that speaks Dari at least 0+ level, with a goal of level 1 in oral communications." Most students in the past who have taken a 16-week language course ended up with a "0+/0+" level of language capability -- a rating that refers both to speaking and listening capability -- but many have achieved the higher 1/1 goal. Clare Bugary, the director of operations at DLI, said the 16-week course will meet the 0+ requirement set by McChrystal, but for Soldiers to exceed that and achieve the goal of a level 1 skill, they will need to push themselves. "The key is motivation," she said. "If they want it, they can get there. And what we are seeing at Carson and Campbell now is a motivated group of Soldiers who are applying themselves." Bugary said to guarantee higher levels of language proficiency, students will need to spend more time in class. The DLI's normal Pashto-basic course is 64 weeks long, for instance. "There's no way the Army can send everybody through that." "It's an issue of time really," she said. But she added that the 16 weeks the Army is committing "says a lot" about their willingness to have Soldiers learn both the language and the culture of Afghanistan. "It's a big commitment for the Army to do that, and it's very encouraging that the Army takes the steps to incorporate language and cultural training. It's going to have a positive effect." Bugary said the language skill levels, "0+", or "1", for instance, are defined by the Interagency Language Roundtable. On the scale, a level 0 learner has "no ability whatsoever," while a level 0+ learner is "able to satisfy immediate needs with learned utterances." A level 1 student is "able to satisfy basic survival needs and minimum courtesy requirements." For this fiscal year -- which ends Sept. 30 -- Maranian said he believes the pilot iteration of language training can reach some 600 Soldiers total. "That meets the goal of the pilot and sets the stage for continued expansion of the program," he said. "We're training about 70-75 per brigade combat team, with a goal of one language-enabled leader in each platoon or platoon-sized element which has regular contact with the Afghan populace." The coursework in the CCLTDs is structured after that included in a larger Department of Defense program called "AFPAK Hands," which is a language and culture-immersion program for field grade officers, senior NCOs, and DOD civilians that includes not just instruction, but a nearly five-year commitment to a specific portion of the mission in Afghanistan. Bugary said students in the CCLTDs are learning the language alphabet and also phrases, to provide a "proficiency foundation." But she also said students will come out of the class with enough knowledge to not just repeat phrases, but to know how to replace words in a sentence to change their meaning and to have enough knowledge to seek out more knowledge -- so it's not simply reading off a card. "What you don't want to do is have them memorize sounds they don't know what they mean," she said. "They can't extrapolate meaning from what they don't know." Sam G. Garzaniti, director of the Campaign Continuity Language Program at Fort Campbell, said the classes focus first on basic listening and speaking skills before moving on to more practical applications for Soldiers in theater. Maranian added that counterinsurgency doctrine makes it absolutely essential to be able to communicate with village elders about such things as governance, economics and security. "After a month, they know alphabet and basic phrases," he said. "In the coming weeks, they will learn social, economic, and military vocabulary to assist them when partnering with and operating amongst the Afghan people." The courses also focus on cultural awareness, to help Soldiers learn to avoid the cultural faux pas that could hinder their unit's ability to conduct operations. Equally important, Garzaniti said, is that Soldiers pass what they have learned to other Soldiers in their unit. "I would hope they impart to fellow Soldiers some language, but especially culture," Garzaniti said, himself a former military linguist. Knowing how to communicate with Afghan civilians not only makes conducting operations there easier, but also helps build rapport with Afghan nationals, said 1st Lt. Robert Sagris, a student in the Fort Campbell language detachment. In COIN doctrine, relationships are key to achieving success. "Every time I've dealt with a native speaker of a language, being able to express the simplest things in their tongue goes a long way in showing we are putting out an effort and trying to relate," Sagris said. Sagris, who serves with the 426th Brigade Support Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, is a prior-enlisted Arabic linguist, and deployed in 2008 to Iraq. He's preparing now for a deployment to Afghanistan and says he knows those Soldiers participating with him in the language course are going to bring needed capability to their units. "After this course, they'll have skills and ability to do basic translation," he said. "Each and every one of these students are going to be an asset their commanders will be able to leverage. Even at the most basic level, it'll be a strong asset." Staff Sgt. Kenneth Forbus, a sniper squad leader with the 1-61 Cavalry, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, returned from a year-long Afghanistan deployment in March 2009. He's getting ready to go back. Last time he deployed, he went with "absolutely no-language skills." His experience there let him know how useful it'd be to learn the local language. "We can have some basic conversation with the locals and gain some confidence," he said. "Ninety-nine percent of your day you are on patrol -- you're not going there to fight a bad guy. There's a lot of time to interact with people -- if you could talk to them: do they have food, are they getting what they need? If you can talk to them, it's huge. You get a lot accomplished if they feel they relate to you." Forbus said he's impressed with the coursework, and with the instructors. He said he believes having learned the language will enhance his deployment experience in Afghanistan. "Now I can go there and talk to the people myself and understand them and interact with them, instead of just pulling security in the mountains," he said. "I think it'll be much more enjoyable." Army to stem overuse of prescription drugs, Congress told [2010-03-25] WASHINGTON -- Overuse of prescription painkillers by Soldiers -- as reported recently in the civilian press -- may be the result of seemingly unrelenting deployments to both Afghanistan and Iraq. Speaking before the House Appropriations Committee subcommittee on defense, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. attributed a rise in prescription painkiller use among Soldiers to ongoing conflict. It's "part of the cumulative effects of eight and a half years at war," Casey told legislators. "It's something -- not a pretty thing -- something we need to get on the table and deal with." A recent article in USA Today said that prescriptions for painkillers to military members have gone up by four times since 2001 -- from just under 900,000 in 2001, to nearly 4 million in 2009. Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh told lawmakers it is possible that Soldiers, like those in the civilian community, end up seeing multiple doctors and are in turn getting multiple prescriptions. He also noted the distinction between such a situation being deliberate or by chance. In theater, the secretary said, shopping for physicians is limited due to the concentration of Soldiers and the number of doctors available. But still, in theater, "tracking systems are not as reliable as they are here in CONUS," he said. The major concern is stateside, McHugh said. In Warrior Transition Units -- where the most wounded Soldiers reside, and the need for pain management is most needed -- the Army has made efforts to more accurately track prescription drugs. "We have established a program whereby all prescriptions in a WTU go through a single reporting source," he said. "So we have that opportunity to make sure that multiple prescriptions designed to do the same things are not finding themselves into a particular patient." He said he isn't ready to say how effective the program is now, but that the Army is moving "in the right direction." Committee members also expressed interest in the legacy left behind by Future Combat Systems, the Army's multi-billion-dollar modernization program that was canceled in June 2009. In place of the vehicles lost under that program -- which accounted for the bulk of the program's cost -- the Army is now developing a new ground combat vehicle. Casey said there is value in what is left of FCS, including equipment in the form of spinouts that will be fielded to Soldiers in 2011, in vehicle research, and in the network that tied FCS together. "The network is what gives us the ability to operate in any environment," Casey said, saying Soldiers need to know where they are, where their fellow Soldiers are and where the enemy is. "We are in a much better position from the network position because of the FCS." The general also mentioned spinouts from the former FCS, which are now packaged together as "Increment 1" of the Brigade Combat Team Modernization program. "We are getting them to a position to take them forward," he said of the equipment, which includes the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle, the Class 1 Block 0 Unmanned Air Vehicle, the Tactical and Urban Unattended Ground Sensors, the Non-Line of Sight Launch System, and the Network Integration Kits. The general said he is aware that some of that equipment has performance issues that surfaced in limited user tests, but that the Army won't be handing out any equipment that isn't ready for the field. "We found some warts on them," he said. "(And) we're going to fix those warts." It's expected the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, out of Fort Bliss, Texas, will be the first BCT to receive the Increment 1 networked systems, starting in 2011. The legacy of the FCS vehicles will also influence development of the new ground combat vehicle, Casey said. He said the Army knows where the "state of the art" is on vehicle technology because "we pushed it there." "The $15 billion or so we invested in that program over time was basically a great test bed that gave us the insights we need to move this program forward," Casey said. One of the purposes of the ground combat vehicle is to replace the 1970s-era infantry fighting vehicle, the Bradley. McHugh also told lawmakers about the significant contributions the mine resistant ambush protected vehicle is having on operations. "It's an incredibly important addition to the force structure," McHugh said, noting the challenges presented by terrain differences between Iraq and Afghanistan. He said now there are more than 1,500 MRAPs in Afghanistan, with 160 on the way. The secretary also said the MRAP is "key both in terms of carrying the fight to the Taliban and to anti-Afghan forces." He added that the MRAP all terrain vehicle, or MATV, "is the platform of the moment." Legislators also asked Casey and McHugh about Army energy security and the suicide rate among Soldiers. McHugh said energy independence -- the ability of the Army to continue to function in the absence of the civilian energy grid -- is important to the service. Also, he said, "the Army is going to be the largest fielder of alternative-fuel vehicles in the federal government. We have an aggressive acquisition program for hybrid vehicles," he said. Regarding suicide, Casey said young Americans brought into the Army often do not possess the "coping skills to deal with the challenges we're asking them to deal with." A response to that, he said, is the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program. To date, he said, some 380,000 Soldiers have taken the program's assessment to help determine their strengths and weakness in five key areas of fitness. The Army has also trained some 800 "Master Resilience Trainers." "We want to bring mental fitness up to the same level we give physical fitness," the general said. Reserve working to balance end strength, skill sets [2010-03-31] WASHINGTON -- The Army Reserve is looking to reduce the number of Soldiers it has and ensure it has the right number of Soldiers in the right jobs. Brig. Gen. Leslie A. Purser, deputy chief, Army Reserve, spoke March 30 to an audience of Reserve Soldiers during a "Centers of Influence" forum at the Pentagon. She said the Reserve needs to get its numbers down and put Soldiers in the right jobs. "We have a little bit of balancing to do -- we're a little top-heavy," she said. The current force strength for the Reserve is more than 207,000. The authorization for the Reserve is 205,000. Being above the authorized end strength costs the Reserve money, she said, so the service is using several tactics to reach its target end strength. "We're working with recruiting and retention, we're watching attrition, we're focused on non-participants and all those kinds of things to get us back into balance so that we can maintain the 205,000," she said. The general said that for the next two quarters -- the third and fourth quarters of fiscal year 2010 -- the Reserve has reduced its accessions goals by 3,000. "If we continue on the glide we are on, we will be over strength by about 9,000, according to our modeling," she said. To cut down its end strength, the Reserve is looking to drop Soldiers who aren't participating as much as they should -- particularly those who don't show up for duty when asked to. The Army Reserve has 12,000 unsatisfactory participants, she said. "That's part of our problem with shaping the force. That's a lot, and we need to get rid of those guys if they are not participating in our units -- so we can make room for people who want to serve," she said. Purser said those Reserve Soldiers who aren't showing up for drill may find themselves separated under "other than honorable" conditions instead of transferred into the Individual Ready Reserve, as in the past. Additionally, Soldiers who are doing Active-Duty Operational Support tours for longer than a year may be transferred to the IRR -- in fact, Purser said, some commanders are transferring those Soldiers sooner than a year. Also, Soldiers with insufficient time to deploy may also be separated before their date of separation, Purser said. "We no longer have Stop Loss, but if you are a Soldier in a unit that is deploying (and) you only have six months before you ETS and you plan to ETS ... we are looking at early release of those guys as well," she said. In addition to having too many Soldiers, the general said the Reserve has some changes to make in the "shape" of the force -- that means ensuring the right number of Soldiers are in the right rank and skill level. "We don't want any more E-1s now, or E-2s," she said, saying the service is bottom-heavy on the junior enlisted grades. "We want E-5s and E-6s that come off active duty that are willing to come into the Reserve and continue their careers." Purser also said the Reserve needs more Soldiers in the rank of sergeant first class. To meet that goal, Purser said the Reserve has asked accessions to reduce efforts to reach out to non-prior service Soldiers and to instead focus on those leaving the active-duty force. We want to "reach out to our active-duty brethren and figure out how to bring them into the reserve component, rather than just hanging up their career ... we want them," she said. Also, she said, the Reserve is using bonuses to drive enlistees into critical shortages. "If you offer them more money for that (military operational specialty), hopefully they will want to join, that's our thought," she said. Right now, Purser said, the Reserve is about four percent over on its authorization for E-3 Soldiers and about 23 percent over on its authorization for E-4 Soldiers. "We're about 132 percent on our skill level one's," she said. "We also have something like 132 percent of chaplains assistants, for example. And we're over by 4,000 on infantrymen." On the officer side, she said, there's too many lieutenants. But the Reserve is short on captains -- they're staffed at only 64 percent right now. And majors are also understaffed, at only 62 percent. She did say, however, that the Reserve is "fat" on both lieutenant colonels and colonels. "We have to figure out how to grow our captains and majors, and reduce our colonels," she said. Record keeping may be responsible for prescription spike [2010-03-31] WASHINGTON -- A change in record keeping methods may be partially responsible for a spike reported in prescription drug use among Soldiers, said the Army surgeon general. Department of Defense data shows that prescriptions for painkillers to military members have gone up by four times since 2001 -- from just under 900,000 in 2001, to nearly 4 million in 2009. Surgeon General of the Army Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker and Dr. Charles Rice, performing the duties of the assistant secretary of defense, Health Affairs, spoke March 24 during a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee subcommittee on personnel. They said that some of that increase in painkiller prescriptions may be due to changes in the in the way the Army tracked those on prescription drugs. The general said that between 2001 and 2006, changes in a Soldier's status, from active-duty to retiree, for instance, could change the way his prescription drug use was counted. When a Soldier retired, their entire prescription drug use history recorded in the Department of Defense Pharmacy Data Transaction Service became marked as belonging to that of a retiree -- so historical numbers for prescriptions to active-duty Soldiers were not accurately reflected. "Everything attributed to his active-duty time -- or her active-duty time -- would have disappeared from the active-duty roster," he said. In 2007, the general noted, the Pharmacy Data Transaction Service changed the way it tracks the use of prescription drugs to more accurately record actual usage. Now, a Soldier's prescription drug use while on active duty will always reflect that the prescription was written for an active-duty Soldier. "We're looking at trends from 2007 and beyond as being much more accurately reflecting the trends in use," he said. "And there is no question ... we are all concerned about the amount of use of drugs and the stress on the force that this reflects. But the increase is not quite as marked as the data would suggest there." The general also discussed Army efforts to expand "healthcare product lines," including the expansion of clinical space in 14 areas across the United States. In those places, he said, the Army is establishing "community-based primary care clinics" by leasing and operating clinics located in off-post communities that are close to where active-duty families live. "These clinics will provide a patient-centered medical home for families, an effort which is warmly embraced and resourced by all three of the medical services in the military health system," he said. The Army is also engaged in an effort to educate Soldiers about mild traumatic brain injuries, mTBI for short -- and commonly called concussions. "Army leadership is also engaged in an all-out effort to change the DoD culture regarding mild traumatic brain injury," he said. The general told senators that TBI encompasses a wide spectrum from concussion to penetrating head injuries, for instance. But the Army is focusing on concussive injury, which is the most common. "Every warrior requires appropriate treatment to minimize concussive injury and maximize recovery," he said. "To achieve this goal we are educating the force so as to have a trained and prepared Soldier, a leader, and our medical professional and personnel to provide early recognition, treatment and tracking of these concussive injuries." Also, the general said, the Army is issuing standards to healthcare providers and commanders to include an automatic "grounding" and medical assessment of Soldiers who meet certain injury criteria. "The end-state of these efforts is that every servicemember sustaining a possible concussion will receive early detection, state-of-the-art treatment, and return-to-duty evaluation with long-term digital health record-tracking of their management." More than third of equipment now out of Iraq [2010-04-05] WASHINGTON -- The Army is now 35 percent complete in its effort to move equipment and materiel out of Iraq as part of the withdrawal from that country. Lt. Gen. William G. Webster, commander, Third Army, spoke April 2 during a press briefing at the Pentagon, about the status of the drawdown in Iraq, and the buildup in Afghanistan. The Army began pulling equipment out of the country in May 2009. "When we started this operation we had about 2.8 million items of equipment in Iraq, along with 88,000 containers containing some of that equipment," the general said. The Army has also retrograded more than 11,000 pieces of rolling stock -- that is tracked vehicles, wheeled vehicles and trailers. Additionally, more than 21,000 troops have redeployed from Operation Iraqi Freedom. In all, more than 1.25 billion dollars worth of materiel and equipment have left Iraq. "We're about 35 percent through with that now," Webster said. Nearly half of the equipment coming out of Iraq has been marked to go to Afghanistan for the buildup there, Webster said. Other equipment will go back to the United States to be reintegrated into the Army, sold to foreign militaries, or disposed of. But much equipment the Army will keep, including that for buildup in Afghanistan, needs to be modified before going into the new environment, or repaired, due to excessive wear from use in Iraq. "The equipment we have has been ridden hard," the general said. Equipment is now being reset and repaired in Kuwait, Webster said. If it can't be reset there, it may go back to the United States to be repaired in depots. "We have a large team of experts from Army Materiel Command and the Defense Logistics Agency that looks at all of this equipment in Iraq where it currently sits," he said. "If the equipment is not fully mission-capable or it doesn't have enough life in it ... they will pass that equipment back to us." Webster said if the Army determines the overall cost to repair equipment is more than the operational cost, it might be scrapped. While equipment needs to be cleaned up and refurbished before going into Afghanistan, other equipment needs to be modified for the different operational environment found there, Webster said. "Some of the equipment we'll get out of Iraq does not have the latest armor on it," he said. "We may also have to change engines, suspensions, transmissions as well as adding on the latest armor before we push it forward. We're trying to get it to our troops in the best condition possible before they realize they need it." To move that equipment around in theater, the Army is depending heavily on the Northern Distribution Network set up by the U.S. Transportation Command. About 50 percent of supplies are being moved that way, Webster said. "Those northern routs have given us a great deal of relief and additional capacity if any of the routes are blocked by weather or enemy action," he said. The general said through efficiencies he expects the Army can beat its initial time estimates for moving necessary equipment into Afghanistan. "The president told us he wanted to move in there (Afghanistan) as quickly as possible," he said. "Initial estimates were that is was going to take as much as 18 months. Through the efficiencies we found and the hard work of the entire DOD team and our allies too, with all these other networks, we now will be able to move the 5,000-plus vehicles that are needed for the buildup by the end of the summer." G-8: Little risk in proceeding with technology [2010-04-16] WASHINGTON -- While in agreement with other government agencies that "plenty of work" is still needed on robotics and sensor equipment to be fielded as "Increment 1 capabilities" to infantry brigade combat teams, the Army disagrees on the way ahead with that program. "We think that there is probably very little risk in proceeding ahead of time, and we think this way primarily because we have demonstrated in the past that if a system of capability doesn't meet what our Soldiers need, we have willingly taken that off the table," said Lt. Gen. Robert P. Lennox, the Army's deputy chief of staff, G-8, during testimony April 15 before the Senate Armed Services Committee air/land subcommittee. The general said that in the past, where the Army has found that programs do not meet the needs of Soldiers, those programs have been discontinued. Examples of that include the Class IV unmanned aerial vehicle, and the Multifunction Utility/Logistics Equipment Vehicle, or MULE. "(They) didn't meet the Army's needs in a cost-benefit way, and we've taken them off," Lennox said. "And we pledge to you we'll do the same thing. If equipment is not ready to put in the hands of Soldiers, we won't put it in the hands of Soldiers." Despite disagreements with the DoD Director of Operational Test and Evaluation and the Government Accountability Office about how to proceed with procurement of such equipment as the Class 1 UAV, the small unmanned ground vehicle, and unattended ground sensors, the general said the Army agrees with those agencies that work must be done to prepare them for fielding. "They were shown to have a number of challenges both in size, weight, mean time between failures -- you'll find that we agree with the findings from DOT&E and the GAO in this regard -- that there is plenty of work to be done," Lennox said. Lt. Gen. William N. Phillips, principal military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics, and technology, said that with input from GAO and DOT&E, the Army has better understood results of testing of Increment 1 equipment and is working to improve it. "We are implementing those fixes, and technical testing is ongoing right now out at Fort Bliss," Phillips said. "We are still going though the test-fix-test scenario to make sure we can get these systems right." Phillips also said the Army wouldn't ask Soldiers to take equipment to theater if it wasn't ready. "If one of those increments, like the Urban UGS (Unattended Ground Sensors) isn't ready, then we are not going to ask to take that and field that to our Soldiers," Phillips said. "We are going to look for the right solutions." Lennox also addressed concerns that the Army's Ground Combat Vehicle, now under development, could suffer the same fate as the Manned Ground Vehicle, which was cancelled last year. The general said technologically, what must be put into the Ground Combat Vehicle is already "much more mature" than what was expected of the cancelled Manned Ground Vehicle. "I think we are farther along technologically, so we won't run into surprises, or as many surprises that would cause cost overruns and delays," he said. "I think additionally, the approach the acquisition team is taking ... the prototyping, the multiple vendors involved, I think that will keep us both innovative and on the right track." Lennox addressed senators about the broad goals for the Army's modernization plans. The Army's modernization strategy was recently approved by Chief of Staff of the Army George W. Casey Jr. The goal of that strategy, Lennox said, includes "developing and fielding affordable interoperable mix of the best equipment available to allow our Soldiers and units to succeed in today's fight" and also to win fights in the future that include full-spectrum operations. That plan for modernization includes buying new capabilities that address current capability gaps, such as creating two new combat aviation brigades, and investing in new intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities such as the Sky Warrior and the Shadow aerial vehicle. The plan also focuses on taking care of equipment the Army already has. One such example is the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior program. "The helicopter has been used extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan and ... it is an older aircraft and we are investing now in both cockpit upgrades and sensor and safety measures to keep that aircraft a contributing member of the fleet until 2025," Lennox said. Also included in taking care of equipment, the general said, is lightening the load on Soldiers, such as the outer tactical vest. There, the Army is attempting to lighten the weight of that safety item for Soldiers. "(We're) fielding plate carriers that are lighter in weight, but give the Soldiers in eastern Afghanistan in particular, better (ability) to climb the hills and deal with the altitude," Lennox said. The last aspect of modernization, Lennox said, is meeting the needs of the Army through the Army Force Generation model, or ARFORGEN. That includes equipping active- and reserve-component units the same when they deploy and are doing the same missions. The general also mentioned the Brigade Combat Team Modernization Strategy, including incorporation of MRAPs and M-ATVs into the Army fleet, incremental improvements to the Army network, fielding of capability packages to IBCTs, and the addition of the Ground Combat Vehicle. "We think we need this to provide a versatile range of capabilities that include things like force protection that we currently don't have, off-road mobility, urban operational mobility, and the space, weight and power to deal with the network and other things we need to load onto vehicles today," Lennox said. He added the Army plans to field the vehicle in seven years. Both Lennox and Phillips were on Capitol Hill to discuss modernization efforts. M-ATVs to replace Humvees in Afghanistan, vice says [2010-04-18] WASHINGTON -- The mine-resistant ambush- protected all-terrain vehicle, or M-ATV, is on its way to Afghanistan to replace many of the up-armored Humvees. "It will not be too long before we will be able to get everybody who can be out of the up-armored Humvee into the MRAP ATV," said Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli. Chiarelli spoke April 14 before the Senate Armed Services Committee readiness and management support subcommittee. The general, along with vice chiefs from the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, testified before the subcommittee regarding the current readiness of U.S. forces. The general said the M-ATV offers Soldiers more protection than the up-armored Humvee. Third Army is now in the process of moving equipment such as MRAPs out of Iraq as part of the drawdown, resetting that equipment, and sending what is needed to Afghanistan. "We have had great success getting equipment into Afghanistan thanks to the great work of Third Army," he said. While the Army isn't finished with the Humvee, it did recently announce that it has reached its "acquisition objective" for the vehicles -- meaning that it had finally received as many as it had planned to buy. The last purchase of Humvees comes to about 2,662 of the vehicles, Chiarelli said. Last week, the Department of Defense sent Congress a reprogramming request for Fiscal Year 2010. Included in that request was a $573-million reduction in the $1.3- billion Humvee procurement funding Congress initially approved for the Army. Chiarelli said with the remaining money, the Army will buy more Humvees, but he also said the Army will begin to recapitalize -- make like-new -- the Humvees it already has. Chiarelli said the Army plans to recapitalize 5,046 unarmored Humvees, at a cost of about $55,000 per vehicle, and will recapitalize 4,270 up-armored Humvees in FY 2011 at a cost of about $105-$130,000 per vehicle. The general also told senators the Army expects to reach its dwell goals for Soldiers in most military occupational specialties by 2012, but said the Army is aware that for Soldiers, it's critical that success in achieving dwell goals applies to individual Soldiers -- not to units. "The only thing that counts is individual dwell," he said. "Keeping track of an inanimate object, like a flag, means nothing. It's the individual that's critical. We do not allow anybody to redeploy that doesn't have 12 months of dwell time." One senator asked the vice chief about the increasing number of non-deployable Soldiers. The general said the reasons for non-deployable Soldiers can be attributed to the loss of "Stop Loss" in January, and also to medical concerns. "One of the reasons we've seen it go up is because the Army has taken units off Stop Loss since the first of the year," Chiarelli said. "That alone, given the fact we can only give them a 90-day drop on their contract, we have to hold onto them until they reach that point -- which drives up the non-deployable rate." Also, the general said, there are medical reasons the non-deployable numbers are rising. "After three rotations, the knee operation they needed after the first rotation won't wait until after the fourth rotation," he said. "We owe it to them to make sure they have the opportunity to be taken care of." The general said the largest increase in non-deployable Soldiers has been from those held back due to medical reasons. "It's because many of those muscular skeletal kinds of issues that arise," he said. He also said he's seen an increase in individuals that are left behind when their unit deploys. Those individuals would have recently transitioned to a unit that is deploying, and would themselves not have had a full 12 months of dwell time. They eventually deploy to their unit when they reach a full 12 months dwell, the general said. For injured Soldiers, Chiarelli said, the Army is putting Soldiers with a single disqualifying injury of 30 percent or greater into the Army Wounded Warrior program. "Of that population, 56 percent have either post-traumatic stress or traumatic brain injury," Chiarelli told senators. "We are instituting new protocols in theater that require Soldiers that are either in a vehicle that is within 50 meters of a blast or in a building with an explosion to go through an evaluation for a concussion as soon after the event as possible and 24 hours later." He said Soldiers that pass such an evaluation return to duty. Those that don't are treated by a doctor until their brain has had an opportunity to heal. Addressing post-traumatic stress, the general said the Army is concerned with Soldiers both at home and downrange. The Army is training medics to better identify PTS when it occurs downrange, and is using telemedicine to evaluate every Soldier that comes back to the United States, he said. So far, Chiarelli said, two units have gone through the evaluations, one battalion in Hawaii and one brigade in Alaska. "The results using this telemedicine are very, very encouraging," he said. The vice chief also addressed the cost of reset for the Army -- a concern for Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. In the next three years, the Army expects reset to cost between $30-36 billion, Chiarelli said. That includes close to $11 billion for both FY 2010 and 2011. The general also said that currently, active-duty components that are not deployed are equipped at a level of about 80 percent, whereas National Guard units are equipped at about 75 percent. "But critical dual-use equipment is at 83 percent and is expected to make it to 87 percent in the next six months," he said. Servicemembers become U.S. citizens at White House [2010-04-23] WASHINGTON -- Two dozen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines became citizens of the United States, April 23, during a naturalization ceremony at the White House. The event was hosted by President Barack Obama. The president was joined by Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, and Alejandro Mayorkas, director, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The servicemembers hailed from nations such as Brazil, China, Colombia, England, Ethiopia, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Kenya, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago. "It is a great honor to serve as your commander in chief and it is my greatest pleasure to be among the first to greet you as a fellow American," said Obama, following the oath of citizenship. "Some of you came to America as children, holding tight to your parents' hands as you arrived in a new world," he said. "Some of you came as adults, leaving everything you knew behind as you pursued a new life. While your stories are your own, today, we celebrate the common spirit that lives within each of you -- the spirit that has renewed and strengthened America for more than two centuries." The president told the new Americans -- each already serving the nation as members of the armed forces -- that being a citizen comes with responsibilities. "Citizenship is not just a collection of rights, but it is also a set of responsibilities," he said. "Like so many others, these men and women met their responsibilities, they have earned their citizenship." Since Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. has naturalized over 58,000 members of the armed forces, Napolitano said. "It takes a very special individual to serve and defend a nation that is not yet your own, but that is what each of you are doing, that is testimony to your strong sense of patriotism," she said. Included among those who became U.S. citizens were: Pfc. Andrew Hopeton Smith, 400th Military Police Battalion, Fort Meade, Md.; Spc. James Nyaga Muchoki, 634th Battle Support Group, Springfield, Ill.; and Pfc. Michael Z. Armstrong, 450th Civil Affairs Battalion (Airborne). "It means a lot to me -- I believe in freedom," said Smith, on becoming a citizen. "There's no better way to go if you live in this country -- I love this country. I want to be a citizen." Hailing from Jamaica, Smith has been in the U.S. for eight years. He says it was the professionalism of the Army that drew him in. Muchoki, who is originally from Kenya, said he originally served in the U.S. Air Force, but was attracted to the Army because it offered him the option to serve as an x-ray technician. He said he's been in the U.S. since 1992, and chose to pursue citizenship after getting a family and "finally settling down." "It's a very exciting day, finally, it feels like it was the last thing I needed to do," he said. Armstrong, originally from England, has been in the U.S. for six years now. His father is a member of the U.S. Air Force. He said he joined the Army "to try something new," and says meeting the president and getting citizenship was an important moment in his life. "It was brilliant, one of the most memorable moments in my life, actually," he said. Following the naturalization ceremony, the president asked Marine Corps Sgt. Ledum D. Ndaanee to come forward. Ndaanee was presented with the "Outstanding American by Choice" award. The award highlights the importance of citizenship rights and responsibilities through recognition of the outstanding achievements of naturalized U.S. citizens. Ndaanee, originally from Nigeria, joined the Marine Corps in 2004, and became an American citizen in 2007. The following 24 servicemembers became American citizens, April 23: • Pfc. Michael Z. Armstrong, U.S. Army, originally from England • Senior Airman Lenard Canlas Belvis, U.S. Air Force Reserve, originally from the Philippines • Seaman Tei Aristide Bislao, U.S. Navy, originally from Togo • Petty Officer 3rd Class Anthony Cabalerro, U.S. Navy, originally from Spain • Airman Maria-Antonette Capio Cabantog, U.S. Air Force, originally from the Philippines • Aviation Machinist Mate Perla Conception Ramos de Chavira, U.S. Navy, originally from Mexico • Petty Officer 3rd Class Rommel Cruz Cuenco, U.S. Navy, originally from the Philippines • Seaman Affeya Tiffany Christine Grant, U.S. Navy, originally from Guyana • Sgt. Therica Tameica Hutchinson, U.S. Army, originally from Jamaica • Senior Airman Oscar Gaspar Manrique, U.S. Air Force, originally from Peru • Cpl. Granger Lawrence Michael, U.S. Marine Corps, originally from Papua New Guinea • Petty Officer 3rd Class Roosevelt Joseph, U.S. Navy, originally from Haiti • Petty Officer 3rd Class Raquel De Olivera Moura, U.S. Navy, originally from Brazil • Spc. James Nyaga Muchoki, U.S. Army, originally from Kenya • Seaman Recruit Jerdaine Devon Oldacre, U.S. Navy, originally from Jamaica • Soraya Conceicao Ross, U.S. Marine Corps, originally from Brazil • Capt. Charlyston Schultz, U.S. Marine Corps, originally from Brazil • Cpl. Raul Pagaduan Sibayan, U.S. Army, originally from the Philippines • Pfc. Andrew Hopeton Smith, U.S. Army, originally from Jamaica • Pfc. Marcin Dominik Staniszewski, U.S. Marine Corps, originally from Poland • Pfc. Berhan Kifetew Teferi, U.S. Army, originally from Ethiopia • Seaman Recruit Pitrianne Natoya Williams, U.S. Navy, originally from Jamaica • Airman Yu Yuan, U.S. Air Force, originally from China • Petty Officer 3rd Class Jhonathan Zapata Garcia, U.S. Navy, originally from Colombia Network kits, vehicles prepare for limited-user test [2010-04-23] WASHINGTON -- At Boeing labs in Huntington Beach, Calif., engineers are integrating the equipment and software that forms the backbone of the Army's Brigade Combat Team Modernization effort: the network. Network Integration Kits are the centerpiece of the network component of the BCT Modernization program. The kits include both new and existing equipment as well as new software. Each part of the kit must be tested to ensure it works as expected when connected -- and engineers are doing that today. The NIK software and equipment is moved through three phases of testing and evaluation, including a phase where software is tested strictly on desktop computers -- entirely inside a virtual environment. At one lab, for instance, some 3 million lines of code are being validated to ensure their compatibility. Another testing phase puts software back onto its host hardware, where the equipment is integrated and validated in a bench environment. Finally, both the software and hardware are tested together in a real-world environment, by being integrated into combat vehicles and tested at Fort Bliss, Texas. Existing NIK components include the Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System, the Enhanced Position Location Reporting System, the High Frequency radio, UHF SATCOM, Future XXI Battle Command Battalion/Brigade and Below, and Blue Force Tracker. New components of the NIK include the Integrated Computer System, which runs the Department of Defense's System of Systems Common Operating Environment, and the Joint Tactical Radio System, Ground Mobile Radio. The JTRS (pronounced "jitters" ) GMR has up to four transceivers, each capable of running a different waveform. A single channel of the radio, for instance, can move data equivalent to 120 SINCGARS radios. The combination of ICS and JTRS GMR ties everything in the vehicle together and pushes information to the existing FBCB2 display panel. The radio also ties multiple vehicles together. The radios seek each other out, and attempt to build ad-hoc networks between themselves. In fact, the JTRS GMR ties vehicles, Soldiers, and sensors together along with anything that communicates on more than a dozen radio waveforms and communications bandwidths. The JTRS GMR handles the communications capability, the ICS running SOSCOE brings the information together, and the FBCB2 system displays results to the Soldier. "We fuse all that imagery through the Network Integration Kit and pull it together and put it on his common operating picture, the FBCB2 screen that is on all of his platforms that have NIKs," said Col. John Windall, the program manager for IBCT under PEO Integration. Imagery comes from equipment such as the Class 1 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, the tactical and urban Unattended Ground Sensors, and the Small Unattended Ground Vehicle. Additionally, information added by one Soldier in one vehicle -- such as an image of an enemy combatant, tagged with information about that enemy -- can be shared across the network by all Soldiers that need to know. "The Soldier can now see where his blue force is and the icons that represent red forces that have been in contact," Windall said. "It's really putting the data together and making it accessible. And then that network has this great range, great redundancy and capability -- it's a robust and scalable network." That robust, scalable network -- the heart of which is the JTRS GMR -- recently demonstrated an ability to network with its nearest neighbor, more than 20 miles away. "We had WNW up and it is pinging for other nodes on the network," said Jerry Tyree, director of integration, director of operations at White Sands Missile Range, N.M. "Unplanned, it joined the network with another vehicle ... about 20 miles away. And, after it joined, and they saw it joined ... they passed an image over that." Tyree said more tests need to be done to validate that extended capability -- but that "it's very encouraging, very initial ... significantly a step forward from where we have been." Ultimately, the NIKs will be installed into Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, MRAP All-Terrain Vehicles, Humvees and other Army tactical vehicles. The NIK allows equipped vehicles to pass data, including such things as imagery with Soldier-inputted annotation, voice, and both Soldier and enemy position from any of the information systems, into the network. That information can be shared across the network by other NIK-equipped vehicles. Twelve NIK-enabled vehicles will participate in an upcoming Limited User Test at Fort Bliss and White Sands so Soldiers from the Army Evaluation Task Force can test the equipment in a more real-world-type environment. Those 12 vehicles include five MRAP-ATVs, six Caiman MRAPs, and one MaxxPro MRAP. It's at White Sands where the JTRS GMR is, for now, being installed into tactical vehicles. Engineers there find ways to route cables through the vehicles and where to place the equipment. They are also faced with questions such as should the radio equipment be inside the crew compartment -- already packed with equipment on some vehicles -- or outside, where it is more vulnerable to damage. In a work bay at White Sands, a Soldier and Marine install equipment into an MRAP vehicle. The bulk of that equipment is in a rack on the outside of the vehicle, in an exposed compartment meant to hold Soldier's gear. Included on the rack is both the JTRS GMR and power supply equipment. Tyree said it's possible that some of the new equipment could be moved inside the cabs of the vehicles they serve, because the GMR actually could replace some of what's in the cab already. "There are three radios inside the cab of that vehicle now," he said. "There are some other radios in here that the GMR could really do the job of." But the inside of the MRAP cab is crowded, and Tyree said if equipment that's inside could be removed due to the addition of the GMR, and the GMR remained outside the vehicle, that would clear up room for Soldiers inside. The next step for the BCT Modernization and for testing of the JTRS GMR is the LUT in August and September. Soldiers will be hard on the equipment, said Windall, and the Department of Defense will use information from the LUT to make decisions on the future of the program. "Pretty much it's a make or break year for the program, and a LUT will inform that decision on fielding," Windall said. "But right now we are moving forward and the Army has bought the first brigade's worth of the equipment and we are putting them on M-ATVs right now." Surgeon general: Nothing to hide at WTUs [2010-04-27] WASHINGTON -- The Army surgeon general invited members of the press, politicians and especially parents and families of Soldiers now assigned to the Army's "Warrior Transition Units" to see for themselves what conditions exist there. "Come and visit. Spend a day, a week, go to formation with them. Go to treatment with them," said Surgeon General of the Army Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker. "There is nothing being hidden here." The WTUs are units set up across the Army specifically to help wounded Soldiers transition from injury back into an active Army unit or back into a productive civilian life. Schoomaker said those concerned about conditions in the units, the kind of treatment Soldiers get there, or the way medicine is practiced, should reserve judgment until they have seen it for themselves. "There should be nobody out there questioning either our motives or how we are executing this that hasn't seen it first-hand," Schoomaker said. "They need to come and see it." The press conference was held in response to a front-page article in Sunday's New York Times about the WTU at Fort Carson, Colo. The article raised questions about the amount of medication prescribed to WTU Soldiers, misuse of prescription drugs by Soldiers, possible illegal use of street drugs by Soldiers, care for Soldiers, and also levels of discipline meted out by unit cadre to those in their care. "We are concerned about over-medication," Schoomaker said, noting that pain management is reliant on the use of medication, and not just across Army medical care. "We're very concerned about our under-treating and under-recognizing pain." To address that concern, the general chartered a pain management task force a year ago to look at the problems involved in pain management and to find alternative ways to treat pain, including such things as yoga, meditation and acupuncture, for instance. "We are very concerned about that panoply of drugs that are being used and the number of drugs being used," Schoomaker said. To deal with that issue, prescription records for Soldiers are tracked Department of Defense-wide in electronic databases, he said. "We have a fairly comprehensive snapshot of all the prescription use across the Army," Schoomaker said. "And we can target that to the 9,000-plus Soldiers that are in WTUs. We know that WTUs in general, Soldiers in there, have a higher prescription drug use than not. Those are patients with complex problems." About 75 percent of Soldiers in WTUs are on some sort of prescription medication, the general added. At the WTU at Fort Carson, Colo., about 26 percent of WTU Soldiers have been prescribed a narcotic, said Col. Jimmie O. Keenan, commander, Evans U.S. Army Hospital, Fort Carson, Colo. She also said a clinical pharmacist is assigned to the WTU to monitor the medications that Soldiers are getting there. Soldier prescriptions are reconciled with primary care mangers for each Soldier, and also with behavioral health providers to ensure everybody knows what drugs Soldiers are being prescribed. "Any illicit drug use -- either illicit use of prescription medications or illegal drugs -- is a huge concern for us," said Brig. Gen. Gary H. Cheek, commander, Warrior Transition Command. "Frankly we would view illegal drug use as absolutely contrary to recovery and the progress of a Soldier moving into their future." While both Cheek and Schoomaker agree that there is illegal drug use in WTUs, they said it isn't at a rate much higher than that of the rest of the Soldier population, and there doesn't appear to be any particular drug in widespread use. "I don't sense and have feedback from across our commanders, of an extraordinary reliance on heroin or a rising use of one particular drug over anything else," said Cheek. "And I think that our Soldier drug use in WTUs is probably very closely aligned with the Army's overall average." At Fort Carson, in the substance abuse program there, about 6.58 percent of Soldiers are enrolled for opiate-related issues -- that includes heroin. At the WTU, there have been about 80 illegal drug incidences since 2008. Keenan said the units there try to minimize drug use amongst Soldiers though inspections and urinalysis. The WTU there, for instance, conducts a 100-percent urinalysis each month on all Soldiers, including cadre. Each month, four percent of Soldiers are also subject to random inspections. Additionally, the unit there conducts room inspections for contraband drugs and also maintains lists of what drugs Soldiers are prescribed, to compare against what Soldiers have in their possession. Keenan also said that Soldiers are given mandatory education on the effects of mixing drugs and alcohol. "Some Soldiers don't understand how alcohol mixes with medication, as well as other medications that they might try to take from other Soldiers," she said. Soldiers in WTUs aren't just getting treated for bodily damage -- they are getting treated for things such as post traumatic stress disorder as well. Schoomaker said that ratios between Soldiers and staff are set so that every Soldier gets the care they need, and nobody falls between the cracks. "There is prescribed interaction between squad leaders and those Soldiers for whom they are responsible," Schoomaker said. Currently, the Army Medical command has a prescribed ratio at WTUs of one squad leader to every 10 Soldiers, and one nurse case manager for every 20 Soldiers. At Fort Carson, however, that ratio is more robust than the standard prescribes. At WTUs at Fort Carson, there is one squad leader for every eight Soldiers, and one nurse case manager for every 15 Soldiers, according to Keenan. Cheek also said that the WTUs use comprehensive transition plans -- run by a social worker -- to help Soldiers develop goals for their futures. The plans are reviewed weekly, Cheek said, to help Soldiers work through each issue that can stand in the way of their goal. The WTU's goal, Cheek said, is to get Soldiers "excited about their future," and to let them know "you can have an effective and productive future." Around 9,300 Soldiers are in the Army's Wounded Warrior program now, Schoomaker said, adding that not all of those Soldiers are going to be happy with the programs the Army provides. "We don't always get it right," he said. "We take every criticism and concern seriously and continuously strive to improve our program." The general also said that Soldier surveys show that satisfaction with Warrior Transition Units is at 81 percent Army-wide. At Fort Carson, that number is at 90 percent. Army's last draftee serves four decades [2010-05-01] WASHINGTON -- Every Soldier's got a story about why they joined the Army. It could be any number of things: money, education opportunities, patriotism, travel, family tradition or even boredom. Command Sgt. Maj. Jeffrey J. Mellinger, the command sergeant major for Army Materiel Command at Fort Belvoir, Va., is now in his 38th year of continuous service to the Army. He joined for a reason few other Soldiers today can claim: he was drafted. In fact, Mellinger claims to be the last draftee on continuous active duty. "I've never left active duty since I got drafted," he said. Though others may have been drafted and have since had a break in service, Mellinger himself never left. "It is my contention that I am the only draftee still on continuous active duty." He likely didn't think he'd be staying so long back when he started out. In the early 1970s, Mellinger was a teenager in Eugene, Ore. At 19, he had a wife and a job hanging drywall. And after he paid the bills, he spent money on the same things other kids his age spent their money on: fast cars and music. Mellinger wanted more though. He wanted, initially (and perhaps even a little bit to this day), to be a Marine. His dad had been a Marine. And long before his draft notice arrived, he'd actually attempted to enlist for some of the standard reasons: money, opportunity and family history. As it turned out though, Mellinger wanted the Marines more than they wanted him -- which was not at all. They were a little too selective at the time, he conceded. "I was a kid who got into some mischief, and when I tried to join they were very selective," he said. "I wasn't a perfect child, I won't lie about that." Having no interest in joining the other services, he went back to work hanging drywall. At a time when mills were shutting down, and unemployment was shooting up, Mellinger had what he thought was a good deal. He was getting paid and supporting his wife, and it was solid work. But his stint as a drywall hanger was short-lived. The United States was still fighting a war in Vietnam, and despite the fact Mellinger had previously volunteered his services, the Pentagon wanted him on its own terms. In March 1972, Mellinger got notice the government would have him after all. "A year later, I got a letter from the president, saying 'Greetings from the president of the United States. Your friends and neighbors have selected you to represent them in the armed forces of the United States,'" said Mellinger, ad-libbing the words from his draft letter. Mellinger tried a logical appeal to the draft board, pointing out that the service hadn't wanted him when he volunteered. He also tried to explain how he had a really good job and didn't need the military any longer. His reasoning fell on unsympathetic ears. "I told them guys I have a job now, I don't need you. They said, 'That's nice, now you have 27 days to report,'" he said. By April, Mellinger was prepared to ship out for the military, though he hadn't yet learned in which branch he'd serve. It was at the Portland, Ore., processing station he'd learn what uniform he'd wear, and see one last chance to join the Marines slip away. After an initial screening to make sure "nothing was falling off," came a seemingly random process where recruits were directed to one door or another, behind which were representatives from the different services. One recruit, in front of Mellinger, had been directed to process into the Marine Corps. "He was hollering that he didn't want to be in the Marines, or go to Vietnam and die," Mellinger said. "He was making quite a show of it." And Mellinger, directly behind him, was directed to process into the Army. His appeal to swap with the young man in front of him also fell on deaf ears -- the processing station, he said, was all about efficiency. "The sergeant standing there...told me basically shut up, get in there, and that was the end of it," Mellinger said. "And here I am." With that, he shipped out to Fort Ord, Calif., to be converted from civilian to Soldier, and begin a two -- year term of service in the Army. "I didn't know anything about the Army -- other than (what) any other kid (did), you know? You heard stories when you're growing up and you knew what you thought you knew," he said. "But nobody that has not been in the service really understands what happens in the service." Mellinger said he learned what all the other Soldiers learned: some discipline, how to make a bed, how to shine boots and how to clean the barracks, for instance. He also learned that, contrary to what anybody else might have been lead to believe, he, as a draftee, didn't feel he was any less a Soldier than those who had volunteered for service. "When I was in basic training, the notion was that all draftees wanted to do was get out as quick as they could, that they were the troublemakers and so forth," Mellinger said. "I remember the draftees that I went to basic training with did everything they could to not get in trouble and to not draw anybody's attention. All they wanted to do was serve and go home. There is nothing wrong with that." Still, the Army made a distinction between volunteers and draftees, Mellinger said. Soldiers who were drafted were "US" Soldiers. Those who had enlisted were "RA" Soldiers, for "regular Army." "When you hit the chin-up bars before you could go eat, you had to count off 'one US, drill sergeant!' I don't understand the method to that madness," he said. "It always seemed to me that the draftees, as soon as they announced that they were a draftee, ended up going to the end of the chow line." Also at the chin-up bar was an opportunity, Mellinger said. Eventually, recruiters from the Army Rangers and Army Airborne showed up, looking for recruits -- of either the US or RA variety. "They stood at the chin-up bars and eyeballed everybody, and pulled people off to the side, based on, I guess, how many chin - ups they did," he said. The Airborne recruiters were speaking Mellinger's language when they offered an additional $55 a month on top of his $288 monthly Army salary. As a drywall hanger, he'd been making as much as $1,200 a month. Going into the Army meant a significant pay cut for him -- so much so his wife had gone back to live with her parents. "How do you support yourself and a family on $288 a month in 1972?" he asked. "You can't live on that kind of money." Being Army Airborne meant both opportunity and money for Mellinger, though he admits, even with the money, had it not been for a few of his fellow recruits who also showed an interest in Airborne training, he might not have gone himself. "Me and eight other guys signed up to go Airborne," he said, "But come the day to ship out to Fort Benning, I asked, 'You guys are going with, right?' They said 'No. Naw, man. We changed our minds.' If I had known that earlier, I probably never would have gone either, 'cause I was ambushed and didn't have a chance (to back out)." Following Airborne training at Fort Benning, Mellinger took his first Army assignment as a unit clerk in Germany. There, he first experienced an Army that stands in sharp contrast to today's professional service. "Like much of the rest of the Army, we had huge drug problems and racial problems," he said. "That's a mild understatement -- we had leadership problems." Mellinger said he knows other Soldiers, Soldiers older than him, who might disagree with his assessment of the situation then. "But from where I sat, as a private through sergeant in my first two years, we had leadership problems, we had drug problems and we had racial problems," he said. Some blamed Vietnam. But Mellinger said that not all who had those problems had gone to that war. Instead, Mellinger said, the Army was a reflection of society, which had the same problems prevalent in the Army and the other services. "The Soldiers coming in, the Sailors, Airmen and Marines, reflected society," Mellinger said. "And society in the late '60s and early '70s had drug and racial problems." It was leadership that would clean those problems up. Leadership, Mellinger said, that is responsible for things like morale, proficiency, esprit de corps and discipline. "I got a new first sergeant, actually a sergeant first class," Mellinger said. "And a new company commander that had been a company commander before." The new leadership had been "chartered by the commander of the forces in Europe to go in and get that unit cleaned up," Mellinger said. "Over the course of my time in that unit, I saw that company commander do the hard right thing over and over again," Mellinger said. In 1974, as Mellinger approached his separation date, that same commander, one he said he still communicates with to this day, was instrumental in encouraging him to continue his service. It was then, after the conflict in Vietnam had ended, that then Gen. Creighton Abrams created the 1st Ranger Battalion. "The company commander, he told me about it," Mellinger said. "He said, 'You need to re-enlist.' He and the first sergeant convinced me that the Army wasn't all bad -- that there (were) good places out there and good leaders and, 'If you go to this Ranger unit, you'll like it.'" Mellinger relented, deciding to stay in the Army and join the 1st Ranger Battalion. But by the time the paperwork was completed, the new battalion was full. Mellinger declined a subsequent invitation to join the 82nd Airborne Division. "In those days, 82nd had a pretty awful nickname. They were called 'The Jumping Junkies,'" Mellinger said. "They did not have a good reputation in those days." A phone call from a noncommissioned officer in Washington, D.C., got his attention though. "I thought, that's a big deal -- it's like getting a letter from the president saying, 'We want you in the Army,'" he said. "He said, 'We got a second Ranger battalion forming at Fort Lewis. I'm going to send you there.' And of course, I was a sergeant and I said, 'Well, if you can't send me to the first one, I don't want to be in the second one.' I was a little hard-headed, but I ended up going to the 2nd Ranger Battalion." Mellinger spent five years at the 2nd Ranger Battalion, 75th Infantry, out of Fort Lewis, Wash. He served as a unit clerk, battalion personnel staff NCO, machine gun squad leader, rifle squad leader, rifle platoon sergeant and weapons platoon leader. His re-enlistment to join the Rangers marked the beginning of Mellinger's voluntary enlistment in the Army. He was no longer a draftee -- at least not technically. And that wasn't the only change, he said. As he left Germany, Mellinger said, he saw the beginnings of change in the Army -- change that re-emphasized leadership and discipline. A new culture was developing, one that put more responsibility on the shoulders of the NCO, and equipped the NCO to handle that responsibility. "The Army, like the other services, recognized they had to do something to get back on the right track," Mellinger said. "We started doing equal opportunity training. We started alcohol awareness classes and drug awareness classes. Discipline and standards started getting reinforced. It really took leaders (who) were determined that they weren't going to take it anymore." He said the Army wanted control of the barracks and formations again, so leadership started putting rigor and discipline back into the Army. "There was a lot of focus on NCO education, on officer education, and how to do the right thing," he said. "It wasn't easy and it wasn't overnight. It took a number of years. It was probably into the early '80s -- a good 10 years after the end of Vietnam -- before you really started seeing a lot of competence and excellence in what units and Soldiers were doing." Units like the 82nd Airborne Division, the 101st Airborne Division, the XVIII Airborne Corps and the Rangers, were all key in seeding change across the force, Mellinger said. They were elite units that forced Soldiers to compete for slots. "Those units had a different kind of opportunity, because they had people that really wanted to be there," he said. "They were able to tighten up discipline and standards much quicker than the rest of the Army, certainly." Mellinger was part of the Rangers and saw firsthand the kind of excellence early on that he said would eventually infect the greater Army. "I had a really prideful time in my life where I was in that Ranger battalion when it formed, and I got to see it grow and stand up and help change the world around it," he said. "I reflect back to 30 years ago, when we had lots of goofy mustaches, and hair over the ears and everything else. And over time, what started out being a point of ridicule -- the Ranger haircut -- became the standard for the Army." And the NCOs there, he said, foreshadowed the NCOs of today's Army. "The NCOs I saw were experts at their craft," he said. "They knew how to shoot, move, communicate, secure, sustain -- if you wanted to know how to do a raid or an ambush, you wanted to know how to move cross country from point-A to point-B and hit a target -- these were the guys that knew how to do it." As a younger Soldier, Mellinger said, he had experienced NCOs who were victims of their own weaknesses: a platoon sergeant who he said was "a drunk;" a squad leader who was also a drunk; even the mess sergeant was a drunk. "There was a lot of drinking," he said. To be fair, he also said, early on there was competence too. "There were some good and caring NCOs. It was a mixed-bag in the early 1970s." But the Rangers -- that's where "I found a whole different kind of NCO," he said. Those NCOs were mostly combat veterans, as were the officers. "They made an effort to only bring combat veterans in that understood the ramifications of poorly trained Soldiers, and the benefits of trained Soldiers," Mellinger said. "It was a night-and-day change from when I was in Germany (to when) I was in 2nd Ranger Battalion." Today's NCOs, Mellinger said, bear greater responsibility than those who came before them. "The NCOs we have now have far more responsibility -- much tougher challenges than anything we've had in the past," he said. "When you look at the kinds of things we put on those sergeants -- a platoon leader today is doing stuff that a major, maybe 10 years ago, might have been given. We have got to give them that trust and responsibility. We can't get the job done without it." For his part of the equation, Mellinger said he's always tried to be the best NCO he knew how to be, and to be a champion for enforcing standards, maintaining discipline and emphasizing the importance of providing Soldiers with ongoing, meaningful training. "If you are disciplined and aggressive in training, you will be that way in combat," he said. "I am serious about what I do, and I take training, discipline and standards very seriously. I have, for years, seen the results of indiscipline. I came from that Army." And he said as a learned NCO, he tries to make sure that young Soldiers know everything they need to know to succeed in the Army, so they can later teach their own successes to future Soldiers. "I believe in taking care of your Soldiers and that means helping them set the conditions to be successful, and making sure they are doing the right things at the right time to grow and learn professionally," he said. "Having been a sergeant a long time, a sergeant major a long time, I know far better than you what you need to do to be successful." Sometimes, he said, that means jobs that don't seem the greatest at the onset: recruiter duty or drill sergeant, for instance. Mellinger himself had been a drill sergeant, though initially reluctantly. "You'll take that hard job -- you have to get out of that comfort zone, because there's things you need to do to grow," he said. "Otherwise you stagnate and become part of the problem and not the solution, part of the past, not the future." Mellinger's been in the Army for almost four decades now -- technically, enough time for another Soldier to have been born, graduated from high school, enlisted, served and retired. But he soldiers on. His career has taken him throughout the U.S., and to Japan, Germany and Iraq. In Iraq, he served for 33 months as the command sergeant major for Multi-National Force-Iraq. Being airborne-qualified, he has more than 33 hours of accumulated freefall time in more than 3,700 jumps, and is a Federal Aviation Administration master parachute rigger. When he thinks about the guys he knew before he was drafted, he said he's unlikely to remember them. And he expects they'd have long forgotten about him. What he does remember though, are the Soldiers. "Those are the people I think about," he said. Moving through his office at Fort Belvoir, Va., Mellinger will show you mementos of his career as a Soldier. There are buckets of coins, an assortment of patches, and pieces of military hardware, mounted to boards burned with unit insignias. There are countless unit photos, and even a mobile-like a wind chime, hanging above the small conference table in his office. It's made of pieces of surgical metal that'd been in his leg from a service-related injury. But it's memories of Soldiers he's met and served with that he'll spend the most time talking with you about. It's the mementos that represent people other than himself -- Soldiers he's worked with and has known -- that have him recounting anecdotes in a hushed voice; stories about people he thinks are heroes. "'Kentucky National Guard Soldiers receive Distinguished Service Cross,'" he says, reading a news clip he's kept in one of the many binders in his office. "That's huge. I've seen the video and after-action report from that battle. I've stood and talked with those Soldiers. I was there the day we presented the Silver Star to Sergeant Leigh Ann Hester and Sergeant 1st Class Timothy Nein and the rest of that squad, and listened to their stories." Mellinger said he'll stay in the Army as long as the Army will have him, so he's not really sure when he'll retire. "I have been unbelievably privileged to serve this nation for as long as I have," he said. "I know there will be a point when they say, 'That's it, times up. Grab your duffle bag and get on home.' Until that happens, I am only thinking about one thing: Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines." Thinking back over his career, Mellinger recalled the commander he'd had in Germany -- the one who'd been challenged to get the unit into shape. "I hope somewhere that first company commander I had is proud of me," he said. "I hope I've never done anything to let him down, or that first sergeant. Just as I look back on some of the Soldiers I've had who have done well -- it makes you proud that you were able to show them something to help them be successful. That's really a huge part of leadership. It is about the Soldiers, it's always about the Soldiers." Soldier aiming for gold at Warrior Games [2010-05-03] WASHINGTON -- He'll have a tough time swimming -- and shooting -- and he's got stiff competition from his training buddy. But Sgt. Robert W. Laux wants to take home some metal and recognition from the Warrior Games in Colorado. "To have a gold medal around my neck -- to have some of the Paralympics (people) recognize me," said Laux, outlining his hopes for the competition. "I don't know if I'm going to qualify for them or not, but just to have some people kind of recognize me and my abilities, and that I'm actually somewhat good. Like an athlete. Like a real Olympian." Laux, assigned now to the Warrior Transition Unit at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., is participating in the first-ever "Warrior Games," May 10-14, in Colorado Springs, Colo. He'll compete in the "Ultimate Warrior" competition. The games are a joint effort between the Department of Defense and U.S. Olympic Committee to inspire recovery, capitalize on physical fitness, and promote opportunities for growth and achievement among wounded, ill, or injured servicemembers. Laux will be one of an estimated 200 servicemembers to participate in the games, about half of which are Soldiers. Laux, a 28-year-old infantryman, was struck by an improvised explosive device Nov. 18, 2007 while on patrol in Yusufiyah, Iraq. He served then with the 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. "A really small IED went behind me -- I was dismounted -- so I had nothing protecting me but myself and it basically just got my left arm," Laux said. Laux's left arm and hand -- once his dominate arm -- is still attached to his body. He said he hadn't expected to keep it after the IED blast. "At first I thought the arm was gone -- the arm was -- no more left arm. Done. I had no thought I'd have it at all," he said. But doctors found the faintest pulse in there, Laux said. And that was enough for them to push through and save it for him. It's taken some 62 surgeries to get him where he is today. "They did one hell of a job to save this arm," he said. His left arm sustained nerve and tendon damage from the blast. It still moves and still does a few things for him but it isn't his dominate hand anymore. He's got to depend a lot on the other arm now. He can't bend where his wrist used to be, his elbow doesn't flex as far as it used to flex anymore, his arm doesn't rotate except at the shoulder, and his fingers don't grip or close nearly as good as his right -- they remain open, like a claw. "This is open. This is closed," he says, demonstrating the current use of his once dominate hand. The two positions look remarkably similar. "I really can't do much with this hand. Yes, I can grab like a cup. I can pretty much pick up anything, but if you ask me to do anything with it, that becomes really difficult, since I don't have a lot of movement with the fingers at all." He soldiered on through the injury though, and focuses now on intense training for the Ultimate Warrior competition at the games, which involves running, sprinting, swimming, shot-put and air rifle. "I'm training every day -- every single day. I love to train, I love to get better and better every day," he said. "We're training a lot harder now and getting my times down a lot better, and training in a lot of more and different sports that I thought I never could do. Swimming is my hardest thing. It sucks but it's fun at the same time." Laux said the swimming is tough for him, because his left arm has difficulty delivering power to move him forward in the pool. "I really can't cup the water and use a lot of power," he said. But Laux says what motivates him most is his training partner, Sgt. Rob Brown, also a wounded Soldier, and also competitor for Laux in the Ultimate Warrior competition. "My competition is pretty damn hard," Laux said of Brown. "He's a freaking machine. He's my biggest competition that I know of, even though we are both in the Army. He basically kills me in everything we do. We're basically like together all the time -- he's doing swimming like me, he's doing the track events like me. We're pushing each other. He's right there with me. Most of the time he gets me -- and some of the time I beat him on his off days. It's a constant battle." Laux said despite his injury, he wants to stay in the Army, and stay in the fight. And he hopes he can do that as infantryman -- out in the field with his fellow Soldiers. "I really want to make this a career -- 20 years," he said. "I want to be out in the fight. I'm an 11B and the 11B is still in me." XM25 lets Soldiers eliminate targets they can't see [2010-05-07] ABERDEEN PROVING GROUNDS, Md. -- The Army's Program Executive Office Soldier showcased some of its products May 5 at the Aberdeen Test Center here. Among those products were the XM153 Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station, the M2 .50 Caliber Machine Gun with M2E2 Quick Change Barrel Kit, the lighter weight M240L Medium Range Machine Gun, and the XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System. Lt. Col. Christopher Lehner, program manager for individual Soldier weapons at PEO Soldier, demonstrated the XM25 airburst weapon. The system launches 25mm programmable rounds which can explode over a target. If the Soldier "wants to get that round in the window ... what's he's able to do with the high explosive round is he's able to laser designate the building and the round will then fly through the window and explode inside the room," Lehner said. Aboard the XM25 is a laser rangefinder that can measure the distance to the target and place an adjusted aim point on a targeting screen. The system then allows Soldiers to choose to over-shoot the measured distance so the round will explode inside the building. The targeting computer programs the round to explode at the designated distance. The system allows Soldiers to hit targets they cannot see, because they are hiding behind walls, inside buildings or behind natural obstructions. Special operations forces will be the first units to use the XM25. Maj. Sean Murray, assistant product manager for individual weapons, discussed the M26 Modular Accessory Shotgun, which can be held individually or mounted under an M4. It allows for the firing of lethal, less-than-lethal or door-breaching rounds. The rifle's door-breaching capability was demonstrated on a free-standing framed door set up on the test range. With one shot, the lock mechanism was destroyed and the door was easily kicked open. Murray said the optimal distance for performing a door-breech operation is about three inches. The shotgun has a slider tip at the end that pulls out to the correct distance, so Soldiers don't have to guess. It's expected the first units will be equipped with the M26 this summer. The M320 Grenade Launcher attaches to the bottom of an M4 or M16, and can also be configured as a stand-alone weapon. It attaches or detaches from a weapon with no special tools required and includes a side-loading breach for longer 40mm low-velocity projectiles. The system also includes a day/night sight and a handheld laser rangefinder for the grenadier. The system is designed as a replacement for the M203. "The 203 has been a great workhorse for us, but in the M320, we've got a more reliable, more accurate and safer weapon system," Murray said. The M320 was fielded to units in 2009. On the M240L 7.62 Medium Range Machine Gun, Murray said the system is one of the best in the world. It's "the most reliable machine gun on the battlefield -- bar none -- nobody else in the world has a machine gun just like this," he said. The weapon is about five pounds less than the 240B, which the Army has fielded for 20 years now. But the M240L has "no decrease in reliability or maintainability," Murray said. The M240L has a titanium receiver, instead of steel, and also sits on the M192 Lightweight Ground Mount -- a new tripod that weighs seven pounds less than the previous tripod for the weapon. "As part of our initiative we're trying to get the Soldier's load lightened up and in this case we've shaved off 12 or 13 pounds from the original configuration," he said. Aboard the CROWS -- a remotely controlled weapons system that mounts above a vehicle -- is the addition of a "green laser" that can temporarily blind targets, said Maj. Michael Pottratz, assistant product manager for crew-served weapons. "It's a non-lethal hailing device, that crosses cultural and language barriers on the battle field, enabling Soldiers to stop or halt or warn civilian on the battlefield," he said. The system can be used at checkpoints to warn civilians to stop, for instance. "It temporarily disrupts the individual's vision and safely warns them." Having the light shined into your eyes is "like looking at the sun for just a couple of seconds," said Pottratz, who has been exposed to the light before. Pottratz also explained improvements to the M2 Machine Gun -- the original design has been used by the Army since 1933. Additions to the weapon include the M2E2 Quick Change Barrel Kit which allows Soldiers to remove a hot barrel quickly and not have to readjust and set headspace and timing. A demonstration showed that when fitted with the kit, the barrel on the M2 could be changed in a little over 18 seconds. "During the heat of battle, the difference between these weapons systems is night and day," Pottratz said. Thermal weapons sights, including the AN/PAS-13(V)1 Light Weapon Thermal Sight, the AN/PAS-13(V)2 Medium Weapon Thermal Sight, and the AN/PAS-13(V)3 Heavy Weapon Thermal Sight were also displayed. The sights serve weapons from the M-16 rifle to the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon and the M2 machine gun. Matthew Hunter, an operation specialist with PEO Soldier Sensors and Lasers, talked about the capabilities of the sights, saying they provide targeting indicators for Soldiers and visual aids to help identify the distance of objects through the sight -- for instance, lines indicate how tall a five-foot man would appear or how large a ten-foot tank would be though the sight. The sights also display information about the weapon they are attached to, and indicate remaining battery life. Hunter said the sights fit a variety of Army weapons and employ interchangeable reticules so users can move between weapons systems. While Soldiers can see targeting lasers and aiming lights with the naked eye, the thermal sights cannot. However, those targeting aids are visible with the ENVG Enhanced Night Vision Goggle, which fuses both infrared and thermal images. Sgt. 1st Class Lang Gureckis, who has served 26 months in Iraq and 9 months in Afghanistan, said devices like the ENVG add greatly to mission capability. "In Afghanistan it made a big difference," he said. "You can sit there on a mountain top ... and actually, if you can see a heat source a kilometer or a kilometer and a half away ... you can scan, as opposed to looking with night vision where you are only going to see somebody when they are like 200-300 meters away from you. It makes life a whole lot easier. We use the lightweight thermal weapons sights to the same effect. You can see far distances with them and actually tell what you're looking at, whether it is a guy with an AK47 or a guy with a blanket around his shoulders." There are plans to enhance the ENVG with improved image processing capability and also to include the ability to import and export digital information, such as data files and maps. The ENVGs are currently fielded to units in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers invited to tell their unvarnished stories [2010-05-13] WASHINGTON -- The Army accession command is releasing this week "version 3" of their blog, "Army Strong Stories." What they need now are more Soldiers to sign up to populate the site with real-world insight and perspective about the Army. "Our efforts are to try to have bloggers and Soldiers tell their stories -- there are such wonderful, rich, content-filled stories about what the American Army is doing," said Lt. Gen. Benjamin C. Freakley, commander, Army Accessions Command, during a media teleconference, May 12. The general's primary concern, he said, is to shed light on the Army so America's youth have the real story about what happens with those in uniform. "This is not a pitch -- this is an awareness," he said, regarding the intent of the site. "This is not necessarily a recruiting tool -- it is a tool to help tell stories." Freakley said recruiters often talk about the future and about possibilities with the young people who visit their offices. The "Army Strong Stories" website will contain stories about what is happening now. "The recruiter talks about if you join the Army," Freakley said. But the bloggers on the site "are telling their Army story. They are not talking about what might happen, they are talking about what is happening -- and I think the people ought to hear that. There is always friction in the Army, and not every day is sunshine and roses. People need to understand that. I think it helps with the expectations." The Army uses websites like armystrongstories.com, and commercial online resources such as Twitter, MySpace and Facebook to make its messages available to an audience that was born into a world already using the internet. Those individuals, Freakley said, are comfortable communicating online, are comfortable using the tools that are available online, and many times are making decisions based on the information and opinions they've been exposed to while online. "We know that over 49 percent of the U.S. internet users 18-24 years old, share advice offline and in person, based on information they read online," Freakley said. "They want that verifiable information about what they are looking at to make a decision. And what could be a more significant decision than to join the U.S. Army -- to serve our nation, especially in a time of conflict?" Right now, there's about 166 bloggers participating on the site, Freakley said. So far, about 800 entries have been posted -- each is available for comment by visitors. The site gets nearly 30,000 visitors a month. Freakley said he hopes more Soldiers will come to the site and sign up to tell their stories. The site, he said, is not really edited or screened. Soldiers are free to post what they want, their own perspectives -- he only said that when Soldiers post they remember operational security and the Army values. He said getting Soldiers unvarnished stories out to the public is good for the Army -- and telling those stories can also be good for the Soldiers. "When people hear what you've done in combat, especially our younger Soldiers, and then talk to you about that in the comments that are posted back -- I think there's a healing that goes on,' he said. "It validates what people are doing." Joint service open house visitors get up-close with Army [2010-05-15] JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md. -- At the far end of the busy flight line here: the sci-fi-looking hanger where Air Force One is housed. At the other end, thousands of military family members and school groups were entertained during an exclusive preview of the 2010 Joint Service Open House. The 2010 JSOH ran May 15-16 at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, right outside Washington, D.C. This year's open house featured the Army's Golden Knights parachute team, the Air Force's F-22 demonstration team, and the Army's "Virtual Army Experience." The Navy's Blue Angels also performed. The traveling Virtual Army Experience involves a life-size simulation of a convoy operation, housed entirely inside an inflatable tent. Participants man life-sized combat vehicles, such as a Humvee or a UH-60 Black Hawk, and shoot electronic M-4 rifles at screens that feature enemies that fire back. "Shooting from a helicopter is the most inaccurate thing I've ever done," said Chas Thibault, one of the civilians who went through the VAE early Friday morning. Thibault graduated from high school last summer in Maryland and has recently been taking classes at West Virginia University, where he studies criminology. He's no stranger to the military; he's got friends in the service already and his dad is in the Air Force. Though he said he's not sure the VAE would get him to enlist, he did say he thinks it'll help people become more educated about the Army and that it gives participants an appreciation of the difficulty of a Soldier's job in a convoy operation. "It's a good realization of how hard things can be, what they have to go through," Thibault said. "And we as Americans actually should help Soldiers out no matter what has all been said. They are the ones that are sacrificing." Aaron Alfrey, a former Army sergeant and infantry team leader, now works as a civilian manning the VAE. He said the team tries to give participants as real of an Army mission experience as possible. "We do the whole thing just like we would in the Army," he said. "We bring them in, give them a briefing about the mission they are getting ready to go on, and then give them an operations order." He also said the former Soldiers brief participants on themselves and their own military backgrounds. The simulation lasts seven minutes and involves something much like a convoy operation -- shooting, bad guys, enemy territory. That's followed by an after action review -- just like in the Army. "We talk to them about what they did right and what they could improve upon. We try to give them a little experience of what it's like to be a Soldier," Alfrey said. "Everywhere we go we are having people come out of the experience with a new-found respect for the Army. I think it's working pretty well." When participants leave the VAE they run in to Staff Sgt. Jermarcus Nettles -- an archetype drill sergeant: lean, quick witted, exuding confidence, and wearing a sharp-looking uniform topped with a characteristic campaign hat. He's got high school-aged boys -- and some girls -- lined up to do pull-ups. "What we do is travel around, really talking to high school kids and really trying to clear up some of the misconceptions and things out there about what really goes on in basic training," Nettles said. "We just try to make them feel a little more comfortable about what they will experience if they decide to join the Army." Primary among the concerns of would-be Soldiers is the exact level of meanness of a drill sergeant. "The biggest thing that the high school kids are concerned with is that all the drill sergeants do is get in your face and yell at you and belittle you," he said. "We let them know they are going to get disciplined. It's just like your mother would tell you to clean your room and if you don't do it she's going to discipline you. But it's not about just yelling -- it's about teaching them how to become a Soldier and instilling that pride and that teamwork." Visitors to the open house also get to see, touch and crawl over some of the Army's "toys," including an M-1A2 Abrams tank, a Stryker infantry carrier, and an M-2A3 Bradley. Spc. Brian D. Heiston, in the Army now for three years, manned the Bradley display. "We're showing the public and other military services all about the Bradley," he said. "The most frequently asked question is does it have air conditioning." He said the particular vehicle he was showcasing to the public did not in fact have AC. But others did, like the ones he rode in during his deployment to Iraq in 2008-2009. The Friday open house involved military families and a lot of school groups -- dozens of young boys, maybe six or seven years old -- crawled in and out of Heiston's Bradley, up into the gun turret and through the narrow passage that leads from the troop compartment to the driver's seat. Their 60-pound frames, weighing in at less than some of the equipment loads Soldiers carry on their backs when riding -- moved easily though the vehicle. They seemed less than interested in how the Bradley performs in combat or how safe it is. "They are getting to see a toy to them," Heiston said. "It's the older ones who ask questions and learn something." One of the things Heiston said he hopes civilians learn about the vehicle, in addition to playing inside it, is that the vehicle is actually pretty safe. "I hope they know it's a more safe vehicle than what they hear on the news," he said. "They say they hear it gets blown up all the time. But actually, it's a really safe vehicle." Heiston also wants visitors to know that safety starts with training, and that Soldiers -- like him -- are well trained by the Army to do their jobs. "Soldiers aren't thrown into a vehicle," he said. "They know what they are doing and they spend a lot of time training up for these vehicles. They are not thrown in -- oblivious -- and go to Iraq that way." It remains to be seen how many of the youngsters will one day don the Army green, but Heiston said a few of his young visitors look the part. "Some. Perhaps," he said. Near the Bradley, was an M-1A2 Abrams tank, manned by Cpl. Nathan Dutch. He's been to Iraq with the tank, and was well-equipped to answer questions from the open house visitors. "There are a lot of questions -- is this thing real? Yeah, it's real," he said. "When it's done here it'll go to its unit." Like the Bradley, and all the Army hardware on display, there was a lot of touching and exploring, Dutch said. "We hope they take something away -- they see tanks in the papers and the movies and everything. But it's a shock to see it in real life," Dutch said. "We hope to educate them a little, so they have a better understanding of what we do." Dutch said he wants the civilians he meets during the three-day open house to know that Soldiers love their jobs -- at least he does. "In my opinion, it's the best job out there," he said. He also said he thanks visitors for making the United States a great place to come home to after a deployment. Visitors, he said, often thank him and his Soldier buddies too. "We get a lot of that," he said. "It makes you feel really good inside. It makes everything worth it." Information about the 2010 Joint Service Open House at Joint Base Andrews can be found at http://jsoh.org. Army issues instructions for painting M16s, M4s [2010-05-19] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers already have uniforms that blend them into their surroundings. Now there's instructions on how to have a weapon that blends in too. In April, the Army released instructions on how Soldiers can apply spray paint to their M4 or M16 rifle, without decreasing the effectiveness of either the weapon or the installed optics. "The Army has always had techniques to camouflage the Soldier ... we have techniques for the Soldier and the equipment," said Col. Douglas A. Tamilio, project manager for Soldier Weapons, Program Executive Office Soldier. "We found in Iraq and Afghanistan that Soldiers were starting to paint their weapons. It wasn't really approved or disapproved for them to do that." Tamilio said the Army worked with the Army Tank-Automotive and Armament Command as well as the Army Research, Development and Engineering Center to put together the instructions. The resulting document, "Maintenance Information Message 10-040," is titled "Camouflaging Specific Small Arms." It focuses on where to apply tape to protect sensitive areas, what areas should not be painted, and what kind of paint to use. "It just shows Soldiers how you tape your weapon up before you go to spray it," Tamilio said. "We are just trying to make sure the Soldiers don't do the wrong things with their weapons. So we make sure we don't reduce the reliability of our weapons system." The new MIM explains the rationale behind why Soldiers would paint their rifles. "Warfighters must be able to conduct tactical operations while reducing/limiting detection by the threat," the message reads. "Camouflage paints provide for reduced visual detection and enhanced warfighter survivability via neutral, non-reflective, and predominantly non-black colors." Additionally, the message explains, the color black is "highly infrared reflective" and it can also "provide a high degree of visual contrast when carried by camouflaged uniformed warfighters." The instruction goes on to explain the materials a Soldier would need to clean his rifle before painting, the types of paint he can use and where to procure them, where to put masking tape on the rifle to protect sensitive parts, and how remove the camouflage after it is no longer needed. To protect the inside of the barrel from receiving paint, for instance, the message tells Soldiers to "take a foam ear plug and insert it in the front of the barrel using firm pressure. Do not use a cleaning rod or any other tool to do this." On actually applying a camouflage pattern to the weapon, the message suggests Soldiers have a plan in place beforehand, and that their design focus on effectiveness rather than beauty. "Remember, most great camouflage is not pretty," the instruction reads. "The goal is to blend your weapon in with the environment in which you are operating. If you are operating in an environment that just has light tan sand, then just paint your weapon tan with limited black breakup ... This procedure's purpose is not to impress. Its purpose is to provide safety and another tool in defeating the enemy." While the Army has provided an official guide on how Soldiers can paint their rifles to provide camouflage in an environment where camouflage may be needed, Tamilio said the instruction is not permission for a Soldier to paint his weapon. Permission, he said, comes from a unit commander. The instruction is simply a guide on how to proceed if a commander gives that permission. The full MIM 10-040 instruction is available online at https://aeps2.ria.army.mil/commodity/mam/tacom_wn/mim10-040.html. In order to access that document, Soldiers will need an account with Army Knowledge Online. A more abbreviated version of the instruction, with photos, is available at https://peosoldier.army.mil/docs/blog/weaponspainting101.pdf. Army hits 1 million flight hours with unmanned aircraft [2010-05-27] WASHINGTON -- The Army recognized a milestone of 1 million hours of flight for unmanned aerial systems, May 25 at the Pentagon. Several UAS vehicles were on display in the courtyard of the Pentagon to officially mark the event. Those vehicles included the MQ-1C Extended Range Multi-Purpose UAS, the RQ-7B Shadow, and the RQ-11B Raven. According to the Army Unmanned Aircraft Systems Project Office, Army UAS actually surpassed one million flight hours April 14. Of those hours, 88 percent were flown in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the project office, the RQ-7B Shadow flew nearly half of those hours, with 478,350 hours to its credit. Col. Gregory B. Gonzalez, the project manager for unmanned aircraft systems, said that since the Army began really experimenting with UAS, a lot has changed. "Acceptance of unmanned aircraft systems was not immediate," he said. "Upon their introduction into the Army inventory, unmanned aircraft were met with some levels of skepticism and doubt. But after initial inefficiencies were overcome and improvements were made, these doubts turned to acceptance." Today, he said, there is increased demand for those UAS, and the Army flies more than 220,000 unmanned aircraft hours each year. "Each hour represents not just time, but time well spent," Gonzalez said. "Perhaps, most importantly, UAS flight hours (are) time well spent keeping Soldiers safe, finding and killing our enemies and collecting information that will lead to future successes." Those hours also represent lessons learned, and changes in how UAS are used in the Army. Chief Warrant Officer Anne M. Thrush said UAS employment in the Army has gone from an obscure military unit operating an unmanned system where operating units didn't "understand how to use the information or process the information that was being provided to them," to a battlefield today, where "commanders incorporate UAS from beginning to end in their operations, often not wanting to conduct critical missions without their UAS support." Thrush worked early in her military career with the RQ-2 Pioneer UAS, and later on with the RQ-5 Hunter system. She also served as an instructor and standardization operator and also spent six years at the UAS schoolhouse. Gonzalez said the Army has learned that the best way to exploit the capabilities of technology like unmanned aircraft is to give it to Soldiers. "The key has always been to get the equipment into the hands of Soldiers," he said. "As the systems are utilized more and more, the ideas just blossom from there." Staff Sgt. Charles Cannon, a Shadow UAS operator out of the 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, at Fort Riley, Kan., said flying the UAS provides him real-time feedback on how his contribution to the fight can change the mission. "I think it's great we get to see how we are affecting the mission," Cannon said. "We can see we have saved this guy's life, because we provided the information he needed to act prior to being attacked." Cannon also said he sees how commanders react to the information he can provide with the UAV he flies. "We watch how the battlefield changes based on what we are finding and what we are providing," Cannon said. Tim Owings, the deputy project manager for unmanned aircraft systems, said he believes the future of Army UAS is secure. "Because they have been so well integrated into the Army, I cannot imagine the Army going to fight without these systems ever again," Owings said. The future of Army unmanned aviation includes developments such as high-definition cameras and signals intelligence packages. "There's really no shortage of ideas ... of what we can do with the Sky Warrior system or any of the other systems, in terms of where we are going to go with them," Owings said. Army implements strategic plan to improve safety [2010-06-01] WASHINGTON -- The "101 Critical Days of Summer" campaign, which began on Memorial Day, and the larger National Safety Month observation during June, provide opportunity to focus on the goals outlined in the latest version of the Army Safety and Occupational Health Strategic Plan that was released in February. The plan lays out four broad goals to provide a strategic vision for safety across the Army, said Tad Davis, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for Environment, Safety and Occupational Health. First among those broad goals is the incorporation of safety and occupational health into Army culture. "We want to reduce complacency -- for folks to take the same careful attention they do every time they get in the car, the vehicle, the helicopter or every time they make a parachute jump," Davis said. "What we want them to do is assess the risks associated with the action they are going to take and take the proactive measures." Ensuring proactive and systematic management of risk is also important. Davis said that means leadership makes it part of their organizational routine to continually look at and identify ahead of time the risks of the workplace. That includes off-duty time, and combat or contingency operations. They can then use what they have identified to find ways to minimize that risk. The Army has a cadre of safety professionals, Davis said, who must manage the Army safety and occupational health program efficiently and effectively. That too is a goal outlined in the plan. "Our safety professionals in particular are providing tremendous dividends for our Soldiers both at home when they are in garrison doing training and preparatory activity, and when they forward deploy on contingency operations," Davis said. Ensuring career paths, career planning and training for those professionals is important, Davis said. Also important to safety program management is the process of fielding a single reporting system to the entire Army that will assist leaders and supervisors at every level in doing a better job of reporting accidents when they occur. Until now, the Army's had as many as eight systems for accident reporting, Davis said. Finally, the reduction of the accident and illness rates in the Army is a very broad goal included in the plan. That goal is accomplished through programs at every installation and organization within the Army, Davis said. "The Safety Center down at Fort Rucker has developed a host of leading edge initiatives in the areas of privately owned vehicles and driving safety to motorcycle safety in particular" to further the Army's accident reduction goals, Davis said, adding that there's good feedback coming from those programs. There were 299 accidental fatalities among Soldiers in fiscal year 2005; that number dropped to 240 in 2006, rose slightly to 250 in 2007, dropped again to 210 in 2008, and then dropped again to 173 in 2009. So far this year, there are 99 accidental fatalities in the Army -- less than the number of deaths at the same time each year since 2005. "We're doing better now than we did last year, not by much, but I think that we'll continue to show progress," Davis said. Of the 99 accidental deaths so far in fiscal year 2010, 27 have been on-duty deaths and 72 were off-duty. Davis said that the number of on-duty accidental deaths is stabilizing and that the number of off-duty accidental deaths in the Army is decreasing. The largest number of those off-duty deaths this year are from accidents in privately owned vehicles -- and those numbers are broken down by vehicle type: 28 from sedans, 16 from motorcycles, and 11 from other vehicles such as vans, SUVs, mopeds or all-terrain vehicles. "The motorcycle area is one where we spend a lot of time and effort," Davis said. "We have seen a big push at every level within every organization that really focuses on motorcycle safety. There are a lot of Soldiers that ride motorcycles." Davis said that Army efforts for motorcycle safety focus on training and certification for Soldiers to ride motorcycles. To ride a motorcycle on an Army installation, for instance, a Soldier must have first taken a motorcycle safety course. The Army also has programs to pair new riders with more experienced ones. "A lot of time when you're dealing with motorcycles, one of the key factors there with fatalities is experience," Davis said. Other large risk factors involve non-motorcycle POVs. "There's two things: speed and seatbelts," Davis said. "As we look at the accident reports that come in, it just shocks you that probably in the range of 25 to 35 percent of those fatalities involve Soldiers that weren't wearing their seat belts." For on-the-job safety, the Army is also making efforts, including aviation safety and ground safety. On-duty safety can be improved with training, Davis said. One such example is with the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle program. The Army is working to designate more MRAPs for training purposes so Soldiers can learn about them before they deploy. "We're working to get the MRAP out at home station training and also the combat training centers so Soldiers will have the opportunity to enhance their driving skills and become more proficient in operating these vehicles," Davis said. The same efforts were made for the up-armored Humvee, three to four years ago, Davis said. Those vehicles were top-heavy, and training was needed to help Soldiers learn to deal with that and to know what to do in a rollover. "They would enhance crew coordination when you have a rollover and we just had more of the vehicles that were available at home station, installations and combat training centers for Soldiers to actually drive and become proficient in operating," he said. Crew coordination continues to be an essential element of aviation activities, Davis said. And the Army has also increased training for high altitude operations, in light of the high altitude conditions Army aviators operate under in Afghanistan. Another big factor in safety, Davis said, is leadership and peer-to-peer engagement. "Soldiers themselves can really help one another, whether it's preparing a mortar round to be fired or setting head space and timing on a .50-cal machine gun -- everybody is watching one another," he said. "At the end of the day, if the headspace and timing is not set properly, it could injure not only the person firing but other people." Soldiers can also ask themselves over the summer if drinking a six-pack of beer is a good idea before boating or getting on a jet ski. Or if it's safe to take a 12-hour drive after working a 12-hour duty day. Davis said the impact of the loss of even one Soldier is far-reaching. "Whether he was a member of a fire team, a Bradley crew, a tank crew or some other team, it can have a devastating effect," he said. "And not just from a readiness standpoint -- by not having a Soldier there -- but there is an impact on the mental readiness of other Soldiers as well. They've lost somebody who was a member of the team, the Army family -- it's hard to recover from that." Cyber command to unite network defense efforts [2010-06-02] WASHINGTON -- A new Army command will soon be responsible for defending Army information networks from threats around the globe. The new Army Forces Cyber Command will be responsible for defending all of the Army's information networks, said Maj. Gen. Steven W. Smith, director of the Army Cyberspace Task Force. The new command will reach full operational capacity before Oct 1, 2010. "The mission for ARFORCYBER is to direct the operation and defense of all Army networks, and, on order, conduct full-spectrum operations in support of our combatant commanders and coalition partners," Smith said. The general said the command will operate in the "cyber domain." That domain includes such things as the laptop, desktop, routers, servers, network switches and both the short- and long-distance connections between Army information systems. He also said that domain can include the networked systems aboard Army combat vehicles. "Anything with an IP address," he said. The ARFORCYBER command will be built by integrating existing Army cyber resources, not by creating new ones, Smith said. NETCOM/9th Signal Command and portions of the 1st Information Operations Command will be subordinate units to ARFORCYBER, for instance. Additionally, the Intelligence and Security Command will be under the operational control of ARFORCYBER for cyber-related actions. While each of those units currently performs cyber-related missions, Smith said integrating them under one command provides an increased benefit for the Army. "Today, we have individuals and teams and units doing the cyber fight -- but they work for different people," he said. "At the Cyberspace Operations and Integration Center at Fort Belvoir, for instance, all of these forces will work for one dedicated command whose primary mission is to direct the operations and defense of the network. This clearly brings that unity of effort." The center is a 24/7 operation, the general said. "That is the front line of defense for defending the Army network worldwide." The ARFORCYBER command will be built using existing facilities and existing manpower, so no new construction will be required, Smith said. It is also not expected that the Army will need to recruit new Soldiers, civilians or contractors to man the 21,000-person command. Smith also said the new command will be headquartered at either Fort Meade, Md., near the headquarters for U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, or at Fort Belvoir, Va. A lieutenant general will be chosen to lead the command. Army seeks balance with rapid acquisition [2010-06-04] WASHINGTON -- The difference between rapid acquisition and traditional acquisition can be as much as six years or more. The rapid acquisition process allows the Army to bypass some of the rules, policies and procedures associated with acquisition for large projects and to get them into the hands of Soldiers quicker, said Lt. Gen. William N. Phillips, military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology. He spoke May 27 at an AUSA Institute of Land Warfare breakfast. One example he used was the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles - which took about 12 months to field, and the MRAP All-Terrain Vehicles took about 15 months to field. With the Ground Combat Vehicle, which will go through the traditional acquisition process, Army officials say they expect to see prototypes of that in seven years. "Really it's looking at what is value added in the review process," he said. "What brings value and then what doesn't add value to the process. So you can shorten the length of time." Phillips said that when the Army does rapid acquisition on a system, it looks to see where efficiencies can be gained to speed technology into the hands of Soldiers. "As you look at that process where you do a program like that, how could you gain efficiency? And as you gain efficiency, ensure you have the same level of effectiveness on the back end without missing anything that is required," he said. Nevertheless, with rapid acquisition, there are points that get overlooked and that must be dealt with afterward, Phillips said. "Those 12,000-plus MRAPs we have, today there is really not sustainment," he said. "We are working though the challenges of sustaining those MRAPs over time. And the Army is looking at how many will remain in the inventory, because it is not a program of record. " Brig. Gen. Mark Brown, deputy for acquisition and systems management, said with rapid acquisition, the Army can deliver good performing systems, but must question the cost. "What is the balance between due diligence ... thinking the whole problem through and knowing all the answers before you move out (and) speed, which is do it now, do it today get it out there and have discovery and learning after the fact," he asked. "The systems we put out there fast are very good performers, but every day we are discovering things we didn't think through when we pushed them out," he said. "We seek every day to find that right space and I think by and large we do a good job. And we could do a better job and we owe that to our share holders." Chaplain remembers Tiananmen Square on anniversary [2010-06-05] WASHINGTON -- It was 21 years ago, June 4, 1989, that Americans watched footage on television of a line of tanks in China's Tiananmen Square stop just short of running over a student protestor who was bold enough to stand in their path. That day, known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, was the last of a nearly two-month long series of protests by Chinese students and citizens, who were unhappy with the communist Chinese government's policies. They wanted freedom. Chaplain Yan Xiong, now a captain in the U.S. Army, and stationed at the Warrant Officer Career College at Fort Rucker, Ala., was there in the square. In fact, he was one of the students that kicked off the protests. "I was the first man to stand out and make a speech," Xiong said. That was April 19, 1989. "Then I was studying at Beijing University law school. We organized a self-government of students. Independent of the communists. That is the first independent student organization. So then we have a demonstration. Every day we would go to Tiananmen Square." Xiong said that at the time, he was young and idealistic. He wanted to make a difference. And his youth propelled him forward -- because he said he was too young yet to have fear. "At 23, as young men, we just wanted to do something," he said. "We had no fear. We didn't think about the results, or what would happen. We didn't think of that. We just needed freedom, freedom of association, freedom of expression, freedom of religion. We just had the courage to do what we wanted to do." On May 13, Xiong and other student leaders initiated a six-day hunger strike. He was among the student leaders that negotiated with Prime Minister Li Peng, in Beijing, to end the strike. When June 3-4 rolled around, tensions at Tiananmen Square were high, and the military was called in. Xiong said there were many deaths, and that the numbers vary from place to place. He carried bodies to the hospital, and says more than 3,000 were killed, though the communist government claims it was only 500 who had died. "The Chinese government has beautiful propaganda," Xiong said. "They say 'we are a government of the people, we are serving the people, we are the best government, we love the people.' We are young students and we believed that -- until they opened fire." Less than 10 days after the massacre, Xiong said, his name and the names of other students, were blacklisted -- on TV, in the papers, on fliers. He was captured just hours after he was named by government officials as one of the 21 "most wanted student leaders." By June 14, he was in Qincheng Prison, just outside Beijing. That was a facility for political prisoners, built in 1958 with the assistance of the Soviet Union. He would serve 21 months there. He said at the prison it was constant confinement, no fresh air, no meeting with other people. It was, he said, books, anger, and faith that he was not in the wrong that carried him through. "At that time, I'm 23 years old," Xiong said. "Full of energy -- angry -- ambitious. We would read a lot of Chinese literature and poetry. And we had anger. We wanted to do something for the future, and we had confidence we did nothing wrong -- because we are not criminals." It was after leaving Qincheng Prison in January 1991 that Xiong first encountered the faith that would change him from political prisoner in China to Army chaplain in Alabama. "Two months later, about the middle of March, there happened a miraculous opportunity. I met a young man by chance who was an underground church member," Xiong said. "He had brought with him many sources of spiritual nutrition, including the word of God, the Bible." Xiong said for many months he struggled with the Bible, studying it and other Christian spiritual books, trying to gain a better understanding. "After several months of this daily study time, a miraculous thing occurred within me," he said. "I would no longer believe ... as I had been taught that religion was superstitious and that human beings were evolved from monkeys, which is the Communists' view." By June 1992 he was fortunate to be smuggled out of China, to Hong Kong. And it was not long after that he arrived in the United States, as a political refugee. He first set foot in the Los Angeles airport June 16, 1992, two weeks before the 4th of July. "I went to a park and celebrated that first 4th of July celebration," he said. "I saw American people, their beautiful smiles. They were relaxed. The park was clean. The fresh air. The dog. It was a really free society. Compared with China, where they are scared. They watch people, have fear there. That is the real freedom of American people: there is no fear in their heart. They can relax, they can smile. They can have ideas and an open mind. It is really different from Chinese society. That is freedom." In the next 19 months, Xiong was baptized into Christianity. "After I became a Christian, I knew the real freedom, from God," he said. He also opted to defend American freedom, and enlisted in the U.S. Army, serving time as a personnel specialist at Fort Jackson, S.C. That was a decision driven partly by anger from what he had seen in China, partly by his desire to better learn English, and partly to serve America. "Freedom is not just a word," he said. "it means to contribute, to do something for the world and make other people free, that is what freedom means." Xiong served 19 months in the military as an enlisted man and was able to leave the Army to return to school, ultimately serving a total of 8 years in the Reserve component. After his departure from the Army, Xiong attended school, eventually graduating from the Gordo-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts. In 2003, he accepted a commission into the Army, this time as an Army chaplain. Since then, he has served a tour in Iraq, beginning in March 2004. "When I serve with Soldiers, especially in Iraq, we really knew our Christian faith -- it really works, it makes sense," he said. "Especially in the battlefield -- I do my best to encourage the Soldiers to share the faith." Xiong is married to a Reserve Soldier, and the two have two children, 12-year-old boy and 10-year-old girl. This week Xiang was in the nation's capital to meet with lawmakers and to commemorate the 21st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. He spoke Thursday evening in Falls Church, Va., about his experience in China and his spiritual journey. While at this time hhe is not allowed to go back to China, Xiong said that were he allowed to go back one day to that country, he would bring faith to those there he says need it most. "The main thing they need, of course, is they need food," he said. "But they need the truth. They need the gospel. They need to know Jesus Christ as their Lord, so they can turn into the truth, to God. That is what they really need, the Chinese. Otherwise they live in darkness. If I can do that, I want to be a preacher -- to go back as a missionary." IG reports prompt management changes at Arlington National Cemetery [2010-06-10] WASHINGTON -- The Army announced management changes at Arlington National Cemetery today after revealing findings of unmarked gravesites, improper handling of cremated remains and discrepancies in burial records there. Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh announced the creation of an executive director position for the Army National Cemeteries Program, as well as the creation of the Army National Cemeteries Advisory Commission. Those changes came as a result of findings in two inspector general reports about management and operational activities at the cemetery. During a press conference at the Pentagon, McHugh discussed the final report of an IG special inspection of the cemetery. That inspection was directed by McHugh's predecessor, Pete Geren, in August 2009. He also discussed the results of an IG investigation of the cemetery, directed by him, in November 2009. "The majority of the findings ... are both deeply troubling and simply unacceptable," McHugh said. He said the inspection report renders 76 separate findings and makes 101 recommendations. The findings "determined the improper interment and transinterment of remains, to include the loss of accountability of remains, graves listed as empty, unmarked grave sites, improperly marked graves, and improper handling of cremated remains," the secretary said. "That all ends today." The secretary also said the IG reported that the cemetery's mission was hampered by "dysfunctional management, a lack of established policy and procedures, and an overall unhealthy organizational climate." As a result of the findings in the two IG reports, McHugh appointed Kathryn A. Condon as "Executive Director of the Army National Cemeteries Program." She previously served as the senior civilian at Army Materiel Command. Second, the secretary announced establishment of an Army National Cemeteries Advisory Commission and said former senators Max Cleland and Bob Dole will begin the work on that commission. The two are both Army veterans. McHugh said the commission will "act as an independent oversight authority to provide a regimented review of all near- and long-term activities at Arlington." The special inspection included five assessment objectives: policy and procedures; management, administration, and training; synergy of command and leadership structures; compliance with Army information assurance requirements; and contracting procedures. The secretary said the investigation focused on "significant allegations" about the cemetery operations, including a "hostile work environment," inappropriate hiring practices, improper interment and transinterment of remains, including non-compliance with internal regulations policies and accountability. On announcing the findings of the two reports, McHugh apologized, on behalf of the Army, to the families of those buried at Arlington. "There is simply no excuse," he said. "On behalf of the United States Army, on behalf of myself, I deeply apologize to the Families of the honored fallen, resting in that hallowed ground, who may now question the care afforded to their loved ones. To the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States, to all citizens of this great nation who believe as I did that Arlington National Cemetery is the most sacred place on this planet, the Army owes better. The secretary acknowledged that he is "unable to explain the past," but can make promises for the future. "The U.S. Army will take every step necessary to fully ensure that every challenge, and every need at Arlington is clearly understood and effectively addressed." The current superintendant of Arlington National Cemetery, John C. Metzler Jr., was formally reprimanded by the secretary for "failure to properly execute oversight and management responsibilities to ensure ANC conducted its interment operations in accordance with applicable laws and policies." Metzler has elected to retire, and will continue at his post until July 2. McHugh directed him to report now to Condon "for the duration of your service," and requested that he assist Condon "to ensure a seamless transition." The deputy superintendant of the cemetery has been placed on administrative leave, pending a disciplinary review. McHugh: Focus must shift to 'generating force' [2010-06-14] WASHINGTON -- The Army's system for producing agile, adaptive, creative Soldiers is strained by nine years of war, said the service's secretary. Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh spoke June 11 during a breakfast hosted by the Association of the United States Army's Institute of Land Warfare. He spoke about challenges faced by the Army's "generating force." That is the system of organizations and structures within the Army responsible for turning civilians into Soldiers, and later for developing those Soldiers into leaders. McHugh cited a memo written in February by Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, Training and Doctrine Command commander. In the memo, Dempsey explains that TRADOC is suffering manning shortages that result in not enough experienced and well developed leaders to teach less experienced and less developed Soldiers. It's the demands of the "operational force" -- those fighting now on two fronts for nine years -- that is consuming that expertise and hampering the generating force from developing strong new Soldiers. "We have to recognize that after some nine years of war, the fact is our institutional ability to produce that creative Soldier has started to fray," McHugh said. "Our ability to train and equip those ready forces for the current fight, while taking care of the Army's Family, has been severely tested." In his memo, Dempsey said TRADOC authorizations for military and Army civilian personnel have decreased. That manning has been filled with contractors that has resulted in a "de-greening" of the force. The general went on to write TRADOC is competing with the operational force for experienced officers. It's those officers, Dempsey said, that have the "field-tested knowledge and credibility to teach, coach, and mentor the officers following behind them." McHugh said the Army must now put a new emphasis on the generating force, to ensure it can continue to produce the Soldiers the Army needs. He said the Army must ask itself if the "generating force of today is properly structured, properly balanced to produce and support the agile the adaptive and creative Soldiers and leaders so integral to the success of today as well as tomorrow's mission." McHugh said that in the past, efforts have been made to affect improvements in the generating force. There have been studies and programs, he said, "some good and progressive and positive things." For a variety of reasons, he said, those efforts were "singular in their attempts." Now, he said, it's time for a "holistic approach, a better way forward." McHugh reminded those in the audience -- including Soldiers, and defense industry representatives -- that it is well trained Soldiers who win America's battles, more so than the equipment Soldiers use. "One of the reasons this Army has been so successful is because ... we always will do everything we can ... make every investment that's required to field the best equipment, the best weapons, the best platforms for our men and women in uniform," McHugh said. "But ... Army's success on any future battlefield will be answered at least as much, if not more, by the creativity, the agility, the level of intelligence of our future leaders, as it will (be by) whatever that new weapons system may look like." Nett Warrior to connect Soldiers to each other, leaders [2010-06-15] WASHINGTON -- The Army christened the new Ground Soldier System June 14 with a name that honors World War II Medal of Honor recipient Col. Robert B. Nett. The system, now in development, will be lighter and more advanced than the current Land Warrior Strike system now being used by a brigade in Kandahar, Afghanistan, according to officials at Program Manager Land Warrior. The next generation of the system will now be called "Nett Warrior." The Army made the naming announcement during a ceremony in the Pentagon's Hall of Heroes on the Army's birthday. Col. David W. Riggins, program manager for Soldier Warrior, explained why his team chose to name their system after Nett, who earned the military's highest award for valor. "One of the things we discussed ... was that we knew we wanted to maintain a warrior ethos, "Riggins said. "We knew we wanted to honor a great American hero. We knew that we wanted it to be a maneuver leader. This is a leader system -- to make them more effective. So it was a pretty easy choice." Nett's son, Dr. Robert B. Nett Jr., spoke at the ceremony and relayed insights about his father -- who he called "pappy" -- that revealed a man who was a Soldier to the core. "I remember helping my dad put his medal around his neck," Nett Jr. said. "He'd say a prayer and give credit to his men. He said he was only a representative of their actions." Nett Jr. said once, as a child, a school teacher had asked her students how many would eat with them for their Christmas dinner. Nett surprised her when he told her it would be in the hundreds. "We always ate with my father's Soldiers who could not go home to their families," Nett Jr. said. "Dad taught me the greatest experience in life was the privilege to serve," he said. Nett, who died in 2008, enlisted in the Army in 1940, at the age of 17. He served until 1978, and attained the rank of colonel during his service. It was because of his actions during World War II, while serving as part of the Philippines Campaign, that he was awarded the Medal of Honor. On Dec. 14, 1944, Nett was serving as a lieutenant in the Philippines. He served as part of Company E, 305th Infantry Regiment, 77th Infantry Division. Nett commanded Company E in an attack against a reinforced battalion of Japanese that had held up the American advance for two days. Nett led the assault against the enemy soldiers. While engaged with the enemy, Nett managed to kill seven Japanese using his rifle and bayonet. Despite being seriously wounded, he continued to lead his Soldiers. He was wounded an additional two times while attempting to achieve their objective. "He calmly made all arrangements for the resumption of the advance, turned over his command to another officer, and then walked unaided to the rear for medical treatment," reads the Medal of Honor citation. "By his remarkable courage in continuing forward through sheer determination despite successive wounds, Lt. Nett provided an inspiring example for his men and was instrumental in the capture of a vital strongpoint." Nett Warrior is a system worn on a Soldier's body that will provide "unparalleled situational awareness" to Soldiers on the ground. The system includes a radio, a helmet-mounted display and a hand-held data input device. The wiring for the system is integrated into a protective vest. With Nett Warrior, Soldiers will be able to see their location, the location of their fellow Soldiers, and the location of known enemies on a moving map. "What this system will mean is they are never lost, never out of reach of their buddies," said Riggins. "They are able to adapt to dynamics of changing ... combat, and able to share all that information about all aspects of their mission in order to cut through that fog of war." Mal O'Neill, assistant secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, said Nett Warrior brings to ground-pounders what the F-22 Raptor brings to pilots and the M1 Abrams brings to tankers. "You look at something like the F-22 and the Abrams tanks and you say these are decisive weapons -- as soon as the bad guy knows he's going to be flying against an F-22, he doesn't even want to leave the ground. Same thing with an enemy tanker going up against an Abrams tank -- he's not going to have a good day," O'Neill said. "We need to make the U.S. Army Soldier and Marine decisive weapons, and the way you do that is you use Net Warrior," O'Neill said. "There is no reason in the world why ... a Soldier can't know everything that is moving within a kilometer and he and his leadership can figure out what to do about that thing." O'Neill said that Nett Warrior should field to Soldiers around 2013. He said the system is meant to be used at fire-team level, tying most junior Soldiers to leadership at squad level. The Nett Warrior system will be integrated into a protective vest that carries armor plates, but the technology only adds about five pounds atop an equivalent protective vest. Additionally, the battery-powered system will be designed to run for about 24 hours on a four-hour charge. "Nett Warrior" will be the common name of the system, which maintains the official nomenclature "Ground Soldier System Increment I." System development was awarded to three separate competing companies. Each of the three companies delivered 60 systems which are undergoing developmental testing. Five Soldiers charged in murders of Afghans [2010-06-17] WASHINGTON -- Five Soldiers have been charged with the premeditated murders of three Afghan civilians. Charges were filed against Pvt. 1st Class Andrew Holmes, 19, of Boise, Idaho; Spc. Jeremy Morlock; Spc. Michael Wagnon, 29, of Las Vegas, Nev.; Spc. Adam Winfield, 21, of Cape Coral, Fla.; and Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, 25, of Billings, Mont. All five Soldiers are assigned to B Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. That unit deployed to Afghanistan in July 2009 and is now processing to return to the U.S. According to the charge sheets issued for each Soldier, Morlock, Gibbs and Holmes are accused of the premeditated murder of the Gul Mudin, sometime in January 2010. The charge sheets indicate each Soldier used fragmentary grenades as well as their rifles to kill Mudin. The charge sheets also accuse Morlock, Gibbs and Wagnon of the premeditated murder of Marach Agha, Feb. 22, 2010. In that case, the Soldiers are accused of using their rifles to kill Agha. Finally, the charge sheets indicate that Morlock, Gibbs and Winfield are accused of the premeditated murder of Mullah Adahdad, May 2, 2010. There, the charge sheets indicate the Soldiers killed Adahdad using both fragmentary grenades as well as their rifles. All of the murders occurred at or near Forward Operating Base Ramrod in Afghanistan. Both Morlock and Gibbs have additional specifications on their charge sheets. They are accused of unlawfully striking an individual, May 5, using both their hands and feet. Morlock is also accused of spitting in that individual's face. Wagnon has also been charged with attempting to impede an Army Criminal Investigation Division investigation by taking a hard drive and asking another Soldier to erase it. Currently, four of the five accused Soldiers are being held at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash. The fifth, Gibbs, was in confinement in Kuwait as of June 16. It is expected he will arrive at Joint Base Lewis-Washington by June 17. A spokesman from JBLW said it is likely the cases of the accused will be heard there. Of the five Soldiers, two have been accused of three specifications each of article 118 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice - murder. The remaining three have been accused of one specification each of article 118. The maximum punishment for violation of article 118 is death. The last active duty Soldier to be executed under the UCMJ for murder, was John A. Bennett, in 1961. Veterans recall smells, cold of Korean War [2010-06-25] WASHINGTON -- War stinks. According to one veteran of the Korean War -- which started 60 years ago today -- it stinks specifically like coal and kimchi. Richard Whittle stood June 23 before an audience at the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington, D.C., to tell his story based on memories of the Korean War. He called his story "Coal Pile and Smellin' Kimchi." Whittle said he arrived in Pusan, Korea, Jan. 31, 1953. He was assigned then to a railroad unit in the engineering section. "My job was to push coal in a pile as it was being unloaded," he said. "But that only lasted for a short time, until I learned to operate the crane. Then they gave me a crew of four and we worked seven days a week, around the clock, keeping the steam engines rolling, carrying supplies and troops to where needed." At night, he said, North Koreans flew suicide missions overhead. "If they saw a light from anything below, they would drop a bomb in that area." He said it was rumored the bombs were homemade and "no two were alike." And the planes, he said, weren't much better. "Their flights were a one-way trip, and when they ran out of gas they crashed," he said. The armistice between the north and south was signed in July of that year, and Whittle said work at the rail yard increased after that, due to exchanging of prisoners of war and transporting of the wounded. "The rail yard was full of steam engines, hissing and smoking and being parked for hours," he said. The smell of the trains, along with the existing smell from the coal piles and the native food, kimchi, "was something to behold." "They had this one item they boiled, fried and stewed -- it was eaten from the cradle to grave," Whittle said. "Once it was cooked, it had a garlic-like smell. I don't like garlic." The smell was everywhere, he said. "It really stinked. With all these odors, it's really something you will never forget." Whittle's story was one of more than a dozen told on stage at the AFRH as part of a program called "Do You Remember." The program was produced by the Double Nickels Theatre Company. The program featured war-time stories read aloud by the former servicemembers themselves or by stand-ins. Their varied military experiences included stories from World War II, Vietnam and the Korean War. William Tobin, also a Korean War veteran, was a Sailor aboard the USS Mt. McKinley in September 1950, when that ship sailed from Kobe, Japan to Inchon, South Korea. Also aboard the ship at the time was General of the Army Douglas MacArthur and his staff. Tobin said he remembers gossip passed to him by the radio room aboard the ship. "It seems that even though the crossing from Japan to Korea ... had been relatively quiet, our illustrious passenger -- five-star General of the Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur -- had been incapacitated by a case of sea sickness," Tobin said. "After hearing this we all felt a little better, by knowing that the omnipotent one, praised as a god by the Japanese who he helped after defeat, was in reality just like the rest of us -- human after all." Another Korean War veteran, Richard W. Robinson, didn't get a chance to tell his story on stage, though he attended the presentation by his fellow servicemembers. Originally from Union City, N.J., Robinson retired from the Army as a sergeant major in 1971, after having enlisted in 1948. He said his mother and father both died when he was young, leaving him without parents at just 16 years. As his two older brothers had gone off to serve in World War II, he stayed at home to take care of his younger sisters. "When they came back, they took over -- I was sort of reckless, and I left school and went to join the Army," Robinson said. "My brother was my guardian and he signed the letter so I could get in." At only 17 years old, Robinson was stationed at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, N.Y. He'd signed up in 1948 for a total of two years. But by 1950, the war with Korea was on and his enlistment was changed for him. "With the war going on, they added another year to us," he said, adding that he took the opportunity to extend his enlistment even further -- to six years. He also took a transfer to Camp Stoneman, Calif., where he worked as a clerk processing Soldiers back from the Pacific theater. In February 1952, he found himself in Korea, first at a "repo depot," or replacement depot, in Tageu. He said at the depot, they fell out every morning and the sergeant there would hand out details. "One morning we fell out and he said 'can any of you guys type'" Robinson said. "Four of us stuck our hands up." It turns out, the personnel staff at 8th Army headquarters, rear, was behind on their paperwork and needed help. "Who wanted to go up on the front?" Robinson said. He eventually secured a permanent position with the 8th Army HQ. One that eventually took him to Seoul. There he worked nights at the Adjutant General's classified message center. Life in Seoul at the time isn't what it is for Soldiers now, but it wasn't as bad as what Soldiers had at the front line, Robinson said. With a general as the commander of their unit, he said, living there was good. "We had a cot. And with the houseboy, we got local mattresses and sheets and hot water and hot food," he said. A friend of Robinson's served with the 25th Division on the front lines, and paid him a visit once during his stay in Seoul. "He came down and visited me," Robinson said. "He got a three-day pass. When he came down he looked like -- in WWII they had these cartoons 'Willy and Joe' -- they looked like bums, they were dirty, they needed a shave. Well my friend came off the line. That's the way he was. He'd been wearing the same clothes for six months. Never had a hot shower. They did all their things in the field." While Robinson admits he had it relatively easy in Seoul, he did say he had one brush with death. "We used to get these new recruits, and when they came in they were issued live ammunition and M1s. You had these guys that put the clip in and would forget to clear their weapons," he said. Robinson said he and the new guy rode together one day on their way to lunch. "We're riding along in the jeep, and all of the sudden: bang! The bullet went over my head. But if he'd been an inch or two down, I wouldn't be here today." Raymond Smith chose not to watch the presentation by the other servicemembers, but came down after to greet them and have refreshments. He said he'd heard all the war stories before, though he shared some of his own insights about Korea. Smith joined the Army in 1950 and served in the 25th Division, 21st Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion. He said before he went to Korea, he learned about the country from his buddy, a Marine. But when he got there, he said, he was ill-prepared. "This isn't real!" he said. "The swamps and the muskrats, and the rats and the cold weather and the freezing my butt off -- I didn't like it." Smith, from Oneida, N.Y., served first as a halftrack driver and then as a gunner, shooting quad-.50s. "We would go out on patrol with the 27th Wolfhounds," he said. "We were their support unit and they were our support unit. When the enemy (would) come over the hills, we'd shoot them down." What he remembers about Korea, he said, is the cold weather. "There wasn't nothing to see in 1950's Korea; it was all shelled out," he said. "It was demolished. And up on the border, there was nothing but cold and freezing and you were cold all the time. It's too cold when you can't pull the bolt on the .50-cal to fire -- and you stand out there with a one-gallon tin can half full of gas and 10 guys are standing around it trying to keep warm." They weren't the only ones who were cold, either, Smith said. "Half mile away is the enemy -- doing the same damn thing," he said. "And nobody's shooting at anybody because it's too damn cold." McHugh addresses graves, management, at Arlington National Cemetery [2010-06-30] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh told lawmakers today the Army is working to resolve issues of mishandled gravesites at Arlington National Cemetery and to ensure that the management problems discovered there do not happen again. The secretary spoke June 30 before the House Armed Services Committee about how he is dealing with the problems at Arlington National Cemetery that were revealed earlier this month in two Army Inspector General reports. Chief among those problems were 211 gravesites in the cemetery that were unmarked. "Our first objective are the 211 graves identified with map discrepancies. We are currently working through those," he said. Thus far, the secretary said, 27 of those discrepancies have been resolved. The secretary said in each case where there were no remains and the map indicated there should be, no records could be found elsewhere of a burial there or a headstone. "The map was in error," the secretary said. "Those graves will be reclaimed and used for appropriate purposes." One lawmaker asked if eventually, the Army could do a similar kind of check against all of the 330,000 burial sites at the cemetery. The secretary said the Army plans to do that, but is awaiting the technology to make it possible. "It is our intent to do exactly what you suggested -- check the three sources of records currently available -- that is the site map, the actual burial cards and records that are contained in paper -- against tomb stones and actual documentation associated with those," McHugh said. "To do that for some 330,000 graves is going to take a better system of record keeping, and that means the best in information technology." McHugh said he has already directed the Army's chief information officer/G-6 to "engage" at Arlington to identify the process of how the Army can move forward with an IT solution to track the records there. Currently, the cemetery uses an antiquated map and index-card system. "As soon as the IT problems are solved, we will begin the process of checking and cross-checking all those records for each of the 330,000-some graves," McHugh said. Pentagon, McHugh discussed the final report of an IG special inspection of the cemetery. That inspection was directed by McHugh's predecessor, Pete Geren, in August 2009. He also discussed the results of an IG investigation of the cemetery, directed by him, in November 2009. Another issue at the cemetery involves headstones found in a creek there. Those headstones, the secretary said, are extra grave markers. For instance, when a husband is finally buried next to his wife, the old headstone might be discarded and replaced with a new one. The old one would have been put in the creek. In the past, it was common practice for government-run cemeteries to use such headstones as construction materials, lining a stream with them for erosion control, for instance, McHugh said. McHugh said he personally considered the process "distasteful" and said that as of 1994, the Army no longer follows that practice. "They are now broken up," he said. He also said the Army is now working with the Department of the Interior to find ways to remove the stones from the creek without damaging it. The secretary told lawmakers that the Army has established a call center to hear the concerns of the family members of those buried at the cemetery. Thus far, he said, the center has received 867 calls. "Of those, we have resolved 169," he said. "As we go forward we are contacting each and every one of those persons who called in and expressed concern, to update them." He added that at this time, the Army is not calling those who have not expressed concerns. "For the vast majority of family members ... our conjecture is that they feel confident." Addressing management issues at the cemetery, the secretary said that he has rescinded "General Order 13." "That was the governing structure, that in my view, did just about everything but govern," he said. "I have redirected the lines of authority, I've created clear command structure, at the top in terms of cemetery operations by creating the position of executive director of the Army National Cemeteries Program." McHugh appointed Kathryn Condon as the executive director of the Army National Cemeteries Program. He said Condon reports directly to him and is currently "restructuring things" so cemetery employees know where to go if there is a problem. The secretary also responded to questions about the possibility of management of the cemetery moving to another agency by saying it would be "rather unfair to burden another agency with an Army challenge," and added that the Army feels it "is the responsibility of the military, particularly in time of war, to carry those heroes to their final resting place." He told lawmakers "until we are ordered to step down, we are going forward." McHugh appeared with Lt. Gen. R. Steven Whitcomb, the Army's inspector general. Whitcomb answered questions about the two reports released by his office earlier this month regarding an investigation and a special inspection of the cemetery. Arlington National Cemetery has been in operation for almost 150 years now. McHugh said the Army has been in part responsible for developing the reputation the cemetery now enjoys. "Clearly, that record has been tarnished," he said. "We are committed fully to regaining that kind of record into the future." Vice chief asks Soldiers to participate in Army STARRS [2010-07-06] WASHINGTON -- Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, strongly urges Soldiers to participate in a study that will help the service learn more about the causes of suicide and improve prevention efforts. The five-year Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers -- called "Army STARRS" for short -- kicked off in 2008. The study involves a review of existing historical information the Army has, including the personnel and medical records of Soldiers who have committed suicide. Those conducting the study now need new information that will come directly from Soldiers. That information will be gathered through questionnaires, online surveys and Soldier interviews. Suicide is a national issue as well as an issue the Army is facing. The Army asked the National Institute of Mental Health to conduct the Army STARRS study in 2008. To gather the kind of information needed to complete the study, researchers from NIMH will need to follow Soldiers as they move through their Army careers. Researchers will collect information from as many as 120,000 new Soldiers each year over the course of three years. To gather that information, they will interface with Soldiers in basic combat training locations at Fort Jackson, S.C.; Fort Sill, Okla. and Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., and Fort Benning, Ga. Researchers will also interface with a representative sample of about 90,000 "combat-seasoned" active-duty Soldiers, including reserve-component Soldiers who have been mobilized. From that second group of Soldiers, researchers will be looking for, among other things, information to help describe a Soldier's psychological and physical health, as well as history of exposure to adverse events. Those Soldiers may be asked to complete paper and pencil questionnaires, take online surveys, or participate in one-on-one interviews. Collection of information from Soldiers will begin this summer, and it is expected that as many as 400,000 Soldiers will eventually participate. Chiarelli said that participation in Army STARRS will be voluntary for all Soldiers. He stressed the importance of Soldiers agreeing to participate, and emphasized that participation is going to be confidential. "Confidentiality has been a hallmark of everything we have done to put this together," Chiarelli said. "We have put in place all the safeguards you would expect to ensure a Soldier can confidently provide data to NIMH researchers and trust it will be kept in the strictest of confidence. We hope every Soldier who is approached is willing to participate in this study." The general said results of the study may one day help a Soldier who participates -- but he guaranteed those results will one day "help out one of his buddies." Chiarelli said the Army has placed emphasis on suicide prevention over the past two years because its suicide rate has risen to a point that now exceeds that of a demographically equivalent selection of the civilian community. "The Army always used to fall below the Center for Disease Control's average for a population corrected to be the same as the United States Army," Chiarelli said. "But in the last three years, we've seen the numbers go up above that corrected number. And this is of great concern to us." In recent years, the number of active duty suicides has slowly risen -- though it appears in 2010 the suicide rate has tapered off. In 2007, 115 Soldiers committed suicide; in 2008, that number jumped to 140. In 2009, the number rose again to 162. As of June 10, there have been 62 active duty suicides in the Army -- that number is lower than the 89 suicides the Army experienced at the same time last year. While the NIMH was asked to conduct the Army STARRS study, Chiarelli said the Army is not going to wait until the study is completed to learn the results. Instead, he said, he is briefed regularly on items of interest the institute has discovered so he can apply those findings now. Already, he said, what has been learned from the NIMH study is "paying significant dividends" and has been transmitted out to Army leadership around the globe. "I've learned that from the instance of whatever event causes post-traumatic stress to the time individuals in the United States seek help is 12 years," Chiarelli said. "That 12 years is in itself not a good thing. What is really not a good thing are all the other potentially negative events that happen inside that 12 years, before that person even seeks help." The general said the kinds of actions that can happen include alcohol abuse, spouse abuse, drug abuse, anger management issues, job loss and divorce. "These are all negative behaviors that happen because a person has not sought the help they need. That's why we want Soldiers to get help as soon as possible," he said. The general also said that Soldiers in their first year of service are at higher risk for suicide, as are Soldiers who are in some kind of transition. "We know Soldiers who are in transition from basic training to their first unit, from their first unit to their second unit, even some senior Soldiers who make a decision to go to a professional military education course, such as the 1st Sergeants Course -- we know that's a particularly dangerous time for Soldiers," Chiarelli said. "These are the kinds of lessons learned and trends I've been able to provide to the field." Also at risk for suicide are Soldiers on deployment. According to researchers at the NIMH, the risk to male Soldiers for suicide occurring while deployed appears to be two to three times higher than in male Soldiers who have never deployed. Male Soldiers who have previously deployed, but who are not currently deployed, appear to have a one-and-a-half times higher risk of suicide than those who have never deployed. The Army is looking for ways to decrease the stress on Soldiers that comes from an increased operations tempo and extended time away from family and loved ones. The Army is aiming now for a 2:1 dwell time for Soldiers. That means two years home for every one year in combat. The service isn't quite there yet, Chiarelli said, and right now the ratio is more like 1:1 for most Soldiers. But the Army is looking to make sure that dwell time is protected. "Today, commanders have made a decision -- and they are holding out individuals who don't have 12 months of dwell," he said. "When you move from -- let's say 3rd Infantry Division to the 1st Cavalry Division, and the 1st Cav. is deploying before you have been home for a year, commanders are leaving their Soldiers behind and don't force them -- don't require them -- to go on the front end of the deployment until they have had that 12 months of dwell time." Finally, Chiarelli said that to reduce suicides in the Army, Soldiers and commanders must work to eliminate the stigma associated with seeking help for mental health issues. "We are starting to reduce the stigma associated with Soldiers seeking help for behavior health issues," Chiarelli said. "People are beginning to understand what traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress is all about. Like you would for any other injury, with behavioral health issues, you need to seek help." The Army STARRS study, conducted by the NIMH, is a "longitudinal study" patterned after a study on cardiovascular disease called the Framingham Heart Study that began in Framingham, Mass., in 1948 and continues to today. "The Framingham study has reduced the incidents of sudden cardiovascular death in this country by over 60 percent," Chiarelli said. "What we are trying to do with Army STARRS is kind of pattern it after Framingham. To be able to come up with an algorithm possibly, that will allow us to ask a Soldier or family member questions -- not unlike your doctor asks you about your heart -- about your mental well-being, and given that information, identify people that may have issues." For more information about Army STARRS visit: www.ArmySTARRS.org Fort Bliss moving toward 'net-zero' energy compliance [2010-07-08] WASHINGTON -- Power consumption at Fort Bliss, Texas, has dropped by three megawatts, and the post is looking to shed even more in its quest to become a "net zero" energy installation. A net-zero energy installation produces as much energy as it consumes. The goal at Bliss, one of the defense department's fastest growing installations, is in line with the Army's efforts to develop energy security. "We view energy security as a critical mission-enabler and an operational imperative, which can provide the Army with an essential tactical advantage," said Jerry Hansen, the Army's senior energy executive, during a bloggers roundtable discussion, July 7, at the Pentagon. "Our Army installations, our tactical operations, Soldier training -- all require secure and uninterrupted access to energy." Energy security means the mission can continue without depending on access to the civilian power grid. That means finding new ways to power the mission and make the mission more energy efficient. As a center for "power projection" -- as in military forces projection -- in the southeast United States, it's imperative that Fort Bliss have energy security, said Maj. Gen. Howard B. Bromberg, Fort Bliss commander. "We have major deployments here for the National Guard and Reserve," he added. "How can we keep ourselves secure and independent so in times of national crisis, we can also be an installation secure and independent and can do what the nation needs to be done in times of crisis?" In finding new ways to power the mission, leadership at Bliss is setting an example for the Army, Hansen said. "Our current initiatives include Fort Bliss, which has the largest DoD facility growth currently under way, and under Bromberg, has enthusiastically embraced the challenge to become an Army center for renewable energy," Hansen said. "Fort Bliss has begun to implement unique renewable energy opportunities from wind, solar, geothermal and biomass resources to provide secure electric power for the installation." Bromberg said that Fort Bliss has recently found a partner to take four privatized homes on the installation and convert them to solar power, for instance. "The goal is to take them off the grid totally for a period of (a) year and have them on the solar panels, and let them help record feedback and experience how you can actually power your home quite satisfactorily off solar," he said. "We're underway now (in) putting those four homes totally on solar power." The general also said that with a grant from the Department of Energy, the city of El Paso and Fort Bliss will be able to work in conjunction to "look at some opportunities to go after geothermal resources that can be shared." Additionally, he said, there's a "great opportunity" to partner with El Paso to look at a combined landfill that could be exploited for biomass power generation. He also said the city is interested in doing an extended lease from the city to develop a solar project. Bromberg said Fort Bliss is currently in the "crawl" stage of moving toward its goal of being a net-zero installation. "We have invested over $50 million of our own money into this. And last year alone, we already got our energy bill down between 10 and 15 percent for the installation," he said. The installation is also nearing completion of its microgrid, Bromberg said. Additionally, it is installing foam on tents in training areas to reduce the fuel cost to climate control them, has a new headquarters building that will go "off the grid" soon, and is reviewing its vehicle fleets to consider them for conversion to electric. "I think we're at the crawl," he said. "We're still moving forward with these projects, but as we're looking out over the next year, we view the continued analysis, I think we're going to get to the walk phase." Within a year, it is expected the Army will release a list of five candidate installations for conversion to net-zero status. Mobile training team aims to bring resilience to Soldiers [2010-07-13] WASHINGTON -- The Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program kicked off another iteration of its Master Resilience Training course, July 12, at Fort Meade, Md. -- this time using a mobile training team. "This is the first effort ever at doing a mobile training team concept for CSF," said Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, the director of the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program. The Master Resilience Training course is part of the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program and was developed from the University of Pennsylvania's "Penn Resilience Program." The 10-day course is designed to equip Soldiers with the skills needed to better weather traumatic events -- be they money problems, relationship problems, or the horrors of combat -- and to teach other Soldiers in their units to do the same. The Army teaches the MRT course to Soldiers now in Philadelphia, on the University of Pennsylvania campus there. The course is also taught to drill sergeants at "Victory University" at Fort Jackson, S.C. Now, in an effort to make it easier for commanders to get their Soldiers trained up on MRT, and to reduce the cost overall to provide that training, the CSF program has developed a nine-person mobile training team that will bring the course to the Soldiers. Cornum said that while the first 10-day course taught by the MTT is stateside, it's at overseas locations where the benefit will be the greatest. "It is very expensive to bring 150 people for example, to here, to put them up -- and they have problems with jetlag and unfamiliarity -- and so if we can send 15 or 20 people to them it is more efficient, and I believe the training will be better," she said. It's expected the team will travel to Germany in September, and will travel to Korea later in the fall, she said. Having an additional training venue for Soldiers to learn the MRT material also increases the throughput for the course -- to help the Army meet the goal set by the chief of staff of the Army to have one MRT-trained Soldier per battalion, and another for each brigade headquarters. That's more than 5,000 Soldiers Army-wide. "We can only train 150 at a time in Philadelphia," said Dana Whitis, the mobile training team coordinator. She also said the schoolhouse at Fort Jackson is limited to 60 at a time. "If you look at the numbers, we're not going to meet (the chief's) intent any time soon. So this gives us an avenue to ramp up numbers." So far the Army has trained a little more than 1,300 Soldiers in MRT. The mobile training team is made up of professionals from the University of Pennsylvania, Army civilians and Soldiers who have already gone through different levels of the MRT coursework. Sgt. 1st Class Eric Tobin, of the U.S. Army Drill Sergeant School, has attained the level-3 training already and is now part of the mobile training team. As part of his job on the team, he conducts breakout sessions with Soldiers to reinforce what was taught in larger full-group sessions. He says it helps to have a Soldier on board to teach the material. "When you come into an Army facility with a bunch of civilians, nobody wants to talk to them because they are a bunch of civilians," Tobin said. "They balanced it out by putting people like myself through the program." Tobin said what MRT provides is not a replacement for good leadership, but leadership tools. In fact, he said really good leaders likely already have many of the tools that MRT teaches -- they just don't know they are using them or what they are called. "If you're a good leader, chances are you're doing this stuff anyway, you just don't have the verbiage we have in CSF," he said. "I've been blown up, shot at, seen my friends die -- I've come through that, and I'm stronger for it. Now I have a framework to teach that to somebody." Tobin is an artilleryman by trade, and has served in the Army since 1996. He said initially he was skeptical of the program, but after a few days in his first MRT class last year, he was sold on the value of the program. "I don't like people telling me what's wrong with me," Tobin said. "But after being there a couple of days, I realized that's not what it was. They were giving me tools that I could use to help myself, and in doing that, it would make me a better leader. I train this stuff on a fairly regular basis now. I think it's great. I wish somebody would have taught it to me when I was an E-5." Cornum said that among the more than 1,300 Soldiers that have taken the MRT course, a positive review of the course is common. "Most people have been sent to something that's supposed to be good for you before, and have not been very impressed," she said. "By about day four, you have almost universally seen the turn-around from skeptical to responses like, 'why didn't the Army do this 10 years ago?' or 'if I had had this training 10 years ago, I'd still be married.' There is no question, there is education and confidence that is built as the course goes on." Army opens resilience evaluation to DA civilians [2010-07-24] WASHINGTON -- The Army has extended its concern about the mental fitness of Soldiers and their families to the civilians that serve stateside, abroad and in combat zones. Department of the Army civilians are encouraged now to have their psychological resilience evaluated by the civilian version of the "Global Assessment Tool," which is part of the Army's "Comprehensive Soldier Fitness" program. Three versions of the GAT are available now, through Army Knowledge Online. One version for Soldiers, one for their families, and now one for civilians. All three measure the same things, though with different questions, said Capt. Paul B. Lester, a research psychologist with the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Office. "The factors are pretty much the same -- we're looking at social, emotional, spiritual and family fitness," Lester said. "A lot of the same things that are important to resilience to Soldiers are absolutely as important to civilians." The military version of the online evaluation is mandatory for Soldiers -- so far more than 700,000 Soldiers have completed it. Army civilians, however, are not required to take the GAT -- though they are encouraged to do so, Lester said. Civilians can expect to spend about 15 minutes completing the online survey, and afterward they are given feedback about how they did. "It's a self-awareness tool to help them get an idea of where they are strong, and also where they can improve," Lester said. "It gives you an idea of where you are on the resilience continuum." After that, he said, GAT participants will have access to "comprehensive resilience modules," the same ones that Soldiers are doing, to help them improve their mental toughness. "The skills we are providing are life skills," Lester said. "It's not only how to respond to and be resilient in the face of extreme adversity, as in combat setting, but how to deal with everyday stressors in family, at work, and in your personal and professional life." There are some DA civilians who are deployed now to combat zones like Iraq or Afghanistan, Lester said. And while those civilians are not supposed to actually be participating in combat -- that's the job of Soldiers -- life in the combat zone is stressful. So assessing mental fitness and working to improve it is critical for both Soldiers and civilians. "Psychological resilience in a deployment situation is absolutely critical," he said. "The work there is hard, the hours long, and the separation from family and friends is challenging." Even Army civilians at work stateside or at Army installations overseas can benefit from participating, Lester said. "We train people, at an individual level, how to be a better team member," he said. "At the leader level, how being a better team member impacts the overall team. It's not only individual performance but the additive effect of better individual performance leading to better team performance." Lester also said that the results of the GAT are confidential, and that supervisors "will never see" the results of an employee's participation in the assessment. Soldiers, Army civilians and family members can all participate in the GAT by visiting the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness website at: http://www.army.mil/CSF/. Aggressive treatment of pain prevents future complications [2010-07-25] WASHINGTON -- Treating pain aggressively, at the time of injury all the way to healing, means fewer complications. Surgeon General of the Army Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker spoke July 22 about pain management in the armed forces, including the final report of the Pain Management Task Force, which came out in May. "Aggressive management of pain almost from the moment of the injury through regional anesthesia, for example ... results in pain relief for the combatant, but also, we believe, few complications for recovery. The general said that the brain and the spinal cord has a "plasticity" to it that, if you provide anesthesia early enough, you can have fewer complications of phantom pain and residual pain down the road. Also of concern, Schoomaker said, is inconsistent standards for management of pain across the Department of Defense. That includes treatment options as well as the language to describe pain. "We don't' have a consistent plan to deliver a standard set of services for both the management of acute pain and chronic pain," he said. "We don't have a common lexicon to describe it. We don't have a common or useful way to measure and look at the treatments of pain and we don't have a wide enough aperture that brings in other non-pharmacological treatments of pain." Some of those non-pharmacological treatments include acupuncture, chiropractic therapy, yoga and biofeedback, for instance. The general also discussed a policy in the Army that now takes responsibility for reporting brain concussions out of the hands of Soldiers -- because, he said, in order to avoid breaking up the team, Soldiers won't fess up to having their skulls rattled by a concussive blast. "If you give the Soldier the option of self identifying, what we learned from the last few years is they won't do that," Schoomaker said. "They come back from combat, many of them now saying 'I've been concussed multiple times, and I knew it.'" The solution, Schoomaker said, is that the Army is "pushing our protocols aggressively down to the battlefield and ... taking it out of the hands Soldiers, and saying it's a mandatory event." For instance, Soldiers who have been involved in an IED attack would be targeted for assessment. "Anybody within a 50-meter radius of that explosion, you don't have a choice ... you come in and get evaluated," the general said. Soldiers assessed without injury get a 24-hour break, those who are concussed are out until symptoms resolve. The Army is also looking into a rule the Marine Corps now uses, the general said. "If you have multiple concussions, you've had three documented concussions, then you probably ought to be out off the fight altogether." An interesting program that takes knowledge and data learned from injuries and helps prevent future injuries is the Joint Trauma Analysis and Prevention of Injury in Combat program. There, the general said, data from both lethal and non-lethal injuries are correlated with the type of protective armor a Soldier was wearing, the type of aircraft they were in, or the type of vehicle they were driving when injured. "It correlates with the material developers to develop the next generation of more protective equipment and things," he said. He said the outcome of JTAPIC could include a better designed helmet, goggles, or body armor. It might also include a redesigned vehicle that could "withstand an underbelly blast." Soldiers mentor Scouts at 2010 National Scouts Jamboree [2010-07-29] FORT A.P. HILL, Va. -- During the first full day of the National Scout Jamboree here, July 27, thousands of young men across America participated in learning activities and earned merit badges -- some with the help of Soldiers. Sgt. 1st Class Jeremy Huizar, a drill sergeant from Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., helped Scouts learn to turn twine into rope, to lash logs together, and to turn wood and rope into a bridge -- all part of earning the pioneering merit badge. "It's pretty much wilderness survival, how to make tools and pretty much getting back to the roots of rope-making and getting crafty with your surroundings," Huizar said of the skills he was helping Scouts learn. "The biggest part of pioneering is that it's all teamwork. Hardly any of this stuff do you want to do on your own. You're going to need teamwork development." Behind Huizar, with the assistance of adult civilian mentors and other Soldiers, two young men used crude wooden tools to twist thin strands of twine into thicker ropes. One of the boys, Zach, with the Troop 714 of Fairbanks, Alaska, was well into earning his Pioneering Badge -- a process that takes as many as four hours of listening, learning and teamwork. "It's a lot more work than I thought it was going to be," Zach said. Zach, at his first Jamboree, said he wasn't entirely sure what other badges he hoped to earn while there, though he added there's opportunity to earn badges back at home. What's not so readily available to him in Alaska, he said, are some of the activities young men from the warmer southern states enjoy -- activities that are available and prove popular at the Jamboree. "I'm mostly trying to do things I can't do in Fairbanks," he said. "Like the fun stuff like scuba diving and snorkeling." Scouts like Zach work to achieve merit badges in skills like metalwork, electronics, first aid or radio. More than 125 such badges exist to be earned, and opportunities are available at the Jamboree to earn about 100 of those. Learning, developing skills, and earning an associated merit badge is one way Scouts can achieve the top Scouting rank of Eagle Scout, an achievement, says Huizar, that has some similarities with being a Soldier. "To be an Eagle Scout, there's a lot of the same requirements as for being a Soldier: land navigation, survival skills and stuff like that," said Huizar. He also pointed out additional similarities. Holding in his hand a dog tag engraved with the Army Values and the Warrior Ethos, he said "this is something we give to a Soldier when they graduate basic training. And we give them to the Scouts too, because our values are pretty much the same as their values." Staff Sgt. Daniel Bath, stationed at Fort Riley, Kan., was at the Jamboree to help Scouts earn their climbing merit badge. Bath said Scouts will learn calls used while rock climbing and belaying, different ropes used for climbing, tying of knots, as well as safety. After classroom instruction and demonstrating new skills with ropes and safety, the Scouts will get to try their climbing skills on a climbing wall. "They'll be climbing on (the rock wall) until they're sick of it," Bath said. "They have to climb at least three routes, but they can climb until they're done." Bath said he was a boy scout himself, and about 13 years ago, he came to the Jamboree. "I earned the climbing merit badge when I was about 14 years old, so I've been climbing ever since" he said. "I've been climbing for about 15 years. I just think rock climbing is fun. I got hooked on it when I was young and I've been doing it ever since. I just can't get enough of it. It's challenging. It's a good workout. It keeps you fit. It gives you a change to be in the outdoors. It's just one more thing you can do in the outdoors that's not boring." Bath said he volunteers to teach the climbing merit badge back in Kansas, and that he also volunteered to go to the Jamboree to teach it there. Nick, a scout with Troop 2005 from Phoenix, Ariz., is a Life Scout and says he needs just three more badges to attain Eagle Scout. One of those merit badges will be for climbing, with Bath as his instructor. "I've been climbing multiple times," Nick said. "But I haven't gotten the chance to get on a real mountain. The class here was pretty cool. The Soldiers did a great job instructing. They are probably the best instructors you can get, because they actually lived the stuff that they're doing." Nick said he felt comfortable working with Bath and other Soldiers while earning his badge, even saying "there was some humor in some of them. They made you want to stay and learn more." Even Soldiers in the band were at the Jamboree to mentor Scouts. Sgt. 1st Class Tony Abatecola, with the Rhode Island National Guard's 88th Army Band, helped Scouts learn more about music, and even learn to play an instrument. To get the merit badge in music, Abatecola said, Scouts must learn a lot. "He has to know a bunch of information, such as music history, and composers, what they do, and how they contributed to the modern music of today," he said. "They also need to know conducting patterns, how to conduct the songs and how to play. They need to know some of the theory and how to understand and read the music." Peter, with the Troop 425 from Trumbull, Conn., was looking to get his music merit badge while at the Jamboree, though he already has a substantial background in music. "I've been playing trumpet since 4th grade, and I'm a freshman now. I went through elementary school band, middle school band and my high school marching band. Also I tried out and made a western regional band. So I don't think it will be that difficult," he said, about earning his music merit badge. "It'll be fun." Already a Life Scout, Peter said he's got 20 merit badges under his belt. He said he hopes to also earn the theater arts badge while at the Jamboree. Abatecola's unit was tasked to come to the Jamboree to provide support, something he said he was excited to do. "I was involved in Scouting," he said. "And it's a great opportunity to work with people. The kids get to see the Army is not just about war fighting. They get to see the Army is huge and does a lot of things. And the correlation between the Boy Scouts and the Army is great -- a lot of the basic traits the Boy Scouts learn is basic soldiering skills in some areas: woodsman, courtesy, respect, citizenship -- and even music." The Merit Badge Midway wasn't the only place that Soldiers and scouts met face-to-face at the Jamboree. At the "Armed Forces Adventure Center," just past three swimming pools built specifically for the Jamboree, Scouts could meet with members from all four branches of the Armed Forces. At one location there, Scouts were challenged by an Army drill sergeant to beat pull-up records set by other Scouts. By late afternoon, the record was up to 23, and Scouts cheered each other on as one after the other they tried to top the record so they could claim "everything on the stage" -- that's one each of a collection of Army-themed prizes. Next door, Scouts played a videogame where they "drove" the Army-sponsored No. 39 NASCAR race car in place of the official driver, Ryan Newman. "This is the speed and action station," said Staff Sgt. Dave Hair, an Army recruiter from Charlottesville, Va. "It allows the individual to basically take control of Ryan Newman's car and drive on desert roads behind MRAPs and Army personnel carriers." Players end up walking away with an Army-themed water bottle -- great to help beat the heat at the event. "We're not actively trying to get anyone to join the Army," Hair said. "We're here to support the Boy Scouts of America on their 100-year birthday. We're just here to support them and show them some of the stuff that the Army does have." Hair said he was a Boy Scout too when he was younger, and also attended a Jamboree. "It's only the first full day today and it's been busy, but it's been good to work with the Boy Scouts and help them out and answer some questions they have," he said. "Some of them ask me about the Army, some of them ask me where they can get their stamps done. I think it's a good way for them to see what possibilities are out there for them -- not just with the Army, but with everybody else that's set up out here at the Jamboree." The 2010 Jamboree runs until Aug. 4 and celebrates the 100th Anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America. It's expected more than 42,000 Boy Scouts and leaders will attend the event. Army releases report on suicide, high-risk behavior [2010-07-30] WASHINGTON -- To curb suicides in the Army, commanders must pay more attention to junior Soldiers and to those who exhibit high-risk behavior, such as drug use or driving under the influence. During a press conference today, the Army's Suicide Prevention Task Force released its report "Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, Suicide Prevention." Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli discussed the report's findings and recommendations, and also said how commanders can use the report to help keep Soldiers from taking their own lives. In fiscal year 2009, there were 160 suicides in the Army. Of those, 79 percent were among those who had been deployed only once, or had not deployed at all. Additionally, 60 percent of suicides were among first-term Soldiers. "The most dangerous year to be a Soldier is your first year," Chiarelli said. "We see more suicides in that first year than in any other year." The general said leadership should be focusing on sponsorship programs for "young Soldiers coming in the unit, just out of basic, who are trying to make friends, who (are) new to the unit. These are the kinds of lessons you draw from this data that we believe are going to be absolutely essential to us getting a handle on this." Chiarelli also said that commanders should use information contained in the report to "to help you prioritize your time and who you are going to concentrate on." Started 15 months ago in response to an increase in suicides in the Army, the more than 300-page report "indicates identifiers of high-risk behavior, reflective of stress and strain on the force. (And) also identifies gaps in policies, processes and procedures pertaining to the surveillance and detection of high-risk and suicidal behavior," the general said. The report "not only says where we are today and what we have done so far to try to fix it, but it also lays out a way ahead for how we are going to get us back to where we need to be," he added. The report contains more than 250 recommendations to identify and mitigate problems in the Army related to suicide and high-risk Soldier behavior. The report will go forward to a staffing process, and determinations will be made as to which recommendations will be put in place, the general said. One recommendation involves use of prescription drugs. "There is no policy governing the length of 'as needed' prescriptions," the report reads. "These open-ended prescriptions create another policy and process gap that harbors illicit use." When a Soldier tests positive for a pain killer that he had been prescribed perhaps more than a year before, there is no way to determine if he is still using that drug "as needed" or if he is in fact purchasing it on the street and abusing it. "From the commander's perspective, there is no way to detect the masked abuse of 'as needed' prescription drugs," the report reads. One of those recommendations, Chiarelli said, involves limiting prescription duration so a prescription is not considered valid after one year without provider reevaluation and renewal. "If you have an open-ended prescription, forever that person would be cleared by a medical review officer because they have been prescribed that. Let's make sure when we prescribe that we put an end date on that prescription. So it doesn't remain an open ended opportunity for somebody to be abusing drugs." Another recommendation, Chiarelli said, is that commanders should be more disciplined in ensuring compliance with DA Form 4833 requirements. That form, the "Commander's Report of Disciplinary or Administrative Action," helps the Army keep track of a Soldiers high risk behavior wherever he may go, ensuring commanders at a new unit have visibility of a Soldier's past behavior According to the report 36 percent (78,410) of DA Forms 4833 were not completed from fiscal year 2004 to fiscal year 2009. "Those are the kinds of things we have to get back to doing in the force today," Chiarelli said. Other key findings in the report include: Key findings include: • Gaps in the current HP/RR/SP policies, processes and programs necessary to mitigate high-risk behaviors • An erosion of adherence to existing Army policies and standards • An increase in indicators of high-risk behavior including illicit drug use, other crimes and suicide attempts • Lapses in surveillance and detection of high risk behavior • An increased use of prescription antidepressants, amphetamines and narcotics • Degraded accountability of disciplinary, administrative and reporting processes LandWarNet opens with 4 keys to Internet security [2010-08-03] TAMPA, Fla. -- Protection of the nation's computer networks requires focus on four key areas, said the director of the National Security Agency. During the first day of the 2010 Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's "LandWarNet" conference, Aug. 3, in Tampa, Fla., Gen. Keith B. Alexander, commander, U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, discussed both threats to the DOD computer network and suggestions on how to secure it. Dynamic protection of the network, the general said, involves a four-pronged approach to protecting a network with as many as 7 million attached computers. 1: Hunt for malicious ware First among those aspects, he said, is defending the network in the same way the Army might protect an area of land it has captured on the ground. "Inside our networks, just like we would do in physical combat, we have to have folks that are hunting inside our networks," he said. "Give the system administrators, our network operators, weapons to hunt inside our networks for malicious software and malicious actors, to destroy them." 2: Protect network borders At the edges of the network, where users interface with network capabilities, there needs to be systems in places that can provide real-time notification of malicious activity to those that are charged with protecting it, he said. "We have to have an interactive device at the boundary," he said. "And that interactive device capability has to be able to talk to those network hunters inside our network and our foreign intelligence capabilities and law enforcement and others outside our network." 3: Partner with stakeholders Also key to protecting the network, he said, is to have strong partnerships with stakeholders in the network. That includes allies and other government agencies. "We have to, with our allies, be able to see what is going on with the global network so we can provide real-time indications and warning to our defensive capabilities." 4: Establish ROE Finally, he said, those protecting the network need to be able to defend it when threats arise. That means they are equipped with rules of engagement to allow them to know what they are allowed to do, both defensively and offensively, without having to endure costly efforts to propose plans for defense and to seek approval for actions they should take. "We have to have offensive capabilities, to, in real time, shut down somebody trying to attack us," he said. "You need autonomous decision logic that's based on the rule of law, the legal framework, to let network defenders know what they are allowed to do in the network's defense." The general spoke to what was claimed as a record audience of attendees at this year's LandWarnet conference. An estimated 9,000 Soldiers and information technology experts from the private sector are in attendance at the three-day event. Know the threat The general spoke at length about the threats to military networks. He said the threat environment today affects more than 7million computers on more than 1,500 individual DOD networks. "On any given day, our networks are probed over 250,000 times an hour," he said. That comes to about six million times a day. Additionally, over 140 foreign intelligence organizations are actively attempting to penetrate U.S. computer networks. And according to a figure by the network security company, Symantec, the cost of cybercrimes have exceeded $1 trillion, he added. Threats to the network have evolved, he said, from exploitative threats, to disruptive threats, to destructive threats. Using networks to take money or information, for instance, is exploitative. To deny service to networks is disruptive. In 2007, for instance, the national networks in Estonia were nearly shut down by distributed denial of service attacks, suspected to be the doing of unhappy Estonians of Russian descent voicing outrage at the removal of a bronze statue of a World War II Soviet soldier. Destructive threats evolving It is destructive attacks against networks, said Alexander, that have him concerned the most. "It's only a small step to go from disrupting to destroying parts of the network," he said. "If you think about our nation, our financial systems, our power grids -- all of that resides on the network. Our government, our defense department, our intelligence community, all reside on the network. All of them are vulnerable to an attack like that. Shutting down that network would cripple our financial system." 'Logic bombs' One such destructive threat he warned of, and asked industry for assistance on, is the potential of "kill switches" in computer hardware. "Hardware kill switches in many of these computers are now something that anybody could put in," he said. "It's very difficult to detect. Those kill switches, or logic bombs in your network, are some of the things that we are going to have to figure out for the Defense Department, our government." In systems the military buys from contractors, for instance, there are sometimes hundreds or thousands of microchips. Those chips are now often built by third-party manufacturers. It is difficult for the military or even for contractors who build systems, to determine everything such a microchip can do. It is possible, for example, for such a microchip to be built with backdoor logic that can cause it to fail at a specific time -- a kill switch -- which ultimately affects the system it resides in. Edge-to-edge visibility Visibility of the entire network is also a problem. Today, Alexander said, the DOD cannot see the entire network. It is not enough, he said, to know there's antivirus software residing on the end-user's computer system -- at its best, antivirus and other methods in place today can only provide about 80 percent protection. "What are you going to do for the rest of that, where adversaries are operating," he asked. "If you can't see them all, how do you react to somebody that's trying to get into one of them? How do you know where they are? We don't have situational awareness of our networks -- real time, situational awareness, and the ability to take action." What is critical, he said, is that the entire network is visible to monitor what is going on and where. The DOD needs a common operating environment to create a baseline of what is normal, he said, to get that edge-to-edge visibility. U.S. must take lead Alexander also said that it was the United States that invented the Internet, and that the United States must lead the charge to protect it. "How are we going to operate and defend that Internet," he asked. "We're the folks that started it, we ought to get down to securing it." Securing the Internet, he said, requires great minds. It also requires a partnership, within government, to include the Department of Defense, the intelligence community and the Department of Homeland Security, for instance. It also requires partnerships with America's allies, and with industry. "We need to leverage our technical dominance in this area," he said. Building out network top priority for Army [2010-08-03] TAMPA, Fla. -- Top Army leaders are keenly focused on building out the Army information network said the Army's chief information officer. During the first day of the 2010 Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's "LandWarNet" conference, Aug. 3, in Tampa, Fla., Lt. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sorenson, the Army chief information officer and G-6, said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. has recognized the importance of the Army information network as critical to the mission. "You can begin to see here -- if we are going to be responsive to a joint force commander -- this whole need to be expeditionary. To be expeditionary, we need to be networked," Sorenson said before what was claimed as a record audience of attendees at this year's LandWarnet conference. An estimated 9,000 Soldiers and information technology experts from the private sector are in attendance at the three-day event. "That particular notion has been adopted by our chief of staff," he said. "The word 'network' has now been embedded into the vision of the chief of staff as he has talked about what he sees for the future Army." The Army is now working to build the network to support its requirements. "This is the effort that we are trying now to achieve, in building out a capability that in many cases will provide more functionality as well as more security for our forces, as they deploy in terms of either expeditionary or to support a campaign like we have in OIF or OEF." Sorenson said there are now fixed regional network hubs at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait and Landstuhl, Germany, for instance. Others are being built at Fort Bragg, N.C., in Guam and at Camp Roberts, Calif. Additionally, he said, there are area processing centers established at Grafenwoehr, Germany, Fort Bragg and Camp Arifjan. "These are now being postured so we can provide our capability so that we can field forces forward and they don't have to carry the network," he said. "The network will be there to support them." Network capability also extends to the tactical part of the fight; examples include the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical and the Joint Tactical Radio System as well as other tactical radio systems that get fielded to Soldiers at the tactical edge of the network. Sorenson said the Army chief of staff has challenged the CIO/G-6 to provide a plan to get to a "unity of effort" to build up the network. Included in that is architecture, testing, technology, acquisition and requirements. During the "Operational Validation II" exercise, the 75th Fires Brigade out of Fort Sill, Okla., simulated preparation and deployment as a Stryker brigade, the general said. "We put everything up on the network service centers; they had connectivity though the fixed regional hubs, they had their data and applications loaded there in the area processing center, and they were able to function on a network from CONUS into the theater of operations," he said. "They were able to do all of the particular aspects of their mission: the early collaboration, the fight upon arrival, and their ability to do battle command through the network in a manner they have never been able to do before," he said. The general said one commander involved in the exercise said the capability demonstrated was something he'd want to deploy with. "Now we're taking it from a dress rehearsal to an operational capability and putting a brigade combat team into the AOR with this network service center concept," Sorenson said. "And in fiscal year 2012, this becomes the way which every brigade combat team deploys into the AOR." Running applications on Army networks is also critical, Sorenson said. Development of applications in the past has resulted in an unwieldy array of single systems, where it is clear that integration with what already exists has not been the focus. Applications today, he said, are fielded as part of a system -- often with their own monitor, keyboard and processor. "It's all bolt-on electronics," he said. "We have been system-focused on what we deliver. It has a line in the budget, we deliver it, we test it, and we field it. And we don't look at it as integrated capability." Outside the Army, however, industry is also focused on applications, he said. And the Army is looking at how industry does its best practices to get applications out, certified and credited. "For Apple and Google, they have a standardized an operating environment," he said. "What that means is the network can be seen and applications can be developed easily because the operating environment is established and known. "So what we are going to do now is standardize that operating environment as opposed to leaving it up to industry," he said. "We're going to reverse that paradigm, so that we like Google, like Apple, we define that operating environment, we get that software development kit established, and then we allow third parties and others to go ahead and develop those applications." As part of the effort to standardize the operating environment and develop applications for it, the Army piloted the "Apps for the Army" program. The program involved hosting application development software and helped the Army better the business processes needed to make it easier to develop applications and certify software for the Army enterprise. "What we did in this particular case was define a number of categories that essentially said we are going to allow Soldiers and civilians to test their skills and develop an application they think would improve the Army," he said. With no requirements document released, some 140 members of the Army community participated in the program, and more than 53 applications were submitted. The top 25 applications were chosen as winners. "These 25 apps represent more than two times the number of certifiable apps we were hoping for and expecting from the program," Sorenson said. "Each application will help overcome mission-related challenges through the power of mobile and web devices." The top five winners of the Apps for the Army, or A4A application development challenge, will be recognized at the LandWarNet Conference. 'Apps for Army' to shape future software acquisition [2010-08-04] WASHINGTON -- Knowledge learned from the Army's recent "Apps for the Army" application-development challenge will be used to help the service more quickly acquire software applications. The Apps for the Army challenge, which kicked off in March, and was set up to test a rapid-acquisition process for software applications -- similar to what is done when developing applications for both the iPhone and Android cellular phones, said Lt. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sorenson, the Army chief information officer and G-6. The challenge was set up with minimal requirements, with the Army asking developers to submit software applications for mobile phones in certain categories, including morale, welfare and recreation; Army mission; information access; location awareness and training. Sorenson said about 140 individuals or teams signed up to participate in the program. About 53 applications had been submitted when the contest closed, May 15. "Of those 53, we got 25 through the certification process," Sorenson said, adding that the contest foreshadows a future for getting applications into the Army more quickly. "I think at some point in time we are going to extend this to the commercial sector." Today, the process to develop applications for Army use is time-consuming and difficult, Sorenson said. With the acquisition process that was piloted during the Apps for the Army challenge, the Army demonstrated a faster way to get capability to the warfighter -- a process the Army can extend now to include industry. "We say we are looking for an application to do XYZ, we'll give you 30 days and come back and show us what you have," Sorenson said. After that, he said, commanders that originally expressed a need for new software will have the opportunity to vote on what comes back from industry. "Then we give them 60 more days to develop it, and in 90 days we have an app," Sorenson said. The speed of the process demonstrated with A4A eliminates the need for writing a requirements document, doing a request for proposal, and doing all the "bureaucratic acquisition process that sort of slows us down in trying to deliver a capability," Sorenson said. What was demonstrated in the contest, where Soldiers and Army civilians were invited to write applications for the Army, will translate into new commercial software being delivered to the Army faster than it has been before, Sorenson said. "We haven't walked through all the capabilities, but I think this contest ... portends a way for how we can more rapidly develop applications in the future, using the collaborative forums to help define the requirements, using this contest methodology to go out and have companies participate, and then build it in a manner that we can more rapidly bring it in," he said. Maj. Gregory Motes, Capt. Christopher Braunstein and Capt. Stacey Osborn of the Army Signal Center at Fort Gordon, Ga., worked as a team to develop four applications for the contest. Their "Physical Training Program" for the iPhone, helps Soldiers develop their own physical training program based on the Army's new Physical Readiness Training program. The application provides training plans and videos of various exercises. "We took a look at the new training manual -- we didn't want to put a wall of words, a PDF, into an application -- and we sat down as a group and started to break it apart," Motes said. What they developed was an application that develops a training regiment for an individual Soldier and demonstrates to users how to do individual exercises using both still images and video. "We saw this as a new way that maybe training manuals could be in the future," Motes said. "Some people, we know, learn better by reading words and looking at pictures, and some people appreciate the videos." Sorenson said the Army is looking at both the hardware and software-development process demonstrated by the iPhone and the Android to help shape the way the Army does business. Using commercial hardware like the iPhone or the Android can provide for the Army a common operating environment, he said. Additionally, the software development process demonstrated by the "application stores" for both systems -- one that was proven inside the Army through the Apps for the Army contest -- can help the Army get applications and capability to the warfighter faster, because developers will already know what systems their software will run on. Sorenson said he's already seen that industry is working to use technology like the iPhone or Android to develop applications that may be suitable for the Army. "There are some continual capabilities these companies are looking at on how to push the edge on how to use these more advanced cellular capabilities," Sorenson said. He said some of those capabilities could be fielded to the Army within the next year. "We are going to move forward to figure out how we can take better advantage of the commercial sector," he said. From the 53 applications submitted to the Apps for the Army challenge, 15 winners were chosen -- a 1st, 2nd and 3rd-place winner in each of five categories. Additionally, 10 "honorable mentions" were named. The first-place winners in each category will be honored Aug. 5 at the 2010 Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's "LandWarNet" conference in Tampa, Fla. The winning applications and their development teams include: -- The Physical Training Program, developed by Maj. Gregory Motes, Capt. Christopher Braunstein and Capt. Stacey Osborn of the Army Signal Center, Ft. Gordon, Ga. -- The Telehealth Mood Tracker, developed by Robert Kayl, Scott Swim and Robert Van Gorkom of the National Center for Telehealth and Technology, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash. -- The Disaster Relief application, developed by Andrew Jenkins and Alex Ly of the Engineer Research and Development Center, Alexandria, Va. -- The Movement Projection application, developed by Luke Catania of the Engineer Research and Development Center, Alexandria, Va. -- The New Recruit application, developed by Thomas Maroulis of Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center, Picatinny Arsenal, N.J. The complete list of 25 winners are available on the CIO/G-6 website at http://ciog6.army.mil/Apps4Army.aspx. Soldiers wishing to use the applications developed in the Apps for the Army challenge can see those applications at the DOD Application Storefront at https://storefront.mil/army. Chiarelli: Enemy acquiring technology faster [2010-08-06] WASHINGTON -- The Army needs to modernize the way it's allowed to buy technology, so it can put the best tools in the hands of the warfighter faster than the enemy pushes technology out to its foot soldiers, said the Army's vice chief of staff. Today's acquisition systems can put years between the best technology now available and the time that technology actually gets into the hands of America's Soldiers, said Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli during the 2010 Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's "LandWarNet" conference, Aug. 3-5, in Tampa, Fla. Chiarelli said America's enemies are leveraging the latest technology on the commercial market to accomplish their own terror mission. "The enemy we face is taking great advantage of simple, affordable technologies such as cell phones and other rudimentary components used to make improvised explosive devises, to command and control forces, and to usher in a new form of information warfare," he said. "The fact is we don't talk enough about how very, very good the enemy is. They truly are formidable adversaries." Meanwhile, he said, the Army struggles to put the latest technology into the hands of Soldiers due to the difficulty of pushing the latest tools through antiquated procurement processes. "In this age of rapid innovation we are constantly pushing technology to stay a step ahead -- or at least in step," he said. "Unfortunately our ability to keep pace has declined significantly in recent years. In many ways our outdated procurement system has become the albatross around the Army's neck." Chiarelli said bringing technology aboard using the Defense Department's "DOD 5000" process, for instance, means satisfying some 41 statutory and regulatory requirements required to have a production decision for any acquisition program. That includes, he said, 65 separate documents to comply with the requirements. "The more difficult the program, the more difficult achieving all these requirements becomes," he said. "We must change the processes to change that time to less than four years. Even more quickly, in information technology -- from concept to fielding." The current system, he said, requires that products move through unique increments of development. "This often becomes a problem when a new technology emerges," he said. "When this occurs, rather than inserting in a technology into an existing program of record, often times we are forced to create a new separate increment, leveraging that capability -- but delaying its delivery to the field anywhere from 18 to 48 months." By the end of that process, he said, the technology is either irrelevant or too late to meet the needs of Soldiers. "What I really need, is I need help," the general said. "Not from the three stars on the Army staff, but from the folks in the field -- the program executive officers, the program element managers -- in trying to do things a little bit differently." Chiarelli also discussed the Army network, and reducing redundancy in capability portfolios. "The network represents the centerpiece of Army modernization," he said. "Successes in this critical endeavor can only be achieved if we all work together. Whether in updating our processes, developing requirements, building common operating procedures, or identifying redundancies or outdated requirements or fielding systems in theater." 'Sergeant Firewall' promotes information assurance at LandWarNet [2010-08-09] WASHINGTON -- Desktop computer users see his face each time they log in, reminding them to practice good cyber security. It's "Sergeant Firewall," the fictional, cartoon face of the Army's information assurance program who now pops up on certain Microsoft Windows desktop installations on startup. He also stars as the sometimes hero of the program's comic strip, "On Cyber Patrol." The Army Office of Information Assurance and Compliance produces the comic strip, videos featuring Sergeant Firewall and other products, to help simplify key information assurance messages and to make them more palatable to time-pressed Soldiers. "The problem is, with AR 25-2, people are not going to read the regulation on their own," said Sgt. 1st Class George Sandlin, 9th Signal Command, NETCOM. Army Regulation 25-2 is the Army's information assurance regulation, a more than 100-page document, Sandlin said, and a complicated read for Soldiers who have lots of other things to read and learn. "What we did was we made video clips and cartoon strips for people to download," said Sandlin. "They can ... put it in their classes and their briefs and use this information to get the message out about information assurance." Sandlin manned a booth at the recent 2010 Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's "LandWarNet" conference in Tampa, Fla. He handed out fliers about information assurance, and plastic cards that read "if you're reading this, you left your CAC unattended," and features Sergeant Firewall looking ready to administer discipline. The cards, Sandlin said, are meant to take the place of an unattended CAC card at a coworkers desk or computer -- an information assurance no-no, he said. Sandlin also handed out copies of the "On Cyber Patrol" comic strip. In one, "the colonel" is howling mad -- a Soldier has posted mission information to their "Foolbook" page. He must cancel their operation and asks Sergeant Firewall to bring the Soldier responsible to him. Elsewhere, the apparent enemy, working out of a cave, realizes their online window into the unit's mission has been closed. "The face of this program is Sgt. 1st Class John Firewall," said Ed Beemer, Army Office of Information Assurance and Compliance. "That character resonates with troops, because everybody hears some sergeant barking at them all the time. And he has a nemesis, who is the 'International Cyber Criminal.' It's the structure of good and evil." Beemer said the information their office produces is available on Army Knowledge Online, and is meant to help support commanders' local information assurance programs. The comic strips can be placed in installation newspapers, and the videos can be run on command information channels, for instance. "The goal is to get the information out and make sure people understand where they can go to get these tools to help them push the information out for information assurance," Sandlin said. "We simplify the message and take out all the jargon." Army IA marketing tools featuring Sergeant Firewall can be found on AKO, under the "Self Service --> my Security" section. New uniform for OEF protects Soldiers, hides them better [2010-08-12] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers deploying to Afghanistan will now go with a new uniform in their mobility bag -- one that fights fire and fleas, and makes them less visible to insurgents. The next generation of uniform for Soldiers deploying to Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom bears the new "OEF camouflage pattern" -- called OCP for short. The pattern is better suited than the "Universal Camouflage Pattern" to blend-in in the Afghanistan environment. It is also known as "MultiCam." Sgt. Maj. of the Army Kenneth O. Preston said the new uniform pattern will better serve Soldiers deployed to Afghanistan because it keeps them better hidden from the enemy. He participated in a media roundtable at Camp Shelby, Miss., that coincided with the fielding of the new uniform to the first deploying brigade. "When you look at the detection of the camouflage pattern, the OCP allows the Soldiers to get far closer to a potential enemy before being observed," he said. "Yes, I believe they are safer." The first unit to get OCP is the 2nd Brigade, 34th Infantry Division, at Camp Shelby, Miss. About 3,600 Soldiers there are getting the new uniform. It's the new "Flame Resistant Army Combat Uniform," or FR ACU, with the OCP pattern, that is being fielded to those Soldiers. Jeff Myhre, the assistant program manager at Program Executive Office - Soldier, said the new uniforms have been designed to help better protect Soldiers from burns. "The uniforms are tested on 'Pyroman' during a four-second burn scenario, to allow Soldiers who find themselves in a flame situation four seconds to egress a vehicle or a thermal incident," Myhre said. Myhre added the intent is to insure Soldiers don't get any third-degree burns and don't suffer any more than 30 percent of second degree burns. "In working with the burn center in San Antonio, (that) almost assures of a 100- percent recovery," he said. The new uniforms are also treated with the chemical permethrin to help protect Soldiers from insect bites and nuisance insects that can transfer things like leishmaniasis or malaria. "The FR ACU provides capability for 120 days in combat," said Lt. Col. Michael Sloane, product manager for Soldier clothing and individual equipment. He added it provides about "70 percent" bite protection. "Every single uniform that's going out OCP, effective last week, is treated with permethrin already." The OCP FR ACU also includes a reinforced seat, buttons on the trouser cargo pockets, and a new crotch design intended to provide increased durability. The uniform will be fielded with Mountain Combat Boots and OCP-patterned Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment, or MOLLE. Sloan said Soldiers stateside who are preparing to deploy to Afghanistan will now start getting the new uniform, and by November or December, Soldiers already in Afghanistan, but who don't already have the OCP uniform, will also get it. Gear being fielded to Soldiers with the new pattern includes a cover for the Advanced Combat Helmet, the Extended Cold Weather Clothing System, the Fire Resistant Army Combat Uniform, the Improved Outer Tactical Vest, both the sun hat and patrol cap, name and service tapes for the FR ACU, and multiple pieces of Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment. Army rescues 3,000 flood victims, delivers tons of supplies in Pakistan [2010-08-13] WASHINGTON -- Army aviators are continuing to provide relief to flood victims in Pakistan, even as they await the arrival of their Marine Corps and Navy replacements. Brig. Gen. Michael Nagata, deputy commander, Office of the Defense Representative, Pakistan, is coordinating U.S. military flood relief efforts from an airbase in Ghazi in the northern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. "We have been delivering hundreds of thousands of pounds of relief supplies and recovering thousands of stranded personnel from this very large river valley, that because of infrastructure damage, bridge destruction, road erosion, etc., many, many people are in need," the general said. "And we have delivered, just with our military assets, more than 160 metric tons of supplies into the Swat Valley." The general also said the Army has recovered more than 3,000 individuals stranded by the flood waters since beginning operations in the country -- though, he added, that is just a fraction of what Pakistani forces have done. Record monsoon rains in July are responsible for the flooding in Pakistan -- with the most heavily affected areas being in the northern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. A U.N. report puts the death toll in the country at 1,200, with at least 2 million being left homeless. The general said military efforts to provide aid to the Pakistani people included so far almost 500,000 rations that have been distributed. Additionally, the military is providing aviation support. For the Army, that includes four CH-47 Chinook helicopters, and two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. Those aircraft are conducting cargo delivery and personnel recovery. The Department of Defense has authorized 19 new aircraft to replace those six currently in Pakistan. Those aircraft include 12 CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters, four CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters, and three MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopters. During a State Department briefing Aug. 12, it was briefed that the U.S. government has so far pledged more than $70 million in assistance in the region. "The first element of Marine aviation landed here at Ghazi Air Base yesterday," said Nagata. "It's going to take us a few days to get the entire compliment in here. Meanwhile, the Army element that has been here now for almost two weeks continues to operate. Our goal is to make this transition from Army aviation to Marine aviation as seamless and as transparent as possible to the Pakistani partners that we have been working with." Nagata said he expects the focus of the Marine element will be the same as the Army focus: providing relief to Pakistanis in the Swat River Valley. He said he expects U.S. military presence in the region to continue as long as it is desired by the Pakistani government. "We will be here so long as the government of Pakistan requests and requires our assistance," he said. "Everything we do, both the locations we operate from, the access we are given to fly, the landing zones that are designated for our support operations -- all these things are requested, provided by, designated by the appropriate authorities here in the military and the government of Pakistan." Challenges in Pakistan now include continuing bad weather, Nagata said, which have reduced flying days for American pilots by as much as 50 percent. Also, he said waterborne disease remains a challenge for Pakistanis -- though U.S. military personnel have remained unaffected by those same illnesses. What's not been a problem for the Army during relief operations in Pakistan are security threats from the Taliban, Nagata said. "The Pakistani military, ever since we stood up this task force, have done simply an incredibly energetic job and totally committed job at providing multiple layers of security around our activities both in the air and on the ground," he said. "Frankly we have seen no evidence of a threat so far -- we are not looking for it." The biggest challenge, Nagata said, is facing what nature has wrought on Pakistan. "The magnitude of this disaster is beyond anything I think anyone was prepared for, not just in Pakistan, but around the world," he said. "The challenge is to rise to the level of the damage and distress that this flood has inflicted." Army eyes industry for energy efficiency alliances [2010-08-31] DETROIT -- To meet energy initiatives, cut costs, and to help better protect Soldiers, the Army is looking to industry for solutions and partnerships. Under Secretary of the Army Joseph W. Westphal traveled to Detroit Aug. 26 to visit the Army's Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center, along with automakers General Motors and Ford. The secretary's visit to the Michigan sites came at the request of U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, the state's senior senator and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "He had a great interest in me learning more about what TARDEC does and its connection to the auto industry and its connection to the Department of Energy," said Westphal, of Levin. "My goal was to come here and see it with him and get a broader perspective of their work, their mission and those relationships." Outside the General Motors Technical Center in Warren Michigan, Westphal and Levin test-drove a Chevrolet Volt -- a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. Following the drive, the two visited with GM executives at the center to discuss the Army's efforts toward energy efficiency, and what General Motors is doing in that area that could be done in partnership with the military. Westphal and Levin then traveled to the nearby TARDEC facility to see how Army researchers are developing technologies related to both Soldier safety and fuel economy -- two things Westphal said are important to the Army. "What I'd like to see us make the most progress in would be to first of all do whatever we need to do to continue to maximize protection for Soldiers in the battlefield," he said. "We are doing everything we can in that respect with all of our vehicles that we are using in the fight. And secondly -- to the extent that we can maximize energy savings -- have less dependency on petroleum products and fossil fuels, both in combat and at home." During his visits to GM, TARDEC and Ford, the secretary said he saw evidence of that. "I think we saw evidence that there are a lot of potential technologies and infrastructure we can use," he said. "Some will require upfront investment -- that's more costly -- we have to make those decisions to do that." While at TARDEC, the secretary saw technology related to fuel efficiency, Soldier safety, and development of battery technology that would allow Soldiers and equipment to yield more power at less weight. Sonya Zanardelli, an electrical engineer and the energy storage team leader at TARDEC, was one of those Westphal and Levin met at TARDEC. She is part of a team now looking at better alternatives to the lead-acid batteries now in 95 percent of Army vehicles. One goal, she said, is to increase the "silent watch" time possible for Army combat vehicles. "What that means is on the vehicles you can power all of your electronics with your main engine off and have something called 'true silent watch' -- engine off and power everything with a battery," she said. For Soldiers, that means the ability to conduct operations in silence, in the dark, virtually undetected, for as long as possible. That length of time is limited now by the duration of lead-acid batteries. Zanardelli said battery chemistry can determine the length of time equipment can operate. A lithium-ion battery, for instance, has an energy density three times that of a lead-acid battery. "You can power your mission equipment much longer," with a lithium-ion battery, she said. Important also is "energy density" -- that's the amount of energy a battery can provide compared to the weight of the battery. "We're looking for high-energy density batteries, high-power batteries, so the Soldier can carry his load and not have to change batteries as often," she said. That also means that Soldiers would have less weight to carry. Zanardelli said one challenge with lithium-ion batteries, however, is that they are subject to "thermal runaway." That's a condition where the batteries overheat due to the chemical reactions inside them. That condition can be managed by battery management systems that control energy use and monitor temperature. "One of the challenges is how to mitigate thermal runaway and how to develop a smarter more intelligent battery management system," she said. "If the battery management system fails, the battery shuts down." Steve Knott, with TARDEC's ground systems survivability division, also met with the secretary and senator. He discussed technologies being developed now that provide lighter protection for combat vehicles, yet still provide the right kind of protection for Soldiers. "Probably the most important things are the lightweight armors -- the lightweight ceramic-composite armors," he said. "Traditional armors have been steels, aluminum, variations of steels that cause the round to break up and to tumble. The weight of those materials are causing burdens to the vehicle -- specifically in weight and size." Some of those technologies involve ceramics, and carbon-fiber products that provide the same protection as steel armor, but at a much lighter weight. That means that Soldiers stay safe, but that the vehicles the armor protects can carry more payload: more people, more supplies, or more weapons. "We have this awesome task of balancing performance, payload and protection," he said. "You want to ensure you get the best protection without eating up payload or performance." Recent developments in armor for vehicles, Knott said, have resulted in significant weight reductions for Army combat vehicles. "I think it's safe to say we are reducing today's armors compared to steel -- we can stop the same kind of round in about half the weight," he said. "Today, the state-of-the-art is ceramics, composites, and different metal matrix composites. And as we get farther out, I think there are opportunities to exploit electromagnetic and different types of defeat mechanisms." Westphal said he was impressed with the work he saw at TARDEC, and said that he sees progress being made toward Army goals of better energy efficiency and Soldier safety. "The work that's being done here is pretty essential to not only the current missions but pretty essential to how we modernize the Army and how best we move this equipping of the Army forward into the future," he said. The secretary also said he was unaware as to the scope and depth of research being done at the Army's Warren, Mich., research facility. "I didn't realize they were focused on so many aspects of the fleet and looking at everything from energy, to structure and mobility and so forth," he said. "I was very pleased to see the scope and breadth and comprehensive nature of their work." Finally, the secretary said he was pleased with the ability to talk directly with auto manufacturers to discuss Army needs and desires and to strike up relationships with them to move the Army forward with its goals. "Seeing that for the first time, after going through that period where the carmakers were going through tremendous economic crisis and all that turmoil in the industry and seeing where they have come from and what they are doing now and how they are looking at the future -- that was pretty exciting," he said. Still, Westphal said, building meaningful partnerships with the auto industry may prove challenging. He said the partnerships between industry, the Army and TARDEC will require more attention in the very near future if the Army is going to accomplish the things it wants to accomplish. "I think it will require greater openness by us, to engage with the private sector and academia," he said. "And I would say the same thing about them. They will need to be a little more flexible and open in dealing with the military and the government and the rules we work under." Pentagon memorial draws visitors day, night, year-round [2010-09-08] WASHINGTON -- Nine years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., visitors come night and day to reflect at the memorial built on the site to honor the victims. Just west of the Department of Defense headquarters, the memorial park features 184 stainless steel benches, one for each victim of the attack, each set over a lighted pool of water. Cynthia Koebeler and Brenda Abplanalp, coworkers and longtime friends from Indianapolis, Ind., visited the park Sept. 7, just days before the ninth anniversary of the attack. A warm day, with a blue sky, and with the Pentagon looming large in the background, Koebeler and Abplanalp were willing to discuss what they both agreed was a fitting memorial to the victims of the attack. "The lights underneath, you want to reflect back and forward," Koebeler said. "I guess I think that's what the lights mean. You're reflecting this way -- we thought we were impervious to all this. But we did get attacked, and it reminds you of how many innocents are here." Koebeler said she hasn't been to the nation's capital in a long time -- and was visiting at the invite of Abplanalp, whose husband makes frequent trips to the city. "It's been a long time since I've been to D.C., and I just wanted to see the 9/11 memorial," Koebeler said. "Early on, it was too raw. But now it feels -- it is nine years -- I just want to see what the completion was for this memorial." Abplanalp said she was already at work when she heard about the 9/11 attacks, and said there wasn't much discussion among coworkers as they watched the news story unfold on televisions in their building's elevator lobby. "Somebody said a bomb struck the World Trade Center -- we didn't even know it was an airplane," she said. "And just as we went out there, that's when both buildings came down. We were stunned, and nobody knew what to say or do. The only thing we were thinking was we need to get home." Koebeler said she heard of the attacks on the car radio and had to pull off on the side of the road to make sense of it. "They didn't say the word attack," she said. "I thought that's odd. The radio announcer kept saying something's wrong, the plane had hit the building. I went on to work and the second one hit while I was at work. Our whole office just really was quiet and we gathered around and not too many words were exchanged. We didn't know what to make of it." Abplanalp said the 9/11 attacks have made her think more now about what she does, that it has affected her life. "This could happen at any time," she said. "It keeps you closer to your family. You talk to people that you haven't talked to in years. You don't know what will happen." She said that she and her family have discussed what would happen were an attack to affect her family more directly than the ones from nine years ago. "We talk about it -- not all the time -- but we talk about it, especially me and my husband," she said. Koebeler said she and her family have discussed other potential attacks, possibilities beyond what happened on 9/11. "I think you become more circumspect because you think: where will they go again," she said. "Instead of New York, maybe it's Miami. Or maybe it's not even a bomb. We speculated about maybe water being tainted, or some other way they will get to us. We are doing all of our efforts at the airport and maybe they have switched strategies, and that's scary for us. My kids and I talk about that." The after-effects of 9/11 are far-reaching, especially those related to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Abplanalp said a friend of hers at work has twin sons who serve in the military. And she has seen the effects of the war on that family. Her friend's son, she said, had taken a life in combat during his deployment and now suffers repercussions from that experience. "He suffers from PTSD -- that's the first time he's killed somebody," she said. "I think that's when it became real for her. Listening to her talk about it -- I was crying because of what happened to her son. I can only imagine if it was my son. I'm scared for them and I hate when they have to go over there. I can only imagine being a parent of that son or daughter and having to send them over to fight." While neither Koebeler nor Abplanalp knew victims of the 9/11 attacks personally, several employees from their company were either injured or killed in the attack on the World Trade Center towers in New York City. Their company had an office there. They both agree the attacks have changed everything for them. "I don't like all the loss of life," Koebeler said of the resulting wars. "Every night I turn on the local station, and somebody has lost his life -- that's sad. It has changed our world outlook." "It's put our world on edge," Abplanalp said. "It keeps their eyes open." On Saturday there will be a memorial ceremony and wreath-laying at the Pentagon Memorial to remember Sept. 11, 2001. The memorial is open to visitors 24 hours a day, every day of the year. Pilferage, transportation among challenges in Afghanistan [2010-09-19] WASHINGTON -- Pilferage and a lack of coastal waterways are two of the problems faced by Army logisticians in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, operations continue to be challenged by the fact the country is landlocked, said Maj. Gen. Robert Radin, the deputy for Army G-4 operations, during a presentation, Sept. 15, at a military logistics conference in Fairfax, Va. Right now, the Army uses two land routes to move material into the country, one from the north through Georgia, over the Caspian Sea, then through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. From the South, the Army uses a route through Pakistan, originating from the port city of Karachi. In-country, logisticians depend on overtaxed Army rotary-wing aircraft to move goods to their end users. "A testament to our aviation fleet is how many hours our rotary-wing aircraft continue to fly, greatly exceeding what we do in the United States," Radin said. In the United States, cargo helicopters like the CH-47 Chinook fly 20-25 hours a month. In Afghanistan, it's between 60-80 hours each month. That's three to four times more each month than what's done in the States, Radin said. "But we continue to exceed readiness rates," he said. The general said the Army is working with the Air Force to use fixed-wing assets to help move cargo from one airfield to another in country "to take some of the weight, some of the... hours off of our rotary-wing aircraft so we can continue to use our rotary-wing aircraft to go the last tactical mile." Also in country, the Army is benefiting from the "Ring Road" that provides a circular route through the country between its major cities. The United States contributed to the repair of that road. "As we started building the Ring Road around Afghanistan, we considered success to be being able to do 1,000 meters a day of road building," he said. "As we continued to improve the trafficability in that country, we greatly affect our ability to sustain operations there." The general also said that as transportation infrastructure in the country continues to improve, not only will Army operations be affected, but so will the Afghan economy and quality of life. "One of their big challenges they have is with distribution," he said. "If I recall correctly, somewhere between 40 to 60 percent of their agriculture products spoil because they cannot get the product to market or they cannot put it in refrigeration capability fast enough in order to maintain it to get it someplace that they can sell." Still the Army is challenged with distribution in Afghanistan, he said. Lethal cargo supplies have to be flown in. Non-lethal supplies, including building supplies, can be brought in with either the northern or southern distribution routes. Challenges include both bringing material into the country and also distributing it throughout the country. "Until recently we had no truck companies in Afghanistan," he said. "We relied purely on commercial solutions for distribution." Now, he said, with the plus-up of manning in the country, there's capability in country to move goods. Combating pilferage -- theft of supplies -- has also been a problem for the Army. One example is when moving fuel. The Army found that some of the fuel was being taken and resold on the market. Fuel trucks had been fitted with internal tanks to take advantage of the fact that fuel was being metered into the tankers, but not being metered as it was offloaded. That allowed transporters to keep what remained in the internal tank. "(There are) a very enterprising group of people over there," he said. "The way we got after this was metering the fuel on both ends -- and then paying them for what was delivered." Also, he said, materials other than fuel have been taken in transport. Cargo containers, for instance, were sometimes found to have been opened and items taken. A solution to that was to put locks and seals on containers. In some instances, containers had been cut open, the items inside removed and replaced with sandbags, and then the ends were welded back on and the container painted. The Army now uses sensors and tracking devices that help it keep track of material in transit, and is working to develop even more secure methods to combat pilferage as it moves through the distribution networks. The general also discussed the drawdown in Iraq, and its challenges to Army logistics. Radin said reviews of the Army's efforts there to accomplish the drawdown have been good -- in particular from the Government Accountability Office, which he said is a tough critic of the Army. "One of the most unusual things we've had most recently with us in logistics is the number of GAO reports on operations that we do, associated with the drawdown, saying that the Army is doing that very well," he said. The GAO, he said, tends to be "very critical" of Army efforts, and that there have been some concerns from the agency. But largely, he said, the GAO has acknowledged the Army had a drawdown plan, that it has executed most of that plan, and that the Army followed through with what it said it would do. "It was very easy for the Army to respond to that report, because we said the Army agrees with what GAO said," Radin told the conference participants. In the drawdown objectives, he said the Army attempted to achieve six targets for cargo movement, but fell short on two of those. The Army fell short on moving about 1,000 short tons of ammunition, for example. He said that's about eight containers, and that it's "not that challenging" to rectify that problem. Overall, Radin said, logistics efforts in Iraq with the drawdown have been successful. "The drawdown work in Iraq has gone very well and we are over the hump for at least this first piece of that and we can see that as vehicles are now just trickling out, as opposed to between 2,000-3,000 vehicles a month being shipped out of theater, we're now down to about 1,000 leaving Kuwait and hundreds coming out of Iraq." Former POW now leading advocate for resilience training [2010-09-22] WASHINGTON -- Personal resilience and her conviction the Army would rescue her is what helped a former prisoner of war make it through the ordeal of captivity nearly two decades ago. Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, now director of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, was captured by Iraqi soldiers in February 1991 when the Black Hawk helicopter she served on as flight surgeon was downed during a search mission. "I approached that like other problems -- that I will make it as good as I can make it," she said. "Instead of just catastrophizing about that I had several broken bones ... I was grateful my fingers were still moving and still attached. I started to learn some of the language. I didn't know how long I was going to be there." The then-major had been captured with crash survivors Sgt. Troy Dunlap and Staff Sgt. Daniel Stamaris. She said during the entire time of their eight-day captivity, she maintained confidence in the U.S. military's dedication to its own. "I had gut confidence -- spiritual strength for me was important -- knowing that the Army was going to come get me," she said. "My new mission was to keep myself and the guys I was shot down with alive until they did. So confidence in something bigger than yourself is really part of what we think is important." Only during her initial capture, when the vehicle her captors transported her in came under a strafing attack, or when she was led to believe she'd be executed, did she doubt she'd make it out of the situation alive. "It's very difficult to think of something positive when somebody's got a handgun to the back of your head," she said. "The only positive thing I came up with at the time is, well, at least it won't hurt. And the gun went click and I'm not dead, so, I was grateful for that and went off to jail." It will be 20 years ago in February that Cornum was captured, and while some might think the event would still be fresh in the general's memory -- that it seems like yesterday -- she says that's not the case at all. "It hasn't felt like it was yesterday since 1991," she said. "It's an interesting thing. I think for some people, that's the last thing they ever saw of me. And I just kind of went back to work and did surgery. So for many people, when they look at me, it was like it was just yesterday, because they haven't seen anything that happened in the between time. For myself, that's not true." In the last 20 years, Cornum's gone from major to general officer, attended Air Command Staff College, served a five-year urology residency, served as commander of two Army hospitals, as surgeon for U.S. Army Forces Command, and attended the National War College. Today, she acts as director of the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program. The program has been fielded for over a year now, and Cornum said while most Soldiers have probably heard of it, they are probably not completely aware of what it is about. "It's a program for increasing psychological fitness and strength," she said. "It's modeled after the way we do physical training, so there's an assessment, there's reassessment as you move along, there's individual training." The program is also designed to teach Soldiers resilience. "It's the ability to bounce back after adverse events," Cornum said. "If you are a resilient person, you are more likely to be able to take advantage of opportunities because you know already that even if you are not successful the first time, you will bounce back and you will be able to be successful the next time." Resilience, and other skills taught today as part of the CSF program's master resilience training, are something Cornum said helped her get through her ordeal in Iraq. "I was convinced that how you go into a situation is really going to determine how you come out of it," she said. "I was very fortunate that I had those thinking skills and that strength before I went in." Cornum said she approaches problems, a cancer diagnosis or family issues the same way: "If I work hard enough, we are going to be successful at getting though this," she said. Not everybody starts off with those kinds of coping skills, she said. Some can be learned through background or educational experience. But, she said, Comprehensive Soldier Fitness is designed to help Soldiers learn to deal with difficult situations and not be destroyed by them. She said anybody can get better at dealing with difficult situations. "Wherever you are in the spectrum of psychological health ... CSF has something for you and you can get better," she said. Building work force top challenge for Cyber Command [2010-09-24] WASHINGTON -- Building the cyber force is the biggest challenge for the new U.S. Cyber Command, the agency's commander told congress. The new U.S. Cyber Command, which is charged with protecting Department of Defense computer networks, is now approaching full operational capability at Fort Meade, Md., said Gen. Keith B. Alexander, commander, U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency Sept. 23 before the House Armed Services Committee. Now, he said, he concerns himself with generating a work force for the command -- the tech savvy personnel who will help defend the military's networks. "The biggest challenge we currently face is generating the people we need to do this mission," he said. "I am optimistic we will get the force we need. We are pushing on the services to go faster to bring those forces in. My greatest concern is moving fast enough to provide a capability to defend our networks in time were a crisis to occur. We see that as our No. 1 mission -- be ready." When developing that force, the general emphasized the importance of single standards for training -- whether servicemembers and personnel are taught at a single school or at multiple schools. "So that you know, our combatant commanders know, whether they get a Soldier, Marine, Airman, or Sailor, that the person is trained to a standard and can accomplish the mission expected of them," he told lawmakers. The security threat to DOD networks today involves as many as 250,000 "probes and scans" an hour, the general said. It's those types of threats that the U.S. Cyber Command needs to keep abreast of, he said, to keep networks and the command and control systems that run on them operational. "Our services and combatant commands depend on a command and control system, a computer system that has the integrity and reliability to operate in combat," he said. "We have the mission to ensure that happens." When asked by members of the committee what congress can provide to ensure success of U.S. Cyber Command, Alexander said that continued support was important. Also, he said, is authority to conduct its mission. That is, clear policies on what the command is allowed to do, and where they are allowed to do it, both defensively and offensively. The White House, he said, is leading discussions on what kinds of authorities are going to be needed amongst the various agencies involved in defending the network from threats. That team includes the Defense Department and U.S. Cyber Command. The general said that the discussions will help determine what authorities exist now, what can now be legally done, and what additional authorities in the law will the U.S. Cyber Command need to ask congress for in the future. The threat to America's network infrastructure are broad. In the past, it's included exploitation. In such instances, that means theft and misuse of data, Alexander said. That could include intellectual property, classified information, or even bank accounts used to steal money. "We've seen that go on, and that endures and is perhaps the most significant form of the threat we have today," he said. But the Internet can also be used as a weapons platform, the general said. In 2007, for instance, the national networks in the country of Estonia were nearly shut down by distributed denial of service attacks, suspected to be the doing of unhappy Estonians of Russian descent voicing outrage at the removal of a bronze statue of a World War II Soviet soldier. Disruptive attracts, like the one in Estonia, can be recovered from, the general said. What is more difficult to recover from are destructive attacks -- ones that destroy network infrastructure equipment. "What concerns me the most is the destructive attacks that are coming," he said. "We are concerned that those will be the next things we see -- those are things that destroy equipment. It is something that breaks the computer or another automated device -- and once broken has to be replaced." In the warzone, were such equipment to be destroyed, command and control would suffer, he said. "We have to be prepared for that, both from a defensive perspective and to make sure the enemy can't do that to us again." The general told legislators that that in cyberspace, the threat does not have to be another country, but really any group with an agenda. "I think there are a number of countries out there that are near peers to us in cyberspace and hence the concern. This is an area that others can have the asymmetric capability and advantage,"' he said. "The non-nation state actors are also a concern. When people create cyber tools, the unintentional distribution of those tools can cause the most problems and we have to be prepared for that." When asked about the U.S. Cyber Command's ability to defend the network infrastructure of the United States, Alexander said that it was the job of the command to defend only DOD networks and that the agency would need to add additional capability were it to be asked to defend networks beyond those of the Defense Department. GCV must be safe, affordable, full-spectrum capable [2010-10-04] WASHINGTON -- The Army's next combat vehicle must perform through the full spectrum of Army operations, be designed to protect itself and the Soldier, and be built with a budget in mind. Nearly 300 attendees gathered at an industry day Oct. 1 in Detroit to discuss the acquisition strategy for the Army's Ground Combat Vehicle. During that time, Army officials explained their vision of the GCV program and gave industry insight into what they can expect with the release of the request for proposal that will kick off the development of the new vehicle. After the Manned Ground Vehicle component was cut from the Army's Future Combat Systems program in June 2009, the Army moved quickly to develop a new vehicle -- the Ground Combat Vehicle. The program released an RFP -- an invitation to industry to come forward with offers to develop the vehicle -- in February 2010. But that RFP was ultimately cancelled in August. Army officials said they expected a new RFP would be released within 60 days of the August cancellation -- that places the release of the new RFP in November. Program managers say they expect that release date is still doable. "We're still aiming for that," said Col. Andrew DiMarco, project manager for the GCV, during a telephone conference with media following the industry day. "But the caveat for that is -- what I don't want to do is to put something out on the street that isn't quite right." While the GCV program is expected to eventually produce multiple vehicles with varying capabilities, the focus for the first block of GCV development is an infantry combat vehicle, said DiMarco. "With the incremental approach to GCV capability, our increment or block, if you will, is focused on the infantry fighting vehicle," he said. "There may be other variants that are identified from a requirements perspective, and there may be other capabilities that emerge over time... our focus right now is on one GCV, and that is the infantry fighting vehicle." Michael N. Smith, director of the Army Maneuver Center of Excellence, said the Army emphasized the importance of the infantry fighting vehicle to potential GCV contractors during the industry day. "The requirement is that we need an infantry fighting vehicle that can deliver a squad to the battlefield, in an improvised-explosive-device environment -- realistically in an environment of anywhere along the continuum of operations under Army," Smith said. Smith also said the Army already has "solutions" that can operate in an IED environment, but that those cannot operate across the full spectrum of operations the Army may be called on to operate in. "So GCV ... as a platform, is designed to allow us to address ... that spectrum of operations, spectrum of conflict, while moving that squad to where it needs to be," Smith said. He went on to say that Army leadership developed four imperatives for the GCV, and emphasized those to industry representatives. Those include capacity, force protection, full-spectrum operations and timing. Four imperatives, he said, which are "non-negotiables" with regard to GCV development. Capacity, he said, means "a requirement to deliver the entire infantry squad on a single platform." The force-protection requirement is separate from vehicle survivability, he said, but rather is about ensuring safety for Soldiers. "(It's) a force-protection requirement that links to ensuring that the infantry squad is in fact delivered and is not taken out because the vehicle does not have the requisite protection to ensure the squad members and the crew of the vehicle are able to accomplish their mission," Smith said. "Full-spectrum operations" means the vehicle must be able to perform missions that include both offensive and defensive operations, as well as stability operations. "From an operational perspective, (that) means I have to have modular and scalable capabilities," he said. Smith added that the vehicle must include "a whole suite of things to allow me to adapt the platform to accomplish the mission in a wide variety of environments and terrain sets." Timing, Smith said, means ensuring the vehicle is developed in time to ensure the end product is still valid for the mission. "If we take too long to develop something, then by the time we have the optimized solution, the environment has changed so significantly that that solution is no longer useful," he said. Cost is another significant element in GCV development and will play a key role in the RFP when it is released. "Our intent for this RFP is to give them a target range and to use that as part of assessing their proposals and making a determination -- among other factors, certainly -- who ultimately will be selected," DiMarco said. The colonel said a specific price range for manufacture would be specified in the RFP, though he was unable to say what that range would be. DiMarco also said the RFP would focus more on vehicle performance, rather than technology, allowing industry more flexibility to develop their own solutions for meeting the Army's needs. But to help with that, he said, the Army will again make available to industry research that was done in development of the MGV, formally part of FCS. "We provided industry with access to I think what we called the 'MGV body of knowledge,'" he said. "That was a compilation of information about things that we did under the FCS MGV program. I believe it's still our intent to provide that body of knowledge to industry again." Saving energy saves lives says new Army exec [2010-10-13] WASHINGTON -- In Afghanistan, energy efficiency doesn't just translate to a savings in fossil fuels -- it translates to saving lives. Fewer fuel convoys in theater can mean saving the lives of Soldiers, said Katherine Hammack, the new assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment. Last week -- at the start of October's energy awareness observance -- the word "energy" was added to the name of that office. It's a reflection of the Army's new focus on energy. There was one casualty for every 24 fuel convoys in Afghanistan in fiscal year 2007, according to a 2009 Department of the Army study. "(Energy) does have a direct impact. And I would say with the recent issues on the Pakistani border, our logistics tail and our convoys are becoming bigger and bigger issues," Hammack said. "I believe our Soldiers are well aware of the issues and are looking for ways they can use energy wiser." Energy use in contingency operations also costs a significant amount of money. The cost of providing energy in Afghanistan and Iraq is often calculated as a "fully burdened" cost. In a place like Afghanistan, that's not just the initial cost of buying something like JP8 fuel, but also the cost of transporting it via convoy or even by aircraft across the desert to where it is needed. Per gallon estimates range anywhere from $20 to $1,000 dollars. The Army is focused now on reducing its energy use both overseas and stateside as a way to reduce casualties associated with fuel convoys, lower the amount of money spent on energy, and ensure energy security for the Army -- which means ensuring there is always energy available to continue the Army mission uninterrupted, said Hammack. "The first priority is less," said Hammack. "If you use less energy, you don't have to buy as much -- or you don't have to make as much from alternative energy sources or renewable energy sources." At Fort Irwin, for instance, the Army is looking at using solar shades with tents to better insulate them in an effort to reduce cooling costs. "If you are better insulated, you don't need as much energy for air conditioning -- if you don't need as much energy for air conditioning, you don't have to bring as much fuel to the facility," Hammack said, adding that efforts like solar shades can achieve 50-percent energy reductions. At Fort Wainwright, Alaska, Hammack said, the Army is putting insulation on the outside of buildings to increase energy efficiency. And at Fort Hunter Liggett, Calif., they've put in solar-powered streetlights that can run for four days. The Army's residential housing initiative also has focus on energy efficiency as well, she said. Hammack said the Army's Installations Management Command is also working to increase the number of energy managers at each installation so they understand how energy is used and how to use it more efficiently, so they can do an analysis of their facilities and identify opportunities for efficiency improvements. The Army is required to meet requirements set out in Executive Order 13423 that requires federal agencies to reduce energy intensity by 3 percent each year, leading to 30 percent by the end of fiscal year 2015, compared to an FY 2003 baseline. Overseas, in contingency operations, the Army is also looking for ways to reduce energy requirements. That could translate to fewer fuel convoys needed to supply operations, Hammack said. The Army is now working on developing "microgrid" technologies that tie generators together into one grid. "If you have ten generators -- each operating at 25 percent capacity -- that might (equal) two generators operating at 100 percent capacity," Hammock said. "They are more efficient and use less fuel for the same amount of output." Reducing use, through improved efficiency, is only part of the way the Army is achieving its goals. Being able to produce energy, without depending on bringing in energy from the outside, is also part of solution for energy security. Energy security means an Army installation can provide power to its most critical operations, even if the civilian power grid or energy supply is completely down. The Army is looking at technologies to help commanders and Soldiers produce energy on site. "There's so many things we're trying and testing," Hammack said. There's a rucksack power capability, for instance, "instead of big batteries you carry around solar panels you can spread out," she said. The Army's also deployed wind turbines in contingency operations to generate energy. Another solution, she said, is waste-to-energy conversion. "We do generate waste and we have several waste-to-energy facilities operating in the United States and we are looking at and have already deployed several waste-to-energy units in our forward operating bases," she said. While the facilities are large, she said, and not rapidly deployable, it is a way to mitigate environmental impact and at the same time generate energy without using JP8 or some other liquid fuels. "Our primary mission is the safety and security of the United States," Hammack said. "Fuel is what is needed to support that mission. We are not going to sacrifice the mission, but we need to be well aware of the logistics it takes to support the mission. We're trying to find and identify and deploy the technologies that help us meet our mission requirements at the same time reducing the fuel." Hammack was recently named the assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment. That office, ASA (IE&E), is new this fiscal year, in that it added "energy" to its name. Army again beats yearly recruiting numbers, quality [2010-10-13] WASHINGTON -- The Army exceeded its recruiting goals again this year, turning more than 74,577 young Americans into Soldiers in fiscal year 2010. That's about 77 more Soldiers than it planned to recruit. During a press conference Oct. 12 at the Pentagon, Maj. Gen. Donald M. Campbell Jr., commander of the U. S. Army Recruiting Command, discussed the Army's recruiting efforts last year and its successes. It wasn't only numbers the Army's recruiters could pride themselves on, it's also recruit quality. In FY 2010, for instance, about 99.9 percent of recruits had high school diplomas -- only a handful came in with a grade equivalency degree, known as a GED. And of all Army recruits, 64 percent scored at or above the 50th percentile on the Armed Forces Qualification Test. The Department of Defense requires only 60 percent of recruits meet that mark. Across the board, the military services, including the Army, brought in a diverse set of new recruits that looks like America looks -- matching recruiting numbers for major ethnic groups to within just points of what the larger American population of 18-to-24-year-olds look like. In 2009, for instance, 71.4 percent of non-prior-service recruits were white, 15.4 percent were African American, and 15.8 percent identified as Hispanic. Those numbers come close to the percentages of the American population of 77.7 percent, 14.7 percent, and 17.9 percent respectively. "My job is to make sure we look like America -- that we are a diverse organization that supports America," Campbell said. "We watch very carefully the numbers that we recruit in all the major ethnic categories, and make sure we look like America." The latest pool of recruits doesn't just span ethnic and racial boundaries. They also come from a variety of economic backgrounds, Campbell said. Numbers showing family income from recruits show that nearly two-thirds of recruits come from middle-class or higher backgrounds. Nearly 25 percent of recruits come from the "richest quintile," according to one set of DOD numbers. "(It's a) fallacy that we recruit from the poorest of Americans," Campbell said. "Those numbers bear it out. If you look at the numbers, we essentially recruit from the middle class to the upper middle class to the richest." The success of the most recent recruiting effort, Campbell said, can be attributed to the Army's recruiting teams. "We have a great team in the field, both noncommissioned officers and officers," he said. "But, primarily, the noncommissioned officers." Campbell said the Army is transitioning away now from an older recruiting model where the mission is laid on individuals and is instead moving toward an effort where it's a team that produces recruiting successes. "We're really working hard on moving this from what we call a legacy individual-based recruiting method to more of a team concept," he said. "I believe the team concept is starting to catch on." Historically, he said, recruiting missions would come from the highest levels to the lowest person. "We'd tell you, here's your mission, go sign for it." Now, he said, missions are assigned to a station and the station commander decides how he's going to attack the mission. "It's not on one person's shoulders in the station or two, it's on the team," Campbell said. The general also said recruiting teams break up missions into distinct tasks as well, which allows Soldier recruiters to spend more time talking with recruits and less time doing processing paperwork. Campbell acknowledged that the current job market and economic crisis might have contributed some to the successes of the Army's last recruiting year, but said that historically, the economy has not been a good predictor of recruiting successes. "There is some credence to the economy helps us," he said. "But there's historical data that shows that similar economic downturns have not yielded the same number of quality recruits." The general said he thinks two things are driving good recruiting numbers. First, recruits want to serve, and second, they are after adventure. "They want opportunities for adventure and a lot of the military occupational specialties we have in the Army -- the 150 'ways to be a Soldier' -- provide them opportunity for adventure," he said. Challenges in the future for Army recruiting include the continued low percentage of Americans that are even qualified to join military service. Factors that could preclude a potential recruit from becoming a Soldier include medical, educational or conduct issues. "As you look to the future, I think one thing will remain constant," Campbell said. "If you look at 17-24-year olds -- for all of our services -- only about three in 10 of those young men and women are going to be qualified to serve." He also said an improved economy, and more job opportunities in the market, could have some impact on recruiting. "As the economy turns, our business will get a little tougher, but if we set the conditions now in the Army, like we are trying to do and focus on quality of life, taking care of Soldiers and families, and focus on those tools that allow them to recruit in difficult environments, then we will be okay," he said. Following the press briefing, Campbell stepped outside to the Pentagon courtyard to meet with some of the young Americans who had decided to join the Army, and to administer the oath of enlistment to them. Gabriella Marvin, originally from New Jersey, but who attends school in Washington, D.C., was one of those recruits. "Being a history major I've come to love my country," Marvin said. "I've worked for different parts of the government before. I worked for a congressman." Joining the Army is something she said she's wanted to do for a while. "It's just different," she said. "I could have gone and gotten a job on Capitol Hill with no problem." She will ship off to basic training in February, she said, but not before finishing her history degree at George Washington University. In the Army, she'll be a military police officer. She said she's concerned about being deployed, but that she knew about that before enlisting. "I think anybody would be worried, but it's part of the job and it's a risk I'm willing to take -- that I knew about before I signed my contract," she said. "I'm more worried that my mother's worried. But she told me it'd probably be good for me because I'm a little bit of a slob. Reid Reifschlager, originally from Texas, was also in the Pentagon courtyard and raised his hand for the oath of enlistment. "It's something I've wanted to do ever since I was 11," he said. "After working dead-end jobs and not really pushing myself to do it, I had this opportunity to move up here with my sister." He said his sister was forceful in helping him get his life together and helped him make some positive decisions about his life. "She said 'yo, let's get this done,'" he said. "And I was like, it's about time. I've wanted to do this for about nine years -- why don't I go ahead and do it." Reifschlager said he was just 11 when he decided he really wanted to be a Soldier -- right around the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "It's kind of coincidental," he said. "I wanted to be one of the people that help serve and fight for my country." In the Army, Reifschlager will serve as an infantry Soldier. He signed up for a four-year contract and says he hopes to eventually re-enlist and retrain in combat engineering. "I could have gone to college," he said. "But I would have struggled in school. School's not really my thing." But he did say that he's seen his friends who've joined the military come back -- more mature. "They're a different person from where they were before," he said. "Most of the time for the better. I hope I get that change." Next year's Army recruiting effort, Campbell said, is already underway. The command actually has about half its job complete. Next year's target, Campbell said, is 67,000 Soldiers. "We're going to do it, because we've started this year with an entry pool of 33,276 -- almost 50 percent of the requirement for the next year is already signed up with us," he said. "We are positioned well, we have the right number of NCOs, and I am funded to the levels we need." Upgrade kits for M4 come in 2011 [2010-10-16] WASHINGTON -- The Army expects to field the new sniper rifle, the XM2010, by January. And conversion kits for the M4 rifle will come next year. A panel of program managers from Program Executive Office Soldier met Oct. 14 at the Pentagon to discuss the status of several programs in the PEO's portfolio. Included in the discussion was the status of the new sniper rifle, development of the Operation Enduring Freedom Camouflage Pattern uniform for use in Afghanistan, Mounted Soldier System development, and the improvement program for the M4 carbine. Col. Douglas A. Tamilio, program manager for Soldier Weapons, said the Army will do a request for proposal in the next three or four months to complete the Army's acquisition objective for M4 rifles. That RFP will include more than 14,000 M4A1 rifles -- an improvement over the M4 Soldiers currently use. "What the M4A1 gives our Soldiers is a heavy barrel and fully automatic -- that's what the field is asking for," Tamilio said. The M4A1 also features ambidextrous controls. The Army already has a contract with Colt to produce the rifles. The second contract, in the next fiscal quarter, will help the Army complete its AAO and will include additional rifles for both foreign military sales and to meet other Army requirements. Tamilio also said the Army will work a contract to procure some 65,000 kits in FY 2011 to convert M4s already in the field to the M4A1. Other phases of M4 improvement involve a better bolt and rail. "I think we can get significant increases in reliability by looking at some new enhancements to bolts," Tamilio said. "Because a lot of companies have shown some bolts over the last year or so that have got, we think, improvement. We're going to ask industry to give us their best." Tamilio also said fielding of the new sniper rifle, called the XM2010 -- the name is a departure from the Army's formally two- or three- digit weapon naming scheme -- has come quickly. "In less than a year we're going to be fielding a piece of equipment that is going to add to the lethality of our Soldiers in the field," he said. The XM2010 is an improvement on the M24 sniper rifle system. A contract for production of the system was recently awarded to manufacturer Remington. Tamilio said it's expected fielding will happen in January. The new rifle features a suppressor to allow Soldiers to fire the weapon in a suppressed environment and to also reduce muzzle flash. Also included, a fluted, free-floating barrel to give Soldiers more accuracy and heat dissipation. The weapon also sits on an improved bipod, Tamilio said, and features a modular rail system. "(You can) screw a 1913 rail adaptor anywhere on here," Tamilio said. The system is unique in that it allows Soldiers to install a laser aiming device, for instance, and run the cord for that device inside the rail so they can install a activation button. The included scope also features a reticle that will adjust based on the scope's zoom factor to maintain accuracy, is magazine-fed, has a 1,200 meter range, and a fully adjustable and collapsible butt stock. "The key behind this weapons system -- the developments and improvements were built on what the snipers asked for," Tamilio said. Col. William E. Cole, program manager for Soldier Protection and Individual Equipment, said the Army is focused on a world-wide solution for Soldier uniforms -- an Army combat uniform available in patterns and colors that allows Soldiers to operate in nearly any environment. Phase four of Army uniform development calls for three uniform patterns of similar geometry but different colors that allow Soldiers to operate in a desert environment, a woodland environment, and in a "transitional" environment in between those two. Additionally, the Army is looking for a fourth color set that compliments all three of those pallets that can be used for organizational clothing and equipment such as modular lightweight load-carrying equipment, rucksacks and the improved outer tactical vest. Those kinds of issued clothing are more durable and more expensive. Unlike a Soldier's ACU, the Army would like to be able to reissue OCIE. "We can't afford to keep replacing OCIE every time we send Soldiers to a different part of the world," Cole said. The colonel said that the new patterns will be based on science, including both photo simulation and field testing, as well as efforts to determine such things as how close an observer must be before seeing a Soldier wearing the patterns. Also a factor will be time to detection -- at a given distance how long does it take for an observer to see a Soldier in the patterns. "It won't be a fashion show or a beauty contest," Cole said. "It's going to be real objective data, measurable data, that we can replicate." Currently, the Army is focused on outfitting Soldiers in Afghanistan with the fire resistant Army combat uniform in the new Operation Enduring Freedom combat pattern, or OCP. That pattern was specially designed for the unique requirements of that theater. It's expected by December all the uniforms that are needed to outfit Soldiers in Afghanistan will have been distributed, though getting them into the hands of the Soldiers that will wear them could be complicated by the operations tempo there, PEO officials said. Additionally, they said not every Soldier in Afghanistan will actually get the FRACU in OCP, based on the time they will have left in theater. Col. Will Riggins, project manager for Soldier Warrior, said the Nett Warrior system is now undergoing limited user testing at Fort Riley, Kan. Three different versions of the system, from three competing defense contractors, are being tested by Soldiers there. The Nett Warrior system is worn on a Soldier's body and will provide "unparalleled situational awareness" to Soldiers on the ground. The system includes a radio, a helmet-mounted display and a hand-held data input device. The wiring for the system is integrated into a protective vest. With Nett Warrior, Soldiers will be able to see their location, the location of their fellow Soldiers, and the location of known enemies on a moving map. "This is not something you hang on a Soldier and say go out and fight," said Riggins. "It truly changes the basic methodology of how you fight, how you command and control, how you share information on the battlefield." Riggins said the Army's Training and Doctrine Command is now in the process of writing doctrine to describe use for the system. He also said he believes development of the Nett Warrior program is where it should be. "We're still on track, as we have been for a while now, for a milestone C low-rate initial production in March 2011," he said. Riggins also discussed development of the Mounted Soldier System program. He said the system is in developmental testing at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., and will move into a limited user test at Fort Bliss, Texas, with the Army Evaluation Task Force in either May or June, followed by an LRIP decision in August or September. The Mounted Soldier System includes a helmet-mounted-display that can attach Soldiers to up to five video feeds, a cordless communications system and a system to keep Soldiers cool under their uniforms and protective gear. "The temperature extremes we deal with in Iraq and Afghanistan and in various places around the world where we are deployed are intense," Riggins said. Inside a vehicle, he said, it can get as hot as 120-130 degrees, because of limited air movement and the extra heat generated by electronic equipment. The cooling system consists of a vest, worn as close to the body as possible, that contains cooling tubes connected to a water chiller and circulator on the vehicle. Riggins said development of the system comes from lessons learned from the Air Warrior system and in terms of "the loss of awareness and capability when you are on extended five- or six- multi-hour missions and how much better Soldiers can perform when their core body temperature is kept at a reasonable level." Riggins also discussed how such systems can be powered and power options the Army is looking at for other systems. He said lithium ion power in batteries is about "state of the art" and has maxed out the current capability for power density -- the amount of power that can be delivered for a battery's physical size. "What we haven't done well is shape those batteries so they integrate on a Soldiers form," Riggins said. Now, he said, the Army is looking at shaping batteries to fit the Soldier form. One example is a battery that is shaped like an enhanced small arms protective insert. He said in the IOTV there is room behind the protective plates to insert such a battery. "It makes a great difference -- it integrates better," Riggins said. "When you put a rucksack on, you don't have that brick pressing on your back." The ESAPI-shaped battery will be demonstrated at Fort Riley as part of the Nett Warrior LUT. He said because the battery is bigger when it's the size of a plate, it also affects the mission. "Instead of having an eight- or 12-hour mission time, like we currently have with Nett Warrior, we're looking at one of those ESAPI-sized plates being a 24-hour mission capability -- so great promise there, and more Soldier-friendly at the same time," Riggins said. LEAP award winners lauded at Pentagon ceremony [2010-10-16] WASHINGTON -- Practitioners of Lean and Six Sigma saved the Army $1 billion last year. During a ceremony at the Pentagon to recognize winners in the 2010 Army Lean/Six Sigma Excellence Awards Program, or LEAP, Under Secretary of the Army Joseph W. Westphal explained just how valuable practitioners of the manufacturing and business process improvement programs are to the Army. He said last year, those individuals, and thousands of others across the Army, produced for the Army $1 billion in cost savings and $3.3 billion in cost avoidances during fiscal year 2010. The secretary said that in times budget cuts, military spending is under scrutiny. "We're in the sights of the Army, in the sights of the Congress ... of the Office of Management and Budget -- in the sights of all these entities of ensuring we do a better job of managing ourselves and of being better stewards of the nation's resources," Westphal said. "All are calling for us to manage ourselves better, to be more innovative." He said that the Army's Lean and Six Sigma practitioners are part of helping the Army be better stewards of the taxpayer dollars. "Lean/Six Sigma professionals like yourselves are providing innovation, the business savvy, the continuous drive to improve the way the Army operates," Westphal told the award winners. "You're helping to transform our business practices, to free up resources so we can better equip and support the Soldier." The secretary said he hopes to make the Army's business operations "as efficient as the warfighting side is effective" "I challenge you to take on the culture of continuous process improvement and to continue to be an active participant in leading transformational change across our Army," Westphal said. The winners of the 2010 LEAP Awards include: -- Enterprise Level Project Sponsor Award: Assistant Secretary of the Army Financial Management and Comptroller -- HQDA Level Organizational Deployment Award: Assistant Secretary of the Army Acquisition Logistics and Technology -- AR 10-87 Level Organizational Deployment Award: Army Materiel Command -- Subordinate Level Organizational Deployment Award: 21st Theater Sustainment Command -- Enterprise Level Award (Master Black Belt): Program Executive Office, Combat Support and Combat Support Services -- Enterprise Level Award (Master Black Belt): Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs -- Non-Enterprise Level Award - (Black Belt): Army Communications-Electronics Life Cycle Management Command -- Non-Enterprise Level Award - (Black Belt): 21st Theater Sustainment Command -- Non-Enterprise Level Award- (Green Belt): Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command -- Non-Enterprise Level Award- (Green Belt): Program Executive Office, Enterprise Information Systems -- Non-Gated Project Team Award: Tobyhanna Army Depot -- Non-Gated Project Team Award: 21st Theater Sustainment Command Disability Awareness: New technology helping deaf employees [2010-10-21] WASHINGTON -- Across the Army, about 280 civilian employees are deaf while another 2,100 are hard of hearing, and the Army is providing new technology to ensure they can do their jobs. A seminar for Pentagon employees Tuesday as part of Disability Employment Awareness Month discussed adaptive technology and challenges facing deaf employees. "Traditionally, the federal government has been a massive supporter of hiring people with disabilities, and the Army has exemplified that," said Barbara Stansbury, deputy director of the Army's Equal Employment Opportunity Office. By making available interpreters or adaptive technology, she said the Army ensures deaf employees can bring their valuable skills to the table the same as their hearing counterparts. Such technology includes video phones, for instance, that allow deaf employees to make phone calls using only sign language. Another piece of technology is the "UbiDuo," system, which consists of two keyboard and screen devices, similar to laptops, that allow a deaf and hearing employee to sit face-to-face and carry on a conversation. "Deaf people are individuals who can function and do function as well as anybody else," Stansbury said. "There is a large set of skills in the deaf community that could easily be utilized with the technology today. There are graphic designers, photographers or budget analysts -- there's a wealth of deaf people out there with skills that the Army needs." Meredith Filiatreault is a sign-language interpreter with the Army's EEO office in Washington. She provides language services to about 15 deaf professionals that serve headquarters Army. Her work takes her to office meetings, awards ceremonies and even office social functions. "It is important that we are able to provide that accommodation for the deaf individuals, so they have access to what is going on in office meetings, or what is going on with coworkers," she said. "I wish I was able to get an interpreter for every deaf person, but that is not possible." She said in lieu of an interpreter, the Army can now provide for deaf employees technology that makes it easier for them to communicate with their coworkers. Filiatreault provided the seminar for Pentagon employees to familiarize them with what the Army does for deaf employees, challenges deaf employees face in the workplace, and how they can better work with their deaf coworkers. "The course was motivated to provide some additional background to the offices that have deaf employees in them," she said. During the two-hour seminar, Filiatreault exposed attendees to some basic sign language and some concepts regarding Deaf culture. She also explained that anyone unable to hear is "deaf" -- but that some of those who are unable to hear, who are "deaf," choose also to be "Deaf" -- with a capital "D." That second word has a cultural connotation, she said, indicating a self-identified cultural connection with a larger community of Deaf individuals. While the Army does a good job of accommodating deaf employees, Stansbury said the Army needs to broaden its focus on adaptive communications. An aging workforce means more employees are experiencing hearing loss. Additionally, she said, Soldiers are coming home from theater with hearing loss. "I'm seeing more and more military wearing hearing aids," she said. "With the number of Soldiers coming back from theater -- a significant number of which have already been recognized as having hearing loss -- our focus needs to be broader. So the whole concept of adapting the way we are accustomed to communicating to a more inclusive way of communicating is not only going to benefit deaf employees, but it is going to benefit a lot of hard-of-hearing older people as well." Army leaders at AUSA promise not to cut family programs [2010-10-25] WASHINGTON -- Army leaders promised to leave family support programs intact when looking for ways to lean out the service's massive budget. "We want to ensure that the family programs we're operating are run well and efficiently and if we need to make adjustments so they can be more so, that's fine," said Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh. "But what we won't do particularly as a first reaction, is look to those programs as a source of budgetary savings." During the Oct. 25 opening presentation at the 2010 Association of the United States Army's Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C., McHugh discussed the Army's challenge of operating in a constrained budget environment as well as efforts to modernize the Army. He and Chief of Staff of the Army George W. Casey Jr. went into more detail during a press conference immediately following that ceremony. In regard to a challenge by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to the military services to find ways to trim some $100 billion from the defense budget over the next five years, the Army's two senior leaders said they won't look to family support programs -- which they say are important to supporting the all-volunteer force -- but will instead look to things like restructuring commands and doing "portfolio reviews" of Army capabilities. "A lot of what we're finding is coming out of capability portfolio reviews and it's basically redundant programs or nonperforming programs," said Casey, also adding the Army is looking at force structures. "We're asking ourselves, for example, do we still need a four-star general in Army Europe and what should a support force structure in Europe look like? I suspect we'll be able to garner some significant military and civilian savings at those headquarters." Those portfolio reviews, said McHugh, "already show great promise in bringing better discipline to our programs -- better evaluating and realigning our requirements with the reality of today and where we think tomorrow is going." The secretary said a task force is working now and will provide a report within 90 days, though he is getting updates on their progress. He also said a good budget policy starts with people. "We can't have an Army without people," he said. "All our efforts must start with them, with training and education -- the things that create our greatest hedge against future threats. That hedge: adaptive, innovative, thinking enlisted Soldiers, officers and NCOs -- folks who will make a difference." McHugh also discussed a new project, an effort to modernize the institutional Army, or generating force. That's the portion of the Army whose primary mission is to generate and sustain the operational Army's capabilities for employment by joint force commanders. "The operational Army has changed dramatically," McHugh said, explaining that 10 years of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan have changed the way the Army fights and reacts. But the institutional Army, he said, the generating force, has not changed. "It looks pretty much the same as it did structurally since the early to mid-1970s." The secretary said there are examples of changes in the institutional Army in the past, including a reorganization of the War Department by Gen. George C. Marshall, and, after the Vietnam War, Operation Steadfast, which reorganized the Army and built an all-volunteer force. "But these models really don't address what I call the new paradigm. America's enemies are no longer solely defined by nations or contained by borders, because they are not," McHugh said. "Our combat formations quickly adapt to changes in terrain, mission and the enemy they face. I believe the institutions and processes we have to help those forces do better, need to change as well." The Army's chief of staff also discussed the Army's effort to restore balance to the force, which it has been working on since 2007. "With the drawdown in Iraq, we are getting to a situation where we can breathe again," he said. "When you're only home for 12-15 months between deployments, you really don't have much time to breathe -- you take a break then you get back on the treadmill and get ready to go." He said as a result of the increased growth the Army completed in 2009 and a temporary end-strength increase of 22,000 by the secretary of defense in July 2009, units are home for 15 to 18 months now, and the units that are deploying toward the end of this year will end up in the 18 to 24-month range. "Increasing the time the Soldiers spend at home is the most important element of getting ourselves back in balance," Casey said. The general also touched on other Army efforts, including modular conversions. He said the service has converted about 290 of the 300 brigades to modular designs. Also, he mentioned an effort to move Soldiers out of Cold War-era career fields and into specialties more relevant to today's conflicts. He said so far some 124,000 Soldiers have been converted, and by this time next year that number will be 150,000. That move, he said is "significantly increasing our ability to do the 21st-century tasks." Casey also said in the Army's second decade of combat it faces several challenges, including maintaining a combat edge, reconstituting the force and building resilience. Army will see more of same for years, CSA says [2010-10-27] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers can look forward to increased time at home station when the Army has all but completely pulled out of Iraq, leaving a larger pool of units free to do rotations in Afghanistan. But those rotations will continue for a some time, said the Army's top Soldier. "This war is a long-term ideological struggle against violent extremism, and our job is not done yet. This war is a long way from over," said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. Casey spoke during the "Eisenhower Luncheon" at the Association of the United States Army's Annual Meeting and Exposition. The chief spoke to an audience of several thousand Soldiers, civilians, and foreign military members. He used the opportunity to provide an update on the status of the Army, including efforts to put the force back in balance and what Soldiers will be doing back at home when they are not deployed. By 2012, the chief said, the Army will have enough Soldiers available to train for missions beyond counterinsurgency. They will be able to return to training and preparing for full-spectrum operations. "We'll have about as many brigades available, but not earmarked for Iraq and Afghanistan, as we will have deploying," he said. "Those that will not be deploying for 12 months will not be sitting on their duffel bags in the barracks. Those not going will be given a training focus for a combatant commander and be available to them for engagement or exercises." It's both the drawdown in Iraq and growth of the Army that will enable it to give Soldiers more time at home, more time with family, and more time to train, he said. The Army has grown by about 95,000 Soldiers since 2007, including some temporary growth, Casey said. "That growth, plus the drawdown in Iraq, is what's allowing us to continuously improve the time our Soldiers spend at home, to improve our dwell," he said. And as I've been here, it's become clearer and clearer to me that the most important thing we can do to restore balance to the Army is to increase our dwell, to increase the time our Soldiers spend at home." For about five years, he said the Army deployed at one year out and one year back. "That was absolutely unsustainable" he said, adding that it takes 24-36 months to recover from a one-year combat deployment. "When you turn faster than that the cumulative effects build up faster." Soldiers freed from grueling deployment cycles to Iraq and Afghanistan under the Army's Force Generation model will be readying themselves for other conflicts that involve a different array of enemies and capabilities, Casey said. Such training has already begun at Army combat training centers. The 3rd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, for instance, recently trained at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, La. "They are conducting the first full-spectrum rotation there in quite a while and I had the opportunity to sit in the grass and listen to a company after-action review and sit in a van and listen to a battalion AAR," Casey said. Casey said he was struck by the fact that Soldiers hadn't, for a while, trained the way the Soldiers at the JRTC were training. "It was clear that we need to rebuild our appreciation for the ground -- a lot of good learning going on," he said of the experience. Secondly, he said, he was impressed at the skill Soldiers displayed in Fort Polk. "We are very, very lethal at the company and platoon level," he said. "When these guys closed with the enemy, they were dominate." Casey also took away from the experience insight into young Army leadership -- hungry to do better and develop warfighting skills. "These leaders who had been up for 36 hours preparing a defense -- some of the lieutenants you could tell they had dug their own foxhole -- and they are sitting there discussing amongst themselves how they can get better at doing what they are doing," he said. Soldiers prepared with such training can expect to go on to serve in other combat missions that are not in Afghanistan, Casey said. "The combatant commanders outside of Central Command have been waiting for you, and you will be received with open arms -- and used," he said. Casey also said that after nine years of war, the Army may have changed, and that it needs to understand those changes to go forward. "The impacts of war have changed us as individuals, as professionals, and as a profession in ways we don't yet fully appreciate," he said. "For us to succeed as an Army ... it is imperative we gain an understanding of how a decade at war has affected us personally and professionally." The general said he has asked the director of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command to conduct a study to find what has changed in the Army as a result of two wars spanning nearly a decade. Army sizing up its industrial base [2010-11-01] WASHINGTON -- The under secretary of the Army visited Pine Bluff Arsenal, Ark., as part of an exploratory effort to better understand the industrial capability of the Army's arsenals and depots. "Part of this visit was to see what is the capacity and capability of the arsenal -- what is the nature of the workforce," said Under Secretary of the Army Joseph W. Westphal of his Oct. 28 visit. As the chief management officer of the Army, the under secretary said he's interested in learning more about the Army's industrial facilities. "The question now is how efficient can we make them (and) how inefficient will they become if we don't bring enough work to them," he said. "So for example, if you take a bunch of work out of a particular arsenal, like Pine Bluff, the cost of work will increase, and so their customer base will (have) a problem." Arsenals like Pine Bluff are permanent Army facilities, and have fixed costs associated with maintaining them. If their workloads are not sufficient enough to offset the cost of maintaining them, the Army loses money keeping them open. "We need to look -- is there a way to mitigate that by taking excess work from somewhere else and shifting it around," Westphal said. The Army doesn't yet have a plan in place to do that, but Westphal's trip is part of his effort to better understand what the Army has, so he can be prepared to build such a plan. "(We're) getting ready to look at the need to produce ... more of a master plan, a strategy about how we are going to address changes in capacity and funding," he said. Pine Bluff is one of several dozen facilities across the United States that produce, repair or reset the tools Soldiers use to fight America's wars. At Pine Bluff Arsenal, for instance, the Army manufactures more than 135 products. Those products include chemical protective equipment such as the M40 and M45 series masks, ammunition like the M18 and M83 smoke grenade, and both visible light and infrared illumination shells such as the M485 155mm illuminator and the M816 81mm infrared illuminating cartridge. During his visit, the secretary visited facilities that manufacture M930 120mm mortars, M40 protective masks, and white phosphorus illumination shells. The arsenal also repairs equipment like the chemical-biological protective shelter and the chemically protected deployable medical system. Demand for such devices is not enough to spur interest in the private sector, so the Army maintains the capability of producing those items on-demand when they are requested. "When we come to the end of a war like this and we need less of something, the private sector will move to something else," Westphal said. "We must be able to produce something should we have to use it in the future. So we want to maintain the capacity." Westphal also said the Army remains mindful of ensuring it does not compete with the private sector. One major change at Pine Bluff Arsenal is the phase-out of the chemical weapons demilitarization mission there -- which employed about 1,100 individuals. Those employees include about 350 Army civilians and 750 contract employees. The chemical weapons demilitarization mission phase-out begins in December. The under secretary met with civilian employees at the arsenal as part of a town hall meeting. During the meeting, the secretary discussed his plans for Army civilians to have career paths similar to what is available for Soldiers. "I want to be able to put everybody that is a federal employee who works for the Department of the Army on a career pathway," he said. "We have many of those, but we have a lot of people who are not on a career pathway, (but) who have generalized descriptions. They have a job and they are doing well, but if they want to move up the pyramid, there is no pathway. I want to create professional development and leadership education for our workforce just like the military." The secretary said that when employees need to leave a position to pursue education in order to move forward in their careers, the Army's civilian workforce must be poised to backfill that slot with another employee who is capable, or more capable, of doing that job. Army striving for 'net-zero' energy use [2010-11-02] WASHINGTON -- The Army has a goal of "net-zero" energy consumption by 2030, one of three challenges laid out by the service's assistant secretary for installations, energy and the environment. Net-zero energy means an installation or building produces as much energy as it consumes, resulting in a net usage of zero. "The goal is net-zero: net-zero energy, net-zero water and net-zero waste," said Katherine Hammack, the assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and the environment. Hammack spoke Oct. 27 during the Association of the United States Army's Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C., as part of a presentation on energy security. She specified, however that the Army's goal for 2030 is for energy only, and that the timeline for water and waste goals have not yet been set. "(We're) working on developing strategies. We're testing various scenarios," she said. "Those are our challenges to both our operational forces and to our permanent installations." The effort is part of providing energy security to the Army, meaning that the Army can continue its mission without depending on the civilian power grid. Achieving that would require both a reduction in energy use by finding efficiencies, and also the addition of power-generation capabilities. As part of that effort, Hammack said the Army has a new policy to phase out incandescent light bulbs, which were invented 130 years ago. "It's amazing to me we still purchase them," she said, adding that 88 percent of bulbs purchased today are incandescent. The Army will finish off the incandescent inventory and start purchasing more efficient technology, such as compact fluorescent bulbs. Additionally, she said, the Army has changed the way it designs and develops Army facilities. New construction will incorporate principles from the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-Conditioning Engineers standard 189.1. Hammack said new construction will include things like cool roofs, solar water heating, storm-water management and water efficiency. The policies can help the Army find energy savings by as much as 45 percent, she said. "That is going to be our new design standard for buildings," Hammack said. On installations, energy reduction can be found through technology and efficiency, but can also be found through conservation efforts as well, said Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch, the Army's assistant chief of staff for installation management, and commander of Army Installation Management Command. The general said that on installations, efforts as simple as turning lights and computers off at the end of the day can help the Army lower its energy consumption. "We have to create incentives for energy conservation on our installations," Lynch said. In Army's privatized housing, for instance, such incentives are already in place. The privatized housing partners have determined baselines for utilities in Soldier housing. Soldiers in those homes pay nothing for utilities if they use only as much as the baseline. If they go over, they must pay utility bills. But if they go under, they get an incentive. They get paid. Lynch said at the 41 installations where that program is set up, some 80 percent of residents get money back. "We have to find out how to apply that kind of logic to installations and incentivize behavior," he said. Lynch also said energy managers have been appointed at each installation to help garrison commanders meet energy goals. Lt. Gen. Michael A. Vane, director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center, also spoke about applying energy efficiency in the tactical areas of the Army. He said energy savings translate not just to less fuel used, but to more boots on the ground and resources available for the mission. In Afghanistan, where fuel is not readily available from the commercial market, some 60-70 tankers a day are used to power the mission in the region. "Security for supply convoys in theater is estimated to require an average of one combat battalion, on a continuing basis," Vane said. "Ground resupply has accounted for some 30 percent of U.S. casualties in Iraq." He added that winter resupply in Afghanistan can take up to 45 days from the source to the end user, and that fuel and water comprise 70 to 80 percent of ground resupply volume. The per-Soldier demand in Iraq was about 16 gallons of fuel per day and water was at least three gallons a day. About 50 percent of fuel used was for electricity in forward operating bases, which, he said, are typically less than 40-percent efficient, with the overall efficiency of base camp power systems closer to 10 percent. "Just a 10-percent reduction applied to non-brigade combat team Soldiers involved in fuel transport and handling could result in as many as 1,500 or more Soldiers available for other missions and 234 less vehicles per day, or 85,000 fewer road-miles per year," he said. Kristopher Gardner, deputy director for technology in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisitions, Logistics and Technology, discussed some of the technologies the Army is looking at to decrease energy consumption and to increase energy efficiency. "We've been doing good with the power-production side: we've got investments in high-density energy-efficient engines for both aviation and hybrid electrics for ground vehicles and batteries," he said. He also said that while on installations, the Army has been good at measuring energy consumption, it has not had the same success at measuring consumption on the tactical side. Strategies for getting at that are included in the "Science and Technology Power and Energy Strategy," the thrust of which, he said, is reducing platform energy consumption. That includes such things as taking equipment off platforms and working on technologies that go into vehicles and on the Soldier. Examples include flexible displays and low-power electronics. Also, he said, the Army is looking at electronics that can operate at higher temperatures, so that there can be weight reduction in the area of cooling. "(They) allow us to operate at higher temperatures, meaning you wouldn't have to cool them as well or as much to get the same efficiencies," he said. The Army is also looking at micro-grid technologies that find reduced energy use through optimized energy distribution, by using technology to connect together 10 previously separate generators, for instance, an installation may find that only half of those generators are needed to run in order to power the mission there. Under Secretary of the Army Joseph W. Westphal said energy efficiency isn't just about "going green." "It's about protecting the lives of our troops and making our military better and more capable," Westphal said. "For the military, that dependence has tremendous strategic and tactical implications. Strategically, too much of our oil comes from potentially volatile places on Earth. There's no way Congress or the American public would allow some of those countries that sell us oil to design or produce the weapons systems we use. By buying oil from these places, we give them some say in whether our ships will sail, or our airplanes will fly." Non-deployable rate could reach 16 percent by 2012 [2010-11-04] WASHINGTON -- By the time the Army meets its goal to have Soldiers home for twice the time they're deployed, the service could face the problem of having nearly one in five Soldiers unable to deploy. Today, nearly 14.5 percent of Soldiers in a brigade combat team are unable to deploy by the unit's latest arrival date in theater, or LAD. That number is up from a little over 10 percent in 2007. By 2012, it's expected the number will be as high as 16 percent, said Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, the Army's deputy chief of staff, G-1. "We don't want it to grow, but the reality is, we're tracking what's happening with our Soldiers and we're making our best assumptions and assessment of what's going to happen in the future," Bostick said. The general spoke Oct. 26 during the Association of the United States Army's Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C., as part of a presentation on Army personnel. He said medical issues are a prime factor in the increase of non-deployable Soldiers. "Some of it is temporary medical, where we fix the Soldiers and they are not ready to go at the deployment time," Bostick said. He also said about 68 percent of those injuries are musculoskeletal issues, including knees, backs or muscles, for instance. The Army's leadership asked the secretary of defense for a temporary end-strength increase in 2009 to help alleviate problems associated with non-deployable Soldiers. As a result, about 22,000 additional Soldiers were approved above and beyond the Army's congressional mandate of 547,400. The Army added about 5,000 of those additional Soldiers in 2009, and another 10,000 in 2010 -- using up to 15,000 of the 22,000 extra slots authorized. Bostick said he expects the Army to take advantage of the remaining 7,000 temporary authorizations and will ultimately achieve an Army force size of more than 569,000. Also adding to the roster of non-deployable Soldiers is the elimination of stop-loss. That policy allowed the Army to extend Soldiers' enlistment beyond their end-of-service date, so they could deploy with their unit. Without stop-loss, some Soldiers stay behind when their unit deploys. "We have to make up for those losses," Bostick said. "They are on our books and we have an end strength, so we can't recruit against them. So you have to find a way to have three-to-one, about 12,000 Soldiers, to make up for 4,000 that might be stop-lossed." Non-deployable Soldiers are a "huge issue we are working across the Army that we have got to fix," Bostick said. The need for additional Soldiers can also be attributed to the service's wounded warrior program, Bostick said. The number of Soldiers in that program is increasing. "We thought that number was going to actually start coming down, but with what is happening in Afghanistan, the number is going the other direction," he said. Today, there's about 9,000 Soldiers in the wounded warrior program from both the Active Duty and Reserve Components, Bostick said. The general said the temporary end-strength increase is not forever. By September 2011, the Army will have to drawdown again to 547,000, the end strength prescribed in law. Bostick said a challenge with such a temporary increase is balancing the need to grow to what is needed, but at the same time dealing with the fact of cutting back at the end and having to tell people that want to stay that they can't. "From a personnel point of view, you have to care for Soldiers and their families and treat them with dignity and respect," he said. Maj. Gen. Donald M. Campbell, commander, U.S. Army Recruiting Command, said the Army is working to fill gaps and targeting recruiting efforts to find the kind of Soldiers the service needs. He said the Army is focusing on making sure recruiting is supporting the Army Force Generation (ARFORGEN) model. "A lot of it is from a precision standpoint, to make sure we give the Army those officers and those young Soldiers that they require at a certain time," he said. "If the world were perfect, the theater commander could say: I need a Farsi speaker of this caliber, of this quality, with this education, and we could deliver that young man or woman to the theater commander in a timely manner." The Army's recruiting community has developed a new model, "Pinnacle," that spreads out the workload of bringing in new Soldiers and that ultimately allows uniformed recruiters to spend less time doing paperwork and more time talking to potential warfighters, he said. "(It's) a new concept we're implementing where we will actually have recruiters who do nothing but talking and doing the Army interview and doing their business of recruiting and they pass the young man or woman off to an Army civilian in that station who then processes that young man or woman," Campbell said. Campbell said the Army's recruiting mission for fiscal year 2011 is 67,000 new Soldiers, and that already there are some 33,276 in the entry pool. Nearly half the mission is already complete, he said. Sam Retherford, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for military personnel, said that against predictions, the all-volunteer force has worked well during protracted war. Competitive compensation is among the reasons he cited for that. "The targeted pay raises of 2001-2007 brought the military compensation to the 70th percentile, which was recommended by the 9th (Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation)," he said. "Today, along with increases in basic allowance for sustenance and other pays, total military compensation is roughly at the 80th percentile, and much higher than that for our junior Soldiers." Retherford also said the 11th QRMC is looking at compensation for service in a combat zone or in a hostile area, and is also looking at Reserve and Guard compensation and benefits, as well as compensation to wounded warriors, caregivers and critical fields like mental health professionals and linguists, for instance. Reform of the G.I. Bill also played a role in the success of the all-volunteer force, he said, including the 36 months of tuition, the cost-of-living stipend, and benefit transferability to a family member. "Transferability has proven just to be a significant level in retention where members stay on longer for that transferability option," he said. Joseph M. McDade Jr., assistant deputy chief of staff, G-1, discussed advancements with the civilian workforce as well. He said that 56 percent of the Army's generating force is civilians, and that of those, 60 percent do not have a career path, something that Soldiers do have. "They are basically told they are on their own," he said. Of new hires in the Army, one third will leave the Army in five years, McDade said. The second most-likely reason for their departure is lack of a plan for career advancement. "When you take a look at the generating force as primarily comprised now of knowledge workers, if you look at losing up to a third within five years, you've got a real significant challenge on your hands," he said. One of the solutions for that challenge is Under Secretary of the Army Joseph W. Westphal's new efforts to provide career paths for Army civilians. The secretary spoke of career paths for civilians Oct. 28 while visiting civilian employees at Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas. "I want to be able to put everybody that is a federal employee who works for the Department of the Army on a career pathway," he said. "We have many of those, but we have a lot of people who are not on a career pathway, (but) who have generalized descriptions. They have a job and they are doing well, but if they want to move up the pyramid, there is no pathway. I want to create professional development and leadership education for our workforce just like the military [has]." The secretary said that when employees need to leave a position to pursue education in order to move forward in their careers, the Army's civilian workforce must be poised to backfill that slot with another employee who is capable, or more capable, of doing that job. Fort Hood report outlines ways for Army to improve security response [2010-11-10] WASHINGTON -- The Army must establish a policy for contract security guards in an "active shooter scenario," to clearly define their authority and responsibilities in a scenario such as the Nov. 5, 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, that left 13 dead and 31 wounded. That's one of the recommendations of a 120-page report just released that reviews Army force-protection and emergency-response programs, policies and procedures. An Army internal review team took a look at the service's ability, below the headquarters level, to identify internal threats. Maj. Gen. Robert M. Radin, the leader of the review team, wrote that the Army has implemented or is taking definitive action on 66 of the 79 DoD Independent Review Panel recommendations. DoD is the lead agency for the remaining 13 recommendations and the Army is working with DoD to determine specific future actions. Among other things, the Internal Review team found there needs to be more guidance on what Contract Security Guards (CSGs) at Army bases are allowed to do. "The team found the legal authority of CSGs to respond to an active shooter threat is unclear," the report reads. "The lack of clarity is exacerbated by the multiple types of jurisdictions on our installations." Today, there are CSGs at both Installation Management Command locations, and non-IMCOM installations. The report says IMCOM is converting its more than 1,600 CSG positions to Department of the Army Security Guards. The report also recommended the Army publish incident reporting procedures and policy that explain the process from installation level all the way to headquarters, Department of the Army. Across the Army, the team found that incident reporting policies varied. "Incident reporting practices overseas and incident reporting in the continental United States, coupled with joint basing, lead to varied reporting practices," the report reads. "As Fort Hood demonstrated, communication is critical to timely response." In their report, the team said they found installation commanders said they were "hampered in their reporting efforts" by multiple reporting chains and report formats. The team also included in its report a list of "quick wins" it says if "implemented quickly would have an immediate and positive impact on Army force protection." Many of those recommendations have already been implemented. Included among those are suggestions are the "iWATCH" program, similar to a neighborhood watch program. That program, the report's authors say is "designed to promote anti-terrorism awareness across all commands, leverage every member of the Army community as a sensor and reporter of potential terrorist acts and establish suspicious-activity reporting procedures at the local level." Also a "quick win" in the report is approval for the use of jacketed hollow-point ammunition for Army law enforcement. According to the report, the Army's Office of the Provost Marshal General and G-3/5/7 authorized the use of jacketed hollow-point ammunition for Army law enforcement and published a message in May to execute the initiative. "This Army action provides an immediate solution to risks posed by internal threat response and active shooter scenarios," the report reads. "The Army's fielding of jacketed hollow-point ammunition concludes a long-standing assessment of its effectiveness. The Army law enforcement community, within the (continental United States) and its territories only, now shares the long standing use of jacketed hollow point ammunition with the civilian law enforcement community." "We must efficiently and effectively transform how we look at protecting the force," Radin wrote in the executive summary of the report, also adding that "the Army must ensure that an enterprise approach is used to further develop our recommendations and emerging ideas." Ambassador addresses veterans, challenges of Marshall Islands [2010-11-15] KWAJALEIN, Republic of the Marshall Islands -- During a trip to the Army's Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site on Kwajalein Island for Veterans' Day, the U.S. Ambassador to the Marshall Islands participated in a ceremony to recognize military veterans past and present. On Kwajalein Island, the largest of about 100 isles in the Kwajalein Atoll -- located some 2,100 nautical miles southwest of Honolulu -- Ambassador Martha Campbell addressed many of the active-duty Soldiers who serve there as well as the many veterans among the nearly 1,000 contract employees and Department of the Army civilians on the island. "Thank you very much to the veterans, both Marshallese and Americans -- there are a lot of Marshallese in the U.S. military -- so thank you very much to those veterans and the active-duty folks," she said. The ambassador also laid a wreath at the Operation Flintlock Memorial on the island. Installation commander Col. Joseph N. Gaines hosted the ambassador on a trip to the island of Carlos -- a neighboring isle in the atoll. Just a short boat ride from the Kwajalein docks, Carlos Island serves as home to sensor equipment that once served as an important part of the mission at the Reagan Test Site. Changes to the Army mission on the atoll will affect change on Carlos. For instance, in the future, the Army is looking to scale back activities there. When the Army stops fueling the generators that power the ageing antenna array on Carlos, for instance, there will no longer be electricity on the island. About 70 Marshallese currently benefit from that power source, but Campbell said other places in the Marshall Islands are able to provide their own power, and she hopes the same could be done at Carlos. "The U.S. would like to see the Marshallese become more self-sufficient," she said. While at Carlos, Campbell paid a call on the Carlos Public Elementary School. Students there learn English as part of their schooling -- though Marshallese is their primary language. "In theory they have been teaching English to children from very early grades, but the students can't speak English, mostly because their teachers don't speak English," she said. "It's one of the things that is really going to hold back the Marshall Islands from joining the world community -- there aren't very many people who speak Marshallese in the world." The U.S. and the Republic of the Marshall Islands enjoy a unique relationship in that they are signers to a Compact of Free Association. The Compact provides special privileges to Marshallese that citizens of other nations do not have. "The citizens may go into the United States, study, work, and live without a visa. That's pretty unique in the world," Campbell said. "Also, we give about $60 million a year in direct Compact funding. Plus, they have access to a lot of U.S. domestic programs to which other countries don't have access." Some of those programs include Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Among the highest priorities for both the United States and the RMI is health and education in the island nation, Campbell said. "A lot of the Compact funding goes to those two things, and we are always trying to encourage them to look for best ways on how to use that and make the education system better," she said. Campbell said the Marshallese have done a good job building new schools with money from the Compact. Almost 200 new classrooms have been built across the RMI over the past few years, including a new eight-room elementary school that just opened in nearby Alinglaplap, for instance. One of the biggest challenges in the RMI is helping the nation become economically self-sufficient. There are about 60,000 citizens throughout the Marshalls, and the largest employer of those citizens is the government of the Marshalls. The second-largest employer is the U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll/Reagan Test Site. Campbell said the Marshallese do have a fledgling fishing industry with the potential to look into tourism -- with the caveat that the islands are distant from population centers. Now, she said, byproducts from coconut harvesting -- called copra -- fuel trade on the islands. "Most of these islands, what they do to pay for a living is gathering copra, which is a coconut byproduct," Campbell said. "They process it and get it ready and wait for the ship to come." Copra can be used to make oils, for instance. Right now she said there's also a study being funded to see if copra can be used for fuel. Availability and cost of fuel is also a problem for RMI, as is transportation. The ambassador also said that climate change is a concern for the RMI. "It doesn't take very much to make them disappear. The high point on Majuro (the capital of the Marshall Islands) is ten feet above sea level, and that's the top of the bridge connecting two islands," Campbell said. "We are supporting a lot of disaster preparedness planning for the Marshall Islands." She said the RMI government is working to develop plans with the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency as well as with the U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, part of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Despite problems in the RMI, the nation remains an important ally to the defense of the United States, said Campbell, due in part to its strategic position in the Pacific and to the Reagan Test Site which is located there. "(The Marshall Islands) are sort of the border of the United States, in a sense. The next thing over is Hawaii. So I think it's important for us," the ambassador said. In Kwajalein Atoll, the Army offers some assistance to RMI civilians living on Carlos and neighboring islands such as Ebeye, the most populated island in the group. But Gaines said it's truly up to the government of the RMI to take care of its own. "When we go to Carlos and see problems there, it is up to that independent sovereign nation, their responsibility to their own people," said the installation commander. "We can assist, but it is their responsibility." But Gaines said its part of his "good neighbor policy" to assist the neighboring islands when there's trouble. Water shortages on Ebeye, for instance, can be helped with shipments of fresh water stored at Kwajalein. And power outages can be fixed with the temporary loan of generators. Gaines said there's a baseball game scheduled soon between the civilians and Soldiers of Kwajalein, and the islanders on nearby Ebeye. The game is scheduled to be played on Ebeye, an island about a quarter mile wide and 1.5 miles long -- with a population of approximately 15,000. Gaines acknowledged he could have arranged the game on his own field at Kwajalein -- where his players would have enjoyed a home field advantage. But Gaines has a reason for wanting to play the game on RMI's field. "We can leave our equipment there when we leave," he said. "That's being a good neighbor." Army barges water to Marshallese in Kwajalein [2010-11-29] KWAJALEIN, Republic of the Marshall Islands -- The U.S. Army provided about 40,000 gallons of water to the nearby island of Ebeye as part of a relief effort when that island's supply system failed earlier this month. Ebeye Island, in the Kwajalein Atoll, is home to about 15,000 Marshallese. The water purification system on that island failed Nov. 13, leaving islanders with just a four-day supply of water. The Army stepped in to help with the shortage. "Some of the units were having a problem, so they were unable to generate fresh water for the population over there," said Col. Joseph N. Gaines, commander of U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll. "We stand ready to support our neighbors in Ebeye, especially when there is a health, life or safety issue." When the water purification system at Ebeye failed, islanders there made a request that ultimately landed on Gaines' desk, Nov. 17. The commander turned to his director of logistics, Capt. Michael Quigley, to fix the problem. The captain sent a reconnaissance team to Ebeye to assess the state of the water supply system there. Ultimately, some repair work had to be done to fix supply lines on the island before fresh water could be brought in. By that evening, a water barge travelled the short distance from Kwajalein to Ebeye and once there, the fresh water was pumped into the island's water system. Unload time for the water took only two hours, Quigley said. Gaines said this kind of effort is not part of the mission at Kwajalein, but it's not something he'd hesitate to do again. "From my perspective as a commander, any time they make a request like this and they need our help, we're going to step in and help them," Gaines said. "We will not hesitate to respond and support the Marshallese people. A good portion of our workforce comes from Ebeye and they are an important part of our community. Water is life here in the Pacific." Quigley said providing such support to the Marshallese is something he as a logistics officer is expected to know how to do. "It is one of the aspects of full spectrum operations," he said. "Coming from two tours in Iraq, doing multiple things including both transportation and some humanitarian support, you are kind of expected as a logistics officer to keep that in your back pocket -- being able to pull that out when you need it." The reverse osmosis water treatment system at Ebeye was repaired by Nov. 18, five days after it failed. Water from the Army at Kwajalein, in conjunction with water already on the island and rainwater, enabled the islanders to get through the last two days before the system could be repaired, Quigley said. In the Kwajalein Atoll, fresh water comes from rain. On Kwajalein Island, for instance, drinking water is collected in a catchment system on the island's runway. Freshwater captured there is sanitized and stored to be used on the island for drinking water, showering and other uses. "Every time we get an inch of rain we get about 800,000 gallons of water in," Quigley said. "A lot of people here complain about the rain, but it's a nice thing to have." The Kwajalein Atoll -- a collection of islands -- is one of 29 atolls and five islands that make up the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Within Kwajalein Atoll, the largest island -- Kwajalein -- is occupied entirely by the U.S. Army's Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site and its support elements. Within the atoll, the nearest island neighbor to Kwajalein is Ebeye. Ebeye is the most populated island. OPSEC slips can slay Soldiers, says SMA [2010-12-01] WASHINGTON -- Sharing what seems to be even trivial information online can be dangerous to your loved one and the fellow Soldiers in their unit -- and may even get them killed. "Failure to practice good operations security puts those we cherish the most at risk," said Sgt. Maj. of the Army Kenneth O. Preston in one of two public service announcements that highlight the importance of operations security to both the Army and to Army Families. Online, America's enemies scour blogs, forums, chat rooms and personal websites to piece together actionable information to be used to harm the United States and its Soldiers. The adversary -- Al Qaeda and domestic terrorists and criminals for instance -- have made it clear they are looking, said Linda Roseboro, chief, Army OPSEC Support Element, 1st Information Operations command. "They are surfing the Internet, they are looking at the blogs, at Facebook," Roseboro said. "We have to make sure that what we're talking about and saying, especially in the public -- that there's not someone else listening. Anything to do with spouses, deployment, the unit and the military in general should never be discussed out there in the public." An OPSEC training scenario offered to Family members through the Army Knowledge Online website details how the fictional "Kim," an Army spouse, brought harm to Soldiers by revealing very simple information online. While using a website related to cooking, the fictional Kim -- using the screen name "ArmyWife99" online -- made public she was frustrated that her husband was still at work, training on a new vehicle that can "stop the bombs they are putting in the roads over in Iraq." The fictional "Alice" -- working for an adversarial foreign government -- used online search tools to stitch together information about the Army and its activities. Because Kim's online activities were public, they were picked up in search engines. Alice's search for "Baghdad deployment" eventually lead her to one of Kim's posts as "ArmyWife99." A further online search for Kim's screen name led to more websites where Kim had posted additional information about equipment vulnerabilities and deployment dates she had learned about through casual discussions with her husband. The searches also led Alice to more information about Kim, including a page that mentioned Kim's real name and also pages that were posted by her own children. The fictional training scenario resulted in Soldiers being killed due to information revealed online by Kim regarding combat-vehicle vulnerabilities. The scenario is fictional, said Roseboro, but what's not fictional is that America's enemies are paying attention to what goes online. "The worst-case scenario is the death of a Soldier," said Roseboro. When Army Family members post things online, she said, even seemingly trivial things, America's enemies can piece together a larger picture of what the Army is doing and use those breeches of OPSEC against Soldiers. Roseboro went on to say that when online, it's not a good idea to mention rank, unit, location, deployment dates or locations, names, or anything about equipment or equipment capabilities. "Our adversaries are trolling social networks, blogs and forums, trying to find sensitive information they can use about our military goals and objectives," said Preston. "Therefore, it is imperative that all Soldiers and Family members understand the importance of practicing good operations security measures." Army issues RFP for Ground Combat Vehicle [2010-12-02] WASHINGTON -- Force protection against a classified list of threats, a nine-Soldier capacity, full-spectrum-operations capability and on-time delivery within seven years are among the "big four" imperatives the Army has spelled out for those hoping to be selected to build the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV). The Army took the next step toward providing a ground combat vehicle for infantry Soldiers, Nov. 30, when it issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for the project. Industry has until Jan. 21 to submit proposals. The four imperatives, said Col. Andrew DiMarco, program manager for Ground Combat Vehicle, are "non-negotiable." "The vehicle has to be capable of carrying the nine-Soldier squad," he said. "And then on full spectrum, we have a series of growth requirements and we have some open architecture requirements that are non-negotiable." While the GCV program is expected to eventually produce multiple vehicles with varying capabilities, the focus for the first block of GCV development is an infantry combat vehicle. Also in the RFP are affordability targets for the GCV. Among those are a per-unit cost for the vehicle between $9 and $10.5 million. Also a cost target is an operation and sustainment cost of $200 per operational mile. Both sets of numbers are in fiscal year 2010 dollars. Not in the RFP: requirements spelling out how the GCV moves along the ground. "I have no requirement that says track or wheel," said Michael N. Smith, director of the Army Maneuver Center of Excellence, who added that a "track vs. wheel is a specious discussion." Smith did say there are requirements in the RFP to fit the GCV on a C-17, but not onto a C-130. It's expected that by April 2011, the Army will reach milestone decision A on the GCV and will award Technology-Development (TD) contracts to three contractors. The TD phase of development lasts 24 months. The early prototype vehicle is expected by the middle of fiscal year 2014, and the first full-up prototype is expected by the beginning of fiscal year 2016. DiMarco said the Army has initially planned for 1,874 GCVs. The first production GCV should roll off the assembly line in early April 2018, seven years from the award of the TD-phase contracts. The first unit should be equipped with GCVs in 2019, he said. After the Manned Ground Vehicle component was cut from the Army's Future Combat Systems program in June of 2009, the Army moved quickly to develop a new vehicle -- the Ground Combat Vehicle. The program previously released an RFP in February of 2010, but that RFP was ultimately canceled in August. The RFP released Nov. 30 is the replacement. Casey: DADT repeal okay, but not now [2010-12-04] WASHINGTON -- During testimony on Capitol Hill today, the Army's senior officer told lawmakers repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" now would be a distraction during wartime. Senators on the Armed Services Committee took testimony Dec. 3 from service chiefs and the vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff about their take on the report produced by a Department of Defense working group that details how repeal of the policy known commonly as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," would affect the armed forces. The DADT policy prohibits gay and lesbian servicemembers from serving openly in the armed forces. Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. told lawmakers that during wartime, it would be an extra burden on leadership to implement a new policy. "Implementation of the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell would be a major cultural and policy change in the middle of a war," he said. "It would be implemented by a force and leaders that are already stretched by the cumulative effects of almost a decade of war." The general said that implementation of a repeal of the DADT policy at this time would add another level of stress to an already stretched force, would be more difficult to implement in combat-arms units than in other units, and would "be more difficult for the Army than the report suggests." However, the general also said that if the law is overturned, and the armed forces must comply, the Army could do so with only "moderate risk" to service effectiveness. "We have a disciplined force and seasoned leaders, who, with appropriate guidance and direction, can oversee the implementation of repeal with moderate risk to our military effectiveness in the short term, and moderate risk to our ability to recruit and retain this all-volunteer force over the long haul," he said. The general also said that after reading the report produced by a Department of Defense working group, he no longer believes in the concepts that supported the ban on gay and lesbian servicemembers from serving in the first place. "As I read through the report, it seemed to me that the report called into question the basic presumption that underpins the law," Casey said. "That is that the presence of a gay or lesbian servicemember creates an unacceptable risk to good order and discipline. I don't believe that's true. And from the surveys it appears that a large number of our servicemembers don't believe that is true either. So eventually I believe it should be repealed." Senate resolution brings recognition to Gold Star Wives [2010-12-07] WASHINGTON -- For the first time, America officially recognizes the contributions and dedication of military widows with "Gold Star Wives Day." A Senate resolution designates Dec. 18, 2010, as a day to honor and recognize the contributions of the members of the Gold Star Wives of America, Inc. The group, with about 10,000 members, provides service, support and friendship to the widows and widowers of military personnel who died on active duty or as the result of a service-connected cause. "This is the first year we've had a Gold Star Wives day. It's something that our government relations committee has been working on," said Kit Frazer, president, Gold Star Wives of America Inc. "It's national recognition for the organization, which is wonderful. It's something very special to us." Frazer's husband was an Army helicopter pilot and was killed in Thailand during the Vietnam War. She said the organization represents military widows from every war since World War II. Vivianne Wersel serves as the chairman of the Gold Star Wives government relations committee. Her husband, Marine Lt. Col. Rich Wersel, died Feb 4, 2005. She said she hopes the observation brings awareness to the efforts of the Gold Star Wives. "Part of it is public awareness, that the organization does exist and has existed since 1945, and the only time when we are really in the eye of the public is when we are on (Capitol Hill)," she said. One of the issues Wersel said the Gold Star Wives would like to bring attention to is how widows receive benefits after the deaths of their husbands -- in particular, how dependency and indemnity compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs affects a survivor's payments from the Survivors Benefit Plan. Wersel said some are confused by what the organization is working for when they ask that the rules governing benefits be changed. She said it helps to understand that a military wife often gives up a chance to earn her own retirement benefits when she agrees to move with their husband's military career. "When you are a spouse and you have to move ten times to ten states in ten years you don't get your own retirement," she said. "Your retirement is a team retirement." She said one of the things Gold Star Wives of America, Inc., works for is to bring attention to that issues, and she hopes the observation on Dec. 18 will bring attention to that effort. West Point cadets drum up support in Pentagon [2010-12-10] WASHINGTON -- Cadets from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point stormed the Pentagon Dec. 10 to rally support for the Black Knights in advance of Saturday's football game against Navy's Midshipmen. The Dec. 11 Army-Navy matchup in Philadelphia pits the West Point football squad against the United States Naval Academy's Midshipmen for the 111th time since 1890. It was cadets from the United States Military Academy Pep Band and school's 'Rabble Rousers" cheerleading team that nosily made their way through the normally sedate halls of the Department of Defense's headquarters building. The group completed their tour of the building in the Army's executive corridor, where they found home-team support from Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh and other Army four-star generals. "Nine is the Navy's unlucky number, their ship is going to sink tomorrow and there'll be a sea of tears on which they can sail back to Annapolis -- Army strong!" said McHugh. "Give them hell tomorrow and we'll be up there with you, God bless you and good luck." The chief of staff was even shorter on words than the secretary. Shaking his fist in the air, Casey predicted an end to the Navy's winning streak. "It stops at eight," he said. Brianna Perez, in her third year at the school, was one of the cheerleaders that walked the halls of the Pentagon drumming up support for the big game. She said she's sure the Army will take home the trophy this weekend for the first time in over eight years. "Our season's been great," she said. "We're definitely going to win, there's no doubt about it. This is the year." From Long Beach, Calif., Perez said after she graduates and gets her commission, she's considering the engineering or military police branch for her service in the Army. Louisa Anchondo, also a member of the Rabble Rousers, is in her third year of school. She's also confident about the Black Knight's prospects. "The Army's going to win this weekend because we have a lot of heart and we're going to play our best -- and we're going to do so well," she said. Anchondo, from Lockhart, Texas, said she expects to go into military intelligence after she is commissioned. Connor Green, from Fort Hood, Texas, is a sophomore at West Point, and is one of the male cheerleaders rooting for the Army to beat Navy in Philadelphia. "Last time we beat Navy we went to a bowl game, it's a sign," he said. The Army team is scheduled to compete against the Southern Methodist University Mustangs, Dec. 30, in the Armed Forces Bowl. The last time the Army competed in a bowl game -- the Independence Bowl against Auburn University in 1996 -- they also beat Navy. Green said he wants to go into infantry or armor after he is commissioned as a lieutenant. One of the drummers in the cadet band, Jake Severn, is in his first year at West Point. He said he knows the Army team is ready to take on Navy this year. "I've watched them play every game -- they're ready to beat Navy," he said. "This is the year, and we're going to overturn the Navy's streak." Severn, from Florida, said he's considering field artillery, military intelligence or infantry as a branch when he is commissioned. The cadets from West Point spent a little more than two hours marching through the Pentagon, playing music and drumming up excitement for the game. They started at the office of the Secretary of the Navy, then moved on to the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as the offices of the secretary and deputy secretary of Defense. In the history of the Army-Navy football competition, Army has won 49 games, lost 54, and tied seven times. In the 2009 matchup, Navy beat Army 17-3. The last time the Army won the game was in 2001. Body armor safe, despite procurement shortcuts [2011-01-11] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers have the best body armor in the world, the Army said, in spite of a recent Department of Defense Inspector General report that states the service failed to follow contracting rules in purchasing components for Interceptor Body Armor between 2004 and 2006. A DOD IG report released Jan. 3 determined the Army had not followed proper procedures on contracting and testing protective gear and therefore could not guarantee the body armor met contract requirements. Still, Col. William E. Cole, project manager for Soldier Protection and Individual Equipment at Program Executive Office Soldier, said that Soldiers were not in danger, and that the equipment in question in the DOD IG report -- the outer tactical vest, or OTV -- is no longer fielded to Soldiers in combat zones. "We're committed to providing our Soldiers the best armor money can buy and we are confident that we are providing the best armor," he said. One problem cited in the IG report was that the Army failed to perform ballistic tests on the deltoid and axillary protectors that were then part of the OTV. The DAP provides additional fragmentation and small arms protection to the upper arm and underarm areas. Cole said that in those cases, the DAPs had been cut from the same ballistic fabric as other components that were tested. "They were all assembled using the same ballistic cloth, manufactured at the same time," he said. "So the Army tested the front right panel, the front left panel and the rear panel -- and they all passed." Cole also said Soldiers needed the DAPs as soon as possible, due to an increased threat of improvised explosive devices. That increased threat necessitated that the equipment be fielded as rapidly as possible to protect Soldiers in harm's way. "We determined the material used and tested for the front and back panels of the OTV would meet the fragmentation requirements for the DAPs, based on the successful testing of identical lot material comprising the panel components of the vest," he said. The Army didn't test the DAPs concluding that, since they were cut from the same piece of ballistic fabric as the other panels that had passed, they too would pass. It was a time saving measure that also protected Soldiers, Cole concluded. Cole also disputes DOD's assertion that the Army lowered its standards to get vests out the door. In January 2002, the Army had released a specification to upgrade the armor on the OTV, which had been in production under a different specification since 1998. But after internal testing, the Army realized the new specification was too ambitious and revised it again in July 2002. No new vests were produced from the January 2002 specification. While the July 2002 specification was not as ambitious as the January 2002 specification, it was still better than the 1998 specification. The resulting vests, therefore, were an improvement over those produced in 1998. "Every vest the Army has ever bought from the original OTV to today's IOTV has been as good or better ballistically than any vest we have fielded previously," Cole said. Today, Soldiers are no longer sent to war with the OTV that was the focus of the DOD IG report. The Army now mostly uses the IOTV -- the improved outer tactical vest. The IOTV is about five pounds lighter than the OTV. The IOTV also includes shoulder and underarm protection built into the vest. Additionally, Cole said, the generation II IOTV -- which made its appearance in Spring 2010 -- has been designed to fit smaller Soldiers and female Soldiers better than the GEN I IOTV. "We found that with female Soldiers, even with the extra-small-size GEN I IOTV, often times when they tightened it up, the side plates would ride forward on their body and prevent them from getting coverage," Cole said. "Also it was uncomfortable when they were riding in an MRAP or Humvee -- cutting off circulation in their legs." The GEN II IOTV, he said, allows Soldiers to adjust the position of the internal pouches that carry the enhanced side ballistic inserts, so the side protection actually remains at their side when the protective vest is closed. Smaller six-inch inserts are also available to make it easier to fit small Soldiers. "It enables them to cinch up the IOTV even tighter to get a proper fit," Cole said, adding "I'd like to tell Soldiers that they are wearing the best body armor that is fielded in the world to any Army." Biden says coalition entering new phase in Afghanistan [2011-01-11] WASHINGTON -- The coalition in Afghanistan has moved into a "new phase" said Vice President Joe Biden Jr. today during his visit to Kabul. Biden traveled Jan. 10 to meet with President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai; Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan; and Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the International Security Assistance Force. The coalition in Afghanistan is in transition now, "to a full Afghan lead that begins this year and will conclude in 2014, as we prepare a framework for our future bilateral relations," the vice president said. "This is President Obama's vision for the future. It's a vision expressed by our allies at the Lisbon Conference. And I believe, based on our conversation today, it clearly reflects the vision of President Karzai." Biden went on to say that this year, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will begin to transition responsibility over the security in certain Afghan provinces to the government of Afghanistan, while at the same time, the United States begins a "condition-based" reduction of forces beginning in July. "All of this will advance our shared U.S.-Afghani objective of having an Afghan National Security Force in the lead throughout all of Afghanistan by 2014, as President Karzai wisely proposed," Biden said. The vice president also said that after 2014, the United States would not leave Afghanistan, if the Afghans wanted the United States to stay. However, he said, he expected that security of the country would be the responsibility of Afghanistan. "We are not leaving, if you don't want us to leave," Biden said. "We plan on continuing to work with you, and it's in the mutual self-interest of both our nations." While on his visit to Afghanistan, the vice president was able to tour an installation where he met with Afghan Soldiers and witnessed their training. There, he said, he saw American Soldiers working together with the Afghanis "to train up a first-class military organization that will be eventually in the position to meet all of the Afghan security needs," Biden said. Now, however, Biden said the U.S. military in Afghanistan is working to break down insurgent activity and American diplomats are working with Karzai to develop regional cooperation that includes Pakistan. Gains in Afghanistan over insurgents are fragile, Biden said. And sustaining the gains will require the support and cooperation of Afghan's neighbors. "These gains ... are fragile and reversible," Biden said. "Sustaining them is going to require the Afghans to assume the responsibility for security and governance. And it's going to require more pressure -- more pressure on the Taliban, from Pakistan's side of the border, than we've been ... able to exert so far." Chinook fielding may ease governors' concerns [2011-01-14] WASHINGTON -- When Army National Guard units deploy overseas and take aviation assets with them, it sometimes leaves voids back home, but a Guard official said CH-47 Chinooks expected to be fielded beginning this month may alleviate some of that concern. When Guard aircraft deploy, governors are concerned about their ability to respond to disasters, said Col. Michael E. Bobeck, chief, Aviation and Safety Division, National Guard Bureau. Bobeck and others in the Army's aviation community spoke Jan. 13, at the Association of the United States Army's Institute of Land Warfare Army Aviation Symposium and Exposition at the National Harbor in Maryland. "Clearly they (governors) are concerned with the availability of aviation assets in the states," said Bobeck "They believe that aviation is one of the top three things on their plate in (terms of) what they are looking for in the event that there is an emergency in the states." More helicopters are on the way that may alleviate some of the stress the Guard is feeling with aircraft numbers, Bobeck said "We don't have all the CH-47s or UH-60s that we are supposed to have, yet," he said. "Those aircraft are cascading (in) as new aircraft are fielded. And we are working very closely with the Army staff to bring aircraft into the force." This month, he said, eight CH-47D Chinooks are coming into the Guard from active units -- as those units get new aircraft. "That allows us to keep eight aircraft in country or in the U.S. for training and for domestic operations support," he said. The colonel said, for example, leaders from one state are concerned that their soon-to-deploy Chinook unit will leave them with only one aircraft in the state - one the Guard needs to move to another state. "I've been spending a little bit of time with one particular state. Their Chinook unit is deploying to theater," Bobeck said. "They have one left and they want to keep it. And it's going (to take) quite a bit of time explaining why we need to move that aircraft to another state, because they are getting ready to deploy in the next rotation." Another concern senior leaders raised at the Aviation symposium was a difficulty integrating NATO and U.S. capabilities. Maj. Gen. Robert B. Brown, commander of the U.S. Army Maneuver Center of Excellence and Fort Benning, Ga., discussed challenges in integrating NATO and American forces with differing network technology. "Our NATO forces are lagging, no question," the general said, saying the technology gap is a number-one concern among Europe's Army chiefs of staff. Compounding the problem are budget cuts for European military services. But Brown said in Afghanistan, at the center of the fight, the coalition nations there have found ways to get their differing technology to work together. There, among the 39 European countries that are allied with the United States, there was initially inability to efficiently move information across systems. "Originally it was all stovepipes," Brown said. "It was vertical stovepipes instead of horizontal information flow. It was the old fight. Over the last year-and-a-half, the Afghan Mission Network came about. It broke down stovepipes and enables folks to (now) communicate and talk to each other. So, you have different levels of technology, but there are ways to pull closer together." Number of Soldiers taking GAT approaches million [2011-01-21] WASHINGTON -- The Army is closing in on a 1-million user milestone for those who have taken the "Global Assessment Tool" survey, the results of which serve as a starting point for an individual Soldier's journey though the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program. The Global Assessment Tool, or GAT, is a 105-question survey that assesses a Soldier in "four dimensions of strength," including emotional, social, spiritual and family. After taking the survey, Soldiers are offered an array of self-guided online courses that can help them strengthen themselves in those four areas Capt. Paul B. Lester, PhD, a research psychologist with the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program, said in late January the Army will reach 1 million Soldiers who have taken the GAT since the Army began requiring them to complete the survey in October of 2009. Now, said Lester, the Army can use information collected from the surveys to determine how it can better help Soldiers become resilient. "We're starting to analyze the data, how people who are resilient are performing in the Army," Lester said. Feedback to Soldiers who have taken the GAT is also improving now to help them better understand how they scored, and how they compare to other Soldiers like themselves. "We show them areas where they are doing well and areas where they can improve," he said. "We also connect them to online training and also allow them to compare themselves to others who are like them -- marital status, MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) or age, for instance." The captain said it can be helpful for a Soldier to see that other Soldiers of the same age and in the same career field scored similarly on the GAT. It helps keep their own scores in perspective. "Nobody passes or fails the GAT. It's a snapshot of where you are in time," he said. "And if you do our training, it'll help you improve over time." The GAT is part of the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program, which is meant to help equip Soldiers with the skills needed to deal with combat, marital difficulty, financial problems, family matters or the confluence of all those things. The GAT measures how well a Soldier is equipped to deal with such adversity. After finishing the assessment, training is available to help Soldiers improve their coping skills. Additionally, the Army offers mid-level noncommissioned officers the "master resilience trainer" course that equips them with the skills they need to impart resilience on others in their units. In January of 2010, the Army began an evaluation of the effectiveness of the CSF program by isolating eight brigade combat teams, evaluating those Soldiers with the GAT, and then offering those units varying levels of training under the CSF program. Later, those Soldiers would be given the GAT again, to measure the effects of the Army's CSF program. "It'll give us a better understanding of the training and if the training is having the desired impact on the force," Lester said. "You want to see across time, is the training actually impacting people's lives. We're hoping to see that the people exposed to our training improve on the GAT at a faster rate than everybody else." The evaluation period ends in March, Lester said. The Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program kicked off in 2009 and includes the GAT, Master Resilience Training and self-guided development for Soldiers. The 105-question GAT survey is mandatory for Soldiers, but the results, and a Soldier's individual scores, are known only to the Soldier, not his commander. Commanders do have visibility of what Soldiers have completed the GAT, however. MOH recipient Giunta honored by fellow Iowans on Hill [2011-01-27] WASHINGTON -- Iowa lawmakers honored fellow Iowan, Medal of Honor recipient Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta, during a ceremony Jan. 26, on Capitol Hill. Giunta was awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military honor, Nov. 16, 2010, by President Barack Obama, for his actions in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley in October 2007. The Jan. 26 event in the Capitol included the presentation by a delegation of Iowa lawmakers of a congressional joint resolution recognizing the service of Giunta, as well as words from the senator from Hawaii, Medal of Honor Recipient Daniel K. Inouye, who served as the keynote speaker. "There is one thing common about all recipients of the Medal of Honor," said Inouye. "Whenever they get it they will say how come me? What about the others?" Inouye received the Medal of Honor for his actions in Italy during World War II. "America is so blessed with people like Salvatore Giunta -- that makes America different -- different from the rest of the world. That makes America strong," the senator said. "Nothing we can say would be enough to thank Staff Sgt. Giunta. But as one who also received the medal, I can say I am proud to be in his company." Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa said Giunta's actions clarify the meaning of the word hero in the American lexicon. "Staff Sergeant Giunta gives meaning to the truth that our real heroes today are not on our movie screens or in our sports arenas, and they are not avatars," Harkin said. "Our real heroes are serving our nation in uniform." Harkin went on to say that Giunta personified some of the best attributes of Iowa. "I respect his Iowa brand of modesty, which is totally genuine," Harkin said. "And I see in him other qualities that we prize in Iowa, including his powerful sense of purpose, of duty, honor and country. Sergeant Giunta, you make us proud. You represent America and Iowa at its very best." The Iowa delegation, including Harkin, Sen. Chuck Grassley, Rep. Tom Latham, Rep. Leonard L. Boswell, Rep. Steve King, Rep. Bruce L. Braley, and Rep. Dave Loebsack presented Giunta with a framed copy of the congressional joint resolution. The resolution "honors the service and sacrifice of Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta of the United States Army," and also "encourages the people of the United States to recognize the valor and heroism exhibited by Staff Sergeant Giunta." Giunta was modest in acceptance of the presentation, citing others as instrumental in his own actions. He called out to fellow Soldier, Spc. Garrett Clary, who was in the audience, and asked him to stand. "It means a lot to me to be able to have him here," Giunta said. "He was my 203 gunner for about 12 months of a 15-month deployment. He was there Oct. 25, 2007, in the Korengal Valley. We were involved in the same conflict and the same incident and we both did everything we could to help the man to the left of us and the man to the right of us." Giunta cited others who had been in Afghanistan that day as well -- including Sgt. Joshua Brennan and Spc. Hugo Mendoza -- both who died during the combat that day. "There are people every day who don't get to come back to their families -- a hug and a kiss -- and a welcome home," Giunta said. The evening prior, Giunta attended the State of the Union address as guest of First Lady Michelle Obama. "It was a really great experience," he said. He'd previously met the first lady and president at the White House. "To come to the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., and to sit next to her, and to listen to her husband. It's monumental for me." Currently, Giunta has been visiting units around the Army, talking with Soldiers and other Americans who want to hear about how he earned the Medal of Honor. But soon, the noncommissioned officer will leave the Army and he plans to attend college. "I hopefully will find my way to Colorado and I'm looking at hopefully Colorado State," he said. "I'm looking at either of two things, business or natural resource management. I don't really know, but I know knowledge is power and I'll just see where it takes me." Tactical vehicle strategy includes fleet reduction [2011-01-30] WASHINGTON -- The Army's Tactical Wheeled Vehicle Strategy, released Jan. 26, is the roadmap for managing and modernizing the Army's fleet of nearly 300,000 vehicles over the next 30 years. "It represents a paradigm shift for the U.S. Army," said Maj. Gen. Thomas W. Spoehr, director of Army force development, of the plan that manages a fleet worth some $70 billion dollars. In the past, Spoehr said, similar strategies have looked out only five or 10 years. The new 30-year outlook, he said, reveals a need to cut back in some areas in order to meet budget requirements. "As we looked out 20 or 30 years we found some aspects of our strategy were going to be unaffordable," Spoehr said. "This strategy makes tough choices today, in order to account for these realities." One of those tough choices is a reduction in fleet size. By 2017, it's expected the TWV fleet could be reduced by as much as 15 percent, said Lt. Col. Robert Lenz, Army G8. He said the cost savings from that reduction, and from other changes in the strategy, will reduce the per-year fleet procurement budget from what had been projected at $4.4 billion a year down to about 2.5 billion a year. Also included in the TWV plan is an extension of time between new purchases and recapitalization of vehicles. "We have kind of factored that in and made what we believe (a) reasonable more incremental approach to our procurement of things," Spoehr said. The Army will also focus on vehicle versatility, Spoehr said. "We're going to procure trucks that are adaptable so they can be used in many different environments and have the ability to accept armor and then relinquish armor when it is no longer needed," Spoehr said. He also said that new vehicles must include growth potential built in, so that years after they have been in the fleet, they can easily accept new equipment and technology. The TWV strategy covers Army tactical wheeled vehicles in four fleets: light, medium, heavy and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected. The light TWV fleet includes the Humvee and will include the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle or JLTV, for instance. The medium fleet includes legacy 2 1/2- and 5-ton trucks, and the heavy fleet includes the Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck, the Heavy Equipment Transporter System and the Palletized Load System. Today, a large part of the Army's light TWV fleet is the Humvee. While the Army is no longer buying new Humvees, it is instead working on procurement of the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. As part of the TWV strategy, it's expected that the JLTV will eventually make up as much as one third of the light TWV fleet. The Humvee must also be recapitalized as part of the TWV strategy and the Army has done research into what is possible with the Humvee with recapitalization, said Col. David Bassett, program manager, tactical vehicles. Also part of the TWV strategy are plans to incorporate about 18 to 19,000 MRAP vehicles into the Army fleet, and to transition the currently joint MRAP program to the Army. Efficiencies mean extra money to upgrade Army critical equipment [2011-02-01] WASHINGTON -- Money saved through an effort by the Department of Defense to trim a target $100 billion from military budgets will be used to modernize some Army capabilities. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli appeared on Capitol Hill, Jan. 26, before the first hearing of the House Armed Services Committee during the 112th Congress. The vice chief was called, along with Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn III and the vice chiefs of sister services, to testify about Defense budget reductions and efficiencies. Chiarelli told lawmakers that money the Army has found through investigating and identifying efficiencies is now being used to reinvest in programs like the M1 Abrams tank, the M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle and the Stryker. "In Stryker, I think we're moving with a double-V hull," Chiarelli said. "We have been completing some testing and that testing has come out very satisfactory. We are pleased with it, and are moving ahead to provide additional protection for the entire crew of the Stryker -- above what we have right now with the flat-bottom hull -- with some of the add-on armor kits." The general said the Army will be making improvements to both the Stryker and the Bradley. The four military services were directed by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to achieve $100 billion in efficiencies over the fiscal year 2012 to 2016 Future Years Defense Plan. The services would be allowed to retain and reinvest these efficiency savings in enhancements of their own high-priority war-fighting programs. The Army found efficiencies through the consolidation of six Installation Management Command regions into four, for instance. Also, through portfolio reviews, the service determined it could terminate both the costly SLAMRAAM surface-to-air missile program and the Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System. "That came out of a portfolio we call air and missile defense," Chiarelli said. "When we looked at that portfolio, we saw we had some broken programs. One of the programs we had concern with was SLAMRAAM. The cost of that missile for SLAMRAAM had grown from $300,000 to I'm told over a million dollars a copy. (And) quite frankly we saw changes in the threat from the time that program had been conceived." In addition to reinvesting in ground vehicles like the Stryker, savings are being applied to upgrade systems like the Patriot missile system and the Counter-Rocket, Artillery and Mortar system. "Quite frankly, counter rocket and counter mortar are the threats that are affecting our troops downrange today. So with over a billion dollars in SLAMRAAM savings, we were able to reinvest that in (C-RAM) and also in upgrading the Patriot," Chiarelli said. Legislators were also concerned about the Army's needs regarding medical care to Soldiers. Chiarelli said the service is most concerned about uniformed health personnel. "We made a decision in the Army a while ago to cap the number of uniformed military health care providers we had at a certain number and I need to find room inside my end strength to add some more," Chiarelli said. "It's just not enough. We've been able to make up that through contract health care in certain areas. But when it comes to areas like behavioral health care, I have a real problem there." Chiarelli also told the committee members that the Army is done with Stop Loss -- the process where the Army keeps Soldiers on past their contracted end of service in order to keep units together for a deployment, for instance. "We have not (used Stop Loss) for the last year and our last Soldier held up on Stop Loss, if my memory serves me correctly, will come off in March of this year," he said. "We have no desire to go back to Stop Loss and our Army Force Generation model has personnel aim points that we are implementing and will continue to implement, that will allow us to ensure that we avoid getting ourselves in a situation where we would have to use Stop Loss again." Army foundation unveils commemorative coins [2011-02-01] WASHINGTON -- Three coins commemorating the Army are now available for purchase from the U.S. Mint. At a ceremony at the Pentagon Jan. 31, the designs for the three coins were unveiled. The coins feature artwork that commemorates the Army at war, the Army during peacetime, and the modern Army of today. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the coins goes toward construction of the National Museum of the United States Army. "What I love about these coins being launched today is that they celebrate Army history with their images and honor the 30 million American men and women who have worn the uniform since 1775," said retired Brig. Gen. Creighton W. Abrams Jr., the executive director of the Army Historical Foundation. Abrams said the coins are important for two reasons. The first, he said, is that sale of the coins will help the AHF build the Army museum at Fort Belvoir, Va., just outside Washington, D.C. The museum, he said would become a "national landmark." "It will engage, educate, inspire and honor Soldiers, veterans, families and visitors of all ages," Abrams said. It is expected the museum will open in 2015, in conjunction with the Army's 240th birthday. The retired general also said the symbolism of the coins is also significant. "These are great designs," he said. "These are the first-ever Army commemorative coins, and I think they are great mementos if you have got a relative who served in the Army or if you served yourself." The three pieces include a $5 dollar gold coin, a silver dollar and a clad half-dollar. The gold coin features five Soldiers, from the colonial times through the modern era. The silver coin features both a male and female bust, in front of a globe, meant to symbolize today's worldwide deployments. Finally, the clad coin represents the peacetime contributions of the active Army, the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve Soldier. "Their symbolic value is certain to resonate with our more than one million serving Soldiers and their families, and our 11 million surviving Army veterans across the country as sincere public appreciation for their selfless service and personal sacrifices," said Abrams. The three coins are now available for purchase on the U.S. Mint's website -- and range in price from just under $20 for the clad coin to $450 for the gold coin. The coins were designed by artists at the U.S. Mint, and will be struck at the mints in Denver, San Francisco, Philadelphia and West Point, N.Y. "The men and women of the United States Mint are proud to produce these coins, not only to celebrate the Army's exemplary history, but also to honor the dedication, courage and sacrifices of all American Soldiers, many of who are deployed throughout the world today," said Daniel P. Shaver, of the U.S. Mint. The number of coins to be produced by the mint is limited by the public law that allowed them to be created in the first place. The mint will produce 100,000 gold coins, 500,000 silver coins, and 750,000 half-dollar coins. Those interested in purchasing coins can visit the U.S. mint website at www.usmint.gov/catalog. Nett Warrior looking at plate-shaped batteries [2011-02-04] WASHINGTON -- New technology, including SAPI-plate-shaped batteries, came out of the recent limited user test for the Nett Warrior system. During a media roundtable Feb. 2, in the Pentagon, Col. Will Riggins, program manager for Soldier Warrior, discussed feedback from the recent Nett Warrior limited user test and the concurrent Land Warrior assessment in theater. "I think probably the best feedback, the best data point was for both of those assessments -- was it's just a game-changing capability -- knowing where you are, where your teammates are," Riggins said. Nett Warrior is a system worn on a Soldier's body that will provide "unparalleled situational awareness" to Soldiers on the ground. The system includes a radio, a helmet-mounted display and a hand-held data input device. The wiring for the system is integrated into a protective vest. With Nett Warrior, Soldiers will be able to see their location, the location of their fellow Soldiers, and the location of known enemies on a moving map. "What this system will mean is they are never lost, never out of reach of their buddies," said Riggins. "They are able to adapt to dynamics of changing combat, and able to share all that information about all aspects of their mission in order to cut through that fog of war." With Nett Warrior, there are issues of power consumption, system size and system weight. One solution, Riggins said, is the use of form-fitting batteries. Batteries molded in the shape of protective plates might allow systems like Nett Warrior to be powered, but with less bulk on the Soldier. "The battery we have now looks like a brick and fits on your body as well as a brick," Riggins said. Using side small-arms protective-insert plates as a model, they asked industry to build a battery that was similarly shaped. While Riggins said the battery might not go into the same location as the SAPI plate -- the pocket inside the vest -- but it will more closely conform to the shape of the body, and will fit easier on a Soldier. The conformal batteries were demonstrated during an "excursion day" at the end of the Nett Warrior LUT, which ended in November. Riggins said during the excursion day, industry was challenged to bring their best ideas to the table. "What we want to see is what are the game-changing technologies ... that we can bring into this area of operating in any environment and being situationally aware," he said. Coming out of that excursion day were the conformal plates, and power-generation capabilities that included solar blankets and power cells, and a generator Riggins described as a "scavenger." "(It's) a generator that runs off multiple different types of fuel," Riggins said, "if you happen to run across JP8 or diesel or even gasoline. With some small adjustments -- it's got an adjustable carburetor on it -- you can generate power based on whatever you can get off the battlefield. So those are the great types of capabilities that we've got." Riggins said feedback on some of the equipment was so strong, one unit did an operational needs statement to get some of the equipment to take with them to Afghanistan. That unit took conformal batteries, solar blankets, and smaller power cells -- in the 30-to-50-watt range -- that act as a squad-rechargeable-type capability that runs off methane. Enhanced Combat Helmet to be fielded in fall [2011-02-04] WASHINGTON -- The Army is looking at an improved combat helmet that surpasses the capabilities of what Soldiers are currently wearing in the field, and it may be available in the fall. The new Enhanced Combat Helmet doesn't look much different than the Advanced Combat Helmet it's designed to replace, but the performance difference is huge, said Col. William E. Cole, project manager, Soldier Protection and Individual Equipment. "If you hold them in your hand, you'd have a tough time telling the difference, other than the relative thickness," Cole said during a media roundtable Feb. 2, in the Pentagon. "The ECH is a little bit thicker, also about an ounce to four ounces lighter depending on the size. But it's really a huge leap ahead forward in terms of head protection capability." During testing, he said, the helmets did so well that a new test system will need to be developed to evaluate their effectiveness at protecting a Soldier's head from fragments. "The data we're getting from the prototypes going into the milestone was even better than we hoped," he said. "We had hoped for a 35-percent improvement over the ACH in terms of ballistic protection and it's way better than that." With smaller fragments, the lab was unable to determine a "V50" rating -- that's a determination of what velocity is needed for 50 percent of fragments to penetrate a test material. "In this case the test guns they had couldn't shoot fragments fast enough to penetrate the helmet," Cole said. "We don't know exactly what the V50 is, but we know it's better than anything we've seen before. We're going to have to build stronger test guns to figure out exactly how good it is." The Army wants 200,000 of the helmets, though Cole said, "I'd be surprised if we stop at that number." It's expected fielding of the ECH will happen this fall and will align with the Army's Force Generation Model, though Cole said he hopes to accelerate fielding. The Marine Corps is a partner in development of the ECH and will also purchase the helmets. "It potentially could mitigate some traumatic brain injuries. We're seeing it has great potential," said Brig. Gen. Peter N. Fuller, the Program Executive Officer soldier. "We're trying to work through getting that product accelerated." Academy commandant to be next SMA [2011-02-07] WASHINGTON -- Army senior leadership announced today that Command Sgt. Maj. Raymond F. Chandler III will serve as the 14th sergeant major of the Army. Chandler currently serves as the 19th commandant of the Army Sergeants Major Academy at Fort Bliss, Texas. He enlisted in the Army in 1981 as a 19E armor crewman. He will replace Sgt. Maj. of the Army Kenneth O. Preston as the Army's senior enlisted advisor and spokesman of the enlisted corps. Chandler will be sworn into the new position March 1 in a ceremony at the Pentagon. "We have the utmost confidence in Command Sgt. Maj. Chandler and look forward to having him join our leadership team," said Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh. "He has the right qualities and credentials to assume this vitally important duty that Sgt. Maj. of the Army Preston has skillfully and adeptly performed for the last seven years." During his nearly 30-year career, Chandler has served in tank crewman positions and has had multiple tours as a troop, squadron and regimental master gunner. "It's huge shoes that I have to fill, following Sergeant Major of the Army Preston," Chandler said. "But I am humbled and excited about the opportunity. And we'll see what the future holds, and what Soldiers and families tell me we need to look at -- and I'll work that with Army leadership to try and make those changes that that best support them." Chandler said he knows some of the challenges he'll help the Army face while serving as SMA are the same the Army is working on now: maintaining the force, reconstituting the force, and building resiliency in the force. "We have got to maintain the combat-seasoned force that we have been so successful at sustaining over the past nine years," Chandler said. "We have an Army that is unparalleled in its lethality and its willingness and ability to conduct operations around the world. So I think that is the first thing, to maintain the combat-seasoned force." Chandler also said he knows it's important for Soldiers to have more dwell time with their families. "This has been a very difficult and long war the Army has been in, and we have some work to do to help it reconstitute as we build dwell time over the next couple of years," he said. The new SMA is also impressed with efforts the Army is making at building resiliency into the force -- in particular with the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program. "Programs like CSF and the new Master Resilience Training that we are developing for the Army and producing for the Army, along with the Army Family Covenant, is going to help us build a more resilient force for the long term," he said. "We are in a period of persistent conflict and this is not going to go away anytime soon -- so we have got to build a more resilient force that can see us through the challenging times." Chandler also said he's fortunate to have participated in developing at the Sergeants Major Academy some of the concepts driving noncommissioned officer development today -- including the advancement of structured self development. "One of the things I've been fortunate to partake in while here at the Sergeants Major Academy is to really understand SMA Preston's vision for the NCO Corps," Chandler said. "Structured Self Development ... (was) built here at the Sergeants Major Academy, and I have been intimately familiar with that process and where we are trying to go. From my perspective, I will continue to sustain and move forward those initiatives that have started with SMA Preston." While Chandler said he's familiar with some of what he'll be working on as the next sergeant major of the Army, he also said that he is not brining his own agenda to the job -- and that he serves at the discretion of the chief of staff. "I have no priorities at this point, except to provide predictability for Soldiers and their families," Chandler said. "I do not come into this position with some set agenda or group of things that I personally want to fix or look into. I serve at the whim of the CSA and he is going to tell me what he wants me to focus on, and from there I move forward." Chandler will likely serve the bulk of his time as sergeant major of the Army alongside Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, currently the commander of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command. Dempsey was nominated to be the next chief of staff of the Army. Chandler and Dempsey share a working relationship today -- Chandler's position as commandant of the USASMA falls under Dempsey's TRADOC. The two have also worked together as part of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment. There, Dempsey was Chandler's regimental commander, while Chandler served as a first sergeant in the regiment. Chandler was chosen as the next sergeant major of the Army by Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. That selection is something Chandler said he never considered during his career. "I never thought in my wildest dreams I would ever even be in a position to be considered for the SMA," Chandler said. "So, I never dreamed about being SMA, or thought about it. For me, I was a squadron command sergeant major in combat. And that is what I aspired to do. Since that time I have had a series of other assignments that have challenged me and helped me to grow as an NCO and as a person." When serving as sergeant major of the Army, Chandler will spend time on Capitol Hill, discussing Army needs and concerns before both the Senate and the House. He will also likely meet with the President of the United States, and will spend much time traveling alone and with the chief of staff of the Army to visit Soldiers and their families throughout the Army. Chandler said the new role for him will not distract him from what he is at his core. "I am a Soldier -- and I happen to be a sergeant major," Chandler said. "But that doesn't change the fact that I came from the same rank and the same position that those young privates and sergeants and first sergeants are in today. And that's the tie that binds us together -- those shared experiences. There is a responsibility to represent the Army at various events and engagements. But at the end of the day, my place is with the Soldiers and their families in the Army and that's where I intend to be." Army wants 36 more 'Punisher' weapons in 2012 [2011-02-08] WASHINGTON -- Only five XM25 weapons exist today, but Soldiers lucky enough to have used them in Afghanistan are saying more are needed. Two Soldiers took the prototype weapons into theater to link them up with requesting units. They trained troops on the weapon's use and managed the Forward Operational Assessment to collect information about the weapon's performance in theater and how Soldiers used it. "The XM25 brought the difference to whether they would stay there 15 to 20 minutes shooting (and) taking pot shots or the actual fight ended after using the XM25," said Sgt. 1st Class Carlos Smith, Soldier Requirements Division, Maneuver Center of Excellence, Fort Benning, Ga. "That was due to the defilade capabilities of the XM25 to shoot beyond targets and behind targets." The XM25 allows Soldiers to engage defilade targets -- those behind a barrier, protected from oncoming weapons fire. The XM25 measures the distance to the enemy's protective barrier, and can then program the round to detonate a user-adjustable distance past that -- allowing Soldiers to put an air-bursting round directly above the enemy's head, inside their protected area. The round measures the distance it travels by counting its own rotations after leaving the barrel. Both Smith and Maj. Christopher Conley, an assistant product manager for Program Manager Soldier Weapons, at Picatinny Arsenal, N.J., were part of the team that brought those weapons into theater for Soldiers to use in actual combat. The five prototype weapons entered theater in November, and were first used in combat Dec. 3. Since then, hundreds of XM25 rounds have been fired in theater, though only 55 of those rounds were fired as part of combat, on nine different operational missions. "We disrupted two insurgents on an OP (observation point) and we silenced two machine-gun positions -- two PKM positions," said Lt. Col. Christopher Lehner, Product Manager Individual Weapons for Project Manager Soldier Weapons at Picatinny Arsenal, N.J., describing some of the scenarios he witnessed in theater where the XM25 had been used. "We destroyed four ambush locations, where the survivors fled." "And when we launched it at a longer range target, who was carrying a machine gun and it exploded near his target -- it either badly wounded him or scared him good enough that he dropped his machine gun and ran away," Lehner recounted. Overall in Afghanistan, the five XM25s have been with two separate units. The first unit used the weapon on four engagements and fired 28 rounds in combat. The second unit was able to use the XM25 on five engagements and fired 27 rounds in combat. "The troops are very excited to carry it," Conley said. "We've limited who can carry it based on the number of folks that we've trained. But within that group of Soldiers that are trained on the operation of the XM25, I heard a Soldier say 'hey, he carried it yesterday, so I get it today.'" Some Soldiers who've used the XM25 in Afghanistan had taken to naming the weapon -- though there is no official name for the system yet. "The kids are calling it 'the Punisher,'" said Brig. Gen. Peter N. Fuller, who heads up the Program Executive Office Soldier. "I don't know what we're going to title this product, but it seems to be game-changing. You no longer can shoot at American forces and then hide behind something. We're going to reach out and touch you." Lehner said during the Forward Operational Assessment, the performance of the XM25, and Soldier response to the system, provided positive response to three questions about the system from Army leadership, including if the weapon gives "higher probability of effect," if the weapon provides more survivability for the Soldier, and how will the weapon be used at squad and platoon level. "What our Soldiers have told us is, when we do fire this weapon, it does have a high probability of effect," Lehner said. "The enemy stops firing. They flee. They drag off their casualties. Essentially, a Soldier is very happy when the enemy stops firing at him." Soldier survivability is also increased with the XM25 because it allows Soldiers to fire on the enemy from protected positions, while the enemy themselves believe they are in protected positions. "We have increased the survivability of our Soldiers because our Soldiers no longer have to maneuver from their cover position to gain an advantageous firing spot for the enemy," Lehner said. "We are able to stay behind cover, and we welcome (the enemy) to stay behind cover -- because we'll get you." Conley and Smith also said that Soldiers were using the XM25 as their primary weapon -- forgoing additional weapons like the M4, for instance. When the Forward Operational Assessment ended in January, and the testing organization had enough data to send to the Army leadership, they expected to take the weapons home, but Soldiers thought otherwise. "We had the Soldiers ask us to leave the weapon there and the ammo there," said Lehner. "They did not want to give up that capability. The word got back to us, we made the decision, let them keep the XM25, let them keep that additional ammunition. We will then go ahead and go back downrange and collect up any additional data that they have received." Now the Army is working to find the money to build an additional 36 XM25 weapons, said Col. Douglas A. Tamilio, the Army's program manager for Soldier weapons. "The Army is looking to find some kind of funding that we can put against maybe a battalion set," he said. "It will depend on how much funding we can get. The idea would be if we can get that funding, we absolutely would try to get these into the fight in a year. And we think we can do that. " Right now, an obstacle to getting more XM25s into theater is that each weapon and each round must be built by hand, Tamilio said. There are no production lines yet for the system. The Army won't begin mass producing the XM25 until sometime in 2013 at the earliest, Tamilio said. Before that, improvements must be made to the system, including those learned from its use in Afghanistan. Tamilio said improvements include improved battery life, as the XM25 is full of electronics. Also, he said, the 12.5-pound weapon could be lightened some, though Soldiers are now overwhelmed by the capability of the weapons. Tamilio also said Soldiers would like to see the weapon's range extended to about 1,000 meters. Its current range is about 500 meters for a point target and 700 meters for an area target. The XM25, officially called a "counter-defilade target-engagement system," recently reached a milestone decision B in its acquisition cycle and has only recently entered into the engineering and manufacturing development phase, or EMD, of the procurement process. "We still have to get through EMD, still get some fixes into the gun that we know need to be fixed -- to make it durable and reliable," Tamilio said. "We have to go through a very stringent safety procedure with this gun." GAT results to soon include fitness score [2011-02-11] WASHINGTON -- A Soldier's physical fitness numbers will soon be included as part of results given after taking the online "Global Assessment Tool." The GAT is the part of the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, or CSF, program that now measures a Soldier's fitness in four of the five dimensions that the CSF program focuses on: emotional, social, family and spiritual. "In the next few months it will also give you a physical score, because we are linking it with your PT test scores and your Public Health Command health assessment," said Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, director of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, during a media event Feb. 10, at the Pentagon. The fifth aspect of fitness measured by CSF is the physical dimension. Cornum said there was no date yet for the inclusion of the new information in the GAT, but that such things as a Soldier's PT score and wellness assessments, including body fat, lipids and blood sugar might be included. The Global Assessment Tool, or GAT, is a 105-question survey that assesses a Soldier in "four dimensions of strength," including emotional, social, spiritual and family. After taking the survey, Soldiers are offered an array of self-guided online courses that can help them strengthen themselves in those four areas Since October 2009, Cornum said, more than 1.2 million Soldiers have taken the GAT online -- an annual requirement for Soldiers. More than 100,000 of those have completed the assessment twice. Capt. Paul B. Lester, a research psychologist with the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program, said there is "robust" ongoing evaluation of GAT results and that by late this summer the Army will have results that compare changes in GAT scores from a Soldier's first and second assessment. Those changes could be looked at as a measure of success of the CSF program. As part of the CSF, mid-level noncommissioned officers are trained as Master Resilience Trainers, or MRTs. Those Soldiers return to their units to impart resilience in other Soldiers. To date, more than 3,000 Soldiers have received the training. The Army now teaches the MRT course in Philadelphia, on the University of Pennsylvania campus there. The course is also taught to drill sergeants at "Victory University" at Fort Jackson, S.C., and through a mobile training team that travels to Soldiers to teach the course. "(There's) just an overwhelming demand for these guys," said Cornum of the Soldiers that have been through the MRT course work. "When people get them they want more. They are really better at communicating with Soldiers. They are really -- they feel more comfortable as leaders." Lt. Col. Sharon McBride, a psychologist and senior researcher with the CSF program, said that Soldiers who have taken the MRT course have come away impressed with the impact it has made. "We survey people at the end of MRT course, and 95 percent or more say it is the best Army training that they've had," she said. "That's a continual number that we see every time we've run the course." Army requests $29.5 billion less than last year [2011-02-15] WASHINGTON -- The Army's Fiscal Year 2012 budget request includes funding for a 1.5 percent pay raise for Soldiers, a 3.1 percent increase in housing allowance, and a 3.4 percent increase in subsistence. The Army base budget request for FY 2012 amounts to $144.9 billion, an increase of just $1.5 billion over the FY 2011 request. The Army also requested an additional $71.1 billion for the overseas contingency operations, or OCO, budget -- to fund operations in Afghanistan and to wrap up operations in Iraq. The OCO budget request was $31 billion less than the FY2011 request, said Maj. Gen. Phillip E. McGhee, director, Army Budget, because Operation New Dawn in Iraq will end in December 2011. Overall, the Army is asking in FY 2012 for about $29.5 billion less than it did in FY 2011. One place the Army is not asking for less money is the military personnel budget, or MILPERS. "The Army leadership's highest priority is caring for our people," said McGhee. "That is our Soldiers, our families, and our civilian workforce -- all with the goal of restoring balance across the Army, (and) continuing to build resiliency to sustain an all-volunteer force." The military personnel portion of the base budget comes to $60.6 billion, by far the largest portion of the Army's budget. That portion of the budget provides the funding for Soldiers' pay increase. "Caring for our Soldiers and sustaining the quality of our all-volunteer force are the top priorities of the Army leadership," McGhee said. "So in addition to caring for our Soldiers, the military personnel budget of $60.6 billion also achieves our manning objectives." In FY 2012, the Army continues maintaining the total force end strength of 1,110,600 it was authorized in FY 2011. That includes 547,400 for the active force; 358,200 for the Army National Guard; and 205,000 for the Army Reserve. The OCO budget also includes $8 billion to support the active Army temporary troop increase of 22,000 Soldiers. That number will decrease to about 14,600 by the end of the year, and will zero out by the end of FY 2013. The general also said the FY 2012 budget would focus on mainlining the Army's "combat edge," on training and equipping Soldiers and units for the current fight, and for reconstituting and modernizing the force. The $45 billion operation and maintenance budget request is about a billion higher than last year's request due primarily to more Soldiers in home station and available for training, McGhee said. The Operation and Maintenance, or O&M, budget, he said, includes "a revised combined arms training strategy, that focuses and shifts training from major combat operations to full-spectrum operations, so funding will support 24 rotations to the Combined Arms Training Centers for all the Brigade Combat Teams and 33 war-fighting exercises for our multi-functional and our functional support brigades." The O&M budget also includes $900 million for recruiting and advertising and initial training for Soldiers; and provides for funding for 73 brigade combat teams, 98 multi-functional support brigades, and 133 functional and support brigades, McGhee said. The Army's procurement request for FY 2012 comes to $22.1 billion, about $800 million more than last year. The funding will support modernization of the UH-60M/HH-60M Black Hawk helicopter fleet, including $1.5 billion for some 71 new aircraft. An additional $1.4 billion is marked for modernization of the CH-47 Chinook helicopter from the "D" to the "F" model. The Army will purchase 32 new Chinooks in FY 2012. Also part of the procurement budget: 88 Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles for $662 million, 710 Javelin missiles for $161 million, 2,784 Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System missiles for $314 million, and modifications to the Patriot missile system for $67 million. The Army expects to spend about $1.4 billion on missile procurement in FY 2012. The Army also expects in FY 2012 to upgrade 21 Abrams tanks to M1-A2 vehicles, and to convert 100 Strykers into nuclear, biological, chemical reconnaissance vehicles. As part of its $5.2 billion facilities budget, the Army will continue with investment in barracks in FY 2012 and will construct 128 new family housing units. The four military services were directed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to achieve $100 billion in efficiencies over the Fiscal Years 2012 to 2016 Future Years Defense Plan, or FYDP. The services would be allowed to retain and reinvest these efficiency savings in enhancements of their own high-priority war-fighting programs. The Army found efficiencies through the consolidation of six Installation Management Command regions into four, for instance. Also, through portfolio reviews, the service determined it could terminate both the costly SLAMRAAM surface-to-air missile program and the Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System. "Our DoD efficiency initiatives are enabling the Army to maintain our forces and our force structure in FY 2012," said McGhee. "It will sustain an Army at war, it does build Soldier and family resiliency and it does help build our full-spectrum readiness and strategic flexibility." McGhee said of the $100 billion the DoD asked the services to find, the Army's portion comes to $26 billion. In FY 2012, the Army found $2.6 billion in savings. Brain experts meet to further Soldier head protection [2011-02-18] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers can have some of the same brain damage as boxers, according to one researcher who presented at the Soldier Protective Conference. Dr. Ann McKee, a neural pathologist from Boston University, discussed her team's research into chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, during an Army conference set up to discuss ways to protect Soldiers' brains, Feb. 17. McKee said CTE is a "progressive neurodegeneration" disorder and the symptoms have a slow "insidious onset" and tend to develop in mid-life. Symptoms include memory loss, "irritability, agitation, and a short fuse," she said. Boxers have shown particular susceptibility to CTE and have a particular form called "dementia pugilistica." McKee presented slides that demonstrated human brain specimens that were both normal and affected by CTE. The normal brains, when specially prepared with a dye, appeared blue. The diseased brains were shrunken and atrophied, and when dyed, showed brown spots in key areas -- evidence of concentrated areas of hyperphosphorylated tau protein. "There's very little hyperphosphorylated tau protein in the brain normally," she said. The bulk of the 66 brains in her team's "brain bank" are boxers and football players who had experienced repeated blows to the head during their careers. But she did have in her collection the brains of five former Soldiers. The disease, CTE, is the result of repeated trauma to the head. "This disease does develop in military veterans -- it really has been described in many different types of mild traumatic injury," McKee said. "It's less important how you get the injury, what's important is that you had repetitive injury. "This is the challenge I think with any discussion about helmet and equipment, how do we protect the brain from the long-term damage we are seeing in these players and Soldiers?" Dr. Dixie Hisley, of the Army Research Lab, presented information related to her team's efforts to find the most effective way to measure the impact on a Soldier's head when their Advanced Combat Helmet is struck by a bullet. A video she presented showed the helmet stopping a bullet, but it deforms inside as it absorbs the momentum of the speeding projectile. Inside the helmet, a speeding bullet creates a "helmet backface deformation," or helmet BFD, that appears as a bulge that grows instantly inside the helmet near a Soldier's head. The bulge can be three to four inches in diameter. But inside the helmet, there may be between 1/2 to 3/4 inch between the helmet and the Soldier's head. "You can see we have a potential for a pretty good impact to a Soldier's head," Hisley said, going on to explain one hypothesis that says "helmet BFD acts more like the mechanical equivalent of a direct impact from a less-than-lethal projectile or blunt object. "What we at the ARLS (Army Research Lab) would like to do is come up with the one to two experimental techniques that would allow us to replicate and measure this phenomenon very accurately." Hisley explained her team's use of instrumented head forms to measure helmet BFD, as well as the use of digital image correlation. She said high-speed cameras can record the deformation as it happens, and measure how fast the deformation occurs. They pay particular attention to how the velocity of the expansion of the bulge changes as it grows and eventually comes into contact with a Soldier's head. Maj. Jason Morneault, with Program Executive Office Soldier, protective equipment, discussed advancements in the Army's head protection for Soldiers. Currently, the Army uses the Advanced Combat Helmet. More than 1 million of the helmets have been fielded to Soldiers. The next generation helmet, Morneault said, is now in "first article testing" -- part of the government's acquisition process. It's expected the Enhanced Combat Helmet will be available for Soldiers this fall. He said the Enhanced Combat Helmet is made of a new material, different from the Advanced Combat Helmet, and is meant to provide 35 percent more fragmentation protection than the Advanced Combat Helmet, but he said it does better than that. "We're seeing upwards to 50 percent better -- along with some small arms," he said. The Enhanced Combat Helmet is slightly thicker than the Advanced Combat Helmet, but is also about four ounces lighter. Also new is the second generation helmet sensor expected to be in the field by August. The sensor measures the head impact Soldiers experience in combat. The data collected from the sensors can be used to help develop better injury models "to better understand what's going on in IEDs and different blasts and blunt impact trauma we're seeing downrange." Moreneault also discussed the competition to develop a different or better pad and suspension system for Soldier helmets. First cdr says AFRICOM helping build partnerships [2011-02-23] WASHINGTON -- Nearly four years since its inception, the United States African Command is a focal point for African nations who want to partner with and engage militarily with the United States. "The nations of the continent of Africa want to engage with us -- they want to engage with America," said Gen. William E. Ward, commander, USAFRICOM. "And we will be their engagement partner of choice in most cases, if we have the capacity to meet all the demands that are there." Ward, who was the first to take the helm of America's newest Unified Combatant Command -- and who will soon relinquish command there -- said partnerships in Africa include military exercises that are often joint in nature and serve dual purposes: to help build the military capability of partner nations and to build and strengthen relationships between U.S. and African partner-nation militaries. "When it comes to what leads to long-term stability and what leads to how nations better understand one another, it's that right personal contact," Ward said. "The establishment of AFRICOM, along with our Army component, U.S. Army Africa, has been a vital factor in increasing the understandings that exist between our two peoples -- the peoples represented in the various nations in the continent of Africa and in the United States of America. It's about establishing relationships." Some of that relationship building comes from combined and joint military exercises between the U.S. and partner nations in Africa, Ward said. Once such exercise, Natural Fire 11, took place in Uganda in 2009. That exercise, led by U.S. Army Africa, involved nearly 550 U.S. personnel and 650 soldiers from Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. The exercise improved inter-operability and helped build African partner capacity to respond to complex humanitarian emergencies. "Another exercise we're about to do this summer, in the Mediterranean, with Morroco -- is African Lion," Ward said. "Marines will provide the preponderance of the troops. But the Army, with its joint logistics over the shore piece, the JLOTS, is integrally involved in African Lion. Most of what we do, because of the environment, has a joint and combined flavor." Also high on the list of building partnership capacity with the African nations: training via the International Military Education and Training program. The IMET program allows foreign military officers, including those of African nation militaries, to train in U.S. military learning institutions. "IMET is probably the single most important thing we do to increase the capacity of our partner nations," Ward said. "That is our long-term dividend in our engagement." Ward said initial misconceptions about the command have dissipated since his team started work on the continent. Initially, he said, there was a misconception that the creation of AFRICOM was an effort to militarize U.S. foreign policy in Africa. "The opposite was seen," Ward said. "Everything we did was done through a lens of our foreign policy perspective. We weren't leading, we were in fact in line with our foreign policy, and supportive of it, in no uncertain terms." Chief of Staff of the Army George W. Casey Jr. has often cited several trends that will affect the global security environment such as globalization, population growth, demand for resources such as energy, water and food; climate change and natural disasters. All are factors in play in Africa, Ward said. "The climate, the effects of water and lack of water -- all those are challenges that are faced on the continent of Africa," Ward said. The general said AFRICOM is working with both African and U.S. partners to address those issues. "All that we do every day is designed to get in front of some of those challenges," he said. "The population of Africa is almost one billion people -- projected to double in the next 50 years," he said. "How do we contribute to an environment where that population is able to be educated (or) the health conditions are elevated because they have access to better water? We are doing things in communities that are supportive of all of those types of initiatives to help address these challenges that are there." Growth has happened in Africa with the start of AFRICOM, Ward said. He sees it in the development of partner-nation militaries. "I see our impact in what our partner militaries are doing ... so those are all things that cause me to feel a sense of accomplishment," Ward said. "But we know that more can be done ... we know we can continue to do more and that's what our African partners are asking for -- sustained security engagement as we work together as partners in helping to build stability." Federal agencies learn benefits of hiring wounded veterans [2011-02-24] WASHINGTON -- Hiring representatives from two dozen federal agencies gathered Feb. 23, at Fort Belvoir, Va., for a two-day event designed in part to help them meet new requirements to increase hiring of veterans and disabled Americans. "We structured the event to educate our federal agencies about the wounded warrior programs, about how we're organized and what our missions are," said Col. Gregory D. Gadson, director of the U.S. Army Wounded Warrior Program, known as AW2. "We are starting out just from an education standpoint. It's important for federal agencies to understand the services' wounded warrior programs." President Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13518 in November 2009, which focused on employment of veterans in the federal government. In July 2010, the president also signed Executive Order 13548, which focused on increasing federal employment of individuals with disabilities. Gadson said he hopes federal employers represented at the event -- which was co-hosted by the wounded warrior programs from all services -- would come away with a better understanding of how to and why they should look to wounded servicemembers when fulfilling the requirements of President Obama's executive orders. "At the end of the day, I hope that the federal agencies in attendance can develop their operational and tactical plans to try to meet these executive orders," Gadson said. "And that amongst themselves they will have created a network of contacts that they can share and communicate with each other so when they come across problems, they can call their sister federal agencies and see how they overcame it -- and to also continue to share best practices." Sean Lenahan, a veteran's employment program manager with the Department of Commerce, and himself a nine-year veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard, was one of those who attended the event. He said he knows veterans, and wounded warriors, can be a valued addition to any team, and that he tries to convey that information to hiring managers within his department. "They are one of the most undervalued and under-appreciated commodities that can be hired," he said. "One of the things I believe that is different is that as a veteran, on active duty, you may have had a specialty -- but everybody that has served knows that's just your primary duty. You may be doing six or seven other things as well. As a veteran and as a servicemember you are tasked to do a variety of collateral duties -- that's a diversified set of skills you bring to the table as a veteran." Lenahan said that elaborating on those skills is something he thinks veterans should know how to do when building their federal resumes. "On federal resumes, we want them to be lengthy and to explain as much as possible," Lenahan said. "Put as much information on your resume as you can. You may have been an assistant to an officer or senior enlisted on some kind of committee, or task force or something like that. Put everything you can think of on the resume. We want to show the diversity you have." Kelly S. Woodall, a veteran employment program manager at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, also attended the event. She too is a veteran, and retired as a master sergeant from the Army after having served 27 years. Woodall acts as a back end to requests for employment assistance made by disabled veterans through the Office of Personnel Management veteran employment website at www.fedshirevets.gov. She said she notices that veterans often know they want a job, but they don't always know what they want to do, or what they can do. She said they don't know how to translate their skills from the Army, for instance, into something the federal workforce is looking for. "They don't clearly articulate the vast amount of skills they bring, especially some of the soft skills, the leadership skills, and things of that nature," Woodall said. "I say take me through your typical day. When you wake up the morning and go to your job, what do you do? I have them write it all down. Then we take that information and we plug it into a resume format." She said a truck driver in the Army, for instance, doesn't just drive a truck. They also are responsible for ensuring preventative maintenance on those vehicles, for planning routes, and for understanding and complying with Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Department of Transportation regulations. "If you understand all that, when a job requirement says you need to demonstrate knowledge of federal regulation, well, you do," she said. "When you drive a truck you follow OSHA and DOT regulations." Gadson said one thing federal agencies can do is be more flexible with job requirements, to allow themselves to bring in veterans at a lower grade to do a job -- with the expectation that they will develop and grow in the position. "As a federal agency, you may have a position open for a GS-11, that requires X amount of skills," he said. "So it may be likely that, certainly not unusual that, a veteran may not have all those qualifications coming in as GS-11. What if we downgrade the position to GS-9 with certain skills -- with the ultimate aim of growing and training that individual to reach that GS-11 position? Don't focus so much on the resume, but understand the potential of that servicemember. These servicemembers show tremendous drive -- particularly ones that have overcome severe injuries, illnesses and wounds." Gadson also said wounded veterans can develop themselves to be desirable to employers. "I encourage them to get involved in intern programs, and to educate themselves," he said. "Not necessarily a formal education, but educate themselves so you can articulate what it is they want to do. Internships and other programs like that give you a chance to figure out what it is you want to do." Woodall said wounded warriors who want federal jobs can get them, that there is help available for them through agency program managers and through OPM, and that they should not fear the federal hiring process. "Proper preparation is the key," she said. "The federal government is committed to our wounded warriors and their success as they transition out of the service." Island paradise for missile defense [2011-03-01] KWAJALEIN, Republic of the Marshall Islands -- If Kwajalein Atoll is just two things -- at least from the perspective of the Americans who work there -- it might be both a paradise and a target. The coral sand beaches and crystal clear blue water make it easy to see why it might be a paradise -- at least for those who like to swim, dive or lay out in the sun. But the U.S. military presence at U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll is meant to support the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, part of the Department of Defense Major Range and Test Facility Base. It's the location of Kwajalein -- a real, middle-of-nowhere place, about 600 miles north of the equator -- that makes it a valuable asset for missile testing. The sparse population, surrounded by the vast Pacific Ocean, makes Kwajalein an attractive place for weapons developers to test their missiles. That is, it's a great place for an unarmed intercontinental ballistic missile to smash into the water, another projectile, or the ground. The RTS also launches its own missiles, tracks objects in space, tracks new foreign launches, participates in technology development and hosts commercial space launch facilities. "Our primary mission here is missile testing," said Tim Hall of the RTS. "Because of our location, we can support all manner of missile tests with varying shots like the ICBMs off the west coast of North America, intermediate range shots from the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii, and shorter-range things from Wake Island and even neighboring atolls if it is necessary." What actually happens is that a customer, like the Air Force, will launch a missile, such as an ICBM, at Kwajalein. The customer has expectations as to what that missile will do during flight, how fast it will fly, when it will arrive and where it will land. "For most of the operational tests, they are interested in how accurate the weapons system is," said Kurt Schwan of the RTS. "Did it come down where we aimed it? They sort of tell us pretty accurately where it's coming down -- but they don't tell us exactly. We measure as precisely as we can where it came down and give that information back to them. It's their job to make that final determination: How accurate was the system?" "We're not only collecting those telemetry data on these missions, but in the case of RTS, very precise radar data and also optics data as those things scream through the atmosphere at about six kilometers per second," said Hall, adding that an ICBM can get, from California to Kwajalein in about 30 minutes. "It's important for people analyzing the test to know what's going on, on board the system," said Schwan. "They need to know those parameters so if something goes wrong they can use that data as diagnostic information for what went wrong." The Kwajalein Atoll is geared up with sensors, radars, cameras and other tracking equipment that can be used to follow the incoming projectile from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., for example, and then report back to that customer how their missile performed. Information gathered at RTS includes missile telemetry, radar information, and even visuals of the missile reentering the atmosphere and hitting its target. Included in the equipment on Kwajalein, Roi-Namur, and the other islands in the atoll that RTS has instrumented, is the Kiernan ReEntry Measurement Site, composed of the ALTAIR VHF/UHF system, the TRADEX L-/S- band system, the MMW Ka-Band system, and the ALCOR C-Band system. According to Hall, KREMS is the "heart and soul of the range." Systems like ALTAIR and TRADEX are tracking systems, he said, and can see deep into space -- tracking things in geosynchronous orbit. Systems like the MMW and ALCOR are less powerful but have more resolution. "We have a kind of complementary capability here," Hall said. "We have this deep-space tracking or long range of tracking with our big beam, high-powered radar. And then we have this complementary capability where we can image targets to get extremely high-fidelity information." Another RTS sensor in use at the RTS: optical devices that capture imagery of missiles as they move toward the island chain. "In the past we have (had) these ballistic cameras that actually had a film plate on the back of them," Hall said. "That entire suite is being replaced. All of these new cameras are electronic digital systems now, so we can collect data in a timely fashion and get it off the island to our customers more quickly and more reliably than we were able to." Hall expects the entire set of cameras on Kwajalein, Roi-Namur, Legan and Gagan to be replaced by the end of fiscal year 2012. It's not just ICBMs that are launched at Kwajalein, it's other missiles too. Some land in the lagoon, some in the ocean to the left or right of the atoll. Others hit land, such as on Illeginni. Hall said you can get the best location readings where the missile actually hits the ground, at the bottom of the sizeable crater they make. "They will actually go out with a global positioning system receiver and figure out where the middle of that is and that's where it hit," said Hall. "So we can track it with radar and we can track it with optics, but no kidding, if you really want to know where that thing hit, you go out to the hole in the ground with a GPS." Kwajalein also launches its own missiles from a facility on Meik Island. The facility, about 35 to 40 miles north of Kwajalein, is where the DOD launches both targets and interceptors as part of Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System and Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System testing. "We support the Missile Defense Agency and the Ballistic Missile Defense System -- Patriot, THAAD -- and we man the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System, which is in Vandenberg AFB and also Fort Greeley, (Alaska)," said the test site's director, Lt. Col. John M. Eggert. "The Army has a big piece in providing missile defense." The missile defense system, said Eggert, is designed to take out missiles from rogue countries. "The better you can make that system, the better the country is protected," he said. Part of developing that system involves launching "enemy" missiles, and then having a missile launched from Kwajalein intercept and destroy it. Now, Kwajalein is launching the "enemy" missiles toward the U.S. In turn, interceptors are launched from the U.S. to destroy them. "We've turned the tables, we're not the target anymore," said Hall. "We're launching at California and they are protecting themselves." The location of Kwajalein makes it a safe place to launch missiles at and from, said Eggert. "Our location has a distinct advantage when you talk about conducting high speed missile testing," he said. "We don't have major population centers that we have to protect like a CONUS-based range does." The population of the Marshall Islands, which included Kwajalein Atoll, he said, is about 66,000 and is spread over about 750,000 square miles. In the atoll, the population is about 16,200 -- most of that is located on Ebeye Island, about two miles north of Kwajalein Island. During launches toward Kwajalein Atoll, islands lying in a specific area -- known as the midatoll corridor (an area most likely to encounter an incoming missile) -- are made off limits to those who might otherwise be working there. "What that means for us is you can have a customer test the full capabilities of his weapons system without a lot of safety constraints," he said. Eggert also said the atoll's location makes it a great place to keep a look out for things launched by other countries. "Being west of the international dateline, it gives us the first look if anyone launches from Asia," Eggert said. "We're actually the first blue sensor in the space surveillance network to see any new foreign launches." Tracking objects in space -- like satellites and missile launches from other countries -- is another RTS mission. And they've got the equipment there to track just about anything. Space tracking equipment -- like the ALTAIR and TRADEX systems -- allows RTS technicians to detect launches from Asia, as well as perform their space-monitoring mission. "We track objects in deep space, mid-Earth orbit, and also low-Earth orbit," said Eggert, who added that the instrumentation they have on Roi- Namur is capable of tracking all orbital regimes. The RTS tracks some 50,000 objects a year through space, including foreign and domestic satellites and other objects as small as 10 centimeters. America's satellites in space may be vulnerable to foreign influence, and those satellites must be equipped with countermeasures to ward off such attacks. The team at RTS helps develop those countermeasures by probing domestic technology in space using known foreign-nation signals and frequencies. "Because of the unique capabilities of our instrumentation here, we are able to replicate some of the frequencies and waveforms that our adversaries have," Eggert said. "We could use those replications to provide some interesting information on some of the friendly satellites that we have up in space right now. So we can beam up a frequency that the Russians use, for example, and see how that satellite reacts to that waveform. So we use that to test countermeasures." The Reagan Test Site does more than work with missiles; it is also involved in technology development. It plays a role in developing the Hypersonic Test Vehicle, for instance, which may one day replace ICBMs. "It's a hypersonic glide body that can actually go exoatmospheric and endoatmospheric," said Eggert. "You can actually control the flight of a hypersonic vehicle. It's very difficult for an adversary to hit, and also for an adversary to track." The team at RTS also hosts commercial launches from companies like Space-X and Orbital Sciences. The location of Kwajalein, near the equator, means it takes less fuel -- and less money -- to get objects into space. "We're doing a lot of important national-level work out here that most don't realize is going on," Eggert said. "Testing and evaluating acquisition programs of national prominence or doing space operations to ensure we have assured access to space assets -- that's the main reason we're out here." Logistics of remote-island service [2011-03-01] KWAJALEIN, Republic of the Marshall Islands -- No roads lead to Kwajalein. Everything on the atoll -- radar or satellite dishes, bolts, jugs of milk or cans of Spam, computers, bicycles, roofing shingles, lumber or gallons of fuel -- came off a barge or airplane. Kwajalein is, despite a lack of highspeed Internet and cell phone service, a fairly well-accommodated installation. There are fast-food restaurants, paved streets, solar-powered golf carts, an exchange, a grocery store, a chow hall, hundreds of homes and bicycles and plenty of radar dishes and other technology used to support the mission. "There are over 98,000 types of items we stock," said Capt. Michael Quigley, director of logistics at U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll. "We've got a pretty big logistics base we have to support and a lot of different items that aren't Army standard equipment." In addition to all the supplies that come in to support island life, Quigley said he maintains supply lines to support equipment used to conduct the mission at the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, such as satellite dishes and radar equipment. The island also maintains a small fleet of boats and aircraft that need parts. Every month, Quigley said, a fuel barge comes to the island to keep the storage tanks there full of diesel, jet fuel and gasoline. The island also needs food to support the people. That includes canned and dry goods that come in via the twice-monthly barge, and fresh produce delivered via aircraft. "We get two airplanes a week that fly out of Travis Air Force Base in California, to deliver pallets to Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii and then they fly them out here," said Quigley. "It's mostly fresh fruit and vegetables, mail and labs (medicines, etc.) -- things with low shelf lives that need to be refrigerated -- things that can't be sent by a barge or a ship." Many supplies delivered to Kwajalein arrive via "The Islander," a cargo ship that brings everything from household goods, to new TVs to be sold in the exchange. The ship travels from California, to Hawaii, to Guam, and finally, to Kwajalein. "Every two weeks The Islander comes up and it's our primary source of receiving cargo," said Robert Chadwell, the port captain at Kwajalein. "All the food and supplies come in on the barge. It's our lifeblood. If it gets delayed, the food doesn't arrive and everyone starts calling the colonel." The commander of U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll, Col. Joseph N. Gaines, has taken those calls before. But he said the folks on Kwajalein are generally a hardy bunch. "We just ran out of paper products -- we had a glitch in our ordering system and we were out of paper products for a couple of weeks," Gaines said. "The great thing about the community out here is they sort of endure these burdens of shortages and not having certain things because the trade-off is they enjoy a quality of life here that is unmatched anywhere in the United States." Chadwell said nearly everything comes in by sea. The installation gets about 30 to 40 containers each time the barge comes in -- nearly 1,000 containers a year. Goods are kept in 22 warehouses on the island -- nine of which are climate-controlled. Chadwell is also responsible for another logistics effort -- moving Marshallese workers back and forth between Kwajalein and Ebeye, where they live. He also runs the boats that move American workers between the other islands in the atoll where the Army conducts operations. "We put about 900,000 passengers a year through our little port here," he said. "We have here on Kwajalein two passenger ferries that run all day long, back and forth, taking Marshallese up to Ebeye. And we also have two fast ferries that do the trips up to Meik Island." Recently, Chadwell said, the Army purchased two new ships, faster passenger ferries that will arrive in early 2012. Besides moving passengers between islands by boat, Quigley is also responsible for the inter-island aviation services, including fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. One thing not shipped to Kwajalein, but perhaps the most important supply of all, is fresh water. "Water is life here in the Pacific," said Gaines. The water on Kwajalein is captured from the rain through several catchments on the island's runway. "If you look out on the airfield, you can see the yellow catchments out there -- we have three really large ones," Quigley said. "A lot of people out here complain about the rain, but it's a nice thing to have, so we don't have to ship water out here." The island gets about 100 inches of rain each year, most of that coming between May and November, the region's wet season. Dan Eggers, the utilities manager at Kwajalein, said just one inch of rain yields about four days of drinking water for the island. "We go through about 210,000 gallons a day, and one inch gives us about one million gallons," he said. "But that's fresh water -- we go through more non-potable water. That's used for flushing the toilets and for irrigation, and for general gray water usage." On Kwajalein, used water is recycled and sterilized into gray water. That's non-potable water, meaning it isn't intended for drinking. But gray water is pumped back into a special water system used to flush toilets, water lawns and wash vehicles. About 99 percent of homes on Kwajalein are equipped with the gray water system. "It's the way we can take the best advantage of the limited resource we have here," Eggers said. Water on the island is brought in from catchments on the runway and pumped into a system of 11, 1-milliongallon untreated freshwater tanks. There are also two similar tanks for potable water, and two tanks for gray water -- a total of 15 million gallons of water storage. During the dry season, the island doesn't capture enough water in the catchments, so alternative sources are needed. "In the dry season, our rainfall will go from 10 inches a month to maybe one or two inches a month," said Stan Jazwinski, the liquid systems manager. "So in the dry season when we don't get enough water, we pump water out of the ground. We put it through our filtration system and then to the reverse osmosis system. That removes organics as well as salt." When it rains, the water seeps into the ground, and forms a "lens" as it floats above saltwater already in the ground. Drilling into the ground, technicians on Kwajalein can pull freshwater out of the "lens well," to use during the dry season. "In the lens well, fresh water is on top and if you pump that off slowly, you can pull very good fresh water out of there," Jazwinski said. Years ago, the island used to do reverse osmosis on seawater, Jazwinski said, but the process was too expensive to maintain. "Now we're taking brackish groundwater and running that through the reverse osmosis system," he said. "It's a lot lower electrical use and it's a lot easier on the equipment. It's not nearly as challenging to keep the equipment running. Seawater is extremely corrosive." It's not just water on Kwajalein that's recycled. Just about everything here is recycled or incinerated, said Bill Craft, supervisor of the incinerator in Kwajalein. Waste includes household refuse, industrial material, tires and palm fronds. About 53.4 cubic yards of trash comes in each day from around the island to be burned. The incinerator has three chambers. The two outer chambers burn just about any kind of trash you can put in them, and the center chamber re-burns the exhaust from the outer chambers at about 1,600 to 1,700 degrees. The result is a talcum-powder- like ash that comes out of the two outer chambers and heat from the center chamber's smoke stack. The center chamber also uses another waste product from the island: used motor oil. "We pump it into that center chamber. It's a secondary fuel source," Craft said. "So instead of burning diesel, we burn waste oil." Craft said that by using the waste oil in the incinerator, they avoid shipping it back to the U.S. for disposal. And because it replaces diesel fuel, they don't have to ship that in to the island. In the past, there had been a landfill. But now, Craft said, they are excavating that landfill and burning the refuse once stored there. "It's to remove our footprint from this island," Craft said. Glass is also reused. Near the incinerator, there's a facility that collects used glass bottles from the island's recycling program. "We use the accumulation of glass we've collected from throughout the island in the residential areas as well as the industrial areas," said Terri Hibbert, the environmental safety and health manager on Kwajalein. "We collect the glass bottles and then we crush and reuse them." Terri said the glass is crushed into two aggregates of sand that can be used for various industrial purposes. Making that aggregate on island from waste means they don't have to ship it in. "The very fine form we use in the sewage treatment plant on the drying beds," Hibbert said. "Once the drying bed is finished, we collect that along with the sand they use to dry it out, and we scoop that up and process it in the composting operation." Hibbert also said the glass sand they manufacture is used as fill under pipes during construction and as top cover when landfilling ash from the incinerator. "This is not some fad program," Gaines said about USAKA's recycling, reuse and incineration programs. "Now we incinerate everything or recycle everything." Gaines said Kwajalein also ships scrap aluminum off the island for reuse. "For us it's not a luxury, it's an imperative," he said. "We have a limited amount of space here. We can't afford to have large landfills like they do in the United States." A lot moves in and out of Kwajalein, Quigley said, and much of what comes to the island, whether naturally as with rain water or via barge or aircraft, as with supplies and equipment, is reused or recycled. But it's the success of the atoll's logistics program that makes life and work possible. "Without logistics, nothing happens -- and you are not able to do your mission," he said. "The only things I don't have to ship onto this island are coconuts. We have plenty of those." Kwajalein boasts a nurturing academic environment for students [2011-03-01] KWAJALEIN, Republic of the Marshall Islands -- There's about one adult for every seven students at the schools on Kwajalein -- a ratio that trumps schools in nearly every category in the U.S., with the exception of special education. Of course, there are less than 300 students between its two schools, which include George Seitz Elementary School and Kwajalein Junior-Senior High School. Class sizes average about 25 students -- about 25 will graduate high school in the spring and move on from island life. The schools on Kwajalein, like nearly everything else on the island, are run by defense contractors -- they are not Department of Defense schools. But the small student body means teachers and faculty at the school can spend more time educating and preparing students for the future, and less time putting kids in the corner. "We have high standards and virtually no discipline problems -- I've been here four years and we've never had a fight," said Al Robinson, the superintendent and principal of the Kwajalein schools. "We also enjoy, for the most part, really good parental support. When you peel away discipline issues, lack of parent involvement and lack of parent caring, you get down to where you can really teach kids 90 or 95 percent of your time." When teachers can educate instead of dealing with those unrelated issues, the school can make great things happen for students, Robinson said. "We tell our kids in seventh grade (that) when they get to the high school, if they do what they need to do and they work hard here, we can literally get them into any school they want to go to," Robinson added. "We've sent kids to any school you can imagine -- Ivy League schools and military academies." A few years ago, for example, the valedictorian went off to Stanford, and this year's top student is headed to Johns Hopkins. The small class size does make it hard for students to blend in or disappear. "The people out here like it because it's more of a Family atmosphere," said senior Aaron Mathison. "You're close to your friends and you can be friends with anybody in school because you know who they are. In the States you blend in. If you don't want to be noticed for something, you're not noticed." Mathison explained that it's a far cry from where he was back in the U.S., in Florida, where he had more than 300 kids in his class. "Most of the people walking down the hall you don't know and won't ever know," he said. "You only have a few friends, and you don't get along with everybody or you wouldn't hang out with them after school." With a 3.9 grade point average, Mathison is applying to the Army, Navy and Coast Guard service academies. He's not the only one headed off to the military, either. Two of his classmates are headed to the Army: Darryl Lorok and Robin Loeak. Both are Marshallese citizens who live on Ebeye, just north of Kwajalein. They've attended the American schools on Kwajalein since kindergarten as "rikatak" students. The Marshallese word means "guest." Each year, five new Marshallese children from Ebeye are accepted into the American school system on Kwajalein, and are allowed to stay from kindergarten through 12th grade. "They send 25 kids over from the preschools and kindergartens there and we screen them and look for things we think will make them successful -- we pick the top five," said Robinson. There are about 65 total slots for Marshallese in the Kwajalein school system -- about 20 percent of the student body. Loeak likes to study physics and math in school, and plans to eventually serve as a behavioral health specialist in the Army after graduation. Lorok said he would serve as a generator mechanic. "I chose to go to the Army because I thought it was an opportunity, a door that can be opened to a brighter future," Loeak explained. "There are a lot of benefits and financial help." Both plan to use their access to the Army -- as Marshallese citizens with benefits under the Compact of Free Association with the U.S. -- to catapult themselves toward a better future. "It'll be just four years until I'm eligible for the grants and the G.I. Bill so I can go to school," Lorok said. "I'm hoping to go in the Army for four years, then go to college after that to get a degree in political science. Then I'll come back to the Marshall Islands and help the Marshallese community." Loeak is less certain of what he'll do after the Army, though. "My first option is to try to go to college, and if college doesn't work out, a career in the military," he said. "I'd want to come back and help out here too, but I don't know. I still don't have my future planned." Faculty members at the Kwajalein school are helping all the students craft plans for the future. "My counselor is talking with the kids and trying to get them through the application process," Robinson said. "Some will go into military service, but all will be really qualified to go to junior college or any state school." Robinson said there are challenges for students on Kwajalein. For one, the isolation means students are sometimes ill-prepared for the dangers and distractions of the larger world in the U.S. "This is an incredibly safe place," he said. "A female athlete can go running at 2:30 a.m. by herself and never worry. It can be pitch black and nobody cares -- nobody will bother you. You won't be harassed or molested. So it's incredibly safe, probably too safe. It gives our kids a naive picture of safety." Mathison said a friend of his, who has since left for school in New York City, has found it tough to adjust to his new surroundings. "If you live out here you don't see the everyday situations you do in the States," he said. "A few of the kids that have grown up here and they go to college, they get really homesick. One of my best friends who graduated here two years ago is in college in Manhattan and always calls back and wants to know how people are doing -- he misses the island lifestyle. It's really different here." The lack of modern technology at the school, especially access to the Internet, was also a problem in the past. But recent developments have made things better for educators and students. "Until about a month ago all of our communications were bouncing off satellites," said Robinson. "So the amount of bandwidth that we had available to do public Internet sites was very small. It's a lot faster now because it's getting to the United States via Guam on an underwater cable. That's already made a huge difference" -- a difference that will further prepare Kwajalein's students for life beyond the island. Up, up and away! Weather forecast critical to missile launch [2011-03-01] KWAJALEIN, Republic of the Marshall Islands -- Mark Bradford makes sure Mother Nature is going to cooperate with the mission at the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site on Kwajalein, an atoll in the western Pacific. Often, the mission requires a clear blue sky. Or at least a portion of the sky needs to be clear. Even cirrus clouds -- the wispy feathers that form as high as 10 miles -- can affect the mission, said Bradford. "We go very high, up into the mesosphere," up to 50 miles above the Earth's surface, said Bradford, the lead meteorologist on the island. He's been working Kwajalein's weather -- on and off the island -- for 25 years. Bradford and his team provide daily weather forecasts to those who run the mission at RTS, to ensure they always know if it's going to be OK to conduct operations -- a launch for instance. "Really what we do is we're here specifically for mission support," he said. "We document the existing weather and forecast it in the areas of concern for each mission. When weather exceeds acceptable constraints, we warn and also try to find acceptable areas where they can operate." Bradford said those who plan missions at RTS are concerned about such things as rain, lightning, winds and thunderstorms. But what Bradford does on Kwajalein needs to be much more accurate and specific than what's done in the States -- the kind of weather forecast that lets you know if you can go to the beach or if school will be cancelled due to snow. "We have particular research techniques that come out of the University of Wisconsin," he said. "We can cut and layer through upper level clouds and really detect and see very thin clouds and determine the altitude of those clouds. We're using a number of techniques that people just don't use." Bradford said the weather that affects the mission on Kwajalein that he must look for, doesn't allow him to forecasting that meteorologists in the States are focused on. "It's hard here because we're remote, and we're tropical," Bradford said. "And the kind of tropical weather we have here is not sexy. Typhoons and hurricanes are sexy...most of the weather we have here is really ignored by the meteorological community." Another element of Bradford's mission on Kwajalein is to collaborate with a worldwide network of meteorologists who collect weather data all over the globe and feed it into a central database. Part of that routine involves the twice-daily launch of a weather balloon with a sonde attached by a dangling string. The sonde is a small, disposable weather station that contains air pressure, temperature, and humidity sensors, as well as a GPS receiver and radio. When Bradford launches the sonde, it sends signals back to his shop -- just outside the island's airport -- and he can capture weather information live as the balloon rises to some 39,000 feet. "All around the world, thousands of places are launching these balloons and sending these packages off all at the same time," Bradford said. "Since 1955...this is still the primary way of getting the information about the atmosphere, how it is flowing, and what the weather is doing." Eventually the weather balloon pops, Bradford said, and the sonde plummets to earth. Generally, the $300 portable weather station is lost forever -- but not always. "I once worked on a big international project in Switzerland and they would keep their software on, even as the sonde fell," Bradford said. "One of their sondes started coming down... and it landed in the mountains some miles away. But then it started getting closer and closer to us, until a farmer came in and handed them their sonde back. It fell in his field and so he just brought it back to them." The missile testing missions conducted on Kwajalein are expensive endeavors, Bradford said. And the wrong kind of weather can have a big impact on operations there. "It has millions of dollars of adverse effects on technical operations like this," he said. Bradford and his team work to provide the most accurate weather information possible to ensure the success of a customer's testing mission. It means more than a macroscopic view of weather in the region -- it means accurate details and predictions of the minutest systems, so RTS customers can be assured their test results are reproducible. "We're really looking for very small, difficult-to-diagnose systems that change very quickly in time," Bradford said. "Most people really give that up as a roll of the dice. But we can't rely on the role of the dice here." Preston retires after record SMA stint [2011-03-01] WASHINGTON -- The 13th sergeant major of the Army retired today after having served more than seven years -- the longest term for the position since its inception in 1966. During his retirement ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Va. Sgt. Maj. of the Army Kenneth O. Preston thanked a litany of individuals, military and civilian, officer and enlisted, and members of his own family, whom he said had been instrumental throughout his career in helping him accomplish his work, or who have stood by his side throughout his career. Of his proudest moment during his tenure as the Army's senior-most enlisted member, Preston was humble in saying it wasn't about him at all. "It's about what the Army has accomplished," Preston said. "Over the last seven years, we've been an Army at war, supporting a nation at war in both Iraq and Afghanistan. We've had Soldiers deployed to over 80 countries around the world. We've liberated 50 million people and we've nearly completed the largest transformation of our Army since World War II. Transforming our Army while at war, with an all-volunteer force has to be our greatest accomplishment." Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. spoke at the ceremony, after presiding over Preston's retirement from 35 years of Army service. He said hiring Preston the first time, in 2000 as command sergeant major for the 1st Armored Division, was "one of the best decisions I ever made." "I asked for a list of potential candidates," Casey said. "As with every sergeant major selection process, they brought me the names of three or four really good sergeants major. It was hard to differentiate and figure out who was going to work best with me." At the end of each interview Casey conducted with the candidates for the job, he asked them what they were most proud of in their life. "Ken thought for a minute and said 'you know what I'm most proud of is my family,'" Casey recounted. "I said to myself, I can work with a guy like that. And so I picked him, and we've been friends with the Prestons ever since." Later, in 2003, Casey served as the vice chief of staff of the Army, and was asked by then Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker for insight into a new sergeant major of the Army. "(He) called me in and said 'vice, I'm trying to figure out who to pick for the next sergeant major of the Army. Do you know Ken Preston?'" he asked. "I said 'as a matter of fact, yes I do.' And I said he's the right guy to lead our enlisted force. He's the epitome of what we want a 21st-century noncommissioned officer to be -- and the rest is history." Casey went on to serve as commander of Multinational Forces-Iraq from 2004 to 2007. Afterward, President George W. Bush nominated Casey to serve as the new Army chief of staff. Preston was still serving then as the SMA, from his appointment by Schoomaker. Casey said Preston wanted to step aside to let another serve as SMA, but he asked him to stay on. "I asked him to stay with me until I finished," Casey said. "And what he accomplished over the past seven years is to take the most professional NCO corps in the world and make it better -- and our Army will be better for his efforts for decades to come." As sergeant major of the Army, Preston served as the Army chief of staff's personal adviser on all enlisted-related matters, particularly in areas affecting Soldier training and quality of life. He devoted the majority of his time to traveling throughout the Army observing training, and talking to Soldiers and their families. Preston enlisted in the Army in 1975. Throughout his career, he has served in every enlisted leadership position from cavalry scout and tank commander all the way up to sergeant major of the Army. During his retirement ceremony, Preston was presented with the Distinguished Service Medal. Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler will serve as the 14th sergeant major of the Army. He was sworn in during a ceremony at the Pentagon just hours after Preston retired. Kwajalein's good neighbor policy [2011-03-01] KWAJALEIN, Republic of the Marshall Islands -- There are about 1,200 Americans living on Kwajalein, but they are not alone in the atoll. Less than 2 miles north of Kwajalein Island is Ebeye Island, where some 15,000 Marshallese live. And like all U.S. military installations, the Army wants to have a great relationship with the citizens of the host nation. "We do a lot of things in terms of being good neighbors," said Col. Joseph N. Gaines, commander, U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll. "For instance, we had a call saying there was a Marshallese boat missing, and they wanted us to assist in search and rescue." In early 2009, when a Marshallese civilian was bitten by a shark, leadership at USAKA provided assistance. "We flew a helicopter up there and flew him back to Ebeye," Gaines said. "We saved his life -- we do a lot of good neighbor things." In the fall of 2010, USAKA provided another kind of help. About 40,000 gallons of water was taken via barge from Kwajalein to the nearby island of Ebeye as part of a relief effort when that island's water supply system failed. With a failed water purification system, islanders were left with just a four-day supply of water; the Army stepped in to help. "Some of the units were having a problem, so they were unable to generate fresh water for the population over there," said Gaines. "We stand ready to support our neighbors in Ebeye, especially when there is a health, life or safety issue." Gaines turned to his director of logistics, Capt. Michael Quigley, to help with the water issue on Ebeye. The captain sent a reconnaissance team to the island to assess the state of its water supply system. Ultimately, some repair work had to be done to fix supply lines on the island before fresh water could be brought in. By evening, a water barge travelled the short distance from Kwajalein to Ebeye, and once there, the fresh water was pumped into the island's water system. Quigley said providing such support to the Marshallese is something he, as a logistics officer, is expected to know how to do. "It is one of the aspects of full-spectrum operations," he said. "Coming from two tours in Iraq, doing multiple things, including both transportation and some humanitarian support, you are kind of expected as a logistics officer to keep that in your back pocket -- being able to pull that out when you need it." About 1,000 Marshallese come from Ebeye to Kwajalein each day, where they work in a variety of jobs. "We have two Marshallese pilots that fly the airplanes," Gaines said. "And we have Marshallese that work on the jet engines. We also have Marshallese in Roi-Namur that are working the technical aspects of the radar. So they run the gamut from picking up coconuts out here to flying our airplanes." As part of the good neighbor policy with the Marshallese in the atoll, young people from Ebeye are invited at an early age to apply to attend the American school on Kwajalein. Each year about five are accepted to attend school there, beginning in kindergarten, said Al Robinson, principal and superintendent of the schools on Kwajalein. "Then they have access to our school through high school," he said. There are about 7,000 children on Ebeye under age 18, and only schools for about 3,400-3,500. The island itself is only about .13 square miles, making Ebeye -- with a population density of about 107,000 per square mile -- one of the most densely populated places on earth. The U.S. has had a relationship with the Marshallese since Kwajalein Atoll was taken from the Japanese in February 1944, during Operation Flintlock -- part of America's Pacific campaign in World War II. "This was a U.S. trust territory, and we took care of these folks until 1986, and then it became a sovereign nation," said Gaines. Since then, the colonel said, the nation has been struggling to emerge as a democracy. But today, the U.S. and the Republic of the Marshall Islands enjoy a unique relationship in that they are signers to a Compact of Free Association. The Compact provides special privileges to Marshallese that citizens of other nations do not have. "The citizens may go to the United States, study, work and live without a visa. That's pretty unique in the world," said ambassador to the RMI, Martha L. Campbell. "Also, we give about $60 million a year in direct Compact funding. Plus, they have access to a lot of U.S. domestic programs to which other countries don't have access." Some of those programs include Health and Human Services, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Among the highest priorities for both the U.S. and the RMI is health and education in the island nation, Campbell said. "A lot of the Compact funding goes to those two things, and we are always trying to encourage them to look for best ways on how to use that and make the education system better," she said. Campbell said the Marshallese have done a good job building new schools with money from the Compact. Almost 200 classrooms have been built across the RMI over the past few years, including an eight-room elementary school that just opened in nearby Alinglaplap. One of the biggest challenges in the RMI is helping the nation become economically self-sufficient. There are about 60,000 citizens throughout the Marshalls, and the largest employer of those citizens is the government of the Marshall Islands. The second largest employer is USAKA. Campbell said the Marshallese do have a fledgling fishing industry, and there's a potential for tourism, although the islands are distant from population centers, and promoting tourism may prove challenging. Now, she said, byproducts from coconut harvesting, called copra, fuel trade on the islands. "Most of these islands, what they do to pay for a living is gathering copra, which is a coconut byproduct," Campbell said. "They process it and get it ready and wait for the ship to come." Copra can be used to make oils, and Campbell said there's a study being funded to see if that oil can be used for fuel. Availability and cost of fuel is also a problem for RMI, as is transportation. The ambassador also said that climate change is another concern. "It doesn't take very much to make them disappear. The high point on Majuro (the capital of the Marshall Islands) is 10 feet above sea level, and that's the top of the bridge connecting two islands," Campbell said. "We are supporting a lot of disaster preparedness planning for the Marshall Islands." She said the RMI government is working to develop plans with the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency as well as with the U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, part of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Despite problems in the RMI, the nation remains an important ally to the defense of the U.S., said Campbell, due in part to its strategic position in the Pacific and to the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site located there. Gaines said as commander at USAKA, he intends to maintain a "good neighbor" policy, in part, because of the importance the Marshallese play in keeping his installation operating. "A good portion of our work force comes from Ebeye and they are an important part of our community -- both the work force and the Marshallese people," Gaines said. "So from my perspective, as a commander, any time they need our help, we are going to step in." Digging for history in the Kwajalein Atoll [2011-03-01] KWAJALEIN, Republic of the Marshall Islands -- There's a lot of American military history in the Kwajalein Atoll -- on Kwajalein itself, and Roi-Namur in the northeast side of the island chain. Most of that history involves Operation Flintlock, part of America's World War II Pacific campaign during which the U.S. military captured the atoll from the Japanese on Feb. 7, 1944. Today, remnants of that operation and of the Japanese occupation of Kwajalein remain buried all around the atoll. When construction starts on a new project at Kwajalein, it's the job of Leslie Mead, Kwajalein's in-house archeologist, to ensure appropriate care is taken to recover and process any artifacts found. "Basically, every time we dig something, I have to be around to take a look at it -- anything that's greater than 6 inches below grade and within the confines of the island prior to 1945," Mead said. Her facility houses relics of the war: weapons, clothing, personal effects of both Japanese and American military personnel, dog tags and even human remains. "Most of what we find these days is from World War II -- for example, a Japanese gun we excavated on Roi- Namur this past year," she said. "It came out of the fill deposit. Right after World War II, they were looking for dirt or anything else that they could to bring the island back online as an American base. They took a lot of Japanese stuff and just dumped it in the ocean. This is one of the things they dumped in -- a Japanese anti-aircraft gun." Mead also finds bones on the island. Part of her work is to confirm if the remains are American, Japanese or Marshallese so they can be sent back to their home countries to be repatriated. Most of the remains, she said, are of Japanese soldiers. "We're not primarily interested in identifying a single individual, but rather trying to confirm what we strongly suspect -- and that is that they are Japanese," she said, while handling a plastic envelope with a bone fragment and documentation inside. "They will be repatriated to the government of the Marshall Islands, who will in all likelihood repatriate them to the Japanese." Dog tags are also a common find on the island. Mead says when they find dog tags they try to locate the Soldier, if he is still alive, or find his Family, so they can be returned. Sometimes, however, they run into problems. "We actually contacted an individual several years ago and let him know that we had found his dog tags, and he denied that they were his," she said. "He acknowledged that yes, he was in the Army, and yes, he had been in the Marshall Islands, and yes, he was on Kwajalein. But they were not his dog tags!" She has a theory as to why the former Soldier didn't want to claim what was his. "Maybe he's concerned the Army will come after him for losing his dog tags 65 years ago," she said. "Or, it was a fairly common practice to take your spare dog tag if you had a relationship with a local girl and there might be consequences from that relationship, to give her your dog tag. If there were consequences after you had left, she would be able to contact you." Mead's facility houses several glass cases to display some of the finds. One pair of cases has sets of American and Japanese World War II-era gear, so visitors can compare the two. "We wanted to have sort of some analogous things in the case so people would be able to understand the difference between the two different types of soldiers," Mead said. "If you look at the American case, virtually everything is standard Army issue. That's reflective of the fact that the World War II Soldier was the best-equipped Soldier that had ever fought. Virtually everything that he was given and had was issued to him by the Army." The Japanese soldier's kit included things donated by the community, she said. "You'll see there are a lot of very idiosyncratic things in here besides the ordnance," she said. Included in the case for the Japanese soldier was a jar of hair pomade from the Tokyo School of Beauty, and a Japanese Imperial Navyissued rice bowl. "We find them all the time," Mead said. "It's sort of the equivalent of an American mess kit." Mead also has a collection of glass bottles exhumed from trash dumps used by the American servicemembers stationed on the island after the war, including beer and liquor bottles. Mead explained that back then, American enlisted Soldiers were limited in the amount of alcohol that could be in their beer. "You can tell the enlisted man dump from the officer's dump, because the officer's dump had the liquor bottles," she said. Mead is more than just the archeologist for Kwajalein -- she collects its history as well. She has thousands of pictures related to the island's history, and newspapers and magazines published about the military mission on Kwajalein -- some even published by the military on Kwajalein. A Sailor's handmade scrapbook that Mead purchased online is among the collection's most prized pieces. "We call it the Reckinger scrap book," she said. "He was here in 1945 and 1946...with the Seabees. There are all kinds of things in here: pictures of Kwajalein, pictures of home, a beer ration card, a cigarette chit and his chow hall pass." The book also includes a photo of the war-crimes trial for the Japanese commander of Kwajalein. "This is the only photo we have," she said. "That's when they tried the commander of Kwajalein...for killing the Makin Raiders here." The Makin Raiders were Marines who attacked the Japanese holding Makin Island (now Butaritan Island) in August 1942. After inflicting heavy Japanese casualties and taking out enemy radios, the Marines withdrew. However, due to a combination of broken boat motors and heavy surf, several Marines were stuck on the island. The Japanese captured them and brought them to Kwajalein for execution. Mead can't keep everything she finds, though. Some things are simply too dangerous. "The hardest day I ever had was when I had to take a full canvas bag that was part of a Japanese soldier's uniform, that had hung from the belt, with the canvas still on it and still full of bullets," Mead said. "I had to turn it over to EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) for destruction -- I can't keep live rounds here. But my favorite boys in the world are the EOD boys, because they keep me alive." Brian Bussey is one of the unexploded ordnance technicians who works with the EOD team. "Most EOD contractors conduct what they call 'walking the grid,' which is just going out on the ranges and digging up areas," Bussey said. "We basically respond to any kind of incidents that are called in. People are digging and they find a UXO (unexploded ordnance), or they are walking along the street and find a UXO. We also go out and do sweeps to look for UXOs." As a result of Operation Flintlock, Bussey said, the entire Kwajalein Atoll is full of UXOs. "That resulted in a lot of ammunition, over 100,000 tons of ammunition just from the Allies," Bussey said. "That doesn't even account for the Japanese ammunition that was here." Bussey's team averages about 54 UXO-related incidents a year, or about one a week. "About half the stuff we find is still considered hazardous in some form or fashion," he said. "It still contains explosives or a functional fuse. Some of the items, especially the Japanese, do not require fuses to be dangerous. Instead, they use picric acid as a main charge filler. And picric acid is extremely sensitive over time." Bussey said a big part of his and his team's mission is to keep the residents safe, including the archeologist. They do that though public awareness and safety campaigns, including public service announcements on the American Forces Network channels and education programs in the schools. "We attribute our public awareness more to the safety (campaign) than to us going out and finding things," he said. Through the efforts of EOD and their local archaeologist, Kwajalein residents can be certain that the atoll's history is safe and sound. Isolation develops keen sense of community on Kwajalein [2011-03-01] KWAJALEIN, Republic of the Marshall Islands -- While you probably should, you really don't need to look both ways when you cross a street on Kwajalein. The speed limit is 15 mph, and most people ride a bike to work, including the installation commander. "Some people liken this place to the 1960s," said Col. Joseph N. Gaines, commander, U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll. "We only have a few TV channels. There are no cell phones and we don't have high-speed Internet. Nobody has a car here, so we ride our bikes. And entertaining here is less centered around electronics and more centered around what you and your neighbors do." Kwajalein Island, about 3.3 miles from one end to the other, is the largest of about 97 coral islands in the Kwajalein Atoll. The circle of islands is one of 29 that make up the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The U.S. has had military personnel there since it ousted the Japanese in February 1944, during Operation Flintlock -- part of America's Pacific campaign during World War II. Today, Kwajalein Island and about 10 other islands in the atoll are used by the Army as part of the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site. About 1,200 Americans live on the island -- including about 700 defense contractors, 50 government civilians, 12 Soldiers and the Families of American workers. There's no cell service on Kwajalein, the cable TV includes about three channels from the American Forces Network and checking your e-mail still involves a telephone line and modem. "I don't think you'll find this anywhere else in the world," said Gaines. "Technology has pretty much reached the entire globe. And we're pretty much high-tech from the mission side, but lifestyle-wise, we're low-tech." Gaines said a recently installed undersea fiber optic cable will provide better data rates. The new cable, called HANTRU1, stretches more than 1,800 miles from Kwajalein to Guam. The line could ultimately carry 160 gigabits per second over two fiber pairs. "There's going to be a non-mission aspect to that which will bring high-speed (Internet) to the island," Gaines said. "That will allow people to do voice-over-Internet. It will also allow people to stream television, and all kinds of things that drove Americans into their homes and away from entertainment with the neighbors. That hasn't happened here yet, but it is coming. We'll see how that affects the island." For residents of Kwajalein today, entertainment means being outside with neighbors, playing sports and taking advantage of what nature has provided: water, sand and sun. "We play a lot of sports -- I coached softball, so both of the kids play," said Callie Chavana, a long-time resident of Kwajalein. "We do a lot of things outdoors. Every Monday is the day we go to the beach, and about once a week the kids get to have a play date and invite a friend over to the house." Chavana has been on Kwajalein for four years, and is now an Army civilian. She lives on the island with her two children and husband. Her parents also live on Kwajalein -- they too are employees. Chavana is a "retread," someone who lived on Kwajalein before -- she graduated from the high school there and came back as an adult. "This place has a history of re-treads," said Gaines. "They're people that come back again and again. Almost everybody here is either a longterm resident or a retread." It's the lifestyle and safety of island life, said Chavana, which made her want to bring her Family. "The children have a lot more freedom than they would in the United States," she said. "They leave in the morning on their own to ride to school and I can meet them home for lunch." There's really no crime on the island -- everybody is there with the Army's permission, and everybody has a job. So the safety, sense of community, and almost non-existent commute for most people, are big draws. "We have a lot more freedom here than in the States," said Evan Rowell, a 12-year-old student at George Seitz Elementary School. "We can ride our bikes everywhere and play all around the island," said his brother, 9-year-old Carson Rowell, also a student at the school. He agreed the safety of the island allows kids a freedom sometimes not seen stateside. "In the United States you can't really go anywhere. You can only stay in your house or go out in your yard and stuff." Evan and Carson live on the island with their mother, Heidi Rowell, and their father, Chief Warrant Officer 3 James Rowell. "We're here for two years and we extended for a third year," said Heidi. The Family came from a previous assignment at Fort Eustis, Va. "It's so safe here. There's no crime, and no need to worry about them getting in trouble. It's like a small American town in the middle of the ocean. Everybody looks out for each other. It's just a 3-milelong island and you'd think you would get bored, but you never get bored." Heidi said she likes to scuba, a hobby enjoyed by many on the island. And the small size of the island, its white sandy beaches and close proximity to crystal-clear blue water, make it easy for her to fit her hobby into her day. "I drop my kids off at school -- they are all in elementary school, except for my 4-year-old. I can drop her off in the afternoon and grab a tank and go diving with a friend and be back by 3:30 to pick her up," Heidi said. Scuba is one of the most popular activities for residents, said the island's community activities director, Steven Gauthier. "I believe the biggest club is the scuba club, which by (its) own statistics has more dives on an annual basis than any other club (in) the world," he said. Gauthier estimates 75 percent of islanders participate in the scuba club. Besides managing the island's recreational activities -- something Gauthier said is critical to maintaining morale -- his office also handles the island's hospital, post office and food-service operations. "We have to be really responsive to the customer," Gauthier said. "We try to meet their needs as much as possible, because there is no alternative. In Germany and Korea you can at least go outside the gate and do things like karaoke or the clubs. Here, there's nothing outside the gate." To keep the 1,200 islanders occupied when they are not at work, school or church, Gauthier says there's a sizable array of options. There's a bowling alley, and two theaters, for instance. And one of those theaters is a "drive-in," where residents show up on their bicycles. There's also a nine-hole golf course, fishing, diving, boating and snorkeling. There's even a yacht club. But many of the activities are supported through organizations staffed by the residents themselves, who are volunteers. "It's a small island, and there's not a lot to do," Gauthier said. "If you don't make it or create it yourself, it's not going to happen. A private organization gives you a chance to get together with people with like-interests and gives you a little motivation to come up with these activities and keep them going. Without the private organizations, it would be a much quieter place." There are nearly 40 such organizations on Kwajalein, which include the yacht club, diving club, golfing club and surf club. There's even a shortwave radio club, Gauthier said. Volunteer work on Kwajalein is big. People there are boxed in by the island's size and location (Hawaii is an expensive, five-hour plane ride from the island), so volunteering keeps many busy. "I do a lot of volunteering," said Heidi. "If you've never volunteered before, this is the place where they need it. There is no one else out here. You're in the middle of the ocean, and to make things happen, you have to get out there. You have to get involved." Aaron Mathison, a senior at the Kwajalein Junior-Senior High School, has occupied at least some of his time on the island with volunteer work and with the Boy Scouts. He and other members of the National Honor Society went to Ebeye Island, just north of Kwajalein, to volunteer. Ebeye is an island of about 15,000 Marshallese civilians. "We went in and asked all the schools there for a wish list to do fundraisers for school supplies," he said. As part of the Kwajalein's Keystone Club, he helped bring sporting equipment to Ebeye as well. And with the Boy Scouts, he helped out in Ebeye's schools. "We built bookshelves for the schools and then they have wooden partitions (so) we painted and fixed those," Mathieson said. "When you go over there, the little kids want to hold your hand and stand next to you. That's a good feeling to help them out." Lisa Ansley, wife of Lt. Col. Steven Ansley -- now stationed in Afghanistan -- volunteers with the Yokwe Yuk Women's Club and the American Legion. She's also a substitute teacher and works in the school's library. She said volunteering on Kwajalein helps her meet people. "The best part is, you get to know everybody," she said. "You go to church with the same people you go to school with and the same people that you do your evening activities with, and hopefully you get along. Generally it's great here, it's a tight community." Ansley's husband had been assigned to USAKA following an assignment in northern Virginia. After finishing his tour at Kwajalein, he was deployed to Afghanistan. His Family, including Lisa and two daughters, Heather Ansley, 8, and Nikky Ansley, 11, were allowed to stay behind while he completed his deployment. The two girls say they don't miss much about the United States. "The only thing I miss is snow and water parks," said Nikky. "And my friends." Her younger sister was of the same mind. "My friends and teacher," Heather said. "And restaurants. And now when we go back to the States -- well, I'm sick of cars. Being here so long makes me feel that cars are ick." "I will never want a car, even when I turn 16," Nikky said. "Never ever, ever." Their mother said it was the traffic she didn't miss -- especially in the Washington, D.C. area. It was traffic and distance that kept her Family apart, she said. "The things that I've got here that I specifically don't miss about the States are much more in the forefront of my mind," Lisa said. "I don't miss traffic and I don't miss having to get in the car. I don't miss having to miss one soccer game because it's all the way on the other side of the county while I'm at another soccer game. Here I can say you go to your game and you go to your game. And because they are two blocks apart, I can spend half the time at each." Chavana said she loves being on Kwajalein. But for the sake of her two children, she wants to make sure they get back to the U.S., just so they can learn what life in the real world is like. "I think there's probably a part of normalcy they miss here," she said. "I graduated with some kids that were born here and had never lived in the United States. I would not recommend it. I think kids definitely need to know what the States are like." While Kwajalein is certainly not the U.S., and life there is greatly different than even life on a military installation in Germany, Italy, Korea or Japan, the Army has made sure that the same things available to those living at any military base are available to those on Kwajalein. Housing on Kwajalein, for instance, is free. And the "downtown" area of the island includes a dive shop, the Micronesian gift shop, an exchange, and a shoppette. There's even the full contingent of AAFEES-contracted fast-food options, including a Burger King, Baskin-Robbins, Subway and Anthony's Pizza. And close by is a dining facility for those on the island who are unaccompanied, and a grocery store for those who brought their Families. And for a grocery store that gets shipments by helicopter and a twice-monthly barge, it's fairly well stocked, residents say. "I was pleasantly surprised when I got here at the fruits and vegetables the grocery store has," said Karen Klumb. "We were in Okinawa and also in Australia and it was real hard to get a lot of the fresh fruits and vegetables where we worked, because we were so remote. I figured this was even more remote so we would have less. But in reality, we can get almost anything here." Klumb is an Army employee on unpaid leave to Kwajalein from her job at White Sands Missile Range, N.M. She came to the island to be with her husband, who took a job at USAKA. While she doesn't have a paid job on Kwajalein, she volunteers as part of the Yokwe Yuk Women's Club, and serves as treasurer for the Micronesian gift shop. Probably the greatest benefit of living on Kwajalein, islanders say, is that the small size of the island and its isolation mean Families who live there can spend more time together. Heather Mayer, whose husband, Ralph Mayer, brought her and their two young children, Katelyn Mayer, 7, and Nathan Mayer, 5, to live on Kwajalein almost two years ago, explained: "We get a better chance here to spend quality time together. And we spend almost every lunch together. That is something we would not get in the States." Army to Congress: FY 12 budget to sustain balance [2011-03-02] WASHINGTON -- For years the Army's chief of staff has said the service was "out of balance," but he believes next year's budget request will keep it on the right footing after 10 years of war. During testimony before the House Armed Services Committee March 2, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. told lawmakers the Fiscal Year 2012 Army budget submission, now moving through Capitol Hill, marks a "transition point" between restoring balance to the force and sustaining that balance. "This budget enables us to sustain the balance that we have restored into this great Army," Casey said, adding that "sustaining that balance is critical because this war is not over." Casey told lawmakers "after a decade of very hard work, we have a force that is the right size, that is organized in versatile modular formations on a predictable rotational cycle, and that has sufficient time at home to begin training for the full range of missions and to recover from a decade of war." The Army's recent growth, plus the drawdown in Iraq, Casey said, have enabled the service to improve dwell time for Soldiers, which is the time they spend at home training and with their families between deployments. "This is a critical component of sustaining an all-volunteer force in a protracted conflict," Casey said. "For the better part of five years we were returning Soldiers to combat after only one year at home. We knew that was not sustainable and have been working to bring dwell to two years at home as quickly as possible." Now, the general said, the Army has reached that goal -- a two-year dwell for Soldiers. "Given what we know about the projected demands, our active units who deploy after the first of October will deploy with an expectation of having two years at home when they return," Casey said. Guard and Reserve units will deploy with an expectation of having four years at home when they return. "We've worked very hard to get to this point, and it's a significant accomplishment," Casey said, adding that the Army will continue to work toward a goal of providing a three-year dwell time to active units. Casey said this year the Army will complete the organizational transformation of the Army, will finish the modular conversion of all but "a handful" of the service's 300 brigades and finish rebalancing some 150-160,000 Soldiers out of Cold War skills to skills more relevant to today's conflicts. Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh confirmed for legislators the Army's successes in working to meet the Iraq withdrawal deadline. "As we continue to drawdown our forces to meet the Dec. 31, 2011, deadline, we've already closed or transferred over 80 percent of the bases we maintained to the Iraqi authorities," he said. "We've reduced the number of U.S. personnel by over 75,000 and we've redeployed some 26,000 back to other operations." McHugh said following a trip to Iraq, he was able to confirm the immense size of the retrograde operation ongoing there, and also that morale was high among Soldiers "as they continue to advise and assist and train Iraqis to support that still burgeoning democracy." Along with the drawdown in Iraq, McHugh said the Army has surged an additional 30,000 Soldiers to Afghanistan to help defeat the al Qaeda terrorist network and the Taliban insurgency. "The surge enabled our Soldiers and our Afghan partners to seize multiple sanctuaries in the traditional insurgent heartland of southern Afghanistan," the secretary said. McHugh told lawmakers U.S. forces have trained some 109,000 Afghan National Army soldiers and 41,000 Afghan National Police. The secretary told lawmakers the Army must stand ready in the future to defend against new threats and must have the right equipment to maintain an edge over America's enemies today as well as for the future. "Our FY12 budget request is critical to achieving this goal by supporting the extraordinary strides we made in the Army state-of-the-art network, tactical wheeled vehicle and combat vehicle modernization programs," McHugh said. For the network, McHugh said, the Army is asking for $974 million in procurement dollars and $298 million in research dollars for the Warfighter Information Network - Tactical, known as WIN-T, which will "become the cornerstone of our battlefield communications systems." Also, he said, the Army is seeking $1.5 billon for tactical wheeled vehicle modernization and $1.4 billion for the Army's combat vehicle modernization strategy -- including $884 million for the Ground Combat Vehicle and $156 million for modernization of the Stryker, Bradley and Abrams programs. The secretary also told the committee members about Army initiatives toward energy security, including the establishment of a senior energy council, the appointment of a senior energy executive, the creation of an Energy Security Office and adoption of a comprehensive strategy for energy security. "We're developing more efficient generators, and power-distribution platforms, factoring in fuel costs as a part of equipment modernization, and developing a net-zero approach to holistically address our installations' energy, water and waste needs," McHugh said. The secretary also said the Army has commissioned a panel to review the service's acquisition systems from "cradle to grave." "We're currently reviewing the panel's insightful report and we'll use it as a guide over the next two years to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the Army's acquisition process," he said. McHugh also mentioned "the devastating impact" of the continuing resolution on the Army's programs. "From modernization to military construction to family services and base operations support, the lack of a fiscal 2011 budget is adversely affecting critical needs and projects that support our Soldiers and their families -- not to mention delaying long-term projects of the department a large," he said. McHugh and Casey were on Capitol Hill to explain to Congress the Army's portion of the president's Fiscal Year 2012 budget. The Army's portion of that budget includes funding for a 1.5-percent pay raise for Soldiers, a 3.1-percent increase in housing allowance, and a 3.4-percent increase in subsistence. The Army base budget request for Fiscal Year 2012 amounts to $144.9 billion, an increase of just $1.5 billion over the Fiscal Year 2011 request. The Army also requested an additional $71.1 billion for the overseas contingency operations budget -- to fund operations in Afghanistan and to wrap up operations in Iraq. The OCO budget request was $31 billion less than the Fiscal Year 2011 request because Operation New Dawn in Iraq will end in December 2011. Overall, the Army is asking in Fiscal Year 2012 for about $29.5 billion less than it did in Fiscal Year 2011. Dempsey pledges as CSA to serve Soldiers every day [2011-03-03] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers expect their leaders to provide them with the tools they need to do their jobs, something the general nominated as the next Army chief of staff says he'll focus on every day. During testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, March 3, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey answered questions about his fitness to serve as the next chief of staff of the Army -- a position he was nominated for in January by President Barack Obama. "I sit before you today with confidence that whatever challenges confront us in the future, your Army will respond with the same courage and resolve that has characterized it for the past 235 years," Dempsey said. The general currently serves as the commander of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, a position he has held since December 2008. Dempsey told senators that Soldiers from all components of the Army -- active, Guard and Reserve -- are deployed overseas today defending the United States. "We are truly one Army, and we serve America proud," he said. And stateside, he said, the Army brings in some 75,000 men and women, each year. Each, he said, is committed to the Army -- and the Army is committed to develop them as Soldiers and leaders. The general also said he knows Soldiers in his own command in the United States; he knows their families, and he knows wounded Soldiers and their families as well. Of the Soldiers who serve, Dempsey said, their needs are simple. "They understand the challenges we face, that we have as an Army and face as a nation," Dempsey said. "Their expectations of us are as simple as they are profound. They trust that we will provide the resources necessary for them to succeed in the fights in which we are currently engaged and they trust that we will have the wisdom and resolve necessary to prepare them for the missions unknown to us today, but will surely await us." "If you confirm me as the Army's 37th CSA, you can be sure I will act to earn their trust every day," Dempsey said. "I will work to match their drive, their sacrifice and their resolve. And I will partner with the Congress of the United States of America and this committee in particular, to ensure we remain worthy of the title 'America's Army.'" Military chefs soup up skills at culinary competition [2011-03-08] WASHINGTON -- It's not likely what's being cooked up at Fort Lee, Va., will ever show up on the menu in a dining facility downrange, but the Soldiers manning the skillets there will go, and when they do, they'll take with them the skills they've demonstrated here. "There's probably not a lot of pate a choux being served in Afghanistan right now, except for maybe around -- they probably do some decorating around Christmas or Thanksgiving," said Chief Warrant Officer Russell D. Campbell, show chair for the 36th Annual Culinary Arts Competition, here. "But the competencies these chefs and servicemembers train for and prepare for to come here do correlate directly to the service they provide to their servicemembers if they are in Iraq and Afghanistan. It builds their pride in their profession, and helps their skills and creativity," Campbell said. The 36th Annual Culinary Arts Competition, March 3-9, at Fort Lee, Va., pits military food service professionals against themselves and each other to show off their best cooking skills. Inside the field house here where the competition was held, two mobile Army containerized kitchens -- stainless steel boxes, like trailer homes outfitted with everything needed to cook hot meals for an Army in the field -- stood against one wall. In one of the two kitchens, a team of Soldiers assigned to the 2nd Infantry Division, Korea, prepared an Asian-themed meal featuring a Thai-style sweet and spicy seafood soup, chicken adobo with citrus rice and brunoise vegetables and a desert featuring a chocolate tort and a pomegranate and lime mousse. About 30 feet away, in the second containerized kitchen, Soldiers from other units in Korea -- part of the U.S. Force Korea team -- prepared a meal featuring items like a seafood bisque with shrimp and scallops, an apple forcemeat stuffed pork loin, potato gnocchi, sauteed green beans wrapped in prosciutto, and a desert with bread pudding, bananas foster and a peanut butter mousse. The two teams each had four hours to prepare from scratch meals for 80 real, paying customers, as part of the field competition. Spectators of the competition were allowed to purchase meal tickets to serve as customers in the "restaurant" that built in front of the mobile kitchens. Sgt. Brian Baker, 557th Military Police company, Camp Humphreys, Korea, was one of the military chefs competing as part of the USFK team. He was responsible for preparing the team's entree, the pork loin. He said timing was the most difficult thing for him in this part of the competition. "It was 80 servings of pork loin, and I couldn't do any prep for that," he said. "I had to fabricate my proteins here on site. I had to trim off the fat and stuff I didn't want to use, remove some to make my forcemeat, butterfly it out and pound them out, and line them with spinach." Baker piped the "forcemeat," a paste of pork trimming and apple, onto the pork loin and spinach and then rolled them up and tied them with a string in preparation for browning and baking in the mobile kitchen. Spc. Jarvis Elliott, assigned to Camp Henry, Daegu, was responsible for preparation of the gnocchi part of the team's meal; something that took about two hours. He said he's been cooking "since I was five years old on my daddy's knee." "I could have chosen any job I wanted and this is the one I wanted," said Elliott, about his choice to be an Army cook. Preparing to participate in the culinary competition at Fort Lee was a lot of work, he said. "It took a lot of practice and a lot of mental prep," he said. "They talk about athletes imagining themselves winning. Well, we do the same things. We go through the same dish again and again and again. You write down your time lines you make sure you know what you're going to do, step-by-step and make sure it happens." During the competition, the power in the USFK kitchen went out, through no fault of their own, "but we adjusted best we could and kept trucking. We were able to pull it out," Baker said. Nevertheless, the team came away from the completion with a silver medal. Their competitors, from the 2nd Infantry Division, took a gold. Staff Sgt. Jeffrey Blanchette, the team manager for the 2nd Infantry Division team, said teamwork is critical to their success in the field competition and anything the team does at the Culinary Arts Competition. "If you have a great team, no matter what equipment you're cooking on, you can do well," Blanchette said. There were plenty of individual successes at Fort Lee as well. Spc. Oscar Alvardo, out of Wheeler Army Airfield, Hawaii, won a gold medal for the Hawaii team in the junior chef of the year competition. He's been in the Army for five years now and this was his first time cooking competitively. "Everything just came out perfect," he said. "I've been practicing for the last two months every day, non-stop. And it paid off in the end. It took me a long time to figure out my order. I've done it so many times. This last perfect order, this is the third time I've tried it. I was kind of hesitant, but I still went through with it and it came out all on time." Alvardo is from Allentown, Pa., where he was born and raised. Being stationed in Hawaii, he hasn't seen his family in some time, so they showed up at the competition to watch. "This is the first time they've seen me cook," he said. Included in the entourage, his mother and his grandmother, whom he credits for giving him some of his passion for being in the kitchen. "She would also cook, and I would watch," he said. "I love cooking and making the food look nice and taste as good as it looks." Alvardo's deployed to Iraq twice in his Army career. Pvt. Chelsea Karr, stationed in Bamburg, Germany, competed against Alvarado in the junior chef of the year competition. Though she's only been cooking in the Army for less than a year now, as she only enlisted in June 2010, she took home a bronze medal for the U.S. Army Europe team. She said she's had some cooking experience prior to the Army, but nothing compared to what she's seen going on at the food competition. "This is high class," Karr said. For her entry in the competition, she prepared grilled salmon and parsnip puree on a bed of broccoli and mushroom salad. "The timing is really ... you have to organize your timing," she said. "And keeping your station clean. And keeping your food hot -- that's what the judges are also looking for. If it's cold, it's not good." Karr followed her father into the Army, who enlisted just a year prior to her. Soon, she said, in December, her unit will deploy -- she thinks to Afghanistan, though now she said the details are changing. She said the gourmet cooking she does in the competition won't be seen while deployed, but the skills she uses will be. "This is gourmet cooking -- at the (dining facility), we just prepare and serve. We don't make the plates all special. But every skill is just as important: time, organization, and cuts, for instance," she said. At the center of the competition: the cold food displays -- probably the most time-intensive, detail-oriented part of the competition. Each table represents about 24 hours worth of non-stop work on the part of each team. They are a theme-oriented displays of such things as hors d' oeuvres, appetizers, desserts, entrees, and buffet platters. Nearly every piece of food on the table looks like a tiny, glazed piece of artwork. It "represents their skills and abilities to present an artistic display of food, their development of menus, compositions, deserts, even their detail they do in their petit four work," said Sgt. Maj. Mark W. Warren, Joint Culinary Center of Excellence. "This is one of the best examples of paying attention to details." Spc. Sarah Deckert, of the Army Executive Dining Facility at the Pentagon, won a gold medal for her part of her team's display. "I tried to utilize as many cuts of pork as I could," she said. "The centerpiece is a roasted loin, mushroom-wrapped. The showstopper piece -- it's a stuffed trotter." The trotter -- that was a pig's foot she deboned, removed the meat from, then re-stuffed like a sausage with spinach and forcemeat, before slicing, spicing and displaying on a platter. She also made something out of the sow's ear. "It's a braised pig's ear and pickled vegetable piece," she said. "Also head cheese -- you cook the whole head and utilize all the meat and the fat to make a terrine out of that." Deckert actually cooks in the Pentagon, sometimes even for the secretary of the Army -- though she said the menu range for even his table doesn't include the likes of what she put out for the judges at Fort Lee." "We wish -- this is only stuff we get to do when we come to Fort Lee or compete," she said. "But I might throw a trotter at him some day. Deckert's been in the Army for a year now. Prior to that she had earned a culinary degree and a bachelor's degree in food service management. She's worked in the food service industry since she was 15 years old. Deckert's teammate, Staff Sgt. Michael Bogle, also assigned to the Army Executive Dining Facility at the Pentagon, earned a silver medal for his contribution to his team's table. His platter featured five tiny dessert items -- small cakes and pastries -- all under the team's "farm to table" theme. "We used ingredients from around Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland," he said. "This is actually a Maryland Smith Island cake, done to a small scale." The tiny cake pieces, all six of them, were arranged on a granite slab along with four other types of dessert pieces Bogle had created -- a total of about 30 pieces in all, each meant to be consumed in about one bite, he said. Attention to detail required for the competition becomes apparent when considering the amount of time it took Bogle to make just those six tiny pieces of cake: "Just this one, from start to finish, about five hours," he said. "You have to make sure the cuts are exactly the same -- the same height and width. You have to make sure the sugar is the same." The knife has to be hot to ensure the icing doesn't smear down the pieces and mess up the layers, he said, and "if the cake gets soft, you put it in the fridge." To make the same tiny pieces of cake for customers in a restaurant, in a production environment, instead of in a competition environment? "I could have done this cake for 200 in an hour," Bogle said, also noting "this wasn't one of the most difficult pieces on this tray of five." Outside the field house, blocks of ice arrived on a truck to be turned into ice sculptures through the application of chainsaws, ice picks and blow torches, by the likes of Chief Warrant Officer 3 Jeff Lein and his team from the U.S. Army Special Forces Command (Airborne), out of Fort Bragg, N.C. "You have got to design a piece that is complicated, use the entire block of ice, and have very limited left over ice," said Lein, on his strategy for doing a medal-winning design. "That's what the judges look for. And we do a lot of fuses -- melt a piece of ice and fuse it together at different angles." His team built a dragon using that technique. He said the piece was something he wouldn't do for a buffet, however, because "it's too dangerous." Illustrating that point: just seconds after the judges turned their back on his piece, the head crashed to the ground -- then the tail piece. But it was too late. His team already won a gold medal for their single-block ice carving. The culinary arts competition showcases the talents of military chefs from all branches of the U.S. armed forces, and includes the most junior servicemembers in the culinary arts profession, such as those with less than one year of service to those with as much as 20 years experience. This year, more than 20 teams, composed of 248 individual competitors, competed in more than 638 different individual or team competitions. "It continues to build on their profession and what they know, and there's a lot of pride in the competition," Campbell said. "They can go back to their friends and family and leadership and show what skills they had they didn't know they had or maybe their leadership didn't know. And we do a lot of training here as well." Senior leadership development opportunities open for Army civilians [2011-03-11] WASHINGTON -- A limited number of slots are available for Army civilians to attend senior leadership development courses and the application deadline is June 15. There are 39 slots available for Army GS-14s and GS-15s to attend Army colleges under the Senior Service College/Professional Military Education program. Additionally, there are 36 slots available for attendance at the colleges of other services under the Defense Senior Leader Development Program. "What we want to do is get the word out to GS-14s and GS-15s, who are eligible for SSC (Senior Service College) or for the DSLDP (Defense Senior Leader Development Program)," said Mark Schaefer, director of the Army Civilian Senior Leader Development Office. "These are two programs designed to provide executive education -- essentially at the apex of the civilian education system. We would like to see all those interested express interest to their chain of command." Civilians selected under SSC could attend schooling at the Army War College, Army War College Distance Education, or the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. Those selected under DSLDP would attend the schools of Army sister services. Nomination and selection to SSC or DSLDP is extremely competitive, Schaefer said, and successful completion of either program will be "career enhancing" for those who participate and will ensure that Army civilians continue to grow both professionally and personally. For GS-14s and GS-15s, attendance at the school provides leadership education, with an emphasis on national security decision making, strategy and policy and joint military operations, Schaefer said. "It's designed to prepare those civilians at those grade levels with leadership potential, for the next available senior leader positions," he said. "Certainly, it's a ticket you have to punch if you want to enter the SES (Senior Executive Service). It's an important ticket." Army civilians who want to attend the course will need to be nominated by their leadership for the limited slots, Schaefer said. And leadership should be judicious in who they nominate. "We need supervisors to exercise their own leadership skills in nominating their very best and brightest -- those with true potential, to become Army's future senior civilian leaders," he said. Under Secretary of the Army Joseph W. Westphal has in the past emphasized his commitment to better developing the civilian workforce. While speaking with civilians during a town hall meeting at Pine Bluff Arsenal, Ark., in November, the secretary discussed his plans for Army civilians to have career paths similar to what is available for Soldiers. "I want to be able to put everybody that is a federal employee who works for the Department of the Army on a career pathway," he said. "We have many of those, but we have a lot of people who are not on a career pathway, (but) who have generalized descriptions. They have a job and they are doing well, but if they want to move up the pyramid, there is no pathway. I want to create professional development and leadership education for our workforce just like the military." Schaefer said opportunities like attending SSC or DSLDP are in line with the under secretary's ideas. "Development of civilian senior leaders is a key component of civilian workforce transformation. It's one of the many pieces of CWT," he said. Specific application information for both SSC and DSLDP can be found online at: - http://cpol.army.mil/library/train/catalog/ch02gen.html#sscgpp - http://cpol.army.mil/library/train/catalog/ch04dsldp.html Army conducting 'full-court press' to reduce weight Soldiers carry [2011-03-11] WASHINGTON -- As part of its modernization efforts, the Army is doing everything it can to reduce the weight of equipment and gear now carried by Soldiers. "We have a full-court press on lightening the load of Soldiers and will continue to work that," said Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, during testimony concerning Army budget and modernization, March 9, before the House Armed Services Committee, subcommittee on tactical air and land forces. The general told concerned lawmakers that Army studies show a fully equipped Soldier can carry anywhere from 50 to 120 pounds in equipment, depending on his mission. Chiarelli said the Army has given Soldiers the option between the Improved Outer Tactical Vest and the new light-weight plate carrier. That provides a weight savings of 8 pounds, he said. "That's a significant improvement over the weight we had before," Chiarelli said. He also said at Yuma Proving Ground, they are demonstrating a new 60mm mortar tripod and 60mm mortar that's 8.7 pounds lighter than what it would replace. Additionally, a new 81mm mortar is 20 pounds lighter than its predecessor. "For the one who does get caught with the base plate of the mortar, to have a 20 pound savings in the weight is a heck of a lot, which allows that Soldier to carry something else," Chiarelli said. Cold-weather gear is also getting less bulky and lighter, the general said. And the Army "continues to look at ways to further lighten body armor," though he told lawmakers it's not likely that the most common protective gear for Soldiers, the ceramic protective plates worn close to the body, could become lighter -- because the technology isn't there yet. "I have not heard of any technologies now that will give us the required protection -- as enemy capabilities continue to increase -- at a lighter weight," Chiarelli said. Lt. Gen. William N. Phillips, the military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics and Technology) said the Army added to the Fiscal Year 2012 budget request a $5.8-million line for research, development, testing and evaluation on Soldier body armor. He also said U.S. Army body armor is the "most tested in the world." Phillips also pointed out that the Army's new combat boot -- the Danner boot, is 1.2 pounds lighter than what it replaces. "We're looking in every way possible to lighten the load of Soldiers," Phillips said. Another key modernization issue for the Army is the ground combat vehicle, or GCV. The new vehicle will be designed with four capabilities that have been characterized as "non-negotiables" for the GCV. Those include capacity, force protection, full-spectrum operations and timing. "We've worked very hard to ensure that this is a full-spectrum vehicle," Chiarelli said. The vehicle offers "capability packages" that give it an ability to work in Afghanistan or Iraq, the general said, and it can be made lighter by taking some kinds of armor off. Charelli also said GCV will be able to carry an entire squad -- something the Bradley cannot do. "Finally in the GCV, we'll be able to put the entire infantry fighting squad," he said. "And in addition to that, we'll be able to provide an interpreter and a medic a place to be -- critical on today's battlefield." Phillips reminded legislators that in August, the Army pulled back the original request for proposal on the GCV to re-characterize the requirements on the vehicle. Of about 900 requirement for the GCV, only about 130 were needed to meet the "big four" capabilities the Army wanted to focus on. That different focus on requirements will help ensure the Army meets its deployment goal for the GCV. "That will allow us to get this vehicle in seven years at an affordable cost," Philips said. Chiarelli also addressed congressional concerns regarding the Bradley fighting vehicle, saying the Bradley would be "around for a long time." The Army's vice said that the Army network "represents the centerpiece of the Army's modernization program," and added "we're past talking concepts -- we are making the network happen." Lt. Gen. Robert P. Lennox, deputy chief of staff of the Army for G8, said in the FY12 budget were two programs key to supporting the Army network. First, he said, there was about $1.3 billion requested for the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical. "That's the big pipes that get us from satellites down to core/divisions/brigade and battalion and even to the company level that start providing the big pipes and capacity for Soldiers," he said. The next is for the Joint Tactical Radio System. The Army has requested $800 million in the FY12 budget to support that program, "for a variety of radios that take the communications from the brigade and battalion level down through the company and platoon to the individual Soldiers." The AN/PRC-154 Rifleman Radio is part of JTRS and the "program has made enormous progress and we think it's on the verge of providing the capacity we need for Soldiers in the future," Lennox said. Chiarelli recently visited with Soldiers from the 3rd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division. Some of those Soldiers had used the Rifleman Radio and passed their thoughts on to the general. "I tell you it made me feel so good talking about a capability we had put in their hands as part of the JTRS family," Chiarelli told lawmakers. " (They) say this fills a capability gap that they have had for the longest period of time. They were just ecstatic about this radio and how it works... the ability to pass data and have voice communication with all the members of that squad... to hear those Soldiers was wonderful." Captain cares for pets left behind in Egypt [2011-03-14] WASHINGTON -- On Jan. 25, citizens of Egypt began protesting against the government of then-President Hosni Mubarak. By Feb. 1, the U.S. Department of State had ordered the departure of dependants and all non-emergency U.S. government personnel and their families from Egypt. But not all "members" of the families departed -- the four-legged ones stayed behind. "A lot of people had pets that they really didn't have a good plan for being taken care of in the event of evacuation," said Capt. Eric Coulson, office of military cooperation at the U.S. embassy in Egypt. He's part of a team that manages nearly $1.3 billion in annual aid to the Egyptian military. "And the vets and the kennels here were kind of overwhelmed." Coulson's wife Karen left Egypt -- but he and the couple's two dogs, Molly and Sayeret, stayed behind. Coulson and a fellow Soldier at the embassy, Maj. Alavora Roa, teamed up to take care of those pets that were left behind when their owners departed the country. "We sort of organized an emergency kennel for all the people who didn't have a place to put their animals while they were being evacuated," he said. "We sort of reached out to people we knew had animals." In all, Coulson and Roa found themselves running an impromptu pet hotel for about 20 animals, scattered among the deserted apartments of their coworkers who had evacuated. The two checked in on the apartments of their coworkers and also stopped in to feed the animals and take them for a walk. One coworker, Coulson said, had a fairly large roof available on his apartment, and they kept several animals there. "We consolidated them at the apartment of one of the other persons involved in this -- he has a large roof and we put them on the roof with some shelter -- with large water bowls and large food bowls and we took turns taking them out." Coulson said the local Purina distributor in Cairo had made a generous donation of supplies to keep the officer's kennel operating. "Most of the people who were leaving told us where to pick up dog food," he said. "The local Purina dealer did give us a couple hundred pounds of dog food, as well as cat litter and cat food. Between what people had and a generous donation from the Purina dealer here in Cairo, we've been able to take care of the animals at minimal expense." Now, several of the pet owners have come back to Egypt, Coulson said, and some of the pets have been shipped back to where their owners are -- so the number of pets he's looking after will continue to dwindle, he said, till eventually he'll be left with just his two dogs Molly and Sayeret. Coulson's pet boarding days will eventually be a distant memory, but the events in Egypt will stay fresh for a while, he said. The speed with which recent events happened was thrilling, he said. "It went from probably about 10 miles an hour to 60 miles an hour in just a matter of days," he said, adding "it was absolutely interesting to watch. To be in the middle of history." And the recent events weren't the first time he's been struck by historical change in Egypt. He was just 13 when Anwar Sadat was assassinated -- old enough to be able to gauge the impact and significance of what had happened. "That was sort of one of my first big memory of things in the news -- of what we had as far as 'wall-to-wall coverage' back in 1981," he said. "I remember being riveted by the TV." And the most recent changes in Egypt mean there's two things he'll remember for a long, long time. "The two transitions of power in Egyptian history that have taken place in my life are really sort of important memories to me," he said. America pays final respects to last WWI veteran [2011-03-15] WASHINGTON -- Hundreds of visitors to Arlington National Cemetery filed through the Memorial Amphitheater Chapel here to pay respects to America's last "Doughboy." A guard from the 3rd Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard) stood watch over the flag-draped casket of Cpl. Frank W. Buckles in the chapel. Buckles, who died Feb. 27 at 110 years old, was America's last World War I veteran. Buckles had enlisted at the age of 16 by reportedly convincing an Army captain that he was older. He was the last living American doughboy to have served in France during World War I and the last of 4.7 million U.S. troops who signed up to fight the Kaiser 94 years ago. Buckles later spent three years as a Japanese prisoner of war during World War II after being captured in the Pacific while serving as a U.S. contractor. He died of natural causes at his home in Charles Town, W.Va., according to a family spokesman. "It was really something to think that (he) is the last American from the First World War," said Albert Berkowitz, himself a former Soldier. "And it just made me think, that in 20 or 25 years, it'll probably be the Second World War this will be happening for. In 20 years it'll be them -- there are less and less of them." Berkowitz was in the Army, as a private first class, from 1963-1965. He served as a microwave technician in Japan, first at Camp Tomlinson in Kashiwa, then in Okinawa. "It was great duty," he said. Berkowitz was originally from Belgium and came to the United States when he was 12. His wife Esther Berkowitz came to the U.S. when she was two. The two were visiting Washington from Brooklyn. "I find Arlington a very inspiring place," Esther said. While Esther said they didn't know anyone who might be buried in the cemetery -- she did say she knew some that have died in World War II, "but not as Soldiers -- our families," she said. Albert confirmed -- both he and Esther had escaped from Europe during the war, though not all in their families had been so lucky. Corey O'Dell, of Round Rock, Texas, was also visiting the cemetery and passed through the chapel with his mother, Kathryn O'Dell and brother, Ethan O'Dell -- he clutched a World War II history book in his hand. "I do have some WWI books at home and I study a lot about WWII," he said, adding his take on Buckles -- "He was a pretty good man." Buckle's casket remained in the chapel at the cemetery until about 4 p.m. Tuesday, when the Old Guard took it to the burial site in the cemetery. Buckles was buried with full military honors in section 34 of the cemetery, within sight of Gen. John "Black Jack" Pershing, leader of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. Army tells Congress Iraq on track to transition by year's end [2011-03-17] WASHINGTON -- It's up to Iraq now to be successful in their own future, said Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh. "The longer-term key for success, is the success of the Iraqi government," McHugh said, adding that in his personal opinion "we've brought them as far as we reasonably can be expected to bring them. We've given them every opportunity and every basis upon which to succeed and now it's up to them." McHugh and Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. spoke March 16, before the House Appropriations Committee - Defense subcommittee regarding Army budget and posture. McHugh said the Army is having success in its withdrawal from Iraq, and should meet an end-of-year deadline for American forces to withdraw from country. In terms of American forces, and retrograde of equipment back to the United States, McHugh said that the drawdown in Iraq is "going about as well as anybody could have hoped." Now, he said, the Army is down to about 50,000 troops in Iraq, who are providing advice and assistance to Iraqi forces, with about six advise and assist brigades in country. Additionally, the Army has significantly reduced its footprint in country from what it had been. "We're down to about 73 bases, down from several hundred at our peak and the retrograde of equipment continues and in very good order," McHugh said. "And we are in fact ahead of our schedule to be totally out, as the order now stands at the end of this calendar year." Both McHugh and Casey agreed that "development of civil society" in Iraq rests largely on the shoulders of agencies other than the U.S. military and American efforts should be led by agencies like the Department of State, for instance. "The development of civil society really falls under the Department of State's bailiwick," Casey said. "We have redone our core doctrine in 2008 to say Soldiers will do offense, defense and stability operations. Stability operations basically provides a secure environment so these other types of civil-society development can take place. We have to ask ourselves, 'do we really want Soldiers doing civil-society development?' I really think that falls on Department of State and USAID and those kinds of agencies to do that." Casey's comments had reflected McHugh's, who said "We need that whole-of-government approach, but I feel very confident and comfortable in having visited Iraq 16 times now, that is indeed happening." LIGHTENING COMBAT LOADS Lawmakers asked both McHugh and Casey about Army efforts to reduce the weight of gear carried by Soldiers in theater, sometimes as much as 130 pounds. Members of the committee expressed concern about muscular-skeletal conditions that could arise from carrying that much weight for too long. "It's a challenge and it is something we work very hard on," McHugh said, saying it is Program Executive Officer Soldier that is working on "lightening the load" for Soldiers and that the organization is working to "take ounces off in any way they can." Nevertheless, McHugh said, there are some technical limits to reducing weight on Soldiers. In particular, he said, "we are pushing up against the limits of technology" in two areas, including development of lighter ceramics for body armor, and reduced-weight batteries to power Soldiers equipment. The Army has a "very focused" effort on lightening the load for Soldiers, McHugh told legislators. PRESCRIPTION DRUGS Also of concern to lawmakers: overuse and misuse of prescription painkillers by Soldiers. "It's a serious problem," McHugh said. "We consider it one of the primarily indices we track in terms of stress on the force." McHugh cited one reason for an increase in prescription drug use since 2001 -- Soldiers are taking wounds now that would have caused loss of life 15 years ago. "And the pain medications are not just appropriate, but necessary in terms of caring for those Soldiers," he said. The secretary told lawmakers the Army did a study on pain management that came back with 100 recommendations to ensure there is tight oversight of the prescription-drug program and to "ensure Soldiers are not becoming addicted." "No one, I think, goes in and purposely becomes addicted to pain medication," McHugh said. One system the Army is using to help prevent Soldiers from potentially becoming addicts is informed consent, which means making Soldiers aware of the dangers of their prescription ahead of time. Another is a system that mechanically manages a Soldier's drugs. The Electronic Medication Management Assistant, or EMMA system has been piloted at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and creates a drug-delivery system "where you can only get one dose at the proper time," McHugh said. Once challenge, McHugh said, is that Soldiers can go outside military medicine to seek treatment. "We have very little if any control over that," he said. "Soldiers are American citizens, and they are entitled to privacy." GROUND COMBAT VEHICLE It's expected the Ground Combat Vehicle will take seven years to deliver to the Army. That is too long, according to some lawmakers. Casey said he had originally hoped for delivery in less time, but that Army staff had said it could not be done. "Both Secretary Gates and I pushed very hard to get this done in five years," Casey said. "And both of our staffs pushed backed and said seven is as fast as you could possibly do it." McHugh also told lawmakers that the Government Accountability Office had said seven years might be too ambitious for delivery of the vehicle. "GAO cautioned that seven years may be too quick," McHugh said. "No matter how we try to field a system, somebody has an opposing view." The secretary told lawmakers the Army is trying to expedite the process by making things easier for industry to develop the system. For instance, he said the initial request for proposal to develop the system had 990 "tier one" requirements. The GCV program released an RFP in February 2010, but that RFP was ultimately canceled in August 2010, and re-released in November with streamlined requirements. "I think the Army has come a long way in learning the lessons of the past," McHugh said. FORCE BALANCE Casey also told lawmakers that the Fiscal Year 2012 budget sustains balance the Army has achieved. "Today we have made great progress toward the goals we set for ourselves in 2007. And as an Army we are starting to breathe again," Casey said. That progress includes a permanent end-strength increase that had been directed by President Bush, and a temporary increase of 22,000 authorized by Secretary Gates in 2009. Dwell time has also increased for Soldiers, he said. "This was a critical component to sustaining the all-volunteer force." In the past, Soldiers went back to the fight with less than a year at home. "Beginning October 1 this year, Soldiers deploying after that time will deploy with an expectation of two years at home if they are in the active force, and four years at home if they are in the Guard and Reserve." The Army will continue to work toward a goal of three years at home. TRANSFORMATION Also, Casey said, the Army will complete the largest transformation of the service since World War II. "We've finished modular conversion on all but a couple of our over 300 brigades," Casey said. And the Army has also balanced the skill set of Soldiers away from Cold War skills, to skills more suitable for today. ""That's about 150-160k Soldiers changing jobs." Casey also said the Army Force Generation Model, the Army's model to provide Soldiers to combatant commanders is "a more effective and efficient way of building the readiness we need, when we need it." The general summed up Army successes for lawmakers, by saying "after a decade of very hard work, we have a force that is the right size, that is organized into modular, versatile formations, that is operating in a rotational cycle, and that is beginning to have sufficient time at home to begin training for full range of missions and recover from war." Secretary McHugh also told legislators that Soldiers in Japan are largely safe from concerns related to that nation's nuclear-reactor crisis. "From the perspective of their physical location, from the Army side -- Camp Zama, Okinawa -- our troops are located a significant distance from the actual reactor site," he said. And added "should things take a significant turn for the worse, we're prepared to react." He also commented on the departure of General Casey as the chief of staff of the Army, saying "George Casey will leave service with his head held high and with a great many admirers, which I count myself among them." Heavy body armor result of over-engineering [2011-03-18] WASHINGTON -- The armor plates used in the plate carriers and IOTV Soldiers wear in combat are safe -- maybe too safe. The ceramic enhanced small arms protective inserts worn in the improved outer tactical vests and lighter plate carriers are designed to provide ballistic protection to Soldiers in combat. But they are heavy, and industry is at an impasse when it comes to developing new armor technology that is as safe, yet lighter, said Brig. Gen. Peter N. Fuller, Program Executive Officer Soldier. "We don't see anything that is game-changing or anything in the near term that is going to change our ability to provide increased protection at a lighter weight," Fuller said of the plates. "I think the next (thing) we need to look at is what is our requirement and is it a validated requirement?" Fuller spoke March 17 before the House Armed Services Committee subcommittee on tactical air and land forces to discuss, among other things, the amount of weight Soldiers now carry on their bodies, as part of armor, gear, power and weapons, when they go into battle. That weight can sometimes be more than 120 pounds. The general told lawmakers that perhaps the plates themselves could be made lighter because today, they are really over-engineered. He said a "holistic," head-to-toe review of body armor has shown the Army could provide a lighter plate to Soldiers because, Fuller said, "we have technically overbuilt our plates right now. We overbuilt them because of our testing process." Fuller said the Army simply set the bar for protective capability of the plates too high. "The way I say it is, we wanted to ensure you could go in the ring with Mike Tyson and if you could take two hits from Mike Tyson, then when Fuller climbs in the ring you knew you would be able to survive those rounds," he said. Today, he said, body armor worn by Soldiers in the field may be unnecessarily heavy because it has been designed to protect against "a round that is not on any battlefield in the world," Fuller said. "We set that bar for a reason. Now we are trying to evaluate -- if that bar causes us to have increased weight, do we want to adjust the bar? " Fuller also said as an effort to reduce weight on Soldiers, the Army is "trying to do a better job of systems engineering at the Soldier level." He said while the Army does a good job of systems engineering for large platforms "we've treated the Soldier as ... a Christmas tree -- we just hang things on Soldiers." Fuller told lawmakers the Army must pay more attention to the amount of weight Soldiers carry on their back, and must do a better job of understanding "the physiological challenges of adding more kit regardless of its capability and the impact it will have on our Soldiers ability." The general explained that a Soldier's cognitive skills diminish when they get tired from carrying so much weight, and "that's not what you want in a combat environment." Fuller also said distributing loads across a combat unit might be one way to reduce the weight burden on the individual Soldiers. "Can we distribute some of this capability across a unit? What's the risk and the advantages so we don't weigh down everybody with the same capability but distribute capability across the unit?" he asked. Body armor for female Soldiers and for smaller Soldiers is also an issue Fuller said PEO Soldier has tackled. The latest version of the IOTV provides adjustments to allow smaller stature Soldiers to ensure their vests are cinched tight enough, while at the same time keeping the side plates where they belong -- at a Soldier's side. "One size does not fit all within the Army," Fuller said, saying some 14 percent of the Army is women. The general said the Army is still having difficulties trying to make conforming body armor plates for Soldiers. "The physics associated with trying to have the body armor work in a complex shape is a bridge too far right now." Another lawmaker questioned Fuller about the Army's individual carbine competition, to find a follow-on to the M4 Carbine weapon Soldiers are using now in Afghanistan. Fuller told the lawmaker the competition was not about meeting a specific need but about seeing if there was something better for Soldiers. "We want to continue to improve the M4 -- not necessarily associated with a complaint or challenge the field might be having -- but we want to refresh that technology," Fuller said. He told legislators there's been 63 improvements to the M4 since it was first fielded in 1991 "This (competition) is another iteration of improvements," he said. "We want to see through a full and open competition is there something better? That's what this competition will be doing for our individual carbine." After competition, he said, the Army would evaluate what comes out of that and measure it against the current M4 to build a business case for making the investment to replace it. Currently, the Army has 500,000 M4s in its inventory, and right now the Army is working to upgrade some 140,000 of those to the M4A1 model, which is fully automatic, and includes a heavier barrel to allow for an increased sustained rate of fire without overheating and ambidextrous controls. 'Spice' now illegal [2011-03-22] WASHINGTON -- There's no more wiggle room for Soldiers who want to use marijuana substitutes like "Spice" or K2. New rules by both the Army and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency make at least one thing clear to Soldiers: Spice will burn you. In February, Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh issued a memorandum that establishes an Army-wide policy prohibiting the use and possession of synthetic cannabis and other substitutes for delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, commonly referred to as THC, the primary psychoactive constituent of marijuana. On March 1, the DEA also made Spice illegal nationwide for at least a year. The product Spice, and other products that use that name generically, are sold in packets and appear as a shredded green herb, similar to marijuana. The product is a delivery system for synthetic cannabinoids, and when smoked gives users an effect similar to that of smoking marijuana. "Synthetic cannabis and THC substitutes are so closely related in action to THC as to make it obvious that synthetic cannabis and THC substitutes will have the same potential for abuse as THC," wrote McHugh in his memo. "It is, therefore, reasonable to assume that synthetic cannabis and THC substitutes have substantial capabilities of creating hazards to the mission of the Army, the health of the user and to the safety of the Army community." McHugh's memo spells out clearly what the Army's rules are for the drug. In regards to Spice and other similar synthetic marijuana products, Soldiers from all components of the Army are prohibited from "using, possessing, manufacturing, selling, distributing, importing into or exporting from the United States, or introducing into any installation, vessel, vehicle, or aircraft used by or under the control of the Army." The DEA also took action on synthetic marijuana products by temporarily placing five synthetic cannabinoids into Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, right alongside PCP, Ecstasy, and real marijuana. The DEA's addition of the synthetic cannabinoids into the Controlled Substances Act means that it is no longer just prohibited for Soldiers to use them - it's illegal now for all Americans to possess and use them. Buddy Horne, with the Army substance abuse program, said that while the DEA's listing of the drug is only temporary, and can be reevaluated within a year, the same is not true of the Army's policy. "Our Secretary of the Army memo is permanent until rescinded," he said. While it's now illegal for Soldiers to use or posses Spice, the Army is working to develop an easy way for commanders to test Soldiers who might have used the drug. Right now that is not so easy to do. Horne said there are no "production labs" now to test to see if a Soldier has used Spice. The production labs, he explained, are the ones that conduct the 1.2 million or so drug tests each year as part of the Army's random drug testing program. Those same labs can conduct on-demand drug testing for commanders who have "probable cause" to believe that a Soldier might have used a drug. "That's a legal term where I have found something on that Soldier, in his room, in his car, in his possession, that would allow me now with a lawyer's support to say now I can test this Soldier for this particular drug because we found some kind of evidence," Horne said. There are production labs similar to the Army's labs that serve all branches of the service. They are operated by the different services, but are funded by the DoD, and operate under DoD policy. The labs currently test every incoming specimen for marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines and heroin. There are additional tests the production labs are capable of doing, and they apply those tests randomly to specimens on a rotating basis, or at the request of a commander for a specific drug. What is not in the battery of tests available at the production labs now is a test for Spice. The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology can conduct such a test; however, it requires there be an open case from CID to conduct such a test. But the Army is looking for ways to remedy that situation. "The Army is getting closer to the point where we can start identifying Soldiers for Spice, other than just random testing," Horne said. "If we get to the point where we get a civilian contract lab approved, we get a contract vehicle that can support that, we would open it up to commanders for probable-cause testing." Horne went on to say that it's important the Army select such a lab carefully because they want to ensure testing is done accurately, to protect the Soldier. He also said the Army wants to ensure that a lab is trustworthy with its handling of evidence, so test results could be used to process actions under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. "We want to ensure a product that we're using taxpayer's money for is legitimate," Horne said. 1st Cavalry prepping for Afghanistan with partners [2011-03-25] WASHINGTON -- Continuing to build partnerships with Afghan security forces will be a key priority in May for the new leadership of Regional Command East in Afghanistan. "The priority focus that we have going forward is to continue the strong partnership that is underway ... to ensure that they have the capability required to truly be in the lead for security in Afghanistan in 2014," said Maj. Gen. Daniel B. Allyn, 1st Cavalry Division. By mid-May, the 1st Cavalry Division will assume responsibility for Regional Command East from the 101st Airborne Division. The RCE area of responsibility includes 14 provinces in East Afghanistan, and shares about 450 miles of border with neighboring Pakistan. The proximity to Pakistan also means it's a priority to work with that nation's security forces. Allyn said when the 1st Cav. takes the lead in RCE, they'll leverage efforts underway now by the 101st to "strengthen the partnership at the tactical level with our Pakistan military counterparts. It's "absolutely critical we continue to build on the complimentary operations that have been planned and conducted recently with RCE forces and the Pakistan military forces -- we are going to continue to strengthen that relationship," Allyn said. The general also said the RCE would continue to work with both the government of Afghanistan and the Afghan security forces to "bring about the security conditions that will continue to enable both governance and economic development and a stable Afghanistan." The 1st Cav. last deployed to Iraq and returned in January 2009. They'll have had about 17 months to rest up and prepare for Afghanistan when they deploy in Mid-May. Allyn said they've been prepping for that day now for about 10 months. "We've had a series of command post exercises that replicate both the missions and the commands involved; we've had a number of both off-site and on-site training and leader-development forums," Allyn said. "And we've been up in the D.C. area engaging with the various Pakistan and Afghanistan task forces." The general also said the 1st Cav. has had a "rigorous mission-rehearsal exercise that was headed by the Joint Forces Command and supported by our coalition partners that will be working with us in RCE." Among those partners, he said, are Polish and French task forces, as well as the five U.S. brigades that will be operating under 1st Cav. command and control. "We've had a very thorough preparation and very good support across the board in getting us ready to go," Allyn said. This is the 1st Cav's first time in Afghanistan, Allyn said, though many of its leaders already have experience in the country. "We have about 40 percent of our key leaders (who) are Afghanistan experienced and we obviously carefully selected those new teammates," he said. Allyn said a primary threat to be addressed in Afghanistan includes the Haqqani network, led by Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani and son Sirajuddin Haqqani. "The continued infiltration of, particularly Haqqani as the principal threat in RCE -- is a continuing area of focus," Allyn said. The U.S. has recently pulled American forces out of the Pech Valley -- and those forces can be used elsewhere, Allyn said, to stave off infiltration of Haqqani, for instance, into Kabul. "The forces that are reduced in areas like the Pech Valley will enable a better application of force against key terrain district areas and will enable us to continue to disrupt and interdict the forces trying to come in through places like Khost, and Paktia and Paktika." Allyn said primarily, the enemy, the Taliban and Haqqani, for instance, want to "create effects" in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. "The focus of our main effort initially is expanding the Kabul security zone, south along Highway 1, and to the east along Highway 7 toward Jalalabad and the Torkham gate," Allyn said. "In order to prevent the enemy from achieving any of those effects in Kabul, we will engage him with a layered defense approach from the border, through the battle space, and ensure he doesn't achieve any effects in Kabul." The RCE region completely surrounds Kabul -- and Allyn said it's important to disrupt any efforts by the enemy to get there. "Ultimately we want to disrupt and interdict the enemy's attempts to infiltrate through RCE toward Kabul," Allyn said. "The principle way we want to do that is through effective Afghan Security Forces -- and ultimately, the objective in 2014 is Afghan Security Forces in the lead across Afghanistan." Allyn said major gains must be made in Afghan Security Forces capacity and capability over the next year. But he also said examples of success can be found among the Afghan Police, for instance. "The Afghan police are securing Bamian Province as we speak," Allyn said. "That's what right looks like." Allyn said it's been a "doctoral level study" to get ready for a regional command responsibility but "the team is excited about the opportunity to serve" and there's "more volunteers than slots" to deploy. For the 1st Cav's time in Afghanistan, Allyn said, he's got some clear expectations of what he hopes can be achieved there. "I think No. 1, we want to have a more capable Afghan Security Force, with Afghans in the lead and larger presence in numbers than is currently the case in RCE," he said. "We want to continue the great progress that's been made by our predecessors, both the 82nd Airborne Division and the 101st, and continue to build effective district governance that the people of Afghanistan can recognize as legitimate and supporting their needs. And we want for as many of the provinces in RCE to be a stable and secure environment as possible." Promotion-point calculations changing for sergeants [2011-03-28] WASHINGTON -- Beginning in June, Soldiers seeking advancement to sergeant or staff sergeant will find the Army has automated its promotion-point calculation and changed the way points are earned. On June 1, the Army will implement modifications to the Semi-Centralized Promotion System for those applying for promotion to the ranks of sergeant and staff sergeant. Soldiers will still earn a maximum of 800 points on the promotion-point worksheet, but where those points come from has changed. The biggest change is that points will no longer come from either a promotion board or a Soldier's commander. Currently, Soldiers earn as many as 300 points in those two areas. Commanders will still be able to recommend Soldiers for promotion, and boards will still provide a "go" or "no-go" for promotion - but Soldiers will no longer earn points in those areas. "It allows us to be more fair and objective in our promotion points, as opposed to a subjective system," said Brig. Gen. Richard P. Mustion, the Army's adjutant general. "Yet it retains the responsibility of the chain of command. It doesn't undercut the chain of command in any way. In the end I think it results in us having an even higher-caliber [noncommissioned officer], focused on skills for sergeant, and leadership for staff sergeant." Those 300 points have been moved to other sections of the promotion-point worksheet, allowing Soldiers to show they have excelled in other areas. The largest increase in points goes toward military training. For promotion to sergeant, Soldiers can now earn a maximum of 340 points for military training. For promotion to staff sergeant, Soldiers can earn 255 points. Previously, that category capped out at 100 points for both ranks. The points have also gone up for military education, meaning the combined emphasis on military education and training has gone up for both ranks when considering promotability. Under the current system, for instance, Soldiers seeking E-5 and E-6 earn only 50 percent of their promotion points in military education and military training. In June, that number jumps way up. For those seeking staff sergeant, about 67 percent of their points will come from military training and military education. For those seeking sergeant, that number will be 75 percent "The Army has an Army training, Army leader-development strategy," Mustion said. "That helps us identify what we need our sergeants and what we need our staff sergeants to do in the Army." The general said for sergeants, the new system is "calibrated to reflect a Soldier's skills." And for those seeking staff sergeant, the emphasis is on leadership skills. Included in those training and education points is credit for deployment. Those seeking E-5 can earn up to 30 points for their deployments - two points for each month deployed, up to 15 months. For those seeking E-6, that number is even higher. They can earn a total of 60 points for up to 30 months deployed. That's "to recognize the development and the education and experience that's gained by our Soldiers and NCOs in those environments," Mustion said. One major change under the new system - a change that will likely change many Soldier's points: No points will be awarded for correspondence sub-course completion. Instead, Soldiers can only earn points for finishing a course in its entirety. Some Soldiers will see a decline in points, Mustion said. But The Army will still promote as many Soldiers as it needs. "We'll see a significant reduction in the number of Soldiers that max out their points, which is a problem we have now," Mustion said. "While the promotion points that our Soldiers have will decline, so will the promotion cutoff. We'll still promote about the same number of Soldiers. Another change in Soldier promotion in June is that a Soldier's calculation-point worksheet will be automatically calculated from information already in electronic Army databases. "No longer will we have to go through the re-evaluation re-computation that we've done for many, many years," Mustion said, saying that the manual calculation process is gone. "As soon as a Soldier makes a change and it gets posted to the personnel and training system, the promotion points get recalculated. You'll be able to go in and see your promotion points went from 700 to 710, based on completing a course, or receiving an award." There are multiple databases the promotion-point worksheet draws on, Mustion said. Included among those is the Total Army Personnel database and the Army Training and Resource System. With automation of the promotion-point worksheet, there's increased responsibility on the Soldiers to ensure their information is accurate. "(It's the) Soldier's responsibility to make sure that his awards, his assignment history, his military and civilian schooling, and all the military training he's received are accurately reflected in the personnel system, as well as in the Army training system," Mustion said. Soldiers can ensure their information is accurate by using the Personnel Electronic Records Management System online, or by visiting their S-1 shop, Mustion said. "We encourage Soldiers to go visit their battalion and brigade S-1 shops and sit down with them and look at their Enlisted Record Brief and make sure it accurately reflects their career," he said. The Army will implement the new promotion-point system June 1. Mustion said Soldiers should start checking their records for accuracy now. Casey says Army must focus on versatility [2011-03-31] WASHINGTON -- The Army and DOD must move away from organizing for conventional war and instead focus on versatility, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. told lawmakers. Casey and Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee March 31 to discuss the Army's posture. Casey said the Army must change how it's been organizing for the last 60 years. "We were designed to build the systems to prosecute conventional war," he said. "We are not doing that now. And I believe the central organizing principal needs to shift to versatility. "We need to structure our forces so that we have a versatile mix of heavy, light, Stryker, and enabling forces, so we can put together force packages for a wide range of contingencies that are going to face us," Casey said. Casey also told lawmakers one of the greatest challenges for the incoming chief of staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, will be preserving gains the Army has made over the last 10 years -- including end strength and dwell time. "I'm going to tell Marty his greatest challenges will be to preserve the gains we together have built over the last decade," said Casey. "End strength is a key consideration for the Army we have to have the right size Army that can meet our commitments with a one year out two years back cycle." The general had been asked what advice he'd have for his replacement who was recently confirmed. Dempsey will assume the role of chief of staff of the Army April 11. Casey also said Dempsey would have to deal with the impacts of 10 years of war -- including issues related to post traumatic stress disorder and mild traumatic brain injury. "He can't take his eye off that and has to focus on the dwell," Casey said. One senator asked the general if Congress should establish guidelines to ensure dwell time for Soldiers will always be met. Casey said such rules might limit the Army. "My initial reaction would be that any time Congress puts another constraint, it limits flexibility," Casey said. "I believe we have drawn a new baseline now and we can't knowingly accept an end strength that will cause us to do less than that... I don't think we should accept an end strength that would allow us to do less than two years at home." Lawmakers were also concerned with photos recently published in a German magazine allegedly related to murders committed by American Soldiers in Afghanistan. Those Soldiers were from 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. "The pictures are reprehensible and they are not indicative of the conduct of the million soldiers that have deployed in combat in the last decade," Casey said. McHugh told lawmakers the Army is investigating what happened with those Soldiers, with their units and with their leaders -- to uncover what happened. And he said he is not pleased with claims the Army will simply punish the most junior of those involved. The secretary said he is "distressed when I read reports that I think are at best premature, perhaps somewhat irresponsible, that the Army is just going to hold a few lower-ranking Soldiers in this case responsible ... we are absolutely looking at the higher command," McHugh said. The secretary said that it is an "assumption" there is command responsibility, but "the important part is we are looking very hard at it. I think there are some serious questions as to the culpability, responsibilities of overseeing a unit that was engaged in this kind of activity, and we will take that wherever the facts and the truth lead us." Casey said 12 of the Soldiers involved are pending court-marital charges now, with some convictions already. Five have been charged with murder and convicted. "We believe we are pressing this to the full extent of the law," he said. One legislator asked about the range of diversity in Army leadership. McHugh said the Army is doing a good job of recruiting a diverse range of Americans -- a range that looks very much like America. But he said senior-leader advancement is not as diverse as it could be. "In baseline recruiting, we are doing pretty well in the segments of the population we are bringing in," McHugh said. But he added that the Army "has to work very hard ... in promoting officers through the ranks that represent that same level of diversity." The Army's secretary, formerly a congressman from New York, also expressed some disappointment to lawmakers over failure in the Congressional ranks to exercise their privilege to recommend candidates to the U.S. Military Academy, at West Point, N.Y. "I think the Congress can be enormously helpful in going out and actively utilizing their full allocation of nominations... in promoting young minority students, young minority Soldiers," he said, adding there is a "broad array" of members of both houses of Congress that don't take advantage of their privilege to recommend candidates to the school -- a major source of Army-commissioned officers. He said to see billets at West Point go unfilled "is crushing." Casey recently visited Fort Riley, Kan., and was able to meet with Soldiers who had received training related to repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law. He said he believes the training there was effective. "The thing I took away: the training is simple, it's effective, and it's starting to break down misconceptions that (Soldiers) had in their mind," Casey said, adding those opinions were shared by leaders and Soldiers at every level he observed. But Casey also told lawmakers that, until Soldiers and leaders were confronted with openly gay and lesbian Soldiers in the ranks, the issue is still "an intellectual discussion." "What I took away is, this is the start of the process," he said. The general said the Army still does equal opportunity training, and training on race relations and gender bias. "We're going to be doing this for a while." He said sexual assault and harassment training for Fiscal Year 2012 will be prepared "gender neutral." He also said concerns from Soldiers involve billeting -- if a Soldier will need to live with a gay or lesbian Soldier, for instance. "I emphasized to commanders we are not going to have segregated billets -- but the commanders do have discretion to adjust the billets to suit people's needs," he said. The general also said there is "a lot of concern among the very religious element of our population, and they are wrestling harder with this than the others." SMA says retention-control points to shape force [2011-04-01] WASHINGTON -- As part of a "right-shaping" of the force, the Army will adjust retention-control points for Soldiers this fall. During his first appearance on Capitol Hill, March 30, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III discussed the Army's temporary end-strength initiative and ensuing force reductions before the House Appropriations Committee, defense subcommittee. In July 2009, the Secretary of Defense authorized a temporary increase of up to 22,000 Soldiers for the active Army. This temporary end-strength increase reduced stress and strain on the force by ensuring all deploying units were filled appropriately. "One of the things we've taken in to account is, that in order to draw the Army down and reduce that temporary end-strength initiative, we're going to have to do some right-shaping, or shaping of the force," Chandler said. The Army's senior enlisted adviser told lawmakers the service had accelerated promotions to create the noncommissioned officer corps needed to serve as the backbone of a force that has expanded over the last 10 years while prosecuting war on two fronts. "We accelerated promotions and we were way ahead of our normal promotion rates," Chandler said. "We're now starting to see those slow down. Which is actually a good thing for us, because it helps us to better develop that leader at their current grade instead of being put in a position where we have to accept some risk and move them ahead to be able to properly man the force." In the fall, Chandler told lawmakers, the Army would implement the force-shaping tools needed to help reduce the size of the Army by 22,000 by the fall of 2013. "We will actually introduce some retention-control-point reductions for our NCOs to actually reduce the amount of time they can serve in the force," Chandler said. Retention control points specify how long a Soldier may stay in the Army at a particular rank before having to either leave the Army or get selected for promotion. Chandler also said the Army would take initiatives similar to the Navy, to look at selective early-release boards. "Some of our marginal achievers will be looked at and considered for separation from the service," he explained. Those efforts will help the Army "get the right Soldier at the right time promoted to be in the right job," Chandler said. "We're very interested in ensuring we do this in a deliberate and efficient and effective manner to take care of the Army's requirements, but just as importantly (those) Soldier and family requirements." Lawmakers also asked Chandler about the Army's use of mental-health providers, and of availability of mental-health care. Chandler told them he had used those programs himself. "I sit before you as a beneficiary of the Army's behavioral-health program," Chandler said. "I myself have had the last two years of behavioral health treatment and it has made a difference in my life and my wife, Jeanne, who is with me today." Chandler said the Army has benefited from an increase in mental-health providers. "I believe without the increases we've had over the last several years, that we would be in much worse shape than we are now," he said. Though the service faces a shortfall in providers, he said the Army is continuing to recruit. "It has made a difference in my life and I know in Soldiers' lives," Chandler said. Lawmakers also asked Chandler and other service senior-enlisted advisers at the hearing about how the services would be equipped to handle conflict on another front -- in Libya. "We exist to fight and win our nation's wars," Chandler said. "We all know that where ever the nation calls us to go is where we are going to go and do the best we possibly can." Chandler said the Army's force generation model, or ARFORGEN, is designed to handle the current demand, and that changes in demand for forces "is going to obviously cause the Army to have to reassess what it is doing and where we are sending Soldiers and the commitment of the Guard and Reserve as an operational fore." Nevertheless, he said, "I guarantee you that he Army will do everything the nation needs it to do." Aviators set 'aim point' for future vertical-lift aircraft [2011-04-19] WASHINGTON -- The Army needs to plan now for a replacement helicopter -- one that has a longer range, is faster, can carry a bigger payload, is more survivable and that has a reduced logistical footprint. Army aviation leaders want such an airframe in less than 20 years -- and they say the Army can't afford to back down from that goal. "We know that the current fleet -- although great aircraft -- will at some point be obsolete," said Maj. Gen. Anthony G. Crutchfield, commander, U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence. He pegged an obsolesce date for the Longbow Block II Apache at fiscal year 2040, for instance, and fiscal year 2035 for the CH-47 Foxtrot. "It sounds like a long way away, but it really isn't," he said. "We have to have a method of looking out that far and making sure that we have aircraft that will be relevant in this future security environment. We have to set an aim point." Crutchfield may as well have stomped his foot on the stage in front of the more than 1,000 attendees at the opening of the 2011 Army Aviation Association of America's Annual Professional Forum and Exposition in Nashville, when he laid out that aim point to field a future vertical-lift aircraft by 2030. WARNING: CAN'T REPEAT COMANCHE "We can't move the aim point," he reiterated. "2030 is the aim point. We're going to set it. We're not going to waiver. Our knees will not buckle and we are going to field this aircraft. I don't want my grandchildren to fly the 'Longbow Block LXXX' -- it's a great aircraft, but we need technology to take us further into that future." Acquisition practices, he said, could be part of ensuring that timeline for a future vertical-lift aircraft -- to avoid practices that contributed to the cancellation of the Comanche program in August 2004. "We can't afford to cancel another program. We can't afford another Comanche," he said. While he acknowledged that had the Comanche not been canceled the Army "wouldn't be in the great shape we are today," he did say that he disagrees with the circumstances that led to its cancellation. "What I say is, in my view, we can't afford to do it again," he said. "The future vertical-lift aircraft is going to have to increase range, speed, payload, survivability -- and it's got to reduce the logistical footprint. I don't believe we can do all those things just by incrementally improving our current fleet of aircraft. It's going to have to be something new." Crutchfield acknowledged the Army won't get "everything we want" in a new airframe, but he did say "we have to get everything we need. And I believe we need this. If we set the marker and we aggressively drive to it, we will make it happen. I know we can do it. In fact, we have to do it." That new aircraft was but one of Crutchfield's aim points. Another was developing adaptable leaders in Army aviation. LEARNING CONCEPT 2015 "We've got to continue to build leaders that are adaptive, that are tactically proficient as well as strategically proficient," he said. Those leaders must be versatile, and prepared for an "uncertain future environment," where the enemy will use everything against them. "The future battlefield is unknown," he said. "One thing that is for sure -- (in) our future fight we're going to have to fight security operations, peace-keeping operations, counter insurgency operations, and full-scale war -- the full spectrum. What are we doing now to train, adapt and equip that future force?" Today at Fort Rucker, Ala., he said, future aviation leaders are engaged in training under Army Learning Concept 2015, an effort that, according to the Army Training and Doctrine Command, is "leveraging technology without sacrificing standards," and that "focuses on the opportunities presented by dynamic virtual environments, by on-line gaming, and by mobile learning." The learning environment for students at the Army Aviation Center of Excellence, the Army Maneuver Center of Excellence and the Army Fires Center of Excellence, for instance, is being enhanced by simulator training that ties them together across three states to allow those Soldiers to work together on operations training inside a virtual battle space. CALL FOR ACQUISITION REFORM Gen. James D. Thurman, commander, U.S. Army Forces Command, served as the keynote speaker at the conference's opening. He asked the aviation acquisition community and industry to work harder together on improving acquisition in today's budget environment. The acquisition community, he said, has done a good job in supporting the war, but he called for "true acquisition reform," including aviation. "I am challenging both the industrial Army and private industry to conduct after-action reviews," he said "To understand what we have done over the course of the past few years, what we need to do in the future, and how we can adapt to increase efficiency of the system. We have to field platforms quicker, I believe, and aviation systems." Over the next 15 years, he said it is the Army's plan to build a force of manned and unmanned aircraft "optimized for full-spectrum operations." That effort, he told attendees, "amounts to a significant challenge for the Army staff, industry and the acquisition community." NEW SCOUT HELICOPTER NEEDED The general also called for a replacement for the Kiowa Warrior. "Our aviators and commanders are doing an outstanding job maintaining and employing the Kiowa Warrior," he said, adding that some units are putting as many as 100 hours a month on that airframe. In fact, he said, all Army aircraft are accumulating airframe hours at "four or five times the desired rate." "I believe they need a modernized scout helicopter as soon as they can get it developed," Thurman said. The general also pointed out that Army aviation gets some 21 percent of the Army's equipment budget. "You can count on pressure for your funding," he said. "The only way you can get this done is to achieve better efficiencies and work closer together as a team. Army aviation and industry must focus every dollar to achieve the best value." REPORT FROM AFGHANISTAN The headquarters of the conference's host unit -- the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) -- lies just 50 miles northeast of the Nashville conference center, at Fort Campbell, Ky. The division's deputy commander, Brig. Gen. Jeffrey N. Colt, spoke briefly at the start of the conference -- drawing attention to those attendees that make Army aviation successful. "Gathered at this conference are men and women, young Soldiers, seasoned warrant officers, veterans, civilians, and contractors -- who have all contributed volumes to defining the past, present and future of our branch," Colt said. "Their contributions make Army aviation, and our Army, the premiere and professional organizations the world's military services seek to emulate." Colt kept his remarks short in order to give the remainder of his time to the 101st's commander -- Maj. Gen John F. Campbell -- who spoke via prerecorded message from Afghanistan. "You have every reason to be very proud of the service and sacrifice of your Army aviators serving in Afghanistan," Campbell said. He said the two aviation brigades from the 101st Airborne Division -- the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade and the 159th Combat Aviation Brigade -- have rotated in and out of theater now for their fourth rotation and will continue to do so for both Regional Command-South and Regional Command-East. In RC-East, Campbell cited great support from two additional combat aviation brigades -- the 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade, from 3rd Infantry Division, and the 10th Combat Aviation Brigade, 10th Mountain Division. "All four of these combat aviation brigades provided superb support to our ground forces," Campbell said. "The fight in Afghanistan is an air-centric fight and truly we could not do all that we do were it not for Army aviation." The greatest praise for Army aviation came not from Campbell -- though he passed it on to aviators at the conference. "When I visit our troops and ask what they need, the first thing they ask for is more Army aviation," Campbell said. "You can be very proud of our Army aviators." The AAAA exposition runs April 17-20, at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville, Tenn. Students demo new learning technology at Quad-A [2011-04-20] NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Technology is advancing new learning opportunities for Soldiers in areas like mission training and even equipment repair. Virtual Battle Space 2, for example, is now networked across multiple schoolhouses to allow students in different career fields to train together on a common mission in a simulated environment. Another example includes a 3-D touch-screen trainer to help Soldiers learn to diagnose faults on Army helicopters. Both technologies were on display on the show floor at the 2011 Army Aviation Association of America's Annual Professional Forum and Exposition in Tennessee. Soldiers from three schoolhouses, including those from the Army Aviation Center of Excellence at Fort Rucker, Ala.; the Army Fires COE at Fort Sill, Okla.; and the Army Maneuver COE at Fort Benning, Ga., sat at laptops networked through a server as they conducted a simulated mission set in Columbus, Ga. "They are doing a penetration against the Columbus police station," said Lt. Col. Craig Unrath, deputy director, simulation directorate, at Fort Rucker, Ala., Army Aviation COE. Multiple flat-panel displays showed conference attendees what was being seen by the Soldiers who were participating. One screen, for example, showed the view from inside an Apache helicopter. Another screen showed the view from an unmanned aerial system. Most of the participants were Army captains enrolled in their Captains Career Courses at the participating COEs. The software driving the simulation, the VBS2 system, isn't new -- it's been around for years now. But in March, the three school houses connected formerly separated installations of their software over T1 fiber cables to allow simulated missions to be conducted between students at the separated school houses. "The objective is to long-haul distribute this between these installations so we don't have to come together to do an exercise," Unrath said. "We can do it dynamically, quicker, not having to do a big deliberate planning process." To get the same kind of training just 20 years ago, the students would have had to physically come together to do the training. "It'd be a full field-training exercise, where aviation, infantry, armor and artillery would all have to go to the field and it would have been a live exercise," Unrath said. "So it's a massive savings on teaching that type of collective training and communications, command and control." The simulation was also augmented with information coming off wireless iPads -- "We believe wireless is the way of the future for us," Unrath said. "We've got iPads replicating current Army battle-command systems, like Command Post of the Future, Blue Force Tracker, and the Air Warrior Electronic Data Manager -- which is the navigation device they use in the actual cockpit." Capt. Michael Ferriter, a student at the Maneuvers COE Captains Course, was one participant in the simulated mission. He's a proponent of the technology that's helping him hone his leadership skills. "I'd take this 'as is' now to train my platoon leaders and give them a good practical application before going to a training center before deploying," he said. "I think it helps you to tie multiple assets so that you can focus on the big fight -- when controlling a company with mortars and aviation." Capt. Scott Davis, one of Ferriter's team members in the simulation, is also a student in the Maneuvers COE Captains Course. He said the newly networked implementation of VBS2 helps when learning to work with officers and Soldiers from other branches. "It really helps you build the communications skills," he said. "You're talking over radio with the fires guys, with the aviation guys -- you have to really clarify your purpose and what you want them to do." Unrath said the technology is in line with what the Army hopes to achieve under "Army Learning Concept 2015," an effort to improve the Army learning model by "leveraging technology without sacrificing standards," according to the Army's Training and Doctrine Command. "It's TRADOC's big charter on how to train this generation of leader we have today -- today's leaders are mobile phone, wireless-device kinds of guys that are attached to that wireless world. We have to figure out how to train that generation that's captured by that. Virtual training and first-person-shooter game technology is doing that." Unrath also said the training the long-haul linked VBS2 simulators provide to participating students is realistic for what they will see in theater. "It gives us the real type of training for what these guys are going to do when they go to theater," Unrath said. "It's quick, it's dynamic, and it gets the small teams talking just like they are going to be operating in Afghanistan." The networked simulation was only one example of how concepts under ALC 2015 are being implemented. In the same booth, another Soldier demonstrated new technology that allows Soldiers to learn virtually how to diagnose faults in equipment on an AH-64 Apache, before actually having to turn a wrench on that aircraft. The technology, a virtual immersive environment, is designed to capitalize on the skills new Soldiers bring to the Army, and that ALC 2015 hopes to access. "The Soldiers who come into the Army today have very little hands-on experience with turning wrenches -- but they grew up in a generation of digitization, and they have a lot of experience with computers," said Lt. Col. Mark Teixeira, director of the Department of Training, Plans and Evaluation at the U.S. Army Aviation Logistics School at Fort Eustis, Va. The simulator uses photorealistic images of the Apache and allows Soldiers to virtually approach the aircraft from all sides, and open panels to access what's inside. "This is 100-percent like what's out on the hanger floor or out on the flight line," said Staff Sgt. David Dunlap, an instructor at the United States Army Aviation Logistics School, Fort Eustis, Va. Dunlap was demonstrating the system for conference attendees. He also uses the system to teach students at the schoolhouse. Dunlap's students include armament avionics electrical repairmen for the AH-64 Longbow Apache. Dunlap touched a screen to open a panel on the simulated Apache, revealing the extended forward aviations bay where all the "black boxes" are located. "The Soldier has to know where all the components are -- it's not a step-by-step guide," he said. "He has to use his electronic manual and his knowledge of the aircraft to know where to go." By just touching the screen, Dunlap was able to remove the "cannon connectors" from a component, and then use an on-screen multi-meter to diagnose faults in the system -- checking for continuity and resistance. The faults in the simulated system are set up by instructors for the students to try to find, by using their knowledge and guidance from their manuals. The system is about teaching procedures, so students can be comfortable before touching an actual aircraft. Dunlap said the students now go through a full day of simulated procedures on the trainer before actually getting their hands on the Apache. "They go from here to the hanger floor the next day and are more comfortable with their trouble shooting as far as leaning how to trouble shoot and as far as pulling off the components," he said. Some tasks on the simulator are simpler than on a real aircraft, but Dunlap said the time saved by training first on the simulator is great -- and Soldiers, he said, are loving it. "For the digital-age Soldier coming in -- the kids are growing up in that digital age -- they like the scenario and like seeing it computer-generated," he said. Dunlap said the trainer has been used for about six months now, and so far, about 200 Soldiers have cut their teeth on the system before trying what they've learned on the actual aircraft. Right now, it's only the modernized targeting designation system that is programmed into the trainer. Plans include adding both the avionics and communications suites and eventually, the entire aircraft. Stateside Lakota deliveries let Black Hawks go to theater [2011-04-22] NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Some 23 Black Hawk helicopters have been freed from duty in the United States to go to combat elsewhere, thanks to stateside delivery of UH-72A Lakota helicopters. As Lakotas are fielded, said Col. John Thurgood, project manager for Army utility helicopters, they take Black Hawks out of the mix and send them back to combat. "As we field the UH-72A, we are able to take Black Hawks at some of those units and give them back to combat units, and those combat units take those aircraft to the fight," Thurgood said. "So the Lakota is a very important part of our Army strategy to make sure our combat units have what they need." "And to make sure our states, our governors, our homeland-security missions have what they need -- this platform delivers all those things," he continued. Thanks to delivery of Lakotas, about one assault battalion of Black Hawks have been freed to return to combat, Thurgood said, about half of a combat aviation brigade. Thurgood, along with John Burke, program manager for EADS North America's light utility helicopter program, spoke April 20, 2011, at a press conference regarding the Lakota program during the 2011 Army Aviation Association of America's Annual Professional Forum and Exposition in Nashville, Tenn. Thurgood said the Army has been pleased with both the aircraft and with contract performance. "They have been doing a tremendous job of producing every aircraft on time, or early," he said. "That's very important to us." Thurgood said the Army plans to purchase about 345 Lakotas, and today, about 154 have been delivered. "We are about halfway through the delivery of this program and doing it exactly on the cost and schedule that the Army asked it to do." The Lakota is a slightly modified version of the manufacturer's commercial EC145 aircraft. "We literally chose the EC145, painted it green, and we've only added to it -- the basic aircraft -- one thing, and that's an ARC-231 radio," Thurgood said. The Army "knew what they wanted and they have held to that requirement," Thurgood said regarding the Lakota. "Holding ourselves to that requirement without changing it really gives the program managers a lot of flexibility to use best business practices." Variants of the Lakota include a two-litter medical version, a VIP version used in the National Capital Region, a security and support version used for state missions by National Guard units, and a version used by "opposing forces" during at combat training centers. The S&S version of the aircraft, on display at the AAAA convention, sported a mission equipment package with a search light, a GPS navigation system that allows pilots to find locations by street address as well as military grid coordinates, and a visual sensor ball that can transmit imagery to a ground station. Thurgood said there will be small continuous modifications for the Lakota -- the sensor ball might become obsolete, for instance, and may be changed eventually. But because the Lakota is essentially a commercial product, the manufacturer is incentivized to do continuous improvements on their version of it -- improvements the Army can opt to buy into without having to fund. "If they decide to put on a new tilt rotor system then the Army gets to take advantage of that without the investment to do that," he said. Conversely, for an aircraft like the Black Hawk -- the Army must pay for such modifications, Thurgood said. Right now, the Lakota is fielded to National Guard units for state support, disaster relief and homeland defense, and in the active component where it's used in non-deployable units for medical evacuation and at training centers, for instance. "There is no better aircraft in the military's inventory right now for domestic operations -- there is none," said Chief Warrant Officer 3 Kevin Mudd, Utility Helicopters Project Office, Redstone Arsenal, Ala. "With its communications, sensors, and ability to be in a location you're not used to and still function and complete your mission -- this is the premiere domestic-operation platform right now." Army names top recruiters, career counselors for 2011 [2011-04-27] WASHINGTON -- Five Soldiers were honored April 27, 2011, for their contributions to the health of the Army's all-volunteer fighting force. Under Secretary of the Army Joseph W. Westphal hosted the 2011 Secretary of the Army Career Counselor and Recruiter of the Year Awards at the Pentagon. "We selected these Soldiers from thousands of their fellow recruiters and career counselors -- all of whom have answered a challenge and calling," Westphal said. "To get here they had to demonstrate they were the best." Westphal said that in the best of times, recruiting is difficult, but in wartime it is more so. America has been at war now for 10 years now -- the longest war ever fought with the all-volunteer force. "It is critical we retain a high-quality all-volunteer force," Westphal said. "Those we recognize today in our outstanding recruiting and retention force help make this happen every day." Westphal said Army recruiters are competing with industry for candidates who are "only the very best society has to offer," he said. "The citizens we recruit are the most sought-after people in our society. They are young, bright and dedicated. And they have options." Additionally, the group of eligible candidates for Army service is shrinking, Westphal said, due to medical, conduct or aptitude-related issues. Nevertheless, Westphal said, Army recruiters and career counselors have done a great job of bringing qualified candidates into the Army and keeping them there. "Today's Army, across all components, possesses a larger percentage of combat-proven Soldiers and leaders in its ranks than at any time in the past 30 years," Westphal said. "Our volunteer Soldiers are re-enlisting because they believe in their nation, they believe in their flag, and they believe in each other." It is Army career counselors, Westphal said, that are helping the Army keep those Soldiers in uniform, to convert their combat experience into leadership positions. "Career counselors successfully retain our Soldiers at high levels because the Army works hard to provide Soldiers with a quality of life equal to the quality of their service," Westphal said. Staff Sgt. Adrienne Campuzano, of the Baltimore Recruiting Battalion, was named the Army Recruiter of the Year. She said it is hard work that earned her the title. "This means a lot of dedication, a lot of hard work and a lot of time," she said. Recruiting is "probably the hardest thing I've done in the Army." Campuzano came from the medical career field before she took the special duty assignment as a recruiter in Baltimore, Md. She said she put in 13 Soldiers last year. The toughest part is finding those who are qualified to enlist. "It's the challenge of being fully qualified to serve in the Army today," she said. Just five years ago, it was more difficult to get bodies in the door, said Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Lucas, 1st Medical Recruiting Battalion, Fort Meade, Md. Lucas was named the Army Reserve Recruiter of the Year. He said now there's plenty that want to join up. "We are able to fill most of our foxholes," he said. But in medical recruiting, it's tougher to get those specialty jobs filled, he said. "We have to have more precision -- to analyze our markets that much more and pinpoint the individuals we're going after." Lucas' recruiting station, which recruits medical doctors and nurses, but not enlisted Soldiers, put in six last year. The Army has been challenged to get medical professionals in some specific career fields -- mental health, for instance. But Lucas said that some other types of medical professionals already have the kind of mindset needed to join the military. It's up to him and his teammates to tap into that. "Sometimes the mindset is even better on the medical side, especially with a lot of your surgeons and some of your physicians and nurses. It's really strong in the nurse corps," he said "You have people that already have that mindset of service to mankind. Now you have to talk to them and show them how they can serve that much more in the Army." Westphal thanked each of the award winners for their service "thank you for what you do every day, thank you for your service to our Army and nation during a time of war." Those recognized during the award ceremony were: -- Sgt. 1st Class Toby Whitney, Army Career Counselor of the Year -- Staff Sgt. Adrienne Campuzano, Army Recruiter of the Year -- Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Lucas, Army Reserve Recruiter of the Year -- Master Sgt. Terry Timmons, Army Reserve Career Counselor of the Year -- Sgt. 1st Class Tavia Syme, Army National Guard Recruiter/Retention Noncommissioned Officer of the Year Korean War MOH recipients inducted into Hall of Heroes [2011-05-03] WASHINGTON -- The names of two Korean War Soldiers posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor were placed into the Hall of Heroes during a ceremony May 3, 2011, at the Pentagon. The families of medal recipients Pfc. Anthony T. Kaho'ohanohano and Pfc. Henry Svehla were present at the ceremony. The families had received the medals from President Barack Obama on behalf of the two Soldiers during a ceremony at the White House just a day prior. Under Secretary of the Army Joseph W. Westphal spoke at the induction ceremony, first thanking the families of the recipients for working to ensure the Soldiers got the recognition they deserved, and also saying how the actions of the Soldiers in Korea remain an inspiration for Soldiers today -- who are also fighting a war. Westphal said it was the actions of Kaho'ohanohano and Svehla during the Korean War that made possible the post-war lives of many who had served alongside them. "Many of those who came back from that terrible conflict to be reunited with their family, did so because of the ultimate sacrifice by Anthony and Henry," Westphal said. "May Anthony and Henry rest in peace. May God bless them and their family, and may God bless the United States." The Soldiers earned their medals during separate incidents in the war, and on different dates, but both were just out of their teens and far from the warm safety of their American homes when they died for their country -- fighting enemy aggression near the 38th Parallel in Korea. Kaho'ohanohano, just 21, hailed from Hawaii. He left his home in Maui to fight with Company H, 17th Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division. He distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism in action against the enemy in the vicinity of Chupa-ri, Korea, on Sept. 1, 1951. Svehla, from Newark, N.J., was 20 when he fought with Company F, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division and distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism on June 12, 1952, as a rifleman while on patrol near Pyongony, Korea. Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey also spoke of the Soldiers, both of whom were killed in action nearly 60 years ago. "They were two very different men, kids really, both of them. And from different backgrounds," Dempsey said. "But they each faced a skilled, determined and numerically superior enemy -- and they inspired others to victory by their personal courage and they willingly gave up their lives for their fellow Soldiers." The general promised family members the Army will not forget the names of or the contributions made by the two Soldiers. "Today we remember Anthony Kaho'ohanohano and Henry Svehla, and we promise they will always be remembered and we make certain of that by their enshrinement here in the Hall of Heroes," Dempsey said. "Their legacies of courage, valor and sacrifice will not only be preserved in our Army and in our nation's history, but will inspire generations of Americans to the service of their country as well." The Medal of Honor has been awarded less than 3,500 times, amongst the tens of millions of Americans who have served in combat for the United States since 1862. Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn III explained the rarity of the award. "Its award is so rare because the feat of bravery it recognizes is so exceptional," Lynn said. Most of the recipients, he added, are "ordinary Americans who took extraordinary action on the battlefield." The secretary added that it has been 60 years since the end of the Korean War, but "the example of their valor still endures." Family members of the two Soldiers were afforded the opportunity to speak as well. George Kaho'ohanohano, the nephew of Anthony, commented on the commonality among the Medal of Honor recipients whose names are listed in the Hall of Heroes. "Looking at all these names listed here and with Anthony and Henry joining it, I believe I see one common thread to this -- it's not the extraordinary gentlemen, it's the hometown person who becomes the Medal of Honor recipient," Kaho'ohanohano said. He also mentioned the kinship he and his family now feel with the Army. "It's such a great feeling for my family and I to be here," he said. "We feel we've adopted another family -- the U.S. Army family. And we now have some brothers and sisters and cousins over in New Jersey." Many of Svehla's family members remain in New Jersey. Anthony Svehla Jr., Henry's nephew, spoke on behalf of his family, and thanked the Army and his congressman for making the Medal of Honor recognition happen. "This is just amazing and what an honor for me and the rest of my family," he said. "We're all very proud." (ARNEWS writer Rob McIlvaine contributed to this article.) Pace Award winners help Army save millions of dollars [2011-05-05] WASHINGTON -- The Army's civilian recipient of the Pace Award saved $128 million by bringing employees back to work and the military winner helped prevent the loss of $324 million in total obligation authority. Lt. Col. Patrick L. Walden, a senior acquisition program analyst with the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-8, received the award Thursday morning at the Pentagon, partly for helping the Army defend programs and retain resourcing. Daisy P. Crowley, a human resources specialist with the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-1, received the award for helping lower the workman's compensation rolls. She explained that Army civilian employees receiving a workman's compensation check don't have to come to work -- and they get a tax-free paycheck from the Army. It's the Army's responsibility to get those employees back on the job, and off the workman's compensation payroll, Crowley explained. Thanks to her effective management and hard work, the number of employees getting that workman's compensation check has dropped by about 25 percent. "We got about 5,000 people off the roles," said. "Previously we had about 20,000 civilians who were receiving workman's compensation, and we brought it back to 15,000." That move produced a future cost avoidance for the Army of some $128 million dollars last year -- and earned Crowley the civilian Pace Award for 2010. "We believe we will do more in the future as we get more and more people back to work and also not permit people to just be lost in the system -- which is what happened in previous years," Crowley said. The Pace Award is given annually to one Army officer, lieutenant colonel or below, and one civilian employee, GS-14 equivalent or below, whose work benefits the Army by providing substantial financial savings, or technological military development. Walden said he analyzes programs for those inside the Army to make sure they are "balanced and appropriate." For those outside the Army looking in, he provides the metrics senior leaders need to defend Army programs. "When the Office of the Secretary of Defense, during program review, challenges how the Army builds a program -- we are the first to defend it," Walden said. "Walden ensured that the Army's equipment programs are properly resourced to support Soldiers today and into the future," read the citation for his award. In 2010, Walden's analysis of Army programs were instrumental in retaining significant resourcing and preventing the loss of $324 million in total obligation authority. "It's a great honor," Walden said, on receiving the award. Thomas L. Lamont, the assistant secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs presented the awards to the two recipients, and said the Pace Award is for those Pentagon employees "who have gone well beyond the call of duty." "Never more than today are the impacts of improving performance, transforming business processes and procedures, and finding savings and efficiencies been so vital," Lamont said. "Through the talent of people like Miss Crowley and Lieutenant Colonel Walden, whom we honor today, our Army will continue to improve." The Pace Award is named for former Secretary of the Army Frank Pace Jr., who served in the position between 1950 and 1953, during the Korean War. The award has been presented annually since 1962. 'Green bullet' as effective as M855 round -- consistently [2011-05-06] ABERDEEN, Md. -- Since June, the Army has fielded about 30 million of its new 5.56mm M855A1 "Enhanced Performance Rounds" in Afghanistan. The cartridge, sometimes called the "green bullet" because it has an environmentally-friendly copper core instead of the traditional lead, has been getting mostly good reviews in the 11 months since it first deployed to Operation Enduring Freedom. "The vast majority of everything we've got back from the field is positive," said Lt. Col. Jeffrey K. Woods, product manager, small caliber ammunition, during a "media day" at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md. During the day-long event, reporters learned the benefits of the new cartridge, witnessed a demonstration of the round, compared to the round it is designed to replace, and had the opportunity to fire the round from both an M16 and M4 rifle. Perhaps the biggest plus of the M855A1 "enhanced performance round" is the consistency it brings to the fight -- more so than the 5.56mm M855 round it is designed to replace. Woods and other officials were reticent to talk specifically about the effects of the new bullet, or any bullet, on a "soft target" -- a euphemism for enemy personnel. But what they made clear was the M855A1 is at least equal to the M855 on a soft target -- but that it did damage with more consistency. The M855 is a good round, Woods said, but it is "yaw dependant." Like all bullets, it wobbles when it travels along its trajectory. Its effectiveness depends on its yaw angle when it hits a target. Not so with the M855A1. The new Enhanced Performance Round, or EPR, is not yaw-dependant -- it delivers the same effectiveness in a soft target no matter its yaw angle. "On M855's best day, with that great performance that you will see, you're going to see that type of performance out of the EPR -- but you will see it every time," Woods said. The EPR cartridge is the same length as the M855 that it's designed to replace, though the bullet it contains is about 1/8 of an inch longer. The weight and shape of the EPR is also the same as the M855, so it fits anything an M855 fits -- including the M16 and the M4 it was designed for. The bullet itself has been redesigned completely. It features a larger steel "penetrator" on its tip, that is both sharper than what is on the M855 and is also exposed. Both bullets feature a copper jacket, but the EPR's jacket is "reverse drawn" -- part of its manufacturing. Perhaps the most notable feature of the EPR is that its bullet features a copper core, verses the M855's lead core. There's also a new propellant in the EPR, designed to enhance its performance in the M4 Carbine rifle -- what most Soldiers are carrying today in Afghanistan. The M4 has a shorter barrel than the M16 rifle, and barrel length is directly related to a bullet's velocity. "The M855 leaving an M16 had a higher muzzle velocity than when it left the M4," Woods said. "Because the M16 is the longer barrel, you get the full burn of the powder, pushing a bullet to its maximum velocity before it left the barrel." On an M4, however, the M855 bullet might leave the barrel before its powder is completely burned -- that means the bullet isn't getting the full benefit of all the powder contained in its shell and an increased muzzle flash. "A longer-burning propellant is still burning when the round is leaving the barrel and you are going to get a brighter flash, which is obviously not good for Soldiers," Woods said. Both of those issues have been addressed with the M855A1. The SMP-842 propellant in the EPR burns quicker, ensuring less muzzle flash in the M4, and also meaning improved muzzle velocity. The performance of the EPR against soft targets is the same as that of the M855 -- but it is more consistent. The new round is also "superior to 7.62mm M80 against soft targets," Woods said. But at the same time the new "green round" is more Earth-friendly than both the M855 and the M80 -- it is also more effective than either of them against hard targets. A test fire an Aberdeen Proving Ground range pitted the M855A1 round against the M855 and the M80 in multiple weapons -- the two 5.56mm rounds were fired in both the M4 and the M16, and the 7.62 M80 round was fired in an M14 Enhanced Battle Rifle. All three rounds are use today. In all test firings against a sheet of 3/8-inch mild steel plate at 300 meters, the M855A1 came out on top. Test center video also showed the EPR to be equally superior against concrete masonry units -- similar to cinder block. The M855A1 was able to penetrate such a block up to about 75 meters with the M16, and up to about 50 meters with the M4. The M855 was unable to penetrate the blocks at those ranges. Wood said Soldiers have been told to turn in M855 cartridges and switch now to EPR. In February, he said, was the first time there's been more expenditure in theater with the EPR than with the M855. The round is effective, Woods said, and testing at Aberdeen has shown that to be true -- against realistic testing targets. But the round can't be effective against enemy combatants unless Soldiers use it in their weapons -- and they need to trust that it works before they will want to use it. Staff Sgt. Jason Hopkins, of the Maneuvers Center of Excellence, Fort Benning, Ga., has served four years in Afghanistan and two years in Iraq. He's seen combat, and confirms that while there he's used his weapon against "soft targets." He was one of the Soldiers at Aberdeen who test fired the new round -- and says he's convinced. "We were a little skeptical -- like any change in the military, a little skeptical," Hopkins said of the EPR. "But coming up here and shooting it and seeing the performance of it -- I'm sold on it. The trajectory and the ballistics are just as good as the M855 and the penetration is far superior to the M855." "It looks like just a more consistent round," he continued. "With the M855 you may not always get the same thing -- but everything we've seen with this EPR has been dead consistent every time." As far as the new round's accuracy, Hopkins said, "It's on par if not better." Woods said testing shows the EPR does produce a tighter shot group -- by about 2 inches at 600 meters. As far as "stopping power" of the new round, Hopkins clarified what that term means to him -- and confirmed his faith that the round would do its job when he might be required to use it. "Stopping power is incapacitation of a target so he cannot engage me or continue his mission," Hopkins said. "I haven't used the EPR in that situation yet, but I've used the M855. It's been effective. It's an effective round. But I truly believe the M855A1 will be more consistent." Pvt. 1st Class Scott Lafferty, 1st Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, has served once in Iraq. He was also a tester at Aberdeen. When he talks to other Soldiers about the effectiveness of the round, he said he's going to tell them what he learned during his test experience. "I'm going to tell them how we've shot both different kinds of rounds and how the M855A1 is superior and they can test for themselves and find out," Lafferty said. He said that a weapon's effectiveness is largely dependent on a Soldier's training, but added, "I am confident the bullet will do what I've seen here today, and yesterday." Army looking at blood test for concussions [2011-05-13] WASHINGTON -- A medical test in the works, though possibly still years away, could show Army medics in just a few hours if a Soldier has suffered from concussion. The test, something similar to what diabetics must do for testing blood sugar, is being researched by the Army's Medical Research and Materiel Command. The test could eventually tell an Army medic "within 95 percent certainty ... whether the individual has a concussion," said Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli. "That is huge for us, because there will be no more guessing about whether the individual suffered a concision. We will no longer have to use the (Military Acute Concussion Evaluation) test, we'll be able to tell if they have a concussion and be able to treat them for that concussion immediately." The test will look for hyperphosphorylated tau protein, something not found in great quantities in a normal brain,but which has been shown to collect in the brains of those who have suffered repeated blows to the head -- including boxers and Soldiers, according to research done by Dr. Ann McKee, a neural pathologist from Boston University. Chiarelli appeared on Capitol Hill May 12 as part of panel discussion on mental health issues, where he also discussed the Army's effort to eliminate any embarrassment Soldiers may feel, or any fear they may have about affects on their jobs, from seeking help for mental health issues -- such as those related to post traumatic stress. The general said today, more than 8,400 Soldiers are part of the Army's Wounded Warrior program, and that 65 percent of those have traumatic brain injury or post traumatic stress. About 11 percent suffer from loss of limb. So much of effort is focused on that 11 percent, he said, "we have forgotten in many instances the 65 percent." He said he expects there are more in the Army that suffer from either TBI, PTS or both, because many sufferers are ashamed to seek help. "That's the real elephant in the room -- stigma," he said The general also said the Army, like the larger American society, is suffering from a shortage of behavioral health specialists, and that it is in fact a "national crisis." Efforts in tele-behavioral health -- allowing specialists to meet with patients through teleconferencing technology, for instance -- could increase the effectiveness and reach of a limited number of providers. But the general said there are challenges regarding the credentialing and licensing of specialists to work across state lines. Study focuses on mental health of force in Afghanistan [2011-05-19] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers say there's lower barriers and better access to behavioral health care in theater, even though for many there's been an increase in time spent outside the wire. The assessment of Soldier opinion on behavioral health care was revealed May 19, 2011, with the release of the Joint Mental Health Advisory Team VII survey. The J-MHAT 7 survey operated inside Afghanistan, consulting with both Soldiers and Marines in land combat forces between July and August 2010. About 911 surveys were collected from 40 different Army maneuver unit platoons, and some 335 surveys were collected from 13 Marine Corps platoons. Additionally, 85 surveys were collected from behavioral health specialists in theater. "The report released today reflects a snapshot of the psychological health of Soldiers and Marines deployed last summer, said Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, Army surgeon general and commander of the U.S. Army Medical Command, during a press event that coincided with the release of the study. "It also reflects a practice of looking hard at ourselves and our behavioral healthcare-delivery system in theater in a disciplined and systematic fashion." Schoomaker said that in MHAT 6, released in 2009, Soldiers had reported "high barriers" to care and the Army responded with an increase in behavioral health practitioners. Today the Army maintains a staffing ratio of one behavioral health practitioner for every 700-800 Soldiers. A priority for Army leadership is eliminating the stigma associated with seeking mental health assistance. The J-MHAT 7 report says about half of Soldiers said they "would be seen as weak" for seeking such services. The number didn't change from the 2009 report. The report also says that Soldiers are reporting "significantly higher" rates of acute stress than what was reported in 2009 or in 2005. However, the report also shows that medication use for mental health or combat stress was at 3.7 percent for Soldiers -- a slightly lower rate of use than what is seen among the civilian population with similar demographics. In Afghanistan, the report shows "dramatic increase" in combat exposure for Soldiers surveyed, as compared to 2009 -- in fact, combat levels are higher than what was reported in past MHAT reports for either theater. Schoomaker also said Soldiers reported a high exposure to events that cause concussions. However, the report shows low percentages for Soldiers that sought evaluation for those concussions. The general did say the Army has taken steps to correct that. "Since this survey was conducted, we have fully implemented mandatory concussion evaluation and management protocols in theater," he said. "Recent reports suggest better compliance with timely and appropriate concussion management." Also a key finding in the survey: Soldiers in combat reported a decline in individual morale, Schoomaker said. An issue discovered by MHAT 7 researches included the effects on sleep deprivation on warfighters. Reports showed Soldiers cited night operations and environment as two contributing factors for lack of sleep. "Sleep deprivation in an operational and combat environment is contributory to our behavioral health issues," Schoomaker said. "We've always known in the military -- and the Army in particular has led with a lot of the studies and insights into what sleep deprivation does to the human brain. It mars our judgment, it changes out mood and it contributes to fratricide on the battlefield." Schoomaker said that issues like sleep deprivation, morale and elimination of stigma associated with seeking mental health assistance comes down to leadership in the smallest units. "Soldiers do what their small unit leaders teach them to do -- lead by example and doing," he said. "That includes aggressive treatment of concussions (and) lowering of stigma associated with seeking help for behavioral health problems." Army tells senators: FY12 to feature squad analysis [2011-05-19] WASHINGTON -- The Army will conduct an analysis of its "fundamental fighting unit," the squad, to ensure everything is being done to prepare those Soldiers for the fight. Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh and Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey appeared May 17, 2011, before the Senate Appropriations Committee defense subcommittee to discuss the fiscal year 2012 budget submission and Army posture. "We'll look at the squad as a collective whole, not nine individual Soldiers, and determine how to enable it from the bottom up to ensure that the squad has the training, leadership, doctrine, power and energy, protection, and lethality to win when we send them into harm's way," Dempsey told lawmakers. The general said other tiers of Army structure are already unmatched, and that he wanted to ensure the squad too was unmatched. "As an Army no one can challenge us at corps level, division level, brigade level or battalion level," he said. "I want to ensure we've done as much as possible to make sure that the same degree of overmatch exists at squad level." While Dempsey didn't give a date to senators for when a review would happen, he did say it wouldn't result in more gear given to individual Soldiers, who are "already strained by the load they have to carry in combat." FORCE REDUCTIONS The Army is facing two requirements to reduce the number of Soldiers in uniform -- a 22,000-Soldier reduction that accounts for the temporary end-strength increase authorized by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates in 2009, and a Gates-directed 27,000-Soldier reduction three or four years from now to be taken out of the Army's permanent end-strength. McHugh told lawmakers he has been working with leaders in the Defense Department to make sure the cuts would happen, but that they would not affect the mission or put other Soldiers at risk. "We've spent a lot of time with the secretary and the people at OSD to make sure the way forward on this makes sense, that we are not buying an unreasonable amount of risk," McHugh said. The reduction of 22,000 Soldiers, he said was something that would have to come down in "the near term." But McHugh told lawmakers the Army was concerned about the current operations tempo and how that reduction would affect the force, and that those troops are still needed. The secretary of Defense, he said, "understood" that, and is allowing the Army to keep those 22,000 until March 2012 -- with the drawdown in Iraq then making it possible for the Army to take the reduction "in stride." In January, the secretary of defense also directed a reduction in permanent end strength of 27,000. That drawdown would be "conditions based," McHugh told legislators. The 27,000-Soldier reduction is aimed at the 2014-2015 time frame, with the potential drawdown in Afghanistan. But ultimately, he said, a final decision would depend on input from the president, NATO allies, and recommendations from Gen. David Petraeus, commander, International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces Afghanistan. "(If) conditions on the ground allow that to continue, we feel very comfortable that the 27,000 is a very achievable target," McHugh said. The secretary said the Army is working on how to shape the force with the drawdown and how to "ramp down" the numbers of Soldiers without "placing Soldiers at greater risk." ARMY ACQUISITION With the 2004 cancellation of the Comanche program, the 2008 cancellation of the Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter program, and the 2009 cancellation of the Army's "Future Combat Systems," known as FCS, program in recent memory, senators concerned about tightening the budget asked Army leaders how they would ensure future Army programs could remain on target and on budget. McHugh discussed a recent study on Army acquisition he said was "long overdue" and which yielded 76 recommendations on acquisition, "some of which were revelatory." "I think the No. 1 thing was our inclination in the past to not control requirements," McHugh said. "We've seen that in a number of programs, and FCS, I think is the poster child for it as is the presidential helicopter, where requirements keep getting built on and built on." Continued additions of requirements in such programs means it takes longer for the program to come to fruition, the secretary said, and makes its costs spiral out of control. "So we've tried to do a better job in stating the requirements, keeping them less reliant on immature or less reliable technologies," he said. He cited the Army's ground combat vehicle program as an example of how the Army has applied what it has learned. The program's initial request for proposal to industry included 990 "tier-one" requirements. Later, the Army rescinded that request for proposal and replaced it with another -- one that reduced tier-one requirements by 75 percent. "A tough decision, but one that at the end of the day I think that was very soundly supported by the industry and will serve not just the Army but the taxpayers more fairly as well," he said. McHugh said the Army is now implementing all but 13 of the 76 recommendations from the report and is taking a closer look at those 13 recommendations. Soldiers showcase combat equipment at Andrews JSOH [2011-05-22] JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md. -- Soldiers proudly showed off their Army combat equipment to thousands of teens and family members, May 20, during the first day of the 2011 Joint Service Open House here. While both military and civilian aircraft -- including the Air Force's Thunderbirds -- performed acrobatic maneuvers over the Andrews flight line, and the Army's Golden Knights parachute team jumped from above the installation, school children and their parents walked among the static displays of military equipment and talked with the Soldiers who operated it. Staff Sgt. Brian Deschenes, 2-8 Cav., 1st BCT, 1st Cav. Div., manned an Abrams M1A2 SEPv2 tank display. "It's the most upgraded version that the Army has right now," he said. Deschenes has served around the globe -- including Korea, Germany, and the United States. He's deployed three times to Iraq, where he served as part of an Abrams unit. In Iraq, he said, the vehicle performance was "excellent -- with great crew survivability, awesome fire power and pretty decent mobility." School children from around the Washington area visited his tank -- many seeing the equipment for the first time. They swarmed over it like ants, peered in to every open hatch, straddled its 120mm cannon, tried on the crew helmets fitted with communications gear, and asked questions of the Soldiers manning the vehicle. "The first thing they always want to ask is how many people fit inside it," Deschenes said. "When they look down inside they don't think three guys can fit in the turret -- it looks small inside. Then they want to ask about the rounds and what types of weapons its shoots, and how life is as a tanker. If you like living outside and you don't have a fear of enclosed spaces, then it's a great job." Deschenes said he loves the Army, and has been a Soldier for a dozen years already. "I don't regret a day of it," he said. Most of the visitors to the M1A2 were kids, and Private 1st Class Paul Gorham, 2-8 Cav., 1st BCT, 1st Cav. Div., who also manned the tank, said he hopes those kids walk away with "a general appreciation of the type of equipment we use, but also a familiarization with not only the equipment, but the personnel that use it." He took a break to put a helmet on one of the kids -- who looked about 8-years-old. "They seem mostly interested in trying on helmets and pretending to shoot the guns," he said. Gorham, new to the Army, hit his one-year mark in February. He was concerned civilians might have a negative view of the Army. He said he hopes his presence at the open house might fix that. "We're here, integrating ourselves with them, and joking around, and letting them know that we're just the same people as their brothers and parents," he said, noting that the kids all reacted positively to him and his fellow Soldiers. Gorham said he's learned a lot about the Army too since he joined, at 30 years old, and coming from a job as a dump truck driver back in his civilian life. "It's another adventure," he said. "I've been happy with it so far and learned a lot -- not just about a new job, but about working with others in different environments, and about leading younger Soldiers." Nearby, Sgt. Seth Cote, 2-5 Cav., 1st BCT, 1st Cav. Div., manned a Bradley A3 combat vehicle -- about 72,500 pounds of steel and weapons that can carry up to ten personnel. The kids crawled into the back of the vehicle, into the crew compartment and moved effortlessly through the small passage that leads to the driver's seat at the front -- their heads popped through the open port there like Whac-A-Mole. "The kids want to know how do you move around in here, why's it so small," Cote said. "The adults are the ones really asking the questions. What kinds of weapons and things like that." Cote said the kids are more interested in doing than asking, though. "The kids are interested in can I push this button?" Cote said. Mainly, Cote and his crew were on scene to educate the American public about their role and the role of their equipment -- to let them know what the Army is really capable of doing. Cote said he knew the mission -- for the three days of the open house -- and had some ideas about what civilians visiting his Bradley should know after talking to him. "Mainly I want them to understand it's probably one of the most versatile and effective weapons we have in the Army today," he said. "It can go mostly anywhere and carry a high-speed infantry squad to execute a mission." Up in front of the Bradley, perched on top and looking down into the open hatch above the driver's seat, Sgt. Scott Jense, 2-5 Cav., 1st BCT, 1st Cav. Div., kept things safe for visitors and answered questions when asked. "Surprisingly they already know how to do a lot," Jense said of the kids. "They are like -- this is the button that shoots the gun." Jense said he's deployed before, but as a dismounted Soldier. And he'll deploy with his unit again, soon. This time as a Bradley gunner. "Basically, whatever the Bradley commander tells me to shoot, I shoot," he said. "It's a lot of responsibility being in that position. The 25mm is a very powerful weapon. It's very important we hit what we mean to -- no collateral damage, that's the key." Jense said the kids that visit the Bradley are excited by what they see -- and he likes to see that. "It's cool to see kids get excited over this stuff," he said. "And the older people here, some used to work on vehicles like this. Some of them left the Army right when the Bradley was coming out back in the '80s -- so it's really cool to talk to them and hear about what they did before I was even born." Sgt. Michael Hammer, 5-159 Avn. Regt., 244th Avn. Bde., 11th Avn. Cmd., was one of several Soldiers manning a CH-47D Chinook helicopter. He talked like a salesman for the aircraft -- articulate in speech, knowledgeable about its capability, and enthusiastic about letting people know what it can do. "This helicopter is a very good performer," he said, recounting his experience with the aircraft in Iraq -- he just returned in September. "You have to take into account the heat, dust and everything -- the helicopter did fantastic. It's the strongest in the U.S. Army inventory and has a high ceiling -- 25,000 feet with oxygen." Hammer is a reservist in the Army. As a civilian he works with the aircraft too -- as a flight engineer. "I have the best of both worlds," he said, of moving back and forth between his uniform and civilian clothes, but staying with the aircraft. Hammer was pretty excited to let visitors know about how long the aircraft has been serving the Army -- since 1962. "This is a piece of history and it still is running today," he said. "It's been in production since the beginning of the Vietnam War. And it's now 2011 and it's still in service. It's a piece of history that is still working. I want them to know -- how awesome this is." With so many kids running around the flight line at Andrews -- many of them seniors in high school -- it was a ripe recruiting environment for the Army. In fact, nearly every branch of the service had some sort of recruiting effort on site to take advantage. Sgt. 1st Class Rithy Ros, 1st Recruiting Battalion, Baltimore, Md., was one of the recruiters there looking to take names and put young men and women into uniform. Initially a mechanic, but now a recruiter in Baltimore, Ros said he's now on his second year of a three-year tour as a recruiter. The recruiting environment today, he said, is easier than it was for his predecessors. "We have a lot of walks-ins," he said. "The recruiter before me, they had a hard time and worked a lot of hours. Well we have it made -- we work 9-5 and still make our mission." He said he's expected to put in about four Soldiers a month. At his booth, where he hands out tee shirts and key chains in exchange for performance on the pull-up bar and push-up station -- key exercises associated with military service -- Ros said the potential servicemembers have a lot of questions. But one stands out above all others. "If I join, do I go to war?" he said, repeating their most immediate concern. "Almost every single one asks -- I tell them you might get a 50/50 chance of going to war." Ros himself has been once to Iraq, in his capacity as a mechanic. He said it was a 12-month deployment, but he voluntarily extended to 18 months His success at the open house was good, he said. Just on the first day he's got several kids to call back. "Once I get back I'm going to call them and hopefully schedule an appointment for them to come in and just continue the process," he said. Most of the seniors, however, are not in his recruiting area, and he'll have to pass them off to his buddies that work further south. But for him, he said, that isn't a problem. "We help each other out -- they help me out, I help them out," he said. "We're all on the same team." The 2011 Joint Service Open House at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, is open to the public May 21-22. Headliners at the event include the Army Golden Knights and the Air Force's Thunderbirds demonstration team. Aircraft such as the F-22 Raptor, the F/A-18 Hornet and the A-10 Warthog will perform. Dozens of aircraft and military equipment are also on static display. All four branches of service are represented at the open house. 'Freedom Award' goes to resilient Ranger [2011-05-25] WASHINGTON -- "No Greater Sacrifice" Freedom Awards were presented May 24 to the former U.S. commander in Iraq and a Ranger who lost his leg from an injury there, but returned to combat duty. Sgt. 1st Class Joseph R. Kapacziewski, who just returned from Afghanistan, and Gen. Ray Odierno were named recipients of the award. The Freedom Award is bestowed annually on those who "epitomize selfless service to the nation and represent the very best of our men and women in uniform," according to NGS founders, Kirk Rostran and Pete Bilden. The two Soldiers were honored during a gala event in Washington, D.C., by donors to the NGS Foundation -- which provides college scholarships to the children of those servicemembers who have fallen in combat. The organization has raised some $3 million to that end, and provided full academic scholarships to 19 children and spouses of fallen servicemembers. Kapacziewski, now part of the 75th Ranger Regiment, was injured in combat in 2005 in Iraq. The six-vehicle convoy Kapacziewski rode in was ambushed, and a grenade fell through the gunner's hatch of his Stryker. Three Rangers were injured by the grenade, including Kapacziewski. "Throughout the firefight, he did all he could to remove his troops from danger, to remove those that were fallen -- putting himself last, and only attending to his own wounds after he was sure all his comrades were accounted for and safe," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who presented the awards. Kapacziewski went through 40 surgeries to repair his body. Through it all, he was determined to continue to be a Soldier -- even though his doctors told him he might never walk again. "To Sgt. Kapacziewski that was not a statement of resignation, but a statement of challenge -- that called him to yet another battle to prove that those doctors were wrong," Lieberman said. Comparing Kapacziewski to other wounded Soldier's he's met, the senator said, "they want to get back to their unit, they want to get back to the fight. They want to get back in service to our country." Kapacziewski now continues to serve as an Army Ranger. He recently returned from his ninth rotation in theater -- having supported both Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Gen. Ray Odierno, who currently serves as commander of the United States Joint Forces Command, was also named recipient of the NGS Freedom Award. Until September, he served as commander of U.S. Force-Iraq. "Odierno had the ability to inspire not only our troops, but the Iraqi people at a time when many people thought the cause was lost," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, who spoke about the general before he received the award. Graham, an Air Force Reserve judge advocate, had served under Odierno. Despite concerns in the past about the outcome of the conflict in Iraq, Graham said contributions from Odierno turned the tide there. "This war is going to go on for a very long time in some forms," he said. "But let it be said that Iraq and Afghanistan, with patience and determination, will go into the win column." While not in Washington for the event, Gen. David Petraeus, commander, International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces Afghanistan, spoke to the crowd via prerecorded message. "The strength of spirit and character that Sgt. Kapacziewski has shown in overcoming his injuries and in returning to full duty with the Ranger Regiment and in leading his men in combat with such distinction is an inspiration to all of us in uniform," Petraeus said. "I consider it the greatest of privileges to have served in the same combat zone with you." The general also had words for his fellow general, Odierno -- the two served together first in the earliest days in Iraq, in 2003. During the surge, Petraeus said, when he was the Multi-National Forces - Iraq commander, Odierno was the Multi-National Corps " Iraq commander. "His leadership of MNC-I was absolutely magnificent, his operational vision was exceptional, his determination was extraordinary, and his drive was legendary," Petraeus said. "It was an enormous privilege to have him as a key member of the team during that pivotal period in Iraq." Odierno assumed Petraeus' position at MNF-I in September 2008. "He continued to make a tremendous impact in the land of the two rivers as the overall commander there for another two years," Petraeus said. In October 2010, Odierno took command of U.S. Joint Forces Command, "shouldering with great skill and vision, the delicate task of transitioning vital capabilities of JFCOM to other organizations to enable the disestablishment of that command," Petraeus said. "In short, General Ray Odierno is an exceptional leader who truly epitomizes the selfless service that the No Greater Sacrifice Freedom Award honors." Odierno himself spoke at the end of the event, saying the award was less about him than about those who enabled him to earn it. "That award is not for me. It for the hundreds of thousands of Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines who served under my command, who sacrificed much greater than I ever did, who have a love for their country," Odierno said. "They want to bring something better to somebody else, and they have a love for their family." Soldier on leave foils bank robbery in Florida [2011-06-06] WASHINGTON -- When Staff Sgt. Eddie Peoples went to the bank in Sarasota, Fla., May 31, he expected to walk out with a cashier's check -- instead he was caught up in a bank robbery that ended with the robber in cuffs and Peoples the hero. Peoples is normally assigned to the 386th Movement Control Team out of Vicenza, Italy. He and his family live in country there, but he'd brought them home to visit his family in Florida. It was while on leave and conducting business in a Bank of America branch in Sarasota with his sons Ikaika and Kioni in tow, that Peoples ran into bank robber Matthew Rogers. "A gunman came into the bank, (and) demanded money -- brandishing a large caliber handgun -- I thought, at first -- (and) basically putting a lot of people in jeopardy," Peoples said of the situation. A surveillance video available online shows Peoples' initial reaction to the gunman. While his two boys hid under chairs in the bank's lobby, Peoples dragged two larger chairs in front of them, putting some protection between his children and the gunman. Moments later, 34-year-old Rogers left the bank for his vehicle. Peoples followed him out the door. "Outside, I knew that it would just be me and him," Peoples said, saying that inside the bank, any confrontation with Rogers might end in his children or other bystanders getting hurt. "That was my main concern ... my children and the innocent bystanders." Outside, Rogers ran to his vehicle, and Peoples got into his own vehicle. Some quick jockeying in the parking lot allowed Peoples to block Rogers' escape. "Basically I just backed out, made a big huge u-turn, and put my vehicle directly behind him," Peoples said. "We basically had a tug-of-war, it seemed like forever, but I know it was probably for only about 30 seconds." Frustrated, Rogers got out of his own vehicle and Peoples was able to temporarily pin Rogers between the two vehicles for just a moment. "He shouted at me and he raised his weapon and came around the vehicle in order to keep me there," Peoples said. "I fully expected to take at least two shots through the window." Peoples said it's not the first time he's been in life-threatening situations. He's deployed several times, he said. In Balad, Iraq, for instance, he said the situation was "a nightmare." "We had people breaching the perimeter. We had people throwing bombs over the gates," he said. "I got my Combat Action Badge there. While on tower guard they actually shot ten mortar rounds over into our compound. I got credit for repelling that attack. I have had pop shots at my head. I've had people come up and actually try to set mortar rounds up like right in front of my tower before." Fortunately for Peoples, Rogers didn't shoot at him. But he did try to unsuccessfully get inside his rental vehicle through the rear door. "I knew at that point I was in a bad situation and I had to get out and face this guy," Peoples said. He put his vehicle in park and opened his driver's-side door. "I was greeted with a handgun in my face," he said. "But since I was so close to him, it was easy to take the gun away. I basically did a wrist lock, pulled it back, intending to use that weapon as a blunt weapon to hit him with." It was then Peoples realized the "gun" was too light to be real, and too light to even be used as a blunt weapon. So instead, Peoples grabbed the criminal and slammed him to the ground. Taking the weapon from Rogers and putting him on the ground are some things Peoples said he learned in the Army. "Quite extensive training," Peoples said of his experience over ten years in service. "I've gone through Combatives. I've gone through weapon handling. I've gone through the proper way to discharge a weapon, the proper way to take a weapon. I'm pretty well-versed in taking care of people like this. Especially in taking people down to the ground and neutralize any kind of threat -- I owe that to the Army." Peoples said after putting Rogers to the ground, he identified himself as a Soldier. After hearing that, he said, Rogers gave up the fight. "He didn't want any more after that," Peoples said. "He basically cowered on the ground and the police showed up." When the police showed up, Peoples was told to drop the gun he'd taken from Rogers and he did so. "I followed their instructions to the letter -- I put the weapon down, placing it away from myself and the bank robber. I placed the money down. I laid on the ground." Peoples could easily have been mistaken by the police as a participant in the robbery -- on the wrong side. But those in the bank who'd seen what happened made sure the police didn't mistake Peoples for a bad guy. "Civilians started piping in -- they were yelling at the deputy," he said. "They were like, 'that's the good guy that's the good guy.' It was a little pandemonium there for a little." When all was done, and Rogers was cuffed, Peoples was allowed to stand -- as the police knew who he was. "They helped me up and the deputy who actually had the gun on me gave me a hug -- he said 'thanks brother' -- like he was in my unit -- the camaraderie was there," Peoples said. Peoples said he had been concerned that Rogers, after leaving the bank, would continue to be a threat to civilians outside, on the road -- especially if there was a chase with police. He knew there was a risk to himself for getting involved, but that was something he said as a Soldier he was prepared to accept. "I knew the risk the moment this bank robber stepped out the door -- and I accepted that risk." As a Soldier, Peoples said, "we accept these risks all the time." For his heroism, Peoples said the Sarasota police department held a ceremony in his honor. "I was really surprised," he said. Peoples and his family live in Italy and he is assigned to the 386th Movement Control Team, 14th Transportation Battalion, 16th Sustainment Brigade, 21st Theater Sustainment Command, Vicenza, Italy. ACU changes make Velcro optional, patrol cap default headgear [2011-06-11] WASHINGTON -- The voice of the Soldier has been heard: the Army announced the patrol cap will replace the black wool beret as the default headgear for the Army combat uniform. Also changing are the options for how Soldiers can attach certain items to their ACU shirts. Army Chief of Staff Martin E. Dempsey said Soldiers will soon be able to sew on name tapes, service tapes, rank insignia and skill badges, instead of using Velcro. The changes were made after Dempsey received input from Sergeant Major of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III, who had been tasked to gather opinions from Soldiers in the field. "I am a scout for General Dempsey, who asked me to look into everything a Soldier wears from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet," Chandler said. "These are changes that the field said they wanted to see." Typically, uniform changes come as a result of a board that meets twice a year. But Chandler said issues surrounding both the ACU headgear and the use of Velcro were changes the Army chief of staff wanted to bring to the Secretary of the Army immediately. Chandler said he spoke with "several thousand" Soldiers and also received comments via social media sites, like Facebook. "I have also discussed this with my board of directors -- the most senior sergeants major of our Army," Chandler said. Post-deployment combat uniform surveys were used as a basis for the changes. The No. 1 and No. 2 issues, Chandler said, involve the beret and Velcro. "The Soldiers didn't like the fact that the beret was hot -- it was not something that they wore the majority of the time," he said. "And they didn't like the fact it didn't shade the sun and it took two hands to put on. And they didn't like to carry two pieces of headgear to do different functions during the day." The beret has been the standard headgear for the Army's ACU -- the camouflage uniform worn by most Soldiers. But most Soldiers still needed to switch to the patrol cap based on the work they were doing -- in a motor pool or in the field, for instance. Those Soldiers would have to carry two pieces of headgear with them, one in each pocket, and switch depending on what they was doing. In the field, they put on the patrol cap. Back on base, they'd have to switch to the beret. The new policy will make the patrol cap the standard. But the beret isn't going anywhere. It will remain as the standard for the Army service uniform, and as an optional uniform item with the ACU -- at the discretion of commanders. "They could choose to say for an event, like change of command, that they want them to wear the beret," Chandler said. The change in the beret policy will save the Army about $6.5 million over the lifecycle of the ACU. New Soldiers had been issued two berets, now they will be issued one. Chandler pointed out that Soldiers didn't ask to eliminate the beret -- just to change when it's worn. "Soldiers said we don't want to wear it with this uniform ... but they do feel they look very professional wearing it with the Army service uniform," Chandler said. The Army implemented a mandatory wear date for the ACU in April 2008. The ACU, a replacement for the Battle Dress Uniform, featured many design changes. Included among those were a different cut for the fabric, new placement for pockets and a new "digital" color pattern. Also included were Velcro fasteners that allowed pockets to be sealed shut, sleeves to be cinched down, and rank insignia, name tapes, service tapes, patches and skill badges to be added and removed at will -- without time-consuming and sometimes costly trips to clothing alterations. Still, some Soldiers were displeased with Velcro on the uniform, Chandler said. The Army's new policy on attaching accouterments to the ACU will allow Soldiers to sew on rank insignia, the name tape and the service tape. Additionally, skill badges such as the Airborne, pathfinder, combat action, combat infantryman's, and expert infantryman's badge will also be authorized for sewing. Currently, those badges are provided in painted metal and have to be pinned to the uniform. Pinning badges to the uniform can be a lengthy process because they have to be aligned using a ruler. The new policy will allow Soldiers to sew those badges to the uniform. Combat and unit patches on the left and right sleeve and the U.S. flag will remain Velcro-only, the SMA said. Additionally, the ACU will continue to come with Velcro in the same locations it is now. Where a Soldier is authorized to sew something on, they will sew it on top of the Velcro. Chandler also said Soldiers had asked for changes to how cargo pockets are fastened. Velcro had been used -- now, ACUs are available with buttons used to keep the pockets closed. A similar change is being discussed for how sleeve cuffs are fastened, but Chandler said that decision will be made by the July uniform board. A more localized uniform decision will affect Soldiers assigned to the Army's headquarters at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. There, Soldiers had been wearing the ACU as their daily uniform. By as early as October, those Soldiers will show up to work in the Army service uniform, Chandler said. "Our perspective is that this is the corporate part of the Army," he said. "The business-part of the Army is done in the Pentagon, and as a professional there are certain standards of attire associated with certain activities. For the business aspect of the Army, it is the Army service uniform." Implementation dates for the announced changes have not yet been decided. Soldiers should wait for direction from their commands before implementing any uniform changes. Army thanks Congress for 236 years of support [2011-06-15] WASHINGTON -- As part of recognition for the Army's 236th year of protecting the United States, the service's leaders thanked members of Congress for their continued support of Soldiers. Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh, himself a former congressman from New York's 23rd district until he was tapped by President Barack Obama to run the Army -- thanked his former colleges for their continued support during an Army birthday celebration at the Capitol Visitor's Center, June 14, 2011. "We on the so-called 'fun side' of the Potomac deeply appreciate the leadership and the support that you bring us," McHugh said. "I used to feel very passionately as a member of the House and the House Armed Services Committee about our role and oversight and our role that the men and women in uniform receive all they needed. Now that I have had a chance to witness the fruits, the benefits of that effort, I value it even more deeply." McHugh talked about recent events that make him appreciate the work of the Soldier even more -- and the success of the Army. "Within the last few weeks I had a chance to walk without body armor in the Arghandab Valley -- a place where you probably wouldn't roll without an M1A1 Abrams (tank) not too many months ago," McHugh said. He said the relative safety he witnessed there was a result of the "great achievements that our men and women are making" in Afghanistan. Later, he said, inside the United States, he visited the flooded areas along the Mississippi in America's south and saw the Army Corps of Engineers "working to battle back the ravages of nature -- saving not just lives but saving whole communities." And in the Philippines, he said, he met with Army Special Operations Soldiers who work with the government there to protect the Pacific basin by ferreting out the terrorists who are there. "Time and time again, through history -- yes through 236 years -- but each and every hour of each and every day your Army is out there making us all safe," McHugh told lawmakers. He finished by clarifying his message: "One, happy birthday U.S. Army, and two thank you U.S. Congress." The Army's senior-most Soldier, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, had spoken earlier and brought attention to the fact the U.S. Army existed before the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. He cited the Congress as having put its faith in the Army to protect the then nascent republic. "This Army of ours had its birth one year before the Continental Congress actually signed the Declaration of Independence," Dempsey said. "What does that tell you? This thing called the Continental Congress actually put the future of our country, the future of our countrymen and our very freedoms in the hands of the Army, 236 years ago. Since that day we have been trying to live up to that trust and confidence." Also speaking were Sen. James Inhofe of the Senate Army Caucus, and Rep. John Carter and Rep. Silvestre Reyes, both of Texas and both leaders in the House Army Caucus. "We should always, before we go to bed at night, thank the good Lord above that we are blessed with the kinds of human beings that are willing to serve in the United States Army and have been willing to serve since the history of our land," Carter said. Following words from Army and congressional leadership, Soldiers brought out a birthday cake -- which was ceremoniously cut by Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III, McHugh, Dempsey and lawmakers. SMA: Expect sew-on skill badges in 10 weeks [2011-06-22] WASHINGTON -- As of June 14, 2011, Soldiers can wear the patrol cap with their Army Combat Uniform, or ACU, and they can take the uniform to alterations to have their name tapes, service tapes and ranks sewed on. A Soldier's skill badges could also be sewn on -- if those badges were available in clothing sales. Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III acknowledged ahead of the recent changes that vendors for military clothing items would not be ready immediately to supply the embroidered skill badges to Soldiers for sewing on their ACU. But during a blogger's round table June 20, he said the Army/Air Force Exchange Service, commonly referred to as AAFES, was working with suppliers to have those items hanging from peg hooks in clothing sales by end of the summer. "The Army G-4 has gone to AAFES and they should have some answers here in a couple of weeks on when vendors will be able to produce (skill badges) in MILSPEC (military specification) requirements and have those out into the force," Chandler said. "So I'm expecting some type of answer in a couple of weeks on a timeline, and past practice -- probably 8-10 weeks from now." On June 11, 2011, Army senior leadership announced change to the service's Army Combat Uniform policy that that involved a change in the default headgear for Soldiers -- a switch from the black wool beret to the patrol cap. Additionally, Soldiers were told that they could sew certain accouterments to their ACU shirts that had previously been attached to uniforms using only Velcro. The changes went into effect for Soldiers June 14. In July, an Army uniform board will meet to discuss other Army uniform issues, Chandler said. That board will look into issues involving Army physical training uniforms as well as placement of buttons on the ACU, an issue Chandler said is related to fire safety. "One of the things that we're going to take into consideration is, for instance, using buttons on the cuffs," Chandler said. "There's a reason why we have Velcro on this uniform and why we had buttons on the Battle Dress Uniform or on the Desert Combat Uniform. And that is, it's basically to kind of prevent what's called a 'fire chimney,' which is -- if you have an open collar, the chances of a fire being pulled up along inside of your shirtsleeve and burning your skin are higher." Chandler said if you can close down the open sleeves, it's possible to reduce the risk of burns. "There (are) options instead of having the button on the outside, like we used to have on the BDU, where you could put it on the inside of the collar and still prevent the chimney effect of fire," he said. "So we're going to take a look at that. We have a couple of designs that we're going to look at (during) the Army uniform board and look at the cost associated and then come back with a recommendation to the chief of staff of the Army." The Army is also conducting a study to get a new "family" of patterns to put on Army combat uniforms. The patterns included would be effective in "wooded," "arid," and "transitional" environments. Additionally, a fourth pattern would be used on personal protective equipment and organizational clothing and individual equipment such as the outer tactical vest. Chandler said Soldiers have suggested the Army switch all uniforms across the Army, away from the "universal camouflage pattern" used on the ACU and go instead with the "Operation Enduring Freedom Camouflage Pattern" or OCP. "You know, we're not going to do that," Chandler said. "What we're going to do is look at a new Army uniform through a very deliberate process using some technology and industry to figure out a better pattern that works in more than a very specific area, like Afghanistan with the OCP right now." Chandler said developing a single new pattern for all Soldiers to wear would be an unusually complex task for the Army. "You cannot design a uniform right now, with the technology that we currently know of, that will cover all conditions where you would need to conceal a person," he said. "But we do believe that we can come up with something for a percentage of the environments that the Army will operate in. We can come up with a pattern that will work within acceptable parameters." Critical to the family of patterns the Army is looking for is that fourth pattern that, while different than the others, must play nicely with them all. It will be the pattern that covers the very expensive organizational gear that all Soldiers must wear in combat environments -- and that organizations and units simply can't afford to buy multiple copies of in multiple patterns. "The largest cost for (the) combat uniform is the organizational equipment that you're issued -- your outer tactical vest, your plate carrier, your Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment kit and so on. That's the most expensive cost -- and it's in the billions of dollars," he said. Also headlining at the July uniform board is the Army physical fitness gear, something Chandler said may be ripe for a change by now. "I've had some feedback that we ought to take a look at the entire physical fitness uniform itself, since it's been around for awhile," he said. "And there have been some changes in industry that we may be able to provide something at a lesser cost, that's better for our Soldiers. So we're going to take a look at it." In particular, Chandler said, the night-time reflectivity of the uniform is something being looked at. That is a safety concern for commanders, he said. "We have actually done a study to look at the original reflective material that was in the improved physical fitness uniform, the one that Soldiers have now," he said. "There are changes right now with that pattern, so that it's a digital pattern which has a greater reflectivity without actually changing the way that it looks." Commanders currently are augmenting the current PT uniform with reflective belts to enhance the safety of Soldiers exercising in dark environment. But the reflective belts, Chandler said, are costly -- about $6 each. "I think we could use that six or seven bucks to do something more, besides having people buy a belt. But we don't have the solution yet," he said. Soldier issues with the PT gear also extend to chafing, because for some Soldiers the liner on the shorts doesn't fit as it should. "Modesty" has also been a concern, Chandler said. "Some folks weren't satisfied with the level of coverage." The Army's senior enlisted advisor recently embarked on a seven-day tour overseas to visit with Soldiers, and said he'll be engaging them on multiple topics, but will also include their insight on uniform issues. Their answers, he said, will be used, along with results of post-deployment surveys and social media comments and surveys, to help develop future changes to Army uniforms. "I'll probably speak to several thousand Soldiers over the next seven days," Chandler said. "I'll ask each one of them what they think about the uniform and what changes they'd like to see -- so that's how it happens." After 61 years, Korean democracy remains strong [2011-06-24] WASHINGTON -- On the 61st anniversary of the first day of fighting in the Korean War, representatives of nations involved in that conflict gathered here at the site of the memorial to its veterans and laid wreaths to honor their sacrifice. The Korean War began June 25, 1950 and ended with an armistice July 27, 1953. The three-year war took the lives of more 33,000 American Soldiers and wounded nearly 100,000 of them. In all, on both sides of the conflict, more than 4.4 million military personnel and civilians were wounded, killed or went missing in action. Present at the ceremony at the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., was the South Korean ambassador to the United States, Han Duck-soo. Representing the Army was Lt. Gen. Richard P. Zahner, deputy chief of staff, G-2. Military attachés from nations involved in the conflict were also present -- in their nation's military uniforms -- to lay wreaths of their own. "The war has often been defined as the forgotten war," Zahner said. "But in many way it talks about a very resilient partnership between America, its allies and the American people that has endured over the years since the armistice in a way that is both profound and very vibrant." Zahner, who has served two tours in Korea, said the event at the memorial is about marking the service of the Soldiers who fought in that country 60 years ago, as well as recognizing the enduring relationship the United States has shared with South Korea since that time. "So we talk about a generation of veterans -- this event marks their service on an annual basis," Zahner said, adding that, like those Americans who fought in World War II, the number of Korean War veterans is dwindling. Today, Zanher said, the relationship between the United States and Korea remains strong. And 61 years after the start of the war there, the Korean economy is as strong as the democracy that developed. "Today when we look back, we can say that we have got the twelfth most vibrant economy in the world," he said about South Korea. "It's a tremendous democracy and a force of stability in East Asia." Prosthesis helps Medal of Honor hero stay with Rangers [2011-07-08] WASHINGTON -- "There was a little bit of a meat skirt, for lack of better words, hanging around the edges. It was oozing. I could see the radius and ulna bone sticking up maybe about half an inch." Sgt. 1st Class Leroy Petry, who will have the Medal of Honor placed around his neck July 12, 2011, by the president of the United States, recounted the moment after his hand was taken from him by a grenade during a May 26, 2008, combat operation in Afghanistan. "It was vivid -- where I could see the black marks from where the burns were. And a little bit of the dirt and the smell of explosives. I sat up and I grabbed it. And it's a little strange," Petry said. "But this is what was in my mind: 'Why isn't this thing spraying off into the wind like in Hollywood?'" After that, the seasoned Army Ranger -- who was at the time on his seventh deployment in support of combat operations both in Iraq and Afghanistan -- had to take charge of his own situation, and of the young Soldiers whom he led. COMBAT ACTIONS At the time of his actions in Afghanistan, Petry was assigned to Company D, 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash. Petry's actions came as part of a rare daylight raid to capture a high-value target. "It's a little out of the norm," Petry said, of conducting such a mission with the sun over their head. "It's never a good thing. We don't like to because our odds are a little lower. But just like any other mission, we said we're going to go out there and do what we do. Execute the mission." Petry's Ranger unit, he said, runs roughly 400 missions during a four-month deployment. "You can see two missions in one night," he said. "That's how busy the ops tempo is. We go out and come back in and then -- hey, wait, there's something else, go back out. OK. Drive on." During his last mission, Petry was to locate himself with the platoon headquarters in the target building once it was secured. There, he was to serve as the senior noncommissioned officer at the site for the remainder of the operation. But things quickly got dangerous for Petry and his team. Insurgents opened fire on Petry and his men. Petry had fellow Ranger Pvt. 1st Class Lucas Robinson at his side. The two were to clear the outer courtyard of the target building. It was there the two first saw the enemy. "I remember seeing the guy out of my peripheral vision," Petry said. "Two guys with AKs at their hip, just spraying. And one happened to strike me right in the thighs. I didn't know I was hit in both thighs, but it hit my left thigh." Robinson was also hit, Petry said. "He was struck right in his ribcage on his left side and he continued along and followed behind me." While wounded and under enemy fire, Petry led Robinson to the cover of a chicken coop in the courtyard. The enemy continued to deliver fire at the two Soldiers. Petry reported contact was made with the enemy, and as a result, team member Sgt. Daniel Higgins moved to the outer courtyard. As Higgins moved toward the chicken coop to meet with the two wounded Soldiers, Petry threw a thermobaric grenade toward the enemy. That explosion caused a lull in enemy fire. As Higgins evaluated the wounds of both Petry and Robinsion, an insurgent threw a grenade over the chicken coop. The grenade landed about 10 meters from the three Rangers, knocked them to the ground, and wounded Higgins and Robinson. With three Soldiers taking cover in the coop, an insurgent threw yet another grenade. This time, the grenade landed just a few feet from the three Soldiers -- much closer than the earlier grenade. "It was almost instinct -- off training," Petry said of his response to the situation. "It was probably going to kill all three of us. I had time to visually see the hand grenade. And I figure it's got about a four-and-half second fuse, depending on how long it has been in the elements and the weather and everything and how long the pin has been pulled. I figure if you have time to see it you have time to kick it, throw it, just get it out there." That's when Petry picked up the grenade and threw it away from him and his buddies. As it turns out, he did have the time to save all three of their lives -- but not time to save his hand. The grenade exploded as he threw it -- destroying his throwing arm. "I actually didn't think it was going to go off," Petry said. "I didn't really feel much pain. I didn't know it had gone off and taken my hand until I sat back up and saw it was completely amputated at the wrist." Petry put a tourniquet on his now severed arm, to prevent further blood loss. That was something he said he knew how to do as a result of good Army training. Then he had to focus on those around him. "The younger guys next to me were kind of still in shock and awe," Petry said, and he tasked himself do what it is that makes Americans marvel at their Soldiers. "Maintaining control, maintaining awareness, trying to remain calm -- so they stay calm." He radioed for help -- but the fighting wasn't over. Staff Sgt. James Roberts engaged the enemy and was able to suppress their fire. But another insurgent began firing, and fatally wounded Spc. Christopher Gathercole. Higgins and Robinson returned fire and killed the enemy. Moments later, Sgt. 1st Class Jerod Staidle, the platoon sergeant, and Spc. Gary Depriest, the platoon medic, arrived in the outer courtyard. After directing Depriest to treat Gathercole, Staidle moved to Petry' s position. Staidle and Higgins then assisted Petry as he moved to the casualty collection point. Within a week, he'd be back in the United States. A HAND IN RECOVERY While passing through hospitals back to the United States, doctors had operated to remove damaged or dead tissue from Petry's arm, in part, to prevent infection. But when he arrived stateside his wound was still open, the bone was still exposed and it was wrapped with gauze. "The initial surgery when he came in was to basically take away what damaged tissue was left, and close his skin," said Col. James Ficke, an orthopedic surgeon. "He had enough skin, but no functioning hand ... by the time he got to us. When he looked at his hand at the time of his wound, when he put the tourniquet on, he had tissue -- skin and broken bones. But no fingers or anything." Ficke is Petry's doctor, and also serves as the current chairman of the Department of Orthopedics and Rehabilitation at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. He also became a friend with Petry. "We met when he was evacuated back to Brooke AMC," Ficke said. "I was on call when he came in to the hospital. He was brought in with a group of patients who were injured in Afghanistan." While it was by chance that Petry landed in Ficke's hospital while he was on duty, the doctor admits he kind of knew Petry was coming. Ficke and Petry's commander had served together in Iraq. "He emailed me and said to look out for him," Ficke said. "I knew that Sergeant Petry was going to be one of the guys who I was going to have a relationship with for a long time." Petry was in his late 20s at the time he was wounded and Ficke said it was devastating for a young man -- in the prime of his life -- to suffer such a catastrophic wound. "This is a guy who was a very active guy, a Ranger," Ficke said. "He had just come back from Afghanistan -- evacuated out. But a week before that, in the prime of health, fighting over there with his buddies." From the beginning though, Ficke said Petry was gunning to get back to the fight. "He wanted to stay in the Army, very much," he said. "He wanted to deploy again, he wanted to restore his life as much as he could. We talked a lot about what was possible and what we could help him with." Petry said he drew inspiration from those around him in the hospital -- from fellow Soldiers with severe burns and "phenomenal attitudes," to those with injuries similar to his own. "The first person that came and visited me in the hospital was a female," Petry said. "She was a double-amputee above the elbow. She had the greatest attitude. She was hanging out with the guys, having a great time. To see that kind of reaction, I thought I have nothing to complain about." Ficke said that he was able to close Petry's wound over his wrist, so the Ranger had available a functioning wrist that could provide rotation. Ideally, a prosthetic hand would fit over that and he would use his own wrist to rotate the hand. But his own wrist was not as capable as it could have been, Ficke said. "Sometimes his own ability to turn that wrist would not be as good as some of the prosthesis," Ficke said. "He and I and the prosthetist, all kind of talked and decided to have a shorter forearm and take away that wrist so that he could have a prosthesis that would do that with motors." Removing a living part of his body to replace it with a more capable mechanical equivalent might be a tough choice -- but Petry said he's pleased with the results. "It's a great hand," Petry said. "It's got a couple of sensors built in underneath the casting right above the skin. What'll happen is, every muscle contraction you make will send signals up to the hand. Each finger, when it meets resistance, it will stop. So you got more dexterity to grab round shapes and stuff like that and this particular hand is able to have a couple of other modes, where you can pinch and so a grasp." Petry's prosthetist built a fitting to slide over Petry's forearm so the hand can attach, and also placed sensors to pick up electrical signals from his muscles. After working with a therapist, Petry's robotic hand moves with the very signals he used to use to control his own hand. "Occupational therapy was great," he said. The therapist had Petry practice doing exercises, manipulating small objects so he could learn dexterity in his new hand. "I used it everywhere," he said. "Actually, I got myself into trouble with recovery -- I wore the arm too long and didn't let my limb get used to it and so I swelled up and I couldn't wear it for a couple days." Now Petry is pretty adept with his new robotic hand -- and is using it back home with his family, and as he moves throughout the Army meeting new people who are interested in his story. "I could shake people's hands today. I'm meeting people all the time. It feels great to actually shake their hands with my right hand," he said. "I'm fortunate they have this type of medical technology. I thought I was going to end up with a set of hooks -- and I got those as well. But when they handed me a prosthetic hand that functions pretty darn close to a real thing, I was ecstatic." Petry was injured in May 2008, and didn't actually make it home permanently until April 2009 -- a span of more than 10 months. "When I actually got back it was great, I got back on Easter day," he said. "I got to have fun with the kids. It was special." It was two things, Petry said, that he thought about as he healed -- and that drove him to push through the therapy so he could get back to the people he wanted to be around. "My family, and my second family -- the 2nd Ranger Battalion," he said. "I used to joke with my wife. I used to tell her hey I got my Alpha and Bravo team leaders at work. And you're my Charlie team leader. We're all one big happy family. I really wanted to get back and see the guys. I really miss the unit, the camaraderie, the high spirit. And to keep doing what I can for the Army." COMING HOME TO NORMAL Petry's got more than himself and his fellow Rangers to concern himself with. Like a lot of Soldiers, he's got a wife and kids that worry about him while he battles for freedom in Afghanistan. Petry and his wife Ashley have four children: Brittany, Austin, Reagan and Landon. Ashley first heard about her husband's wounds when some Soldiers came to their front door -- a day her mother was visiting to help with the kids. "It was Memorial Day morning and the kids were out of school," she said. "We'd slept in late and my mom was in town -- she comes in often when he deploys. I was still in pajamas. The doorbell rang -- and we've always been briefed as spouses if they come to your door what they would be dressed in and how many would be there if there was a casualty." She said she knew by the way the Soldiers were dressed -- and how many of them there were -- that Petry had not been killed. But she knew something was wrong. "I looked through the peep hole and you see the tan berets and the uniform -- my heart just sank," she said. "I just remember being numb. And after that morning I always was very sad and would cry when I'd see things on TV when other families lost their family members overseas, but now I have that feeling." Less than a week later, Ashley and the kids could meet up with Petry -- the first time they'd seen him since he'd deployed. "I think the acceptance came when we were actually able to bring the kids to Texas and they could see him," Ashley said. Initially concerned about their youngest, Ashley said she didn't know what to expect when the boy would see his dad for the first time without an arm. "But he ran straight to him. And from day one, he's had a nickname for it -- that's Nubby. He calls it Nubby," she said. The boy refers to his dad's shortened forearm -- his stump -- by a nickname. "Even when I'm gone on the road, I'll call late at night and tell him goodnight," Petry said. "He'll say tell Nubby goodnight for me." Both Petry and his wife say he's made some changes at home -- but has otherwise adjusted to life with his new mechanical hand. Ashley, initially concerned Petry would need assistance with everyday tasks, said he has turned down offers of help. Instead, he's become skilled doing all the things other Soldiers do for themselves -- but with one mechanical hand. "From the day I went to the hospital, he was doing everything himself," she said. That included such things as shaving and cutting his fingernails. "He didn't want help. At home we don't see him as injured. He sometimes forgets he has the prosthetic." Petry even shakes hands with new people using his prosthetic -- something others might be uncomfortable with, but something he said he is proud of. On a March trip to Washington, D.C., he got to use his new hand to greet Army leaders. Despite some adjustments which Petry said do in fact require him to ask his family for help, and which he said means he gets more interaction with his kids -- he has actually learned to do some things with his prosthetic that he didn't do before. "I picked up golf with my golf attachment," he said. PROUD RANGER Petry's been a Ranger since after basic training. And he wasn't the first in his family to do so. "My cousin was actually serving in the 2nd Ranger Battalion when I was finishing up high school, debating on when or what I was going to do," he said. "He explained a lot to me what the regiment did, and that was a sell for me." Petry said after being sold on the Rangers by his cousin, he had made up his mind to follow in his footsteps. After completion of One Station Unit Training, the Basic Airborne Course and the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program -- all at Fort Benning, Ga. -- Petry got assigned to 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. Today, Petry holds his unit, and his Ranger team members in high esteem. "They're my Ranger brothers," he said. "They're great guys, all of them. And they are definitely guys you'd want to be at the front lines with. I'm glad they were there that day with me." Petry said he has honored his fellow fallen Rangers -- the ones he calls real heroes -- by keeping their names as close to him as possible. "I've got all the names of the 2/75 Rangers we've lost on my prosthetic arm," he said. "As much as I like to say remember the fallen heroes, those are the true heroes, who sacrificed it all. I didn't sacrifice anything more than anyone else who is out there." SOLDIERING ON Despite his injuries, Petry recently re-upped in the Army for eight more years, which will take him to a full 20 years of service. Petry is the ninth servicemember to have been named a recipient of the Medal of Honor for actions in Afghanistan or Iraq. Of prior recipients, all but Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta were awarded the honor posthumously. Included among those recipients are Spc. Ross A. McGinnis, Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith, Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor, and Marine Corps Cpl. Jason L. Dunham, all for actions in Iraq. Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta, Staff Sgt. Robert Miller, Sgt. 1st Class Jared C. Monti and Navy Lt. Michael P. Murphy were awarded the Medal of Honor for actions in Afghanistan. Petry currently serves as a liaison officer for the United States Special Operations Command Care Coalition-Northwest Region, and provides oversight to wounded warriors, ill and injured servicemembers and their families. He enlisted in the United States Army from his hometown of Santa Fe, N.M. in September 1999. Petry has served as a grenadier, squad automatic rifleman, fire team leader, squad leader, operations sergeant, and weapons squad leader. He has deployed eight times in support of the War on Terror, with two tours to Iraq and six tours to Afghanistan. Army to implement 63 Decker-Wagner acquisition recommendations [2011-07-22] WASHINGTON -- The Army will implement 63 of the recommendations put forth in the final report of an Army acquisition review that was charted by the service's secretary. Since 1996, the Army has spent over $1 billion a year on programs that were ultimately canceled. Since 2004, that number has been between $3.3 and $3.8 billion dollars -- anywhere from 35 to 42 percent of the Army's development, testing and evaluation budget. Those details and proposed solutions to improve the Army's acquisition community are detailed in a report released by the Army, July 21. The report, "Army Strong: Equipped, Trained and Ready" is the final result of an Army acquisition review chartered by Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh to look into the Army's acquisition processes. The panel that produced the report was chaired by Gilbert Decker, a former Army acquisition chief, as well as Gen. Lou Wagner, the now retired former chief of the Army Materiel Command. In the report, Decker and Wagner say the Army needs to continue to field the best equipment to Soldiers -- but that there are four challenges to meeting that requirement. Chief among those challenges, the assertion that core competencies of the requirements and acquisition community have eroded over the past 20 years and are "in urgent need of repair." The report also says the number of personnel overseeing the acquisition process is rising, while the number of "qualified, accountable professionals charged to develop and produce the product" is going down. Also a challenge is the non-collaborative nature of the acquisition process, where the report says there are "multiple opportunities for oversight staffs to question and challenge requirements." Approval time for major acquisition programs can be anywhere from 15 to 18 months, the report says, and the challenges of synchronizing the acquisition cycle with the budget cycle can mean "program starts can occur two to three years after the operational need was identified." The Army acquisition process "has proved ineffective and inefficient," the report reads, and well-intentioned steps to improve it have been "counterproductive." It goes on to say that "even with this laborious process, new weapon systems continue to enter engineering and manufacturing development prematurely with technological risk, leaving a legacy of program cost overruns, reduced quantities fielded and terminations." More than 70 recommendations were put forth in the Decker-Wagner report to improve the Army's acquisition process -- the same process that procures weapons systems and combat vehicles. The Secretary of the Army wrote in a July 15 memo that the Army will implement the 57 recommendations the Army can do on its own, and will address six additional recommendations that require input from outside the Army. Thomas E. Hawley, the deputy under secretary of the Army, has been appointed by McHugh to lead implementation of the recommendations. "After ten years at war it's time to retrench and look at how and what we are doing," in acquisition, Hawley said, adding that the acquisition of weapons systems, is "extraordinarily complex" and procurement of any system requires "constant scrutiny and adjustment." The Army Acquisition Review, he said, is a start to fixing acquisition. "We see this study as a useful framework for our internal reform efforts and we will address each issue in some way." Among the recommendations the Army will implement is to put limitations on the number of key performance parameters and key system attributes, or KSAs, in program. In a report by the Army that spells out which of the Decker-Wagner after-action review recommendations will be implemented, the Army acknowledges "the number of key performance parameters and key system attributes in requirements documents has a significant impact on cost and schedule." Also a recommendation is giving industry the flexibility to provide the government cost-effective and timely designs, by making KSAs "tradable." Industry might be able to say, for instance, that if the Army were willing to accept a design that didn't meet all of its requirements, a design could be produced at a lesser cost or in a more timely manner than if all KSAs had to be met. "Industry must have flexibility in trading KSAs in order to drive designs to cost-effective proposals that can be achieved on realistic timetables," the Army wrote in its own report. "In developing requests for proposals for future systems, the Army must carefully tailor KSAs that support the acquisition strategy by establishing threshold and objective values for each." Heidi Shyu, acting assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, spoke specifically about requirements for development of Army systems. She said it's important for the service to develop requirements documents keeping in mind what is possible. "What we are doing now that's different is looking at the trade space before we say we want this capability," Shyu said. "The Army is absolutely dedicated and committed to an affordable, achievable and realistic approach to acquisition." Shyu said that when asking for capabilities in a new system, the technology might not be mature enough to support them. "(When) you are pushing the envelope to achieve the capability you'd like to have with immature technologies, that takes time to develop," she said. "The schedule stretches, and you have an optimistic schedule you can't achieve." Schedules slips, she said, cost money. "What are the knobs we can turn to dial down our appetite? Understanding that is absolutely tantamount to designing and developing a program that is achievable and affordable and realizable." The Army is already engaged in practices to overhaul its acquisition programs, Shyu said, adding that the Army welcomes the report's findings Among efforts already underway is an increase in competitive prototyping prior to acquisition milestone B decisions. This means that competing vendors on a project might provide prototype vehicles for extensive evaluation before the Army downselects to fewer vendors on a contract. This means that any bugs can be worked out before a program moves into production. Also underway is an increase in the purchase of technical data packages, or TDPs, from defense contractors. The TDP is the body of technical, scientific, research, engineering data and schematics that industry has produced in its development of a product. The Army can purchase the TDP, and with full ownership, can recomplete for production at lower costs. Shyu also said the Army has been doing "capability portfolio reviews" as a cost cutting measure -- looking at the entire range of what the Army has already and finding redundancies in capability. Also an effort on the part of the Army: looking to industry for technologies that are already developed, as in "commercial, off-the-shelf" technologies. "There are things we can leverage from the commercial industry," said Shyu. Things like computer processors would fall into that category. But something like munitions, for instance, is something she said only the Army has a real interest in developing. ASAP, Army to fill 130 substance abuse counselor positions [2011-07-27] WASHINGTON -- The Army needs 130 substance- abuse counselor positions filled as soon as possible -- or at least by Oct. 1. The Army Substance Abuse Program is short on providers who can help restore to duty those substance-impaired Soldiers who have the potential for continued military service. The Army needs about 10 additional providers each at Soldier strongholds like Fort Hood, Texas; Fort Bragg, N.C.; Fort Jackson, Miss.; and Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. The service also needs providers overseas in places like Grafenwoehr, Germany and Camp Humphreys, Korea. For only a week, beginning Aug. 1, the Army will accept applications -- as part of an expedited hiring process -- to bring new counselors on board. And the Army is willing to pay competitively to get those providers to sign up. Providers will earn anywhere from $50,000 to $93,000 a year, depending on their location. And along with the salary comes some hefty benefits. "When you consider the benefits package the Department of the Army offers -- health and life insurance, matching contributions toward Thrift Savings Plan, and leave -- I think it's extremely competitive," said Joy Krush, chief of MEDCELL at the Army Civilian Human Resources Agency. Also authorized to bring qualified substance-abuse counselors on board are directed recruiting bonuses, relocation incentive and even student loan payback. "We do what we can to be competitive in the marketplace," said Dr. Les McFarling, director of the Army Substance Abuse Program. "With a big push, we can get ourselves over the top with this 130." McFarling said the Army knew it had a shortage of substance-abuse counselors back in 2008, when the service started getting Soldiers back from combat and there were waiting lines to see substance-abuse counselors. The Army's vice chief of staff made it a "top issue" to rectify the situation in 2009, McFarling said. "We're pushing to get more folks," McFarling said, saying the Army has a target of reaching about 562 total counselors Army-wide to meet the needs of Soldiers. The 130 it's looking for now will fill the shortfall it currently has. "We've been working toward that target since March 2010," he said. "And it's been a struggle." McFarling said it's not just the Army that has a shortage of substance-abuse counselors -- nationwide, he estimates, the United States could use an additional 30,000 counselors. Perhaps making it a bit easier for the Army to find counselors are laws that allow practitioners who work as employees of the U.S. military to practice in any state -- regardless of what state they are licensed in -- so long as they are practicing on a military installation. "A license from any state can be used on an Army installation, regardless of where that installation is," Krush said. Krush said the Army is especially looking for providers with independent licenses -- meaning they can work alone -- coupled with substance-abuse certification. Those without a substance-abuse certification, must get one within a year, she said. And she also added that the Army is willing to "accept a non-independent license if the individual has the substance-abuse certification" already. While some civilian mental health providers might be reticent to sign up to help Soldiers, or to be part of the military lifestyle, Krush said it's important to know that already, as many as 60 percent of everyone engaged in providing health care in Army hospitals and clinics are civilians. "I do think there is a general lack of knowledge that we have these civilian positions," she said. According to Krush, there is no mobility or deployment requirement as part of the job, and no positions to fill in war zones. "They will be able to choose a location," she said. To get assistance from the ASAP, Soldiers can self-refer or be referred by their commanders. McFarling said last year, about 11,000 Soldiers were provided assistance from ASAP for alcohol-related problems, while about 1,900 got assistance for other drugs. "And the more counselors we have, the better opportunity we have to help Soldiers, and in some cases, to help save a Soldier's life." Those interested in applying can visit http://medcell.army.mil/spotlight.asp?id=20 for more information. Soldiers transfer materiel in Iraq drawdown [2011-08-04] WASHINGTON -- With a massive departure from Iraq looming at the end of this year, U.S. forces there are busy divvying up gear to either send it home, send it to Afghanistan, or hand it over to the Iraqis. Maj. Gen. Thomas J. Richardson, the U.S. Forces-Iraq J4, said his command is using multiple legal authorities to ensure the proper disposal of government-owned property. "We have a very deliberate process here of how we are going to close out what we have been doing here for the past several years," he said. "(And to) make sure we are good stewards of the American taxpayer's dollars -- that's very important to us. We want to make sure we have good accountability and we have auditable trails of where the equipment is going." Richardson spoke from Iraq, during a telephone media event regarding USF-I's role as they begin re-posturing forces in that country. Operation New Dawn began with 94 military sites in Iraq, in September 2010. Today, that's down to 48 sites. Seven more sites will shut down in August, Richardson said. "We've been shutting sites down throughout this last year," he said. The land those sites are on doesn't belong to the U.S. government or military. That's "real" property. But there is personal property there -- things to sustain the buildings, the generators, the air conditioners and other things that can be transferred when the land goes back to the Iraqis. "FOB (forward operating base) in a box," Richardson said -- characterizing the way USF-I returns military sites to the Iraqis. "The containerized housing units, T-walls, jersey barriers, water and fuel tanks, air conditioning units, generators, refrigerators, freezers, port-a-johns, beds and mattresses, office equipment, tents, guard shacks, dining facility equipment, washers and dryers." It's everything the Iraqis will need, at least at the start, to sustain their operations on those sites when they take them back from the Americans. Other items, like forklifts, fire department equipment, other types of large trucks -- non-tactical vehicles for instance -- can also be transferred, but Richardson said USF-I needs "additional authority" to do so. So far, Richardson said, about $157 million in property from Operation Iraqi Freedom 1 has been transferred, and about $247 million in property from Operation New Dawn. Property value is not based on purchase price -- but instead on its value after having been in use since 2003. "That's gone to various ministries: Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Defense, other security forces, other ministries," Richardson said. Richardson said more than 67,000 items have been slated for transfer to the Government of Iraq, and USF-I is about 58 percent complete on the process. Some property, weapon systems in particular, may also be sold to the Iraqis instead of being transferred at no cost. New task force to focus on renewable energy [2011-08-11] WASHINGTON -- A new Energy Initiatives Office Task Force will help the Army face challenges associated with rising fuel costs. The formation of the new office was announced Aug. 10 by Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh during a presentation at the GovEnergy Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is expected the task force will be fully operational by Sept. 15, and will help develop the large-scale renewable energy projects the Army will need to achieve energy security, Army officials said. Energy security means ensuring there is always energy available to continue the Army mission uninterrupted, even if the civilian power grid is unavailable. "The Energy Initiatives Office Task Force will help the Army build resilience through renewable energy while streamlining our business practices so developers can invest in and build an economically viable, large-scale renewable energy infrastructure," said McHugh. "To meet a goal of 25-percent renewable energy by 2025, the Army must use every opportunity to be energy efficient and draw power from alternative and/or renewable energy sources." During a press conference via telephone that followed McHugh's announcement in Ohio, the secretary, along with Katherine Hammack -- assistant secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment -- discussed the implications of the new task force and the goals the Army has for it. The new task force is part of IE & E. "This is focused entirely on (the continental United States) and large-scale renewable, almost utility-scale renewable projects, on CONUS, that would offset all or part of the energy needs of a permanent installation," Hammack said. "When we are looking at projects, we are looking at about the 10-megawatt size, plus or minus a little bit. Or it could be larger. We are looking at large-scale renewable energy projects, on Army installations." McHugh said the Army has about 126 renewable energy projects ongoing, including one at Fort Irwin, Calif., where a solar-energy project will cover a land mass "about the size of the island of Manhattan." But the Army is looking to develop even more partnerships, McHugh said. "What we are looking toward is a better partnership and an infusion quite frankly of private-sector investments where it would be a win-win situation," McHugh said. Such situation would be one where the Army gets a reliable and local source of energy, while the developer, who builds the project, gets both a full-time, guaranteed customer in the Army -- along with the ability to sell excess electricity to the local power grid, McHugh said. According to an Army press release, investment by industry will need to be about $7.1 billion over the next 10 years in order for the Army to meet its enhanced energy security goals. It's expected with that level of investment, about 2.1 million megawatt hours of power can be generated annually for the Army. "The task force I announced today is specifically directed toward basically power production," McHugh said. "We're looking to meet our goal of renewable energy utilization by 2025." Hammock said that despite concerns the Army has been characterized as "difficult to deal with," she feels confident the energy task force will help the Army and industry partner to meet the 25-percent renewable energy goal. "We have great individuals at our garrisons who are working hard to advance this, but the energy initiatives task force will be staffed with experts in finance, renewable technologies, project management, and work in concert with the garrisons to expedite these projects so they can be executed in appropriate time frames," Hammack said. Free books for active duty under G.I. Bill changes [2011-08-12] WASHINGTON -- Active duty Soldiers and their spouses will soon be able to get funding for books and supplies as part of the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill. Beginning Oct. 1, active duty members and their spouses can receive up to $1,000 for books and supplies, per academic year, as part of the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill. Active duty members were not previously eligible for the books and supplies funding. Additional benefits to servicemembers and veterans include reimbursement of fees for exams used for admission to colleges. Such exams include the ACT, GMAT or SAT. Changes to the bill also mean reimbursement for more than one licensing or certification examination. Additionally, there are expanded benefits for non-college degree programs, on-the-job training, apprenticeship training, flight programs and correspondence training. "I think the great thing about these changes (is) that it brings a lot more training options under the umbrella of this already robust program," said Keith Wilson, director of education service at the Department of Veterans Affairs. New enrollees in the program will also find that if they are entitled to the housing allowance (active duty and their spouses are not) they can receive that benefit while enrolled in certificate or other non-college degree programs or even long-distance learning. Those enrolled in distance learning could receive up to 50 percent of the housing allowance provided to those who enrolled in on-campus education programs. The housing allowance for those in resident training is now prorated based on a student's course load. A student taking a course load that is approximately 80 percent of what a school deems "full time," would receive 80 percent of the housing allowance. Housing allowance for an in-resident student taking a full load is equivalent to the basic housing allowance for an E-5 with dependants. Additional changes to benefits under the bill include elimination of housing payments for even short gap periods between enrollments. In the past, during the less-than-one-month breaks between semesters, beneficiaries could continue to receive housing payments. But that is no longer the case, Wilson said. While Wilson said VA is working to keep students informed of the changes, students will have to practice some "sound financial management" on their own to make rent payments during the short non-enrollment periods between semesters. Wilson pointed out that under the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, beneficiaries have never received housing allowance during the three-month summer break. Wilson added that, when beneficiaries did receive housing payment between enrollments, they were actually burning up part of their benefits. The bill provides for 36 months of benefits. If a student was getting just housing benefits for the nearly one-month period between the fall and spring semesters, for instance, that would burn up a month of benefits. The new change in law also affects payment eligibility, and now accounts for active duty service performed by National Guard members under Title 32. Secretary of Army announces transformation commission [2011-08-15] WASHINGTON -- The Army announced Aug. 15 the creation of a new commission to help transform the service and prepare it for inevitable cuts to the defense budget. "There is no question that our Army, indeed, the entire Department of Defense, is under tremendous, and I think we all understand, inescapable pressure to reduce costs," said Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh. In front of more than 100 members of the Senior Executive Service, McHugh announced creation of an "Institutional Army Transformation Commission" -- a longer-term version of what the secretary had already started with a temporary transformation task force. "That commission will do on a more extended basis the important work that has already begun under the current temporary task force -- with a more enduring, longer-term effort," McHugh said. "The commission will continue to function for the next three years. This longer-term approach is historically and practically necessary." What's already been started, McHugh told senior Army civilian leaders, are efforts to eliminate redundancies in research and development, to review "temporary organizations" which the secretary said all-too-often have a tendency to become permanent, to streamline Army requirements processes, to optimize Army acquisition, and to make changes in human capital management. The secretary also told leaders the Army is top-heavy on civilian personnel, and is manned at nearly 18,000 over its authorization. "Those over-hires need to be rationalized," he said. McHugh told civilian leaders that while transformation would not be easy, it would streamline the Army, and it would also leave the Army with a smaller workforce. The Army only recently announced nearly 9,000 civilian positions must be cut. The secretary also said the director of the Army staff would ensure "only the most qualified" personnel are chosen to serve on the commission -- those who "possess the skill sets and expertise required." "If we don't do this ourselves," McHugh said of Army transformation, "it will be done for us -- to us -- and we risk being salami-sliced and hollowed out. This is our chance, it is our moment to lead and innovate, to restructure and transform." Suicide awareness video aimed at first-line supervisors [2011-08-19] WASHINGTON -- A new suicide prevention awareness video just released by the Army is aimed primarily at both junior leadership and first-line supervisors, to let them know their responsibility to be the first to identify and assist those in need. "It is with the junior leader where the big difference is made," said Walter Morales, chief of the Army Suicide Prevention Program. "We want to have the junior leader take the reins of their subordinate personnel -- to include family members -- and provide them with the right know-how in order to not only stay personally resilient, but also impart those behaviors onto those who may be thinking about suicide or going through a stressful situation." The new video is called "Shoulder to Shoulder: Finding Strength and Hope Together." The video contains actual vignettes from Soldiers, Department of the Army Civilians, and family members, about their own suicide attempts, or the suicide of a loved one. It is the third such "Shoulder to Shoulder" video the Army has produced regarding suicide awareness since 2009's "No Soldier Stands Alone." Morales said chaplains and professional mental (behavioral) health providers are important assets for the Army, but as important, is the first-line supervisors who can make the most impact in preventing suicides in the Army Family ranks. "The video encourages first-line supervisors and junior leaders to intervene early in order to stop problems from escalating," Morales said. "This requires a lot of courage and at times, personal sacrifice as the intervention process may require a lot of time, but it simply has to be done." The first-line supervisor has a role, and that role is to connect, assist, and make sure these personnel have the resources needed to avoid a needless loss." The nearly 20-minute video features real Soldiers, DA Civilians, family members, and survivors -- not actors -- who talk about their experiences with the loss of a loved one, pain, and suicide. "If it wasn't for that supervisor -- who didn't have any suicide prevention training, he was simply watching his Soldier, I wouldn't be sitting in front of you today," one Soldier said on camera. "I would be dead." In another segment, the wife of a Soldier who had killed himself talked about her loss -- and lamented that her young daughter would never know her father. Also in the video, an Army officer, a commander, reemphasized the role of leadership in helping Soldiers overcome suicide. Morales also emphasized that "We can't let the Soldiers and families struggle with this independently, we can't let our hired professionals alone help them. Leaders have got to be brought in to the fact that it's okay to say 'I'm not okay.' And to allow the members of our Army family to go get help." Morales also said that one very important aspect of the video is to help decrease the stigma associated with seeking behavioral health assistance. "We, as leaders, must continue to get the message out that we understand the challenges, that we care, and that we stand ready to help heal those invisible wounds with dignity and respect," he said. While Morales said it is difficult to measure the long-term effectiveness of videos such as those in the "Shoulder to Shoulder" series, he did say that training with such videos provides participants with "a higher level of understanding and competence that allows the person to know and practice those healthy behaviors that are focused in protecting life." He also said surveys indicate the training is on target, is relevant, effective, and that it needs to be continued. Suicides have risen in recent years among our Soldier population. Although a slight dip was noticed on active duty suicide rate in 2010. Regardless of the number of suicides, one suicide is one too many, and the Army will continue to provide all necessary resources to promote health, reduce risk, and prevent suicidal behaviors. The video "Shoulder to Shoulder: Finding Strength and Hope Together" can be found online at www.preventsuicide.army.mil. Responders remember 9/11 at Pentagon [2011-08-24] WASHINGTON -- "You never recover completely. You always want to remember the people who perished. I think that is the lesson of 9/11: You can never be complacent." Col. Franklin Childress, with the Army's Office of the Chief of Public Affairs and a dozen or more first responders, survivors and witnesses to the terrorist attack at the Pentagon, gathered Aug. 23, outside the building near the memorial built to honor those lost their lives that day 10 years ago, to meet with members of the press corps to share their stories. Childress had arrived in Washington, D.C., for his assignment at the Pentagon, just a week before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack there. Initially, he'd expected his household goods to be delivered to his new place Sept. 6, but clerical errors kept his stuff from arriving. "I called and they said, 'sorry, the transportation clerk has dropped the ball, we found your paperwork in his inbox,'" Childress recalled. Instead, the then-lieutenant colonel was offered a new delivery date -- Sept. 10 or 11. He chose the latter. "That was a decision that saved my life," Childress said. "I was in the personnel office then -- 26 people around my desk were all killed. Had I been there I would have been dead." The colonel said he heard the plane hit the Pentagon -- his apartment was less than a mile from the crash site. "I thought it was a sonic boom from Regan National Airport. I had no idea. I had no frame of reference. I wasn't watching TV. I didn't know New York City had happened," he said. It was his pastor from a previous assignment that called him and told him to turn on the television. "I saw the second World Trade Center tower fall. I thought the world was coming to an end." Childress said he put on his uniform and made his way over to the Pentagon to help out to "be a stretcher bearer or whatever," but the FBI was already there and wouldn't let him in. "They said it was a crime scene," he said. By the next day, those who would be let in to help out were already on their way. Up in Maryland, for instance, members of the National Guard there had been activated since the attack happened, and arrived on scene at the Pentagon the next morning. Sgt. 1st Class John Richter, with the Maryland National Guard's 202th Military Police Company, served as a squad leader in 2001, and provided security on the 5th floor of the building, near the crash site. He was a staff sergeant at the time. "When we first arrived you could see smoke coming up from the Pentagon still," Richter said. "We were escorted up to the 5th floor, and still there was smoke coming from the crash site. A lot of us didn't know the extent of the destruction." Also working security in the building, Staff Sgt. Bruce McGrath, also part of the Maryland National Guard. He was a specialist at the time, and he worked the same floor as Richter. He said his job was "not let anyone past my point. Because beyond that was the crash site." Seeing the devastation, he said he was "overwhelmed -- there's no other word." When he and the other members of his unit heard about what had happened, that the event had been perpetrated by Osama BinLaden, "everybody wanted to go get him and do their part. And you know, come here and help. We wanted to do something. And we did. We were able to contribute," McGrath said. Master Sgt. Aarion Franklin of the 290th Military Police Company, Maryland National Guard, said the scene he saw when he arrived was not what he was expecting. "What we expected to see was something pretty much contained -- it had been 12 hours," Franklin said. "But when we got here, the building was partially collapsed, there were still flames and there was a lot of smoke. And hundreds of first responders were all over the place. It was definitely not what I anticipated." Franklin was a sergeant at the time of the attack, and has been to Afghanistan and Iraq since then. As a Guardsman, he has a civilian job as a planner with the Maryland Department of Transportation -- though now he's been activated in preparation for an upcoming deployment. At the Pentagon, on Sept. 12, he worked outside the building securing the perimeter of the crash site so first responders could do their work, putting out fires, and finding bodies in the rubble. Franklin said he didn't have to go in the building to know what was going on inside, though. "All my work was on the outside. And when they brought a body out, work stopped," he said. Childress is now back at the Pentagon. And today, he still sees people in the hallways there he knew from 10 years ago, when the building was attacked. "I think we become a family that day, we really bonded after 9/11," he said. "Because of the tragedy, a lot of people in G-1 came together and those people who are still working in the building -- I'm very close to. I see them in the hall, and it's like seeing a family member. I think that's what I got out of it was that closeness -- experiencing tragedy and coming out of it as a stronger team." Dempsey to move on as chairman of Joint Chiefs [2011-09-07] WASHINGTON -- As a new chief of staff of the Army prepares to run the largest of the services, the outgoing Gen. Martin E. Dempsey now prepares for his new role as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was during a ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington, Va., Sept. 7, where Dempsey handed the reins of the Army over to Gen. Ray Odierno. Dempsey will become the senior-most officer in the U.S. military when Adm. Mullen retires Sept. 30. Following the Army change of responsibility ceremony, Dempsey commented on his time as the lead officer in the Army, on challenges the service faces, and on challenges faced by the Department of Defense. "The challenges we face are not new," Dempsey said of potential cuts to both budget and manpower in the Army. "The Army by its nature, over the course of history, has always expanded and contracted as conflicts demanded and post-conflicts came. So the challenge is not new." He also said the Army has learned from previous experience with post-conflict situations and continues to learn to deal with changes. "What makes this one a little bit unique is that the conflict doesn't have any clean endings, so it's not that we are about to have sort of a post-conflict reduction, it's that we've decided that because of the nation's economic state and because the security environment around the world is as stable as it's ever going to be, we've decided that we can absorb some resource cuts," he said. To avoid becoming a "hollow force," Dempsey said, it is imperative the Army dial back in balance -- pulling all the right "levers" equally. "Whether we hollow it or not will largely depend on whether we have the ability to do it by turning all those levers -- manpower, force structure, maintenance, equipment, training, and infrastructure. As long as I can change and account for all those factors, then we won't hollow out. But if I have to take a disproportionate change in any one of those accounts: more maintenance, or more equipment, or more manpower -- that's how you become out of balance. And that's where 'hollow' starts to resonate. But we have some control over that." The general also said he didn't expect the Army would take the biggest hits in terms of budget cuts. "I don't look at it that way," he said. "I think we have got to decide what does the future security environment demand? And where will our priority be? We can't be everything to all people everywhere. We have to at some point prioritize our efforts. And that may mean that one service or another is the main effort as we describe it militarily. And that service may have a greater share of the resources." Dempsey said as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he and the Secretary of Defense will make those kinds of decisions and provide military advice about the needs of the nation, and then added "if you're going to declare something the main event, you have to resource it." On his job as the Army's chief of staff, Dempsey said he'd like to be known as a chief that "got the people right." "If we get the people right, then we will figure out how to equip them, how to train them, how to develop them," he said. "Then that is when you have an Army, and a military, that actually can do what the nation asks it to do." New Army chief of staff warns of challenges [2011-09-07] WASHINGTON -- After assuming responsibility as the Army's new chief of staff, Gen. Ray Odierno discussed challenges ranging from transnational terrorism to "uncertainty of the Arab Spring," to looming resource cuts, and he called for caution to avoid a hollowing of the force. Before an auditorium full of members of Congress, current and former leaders in the Department of Defense, Soldiers, and family members at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Va., Odierno took an oath as the 38th chief of staff of the Army. "I pledge I will work with all the Joint Chiefs and our service secretaries and the secretary of Defense, as we face these very difficult challenges," Odierno said. "But I do have a word of caution. We must avoid our historical pattern of drawing down too fast and getting too small. Especially since our record of predicting the future is frankly not a very good one. So as we make difficult resource decisions we must be thoughtful and understanding of the risk we incur to the future security of this great nation." Odierno said the Army must continue to provide combatant commanders a trained and ready Army to ensure the United States prevails in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In order to do that, he said, the nation must sustain the all-volunteer Army and continue to develop leaders and commitment to the profession of arms. "Today is like no other in our history," said the new chief of staff. "It is a time of uncertainty and historic change. We face a multitude of security challenges such as transnational and regional terrorism [from] places like Yemen and Somalia, North Africa, and Pakistan's federally-administered tribal areas. "We have the uncertainty of the Arab Spring," he said about the revolts in North Africa and elsewhere. He warned of the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the challenges of rising national powers. "All of that is underpinned by our own fiscal challenges," he said. "The strength of our nation is our Army," Odierno said. "The strength of our Army is our Soldiers. The strength of our Soldiers is our families. This is what makes us 'Army strong."' Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta praised Odierno, and commented on his ascent to the top military position in the Army. "He brings a wealth of combat experience, with three long deployments to Iraq that totaled over 50 months," Panetta said. "After leading the 4th Infantry Division in the early years of that war, he later returned, as General' Petraeus' right-hand man." Panetta said Odierno was the operational architect of the troop surge that "turned the tide" in Iraq. The general was commander of Multi-National Corp-Iraq during those days and later became the overall commander in Iraq, from 2008 to 2010. "A very crucial time when our military was trying to make sure we lock in the gains that were made with the surge," Panetta said. After having sworn in his new chief of staff, Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh commented on the "transfer of responsibility" of the Army -- the name of the process is different for the chief of staff than it is for a command position -- saying it is a reflection of American democracy. "The transfer of authority from one CSA to another [takes place] not with weapons, not with force -- as we have seen in so many places across the planet in recent days -- but with honor and tradition and even reverence," McHugh said. "It's a credit to our democratic principles and a credit to our nation, and to the military's respect of civilian authority. But most importantly, it's a credit to the selfless men and women of profound character and conviction who take up arms and don uniforms in defense of our nation, our liberties and our freedom." McHugh, a former congressman from New York, said Odierno brings to his position as the new chief of staff "impeccable credentials as a Soldier, [and] as a leader," and noted that the general had commanded units at every level during a career that has spanned more than 35 years. "As a testament to his leadership and acumen on the battlefield, General Odierno is only the second officer since Vietnam to command up to division, corps and Army level during the same conflict," McHugh said. The secretary said it was during Odierno's time in Iraq the two first met. Over a period of 10 years, McHugh said, he's visited Iraq about 14 times. "As I recall, Ray was there for just about every one of them," McHugh said. "Every time I returned to Washington thereafter, I felt better about our presence in that theater, better about our mission and better about the leadership in that nation, because of Ray Odierno." Odierno himself thanked many in the audience, including the members of the 1974 graduating class of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point -- his own classmates. The outgoing chief of staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, who had just passed responsibility for the Army to his counterpart, had these words for the Army's 38th chief of staff and for his wife, Linda. "I wish I could've gotten a few more things ironed out before you Ray, but you two know more about service and sacrifice than just about anybody we know," he said. "And you're going to be a terrific 38th chief." Dempsey, after serving just five months as the Army's chief of staff, will move on to assume new duties as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff following the Sept. 30 retirement of Adm. Michael G. Mullen. Soldiers top priority for new CSA [2011-09-09] WASHINGTON -- A day after being sworn in as the new chief of staff of the Army, Gen. Ray Odierno laid out some priorities for his tenure. Among those are ensuring the continued training and preparation of Soldiers to provide a ready force to combatant commanders, the development of Army leaders, the strengthening of family programs, and a desire for all Soldiers to be able to tell the "Army story." "Soldiers are the strength of our Army," Odierno said during a media roundtable event Thursday. "I must continue to provide trained and ready forces to Iraq and Afghanistan and in other places around the world where our presence is required. I also have to look to the future, 40 years out, and develop what I believe it is the right versatile mix of capabilities, formations and equipment which have the key characteristics that I think will be important in the future." Leadership development to accommodate the future environment is also critical, Odierno said. Future leaders must be adaptable, agile, and able to operate in a threat environment that includes a combination of regular warfare, irregular warfare, terrorist activity, and criminality. "We have to adapt their leader development programs," Odierno said. "We have incredibly good leaders today, but we have to continue to develop them to address the many complex problems that I think we're going to face in the future." The general said the best leaders create environments that allow individuals to grow and trust their subordinates. "The best units I have ever been associated with are those who think they're really good, who have an environment where people feel deal they are empowered, and they work together collectively to achieve a goal," Odierno said. "We can't have leaders who are risk averse, we can't have leaders who are micro-managers and don't trust their subordinates -- [that's ] the kind of toxic leadership that we can't afford." Odierno also said Soldier and family programs must be strengthened, and redundancies across programs must be removed to ensure the Army has "just the best programs that are capable of helping our families." Additionally, he wants Soldiers to make themselves available to tell the Army story. "I think the Army has a great story, and I think sometimes we don't tell that story," he said, saying Soldiers and leaders must "make ourselves available to discuss the issues, to discuss what's good about our Army." Budget and personnel cuts, Odierno said, will likely leave the Army smaller -- perhaps even smaller than the 520,000 directed by former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. "The initial reduction [to] 520,000, I think we all think is reasonable, based on the assumptions. And the assumption of that was that we would be coming out of Afghanistan in 2014," he said. "So if that assumption bears out, that number is one we certainly can sustain." But Odierno wasn't sure the initial plans for that many Soldiers would pan out in the end. "Do I think we'll end up at 520,000? Probably not," he said. The Army's new chief said what's important is that force reductions happen at a pace that allows the service to maintain its capabilities. "The important piece here when we talk about force structure and troop strength reductions is that we do it in such a way that we allow ourselves the flexibility and capability to expand," he said. "My comments have been: be careful of going too small too fast. And the reason I say that is because if you go too small too fast, it takes away your flexibility." If the Army would still be able to fight two wars at the same time with troop reductions is also something Odierno said is being looked at carefully now. "We're still doing some analysis," he said. "I think at 520, we could probably do it fairly close. Below 520, I don't know." 40 ribbons placed in memory at Pentagon Memorial [2011-09-09] WASHINGTON -- Family members, coworkers, and friends of those killed on 9/11 from the Office of the Administrative Assistant to the Secretary of the Army gathered near the Pentagon Memorial Friday to place "resilience ribbons" on benches dedicated to those lost. Before a sea of umbrellas and under a steady rain, Joyce E. Morrow, the administrative assistant to the secretary of the Army, spoke to the ceremony attendees just two days in advance of the 10th anniversary of the attack. "The 40 individuals we remember today had many roles: husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, friends and coworkers," Morrow said. "Your presence here today helps remind us how significant, and how special those 40 individuals were." At the time of the attack, it was J. B. Hudson who served as the administrative assistant. He stood to address the crowd, some who were there that day and who still work for the office. "As the members of the OAA family grieved their loss, they rose to the many challenges, and met every one of them in an exemplary manner," Hudson said. "Nearly a decade later, 9/11 is no less painful, and the threat to this American experiment in democracy, any less real. From those events, one very profound truth rises above all others: our nation is blessed with an incredible number of patriots who meet every challenge to our way of life with unbelievable grace and absolute determination. Today, I am blessed to be among the finest of those patriots." After Morrow and Hudson spoke, the names of those killed were read aloud, and a representative for each rose to collect a ribbon to be placed on their memorial bench in the Pentagon Memorial. "These ribbons represent the trinity of yesterday, today and tomorrow," Morrow said. "We will always have our sacred memories of yesterday. Some may still be difficult to revisit. Other memories may cause us moments of reflection, and still others may remind us of the good times we shared. Even in our darkest moments, we find hope and faith. Together we move forward in the spirit of healing and strength." After the 40 names were read, ceremony participants moved to the Pentagon Memorial to place the ribbons there on the benches. "Today was very important, to remember all those that were lost, but also to kind of celebrate the strength, the resiliency and the resolve of the survivors, the family members and the coworkers," Morrow said. "Being the 10th anniversary of the attack, it was a special moment to be able to reflect." Box check returns to company-grade OERs [2011-09-18] WASHINGTON -- For company-grade officers, the senior-rater "box check" will soon reappear on officer evaluation reports. The Army is making multiple changes to officer evaluation policy to better identify officer talent and potential. Those changes take effect Oct. 1, and apply to OERs with a "thru" date of Nov. 1 and later. Included among the changes are modifications to the senior-rater successive assignments list, accountability for completion of a multi-source assessment and feedback/360, a reduction in short-term evaluations, and the reintroduction of the senior-rater box check for company-grade officers. In addition, the OER support form will now be optional. The OER form -- DA FORM 67-9 -- now presents the "above center of mass," "center of mass," "below center of mass, retain," and "below center of mass, do not retain" check boxes for only those officers above the rank of captain. But for OERs with a "thru" date of Nov. 1 and later, the box check will be displayed for all Army officers, except chief warrant officers 5 and major generals. "We're bringing back honest feedback both for the rater and the senior rater. It goes back to rater accountability for fairly and accurately accessing their Soldiers," said George Piccirilli, chief, Evaluation, Selection & Promotion Division, Adjutant General Directorate, U.S. Army Human Resources Command. "When you bring back the senior- rater box check, we reinstate senior rater accountability to the company-grade officer." Piccirilli also said the box check better informs company-grade talent management by providing selection boards with information needed to "identify the best talent." The changes to officer evaluation will take place at the same time for all Army officers, including active duty, Army National Guard, and Army Reserve. Raters will also now indicate on the OER if an officer has completed the 360/Multi-Source Assessment Feedback. The 360/MSAF process is required of officers every three years -- though Piccirilli said not all officers knew that. Within the 360/MSAF program, officers ask their subordinates, peers and superiors to evaluate them -- the input is meant to help officers develop as leaders. While the input they get will not influence their OER -- or even appear on their OER, because only the officers themselves can see the information -- their participation will be noted on the OER form. "It has no impact on the evaluation," Piccirilli said. "It's just a tool that says it's important, and that you need to do one. It's kind of a forcing function." One box on the OER form now asks senior raters to "list three future assignments for which this officer is best suited." That instruction will change too as a result of the policy change. Instead, senior raters will now be asked to indicate "three successive assignments," instead of three future assignments. Senior raters will be asked to look "three to five years" into an officer's future, and suggest what their next three assignments should be. "Some senior raters were exaggerating, telling a young lieutenant he's the next corps commander," Piccirilli said. "So it kind of puts reality in, focusing on the future jobs for the officer." The list of next assignments not only serves selection boards, Piccirilli said, but also helps personnel specialists put officers into the right jobs. Finally, as a result of the policy change, senior raters may opt for a memorandum of input in lieu of a change-of-rater evaluation, when an officer's rater changes. The policy change reduces multiple short-term evaluations, particularly in deployed situations. The new policy takes place Oct. 1, for all Army officers, across all three components. It applies to OERs with a "thru" date of Nov. 1 and later. More information about the changes can be found at: www.hrc.army.mil/evaluations. The policy change for officer evaluations helps officers by helping the Army identify the best talent in uniform, Piccirilli said. "As we start reshaping, we have to make sure we have to identify our best officers -- they are our future leaders," Piccirilli said. "They have the potential to be the future leaders of the Army, and we have to make sure we take care of them." Army seeks $7.1 billion in energy-related industry investment [2011-09-20] WASHINGTON -- The Army is hoping industry will be willing to invest as much as $7.1 billion dollars over ten years on installations to develop renewable energy projects that can help the service meet its energy security goals. To make that easier, the Army announced in August the creation of an "Energy Initiatives Task Force" to interface the Army with the private sector, and to ensure that potential investors and developers are comfortable working in the sometimes complex acquisition environment of the federal government. That task force stood up Sept. 15. "Energy security is a critical issue to the Army, affecting both our energy supply at home and abroad," said Katherine Hammack, assistant secretary of the Army for installations environment and energy. "It is critical that we take steps to improve our energy security." Part of ensuring energy security is the Army's "Net Zero" program, meant to increase Army focus on both energy and water efficiency. Additionally, Net Zero is meant to help reduce the amount of water and energy used. Also part of that program, Hammack said, is to produce energy on the military installations. But with budget challenges, Hammack said the Army doesn't have the funds available to pursue the things it needs to increase energy security. "What we are doing is leveraging the authorities given by Congress, and have identified that the Army is looking for about $7 billion of private sector investment on Army installations," Hammack said. With that kind of investment, the Army hopes to get about 2.1 million MWh of energy. The Army seeks "utility scale" energy production, Hammack said, something she said amounts to 10MW or larger. She also said it is "unreasonable" to ask an installation to put the level of focus necessary into such projects. "It'll take an effort above and beyond the daily activities at our installations and garrisons," she said. The energy initiatives task force will bear most of the burden of enticing industry to get on board with Army energy goals, Hammack said. The team is made up of "focused individuals whose primary task is to work with the private sector to develop these kind of renewable and alternative energy projects." Part of that, she said is ensuring the Army's got all the paperwork right, and all the facts and information needed to present to industry so they can feel comfortable investing and developing renewable energy projects that will both help the Army achieve energy security, and will help investors earn good returns. "To attract the private investments, we need to have biddable projects -- we have to do our homework," Hammack said. "We have to do our due diligence to make sure these projects have the appropriate information, facts and background that is necessary for a developer and for the finance community to invest in." Hammack said now there are already 20 projects "in the pipeline" and the task force will work to accelerate them, "so that when we get to spring of next year or summer of next year, [we'll be] ready for bid." There are challenges to working with the federal government on acquisition, Hammack said, though much is part of federal law. "There is no intent to work around that, but there is an intent to help streamline it," Hammack said. She also said there's some portions of the acquisition process that are service-specific, that can be made easier to deal with. The task force will work to streamline the acquisition process to bring investors on board. The task force plans an industry day, Oct. 27, at Fort Bliss Texas. Additionally, there will be an Energy Initiatives Task Force summit, Nov. 3, in Washington, D.C. Exercise integrates manned, unmanned aircraft [2011-09-22] WASHINGTON -- The systems on display at the Manned-Unmanned Systems Integration Capabilities, or MUSIC, exercise, which concluded last week at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, are expected to make their way to Afghanistan within the next two years. The MUSIC exercise was meant to demonstrate interoperability and system integration among multiple Army aviation assets, including both manned aircraft such as the AH-64D Apache helicopter and the OH-58D/F Kiowa Warrior helicopter, and unmanned air vehicles like the Gray Eagle, Hunter, Shadow, and others. Also demonstrated at the exercise were controllers for the unmanned systems, including the Universal Ground Control Station, the mini-UGCS, and the One System Remote Video Terminal, or OSRVT. Vehicle control and passing of video information from system to system was a key part of the exercise. "We demonstrated flawless exchange of video products between the complete unmanned aircraft systems fleet, including all the small unmanned aircraft, plus the larger systems such as Shadow, Hunter, and Gray Eagle," said Tim Owings, deputy project manager, Unmanned Aircraft Systems. Integration between manned vehicles and the unmanned aircraft was also important, Owings said. The Apache block III aircraft demonstrated advancements in interoperability with its ability to control the Gray Eagle; the Apache block II also demonstrated video transmission to the OSRVT via the "Efficient Digital Data Link"; and the Kiowa Warrior demonstrated its ability to re-transmit unmanned aircraft video and metadata to the OSRVT and troops on the ground, via the TCDL link and the Hunter Platform. "We demonstrated flawless and seamless integration between the unmanned fleet and the manned fleet, primarily Apache Block II and Kiowa Warrior," Owings said. The exercise also proved multiple vehicles could be controlled by the same controller, and that multiple controllers could direct a single set of sensors on one vehicle. The Triclops is an MQ-1C Gray Eagle carrying three sensors. Owings said it was demonstrated during the MUSIC exercise that all three sensors could be controlled independently of each other, with three different controllers. "One particularly poignant way that we showcased the capability [of the OSRVT] is with Triclops, a three-sensor variant of Gray Eagle," Owings said. "We controlled one of the sensors from the OSRVT, we controlled one of the sensors from the M-UGCS, and one from the primary control station. [It's] quite a demonstration of the complete gambit of interoperability, open architecture, and manned/unmanned teaming. Owings said it's expected systems like the UGCS, the m-UGCS and the OSRVT will be fielded within the next two years -- and part of the plan is for those systems to be in Afghanistan. For Soldiers, it means a whole new way of doing things. Information about surroundings will come instantly, for use immediately. "This helps Soldiers get information right now, as opposed to a few hours from now, or maybe days from now," said Lt. Col. James Kennedy, product manager, Common Systems Integration. "That has been the case in the past. The huge situational awareness piece, as well as receiving the information right away, that's key." Owings said systems like the OSRVT, which control sensor payloads on unmanned aircraft, can provide another layer of security to Soldiers in dangerous situations. "If he is in a convoy that is under attack and there is a UAS doing some type of route clearance patrol or force protection mission, there is a point-at-me feature in there where he can immediately point the UAS sensor at his location, based on the location of the RVT," Owings said. "The other thing he can do is point it to gain situational awareness of exactly what he wants to see. With the TRICLOPS capability he can control one or multiple sensors simultaneously to inspect different things." For Soldiers using the mini-UGCS, flying a Raven or Puma unmanned aircraft -- their controller will also be able to control the Triclops payload aboard the Gray Eagle through Digital Data Link. The capability expands their horizon. "Now, even if he has just a Raven or a Puma capability, he has the capability to see what is flying in the larger class of vehicles as well," Owings said. The after-effect of the MUSIC exercise was to prove to program managers that what they have been working toward is functional in an operational environment, said Edward E. Gozdur, deputy project manager, Common Systems Integration. "It confirmed what I believed all the time," Gozdur said. "That we could in fact do it. This was the first time it came together in a scripted exercise, and scenarios like something you'd see in the field." Owings said the exercise also pushed them harder, and closed gaps in the development of systems that might have taken longer to close. "What ends up happening is, that last tactical mile of development becomes the most difficult," Owings said. "So you saw a lot of gaps close the last two and a half months before we actually did the demonstration, that would have probably stretched on truthfully for a year or more, but instead, those things were done." Owings said he hopes within the next two years a similar exercise can be held, to again demonstrate what Army aviation is working on. "What we are looking at now is expanding this and to do this every two years, with ever-increasing capability," Owings said. "We are in the processes of defining exactly what we are going to do on this next two-year cycle, but we think it is a fantastic way to showcase information. Plus it acts as a forcing function to get all of our programs aligned, plus the manned systems aligned, and ensure we are staying in lock-step with each other periodically." IG tells Congress Arlington Cemetery issues corrected [2011-09-23] WASHINGTON -- Issues involving misconduct, mismanagement and poor record keeping at Arlington National Cemetery have been corrected, the Army's deputy inspector general told Congress at a hearing Sept. 23 on Capitol Hill. "The changes that have taken place in the last year are a good news story," said Maj. Gen. William McCoy, the Army's deputy inspector general. "The deficiencies found at Arlington National Cemetery a year ago, I am proud to report have been substantially corrected this year." McCoy, along with the cemetery's executive director, Kathryn A. Condon, and its superintendent, Patrick Hallinan, addressed members of the House Armed Services Committee's joint military personnel and oversight and investigations subcommittee. The three appeared in order to discuss progress made at the cemetery to correct problems initially revealed in a June 2010 Department of Defense Inspector General report that revealed mismanagement at the cemetery. McCoy credited Condon with leading the changes at the cemetery. The 2010 IG inspection had 76 findings, and 101 recommendations, McCoy said. Of those findings, 61 were deficiencies. This year, he reported, there are no deficiencies. There were 31 observations, and two other matters "for consideration" on progress being made. There is still work to be done, the general told lawmakers. Efforts at Arlington National Cemetery include development of new information technology that both helps workers there track burials and also helps handle the volume of telephone calls to the cemetery. The calls query about locations of those interred there and ask questions about the process of having a loved one buried there. Condon said all paper records at the cemetery are now scanned into digital information-technology systems, and the Old Guard has done photography on the graves, clarifying for the first time that there are 259,978 gravesite locations in the cemetery. "But those are just the actual locations, that doesn't tell you the actual number of decedents we have buried in the cemeteries," Condon said. Now, Condon said, work is being done to match each of the headstones and markers with records at the cemetery. "We are well on our way in that effort." Also in the works, Condon said is a "Google Maps-like" information system to help manage the grounds and choose spots for interments, as well as to provide directions for guests. Some lawmakers expressed concern that the Army wasn't up to the task of handling Arlington National Cemetery. They asked if it was outside the core mission of the Army, or if efforts by the Army were in fact duplicating efforts by the Veterans Administration? "It's been a core mission of the U.S. Army for 150 years," Hallinan said. "Since they interred those first Union Soldiers after the first battle of Manassas." Hallinan also told legislators that while it is regrettable what happened at Arlington National Cemetery, he believes the Army is best suited to continue its work there -- even more so than the VA. "Arlington does things completely differently," Hallinan said. "I think if the VA in fact does have Arlington transferred under their jurisdiction, there's going to be some change that they have to deal with. Some very real challenges." He said the VA does not do the graveside burials the Army does, render the military honors the Army does, or deal with the 4 million visitors a year the Army does, including heads of state. "These complexities they do not deal with," Hallinan said. "They deal with their regional local cemeteries in their local communities. Arlington is unique, Arlington is special to the American people. It is special to the world." Condon and Hallinan also addressed concerns about spaces at the cemetery filling up and remedies to deal with this issue. Condon told committee members that initial data she received said they would run out of "niche space" at the cemetery in 2016, and would run out of ground burial space in 2025. Plans at the cemetery include expansion into a site currently called the "Navy Annex," which is a set of buildings from around the time the Pentagon was built. Also, the "Millennium Project" could expand the cemetery to a nearby picnic area and additional parcels of land in or around the cemetery. Adjusting eligibility for the cemetery -- who can be buried there -- may also extend how long the cemetery can continue to conduct burials. Hallinan said changing layout patterns in the cemetery, how graves are placed and how close together they are placed, "will increase the yield and longevity of Arlington National Cemetery if we can increase the yield, we may not have to revisit eligibility." McCoy told lawmakers he believes the efforts both Condon and Hallinan have been making at Arlington National Cemetery represent positive change. "I believe the progress made at Arlington National Cemetery since last June shows a significant turnaround in performance, and demonstrates the Army's stalwart commitment to ensuring all actions at this national shrine are executed to exacting standards," he said. Prescription abuse down, but challenges face wounded warriors [2011-09-26] WASHINGTON -- Prescription drug abuse among wounded warriors has decreased since the Army Pain Management Task Force was founded two years ago, said the Army's vice chief of staff. A drop in narcotics use was the good news Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli related as he discussed the high number of Soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress, or PTS, and traumatic brain injury, or TBI, during his keynote speech today at the 2011 Defense Forum Washington seminar "The Journey Back: Helping Wounded Warriors and their Families Transition." As of Sept. 1, just more than 8,900 Soldiers were part of the Wounded Warrior Program, he said. Of those, just under 4,500 suffered from PTS, and just under 1,500 suffered from TBI. "These are "the signature wounds of this war," said Chiarelli. And he added that more Soldiers are likely suffering, but have not yet been diagnosed. "We must get a handle on this," he said. Advancements have been made though, he said, in dealing with one problem facing wounded warriors: prescription drug abuse. The Army Pain Management Task Force has created new guidelines, he said, to ensure fewer Soldiers are able to become addicted to prescription drugs. "These important changes have led to a decreased use of prescription medications," he said. Specifically, there have been reductions in the use of narcotics and psychotropic drugs. At Walter Reed's Warrior Transition Unit, narcotics usage went down from 80 percent to 8.5 percent among wounded warriors, he said. The general said the Army would like to replicate that success at all Army installations, but there is a shortage of those trained in alternative pain management. The Army Pain Management Task Force was chartered in 2009 to look at alternative ways to treat pain, including such things as yoga, meditation and acupuncture, for instance. Prescription records for Soldiers are also now tracked by Defense-wide electronic databases. "My number-one priority is the health and well-being of the force," Chiarelli said. While issues such as cost savings and the Army's network are also important, he said that unlike the Air Force and the Navy, where platforms such as aircraft and naval vessels are critical -- the Army is "people-centric." "The rest simply won't matter if our people aren't cared for properly," Chiarelli said. Chiarelli also expressed concern to seminar attendees about the complexity of and the speed at which Soldiers move through the Integrated Disability Evaluation System, or DES. After a decade of war, he said, there are about 20,000 Soldiers in the system. Those are Soldiers who are not able to deploy, he said, adding that the number of Soldiers in the system has increased about 169 percent since January 2008. "The reality is that number is probably closer to double that factor if you figure in the number of Soldiers who are not yet enrolled in DES, but are none-the-less non-deployable, with either temporary or permanent medical profiles." Some of those, he said, will get a permanent profile, for up to 6 months, and they will heal and be able to go back into a deployable status. Others will not, he said. Others will remain un-deployable, and enter the DES. "When you take 40,000 Soldiers out of the end strength of the U.S. Army -- that is one of the effects of 10 years of war." Getting an active-duty Soldier though the system takes about 373 days now, he said. "Needless to stay, this is too long. The system is complex, disjointed and confusing. DOD is continuing to work closely with the Department of Veterans Affairs, along with military services, to make needed improvements." Inside the Army's Wounded Warrior Program, about two-thirds of Soldiers are suffering from either post-traumatic stress or traumatic brain injury, Chiarelli said. Both TBI and PTS produce symptoms like concentration problems, irritability, personality changes and memory impairment, Chiarelli said, also saying it's important to learn the difference between the two. "We need to understand how to differentiate between them and how to effectively treat them." One challenge with both PTS and TBI is the latency of symptoms -- the time between when an injury occurs that causes them, and when the symptoms present themselves. After that, there is even time before somebody suffering from the two injuries is first treated. Chiarelli reported a statistic from the National Institute of Health that the average time between injury and first treatment is 12 years. "A bunch of bad stuff happens in that 12-year interval," he said. With the drawdown in Iraq and Afghanistan, more Soldiers will be coming home, and some will stay home 12-14 months. Many of those, he said, will be dealing with physical and behavioral health issues -- including depression, anxiety, TBI and PTS. Of particular concern are Soldiers in the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard. Unlike their active-duty counterparts, those Soldiers do not stay on a military installation or a military community after they return from overseas. "The reality is we are able to more effectively influence those Soldiers serving on active duty," Chiarelli said. Soldiers in the reserve components are isolated from military support structures, including their command structure and mental health facilities. And isolation from the military community and support is now exacerbated by the concerns that come with the declining economy, he said. "We are not going to rest until we figure out how to bridge the divide of the reserve component," he said. Army ready to face budget challenges [2011-10-06] WASHINGTON -- Budget challenges loom in the Army's future. In fact, just about any portion of the federal budget could be cut to help the United States reduce its yearly deficit. In fiscal year 2011, the government spent an estimated $1.6 trillion more than it collected in revenue. In fiscal year 2012, it's estimated the government will spend about $1.1 trillion more than it takes in. The Department of Defense, and all services, including the Army, are potential targets for deficit reduction. "We understand that our nation's in a critical time and economic capacity is the basis of strength of a nation," said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno. "We understand the military has to be part of this, and that we have to be part of the solution as we move forward. And we are prepared to do that. But we must do it in a reasonable smart and well thought out way." Odierno, the 38th chief of staff of the Army, spoke Oct. 6 before a House Army Caucus breakfast attended by lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, as well as Army general officers and senior Army civilians. He told lawmakers that budget reductions must be made in both DOD and the Army, but said those cuts must be done in a way that allows the Army to continue to be an elite fighting force. He said today the Army is the best in the word, and he hopes that after budget cuts, the Army will continue to be the best. "It's up to us to work together." The general said he fears poorly planned budget cuts could lead to the return of the "hollow force" he experienced at the start of his military service. He entered the Army in June 1976, less than three years after the last U.S. military personnel exited Vietnam. "We got to experience what the Army was like in the '70s and it was in shambles," Odierno said. "There was lack of discipline. There was lack of a way forward." The challenge in the post-Vietnam era was to prepare the Army for whatever missions lay ahead at a time when defense budgets had been cut to coincide with the end of American involvement in that conflict. "It took us 15 years to rise over that," Odierno said. "In my opinion, we can't afford 15 years today. We have too many things facing us around the world. This is not a time of peace around the world, it is a time of uncertainty. And uncertainty is a problem." The general warned against placing faith in the idea that when the current wars end, ground forces will never be needed again and that budget cuts should reflect that. The idea presented itself before, he said, and was quickly proven wrong. Odierno said that when the Berlin wall came down in 1989, he was witness to conversations that predicted cessation of future conflict. "We'll never fight another war. We'll never have to deploy our ground forces ever again. We have solved the problems, we will have peace for as far as we can see," he recounted. But after the fall of the wall in November 1989, there was Operation Just Cause in Panama, where the U.S. overthrew Gen. Manuel Noriega. In 1991, the U.S. entered Operation Desert Storm, to liberate Kuwait from Iraq. There was also Operation Provide Promise in 1992 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Operation Allied Force, which was part of the Kosovo Conflict in 1999, the entrance into Afghanistan in 2001, and the beginning of operations in Iraq in 2003. "We can sit here and say we are going to have peace and we'll never need our military anymore -- but I think we're putting our heads in the sand," he said. Odierno said as the new chief of staff, he's focused on continuing to prepare Soldiers -- to provide trained and ready forces to send into combat. Also, he said, the Army must look to balance capabilities to meet future threats. He said an Army must be developed that is "smaller, more agile, deployable and capable of meeting whatever our nation's needs are." Agility, adaptability and deployability are key, he added. He also stressed that the Army provides depth. "What many people don't realize is that the Army provides depth, it provides combat support, combat service support to all the other services," he said. "It is the basis for all our special operations forces." Odierno said between 35-40,000 of the Army's end strength is special operations forces, and pointed out that those Soldiers don't just come in off the street. "They have had experience, they have to develop critical skills as we get them ready to do these missions," he said, adding that they are a product not of recruiting, but of an all-volunteer force. Those are Soldiers, he said that have willingly joined the service, and that take pride in serving. "These are the kinds of people you want in your Army, or your Navy, or your Air Force or Marines -- these are the type of people we need in order to ensure we can deter [the enemy] or defend our nation as we move forward," Odierno said. "We have to preserve the all-volunteer force." Army marketing campaign to inoculate force against prescription drug abuse [2011-10-07] WASHINGTON -- The number of Soldiers abusing prescription drugs is low -- very low. And the Army just signed a contract to develop a marketing campaign to help keep that number low. In September, the Army signed a contract to develop a marketing campaign to educate Soldiers, leadership and family members about the addictive nature of prescription drugs such oxycodone. The measure is preventative in nature and the first wave of campaign material should appear in January 2013. "We see an ever increasing threat, from a national level, of the potential for abuse of prescription drugs," said Dr. Les McFarling, director of the Army Substance Abuse Program. "We've seen the abuse of pain killers, oxycodone for example -- and that's something that's rising very fast in the national scene." McFarling said some consider drugs like oxycodone "a medical miracle" due to its speed and effectiveness in relieving pain. At the same time, he said, there's the potential that once a Soldier starts taking such a drug, he might not stop. "It doesn't take much," McFarling said. "These are very, very dangerous drugs, in terms of their addictive quality." McFarling said that today in the Army, there isn't much indication that prescription drugs such as amphetamines, methamphetamines, codeine, morphine, oxycodone or oxymorphone are being abused in great numbers. Data from the Army shows that in fiscal year 2011, for instance, among the 507,502 drug tests conducted for amphetamines, about 0.13 percent of Soldiers were subsequently confirmed to have been using the drug illicitly. For methamphetamines, about 0.07 percent were shown to be using illicitly. For codeine, that number is 0.05 percent, oxycodone is at 0.08 percent, and oxymorphone is at 0.15 percent. Even with the low number, McFarling said, if abuse of a prescription drug like oxycodone does become a problem, it's one that's "very, very, very hard to correct. This is one of the most addictive drug families you can have. It's much easier for us to prevent Soldiers from becoming addicted than it is to help them get rid of their addiction." The campaign the Army will embark on will be preventative in nature, he said, one that is aimed at making Soldiers aware of the risks and addictive nature of many prescription drugs. The format of the campaign, he said might be similar to what the Department of Defense is doing with its "That Guy" campaign to educate servicemembers about alcohol abuse. "You have people coming into an installation, they do rollouts, get community involvement with presentations, they do media spots, paper campaigns, handouts, possibly billboards, social media, anything you could conceive of to sell this idea," he said. In addition to the anti-prescription drug abuse campaign the Army is gearing up for now, the service already has other efforts in place to prevent an epidemic of prescription drug abuse. Prescription drugs are being tracked across the Department of Defense now, to ensure Soldiers aren't inadvertently prescribed multiple doses of the same addictive drug -- or that Soldiers don't seek out multiple prescriptions. Also, there are now limits on the amount of time a Soldier is allowed to use a prescription -- even if there are pills left over in the bottle. Also coming in the future, a widening of the scope of random drug tests. Today, when a Soldier goes in for a random drug test -- there's a 100 percent chance he'll be tested for marijuana. There's only a 20 percent chance of him being tested for oxycodone, however. By the middle of fiscal year 2013, oxycodone will become part of the standard drug test. Other drugs like those in the hydrocodone family or benzodiazepine tranquilizers will also eventually become part of the standard drug testing battery. Army bracing for more budget cuts, AUSA audience told [2011-10-10] WASHINGTON -- The potential of DOD facing additional budget cuts of $500-600 billion over the next 10 years keeps him "up at night," said Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh. The Department of Defense is already looking at budget cuts meant to save the federal government $450 billion over 10 years. In addition, lawmakers who are part of the "super committee" are looking to find an additional $1.2 trillion in savings over the same period. If they fail to do so, as much as half of that amount could automatically be taken from the DOD through "sequestration," McHugh said. "I think we're in a positive position to accommodate at least the $450 billion or so in cuts that have been scheduled against the DOD to this point," McHugh told a panel of journalists during the opening hours of the 2011 Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C. "Additional cuts coming out of that process, particularly the potential of sequestration, and the $500-$600 billion or so of additional cuts that would likely (be brought) against the Defense Department, I would think it is fair to say [would be] catastrophic," McHugh said, "certainly to the Army and certainly to our national defense posture." Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno said that the potential of a "hollow force" would not come to fruition, however. Instead, he said, a ready and capable force would exist -- though size might be affected. "No matter what happens, we are not going to have a hollow force," Odierno said. "We are going to have a force that is a certain size, that has the modernization and readiness necessary to be quality." The general said that, despite the quality of such a force, and it's readiness to deploy and fight, it would be questionable what could be done with it. Both McHugh and Odierno agreed that cuts to the DOD would likely be shared equally across the three military departments -- the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. The Marine Corps falls under the department of the Navy. Earlier, at the opening ceremony of the 2011 AUSA event, McHugh addressed a room of more than 3,000 guests -- including Soldiers, civilian employees and defense contractors. During his opening remarks there, the secretary pointed out that while all services contribute to the fight, it is the Army that carries the brunt of the mission in both Iraq and Afghanistan. "There's no getting around the fact that it is the Army that has been saddled with much of the burden these past years, providing between 50 to 70 percent of our deployable forces," McHugh said, addressing an audience that was likely half Soldiers. "While I am loathed to view our men and women in uniform as mere budgetary statistics, I think it is important to remind people that while the U.S. Army represents half of our nation's entire force, we consume only a quarter to 30 percent of the entire defense budget." The secretary said that decision makers often fail to correctly predict the nature of future conflicts and that following conflicts like World War I, World War II, and Korea, for instance, budget decisions were made based on the notion that ground forces were no longer relevant -- those decisions ended up depleting Army forces and reducing quality of life for Soldiers and their families. This time, he said, the Army has seen the economic downturn in advance as well as the impending budget cuts. "Unlike in the past, this time we have seen this downturn coming for some time," he said. "We have been analyzing the best ways to meet these challenges, and as such I can tell you we are better positioned than at any time in our nation's history to deal with the fiscal realities and do it in a way that truly makes sense." Part of dealing with fiscal realities, he said, is cuts to end strength -- the total number of men and women in uniform. The end strength will eventually "look different" than it does now, he said. And with the drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said he thinks the Army can handle the challenge of end-strength reductions. But he was cautious to hope that cuts don't come too quick or too clumsy. "But what is critically important, is that no matter what the force ultimately looks like, we have sufficient time to ramp down to ensure we do it in a balanced way and that we have what is necessary for training and equipment and reset," McHugh said. Another concern for McHugh, he said, are suggestions that "some of the services recover at the sacrifices of others. That the United States probably doesn't need a strong and decisive standing Army the future to them looks more like 'Transformers' than 'Saving Private Ryan.' History looms before us once again." McHugh said air power and technology are critical, but that America's enemies don't often fight the way Americans predicts they will. Boots on the ground, he said, are critical for the nation's defense. "No major conflict has ever been won without boots on the ground," he said. "And accordingly, our national interests demand that while we set about the task of reshaping this Army for the years ahead, we remain steadfast and continue to support this, the greatest land force the world has ever known." Efforts to help the Army find ways to save money, to be able to absorb looming budget cuts, are already underway, McHugh said. The service is removing redundancies and overlap in research, for instance. Additionally, McHugh has asked that that Army look into the multiple and expensive temporary task forces that have become "permanent." Also underway are efforts to streamline the requirements process, reforms to the Installation Management Command and "sweeping changes" to human capital management. McHugh said changes will be made to find cost savings within the Army Service Acquisition program, where $243 billion was spent in 2010 -- including $140 billion on contracts, where more than half was spent on services. A McHugh-issued directive will create a new government structure that will consolidate about 45 percent of service obligations into six portfolio management centers, he said. Those include facility support services, medical services, transportation services, electronics and communications, equipment related services, and knowledge-based services. "This will, I believe, improve oversight effectiveness, while helping us tailor and apply and monitor the results of better buying practices for improved acquisition, as well as leveraging portfolio demand for better prices," he said. Those types of actions, he said, will help the Army deal with the budgets that will be made for the service by others. He told Soldiers he will help guide the Army to make it through the budget crisis, and will keep them in mind when doing so. "We can, we must -- and I promise you -- we will do better," he said. More companies to help military spouses find jobs [2011-10-11] WASHINGTON -- Two dozen new companies have put their hat in the ring to make it easier for spouses of service members to find and keep meaningful, career-oriented, portable employment. During the opening hours of the 2011 Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C., Oct. 10, the 24 companies signed on to be part of the Military Spouse Employment Partnership. MSEP is a group of companies, with the addition of the new partners, which is now 96 strong. "They support military spouses in their employment and career efforts by offering jobs that are portable," said Robert L. Gordon III, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for military community and family policy. "That means the companies provide support and commitment that when a military spouse has to move, their employment opportunities will continue with that company." While most of the partners are U.S.-based, Gordon said some have "global reach." "We do look for companies also that have a global footprint, since our military community members live overseas," Gordon said. On the MSEP website, there are now 54,000 jobs available, but Gordon said there are even more available through the human resources departments of the partner companies. "We are leveling the playing field for our spouses, since our spouses have a 26-percent unemployment rate and a 25-percent wage gap," Gordon said. "As we all know, with deployment and moves overseas, often times our spouses have difficulty finding and keeping jobs and careers. This levels the playing field by matching companies to the skill sets of our spouses." The MSEP program only began serving spouses of all military service members in June. Since then, it has provided employment to some 5,600 military spouses. Before it was MSEP, however, the program belonged to the Army, and was called the Army Spouse Employment Partnership. That program had been in place since 2003. Combined, the two programs have placed more than 90,000 spouses, said Anthony J. Stamilio, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for civilian personnel and quality of life. Stamilio believes the DOD flavor of the program can continue what the Army started. "What this program offers is the ability to better match and inform," Stamilio said. "We have spouses looking for work and companies looking for great talent. What MSEP does is provides that conduit of information and that matching capability for the potential that already exists." Gordon said the MSEP program does more than provide spouses with gainful employment. It also helps businesses find skilled employees, it helps families, and it even helps the military. "We feel it does positively affect readiness and retention," he said. The MSEP program website can be found at: www.msepjobs.com Among the companies that signed on to be partners with the program are: -- Bradley-Morris -- Care One -- Citi -- Dial America -- Dominion Power -- General Dynamics OTS -- GEICO -- Hitachi Consulting -- Integrated Communications Systems -- Johnson Controls -- Navy Exchange -- N.E.W. Customer Services -- Red Cross -- SitterCity.com -- Sterling Medical -- TroopSwap.com -- Tutor.com -- United Health Group -- Wittenberg Weiner -- Zeiders Enterprises Army must prepare to 'do less with less' [2011-10-12] WASHINGTON -- Looming budget cuts across the Department of Defense mean the Army must be prepared to conduct business with less funding, and the service's senior officer said this may also mean doing less. "In the past during periods of austerity, we've said we'll have to do more with less," Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno. "As we move ahead under significant budget restrictions, we'll have to do less with less. We'll have to accept higher levels of risk than we have in the past. Determining where it's best to do so is the primary task before us." Odierno addressed attendees at the Eisenhower Lunch, Oct. 11, at the 2011 Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C. A major concern for the general is the potential of a trillion dollars being cut from the Department of Defense budget over the next 10 years -- something that could happen if the "super committee" tasked to trim $1.2 trillion from America's federal budget fails to come to a consensus. If they fail, it's estimated that $500-600 billion could be automatically cut from defense, in addition to the $450 billion the department is already tasked to cut. The Army would bear a significant portion of those cuts. "A cut of this magnitude would be devastating, this would threaten every aspect of the joint force, and especially the Army -- it's force structure, modernization efforts and ability to sustain an all-volunteer force, as well as our defense industrial base," Odierno said. The general said cuts must come carefully to avoid risking the readiness of the Army. "All of us have to realize and understand that we will get smaller, that is fiscal reality," Odierno said. "But it's the how that is critical. If we go too fast, we risk the current future readiness of the force and lose the flexibility to react to the uncertain security environment we find ourselves in. We also threaten the trust that is the foundation of everything we do." From talking to Soldiers and veterans, Odierno said he's learned that a primary concern about looming budget cuts involves compensation and entitlement programs. "Everybody needs to know decisions have not yet been made," he said. "The president recently announced a committee to study military compensation. Department of Defense will provide input. Rest assured, we are dedicated to a system that cares for Soldiers and families now and well into the future." Odierno said he has been involved in discussions on how to address the "fundamental tension" between the fiscal situation and an "increasingly complicated and unpredictable world." While he said the Army should and will be part of any solutions to the financial situation, the nation must be told the truth about the risks involved in using the Army budget to help solve the fiscal crisis. Terrorism, failed states, man-made disasters, weapons of mass destruction, drug trafficking and cyber threats are now part of "a strategic environment that is increasingly complex and unpredictable," he said. Those issues are compounded by scarcity of and competition for energy, food and water. The general said he remains committed to a "successful resolution" in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and that after that, the Army will be free to pursue other areas of concern, such as continued stability in Asia. He said there is consensus that future economic and security interests are great in Asia, including developing a "peaceful and constructive" relationship in China. "We cannot ignore China's military modernization, but it need not lead us to confrontation," he said. He said how America interacts with China's neighbors, for instance, is a key part of ensuring a good relationship with that country. He said he looks forward to the Army contributing to stability in the Pacific region. There, he said, the United States has developed a wealth of partnership and diplomatic options that can be used. Odierno also laid out some priorities for the Army. Included in those priorities are winning the current fight, which means continuing to provide trained and ready forces to ongoing contingency operations such as in Iraq and Afghanistan; developing a more versatile "mix of capabilities" to enable the Army to be a more flexible provider to the joint force; continuing the commitment to "the Army profession"; and continuing to adapt leader development programs. The general also said preserving the all-volunteer force is a priority. "We have the best all-volunteer force we've ever had," he said. "We cannot waiver on this commitment." Army civilian workforce development on track [2011-10-13] WASHINGTON -- In the last year, the Army has moved closer to transforming its civilian work force of more than 320,000 employees. Currently, the Army Career Tracker is available to some 50,000 civilian employees. The online tool is designed to integrate training and education into one web site. The tool allows an employee and leadership to track their careers, and monitor education and training resources. During a lunch for Army civilians at the 2011 Association of the United States Army Annual meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C., Under Secretary of the Army Joseph W. Westphal highlighted some of the progress made toward some short-term goals that he laid out a year earlier at the same event. Included in those goals, Westphal said, was mapping civilian employees to a career program and also developing a "scalable hiring process proof-of-concept" to reducing hiring times for civilian employees. So far, about 50,000 civilians have been mapped to one of 31 career programs and there is a target to have 100 percent mapped to a career program under ACT by Sept. 30, 2012. To speed up civilian hiring, the Army conducted a "hiring reform beta test," aimed at reducing timelines for hiring actions. "We invested in civilian employee professional development with a talent management program for GS-15s and aligned the SES and senior civilian management organizations," Westphal said. "We have also developed the Army career tracker, an online tool for tracking employee skills and training requirements. The ACT will help employees and their supervisors try and navigate a roadmap of professional success." Westphal said that progress in civilian workforce transformation "has not been easy," and that transformation is still "embryotic." The under secretary said studies have shown the Army has to improve how it hires civilians, manages civilian careers, and trains and develops leaders. Additionally, he said, the Army must adapt the workforce to changing national requirements. "The primary goal [of civilian workforce transformation] is to ensure that every civilian that comes into the Army has a career path," Westphal said. "And that career path can be tracked, that people will be able to receive education training and development in those career paths so they can grow in the Army and provide greater expertise in their jobs." Developing education for civilian employees, something similar to what is available for Soldiers, is also critical, he said. "If you're a Soldier today, whether you are a noncommissioned officer or an officer, the Army invests a significant amount of money in your education," he said. "We've got probably the best educated military in the world. We need to do the same thing for our civilians. Putting money into that in a tight economy is going to be a struggle -- but I am going to make sure we do the best we can." REF striving to save energy, lives on battlefield [2011-10-19] WASHINGTON -- Meeting the energy needs of Soldiers at the "tactical edge" of the battlefield is a top priority for the Army's Rapid Equipping Force, said its director. The needs of Soldiers at combat outposts in Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan served as examples of the types of power supply problems that if solved could start to minimize the dangerous and expensive resupply missions that sometimes mean loss of life. Col. Peter A. Newell, director of the Army's Rapid Equipping Force, talked Oct. 18 at the Pentagon as part of a panel on energy security. Just back from Afghanistan, Newell said he visited seven brigade combat teams there to meet with commanders and noncommissioned officers to discuss the challenges of sustaining Soldiers at the "tactical edge" of the battle field -- where delivering fuel and water are the most difficult. "At virtually every stop, command sergeants major and commanders alike brought up the issues they had in providing sustainment to some of these outposts and small combat formations that are the farthest away from them," he said. One combat outpost, in the mountains near the Afghanistan and Pakistan border, was manned by about 14 Soldiers. They had a small energy requirement there -- a handful of radios, some intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment, and some hygiene needs. All that, Newell said, powered by a single 5kw generator running at about 20 percent of its capacity. A smaller generator, perhaps, would require less fuel to run the OP, and require less sustainment deliveries. Delivering sustainment to those remote units, Newell said, "takes combat power." "That combat power is taken out of the hide of missions that are designed to do other things," he said. "In many cases, delivering those resources to those units comes at a detriment to force protection in operations that are really designed to get after stopping the attacks. At the tactical edge, we will likely measure the savings we will get in energy in terms of lives, not gallons saved." Providing "spot power," at such units is something Newell said he heard a lot about during his visit in Afghanistan. A solution, "technologically probably sounds like a mini/micro/nano grid," he said. "[We] provide a storage capacity to a power management source that allows you to plug and play different sources of power -- one is a small generator that provides just enough power to recharge the batteries, while you have highly portable clean energy technology like wind or solar or in some cases a fuel-cell generation that can provide the day-to-day usage and you only touch that generator when you absolutely have to." Newell said the Rapid Equipping Force is also focused on finding ways to charge batteries for the many devices Soldiers carry in the field so they don't have to carry so many backups with them. "Not just for the radios and devices that are on them, but for every piece of kit and gear we buy," he said, citing equipment to support ISR systems, unmanned aerial systems and robots. The colonel also said the REF is "looking hard" at doing energy transfer between devices. "We know that it is possible to provide wireless transfer of energy between a platform and a system," he said. "We think that same premise will eventually apply to Soldier-worn devices. You simply have a power source that provides the energy required for Soldier systems, without having to string wires and other things all over the body." Online language training now earns promotion points [2011-10-21] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers can now earn up to 16 promotion points for completing language instruction with the Headstart2 language training program. The Headstart2 software uses digitally animated characters involved in military scenarios to teach reading, writing, speaking and listening skills in any of 16 target languages. Soldiers must register for an Army Training Requirements and Resources System account, known as ATTRS, to earn points in any of those target languages. "It gives ... a Soldier, a Marine, an Airman, a Sailor or a civilian -- that doesn't have background in the language, a fairly decent understanding of the culture, a basic understanding of the sound and script, and what we would describe as survival-level language," said Col. Danial Pick, commandant of the Defense Language Institute. The HeadStart2 program was developed at the Defense Language Institute. Pick said the program teaches a "military-focused vocabulary," designed with requirements from both the Army and the Marine Corps, to help Soldiers and Marines complete the types of missions they will be engaged in during deployments. He said specifically there is a focus on conducting patrols, cordon and search, medical treatment, as well as "interrogatives and vocabulary that allow squads of Soldiers and Marines to ask critical survival-type questions in local populations, as well as have an understanding of culture." Being able to engage effectively with local populations, Pick said, enables Soldiers and Marines to "identify and isolate enemy elements in a population and more effectively deliver aid and development to friendly forces in the countryside and the cities." For an average user, the language program takes between 80 and 100 hours of self-directed study. The language programs can be accessed online through the DLI website or through service-specific portals, like Army Knowledge Online. The software can either be downloaded and installed on a computer or used online. Soldiers in a remote location, without access to a high-speed network, can also order the disks directly from DLI. The Headstart2 program, first introduced in 2006 with Iraqi Arabic, is available now in 16 languages. Iraqi Arabic, Pashto, and Dari are available through the Army Learning Management System. Urdu, Persian Farsi, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese European, Russian, French, German, Spanish, Uzbek, Kurmanji, Swahili and Portuguese Brazilian are available through the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, though those are in the process of being moved to ALMS. An additional 11 languages are under development for HeadStart2, Pick said. Soldiers who complete the Headstart2 program in any language can get up to 16 promotion points in ATRRS. For those languages hosted on ALMS, those points are automatically posted to ATRRS. For those languages hosted on DLIFLC, Soldiers will need to print out the certificate of training to apply for the credit. "When a Soldier completes Headstart2, he or she gets credit in ATRRS, which not only tells the unit commander at a glance who has or has not completed pre-deployment language and culture training, but it also gives that young Soldier credit in terms of promotion points." The most popular of the language training programs are Dari, Iraqi Arabic and Pashto. Between June 2010 and June 2011, for instance, some 33,000 individuals used the Dari language program to train for deployment to Afghanistan. But Pick said others may use the program for non-deployment purposes. His own son, he said, used the program to augment his high school Spanish language training. The Defense Language Institute developed the Headstart2 program completely in-house, Pick said. There's also another program available online through DLI called the Global Language Online Support System, or GLOSS, that includes training modules to help users achieve "level three" ability in a target language. And within the next year, Pick said, DLI will release a follow-on training program for Headstart2, called "Gateway." The first target language for Gateway will be Swahili. While HeadStart2 provides Soldiers with a good starting point for language training, the Army has a much more robust option available to prepare Soldiers for deployment: the General Purpose Force Language Training Detachment. The first of those detachments stood up at Fort Carson, Colo., in 2010, and was the result of a partnership between the operational Army and the Defense Language Institute. There are now seven detachments, as well as mobile training detachments that bring the training to Soldiers. Right now, only Dari and Pashtu are being taught in language training detachments, and the training time for those languages is 16 weeks. The goal for training in the detachments is to bring students to a "0+" spoken proficiency in either of those languages, depending upon a deploying unit's area of operations and forecasted mission, said Maj. Gregory R. Mitchell, with the Army's Language and Culture Office, G-3/5/7. "Face-to-face, instructor-based training is the only proven methodology for training spoken proficiency to any level on the Interagency Language Roundtable Scale," he said. "This fact alone is the reason why the Language Training Detachment is the Army's method of choice for training the one language-enabled Soldier per deploying platoon." Mitchell said other languages could be taught in the GPF LTD, and depending on the difficulty of the language, the time for training to reach a 0+ could differ. French or Portuguese, for instance, could be taught to that level in a third of the time, he said. "The LTD concept is very flexible and can be tailored, resources permitting, contract teachers in most languages can be hired within weeks to adapt to arising contingency missions," Mitchell said. For Soldiers able to successfully complete language training at a GPF LTD, 48 points are available toward promotion. The Army is also awarding 10 promotion points to Soldiers who achieve an elementary proficiency rating on the Defense Language Proficiency Test. Army testifies to Congress on acquisition, technology [2011-10-27] WASHINGTON -- By this time next year, the Army will have a good idea about alternatives for the ground combat vehicle program, Army leaders told Congressmen Wednesday. They said the GCV will be the first combat vehicle developed to operate in an improvised-explosive device and hybrid-threat environment. Lt. Gen. Robert P. Lennox, deputy chief of staff of the Army, G-8, told members of the House Armed Services Committee tactical air and land forces subcommittee he thinks the Army has a good path in looking at both "developmental systems" and "non-developmental systems" as possibilities for a ground combat vehicle. The general appeared Oct. 26 before the committee, along with Lt. Gen. William N. Phillips, military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, to discuss Army acquisition and modernization. Phillips told lawmakers that it's expected the Army will be able to get the vehicle, which is meant to operate in an improvised explosive device, or IED, environment and to carry nine Soldiers, for about $9 to10.5 million, which is what was specified in the request for proposal for the vehicle. For non-developmental items, which means possible vehicles that could become the GCV but are already developed, he said the Army doesn't know the exact costs but would take a "deeper look." That includes a variant of the M2 Bradley, for instance, as well as an Israeli-made vehicle. Everything would be taken to White Sands Missile Range, N.M., to be tested by Soldiers, he said. "The GCV is incredibly important to the Army," Phillips said, adding that the GCV is the first vehicle built from the ground up to operate in an IED environment. Lawmakers asked about the Army's emphasis on research and development. Phillips said the Army is concerned about the budget and what that will mean for research and development, and that if the Army wants to remain "world class" it must invest in the future, and that means adequate R&D. He also said it's important the Army continue to invest in R&D because of the many small businesses that provide that research to the Army as part of the Small Business Innovation Research program. The Army's working now to both improve the current M4 carbine used by Soldiers and to also research a replacement for the M4, if a better one exists. Phillips called the current M4 "a remarkable weapon." He pointed out the requirement for the current weapon is 600 "mean rounds between systems abort," which means 600 rounds before the weapon fails. But that number today is much higher, about 3,500, meaning the weapon is even more dependable than what the Army asked for. Still, Philips said, that Army will continue to upgrade the weapon. Already, some 60 improvements have been made to it. Additional upgrades include an ambidextrous trigger and heavier barrel. And the Army is converting existing M4s to the M4A1. A request for proposal that went out in June asking industry for a possible replacement to the M4 closed out Oct. 27. Now the Army will look at those proposals, he said, to determine if there are good options. "Our Soldiers trust us to give them the best equipment they we can," Phillips said. While the Ground Mobile Radio portion of the Joint Tactical Radio System will be cancelled, Phillips told legislators the program would face "a graceful termination." The Army will not renew the contract. He said the GMR is "critical to the Army's network strategy" and the Army would seek commercial radios now that can run both the Wideband Networking Waveform as well as the Soldier Radio Waveform. The general said the Army would put out a request for proposal, possibly in the next month, to ask for hardware from industry to run those waveforms. "This is positive for us," Phillips said. "We'll get this radio quicker. It'll be at a lower cost." 100th Infantry: Cane fields to Congressional Gold Medal [2011-11-01] WASHINGTON -- Mitsuo Hamasu will receive the Congressional Gold Medal Nov. 2 for his service in the Army during World War II as part of the all-Japanese-American 100th Infantry Battalion. Hamasu, born in Hawaii in 1919 to Japanese parents, is a Nisei -- the second generation, born in a new country to parents who were Japanese by birth. Hamasu was excited to join the Army -- even by force in 1940, as a result of the first draft in Hawaii -- because it got him off the rural sugarcane plantation he worked as a young man. "I was happy, to get out of the country," he said of his rural home on the north side of Hawaii's largest island. "That's a country place. It's sugar cane. We were working for a plantation, a sugar plantation -- cane farming." Hamasu had actually been lucky to help his uncle as a carpenter's assistant -- the same uncle, he said, who had told him he'd never get into the Army, even if he wanted to. "I was five foot two," Hamasu said. "And I thought that was too short. I worked for my uncle, and he used to tell me you can't get in. They won't take you. You are too short." But in 1940, the Army came anyway and Hamasu was drafted into the Hawaii National Guard, 299th Hawaii Infantry Regiment. His parents and friends were happy for him, Hamasu said. "They were happy to see one of their children get into the military," he said. "It was the first draft, and we never had this thing before. Friends were happy because I got in." Just one year after he was drafted, on Dec. 7, 1941 -- the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Immediately after his enlistment, Hamasu had been in a mixed unit -- white Americans mingled with Japanese. But after Pearl Harbor, military life changed for Hamasu. "They called us in, the 299th Regiment -- I was in F Company," he said. "They called the company together and said all the Japanese Soldiers turn in your weapons and ammunition. That's when they segregated us and sent us to a place called Schofield Barracks. We were curious to what was happening, because they don't tell you. They just said to turn in your weapons -- then they pick all the Japanese Soldiers and send them to a place, isolated, as far as Schofield Barracks is concerned. And they said we're going to make a unit out of it." Others might have felt slighted, angry or ashamed. Hamasu said he wanted to do what he was told -- what his country asked of him. "I felt that since I was in the military -- whatever the military tells you to do, you have to do it," he said. "So, we took it as it came." Did he have to work harder to prove himself? Yes. "They didn't say you have to, but it happened that way. You have to -- you know, you have to do more than your share to be accepted by the other Soldiers." In early June 1942, Hamasu's unit left Hawaii for the United States -- though they didn't know where they were going at the time. Shortly after their arrival at Fort McCoy, Wis., they were christened the 100th Infantry Battalion -- an all-Japanese-American unit that would fight the Germans in Italy. By September 1943, the 100th had finished training in the United States and sailed for Africa. By the end of the month, they were in Salerno, Italy. They fought for nine months from Salerno to Rome -- a distance of about 140 miles. Their heaviest fighting came in late January 1944, at Monte Cassino. The 100th landed in Italy with about 1,300 Soldiers. They started at Monte Cassino with around 800. They finished that battle with about 500. It was at Monte Cassino where the Nisei Soldiers earned the nickname the "Purple Heart Battalion." The 100th received reinforcements after Monte Cassino, from the 442nd Regimental Combat Team -- another all-Nisei unit -- and pressed on to Rome. The 100th fought for a total of 18 months in both Italy and France. The 100th Infantry Battalion earned three Presidential Unit Citations, 1,703 Purple Hearts, 8 Medals of Honor, 16 Distinguished Service Crosses, 147 Silver Stars, 2,173 Bronze Stars and 30 Division Commendations. "Serving overseas in Italy -- it's mountainous," Hamasu said -- reluctant to recount any details about his combat actions in the country. "It was a terrible thing, as far as the war is concerned. I think they should stop all wars -- I feel that way." He did say he thought the actions of his unit merited recognition though -- and was appreciative of the recognition he and his fellow Soldiers are going to receive from the U.S. Congress. "It's very nice of Americans to do this," he said. On Nov. 2, Hamasu and fellow Soldiers from the 100th, as well as Soldiers from the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and Military Intelligence Service will be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. Hamasu left the Army after World War II, only to re-enlist again in time to serve in the Korean War. He served in the U.S. Army until his retirement in 1963 as a staff sergeant. He and his wife have seven children. Following his military retirement he served as a Department of the Navy civilian until his civilian retirement in 1986. He resides in Hawaii. 40 Bronze Stars awarded to Japanese-American vets [2011-11-02] WASHINGTON -- More than 66 years after hostilities ended in World War II, 40 Americans were given the Bronze Star medals they deserved for combat service in that conflict. They were Japanese-American Soldiers who fought as part of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the 100th Infantry Battalion, and the Military Intelligence Service awarded the decoration during a ceremony Nov. 1 in Washington, D.C. The Army decided all Soldiers who wore Combat Infantry Badges from World War II were owed a Bronze Star -- some, however, never received theirs. Getting such an award, in many cases, depended on "how good your clerk was ... and some of the clerks were not that great," said Lt. Gen. Joseph F. Peterson, now retired. He said it's really a matter of paperwork that the Soldiers had to wait so long to get their Bronze Stars. The general said he's organizing the three-day recognition of Japanese-American Soldiers in Washington. The highlight has some 800 of those veterans being honored with the Congressional Gold Medal during a ceremony Nov. 2 at the U.S. Capitol Building. But for the Soldiers gathered at a posh Washington, D.C. hotel, Nov. 1, the day was about finally getting the Bronze Star they were owed. At the event, 31 of those Soldiers were present to have the star pinned on their chest by Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno. Another nine Bronze Star medals were given to the family members of Soldiers who could not attend, or who had died. "It's amazing to get a star like this," said Don K. Masuda, one of the recipients of the award. The former Soldier attended the event with his wife, his daughter, and two of his grandsons. He said following the Army he's led "a pretty good life," which he said included being a co-owner of a shipping business in his native Hawaii, and also working six years for the postal service. He served as an infantryman in World War II, in both Italy and France, as part of the 442nd RCT. He earned two Purple Hearts during his service. He said he's been waiting "a pretty long time" to have a Bronze Star. Fellow 442nd RCT Soldier, George Joe Sakato, was also at the award ceremony -- both as a recipient of the Bronze Star and as a speaker. Sakato is one of 21 Japanese-American Medal of Honor recipients to come out of the 442nd RCT and 100th Infantry Battalion. On behalf of the 33,000 Japanese-Americans Soldiers who served in World War II, Sakato thanked Congress for the Congressional Gold Medal the Soldiers would be honored with Nov. 2. He also thanked his country for the opportunity to earn that honor. "We also thank the government, which allowed us to serve in the U.S. Army, to defend our country, and to prove our loyalty to America," Sakato said. A total of 40 Bronze Stars were presented to Soldiers or their family by the Army's chief of staff. Odierno reiterated for those at the event the greatness of their service, like the service of all those who served in World War II. He called them "the greatest generation." But the general also touched on the tragedy those Soldiers faced that other Soldiers did not -- many of their families, back home, locked away in camps and branded as enemies of America, even while their sons served to defend the country's ideals. "From the shock of Pearl Harbor, and out of fear and prejudice, 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry were sent to internment camps," Odierno said. "But what's incredible to me as that many of them did not allow that grave injustice of the internment to stand in their way. They remained steadfast in their commitment to their country, and volunteered to serve a nation in combat -- a selfless act of devotion." Those Japanese-American Soldiers, he said, served as infantrymen, linguists, military intelligence, and artillerymen. "Over 33,000 Japanese-Americans served in the war," Odierno said. "And of those, over 13,000 served in the 442nd, and earned over 9,000 Purple Hearts." The 442nd became the most highly decorated unit in the Army's history, Odierno said. The 442nd and the 100th Infantry Battalion together earned seven Presidential Unit Citations, two Meritorious Service Plaques, 36 Army Commendation Medals, and 87 Division Commendations. Individually, Soldiers earned 21 Medals of Honor, 29 Distinguished Service Crosses, one Distinguished Service Medal, more than 354 Silver Stars, and more than 4,000 Purple Hearts. Of those Soldiers, Odierno said, "together they define the ethos that we all live by today, 'never leave a fallen comrade."' Odierno said a lesson was learned from the experience of World War II -- a lesson about tolerance. "The lesson of the Japanese-American experience is that fear and prejudice make our country weaker, not stronger," Odierno said. "Japanese-Americans, like others, have more than earned their place in our country, in our Army, and in our society -- a melting pot to include African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans and today, Arab-Americans." About 240 veterans attended the Bronze Star event. Another 100 spouses of deceased veterans also attended, as did about 500 family members representing Soldiers. Peterson, himself a descendant of Japanese ancestry, said the event was both to honor those Soldiers that served, and to educate America. "It's educational for our nation to know that a group of Soldiers and a group of Americans, who because of the mass hysteria when the imperial military of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor -- were classified enemy aliens," Peterson said. About 120,000 Japanese-Americans were rounded up, Peterson said, and put into any of 10 internment camps across nine states. "Out of those camps came a demand, by 65 percent of them -- 65 percent of 120,000 internees -- to serve their country in a time of war," he said. It was those Soldiers who served in units like the 442nd RCT, the 100th Infantry Battalion and the Military Intelligence Service, Peterson said. Among those three units, he said, the average number of individual awards per Soldier was three awards for heroism. "They are the most decorated unit in U.S. military history of its size and duration of the conflict," he said. Japanese-American vets earn nation's highest civilian honor [2011-11-02] WASHINGTON -- Hundreds of former Soldiers, wearing blue and red veterans caps bearing the names of their World War II units, walked, shuffled or were wheeled in to the Capitol Visitors Center here, Nov. 2, to witness the presentation of the Congressional Gold Medal awarded for their bravery and contribution to country more than 66 years ago. They were Japanese-American Soldiers, the American-born sons of parents who immigrated to the United States from Japan, that were honored. In Japanese, they are called Nisei -- the second generation. But those Soldiers are all American, and fought for the United States during World War II as part of segregated, all-Japanese-American units that included the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the 100th Infantry Battalion and the Military Intelligence Service. The three units together were the most decorated units of that war. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese-Americans had been rounded up and were forced to live in internment camps inside the United States. They were branded enemies of their own country. "For Japanese-Americans, the days and months after Pearl Harbor must have seemed like a giant and painful step backward," said Rep. John Boehner. "Removed from their homes and placed in camps, these loyal Americans endured years of discomfort and disgrace. But out of this story of prejudice comes another story that reaffirms America's worth and America's exceptionalism. Today we honor the thousands of Japanese-Americans who served in the Army's three units we honor today, most of whom were recruited during their internment." These Japanese-American Soldiers, Boehner said, distinguished themselves in nearly every operation in every theater of World War II. "On behalf of my colleagues and the American people, thank you for fighting to make this the greatest nation on Earth and God bless all of you for all of your work," Boehner said. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, a Medal of Honor recipient, was also a recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal. As a Nisei himself, he had served as part of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team during World War II. After Pearl Harbor, Inouye said, Japanese-Americans like himself were not satisfied to sit and do nothing while America fought -- he said those Japanese-Americans who had been interned petitioned the government for an opportunity to demonstrate their love of country and patriotism. Today, those Soldiers are recognized for their commitment to the United States, Inouye said. "This has been a long journey, and a glorious one," the senator said. "We wish to thank all of you, all Americans, for this recognition. It's heartwarming, and I am certain that I speak for all assembled here, but more importantly I'm certain that those resting in cemeteries, are pleased with this day." Sen. Barbara Boxer participated in getting the legislation passed to allow the medal to be presented to the veterans. "Granting this medal is a long overdue honor which recognizes and expressed our long overdue appreciation for your dedicated service during World War II," Boxer told those in attendance. She said those servicemembers fought the war on two fronts -- including both the enemy in combat, and prejudice at home. "While we can never repay the debt that we owe you, we can and we must recognize your valor and your patriotism, and that is what we are doing here today," Boxer said. Sen. John McCain said America's Nisei veterans of World War II did "everything that was ever asked of them and more. And what is most remarkable is that they did so despite the fact that our nation at times fell short of its responsibilities to them, and Americans like them." McCain also recognized that while lawmakers are in disagreement about many things, the merits of the Japanese-American veterans is something they are in agreement on. "It's not every day that the leaders and members of Congress have an opportunity to put aside our usual difference over the impending business of the day, to join together with bipartisan unanimity, to pay tribute to fellow citizens who have served a just cause greater than their own self interests," McCain said. "When it comes to honoring those among us who have given everything to protect our nation, Americans have always and will always stand as one, just as we do today." Rep. Nancy Pelosi said the gathering to award the Congressional Gold Medal is not complete -- many of the Soldiers who served were killed in combat, or have died since the end of World War II. "We remember those for whom today came too late, and we particularly honor those who never came home," Pelosi said. "In battle, today's awardees proved that they were great fighters, in their service, they proved they were great patriots. Your cause was not just the end of fascism, but promoted the end of discrimination -- the American ideal of equality, which is our heritage and our hope." The Congressional Gold Medal is awarded by the American Congress, and is the highest civilian award in the United States. Veterans in attendance at the ceremony receive a bronze replica of the medal. A single gold medal will be placed in the Smithsonian for all Americans to see. Over 33,000 Japanese-Americans served in World War II. Together, the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team earned seven Presidential Unit Citations, two Meritorious Service Plaques, 36 Army Commendation Medals, and 87 Division Commendations. Individually, Soldiers earned 21 Medals of Honor, 29 Distinguished Service Crosses, one Distinguished Service Medal, more than 354 Silver Stars, and more than 4,000 Purple Hearts. The units together are the most decorated units in Army history. Today, they, along with the Military Intelligence Service, also staffed by Japanese-Americans, add the Congressional Gold Medal to their list of decorations. Award-winning female aviator says challenges same for men as women [2011-11-02] WASHINGTON -- Before taking home the 2011 leadership award from the non-profit Women in Aerospace organization, Col. Laura J. Richardson said she believes the challenges for both men and women in Army aviation are largely the same. "I think they are the same challenges [for] everybody -- if they are going to be a leader in Army aviation, they have got to compete for the assignments as commanders," Richardson said. "Work as hard as you can and be as competent as you can in your profession." Now commander of the Operational Test Command at Fort Hood, Texas; recipient of seven air medals, recently selected for promotion to brigadier general, and having some 1,400 hours in the cockpit -- with more than 400 of those combat hours during a tour in Iraq in 2003 -- Richardson is in a good position to comment on the state of affairs of women aviators in the Army. During a ceremony Nov. 1 in Washington, D.C., Richardson, a Black Hawk pilot, was given the leadership award from Women in Aerospace. The non-profit group aims to expand opportunities for leadership and visibility for women in the aerospace community. Her award citation reads "for her extraordinary leadership in U.S. Army aviation, her advancement of the role of women in combat aviation, and her dedication to the development of the current and future generations of female aviators." Richardson said she was honored for the award, and thanked those who had nominated her for it. She also cited her military career as a point of pride. "My 25-year career in the Army has just been super, and I am thankful I have been able to serve, and serve this long and I would not trade it for the world," she said after receiving the award. "To the other ladies who are receiving awards, I am just so honored to be standing among you tonight." Richardson was commissioned in 1986 and says since then "opportunities for women open wider and there are more opportunities for women in service." When she first entered service, she said, women aviators were not allowed to fly combat aircraft -- that restriction has now been almost completely removed. "When I came in, I couldn't go attack aircraft, I couldn't fly Apaches, I couldn't fly Kiowa Warriors," she said. "I had to either go Chinook or Black Hawk or stay Huey. Nowadays, women can fly Apache and Kiowa Warrior." Women aviators in the Army can still not serve as pilots in special operations aviation, however, a hurdle Richardson said she'd like to see overcome. Though she said she sees a broader push now for more opportunities for women Soldiers. "I don't know that there's a push per se for that particular skill set [SOF aviation], as much as there is overall with women serving in combat positions," she said. "There is, I think over the past year, more and more folks are thinking that the positions that are currently closed to women should open up and women should be able to serve in them." Richardson also said she'd like to see another first for women in the Army aviation community -- a woman at the helm of the Army's aviation branch. "There are a lot of things you can do, by the time you get to that rank, and where you have worked -- assignments in the Pentagon, assignments on the Hill, wherever -- you kind of have an idea how the Army works and you can shape your branch that you came up in," she said. Today, Richardson serves as commander of the Army's Operational Testing Command out of Fort Hood, Texas, a role she assumed in July. There, she focuses not on aviation, but on testing in a real-world environment the equipment the Army wants to field. The OTC she said has been testing equipment like the Stryker Double-V Hull Scout Kit, or the Rifleman Radio, and will soon test the Stryker Double-V Hull Mortar Carrier Kit. The OTC is also involved in the Army's Network Integration Exercise. While developmental testing happens in the lab -- with air conditioning, optimal testing environments and "men in lab coats," at the OTC, it's real Soldiers working with the equipment the way it's meant to be used. "You give it to a bunch of people like us -- we bang it around and get it out in the 100-degree heat and get it all dusty and dirty and throw it around and drop it," she said. "We do our mission. We go through bush, the weeds and the trees. We are the last stop, the truth. They call us the honest brokers with equipment. We are not going to lie about it, we are not going to say it is what it isn't -- it either works or it doesn't. Either the unit can do the mission, and they can do their mission better with this equipment -- or not." For young women in Army aviation -- perhaps even for men in Army aviation -- Richardson said getting ahead means having goals. "Set goals early. Have some goals. Don't just plod along and not have ideas about what you would want to do in the service," she said. "There are so many opportunities in the Army." She said some of the things she has done in the Army she had no idea early on those opportunities even existed -- the Army chose her to serve as the military aide for Vice President Al Gore, for instance. She also served as a military liaison officer in the U.S. Senate. "I didn't know I could do that," she said. "I didn't know that as a major, I could go and work for the vice president, or the president." Richardson says young officers should take advantage of those opportunities -- in between the times they get to do the things they "love to do" -- being in the field, and being in command, she said. "There are great positions that you can do and take advantage of -- internships, fellowship programs and all different kinds of things," she said, things that are career-building. She doesn't know exactly where she'll be in the future, but Richardson says she hopes to continue to live up to what WIA has honored her for -- being a leader of women. "I just hope to be a role model for women in the Army, and do the best that I can," she said. "People really don't care -- as long as you do your job -- what gender you are, what race you are, what ethnicity. It really doesn't matter if you are confident and competent in what you do." Richardson's awards and decorations include the Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit with two Oak Leaf Clusters, Bronze Star, Army Meritorious Service Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters, Air Medal (seven), and Joint Service Commendation Medal. Army summit attracts potential energy investors [2011-11-04] WASHINGTON -- The Army's Energy Initiatives Task Force, which stood up in September to accomplish the Army's energy goals, hosted a summit Nov. 3 to bring in interested private-sector investors together to learn about the Army's way ahead on energy independence. The Army's looking to reduce its dependency on foreign oil, but it's also looking to increase the "resilience" of its installations through renewable energy development. "We need to increase the resilience of our installations," said Katherine Hammack, the assistant secretary of the army for installations, energy and environment. "Many of our installations are at the end of the line, they are in fairly remote locations. That means if anything happens up stream, our fallback is diesel generators. We'd like to increase our resiliency by having generation on the installations." To meets its energy goals, the Army is hoping industry will be willing to invest as much as $7.1 billion dollars over ten years on installations to develop renewable energy projects. "There are a lot of people interested," said Katherine Hammack, the assistant secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment. Hammack said as many as 250 companies were represented at the summit. Interest was so high, she said, that registration for the event closed in only four hours. A subsequent registration closed in six hours. "We're looking at, by 2025, we want 25 percent of our energy to come from renewable sources," she explained. "We're looking at a ten-year window, a specific amount of energy that we want generated. We're not just saying projects starting, or projects under construction, but we want to be generating that much energy." To accomplish the 25-percent goal, the Army will need 2.1 million megawatt hours a year of renewable energy through collaboration with the private sector. Some projects are already underway, Hammack said. There are multiple renewable energy projects at Fort Bliss, Texas, for instance. There's also work being done now on solar projects at Fort Irwin, Calif. She said the EITF will help installations with projects underway to accelerate those projects. "We're not starting from zero," Hammack said. "Right now there's 20 different projects in the pipeline that are under evaluation." She said the EITF will help installations develop such projects because developing renewable energy options for military installations is really outside the scope of what installation management is equipped to do. "What we want them to focus on is operating [an installation] and supporting Soldiers and their families," Hammack said. "When we have a need for something above and beyond, like large-scale renewables, it exceeds both their capacity and capabilities. The EITF was stood up to augment our garrison commanders, to augment our installations and provide them with the skills and resources they need to have large-scale renewables on the installations." Richard G. Kidd, the deputy assistant secretary of the Army for energy and sustainability, said the summit, which was held at the U.S. Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., "went very well. We are really trying to signal that the Army is serious about this." Kidd said there was some "dynamic tension" at the summit, however, because the Army could not be as open about the specifics of the acquisition process as it would like to be, but said the strategy is under development. "We are committed to rolling out the particulars of the acquisition details as rapidly as we can, in a manner that preserves procurement integrity," he said. "The last thing we want is to do something wrong on the acquisition process and have to start over." The EITF will hold a follow-on conference in the spring. McHugh says Guard remedy for military, civilian divide [2011-11-09] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh told members of the National Guard Nov. 9 that military leadership is concerned about the divide between society and the less-than-1-percent that serve in uniform. "Not only is this 1 percent a small segment of the population, there are those who understandably worry it is an increasingly isolated part of the population, becoming increasingly apart from America," McHugh said during the 2011 National Guard Joint Senior Leadership Conference. McHugh said former Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates had noted that the U.S. Army's forces are concentrated in just five states. And while Alabama, with a population of less than 5 million, has 10 Reserve Officer Training Programs, Los Angeles, with more than 12 million, has just four such programs. Chicago, with a population of 9 million, has only three. "Gates went on to say there is a risk over time of developing a cadre of military leaders that politically, culturally, and geographically have less in common with the majority of the people they are sworn to defend," McHugh said. The secretary said the National Guard is an answer to that concern. "That's where you come in," McHugh said. "I certainly don't need to tell you the men and women of the National Guard and the Air National Guard are in every zip code in America. That means you are in every city, you're in every town, village and hamlet. And unlike our major military installations, you're in every congressional district all across this great land." Whether Guardsmen are on or off the job, McHugh said, "you, the members of the Guard, are the military's connection to every segment of American society. You show all this great nation the goodness of duty, and honor and country." Despite concerns about the military losing a connection to the larger society, the secretary said polls indicate that Americans rank the military as one of the most trusted agencies of federal government. "There's no question in my mind that Americans are deeply grateful for what you do," McHugh told the audience -- mostly Army and Air National Guard personnel. A top concern for military leaders are looming budget cuts, which McHugh addressed with the leadership forum. The military, McHugh said, has enjoyed seemingly endless resources. But now, after 10 years of war, and in the midst of a global financial crisis, he said, the DOD is under "tremendous pressure" to cut costs. "As you know, some of that will inevitably rest at our door step -- and I would argue, frankly, it should," he said. The debates over military cuts are not new, the secretary said. They've come after all the major wars the United States has been involved in, including World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and Desert Storm. And after those conflicts, he said, troop strength has been cut, research and development has been cut, and acquisition programs have been cut. "And in every instance, we were wrong," McHugh said. Today, that argument is back -- an argument for both strength reduction and for technology over boots on the ground. He said some see the future as more like "Transformers" and less like "Saving Private Ryan." But McHugh said cuts don't have to come at the expense of one service over the other. "We have to do this as we have fought for the last 10 years, as a team, brothers in arms, one team one fight," McHugh said. Despite suggestions that the military has outlived its usefulness, or that future military actions will not need ground forces, McHugh said that peace is "fleeting," and that the military must serve to both deter and take action at all times. "A hollow force invites aggression," McHugh said. "As we continue to wrestle with our budgetary reality, our military and our nation must heed the lessons of history." McHugh said that had the United States commanded the military respect of Japan and Germany prior to World War II, the U.S. involvement might not have been necessary. But that kind of respect, he said, must be maintained. "That is our solemn obligation," he said. "To ensure this nation's continued respect, built on the valor and sacrifice and bloodshed of our all-volunteer force." In the past year, McHugh said, he's seen the Guard fighting terrorists in Panama, Sinai and the Balkans, or "challenging nature on the banks of the Mississippi River," and leading patrols in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. "I haven't seen Guard or Reserve," he said. "I've seen only Soldiers and Airmen. And what I've seen has been extraordinary." The president, McHugh said, has recognized service members for succeeding in every mission given to them -- including fighting the Taliban, eliminating Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and fighting insurgency. They've also done missions outside traditional combat, including developing power sources, building schools, and negotiating with local leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Looking toward the future, I will tell you it is critical we keep you engaged, we keep you in uniform, and we keep you bridging that gap between military service and American society," McHugh said. "We will do everything we can to make sure that Guard units have the training, the equipment and the support that you need in ensuring you are ready for any contingency -- whether a theater of war, homeland defense, or disaster response." JIEDDO working to reverse trend for larger IEDs in Afghanistan [2011-11-10] WASHINGTON -- The amount of explosives used in IEDs in Afghanistan is increasing, while at the same time, the number of attacks are at "historic highs." In June and July, there were 1,600 IED events in Afghanistan, said Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero, program executive officer, Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization. The good news, he said, is the number of IEDs found and cleared has gone up by 100 percent, as has the number of finds of caches of IED-building material. During an Institute of Land Warfare breakfast Nov. 10 in Arlington, Va., Barbero said as many as 80 percent of IEDs in Afghanistan are made from ammonium nitrate coming from fertilizer plants in Pakistan. Each factory produces as much as 400,000 metric tons of the material each year, and about 1 percent of that makes its way to insurgents, where he said it's easily turned into inexpensive explosives. He also said 90 percent of casualties in Afghanistan come from ammonium nitrate explosive. Barbero said the JIEDDO and the intelligence community must focus on the network that brings the material from those facilities into the hands of terrorists. "From these two legally operating factories in Pakistan, we know where they are producing, we know who their distributors are -- and we are getting great support from them." What is unknown, Barbero said, is where the transition point is between legal enterprise and criminal activity. "What we don't understand is how this ammonium nitrate gets from the factories to these insurgents -- that's the greatest intelligence gap we have." Once that gap is identified, Barbero said, funding sources can be tracked, and other elements of U.S. government power could be brought in to affect change -- including both the State Department and the Treasury. Barbero said that in 2011, there was about $2.44 billion in funding for JIEDDO. While not "locked in" yet, he said, it's expected that in 2012 and 2013 that number will be about the same. "We'll be able to do what we need ... to support our warfighter." The general said there is talk about modifying authorities for JIEDDO to support other federal agencies, because he said the IED threat has expanded beyond Iraq and Afghanistan. "These networks and these IEDs are coming to a 14th Street Bridge near us," he said, referring to a major commuter route into Washington, D.C. "We need to be able to share better with our interagency partners the intelligence and information we have on technology and the networks." In January, Barbero said, JIEDDO will publish a strategy that "goes beyond Afghanistan" to detail some enduring IED threats and to offer a description of the kinds of research and development needed to counter them "so we can start the dialogue and collaboration ... on finding solutions and capabilities." 'Open season' begins for federal employee health care [2011-11-16] FORT MEADE, Md. -- Even if a federal employee is happy with current health insurance, officials say it's probably a good idea to do at least a little research during "open season," which began Monday and runs through Dec. 12. The Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan open season refers to the time each year when employees are allowed to change options for health care coverage, including dental and vision insurance. "A federal employee has many choices between health plans," said Anne Healy, a representative from the BlueCross BlueShield Federal Employee Program. In Maryland, Healy said, employees can choose from as many as 25 plans, including preferred provider plans, health management organizations, and high deductible health plans. "There's all different types of options," she said. "If an employee is enrolled in one plan, say an HMO (health maintenance organization), and they decide they want to change to a PPO (preferred provider organization), the only time they can do that is during the open season." New federal employees pick a health care plan when they are hired. And existing employees can change their coverage options during "life-changing events" such as getting married or having a baby. But otherwise, employees must wait until "open season" to make changes to their health coverage. But even if an employee doesn't make changes to health insurance coverage during open season, providers can make changes of their own. And employees should be aware of those changes, because they can reflect on their paycheck come January. "A couple years ago we had one health carrier that raised its premiums tremendously," said Peggy Schultz, the director of the Army Benefits Center. "We had a lot of unhappy people after open season because by then it's too late to do anything about it. And it was a significant increase." Schultz said that federal employees, during open season, should investigate changes being made to their current health, dental and vision plans to ensure that when the new year rolls around, there will be no surprises in their paycheck. "People should go out there to investigate with the tools available," she said. Schultz said some of those tools are available on the "Smart Choice" website that is available at https://www.plansmartchoice.com. Additionally, there is information available on the "Army Benefits Center-Civilian" website at https://www.abc.army.mil. Schultz said that during open season, Army civilians can look at and modify their health coverage options on the "Employee Benefits Information System" at https://www.ebis.army.mil. Somewhere between 90 and 95 percent of Army civilians use the EBIS site to make changes to their health insurance plans, Schultz said. "They have embraced the automation." Others, she said, can call the toll-free number available on the site to work with an operator. Mark Ruddick, a representative of the Kaiser Permanente health care organization, said during open season, federal employees should reassess their health care needs and then look at all the options available to them. "What's important for them -- that's part of my dialogue when I meet with a potential member -- it is not necessarily to sell a plan to them, but to really find what they are looking for. "Buying health insurance is a very personal issue," Ruddick said. "So what's important to you might not be important to me. So it's having a conversation with somebody, as they look at all this information. Is it choice of physician, is it the cost of the plan, it is having them on an integrated network?" According to the Office of Personnel Management website, most Federal Employee Health Benefit plans will see benefit and rate changes beginning in January 2012. Some plans are dropping out, for instance, and some plans are changing their coverage area. "It is wise to review your coverage during this period to decide what coverage and premium best suits your needs for the upcoming year," the website reads. Information from OPM can be found at http://www.opm.gov/insure/openseason. Included there is information about health, dental and vision plans, as well as information about flexible spending accounts. A flexible spending account allows an employee to set aside untaxed money to use for authorized medical expenses. Employees who use flexible spending accounts must enroll each year to continue participating. The OPM website also offers several video seminars online regarding the 2012 open season. EOD techs show Congress bomb disposal tools [2011-11-17] WASHINGTON -- More than a dozen Soldiers showcased explosive ordnance disposal equipment on Capitol Hill, Nov. 17, as part of an "inaugural event" for the recently formed House EOD Caucus. Many of those Soldiers came from the 55th EOD unit out of Fort Belvoir, Va., which provides EOD support in the National Capital Region by providing assistance and expertise to the civilian bomb squads already operating there. The 19-member House EOD Caucus is co-chaired by Congressman Rick Crawford, of Arkansas, who served in the Army in the late 1980s as an EOD technician. It was Crawford, along with co-chair Congresswoman Susan Davis, of California, who requested support from the 55th EOD unit. "I think this is an opportunity to shed some more light on what are the key enablers in the War on Terror, with respect to counter-IED operations," Crawford said. "We want to educate our colleagues and make sure they understand how critical this is in making sure that we can adequately address the War on Terror through our counter-IED operations." Davis said the education she hopes fellow legislators will get from meeting with EOD technicians one-on-one will help lawmakers make decisions that can help save the lives of Soldiers. "To me it is about saving lives, actually," she said, adding that it's important that EOD Soldiers are enabled with the tools needed to better anticipate life-threatening danger in theater. "We want to be able to do that," Davis said. "A lot of people have devoted their lives to be able to find a better way to be in such a dangerous war theater, where you are not fighting an enemy, you are fighting devices like these." Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle were free to visit the EOD displays in an atrium of the Rayburn House Office Building throughout the day. At one table, Sgt. 1st Class Sean Conley, an EOD technician with the 55th EOD and an 8-year Army veteran, showcased both the tools of his trade, as well as some example of unexploded ordnance he might be called on to disable. He explained a piece of EOD equipment technicians use to investigate explosives, an x-ray system with a portable x-ray source and imaging system that hooks into a computer. "It's just like going to the doctor's office," Conley said. "What this does is it lets us see inside of whatever our package is." The x-ray unit was set up next to a mortar, but he said the system works with an IED as well. "We deal with anything that goes boom," he said. "If there are explosive hazards that reside in any piece of equipment or device or munition -- we are the ones that come and take care of it. We remove all explosive threats." Conley has deployed twice to Iraq, once on a 16-month deployment, and the second time on a 12-month deployment. He couldn't say how many explosives he personally dismantled there, but his unit, he said, went out on about 4,000 calls during his first deployment -- that's about eight calls each day. At a nearby table, Spc. Nik Karahalios, also with the 55th EOD, showcased both the PackBot, and its larger, meaner looking brother, the TALON. Both are remotely controlled robots that allow EOD technicians to get some standoff from an explosive threat as they dismantle it. "They have kind of the same capabilities, they both have claws and everything we can use to pick up what we need to," Karahalios said. Karahalios has been to Iraq, but as infantry, not EOD. He switched to EOD about a year ago, but has yet to deploy as a bomb disposal technician, though he says he's ready to go "if my country asks for it." Equipment like the PackBot and the TALON allow EOD technicians to keep a safe distance from an IED, for instance, and reduce the threat that somebody might be injured or killed while disposing of it. "In our job field, distance is our friend," said Sgt. 1st Class Bryan Layne, an EOD technician with the 55th EOD unit. "If we can do this from 300 yards away with that robot, I'd rather do that then send one of my guys to have to put that suit on and do that manually." Layne said he's been in the Army for 11 years, and that the explosive threats he and his teammates are asked to deal with have evolved over the years. "A lot of things we dealt with pre-9/11 were a lot simpler explosives," Layne said. "It was a lot simpler when it came to IEDs. Somebody built it in their garage, they came up with it, it was their idea. It was a lot simpler time. You had a higher probability of not running across anything complex." Conley said older explosives were like "that standard clock with some dynamite you see in cartoons a lot -- that was the typical style of device." Now, he said, technology and electronics advancements, have made IEDs more complicated. What has also advanced, though, is the technology EOD technicians use to disarm those explosives. Crawford, who left the Army in 1989, said the technology Soldiers use today in EOD is a "quantum leap forward" from when he served. "The mission has changed, certainly, but the technology has allowed them to prosecute that mission much more effectively," Crawford said. He cited the robots, the 50 cal. dearmer and even the bomb disposal suit as examples of that advancement. "The newer generation of bomb suits -- we were in a first generation bomb suit that were not very effective," he said. "And just the level of technology and skill that these EOD Soldiers have to learn and apply is tremendous." Crawford said as a result of EOD Soldiers appearing on Capitol Hill, he hopes his fellow members in Congress will be more equipped to support EOD Soldiers by investing in the right technology. Both the battlefield and the EOD mission will change, and EOD Soldiers must be equipped to "adapt in a very fluid way" Crawford said. "We need to make sure that they are equipped adequately to make those adaptations in a changing battlefield." Deadlines to mail Christmas packages approaching [2011-11-23] WASHINGTON -- If you want to send cookies or crocheted underwear to your Soldier overseas and have it in his hands before Christmas, the time to drop it in the mail is now -- or at the latest, Dec. 17. There's actually a range of deadlines the Military Postal Service Agency has established to ensure before-Christmas delivery of packages and letters to service members in deployed locations. To get mail to a service member by Christmas at APO/FPO/DPO AE 090-092, 094-098, 340, or 962-966, the latest a package can be sent to arrive on time is Dec. 17 -- that'll mean senders have to pay for Express Mail. If senders have already got packages ready and they want to send earlier -- and pay less -- they can put them in the mail by Dec. 10 and pay for either 1st Class or Priority mail. Mail to APO/FPO/DPO AE 093 must be sent by Dec. 3, regardless of the class of mail service used. Mail sent to deployed service members is handled almost entirely by commercial contractors -- almost. By the time it reaches what the Army calls "the last tactical mile," however, it might also be handled by Soldiers, Marines, Sailors or Airmen. "Once it gets into Afghanistan the military postal folks will sort it, to get it out to the different combat outposts," said Peter Graeve, with the Military Postal Service Agency. Getting it out to the combat outpost, he said, might involve "a military helicopter or a ground convoy -- or whatever access they have available at that level to get it out to the furthest reach of the spear." Where it used to take weeks or months to deliver mail to deployed Soldiers, it now can be done in days, Graeve said. That's good for moms, spouses, significant others and Soldiers. "It's a real morale booster, a touch of home, if you are sitting out there in a combat outpost and getting shot at and you get a card from home," Graeve said. "A little perfume from your wife or girlfriend means a lot to a person that is under a lot of stress out there. Getting some cookies when you're used to eating MREs, that's a good thing. We try to keep that in mind when we are processing the mail out to the folks." Those sending mail to overseas locations should also consider that customs forms may need to be filled out before items can be sent. More information about military mail and mailing dates can be found at: http://hqdainet.army.mil/mpsa/ LEAP award winners lauded at Pentagon ceremony [2011-11-29] WASHINGTON -- Practitioners of Lean Six Sigma were recognized Nov. 29 for streamlining Army business processes that help save the Army money. During a ceremony at the Pentagon to recognize winners in the 2011 Army Lean/Six Sigma Excellence Awards Program, or LEAP, Under Secretary of the Army Joseph W. Westphal explained just how valuable practitioners of the manufacturing and business process improvement programs are to the Army. Westphal said he had spent the morning with other Army senior leaders discussing the fiscal year 2014 program objective memorandum and how shrinking budgets would affect that process. "The challenges we talked about, the challenges to the Army that the DOD and the country will face over the course of the next few years, and certainly through the POM (Program Objective Memorandum) that we are going to build are pretty significant," he said. "We did talk a good deal about the need to really get our business transformation processes better aligned to garner more savings. Westphal said the more the Army can employ best practices and business process improvement to gain efficiencies, the easier it will be for the Army to meet the challenges that come with declining budgets. Lean and Six Sigma are two methods for improving business processes that can help the Army meet budget challenges. "These awards of course recognize the work that organizations and team leaders have been doing in finding real savings, and really getting these business processes to perform much better," Westphal said. "I am a big supporter of Lean/Six Sigma because I think it does give us a way ahead. It is always a learning process, it builds sustainability within our business processes so that future leaders, future managers can benefit from the success of all of you today and we can continue to learn and move those processes forward." Lean and Six Sigma are tools to improve the efficiencies and effectiveness of processes. Lean is used to get rid of waste in a process, while Six Sigma is used to reduce variation. Practitioners of the two processes are certified as "green belts," "black belts," and "master black belts." Representatives from Program Executive Office Ammunition, out of Picatinny Arsenal, N.J. were at the ceremony to receive the AR 10-87 Level Organizational Deployment Award. "We got an organizational deployment award, which encompasses how many projects we've done: all the benefits, all the cost avoidance benefits that we bring to the Army, as well as the percentage of certifications across the entire organization that are trained in green and black belt," said Barbara Gabbard, a Lean Six Sigma practitioner with PEO Ammo. In fiscal year 2011, PEO Ammo implemented about 20 LSS projects that resulted in a cost avoidance for the Army of about $160 million in fiscal year 2011. Those projects included a small caliber safety critical characteristic classification -- a set of four projects -- which improved the safety of 5.56m, 7.62mm and .50 cal rounds and generated a financial benefit of $40 million. PEO Ammo also ran an Improvised Explosive Device Defeat project which improved the process to urgently release products to the field, getting systems to Soldiers quicker, and generated a financial benefit of $616,000. "We have a culture of LSS on Picatinny Arsenal as a result of our training and certification programs that helps people think about all the good things that come from leaning these processes," said Brig. Gen. Jonathan Maddux, with PEO Ammo. Paul Chiodo, also a LSS practitioner with PEO Ammo agreed. He said knowledge of LSS runs from the top down. "I think one key ingredient that really distinguished this organization from any other in the Army is that the senior leadership from the commanding general on down are trained and being certified as black belts, so they are leading by example, by demonstration, by doing enterprise level projects themselves, and leading the community," Chiodo said. The winners of the 2011 LEAP Awards include: -- Enterprise Level Project Sponsor Award: Assistant Secretary of the Army Financial Management and Comptroller -- HQDA Level Organizational Deployment Award: Assistant Secretary of the Army Acquisition Logistics and Technology -- AR 10-87 Level Organizational Deployment Award: Program Executive Office Ammunition -- Subordinate Level Organizational Deployment Award: 21st Theater Sustainment Command -- Enterprise Level Project Team Awards: Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs -- Enterprise Level Project Team Awards: Program Executive Office Army Combat Support and Combat Support Services -- Non-Enterprise Level (Black Belt) Project Team Award: Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command -- Non-Enterprise Level (Black Belt) Project Team Award: Red River Army Depot -- Non-Enterprise Level (Green Belt) Project Team Award: Army Sustainment Command -- Non-Enterprise Level (Green Belt) Project Team Award: 21st Theater Sustainment Command -- Non-Gated Project Team Award: Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management -- Non-Gated Project Team Award: Army Test and Evaluation Command, Electronic Proving Ground -- Multiple Theater Projects Recognition Award: Third United Stated Army/Army Central Command 'Master black belt' cited for leaning medical retention boards [2011-11-29] WASHINGTON -- Shane Wentz isn't entirely responsible for reducing processing time for the Military Occupational Specialty/Medical Retention Board process by more than half -- but he is responsible for validating the results of the effort. Wentz, a "master black belt" in Lean Six Sigma, was honored for his contribution Nov. 29 at the Pentagon during a ceremony to recognize winners in the 2011 Army Lean/Six Sigma Excellence Awards Program, or LEAP. "These awards of course recognize the work that organizations and team leaders have been doing in finding real savings, and really getting these business processes to perform much better," said Under Secretary of the Army Joseph W. Westphal at the LEAP awards ceremony. " I am a big supporter of Lean/Six Sigma because I think it does give us a way ahead. It is always a learning process, it builds sustainability within our business processes so that future leaders, future managers can benefit from the success of all of you today and we can continue to learn and move those processes forward." Wentz had been nominated for his part in developing the Military Occupational Specialty, or MOS, Administrative Retention Review, know as the MAR2 process. That process will soon replace the existing MMRB process, and takes less than half the time to complete. When a Soldier, for medical reasons, is no longer able to perform in his or her MOS, the Army must decide if the Soldier can be allowed to continue in that MOS, can be moved to a new MOS, or should be separated from the Army. Under the existing MMRB process, it takes the Army an average of 61 days to come to that decision, but the time in some cases could be as much as 400 days. Under the newly developed MAR2 process, it takes less than a month. "I don't think we've seen any take more than 30 days now," Wentz said. When a Soldier is going through either the existing MMRB process or the newly developed MAR2 process, they are essentially stuck in one location -- meaning they can't deploy, they can't make a permanent change of station, and they can't go to school. That's a problem for both Soldiers and commanders, because being in either process means a Soldier's future is on hold. "It is scary for the Soldier and their family, and that's one of the problems they had is some of these Soldiers were sitting in excess of a year waiting for this process to go through," Wentz said. "In that year they don't know what their career is going to be." The reduced processing time of MAR2 means Soldiers will spend less time waiting to get on with their careers and their lives. That's good for the Soldiers, their families and their commanders. "That Soldier and their family don't have to sit and wait -- and commanders -- the feedback from commanders has been phenomenal," Wentz said. "They know now within a month or so ... they are going to have a decision on that Soldier. It helps with that non-deployable problem, which is a huge issue for the Army now." Wentz is very clear about his role in developing the MAR2 process -- he didn't come up with the idea. "I wasn't the good idea fairy on that one," he said. "I just helped them show that the good idea really was." "My piece of it was helping with the analysis, setting up how we are going to do the analysis," Wentz said. "When they said MMRB is not working well, I was the one that went in and pulled data from four different active-duty sites, ran and crunched the numbers and did the analysis and said -- here's exactly how bad it is currently working." Wentz was able to show, using Lean and Six Sigma tools, that MAR2 was better than MMRB because it took less time to process, generated fewer errors, cost less money, and didn't have the variability in outcome of MMRB. Part of the problem with the MMRB was the amount of variation within the process due to boards being run on a monthly basis at installations around the Army. "Every installation was doing it differently," Wentz said. "Or a lot of the installations were doing it differently." As an example, at one location, due to medical reasons a corporal in the infantry might now only be able to lift 30 pounds. The requirement for an 11B is that he be able to lift 40 pounds. The board at his installation might allow him to stay in the Army as an infantryman, however. At another location though, there might be a different outcome. "There was a lot of variation within that process," Wentz said. The MAR2 process has done away with the local boards. Now, Wentz said, a Soldier's profile, along with a commander's recommendation and a Soldier's recommendation are submitted through the chain of command to Human Resources Command, and HRC makes a determination based on those three documents and what the regulation says. With the MAR2 process, Soldiers and commanders will get answers faster, and the answers will be consistent no matter where they are. Additionally, the Army will have better visibility over the MAR2 process. Finally, under MAR2, the Army will yield a cost avoidance of as much as $15.3 million a year due to reduced manpower costs for processing packets, conducting boards, and reduced paper costs. Wentz is a "master black belt" in Lean Six Sigma certification. That's one of three certification levels, which also include a green belt and a black belt. Lean and Six Sigma, Wentz said, are tools "used to improve the efficiencies and effectiveness of processes." Lean is used to get rid of waste in a process, while Six Sigma is used to reduce variation. Wentz served 20 years in the Army and retired this year as a master sergeant. He now works as an Army civilian at the Army's Human Resources Command as the deputy SIG chief. He became involved in Lean and Six Sigma while working on his MBA in 2006-2007. Approval to implement the MAR2 process throughout the Army is currently being staffed to the Secretary of the Army. The Army Reserve and the Army National Guard are currently using MAR2 as a pilot program. Army recognizes benefactors who support Soldiers [2011-11-30] WASHINGTON -- The Army's chief of staff took time Nov. 29 to thank some civilians who have spent their own time looking out for Soldiers and their families. Seven men representing two organizations -- the Troops First Foundation and the Patriot Foundation -- were recognized for their work by Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno. "Those who are here today represent those who spend their own time and effort in order to help and assist our families, and I just wanted to have them here today to thank them," Odierno said. The recognition is something Odierno said he wants to start doing regularly, every six months, to "recognize individuals who I think have gone well beyond the call of duty to help our families and our Soldiers." OPERATION PROPER EXIT Rick Kell was among the first recognized by Odierno. Kell founded the "Troops First Foundation" in 2008, along with co-founder David Feherty. Kell serves as executive director now for the organization which runs several initiatives, including one called "Operation Proper Exit," which returns wounded warriors to theater so that they can meet with Soldiers and finally leave "under their own terms." "This is a groundbreaking program, trying to bring those who have been injured in combat back to where they were injured, to bring about sometimes closure for them, but also to help them face some of the challenges that they continue to face since they were injured," Odierno said of Operation Proper Exit. The general said he has been on the receiving end of some of those visits, and said wounded Soldiers who come back to theater to visit affect the Soldiers now there. "What it really did was motivate us who were over there, and made us feel good about watching them come back to where they were injured," Odierno said. "This time they got to leave on their own terms, not on somebody else's terms. I think the young men who have gone through that have really in some cases been able to start anew." Kell credited Odierno for making Proper Exit possible. "Please note that Operation Proper Exit exists because of one person. The fact that it became a reality was General Odierno," Kell said. "I still keep the email that you sent back to me when I asked for some help. You said it would be a tremendous opportunity not only for the warriors returning but for the Soldiers and Marines on the ground, and I watched that happen, and it was amazing." Kell's foundation sponsors other initiatives as well, including "Operation Front Door," which helps veterans purchase a home through fund matching; "Operation Coaches and Warriors," which provides wounded warriors with a personal message of support and thanks from his or her favorite college basketball coach; and "Harmon's Heroes," which provides wounded warriors the chance to play golf as a form of therapy. HARMON'S HEROES Butch Harmon, a Troops First Foundation board member, serves as host for the "Harmon's Heroes" initiative. He was also honored by Odierno. "What a lot of people don't know about Butch Harmon, is that he's a Vietnam veteran -- two tours in Vietnam," Odierno said. "And I know how important it is to him to reach out to our veterans, and to reach out to those who have been wounded. And it was important for him to understand and help them as they came back. He started Harmon's Heroes -- working with Rick Kell -- which allows wounded warriors to experience the best facilities and staff the sport of golf has to offer." In the "Harmon's Heroes" initiative, wounded warriors travel to Las Vegas to meet with PGA and LPGA tour members. Harmon has also visited Iraq, Odierno said, and "really dedicated himself, he's always available for other tournaments that have been done, and is always there to give clinics for our wounded warriors. And I can't thank him enough for opening up his school to our wounded warriors. The feedback I've gotten has just been tremendous on that." TOM WATSON Odierno also recognized another participant in the Troops First Foundation, Tom Watson, winner of 39 professional golf tournaments. Watson made two trips to Iraq during the Thanksgiving holiday, one in 2007 and another in 2009. "He also has participated frequently in the Troops First Foundation in their annual golf and hunting events that they do for wounded warriors," Odierno said. "And he has given a lot of his time. He can find a lot of different ways to give of his time -- and he has chosen to give back to wounded warriors." Watson works with Troops First Foundation by helping wounded warriors learn golf as a way to deal with their injuries. "I've done some work with the wounded warriors trying to teach them a little about the game of golf once they lost some limbs -- trying to teach them how to get some enjoyment out of the game after losing a limb," Watson said. "That is sometimes a challenge, but the passion these people have for the game sometimes is beyond the pale." PATRIOT FOUNDATION The Patriot Foundation, founded in 2003 by Spike Smith, began by supporting families of Soldiers in the Fort Bragg, N.C., community. "He's been a strong supporter of our Soldiers and their families in the Fort Bragg area," said Odierno of Smith. "He's also an avid golfer. He started the Patriot Foundation initially as a charity golf tournament for the troops in the Fort Bragg area." The scope of that foundation has grown now, Odierno said, and now includes a scholarship for children of fallen Soldiers, and a childcare benefit to help spouses of personnel killed in action get additional education. "We concentrate on ways to help the families at Fort Bragg, since we live in the Fort Bragg area -- and they are the tip of the spear in this fight," Smith said. "There is so much need over there. And as the years have progressed, starting in 2003, we found one organization after another to give this money to, to help alleviate some of their anxiety and some of their pain." The Patriot Foundation has helped more than 600 children of Soldiers with scholarship support and more than $1.5 million has been raised since the Patriot Foundation's founding. In 2010, the Patriot Foundation provided $325,000 in scholarships for about 134 children. In 2011, that amount was $500,000 in scholarships for approximately 200 children. "Thank you for everything you have done for the great Soldiers of Fort Bragg," Odierno said. HELPING MORE PATRIOTS Odierno also thanked the current president of the Patriot Foundation, Chuck Deleot. Deleot is a retired Navy captain, and Odierno said what he cares about is "taking care of our men and women who have sacrificed and raised their hand to support our country." Odierno said Deleot led the Patriot Foundation in developing corporate partnerships in the Fort Bragg area to provide additional support to Soldiers and families. One such partnership, with Hardee's restaurants, for instance, has raised nearly $95,000. "Chuck, I want to thank you for everything you continue to do to move the Patriot Foundation forward," Odierno said. Deleot said the Patriot Foundation has expanded its mission. Recently, he said, the organization gave $125,000 to 25 children of Navy SEALs killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan. Those SEALs were part of SEAL Team Six, the same group that captured Osama Bin Laden. "We are starting a relationship with the Navy SEAL foundation," Deleot said. "And we are also working with Fort Campbell, with the judge advocate general there, to identify children of KIAs, because I have money I can give to them for scholarships now." Deleot also said an important part of the Patriot Foundation mission is helping military widows with childcare for their children, so they can get their own education. "That's the hurdle," he said. "Most of these people can get assistance to go to school, but the childcare is so expensive, they can't go." UNWAVERING SUPPORT Odierno also thanked Patriot Foundation board member Mike Girimont for his work helping Soldiers. "Mike has committed his own personal time, talent, and treasure to ensure the Patriot Foundation is able to support our Soldiers and families," Odierno said. "Mike's passion for caring for our Soldiers truly sets the example for others." Girimont has gone as far as arranging for the donation of 30 cases of water a month to the Fort Bragg Warrior Transition Battalion, putting the water in his pickup and delivering it to the WTB personally, Odierno said. His involvement in the Patriot Foundation has "directly helped hundreds of our families," Odierno said. "His unwavering support demonstrates that our nation's citizens care deeply for the welfare of our troops and their families." SPIRIT OF UNITY Finally, Odierno extended thanks to retired Gen. William F. "Buck" Kernan, who serves as an advisor to the Patriot Foundation. Odierno said Kernan "has dedicated his life to the Army and service to our nation." Kernan began as a rifle platoon leader and ended as commander of Joint Forces Command, Odierno said, and "continues his service through the Patriot Foundation and helps ensure that those that sacrifice so much in defense of our nation are not forgotten." Odierno said Kernan is involved in the National Golf 9/12 effort, which is a simultaneously played multi-course golf tournament "aimed at uniting our nation through the opportunity to reflect on the shared spirit of unity that was felt on Sept. 12, 2001." "I know that you do this because of your care and longstanding relationship with Solders, but I just want to thank you for your continued support and commitment," Odierno said. Each man recognized walked away with a plaque from the Army that commemorated their service to Soldiers. Each one was also presented the Outstanding Civilian Service Medal. Rick Kell, founder of the Troops First Foundation, along with Sgt. 1st Class Joshua Olson, who was injured in Iraq in 2003 and participated in Proper Exit 2, also presented Odierno with a flag for his support of Proper Exit and his advocacy of Soldiers. The office of security cooperation maintaining a presence in Iraq once soldiers go home [2011-12-01] CAMP VICTORY, Iraq -- By Dec. 31, 2011, a large portion of the United States presence in Iraq will be gone -- but not all of it. In place of the United States Forces-Iraq presence, America will instead have a largely non-military presence -- a sizable U.S. embassy staff in Baghdad that is charged with taking up in Iraq where the military left off. It will be a big change from what Iraqis are used to seeing in their country, which has had a large U.S. military presence since a U.S.-led invasion toppled Iraq's sitting dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003. "The public face of the U.S. government will (now) be principally civilian," said former U.S. embassy spokesman, David Ranz. "For the average Iraqi, if he had any direct interaction with somebody from the U.S. government up until now, chances are it was somebody in green." The embassy staff, under James F. Jeffrey, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, will number a few thousand, Ranz said. The embassy will be performing many of the missions the military used to. And while Ranz said the size of the embassy staff is nowhere near close to the size of the USF-I presence in Iraq, he feels confident in the embassy's ability to take over the mission. "We feel like we're going to be able to conduct the mission effectively," he said. "It won't be exactly the same, and it won't be quite as robust, but we at the State Department do this kind of thing in dozens of embassies around the world. So we feel confident we will be able to take it over." Ranz said that the military equipping and training mission, along with the police-training mission, are probably the two largest functions that will transfer from military to civilian leadership with the transition in December. As part of the police-training mission, Ranz said, the embassy staff will focus more on "executive-level" training. "It's the train-the-trainer approach," Ranz said. "Our State Department's Office of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement is right now in the process of assuming responsibility for that. They have been involved in police training programs around the world. The actual implementers are principally police officials -- American police officials who have been involved in international training in the past." While all USF-I forces and most military personnel will leave Iraq before the end of 2011, about 120 U.S. military personnel will stay behind, as part of the embassy's Office of Security Cooperation. One of the missions of OSC-Iraq will be to equip and train the Iraqi military, a mission that previously belonged to USF-I. Lt. Gen. Michael Ferriter, the former deputy commanding general, USF-I Advise and Train, handed over command of the newly stood up OSC-I to its first director, Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen, Oct. 1. The OSC-I will continue to develop the relationship between the U.S. military and the Iraqi military. Caslen will report to the ambassador, and will conduct equipping and training missions in the country, as well as facilitate foreign military sales -- similar to other OSC offices in places like Turkey and Egypt. "OSC-I will work for the ambassador and deliver foreign military sales, as well as provide the international military education and training opportunities," Ferriter said. "(It) will also work with Iraq officials to identify young Iraqi officers and NCOs to go back to our schools each year, and also we will have the ability, on a much smaller scale, to advise and mentor Iraqi military leaders." When the Iraqi military wants to purchase new military hardware, Caslen's OSC-I, under the embassy, will be responsible for making that happen. Already, Ferriter said, the Iraqis have purchased helicopters, Humvees, M-1 battle tanks, M113 armored personnel carriers, howitzers and other items. The Iraqis are also now committed to purchasing new F-16 aircraft. The foreign military sales program, Ferriter said, will provide Iraq a "corruption-free" ability to get the military equipment it needs to defend itself. Foreign military sales packages, the general added, usually include not only equipment, but also training and maintenance capabilities. The training and maintenance portions of the contract will most likely be civilian contractors, in either the United States or in Iraq, the general said, though facilitation will fall under OSC-I. On an Iraqi purchase of patrol boats, for instance, Ferriter said the Iraqis were able to send their sailors to the Louisiana to receive training from civilian contractors as well as U.S. Sailors. The OSC-I will also be responsible for continued training opportunities between the Iraqi and U.S. militaries, the general said. And such training opportunities will occur the same as they do in other nations where the U.S. has partnerships with militaries. "The two countries will get together and they will decide what relationship they want and how they will do it," Ferriter said. "The first part of that is to send their officers and soldiers to our schools in the United States. With a lot of countries we have joint exercises, like with Thailand we have Cobra Gold." When the American embassy in Iraq works with the Iraqis to develop a country plan, such training opportunities will be part of the discussion, Ferriter said. While continuing to work to develop Iraq's security capability will be an important role for the U.S. embassy there, Ranz said the embassy will focus on other areas as well, such as economic development. "Everything from economic cooperation, political and diplomatic cooperation, educational, scientific and technical cooperation, law enforcement and health care," Ranz said. "It's a very wide range of civilian areas where we have programming. And that will become the focus of our diplomatic relationship with the Iraqi government, as well as our relationship with the people. And the security issues will become a subset of that rather than the principle focus." One area of concern for Iraq's future development, Ranz said, is ensuring the country expands its economy beyond the oil industry -- for both expansion of employment opportunities and to ensure its economy isn't entirely dependent on an industry subject to price fluctuations. "Right now, Iraq relies almost exclusively on oil revenue for its budgetary revenue," Ranz said. "And the economy in general is heavily reliant on the oil sector. That is not generally a hugely employment-generating sector, and unemployment is a very big problem here." As in other parts of the Arab world, Ranz said, large cadres of youth in Iraq are unemployed. "(They) do not feel they have a voice in the future of their country, and eventually they will go to the street and make their views known," Ranz said. "Iraq is in many ways well ahead of where these other countries were, because it does have a representative government. People do have an opportunity to express their views, and they do demonstrate. But unemployment is a serious problem. In the medium-term Iraq needs to find jobs by promoting and developing its private sector." Ranz said the private sector in Iraq is "feeble" today, and that is something the embassy is discussing with the Iraqi government -- in particular, how to develop a more investor-friendly climate that would bring money and opportunity to Iraq. "In order to get a lot more investment and in a broader range of areas of the economy, there needs to be a focus ... on commercial courts that are seen as efficient and fair," Ranz said. "And there is an issue with visas and getting workers in here that needs to be addressed. So I would say the other big challenge is Iraq generating a more diversified economy that is attractive to foreign investors, and creates the employment that is going to be necessary to absorb the youth, who are still growing pretty rapidly and don't have enough jobs." Ranz said in Iraq, the U.S. government has spent as much as $58 billion in reconstruction and development, while the Iraqi government has invested around $110 billion. Most of that spending, he said, has focused heavily on reconstruction, schools, hospitals and clinics, for instance "That is not traditionally the way the U.S. government does development," Ranz said. "But it was the focus that was needed in a post-conflict environment. We are now moving into a new era, where what we really need to do is work with the Iraqis to develop their capacity to meet their own needs and do their own work. Whether it is working with the Ministry of Agriculture to work on new techniques for water conservation, whether it is working with the government and the private sector on how the private sector can build up its capacity to generate employment -- those are going to be our primary focus." Until the withdrawal of U.S. Forces from Iraq, the American embassy in that country was very much dependent on the services provided by the military there, Ranz said. That is something the embassy will need to learn to get along without. "We rely on USF-I for a lot of logistical and security and life support needs, and we are in the process of assuming those responsibilities," Ranz said. "This is the largest transition from a military-led to a civilian-led effort since the Marshall plan in Europe. It is an enormous undertaking. Smoothly taking over the areas of responsibility in the areas of life support and security and logistics that the military provides us right now, that's probably going to be our biggest challenge." Nevertheless, Ranz said he believes the U.S. embassy in Iraq is ready to assume responsibility from USF-I, and to continue the partnership there between the United States and the newly formed government in Iraq. "We have spent every waking hour of the nearly year that I've been here, and I'm sure a lot of time before that, painstakingly going through everything we need to do in order to effectively take over and ensure a smooth transition," Ranz said. "This embassy has some of the most experienced officers anywhere in the State Department." Ranz also recognized that USF-I, and the servicemembers who fell under that command, have laid the groundwork for what the embassy staff must now do on its own. "I want to give UFS-I and all its antecedents and all of the hundreds of thousands of Soldiers that have cycled through here -- in some case three, four or more times -- the credit they deserve," he said. "If we do succeed in this venture, and I am confident in our capacity to do so, it will be in no small part to the effort and dedication and sacrifice that out military brethren have made here. We can do our mission, but we will miss that partnership with USF-I, and we will miss the people that we have grown to love and trust on a day-to-day basis." Tributes to the fallen come home [2011-12-01] CAMP VICTORY, Iraq -- In some places on Camp Victory in Iraq, there are so many concrete T-walls lining the streets that, combined with the general bleakness of the place, and the dust in the air and the eerie dusk-like light it creates on everything, it'd be the perfect setting for a sci-fi movie about maybe a mining camp on some desolate remote planet. Occasionally, though, there's a splash of color on one of those T-walls -- walls meant to protect tents and their occupants from possible mortar attacks from outside the gate. Sometimes it's a unit insignia there on the wall, with maybe some Latin on there too. There's also sometimes a list of names of Soldiers who have died -- memorials to those killed in combat. "You could walk into some of these base camps that we've been at six or seven or eight years and you will see row after row of T-walls with individual names on them," said Lt. Col. Jerry E. Brooks, the command historian at U.S. Forces Iraq. Soldiers want a way to remember their buddies lost in battle, or an IED attack or a rocket attack Brooks said. "These units, even down to a company level, will say we want to do something to honor this person -- because we've trained with him, he is our buddy and we want to dedicate our deployment to him," Brooks said. Nearly 4,500 Soldiers, Marines, Sailors and Airmen died in Iraq during Operations Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn. While their bodies went home, their buddies stayed behind to continue the fight. To remember their friends they put up plaques, named buildings or rooms in buildings, painted names on T-walls or on plywood signs, or even put up the traditional boots, bayonet, helmet and dogtag memorial -- such as at Camp Adder. There, Brooks said, the boots and helmet represented many Soldiers lost, with a plaque indicating all those lost at Adder. "What they've done is, rather than it being a single unit's memorial, it has evolved into a base camp memorial," Brooks said. Whatever his buddies used to memorialize their friend, one thing is for sure -- it would be inappropriate to leave behind what was created to remember the war dead. "You don't just want to leave it," Brooks said. "What you don't want is to turn over a base to the Iraqis or the Somalis or whoever, and leave your memorials there, and a couple of nights later they decide to loot the place." The "worst case scenario," Brooks said, might involve insurgents desecrating what was meant to honor those lost in the fight. "Next thing you know there's a picture of two al-Qaida fighters there firing at a memorial for some Soldier who died in Iraq," Brooks said. "There's the impact on the family, and it's just the spectacle of it." So in leaving Iraq, the Army makes sure to take care of not just equipment there, but also the memorials that are left behind. They are all either sent home, and hopefully sent to the families of those they memorialize, or, if it's not possible to send them home, they are photographed and then "sanitized." "They're whitewashed," Brooks said, referring to the T-walls, for instance, which are far too heavy to be brought home with the last units departing the country. "If the last unit has a desire they could take every single memorial back -- all they would have to do is declare it their own unit property, and they could take it back," he said. The only restrictions, he said, are space, or cost, or the possibility that some things, like the weathered old wood of a plywood memorial won't get through customs in the United States. There are Army rules about what constitutes an "official" memorial, Brooks said. They involve the size of a unit authorized to be memorialized, or the types of action a Soldier must perform if he is to be individually memorialized. But the memorials put up on base camps in Iraq are not official memorials put up by a committee. They are memorials put up by Soldiers for other Soldiers who knew them. They are not granite and bronze installations on dedicated space after years of lobbying, such as what might happen in Washington -- but are instead the humbler and maybe the more honest recognition of one warrior by another. "What he did was important, and it's important to remember that they were here," Brooks said. "But we do what we can for the individuals that were here and made the ultimate sacrifice. Unfortunately, you can't get them all back, but you can take a photograph, you can take the plaques back. It's up to these units to do that. These people they have offered us the best they can -- this is small consolation -- but it's something." Security: Iraqis stand ready to defend their own [2011-12-01] CAMP VICTORY, Iraq -- Beginning in 2012, Iraqis will be responsible for defending their own borders and air space, and for policing their own people, both inside and outside their cities. Since 2003, Iraqis have not had to perform that mission alone. United States Forces-Iraq has been there to provide security, train the Iraqis and watch over the Iraqi security forces as they learned to manage security issues on their own. But the safety net of the Americans in Iraq will soon be gone, and Iraq will go it alone. To manage its own security, the Iraqi government has at its disposal an array of security forces -- including an Iraqi army, navy and air force -- as well as local civilian and federal police forces, border enforcement and oil police. Today, the security situation in Iraq has become more stable than what it was at the height of the surge in 2007. "Back in 2007, there were about 1,600 attacks each month in the country," said Lt. Gen. Frank G. Helmick, the USF-I deputy commanding general for operations. "That is IED attacks and sniper attacks and grenade attacks and small-arms attacks and mortar attacks and rocket attacks. Today, there are about 400 attacks each month in the country, with the same kind of munitions. And those aren't attacks just against U.S. forces, those are attacks against Iraqis as well." Iraqi security forces fall under both the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of the Interior. The MOD owns the Iraqi army, while the MOI owns the federal police; the roles of each have evolved over time. For eight years now, Helmick said, Iraq has focused its security efforts inward. Now, he said, it is time to focus those efforts outward. "What we are doing is transferring responsibility for internal security to the police forces and not the Army forces," Helmick said. "The Iraqis want to eventually get the military out of the cities, and instead of having the weapons pointed in, have the weapons pointed out." In July, Gen. Babacar Zebari, chief of staff of the Iraqi army, said the service has been preparing for that role for some time. "About a year or year and half ago, we changed from an army of being the police, to being a real army," he said. "We started from the beginning. We had battalions that did the tactical training. After we finish training with the battalions, we'll do training from battalions to brigade divisions, so we can protect our borders." Zebari's forces now include some 192,000 soldiers, with more than 5,000 Iraqi special operations forces as well. They train at nine Iraqi-run training centers that provide programs for individuals up to battalion level. "We are now focusing on the training academies so the young generation can get trained and will be equal to the modern nations," Zebari said. Zebari said his army is different now than what existed before the Americans came. "In the old days it was a draft and you had to force people to join the army," Zebari said. He credits the U.S. with helping develop an all-volunteer force, helping to foster better relations between the Iraqi officers and the enlisted force and developing rules of engagement. "If an incident happened -- somebody fired their weapons for instance -- in those days they had no objections to just keep firing back at people, to eliminate everybody there, whether it was a neighborhood or a village," Zebari said. "Now, the whole system has changed." Zebari also pointed out that civilians now control the military in Iraq, a departure from how the system operated under Saddam Hussein. "The minister, he gets his power and his strength from the prime minister and the parliament, and parliament is elected by the people," Zebari said. "So a lot of things have changed." The U.S. military provided training to the Iraqi Army to get it to where it is today, Zebari said. Included in that training, at the onset, was counter-terrorism training, which Zebari said he has been told his forces now excel at. "Even now the coalition and the Americans are saying that the Iraqi Army is the most qualified Army fighting terrorism, because (it's) always on the ground," Zebari said. "I will never forget my work with the United States," Zebari said. "When I came here to take over this important position, it wasn't easy at all. But if it weren't for U.S. advisers and coalition advisers, we wouldn't have been able to build this establishment." The MOI-run Federal Police, along with the local police unit in cities, now provide security inside the country, a role once performed by the Iraqi military. "The Federal Police is a force somewhere in the middle between the Iraqi Army and the regular police," said Staff Lt. Gen. Hussein Jassim Al Awadi, chief of Iraqi Federal Police. "Using the Army in internal issues is against international law. That is why a lot of countries are seeking to own such a force. This force will be able to take control if the situation in this country is out of the control of the regular police, and to prevent having to use the regular Army." The Iraqi Federal police force employs about 41,000, and has five federal police training facilities around Iraq. Al Awadi said interest in serving in the force is growing, not only for the pay, but also for the confidence it is instilling in those who serve. The general said that Americans training the police force units had at one point started giving units unique titles, for instance. "They start giving those units some titles, such as Delta, Scorpion, Cobra, etc.," Al Awadi said. "Such a title for the company, to train with the United States Army -- it creates motivation inside them. If you try to move one of those police from one company to another, they will say, 'No I am a part of Cobra Company.' The U.S. Army has created pride inside these police in their units." Confidence also comes from being trusted by civilian Iraqis, Al Awadi said. It was a confidence not easily gained. "Thankfully, we were able to plant this trust and confidence with Iraqis," he said. "Now, individuals are proud to wear our uniform." Another incentive is pay for the Federal Police force. In the Iraqi parliament, he said, there are efforts underway to make pay for the Federal Police the same as that of their Iraqi Army equivalents. For a private in the Federal Police, that means about $850 a month. For perspective, Al Awadi said, as a general in the Iraqi Army in 1996 he was making less than $50 a month. Some of those hoping to join the Iraqi Federal Police will pass through one of its academies in Baghdad, currently on Victory Base Complex. Staff Maj. Gen. Montather Mohammad, the Special Training Academy commander, runs the school. At the schoolhouse, which stood up in 2008, Mohammad oversees training for those who will eventually serve in the Iraqi Federal Police. The school has grown, he said, despite initial skepticism. "In the beginning, a lot disagreed about having an academy. But now, because of our strong discipline and our hard work, those same people say they actually see now the results of this academy." When the school first opened, he said, there were only 58 enlisted men and eight officers. Today, that has grown to 1,000 enlisted and 60 officers. "This academy was built from nothing," Mohammad said. "We had this progress and this success because we insisted on having an academy." The special training academy has had American, Australian and Italian police force instructors, but now, Mohammad said, the Iraqis are taking over their own training. "At my academy, we are ready, we are going to take over the mission," he said. "The personal security detachment section, they don't have any foreign trainers anymore. We are taking care of that training by ourselves, 100 percent. And the (Italians) are now just observing, since the seventh training cycle." Mohammad said the presence of the NATO-sponsored training mission there will continue. But he said he has asked for additional types of training, for different kinds of missions. In particular, he said, they are asking about air marshal training to provide security in the air. "That takes special skills," he said. Additionally, he said, with turmoil in neighboring Middle Eastern countries like Tunisia and Egypt, the police there are also learning riot control. When the Americans leave Iraq, Helmick said it's been suggested that violence in Iraq will increase, as a parting shot of sorts, to muddy the perception of why the United States is leaving Iraq. If it happens, the general says USF-I will be un-phased, as should observers. "We think the attacks are going to increase as we begin to depart in earnest, and we believe the reason for that is that the groups backed by Iranians will want to take credit having the United States leave," he said. "But we have an agreement with the government of Iraq ... that we are needed here until Dec. 31, 2011. We will honor that commitment, and we will leave here with honor and a successful mission. Nobody runs the United States of America out." When America does leave, the U.S. embassy will remain, and plans are underway to ensure a continuing partnership between U.S. forces and the Iraqi security forces, said Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, the USF-I spokesman and J-9 director. "One of the things that were doing is really, we're working with the Iraqi security forces to develop a long-range combined- and joint-exercise program," Buchanan said. "This will be under U.S. Central Command's leadership, as part of the CENTCOM theater security cooperation plan." This year, he said, USF-I helped the Iraqis plan a joint training exercise series that involved the Iraqi army, navy, marine corps and air force. "They did so with our advice, and except for a couple of very small events, we weren't directly involved in the execution," he said. Buchanan said Americans will continue to work with Iraqi leadership in both the MOI and the MOD, to help expand the program. "Perhaps the next time around -- and we're are looking to see if this will be done during the rest of our time here or if it comes at some point in the future -- it will be more of a combined exercise, so it's not just Iraqi forces but Iraqi, U.S. and perhaps some of our regional partners from other countries," Buchanan said. The U.S. Navy's relationship with the Iraqi navy might provide a good example of what's to come. U.S. Navy Central, Buchanan said, works daily with the Iraqi navy to assist in securing territorial waters and offshore oil platforms. "Our forces have been working at the port to advise, train, assist and equip the Iraqi navy and marine corps," he said. "Then Navy Central force has been working with them on the operational side. That relationship is not going to end with the departure of USF-I." Ultimately, it will be the U.S. embassy that helps create further opportunities for U.S. forces to interact and train with Iraqi forces after the departure of USF-I, Buchanan added. Both the United States and the Iraqis signed a strategic framework agreement. That, Buchanan said, "aspires to a long-term and enduring partnership between Iraq and the United States and sets the conditions for cooperation in a wide variety of areas -- everything from agriculture and economic development, educational exchanges, science and technology, to defense and security cooperation." The broad, overarching agreement, he said "gives the azimuth to the embassy as it looks forward to enhance Iraq's civil capacity in the future -- 2012 and beyond. Defense and security cooperation are part of that, and it relates to both professionalization of the police forces and the military." Responsible transition: coordinated efforts ensure successful transfer of property, facilities [2011-12-01] CAMP VICTORY, Iraq -- In 2008, there were more than 500 military bases in Iraq manned by U.S. military personnel. Before United States Forces-Iraq leaves that country at the end of 2011, the future of each installation must be determined, and an appropriate transition must be made to either the Iraqis or the U.S. State Department. In general military parlance, most of those locations are referred to as "forward operating bases," though they are known by more specific names, based on their size. A "contingency operating base," for instance, is a larger facility that might house a brigade combat team, a "contingency operating site" would be sized for a BCT-sized element or smaller and a "contingency operating location" might house a battalion-sized element. There are also patrol bases, and joint security stations, and coalition outposts. Each property, including the infrastructure must be evaluated before turnover. Equipment must be moved out or transitioned, and property must be legally and responsibly transitioned to the follow-on unit or organization that will occupy it. By late July 2011, the portfolio of installations the U.S. military occupied in Iraq had dropped by some 90 percent, to about 57. By Dec. 31, that number will have dropped to zero. Brigadier Gen. Scott F. "Rock" Donahue, director, J-7, U.S. Forces- Iraq, said bases are transitioned to the government of Iraq through a "very deliberate, base transition process" that he says is outlined in "The USF-I Base Transition Smartbook." "'Transition,' like FOB is an overarching term," Donahue said. "We can either close a base, return it to the government of Iraq, conduct a partial return of a base or complete an administrative closure. The base transition Smartbook explains how we do this." There are many people involved in the process, with as many as five "lines of operation" needed to complete a transition, the general said. Included among those are real estate management, environmental oversight, property distribution, contracting and documentation and final real estate transfer. Transitioning a military installation after it has been used for so many years is akin to moving out of a home, Donahue said. "We inventory property and ensure facilities are clean, functional and free of any debts or financial burdens." He said about 45 days prior to USF-I leaving an installation in Iraq, they begin a "weaning" process where various services cease. Included among those might be morale, welfare and recreation services as well as various utilities. "You start to thin and consolidate," he said. And while Soldiers are repositioned off those installations, to ensure a "responsible drawdown" of forces, USF-I coordinates with the Iraqis to determine who is going to accept the property on the installation, and who is going to accept the facility or base. The government of Iraq provides a "receivership secretariate," who works with the USF-I J-7 basing team to complete the transition, Donahue said. The joint process is meant to ensure the transition is conducted fairly and accounts for the installation and everything on it: furniture, utilities and key infrastructure such as water treatment plants, hazardous waste treatment centers and incinerators. In most cases, the installations are transitioned whole to an Iraqi unit. In the case of Victory Base Complex -- the largest of the 12 "large" bases in Iraq, situated outside Baghdad International Airport -- the installation will be parceled out in various pieces to different ministries of the Iraqi government, including the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Defense. Allowing the government of Iraq to take pieces of VBC, means USF-I no longer needs to provide security for that part of the installation. "It allows us to thin our own lines, which minimizes the resources we have to commit," Donahue said. "That's one aspect of that land you don't have to worry about." Not all installations will transfer to the Iraqis, however. Some "enduring sites" will instead transfer to the U.S. Department of State, for use by the U.S. embassy. Another aspect of the installation transition process includes ensuring that the location meets U.S. Central Command and USF-I environmental regulations. While Iraq itself has no environmental regulations, Donahue said, USF-I remains "very good stewards of the environment here. Our aim is to protect the natural environment as well as human health and safety," he said. Before a base is transitioned in Iraq, USF-I conducts several environmental site closure surveys. "Our goal here is to mitigate any of our environmental challenges and minimize any of the environmental impacts," Donahue said. The USF-I works to "mitigate," not "remediate" environmental issues in Iraq, he added. Fuel spills, for example, are something they routinely mitigate. "We do that through environmental response and cleanup teams," Donahue said. The teams go out and assess a spill, or a lagoon, for instance "and determine what we need to do to restore these facilities in accordance with CENTCOM 200-2." The general was careful to point out that installations in Iraq are not being returned in accordance with U.S. environmental regulations. "That would be unrealistic and impractical, and extremely costly," he said. In Iraq, burn pits have been removed and replaced with incinerators. Hazardous waste treatment centers have been set up and cleanup actions, such as oil spills, have taken place at more than 600 sites in the last year. "It's down to how do we take care of lithium batteries or printer cartridges," he said. "From small things to the big things, like incineration of trash -- including medical waste or regulated waste." Transitioning land sometimes involves more than just accountability and environmental issues, Donahue said. Land deeds must be verified to ensure that no one has a claim on the land. In some cases, he said, there may be unexpected claims to land from outsiders. "We get involved in real estate management to determine if there's validity to that claim or not," he said, noting that USF-I works with the government of Iraq to establish the validity of those claims. It's not just land that USF-I must transition. In July, there were a little more than 1 million pieces of U.S. government-owned property in country that had to be dealt with. That number was down from more than 2 million when Operation New Dawn began in September 2010. All of USF-I's vehicles, weapons, buildings, equipment and infrastructure on an installation must be accounted for and then either transferred to the Department of State, destroyed, sold, handed over to Iraq, sent back to the United States for reset or transferred to other theaters of operation. According to Maj. Gen. Thomas J. Richardson, the USF-I, J-4, property in Iraq is categorized as either organizational property, theater-provided equipment or contractor-operated/government-owned. Organizational property includes those things a unit brings with them from home. It's clear how that leaves the country, he said: The unit takes it home with them. It's the theater-provided equipment, such as Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles and communications equipment, as well as the contractor-operated/government-owned equipment like fuel trucks, containerized housing units and generators, that must be dealt with. How it all gets where it belongs, Richardson said, involves "a very methodical process that only the U.S. military could come up with." Theater-provided equipment, for example, goes into a database and a determination is then made regarding its disposition. "That property, for instance a radio, might need to be reset," Richardson said, meaning restoring an item to an as-new condition. "So it goes to Tobyhanna Army Depot for reset. Or something else that doesn't need to be reset might go to Fort Hood. That disposition is given all the way down to the supply sergeant." A unit supply sergeant then does all the paperwork and takes it to the redistribution property assistance team, where it is taken off the sergeant's property book and added to another set of books. "There's a shipping address and trucks to pick it up, and eventually it goes home," Richardson said, adding most non-sensitive items will leave Iraq by contractor-provided surface transportation. Sensitive items, such as weapons, are taken southbound through Kuwait by military convoy. In July, he said, about 500 truckloads of equipment made their way to Kuwait. Urgent-need items bound for Afghanistan, like firefighting equipment, depart Iraq by air. Air Force Capt. Chris L. Martagon runs the RPAT yard at Victory Base Complex near Baghdad International Airport. He and his team of Soldiers and Airmen are responsible for gathering both equipment and vehicles that will be shipped out of country back to the United States, or moved to other missions in either Afghanistan or Iraq. "(Business) is definitely picking up now because units are trying to get out of here. So, as they complete their mission, they are getting rid of all their stuff so they can redeploy and head back to the States," Martagon said. "We are staying consistently busy." In July, there were hundreds of pieces of equipment in his yard, including about 101 MRAP vehicles that he is responsible for. Of those, about 40 were headed to Kuwait, and the rest were headed to other missions in Iraq. When a piece of rolling stock, like an MRAP, comes to the yard, Air Force Staff Sgt. Lamar Harvey, the noncommissioned officer in charge of rolling stock, manages the in-processing inspection of the vehicle. "We're looking ... to make sure they have the correct paperwork, and make sure these vehicles are free of trash, and make sure all the accountable items are there," Harvey said. "We also verify the vehicle identification number, stock numbers, serial numbers and make sure it matches up with the paperwork so we know what we are accountable for." The RPAT yard also accepts non-rolling stock, including computers, communications equipment and even surplus enhanced-small arms protective inserts. Across Iraq, there are about eight RPAT yards, with the one managed by Martagon being the busiest. Between October 2010 and July 2011, those eight RPAT yards together received and shipped more than 5,000 pieces of rolling stock. They also received and shipped more than 80,000 pieces of non-rolling stock. Facility items on an installation -- the air conditioners, containerized housing units, cooking supplies in dining facilities, tents, latrine facilities, shower facilities and generators, for instance -- might all either be destroyed, turned in to the Defense Reutilization Management Office or given to the Iraqis as foreign excess personal property, but it all must be itemized. "We account for everything," Richardson said. "Every T-wall, every Hesco barrier is accounted for." When FOB Sykes was closed in the north, it was turned over to the Iraqis, Richardson said. "There were about 7,000 pieces of property there," he said. "We shipped roughly 500-600 items out of there to go to the State Department." The transfer shipment included the firefighting equipment at FOB Sykes and a gymnasium. The rest, Richardson said, became FEPP. A FEPP package, he said, could be almost 350 pages long, and itemizes things that will go to the Iraqis. Getting things on that list involves a business case analysis to determine what the item is worth, and what it would cost to ship it versus giving it away. "We consider it a cost avoidance," Richardson said. "Because if we have to send it all out, we have to pay for someone to ... take it all apart." Stuff that's been used in Iraq for seven years, for instance, may not be worth the cost of shipping it home. Other items might not have any value in the United States. Containerized housing units, used as sleeping quarters by Soldiers in Iraq, for example, run on 220-volt power. "If I would send that back to the United States, what would we do with it?" asked Richardson. "We are a 110-volt society." So the CHUs stay in Iraq, with a FEPP sticker indicating they will become the property of the Iraqis, if they want them. "The challenge is to make sure we stay synchronized throughout this process," Richardson said. "That takes a large amount of communications between all of the elements turning things and working each of the problems as they arise and in finding solutions to fix the problems." Richardson said USF-I has done the analysis needed to orchestrate the transition out of Iraq, and determined that it has what it needs to get the job done. "We have enough trucks, we have enough time and processes to get everything out of here, and do it in an orderly fashion," he said. "This is probably the first time in the American history that we have left a place like this and in this fashion." Partners for peace - Civil Capacity projects help improve prosperity in Iraq [2011-12-01] CAMP VICTORY, Iraq -- Electricity, water, schools, hospitals, transportation networks and an active police force are among the things often taken for granted in the United States. In Iraq however, these services are greatly appreciated. United States Forces-Iraq has been working to develop these and other "civil capacity" elements there in advance of USF-I's departure from the country at the end of 2011. Since 2003, reconstruction efforts have resulted in an estimated 70,000 projects at a cost of $58 billion, according to Brig. Gen. Scott F. "Rock" Donahue, director, USF-I J-7. Some of the notable projects include electricity and power plants. There are also many high-profile water projects, he said, including one on the Euphrates River, in addition to a number of water treatment plants. "When you look at what we've done in Iraq since 2003, this is pretty impressive," he said. "Contributing 25 percent of the nation's potable water, we provided 2.45 million cubic meters of safe clean water per day to the Iraqis. (We) completed more than 1,600 school projects and over 800 projects to strengthen Iraq's electrical transmission grid. (We) contributed to the construction of nearly 1,200 bridges and executed numerous upgrades and repair projects to improve Iraq's transportation systems, roads, railroads, aviation, ports, medical facilities, public works facilities and oil and electricity infrastructures." Donahue, an engineer, and formerly the commanding general, U.S. Army Engineer Division, South Pacific, and director, Multi-National Corps Iraq C7 from 2008 to 2009, credits the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for much of the civil capacity rebuilding efforts in Iraq. "Much of the U.S. construction effort here was led by the Corps of Engineers," he said, adding that the Gulf Region Division of the Corps, activated in 2004, had been somewhat of a household term for seven and a half years. The division was consolidated to the Gulf Region District in 2009, and Donahue said their "full-spectrum construction management" work continues. "Since 2004, we've been involved with over 5,000 projects worth more than $8.4 billion," he said. The Corps of Engineers helped double the amount of power to the Iraqi electrical grid, for instance, and also helped increase oil production capacity by 3 million barrels a day. Additionally, the COE worked on other public works projects including schools, hospitals, railroads, road construction and airport construction, "all designed to help build that civil institutional capacity," Donahue said. The COE efforts were augmented at the tactical level, where divisions, brigades and battalions executed commander-driven reconstruction projects at the provincial level. Those efforts are part of the Commanders Emergency Response Program. There is also an Iraqi version of the program, the ICERP. Donahue said the U.S. government has invested about $4 billion in CERP since 2004. About $2.1 billion of that funded more than 15,000 construction projects, while just less than $2 billion funded 22,000 non-construction projects, he said. Lieutenant Col. Patrick Campbell, the civil affairs development chief with USF-I J-9, credits the 101st Airborne Division with the idea for CERP. "We had all this money that we had seized -- Iraqi dinar -- we had truckloads of it," Campbell said. The 101st commander had "wanted to do something with it to get people back to work." Campbell said it was initially suggested that the money be used to pay Iraqis to do such jobs as street cleaning, rubble clearing and trash pickup. "From that sprang this funding called CERP," Campbell said. "Now it's a budgetary item we get allocated every year. It's meant to provide the commander on the ground cash in his pocket to make an immediate influence. It has proven to be a wonderful tool." Campbell said CERP projects now cover "the width and breadth of the economy," from sewer, power and agriculture construction, to economic development in small, one-person sewing shops, to reconstituting the poultry industry. In one location, the program provided sewing machines and training to kick-start a small business. In another, it provided funds to raise chicks and better feed to help reinvigorate a poultry-processing facility. "You name it, I think we've done it in Iraq," Campbell said. One of the primary goals of CERP is to help develop the economy, in particular by eliminating unemployment. "Most of the time when you have a CERP a project, they are gunning to create jobs." the colonel said. In Iraq, the economy is largely oil-based, he said. But that industry cannot employ the number of people that need jobs in the country. "One of the things we tried to do in Iraq is diversify the economy," Campbell said. Agricultural development is a good target, he said, because agriculture is labor intensive--and creates a lot of jobs. Campbell said that in Iraq, transition to a free-market economy and away from the state-run economy that existed under the Saddam Hussein regime, has been something of a challenge. "Before we came in here, the state would tell you what to grow, provide the seeds, provide the gas, tell you when to grow it. They'd come here and buy it for a set price and they'd repeat that over and over again," Campbell said. He called the new free-market economy "alien" to Iraqis early on. "That was one of the things we did, a kind of education on free-market and how it works." He likened the transition of moving to a free-market economy to that of the Soldier leaving the Army. "It's kind of like when you leave the Army for the first time, you are out there without that safety net of a 'mother hen' taking care of everything," he said. "You have your food, you have your place to go, you have your retirement. When you are outside the Army and you have to get your own paycheck and you have to find your own way, it's kind of scary. That's the way it was for these folks too. But it can be done, and if done properly, it can be profitable." U.S.-led economic development efforts in Iraq, involving nearly 14,000 projects, have resulted in some 23,000 new businesses being registered in the country over the last two years. The per capita income in the country has nearly doubled since then, and the Iraqi gross domestic product also doubled from $59 billion in 2003, to $117 billion in 2010. Additionally, the unemployment rate in the country has dropped to 15.3 percent from a staggering 28.1 in 2003. Since 2003, civil capacity development in Iraq has improved the power supply in the country -- increasing power production from 3,764 MW in 2003 to about 7,045 in 2011, for instance. With U.S. assistance, the water supply in Iraq now provides 2.45 million gallons of potable drinking water each day to Iraqis, and sewage projects process 1.2 million cubic meters of wastewater each day to the benefit of some 5.3 million Iraqis. U.S.-assisted health care projects in the country have also provided 3.2 million children with vaccinations, and decreased the infant mortality rate by 68 percent. And those children will now attend any one of more than 12,000 schools in the country--up from just over 9,000 in 2002. "I don't know if there is a way to measure all we've done here," Campbell said. "But when we came in 2003, the infrastructure was pretty crappy. It was not well maintained. The only person who had constant power and light was Saddam Hussein and his cronies. But I know if you look around this country now you will see the infrastructure and the economy is light years ahead of when we rolled in here. There is no comparison." When USF-I leaves Iraq, it will be the job of the Iraqis, with the help of the U.S. embassy, to keep the momentum going, and to maintain what was gained by civil capacity development there, Campbell said. "A lot of the projects we do, we do with the understanding and agreement from the Iraqi government that they will continue them and maintain them," he said. "One of the things we do with the Department of State folks is to make sure that we keep helping with the governance, keep helping them understand that you have to maintain what you get and keep helping with the training to make sure that they can maintain it." Man's best friend helps him deal with PTSD [2011-12-01] WASHINGTON -- "He knows how I'm feeling. And if I were feeling unwell, which could be any number of things: PTSD, TBI or other type of pain, he would proactively do something to help me." Former Soldier, proponent for sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder, and author, Luis Carlos Montalván, spoke Nov. 30 at the Pentagon Library about his service dog, "Tuesday." He also spoke about the book he wrote that documents how his struggle with PTSD was aided by "Tuesday." Montalván enlisted in the Army in 1990, first as a communications specialist, then a military police officer, and then an infantryman. He accepted a commission in 2002 as an armor officer, and he served twice in Iraq. "The experiences before, during and after war, particularly those after, were very difficult," Montalván said. "I felt compelled to share what I think so many service members and veterans have gone through ... in the war, and at home, and offer points of light if you will to help and offer hope for many who are struggling." His book, "Until Tuesday" covers the relationship between him and his service dog "Tuesday," who came to him in 2008, after he left the Army. "I was wounded in Iraq in 2003, but the effects of some of those wounds caused me to deteriorate in health over subsequent years and a second tour," Montalván said. "Ultimately, I had to get out of the Army to care for myself and get the help I needed." Tuesday was part of the help he needed, Montalván said. "He helps me with everything from mitigating the effects of PTSD to helping me balance [a result of] traumatic brain injury," Montalván said. "He helps me with mobility when I walk. So physically and psychologically he helps me with my disabilities and is allowing me to move forward in the healing process." Montalván said he believes many don't know what service members endure during their service or after, and he hopes his experiences, which he shares in "Until Tuesday" will enlighten those who choose to read. "There are a lot of service members, as is well known, who are suffering silently, with the wounds of war," he said. "Many who, for fear of coming forward, don't. There are many veterans who have exited the military who are struggling with getting help, struggling with recognizing issues that they have. We really want them and the general society to know the vastness of the problem and details of the problems as well as the light that exists in spite of disabilities, physical and psychological disabilities." In his book, Montalván explains how his service dog "Tuesday" helps him through the ongoing healing process. He said there's hope for all those who have suffered from service-related injuries and PTSD. "You can be happy, you can be employed, you can achieve educational and life goals. You can achieve a happy and successful marriage," he said. "But that will require recognition, that will require treatment, and it will require being committed to a journey of healing, almost for the rest of your life." Montalván said there's been some efforts in how service members can receive care after they leave the military, but he said more needs to be done. "There have been a number of macro movements to help mitigate the colossal and corrosive problems of invisible disabilities and other wounds of war," he said. "But the juggernauts of the DOD and the VA and other institutions are slow and there is a lot more that needs to happen." Today, Montalván lives in New York City, with his service dog, Tuesday, and is in the process of earning a second master's degree in strategic communications at Columbia University, to augment his first masters in journalism. Reserve looks to preserve Army investment in personnel [2011-12-06] WASHINGTON -- With force cuts looming for the active component, the Army Reserve is looking for ways to preserve some of that investment which might otherwise be walking out the door, for good. Lt. Gen. Jack C. Stultz, chief of the Army Reserve, said he's been trying to push for almost a year now a "continuum of service" concept that would make it easier for those who've donned an Army uniform to move back and forth between statuses in the Army and to stay connected with the service. "When you join the Army, our intent is to make you a 'Soldier for life,'" Stultz said. Stultz said now about nine percent of Soldiers leaving active duty opt to continue serving in the Army Reserve. He presented data that showed the total investment, in dollars, that the active component makes to develop Soldiers at two different ranks. For a staff sergeant, for instance, that number is about $430,000. For a captain, that's about $690,000. "What we are trying to portray here is really preservation of investment," Stultz said. "One of the reasons for really making the continuum of service come alive is that we are investing a lot today to develop the Soldiers we have on the battlefield." The Soldiers the Army has today, he said are the best the service has ever had, in both technological and tactical competence. "We cannot allow, as we draw down our force structure, to lose that investment," Stultz said. "It costs too much to regenerate it." He said creating a "continuum of service" might require changes in Army culture, law, and policy. For one, he said, Soldiers moving into the Reserve component will need jobs -- as they are civilians who drill with an Army Reserve unit. The service already takes advantage of the "Employer Partnership," that provides employers with a direct link to already trained employees -- Soldiers. But Stultz the Reserve can use the private sector to keep Reserve Soldiers trained in the same skills they use when they put on their uniform. "My idea was look at skill sets that translate very easy into the civilian sector," he said. Medical is one such example. "If we are taking Soldiers that maybe we trained them as an active-duty Soldier to be a radiology technologist, or a lab technologist, and we are able to provide them out to the civilian establishment and keep them in the Reserve, when we need them or when they desire to come back to this side -- they've maintained their technical competence and their capability." For "emerging capabilities," such as technical career fields like information technology, for instance, the private sector may even be able to keep Soldiers better trained than the Army Reserve can, he said. Policy changes in the Army can also help the "continuum of service," Stultz said. One idea is creation of an "Inactive Ready Reserve volunteer" status. Both officer and enlisted Soldiers complete an eight-year service obligation, and if they complete that while in the Inactive Ready Reserve, known as the IRR, they are asked to either leave permanently, or continue on with susceptibility for deployment. Stultz proposes a third option, a volunteer status in the IRR. "The only way you can get called back is if you volunteer to come back. I know there are people out there that we could preserve in our force that we have invested in if we made it more flexible." Such a program would leave Soldiers affiliated with a unit near them that they would go to in order to conduct yearly musters that are part of being in the IRR. The Army Reserve is now conducting a pilot program that affiliates Soldiers with a unit while they are in IRR status, even though there is yet no "IRR volunteer" status. But the affiliate program provides a base of support to the Soldier and his family while he is in IRR status, and provides him support if he gets called up. "Should that Soldier ever get called up, that unit is responsible for his family, and responsible to take care of that Soldier when he comes back home," Stultz said. Stultz said he expects the affiliate program to move out of pilot program status and become a full program in March. Then, active-duty Soldiers leaving the Army and moving into IRR status would be affiliated with a unit that they can muster at and become familiar with, so they know somebody will look after their family if they get called out of IRR status. Right now, Stultz said, there is "no hard timeline yet" for implementing the continuum of service concept. "I think what we are trying to establish now are some milestones," he said. "This is not a six-month or twelve-month overnight success." But the Reserve in the short-term may post more career counselors and recruiting stations on active-duty installations to "synch them with the transition process." He also said the Army Reserve could map soon-to-separate active-duty Soldiers to holes in the Reserve force before they leave active duty. The Army Reserve is also managing its end strength in a way that it can be ready to absorb the Soldiers it most wants to preserve. Right now, the Reserve is authorized about 206,000 Soldiers. "We may go below our authorized end strength deliberately," Stultz said. "Just to create space to absorb Soldiers that are coming off active duty." Force cuts may mean new job for some Soldiers [2011-12-07] WASHINGTON -- With the Army leaving Iraq by the end of the month and large drawdowns coming in Afghanistan, officials said the service may shrink by 50,000 over the next few years. Cutting that many Soldiers from the Army may mean some will be asked to leave before they planned. And others may need to transfer to a new military occupational specialty, said Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III. "Right now we are at a crossroads in our Army," Chandler said at a blogger's roundtable Wednesday. "We have continuing responsibilities overseas with our war in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places around the globe, and at the same time we are wrestling with reduced budgets and what that impact will be on our Army; and the drawdown in the force, and how we are going to manage that transition over the next several years." Chandler said the Army will use four tools to cut the force by 50,000. First, the Army will bring in fewer Soldiers from the civilian world. At the height of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army brought as many as 80,000 Soldiers a year into service. This year, the recruitment goal is about 58,000, Chandler said. Second, Chandler said, the Army will retain fewer Soldiers. That means it may be tougher for some Soldiers to re-enlist, and for those that want to re-enlist, they may have to do something different. "The retention piece is the one that is going to affect a lot of folks in our Army," Chandler said. "Everybody will be touched in some capacity. But for our Soldiers that are eligible to re-enlist, the standard is going to be excellence. We are looking for the best and the brightest in our Army, (to) offer the privilege of service. And it is really a two-part decision." The first part of that decision to retain a Soldier will include the Soldier's own commitment to serve. The second part of that decision will include putting Soldiers where the Army needs them. "You have to be committed to serve the Army in the capacity that we need you," Chandler said. "There are going to be some Soldiers that are going to be afforded the privilege to stay in service, but they may have to choose a different MOS (military occupational specialty). And for some folks that may not be palatable." Chandler said "finding the best folks" to stay in the Army will include some of the same tools used to decide promotion: military education, civilian education, duty performance, and a Soldier's own "desire to seek greater responsibility and other skills." "[It's] all going to be part of that equation that commanders will make to decide whether or not somebody will be able to stay," Chandler said. A third tool to cut the force will be adjustment of retention control points for sergeants and staff sergeants. The RCP is a cap on the number of years a Soldier may be in service without attaining the next higher rank. With planned changes to the Army's RCPs, Chandler said, "probably anywhere from 1,500 to 1,800 sergeants and staff sergeants will end up leaving the Army earlier than they may have anticipated." He said the change is not because of the drawdown, but rather because of adjustments made in leader development strategies about when people would get promoted. "We had to make some adjustments, and some folks, unfortunately, will have to leave," Chandler said. Also a tool to reduce the force will be selective early retirements, "probably starting next fiscal year," Chandler said. The Army will conduct selective early retirement boards for sergeants first class, master sergeants, and sergeants major. "We will look at whether or not Soldiers in that rank have any future potential and whether or not their MOS or career management field may be over strength and we'll tell them that it is time to retire now instead of waiting until their mandatory retirement date," he said. Chandler said he has spent nine months traveling around the Army talking to Soldiers and families and talking with them about their concerns. "I see myself as a scout, where I go out and find our Soldiers and hear what their concerns are and bring that information back to General Odierno, and share what they have to say," Chandler said. One of the primary concerns Soldiers have involves how the budget may affect their retirement. The sergeant major said he and other leaders are committed to preserving for Soldiers what they were promised. "The bottom line is this, the president, through the secretary of Defense, and the secretary of the Army and the chief and myself are committed to maintaining the current system of retirement for those that currently serve," Chandler said. "I meet with members of Congress. I have yet to find a member of Congress who said that we are willing to cut retirement for those currently in uniform, because they all understand the commitment and the sacrifice that very small population of folks have paid to our nation." Soldier earns German medal for saving ally's life [2011-12-09] WASHINGTON -- In combat, it doesn't make a difference what language your allies speak -- every Soldier who fights alongside you is like a brother, said a German who was saved by Americans in Afghanistan. The German government highlighted that reality of war, Dec. 8, when Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany Peter Ammon presented Staff Sgt. Peter Woken with the German Medal of Honor for Gallantry in Action -- an award similar to the American Silver Star. Woken's actions were instrumental in saving the life of German Cpl. Tim Focken, Ammon said. Addressing Woken's wife and two sons who attended the ceremony, he told the family an entire nation is thankful for the actions of the noncommissioned officer. "The German government and the German people are deeply grateful for your husband and your father," Ammon said. "He will be the first American to receive the German Medal of Honor for Gallantry in Action here in the U.S. You can be proud." Ammon pinned the medal on Woken's uniform. The sergeant, now part of the Warrior Transition Unit at Fort Hood, Texas, is the first American to receive the medal on American soil. Seven other American Soldiers involved in saving Focken's life also received the medal, though it was presented to them in theater by German Minister of Defense Dr. Thomas de Maizière. Woken had said that he views the recognition as confirmation of what Soldiers know about their comrades -- that soldiering together unites servicemen across language and nationality. "Even though Germany is honoring me this way, I think what they are conveying is that we are all brothers," Woken said. "This type of award generally doesn't go to Americans. It will go to Germans on German soil. We feel the same way -- they are fighting the same enemy that we are, and we are all brothers." Focken said the same -- to an infantryman, uniform, language and nationality make no difference if you're fighting on the same side. "We've had a lot of battles, and we've fought side-by-side with 10th Mountain," he said. "There was never a discussion on who is there to help who and to save who. It's basically like brothers, and if anybody needed help, nationality doesn't matter. You're there to help." On Oct. 7, 2010, a German ground patrol at Qala-ye Zai, Afghanistan, came under enemy fire -- Focken was shot in the conflict. After receiving immediate medical assistance from German Army medics, Focken boarded an American Black Hawk helicopter, where flight medic Woken tended to the injured Soldier's wounds during travel to a military hospital. The action in Afghanistan that earned him the award was typical of what combat medics like Woken are called upon to do as many as 10 times a day. The Soldier said he'd performed so many rescues that he's lost count. "I had stopped counting at 357," he said. "At that point it was becoming kind of redundant to even count." Originally from Tacoma, Wash., Woken said teams like his are on call for 48 hours at a time with 24 hours of down time between. On that day in Afghanistan, his team was waiting in a "relaxed state," he said, to conserve energy until they got the call to do a rescue. Then, he said, "we went from basically zero to 100 in a matter of minutes." "We were flying about as fast as we could go to the scene," he said. "We were told there were troops in contact. Once we got there we overflew the scene one time. Normally we will do a high recon and then a low recon. And we only did one low recon and we landed. I guess our pilot chose to not do a full landing. We took off due to safety reasons." Woken said the crew onboard the aircraft decided quickly to land again to pick up the injured German Soldier -- personal risk is not part of the equation when you are trying to save somebody's life, he said. "A flight medic shouldn't feel like they are taking a risk whatsoever," Woken said. "You have to think that God has your back, and you have the back of the Soldier on the ground." Woken said the Black Hawk stayed on the ground for less than a minute before Focken was onboard. Focken had been on the ground leading a team of three Soldiers when he got injured. "Our job was to go into the town, Qala-ye Zai, to do recon," Focken said. "We got there early so our company commander could do HUMINT and recon. My three Soldiers and I were on the compound roof securing the perimeter. About a half hour after we got into Qala-ye Zai, heavy fighting broke out, with the Taliban insurgents firing. After about one and half hours of intense fighting, a sharpshooter picked me off the roof." Focken was hit in the left shoulder. "I was talking to one of my guys when I got shot," he said. "It felt like a bolt of electricity going through my arm." He was able to maintain order among his Soldiers even after he was shot, and his Soldiers applied aid to try to stop his bleeding. Once on the ground, a German medic tended to his wound, and then he was able to get to the helicopter. "His attitude was probably one of the best I've seen out of any injured Soldier," Woken said. "He was still in top physical condition. He was able to jump into the helicopter even though it was three and a half feet off the ground. He was able to speak with me and explain how he was feeling. And at the end of the mission he walked off the helicopter." Both Woken and Focken were present at the ceremony -- brought together for the event by the German government. The two had not been in contact with each other since Focken departed Woken's Black Hawk in Afghanistan in 2010. "I get to meet the only person I've ever MEDEVACed from any theater," Woken said of the opportunity. "Normally I'll get my patient, I'll take care of them on the aircraft, then they walk away. I never hear or see from them again. This morning I got to meet Cpl. Tim Focken and start a relationship. It provides a lot of closure for me." For Focken, he got a chance to say thank you to one of the American Soldiers that helped save his life. "It's a great thing to say thank you personally to Sgt. Woken and to his crew that saved me." Ammon said the award ceremony was about more than just a medal -- he said it was about an enduring friendship between two allied nations. "Today is more than just paying tribute to the bravery of one courageous serviceman who saved a fellow Soldier," Ammon said. "Today we also celebrate the lasting vitality of our alliance in challenging times -- an alliance that has roots going back to the American revolution of 1776, and an alliance that will remain a cornerstone of our security well into the 21st century." Thousands lay wreaths at nation's cemetery [2011-12-10] WASHINGTON -- As part of a tradition now 20 years old, thousands showed up early morning at Arlington National Cemetery to place wreaths at the gravestones of those buried there. This year, about 85,000 wreaths made their way from Maine to the cemetery -- donations from both Americans and from wreath manufacturer Morrill Worcester, of the Worcester Wreath Company. Worcester began laying wreaths at the cemetery in 1992. Thousands of volunteers, including civilians from Virginia, Maryland and Maine as well as other parts of the country, along with servicemembers, and young people from scouting and cadet programs, gathered in the Memorial Amphitheater at the cemetery before placing the wreaths. Speaking to the crowd were both Morrill and wife Karen Worcester -- founders of the "Wreaths Across America" program. Volunteers from the program brought wreaths to Arlington and 740 other cemeteries this year. Also speaking were Kathryn A. Condon, executive director, Army National Cemeteries Program, and Wayne Hanson, chairman of the board for Wreaths Across America. Hanson said the wreaths were a "thank you for the service and sacrifice" of those buried in the cemetery. After Hanson's words, the crowd poured into the cemetery and volunteers gathered around the several tractor trailers that had carried the wreaths down the east coast from Maine. When the doors opened, volunteers passed boxes of wreaths out to the waiting crowds, who quickly distributed the wreaths among eager hands to place on grave sites. Jerry Gladwell, a Cub Scout Master from Manassas, Va. Was among those who placed wreaths on graves. With him was his son Scott, age 7, in a Cub Scout uniform. "We do this to respect the Soldiers," Scott said. "They fought for us to be free." Jerry said he didn't know what his son Scott, and Scott's friend Cohen -- just 6 and a half, and also a Cub Scout -- would gather from attending the event. But he said he had written down the information from the grave stone where he laid a wreath, and hoped to learn more about who was buried there. He also said many know about Arlington National Cemetery, but being there provides another perspective on sacrifice. "For me, taking it in as a whole -- it's awe inspiring, you just don't think of the numbers of people here until you see all the stones. This are a lot of folks here," Jerry said. Nearby, Spc. Tyler Ahrens, a military policeman from the 488th Military Police Company, Maine Army National Guard, struggled to get two wreaths attached to a fairly large memorial to the servicemen who had been killed as part of the Battle of the Bulge. Ahrens had come down from Maine for the event for the sixth time. This year was the second time the young Soldier had been asked to escort to the event Sir Stanley A. Wojtusik, a World War II veteran who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and who now serves as member of the board of trustees for Wreaths Across America. Ahrens also escorted to the event Edith T. Nowels, member of the Wreaths Across America board, and sister of Medal of Honor Recipient Cpl. Bud Thorne -- who also fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Ahrens said it was a "great honor" to escort the two to the Wreaths Across America event, and said he was humbled by the number of graves in the cemetery that represent so much sacrifice on the part of so many servicemen and women who were as young as himself. Wojtusik, on a cane, and who had been held as a prisoner of war in German Stalag IV-B, near Dresden, for six months during WWII, didn't place a wreath himself -- Ahrens had placed wreaths for him at the memorial to Soldiers from the Battle of the Bulge. He said the wreaths represent a little bit of Christmas for Battle of the Bulge veterans -- during World War II, he said, those Soldiers were "deprived of Christmas by Hitler." But Wojtusik said the Wreaths Across America event was meant "to honor all deceased members of the services -- all veterans." No excuses now for officers not to apply for fellowships, scholarships [2011-12-14] WASHINGTON -- Two changes made to a set of programs will make participation easier for officers wanting to expand their military careers with opportunities such as fellowships and scholarships. Under the officer "Broadening Opportunity Program," or BOP, officers can apply to all programs they qualify for, instead of just one. Additionally, notification for acceptance into one of the programs will now come much earlier. The BOP includes the Strategic Education and Development Program; the Army Regional Fellowships; the Olmsted Scholar Program; the Joint Chief of Staff, OSD, and DA Staff Internship Program; the Cyber Command Scholarship Program; the Downing Scholarship Program; the Congressional Fellowship Program; and the Arroyo Center Fellowship Program. "These programs educate and mature the officer for the next battle," said Joel Strout, manager for the programs included in the BOP. With current budget concerns, Strout said, officers who know how Congress works and who have had experience on Capitol Hill will be valuable to the Army. "The Army Congressional Fellowship Program can allow the officer that experience," he said. One of the changes under BOP allows officers to apply for all programs for which they are qualified -- though they will be accepted to only one. Under the previous "Non-Military Education Level" program, as it was known, officers could apply to only one. The change, Strout said, gives interested officers "a better chance of being selected for a program." Officers can apply for all of the BOP programs for which they are qualified, and rank their preference. Acceptance into one of the programs eliminates them from consideration for the other programs. The second change that comes with BOP is that officers will learn by as early as mid-July if they have been accepted into one of the programs. In past years, under the non-MEL program, they might have had to wait until as late as December to find out if they were accepted. "Notification is sent out much, much earlier to all the candidates and all the career managers, of who was selected and who wasn't," Strout said. "In previous years, selection boards were scattered." The deadline for applying for the next series of BOP fellowships and scholarships is March 30, 2012. The selection boards for all those programs will meet during a two-week window in late June. Results will be available to applicants by mid-July. The earlier notification aligns better with the onset of the officer assignment cycle, Strout said. "The earlier that we can tell the candidates they've made it or not, the earlier they can put their name in the hat for an assignment," Strout said. Strout said the changes come as a result of Human Resources Command listening to officers who have in the past participated in the fellowships and scholarships that are now part of BOP. "The HRC is listening," Strout said. "They said let's do it this year, let's do the pilot program. This is the very first time that we are allowing multiple programs at one time that a service member can apply for." Six of the eight programs in the BOP are graduate degree programs," Strout said. Two of the eight programs provide Intermediate Level Education/Advanced Operations Course credit -- including both the Joint Chief of Staff, Office of the Secretary Of Defense, and the Department Of the Army Staff Internship Program; and the Army Congressional Fellowship Program. Programs that are part of the BOP include: -- The Fiscal Year 2013/2014 Arroyo Center Fellowship: The 12-month program, open to majors or lieutenant colonels, is a research and study fellowship established at the Army's research and development center, the Rand Arroyo Center. The center supports the Army by studying topics related to the National Security Strategy and other issues of critical importance to the Army. (MILPER message 11-362) -- The 2014 Army Congressional Fellowship Program: The 43-month program educates selected Army officers, senior noncommissioned officers and civilians on the importance of the strategic relationship between the Army and the Congress. The program includes pursuit of a master's degree in legislative affairs, service on the staff of a member of Congress, and utilization on the Army or joint staff in a congressional-related duty position. (MILPER message 11-363) -- The Fiscal Year 2013 General Wayne A. Downing Scholarship Program: The 24-month program, open to active-duty captains and majors in the maneuver, fires and effects branches, provides participants the opportunity to study terrorism and counterterrorism at top-tier graduate schools. (MILPER message 11-364) -- The Fiscal Year 2012/2013 U.S. Army Cyber Command Scholarship Program: The two-year program, followed by a three-year utilization assignment, is open to active-duty captains and majors in the maneuver, fires, and effects; operations support; and force sustainment branches. The program offers participants the opportunity to pursue a master's degree in cyber security at the University of Maryland. (MILPER message 11-365) -- The Fiscal Year 2013 Joint Chief of Staff, Office of the Secretary Of Defense, and the Department of the Army Staff Internship Program: The three-year program includes a Georgetown University master of policy management degree, an internship on the Joint Staff or with the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and an internship within the Headquarters Department of the Army staff. (MILPER message 11-366) -- The Fiscal Year 2013 Olmsted Scholar Program: The program, open to active-duty officers, provides participants the opportunity to achieve fluency in a foreign language while studying at the Defense Language Institute and then pursue graduate study at an overseas university. (MILPER message 11-367) -- The Academic Year 2013/2014 Army Regional Fellowships -- LTC Level: Three separate programs provide an approximately year-long fellowship to participants at the Asia-Pacific Center in Hawaii; the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany; or the Department of State in Washington, D.C. Participants then do a two-year utilization tour immediately following their fellowships. (MILPER message 11-368) -- Academic Year 2013/2014 HQDA G-3/5 Strategic Education and Development Program: This one-year program, open to active-duty and Army Reserve captains and majors, provides participants with a master's degree in public administration at Harvard University followed by a utilization tour within the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army G-3/5 and the Office of the Chief, Army Reserve (for Reserve officers only). (MILPER message 11-369) Reserve website offers 600,000 jobs to veterans [2012-01-06] WASHINGTON -- The large number of veterans coming out of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are a good resource for American businesses looking for great employees, said an Army Reserve general. About 20 million veterans now reside in the United States, said Maj. Gen. Keith Thurgood, chief of staff, U.S. Army Reserve Command. The unemployment rate for those veterans that are coming out of recent conflicts is about 14-18 percent. "For some of the generational cohorts, veterans in the 18-24-year-old range, that unemployment is nearly three times the national average," Thurgood said. The national unemployment rate is about 9 percent now. So many veterans available for work, Thurgood said, is "an opportunity for the nation," because veterans have skill sets that are usable by any business. "The Army does two things really well that every business wants," he said. "They deliver results, and they produce leaders -- they fill the leadership pipeline. If you were to take those two characteristics, and take them to a business, I guarantee you that Soldier, that veteran, can start to make an immediate impact on the business' results." Matching Soldiers with businesses that can benefit from the unique characteristics Soldiers bring to the table -- integrity coupled with an understanding of discipline, respect, diversity and the importance of collaboration, along with the ability to think strategically and act tactically -- is what the Reserve component is doing with the online "Employer Partnership of the Armed Forces" website, at https://www.employerpartnership.org/. Right now, Thurgood said, there are only about 36,000 registered users on the website. "We've got over 600,000 jobs that we could fill today, if we had the right people," he said. "We're not trying to create magic here. We're trying to take the supply, the resources we have, and match them with a known demand." Thurgood said there are about 2,500 employers partnered with the Reserve via that website, and he said response from the employers has been good. "They are very, very happy with the quality of people they are getting and the ease with which we can do business," he said. The Reserve component also has program service mangers in specific regions across the United States, about two dozen of them, who are working to connect veterans who need a job with private sector human resource professionals that are looking for employees. Thurgood said the Reserve is working to expand that force of service managers. Why veterans have a more difficult time finding work when they leave the service is a two-fold problem -- and part of that is based on Soldier's humility, Thurgood said. "If you think about the culture of the United States Army, by and large, the force is what I would describe as a humble force," Thurgood said. "Soldiers are not used to talking about themselves and making themselves look better. It is about discipline, it is about the team, it is about accomplishing the mission. And we collectively are only a small piece of that. There's a little bit of reluctance to say 'I'm actually good.' And these Soldiers are good." So Soldiers, Thurgood said, have a hard time selling themselves in the job market. They also have a hard time knowing how to translate the skills they learned in the Army to skills that employers want in the private sector. Thurgood said the Army can bolster its programs designed to help Soldiers make that transition from the Army to the private sector -- programs like the Transition Assistance Program. "I think there is some more structure we need to put around TAPS," he said. "If you start to integrate all these activities in a way that makes sense, you've really got a good framework that can be good for the nation and good for our Soldiers." Aging Kiowa, vertical unmanned aerial systems among aviation challenges [2012-01-13] WASHINGTON -- Probably by this summer, the Army will be floating a new idea past the troops for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Not a program of record, but something the Army expects to test in Afghanistan this summer, the Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle. It's a hybrid air vehicle -- like a blimp -- that can carry multiple intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, known as ISR, payloads for more than 21 days at altitudes greater than 22,000 feet. While discussing efforts to resource and transform Army aviation during the Association of the United States Army Aviation Symposium and Exposition just outside Washington, D.C., Jan. 12, Lt. Gen. Robert P. Lennox, deputy chief of staff, Army G-8, touched on the future of vertical take-off and landing unmanned aerial systems, or UAS. The general said Army aviation has a "good path" for vertical UAS. "We are using overseas contingency operations dollars and we are hustling systems to theater and we hope to learn from that," Lennox explained. The LEMV, developed by Northrop Grumman, "has got some real promise," the general said. "We will see the value of the persistent stare that that gives us." Other vertical take-off and landing, or VTOL, capabilities the Army is looking at include the Boeing A160 Hummingbird. "It's wonderful not being tied to a long runway," Lennox said. And the platform's long endurance and "pretty good stare capability when teamed with some of the latest sensors, I think it can give us some powerful capabilities." Where such pieces of equipment can go in the Army, or if the Army can even afford them, remains to be seen, he said. "We think it'll help in Afghan significantly." Lt. Gen. William N. Phillips, with the Army Acquisition Corps and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, said the Army must consider vertical UAS "through an affordability lens. What does this provide to the Army, what capability could it provide and then again how much does it cost?" Lennox said the Kiowa Warrior fleet is now about 35 years old, on average. The rest of the helicopters in Army aviation are about 15-20 years old, and have been "used at incredible rates over the last ten years," he said. The general said Congress and industry have helped reset the fleet. "But we haven't fixed the age of the fleet, and the one that stands out like a sore thumb is the Kiowa Warrior," Lennox explained. "We have to figure out something to do with that." Two options for that aircraft include continuation of the Cockpit And Sensor Upgrade Program along with the Service Life Extension Program. "We can do that now," he said, and "relatively cheaply." That option comes to between $2.9 and $4.1 billion, he said. Another option, which would be to develop a replacement, might run as much as $12 billion. "My challenge for the Army is how do you afford that?" Lennox said. Challenges for Army aviation, Lennox said, also include modernizing an Army fleet that continues to be used at historical rates and will likely continue to be used that way. It will be a challenge to fix existing shortages, Lennox said, like the Kiowa Warrior. One solution might be to develop an Armed Aerial Scout to replace the Kiowa Warrior, he said. Other challenges included: multi-year contracts, modernization of unmanned aerial systems, incrementally improving aircraft, and developing the right aviation force structure. Right now, said Col. Patrick Tierney, director of Army Aviation, the Army's aviation portfolio is in "good health." About seven percent of the Army force is aviation -- though it is an expensive part. There are currently 12 active-component combat aviation brigades, with a 13th coming. There are also eight Reserve-component CABs. The Army has about 3,850 rotary aircraft, about 350 fixed-wing aircraft and more than 5,000 vehicles total of all sizes among its unmanned aerial systems. Phillips said the Army has experienced "exponential growth in UAVs," and the growth, he said, has been successful. "The ground brigade commanders, battalion commanders, company commanders -- have learned how to use UAVs in the most extraordinary ways, to extend their ability to achieve a situational awareness on the battlefield." The Army's fiscal year 2012 investment portfolio includes $2 billion for utility helicopters, including variants of the UH-60 Black Hawk; about $700 million for UAS; over $1 billion for attack helicopters and about $1.5 billion for the CH-47 Chinook. The Army expects to buy about 68 UH-60 Black Hawk variants in the next year, 47 CH-47 Chinooks, 19 Block III Apaches, and 39 of the light utility helicopters. There's "considerable investment in FY12, and it's going to pay off for us," Lennox said. Army one step closer to replacement of ACU pattern [2012-01-13] WASHINGTON -- The Army is now one step closer to selecting a new set of camouflage patterns that could replace what Soldiers are wearing now in most places. As part of the "Phase IV" camouflage effort, the Army this week awarded contracts to five vendors -- selected from an initial 20 -- to each provide enough fabric in the new camouflage patterns they have developed to produce 150 uniforms for the Army to test. Each vendor had been asked to produce a "family of camouflage patterns," including one that would be suitable in a woodland environment, one that would be suitable in a desert environment, and one that would work in a "transitional" environment. The Army will spend the next nine months testing the effectiveness of those patterns. "To really have confidence in being able to make a recommendation to senior leaders, we need to do field trials," said Col. William E. Cole, of Program Executive Office Soldier. "We are looking forward to getting out into the woods, into the deserts, into the transitional areas and having real Soldiers wear these uniforms and have real Soldiers observe them." Cole said the Army will use both real-world testing in varying terrains and conditions, as well as more advanced computer testing to evaluate the patterns. "We're going to put them through the ringer," he said. Due to the varying types of terrain Soldiers operate in, Cole said the Army had found that "we can't really have one pattern that is as effective as we'd like in every single terrain type." Today, most Soldiers wear the Army Combat Uniform. The ACU bears the Universal Camouflage Pattern, the familiar grey/blue "digital" pattern. In Afghanistan, Soldiers also have the Operation Enduring Freedom Camouflage Pattern, or OCP, available for wear. The vendors each developed three patterns with the same geometry -- the shapes on the fabric -- but with different color palettes. Additionally, the vendors were to develop a fourth "coordinated" pattern, or name one of the three already in their family of patterns, that would work well with all three patterns. That fourth pattern is for use on organizational clothing and individual equipment, or OCIE. Cole said that OCIE, things like belts, protective vests, ruck sacks and plate carriers, are more expensive than a Soldier's regular uniform. The Army doesn't want to maintain OCIE in each of the three patterns, so instead the Army will have it in one pattern that looks good with all three of the uniform pattern variants. Cole said other organizations have OCIE that is a solid color, but he said "we were hoping we could do better than that," and the Army asked industry to come up with an OCIE pattern to break up solid color "and still look good on all three uniform patterns." "We had seen some examples of grossly mismatched OCIE in uniforms in the early part of Iraqi Freedom -- we didn't want to have any telltale signs of where the OCIE, the vest and armor stopped and where the rest of the body began," Cole said. Many vendors have chosen their "transitional" pattern for use on the OCIE, Cole said. Each of the five vendors will now produce enough fabric to build 50 uniforms out of each of their three submitted patterns -- for a total of 150 uniforms from each company. In all, the Army will have 750 uniforms for use in its testing. Cole said by October, PEO Soldier will have completed testing of the patterns and will be able to make recommendations to Army senior leadership about the way ahead. "There's a lot to do between now and October, but that's our plan," Cole said. "Complete the field trials and complete the more sensitive computer simulations and come back to senior leaders in October and lay out the results of what we found and have a recommendation." The five vendors awarded contracts include: -- Atlantic Diving Supply, Inc., Virginia Beach, Va. -- Brookwood Companies Inc., New York, N.Y. -- Crye Precision, LLC, Brooklyn, N.Y. -- Kryptek Inc., Fairbanks, Alaska -- U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center, Natick, Mass. Net Zero conference begins in Chicago [2012-01-18] CHICAGO -- Representatives from posts named in April as pilots for the Army's Net Zero Installation Strategy are meeting here this week to brief their progress. "They have made a lot of progress, and that is what is encouraging to see," said Katherine Hammack, the assistant secretary of the Army for installations, environment and energy. Hammack opened the three-day Army Net Zero Energy Installations Conference, Jan. 18, and said she hopes that in addition to briefing the progress of their home installations, participants will also learn from one another. "This is really all about networking and learning from each other," she said. "We have a lot of great, smart people doing wonderful things. But our Army installations can be in very diverse and remote locations. By bringing everyone together, they can learn from both the formal presentations, and from networking and talking with each other to understand how they may address something that was a problem at one location, but the other location figured out." The Army's Net Zero Installation Strategy focuses on three areas: energy, water and waste. For each of those areas, the Army chose six pilot installations. Some installations were named pilots in two areas. An additional two installations, Fort Carson, Colo., and Fort Bliss, Texas, were named as "integrated" Net Zero installations. Those installations will work on reaching Net Zero goals in all three areas. Representatives from 18 installations in all are at the conference to brief their home station's progress. The Army's Net Zero Installation Strategy is about reducing energy use, water use and waste production, to help secure the Army's mission. A Net Zero energy installation produces as much energy as it consumes, resulting in a net usage of zero. A Net Zero water installation limits its consumption of freshwater resources and returns water back to the same watershed, so as not to deplete groundwater. Finally, a Net Zero waste installation reduces, reuses, and recovers waste streams with a goal of zero landfill use. Part of the reasoning behind the Net Zero goal is that Army installations become self-sustaining, Hammack said. "Fire, earthquake or tornado can all shut down infrastructure like water or power to an Army installation and disable it," Hammack said. "All of those threaten the ability for us to do our primary mission. We have to address these threats and work to ensure that the Army of tomorrow has the same access to resources that the Army of today does." NET ZERO ENERGY For an Army installation to meet the Net Zero energy goal, it must produce as much energy as it consumes. That is driven in part by the vulnerability of the power grid and the effect its failure could have on the Army mission, Hammack said. "Our power grids are increasingly vulnerable, and that exposes Army operations to risk," Hammack said. Power lines which supply Army installations are aging and easily accessible for those who might want to attack the Army. "Who would have thought ten years ago that somebody would fly an airplane into buildings," she asked. "Imagine somebody setting off a small bomb, and it doesn't take much, to cut down power grids and render our bases vulnerable and exposed. If a raccoon can do it, a terrorist can do it." The Army's risk management for that is both onsite production of energy, coupled with reduction in use by more efficient use of energy. Existing buildings also need to be looked at for energy-use reduction, she said, because decreased budgets mean new construction will slow, and the Army must look to existing construction to cut energy use. Decreasing use of fossil fuels means increased use of clean and renewable energy resources -- not just wind and solar. Determining which new technologies are best for each installation means assessments at those installations. Hammack said the Army is working with the national labs to develop roadmaps to help installations move towards Net Zero energy use. One such roadmap involves overall reduction in consumption coupled with an increased percentage of use supplied by alternative energy sources such as solar hot water, photovoltaic, geothermal, wind and biomass. "It's going to take a balance and blend of resources to get us there," Hammack said. NET ZERO WATER Net Zero installations must also reduce water use, Hammack said. Water is itself more important now because of water shortages and increased demand for fresh water. And Army leaders have said competition for fresh water will increase in coming years. "Some say that water will be more precious than oil in the 21st century," Hammack said, adding that only about three percent of the world's water is fresh. "If you think about an Army installation, where are you getting your water from? Is it a single point distribution? That is vulnerability and a risk," she said. Hammack said one installation discovered that, when it lost power due to a forest fire, it also lost pressure to its fire hydrants. That is something she said should have been known ahead of time. "We need to do vulnerability assessments and understand the critical nature that water has on our operations," she said. Net Zero goals for water require reduction of water demand. That can be accomplished through such things as treatment of used water to repurpose it for other uses, like irrigation. In new construction, Hammack said, it might also mean implementing more green plumbing technology. One surprising way the Army has shown it can reduce water, Hammack said, has been to reduce leaks that are the result of ageing water infrastructure. The Army must also look at continued access to water. The Army is looking at supply and demand studies to assess 30-year water demand on installations in order to determine if in the future there will be problems at those installations with getting water. Hammack said the Army's goals for Net Zero water include both reducing water demand on installations, and also ensuring continued water rights for installations into the future. NET ZERO WASTE Producing zero waste by reducing waste production and by reusing waste that is created is also part of the Army's Net Zero Installation Strategy. "Waste reduction doesn't mean send all your solid waste to incinerators," Hammack said. "Stuff coming out of an incinerator is waste too. Waste avoidance is a first step for reduction." That can be accomplished by repurposing materials, recycling and composting. "We have some installations that are doing fantastic jobs with recycling -- to the point where they are generating money that goes into MWR," she said. What goes on at these installations, she said, can be taken to theater to reduce the impact there on the environment and on Army operations. Installations making progress toward 'Net Zero' by 2020 [2012-01-20] CHICAGO -- Around the Army, installations are testing renewable energy sources such as solar photovoltaic panels and using technology such as sensors to find water leaks. Representatives from 18 installations attended the Army's Net Zero Energy Installations Conference here to brief their progress in decreasing energy use, reducing their use of water, and eliminating waste sent to landfills. Kristine M. Kingery, director of Army sustainability policy, which is part of the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Energy and Sustainability, said pilot installations in the program are "striving toward" goals the Army wants them to meet by 2020. "The pilot installations also are the places where we want to do tests," she said. "Some of the stuff may work, or may not work. What we may find out in this is we get 80 percent toward a goal in one place, and by getting that we achieve what we want to achieve." ENERGY SECURITY One of the things the Army wants to achieve is energy security. That means an Army installation can keep on with its mission, even if outside power is gone. To get there, an installation must first reduce its own energy consumption, through efficiency, and then produce its own power using renewable sources to meet its needs. "With Net Zero, the idea is not just replace the energy with renewables," Kingery said. "It's the reduction, the repurposing, conservation and efficiency. Reduce usage, and replace what you are using with renewables." One installation that is a pilot in that area is Fort Hunter Liggett, Calif. "The first step is the culture change," said Todd Dirmeyer, the Fort Hunter Liggett and Camp Parks energy manger. He said that means command buy-in as well as buy-in from Soldiers and the community -- he said he's got command buy-in at Hunter Liggett. The second part of achieving Net Zero energy at Hunter Liggett will mean energy conservation. "We have to learn what our demand is now -- we just can't model renewables against that and call it Net Zero and we're good," he said. "There's not enough financial assets in the Army or third party financing to get all that done. So we have to draw that consumption down, by getting rid of waste." Dirmeyer said conservation efforts could mean new technology like occupancy sensors for lights, hot water through solar, sealing buildings to avoid losing heat, or using more daylight to illuminate building interiors. Even a Soldier turning off a light when he leaves the room makes "a huge difference," Dirmeyer said. "As you start adding those little things up, they become big things." The goal for Hunter Liggett now is a 30-percent reduction in energy use by 2015, he said. The installation is moving slowly toward that goal now. "We're in the crawl stage now. We'll get to the walk stage in three to six months." Reduction of energy use is only part of the Net Zero equation. An installation must also make as much energy as it uses. "That's when we do the renewables," Dirmeyer said. "We've got one megawatt of installed solar power that's currently under construction. We have another megawatt of installed solar power that is just about ready to be awarded." The installation has mounted solar photovoltaic panels above parking structures to generate power, Dirmeyer said. The installation of solar power generation will bring about 400 kilowatts of renewable energy to the base, and help them cut some of the 2.7 megawatts it currently takes from the grid. That change will help them get about 15 percent toward their goal. Other renewables being considered at Hunter Liggett include concentrated solar, where a concave mirror is used to heat a "liquid media," that can then be used to generate power. "It can offset some of our thermal loads," Dirmeyer said. "Right now we have barracks heated by propane and diesel." Part of the Net Zero goal is to push thermal power "off the table," he said. That means elimination of fossil fuels such as diesel and propane. Hunter Liggett is also planning exploration of geothermal energy. Dirmeyer said the Navy's Seebees will drill a well to help in that exploration. Dirmeyer said he is proud Hunter Liggett was chosen to be a pilot installation for Net Zero energy, and said success in the program will require passion and commitment from all involved. "A lot of commanders have bigger things to worry about, that's where energy managers have to get in the back pocket of the commander and make him the champion of the program," Dirmeyer said. "The key to all this is you have to be very passionate about this stuff. You have to believe in the cause. There are a lot of people that will tell you it won't happen. But truly the Army is leading the nation in this effort, and we are going to lead the nation to energy security." To help Net Zero energy pilot installations achieve their goals, the Army is now working with installations on doing energy audits that will help them identify projects they can undertake in reduction, Kingery said. Also, Kingery said, the Army is working with installations to do "renewable assessments" to "look at the possible blend of renewable energies that could come into play." Additionally, the Army is trying to develop an energy "roadmap" for installations that is supposed to be done by the end of September, "to help try to set out a plan for actions that they can take toward Net Zero by 2020." REPLACING WATER YOU TAKE "We are trying to minimize the amount of water we are drawing out, we are trying to reuse, we are trying to recycle -- to repurpose the water," Kingery said. "So we are trying to look at how we are using water." Water balance studies, Kingery said, will help the Army understand what the water requirements are for an installation, and what is coming in. And while Army installations use meters to determine how much water they are bringing on base, they haven't yet metered individual buildings -- though they know how much water is going into their wastewater treatment facilities. Net Zero water means returning to the environment as much water as is taken out of the environment. It also means using less water in the first place. "One of the biggest things for us is our leak-detection system," said Thomas Wildoner Jr., an environmental protection specialist at Tobyhanna Army Depot, Pa. Tobyhanna is one of the pilot installations for Net Zero water. Wildoner said a new system at Tobyhanna uses acoustical sensors to listen for the sound of leaks in their water supply system. "A small leak sounds like a whistling noise from high pressure (through a) small hole," he said. "A larger leak sounds like a gurgling pipe." So far, he said, they've found four small leaks and two medium sized leaks using the system. Before the installation of the system, a company came out and did an acoustical survey to establish a baseline for the sensor system -- and that survey found leaks that were wasting 40 gallons of fresh water a minute. The sensors are just part of the effort at Tobyhanna to reduce water waste at that industrial installation, and to reduce the amount of water the base uses overall. At Tobyhanna, there's no irrigation, and no golf course to water. As an industrial site, all the water it takes in should be accounted for in the waste water it produces. So the amount of water it processes in its waste water facility should be equal to the amount of water it pulls from the ground. "Twenty years ago, there was a 100-million-gallon difference between these two numbers," Wildoner said. "We didn't know where the 100 million gallons was going. At the end of fiscal year 2011, what we are bringing up out of the ground is roughly equal to what we are sending back into the environment. That's where we want to be." Actually, Wildoner said, there's about a 7-percent difference between what they take out of the ground and what they process out as waste water. But the difference is that they are now actually producing more waste water than what they pull from the ground. That, he said, is due to water leaking into waste pipes. Wildoner said to move forward at Tobyhanna, the installation must have a better understanding of where water is being used. Part of that can come from metering its industrial processes. "Until you have a really good understanding of where it's being used, it's hard to come up with the technology to reduce that usage," he said. By 2020, Tobyhanna is looking to achieve a 50-percent reduction of fresh water intake, compared to what it did in 2007. So far they've found success in one of their facilities that manufactures, among other things, brackets to hold night vision goggles onto helmets. In the 1990s, that facility used about 2 million gallons of potable water a month, which was discharged into the sanitary sewer after use. Today, that same facility is included in a larger industrial operations facility that also does things such as painting and sandblasting. The new facility uses only about 330,000 gallons of potable water a month. A lot of that savings comes from recycling the water used in the plating process there, Wildoner said. "That waste water goes to a pretreatment plant where it is filtered. We use a reverse osmosis unit to recharge that water and send it right back to the plating shop, without having to retake potable water," he said. Other efforts to reduce water usage at Tobyhanna include installation of a water chiller to cool air compressors -- previously, potable water was used to accomplish that task, and then, when the cool, potable water had chilled the compressors, it was dumped into the sewers. Today, the water is recycled in a closed loop, cooled, and then sent back to the air compressors. Tobyhanna has gotten pretty close to their goal for 2020 -- in fact, Wildoner said, they've already reduced water usage by 34 percent. "We're almost there," Wildoner said. They've taken the "low hanging fruit," and must now look at more complex solutions. They are using condensed water to fill tanks in "rain rooms" used to evaluate the waterproofness of electronic equipment, for instance. And soon, they will look at residential housing to find more possible gains..." "Management has been behind this from the get go," Wildoner said. "They've been generous with projects. If we can come up with a project to save water and it shows a good payback and it's something that can reduce our rates we charge customers, they are behind it 100 percent -- because that's more work that can come into the depot." WASTE NOT "It's not just recycle as much as you can," said Kingery. "The idea is how do you limit stuff coming in? They are doing this materials flow study right now, looking at various products that are coming in, and looking at what is going into the landfill, trying to get a handle on what their waste streams are how can we reuse things." The overall goal of Net Zero waste, Kingery said, is to bring down to almost zero what goes into landfills. "We've come pretty darn close already," said Terry Austin, installation sustainability coordinator at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash. "For municipal solid waste, we are close to the 70-percent mark." At JBLM, that means that 70 percent of the garbage that would normally go off to the landfill is instead diverted somewhere else -- like recycling or reuse. The installation also has an "aggressive composting operation," Austin said, that takes waste organics from food sources like the Commissary or the dining facility and incorporates that with things like storm debris and wood waste to make products like mulch for the installation. JBLM actually started sustainability operations back in 2002, Austin said. One of the goals then was zero waste -- so they've been working on that for 10 years now. Helping them along, she said, is that JBLM is in the "sweet spot" of the Pacific Northwest, where surrounding communities are already working hard at waste reduction. "Some of our bigger neighbors -- Seattle and so forth -- are very advanced in diversion and waste reduction, Austin said. "Given that, we had a tremendous stepping stone to launch our program back in 2002. We have done quite a bit in identifying what waste streams are going off post, and finding resources to make them diversion opportunities." To get to a 100-percent diversion, she said, JBLM needs to "get our arms around green procurement." In particular, she wants a culture where all the procurement agencies, from the contracting agency, to individual credit card holders, are making "the right choices" on product purchases. That means stuff that's made from recycled material, and products that can themselves easily be recycled. "We need to be mindful of what we buy, what we bring into the mix," she said. There is still stuff in the waste bins at JBLM, and because so much has already been diverted to recycling and reuse, Austin said she's not sure what that stuff is. "We're doing a material flow analysis to see how we do buy things and who buys them and also going to do another waste survey to see what's in the dumpsters now," she said. Austin said at JBLM they are also looking at ways to deal with construction waste -- which is different than municipal waste -- and finding ways for that to be reused by other construction projects. Also, JBLM will look at waste-to-energy conversion -- "once you divert everything, that 30 percent remaining, there may not be a marketing opportunity to divert it. But it may have some energy potential that will help augment our energy requirement on the installation. That's what we're looking at now. We think there is energy potential that is untapped." BEYOND 2020 Kingery said the pilot installations involved now in the Army's Net Zero Installation Strategy are test cases to see what's possible. They are "striving toward" goals for 2020. By 2014, she said, an additional 25 installations will come on board in the program, and those installations will have a target year of 2030. The Army's overall goal is to reach Net Zero status in all three areas, for all installations, by 2050. Net Zero means 'more fuel for the fight' [2012-01-23] CHICAGO -- CHICAGO (Army News Service, Jan. 23, 2012) -- Net Zero for the Army means a reduction in energy used, in water used, and in waste produced. For Soldiers it can mean lives saved and more resources to train to fight. "We are already working operational energy initiatives now overseas and the way we explain that is important is that every time we bring in water and bring in fuel to the area that could have been conserved, that's one more convoy," said Maj. Gen. Al T. Aycock, to director of operations, Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, Installation Management. An Army study released in 2009 showed what many Soldiers already know -- convoys are dangerous. The report showed that in fiscal year 2007, there was one casualty for every 38 fuel convoys in Iraq. During the same time period there was one casualty for every 23 fuel convoys in Afghanistan. Also by conserving fuel, Aycock said, there's more energy for training. "By conserving the fuel in theater, by conserving the fuel at our posts, that means we have more fuel overseas to fight better and on our posts to train better," Aycock said. "If I am spending more on heating or cooling a building or maintaining a poorly constructed building that wasn't built to sustainable standards, that is money taken directly out of the training pot." Aycock spoke at the close of the Army's Net Zero Energy Installations Conference in Chicago, which ran Jan 18-20. During the conference, representatives from 18 installations briefed their progress in decreasing energy use, reducing their use of water, and eliminating waste sent to landfills. Aycock said selling Solders on Net Zero means a culture change -- making it something they understand -- a competition, for instance. "Soldiers love to compete with other Soldiers and Soldiers like to be recognized for what they do," he said. "So if we can make this a program that they can participate in and see the benefits of that would be better than just telling them to do it." Aycock made it clear that Soldiers always do what they're told, but "they do a whole lot better when they're having fun doing it." At the end of the three-day workshop, Katherine Hammack, the assistant secretary of the Army for installations, environment and energy, said she learned one benefit of the Army's efforts in waste reduction is to spur more programs in nearby communities. "One of the great things from the waste community that they talked about, because the Army has such a focus on minimization of waste and recycling programs, this is becoming an economic driver in some of the communities that are surrounding our bases," she said. "It's a win not only for the Army ... not only for future generations, but it's an economic win." Hammack said some communities have no waste recycling programs, and the presence of an Army installation that is doing waste recycling -- bringing in contractors to run their programs for instance -- is generating interest in the community and creating momentum in the community to do what the Army is doing. "When they move into a community, they bring in construction, they bring in jobs and they bring in an opportunity for the communities and other cities to have the resources so they can start up their recycling," she said. One challenge Hammack said she has heard from installations involved in the Net Zero pilot program is that bases believe they could do more work toward reaching their Net Zero goals if they had more money. But at the conference, she said, she learned that many bases say they are finding success without additional funding. Hammack said she heard several "wonderful presentations that it didn't take a higher construction cost to reach Net Zero, or didn't take more money for recycling programs -- because it can be self-funding." She said there was, at the conference, "a lot of discussion about doing it smart verses spending more money to achieve success." Hammack said overall, it was a "very successful conference ... with a lot of collaboration between the military and private industry." The Army's Net Zero Installation Strategy focuses on three areas: energy, water and waste. For each of those areas, the Army chose six pilot installations. Some installations were named pilots in two areas. An additional two installations, Fort Carson, Colo., and Fort Bliss, Texas, were named as "integrated" Net Zero installations. Those installations will work on reaching Net Zero goals in all three areas. The Army's Net Zero Installation Strategy is about reducing energy use, water use and waste production, to help secure the Army's mission. A Net Zero energy installation produces as much energy as it consumes, resulting in a net usage of zero. A Net Zero water installation limits its consumption of freshwater resources and returns water back to the same watershed, so as not to deplete groundwater. Finally, a Net Zero waste installation reduces, reuses, and recovers waste streams with a goal of zero landfill use. Odierno: Army seeks increased partnerships in Asia [2012-01-25] WASHINGTON -- The Army is looking for increased opportunities to partner with allies in Asia, including both Korea and Japan. Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno recently returned from a trip to the Pacific region, including Korea and Japan, as well as other parts of Pacific Command to include Hawaii and Alaska. Odierno spoke Jan. 25 at a breakfast hosted by the Association of the United States Army's Institute of Land Warfare in Arlington, Va. In Japan, the general met with the Japanese minister of defense and the Japanese Ground Self Defense Force commander. "Both expressed their optimism and were excited about increased opportunities to work together with the Army, which they see as critical to the future of the Asian region," Odierno said. While in Korea, he met with the country's minister of defense and army chief of staff. "Both leaders were extremely appreciative of our Army's continued commitment and dedication to security in Northeast Asia," Odierno said. Odierno expects development of a trilateral relationship between South Korea, Japan and the United States for security cooperation, something he said "is an important step as we continue to expand our relationships in Northeast Asia." The general said the trip to Asia was productive, adding that it's "clear that our partners and allies in Asia/Pacific desire increased engagement with our great Army -- especially as we continue to maneuver our way through these complex and uncertain times we have," Odierno explained. The general said he has three "principal and interconnected" goals for the Army: prevent, shape and win. He explained that the Army can prevent conflict by maintaining the Army's own credibility, adding that the service's capacity, readiness and modernization can "avert miscalculation by potential adversaries." He also said the Army must not lose the ability to conduct missions across any operational environment, including regular and irregular warfare, civilian operations, counter insurgency and humanitarian assistance. The Army can also shape the international environment "with strong military relationships with allies and by building partner capacity," he added. Such relationships, Odierno said, are already strong in Asia, and will continue to grow. "We will strengthen our presence in the region," he said. "We have five of our seven mutual defense treaties in this region and we continue to conduct longstanding exercises with Korea, Japan, Thailand and the Philippines. The Army will actively seek new opportunities for expanding and existing training and engaging with new partners." In Europe, Africa and South America, Odierno expects similar partnerships. Even with a reduced footprint in Europe, for instance, the Army maintains its commitment there to NATO allies, Odierno said, and will have increased training opportunities with its European partners. The Army must also be "ready to win," dominantly and decisively. "The cost of indecision and cost of entering the fight without a dominant capability, enabled by superior technology and unmatched leadership, is the unnecessary loss of American lives," Odierno said. "We must and will retain an Army with the capacity and capability to win decisively on any battlefield, should the terms fail." Odierno touched on the recently released National Defense Authorization Act, which he said reflects Army modernization priorities, and includes the Army network, an infantry fighting vehicle that can accommodate an entire infantry squad, and the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. With force reductions looming, Odierno said the Army will reduce "incrementally" over time, and he expects a "great deal" of force reductions can happen through natural attrition -- and that the Army "will reduce in a manner that preserves our readiness while avoiding any type of hollow force." Odierno: Force reductions will be responsible, controlled [2012-01-27] WASHINGTON -- The Army will draw down in size by as many as 80,000 Soldiers over the next six years. That reduction includes the elimination of at least eight brigade combat teams. The Army expects an active force end strength reduction from 570,000 to 490,000, said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno, during a press briefing, Jan. 27, at the Pentagon. The general said the time is "strategically right" to reduce the Army's force structure, but stressed that it would be done the right way. "Even given a fiscally constrained environment our Army will accomplish our reductions in a responsible and controlled manner," Odierno said. "Secretary McHugh and I are committed to ensuring we walk down this hill at the ready, rather than running our nation's Army off a cliff." Odierno said the Army would execute force reduction measures by following a "drawdown ramp that allows us to take care of Soldiers and families, while maintaining a ready and capable force to meet any requirements, including our current operations in Afghanistan." Most of that force reduction, Odierno said, would come from attrition. Part of the force restructuring will come from a reduction of two heavy brigade combat teams out of Europe that will take place in 2013 and 2014. Odierno said the Army will continue to provide forces on a rotational basis to Europe for training and readiness exercises with NATO and other partners. While the total force end strength would be 490,000 Soldiers within six years, the Army will see an increase in special operations forces, Odierno said. He said the Army will increase those forces to 35,000. "I want to reemphasize the incredible missions and roles that they play and what they've been doing over the last 10 years in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world," Odierno said. Odierno said the Army's future also calls for a strengthening of security relationships and partnerships in Asia, as well stabilization of growth in personnel costs. "The cost of military personnel has grown at a substantial, unsustainable rate over the last decades," Odierno said. "We will not reduce pay, but reductions must occur on the rate of growth in military compensation and other personnel costs and related benefits." Even with fewer Soldiers and a streamlined force structure, Odierno said the Army would continue to meet commitments in Afghanistan and around the world. "The Army will continue to play a large role in the missions identified in the strategic guidance," he said. That includes counter terrorism, irregular warfare, the deterrence and defeat of aggression, the projection of power, defense of the homeland, support to civil authorities and stability and counterinsurgency operations. Reserve Soldiers 'more relevant' than ever [2012-01-31] WASHINGTON -- Amidst concerns of budget and troop reductions, Reserve Soldiers remain a critical component of America's defense, said the chief of the Army Reserve. During his visits around the force, Lt. Gen. Jack C. Stultz, chief, Army Reserve said the No. 1 question he's asked by Soldiers is "what's going on" with regards to budget and force cuts. Those Soldiers, Stultz said, are concerned about the future of their jobs and their relevance in America's defense. "My answer to the Soldiers is, 'You are going to become even more relevant than you've ever been to our national security strategy,'" Stultz said, Jan. 31, at a meeting of the Reserve Officer Association in Washington, D.C. The active duty Army will draw down from 570,000 Soldiers to 490,000 Soldiers over the next six years. The growth to 570,000 Soldiers was a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. During that time, Stultz said, the Army relied heavily on the Reserve to fulfill important combat support and combat service support missions. The Reserve, he added, is where the bulk of combat support, or CS, and combat service support, known as CSS, Soldiers reside. "To the point where today, if you're in the transportation community in the Guard and Reserve, you represent about 80-85 percent of the Army's capability," Stultz said, adding that for engineers, that number is about 75 percent. The Reserve components also represent about 70 percent of the Army's medical capacity, about 85 percent of its civil affairs capacity, about 66 percent of the Army's logistics capacity and about 70 percent of its military police. The Army will continue to lean heavily on the Reserve components for these services after it draws down its own Soldiers. "Our nation and our military are going to be dependent on access to the Reserve components," Stultz said. And the nation expects the Reserve to be ready. OPERATIONAL RESERVE Stultz said the Reserve will be an "operational reserve," a term he said has been in use now for a number of years. Being an operational reserve involves capability, modularity and employer support. An operational Reserve, he said starts with capability. That means a force with capabilities that can be maintained, that is ready on short notice without the need for a lot of additional training, and that is accessible. "That, to me, is the start of a definition of an operational Reserve," Stultz said. An operational Reserve is a force made of Soldiers who are also civilians. Those Soldiers must be able to maintain their military skill set even when they are not in uniform -- so when they are called upon, they are ready. To make that happen, Stultz said, the Reserve must focus on being a force that provides skill sets that are shared among both the military and the civilian communities. The Reserve component is able to maintain a ready cadre of Soldiers in the medical field because many of those Soldiers are working related jobs in the private sector. There, Stultz said, they are getting great training -- sometimes even better than what's available in the military. The same is true for engineers and other "hard skills" like electricians, carpenters and plumbers. "To me, an operational Reserve is where you can have those capabilities," he said. Stultz also said the future of the operational Reserve is going to involve modularity. "The role of an operational Reserve in the future is going to be plug and play," Stultz said. "Where do we need these capabilities, and can you scale them either up or down to fit what we need?" Stultz said a modular operational reserve could provide the capability needed, in the right amount. "If I need some engineer capability, but I don't need a whole battalion, can you give it to me?" he asked. Soldiers in the Reserve components need jobs, and they need employers that understand their service commitment. At the same time, the civilian employers of those Soldiers need some stability from their employees. "If we don't have the employers and we don't have the families, we won't have the Soldiers," Stultz said. "We have to make the employers part of this equation." The Army Reserve championed the Employer Partnership of the Armed Forces program, before it was transitioned to the Department of Defense. That program now involves more than 25,000 civilian employers. The partnership provides good job opportunities to Soldiers, and quality employees to civilian employers -- employees, Stultz said, with background screenings who are drug free, healthy, and who possess a set of skills that are applicable in the civilian world "There's a value of having a Soldier as an employee," Stultz said. "If we are going to have this operational Reserve, we are going to have to have some confidence we can get to them when we need them, and have the employers say, 'We support you.'" WHAT SOLDIERS WANT Soldiers have asked for three things from the Reserve, Stultz said. They want predictability -- and their civilian employers do too, they want the Reserve to put them and their skills to good use and above all, they don't want their time wasted. Stultz said the Reserve recognizes that Soldiers have been to Iraq and Afghanistan -- they've trained hard for that, and they've got combat experience under their belts. Now, he said, they want to maintain that experience and skill -- they don't' want their time wasted with what they consider irrelevant training. "Don't expect me to show up at a drill hall and sit in a classroom and listen to some PowerPoint presentation -- that's not relevant," he said, relaying sentiments he's heard from Soldiers. "Make the training worthwhile." To that end, Stultz said, the Reserve is investing in simulator training, including those for weapons systems and vehicle simulators. "That is what we want that Soldier to experience when he comes to that drill -- something realistic." Trained Reserve Soldiers want to put their skills to use, Stultz said. And the Reserve knows how to do that. "That's were that predictability, that five-year model comes into play," he said. Four years at home for a Reserve Soldier means predictability for him, his family and his employer -- after that, they want the opportunity to put their training to use doing something meaningful for the Reserve. "If you look at what's a huge demand now, it is a lot of stability, theater-engaged, security-cooperation types of work that we've been doing," he said. Included in those kinds of engagements are medical readiness exercises abroad in countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, Columbia and Haiti. In the past, units might have deployed to such missions for a month. Now, Stultz said, he could let units go for three months or more. The Reserve could provide hospital units to the Southern Command, for instance, allowing expansion of engagement opportunities. Engineer units, he added, could be deployed a company at a time, for 90 days each and overlapping -- "Let them build a school all through the year." SOLDIER FOR LIFE Stultz said he told the Army's chief of staff if he could change one thing about the Army, he'd like to create an Army culture that supported the notion of "a Soldier for life." Such a culture, he said, would provide Soldiers with the opportunity to move more easily, in either direction, between the Reserve and active components. "We have to be able to provide this continuum where you can move back and forth, as you or the Army desires," he said. Even Soldiers in the Individual Ready Reserve would be assigned to a particular unit for both muster and support. The effort gives Soldiers the ability to move back to military life if they want. A "Soldier for life" culture, he said, provides Soldiers a way to continue to serve their country full time, or part time -- explaining that some Soldiers might want to serve part time, but simply don't' know how to make it happen. For the Army, he said, it helps to prevent the loss of years of training and skill. "If we're going to come down from 570,000 to 490,000 on the active side, think of the investment that is going to walk out the door if we don't have the right transition program in place," he said. The Reserve is working closely with the Army to minimize that loss of investment, Stultz said. He also stressed the importance of informing Soldiers of their options as they prepare to leave the active component. Additionally, the important relationships the Reserve has built with civilian employers makes it easier for Soldiers to find jobs as they prepare to move out of the active Army -- and that makes it easier to choose to stay in the Army as a member of the Reserve. "For every one of those that transitions into the reserve, that's one less recruit to pay a bonus to, that's one less triaging seat at Fort Jackson (S.C.) or Fort Benning (Ga.) -- because we've already invested in that Soldier," Stultz said. Army reduced 'energy intensity' by 4 percent last year [2012-02-02] WASHINGTON -- The Army's overall "energy intensity" went down last year, said the Army's lead on energy-use reduction. "Just last year, overall, the Army's energy use per square foot decreased by a little more than four percent," said Katherine Hammack, assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment, adding the Army is on track with its overall energy reduction goals. Hammack explained that energy use per square foot, or energy intensity, measures how much energy is used in a facility over the square footage of the facility. That same number can be taken for a whole installation, or the entire Army. At Fort Carson, Colo., for instance, energy intensity has been reduced by 13.4 percent since 2003. Fort Carson is one of the installations involved in the Army's Net Zero Installation Strategy, which focuses on reducing energy and water use, as well as waste production. For each of those areas, the Army chose six pilot installations. Some installations were named pilots in two areas. Two installations, including Fort Carson, and Fort Bliss, Texas, were named as "integrated" Net Zero installations. Those two installations will work on reduction goals in all three areas. All the Net Zero pilot installations are working toward reaching their Net Zero goals by 2020. Reducing energy use and water use is about energy and water security -- a critical component of operational mission success, Hammack said. "If we do not have energy or water, when and where we need it, it could lead to mission failure," said Hammack, speaking from Colorado. "So, working with clean energy, and reducing the amount of energy that we use, is critically important." As a pilot in the Net Zero initiative, Fort Carson is having great success, Hammack said. Fort Carson, she said, is "an example of how to do it right." Carson is finding success in energy-use reduction with the construction of energy-efficient buildings and investments in solar energy. The installation now has a solar array atop a landfill, as well as ground-based solar arrays and solar atop carports. "We are on track and very proud of the solar we have," said Col. Robert F. McLaughlin, the Fort Carson garrison commander. The colonel also said the installation is working on biomass energy production and is also exploring wind energy production. "The most important thing here is we are completely engaged with the community in doing those things," he said. "As we lead for the Army, under Miss Hammack's leadership, we bring the community along with us." The installation has also made "significant strides" in water-use reduction, Hammack said. Water use there has declined by 47 percent since 2002. In the western United States, Hammack said, where there are drought conditions in many states, "it is prudent and responsible of the Army to lead the way in reducing our water consumption." Fort Carson is a growing installation, and is preparing now for a new combat aviation brigade to be stationed there. The 13th Combat Aviation Brigade will arrive in 2013. The arrival of the new CAB means new equipment and thousands of new Soldiers and family members at the installation. As Carson grows, Hammack said, new facilities to support that CAB will be Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certified, known as LEED, or built with efficiency in mind, "which will ensure that the buildings that we are building out there are appropriate in their use of resources: water and energy specifically," Hammack said. The Army's Net Zero Installation Strategy is about reducing energy use, water use and waste production, to help secure the Army's mission. A Net Zero energy installation produces as much energy as it consumes, resulting in a net usage of zero energy, for instance. Installations achieve that by first reducing their energy use, and then by meeting their remaining energy needs with self-produced renewable energy. A Net Zero water installation limits its consumption of freshwater resources and returns water back to the same watershed, so as not to deplete groundwater. Finally, a Net Zero waste installation reduces, reuses, and recovers waste streams with a goal of zero landfill use. Fort Carson is only one of multiple installations involved in the Net Zero pilot program. All those installations are working to develop roadmaps, strategies and technologies that will eventually be used by all Army installations to reach the Army's goals, Hammack said. "The goal for the U.S. Army is that all of our installations reach Net Zero," Hammack said. "That is something that is a challenge, but something we believe is necessary and prudent." For the installations in the current pilot program, the target year for reaching their respective goals is 2020. In 2014, an additional 25 installations will be chosen for each of the three Net Zero areas of focus. Those installations will have a target year of 2025. The Army's overall goal is to reach Net Zero status in all three areas, for all installations, by 2050. Army-wide energy reduction efforts are already underway. One such effort is with the non-tactical vehicle fleet -- delivery and passenger vehicles, for instance. The Army has one of the largest non-tactical vehicle fleets in the government, and is working to reduce that fleet by 20 to 40 percent in the next five years, Hammack said. In fiscal year 2011, the Army reduced the fleet by 8,000 vehicles. Where non-tactical vehicles are needed, the Army buys hybrid, high-efficiency, or alternative fuel vehicles to fill its needs. With tactical fleet vehicles, Hammack said the Army's focus has been on mission completion and Soldier safety. More armor on vehicles makes Soldiers safer, but also makes vehicles heavier -- and less efficient. The Army's Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center is researching materials that will make vehicle armor lighter, and is also researching the use of alternative fuels in tactical vehicles "We are in lock step with the other services in certifying and qualifying all our existing vehicles to run on the alternative fuels and the blends so that when and if the market is ready with alternative fuels, at a cost-effective price, we could utilize them," Hammack said. Another tool the Army is using to reach its Net Zero goals includes "energy savings performance contracts." In Executive Order 13514, the president asked for an increase in the use of "performance contracting," which Hammack said means working with the private sector to make investments on Army property. The Army pays back for those investments out of savings in energy. "The Army right now is on target to meet, if not exceed those goals," she said. "And Fort Carson has stepped up and has several programs in place." In fiscal year 2011, Hammack said, the Army executed about $73 million in ESPC programs. In the first quarter of fiscal year 2012, she said, the Army executed $93 million in energy savings performance contracts. "We are on track to exceed the expectations and the goals that the president set for us," she said. New Soldiering roles for women ensure best use of talent [2012-02-12] WASHINGTON -- The Army announced Feb. 9 a broadening of opportunities for female Soldiers, something the service's chief of staff said is meant to take better advantage of all the talent in uniform. Six new military occupational specialties have now opened to female Soldiers. Additionally, other MOSs that had been open to women only at brigade level or above will now be open to female Soldiers at the battalion level. "To me, it's about talent management," said Gen. Ray Odierno, chief of staff of the Army. "It's about using our best talent in the best positions and I don't ever want to limit our ability and hinder the talent that we have in our Army." Odierno spoke Feb. 9 before an audience of lawmakers, congressional staffers and Army general officers at a House Army Caucus breakfast on Capitol Hill. While speaking to lawmakers, the general also touched on sexual assault, hazing and suicide prevention. Sexual assault, the general said, is "absolutely inconsistent with our Army values." He told lawmakers the Army is "dedicated to establishing a campaign for awareness to change in some cases culture, to understand we are Soldiers together, and we will protect each other no matter where or when it is." The general also said the Army is working on investigational capabilities for sexual assault and development of programs for prosecutors on how to deal with sexual assaults. Suicide prevention has continued to be a concern for the Army. Suicide statistics published by the Army in January, for instance, showed that in 2011, there were 140 confirmed active-duty suicides, with an additional 24 under investigation. Odierno said the Army has put a "full court press" on suicide prevention but that has made only a "marginal difference" in the suicide numbers. "We are going to continue to work this," he said. "It's about training our Soldiers, it's about awareness, it's about identification of the signs of suicide. We'll continue to work this very hard." Also important to Odierno is the relationship the Army has with its partners in the Asia-Pacific region. That part of the world, the general said, is home to seven of the 10 largest land armies in the world. There, he said, 22 of 28 chiefs of defense are army officers, and the predominant military force in each major country in Asia is the army. So in Asia, Odierno said, the U.S. Army must work to strengthen its partnerships. "We have to help to engage, build partner capacity, (and) establish military-to-military relationships as we continue to work our issues in the Asia-Pacific region," he said. In South Korea, he said, there has been some concern about the reduction of defense spending in the United States. To address that concern, Odierno said, "we reinforce with them our commitment, our treaty commitment with them. We will be there for them if necessary." Odierno said the Army is working to build a "strong trilateral" relationship between Korea, Japan and the United States. Acknowledging that Korea and Japan have had differences in the past, he said he's been encouraged by the growing relationship between the nations. "We are starting to see more discussion and more agreement between the two countries and we are there to help facilitate that," he explained. A trilateral relationship between the chiefs of staff of the three countries exists now, he said, now to continue to meet "to deal with some of the key issues that face our militaries in the region." Army rolls out 2013 budget request [2012-02-14] WASHINGTON -- Despite cutbacks, the Army's fiscal year 2013 budget request includes a pay increase of 1.7 percent for Soldiers, as well as allowance increases of 3.9 percent for housing and a 3.4 for subsistence. "The fiscal year 2013 [budget] reflects some hard and difficult choices," said Maj. Gen. Phillip E. McGhee, director, Army budget. Nevertheless, he said, "the Army will remain the best-led, best-trained, best-equipped ground force in the world." The fiscal year 2013 budget request, McGhee said, supports the all-volunteer force, and has "wise investments" in modernization programs. There are about eight program cancellations, however. Also, the budget supports operations in Afghanistan, and funds reset of equipment that came out of Iraq, and also that which is planned to come out of Afghanistan. The Army requested $184.6 billion in this year's budget -- about $18 billion less than what the Army received in fiscal year 2012. Of that, about $134.6 billion is part of the "base" request, for the generating force. An additional $50 billion is to support overseas contingency operations, such as the war in Afghanistan. In the base budget, the largest portion is aimed at military personnel, about 42 percent, or $56.4 billion dollars. An additional $47.2 billion is aimed at operations and maintenance, known as O&M, and $25.7 billion for procurement. Within the overseas contingency operations, or OCO budget, about 58 percent is targeted at operations and maintenance. Within the O&M budget request, there is a $7 billion decrease from what the Army received last year. Also in the O&M is $15.4 billion to provide trained and ready forces to win the current fight and sustain readiness. That includes $8 billion to support air and ground operations. "It also funds additional training seats and professional military education, because we have so many Soldiers that are at home station now and are available to train," McGhee said. The O&M funding also includes $1.7 billion for Soldier and family programs, including Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, sexual harassment prevention and education programs, and the Army substance abuse and suicide prevention programs. About $1.6 billion is also included for recruiting and initial military training for officers and enlisted personnel, and about $4.1 billion for training of officers, noncommissioned officers and civilians. Regarding the O&M funding for OCO, the Army planned for a reduction of 25,400 Soldiers by September 2012, and for steady state of 41,000 Soldiers in fiscal year 2013. There are "no changes in the nine brigade combat teams we are planning for in the program," McGhee said. Eight programs were terminated in this year's budget. That should help the Army recognize a savings of $5 billion in total over five years. Included among the cancelled programs are the Enhanced Medium Altitude Reconnaissance System aircraft and the base-funded Humvee recap program -- though Humvee recapitalization within the OCO will continue. Also, the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles program will be cancelled as well as the Mounted Soldier system program and the Joint Precision Approach and Landing System. Many Army programs have also been downsized. The Army asked for about $19.6 billion in procurement for fiscal year 2013. Within aircraft procurement, for instance, the service requested about $6.3 billion, which "reflects the tremendous demand on aviation assets. We remain committed to aircraft modernization," said Barbara L. Bonessa, deputy director, Army budget Included in aircraft modernization, is $1.4 billion for the Chinook, $1.2 billion for the Black Hawk, and $1.2 billion for Apache procurement, Bonessa said. And additional $518 million is requested for 19 additional unmanned Gray Eagle systems to support two more companies, for a total of 17 companies. Within the OCO budget is a $486 million request for two Apache, six Chinooks and 16 Kiowa Warriors helicopters -- all to replace aircraft lost or damaged in current operations. Within missile and ammunition procurement, the Army asked for about $2 billion to support ongoing missile programs, including the Patriot Advanced Missile Capability-3 program, which includes a funding requests for 84 missiles and 38 launchers. For tracked vehicles, the Army asked for $1.5 billion -- included in that is $379 million for the Stryker vehicle, $204 million for the Abrams tank, and $184 million for the Bradley Program modifications. The Army also asks for $8.3 billion to support the Army network, the tactical wheeled vehicle modernization, and night vision and thermal vision weapons sights. The Army is also asking for $8.9 billion for research, development testing and evaluation -- an increase over last year's appropriation. Included in that, $640 million for the ground combat vehicle. "The fiscal year 2013 budget request does begin to take into account the discretionary spending caps, but it does so without any risk to continuing to support our essential roles," said Bonessa. "We are continuing to meet our commitments in Afghanistan and around the world. We are developing the Army of the future. We are continuing to care for Soldiers and families -- that is one of the most important commitments we could possibly have, commensurate with their sacrifice and service. We are continuing to reduce our active component end strength, hopefully in a measured way, and with solid attention with how to restructure our force to be an even more capable force than it was before." Budgets, force reduction on service members' minds [2012-02-17] WASHINGTON -- The senior enlisted advisors for the four military services met on Capitol Hill today to discuss with lawmakers issues on the minds of service members. It turns out that for many, it's the same as what's on lawmaker's minds: the budget. "I was asked questions, beginning in April, all the way to September -- 'what do you mean the Army can't pay me?'," said Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III, relaying to lawmakers the words of Soldiers who had been concerned about the "continuing resolution" last year. Without an approved Defense Appropriations Act, some Soldiers mistakenly believed that they might not get paid. Budget concerns still weigh on the minds of service members, as lawmakers try to find a way to balance the federal budget. Lawmakers who were part of the "super committee" last year were looking to find $1.2 trillion in savings within the budget, and were unable to reach a compromise. Now, as much as half of that amount could automatically be cut from the DOD through "sequestration" and service members are concerned what that will mean for them. "It's a very eye-opening experience," said Chandler "I think the concerns raised in media about the impact of the election year and whether or not there will be an appropriations and authorization bill signed, is on people's minds. The last thing we want to have is for some Soldier, Sailor, Airman of Marine deployed in harm's way, being concerned about whether or not they are going to be paid. That's something we don't need these young people to be concerned about." The senior enlisted advisors gathered Feb. 16 to speak at a hearing of the House Appropriations Committee, subcommittee on military construction, veterans affairs and related agencies. Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. Michael P. Barrett said that when he had talked to Marines about the effects of a continuing resolution, some of those Marines had considered visiting "the snakes," to make ends meet -- a term Barrett said they used to refer to the "predatory loan industry" prominent outside military installations. "They are still finding a way to put 400 percent on top of a loan for you to pay it back," he said. Service members are also concerned about their retirements, with rumors of changes being considered as part of budget-trimming efforts. The senior enlisted advisors said retirement is not something that should be on the minds of a young person in uniform. "It is a distractor," said Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force James A. Roy. "We have young Airmen focused on retirement. I don't need young Airmen focused on retirement. I need young Airmen focused on upgrade training. I need young Airmen focused on mission. I don't need them to be worried on their retirement and compensation. That is the number-one thing I hear from Airmen, and from families. There is uncertainty out there and we are trying to keep focus on the mission." Across the world's oceans, America's Sailors are worried about their futures in the military as well, said Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Rick D. West. "They're talking about the retirements," West explained. "They are talking about the future of the force, with the budget cuts, with all the personnel. We've had to make some tough choices. With our folks, it's no different. The budget cuts as of late -- some folks will tell you, personnel didn't join the Navy for the retirement. Maybe they didn't initially. But once they get in and see the contributions they make to the nation, they start thinking about some of that." Service members that want to stay in uniform are also going to find it harder to do so. The Army and the Marine Corps, for instance, are cutting personnel. That means, for both services, fewer fresh faces coming in the front door, older service members possibly retiring before they expected to retire, and service members in the middle of their careers finding it tougher to meet the standards to re-enlist. "They want to know who we are going to go fight next," said Barrett. "They want to know about advancements in full-spectrum battle equipment [and] they want to know what they need to do to stay in the Corps." The Marine senior enlisted advisor told lawmakers what Marines ask him most about when he visits them. To the last question, he answers, "you'd better bring your A game every single day." Inside the larger of the two ground forces, the Army, Chandler said "the privilege to serve will become more difficult." Standards will increase, he said. And to draw down the force, the Army will use multiple tools -- including fewer new recruits, tougher retention standards, and early retirements. For those who will leave, he said, the Army will "have an orderly transition plan starting a year before they leave the service." That, the sergeant major said, will make sure both Soldiers and their families are ready, and are able to leave the Army "with dignity and respect." What a service member will do after military life is also a concern. Chandler said there are "tremendous concerns" among Soldiers leaving the service given the state of the economy and the job market. The Army and its sister services are working to make smooth the transition for service members. "That is a major focus for me personally and the rest of the Army this year is to really refine our transition assistance program with the help of VA and DOL and to put our kids in the best place we can to make sure they have a dignified transition out of the service and back into the rest of American society," Chandler said. 'Top line' Army messages featured on new display at AUSA [2012-02-22] FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- The Army is the nation's "force of decisive action," the Army is "meeting the needs of the nation" and "people are our Army." All three messages figure prominently in a new Army display shown for the first time at this year's Association of the U.S. Army symposium here. The new display features two curved walls that feature imagery to reinforce Army leadership's three "top line" messages and additionally features a "gallery of heroes" section to pay respect to the more than 400 Soldiers who have earned the Army's awards of valor during Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn. While the conference display is new, the three messages are not. They were revealed by Army senior leaders in October at the AUSA conference in Washington, D.C. PEOPLE ARE OUR ARMY People are "the essence of who America's Army is," said Lt. Col. Thomas Smedley, an Army spokesman who manned the service's booth on the display floor at the conference. "When you look back on our 237 years of history, from the Minutemen that defended at Lexington and Valley Forge, to the Doughboys, those that fought in World War II, those drafted into Vietnam, and now our all-volunteer force, it's men and women from the community," Smedley said. "Mothers and fathers send their sons and daughters into the Army, black and white, male and female. It doesn't matter your background or ethnicity. It's the citizens of America that make up our Army." MEETING THE NEEDS OF THE NATION The Army doesn't just engage in combat, it is a patron of new technology that eventually supports the entire nation, and it provides non-combat support in response to disasters that can affect all Americans. "It gets to the full-spectrum the Army provides, not just the operating Army out in the field, but the institutional or generating Army," Smedley said. "That includes the science and technology that the Army funds and supports to support its own Soldiers." The Army is working to develop new sources of power, such as solar, to provide for its missions. That technology will eventually filter out into industry. And the Army funds research and development of medical technology that also makes its way into the civilian world, to help the American citizens that pay for the Army. The Army is working with the NFL on concussion prevention, for instance, Smedley said. And Army research into tourniquets and the stopping of bleeding have made their way into the backs of ambulances to help EMTs help Americans. "That kind of research isn't just for the Army or DOD. It belongs to the American people," Smedley said. "We are giving that innovation back to America, back to industry, back to citizens to use on a daily basis." The Army also meets the needs of the nation at home with its response to disasters such as wild fires and floods, for instance. America's Army is there "to be that force in the community to help them out. We meet their needs in crisis as well." OUR NATION'S FORCE OF DECISIVE ACTION "When you commit Soldiers, America's sons and daughters to a mission, not just combat, that's decisive," Smedley said. "You now have the American flag and the American Soldier involved. That's in ground combat against a tenacious enemy, that's in places like Japan and Pakistan, whether it's the earthquake or the floods." Wherever America's Soldiers go, Smedley said, the Army brings "the right expertise, the right leadership, the right capabilities, the right tooth and footprint to the mission." Committing America's Soldiers to a mission is a decisive commitment, because it's a guarantee the mission will get done and will get done right. The Association of the United States Army's Institute of Land Warfare winter symposium and exposition runs Feb. 22-24 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Budget will play prominent role in AUSA discussions [2012-02-22] FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Budget cuts for the Department of Defense and the Army will likely play a prominent role in discussions, panels and presentations at this year's Association of the United States Army's winter event here, leaders indicated. The opening speaker for the event was Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody, commander of Army Materiel Command. "This year is even more important, because this is such a critical time for our Army," she said. In 37 years of service, she said she's never seen a time when as much change has come as quickly, including the drawdowns and the change in military budgets. When 2011 came to a close, she said, there was uncertainty about the budget and the way ahead for both Army and the Department of Defense. An "inconvenient truth," she said, is the budget reduction that comes following a conflict. "We all knew we were going to face the same historic budget reductions we've seen at the end of every conflict," Dunwoody said. "We've all seen the second and third-order effects of not getting it right," she said. "Task Force Smith before Korea and the hollow Army after Vietnam, we can't let that happen again." Citing Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, she said dealing with budget issues facing both the DOD and the Army will mean "getting after the ends, ways and means." "We all know and expected our means would go down. But our ends really haven't changed," she said. "We will still be counted on to respond to full-spectrum operations and win. A dip in the budget is not going to give anyone a pass on what our nation expects us to do. So when the means don't meet your ends, you have one choice left, and that's to get after the ways." She said the Army must fundamentally change the way it does business: "we must find ways to adapt. And institutional adaptation is not just a budget drill." In the past two and a half months, Dunwoody said, there have been answers to questions about both budget and the way ahead for the Department of Defense and the Army. Included in that is a new DOD strategy, followed three weeks later by the secretary of Defense's budget priorities. Dunwoody said it was notable the two documents came in that order. "How many times have we seen the budget released before the strategy," she asked. Later, she said, Dempsey released the strategic direction to the joint force. "It talks about the need to balance ends, ways and means," Dunwoody said. "It speaks to the logic behind the tough choices we're making." Last Friday, the new Army posture statement for 2012 was released. "One of the things it highlights is the absolute requirement for institutional adaptation, including logistics and acquisition," Dunwoody said. And Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno recently released his "marching orders" to the Army. All those important documents, Dunwoody said, share some reoccurring themes, including "the need to be bold, adaptive and innovative." At the AUSA winter symposium and exposition, Army leaders will discuss how the service will demonstrate boldness, adaptiveness and innovation. Heidi Shyu, the principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, will discuss how the Army will provide Soldiers with the decisive advantage that comes from versatile and affordable equipment. Lt. Gen. Dennis L. Via, the deputy commanding general of AMC, will discuss retrograde and reset. Lt. Gen. Keith C. Walker, deputy commanding general for Army futures, and the director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, will chair a panel on Army investment strategies. And Lt. Gen. Raymond V. Mason, deputy chief of staff, G-4, will chair a panel on operational energy. The Association of the United States Army's Institute of Land Warfare winter symposium and exposition runs Feb. 22-24 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. 'Kevlar underpants' protect pelvic region [2012-02-22] WASHINGTON -- For dismounted Soldiers patrolling Afghanistan roads, improvised explosive devices can be even more devastating than for those in armored vehicles, but a new line of protection may help. "A few years ago, in certain areas of Afghanistan, we started to notice the dismounted improvised explosive device (known as IED) threat becoming more prevalent," said Lt. Col. Frank J. Lozano, PEO Soldier protective equipment. "There were a lot of significant injuries, and very traumatic injuries occurring to Soldiers in the lower extremity area. A lot of Soldiers losing their lower leg below the knee. A lot of above-the-knee amputations, and a lot of high hip amputations." Soldiers who stepped on an IED might suffer injuries that required amputations which didn't leave enough of a limb for a prosthetic leg, for instance. But those Soldiers were also suffering extensive damage to the perineum region, the part of the body that includes the anus and reproductive organs. "It's very traumatic, very heartbreaking, when Soldiers go through those types of events, and they are very young, and then they come home and they are not able to have children," said Lozano. "It's one of the harsh realities of this type of warfare when you have dismounted IEDs." The Army wanted to do something to offer protection to Soldiers. Taking a cue from British forces that had already found a material solution to the problem, the Army developed the Pelvic Protection System. The system includes two layers of protection for Soldiers, including the Tier I protective under-garment, called the "PUG," and the Tier II protective outer-garment, called the "POG." "We wanted first to be able to protect the genital region so that Soldiers going through those traumatic events would still be able to do things like have a family when they get home," Lozano said. Both components of the system are worn like shorts. The PUG is worn under a Soldier's ACU pants. It can be worn in place of underwear, or over the top of a Soldier's underwear. Some Soldiers have called them "Kevlar boxers" or "combat underpants" and it's not far from the truth. "It's kind of like a bicycle shorts garment," Lozano said. "It's designed to be worn under the pants, close to the skin. You can wear it like you'd wear a normal piece of underwear." The PUG has a breathable, moisture-wicking material on the outer thighs. Along the inner thighs is knitted Kevlar to protect the fleshy inner parts of the thighs and the femoral artery. Over the groin, more knitted or woven Kevlar. "It's not really very complicated," Lozano said. The colonel said that as a result of an IED blast, sand, dirt, and "manure that's been in the ground for decades" is pulverized and can wind up embedded in a Soldier's flesh. "It can take 20 or 25 surgeries to go through and pick all that out," he said. "If you don't get it all, then that causes infections and it can lead to further amputations," Lozano said. The PUG is part of a system to prevent that from happening in the first place. The fabric used in the garment has also been tested to ensure that it won't melt or drip when exposed to high heat. "Since it's so close to the skin, we don't want to exacerbate any type of heat damage a Soldier might get in an IED blast," Lozano explained. The outer garment, the POG, provides even more protection for Soldiers, and performs similar to the soft portions of the improved outer tactical vest. It "protects along a greater range of fragments," Lozano said. While Soldiers can wear the undergarment on its own, Lozano said if Soldiers are going to wear the outer garment they should wear it in conjunction with the undergarment. "Because the Tier II has more ballistic protection, it is a little more rigid," he said. "If you wear the Tier I under the Tier II, it prevents chafing. It also provides the maximum amount of coverage together with the maximum amount of protection, without restricting your movement." Wear test and user evaluations have ensured that the tiered pelvic protection system is comfortable for Soldiers to wear," said Lozano said. "You might go through testing and think you've got a great design, but then you put it on a Soldier and tell him to road march for 20 miles and shoot and go through an obstacle course and find out, it's a terrible design." He said that even if the protection is great, if it's not comfortable, Soldiers might not want to wear it. Soldiers in theater who have worn the gear have reported back on their experience and have helped inform changes to the pelvic protection system, Lozano said. Early on, he said, there were reports of chafing and "poor thermal management," for instance. "We've worked with the Soldiers in theater to redesign the system; we've gone through a couple of design iterations," Lozano said. "It's taken a good six to nine months. We're getting now to an optimized system where Soldiers are seeing their feedback codified in a material solution and it's more comfortable and breathable and Soldiers are more willing and apt to wear it." The Army first put the pelvic protection system into theater in June 2011. Now, the system has been fielded to some 15,000 Soldiers. The typical issue includes three PUGs and one POG. Fielding is happening now for Soldiers in theater and for Soldiers stateside. Regional unit alignments could match brigades with combatant commanders [2012-02-24] FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- The Army's chief of staff has already said the Army will attempt to provide better support to combatant commanders -- the Department of Defense-level commands responsible for U.S. military interests across large swaths of the globe. Now, the Army may assign units, within the Army force generation model's reset, train and available phases, to specific combatant commanders, said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno, Feb. 24, during the Association of the U.S. Army's Institute of Land Warfare Winter Symposium and Exposition. "We will adjust the process where active-duty and reserve-component units advance through a reset phase, a training phase and an available phase and prioritize their training and planning in support of a specific combatant command and mission sets," Odierno said. The general said the strength of that concept is that it gives combatant commanders the ability to reach out to units and to include them in planning and "to include them in what they are trying to do in order to shape their region." The process would also allow associated brigades to become familiar with particular regions, he said. More brigades will understand what's going on in the Pacific, for instance, or there could be brigades associated with the Middle East, and brigades doing exercises with NATO partners. "It's the ability for us to project our capabilities across all the combatant commands," Odierno said. "It'll be for the development of our leaders, it'll be good for establishing strong relationships." FEWER BRIGADES By the end of fiscal year 2017, the active-duty Army will decrease its end strength from 570,000 to 490,000. The Army National Guard will reduce from 358,000 to 353,000, and the Army Reserve has reduced to 205,000. Decreased end strength will result in at least eight fewer active-duty brigade combat teams, known as BCTs, Odierno said, and the Army will go from 45 BCTs to 37. The first two reductions will happen in Europe. There, the 170th BCT will inactivate in fiscal year 2013, and the 172nd BCT will inactivate in fiscal year 2014. Remaining decisions on who will deactivate have not yet been made, he said. The general asked the Army's Training and Doctrine Command to lead an analysis of BCT design. "Modularity has served our Army very well, and we will not walk away from it," the general said. But "we now have the time and opportunity to study and recommend changes to our BCT organization." Early feedback from that analysis indicates "that significant flexibility and capability would be gained by adding a third maneuver battalion and more engineers to our brigade combat teams." If a decision is made to do that, he said, it could cause the Army to reduce further the number of brigade combat teams, from what is planned at 37 to possibly 32 or 33. "Such a reduction represents an investment in the overall number of battalions in combat formations, while reducing overhead with brigade-level headquarters," he said. While no decisions have been made, they are "foreseeable possibilities." TWO FRONTS Even with troop cuts and brigade combat team cuts, Odierno said he believes the Army can still be an effective fighting force. "From a combat perspective, I believe with 490,000 [Soldiers], and 32 brigades or 37 brigades, with 20 brigades of aviation and with the amount of engineers we have, I do believe we could fight two simultaneous wars," Odierno said. "My concern is if they become [extended], that would be a problem. We can fight two Desert Storms if we have to. What we can't fight right now is two Iraq's that go on for eight years." To handle a counter-insurgency like in Iraq, Odierno said, the Army will need to get more nations involved. "It can't be just the U.S." WARRIORS AND FAMILIES As the Army moves forward, budgets shrink and end strength is reduced, Odierno said one thing that won't change is the Army's commitment to Soldiers and families. For wounded warriors, the general said, the Army remains committed to keeping its promise. "The wounded warrior program will continue to exist," Odierno said. "We are not going to forget our wounded warriors; we are not going to forget our families. We have invested a lot of money here to ensure they understand that if you are part of this Army and you are injured in any way, we are going to take care of you." Over the next five to 10 years, the general said, he expects a rise in post-traumatic stress, and said infrastructure associated with wounded warriors needs to be in place. The general also said the Army's new vice chief, Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, would continue to champion the Army's efforts to treat post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries in the same way his predecessor, Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli had done. Army family programs will also continue, Odierno said. This year, family programs have not been reduced in the budget request, but have gone up. The Army is asking for $1.2 billion this year for family programs. But the general did say the Army must "clean up" those programs to reduce redundancy and inefficiency. "The main problem we have is making sure people aren't confused about what's available for them," he said. There are so many programs he said, some don't know how to get access to them. Industry ready now for Joint Light Tactical Vehicle [2012-02-28] WASHINGTON -- Industry bidders will respond March 13 to the most recent government request for solutions to modernize the light tactical vehicle fleet -- and they don't need any more time than that to do so, because they are prepared now. "Industry, they don't need another two years to design this vehicle," said Col. David G. Bassett, the project manager for Army tactical vehicles. "They are ready now to respond with mature designs to our solicitation." Bassett, along with Kevin M. Fahey, the Army's program executive officer for combat support and combat service support, spoke Feb. 23 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., during a media opportunity at the Association of the U.S. Army's Institute of Land Warfare's Winter Symposium and Exposition Feb. 23. "I have not seen substantial pressure to slow this program down," Bassett said. "The feedback we have got from industry confirmed we have folks prepared to bid mature designs now." Fahey agreed. He said that industry is ready to present their options for the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, or JLTV, and that the Army and Marine Corps program is structured as-is with current budget considerations in mind. "One of the number one things is keep it focused, and from an Army and Marine Corps perspective, the program now as structured and the schedule we [are] on is also consistent with our fiscal constraints on how we are going to fund the capability we need over time." The Army released the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle engineering and manufacturing development phase request for proposal, known as an RFP, Jan. 26. Industry has until March 13 to respond. Bassett said in the JLTV technology development phase, the program received criticism because it was changing requirements and the schedule was slipping, but he said the TD phase "did exactly what it was intended to do, which is it gave us an opportunity to learn about our requirements, and learn the relationships between those requirements and costs." It also allowed the Army to focus on the capability gaps that had to be satisfied by the JLTV -- protected mobility and restoring capability that was lost by having added armor to the Humvee. "We came out of that with an industrial base that had learned a lot and had benefited from a round of competitive prototyping," he said. Having built prototypes, he said, industry learned key capabilities of the vehicle and also learned of the challenges of developing the JLTV. "They came out a whole lot better prepared to make the adjustments and requirements necessary to end up with the program that we have an RFP out on the street for today." HUMVEE WAY AHEAD The latest budget proposal has not provided funding for the "Modernized Expanded Capability Vehicle" program, or MECV program. The MECV program was to modernize the Humvee. Fahey said, however, that the Humvee is still suitable to do its mission -- many of those missions inside the United States. There will be a "sustainment program for the HUMVEE fleet for the foreseeable future," he said, that includes less a of a focus on survivability of the Humvee fleet, and more on cost effectiveness and fuel efficiency. "We're going to be sustaining that fleet for quite a while, there will be times in its life it has to go back to the depots for some kind of reset." Fort Lauderdale high schoolers demo robot at AUSA expo [2012-02-28] FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- More than a dozen teens, part of robotics team "Shark Attack," demonstrated their engineering talent outside the convention center here alongside military hardware from the likes of defense contractors Boeing, Oshkosh and Sikorsky. The teens, from Westminster Academy in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., demonstrated the robot they built to Marilyn Freeman, the deputy assistant secretary of the Army for research and technology, during the Association of the U.S. Army's Institute of Land Warfare Winter Symposium and Exposition, Feb. 22-24. "When you look at these students, their faces, and you see their excitement about something they have accomplished using the knowledge they have gained in the classroom in science, technology, engineering, physics and mathematics, and they are putting it to an application, building a robot that can do things they never thought about doing before, it's really exciting," Freeman said. "I see eagerness in learning. I see eagerness in working together, which is an essential piece of success in the world." The high school robotics team competes yearly in the "FIRST Robotics Competition," an international competition for high school teams. At the AUSA conference this year they demonstrated their robot from last year's competition, as this year's robot is now getting ready to compete in the upcoming round of competition. As part of their demonstration, the robot picked up large inflatable loops, similar to swimming pool toys, lifted them high in the air, and placed them on their instructor's outstretched arms. The challenge last year for this robot was to do something similar. This year, their robot was designed to do something completely different than what the one did last year, said the team's faculty instructor. "We have a new robot that plays basketball," said Kent Stolley, Westminster Academy's science and physics instructor. The competition this year, called "Rebound Rumble," meant robotics team Shark Attack had to develop a robot that could put as many basketballs as possible into hoops to score points. "We've been working day and night for six weeks to build the current year's robot," Stolley said. The team finished just this week. Amongst the 36 members of the Shark Attack robotics team are students that Stolley said are skilled across a variety of technical areas. "We've got about three of four kids that when they handle tools, it's artistry," he said. "Each of these kids is here because they have some amazing talent, and they've used it for our team." One of those kids is the team captain, Andrew Danielsen. Stolley said Danielsen excels in computer programming, which the team used, in part, to tell the robot how to complete this year's challenge. But Danielsen said as team captain, his role is more than just programming. "It involves sort of generally organizing all the student aspects of the team," he said. "I work with all the different subsystems while designing, building, and programming all the different parts that entail building the robot." Not all the team members are involved in technical ways, Danielsen said, though he expects about half of his teammates will eventually end up in some technical field later in life. There are those involved in media and event scouting, he said. But more than the programming that he excels at, he said, it's the leadership experience he's learning. Freeman spoke with the high scholars about their project and about science, technology, engineering and mathematics education. She also gave each of the students her military coin. She also commented on the diversity of the team, all age groups and both males and females. "It's a great tribute to our youth to find kids like this who exist around the country, that they really are able to do and apply themselves," she said. "These kids give me great hope for the future." She also said that she imparted on the students the importance of education, and said that "parents, adults and national leaders need to encourage education. We need to show our students how much we value education and what it does for you. When you get an education, nobody can take that away from you." Freeman became the deputy assistant secretary of the Army for research and technology in July. She is responsible for the entirety of the Army's research and technology program, which spans 16 laboratories and research, development and engineering centers, with more than 12,000 scientists and engineers. She previously served as the director of the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center. Assistant Secretary reflects on Women's History Month [2012-02-29] WASHINGTON -- March is Women's History Month and an assistant secretary of the Army said the observance is a recognition of the value that women have had in society all along. "There have been periods in our history where women have not been as in front of the decisions -- but behind the scenes women have had a tremendous role," said Katherine Hammack, the assistant secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment. "It's always interesting to me to walk into the halls of the Pentagon and see the Women's Army Corps and see the contributions that they made in previous wars. Women have made contributions all throughout history." This year, the theme for Women's History Month is "Women's Education -- Women's Empowerment." An engineer by trade, Hammack said early on in her career, she was one of only a few women in her profession. "When I went through engineering school I was one of three women in the engineering department," Hammack said. "It was interesting to be a minority in that situation. But after a while, people forget whether you're a man or a woman, and you're just a fellow student getting an education." Hammack said opportunities for women in the private sector and the Army have increased from when she started out. A woman today, she said, is limited primarily by her own aspirations. "There are way more opportunities available to women today than there were in the past," she said. "I think if you have an education that's going to serve you well, I think women are capable of almost any role now. I think in the past -- a paradigm, it was my mother's generation, where women were nurses or teachers, if you had a job. Nowadays, a woman can be anything that she has interest in being. I don't think there are any limitations to what anyone can do." Hammack, who said she has no background with the military prior to being appointed in her current position, said she was surprised at how women in the Army are accepted in the positions they are in, and in the leadership positions they hold. "I think the role has changed in that now [women] are seen as just as fellow members of the Army doing our jobs," she said. "I don't think if you're a man or woman it is looked on quite as closely as it may once have been. I think that's what surprised me most about becoming part of the Army family is how many women are in the Army doing phenomenal jobs." From Gen. Ann Dunwoody, the first female Army four-star general, all the way down to Army privates, Hammack said she is impressed with the leadership capabilities she has seen in women in the Army, and in the work women are doing. "I've seen women at every echelon doing phenomenal jobs," she said. "In theater I rode with women in the MRAP (mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle). And so women can do just about any job that's put forward to them. So I think the role of women in society and the Army has changed over the last decades." That women and men are integrated as they are in the Army, and that leadership positions and job opportunities are open nearly equal to both genders is a benefit to the Army, Hammack said. She said that studies have shown that the "IQ of diverse teams" was better than the IQ of homogeneous teams when it came to decision making. "When we talk about diversity, we can talk about women mixed with men, we can talk about different cultures, different experiences, different age groups," she said. "But when you have a diverse team, you are going to have a better resulting decision. I think it's very important that we all think about diversity when we're building teams and making decisions." The formula for success is the same for women as it is for men, Hammack said: hard work and education. "You have to work hard, you have to take on responsibility, and you have to complete tasks," she said. "I've seen those people who don't get ahead, or those people who say 'it's not my job,' or those people who aren't willing to complete a task and who get it halfway done and pass it off to someone else. So I think for anyone to get ahead and succeed, you have to be able to take on that responsibility or maybe see where there is a need and work to fill that need." Equally, if not more important to success, Hammack said, is a life-long commitment to learning. "I think life is a continuous learning process," she said. "When you go and get a degree, no matter what degree it is, you are learning from the teachers, from the text books, and also from the other people in the class. I think everybody owes it to themselves to get an education and continue a lifelong habit of learning." Among the myriad obligations for both leaders and aspiring leaders come two additional challenges to which Hammack said they should endeavor: writing and volunteerism. "I think it's a responsibility of all leaders to volunteer and to publish and communicate," Hammack said. Younger women and men "can volunteer within your own organization, you can volunteer in your community, you can volunteer in your church," Hammack said. "When you volunteer you meet different people. You get outside your comfort zone. You get outside the roles and responsibilities you have on a daily basis. And you contribute back to community, society and other organizations." Hammack also said that aspiring leaders should write more, and learn to be more effective writers so they may better communicate their ideas. "Writing about what you are doing, or experiencing or what you are learning is a tool that helps you gather your thoughts and become a better writer," she said. "But it's also a means of communicating to the rest of your team or your industry or the nation." In her position as assistant secretary, Hammack is responsible for policy and oversight of sustainability and environmental initiatives; resource management, including design, military construction, operations and maintenance; base realignment and closure; privatization of Army family housing, lodging, real estate, utilities; and the Army's installations safety and occupational health programs. Army to field more 'double-V hull' Strykers [2012-03-02] WASHINGTON -- The Army expects final delivery of additional Stryker double-V hull vehicles, the Stryker DVH, by year's end and expects to then have a total of about 760. The vehicle has been effective in theater, Army acquisition officials said at a media roundtable Friday. "To hear from the field, back from Soldiers and commanders about the value of the double-V hull, it is truly remarkable," said Lt. Gen. Bill Phillips, principal military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology. To date, Phillips said, there have been about 40 incidents where the double-V hull has encountered an improvised explosive device, known as an IED, and with the exception of two incidents, all of the Soldiers walked away with just minor injuries. "That vehicle has performed beyond our expectations in countering IEDs," Phillips said. "And we will continue to field them." The Army already has about 300 of the Stryker DVH vehicles in theater. The additional vehicles will allow the Army to build two brigades with the Stryker DVH. Still in theater are Strykers without the special hull design, or "flat bottom" vehicles. Included among those are the nuclear, biological, chemical, reconnaissance vehicle, or Stryker NBC RV version, and the mobile gun system version, or Stryker MGS. Maj. Gen. Tony A. Cucolo III, director, force development, Army G-8, said that across a range of threats, the Stryker flat-bottom could be applied in some areas. He also said that there is a "very capable" underbody kit for the flat-bottom Stryker to provide extra protection. PELVIC PROTECTION Another success in theater, Phillips said, includes the Tier I and Tier II Pelvic Protection System. The Army wanted to do something to offer protection to Soldiers. Taking a cue from British forces that had already found a material solution to the problem, the Army developed the Pelvic Protection System. The system includes two layers of protection for Soldiers, including the Tier I protective under-garment, called the "PUG," and the Tier II protective outer-garment, called the "POG." Both components of the system are worn like shorts. The PUG is worn under a Soldier's ACU pants and has a breathable, moisture-wicking material on the outer thighs. Along the inner thighs is knitted Kevlar to protect the fleshy inner parts of the thighs and the femoral artery. Over the groin, more knitted or woven Kevlar. The outer garment, the POG, provides even more protection for Soldiers, and performs similar to the soft portions of the improved outer tactical vest. The Army has fielded just more than 15,000 Tier II garments and more than 52,000 Tier I garments. Three Soldiers who encountered IEDs while on patrol in Regional Command South in Afghanistan had been wearing the Pelvic Protective System. Two lost part of one or both legs -- but their groin area, Phillips said, survived, as did their pelvic area. The third Soldier lost both legs and suffered severe damage to his pelvic region -- but his groin area was intact. "As soon as that was understood by Soldiers throughout the formations, that went through the command like wild fire," Phillips said. "And Soldiers are now wearing undergarment protection, pelvic protection." ACQUISITON REFORM AND JLTV In July, the Army released the "Decker-Wagner" review of its acquisition processes. The panel that produced the report was chaired by Gilbert Decker, a former Army acquisition chief, as well as Gen. Lou Wagner, the now-retired former chief of the Army Materiel Command. Phillips said the Army has already implemented 29 of the 76 recommendations in the report, and will implement a total of 63 of those recommendations total -- with the majority complete by the summer. As a result of the study, Phillips said, the Army has revised the way it looks at requirements. Now, he said, the service is looking at what capabilities a requirement provides, is it feasible in terms of execution on the timeline, and is it affordable. One beneficiary of the Army's new acquisition processes is the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. Phillips said the JLTV might have cost the Army close to $500,000 per vehicle if the Army had gone forward with the strategy it had during the technology development phase of the vehicle. Today, he said, as a result of how the Army changed the way it does requirements "we are confident we can bring this vehicle in for less than $250,000." Phillips also chided "naysayers" of Army acquisition -- those who say Army acquisition can't deliver. Phillips cited the mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle, known as an MRAP, the MRAP All-Terrain Vehicle, the 60-plus upgrades to the M4 carbine, the M240L light machine gun, and the proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles as examples of how the Army is delivering to the force what Soldiers need to complete the mission. "The myth is Army acquisition can't deliver," Phillips said. "The truth is, we have delivered for our Soldiers." Shrinking construction budget supports key projects [2012-03-02] WASHINGTON -- The Army's $3.6 billion request for construction, family housing and base realignment in fiscal year 2013 is about a third less than what it received for fiscal year 2012, but the Army's top officer told lawmakers it supports the service's "most critical needs." Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno testified March 1 to the House Appropriations Committee, subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies, to discuss the MILCON portion of the Army's fiscal year 2013 budget request. Stateside, the largest MILCON request is $192 million for barracks at West Point to house growing cadet numbers there. The last barracks built at the school was in 1965, Odierno said. He explained that new barracks will better support the 18 percent of cadets who are now female at the school. The request also includes $85 million for expansion at Arlington National Cemetery, $22 million for a digital multipurpose training range at Fort Stewart, Ga., $39 million for a vehicle maintenance shop at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., and $91 million for a waste water treatment plant at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash. The service asked for no MILCON funding next year for overseas contingency operations, such as in Afghanistan. Odierno said the infrastructure built in Afghanistan is already "quite robust" and said he believes it could support the smaller footprint there that will result from drawdowns in that country. He told lawmakers that U.S. Central Command has not asked for MILCON money. The reduction in MILCON funding has also caused the deferral of some projects across the Army, Odierno said. "These reductions, both domestically and overseas, have caused financially prudent project deferrals," he said, "but despite these reductions, we continue to put a heavy emphasis on funding critical infrastructure, sustainment, restoration and modernization of our failing facilities." BRAC About $186 million requested for fiscal year 2013 would be to complete a final remaining obligation under the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure legislation, Odierno said. "As we did this budget, we did not assume a future BRAC with the budget submission, however we fully support the need for a future BRAC," he said. The Base Realignment and Closure process is used by the Department of Defense to shutter installations and realign missions, so it can better control its infrastructure to meet its mission. The last round of BRAC, in 2005, gave the Army a one-time savings of $4.8 billion and a net annual savings of $1 billion, Odierno told Congress. The general also told Congress that if another BRAC round happens, the Army will help establish and recommend criteria as the BRAC commission looks to conduct the process. "We do have an opportunity to shape this as we move forward and we will work very closely with the commission and then with Congress as we do this," he said. Congress must approve another round of BRAC before it could take place. TWO WARS By end of fiscal year 2017, the Army will decrease its end strength in from 570,000 to 490,000 Soldiers. In the National Guard, end strength will reduce from 358,000 to 353,000. The Army Reserve will also be reduced. Even with those reductions -- about 80,000 in the active component -- the Army will be able to conduct its mission, Odierno said. "We can meet two war requirements," Odierno said. "The issue becomes if we have to do sustained operations like in Iraq and Afghanistan." With the reduced Army, the general told Congress, it would be a problem for the Army to sustain a conflict over four years. However, he said, even with the reductions, the Army's combat capability remains credible. SEQUESTRATION Lawmakers who were part of the "super committee" last year were looking to find $1.2 trillion in savings within the budget, and were unable to reach a compromise. As much as half of that amount could now be cut from the Department of Defense budget through sequestration. "Sequestration is not in best interest of our national security," Odierno said. "The impact to the Army could be an additional 100,000 in cuts to our end strength on top of the already 80,000 that we're taking now." Additional cuts, he said, would result in "severe reductions" in the National Guard and Reserve, as well as additional cuts in the active component. It would "significantly decrease what the Army can do for the joint force," the general said. Because the Army can't choose where the cuts come from, the general said under sequestration they would come evenly, and "we will have an imbalance within our own readiness and we will be back to having a potentially 'hollow force.' Where, if necessary, we'd have to respond to something, that might not be what we need to respond with, and ultimately cost us American lives." Chefs bring elegance, teamwork to Army's largest culinary competition [2012-03-07] FORT LEE, Va. -- It was cold inside the field house here, like a refrigerator, March 5, as military chefs prepared for another day of competitive cooking at the 37th U.S. Army Culinary Arts Competition. "Earlier you could see your breath in here," said Pfc. Caleigh Batchelder. "It was so cold. My hands were so cold." "They're shaking!" said Spc. Nicole Kanyer. The two were part of a five-person team that competed in the student team skills portion of the competition. One of the biggest challenges for the team: "keeping our stuff hot, really," Batchelder said. TEAMWORK WINS SILVER The five student military chefs were part of a larger, 21-person team from Fort Hood, Texas. The junior chefs first displayed their individual cooking skills to judges from the American Culinary Federation -- cutting, chopping, and safe food handling, for instance. Then they came together to prepare a French-themed meal unlikely to ever appear on the menu at a Fort Hood dining facility, including fish, Niçoise salad, and chicken with stuffed beef tongue. "Everything on the menu was from classical French, from the book Escoffier," said Pfc. Thomas Poux. His portion of the meal included the desert gâteau st-honoré, or "St. Honoré cake," which includes cream puffs and caramelized sugar. The cooks worked together, four out in front manning the stove, chopping and dicing and plating food for the chefs, and one, Spc. ShaRee Taylor, working backup, "being the eyes and ears for these guys, making sure everything is going right, making sure they are on time and on schedule." The five earned a silver medal for their effort. "It was all about team work," said Batchelder. "We worked really hard together and it was pretty much displaying our skills to the best ability that we could." The five students, she said, "that's our team, that's our family." $40K IN MEDALS FOR CHEFS This year, there are about 335 competitors and 22 teams in the competition, and more than 850 separate events to be judged, said Chief Warrant Officer 4 Russell D. Campbell, chief of the Advanced Food Service Training Division at the Joint Culinary Center of Excellence, Fort Lee, Va. "This year is the largest competition we've had to date," he said, adding that competitors come from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, as well as the Coast Guard. Some $40,000 worth of medals were ordered for the competition. The competition is the largest culinary competition in North America. The culinary arts competition showcases the talents of military chefs from all branches of the U.S. armed forces, and includes the most junior service members in the culinary arts profession, such as those with less than one year of service to those with more than 20 years of experience. "The most important thing that happens here, from day one the competitors arrive, is the training aspect," Campbell said. "We have live demos from industry chefs, other college students, or other chefs that have performed well in different events to teach and train and prepare these competitors as they prepare to compete." The competition involves both team and individual events where competitors earn points for their performance. The event that earns the teams the most points is the team buffet -- a 12-foot by 10-foot table the teams work to compete that features full meals, hors d' oeuvres, finger foods and deserts. Teams work on the tables for 72 hours or more to complete. "When the teams put this up there they have to work all night, it's a 24-hour kitchen is what we call it," Campbell said. "When they get up in the morning they work till the next morning when they put this table up and then they get to go sleep to get ready for the next day." MYSTERY BASKET YIELDS GOLD Another event, the nutritional hot food challenge team competition involves two chefs who work together to create a nutritionally balanced meal, in 90 minutes, out of ingredients revealed to them only at the start. "You get a mystery basket and you don't know what's in it until you get there," said Sgt. Maj. David Turcotte. "It's a nutritional challenge, so some of the meats and proteins that are in there, and vegetables were kind of challenging." For Turcotte and his partner, Master Sgt. Verna Bellamy, both part of the team from Fort Stewart, Ga., the "mystery basket" included quail breast, couscous, "vegetarian protein mix," cactus, papaya and pine nuts. "The hardest part is you have to sit down and plan your menu," said Bellamy. "And time is the essence. Time is the key to the whole thing." The two had 90 minutes to compete, with 15 minutes of that at the start to come up with a menu, and Bellamy said she had never cooked with either the cactus or the vegetarian protein powder before, "we don't see that type of food when we work in the dining facility environment." What did they do with the protein powder? "We just added a bunch of vegetables to it, some mushrooms and shallots and garlic to try to get it to taste a little better than what it tasted like coming out of the bag," Turcotte said. "Then we stuffed it into a tomato and in a mustard sauce, so the mustard camouflaged it a little more. It's kind of like a hot dog. You put on some onion, some mustard and relish." "You add a little flavor," Bellamy said. Both Bellamy and Turcotte have more than 20 years each in the Army, and Turcotte said he's competed before. For Bellamy, though, this is her first time competing. Still, the team won a gold medal for their work. ELEGANCE IN FIELD COOKING On the other side of the field house, opposite the row of identical miniature kitchen stations that had been set up for the competition, two make-shift restaurants were ready for the field competition. Here, the kitchens weren't like ones in a restaurant. Instead, they were two Army containerized kitchens -- kitchens in a box. And two teams, one from Fort Polk, La., and one from Fort Sill, Okla., competed to serve dinner to 80 customers each. Campbell said the teams start cooking at 7:30 a.m., and serve just four hours later. The customers are visitors to the competition who buy the $4.55 tickets that allow them to sit down to a restaurant-style three-course meal that includes either soup or salad, entrée and dessert. What's on the menu is up to the teams. "It's whatever they want to do they can do, but they have to use the equipment that's on the containerized kitchen," Campbell said The Fort Polk, La., team decided on "tropic shrimp ceviche" as an appetizer, "seared spicy chicken supreme with Caribbean jerk mango chutney" and "rice primavera" and "broccolli rabi with carrots" for their entrée, and "chocolate drizzled strawberry and pineapple soup" for a dessert. Sgt. Armando Hernandez led the team he hand-picked for the competition to a bronze medal. "I picked the guys with the most experience as far as restaurant-wise," he said. "You come into the military, you work for the Army, you cook for a bunch of people at once. We are working off of what we use in the field and we are going for elegance." The biggest challenge, Hernandez said, was serving the customers in a timely manner. "Once everybody comes in they are ready to eat right away," he said. "The way they want us to serve them, we can't cheat and plate everything up at once and push it out. We have to do it as they come in and as they bring us the tickets. So it was keeping everyone under control and communication." Spc. Juan Dejesus worked on the main entrée, the chicken. The biggest challenge for him was "getting all the cuts and getting everything perfect," he said, as well as dealing with the uniqueness of the containerized kitchen's range. "The burner -- it's like a jet flame. If you put any kind of pan in there by itself it will go through it," he said. The same fuel used to power Army tactical vehicles, and Air Force fighters -- JP-8, is what powers the burners in the kitchen. "That's the biggest challenge, to control your cooking temperature, the time and the liquid you have to have there." But working in the kitchen is something Dejesus said he wants to keep doing. "This is the kind of cooking that I like to do, that I want to do," he said. "I want to be here, because you are always learning. You can never say that you know it all. There is always a new way or a shorter way, or somebody works it different, or playing with the taste." Since 1973, with the exception of two years during Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom, military cooks have come to Fort Lee to participate in the culinary arts competition. Some of those cooks are new, like the ones in the student skills competition, others are well-seasoned. But they all work in teams, and they all learn by being there, Campbell. "That's where the great balance is. The teams work together. The labs are all open. The teams, you see them intermingling with each other, supporting each other," he said. "And we have chefs go around working with each team on plating, flavor development, presentation -- every day these teams have opportunity to learn and grow." New Army focus on Pacific doesn't mean abandoning Middle East [2012-03-08] WASHINGTON -- While the Army has a new emphasis on the Asia and Pacific region, it doesn't mean the service will be unable to meet obligations in the Middle East -- if need be, said the Army's chief of staff. Earlier this year, Gen. Ray Odierno said the Army will put an increased emphasis on the Asia and Pacific region and a renewed emphasis on its partnerships there with allies, including a "trilateral" partnership between the United States, Korea and Japan. But that renewed emphasis doesn't mean the Army will abandon its roles elsewhere, he said. "I don't see us necessarily rebalancing from the Middle East to Asia/Pacific," Odierno told lawmakers, March 8, during a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. "Based on the priorities we've established, Asia/Pacific is first, closely followed behind by the Middle East. But I don't think that is causing us to have less attention and capability available to use in the Middle East." The general said in other parts of the world the Army may be diminishing its "potential to influence" -- but that's not true in the Middle East. "I have confidence that we will be able to do what we need to do if necessary, in the Middle East, even though we have now provided some focus in the Pacific region," he said. IRAQ The Army recently pulled out of Iraq -- today, there are about 150 Soldiers in country there, who now work in support of the Department of State. But al-Qaeda continues to be active there, though Odierno said he has confidence the Iraqi security forces, originally trained by Americans, can defend themselves. "There are reports that there has been some increase, especially in Anbar providence, of al-Queda, and also in Baghdad," Odierno said. "I am still confident that Iraqi security forces can handle the violence. The issue becomes that we need the people of Iraq to continue to reject al-Queda and not allow them to get back in and form groups." The general also said that unrest, in places like Syria, could be exploited by al-Qaeda. But in the Middle East, the Army still has Soldiers who can react in Iraq, if called on to do so, Odierno told lawmakers. "We have a brigade combat team that came out of Iraq and is now inside of Kuwait, we have some aviation elements that are also inside of Kuwait," he said. "We have people in Kuwait that also support Afghanistan. The current number is somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000. It will come down over time, probably to something less than 10,000 in Kuwait." Those Soldiers, he said allow the Army to "react with ground forces if necessary, if it was in our best national interest." DRAWDOWN As part of budget cuts, the withdrawal from Iraq and the coming drawdown from Afghanistan -- the Army will cut about 80,000 Soldiers from the active force end strength. The service will go from about 570,000 to 490,000. The drawdown will last about six years, Odierno said, and will begin this year. "We have developed this ramp, which we believe can be accomplished mostly through attrition," Odierno said. "And with the rate that we're reducing the ramp, we believe that we can continue to meet our commitments in Afghanistan and our other deployable commitments with rotational forces." Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh told lawmakers that nearly half of the Army budget goes to personnel. He told lawmakers that making cuts to the Army budget means balancing personnel needs against other needs, "the modernization, the equipping, the family programs, the things that, if you don't support them, you're on a quick path to a hollow Army." McHugh said the Army will try to make the cuts as "humanly as possible." "We're working as hard as we can to try to manage both our discharges and our accessions in a way so that we don't have to have forced outs," McHugh said. "They're not something anyone likes to go through, but the reality is, at the end of the day, we're probably going to have to ask some Soldiers who have served honorably and who meet at least minimum criteria, to perhaps think about a next challenge in their lives." More than 280 service members offered third opinion on psych evals [2012-03-12] WASHINGTON -- The Army will offer 285 service members a chance to have their mental health diagnoses re-evaluated -- a second time. About 1,600 service members who received medical care at Madigan Army Medical Center at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., and who were diagnosed with behavioral health problems, also had their medical records evaluated by the forensic psychiatry department at the hospital. Of the 1,600, the department changed the diagnosis for 285 patients to something other than post-traumatic stress disorder, known as PTSD. Now, the Army will offer those 285 service members the opportunity to have their medical records evaluated again -- and to possibly undo the changes made by the forensic psychiatric unit. "What we're looking at is wanting to make sure that our service members received the best care possible," said Surgeon General of the Army Lt. Gen. Patricia D. Horoho, before the House Appropriations Committee, Defense subcommittee, March 8. The general also told lawmakers that the Army is looking into the variants across its processes. Forensic psychiatry introduces variance into the Integrated Disability Evaluation System process, Horoho said. The surgeon general told legislators that last year, 17 service members expressed concerns that their initial behavioral health diagnoses had been changed by the forensic psychiatry department. The Army offered to allow those service members to be re-evaluated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Most of the reviews done at Walter Reed changed back the decisions of the forensic psychiatry department. Two investigations, one at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, and one across Army medicine have been initiated, said Horoho. At Lewis-McChord, the investigation will "look at the climate and the practices and variants and to make sure that we were fairly treating our service members and providing them the best care possible." The second, an inspector general investigation, will look at "variants or systemic issues" across Army medicine. Both investigations are ongoing. DIAGNOSING AND TREATING PTSD Lawmakers asked the Army's surgeon general if there was a common standard among the military services for diagnosing post-traumatic stress disorder. She told them there was, and that it is being used across the Department of Defense. "There are Department of Defense guidelines for diagnosing PTSD, which each one of our services follows," she said. "Those guidelines have been in place, and we're all consistent with following those." The general also told lawmakers that the Army is perusing multiple avenues to treat PTSD, including methods that don't involve medications. "There's a lot of work that's being done with not just looking at providing medication, but actually looking at yoga and stress reduction, virtual reality and many different forums that we can actually try to help someone with their behavioral health and help them on the healing journey," Horoho said. She also said that there isn't a single medication to treat PTSD, but instead multiple medications with different levels of efficacy on different patients. "There are some medications that may work better than others for one individual, and then may not be as effective on another individual," she said. BEST TRAUMA CARE Horoho told lawmakers that it is the U.S. military -- in places like Afghanistan, and before, in Iraq, that provide the best trauma care in the world. "Army Medicine is focused on building upon these successes on the battlefield as we perform our mission at home, and is further cementing our commitment to working as a combined team anywhere and any time." Warrior Transition Command recognizes women's education, empowerment [2012-03-14] WASHINGTON -- Staff Sgt. Stefanie Mason suffered nine fractures to her head and traumatic brain injury as a result of a vehicle crash while on a mission in Afghanistan in 2010. Now she's competing for gold at the Warrior Games. "I have made remarkable strides in my recovery since I was injured," she said. Mason was injured April 20, 2010, in Kabul, Afghanistan, while working as part of the 354th Civil Affairs Brigade. She said she and her team were "winning the hearts and minds of the international community," there. She worked to persuade local leadership to work on projects like building schools, to change laws, and to engage in humanitarian missions. Days after he injury, she was in Germany, and then on to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. She also spent three months at the Richmond Veterans Brain Injury Center, and was immobilized there due to other injuries she suffered. "I was unaware of what would happen in the future, however with another strong woman at my side -- my mother -- she helped support me as I endured the pain and intense therapy." With Mason's determination, she said, she is where she is today. In May 2011, a little over one year after she was injured, she was at the Warrior Games in Colorado. There, she earned a gold medal in the 50-meter freestyle and a bronze medal in the 50-meter backstroke. Now, Mason wants to go to the Paralympics in England. "I'm crossing my fingers, and I'm working hard," she said. Mason spoke March 14 at the Warrior Transition Command's Women's History Month Celebration at the Women in Military Service for America memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. She told attendees at the event that like her, women across the Army have made great advancements. "Today, women in the military have again made considerable strides," she said. "Now, women, like their predecessors, are serving in supporting units as truck drivers, medics, military police, and helicopter pilots. They are taking a more proactive role than ever before." Today, she said, women are on the front lines. They can be captured, injured or killed. In between therapy at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., Mason is also working at the Pentagon, doing public affairs work there within the Office of the Secretary of Defense. She hopes she will clear her medical boards and will eventually be able to go back to her Reserve unit and serve her country again as a civil affairs specialist. Maj. Gen. Jimmie O. Keenan, commanding general, U.S. Army Public Health Command and chief of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, also spoke and relayed anecdotes from her own experience that highlight the work of women who are empowered to achieve. Included among those, her own sister, who works for the Internal Revenue Service as deputy commissioner for operations support, a female Soldier who was injured, lost an arm, and now runs her own security consulting firm. Keenan said that more recently, the first female officer was advanced to the role of Army surgeon general. "What a breaking of the glass ceiling that was for all of us in the military," Keenan said of Lt. Gen. Patricia D. Horoho, the Army's surgeon general. Keenan also discussed her own efforts, after serving a tour in Kosovo, to participate in the legislative process by working as an Army liaison on Capitol Hill in the office of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, of Texas. While serving there, she was able to participate in development and approval of legislation related to women and girls in Afghanistan. "Women literally died in child birth because there was no one to take them to a hospital to deliver. Because they could not go unescorted, they would literally die," Keenan said. "[the senator] was a big supporter of No Child Left Behind, and she also believed in the education of women both here and abroad. So she asked me to draft a bill, because I'd gotten pretty good at it. She said let's draft a bill and get all the women senators to support the bill, and we'll introduce it as a group. And then we'll do the same thing on the House side, with the congresswomen." The bill was introduced in both the House and Senate, and the bill was signed by then President Bush -- the Afghan Women and Children Relief Act of 2001, which authorized U.S. humanitarian aid expenditures on health care and education for women and children. "What this really says is it talks about the importance of education and it talks about the importance of empowerment, and what a group of women, who are determined to do something, what they can do," she said. Keenan said that going forward, Army women must ensure in their roles as mothers that no barriers are placed on their own children "We must carry on the work that is before us, to ensure our daughters have no limits on their dreams, no obstacles on their achievements, and no remaining ceilings to shatter as they continue the strength of the Army and the strength of the nation," she said. "Women should not shy away from the attributes of being a female, but rather should capitalize on the unique characteristics that make them women and such a vital part of history," she added. Hall of Fame inducts women Vietnam vets [2012-03-14] WASHINGTON -- Hundreds of women gathered on Capitol Hill, March 13, to induct into the Army Women's Hall of Fame all those who served in Vietnam. The afternoon event was hosted by the U.S. Army Women's Foundation, and followed a morning event, the 4th Annual Army Women in Transition Symposium, where former military leaders and civilians discussed the changing roles of women serving in the Army and the challenges faced by female Soldiers after they leave the Army -- finding employment after the Army, for instance. In the afternoon, retired Maj. Gen. Dee Ann McWilliams, who now serves as president of the foundation, discussed the challenges faced by women who had served in Vietnam. "The women who served in Vietnam did it for their country -- in terrible conditions," she said. Those women, she said, dealt with adversity, and the nurses there dealt "with things they could not ever have been trained for the trauma, the shock, the tropical diseases, compounded all the things that happened." When those women officers and enlisted came home, she said, Americans didn't take notice of the work they had done. "They didn't even make a ripple at home. We want to change that today, and do our part." More than a dozen women took the stage at the event. All had served in Vietnam in the limited roles for women at the time, such as nursing or clerical work. The women, who represented all Army women who served in Vietnam, were presented with a momento that commemorated their service. It will be placed in the Women in Military Service for America memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. Among those in attendance was Connie Slewitzke, who had served for one year as a nurse in Vietnam, first as a surgical supervisor, then as a chief nurse at the convalescence center. "It makes you feel good that somebody appreciates it," Slewitzke said of the recognition. "You never really ask for 'thank you's' from people. But it really makes you feel good that people appreciate what you did." Slewitzke said even today, she stays in touch with the women she served with overseas. "It's camaraderie," she said. "You work with these people for a year, and if you stay in the Army long enough, you keep meeting these people." While she served as a major during Vietnam, Slewitzke stayed on in the Army for 30 years, and retired in 1987 as a brigadier general. Today, she said, she is proud of the accomplishments that women have made in service to their country. For women serving now in Afghanistan, and who had served in Iraq, Slewitzke said she is proud of the work they are doing. They are doing jobs, she said, that were never open to her or her fellow women while serving in Vietnam. "I think it's great they are able to do that, and able to perform in an outstanding manner," she said. "You don't hear much of this 'women can't do this' anymore. It used to be 'oh, we can't have women in combat.' I don't know what they call it now, but women sure are in combat." Not all women who served in uniform in Vietnam were nurses -- or even officers. Carole Gittman served from 1968 to 1970 in Vietnam, a total of 18 months. She worked as an administrative assistant for an engineer construction division. "It think it's pretty awesome," she said of the recognition. She too stays in touch with the women she served alongside. Today, women who served in Vietnam, from all branches of service, can participate in the Vietnam Women Veterans Conference. This year, Gittman will attend the event, April 26-29 in Biloxi, Miss. Gittman had little negative to say about her time in Vietnam, but said she wished she and her fellow female Women's Army Corps sisters had been trained the same way female Soldiers today are trained. "The only thing that would have been nice would be if we'd been able to have weapons, or training. At least women are getting that now. We never got that," she said. The WAC ceased to exist in 1978, something that Gittman said she was disappointed with. "If you were a WAC, you will always be a WAC," she said. "And if you were a Soldier, you will always be a Soldier. We could still have done the same job if you left us the WACs. We loved being WACs. It was us -- we think we're different." Gittman retired from the Army in 1982 as a sergeant first class. Earlier in the morning, standing before the crowd at the event, Lt. Gen. Patricia D. Horoho, the Army's surgeon general, asked all female officers in the audience to stand; most all were in civilian clothing -- long since retired from the Army. "Thank you for leading the way and making a difference," the general said. She is the first female to serve as the Army's surgeon general. "It's really your shoulders that we have been able to stand on and build and continue to move forward." Women today have made great advances in where and how they can serve the Army, Horoho said, stating that 412 of the Army's 438 military occupational specialties and areas of concentration are now open to women. But women have always served the military, she explained. "Women serve and have served, with distinction, grace [and] honor," in wars back to the Revolutionary War, Horoho said. "Women have served honorably and have died in every single war and every conflict that this country has fought." To the women of the WACs, she said, "You are the bridge that linked the WACs of World War II to today," she said. And the women who served in Vietnam made sure Americans didn't forget that "women could do hard work in hard places." Amongst all military services, about 11,000 American women served in uniform in Vietnam. According to the Vietnam Women's Memorial Foundation website, about 90 percent of those women served as nurses in the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Brain injuries don't end with Afghan drawdown [2012-03-21] WASHINGTON -- Even with the eventual drawdown in Afghanistan, traumatic brain injury will continue to be a problem for the Army. "Traumatic brain injury, or TBI, is not just an event unique to deployment," said Col. Nikki L. Butler, director of the Army Rehabilitation and Reintegration division, part of Army Medical Specialist Corps. "These injuries occur at airborne school, basic training, or in motor vehicle accidents. Some 84 percent of TBI is happening in garrison, it's not just an IED blast that causes TBI. It's bigger on the garrison side than on the deployed side. Just because we're going to come out of Afghanistan doesn't mean TBI is going to go away." Butler manned an informational booth at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., March 21. Representatives of the Army and more than a dozen other organizations set up shop to educate the public about traumatic brain injury. The Army Medical Command set up a booth "to raise awareness about all of the Army's efforts for brain injury," said Maj. Sarah B. Goldman, of the Army Medical Specialist Corps. Goldman is the director of the Traumatic Brain Injury Program, part of the Rehabilitation and Reintegration division. "The Army has invested over $650 million in TBI research and we have enormous TBI educational efforts worldwide," Goldman said. "The Army is a leader within the Department of Defense for TBI prevention, awareness, treatment, and research." The event was part of the "Capitol Hill Brain Injury Awareness Day," which included both the informational TBI fair, as well as an afternoon informational briefing about the impact of traumatic brain injury. The event was hosted by the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force. At the fair, as in the Army, education about TBI is a top priority. "We implemented a policy in 2011 that mandated TBI education not just for medical providers, but throughout the entire Army," Goldman said. The efforts included particular emphasis on line leaders and commanders. "Brain injury awareness is not just a medical issue; it is an entire Army issue," Goldman said. "It's important our medical community and our warfighters partner together to understand brain injury and know when to seek help." Goldman also said she would explain to those at the TBI fair about some of the technologies the Army is using to help it better understand what occurs during a concussive event. Included among those technologies are the helmet sensors and blast gauges. After an injury, she said, early treatment is critical, and the DOD has implemented a theater policy to ensure early detection and treatment for Soldiers, Goldman said. The policy ensures a minimum of 24 hours of rest after a concussive event, even if a Soldier wasn't diagnosed with a concussion, Goldman said. It also mandates a follow-up evaluation to make sure a Soldier is okay to return to duty. Following a concussion, it's important to get the right kind of rest, Butler said. "People think they're resting -- but they're reading a book," she said. "That's not cognitive rest. You're physically resting, but your brain is still working. That's a huge education piece." Brain rest to recover from a concussion means sleep, Butler said, and that excludes watching television and playing video games. "That's one of the overall concerns for those deployed, is they don't get enough sleep. They don't rest." Hero 2 Hired website aims to transform heroes to hired civilians [2012-03-22] WASHINGTON -- A new website championed by the Army is aimed squarely at Soldiers ready to leave the service, to help them find jobs that best match their knowledge, skills, abilities and interests. The website, www.h2h.jobs, for "Hero 2 Hired", or H2H, is part of a larger, ongoing Army effort to make easier for Soldiers the transition from military life to civilian life. The Hero 2 Hired site includes more than 3 million real-time job listings, said Col. Edward D. Mason, chief, Army transition policy initiative, who also said the "jobs are all relatively fresh and new." The colonel said the site uses an algorithm to weed out "stale jobs." The site allows Soldiers to search in a particular zip code or city for jobs, using their military occupational specialty as criteria for the search. A search in Kansas City, Mo., for jobs that might be suitable for a soon-to-be-separating infantryman yields 42 available jobs, for instance. The site also provides "career recommendations" to Soldiers, based on their Military Occupational Specialty, or MOS. A search on the site for careers that might be suitable for an infantryman yields results like "police identification and records officers," "aircraft cargo handling supervisors," and "correctional officers and jailers." The site actually returns 25 career recommendations for that search, and includes average national pay for each as well as projected number of openings available in each field and growth potential. The site also includes a "career path exploration" option that involves a 14-question test for Soldiers to answer to identify career choices they might not have thought about before. "A lot of people think if you were a truck driver in the Army, you need to be a truck driver outside," Mason said. "Well, maybe you don't want to drive trucks. And not everybody that has been in infantry needs to be security guard." The test "qualifies your interests and identifies career fields you may be more interested in," Mason said. Also on the site is the option to develop and post a resume so that the 50,000 employers who have vowed to hire veterans can find the most classified separating service members. According to Army officials, more than 130,000 Soldiers separated last year. For Soldiers preparing to separate, the Army is looking for ways to smooth the transition, said Mason. The H2H website is just one part of the Army's plans to recreate the process to transition Soldiers out of the Army. Mason said the Army's re-engineering of the transition process makes it a "commander's program." That, he said, puts more responsibility on leadership to ensure Soldiers are involved in transition programs. "The commanders are responsible for tracking their people," Mason said. Previously, Soldiers slated to leave the Army might have "fallen through the cracks." Now, Mason said, "we are trying to put discipline into the process. And move it from attendance, to making it an outcomes-based program." The transition process, Mason said, will begin a year before a Soldier's end-of-service date and will ensure ample time to provide Soldiers with the greatest opportunity for success after their military service. When Soldiers become successful as civilians, Mason said, that's good also for the Army. "Soldiers will be great ambassadors for the Army, and that helps sustain the all-volunteer force." Army focus on post-traumatic stress disorder shifts toward prevention [2012-03-22] WASHINGTON -- It's not enough to simply treat post-traumatic stress disorder; the Army recognizes the importance of preventing it from happening in the first place. During testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, subcommittee on military personnel, March 21, Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Patricia D. Horoho told lawmakers the service is now focusing on more prevention. Horoho told lawmakers the Army has Soldiers see a behavioral health specialist before deploying, for instance. And in theater, there has been an increase in behavioral health assets made available to Soldiers. "We're using tele-behavioral health, so that instead of waiting until they redeploy back to deal with some of the stressors and the symptoms associated with deployment, they are able to do that through tele-behavioral health in some of the most remote areas in Afghanistan," Horoho said. Stateside, she said, the Army has also ensured the availability of behavioral health specialists through telemedicine. "We've over-hired across each of our regions using tele-behavioral health so that we can shift that capability where the demand is," she said. The Army is also emphasizing stress reduction and anger management, as well as looking at how Soldiers use alcohol, Horoho told legislators. "The approach now is more towards that prevention and looking at incorporating mindfulness, yoga, acupressure, acupuncture, so that we really help with decreasing some of that stress," Horoho said. "We've [in the past] focused more on treatment, and over the last couple of years it's been more toward prevention, we have a ways to go." The general also told lawmakers that medical advancements developed during ten years of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq are being brought home to the United States. "The best trauma care in the world resides with the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq," she said. "The Army Medical Service is focused on building upon these successes [from] the battlefield as we perform our mission at home." The general also said the effectiveness of joint medical efforts in theater spells out a roadmap for the future of military medicine. "We are at our best when we operate as part of the joint team and we need to proactively develop synergy with our partners as military medicine moves towards a joint operating environment," she said. Leadership experience is available in garrison too [2012-03-28] WASHINGTON -- With the withdrawal from Iraq and similar actions in Afghanistan on the horizon, Soldiers looking to be leaders need to know opportunities are available in garrison, senior leaders said. Army leaders speaking on Capitol Hill, March 27, told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that keeping the right Soldiers interested in staying in the Army after the current combat action in the Middle East ends means showing those Soldiers that leadership opportunities exist in the United States the same as they do in theater. "How are we going to keep them interested when we get them back from combat and we put them in Fort Hood or Fort Benning," asked Lt. Gen. Keith C. Walker, deputy commanding general, Army Futures. He said today's Soldiers have enjoyed a "lot of freedom of action and independence" while in combat, and that Soldiers have told him the appeal for joining the Army was not new equipment but the opportunity to lead. "Those opportunities exist here," he said. Still, the Army's "leadership triad," includes training, education and experience. The latter is one the Army is rich with, Walker told lawmakers. It's the other two, training and education, he said the Army must beef up on if it wants to keep the right Soldiers engaged stateside. REVERSIBILITY The Army will draw down to about 490,000 active-duty Soldiers. But it's important to service leaders that the Army can grow again in size, if the nation calls on it to do so. That means reversing the drawdown, and doing so responsibly. Ensuring the Army can grow rapidly, if it needs to, means keeping in place the right kind of Soldiers, those are the noncommissioned officers and mid-level officers that will need to be available to train an influx of new Soldiers if the Army must expand again. "We'll be a little bit more officer and [senior noncommissioned officer] heavy in some organizations," said Lt. Gen. John F. Campbell, deputy chief of staff of the Army, G-3/5/7. "Should the nation need the Army to grow again, will we have the capacity to do that?" Walker asked. He said preparing for the future, one where the Army just might have to rapidly grow again, means more than just investment in equipment. It means investment in people. "[It's] taking a very broad look across doctrine, organization and training. Yes, we still look at material. But aspects of leadership development are huge. And our personnel policies and facilities would help us do that. Perhaps, most importantly we think, is our investment in our mid-grade leaders, so that should we have to expand, we can do that." In the past, Walker said, the Army was able to grow by about 15,000 Soldiers a year, but mid-level officers and noncommissioned officers were needed to train those incoming Soldiers. GCV vs BRADLEY The infantry fighting vehicle program, said Lt. Gen. Robert P. Lennox, deputy chief of staff of the Army, G-8, has "a number of shortfalls that we are aiming to correct with the Ground Combat Vehicle, or GCV, program." Included in that, he said, is that the Bradley Fighting Vehicle is underpowered, lacks the right capacity for the number of Soldiers it can carry, and lacks growth potential for the future the Army envisions. "The Bradley does not have the maneuverability and the protection for our rifle squads that we believe we might encounter for those adversaries that would employ hybrid-like tactics against us," Walker told legislators. Lennox told lawmakers the recently launched GCV program is on a "really good path" insofar as the requirements for the vehicle are correct and the estimated cost of the vehicle is correct. But he also said the Army is still looking at other options, including already-built vehicles from other countries, such as the Puma vehicle from Germany, and the Namer vehicle from Israel. He said the Army is also looking at what industry is doing in technical development. "We are evaluating those to see if we have our requirements right and if this is the right path ahead," Lennox said. "So I think we are taking a very prudent, measured approach to make sure we have our requirements right for the GCV." It's a possibility to modify the Bradley Fighting Vehicle to meet many Army requirements, but the cost estimate for doing that would put it on par with a newly developed GCV, Lennox said. "We have done an analysis of alternatives that [has] said that the price is much closer to a new vehicle, fixing up the Bradley, to give it the growth potential and protection that we need in a similar version," Lennox said. "We are not done with that analysis. Improving the Bradley is an option for the Army in the future, and it is being looked at as well." Lt. Gen. William N. Phillips, principal military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics, and technology said Army senior leaders think they can get the GCV "somewhere between $9-10.5 million." That cost, he said, is not far above the cost of doing a Bradley upgrade to give it the capability expected of the GCV. JOINT LIGHT TACTICAL VEHICLE The JLTV is an ongoing project the Army is working on in conjunction with the Marine Corps. Lennox told lawmakers the Army could get the vehicle for about $250,000 each, and with it "the capabilities we need for the future." The JLTV will take over many of the roles the Humvee might have done. That vehicle, Lennox said, is no longer something the Army can use "outside the fence line." "The Humvee, for example, is incapable of going off the forward operating base," Lennox said. "It doesn't provide protection for Soldiers today. We've over-burdened it with the weight." Still, the Army will find roles for the Humvee in the future. Inside the United States, for instance, such roles could include homeland defense. KIOWA WARRIOR AND ARMED AERIAL SCOUT Phillips said Army leaders are excited about industry interest in the Armed Aerial Scout, or AAS, an aircraft meant to take over roles formally done by the Kiowa Warrior. "We think there are probably between six or seven industry partners interested in AAS program," he said. But with budget constraints, if the AAS doesn't happen, the Kiowa Warrior could be upgraded through the Kiowa Warrior service life extension program. The Army is also continuing with the Kiowa Warrior cockpit and sensor-upgrade program. He said an acquisition memo, due around April 23, will allow the Army to go forward with formal AAS flight demonstration this summer. After that, the Defense Acquisition Board will make a decision this summer if there is a good enough solution to go forward with the AAS program. Army aims to grow more resilience trainers on its own [2012-03-30] WASHINGTON -- About 8,000 Soldiers are now trained as "master resilience trainers," or MRTs, and the Army wants even more, but it hopes to train them in an Army school. The MRT course is a "teaching the teachers" type of training. The noncommissioned officer, or NCOs, who attend the course go back to their home units and teach resilience to their own Soldiers. Right now, Soldiers are getting the MRT course in Philadelphia, at the University of Pennsylvania. The Army is going to change that, said Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III. The Army has built the "Warrior University" at Fort Jackson, S.C. The MRT program will eventually be taught there, he said, not in Philadelphia. "The objective is to create within the Army the capability to produce and generate capacity for a more resilient force," Chandler said. The Army's senior enlisted advisor spoke March 28 during the fourth annual "Warrior Resilience Conference" in Washington, D.C. He said the Army is doing a good job at training Soldiers to be resilient, though there's always room to improve. "As an Army we need to do even better than we are right now," said Chandler. "We are actually doing very well with the implementation of our resiliency programs, specifically MRT. But we have got to do better. And I don't believe that we're ever going to be completely satisfied with where we are." Those 8,000 master resilience trainers, he said, are distributed down to battalion level in the Army. With more Soldiers trained as MRTs, Chandler said, the Army could have MRTs down to company level. Also a focus at the resilience conference was access to behavioral health services, and helping service members overcome their aversion to seeking assistance. Chandler said right now, the Army, all the services in fact, need to do more to make sure that all service members, across all components and services, can get the help they need where they need it. A particular emphasis was placed on ensuring the availability of those services to members of the reserve components who do not always have proximity to military installations. "I think that we have to have a much more robust discussion about how we access care across the services, and how we make sure that every person that is a service member, [who] serves in whatever capacity and whatever service, knows that there is a resource there that can help them in their time of need," Chandler said. "It's about making sure that we take care of our own, no matter what their capacity is. We have to keep pressing that issue and break down some of the stovepipes that are out there." Chandler spoke during a panel discussion at the conference that included senior enlisted advisors from the Marine Corps, Navy, Coast Guard and Air Force. One conference attendee asked the advisors about how to convince service members that it was okay to seek assistance from mental health professionals, as many service members are concerned that seeking care could be damaging to their careers. The attendee suggested that knowing that senior leadership had been to mental health services would be proof that it was okay. Chandler responded by relating his own experiences stemming from time spent in Iraq. In Baghdad, in 2004, he said, in his room after an eight-hour patrol "I had a nice 122mm rocket come into my room while I was standing there." He said the experience "tripped him up a little bit" and that he pushed the experience aside for several years following that. "Until I got to a point in my life where (I was) pretty much on a downward spiral," Chandler said. The SMA said he spent 2009-2011 attending weekly behavioral health sessions, seeing a social worker and going through counseling. Later, when Chandler was being interviewed for the job as sergeant major of the Army by the Army chief of staff, now-retired Gen. George Casey had asked him if there was anything in his past that would cause the Army "embarrassment" if it were to come out. "The one thing that came to mind was that I was in behavioral health care counseling," Chandler said. "I felt it was my duty to tell the chief." Chandler said Casey told him the counseling was not going to cause the Army any embarrassment, and instead asked the SMA to share his story with Soldiers as a way to let Soldiers see the Army is committed to taking care of them. "If I can be chosen [as SMA], that shows the Army's commitment," Chandler said. Pakistan route critical to reset, retrograde in Afghanistan [2012-03-30] WASHINGTON -- The Army would like to see the route through Pakistan available again to get things out of Afghanistan when the time comes, said one Army senior leader. Lt. Gen. Raymond V. Mason, deputy chief of staff, logistics, Army G-4, spoke March 28 in front of the House Armed Services Committee subcommittee on readiness, to discuss Army materiel reset. Right now, the Army is using the "northern distribution network", or NDN, which comes into Afghanistan through countries to the north, such as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, to get things into the country. But the route is long, and three to four times more expensive than the Pakistan Ground Lines of Communication, or PAKGLOC, to the south. That route is important to the Army's planning efforts in Afghanistan. "We need to continue to negotiate and get that back open," Mason said. "We need both methods to get out of Afghanistan." The PAKGLOC has been closed since November, the general told lawmakers. Right now, the Army is using aircraft to get things home. "We fill aircraft as they depart, both Air Force aircraft and commercial aircraft," Mason said. "We're using every available aircraft to go back out again." As an alternative, Mason said the Army is doing proofs of principle on an idea to use the northern distribution network or NDN to get things out of country, something it can't do regularly, due to diplomatic reasons. In partnership with the U.S. Transportation Command, or USTRANSCOM, the Army is experimenting with something Mason called "back haul," where trucks that bring goods into the country do not leave empty as they have been doing. "We have several hundred vehicles and containers that are moving back on the NDN working through the diplomatic clearances," Mason said. The effort is getting assistance from the Department of State, Central Command and USTRANSCOM. "That's looking very good," Mason said. "Once we get that done, I think we'll be able to get the EXFLOW back out of the NDN." Still, he said that will raise the cost for retrograde -- moving military equipment out of country and back home. Working on the NDN, he said, means multiple modes of transportation and requires moving equipment between those modes. That increases the costs, he said. "The PAKGLOC is critical," he told legislators. WHAT'S LEFT BEHIND When the United States left Iraq, military equipment, supplies and material were left behind -- sold to the Iraqis or simply given to them because the cost of bringing some things home outweighed their value. "We in fact did that significantly in Iraq to the tune of about $1 billion," Mason said. But in Afghanistan, he said, things will be different. "We're not going to have the same opportunity in Afghanistan, we don't think," he explained. Certain equipment can be sold to the Afghans, or donated, Mason said. Old equipment can be divested through the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service. Some equipment can also be sold to countries near Afghanistan, Mason said. But, he said, "I think the vast majority of what's in Afghanistan, because of the conditions there, we probably are going to have to move out of that country." Some 50,000 vehicles, for instance, will be leaving the country. PREVENTIVE MEDICINE FOR EQUIPMENT Mason told lawmakers the status of equipment coming out of country, it's "health," has been affected by the Army's pre-emptive efforts in theater to maintain equipment on the ground. "We put significant special repair activities in theater, that has infused health into our vehicles and our equipment coming back," Mason said. While not all the equipment is as good as it could be, he said, "some of this equipment is actually in better shape than we thought it was going to be." That capability included special repair activities in theater, depot-like capability that came from organizations like the Army's Tank-automotive and Armaments Command and the Aviation and Missile Command. The capability provided by those agencies, he said, "really made a big difference." THE MOVERS What will also be forward in theater are about 2,000 personnel who will be dedicated to retrograde, so that Soldiers who are in Afghanistan to conduct combat operations can continue their efforts there, Mason said. "We put teams as far forward in the battle space as possible to help those units," Mason said. "They're retrograding and we want them to focus on that, [but] their main job is to conduct combat operations. So we're helping them with that. It was recently approved to put the Central Command materiel retrograde element force of about 2,000 people into theater and they'll focus purely, every day, on retrograde." COST OF RETROGRADE AND RESET Mason told lawmakers the "worst-case" scenario for the cost of reset is somewhere between $15 and $16 billion. Reset means repairing the equipment that comes home. The actual numbers for that process though, he estimated to be "significantly less than that." Force structure changes, and the eventual divestiture of equipment will change what needs to be reset, he said, and that affects cost. "So we're not going to reset all the equipment, number one, because there won't be a requirement for it," he said. "Number two, some of that equipment will be un-repairable so we won't repair that particular equipment." Mason did say that all helicopters will be kept. "We need every one of those," he said. Also, most of the mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPs, will be kept. The real cost of reset from Afghanistan and Iraq will be decided based on what equipment looks like as it leaves theater. "While we can do some inspection in theater, most of that equipment is out being used every day. So you really don't know until it gets back to the depot , until you get a full inspection on it." Mason told lawmakers that during operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army "rode our equipment hard." And reset for that equipment is "key and central" to the Army. The peak of reset operations, where most funding would be spent, he estimated, would be around 2015-2016. Aviation conference opens with 'sunrise' on Army aviation [2012-04-02] NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The military's budget may shrink, but the outlook on Army aviation is optimistic, said the commanding general of the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence. More than 1,000 members of the Army aviation community and commercial aviation industry took in the opening remarks of Maj. Gen. Anthony G. Crutchfield here, April 2, at the opening of the 2012 Army Aviation Association of America conference in Nashville, Tenn. A photograph on a display screen featured a helicopter in silhouette, with a low-hanging sun in the background. The general used the image, one in which it was hard to discern the time of day, to illustrate the future of Army aviation: is Army aviation in decline, like a setting sun? Or is it on the rise? "Based on things that you read, there will be those who say this is a sunset, because of the problems we face," Crutchfield said. "I see this as a sunrise." The general said the Army is changing again, as it has in the past. "Change is hard, but it's not bad." A large change, most recently: the Army is coming back from 10 years at war. Operations in Iraq have ended, and the end of operations in Afghanistan is on the horizon. The Army has gone now to nine-month deployments, Crutchfield said, and that means more time at home. How the services uses that time will determine, in part, the future of Army aviation, he said. "What do we have to do as an Army, as a branch, to make sure that with that time at home, we stay a sharp force, ready to be called and fight the nation's wars when called to do so," he asked. The Army today is combat-proven, he said, and the Army must work hard to preserve that combat readiness. At last year's AAAA conference, Crutchfield introduced the Army's "AimPoint 2030" vision. The year 2030, Crutchfield said, is "a point that we have to produce strong, capable aviators with future vertical lift that's different than what we have today: faster, lethal, reduced logistical footprint, expanded ranges -- all those things." Since last year, the Army took the concept and "put meat on the bone." Four points of that include the goals of meeting future reconnaissance attack and vertical maneuver missions; organizing into rapidly deployable and adaptable formations; equipping with a new generation of multi-mission manned and unmanned aircraft; and greatly reducing the aviation sustainment footprint. A new aviation campaign plan has also been introduced that spells out how to achieve those goals. That plan he said will have "measurable output." "We know that there are three things that are important today that are going to remain important: that's train, sustain and modernize," he said. "This campaign plan uses the simplicity of [that] for the basis of everything that we write. All the objectives and all the tasks are rooted in those three things." Modernizing the Army's aviation fleet is of critical importance to maintaining a strong aviation force, Crutchfield said. Topics of interest at the 2012 AAAA conference include modernization updates on the AH-64 Apache fleet, unmanned aerial systems, and the OH-58 Kiowa Warrior. Crutchfield said sustaining today's fleet is important, but the Army must also look beyond modernizing and improving what it has already in today's arsenal. "Our future really does depend on sustaining what we have today but [also] modernizing our future vertical-lift capabilities for tomorrow," he said. "At some point the helicopters that we have today will be obsolete. No matter how much money we put into them, they will be obsolete." The Army, he said, must make sure that future aviators and future commanders have the technology and capability they need to fight future wars. To meet its goals, Crutchfield said the Army aviation community must speak with a common voice, and clearly define what it needs. "The quickest way to get nothing is to ask for everything," he said. The Army aviation community must clearly define its needs before moving forward to pursue acquisition, for instance. The Army will need to spend money, he said, but must do so at the best cost. Army must define what it needs, "snap the chalk line" and then go get it, without changing requirements, and without speaking with multiple voices. "That's how we're going to have a branch that will sustain the sharp edge that we have today." "The bottom line is the Soldier," he said. "If we don't have a way to ensure we get what a Soldier needs to have for that Soldier to deploy, fight, win, and return to their families, then we have failed as leaders." The AAAA conference runs April 2-4 in Nashville. Air Soldier System to improve upon Air Warrior, weigh less [2012-04-03] NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The Air Warrior system, an aviation life-support and communications ensemble first fielded in 2004, and designed for Soldiers who work aboard rotary-wing aircraft, was designed for use between five and six hours of flight time. The system is now being used by Soldiers at double that time. "Our aircrews are flying in excess of 11 hours," said Lt. Col. Ian Klinkhammer, product manager Air Warrior. While Air Warrior is performing well -- Soldiers in Afghanistan are even getting the equipment in the Operation Enduring Freedom camouflage pattern -- the system is heavy. What the Army wants to bring to the cockpit with a new aircrew ensemble is reduced weight and improved situational awareness, Klinkhammer said. The solution is the Air Soldier System. "Our goal is to reduce weight and bulk by 25 to 40 percent," Klinkhammer said. The Air Soldier System should also improve Soldiers situational awareness. "We need some better capabilities with the heads-up display, and the 3D symbology, along with the sensors, so that they are able to fly into the last 50 feet as they land to get out of that controlled flight into the terrain and also fly out of that same environment." Klinkhammer spoke April 3 during the 2012 Army Aviation Association of America conference in Nashville, Tenn. The Army is working now to replace the Air Warrior System with the Air Soldier System, a lighter-weight ensemble, with reduced bulk and improved capabilities. The system will be fielded, initially in two sub-increments: the first, 1a, in fiscal year 2015, and the second, 1b, in fiscal year 2018. In that first sub-increment, replacing the Electronic Data Module that is currently in Air Warrior, is a personal electronics computer and display system, in three components. Included in that is a Solider computer module, or SCM, a personal display module, or PDM, and a mission display module. The PDM will be wrist-worn and will help a Soldier monitor the systems he's wearing, Klinkhammer said. "You can look down at one source and see all those displays and see how much battery power you have, and how much coolant you have and how much oxygen you've got," he said. The mission display module interfaces with a platform's sensors. The SCM, "as big as a pack of cigarettes" will do processing for the systems, but also for oxygen and cooling systems. Also in the first sub-increment is the common helmet mounted display, which includes a common flat-panel display with integrated head tracker and 3D degraded visual environment symbology. "You have a see-through display that has symbology based on the capabilities of the aircraft," said Col. Will Riggins, of Program Executive Office Soldier, the headquarters agency that will eventually field the Air Soldier System. "What the system is designed to do is make the pilot safe." Riggins said that the symbology on the helmet display can illustrate friend, foe, weather and terrain, for instance. "Every time you land, you land in a sand storm, because it kicks up everything around you. So it helps you see where all that is as well, where your friends are, where the bad guys are too -- threats." Also included in increment 1a of the Air Soldier System is an improved cooling vest that is 40-percent lighter than what is currently offered, and a layered clothing ensemble that reduces to three layers what is currently offered as seven. There is also a lightweight environmental control system, an integrated Soldier power and data system, lightweight soft body armor that reduces weight and bulk 30-40 percent, and 72-hour survival items. Sub-iteration 1b of the Air Soldier System includes a wide field-of-view/high resolution head-mounted-display for the AH-64 Apache initially, but with support for future platform sensors. The 1b sub-iteration also includes enhanced laser eye protection and an integrated protective ensemble that includes an integrated flotation device. The legacy Air Warrior system weighs in at about 99.6 pounds. By the time the Army fields sub-increment 1b of Air Soldier System, aviators will have an ensemble that has been reduced in weight to about 72.5 pounds. The Air Soldier System will also reduce the number of batteries from seven to one, and will reduce the number of displays from four to one. Total electronics weight will go from 9.7 pounds to 3.2 pounds, and the number of connections to the aircraft will be reduced from five to three. Right now aviators are still wearing the Air Warrior system. That system is still being improved upon, Klinkhammer said, and right now, just about every Soldier that needs the gear has access to it. "For the most part we're pretty much complete with all fieldings of that gear," Klinkhammer said. The Army is even stockpiling the Air Warrior gear now for the 13th Combat Aviation Brigade, and will field equipment to them in 2013-2014, "to get those guys ready to go into the fight." Part of the current Air Warrior system, the HGU-56/P integrated helmet system with laser eye protection, will get magnetic tracking for Apache Block III pilots, Klinkhammer said. That is coming off the production line now, he said, and will be fielded as the Block III Apache is fielded to units. There is also enough of the Portable Helicopter Oxygen Delivery System equipment available, he said, to field to four Combat Aviation Brigades. That equipment is being used, reset and re-fielded to those who need it. The latest addition to Air Warrior includes two Electronic Data Manager, or EDM, systems for use aboard aircraft, and they are enhanced as part of EDM 3.5. That includes a 1.6 GHZ system processor, two gigabytes of RAM, a sunlight-readable and night vision goggle-compatible display and the ability to host dynamic terrain and obstacle avoidance. The Black Hawk UH-60A and L aircraft will see the dual EDM in May or June, Klinkhammer said, and the Chinook will start seeing it in November or December. Lakota fleet more than 200 strong approaching 100K flight hours [2012-04-05] WASHINGTON -- The Army's newest aircraft, the UH-72A Lakota, is approaching 100,000 flight hours, and maintains one of the highest mission-capable rates among Army aircraft. The Army expects to buy a total of 345 of the aircraft, and the service has just taken delivery of 209 so far. "The real success story for us: it's been on schedule [and] it's met its cost targets perhaps better than any other aviation program we have got that's active right now," said Col. Thomas Todd, project manager for Army utility helicopters, during an April 3 press briefing at the Army Aviation Association of America conference in Nashville. The Lakota is a slightly modified version of the manufacturer's commercial EC-145 aircraft, and serves mostly inside the United States, though it has served in Haiti as part of relief operations there, Todd said. Right now, the Lakota is being used in 42 of 50 states. Only a third of the aircraft are headed for active-duty units. The remainder are bound for Army National Guard units. In the field, Todd said, the Lakota has maintained remarkably high reliability rates. "It maintains consistently 90 percent operational availability rates," Todd said. "We obviously take a lot of pride in the fact that 90 percent means [a commander] gets nine out of 10 to fly. It makes that unit commander, no matter where they are and what mission they are performing, more effective." The Lakota can be configured with mission equipment packages to support medical evacuation missions, VIP support or and security and support. While most military aircraft deal with military threats, the Lakota, with the S&S mission-equipment package, was developed to work counter-narcotics on the southwest border. Along the Mexican border, for instance, 11 Lakota aircraft have racked up 700 flying hours working the Southwest Border Mission there out of operating locations in Larado and Harlingen, Texas. In a time of constrained budgets, Todd said that the Lakota also delivers on maintenance costs. As a light utility helicopter, the UH-72A Lakota was pursued as a replacement for the OH-58A and C Kiowas as well as the UH-1 Iroquois. Repair parts for the Lakota are less expensive than for the older aircraft, and are delivered quicker. "When we compare our parts fill rate is higher, and our parts cost or our contracts cost is easily 30-40 percent less," Todd said. "That's a huge measuring stick for us, in these resources constrained times." Future vertical lift aircraft to be faster, have smaller logistics footprint [2012-04-10] WASHINGTON -- The Army's aircraft of the future will be faster than what the service has now, it will carry more weight, it will require less of a logistical footprint, and officials said it will better do what Army aviation is meant to do: serve the ground commander. While what is now being called "Future Vertical Lift," or FVL, by the Army is still a concept, its capabilities are already known. The FVL concept will be "able to support the Army and the ground commanders better than we can do it today," said Maj. Gen. Anthony G. Crutchfield, commander, U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence." I see this aircraft being able to do all the missions that we currently do. I see the aircraft that can do it because it can be scaled. It may be a medium variant, something that is the size of maybe a Black Hawk or an Apache is today, that can do the attack mission, or the assault/lift mission. I see the same aircraft scaled smaller that will be able to do the reconnaissance mission, similar to what a Kiowa Warrior does today." Crutchfield said it's not known if the FVL concept will end up producing a rotary-wing aircraft, like the Army AH-64 Apache, or a tilt-rotor aircraft like the Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey. What the FVL will do is perform missions the Army does today with its aviation assets, missions that will not change. "The vision is that we can have an aircraft that can do all the missions that we currently have," he said. "Our missions will not change. We still will do attack and reconnaissance, we still will do sustainment and troop movements. It's an enduring mission that will not change. I just want to do it better." The FVL aircraft will perform multiple roles, Crutchfield said, and that means that the end result is that there will be fewer types of aircraft in the Army's fleet. It's also possible that there will be fewer aircraft overall, because a more capable aircraft means that fewer aircraft will be needed. "Today there are concepts where there are aircraft that we consider rotary wing, that can fly in excess of 300 knots," Crutchfield said. "No other aircraft we have today can fly 300 knots. If you have an aircraft that can fly 300 knots, it can cover more terrain faster, and if you can cover more terrain faster, theoretically, you would need less airframes to do the same type mission." And because Crutchfield said the idea behind the FVL concept is to have the same aircraft be able to perform multiple missions, the Army will need fewer types of aircraft. That means a smaller number of parts will be needed to sustain the fleet, and a shared pool of maintainers and maintenance equipment. That will result in a reduced cost for logistics. Crutchfield said that the FVL could come in different sizes, depending on the mission it will perform, but things like engine, drive train, and cockpit components would be the same, common between the two, and swappable. Today's Army aircraft, Crutchfield said, are capable. But there is a limit to the performance that can be squeezed from them. "Although we have great aircraft today, the best in the world, no matter how much money we invest in these aircraft of today - the aircraft are not going to fly any faster than they fly right now," Crutchfield said. "They are not going to be able to carry any more payload than they do right now. They will not be able to reduce any of the logistical footprint [more] than they do right now. That's what future vertical lift will do. That's what we see for the Army Aviation force of 2030." It's expected that this summer, performance specifications for the FVL aircraft will be unveiled. Development of the program is an Army-led, joint program, that includes all military services, including the Coast Guard. New fixed-wing aircraft will replace C-12s [2012-04-11] WASHINGTON -- The Army is looking to replace its fleet of 117 C-12 aircraft with something called a "Future Fixed Wing Utility Aircraft." The C-12 Huron is used by the Army for personnel transport, intelligence gathering and reconnaissance, as well as carrying cargo. "The biggest program that we have got coming up, and of course this is going to replace all the Army C-12s, we're looking at putting a program together called the Future Fixed Wing Utility Aircraft," said Col. Brian Tachias, the Army's project manager for fixed-wing aircraft. The colonel said a requirements document for that program is now "working in the Pentagon." When that is approved, he said, it will allow the Army to begin an analysis of alternatives, and eventually define the requirements for the program in a capabilities development document. If approved, that will allow the Army "to go out and procure the next fixed-wing utility aircraft." Tachias spoke last week in Nashville, Tenn., at the Army Aviation Association of America conference there. He heads up the Army's latest project office, focused entirely on fixed-wing aircraft. The Project Office for Fixed-Wing Aircraft stood up in October 2011, and has a "leadership role over all of the Army fixed-wing aircraft," Tachias said. Before the official stand-up date last year, the office managed about 256 Army aircraft. Today, the office manages about 366 fixed-wing aircraft. The consolidation of those aircraft under the oversight of one project office came after a push by the Army's vice chief of staff to centrally manage fixed-wing aircraft in one office because there are "a lot of efficiencies to be gained by consolidating them under one leadership role," Tachias said. Tachias said there's been an estimated 10-15 percent cost savings by having the Army's entire fleet of fixed-wing aircraft managed by the office. He also said that managing them in one program means increased safety. The Army, he said, is "managing these programs under one Army standard to make sure we are providing safe aircraft for the pilots to fly, and of course consolidating the configuration management under one system, that way we don't have all these different configurations of all these different aircraft." The colonel said that since October, the office has conducted 111 airworthiness releases on the aircraft it manages. Among the aircraft the office manages are those used by the Army Corps of Engineers, the Golden Knights, and the United States Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. The office also handles special operations fixed-wing aircraft and aircraft that do intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance work. In the near term, the project office is also buying aircraft for the Army Test and Evaluation Command, which has four aircraft that need replacement. The office has also procured new aircraft for the Golden Knights. Recently, Tachias said, the office has stood up a foreign military sales cell and is working cases with the United Arab Emirates, Columbia, Egypt and Greece. MRAP has future in Army with clearance, prepositioning [2012-04-16] WASHINGTON -- The mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle has a future in the Army, said service officials, though it won't be part of an "MRAP brigade." MRAPs will be used for training Soldiers and for conducting route clearance. The vehicles will also be prepositioned for use when needed. The Army has more than 20,000 MRAPs in a tactical wheeled vehicle fleet of more than 270,000 vehicles. "That's a very small percentage," said Col. Mark Barbosa, the division chief for Force Development logistics, Army G-8. With so few MRAPs in the Army's fleet, there are no plans to build MRAP brigades, but instead the MRAPs will be prepositioned in "contingency sets," Barbosa said, ready for Soldiers that need them for missions. Other MRAPs will be used as part of predeployment training sets and for specific missions as well. Now, Barbosa said, the majority of the Army's MRAPs are still in Afghanistan, though some are leaving Kuwait and going back to the United States to depots such as Red River Army Depot, Texas or Letterkenny Army Depot, Pa. There they are reset, and receive the performance enhancements that were developed for later models. JLTV and HUMVEE Barbosa said that in the most extreme environments, the Humvee has "really met its match and it is about maxed out." The Joint Light Tactical Vehicle will slowly displace the Humvee, because it has the protection the Army is looking for. "The major modernization effort for the Army when it comes to tactical wheeled vehicles is with the JLTV," Barbosa said. Still, Maj. Gen. Tony A. Cucolo, director of force development for the Army deputy chief of staff, G-8, said there continues to be a role for the Humvee in the Army, in particular with disaster response. But it's "no longer feasible" for use in combat, he said. ARMOR Barbosa said the Army needs to "focus on the very latest when it comes to armor" for tactical wheeled vehicles. The Army budget includes money to explore "the art of the possible" with armor, but he said the Army won't buy everything at once. Instead, he said, the Army will buy armor on a continual basis, to keep up with the latest of what is available. Today's armor is "adequate," he said, but "we know tomorrow somebody is going to come out and find something that can defeat that and we want to know what the latest technology is, so that when we need to employ it quickly, we have the very best out there." Afghanistan ambassador invites U.S. Soldier to embassy [2012-04-17] WASHINGTON -- An American Soldier's simple actions in Afghanistan last year gained the attention of that nation's ambassador to the United States, who spoke April 13 with the Soldier one-on-one at the embassy in Washington, D.C. Sgt. Stephen Hirt is an imagery analyst and part of the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division. During his second deployment to Afghanistan, between 2010 and 2011, Hirt made the effort to gather a small amount of school supplies for Afghan children and to then distribute them. While handing out supplies, he also stopped to pray with the local villagers. An American Soldier, Hirt is one of the estimated 10-20,000 practicing Muslims among U.S. service members. "The commander knew that if at all possible I'd like to pray with the locals," Hirt said. "And we got there just by chance at prayer time when they were praying, and he asked, and they said it was fine, they were surprised that I was Muslim, I dropped my gear and handed the commander my weapon and prayed with the locals." Eklil Ahmad Hakimi, the ambassador to the United States from Afghanistan, said the story interested him. "I was interested to hear that, especially the experience that he had, he prayed with the Afghan community in the south, where he served," said Hakimi. "I've told him, we should communicate that somehow to Afghanistan. Some people, they don't know that within the U.S. Army, [are] people with different faiths, they serve there, without any discrimination, without any problem. These are things our people don't know. They will be more than happy to hear things like that." Hirt and Ambassador Hakami met at the Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington, D.C., April 13, for about an hour. Hirt also presented Hakami with a tactical knife inside a shadow box, as a gift. Hirt said that when he asked if he might pray with the local men in the Afghan village, he suspected they might have been suspicious of his intentions at first. "I think a lot of them doubted that I would know how to do it," he said. Hirt's been a practicing Muslim for eight years now. "I think they thought I was just trying to be polite, like having tea with them." Hirt said he prayed alongside two other men, and that another "lent me his head scarf to place down so I could pray." Later, Hirt said, he recognized that there in Afghanistan, even among strangers, and even with a language barrier, he shared something with the villagers that few others did. "I could tell they felt like they had something in common with me, even though we don't speak the same language," he said. More important, Hirt said, he suspects that his action might have helped disprove in part, the deceptions being spread by both America's and Afghanistan's enemies in the region. "In that area I would suspect that it causes a lot of people to question the propaganda the Taliban is running about 'America's war against Islam,'" Hirt said. Hakimi said the same, adding that by seeing Hirt pray with them, the Soldier had helped disprove, at least there, the myth of America and other outsiders coming to overtake Islam. The ambassador said that there are opposition forces in Afghanistan that are intent on convincing villagers that outside forces, including ISAF, NATO forces, and the United States, are there to invade the country. "That is not the case," Hakimi said. "[America] came there to help us get rid of terrorism. [America], with us, we have invested blood and treasure to get rid of terrorists, and to bring institutions based on democratic values. These are the things that you are doing. That is why we have paid a huge, huge price. That example [of Hirt praying], that will change not only people's minds, but it will counter the enemy's agenda." White House honors 'Champion of Change' for Afghanistan energy-saving [2012-04-20] WASHINGTON -- An Army Reserve officer who researched the effectiveness of energy-saving "micro-grid" technology in Afghanistan was among nine Americans honored as "Champions of Change" by the White House, April 19. As a civilian, Alan Samuels works as a research chemist at Edgewood Chemical Biological Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., where he studies remote-sensing technology for the Army. As a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, he recently returned from deployment to Afghanistan, where he supported the efforts of the Army's Research, Development, and Engineering Command to evaluate better ways to more efficiently use energy in a combat environment. "It's a very humbling thing for me as a research chemist without any real expertise in power and energy," Samuels said of being honored as a Champion of Change. "I am glad I was able to make a contribution to help out." Samuels deployed to Afghanistan in April 2011 to stand up a science and technology integration and collaboration center at Bagram Airfield. He and his team collaborated and shared information with other Army and Department of Defense agencies in theater to address operational energy challenges there. One of the efforts Samuels was involved in was to assess, in an operational environment, the efficiency of traditional power-distribution systems using generators, and how that changes with the addition of "micro-grid" technology. Traditional power-distribution networks on a forward operating base, or FOB, in a combat environment, Samuels said, are using fuel inefficiently. "We had 60kw generators putting out anywhere from 5-15kw around the FOB," he explained. "That is kind of bad news for the generator systems. They are using a lot of fuel they don't have to. Second, there are maintenance issues. Since the generator is not running at its load, then it's not reaching the temperature it needs to efficiently burn that fuel and put out the power, based on the demand." Micro-grid technology, Samuel said, makes the whole system more efficient and so they use less fuel. "So what these computer technologies do as components of the micro-grid systems is sense that load and only turn on those generators that are needed," he said. "And their maintenance, as well as their fuel consumption, goes way down." Samuels said in Afghanistan, in an operational environment, he was able to observe a 17-percent reduction in the amount of fuel used, relative to the baseline, just using micro-grid technology. Samuels said assessments for how fuel usage numbers change, how efficiency changes with demand-side reductions in energy use, are still underway. The "demand side" of the energy equation is the user, and how much electricity he pulls from the grid. Ways to reduce efficiency on the user side can involve things like improving the efficiency of environmental control units that cool and heat tents, placing shades over the tops of tents to reduce solar loads, and using thermal quilts to insulate tents, "so you are not trying to cool the tent when you really only have the thickness of canvas as insulation," Samuels said. Those kinds of improvements to demand-side efficiency could also significantly reduce the amount of fuel used on a FOB or a combat outpost, or COP, Samuels said. But those assessments are still underway, because they will be conducted through multiple seasons in theater to get the best numbers. Reducing the amount of fuel used in theater is not just an environmental concern, or even a cost concern, it's a concern for the lives of Soldiers. "The Army's mission is very dependent on power and energy, and upon our ability to adapt, change and innovate to the circumstances in which our forces find ourselves," said Katherine Hammack, the assistant secretary of the Army for Installations, Environment and Technology. Technology, like micro-grids, can reduce fuel usage, and the great costs associated with providing it. "It means that we can have fewer fuel convoys on the road," Hammack said. "One in every 46 convoys suffers a casualty, which means if we have fewer convoys over the road, we are saving lives." Secretary of Army recognizes innovation [2012-04-24] WASHINGTON -- Four Soldiers who built a training device to teach service members to safely exit an overturned Humvee were among 22 troops and civilians honored April 24 as part of the 2012 Secretary of the Army Awards. Under Secretary of the Army Joseph W. Westphal hosted the ceremony at the Pentagon and told attendees that the "tools of innovation," which include creativity and design, are key to America's "ability to win wars, to shape the environment and to deter aggression." Winners were chosen in categories including diversity and leadership, small and disadvantaged business utilization, editing and publications, exceptional civilian service and "suggester of the year." The Secretary of the Army awards program bestows upon Army civilians and Soldiers alike, recognition from the service's secretary, John M. McHugh. While the Army's undersecretary presented the awards, McHugh spelled out in an official letter regarding the program, the importance of the contributions of the winners. "People are our greatest resource," McHugh wrote. "The quality of your service and the depths of your commitment are reasons why our Army is the best-led, best-trained and best-equipped force the world has ever seen." Westphal said the 22 chosen for recognition are "instruments of transformation, truly pioneers who have fundamentally changed the ways in which the Army is doing business. Our business processes are profoundly more powerful and proficient because of these men and women." With the awards program, the undersecretary said, the Army is able to "empower a culture of seeking the best solutions at the lowest cost. These leaders have driven down the cost of doing business, not only in terms of money, but more importantly in terms of lives." Among those whose contributions save lives are the four Soldiers who teamed to build the "HMMWV Egress Assistance Trainer," or "HEAT." The training device helps Soldiers and other service members learn to escape from an overturned Humvee. "We built the prototype and got it inducted into Army training, and now it's part of the curriculum for every unit going down range," said Sgt. Mickey L. Hill, 82nd Sustainment Brigade, XVIII Airborne Corps, U.S. Army Forces Command, Fort Bragg, N.C. Hill was part of a team that included Chief Warrant Officer 4 Rick Cox, Sgt. 1st Class James A. Jett Jr., and Staff Sgt. Christopher R. Whiting that devised the training device, which involves a Humvee that can be mechanically flipped using hydraulics. Their construction of the device was in response to combat losses in theater from Soldiers unable to escape from overturned Humvees. "After so many losses in Operation Iraqi Freedom to begin with, from vehicle fatalities specifically from vehicle rollovers, FORSCOM directed their safety office to come up with an idea," said Jett. "At the time, the only training tool was a graphic training aid, a card. [Chief Cox] had the idea and came up with the materials. We assisted him in actually fabricating from what his idea was, to making it work." The Army has now adopted that training tool worldwide, and a similar tool is now going to be used that trains Soldiers to exit an overturned mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle, known as an MRAP. Whiting said the recognition is great, but he's more pleased with the results their efforts have had on the force at large. In the first year of use, there was a 31-percent decrease in Army tactical vehicle fatalities. "I'm glad at the outcome, not necessarily what I'm receiving," Whiting said. "It's already a proven effect. The tool is there and it is a great success." Edward E. Gozdur was another award recipient who was proud of his accomplishments. He led a team that demonstrated the capabilities of manned/unmanned aerial teaming. Gozdur, deputy product manager, Common Systems Integration Product Management Office, Program Executive Office, Aviation, led a team of 37 individuals in demonstrating interoperability between manned aircraft like the AH-64 Apache and OH-58 Kiowa Warrior, and the unmanned Hunter, Shadow and Grey Eagle aircraft. "It's a great honor and I just wish my team could be here to enjoy this," Gozdur said. "We showed Army interoperability for unnamed systems. We showed how manned/unmanned teaming could improve the Army, and we showed interoperability commonality, how it can take the Army forward to save money, save lives and win the battle." Godzur said his team was also responsible for demonstrating for the first time that all the systems could be flown with a single ground control system, or GCS, called the "One System Remote Video Terminal" that controls unmanned vehicles from the ground. "Now one GCS can fly all the airplanes we have out there," he said. There are three such controllers now, but soon, he said "in the very near future, there will be one, and it will be with a big 'U', universal." Before handing out awards to the winners, Westphal told them it is their kind of contribution that keeps America in a leadership position. The difference between an America that can lead, or that will fail to keep up, Westphal said, is the failure of institutions to prioritize innovation. "Our Army, your Army, this nation's Army, will be an institution that leads in innovation, because of the people we will honor today, and others like you who are currently working and will be working in this great institution," he said. The complete list of winners from the 2012 Secretary of the Army Awards: Diversity and Leadership Programs Award -- Herbert A. Coley, chief of staff, U.S. Army Medical Command, Fort Sam Houston, Texas Diversity and Leadership Award (Equal Employment Opportunity Professional) -- Phyllis Brantley, chief special emphasis programs and diversity management, National Guard Bureau, Arlington, Va. Diversity and Leadership Award (Equal Opportunity Advisor) -- Master Sgt. Tracy Y. Marshall, senior equal opportunity advisor, U.S. Army Central, Shaw Air Force Base, S.C. Small and Disadvantaged Business utilization Award -- Maj. Gen. Merdith Temple, Deputy Commanding general and commanding general (acting) U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Washington, D.C. Secretary of the Army Award for Editor of the Year (departmental) -- Kathleen A. Anshant, writer-editor, Office of the Administrative Sssistant to the Secretary of the Army, Washington, D.C. Secretary of the Army Award for Publications Improvements (Departmental) -- Debbie L. Rivenbark, Stephen A. Moran, Stephen P. Wehrly, Elaine S. McIver, Brenda C. Taylor and Mary C. Carpi, Army Publishing Directorate, Lean Six Sigma Publishing Team, Fort Belvoir, Va. Suggester of the Year (Civilian) -- Kenneth A. Greene, mechanical engineer, Detroit Arsenal, Warren, Mich. Suggester of the Year (Military) -- Chief Warrant Officer4 Rick Cox, safety officer, Army National Guard and Safety, Arlington, Va. -- Sgt. Mickey L. Hill, 82nd Sustainment Brigade, XVIII Airborne Corps, FORSCOM, Fort Bragg, N.C. -- Sgt. 1st Class James A. Jett Jr., Army Safety Augmentation Detachment, FORSCOM HQ, FORSCOM, Fort Bragg, N.C. -- Staff Sgt. Christopher R. Whiting, Equipment Concentration Site 43, 81st Regional Reserve Command, USARC, Fort Benning, Ga. Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service -- Dr. Patrick J. Baker, chief of Protection Division, U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md. -- Harry V. Cunningham, supervisory general engineer, C4 and test technology directorates, Aberdeen Test Center, U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command, Aberdeen, Md. -- Edward E. Gozdur, deputy product manager, Common Systems Integration Product Management Office, Program Executive Office, Aviation, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics and Technology), Washington, D.C. -- Mark A. Greer, site manager, Pine Bluff Chemical Agent Disposal Facility, U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency, Pine Bluff, Ark. -- Dr. Maryanne T. Vahey, science director, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Silver Spring, Md. -- Steven R. West, deputy, Accelerated Capabilities Division, Requirements Integration Directorate, Army Capabilities Integration Center, Fort Eustis, Va. Foreign military sales make partnerships strong, keep production lines hot [2012-04-25] WASHINGTON -- On the Arabian Peninsula, the Saudi government has purchased $17 billion in military hardware from the United States. But they don't buy it directly from manufacturers like Boeing or Sikorsky, they buy it instead through U.S. government intermediaries, like the Army's Security Assistance Management Directorate. The Saudis have purchased for their Royal Saudi Land Forces and Saudi National Guard UH-60 Black Hawk, CH-47 Chinook and AH-64 Apache helicopters, as well as the light-weight MD 500 helicopter. "There's full suite of our aircraft going in for Saudi Arabia," said Jeff Young, director for the Army Aviation and Missile Command's security assistance management directorate. Young referred to the deal as a "mega sale." Also in the region, he said, the first sale of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, missile system has been made to the United Arab Emirates. And on the other side of Asia, the Taiwanese signed a $4.1 billion deal for the Patriot Missile system. "Our most popular, one of our most capable systems," Young said. Young's directorate deals in missile and aviation sales to the militaries of America's allies. In the first five months of fiscal year 2012, they managed some $11.8 billion in sales, and managed more than 870 FMS cases worth $62.3 billion dollars in more than 160 countries. 'TOTAL PACKAGE APPROACH' The Army manages sales of an entire array of equipment to allies, including things the Army uses, such as the Black Hawk and the Apache, "one of our biggest sellers," Young said, as well as "non-standard" equipment that the Army never used, or that is no longer in use. The UH-1 Iroquois, or "Huey" is considered non-standard now. But it's not just equipment sales Young deals in. There are also training and maintenance packages that come with the sales. And the benefits aren't just to the buyer, they go all around. With FMS, the buyer gets new equipment and guidance, the manufacturer gets increased sales, and the United States strengthens its military-to-military ties with the new owner through training opportunities and increased equipment interoperability. "By selling equipment, we are able to enable the strategic goals of the United States," Young said. "The State Department will decide what kinds of capabilities that we want certain countries to have, and then they will ask us in turn to enable those capabilities, with equipment, with training and with maintenance." Young said his directorate always tries to broker deals with a "total package approach." "We sell to them the hardware, along with training to go with it, training by our people," he said. KEEPING LINES OPEN There's financial benefit to FMS as well, and not just to the manufacturer of the equipment. "One of the other big reasons from an economic point of view for us to continue to sell equipment to foreign nations is that it allows us to keep our production lines open," Young said. "FMS allows us to keep the industrial base hot all the time." Keeping an aircraft's production line "hot" means that the production line, and the expansive network of sub-contractors and sub-sub-contractors that supply that production line with parts, is always moving, always producing a new airframe. When there are no more buyers for the aircraft, that manufacturing system can't stay open long. It's expensive to keep laborers employed and systems in place to produce an aircraft that nobody wants to buy any more. And once that system shuts down, it's difficult to start it back up. "It costs a lot of money to rehire, retool lines to start production up," Young said. "By working with foreign countries, we can understand what they are going to need and we plug that in to the demand to keep that production line open." A tertiary benefit, Young said, is that when aircraft keep getting produced "we actually get a lower price for all of us, not just the foreign customers, but for us as well." TRAINING NEW CUSTOMERS Chief Warrant Officer 4 Christopher Hunt, of the Security Assistance Training Management Organization, or SATMO, manages teams that train FMS buyers on the new equipment they have purchased. "We integrate ourselves into the total package approach by providing training for that equipment," Hunt said. "We travel overseas and we place those teams in country to train them, help them with the delivery of the equipment they just purchased, the assembly and then operation." For purchasers of the Apache aircraft, Hunt said, the pilots would come to the United States first for an initial qualification course. After that, he said, SATMO takes over in the buyer's country. "Once they take delivery of the aircraft in their country, we will assist them in providing tactical training, domestic operations training and maintenance training," Hunt said. What FMS buyers get, Hunt said, is whatever they ask for in the deal. "We'll give you everything that you ask for," he said. "We'll start with maintenance, assembly, we have large advising teams in countries, both contract and active-duty military, to teach how to repair and maintain as well as how to operate." Hunt said SATMO is working now in more than 70 nations, but his own teams include one in Egypt that specializes in the Chinook and the Apache, as well as another team in Bahrain that specializes in Black Hawks. The Chinook, he said, has been in Egypt since 2001, and the Apache has been there since 1991. "I can't put a number on the amount of pilots we have actually trained," he said. "I can tell you we have advised them for several years and assisted them for several years. And because of that, our relationship with the country of Egypt is very strong, military-to-military." Not all equipment the United States sells to allies comes with training packages, but, Hunt said, "our preference is to provide that entire package to assist with its use." Hunt said that by providing training to the nations that buy equipment from the United States, it increases the opportunities to work together military-to-military to create working, lasting relationships. "Partnership building is part of one of the largest benefits that we see," Hunt said. "It's building and maintaining friendships, it's about building allies. United States Central Command, or CENTCOM, is obviously a very busy place for the United States now. The more that we can help those countries not only defend, but operate amongst themselves, the stronger our friendship will become, and the less reliant they [will be] on the United States for assistance." Army asks for armed aerial scout demonstration [2012-05-01] WASHINGTON -- The Army released to industry, April 25, a "request for information" about a replacement for the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior aircraft, including a proposal to industry to provide for the Army a demonstration of the current "state of the art" in rotary-wing aircraft and their subsystems. It's expected any demonstrations would happen this summer or fall. Currently, the Army has more than 300 Kiowa Warriors filling the armed aerial scout, or AAS, role. But that airframe entered into service during the 1960s and no longer meets all the needs of commanders. Yet it still remains in high demand. "The Kiowa Warrior, in its current form, is still the basic airframe of an OH-58A/C that we flew in Vietnam," said Ellis W. Golsen, director of the Capability Development and Integration Directorate at the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence. "We have continued to modify it and address it. But the airframe itself and the environments we fly in now and the ones we look to in the future are going to require greater performance." Golsen said the Kiowa Warrior, as an AAS, is "our most demanded capability," and added that the Army's AAS has not received the attention other airframes have. "If you look at the history so far, we have corrected or adjusted or fielded an upgraded system for everything except AAS," he said. "But those are the guys that are continuing to have to fly in a hostile environment, to provide close support to ground Soldiers, and that's the reason we exist, to provide support to the ground Soldiers." The request for information, known as an RFI, spells out capability shortfalls with the current OH-58D. Those shortfalls include responsiveness in terms of speed, range and endurance; the performance margin to operate in high and hot environments; and aircraft lethality due to limitations on weapons payload capacity. Officials expect that this summer or fall, they should begin viewing demonstrations of aircraft from industry. And industry participation in the demonstration is totally voluntary, the RFI explains. Aircraft developers who don't participate in the demonstration will have an equal chance to compete to sell the Army a new armed aerial scout, or AAS, if and when the Army decides to buy one. "This voluntary flight demonstration is really an effort, an extension of the 'analysis of alternatives,' or AOA, to help us verify the data in the AOA and give us a better idea of what we can ask for, and what is achievable within our budget constraints," Golsen said. There are multiple options for the Army to purchase a new AAS. Included in those are: -- improving the current Kiowa Warrior to fill its capability gaps -- creating a new aircraft, a developmental aircraft, from the ground up -- pursuing a commercial off-the-shelf replacement. The COTS solution means finding something already being made by industry, and deciding that with acceptable modifications it could fit the Army's needs. Maj. Gen. Anthony G. Crutchfield, commander of the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence, said in Afghanistan today, the Kiowa Warrior is showing gaps in what it's able to do. "The Kiowa Warrior, quite frankly, has challenges in some of the altitudes that we fly in Afghanistan, in reaching those altitudes, and having the appropriate station time that a ground commander needs," he said. "That is one of the biggest gaps. We want to be able to not only reach the target area, but we want to have the loiter time commanders need." Crutchfield said commanders can make trades with the capabilities of the Kiowa Warrior, such as adjusting the aircraft's weight by taking less fuel or less ammunition. Those kinds of changes can affect altitude, station time and payload. A longer range, with altitude and environment taken into consideration, might mean a tradeoff with fuel and ammunition, for instance. Less fuel can also means less station time, and less ammunition might mean not meeting a ground commander's needs. "It's trades, it's give and take," Crutchfield said. "What we'd like to see is an aircraft that we don't have to make that choice; that we don't have to give up something. We can give the commander the station time he needs and the payload that he needs. That's what we are really after." The Army's current AAS, the Kiowa Warrior, is good at "going out and finding things, reporting them, synchronizing the battlefield, calling for indirect fire, and doing all the other things we expect of a scout on the battlefield." Like AH-64 Apache, the Kiowa Warrior is armed, but unlike the Apache, the Kiowa Warrior is more subtle in its approach, Golsen said. "When you're doing recon, you don't necessarily want the other guy to know you're looking at him," he said. "Apache is big and heavy, it was designed to go out and no kidding, kill stuff." The AAS needs to be able to loiter and watch, and to be ready at a moment's notice "to deal with fleeting targets that you don't have time to coordinate for, and you have a small window of opportunity to destroy the target and it's a high pay-off target," Golsen said. WTU Soldiers say competition helps heal at Warrior Games [2012-05-02] WASHINGTON -- The Soldiers competing this week in the Warrior Games at Colorado Springs, Colo., are members of one of the 29 Warrior Transition Units spread across the Army. They are wounded, ill and injured Soldier-athletes with prosthetics, amputations, traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress, and "through sport, daily activity and getting a sweat, they get better," said Brig. Gen. Darryl A. Williams, assistant surgeon general and commander, Warrior Transition Command. "That's the resiliency of our Army," he said. Williams spoke to reporters, May 1, via telephone, from the Warrior Games in Colorado. He said the Soldiers who compete in the games signed up for military service to be something bigger and better than themselves. America, he said, doesn't know "these Soldiers that surround me. They get after it every single day. It just shows the strength (of) Soldiers who have given some, and some have given all. They are the best of our country." While not all Soldiers that have been injured in combat will end up back in uniform, Williams said that since 2007, the Army's Warrior Transition program has transitioned 22,000 back to the Army. The equivalent of about two divisions of Soldiers, Williams said, has since returned to uniform after overcoming traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress. While not all Soldiers in the Army's Warrior Transition Units come to the games, Williams said, there is a "vibrant, adaptive sports program" at all of the Army's WTUs. Two Soldiers who did come to the games this year are Lt. Col. Daniel Dudek and Spc. Jasmine Perry. SPC. PERRY Perry is a recovering Soldier in the WTU at Fort Campbell, Ky. She was injured during a training accident in May 2005 at Fort Carson, Colo. Her left leg was amputated below the knee as a result of her injury. She said she was always active in sports before her injury, but afterward, it was the very language surrounding her injury that initially kept her from continuing to compete. "The word 'adaptive,' to me, makes me feel different, and I didn't want to feel different than my other friends," she said. "Adaptive sports" is a term used to describe traditional athletics that have been modified to compensate for people with disabilities. In 2010, Perry said, she went to the Center for the Intrepid, now at San Antonio Army Medical Center. "I was seeing injuries way worse than I was experiencing," she said. "They strapped me into a wheelchair, got me playing wheelchair basketball to boost my ego a little bit after scoring a few points. And since then I've been involved in adaptive sports, and that's what brought me here today for the Warrior Games for the second year." In 2011, Perry won gold in the seated shot put competition. This year, she's competing in the 50-meter freestyle and 50-meter backstroke competition, as well as the 100-meter sprint and standing shot put competition. Competition at the Warrior Games, Perry said, may only be slightly different than competition at any other athletic competition. "I think it's a lot more aggressive," she said. "They have something to go out there and prove as much as you do. We all get along pretty good. The morale is good. But when it's time to compete, it's time to compete -- you don't have friends." Perry serves as the Defense Travel System specialist for her Warrior Transition Unit. LT. COL. DUDEK Dudek was injured July 9, 2007, when an explosively-formed penetrator came through the back of his Stryker in Iraq. Another Soldier was killed during the attack, Dudek said, and he was severely injured. "After a quick firefight and a helicopter ride, within an hour I had a laminectomy, surgery on my spine to release the pressure," he said. "It gave me the ability to get my quads and hamstrings back. And so I had a long road ahead of me for recover." Dudek's injury has left him unable to walk without assistance, as he is paralyzed below both knees. "Nothing below the knee works; I have braces that let me get around. I think I get around okay. I use a wheelchair most of the time. But I am able to get around with forearm crutches, if I need to intimidate people." Dudek said the chronic pain from his injury made it easy for him to gain weight, until a "really pushy person" got him playing golf again. "I started realizing a lot of the obstacles in front of me were just illusions I'd put in front of myself and I started swimming again and I started going skiing," he said. "I started realizing a lot of things I used to do I could still do, I can do with an adapted piece of equipment. America's behind me 100 percent in terms of equipment and facilities and expertise and so the community was there in a way that I had never seen before." Since his injury, Dudek has participated in the Army Ten miler, a Sprint Triathlon and the Seattle-to-Portland cycling event. He also said he's been a life-long swimmer, and he'll capitalize on his love of the pool during the Warrior Games. "I'll take what I've learned the last two months and apply it and do my best to kick some butt in swimming," he said. "That's why I'm here and what I'm going to do for my Army." Dudek served as commander of the Warrior Transition Battalion at Joint Base Lewis-McChord before he joined the Warrior Transition Command headquarters staff. There he serves as the Plans, Policy, and Procedures Branch Chief. Microemulsion could allow vaccines to be stockpiled long-term [2012-05-09] WASHINGTON -- At an Army medical lab in San Antonio, the observed stability of a recently concocted "microemulsion" could one day be key to the long-term stockpiling of important vaccines for distribution in case of disaster. Maj. Jean M. Muderhwa, a biochemist who serves as deputy director of the lab at the Department of Clinical Investigation at Brooke Army Medical Center, formulated the mixture which appears robust for both longevity and temperature variations. The compound was stored at both room temperature and in the refrigerator with equal results. "They have been stable for eight months; so storing at room temperature does not hurt," he said. Muderhwa recently presented his findings at the annual meeting of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Some vaccines are created in the form of an emulsion, a mixture of an oil and water that requires high energy input for its formulation. While a vaccine is in storage, the ingredients of the emulsion protect and preserve the "protein antigen" portion of the vaccine, its active component. The emulsion also serves as a medium to deliver the antigen into the body. Additionally, the emulsion can help the antigen stick locally inside the body for a longer time. That gives the immune system of an individual or patient more time to react to the antigen. But emulsions can separate due to time and temperature changes. When that happens to vaccines in storage they may have to be destroyed, Muderhwa said. Finding an emulsion that is more robust is important to creating vaccines that can be shelf-stable for longer periods of time. "If you make an emulsion containing the vaccine, the emulsion only lasts a few weeks or few months," Muderhwa said. "When they separate, the components begin to degrade; either by oxidation or other means." Muderhwa has worked to develop an emulsion that forms readily and sometimes spontaneously and that would last longer by being thermodynamically stable. One way to do that is with a microemulsion. The particles of oil in the microemulsion are smaller than in a regular emulsion. "When you have an emulsion of the oil-in-water type, and you measure the particle size of the oil, you can make those particles smaller and smaller by adding a co-surfactant, such as a short chained alcohol, for example, isopropanol or pentanol," he said. "By doing that, you ensure the flexibility of the interfacial layer leading to decreased interfacial tension to nearly zero. The result is a transparent solution. And this solution is thermodynamically stable." In Muderhwa's microemulsion, he didn't use isopropanol or pentanol because of its toxicity if administered internally and because of its effect of destabilizing the system with time. Instead, he used glycerol as the "co-surfactant." A co-surfactant works in addition to two pharmaceutically-acceptable surfactants, Span 80 and Tween 60, in the microemulsion. "The co-surfactant works with the surfactants to reduce the surface tension to near zero," Muderhwa said. "In an emulsion, the surface tension is not zero. So the molecules repeal themselves with time until they fail because of the tension. So they give up. They fail to stay together for a long time. In a microemulsion, since you are suppressing that interfacial tension, the particles stick closer to one another. " A vaccine, however, is not simply oil, water, surfactants and in the case of Muderhwa's compound, the co-surfactant glycerol. A vaccine must also contain its active component, the protein antigen, and also sometimes adjuvants such as aluminum hydroxide and aluminum phosphate. While Muderhwa saw that the microemulsion he'd created was stable, he'd also need to add the additional important components to make it a vaccine. "Microemulsions are very sensitive to change in composition. If you add an extra compound, they also separate quickly like in the case of emulsions," he said. "But what I have found is that, if I add aluminum adjuvant compounds, which are the only ones approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in human vaccines like influenza, and I mix that microemulsion with the aluminum compounds, it is still stable". Thus, Muderhwa's concoction is the result of a composite adjuvant formulation consisting of a microemulsion containing aluminum-adsorbed model protein antigens and immunogenic agents, such as microbial cell components, for example monophosphyl lipid A. Muderhwa used both aluminum hydroxide and aluminum phosphate in his compound. Just how long will the components of the microemulsion stay emulsified? It's been less than a year at this point, but Muderhwa thinks the microemulsion he's put together in his lab could be stable for a long, long time. "I think years. Ten or fifteen or twenty years," he said. Longer stability for a vaccine means that large amounts of vaccines could be manufactured and stored for emergency use. "The Army can have this vaccine to be distributed to Soldiers and to the population," he said. "I think the future will be to make, for example, a vaccine against biological weapons. You can make a vaccine containing anthrax or containing neurotoxins, and stockpile them." Muderhwa's research opens up new possibilities in vaccine research. "In contrast to emulsions, microemulsions are thermodynamically stable and are easy to formulate," he said. "Also, given their larger interfacial area, i.e., large surface-to-volume ratio, these dispersions will provide the opportunity to study the effect of increasing the surface area increase on the immune response." Right now, though, the work is still in the experimental stages, he said, and it could be some time before there is benefit to the Army. "This is just a formulation to be used to test on mice. If it works in mice, I will have to apply for an investigational new drug with the FDA, to allow me to start clinical trials in humans," he said. "It's a long process that will take time." Odierno: Soldiers must take action to prevent sexual assault [2012-05-09] WASHINGTON -- In the Army's fight against sexual harassment and assault, Soldiers cannot be passive. They must recognize and confront other Soldiers engaged in offensive behavior or who may sexually assault someone. "We need to eliminate the prevalent bystander mentality," said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno. "It's intolerable to me that there are people that see sexual harassment or circumstances that could lead to sexual assault, and choose to turn the other way." Odierno spoke May 8 before the 2012 "I. A.M. Strong Sexual Harassment/Assault Prevention Summit," just outside Washington, D.C. Odierno said passive bystanders who do not assist those who they think might be at risk of sexual assault, and who aren't willing to confront those who might offend, are part of the problem. "When you have a Solider that sees a situation where there is high potential for either a sexual assault or sexual harassment happening -- say it's on a weekend, you're out at a bar, or you see somebody coming back to the barracks -- and you have a feeling that something (might happen), you intervene and make sure it doesn't and make sure all the parties involved understand how serious this is," Odierno said. The general said that Soldiers must be empowered to prevent sexual assault and sexual harassment from happening in the first place and that taking care of fellow Soldiers is part of being in the Army. "It's about Soldiers taking care of Soldiers," he said. "We're supposed to be there for each other all the time; whether we're fighting in Afghanistan, or we're at home, we have each other's backs. We have each other's rights and lefts. We are there to help them, and we should never tolerate somebody else who is not living up to that standard." Odierno said females make up about 14 percent of the force, but about 90 percent of the victims for violent sex crimes. He also said there are 2.5 cases of sexual assault per 1,000 Soldiers, a number roughly equivalent to one squad within a brigade combat team. "Those are just the victims that choose to report," he said. "There are so many that do not feel comfortable to report." Some of those victims are embarrassed to report, he said. Some fear of retribution by the chain of command. "They believe the boys club will take over and not protect them if they come forward. That is not tolerable to me." It's not just Soldiers that Odierno believes must be responsible for curbing sexual assault and sexual harassment in the Army. Commanders, too, have been tasked with broader responsibility. Commanders must establish a command climate of trust and accountability, and they must reinforce that with education and training, Odierno said. They must also conduct assessments using command climate surveys to sustain the right climate in commands. "I'm going to ask that every commander must conduct a command climate survey within their first three months, again at six months following, then every year," Odierno said, adding that command climates must be established that are open and transparent. Commanders must also ensure that Soldiers who are the victims of sexual assault or harassment must feel comfortable reporting those crimes. "We must develop those climates that make it easy and make people believe that when they report a crime, action will be taken," he said. "There are few things that I believe are more inconsistent with our Army values than this," Odierno said. "Our Army faces many threats and risks. But these specific threats emanate from within our own corps. They have a corrosive effect on our unit readiness, team cohesion, command environment, and trust of Soldiers and family members. We must make every single effort to take care of and protect each other. That's what we do, that's who we are." Austin: Army takes advantage of training opportunities with reduced OPTEMPO [2012-05-10] WASHINGTON -- With the military out of Iraq, there's more time for Soldiers to train for the next fight, the vice chief of staff of the Army said. "As we have come out of Iraq, we have more opportunities to train at home station and we are taking advantage of those opportunities," said Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III. "And again, as we retrograde our equipment and put that equipment through reset, more equipment is being made available (to use for training.)" Austin spoke May 10 on Capitol Hill before the Senate Committee on Armed Services, subcommittee on readiness and management support, discussing the current readiness of the Army. "We are already beginning to reap some of the benefits of that slowdown," Austin told lawmakers. Even with the Army out of Iraq, it is still preparing to come out of Afghanistan, and the general said, "much work lies ahead," in that regard. The Army is still placing priority on the fight there, while at the same time it is working at home "to help heal and alleviate some of the stress on our personnel." Austin told lawmakers that with the Army pulling out of Afghanistan it is going to need funding to reset the heavily-used equipment that comes out of the country. "It will take about two to three years, beyond the complete retrograde of our equipment out of Afghanistan, to reset that equipment," he said. "And we certainly need to be funded to do so." Without that funding, he said, the Army will be required to accept risk in other areas "at significant cost with a negative impact on readiness." Also on the minds of lawmakers is what the Army will do with "non-standard" equipment. Austin said the Army is already assessing non-standard equipment in terms of numbers of vehicles and weapons. "I have a real concern about how much equipment we are asking our troops to maintain that may not be useful to us anymore, and (that) we may not be able to afford to sustain," he said. "So we are going through a very deliberate process of making sure that we keep what we need and we transition things we don't need and can't afford." Also being assessed, he said, is the status of the mine resistant, ambush-protected vehicle, known as the MRAP, how many the Army will keep once it is out of Afghanistan, and how it will pay to maintain those vehicles. "We won't be able to rely on contractor logistics for the foreseeable future," he said. "That is very expensive. We are going through an assessment on how many MRAPs we are going to keep and what the disposition of those is going to be and again, we will outline what the maintenance and supply chain will be." The Army is looking at reducing the number of Soldiers in the Army by 79,000. Austin said to do that, the Army will need continued overseas contingency operations funding to ensure a gradual reduction in forces and to prevent negative consequences that would come from drawing down too quickly. "This funding is imperative to our ability to manage a gradual reduction to our end strength over the next five years," Austin said. The lack of continued OCO funding will force a steeper drawdown "primarily through involuntary separations and other means that could result in significant hardship for thousands of Army combat veterans and their families, and generate a large bill for unemployment and other related costs." The active component will draw down 79,000 Soldiers to 490,000 by the end of fiscal year 2017. In the Reserve Component, by fiscal year 2018, the Army National Guard will draw down by 8,000 Soldiers, to reach 350,200 end strength. Also looming on the horizon is possible implementation of the "sequestration" that was spelled out in the Budget Control Act of 2011. As part of that act, lawmakers who were part of a "super committee" last year were tasked with finding $1.2 trillion in savings, or risk across-the-board reductions in funding. Because a resolution was not reached, as much as half that amount could now automatically be cut from the Department of Defense through sequestration. While the Army has not actually planned for sequestration to happen, Austin said a "back-of-the-envelope" calculation shows that implementation of sequestration could mean an additional force cut of 100,000 Soldiers on top of the 79,000 it is already planning to cut. About half of the additional cuts could come from the Reserve Component, he said. Despite the already planned force cuts of 79,000 Soldiers, Austin said the Army is confident that it will continue to be "sufficiently agile, adaptable, and responsive," as well as able to grow capacity as needed in response to unforeseen contingencies. "The key to our success," he said, "is balancing the three rheostats of force structure, modernization and readiness. That is where we are focusing our efforts." President presents Medal of Honor to Vietnam hero's widow [2012-05-16] WASHINGTON -- More than 42 years after performing selfless, heroic actions in Cambodia, which resulted in his death, Spc. 4 Leslie H. Sabo Jr. was recognized at a White House ceremony when his widow accepted the Medal of Honor on his behalf. Among those attending the May 16 ceremony in the White House's East Room were Sabo's widow Rose Mary and members his unit: Company B, 3rd Battalion, 506th Infantry, 101st Airborne Division. President Barack Obama presided over the ceremony, addressing Sabo's widow, his brother George, his fellow comrades in arms, and more than 100 other military personnel and government officials in attendance at the event, including Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Sandy Winnefeld, Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno, and Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III. "Today is also a solemn reminder that when an American does not come home from war, it is our military families and veterans who bear that sacrifice for a lifetime," the president said. "They are spouses, like Rose Mary, who all these years since Vietnam still displays in her home her husband's medals and decorations. They are siblings, like Leslie's big brother George, who carries the childhood memories of his little brother tagging along at his side. And they are our veterans, like the members of Bravo Company, who still speak of their brother Les with reverence and with love." It was 42 years ago this month, May 10, 1970, that Sabo was killed in action in Cambodia. Sabo and his platoon had been conducting a reconnaissance patrol in Se San, Cambodia, when they were ambushed from all sides by a large enemy force. Sabo charged an enemy position there and killed several of the enemy soldiers. Afterward, he assaulted an enemy flanking force, drawing their fire away from friendly Soldiers and forcing the enemy to retreat. In order to re-supply ammunition, Sabo sprinted across an open field to a wounded comrade. As he began to reload, an enemy grenade landed nearby. Sabo picked up the grenade, threw it, and shielded his fellow Soldier with his own body, absorbing the brunt of the blast and saving his comrade's life. Wounded by the blast, Sabo charged an enemy bunker that had inflicted damage on the platoon, and received several serious wounds from automatic weapons fire in the process. Mortally injured, he crawled toward the enemy emplacement and, when in position, threw a grenade into the bunker. The resulting explosion silenced the enemy fire, but also ended Sabo's life. "Leslie Sabo left behind a wife who adored him, a brother who loved him, parents who cherished him, and family and friends who admired him," the president said. "But they never knew. For decades, they never knew their Les had died a hero. The fog of war, and paperwork that seemed to get lost in the shuffle, meant this story was almost lost to history." The president explained that it was a Vietnam veteran from the 101st Airborne Division that had found a proposed Medal of Honor citation for Sabo amongst archival material in the National Archives. That veteran asked the questions necessary and put in the effort required to turn that proposed citation into recognition for Sabo. The president thanked the veteran for making it know to everybody that Sabo was a war hero -- deserving of the nation's highest military honor. But Sabo wasn't the only Soldier who died that day, the president said. Seven others died alongside him. "Those who came home took on one last mission -- and that was to make sure America would honor their fallen brothers," Obama said. "They had no idea how hard it would be, or how long it would take." Following his remarks, the citation for Sabo's Medal of Honor was read, and the president passed the framed medal to Sabo's widow, Rose Mary. Rose Mary and Leslie had been married after Leslie returned from basic training, and before he shipped off to Vietnam. Following the ceremony, Rose Mary Sabo-Brown said it is not just her husband she keeps in her heart. "My heart beams with pride for Leslie because he is finally receiving tribute for his sacrifices and bravery," she said. "Along with Leslie, please don't forget the seven other men who lost their lives that fateful day in 1970. They are all heroes to me too." More than 58,000 American service members were killed during the Vietnam War. America first sent troops to the country in 1962, 50 years ago. "This month, we'll begin to mark the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, a time when, to our shame, our veterans did not always receive the respect and the thanks they deserved -- a mistake that must never be repeated," Obama said. "And that's where I want to begin today, because the story of this Medal of Honor reminds us of our sacred obligations to all who serve." Sabo inducted into Pentagon Hall of Heroes [2012-05-17] WASHINGTON -- A day after Spc. 4 Leslie H. Sabo Jr. was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, Army and Defense officials inducted him into the Pentagon's Hall of Heroes. During the May 17 induction ceremony, a new plaque bearing Sabo's name was revealed and placed on a wall in the Hall of Heroes in the Pentagon, permanently enshrining the Soldier's name there along with the names of nearly 3,500 others who also earned the honor. "With this Medal of Honor, a warrior is held up to the American people as an example to all fellow men and women, with the embodiment of (our) highest ideals displayed," said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno. "Our most solemn professional obligation is to honor heroes, like Specialist Sabo, by retelling these stories of valor and passing them on to future generations." Sabo, a rifleman and part of Company B, 3rd Battalion, 506th Infantry, 101st Airborne Division, was killed in action 42 years ago this month, May 10, 1970, while conducting a reconnaissance patrol in Se San, Cambodia. "He gave his life so that his brothers, who had fought side-by-side with him, could live," Odierno said. "There is nothing more that our Army or nation could ever ask of an American Soldier. Specialist Sabo is the epitome of a hero and he will never be forgotten." Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta explained how Sabo and his family had come to the United States after World War II to escape Soviet-controlled Hungary. They settled in Pennsylvania, became American citizens and pursued the American dream. "Called an average guy by high school classmates, Les played basketball, joined the bowling club, went to work at a steel mill and, as I said, married an Italian girl," Panetta said. "In short, Les was living the American dream." But, Panetta said, Sabo knew that being an American meant more, that it might mean sacrifice. "Les had learned the lesson of service and sacrifice at a young age from his immigrant parents," Panetta said. "When his family's adopted country called him to serve in April 1969, he answered that call, he put on the uniform of the United States of America and, as importantly, the United States Army, and in an instant, he went from average to exceptional." It took more than 42 years for Sabo to receive recognition for the heroic actions that cut his life short in Cambodia. That, Panetta said, is a problem. "It has taken over 40 years to correct this wrong," he said. "And nobody has said this, but frankly I think we owe the Sabo family an apology for a citation that somehow got lost." Panetta said the initial Medal of Honor citation could have been lost in the "fog of war," or it could simply have been government bureaucracy, "but when somebody is a hero, when somebody puts his life on the line for others, and does what Les Sabo did, that sacrifice must never be lost." Leslie had an older brother, George, who also spoke during the ceremony. George thanked all those who worked to get the medal process started, wrote the initial citation, discovered that lost proposed citation amongst archival material at the National Archives, and who subsequently ensured it would be researched, moved through Congress and ultimately result in the award of the medal to his brother. "All the people involved in completing this Medal of Honor presentation, I am sure, worked very hard to do the right thing and make it happen," George Sabo said. "And we here are all very grateful for their efforts." Seven other Soldiers also died that day in Cambodia, and George Sabo read their names aloud at the ceremony, apologizing for choking up while thinking of the sacrifice those other Soldiers had made. "I also want to honor the seven other men who died that day: Larry DeBoer, James DeBrew, Fred Harms, Tom Merriman, Ernie Moore, Don Smith and Leslie Wilbanks," George Sabo said. "These men, along with my brother, gave the ultimate sacrifice that day. And we will remember them in our hearts. For their families here today, I want you to know that the Sabo family considers them all heroes and this Medal of Honor is for them also." Rose Mary Sabo-Brown, Sabo's widow, spoke last, saying she was proud of her husband. "I am so proud that my husband Leslie Sabo has received the Medal of Honor and has been inducted into the Pentagon Hall of Heroes," she said. "My family and I are honored and happy that my Bravo Company family is with us today. Many of these wonderful people in my Bravo Company family lost loved ones in the Vietnam War. I want to share this honor, my love and admiration for those who made the ultimate sacrifice in battle, and their family members. Thank you so much for honoring Leslie, my husband, and the fallen brothers of Bravo Company. May God bless you all." Rose Mary also gave the Medal of Honor presidential citation to Leslie Sabo's brother, George. The citation was signed by President Barack Obama, and was presented to Rose Mary, May 16, during the Medal of Honor Ceremony at the White House. Odierno: Sequestration could lead to hollow Army [2012-05-17] WASHINGTON -- It's possible the Army could be cut to 400,000 if the sequestration option spelled out in the Budget Control Act of 2011 goes into effect, the Army's chief of staff said this morning. The Army is already planning on cutting 80,000 active-duty Soldiers from the force over the next five years, which will bring the active end strength down to 490,000 Soldiers. Were sequestration to kick in, Army leaders expect the cuts it brings could mean the loss of an additional 100,000 Soldiers. Those Soldiers would come from both the active and Reserve components. "If we have sequestration, it will affect both the active and reserve component," said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno. "It depends on what balance we pick. But what I talk about a lot is: 70,000 out of the active, 30,000 out of the reserve; 80,000 out of the active, 20,000 out of the reserve. Some number around there is what we would expect." With that, he said, he expects the active component of the Army could be reduced to anywhere between 400,000 to 425,000 Soldiers. The National Guard might lose an additional 20,000 Soldiers, and the Army Reserve might lose an additional 10,000. "It would be quite significant," the general said, speaking May 17 on Capitol Hill, before an audience at a Senate Caucus breakfast. "If we have sequestration, the problem we have is with this balance between end strength, readiness and modernization," he said. "I think it's going to be really hard for us to create this right balance we need, and secondly I think it's going to impact not only end strength, (but) it'll impact our ability to train and be ready. And it will significantly impact our modernization programs. It's a template for hollowing out the force." As part of the Budget Control Act of 2011, lawmakers who were part of a "super committee" last year were tasked with finding $1.2 trillion in savings, or risk across-the-board reductions in funding. Because a resolution was not reached, as much as half that amount could now automatically be cut from the Department of Defense through sequestration. "The thing about sequestration that is also bothersome, even though the amount of cuts are in my mind unreasonable, it's the fact that we don't have any choice on where those cuts are directed," Odierno said. "It's a percentage cut out of every line item that we have. And so it would completely have significant impact on our modernization programs." RESET AND READINESS The Army's chief of staff also told lawmakers that "reset" is going well. Reset is the process the Army uses for the recovery of personnel, units and equipment from the war that was fought in Iraq, and the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. Odierno said equipment that has come back to the United States and has been reset is now being provided to Soldiers back home for training purposes. The availability of that equipment for Soldier training helps those Soldiers and their units increase their readiness level for the next conflicts. "We now have some MRAPS (mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles) we can train on," Odierno said. "One of the real issues was we weren't having a lot of our counter-improvised explosive device equipment, we didn't have enough, to do training on. So the first time they'd see it was when they got into theater." But Odierno told lawmakers that there is an "incredible amount" of equipment still in Afghanistan. And until that equipment is back in the United States and made available to Soldiers for training purposes, those Soldiers and their units will face readiness issues. "When you don't have the equipment, it's more difficult to train, so it is going to take several years to do this," he said. The general told lawmakers that the Army is going to retool the Army force generation process, known as ARFORGEN, it used to provide fighting forces to Iraq and Afghanistan to keep forces back in the United States at the appropriate level of readiness for potential future conflicts. "We are going to modify (ARFORGEN) in such a way that will enable us to make sure that we have units at (a) significant high level of readiness, getting ready to have a high level," he said. The highest level of readiness, C-1, is for units that are fully equipped and trained to go to a conflict, and who know where they are going and are prepared for deployment to that particular area. The lowest level of readiness, C-5, is for units that are completely unprepared for deployment. "Some units will be at a C-3 level of readiness," Odierno said. "We are going to direct that to ensure we have ready forces, even as we go through this transition period. Our goal is to get as many into that 'ready category' as possible." Still, Odierno said there will be some units at a very low level of readiness until equipment comes back from Afghanistan. SUICIDES AND SEXUAL ASSAULT Also on the mind of the Army's senior officer is dealing with suicides in the force, and with sexual assault and sexual harassment. "We are all in on sexual harassment and sexual assault," Odierno said. "We have a lot of work to do. It is a culture. We have to change the culture in our Army. We get people from all over our country. And we are going to bring them into our Army and talk to them about the Army culture, the Army culture of values and ethics, the Army culture of Soldiers taking care of Soldiers we will not allow this type of behavior to permeate our profession." The number of suicides in the army is up this year, Odierno said, and will perhaps exceed the number of suicides that occurred in any other year. The source of the suicide problem, Odierno told lawmakers, is difficult for the Army to pin down. "I can't tell you why that is happening and that is what's vexing to me," he said. "There are no trends." The solution, to the suicide problem, he said, might be clearer. "I do know it's about intervention, it's about Soldiers knowing Soldiers, it's about leaders understanding Soldier issues," he said. "We are going to continue to work this problem as hard as we can." Soldiers school public about Army during 2012 JSOH [2012-05-18] WASHINGTON -- The Army's Golden Knights and the Navy's Blue Angels headlined at the 2012 Joint Service Open House here, which ran May 18-20. But not many visitors to the open house will get to crawl up on a Navy F/A-18 Hornet, the Blue Angel aircraft, or the Fokker C-31A that Soldiers jump from during a demonstration by the Golden Knights. On the flight line at Joint Base Andrews where vendors sell ice cream on a stick and falafel, the Army has some if its more common equipment on display, along with the Soldiers who train on and deploy with it. Those Soldiers don't seem to mind the poking, touching, and climbing that comes from letting hundreds of school children explore the military hardware they work with every day. SHOW OF FORCE The AH-64D Apache can sometimes win a fight without firing a round, or missile, said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Josh C. Benton, with the 1-130th Aviation Battalion out of Raleigh, N.C. "They drop their guns," Benton said of those who see the Apache approach. "It's a fearsome aircraft. We always try to do a show of force, rather than shoot first." Benton has been to Iraq once with the Apache, and has about 800 hours in the air inside one. "The mission for the Apache helicopter is reconnaissance and attack," he said. "And this one performs really well for us." Leading up to the cockpit of the aircraft was a set of stairs, where school kids and the children of military personnel could look inside. "They ask what's this piece, what's that piece," he said. "The kids -- they are interested in how fast you can fly, how far you can fly. That's the kind of questions they usually ask. Their dads usually want to know the caliber of the gun, and how far the rockets can shoot." Both Benton and the aircraft are on display at the open house. "We're here for the airshow, to show everybody what the aircraft is about and let them get up close and personal on it," he said. "It's a little bit of Army public relations." After they get down from the aircraft, Benton said, he hopes they remember at least two things: the name of the aircraft, and the role it and he plays in America's defense. "That's air support," he said. CLEAN SHIRTS Perhaps not as impressive as the Apache, but maybe more fun for the kids to see, is the "laundry advanced system" or LADS. It's a washing machine on wheels that can both wash and dry Soldier clothing in the same drum, providing a "dry-to-dry" solution for up to 500 Soldier each day. Kids were taking "rides" inside the drums of the washing machine. They weren't turned on, of course, but the kids were doing flips inside anyway. "Most kids don't have a question, they just want to ride in the drum," said Pfc. Andrew S. Pfeifer, a shower, laundry and textile specialist with the 611th Quartermaster Company, a Reserve unit in Maryland. Pfeifer has been in the Army since 2006, and has been to Iraq once. There, he said, he served at Forward Operating Base Normandy, where one of the very same LADS was in use. It was eventually replaced with contractor support. "I think really it's for smaller FOBs (forward operating bases), to give them laundry when they don't have contractors," Pfeifer said. Staff Sgt. Alvin P. Williams, also with the 611th Quartermaster Company, said the service he and his unit brings to the fight is "a big value for Soldiers. It's important for Soldiers to keep themselves clean, as far as hygiene is concerned. And we take care of their equipment, as far as uniforms are concerned. We bring in the equipment and we run showers 24 hours. A hot shower and clean clothes goes a long way." KING OF BATTLE Nearby, Staff Sgt. Armando Perlaza, of the 327th Field Artillery Regiment at Fort Bragg, N.C., mans the M-142 High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System. The rocket-launching system is truck-mounted, weighs about 15 tons, and can be carried on a C-130. "It shoots off these rockets ... the range is 270 kilometers. That's why we are the king of battle," Perlaza said. Perlaza has been a Soldier for four years now, and before that, he was a Marine. He says he loves them both, and that he's been once to Iraq and twice to Afghanistan. At the open house, he said, visitors primarily want to know the capability of the rockets the HIMARS can launch. "Everybody wants to know how far this vehicle can reach out and touch someone," he said. What Perlaza wants them to know, however, is a little different. "The main thing we like to show people is that we are here for them, and that we do this every day, just to keep this country safe, and keep what we have today," he said. "This is the king of battle, and we contribute a lot to that." SO YOU WANNA BE A CARGO PILOT? "I've had several questions about how did I become a pilot, how did I get into flying," said CW2 Jeffrey A. Luther, a CH-47D Chinook pilot and Army reservist out of Fort Eustis, Va., with B Company, 5/159 Avn. Regt. "One gentleman wants to be a pilot. He's a senior in high school. So I explained the process to him." That process starts with the right score on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, Luther said. Then, it's filling out the forms and applying, and hoping you get accepted. "You go visit an aviation recruiter," Luther said. The Chinook is a heavy-lift aircraft that "does cargo or passengers," Luther said. With the Chinook, he's been to Peru, Iraq for nine months, and "just about every state in the country." Visitors, he says, when they aren't asking how to get his job, want to know how many people the Chinook will hold, what it does, and what its name is. "A lot of kids also ask what do you do in an emergency, how do you get out, or do we parachute out?" he said. The answer to that, he said, is no. "We go down with it." After doing a little more than four years in the Navy, Luther left the service and got some more education. Then he came back to the Army. It's been 12 years total for him in uniform now, he said. He and six Soldiers came up from Fort Eustis to the open house to show civilians, he said, what the Army is all about. "It's the exposure we have with people that don't know what we do," he said. "It's our chance to explain to people who don't know what we do, why we do it, and what the effects of it are." BETTER THAN A HUMVEE The Humvee doesn't meet the requirements any longer for going "outside the wire" in a combat zone. It's simply not safe enough to do so. But there are several better vehicles out there, included among those, the speedy, safe, mine-resistant, ambush-protected all-terrain vehicles, known as M-ATVs. "It's very easy to drive, and quicker than a Humvee," said Staff Sgt. Jamaal N. Moragne, with the 215th Brigade Support Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 1st Cav. Div., out of Fort Hood, Texas. "The M-ATV is an upgrade of the Humvee. It's more technical. It can go up and down mountains. It's meant to go on more terrain than the traditional Humvee." Moragne is a logistics platoon sergeant, he's been to Iraq twice, and he's new to the M-ATV. He's training now on the vehicle and will eventually be a truck commander. "We're learning now to drive, to maneuver, to do our basic battle drills out of it," he said. More important than its speed, he said, is the safety he feels in the M-ATV. "It has the upper armor on it," he said, and the M-ATV repels blasts from improvised explosive devices. "You feel safe in every mine resistant ambush protected vehicle. There's not an MRAP you don't feel safe in, compared to when the war first started." Moragne said he wants kids and their parents who come see the M-ATV to know it's Army training, and vehicles like the M-ATV, that keep Soldiers alive. "They should know what we do on a daily basis in combat, and the training that we do to make sure that America's sons and daughters are safe," Moragne said. MORE THAN A SOLDIER Not everything at the open house was outdoors, or could be crawled inside. In a nearby aircraft hangar, units from around the Army had set up displays to showcase to visitors what it is they do to defend the United States. The 10th Mountain Division, out of New York, was one of those units. On the ground within their display area, among other things, were multiple variations of the M-4 carbine, the M-249 squad automatic weapon and the M-2 .50 caliber machine gun "Can I pick them up, can I play with them?" said Staff Sgt. Randall J. Fuller, of the 10th Mountain Division, repeating queries of the many young men who were gathered around the displays. "One kid asked me what is the best thing about my job. Well, not only am I a Soldier, but I am also a medic in the Army. My job is to sustain life. The best part of my job is knowing that each and every one of those Soldiers that does get hurt, they know they can rely on me to take care of them. That's the favorite part of my job." Fuller said most of the visitors to his display are drawn to the M-4 carbine with the M-320 grenade launcher attachment, "that's their favorite thing to see, so far. It just looks cool," he said. The officer in charge of the detachment of Soldiers that made their way from New York to Maryland is Maj. Silas R. Bowman. He said what's important for visitors to see is that Soldiers are people too -- just like them. "They need to know how professional we are, and what kind of equipment we've got," he said. "And they need to see that we're average citizens who decided to join the Army and serve our country by defending our country. When a kid picks up a weapon -- he's 10 or twelve years old -- he's able to pick it up and look at it, he's able to realize that several years from now, he could do this too." Fuller said he wants visitors to know he's more than a medic, more than a rifleman, more than a platoon sergeant, and more than a Soldier. "We want people to understand, we are not just Soldiers," he said. "We are husbands, wives, sons and daughters. We're regular people. We just represent .1 percent of the United States." This year's open house features, among other things, performances by the Army's Golden Knights, the Navy's Blue Angels, a performance by a team of F-16 Fighting Falcons, an MV-22 Osprey demonstration, and an F-22 Raptor demonstration. Additionally, on display is static aviation equipment and ground equipment from all branches of the U.S. Armed Forces. Fisher House opens new site for families of wounded [2012-05-22] WASHINGTON -- Families of injured and ill service members have a new home away from home. At Fort Belvoir, Va., a short distance from the Pentagon, out the front door of the brand new, spacious, state-of-the-art Fort Belvoir Community Hospital, visitors and patients can see the brand new Fisher House that was opened for business during a ceremony, May 22. There are nearly 60 Fisher House Foundation homes now on military bases in the United States and Germany. The homes provide private suites for the families of military members receiving care at military hospitals, and have common kitchens, laundry facilities and dining rooms. Military families do not pay to stay at any Fisher House. According to Ken Fisher, of the Fisher House Foundation, the foundation has provided 4 million nights of lodging for family members, has served 170,000 families and saved them $180 million in associated lodging and travel expenses. "We owe these men and women and those who wore this nation's uniform a debt we could never hope to repay," Fisher said. "It's more than just words. It's more than just building houses. It's remembering that behind each and every man or woman that wears this nation's uniform is a family. And that family serves this nation too. They make sacrifices and bear burdens that the average American has no concept of." When a service member is injured, those families suffer too, Fisher said, they too sacrifice for America. The Fisher House Foundation helps those families through those troubled times, when their loved ones are in the hospital receiving care for the wounds they suffered while wearing their military uniform. "It provides that home away from home; it provides, not just that room that they can stay in and sleep and rest, it provides a support system, so that the families can share the joy of the good days, they can help each other on the bad days," Fisher said. "Not every story has a happy ending, but at Fisher House we have focused on the healing process. Helping these families, to us, is as important as helping the service man or woman, especially during those times." Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III said that war sometimes can bring out the best in people, and that the outpouring of generosity over the last decade has been "a positive outcome" of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. "The kindness shown by so many across this great nation has been both humbling and inspiring," Austin said. "There is no greater example of this than what we are witnessing here today." The Fisher House Foundation, Austin said, along with the donors and organizations that support it, have had "an immeasurable impact" on the military, veterans and their families. While service members are getting care at military hospitals around the world, at Fisher House, Austin said, they are being provided "with the very best medicine possible: and that medicine is the love and support of their family members." The commander of the new Fort Belvoir Community Hospital, Col. Susan Annicelli, said the new home is a "stunning addition to the community, and a phenomenal resource to patients and families receiving care at Fort Belvoir and within the National Capital Region." The Fort Belvoir Fisher House features 12 suites for families. "The home offers a nurturing refuge from the stress and vulnerability of hospitalization, rehabilitation, and recovery," Annicelli said. "It's a true complement to the healing environment. The home promotes a sense of community while bringing the comfort of a home away from home at a time needed by both patients and the families who have supported them." Annicelli said the Fisher House Foundation has supported military and veteran families for more than 20 years now with a commitment to both patient- and family-centered care that "extends well beyond the walls of the hospital." "On behalf of all our treatment teams here at Fort Belvoir, thank you for your generosity, and continued focus on making a difference in the lives of our service members each and every day," Annicelli said. There are now Fisher Houses in more than 20 states, in addition to houses in Washington, D.C., and in Germany. The Fisher House Foundation has also donated money to open a Fisher House in the United Kingdom to serve the families of the U.K.'s most seriously wounded military personnel. Military families do not pay to stay at any Fisher House. Reserve components need equipment to keep Soldiers engaged, onboard [2012-05-23] WASHINGTON -- The Army Reserve has about 86 percent of the equipment it's supposed to have on hand. But that equipment is only 66 percent modernized. That's a problem for keeping Reserve Soldiers trained, and for keeping up morale, said its commander. "The equipment we have in a lot of cases is substitute items for the modern equipment," said Lt. Gen. Jack C. Stultz, chief, Army Reserve, and commander of the U.S. Army Reserve Command. "As far as our Soldiers being able to do their jobs in Afghanistan and Iraq and other places, (it's) not an issue. We make sure they are using modernized equipment in those theaters; where it impacts me is back home." Stultz, along with Lt. Gen. William E. Ingram Jr., director, Army National Guard, testified May 23 on Capitol Hill before the Senate Appropriations Committee, subcommittee on defense. Stultz had been asked about equipment modernization, and how much equipment the Army Reserve has on hand. He said while the Army Reserve has modernized equipment in theater, it's back at home, where home-station training occurs, that he sees a problem. "It impacts me back home because now, and especially since we've drawn out of Iraq and we are going to start drawing down out of Afghanistan, I am focusing on home-station training," Stultz said. "How do I keep these Soldiers trained at home so they are ready to go when I need them?" It's also a morale issue for Soldiers, Stultz said. When a Soldier has been in theater and uses the modern equipment there during operations, and then returns home to his unit for training and sees outdated equipment, he loses interest. "It does have an impact on the Soldier who is saying 'why aren't we training on what we just had in Afghanistan?'" Stultz said. "So to me, the modernization of that equipment is critical for our retention and for our readiness." HUMVEE RECAP OR JLTV? Ingram said that when it comes to Humvees, for instance, the Army National Guard has to strike a balance between spending money on recapitalizing outdated Humvees, or waiting for the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle to be fielded to units. "We have some of the oldest Humvees in the inventory for the Army," Ingram told lawmakers. "The question is do we keep a number of Humvees, un-recapitalized, to trade in or to turn in as we gain the JLTV? It's a balance. Obviously, we would like to upgrade the fleet. But we want to be frugal with our resources and do the right thing. So at the moment there is a tradeoff there. The longer we wait, the older the vehicles become and the more need there is for newer vehicles or for recap." Stultz said he has concerns about modernization plans for the Army Reserve. In particular, as the Army draws down its end strength, units might be shuttered. Equipment from those units, he said, might cascade into the Army Reserve. "I think (restructuring) is going to lead us to make some equipping decisions for the future that might say we can delay some modernization until we decide what the force structure will look like," Stultz said. "I can't afford to wait. My Soldiers need equipment today." While Stultz agreed it's probably "a smart thing to do in some cases," he also told lawmakers that it could be several years before Army Reserve units see equipment coming out of active units. "That is why the National Guard and Reserve Equipment Account funding that you give us is so critical," Stultz said. "Because if the Army says we are not going to buy anymore modernized trucks, for instance, because we are probably going to take some of the active trucks and give them to you in 2016, I can go ahead and buy some today, and put them in my units. And then when the other ones come, fill out the rest of my units." STRATEGIC TO OPERATIONAL "The Army Reserve today is an operational force, and it is highly successful," Stultz told senators. The general said the Army Reserve's effort to convert from a strategic "weekend warrior" force, to an operational force has gone as planned. "During the period of Operation Iraqi Freedom, or OIF and Operation Enduring Freedom, also known as OEF, the Army Reserve has mobilized over 200,000 of our Soldiers and put them into support missions both in Iraq and Afghanistan, and here at home," Stultz said. "We have continually kept on active duty somewhere between 20-30,000 Soldiers every day since that inception. Those Soldiers are doing critical missions." Those critical enabling missions include engineer, medical, logistics, transportation and military police, for instance. He said the active Army has shifted those responsibilities into the reserve component. Today, he said, for 85 percent of transportation support, 70 percent of medical support, and 85 percent of civil affairs and psychological operations support comes from Army National Guard and Army Reserve Soldiers. "The Army can't do what they do without us," Stultz said. "That transformation has been hugely successful. It's not the leadership I have given, it's the dedication our Soldiers have given. The culture of the Army Reserve has changed. Soldiers that are in the Army Reserve today either have joined our force or re-enlisted to stay in our force while this nation is at war. They know what they signed up for." Rolling Thunder gathers for 25th ride at Pentagon [2012-05-29] WASHINGTON -- "The guy in the cage over there kind of put a knot in my stomach," said Vietnam veteran Ron Lambert. On a grassy hill overlooking the north parking lot at the Pentagon, Lambert sat with his wife of 40 years, Eileen Lambert. In the lot below, teeming with chrome and leather, was the largest portion of an estimated 400,000 motorcyclists who would participate in the 2012 Rolling Thunder "Ride for Freedom" around the National Mall in Washington, D.C., May 27, as part of Memorial Day weekend events in the nation's capital. The event, now in its 25th year, is meant to draw attention to service members who went missing in action and are still missing, or who were captured as prisoners of war and who have yet to be returned home. Off on one side of the parking lot was a trailer with a bamboo cage sitting on top. Inside the cage was an elderly, bearded, shaggy-haired man in tattered clothing. He grasped the cage walls, looked out, and said nothing; but the signs on the trailer said it for him: "Vietnam, Korea, WWII." He represented POWs from those wars, the focus of the Rolling Thunder rally. "It's to honor all the veterans that lost their lives, and for the ones that are not back yet," Lambert said. "Look at it. You can't beat this." Lambert and his wife, whom he met in high school, rode to Rolling Thunder from upstate New York. Lambert had enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1968, when he was 17 years old. He served in Vietnam with the 1/9 3rd Marine Division as an infantryman. "I'd graduated from high school and had to do something," he said. "There was nothing to do, once I graduated. I was a foster child, so when I graduated high school I had nowhere to live, so I went in the service." This year, the United States also recognizes the 50th anniversary of the start of the Vietnam War. And times have changed, Lambert said, for service members returning home after a conflict. "It's a major difference," he said. "We landed in California and we took our uniforms off. It was a different time. They were all looking down on us. Now you're proud to have it on. The less people that knew (about our service), the better." Roy Powell said he's glad to see the attitudes of Americans have changed from the way they were when he got back from Vietnam, to the way they honor Soldiers today. "I'm very happy to see that," he said. "Just because of the way we were treated when we came home. A lot of guys I know had bad experiences when they came home; people would sneer at them. I've heard of people being spit on and called names. It's nice they treat the veterans a lot better today than when I came home." Powell, of Forsyth, Mo., left the Army as a sergeant in 1970, after enlisting in 1964. He served in Vietnam as a military policeman. He'd been medically evacuated out of Vietnam after serving in places like Saigon, Tan Son Nhut Air Base, and Can Tho. "They moved me around a little bit," he said. "We did convoy escort and river patrol and things like that. We used to assemble convoys at the Saigon ports; the ships would come in and unload their cargo and put it on trucks. And we'd escort the convoys to Long Binh and Bien Hoa. We'd have a jeep in front with a machine gun, and then a jeep in back with a machine gun. Unless it was a real long convoy (and) we'd have a jeep in the middle somewhere." This was his first time at Rolling Thunder, Powell said. "This is the 25th anniversary of Rolling Thunder and the 30th anniversary of the Vietnam Memorial Wall," he said. "I've always wanted to do this. So I finally decided I'm going to do it." He rode because he wanted to bring attention to the needs of service members who have gone MIA or who were taken as POWs. "The whole crux of the thing is we're protesting the way the government is handling the POW/MIA issue," Powell said. "We don't think they are doing enough. They never really made the effort. We feel there were POWs left behind in Vietnam." Powell admitted it's doubtful there are POWs alive today, however. He's 68 himself, and imagines anybody who had been left behind would since have died. "They aren't going to live that long," he said. There are still MIAs in Vietnam and the Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command does send workers there to find and reclaim the remains of those service members. Participants in Rolling Thunder aren't just veterans of Vietnam. They also include veterans of operations Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom, and Enduring Freedom, as well as supporters of veterans. Also, the riders support MIA from current wars, including Operation Enduring Freedom. Jerry "Stogie" Mongrain, who served in Vietnam as a Soldier and who retired from the Army after more than 22 years, pulled from the inside pocket of his leather riding vest a sticker bearing the words "Riding for Bowe." Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is an American Soldier who was captured in June 2009 in Afghanistan, and who is currently being held by the Taliban. "This is a protest ride, a reminder of we still have a lot of POW and MIA still out there, from all wars," said Mongrain. "(Bergdahl) is a POW in the Middle East now. But they need to account for all, get the POWs back, and account for the MIAs." Army employees recognized for work with civilian work force [2012-05-31] WASHINGTON -- Two Army civilians and one Army officer were honored at the Pentagon, May 31, for their efforts to strengthen and streamline the Army's civilian workforce. "The Army works well when the civilians and military are working together as a team," said Undersecretary of the Army Joseph W. Westphal. The three awards presented at the ceremony, chaired by Westphal, include the William H. Kushnick award, the John W. Macy Jr. award and the Nick Hoge award. The awards, Westphal said, are but one way to illustrate the value added the civilian workforce brings to the nation. "We must ensure that we continue to make that case that we are trying to be on the edge of innovation and creativity," he said. Nancy A. Lane, director for the North Central Region of the Civilian Human Resources Agency, office of the deputy chief of staff, Army G-1, earned the William H. Kushnick award. The award recognizes achievement by Army employees engaged in the administration of civilian personnel programs. Lane was recognized, in part, for developing recruitment strategies and tracking tools for the Integrated Disability Evaluation System and the Army Substance Abuse Program counselor efforts. "I am extremely humbled and honored, and it came as a complete surprise to me," said Lane of the award. She said she has worked with and respects many who have earned the award in the past. Col. Christopher B. Carlile, commander, Corpus Christi Army Depot, Texas, was the recipient of the John W. Macy Jr. award. The award recognizes those who demonstrate effective leadership of civilian employees, which has additionally resulted in material improvements in areas that include mission support, military-civilian teamwork or customer service. Carlile earned recognition for work at the depot that, among other things, led to a streamlined, horizontally integrated organization that yielded $400 million more in revenue with more than 600 fewer employees than what was originally authorized. The Nick Hoge award was given to Ursula L. Burkhalter, human resources specialist, United States Army South, office of the deputy chief of staff, Army G-1. "I was a little bit nervous; very excited, very honored," said Burkhalter of the award. "It's a wonderful award. When I wrote the paper I had no idea I'd make it this far." Burkhalter's essay, "Workforce Development: Innovation Measures for Mission Readiness During Transformation," earned her the award. She said drawdowns in the civilian workforce prompted her paper about innovative measures in workforce development. "We talk about functional and technical training for employees, and we talk about leadership training, and we do all the right type of competency training," Burkhalter said. "But we don't always focus on the individual, and their personal needs and their personal aspects, and how we inspire people to become engaged and motivated." While working on a project for workforce development, her former mentor at the Army Installation Management Command asked her to take a portion of her project and turn it into a paper for the Nick Hogue award. Army civilians represent 60 percent of the generating force and fill "critical leader and manager positions that ensure global delivery of mission-critical enabling capabilities to the operating force," said Anthony J. Stamilio, the deputy assistant secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. "Civilian experts design, develop, operate and manage the processes that articulate our requirements and generate and manage those resources and deliver human capital and material to meet the Army mission needs," Stamilio said. The Army's operation depends on the civilian corps, and the award recipients, Stamilio said, are "role models for exceeding performance expectations, for their sustained accomplishments and caring leadership, and for thinking through and presenting solutions to some of our toughest problems relevant to the civilian personnel management and administration systems." On anniversary of D-Day invasion, Army recognizes WWII vets in Nation's Capital [2012-06-07] WASHINGTON -- The Army remembered the servicemen who took part in the Allied invasion of Normandy, France, which began 68 years ago, during World War II, at a reception in advance of a traditional Twilight Tattoo ceremony here, June 6. More than 150,000 troops participated in Operation Neptune, part of the larger Operation Overlord, which kicked off June 6, 1944. The date has now come to be referred to as "D-Day," when Allied forces poured onto the beaches of Normandy, France, as part of an effort to wrest control of the country from German forces, who were already entrenched there. "More than 5,000 ships and 13,000 aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and by days end, on June 6th, the Allies gained a foothold in Normandy," said Under Secretary of the Army Joseph W. Westphal, who hosted the event. "The D-Day cost was high, more than 9,000 Allied Soldiers were killed and wounded. But more than 100,000 Soldiers began to march across Europe to defeat Hitler, and Nazi Germany." The Twilight Tattoo event is held during summer months on Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington, Va., near the Pentagon. During the ceremonial event, the precision drill and discipline of Soldiers of the 3d U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard) is displayed along with music from the U.S. Army Band, "Pershing's Own." Attending the Twilight Tattoo event, Westphal said, would be thousands of spectators, mostly young people. "It is important that they recognize that the freedoms they enjoy today are a result of the sacrifice of millions of people from all over the world that ensured their liberty," said the secretary, referring to the World War II veterans the Twilight Tattoo was held to honor. "No greater act of bravery was ever carried out than that of millions of citizen Soldiers, and civilians, who faced and defeated tyranny and rebuilt this country and the world." Sen. Daniel Akaka, of Hawaii, and also a World War II veteran, attended the ceremony as well. The recognition bestowed upon he and his fellow veterans, he said, is important. "It is important for the country to know that we sacrificed -- and there are many heroic contributions that were made during World War II -- to the point where we were able to stop tyranny and bring freedom not only to our country, but the world," he said. "And today I look upon this as inspiring to the country." Akaka served in the Pacific theater in World War II, and he said that today's Soldiers are very much the same as those from 68 years ago. "There is still the element of sacrifice for our country in our military personnel today," he said. "And I would tell you that with all the knowledge and technology, they are able to help our country well." Earnest F. Gloyna started service in the Army in 1942, when he was just under 21 years old. He served mostly in the European theater and said he spent only two months of his active duty time in the United States. He served as part of the of 820th Aviation Engineer unit, and participated in six campaigns, from Omaha Beach to Germany. He was aboard a ship during the initial D-Day invasion, and arrived at Omaha Beach on "D plus 2." But he said during the war, he and his unit were always near the front. "Usually we were near the front line, sometimes we thought we were in the line," he said. Soldiers today "have very different equipment, but their spirit is the same," Gloyna said. "They are equipped with very different equipment we thought would never come around." Back on Omaha Beach, he said, they looked for mines by poking the ground with a stick, for instance, something he thinks doesn't happen today. But now, he said, when Soldiers prepare to go to war, it's no different than when he and his fellow Soldiers prepared for war. "I don't think it's any different than what we did going into Omaha," he said. "You've already gone through the experience of heavy training -- training that is absolutely necessary. After that, it is a matter of doing the best you can -- and the American Soldier is probably better at that than anybody else." Among the veterans of World War II in attendance at the event were Sen. Daniel Akaka, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, Albert Darago Jr., Walter Brown, Donald Collins, Louis Cunningham, David Bailey, Douglas Dillard, Robert Franke, James Ellicot, Tyson Hopkins, William Kracov, Bernard Resnick, Alfred Shehab, Myron Wollard, Dr. Earnest F. Gloyna, Fredrick Griswold and Walter Heline. Army expands early separation program for non-deployers [2012-06-08] WASHINGTON -- In an effort to enhance readiness for deploying units, the Army will expand its Enlisted Involuntary Early Separation Program for some Soldiers. Under the program, enlisted Soldiers who elect to not re-enlist or extend in order to deploy with their unit, could be subject to involuntary early separation. Officers are not affected. "This is a readiness program, not a force reduction program," said Jim Bragg, chief of the retention and reclassification branch at Army Human Resources Command. "It is all about unit readiness as a unit deploys. That's what it comes down to." By identifying Soldiers who will not deploy with their unit, and having those Soldiers leave the Army early, a unit can bring more Soldiers into the unit. Those new Soldiers will deploy, and will be able to train alongside the other Soldiers they will deploy with. "From a readiness point of view this is the decision that has to be made," Bragg said. In the past, Soldiers who would be affected by this program might have been kept involuntarily past their expiration term of service in order to deploy with their unit, through the implementation of "stop loss." That is no longer the case. "Now we are asking for volunteers to meet the deployment, and we are not forcing them to go," Bragg said. The program affects Soldiers who have more than three years active duty service, but less than six years total of service. Who is affected is determined by a unit's "latest arrival date" in theater, or LAD. During Phase 1 of the program, Soldiers in units with a LAD on or before Jan. 31, 2013, and who have an expiration term of service, known as an ETS, that falls between their unit's LAD and 179 days after the LAD, are subject to the current 90-day involuntary separation program. Phase 2 of the program applies to Soldiers in units with a LAD between Feb. 1, 2013 and May 31, 2013. Soldiers in those units who have an ETS that is between the LAD and 179 days after the LAD, are subject to involuntary early separation up to nine months before their ETS. In Phase 3 of the program, Soldiers in units with a LAD that comes June 1, 2013 or later and who have an ETS that falls between 180 days before deployment to 179 days after deployment, will be subject to involuntary early separation up to 365 days before their ETS. Soldiers who could be affected by this program will first be offered the opportunity to reenlist in the Army, or to extend their enlistment so they can deploy with their unit. Additionally, Soldiers who are separated involuntarily from the Army will retain Veterans Administration benefits. They may also opt to join one of the Reserve components, including the Army Reserve, the Army National Guard, or the Individual Ready Reserve. Soldiers with time remaining under their eight-year military service obligation will be required to complete their time in one of the Reserve components. It's expected the program will affect about 2,000-2,500 annually, and the program currently has no projected end date. Bragg said that the best way for Soldiers and commanders to learn more about the Enlisted Involuntary Early Separation Program is to talk to their unit's career counselor. The career counselor, Bragg said, is the subject matter expert within battalions and brigades, and will be who does extensions for Soldiers who opt to extend, and who additionally identifies the population subject to the program. Two documents online that explain more about the Enlisted Involuntary Early Separation Program are the 142/2012 ALARACT, available at https://www.us.army.mil/suite/doc/36616926; and MILPER 12-165 available at https://www.hrc.army.mil/Milper/12-165. Hiring event goes virtual to reach more veterans [2012-06-11] WASHINGTON -- It won't be a job fair in Detroit, June 25-29, but rather, a "hiring event." The difference is that Soldiers who attend the Veterans Affairs-sponsored event won't just be dropping off their resumes with company reps in hopes of receiving a call back. Soldiers can actually attend the event, get interviewed and perhaps, get hired. "We are actually offering positions and jobs, on site," said Mary M. Santiago, director for Veteran Employment Services at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Soldiers don't need to actually go to Detroit to participate, either. There are five locations throughout the Army where they can interview with participating employers via video teleconferencing: Fort Drum, N.Y.; Fort Knox, Ky.; Rock Island Arsenal, Ill.; Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.; and Fort Riley, Kan. Santiago said there are close to 21,000 jobs, from across the United States, that are being offered at the event. Those jobs are from employers, with hiring officials and mangers on site. "All these companies that are coming want to be able to hire veterans," she said. "We are providing a forum for all companies to be under one roof, bring veterans in also to the same place, and make that connection." In January, she said, the VA held a similar event in Washington, D.C. There, 6,400 potential jobs were available for veterans. About 4,100 veterans attended the event. Today, more than 14 percent of those veterans are employed as a result. At most job fairs, Santiago said, the potential of actually getting a job is less than three percent. "It's the gift that keeps giving," Santiago said. "Businesses are still referring back to the resumes they received during this event." In addition to employers, there will be 100 career coaches available to work with veterans on their resumes and career choices, Santiago said. "To get them career-ready for their interviews and any of those jobs they want." Career counselors will also participate in the VTC portion of the event, though Santiago did say it would be beneficial for job seekers to sign up early at the event website at vaforvets.va.gov/Detroit. Veterans attending the Detroit event can also learn about benefits available to them through the VA, get medical and dental exams, sign up for E-Benefits and learn about the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill. The variety of jobs available at the hiring event cover a wide spectrum, such as careers in accounting, budget, finance, business, industry, procurement, engineering, architecture, human resources, information technology, logistics, transportation, management, administration, office services, legal and claims. Santiago said there are jobs available for veterans with education levels ranging from high school diploma through college degree. "We have it all, from A to Z, every type of position possible," she said. Participants do not need to be out of the military to participate in the hiring event. Employers are looking to hire veterans and soon-to-be veterans. Santiago said employers know military veterans offer qualities others job seekers don't always bring to the table. "Part of what we found out is a veteran comes with already instilled experience that you can't find anywhere else: decisions making, critical thinking, leadership, (they are) very focused on the mission. Veterans are trained to get things done, and people know this," she said. To participate in a VTC, Soldiers and veterans must first register for the event on the VA website at www.vaforvets.va.gov/Detroit, by June 20, 2012. Once registered, Soldiers are encouraged to contact their local ACAP center to inform them of their registration for the hiring event, posting of a resume on the VA website, and their desire to schedule a virtual interview. Soldiers and veterans will be contacted for the date/ time/location of their virtual interview. Employers will select the candidates they desire to interview. Soldiers and veterans are not guaranteed virtual interview opportunities. McHugh: Army birthday about recognizing Soldier service, saying thanks [2012-06-14] WASHINGTON -- The Army birthday week is about recognizing more than two centuries of Soldiers defending freedom, and about saying thank you to those Americans that have ceaselessly supported them in the effort. The Army celebrates its 237th birthday, June 14. The birthday week, Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh said during a reception in advance of a Twilight Tattoo at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Va., June 12, is to "provide us each year the opportunity to pause and celebrate our incredible traditions, 237 years of going out, heeding the call, wherever that call is heard ... protecting freedom and defending innocence, and making a difference in the lives of deserving people." The secretary, who hosted the event, also said the birthday recognition is a thank you to Americans, such as those who would attend the Twilight Tattoo presentation, for their tireless support of Soldiers. "It should, and I would suggest respectfully tonight it is as well, an opportunity to say thank you," he said. "Thank you to the American people for the incredible support they have provided us for more than two and one quarter centuries." The Twilight Tattoo event is held during summer months on Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington, Va., near the Pentagon. During the ceremonial event, the precision drill and discipline of Soldiers of the 3d U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard) is displayed along with music from the U.S. Army Band, "Pershing's Own." This tattoo event was held as part of the Army's birthday celebrations this week. Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III also attended the event. Afterward, amidst the noise of the mostly out-of-state visitors to the event, who were on the floor mingling with and talking to the Solders who had just performed for them, Chandler said that having been a part of the Army's 237-year-long story has been to him an amazing opportunity. "It's quite an honor to be part of an organization that's 237 years old," he said. "You know we've got amazing men and women that serve every single day, and those who have served before -- this is an amazing opportunity." In the Army almost 31 years now, the Army's senior-most enlisted Soldier said leading Soldiers in combat has for him been the proudest moment of his career, "and to be part of something larger than myself." But of the Army as a whole, he said, he is proudest of the resilience exhibited by those that have made the choice to serve in uniform. "The thing I'm most proud about in America's Army is that we are so resilient," he said. "Not too many other armies around the world, if any, can do what we have done in the past ten years. These last ten years I think are really a testament to the American Soldier and their family and their resilience." Chandler's service extends back now more than three decades, and he said that in that time, he's seen changes in Soldiers, as well as changes in what America has asked of its Soldiers. Over the past 30-plus years, for instance, the nation has demanded more of Soldiers, and of the Army. "They have asked us to be more agile, more adaptive, more lethal, and more creative in how we go about our mission of protecting the American people," he said. "And I think we are just better than when I came in." Chandler said that Soldiers from more than 200 years ago -- those Soldiers that fought for America's independence -- and Soldiers now, share some commonalities that get to the very core of what it means to be a Soldier and to serve. "We serve our nation. We are proud of our service. We believe that we are part of something larger than ourselves, and that we are protecting the American way of life," Chandler said. "I think the same holds true today as it did 237 years ago." This week, around the Army, units will hold ceremonies large and small to recognize another year of sacrifice, service, time away from family and friends, dedication to country, and selflessness. During those ceremonies and after, whether in Afghanistan, Asia, Europe, Africa, or the Americas, Chandler said it's important for Soldiers to remember those who came before, who fought, who died, and who sacrificed for America's freedom. "Never forget those that have gone before us -- those that have paid the ultimate sacrifice," Chandler said. "Then remember to honor their sacrifice and their family's sacrifice in this time. Be proud, most of all, of what you do. You do something that less than one percent of the American people can do -- and that's amazing." Army chief celebrates service's 237th birthday in 'Big Apple' [2012-06-15] WASINGTON -- On the day of the Army's 237th birthday, the Army's senior-most officer toured one of the largest cities in America -- New York City -- to tell the Army's story and to thank Americans there and across the United States, for their continuing support of the American Soldier. Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno started his morning in the "Big Apple" by addressing the nation in front of television cameras at the MSNBC television studios at 30 Rockefeller Center, during a segment of the popular early-morning television show "Morning Joe." The general talked with host Joe Scarborough about challenges the Army is facing, in particular with declining budgets. But the general also said that despite looming budget cuts and the challenges that will come with them, America has remained strong in its support of the Army. "For the last ten years and one of the reasons we have said thank you to the American people, is that we have been given the resources to execute the two wars we've been asked to execute," Odierno said. "And the American public has given us quite a bit and believed in us, and so it is important for us to thank them for doing that." Odierno also talked about the challenges of multiple deployments on Soldiers. He told Scarborough how Americans can identify the time a Soldier has spent in combat. "I always tell people when you meet somebody in the Army, look at their right sleeve, each one of these means six months of combat," the general said, pointing out the gold bars stitched into the sleeve of his Army Service Uniform coat. "So when you go around and look at those, you understand how many times somebody has deployed." The general himself had eleven bars on his right sleeve -- representing five and half years in combat. "We have asked a lot of these men and women," Odierno said. "This is the first time we've had such extended combat operations for an all-volunteer Army." The general said to date, as a result of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, some 4,400 Soldiers have been killed. An additional 32,000 have been injured, he said. Additionally, some of the Soldiers coming back from those wars will continue to suffer from the effects of post-traumatic stress. For those, Odierno said, Americans must continue with their support. "We will continue to see those who have PTSD as they come back. We'll have to deal with that," he said. "As a nation, we owe it to them to make sure we are able to continue to take care of them because of what we have asked them to do." SWEARING IN AND TANK CAKE AT TIMES SQUARE In the heart of New York City, Times Square, Odierno addressed a crowd of several hundred who had gathered to witness both a traditional birthday celebration -- with a cake cutting -- and an even more traditional ceremony that involves turning young civilian Americans into new Soldiers -- an enlistment. The general first thanked New Yorkers for hosting the event, and said he feels the military and the Army have a connection to the city. "The military and the Army specifically have long and close ties with the city of New York," Odierno said. "And I think it's appropriate, since I consider New York to be the best city in the world and I consider the U.S. Army to be the best fighting force in the world -- so I think we're a good match together." The general said the celebration there, beneath neon signs and video screens is not just about the 237th birthday of the Army, but also about the millions who have served the United States since the beginning of the nation: from the Revolutionary War, to World War I and World War II, through the Korean War, to Vietnam, then to Desert Storm and finally, the last ten years in Iraq and Afghanistan. "As I have had a chance to go around the world, I realize that we have something very special here," Odierno said, referring to the United States. "Our freedoms and our liberties are very unique to any other country in the world, and our Army is here to protect those freedoms and protect those liberties. We are an arm of the people and we are an arm of our constitution." As he had done earlier, on television, the general again said that it is the American people, with funding and support, that makes it possible for the Army to do what it does. "We want to (give thanks for) the incredible support that we get from the people, from all citizens of the United States, that allows us to do our difficult job," Odierno said. Today, the general said, there are 94,000 Soldiers deployed around the world. About 68,000 are in Afghanistan now. Others are deployed to locations such as Bosnia, Kosovo and the Middle East. Another 90,000, he said, are forward stationed in about 150 countries. "(Those Soldiers) are representatives of our values, they are representatives of our ethical and moral values, and they are representatives of America," he said. "That's why today it is so important to recognize the sacrifice of many throughout the years, and over the last ten years. We've had over 4,000 Soldiers give their lives for our country, and over 35,000 injured for their country. And they do that because they think it's important that we continue to bring the values of freedom and liberty around the world, and protect our own freedom and liberty." On the Army's birthday, Odierno said, it is a day to celebrate the entire "Army Family." That, he said, includes active duty Soldiers, Soldiers from the Army National Guard, and Soldiers from the Army Reserve. It also includes Department of the Army civilians, and the family members of America's Soldiers. "So as you go about your day-to-day, think about the sacrifices, think about our great Army, and think about how fortunate we are to live in this great country of ours -- there is no country like it," the general said. On a live video feed from Afghanistan, New Yorkers shared in an Army birthday celebration that happened there in the desert. That celebration happened with the commander of the 1st Infantry Division, deployed now. He cut a cake, along with Soldiers, via the video feed, to share their Army pride with Americans back home. Back in New York, Odierno cut a cake locally. This cake, shaped like an Army tank, weighed a full 500 pounds, and was prepared for the Army by Buddy Valastro and his staff. Valastro is well-known from the popular television series "Cake Boss" on TLC. Eight members of Valastro's staff took three days to prepare the tank-shaped cake. Finally, before leaving Times Square, Odierno presided over a ceremony even more traditional, and sacred, than cutting a birthday cake. There, before the military recruiting station that has been in place there since 1946, the general swore 16 young Americans into the Army by administering the oath of enlistment. During the enlistment ceremony, other Soldiers in the area were also asked to raise their own hands, so they too could recite the pledge to protect the nation. Odierno's day in New York didn't end with Times Square. The general continued on to nearby Bryant Park, to witness a traditional tattoo, which included performances by the Army's Fife and Drum Corps and Army Drill Team. Also part of the presentation, the "Soldiers Show," and music from the Army Band. Odierno closed out his day, and the Army birthday celebrations in the city, by performing a New York City tradition -- he closed the New York Stock Exchange by ringing the closing bell there. Since the NYSE moved to its current location in 1903, trading at the exchange has ended each day with the ringing of a bell. Before that, trading was stopped with a gong, and before that, with a gavel. The New York Stock exchange was founded in 1817, making it about 195 years old. It's an old American institution -- but it's still not as old as the Army that protects it. Army birthday ball a celebration of Soldiers, history [2012-06-18] WASHINGTON -- The immense ballroom at the Washington Hilton here had a kind of moody haze hanging in it the evening of June 16. Beams of light cut through the air and crisscrossed the room, lighting up tables and Soldiers dressed in their military finest. All the tables were decked out with formal place settings, stemware, neatly folded linin napkins, and a military coin in a folded card that commemorated the Army's 237th birthday and 2012 Army Birthday Ball here that would cap off a week of celebration across the force. It could have been a scene from an old movie: the bride of at least one Soldier wore a formal ball gown that was easily four-feet across at the bottom. Most Soldiers were in mess dress or service dress, with mini-medals hanging from the breast -- some had the full-sized medals hanging around their necks. Some were in wheelchairs, or walked with canes -- these were the Soldiers who had been injured in combat or during training. On a platform in the reception area, a Soldier sat above the crowd and played piano. Junior Soldiers, with their spouses at their sides, shared stories with each other, and even with the senior-most officers and enlisted in attendance. SPECTACULAR EVENING This was the start of a spectacular evening in the nation's capital, the 2012 Army Birthday Ball, the likes of which come only once a year. It's an event where the Army celebrates both the Army and the Soldiers who are its most important assets. "When they do stuff like this, they tend to do it big," said Sgt. Patrick M. Wise, a National Guard Soldier who attended the ball with his wife, Kristinn. Wise works as a human resources specialist at Fort Belvoir, Va. He said it's the first time he's attended the Army Ball, and he has always wanted to experience it at least once. "We've never had the opportunity to go to a ball like this where I was stationed previously," he said. "Also, to preserve tradition. We come together to honor the Army, to honor how long it's been standing, and where we've come from." Wise said the number of Soldiers in attendance seemed surprising at first. But he also said there are so many veterans and Soldiers in the Washington, D.C., area that it makes sense so many would be there. Kristinn had a different take. With a new daughter in the family, she said she was glad to get some time away, to be alone with her Soldier husband. "I love him and I support him," she said. "I'm excited because it gets us away from our one-year-old." Also impressed with the evening, Staff Sgt. William Matthews, of Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 53rd Infantry Brigade. "This definitely is the classiest thing I've ever attended," Matthews said. "It's truly an honor to be here tonight." Matthews, who attended the event with his girlfriend, Julia, is currently in a Warrior Transition Unit in Orlando, Fla. He'll face a medical evaluation board soon, and understands his continued service in the Army will be in their hands. But, as an Army ordnance sergeant, he said he wants to stay in and continue serving. Matthews said he joined the Army originally to be closer to its history, which now spans 237 years. "I wanted to do something useful with my life," he said. "And I've always been interested in Army history and I figured the best way to appreciate it is to be a part of it." A TOAST Most formal military events involve a series of toasts. This year, at the Army's 237th Birthday Ball, the Army brought in several special guests to render the traditional military toasts. Included among those were retired Col. Angelo Perri, Korean War and Vietnam War veteran, and recipient of two Combat Infantryman Badges. Perri toasted the nation. Sgt. 1st Class Ronald E. Rosser, a retired Korean War veteran and a Medal of Honor recipient for conspicuous gallantry, toasted the commander-in-chief. Master Sgt. Ed O'Neil, a wounded warrior, and member of the World Class Athlete Program, rendered a toast to the Army. The toast to Soldiers and their families was rendered by Sgt. Justin Olsen, who has earned an Olympic gold medal for bobsledding, and is also a member of the Army's WCAP. Spc. Dennis Bowsher, also of the WCAP, will compete and represent the Army and the United States at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. He will compete in the modern pentathlon. Bowsher rendered a toast to guests of the ball. Finally, with a toast to fallen comrades -- a toast always rendered with water, to recognize the suffering of service members who have been held in captivity -- was Col. Gregory D. Gadson. Gadson is director of the U.S. Army Wounded Warrior Program, and has served in every major conflict of the last two decades. A wounded warrior himself, Gadson rendered the toast from his wheelchair. TEN ACTIVE DIVISIONS, 237 YEARS The Army turned 237 years old, June 14. Across the Army, units large and small celebrated with parties and cake-cutting ceremonies. At the 2012 Army Birthday Ball, hundreds of Soldiers and their spouses celebrated 237 years of service to the nation. Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III greeted those at the ball and thanked them for their service. "Thank you for being here tonight and thanks again for your service and sacrifice for the nation," Chandler said. "Each of you is a vital part of our Army team, whether you are a Soldier, a Department of the Army civilian, or a family member. You know what it means to be a Soldier in the U.S. Army." Chandler spoke for a few moments about the Army's history, and presented a challenge to those in the audience. He said he'd worked into his speech the mottos or nicknames of the Army's ten active-duty divisions, and challenged Soldiers to cheer when they heard the motto or nickname of their own division. "237 years ago, our nation's leaders established the Continental Army. Ever since that day, our Soldiers have been SECOND TO NONE," the sergeant major said, emphasizing the last three words -- the motto of the 2nd Infantry Division. From one section of the crowd, hoots, cheers, and the Army's "hooah!" "All right, so far, so good," the sergeant major said, confident the crowd was now paying attention. Chandler managed to raise cheers from Soldiers, each time, and on cue, as he dropped the nicknames and mottos from each of the remaining divisions into his speech. Included in those: "Old Ironsides," from the 1st Armored Division; "The First Team," from the 1st Cavalry Division; "Duty First," from the 1st Infantry Division; "Second to None," from the 2nd Infantry Division; "Rock of the Marne," from the 3rd Infantry Division; "Steadfast and Loyal," from the 4th Infantry Division; "Climb to Glory," from the 10th Mountain Division; "Tropic Lightning," from the 25th Infantry Division, "All the Way," from the 82nd Airborne Division; and "Rendezvous With Destiny," from the 101st Airborne Division. A TIME TO BE WITH SOLDIERS Staff Sgt. Brian Scott, with the 382nd Military Police Battalion, out of Massachusetts, attended the ball with his wife, Tanya. Scott also serves in a civilian capacity as a Department of the Army civilian with the Natick Soldier Research Development Engineering Center. He works in the Combat Feeding Directorate, where MREs are developed. "It's really good to get together here with a lot of other members of the military," Scott said. "To hear where they're from, where they've been, and hear everybody else's story. Also, to see the leadership of the Army, and the community that is the U.S. Army." Tanya said she finally got to see some of the people her Soldier husband talks about from work. "It's interesting to be a part of and see the senior leadership that he talks about so much, and to sort of see it first-hand and see how it works," she said. Scott has been to Iraq once, and said while there, he was beneficiary of some of what is developed at Natick, especially the Advanced Combat Helmet and the Improved Outer Tactical Vest. "It's been proven to save my life in a situation in combat. My convoy was under attack and we took an IED (improvised explosive device) to my vehicle, and I took shrapnel wounds. But mostly the ACH (Army Combat Helmet) is what saved my life, and the body armor," he said. Scott said he joined the Army because of his grandfathers, who both served in World War II, one in the Pacific theater, and one in Europe. "One of my grandfathers was in the Normandy invasion," Scott said. "I heard a lot of their stories growing up and I always wanted to be a Soldier. When it came that time, and I met a recruiter, I said 'I'm in.'" 94,000 WHO COULDN'T MAKE THE BALL There were a lot of Soldiers at the ball, a lot of food, a lot of drink, and a lot of dancing. The jazz ensemble "Afro Blue," from Howard University sang. The "World Class Rockers," which includes former band members from Journey, Boston, Santana, Steppenwolf and Lynard Skynard also performed songs like "Born to be Wild," and "Sweet Home Alabama." But the evening wasn't just about the party. It was about the Army -- including those not there. Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno took the podium at the front of the ballroom, and asked the crowd to go silent -- forks and knives dropped, conversation quieted. During the previous week, the general said, he's traveled throughout the United States. "What I've learned of as I've traveled across the country is the deep respect that the men and women in this country have for the United States Army," Odierno said. "That respect has been earned. As we stand here tonight and as we celebrate this great birthday we have, it's really about celebrating the millions of Soldiers, men and women, who have come before us. That's what our Army is about. It's about those who come before us, it's about those who stand here today with us, and it's about those who will come behind us in the future." Odierno told the audience that while they were eating dinner, and enjoying time with their families and friends, 94,000 Soldiers are deployed around the world. Of those, about 68,000 are in Afghanistan, with thousands more deployed to Bosnia, Kosovo, the Sinai, and other nations in the Middle East. Additionally, Odierno said, there are 90,000 Soldiers forward stationed to 150 countries around the globe. "They represent us," Odierno said. "They represent our country -- the moral and ethical values that they bring forward, they represent America, the greatest country in the world. That's who we are and that's what we do." The general also directed the attention of Soldiers to the far side of the ballroom, where Army Honor Guard Soldiers had earlier placed the American and Army flags. Adorning the Army colors are 183 campaign streamers. "That's 183 campaigns that this Army has sweated for, has sacrificed, and bled for," Odierno said. "That's who you are. That's who we are. And that's who we will continue to be as we move forward." ANOTHER CHAPTER IN ARMY HISTORY "All of you in this room tonight are part of yet another chapter of what is the most glorious book of history this world has ever seen," said Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh. "Another chapter in the long proud history, the storied history of this great United States Army." The secretary told Soldiers that for 237 years, the Army has been called upon to do more than just protect America's borders. The history of the Army is "237 years of making a difference, 237 years of keeping not just America safe, but keeping this planet safe," McHugh said. "We are so blessed to be a part of that history, that tradition. You epitomize not only our nation's ideals, but also our military values: loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. And tonight, as always, it's a pleasure to be -- no, it's an honor, to be with all of you here, so many members of that Army family." McHugh, Odierno, and Chandler together cut an Army birthday cake, brought into the ball by the Army's honor guard. Soldiers at the ball spent the rest of the evening dining and dancing, and celebrating the 237 years of Army history that they have all contributed to. Dagger Brigade to 'align' with AFRICOM in 2013 [2012-06-22] WASHINGTON -- As part of an effort to regionally align Army forces with specific unified combatant commands, or COCOM, a brigade will begin serving in March as the go-to force for U.S. Africa Command, or USAFRICOM. The 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, called the "Dagger Brigade," or 2/1ID, and out of Fort Riley, Kan., will be the main force provider for security cooperation and partnership-building missions in Africa. The effort is a first step toward fulfilling national strategic and defense guidance that includes military services partnering with allies around the world to build capacity and security capability, officials said. The 2/1ID is the first Army unit to be named in this way for alignment with a combatant command. That unit will be on deck for their mission for an entire year. The tasking will be to perform security cooperation, when needed, not operational or regular warfare missions, officials explained. Col. Andrew Dennis, the division chief of the Army Security Cooperation Policy and Concepts Division within the Army G-3/5/7, said that drawdowns in the U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, region are freeing up more forces to be regionally aligned with other COCOMs in the same way that 2/1ID will be aligned with USAFRICOM. For 10 years, he said, CENTCOM has been the main focus of Army forces, while organizing forces for the rest of the COCOMs has been a "relatively ad hoc" process. Now that forces are drawing down from CENTCOM, he said the Army can do a better job of having forces prepared for other COCOMs, to provide a "predictable supply" of forces to those commanders. Regional alignment will provide informed units, and "a more flexible sourcing function for the geographical COCOMs," Dennis said. "This is building on work that has already been done," Dennis said. "The U.S. Army has aligned forces regionally and built partnerships across the world for many, many years. And what we're working on now is the organization of the Army beyond the current conflict to provide the capability required and maintain an expeditionary mindset in the Army." Other units will be assigned to follow 2/1ID when their year-long tasking is complete. Those assignments, it is expected for now, will follow the Army force generation model. "We're using the current, existing Army force generation process, which sees people doing two years build-up and training, and a year in the available period," said Dennis. There are six unified commands, including U.S. Africa Command, U.S. Central Command, U.S. Southern Command, U.S. Northern Command, U.S. European Command and U.S. Pacific Command. Only USEUCOM and USPACOM have Army units currently assigned to and living in those areas of operation. However, all of those commands already have some form of Army unit "regionally aligned" with them in some capacity. Primarily, that means Army Special Operations Forces, or Army Reserve or Army National Guard units. "What we are talking about is building off the current pattern and extending it across the broader Army," said Dennis. Units will provide security cooperation-type capability to the COCOM they are aligned with, he explained. Included in that is security-force-assistance missions, familiarization, military contact, and support of combined exercise, Dennis said. HOME STATIONED Soldiers within the 2/1ID will remain at home, in Kansas, for most of the year they are aligned with USAFRICOM, said Dennis. "It's worth stressing at this point ... this does not mean that [2/1ID] is going to deploy en masse," he said. "Not at all. What it does mean is that [2/1ID] is going to be the sourcing solution of preference to provide troops for USAFRICOM to carry out their security cooperation requirements, security force assistance. They will task-organize the teams as required to meet mission requirements." Teams that go to Africa as part of the alignment could be very small, Dennis said, as small as a squad, for instance. They may be involved in "low-level familiarization-type missions through to more structured organization, perhaps to take part in an exercise." Dennis did say there is a "rough order of magnitude" estimate that 60-70 percent of Soldiers in the unit could deploy at one time or another during the course of the year, and that mission lengths would likely be measured in weeks or months. GOOD JOB FOR CONVENTIONAL FORCES The Army already has regional experts, including foreign area officers and civil affairs units. Additionally, the Army has regionally aligned special forces. But special forces are highly specialized, are in short supply, and are already in high demand. "Special Forces have a particular capability in this area, but not the capacity to fulfill the demand; and we think we will be able to fulfill the demand by using conventional forces," Dennis said. "And there are some missions that actually maybe don't require that level of training and language expertise, that you could be more cost effective in using conventional forces." One benefit to conventional units is that the deployment and partnering experience builds better Soldiers, Dennis said. "We also see this as providing us the mechanism for giving experience to Soldiers," Dennis said. "Not necessarily the mid-grade officers and senior noncommissioned officers, or NCO. But giving the experience to Soldiers, that they have experience leaving the United States, being part of a partnership mission, and that enables them to grow into the senior NCOs of the future." Dennis also said that there's been discussion about the level of expertise that needs to be developed in the units that are regionally aligned with a COCOM. "One of the aspects that we've been looking at in this is the language, regional expertise, and culture issue," Dennis said. He said language, for instance, is difficult asset to obtain, and it is both perishable and expensive. "To what extent do we want people to be linguistically expert, or is it a more general sense of being good at partnering with other nations," he said. "It is that experience we think is good for the Army as we look to the future." WHO WILL GO While the entire 2/1ID will prepare for their regional alignment tasking, Dennis said, different parts of the brigade combat team could be tasked at various points during the year-long alignment period. The headquarters could be asked to participate in a command post exercise, for instance; or platoon and squad sized elements could be called upon to engage in infantry training. Combat service support in a brigade could also be called upon. "As the missions come up, and as you get closer and closer, you get better definition of what is required, then they can improve the estimate of what is required and adjust as they get much closer to the mission and adjust to fit the mission better," Dennis said. The Army also knows that as more units are regionally aligned to specific COCOMs, different sized units could be aligned. Options beyond the brigade-level could mean entire divisions are tasked. For USAFRICOM, however, "they think the military skills that will be most useful to them in Africa are contained in an infantry brigade combat team," Dennis said. Other regional alignments are still "pre-decisional," Dennis said, but added that Army Forces Command has tentatively identified two brigades for regional alignment in Fiscal Year 2014. But Dennis did say units tasked for regional alignments will prepare, in advance, in the way units prepare for other deployments. It requires a build on core skills Soldiers have now: unified land operations, decisive operations skills, language, regional expertise, and train-advise-assist experience. Where units go will be based entirely on what COCOMs are asking for, after consultation with the U.S. State Department and the partner nation, Dennis said. "This is not the Army trying to go into some new area. This is fulfilling a geographic COCOM's mission requirements," he said. In short term, Gray Eagle trades reliability for capability [2012-06-27] WASHINGTON -- The Army's MQ-1C Gray Eagle program is under its estimated budget, and is also meeting expected availability rates in theater. While the reliability rate of the unmanned aircraft system, or UAS, is not where it could be, Army leaders have said for now the service is okay with that because the UAS doing more in terms of capability than what it was originally designed to do. "We focused on what is more important. And what is more important is getting capability into hands of warfighters down range," said Maj. Gen. William T. Crosby, program executive officer, Army aviation. "The feedback we've gotten from our warfighter down range is this system is a game-changer." The Gray Eagle UAS is part of a system that includes ground control stations and ground equipment. The system provides reconnaissance, surveillance, targeting and acquisition capabilities for commanders. The aircraft can carry multiple sensors and is also weaponized with the Hellfire missile. "It's done so well, we keep adding stuff to it," Crosby said. "We're adding sensors, we're updating the engine." With the Gray Eagle, the Army has made a conscious decision to focus on capability for now, Crosby said, and will focus later on reliability. So far, reliability problems have been attributed mostly to software issues that arise with the addition of new sensors to the Gray Eagle, Crosby said. Those problems change as new sensors are added. However, Crosby said, when those software problems are fixed, they don't reappear. "That gives the team confidence we will be able to resolve this when we quit adding new capability," Crosby said. When the Gray Eagle first was introduced into theater, it was equipped with an electro-optical/infrared sensor. Now the system carries weapons, and the Army has also added the Synthetic Aperture Radar/Ground Moving Target Indicator as well as air-data relay capability. In Afghanistan now, the Army has two "quick reaction capability," or QRCs, platoon-sized aviation elements that are each equipped with four Gray Eagles. The first of those QRCs was initially in Iraq, in August 2009, before it moved in December 2012 to Afghanistan. The second of the QRCs moved into Afghanistan in September 2010. Also in Afghanistan now is the first full-sized Gray Eagle unit, F-227, which is a company-sized unit with three platoons of four aircraft each. Fox 227 entered Afghanistan in April 2012 and has done well there. The F-227 unit has been flying now for about two months and "the unit has matured over the last 45 days or so," said Col. Timothy Baxter, project manager, unmanned aircraft systems. Baxter said the unit flies three to four "strings" per day, gaining about 70-90 flying hours for the systems during each day of flying. The Gray Eagles in theater now have flown, together, about 24,000 combat hours. Baxter said availability for the Gray Eagle is at about 80 percent now, which is what was expected, though the Army's objective for the aircraft is 90 percent. In January 2013, the Army expects to field another unit, F-1, with 12 aircraft, a unit similar to F-227. Before deploying to Afghanistan, the unit will participate in an initial operational testing and evaluation this summer. The Army hopes to eventually field a company-sized Gray Eagle unit to every division, officials said. New tactical network set to begin fielding in the fall [2012-06-29] WASHINGTON -- New equipment and training, part of the Army's "Capability Set 13" begins fielding in October. The 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, out of at Fort Bliss, Texas, will be the first recipients of more than 15 new systems included in the set. Over the next two years, a total of 14 brigades will be equipped with the networking technology that, among other things, brings information such as friend and foe location and streaming video down to the dismounted Soldier's level. Eight brigades will get the equipment that makes up Capability Set 13. That equipment includes such things as Nett Warrior, the Warfighter Information Network - Tactical 2, the Rifleman Radio, and the Soldier Radio Waveform. An additional six brigades will be equipped with Capability Set 14, the following year. "For the first time, our troopers and our commanders will know where everybody is on the battlefield," said Brig. Gen. John B. Morrison Jr., director, LandWarNet/Mission Command, Army G3/5/7. "We'll have that level of situational awareness. We'll be able to pass orders and graphics to dismounted leaders on the ground; imagery will be able to flow both ways. Think of the power of that operational capability as we extend the network and truly make it mobile to go where our force is needed." Capability Set 13 includes the latest version of the Army's combat network backbone, WIN-T Increment 2. "It extends the number of nodes we're able to operate from in the field," said Brig. Gen. Randal A. Dragon, commander, Brigade Modernization Command. In the past, he said, with WIN-T, full situational awareness was limited to eight command posts. With WIN-T Increment 2, that's now extended to 58 command-post-like situational awareness facilities. That's includes both static and on-the-move command posts, which gives commander and leaders the ability to leave an operating base, and have the capabilities, while moving, that they have while in a static location. The WIN-T increment 2 system, with vehicle-mounted satellite capability, brings satellite communications to the company level and allows Soldiers closest to the fight to have better connectivity. Also in Capability Set 13 is the Nett Warrior system, which is a Soldier-worn equipment set that runs mission-related applications and allows Soldiers to communicate with higher headquarters. Nett Warrior has been modified to make it lighter for Soldiers to wear, said Morrison. Nett Warrior previously had requirements that were "more than a little bit old," said Morrison. Those requirements had not been vetted at an Army Network Integration Evaluation. The system originally had a backpack computer and an eye piece display and weighed about 14 pounds. "That's the last thing you want to be putting on a light infantryman that's already carrying a whole bunch of stuff," Morrison said. The general said Nett Warrior has now been vetted through a Network Integration Evaluation, or NIE, has now been modified to include Android-based smart phones that are linked with Rifleman Radio. The system is now lighter, the requirements are better matched to what Soldiers need, equipment can be fielded sooner, and the Army will save about $800 million. Nett Warrior and WIN-T increment 2 extend the network down to the Soldier level on a hand-held device. "At the infantry team level, the four-Soldier infantry team, you'll see that the leaders have the ability to look down and see where everybody is around them," said Dragon. "That is a major plus. Essentially, the team leader and the Soldiers are trying to answer the questions 'where am I,' 'where are my buddies,' 'where is the threat,' and then 'how do I deliver effective fires?'" Dragon said Capability Set 13 provides the ability to push to warfighters position location information and also allows Soldiers to access database information like the Army's Tactical Ground Reporting System, as well as full-motion video. Additionally, Capability Set 13 increases fires capability, including a laser-targeting capability linked to a radio-target designation. "That allows me to transmit, without the possibility of transposing numbers or data, transmit directly to a firing unit, from a forward observer out in the field," Dragon said. "Everything is electronic now, except for the command's decision on whether to shoot or not. That remains man-in-the-loop; it must." The systems in Capability Set 13 were recently tested in the Network Integration Evaluation 12.2, at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., and Fort Bliss, Texas. There, Soldiers from Army Test and Evaluation Command validated the systems in combat-like conditions to ensure that they work. The idea was to ensure that the equipment works as an integrated system, before deploying it overseas, and it's part of a new acquisition strategy called "capability set management," said Col. Daniel P. Hughes, director, Army System of Systems Integration Directorate. With capability set management, multiple program executive officers and multiple, up to 100, program managers, no longer need to show up to a unit, with separate equipment and systems, and attempt to integrate what they are offering to a unit into what the unit already has. "Capability set management is all about bringing that as a single capability together," Hughes said. Hughes said that with capability set management, equipment is fielded at once to a unit, already integrated and plugged together; that process doesn't have to happen in combat any longer. "That unit knows what it's getting and can implement that in a timely manner," Hughes said, and that saves time by synchronizing fielding and training. Army radar to allow UAS to fly in National Air Space [2012-07-02] WASHINGTON -- By March 2014, the MQ-1C Gray Eagle, an Army unmanned aerial system, or UAS, will be able to train in the same airspace as the Boeing 747, with the help of the Army-developed Ground Based Sense and Avoid system. The Army recently concluded a two-week demonstration of the Ground Based Sense and Avoid system, or GBSAA, at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. During the demonstration, the Army put the system through multiple training "vignettes" that validated both the design and functionality of the system. "We are ready to begin the certification process in order to be fielding in March 2014, for the Gray Eagle locations," said Viva Austin, product director for the Army's Unmanned Systems Airspace Integration. The five locations for Gray Eagle basing and training include Fort Hood, Texas; Fort Riley, Kan.; Fort Stewart, Ga.; Fort Campbell, Ky.; and Fort Bragg, N.C. It's expected the first system will field in March 2014 at Fort Hood. About three months later, the system should field to Fort Riley. All five sites should be equipped with the GBSAA system by 2015, officials said. The GBSAA is a radar and warning system designed to allow Soldiers to fly unmanned aerial systems, like the Gray Eagle, inside the National Air Space, while still meeting Federal Aviation Administration regulations. The system monitors location and altitude of the UAS and other aircraft, detects possible collisions, and makes recommendations to UAS operators on how to avoid those collisions. As unmanned aerial systems and the Soldiers who fly them return home from theater, the Army needs a way to keep those UAS operators trained for the next battle, and they need to do that training inside the United States and inside the National Air Space, or NAS. The Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA, requires a pilot be able to "see and avoid" other aircraft flying in the same airspace. But a UAS has no pilot onboard. The Army can get around that by meeting other requirements, however. The Army can fly a UAS in the NAS with a chase aircraft following the UAS, for instance. It is also possible to fly in the NAS if a trained observer is watching the UAS. But the observer must be within one mile and 3,000 feet of the vehicle. Additionally, the Army can't fly the UAS in NAS at night. The GBSAA was developed as an "alternate means of compliance" for the FAA's "see and avoid" requirement. The system senses other traffic in the area, using a 3D radar system, and uses algorithms to determine if there is danger of collision and how to avoid that danger. That information is provided to the UAS operator. When the FAA approves the system for use, the Army will be able to train UAS pilots any time of day. "It's a significant impact [on training]," said Austin. "It does two things. One is it allows us to not need to put chase planes out to follow the aircraft over. It allows us to not have ground observers standing out there, trying to separate traffic. And it allows us to fly through the night hours, it gives us 24-hour operations, GBSAA allows that and opens it up." The recent demonstration of the GBSAA involved seven vignettes at Dugway Proving Ground, involving both live and synthetic UAVs, as well as synthetic "intruders." The first three vignettes used real UAS. In vignettes 1 and 2, a real Hunter UAS flew at Dougway against synthetic "intruders" in their airspace. The difference between the two vignettes was the version of the GBSAA used. In both scenarios, the system performed without endangering the mission, but on the second run, the Army Phase 2 Block 0 system's improved algorithms indicated an earlier, safer departure time between the two intruders. Vignette 3 pitted two live Shadow UAS against each other. One of the Shadows served as the intruder aircraft, the other was guided by the GBSAA. The operator of that aircraft was warned at an appropriate time and was able to follow the recommended maneuver to avoid the other aircraft. The next three vignettes showed the adaptability of the Phase 2 Block 0 algorithms. They were flown using synthetic UAS, through the X-Plane system. Each of the three vignettes used replicated airspace over different military installations, including Marine Corps Air Station, Cherry Point, N.C.; Fort Stewart, Ga.; and Fort Drum, N.Y. Finally, in vignette 7, the GBSAA system was demonstrated again using a synthetic UAS, but was flown against live aviation traffic data around nearby Salt Lake City, and also against recorded air traffic data from Boston's Logan Airport. "In both cases we were extremely successful and (it) was even more than we had hoped for," Austin said. Austin said it was difficult to get the GBSAA system into a tough situation that it couldn't handle. "The hardest part of that was actually trying to get into a situation where the maneuver algorithm was really tested, getting into a red condition," Austin said. "Big sky theory kind of held true, we almost felt like we were trying to chase people down at that point because air traffic control keeps people separated so well, it was kind of hard to put yourself in a really stressing situation and test those algorithms out really well. It was very safe and we demonstrated that the system and the test bed was really successful." Austin did say one thing learned about the GBSAA is that the algorithm used to safely move UAS through airspace does not always do things conventionally, as pilots would do them. Austin said that they will try to work more standard ways into the system, if they can do so without breaking the algorithm. Army to discontinue NASCAR sponsorship [2012-07-11] WASHINGTON -- After this year, the Army will no longer sponsor a NASCAR team as part of its national branding and accession efforts. But the service will continue other programs to attract new Soldiers and keep itself in the public eye. "We do a wide array of traditional advertising, and we also do a whole bunch of digital outreach through web platforms and social media," said John Myers, director, marketing support element, Army Marketing and Research Group. "We are in every state and every major market, with other marketing and advertising assets, Motorsports, particularly NASCAR, is only one tactic of our overall branding strategy to connect the Army with America." During fiscal year 2012, the Army committed about $8.4 million to NASCAR sponsorship, which includes 12 NASCAR races. The relationship between the Army and the NASCAR team it sponsors with Ryan Newman will end when the current NASCAR season concludes. Myers said the Army is looking to reach a particular segment of the population, men between the ages of 18 to 24. But the NASCAR audience, he said, is "starting to skew older." Now, he said, "we can't justify the investment in NASCAR as much as we can in other things that we are doing; so when our budget is being reduced, we have to make tough decisions. This is a process that we continually undertake as far as analyzing what we are getting for our marketing activity." The Army isn't pulling out of motorsports entirely. Marketing with the National Hot Rod Association, or NHRA, for instance, "is still giving us good numbers," Myers said. The Army has a 10-year, ongoing relationship with NHRA and Tony "the Sarge" Schumacher. "We want to continue that relationship in 2013," Myers said, "because the metrics are suggesting that it is still a very good market for us." The Army is also involved in the All-American Bowl championship each January. Next year, during the January 2013 All-American Bowl, the Army will kick off a partnership with the NFL Hall of Fame when it announces, at the bowl game, the 2013 U.S. Army Pro Football Hall of Fame Award for Excellence Program winner. The winner will be chosen from a pool of 10 high school students and can be anyone who demonstrates excellence in academics, athletics or community service. Myers said the partnership with the NFL Hall of Fame will be good for the Army. "How the public considers the NFL, their brand awareness and how it aligns with Army values, that's probably one of the better picks if you are looking for opportunities to exploit," Myers said. "The attributes and values that we insist upon are very closely aligned with some of the values that members who have been selected for the NFL Hall of Fame display." The Army is looking to market to a more diverse audience, and so its efforts include targeting more than just sports. "In everything we do, we want to make sure that we are reaching the prospect target population, in a number of ways," Myers said. "Not only in numbers;18 to 24-year-old young men is our major target market, but also within that market, also other mission aspects. If you're going to be representative of the American population, which the Army wants to do, you need to have proper representation of diversity and ethnicity." Around the United States, the Army puts itself in front of the American public, and in front of potential Soldiers, through sponsorship of and participation in the activities of groups like the League of Latin American Citizens, First Robotics, the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, Infinite Scholars, the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, Great Minds in STEM, the National Society of Black Engineers and FFA. Myers said the Army is looking for a prospect pool of "high quality and diversity." To do that, he said, the approach must be tailored to reach a diverse market. And the Army must also influence parents, teachers, peers and community leaders. "We do thousands of events across the country," Myers said. "Robotics competitions; we invest in events such as FFA, Skills USA, Association for Career and Technical Education and dozens more. We will redistribute the NASCAR funds to supplement our approach to these other venues that have a higher payoff for us." While the Army's sponsorship of NASCAR will end, the Army will continue marketing itself to the American people and seek new recruits. "We will continue, as we always do, to investigate opportunities to put the Army forward to the American people and the prospects that we need to join the Army," Myers said. Odierno meets with, addresses Pacific-region army leaders [2012-07-18] WASHINGTON -- Building partnerships with the armies of Asian and Pacific nations is the focus of the Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno's trip through Australia and Thailand. This week, Odierno visited first with Lt. Gen. David Morrison, his counterpart in the Australian army. The two talked about declining defense budgets in both Australia and the United States, a continued partnership between the Australian and American armies and areas of mutual concern to both nations in the Asian and Pacific regions. Odierno also addressed the Australian Center for Defense and Strategic Studies, which is similar to the U.S. Army War College. He also visited the Australian War Memorial and while there, laid a wreath with Morrison to further drive home the importance of the alliance and shared sacrifice between the U.S. and Australian armies. Also while in Australia, Odierno addressed the 36th annual Pacific Armies Management Seminar, also known as PAMS. This year, leadership from some 27 armies in the Pacific region attended the event, including China. "Our partnerships in the Pacific region have always been exceptionally important to the United States and to the U.S. Army in particular," Odierno said. In the Pacific region, the largest component of most nations' military is their army. "For many decades, and especially since the end of the Second World War, the United States has depended on strong partnerships in the Pacific, built on mutual respect, trust and cooperation, to ensure the stability, peace and prosperity of a region that is critical not only to the individual nations represented here today, but the entire international community," Odierno said. The general said one example of the strong relationship between the U.S. Army and the armies of Asian and Pacific nations has been the support provided in both Iraq and Afghanistan by many of the nations represented at the PAMS. Odierno also talked about challenges facing not only the United States, but the international community, as well. Challenges he raised include the damaged global economy, competition for dwindling natural resources and the rise of extremist groups. The general said that while the nation-state still exists, with a central government and controlled borders, individual groups that are enabled by new technology have become a more powerful influencing factor that can change the nature of global relationships in ways they could not have in the past. "Empowered by technology, individual actors, whether Soldiers, civilians or adversaries, can broadcast an image or message to a global audience in an instant, and these tactical actions can and often will have strategic impacts," Odierno said. The Internet and social networking have also created new forces to be reckoned with, the general said. He told army leaders at the seminar that developing new ways to deal with those forces is something that must be integrated into training, just like training for operations on land. "Technology allows like-minded individuals to come together virtually, united by passionate causes and shared ideas," he said. "These new human relationships are not constrained by geography or formal borders, and represent a new space we must embrace and integrate into our operations alongside the physical terrain as we plan and conduct operations." In the United States, he said, the Army has already started to bolster its own training with "a better understanding of human behavior and different cultural lenses." That is something he suggested the armies of other nations should do as well. Four areas of potential regional instability that that can affect all nations collectively, the general said, include competition over resources; the agendas of non-state actors; the activities of those using virtual environments, such as the Internet; and the effects of natural disasters in highly populated areas. While there are new concerns, the general said, traditional concerns still exist. These include territorial disputes and national usage of "the global commons." Odierno said that the United States is but one player among many who have interest in the Pacific region. "Reinforcing the importance of international norms of behavior is key to these efforts," he said. "In each of these cases, it is important to emphasize that we must all work this together." As the United States' operations draw down in the Middle East, first in Iraq and then in Afghanistan, Odierno said that America's Soldiers will be returning to the military installations in the Asian and Pacific region. Those Soldiers, he said, will be available to participate in partnership-building operations in in the Pacific. "I know these units look forward to re-energizing and expanding the partnerships, exercises and exchanges that we share with so many of you," he said. Right now, the general said, the United States has about 60,000 Soldiers in the Pacific region, and America's commitment there is "as strong as it has ever been." To further bolster ongoing relationships between America's Army and the armies of nations in the Asian and Pacific regions, Odierno said senior leaders of Pacific armies must continue to dialogue with each other. Additionally, he said, nations must work together in multi-nation training exercises to improve interoperability and to develop a better understanding of each other. In the wake of natural disaster, he said, nations must be committed to each other and ready to provide humanitarian assistance and disaster relief when needed. Armies must also be willing to share intelligence with each other, as well as technology. Odierno reminded leaders at the seminar that the United States Army has a long history in the Pacific with nations there, and that he wants to continue to build on those relationships. Right now, for instance, of the seven Mutual Defense Agreements between the United States and foreign nations, five are in the Pacific region. "We want open, transparent relationships with all nations for continued peace and security," Odierno told military leaders. "Many countries here today have fought with us, to include our gracious Australian hosts who have steadfastly been at our side for the past century. I look forward to an even brighter future built around strengthening ties with our long-time allies and closer relationships with potential partners in the pursuit of our shared interests and lasting regional stability and peace. " Following his visit to Australia, Odierno moved on to Thailand. On Friday, he will meet with his counterpart there, Gen. Prayut Chan-O-Cha, commander-in-chief of the Royal Thai Army. DOD to mark anniversary of Korean War armistice [2012-07-23] WASHINGTON -- The Department of Defense and the Army will recognize veterans of the Korean War Friday and will also commemorate the anniversary of the July 27, 1953, signing of the armistice that ended fighting on the peninsula. A wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns, Arlington National Cemetery, on the 59th anniversary of the armistice, will honor those who served and those who gave their lives in Korea. Since the beginning of the three-year Korean War commemoration, the DOD and the Army have been participating in and conducting events across the country, "with the principal goal of honoring the service of our Korean War veterans," said Col. David J. Clark, executive director, DOD 60th Anniversary of the Korean War Commemoration committee. Clark also serves as the Army's director, foreign intelligence, with Army G-2. Clark said the committee has participated in more than 100 events involving Korean War veterans groups in the United States since the commemoration began June 24, 2010. Koreans and Korean War veterans have commemorated July 27 yearly since the armistice ended hostilities there. There are about 600-700,000 Korean War veterans still alive, Clark said, and veterans groups around the United States, such as the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, or the Korean War Veterans Association, regularly hold events to recognize those veterans. Clark said that the committee makes it a point to attend those events. They bring with them films to do historical presentations, participate in wreath-laying events, and give speeches. Veterans get a signed certificate by the Secretary of Defense commemorating their service. "If there is a veterans group that is hosting an event and we can fit it into our schedule, we try to go anywhere," Clark said. "We don't want to disappoint anybody." The committee also brings to these events something more that those veterans might not otherwise feel they receive, recognition by America's Department of Defense. "I think the most important thing is the legitimacy of the government," Clark said. "To know that the Department of Defense cares about them and they are willing to send a representative to thank them for their service, and it is an official representative of the government, that means an awful lot to these veterans." Clark said he is often called on to speak at various events around the United States, and veterans relay to him their gratitude. "In the simplest terms, they say thank you," he said. "And many say it's about time. And they feel gratified their country hasn't forgotten them. With the time and money we've invested in this program, what it's brought back to the DOD and the Army is almost immeasurable. It's really resonated with these veterans that their country is thanking them." FORGOTTEN WAR The Korean War came less than five years after the end of World War II, Clark said. "A lot of Americans, after World War II, after that huge world-wide conflict, just wanted to turn the page and move on." Many Americans didn't know where Korea was, the war only lasted three years, and most Americans, Clark said, didn't really care there was a conflict going on overseas. For many at home, the Korean War simply didn't show up on the radar, it was a "forgotten war." "A lot of veterans returned home to just indifference," Clark said. "People didn't know they had served in Korea, and didn't really care." But Clark said the Korean War was an important conflict, it strengthened Korea, it strengthened America's relationships and presence in Asia, it demonstrated for the first time the effectiveness of the newly formed United Nations, and it helped stop the spread of communism. "I think the most important reason is what it changed in North-East Asia," Clark said. "When you look at the results of the Korean War, it was kind of ambiguous when it ended. Nobody knew what was going to come out of it, the Republic of Korea, South Korea, was a poor, ravaged country." Today, however, the Republic of Korea has grown exponentially into a powerhouse in Asia, and is an ally to the United States. "What has happened over time is South Korea has become a powerful country in its own right," Clark said. "It's developed democratic traditions, it's become an incredible ally to the United States. By preserving the Republic of Korea and its freedom, it's become an incredible partner for us in North-East Asia, and really stabilized the entire region." Clark said he reminds veterans of that when he sees them at commemoration events around the country -- the success that is Korea, and their contribution to that success. "If they ever had any doubt as to whether or not their service mattered, they can look at today's Republic of Korea and be proud of where it stands today," Clark said. THE TIME TO RECOGNIZE IS TODAY Clark said that every day the number of Korean War veterans goes down, and that the time to recognize veterans, the time to let them know their country is grateful for what they have done, is today. "In this particular case, this is a situation where we have living American war veterans who are in their 80s for the most part, some in their 90s, who served in both World WarII and Korea, who won't be around in the next go-around," Clark said. "When we get to the 70th anniversary, that population will have dwindled. This is our last opportunity as a nation to say thank you to the veterans that are still alive." Recognizing the contributions of those who served in the Korean War now, Clark said, is simply the right thing to do. "It's very important for a great nation to not forget its veterans," he said. "That's what makes a great nation: a nation that remembers the sacrifices of its veterans. There's a younger generation observing how we take care of our veterans. That makes a big impact on their decision to serve their country. It's important that we set the right tone and continue to do so by honoring our veterans." The Department of Defense began the commemoration of the Korean War, June 24, 2010, on the 60th anniversary of the conflict's first shots. The three-year commemoration of the conflict lasts as long as the war itself, and concludes July 27, 2013, with the 60th anniversary of the singing of the armistice. Muslim service members, DOD personnel, celebrate Iftar dinner at Pentagon [2012-07-27] WASHINGTON -- In the Pentagon Library and Conference Center here, July 25, dozens of members of the Department of Defense's Muslim community and their families -- including Muslim service members -- gathered to break their Ramadan fast with an Iftar dinner. During the month of Ramadan, Muslims are required to fast during daylight hours. The Iftar dinner, following sundown, is when Muslims break their fast for the day. In 1999, the Pentagon Chaplain's office first hosted such a dinner to show solidarity with and support for the Islamic community. They have been doing so each year since. "It sends a positive signal from our top leadership to thousands of Muslim service members and their families," said Chaplain (Col.) Thomas Waynick, of the Pentagon Chaplain's Office. The Pentagon Chaplain's Office sponsored the meal. "That positive message is that we are a diverse and inclusive organization." Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta spoke to those gathered for the meal, thanked them for the opportunity to share in their faith, and said the gathering is a confirmation of American values. "We are grateful to be able to host this Iftar dinner at the Pentagon and to share in one of the great traditions of the Muslim faith," Panetta said. "We are also able to confirm one of the fundament principals of our country: Our ability to freely practice our chosen faith, and to be able to worship our God, wherever we are." Panetta also said that by including Muslim service members and service members of all faiths in the military, America's military had become stronger. "Our nation and our military are indeed stronger because of the service and sacrifice of people of all faiths, including Muslim-Americans," Panetta said. The secretary said that after the 9/11 attacks took lives of many Americans, including those who are Muslims -- Muslim-Americans have participated in the defense of the United States by fighting in American uniforms. "I am grateful that Muslim-Americans have been fighting for America on the front lines," he said. "They have sacrificed a great deal for our country, and on behalf of all Americans, let me thank them and thank all of our troops for their service." One Muslim-American service member at the event was the emcee for the Iftar dinner, Army National Guard Maj. Jalal Malik. Malik is a theater action officer for both CENTCOM and AFRICOM, as part of the National Guard Medical Services Corps. He also serves as an Islamic Faith Leader in the National Capital Region. Malik joined the Army, initially, in 1999. He said that as a Muslim-American, he feels his government and his military are supportive of him and his faith. He said that others he knows in his faith feel the same. "There is probably not a Muslim that I know who doesn't feel that our government supports us," he said. "We are at least allowed to practice our faith and that is much better than many people can say -- even in so-called Muslim countries." Malik went on to say that he feels his faith and his service to America as a Soldier are in line with each other. "Islam requires me to be loyal to my country," Malik said. "I am very comfortable being an American, being an American in uniform, and being a Muslim." Before the Iftar dinner, attendees listened to a presentation by Ebrahim Rasool, the Ambassador of the Republic of South Africa to the United States of America. Rasool was the evening's guest speaker. At the Iftar dinner, which began at 8:26 p.m., at sunset, those in attendance said a prayer and then reached in to communal bowls on their tables for a date to eat, and also reached for a glass of water to drink. This is a traditional way to break the fast during Ramadan. Afterward, attendees enjoyed a full meal of traditional Middle Eastern foods. 'Pockets of excellence' across Army, but work still needs to be done on health of force [2012-07-27] FORT RILEY, Kan. -- Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Lloyd J. Austin capped off a week-long series of visits to several Army bases, with a final visit to Fort Riley, Kan., July 27. The series of visits was part of an effort to develop a better understanding of the "health of the force." During the trip, the vice talked to installation senior leaders and brigade and battalion commanders about issues involving the Integrated Disability Evaluation System, sexual assault and sexual assault prevention, suicide prevention and wounded warrior care. Army leaders Austin talked with during the visit are concerned with taking care of their Soldiers, and are also concerned about having the right resources to do so. Finding ways for the Army to provide those resources was one of the goals of the visits, Austin said. When Austin and the senior leaders who accompanied him on the trip return to Washington, D.C., they will consolidate their observations, analyze the needs of commanders in the field, and find better ways to provide them with what they need to take care of their Soldiers, the general said. "The policy changes that need to be made, we'll endeavor to make those policy changes -- to speed up processes, to improve the quality of delivery of service," Austin said. "And where there are resources that need to be applied we'll look at getting more resources out to the field as well. We'll also endeavor to share best practices." Austin said that getting resources to the field, including more behavioral health providers, is something that he suspected was going to be seen as a challenge. He said his trip to the field has shown that to be true. What the general also said was that during his trip, he learned that installation commanders are concerned about taking care of their Soldiers and that many are already working on solutions for suicide, sexual assault and sexual harassment prevention, for instance, that warrant a further look for use across the force. "We've had the opportunity to meet with and talk with leaders and commanders and health professionals and others," Austin said. "And what these discussions have confirmed for me is that we've made progress in a number of areas. Indeed, there are pockets of excellence at every installation." Still, Austin said, the Army has a way to go to achieve its goals. The purpose of his visit was to identify "best practices" already in place and decide how to implement them across the force and identify friction points in delivering services to Soldiers and their families. "We will do what is necessary, because this is about taking care of our most precious asset, and that is our people," Austin said. SUICIDE PREVENTION A key goal of Austin's trip was to address efforts being made in suicide prevention, and to also ask commanders what tools they need to help fight back the suicide trend in the Army. The general said suicide "is the toughest enemy I've ever faced." The suicide problem in the Army is a "complex problem set," he said, that requires a "sophisticated solution." The solution will require a number of agencies working together to build resiliency into Soldiers and families. Brig. Gen. Donald M. MacWillie, the commander of Fort Riley, said at his installation he is attacking suicide on "four fronts." The first of those is to simply engage with Soldiers. "We're letting them know that life is good," he said. "And with that, it takes courage and strength when you come forward and say you need some help. If we can break through that -- that very bottom level -- we see success." MacWillie also said that at Fort Riley, educating and empowering leaders is part of the solution. There, he said, he wants his leaders to know their Soldiers, to know the indicators of suicide, and to also know the stressors that may cause suicide. He also said that they are educating Soldiers to know how to identify in other Soldiers the signs of suicide, and emphasizing the need for Soldiers to take care of one another. The Fort Riley community is also working with academia, such as at Kansas State University, and also with professionals locally to learn more about the suicide problem and to learn ways to combat it. Finally, MacWillie said, Fort Riley has integrated 214 behavioral health providers on post who are "integrated down to the lowest level, down to where the Soldiers see that behavioral health provider." Surgeon General of the Army Lt. Gen. Patricia D. Horoho, one of those who accompanied Austin on the trip, said increasing the number of behavioral health providers is something the Army has been "working really aggressively" at since 2007. Since then, she said, the Army has increased behavioral health providers by 83 percent, and is now working to embed those providers into brigade combat teams, as well as to make behavioral health a part of a Soldier's primary care experience. "It's making sure that behavioral health -- the mental and the spiritual, the total aspect of our Soldiers and our family members -- is in the fabric of who we are and it's one component of wellness," Horoho said. KEEPING SOLDIERS CONNECTED TO THE ARMY A difficult time for Soldiers, and one potentially at the center of the very problems Austin is investigating now, is when they transition from one installation to another. Making that transition is something the Army is working to get a handle on, said Lt. Gen. Michael Ferriter, commander, U.S. Army Installation Management Command, and assistant chief of staff for installation management. "A lot of the issues that we have today occur in those first couple months of that transition," Ferriter said. The general also accompanied Austin on the installation visits. As Soldiers move around the Army, Ferriter said, it's important for them to stay connected to the Army, and to retain a sense of belonging. The Army, he said, has a sponsorship program that helps make that possible. In November, the Army published a requirement that all Soldiers transitioning to a new installation must have a sponsor that will help them integrate into their new unit. Additionally, Ferriter said, about two-thirds of military families live in the local communities off base. The Army is working to make stronger connections with those communities, with community groups, and with sports teams, for instance, to ensure that military families stay engaged. Finally, Ferriter said, the Army is working, from headquarters-level in Washington, to further efforts that help keep military spouses employed when they move from state to state as part of the transition process. Continuity, Ferriter said, is critical. To that end, the Army has worked to develop a program where credentials that military spouses might need to do their jobs can be transferred from state to another during a transition. About 23 states now participate, he said. The Army is also making a similar effort that will allow the children of military families to transfer school credits from one school to another. "What we offer is a full layer cake of opportunity to create stability and certainty during this time of a lot of movement," Ferriter said. COMMANDERS ARE ENGAGED Following the visit around the force, at installations chosen both for their size and their diversity, Austin said he came away with one clear picture of the Army's health. "The overriding piece of feedback is that commanders are engaged and are very concerned about taking care of their troops and are very focused on building a better force," Austin said. Lt. Gen. Howard B. Bromberg, deputy chief of staff, Army G-1, another participant in the visits, said he was impressed to have found that commanders are already engaged with their Soldiers to tackle the very problems that the senior leader team visited to address. "What I was really encouraged with on this trip was the open dialogue amongst commanders and young Soldiers about our increase in behavioral health, our increase in willingness to talk about suicide, to talk about the challenges of military life," Bromberg said. "We talked to several family members as well and talked about their challenges. I think as we go through and we increase our numbers of trainers and resiliency, increase our number of people who understand the challenges our Soldiers face -- I think that's how we are going to attack (it)." Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III, who also participated in the six-installation tour, said it was important for Soldiers to see leadership from the highest levels of the Army -- leaders they don't often interact with -- tackling the problems that affect them. "Soldiers really want to know their leaders are doing everything they can -- including from a Department of the Army level, who they really don't hear too much from -- and that they are working on these issues diligently and aggressively as can be," Chandler said. "I think they wanted to hear from the folks here that we are engaged, we are working this and we are going to help them in many of the areas we talked about." Austin said if the Army is going to tackle the problems it faces with suicide, sexual assault, behavioral health issues, and Soldier care, it must continue to do what he and his team have already done. To really get at the problem, Austin said, requires getting down to the lowest levels "and take a knee beside that commander, and say tell me what's going on specifically and what resources do you need to better fight that fight. That's worked for me in every fight I've been in, never failed me, and every time I've seen us get our leadership focused on a specific issue, we're successful." During the week, Austin and his team visited Fort Bragg, N.C.; Fort Hood, Texas; Fort Benning, Ga.; Fort Stewart, Ga.; and Fort Gordon, Ga. They concluded their trip at Fort Riley. First female four-star general retires from Army [2012-08-15] WASHINGTON -- The first woman to serve as a four-star general in both the Army and the U.S. armed forces, Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody retired today after 38 years in uniform. "Ann is a leader who lived our Army values, who always led from the front, who dedicated herself to the profession of arms," said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno, who hosted the retirement. "In my mind, Ann Dunwoody is the epitome of the Army professional." Dunwoody joined the Army in 1974, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Women's Army Corps in 1975. Her first assignment was as supply platoon leader, 226th Maintenance Company (Forward, Direct Support), 100th Supply and Services Battalion (Direct Support), Fort Sill, Okla. Since then, she's served at every level of command. "Her true legacy and reward will be the thousands of Soldiers and civilians whose lives she has touched through the span of her career," Odierno said during a ceremony at Summerall Field at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Va., near the Pentagon. Most recently, Dunwoody served as commander of the Army Materiel Command, or AMC, one of the largest commands in the Army. The command employs more than 69,000 employees across all 50 states and 145 countries. "It was Ann's most recent role, as commander of the AMC, in which she unified global logistics in a way [that has never] been done," Odierno said. "She capitalized AMC's fundamental logistics functions to maximize the efficiency and services they provided of supply, maintenance, contact support, research and development, base and installation support, and deployment and distribution. She connected AMC not only to the Army, but ensured the joint force was always ready and supplied as well." Odierno assured Dunwoody that she has left a mark on the Army, and changed it for the better. "You have shown pride in your units, you have challenged your subordinates, you have been loyal to your leaders, you have been a friend to your colleagues, and you have been a selfless servant to those who have been placed in your charge," Odierno said. "You have made every unit you have been in a better unit. Your legacy is clear." In 2008, Dunwoody was promoted to general. She was the first woman in the U.S. military to be promoted to that rank. Odierno said that while the promotion is significant for women, Dunwoody didn't get it because of her gender, but because of her performance. "It wasn't because you were a woman, it was because you were a brilliant, dedicated officer, and you were quite simply the best logistician the Army has ever had," Odierno said. "You have set the shining example for all Soldiers, especially our young leaders." An Army brat, Dunwoody said she moved all over the world with her father, who was also an Army officer and who retired as a brigadier general. On the occasion of her retirement from the Army, she said, it's been easier for her to think about leaving than to talk about it. "Thinking about it is fun, talking about it is very hard," she said. "And the reason it's so hard comes down to one word: Soldiers. Referring to those Soldiers on the parade field from the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard), she spoke more broadly of all the Soldiers in the Army. "These Soldiers represent the finest in our Army, the Army that I love so much," she said. "It's a profession and an institution that has been a part of me since the day I was born. "From the very first day that I put my uniform on, right up until this morning, I know there is nothing I would have rather done with my life," she said. "Thank you for helping me make this journey possible." Dunwoody's husband, retired Air Force Col. Craig Brotchie, along with many of her family and friends, some going back as far as the fourth grade, attended the retirement ceremony. "I promise now that I'm retired, I have a lot more time to be a better sister, a better grandma, and a better friend," Dunwoody told them. "I can't wait." The outgoing general also thanked her husband. "I won't even try to put in words what our life together has meant," she said. "Thank you. I love you. And I know you, me and Barney (their dog), have plenty of more miles to go." According to Odierno, a member of the Dunwoody family "has served in every great conflict since the Revolutionary War." Her great-grandfather was a veteran of the Spanish-American war, and a Signal Corps officer. Dunwoody's own father, Brig. Gen. Harold Dunwoody, was a veteran of World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Dunwoody thanked her father, who could not be in attendance, for the influence he had on her. "My own personal hero is my dad, he is a proud World War II, Korea, Vietnam veteran," she said. "And he was a real Soldier's Soldier. And much of who I am is founded on what I learned from my dad, as a Soldier, as a patriot and as a father." Also thanking her mother, Dunwoody said "I got my faith, energy, and my love of sports from my mom." Dunwoody said during her military career, she's never worked for a female boss. "I've always had male bosses who have coached me, mentored me, and influenced my career as a Soldier," Dunwoody said. "[They] gave me opportunities that I know if left to the bureaucracy would have never happened. [They are] leaders who opened the doors for me, leaders who looked beyond gender, leaders who could see something in folks that didn't look like they do. Without their help, I know I would not be standing here today." When Dunwoody first became a Soldier, women served in the Women's Army Corps and "it was not equal," she said. But much has changed since then. "Over the last 38 years I have had the opportunity to witness women Soldiers jump out of airplanes, hike 10 miles, lead men and women, even under the toughest circumstances," she said. "And over the last 11 years I've had the honor to serve with many of the 250,000 women who have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan on battlefields where there are no clear lines, battlefields where every man and woman had to be a rifleman first. And today, women are in combat, that is just a reality. Thousands of women have been decorated for valor and 146 have given their lives. Today, what was once a band of brothers has truly become a band of brothers and sisters." Dunwoody and her husband will retire to Florida. Inputs into Army exercises increase command awareness of cyber threat [2012-08-17] BALTIMORE -- An increased focus on training and leader development can help commanders at all levels better understand the threat to America posed by adversaries in the cyber domain, said the commander of Army Cyber Command, during the Aug. 16 Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association TechNet Land Forces East conference in Baltimore. "There is still more that can be done that causes leaders at all levels to understand and appreciate what it is going to take to operate and be able to conduct operations in land and cyber," said Lt. Gen. Rhett Hernandez, commander of ARCYBER. "I put a lot of energy into our exercise program." Hernandez said ARCYBER has already participated in three brigade combat team-level training rotations at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., and is working now to expand opportunities where commanders can really see the impact that the cyber threat has on operations. Included in that effort is expansion to the Joint Readiness Training Center level and also into Europe at the Combat Maneuver Training Center "Once commanders are allowed to see and understand what it takes to plan for and integrate, and we unleash a world-class cyber [opposing force] on them, they now have the ability to recognize what they have to protect, what they can take risk in, and where we might have gaps in our training, or in our capabilities," Hernandez said. "That will improve our ability to conduct operations at those levels." Hernandez said that commanders who operate "all the way to the tactical edge" must learn the importance of the network, and the impact that threats to the network have on land operations "Every day at the tactical edge there is an absolute requirement to conduct operations that ensure that you are defending your network so you maintain the freedom to operate," Hernandez said. "That's not going to go away. What I believe will happen over time is we will have more convergence. We will train more as one team, and we will be able to bring cyberspace operations effects at all echelons, through all three lines of operations." Those lines of operations, Hernandez said, include "operate, defend, and when directed, conduct offensive operations." SOCIAL MEDIA PREVENTS, SHAPES, WINS Mirroring the words of the Army's chief of staff, Gen. Ray Odierno, Hernandez presented to AFCEA conference attendees the roles of ARCYBER, in the cyber domain, in terms of the three roles that the chief has spelled out for the Army: prevent, shape and win. Hernandez said that the network, mobile networks and the social media networks have the ability to both shape the battle space and to prevent conflict in the first place, and that commanders must come to understand the influence of those networks on operations. "It is the social media that we all have a lot of work to do, and understand and appreciate it, because it is key to not only preventing but also shaping," Hernandez said. "We have seen from activities from around the world, particularly with the 'Arab Spring,' that it plays a significant role in winning." The general said the Army has "a lot of work to do" in determining how to include social media as an operational issue and not just as a public affairs issue, and must determine what needs to be done to "prepare ourselves for that social media environment that will be a part of, I believe, any future contests." SECURING RESOURCES FOR CYBER With budget cuts on every Army commander's mind, Hernandez said the Army must be smart in how it prioritizes the threat in the cyber domain, and how it allocates limited funding to combat those threats. "What's on us is to ensure that we clearly articulate the most significant gaps and the requirements that need to be addressed -- are prioritized in a way that give us the biggest effect for the least amount of cost," Hernandez said. Hernandez said that DOD's plans for the "Joint Information Environment," which includes consolidated data centers, consolidated operations and management of network infrastructure, consolidated end-user services like e-mail, migration to cloud services, and standardization of hardware and software platform, are essential. Until the Joint Information Environment comes to fruition, he said the Army must focus on the essentials. "Absolutely essential to this is our ability to bridge the gap between now and then with only those things we have to absolutely invest in to mitigate the most significant vulnerabilities and risk to the network," Hernandez said. Additionally, he said, the Army must remain focused on research and development to stay abreast of rapidly changing technologies. The Army, he said must "remain committed to identifying and articulating the most significant science and technology requirements we need for the future, so that they are not surprises, but we are ahead of the threat and we are investing in the right R&D capability that will be there before we need it and not too late." Exercise confirms U.S. homeland defense capability [2012-08-20] WASHINGTON -- Army leaders say the performance of participants in the recently concluded Vibrant Response 13 exercise has demonstrated that the U.S. military is ready to handle a major catastrophe, such as a nuclear explosion, on the homeland. "I think what we really demonstrated was a pact that we've made with the American people that should something like this occur in our nation, that we have the Department of Defense capability with trained and ready response forces," said Maj. Gen. Walter L. Davis, deputy commander, U.S. Army North. About 9,000 service members participated in Vibrant Response from July 26 to Aug. 13. It was held on 11 training areas across 5,000 square miles in southern Indiana and northern Kentucky. The purpose of the exercise was to confirm the capabilities of various elements of the DOD's chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear, known as CBRN. response enterprise. During the exercise, troops reacted to the simulated detonation of a 10-kiloton nuclear detonation in a major Midwestern city. Participants came from all four services, both the active and reserve components, and represented about 25 U.S. states and territories. "It's really kind of heartwarming and gratifying to see the people who are training, as an example, in search and rescue or search and recovery operations, putting on personal protective equipment and digging through rubble, and staying in it for minutes, hours, long periods of time to rescue somebody," said Davis, who answered questions about the exercise as part of an Aug. 15 bloggers round table. Although the exercise officially concluded, evaluation and further testing will continue through at least October. Vibrant Response confirms the capability of the Defense CBRN Response Force as well as the Command and Control CBRN Consequence Response Elements B- team, by evaluating performance in a realistic setting. The C2CRE-B team, comprised of about 1,500 personnel, begins their mission to support the DOD's CBRN response capability in the United States on Oct. 1. At that time, the C2CRE-A team, who also participated in Vibrant Response, will conclude their mission in that same role. Davis said that Vibrant Response 13 served as both validation for C2CRE-B as they prepare to take on their mission, and as well as sustainment training for C2CRE-A. That type of training will continue, Davis said, in order to maintain America's CBRNE response capability. "We will have to continue encouraging the sustainment training," Davis said. "These are forces that don't have a lot training days during the year. And so we will really have to continue to emphasize, maximizing as we go through the course of next year, the collective training for those units as they return back to their installations." Preparations have already begun for next year's Vibrant Response exercise, and Davis said lessons learned from this year's exercise, and from those in past years, will be applied to the next exercise. "We've learned a lot of lessons over three or four years of conducting this," he said. "And so each time we try to improve it in terms of what we need to do to improve the entire enterprise and its preparedness to respond." Army gold medalist Hancock to visit White House with U.S. Olympic team [2012-08-28] WASHINGTON -- After the spotlight of the Olympic games in London, and another gold medal to add to the one he earned in Beijing four years ago, Sgt. Vincent Hancock has returned to the United States and is now reaping accolades for his performance behind a Beretta DT10 shotgun. In a couple of weeks, on Sept. 14, Hancock and other members of the U.S. team from the 2012 Summer Olympic games in London will visit the White House to meet with President Barack Obama. This year the U.S. sent more than 530 athletes to London to compete in the games, and those Americans brought home 29 bronze medals, 29 silver medals, and 46 gold medals, one of which was earned by Hancock, July 31, for his performance in the men's skeet competition. Before Hancock leaves the Army in December, he will represent the service multiple times as the young Soldier from the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit, or USAMU, who was the first-ever Olympian to win two gold medals in skeet shooting. This Labor Day weekend, for instance, Hancock will attend a NASCAR race in Atlanta. There he will represent the Army at the USAMU booth. He'll also meet with NASCAR drivers at the race and will be onstage representing the Army as race drivers are introduced. Hancock will also be recognized for his prowess behind the shotgun at the Maneuver Warfighter's Conference at Fort Benning, Ga., Sept. 18. And this October, during the two-day "Expo" before the start of the Army Ten-Miler race, Oct. 21, in Washington, D.C., Hancock will sign autographs, and hold a shooting clinic for visitors. He'll also be at the race's starting line with Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III to start the race for competing wounded warriors. A local hero now, Hancock has interviewed with every television station in the Fort Benning, Ga., area, home of the USAMU. He's also been featured on ESPN radio, CNN, and the Dee Armstrong Show. He's been invited to appear on Spike TV and the "Sons of Guns" show on the Discovery Channel. He'll also provide tips on "Shooting USA" on the Outdoor Channel this fall. While the Olympics is over for now, Hancock won't stop competing. Next month he'll compete in the invitational World Cup Final in Slovenia, Sept. 20-26. And the following month he'll compete in the Shotgun Selection Match for the USA Nationals in Kerville, Texas, Oct. 1-9. Those competitions are not as big as the 2012 Olympics, nor as big as the 2016 Olympics, where Hancock hopes to again represent the United States as part of the U.S. Olympic shooting team in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He said he's started training already for that event. "Twenty sixteen is definitely in my sites," Hancock said during a telephone media roundtable, Aug. 28. "I love the range at Rio. I won the Pan-American games there in 2007, so I am looking forward to getting there, and representing my country yet again. Though I won't be in a military uniform, I'll definitely make sure that everybody knows it's because of the military that I'm in the spot I am (in)." While Hancock was already a champion with the shotgun before he joined the Army in 2006, he said the Army has provided him with something that he couldn't get elsewhere. "The military has given me a completely different outlook on life," Hancock said. "The determination they have instilled in me and the ability to grasp hold of opportunities is unlike any other. That's what the military instills in their Soldiers. "The military has led me in a direction that I don't think I could have gotten anywhere else," Hancock said. "The marksmanship unit family that I've come to know over the past six years has just been an amazing company to be in. They have pushed me further than I knew that I could have gone and they helped mold me into the man I am today." After the Army, Hancock will continue to compete. But the skills he learned before the Army, and the skills he learned in the Army as part of the USAMU will not end with him. He plans to pass those skills on to others. Already, he and his father have started the "Hancock Shooting Academy," where he said all those who want will be able to come learn to be better shooters. Hancock said it isn't money or more medals that's motivating him anymore. He said instead it's the desire to further the sport of shooting, to bring more into the fold, and to teach those newcomers what he knows. "We've had people come to us for lessons that have never even touched a shotgun before and this is their first time," Hancock said. "My goal for the shooting academy is not just to take the elite-of-the-elite and help them get better; it's to help grow the sport. That's the stage I'm in, in my career right now. I'm not about winning as many medals as possible, or making as much money as I can. It's about growing my legacy, being able to pass on the knowledge I've learned over the past 13 years to people all around the nation and all around the world." Hancock started competing in shooting at age 11, and said he now wants to do everything he can to promote the sport; something he said has given him a lot. "Shooting has changed my life, so dramatically, that I can't compare it to anything else in my life," he said. "Being a part of a U.S. national team, and the international skeet community, I got my wife; she was a shooter before we met. It's given me so much, I want to give back." Hancock is a native of Eatonton, Ga., but now lives in Columbus, Ga., with his wife, Rebekah, also a shooter, and his two daughters. Academy women's volleyball teams compete at Pentagon [2012-09-07] WASHINGTON -- The Black Knights women's volleyball team will compete Friday evening and Saturday in the inaugural Armed Forces Tournament at the Pentagon. The U.S. Military Academy cadets from West Point, N.Y., begin competition in the Pentagon Athletic Center at 7 p.m., Friday, against cadets from the Citadel, S.C. During the tournament, the Black Knights will also play against the U.S. Air Force Academy and the University of Denver. The team came down to Washington, D.C., Thursday from West Point and prepared with about 45 minutes of practice at the Pentagon. They also met with Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno and took a tour of the Pentagon with a former Black Knights player, who is now an Army officer working on Capitol Hill. "I think that yesterday's event got the team more exited to play in the tournament," said Tracy Nelson, the sports information director for the team. "It's a real honor to be playing alongside cadets and other service academy attendees, other than themselves. They are really looking forward to repressing West Point." This is the first such tournament being held in the Pentagon, but the fourth time the military service academies are competing in such a challenge. A special "sport court" will be put down in the Pentagon Athletic Center for the tournament, Nelson said, possibly featuring an American flag. The tournament actually begins Friday at 2:30 p.m. with Citadel vs. Denver. At 5 p.m., Air Force takes on Navy; and at 7 p.m., the Black Knights take on Citadel. On Saturday, competition kicks off again at 9 a.m., when Denver goes head-to-head with the Navy; at 11 a.m., the Air Force takes on the Citadel; and at 1 p.m., Denver is again on the court, this time against the Black Knights. Two more games round out the two-day tournament, including Navy vs. Citadel at 3 p.m., and finally, Air Force vs. the Black Knights at 5 p.m. The two-day tournament is part of NCAA competition, Nelson said, and the games played at the Pentagon will all be counted in the team's overall season record, which now stands at 4-3. "We're playing really well right now," Nelson said. "We're also getting closer to Patriot League play, it begins in two weeks. American (University), also in the Patriot League, is favored to win, but the Army is right there. And this tournament is a huge tune-up for the team, with league play starting so soon. This has to be one of the most unique tournaments in the country right now." Nelson said that during this tournament, the Army will not play the Navy, because both of the teams are in the Patriot League, and that league's rules prohibit the teams from playing each other outside the league games. For those who follow West Point athletics, statistics and a recap from Army matches will be available at www.goARMYsports.com shortly after the end of each match. On 9/11, Soldiers in Afghanistan reminded Army takes care of its own [2012-09-11] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers first entered Afghanistan less than a month after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York City, Shanksville, Pa., and the Pentagon. Eleven years later, Soldiers are still fighting in Afghanistan and Army leaders want them to remember the reason and know that while they battle abroad, their families back home are being taken care of. "We speak in the Army a great deal about how we are a family, and that is more to us than just a saying or a bumper sticker," said Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh. "It is something we believe in and it of course starts, most importantly, with the spouses and the children, and the fathers, sisters, brothers, and loved ones of those we ask to put on the uniform of this country and to go forward." Following an observance ceremony, Sept. 11, in the courtyard of the Pentagon, McHugh said Soldiers must know that as they protect America, the Army looks after the loved ones they have left behind. "One of the most solemn responsibilities that we have here, back at home, is to ensure we are providing the kind of support and programs those families, the children need, so the warfighters can concentrate on their mission and know their loved ones are being taken care of," McHugh said. As for the Soldiers themselves, still fighting in Afghanistan, McHugh said today, as they remember the events that spurred the war they fight, the mission back at the Pentagon and of "Big Army" is to also take care of them. "They continue to be foremost in our thoughts and prayers," McHugh said. "Our main mission here is to make sure they have what they need to complete that mission and to come home safely. Today serves as a reminder, I hope to them, and certainly to all of us here as to how this war began, how this scourge was brought upon us, and how it is now our job to continue and to close out the struggles so that all Americans remain safe." At an afternoon ceremony in the courtyard of the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta addressed a crowd of more than 1,000 civilian employees, contractors and service members. Part of the recognition at the event, he said, was recognizing those that -- after the Sept. 11 attacks -- heeded the call to shoulder some of the burden to defend the United States. "Today we recognize the millions of Americans who stepped forward to answer that call and to serve in uniform," Panetta said. "They are the latest in a proud linage of Americans who raised their right hand in a time of need and volunteered to serve this country. They have carried the burden of protecting America for 11 years -- relentlessly pursuing those who would do us harm. They are truly the next greatest generation." Eleven years ago at the Pentagon, 184 people were killed when terrorists crashed American Airlines flight 77 into the west side of the building just after 9:30 a.m. "Even as we mark 11 years since that horrible day, we know it will be forever engrained in our souls and in our hearts, as members of the Pentagon family and as Americans," Panetta said. Included among the dead were both the passengers on the aircraft and workers in the building. "They had done nothing to deserve such cruel fate," Panetta said. "We remember them and we think of their families who have suffered through grief and through heartbreak." Panetta also recognized the first responders and civilians who helped to save lives immediately after the attack. "Their actions that day reflect the very spirit of this great country of ours." The day after the attack on the Pentagon, employees who work there "displayed great resilience" when they returned to work to continue the job of supporting the nation's warfighters, Panetta said. "Thousands reported for duty the next morning, while portions of this building were still burning," he said. "Their determination showed our enemy that we would not be intimidated; that we would get right back up and that we would even be stronger than before." That America's defense force could return to work the next day was a bold statement that contradicted the message America's enemies intended, Panetta said. "Our enemies thought that they could weaken us that morning, but instead they saw this country for what it is and what it is all about," Panetta said. That is, he said, Americans risking their lives for each other, and getting to work to rebuild that which was destroyed, and that the Pentagon continues to work to defend the United Sates. "This is the enduring legacy of 9/11," Panetta said. Panetta also appeared earlier in the day, at the Pentagon Memorial, to participate in a wreath laying with President Barack Obama. Army, NFL report to Congress on brain-injury initiatives [2012-09-13] WASHINGTON -- The Army has made more progress in studying traumatic brain injury in the last 10 years than it made in the previous 50, said the service's vice chief. On Capitol Hill, Sept. 12, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III appeared alongside the commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell, to discuss the initiatives being shared by the two organizations in regard to traumatic brain injuries, known as TBIs. Austin and Goodell met with lawmakers from both the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force and the Military Veterans Caucus to let them know about the work that both the Army and the NFL are doing to learn more about TBI, and to share what has been learned about TBI prevention and diagnosis. Austin said the Army has made "significant progress in recent years" in Afghanistan in regard to TBI. Protocols in theater now prescribe what has to be done when a Soldier experiences such an injury, for instance. There are nine concussion care centers in Afghanistan. About 7,000 Soldiers are deployed to theater now with sensors in their helmets to record concussive events. Additional units are preparing to deploy with those sensors in their helmets. The Army is also working on tests that can detect biomarkers in the blood that will indicate more accurately if a Soldier has suffered injury to the brain as a result of a concussion. "We are doing a lot in this area," Austin said. "We can never do enough. We are going to continue to push the envelope. Our goal is to achieve more, to do it sooner, and to create greater effect." "TBI affects a significant portion of our population, and not just within our military ranks or among professional athletes, but across society as a whole," Austin said. There have been about 244,000 cases of TBI over the last 11 years in the DOD. In the United States, there are about 1.7 million diagnosed cases of TBI each year, and it's expected there's an additional 1 million cases that go undiagnosed. Both Soldiers and athletes, such as those in the NFL, are suffering from TBI. During a ceremony in August at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno and Goddell both signed a letter outlining initiatives to be taken by the Army and NFL in regard to TBI. Included in the initiative is a promise to share medical research and information about TBI between the two organizations. The Army's focus on TBI is directed at protecting Soldiers in combat, while the NFL wants to protect its players. The NFL is also an influencer, nation-wide, in promoting TBI awareness among youth football teams. The league, for instance, is involved in an effort to get newer, more modern football helmets into youth football programs. The league also supports the Zackery Lystedt law, legislation designed to protect young athletes who've suffered a concussion from returning to play before it is safe. The Army and the NFL have both launched websites dedicated to their shared initiative, the Army at www.army.mil/tbi, and the NFL at www.nfl.com/military. Both organizations will also bring together pro football players and Soldiers at forums around the country to highlight the importance of seeking treatment for TBI. "All of us are working cooperatively to make a difference to address this issue, to make it safer for not only our troops but for sports in general and society in general," Goodell said. Navy Paralympian proud to be back in uniform representing America [2012-09-14] WASHINGTON -- Brad Snyder, a triple medalist in swimming in the recently concluded 2012 Paralympic games in London, was in Washington, Sept. 14, along most of the rest of Team USA, to meet with President Barack Obama at the White House. A Navy lieutenant who earned his commission at the U.S. Naval Academy, Snyder was injured in 2011 by an IED. The injury left him blinded. But that didn't stop him from medaling at the Warrior Games in May. It didn't stop him from earning two gold medals and a silver swimming in London during the Paralympic games. Snyder was also honored to carry the American flag during the closing ceremonies of the Paralympic games. Both he and flag bearer Mariel Zagunis, the Olympic fencer who carried the flag in during the Olympic opening ceremonies of the Olympic games, brought that flag back home to the White House and presented it to President Obama. "I was thinking about it in retrospect," Snyder said. "The toughest aspect of my recovery over the last year was the idea that my service was taken away from me. To be able to throw on this new uniform, represent Team USA, and get back out there and continue to serve and ... get back in the fight, was amazing for my family... I'm really glad to be the one to represent Team USA to bring that flag home to you, our president, it's really a privilege." The United States sent 530 athletes to the Olympics in London, and another 216 to the Paralympics. Many of those were at the White House, standing behind President Barack Obama, Sept. 14, to hear him pass on to them the gratitude of Americans, and to convey to them his pride and the pride of all Americans. "What you guys did is inspire us," Obama said. "You made us proud. As president, you made me especially proud to see how you conduct yourself on a world stage. You could not have been better ambassadors and better representatives for the United States and what we stand for." The president said that watching the Olympics and seeing who America sends to the games allows the citizens of other nations to see the diversity of the United States. "One of the great things about watching our Olympics is [you] are a portrait of what this country is all about," he said. "People from every walk of life, every background, every faith; it sends a message to the world about what makes America special. It speaks to the character of this group, how you guys carried yourselves. And it's even more impressive when you think about the obstacles that many of you have overcome." The president said he recently visited the Olympic training facility in Colorado and witnessed athletes there preparing for both the next winter and summer Olympic games. He said that it impressed upon him the effort that goes into preparing for the competition. "It was just amazing to see not only how hard people were training, but also to hear how much you guys get to eat," the President said, getting laughs from the crowd. "I hope that all of you guys get some well-deserved time off over the next few months. But I know that pretty soon many of you will be back in the gym or on the track or in the pool, thinking about Rio, because the Olympics is not just about what happens on the big stage, in front of the cameras when the world is watching; it's about what happens when nobody is watching. And that's what really counts." Before leaving the podium, to shake the hands with every athlete that attended the ceremony -- an effort the president acknowledged would make him late for his next engagement -- he thanked the athletes for what they had done. "So thank you for being such great role models, especially for our young people, we could not be prouder of you," he said. "You gave us a summer we will never forget." Army tightens fitness standards for students entering professional military education [2012-10-01] WASHINGTON -- Pre-war height, weight and physical fitness standards are coming back for Soldiers entering professional military education courses on or after Nov. 1. The short explanation is: if you're heavier than you should be, or you can't meet the Army's physical fitness standards, you're not going to get into the professional military education, or PME, course you're scheduled to attend. The standards had been waived because the Army needed as many Soldiers as possible trained for the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts -- but that is no longer the case. "In 2007, when the Army was fighting two simultaneous conflicts, we instituted a physical fitness waiver for institutional training courses," said Brig. Gen. Todd McCaffrey, director of Army training. "This ensured Soldiers attending these courses received the required education and relevant operational and combat skills training, regardless of temporary fitness issues or post-deployment recovery and reset cycles. We accepted this risk, rather than send an untrained or unschooled Soldier back to their units." Now, McCaffrey said, the Army can afford to have Soldiers who meet both the training and fitness standards. According to a message sent to all Army activities, PME courses affected include the Senior Service College, the Sergeants Major Academy, the Joint Special Operation Forces Senior Enlisted Academy, the Captains Career Course, intermediate level education, the Warrant Officer Advance Course, the Warrant Officer Staff Course, the Warrant Officer Senior Staff Course, the Advanced Leaders Course, the Senior Leaders Course, and the Warrior Leader Course. The policy change applies equally to courses taught in-residence and by mobile training teams. Soldiers who are identified to attend these courses and schools will get an initial Army physical fitness test, height and weight screening. Those who don't pass the initial test will be allowed one retest. Soldiers who don't meet requirements after the second test will be removed from the course. Their service school academic evaluation report will also be annotated "failed to achieve course standards." "Reestablishing the Army physical fitness test and height/weight standards into our professional military education programs reinforces the efforts the Army's senior leaders have been emphasizing on standards based training and education," said McCaffrey. More information regarding the policy change can be found at: http://www.apd.army.mil/pdffiles/ad2012_20.pdf. Soldiers get 20 days to vote on new PT uniform [2012-10-04] WASHINGTON -- Back in February, the Army gave Soldiers a chance to weigh in on the Improved Physical Fitness Uniform. The Army took those Soldier suggestions and developed a possible replacement uniform. Now Soldiers can vote on which one of those they think looks the best. More than 76,000 Soldiers responded to the initial survey. Among other things, Soldiers commented about uniform fit, moisture wicking and anti-microbial properties and how much the uniform weighs. The Army listened to Soldiers and has developed a new Improved Physical Fitness Uniform, or IPFU. Now the Army wants Soldiers to weigh in on color options and graphic patterns for the uniform. There are six candidate uniforms -- they are all the same in terms of fabrics, capabilities and durability. What's different is the color of the fabrics and the size, color and shapes of the graphic designs. All Soldiers have the option to log on and choose which uniform option they like best. The poll goes live beginning Oct. 9, and will be available for 20 days. Stylistic variations include different colors for the jacket and pants -- black or gray, for instance. Soldiers can also choose among graphic elements and colors for graphic elements. With the jacket, for instance, there is a chevron emblazoned across the chest. That can be in yellow, grey or black, and it can be thick or thin. On the shorts, there's the option to have colored piping on the sides. For the long and short-sleeve T-shirts, there's both fabric color options and the option to have either the word "Army" emblazoned across the chest or the Army logo over the left breast. Soldiers will have 20 days to make it known which they think looks best. Perhaps more important than how the uniform looks is how the uniform will perform and feel. Improvements in the IPFU include reduced fabric weight, tagless labels, anti-microbial properties, quick-dry capability, removal of reflective properties in the uniform, the removal of the liner and elastic bottom on the pants, and overall pattern adjustments to provide a better fit. Those changes came as a result of Soldier input as well. Command Sgt. Maj. Emmett Maunakea, Program Executive Office Soldier, said Soldiers were asked to weigh in on the IPFU, and are being asked now to vote on which uniform they like best, because it is Soldiers who are the end users. "Nobody can tell you better what needs to happen with it than the user of that piece of equipment," Maunakea said. "We need the feedback from Soldiers and leaders in the field to tell us what is wrong with it, what is right with it, and how can we make it better and work better for them." Maunakea said Soldiers know what's available to civilians in the way of fitness gear, and brought that knowledge with them when they commented on the Army's uniform. "Our Soldiers are smart," he said. "They are out there spending a lot of money in the economy as they buy their civilian workout clothing. And they are buying the newest, latest and greatest type of stuff." Maj. Mia Bruner, assistant product manager for initial issue uniforms, said Soldiers came into the February survey with well-informed ideas about their physical fitness uniform. "They knew what they wanted that uniform to do," she said. "They knew that they wanted it to have sort of high-performance capabilities within the fabric. They know when you go out on the commercial market, you see tags that say anti-microbial and quick-dry and all of these high-speed, high-performance terminology -- they knew what characteristics and features they wanted to see in the uniform." To save on cost, the reflective elements of the IPFU have been removed, Maunakea said. "Everybody is going to be wearing a PT belt anyway, so it doesn't make sense to have it on the uniform, if you are already wearing a reflective belt." On the long sleeve T-shirt, the "mock collar" has been removed, as well as the sleeve cuffs, to make the uniform more comfortable for Soldiers. "We made it more like a crew neck collar to allow more air in for the Soldiers to cool down as they are working out," Bruner said. "It won't be as constricted around the neck area." In the February survey, Soldiers had said they felt the liner in the pants was too thick and "got in the way," Bruner said. The liner has been removed. "We included re-enforcements along the knee area as well." Also a possibility with the new uniform is "possible female sizing that will be developed," Bruner said. Maunakea and a team from PEO Soldier will travel around the Army to show off to Soldiers the new uniform options. The dates and locations include Fort Bragg, N.C, Oct. 8-10 ; Fort Hood, Texas, Oct. 11-15; Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., Oct. 16-18; and Fort Shafter and Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, Oct. 19-26. Locations for those demonstrations were chosen for density of Soldiers. After Soldiers vote on which uniform they like best, there will be a "series of steps" that must take place before the uniforms reach Soldiers. Included in those steps are wear testing by a sample group of Soldiers, additional improvements as a result of that testing, and a final approval by the chief of staff of the Army. Soldiers can start voting on the IPFU beginning Oct. 9. To vote, go to https://ipfusurvey.natick.army.mil, and log in with your CAC. If you want to take the survey without having to log in with your CAC, visit https://surveys.natick.army.mil/Surveys/ipfu.nsf. 'Capital Shield' tests Army's first responders in nation's capital [2012-10-12] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers with the 911th Engineer Company (Technical Rescue) dug through the rubble of a collapsed building in Washington, D.C., Oct. 11, as part of the "Capital Shield 13" regional training exercise. Soldiers met for their portion of the exercise at a training center for the Washington, D.C., fire department -- in a remote area of the District that a Job Corps center, a police recruiting facility, and an 85,000-square-foot greenhouse used in part to grow flowers for placement around the U.S. Capitol complex. During the exercise, Soldiers at the facility crawled over a pile of concrete blocks and wall pieces, wrecked cars, and cement culverts in an effort to find a way to penetrate the mess to locate "victims" buried inside. The rubble pile was meant to simulate a collapsed hotel, said 1st Lt. Matthew Hoover, executive officer with the 911th. "A terrorist explosion has taken place -- so we are here as a civil-support entity to assist in the rescue of the victims in that hotel," he said. Inside were an unknown number of rescue dummies, and a few live role players. Soldiers with the 911th used their specialized technical rescue skills to find a path to those victims. They used saws to cut cement out of the way, or to cut through an automobile, and plasma torches to cut especially difficult steel panels that blocked their path. A culvert system in place in the carefully constructed pile of rubble simulated the voids that would exist in a real building collapse -- such as what might happen if a real hotel collapsed, or the Capitol Building. Blocking Soldier movement through the passageways were chunks of steel and concrete that have to be removed or cut away to allow passage to victims. "It is simulating a tight space they have to crawl through in order to make progress into the building," Hoover said. "The chances of them finding an obstacle they can't pass is high. They radio back to get the tools needed, and send a team in to deliver the tools to them, or send a team in with the tools to take their place." Clearing a path through the rubble means that rescuers with the 911th can get to those trapped and get them to safety, or go in and look for even more victims. "If we get this open well enough, the dog can actually go through the tunnel system and find where people are," said Spc. Nels Parvi, an Army-trained firefighter who has been with the 911th for a year and a half now. Hoover said Soldiers with the 911th train at their home station on nearby Fort Belvoir, Va., using facilities similar to what they exercised on in the Anacostia area of Washington, D.C., including a rubble pile that is nearly twice as large, and a plywood building of tunnels and restriction points they call the "rat maze." But bringing the training to Washington, D.C., as part of Capital Shield, means that the Soldiers can work with civilian first responders and other military units so they can train under the different types of command and control they would experience in a real-world situation, such as a disaster in the nation's capital. "Any time that we go into a site, there is little to no chance that's it's just going to be just us on that site," he said. Normally, he said, such a scenario would be run by somebody like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, known as FEMA, for instance. And once on scene, they expect to work with other federal and local disaster-response teams as well. The Capital Shield exercise gives them a chance to train the way they will operate if they are called on to respond. Lt. Col. Reed Erickson serves as commander of the 12th Aviation Battalion, of which the 911th is a part. He said the exercise is validation of what the Soldiers train for all year. "They train throughout the year on individual- and Soldier-level tasks and things they need to make them successful at this level: basic rescue tasks, combat lifesaver training, EMT training, and basic Soldier tasks. They build on that into squad- and platoon-level collective tasks, through various exercises," he said. "This is really their capstone to validate that whole training plan throughout the year." About 60 Soldiers from the 911th came to the training facility in Washington, D.C., for this part of Capital Shield 13. The exercise runs four days, Oct. 9-12, and involves dozens of Department of Defense military units, federal agencies, and civilian first-responder teams from nearby municipalities. Capital Shield is designed to exercise and test the ability of the services, federal and local agencies to work together. This is the eighth iteration of the Capital Shield exercise, which is conducted by Joint Force Headquarters-National Capital Region/Military District of Washington. JRTC rotation demonstrates force of future [2012-10-20] FORT POLK, La. -- Training bases like the Joint Readiness Training Center here will be central to preparing America's Army for future conflicts that could come up at a moment's notice, said Under Secretary of the Army Joseph W. Westphal, during a visit here, Oct. 19. "One never knows when the president will need his Army to address an issue somewhere around the world," Westphal said. "We need to be trained and ready at all times, and that level of training, and that level of readiness that we will have to maintain into the future will require that we have places like Fort Polk ready to help us do that. What I saw here today is that we have good footing there." Beginning Oct. 9, more than 4,800 Soldiers, many from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne Division, descended upon the training grounds at Fort Polk to participate in the Joint Readiness Training Center's 13-01 training rotation. Many of the participating Soldiers entered the bare, unprepared training space via parachute. The training is a departure from past rotations at the JRTC which have focused on training Soldiers for deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq through counterinsurgency-based mission readiness exercises. The most recent rotation at the center put an emphasis on "decisive action," which required Soldiers to exercise both wide-area security and combined arms maneuver and conduct offensive, defensive operations and stability operations. Soldiers participating in the 13-01 rotation entered, via parachute, a location that was completely empty. They were required to secure an airstrip, bring in needed supplies and equipment via U.S. Air Force aircraft, conduct a noncombatant evacuation operation for American citizens who were already on the ground in a nearby town as part of the fictional scenario, defend their position, and then later conduct offensive operations against a "hybrid threat" that included "near-peer" forces, irregular forces, terrorist and criminal groups. Westphal visited with the leadership of the units there to train and with the leadership of partner organizations who also participated in the exercise, including Army Special Operations Forces. He said he was "able to talk to them about the challenges they face both in the training area and integration area and get some real straightforward commentary on what we need to do at headquarters to make this continue to be a success down the road." As the Army's under secretary, Westphal must stay abreast of the Army needs and work with other senior leadership to ensure continued support of the kinds of training that takes place at the JRTC. "We need to keep an eye on the investment here and keep an eye on what is needed to make sure we sustain this kind of opportunity," Westphal said. "Training and readiness for our force of the future is absolutely critical." While Westphal spoke with many of the senior leadership on the ground at JRTC, he also met with the young Soldiers and noncommissioned officers training there, and said he was impressed with their knowledge and professionalism. "Every once in a while I'll go up to a private, a specialist, a sergeant and start asking them about what they are doing," he said. "I'm absolutely impressed with their intellect, their knowledge, and their easy disposition from which they are doing this. They don't have their hair on fire -- they are just professional people." Westphal said that the talent he saw at JRTC is critical to America's future force, and that it must be preserved. "What we need to do as a country is sustain that talent, and to invest in that talent, and to ensure this country's defense will always be absolutely the very best," he said. "It'll be the very best, not because of the equipment we have, but because of the people that manage that equipment and operate that equipment and sustain that equipment -- that's our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines." Army will do its job with less, secretary says [2012-10-22] WASHINGTON -- With budget cuts already in place, and more cuts possible next year -- the Army can expect fewer resources to accomplish a mission that will likely not shrink, said Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh. Speaking before the opening session of the 2012 Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C., McHugh said the nation's economy, and how it affects the Army budget, is something that worries him. After more than 11 years of war, he said, "the Army is going to do its job with less." Budget cuts and force reductions were a long time coming, he said, and the Army has been aware of them for some time. "We've seen this day coming for some time," he said. "We've been given the opportunity and the time to get it right, to plan, to prioritize and adjust force structure, equipment and training; we are doing it." TOTAL FORCE: ACTIVE, GUARD, RESERVE A critical component of the Army's future is integration of Reserve forces. Since 2001, McHugh said, the Army has learned the importance of an operational reserve component in meeting mission requirements. Continued training and readiness of the Reserve components is "paramount to the Army's overall readiness and stability, and our nation's security," McHugh said. "We are going to make sure we do that, and we do it right." Part of the Army's effort in that direction includes a McHugh-signed directive that establishes a "total force policy" for the Army. That directive says the Army will man, train, and equip active and reserve components "in an integrated operational force," the purpose of which is to provide "predictable, recurring, and sustainable capabilities." McHugh said the directive outlines a number of measures to make integration of those forces seamless. Some of those measures include uniform processes and procedures for validating pre-deployment readiness; developing and implementing unified personnel management and pay systems; ensuring that equipping strategies promote procurement programs for a total force; and facilitating opportunities for Soldiers to move between active and reserve-component assignments throughout their career. ARMY A HEDGE FOR THE FUTURE At a press conference following the opening ceremony of this year's AUSA conference, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Raymond T. Odierno said that as the Army heads into an uncertain future, it starts from a "position of strength," as a result of veterans and Army leaders that have been in combat for 11 years now. And because the Army is an all-volunteer force, he said, he expects many of those same leaders to stay in the Army "and to pull the Army into the future." The Army will adapt readiness and training models to prepare units to better operate "in what we believe will be more and more complex environments that we are going to have to fight," Odierno said. To deal with those complex environments of the future, the general said he is now focused on an Army that can deploy at "several speeds," at "several sizes," and that can respond to "several contingencies." "The Army provides a depth and capability that no other service provides -- tooth to tail -- (from) combat, all the way down to every kind of logistics and combat service support that you can provide," he said. "We're the only service that does that completely, tooth to tail." McHugh said the Army's "key to the future is our full-spectrum capability, and the capacity to go anywhere and do any mission." The ability to do that, he said -- the Army's adaptability -- means that it can serve as a hedge for the uncertainty of the future. Army will prepare for future with regionally aligned forces [2012-10-23] WASHINGTON -- Future Army forces must be tailored to meet local requirements, must be rapidly deployable at lower echelons, and must be scalable from squad to corps level, said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno. During the Eisenhower Lunch, Oct. 23 -- part of the 2012 Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C. -- the Army's chief of staff discussed a changing strategic environment and the future of the Army in that environment. "We must approach operational tasks by organizing our missions around highly trained squads and platoons that are the foundation for our company, battalion and brigade combat teams, organized for specific mission sets and regional conditions," Odierno said. Organizing for regional conditions is part of the Army's effort to regionally align forces to specific combatant commands, such as those in Europe, the Pacific, and in Africa. Already, the chief said, efforts are underway to designate such forces, align them with combatant command headquarters, and increase integration with allies and multinational forces, such as the NATO response force. "By aligning unit headquarters and rotational units to combatant commands, and tailoring our combatant training centers and exercises to plan for their greatest contingencies, units will gain invaluable expertise and cultural awareness, and be prepared to meet the regional requirements more rapidly and effectively than ever before," Odierno said. To be a military force capable of engaging around the world requires a modernization strategy centered on Soldiers at the squad level, the general said. "We must empower them with unmatched lethality, protection, and situational awareness, to achieve tactical dominance," he said. "It entails an overarching network architecture that connects all echelons from squad to joint task force, to ensure our leaders have the right information at the right time to make the best possible decisions." Odierno said the Army's modernization efforts will prepare the entire Army for the complex and uncertain battlefield of the future by putting "squads with precise information and overmatched capability at the decisive time and place to achieve dominance of the operational environment." While Odierno said America's Army will be prepared for future conflicts, he also said the Army acts as a deterrent to conflict as well. "The Army represents one of America's most credible deterrents against future hostility," he said. "We prevent miscalculations from erupting into war. And we defeat an adversary when it does. No other nation can match the U.S. Army's ability to rapidly deploy a large number of troops over extended distances, sustain them, and deliver precise, discriminate results." Melting Arctic ice will present new challenges [2012-10-25] WASHINGTON -- With ice melting in the Arctic Ocean, which is bordered by countries including Canada, Russia and the United States, more sea-faring traffic will appear there and more nations with economic interest in the region will arrive to exploit the resources there, said a panel of security experts during a forum, Oct. 24. "[Our] area of responsibility is evolving and changing," said Maj. Gen. Francis G. Mahon, J5, U.S. Northern Command. "The Arctic is receding ... the northern coast is about to become a real coast; maybe not today, maybe not this year, but in a short time. We need to start thinking about that." Mahon was featured during a panel discussion regarding North American security, during the 2012 Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C., Oct. 24. Mahon said development in the Arctic "is going to happen." Shell Oil, for instance, has been there conducting test drilling operations, and Conoco, he said, will be there next summer. Increased economic interest in the region, which is bordered by Alaska, means more security concerns, potential conflict over rights to resources there, such as fishing and mineral rights, and more opportunity for the kinds of disasters that the United States might be called on to assist with. John Stanton, director, Joint Operations Directorate, Customs and Border Protection, also sat on the panel. He said that the northern ice cap has been receding more on the Russian side than on the Canadian side. Increased opportunity in the Arctic will mean "different sovereign nations' territorial water come into play," Stanton said. Right now, concern in the area is largely limited to nations that have coastlines on the Arctic, and that includes the eight countries that make up the Arctic Council: Canada, Denmark/Greenland/Faroe Islands, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States. But more nations will eventually show interest, Mahon said. "There are many, many others who have economic interests who would like to harvest the goods and sell them on the economic market," Mahon said. Mahon said, as an example, that for Chinese exports to Europe, it is 40 percent shorter to move goods through the Bering Strait than to move those goods through Panama or around the southern tip of South America. "From an economic standpoint, you know that will be exploited as quickly as possible," Mahon said. "Ultimately, we will be operating up there more." SOUTHERN BORDER Illicit movement of goods between Mexico and the United States involves more than just drugs coming north from Central America, said Stanton. Illicit traffic across the 1,900-mile border goes both ways, and includes not just drugs, but money, human trafficking and weapons. In the 1990s, Stanton said, a lot of that illicit activity came through California. Now, he said, much of that has shifted eastward to Arizona. Maj. Gen. Davis S. Baldwin, the adjacent general for the state of California, said drug problems persist in California, however, as a result of transnational criminal organizations, or TCOs, operating in the state. "Our problem set really goes throughout the northern part of the state, where TCOs are operating quite actively in our forest and public lands by growing marijuana," he said. "The threat there can many times be greater than what we see on the border. When we deploy Soldiers and Airmen down on the border, we generally arm them with side arms. When we send them up into the forest, in the northern part of California, they take long rifles and carbines -- because the threat is that great." Baldwin said that smugglers, while now crossing the border less into California, are trying new tactics to get into the state. "We're seeing now smugglers are turning to sea routes of entry and the littorals, and we've had to shift our efforts to more coast-watching," he said. "[It's] an agile threat." Transnational criminal organizations, he said, are going out to sea and coming to shore "much farther north," and that threat requires work with local and federal agencies, along with a requirement to increase aerial surveillance. Included in that, he said, are the California Air National Guard C-130J aircraft and the rescue-equipped MC-130. Army and Air National Guard unmanned aerial systems are also helping, he said, by keeping "an unblinking eye over the coast to start picking up these boats." Baldwin also said the California National Guard is developing expanded capabilities to include development of a program with the U.S. Navy Special Operations Command, called the Global Information Network Architecture, or GINA, which is a database of target sets, such as TCOs, that is presented as "a 3D picture in time and space," and which allows them to do predictive analysis. With the GINA, he said, it is possible to see, for instance, who a TCO has been communicating with and how, "on both sides of the border -- and it can enable law enforcement on both sides of the border to use that information to start taking out these very complex criminal networks and organizations." While relations with Canadian law enforcement have always been good, relations with Mexican law enforcement is getting better. Mahon said that military-to-military relations with Mexico have "taken off." That includes combined exercises between the two nations as well as subject-matter expert and senior-leader exchanges. "Professional exchanges have soared," Mahon said. "It's a good dialogue and a good exchange, it is truly professional, they are giving as much as we are giving." Stanton said that tactical exchanges with the Mexicans at border crossings are also "quite mature." Right now, Stanton said, that relationship includes a protocol to pass first responders back and forth in the event of disaster. Were there to be a disaster in San Diego, for instance, Mexican firefighters could come across to provide assistance. At JRTC, Army training for DATE with hybrid threats [2012-11-14] FORT POLK, La. -- Last month, about 1,200 Soldiers parachuted into the Joint Readiness Training Center here to participate in a "Decisive Action Training Environment" exercise meant to prepare them for the hybrid threats the Army will likely face as it shifts away from engagement in Afghanistan. The Joint Readiness Training Center, or JRTC, has for years conducted "mission readiness exercises," or MREs, specifically tailored to ready Soldiers for deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. Those exercises focused primarily on training units for counter-insurgency operations that were already manned by American forces stationed in established forward operating bases. When Soldiers arrive in those locations now, they replace units already established there through a "relief-in-place transfer of authority." DAY ONE IN THEATER The Decisive Action Training Environment, or DATE, exercise goes well beyond what the MREs offered. The DATE training prepares Soldiers for day-one of a military operation, before the hard facilities have been built, the exchange service sets up shops, the fitness centers are installed, and contractors come on board to put in wireless internet in the tent cities. They also exercise a brigade's mission-essential task list, and support the Army's core competencies, including both wide-area security and combined arms maneuver. JRTC has held "full-spectrum operations" training in the past, the last one was just two years ago, and before that it had been about seven or eight years. But now, after more than 10 years of conflict, "full-spectrum" has been modified into "decisive action" by incorporating lessons learned from conducting Counter Insurgency, or COIN, operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and reflecting the more complex threat environment. Within the JRTC rotation 13-01 DATE scenario, which ran Oct. 9-21, the hostile nation of "Arianna" invaded U.S.-friendly "Atropia" for its oil, and attacked the U.S. consulate in the Atropian city of Dara Lam. American forces intervened. GLOBAL RESPONSE FORCE Soldiers from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, about 4,800 Soldiers in all, exercised their role as a global response force by deploying to Atropia to assist. About 1,200 of those did so immediately with a "forcible entry" into Atropia, when they parachuted into a completely bare JRTC training range to help expand the foothold of "friendly forces" already in the area. After establishing a lodgement area and securing an airstrip that allowed additional American forces, equipment and supplies to be brought in by aircraft, Soldiers from the 2/82nd, with assistance from Army Special Operations Forces, conducted a noncombatant evacuation operation, or NEO, to get Americans out of Dara Lam. Soldiers from the 2/82nd stayed behind to secure the city as well. In addition to the forcible entry and NEO portions of the DATE scenario, Soldiers were also required to conduct both a defensive and offensive operation against a "hybrid threat" of guerrilla forces, insurgents, criminal elements, and "near-peer" conventional forces from hostile states. DATE FREE-PLAY When a unit has in the past come to JRTC to participate in an MRE in advance of an Afghanistan deployment, they already knew what region of the country they were going to deploy to and what type of enemy they could expect to be up against. With that knowledge in advance, JRTC has been able to develop training scripts tailored to what the unit will see in theater, said Capt. Dennis Grinde, the rotational planner for the 13-01 rotation. In such a script, training designers plan multiple "injects" into the scenario to better guide training for the unit and to ensure the unit will see the kinds of things in training that it's expected they will see in theater. With an MRE for Afghanistan, Grinde said, there are about 400-500 injects into the scenario. But DATE scenarios have to prepare Soldiers for unknown environments and unknown threats. In order to better approximate the unknown, there are less than 40 injects into the last DATE training event, Grinde said. Units tasked as a global response force, such at the 2/82nd, might know what part of the world they will go to. What they don't know is what country they will be asked to go to, or what region, or what enemy they will face. They have to be prepared to go just about anywhere. "We're really trying to train the unit here that is not necessarily defined in a particular environment," Grinde said. "It's a free-thinking, aggressive enemy that has realistic capabilities, and realistic motives. There's an increased amount of free-play, an increased amount of thinking out there." NEAR-PEER COMPETITORS Brig. Gen. Clarence K. K. Chinn, the commander of both Fort Polk and the JRTC, said that during a DATE training scenario, "anything is possible." That, he said, is something a unit like the 2/82nd must be prepared for. As the nation's global response force, Chinn said the 82nd must be able to respond within 96 hours to a notification to be anywhere in the world, where they could face just about any kind of threat. The DATE scenario at JRTC has been developed to ready them for that situation. "We've got to be prepared to fight in an environment where we may face a near-peer competitor," he said. "We can't be allowed to be surprised. In Afghanistan, we've fought a COIN fight. That's not the fight we think we may be in, in the future. For every unit here, we have to make their toughest day here." THE HYBRID THREAT To make DATE training realistic, JRTC has developed a formidable set of adversaries for units that will train. The DATE trains Soldiers against a "hybrid threat" that includes guerrillas, insurgents, criminal elements, bandits, gangs, and conventional forces from hostile states that are rated as "near-peers" to American forces. That means they have the same kind of equipment and know many of the same kinds of tactics that Americans know. Grinde said the near-peer forces possess GPS jamming capability, armored personnel carriers, modified tanks, attack helicopters, artillery, and nuclear, biological and chemical capability. He also said there is a developing cyber threat that will allow the "OPFOR," or opposing forces, to get into the brigade's computer systems. "It's in its infancy now, but it's a threat the 2-82 will have to watch out for," he said. HERE TO LEARN "In my 25 years of service, this is the best training I have ever conducted; it's that good," said Lt. Col. Kevin Quarles, deputy commander of the 2/82nd. "The team here at JRTC has exceeded our expectations, caused us to get out of our comfort zone, think creatively, and be adaptive." Quarles said the core mission of 2/82nd is to conduct forcible-entry operations, like the one at the onset of rotation 13-01, and that the training scenario presented to his brigade at JRTC is exactly what the unit needs to prepare itself to deploy as a global response force. More importantly, Quarles said, is what being learned at JRTC as part of the DATE training that is going to help fill in the experience gaps in his brigade that have been left by 10 years of conducting predominantly COIN missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. "As we surveyed our formation and talked to our leaders and asked them when the last time they conducted a defense was, we found we have about a decade-gap that corresponds to the amount of time that we have been committed to the conflicts [in Afghanistan and Iraq]," Quarles said. "In an environment like this, in an expeditionary environment, we've got to read our doctrine, we've got to go back to our field craft, and we've got to ensure that the leadership and the paratroopers are ready for the hardships ... and that is exciting," he said. 'WHAT'S ON YOUR BACK' When Soldiers parachuted into the JRTC training range at Fort Polk, La., there was nothing there except dirt, wild horses and port-a-potties -- regulations don't allow the Soldiers to dig latrines on the training range there. "If you didn't bring it with you on your back, it is not there," said Command Sgt. Maj. Jason Mosher, 2/82nd Brigade Special Troops Battalion. "That is very different from how the Army is used to doing things, where you could go in, open your computer, find something, order it, and it shows up in 48 hours. The AAFES tent will not come here." Mosher said one of the biggest challenges for his Soldiers was learning to live in austere conditions that were always vulnerable to enemy forces. "They have a hard time wrapping their head around sleeping on the ground in all-weather conditions," Mosher said. "Some people have a hard time wrapping their head around conducting 24-hour operations in an environment that is hostile and not having a location to go to in order to decompress, one that is completely shielded from those hostilities. That is the difference between an expeditionary force and one that does what we call RIPTOA, or relief-in-place transfer of authority. That's what the force of the last decade has been accustomed to." Mosher has been involved with expeditionary forces before -- he's been in the Army for more than 23 years now. But like Quarles, he said there's a shortage of Soldiers with real experience in expeditionary operations. Many in his unit, he said, entered service in the last decade. "If you look at the progression of the enlisted force and the officer corps, there is a strong likelihood that a Soldier witnessed 9/11 as a civilian, in high school or in college," he said. "They dropped everything they were doing and enlisted in the U.S military in a time of war." Now, he said, those Soldiers have attained senior rank, but without the experience of the expeditionary Army. "They are now senior leaders," he said. "For those who are not first sergeant or above or lieutenant colonel or above, there is a strong possibility they haven't seen this. So there is a large learning curve here. And the more senior of us are doing everything we can to ensure the next generation of Soldier is prepared." ON THE GROUND After Soldiers parachuted into JRTC, they were responsible for defending the area they dropped into, expanding the lodgment area, evacuating American citizens from the training city, and then defending the city from a very skilled OPFOR. Spc. Jacob Gallagher, a team leader with A Co., 1/325th, 82nd Airborne Division, was one of those charged with defending the fictional city of Dara Lam. "We had some American citizens we had to help escort out of here and get them to safety areas and get them out of danger," Gallagher said. "And right now we've had some defensive attacks from SAPA, the local army of Dara Lam and the Atropia area." Gallagher stood in the "city" of Dara Lam -- built at JRTC as a Soldier training aid -- across from the American consulate, with a rifle across his chest. He'd been on the ground for more than week. He said he was on his second pair of ACU pants because the first had worn out; so had the second. The day before, he said, the "South Atropian People's Army" which served as the insurgent force inside Atropia, had entered the city in tanks. He'd been inside one of the buildings there, which were equipped with machine gun bunkers, when the enemy rolled into town. FORCE ON FORCE "It wasn't until about 9 a.m. when we got our first hits, and the first engagements started," he said. "Then all the tanks started rolling through. It was kind of a tank battle out there with our Delta trucks and our gun trucks and our 50-cal. verses the tanks and their machine guns. It was pretty crazy." American forces took losses, he said, "but a lot less than the enemy." He also said he got "hit in the ribs" -- which in a training scenario might register as a hit on the laser tag-like MILES gear -- and was put through some medical care before a tactical pause in the exercise was called and he was eventually put back in the exercise. This is Gallagher's second rotation though JRTC. The first time, he said, was different because it was just company-level training. But the DATE training is much bigger. "You kind of see the whole Army working as one," he said. "You see the whole machine. As far as me being a team leader, and having my Joes pulling security as far up as brigade commanders, company commanders, battalion commanders, and seeing what they are doing and having other support units from different divisions-- it's a bigger picture." Gallagher said he doesn't just see the JRTC rotation as being good for him. He said he sees benefit for nearly everybody who's involved. "This is good for me, it's good for everybody," he said. "From my team to other teams, the gun teams, Joe on up to platoon leader. We just got a new platoon leader, and this is his first cycle, so this is good training for him. It's a different type of atmosphere, a different type of environment. You never know what you're going to face when you go overseas." ADAPTING ARMY Sgt. Ronald Brown Jr., an operations sergeant with A Co. 2/82nd Brigade Special Troops Battalion, didn't parachute into the JRTC rotation, but arrived two days after "P-hour" to take accountability of fuel and equipment. But Brown has been in the Army for a while now. He did a four-year enlistment starting in 1993, well before 9/11 happened. The Army then was all about full-spectrum operations -- it wouldn't start its 11-year focus on COIN for another eight years. But Brown got back in the Army in 2005, and has served since then. He said the Army he came into the second time was different than the one he knew as a younger man. "It was definitely a different Army as far as the training aspect goes, going from what I call old school to the COIN operating environment -- insurgent- and terrorist-based, more non-conventional type of warfare," he said. "But I learn fast and adapt fairly quickly." Some of what he knew from the Army back in 1993 is what is being retaught to Soldiers today -- along with all the lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan. He's talked to his Soldiers about what he knows from his first time around. "This is more of an eye-opener for them," he said. "I've already talked to my Soldiers within my element, letting them know direct action means force-on-force, and we are fighting near-peer assets as opposed to an insurgent or terrorist type action," he said, adding that he thinks the more robust training will help develop both him and his Soldiers into better warriors. "It's going to blossom us, and open our eyes to what can come in the future, what to expect, and how we can better ourselves as a unit," he said. TRAINING FOR THE WIN There were two "hard stops" during the DATE exercise -- one after the NEO, and one after the defense portion of the exercise was complete. There was also an after-action review at the conclusion of the training. During those times, Soldiers, commanders and exercise observer-coach-trainers discussed the unit's performance in each phase of the training. Even while the training was ongoing, OCT personnel remained among the rotational training unit to guide and coach them as they performed their tasks under stress, and attempted to achieve their objectives. "We always have an officer and an NCO out there providing immediate feedback to them and coaching, observing and teaching them all the way; so it's constant feedback, all the time," Chinn said. The feedback, the coaching and the evaluations are meant, Chinn said, to help Soldiers see what they've done wrong while training, so they don't do it again. "That's the whole key to training, to make sure that if we make mistakes, we make it here, we figure it out and make it work, so it's not a problem on the battlefield, and we don't have to pay in red with our blood," Chinn said. At the end of a DATE training rotation at JRTC, it may be hard to determine who was the winner of the fictional scenario, was it the rotational training unit or the OPFOR? Did the Americans defeat Arianna forces? Did they subdue the insurgency by the South Atropian People's Army, or were they overrun? Chinn said the outcome of the scenario is not important, it's the learning that is important. Soldiers come to JRTC to make mistakes so they don't make them in combat. "When you come to JRTC or go to [the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif.], we all want to win, but you've got to understand that you're coming here to learn and grow, do after-action reviews and modify your behavior," said Chinn. "Sometimes the BCT actually wins by defeating OPFOR, but in the end what we are looking for is better trained Soldiers and leaders." 'Spirit of Hope' awardees find unique ways to thank troops [2012-11-15] WASHNGTON -- Six Americans who've dedicated considerable time to U.S. service members received the 2012 Spirit of Hope Award, Nov. 15. Included among those six are Bill Dietrich, founder and executive director of the Two Top Mountain Adaptive Sports Foundation and Carolyn Blashek, founder of Operation Gratitude. The Spirit of Hope Award is named after entertainer Bob Hope, who served service members for decades though his work with the United Service Organizations. "Bob Hope connected the civilian world to the uniformed world," said Surgeon General of the Army Lt. Gen. Patricia D. Horoho, during the Nov. 15 award ceremony at the Pentagon. "Today we honor those who have done their best to walk in Bob Hope's shoes, in the finest tradition of American values. We are here to recognize their love and their service to our country." OPERATION GRATITUDE LAUNCH Blashek, nominated for the award by the Navy, founded "Operation Gratitude" out of her home in 2003, just after the start of the Iraq war. The organization has sent over 875,000 care packages to individually-named deployed service members, their families, wounded service members, and first responders in the U.S. "After September 11th, I wanted to join the military, but I was too old," Blashek said. "So I started volunteering at the military lounge at Los Angeles airport." In March 2003, in a period just before the start of the Iraq War, Blashek said she had been working alone in the military lounge when a distraught Soldier came in asking to talk to a chaplain. "There wasn't one, and I was a little panicked, thinking I couldn't handle this," she said. She grabbed the phone, offering to find somebody for him to talk to, but he said his plane was leaving soon and he asked instead to talk with her. "He explained to me he'd been on emergency leave to bury his mother, his wife had left him, and his only child had died as an infant, and that he had no one left in his life," she said. "He said for the first time in his 20-year career, he was going to a war, but he knew he wouldn't make it back this time, and it didn't matter because nobody would even care." That a Soldier preparing to go off to a war zone didn't think he had anybody back at home to care about his well-being was what drove Blashek to do something to prove him wrong. "It was simply not okay for a new generation of service members to go into harm's way, with bullets flying, and not believe that people at home cared about them and wanted them to come home," Blashek said. That day served as the birth of Operation Gratitude, Blashek said. She knew she needed to find a way to show deployed service members that Americans back home did care about them, even if they didn't know it yet. "The way I showed I cared was to send care packages, filled with little goodies and letting them know that somebody was thinking about them," she said. NOW 100,000 PACKAGES ANNUALLY She started small, in her own home, unsure if what she was doing would ever amount to anything. But momentum built up around her efforts she said, and more came aboard. "Little did I know it was going to mushroom into this enormous operation and organization," she said. Since then, Operation Gratitude has sent out more than 875,000 packages. They send out about 100,000 of them each year. There are about 15,000 volunteers in California, and there are tens of thousands of others across the United States that participate in the organization by writing letters, knitting scarves, making bracelets, donating money, or purchasing items and sending them to Operation Gratitude. Blashek said care packages include hand-made items, snack food, entertainment items, hygiene products and even Beanie Babies. "It started as a kind of symbolic kind of thing for them to know people were thinking about them," Blashek said of the once wildly-collectable plush animals. "But they tend to give those out to the children in the conflict zone to win the hearts and minds." 'THANK YOU' LETTERS AT TOP Also in each box, included amongst the goodies, is one or more personal letter from somebody in the United States -- oftentimes from children. "It goes on the very top of the package because it really is the most important thing," she said. "It's at least three or four letters -- to me that is the critical item. It's for two reasons. One, it is the message that we are sending: somebody in this country is thinking about them. Also, our main mission is to put a smile on a service member's face and let them know that people care." Equally important, Blashek said, is that writing those letters provides for Americans who are not otherwise connected to those serving in conflicts overseas an opportunity to say thank you. "The personal letters from the kids really are a way for any child, no matter what age they are, to understand that people are serving the country on their behalf and this is their way of saying thank you to them," she said. HITTING THE SLOPES Bill Dietrich was the Army's nominee for the 2012 Spirit of Hope Award, for his efforts in creating the Two Top Mountain Adaptive Sports Foundation, which helps both injured service members and injured civilians learn to ski. Dietrich has been a ski instructor for 23 years now at the White Tail Ski Resort. And while there have been adaptive ski lessons taught at the resort since 1991, when it opened, it wasn't until 2007 when Dietrich was asked to become the director of the Adaptive Program that he decided a non-profit organization was needed to better fund the program. It was then, in the summer of 2007, that he founded the Two Top Mountain Adaptive Sports Foundation. "My ski school director kind of challenged me to kind of build the program at Whitetail," Dietrich said. "We really didn't have any kind of organized adaptive program. So I took the challenge, had people tell me it couldn't be done -- and I love to hear that -- and made it happen." The adaptive ski program works with anybody with any kind of disability, he said. "We primarily work a lot with children with learning disabilities, and autism," he said. "And we have a double-amputee, a young man we are working with, that started skiing with us last year." INVITING WOUNDED WARRIORS The resort is just a short distance from Baltimore and Washington, D.C., he said, and that makes it easy for wounded Soldiers at places like Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to take part in the program. Being a chapter of Disabled Sports USA has also given inroads to places like Walter Reed. The Two Top program has had booths at the hospital in both the spring and fall to let Soldiers there know about the opportunities at Two Top Mountain Adaptive Sports Foundation. And wounded service members have flocked to the resort to pick up the sport. During the first year, Dietrich said, it was just one wounded warrior and his wife who skied together for just one day. The next year, that number grew to 25 wounded warriors who participated. The following winter, it was 75 wounded warriors. And while last year that number dropped to 60, Dietrich said he knows the program is successful. "We're one of the closest adaptive sports programs that offer skiing and snowboarding for our wounded guys out of Walter Reed and Bethesda," said Dietrich. "The fact that guys are coming back and becoming better shows the program is working." Dietrich has been an avid skier since childhood. He said he wants, through his program, to pass his love of the sport on to wounded service members. "I love the sport, and teaching anybody to ski is rewarding," he said. "Taking somebody out of a wheel chair and changing their life is incredible. You can't hide an honest smile. And I know I've done a good job when that service member is sitting there with a big grin on their face wanting to know when they can come back again." Also included in this year's Spirit of Hope Awards winners are: -- Actor Gary Sinise, who was nominated by the Department of Defense for his work with the USO; -- Peggy Rochon, nominated by the Marine Corps for her work as the program developer as well as the director of the Wounded Warrior Unit Support Program for Hope for the Warriors; -- Master Sgt. Brandon Lambert, nominated by the Air Force, for 115 hours of volunteer work at the Air Force Theater Hospital as Joint Base Balad, Iraq; -- Ross E. Roeder, nominated by the Coast Guard, for his work as chairman of the Coast Guard Foundation. Portrait of 37th chief of staff unveiled at Pentagon [2012-11-20] WASHINGTON -- The Army unveiled a portrait of Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, who served as the Army's 37th chief of staff, in a ceremony at the Pentagon, today. Dempsey, now serving as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, attended the unveiling with his wife, Deanie. Dempsey is now the 18th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or CJCS. He assumed the position Sept. 30, 2011. Prior to his service as the CJCS, Dempsey served as the Army's chief of staff, and held that position for 149 days, beginning in April 2011. The portrait is meant to commemorate the general's service to the Army. Standing in front of the portrait, painted by artist Laurel Stern Boeck, Dempsey explained some of the significant elements of the work, and why they are important to him. In the painting, which is set in his office, there is a picture of his family on his desk. He said their image is there to include in the portrait their commitment and contribution to his military career. "The picture, I hope, will memorialize that; that this isn't just about me," Dempsey said. The portrait also shows the general wearing his graduation ring from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. "I don't wear it all the time, but as a cavalryman in armor units, you start to take jewelry off so you don't lose a finger in an alternator or generator," he said. "But I do wear it on special occasions, and I wanted to remind myself and those who come after me that I owe a good bit of who I became as a military officer to my time at the U.S. Military Academy." Finally, in the background of the portrait, the painting "Pride of Erin" is represented -- a print that hung in the general's office that portrayed the "Irish Brigade" at Gettysburg during the Civil War. "It's to remind me -- as the secretary and I talk about often -- we are a nation of immigrants," Dempsey said. "We are all from someplace else, or the vast majority. And somehow we manage to pull it all together, not only as a nation, but as a military. I wanted to make sure I captured that as well." The general identifies closely with his own Irish heritage. Among the distinguished guests at the unveiling were Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III, and former Chief of Staff of the Army retired Gen. George W. Casey Jr. McHugh said that while Dempsey had been the chief of staff of the Army for only a short time, he came into the job with a plan; one which he'd been developing for years. That plan, McHugh said, involved the importance of the cultivation of leaders. "All of us recognize that all of our Soldiers are truly the strength of the Army -- the strength of the nation," McHugh explained. "Marty is the one that recognized our leaders are an irreplaceable source of that strength. And pursuing his thesis on how to develop great leaders, at the same time, Marty became one himself. We've been blessed by that." The general's portrait will hang with similar portraits of past chiefs of staff in a corridor in the Pentagon. Soldiers at NIE run network equipment through life-like combat scenarios [2012-11-20] FORT BLISS -- Testing networked equipment in a lab ensures functionality, but only a field evaluation with Soldiers ensures it will work as designers intended in an operating environment. At Fort Bliss, Texas, and on its training ranges just north of the border in New Mexico, Soldiers with the 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division, completed Network Integration Evaluation 13.1, Nov. 17. During the month-long Network Integration Evaluation, or NIE, Soldiers in a field environment tested and evaluated 26 pieces of equipment for their usability and compatibility with existing Army networks. Soldiers with the 2/1 AD, part of the Army's Brigade Modernization Command, or BMC, are not evaluators or equipment testers by trade. They are a regular, warfighting, combat-training brigade combat team that could be tasked to go to Afghanistan like every other Army brigade. The difference is, when the 2/1 AD trains, the Soldiers are tasked to include in their preparations new equipment the Army wants to integrate across the larger force, to make sure it is combat-ready and Soldier-usable, and to evaluate its readiness to be integrated into existing systems before it is fielded to other units. "The NIE is about taking the equipment that's been nominated to fill what the Army deems as a gap in what our capabilities (are), and putting it into the hands of real Soldiers, Soldiers trained to deploy and fight," said Lt. Col. Andy Morgado, the G-3 operations officer for the Brigade Modernization Command. "They are a FORSCOM brigade that has been put on loan to the BMC to do this very thing. We put this equipment into a realistic environment, and try to break it, and see how it works. That's what we're trying to do." Among the equipment at the most recent NIE were 21 systems under evaluation, and five systems under "test," including Nett Warrior; Joint Battle Command Platform; RAM Warn; and Spider XM7. Additionally the Paladin PIM was under test at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz. NETT WARRIOR "Nett Warrior is for battlefield communication, like a 'Blue Force Tracker' on the ground," said Staff Sgt. Alex Carter. "It lets you know where team leaders and above are. The effects it has on the battlefield are amazing. For something as new as it is, I thought there would be a lot more glitches. I thought it would be just another piece of junk. But I'm very impressed by it." The Nett Warrior system includes an Android-driven, smartphone-like device mounted to a Soldier's chest and attached to a radio system. Using applications installed on the system, Soldiers at team-level and above can see the mapped-out locations of other Soldiers wearing the device, communicate with each other via text message, as well as have visibility of "chem lights" dropped onto the mapped environment by other Soldiers to mark things such as improvised explosive devices or locations that require fires support. The markers can also designate locations where a platoon leader might want a team to move, for instance. "Sometimes towns are very condensed," he said. "With this you can tell exactly where Soldiers are. Every step you take you are a little bubble, you are a blue arrow. It shows exactly. When a team is bounding across the objective, you just pull this out and look at it. It's real-time, it's real effective." Carter said he's impressed with the system, "you can send up a 9-line (medical evacuation request) in less than 30 seconds," he said. And he's also impressed with the texting function. It would have been a "combat multiplier" for him during the 29 months he served in Afghanistan. "If you don't have comms, you can still send text via satellite: this is our position, we're holding here, here's our liquid, ammunition, casualty and equipment report," he said. "You can get [operations] orders, fragmentary orders, whatever you want through text messages. That way you're not clogging up the radio net." Capt. Josh Horner, Alpha Company commander, 1/35 Armor Battalion, said the system has created a better common operating picture between himself and his platoons. But he's also got some suggestions about the system -- things that need to be improved. "There are some shortcomings in the system at this point," Horner said. "I'm on a classified system, my platoon leaders are not on a classified system. So I can't talk to them. If I want to drop some sort of information on my Net Warrior device, they are not getting them. So I call them up on voice communications." Both Horner and Carter agree the Nett Warrior needs more graphic symbols on the screen, and in more colors, to differentiate a wider array of things for Soldiers to take note of when using the system. "There's not enough graphics on there so I can correctly identify," he said. "When you look at the operating picture, you got all these different colored dots all over the place. And unless you have really good SOP within your unit, you might not know what they are. I'd like to make it clearer what they are." Having something to say about the equipment they are using is something expected of both Horner and Carter during the after-action reviews and formal surveys that follow their evaluation of the system; because they are not just training for combat at Fort Bliss -- they are evaluating the systems they may eventually take with them to combat. Still, Carter said, "It's very quick, and it's probably the best combat multiple I've ever see. This thing; I stand by it 100 percent." JOINT BATTLEFIELD COMMAND PLATFORM Billed as the "next generation" of Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below, which is known as FBCB2, the Joint Battlefield Command Platform, or JBC-P, system has a redesigned graphical user interface and can be used jointly to convey both command and control messages as well as situational awareness. "It allows us to have more situational control of the battlefield," said Sgt. Joshua Perkins. "We can see what's going on a lot faster, especially where the FBCB2 didn't allow us to see where the dismounts are on the ground. But with the integration of Nett Warrior and JBCP, you can see the dismounts on the ground. It gives us better situational awareness, better information on the battlefield, it's more time-efficient. Overall it's a good program." Sitting at a JBC-P mounted on the passenger side of a mine-resistant, ambush protected vehicle, or MRAP, Perkins had only one complaint about the system: his plastic stylus for interfacing with it had broken. "Hopefully most guys will write positive, professional criticism, as well, that way we can take what we learn, keep using that and whatever needs improvement they can fix and then send back out for us to re-evaluate," he said. GLOBAL NETWORK ON THE MOVE ACTIVE DISTRIBUTION The Global Network on the Move Active Distribution system, or GNOMAD, is a modular, scalable, broadband satellite communications on-the-move system of systems capable of supporting mission command on-the-move. "The GNOMAD is actually a very fascinating device in that it can be used in multiple functions," said 1st Lt. Zachary Taylor. "We use it two ways. The primary way we are using it throughout this operation is in an on-the-move capability. Every mission we are going out, platoon-wise, company-wise, STX (situational training exercise), we are actually pushing out as a command and control element. We are using it on a trail vehicle, we're using it as a relay station from the platoons to company, and company to higher echelons, such as battalion and brigade." The GNOMAD system can be used on the move, or in a tactical operations center, Taylor said, though he said in future operations, he sees it as "more of a mover." "My experience with GNOMAD, and running it on STX lanes, is that it provides us with more eyes on the ground, and also more intelligence assets at the fingertips of the commander and of the platoon leader on the ground," he said. "The GNOMAD will improve the command and control on the ground, which will also improve the situational awareness, and allow commanders to make a better decision, more quickly. In my opinion, it is a plus for the Army." ROAMER NET Taylor and his Soldiers are also evaluating the "Roamer Net" system, which allows companies and platoons to communicate with outside units tasked to support them. One example might be if a support aircraft comes in to their area of operations. "A bird comes into our battle space, they contact me, and I push them out over the company network," Taylor said. With Roamer Net, Soldiers were tasked to answer questions like "What tactics, techniques and procedures did you use to operate and sustain a Soldier Radio Waveform/Roamer Network?" And "How reliable was the Roamer Network at supporting air-ground data/voice communication?" During training, which Taylor said is his priority in the field, Soldiers will evaluate Roamer Net for how it changes the way they operate -- for good or for bad. Afterward, During after-action reviews, Soldiers -- depending on what equipment was in their unit during training -- will be asked to discuss how things like Net Warrior, GNOMAD, JBP-C, Roamer Net, or any other equipment enhanced or detracted from their mission. Taylor said Soldiers will need to consider the reliability of a system, how easy it is to use, how often it was operational, how easy it was to bring it back when it went down. "Once you kind of peel back that onion, you're looking at the meat and potatoes of the operation," Taylor said. He said each Soldier must answer the question: Can he use it? Can he trouble shoot it? "When we have an issue, do we have to call field service representatives, or can we learn this operation? Then you can see if it's a burden or an asset for the company. Each piece of the equipment has its pros and cons, and each piece of equipment also provides something new to the company and something new for the Soldier. It doesn't matter if it's at the headquarters element, it provides intelligence all the way down to the lowest Soldiers, and that provides more situational awareness." Taylor said Soldiers can come easily to learn how to make a piece of new equipment work, to turn it on and to make sure it's connected properly. But the implementation of that system is more complex, he said. "That's what we're trying to evaluate," he said. "Is the implementation of it and the difficulty of it worth the meat? Or do we need to go back to a more simplistic concept?" Soldier feedback at NIE comes quickly, said Morgado. Soldiers are in the tactical environment the whole time, on four-day "mission cycles." But on the fourth day of that cycle, he said, they harvest Soldier feedback and collect data from equipment in the field to be evaluated and fed back to 'big Army' to decide which systems need more work, which systems might be ready to move ahead, and which systems might not be so good for the Army. "We're not waiting until the last day of a 32-day exercise to ask how they felt about something from day one of an exercise," Morgado said. The most important thing about NIE, Morgado said, is that the data collected there is collected by real Soldiers doing real training -- just like every other Soldier in the Army. "It's not testers there. It's real Soldiers evaluating this stuff" Morgado said. "The main stuff we're asking our Soldiers from private to brigade commander is, 'will you take this thing to combat?' It's a really realistic and pertinent question for them because they might be taking it into combat. The feedback we get from them is extremely important because it comes from an operator." Army wins Warrior Care Month sitting volleyball tournament [2012-11-21] WASHINGTON -- The Army team took the top slot, beating out the Veterans Affairs team in the final round of the Department of Defense Warrior Care Month sitting volleyball competition, Nov. 20, at the Pentagon Athletic Center. "It means everything," said Sgt. Monica Southhall, an Army team participant. "You come out here today and show that regardless of your disability, you are still able to do something fun." Army finished the tournament 8-0. VA came in second, Special Operations Command took third, and the Marines, the Air Force and the Navy took fourth, fifth and sixth place, respectively. Southhall is still in the Army and is assigned to the Community-Based Warrior Transition Unit at Virginia Beach, Va. A wounded warrior, she tore both rotator cuffs and injured her left knee while serving in Afghanistan. She is both a track and field athlete and a sitting volleyball player. As part of the Army's team at the Warrior Games in 2012, she helped her team take the gold. Right now, she said, she thinks the goal for the team at next year's games is pretty much the same as it was last year and the same as it was at the Pentagon competition: to dominate the playing field. "Last year at the 2012 Warrior Games we took the gold medal -- that's pretty much our same goal," she said. "We're looking to repeat in the 2013 Warrior Games. We get together, we do camps at different times, to try to keep our momentum going and keep our skills up. I think we can repeat again next year." Robbie Gaupp, a veteran of the Army and the gold-winning 2012 Warrior Games sitting volleyball team, also helped the Army take the No. 1 slot in the Warrior Care Month tournament. He said winning is all about training. Even though the Army's team won gold, he said, "you still have to train hard, you have to practice. No matter, when you take a break for a day, or time off, you start losing basics. You want to go back to basics and fundamentals which create great athletes." Winning gold at the Warrior Games and taking the top slot at the Warrior Care Month competition means a lot to Gaupp, he said. "It's great to come out and show ... warriors don't have to give up, even though you are injured," he said. Gaupp initially joined the Army in 2003, but was medically retired as a sergeant in 2010, due to shoulder injuries sustained during Operation Jumpstart, along the Texas-Mexico border. The competition at the Pentagon was in recognition of the DOD's Warrior Care Month, said Master Sgt. Jarrett Jongema, the noncommissioned officer in charge of the Army Adaptive Sports and Reconditioning Branch. The Army hosted the event this year, and Jongema, a wounded warrior himself, said "we wanted to showcase recovery, we wanted to showcase resiliency, and at the same time we bring about awareness of some of the different sports." This is the second year the event was held in the Pentagon, but Jongema said this year was better than last, because this year, all four services sent a team of skilled players to compete. "That changes the dynamic," he said. "The competition level goes through the roof." This year, the VA team, "Team Semper Fi," was sponsored by the Semper Fi Fund. Jongema said he sees no reason why more sponsored teams couldn't play in next year's event. "Why wouldn't you expect to see other sponsored teams show up ... other great programs and non-profits?" he said. "I want to see it grow. This was very successful today." Military families meet with first lady at White House [2012-11-28] WASHINGTON -- The children of military families sat patiently in the front row of seats set up in the East Room of the White House, Nov. 28, to listen to remarks by Michelle Obama. "Our military families truly represent the very best that this country has to offer, and I've seen it up close," Mrs. Obama said. "You all do so much for this country, and you do it with such amazing poise and grace." Behind the children, the East Room was filled with military families. The first lady commented on the sacrifice of military families, their contributions to the community and the contributions to the nation's defense. She also highlighted the sacrifices of their young children who may have to move many times around the country and the world as part of a military family. To illustrate her point about the sacrifices of military children, she asked for one of the children to volunteer how many times they have had to change schools. One child, only 10 years old, had changed schools four times. "Four schools at 10 years old -- that is typical," Mrs. Obama said. "You meet these kids and they've been to so many schools and they are adjusting and keeping their grades up. And so many of you step up and handle your business while mom or dad is away, right? I just want you all to know just how proud we are. We are so proud of you, and we think you are amazing individuals. It may not feel that way, but you are special. We are grateful for your sacrifice and your service." In the few days following the Thanksgiving holiday, volunteers from around the country descended on the White House to help decorate the first family's home for the Christmas season. Included in those decorations, the first lady said, are 54 trees, including the "official" White House tree, which is 19 feet tall. This year, that tree bears the words "Joining Forces" and is decorated with ornaments made by the children of military families from around the globe, Mrs. Obama said. Another tree in the White House, she said, "honors our men and women in uniform for the extraordinary sacrifice they and their families have made." That tree is decorated with gold stars bearing the names of those who have died in service to the country. "Any Gold Star family who visits the White House during this season will have the opportunity to decorate their own ornament and hang it on that very tree for the holiday period in honor of their loved ones," Mrs. Obama said. Included among the 85 volunteers from around the United States who came to the White House to help decorate was Jennifer Jackman, mother of Marine Corps 1st Lt. Ryan M. Jackman. He died in training, March 2007, near Camp Pendleton, Calif. This is Jackman's second year as a decorator at the White House. "Last year I was invited to be the Gold Star representative on the decorating team," she said. "This year I applied just like any other American and got selected. I came to support the cause. I love volunteering. That's what Gold Star mothers do. We volunteer to honor our sons and daughters; and what better opportunity than to volunteer to decorate the White House." Jackman said she's the only Gold Star mother on the volunteer decorating committee, but said there are also Blue Star mothers included as well. She said the decorators come "from every walk of life," and are all volunteers, like her. "I've had the opportunity to educate my fellow volunteers on what we do following the deaths of our sons and daughters, which is give back to our country," Jackman said. Concluding her remarks, Mrs. Obama expressed holiday wishes for the families that had gathered. "I do hope that your holiday season is truly special; that you really use this time to reflect, to come together," she said. "So many of us in this country will use your lives as inspiration as we sit around our trees and our tables and we think about all that we have and all that all of you are sacrificing to make sure we live in freedom and harmony. We are truly grateful." As Mrs. Obama left the East Room, she was flanked on all sides by a crowd of tiny children. She led them to the State Dining Room, on the other side of the White House, where she worked with them to make holiday decorations and decorate treats. African nations can, must do for themselves -- with U.S. support [2012-12-04] WASHINGTON -- While the United States has military forces in Africa, they are mostly limited to small groups who have specific, time-limited tasks. That setup, said Gen. Carter F. Ham, commander, U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, is ideally suited to Africa, where militaries there are able to, and should take care of their own, with the help of some U.S. support. "We think we do that best by developing and strengthening the defense capabilities of our African partners, so they are increasingly capable of providing for their own defense, and for contributing to regional defense, stability and security," Ham said, during a presentation, Dec. 3, at the Institute of Land Warfare's Gen. Bernard W. Rogers Strategic Issues Forum. The general said that AFRICOM is predominantly involved in a supporting and enabling role, though he said AFRICOM remains ready to execute the operational military directives of the president, such as in Libya. The United States has other policy tools in place in Africa, furthering U.S. goals there to promote opportunity and development, spur economic growth, strengthen democratic institutions and advance peace and security. It is the advancement of peace and security where AFRICOM plays its most dominant role, Ham said. The U.S. military in Africa plays out its role there, primarily through partnerships with African militaries, by providing training and guidance, to strengthen those militaries and to enable them to fight their own battles. "Strengthening of the defense capabilities -- it's the bread and butter of what we do at U.S. AFRICOM," Ham said. The command is also ready, he said, to provide humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, as well as to respond to and prevent mass atrocities. In Africa, he said, quoting DOD strategic guidance, the US will have an "innovative and light footprint approach." "We don't need large-scale U.S. armed forces operating in Africa," Ham said. "We are much better when we have small tailored forces, that are there for a specific purpose, usually time-limited, to accomplish a specific objective." As defined in the Department of Defense's 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance, the Pacific region has been named a priority, but Ham said that the new guidance doesn't mean the U.S. is no longer interested in Africa. To the contrary, a primary goal stated in the same guidance indicates that the countering of extremist organizations is also a priority. "It's a sad fact that violent extremist organizations are present in Africa," Ham said. "So that becomes our highest priority." The general spelled out four specific extremist hotspots in Africa that are of concern to the United States. SOMALIA In Somalia, he said, the presence of the extremist group al Shabaab, an affiliate of al Qaeda, is of concern. "They have controlled Somalia for the past nearly 20 years," he said. But now, the general said, Somalia has an elected president, a constitution, and a parliament. Al Shabaab is out of Mogadishu and "mostly out of Kismayo." That success is in part due to the efforts of the African-led effort, Ham said. "It's happened because the Africans decided that they were going to put forward the effort to do this," he said. "And I think this is perhaps a model for us to think about for other endeavors in Africa and other places. I think the reason the African Union mission in Somalia has been successful is because it has been African-led, it has been African troops on the ground." The U.S. provides training, equipping and logistical support of the African forces who have worked in Somalia, Ham said, "but it is African forces who are fighting this fight, and led by African commanders and I think that is what has made the difference. And I think it's a pretty extraordinary achievement and maybe indicative of what might be possible." Now, he said, Al Shabaab in Somalia, is "essentially in survival mode, because they are under duress from many directions." He was clear, however, that the extremist group is not defeated, and there is work still to be done. The focus now, he said, is to help train Somali forces to provide for their own defense, and not just to rely on outside African forces. LIBYA After NATO operations in Libya, and the fall of the Muammar Gaddafi regime in 2011, the Libyans have formed a "fragile government" that Ham said extremist organizations, some with ties to al Qaeda, are looking for opportunities with. With a lack of governmental institutions such as a military force, a police force, border security forces, or a national intelligence service, Ham said, extremist groups in Libya "seek to establish or in many cases re-establish networks that have been previously operating inside Libya." AFRICOM efforts, Ham said, must help strengthen the Libyan government so they can deal with the threats. MALI As a result of a military coup earlier this year, an absence of government in northern Mali has left it a "safe haven" for al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a militant Islamic group, Ham said. "The absence of government is very evident in northern Mali," Ham said. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, is the wealthiest affiliate of al Qaeda, and earns money from kidnapping for ransom, the drug trade and other trafficking. "They have a lot of money and they have a lot of weapons," Ham said. "In the aftermath of fighting in Libya, many of the fighters who had been paid mercenaries, paid by Mr. Gaddafi, when they realized that they were either not going to be paid or that he was no longer going to be in power, they left Libya and they brought their weapons with them and many of them came to northern Mali, where they present a real threat." Ham said the well-financed AQIM are establishing training camps and a "very sophisticated recruiting effort" to strengthen their goals. "I think this is a very dangerous situation, not only for the Malians, but for the region, and more broadly for Europe and eventually for the United States," Ham said. "It's clear to me that al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb aspires to attack in Europe and in the United States." But there is an opportunity now, Ham said, with an African-led endeavor, to re-establish security in northern Mali. NIGERIA Finally, in Nigeria, Ham said, is the growing threat of the Boko Haram terrorist organization, which operates in the mostly Muslim northern part of the country. "They seek to undermine the central government in Abuja," he said, and impose Islamic law across the northern portion of Nigeria. "They are increasingly violent in their behavior; attacking universities, colleges, and Christian churches throughout the country. It's a very dangerous organization. They are not yet capable of extending their activities beyond the borders of Nigeria, but I think it's a matter of time before they are able to do so." GROWING CONNECTIONS Ham said he's concerned that the extremist and terrorist groups across Africa are now developing connections, and sharing funding, tactics, techniques and procedures, explosives, munitions and weapons. The groups, he said, are "collaborating and coordinating their efforts. It's that synchronization (of) these various extremist organizations that to me is really worrisome." AFRICOM must now focus efforts on a regional basis, Ham said. "The threats present themselves regionally in an interconnected manner and I think it will require a regional approach to counter them." The U.S. is working with the African Union to help them address the threats. Ham also addressed the threat of Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army, and said the United States is "committed to helping the four countries involved," including Uganda, South Sudan, Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The U.S. will help those countries "coordinate their efforts from an information standpoint, from an intelligence standpoint, from a humanitarian standpoint, from economic development standpoint, and yes from a military standpoint, to capture Kony and his senior leaders and bring them to justice." The Lord's Resistance Army claims to want democracy in Uganda, but has been accused of human rights violations such as sexual slavery with children, rape, murder, kidnapping, and using children as soldiers in their fight. Ham said efforts to stymie the LRA have been fruitful, in that they have weekened the group. "We have seen very clearly that Kony and his leaders are much more focused on survival than they are on conducting the kinds of activities they have over the past many years," Ham said. African and U.S. efforts, he said, have contributed to defections and escapes from the LRA, and those people have provided information that may eventually help bring Kony to justice. Army evaluates plan to synchronize readiness, resilience programs [2012-12-06] WASHINGTON -- The Army aims to take programs related to Soldier resilience and align them under one "governance structure" that is located at the top level of the Army and runs all the way down to installation and regional coordination councils. Details for the "Ready and Resilient Campaign" plan were reviewed by Army senior leaders this week in Washington and their recommendations for going forward with R2C were briefed to the Army's vice chief of staff during the R2C symposium, Dec. 4-5, at the National Defense University here. At the symposium, Army leadership from the surgeon general's office, manpower and reserve affairs, Installation Management Command, Training and Doctrine Command, the Judge Advocate General's office and others gathered to review and provide critical initial feedback on the R2C plan before its implementation begins early next year. "The campaign plan is something we have recently developed, as a result of some of the things we've done over time and as a result of what we've seen on our trips out to the field," said Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III. "It helps us kind of synchronize the efforts of the total force and make sure we are focusing on the right things." There are multiple programs that will be affected by R2C, all of which affect Soldier readiness, fitness, resilience and health. Some of those programs are the Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness Program, the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program, the Army's suicide prevention efforts, the Integrated Disability Evaluation System, transition programs and the Wounded Warrior care programs. The vice chief said the Army plans to synchronize multiple Army programs -- any one of which may be successful on its own -- to make them more accessible to commanders, to eliminate potential redundancies and to make them easier for commanders to understand. "As we look at them you know in some cases we need to refocus some things, make sure the resources are there, make sure that one entity is not competing with another entity for important resources -- that we are looking at this thing in a holistic fashion," he said. "I think if we do the right things, we will be successful in all of these programs." Lt. Gen. Howard B. Bromberg, deputy chief of staff, Army G-1, said feedback from the field earlier this year, as part of the vice chief's "Health of the Force" tour of Army installations, showed that as more resilience and Soldier fitness programs are pushed to the field, commanders have had a difficult time in some cases knowing how the programs relate to each other. The R2C plan aims to provide clarity and understanding to commanders, Bromberg said. "It will give them a single point of entry into Army programs that support improving, overall, taking a great Soldier and making him even better," Bromberg said. "By improving the individual Soldier's readiness, it is going to improve their unit, improving the unit is going to improve the Army." Synchronizing these programs, Bromberg said, will also make it easier for commanders to incorporate "resilience" into their core training, "so it won't be seen as additional training, it's seen as complementary and supportive training to make their unit and individuals better." Bromberg also said that as leaders discussed the idea of resilience, the talks also turned to "readiness." A Soldier who is resilient, he said, is a Soldier who is ready for the war fight. "That means individual readiness; you'll hear us talk about if you have a ready individual, you'll have a ready unit. And ready units, you know squad-level, make ready platoons. Ready platoons make ready companies and ready companies make a ready Army," Bromberg said. "That's why we want to synchronize it that way." While Army leadership was asked to evaluate and provide feedback on the R2C plan as it is written, the feedback itself will be evaluated as to how it can improve the R2C program. "We'll collate what we heard with our planning team back in the [Pentagon], we'll come back together, start refining the words and then in January we'll go back to the leadership and say does this look about right to meet the chief and the secretary's intent," Bromberg said. Bromberg said the R2C plan will begin fielding in February or March of next year. In preparation for developing the R2C, Austin, Bromberg and other Army senior leaders embarked on a week-long series of visits to several Army bases in July to develop a better understanding of the health of the force. "We did multiple sensing sessions at each installation just to talk about these different aspects of suicide prevention, sexual harassment, Army drawdown, families, readiness, resiliency and just an open dialogue about these concerns and how we need to pull the team together," Bromberg said. "When we came back we said we really need to look at how we synchronize these activities." During the visits, commanders expressed concern with taking care of their Soldiers and were also concerned about having the right resources to do so. Finding ways for the Army to provide those resources was one of the goals of the visits. When Austin and the senior leaders who accompanied him on the trip returned to Washington, they consolidated their observations from the trip, analyzed the needs of commanders in the field and looked for better ways to provide them with what they need to take care of their Soldiers. What was learned from health of the force visit was instrumental in developing the R2C plan. Cadets raise spirits in Pentagon for Army-Navy game [2012-12-07] WASHINGTON -- In advance of the Army's 113th face-off against Navy on the football field, U.S. Military Academy cadets of the Spirit Band marched through the halls of the Pentagon Friday to rally support. This year the cadets from West Point hope to finally bring home the coveted "Commander in Chief's Trophy." The Black Knights from West Point will square off against the Naval Academy midshipmen, Dec. 8, at Philadelphia's Lincoln Financial Field. Marching through the corridors of the Pentagon, members of the school's Spirit Band played music loud enough to be heard floors away, and at a few locations where they stopped to play to a gathering crowd, the school's cheerleading team led passersby in cheers to rile up support for the Army. The cadets didn't march aimlessly though the building, however. They stopped off at a few key spots; in some places to find support for the Army from the top-tiers of Pentagon leadership, and in one location, to make a show of force in front of the enemy's senior-most leader. The cadet corps stopped first to visit Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who appeared delighted to see the young college students waiting outside his office. "I want you to know first and foremost how proud I am of all of you that are part of our military," Panetta said. "You guys are great. I have the best military in the world because of the men and women in uniform that serve this country." He said no matter the service, he's proud of the service members that work for him. Having been to Afghanistan and Iraq to see the conflict there, he said that cooperation between services in important. "But having said that, on Saturday you're going to meet on the football field, sports field, and there will be a great competition between two great academies," Panetta said. "It's a great tradition, and I think it's something everybody looks forward to. And you know you guys all know, I served in the Army ..." Hoots and cheers from the cadets indicated they hoped for a flat-out Army endorsement from the secretary, whose job it is to lead all branches of the U.S. military. "But as secretary of Defense, I take a neutral position," he said. Groans from the cadets indicated they were disappointed the secretary had opted to play it safe. "But if the time has come guys!" he said; and the cadets cheered, even though his endorsement was but a wink. Panetta handed out challenge coins to every cadet in attendance, and also introduced them to his dog, Bravo, who'd been frolicking in the hallway outside the secretary's office. Cadets also marched off to visit with Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, who started off by explaining his pride in all branches of the service. But his pride in the joint force didn't keep him from laying into the cadets with a friendly jibe, in a hope to stifle their spirit. "No matter how bad the Navy season has been, no matter how tough things are, you guys always make us look good," he said. "The last time you all won, you all were in middle school. I got bad news for your younger brothers and sister; but I think there may be some hope for their children." Over in the Army corridor, cadets got more love from their own service's leadership, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno and Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh. "I want to talk to you all, those who provide the spirit, [about] the important job you have tomorrow to make sure that the corps is ready," Odierno said. "We need everybody behind us to make sure that we do everything we can to win that game. And I know you are up for the task, right? We are ready to take on this victory, when Army beats the hell out of Navy. To the oldest service, to the best service; tomorrow we will beat Navy." McHugh told cadets he was confident that by the end of Saturday, there would be a lot of sad Midshipmen, because the Army had finally brought home the Commander in Chief's Trophy -- they haven't had it for 16 years." "This is a great day, but it's going to get even better for the Army tomorrow. I can feel the tide turning. I just want you to know the Navy folks came through here yesterday; they looked great, they looked terrific. But it's going to be so sad to see them tomorrow with tears in their eyes," McHugh said. "We're going to be there in spirit, we're going to be there in strength and God love you, the Commander in Chief's cup is coming home to where it should be." Before the cadets left, McHugh reminded them that while the football game is competitive fun, players from both teams, and the cadets themselves, are actually on all the same team. "Tomorrow, when the game is over, the players from both teams will walk off that field, and join a better and bigger team, that of the defense of the greatest country the world has ever seen," he said. In the Pentagon courtyard, the cadets gathered for a pep rally attended by Pentagon employees, and a lot of Soldiers, to rile up support for the weekend's big game. Mario David Turi, an engineering management major at West Point who is in his senior year, had served as a "rabble rouser" for the team. He was impressed, he said, with his visit to the headquarters of the nation's military. "It's a big maze," he said. And while Odierno has visited West Point in the past to address cadets there, Turi said he was glad to get a more personal visit with him. "Meeting him in person is impressive," Turi said. The fourth-year cadet has already chosen his branch in the Army, aviation. "I don't know my air frame yet," he said. "But I'm hoping to fly Apaches." He's not sure yet what he'll fly in the Army, but Turi feels confident of the outcome of Saturday's game. "I've watched every game," he said. "The Army fights hard, and I think we've won the games we need to bring home the Commander in Chiefs trophy tomorrow." Carlton Blake, an engineering management student in his second year at West Point, plays the drums in the Spirit Band. He said he wants to branch into combat engineering and "stay in the engineer corps and hopefully become the commander of engineer corps one day, hopefully." He said he's sure the Army will win Saturday against Navy, because he's talked to buddies of his on the team who've assured him of as much. "Army's going to win tomorrow," he said. "I've got no doubt about that. I've got a couple of friends on the Army team; from what they say, we beat Air Force and now hopefully we beat Navy." Also a drum player, Edward McBride, geospatial information science major in his senior year at the academy, said the pep rally at the Pentagon demonstrated to him that it's not just cadets who are rooting for the Black Knights at Saturday's game. "The pep rally shows how much spirit the actual leaders of the Army have, and not just us as the Corps of Cadets," he said. "And the Army is always going to win." 'Fiscal Cliff' would challenge Army to maintain readiness [2012-12-07] WASGINGTON -- Knowing there's a possibility the government will go over a "fiscal cliff" on midnight, Dec. 31, the Army recognizes some of the challenges it will face, but a senior leader said Thursday its priority will be to maintain readiness of the force. Like its sister services, the Army faces repercussions and adjustments that would follow a nearly $500-billion cut to the Department of Defense over the next decade. "It is all about readiness," said Lt. Gen. William T. Grisoli, director, Army Office of Business Transformation. "It is all about as we take a look at the new strategy, we feel comfortable that there are some things we have to work as far as the readiness of the force." The general spoke as part of a panel of government executives titled "The Road Ahead: Senior Military Leaders Identify New Challenges." It was hosted by the Government Executive Media Group. It is uncertain now if the terms of the Budget Control Act of 2011 will go into effect come the end of the year -- Congress may yet find a way to avoid the act's effects. But Grisoli said if the Army is impacted by the cuts, it will have to look at what further adjustments will be necessary. "As we adjust, if we are further impacted, and we have things that we are asked to do, you always have to take a look at what force structure do we have -- no matter what service -- and can you man, train and equip it properly -- the hollow force issue -- so that we can accomplish the mission," Grisoli said. "Those are the things we take a look at when you say what are our challenges. Our challenges are we will take a look at meeting the new strategy with the resources we are provided ... and we turn that dial of manning, training, and equipping to make sure we don't have a hollow force." TRIMMING THE WORKFORCE Budget cuts could also mean cuts to manning for the Army. Already, the Army is reducing the number of Soldiers in the ranks -- a drawdown of the end strength is underway that aims to take the Army from a high-point of 570,000, down to about 490,000 Soldiers. "As we draw down responsibly and look at that over a period of time -- the key thing that we learned over 10 years of war -- as all services have -- [is that] the key part of what we have is our people," Grisoli said. That includes, he said, Soldiers, civilians and contractors. The Army will have to balance numbers of people with skills that it needs, he said. "Human capital to all services is extremely important, and how you balance and grow that human capital is so important ... so whether it is uniform, civilian or contractor, what is the right path to meet the strategy we have?" he said. The Army will need to consider what size and type of the war-fighting force it needs, and what is needed to support that force, Grisoli said. "It's really a balancing act -- making sure you've got the right skills in the right place, and if there are some reductions based on that overall strategy ... then they might come in any of those particular areas, whether it is military, civilian or contractor," he said. Grisoli said the Army is "looking very hard" at its strategy for the civilian workforce and at its transformation efforts for that work force. "How do we manage that, a little more centrally than we have in the past, to make sure we grow the right folks for the right positions?" STAYING RELEVANT After the drawdown in Afghanistan, Soldiers will still have work to do and will still have opportunity to maintain their sharpness and readiness. The Department of Defense has spelled out a strategy that puts increased emphasis on the Pacific region, so Soldiers there will be engaged in partnership activities with some of the largest land forces in the world. "In the Pacific, where we hope to keep peace and continue commerce and all those sorts of things, all the series have a role," Grisoli said. "The Army has a role with those 10 largest other armies that are in the Pacific Rim, to engage them, to be on the ground, to understand [them]." But Army leaders are also committed to strengthening commitments to all U.S. combatant commanders around the globe, by meeting their needs across a spectrum of options, including training opportunities, logistics support, engineering support -- and when needed, combat support. The Army will do that through regional alignments, such as in Africa where the Army has now aligned a brigade with U.S. Africa Command. Grisoli said in the past the Army may not have been able to provide to all combatant commanders the support it would have liked to provide -- due to commitments in the Middle East. But now, with the drawdown, it is the Army's intent to more effectively meet the needs of COCOMs. "We want to be able to send those capabilities as required," he said. Commander's 'dashboard' will highlight high-risk behavior in Soldiers [2012-12-11] WASHINGTON -- In February, the Army proposes to make available to commanders a new online software application called the "Commander's Risk Reduction Dashboard." The dashboard will consolidate information from multiple Army databases and present to commanders a concise report about which Soldiers in their unit have been involved with at-risk behaviors, some of which may be associated with suicide, and when those instances occurred. Reports generated by the Commander's Risk Reduction Dashboard, or CRRD, will be used by commanders to make decisions on how best to help Soldiers through intervention activities. The CRRD effort is in response to an increase in suicides in the Army. In July, for instance, the Army experienced 26 suicides, the highest number since the Army started keeping track in 2009. The is just one of many initiatives the Army is looking at to help stem suicides in the service. The Army is also looking at increased training and awareness for commanders, Soldiers and civilians about risk behaviors, said Donna Clouse, Risk Reduction program manager, Army Center for Substance Abuse Programs, Army G1. "We know that commanders are concerned with the health and well-being of their units," said Clouse. "And so the intent of this dashboard is to display data to enable commanders to make informed decisions about intervention strategies, and assist in helping commanders respond earlier to the warning signs." The CRRD is being developed by the Army's Communications-Electronics Command at the request of the Army's G-1. The dashboard that is expected to be released in February will serve as an "interim solution." It's expected a more robust "full solution" will become available about two years from now. The interim CRRD will highlight for commanders at company and battalion level instances where Soldiers have displayed any of 14 critical risk factors that could indicate they could be at risk. Some of those behaviors include illicit drug positives, crimes against persons or property, alcohol offenses, or domestic violence, for instance. The dashboard will be able to generate multiple reports, including one that highlights just Soldiers with risk factors within a certain time period; another that focuses only on newly assigned Soldiers; and another that allows commanders to look at a specific Soldier's history with at-risk behaviors. "The CRRD is going to help commanders recognize trends in Soldiers who may be at risk and alert them to any incidents for both current and new Soldiers coming into the installation," said Crystal Chadwick, CRRD project lead with the Software Engineering Center at CECOM. Many times, Soldiers who have had a history of high-risk behaviors can transition into a new unit without their new commander having visibility into their history. The CRRD will allow commanders to evaluate a Soldier's history inside a single unit, or across multiple units. "The intent is to give the commander a way to connect the dots on all these high-risk events that have occurred in the Soldier's life, that they didn't necessarily put together as a problem with this Soldier," said Michael Biggerstaff, Drug and Alcohol Management Information System program manager, Army Center for Substance Abuse Programs. "They saw there was an event a month ago and then three months ago. But they weren't tying it together that this is a group of events that is occurring within a single Soldier that needs to be addressed." Biggerstaff said the final implementation of the CRRD, still now about two years away, will include more options than the interim version slated for February. The final version will provide intervention options to commanders, points of contact, aggregate unit data, graphs, trends, and "a lot of other things the interim solution doesn't currently have." A screen shot from the CRRD shows how a commander might be able to view his unit: The report "High Risk Soldiers," for instance, allows the commander to select a time period using month and year. One such search returns five blocks of data, with each block representing a Soldier found to have had a high-risk event within the time period searched. Each block contains the name of a Soldier, their rank, their unit, their "last 4" and the specific high-risk behavior or behaviors that may indicate they could be at-risk. One example shows a Soldier named "Pfc. John Smith" as having been enrolled in ASAP treatment, while 22 days earlier, he had tested positive for illicit drugs. With the data provided on the CRRD, commanders will be more accurately armed with the information they need to get Soldiers the kind of help they need, before something more serious can happen, Chadwick said. "This effort is designed to protect Soldiers before more problems arise, or worse, another life is lost," she said. "This tool is going to help us provide commanders the information they need to recognize those early warning signs and proactively engage in intervention activities." Developers of the CRRD hope that ongoing Army research aimed at categorizing risk leads to the implantation of an assessment system to identify Soldiers who need immediate support. The algorithm to support this kind of assessment system is not currently available, but it is anticipated in the full solution. "We hope to be able to build upon and expand the dashboard in the full solution," Clouse said. "We think that once the algorithm comes out and we gather additional information about high risk behaviors from Army Public Health Command and others involved in the Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Service members program, we will be able to scale the full solution to fit the needs of commanders." One critical concern the CECOM team built into the CRRD project is a focus on the protection of a Soldier's information and privacy. The full solution will pull data from more than 20 authoritative Army sources. Michelle Dirner, CECOM Software Engineering Center program manager, said developers of the system paid particular attention to ensuring Soldier privacy is respected. "What we're doing is organizing information from authoritative sources that are already out there today and being utilized by commanders and the Army," she said. "What we're doing is following the same policies and guidelines for privacy of information that exist within each system and ensuring commanders readily have access to a common picture." Troops at MAPEX prepare to support inauguration [2012-12-13] WASHINGTON -- As the nation prepares for another presidential inauguration, Jan. 21, military services in the National Capital Region are gearing up to provide support to the event, as they have done every year since George Washington took office. "Military support to the inauguration is appropriate, traditional and important in my mind in honoring our president and commander-in-chief," said Maj. Gen. Michael S. Linnington, commander, Joint Task Force-National Capital Region. "It also recognizes our commitment to civilian control of the military." At the District of Columbia Armory, a 10,000-seat arena, a 40-by-60-foot map that includes the entire downtown area of the nation's capitol and also parts of Virginia was laid out on a floor where Marilyn Manson once played and which currently serves as the home for the D.C. Rollergirls, a female roller derby league. Both military and civilian planners who will be involved in executing support for inauguration events in Washington, D.C., met at the Armory to conduct a "MAPEX," or map exercise, to coordinate and solidify support actions for the inaugural parade. "The rehearsal allows different participating units to physically walk on the map as they are speaking though what they are doing," said Linnington. "As they are walking through the routes, folks along the routes or who have other events taking place can see the effect of what is going on with what their event is. It's a very good tool for synchronizing events in time and space." The map exercise is just one of nearly two-dozen types of exercises and walk-throughs that will help solidify military support during the 10-day period of inauguration events, Jan 16-25. Military support to the inauguration includes marching bands, musical units, color guards and honor cordons. Service members will also march in the inaugural parade and provide security in certain areas. Some National Guard service members will even be deputized by the Washington, D.C., Police to help with crowd control. When it's all over, more than 12,000 service members will be able to say they participated in the inauguration in some way. While crowds during the 2013 inaugural event are expected to be significantly smaller than they were in 2009, planners for the event are still preparing the same way they did for President Barack Obama's first inauguration, said Maj. Gen. Errol R. Schwartz, commander, National Guard, District of Columbia, Joint Forces Headquarters. "We are still looking at what are the possibilities that may occur in the smaller crowd," he said. On the lookout will be some 6,000 National Guard Soldiers and Airmen, who will be on the streets keeping things safe for those who hope to witness the inauguration and attend the parade. Many of those Guardsmen will be pulled from the Army's military police, or the Air Force's security forces. "They have a good eye for those kinds of crowd-management issues," Schwartz said. One concern for both Linnington and Schwartz is cold weather, which makes things difficult for both those providing logistics to the event and those attending the event. "As you look at safety and force protection of your ceremonial units, if it's bitter cold and snowy, it makes life more complicated," said Linnington. "So weather would be first and foremost on my mind." Schwartz said there is also concern for civilians who are attending the event. "The individuals who are coming to the ceremony will have to understand that it is going to be cold, they will be standing for a long time, they will be walking a long ways," Schwartz said. "We are concerned about individuals making sure their health considerations are taken care of." Schwarzkopf, architect of Operation Desert Storm, dies at 78 [2012-12-28] WASHINGTON -- Retired Army Gen. Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf -- nicknamed "Stormin' Norman" -- died Dec. 27, in Tampa, Fla., at the age of 78, due to complications from pneumonia. Schwarzkopf became well-known to Americans in 1991 as commander of U.S. Central Command and commander of coalition forces during Operation Desert Storm. "Our nation has lost a Soldier and Statesman with the passing of General Norman Schwarzkopf," wrote Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh and Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno in a joint statement. "Our prayers are with his family as we honor the memories of a man dedicated to family, his country and the many Soldiers he led in war and peace." The Army's senior leadership went on to say that Schwarzkopf's legacy will be the Soldiers he left behind. "His life story touches on much of the fabric of our nation's story, ensuring his memory will remain with us for generations," McHugh and Odierno wrote. "Our nation owes a great debt of gratitude to General Schwarzkopf and our Soldiers will hold a special place in their hearts for this great leader. While much will be written in coming days of his many accomplishments, his most lasting and important legacies are the tremendous Soldiers he trained and led." Schwarzkopf graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., in 1956, twice served as an instructor at the school and went on to serve two one-year tours in Vietnam, first in 1965, and again in 1969. From Nov. 1988 to August 1991, Schwarzkopf served as commander in chief, United States Central Command, at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla. In that role he also served as commander of coalition forces in 1991 for both Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. As commander of USCENTCOM, Schwarzkopf developed a plan against an Iraqi aggression in the Persian Gulf. It was that plan that helped the U.S.-led coalition defeat Iraqi forces just 210 days after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Operation Desert Storm lasted only 42 days, starting with the initial bombing campaigns on Jan. 17, 1991. The ground portion of the conflict lasted just 100 hours, beginning with initial U.S. entry into Kuwait on Feb. 24, and ending Feb. 28, with a cease-fire, an end to the war, and the liberation of Kuwait. Key to the success of the ground war to liberate Kuwait was Schwarzkopf's "left hook" strategy -- a flanking maneuver where instead of attacking Iraqi forces in Kuwait by crossing directly into that country from Saudi Arabia, coalition forces instead entered Iraq from Saudi Arabia and then entered Kuwait from Iraq, by moving west across the Iraq-Kuwait border. During his career, Schwarzkopf earned, among other awards, three Distinguished Service Medals, three Silver Stars, the Legion of Merit and a Distinguished Flying Cross. He is survived by his wife of 44 years, Brenda, and his three children, Cynthia, Jessica and Christian. Defense Authorization Act boosts pay, requires special training [2013-01-04] WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2013 into law, Jan. 2. Among other things, the act authorizes a 1.7-percent increase in Soldier pay, effective Jan. 1, as well as funds for Army procurement, operations, maintenance, and research and development for both the generating force as well as for the operational force engaged in overseas contingency operations. The act means that Congress has approved a plan for how the Army can spend money for fiscal year 2013, which actually began Oct. 1, 2012, and runs through Sept. 30, 2013. The National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, authorizes the Army, and other departments, to spend money. But Congress must still pass additional legislation to "appropriate" money, to take money from the U.S. Treasury and hand it over to the Department of Defense, in order to pay for what is spelled out in the Authorization Act. Still facing lawmakers, the Department of Defense, and the Army, however, is the threat of sequestration, which could now happen in March. Were sequestration to occur, it could change the amount of money the services receive, despite what kind of spending is authorized in the NDAA 2013. That possibility has the Department of Defense planning for a future that could be different from what is spelled out in the NDAA. "We're entering a phase of, of serious planning," said George Little, Department of Defense spokesman, earlier this week. "We don't want sequester to go into effect. This is bad for everyone, again, not just for the Department of Defense. But we are in a period of fiscal turmoil, to say the least, and we need to get beyond this." The NDAA 2013 doesn't just spell out how the Army is authorized to spend money during fiscal year 2013, it also spells out some other changes for how the services conduct business. For the active Army, the end strength drops to 552,100 Soldiers by Sept 30, 2013, a decrease of nearly 10,000 Soldiers in the active-duty force. For the Reserve components of the Army, the authorized end strength remains the same as last year, with the Army National Guard at 358,200 and the Army Reserve at 205,000. One section of the act calls for establishment of special victim capabilities within the military departments to respond to "allegations of certain special victim offenses." According to the law, service secretaries must establish "special victim capabilities" that can investigate and prosecute child abuse, domestic violence and sexual offenses. Those capabilities must also include support for victims of those offenses. Initial capability must be available within a year of the law's signing. Another section of the law requires the Department of Defense to provide sexual assault prevention and response training modules for new or prospective commanders. Training will include, among other things, how to foster a command climate that doesn't tolerate sexual assault, and one that encourages victims to report assault. Another section of the law expands how DOD funds can be used for providing abortions. The current law reads: "Funds available to the Department of Defense may not be used to perform abortions except where the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term." The NDAA 2013 adds the following to that section of law: "or in a case in which the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest." Within the NDAA, the Congress also calls on the Army to conduct a study of the Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness Program and the Army's capability to reduce high-risk and self-destructive behavior among Soldiers. A report on the study must be submitted to Congress by Oct. 31, 2014, and must include trends in high-risk or self-destructive behavior as well as measurements of the effectiveness of the Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness Program training efforts to enhance resilience. Increase in Social Security withholding will little affect Soldier pay [2013-01-09] WASHINGTON -- This year, Soldiers and most civilians will see an increase in the amount of their pay withheld for Social Security. The withholding has increased from 4.2 percent to 6.2 percent. The change comes with the expiration in legislation that was passed in 2010. Back then, that legislation actually decreased the withholding from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. Now that the legislation has expired, the withholding jumps back up to 6.2 percent. Soldiers can see the effects of the change by looking at the line marked "FICA" on their leave and earnings statement. Civilians will look under the line marked "OASDI." Soldiers are also seeing an increase in pay this year of 1.7 percent. In addition, there are changes to the basic allowance for housing and basic allowance for sustenance. So for Soldiers, the change in Social Security withholding may not have a noticeable effect on their take-home pay. "Overarching, it's not huge based on the paychecks that the individuals are getting," said Roy Wallace, assistant deputy chief of staff with the Army G-1. "The normal Soldier will probably see no decline." Wallace said that despite the possible sequestering of money from the Department of Defense and the rest of the government, which could happen in March, the 1.7 percent increase in Soldier pay is protected. "The president of the United States exempted military salary from sequestration," Wallace said. "The payroll for Soldiers will continue on, as outlined by the National Defense Authorization Act at the rates specified in that document." While in some years past, pay increases have not been across-the board for everybody, that is, every service member gets the same percentage increase no matter their pay grade or time in service, this year everybody gets the same, Wallace said. BAH & BAS In addition to a pay increase, increases in BAS and possible increases in BAH may help insulate Soldier take-home pay against the small increase in Social Security withholding. Enlisted Soldiers will see their BAS go up by $3.83. Officers will see a comparable increase of $2.64 cents in their BAS. In the Fort Riley, Kan., area, E-5 Soldiers with dependents will see a BAH increase of $21.00. Single sergeants in the same location will see an increase of $36.00. Further south, at Fort Hood, Texas, the same Soldier and his family will see a decrease in BAH -- it drops $39.00. The single sergeant at Fort Hood sees a BAH increase of $24.00. Solders can visit the BAH calculator at http://www.defensetravel.dod.mil/site/bahCalc.cfm to look up their BAH for 2013, or for previous years. Wallace said that it is the Department of Defense, not the Army, which is responsible for setting BAH rates across the United States. Those rates are recalculated each year, in January, and are based on rental rates in particular zip codes. CIVILIAN PAY Soldiers got a 1.7 percent increase in January. Civilians might get a .5 percent pay increase later this year, Wallace said. Also later this year, sequestration may happen, cutting billions from the DOD budget, and ultimately the Army budget. But Wallace said pay cuts and civilian cuts in the Army are not necessarily guaranteed if that happens. "Most civilians in the Army are paid by an account called 'operations and maintenance,'" Wallace said. "That account has lots of flexibility in it. It has people, it has supplies, it has travel, it has contracts; it has all sorts of different classes of expenses in it. So you don't immediately have to go to people." LEAP award winners lauded at Pentagon ceremony [2013-01-10] WASHINGTON -- For the fifth year now, practitioners of Lean Six Sigma were recognized, Jan. 10, for streamlining Army business processes that help save the Army money. During a ceremony at the Pentagon to recognize winners in the 2012 Army Lean Six Sigma Excellence Awards Program, or LEAP, Under Secretary of the Army Joseph W. Westphal, Ph.D., explained just how valuable practitioners of the manufacturing and business process improvement programs are to the Army. "Their leadership is important in ensuring our business systems continue to improve, but also in driving efficiency and eliminating redundancy," Westphal said. "And in these days, as you know, we are all about looking at eliminating redundancy and creating greater efficiency." Lean Six Sigma, or LSS, is a method for improving business processes in a way that can help the Army save money and meet budget challenges, something that has become increasingly important for the Army, Westphal said. "Our trained LSS professionals, like our distinguished award recipients here today, I think are a critical asset to the Army," Westphal said. "This is particularly true as we negotiate through these very challenging fiscal times, where efficiency really does count." During the award period, some 894 LSS projects were completed. Of those, 40 were considered "highly competitive" as part of LEAP awards submissions. Lee Rivas, part of the Army's Office of Business Transformation, said that last year overall, the Army avoided about $2.4 billion in costs dues to Lean Six Sigma efforts. Such efforts, he said, can be applied almost anywhere. "We have proven that anything can be leaned out from both an operational side as well as the institutional side," he said. LSS efforts have been used to avoid costs and create efficiency both inside the United States and overseas. This year, Tobyhanna Army Depot, Pa., earned the "Non-Enterprise Level (Green Belt) Project Team Award." Their efforts in transforming the purchase request process resulted in a cost avoidance of $5.1 million through fiscal year 2017. "They charged us with this project to reduce the number of redundant purchase requests in a one-month period that go over to our contracting area, to consolidate as much as we could," said Jeff Wood, of Tobyhanna Army Depot. Wood said that at the depot, where Army Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance , known as C4ISR, equipment is refurbished and maintained, it is a common occurrence that parts could be ordered one day for a particular project, and the very next day more of the exact same parts could be ordered again for a different project. "Yesterday we needed ten; today we need ten more," he said. "But they wrote a contract yesterday for ten. So how do we consolidate the ten we need today into the ones we've already written a contract for?" Processing two purchase requests is expensive, he said, because there is substantial manpower that goes into processing each one through completion. "We implemented quick wins right off the bat, and we implemented some efficiencies to those inefficiencies," he said. "And then we started looking at the data. What is it that we repetitively are buying? Maybe we could use an inventory provider, someone who is right there who has the [parts] in their truck, right there. Park them right here on our depot. Or buy a bulk shipment of this particular item that we can pull out of inventory and utilize." Col. Gerhard Schröter, Tobyhanna Army Depot commander, said he sees Lean Six Sigma as being increasingly important for the Army in the face of looming budget reductions. "For the lean process, what that allows you to do is help you see and identify waste and give you a process to go ahead and analyze that, break it down to its components, and then reduce that waste and inefficiencies," he said. "I think that's extremely important as we get into the next three or four years." Before Westphal presented plaques to award recipients, he said it is important that those who are involved in Lean Six Sigma spread the word about the effectiveness of process improvement in an effort to help the Army become more efficient in its business processes. "Only trained experts can bring additional personnel on board," Westphal said. "And I challenge you to be evangelists for this program across the force, and create a legacy of persistent and healthy change and evolution across our Army." The Army does its own training for Lean Six Sigma, and practitioners of LSS are classified according to their skill level. Today, the Army has trained about 7,500 "green belt," 4,000 "black belt" and 225 "master black belt" LSS practitioners. "I heartily congratulate today's awards recipients and their achievements," Westphal said. "We're proud of you and we will continue to call on you and your talents in the future." The 2012 award winners represent "outstanding organizational and project team efforts that have used Continuous Process Improvement/Lean Six Sigma methodologies to transform their business processes," wrote Lt. Gen. William T. Grisoli, the director of the Army's Office of Business Transformation in a memo to LSS deployment directors across the Army. The winners of the 2012 LEAP Awards include: -- Enterprise Level Project Sponsor Award: U.S. Army Central -- HQDA Level Organizational Deployment Award: Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs/G-1 -- AR 10-87 Level Organizational Deployment Award: U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command -- Subordinate Level Organizational Deployment Award: 21st Theater Sustainment Command -- Enterprise Level Project Team Awards: U.S. Army Central -- Non-Enterprise Level (Black Belt) Project Team Award: Assistant Secretary of the Army for Financial Management and Comptroller -- Non-Enterprise Level (Black Belt) Project Team Award: U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command -- Non-Enterprise Level (Green Belt) Project Team Award: 21st Theater Sustainment Command -- Non-Enterprise Level (Green Belt) Project Team Award: Tobyhanna Army Depot, U.S. Army CECOM Life Cycle Management Command, Army Materiel Command -- Non-Gated Project Team Award: Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command -- Non-Gated Project Team Award: U.S. Army TACOM Life Cycle Management Command Viability of industrial base concern for Army aviation [2013-01-11] WASHINGTON -- With already declining budgets, a potential sequester later this year, and a difficult economy, sustaining the industrial base that provides the Army with aircraft and aviation logistics support is a complex problem. One area of concern, for example, is with suppliers of critical aviation safety equipment. Suppliers of that type of equipment undergo extensive, and expensive certification before being allowed to sell to the Army -- so they are valuable partners to the Army aviation community, leaders said. They voiced concerns today during the Association of the U.S. Army's annual Aviation Symposium. With a force drawdown coming in Afghanistan, there will be a lower operations tempo for the Army, and that means Army aviation will use less supplies than it had before. A stock supply of equipment and parts that during a high operations tempo might have lasted the Army only six months, might instead last two years during a period with a lower operations tempo. That could mean problems for suppliers, said Maj. Gen. Lynn A. Collyar, U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command. "How do I keep the small manufacturer in business as I draw (on) that two years of stock? How do I draw that down and still buy enough from the manufacturers to keep them economically viable?" he said. Collyar suggested that if the Army can show manufacturers what the force has in stock, and can also show usage rates, manufacturers might be better equipped to manage raw material purchases, for instance. That could lower operational costs for them, and in turn decrease what the Army must buy to keep a manufacturer viable. "It really comes down to partnering," Collyar said. Opening up military sales to foreign nations is also a possibility for helping ensure America's industrial base weathers tough economic times, said Maj. Gen. William T. Crosby, Program Executive Office Aviation. While the general said there are some areas where technology transfer is a security issue, the U.S. does have good partnerships with both European and Pacific nations. In those places, foreign military sales can help sustain the industrial base back home while at the same time help the Army get even better equipment, he said. "When we slow down production, to maintain and sustain that industrial base, it behooves us to help our original equipment manufacturers partner with those customers. And sometimes, by nature of when they come in to procure something, they can procure an upgrade we are unable to afford," Crosby said. "Not only does that keep the production line warm, it is then something that can flow over into our side." Taking care of financial business in-house is also a priority for the Army aviation community. Collyar cited as an example of possible cost overages the number of T-700 engines now in depot repair. Today, he said, the Army has about $5 billion worth of those engines on operational aircraft -- "on wings today," Collyar said. But another $2.5 billion of those engines are in supply depots or maintenance depots or in transit -- a significant dollar amount of engines that are not currently inside an operational aircraft. "(Of) items getting back to depot for repair, about 50 percent of those that are received should never go back to that level. They should have been repaired forward," Collyar said. "If we fixed them in the right place, there's a significant savings to be had." The general cited both shipping costs and administrative costs as two places where savings could be found if T-700 engines were being repaired at the lowest level possible. New systems procurement is also an issue in an austere fiscal environment. Collyar said that an often-cited statistic is that 30 percent of the cost of a system is procurement, while 70 percent is sustainment through its lifecycle. But that statistic is really for systems with an expected 20-year lifecycle. But Collyar said many Army systems are actually 30-to-50-year systems now. As the Army has kept platforms longer, the percentage may change to 20/80 or 10/90. With longer-term systems, Collyar said the Army must plan upfront, at procurement time, for systems that will last longer. The Army may have to spend a little more today and not take shortcuts in procurement, he said, to keep down the cost in the future of maintaining a system that may be in service for as much as half a century. "Knowing that a platform is going to be there for 20 or 30 years, is that the same platform we need today that we are going to need 30 years from now?" he asked. Planning will make it possible to have a basic platform be the same 30 years from now, but look and fly different, he said. The Army must plan at procurement time for long-term sustainment. One example, he said, is to ensure that systems built today are developed in a way that allows them to be upgraded in the future at lower cost. He also said condition-based maintenance will allow the Army to maintain systems for less money. Crosby said that with systems in the Army today, ensuring future sustainment is a problem, in particular with "technology insertion," or keeping those systems technologically up-to-date into the future. With systems like Chinook, Black Hawk and Combat Shadow, for instance, he said sustainment is a challenge. "The challenge we have is how do we keep those platforms viable ... so far as technology insertion," he said. "The platform is what we have, but how do we insert these new technologies?" In particular, he cited sensors as an example of the kind of technology that will continue to evolve, and which must be continually added to systems as they reach maturity. "We can't continue to strap on tools," he said. "We've got to find a way with these digitized platforms to integrate those systems and upgrade them without re-designing them." At the same time, Crosby said, the Army must be cognizant of weight when upgrading and integrating systems -- weight, he said, decreases aircraft performance. Crosby also addressed the Armed Aerial Scout program, acknowledging that industry is "chomping at the bit" for answers on how the program will move forward and an Armed Aerial Scout competition. But he cautioned that with budget constraints, Army leaders will need time to make the right call. "The Army wants to make some tough decisions. It's not as simple as do you do a competition. It's not as simple as what the competition will be. There are so many aspects that have to go into that decision that our senior leaders are wrestling with," he said. "It's much bigger than Army aviation. They're looking at the future of our Army. Let's don't rush and compel and force people into a decision that we are going to have to change in six months or a year." Military plays security support role for inauguration [2013-01-15] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers from around the nation will provide security assistance to the Secret Service, the FBI, the National Park Police and other law enforcement agencies during the 2013 inauguration event here, Jan. 21. While hundreds of thousands of Americans crowd Washington, D.C., city streets this Martin Luther King Day to witness President Barack Obama's second swearing in as president, and then stay on to watch the inaugural parade, thousands of service members will be on the sidelines providing support to the lead federal agencies that have been tasked to provide security for the event. About 6,000 Army and Air National Guard members from 26 U.S. states and territories have come to the nation's capital to lend their support for the inauguration, said Air Force Maj. Shane E. Doucet, a spokesman with the D.C. National Guard Bureau. Doucet said that while some will participate in the ceremonial portion of the events -- they will march in the parade, for instance, to represent the National Guard or their state -- many will actually be on duty pulling security assistance in support of the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department or other agencies. Many Guardsmen will first be deputized by the Washington, D.C., police department so they can act in a law enforcement capacity in the nation's capital, and will then be tasked to pull duty at traffic control points, or on street corners doing crowd control or guiding foot traffic. Other Guard members will bring their expertise in transportation, communications and medical and logistical support to the mix. While military members will not be the lead on any security details during the inauguration -- the Secret Service is running that effort, Guard members will show they can work as part of a team during the inauguration, and will bring with them the skills that many of them exercise back in their hometowns during their civilian jobs. "Many of these citizen-Soldiers and Airmen serve on a police force and have experience in this field," Doucet said, adding that some Guardsmen arriving for the inauguration have participated as many as three times. Col. Jesse D. Galvan serves as the provost marshal for Joint Task Force-National Capital Region/Military District of Washington, and is responsible for law enforcement, force protection and emergency management in the JTF-NCR/MDW. His office has been preparing for as many as 18 months for the inauguration. While Galvan said that security for the inauguration is the responsibility of the Secret Service, his office has been coordinating for months with the Secret Service and FBI to plan for inauguration security, and to ensure that JTF-NCR/MDW personnel are ready if needed. "In the unfortunate event that we have a catastrophic event happen, we stand ready and postured to support our local law enforcement and emergency management personnel, and to provide resources to them," Galvan said. One such agency, he said, includes the 911th U.S. Army Technical Rescue Engineer Company out of Fort Belvoir, Va., which specializes in rescuing those trapped under collapsed buildings, such as after an explosion. But Galvan also said JTF-NCR/MDW will actively provide military working dog support to the Secret Service at various events. "They will be working various venues and providing sweeps," he said, including at the children's concert the night before, on the parade grounds and at the Capitol Building. The JTF-NCR/MDW will provide about 45 dog handlers to support the inauguration. About 16 of those handlers will be from the 947th Military Police Detachment out of Fort Myer, Va. President Barack Obama is the 44th president of the United States, and will be sworn in for his second term, Jan. 21, 2013, on the steps of the U.S. Capitol Building. The U.S. military has been providing support to presidential inaugurations since 1789, when George Washington was sworn in as the first president. Army freezes hiring, cuts base ops, reduces training [2013-01-17] WASHINGTON -- In advance of possible extreme budget cuts that could arrive in March, Army leadership has called for an immediate hiring freeze and spelled out other pre-emptive measures meant to help the service prepare for a fiscal cliff. In a memo dated Jan. 16, Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh and Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno laid out 15 "near-term" actions to help the Army "reduce our expenditure rate and mitigate budget execution risks in order to avoid even more serious future fiscal shortfalls." "We expect commanders and supervisors at all levels to implement both the guidance contained in this memorandum and the detailed instructions to follow," wrote McHugh and Odierno. "The fiscal situation and outlook are serious." WHAT HAPPENS NOW First among those actions is an immediate freeze on civilian hiring, though Army leaders have left commanders with some latitude in the policy for "humanitarian and mission-critical purposes." Also among employment-related measures spelled out in the memo is a termination of temporary employees when "consistent with mission requirements." The memo also directs installation commanders to reduce base operations support for fiscal year 2013, which runs from Oct. 1, 2012 to Sept. 31, 2013, to levels that are about 70 percent of fiscal year 2012. Commanders have been asked to reduce support to community and recreational activities and to also reduce utilities consumption "to the maximum extent possible." Non-mission-essential training activities are also up for reduction. In particular, training not related to maintaining "readiness for Operation Enduring Freedom, the Korean forward-deployed units, Homeland Defense and the Division Ready Brigade." Also targeted is conference attendance and professional training that is not mission essential. The secretary and the chief have also directed installation commanders to cease facility sustainment activity that is not "directly connected to matters of life, health or safety," and to stop restoration and modernization projects. Army senior leadership has also spelled out changes for Army acquisition, logistics and technology. All production contracts and research, development, testing and evaluation contracts that exceed $500 million must be reviewed by the under secretary of defense for acquisition, logistics and technology. The assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology must also assess the impacts of "budgetary uncertainty" on science and technology accounts. The secretary and chief of staff state civilian furloughs could be a "last resort" possibility in fiscal year 2013. "Therefore, no action should be taken with regard to furloughs without the express approval of the secretary of the Army." Any measures taken as a result of the Jan. 16 memo must be reversible, the document states. "At this point, the steps should focus on actions that are reversible if the budgetary situation improves and should minimize harm to readiness," McHugh and Odierno write. The memo also notes that "funding related to wartime operations and Wounded Warrior programs" will not be affected. Concert for military kids kicks off inaugural weekend [2013-01-22] WASHINGTON -- Thousands of kids from around the country gathered at the convention center here to take in the musical performances of Usher, Katy Perry and Mindless Behavior as guests of Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, Ph.D., wife of Vice President Joe Biden, in advance of the second inauguration of President Barack Obama. "The inauguration is a pretty big deal," the first lady said. "The president and the vice president are sworn in. There are all these inaugural balls. Everybody dresses up and dances. We had a wonderful day of service today. And hundreds of thousands of people come from all 50 states to join in this celebration. And I love every single minute of it. But my very favorite part of this entire weekend is being right here with you. For me, this is what inauguration is all about." The first lady said what's important to her is "celebrating who we are as Americans." "When I think about who we are, when I think about what makes America great, I think about all of you," she said. "Our men and women in uniform, our military spouses, and our amazing military kids. And that's why Jill and I wanted to host this event." Kicking off the concert, called "Kids' Inaugural: Our Children. Our Future," was the arrival of Mrs. Obama and her daughters, as well as Mrs. Biden and her grandchildren. A joint honor guard presented the colors and the daughter of an American sailor sang the national anthem before a crowd of thousands of children and their parents. Children of U.S. service members led the pledge of allegiance. But the big draw for the evening, for the kids -- many of whom were from military families stationed in places like Fort Hood, Texas, Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, Camp Pendleton, Calif., and Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater, Fla., was the entertainment. Musician Usher kicked off the entertainment with three songs, peppered in between with a message repeated throughout the evening by other artists: support for, pride in and gratitude for the military children that support their mothers or fathers who serve. The first lady reiterated that message later in the evening -- before the main act featuring Katy Perry -- when she addressed the audience and drew attention to the challenges of being the son or daughter of a service member. "Did you know a military kid attends an average of six to nine schools by the time they graduate high school?," she asked. "Just imagine how much courage it takes to always be the new kid, to walk through the doors of a new school every couple of years; to have to make new friends again and again." The first lady said that when service members leave for deployment, they leave behind their young children who often have to take on responsibility that is beyond their years. "Just think about the level of maturity that is required from military kids during those times," she said. "Think about how they have to step up at home without even being asked: taking out the trash when dad is not there; helping brothers and sisters with homework when mom is away. Think about how hard it is for military kids to be apart from the people they love the most. How they miss their moms and dads every day and would do anything to have them back home. And that is just a glimpse of what it means to be a military kid." The first lady directly addressed military children who were watching the concert both in person and on television. She told them how proud she is of them, and of her commitment and the commitment of Mrs. Biden, to continuing to draw attention to the needs of military families through the Joining Forces program. "Make no mistake about it, you all are an important part of the greatest military on earth," Obama said. "By supporting your families, you all are helping to protect this country and keep every single one of us safe. You are doing that. And Doctor Biden and I are so incredibly proud of you all. Every day we are proud of you. The vice president and the president are proud of you. And in the coming years, as these wars draw to an end and we draw down our troops, I want you to know, you and your families to know that we will not be drawing down our work to support you." Biden explained the Joining Forces program to children and their families, and why she and the first lady started the program. "The first lady and I knew from the start that we wanted to celebrate the strength and service of our military families," Biden said. "That's why we started Joining Forces. Our efforts encourage all Americans to find ways to honor and support our troops, veterans and military families." Biden said the program is especially important to her, as her son Joseph "Beau" Biden III serves in the Delaware Army National Guard, and was deployed to Iraq for a year. "We want tonight to be one special way our country shows all of you just how much we appreciate everything you are doing for our country," Biden said. "We are so excited to be here with you tonight." According to the program's web site, Obama and Biden use the Joining Forces initiative to "mobilize all sectors of society to give our service members and their families the opportunities and support they have earned." The program brings attention to the needs of military families, encourages all sectors of society to ensure veterans and military families have the opportunities and resources they need, and helps to create a greater connection between the military and the rest of Americans. Performers at the Kids' Inaugural concert included Usher, Far East Movement, iLUMINATE, Mindless Behavior, the Soul Children of Chicago with Black Violin, Katy Perry, and performers from the television show Glee. Army must complete analysis before opening jobs to women [2013-02-01] WASHINGTON -- Last month, the Secretary of Defense announced an end to the Direct Ground Combat Exclusion Rule for female Soldiers. But the Army wants commanders in the field to know that it will be some time before they'll be able to make any changes in their units. "There will be no immediate changes," said Col. Linda Sheimo, chief of the Command Programs and Policy Division at the Human Resources Policy Directorate, Army G-1. "In order to open any position that is closed, whether it is due to the military occupational specialty (MOS), or the unit's mission, all the services have to submit a detailed request outlining the MOS, the unit, the numbers, and also a legal analysis, that has to go through the Army leadership to the Secretary of Defense." The Secretary of Defense, or SecDef, then has to notify Congress of the intent to open those positions, and Congress has a specific amount of time to consider the issue before anything in the services can change, Sheimo said. "The very soonest that anything could happen would be this summer," Sheimo said. The Army now has more than 450 MOSs, about 20 of which are currently closed to female Soldiers. Additionally, there are units in the Army that are closed to women, based on the mission of those units. So, within those units, even if there are jobs with MOSs that women are allowed to do elsewhere in the Army, women would not be allowed to serve in those MOSs within those specific units. The SecDef's announcement is expected to change the current policy, and could open up new opportunities for women in the Army and in the other services, Sheimo said. "The intent of the policy change is to make every position open, by January 1st, 2016, regardless of gender, unless we get an approved exception to policy to keep it closed," Sheimo explained. Such exceptions, Sheimo said, must be approved by the SecDef and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The announcement by the SecDef amounts to a "reversal" of the current policy, Sheimo said. Where today, women are excluded from some jobs and units and a special exception must be approved in order to get women into those particular jobs; in the future, the policy will be that all jobs are open to women and if the services want to exclude women they must get a special approved exception that explains why they should be excluded. The Army has not completed the analysis it needs in order to open any more MOSs or units to women, but the Army already has an effort underway to meet the SecDef's suspense date. "The Army is pursuing a very careful and deliberate approach," she said. "As we move forward we will open units and/or MOSs as we complete the appropriate assessments, and we will submit those requests to Congress to open those positions." When the Army does eventually open units and MOSs to women, the service will focus not only on recruiting from the outside -- but will also look for volunteers from inside the Army in order to fill important leadership roles in those units and MOSs, Sheimo said, for both enlisted Soldiers and officers. "Leadership is a key element of success in this effort," Sheimo said. "It's very important to have a leadership cadre in place. Initially it will have to come from other MOSs and specialties." But for now, Sheimo said, commanders in the field should know that no new positions are open to women. "The Army will not open any position before congressional notification has been done and the notification period is complete," Sheimo said. Double-arm transplant helps Soldier who lost limbs in Iraq [2013-02-01] WASHINGTON -- Former infantryman Brendan Marrocco has two arms again, real ones that he can already move, thanks to a double-arm transplant surgery performed at Johns Hopkins. "It's given me a lot of hope for the future," said Marrocco, about the successful completion of the surgery. "I feel like I've gotten a second chance to start over after I got hurt. So I'm just excited for the future, and where I could go with it." Morocco lost both arms and both legs to an explosively formed penetrator in Iraq in 2009. He was injured while conducting raids and doing presence patrols. He was a private first class at the time, serving as a "Wolfhound" with the 25th Infantry Division, 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment. He was medically retired as a sergeant in May 2012. During a press conference, Jan. 29, at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Md., Marrocco and several members of the 16-person team of plastic, orthopedic, and micro-vascular surgeons who performed the procedure discussed the surgery. This is the first time a double-arm transplant has been performed at Johns Hopkins. The surgery took 13 hours, and was sponsored by the Armed Services Institute of Regenerative Medicine. "The surgical team had rehearsed the procedure on cadaver arms four times in the last 18 months and the transplant was executed according to our design," said Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, director of the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Johns Hopkins. The surgery, Lee said, was the most expensive and complicated arm transplant ever performed. During the surgery, Dec. 18, the team replaced Marrocco's right arm, above the elbow, with a donor arm, Lee said. On the left side, where Marrocco still had an elbow, the team replaced his entire forearm over his own remaining tissue. Donor bone, muscle, blood vessels, nerves and skin had to be connected to Marrocco's own tissue. Marrocco was also given transplanted bone marrow from the donor as a way to help keep his body from rejecting the donor arms using fewer anti-rejection drugs. "He will take only one anti-rejection medication instead of the usual triple-drug cocktail," Lee said. During the press conference, Marrocco didn't sit still. Like anyone, he inadvertently moved his left arm to scratch his head, or shift it around, something he couldn't do just six weeks ago. "I just kind of do it," Marrocco said of his own unconscious, but normal arm movement. "I don't realize it anymore. I've been using the arms, the hands, to text and use my computer and scratch my face and do my hair. It's just they've truly become a part of my everyday life in the last six weeks. That's the way we want it." Right now, Marrocco is involved in "intensive hand therapy," Lee said, which includes range of motion with his new fingers, wrists and elbow. The therapy will help him to learn to use his hands and arms again. "Right now it's not too intense for me because I can't really feel what she's doing," said Marrocco, of his current work with a physical therapist. He currently can't feel his arms, because the nerves are still developing. "Down the road I'm sure it'll get a lot worse -- a lot more intensive, and a lot more work." Lee said it will take a considerable amount of time for the nerves in Marrocco's arms to regenerate. The nerves, he said, regenerate at about one inch each month, and that there are "many, many inches" of nerves. "The process will be slow, but the outcome will be rewarding," he said. Marrocco is no longer in the Army, and hasn't yet made plans for his future. But he does have plans for what he'll do with his new arms when he regains enough control. "Driving; I used to love to drive. And it was a lot of fun for me. So I am really looking forward to getting back to that," he said. There's a black Dodge Charger SRT8 with black rims waiting for him back home. "I've had it sitting in the garage for like the last three years," he said. Marrocco also said he wants to get back to being an athlete, like he was before his injury, when he was a Soldier and when he enjoyed playing soccer. "One of my goals is to hand cycle and marathon. I'd love to get back to that," he said, adding that he also wants to swim. "I want to get the most out of these arms. And as goals come up, knock them down and absolutely take it as far as I can. I want to get to the point where I can be on my own and get back to enjoying life." Divisions will get 9 Gray Eagles to train, but deploy with 12 [2013-02-05] WASHINGTON -- The Army plans additional Gray Eagle units, one for each of 10 active-duty divisions, and several more for special operations units, aerial exploitation units and the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif. With the current program of record, a purchase of 152 Gray Eagles in total, the Army won't have enough of the aircraft to give a full assignment of 12 aircraft to every one of the divisions it plans on equipping; so some may get as few as nine aircraft. But when those units go downrange, they will get a full component, Army aviation officials said. "The plan is, when a Gray Eagle company deploys, like we have downrange now with F-227 (Aviation), they would deploy with a full complement of three platoons of four aircraft, or 12 aircraft total," said Col. Timothy Baxter, project manager, Unmanned Aircraft Systems, during a media roundtable, Feb. 4. Those extra aircraft would come from other units who are not deploying. "[U.S. Army Forces Command] would task organize from other Gray Eagle companies to make sure when they are deployed in harm's way, they would have a full 12," said Jeff Crabb, deputy product manager, Medium Altitude Endurance UAS. "That's the current strategy." The direction to equip the combat aviation brigades within all Army divisions with the Gray Eagle came from Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno. But the Army plans to buy 152 of the aircraft to distribute among those units. "The only way you could do that without buying more assets is to reduce the numbers," Crabb said. The Army has contracted for 103 Gray Eagles to date. Today, the Army has one Gray Eagle company already deployed, Company F, 227th Combat Aviation Brigade, or CAB, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. While deployed in Afghanistan, it is assigned to the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). Company F, 227th CAB, is equipped now with 12 aircraft, and will retain all 12 when it returns home sometime within the next two months. The 1st Cavalry Division also has an additional company of 12 Gray Eagle aircraft, Company E, 227th Combat Aviation Brigade. Another company, Company F, 1st Aviation Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kan., also with 12 Gray Eagles, will replace F-227 within the next 90 days, officials said. They now have an advance party already in theater, and are preparing to deploy soon. Also in Afghanistan now are two "quick reaction capability" units, each with four Gray Eagle aircraft. Those two QRC units have been deployed since 2009. The first was deployed initially to Operation Iraqi Freedom and stayed though until the end of Operation New Dawn before moving on to Afghanistan to support Operation Enduring Freedom. The second QRC has always been in Afghanistan. The Army is also fielding another company to the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Ga. And by October, another to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. The 160th may end up with two companies of 12 aircraft each. Baxter said it's been a "busy year" for the Gray Eagle program, which has culminated with the director of operational testing and evaluation publishing a "beyond low rate initial production" report for Gray Eagle IOT&E that was conducted last July and August. The report "deemed us effective, operationally suitable, and meeting our survivability and force protection key performance parameters on the program," Baxter said. Additionally, he said, a "number of recommendations" came out of the Beyond LRIP report, involving maturing tactics, techniques and procedures on the Gray Eagle program, improving training on the program, improving doctrine across the Army on the program with respect to Gray Eagle and all UAS, and also maturing the manned/unmanned teaming capabilities. President awards Medal of Honor to hero of COP Keating [2013-02-11] WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama placed the Medal of Honor around the neck of former Army Staff Sgt. Clinton L. Romesha during a ceremony Feb. 11 in the East Room of the White House. Romesha is the fourth living service member to receive the medal for service in Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom. The former Soldier earned the Medal of Honor for actions Oct. 3, 2009, at Combat Outpost Keating, Kamdesh District, Nuristan Province, Afghanistan. On that morning, Combat Outpost, or COP, Keating, manned by only 53 Soldiers and situated at the bottom of a steep valley, came under attack by as many as 300 Taliban fighters. During the fight, the perimeter of COP Keating was breached by the enemy. Romesha, who was injured in the battle, led the fight to protect the bodies of fallen Soldiers, provide cover to those Soldiers seeking medical assistance, and reclaim the American outpost that would later be deemed "tactically indefensible." "Throughout history, the question has often been asked, why? Why do those in uniform take such extraordinary risks? And what compels them to such courage?" the president said. "You ask Clint and any of these Soldiers who are here today, and they'll tell you. Yes, they fight for their country, and they fight for our freedom. Yes, they fight to come home to their families. But most of all, they fight for each other, to keep each other safe and to have each other's backs." The White House ceremony was attended by several hundred, including lawmakers, defense leaders, Romesha's family, and team members from Romesha's own Bravo Troop, 3d Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. Also there was Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno and Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III. The president said that upon learning he would receive the Medal of Honor, Romesha displayed the brand of humbleness typical of many Soldiers. "When I called Clint to tell him that he would receive this medal, he said he was honored, but he also said, 'it wasn't just me out there, it was a team effort,'" the president said. "And so today we also honor this American team, including those who made the ultimate sacrifice." Included among those who died in the fighting that day in Afghanistan were, Staff Sgt. Justin Gallegos, Sgt. Christopher Griffin, Sgt. Joshua Hardt, Sgt. Joshua Kirk, Spc. Stephan Mace, Staff Sgt. Vernon Martin, Sgt. Michael Scusa, and Pfc. Kevin Thomson. "Each of these patriots gave their lives looking out for each other," Obama said. "In a battle that raged all day, that brand of selflessness was displayed again and again and again, Soldiers exposing themselves to enemy fire to pull a comrade to safety, tending to each other's wounds, (and) performing 'buddy transfusions,' giving each other their own blood." The president said on that day, it wasn't just Romesha who earned recognition for his actions, it was dozens of Soldiers. From that battle, Soldiers earned 37 Army Commendation Medals, 27 Purple Hearts, 18 Bronze Stars and nine Silver Stars, the president said. "These men were outnumbered, outgunned and almost overrun," Obama said. "Looking back, one of them said, 'I'm surprised any of us made it out.' But they are here today. And I would ask these Soldiers, this band of brothers, to stand and accept the gratitude of our entire nation. "God bless you, Clint Romesha, and all of your team," the president said. "God bless all who serve. And God bless the United States of America." The president then asked that the Medal of Honor Citation be read, and following that, he placed the medal around Romesha's neck. Romesha inducted into Pentagon Hall of Heroes [2013-02-12] WASHINGTON -- Just a day after the president placed the Medal of Honor around the neck of former Army Staff Sgt. Clinton L. Romesha, the noncommissioned officer was inducted into the Hall of Heroes at the Pentagon -- where the names and memories of all service members who have earned that honor have been enshrined. Among those attending the Feb. 12 ceremony at the Pentagon were Romesha and his family, Soldiers from his unit -- B Troop, 3-61 Cavalry, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division -- Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III, and Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno. "Today as we induct Staff Sergeant Romesha into the famed Hall of Heroes, he joins the rare fraternity of military service members in the Medal of Honor Society -- they have demonstrated uncommon valor and extraordinary courage under fire," said Odierno. "Of being awarded the nation's highest military decoration, Staff Sergeant Romesha said 'this medal isn't for me, the medal is for all the great things the platoon and the troops did that day.' His humility, honor, leadership, integrity, personal courage and selfless service represent what is best about our Soldiers and our Army." Romesha is the fourth living service member to receive the medal for either Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom. The Soldier earned the medal for actions Oct. 3, 2009, at Combat Outpost Keating in Afghanistan. On that morning, Combat Outpost, or COP, Keating, manned by only 53 Soldiers and situated at the bottom of a steep valley, came under attack by as many as 400 Taliban fighters. During the fight, the perimeter of COP Keating was breached by the enemy. Romesha, who was injured in the battle, led the fight to protect the bodies of fallen Soldiers, provide cover to those Soldiers seeking medical assistance, and reclaim the American outpost that would later be deemed "tactically indefensible." Odierno told those in attendance that Romesha embodies "the essence of a Soldier" and that he represents what every Soldier strives to be: "an individual who has earned the trust of all he associates with, one who possesses humility and selflessness that we all respect, (and) one who embraces esprit de corps and routinely demonstrates a dedication to his profession, with moral and physical courage that epitomizes the ethos of the American Soldier." Panetta said that as secretary of defense, he has learned that a Soldier's success depends not just on those other Soldiers around him, but also on the support of his family back home. That support, Panetta said, is something he has learned is critical to the success of today's military. "It's been my experience that every warrior who is out there who puts his or her life on the line -- that behind them is a family that supports and shares in the many sacrifices that come with serving this country," he said. "That love, that support, that sacrifice, is provided by the families of our service men and women; it is central to the strength of our military. We simply could not do the job that we are asked to do without our families." At COP Keating, the odds were stacked against American Soldiers -- nearly 400 to 50. But Panetta said the Taliban failed to take into account the dedication American Soldiers had to protecting their own and what was theirs. "That the Taliban failed to overtake COP Keating is, with those numbers, a testament to the bravery, the heroism, the warrior spirit, of the American Soldiers who fought to save it," he said. "They failed because of brave young men such as Clint Romesha, a combat veteran who had already served two tours of duty in Iraq and who distinguished himself above and beyond the call of duty on that day. They failed because he and his fellow Soldiers were determined to hold that post." After senior leaders spoke, Romesha and his wife Tammy Romesha were asked to step forward. Romesha was presented with a frame containing both his picture and a copy of his Medal of Honor citation. He and his wife then revealed the board that now contains his name alongside the names of other medal recipients from Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. That board will be placed in the Hall of Heroes. Afterward, Romesha was able to address those in attendance at the ceremony. "Nearly 400 Taliban fighters surrounded the place me and 52 other members of Bravo Troop 3-61 Cavalry called home," Romesha said. "Four hundred Taliban versus 53 American Soldiers: it just doesn't seem fair ... for the Taliban." The normally shy Romesha drew a laugh from the crowd, during what had previously been a more solemn ceremony. But then he turned again to something very serious for him: the friends he lost in Afghanistan in 2009. "It was our home, and they simply couldn't have it," he said of COP Keating. "But you know the Medal of Honor is not often given when things went well on the battlefield. It tends to come at a price, and heroes are often revealed. Some say I am a hero. But it doesn't make sense, because I got to come home with few scars. Eight of my friends did not have that fortune. Eight of my brothers fought to survive for a place we had called home. And more importantly, they fought for their comrades. And in the end they gave their lives in their defense. Those eight amazing men, they are the real heroes." Included among those who died in the fighting that day in Afghanistan were, Staff Sgt. Justin Gallegos, Sgt. Christopher Griffin, Sgt. Joshua Hardt, Sgt. Joshua Kirk, Spc. Stephan Mace, Staff Sgt. Vernon Martin, Sgt. Michael Scusa, and Pfc. Kevin Thomson. "These aren't just names, they are some of the best troops; and my friends," Romesha said. With the Medal of Honor around his neck, and in a uniform he no longer needs to wear because he is now a civilian, he told those in attendance and the other Medal of Honor recipients that he would not let them down. "I will wear it with dignity and humility, in their honor," he said of the medal around his neck. "I vow to respect their memories and carry each of them in my heart for the rest of my life. It is on their behalf that I stand before you today as just a regular grunt. "There was no shortage of heroism at COP Keating that day," he continued. "And I am honored that some of the heroes of COP Keating are here with me today." He asked those other heroes, Soldiers in the audience who had fought with him that day as part of B Troop, 3-61 Cavalry, 4th BCT, 4th ID, to stand. "Thank you brothers, thanks for everything," he said. "You are the strength of our nation." The Army's latest hero finished his short remarks by saying he hopes he will always be able to make proud those who are the most important to him. "I pray that God and my family will always be proud of me," he said. "And know this: whether I wear a uniform or civilian attire, I am and always will be a Soldier for life." Sequestration could mean training reduction for 80 percent of ground forces [2013-02-13] WASHINGTON -- On Capitol Hill Feb. 13, the Army's chief of staff told lawmakers in very clear terms what budget reductions under sequestration would do to Soldiers and Army readiness. "It has grave consequences and immediate readiness impact on our forces," Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno told members of the House Armed Services Committee. For those not serving now in Afghanistan or those not forward-based in Korea, budget cuts will mean that they are not getting the training they need to go into the fight if called upon to do so, the general said. "We will curtail training for 80 percent of our ground forces," he said. "This will impact our units' basic war-fighting skills, and induce shortfalls across critical specialties, including aviation, intelligence and engineering -- and even our ability to recruit new Soldiers into the Army." Soldiers in Afghanistan now, he said, were trained for that deployment. Those who are getting ready to go -- they too are trained and ready. But there will be no money to adequately prepare the next set of Soldiers who are meant to go. "We will see a slow degrade in our readiness," he said. "We will respond, [but] they will not be as ready as we like them to be and the cost will be in lives." Not only will Soldiers miss out on critical, life-saving training, but the skill set in the Army to train Soldiers will also be lost. Without the funding to provide the opportunities for experienced Soldiers to pass their skills on to inexperienced Soldiers, skill sets and knowledge of standards will be lost, until that knowledge is all but completely gone from the Army. That erosion of corporate knowledge will get worse as time goes on, Odierno said. "It'll be worse a year from now than it is today," he said. "It'll be worse two years from now than it is a year from now. It will slowly degrade over time. It becomes risky. And then you find yourself in a hollow force -- one that is not capable of doing the missions we are going to ask them to do." Right now, Odierno said, there is already a training deficiency in the force. The Army would like to train Soldiers with the ability to work and coordinate with commands up to the battalion level. But that is not the case today, he told lawmakers. "Their proficiency, although still good, is not where we would like it to be," he said. "Because of these training reductions, right now we believe we are down to about squad-level capability for fiscal year 2013, for example. So that means you're only going to train up to the squad. When you have to deploy somewhere, your ability to coordinate and execute has not been trained. That puts lives at significant risk." If funding for aviation training is reduced, he said, it will hinder the ability of pilots to perform in environments like Afghanistan, where flying conditions are difficult and dangerous. "They will go in there with a hell of a lot less capability," he said. "That means mistakes will be made. That means we will have accidents, or that means they will be more likely to be shot down by enemy fire." That increase in risk, due to a cut in training, doesn't just spell out a danger to pilots, but also to their passengers, Odierno said. It also means limiting the kinds of missions that aviation can perform, and the kinds of missions that can be performed that depend on aviation support. "So across a broader range, you lose your broader capability to conduct the type of operations that are necessary for us to be successful," he said. Both infantry training and aviation training are critical to the Army and the missions it conducts. But also important are the critical combat support functions like logistics. With the budget reductions that will come with sequestration, he said, new budget prioritization might mean logistics Soldiers also do not get the training they need, to run convoys for instance. "All of those things now come at risk and ultimately those all result in the loss of life and the loss of capability we have," Odierno said. The general told lawmakers that force reductions and loss of training will result in a hollow force, something he said he has seen in the past. "All of us have experienced the Army post-Vietnam," he said. "It is one that was under-resourced, one that was under-trained, one that lacked appropriate equipment, was not ready, and lacked discipline. We cannot allow careless budget cuts to bring us there again. I began my career in a hollow Army, I am determined not to end my career in a hollow Army. We owe that to the young men and women who are willing to raise their right hand and defend this country." Sequestration could mean delayed redeployment for Soldiers in Afghanistan [2013-02-15] WASHINGTON -- The lack of an appropriations bill coupled with sequestration could eventually translate to Soldiers being delayed in their redeployment home from Afghanistan, the Army's chief of staff said. Gen. Ray Odierno, speaking at the Brookings Institution Friday in Washington, D.C., explained that replacement forces to Afghanistan in 2014 could be affected by a shortage of training dollars and be forced to delay their deployment. The Department of Defense has already agreed to nearly $800 billion in cuts, the general said. Sequestration will mean an additional $500 billion in defense cuts, and shifting funding for improvised explosive device, or IED, detection and electronic warfare equipment from overseas contingency operations budgets to service operations and maintenance budgets will mean an additional $100 billion in cuts. The U.S. military is looking now at a possible $1.3 trillion in defense cuts overall, Odierno said. Compounding cuts to defense budgets is the lack of a confirmed budget for the services -- the military is operating now on a "continuing resolution," which is how Congress funds the government if it has not passed an appropriations bill. A continuing resolution makes military planning difficult. "Today, in my opinion, the greatest threat to our national security is the fiscal uncertainty resulting from the lack of predictability in the budget cycles," Odierno said. "Our country's inability to put its fiscal house in order compromises the future of the joint force, the Army, and ultimately will impact our ability to provide security to our nation." Right now, Odierno said, the continuing resolution has created a "mismatch of funds" that doesn't leave enough in the operations and maintenance accounts, known as O&M funds. There's a $6 billion shortfall there compared to what the Army needs, and sequestration will add another $5.4 billion to that shortfall. It's O&M funds that allow the Army to train, so a shortfall in O&M funds means that fewer Soldiers will be able to train for Iraq and Afghanistan. "We're funding, totally, Afghanistan. We're going to fund, totally, Korea, and sustain the readiness level in Korea," Odierno said. "What that means is the rest of the forces that are now back in the United States will not be able to train. They will be able to do very small-level, squad-level training. They will not be able to do platoon-level, company-level, battalion-level training back at their installations. They will not be able to go out to combat training centers, which is what provides them the final readiness certification at the battalion and brigade level." The general said the forces that are slated next to go to Afghanistan are going to be ready to go, insofar as training and equipping is concerned. "What my concern is, the ones who come after them, they will now be behind," he said. What that means for the forces in Afghanistan in 2014 is that they might have to wait to redeploy while the follow-on forces are readied for their deployment. Earlier this week he told Congress as much, saying he offered two options to lawmakers on how to keep forces in Afghanistan. "If I can't make them up quickly, I then have to send forces that aren't ready, or I have to extend forces that are already there," he said. "That'll be a decision I have to make as we get closer. We will continue to try to divert money so we do not have to extend people in Afghanistan." RESET DELAYS The Army's share of defense cuts could mean the loss of civilian employees at Army depots where war-ravaged combat equipment is "reset" and made serviceable again for Soldier training and deployment to combat zones. Odierno said looming budget cuts will mean smaller depots and a drop in the civilian work force. That translates directly into a backlog of equipment to be reset, including the equipment that still needs to be reset from Iraq, and equipment coming out of Afghanistan right now. The general said that due to those backlogs, it's expected that delivery of that reset equipment could be delayed by two to three years, with some being delivered as late as 2016. Unfortunately, not having that critical combat equipment available, tanks and helicopter and infantry fighting vehicles, for instance, means that Soldiers who need to train on it won't be able to train. Additionally, that equipment won't be ready for deployment if the Army is called upon to fight again, and predicting when that will happen is not something the military does well. "We have not predicted very well when we will use forces," Odierno said. "When the [Berlin] Wall came down in Europe, people said 'this is it, we don't need [the Army] anymore.' But then a year later, we are deploying to the deserts of Kuwait. Then we went into Somalia. Then somewhere in there we had Panama, and 'Just Cause.' You just don't know. It is our responsibility to prepared, that if the president decides he needs to use the military, that we are ready and prepared. And I am concerned whether we will be able to do that or not as we move to the future over the next couple of years." Right now, Odierno said, the Army has a "fairly high level of readiness." But that will change soon, for both Soldier readiness and equipment readiness. When the time comes, unexpectedly, for Soldiers to deploy, emergency funding will not be enough to provide for Soldiers the readiness they need to fight successfully, Odierno said. "It slowly degrades," he said of military readiness. "So over the next six or seven months, if you are not taking care of your equipment, if you are not training, you degrade that readiness. And you can't just recover that readiness by money, it takes time." LOSS OF SOLDIERS Paying for people, Soldiers, takes up about 48 percent of the Army's budget. Cuts to the budget means a reduction in the number of Soldiers the Army will have in the ranks. The Army is already reducing the number of Soldiers in its ranks by about 88,000. Sequestration could bring the loss of an additional 100,000 Soldiers across the active force and the reserve components, Odierno said. In all, about 190,000 Soldiers will have to be cut, though the general believes it will be more than that. "My guess in the end, it'll be over 200,000 Soldiers we will have to take out of the active duty, Army National Guard, and U.S. Army Reserve," he said. That cut will mean a loss of force structure, he said. It will cost the Army a 40 percent reduction in brigade combat teams, when it's all done. A smaller Army means a loss of ability to influence and deter conflict, the general said. If the Army gets too small, "you lose your ability to deter conflict. My concern is, you have people who miscalculate. Almost every great war we've been in to, or great regional conflict, has been based on a huge miscalculation by somebody. And what I worry about is we will cause people to miscalculate, which will then cause us to have to get involved." Odierno said that without sequestration, the Army may drop below 490,000 Soldiers, something he said is doable, if managed correctly to avoid loss of skill and capability. If sequestration does happen, he said, he is concerned about not dropping below a specific number, one he didn't say, to avoid losing the ability to deter conflict, and to ensure the Army has the capability to do the things the president asks the Army to do. That number, he said, might be smaller than 490,000, "but some of the numbers I hear are too small. I do worry that the capability will be much less than we need. "I think there is a certain level of capability that I need to have, that I would propose to the president and the chairmen and others that we have to have in order to sustain our capabilities in order to respond globally," he said. Cutting the force that deep, he said, will have to be done carefully, and across all components of the Army. A proper balance must be made, he said, to preserve the unique capabilities each component brings to the fight. In particular, he said, the active component maintains a higher level of readiness, while the reserve component brings a more diverse mix of experience and capability to the table. HOW TO CUT THE FORCE Odierno said he doesn't want to force Soldiers out of the service, but at some point, some of that might happen. For the first set of cuts, he said, done over a five-year period, it'll be mostly attrition. "There will have to be some other methods," he said. "But it will be mostly, about 75-80 percent by attrition." With additional cuts, he said, "we'll probably have to increase the amount we put out each year, but I would still like to leave it at a level where I can control it," Odierno said. "If we can control it, we keep the people we want to keep, we are able to help the people transitioning to better transition, and that enables us to keep the level of readiness we need to respond." Odierno said his goal is to do the "large majority" of force cuts by attrition. But personnel boards that make other cuts might have to come in to the mix at some point. "There will have to be some boards that we conduct that we maybe ask people to retire earlier than they might want," he said. "And there might be some boards that tell us we need some officers and some senior noncommissioned officers to leave. But we will try to minimize that as much as we can." Army must shift focus from execution to preparation [2013-02-20] WASHINGTON -- The Army must transition now from a force of execution to one of preparation, said the commander of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command. As the opening speaker at the 2013 Association of the United States Army Institute of Land Warfare Symposium and Exposition in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Gen. Robert W. Cone discussed how the Army must change as it transitions out of Afghanistan during a time of fiscal drawdown for the military. Cone said one thing the Army must do is "invest in the process" of acquisition. He said over the last 12 years, the Army has gotten away from traditional processes for acquisition, and turned instead to rapid acquisition to provide for the needs of Soldiers in theater. Rapid acquisition bypasses the traditional acquisition processes the Army would normally use, and in some cases doesn't pay attention to cost. "The reality of it is, with money being much harder to come by, we are going to have to make fewer, but bigger decisions, and they will have to be informed by process," Cone said. The general also said the Army must start planning for the future. For a dozen years now it has been responding to immediate problems in theater. Now, he said, "the intellectual has to get back out in front of the physical." With the drawdown in Iraq complete, and the drawdown in Afghanistan coming, the Army must shift toward looking at the larger problems it may face in the future, and take an intellectual approach to solving those problems and how to apply resources against them. Finally, Cone said, the Army must be looking for long-term innovations. "An order of magnitude of change and generational capability change," he said. While the Army has enjoyed a "high degree of success" for more than a decade now in theater, Cone said "Big Army" must now shift its focus to the future. So while the Army has become very good at adjusting quickly to changes in both the tactical and operational environment in theater, that's no longer enough. "Strategically, we have been fighting the same fight now for about 12 years," he said. "And I think that as we look to the future we have got to be prepared for both strategic and operational adaptation." Cone acknowledged that the Army has proven its ability over 12 years for conducting counter-insurgency and stability operations from static bases and with a robust support infrastructure in place. "But let's be clear, that is not the full range of military operations," he said. "And again, with a young generation of warfighters, who I think so highly of, I think they would be the first to point out that their experience beyond this COIN/stability operations set is limited." Improving on the experience level of those Soldiers and the Army, and preparing for the future, he said, requires an approach that pays special attention to doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel and facilities. The strategic environment continues to be as dangerous now as it was when the Army started in Afghanistan, Cone said. "The world as we know it today is as dangerous and complex as at any time in our past," he said, saying that the effects that can be delivered by non-state actors through the use of technology is "absolutely staggering." Cone said that what the enemy has used against the Army in the past, they will continue to use, and will tie into that even better technology, including unmanned aerial vehicles and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The general also touched on how the enemy knows to use anti-access and area denial to stymie Army efforts to win. He said war games that have been hosted by TRADOC, as part of its Unified Quest series of events, have illustrated that the enemy recognizes that once the Army is set in a lodgement area, it can project the combat power it needs to win. "The trick from their perspective is to prevent us from ever establishing that sort of lodgement within a theater of operations," he said. Cone said the enemy understands U.S. military strength, it's Navy and Air Force, for instance, and it's intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capability as well as its ability to deliver precision strike. "They will avoid our strengths at all costs," he said. "They will prolong conflict, attacking our national will, and then they will use strategic levers, events on the ground, that will cause us to fight in ways we do not want to fight, and thereby prolonging that conflict into the future. It is dangerous, in my opinion, to undertake combat operations without a fully developed set of capabilities, reflecting air, land and sea." The Army's chief of staff, Gen. Raymond Odierno, has characterized the Army as being in an era of "prevent, shape and win," Cone said. Demonstrating a full range of capabilities is a key component to prevention of conflict, Cone said. When America shows what it is capable of doing, it lets others more accurately assess their desire to engage in conflict. The Army also shapes the strategic environment by working with, training and creating interoperability with coalition partners and indigenous forces. Additionally, Cone said, the Army can currently win the conflicts it engages in, and must maintain that capability in order to be effective with the other two elements. "The reality of our business is that no one stands in line behind us to answer the call of this nation," he said. "The Army will do what others cannot. And we have to maintain that capability. And we are doing that right now under an assumed 490,000 cap, with a capability of 32 combat brigades, 10 divisions, and four corps. "When we lose the ability to win, I'm not so sure our 'prevent' and 'shape' is going to be quite so effective," Cone said. SHIFTING GEARS The general said the Army must shift its activities now from one of resourcing the fight in Afghanistan to one of being prepared for future conflict. But making that shift must be done carefully, in order to prevent Soldiers from losing interest in the Army and leaving. Young Soldiers, Cone said, know an Army where "the world is defined by having everything you need to do all the training that you want. If there is a problem it's somebody's job to get it for [you] in terms of making things happen. We are about to cross into an environment where that will change." Soldiers have high expectations of the Army, and Cone said he is concerned that severe cutbacks to things like home-station training, or the ability to conduct exercises, will have a "very serious negative impact on retention in these generations." A challenge for the Army, he said, will be getting the balance between near-term readiness, and the investment in readiness for the future. "Cutting the near-term readiness too greatly is going to create an exodus for us, and a great deal of dissatisfaction," he said. An Army of "preparation" is one that that has shifted the focus to long-term readiness, and to do that the Army must invest in leader development and institutional training programs, Cone said. The 2013 Association of the United States Army Institute of Land Warfare Symposium and Exposition runs Feb. 20-22 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. AUSA kicks off last winter symposium in Florida [2013-02-20] WASHINGTON -- For 14 years now the Association of the United States Army has held its winter symposium in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. This year's event will be the last in the Sunshine State. During opening comments at the 2013 Association of the United States Army, or AUSA, Institute of Land Warfare Winter Symposium and Exposition, the AUSA president and former chief of staff of the Army, retired Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, told his audience, about 500 in number, that this year's event would be the last in Fort Lauderdale. The retired general also pointed out that the number of Army attendees at the event has dropped. The number of foreign military in attendance now nearly equaled the number of U.S. military attendees, he said. Nevertheless, the three-day event features an array of Army general officers and panels presenting on a variety of subjects from transition, to equipping to Army networks. The opening presenter, Gen. Robert W. Cone, commander of Army Training and Doctrine Command, or TRADOC, discussed the Army's transition from a focus on execution, to a focus on preparation. "As we look to the future, we have to be prepared for both strategic and operational adaptation," Cone said. The Army was successful in Iraq, and has been successful in Afghanistan in dealing with counter-insurgency, stability operations, and operations from static bases, and has been accustomed to a robust support infrastructure. But he said that's not enough any longer. "That is not the full range of military operations," he said. The Army must move beyond counter-insurgency now, which has been for many young Soldiers the only thing they have known during their military careers, Cone said. That move will require an approach that includes an emphasis on doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel and facilities. Additional panels include a discussion on strategic land power, with Lt. Gen. Keith C. Walker, also with TRADOC; and an afternoon panel with Heidi Shyu, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, to discuss efficiencies in procurement. Also scheduled to present during the three-day event is Gen. Dennis L. Via, of U.S. Army Materiel Command; Grace Bochenek, Ph.D., the Army's chief technology officer, who will discuss the Army's science and technology investment; a panel that discusses Army partnering with the industrial base; and a panel discussion on the future of the Army's Network Integration Evaluation efforts. Also interspersed throughout the event are "AUSA TECH TEN" events, ten-minute presentations on various technology items, including fuel cells, GPS-denied operations, and development of sensor technology for the military. The three day AUSA symposium runs Feb. 20-22. Foreign military sales growth area for Army [2013-02-21] WASHINGTON -- Selling military hardware to allied nations is a way to keep weapon production lines hot, ensure the viability of America's industrial base, and strengthen ties with the militaries that buy the equipment. Foreign military sales is a growth area for the future, and a good idea, said the commander of Army Materiel Command. "There's a growth in demand for training," said Gen. Dennis L. Via, commander, U.S. Army Materiel Command, during a presentation at the 2013 Association of the United States Army Institute of Land Warfare Symposium and Exposition in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "We think this is an opportunity we can leverage as we continue to build partner capacity and build relationships with allies and partner nations." Through its Foreign Military Sales office, the Army facilitates the sale of military weapons and hardware to partner nations. When that happens, training and support packages are also sold to those customers, which ensure an ongoing relationship between the U.S. Army and the allied nation's military. In fiscal year 2012, the Army was able to generate $19.6 billion in foreign military sales, or FMS, to 144 different nations. The projected sales in fiscal year 2013 are about $12.2 billion. Via said partner nations and allies want American military goods, and AMC can provide those goods through FMS. "What I'm finding in my travels, as I meet with embassies and foreign militaries, is they have trust in the equipment the United States provides to them," Via said. "Certainly, I'd leverage every opportunity to push for a sustainment package as well. Because, at some point in time it is going to have to be sustained; it is going to have to be maintained." Providing those sustainment packages along with FMS helps the Army preserve its own organic industrial base, its arsenals and depots, as well as provides opportunities for training and creates interoperability between U.S. and foreign militaries. "That's been a win-win for both the U.S. Army and our allies as well; and also a win-win for industry," Via said. "We see that as continuing in the out years. This is a growth industry." Sequestration may affect reset from Afghanistan [2013-02-22] FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- The reset of equipment returning from Afghanistan may be affected by sequestration, said the commander of U.S. Army Materiel Command. The cancellation of reset would affect post-combat repair for about 1,000 vehicles, 14,000 communications devices and 17,000 weapons, Gen. Dennis L. Via, commander of U.S. Army Materiel Command, or AMC, told an audience of about 500 Thursday at the Association of the United States Army Institute of Land Warfare Symposium. Retrograde of equipment from Afghanistan is now underway, Via said. About $22 billion worth of military hardware, weapons, vehicles and goods will move out of the country back to the United States. Some of that will be put back into the force, while some will first be reset in Army depots, made like new, before being sent back to a unit. Army Materiel Command is largely responsible for that retrograde. FISCAL UNCERTAINTY AND RESET Via said in fiscal year 2012, AMC depots reset 24 brigade combat team-equivalents worth of equipment. But sequestration will affect what AMC is able to do in the way of reset during fiscal year 2013. Sequestration, he said, will affect every AMC command and organic industrial base facility, with the exception of those in direct support of combat operations and units that are deployed and preparing to deploy. It will also result in cancellation of depot maintenance during the 3rd and 4th quarter. "The challenge that we have in FY 2013, with the planned cancellation of new work orders for the 3rd and 4th quarter, is that is going to impact on six Army divisions of equipment," Via explained. Sequestration may also bring furloughs to Via's civilian workforce across the 20 depots and arsenals that make up the Army's "organic industrial base." "The greatest risk to me, as commander, is losing this critical workforce that we have developed over the last 12 years," Via said. That workforce includes uniquely skilled mechanics, machinists, engineers, artisans, scientists and contracting professionals. RETROGRADE UNDER CONTACT Even thought equipment is already returning from Afghanistan, Via said commanders there are still in "a very tough fight" as they work to transition the mission to the Afghan National Army. "So it's retrograding while in contact, and I don't think there could be any more complex mission than what we face there in theater there today," he said. Still, Via said commanders in Afghanistan are on board with the retrograde process, and are working with AMC to make it happen. "They have fully embraced retrograde as an operational mission," he said. "By embracing retrograde as an operational mission they will help us as we prioritize equipment to leave the theater. They will prioritize non-mission-essential equipment that we can remove from the theater, and we've got processes in place to be able to do that." Lessons learned from the retrograde out of Iraq, a process that is still ongoing, have helped inform the retrograde process in Afghanistan, Via said. During a trip to Afghanistan in January 2012, he learned it took about 90 days to ship a vehicle out of country after it had arrived in the Redistribution Property Assistance Team, or RPAT, yard. Now, he said, that process is down to fewer than 12 days. That, he said, is due to lessons learned from the Operation New Dawn retrograde. But unlike the initial retrograde from Iraq, where some equipment could be shipped to Afghanistan for use there, the retrograde out of Afghanistan, Via said, must be back to the United States. PAKISTAN ROUTE REOPENS Getting that equipment out of Afghanistan has been helped by a recent "thawing" on the Pakistan Ground Lines of Communication, or PAKGLOC, the route to move supplies south out of Afghanistan through Pakistan. That route has been closed to traffic for some time. But to date, Via said, movement on the PAKGLOC is "not to the levels we need, of course, and not to the levels we previously enjoyed over a year ago. But we began to see some movement there." Via said there is also a northern route out of Afghanistan, through India, called the Northern Distribution Network. Moving equipment that way is more expensive than through Pakistan. Via told an audience of about 500 that he thought retrograde from Afghanistan would be on target if adequate funding is provided to make it happen. "We think we will be able to meet what the Secretary of the Army and the Chief of Staff of the Army have laid out, the priorities of the equipment to come out," he said, adding that there is a challenge still with sequestration and fiscal uncertainty. The goal is to get the equipment out of country by the end of December 2014, but as equipment starts to surge out of Afghanistan, there will be a cost increase, just as there was a cost increase with the surge for that equipment going into theater. "That's a challenge we face going forward," Via said. 'Military Saves Week' challenges families to set goals [2013-02-26] WASHINGTON -- This week, U.S. service members around the world, along with their spouses and kids, are being been challenged to take a pledge to save money in their home budgets; to "set a goal, make a plan, and save automatically." As part of "Military Saves Week 2013," which began Feb. 25 and runs through March 2, service members and their families can point their web browser to militarysaves.org to take the pledge, said Barbara Thompson, director of the Office of Family Policy, Children and Youth, at the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Military Community and Family Policy. Thompson said this is the seventh year of Military Saves Week, which is cosponsored by the Consumer Federation of America. The week focuses on helping military families learn to save money, and to ensure they have the tools needed to reduce their debt and save for the future. Thompson said some of those tools available to military families include the certified financial managers at military family centers, for instance, that provide education and budgeting and counseling to service members and their families. Military banks and credit unions on installations, she said, are also required to provide those educational tools to service members and families. Additionally, the "Military One Source" program, accessible 24/7 online or via telephone, allows service members to get referrals for up to 12 sessions of financial counseling. Sgt. Maj. Bryan B. Battaglia, the senior enlisted adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his wife Lisa Battaglia, answered questions Feb. 26, during a bloggers roundtable about their own efforts to be financially responsible, the challenges faced by service members, and the importance of military leadership in helping young troops make the right financial choices. Mrs. Battaglia said that she and her husband are like every other military family. They've moved more than 16 times in 27 years, she said, and they've faced family emergencies and shaped their lifestyle to be based on one income. "As part of building a family, we, like others, sat down as a team and drew up a budget, adjusted it over the years, and saved where we could," she said. Early on, Mrs. Battaglia said, her family socked their money away in U.S. savings bonds as a way to guarantee a bright future. "We saved for many years and built a nest egg," she said. Today, the "Thrift Savings Plan" is available to service members, and both Sgt. Maj. Battaglia and his wife agree it's a good decision. As additional cost-saving measures at home, Mrs. Battaglia told reporters she's been making lunch for her husband every day for longer than she can remember. "Call me old-fashioned," she said. "Not only does it promote nutritional fitness, but the money that we saved over the course of time is huge." She also said that Sgt. Maj. Battaglia cuts his own hair, saving as much as seven dollars each week. "You add it up -- 52 weeks at seven or eight dollars a week, plus tips," she said. "These are just a couple ways that we still save to this day." Mrs. Battaglia said that her advice to service members it to live within their means, and, if possible, to have one person in the family manage finances. She said that their family can afford more expensive things now -- but they have built financial discipline into their household, and now the money they still choose to save in small places can be used in other places for more important things. "Financial fitness should be in every household," she said. Sgt. Maj. Battaglia said that as a young military family, it is temptation to live beyond one's means -- "there's temptation with impulse buying," he said. But the financial instability that comes with succumbing to temptation and irresponsible spending can have implications beyond the bank account. "Financial instability brings tension within a relationship and a marriage," Sgt. Maj. Battaglia said. "Financial fitness plays a big role in more than just being healthy in the wallet. We would like to teach a behavior within society, which once was, it's okay for young military couples to have second-hand furniture. What worked for us ... the cinder block with the piece of wood or the electrical spool that got sanded down and varnished as a coffee table really worked just fine as furniture for a young family like we, just starting out. It didn't have to be brand new, or Ethan Allen style that really set us back." The sergeant major also touched on a dangerous pitfall for young troops that are short on cash and need a quick fix -- the payday lenders, loan sharks and "questionable sales people that are ready to latch on to service members and families as soon as they enter into the military." Battaglia hammered multiple times that services must educate their troops to not be tempted by payday lenders and others "who are out to make a profit at any expense, and especially at a service member's expense." As an example, Battaglia said that in his youth -- at a time when there was no direct deposit of military pay, but instead service members were paid in cash -- if a service member ran out of funds, they might be tempted to go to a payday lender. "There were sharks out in the local community who would loan you $150, let's say, hypothetically speaking -- and the following payday when you got paid you had to pay them $250 back," he said. "So those loan sharks were hungry and active back then, and my senior [noncommissioned officers] kind of steered me away from those folks." To protect service members from those threats, Battaglia said that it's important that military leadership provide counseling to their subordinates and in some cases, be involved or be available in the decisions junior service members make that could dramatically affect their financial standing. "When a young trooper is preparing to buy a first car, I think a leader must be involved," he said. "Even when a young trooper is preparing to have a child for the first time, I think a leader must be engaged, and when a young trooper is preparing for marriage, a leader just has to be there. Each one of those real-world instances are investments, and major expenses -- and if they are not done correctly they could be catastrophic." TEACHING YOUTH Thompson said that finical education needs to start young, and military children are reaping the benefit of that philosophy. "We feel it's important to start with our military children," she said. "So many of them enter the military or are considering entering the military. So part of Military Saves includes our youth centers and our school-age programs. And I'm of a personal belief that we start with our preschoolers on basic money management." Starting young on responsible money management education is important, she said, because many of those coming into the service, she said, are coming in already in debt. She said that her office is working to develop a program for those who have been recruited into the military, but who have not yet started basic training, to help them deal with financial issues before they actually put their uniform on for the first time. Thompson said a website, moneyasyougrow.org, is useful in communicating to children of varying ages, in language understandable to them, the importance of how to use and manage money. Service members interested in participating in the Military Saves program can visit the program web site at www.militarysaves.org. Billion-dollar cuts may lead to boarded windows, Soldiers as groundskeepers [2013-02-27] WASHINGTON -- Sequestration for the Army will mean a significant cut to facilities maintenance, a severe cut in contract services provided on installations, and a reduction in Soldier training and readiness. Total cuts to the "operations and maintenance - Army" budget, called "OMA," will leave the service with about $2 billion to support garrisons and training for the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. The OMA account supports the war effort and other operations around the world; pays for training, exercises and mission support; base operations support and facilities sustainment; and Soldier and family programs. During a media engagement Feb. 27, at the Pentagon, Maj. Gen. Karen E. Dyson, director of the Army Budget Office, called the cuts and fiscal uncertainty "dire" and "unprecedented" for the Army. Budget numbers may be nebulous for many, Soldiers included. But Brig. Gen. Curt A. Rauhut, director of resource management for Installation Management Command, painted a picture for reporters that clarifies what the cuts will actually mean for Soldiers around the Army. With cuts to the budget for Installation Management Command, or IMCOM, which provides utilities, airfield services, public works, law enforcement, access control, fire and emergency services and family services to some 75 installations across the world, Rauhut said life on an Army base could get difficult for those who live there. "(For) a Soldier living in a barracks that has a leaky roof, we may not be able to fund that to repair that roof," he said. "We may have to throw a tarp over it to repair that roof. Or say a window is broken, we may not be able to replace that window, we may have to provide a piece of plywood or electrical tape. Or if a water main breaks within a barracks, we may have to direct that Soldier to leave his barracks and take a shower in some other barracks." Rauhut said sustainment to facilities will be reduced by about $2 billion dollars, which represents a reduction to 37 percent of the command's actual requirement. "It is a concern of not having the funding for restoration and modernization, or even enough funding to sustain the facilities that we have currently out there," Rauhut said. Rauhut said IMCOM also handles facility services, paying for those who pick up the trash and mow the lawns, for instance. Those services could be cut with sequestration in some places. Somebody will need to do them, but Rauhut said he doesn't want for it to have to be Soldiers. "Do we want our Soldiers to be doing refuse removal?" he asked. "Do we want them to be riding around on lawnmowers and cutting grass; do we want them to do custodial services? With our force today, I think we'd rather have them flying helicopters, doing live-fire exercise out on the ranges. Every dollar we don't put toward services contracts, that is Soldiers now doing that type of work." CUTS TO FAMILY PROGRAMS IMCOM doesn't just fund maintenance of buildings, it also funds programs that maintain families. Rauhut said some family programs will need to be reduced. Family programs include community and family support centers, Army community services, child youth services, and Soldier recreation programs, for instance. Rauhut said all of those are being looked at now for cuts. "I can see where there are decrements to child youth services," he said. Those cuts could impact hours of availability, where Soldiers who use those services would need to adjust their own schedules. Availability of Soldier recreation centers may also have to be adjusted, including youth sports programs, for instance. READINESS SUFFERS Soldiers slated for deployment to Afghanistan, Soldiers in Afghanistan, Soldiers preparing for assignment in Korea, and Soldiers already in Korea, as well as Soldiers who are part of the Army's Global Response Force will all be trained to 100 percent, Dyson said. But those Soldiers represent about 22 percent of the Army. The remainder of Soldiers will not be able to train the way the Army needs them to, and as a result, their skill sets will languish and deteriorate. The more time Soldiers go without training, the longer it will take for them to become prepared to go to war, and that could mean delays in their deployments, and delays in redeployments for Soldiers already there. "The Army is going to send trained, ready units into harm's way," said Maj. Gen. Robert M. Dyess, director of force development, Army G8. "That is our task, that is our duty, and that's what we're going to do. If we believe that a unit does not receive the training, that they don't get the equipment, if there's a timing issue to this, we won't send them downrange until they are ready. That means we may have to look at an option that we did in the '06-'07 time frames, to keep some units longer." Budget cuts mean Soldiers won't be able to train as much or to the level they have been training to in the past. That shortfall is exacerbated by cuts to Army depots, which means it will take longer for the Army to reset the equipment that is needed for training. Dyson said changes made to depot maintenance throughput could delay equipment by as much as three to four years getting back to units. BUDGET CUT '666' "The fiscal crisis that we face today can be framed by three numbers, 6, 6 and 6," Dyson told reporters. The Army has not received an appropriation for fiscal year 2013. Instead, the Army runs on a "continuing resolution" that funds the Army in fiscal year 2013 at the same amount that was provided to the service in fiscal year 2012. The funding for this fiscal year underfunds the OMA account by about $6 billion, Dyson said, about 17 percent less than what the Army had asked for in the submitted fiscal year 2013 budget. It asked for $36 billion, but due to a CR, it instead got $30 billion. Dyson also said that the war in Afghanistan is costing more during this period than what the Army had planned for, something it does 18 months in advance. As a result of increased costs, there is a shortfall in the overseas contingency operations budget, or OCO, of about $6 billion. One cause is that the Army is now retrograding equipment out of Afghanistan, but the routes the Army planned to use to get equipment out of the country are not as usable as they could be. Instead, the Army is paying more to fly equipment out of country, or move it out through a more expensive route, such as north through India. Finally, sequestration pulls about $12 billion out of the Army across all appropriations, but about half of that, $6 billion, will come from the OMA account. Funding for the Army's OMA account is under siege from three directions -- about $6 billion due to a shortfall in the continuing resolution, about $6 billion due to increased costs to fight the war, and about $6 billion that will come from sequestration. Dyson said the Army will protect funding for the war effort, for wounded warrior programs, and for some Soldier and family programs that are deemed critical. So money for those programs, which represents about 43 percent of the OMA budget, is "protected." "This means that this reduction of $18 billion has to be taken against the unprotected amount," she said. The unprotected amount comes to $34 billion for fiscal year 2013, about $14 billion of which has been spent already. For the remainder of the fiscal year, the Army has about $2 billion left to spend from the OMA budget on training, facilities, maintenance, and family and Soldier programs. "The cumulative effects with a start so late in the year will stress and shock our workforce," Dyson said. "It will cause an erosion of readiness across our non-deployed force that will extend well into [fiscal year 2014] and beyond, and potentially put us at risk for meeting the nation's demands." Army studies range from virtual marksmanship to waste water reuse [2013-03-06] WASHINGTON -- Army commands can start thinking now about submitting study proposals to the Army Study Program Management Office for consideration this summer. Meghan Mariman, director of the Army Study Program Management Office, known as ASPMO, which is part of G-8 at the Pentagon, said that each year, her office pays for about 30 studies at the request of Headquarters, Department of the Army agencies and Army-level commands. A study, she said, is a research project or an effort to make a project more efficient. The ASPMO is funding studies this year into traumatic brain injury monitoring, risk assessment, leadership development, and cyberspace operations, for instance. "We're looking to make smarter decisions, to either make a process more efficient or more effective," Mariman said. Funded in fiscal year 2013 by ASPMO are studies on cyberspace defensive operations, the effectiveness of the Selected Reserve Incentive Program in maintaining the Reserve force, the use of locally-sourced materials for construction of facilities in theater, and something called "Neurocognitive Temporal Training and Marksmanship Performance." "Using a virtual environment, Soldiers can become better sharpshooters," Mariman said of the study on neurocognitive training. "And they can use a virtual environment, which saves money; the Office of the Surgeon General has some brilliant work going on." In fiscal year 2013, the ASPMO funded nearly 30 studies at about $335,000 each for 15 different agencies, including the Office of the Surgeon General; the Army Materiel Command; the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology; U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command; and the Army's G-3/5/7. The ASPMO doesn't do any research for the Army on its own. Instead, it takes in requests for studies from commands and HQDA agencies, and finds a suitable research agency to perform those studies. That could include internal Army agencies that do analysis, such as the Center for Army Analysis at Fort Belvoir, Va. The ASPMO also works with a federally funded research and development center called the RAND Arroyo Center, and with commercial contractors that can perform studies for the Army. "We manage the program, we provide the resources, and then work with the sponsoring command to help them identify a performer," Mariman said. "If we have the expertise in-house, of course, we try to keep it in house. We're trying to do the analysis in the most cost-effective way." The ASPMO also manages the relationship between the analysis agency that does a study and the command that wants the study done. She said the studies that yield the best results are those where there was a close relationship between the command that sponsored the study and the agency that performed it. "I can't make sure they have regular in-progress reviews," Mariman said. "But what I can do is encourage regular meetings, and to make sure that the analysis is going in the right direction. That's where we find the sponsors are most pleased with the results -- when they are involved in the process along the way." Mariman said most of the studies take about 12 months to complete, and are generally focused on the most current and relevant issues affecting the Army. In fact, she said, the ASPMO compiles a list of topics that are most relevant to the Army and uses that list, in part, to determine which studies will be funded. "We're trying to look at near-term issues," she said. The ASPMO puts out yearly guidance on topics that are critical to the Army so that agencies that would like to have ASPMO pay for a study can focus their request on issues important and timely for the Army, Mariman said. "There's been a big push to make things more efficient in terms of energy and water security," she said. "So those are two areas we work really closely with the commands that focus on energy conservation." Two studies currently underway for the Army in regard to water usage include one that looks at how to reuse waste water, and another that looks at commercial off-the-shelf water quality analysis sets. Both studies are underway now for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment. At forward bases, Mariman said, for each gallon of fresh water brought into a location, an equivalent amount of waste water must be brought out or dealt with on site. "So we're looking at ways to purify the water and not make an environmental impact," she said. In the spring, around mid-April, the ASPMO's "Study Program Coordination Committee" releases guidance for what kinds of topics are most important to the Army. Shortly after, they issue a call for studies -- inviting agencies to submit proposals for consideration by the Senior Analyst Advisory Board. By the fall, the SPCC meets again to approve proposals for study in the upcoming fiscal year. ARCHIVING RESEARCH FOR THE FUTURE Studies funded by ASPMO don't end up in a black hole after the research is done. Instead, the synopsis for each study requested, in progress or completed is posted online within an ASPMO database that allows other agencies access to the research, Mariman said. "If a command is looking to see if a project has been performed in the past, they can do some initial research in our database to see what analysis has been done on a certain platform or issue," she said, adding that there's nearly 5,000 studies documented in that database. While the actual studies are not posted online, the points of contact for the research are there, as well as a synopsis of the work done. That way, interested Army parties can get access to research the service already paid for and avoid replicating the work themselves. "It helps to take advantage of lessons learned," Mariman said. "Nobody wants to start from ground zero when they are working on an analysis project. Almost all the work we do is unclassified, so one thing that makes the work we do powerful is sharing the work we do with other commands. We don't want to duplicate efforts. So we work really closely with all the internal Army analysis agencies to make sure we don't have redundant efforts going on." Military culinary arts competition heats up at Fort Lee [2013-03-11] WASHINGTON -- Steamed opakapaka, scallops, profiteroles and stress were on the menu at the 2013 Military Culinary Arts Competition here. The competition, now in its 38th year, runs March 2-15, at Fort Lee, Va., and pits military food service professionals from all services against themselves and each other to show off their best cooking skills. Inside the field house here where the competition was held, two mobile Army containerized kitchens, stainless steel boxes, like trailer homes outfitted with everything needed to cook hot meals for an Army in the field, stood against one wall. On the other side of the field house, a row of 10 identical kitchens with large digital timer clocks on the refrigerators stood ready to host a variety of young military chefs in competition, each eager to show judges from the American Culinary Federation that they were on top of their game. "What they can expect here is enhanced professionalism, enhanced culinary skills, more developed techniques in the arts of food preparation and food sanitation, and the credentials that will allow them to be recognized in the private industry," said Lt. Col. Luis A. Rodriguez, director of the Joint Culinary Center of Excellence at Fort Lee. "Also, they are given the opportunity to expose themselves outside the garrison environment, within a competitive environment." Over at one of the mobile field kitchens, Soldiers from Fort Carson, Colo., prepared to serve meals to 60 visitors to the competition, visitors who would actually pay for their meals, and who would eat as paying customers. Nearby, another identical field kitchen was manned by Soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas. Spc. Kollin Mullins, with the Fort Hood team, served as expeditor on a six-person team of servers. "I make sure the plates get out to the customers in a timely manner, and at the same time make sure all the components are on the plate," Mullins said. Coming out of the Fort Hood kitchen was a squash soup, a grilled and marinated halibut fillet, and a layered dessert with orange chiffon cake, mango mousse and raspberry gellee. When customers had been seated, and were awaiting their meals, Mullins stood near the kitchen waiting for food to be plated and verified that it looked good before handing it off to his team of servers to move out to the diners. Each server, he said, had two tables. "If one of them gets down, or somebody is messing up, or needs help, if another one can help they go help," he said. Mullins is a 92G himself, and does more than just expedite. Last year he was at Fort Lee to participate in the ice carving competition, he took home a bronze medal. But he cooks too, especially when he's back at home and part of the Fort Hood Culinary Arts team that helps train other 92Gs there to do things beyond what they do in the dining facility, known as a DFAC. "We train the Soldiers on the culinary side of being a 92G, not just working in the DFAC," he said. "We train them to do better stuff." Being at Fort Lee for the culinary arts competition puts everything he knows to the test, Mullins said. At the competition, he and his team can show off their A-game. "This is a competitive training event," he said. "A select few get to do this, and it's a great thing to be here and do what we do. It shows not only what you can do in the Army as a 92G, but that there is more to being a 92G." At Fort Lee, Mullins said, there is also an opportunity to learn, from nearly everybody he encounters. "You can go from the highest ranking noncommissioned officer or officer, down to the lowest private, and you can learn anything from any one of them," he said. "Nobody knows everything, but everybody knows something." Now 18 years in the Army, and originally having served as a communications specialist, Army Staff Sgt. Brian S. Gerstemeier with the Fort Carson, Colo., team found himself making desserts for the lucky 60 guests of their team. "I'm filling pistachio profiteroles with a pastry cream," Gerstemeier said. "They're made with butter, water, flour and salt, with ground-up pistachios. I boil the water and butter, add the flour and salt mixture at once, and stir while it's on the fire, and mix into a ball, then I bring it to the mixer and beat all the heat out of it and then add eggs and pistachios." The work looked delicate. For each tiny puff of pastry he'd baked, he had to puncture it with the tip of a pastry bag and fill it with the crème, so it could later be plated with other elements of the dessert. Together, the team served an appetizer with scallops and a pea puree, and an entrée with veal, purple potatoes, and asparagus. Gerstemeier said competitions like the one at Fort Lee come down to one thing: "time management, bar none. You have to manage your time. If you don't space out your cooking times, if you don't alternate, and work with the other team members, you won't be able to get where you're going." Across the field house, individuals and two-person teams competed against stringent standards and an unforgiving clock in various competitions that tested everything from their personal skills with the knife and poultry to their ability to design a healthy meal. Sgt. Rena Adonis, stationed at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, came to the competition with Joint Team Hawaii, and competed in the hot food nutritional category. "The entire dish had to be under 1,000 calories," she said. Included in that was ox tail soup, steamed opakapaka, a fish, with brown rice and sautéed broccoli, and "ying and yang" Asian pears with a cherry compote. The three-course meal for four people had to be completed in 2 1/2 hours. "Coming down to the wire, I definitely started to feel everything coming through and I started pushing more," she said. "We placed high silver. It's my first time in this competition, and I'm pretty excited about that." Adonis, who is originally from the Caribbean Islands, said that special attention needs to be paid to portions of food and ingredients used when preparing a meal that has to meet specific nutritional specifications. "Cooking regular meals, you just add a little of this, add a little of that," she said. "We don't really measure stuff. But for nutritional, for our fish for instance, we had to make sure our portion sizes were correct, it had to be three ounces, exact. We were also using brown rice, and there had to be a certain amount of rice on the plate. And with all your sweeteners, you have to use sweeteners, like Stevia or natural honey. You have to think it through when you do a category like this." This is Adonis's first year at the competition, and she said she's learned that patience is key to success at the event. "A lot of times, especially working with the people I work with, we work with them 24/7," she said. "People are going to get on your nerves, because you are in close quarters, and you're trying to get things perfect, and you are frustrated. Patience is key in this entire thing." In preparation for the competition, Adonis said she and her team trained for three months, sometimes as many as 12 hours a day. "It's a lot of long hours," she said. "And a lot of us on the team are novices. We don't have any professional certifications or anything, a lot of us are mess hall cooks, dining facility cooks." Coming down from nearby Washington, D.C., to participate in the competition was Air Force Staff Sgt. Ghil Medina. He spends most of his days cooking for the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon. Medina competed in the K1 "professional" category at the competition, wowing judges with something he said is native to his home in the Philippines, including chicken relleno, mixed vegetables, and garlic fried rice with adobo sauce. "I went back to my roots," he said. "It's like Philippines in a nut shell. I feel great about my food today. It represents me. It's the thing I always eat every day, and I'm really proud the judges loved the food and are appreciative that I served them something outside the box." He earned a silver medal for his dish. "There's a lot of things the judges are looking for," he said of the competition. "There's sanitation, organization, and the way the work flows. And most importantly, the flavor and the execution of the dish. The judges need to see the amount of skill in a plate, and how you execute it." Medina has been in the Air Force for six years now, has been cooking the entire time, and says he's "right in the middle" when it comes to his skill level. "I'm training younger Soldiers and Airmen, and I'm transitioning to be a more professional chef," he said of himself. When he goes back to Washington, he'll be back cooking again for Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, along with the 20 other cooks that work in the mess there. The secretary, he said, eats simple, and leans "toward the healthy side." But despite cooking for the highest levels of those in the Department of Defense, Medina said he just loves to cook, and one day would have no problem returning to an Air Force base, such as Lackland Air Force Base, to cook again for other Airmen, even basic trainees. "I would love to go back," he said. "The things I've learned from the great chefs at the Pentagon, I would bring it back down to the Airmen. I am passionate about cooking, because I love to make people happy. That's the main thing." This year's competition at Fort Lee was smaller than in other years. Budget constraints have meant that not everybody who wanted to attend could attend. Additionally, some of the events that have been available in years past were no longer present. This year, for instance, there was no ice carving competition. Budget constraints, Rodriguez said "affected us significantly in terms of how many events we put into the competition." Still, he said, the competition is robust enough in scope, with the right events included, to continue to be an American Culinary Federation-sanctioned event. And most importantly, Rodriguez said, the competition has a significant learning element. "We kept the training portion intact," he said. "That ensures that participants could enhance their skills by participating." While the food on display at the competition is not something you'd usually see in a dining facility, Rodriguez said, the skills service members bring there to compete are on display at chow halls across the U.S. military, and that's what's important. "All the ingredients, the procedures, the techniques are the same ones that are applied in a garrison or field environment. So in a garrison environment, you will see the food preparation and the techniques are the same," he said. Furloughs to affect Army's behavioral health care [2013-03-13] WASHINGTON -- Upcoming furloughs for Army civilians, along with budget cuts, will affect the Army's ability to provide behavioral health care to Soldiers, an official said. More than half of the Army's behavioral health providers are either government civilians or contractors, said Col. Rebecca Porter, the chief of Army behavioral health care, speaking at a Defense Writer's Group breakfast Tuesday. "The plan is that our Department of the Army civilians who are employed with us would be impacted across the board," Porter said. The Army's medical community is about 60 percent civilian, overall, she said. Within the behavioral health specialty, which includes about 4,500 providers, more than half are civilian. With the Army surgeon general's priorities for medical care during the sequestration being warrior care, primary care, behavioral health and the Integrated Disability Evaluation System, Porter said the Army is looking at possibly exempting some of those Army civilians from furlough. Another option, she said, is to have Soldier-providers, that is medical providers who are in uniform, backfill where care is most needed. "In the areas that we anticipate that furloughs or sequestration could have greater impact on the availability of care for Soldiers," she said, the Army is looking at "moving, especially uniformed people, there on a temporary basis to assist." Due to both Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, there has been a greater need in the Army for behavioral health providers, Porter said. And the Army has worked to bring those medical professionals on board, despite there being a nationwide shortage in the civilian community as well. With furloughs and sequestration, lack of stability as a behavioral health provider within the Army may draw some of those professionals back to the private sector. "There is a national shortage of behavioral health providers," Porter said. "We've worked for several years, since 2007, we've more than doubled the number of behavioral health providers that we have in the Army. To see them now looking elsewhere because they don't have the job security that they thought they were going to have, and they don't know how much the organization or the institution supports them in what they are trying to do, it is a morale issue." She said in behavioral health, when contracts or term positions come up for expiration or renewal, they will go through her office "so we can look, kind of corporately, at what do we have as far as resources in the personnel realm. We value those individuals greatly. Particularly for providers, we are looking to retain them." Porter said the Army has seen success with embedded behavioral health teams, or EBHT, where behavioral health providers are taken out of the hospitals and instead aligned with specific brigades. The pilot installation for that effort was at Fort Carson, Colo., and she said success with the program has meant an expansion of the program to brigade-sized elements across the Army by the end of fiscal year 2016. An evaluation of the EBHT program at Fort Carson, she said, has shown "a decrease in incidents of psychiatric hospitalizations, decreased incidents of suicides, of suicide attempts and even things like alcohol-related incidents." The success of the EBHT program, and cause for its expansion across the force, stems largely from the benefits of creating familiarity between providers and unit commanders. "Co-locating them with the unit and with the commanders, I think, helps the behavioral health provider be more in tune with what are the needs of the command," Porter said. "But it also, in our experience, makes the commander, and the Soldiers, more trusting of the behavioral health providers." Early in her career, she said, as a captain she was in a position to make a recommendation to a commander that he not take a Soldier on deployment, due to post-traumatic stress disorder, known as PTSD. She said that commander thanked her for her input, but took the Soldier on deployment anyway. Later, she said, problems surfaced and the commander had to send the Soldier home. "Today, I think if I made the same recommendation to a commander, I think they would heed a behavioral health professional's input a lot more than they did 16 or 17 years ago," she said. "It's a different environment. Vastly different than it was back then." Part of the increased trust commanders have in behavioral health providers stems from increased awareness of issues like PTSD, Porter said. But she believes that the relationships that can be built through the use of EBHTs will only further commander trust. The EBHTs are made up of civilian behavioral health providers, she said. Downrange, units have two organic behavioral health providers, and two behavioral health technicians. There are also combat stress control teams that function in a general area and go where commanders think additional help is needed. Army's 'Ready and Resilient Campaign' kicks off [2013-03-13] WASHINGTON -- The Army has made available to Soldiers a new online resource to complement the Ready and Resilient Campaign that launched March 12. The campaign's website is available now at www.army.mil/readyandresilient, and is designed as a "one-stop shop" for resources related to Soldier resilience and readiness. The new site includes sections for medical readiness, personal readiness, and Soldier transition issues. On the front page of the site is a list of hotlines for Soldiers to call for when "something bad happens," said Col. John Sims, with the Army's Office of the Chief of Public Affairs. Such an event could include a sexual assault, suicide issues, traumatic brain injury or post-traumatic stress disorder. The Army already has dozens of programs and websites that can help Soldiers improve their readiness, help them become more resilient, and help them deal with crises such as sexual assault, suicidal ideation, post-traumatic stress disorder, or traumatic brain injury for instance. But the new website is meant to bring access to those resources together in one place. "You can find this information in 500 other different places. But this is supposed to be the one-stop shop for Soldiers," Sims said. "We wanted to make a place where leaders, Soldiers and family members could go and find information and quick resources, emergency hotlines, and learn to improve their resiliency." Resilience is an individual's ability to bounce back when "something bad happens, in the simplest terms," said Sims. A Soldier's resilience, he said, can come from how they were raised, the experiences they had in their lives, and how they were trained. Sims said the secretary of the Army, the chief of staff of the Army and the vice chief of staff of the Army want to show the connection between a Soldier's resilience and a Soldier's readiness for duty. That connection, and maintaining that connection, is the impetus for the Ready and Resilient Campaign. Readiness, Sims said, is the ability of an individual or unit to accomplish its assigned task or mission. "We are recognizing that it's not just the training we go through that makes us ready, but all the things that we bring as an individual," Sims said. Col. Theresa Gonzalez, with Army Medical Command, said for an individual, not being ready could be the result of administrative, medical, or mental health issues. Readiness, she said, means that a Soldier is resilient to the many stressors that all Soldiers face. "The difference between people who do well and sustain their capacity, is what we refer to under the name resilience," Gonzalez said. "A more resilient Soldier is able to accept the same load, allostatic load is the term we would use. They can accept the same allostatic load and continue to perform their mission." An "allostatic load," she said, describes the physical consequences to one's body that result from repeated exposure to stressors. Those stressors could include, among other things, relationship issues or financial issues, for instance. Such stressors can affect a Soldier's ability to concentrate, Sims added. And long-term exposure to such stressors, and a Soldier's inability to adapt to them and deal with them can also affect his or her health, Gonzalez added. Additionally, Gonzalez said, Soldiers rarely have just one stressor in their lives, they often have multiple stressors that can affect them. And the Ready and Resilient Campaign website, and program overall, is meant to help Soldiers identify in one place the things that are affecting their lives and then point them to available solutions. Sims said the Ready and Resilient Campaign offers "nothing new" in terms of programs, but instead aims to take an array of existing Army programs and optimize them, to make them all more effective. Additionally, he said, some programs that are redundant have been eliminated to ensure resources are directed to other more effective programs. "Really what we are doing is changing how we view these programs," Sims said. "No longer do we view suicide as unconnected to negative behavior, or sexual assault, or other things. We are now seeing them much more holistically." The Ready and Resilient Campaign website is just one part of a larger Campaign to emphasize how Soldier resilience directly affects a Soldier's readiness, and the readiness of that Soldier's unit. The goal of the Ready and Resilient Campaign is to make it easier for Soldiers, commanders and families from all components of the Army to find the resources they need to make themselves ready for the war fight, and to help them understand the connection between being resilient and being ready to be a Soldier. New OER means fewer boxes, more accountability for raters [2013-03-21] WASHINGTON -- By December, officers will be rated under a new evaluation system -- one that is designed to both strengthen rater accountability and reflect current Army leadership doctrine. The new system will affect officers in all branches and all components of the Army, said Maj. Gen. Rick Mustion, commander, Army Human Resources Command. Additionally, he said the new Officer Evaluation Report, or OER, system will be preceded by deployment of mobile training teams Army-wide to help officers become accustomed to the new system. One change to the OER is emphasis on a clear delineation of responsibilities between raters and senior raters, Mustion said. "Raters discuss performance, and senior raters discuss potential," Mustion said. Right now, he added, that distinction is not being made. There will also now be three separate evaluation forms based on grade. Those three "grade plates" include one for company-grade officers, warrant officers and chief warrant officers two; one for field-grade officers as well as chief warrant officers three through five; and one for "strategic leaders," which includes colonels and brigadier generals. The Army will also implement a rater profile for the company and field-grade officer plates; emphasize recommendations for future operational and career broadening opportunities on the field grade plate; redefine the senior-rater box check; and limit the use of intermediate raters to special branches and dual-supervision situations. Gone from the OER will be the "outstanding performance, must promote," "satisfactory performance, promote," and "unsatisfactory performance, do not promote" boxes. Instead, raters will now choose from "excels," "proficient," "capable" and "unsatisfactory," Mustion said. The online tool that will allow officers to rate other officers will limit the number of "excels" ratings they can offer a particular grade to less than 50 percent. During an officer's career, the system will ensure the rater rates less than 50 percent of captains, for instance, as "excels." Such information about a rater's rating history will be part of his or her "rater profile." Right now, raters do not have a "rater profile," while senior raters do. For senior raters, the "above center of mass," "center of mass," "below center of mass, retain"," and "below center of mass, do not retain" blocks will be replaced with "most qualified," "highly qualified," "qualified," and "not qualified" check boxes. With those ratings, a senior rater will also be limited to less than 50 percent of rated officers being marked "most qualified." Mustion said the Army has no intention of restarting senior rater profiles with the change to the new system. The "mass"-based ratings will transition to the new "qualified"-based ratings. For company grade officers, what Mustion calls the "Rubik's Cube of attributes and competencies" will also disappear. The current DA Form 67-9, included about 16 "yes" or "no" check boxes for a rater to answer an array of questions about an officer's mental, physical and emotional characteristics; their conceptual, interpersonal, technical, and tactical skills; and, among other things, their ability to communicate, make a decision, or develop their subordinates. In place of that matrix of yes and no check boxes, raters will instead evaluate an officer in six distinct areas -- and it won't be multiple choice to complete the section. "What our raters will do is write three to four sentences, documenting the officer's performance, not potential, in line with each of the attributes and competencies," Mustion said. Raters will be asked to write about an officer's character; "presence," which includes professional conduct; intellect; leadership ability; ability to develop subordinates; and ability to achieve their mission. For field grade officers, raters will instead provide narrative commentary that demonstrates an officer's performance regarding "field grade competencies." "It reverts back to a narrative description, similar to what we have today, except it is a documentation of performance in line with the attributes and competencies," Mustion said. "What it reflects are those things that our field grade officers and warrant officers should be able to accomplish." Mustion said among those attributes are the ability to adjust to an ambiguous situation, for instance, and the ability to manage resources. CAREER BROADENING A key part of the new OER system will be to ask raters to make determinations about what an officer is capable of, and what suggestions there might be for how the officer can be better developed -- both for his or her sake, and for the sake of the Army. Mustion said the Army is asking leaders to identify future and broadening assignments for officers who are rated. "In our Army we have a lot of requirements that are outside the operational Army," he said. "We have opportunities that range from fellowships here in the [Pentagon,] to teaching at ROTC, to the operations controllers at our National Training Center, to joint staff positions -- which are very important to building officers that can operate at the strategic level -- and that's the construct of broadening." PREPARING FOR THE NEW OER The new OER system will start Dec. 1, 2013. All ratings that take place before that date will use the old system. Ratings with THRU dates after that date will use the new system. Mustion said there will be no close-out reports required before switching to the new system. To prepare officers for the new OER system, Mustion said the Army will deploy mobile training teams this autumn. Additionally, he said the new version of Army Regulation 623-3, which explains the OER process, will be available 30 days before implementation of the new system. The regulation should be available from Army publishing sometime in November. Selective Early Retirement Board could affect 1,200 field grade officers [2013-04-05] WASHINGTON -- In August, the Army will convene a Selective Early Retirement Board for lieutenant colonels and colonels. The move is just one part of a larger Army effort to meet its congressionally mandated end strength reduction. Currently, about 500 colonels and 700 lieutenant colonels in the Army Competitive Category meet the criteria for the Selective Early Retirement Board, or SERB. While the board may select up to 30 percent of those officers for early retirement, it's expected many officers may opt instead to apply for voluntary retirement. Those who meet the criteria for the August SERB include active duty colonels in the Army Competitive Category who have been a colonel for more than five years; and lieutenant colonels who have been at least twice non-selected for promotion to colonel. While the SERB is necessary to both reduce the size of the Army and appropriately shape the officer force for the future, it is a difficult action for the Army to take, said Lt. Gen. Howard B. Bromberg, Army G-1. "It's hard to do, because we're doing it to people who have supported us tremendously with great honor and service to the nation and service to the Army over the last 12 years while we have been engaged in the fight," Bromberg said. Bromberg said the SERB is not just about force reduction, it's also about force shaping and about ensuring opportunities for other officers to move up in rank. "What we have seen in the last ten years or so is that the average officer is staying about 10 percent longer than the norm," Bromberg said, saying that colonels that might have retired 25-26 years, a decade ago are now staying for 28 or 29 years in service. "It's just because they want to serve, which is very commendable. But unfortunately, in order to shape the Army, we are going to have to bring that down." Promotion rates to colonel over the last two years have been low, he said, at about 35 percent or lower. He said asking some colonels to leave will clear up spots for new officers to put the eagle on their shoulder. "Younger lieutenant colonels will still see that opportunity to continue to serve," he said. "What we don't want to do is have people say 'oh, [I] won't ever get promoted.'" For the Army to meet the mandated end strength goal of 490,000 Soldiers by fiscal year 2017, it must start making cuts now, Bromberg said. The SERB will meet on or about Aug. 13, 2013. When the results of that board are approved by the secretary of the Army, which is expected to happen in early January 2014, those officers selected will have no more than seven months before they must retire. It's expected the retirement date for officers selected by the 2013 SERB will be no later than August 1, 2014. Officers who know they meet the criteria for the SERB, but who choose to volunteer to retire instead of face the SERB, can benefit from an extended advance-time for submitting retirement paperwork. Typically, an officer can put in retirement paperwork a year in advance. Bromberg said that has been extended. An officer could put in retirement paperwork in June, for instance, before the August SERB, and plan his retirement date for September 2014. Officers who choose to voluntarily retire must have their requests in to Human Resources Command no later than July 8, 2013. Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh first notified general officers of the SERB late last month, and Bromberg followed that up with a message to personnel officers and staff Army wide, shortly after. Additionally, a Military Personnel message on the subject was released April 4. In 2014, Soldiers get 1 percent raise, 3.9 percent increase in BAH [2013-04-10] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers will see a one percent pay raise in 2014. Their untaxed paycheck will also benefit from a 3.9 percent increase in basic allowance for housing and a 3.4 percent increase in basic allowance for subsistence as well. The Army announced April 10 its fiscal year 2014 budget request, which amounts to $129.7 billion -- that's part of the president's $3.03 trillion total government budget request for the fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, 2013. During a briefing at the Pentagon, Maj. Gen. Karen E. Dyson, director of the Army Budget, and Davis S. Welch, deputy director of the Army Budget, discussed components of the Army's proposal, including how much is marked for supporting personnel, how much is marked for facilities maintenance, and how much will go toward buying or modernizing war-fighting equipment. The new budget represents a continued adaptation to the Department of Defense's 2012 defense strategy, Dyson said. "Adapting to the 2012 defense strategy means we are refocusing our training away from the emphasis that has been there on counter-insurgency -- [which] was so key and critical in the Iraq War and remains critical today in the war in Afghanistan -- and refocusing our training to go more toward core competencies, combined arms maneuver and wide area security." Dyson also said the Army, despite fiscal difficulties, demonstrates in its budget proposal that it remains committed to those Soldiers currently involved in the war, those Soldiers who are preparing to go to war, Soldiers engaged in Korea or going to Korea, and Soldiers that are part of the Army's Global Response Force. For other Soldiers, she said, there is a reduction in training dollars. "We are starting to see readiness slipping away from some of those units," she said. Noticeably absent from this year's budget briefing were numbers related to the "overseas contingency operations" budget -- which is separate from the Army's proposed "base budget." The base budget supports the training, equipping and sustaining of the "generating force," while the overseas contingency operations budget supports the war-fighting effort overseas and is usually presented at the same time, but as a separate request. Dyson said planning for the fiscal year 2014 overseas contingency operations is not yet complete. This year's total fiscal year 2014 base budget for the Army comes to about $129.7 billion. Of that, about 44 percent, or $56.6 billion, is for military personnel; about 18 percent, or $23.9 billion is for procurement research, development, testing and engineering; and about 35 percent, or $45.5 billion, is for operations and maintenance. This year's base budget request is approximately $5 billion less than last year's request. MILITARY PERSONNEL This year's military personnel budget provides for Soldiers a one percent pay raise for 2014. It also increases basic allowance for housing by 3.9 percent, and increases basic allowance for subsistence by 3.4 percent, Dyson said. The budget also supports incentives for the all-volunteer force, to include recruiting and retention bonuses. For the active Army, the budget asks for $41 billion, a slight increase over last year's request. The military personnel budget request for the Army Reserve also increased slightly to $4.5 billion, and the Army National Guard request went down -- coming in at $8 billion. OPERATIONS AND MAINTENANCE The O&M budget request this year took a cut of about $1.54 billion. It funds everything from 21 training center events in fiscal year 2014, to six mission command exercises and combatant commander engagement activities. The O&M budget also funds normal operations at 158 Army installations, family and Soldier programs and training miles and flying hours. The O&M budget also pays for the training of new Army recruits. MODERNIZATION "Our [fiscal year] 2014 president budget request demonstrates a cost-effective decision to modernize many of our existing platforms -- to maintain the technological edge over potential adversaries," said Welch. "Our approach integrates mature technologies and incremental improvements." Welch told reporters that the current fiscal environment requires "smaller procurement objectives" for the Army. "We cannot equip and sustain the entire force with the most advanced equipment," he said. But, "where capability gaps cannot be closed in modernization of existing platforms, new ones will be procured." Critical modernization efforts include continued development of equipment designed to protect the Soldier, as well as development of the Army network. The Army's network strategy sees about $1.8 billion in funding to provide continued support to technologies such as the Warfighter Information Network - Tactical, the Joint Tactical Radio System, the Joint Battlefield Command Platform, Nett Warrior and the Distributed Common Ground System - Army. The Army network, Welch said, remains "critical to empowering our Soldiers and leaders with the right information at the right time, to make decisions essential for mission success." This year, the fiscal year 2014 budget proposal requests funds meant to complete fielding of Increment 1 of WINT-T, for instance, and additionally supports fielding of Increment 1A, and Increment 2 -- the "limited on-the-move" capability. Funding requests this year also support advancements in Nett Warrior, Welch said, which includes procurement of "tablet-like devices -- enabling squads uncommon situational awareness while dismounted." Finally, Welch said, the fiscal year 2014 budget request funds two Network Integration Evaluations. "These exercises are critical as they integrate and validate the Army as fielding platforms, components and software that are interoperable," he said. EQUIPMENT The Army has in the fiscal year 2014 budget request about $15.9 billion marked for procurement of aircraft, missiles, ammunition, weapons and tracked vehicles. That's about $763 million less than last year's request. The Stryker gets $395 million for modification to the vehicle, to include conversion of the flat-bottom version to the more safe "Double V-hull" version. Work on that program will be split between Anniston Army Depot, Ala., and the Lima Army Tank Plant, Ohio. The Paladin Integrated Management modification, coming in at $250 million, brings the system into low-rate initial production for 18 Paladin Integrated Management self-propelled howitzers which will go into brigade combat teams. Additionally, Welch said, the funding for the M1A2 Abrams, at about $178 million, completes fielding to the Army National Guard of M1A2 Abrams "System Enhancement Package" tanks, and provides the Army with the two-variant Abrams fleet it was looking for. Welch also said funding for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle program, about $158 million, kicks off an "engineering change proposal" that will restore to the vehicle size, weight, and cooling capabilities that had previously been "traded" for the improved survivability and mobility needed during combat operations over the last 12 years. AIRCRAFT The OH-58 Kiowa Warrior program gets $184 million for cockpit and sensor upgrades, and recapitalization on the cockpit, fuselage and tail boom, Welch said. Upgrades will yield weight reductions through new heaters and "composite universal weapons pylons and weapons displays." Welch said an earlier flight demonstration of possible replacements for the Kiowa Warrior -- part of the "Armed Aerial Scout" program -- did not provide a suitable candidate for militarizing existing commercial airframes. The Kiowa budget provides for continued upkeep of the airframe while deciding on further development of new Armed Aerial Scout. This year, with $1 billion in funding, the CH-47 Chinook enters the second year of a multi-year procurement effort. The Army will get six new aircraft from that effort, as well as 22 re-manufactured aircraft. The aircraft is being modernized with common avionics, digital advanced flight controls, common missile warning systems, and increased endurance and reliability through vibration reduction in its components, he said. Budget requests for the UH-60 Black Hawk program, to the tune of about $1.2 billion, will pay for 65 new airframes. Included in that are 41 UH-60M utility aircraft and 24 HH-60M medical aircraft. The AH-64 Apache gets about $813 million in the fiscal year 2014 budget request. That will provide funding for 42 re-manufactured Block III aircraft that can provide network-centric capability and "level 4" unmanned aerial system control capability that provides "manned-unmanned teaming" between Apache pilots and the unmanned aerial system they can control from their cockpit. The fiscal year 2014 budget also requests $518 million to equip two Army companies with the MQ-1 Gray Eagle unmanned aerial system. FACILITIES Welch said funding for facilities in the fiscal year 2014 budget request reflects "a return to the more historical spending levels." About $2.3 billion is marked for military construction, Army family housing and Base Realignment and Closure in the fiscal year 2014 budget request -- about $1.2 billion less than last year. Welch said funds will be used for, among other things, replacing aging facilities. Nearly $750 million is marked for training ranges, reserve readiness centers, and failing infrastructure replacement. Facilities funding will also be used, he said, to support activation of the 13th Combat Aviation Brigade at Fort Carson, Colo., and the 16th CAB at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., and Fort Wainwright, Alaska. GUNS It's not all aircraft and ground vehicles in the fiscal year 2014 budget request -- there are also things Soldiers can shoot. The "Integrated Air Burst Weapon System Family," also called the XM25 -- and at one time called "the Punisher" by Soldiers in Afghanistan -- is a counter-defilade target engagement system. The XM25 was "tested and proven in Afghanistan against defilade targets, and the system provides dramatic increases in range and lethality compared to other individually fired weapons," Welch said. The system will get $69 million in fiscal year 2014 to enter low-rate initial production for as many at 1,424 of the weapons. On a smaller scale, the Army's carbine program gets $71 million for 12,000 M4A1 carbines, and 29,897 Individual Carbines. Refined precision-guided parachutes may be cure-all for overburdened Soldier [2013-04-15] WASHINGTON -- A fully equipped Soldier may carry anywhere from 50 to 120 pounds on his or her back in theater. Refinements to precision-guided parachutes may reduce that load -- if the Army can just convince Soldiers it can provide supplies to them as needed. Brig. Gen. Paul A. Ostrowski, with Program Executive Officer, Soldier, known as PEO Soldier, discussed equipping options for Soldiers on Capitol Hill, April 11, before the House Armed Services Committee's subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces. In addition to finding newer materials to reduce the weight of protective armor plates for Soldiers, and possibly using things like self-propelled robotics to carry supplies alongside Soldiers on the move, Ostrowski told lawmakers Soldiers might be willing to deploy with fewer supplies if they are convinced the Army can get them what they need on short notice. "Guaranteed 24/7 aerial resupply; we have the ability to use our current precision-guided parachutes that we have -- except the guidance systems are very bulky," Ostrowski said. "If we can cut the weight of those down or make them disposable, we could allow Soldiers to train with them constantly. And when they believe in their resupply, they will carry less." Ostrowski said that while it's possible for the Army to reduce the load on a Soldiers' backs by making gear lighter, that doesn't necessarily mean they will end up carrying less weight. "We all know that a pound off a Soldier, incrementally, is not a pound off," he said. "They will simply replace it with something else, because they don't know if they will get resupplied. If we can guarantee them resupply, and train with it to the point they believe in it, we might absolutely fix this problem long-term." Testifying with Ostrowski was Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Eric M. Smith, director, Capabilities Development Directorate, U.S. Marine Corps. Smith told lawmakers that the Marines have the same issue. "Most of what a Marine is out there carrying is chow, water and ammunition," he said. "When there is an absolute, guaranteed concept that he is comfortable that he is going to be resupplied -- they are going to cut a lot of weight. A gallon of water, once you include the container, is seven pounds -- no matter who is carrying it. So once we can take that out of a Marine's pack, that is going to be a tremendous benefit. Enhancing the logistics piece does go a long way toward lighting the load of the rifleman." Lawmakers pointed out that over the last 12 years, funding for improvements in warfighter equipment and protective gear has increased; and that money has largely come from overseas contingency operations budgets meant to fight the war. The industrial base has also been energized and expanded to ensure Soldier equipment production could be sustained, and that modernization and innovation was a priority. Among advancing technologies are body armor and night vision goggles. Lawmakers were unsure whether the Pentagon's current fiscal situation given the budget sequester would have an impact on procurement, especially after the drawdown in Afghanistan. In particular, lawmakers appeared concerned that the incentive to continue advancements in lighter body armor development might disappear if industry was unable to see that the services had committed a certain amount of money to the issue. Currently, funding for procurement and development of protective gear is not explicitly stated in budgets. Instead, it's included in operations and maintenance accounts. Lawmakers were concerned that if industry is not be able to see how much was specifically was committed by the military to body armor, they would be unable to build business cases to invest their own money in those areas. Ostrowski told lawmakers that body armor is included in operations and maintenance budgets to ensure flexibility in procurement and development. With that flexibility, he said a new threat in Afghanistan -- the dismounted improvised explosive device, or IED -- was ameliorated with development of a protective over-garment and undergarment system. The Army was able to provide 66,000 sets of that equipment to Soldiers. "That flexibility was really highlighted with respect to that procurement," Ostrowski said. The general also said the Army, and PEO Soldier, maintain a "very open dialogue" with industry. Despite money for protective gear being "hidden" in an operations and maintenance account, "flexibility is key; with respect to personal protection, our ability to shift is adamantly important across the force." BALLISTIC PROTECTION FOR WOMEN With women seeing combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, and policies having changed about women serving in combat roles, the Army has made great strides in providing protective gear for female Soldiers. "Female body armor is [the] latest invention we were able to create with industry partners and Natick Labs," the general said. "And what we were able to accomplish is a weight reduction from 31 pounds in the improved outer tactical vest down to 25 pounds for female body armor." He said the Army now has 19 sets of female body armor in theater, in eight sizes. The Army will field 600 sets of the armor in August and September to the next force deploying. "We will always field female body armor to our deploying forces from this point forward," Ostrowski said. "From now on, every female Soldier deploying to theater will be given female body armor." MISMATCHED CAMMO In 2005, the Army started fielding the current "Army Combat Uniform," in the now familiar "Universal Camouflage Pattern." But at the time, unit-provided equipment such as Kevlar helmets, load bearing equipment and protective vests were not available in the new UCP. Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who wore the ACU coat and trousers found that their protective vest was in either the poorly-matched green, brown, beige and black "woodland" pattern that was made for the Battle Dress Uniform, or the beige and brown pattern common to the Desert Camouflage Uniform. One lawmaker said the disparity between the two uniform patterns made Soldiers easy targets for snipers. Ostrowski said the problem has been resolved. "Should we decide to undertake a new uniform for the Army, the body armor, the organizational clothing, and the individual equipment will match the family of uniforms very closely," he said. The Army is now working on a new set of uniforms, Ostrowski told lawmakers. The new uniform "family" includes three camouflage patterns that share the same geometry but vary in palette. One is for woodland environments, one for desert, and another for the "transitional" environment in between. The expensive organizational equipment, such as protective vests, will be built using the transitional pattern. It has been shown to be operationally effective on all three camouflage options. "We have gotten to the point of the end of testing with respect to the Phase 4 camouflage program in the Army and what we have learned is that a family of uniforms outperforms a single pattern, a universal camouflage pattern," Ostrowski said. Ostrowski also said that the Army had brought in test results from that uniform program. Included were over 120,000 data points from a "uniform test that is unequaled with respect to the DOD. We are bringing those results to the chief of staff of the Army for his guidance going forward." THE CARBINE Lawmakers asked about Army efforts to find a rifle that is more dependable than the M4 Carbine Soldiers currently use. Ostrowski first defended the success of the M4 program, saying that it was introduced as early as 1990, and since then has undergone over 92 adjustments to improve its accuracy and reliability. "Each one of these changes has brought about a much better weapons system than we ever had before," Ostrowski said. The initial requirement for the M4, he said, 600 "mean rounds between stoppage," or MRBS. Recent testing in 2010, he said, shows the M4 -- loaded with the common MA55 round -- performed at the much more reliable MRBS of 3,692 rounds. "That's a six-times increase over the original requirement of 600 rounds between stoppages," Ostrowski said. Still, the Army is looking for a better carbine to field to Soldiers, and that effort is called the "Individual Carbine" program. Ostrowski said the Army has looked "to determine whether or not industry could provide us with a weapons system that was as accurate, as reliable, and was compatible with our current optics, and also had a lifecycle cost that was within a boundary we've established now for the M4." The competition for a follow-on carbine is ongoing, Ostrowski said, and he said testing of phase 2 proposed weapons was recently completed. The source selection board for the follow-on weapon has been given the relevant testing material to make its decision. It may choose three weapons to move into phase 3 of the competition. If there is a winner from phase 3, he told lawmakers, the final decision will go before the secretary of the Army for a cost-benefit analysis. It will be compared to the current carbine for accuracy, reliability, lifecycle cost and compatibility with existing accessories. Budget cuts will affect readiness, Army leader says [2013-04-18] WASHINGTON -- The Army's under secretary said with sequestration in place and deep cuts requested, the Army is concerned about how it can train, equip and sustain Soldiers to be ready when called upon. Under Secretary of the Army Joseph W. Westphal, Ph.D., was on Capitol Hill early morning April 18, to have breakfast with and address a delegation of civic leaders from Lawton, Okla., that had come to the nation's capital to meet with their senator. Lawton is the civilian community outside Fort Sill. That military installation is home to more than 50,000 Soldiers, civilian employees and military family members. The under secretary told those at the gathering the Army sees budget cuts as a threat to readiness, the ability to keep Soldiers and their units prepared to go off to war when called upon. He said he doesn't want to see an Army that is unprepared to meet the demands of the nation. "We don't ever want our president to have to call up to the Army, and that's the message he gets, an Army where Soldiers aren't trained, a force that is not ready to go at a moment's notice, that's not equipped to go. That's the challenge of readiness." Now, Westphal said, the Army is having to "back off training" due to new budget realities. Commanders are "modifying, reducing, potentially eliminating some of the training due to these fiscal limits." Those changes to training directly affect a Soldier's and unit's readiness to deploy, he said. It means it will take more time to spin those Soldiers up to react, if they are called upon to react. Westphal asked civic leaders to take back to their communities a better understanding of readiness, to explain what it means to the nation. "Readiness is a critical element," he said. "When you hear that word, when you go back to your communities and talk about that, [ask] is your Army ready to take on whatever fight the president and the Congress deem necessary?" Despite budget cuts, Westphal didn't leave visitors from Oklahoma afraid their Army would fail them. He said the Army has been around for a long time defending the nation, and would continue to do so, in spite of budget cuts. "It began 238 years ago tomorrow, April 19, 1775, in Lexington, Massachusetts, and will endure forever," he said of the Army. "The Army is the embodiment of the American spirit; a reflection of its melting pot; a protector of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. "Regardless of sequestration, partisan divide, politics, ideology or economic downturns, your Army will always be on point for the nation." Army says no-go on extended tours for Soldiers in Afghanistan [2013-04-23] WASHINGTON -- Last month, the Army's senior-most officer told lawmakers budget cuts could result in a decrease in training readiness for follow- on forces to Afghanistan that could result in extended tours for Soldiers already there. That is no longer the case. During testimony on Capitol Hill April 23, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that "difficult decisions" with regard to the Army budget have eliminated the possibility that Soldiers who are in Afghanistan now might need to stay longer due to the training-related delays of follow-on forces. Chief among those difficult decisions are the 14 days of civilian furloughs the Army will implement later this year to help reduce costs. The savings there will help the Army train, Odierno said. "That's allowing us to have enough money to invest in the training of the units that will be placed in Afghanistan, so we will not have to increase tour length," he said. "We've had to make some very difficult decisions here in fiscal year 2013 in order to ensure we do not extend those tour lengths. So they were tough, difficult decisions; but we believe tour lengths will remain the same and we will be able to train the forces that follow up those units." SHRINKING ARMY A primary concern for legislators was the cut in forces the Army will experience between now and the end of fiscal year 2017, coupled with the force cuts that could come with additional sequestration. Right now, the plan for active-duty Army force cuts requires the Army to drop to just 490,000 Soldiers by the end of fiscal year 2017. In 2010, the Army was at 570,000 Soldiers. That's a cut of 80,000 Soldiers. Additional sequestration could require the Army to cut even more Soldiers, possibly more than 100,000 troops. Though the cuts would come from all three components, Odierno said that about half of that would come from the active force. Were that to happen, the Army might drop to 440,000 Soldiers. That's a number Odierno said will affect what Americans can expect of the Army. At 490,000 Soldiers, Odierno said the Army "would have enough capability to do one major contingency, maybe something a bit smaller. If we cut another 80-100,000 out, we now put in to question our ability to respond to large-scale major contingencies. And we certainly will not be able to do anything above that." INDUSTRIAL BASE Coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army now has "less need to buy things," Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh told senators. That hurts the ability of America's industrial base to sustain itself. Concern about the industrial base stems from the Army's need to have a place to turn, at a moment's notice, to procure war-fighting materiel. McHugh told lawmakers the Army is working on two fronts to assess the effects of drawdown and sequestration on America's industrial base. Firstly, he said the Army is working with the Department of Defense to set up the metrics in which to feed "consumption data." Results from that, he said, will be able to "come up with those kinds of red flags" that can be used to identify problems with the industrial base. The Army is also, on its own, working with a civilian analysis firm to better understand the threats to the industrial base. A report from that effort should be available in June, he said. "The first step is knowing where problems lie; the second is trying to use diminishing resources to protect it," McHugh said. HOLLOW FORCE Odierno said the Army, post-Vietnam, suffered from lack of training and a lack of discipline. Then, he said, the Army was a hollow force. "For the next 15 years we focused on improving our readiness, improving our modernization, and improving our training programs," he said. "We revolutionized how the Army did our business. I was fortunate enough to grow up in that environment." The steepness of cuts from sequestration, he said, "could lead us back to where we were in the late 1970s." Right now, "the full impact of not having enough money to train has not fully hit yet. It's just beginning to hit." If it continues, he said, there will be training shortages and readiness issues. "We'll have some real challenges on our hands." Training shortages and readiness issues, the general said, could lead to a lack of faith among Soldiers -- causing Soldiers who now have great combat experience to want to leave the Army. "We still have time to ensure we can keep the best in our Army," he said. Doing that means predictable budgets that allow the Army to remain the best, and to prove to Soldiers the Army is "the right size, and ready and trained to deploy." BCT REDCUTIONS As part of a mandated drawdown of forces -- the one expected to take the Army to 490,000 Soldiers, the Army must also eliminate some of its force structure. That means the service will eliminate eight brigade combat teams. Already, two brigade combat teams, known as BCTs, from Europe have been eliminated. Six more will be eliminated in the future, McHugh told lawmakers. On a path to deciding which BCTs will be eliminated, the Army has already completed assessments at 21 installations to measure the impact. Now the Army will hold public meetings near the installations to hear what civilians have to say. We're in "the process of holding public listening sessions in over 30 locations throughout the Army to receive input from the communities that surround places like Fort Carson (Colo.) and others, to make sure we have the fullest record possible to make those very important decisions." The Army will also develop a list of criteria it will use to make determinations about what can be cut. That list, McHugh said, should be available in June. Odierno told lawmakers that while some BCTs might be eliminated, other BCTs could be increased in size. It's not just "flags or the numbers of units," Odierno said. "But instead, numbers of people." Reorganizations of BCTs, he said, could mean "we might make them larger," Odierno said. "So we might eliminate flags, but it wouldn't be a total loss of BCT, because we would add a third maneuver battalion to the BCT. Don't focus on the flags, focus on the numbers." Both Odierno and McHugh told lawmakers they supported the one percent pay raise for Soldiers, as well as an increase in premiums for Tricare. McHugh and Odierno both agreed the cost of Tricare has gone up, with McHugh saying while everybody wants to maintain the "status quo," the cost of providing Tricare has "skyrocketed over the last 10 years." Odierno pointed out that while the benefits associated with Tricare have increased, the cost to beneficiaries has not kept up. Budget cuts mean Army must consider where it will buy weapons [2013-04-29] WASHINGTON -- With sequestration firmly in place, the Army will be buying a lot less stuff, and leaders are concerned about ensuring the businesses they buy things from don't wither. Lawmakers with the House Armed Services Committee, subcommittee on tactical air and land forces, met April 26, with Lt. Gen. James O. Barclay III, deputy chief of staff, Army G-8, and Lt. Gen. William N. Phillips, the military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology. Phillips told lawmakers in his opening statement the Army is deeply concerned about sequestration-induced atrophy in the industrial base that could lead to the Army having no place to go shopping for equipment when the time comes to go to war. "Of great concern to the Army are the likely long-term impacts to include the loss of critical skills, the loss of suppliers at all tiers, and an increase in the number of single-point failures in the supply chain," Phillips said. "The Army is aggressively evaluating how best to identify and preserve critical industrial base capabilities." Preservation of the "industrial base" means ensuring those businesses the Army buys equipment from don't have to close their doors due to lack sales from to one of its biggest customers. One such facility -- actually an Army-owned facility that lawmakers were concerned about -- is the Joint Systems Manufacturing Center at Lima, Ohio. The Army makes M1A2 Abrams tanks there for its own use and for sale to foreign nations through foreign military sales. Phillips told lawmakers it's not the Army's intent to shut down the Lima facility. Right now, he said, the Army is still manufacturing 67 tanks at the facility that were paid for in the fiscal year 2012 budget. The production will keep the facility busy through December 2014. Congress also authorized an additional $181 million, Phillips said, to procure an additional 20-24 tanks. Coupled with foreign military sales to other nations and other equipment produced at the facility, it will be secure in its operations and commitment until at least 2018, the general said. KIOWA WARRIOR The Army has been looking for a follow-on to the OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopter for some time. As one lawmaker pointed out, the Army was going to replace the Kiowa Warrior with the Comanche aircraft -- but that program was cancelled. There was also the Armed Reconnaissance Program and most recently the Armed Aerial Scout, or AAS, program. The AAS program recently looked at commercially available helicopters to see if they would be good candidates for militarization -- but none proved a viable candidate. Barclay said the Army continues to look for a replacement for the Kiowa Warrior, however, it is also now working on modernization of the aircraft. By late summer, he said, based on outcomes of fiscal guidance, the Army will make a determination on the way ahead for the Armed Aerial Scout program, or will make a determination on a service life extension program, or SLEP, for the Kiowa Warrior. Still, he said, those options would not get into the field until the mid- to late 2020s. As a stop-gap, he said, the Army is now working the cockpit and sensor upgrade program, or CASUP, for the Kiowa Warrior. That, he said, includes "obsolescence and safety upgrades" to the current fleet. The first Kiowa Warrior with the CASUP upgrades will fly an inaugural flight, April 30. "That is our bridge," he said, until decisions are made about SLEP or AAS. FUNDING FOR RESET Barclay also told lawmakers that, despite drawdown and budget cuts, the Army must have funding for reset of equipment coming out of Afghanistan. It's not the first time Army leadership has said as much on the Hill. In particular, Barclay said the Army needs three years of additional overseas contingency operations funding following the withdrawal from Afghanistan in order to fix and repair the equipment coming out of that country. Equipment, once reset, doesn't just go into storage. It goes to units who need to use it to train, and who need it in order to be ready for deployment in case they are called to deploy. "Failure to get this right will impact the equipment readiness of our units for years to come," Barclay said. Kiowa Warrior upgrades alter aircraft profile [2013-04-30] WASHINGTON -- The newly updated Kiowa Warrior aircraft, the OH-58F, made a ceremonial "first flight," April 30, at Redstone Arsenal, Ala. With new cockpit and sensor modifications installed, the OH-58F represents the first major upgrade or modernization to the Kiowa Warrior in 20 years. The "cockpit and sensor upgrade program," called CASUP, converts OH-58D Kiowa Warriors into OH-58F models. The CASUP program is "designed to address obsolescence in the aircraft as well as the capabilities of the sensor," said Col. Robert Grigsby, project manager, Armed Scout Helicopters. Perhaps the biggest change to the aircraft is that the familiar sensor ball, which is mast-mounted above the rotor in older models, has been moved down to the front of the aircraft. The nose-mounted common sensor payload includes improved optics, an infra-red sensor, laser pointer and laser spot tracker. Col. John Lynch, Training and Doctrine Command capability manager for the Kiowa Warrior, said mounting the sensor package on the nose of the aircraft was a decision made after considering operations over the last 12 years in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We are really doing a lot more maneuvering flight both in urban and non-urban environments, and the sight quickly reaches the stop limits and it is very difficult to track targets when you are flying in an environment where you are getting much closer to the enemy than we ever envisioned with the mast-mounted sensor in the Cold War-era," Lynch said. Lynch did say the aircraft will be "a little more exposed" by using the nose-mounted sight instead of the mast-mounted sight. But other factors in the battle space mitigate that exposure. "[With] the linkages that are provided through communications, through manned-unmanned teaming in the current generation of aircraft as opposed to the original OH-58D in the late 1980s, and teaming with other aircraft such as the AH-64 Apache, we believe we will be able to overcome that risk and still perform the mission in major combat operation-type environment," Lynch said. "Based on what we've seen in the last ten years, we can certainly expect to be deployed in more environments like the current operating environment in Afghanistan, or recently, in Iraq." The OH-58D Kiowa Warrior has the highest operational tempo of any Army aircraft in theater. On average, it maintains a monthly operational tempo of about 75 hours. Last year in theater, that number was more than 100 hours a month. The CASUP program, which converts the D model into F models, brings much capability to the well-used aircraft. The OH-58F also includes a new digital cockpit that can be customized by the crew to display information relevant to the mission. Additionally, the OH-58F brings doubled processing speed to the aircraft, as well as improved recording and storage capability. Both the pilot and co-pilot will now have their own, separate map and data viewing capability. The OH-58F is also about 160 pounds lighter than the D model of the aircraft, which means that commanders have more mission flexibility when using the aircraft. "Understanding where the Kiowa Warrior operates today, which is trading both fuel and ammunition for every mission, I think this provides additional flexibility to the commander and crew," he said. A weight reduction on the aircraft means it can carry more fuel for increased flight time, or more rockets or ammunition. "I think flexibility is really the key thing it's going to provide." The OH-58A model appeared in the Army in the late 1960s, during the Vietnam era. Some of the aircraft in the Army inventory today are more than 40 years old. But the CASUP doesn't "zero-time" the aircraft. "About 60 percent of the airframe will be replaced," said Lt. Col. Matt Hannah, product manager, Kiowa Warrior. "But there's 40 percent that is literally still 42 years old today, and when you finish the production line, 55 years old." Grigsby said a decision is pending now in the Army to either go after a replacement for the Kiowa Warrior -- that's the Armed Aerial Scout program -- or completely overhaul the Kiowa Warrior with a service life extension program, called SLEP. Right now, the Prototype Integration Facility at Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is building the "Prototype Qualification 1" OH-58F aircraft. In the fall, production will transition to Corpus Christi Army Depot, Corpus Christi, Texas, to build PQ2, PQ3, and PQ4, as the Army prepares for milestone C decision. In the fall of 2014, it's expected the Army will conduct a limited user test of the aircraft, and by March 2015, the Army will make a low-rate initial production decision. The LRIP Lot 1 set includes 27 aircraft and LRIP Lot 2 includes 33 aircraft. The decision to go into full-rate production will yield a total of 368 OH-58F Kiowa Warriors, to be built between 2017-2025. "The program is doing well, and we are on track," Hannah said. Army secretary calls sexual assault 'sickening,' vows continued action [2013-05-09] WASHINGTON -- The Army's secretary told lawmakers that leadership across the Army is not pleased with the number of sexual assaults occurring in the ranks, and that any progress made thus far to combat it is simply "nowhere good enough." Both Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh and Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno spoke on Capitol Hill, May 8, before the House Appropriations Committee, subcommittee on defense. "It's hard to capture a single emotion," said McHugh, addressing legislators. "All of us, we're frustrated, we're angry -- but what we aren't is dissuaded from continuing the fight and meeting the challenge. This is so contrary to everything upon which the Army was built. "To see this kind of activity happening in our ranks is heart wrenching and sickening," he continued. "We've tried and will continue to try to approach this at virtually every level." The secretary told lawmakers the Army has now, as directed by legislation in the fiscal year 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, placed two full-time positions within each brigade. That includes both a Victim's Advocate and a Sexual Assault Response Coordinator. The Army is also in the process, he said, of hiring nearly 500 victim assault counselors to place as deployable personnel "so even out of the country Soldiers will have the confidence to step forward to know there will be someone there who is trained and who will be sympathetic to them and hopefully diminish the fear that too many Soldiers continue to have: if they step forward they will be victimized again by the system." The secretary also told lawmakers that the Army's "propensity to report" sexual assault -- the willingness of victims to come forward -- has gone up to 42 percent from 28 percent, "but that is nowhere good enough," he said. The Army will continue to hire those it needs to combat the problem, he said, and the Army is also focused on aggressive, thorough training to combat the problem. "Training of all Soldiers at all levels and all ranks is occurring, not just one day, not just at one touch point in initial military training -- but really as a career-long activity," he said. He also told lawmakers that during meetings with new brigadier generals, he's let them know that the issue of sexual assault is a top priority. "I told them you can do everything from this point forward in your military career perfectly, but if you fail on this, you fail the Army," McHugh said. Odierno said the Army must make Soldiers feel comfortable that if they are sexually assaulted, they are safe to come forward and report. And if they are sexually assaulted, the service must protect them when they do come forward. "We have to protect them, and have them feel comfortable that we have systems in place that will protect them before -- and then, if unfortunately something happens, that we have systems in place that protect them after the event," he said. Also, he said, the Army must affect a cultural change that can prevent sexual assaults from happening in the first place. "We get individuals from all parts of society," he said. "We must engrain them into the Army culture. And we have to do this by several methods. We have to incorporate this into our institutional training. We have done this from the time they enter as an officer or Soldier -- it is at every level of training. We have to eliminate that bystander mentality -- it's no longer acceptable. We have to understand about accountability. You have to be accountable for your own actions and you have to be accountable for your command." While the Army works from the top level down to inculcate Soldiers about the service's stance on sexual assault, Odierno said a point of failure can be at individual units, where the command climate must reflect that of the whole Army. "We have attacked this at all angles, but we still have lots of work to do," Odierno said. "Institutionally, we can do well. But if you go into a unit and the climate is not right, it will tear down everything we've tried to train in the institution. So we are really focused on ensuring that in our operational force, we have the training mechanisms necessary to educate, and ensure people understand the importance of this issue. We will continue to work this. We have a long way to go but I think we are moving forward in the right direction." Army continues to aggressively push sexual assault prevention, response efforts [2013-05-13] WASHINGTON -- Army surveys show that Soldiers are more willing now to report they've been the victim of sexual assault. But the service is still not happy with its efforts to eliminate such crimes within the ranks. "It's hard to capture a single emotion," said Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh, addressing lawmakers on Capitol Hill, May 8. "All of us, we're frustrated, we're angry -- but what we aren't is dissuaded from continuing the fight and meeting the challenge. This is so contrary to everything upon which the Army was built. "To see this kind of activity happening in our ranks is heart wrenching and sickening," McHugh continued. "We've tried and will continue to try to approach this at virtually every level." To increase our effectiveness in addressing sexual assault Army leaders are aggressively enforcing the Army's Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention program while implementing new initiatives announced May 7 by the Department of Defense, said Carolyn Collins, director of the Army's SHARP program. "The Army's portion of the Department of Defense Annual Report on Sexual Assault for fiscal year 2012, shows increasing effectiveness in combating sexual assault," Collins said. "However, we realize there's still more work to be done to combat sexual violence. The Army will continue to work with DOD to ensure Army efforts align with the DOD Strategy and the Secretary of Defense initiatives." Under reporting of sexual assault remains a national issues and is also a challenge for the Army. However, Army surveys show that between 2009 and 2012 female Soldier's "propensity to report" having been the victim of sexual assault has increased from 28 percent to 42 percent. That increase means Soldiers are more comfortable with their chain of command and are more willing now to report both the crime traditionally thought of as rape, as well as other examples of unwelcome physical contact of a sexual nature. While both the Army and the Department of Defense believe the increase is a positive step, the Army is moving ahead on efforts to bolster its SHARP program by embedding more than 800 additional full-time positions across the Army, Collins said. As part of FY2012 National Defense Authorization Act, Collins said, there was a requirement to man two full-time positions per brigade -- to include a Victim's Advocate and a Sexual Assault Response Coordinator. "We have the manpower requirements to meet current FY12 NDAA legislative requirements and are meeting the requirements with an interim brigade military SARC and VA manning," Collins said. "In FY12, we programmed full-time personnel assets for FY14-18 as we transitioned from a contract supported program to a government program. Leaning forward in this effort, the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army directed commands to begin hiring in FY13." There are also full-time "special assault investigators," as part of the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, referred to as "CID", to investigate sexual assault crimes, as well as special victims prosecutors who only address sexual assault crimes. "These assets provide special victim capability support to victims and commanders. They are augmented by highly qualified experts both in Judge Advocate General and CID to work on accountability of these crimes," Collins said. To ensure accurate and timely processing of DNA evidence, she said, the Army has about 32 sexual assault lab examiners in Atlanta. And in medical treatment facilities, she said, there are sexual assault care coordinators and sexual assault clinical providers -- both of which are collateral duty positions. Collins said the Army continues to add resources in support of its prevention, advocacy, investigation, accountability and assessment efforts. PREVENTION The Army does more than just investigate sexual assaults, Collins said. It's also working to stop them before they happen. That involves aggressive training at all levels across the Army, from entry-level Soldiers in basic training, to generals at the highest levels of command, and civilians as well. "We have about five levels of echelon, coming in from a new recruit or a new officer or a new employee up to the senior levels of general officer, senior noncommissioned officer, senior civilians," Collins said. Augmenting that is unit-training, both annual and self-study, she said. Additionally, there is pre- and post-deployment training and orientation training that Soldiers receive whenever they join a unit. "We've done some extensive training across the board to include everything from specialized training for cadre, instructors, in our school houses -- and core competencies for our commanders ... as well as for our senior enlisted personnel," Collins said. New core competencies were implemented in March in all leadership courses and pre-command courses. But training, Collins said, is only part of what will ensure the Army can effectively address sexual assaults in the ranks. "The biggest focus on prevention certainly falls on the shoulders of the commander," she said. "They are our key personnel, and are critical to this program. Our commanders and senior enlisted advisors are the center of gravity to creating a culture free of sexual assault." Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno, who also testified on Capitol Hill with the secretary, told lawmakers that he knows that Army efforts from the top can be undermined by a commander that is not entirely on board with Army policies. That is something he is personally getting after. We have attacked this at all angles, but we still have lots of work to do," Odierno said. "Institutionally, we can do well. But if you go into a unit and the climate is not right, it will tear down everything we've tried to train in the institution. So we are really focused on ensuring that in our operational force, we have the training mechanisms necessary to educate, and ensure people understand the importance of this issue. We will continue to work this. We have a long way to go but I think we are moving forward in the right direction." To ensure that happens, he said, the Army is going after commanders to ensure they are on board, and are creating command climates that let Soldiers know sexual assault is not tolerated. Efforts to that effect, he said, are aimed at first sergeant and company commander courses on installations. Additionally, both he and Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. John F. Campbell have engaged every battalion and brigade commander course about sexual assault. That kind of engagement also exists with general officers and the sergeants major academy. WORKING WITH DOD During a briefing May 7, at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel laid out several new strategies for all the military services to follow in their joint fight against sexual assault. Among six specific measures laid out by the secretary were increased accountability for commanders to establish command climates "of dignity and respect and incorporating SAPR prevention and victim-care principles" within their commands. The secretary also directed the services to improve overall victim care and to make an assessment of the military justice system's ability to investigate, prosecute and adjudicate crimes of a sexual nature. Each of the directives the secretary presented had specific dates associated with them, and specific dates requiring reporting to him on progress the services have made in their implementation. The secretary also presented an updated version of the DOD's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Strategic Plan. He said the plans of individual military services should align with the DOD plan -- and he required reporting on the progress of that alignment by July 31, 2013. Collins said the Army stands ready to implement DOD directives to improve efforts to combat sexual assault in the ranks. She said the Army would meet the DOD requirements "collectively as a team," adding that the Army is already moving aggressively to meet the requirements and align with the strategy and initiatives. "The Army is committed to this effort. This is not a short-term effort, this is a long-term sustained effort and the Army has put the assets in place and is ensuring those assets are institutionalized and are growing to meet this challenge," she said. And while she acknowledged that cultural change "takes time," she said the Army is on an "aggressive timeline" to affect that change. Next command boards require 'opt in, all in' for eligible officers [2013-05-13] WASHINGTON -- This September, field grade officers who want to be considered for command positions and key billets will have to actively make it known they wish to compete. Unlike in years past, they will no longer be passively entered into competition for these important Army leadership positions. The Army has changed how lieutenant colonels and colonels participate in the "Brigade and Battalion Command Centralized Selection List" system. Officers now must "opt in" to participate. "You want officers that are committed to leading our formations, have thought through those challenges, and have a desire to command," said Col. Robert C. Doerer, the director of the Officer Personnel Management Directorate, about the change. The Senior Leader Development Division and Army Human Resources Command work with Army commands to determine what the requirements are for command and key billet positions. Once those needs have been assessed, the Army holds Centralized Selection List, or CSL, boards to fill those positions using eligible Army officers. For lieutenant colonels, the three boards they can participate in -- the maneuver, fires and effects board; the force sustainment board; and the operational support board -- are held in September. For colonels, three similar boards are held in January. The changes affect how eligible officers will make themselves counted among those considered for participation in the upcoming fiscal year 2015 centralized selection list boards and for those in coming years. The Army's Human Resources Command has what's called a "command preference designator." For the fiscal year 2014 CSL boards and for those held in years past, officers logged into that computer system and chose which "subcategories" of command they wished to compete for, Doerer said. If they didn't log into the system at all, they would then automatically be competed in every subcategory of command. Not logging in was akin to selecting to compete in every category. With the new "opt-in" change implemented for the first of the fiscal year 2015 boards, coming in September, officers who don't log into the system won't compete at all. If they want to compete, they will need to log in and let the Army know their wishes. Another change is that officers will now compete for all subcategories of command. Under the old system, they could choose which subcategories they wanted to compete in. Now, they will either compete in all subcategories, or not compete for command and key billets at all. Officers who do choose to compete will "rank" the subcategories they are eligible to compete in, however. But they will be considered, in the order of their preference, for all subcategories. Subcategories of command are based on an officer's branch or functional area. For some officers, such as those competing for a battalion command, there may be as many as 10 subcategories. For officers competing for a brigade command, there may be as many as 14 subcategories. The CSL boards will consider an officer's preferences in the selection process. "We're giving the officers the ability to influence the type of command they are selected for, by giving them the opportunity to rank order the subcategories for the type of commands," said Col. Steve Sears, chief of the Command Management Branch. Doerer said the "opt in" nature of participation in CSL boards is better for the Army, as it ensures that only those Soldiers who want to be commanders compete to be commanders. The "all in" change is also important, he said, because it helps emphasize an important part of Army values. "You can associate that with 'selfless service,'" Doerer said of the "all in" change. "Once you're committed, you're opting in -- our Army wants highly qualified commanders who will selflessly serve to meet the Army's needs." Doerer said changes to the CSL process serve to strengthen the Army, and improve what is already a good process for selecting officers for important positions. "The CSL has served the Army well in identifying the best qualified officers to fill our most important battalion and brigade command/key billets. These refinements will only make the system that much better," Doerer said. Army supports president's request for 2015 BRAC round [2013-05-15] WASHINGTON -- As the Army cuts the number of Soldiers in its ranks, there will be an excess of infrastructure in place that used to support those Soldiers. Maintaining that extra unused infrastructure could mean other critical Army programs will suffer, said a senior official. "A future round of base realignment and closure, or BRAC, in the U.S. is essential to identify and reduce excess Army infrastructure, and prudently align our civilian staffing with reduced uniform force structure," said Katherine Hammack, the assistant secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment. She spoke May 15, 2013, before the Senate Appropriations Committee, subcommittee on military construction, veterans affairs and related agencies. "If Army force structure declines but facilities, overhead and civilian staffs remain constant, our ability to invest in equipment, training and maintenance will be reduced," she said. "The Army fully supports the president's request for authority from Congress to conduct a BRAC round in 2015." The Army expects to cut some 80,000 Soldiers by fiscal year 2017. The force is expected to be reduced to 490,000 Soldiers by then. With those cuts, force structure will also be reduced. Already, in Europe, two brigade combat teams have been cut. In Europe, Hammack told lawmakers, the Army is reducing force structure by 45 percent, reducing infrastructure by 51 percent, reducing civilian staffing by 58 percent, and reducing base operations costs by 57 percent. She also said the Army is working with the Office of the Secretary of Defense to see if there are additional opportunities in Europe for multi-service or joint consolidation. Stateside, she said, the Army will cut at least eight brigade combat teams, or BCTs, and "maybe more" with continued sequestration. No decisions have been announced yet about what BCTs will be cut in the U.S. The Army has conducted studies and surveys to make that determination, and underway now is a "total Army analysis," the results of which are expected before the end of June, that will determine what BCTs will be cut. Before the announcement of what BCTs will be cut, and from where, the Army has changed its budgeting priorities. Hammack told lawmakers that the Army is not focused on building BCT headquarters or permanent party barracks, for instance, but is instead focused on training ranges, training barracks, and infrastructure improvements. Hammack also touched on energy security with lawmakers, who were interested in solar facilities at places like Fort Bliss, Texas. The assistant secretary told senators that the Army's focus is on improving energy security. Between fiscal year 2011 and 2012, she said, the Army has seen a four-fold increase in power disruptions at bases. "That means we are required to provide more generation on our bases to continue our missions," Hammack said. Renewable energy projects, such as the 20-megawatt solar farm at Fort Bliss, Texas, deemed the largest in the DOD, or the four-megawatt facility at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., help that process along, she said. Hammack said the Army continues to look for ways to leverage public/private partnerships, such as what was done at Fort Bliss, to fund renewable energy projects. The Army will depend on the private sector to install and maintain such facilities, and will then buy energy from them at market or lower-than-market price. Interoperability with intelligence community paramount for DCGS-A [2013-05-17] WASHINGTON -- This week, the Army Intelligence and Security Command conducted a demonstration of the Distributed Common Ground System - Army, for members of the press as well as members of Congress and their staff to help them better understand the system. The top message coming out of the demonstration was that Distributed Common Ground System - Army, or DCGS-A, is compliant with the standards of the intelligence community, that includes the Army, the other services, the DOD intelligence agencies, and other federal government intelligence services as well. Also a key message of Army intelligence community leaders at the demonstration was the idea that new tools and software packages could be added to the already robust DCGS-A "family of capabilities," but only if they are compliant with the standards of the intelligence community, only if they are seamlessly interoperable. The DCGS-A is part of a larger network of DCGS systems within the DOD, including one run by the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Air Force. The "system" connects Soldiers involved in intelligence gathering and analysis with each other, with those in the intelligence community of joint partners, and with the larger intelligence community of the U.S. DCGS-A is already deployed to theaters worldwide, said Lt. Gen. Mary A. Legere, the Army's deputy chief of staff, G-2. "It is globally deployed," Legere said. "This is not a system that is in the lab. This is a system that is supporting and has supported nine corps, 38 divisions and 138 brigade combat teams. It has been since its inception, fielded, and supporting both of the wars, as well as spreading out to other global theaters." Today, she said, DCGS-A is in Afghanistan and is used by Soldiers throughout the Middle East, as well as at units assigned to U.S. Africa Command, U.S. Army Pacific Command, "and anywhere you have Soldiers who are deployed." The DCGS-A is not a piece of software, or a piece of hardware. It's really an "enterprise," Legere said. That is, there is now a collection of different software packages, only some developed by the Army, that are used by members of the intelligence community across the Army. All of those software packages can process intelligence that is shared in a way that they can all access it and process it without the complication of incompatible data. Intelligence information produced by Army sensors, such as a Gray Eagle, a Global Hawk or a Shadow unmanned aerial system, or by human intelligence gatherers, are easily ingested into the DCGS-A system because they are all compliant with one standard. And the data, once inside the system, is easily shared, around the world and instantly, with users of DCGS-A. The data, because it is compliant with a single standard, can be ingested and processed by any one of dozens of intelligence analysis software tools because all the data is compatible. Output from those tools also remains compatible and visible across the DCGS-A "enterprise," across the intelligence assets of other services, and across the wider U.S. intelligence community. Legere said DCGS-A is a "family of capabilities, [that] includes sensor controls and downlinks for data that connects our Soldiers to the joint intelligence platforms. It's a common enterprise, it ensures all the data they see is viewable and is accessible so the Soldiers can collect, analyze, collaborate, re-task and redistribute intelligence." It's not the Army, or one defense contractor that has built DCGS-A. Legere said more than 40 private sector industry partners across the U.S. are participants in development of the system, all of whom have adjusted their own independent products they brought to the table to fit within the DCGS-A environment, and within the environment of the larger U.S. intelligence community. Legere said that there is better software available to be included within the DCGS-A enterprise, but that in order for such software pieces to be accepted and integrated, they must first be compliant with DCGS-A, which is in turn compliant with intelligence community standards. "We take joint and intelligence community interoperability very seriously," Legere said. "We work with the other DCGS programs [in the other services], so that nothing comes in on our hardware or software that would impede our ability to share or interact with our partners, their data or sensors." The general went on to say that Soldier safety, and winning the war fight is the No. 1 priority of the DCGS-A program, and data standards is key to ensuring that. "Ultimately, every decision we make about our program is about our Soldiers and their commanders," she said. "Sometimes we have to explain that that intelligence community standard, and that data access, may be more important than the thing that, quite frankly, seems easier, but creates issues." The Army didn't create the intelligence community data standards, Legere said. But the Army does, as the largest "footprint" in any theater, have a responsibility for compliance with those standards, and like joining the Army itself, part of participation means compliance with standards. "Other services count on the Army for this disciplined support," she said. "And our industry partners who work with us understand we do not want to compromise interoperability in order to use their products." WWII vet gets 'Order of the Rising Sun' from Japan's ambassador [2013-05-22] WASHINGTON -- The government of Japan has bestowed one of that nation's highest honors on a Japanese-American, a former U.S. Soldier and World War II veteran, for his work furthering relationships between the Japanese and Americans. During a ceremony, May 21, 2013, at the home of Kenichiro Sasae, the Japanese ambassador to the United States, Terry Shima was awarded the "Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette" award. The award comes from both the prime minister and emperor of Japan. Shima is a "Nisei," or second-generation Japanese-American. During World War II, he joined the 442nd Infantry Regiment in 1945 in Italy, where he was assigned to public relations. When the unit returned in July 1946, he continued to handle public relations for the veterans association in New York, in Washington, D.C., and in Honolulu. Following two years in the Army, he worked for the Foreign Service for 30 years. Shima also served as the executive director of the Japanese-American Veterans Association, or JAVA, in 2004. He'd only been with the organization for three years. His work there furthered recognition of the contributions of Japanese-Americans in the U.S., helped strengthen relationships between Japanese-Americans and the people of Japan, and also ensured that Japanese-Americans remember how they were interred during World War II. Shima continues that work today, still with JAVA, where he serves as the chairman of its committee on outreach and education. In the citation for the award, it is noted that Shima is "a citizen of the United States." Sasae drew attention to that phrase, saying it carried special significance. "That phrase in the decoration, 'citizen of the United States of America' has special meaning to Shima-san and his generation. Citizens of the United States, this was the identity for those who lived each day loyal to these words, until his very loyalty was tested," Sasae said. The ambassador said it was a test of loyalty that, during that time, many Japanese-Americans had been imprisoned as a result of the outbreak of war with Japan. Yet many "went directly from being imprisoned in an internment camp to fighting for their country that had imprisoned them," Sasae said. "Fathers told sons to make them proud once again, and they did," Sasae said. "Eight hundred Nisei gave what the very best and most loyal citizens could give, their very lives. They died for those who were coming in the future, the children and the grandchildren." He said that it is Shima who helps ensure those descendants remember what happened to their families during World War II. "Shima-san, you have done your work well," the ambassador said. After accepting the award, which included both a medal and a large certificate printed in Japanese, Shima addressed the audience which included many Japanese-Americans, including Japanese-American service members. "I am deeply humbled to be selected to receive the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette," Shima said. "I will accept it on behalf of the other volunteers and some 30,000 Japanese-Americans who served during World War II, and the 800 who were left behind on the battlefields of France and Italy and the Pacific." He told those at the ambassador's residence that it is his work now, "in the trenches," to ensure that Japanese-Americans know about their history during World War II within the U.S., and to also further relations with Japan. "Japanese-Americans are proud of their racial and cultural heritage, as we are proud to be Americans," he said. "When Americans questioned Japanese-American loyalty, Nisei volunteered to serve in combat to prove their loyalty. And President Truman affirmed it, on July 15, 1946, at the Ellipse. The president's affirmation resonated across the land." Shima finished by thanking those involved, including the Japanese, for recognizing his contributions to relations between the two countries. "Thank you again Mr. Ambassador for this high recognition, and congratulations to the post-World War II Japanese-Americans, who have competed with the best of the best to contribute to America's greatness, and also, God bless America for the U.S./Japan alliance," Shima said. At Rolling Thunder, veterans, supporters, draw attention to prisoners of war, missing in action [2013-05-27] WASHINGTON -- "If they find every one of them, then they have done enough," said Bill Scheuneman, while standing next to his motorcycle in the north parking lot of the Pentagon, May 26. Scheuneman, a Soldier for two years and a Vietnam veteran, is one of many who want the government to do more to find prisoners of war and service members who have gone missing in action. To make their voices heard, he and thousands of others gathered on their motorcycles in the vast parking lots surrounding the Pentagon to rally in advance of the 2013 Rolling Thunder "Ride for Freedom" around the National Mall in Washington, D.C., over Memorial Day weekend. Scheuneman and his wife of 42 years, Gail, rode to Washington, D.C., from Charlotte, N.C. He's been coming to the rally now for 10 years -- though Gail said family commitments have kept her from coming along every time. "We want to make sure they account for every POW and MIA," Scheuneman said. "I don't know how many are still missing. They are bringing back a few. Every year they find the remains of somebody." In its 26th year now, the rally left the parking lots a sea of leather, chrome, American flags and veterans of multiple wars who want to see those they fought with repatriated. "I'm here to create awareness of the POWs and MIAs, past and present -- and spread the word across the country that we still have 58,400 men missing," said Jim Harper, who served in the Navy as a "Seabee" from 1969-1973. He rode to the Pentagon from Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.-- a 10-day trip. "They need to go out there and actually look for them," Harper said. "We've got one in Afghanistan right now." Harper was talking about Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who went missing in 2009. Many riders wore stickers dedicating their ride to Bergdahl. "He's been there since 2009," Harper said. "Why haven't they gone after him? The government could actually get involved with the countries we've fought in, and go out and look for them. Whether they are dead or alive, we need to bring them home." Mike Matejov and Judy Wormmeester are brother and sister. The two rode from California to Washington, D.C., where they met up with their sister, Theresa Freeze, who lives in the area. The three -- from a family with five brothers and five sisters -- rode together in Rolling Thunder this year. They want their older brother Joseph, who has now been classified as "killed in action," to be reclassified as "missing in action." Air Force Sgt. Joseph A. Matejov, the third-born of the 10 Matejov children, was aboard an Air Force aircraft that went down Feb. 5, 1973, in Laos. "His mission was reconnaissance -- making sure enemy troops weren't moving," said younger brother, Mike Matejov. The siblings don't believe their older brother was killed in the crash. "We were told, originally, that everybody was killed on the plane," Freeze said. "We found out five or six years later there were four survivors that were captured. They tracked them for days. Their names were on the list to come home with all the other POWs, but for the good of the many their names were taken off because it was Laos, where we weren't supposed to be after the peace treaty." Freeze served in military intelligence before leaving the Army as a captain. She was among the second class of women to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., a school her father also graduated from. "I don't believe he died in that crash, I believe he was taken prisoner, and I'd like to know what happened to him," Wormmeester said. "They can reclassify him missing in action. They've declared him killed in action now. They went in in 1993, 20 years later, and they brought back 27 fragments that can't even be declared as human, and they declared them all killed in action." While only three of the Matejov children rode in Rolling Thunder, others, including an older brother who served in the Marine Corps, want to see their brother's status changed to missing in action. "My brother who was in the Marine Corps was Joe's best buddy. They enlisted one after another -- he's actually pursuing getting his status changed," Wormmeester said. Amongst the 10 brothers and sisters, all four branches of the military were represented: Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. Once sister also served in the Peace Corps. There are still MIAs in Vietnam and other places, and the Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command does send workers there to find and reclaim remains of those service members. Participants in Rolling Thunder aren't just veterans of Vietnam. They also include veterans of operations Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom, and Enduring Freedom, as well as supporters of veterans. With drawdown in Afghanistan, Army regional alignments likely to increase [2013-05-31] WASHINGTON -- Globally, and across the total force in fiscal year 2013, the Army could engage in nearly 6,000 different activities, in more than 160 countries, and involving as many as 60,000 Soldiers and Army civilians as part of its "regionally aligned forces" concept. Brig. Gen. Kimberly C. Field, with Army G-3/5/7, spoke May 30, during a media roundtable at the Pentagon to provide an update on the Army's regionally aligned forces, or RAF, concept. The general said regionally aligned forces can include Army capabilities in direct support of combatant commanders, or COCOMs, every day. They also include personnel and units assigned to a theater, U.S. Pacific Command and U.S. European Command have the bulk of these. Regionally aligned forces also include those units in an "allocated" status, given to a combatant commander for a specific mission for a specific period of time and under his direct control, Field said. "Regionally aligned forces are also the other capabilities that support the combatant commander, but are Army-service retained," Field said. "These are individuals and small teams providing reach-back support or on regular temporary duty missions to a region, or conducting contingency planning for the combatant commander." As the Army draws down from the Middle East, from Afghanistan, Field said the service will likely increase its efforts with RAF. "We are working hard to respond to the increasing complexity of the global security environment," she said. "By deliberately aligning forces regionally, the Army meets the enduring needs of COCOMs in a way that ensures responsiveness, consistent availability, and a higher level of training and expertise." In April, the Army provided regionally aligned forces to U.S. Africa Command to support the East Africa Response Force there. Stationed in Djibouti, 129 members of the 2-1 Infantry Division are ready to respond as needed to the security of U.S. facilities in Africa, Field said. "It really was a directive from the Secretary of Defense to look forward, look at these areas that might have a Benghazi-like situation that could happen again, and to pre-position forces to do that," Field said. "They arrived in April. They train and they stay ready to be able to respond to these crisis." The Army total force, including the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard, specifically the State Partnership Program, will provide some 4,500 personnel to the continent in order to conduct 660 activities in 34 countries in support of the combatant command in fiscal year 2013. Most of these forces are based in the continental U.S. until they are needed. Field said aligned forces in Africa have already been involved in providing training support to Nigeriens who are part of the African-led International Support Mission to Mali, for instance. "We've deployed trainers to Niger, and are working with the Department of State, and we did that on fairly short notice," she said. "And then there are the smaller things. There are 37 smaller familiarization exercises, one of which, an example, is training Ugandan military police for route security. There are a range of activities." The Army is also discussing with the Department of State the idea of providing training support for the United Nations Mission in Darfur. In fiscal year 2014, Field said, a brigade combat team from 1st Cavalry Division will provide "European Rotational Force" support to U.S. European Command, and will be dual-hatted as the NATO response force. Additionally, III Corps will be aligned with U.S. Central Command. Right now 1st Corps is already aligned with U.S. Pacific Command, while the 18th Airborne Corps remains in "global" alignment as the Army's global response force. Also in fiscal year 2014, the 48th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, with the National Guard, will be regionally with U.S. Southern Command. The unit is preparing now to send Soldiers to Guatemala to mentor and advise military forces there on command and control operations, logistics, communications, and small unit tactics. About 166 Soldiers will participate. THE RAF PAYOFF Field said the goal of RAF is to provide better support to COCOMs by providing them with forces prepared with cultural, language and specific mission capabilities that match up with a commander's particular region of the world. Those forces will help COCOMs address mutual threats and interests with partners; build capabilities of partners so they can handle things themselves; and increase influence and ability to have access if needed. Regional alignment leverages the great strengths built in the past ten years of war, Field said. "It is a fundamental orientation different from other drawdown periods," She said. "We are staying externally focused, leveraging all we have learned about the human terrain and what strategic landpower means and we're building on this." While the Army is looking in the future to "habitually align" both division and corps-level headquarters with a particular COCOM in order to provide each geographic combatant command a JTF-capable headquarters, Soldiers themselves will likely pass through several units during their Army careers, each unit aligned to a different COCOM. Field dismissed the idea that the cultural and language training provided to a Soldier when he is aligned with one unit will be wasted when he moves on to another unit. Simply participating in that type of preparation is a payoff for the Army, she said. "We will give Soldiers who are aligned for that year some culture, some language, some expertise," she said. "We think the biggest benefit in regional alignment, to the cultural and language aspect of this, is that you now have a force that is much more culturally savvy. [A force] that can get on the ground in a foreign environment and can quickly get situational awareness, situational understanding, a better understanding of the problem they have to solve, and then come up with solutions." 1st Armored Division troops aligned with CENTCOM, ready for Eager Lion kick-off [2013-06-03] WASHINGTON -- About 100 Soldiers from the 1st Armored Division are now in Jordan, within the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, as part of an advance headquarters element that will pave the way for follow-on Soldiers in the June "Eager Lion" exercise there. Maj. Gen. Sean B. MacFarland, the new commander of Fort Bliss, Texas, and the 1st Armored Division, or 1st AD, will himself go forward in a few weeks to meet up with his deputy, who is already in place, in order to participate in the exercise. "It's an opportunity for us to develop mil-to-mil relationships with the Jordanian armed forces," MacFarland said. "The 1st Armored Division is regionally aligned with the U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, area of responsibility, or AOR, so building on our ability to operate and establish greater bonds of mutual trust with the Jordanians is a huge benefit for our troops who are going over there, and familiarizing ourselves with Jordan." The exercise will involve about 8,000 personnel. About 5,000 of those will be U.S., and about 3,000 will be Jordanian. The 1st AD is "regionally aligned" with CENTCOM, something the Army has recently started to push. A regional alignment flags Army units to prepare to go forward and support combatant commanders as they address mutual threats and interests with partners; build capabilities of partners so they can handle things themselves; and increase influence to have access if needed. Regionally aligned forces can include Army capabilities in direct support of combatant commanders every day. They also include personnel and units assigned to a theater, U.S. Pacific Command and U.S. European Command have the bulk of these. Additionally, regionally aligned forces include those units in an "allocated" status, given to a combatant commander for a specific mission for a specific period of time and under his direct control. Finally, regionally aligned forces include other capabilities that support the combatant commander, but are "Army-service retained." That includes individuals and small teams that provide reach-back support, who serve on regular temporary duty missions to a region, or who conduct contingency planning for combatant commanders. As part of its regional alignment with CENTCOM, MacFarland said the 1st AD will be involved with work on integrated air missile defense, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief. "These are all elements of our capability tool bag that it is good to dust off and work on," he said. Jordan shares more than 200 miles of border with Syria, to its north. MacFarland said he doesn't believe what is going on in Syria now will affect the Eager Lion exercise. Nevertheless, he said, the Army has plans if conflicts in Syria boil over at some point and cross into Jordan. "If conditions remain relatively constant in the area, then I would anticipate that the size of the headquarters will remain what it is," he said. "If events begin to move in one direction or the other, we may have to augment those and implement one or more contingency plans." The general said he is concerned about the conflict in Syria. "We are concerned about the expansion and the spillover of the conflict into the neighboring countries," he said. "That's one of the main reasons we are partnering with the Jordanian armed forces, to help them defend their own borders. And so this exercise will enhance their ability to do so." MacFarland said his upcoming trip to Jordan will be his first to the nation, and he is "looking forward to it." The entire 1st AD, about 20,000 Soldiers, is aligned with CENTCOM. Other forces are also aligned to the CENTCOM AOR. Those Soldiers who are aligned remain at home until they are called upon to participate in partnership-building exercises or other activities. Not all Soldiers who are aligned will go forward to participate in such exercises, officials said. Individual Carbine competition concludes with no winner [2013-06-17] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers will continue to use the M4 carbine or improved M4A1 carbine as their issued weapon, as the Army has concluded the Improved Carbine competition without having selected a winner. During a media event June 14, at the Pentagon, Brig. Gen. Paul A. Ostrowski, with Program Executive Office - Soldier, said that none of the eight competitors in the Individual Carbine competition had been able to progress beyond phase 2 of the competition. As a result, the Army is not able to proceed any further with selecting a follow-on weapon for the M4. "None of the vendors were able to meet the requirements to pass into phase three," Ostrowski said. "I want to be very clear -- none of the vendors met the minimum requirements to allow them to phase three. The Army is not canceling the Individual Carbine competition. The Army is in a position where it must conclude the Individual Carbine competition, because none of the competitors met the minimum requirement to pass into the next phase." The eight competitors in the competition included Adcor Defense, Beretta, Colt, Fabrique Nationale, Heckler & Koch, Lewis Machine & Tool, Remington and Troy. Those competitors all passed phase one of the competition, but did not pass the second phase. Ostrowski said that each weapon had a reason it failed to progress, but the Army has not yet done the forensics on the results to determine why each weapon did not progress to phase three. He said the Army will work with those competitors to find out what happened. CONTINUING WITH THE M4 Right now there are more than 483,000 M4 carbines in the Army inventory. Ostrowski said surveys from Soldiers returning from combat have shown that Soldiers are happy with the weapon. "We do extensive post-combat surveys after every unit redeploys from theater," Ostrowski said. "Over the past four years, the survey results have revealed that in compilation, over 80 percent of Soldiers are completely satisfied with the M4 coming out of theater. And that trend is moving upward. Over the last two years, it's actually been 86 percent Soldier acceptability for the M4. It's battle proven. It's lethal. It's accurate." Ostrowski also said Soldiers are happy with the new round the Army first issued in 2010, the M855A1 round. "We have experienced absolutely zero issues with the M855A1 round in combat," Ostrowski said. "It is a proven, lethal round, and has extreme acceptability on behalf of our Soldiers." While Soldiers are happy with the current M4, and while the Army was looking for a follow-on weapon to eventually replace the M4 -- the Army has always pursued a "dual-path" strategy for the system, Ostrowski said. One path was replacement -- the Individual Carbine competition. The other path was continued improvements to the current M4. The Army plans to convert all of its existing M4s to the improved M4A1. That conversion includes a heavier barrel, and also provides an ambidextrous selector switch that allows fully automatic capability as opposed to a three-round burst. Other improvements have been ongoing with the M4 since its introduction. "We've made 92 improvements to the M4/M4A1 over the course of time since 1990, when the weapon was introduced. We will continue that trend," Ostrowski said. A REPLACEMENT FOR THE M4 The Army originally proposed a replacement for the M4 in 2008. The eventual competition kicked off in 2011, with a draft solicitation to industry. The draft asked for a non-developmental weapon. Instead of working with the Army to develop something new, competitors would instead bring forward weapons they might already have available for sale. The new weapon would need to be something that "could exceed the current capabilities of the M4," Ostrowski said. "The intent was to determine if there was a weapon that could meet a much greater standard, in terms of requirements that were challenging but achievable." Ostrowski said in a replacement carbine, the Army's requirement's community is looking for increased lethality, increased range and increased accuracy. Right now, he said, the Army will continue to look at the developing state of small arms technology and current carbines, all while considering the current fiscal environment. "All of these are things that will determine the Army's path going forward," he said. "I will tell you this, there is not an immediate move to engage in another competition at this time." Army describes plans for integrating women into combat [2013-06-18] WASHINGTON -- No later than Jan. 1, 2016, women will be able to apply to all military occupational specialties, and to all Army units, across the total force. "The Army is very excited about the approval of our implementation plan to move forward," said Maj. Gen. Howard B. Bromberg, Army G-1, during a June 18 multi-service briefing in the Pentagon. Bromberg and representatives from the Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force and Special Operations Command explained how they would implement their specific plans to integrate women into all areas of military service. The Army's plan, like the plans from other services, include first opening closed units to women, and then opening all closed military occupational specialties, or MOSs, to women. CLOSED UNITS Today in the Army, some combat units at battalion level and below are still closed to women. One of the first steps the Army will take is to open those closed units. This step will not involve opening closed MOSs to women, but rather, opening closed units to allow women to serve there in MOSs that are already open to both genders. Already, the Army has made headway in this area, Bromberg said. In 2012, the Army opened 14,000 positions in closed units to female Soldiers with the elimination of the "co-location restriction" through its "Exception to Policy" program. Women were assigned to maneuver battalion headquarters in nine brigade combat teams, known as BCTs, as an exception to the Direct Ground Combat Definition and Assignment Rule. This year, the Army has already signaled its intent to open an additional 6,000 positions within closed units. The Army will accomplish that by opening up an additional eight active-duty BCTs to women -- for a total of 17; nine Army National Guard BCTs; and also positions within special operations aviation. In a plan submitted to the secretary of defense in April, Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh spelled out the details of the Army's way ahead to integrate women into closed units. The Army will continue to open positions in closed units, initially within the headquarters of combat arms units such as infantry, armor and field artillery. The Army will also open headquarters positions to women in reconnaissance, surveillance, targeting and acquisition maneuver battalions. For enlisted Soldiers, about 76 military occupational specialties that are open to both male and female Soldiers are represented within closed units. For officers, there are about 35 officer areas of concentration represented within closed units. And for warrant officers, there are 19 warrant officer military occupational specialties represented in closed units. The Army will begin allowing women to move into positions within previously-closed units in early 2014, first with officers and non-commissioned officers, and then with junior Soldiers. "The further assignment of women to companies and batteries below the level of headquarters will be based on assessments, deployment cycles and specific guidance," reads the implementation plan the Army sent forward to the secretary of defense. "This process will be completed at the end of calendar year 2014 and will provide the framework for opening positions that are currently closed to women." OPENING NEW JOBS TO WOMEN For occupations currently closed to women, the Army is planning on developing gender-neutral standards to ensure all Soldiers have fair access to jobs. However, Bromberg said that it is important for the Army to ensure that the standards meet job requirements. "Whatever that job or that occupational specialty, we have to make sure we have the requirements of that task established -- regardless of male or female," Bromberg said. "The worst thing we could do is change that standard for that position. We have to be absolutely certain that performance can be understood and applied in combat situations. This isn't to set anybody up for failure. This is all about success. We're calling it Soldier of 2020 -- it's not male Soldier or female Soldier." Beginning in July 2014, the Army will first open military occupational specialties within the Army Engineer Branch. New opportunities for women there include combat engineer and combat engineer senior sergeant. Once those occupations open, the Army will assign female engineer officers and any reclassified NCOs to combat engineer companies. This will open up approximately 10,281 positions to women. Beginning in the second quarter of fiscal year 2015, the Army will open previously-closed positions within the Field Artillery Branch. After that, opportunities for women will expand to include cannon crewmembers, field artillery automated tactical data systems, fire support specialists and field artillery senior sergeants. Within the Field Artillery Branch, the change will ultimately open about 15,941 jobs to women. Additionally, the Army will open positions to women with the Armor Branch and the Infantry Branch. Positions there are numerous. Enlisted women will for the first time have the opportunity to serve as cavalry scouts, armor crewmen, infantrymen, and indirect-fire artillery. As a result of this change, about 90,640 positions will open for women in the Army. Within the Armor Branch and the Infantry Branch, the Army will also offer junior officers and junior NCOs the opportunity to transfer branches or reclassify into these occupations as a way to build a cadre of experienced female Soldiers prior to the arrival of Soldiers who are new to the Army. [ARNEWS reporter Julia Henning contributed to this article] Brigade combat teams cut at 10 posts will help other BCTs grow [2013-06-25] WASHINGTON -- The Army announced June 25 that 10 brigade combat teams based in the United States are slated to be reorganized by the end of fiscal year 2017. In addition to the 10 brigade combat teams, known as BCTs, announced today, the Army also announced last year it would cut two brigades in Germany that complete inactivation this fiscal year. These changes will reduce the number of BCTs in the Army from 45 to 33. "Based on extensive analysis, the lessons of twelve years of war and the need to increase the Army's operational capability and flexibility, the Army is reorganizing our brigade combat teams to reduce the number of headquarters while sustaining as much combat capability as possible," said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno during a press conference at the Pentagon. "In other words, we are increasing our tooth-to-tail ratio." It is expected that at a later date, the name of an additional BCT will be announced that will also be reorganized, Odierno said. When that happens, it will bring the total number of remaining BCTs in the Army down to 32. While the number of BCTs will be reduced, the size of remaining BCTs will increase, on average, to about 4,500 Soldiers. That will be accomplished, in many cases, by moving assets from existing BCTs into other brigades. "We will reinvest some of the Soldiers, equipment and support personnel into the remaining BCTs," Odierno said. The Army's decision to cut those 10 BCTs involved "extensive BCT analysis that included over 6,500 hours of simulated combat in 34 separate scenarios and extensive interviews with our commanders," Odierno said. "We also conducted a programmatic environmental analysis that looked at both the environmental and socio-economic impacts. Additionally, we conducted listening sessions at 30 installations with Soldiers, families, local leaders and the business community to better understand the impacts of all potential decisions." The general also said the Army saved nearly $400 million in military construction dollars by putting projects on hold until the final decisions were made about which brigades to reorganize. BOLSTERING REMAINING BRIGADES While 10 BCTs will be eliminated from the Army, some of the components from those brigades will be put into remaining BCTs. In particular, Odierno said, a third maneuver battalion, and additional engineer and fires capabilities will be added to each armor and infantry brigade combat team. That, Odierno said, will make those remaining BCTs "more lethal, more flexible, and more agile." Maj. Gen. John M. Murray, director of force management with Army G-3/5/7, said the Army will convert brigade support troops battalion within remaining BCTs into "brigade engineering battalions." Additionally, he said, BCTs will get additional "gap-crossing" capability, and route-clearance capability. "We will also increase the fires capability," Murray said. "Specifically, we'll go from a 2x8-gun fires battalion to a 3x6. So two additional guns, one additional battery to support the three maneuver battalions. And then in order to do that, some of the echelon-above-brigade structure in terms of engineers will have to be reorganized to provide that additional engineering capability to the BCT." Stryker brigades, Murray said, currently have three maneuver battalions, but no brigade support troops battalion. Those brigades will get a brigade engineer battalion. Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. John F. Campbell said that the changes to the brigades make the remaining BCTs more capable. "We had the ability to make the brigades more capable," he said. "We are getting rid of a lot of the headquarters, the 0-6 headquarters. So the tooth to tail goes down." Campbell said that some Soldiers will need to move as part of the changes. But for the most part, moves will be from one unit on an installation to another. "A majority of that will stay on that post," Campbell said. "But we will have to add some, (in) some places. Some will have to move." With the expected cuts in BCTs, the Army will be left with a mix of 12 armored BCTs, 14 infantry BCTs, and seven Stryker BCTs. Those numbers could change in the future. Campbell said he feels confident that the brigades identified already would be the ones to be "reorganized." But if the Army finds, in the future, that it needs a different mix of brigades than what has already been identified -- some existing brigades might instead be changed to meet the new requirements. Brigades marked for reorganization include: -- the 4th Stryker BCT, 7th Infantry Division, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash. -- the 3rd Armored BCT, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Carson, Colo. -- the 4th Infantry BCT, 1st Armored Division, Fort Riley, Kan. -- the 4th Infantry BCT, 101st Air Assault, Fort Campbell, Ky. -- the 3rd Infantry BCT, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Knox, Ky. -- the 3rd Infantry BCT, 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, N.Y. -- the 4th Infantry BCT (Airborne), 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C. -- the 2nd Armored BCT, 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, Ga. -- the 4th Armored BCT, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas -- the 3rd Infantry BCT, 1st Armored Division, Fort Bliss, Texas It's expected the current slate of proposed changes will be complete by the end of fiscal year 2017, though Odierno said that continued sequestration could make it happen faster. He also said that the current changes are not a result of sequestration currently in place -- but are instead a result of the Budget Control Act of 2011. "These end-strength and force-structure reductions predate sequestration and ongoing fiscal year 2013 budget reductions," Odierno said. "If sequestration continues into fiscal year 2014, Army reductions to end strength, force structure and basing announced today will be only the first step." The Army is currently planning to reduce its end strength to 490,000 Soldiers by the end of fiscal year 2017. Change to Army Post-9/11 GI Bill transfer policy takes effect Aug. 1 [2013-07-08] WASHINGTON -- Beginning Aug. 1, 2013, every Soldier who elects to transfer their Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits to a family member will incur an additional four years in the Army, without regard to their time in service. The policy already applies to nearly every Soldier in the Army -- and has since the beginning of transferability in 2009. Until now, Soldiers who were nearing retirement were eligible for certain exemptions from the policy. That will no longer be the case. This policy change affects them. "This policy was drafted in 2009 and takes effect Aug. 1, 2013. It is important that we inform Soldiers of this existing policy regarding the Post 9/11 GI Bill benefits," said Lt. Col. Mark Viney, chief of the Enlisted Professional Development Branch, Army G-1. That news comes in a message to military personnel, dated April 15, 2013. The rule largely affects senior officers and enlisted Soldiers who are retirement-eligible. As of now, these Soldiers may be able to transfer benefits to their loved ones with anywhere from zero to three years of additional service. Soldiers who are not retirement eligible, electing to transfer their GI Bill benefits to a family member means committing for an additional four years. Beginning Aug. 1 that rule will apply to all Soldiers, whether they are retirement-eligible or not. "The Post-9/11 GI Bill. Soldiers are entitled to the benefit for their own use, but to transfer to dependents: that is used as a recruiting and retention tool," said Viney. Viney also serves as the policy proponent for the Army's Post-9/11 GI Bill Transfer of Education Benefits Program. "We want Soldiers to be informed of the impact of this policy," Viney said. "This is going to impact their decisions and their families, and whether or not they are going to have this money available to fund their dependent's education." Veterans Affairs, or VA, also has eligibility requirements for transferability. A Soldier must have six years of active duty in order to transfer his GI Bill benefits. In some cases, if a Soldier has incurred additional time in service in order to transfer GI Bill benefits to a family member, and is afterward unable to serve that additional time in service, he or she may be required to pay back those benefits. Viney said that as the Army draws down, some Soldiers will be involuntarily separated under force-shaping initiatives. Soldiers who are separated early under such circumstances and who had previously transferred their Post-9/11 GI Bill education benefits to their dependents may retain the transferred benefits, without needing to repay them to the VA. Soldiers who were retirement eligible after August 1, 2009 and before August 1, 2012 and who are considering transferring their benefits to their dependents should review their service obligation before doing so. All Soldiers will incur a four-year service obligation after August 1, 2013 if they transfer their benefits to their dependents. Soldiers with questions about transferring their Post-9/11 GI Bill education benefits to their dependents should contact their approving official. 5 named 'Service Members of Year' for 2013 [2013-07-18] WASHINGTON -- Five service members, one from each branch of service, including the Coast Guard, were honored July 18, on Capitol Hill, as "Service Members of the Year," by newspaper publisher Military Times. The five were nominated for the recognition by fellow service members. They include Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Karen D. Beattie; Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Clifford M. Wooldridge; Air Force Master Sgt. William G. Janczewski II; Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Joshua E. Beemer; and Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Chase M. Severns. Serving as the keynote speaker for the event, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert noted that the five were so impressive, their fellow service members had taken the time to sit down and nominate them for the award. The admiral himself was impressed. "They continue to put service before self while off duty as well as while on duty; volunteering to do such things as volunteer in the Make-A-Wish Foundation, teaching math and English to children in Afghanistan, raising awareness for Gold Star Families, building homes with Habitat for Humanity, and working with wounded warriors," Greenert said. Noting that July is the 40th anniversary of the all-volunteer military force in the United States, he said the award recipients represent the best of what America has to offer -- to those at home, and to those overseas. "These individuals represent a really special quality of all the service members that we have," the admiral said. "And they represent the face of the United States around the globe. They build the trust that enables the partnership that we need so very much to continue to do what we do around the world to ensure security. They are our ambassadors." SOLDIER OF THE YEAR Beattie, named the "Soldier of the Year," today serves as part of the 31st Air Defense Artillery Brigade at Fort Sill, Okla. She and her now-deceased husband, Sgt. 1st Class Clifford Beattie, had served together in Baghdad, Iraq, in 2011. He was killed in action there that May. The loss of her husband and friend left Beattie considering if she wanted to continue service in the Army. At the time, she'd already been in for 14 years. Acting as the military presenter for the award, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. John F. Campbell said that it was Beattie's faith that kept her in uniform. "She faced her struggle head-on and turned her grief into a way to support and inspire other Gold Star families -- families that have a fallen service member," Campbell said. Herself a Gold Star spouse, Beattie started an awareness program called the Fort Sill Survivor Outreach Services, or SOS, to provide support to other Gold Star families. "We just want to make the world better, and make people better, and make everything better for survivors," Beattie said of her efforts with the program. When she heard she'd been selected for the award, she said, she was surprised -- and humbled. "We just do what we do," she said. "There are so many amazing men and women in the military; and to get picked out of all of them is just humbling. It's just awesome." SAILOR OF THE YEAR Beemer, a cryptologic technician and Arabic linguist with the Navy Information Operations Command at Fort Gordon, Ga., was named "Sailor of the Year." "Humbling. Humbling, to say the least," Beemer said of the award. "There are so many great things that every other service member is doing. We're finishing up two wars. We've been doing great things in the military for so many years. It's like -- why me?" Greenert, who served as the military presenter for Beemer's award, gave at least one answer for why Beemer had been selected. "While in Afghanistan, CTI1 Beemer dearly missed his wife and four-year-old daughter, Liliana," Greenert said. "He filled this void in his life by using his limited free time to serve as the secretary of the Cat in the Hat Language Arts Center. The center teaches Afghan children ages six to 11 basic English and math skills." Having served now about 12 years of active duty in the Navy, starting in 2000, and with a break in between -- Beemer said he plans to push on beyond 20, if he can. It's his fellow Sailors that make him want to stay. "You don't get rich in the Navy," he said. "But being able to work with young people, and people who have a sense of service, and of actually coming to work every day and doing the job -- it's not about coming and collecting a paycheck. I'm proud of what I do and I'm proud of what the junior guys do." AIRMAN OF THE YEAR "It's very, very humbling," said Janczewski of his being named the "Airman of the Year." "I see what happened as just doing my job. The volunteer work was just a way to pay back all my experiences, so other families or other people don't have to go through the same problems we went through. Being here tonight, it's just very humbling to be recognized for something on this scale." Janczewski's son, six-year-old Ethan, was born with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. The young boy was born with only a right ventricle and right atrium. The heart defect left the newborn in the hospital for nearly five months -- about four of those in an induced coma. Ethan is now in stable health. Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Larry O. Spencer, the military presenter for the award, said Janczewski and his wife were able to get through the difficult times thanks to support from friends and family. Now, Janczewski works to provide that kind of support to others who may face similar family crisis. He volunteers with the Arkansas Congestive Heart Defect Coalition to help others who are in the same situation now that his family was in years ago. An Air Force firefighter who is approaching 20 years of service, Janczewski now serves with the 19th Civil Engineer Squadron Fire Emergency Services at Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark. He said he plans to stay in uniform as long as he is allowed. "I love the job and I love the mission," he said. COAST GUARDSMAN OF THE YEAR A boatswain's mate, Severns recently started a new assignment at the Aids to Navigation Team on the Columbia River in Kennewick, Wash., after having served aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Haddock, in San Diego, Calif. Severns was described by Commandant of the Coast Guard Adm. Robert J. Papp Jr., who was the military presenter for the award, as "highly competitive." But at the same time, "willing to help those around him." Perhaps one reason Severns was named "Coast Guardsman of the Year" was his efforts aboard the Haddock to help his fellow service members prepare for advancement, Papp said. "Severns started a challenge to get the crew to study for their next Rating Advancement Test," Papp said. "He spent countless off-duty hours assisting crew members with their training and advancement sign-offs." Papp also noted that Severns' commander aboard the Haddock said he had been "instrumental in making the Haddock the most successful patrol boat in counternarcotics operations in the Coast Guard in 2012." Severns has been in the Coast Guard now for seven years, and plans to make it a career. He said he loves the responsibility laid at the feet of Coast Guardsmen, even when they are very young. "It's the responsibility that they give to a member," he said, of what keeps him in uniform and protecting America's waterways. "The Coast Guard provides that responsibility to very young people, very young in their military career, and allows them to develop into those great leaders." He said it was a "a great honor" to be selected for the award. MARINE OF THE YEAR Also honored to be recognized as "Marine of the Year," is Wooldridge, who serves now with Marine Corps Security Forces Training Company, Naval Support Activity Northwest Annex, Chesapeake, Va. While on mounted patrol in Afghanistan in 2011, Wooldridge and his team came under enemy fire. After gunfire subsided, and other Marines had begun to leave the area, Wooldridge was doing security around a building. Turning a corner, he found himself face-to-face with two additional insurgents -- which he dispatched. Shortly after, while reloading his weapon, he was surprised by the barrel of an enemy machine gun pointed at him from behind a wall. Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. John M. Paxton Jr., who served as the military presenter for the award, said Wooldridge took the turn of events into his own hands as well. "Wooldridge dropped his empty weapon and seized the machine gun barrel and took on the enemy gunner in hand-to-hand combat," Paxton said. He was subsequently awarded a Navy Cross for his bravery, Paxton said. At home, Wooldridge works with disabled veterans as part of the Wounded Warrior Project, Paxton told the audience. "He has spent countless hours assisting disabled and recovering veterans," Paxton said. "Most recently, he was the host Marine for the Special Olympics of Virginia Beach and served as an athlete sponsor. He helped a terminally ill young man receive recognition as an honorary Marine." Military Times has presented the Service Member of the Year Awards for 13 years now. The company publishes such newspapers as Army Times, Air Force Times, Marine Corps Times and Navy Times. Vice chief addresses current Army challenges [2013-07-25] WASHINGTON -- While budget cuts and sequestration are a challenge, Americans won't accept them as an excuse for the Army failing to maintain a fighting force able to win the nation's wars, said the Army's vice chief of staff. "They don't want to hear that sequestration makes our job hard," said Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. John F. Campbell. "If they ask us to do something, our nation expects us to be able to do it." Campbell spoke July 24, at the Pentagon, before a packed room of Army officers and a smattering of civilians as part of a briefing for staffers new to Headquarters Department of the Army, new to the Pentagon. The officers and civilians in the audience will contribute to the teams responsible for developing policy and programs for the Army, and staffing those proposals and changes to ensure they are ready for review and possible approval by Army senior leaders. "You can make a huge difference to the Army staff and how it moves," Campbell told them. "You're coming at a time when we are going to have to make some very important decisions for our Army. We are going to get smaller." Campbell told the new staffers that he, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno, and Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh are focused on "priorities and risk," and asked staffers to keep that in mind as they go about their work. "That's what I need you to think about, as you present solutions as you work your staff actions, he said. "How does it fit in the secretary's and the chief's and the Army's priority, and what is the risk if we do or don't do that. Keep that in mind." As those officers go about their business in the Pentagon, some of the challenges facing them include sequestration, budget cuts, and civilian furloughs. None of those are excuses, Campbell said, for not completing the Army mission. OCO SHORTFALL With the drawdown in Iraq complete, and the Afghanistan withdrawal coming soon, money meant for warfighting will disappear as well. That money paid for extra Soldiers and paid for equipment and materiel to fight the war. But, Campbell said, there is a shortfall in what is called the "overseas contingency operations," or OCO, budget for this fiscal year. Campbell told the new staffers the Army has an $8.3 billion shortfall in the OCO budget that it is working now to rectify. About $5 billion of that can be met by moving money from other accounts, but that requires "reprogramming" and approval by Congress, and the Army is waiting on that now. Army civilian furloughs have helped to pay for some of that as well, but there is still a shortage in funds to pay for the warfight. "We still have a bill this year of $1 billion to support the warfight that we don't know how we're going to pay for," he said. "We have to get that paid before we address the furlough piece." CREDIT WHERE DUE Traditionally, those in the Army, both Soldiers and civilians, are not interested in taking credit for the work they do. "It's not in our DNA, we don't take credit for stuff," he said. "We've all kind of grown up in a culture where we don't take credit for stuff, just get it done." But the general said the Army does things to support other services, things that come out of Army budgets. "Every single day, 30-40,000 Soldiers at theater level are working with combatant commands providing sustainment, intelligence and signal capability, for instance, and other forms of support, costs taken out of the Army budget," he said. GRANDFATHERED RETIREMENTS Campbell said that about 48 percent of the Army budget involves personnel, and that includes retirement for Soldiers. One concern for Soldiers who may end up being retired early, is what will happen to their retirement if personnel budgets are cut. The general said he believes that those in the Army now should be "grandfathered" on compensation for retirement, that their retirements will not be affected, including those that are asked to retire early. But in the future, he warned, there may be new rules for new Soldiers about how retirement and other compensation is paid. In Asia-Pacific, Army policy not one of containment [2013-07-31] WASHINGTON -- Despite a Department of Defense focus on the Asia-Pacific region, there is no Army policy to "contain" China, said the service's senior-most officer. Speaking before an audience July 29, at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno explained the service's new interest in the Pacific region -- a focus driven by a national defense strategy released in 2012. While the Army has interest in that part of the world, Odierno said, it does not have an interest in "containment." "Where you get into that policy of containment is where you start having large land forces forward-stationed in countries. That is not our plan," Odierno said. Instead, the Army plans to develop military-to-military relationships in the Asia-Pacific region, a location where, he said, it is the army that is most often the largest and most prominent military service. One such example is India. "We'll continue to build partner capacity, continue to do exercises ... missions from humanitarian assistance to disaster relief," Odierno said. "It's about building cooperation, about building confidence, so we can work together to resolve and continue to move forward together in the Asia-Pacific region -- to include China. This policy is not to exclude China, it is to work with China. So everyone has the opportunity to continue to move forward." More specifically, Odierno said that as the Army partners with countries in the Asia-Pacific region for exercises and other cooperative engagements, it is doing so to help the U.S. Pacific Command commander develop relationships in that part of the world -- not to exclude anyone. "Ours is not to contain China, ours is to build relationships, to build better support to the U.S. Pacific Command commander as he attempts to ensure that we don't get into conflict -- that we don't build animosity between all the major powers in Asia-Pacific," Odierno said. Most recently, the general returned from a trip to the Asia-Pacific region, where he visited India. During that trip, he met with defense leaders in that country, including his counterpart there, India Chief of Army Staff Gen. Bikram Singh. Odierno said that while talking, the two realized how much the United States and India have in common. We are "the two largest democracies in the world," he said. "We are based on a professional army. Two very professional armies. There is much that we can do together to learn from each other." The general also said the two discussed "the way ahead" in that region of the world and the importance of operations there. He was also able to visit the India Northern Command, responsible for borders with Pakistan and China, and was able to meet with staff and commanders there. "What really caught me was is what they have been doing for the last 20 years, is what we've been doing for the last 12 years -- counter-insurgency," he said. "There is a lot of knowledge we can share. I think that will be the basis of our continued relationship -- the sharing of information about what they face on a day-to-day to basis." He also said that with India, as with other countries in the Asia-Pacific region, there are opportunities for professional development, development of leaders, and sharing of techniques. "It is important for us to build Army-to-Army relationships with them as we continue to work our strategy, as we continue to rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region," Odierno said. BUDGET CUTS COULD MEAN LESSER-TRAINED FORCES Odierno also addressed the effects of budget cuts on readiness and troop strength. Initial budget cuts aimed at the Department of Defense as part of the Budget Control Act of 2011 -- about $487 billion over ten years -- meant the Army had to reduce its size to about 490,000 Soldiers. That's a reduction of about 80,000 Soldiers. Though "sequestration" was described in the act, that part of the law was not guaranteed to kick in unless members of a congressional "super committee" failed to come to a budget-cutting agreement on their own. When that failed to happen, the sequestration kicked in, January 2013. That meant for the DOD an additional $500 billion in cuts over the next ten years -- for a total of about $987 billion in cuts over a decade. It is possible that Congress could find a different way than the current sequester to save money, and that the $500 billion in cuts to DOD over the next ten years might not continue. If the sequester does continue, however, and cuts continue to come at the same pace, Odierno has said that additional cuts to end strength will be needed. More than 100,000 Soldiers, in addition to the 80,000 already being cut, may need to go, if sequestration continues as planned. Those cuts do not bode well for the Army's mission of providing ready-troops to combatant commanders, Odierno said. As the chief of staff of the Army, Odierno' s role is to maintain a balance between modernization, readiness and end-strength. "I would tell you the way we go about it is not right," he said of the cost-cutting efforts implemented by sequestration. "It's so fast, it gets us really out of balance." The general said the rate that continued sequestration would force him to cut Soldiers from the ranks will create an imbalance that affects both modernization and readiness. "If I am asked to deploy 20,000 Soldiers, I'm not sure I can guarantee they are trained to the level I think they should be over the next two or three years, because of the way sequestration is being enacted," he said. He said if he is asked to deploy Soldiers for instance, the Army will have them ready to go; but the cost to do that could be high. "They will not have been able to train collectively to a level we like," he said. "Operations will take longer. But most importantly, it probably means more casualties." XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement system may lose 'X' by next August [2013-08-09] WASHINGTON -- The XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement weapon system is now in development. But by this time next year, the system may have moved into low-rate initial production and if so, will lose the experimental "X" prefix. Lt. Col. Shawn Lucas, the PEO Soldier program manager for individual weapons at Picatinny Arsenal, N.J., said the XM25 is currently in the "engineering and manufacturing development phase," not yet ready for fielding. "That's where we are developing the subsystems, which would be the weapon, the fire control, and the programmable ammunition," he said. "[We are] integrating it all to work together at the system level so we can meet the requirements the user has asked for. If we do that, we would look to go into production." It'll be about August of next year, he said, when the Army would ask decision makers to move to a "milestone C" decision with the system. That will allow them to start low-rate initial production, or LRIP, and manufacture a little more than 1,100 of the weapons, along with the needed ammunition. The LRIP decision will help prove out manufacturing processes for the weapon, the fire control and the ammunition. Additionally, those systems would then be used to do operational and live-fire testing. Additionally, he said when that happens they would do "type-classification" on the system. "We'd take the X off," he said. "It's no longer experimental; it'd be the M25." The XM25 was once called "the Punisher" by some of the Soldiers who initially evaluated it in Afghanistan, in November 2010. It allows Soldiers to engage defilade targets, those behind a barrier, protected from oncoming weapons fire. The system provides an advantage over traditional weapons. "With traditional direct-fire kinds of systems that shoot in essentially a straight line, that enemy combatant would have cover from those types of weapons," Lucas said. The XM25 measures the distance to the enemy's protective barrier, and can then program the round to detonate a user-adjustable distance past that, allowing Soldiers to put an air-bursting round directly above the enemy's head, inside their protected area, even if they are behind a wall or inside a building. "There' s a lot of art and science in doing that, so you can get the air-bursting munitions exactly where you want in order to have the intended effect," Lucas said. A Soldier may use the XM25's capability to determine that a wall protecting an enemy is some 100 meters away. The Soldier then might adjust that distance by a meter or two, so the round will travel in the air past the wall, and instead detonate directly above the intended target. "Whoever was behind the wall would get a lot of fragments rained down on them," Lucas said. "It's a leap ahead, something that has never before been resident in the squad, or really our small tactical formations, squads, platoons or companies. That's the ability to engage, and have effects on targets that are in defilade." The XM25 fires a programmable air-burst round that determines the distance it travels based on the number of times it rotates after leaving the barrel of the weapon. The system includes both the weapon, the rounds, and a fully-integrated day and night fire control. Right now, Lucas said the Army is working to make more improvements to the design of the XM25, in particular to the fire control system. He also said there has been a lot of feedback concerning battery life, weight, and the size of the magazine. Were a milestone decision to come in 2014, he said, much of 2015 would be spent testing the system, including initial operational tests, as well as the live-fire tests. They would also need to do weapons qualification, and additionally qualify the fire controls and ammunition produced off the manufacturing lines. "Assuming success in all of those events, then you'd be able to field a unit that is then going to take those into combat operations towards the end of 2015," he said. Lucas said he expects the weapon will be fielded to all brigade combat teams, as well as units in U.S. Army Special Operations Command, Special Forces detachments, and Ranger Regiments. The cost for the XM25 and the rounds it fires is expensive today, Lucas said, because the weapons and ammunition are being manufactured by hand. But with development of automated production facilities, he said the price is expected to come down to about $35,000 for the weapon and fire control system, and about $55 per round. STEM grads critical to U.S. military mission [2013-08-14] WASHINGTON -- The Army and America both need more scientists, engineers, mathematicians and technology specialists, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is now doing something about that, said its commander. As part of an effort to turn young students on to science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, career choices, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, or USACE, in May signed an agreement to partner with the Department of Defense Education Activity, known as DODEA, schools to bring engineering-related experiences to the classroom, said Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, Corps commander. For now, Bostick said, the new partners have identified USACE districts to be matched up with schools. He also said the new team is working on what topics they will look at. "We already have in our kit bag neat things that would inspire young boys and girls to want to at least be interested in the STEM fields," Bostick said. "Whether that is bridge building, or understanding the Mississippi, and everything that happens on the Mississippi from dams and levees, recreation, ecosystem restoration, those are the types of things we can talk about and how the COE (Corps of Engineers) is engaged." The general said the intent is to be in classrooms by mid- to late October. The general talked with bloggers, via telephone, during an Aug. 13, bloggers roundtable discussion about the need for more Americans to enter into STEM education and careers. The general said increasing the number of Americans in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers is important for the nation and the military. "A workforce with robust science, technology, engineering, and mathematics capabilities is critical to the success of the U.S. military mission," said Bostick. "The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of Defense, and the nation must ensure that there is a pipeline engaged in STEM and prepared for careers in engineering, the natural sciences, and research and development." Today, Bostick said, the U.S. is behind in producing professionals in the STEM career fields. "Only 14 countries in the world produce a smaller percentage of engineers than the United States, including countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia and Cuba," Bostick said. "Out of 100 U.S. college graduates, four will be engineers. In Russia, that number is 10. In China, 31." He also said the diversity of American STEM graduates is lacking. Of 100 graduates, only 10 are women, and five are Hispanic or African American, he said. Diversity is something that makes the Army stronger, he said, so there is much work to be done to increase diversity among STEM careerists. "We want an Army that reflects America," he said, "We are always working and striving for that." As commander of the "largest public engineering firm in the world, with more than 36,000 civilians, and 600 military members, in 130 countries around the world, Bostick said that today, the Corps of Engineers is doing well, keeping its ranks filled with capable engineers and scientists, with only a few areas of concern. Among those, he said, are structural engineering and geo-technical engineering, where the Corps is in "competition for talent" with the private sector. But in the years ahead, by about 2020, he said, it's predicted there will be about 2.8 million STEM job openings, and America must increase the number of college graduates by about 1 million STEM professionals to meet that requirement. That goal won't be met without some changes, he said. One problem explaining the dearth of STEM graduates, Bostick said, is the number of young students who have decided early on that a career in math and science isn't for them. "I can tell you that in ninth grade, we know that about only six will go on to study STEM in college, out of 100 students," Bostick said. "We are already starting early on knowing that folks are not interested in this area. And some of it has to do with the studies they have to put into it." He said it's important to keep young minds open to careers in such fields, and to prevent youth from deciding at an early age they are not interested in STEM education. That is one reason why Bostick said the Corps is involved with DODEA. But students at higher levels need also to be engaged. "At junior levels, we have to do as much to keep the doors open on the science and math course," he said. "They are going to have to take them anyway, but I think keep the doors open in terms of their interest. Try to spark enough interest in the youngsters in order to keep them active and engaging, to keep them in the fight, so to speak." For high school and college students, he said, educators and industry must do more to help students understand where a career in STEM fields might take them; what their career might look like 10 years down the road. It's not just civilian college students and grade school children that can help America gain an edge in STEM-related industries, Bostick said. The Corps of Engineers is working with wounded warriors and veterans to bring them aboard and help them develop a desire to further their education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. "The COE is taking this on as a mission, and we are starting with wounded warriors," he said. "We have asked wounded warriors that are interested to come into our ranks. In the many districts, divisions, or even at my HQ, we have wounded warriors that are serving with us in intern programs, or they are serving with us while they wait to transition, and I have seen some of them gain skills that are easily transferable, and then they go into STEM-related areas based on that experience." Active-duty Soldiers can also play a part, he said. While serving as commander of Army Recruiting Command, Bostick said he had been surprised to learn as many as 50 percent of active-duty Soldiers were engaged in some sort of civilian education courses. In that regard, he said, schools now are working to find ways for students to take STEM education courses online or remotely. New SHARP director says Army must defeat sexual assault to maintain public trust [2013-08-22] WASHINGTON -- As the Army finishes up operations in Afghanistan, at home it continues a fight to stem the sexual assaults some in uniform perpetrate against their fellow Soldiers. Now leading the charge against sexual assault in the Army is Christine T. Altendorf, Ph.D, the new director of the Army Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention program office, or SHARP. She said the service is on track with meeting tough requirements laid out this year by the Secretary of Defense and Congress. Altendorf also said that while the American public has a high opinion of the Army from its decade and a half of combat, that trust is at risk of slipping away because of the internal struggle to prevent sexual assault and harassment within the ranks. "We need to make sure we have a place where a parent would have no problem seeing their child join the Army, that there would not be a trust factor, that we have not lost the trust of the public," Altendorf said. And that loss of public trust hinges on the Army's effort to "clean up our internal battles" with regard to sexual assault. The SHARP program is the Army's primary campaign against sexual assault. Altendorf said that while the program has been "beefed up" recently, it has been since its inception a "leader in prevention of sexual assault and sexual harassment." The program's new director said recent efforts to strengthen the SHARP program have expanded its reach beyond a program that was once isolated to ensure it is now matrixed, integrated and connected with the other parts of the Army that are needed to ensure it is embedded in the structure and culture of the Army to ensure mission success. One of the changes included putting a Senior Executive Service member at the helm so the program is on par with other general officer-level led sexual assault prevention organizations. The change provides equity that is integral to the coordination required for the effective execution of the SHARP program. "The challenges of having it at a couple of levels below that echelon is that it made it difficult to do a lot of that collaboration," Altendorf said. As part of her role as the new program director, Altendorf said she is keenly interested in building bridges with the Office of the Secretary of Defense, or OSD, and Congress. "SHARP really became a much bigger thing than it was when it was originally stood up," she said. Once a "stove-piped" program, SHARP now works closely with the Army's Provost Marshal Office, the Office of the Judge Advocate General, the Surgeon General of the Army and other key elements on the Army staff. SHARP is closely integrated with OSD and is focusing on new initiatives from the Secretary of Defense. She said there is a solid focus on prevention, investigation, accountability, advocacy and assessment. "We're working on figuring out how to implement these requirements," she said. "What actions are going to make a difference in the field? All of our actions need to have an impact at the lowest levels of the Army." PREVENTION Altendorf said as part of preventive measures against sexual assaults, the Army provides sexual assault awareness training at all levels of the Army. Personnel receive training prior to commissioning and enlistment, during initial military training, during every professional development course, before and after deployment, and before taking a command position. This event-based training is augmented by mandatory annual training while assigned to a unit. There is also comprehensive training for victim advocates and for sexual assault response coordinators. Additionally, Altendorf said training is reaching the highest levels. Recently, the chief of staff of the Army conducted training through a two-day sexual assault prevention summit for two- and three-star generals. INVESTIGATION Prevention is an effort to keep sexual assaults from occurring in the first place. When that fails, the Army is enhancing its ability to investigate and prosecute sexual assaults in the ranks. Altendorf said that every sexual assault report now goes to the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, or CID, who will in turn kick off an appropriate investigation. She said the SHARP program is working with CID, the Office of the Judge Advocate General, and judge advocate generals in the field to improve pre-trial investigative capabilities, with the intent of increasing confidence in the military justice process and protect the privacy rights of victims. In support of the Secretary of Defense's recently announced initiatives, the Army is also enhancing its special victims investigation training for agents within the Criminal Investigation Command, as well as for prosecutors. The Army is also working to increase the number of Special Victims Unit capabilities at major installations, Altendorf said. To that end, the Army's OTJAG also now has 24 special victim prosecutors trained specifically to work sexual assault cases. "They are some of the best trained and qualified prosecutors in the Army," she said. ACCOUNTABILITY To keep units accountable for maintaining an environment that encourages reporting, but that is also inhospitable to sexual assault perpetrators, the Army has strengthened its use of command climate surveys, Altendorf said. While such surveys have long been in use, until recently climate surveys were only at the company level and the results stopped at the desk of the commander they assessed, no longer. Now climate surveys will be conducted at every level of command, and the results will go one level of command higher in the command chain, Altendorf said. That will allow a commander's supervisor to see how they are evaluated, and to watch for trends, either positive or negative. "This is going to push accountability," Altendorf said. "If that commander's boss is looking at the survey data and he is seeing something regularly occurring, or something not right, he can step in." Additionally, she said the Army requires company-level surveys more frequently than other services. A command climate survey is required within 30 days of assumption of command, an additional survey six months later, and then additional surveys each year afterward. Commanders are now required to meet face-to-face with the next higher echelon of command to review the results of the surveys. "You can actually look and see if the climate is getting better or worse under that commander," Altendorf said. ADVOCACY Taking care of victims of sexual assault is a key component of SHARP. As part of victim advocacy, the Army already has sexual assault response coordinators and victim advocates. Now, those personnel and others will undergo enhanced screening to ensure that those most qualified for the position are filling the critical roles as the front-line support for a Soldier who has been violated. "We're trying to create an environment where, if something does occur, that victim feels very comfortable in reporting it," Altendorf said. "We're making sure we have the right people as victim advocates, choosing the right people who have the most positive influence on Soldiers. So we are expanding the screening process for victim advocates, sexual assault response coordinators, recruiters and drill sergeants." The intent is to ensure they don't "have anything in their background that actually might prohibit them from being an appropriate person to deal with a victim," Altendorf said. Altendorf also said the SHARP program is looking at ways to raise the prestige of positions such as a victim advocate or sexual assault response coordinators, known as SARCs, to attract the right kinds of Soldiers to those positions. ASSESSMENT Critical to success of the Army's SHARP program, Altendorf said, is determining whether the programs and policies are having the desired effect. To make that happen, she said, the Army must find a way to make sure the assessment of its own efforts is aligned with those of the Department of Defense. "We're working very closely with the Army Research Institute to make sure our survey questions mesh with the Office of the Secretary of Defense's survey questions, so that when we are comparing the results we are compatible," she said. "The data is important." OSD DIRECTIVES On May 6, May 17, and Aug. 14, 2013, the Secretary of Defense released memorandums directing the services to meet certain dated benchmarks and requirements in their efforts to stop sexual assaults in the ranks. Altendorf said the Army is on-task with meeting those demands. Already, the Army has looked at credentials and qualifications of current-serving drill sergeants, recruiters, SARCs and victim advocates to ensure they meet applicable selection criteria and standards of conduct, she said. The service has also completed refresher training for drill sergeants, recruiters, SARCs and victim advocates on professional ethics, their critical responsibilities and standards, and the impact on mission readiness for violations of standards. Another directive mandated inspection of workplaces for professional appearance, and the removal of items deemed offensive. That requirement has also been met, she said. The Army also met the requirement to ensure the Army's own sexual assault prevention campaign is in alignment with DOD's plan. "We've actually done quite a bit," Altendorf said. "Now we have to set up the proper metrics to make sure it is actually having an impact. You must go back and measure and make sure you're improving." A CULTURE CHANGE A primary factor in eliminating sexual assaults in the military is ensuring a change in culture. Soldiers must understand that sexually assaulting other Soldiers is simply not the Army way. Education goes a long way toward changing that culture, Altendorf said, but the Army must also contend with the culture Soldiers bring with them from the civilian world. "As we bring in new recruits, we have a requirement to train them to behave in a manner that upholds Army values," she said. "From the moment they first step foot in the door, we have to talk about respect for others and the Army values." The Army's SHARP program is part of its Ready and Resilient Campaign. R2C ensures the right conditions exist for Soldiers to be ready to do their job. "To keep your force ready and resilient, you need an environment where people can flourish," she said. "When there is sexual harassment or assault, you don't have an environment that allows people to do what they need to do, so they can perform their job as a Soldier." Altendorf said the Army is striving for a cultural change that results in a positive command climate so Soldiers can reach their full potential. The SHARP program is a critical piece in achieving that goal. Vice chief Campbell: Suicide prevention 365-day-a-year mission [2013-09-03] WASHINGTON -- September is suicide awareness month and while the Army will highlight suicide prevention this month, the service's vice chief said the effort is year-round. "This is something we can't just look at in one month," said Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. John F. Campbell. "It has to be a 365-day mission to make sure we can provide our Soldiers with the tools they need to deal with the stressors of everyday life, and help them understand that seeking help is a sign of strength not weakness." Comparing the March through July 2013 time period to the March through July 2012 time period, Army suicides have gone down slightly -- by about 17. But if January and February are included in those numbers, the Army has so far had the same number of suicides this year as it had last year during the same period: 184. In 2012, the Army had a total of 325 suicides. Campbell said he's kept abreast of every suicide in the Army; he knows the numbers, and the Army researches every suicide to try to determine what might be the cause. He said that the trends show that most suicides are the result of financial or relationship issues, often exacerbated by drug and alcohol use. The general said as a way to prevent suicides in the Army, it is critical that commanders and noncommissioned officers know their Soldiers that work for them. And it's important Soldiers know their fellow Soldiers as well. "Much of it is just about knowing your Soldier, knowing if they have a financial issue, if they have gone through a breakup with a girlfriend, or if they have a problem in their marriage," Campbell said. "It's as simple a thing as sitting down and talking to a Soldier. A lot of time a Soldier is going to keep that to himself. The more you can figure out whether a Soldier is higher risk, you will watch them a little bit more closely and make sure they have the resources to get help." Campbell said he saw a Soldier suicide for the first time in the early 1980s, while serving in Germany. He was a lieutenant then. Later, as a brigade commander within the 82d Airborne Division, and then later still as commander of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), there were more suicides among Soldiers in his units. "Not only in garrison but deployed. I've also been in units that had family members who committed suicide," Campbell said. As a company commander at Fort Bragg, N.C., Campbell said, a Soldier hanged himself in his room over a holiday. "The chain of command knew he wasn't going on leave, he'd be sticking around the barracks," Campbell said. "But it was a good 48 hours before somebody really checked in on him and found out that, in fact, his roommate had gone off... and he'd been having some relationship issues." Today, lessons learned from the suicides he experienced early on in his career still stick with Campbell. "What I learned at that time, still stands with me today," he said. "In order to help get at this, you have to know everything about our Soldiers. And our non-commissioned officers have to embrace this, which they are." Having experienced suicides in his own units, and as vice chief of staff of the Army being aware of the number of suicides that occur across the force every day, Campbell said he knows exactly how a single suicide affects everybody who knew that Soldier. "One article I read said that for every suicide, there are 35-plus people impacted," he said. "Whether that is family members or the unit, I am not sure you can put a number on it. Any suicide is tragic. But every one of them does impact the unit, the morale of that unit, that squad. And I just think the more that we can do to keep the focus on what resources are out there for people who are having issues and those stressors that would drive somebody to suicide, then we make those resources available." When leadership is aware of the issues Soldiers are facing, whether it be relationship issues or financial issues or something else entirely, they can direct those Soldiers to the ample support services the Army provides -- especially though the Army's Ready and Resilient Campaign, which serves as an umbrella for hundreds of programs aimed at helping Soldiers resolve the issues that might lead them to consider suicide, and also develop the resiliency they need to be able to handle those challenges. There are many programs available, some that deal with Soldiers, some with families, others that affect various aspects of a Soldier's life and well-being. The Ready and Resilient Campaign is meant to make it easier for Solders to find the right program to help them, and at the same time, R2C will also find efficiencies within the portfolio of programs available. In practical terms, that means some programs will be cut where there is redundancy, and other programs might be merged to make them more efficient. The effect of that will be to create fewer, more effective programs, Campbell said, that cost the Army less money, but at the same time continue to provide Soldiers with the same support the Army has always provided. "At some posts you may have two or three programs that deal with alcohol or drugs that are tied into suicide, and they may not be talking to the same population," Campbell said. "We can't afford to be redundant, and we can't afford not to provide to Soldiers what is important to them. What we are trying to do is take a hard look and have metrics applied to all those programs, and make sure the decisions we make are the best for each of those posts, camps or stations." One part of the Army's Ready and Resilient Campaign the vice chief considers critical is the Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness Program, responsible for helping Soldiers learn resilience by either becoming master resilience trainers, or by learning resilience at the unit level through Soldiers who have been through the master resilience trainer, or MRT, course. "I can't stress enough the resiliency piece of it, and this CSF2, tied into MRT," Campbell said. "As I went out and traveled and talked to folks that had gone through the master resilience training ... everybody I've talked to that has been through the MRT has said it has changed their lives and they have been able to impact other Soldiers lives. That's really key." Campbell said the Army is trying to get master resilience trainers down to company level. Right now the Army has about 16,000 personnel who are MRT-qualified, and that number increased both through MRT training at Fort Jackson, at the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia, and through mobile MRT training teams. Resiliency training is meant to strengthen a Soldier's ability to more effectively deal with the kinds of situations that might affect their ability to do their job, or might even drive them to consider suicide. Resilience training isn't just offered to master resilience trainers -- who are meant to bring those skills back to their unit. Soldiers are getting resilience training as early as basic training and throughout their career, Campbell said. As part of the September suicide awareness month observation, Army senior leadership will sign a tri-signed letter discussing the Army's emphasis on suicide prevention. Campbell also said the Army will provide some flexibility to commanders, allowing them to have a suicide stand-down day if they choose to do so. SHARP: Soldiers need character in addition to competence [2013-09-10] WASHINGTON -- To eliminate sexual assault in the Army, all Soldiers are going to need more than just the know-how to do their jobs. They're also going to need character -- to ensure they uphold Army values. During a television interview Sept. 9, at the Pentagon, Dr. Christine T. Altendorf, the new director of the Army Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention program office, or SHARP, said job know-how is not enough. "We need to really push forward that competence over character is not okay," Altendorf said. "You have to actually have the character. We have the Army values that are in place. We have to have our Soldiers abide by those values. And we have to have the utmost respect for our fellow Soldiers." Right now, she said, most Soldiers in the Army already have that respect for their fellow Soldiers. "The bulk of our Soldiers, and our service members absolutely are at the utmost respectful end," she said. "But we do get the bad apples that kind of taint our record when it comes to sexual assault and harassment." Maintaining that "record" is important, Altendorf said. Some of the biggest influencers for getting young Americans into the Army are parents. And if parents don't trust the Army, she said, the service may have a hard time convincing potential Soldiers to enlist. But right now, she said, she thinks the Army still has the trust of most Americans. "Can American citizens trust the Army as their sons and daughters are sent to us? I'm going to say, absolutely they can," she said. "They just have to understand the things we're doing, all of the initiatives that are in place, and how we are going to respond -- and also take care of victims." Altendorf said both commanders and their Soldiers have a role in changing Army culture in a way that can reduce the number of sexual assaults in the ranks. Senior Army leadership, she said has already embraced the importance of the Army's SHARP program, and what it is meant to accomplish. Leadership down the line must also embrace it in order for it to be successful, she said. "I think we have to make sure that the company commander and levels below have bought into this -- that it is not another check mark that they have to deal with [among the] multitude of other initiatives they are trying to deal with," Altendorf said. "We have to really focus this as a culture change. It isn't something we do for a couple of months and then it kind of goes away and then everybody has to focus on something different. This has to be a culture focus, and an initiative that really is bought into." Soldiers too are part of that culture change, she said; especially in the lowest ranks -- among E-1 through E-4 -- where most sexual assaults occur. "A huge impact is peer pressure," she said. "It's peer pressure in the positive or in the negative. And this goes back to the whole culture change. If somebody sees one of their buddies doing something that is not okay -- I think for the most part people do know when something is OK or not OK -- when they see that, they need to say this isn't the right thing, it isn't cool; and put that peer pressure on their buddies to do the right thing." Numbers for sexual assaults in the Army went up for the third quarter of 2013 as compared to last year. Altendorf said it will take some analysis of that data to determine why that is, but said she hopes it's due to improvements in command climate -- the kind of improvements that make a Soldier who has been sexually assaulted feel more comfortable actually reporting the crime. "I like to think it's an increase because we are presenting a trusting environment that people are willing to report," she said. The Army has at least two sets of numbers regarding sexual assault, Altendorf said. One is reporting data. That's when a Soldier who has been sexually assaulted actually reports that crime. The second set of numbers comes from survey data -- anonymous surveys that query Soldiers about both sexual assault and sexual harassment. "Reporting is under-reported," she said. "Based on survey data, a lot more folks have indicated they have been sexually harassed or assaulted compared to the number of reports." Altendorf said survey data -- believed to be a more accurate reflection of sexual assault numbers in the Army -- are called "prevalence of sexual assault." "Your goal is to get those two to come together -- have your reporting increase, while your prevalence goes down, and then, ultimately, have both of them go down together." SHARP HANDBOOK On Sept. 9, Lt. Gen. Howard B. Bromberg, the Army's G-1, released a new SHARP guidebook to Army leadership. "The SHARP guidebook is a company-level reference tool for company commanders and Soldiers, Department of the Army civilians, and family members to use in sexual harassment and sexual assault prevention and response efforts," Bromberg wrote. The guide outlines the SHARP program, as well and prevention and response responsibilities for commanders, SHARP program personnel and Soldiers. The guide also includes a definition of sexual assault, resources for commanders and SHARP personnel. Resilience training comes to Pentagon [2013-09-12] WASHINGTON -- Several hundred Army civilians, officers and senior non-commissioned officers at the Pentagon attended resilience training, Sept. 11, receiving an abbreviated version of what Soldiers around the force have been learning. "What we've learned in the Army, through 30 years of scientific evidence, is that you can train and increase a person's level of resilience," said Col. Ken Riddle, Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness, or CSF2, program director. "What we aim to do in the Army, through the train-the-trainer program, is train our whole team on these resilience skills and increase everybody's level of resilience." Riddle's CSF2 program is responsible for instilling resilience in Soldiers -- defined by the Army as "the ability to grow and thrive in the face of challenges and bounce back from adversity." The CSF2 office pushes resilience training to the lowest levels of the Army, first by training key Soldiers as "master resilience trainers," or MRTs, during a 10-day course, and then by having those MRTs teach resilience to Soldiers in their own unit. Riddle said so far the Army has trained about 18,000 master resilience trainers, but many have since left the service, and the Army still has "a ways to go where we get to that one per company." One of those MRTs, Master Sgt. Jennifer R. Loredo, spent more than two hours before an audience of mostly colonels and Army civilians to teach them an abbreviated version of two of the 14 resilience skills typically taught to Soldiers across the force. Loredo learned to be an MRT in 2010, after taking the 10-day course at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. She's since taught resilience to thousands of Soldiers, mostly at Fort Bragg, N.C. "We get overwhelmingly positive responses," she said of how Soldiers respond to the training she provides. "When they go apply this to their lives, personally or professionally, the positive things that they are seeing are overwhelming. Relationships are being saved. Leaders are more confident because they can communicate better." Among Soldiers at Fort Bragg, she said, initially it was a tough sell to get them to accept what they felt was "touchy-feely psychology stuff," Loredo said. "But when you teach it to them and they see how it can be applied and the benefits, they change their tunes very quickly," she said. Loredo said there are 14 resilience skills she teaches to Soldiers, and that each takes several hours of formal classroom instruction. So at units around the Army, those 14 skills are not all taught at once. Instead, over the course of a year, she teaches one or two skills a month to Soldiers. The Army requires that every Soldier get trained, or receive refresher training, on all 14 of the skills every year. "Once or twice a month, the organization will set aside a few hours on their training calendar to train a skill or two. It's one skill, usually, at a time," she said. At the Pentagon, she taught an abbreviated version of two of those skills, including one called "real-time resilience" and another one called "active-constructive responding." The first is a form of "mental boxing" -- illustrated initially with an instructional video featuring a Soldier in the boxing ring competing against himself -- that asks Soldiers to talk themselves down from the kind of mind games or "counterproductive thoughts" that might keep them from performing at full capacity. In the face of a difficult situation, where a Soldier might have resolved himself to failure, the resilience instruction Loredo teaches asks them to mentally counter those thoughts with sentences that start "That's not completely true because ..." or "The most likely implication is ..." and "I can ... " Loredo warned that the mental exercises, which allow Soldiers to structure a useful counter-argument to their own self-defeating conclusions, are better completed in in their head, as opposed to being said aloud. "Active-constructive responding" helps Soldiers learn to listen better. Loredo said it's the only way to respond to somebody else's "good news" that actually strengthens a relationship with that person. A series of video vignettes helped illustrate the concept. A Soldier in civilian clothes is at home on his couch and is playing a video game. His wife interrupts him with "good news." She and her mother have received free tickets to be in the audience of a television talk show. Before the Soldier gets it right, he fails three times to respond the right way to his wife's good news. At first, he is dismissive of her -- not even looking away from his game. His second attempt has him changing the subject -- "hijacking" the conversation and turning it on himself. "That's great" he had said to her. She'll be out and he's got tickets to a basketball game -- would she like to see the team's latest stats? His third attempt again disappointed his wife. He questioned the tickets themselves -- were they real? Was it a scam? Loredo called him a "joy thief." It wasn't until the last effort where he got it right. He stopped playing his game, he expressed excitement for his wife's good fortune, and he asked her for more details, allowing her to expand on the opportunity for her and her mother. He was being an "active, constructive" listener. "He's a joy multiplier," Loredo said. Sgt. 1st Class Fred Cohen, a chaplain's assistant out of 1st Army Division East at Fort Meade, Md., attended Loredo's training at the Pentagon. "A lot of the stuff they talked about here today is similar to our Strong Bonds curriculum," Cohen said. "We know where Strong Bonds works, and this is sort of following almost in the same genre as the Strong Bonds program, where communication is very important to relationships -- and it does work, especially if people want their marriage to work." Master Sgt. Lester Long, the senior enlisted advisor with the Office of the Administrative Assistance to the Secretary of the Army, also attended. "I think it's important to get this down to our junior Soldiers," he said. "I think we should make this more mandatory for our senior leaders, so we can understand some of these skills. When we talk to our junior Soldiers, we can push some of these skills down to them. It was a good class." MORE LEADERSHIP TRAINING Long said he'd taken only a brief amount of resilience training beyond the teaser course offered by Loredo. More senior leadership in the Army might be in the same situation, Riddle had said. Resilience training needs to be taught from the top down -- and if leaders aren't getting it, then their Soldiers won't buy into it either. "No program in the Army has ever worked or will ever work unless you have command buy-in and command support on the ground," Riddle said. "We haven't educated and informed and trained our leaders. So it's not working on the ground in all cases. And until we do that we won't recognize the dividends of this training. We have a fix for that." That fix includes an array of training centers across the Army where master resilience trainers can learn their craft and then return to their unit. At the onset of the CSF2 program -- back when it was called just "Comprehensive Soldier Fitness," Soldiers were traveling to Philadelphia to learn the MRT skills. Later, the CSF2 program added Fort Jackson, S.C., as a training location for MRTs. Additionally, mobile training teams went out into the Army to offer the training. Today, there are 16 such locations in the Army where Soldiers can learn to be an MRT. It's expected that will expand to 28 locations by fiscal year 2015. That will offer commanders more options to get their Soldiers trained up on resilience -- and in most cases they will be able to do that training locally at one of the centers. New centers aren't the only advancements in resilience training. Riddle said there are improvements underway for the online self-development portion of the training as well. That includes both the "Global Assessment Tool", or GAT, which is designed to get an assessment of a Soldier's total health, and also the self-help modules that are available to Soldiers. "The GAT is boring," Riddle said. "The only reason Soldiers take it is because it is mandatory." He backed up his assessment by pointing out that family members and Army civilians are also allowed to take the GAT -- though not obligated to do so -- and they are not taking it. "It needs an overhaul," he said. "We need to add some 'sex appeal.'" Overhauling the GAT, and the online self-help portion of the CSF2 program that comes along with the GAT, is something Riddle said is underway now. The CSF2 program managers are adding a physical fitness dimension to a Soldier's online assessment -- that is something that Riddle said should be there already as part of a "holistic" assessment of a Soldier's fitness, but which is not. Also in the works is something Riddle called "real age," which is an algorithmically derived "age" for a Soldier, based on how they do on the GAT. "It's a carrot at the end of the stick," he said "I'd like to know my 'real age.' Am I doing things right or do I need to make some improvements?" The idea for "real age" would be that a Soldier want's his "real age" to be younger than his chronological age -- as in you are healthier, mentally, than what your chronological age would suggest. Riddle said younger Soldiers might not care about a "real age" calculation, however. Especially if they are 18 years old. For them, a "warrior performance index," something that looks like a physical training score, is in the works. He also said that instead of sending Soldiers to watch videos after taking the GAT, the Army will instead put Soldiers into an "Army fit environment," that he said is a "socially enabled interactive environment where there will be a plethora of resources and subject-matter experts, and topics and videos." Included in that "environment" is Army fitness content, as well as content and resources from industry, including the ability to get coaching electronically, follow topics or experts, watch videos, and earn points and awards for participating in programs such as diet or nutrition programs or sleep programs. He also said they are developing the system to include the ability to ingest data from user-wearable fitness-monitoring devices as well, such as Nike Plus, Fitbit and Jawbone Up, for instance. The Army Fit Environment will also include a "Soldiers Wall" similar to something like a Facebook page. SUCCESS Riddle said analytics have proven the Army's resilience program is successful. One study he cited showed that within four brigades that went through resilience training, they saw a 60 percent reduction in drug and alcohol rates. Those types of numbers, he said, are of interest to commanders. Critics, he said, will question the success of the Army's CSF2 program in the face of increasing attention to the Army's rate of suicide and sexual assault. But Riddle said resilience training is not an immediate fix -- it will take some time to change the whole Army. "We're talking about changing behavior, and life skills," Riddle said. "We're talking about changing a culture, a generation. That takes time. It's not going to happen overnight. With resilience training, you take the language and you inculcate it and integrate it and embed it in everything you do every day. It gives our squad leaders a language in which to communicate with their Soldiers that they don't have right now. And it gives them some insight at the same time into what that Soldier is thinking and why they are thinking it. These are powerful tools." Campbell outlines plans to strengthen behavioral health programs [2013-09-13] WASHINGTON -- The Army expects to have embedded behavioral health teams on Army installations and in all active brigade combat teams no later than fiscal year 2016. Speaking before the 2013 Warrior-Family Symposium, Sept. 12, in Washington, D.C., Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. John F. Campbell briefly laid out some of the Army's efforts to bolster resilience in Soldiers and strengthen its behavioral health programs for service members and their families. Campbell said the Army is focused now on an effort to "standardize, integrate, and centralize" the tracking of its behavioral health programs and behavioral health patients. To do so, they have created what he calls the "behavioral health service line." That includes six lines of effort, which he explained to the several hundred attendees of the day-long symposium. First among those is embedded behavioral healthcare. That includes "multi-disciplinary community behavioral health care to Soldiers in close proximity to where they live and to their units." That health care stays coordinated with their units and their families, he said. The Army in 2012 first directed development of embedded behavioral health teams on every Army installation, and in all active brigade combat teams. The embedded behavioral health model, Campbell said, is "an early intervention and treatment model that promotes Soldier readiness before, during and after deployment." Each embedded team usually includes a psychiatrist, three clinical psychologists, and three clinical social workers. Right now Campbell said the Army has 42 such teams across the Army -- 80 percent of which are within a brigade combat team. Implementation of embedded behavioral health care has proven effective, Campbell said; evaluation of the program "statistically [shows] significant changes in key areas such as improved mission readiness, increased outpatient utilization, and decreased need for acute in-patient psychiatric care." Second, there is also a "behavioral health data portal," which Campbell said tracks patient outcomes, satisfaction and risk factors via a web application. "It enables improved assessment of program and treatment efficacy." The portal is currently being implemented at all behavioral health centers and clinics, as well as at Army Medical Command. The Army's Child and Family Behavioral Health Services provides care to spouses and children where they live, through school programs, along with child and family assistance centers. It also includes the integration of behavioral health providers into primary care clinics. Family advocacy programs, he said, provide Soldiers training, support and "tools to establish a climate within their families that foster resilience and trust, to eliminate abuse and neglect," Campbell said. Tele-behavioral health care provides clinical behavioral health care across great distances through the use of video teleconference technology. This also enables the Army to provide care to Soldiers who are in areas where it is not readily available in person. He said about 2,000 portable video teleconference systems are now in use to facilitate tele-behavioral health care. Finally, the internal behavioral health consultant program integrates behavioral health care into primary care facilities, "in order to reduce the stigma associated with behavioral health and make it more accessible." Campbell also discussed the Army's efforts to treat post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, known as TBI; injuries that have become associated with 12 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. "We've made great progress ... to ensure that Army and all Department of Defense personnel that have potentially been involved in concussive events are properly evaluated, treated and tracked," Campbell said. To better detect possible TBI, Soldiers are equipped now in theater with three "blast gauges" that can detect their exposure to a concussive event, Campbell said. Vehicles are also being equipped with blast gauges. Campbell said a partnership with the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund produced the National Intrepid Center of Excellence at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. That is now being expanded to nine satellite centers across the country -- seven for the Army, and two for the Marine Corps. On Sept. 11, the first of those satellite centers, called "Intrepid Spirit 1," opened at Fort Belvoir, Va. "These centers increase access to quality interdisciplinary care for our Soldiers and family members," he said. "Their proximity to where the warriors live allows patients to leverage love and support of the families that are tied into this process -- the healing process. It gives them the access to the latest research." Army efforts into behavioral health are part of an overarching program called the Ready and Resilient Campaign, a "top priority" for Campbell, which he said is meant to "establish an enduring cultural change within our Army, starting with our Solders, but it has to include our families, and has to include our great Department of the Army civilians." "It integrates resilience into how we build, strengthen, maintain, and access total fitness, individual performance, and more importantly unit readiness," he continued. "Our goal is to create an Army culture that embraces resiliency as part of our profession." Rock Island enables 100-percent accountability, quick delivery of war-fighting gear [2013-09-18] WASHINGTON -- For just about a year now, employees at the Joint Manufacturing Technology Center at Rock Island Arsenal, Ill., have been making it easier for military units to get the sensor and laser equipment they need to equip their Soldiers. The Project Manager Soldier Sensors and Lasers Staging Facility at Joint Manufacturing Technology Center, or JMTC, Rock Island Arsenal, Ill., stood up in September 2012, and is coming up fast on its one-year anniversary, Sept. 28, 2013. The government-owned, government-operated facility serves as a staging area to more efficiently move equipment procured by Program Executive Office Soldier's "Project Manager Soldier Sensors and Lasers," or PM SSL, section from the manufacturer to the end user, said Joe Pearson, director of logistics for PM SSL. "The individual vendors are very capable," Pearson said. "But having a staging facility like Rock Island allows us the capability to receive and repackage the shipment just prior to each hand-off to the gaining commands." Pearson said it would be possible for manufacturers of equipment like thermal sights, or night-vision goggles or laser-designator rangefinders to send the equipment they manufacture directly to receiving units. But units preparing for deployment are authorized to be issued equipment that comes from multiple manufacturers. If the manufacturer sent items directly, units would receive items at different times and on unpredictable schedules. "Trying to orchestrate all the vendor shipments would be a challenge," Pearson said. "That would tie up the gaining commands. They wouldn't know when the shipments would arrive. We wouldn't know how long our fielders would be on the ground to issue the equipment because they would be waiting for separate shipments to come in." With the efforts at JMTC at Rock Island Arsenal, a commander's entire order for equipment is packaged at the same time, verified to be accurate, and sent all at once; and commanders know when it will arrive. "It's a staging facility," Pearson said of employees at the JMTC. "We track everything, individual serial numbers, that's what they do for us using an inventory database system. They are able to track items that come in 'first-in-first-out,' from the vendors, which actually serves the Soldiers. You want to make sure that for the equipment that is bought under warranty, if something breaks, Soldiers are able to send it back to the vendor without any cost. We can't easily do that without depending on Rock Island Staging facility." Sensor and laser equipment wasn't always fielded out of a government-owned, government-operated facility. In the past, Pearson said PM SSL has staged and distributed the equipment they procure from a variety of locations, but never one both owned and operated by the government -- which Pearson refers to as an "organic" capability. The JMTC at Rock Island, which began just a year ago doing work for PM SSL, is part of the U.S. Army Tank and Automotive Command, or TACOM. The command had already been supporting PEO Soldier with "lifecycle management" of SSL systems. And Pearson said that TACOM personnel had also been fielding PM SSL equipment to gaining units. "It was just a natural fit," he said of the choice to use JMTC at Rock Island for the staging facility. "We were looking for organic support -- and they are a totally organic organization." Pearson also said that by moving onto a military base, they have increased their level of security. Rock Island sits in the middle of the Mississippi River, near Moline, Ill. Its location on the river makes it a difficult target. "It's very hard for somebody to get there that doesn't belong there," Pearson said. The PM SSL fields about 18 different types of equipment to Soldiers out of JMTC Rock Island, including thermal weapon sights, enhanced night-vision goggles, monocular night-vision devices, aviator's night-vision imaging systems, clip-on sniper night sights, multifunction aiming light, integrated laser white-light pointers, weapons-mounted lights, aircrew laser pointers, laser target locators, and lightweight laser-designator rangefinders. Each day the JMTC ships out about 2,000 pieces of equipment to receiving units, though Pearson said that number fluctuates. Once, he said, at a prior facility, and during a surge, nearly 30,000 pieces of equipment were shipped in one day. MONEY SAVING The now nearly year-old JMTC staging facility at Rock Island doesn't just enable PM SSL to deliver critical war-fighting equipment on time to gaining commands. It also saves money, Pearson said. A recent Lean Six Sigma project showed that the facility, from fiscal year 2012-2016, is expected to save the government "at least half a million a year." In the last year, efforts at JMTC to use item-unique identification tracking tools have also drawn the attention of Headquarters Department of the Army. The advanced inventory tracking systems in use there were lauded by Army leadership because they better enable transparency in the supply chain, Pearson said. The JMTC is able to maintain a 100-percent success rate in tracking all its gear. "There is a big thing with transparency, not only with the units wanting to know what items that they have on their property books, but also from an HQDA (Headquarters, Department of the Army) perspective, in knowing what Congress appropriated, and in knowing what items were bought with what dollars," Pearson said. With budgets tightening, accurate accountability of equipment is important, Pearson said. But even more important is the PM SSL mission of supporting Soldiers in the war fight -- and that's something efforts at JMTC Rock Island enable them to do. "All of this is very important when it comes to timing and supporting units. The units usually have a complicated pre-deployment schedule. Without having what JMTC does for us up there, we couldn't easily support the units. The goal is to get them everything from our specific portfolio that they need to go to win the fight." Life-saving ESAPI plate returned to Soldier [2013-09-19] WASHINGTON -- When Sgt. Joseph Morrissey stepped out of his vehicle onto a military supply route in Afghanistan, Aug. 9, 2012, he didn't know it would be the day his body armor would prove to be worth the weight and discomfort that comes with wearing it. "It was basically like getting a sucker punch that you didn't expect," Morrissey said of being shot. "It's kind of an unexpected feeling and takes your breath away; it knocks the wind out of you a little bit -- but I kept my balance the whole time." Despite being hit in the chest with a 7.62mm round from about 30 meters, Morrissey remained uninjured. The ceramic "Enhanced Small Arms Protective Insert," or ESAPI, he wore, which weighs about 3.5 pounds, stopped the bullet and saved his life. On Sept. 18, 2013, a year after the incident in Afghanistan, Morrissey and his wife Nikki Morrissey traveled from Fort Bragg, N.C., to Program Executive Office, or PEO, Soldier at Fort Belvoir, Va., to retrieve the ceramic plate that enabled their life together to continue. "It's amazing how much my life has changed in the last year, and to think it wouldn't have been possible without that piece of equipment," Morrissey said. "I've been married since then; I have a child on the way." After he was shot, Morrissey finished out the reminder of his tour protected by a new ESAPI plate. The plate that saved his life redeployed so it could be evaluated by scientists at PEO Soldier and the Joint Trauma Analysis and Prevention of Injury in Combat Program. Their analysis of the plate will help the joint war-fighting team better understand injuries, and will also help PEO Soldier design better protective gear. Command Sgt. Maj. Emmett Maunakea, PEO Soldier, returned the plate to Morrissey in a small ceremony at PEO Soldier headquarters. The event was attended by dozens of scientists, engineers and staffers of the agency responsible for fielding to Soldiers such things as body armor, laser sights, and individual and crew-served weapons. "These are the hidden faces behind all of the equipment that gets issued by PEO Soldier," Maunakea said, addressing Morrissey. "These are the science and technology folks, the research and development folks, the acquisition professionals. These are the people who bring together all of the kit that you wear down range. And this is as much their moment for them because this is one of the few times the PEO Soldier team actually gets to watch one of the plate returns." To the PEO Soldier staff, Maunakea let them know that Morrissey, standing there in the room with them with his new bride -- is the reason they come to work in the morning. "Everything I've talked with you all about before, this is where it all culminates," he said. "We've got a Soldier who got hit, went back in to continue to patrol, and finished an entire rotation, came back and he's standing here today -- here with his wife and father-in-law and a battle buddy from one of his deployments. And he's here because of exactly everything you all do. It's every piece of equipment you put your blood sweat and tears into -- that's what saved Sergeant Morrissey's life, and that's why he's able to be here today." For making available to him and other service members the protective gear that saved his life, Morrissey thanked the PEO Soldier team -- a team he said he hadn't known existed until he arrived to pick up his plate. "I didn't even know this place existed," Morrissey said. "I didn't understand the process of testing our equipment. I just know equipment is given to you, it's what you use, and you go on every day with it. I want to say 'thank you very much' for everything you guys do; without you I wouldn't be here. It's been a little over a year since the incident happened, and in the last year I was able to come home from that deployment, I married my fiancée -- probably the happiest day of my life -- and shortly thereafter, I found we have a baby on the way." If Morrissey is a believer now in the protective armor he wears downrange, he wasn't always so. Like many Soldiers who wear the heavy protective gear, he said he sometimes had doubts if it was worth the burden of carrying that much weight on his shoulders. "Before I actually had put this equipment to the test, on a personal level, I didn't have faith in it because of stories I'd heard -- that it won't stop a 7.62, that it won't save you from anything," Morrissey said. "There's always rumors going on. Most people in the Army are going to tell you they don't like wearing the body armor because it is heavy and uncomfortable. Whatever their excuse is, they don't want to wear it." Now, he said, he's a believer. "After putting it to the test, regardless of the weight, regardless of the comfort, you can't beat having your life saved," he said. "Regardless of how heavy it is, or how uncomfortable it is -- the equipment works." Morrissey's s wife, Nikki, said the plate allowed her to have her husband -- and says the plate will be displayed prominently in their home. "It's going to get hung up somewhere where it's very visible," she said. Futures wargame prepares Army for 2030 [2013-09-20] WASHINGTON -- The Army doesn't know for sure what the global environment will look like around 2030, but it's likely going to have to conduct operations then when called upon to do so. To prepare for that time, the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command conducted a Unified Quest Deep Futures Wargame at Carlisle Barracks, Pa., Sept. 16-20, 2013. The wargame takes predictions about the future strategic environment, from insights that come from the National Intelligence Council 2030 study and other sources, including the Army's own studies, and uses that environment as the foundation for two teams to independently wargame the same fictional futures scenario. While the future strategic environment is something nobody can be 100 percent sure of, the Army's wargame works on a futures model predicted by using 40 geostrategic, military, science, and technology trends. Included in futures predictions are the effects of expanding nation states, non-state actors that include groups like Hezbollah and al Qaeda, non-government agencies and even large global corporations. Also included in futures predictions are the effects of climate change, shifting demographics, urbanization, information, and technological trends, said Maj. Gen. William C. Hix, deputy director, Army Capabilities Integration Center. "What you see in terms of the environment -- because of this interconnection, which is also reflected in the globalized nature of our society and the increasing technological dependence of global society -- [are] events unfolding more quickly," Hix said. "You see the second- and third-order effects of those events impacting on a wider scale in terms of having a global impact. That drives us to consider how do we influence those events at speed -- arrest their acceleration, control those events and try to restore to some degree of stability an area that has gone 'tilt,' if you will." One team involved in the wargame was equipped as today's Army, as it is programmed to be in 2030. The other team is equipped with "things that are possible but not yet programmed into the Army," Hix said. "One of the outcomes of the more technologically enabled force is that they can respond in the game more rapidly," Hix said. "They can cut the time in half, or maybe two-thirds. It allows the political leadership to respond very rapidly to something that is happening very quickly. If the event can be responded to over a longer period of time, what we are really doing is giving the president, the secretary and others more political space to maneuver." While the two teams worked through the challenges of a theoretical conflict more than 17 years in the future, and each used a different capability set, they were able to develop insights into how today's Army can better prepare for an uncertain future. This wargame, Hix said, focuses on two operational issues; one of those is the "imperative of speed." Key findings of the emerging operating environment is the "momentum of human interaction." Hix said that includes the information that can be amassed, and the ideas that can be shared by people through the use of technology, as well as the ability to organize and take action. "That momentum is something we see accelerating into the future, which will compress the decision space of our political leadership, and will drive the imperative for Army forces to be able to respond to it and influence events at the speed at which they occur," Hix said. "This creates options both militarily, and, potentially, we should be able to provide more decision space back to our political leadership." New operational approaches are also a focus in the wargame, he said, in addition to "revisiting" old ones. "Non-linear operations, such as what we saw when we conducted Just Cause in Panama, is something we're looking at," he said. "How do we do that on a more routine basis against a variety of different challenges?" The outcome of a wargame such as the one conducted at Carlisle Barracks is the ability to help Army senior leadership of today chart a better course for the Army of tomorrow. Right now, Hix said, the Army is spinning down from being an operational Army to one that is preparing, or getting ready for the next fight. He said being prepared means being ready for the next fight, and it also means laying the groundwork today that will help an Army in the future be ready to fight. "There are a couple of things we can impact today that we will see the effects of in 2030 and 2040," Hix said. "The senior leaders of the Army in 2030-2040 are in the Army today. So we need to look at what are the implications and the things that we need to start doing today with the officers and non-commissioned officers that we have, to start educating them over time, so they are prepared to deal with that environment." Hix also said the Army can start thinking now about what types of Soldiers it will need to fight in a future environment; what types of Soldiers it will need to recruit today and in the near future, in order to have a capable Army in 2030. In addition to personnel issues, the Army must also lay the groundwork today to ensure the future Army has the tools and technology it will need. Hix said that doesn't necessarily mean buying new equipment today, or spelling out exactly what kinds of weapons are going to be needed. Instead, it means ensuring the Army remains committed to robust science and technology development. "[It's] not predicting the systems the future force will need, but looking to make sure we are focusing our science and technology investments today so that in the mid-2020s, those leaders have more options to draw from as they reshape the force for that decade," Hix said. While a "deep futures" wargame can't truly predict what the strategic environment will look like, Hix said already the Army is aware of some things it needs to focus on to be more prepared for the uncertainty that is going to come. "It is to our advantage to be more involved in the international environment, working mil-to-mil relationships, enabling diplomatic, economic and information activities around the world, attracting partners, reassuring allies, creating deterrent structures to maintain a degree of balance strategically, and then through all those activities being postured to respond when that strategic balance is upset," he said. The goal of the Unified Quest Deep Futures Wargame, Hix said, is to "inform decisions today so we can create options for tomorrow." The wargame will generate some "insights," he said, that can be brought to Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno, to better inform him on decisions he will make now to ensure the Army can be successful in the future. "What we will be able to do is bring him some insights and help him think about the implications of this deep future, which really isn't that far away; to inform his thinking on where he needs to make investments," Hix said. Sunday to honor Gold Star Mothers [2013-09-26] WASHINGTON -- This Sunday, the Army and the nation will, for the 77th time, turn their attention to mothers who have lost sons or daughters while fighting America's wars. The Congress first created "Gold Star Mother's Day" in 1936 to honor those women whose children were taken from them as a result of war. "The Gold Star Mothers, as well as all family members who bear the enormous burden of loss, will always be cherished members of our great Army family. We maintain our commitment to support these families while honoring the legacy of our fallen Soldiers," stated Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno and Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III in a tri-signed letter to the Army. Donna Engeman, program manager of the U.S. Army Survivor Outreach Services, is also a "Gold Star Wife." She lost her military husband. She said just the letter from Army senior leadership -- proof that the Army recognizes the heartache of those who lost their loved ones -- is meaningful. "The feedback we get is that this is very important to our Gold Star Mothers," said Engeman. "They tell us it's very heartwarming to them, it's comforting to them to be remembered and recognized by the Army." The Army's Survivor Outreach Services provides access to support, information and services for those who have lost a Soldier. The services are provided at the closest location to where the survivor resides, Engeman said, and for as long as they desire. In the nation's capital, the Army will join all Americans in support of the 2013 Gold Star Mother's Day. Memorial events will be held at Arlington National Cemetery, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Tomb of the Unknowns. Army leaders are also encouraging Soldiers, their families, and Army civilians to take time to remember both those who have given their lives in service to their country and the loved ones they have left behind. Around the Army, Engeman said, many installations are having events to honor and recognize Gold Star Mothers. Included are various picnics, luncheons, and breakfasts. "Gold Star Mother's Day is important because it's a day set aside to recognize mothers who have lost a son or daughter on active-duty service," Engeman said. "If you think about it, we have Mother's Day, every May. But when you have lost a son or daughter in service to our nation, Mother's Day is not the same. This day, Gold Star Mother's Day, is set aside to honor mothers who have lost a son or daughter who made the ultimate sacrifice. And it recognized the loss of our mothers." Survivor Outreach Services works with more than 56,000 "survivors." That includes not just Gold Star Mothers, but also spouses -- like Engeman -- and other family members, including children. "The Survivor's Outreach Services is kind of a big process, but a simple concept," said Hal Snyder, chief, Wounded and Fallen Branch, U.S. Army Survivor Outreach Services. "It's to continually link our surviving families to the Army for as long as they desire; that they remain part of the Army family. That is a promise that has been made to our surviving families and it is part of the job of SOS to honor that promise and to provide the services and support that link these families to the Army." Engeman said services to Gold Star mothers and other surviving family members are provided by local resources such as support groups. The SOS works to put surviving family members in touch with those services, and can also coordinate counseling. "Many of our survivors have asked for and sometimes need some financial counseling and education on how best to care for their families after the loss of their Soldiers," Engeman said. "We have extensive financial counseling and education available. Our job is really to get to know our survivors and develop a personal and professional relationship with them, and help them walk through their grief journey. As you get to know your survivors, you find out or you come to understand what they are looking for and what their needs are and we help them navigate that." The SOS is available to surviving family members of Soldiers across the total Army -- including the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve. During World War I, families would hang flags in their windows that were white with red borders. Inside, a blue star would represent each family member who was serving in the military. When a service member was killed, the blue star was changed to a gold star. In 1947, the Gold Star Lapel pin was designed and created to be presented to eligible surviving family members of service members who died while deployed in support of overseas contingency operations, or who died from wounds sustained in theater. Army live-stream of AUSA exposition to allow viewer participation [2013-10-10] WASHINGTON -- This year, the Army will live-stream nearly every discussion panel that occurs at the 2013 Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C. Remote viewers will also be able to interact with panelists via social media. Many Soldiers will not be able to attend the Oct. 21-23 event in person, due to lack of budget and restrictions on travel. However, the educational and professional development panels will be available to them online, and they will even be able to ask questions. "We look at the Army part of AUSA as a great opportunity for professional development," said Maj. Alison M. Hamilton, of Army Public Affairs. "Live-streaming these forums will give Soldiers the opportunity to hear senior-leader priorities, learn how they view changes in the force over the next ten years, and hear about important policy decisions and the Ready and Resilient Campaign. They will also be able to ask questions, feel engaged, and be more connected to decision makers." This year's AUSA will undoubtedly have an emphasis on declining budgets. But the symposium will also feature discussions related to military families, equipment modernization, the Ready and Resilient Campaign, energy security, regionally aligned forces, leader development, equipping the Army of the future, and the security of North America. Live-streaming of the multiple panels will be available through a microsite on Army.mil, at www.army.mil/professional. Soldiers and family members will also be able to ask questions of the speakers at appropriate times through social media. On site at the convention, moderators will pass questions from remote viewers on to the speakers. "If I'm in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, I'll be able to say my name and submit my question -- to address questions to the panel or to specific panel member," said Hamilton. The Army has live-streamed AUSA panels in the past. But last year, for instance, only the "family forums" allowed for interaction. This year, all panels will allow for virtual engagement, Hamilton said. "Every year the virtual audience increases," Hamilton said. "Last year the Institute of Land Warfare forums were not interactive. This year we thought about how to make it better, and encourage more to watch. We thought about giving them the ability to participate, feel connected, and get important questions answered." Hamilton said every effort will be made to answer as many questions as possible -- but it will not be possible to answer them all. Opening up all the panels for interaction is something that Hamilton said was requested by Soldiers and family members in the field. "This is a cost-effective way to be able to reach a larger sort of total Army audience," she said. "We're trying to increase support to the Soldiers that can't travel, so they still can benefit from professional development." Hamilton also said that multiple events will be live-streamed at the same time, and will also be recorded. Soldiers will be able to go back at a later time to watch panels they missed. Army's special victims prosecutors bring enhanced expertise to courtroom [2013-10-16] WASHINGTON -- In 2009, the Army's secretary directed the creation of 15 slots for "special victim prosecutors." Last summer, that number grew to 24. These Army lawyers enhance the prosecution of offenders with increased expertise, unique training, and specialization. There are anywhere between 400 and 500 unit trial counselors across the Army. These are the lawyers at brigade level and above who prosecute offenders at courts-martial on behalf of their commanders. These Army lawyers are expected to prosecute any offense in their unit, including thefts, physical violence, malingering and even murder, said Lt. Col. Alexander N. Pickands, deputy, Trial Counsel Assistance Program. Many of these lawyers, however, may be on their first stint as a prosecutor, Pickands said. "Those trial counsel have anywhere between zero and 18 to 24 months being a prosecutor -- which isn't a great deal," he said. The Army's special victim prosecutors, or SVPs, managed by the Trial Council Assistance Program, augment the sometimes limited expertise of unit trial counselors in prosecuting a more narrow range of crimes, including sexual assault, child abuse, child sexual exploitation, and serious domestic violence. "They differ from the trial counsel in that all the SVPs are much more senior and experienced; they are nominated for the positions, and then they go through specialized training in addition to that," Pickands said. The Army's cadre of SVPs don't serve particular installations or commands, as do unit trial counselors. Instead, they serve regions that may have multiple Army installations and commands. Of the 24 SVPs in the Army now, two now serve in Germany, with one assigned specifically to that country, and the other also serving units in U.S. Central Command. There is also an SVP in Korea who serves units there and in Japan. Additionally, there is an SVP in both Hawaii and Alaska. The reaming SVPs serve in the United States, with one being assigned to the Judge Advocate General School at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. Pickands said today there are now no jurisdictions in the Army without SVP coverage. That coverage has resulted in a "better focus" on offender behavior, instead of victim behavior, "which was for many years kind of the thing that discouraged most victims from reporting." With the increased expertise of SVPs, investigations now look at histories of subjects -- perpetrators -- more closely, Pickands said. "We're looking at making connections with previous victims of sexual assault, out of a recognition that usually if the behavior is predatory, there are other people in the past who might be identified as victims, which tremendously strengthens the evidence at trial," he said. "A lot of our cases are benefiting from a more thorough investigation that is focused on the accused rather than the victim," he said. Pickands also said Army prosecutors are now doing "a lot better in communicating with victims than we did in the past." In the past, he said, he'd talk to victims early in an investigation, "then I probably wouldn't see that victim again until I was charging the case." There might also be delays in the case, he said, which increases the amount of time where the prosecutor would not communicate with victims. Now there is "almost continuous communication with the victim over the course of the prosecution, and that makes a huge difference because it improves the relationship between the prosecutor and the victim," Pickands said. "It increases victim awareness of the process moving forward, and confidence that there are many people working on the prosecution, and championing her account in court. And victims are better involved in decisions." If the defense offers a guilty plea, or another stipulation, for instance, victims are made aware of that. Success of the SVP program is also measured in the cases that come to trial. Those cases, he said, have "much more detailed corroboration of reports." "You can see over time somebody who is more experienced at prosecuting these types of cases will have many more points of intersection between other people's testimony and evidence and the victim's account of what happened," he said. "I've seen that improve dramatically over the years." Pickands said that SVPs perform two functions for the Army. One is to help represent the government in prosecuting offenders for breaking the law. The other function they serve is to help "improve the pool of competence in trial counsel in their area." The SVPs, being more experienced prosecutors, help trial counselors improve their skills. "They do a lot of training," Pickands said. "Some of that training is training by doing, by prosecuting these cases with more experienced SVPs. Some is formal training. I would create classes for trial counsel and for unit victim advocates and so forth. And some is informal training. If I saw a particular issue that kept coming up in cases in that jurisdiction, I would put my arms around the trial counsel there and give them a quick class on whatever that issue is." BECOMING AN SVP Pickands said SVPs are nominated for their positions and end up being interviewed by the Army's Judge Advocate General before being assigned. Afterward, there is a significant amount of work involved before starting in their new position. One of those requirements, Pickands said, included on-the-job training with a civilian prosecution office, "usually in their functional equivalent to a sex crimes division or special victim unit." Pickands did time with the Los Angeles County, Calif., District Attorney's office. "I wanted to go for the biggest city, the business city I could arrange to do on-the-job training with," he said. "The crimes I saw prosecuted there looked the same as those I have prosecuted for years in the Army," he said. "It makes sense; we are, after all, an all-volunteer force drawn from all of the same communities across the nation, who face these troubles every day. I do believe in the transformative power of the uniform, but it does not change people overnight, and it does not change all people." Army SVPs must also participate in: -- The Sexual Assault Trial Advocacy Course -- Civilian sector training -- TCAP-provided SVP conference -- The annual National District Attorney's Association's Career Prosecutor Course -- The TCAP's New Prosecutor's Course and Essential Strategies for Sexual Assault Prosecution training "Many SVPs also have other advanced, specialized training, such as child forensic interviewing, advanced victim interviewing techniques, behavioral health issues in the criminal justice system, capital and complex litigation, and more," he said. Army 'can't afford' not to have Rapid Equipping Force, leader says [2013-10-18] WASHINGTON -- The Army's Rapid Equipping Force plays such an important role in providing Soldiers with what they need to complete their mission that its commander is confident his organization will continue in one form or another even after budget cuts shrink the Army. "I think there is great support for the REF (Rapid Equipping Force) at the highest level of the Army," said Col. Steven Sliwa, director, Army Rapid Equipping Force, during a media event at Fort Belvoir, Oct. 16. "I have full faith I can continue on in this job and employ a workforce that is the REF that goes into the future." In the past, the process for meeting Soldier operational demands was often not as quick as commanders would like. The Army's Rapid Equipping Force, or REF, was stood up in 2002, to fill that role -- to provide rapid solutions to problems Soldiers in Afghanistan encountered while conducting their mission. Such solutions can be developed in-house by REF engineers, and fielded quickly to Soldiers using commercial off-the-shelf or government-created technology. Despite budget cuts, and inevitable program and personnel cuts, Sliwa said he thinks the Army knows that the capability REF provides is something they will want to keep. "I think many have come to the conclusion that we cannot afford to not have the REF," he said. In 2002, when Soldiers first went into Afghanistan, the REF was responsible for getting some of the first robotics into theater in response to Soldier needs. Soldiers there were running into booby traps and explosives while searching and clearing caves. Within 30 days of receiving a request for a solution, the REF was able to field four robotic devices to Soldiers, allowing them to send a robot into the caves first to look around, before sending in troops. "It's small, advanced, easy enough for a Soldier to use without a whole lot of training, and something he can carry," Sliwa said of the "Pack Bot" solution the REF provided. "Who really wants to hear that somebody had to go into a cave to do something without a set of eyes going in there ahead of time?" Since then the REF has provided thousands of immediate or near immediate "rapid" solutions to equipment problems Soldiers encounter in the field. The REF operates out of Fort Belvoir, but it also have forward facilities in Afghanistan, permanently operating out of both Bagram Airfield and Kandahar Airfield. Last year, the REF also stood up three mobile laboratories that can solve many Soldier problems on location at the forward operating base from which they operate. The labs, built into metal shipping containers, can be packed up and moved to where they are needed most. The mobile labs have the ability to rapidly prototype solutions for Soldiers out of both plastic and metal, using either 3D printers or a CNC milling machine. CNC stands for computer numerical control. Such a machine can take a chunk of metal and with a computer controlled router, carve the same part out of metal that the 3D printer made earlier out of plastic. Right now, one of the three "Expeditionary Laboratories," or Ex Labs, is located at REF headquarters in Virginia. The other two are in Afghanistan, one within Regional Command-East, and one within Regional Command-South. "The idea of the mobile lab is we bring the solutions to you," said Dr. Albert Vega, an engineer with REF. He was deployed to one of the labs in Afghanistan in June 2012, and returned in April. "With the idea of 'you have a problem, we have a solution' -- that whole iteration is so much faster if we do it right next to you," Vega said. "You just plop the lab where the need is." With the rapid prototyping capability of the lab, he said, solutions can be delivered to Soldiers in days or weeks instead of months. During his deployment to Afghanistan, Vega worked for a short time alongside Master Sgt. William Pascual, also with the REF. Each lab is staffed with two engineers, an operations advisor, and a non-commissioned officer, or NCO. The Ex Labs are staffed with an NCO, Sliwa said, to help facilitate better communication between the engineering staff and the Soldiers who need their help. "They can talk to the unit on their terms using their language as only NCOs can," Sliwa said. "They know the language as only NCOs and Soldiers can. They know the art of war, and they can relate to the requirements coming in." Pascual said that having both an engineer and an NCO on board means that problems can be seen from both an engineering perspective and a Soldier perspective. Having both perspectives means success, he said. "The camaraderie, the joining of the scientist and the NCO, is what makes the lab successful," he said. Since they've been deployed, the Ex Labs have provided multiple solutions to Soldiers, including the "X90 USB power supply," which allows Soldiers to charge standard USB devices using a common X90 military battery. The first of the tiny adapters was delivered to Soldiers within a week of their request. The REF engineers were able to develop the power supply through modification of commercial off-the-shelf technology. REF personnel in Ex Labs were also able to develop a cover to protect the valve stems on the tires of some military vehicles. Soldiers had found that in close-quarters, the valve stems were breaking after brushing up against obstacles -- that left them and their convoys stranded in enemy territory. Sgt. 1st Class Adam Asclipiadis, with REF, is another NCO who deployed with an Ex Lab. He said that within its mobile labs, the Army helped develop for Soldiers an adapter that allows them to power hand-held mine sweepers with the more common X90 battery instead of the included battery, which allows only 5-8 hours of operation during missions that last as long as 24 hours. "Before, patrols would have to stop until they could circulate these batteries from another unit and then continue the mission," Asclipiadis said. "It was a high-impact solution." Sliwa said the REF has a future. While Afghanistan will draw down, the Army will continue to operate in other locations around the world, and he said he thinks REF can be there to meet those needs. "When you think about it, REF has been that key gap filler to take on unique non-standard equipment not available in the Army system," Sliwa said. "It's tough for the Army to be ready for everything. From an equipment standpoint, you can't have everything on the shelf ready to go. Where the REF has been able to fill in is where we have unique challenges and we have been able to provide limited quantities of equipment for those unit challenges." With budget cuts, Sliwa said REF will get smaller, but probably won't disappear. He said a challenge will be retaining the ability to expand as needed -- likely with contractor support -- to meet the changing demands of the Army. "How do we expand and contract so that we are right sized, but able to grow to the size required to meet the demands of any operation? We don't want to lose the 12 years of lessons we've learned. We don't want to lose the 12 years of relationships we've built and the knowledge of industry and what is out there on the tech side. That would be tragic." SecArmy McHugh: Budget cuts affecting readiness [2013-10-21] WASHINGTON -- Budget cuts, sequestration and continuing resolutions have exacted "great cost" on Army readiness, said the Army's secretary. During the opening of the 2013 Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C., Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh said the Army has worked hard to make ends meet in the face of requirements to reduce the budget, sequestration, lack of timely appropriations bills, furloughs and a recent government shutdown. But despite those efforts, he said, the Army has suffered in real ways, in terms of preparedness. "We're making every possible adjustment in these random across-the-board reductions ... adjustments that have helped us better prioritize our most pressing needs," McHugh said. "But I want to be very frank here. For all of our efforts, for all of the hard work that everybody has put forward, the current and the ongoing fiscal realities have extracted a great cost, not just in financial terms, but costs in real-world programs and real-world preparedness and real-world manpower." McHugh said the "indiscriminate nature" of sequestration has forced declines in readiness for the Army. In particular, he cited equipment readiness and personnel readiness for Soldiers. The secretary said the Army's chief logistician recently told Congress that there is an inventory of equipment that needs to be repaired from Afghanistan -- 800 vehicles, 2,000 weapons and 32 helicopters, for instance. It's "unrepaired and unavailable," he said. Soldiers are also not getting qualified on their M-4 weapons unless they are getting prepared to deploy. The secretary said sequestration has cost the Army $1.7 billion for reset in fiscal year 2013. "This is no way to manage the greatest military the world has ever known," he said. "And it sure as hell is no way to manage the greatest country on the face of this earth." Later, during a press conference alongside Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the secretary said that despite the budget cuts, and lack of uncertainty in funding for Army training and equipment readiness, Soldiers will never go to war unless they are ready to go. "The chief and I have made a commitment to ourselves and to the men and women who wear the uniform and their families, and that is for all the of the tough times that they have ahead, whatever the Army end strength and its budgets may look like, we will never send the Soldier into war unprepared, untrained and improperly equipped," McHugh said. Odierno told reporters at a press conference following the opening ceremony that right now, there are only two brigades are ready for combat operations. Another two brigades, he said, are ready to go to Afghanistan. But those units are ready for "train and advise" missions, not combat operations. Odierno said he expects to up that number to seven brigades trained by June 2014, however. McHugh and Odeirno also touched on some force-reduction efforts. In particular, a directive by the secretary of defense to reduce headquarters staffs by 20 percent. McHugh, however, upped that number to 25 percent. "The headquarters cuts are not directly intended to address units, these are administrative functionaries," he said. The secretary said those personnel, largely civilians, play an important role in the Army. But he said he and the chief feel they can take some out. "The chief and I felt very strongly that headquarters reduction was a place that we could just do things more smartly and do it with fewer people," he said. Odierno said the potential cuts could be in the thousands, and the plan might be implemented somewhere around 2015 and beyond. "The response we've gotten is very positive from our subordinate commands. They are working this hard. They understand that we have to become more efficient and effective," he said. On the military side, there are already plans to reduce the end strength of the Army to 490,000 by 2017. Earlier this year, the Army spelled out which brigades would be eliminated to make that happen. Odierno said that now that plan may be sped up to 2015, instead of 2017. "We are still working through the budget process to decide that," he said. Westphal: Small businesses critical to readiness of Army [2013-10-22] WASHINGTON -- The Army must "widen that aperture" to allow easier access for small businesses to find opportunity with the largest of America's military services. During a discussion Oct. 21, at the 2013 Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition, in Washington, D.C., Under Secretary of the Army Dr. Joseph W. Westphal met with dozens of small business owners and representatives to hear their success stories on working with the Army as well as the challenges they face. "How do I as the under secretary of the Army and the chief management officer of this department do something, at least in the Army, to help small businesses compete better?" Westphal asked them. The AUSA annual meeting and exposition typically consists of three days of briefings and presentations by Army and command senior leaders. But before a room of small business representatives and owners, Westphal opted instead to let the audience speak, saying he wanted instead to have a "dialogue" with business representatives. The under secretary said he wants to "find better and more significant ways to open that aperture for small businesses in the Army." That would include, he said, more than just Army websites that point out how well the Army is doing with small businesses. It would include finding ways to help small businesses engage better with the Army. One small business owner said he thought that the Army might hold more "regular and useful advance briefings to industry." He told the secretary that some of the Army commands "do a really good job" in presenting advanced planning briefings for industry, known as APBIs, to small business owners. Those APBIs spell out upcoming business opportunities that small businesses may opt to attempt to take advantage of. Other commands, he said, offer little more than "org charts." Westphal acknowledged that the Army must do a better job of providing more meaningful and substantial APBIs to industry. "No org charts. We'll put a memo out on that," he said, drawing a laugh from the audience. During the short engagement, one Army civilian who works in a small business office said that the Army's small business workforce is too small. That workforce helps the Army interface with small businesses. In some places, she said, small business offices are "one deep." "We do need your help with a couple of things," Westphal answered, addressing the audience. "Did you ever meet a politician who didn't' say 'I'm for jobs?'" "We need you all to remind them to help push us to be more aggressive with small businesses," he said. "And what that means is that if they ask us those questions at hearings and they demand more information from us, then I think that will help us. It will help us to be able to put the dollars in the right place as well." At the AUSA conference, hundreds of defense contractors have displays showcasing their business offerings. Many of those defense contractors, though, are small businesses. Their displays are eclipsed by the displays of the larger defense contractors who manufacture Army helicopters and combat vehicles. During an interview with Army Broadcasting, Westphal said he likes to walk the display floor alone -- separate from the entourage of handlers and military officers that usually accompany him -- and talk to small businesses to see what they offer and how the Army can help them. He said these businesses are critical to both the nation and to the Army. "What can we do to increase the opportunity for small businesses?" Westphal asked. "They are the heart of our nation's economic strength. Most jobs are in small business. Small businesses are the core and essence of our communities. The more we can persuade the big contractors to do more work with small businesses, and keep them viable, the better our country is." Army Undersecretary: Furloughs disservice to Army civilians [2013-10-22] WASHINGTON -- In the last six months, Army civilians have faced two work stoppages: one in July with six weeks of four-day work weeks, and most recently, more than two weeks of a government shutdown. During an Oct. 21 interview with Army Broadcasting at the 2013 Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition, in Washington, D.C., Under Secretary of the Army Dr. Joseph W. Westphal said that is no way to treat a workforce that has served the Army honorably during more than a decade of war. "Our Army civilians are public servants. They don't just serve the Army, they serve the nation. And they are absolutely, critically important to our ability to be a ready force in the future," he said. "I have traveled around the Army and I've talked to our civilians. I've listened to them. Furloughing our civilian workforce undermines our ability as an Army to maintain readiness." Army civilians serve throughout the United States, overseas, and are deployed in war zones. Army civilians, Westphal said, are "integral to everything we do." "For the past 12 years our Army civilians have been there, supporting our warfighters, supporting our missions, working incredible hours doing tremendous public service," he said. "Furloughing them is wrong and it hurts our total Army." The under secretary said the Army is working with Congress and with the president to "ensure we don't do this again." NO BUDGET HURTS READINESS Westphal also said that budget uncertainty is hurting the Army's ability to train and maintain readiness. "We are reducing the number of National Training Center rotations. We've reduced a significant amount of training over the last few months as we've transitioned from last year's budget to this budget," he said. "The unstable fiscal picture gives us some pretty daunting challenges. But the secretary and the chief are adamant we are going to do the utmost to maintain our levels of readiness. The president will always have his Army trained and ready to go whenever he needs us." To make that happen, Westphal said, the Army will have to reduce costs, become more efficient, and become more innovative. "In the training area we will have to use more simulation. We have to use more technologies, we have to train our Soldiers and build capacity in different ways than we have traditionally done." BUDGET AFFECTS MORALE Declining budgets, lack of an appropriations bill, sequestration, and continuing resolutions are making it hard for the Army to do business, Westphal said. And as Army leaders talk about the challenges of operating in a constrained fiscal environment, Soldiers and their families are listening and are increasingly concerned about the future. "We must be clear about how resilient our Army really is -- we're not going to compromise on key issues that are important to our Soldiers and their families," Westphal said. "Our commitment during these challenging times is to convey that the all Army senior leaders are mindful of the challenges and the working hard to address them," he continued. "And that we are guiding this Army into the future in a very viable and positive way. We will have some rough tides to go through -- but we will get though that. "We have about 45,000 Soldiers deployed in Afghanistan; still a very complex combat zone and we will continue focusing on that mission to ensure our Soldiers, and Army civilians, are fully supported as we transition," he said. "We will never put our Soldiers, and those who support them, in peril." Odierno: Those who doubt relevance of ground forces naïve [2013-10-23] WASHINGTON -- Ground forces, including Soldiers, Marines and special operations troops, will continue to play a critical role in supporting America's defense and joint fight, despite the opinions of "intellectuals" who might believe otherwise, said the Army's chief of staff. "I worry about this discussion that land power is something that is obsolete," said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno. "There is nothing further from the truth. There are a lot of intellectuals out there who believe land power is obsolete. In my opinion, as I have said before, it is naïve and in fact, in my mind, it is a dangerous thought." Odierno discussed the future of strategic land power alongside counterparts from both the Marine Corps and Special Operations Command during a panel discussion Oct. 23 at the 2013 Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition, in Washington, D.C. A theme common within the periodic discussions on the demise of the importance of land forces and ground troops is that technology -- whether it be missiles, aviation assets, or remotely controlled vehicles -- will replace the need for boots on the ground. That is something Odierno disputes as well. "There are many people that believe that through technology advancement, we can solve all of the issues of warfare," Odienro said. "I absolutely reject that concept. What I do agree with is technological advances can support us in attaining our goals." Warfare is about human interaction, not about machines, the general said. "It is people who make decisions and you have to be able to compel people. Yes, you can use technology to help you compel people. But ultimately it requires, in my opinion, an interaction on the ground." The Army has had 12 years now to develop expertise in the "human domain" of war fighting, one of three concepts Odierno said "intersect in his mind" when he thinks about strategic land power. The other two are land power and the cyber domain. "Human interaction in a complex environment is key to our success in the future," he said. "It is going to require a joint force that is skilled in understanding the physical, cognitive, the information, cultural and social environments we have to operate in the future." After 12 years of developing a mastery of the human domain, he said, the Army doesn't want to lose those skills. The Army has now built the concept into its training at Army combat training centers like the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, La., and the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif. "We are going to get back to sending 25 to 30 units through CTCs each year. That's the intent as we go forward," he said. "We are reinvigorating our combat training centers. And in our combat training centers, you are going to have to do this," Odierno said. "This is embedded in all of our future training. We are going to continue to revise it and update it." Also bolstering the Army's expertise within the human dimension is the interaction that Soldiers have with allied militaries as part of the Army's regionally aligned forces concept. Under RAF, the Army continues to cycle units overseas to combatant commanders to help develop the military skills of partner nations though combined exercises and training. At the same time, Soldiers involved continue to develop their own skills in understating other cultures and other parts of the world. Despite budget crunch, JLTV purchase plans remain unchanged [2013-10-28] WASHINGTON -- Despite budget cuts, furloughs, sequestration, continuing resolutions, ongoing changes in force structure, and a government shutdown, both the Army and Marine Corps are committed to buying the same amount of Joint Light Tactical Vehicles they initially set out to purchase. The Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, or JLTV, is designed to replace the Humvee, and to bring additional capability to both the Army and the Marine Corps. It is lighter and more mobile than the mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle, but it also provides more survivability than the Humvee. The Army expects to buy 49,000 of the vehicles, while the Marine Corps expects to buy 5,500. Col. John Cavedo, manager of the Joint Program Office for the JLTV, said even as the Army changes in size due to end-strength reductions, and the force structure changes as a result, the Army will still want the same number of vehicles. "Reductions to match the force structure would come at a reduced number of 30-year-old Humvees," he said, indicating that the Army expects to buy all 49,000 JLTVs, and will simply eliminate Humvees more quickly than expected. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Mike Burks, deputy manager of the Joint Program Office for the JLTV, said the same. "Let me be clear on the front of Marine Corps commitment to JLTV: We are in," he said. "Right now, in the current conversation, in the context of the size the Marine Corps is looking at, 5,500 JLTVs is good enough to meet deployed commanders critical mission needs in the Marine Corps' most dangerous combat mission profiles." There are currently three defense contractors in competition to be named manufacturer of the JLTV for the Army and Marine Corps. Those competitors are Oshkosh Defense, Lockheed Martin, and AM General. AM General manufactured the Humvee. In August, each of the three manufacturers delivered 22 of their vehicle prototypes to the Army and Marine Corps for testing. A total of 66 vehicles in all were delivered. Today, those vehicles are spread out across multiple sites for testing. Kevin M. Fahey, Program Executive Officer for Combat Support and Combat Service Support, said the JLTV program is, despite some budget issues, largely on schedule. "Everybody has been on schedule or ahead of schedule," he said. "The perturbations we've had have all been driven by budget and continuing resolution authority. The hardest part of what we are going through is not knowing." Fahey said that the recent government shutdowns had an unusual impact on the JLTV program. While the program had prior-year funding available to continue testing on the vehicle, the funding doesn't cover the operating costs for the sites where the testing actually occurs. "The proving ground was basically shut down," he said. As a result, testing had to stop on the vehicles. When the government came back on line, the testing program was not able to start back up as quickly. "Starting back up has been a very difficult proposition," Fahey said. The stoppage of testing during the shutdown, plus the slow restart, has delayed JLTV testing somewhat, he said, but at this point it is not significant. "We are behind our current ideal plan, but that doesn't mean we are behind our macro schedule," he said, adding that the program office is looking daily at how it can make up for that schedule slip over the course of the next nine months. "We are pretty confident we can do that." Right now the JLTV is funded by a continuing resolution that ends in early 2014, the second quarter of the fiscal year. Fahey said the program is on track now, but definitely by the third quarter of the fiscal year, a confirmed budget decision will need to be in place. "The JLTV is one of those programs where if we don't get a budget approved it will impact the program," he said. Cavedo said that for now, he's operating as though funding will arrive when the continuing resolution ends, and he thinks the JLTV program will continue to stay on track. "We are planning for success here, and we are going to keep the train on track for as long as we possibly can keep it on there," he said. "Some really hard decisions are going to have to be made in the second quarter, mid-second quarter of this (fiscal) year. And from where I sit, I certainly hope that for JLTV, the hard decision is to keep it on the tracks. But that may not be what the Army decides." Fahey, Cavedo and Burkes spoke Oct. 22, during a press conference at the 2013 Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition, in Washington, D.C. Officer credits hospital team, Army family with saving daughter's life [2013-10-31] WASHINGTON -- Delaney Saslav, only three at the time, nearly drowned while attending a pool party with her parents. Delaney's father, Lt. Col. Adam Saslav, an infantry Soldier, credits quick discovery of the accident and cardiopulmonary resuscitation performed by family friend and former Soldier Dr. Jason De Luigi with putting Delaney on the road to a recovery from the incident. "Everybody credits proper CPR with allowing Delaney to have the ability to recover as well as she did," he said. "Most of it is the spirit of my daughter. But that life-saving treatment was absolutely critical to her having a chance." Delaney had been unable to sit up or speak after nearly drowning in the pool. But she later was brought to the National Center for Children's Rehabilitation at the MedStar National Rehabilitation Hospital. It was there she learned to talk again, to sit up, and to stand. Delaney is one of three who were honored by the MedStar National Rehabilitation Network with "Victory Awards," during an Oct. 30 ceremony in Washington, D.C. The award is given to "celebrate the victory of the human spirit and to honor individuals who best exemplify exceptional strength and courage in the face of physical adversity." The other two recipients of this year's awards are Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth, who was injured Nov. 12, 2004, while serving as a UH-60 Black Hawk pilot in Iraq; and Adrianne Haslet-Davis, a ballroom dance instructor who was injured during the April 15, 2013, terrorist bombing of the Boston Marathon. Delaney left the National Rehabilitation Hospital, or NRH, in a wheelchair in October 2012, and her dad said her recovery progressed from there. "She soon started pre-kindergarten," he said. "I will never forget the phone call from my wife when she went to pick Delaney up from school and her teacher, Ms. Judy, rushed to the door to show the piece of paper with Delaney's name that she wrote herself." By Christmas 2012, he said, Delaney was walking again. By spring 2013, she was dancing. And by summer 2013, he said, he had moved on to teaching her to ride a bike. Saslav spoke on stage before hundreds of event attendees at a downtown hotel. He found it difficult to keep the attention of the audience because he shared the stage with young Delaney, now five. Uninterested in her father's speech about the progress she had made following her accident, she drew away from him and stole his spotlight, dancing and twirling on stage, and delighting the audience. "She experienced all the things that a typical four-year-old experienced, but it was because of the amazing work at NRH and the team there," Saslav said of his daughter's life after the incident. The Army officer also thanked an unlikely member of the audience, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno and his wife, Linda. At the time of Delaney's accident, Saslav worked with Odierno at the Pentagon. He said the general ensured he was given the time to be with his family following the accident, "so that Delaney and our family could move through what was a near tragedy, to what you see on stage today." Off stage and after the formal portion of the award ceremony, Saslav said the Army played two important roles in the recovery of Delaney. The first, by ensuring he and family had proper medical insurance. "My wife and I never had to worry if Delaney was going to be taken care of. We never had to worry if she was going to get the treatment she needed to have," he said. The second thing the Army provided for him, he said, was the family-type of camaraderie that allowed him to be home with his wife, daughter, and son while recovering from a tragedy. "That is the complete and undying support from everybody inside my office, from the boss and everybody on down," Saslav said. "They were there through those initial four months in the hospital that I didn't work, to support me and to cover my duties as I was gone. They continued to be there through the entire process, always making sure we had the support we needed. It's a family that you can't get anywhere else." Illinois Rep. Tammy Duckworth was also a "Victory Award" recipient. She is a currently a member of Congress and a lieutenant colonel in the Illinois Army National Guard. Duckworth was injured in Iraq in 2004, when she was co-piloting a mission in a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. As a result of a rocket-propelled grenade launched at her helicopter, she lost both legs and partial use of her right arm. On stage at the award ceremony, Duckworth stood up from her wheelchair on prosthetic limbs. "Life hasn't been easy since I was injured," she said. "But I've done things I never dreamed of doing." Aside from serving in Congress today, she has served within the Department of Veterans Affairs, continues as a member of the Illinois Army National Guard, advocates for veterans, and has even done several marathons in her wheelchair. "My new life is just as rich as my old one, just in a different way," she said. Duckworth said she was lucky to get the kind of medical treatment she received at then-Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., following her injury. But she knows not everybody has access to that kind of care. "For many Americans, that type of medical care is not guaranteed," she said. "So many who have suffered traumatic injuries don't have access to the medical care that can help them to achieve their fullest potential. I think we have a responsibility to stand with those who have suffered tragedy and encourage them to move forward with their lives, so they too can do great things." Later, Duckworth said that after her injury in Iraq, the Army took care of her "as a whole person." "It wasn't just about recovering from the wounds themselves, it was about what I was planning on doing after -- whether I was going to try to stay in or whether I wanted to get out, and go on with my life, post-military," she said. "That was critically important, because I needed a new mission. I was hurt and needed a mission and I needed to know what I was going to do next." In her position as a lawmaker, and as National Guardsman, she knows how important it is that Soldiers are confident the Army will take care of them if they get injured -- the same way the Army took care of her after she was wounded. "We want our troops to know they will be cared for," she said. "Part of the deal that you make when you put on the uniform is that you are willing to go into harm's way, and you are willing to be wounded, and to ultimately, if must be, lay down your life for your nation. But part of that deal is that your nation will care for you. We don't need a situation where troops are going into harm's way, and questioning if they will be cared for or if their families will be cared for." Duckworth said as a lawmaker she is interested in improving the transition Soldiers go through as they move from active duty to their new status as veterans. "The Department of Defense does a great job of taking care of active duty service members; the VA does a great job of taking care of veterans," she said. "But there is a gap there, where a service member is leaving active service and is trying to get into the VA system, and that is where you have this backlog of troops trying to get into the VA system. We need to fix that so that transition is as seamless as possible." Duckworth said she was "deeply honored" to receive the Victory Award, but also said "this is not about me. It is about the men who saved me. It is about our military and our veterans who continue to sacrifice every single day." Sexual assault victims now entitled to their own lawyer [2013-11-01] WASHINGTON -- Victims of sexual assault now have the option to have legal representation following a sexual assault. During criminal proceedings in a courtroom, the defendant has a lawyer. The state is also represented by their own lawyer, the prosecuting attorney. But the victims of sexual assault have historically not had the benefit of a state-provided advocate as they are interviewed, as they testify on the witness stand, and as they move through the other complexities of the criminal justice system. This is no longer the case. Beginning Nov. 1, 2013, Soldiers who report that they have been the victim of a sexual assault can elect to have a Special Victims Counsel assigned to them. An SVC is an active duty Army attorney, provided at no charge to the victim, who will represent the victim's interest throughout the course of the legal proceedings that might follow the report of a sexual assault. Col. Jay McKee, an Army lawyer with the Army's Office of the Judge Advocate General, serves as the program manager for the Army's Special Victims Counsel program. "Once the crime happens, or alleged crime happens, and the victim is seen by a victim advocate, or at the hospital or by Victim Witness Liaison -- however the victim is taken into the system -- they are notified that they have a right to an SVC." It is a misconception, McKee said, that the prosecuting attorney in a criminal case represents the victim of a crime. The prosecutor represents the government's interests or society's. But McKee added that in almost all cases those governmental interests are the same as the victim's: to see that justice is done. "The prosecutor wants justice. He is serving the community, he is serving the military justice system for good order and discipline of the force," McKee said. "And 99 percent of the time, that interest is aligned with the victim's. They want the same thing." But sometimes, McKee said, the victim might have concerns that require the assistance of an attorney. For example, the defense attorneys might also want to bring into the trial a victim's medical records or past sexual history. That might possibly damage a victim's reputation or embarrass her. "They can try to get that introduced on the record," McKee said. "The defense is there to represent the defendant, the accused, they are going to put on the best case for the accused. Sometimes that is not in the best interest of the victim to undergo cross examination in a public trial about her past sexual history or to have her personal medical records be reviewed by parties to a courts-martial.." The SVC can help the victim make sense of the ramifications of trial, and help her understand what will happen. McKee also said that while the SVC will not participate in the "adversarial portion" of a trial -- in that there will not be a third table in the courtroom for the SVC and the victim -- the SVC will be able to make motions on behalf of the victim, talk to the Special Victim Prosecutor, the trial council, trial defense attorney, and the staff judge advocate "in terms of what justice looks like for the victim." Right now, there are about 45 SVCs in the Army, across the United States, and in Europe. There will soon be an SVC in Afghanistan as well. The total number of SVCs the Army will ultimately need will be determined after a year of evaluating manpower needs for SVCs, McKee said. Special Victims Counsel are nominated for service out of the existing pool of Army lawyers, and serve for no more than two years. They are chosen after an evaluation based on their military justice experience, maturity, and judgment. Those chosen for the program undergo three days of training, which includes classes on professional responsibility, military rules of evidence, the Army's parole system, forensic medical exams, rules for practicing as an SVC, and classes from professionals who teach about how to treat and talk with a victim of a sexual assault. Sometimes a sexual assault case is not tried in a military criminal court, but instead in a civilian criminal court. McKee said in those cases, the Army will also provide a special victims counselor to Soldiers who are victims of sexual assault. The SVC cannot appear in the local civil court, but can help explain the process and provide victims with legal assistance advice, such as helping them get a civilian restraining order against the accused. Odierno: Sequestration would make even 1 major operation difficult [2013-11-12] WASHINGTON -- Unless Congress acts to counter the effects of sequestration, the Army will be hard-pressed to complete its mission, said the service's senior officer. "If Congress does not act to mitigate the magnitude, method and speed of the reductions under the Budget Control Act with sequestration, the Army will be forced to make significant reductions in force structure and end strength," said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno. "Such reductions will not allow us to execute the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance, and will make it very difficult to conduct even one sustained major combat operation." Odierno testified Nov. 7, before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill. Also testifying on the effects of sequestration were Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert, Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. James F. Amos, and Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Mark A. Welsh III. From fiscal year 2014 through fiscal year 2017, Odierno said, the Army will reduce its end strength to meet new budget requirements. A reduction in end strength also means the Army will restructure itself into a smaller force -- a reduced number of units. The general said the Army will experience "degraded readiness and extensive modernization program shortfalls" during that time. Army programs during this time will also be restructured or delayed, he said. "We'll be required to end, restructure or delay over 100 acquisition programs, putting at risk programs such as the Ground Combat Vehicle, Armed Aerial Scout, the production and modernization of our other aviation programs, system upgrades, unmanned aerial vehicles and the modernization of our air defense command and control systems, just to name a few," he said. Around fiscal year 2018, he said, the Army will begin to "rebalance" readiness and modernization, but at the cost of end strength and force structure. Odierno said he expects that end-strength reductions will reduce active-duty forces from a wartime high of 570,000 Soldiers down to 420,000 Soldiers. The Army National Guard will reduce from 358,000 Soldiers to about 315,000. The Army Reserve will reduce from 205,000 to 185,000 Soldiers. Altogether, that's a more than 18 percent reduction across the total force over seven years. That reduction in Soldiers will also mean a reduction in units. He said the Army can expect to reduce its brigade combat teams by 45 percent. "In the end, our decisions today and in the near future will impact our nation's security posture for the next 10 years," Odierno said. "We've already accepted nearly $700 billion in cuts to the Department of Defense. Today we have the premier Army in the world. It is our shared responsibility to ensure we remain the premier Army and the premier joint force in the world." He said it is the decisions of Congress that will determine the future size of the Army. READINESS LOST Before the Army sends Soldiers to war, they need to be ready to go. One aspect of readiness is combat training, such as at one of the Army's combat training centers. Another aspect is equipment readiness -- equipment that has been in Afghanistan will need to be properly repaired and upgraded. Odierno said Soldiers may not be ready for combat. "So we have a huge readiness issue between 2014 to 2017 that ... frankly, will significantly impact our ability to respond in the way we expect to respond," he said. Not being trained, he said, means more Soldiers might not come home from combat. "We will not be able to train them for the mission they're going to have to do. We will have to send them without the proper training and ... actually, maybe [the] proper equipment that they need in order to do this. So that always relates to potentially higher casualties if we have to respond," Odierno said. In training, the general said that the Army is up to speed on counter-insurgency -- something it's been doing for more than ten years now in Afghanistan. But to prepare for future conflicts, he said, the Army must provide training beyond COIN (counter-insurgency) operations. "It's about having the capability to do a multiphase, combined arms, joint campaign that operates in a very complex environment that includes a conventional opponent, irregular warfare, counterinsurgency, because that's where future warfare is going and so, we have to train our forces to do that," he said. Implementation of sequestration earlier this year has had an effect on how many Soldiers can receive relevant training, and how many units are actually ready to go into the next conflict, he said. "We were supposed to begin training for that in 2013. We were not able to because of the cuts we had to make in our training dollars. So we are now behind," he said. "That's the problem we have. Right now, we have a limited number brigades that are [capable of going into the next conflict] right now, and we're falling further behind as we move forward." In fiscal year 2013, the general said, the Army had to cancel seven rotations at combat training centers. "Usually it's a force of about 5,000 to 8,000 men and women who go there, who get a chance to train and really get certified in the kind of operations that we think they might have to deploy and do, so we weren't able to do that." If due to sequestration, the Army continues to not be able to send Soldiers to training, it will further erode readiness, he said. In 2014, the Army will focus all training dollars on getting seven brigade combat teams ready for combat. "That's the only money I have to do that," he said. "Everyone else is going to go untrained. They will not be able to do the training necessary." He said that means only 20 to 25 percent of the force will be trained in its core competency. PAYING FOR SOLDIERS Within the Army's budget, the percentage of funds paying for Soldier compensation is now beyond what Odierno calls the "best case" for that Army -- which he says is somewhere between 42 and 45 percent of the total budget. Soldier compensation includes such things as a Soldier's pay, TRICARE for the Soldier's family and basic allowance for housing. "On compensation, we have to grapple with compensation within the military. The Joint Chiefs are working very hard with this issue. The cost of a Soldier has doubled since 2001. It's going to almost double again by 2025," Odierno said. "We can't go on like this. So we have to come up with compensation packages, not taking money away, but reducing the rate of increase of pay increases, of basic housing allowance you brought up, look at the commissaries, look at health care. We have to have a total package that allows us to reduce this cost." Despite budget reductions, and reductions in training readiness and equipment readiness, Odierno said morale is high among Soldiers, though "tenuous." "There's a lot of angst ... you know, people talking about benefits. People are talking about, obviously in the Army, we're significantly reducing the size of the force, so they're worried about their future," Odierno said. "What makes me feel so damned good about it is ... that they are -- their morale is high," he said. "They're doing exactly what we ask them to do. They're training as hard as they can with the money we give them. When they deploy, they are there trying to accomplish the mission to the best of their ability." Senior leaders review Unified Quest 'deep future' [2013-11-21] WASHINGTON -- How long should a unit be self-sufficient after hitting the ground, and why can't the Army get immediate communications capability using local, established, commercial networks after arriving at a forward location? These were questions discussed by senior Army leaders who met Nov. 20, at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., to discuss lessons learned from the Army's Sept. 15-20 "Unified Quest 2013 Deep Futures War Game," held at Carlisle Barracks, Pa. The wargame took predictions about the future strategic environment from insights derived from the National Intelligence Council 2030 study and other sources, including the Army's own studies. The exercise used that information as the foundation for two teams to independently wargame the same fictional futures scenario. Among those in the room Wednesday were Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. John F. Campbell and Gen. Robert W. Cone, commander, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. TRADOC hosted the event. LOCAL NETWORKS One senior Army officer wanted to know why it takes so much Army equipment and tools to get a communications network going upon hitting the ground in a military operation -- "a hundred trucks on the ground," he said. He said al Qaeda uses local network connectivity -- cell phone networks for instance -- to successfully conduct their operations. Why can't the Army use the same networks? "Why can't I leverage the worldwide network for command and control," that officer asked. Another officer said the Army must have a manual backup to using that global network to conduct operations, because if the enemy finds the U.S. is using their network to conduct operations -- they will simply shut it off. But the Army must be able to take advantage of networks already in place when it hits the ground -- because the amount of communications equipment the Army brings to its fight makes it less deployable, a senior leader said. He said the global network will increase in size in the future and the Army must learn to make use of it in order to make itself lighter, and thus more deployable. Another concern addressed: by 2025, will Army equipment be able to connect to such an open-architecture global network, if need be, or will it still be locked in to proprietary Army networks that must be brought in by a unit? SELF-SUFFICIENCY Also addressed was the amount of time a unit must be "self-sufficient" upon arriving at a deployed location, before follow-on logistic support arrives. Ideas discussed included the importance of decreasing power usage as a way to increase self-sufficiency. Another idea briefly mentioned was the use of 3D printers as a way to create spare parts on hand for units. The future of the Army also includes an increased emphasis on the Regionally Aligned Forces, or RAF, concept, which "has significant impact on how we support combatant commander's efforts in their areas," one officer said. The role of RAF operations is not about combat, he said, but rather about developing relationships and ensuring access. The RAF concept allows the Army to bring to combatant commander areas of responsibility its unique ability to support humanitarian efforts, disaster relief, and nation building. The RAF concepts also put an emphasis on increasing partnership capacity. A critical conclusion reached at the seminar was that the Army must not rely, in the future, on "strategic platforms" to project power. The Army must not depend on investments by other services in these capabilities as a way to get where it needs to be. Instead, the Army must assume there will be less of these platforms, or less access to them. The Army must "control our own destiny," one officer said, when it comes to its ability to move. The Army must not assume more platforms will be available to move it where it needs to be, but must rather make itself smaller so there is less of it to move. Peacekeeping Institute paying increasing dividends after 20 years [2013-11-25] WASHINGTON -- In an ever-changing world, demand for U.S. involvement in humanitarian assistance and stability operations will increase, said the former Army chief of staff who founded the service's Peacekeeping Institute 20 years ago. "My experience tells me the world has changed significantly since the end of the Cold War," said retired Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan. "[With] the fragmentation of the world, the globalization of the world, global climate change ... we have an increasing demand ... [for] humanitarian aid and assistance, and a need to be involved in stability operations." Sullivan served as chief of staff of the Army from 1991 to 1995. Today he serves as the president and chief executive officer of the Association of the United States Army. The retired general spoke Nov. 25, during an event recognizing the 20th anniversary of the creation of the Army Peacekeeping Institute, which he founded in 1993. The organization, which creates doctrine and conducts training, later changed its name to the Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, or PKSOI. "Today's celebration, this celebration, is very significant in my mind," Sullivan said. "This is the most significant institutional legitimization of PKSOI, and I congratulate all who have been involved in this." During a keynote presentation at AUSA headquarters in Arlington, Va., Sullivan discussed why, 20 years ago, he decided there was a need for something like PKSOI. Around that time the United States had become involved in providing humanitarian relief support in Somalia. The civil war in that country began in January 1991. The U.S. became involved in peacekeeping operations there in December 1992, as lead of the United Nation's "Unified Task Force." Sullivan said the focus at the time was "primarily humanitarian assistance." But he said that as operations continued "it became more apparent that we had not fully prepared ourselves for the challenges of Somalia, the complexities of the battlefield we found, with the humanitarian aid needs, as well as security needs." He said the United States had done similar, "significant operations" in the past, but the Army had not codified what it had learned about operations such as in Turkey with the resettlement of the Kurdish after the first Gulf War, for instance. "For some reason we didn't capture a lot of what we learned in what was a huge humanitarian crisis, and stability ... situation," Sullivan said. The general also cited the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama to remove Manuel Noriega from power as an example of an initial military success that caught the U.S. off-guard in the aftermath with the necessary stability operations and humanitarian support that would be needed. "That went off like clockwork," he said. "But the next day ... somebody called and said who's going to feed the Panamanians? We presumed they were going to feed themselves. Wrong answer." Of Somalia, he said, "the fact of the matter is, we had not prepared ourselves ... we had not prepared the troops as well as we should have for what was a major event." He said the Army was able to eventually figure out what was needed to operate in what he called a "very alien environment" insofar as humanitarian assistance was concerned. Making that happen, he said, was also a learning curve. Providing that assistance in Somalia required working with both the United Nations and with non-governmental organizations, known as NGOs. "The NGOs that were there were really a big 'aha' to all of us," he said. He said the efforts there supporting the Somalis and working with the U.N. and the NGOs was a "trial-and-error effort" with "bruised egos" on both sides. "We had to learn some lessons that we probably should have known," he said. "We clearly did not know the actors. We did not know all the U.N. people that were there. We fully didn't understand the complexity of that organization, and certainly some specialized NGOs from the U.S. as well as from around the world. That was a whole new landscape for us." What was needed, Sullivan said, was guidance for conducting humanitarian, peacekeeping and stability operations. "I believe and have always believed that doctrine is the engine of change," he said. "We really needed to write some doctrine about what we were doing in these faraway places." He said there wasn't much doctrine available. There was in some cases, historical accounts, he said. An example involved efforts to support Hurricane Andrew relief in Southern Florida. The Army had been asked by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to construct a "city" to house displaced persons. But the Army didn't have anything to look at on which to base their plans. Eventually, Sullivan said, the Army turned to archived records of relief work that had been done in San Francisco after an earthquake there to build camps for those displaced by the hurricane in Florida. "You can find stuff in the history of the Army, but it wasn't readily apparent to everybody on the ground at the time," he said. "I believe military organizations perform better if they have a doctrine ... and people have thought about it ... and [are] trained to do it." Sullivan said that is why in 1993, he asked the commandant of U.S. Army War College to create the an organization that could capture lessons learned from peacekeeping operations and turn them into doctrine, and to additionally provide training. That organization was the Army Peacekeeping Institute. "I just happened to be the guy at the top and felt we had to do something about it rather than just discuss it forever," Sullivan said. "Peacekeeping, stability ops, and humanitarian assistance was the issue then, and is the issue today" As a young officer joining the Army, Sullivan said he hadn't considered that he'd be involved in humanitarian efforts and stability operations like he experienced with Panama, Hurricane Andrew, the resettlement of the Kurds after the first Gulf War, or Rwanda, for instance. "The Balkans, Haiti multiple times, Afghanistan, Iraq: what have we learned in all those places?" he asked. "All of this work is starting to become codified in very important ways." Sullivan said the world is changing dramatically now, and will continue to do so. He said with climate change, ethnic and religious conflicts, and international extremism, there is more chance for the United States to be involved in humanitarian relief efforts. Those efforts will be informed by work already done at PKSOI, he said. And the institute will also codify lessons learned from those efforts for future missions -- as it has done for 20 years now. Administrative leave authorized for Soldiers seeking same-sex marriages [2013-11-25] WASHINGTON -- As of a Nov. 7, Army directive, Soldiers seeking same-sex marriages are entitled, in some cases, to an amount of administrative leave in order to travel to a location where such marriages are legal. In the directive titled "Extending Benefits to Same-Sex Spouses of Soldiers," Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh spelled out some of the policies regarding the administrative leave for Soldiers seeking same-sex marriages. The directive also says that marriage-related entitlements for same-sex couples are retroactive to June 26, 2013 -- the day of the Supreme Court ruling that changed the laws. In the directive, the secretary says that Soldiers who are part of a same-sex couple and desire to get married will be granted administrative leave that allows them to travel to the "nearest state (or the District of Columbia) or jurisdiction that allows the couple to get married." Soldiers not stationed in a state or jurisdiction where same-sex marriage is legal, or who are more than 100 miles from such a state, are entitled to as much as two days of administrative leave for travel, if they live in the continental United States; or as much as five days of administrative leave for travel if they live outside the continental United States. Those Soldiers are also entitled to administrative leave for adherence to the "waiting period" required by those states in advance of a marriage. The policy is meant "to help cultivate and level the playing field" allowing members to go to the nearest jurisdiction that permits same-sex marriages, said Larry Lock, chief of the Compensation and Entitlements Branch within the Army's G-1. Chargeable leave used on or after Aug. 13, 2013, that would have otherwise been eligible as an administrative absence under the policy may be replaced at the direction of the commander approving the chargeable leave. Additionally, the total amount of administrative leave that can be granted must not exceed seven days. Soldiers stationed in states like California, Washington, Maryland, or New York are entitled to no administrative leave at all. Same-sex marriages are legal in those states. Soldiers assigned to locations that are less than 100 miles from such a jurisdiction will also not be entitled to the administrative leave. A Soldier stationed at Fort A.P. Hill, Va., for instance, cannot get a same-sex marriage in Virginia. But the installation is about 88 miles from Washington, D.C. That Soldier could travel to the nation's capital, or to nearby Maryland, to get a same-sex marriage. If Soldiers stationed in such a state wished to travel to another state to get married, they would also be entitled to no administrative leave. A Soldier stationed in California who wanted to travel to New York to get a same-sex marriage, for instance, would not be entitled to administrative leave. "There would be no need for it," said Lock. "You would treat them just like you would a heterosexual Soldier who wanted to go someplace to get married, when they could get married in the very state in which they are stationed in. These individuals would be charged leave." The Army is now working to ensure equity for Soldiers with same-sex spouses, Lock said. Already, same-sex spouses of Soldiers are given dependent identification cards. Same-sex couples can also file for retroactive housing benefits as well. But there may be some areas of difficulty. One such area is for Soldiers who might be assigned to locations overseas. "The challenge is going to be in overseas areas, where we have Status of Forces Agreements where it can be problematic with respect to whether or not that particular host country recognizes same-sex marriages," Lock said. In those places, it may be difficult for the Army command to sponsor a Soldier's same-sex spouse, for instance. Lock said the Army is in about 130 countries where there are uniformed members. "As you can imagine, this could be a significant problem in overseas areas," he said. "That will be part of the forthcoming implementation guidance, particularly for people involved with the assignment of Soldiers." While the secretary of the Army released an Army directive spelling out his intent, the Army is now working to develop that intent into specific implementation policy to make things easier for commanders to understand, Lock said. The guidance is expected to be available to commanders by the end of November. Army's Ultra Light Vehicle now in survivability testing [2013-11-27] WASHINGTON -- Two of the three vehicles in the Army's "Ultra Light Vehicle" program have now entered survivability testing in Nevada and Maryland, to evaluate both their blast and ballistic protection capability. The third vehicle remains at the Army's Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center, known as TARDEC, for testing there. The TARDEC began development of three Ultra Light Vehicles, or ULVs, in fall 2011, at the request of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. While the ULV will not be fielded as a combat vehicle, it does serve as a research and development platform that will ultimately yield data that can be used by other TARDEC agencies and program managers, as well as sister services to develop their own vehicles and equipment in the future. "It's all about sharing the data," said Mike Karaki, the ULV's program manager. "If we have an ability to share the data internally within TARDEC, and externally within the program managers and program executive offices, and beyond that with other government agencies, we will attempt to do that. It's helping shape and inform future programs." Karaki said the ULV program might help development of survivability in future vehicles, and may also help development of other hybrid vehicles as well. "You want to be able to use anything and everything you can from this program to help reduce the duplication of efforts in the future," he said. The ULV is a hybrid vehicle that includes lightweight advanced material armor, lightweight wheels and tires and other automotive systems, blast-mitigating underbody technology and advanced command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment inside. "We tried to push the envelope in terms of state-of-the-art and out-of-the-box materials throughout the entire development process," said Karaki. The vehicle, from design to delivery, took only 16 months, Karaki said. "We show there are some successes in the rapid design, development, fabrication and integration of the effort," Karaki said. "It's doable. It's high risk and high reward. Can you do it in a rapid time frame? We've proven we can do that." The ULV is hybrid vehicle powered by a diesel engine that drives an electric generator. That generator in turn powers two electric motors that turn the wheels. Two electric motors provides redundancy should one of the motors fail. Karaki said choosing a hybrid system came from the need to develop a more survivable vehicle for Soldiers. He said the contractor was concerned about how to make the vehicle perform better in a blast event, and came to the conclusion that a hybrid was the better choice. Because it is a hybrid vehicle, it has none of the standard equipment underneath the vehicle. It features instead a "clean underbody" that makes it more capable of withstanding something like an explosion from an improvised explosive device. "If you keep less equipment, accessories, systems underneath the vehicle, and you allow the underbody geometry to do what it needs to do -- have a clean underbody -- you will be able to improve your chances of being able to direct a blast away from the vehicle," he said. The primary customer for the ULV vehicle, which is a test vehicle, is the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The program came with four research objectives, which are a 4,500 pound payload, a vehicle weight of 14,000 pounds, protection that is comparable to the currently fielded mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle, and a price of $250,000 each for a hypothetical 5,000-unit production run. Karaki said the program is meeting or is expected to meet those objectives. "On paper, the stuff upfront, the size, the weight, the cost, the timeframe, we checked those boxes," he said. "The testing and evaluation of all these advanced survivability systems are in process right now." Two of three vehicles are undergoing survivability testing now. The third vehicle is in Warren, Mich., at TARDEC's Ground Systems Power and Energy Laboratory undergoing automotive testing and to evaluate its hybrid electric setup. Karaki said eventually the two ULVs undergoing survivability testing will be destroyed as part of that testing. The third vehicle, the one at TARDEC, will be kept as a test platform. The ULV is not a replacement for the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program or the Humvee. It is an experimental vehicle used for testing purposes. The program will wrap up in fiscal year 2014. Points change for Soldiers seeking NCO status [2013-12-03] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers competing for sergeant in January will no longer have 16 promotion points available to them for completing the online "Structured Self-Development I" course. Additionally, Soldiers who have not completed SSD-I will not be eligible for promotion to sergeant for the Jan. 1 promotion cycle. The new rules were laid out in a Nov. 25 MILPER message involving structured self-development and semi-centralized promotions. The message says that beginning in December, Soldiers who complete the SSD-I course will not get any points for it. The message also makes it clear that the SSD-I course is a requirement for promotion to sergeant. Sgt. Maj. Jonathan A. Uribe-Huitron, chief of the Enlisted Promotion Branch at Army Human Resources Command, said SSD-I is a requirement to attain eligibility for promotion recommendation to E-5, and a prerequisite for attendance at the Warrior Leader Course. That requirement is one reason the points awarded for completion of the course were dropped. "It is a mandatory requirement for all Soldiers to have it, so there is no need for us to award points for a requirement that they need to have," he said. In the past, he said, promotion points were offered for SSD-I because it was a correspondence course. Soldiers had earned four points for each week of the four-week course. Soldiers can still earn points elsewhere to make themselves competitive when they go before a promotion board, Uribe-Huitron said. He explained those Soldiers need to realize that they are competing against peers in their own military occupational specialty, known as an MOS, for promotion. COMPETITION WITH MOS "Their promotion potential will depend on what the rest of their peers are doing in that same MOS," Uribe-Huitron said. "Soldiers must familiarize themselves with how the Army awards promotion points. This is where non-commissioned officers come into play as they coach and mentor their Soldiers. NCOs, having experienced this process, will have a thorough understanding of how Soldiers can earn more points to become more competitive." How many Soldiers can be promoted depends on how many slots within an MOS that the Army needs to fill, Uribe-Huitron said. If the Army needs to fill a lot of empty slots in an MOS at a particular grade, it will set the promotion points requirement low. If it needs to fill fewer slots, the promotion points requirement will be higher. OTHER PROMOTION POINTS When competing for sergeant, E-5, Soldiers can earn up to 340 promotion points in military training, Uribe-Huitron said, and that includes weapons qualification and the Army Physical Fitness Test. They can earn as many as 125 points for awards and decorations. Up to 260 points can be earned for military education, which in the past included completion of SSD-I. They can also earn up to 75 points for civilian education. An additional 30 points may be earned for airborne advantage. Soldiers also earn 80 promotion points for attending the Warrior Leader Course. They may earn more than that through exceptional performance in the course. Those Solders who make the commandant's list, for instance, will instead earn 92 promotion points. Graduates of the course who earn "Distinguished Honor Graduate" status or "Distinguished Leadership Award" will now receive 104 pts. While Soldiers will no longer earn points for attending SSD-I, no changes were announced for the points earned by completing SSD-III or SSD-IV. The SSD-V course is still under development, Uribe-Huitron said, and is not available at this time. CHANGES TO COMMAND LIST INTEGRATION Not all promotion-eligible Soldiers have their commander's recommendation to go before a promotion board. But those Soldiers could still be promoted by being placed on "command list integration," or CLI. Soldiers on CLI are on the promotions standing list along with Soldiers who went before a promotion board. But those CLI Soldiers do not appear on the list with all the promotion points they earned. Instead, they are ranked on the list with either 39 points, if they are seeking promotion to sergeant, or 14 points if they are seeking promotion to staff sergeant. When the Army needs to fill more spots in an MOS than the number of Soldiers sent before a promotion board for sergeant, for instance, it drops the promotion requirement for that MOS to 39. This allows the Army to fill its manning requirements by picking up for promotion all the Soldiers who went before a board, and to then also pick up additional Soldiers for promotion who did not go before the board. The CLI was recently "automated," Uribe-Huitron said. He explained the CLI policy was written so that Soldiers could be put on the CLI if they did not go before a board. But if those same Soldiers become non-promotable for some reason, like being barred from enlistment or by failing their physical fitness test, their unit would have to notify Human Resources Command to take them off the CLI. Many units failed to make that notification. There was a "very substantial" number of Solders on CLI that were not actually promotable," Uribe-Huitron said. "The most notorious reason was for not taking an APFT or for failing an APFT." Now, he said, inclusion in CLI is automated. As of Nov. 21 Soldiers who become ineligible for promotion for some reason are automatically taken off CLI. "It gives us a more accurate number of who we have eligible to fill promotion requirements," he said. 'Make-a-thon' to design tactical vehicle via online collaboration [2013-12-05] WASHINGTON -- The Army's Rapid Equipping Force will host a "Make-A-Thon" event, Dec. 9-13, at Fort Benning, Ga., to develop a mobile command post that is mounted on a commonly available Army Lightweight Tactical All-Terrain Vehicle. The effort is part of a proof-of-concept to show that the Rapid Equipping Force's, or REF's, "ArmyCoCreate" concept can use "crowd sourcing" to quickly produce viable solutions for tactical problems. "The proof of concept is the process that could help the REF continue to innovate," said Gary Frost, the deputy director for futures at REF. "For the REF, the hardest thing we have is time. There are a lot of solutions out there, and there are a lot of people we could get to, if we had a year to go find a solution. For the REF, we have to figure out how in a very short period of time to get the most users and the most material solution providers together, so we can do a rapid prototype." The REF set up a website at www.armycocreate.com, and invited interested individuals to sign on to be participants in an online problem-solving community. Today, the site has more than 800 participants. They include both Soldiers and civilians, many with engineering and technical backgrounds. The idea being tested is "in a very short period of time, can we generate enough users, and enough people who would be able to provide solutions, get them in a virtual room, and come up with a solution, and then be able to build something quickly," Frost said. Within the online community at ArmyCoCreate, about 120 ideas were submitted as challenges that the community might solve together. Ultimately, the REF picked one of those suggestions as the challenge the community would solve. That selected challenge was to create a mobile command post. Frost said the idea was among those with the highest number of votes from the community, which he said REF felt would keep the community involved, and Soldiers as well, and which also "made the most sense." The challenge will be to modify an existing, commercially available Kawasaki Teryx 750cc LTATV, to carry a command, control, communications and computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capability. The resulting mobile command post must be able to serve platoon and company-sized units, or approximately 30-150 Soldiers. During development of the project, he said, there is a focus on mobility, weight, visibility, payload, operations, and transportability. During the Make-A-Thon event at Fort Benning, the first of two such events scheduled, Soldiers with the Maneuvers Center of Excellence Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate will work with members of the online community at ArmyCoCreate.com to design the prototype mobile command post. During the first event, participants will work on such aspects as vehicle platform specifications and payload capacity to see if "something needs to be tweaked" on the ATV to be able to add heavier equipment. "What we'd expect at the end is a locked-down design," Frost said. "The design could be a cardboard cutout -- like this is how we will fit everything. That you could turn into [computer aided design] drawings, for the engineers to start building and measuring and cutting. And it will turn into 'this is the size and shape of the power and the batteries we need.' And then over the next couple weeks we are going to go procure whatever we need to modify it -- if it's batteries, a communications package, etc. -- and we will figure out online how to put this together." By having Soldiers on the ground at Fort Benning participating in the design, he said, the effort will get much-needed feedback to ensure that what is being designed is actually usable. "You get a user feedback; we call it a 'user jury,'" he said. "It's hands-on for that week that will kind of vet what we talked about online." Later, at a second Make-A-Thon event, participants on the ground will actually build the mobile command post. Soldiers participating will look at the more finalized design to see if the idea is working the right way, Frost said. A second user jury will look at the design to see if it "makes sense." "The intent is, if we can build what we think, and we are successful in it, it is a candidate to deploy to a unit," Frost said, "especially a unit in Afghanistan." Ultimately, what is being tested is the process of defining a problem, proposing and selecting solutions, and executing those solutions using crowd-sourced expertise. This is something Frost said industry is already doing, and something he said the Army must do if it wants to be competitive. "If we are going to keep being fast and innovate, we can't just do it on our own," he said. Frost said that this iteration of the ArmyCoCreate concept is unclassified. But he said if need be, the same concept could be moved to a classified Army network, involving thousands of Army engineers to solve problems that require a security classification. Assessment of effectiveness of the ArmyCoCreate project will involve looking at how long it took to build the online community, if the right kinds of people participated in the community, if enough good ideas were submitted, and how worthwhile the effort was in creating the end product. New first aid kit includes eye protection, strap cutter [2013-12-06] WASHINGTON -- The Army is now issuing to Soldiers the more robust, more streamlined "Individual First Aid Kit II" as replacement for the older kit which was built inside an ammunition pouch for a Squad Automatic Weapon. The IFAK II contains all the supplies of the old kit, with the addition of a second tourniquet, a tactical combat casualty card to annotate what kind of first aid was applied to a wounded Soldier, a marker, an eye shield, a rubber seal with a valve for sucking chest wounds, and a strap cutter. The kit fits inside a custom pouch that can be mounted out-of-the-way on the back of a Soldier's Improved Outer Tactical Vest. "That's typically low-rent real estate there," said Maj. Peter Stambersky, assistant product manager of Soldier clothing and individual equipment at Program Executive Office Soldier, Fort Belvoir, Va. "Guys don't use it too much." The pouch has "US IFAK" printed on its rear, so Soldiers may easily identify its contents, Stambersky said. The individual tourniquet pouches also contain customizable, removable tabs that allow Soldiers to hand write their blood type or unit on the kit. While the new first aid kit can be mounted on a Soldier's back, it is designed to be easily accessible when needed for both right-handed and left-handed Soldiers. The IFAK II can be removed from its container pouch from either side by pulling on one of two tabs and slipping it out of its case. The tabs also have small "flaps" on them, so that when a Soldier is reaching for the kit, he can get some tactile feedback that lets him know he is pulling on the right tab, Stambersky said. When removed, the foldable kit remains attached to the pouch by an elastic tether. The kit also comes with two removable tourniquet pouches that can be mounted to the kit, or to other parts of a Soldier's gear. Stambersky said Soldiers might even remove one of the tourniquets from its separate pouch and store it in a cargo pocket on their uniform pants, or in a sleeve pocket. "You can take this out and walk around with them in your pocket, which a lot of guys are doing in-country now," he said, while waving the un-pouched tourniquet in the air. The kit is already in Afghanistan in small numbers, as part of a previously initiated limited user evaluation involving 4th Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, out of Fort Polk, La. In September, units at Fort Bragg, N.C., received the kits through the Rapid Fielding Initiative in advance of their own deployment. Stambersky said the Army added the Tactical Combat Casualty Care card and a small Sharpie marker to the kit as a way for Soldiers who have administered first aid to a fellow Soldier to indicate to follow-on medical professionals the kind of assistance that was rendered. The card, once marked, is meant to be attached to the uniform of the afflicted Soldier. The new method, he said, is better than the old way. "What you would do if you found me on the battlefield and you applied a tourniquet to me is you would write that on this card and attach this to my body," Stambersky said. "In the old days, the technique was to take blood and write 'T' on your forehead. But that will get smudged with sweat or water; it'll rub off." Also included in the new kit is a rubber seal that looks much like a stopper to put over a sink drain, but with a valve in it to let out blood. The seal is meant for Soldiers who are suffering a sucking chest wound. That happens when a bullet, for instance, has pierced their chest and lung, and as a result of the new hole they are unable to properly draw air into their lungs. In the past, Soldiers might have been directed to bandage a Soldier's ID card or other piece of flexible plastic over the wound to cover the hole. The new seal now fills that role. Pouches inside the IFAK II are left empty so that Soldiers may also be issued QuickClot Combat Gauze when they receive their kit. The gauze, due to its shelf life, is not distributed with the kits. Also in the kit is an eye shield, which is a small, curved aluminum disk with padding on the edges that can be placed over a Soldier's wounded eye. The shield is meant to keep pressure off a wounded eyeball when a Soldier's injured head is subsequently wrapped with bandages. "The eye shield is an addition, above and beyond what was in the IFAK II," Stambersky said. "Eye shields are on the battlefield now in the MOLLE (Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment) medic set and in the combat lifesaver bags. But now every Soldier has one, to prevent further injury to the eye socket and to the eyeball." The addition of the eye shield came after the members of the Army ophthalmological community -- eye doctors -- recognized that something needed to be done in theater to give Soldiers who administer first aid to their injured buddies the tools needed to prevent further, perhaps irreparable damage to eyes. One such doctor is Dr. Robert Mazzoli, an ophthalmologist and retired Army colonel. He now serves as the director of education, training, simulation and readiness at the Department of Defense's Vision Center of Excellence. Mazzoli said the Army medical community had identified that eye injuries were not being treated with an eye shield, "which is the appropriate immediate treatment." He said they tracked why that was not happening, and found the eye shield was "not available where the injury was happening." "When we elevated that as a concern to the [U.S. Army Medical Department] Center and School, the logistics people and the Committee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care, they latched on to that," Mazzoli said. He said quickly after that, the eye shields started making their way into various medical kits on the battlefield, and most recently they were included in the IFAK II. While Mazzoli said it's a great move on the part of the Army to include eye protection in first aid kits, he says it's important too that training on how to use the new equipment is also provided. "We also have to make sure they know," he said. One of the "good news" stories that has come out of the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is the advancements in medicine and combat care, Mazzoli said. "It shows how we are doing things differently in this war than any previous war that we have fought, in that we are making rapid changes to not just how we are taking care of causalities, but to the stuff we are able to take care of casualties with -- like the eye pro, like the tourniquets, and the development of new body armor systems," he said. Stambersky said the new IFAK II is designed to provide to Soldiers only the most basic tools needed to save lives, at the place where injuries occur. "What the IFAK II gets at is life, limb, eye sight, immediate point of injury care -- what needs to be done immediately to keep that Soldier alive," he said. Thousands of officers to face boards for early separation [2013-12-12] WASHINGTON -- Nearly 19,000 active-duty captains and majors in the Army Competitive Category will go before either an Officer Separation Board or Enhanced Selective Early Retirement Board early next year. The OSB and eSERB will evaluate the eligible captain and major populations by year group, and will select from as little as 5 percent to as much as 18 percent of specific considered year groups originally over-assessed to support a much larger force. The Army will select the minimum number for separation that will allow it to meet congressionally mandated end strength, officials said, with this year's board directing separation for up to 2,000 officers. Dave Martino, director, Officer Personnel Management Directorate at Human Resources Command, said the Army's drawdown plan is a "balanced approach that maintains readiness, while trying to minimize turbulence to the officer corps." The reductions in the officer force are meant to coincide with the reduction in Army force structure, he said. "As the structure reduces in size, the Army officer corps will make a requisite reduction relative to that structure." He also said the OSB and eSERB will separate "fully qualified and officers who have rendered quality service to the nation. Therefore we will execute the OSB and eSERB with precision, care and compassion." Beginning in March 2014, about 9,735 captains will go before an OSB. About 699 captains will face an eSERB. Captains going before these boards come from year groups 2006, 2007 and 2008. Beginning in April, the future of about 6,943 majors will be decided by an OSB, and 1,504 by an eSERB. Majors going before these boards come from year groups 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003. Officers have already been notified of their eligibility for either an OSB or eSERB. It will late be winter or early spring 2015 before officers will begin separating or retiring from the Army as a result of decisions of the boards, officials said. Among officers selected by an OSB for separation, those with less than 15 years will receive separation pay. Those with more than 15 years but less than 18 years may receive separation pay, but may opt to also apply for Temporary Early Retirement Authority. Officers eligible to go before an eSERB must have 18 or more years of service. If those officers are selected by the board, they are entitled to serve until their 20th year and retire then, or they may choose to apply for TERA so they can retire earlier. "If an officer is selected by the eSERB board, they will be able to serve until their twentieth year," said Hillary R. Baxter, division chief, Leader Development Division. "Then they will have a mandatory retirement date at that point. They still are safe to get a 20-year retirement if they so choose." Before going before either an OSB or eSERB, officers should have their records up-to-date and accurate, said Col. Stephen C. Sears, deputy director, OPMD. That is something their commanders can help with. In addition to emails that have been sent to affected officers, emails have also been sent to commanders in the field at the colonel level, so those commanders can help counsel officers in the zone of consideration. "That is an important piece -- for these commanders to sit down with officers and look them in the eye and help them prepare their records, from that position of experience, and to give them an assessment of where they think they stand in terms of their peers," Sears said. Sears said officers need to make sure their records accurately reflect their performance, are complete, and have an up-to-date photo. For online guidance on how best to accomplish this, Sears said officers may view the CAC-required website at https://www.hrc.army.mil/officer and then select "How to prepare for an OSB, SERB, eSERB." Sears also said assignment officers at Army Human Resources Command are ready to help officers who call in needing help to repair records and update their file. GETTING READY TO LEAVE Officers who leave the active force before they expected don't necessarily need to take off the uniform forever. The reserve component is ready to take on some of the best officers to put them into either the Army Reserve or the Army National Guard. Col. Charles A. Slaney, with Army Human Resources Command, said reserve-component career counselors stand ready to help Army officers prepare to move into one of the reserve components following their active-duty career. He said the Army has put significant investment into developing officers, and that one role of RCCCs is to retain that valuable human capital investment. "We want to preserve that by putting them into the reserve components," he said. Thousands lay wreaths at Arlington gravesites [2013-12-15] WASHINGTON -- More than 143,000 wreaths were placed on gravesites, Dec. 14, as part of the 22nd annual "Wreaths Across America" event at Arlington National Cemetery in northern Virginia. For more than two decades now, volunteers have gathered to place wreaths on gravesites in the cemetery. The wreaths are manufactured by the Worcester Wreath Company, of Harrington Maine, and come to the cemetery by truck over the week in advance of the event. Wreaths are paid for by both donors and the Worcester Wreath Company. Before thousands of volunteers who had gathered at the cemetery to place wreaths, founder of the event, and company owner, Morrill Worcester, said that over the last 22 years, interest in the project has grown steadily, and he feels now his participation has grown to something more. "About five years ago, things really started to take off," he said. "I really think that it became our responsibility at that point to do what we do. Today I really think it's our obligation to be here." Morrill's wife, Karen Worcester, reminded event participants of the people, and lives, being commemorated during the event. "These are not gravestones, these are lives," she said. "These represent lives that were lost and laid down so we can be free." Out of the backs of several tractor trailer trucks, volunteers passed the wreaths -- Maine balsam with a hand-tied red bow -- to the thousands of civilians, service members, adults and children who would take them out to a single stone and place them there in advance of the holiday season. "I said let's come down early and actually volunteer and put some wreaths on," said Bob Taylor of Redline, Pa. Taylor and ten others of his family drove more than two hours to participate in the event. "What really impressed me was how many served in multiple wars," he said, after reading inscriptions on some of the headstones. "You see individuals who served in three and four wars. It's really incredible, the dedication and commitment that they showed for our country. It's a profound sense of gratitude, to see how fortunate we are to live the life that we live, in part because of what these people have sacrificed." Marine Corps Maj. Daniel Smith works at the Pentagon and lives in the Washington, D.C., area. He said he knew some who are buried in the cemetery -- men he had served with in two theaters of war, over the last ten years. "Several folks we've served with are here, in different areas," he said. "We have been in conflict now for ten-plus years. You're going to lose people. It's an amazing feeling to know that so many people not only contributed monetarily, but are here." Smith's daughter, Kara Anne Smith, said she was glad to have come to the event with her father. "These people have died in some of the most important wars," she said. "They did good -- so we honor them." Vietnam and Army veteran Gerald Reed, of nearby Columbia, Md., attended the event for the first time this year with his wife, Kathy Reed. Reed was drafted at 25, and served in Phu Bai, Vietnam, in 1971, as a radar technician. He'd been a radar technician as a civilian when he was drafted. "I really lucked out," Reed said. "Normally when you are drafted they put you in the infantry. They had a need for radar repairmen, and that's what I did. They didn't even have to train me." While Reed said he doesn't know anybody buried in the cemetery, he did say a high school classmate of his was the first from his county to be killed in the Vietnam War. And Reed's older brother was killed in World War II in Normandy. He said he never met his brother. "My oldest brother Clifford, who died in [World War II], died before I was born," he said. "My mother was pregnant with me when they got word that my brother was killed." Reed says he has six brothers and four sisters. While one of his brothers died at an early age -- just three years old -- he and the rest of his brothers all served in the military. All but one served in the Army. His four brothers-in-law also served, he said. "I think it's absolutely inspirational," said his wife, Kathy, of the event. "I love the fact that maybe there is a little pendulum that is swinging back a little more toward respect, appreciation, remembrance, recollection and giving honor -- that kind of thing. This is an amazing way to do that. There is a lot of distraction in the world. This is a very humbling experience." Kathy also reflected on the words of Karen Worcester, about how each stone represents a life lost. "Every one of them had a hope, a dream, a family, someone who mourns their loss," Kathy said. "This is a small gesture of gratitude." Army team to destroy Syrian chemical weapons afloat [2014-01-03] PORTSMOUTH, Va. -- Some 64 specialists from the Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center are expected to depart for the Mediterranean in about two weeks aboard the ship Cape Ray to destroy chemical weapons from Syria. The nearly 650-foot-long ship, now in Portsmouth, Va., will travel to a yet-to-be specified location in the Mediterranean, will take on about 700 metric tons of both mustard gas and "DF compound," a component of the nerve agent sarin gas, and will then use two new, and recently installed "field deployable hydrolysis systems" to neutralize the chemicals. Onboard the Cape Ray will be 35 mariners, about 64 chemical specialists from Edgewood, Md., a security team, and a contingent from U.S. European Command. It's expected the operational portion of the mission will take about 90 days. Outside the ship, Jan. 2, Frank Kendall, under secretary of Defense for Acquisition , Technology and Logistics, said preparations began before the United States even knew it was committed to the mission -- or that the mission would ever materialize. "There was a recognition that something was going to happen in Syria, in all likelihood that would require us to do something with those chemical materials that were known to be there," he said. In December 2012, a request was made to determine what could be done if the U.S. was asked to participate in destruction of chemical weapons from Syria. By the end of January 2013, a team with the Joint Project Manager for Elimination and the Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center had evaluated existing technology and configurations for neutralization of chemical weapons and made the recommendation to use the hydrolysis process. Construction of a deployable system began in February, and the first prototype was available in June. A second was available in September. "We could have waited to see what happened and then reacted to that, or we could have moved out ahead of time and then prepared for what might happen or was likely to happen," Kendall said. "Fortunately ... we took the latter course." Onboard the ship, an environmentally-sealed tent contains two FDHS units which will operate 24 hours a day in parallel to complete the chemical warfare agent neutralization mission. Each unit costs about $5 million and contains built-in redundancy and a titanium-lined reactor for mixing the chemical warfare agents with the chemicals that will neutralize them. About 130 gallons of mustard gas can be neutralized at a time, over the course of about two hours, for instance, said Adam Baker, with the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, Edgewood, Md. The FDHS systems can, depending on the material, process between 5 to 25 metric tons of material a day. With two systems, that means as much as 50 metric tons a day of chemical warfare agents can be destroyed. The mission requires disposal of 700 metric tons of material. But the plan is not to start out on the first day at full speed. "There is a ramp-up period," Baker said. "It's going to be a slow start. We're going to go very deliberately and safely." Rob Malone, with the Joint Project Manager for Elimination at Edgewood, Md., said the two chemical warfare agents will be neutralized with reagents such as bleach, water or sodium hydroxide. "They are doing a chemical hydrolysis process. It brings the chemical agent together with a reagent, another chemical," Malone said. "It creates a chemical reaction that basically destroys the chemical agent in and of itself." The result of that neutralization process will create about 1.5 million gallons of a toxic "effluent" that must be disposed of, but cannot be used as a chemical weapon. Additionally, Malone said, the effluent is similar to other toxic hazardous compounds that industrial processes generate. There is a commercial market worldwide for disposing of such waste. The effluent will be acidic and will be PH-adjusted to bring it up to "above neutral," as part of the process. The end result will be a liquid that is caustic, similar to commercially-available "Drano," said Baker. The operational plan includes a cycle of six days of disposal plus one day for maintenance of the equipment. On board will be about 220 6,600-gallon containers that will hold the reagents used in the disposal process, and will also be used afterward to hold the effluent. "Everything will be kind of contained on the ship throughout the entire process," Malone said. YEARS OF EXPERIENCE The U.S. has never disposed of chemical weapons onboard a ship before. But it has spent years disposing of its own chemical weapons on land, using the same process that the FDHS uses. The chemical process is not new, and neither is the technology. The format, field-deployable, is new, however. And the platform, onboard a ship, is also new. And these additions to the process have created challenges for the team. "This has not been done on this platform, not been done at sea," said Baker. "But it is taking the established operations we've done at several land sites domestically and internationally and is applying them here." In the United States, the U.S. military has been destroying its own chemical weapons for years at places like Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., and the recently-closed Pine Bluff Arsenal, Ala. Lessons from those facilities and others were used to develop the process that will be used aboard the Cape Ray to destroy Syrian chemical weapons. The process for disposing of mustard gas was used at Aberdeen Proving Ground. The process for disposing of DF compound was taken from Pine Bluff Arsenal, Baker said. The processes and technologies from those locations were scaled down to make them transportable. "So there is no mystery about the process," Kendall said. "It is a slightly different scale that we are doing it at here. We had fixed installations that had hydrolysis units that could do this job. But what we did not have was a 'transportable, field deployable' [system], the words we're using for these systems, that could be moved somewhere else." Malone, who has 20 years of experience destroying chemical weapons for the United States, said doing onboard a ship what he has done on land for two decades required some additional thought and effort. "We had to figure out on the Cape Ray how to operate in three dimensions," he said. The FHDS systems are inside tents inside the ship, for example. But the chemical weapons may be loaded on the ship on the deck above, and additional materials will be a deck below the FDHS equipment. On land, everything is spread out and on one level, he said. "That's been the significant challenge and things we've had to overcome to get the Cape Ray ready for deployment," he said. Additionally, vibration studies were done to learn how lab equipment would operate onboard a ship, he said. And the equipment had to be modified to anchor it into the ship using chains. FASTER THROUGHOUT In the U.S. chemical weapons demilitarization program, many times it is munitions that contain chemical weapons that are being demilitarized, such as rockets and projectiles that include a casing and explosive as well as the chemical component. "Really, that's that part that really limits throughput a lot of time, the de-mating of the explosive from the chemical agent and the body," Malone said. But onboard the Cape Ray, the mission will be different. It is not munitions that are being demilitarized, but liquid chemical agents. "This can be done fairly quickly because all of the material we are receiving are going to be in a bulk configuration," Malone said. "It's in large vessels, easily accessible, and for us it gives us a very high throughput." The chemical weapons also lend themselves to faster neutralization, he said. ONBOARD THE CAPE RAY Rick Jordan, captain of the Cape Ray, a mariner for 40 years now, and an employee of contractor Keystone Shipping Company, said for this mission his crew was expanded from 29 to 35. The additional six will support mainly what he calls "hotel services" onboard the ship. "We've got some really good folks on here that know how to train, and we've been training them," he said. "They've got all kinds of shipboard damage control, damage control training and that sort of thing." He also said there is plenty of support for spill response as well as for fire suppression. "The whole key here is teamwork," he said. "There has been an unbelievable amount of teamwork in this whole process, from the Maritime Administration, Military Sealift Command, to the Keystone Shipping Company. I'm humbled by what is going on here. We've had about three or four days of hard training together where we've been making mariners out of them, and they've been making chemical destruction folks out of us. And we're going to continue to train. The whole trip will be a combination of production, training and being ready for the worst case scenario." Jordan said he has not yet received sailing orders, but estimated the time to sail to the center of the Mediterranean Sea at about 10 days. The mission will last 90 days. That 90-day mission has about 45 days built in for "down days" due to bad weather. So the mission could be shorter. "Weather is the single most important factor as a mariner that I have got to consider," Jordan said. "The good news for the Cape Ray is we have lots of things to mitigate weather on board." He said the ship is equipped with stabilizers to dampen any roll. He also said that because the ship really has no destination, but is rather meant to serve as a platform, he can navigate around weather if need be. Sea trials for the mission have already begun, and the Cape Ray will do more sea trials before it departs on its mission in about two weeks. It's expected the mission will include the neutralization of about 700 metric tons of chemical weapon agents. Those agents will be transferred to the Cape Ray from both Danish and Norwegian ships in a process expected to take about one or two days. "Exactly where and how that process will take place has not been finalized yet," Kendall said. Additionally, U.S. Navy assets will provide security for the ship while it conducts operations, Kendall said. Safety top priority on chem-demil ship, officials say [2014-01-14] WASHINGTON -- Joe Wienand pulled his agency's military challenge coin from his coat pocket and held it in the air to display its artwork. He pointed to a small dot of green paint on its surface, less than 1/8 inch in diameter. "A spot like that of mustard [chemical agent] would raise a blister that would be very, very big, and painful," he said. "And nerve agent -- a dot like that would be enough to kill somebody." Wienand, who serves as director of the U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., said the coin was designed with that bit of artwork so he could use it to illustrate the toxicity of the chemicals the center works with. His team, in cooperation with the Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical and Biological Defense, is responsible for designing, constructing, deploying and operating the Field Deployable Hydrolysis System, which will be used aboard the cargo ship MV Cape Ray later this month as part of a U.N. mission to destroy bulk chemical weapons from Syria. That mission is expected to begin Friday. Those weapons include 700 metric tons of bis(2-chloroethyl) sulfide, or mustard agent; methylphosphonyl difluoride, or "DF," which is one component in the manufacture of the nerve agent sarin; and O-ethyl methylphosphonothioic acid, or "EMPTA," a component in the manufacture of the nerve agent VX. Aboard the ship Cape Ray, a team of 46 Army civilians from both ECBC and JPEO-CBD will use the two Field Deployable Hydrolysis Systems, or FDHS, to destroy those chemical agents over the course of about 90 days. The Cape Ray was originally built in Japan for Saudi Arabia, said Carmen J. Spencer, the Joint Program Executive Officer for Chemical and Biological Defense. The Saudis used the ship to haul components of oil rigs. Today, the ship is owned by the U.S. Maritime Administration. It was modified for the chemical weapon destruction mission. Modifications to the Cape Ray in advance of the mission include a collective protection system to ensure clean air in berthing compartments, hospital units, and operational areas, Spencer said. Also installed were 100 berthing units to accommodate the increased crew, a hospital trauma unit, and a medevac capability. To accommodate the medevac capability, a helicopter pad was installed on the ship. The Cape Ray will sail to a yet-unnamed port in Italy to rendezvous with a Danish ship that will have previously picked up the chemical weapons at the port of Latakia, Syria. The trans-loading of the chemical weapons -- moving them from the Danish ship to the U.S. ship, will take place at the Italian port. "It's much safer that way," Spencer said. Following the transfer of the chemical weapons, the Cape Ray will head out to international waters -- where, exactly, is still to be determined -- and the process of destroying those chemical weapons will commence. Using the FDHS, Edgewood specialists will mix the chemical weapons with neutralizing agents such as bleach, water, or sodium hypochlorite, to render them unusable as weapons. In some cases it's expected the mix ratio will be nine gallons of neutralizing agent for each gallon of chemical weapon. The resulting mixture is waste material, called effluent. The effluent from the neutralization process, hazardous waste, will be stored in approved containers aboard the ship. The UN has solicited bids to determine what commercial facilities will receive the effluent for disposal. Some 42 bids have been received. Spencer said an announcement on winners will be made soon. Safety is a top concern during the mission, Spencer said, and the JPEO-CBD has worked closely with ECBC to make the mission a success. "We could not accomplish this mission if we did not collaborate and work together," Spencer said. "The number one driver of this mission is not schedule, it is safety. The operators coming from ECBC, physically deployed on the ship, are performing a dangerous mission. Within the PEO, my people on the ship will be working side-by-side with them and will be performing a dangerous mission. What has always been preeminent in our working together is how can we protect the people, the ship and the environment, to accomplish this mission successfully. We are very confident we will be able to do that." Wienand said the ECBC operators aboard the Cape Ray are experienced with the handling of chemical weapons. He also said the systems aboard the ship have been engineered to ensure crew safety. "We have very, very experienced operators, people who have dealt with this material before," Wienand said. "All the material will be monitored with chemical monitors so if any vapor gets out we can close the operations, and we can decontaminate. These very experienced operators know how to handle these materials, and I think they are going to do a fantastic job of making this a safe operation." Spencer said the team from ECBC, JPEO-CBD, and the Cape Ray crew, embarked on a five-day sea trial, Jan. 10. "We hope to validate all of our equipment, the emergency procedures, operating procedures, and integration with the ship," he said. Afterward, he said, the crew will conduct an after-action review. BUILDING THE FDHS It was a little more than a year ago, Dec. 27, 2012, when defense officials at the Pentagon gathered to address the concern of dealing with chemical weapons from Syria, Spencer said. "Since we knew at the time that an overwhelming majority of the chemical weapons were bulk liquid, we had to basically do a search around the globe on what capabilities exist today, and what capabilities does the U.S. own that could deal with the chemical weapons in Syria," Spencer said. Within the United States, destruction of chemical weapons comes to the JPEO-CBD, Spencer's responsibility. So the task came to him to find a solution. He worked with Wienand's ECBC to look for a solution to the problem. "We collectively came together and did a global market search," Spencer said. "We quickly realized that the U.S. did not possess that capability." The U.S. Strategic Command subsequently published a Joint Emergent Operational Needs Statement that directed JPEO-CBD to put together such a capability, no later than July 1, 2013. "Basically, we took an acquisition system that was designed to provide something in seven years or less, and in less than six months (had to) provide a proven operational capability," he said. "Together with ECBC and my organization, we determined the best available technology -- a proven technology that we had over 10,000 hours of operating, and a technology that we had used in three locations in the United States." The prototype solution, the FDHS, was finished June 27 -- three days in advance of the July deadline. The FDHS is air-transportable and fits inside two 20-foot containers. "It is a proven capability that can effectively neutralize and destroy all known chemical agents, anywhere on the planet," Spencer said. "It is a portable, transportable system to accomplish that mission." "It's a very small chemical plant that you can move wherever you need it to be operated," Wienand said. In building the FDHS, ECBC and JPEO-CBD looked at technology and processes used at Aberdeen Proving Ground for destruction of mustard gas; Newport, Ind., for destruction of the nerve agent VX, and Pine Bluff, Ark., for the destruction of precursors and binary components of chemical weapons. While these chemical weapons destruction processes, facilities and technologies existed already in the United States, what did not exist -- and what was created with the development of the FDHS -- was a way to make that capability portable. The system was designed and built at Aberdeen Proving Ground by Army civilians within ECBC. So far, the team there has built three completed units -- two are currently on the Cape Ray. The team is in the process now of building a fourth FDHS, and will build an additional three -- for a total of seven systems. "It's been a very busy year," Wienand said. "It is not our job normally to produce things, but in this case it was the only way to do it quickly enough so we wouldn't have to put a contract out and wait for people to bid on it and produce it." Initially, the expectation was that the destruction of Syrian chemical weapons would happen on land, but that changed. "The ultimate decision was to deploy it at sea," Spencer said. "When you deploy it at sea, in international waters, there is no potential for harm to civilian populations in nearby areas. There (are) operational advantages to doing it at sea." Wienand said the decision to go to sea produced some challenges. "It took a little bit of engineering to figure out how to ruggedize the system to make sure it is survivable," he said. "On the shipboard application we had to run some special engineering studies to make sure it was effectively braced and bracketed so it wouldn't have any problems when it is transported on ship or operated on a ship." In addition to making accommodations for at-sea operations, accommodations also had to be made for the constrained space, Wienand said. On land, all components of the process would be laid out on the same level. In the constrained environment of the ship, the whole process had to be adjusted for deployment on multiple levels. It forced engineers who installed the system to consider the three-dimensional nature of the ship. "They want to be able to use gravity as much as possible," Wienand said. "They want gravity to feed the effluent down to the tanks. Many of the tanks are down below the FDHS unit. There is support equipment on the same deck. There is support equipment on the deck above. They tried to position it all, with the ship engineer, so that whatever that piece of equipment was and the way the operation was supposed to work, it would be optimum. So a lot of the electrical material, and the things that you don't have to worry about in terms of pumping liquids, it's above the FDHS. The liquids, the things that you have to handle, it's either on that deck, or below. The engineers have done a great job." On Aberdeen Proving Ground, at ECBC's Chemical Biological Applications Risk Reduction unit, construction of the fourth FDHS is now underway. In a maintenance building, a pre-built frame for an FDHS stands nearly empty, save for two electric motors and pumps on one end, and a bit of brightly-colored plumbing. Two workers together bolted another part onto the system, which when complete will contain nearly 2,000 such parts. Jeffrey Gonce, supervisor of the field maintenance branch at ECBC's Chemical Biological Applications Risk Reduction unit, is responsible for a team of 20 Army civilians, eight of whom constructed the existing three FDHS units already in existence, and who are now building the fourth. It takes about two weeks to assemble a system from off-the-shelf parts. Gonce said he has 26 years of experience working in the Army facilities that are responsible for destroying America's own chemical weapons stockpile. Because of his experience as a field maintenance technician, he was called on to offer guidance in the design of the FDHS. "They were having some difficulties with designing the plumbing," he said. "So they brought me in to kind of facilitate some of the plumbing, how it flows ... to get the right agents and reagents going to the right locations at the right time." Design of the system, he said, drew on existing chemical weapons destruction facilities he was already familiar with. "We took the plant designs, and we figured out the common denominators between them and shrunk them down to make one system, a portable system," he said. "We took the three plants and three processes and combined them together to make one process -- we came up with the FDHS." Gonce said his team has embraced the mission so far. "They stood up to the challenge that was put before them," he said, adding that when his team ran into difficulties constructing the FDHS, because in some cases the blueprints for the system didn't match the realities of actual construction, his team was able to contribute by improvising and making the system work. One example is with the electrical components of the system. When the preliminary drawings for the FDHS were made, the boxes that would house electrical components were not yet available. As a result, the system's electrician had to make modifications at construction time to accommodate the new boxes. "Things didn't fit like we thought they would, because we didn't have the actual boxes and material at the time," Gonce said. "He redesigned it so it would all fit the way we wanted to make it work." "I'm very proud of my team," Gonce said. "I'm very proud knowing that something that my team here worked on, I can stand back some day and say we had something to do with that. I'm proud of that." The operational part of the Cape Ray mission is expected to take 90 days, though with perfectly calm seas, it could take as little as 45. "It will be one less nation on this planet that will then possess chemical weapons," Spencer said. Recruiting force remains unchanged, despite shrinking goals [2014-01-16] WASHINGTON -- Military budgets have declined, the U.S. military is preparing to pull out of Afghanistan, and the Army is drawing down its force. But the Army must still recruit new Soldiers every year, and less money means it may be harder to put young Americans into uniform. Maj. Gen. Thomas C. Seamands, the Army's director of Military Personnel Management, discussed those challenges with members of the House Armed Services Committee, subcommittee on Military Personnel, Jan. 16. "Our Army is now made up of the highest quality, best trained, most experienced, and highest skilled Soldiers ever," Seamands said. "Our ability to meet the challenges of the current and future operational environment depends on our ability to recruit great citizens and retain great Soldiers." The general told lawmakers that despite challenges of the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, drawdown plans and budgetary constraints, both the active-duty Army and the Army Reserve exceeded their enlistment and retention missions for Fiscal Year 2013. The National Guard achieved 86 percent of its goals. "The total Army percentage of newly enlisted Soldiers with a high school diploma was 98 percent," he said. "Well above historic rates. Additionally, the Army achieved 99 percent for each of its military occupational specialties." Seamands told lawmakers that the recruiting mission for the Army is shrinking, but that it has decided to maintain its pool of recruiters because their presence in communities builds and maintains trust between civilians and the military. "What the Army is doing is taking a long-term view of the issue," he said. "If you look at our accessions mission for 2014, there is a reduction from 2013. What we opted to do is leave the recruiting force in the communities. We feel that what recruiters do ... is built on trust. You need to keep the recruiters in the high schools, in the communities, in the cities, to have that relationship and that trust. So we maintain roughly the same level of support, despite a reduced mission out in the recruiting force." Vee Penrod, deputy asistant secretary of Defense for Military Personnel Policy, also addressed lawmakers. She said that health and fitness issues prevent many youth from joining the military. Additionally, she said, the opinions of young Americans are changing away from considering the military as an "attractive" lifestyle. Seamands said that while the Army met recruiting goals, other indicators may be a harbinger of tough recruiting times ahead. One of those indicators is the number of young people enrolled in the Army's Delayed Entry Program. "As we look at our delayed entry pool, we see that decreasing," Seamands said. "We see that as kind of a canary in the coal mine in terms of warning about a tough environment ahead. If you were to go back in time about a year ago, we would have had about half our mission in the Delayed Entry Program. If you look at it now, it's about a third. It's going down." With declining budgets, and the money military services receive for recruiting also decreasing, it becomes more important that the services be able to manage their own funds and use them where they think the funds can best be used. "We believe the services are really in the best position to determine how to spend recruiting dollars," Pinrod said. "They understand their force, they know the requirements, they understand the culture. When the services are directed, or not directed to spend recruiting dollars, it is, we believe, a misdirection of funds. So we absolutely believe the decision should be left to the services. And we provide oversight to ensure they follow policy and law." The Army does not just recruit, it also works to retain Soldiers. When Soldiers choose to leave the active force, the service hopes they transition to the Army National Guard or Army Reserve. To facilitate that, Seamands said the Army has bolstered its relationships with the two reserve components. "We have developed a great partnership with the Reserve and the Guard, and work hand-in-hand with them as we identify and downsize the active component," Seamands said. "If you were to look at the active-component to reserve-component transition, the last couple of years we've exceeded 157 percent two years ago. We've raised the standard, or the goal for that across the board. My counterparts in the Guard and Reserve understand what our process is." The general said one of the things the Army has done with the Reserve recruiters is ensure that Reserve recruiters get to meet earlier with departing active Soldiers. "It becomes part of their thought process about getting out, going into the Reserve and Guard," Seamands said. "We talk about Soldier for Life, where you continue to be a Soldier after you leave the service. We don't like using the words separation of service. It's really a transition, whether you go to be a civilian, or you go into the reserve component." Seamands also told lawmakers that the Army is working to increase recruiting of Soldiers who are equipped to go into the Army's cyber career fields. To that end, he said, recruiters are looking to recruit more among those who have educations and backgrounds in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. He also told legislators that continued support from Congress for funding of recruiting efforts is what will help the Army continue to meet its recruiting goals in a difficult recruiting environment. "Recruiting is expected to become increasingly more difficult due to the tough recruiting environment and the impacts of the budget," Seamands said. "These will likely cause a decline in the entry pool. The continued support of Congress for competitive military benefits and compensation, incentives, bonuses for our Soldiers, and marketing to help us tell our story will remain critical to the all-volunteer Army's effort to recruit, retain, and support the highest caliber Soldier. While we transfer to a smaller Army, we will remain dedicated to improving readiness, and building resilience in our Soldiers, civilians and families." Aviation chief: stretch limited flying hours with 'week-long flight' [2014-01-17] WASHINGTON -- Less money means fewer flying hours for training pilots and air crews. How can the Army maximize the value of those limited flying hours so Soldiers can get the most out of their time in a real aircraft? Chief Warrant Officer 5 Randy Godfrey, chief warrant officer of the Aviation Branch, United States Army Aviation Center of Excellence, suggests the "week-long flight" as one approach to make those hours in the air have more benefit. During the Association of the United States Army aviation symposium, Jan. 14, in Arlington, Va., Godfrey explained how the days before an actual flight and the days after could be structured to get the most out of three or four hours of actual flying. "How do we maximize our flying hours? An example I have looked at is something called the week-long flight," Godfrey said. "So when you have a three- or four-hour flight, we can stretch that out and have it take approximately three to four days." On Monday, he said, Soldiers go back to "company-level planning," something that atrophied somewhat in Iraq and Afghanistan because the operations tempo there pushed such planning up the chain of command. "Let's go back to company-level training. On Monday we have fragmentary orders, a scenario that we develop based on our mission-essential task list for that company," he said. "We take that scenario, that FRAGO, and we break it apart into what's called our mission planning cells, where everybody in the company has a part in that where they develop and look at different things. At the end of the day, we bring those mission planning cells together, we develop our operations order, our mission briefs." On Tuesday, the missions are actually briefed, he said. And then Soldiers rehearse those missions. "We either rehearse them the old-style way on a sand table or a training board, or we use some of the newer technology we have or would like to see developed: the Tactical Terrain Visualization System, desktop type things where they can actually see those missions and fly them in a virtual world." The next day, crews would go to simulators and practice. They might use the Aviation Combined Arms Tactical Trainer, or the Longbow Crew Trainer for instance. "Hopefully all those can tie in together, and we have incorporated those with our ground units," Godfrey said. He added that those missions should be practiced "over and over" to help Soldiers develop. On Thursday, crews would actually suit up and get inside a real aircraft for a real flight -- limited as it may be. "When we fly that mission, we've seen this mission for three days now, we've practiced it, we've briefed it," he said. "So it maximizes those three or four hours they may be out flying." Finally, on the following day, he said, crews do their after-action review and debriefs. "We capture the lessons learned to put into that scenario," he said. "So basically a three- or four-hour flight, we've taken a whole week, and we've seen this multiple times in maximizing the amount of flight hours." VIRTUAL TRIANING Army aviation leaders at the conference said that virtual training in Army simulators is key to maintaining readiness when flying hours are being cut. Brig. Gen. Michael D. Lundy, deputy commanding general, United States Army Combined Arms Center, said the Army's integrated training environment -- fielded now at five Army installations and eventually at 17 -- plays a part in that. "It ties together a lot of our legacy training aids devices simulators and simulations, specifically for aviation's Aviation Combined Arms Tactical Trainer and the non-rated crew member module, but also the close combat tactical trainer on the ground side, all of our constructive simulations, and our live capabilities that are out there -- home-station instrumentation systems, and MILES," he said. Systems at Fort Hood, Fort Bliss, Fort Campbell, Fort Stewart and in Korea allow units at home station to "replicate very closely what our fidelity is out at the combat training centers with the instrumentation and the integration of these different enablers." By 2022, he wants to move into something called the "Future Holistic Training Environment - Live Synthetic" to get "away from multiple environments, virtual, gaming, constructive, and go to one synthetic environment, make it lower overhead, and integrate the full operations process so a commander can holistically ... sit down and go through plan, prepare, execute and access. And do everything with respect to training in a common operating picture," he said. With the Army's Aviation Combined Arms Tactical Trainer -- a multi-user simulator for training helicopter crews -- efforts are underway to upgrade the systems to account for advances in current Army aviation assets. Lundy said AVCATT is the premier virtual trainer on the virtual side for the Army, but that the system has currency issues now in that it is not concurrent with the CH-47F model Chinook, the UH-60M Blackhawk or the AH-64 Block III. They have a plan with a way ahead on upgrading the training capability of the AVCATT system to include CH-47F, and also with the UH-60M Chinook. Lundy said they are still working upgrades to bring it current with AH-64 Block III capabilities. NEW EMPHASIS ON TRAINING Lundy told attendees that changes to Army training doctrine are drawing attention to the role commanders play in keeping their Solders ready for combat. "The big change for training doctrine was really re-emphasis the commander's role in training," he said. Army doctrine has been rewritten to re-emphasize that, and also changed to make sure there is a closer alignment in training with how the Army fights. Col. Robert T. Ault, commander, 4th Combat Aviation Brigade, said company commanders must take ownership of simulated training as well. "Company leadership needs to learn to train in the simulated environment," Ault said. "The fidelity of the simulated environment is maintained at that level. They have to understand how to transition their force, their units, their Soldiers from flying live missions to now making the simulator -- not necessarily seem real -- but have fidelity." And Command Sgt. Maj. James H. Thomson Jr., Aviation Branch command sergeant major, United States Army Aviation Center of Excellence, said there are changes for enlisted Soldiers as well. He said that after 10 years at war, noncommissioned officers know how to be trained -- but they might not know how to train others. "We have to train that paradigm and get back to NCOs owning training," Thompson said. "We're working on a lot of initiatives to get there." He also said there are changes being developed for enlisted aviation training. The concept is to move toward a "skills-based" program of instruction. Using an aircraft engine mechanic as an example, Thompson said the Army is looking to get away from Soldiers preforming 70-80 critical tasks and instead getting Soldiers to master skills and knowledge required for their MOS. An enlisted engine mechanic does critical tasks on every turbine engine in the Army inventory, he said. "Instead of that, we will spend several weeks mastering the skills that a turbine engine mechanic needs without even seeing an engine," he said. After that skills-based training and mastery of skills, he said, they might then go do critical tasks on various Army engines. "It's not 80 critical tasks, it's a dozen, to validate those skills that were mastered upfront in the skills-based training program of instruction," Thomson said. He also said an initiative for NCOs involves a partnership with Corpus Christi Army Depot to send NCOs there from units to train with the "artisans" and "really get that graduate-level maintenance training," Thomason said. "They can bring that back to their units." Women leaders serve as role models, whether they realize it or not [2014-01-23] WASHINGTON -- The Army's surgeon general, Lt. Gen. Patricia D. Horoho, said she tried not to consider the role her gender played on her professional development as she climbed higher through the ranks in the Army. But at some point, she said, it would become inevitable that somebody would point it out to her. Just in 2011, in fact, as she had been named the first female, first non-physician to be appointed as the Army surgeon general, she was approached several times about the uniqueness of her position. "The U.K. called, when I was in Afghanistan, and said congratulations -- 'how does it feel to know the entire world is watching to see if you succeed or fail?'" Horoho said. "I have to tell you, I was holding the phone and I thought, 'I'm not sure if I should be happy with the call or if I just got insulted.'" Both Horoho and Lt. Gen. Flora D. Darpino, the Army's judge advocate general, or JAG, spoke Jan. 22, before the Women Mayors' Caucus in Washington, D.C. The caucus is part of the larger United States Conference of Mayors, for mayors of cities with 30,000 or more citizens. The group held its 82nd Winter Meeting, Jan 22-24, in the nation's capital. Horoho said more recently she was approached by the Israeli surgeon general. "He said 'you need to know when you got selected, it was the shot that was heard around the world. Because if the United States places a female in their highest position within Army medicine, then it caused other nations to look and say why aren't we doing that? Why aren't we following suit?'" Later, she said, two positions in the Israeli military opened up for women to command. And now there are discussions about should they be general officers. "That's a huge change," she said. She said that France has also approached the Army, following her appointment to surgeon general, to ask for help with leader development of nurses. "They are going to move their nurses from being enlisted to officers, and they have taken a general officer slot and held it for that," she said. "They did that because they said watching the [U.S.] Army make that decision, they couldn't defend why they weren't doing that." "What I learned from that, is you serve as a role model whether you realize you are doing that or not," Horoho said. "And there are people watching what you are doing, and the impact that you have can be huge." On a more personal level, she told the women mayors in the room, fathers have approached her and told her that by having achieved her position as the Army's first female surgeon general, she has served as proof for their own daughters that anything is possible. She told the mayors "there are young women, and there are fathers that are looking and saying if you all can serve as the mayor, my daughter can do that one day. Those are some of the lessons learned." Darpino, the Army's first female judge advocate general, also spoke with the women mayors. She explained her roles as JAG within the Army, including the senior military legal advisor to the secretary of the Army, the primary and principle attorney and counselor to the chief of staff of the Army, and the head of the JAG corps. She oversees attorneys, paralegals and professionals in the legal profession within the Army, worldwide. "We have to be highly flexible, very adaptable, willing to change, and willing to learn," Darpino said. As a second-generation Italian American, she said her father had told her they would need to work harder to get ahead. "He basically inculcated us with the thought that in order for us to ever be considered equal, we always had to work harder and be better," she said. "As women, that hits home a little bit more. That's a lot of times how we feel. This idea of joining the military -- I was slightly naïve I must admit -- didn't seem that intimidating to me. And then I showed up at my first course." There, she said, of 150 people, there were about seven women. "I thought, 'I have picked not only a male-dominated profession, the law, I have picked a male-dominated organization, the Army,'" she said. "I'm really glad I didn't know what I was doing when I started." Darpino relayed only one example of somebody in the Army who considered her gender before her professional capabilities -- an officer at her first assignment. After that, she said, she found that in the Army she was valued for her input and achievements, and not discriminated against for her gender. "What I ran into were a bunch of people who judged me by how well I did," she said. "And as long as I did my very best, and gave my very best in this team sport, the Army, I continued to be promoted and given positions of greater responsibility." Both officers spoke about their upbringing in the Army as women, but also spoke about the challenges they face in their current position. One female mayor posed a question about the challenges of sexual assault in the Army. Darpino said sexual assault is not just an Army problem, but it is a problem where the Army has a unique ability to make a difference. "Sexual assault is a societal problem, it is the most under-reported crime there is out there," she said. "But I feel the Army is better equipped to address this issue than a lot of the rest of society. Sexual assault is under-reported for a lot of reasons. Our studies have shown that the reason sexual assault is under-reported, is that the victim doesn't want people to know. It is a personal matter." She said that retaliation for having reported a sexual assault -- retaliation by their peers, not their leadership -- is also a problem that keeps sexual assault in the Army an under-reported crime. This is where, she said, the Army can make some headway. The military, she said, is a team. And youth can -- in the early stages of their career, in Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, in Reserve Officer Training Corps, or in the Delayed Entry Program -- be taught that being on the team means not allowing your teammates to be assaulted. "We bring 54,000 people into the Army a year," she said. "And they are young. The vast majority of our victims are between the ages of 18-24. That would be about 75 percent of our victims. They are the ones who have just come in. Who are the people that are sexually assaulting them? About the exact same age group. So we have an opportunity to start, which we have been doing in our JROTC programs, in our college ROTC programs, in our Delayed Entry Programs ... working with them, in the culture change. That is, as a member of the team, if you see something, you have to stop it." Regarding youth, Horoho told mayors it is a national "strategic vulnerability" that only 25 percent of youths aged 17-24 meet the health and fitness criteria to join the Army. "We're not getting healthier as a nation," she said. Some 1/3 of Americans will have diabetes by the 2045-2050 timeframe, she said. And 70 percent of illnesses across the nation are preventable. Within the Army, she said, the service has rolled out its "Performance Triad" effort, focused on eating right, sleeping right, and getting the right amount of physical activity to stay healthy -- and to stay ready for combat. "We are focusing on brain health, to really improve the health of our service members and their families," she said. She said she hopes the Army's efforts at a fitness revolution will persuade others to follow suit. "We provide healthcare across five continents," she said. "If we can take the Army and show that by focusing on sleep, activity and nutrition, we can bend the cost curve of health care, that we can increase health outcomes. I think we could have a pilot that we could share with the nation to really look at how do we improve [the health of] young Americans." In April, Army to open 33,000 positions to women Soldiers [2014-01-27] WASHINGTON -- About 33,000 of the positions in the Army today that are closed to women are closed because they were in units that were designated as direct ground combat. That will change this year in units that are not under Army Special Operations. The Office of the Secretary of Defense recently notified Congress of the Army's intent to open those 33,000 positions to women. The change is expected to take place in April 2014, said Col. Linda Sheimo, chief of the Command Programs and Policy Division at the Directorate of Military Personnel Management, Army G-1. Sheimo said that with recent force structure changes, the Army moved away from "focusing on units. Our plan allowed us to identify all the positions that were closed across the three components, regardless of the unit." Those 33,000 positions do not include anything within the Special Operations community, she said. "When we complete Congressional notification in April 2014, the Army will have opened approximately 55,000 positions to women, across all three components, since May 2012." Sheimo said. OPENING CLOSED MOS TO WOMEN There are more than 400 military occupational specialties in the Army, of those, 14 are closed to women. The 33,000 positions that will open to women in April do not include jobs in MOS that are closed to women. Instead, they are positions now open to women across the total force -- positions which were previously closed prior to the notification. Sheimo said the Army still has more than 100,000 jobs closed to women. That includes those MOS that are closed to women. Among those MOS are the 12B combat engineer, 13B cannon crewmember, 11B infantryman, and 19K M1 armor crewman, for instance. The Army has a plan to determine whether these MOS should open to women, Sheimo said, and women Soldiers may have the opportunity to serve in every position, unit, and MOS where a male Soldier can currently serve. Before that happens, however, the Army Training and Doctrine Command is leading the effort to revalidate the physical standards required for entry into the 14 currently-closed MOS. The colonel said that when the Army is complete with its efforts, all individuals joining the Army will understand what standards must be met to be awarded a military specialty. "Ensuring we have clear standards for all Soldiers will ensure the best Soldiers are assigned to positions, something the Army is calling the 'Soldier of 2020,'" Sheimo said. "What we are trying to do is get the best Solders for the future. The Army's efforts across various spectrums will ensure all Soldiers have the opportunity to serve successfully." The first MOS to finish the revalidation will be 12B, combat engineer. When the validation is complete, TRADOC and Army G-1 will make a recommendation to the Secretary of the Army about opening the MOS to women Soldiers, or ask for an exception to keep the MOS closed to women. The Secretary will then review that recommendation, make his own decision, and pass his signed recommendation up to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The OSD will complete their own review of the Army's recommendation and pass their signed recommendation on to Congress. After 30 in-session days of Congress, if lawmakers have not disagreed with the OSD's recommendation, the Army can then begin recruiting female Soldiers into the previously closed-to-women MOS. For the 12B MOS, it is expected that the Army will have made its recommendation to the OSD by the end of 2014. The process must be completed for all 14 MOS that are currently closed to women, and Sheimo said that by Jan. 1, 2016, the Army will have passed onto the OSD decisions on each of those. McHugh: Signals indicate culture changing on sexual assault, leaders must embrace trust [2014-02-03] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers who are victims of sexual assault are showing more willingness to report crimes against them, a sign that there is growing confidence in the Army's commitment to investigating such crimes and providing support to victims, according to Army leaders. Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh spoke about preventing sexual assault, his top priority, Jan. 28, at an Army Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention conference at Joint Base Andrews, just outside Washington, D.C. The secretary outlined both his concerns -- and the Army's growing list of accomplishments -- to the more than 300 officers and senior enlisted personnel in attendance at the event aimed at promoting the Army's effort to curb sexual assault in the ranks. McHugh cited findings from the Army's provost marshal general that found the number of reports of violent sexual crimes in the Army has increased over the last three years. A greater willingness to report may be the result of a victim's trust in their leadership, unit, and the Army, representing a shift in Army culture. "Victims feel as though they not only can come forward, they should come forward ... and they know they won't be victimized a second time by a leader who doesn't care, who doesn't believe them, who doesn't take them seriously," McHugh said. "And they won't be harassed when they go back to the unit by other Soldiers for blowing the whistle on someone. I think we have made great progress down that path. I think our efforts are working." As evidence of that, McHugh noted that many of those reports -- nearly 40 percent -- involve incidents that happened in years past. That, he said, is a likely indication that the increase in reporting is not necessarily an increase in crime, but rather a new willingness of Soldiers to open up to their leadership about having been victimized. "That, I think, is such a clear signal that those who have been assaulted do trust you, that you are making an effort, that you are changing the culture," he told those in attendance. In fiscal year 2012, the Army had a prosecution rate of 56 percent for founded rape allegations in which the Army had jurisdiction over the offender. This resulted in a conviction rate of 78 percent for those rape cases tried to findings. These rates are significantly higher than those in the civilian community. Additionally, the Army's special victim investigation course is a DOD best practice, he said, and the Army has trained military special investigators and prosecutors "not just for ourselves, for the Army, but across all services." The service has also assigned full-time Army civilians and Soldiers as sexual assault response coordinators, known as SARCs and victim advocates at brigade-level units. And he said the Army is making sure that those positions are filled by qualified individuals who have both the passion for the work, as well as the expertise to do it correctly. "[We are] ensuring that those who serve in such a position of trust are the right people," he said. "Making sure that commanders don't just take who happens to be available, but pick those who are truly qualified and able to serve." The Army also recently created the special victim counsel program that ensures victims get an Army lawyer dedicated to them, to advocate on their behalf and to help them navigate the complexities of the criminal justice system while perpetrators of the crimes against them are prosecuted. There are 81 special victim counsels now trained across the Army. "We also ensure now that we initiate separation or elimination proceedings, and prohibit overseas assignment for Soldiers who are convicted of sexual assault, where the convictions don't result, for whatever reason, in a punitive discharge or dismissal," he said. And Soldiers recently found changes to the evaluation and reporting system that takes into account their own efforts to foster a "climate of dignity and respect, and most importantly how those officers and NCOs are adhering, or not, to our SHARP program," the secretary said. Despite the encouraging news, McHugh cautioned attendees that they need to be more vigilant in ensuring that resources are available to victims of sexual assault. The Army Secretary reported that a study by the Army Audit Agency found that only 73 percent of calls designed to test the victim support network were answered successfully. Examples of failures included voicemails that were not returned, unanswered phones, disconnected numbers, and numbers on websites that were incorrect. "That is outrageous," McHugh said. "This isn't a failure of a website, or a number or the phone company. This is a failure of leadership. I don't know how we can make it any clearer to those in charge who are commanders. It cannot and it will not be tolerated. Every time a victim reaches out, we have got to be there. We have to provide the help that we say is available." Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno said "this is about leadership accountability and development. We need to change the culture and train our young leaders. The communication aspect of this is also vital; we need to continue to relay the importance of this issue to our formations. We need to continue to take care of our victims; empower them to feel comfortable and trust their chain of command to do the right thing. We need to be aware and actively seeking to prevent individuals from committing these acts against our own brothers and sisters in arms." Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III, in an interview with Defense Media Activity broadcasters at the conference, said that fixing the problem of sexual assault in the Army starts with leadership that will follow through and demonstrate to Soldiers that there are repercussions for those who fail to respect their fellow Soldiers. "Solders want leaders to take action," he said. "If the Army tells Soldiers to treat each other with dignity and respect, that sexual assault and sexual harassment are inappropriate and intolerable in the Army, they want to know that action is being taken." He said Soldiers want to see that perpetrators are being dealt with. "We have got to do a better job of that, more widely publicize that information," Chandler said, noting that it could be done with using names. "We can tell our formations that a person in our organization was investigated for an alleged sexual assault, was found guilty, and this is the result. If Soldiers understand that, that leadership is taking action, it is a deterrent." He said Soldiers want to see that perpetrators are held accountable. Chandler also said that Army training regarding the Army position on sexual assault must move beyond classroom learning, and must become a matter of regular interaction between the most junior Soldiers and the first leader in their chain of command. "There are places where large group sessions work," Chandler said, "especially when you are introducing a new program or policy. But I think that small group instruction, which facilitates dialogue amongst a group of peers is important. I think the most effective training is going to happen between the sergeant and the Soldiers they lead, because they are going to see those individuals on a day-in and day-out basis. And the leader can then check and adjust what he has taught them in order to individualize the training to the person they are trying to teach. I think that is the most effective way." He also said vignettes, real stories with real outcomes about victims and perpetrators of sexual assault, are also a powerful tool for teaching Soldiers. While there are many resources across the Army for educational material on a myriad of subjects, Chandler cited the Center for the Army Profession and Ethic as an excellent starting point for material on both sexual assault and other ethics and Army professional material. "It's a tremendous website that is very user friendly, that any person can go to and get a complete lesson plan and the training material to help our Soldiers learn and grow," he said. "It even has the instructor guide as to what you are supposed to say and when. I challenge anyone to go take a look at these stories, personalize that Soldier as your brother or sister, and to learn from that and become a proactive member and go and make change." Army adjusts retention control points for junior enlisted [2014-02-05] WASHINGTON -- The Army has announced changes to retention control points for Soldiers in the ranks of corporal through sergeant. The changes took effect Feb. 1. Retention control points, or RCPs, refer to the number of years a Soldier may serve to, at a particular rank. For example, the retention control point for a staff sergeant is 20 years. He must retire at 20 years, unless he is promoted to sergeant first class. Army ALARACT 026-2014, "Change to retention control points for enlisted Soldiers serving in the regular Army or under the Active Guard Reserve Title 10 programs," released Jan 31, spells out the changes in detail. The new RCP for promotable corporals and specialists is eight years. That is down from 12 years, as spelled out in an earlier 2011 ALARACT. The new RCP for sergeants is 14 years, up from 13. And the new RCP for promotable sergeants is 14 years, down from 15. The changes apply to Soldiers serving in the active Army. It also applies to Soldiers in the Army Reserve or Army National Guard who are serving under Active Guard Reserve Title 10 programs, but not reserve Soldiers who are mobilized. According to Paul Prince, Army G-1 spokesman, Soldiers who are not serving on an indefinite re-enlistment and who reach their RCP during their current enlistment agreement will perform active service until they reach their expiration term of service date. Vice chief honors black engineers at 2014 BEYA conference [2014-02-09] WASHINGTON -- Advancements in medical and weapons technology, developed by science, technology, engineering, and mathematics professionals, help the Army win wars and save lives, said the service's vice chief of staff. At this year's 9th Annual Stars and Stripes recognition dinner, part of the 2014 Black Engineer of the Year STEM conference, Friday, in Washington, D.C., Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. John F. Campbell served as the keynote speaker and presenter for two awards to both uniformed and Senior Executive Service African-American engineers. STEM refers to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Brig. Gen. C. David Turner, commander, South Pacific Division, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, earned the award for Army general officer. Alvin D. Thornton, director of the engineering directorate, Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, U.S. Army Research, Development, and Engineering Command, earned the civilian award. The 2014 Non-Commissioned Officer award went to Sgt. 1st Class Milvia Mae Kendrick, and was presented by Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III. Addressing an audience of about 400 BEYA conference attendees, Campbell highlighted an Army officer who broke boundaries by becoming the first African-American four-star general. Gen. Roscoe Robinson was a 1951 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., and served in the Army from 1951 through 1985. He was an engineer. "For 35 years, during one of the most important eras for race relations in our country's history -- he fought in Korea, he fought in Vietnam. As a lieutenant, he served as a platoon leader in a segregated, all-black unit, in a time when black men could not serve in positions of authority over white men," Campbell said. "Through perseverance, determination, and a strong educational foundation, he went on to become the Army's first African-American four-star general." Campbell used Robinson as a launching point to highlight the difficulty the Army has in attracting minorities, and minorities with STEM educations. He said in the United States, the percentage of engineering graduates is below five percent. China, he said, graduates STEM professionals at about 31 percent. "Add to this that only five percent of our engineers are African-American or Hispanic, and the talent pool that merits our focus at events like this becomes even more clear," Campbell said. But Campbell told attendees that the Army is a competitive employer for STEM professionals. The service offers scholarships, is on the cutting edge of technology, and "can guarantee a job for any hardworking individual, and potential for advancement." "STEM expertise is fundamental to our ability to defend our nation," he said. "BEYA provides a forum where leaders in the public and private sector come together to inspire and develop current and future generation STEM professionals." Campbell said the Army has several avenues to reach out to youth, including an emphasis on minority youth, to inspire them to pursue STEM career fields. A workshop in Atlanta, led by engineering students from the West Point, and sponsored by the Atlanta West Point Society, exposes local youth to Army programs for those interested in STEM career fields, he said. "These efforts to educate are having an effect." The Army's Reserve Officer Training Corps program is also among leading sponsors of college education in the United States. The Army, he said, provides $240 million in scholarships to about 13,000 students at over 1,000 schools, including 23 historically black schools. And the Army Educational Outreach program works across the country to provide STEM education opportunities to schools representing all social and economic backgrounds. TRUST IN EQUIPMENT, TECHNOLOGY In room full of engineers, some of whom may be responsible for designing and manufacturing technology used by Soldiers, Campbell said that after leading Solders in combat, he knows they trust the equipment they are issued to both let them win, and to protect them from enemy attacks. "When Soldiers lob rounds on target, they trust they can call on an M777 Howitzer with Excalibur rounds to give them the precision fire they need within two meters," he said. "When Soldiers believe there might be an improvised explosive device, they trust they can see the enemy emplace it during the day or night with their Gray Eagle unmanned aerial vehicle, with their hand-launched Puma [unmanned aerial vehicles], or with their JLENS aerostat with over-the-horizon cameras. They trust that they can jam the [improvised explosive device] with their man-packable four-frequency jammers, or detect it with their ... ground penetrating radar and metal detectors." And if they do get hit with an improvised explosive device, or IED, he said, Soldiers are protected "with the best body armor, and best vehicles in the world." He said mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, known as MRAPs, for instance, and the double-V hull Strykers have decreased casualties by 30 percent in Iraq and Afghanistan. In December 2007, he said, 1,300 MRAPs were being produced every single month. And the design, acquisition and fielding of the double-V hull Stryker took just 18 months. "If we put our minds to it, this nation can do anything we want," the general said. Even more than weapons, he said, medical advancements build trust among service members, "inspiring confidence in the all-volunteer force -- that we have their back when we go to war." Studies from Vietnam and Somalia, he said, show that as many as 70 percent of battlefield deaths are the result of bleeding in the arms and legs. Medical engineering advancements such as the combat application tourniquet, and hemostatic dressings have addressed that. He also said within 72 hours of injury, Soldiers can be home in the United States getting medical treatment. "What is most important in all of this is the tactics, techniques and procedures that scientists, doctors, and engineers have built," he said, Prosthetic technology, the product of advanced medical engineering research has greatly improved the ability of Soldiers to function after losing a limb. Prior to 2001, he said, prosthetic arms could perform two or three functions, such as turning a wrist or moving a hand -- but not simultaneously. Today, he said, prosthetics can perform 29 discrete motions using neural signals from the brain. "The latest technology allows an above-the-elbow amputee to pick up a grape and eat it," he said. A major initiative for the Army, in the face of two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been research into traumatic brain injury, known as TBI, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Campbell said the Army Medical Research and Material Command is now managing the largest TBI research investment in world, and has established a partnership with the National Football League, General Electric, and UnderArmor. They've "launched a $60 million research effort to accelerate brain injury detection and prevention," he said. For evaluating the potential of TBI in Soldiers, he said, "engineers have designed the blast gauges that Solders wear on their kit that enable medics to accurately identify those at risk for TBI after an explosion. And, doctors and engineers are designing pen-sized testing devices that can draw a Solder's or football player's blood immediately after an incident and test the sample for blood-based biomarkers for brain injury. What better way to maintain the trust of your Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines than to provide the best medical care in the world?" The Army has great technology today, Campbell said. But it will need the best technology for the future too, including micro-UAVs, "Ironman-like" exoskeletons for Soldiers "that enhance their ability not only to run farther, and carry more, but monitor their vital signs, rapidly close wounds, and stop bullets." He said kinetic weapons today, like the Phalanx close-in weapon system can stop incoming artillery, rockets and mortars. For the future, he said, it might be directed energy weapons, or lasers that perform that function. He called on those in the audience to make it happen. "For the students in the audience, for our academic leaders in the audience, this is exactly what we need for you all to continue to build upon to keep our nation on top," Campbell said. "I trust beyond expectation that the group gathered here tonight will continue to lead the military and American society, in the fight for diversity, equal opportunity for all who choose to serve." The Stars and Stripes recognition dinner is not associated with the Stars and Stripes news service. Small groups key element of better SHARP training [2014-02-11] WASHINGTON -- Last month at the opening of the Army's SHARP conference, the service's chief of staff told attendees he's heard reports of "SHARP training fatigue" among junior Soldiers. SHARP stands for the Army's Sexual Harassment/Assault Prevention and Response Program. As it turns out, Soldiers feel they don't learn much about SHARP from looking at PowerPoint slides in a dark room with hundreds of other Soldiers packed in next to them, said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno. Odierno told some 300 battalion and above commanders and command sergeants major that Soldiers have told him the number of classroom briefings has become too much. They have become numb to the subject matter, he said. "When are we going to stop doing that?" he asked attendees. "We are not going to change the culture by giving a PowerPoint presentation on sexual assault. We have to stop it. We have to stop doing the battalion-level sexual assault briefings. You get nothing done with 120 people in a room." He said he thinks success in SHARP training, and in changing the culture of the Army from one where some may turn a blind eye to sexual assault and sexual harassment, to one where every Soldier personally finds such behavior abhorrent, will come from small-group interaction -- 10 or 15 Soldiers -- led by the junior leadership they interact with every day. "They are having a discussion, and they are interacting with each other about the problem, being facilitated by leadership," Odierno said. Right now, the general said, statistics do not yet demonstrate a significant enough change in Army culture with regard to sexual assault. "We still have some very serious problems regarding sexual assault," he said. "The issue that comes through with this is its all ranks. It's very senior officers down to very young privates, who are continuing to be this insider threat inside the Army." Those individuals threaten the good order and discipline that makes the Army what it is, he said, and that remains essential to the Army as it tries to accomplish its missions. He said culture change means that no Soldier will accept the harassment of a fellow Soldier. "Whether it is male-on-female, or male-on-male -- they simply won't accept it. And we are not there yet," Odierno explained. Dr. Christine T. Altendorf, director of the Army's SHARP program, said culture changes comes from leadership from the very lowest levels all the way to the top. "I think you have to lead by example," she said. "I think it's a leadership issue, and will only occur if leadership is on board with it." Army values, she said, are at the center of what leadership has to demonstrate to their subordinates. Some Soldiers come into the Army with a very different set of values than what the Army expects of them. "A lot of times folks might come in and they don't have a good understanding of any values, much less the Army values," Altendorf said. "From the time they hit basic training, it is the leader's responsibility to make sure that all of the actions in that unit follow the Army values." Altendorf said most sexual assaults occur among very junior Soldiers, and training needs to be developed that can be effective among that age group. "Everybody despises death by PowerPoint training," she said. "We had quite a bit of discussion at the conference about what works for troops, what works for 18-24 year olds. A lot of discussion on vignettes, how you actually have a story of a Soldier who, unfortunately, was assaulted, and what happened and how can we use that as a learning tool." Some panelists at the conference even discussed efforts at their own installations regarding small-group training for SHARP. She said Soldiers are asked to read a book, or read an article "and then they would share information with a small group and actually force the discussion." Altendorf said the Army's chief aggressively challenged commanders at the conference to find better ways to train SHARP topics to Soldiers. "Get in smaller groups, get some vignettes, look at a video of something that happened ... ." After that, she said, as in an after action review, Soldiers would openly discuss -- in a two-way conversation with a group facilitator -- "how would you act differently from what you are experiencing or what you are watching." Altendorf said that the Army has specific guidance on when Soldiers must receive SHARP training, such as at basic military training, advanced individual training, arrival at new installations, and at other points during their careers, such as during more advanced professional military training courses. The Army also has guidance on what Soldiers should be trained on in regards to SHARP, she said. While the Army spells out the when and what type of training Soldiers must get, she said, it doesn't spell out the how. Only commanders know best what will work with their Soldiers. And Altendorf said the Army is "trying to leave it up to them on how best to teach it." Army efforts to reduce and then eliminate sexual offenses focus on prevention, investigation, accountability, advocacy and assessment. As part of its prevention efforts, this year the Army kicked off a pilot Sexual Assault Response Coordinator and Victim Advocate schoolhouse course to expand the knowledge, skills and abilities of SARCs and VAs. It's expected that the school house will reach full operational capability later this year. The Army also recently established a Special Victim Prosecutor program that assigns Army lawyers trained to prosecute a more narrow range of crimes, including sexual assault, child abuse, child sexual exploitation, and serious domestic violence, to aid regular Army lawyers in their prosecution of such cases. At the SHARP conference, Odierno told leaders that accountability is key in defeating sexual assault. The Army has instituted a new policy requiring initiation of separation or elimination proceedings and prohibiting overseas assignments for Soldiers convicted of sex offenses whose conviction did not result in a punitive discharge or dismissal. This applies to all personnel currently in the Army, regardless of when the conviction of the sex offense occurred and regardless of component of membership and current status in that component. Additionally, the Army has also created the Special Victim Counsel program to help victims navigate the complexities of the criminal justice system while perpetrators of the crimes against them are prosecuted. There are 81 special victim counsel now trained across the Army. Altendorf said with the dozens of initiatives within the SHARP program, she is now focused on metrics, to analyze how well each is working. "If you don't know how well something is working, if you can't measure the success, then you are going to be chasing your tail," she said. She said focus groups and surveys can determine the effectiveness of training at various levels. Command climate survey questions might delve into bystander intervention, for instance, where it asks Soldiers if in the last year they have observed a situation where they recognize somebody who might be at risk of sexual assault. Then a follow-on question, depending on their answer, asks if they took any actions when they saw that. "We can go in and measure, and start to get a handle on command climate, as related to sexual assault," she said. Altendorf said she envisions such data being used not only to determine the effectiveness of SHARP programs, but also to help commanders tailor training and efforts on their own installations. During 'Military Saves Week,' Army reminds Soldiers of year-round financial education [2014-02-21] WASHINGTON -- As the Department of Defense embarks on "Military Saves Week," Feb. 24 through March 1, the Army wants Soldiers, civilians and their families to know that year-round it provides financial education -- including information on how to save -- at installations across the force. As part of "Military Saves Week 2014," service members and their families can point their web browser to militarysaves.org to take the pledge to save money. This is the eighth year of Military Saves Week, which is cosponsored by the Consumer Federation of America. The week focuses on helping military families learn to save money, and to ensure they have the tools needed to reduce their debt and save for the future. "It's a social campaign where we collaborate with the Office of the Secretary of Defense and our Military Saves partners, under the umbrella of America Saves. The intent is to get folks to save as much as possible. The Army had the most pledgers last year," said Gale Johnson, financial readiness and Army Emergency Relief program manager at Installation Management Command. Johnson said service members, civilians and family member finances are keys to successful service and enjoying a satisfactory lifestyle while in the Army. She said that while there is a focus on saving and financial awareness especially during Military Saves week, the Army offers financial training to Soldiers, civilians and their families year-round. The Army also provides mandatory training to Soldiers throughout their careers, beginning with initial entry training. That training spans an array of financial topics, to insure that Soldiers and their families are financially literate and are able to build budgets for their families now, and plan for their future. Financial readiness is one component of Soldier and Army readiness, said Michael A. Wood, chief of transition support services at U. S. Army Installation Management Command, or IMCOM. He said when a Soldier has his or her finances in order, that translates to increased personal readiness. And that means increased mission readiness for the Army and increased personal satisfaction for service and family members. "If a Soldier doesn't have to worry about their finances, that's one less thing to think about as they go downrange to deploy, while they build an Army career," he said. "If you are financially secure, you will be more resilient and more ready to help defend the country." Through Army Community Services, or ACS, IMCOM provides personal financial managers to Soldiers, civilians and their families to counsel, train, and mentor them on the financial issues and challenges that life brings, Wood said. Those programs begin as early as basic training. There, Soldiers get about 2.5 hours of mandatory training on military pay issues and banking and financial services, said Johnson. After Soldiers leave basic training, they get an additional 8 hours of mandatory financial education during advanced individual training. That additional classroom experience covers a much wider array of issues. There is further development of the limited basic information they got in basic training, plus additional material on developing a spending plan, managing credit, buying a car, insurance, investments and savings, saving for college, retirement planning and consumer awareness. That last subject delves into such things as predatory lending, to include pay day loans, for instance. "The first thing we teach is establishing a spending plan," Wood said. "We try to build everything around a spending plan. When a family has an effective spending plan in place, they know what their income and assets are, and what their money left over at the end of the month will look like." That's just initial mandatory training. Soldiers get additional mandatory financial training at various points in their military career as part of "life-cycle" training. And the Army goes further. The ACS program offers advice and assistance on an even larger array of topics that Soldiers and their families can seek out on their own. In 2012, financial readiness providers within ACS fielded 585,000 queries on issues ranging from credit counseling to the Thrift Savings Plan. Those were just simple queries. The ACS maintains a database of such contacts. Overall in 2012, the ACS fielded more than a million queries from Soldiers that could have been resolved in as little as 15 minutes, or could have taken hours or days to resolve. And the ACS also offers voluntary classes, financial education coursework outside the mandatory coursework required in basic military training and advanced individual training. In 2012, the ACS provided courses to more than 387,000 Soldiers, civilians and retirees on subjects from credit report reviews to predatory lending. "What we are trying to establish with Soldiers, civilians and their family members is a basis of financial stability leading to financial resiliency," Johnson said. "Keeping with the theme of OSD, our motto is 'financial readiness equals mission readiness.' We want to create the link to ensure we have a connection." Soldiers can come from all kinds of backgrounds, Wood said, and the Army can't make a prediction about what Soldiers know when they come in -- only that it wants all its Soldiers to be financially literate, because being financially stable is important to unit readiness, military readiness, and their personal safety. Wood said in terms of financial literacy, "In our opinion, it doesn't matter how much you have or how much you make, it is what you do with it. We give them the tools to establish a plan for their military career. "We assume an 18-year-old is often most of the time not very savvy in terms of finances and investing. We'll take them through those basics, giving them the needed tools and resources to build them some protection as they have established a firm baseline." Later, Wood said, as a Soldier moves through his or her career, the Army provides additional financial education that helps Soldiers understand how to buy a home, build an adequate "nest egg," save for an emergency fund, and prepare for retirement. It's not just ACS that offers financial education. The banks and credit unions that operate on Army posts also provide this service. In fact, as part of the operating agreements that allow banks and credit unions to do business on an Army installation, they must provide free personal financial training. Those same agreements also cover what services banks and credit unions will provide and the fees charged for various services. FINANCIAL TROUBLE Soldiers getting into financial trouble with predatory lenders "has been a problem for us since the beginning of time," Johnson said. Predatory lenders could include debt to payday lenders, car title loans, or rental companies. Wood said the only difference between civilians and the military when it comes to predatory lenders is that service members are targets because predatory lenders know they have stable jobs. But other than that, he said, "all the same loopholes and pitfalls are around installations that you are going to see in any small community." When Soldiers get in financial trouble they could opt to request assistance from AER, said Wood. AER is usually located within the ACS and is the Army's own emergency financial assistance organization. They are dedicated to helping the Army take care of their own. Another option is to approach ACS for assistance. "We'll set up payment plans with the bank," Wood said. "We'll let them know the Soldier is unable to pay that full balance and we would like to set up a payment plan that would last six months to a year, paying a minimum payment, and asking them to waive the interest. And most of the time, almost all of the time, the banks would be willing to work with you on that." MILITARY SAVES WEEK The majority of banks and credit unions on Army installations get involved and encourage their communities to get involved with Military Saves. Participants in Military Saves on Army posts fill out a pledge card, which can be picked up at the on-post financial institutions or at ACS, indicating their commitment to save. The physical card helps Soldiers remember their promise to themselves and to their financial health. During Military Saves Week, the on-post banks and credit unions gives incentives to Soldiers, civilians and their families. Such incentives include waiving minimum balance on savings accounts for a year, higher interest earnings for a certain time periods, and small monthly requirements to maintain their accounts. That allows Soldiers to start off small and work their way up to their goal. Banks and credit unions on post also offer financial education to Soldiers, in partnership with ACS. They offer basic financial education for debt management, checkbook maintenance, investing, and retirement planning. They sometimes do that through ACS or through other avenues. On-post banks and credit unions take those incentives even further. They continue to promote financial readiness and health through the unique services they provide for the Army posts. Some of the services also include small dollar loans with low interest rates, pre-deployment briefings for Soldiers, civilians and family members, rebates on ATM fees and even on credit cards. These extra incentives add additional motivation for them to be financially healthy by putting those extra savings into their accounts. Military Saves Week, runs Feb. 24 through March 1. More information on the program is available at militarysaves.org or at installation Army Community Service centers. Joint IED defeat capability to endure, at smaller size [2014-02-25] WASHINGTON -- The Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, or JIEDDO, is still relevant and is needed for future conflicts, But its size is expected to shrink significantly, according to its director. Lt. Gen. John D. Johnson said he'd received guidance from former-Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to "scale JIEDDO down," and to draw up plans for what an "enduring" JIEDDO might look like in the future. JIEDDO's mission is to help combatant commanders "defeat IEDs (improvised explosive devices) as weapons of strategic influence." The IED has been called the "signature" weapon of both Iraq and Afghanistan. Johnson said he's confident that Carter's guidance, a request to craft a roadmap for JIEDDO's future, is proof enough the organization will endure after Iraq and Afghanistan -- the two conflicts that necessitated its creation in 2006. "There is a full appreciation that JIEDDO functions should endure, the key is that it be scaled to what the nation can afford, and we have to be smart as to how we structure it so it can be rapidly expanded as necessary based on the nature of the threat and the challenges we are going to face in the future," Johnson said. The organization stands now at about 3,000, Johnson said, and he said he'll draw JIEDDO down to 1,000 by the end of this fiscal year. Additional guidance from the deputy secretary of defense could later bring the organization's numbers as low as 400, said the general, speaking at media roundtable last week at JIEDDO's headquarters in Arlington, Va. Johnson said he will spell out to the deputy secretary what could be done with 400 personnel, and "what are the risks associated with it." "There are certain parts of an organization like this that if you reduce it beyond a point it could take six months, a year, even longer to reestablish it," he said. "And in that time period, our Soldiers and Marines in the field are suffering from the effects of IEDs and it ends up costing us more to try to fix the problem without necessarily having the sophistication of understanding the entire system of systems." Some parts of JIEDDO can't be easily scaled. One of the areas he's looking to protect, he said, is the intelligence integration functions of JIEDDO. "My concern is, right now, we have a fairly persistent look at the organizations that most commonly use IEDs," he said. "If we were to take our eyes off, what are the chances that there would be an adaptation or permutation in the way they use IEDs that we didn't anticipate and how long for us to catch up?" Also a critical component of JIEDDO that Johnson has marked for retention are the "operational integrators" embedded in combat units. "We have embedded analysis and operational integrators down with most of the tactical units and in the supporting commands," he said. "Those integrators are able to observe the organization they support, understand what their problems are, and transmit those problems all the way back to the capabilities we have here to either go develop a piece of kit or modify a piece of kit or see their situation in a different light." That capability, integrators in the units, he said, is something he thinks JIEDDO needs to retain. "It's that's bottom-up feedback that defines very rapidly not only what any one of those particular units need, but helps telegraph what other units may well expect to see on the battlefield," he said. He also said that JIEDDO will need to maintain its robust relationships with the research and development communities that support it, pointing out that rapid acquisition to defeat emerging threats requires solutions from a full spectrum of innovative sources. AFGHANISTAN TODAY While pondering a reduction in force, a complete reorganization, JIEDDO still has an ongoing role to play in Afghanistan. There, Johnson said, the focus is taking care of and protecting forces. He said JIEDDO continues to prepare units with relevant counter-IED training pre-deployment to support their mission. JIEDDO's mission inside Afghanistan, however, now largely involves advising the Afghan National Security Forces, known as the ANSF. "We don't have as much of a direct role in the fight there," he said referencing the Afghans taking the lead in operations. In Afghanistan, JIEDDO is training staffs and advisors to help the ANSF use the assets they have -- including equipment and organizations -- to protect themselves and "take the fight to the enemy." He said in the last six months there has been additional JIEDDO emphasis on helping the ANSF stand up its own counter-IED skills and capabilities in preparation for the 2014 withdrawal of forces. "As we have not been as directly engaged in combat operations, the ANSF have picked that fight up, and as a result the IED casualties are being felt by the ANSF," he said. "By helping train them, by helping them facilitate their own logistics networks and things like that to get their hands on the equipment that is available to them, they are better able to take this fight on." PARTNERSHIPS DOMESTIC, ABROAD The term IED largely entered American vernacular as part of the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, but Johnson said the term has broader application beyond homemade bombs along convoy supply routes laid as part of an insurgency. The devices responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, the 2000 USS Cole bombing, and the Boston Marathon attack in 2013 were all IEDs, Johnson said. While he said he doesn't have responsibility for law enforcement in the U.S., "there is great value in sharing information among the various agencies in our government, to make sure we don't miss out on experiences we've had abroad and how we have benefited from that knowledge here. We collaborate with the other agencies very closely." After the attack in Boston, he said, "the discussions were really a comparison of experiences to see if there were ways that we could learn from what happened there, and they could learn from anything that we did. One of the most important things we've done is in the investment of the Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center, that the FBI has." He said JIEDDO had invested in Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center during Iraq and Afghanistan because "we needed the highest level of forensic capabilities to take a look at these IEDs and tell us who was responsible from them and also to help us track if they were flowing from one country to the next," he said. Increasing biometric and forensic capabilities has taken the anonymity from those who plant IEDs and has been a tactical game changer on the battlefield. Outside collaboration with federal agencies in the United States, Johnson said JIEDDO is working with partner nations to asset them with standing up their own organizations that are similar to JIEDDO. The Colombians, for instance, have a JIEDDO-like capability they've stood up, and Johnson said they have recently visited the United States to discuss that organization and their strategy. He said he hopes he can demonstrate to the Colombians how JIEDDO is organized, and help show them how they are successful. JIEDDO also works with other key allies such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, he said. He also highlighted NATO's establishment of an IED center of excellence in Madrid, Spain. In Southwest Asia, he said, where operations are still underway in Afghanistan, JIEDDO has developed a partnership with Pakistan to help that country deal with its own IED threat. In particular, he said, JIEDDO is interested in helping stymie the flow into Afghanistan of IED precursors -- the materials, such as ammonium nitrate-based fertilizer, that can be crafted into homemade explosives. He said JIEDDO is working with industry to find better ways of controlling distribution of materials and "to make sure this very legitimate product is being used in ways it was intended to be used." He said JIEDDO has seen a reduction in the amount of ammonium nitrate fertilizer that's being used as homemade explosives, but that "it isn't enough." With approval in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, and a recent re-approval, JIEDDO has been able to use its own money to pay for other U.S. government agencies to use their authorities in Pakistan to help "get after" the JIEDDO mission. Agencies that benefit from that authorization include the Department of Commerce, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Justice and the FBI, for instance. The FBI, he said, is training bomb technicians, border police, and customs officials in Pakistan. Additionally, homemade explosive test kits have been provided so border police there can test materials they see moving through their checkpoints. "There is more work to be done. The Pakistanis are anxious to work with us, and I am excited about the ability to continue to do that," Johnson said. Army on budget, on schedule with hypersonic missile program [2014-03-14] WASHINGTON -- In August, the Army expects to again test its Advanced Hypersonic Weapon Technology Demonstration. The results of that test will help determine the system's future. Lt. Gen. David L. Mann, commander, U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, discussed the status of the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon, or AHW, program, Wednesday, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, subcommittee on strategic forces. "Based upon the results that come from that test, we'll go ahead and, again, work closely with Office of the Secretary of Defense as to what they would like us to do, what the next steps are," Mann said. The general told lawmakers the Army is also working with the Navy on "possible utilization of this capability." The AHW is part of an effort to develop a conventional "Prompt Global Strike" capability. Conventional means non-nuclear. The AHW can be launched from the United States and can hit a target anywhere in the world. It can travel at speeds of Mach 5, about 3,600 mph, or higher. As part of the November 2011 test, an AHW was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Kauai, Hawaii, and arrived 30 minutes later at the Reagan Test Site, U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands -- a distance of about 2,500 miles. Mann said with the AWH, the Army is on budget and on target with the program. "I don't see any kind of an overrun at this moment," he said. "Everything is kind of predicated on what happens after the test. We have the monies allocated to support the test. We don't envision any kind of overruns." MISSILE DEFENSE Beyond offensive capabilities like the AHW, the Army is also looking at defensive capabilities against threats from other nations. The U.S. has defensive missile capabilities at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. Mann said adding an additional site on the East Coast of the United States would be beneficial to America's defense capability. "Obviously, putting a third site out there on the East Coast will provide increased capacity, not so much capability, but increased capacity," Mann said. "You will take your assets and spread them out so that you don't have them just at Greeley or at Vandenberg Air Force Base. It also will give a little bit more decision space or 'battle space' as it's known, in order to make a decision regarding a threat emanating from Iran." Mann told lawmakers the Army must focus more on "long-range discrimination," of targets -- determining what is a threat. "I think it's fair to say that we will never have enough interceptors to really address all the threat vehicles that are out there," he said. "I think it's more important that we're as efficient and as effective with the interceptors that we currently have, and that's the reason why making sure that we're providing the interceptor with the best track data, the discrimination, to be able to really identify the target within a complex. That's really what I would really highly recommend." Latest 'Virtual Battle Space' release adds realism to scenarios, avatars [2014-04-03] WASHINGTON -- The most recent version of the Army's 3D virtual training game, Virtual Battle Space 3, allows players to personalize their avatar within the simulation and the scenes and scenarios look a lot more real as well. Using new human dimensioning modeling within Virtual Battle Space 3, known as VBS3, Soldiers using the training will put in personal characteristics, including their own height, weight, Army Physical Fitness Test scores and even their weapons qualifications scores, "so then the avatar will only be as capable as the individual Soldier," said Robert Munsey, an analyst with U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command Capability Manager -- Virtual & Gaming. Soldiers who are not qualified on a weapons system will not be able to use it in the simulation. And unlike in some video games, where every player is represented on the screen with a hulking, ripped avatar -- with VBS3, an overweight Soldier will also be overweight on the screen. And with the system's fatigue modeling, his character will get tired faster too, Munsey said. Munsey said within the game, a fatigue bar at the top left hand side of the screen will "go down a lot quicker" for somebody that has scored a 160 APFT score, versus the person who has an average at 220, or the "APFT stud or studette at 300-plus." "If the Soldier is one of those 270-300 physical training performers, the fatigue model will model that in the game," he said. "Then the leaders, the small unit leaders have the capability to understand the performance of their squad." Soldiers who have used the system have noticed the difference, Munsey said. "When they tested this last year, one of the Soldiers said 'I look fat,'" Munsey said. "And the other Soldier sitting right next to him said 'that's because you are fat.'" The Army's VBS3 system is a multi-user "realistic semi-immersive environment" that allows units, usually company and below, to train at home station on more than 150 battle drills, platoon level collective tasks, combined maneuver tasks and other collective tasks. In a budget-constrained environment, company commanders can put each of their Soldiers in front of a networked computer running the system and train things inexpensively before going out to the field -- where things get more expensive. "It's really mostly focused at the company level and platoon level -- it's a cost-saver in the fact it gives us a chance to do the crawl/walk phases of your training before you go out to training areas and execute," said Capt. Chuck A. Williams, field operations branch, TCM-V&G. "You get a chance to work out bugs and kinks and rehearse before you go out. And you don't get out there and waste fuel and ammo messing things up." Also new in VBS3 are "ambience"-related plugins that allow the game to inject crowds of simulated personnel into a simulation. "Soldiers maneuvering through an environment, whether an urban environment or a fringing and rural environment, are going to see the normal pattern of life so it's not vacated of civilians," said Munsey. Something called "insurgent ambience" allows the computer to simulate the activities of an insurgent cell "so the insurgent cell can initiate the attacks," Munsey said. With fewer training staff now available, computer-controlled "red team" inputs "allow the trainer to have the computer play some of the portions of the OPFOR to meet the training objectives of the training commander." Munsey said commanders at Fort Hood, Texas; Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash.; Fort Campbell, Ky.; Fort Stewart, Ga.; and Fort Riley, Kan., have in the past mandated the use of VBS2 as a simulation prior to execution in the live environment. Stryker units, he said, have no virtual simulator of their own, but were able to train on Stryker's inside the VBS2 system. "The Stryker community has been using VBS2 a lot longer before the Army did -- about a year or two before the Army," Munsey said. "They have a lot of experience and this is one of their preferred simulations." The Army's VBS3 was made available March 31. Units can get access to the latest version of the trainer at https://milgaming.army.mil/VBS3. 'Soldier for Life' website to be new online home for retirees [2014-05-01] WASHINGTON -- The Army's "Soldier for Life" website, launched today, is designed to be a new online home for retired Soldiers. The Army's web portal "Army Knowledge Online" -- better known as "AKO" -- has been available to retirees and family members for many years now. However, the Army is transitioning to a more secure enterprise network for business users -- Soldiers, Army civilians and contractors. Retirees will continue to be able to access important information about the Army, and information pertaining to health, retirement, employment and education benefits online at www.soldierforlife.army.mil. Mark E. Overberg, who serves as deputy chief of Army Retirement Services, said the new website will allow "ongoing communications with the retired community." In February, the Army Retirement Services office was moved under the newly created Soldier for Life program, Overberg said, because retired Soldiers are "a part of the whole Soldier lifecycle -- the last part of the Soldier lifecycle." Right now on the website, retirees can also opt-in to receive a newsletter that lets them know what's going on in the Army "with a primary focus on news that retired Soldiers care about," Overberg said. EMAIL CHANGES On AKO, retirees and family members had access to web-based email services that gave them a ".mil" email address. Currently retirees and family members are no longer able to send email from their AKO accounts or read emails within the site. What they are still able to do, however, is instruct AKO to forward any emails they might receive there to a commercial account. The AKO website will continue forwarding emails to commercial accounts, until Dec. 31. Overberg suggests retirees and family members set up a free commercial email account to replace what AKO used to provide for them. He said after setting up such an account, they should notify family, friends, and professional contacts about the new e-mail address. Additionally, he said, retirees and family members should contact any businesses or other websites where the AKO email address is a part of their contact information and update it to reflect the new email address. One such site in particular to update, he said, is the Defense Finance and Accounting Service's "MyPay" website, where retirees and Soldiers alike can look at their leave and earnings statements and other important documents. To ensure that DFAS can contact them, Retired Soldiers should visit the "MyPay" site and ensure that a new or non-AKO email address is listed. Overberg said that today, some 500,000 Army retirees have MyPay accounts. Of those, he said, about 350,000 are still registered there with their AKO-provided email address. By not signing up for a commercial e-mail service and updating business account information, former AKO users risk not receiving important notifications. FUTURE SITE Right now, the Soldier for Life website is extremely new. Overberg said the site is only in "stage one" of its development. But he said there are several ideas about what will be brought aboard as the site's development progresses into "phase two." Future upgrades to the Soldier for Life website might include a "white pages" feature similar to what was one available on AKO, Overberg said. The difference will be that the white pages-style directory will include only those retirees who "opted in" to the listing. Also under consideration for inclusion in the next-generation of the site is a "Retired Soldiers Blog," Overberg said. "The intent of this blog will be to provide a three-way communication: the Army to retired Soldiers, retired Soldiers to the Army and retired Soldiers to other retired Soldiers." Overberg said that commenters to blog posts will be limited to those who have retired from the Army. "When somebody posts a comment, we'll want to make sure they are a retired Soldier." Part of making that happen, he said, is ironing out the technical details of how to authenticate retired Soldiers on the site. That might include integration of services from DoD Self-service Logon. Overberg also said that the Soldier for Life website has been designed to be easier to use than AKO. He said he has heard complaints from retirees that AKO was too complex -- and so they stayed away from the site. MORE THAN JUST RETIREES The Soldier for Life program, and its website, is about more than just retirees. In fact, the retiree program was just recently folded into the SFL program. "Soldier for Life," is in fact about the entire "lifecycle" of being a Soldier: from the moment a Soldier shows up at basic training: "Start Strong;" to the day they arrive at their first command and begin their Army career: "Serve Strong;" to the moment they make the decision to transition from a uniform-wearing Soldier back into a productive member of civilian society: "Reintegrate Strong;" to the final separation or retirement from Army service and transition into an example in their community about what it means to be a Soldier: "Remain Strong." Lt. Col. Wenceslao G. Angulo, who serves as the communications and outreach director of the Army's Soldier for Life program, said the SFL program and its website aims to serve those in all four phases of being a Soldier. "We want to attract talented young men and women to join the Army," he said. "The new site provides current information and links to resources for all Soldiers, which include active duty, Army National Guard and Army Reserve," Angulo added. "We also provide access to information and links to resources for those preparing to transition to civilian life. Now with retirement services joining the Soldier for Life program, we can now provide services and information for those who have retired from the Army, but remain Soldiers for life." Sony's 'Play Station' division signs up with Army in PaYS partnership [2014-05-12] WASHINGTON -- For some Soldiers leaving the Army, they've already got a job interview lined up with one of more than 500 private-sector companies. In fact, as part of the U.S. Army Partnership for Youth Success Program, called "PaYS" for short, those Soldiers had their interviews lined up as soon as they completed initial-entry training. During a memorandum of agreement-signing ceremony today, at the Pentagon, Sony Computer Entertainment America -- the division that produces the Play Station gaming system -- became one of the many companies that promise new Soldiers a shot at a private-sector job when their enlistment is over. "At Sony, we are partnering with the Army to make sure we provide great career paths for young people who join the military and serve our country," said Sally Buchanan, senior vice president for human resources at Sony Computer Entertainment America. "It's important for them to know, when they come out, that [they] have gained valuable experience as a result of serving [their] country. We're very proud to be a part of the PaYS program and to sign this document here today. We wholeheartedly support the hiring of veterans and will continue to do so throughout the years to come." Karl F. Schneider, the Army's acting principal deputy assistant secretary for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, signed the memorandum of agreement with Buchanan, solidifying the relationship between the Army and the makers of one of the most popular gaming systems in the world. This is "another great company coming on board to help us help the nation, making sure that our best are taken care of, not only while they are on active duty, but when they leave active duty," Schneider said. Schneider said that what companies like Sony get for participating in the PaYS program are workers who exceed most standards. "What you get out of the Army are young men and women who are well-educated, who have done something hard, who have values, who know how to work together for a common goal," he said. "All of those things that corporate America needs." About 510 companies are involved in the PaYS program. Those companies do not agree to hire Soldiers who are leaving service, but do agree to offer Soldiers a shot at employment -- in the form of a guaranteed interview. Soldiers sign up for the program, and pick the company they would like to interview with, early in their Army career. The program began in 2000, and so far, about 160,000 Soldiers have signed up to participate. Angela R. Byrd, who serves as the PaYS program manager, said the program helps departing Soldiers with their resume, and also provides them with "the resources they need so they can be an ideal candidate for these companies. "We're hoping to continue to grow the program," she said. "The more it grows, the more exciting it becomes. It's a win-win for all of us." Transportation Chief: Atrophied deployment skills must be bolstered [2014-05-21] WASHINGTON -- The Army has been at war for nearly 13 years now in Afghanistan. And while many units have deployed, some multiple times, Army leaders say units may be lacking the pre-deployment readiness skills that will be necessary for future operations. "It seems counterintuitive, with the operations tempo we've had and the number of deployments we've had," said Brig. Gen. John P. Sullivan, chief of transportation and commandant of the U.S. Army Transportation school. "But there have been a number of unit deployment skills that have atrophied." Sullivan spoke yesterday, at a force sustainment seminar in Arlington, Va., hosted by the Association of the United States Army. One example of atrophied skills is the unit-level staging and loading of equipment out of garrison for deployment. Sullivan said these skills were at one time exercised regularly by Army units during "emergency deployment readiness exercises." The general said that while not easy, pre-deployment processes for units going to Iraq and Afghanistan have been "pretty much uniform" across the board. Those processes included immense contractor support in their efforts to mobilize. Additionally, he said units have relied almost exclusively on theater-provided equipment as part of their deployment process. That is, they didn't bring with them to theater most of the vehicles and heavy gear they would need there. Instead, they inherited that equipment in theater from the units they replaced. "In OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom) for example -- certainly from OIF-3 and onward, units by and large deployed with containers, not with all of their organic MTOE (modification table of organization and equipment)," he said. "As we look forward, as we expect units to deploy in a short timeline, not in a rotational manner, not with long lead times, possibly with all or most of their organic MTOE equipment, to an environment that does not have the robust contractor support that units have had here before, it calls for training a certain number of skills." He said that the Rapid Expeditionary Deployment Initiative is a step the Army has taken to prepare for that -- "To try to re-instill some of those basic expeditionary deployment skills that have atrophied over the past 12 or 13 years." SUSTAINMENT REQUIRES ACCESS The AUSA conference, called "Sustaining the Force 2025," put an array of sustainment professionals together to discuss how the Army and the joint force must adapt to be prepared for future conflicts and commitments. In particular, the seminar focused on sustainment aspects of the future fight, and how the Army must adjust in the next 10 years. Vice Adm. Mark D. Harnitchek, director of the Defense Logistics Agency, speaking as part of the same "Strategic Mobility Now to 2025" panel as Sullivan, said that in terms of transportation capability -- aircraft and ocean-going vessels -- he believed the joint force was squared away. Instead, he said, he is concerned primarily with delivery of warfighting materials across the "last tactical distance." "Where we are not very good is access, infrastructure, and options or flexibility," Harnitchek said. "All those machines don't mean anything if you can't clear the port, if the road networks aren't any good, if the airfields aren't long enough or plentiful enough and are not air-mobility friendly. If we can't close that last operational, tactical distance ... it really doesn't make any difference if you can get it close. If you can't get it all the way there, you haven't completed your mission." "I think if we need to do anything in terms of homework here, between now and the immediate future, 2025 or so, it's figuring out where we have to operate and then doing that hard work that discusses how do we close that operational and tactical distance," Harnitchek said. "How do we build a network here that allows us to exercise leverage?" Tens of thousands draw attention to POWs, MIAs as part of Rolling Thunder XXVII [2014-05-26] WASHINGTON -- "The first time I went, my daughter brought me. And my son-in-law was there, and his friend. That day we had clouds, low clouds like fog. And when I saw those statues -- I'd seen it in real life. My knees started to go." Frank Harper, a Korean War veteran who served in the Air Force, was talking about the statues at the Korean War Memorial, in Washington, D.C. "They both grabbed me. They said 'Sorry dad. Good job. Your job is done.' That was the first time I got thanked," Harper said. Harper, his daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter, were among the tens of thousands of motorcyclists who lined up their bikes in the vast parking lots surrounding the Pentagon, this morning, as part of the Memorial Day weekend Rolling Thunder XXVII motorcycle rally and protest. The event is meant to bring attention to prisoners of war and service members who have gone missing in action. In January 1951, Harper dropped out of high school to join the Air Force and participate in the Korean War. In the Air Force, he flew aboard the C-47 Skytrain, also called a "Gooney Bird," where he was responsible for reconnaissance photography. For many, the ride around the National Mall will close with a visit to the Vietnam Wall. And while Harper said he rides for veterans from all wars -- he did serve in Korea. And it's his memory of that conflict that has pushed him to participate each year in the rally. "I lost buddies. I had one fellow that was cut right in half by an ack-ack shell," Harper said. "The shell came through the plane, it didn't blow, it went through him and went out the other side. We were all harnessed up so we could work on either side of the aircraft. It kept you from banging up against the aircraft. And he was right beside me. And the co-pilot came back and said he was standing there saying 'come on Kyle ... wake up Kyle.' And he had ahold of his shoulder and was shaking him. And the lower part of his body was sliding toward the back of the aircraft." Harper said the young man, a friend of his, had just gotten news that his wife had given birth to their first child. "He was all happy about that," Harper said. Since returning from Korea, Harper said he's seen attitudes about veterans change significantly. "Now they seem to be treating veterans that are coming back a lot better than they did me," he said. "When we came back they treated us like they did the Vietnam veterans. Baby killers. Butchers. All that." Today, he said, people sometimes pay for his dinner in a restaurant. And once, he said, when delivering a package at Boston University, he had the opportunity to ride in an elevator with three Korean students who expressed interest in the Korean War veteran hat he was wearing. "They said 'when were you there?' And I said '1951-1953.' And they said' thank you for giving us freedom,'" he said. Keith Sellers is a Vietnam veteran who served as a tail gunner in the U.S. Navy with the "Navy Sea Wolves." "We worked real close with the SEALs, to insert the SEALs in country," he said. "And we supported riverboats." Sellers has made the ride to Washington, D.C., yearly since 2001, from his home in Wilmington, N.C. He rides with the motorcycle club "Nam Knights," and said his wife has come with him once to the nation's capital -- but ultimately, "it's a brother thing," he said. "The main reason I am here is to support those who gave it all, and those wounded warriors," he said. "The very main reason is that wall means a whole lot to me. It's a sacred place." "I had several friends who died in Vietnam," he said. "I had a lady who asked me one time -- the first time I went to the wall I was really having a hard time. Did I know anybody on the wall? I said all of them. That's just the way I feel. They are all brothers." Many of the Rolling Thunder participants will end up at the Vietnam Wall, but Sellers said he's only been able to approach the memorial once -- the impact is too hard on him. "I'll go to the wall, but stand around the perimeter of it. It's just really hard," he said. "It's just hard for me to do." Marine Corps veterans Alex Teran and Omar Teran are both riding this year in the rally. Omar, Alex's father, now works as a civilian with Headquarters, Department of the Marine Corps, in the Pentagon. He said his wife, not at the ride with the father and son team, retired from the Navy. Alex, just 23 years old, joined up with the Army Reserve after his time in the Marine Corps. "We have been around the military all our lives," Omar said. "The military has been pretty much everything I have known as an adult. This is a great way to maintain that connection." Alex, who served in the Marines from 2009-2013, did a tour in Afghanistan. He said he joined up "because my dad was a Marine." Omar said he bought his first motorcycle around the time his son joined the Marine Corps. They decided to start riding in 2010. Today, he said, they ride to remember their fellow Marines, and all service members, who died in service to their country -- including some friends of Alex, who were killed in Afghanistan. "When you join the service, it's because you believe in the mission," Omar said. "Unfortunately, people sacrifice their lives or are injured. That's part of the job. You want to commemorate them for what they have done." Buddy Sours draws a crowd at the Rolling Thunder rally. Actually, it's his dog, a Chihuahua named Isaiah that draws the crowd -- Sours just holds him in his arms. For several years now, Sours and his wife Carol Sours have brought the tiny dog to the Rolling Thunder rally dressed in a combat helmet with four stars, and a tiny pair of sunglasses. Sometimes he's wearing a leather vest like his owner. Sours served as a Soldier in Vietnam, 1967-1968, where he drove a truck hauling petroleum, oils and lubricants. After serving in the Army, he worked at the Smithsonian Institute in Front Royal, Va. "I was in charge of building a fence for rare and endangered species," he said. He and his wife are celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary over Memorial Day weekend, and he said the two have been together for as long as they have "because we like to do the same things. We're outdoor people," he said. Carol added, "I love riding. We have horses, we've had horses for many years. We have ridden thousands of miles on horses. And we've done over 12,000 miles on bicycles. We used to do a lot of mountain biking. The C&O Canal -- we did that. And then we got into this motorcycle riding." Buddy said it was Carol's idea for them to get into motorcycling, back in 2006. "She said why don't we get a motorcycle? Which really surprised me," Buddy said. "I still had a motorcycle license, and said that's fine with me. We went out and got a cruiser, which is more comfortable." Carol doesn't ride her own bike -- Buddy drives, and she sits on the back and holds Isaiah in a carrier as they travel to Washington, D.C., to participate in the rally. "It's about all veterans, those that are past, and those present -- respect for everybody," Carol said. "This isn't draft anymore. This is volunteer. You have to give much respect to those men and women who volunteer their lives for the freedom we have today." Buddy said he had friends die in Vietnam, and their names are on the memorial wall. The average age of the more than 58,000 service members whose names are on the wall is just over 23 years old. Buddy said he rides for all of them. "All the things they have missed in their life because they gave all," he said. "That's why I do this." He also pointed out that the Rolling Thunder ride is not a parade -- it's a protest ride. "A protest because you still have people that are MIA, and possibly POWs that have not been accounted for," he said. "We need to keep up the effort to make sure that every Soldier who gave all is back home." Army celebrates 239 years of history at 2014 Army Birthday Ball [2014-06-22] NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. -- "The Army has been building men and women of character, leaders of our nation, for all of its 239 years." Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh addressed the more than 1,000 Soldiers and family members in attendance at the 2014 Army Birthday Ball here, Saturday, held as the capstone event on a week of celebration coinciding with the Army's 239th birthday, which is June 14. "Every member of our Army family, each and every one of you, has helped write the 239-year history of this truly amazing force -- a history that at this very moment is still being written here at home, in Afghanistan, and in more than 100 nations across the globe," McHugh said. "Make no mistake about it -- each and every one of you are part of that long legacy of service -- defending our nation, and our ideals and living every day the Army values." At the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center at National Harbor, Maryland, just a short drive from the Pentagon, Soldiers and their families celebrated 239 years of Army history and sacrifice -- something they don't do often enough, the service's chief of staff said. "This is a day for us to celebrate who we are, to celebrate this great Army of ours," said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno. "One of the things we don't do very well in the Army is really talk much about ourselves. We just go about our business." From the crowd, a solitary Soldier acknowledged the truth of his observation with an affirmative "hooah." "What does our talking? All we have to do is look at the colors -- 187 battle streamers, earned by millions of men and women throughout this nation's history. That's who we are," Odierno said. The U.S. Army began June 14, 1775 -- 239 years ago -- with the formation of the Continental Army. That Army was meant to support the American Revolution. "We started out as a volunteer force back in 1775. And today we remain a volunteer force, despite all that has gone on in between," the general said. "And that is what tonight is about. It's about remembering who we are." Odierno highlighted several key conflicts -- each of which has a corresponding streamer on the Army flag -- that he believes best represents what it means to be a Soldier. Included in those, he said, are the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the U.S. Civil War, and World War I. "And then again, as we were reminded just a few weeks ago, the great men and women who sacrificed all, when the basic freedoms of everyone in the world were being challenged -- who were willing to raise their right hand and swear that oath to the Constitution of the United States," he said. Odierno was alluding to World War II. Recently, on June 6, nations convened in Normandy, France, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion by allied forces onto the beaches there. "That's who we are," Odierno said. "And that has gone on throughout our history. Whether it be in Vietnam, whether it be in Korea, whether it be in Panama, or whether it be in the deserts of the Middle East." Today, Odierno said, there are some 70,000 Soldiers deployed around the world, still fighting, defending the United States and its interests. "They do it with little fanfare," he said. "They do it because that is what is needed to sustain our freedom. That's who we are. We are a group of Soldiers who support this nation and who believe in the values of this country. That is what we are here to celebrate tonight." American Soldiers today, he said, are in the mountains of Afghanistan, in Kosovo, and in Africa training the militaries of partner countries. "We have special operations forces operating around the world, preparing to deploy back to Iraq," he said. "We have Soldiers in Honduras, conducting operations in Central America. We have Soldiers assuring our allies in Eastern Europe. Their presence makes a difference. We do our work quietly, but we do it to protect this great nation." This year's Army birthday celebration included all the trappings of any celebration: song, dance, entertainment, fine dining, and even a cake. The Army's three senior leaders together made the first symbolic cut into that cake with a military sabre. Before that happened, however, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III made it clear that there are many who could not make it to the celebration -- some, because they are deployed and are now in combat. Others, he said, because they had been killed in combat. "Tonight, unfortunately, many folks will not be able to participate as part of our Army birthday," he said. "We need to remind ourselves that their sacrifice is part of what sustains us, not only today, but into the future. "It's the American Soldier that sustains this nation and sustains this Army," Chandler said. "And regardless of what component you may serve in, together as a team, we continue to defend and support the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. And if that doesn't fill you with pride, if that doesn't fill you with a sense of being a part of an Army profession -- I don't know what does." Official: Initial Bergdahl Investigation Was Inconclusive [2014-06-25] WASHINGTON -- An initial Army investigation into the whereabouts of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl following his disappearance in June 2009 did not conclude that he voluntarily left his installation, an Army official, speaking on background, said today. "My recollection is that it didn't make a conclusive finding on that," the official said. Bergdahl -- who spent nearly five years in enemy captivity after he disappeared from his base in Afghanistan -- is now undergoing a "reintegration" process at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in Texas. Officials said his current status is medical temporary duty. He is receiving full pay as an Army sergeant. The focus of the reintegration process, the Army official said, is from the point of capture onward. "We have no reason to believe that he engaged in any misconduct during that period of time," the official added. Meanwhile, a new Army investigation, known as a "15-6" into the circumstances of his disappearance is underway, though an Army official said Bergdahl's reintegration process takes precedence. "The scope of the investigation is fairly broad," the Army official said. "It's really to look at all of the facts and circumstances surrounding his disappearance up to the point of capture. Depending on what the findings are with respect to what motivated him and his actions, there are several conclusions that could flow from that." One possible conclusion is that Bergdahl went away without leave -- commonly called "AWOL." Another might be that he deserted his post. "It's also possible that he engaged in no misconduct," the official said. "We just don't know yet. The investigation is going to flesh that out, and will make findings and recommendations based on fact." Bergdahl's period of captivity has been classified as "missing/captured." The results of the 15-6 investigation may recommend further action that ultimately could reclassify his period of captivity as something else, the official said. "Both AWOL and desertion are violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice," the official said. "And the commander will make the determination as to what the appropriate disposition of any allegation is, and a commander has a variety of tools available to him or her. It can range from counseling to a letter of reprimand, to an Article 15 nonjudicial punishment, to a court-martial." The recommendations from the investigation will be passed on to the director of the Army Staff, who in this case is the appointing authority. "The director of the Army Staff is not bound by the investigating officer's findings and recommendations," the Army official said. "He can make additional findings and recommendations or alternative findings and recommendations. Because it's the director of the Army Staff, it's unlikely that he will actually carry out the recommendation. What is much more likely is that any approved recommendations will be forwarded to the appropriate entity to carry out." The Army official said the investigating officer for the current 15-6 investigation is using the previous 15-6 investigation of Bergdahl -- a report that is classified -- as a "starting point". The investigating officer also may re-interview members of Bergdahl's unit, the official said. "To the extent that the investigating officer believes that there are gaps in those statements or additional questions that need to be asked," the official said, "he may reach out to witnesses that have already given statements and re-interview them." The investigator for the 15-6 investigation has not yet interviewed Bergdahl, the official said, and that won't happen until Bergdahl's reintegration process is complete. Typically the subject of the investigation is not interviewed until the end, the official noted. An interview with Bergdahl could happen "in a couple of weeks," the Army official said. While Bergdahl was in captivity, he continued to receive pay from the Army. For a while, he was paid into his regular direct-deposit account like all soldiers. Later, due to inactivity on his account, the Army began depositing his pay into a holding account in compliance with Army rules. Officials said if Bergdahl is determined to have been a deserter, he may have to pay the Army back for money he earned during his time in captivity. (Note: Only DOD ran this: http://archive.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=122551) 94th Infantry Division vets reunite to remember World War II [2014-07-01] WASHINGTON -- To remain hidden against the snow in Germany during World War II, "the quartermaster gave us a white sheet to wear over our uniform -- and a white pillowcase to wear on our helmet." Jerome Fatora, a World War II veteran with the 94th Infantry Division, remembered that his uniform back then stood out against the snow without a little help from the quartermaster. Fatora was one of about 20 World War II veterans of the 94th Infantry Division, who gathered in Arlington, Virginia, for their 65th reunion, Saturday. Some of their family members also attended. Fatora was in the Army at 18, inducted at Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, just outside Harrisburg. Initially, the Army had told him he'd be part of an elite educational program -- the Army Specialized Training Program -- to earn him an engineering degree; but that wasn't to be. "They said we're closing the program," he said. "See, what happened was, they made the invasion, and they realized that they were going to have a lot more casualties than they thought they would have. So they pulled all the regular Army division units out and put them into the invasion force. And they pulled us kids to fill up the Reserve divisions. The 94th was a Reserve division, so they put us in there." It was the plans for D-Day that Fatora remembers might have made the Army think twice about sending so many Soldiers off to college when it would probably need them elsewhere -- considering how ambitious those plans were. Fatora didn't end up "storming" the beaches at Normandy, though. But he got there eventually, on "D+94." About three months after D-Day, he and the 94th Infantry Division arrived on Utah Beach, and entered the fight in Europe. Fatora said he entered and exited the combat unscathed. "I went 209 days without a scratch," he said. Fellow 94th ID veteran, Andy Cella, joined Fatora for a chat at the reunion. It was unclear if the two knew each other in combat, back then. They may have known each other in recent years from attending reunions. But they knew some of the same stories. And Fatora, who had been a private at the time, knew of Cella -- who had been a lieutenant. "I joined Jerry's outfit about the second week in March," Cella said. "We called them 90-day-wonders," Fatora said. "We used to make fun of these guys. We'd already been in combat and these guys come in with their brand-spanking-new gold bars. We made fun of -- we really shouldn't have." Cella had been part of a program to earn a commission in just three months. He came to the 94th ID as a second lieutenant. "I was a platoon leader of an infantry platoon," Cella said. "We knew the lieutenants who came in," Fatora said. "Of course, Cella was one of them. Officers had a shortened life over there. They got killed pretty fast. We had two or three ... they didn't last very long." While their paths didn't cross in Europe, they knew the officers and enlisted among them who had been injured or killed. "The guy whose place I took lost his leg," Cella said. "Then there was Sgt. King, remember Sgt. King? He lost his leg." "King, yeah, running through the woods, I remember seeing him," Fatora said. "He had blown his toes off. He's running through the woods screaming. I said, 'hey Sarge!' He lost his toes." "You remember Lt. Seeby?" Cella asked. "Wasn't he your ... ?" "Seeby was with us when we got captured. Carl Seeby. Yeah," Fatora said. All around a tiny banquet hall in a high-rise hotel near the Pentagon, veterans of World War II -- members of the 94th ID -- shared stories. "Seeby, he was your platoon leader. He broke me in," Cella said. "He came in late too," Fatora said. "We gave him the raspberry. See, whenever these lieutenants came in -- we were combat veterans now. We didn't pay a hell of a lot of attention, honestly, to lieutenants." "Lt. Seeby, last couple of weeks of the war, he went across the Rhine River and he got captured," Cella said. "Yeah. I was with him," Fatora said. "Were you in that?" Cella asked. "I was a patrol leader after him," Fatora said. "Why did he go into the house and have the tank come right into the ... " Cella asks. Fatora told Cella how he came to be taken prisoner of war for less than a week by a group of over-anxious German youths. "This guy could speak perfect English. He said we got an 88mm lined up on the front door, do you want to surrender? Seeby said no. I said 'screw you Seeby, I'm leaving,'" Fatora said. "Seeby was real tough, and he wouldn't surrender. The war ended three weeks later. That's the problem we had. They carried us on a morning report, present for duty. And we were captured! We were all taken. The guys were 14 years old who took us POW. The Germans were 14. That's all they had left. But they took our guns. What're you going to do, tell them to go to hell? They were ready to kill us. And a lieutenant kept them line. Otherwise they would have shot us. They were crazy. They were Hitler Youth." Cella said he remembered having been tasked to go look for the captured Soldiers. "We didn't know right away they were captured. We thought they were just isolated over there." Later, Fatora said, the 10th Armored Division freed them. Cella said he remembered the most important thing about being in the Army back then. And it's remarkably similar to what Soldiers today often recall about their own time in combat. "It was the camaraderie and the togetherness," Cella said. "Each guy depends on the next guy. For me to join the outfit, it took them about three weeks to get a line on my ego so I would fit in. Otherwise they had no confidence in me. That was the whole company. They would rely on each other. "In a unit like that, you got to," Fatora said. "You work as a unit, you know. It's just like when a lieutenant comes in like that, he comes into a combat outfit, and we'd already been to battle. All of the sudden he's got to adjust. I don't know how they do it. It's damn hard to do it." Bill Graves served as a mortarman during his time with the 94th ID. He was drafted at 18 out of Richmond, Virginia, in 1944. By January 1945, he was in the 94th ID, and found himself in England. "At that age, I guess you kind of adjust rather fast," Graves said of joining the Army. He was a farm boy then, living in Spotsylvania, Virginia. "It was different. I'd never been very far away from home. I'd been to D.C. a few times. I'd been to West Virginia. That's about the extent of my travel." At the induction station in Richmond, he said, he was given a choice about what branch of service he could go into. He didn't choose the Army -- or any other branch of service. Like so many things, it seems, he found there that he'd be given a choice, and the military would have its way with him just the same. "You knew you were going into the service. You didn't know which. When we got to Richmond, they lined us all up and they asked us 'do you want Army, Navy or Marine Corps?' If you said Army, they put you in the Navy. If you said Navy, they put you in the Army or Marine Corps," Graves said. "When they came to me, they said what do you want? And I said I don't care. And he said, 'well you have a choice.' And I said I still don't care. Well then he picked up a stamp and I thought he was going to break the table he slammed it down so hard. He said 'You're in the Army now.'" In Europe, Graves said he sustained few injuries -- once, though, he suffered a flesh wound that would have earned him a decoration. "I only got a little shrapnel," he said. "They bandaged it up and said 'I'll put you in for a Purple Heart.' And I said no -- they'd send a telegram home. So I didn't get a Purple Heart." He wanted to avoid worrying his mother, he said. Graves remembers one non-commissioned officer who, the way he tells is, might be a template for NCOs today. "Our platoon sergeant, he said I want everybody to know how to operate the mortar. So one day you'd carry ammunition, and another day you'd be assistant gunner. And another day you'd be a gunner," Graves said. "He was an older guy. Well, he was 32. We called him 'Father Hertwick.' A real nice guy." "When we were lined up, Capt. Dare said I want four volunteers for the weapons platoon," Graves continued, talking about Hertwick. "So I stepped out and three other guys stepped out with me." They went with Hertwick. "He said 'listen to me, and I'll take care of you.'" Graves said he remembers the heroics of the combat medics. "A lot of times if a guy was wounded, they'd go get the guy, even with artillery coming in around them, and also small arms." Graves said he comes to the reunions to connect with the men from his old company. He said in years past -- long ago -- maybe 35 to 40 such men would show up from his company. From the 94th ID, maybe 2,000 veterans total. This time, only about 20 veterans total from the 94th ID made it to the reunion. After the war, Graves became a certified public accountant. He also earned a Bronze Star from his service in World War II. Joe Milich and Andrew Moranz sat on a leather lounge together after a banquet dinner. Both had been members of the 94th ID during World War II. And like Fatora, they too had been selected for the Army Specialized Training Program, known as ASTP, which was a program that would have provided them a college education before heading off to join the Army. Like Fatora, they too found that the program had been cancelled. The two ended up as infantrymen in the 94th ID. "I had no opportunity to do anything else," Milich said. "They needed bodies. The 94th had a large percentage of ASTP people." Moranz said he had "made himself available" to the draft board. He wanted to go to war. He said he took some classes in the summer between his junior and senior year of high school, so that he'd be eligible to go. The Army inducted him in August. He was overseas by January. "They awarded me a high school diploma," he said. "I could have stayed in school," Moranz said. "But I thought the war was going to end. And I didn't want to miss it. I wanted to go into the Army. So I made myself eligible to be drafted. "I was the son of a German," Moranz continued. "My mother left Germany a year before I was born. My father married her and brought her to America. And I wanted to -- when I became 18 -- I did not want to miss the war. I wanted to be in the Army." Milich offered a different explanation, perhaps, for why it was Moranz would go out of his way to leave high school before his senior year and go off to join the fight in Europe. "It was a different generation," Milich said. "A different case. Everybody was patriotic. We all wanted to go fight for the country." Both Milich and Moranz saw heavy combat in Europe. Milich fought in the Battle of the Bulge, Moranz fought elsewhere. "We were surrounded," Moranz said of one battle. "We were going to assault them. Somebody asked me if I was scared. Not particularly. I didn't have a concept of being killed. I didn't think I'd be shot." Milich said in one conflict, after his unit had crossed the Saar River, he was up on top of a hill. "I knew I had to get off the hill. But I wasn't fast enough. I got hit by mortars. I laid there until noon, I guess." Later, he said, he saw two American Soldiers taking six German prisoners to a jeep. "I yelled to them. They came and they picked us up. I ended up in a field hospital," Milich said. After that, he said, he found himself in a hospital in England. And later, he was able to fly back to the United States -- his first time ever on an airplane. Milich said when he remembers back to his time in combat -- he remembers the heroics of regular Soldiers risking their lives to save others who had been injured. "I saw guys, under fire, getting the wounded, and getting them back. I saw my friends do that. "When I was wounded, that was six days before my 19th birthday. I was a kid," Milich said. "Maybe that's why I don't like to talk about it. But when I was discharged, I went to college. I was a sophomore when I got married. I had a kid my senior year. I had no money. I graduated. I had a job. So I was busy living, raising kids." Milich spent the remainder of his adult years as a mechanical engineer -- after completing the courses the Army might have initially offered him as part of its ASTP. He built jet engines, and now has four children. One of his grandsons is a Soldier as well, and a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. Moranz, with five daughters, said he "didn't admit to being in the war for a long time." Just recently, last year, he started coming to the reunions of the 94th ID. The 94th Infantry Division fought in Northern France, Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace, and elsewhere in Central Europe. The unit was activated Sept. 15, 1942; entered Europe Aug. 6, 1944; left Europe Feb. 6, 1946; and was deactivated Feb. 9, 1946. Soldiers to get new camo uniform beginning next summer [2014-08-06] WASHINGTON -- The Army has confirmed what Soldiers have been hearing rumors of for months now -- a new camouflage pattern for combat uniforms is on the way with a number of improvements. Beginning in the fall of 2015, the Army will begin issuing to new Soldiers an Army Combat Uniform that bears the Operational Camouflage Pattern. That same uniform will also become available in military clothing sales stores in the summer of 2015. Soldiers are expected to retire their current uniform and begin wearing the new pattern by the summer of 2018. The uniform bearing the new pattern will be largely the same as what Soldiers wear now, except that the lower leg pockets will be closed by a button instead of the "hook and loop" fabric fastener on the current Army Combat Uniform, or ACU. Soldiers complained that fastener made too much noise in combat environments, officials said. The insert pockets for knee pads and elbow pads will also be removed from the new uniform, according to Program Executive Office Soldier. Other changes that will be considered by the 2015 Army Uniform Board include: -- elimination of the mandarin collar and replacement with a fold-down design -- change of the infrared square identification for friend or foe, known as the IFF tab -- removal of one of three pen pockets on the ACU sleeve -- elimination of the drawstring on the trouser waistband These last four potential changes have not yet been approved but are being considered, according to PEO Soldier. Currently, Soldiers wear ACU with the Universal Camouflage Pattern, or UCP. By 2018, they will be wearing an Army Combat Uniform with the "Operational Camouflage Pattern." The fabric of the uniform, the cut, the placement of pockets and other details, for instance, will remain the same. It is only the geometry and palette of the camouflage pattern printed on the fabric that will change. The cost of uniforms with the new pattern will be comparable to the current uniform. At the Fort Myer, Virginia, military clothing sales store, for instance, an ACU top now sells for approximately $45. The pants sell for around $45 as well. A cap sells for about $8. According to the 2014 pay charts, online at dfas.mil, enlisted Soldiers receive between $439 and $468 annually to buy new uniforms -- that includes replacing the outgoing UCP ACU with the Operational Camouflage Pattern ACU. Soldiers will have about three years -- the time between the first availability of the uniform in military clothing sales in 2015 and the time they are required to wear it in 2018 -- to transition the contents of their clothing bag to the new look. They will also have more than $1,300 in clothing allowance at their disposal to make that happen. The new pattern is different, but visually compatible with what Soldiers wear now in Afghanistan. It does have the same acronym, however. In Afghanistan, Soldiers wear the "Operation Enduring Freedom Camouflage Pattern," called OCP for short. The new uniform pattern is also called OCP. "The Army is naming the pattern the Operational Camouflage Pattern to emphasize that the pattern's use extends beyond Afghanistan to all combatant commands," said one senior Army official in a July 31 press release. The new pattern is borne from efforts to meet a 2009 directive by Congress to develop a camouflage uniform suitable for the Afghanistan environment. That initiative, along with Soldier feedback, led the Army to develop the Operational Camouflage Pattern. As part of that program, the Army was directed to develop and evaluate camouflage patterns that will provide effective concealment in a wide variety of terrains and environments. The Operational Camouflage Pattern is a result of that effort. As part of the program two "bookend patterns" of OCP are being optimized and evaluated for possible use on Flame Resistant ACUs that would be worn by Soldiers deployed in either arid or heavily wooded terrains. All organizational clothing and individual equipment, referred to as OCIE, such as MOLLE gear, protective vests, ruck sacks and plate carriers and non-flame resistant ACUs and will be offered in the OCP pattern only. The Army has also said that following rigorous testing and evaluation, the OCP was proven "the best value for the Army. Soldier force protection and safety was the Army's primary decision criteria," a senior Army official said. "The Army has selected a pattern as its base combat uniform camouflage pattern," explained the official. "The Army has confirmed through testing that the pattern would offer exceptional concealment, which directly enhances force protection and survivability for Soldiers." The senior official said the Army's adoption of OCP "will be fiscally responsible, by transitioning over time and simply replacing current uniforms and OCIE equipment as they wear out." Unique PT commemorates 9/11 events [2014-09-11] WASHINGTON -- In the Pentagon courtyard, on the evening of the 13th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, service members from around the Washington, D.C. area participated in a first-of-its-kind commemoration where each repetition in their " workout of the day" was symbolic in some way of that day's tragedy. Billed as a "9/11 Tribute WOD," the event was meant to provide a new way to look at the tragedy of 9/11, said Army Staff Sgt. River Mitchell, who conceived the unique commemoration. "Every year since I have been at the Pentagon, we do the same memorials," Mitchell said. "I think that things that are different, and things that are fun, can raise awareness in a more positive way. I think this is an event that can bring new sight on the memory of the attacks and what happened." Mitchell is a chef in the Secretary of Defense Mess at the Pentagon. He is also vice president of the Military District of Washington Sergeant Audie Murphy Club, which recognizes non-commissioned officers who have contributed significantly to the development of a professional non-commissioned corps and a combat-ready Army. The club sponsored the commemoration. In the Pentagon courtyard, 50 participants were paired off into 25 teams, to embark on a unique CrossFit workout. "Every rep, every weight, is in memory of 9/11," Mitchell said. The evening's workout consisted of, among other things, 175 thrusters, representing United Airlines flight 175, which crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center; 110 deadlifts and 110 lunges to symbolize the 110 floors in each of the World Trade Center towers; 2,001 meters of rowing to symbolize the year; 93 box jumps to symbolize United Airlines flight 93, which crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania; 77 kettle bell swings to symbolize American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon; and 125 burpees to symbolize the 125 personnel killed at the Pentagon. To successfully complete the workout, Mitchell said, service members will need to apply the same tactic they have used to find success in military endeavors. "The team is what will make you or break you here. If you have a good working relationship with your partner, and you guys go through the workout well, you will be a beast at this workout," he said. Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Daniel Martinez, who works for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, participated in the commemorative workout. He said during 9/11, Americans should think not just about the service members still in combat, but their families too. "I think Americans should remember about service members, what they sacrifice ... especially those who joined after 9/11," Martinez said. "They have to understand we have been in a constant war with terrorists, and they never go away. Anytime anybody joins, especially now, they must understand they are making a huge sacrifice -- and their family is too." While the planned workout was difficult, Martinez said he thought he would get through it fairly easily. "This competition has a lot of reps involved. A lot of different exercises," he said. "Fortunately it's a partnered WOD. Otherwise I don't see myself doing over 100 burpees by myself. But it should be pretty good. I have the fundamentals in CrossFit -- kettlebell swings, burpees, thrusters, rowing. It's going to be a great workout." Sgt. Kevin Arwood, a culinary specialist, works alongside Mitchell in the Secretary of Defense mess. He's originally from Peru, Indiana. When 9/11 happened, he was 23 years old. "I went into work later in the day, and I remember thinking things have changed, and it was very uncertain," he said. Arwood didn't enlist in the Army immediately after 9/11, but joining was something he said he had thought about for a long time. "I have a lot of family that was in the military, and it was something I always wanted to do," he said. Arwood also cited military families as being something Americans should think about on 9/11. "Not only are the service members sacrificing their time -- sometimes blood and lives -- but sometimes we forget about the family members that stand behind those service members," he said. "Without them we are not able to do our jobs on a daily basis. Wives and husbands and kids and parents -- all those people -- make it possible for us to do our job." Navy Chief Petty Officer Jason Gooch, who serves as the leading chief petty officer of Mess 1 at the Pentagon, is originally from Burlington, Iowa. He said he works hard to stay fit, and also prepared himself for the fitness challenge. "Every day I go to the gym here at the Pentagon. I go five days a week. I started preparing for this event three weeks ago," he said. "Every day we'd take half the events. We'd do overhead lunges, we'd do kettle bell swings, we'd do burpees, we'd do pull-ups -- anything that can get me ready for today, a lot of deadlifts and a lot of pain." For Gooch, 9/11 wasn't the reason he joined the Navy, but it instead validated for him his decision to join. At the time, he said, he had been recovering from an operation to correct a hernia -- a condition that he discovered for the first time on his way through the Military Entrance Processing Station. He was scheduled to go into the Navy after his recovery period ended. "9/11 happened a few months before I went to boot camp," he said. "When it happened, I knew that this is what I wanted to do." Gooch said Americans need to know that service members do what they do for them. It's why he gets up in the morning, he said. "We are one percent of America, and we do it for America," he said. "I get up every morning and know I am doing something that a lot of people before me wish they could have, if God had given them an able body. I love this. I'm going to do 20 years because I love it. It's not the pay. It's not the fame or the awards. It's getting up every day and knowing that I'm serving my country." A lot of service members will say they loath working in the Pentagon. But Gooch said the experience is humbling, and something he is proud of. "I was telling the guys, two years ago I never would have thought I would be here," he said. "I put in my application and got selected. And now here I am working in direct support of the secretary of defense. Every day I come to work, I am still in awe. I see the building lit up, and I am walking towards the Pentagon, and I say here I am -- the Pentagon. Walking in the hallways I am reminded that so many people, famous people, people who have done great things for this country, have walked down the same halls." Air Force Staff Sgt. Maria-Antonette Capio Cabantog serves also as a culinary arts specialist. She lived in the Philippines when 9/11 happened -- she was just 11 years old then. She said being in the Pentagon has challenged her to improve her fitness. "I have been physically active since I've been here, getting involved in the CrossFit workout, and trying to stay busy and productive," she said. "Being here at the Pentagon, I see a lot of fit people. I try to keep up with them." For nearly an hour, the 50 participants cycled through the various workout routines, until the event was called to a close. Mitchell, who designed the commemorative workout and who also works out six times a week, said he might have underestimated how difficult it would be. "The workout was tough. Me and my buddy, we made it up," he said. "We thought we would blow through it in 35 minutes -- it took me 43. But I think this is going to happen every year now. It's something the club can sponsor, and it's going to get better every year." Mitchell said during 9/11, he wants Americans to remember that the nation is still at war. "Soldiers are still fighting, Airmen are still fighting, Sailors are still fighting, and Marines are still fighting," he said. "Just because what we may see on the news, what we may be hearing about pulling out, I think the most important thing is: never forget that there are still troops in battle fighting for our freedom. I think it's my duty to get back over there. It's everyone's duty to serve their time there, and protect our nation. That's really what we signed up for, to defend and protect our nation." As vice president of the Military District of Washington Sergeant Audie Murphy Club, Mitchell said sponsorship of the 9/11 Tribute WOD is another way to spread the word about the club. He said he hopes he can help expand it, and further its reach. "I think this is a club that can really help not only Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Air Force folks, but also reach out into D.C. high schools and middle schools -- to kids that need that mentorship. They can get that through our club." With the tribute workout, he said, he's also interested in influencing the way the Army does physical training. "I want this type of working out -- be it CrossFit, or high-intensity training -- I want the Army to base their new PT plans off of this. I think this is going to be the battlefield of the future," he said. "Let's take some time to learn from the movements, the technique, how intense this is for a short amount of time, and compare it with what each branch is doing now." Army to get fourth 'Double V Hull' Stryker brigade with enhancements [2014-10-13] WASHINGTON -- The Army today has nine Stryker brigade combat teams, three of which now sport the survivability enhancement known as a "Double V Hull." The Army acquisition executive has approved procurement of a fourth such brigade. The converted Strykers will also have other engineering improvements, to include a chasis upgrade, more powerful engine and higher-amp generator, said Lt. Col. Jason Toepfer, the program manager for Stryker development, speaking at the 2014 Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition. In the third quarter of fiscal year 2017, the Army expects to begin converting not more than 360 existing "flat-bottom" Stryker combat vehicles into the safer Double V Hull, or DVH, variety. The cost of the conversion, which will be completed inside the Army's organic industrial base, at places like Anniston Army Depot, Alabama, is about 30 percent less than purchasing a new such vehicle outright, Toepfer said. "I think that's pretty remarkable, the fact we are able to leverage the organic industrial base that we have at our depot, at Anniston ... and converge them to create a fully-functioning, capable vehicle, without having to start from scratch," Toepfer said. "I think that's a great news story." Those converted vehicles bound for a fourth Stryker brigade combat team will also get updates that are part of an engineering change proposal that will compensate for some performance issues previous Strykers have suffered from, as a result of the conversion from flat-bottom to DVH. "When we built the DVH Stryker, we found a way to keep Soldiers alive and protect them. But we did that at a small cost," Toepfer said. "We gave up mobility, we added more weight to that vehicle. We also had an additional power burden. In moving that amount of weight, plus the Army technologies that have been added on since then, we put a significant tax on the power and on the network that is on the current vehicle. So we needed to find a way to mitigate that, and buy some of that back." That mitigation comes in the form of an engineering change proposal that includes a more robust 450-HP engine, a more powerful 910-amp power generator, a chassis upgrade to handle the new engine, and improvements to the vehicle's internal network, which is designed to handle future communications equipment the Army may install. Previous conversions from flat-bottomed Stryker to DVH have not included the enhancements in the engineering change proposal. The Strykers to be converted in 2017 will be the first to get those enhancements, at the same time they get the double-V hull. That is a change in the way the Stryker is being updated, and it is something that Toepfer said will continue. For Strykers that have already been converted to DVH, but did not get the engineering change proposal enhancements -- those Strykers will receive those enhancements at a later date, when funding is available. Toepfer also said Army leaders are considering additional enhancements for the Stryker. The full plan for those enhancements, not yet entirely crystallized, will include a focus on improving lethality and networkability. Toepfer did say one such improvement might include a Javelin anti-tank missile mounted on a remotely operated weapons system. Better gear under evaluation for both winter, tropical climates [2014-10-14] WASHINGTON -- Up in Alaska, the Army is looking to evaluate some new winter weather gear for Soldiers, including newer face masks, better gloves, and more modern tentage. Unlike much of what the Army buys, however, the new gear is non-developmental, commercial off-the-shelf equipment that has been suggested for adoption into the Army by the very Soldiers who will end up using it. Soldiers make such suggestions through the Soldier Enhancement Program, or SEP, which is part of Program Executive Office Soldier. "We bought about ten different items, and we're going to take them to Alaska, and we're going to test them this winter," said Col. Gordon T. Wallace, program manager for Soldier Warrior, during the Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition. The winter environment, Wallace said, has not got much attention over the last decade. "So some of the equipment the Soldiers are issued up there is fairly outdated," Wallace said "And there are a lot of new things on the market today, that people perceive as a lot better." One example, is the XGK Stove. Other items include skis, bindings, gloves, boots, tents, sleds and face masks. "We'll take them to Alaska this winter, and do a series of testing and get a lot of information from that and move some of these items straight into a program of record," Wallace said. He said that there's not just one item from one vendor, but multiple examples of gloves, boots, skis, etc. Additionally, the suggestions came from many Soldiers, Wallace said. At the other end of the weather spectrum, SEP has in the last month started looking also at jungle equipment with 25th Infantry Division, and the Jungle Warfare School in Hawaii. While there are no timelines yet, he said, the SEP is looking at such items as quick-drying fabrics, water purification items, and boots. "I think that is the number-one requested items," Wallace explained. "So we are going to be getting some different ones, and some that Soldiers have seen before, I believe, and test those." Soldiers who have ideas about how commercially available products -- things they might buy online or in stores -- could be used to improve the combat effectiveness of Soldiers, can visit http://www.peosoldier.army.mil/sep to submit their ideas. Wallace said after that, the SEP does extensive evaluation to ensure the product is a good fit for the Army, that it is needed, that it has buy-in from the Army, and then that it is safe, that it does what it is supposed to do and that it fills a capability gap. He said the goal is to have everything done within a year, though that doesn't always pan out, especially with complex weapons systems. Wallace said each year about 200 suggestions come into the SEP, though many are weeded out due to comparable items already in the Army inventory. U.S., Korean reps lay wreath at war memorial [2014-10-15] WASHINGTON -- U.S. Army generals and representatives of the Republic of Korea and its Army, laid wreaths at the Korean War Memorial here, today, to commemorate those who fought in the three-year-long conflict in that country. The small commemoration at the memorial took place at the same time as the Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition, just a few miles away. Lt. Gen. Bernard S. Champoux, 8th Army commander, placed a wreath at the memorial along with Maj. Gen. Shin Kyoung Soo, Republic of Korea defense attaché to the United States. "It's critically important to recognize the service and sacrifice of so many," said Champoux, of the many Service members who fought in Korea. The general was in the United States to attend the AUSA event, which ran Monday through today. "Oftentimes you hear the Korean War is the forgotten war. It isn't. Today is witness to that. The service and sacrifices of those both from the United States and the Republic of Korea are not forgotten." The Korean War began June 25, 1950, and ended with an armistice on July 27, 1953. The war took the lives of more 33,000 American Soldiers and wounded nearly 100,000 of them. In all, on both sides of the conflict, more than 4.4 million military personnel and civilians were wounded, killed or went missing in action. That an American Soldier and South Korean Soldier together placed a wreath at the memorial was also a testament to the strong alliance that continues between the United States and the Republic of Korea, Champoux said. "We've stood shoulder-to-shoulder with them for over 64 years," the general said. "To do the ceremony together demonstrates how very strong the alliance is. It's an honor to be part of it." A prime example of the strength of the U.S. and Republic of Korea alliance is the ongoing Korean Augmentee to the U.S. Army program, called 'KATUSA for short. At the ceremony was 8th Army Command Sgt. Maj. Ray Devens, who said the program is a lynchpin of the U.S. Army mission in Korea. "These are Korean citizens that are put into U.S. Army formations," Devens said. "They are Korean citizens that are now Korean Soldiers, but they are not part of the Republic of Korea Army -- they wear the U.S. Army uniform." Devens said KATUSA Soldiers serve as medics, cooks, infantrymen, tankers, and in nearly any military occupational specialty that American Soldiers serve in. "They have responsibilities like any Soldier. So here you have a Republic of Korea citizen that comes into the U.S. Army -- and that's why the alliance is so strong. No other country does that. We don't do it with any other country in the world. That's why we say it is the strongest alliance in the world." Devens said there are about 3,000 KATUSA Soldiers. Before Champoux and Shin placed their wreath, which bore a banner that read "Remembrance of Sacrifice and Goodwill -- Eighth Army," another wreath was placed first by Maj. Gen. Thomas Vandal, commanding general of the 2nd Infantry Division; and Rocky Park, president of the Korea Corporate Members of AUSA organization. Park said he comes each year to the memorial when he makes his way to the United States to participate in the annual AUSA conference here in the nation's capital. "I come to pay my respect for the priceless devotion and sacrifices" of American Soldiers who fought in the Korean War," Park said. At the start of the Korean War, Park was young, just 15. He said some of his classmates served as "student soldiers." Later, however, he said he served in Vietnam as a Soldier in the Korean Army. He had graduated from the Korean Military Academy in 1958, and served in Vietnam from 1968-1969. The relationship between the United States Army and the South Korean Army, Park said, is strong. And it is important that it stays strong, he said, to serve as a deterrent and warning to enemies of South Korea. "We show them power -- a strong attitude," he said, pumping his fist for emphasis. The ceremony at the memorial was short. But being in a public area on the National Mall meant anybody who passed by could attend. Dozens of youth from touring school groups, veterans and dozens of Korean-American citizens from the local area stood nearby during the ceremony to witness the small gesture that is symbolic of one of the strongest military alliances in the world. Speed of innovation key in Army Operating Concept [2014-10-17] WASHINGTON -- Both the Army and America's adversaries enhance their prowess on the battlefield with technological innovation. But to be successful against an array of unknown enemies, the Army must focus not just on innovation, but on the speed with which it can deliver that innovation to Soldiers. Gen. Dave Perkins, commander of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, spoke Tuesday, at the Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition, here, about the recent release of the new Army Operating Concept, titled "Win in a Complex World -- 2020-2040." A central theme of the publication is the concept of preparing the American Army for combat with unknown enemies, in unknown locations, and with unknown allies at their side. "This Army Operating Concept was written specifically to deal with the unknown," Perkins said. What the Army won't know, expressed in the Army Operating Concept, is where it will fight, who it will fight, or who it will fight alongside. What the Army will know, Perkins said, is that it will be expected to "exceed all expectations." Perkins said in combat, the Army can overmatch an enemy's capability through adaptation and innovation. With a known enemy, the Army innovates by creating a "known differential" between the Army's ability and the enemy's capability, he said. But with an unknown enemy, he said, innovation is only part of the equation for a win. Speed of innovation is important as well. "We have to enable that young leader both through training, education, and organization, to have the ability to innovate very quickly -- from the materiel aspect of it when we buy stuff for the Army, to how we organize ourselves, and how we apply all the elements of national power." According to the new Army Operating Concept, "The Army must adapt faster than enemies and potential adversaries. Army forces will have to develop materiel solutions much faster than in the past due to the ease and speed of technology transfer and adaptation by enemies." Generations of family proud of Civil War hero [2014-11-05] WASHINGTON -- Helen Loring Ensign will accept the Medal of Honor on behalf of her first cousin, twice removed, Alonzo Hereford Cushing, at the White House, today. Then-1st Lt. Cushing was killed in combat, July 3, 1963, during fighting on the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg. He was later posthumously promoted to brevet lieutenant colonel. During a media event Nov. 5, in Arlington, Virginia, Ensign said she knew about her Soldier cousin from a young age. "My father's name was William Cushing Loring," Ensign said. "I heard it daily in reference to him and I had to ask who he was. I was under five years old when I heard about Cushing. We've all gone to Gettysburg, and we've seen the plaque for him there." "We're delighted to be here to represent our family's admiration of Mr. Cushing," Ensign said. "And the Cushing name has been passed down generation to generation. We are proud and happy that he is getting recognition at the White House tomorrow." Another cousin of Cushing, Jessica Loring, said this recognition for Alonzo Hereford Cushing has provided an opportunity for her family and the other side of the family to meet for the first time. She is a niece of Helen Loring Cushing. "His whole family was a brave family," she said of her Soldier cousin. "His mother would say 'death before dishonor,' when she sent her sons out to war. Three of them died young. Alonzo Cushing was the first, facing Pickett's charge at the Bloody Angle at Gettysburg. All of our family has honored the Cushing name down through all generations. All generations, from the start, some child born into the family has kept the name of Cushing." She said even her own grandson carries the Cushing name. Loring said that the paths of Soldiers today parallel Cushing's story in a couple of ways. "Alonzo volunteered for his position," Loring said. "Soldiers today volunteer as well. They are extremely loyal, like Alonzo was, extremely brave and devoted to this country and freedom. And that's what carries through ... is people going beyond themselves to make the ultimate sacrifice. And everybody out there, in the military, in Afghanistan -- wherever they may be -- is putting their lives on the line. And I think that's how this message carries through to the young people in the service today." The primary force behind getting Cushing recognized with a Medal of Honor was not a relative of Cushing, but rather Margaret Zerwekh, of Delafield, Wisconsin. While not related to the Cushing family, Zerwekh lives now on the farm that had been owned by the Cushing family. And in Delafield, Cushing is a celebrity. Twenty-seven years ago, in 1987, Zerwekh started an effort to get Cushing the recognition she thought he deserved. The impetus for all that effort was originally curiosity, Zerwekh said. "My commitment started with moving to a piece of property, and owning it, and then studying it and who lived there, and what happened to them and where they went to in the country," she said. Zerwekh said that as part of her efforts she had been able to trace the Cushing family roots back to the year 1000, in Ireland. About that time, she said, is when she believes the family actually changed their name to Cushing. Mark Bradley, a historian with the Army Center for Military History, said that Cushing, as a battery commander, was in one of the most dangerous positions during the Battle of Gettysburg. "I would say that Lt. Cushing's selflessness is evident in his decision to be a battery commander," Bradley said. "He was a staff officer, and he could have remained a staff officer for the rest of the war, and maybe even gone up to higher command in the infantry." But Cushing chose to stay a battery commander, and that, Bradley said, "indicates he thought he could contribute the most to the Union War effort ... by putting his life in jeopardy each time the battle was fought, rather than being safe behind the lines, where he might have been as a staff officer. That resulted in his death at Gettysburg." Cushing's first sergeant, Frederick Füger, also earned the Medal of Honor for the same battle, on the same day. Bradley said Füger had encouraged Cushing to leave the scene, to go to the hospital, but Cushing had been determined to stay. "He said he'd fight there and die if necessary," Bradley said, recounting a conversation between Cushing and Füger. "His mere presence there, I think, was a tremendous symbolic boost to his men, who incidentally are falling -- close to the dozens. Cushing's stand there at Gettysburg, while we can't say definitively that it turned the tide of the battle, it contributed to the Union victory. It's difficult to say what might have happened if Cushing had taken up Füger's suggestion and gone to the rear. But he didn't. And he paid the ultimate sacrifice." According to the Army website at www.army.mil/medalofhonor/cushing, Cushing commanded 126 men and six cannons positioned on Cemetery Ridge, July 3, 1863. In the face of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's assault, Cushing's battery took a severe pounding by Confederate artillery. Cushing and his battery stood at the apex of the assault where Confederate Maj. Gen. George Pickett intended to pierce the Union line. Within just a few hours, all of Cushing's officers had been killed, and all but two of his guns had been silenced. During the Confederate cannonade, he was wounded in the abdomen, as well as the right shoulder. Refusing to evacuate, despite his severe wounds, Cushing directed the operation of his two remaining guns -- firing in the face of the enemy. When the Confederates were less than 100 yards from his position, Cushing was shot in the head, and died instantly. Cushing's actions materially aided the Union Army's successful repulse of the Confederate assault, according to his award narrative. History shows that the Confederacy would be on the defensive from this point forward, and never again mount a major offensive. Industry mentorships could help Soldiers transition after Army [2014-11-14] WASHINGTON -- As the Army draws down its end strength, more Soldiers will be looking for work in the private sector -- some one million over the next 10 years. A kind of corporate mentorship might be one example of how industry could make that transition easier for Service members, said the Army's senior enlisted advisor. "That young Soldier, the first-term Soldier, may not have the skill set you need. But he or she has those intangibles that you are looking for in your organization," said Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III. One of those intangibles is leadership ability, Chandler said, while speaking to an audience of industry representatives, Wednesday, at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, during a meeting of the Veteran and Military Spouse Employment Advisory Council. In order to tap into that market of Soldiers with leadership skills, Chandler said industry might consider a kind of mentorship arrangement with job-seeking Soldiers. "What if you thought about partnering with those individuals and saying, 'I'd like you to use your Post-9/11 G.I. Bill benefit and look for a degree in the information technology field,'" he said. "And in return for that, over a period of two to four years, we'll inculcate our values and beliefs and mission about (our) organization, with a quarterly meeting ... where somebody mentors you in the organization and the corporate life." When the Soldier finally graduates, the company guarantees the new graduate a "quality interview" for a job. Chandler said such companies wouldn't guarantee a job, just a shot at one. A quality interview is "actually sitting down with somebody from human resources and doing an interview -- not just saying that they've received a r�sum�. They actually have jobs for those skill sets, and that they actually conduct an interview with you for applying for one of those jobs," Chandler said. "If you can get your foot in the door, most kids can sell themselves." Such an arrangement, he said, would solve three problems. First, he said, it might increase use of the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill. Right now, he said, the utilization rate is at about 35 percent. It also provides post-Army Soldiers with "focus and direction -- something they are comfortable with based on their years of service." And finally, he said, it gives a company an opportunity to look at a potential employee to see if "they are really going to fit into your corporate culture and organization." As the Army draws down to 490,000 Soldiers by the end of fiscal year 2015, and goes as low as 420,000 by the end of fiscal year 2019, if full sequestration returns, Chandler said he is concerned most about two types of Soldiers: female Soldiers and first-term Soldiers for whom the Army has been their only job. For female Soldiers leaving the Army, some of whom are single parents, "their unemployment rate is almost three times as high as their similar male counterparts," Chandler said. "How do we help them? How do we provide a soft landing?" Chandler said that inside the Army there has been some discussion about extending some kinds of benefits to help those Soldiers with their transition. For first-term Soldiers who transition to the private sector, he said those Soldiers might be shocked at how the private sector compensates them differently than the Army. He also asked private-sector representatives to consider how they view a first-term Soldier's resume -- and if intangibles such as leadership, ability to operate under stress, and willingness to set aside personal needs are being considered. Finally, he said, the Army cannot get Soldiers hired in private-sector jobs. What it can do is prepare Soldiers for private-sector jobs. Soldiers themselves, with adequate guidance from the Army and their leadership, must prepare themselves for their futures. "Soldiers can help themselves," he said. "That's through getting as much civilian education and credentialing opportunities as they can while on active duty. When a Soldier starts, there should be a plan in place for that individual to start working on college after one year of active federal service." As part of the Army's "Soldier for Life" program, Chandler said the Army starts talking about transition to civilian life with Soldiers "almost from the moment they come into the Army." And with the Army's Transition Assistance Program, Soldiers may start as much as a year in advance of separation or retirement to contemplate their plans for the future. "One year out we are starting to talk to you about what direction you will go," Chandler said. "Do you want to stay in? Do you want to leave? What will you do? That's where leadership comes into play, and the Soldiers have to recognize they have a responsibility to take care of themselves." Army in final steps of defining service 'ethic' [2014-11-20] WASHINGTON -- As guests of Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh, about 100 Army civilians within the Senior Executive Service met today, at the National Defense University here, to discuss and provide input on a new addition to Army doctrine called the "Army Ethic." This coming June, the Center for the Army Profession and Ethic at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, will release the second edition of the Army Doctrine Reference Publication 1, called "The Army Profession." This time around, that publication will contain an entire chapter dedicated to defining the Army Ethic, something that was mentioned only in brief in the first edition of ADRP 1 in June 2013. At the National Defense University, Army civilians discussed options for integration of the Army Ethic throughout the professional development process for Army civilians and provided their thoughts on how to strengthen morale, retention, and esprit within the Army Civilian Corps. "We think of ourselves as ethical people," McHugh said. "We have standards and measurements by which we guide our lives -- it's kind of the glue that holds our society together." But he said person to person, ethical standards vary. And that is why there needs to be a unifying ethic for the Army. "As an organization, we really need to think of ourselves more as a single organism, as a single profession," he said. "Which means it's better if we can come together, if we can come to the most common understanding we can as to what it means to be an Army professional and what it means to live the Army ethic." The secretary asked senior Army civilians for their "honest reactions" and "candid input" regarding a proposed version of the Army Ethic. The document has already been seen by and commented on by officers attending the May 2014 class of the Command and General Staff College. Additionally, two-star Army generals had their own chance to provide input in July during a forum hosted by Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. "What I hope we can all take away from today's effort ... we have to have that shared vision among all of us -- uniform and civilian -- because we are one Army and we are very proud of that fact," McHugh said. "And we have to reinforce guidance we generate here today on how we live the Army ethic." McHugh told the civilians he needed their "observations, and council, on how we can integrate these principles throughout our professional development effort. It has to permeate the entire Army -- civilian and military." The current draft Army ethic defines a "trusted Army professionals" as being three things: "honorable servants of the nation -- professionals of character;" "military experts -- competent professionals;" and "stewards of the Army profession -- committed professionals." "As trusted Army professionals, we strive to be honorable military experts, and servants, and stewards of the army -- as a professional institution -- and do the right thing by the people who are entrusted to us," he said. "That is our identity. That is who we claim we are ... As we practice this profession we must uphold the Army ethic, and reflect a common understanding of why we serve and how we serve in defense of the American people." McHugh said Army professionals serve out of love of country, love of the Army, love of the Army family and of the American people. "We come, contrary to the thoughts of many, to preserve the peace," he said. "As we put it, to prevent, shape and win in a complex world. We are committing to do our duty to lead this nation into a more peaceful environment." The Army professional, McHugh said, contributes to the common defense, defends American values such as those spelled out in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and serves "not to promote war, but rather to preserve peace." The Army professional also serves ethically, he said. "We demonstrate character; we serve effectively with professional competence, efficiently ... taking care of our Army, our people, our resources." Another 100,000 troops on road to civilian employment [2014-12-05] WASHINGTON -- As more Soldiers prepare to transition out of the Army, private-sector businesses continue to make the pledge to put those experienced Service members to work. For instance, the American Trucking Association recently announced its commitment to hire some 100,000 military veterans as part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's "Hiring our Heroes" program. "There's no higher calling for an American than to serve in our armed forces, and I'd like to think that driving a truck -- delivering America's most essential goods safely and efficiently is also a high calling," said American Trucking Association President and CEO Bill Graves. "That's why we're so proud to be partnering with Hiring Our Heroes and committing on behalf of the trucking industry to hire 100,000 veterans over the next two years." But the American Trucking Association is just one of multiple private-sector companies that have made such pledges. "So many organizations and companies representing government agencies, non-government organizations, and private companies have answered our commander in chief's challenge to train and hire our transitioning Service members, veterans, and family members," said Col. Adam L. Rocke, director of the Army's Soldier for Life Program. "Some have committed to specific hiring objectives with each company, while others continue to improve education and wellness opportunities ... including access to various job training, employment skills training, apprenticeships and internships." Rocke said that there are "hundreds" of organizations and companies that have committed to "recognizing the unique opportunity that Soldiers, veterans, and their family members bring to various sectors within industry." Other such programs include the Shifting Gears Automotive Technician Training Program; the Veterans in Piping, Welding and HVAC program; the Veterans in Construction (Electric) program; the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades program; the Microsoft Software Engineer Academy program; the Veterans Entering Trucking program; and the National Institute of Sheet Metal Workers program. Rocke said that the recent budget-related drawdown has caused Army transitions to spike to about 90,000 Soldiers annually. If the Army is not required to draw down below 490,000, he said, transitions should return to the pre-drawdown rate of about 75,000 annually. Those Soldiers leaving the Army each year are being prepared for civilian life through the Army's Transition Assistance Program, which previously was called the "Army Career and Alumni Program." TAP is now part of Rocke's "Soldier for Life" program. "The Transition Assistance Program is responsible for the structured transition process that begins 12-18 months prior to transition," Rocke said. As Soldiers prepare to leave the Army, they are required to enroll in the Soldier for Life-Transition Assistance Program. As part of their involvement in that program, Soldiers learn of job opportunities such as those offered by the ATA, and learn what they must do to take advantage of those programs. Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III said that while the Army does not find civilian work for Soldiers after they leave service, it does help prepare Soldiers for private-sector jobs. Soldiers themselves, he said, with adequate guidance from the Army and their leadership, must prepare themselves for their futures. "Soldiers can help themselves," he said. "That's through getting as much civilian education and credentialing opportunities as they can while on active duty. When a Soldier starts, there should be a plan in place for that individual to start working on college after one year of active federal service." ARDEC's airburst round to begin evaluation this summer [2014-12-08] WASHINGTON -- The Small Arms Grenade Munition round -- a 40mm counter-defilade, air-bursting grenade designed for both the M203 and M320 launchers -- will undergo evaluation in July 2015. The SAGM round has been under development by the Joint Service Small Arms Program at the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center, or JSSAP-ARDEC, since January 2012. If the SAGM round is successful in the demonstration, it will transition to Project Manager-Maneuver Ammunition Systems, or PM-MAS, by the end of fiscal year 2015 for integration into an official Army program of record. To do that, said SAGM Project Officer Steven Gilbert, "We must demonstrate a certain level of functional reliability over selected target sets." PM-MAS is evaluating all possible material solutions and critical technologies as they develop the acquisition strategy for the development of a material solution, which will satisfy the Army's requirements. The JSSAP-ARDEC team's concept will be included in this evaluation. The SAGM allows a Soldier to target an enemy who is protected behind a barrier -- "in defilade" -- and have the munition explode, in the air, above the target. "The SAGM cartridge, which is compatible with the Army's 40mm grenade launchers, provides the small unit grenadier with a higher probability of achieving a first-shot kill against enemy personnel coupled with the ability to defeat personnel targets in defilade positions at increased ranges with greater accuracy and lethality," Gilbert said. The weapon is similar to the effects of the XM-25 weapon which is already in development by the Army. (The XM25, a direct-fire weapon, launches a programmable air-burst round that determines the distance it must travel. The system includes both the weapon, ammunition rounds, and fully-integrated day/night fire control. A direct-fire weapon, the XM25 is complementary to SAGM which is indirectly fired.) The SAGM doesn't require the Soldier to conduct any kind of pre-fire programming sequence. Gilbert said the Soldier aims the weapon and fires, and the round detects where a wall is and then explodes, in the air, after passing the wall. "It has a sensor that will sense defilade or walls or anything that somebody will be hiding behind," he said. "And basically detects it without the need of a laser range finder. The biggest challenge has been maturing the SAGM sensor's robustness to ensure proper functionality against the plethora of available defilade structures in a battlefield environment." The system does require some skill on the part of the user, however. "All the Soldier would need to do is aim the weapon and fire it," Gilbert said. "He'd have to have good aim ... or the round won't detect the wall. You have to have some sort of accuracy." Right now, Gilbert said, the approximately 10-person engineering team is still integrating the fuze in the SAGM with other technology components so that when the time comes, the system will demonstrate the appropriate level of technology readiness to be accepted by PM-MAS. Soldier uniforms may one day detect, neutralize biological threats [2014-12-12] ADELPHI, Md. -- Scientists at the Army Research Laboratory have developed and are producing in small batches synthetic peptides they believe will serve as great replacements for animal-grown antibodies currently used to detect biological hazards. Today, natural antibodies are used as part of handheld ticket assays that can be used to detect the presence of biological hazards such as botulism, anthrax or ricin, for instance. But those antibodies are expensive to produce, take a long time to produce, and are also fragile -- they are susceptible to temperature fluctuations and have a short shelf life. These shortfalls make them difficult to deploy into the field where they could be used by Soldiers to protect the force. "One of the main problems with those assays is when they use the antibodies, if the antibodies get too warm, they will denature," said James J. Sumner, Ph.D, the chief of the Biotechnology Branch and a supervisory chemist in the Sensors and Electron Devices Directorate at Army Research Laboratory here. "They will essentially cook, and then they won't function anymore. What you want to do is make something that is easily producible and that is really rugged so that when you store it you don't have to have it refrigerated." The synthetic peptides under development at the Army Research Laboratory can perform the same biohazard detection functions as the antibodies, but they are much more robust. Temperature studies, for instance, have demonstrated the materials can be held at up to 90 degrees Celsius -- or about 194 degrees Fahrenheit, for as much as an hour "and we hardly lose any activity," said Dimitra Stratis-Cullum, Ph.D., the biomaterials team leader with the Sensors and Electron Devices Directorate at the Army Research Laboratory. "We've also done 70 degrees Celsius for a week." Stratis-Cullum said the materials also hold up better when exposed to the environment, unlike the natural antibodies. "We can take advantage of non-natural peptides and engineer them so they don't degrade in the environment," she said. "So things won't chew them up, like enzymes that are always present won't degrade them -- they are very stable." Another benefit of the synthetic peptides is that unlike antibodies, they are easy to manufacture. Whereas antibodies must be grown in animals or engineered microorganisms, synthetic peptide sequences can be built on-demand, in a lab. So if customers need a specific set of detection tools, the appropriate type of synthetic peptides can be ordered to meet that demand and can be quickly procured. With antibodies, "months and months of lead time (are needed) in order to be able to do that," Stratis-Cullum said. "And you can't build up a stockpile and store them because they only last about six months with special packaging. So there is a huge storage and logistics and manufacturing issue as well, even for the limited use." With the synthetic peptides that Sumner, Stratis-Cullum and their team have developed, those testing agents can be produced quickly and inexpensively. "We are doing the manufacturing so you can produce them on-demand and quickly," Stratis-Cullum said. "Anybody who has a peptide synthesizer can make one. That's a lot of companies. In the field of biotech they are common. You can go to a company and order a sequence. There are robots that make them." "Once you have that sequence, you can go online and send them the sequence, and they will send you a vial to make 100 assays for maybe $100," Sumner said. Right now, the development of synthetic peptides at the Army Research Laboratory is best targeted at hand-held testing kits that can detect nearly any kind of biohazard one's immune system might react to. But Stratis-Cullum said that's just the "lowest-hanging fruit." The future holds more promise for the work she and her team are doing at the Army Research Laboratory. "The vision for this is now to bring it to integrated Soldier uniforms that sense and respond and self-neutralize," she said. "The newer versions of this could bind and inhibit it to make it inactive as well. So you could've been exposed, but the suit would help decontaminate and protect the Soldier." This summer, the team at the Army Research Laboratory will demonstrate their work to researchers from the Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center and Army Medical Command, Sumner said. "We'll show that these function even though they are exposed to high temperature for a long period of time. And they still work as well as the traditional antibodies do." If they are successful in that demonstration, the team at the Army Research Laboratory will transition their work to Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, who will carry it on in a way that will more directly benefit Soldiers. "We would like to be able to provide them the techniques and the protocols and how we develop these things and help them along the way as they start developing the same type of recognition elements that they see as the highest priority," Sumner said. Army to launch cruise missile-detecting aerostat at Aberdeen Proving Ground [2014-12-17] WHITE MARSH, Md. -- Sometime early next week, the Army expects to launch the first of two tethered aerostats from a ground base here, just north of Baltimore. The aerostat, part of the "Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor" system, referred to as JLENS for short, is a nearly 250-foot blimp-like vehicle that will stay aloft for a three-year evaluation period. The JLENS aerostat will be tethered to the ground at all times, and will float at an elevation of about 10,000 feet -- just less than two miles high. The vehicle is filled with helium, and is meant to keep a cruise missile-detecting radar system aloft. The system can detect cruise missile threats in an area that ranges from upstate New York to just a bit south of Norfolk, Virginia. During the evaluation period the Army hopes to show that the JLENS aerostat, which carries a radar system that can detect cruise missiles, can be successfully integrated into existing North American Aerospace Defense Command systems designed to protect airspace over the East Coast of the United States -- an area that includes New York City, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. A second JLENS aerostat will launch in late winter or early spring 2015. In the event that a cruise missile were to enter the area observed by the two aerostats, information gleaned from their systems would be fed into existing NORAD Eastern Air Defense Sectors systems and that information could in turn be used to bring down the cruise missile using aircraft launched munitions, ground-based air defense systems, or even an Aegis Combat System. "It is based on who can get the best shot possible," said Maj. Gen. Glenn Bramhall, commander, 263rd Army Air and Missile Defense Command, during a press briefing, Dec. 17. Right now, the purpose of the three-year evaluation of the JLENS system is to see how well it can integrate into existing NORAD detection systems. The JLENS system has already shown it is effective at detecting cruise missiles -- something it proved during evaluation on test ranges in Utah, said Lt. Col. William Pitts, with 263rd Army Air Defense Command. "We've already answered the question, 'Is it effective against cruise missiles?'" Pitts said. "There are plenty of tests that show we can see those things. Now the question is, when I put it here in the homeland and plug it into all the NORAD command-and-control systems, how does it integrate and how does it enable the other systems to do their job better? All those command and control nodes can leverage the data off the aerostat to provide some of that early awareness." From its 10,000 foot perch, the JLENS aerostats can get a more thorough picture of the area they are meant to protect than can ground-based radar systems. Current systems cannot see everything, Bramhall said, so what is needed is something that flies much higher in order to detect everything that could pose a threat. "Current systems do have limitations. One of the limitations we have is ... we have limited ability to detect," Bramhall said. "With an elevated sensor, such as JLENS ... [we have] the ability to look over the horizon, we have the ability to detect, and to enable our systems to defeat cruise missiles." In addition to its expanded coverage range, the JLENS system also provides persistent over-watch. The system stays aloft for 30 days at a time, coming down only for maintenance or severe weather. With the amount of time it can stay aloft, it is much less expensive than it would be to get the same capability via manned missions with an E-3 Sentry with the Airborne Warning and Control System, referred to as AWACS, or an E-2 Hawkeye with an airborne early-warning system. "Thirty days is so much better and cheaper than flying AWACS," Bramhall said. The increased capability of the JLENS system also means that airborne threats can be detected earlier than they can be now. This earlier warning provides ground commanders with more time to make important decisions. "If I can detect this thing much further out, it gives commanders [more] time to get air assets into place and to alert people on the ground of the threat," said Bramhall. "If I can give a command four more minutes or five more minutes, that's a lot of time." The JLENS aerostats will both carry radar systems to detect cruise missiles, strobe lights to alert nearby aircraft of their whereabouts, and backup batteries to ensure operations in the event the ground power station fails. What the aerostats will not have is video cameras, said Capt. Matt Villa, JLENS plans and coordination officer. "I can't stress enough: there are no cameras or video equipment onboard the JLENS system. Its radars cannot detect people," said Villa Additionally, said Villa, the JLENS aerostat carries neither weapons nor people onboard. About 100 Soldiers from Alpha Company, 3rd Air Defense Artillery, part of the 108th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, will run the aerostat's operations. About eight Soldiers will be responsible for actual operations of the aerostat. Another crew will operate the radar system. The first JLENS aerostat is expected to be launched at Graces Quarters, part of Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. The second will also launch at Aberdeen Proving Ground, in the nearby Edgewood Section of the installation. Army to further consolidate footprint in Europe [2015-01-08] WASHINGTON -- While the big news coming out of the Pentagon today was the closure of U.S. Air Force facilities at RAF Mildenhall, England, the Army will also consolidate or close several facilities in Europe. The Department of Defense announced changes to the U.S. military presence in Europe during a Jan. 8 press conference at the Pentagon. The changes are the result of a two-year process, called the European Infrastructure Consolidation, or EIC, to review U.S. force presence and facilities in Europe. Changes recommended by the EIC will occur over the next several years, and are expected to "produce savings that will enable us to maintain a robust force presence in Europe," said Derek Chollet, the assistant secretary of defense for International Security Affairs. Chollet said the changes would consolidate some existing support infrastructure, but would not affect operational ability, or the ability of the United States to support its partners in Europe. In Germany, the Army's Barton Barracks at U.S. Army Garrison Ansbach will be returned to the host nation. At U.S. Army Garrison Rheinland-Pfalz, the Hoppstaedten Waterworks, the Pfeffelbach Waterworks, and the site at Husterhoeh Kaserne will close. A portion of the Army-run Pulaski Barracks will also shutter. The Weilimdorf Warehouse Site at U.S. Army Garrison Stuttgart is also slated for closure, as is the Mainz-Kastel Station and the Amelia Earhart Hotel at U.S. Army Garrison Wiesbaden. The Army will partially return to Germany the Artillery Kaserne, part of U.S. Army Garrison Bavaria. In Italy, about half of Camp Darby, near Livorno, will be returned to the host nation. Additionally, the Vicenza Health Center -- an Army-run facility -- will be converted to outpatient and specialty care only. In Belgium, the Brussels-leased site at U.S. Army Garrison BENELUX will close down, as will the Schinnen Emma Mine site in the Netherlands. Recommendations for change, as part of EIC, were developed using a process similar to what the DoD has used in the past to develop recommendations for Base Realignment and Closure, said John Conger, the acting deputy under secretary of Defense for Installations and Environment. "We looked at capacity, requirements, military value, at cost, and at the diplomatic dynamics involved in each action," he said. The announced changes in Europe will not happen immediately, and will likely happen alongside other changes not directly related to EIC, he said. "These recommendations will be executed over the next several years," Conger said. "That does not mean everything will remain static while these changes occur. There were consolidations made before EIC, and there will undoubtedly be future basing actions." Army developing higher voltage batteries that don't corrode [2015-01-09] ADELPHI, Md. -- New, lighter batteries are under development for Soldiers now, in-house, at the Army Research Laboratory here. Chemists at the lab here do materials research on lithium ion batteries and other advanced battery chemistry in an effort to support the warfighter. "We help to develop new battery materials that are lighter and last longer for the Soldier, so he doesn't have to carry so many batteries," said Cynthia Lundgren, a chemist and Chief of the Electrochemistry Branch of the Power and Energy Division in the Sensors and Electron Devices Directorate. To create a better battery, Lundgren and her team experiment with small "button cells," such as what one might find in a watch. A "cell" consists of two electrodes: an "anode," which is the side marked with a "minus" sign; and a metal oxide or phosphate cathode, which bears the "plus" sign. Between these two electrodes is a liquid electrolyte soaked separator that facilitates the transfer of lithium ions to transfer charge. One or more of these "cells" is used to construct a battery pack. The team tinkers with the different materials that make up both the cathode and the anode. They also tinker with the chemistry of the electrolyte of the battery. Lundgren said that one way to make a battery lighter is to use electrodes that increase its cell voltage. "If we could raise the voltage of a single cell -- energy density is a direct function of the voltage -- we could make the battery lighter," she said. "The problem is, as you go up in voltage, the electrode becomes much more energetic, and so it reacts with the electrolyte." The reaction of electrodes with the electrolyte is one of the key problems Lundgren and her team have proven successful at tackling. "The electrodes are very corrosive, and they react with the electrolytes," said Von Cresce, a chemist at the lab. "So what ends up happening as you cycle the battery back and forth is that the electrolytes are degraded by the cathode because of the voltage of the cathode." For the types of rechargeable batteries that Lundgren and her team are developing, that degradation means fewer charge/discharge cycles. Additionally, as the cells are charged and discharged, they retain less of their ability to hold a charge. To prevent such degradation in a cell, the team created a solution called HFiPP -- short for "tris (hexafluoroisopropyl) phosphate," which they use to enhance the electrolyte to make it more stable in high-voltage situations. "It's a corrosion inhibitor," Lundgren said. "You just add it to the electrolyte that any manufacturer would put in. It's a little bit of pixie dust." In the lab at Adelphi, the team is experimenting with a higher voltage iron-doped lithium cobalt phosphate cathode developed in the lab by fellow Army chemist, Jan Allen. Cresce said the LiCoPO4 cathode is particularly high voltage, at 4.9V. "It seems to be more reactive towards the liquid electrolyte," he said. "This is a common problem among many varieties of experimental high voltage cathodes. It really seems to behave badly against unprotected liquid electrolyte." But with the HFiPP solution added to the electrolyte for corrosion protection, the team was able to develop a battery that has both a higher voltage cathode, but at the same time is more stable. It can be charged and recharged many times, while maintaining its capacity and not corroding. In early 2015, the lab expects to get back from a commercial manufacturer samples of larger cells, called "pouch cells," that were built using the same chemistry they developed in their lab. They and other Army researchers will evaluate those cells for their performance and safety characteristics. "We'll go through a number of evaluations," Lundgren said. "Do they perform as a pouch cell the same way they perform as a coin cell? One of the things you can't see in a coin cell is gassing. So if there is some reaction between the electrolyte and the electrode, and if you can get gassing you can make the pouch cell blow up." Lundgren said she believes what they have developed at the Army Research Lab will make batteries lighter and last longer -- something the Army wants in order to better equip Soldiers. First women to attend Ranger Course [2015-01-16] WASHINGTON -- The Army announced Jan. 15 that female Soldiers will be allowed, for the first time, to attend the Army's Ranger Course and possibly earn the coveted Ranger tab. According to an official Army statement, the first Ranger Course open to female Soldiers begins this spring. "Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh approved the participation of both men and women in the spring 2015 Ranger Course assessment," said Army spokesperson Wayne Hall. "The assessment will be conducted during Ranger Course 06-15, which is scheduled to begin on April 20, 2015. The course has approximately 60 women scheduled to participate. Those who meet the standards and graduate from the course will receive a certificate and be awarded the Ranger tab." According to Monica L. Manganaro, a spokesperson for the Maneuver Center of Excellence's Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade, the 2015 "Ranger Course assessment" is a regular Ranger Course, with all the same physical requirements. The current Ranger Course completion standards, to include prerequisites, phase performance requirements and graduation standards would not change for the assessment, she said. Manganaro said the course is being called an assessment due to the first-time participation of female Soldiers. Both male and female students will participate in the assessment. The Army released an all Army activities message in September 2014 requesting units forward the names of female volunteers to attend the spring Ranger Course assessment. At the time, the decision to include women in a Ranger Course had not yet been made. "The response was overwhelmingly positive," Manganaro said. "When the Army asked for women who had interest, the interest outweighed the number of slots available." Some of the women who may attend that Ranger Course assessment began the 16-day Ranger Training Assessment Course, run by the Army's National Guard Warrior Training Center, Jan. 16. The RTAC is meant to prepare Soldiers to succeed in the Ranger Course. This is the first time an RTAC has included women. Of the 120 slots available for students in the RTAC, up to 40 are allotted for women. There are three additional RTACs scheduled before the Ranger Course Assessment begins that include female Soldiers. With an endorsement from their unit, Soldiers who successfully complete the RTAC are eligible to attend the 62-day Ranger Course, Manganaro said. Historically, she said, approximately half of those who enter the Ranger Course will succeed in earning the Ranger tab. Not all Soldiers who attend the Ranger Course are required to attend an RTAC, Manganaro said. But all female Soldiers who attend the Ranger Course Assessment must first attend and successfully complete an RTAC. "The RTAC is mandatory for the women who want to go to Ranger school," Manganaro said. "It is going to re-enforce those Ranger skills, and familiarize the female Soldier with the skill sets they may not have had in other courses they have gone through." Manganaro said the requirement to attend the RTAC will "level the playing field," in the Ranger Course, allowing women to better familiarize themselves with the skills they will need to succeed there. "The RTAC gives them an azimuth on their skill set, on what they will need to go to Ranger school," she said. FEMALE OBSERVERS AND ADVISORS For the Ranger Course assessment this spring, the Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade selected 31 female Soldiers to serve as observers and advisors. Of those, there are 11 officers and 20 non-commissioned officers. The observer/advisors will be integrated into the Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade staff during the Ranger Course assessment, for the purpose of assisting with the execution of the assessment, and to help capture "lessons learned" from both men and women training together. The female observer/advisors underwent a weeklong evaluation in November 2014, before being selected to move on to a modified Ranger Instructor training program, meant to prepare them to work in assigned areas during the Ranger Course assessment. Observer/advisors will also observe two cycles of an all-male Ranger Course as part of their preparation for the April 2015 Ranger Course assessment. Manganaro said that female Soldiers who successfully complete the April Ranger Course assessment will earn a certificate of completion for the course, and will have earned the privilege of wearing the Ranger tab on their uniform. However, she said, those Soldiers will not get the Ranger skill identifier, nor will they be able to transition to an MOS that requires the Ranger skill identifier, as those MOSs are not yet open to women. The move to assess female Soldier performance in Ranger Course is part of an ongoing Army effort called "Soldier 2020." That effort is meant to allow the Army's best-qualified Soldiers the opportunity to serve in any position where they are capable of performing to standard. "In 2011, the Army began assessing barriers to service for women," said Col. Linda K. Sheimo, chief, Command Policy Division at Army G-1. "In 2012 we opened approximately 14,000 positions that were closed due to the removal of the collocation rule which includes opening six MOSs and executing the exception to policy program in the maneuver battalion headquarters of maneuver battalions in nine BCTs. Since 2012, approximately 55,000 positions have been opened. Now, we continue our efforts with the assessment of women attending the Ranger Course this spring. We'll use the data and lessons learned from this pilot to inform our way ahead in a deliberate, measured and responsible manner. We're upholding standards and ensuring every Soldier has the opportunity maximize their potential." Army honors Chandler for helping overcome challenges [2015-01-22] WASHINGTON -- "When we have to go talk to Congress ... there are many times they would much rather hear it from a sergeant major than from a general officer," Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno said. In his position, Odierno has testified many times on Capitol Hill, and says that lawmakers often want to hear the Army's story through the words of a sergeant major because "they know they have sacrificed and gone through what it takes to be Soldiers." One such enlisted Soldier is Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III, who will retire from the Army, Jan. 30. Odierno and other senior Army leaders gathered at the Pentagon, Jan. 22, to celebrate Chandler's 33-year career. "The position of the sergeant major of the Army is incredibly important," Odierno said. "And Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III has done an incredible job of handling that during some, I would argue, pretty challenging times." Chandler began serving as the 14th sergeant major of the Army in March 2011. At the time, he was sworn in under then Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. During his time as the senior enlisted advisor, he helped find solutions for an array of daunting challenges. One of those challenges involved the elimination of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law that prohibited gay Service members from revealing their sexual orientation. "Everybody was concerned about how the force would take this," Odierno said. "But the sergeant majors had prepared the force, and we had gone through a fairly significant educational process that this was going to happen. The transition of this policy probably went smoother than anybody expected. And the reason that happened is because of the non-commissioned officer corps." Odierno said that the success of such a policy change hinges on the acceptance of it by the non-commissioned officer corps. "I am convinced if you want to get anything done in our organization, you first have to get the buy-in of our NCOs," he said. "If they buy in, it will happen. And that starts from the top. SMA Chandler was absolutely going to make sure that this policy change was implemented correctly, professionally and ethically." Another significant contribution during his four-year tenure was to change the way senior enlisted personnel were assigned to jobs, a task Odierno said had been initiated by the 13th Sgt. Maj. of the Army Kenneth O. Preston. "SMA Preston started down this road, but SMA Chandler took it and developed it to the next level," Odierno said. "And I have seen the fruits of that as I have traveled around the Army, as I see the right senior sergeants major in the right jobs, spread across the Army and spreading their expertise to places where they would have never served before under our old system." Odierno said in the past, he had come to think of sergeants major as a kind of "good old boys society." "They got picked for positions based on how well they knew the senior sergeant major on the installation," he said. Now, Odierno said, he sees general officers impressed with the right senior NCOs in the right jobs, performing at the top of their game. "It's the system he put in place. It's made our Army better. And sergeant major, I want to thank you for that," Odierno said. Chandler was on board during a time when the Army was asked to downsize by 60,000 Soldiers, Odierno said. The Army is now downsizing by an additional 20,000, he said, and may be asked to downsize by as many as 50,000 more. Odierno said Chandler "set the tone" for how the Army would get to a lower end strength, by developing a system designed to determine who deserved to stay, and by "making sure that he carries that message, that if you do your job and if you are a good Soldier and a good NCO, there is room for you in this Army." Chandler also contributed to developing the new Army Operating Concept -- the Soldier 2020 concept, which involves "the future of our NCO corps, and how to train and develop them;" programs to curb and eliminate sexual assault in the Army; and developing the systems needed to bring women into combat arms. "Just one or two of those issues would have been a complex issue for any SMA," Odierno said. "He has helped lead our Army through that, and our Army is stronger and better today because of his great leadership." Odierno also highlighted the contributions of Chandler's wife, Jeanne Chandler. As the wife of the SMA, she frequently traveled with her husband to military installations to meet with the families of Soldiers. "She has done so many things to make us aware and help our young families around the Army, as we ask them to conduct many missions around the world," Odierno said. "She has been instrumental in providing feedback, or counsel, or just listening in some cases to them. Thank you for what you have done ... and we appreciate your sacrifice and your support of your husband and all that you have done to make sure that he can do his job, and the sacrifices that you have made to allow him to do his job." MYTH DISPELLED "I used to think of the Pentagon as an evil empire," said Chandler, speaking of his time before coming to Washington, D.C., to serve as the Army's senior enlisted member. Chandler cited situations where, in his previous jobs in the Army, he had come to the Pentagon to ask for something and never got what he had asked for. "It was a place where everything went and never came back," he said. But on arrival in Washington, D.C., in March 2011, he said, he had a change of heart. "When I became the SMA, I learned quickly it was not the evil empire," Chandler said. "It was people very dedicated to what the needs of the Army were, and finding a way to make it happen. I learned there are great processes and procedures, like any other bureaucracy. But the difference was they were very dedicated people who were very interested in trying to make a difference." A FAMILY MISSION Chandler said being close to his wife, Jeanne Chandler, was important to him, and that he felt that serving as SMA would not allow that to happen. He said he had seen that his predecessor, Preston, had traveled often and always alone. Bearing that in mind, he had said he didn't want to be the SMA. "I can't do this. I can't even compete," said Chandler of how he had felt back when he was asked to do the job. "If you're not committed 100 percent, then you are doing a disservice not only to the position but also to the Soldiers you are serving." But conversations with Preston changed his mind. He said Preston told him that it would be possible to travel together with a spouse; that his wife could be with him on his tours. Chandler thanked the secretary of the Army and the chief of staff for allowing that to happen -- for making it possible for him to be both a good partner to his wife and a good servant of the Army. With Jeanne at his side, Chandler said he was able to tackle the issues that needed his attention, while Jeanne was able to champion the needs of burdened, overtaxed Army families across the force. "When Ray became the SMA, I gained the ability to travel with him and do sensing groups with our junior leaders, senior leaders, survivors, schools, day care centers and housing directors," said Jeanne Chandler. "More than that, I reported back, just like Ray did, to the secretary of the Army and the chief of staff," she added. "And sitting on the Department of Defense Family Readiness Council as an Army representative, I could speak with authority about what was going on with our families, and this council made recommendations to Congress. It was the opportunity of a lifetime." "I can't tell you the difference she made," Chandler said. "I am not sure I'd be able to measure that. I do know she brought a voice to the Army senior leadership of Solders and families, and she gave up a lot to do that." "I love you for that," he told her. TODAY'S SOLDIER On leaving the Army now, Chandler reflected on what the Army looked like to him, in the past -- back in 1981 -- and how it has changed today. "It's so much better than it was when I first entered the Army," Chandler said. "When I came in the Army it was really at the end of the Vietnam era, and the beginning of the all-volunteer force. We had huge challenges then." On the first day at his first duty station, for instance, Chandler said a Soldier had jumped out of a window with a heroin needle in his arm. "The CQs [Charge of Quarters] walked around with loaded pistols to ensure that the barracks were a safe and secure environment," Chandler said. "There were race issues. Our equipment was falling apart." Today, Chandler said, things are different -- not just with equipment and with conduct, but with education as well. "It's so much better now with the standardization of education across the Army," he said. "If you see a sergeant, you know what that sergeant has gotten for school. That's so much different than years ago. And I'm glad to have been a part of it." Chandler enlisted in 1981, and trained as a 19E armor crewman. He was sworn in as the 14th Sgt. Maj. of the Army on March 1, 2011. He will retire Jan. 30, after more than 33 years of service, and will be replaced by Sgt. Maj. Daniel A. Dailey, who, until recently, served as the senior enlisted adviser for U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. THAAD schoolhouse opens at Fort Sill [2015-01-23] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers destined to operate the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system will now learn their trade from fellow Soldiers. The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense Instructional Facility, or THAAD, opened at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, Jan. 23. Already, four classes are underway at the schoolhouse. "This represents the culmination of a lot of activity to get the facility built, the instructors trained, and the training devices built and delivered," said Brig. Gen. Christopher Spillman, commandant of the Air Defense Artillery School, located at the Fires Center of Excellence. "All of that required a monumental amount of work and coordination from various stakeholders across the air defense artillery community." In the past, Soldier training for THAAD was done by contractors. That is standard for new Army systems, Spillman said. But as those systems mature, and the cadre of Soldiers familiar with those systems grows, the Army can instead come to rely on its own non-commissioned officers to train newcomers. "Today marks the transition from the way we used to train Soldiers to now, having the Army train our Soldiers in the institutional training base," Spillman said. The THAAD system provides a globally transportable, rapidly deployable capability to intercept and destroy ballistic missiles inside or outside the atmosphere during their final, or terminal, phase of flight. A THAAD battery includes up to six truck-mounted launchers, each with the capability to store eight interceptor projectiles, a radar system, and a fire control system. Spillman said such a battery might have as many as 80 Soldiers on board. Soldiers who are bound for those units will first attend schooling at the new THAAD training facility at Fort Sill. Right now, Spillman said the schoolhouse teaches five courses of instruction, including one for new air defense artillery officers, a separate course for warrant officers, and courses to provide THAAD skill identifiers to each of three enlisted military occupational specialties. Today, the Army has fielded three THAAD batteries, with a fourth battery now stood up and going through new equipment training. In the coming years, Spillman said, the Army will stand up and equip another three batteries, with potential for an eighth battery. "The THAAD is an important system for national defense," Spillman said. "When you deploy a THAAD battery, or any air and missile defense capability for that matter, it sends a pretty powerful signal to adversaries in our various regions, that those areas are of important national interest to the United States." Most recently, Spillman said, the United States sent such a message to adversaries in Northeast Asia by locating a THAAD battery in Guam. "THAAD has been a major success story for the United States and for the Missile Defense Agency," Spillman said. Coastal risk: Corps of Engineers releases planning guide for future storms, flooding [2015-01-28] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, or COE, released a study, Jan. 28, that frames future risks from rising oceans and increasing weather patterns along the areas affected by 2012's Hurricane Sandy. The "North Atlantic Coast Comprehensive Study," commissioned by Congress in 2013, looks at the risk along 31,000 miles of Atlantic Ocean shoreline from North Carolina to New Hampshire. Joseph R. Vietri, with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said the United States was hit "very badly" by Hurricane Sandy, and said the storm was not the first to affect the East Coast of the United States in such a fashion -- nor would it be the last. "In the last 100 years ... every 20 to 30 years we've had a fairly significant storm that has pretty much created havoc along the coastal communities," he said. "That includes not only civilian communities, but also Department of Defense communities." At risk from such storms along the East Coast is a significant amount of national infrastructure, including the U.S. Atlantic Fleet in Norfolk, Virginia, Vietri said. "The idea behind the comprehensive study, at least the congressional intent behind it, was that the Corps of Engineers, working with a large number of partners -- state and federal and local -- would identify vulnerable areas, and come up with a framework on how to address those vulnerabilities into the future," Vietri said. "Understanding the effects of climate change and sea-level rise is paramount to that." Vietri said the Corps developed new tools to look at how storms affected coastlines, and how projected increases in sea level would change the way those storms acted on coastal communities and infrastructure. "I think it was the largest use of Army supercomputers by any civil works activity ever," he said. "A tremendous amount of time was spent burning up supercomputer hours and trying to analyze all this data and develop these storm models that are critical to not only what happened but what will happen into the future." Vietri said one conclusion drawn in the study is that several large areas along the East Coast did not have adequate protection from Hurricane Sandy or potential future storms. Included among those areas were Washington, D.C., New York City, Baltimore and Norfolk, for instance. He said the study calls for further, more detailed analysis of such highly developed areas. He cited one hypothetical example from the study involving the New York City area, which he said has seen a 12-inch increase in sea level over the past 100 years. "If you look at the high end of that curve spectrum, into the future, based upon some of the information that has come out though a lot of the work done on the international scene, you realize a change as high as two meters -- almost six feet in 100 years, could occur," he said. Regardless of whether additional sea-rise estimates fall at the low end -- 12 more inches -- or the high end -- 6 feet -- the results will still be disastrous, he said. "A lot of barrier island areas that are only 10 feet above sea level would be really catastrophic," he said. Vietri said that it would be inappropriate to just assume the worst-case scenario, however. "That would over-exaggerate what the potential damages are, and by extension potentially exaggerate what solutions might be needed," he said. But at the same time, "If you take the lowest, you could really underestimate it." The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Roselle E. Henn said the 31,000 miles of shoreline that was studied includes not just oceanic shoreline, but also estuaries, and river inlets, for example -- anything that would be affected by rising flood water. The study broke that area down into multiple "reaches," or areas of beach and shore that she said were 'hydraulically separate" from one another. "We looked at risk of flood in those areas as well as the exposure of the populations; exposure by population density, infrastructure density, and vulnerability by socio-economic factors that might make it difficult to respond to an emergency situation and flooding, as well as the vulnerability of environmental resources and cultural resources like monuments and historic locations," Henn said. The team responsible for the study also looked at possible measures that could be used to manage the risks they assessed as part of the study, including those tools owned by the Corps. "We looked at the traditional COE portfolio, which includes levies and breakwaters and shoreline stabilization techniques," she said. "But we also took a broad look at non-structural measures, like flood-proofing, acquisition, relocation and flood warning." The team also factored into their risk calculations the natural protections, such as salt marshes, and also things that could be engineered to mimic such natural protections. "Using that full array of measures, we then began to screen and aggregate them as a system, to link them together, not looking for measure alone to reduce the risk in an vulnerable area, but to see how different combinations of measures provided different levels of risk management," she said. While the study "stopped short" of providing solutions or making recommendations -- something Henn said was outside their congressional mandate -- it does provide the information smaller jurisdictions can use to manage their own risk. "We provided this framework as a methodology that regional partners can use at smaller scale," she said. "They can take it all the way down to the end point which is to evaluate and compare solutions ... to plan, implement plans, and then monitor and adapt. The point is this framework, what we put together, is not a COE-only document. We hope it provides a common basis for thinking about coastal risk across the region." One of the major conclusions of the report, Vietri said, is that there is a shared responsibility for risk assessment and planning that ranges from homeowners all the way up to the federal government. "The federal government, the Army Corps of Engineers, or any governmental body by itself is not the sole party responsible for managing or mitigating these increased risks," he said. "It starts with the local homeowner, carries into the local village or the person who has land-use controls in these vulnerable areas. It goes to the DoD on a facility on how you might look at that facility in the future, and what changes you might have to make to that facility ... so the mission of that facility is not compromised." Partners in the study included the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Housing and Urban Development, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of the Interior, or DOI, and agencies within the DOI such as Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey, as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Henn said partners also included state-level governments, regional groups, and tribal officials, as well as metropolitan governments in impacted areas. Henn and Vietri said they hope the study will be used by all levels of government to improve decision making on storm preparation in the future, taking into account both possible storms and rising oceans due to climate change. Dailey shares ideas about leadership development, fitness, women in combat arms [2015-01-30] WASHINGTON -- "You've always been just a Soldier. And you need to say that," said Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey, relaying the advice given to him by retired Sgt. Maj. of the Army Robert E. Hall. Dailey, who most recently served as the command sergeant major at U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, or TRADOC, was sworn in as the 15th sergeant major of the Army during a ceremony at the Pentagon, Jan. 30. Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno administered the oath to the new senior enlisted advisor. The role of the sergeant major of the Army is primarily to advise the chief of staff of the Army on issues related to the enlisted force, and to pursue objectives laid out by the chief of staff of the Army, or CSA. During an interview, Jan. 30, before having been sworn into office, Dailey said Odierno had already discussed objectives with him, and that after he settles into his new job, he is expected to start off in his new position by visiting with Soldiers around the Army. "The chief wants me to get out and see the force," Dailey said. "It's critical I hear their voice, and carry that back to the chief and the secretary of the Army." Dailey said he expects to visit areas with large Soldier populations. Included among those might be the 1st Armored Division at Fort Bliss, Texas; the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas; the 1st Infantry Division at Fort Riley, Kansas; and the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia. Dailey also has his own ideas he brings with him to the job -- ideas about Soldier development, physical fitness, and women in combat, for instance -- topics he became familiar with while serving as the senior enlisted advisor at TRADOC. WOMEN IN COMBAT ARMS Most recently, the Army announced that female Soldiers will be allowed, for the first time, to attend Ranger school on a trial basis. This April, 60 slots will be made available to female Soldiers during a Ranger course assessment at Fort Benning, Georgia. The change is something Dailey said he welcomes. "Is the Army ready for women in combat arms? I think we are past due," Dailey said. "I think we should give every Soldier, regardless of gender, the opportunity to serve in any military occupational specialty. What I am excited about is that we are using a standards-based approach, just like we should for everything we do in the Army. Regardless of gender, those Soldiers who are physically capable and want to compete and try out for these schools and military occupational specialties will be eligible to do so. I think it will make our Army better." DEVELOPMENT OF THE NCO CORPS A key area of focus for TRADOC, and now the newest sergeant major of the Army, is continued maintenance and development of the non-commissioned officer, or NCO, corps. "I am carrying on some of the initiatives that we started when I was the TRADOC sergeant major," Dailey said. "I truly believe that we have a lot of work we have already done, and there also is a lot that still needs to be accomplished, to further professionalize our professional military education system for our NCOs and Soldiers." One area of development, Dailey said, is placed firmly on the shoulders of Soldiers themselves: structured self-development and civilian education. "Our non-commissioned officers and Soldiers need to understand that a critical part of the development phase for a Soldier is the development they do on their own -- utilization of the structured self-development platforms that we initiated and utilization of tuition assistance for them to take college credit and certifications," Dailey said. Equally important, he said, is maintenance of the operational skills Soldiers have learned from 12 years of combat. Soldiers who have participated in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan will eventually leave the Army, and their experience will leave with them -- unless they pass it on to the Soldiers that follow in their footsteps. The Army wants them to pass that information on, Dailey said. He also said that with combat operations having been drawn down, there will be more time for Soldiers to develop those professional skills, and to also transfer what they have learned from 12 years of conflict to the new Soldiers arriving in the force, fresh from basic training. "We have to make sure our NCOs are using those skills they learned over the 12 years of war, and translating those skills to our young Soldiers, and ensuring they are maximizing the time," Dailey said. He said there's more time now for NCOs to spend with younger Soldiers to do critical unit-level training. Dailey said the Army is becoming an "Army of preparation," and must be ready for whatever the nation asks it to do, and that means continued training. "I've always said the harder you train in garrison, the easier your combat experience should be," Dailey said. "It's critically important for our NCOs, and our leaders and officers that have served overseas for the last 12 years, to maintain those skills. And they also have to educate and train the future Soldiers." The world is still dangerous, Dailey said. There is a significant amount of uncertainty that the Army, and Soldiers, must be prepared to face. One way to prevent war -- which is the most desirable course of action, he said -- is to show potential adversaries that the Army is still very capable of combat. "It is a critical time in our Army now. We live in a world of uncertainty. We have to maintain readiness. Our ultimate goal is to not fight," Dailey said. "Our adversaries need to see we are an Army of preparation, and that we are trained and ready to fight in response to our nation's call. That call can happen anywhere, for any type of operation -- whether it's another war, or a contingency operation in one of our partnering nations to help them. This time is just as critical as the last 12 years of war." PHYSICAL FITNESS One aspect of war readiness, Dailey said, is Soldier physical fitness. The Army Physical Fitness Test measures how well Soldiers meet standards. Dailey said the Army is looking at possible new standards for physical fitness. "There is a very extensive, on-going initiative, to take an extremely comprehensive look at Army physical fitness," Dailey said. "TRADOC has been doing a lot of research, really from the last two years, and in connection with the Soldier 2020 effort. I think there will be a change to the Army physical fitness test. But the Army physical fitness test is just an indicator of a level of fitness. I would also encourage Soldiers to do things that make you physically fit. Regardless of what the Army physical fitness test becomes, if you maintain a level of physical fitness, you will do well." Another key component to physical fitness, Dailey said, involves NCOs and commanders leading from the front. "I remind leaders all the time that if you are not going to your place of duty every morning at 6 a.m. for physical training, and saluting the flag with your Soldiers, well then they are probably not doing it either," he said. "And the way you get them to do it is you lead from the front." KEEPING THE BEST SOLDIERS Today, the Army is in the middle of a drawdown in troops levels. While many Soldiers will leave the Army voluntarily, at some point the Army might be forced to ask some Soldiers to leave. "My advice is to make sure you are doing your best, that you are representing Army values, and that you are truly an Army professional," he said. "Stewardship of the profession is critical. As we draw down, it has been made clear that we will use a standards-based approach to make sure we keep the best Soldiers. We owe that to our Soldiers. We owe that to our leaders. We owe that to the gracious taxpayers of America. "Continue to do your best, work hard, and when you get those opportunities to excel, you need to do that. Study hard when you go to the various levels of NCO education, work hard at physical fitness training. There is plenty of room in the Army, for the future, for those Soldiers who want to stay." For those Soldiers who do leave the Army, Dailey said preparation for civilian life is along the same lines as what Soldiers ought to be doing anyway -- something Dailey said he has been doing now for 10 years. "Take advantage of the education and self-development opportunities that currently exist," he said. "Every Soldier is entitled to tuition assistance, so utilize that. That's a gift from the American taxpayer, to give Soldiers the edge they need when they get out of the service." SOCIAL MEDIA INITIATIVE One unique endeavor the new sergeant major of the Army plans to undertake is to officially engage Soldiers on social media. He said he plans to kick off an advisory group to make that happen. "I'm not the expert on social media," he said. "I come from a generation where I didn't live my entire life with access to computers. That came on very late in life. I do take pride in the fact I am smart enough to consult the individuals that do have the knowledge, skills and attributes associated with the task." Dailey said he will form an SMA, or sergeant major of the Army, advisory group on social media, made up of Soldiers from across the Army, who will advise him on how Soldiers want to be communicated with. "The audience is our Soldiers and the American people," he said. "So who better to ask how they want to be contacted? When Soldiers give you advice, you've got to take it." Dailey joined the Army in 1989, and attended basic training and advanced individual training at Fort Benning, Georgia. He earned the 11B Infantry Military Occupation Specialty, or MOS. Dailey's first assignment was with 3rd Infantry Division at Schweinfurt, Germany. He was promoted to the rank of command sergeant major in 2004. Dailey has served in both Korea and Germany, and has done five combat deployments to Iraq. His first such deployment was as a rifleman and radio telephone operator during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Dailey's awards include the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star Medal with Valor, three Bronze Star Medals, three Meritorious Service Medals, seven Army Commendation Medals, and 10 Army Achievement Medals. Dailey is also a member of the Distinguished Audie Murphy Club. Dailey assumes role as 15th sergeant major of Army [2015-01-30] WASHINGTON -- The 15th sergeant major of the Army was sworn into office Jan. 30, 2015, bringing with him a wealth of experience from both the operational and institutional Army. Before administering the oath of office to Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno explained what it is he believes Dailey will bring to the office. The general said the first time he met Dailey, the non-commissioned officer had been a platoon sergeant. Subsequently, he served as a battalion sergeant major, brigade sergeant major, and division sergeant major. Dailey also has in-depth institutional experience, Odierno said, having served as the command sergeant major at TRADOC. "He brings this broad experience of both understanding the institutional side as well as the tactical and operational side," Odierno said. "In my mind, there is no one more qualified to take on the responsibilities and the challenges our Army faces in the future." The general named three such challenges, saying they are concerns he thinks about every day. He said he believes that Dailey will be able to help address those challenges, as did Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III before him. First, he said, is the continued commitment of Soldiers across the globe -- as many as 140,000 Soldiers are now deployed or forward stationed. "It's our responsibility to ensure they have the resources and tools necessary to do their jobs. And that we develop NCOs ... so they are able to lead our Soldiers anywhere." Secondly, he said, is the downsizing of the Army. "How do we maintain the strength of our Army by keeping the right NCOs in the force, but while also taking care of those who raised their right hand and were willing to serve this nation in a time of war, and how do we properly transition them and do it the right way?" Finally, he said, is planning for the future of the Army, to plan for what the Army will need to continue to maintain the security of the United States. With all of those issues, Odierno said, he believes that Dailey will serve as an advisor and leader to help the Army make the right decisions. "Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey is the one who can lead us that way," he said. "He understands those problems and he understands what it will take. I know his preparation and leadership and experiences will help us to lead this great Army into the future -- and to ensure that this Army will remain the greatest Army in the world." HUMBLE After being sworn in to office, and swapping out his uniform coat for a new one that bears his new rank insignia, Dailey explained how he, a self-described "middle of the road guy," was able to rise to the highest enlisted position in the Army. "As a young man I was a pretty average kid," Dailey said. "I did well in school, but I wasn't the valedictorian. I was somewhere in the middle of the class. I played high school sports. But I wasn't a superstar athlete. I couldn't play in the band -- because I don't have any musical talent at all. I'm even average by military standards: 5-foot 9-inches, and 161 pounds, as of this morning. I checked. By all accounts I was a poor, average kid from Northeastern Pennsylvania. "How does a middle-of-the-road guy make it to this rank? To represent the finest fighting forces the world has known?" he asked. "The answer is simple. It's sitting in the seats in front of me. It's leadership -- leadership from great Soldiers, non-commissioned officers and officers that I served with over the years. These are the people who make Army leaders." Daily said leadership is not born, but is rather built. "I am merely a product of the best the Army has ever had to offer," he said. "I am grateful for that." Dailey thanked both the officer and enlisted Soldiers who helped shape his career, as well as civilians in government and those from his home town, including his high school principal. Dailey also thanked his mother for developing in him and his brothers "the ethical and moral foundations we needed. Mom, thank you and I love you." He also thanked his father, an Army veteran who recently passed away. "He taught us boys a strong work ethic and discipline. And he ensured we all had a sense of patriotism. Dad, rest well, and the boys are all okay." He also thanked his two older brothers, saying that as the baby of the family there had been for him both privileges and sacrifices. "My brothers felt it was their responsibility to begin building my resiliency at a very young age," he said, drawing laughter from the audience. "In the Dailey house, resiliency is code-word for 'the punching bag' during their live re-enactment of Saturday morning episodes of Kung Fu Theater. Brothers, you made me strong. Thank you. But don't try it now. Combined with years of military service, and the fact of this stage of your life -- the younger samurai now has the advantage." He mentioned also his younger brother. He thanked his wife Holly: "I love you for sticking by me for 21 years, and the seven I wasn't there; but most of all because you're my best friend. Thank you." Finally, he thanked his son, Dakota. "I'm so proud of you ... you're the reason why I get up every day and work so hard. You really are." "All of these people, from the former leaders to my family, made it possible for an average guy to be the representative for a million of the nation's best and brightest," Dailey said. "That's why I'm convinced that anyone can be the sergeant major of the Army. Any Soldier in today's Army, even an average Soldier like me, has the potential to be an Army senior leader some day. It just requires two things: great leadership, and a strong Army family." Army's fiscal 2016 budget to help close gap for leader development training [2015-02-02] WASHINGTON -- Included within the $126.5 billion the Army has asked for in its fiscal 2016 base annual budget, is some $230 million for professional military education for Soldiers. The request represents an increase of about 21 percent over the $190 million the Army asked for last year, said Maj. Gen. Thomas A. Horlander, director of the Army budget, during a Feb. 2 briefing at the Pentagon on the heels of the release of the president's fiscal 2016 budget proposal. "This will help reduce the current backlog of leader development courses that we have," Horlander said. "This request also represents a seven percent increase for funding for civilian education. This critical funding will help lay the foundation for the Army's future operating concept that we have been working on." Those training dollars for professional military education, or PME, come out of the Army's $35.6 billion request for Operations & Maintenance, Army, or OMA. That request, Horlander said, is meant to "resource a more balanced readiness across the force, instead of a tiered readiness model that only has approximately one third of our 32 brigade combat teams in 2105 ready for contingency force operations." To increase that readiness, he said, the Army hopes to fund 19 combat training center rotations, what he called "the Army's centerpiece of training." Of those, 17 are for active Army units, and two are for National Guard units. The OMA request also covers sustainment of Army equipment by increasing the level of funding for depot maintenance that will "help bring our equipment to a greater level of repair and restore the Army's prepositioned stocks to ensure our expeditionary force capability," Horlander said. This year's Army budget request attempts to strike a balance between end strength, readiness and modernization, and is on par with what the Army actually spent in 2014. The budget was developed "to provide the combatant commanders ... with trained and ready land forces capable of conducting not only preventing and shaping operations, but decisive operations," Horlander said. This year's request will allow the Army to move away from a "tiered readiness construct" to "a more balanced readiness across the force," something Horlander said is required for today's operating environment. Were there to be no relief from sequestration, he said, tiered readiness levels will continue for the Army, "allowing only nine of the Army's [brigade combat teams] to be fully ready as part of the Army's contingency force pool." Continued sequestration will also cut Army modernization accounts by approximately 12 percent, will accelerate the drawdown of the active Army, and will mean that base infrastructure funding will be limited to critical life, health and safety repairs to facilities. Davis S. Welch, deputy director of the Army budget, said this year's request includes no program terminations, and "wisely allocates funds that maintain science and technology at a level to facilitate equipping the force of 2025." In line with the Army's Aviation Restructure Initiative, the $16.1 billion requested for procurement this year prioritizes modernization of the AH-64 Apache, UH-60 Black Hawk and CH-47 Chinook fleets, as well as critical ground vehicle efforts for Abrams and Bradley modifications, double-v hulls for Stryker vehicles, and the Paladin Integrated Management program. The Army hopes this year to procure 70 UH-60M and 24 HH-60M Black Hawk helicopters, as well as mission equipment packages; 64 remanufactured AH-64E Apache Block III aircraft and associated modifications to the AH-64D fleet; and 27 remanufactured CH-47F Chinooks as well as 12 newly-built CH-47F Chinooks and associated modifications to the Chinook fleet. Fiscal 2016 funding also continues low-rate initial production for the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle with $308.3 million in funding. Welch said the Army expects to purchase as many as 49,000 of the vehicles by 2041. LOWEST OCO IN A DECADE At $20.6 billion, this year's request for overseas contingency operations, or OCO, funds is the "smallest it's been in over a decade," Horlander said. About $15.1 billion of the OCO request is for the Army, and of that, about $11.4 billion will support theater operations, including transportation, force protection, support contracts, pre-mobilization and pre-deployment training, and the reset of equipment returning from theater. About $5.5 billion of that OCO request is for "pass through" accounts for the training and equipping of Iraqis, Syrians, and Afghan security forces. Additional dollars are marked for the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Fund and the Afghanistan Infrastructure Fund. Horlander said the Army today has 140,000 Soldiers in 150 countries around the world, and that Army engagements world-wide are increasing. "You will see that the U.S. Army is supporting more and more operations as the world continues to experience an increased velocity of instability," Horlander said. With that in mind, Horlander said, this year's budget is meant to keep the Army resourced "to not only be trained and ready to address any number of emergent missions that may arise, but to have an effective engagement capability though regionally aligned forces that can ultimately, over time, prevent some of these crises from maturing. "America's Army must stay trained and ready," Horlander said. Army surgeon recognized as top performer at 2015 BEYA conference [2015-02-08] WASHINGTON -- "What Doc Providence brings to bear are the skills, the experience, the commitment and the dedication to deliver exactly what our Soldiers need on the battlefield," said Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Daniel B. Allyn. Allyn spoke during the 10th Annual Stars and Stripes recognition dinner, Feb. 6, in Washington, D.C. The annual event recognizes top-performing African-American general and flag officers, senior executive service civilians and leadership within the U.S. armed forces, and is held concurrently with the Black Engineer of the Year Award, or BEYA, STEM conference, now in its 29th year. "STEM" is shorthand for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. This year, Army Brig. Gen. Bertram Providence, command surgeon for U.S. Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, was chosen as the Army's award recipient. "[Providence] earned his skills where it matters most: putting together broken paratroopers as an orthopedic surgeon at Fort Bragg," Allyn said. "He subsequently went on to train with, and train the very best, as both a doctor of orthopedic surgery, and a trainer of future doctors." Allyn said Providence served multiple assignments overseas in combat and as a special operations task force surgeon for Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines. He also served as a surgeon deployed in the early phases of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, and as a senior surgeon in Iraq during Operation New Dawn. "He has been a command surgeon, a Soldiers' doc, and a commanders' doc, at every level in our Army, from task force, to division, to corps -- and now as the U.S. Army Forces Command surgeon," Allyn said. BRIDGES TO SUCCESS Each year, one branch of the U.S. military serves as host of the Stars and Stripes recognition dinner. This year, the Air Force served as host. Speaking before an audience of active and retired Service members, as well as members of the defense contracting community and college students, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James drew on a quote from television personality Oprah Winfrey, who once said her success has come from the stories of history-making African-American women she calls "bridges." Among those women are Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, Madame C. J. Walker and Fannie Lou Hamer. "Bridges tie us to the past, and they join us to the future," James said. "Take William Cathay, for instance. Mr. Cathay enlisted in the U.S. regular Army during the Civil War. But it turns out that Mr. Cathay was actually Ms. Cathay Williams. She was the first African-American female to enlist, and she dressed as a man in order to do so. "She is a bridge for today's armed forces," James said. "And then there is Elizabeth Bessie Coleman, the first female African-American pilot -- really, the first African-American pilot, male or female, to hold an international pilot's license. Bessie was another bridge." James said that for her, Dr. Sheila Widnall is a "bridge." Widnall was the secretary of the Air Force from August 1993 to October 1997, and is the first woman to have served as a military service secretary. THE TUSKEGEE AIRMEN For those at the BEYA conference and attending the Stars and Stripes award dinner, James said, the Tuskegee Airmen are a bridge. The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African-American pilots in the U.S. military. They served as both fighter and bomber pilots during World War II. "This conference, BEYA, is really a bridge for all of us. To me, bridges transcend race, color and creed," James said. "Our bridges speak to the innate courage, strength of conviction, and perseverance in the face of adversity." As part of the Stars and Stripes event at the 2015 BEYA Conference, military leaders, both officer and civilian, participated in mentoring sessions with youth from in around the national capital area. James said such interaction will for those youth serve as a bridge to their future. She asked those in the audience who had participated in the mentoring to continue to build the connections that link those who are successful with those who have the promise to be. 'AMERICA NEEDS YOU' "Keep on making those connections, and keep on building those bridges. America needs you," James said. "And if you are still in school, America needs you to keep working hard. We need Americans in the future who are grounded in science, technology, engineering and math, to continue building those bridges. "For those of us who are more senior -- America needs us too," she continued. "We need to be individuals who are part of organizations that continue to connect and to become bridges that lead others to follow that path to excellence." SENIOR LEADERS RECOGNIZED During the Stars and Stripes event, senior African-American leaders from each military service were recognized for outstanding performance. Those recognized include: -- Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., director of operations, Strategic and Nuclear Integrations Headquarters, Ramstein Air Base, Germany; -- Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Jacob P. Dunbar, installations and mission support chief enlisted manager, Headquarters Air Force Special Operations Command, Hurlburt Field, Florida; -- Arthur G. Hatcher Jr., director of communications, Headquarters Air Force Global Strike Command, Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana; -- Army Brig. Gen. (Dr.) Bertram Providence, command surgeon for U.S. Army Forces Command, Fort Bragg, North Carolina; -- Marine Corps Lt. Col. Nick I. Brown, commander of Marine Wing Support Squadron 172, Camp Foster, Okinawa, Japan; -- Navy Capt. Cedric E. Pringle, director of Senate liaison, U.S. Navy Office of Legislative Affairs; and -- Coast Guard Capt. Kenneth D. Ivery, chief of the Surface Forces Logistics Center, Norfolk, Virginia. -- National Guard, Air Force Brig. Gen. David D. Hamlar Jr., Assistant Adjutant General for Air, Minnesota Air National Guard The Stars and Stripes recognition dinner is not associated with the Stars and Stripes news service. Annual event honors military's African-American leaders [2015-02-08] WASHINGTON -- Prominent African-Americans from all walks of life have served as a bridge between the past and today, as well as a bridge to the future, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said here Feb. 6. The Air Force served as the host of the 10th annual Stars and Stripes recognition dinner, an event that recognizes top-performing African-American military and civilian leaders in the armed forces. The dinner is held concurrently with the Black Engineer of the Year Award, or BEYA, STEM conference, now in its 29th year. STEM is shorthand for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. DRAWING FROM OPRAH WINFREY'S ROLE MODELS Speaking before an audience of active and retired Service members, as well as members of the defense contracting community and college students, James drew on a quote from television personality Oprah Winfrey, who once said her success has come from the stories of history-making African-American women she calls "bridges." Among those women are Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, Madame C. J. Walker and Fannie Lou Hamer. "Bridges tie us to the past, and they join us to the future," James said. "Take William Cathay, for instance. Mr. Cathay enlisted in the U.S. regular Army during the Civil War. But it turns out that Mr. Cathay was actually Ms. Cathay Williams. She was the first African-American female to enlist, and she dressed as a man in order to do so. "She is a bridge for today's armed forces," the Air Force secretary continued. "And then there is Elizabeth Bessie Coleman, the first female African-American pilot -- really, the first African-American pilot, male or female, to hold an international pilot's license. Bessie was another bridge." James said that for her, Dr. heila Widnall is a "bridge." Widnall was the secretary of the Air Force from August 1993 to October 1997, and is the first woman to have served as a military service secretary. THE TUSKEGEE AIRMEN For those at the BEYA conference and attending the Stars and Stripes award dinner, James said, the Tuskegee Airmen are a bridge. The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African-American pilots in the U.S. military. They served as both fighter and bomber pilots during World War II. "This conference, BEYA, is really a bridge for all of us. To me, bridges transcend race, color and creed," James said. "Our bridges speak to the innate courage, strength of conviction, and perseverance in the face of adversity." As part of the Stars and Stripes event at the 2015 BEYA Conference, military leaders, both officer and civilian, participated in mentoring sessions with youth from in around the national capital area. James said such interaction will for those youth serve as a bridge to their future. She asked those in the audience who had participated in the mentoring to continue to build the connections that link those who are successful with those who have the promise to be. 'AMERICA NEEDS YOU' "Keep on making those connections, and keep on building those bridges. America needs you," James said. "And if you are still in school, America needs you to keep working hard. We need Americans in the future who are grounded in science, technology, engineering and math, to continue building those bridges. "For those of us who are more senior -- America needs us too," she continued. "We need to be individuals who are part of organizations that continue to connect and to become bridges that lead others to follow that path to excellence." SENIOR LEADERS RECOGNIZED During the Stars and Stripes event, senior African-American leaders from each military service were recognized for outstanding performance. Those recognized include: -- Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., director of operations, Strategic and Nuclear Integrations Headquarters, Ramstein Air Base, Germany; -- Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Jacob P. Dunbar, installations and mission support chief enlisted manager, Headquarters Air Force Special Operations Command, Hurlburt Field, Florida; -- Arthur G. Hatcher Jr., director of communications, Headquarters Air Force Global Strike Command, Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana; -- Army Brig. Gen. (Dr.) Bertram Providence, command surgeon for U.S. Army Forces Command, Fort Bragg, North Carolina; -- Marine Corps Lt. Col. Nick I. Brown, commander of Marine Wing Support Squadron 172, Camp Foster, Okinawa, Japan; -- Navy Capt. Cedric E. Pringle, director of Senate liaison, U.S. Navy Office of Legislative Affairs; and -- Coast Guard Capt. Kenneth D. Ivery, chief of the Surface Forces Logistics Center, Norfolk, Virginia. -- National Guard, Air Force Brig. Gen. David D. Hamlar Jr., Assistant Adjutant General for Air, Minnesota Air National Guard The Stars and Stripes recognition dinner is not associated with the Stars and Stripes news service. Exposure to success positively influences youth, Army leader says [2015-02-08] WASHINGTON -- Maj. Gen. Gwen Bingham sat at a small table in a tiny conference room, holding court with a group of African-American teens from area high schools, many of whom wore the military uniforms of their Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program. Bingham, who serves as commander of the Army's TACOM Life Cycle Management Command, out of Warren, Michigan, was one of many military officers and Senior Executive Service civilians participating in a mentoring session with area high school students. The mentoring was part of the "Stars and Stripes" portion of the annual Black Engineer of the Year Awards, or BEYA, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM, conference at an area hotel. That conference is now in its 29th year. "They were very excited to be here and what I was so encouraged by is that they had so many mature questions for us," she said. "They have eager minds. When I think about our youth, I feel encouraged our future is in good hands." Bingham said the organization she commands -- formerly the Army's Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command -- is in great need of those eager minds, especially those who have graduated with STEM degrees. "I told them for each one of you who wants to be an information-technology engineer, or architect, or engineer of any type -- we could probably employ you if you so choose," she said. During the mentoring session, Bingham rotated from table to table, spending time with and answering questions from teens at each table. "They seemed very interested as we adults were talking about the places that we have been in our military careers and government civilian careers," she said. "I think they found it pretty cool, as one guy said to me, just to work with tanks and weapons systems and those kinds of things." Bringing young people together with successful adults, and having them interact, allows them to better visualize the opportunities that are available to them, Bingham said. "Programs just like this ... these kinds of opportunities just bring alive to young people some of the disciplines that they can do when they go through college and get their degree," Bingham said. "I am a visual learner myself. Just being able to visualize and see some of the programs that are out there would ignite a lot of fun and passion within the students." Bingham said that when youth see successful adults of diverse race and gender at conferences like the BEYA STEM conference, they recognize that there is possibility for them as well -- and this is the purpose of such mentoring sessions. "When young people see that, and they see examples of others who are involved in some of the areas that they are excited about, they pass that word around to their peers and it grows among student populations," she said. Civil works projects mean American jobs, Army leader says [2015-02-11] WASHINGTON -- For every $1 billion spent on civil works projects by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, about 20,000 jobs are created, Army senior leaders said. During a Feb. 11 hearing before the House Appropriations Committee, subcommittee on energy and water, regarding the fiscal year 2016 civil works budget, Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, told lawmakers that money spent on civil works projects means jobs for Americans. Bostick told lawmakers that 10,000 full-time jobs are created that are directly related to each $1 billion spent on civil works projects, while an additional 10,000 jobs are created that are indirectly related to such spending. He also said that the Corps' efforts to maintain waterways, such as on the Mississippi, are also responsible for keeping Americans employed, as well as for bolstering economic activity. "If you look along Mississippi, there are a lot of jobs that are dependent, and a lot of businesses that are dependent on the efficient dredging of the Mississippi," Bostick said. He said dredging there allows barge traffic to move more efficiently and said that both businesses and people benefit from the increased and more efficient use of the river as a result. "The greater that capacity ... the more population and more businesses that would develop and benefit from it," he said. Bostick estimated that the Corps' work along the Mississippi benefits some 800,000 people. "Their livelihood depends on efficient flow of the river," he said. Bostick also told lawmakers that an array of invasive species of carp, known collectively in the United States as the "Asian carp," appears to have not moved any closer to the Great Lakes than it had been in 2006. The general provided updates to concerned lawmakers regarding both the carp, and some of the efforts the Corps is involved in to ensure the fish doesn't make its way into the lakes. "The electric barrier is about 37 miles from the great lakes," he said. "The presence of adult fish is about 55 miles. The spawning area is at about 62 miles. And the established population is about 143 miles away from the Great Lakes." "The point is, the leading edge of the Asian carp has not changed movement since about 2006," he said. "We don't know why they haven't moved. But they have not moved from that leading edge of where the carp are located since 2006." Bostick also told lawmakers that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is engaged furthering four "campaign goals," as part of its mission. First among those is the support of national security, he said. "The Corps supports the national security of the U.S.," Bostick said. "We continue to work in more than 110 countries using our civil works, military missions, water resources, and research and development expertise, to support our nation's combatant commanders." The second campaign goal, he said, is the transformation of how it executes its civil works mission. That campaign goal has four points of its own, Bostick said. That includes modernizing the project planning process; enhancing the budget development process through a "systems-oriented approach;" developing an infrastructure strategy to evaluate the current inventory of projects to help identify priorities; and improving methods of delivery to produce and deliver "sound decisions, products and services that will improve the ways in which we manage and use our water resources." Bostick said the third campaign goal of the Corps is to continue its proactive approach to, and to continue to develop improved strategies to reduce disaster risk, as well as to respond to natural disasters when they do occur. "I continue to be very impressed at the work of the Army Corps of Engineers in this particular area," he said, citing the Corps' work in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, as one example. He said that in regards to the Sandy response, the flood control and coastal emergency program is more than 95 percent complete, while the sand operations and maintenance program is more than 70 percent complete and is also on schedule to be 100 percent complete by the end of 2016. Bostick also cited, as part of the Sandy response, the recent completion of the "North Atlantic Coast Comprehensive Study." The study was commissioned by Congress in 2013, and looks at the risk along 31,000 miles of Atlantic Ocean shoreline from North Carolina to New Hampshire. Finally, the fourth campaign goal of the Corps, Bostick said, is planning for the future of his organization by ensuring it continues to hire the best personnel. "This is all about our people, and ensuring we have a pipeline of talented military and civilian teammates as well as a strong workforce development program and a talent management program," he said. "Equally important is helping our nation's wounded warriors and Soldiers as they transition out of active duty to find fulfilling careers." Bostick said that last year, the Corps had set a goal of assisting 125 Soldiers transition out of the military and into civilian jobs. "We exceeded that goal by more than 50 percent," he said. "Nearly 200 wounded warriors found permanent positions within the Corps or other organizations across America." Exercise leaves imprint on Soldiers, Pacific region [2015-02-13] WASHINGTON -- Some 60 percent of the nearly 700 Soldiers who deployed last August to Malaysia, Indonesia and Japan, as part of the 2014 Pacific Pathways deployment, had never deployed before. "Many of them were in high school just a year prior. The opportunity to build important relationships, and gain new experiences - just like these - are why Soldiers join the Army," said Col. Louis A. Zeisman, commander of the 2nd Stryker Brigade, 7th Infantry Division, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. The 2014 Pacific Pathways deployment was the first of its kind and served as a proof-of-principle for the Army, Zeisman said. The deployment, which began in August, lasted more than 12 weeks, and involved nearly 700 Soldiers from the 2nd Stryker Brigade, as well as additional Soldiers from the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve. As part of the first-ever Pacific Pathways, Soldiers partnered with the armies of three nations to train together on scenarios involving, among other things, humanitarian relief, medical evacuation, counter-improvised explosive device operations, urban counter-insurgency operations and jungle survival, as well as both air and ground maneuver. Exercises Garuda Shield in Indonesia, Keris Strike in Malaysia, and Orient Shield in Japan were all part of 2014 Pacific Pathways. Each is a combined exercise the Army has participated in historically. The Army conducts such exercises in partnership with the host-nation armies. As part of the 2014 Pacific Pathways deployment, Garuda Shield and Keris Strike were conducted simultaneously. The 2nd Stryker Brigade was split - with some Soldiers going to Indonesia and some going to Malaysia to participate. At the conclusion of those two exercises, the brigade moved their gear and personnel to northern Japan to participate in Orient Shield. During all three operations, the headquarters element of the 2nd Stryker Brigade was there to provide oversight of exercise operations. "In every country we went to, we had the opportunity to do that staff-to-staff engagement, that leader engagement, and the planning," Zeisman said. "The scenario wasn't so much the thing we focused on. It was everything else we got besides the scenario - how are we communicating? How are we sitting? How are we moving? How do aircraft fly in the same air space?" MALAYSIA As part of Keris Strike in Malaysia, mission objectives included a staff training exercise where the participating brigades "planned for and reacted to a humanitarian assistance disaster-relief scenario, which was essentially a flood in Malaysia," said Maj. Joshua D. Powers, brigade planner and operations officer, with 2nd Stryker Brigade. "We had to work through the intricacies of helping out the civilian population." Powers said the flood scenario proved relevant to the participating Malaysian army unit because the scenario took place in the area of the country for which they are responsible. To further tactical training objectives, Powers said, the 1-17th Infantry, 2nd Stryker Brigade, was paired with a Malaysian infantry unit. As part of that partnership, the Malaysian army provided the Americans with jungle training, something they don't have the opportunity to train on in the U.S. "Nobody does jungle field training like the Malaysian army does," said Lt. Col. Shannon E. Nielsen, commander, 1-17th Infantry. "We don't have that expertise like they do. We learned an incredible amount about how to operate in that environment and how to deploy systems there." Sgt. 1st Class Desmond H. Politini, platoon sergeant for 1-17th Infantry, said that the Soldiers in his unit were impressed with the professionalism that the Malaysian army displayed, and were fascinated with the jungle training they received while in country - and remain so today. "We never received any kind of training remotely like that," said Politini of the jungle training. "In fact, you won't get that anywhere you go in the United States. For the Soldiers ... one of the biggest takeaways was just learning how to survive off the jungle. One of the key things they taught us was how to trap animals. The Soldiers were blown away by that. As a matter of fact, those guys are doing that to this day, back at the unit." Nielsen said that in addition to the jungle and survival training provided by the Malaysian army, there was also counter-insurgency training. He said that while many U.S. Soldiers are familiar with counter-insurgency operations from their time in Iraq and Afghanistan, similar operations in Malaysia, conducted by the Malaysian army, are different than what U.S. troops are familiar with. "It was good to hear their perspectives on that," Nielsen said. Training in Malaysia went both ways, Nielsen said, and was beneficial to both armies. "We learned just as much from the Malaysian army as we were able to teach them," Nielsen said. INDONESIA As part of the Garuda Shield portion of the 2014 Pacific Pathways deployment, Powers said, the culminating training event involved a "combined-arms live fire." During that event, Powers said about 400 U.S. Soldiers as well as Indonesian soldiers maneuvered on the ground, both dismounted and in vehicles -- including Strykers and the Indonesian equivalent. There was also mortar fire, and both U.S. and Indonesian aircraft operating in the same air space. The largest take-away from the training there, Powers said, "Was less about the actual combined arms live-fire, but more about weeks and weeks of rehearsals to gain synchronization and to be able to accomplish that objective." Powers said the exercise in Indonesia also included medical and jungle training and other activities to further training objectives. Sgt. 1st Class Christopher J. Korntved, assistant operations sergeant for 2-1 Infantry, worked in the operations cell for his battalion while participating in the Indonesian portion of 2014 Pacific Pathways. While he said he didn't train with the Indonesian military, he did, as an observer, see that training that was going on. "One of the biggest takeaways I saw and observed there was the Indonesian army's professionalism and pride within their unit. It was the same with our Soldiers, who wanted to demonstrate our professionalism and pride," Korntved said. "One of the common things that army-to-army interactions and engagements have, is even though there is a language barrier, we all still speak 'soldier.'" JAPAN While the 2nd Stryker Brigade was split for participation in Malaysia and Indonesia, the brigade came together to train in Hokkaido, Japan, with the 7th Armor Division of the Northern Army, part of the Japanese Ground Self Defense Force. Part of that training event included a staff training exercise where they planned a scenario against a hypothetical invasion. The culminating event was a ground-force maneuver with both American and Japanese Soldiers. "It was about relationships," Powers said. "It goes back to building relationships with counterparts. My counterpart was the 7th Division operations officer. He was a colonel, I am a major, and he had substantially more experience than I do. I felt as I sat next to him -- we worked through these scenarios and worked through logistics to support everything -- that I was in school. I took notes constantly. I grew as an officer as a result of that experience. I think that is really what Orient Shield and Pacific Pathways is all about." TRAINING FOR PACIFIC PATHWAYS Before deploying to Asia to participate in Pacific Pathways, the 2nd Stryker Brigade trained at the National Training Center, or NTC, at Fort Irwin, California. Zeisman said they treated their Pacific Pathways involvement as a deployment, and trained as such. He said the environment in California at the NTC, coupled with the varying terrains and climates of Southeast Asia and Japan, provided Soldiers a robust and diverse experience that tested their adaptability. "One of the things we want our Soldiers to be, from private to general, is agile and adaptive," Zeisman said. "This operation allowed us to do that. We left ... the desert, and went into where you can't see your hand in front of you - the jungle. Then we left 100-degree weather in Malaysia and Indonesia, to go to the beautiful country of Japan - where it was a drop of about 60 degrees. We went through a wide range of things to allow our Soldiers to be agile and adaptive and again, totally resilient. I think they appreciate the challenge." Following training at the NTC, Powers said, the brigade participated in training they called "Pacific Pathways academics," which was less tactical and more educational. He said the subject-matter experts, from around the world, provided not only cultural training for Soldiers, but also "they took us all the way down to the history of the battalions that we'd interact with. Where had they trained? Who were their leaders?" Among those trainers in "Pacific Pathways academics," Powers said, was a recently retired Malaysian one-star general. PACIFIC PATHWAYS TAKEAWAY While Pacific Pathways offered plenty of tactical training for 2nd Stryker Brigade, Powers said the implications of what happened during the exercise extend beyond just operations, tactics, techniques and procedures -- there is also the strategic implication of the event. "The big takeaway ... that group of Soldiers was forward in the region for 85 days - I think that makes a strong statement," Powers said. "We are a regionally aligned brigade, and we have been for some time. But now our task force executed regional engagement. We were there, we were in the theater, and we stayed there for an extended amount of time. I think that is a strong message to ourselves, to the Army, and to our partners in the region. "Regardless of the training objectives along the spectrum of conflict, the important part of Pacific Pathways was the soldier-to-soldier interaction, and the lasting impression that that will make for years and years with Soldiers - not just with our counterparts, but with our Soldiers within the 2nd Stryker Brigade. It really shows the importance of being engaged in the region." There is a Pacific Pathways deployment underway now: Pacific Pathways 2015-1. The event involves the 2-25 Stryker Brigade Combat Team, or 2-25, out of Hawaii. During this Pacific Pathways deployment, the 2-25 will participate in the Cobra Gold exercise in Thailand, the Foal Eagle exercise in Korea and the Balikatan exercise in the Philippines. New devices may soon help Soldiers nose out chemicals, bio threats [2015-02-18] ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. -- Researchers are refining for Army use a commercial technology that will allow Soldiers to accurately and rapidly detect an array of chemical and biological hazards - from mustard agent to anthrax - and then transmit those results to their higher command. At the same time, the technology is smart enough to differentiate between those chemicals which are dangerous and those that the Soldier has carried with him into the environment on his own skin, such as bug spray or hand sanitizer. The VOCkit system is a small electronic device developed at the Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, or ECBC, and even manufactured there, for now, on the center's 3D printers. The device reads the result of chemical detection paper and can then transmit the results into the Army's network via the Soldier-worn "Nett Warrior" smartphone system. At the heart of the system is a colorimetric detection assay, a swatch of paper about the size of a postage stamp, that is printed with a grid of several dozen indicator chemicals arranged in a grid of small dots. Each dot is made from a differently-colored indicator chemical that will have a unique color change in response to any compound it comes in contact with: from chemical threats, to biological threats, to common household cleaning products and cosmetics. "You have almost one hundred reactions going on and the combination of those reactions gives you a unique signature," said Peter A. Emanuel, Ph.D., ECBC's BioScience division chief. "Some react, some don't ... some intensely. The signature, the collection of those dots, gives us a unique fingerprint for what that agent is." The colorimetric detection assays they are using are placed inside a small plastic hockey puck-shaped cartridge that has a removable plug on one side. Researchers can open that plug and put a drop of a test substance inside so as to expose the assay to a chemical. The odor of whatever chemical is being tested interacts with the assay to create reactions - or a lack of reaction - among each of the indicator chemicals. "Everything emits an odor, essentially, even if you can't distinguish it," said Aleksandr Miklos, Ph.D., a senior scientist at ECBC. "Virtually everything that's out there emits something of itself into its environment. That's how your sense of smell works." Miklos said the detection assays perform a function similar to a human nose. "This is essentially a little piece of paper that does what your nose does," Miklos said. "It is not quite as good as your nose in some regards, but better than your nose in others." Miklos said a human nose has a "couple hundred" receptors to recognize odors. But that doesn't mean that a nose is capable of recognizing only a couple hundred odors. "You can actually recognize up to a billion odors," he said. Miklos said that chemical receptors in a human nose don't each detect one smell. "There isn't one receptor in your nose that is for the scent of a rose," he said. "Everything you smell triggers every receptor to a slightly different extent. And what your brain does - it's very clever - is it recognizes these patterns. Odors establish a pattern in your nose and your brain recognizes it. Odors establish a pattern on this assay." The colorimetric assays have at least one distinct advantage over the human nose, Miklos said. "A human could not sniff a container of sarin, because you would die," he said. "But the paper ticket doesn't care." The colorimetric assays react differently to a variety of chemicals, Miklos said. But in the case of existing, fielded colorimetric strips, two chemicals might produce very similar results. So he and team member Melissa Dixon are testing the colorimetric arrays against a variety of products commonly used by Soldiers to ensure that if something like rifle cleaner indicates the same chemicals as sarin gas, Soldiers will know about that. "The problem is that common stuff confuses the strips," said Miklos of the currently-fielded strips. "We know certain solvents will look a lot like VX. That's not particularly helpful." In his lab, Miklos and Dixon are exposing the arrays to common chemical items: lotions, bug sprays, lubricants, fuels, baby wipes, alcohol, etc. "We want to use them to make sure we are not getting any kind of cross-reactivity," Dixon said. "If Soldiers clean themselves with baby wipes, we want to have a background for baby wipes, as opposed to being VX." Dixon's husband is a Soldier, she said, and he provided her and Miklos with some common items that Soldiers use in the field so that those could be tested. Miklos and Dixon are building a database of colorimetric array reactions to a variety of common, relatively safe chemicals. On the other side of ECBC, Miklos said, in labs equipped to handle more dangerous materials, they are exposing the assays to more dangerous things, like VX. THE HARDWARE Already, ECBC has a device called the SmartCAR, short for "smart color-metric assay reader." That hand-held device was developed by ECBC engineer Colin Graham. The SmartCAR does not read the same color-metric assays that Miklos and Dixon are working on - the ones with the array of colored dots - but instead uses electronics and a camera to read test strips similar to a pregnancy test. Those strips are in common use today in the Army, and they can evaluate for one biological agent at a time. Graham designed the circuit boards for the device and wrote the software for it. The shell for it was built in-house on ECBC's 3D printers. He said from concept to completion took about six months. The SmartCAR was evaluated recently in South Korea during an advanced technology demonstration that explores bio-surveillance, Emanuel said. In South Korea, the device was used in the field by Soldiers during scenarios that involved anthrax and plague. "What they did was they ran the assays and it got the result, it interpreted the result, it told them what the answer was and then it immediately uploaded it to the cloud and put it up on a screen so that anybody in Korea could see," Emanuel said. "The advantage is that the machine takes the ambiguity out of the read, and also uploads and archives the image so that every battlefield commander can see what's going on. It shows up like a little pin on Google maps." The SmartCAR, in conjunction with the Nett Warrior device, can run the evaluation, capture the results, and transmit the results, along with latitude, longitude and time to a central location on an Army network so that it can be used by commanders, Emanuel said. Emanuel said he envisions a scenario where multiple Soldiers are running similar evaluations across a theater, and their results are plotted real-time for commanders to see the result. "That's the whole idea of bio-surveillance, it's not just being able to see things, but see them in real time and have everybody see them," Emanuel said. "What we are trying to do is inform the common operating picture." Emanuel said they'll take the device back out in June for another evaluation. The new VOCKit system that ECBC is developing will read the colorimetric arrays that Miklos researches in his lab, growing detection functionality beyond the SmartCAR. "We are trying to move away from one ticket one test, to one ticket many tests," Emanuel said. "Then it evaluates and beams from the evaluator to the phone and into a cloud where everybody can know what's going on." Emmanuel said that the goal is for these technologies to ultimately replace the ECBC-developed M8 and M9 chemical detection paper currently used in the field today. "It's [M8 and M9] indicator paper and they touch liquids, and it turns like blue, and they say they think it might be something," Emanuel said. "But the new tickets instantaneously and vividly not only indicate, but tell you exactly what the liquid is. We are moving quickly to replace M8 and M9 paper with a new kind of indicator paper. We are creating a dipstick that will tell you what that chemical was. This has applications for the Soldiers. It could be used for customs agents." Emanuel said ECBC expects to have a working prototype in about 18 months. The Edgewood Chemical Biological Center is part of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, which has the mission to develop technology and engineering solutions for Americas Soldiers. RDECOM is a major subordinate command of the U.S. Army Materiel Command. AMC is the Armys premier provider of materiel readiness -- technology, acquisition support, materiel development, logistics power projection and sustainment -- to the total force, across the spectrum of joint military operations. If a Soldier shoots it, drives it, flies it, wears it, eats it or communicates with it, AMC provides it. Iraqi Security Forces must lead on defeat of ISIL in Mosul [2015-02-27] WASHINGTON -- Iraq's military and Kurdish Peshmerga, after being trained by U.S. military advisors, will be in the lead in what is expected to be a complex and challenging battle to reclaim the country's second largest city, Mosul, from Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIL, terrorists, who have held it since June, the Army's chief of staff said, Feb. 25. "One of the lessons I think we should have learned, is that it is important to have indigenous capability involved. This is really about their country," Gen. Ray Odierno told CNN's Wolf Blitzer as part of a "Future of War" conference here. "It is important for us to assist in any way we can. But I think it's important that they do this." As part of Operation Inherent Resolve, several thousand U.S. military advisors are in Iraq training Iraqi forces and providing them with equipment as airstrikes conducted by the U.S.-led coalition continue on ISIL targets in Iraq and Syria. But Odierno said more U.S. support is needed before an assault on Mosul can begin, and that a defeat of ISIL is not going to happen quickly. "This is going to be months and months," Odierno said. "It's a very difficult situation." Removing ISIL from their stronghold in Mosul will be complex, he said, and time consuming, because as an enemy they are not easily identifiable - they hide among the civilian population. "They will do anything," Odierno said. "There is no limit to what they will do to survive. They could have hundreds of suicide bombers, booby-trapped buildings - they could have all kinds of things. And the suicide bombers are everything from men, to old women, to young children. This type of warfare is something that is despicable to us, but something very natural to them. That's what makes this challenging." As many as 25,000 Iraqi soldiers may head back to Mosul to try to take the city back from fewer than 4,000 ISIL fighters. And Odierno said he thought they could find success in that endeavor, based on their recent performance. "We are seeing great progress over the last couple of days, over the last week," he said. "We've seen them do successful operations in western Iraq and Anbar province. They have made some improvements. We will wait and see." Complicating their fight against a smaller ISIL force is the challenge of eliminating an enemy that hides in the shadows - or behind innocent civilians. "What it goes back to is that it's not that there are 5,000 fighters lined up, it's two, three four, five thousand fighters intermixed among the population, and who use incredibly unconventional methods in order to be successful," Odierno said. "For them it is about making this operation as long as possible, it's about inflicting as many casualties as possible, about it's about going after the will of the military forces that they are facing." Odierno said ISIL doesn't have to defeat Iraqi forces, but rather stretch out the fight. "It's about making the populations suffer, it's about inflicting casualties on the enemy," he said. SYRIA ISIL has taken a wide swath of territory spanning the Iraqi-Syrian border and success in pushing back the Sunni group will ultimately require nations of the region working together, Odierno said. "We are starting to see the leaders in the Middle East start to coalesce around ... this is a problem we have to deal with. I think that's important. We need them all to be involved." The U.S. Army will be involved in raising an opposition "Free Syrian Army," which will be trained in the region, and has been vetting possible fighters to take on the battle against ISIL. Odierno expected training to begin in March or April, and to last about four to six weeks. "There is a good plan in place," he said. "These units are being built to help us to put pressure on ISIS and we want to put pressure on from multiple fronts," he said. "This allows us to open another front against ISIL." McHugh: Budget cuts would mean 'dark and dangerous' future [2015-03-17] WASHINGTON -- The Army's ability to continue to operate globally and to stay trained and equipped to perform missions around the world is threatened by looming budget cuts, Army Secretary John M. McHugh told lawmakers. McHugh testified March 17 before the House Armed Services Committee during a hearing on the Fiscal Year 2016 National Defense Authorization Budget request. For the committee, McHugh highlighted recent Army actions and activities, which illustrate precisely the kinds of things the Army would be unable to do were its funding to be cut below the $127 billion it requested in its Fiscal Year 2016 budget, and were it not able to adequately prepare Soldiers for the kind of pop-up contingencies the Army responds to now. In the last year, he said, the geopolitical landscape has "morphed" to include aggression by Russia in Ukraine, increased threats from North Korea, and gains by terrorists in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Added to that, he said, there has been the threat from Ebola in West Africa. "As Russian-backed forces rolled into Ukraine, annexed Crimea, and threatened regional stability, our Soldiers rapidly deployed to Eastern Europe in a demonstration of U.S. commitment and resolve," he said. In Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Estonia, Soldiers from the 173rd Airborne and the 1st Cavalry "showed the world that America would stand with our NATO allies and respond to unbridled aggression." In West Africa, he said, "elements of several units, led by the 101st Airborne, provided command and control, equipment and expertise to support efforts to stop this deadly and destabilizing disease," he said. In regard to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, "your Soldiers quickly returned to Iraq to advise and assist security forces in turning the tide on this barbaric group of radical terrorists," he said. And in the Pacific, the Army has been involved in Pacific Pathways to strengthen relationships there. "Your Army has been managing to tackle contingencies around the world, even though they grow at an alarming rate," he said. These types of requirements have not been foreseeable, he said, but rather unexpected. And this is exactly the kind of response he predicts the Army will be called on more often in the future to provide - and what the Army will not be able to do without adequate funding. Budget cuts, he said, mean Soldiers are not going to be trained to fight when they are called on to do so. If called on to respond, he said, the Army may be forced to send Soldiers into dangerous situations where they are ill-equipped and ill-trained to perform their mission. Lack of training, lack of equipment, and lack of manning - direct results from slashed budgets - means increased risk in the Army. And that translates directly to lives. It "means people dying, risk means greater injuries, risk means people don't come home," McHugh said. "Ladies and gentlemen, our Army, your Army, faces a dark and dangerous future unless the Congress acts now to end these ill-conceived and inflexible budget cuts." Looking at the effects that continued budget cuts from sequestration could have on manpower in the near future, McHugh said by 2019 the Army could lose another six brigade combat teams, and possibly a division headquarters. Such cuts would mean the Army would be unable to meet the demands of the Defense Strategic Guidance, McHugh said, something he does not think America is ready to accept. "I don't think the American people are really postured to accept a military that can't answer the bell wherever the challenge may arise," he said. TAKING CARE OF SOLDIERS During 13 years of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army and its sister services built up robust capabilities to take care of Service members who were injured in combat. McHugh said the Army continues to maintain that capability and is in the process of right-sizing it to meet current demands. "I think we have a legal responsibility, but even more a moral responsibility to ensure that those who return home, in the first instance, get the medical care that they deserve," he said. He said the Army is now reconfiguring its warrior transition commands "to respond to the realities of the diminishing budgets, but also the phasing out of wartime activities that we have endured for the last 13 years." He said the Army still plans to provide this capability to wounded Soldiers, to ensure the Army is "providing care in the most effective and efficient manner possible." CYBER EFFORTS Because threats in the information technology domain continue to grow, the Army has built a significant capability to defend against threats over the network. McHugh said the Army is in the process of standing up 41 cyber protection teams now, and that 24 are at initial operating capability. "By the end of 2016, we expect all 41 to be up and operating," McHugh said. He also said the Army National Guard is setting up 11 cyber protection teams, while the Army Reserve will have 10. Within the reserve components, he said, there is ample expertise in the information technology realm, as many Guardsmen and Reservists have civilian jobs in related career fields that they can bring to the table while in uniform. Additionally, McHugh said, the Army is structuring benefits and bonuses to help it compete for those high-tech individuals. Armed Aerial Scout still valid requirement, Army says [2015-03-19] WASHINGTON -- Despite cancelling its quest for an Armed Aerial Scout, or AAS, aircraft - a replacement for the OH-58 Kiowa - an Army leader told Congress there is still a valid need for that type of aircraft. During a March 19 hearing before the House Armed Services Committee, subcommittee on tactical air and land forces, Maj. Gen. Michael D. Lundy, commander of the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence, said the Army still considers AAS a valid requirement. "We still have a valid requirement for Armed Aerial Scout. That has not changed," he said. "We made a fiscal decision, based on the original 40-percent cuts that came into the aviation modernization portfolio." Right now the Army plans to divest itself of the OH-58 Kiowa aircraft, which had performed the armed reconnaissance helicopter mission. The Army deemed it too expensive to maintain the aircraft or upgrade it for the AAS mission through a Service Life Extension Program. Also too expensive was a replacement aircraft. The Army now plans to use AH-64 Apache aircraft teamed with unmanned aerial systems to fill the role. But Lundy said that isn't the end of the Army's quest for a new AAS aircraft. "Really where we are taking that now is, as we go into Future Vertical Lift [FVL]- what is going to be the armored reconnaissance capability that we have in FVL? We are doing a number of analyses of alternatives associated with the armored reconnaissance variant. We've got the requirement already clearly identified for a conventional aircraft right now. We are looking again at FVL as being that next iteration of the armed scout," Lundy told lawmakers. "If something materializes between now and then we are going to remain agile enough we can look at it. It is a valid requirement. But we are certainly going to be dependent on the fiscal constraints that we have." For those pilots making the transition from OH-58 to AH-64 Apache pilot, Lundy said the training is going well, and said that the Army recently graduated three such pilots from training, and that two of those had done well enough to remain on at the school house as instructor pilots. "I see no issues with the training," Lundy said. BLACK HAWK MODERNIZATION Lundy also told lawmakers that the Army's effort at modernization of the UH-60 Black Hawk is underway, and that it supports all components of the Army. As many as 600 UH-60A Black Hawks across the Army will be divested from the fleet by 2023, he said. Additionally, the Army is converting UH-60L Black Hawks to the UH-60V version, which includes a glass cockpit. Fielding will happen between 2018-2032, he said. The majority of those will go into the National Guard and the Army Reserve. The Army continues to field the UH-60M model as well, and expects to finish by 2028. M4 CARBINE IS A SOLID WEAPON Challenged by one lawmaker with the suggestion that the M4 Carbine is a less-than-satisfactory weapon, the Army's chief of resourcing said he has heard no complaints from Soldiers. "It is a capable weapon," said Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Ierardi, deputy chief of staff, Army G-8. "In my service in 1st Cavalry Division, I did not hear one complaint from my Soldiers about the M4 Carbine. In fact, Soldiers wanted the M4 for what it brings: which is a compact, easy-to-maintain, and capable weapon." Ierardi said the Army will continue to enhance the M4, including conversion to the heavier M4A1. He said 90 improvements have been made to the weapon since it was fielded in 1994. GOODBYE M113 The M113 armored personnel carrier has been in the Army since 1960 and Ierardi said the vehicle has already seen its last days as an operational vehicle. While a number of M113s remain in the Army inventory, the service has stopped using them operationally. The Army plans to replace the M113's capability with the armored multi-purpose vehicle, or AMPV. "It is the Army's intent, and it is under execution now to move away from M113, which brings into discussion the armored multi-purpose vehicle, the follow-on vehicle to the M113 variant," Ierardi said. "It's an important capability for the Army to replace: the mobility that the M113s bring in the varied terrain that our armored and tracked vehicles operate. So AMPV is an important program for us to replace the M113s." The Army announced in late 2014 that that BAE Systems Land & Armaments, L.P. was selected for the engineering and manufacturing development, or EMD, contract for the AMPV. The initial award is for a 52-month base term, valued at about $382 million. During that time, BAE Systems will produce 29 vehicles. Dailey to bring Soldiers to Washington to 'own' SHARP problem, solution [2015-03-25] WASHINGTON -- Since the Army first began its effort to eliminate sexual assault in the ranks, the agenda, the training, and the delivery has been driven by Army senior leadership. Junior Soldiers will soon be given an opportunity to provide input as well. Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey will soon kick off a new program, "Not in My Squad, Not in Our Army," that will offer Soldiers at the lowest levels in the Army an opportunity to take ownership of both the problem of sexual assault in the ranks, as well as the solution. Part of that initiative will bring Soldiers from around the force - leaders at team and squad level - to Washington, D.C., to meet with Army leaders and experts within the Army's sexual harassment/assault response and prevention, or SHARP, program and G-1, to wargame their own solutions to sexual assault that they feel might better resonate with the Soldiers they lead worldwide. Dailey said the idea is "a bottom-up approach to sexual assault and sexual harassment prevention. But not only that, it's also about everything in regard to the Army profession, and getting our subordinate leaders - those first line-level leaders who have direct influence over their Soldiers every day, to take ownership of this problem - sexual assault." Dailey said he is confident that Soldiers know what the Army's stance is on sexual assault. But he said he has heard from Soldiers that he has talked to that they feel the delivery of the message could be done better. That is why, he said, he feels it would be better to have Soldiers themselves develop a solution. "We don't want to design this," Dailey said. "We want those small unit-level leaders to design this." Included will be staff sergeants from around the Army, from different divisions, corps, and theaters. Guiding discussion will be SHARP experts and personnel from the Army's G-1. But it will be Soldiers themselves who are finding the solutions, and who will make recommendations to Army leadership about those solutions. "We will present them with problems, challenges associated with sexual assault, and they will engage with our civil leaders here, and then brief myself and the chief of staff of the Army and the vice chief of staff of the Army on how they are going to build this concept of taking this back to the force," Dailey said. "For them to truly embrace this concept, to truly embrace this initiative, they have to be empowered, and they have to feel like it's their initiative." Dailey's concept is similar to what the Army began doing last year with captains during what it calls a "solarium." During the solarium's events, captains are placed in groups and are assigned various problems that face the Army today, and they work together to develop possible solutions to those problems. Afterward, the captains brief the Army's chief of staff on their proposed solution. "I am excited to see what our creative young leaders will come up with and what their approach will be to get at this problem," Dailey said. "And I think we have to be brave enough to institute some of the recommendations they come up with." Soldiers participating in this "Not in My Squad, Not in Our Army" event will also tackle challenges regarding the Army profession in addition to the problems involving sexual assault. "We have done a lot of work to communicate the Army profession across our force," he said. "If you want something to happen, it requires leadership. And if you want something to happen from the lowest level up, it requires leadership at the first-line leader. They have the clearest understanding of the issues, the challenges associated with what our Soldiers are facing every day, the stressors of life of being a young Soldier and young Family member throughout our force. I think they are well postured to inform us on those challenges." No time or date has yet been set for when Soldiers will come to Washington, D.C., to participate in the event, nor have the Soldiers who will participate been identified. Additionally, Dailey said, the "Not in My Squad, Not in Our Army" initiative is broader than just one event and one topic. The broader effort is meant to highlight the critical role the non-commissioned officer corps plays in leading and sustaining a values-based organization such as the Army. Dailey: Individual Soldiers can raise unit readiness, rather than detract from it [2015-03-26] WASHINGTON -- Earlier this month, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno told Congress only 33 percent of Army brigades are ready to go to war, when the number ought to be closer to 70 percent. While there is little a Soldier can do about the funding required to ensure his brigade meets unit readiness standards, he can do something to be personally prepared, so when his personal readiness is folded into the larger calculation that tells "Big Army" what units are war-ready and which are not, he is adding to and not subtracting from that number. "One of the most important aspects of Soldier readiness is individual skills and tasks - making sure they understand the knowledge and skills associated with their skill level and military occupational specialty [MOS]," said Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey. "There is also personal readiness - making sure their medical and dental, and all their appointments are taken care of, so our readiness accounts are up to date and we can report readiness at a higher rate." Dailey said there are many non-deployable Soldiers in today's Army who detract from a unit's readiness. While some of those Soldiers are wounded warriors, a portion of that non-deployable number "is attributed to Soldiers not maintaining personal readiness." "Every single Soldier's individual readiness is part of a collective effort to get their entire organization at a readiness status that is up to par with them being able to accomplish their wartime mission," he said. Dailey said that in addition to the personal readiness of individual Soldiers, a unit's total readiness involves such things as small-unit collective training, platoon-level training, platoon live-fire, company training, home-station mission rehearsal exercises, home-station certification exercises, unit/staff exercises, and rotations through a combat training center. CHANGES TO THE NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICER EVALUATION REPORT In September, the Army expects to roll out an improved way to evaluate Soldier performance - a new non-commissioned officer evaluation report, also known as NCOER, system that provides a different template for sergeants, staff sergeants through master sergeants, and sergeant majors. Dailey said the new system more closely matches what Soldiers are evaluated on with what Army doctrine expects of them. "The new NCOER is fundamentally different than what we have had in the past," Dailey said. "We needed to revise it. It's a system that has been revised throughout history, but doctrinally is incorrect. We had to revise it to meet the current needs of our doctrine." Dailey said that the leadership attributes spelled out in Army doctrine have changed, and so the evaluation of Soldiers must change to reflect that. "We need to match the NCOER with the leadership attributes inside of ADP 6-22," Dailey said. "If we are saying in doctrine that things are important, then that is what we should be evaluating our NCOs [non-commissioned officers] on." The new NCOER also addresses a critical problem with NCO evaluations: rating inflation. "It's no secret that NCOERs have been overinflated for a long time," Dailey said. "When you look across files of NCOs in the same grade, there is a tendency to see everybody's 'one block' checked all the way down the left side: among the best, among the best, etc." Right now, Dailey said, the Army may promote, at best, perhaps 20 percent of Soldiers in a particular grade and MOS. "We can't sustain a fair promotion system when everybody is ranked number one," he said. "Not everybody can get promoted." To fix the problem, he said, the Army will implement rating profiles for senior raters. The result will be that senior raters will only be allowed to give top ratings to a certain percentage of Soldiers. The Army has already done something similar for officer ratings, Dailey said. "You can't give everybody a one block, because we are going to track your profile as a senior rater," Dailey said. "For officers, if you break your rater profile, everybody gets a 'two block,' or center of mass. That is something we have instituted, and it has helped greatly with our officer corps. It's a huge culture change for NCOs." Dailey said one driver of rating inflation is that raters have not done a good enough job of counseling their Soldiers. "If you haven't told somebody throughout the year that they are not doing a good job, you are less apt to tell them at the end of the year they are not doing a good job when you write their NCOER," he said. "That means you didn't do your job." Soldier counseling is a critical part of NCO rating, Dailey said. Under the new NCOER system, raters must counsel a Soldier each quarter. Senior raters must counsel the same Soldier at least twice a rating period. For senior raters, this is new. "The most important thing for a Soldier's performance is the counseling that happens throughout the year," Dailey said. "If there is a negative behavior, or less-than-superior behavior that you want to correct, the way to get at that is by counseling the NCO. Driving that process through the use of consulting sessions with the senior rater is going to help us maintain the appropriate counseling we need between the rater and the ratee." Dailey said the new NCOER system also allows senior raters to rank a ratee among his peers, "one out of seven," or "five out of seven," for instance. "It gives the board and others an indication of performance based on what their peers are doing." STAYING IN THE ARMY The Army is drawing down, reducing Soldiers in the force, and expects to be at 490,000 Soldiers by the end of fiscal year 2015, and at 450,000 by the end of fiscal year 2017. Dailey said that the Army hopes to achieve much of that force reduction through the adjustment of accessions and retention. "But traditional accessions and retention will not get it all," Dailey said. "Some Soldiers will be asked to go home." Deciding who gets to stay and who does not will be a decision based on a Soldier's adherence to standards, Dailey said. The Army will rely on a "standards-based approach" when drawing down its end strength. Centralized selection boards will review Soldier files to look for performance-based measures "and determine within that MOS and skill level who is most qualified to stay," Dailey said. "That's the most appropriate way to do it, and the one that Soldiers can relate to - and have to accept. There is no other way to do this appropriately." To stay in the Army, Dailey said, Soldiers must "work hard, do their best every day, invest their time when they go to school and graduate in the top 10 percent. There is plenty of room in the Army for Soldiers who want to stay and serve and be stewards of the profession." "If we have a Soldier doing everything we ask them to do, working hard every day to represent themselves and the American people, and then there is one who has not done these things -- who is supposed to go?" Dailey asked. "It's an easy pick." Laser-based aircraft countermeasure provides 'unlimited rounds' against MANPADS [2015-03-27] WASHINGTON -- The Army expects later this year to reach a Milestone B decision with its laser-based common infrared countermeasures, or CIRCM, defense system program. The CIRCM system, under development now by both BAE and Northrup Grumman, provides a light-weight, laser-based countermeasure against man-portable air defense systems, which are missile launched from the ground at their targets -- including Army and Navy aircraft. "My No. 1 priority as a project manager is to protect our Soldiers lives -- in this case, aviators and their passengers -- against the current threats out there," said Col. Jong H. Lee, project manager for Aircraft Survivability Equipment. "The common infrared countermeasures program is going to do that. It will increase protection of our Service members against an ever-evolving threats." It is expected that the CIRCM system will begin fielding in Fiscal Year 2019 to both the Army and the Navy, and will be used aboard helicopters, tilt-rotor aircraft, and small fixed-wing aircraft. Included among those aircrafts are the AH-64 Apache and the UH-60 Black Hawk. Within the Department of the Navy -- a partner in the CIRCM program -- the AH-1 Cobra will receive the system, as will the MV-22 Osprey. In the future, Lee said, the Advanced Threat Infrared Countermeasures system aboard the CH-47 Chinook will be replaced with the CIRCM as well. Lee said the primary threat CIRCM is meant to address is Man-portable air-defense system, also known as MANPADS, which are in use worldwide by both nation states as well as non-state actors. The CIRCM works in conjunction with the Army's existing Common Missile Warning System aboard aircraft now. The CMWS can detect an incoming threat from a MANPADS and automatically pass relevant information about that threat to the CIRCM system. CIRCM works in combination with the missile warning system to detect and defeat MANPADS. Missiles launched from MANPADS are typically guided by infrared capability, Lee said. The missiles guide themselves toward a target's infrared heat signature. The laser that is part of the CIRCM system takes advantage of that. Insofar, as pilot interaction is concerned, Lee said the entire system is automatic. "They only have to turn it on," Lee said. "It's meant to be fully automatic. It really makes it an extremely valuable system for the pilots and the passengers." Lee said the CIRCM system primarily includes three components: a pointer/tracker unit, laser, and system processor unit. These three primary pieces of hardware are part of what Lee said is called the "B-Kit" portion of CIRCM. The system also includes what is being called an "A-Kit." The A-Kit portion includes the wiring and harnesses that must be installed in an aircraft before the B-KIT can be installed. Approximately 3,000 A-Kits will be purchased and installed in Army aircraft, Lee said, while 1,000 B-Kits will be purchased. Lee said it takes "several hundred hours" to install an A-Kit into an aircraft, while it takes only a few hours to install the B-Kits in an aircraft if the A-Kits have already been installed. With this configuration, he said, it will be easy to move the B-Kit hardware -- the primary system hardware -- from one A-Kit-equipped aircraft to another. This means that aircraft can be easily equipped with the CIRCM system if it is needed for a mission, or the system can be removed and used elsewhere if an aircraft does not need it. "We want to make sure we have the ability to deploy, and move the B-Kits around. We are doing that with other systems too, such as with the CH-47 ATIRCM [advanced threat infrared countermeasures]," Lee said. UNLIMITED ROUNDS Lee said the biggest difference between CIRCM and other counter-measure systems currently in use -- including the ATIRCM -- is that CIRCM is so light weight. The B-Kit portion of the system weighs just 85 pounds, he said. And the Army is working with contractors to reduce the weight of the A-Kits as well. "That's a really big factor," Lee said. "A lot of our Army aircraft don't have excess space or capacity. We wanted to make sure we provide a lightweight system that provides great protection against these threats out there." He said that both the ATIRCM -- used now on the CH-47 Chinook -- and the large aircraft infrared countermeasures systems, used by the Air Force, are too large for some of the aircraft the Army wants to protect with the CIRCM system. Also, he said, the CIRCM system is designed with open systems architecture to be easily expanded, to take on more threats than what exist today. "Because of the way we designed the system as being open architecture, it allows us to have growth for emerging threats," he said. He also said that while the Army already has countermeasures onboard aircraft, CIRCM will offer a more robust level of protection. "With a laser system, you have unlimited rounds you can dispense against threats," Lee said. "Also, it's a lot more agile in allowing us to adapt to the threats. It gives us an opportunity to provide increased protection, but also the ability to be adaptable to future threats." CIRCM FUTURE Right now, Lee said, development of CIRCM has passed a "Milestone A" decision and is in the technology maturation and risk-reduction phase, during which time the cost risks associated with technology, engineering, integration, and life cycle are reduced. During this phase, the CIRCM must also reach "technology readiness level 6." This will allow the program to successfully pass a "Milestone B" decision. When Milestone B is reached, the program will award a contract for the "engineering and manufacturing development phase" to just one contractor -- eliminating one of the current two contractors from competition. "That phase is to develop, build and test a product to verify it meets requirements -- documented requirements," Lee said. The Milestone B decision is expected to be made in within this Fiscal Year. A Milestone C decision will mark entry into low-rate initial production. The Milestone C decision is expected to happen in Fiscal Year 2017. Army Knowledge Online email goes offline this week [2015-03-29] WASHINGTON -- Since the late 1990s, the Army has hosted email functionality for Soldiers on the "Army Knowledge Online" website, known as AKO for short. Most of that email functionality will end March 31. Right now, some users are still able to log into the website and load up the email application. On Tuesday, the Army will shut that capability off. "There are only a small group of individuals still using AKO email," said CW5 Ricardo Pina, the chief technology officer with Army CIO/G6. "It's about 17,000 people." As a result of the change, those users will no longer be able to log into AKO and read or send email. But if those users are still getting email sent to their @us.army.mil account, that email can be forwarded to their "DOD Enterprise Email," or DEE address -- the one that ends with @mail.mil. The email forwarding functionality is expected to last until June 30, 2015. The Army will shut the forwarding off at that time. Pina said the Army made the decision to shut off AKO email, in part, because DEE email is far less expensive. Additionally, he said, AKO email was originally intended to be the only email that Soldiers used. But that proved to not be the case. Many Army users, he said, had additional government email addresses. "Some people had three or more," he said. "So it just wasn't efficient to maintain email that way." FUTURE OF AKO AKO does much more than provide email capability, Pina said. It also provides collaboration, files storage and white pages functionality. Those capabilities are not going away, he said, though the Army is looking for better solutions to provide that functionality. "The Army is working on something called 'unified capabilities [UC],'" he said. "When we have the UC solution, that will basically do away with a need to maintain them from AKO." Vice chief kicks off 'Quad A' by recognizing innovators [2015-03-30] NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The Army's vice chief of staff kicked off the 2015 Army Aviation Association of America conference here by highlighting some of the best aviation units in the Army. "I am incredibly proud of the incomparable courage and competence of our great aviators," said Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Daniel B. Allyn, March 30. "I always have been, and always will be." Allyn spoke before more than 1,000 Army aviators and aviation industry representatives at the beginning of a two-day aviation conference sponsored by the Army Aviation Association of America, known as Quad A. Allyn noted several Army aviation units, who would later be named recipients of national-level Army aviation awards, units, who he said were "consistent with the future our Army leadership envisions for Army aviation and for Force 2025 and beyond." First among those named by Allyn was the 2nd Battalion, 13th Aviation Regiment, out of Fort Huachuca, Arizona. The unit is a U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, or TRADOC, battalion and is responsible for training unmanned aerial surveillance Soldiers on four different aircraft systems. "The 2-13 is a model of a unit that embraces innovation, by combining technologies, all the while maintaining their warrior ethos in a cavalry and scout mentality," Allyn said. "They are at the cutting edge of innovation and technology, learning how to best integrate our unmanned aerial surveillance and implement manned and unmanned teaming. In addition to their training mission, 2-13 deployed two companies to Afghanistan last year and supported the Department of Homeland Security in their continental United States mission." Allyn also honored the Army National Guard's aviation unit of the year, Company B, 1st Battalion, 171st Aviation Regiment, out of Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. "They are a picture of the future as we become even more reliant than we already are on the total force, executing diverse missions across the globe," Allyn said. "During 2014, the 'Voyagers' provided medium-lift capabilities to conventional, special operations, and multi-national forces. They performed missions across the spectrum of lift capabilities, including forward operating base retrograde, combat resupply, night insertion and extraction of special operations forces, and battlefield circulation. They represent true aviation professionals." Finally, Allyn highlighted the 12th Combat Aviation Brigade, or CAB, out of Ansbach, Germany, later named the "outstanding aviation unit of the year." Allyn said the 12th CAB demonstrates "a lot of adaptability and interoperability in a multi-national environment. The 'Griffins' flew over 2,388 combat missions in Afghanistan and participated in 22 major multi-national training operations in 37 different countries. The 12th CAB performed both strategic shaping in a multi-national environment, while maintaining steadfast combat focus at all times." Allyn said the accomplishments of those units "exemplify an aviation community moving in the exact direction we have in mind for Force 2025 and beyond." During the opening ceremony, 11 aviation individuals and units were recognized. They include: -- The Joseph P. Cribbins Department of the Army Civilian of the Year award: Ellis W. Golsen, Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate, U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence, Fort Rucker, Alabama -- The James H. McClellan Aviation Safety Award: Sgt. 1st Class Eric D. Wright, Company B, Special Operations Training Battalion, Fort Campbell, Kentucky -- The Army Aviation Soldier of the Year Award: Spc. Luis D. Marino, Company B, 4th Battalion, 101st Aviation Regiment, 159th Combat Aviation Brigade, Fort Campbell, Kentucky -- The Henry Q. Dunn Crew Chief of the Year Award: Spc. Benjamin J. Rosa, Company A, 1st Battalion, 229th Aviation Regiment, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington -- The Rodney J.T. Yano Non-commissioned Officer of the Year Award: Sgt. 1st Class Bryant D. MacFarlane, Company D, 1st Battalion, 1st Aviation Regiment, Combat Aviation Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kansas -- The Michael J. Novosel Army Aviator of the Year Award: CW4 Michael J. Siler, Company C, 1st Battalion, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), Fort Campbell, Kentucky -- The Robert M. Leich Award: 2nd Battalion, 13th Aviation Regiment, Fort Huachuca, Arizona. Accepting the award were: Lt. Col. Clinton J. Conzemius, commander, and Command Sgt. Maj. S. Todd Schmidt -- The U.S. Army Reserve Aviation Unit of the Year Award: 90th Aviation Support Battalion, 244th Aviation Brigade, Fort Worth, Texas. Accepting the award were: Lt. Col. Lee D. Hyder, commander, and Command Sgt. Maj. Robert N. McGee -- The John J. Stanko, Jr. Army National Guard Aviation Unit of the Year Award: Company B, 1st Battalion, 171st Aviation Regiment, Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. Accepting the award were: Maj. Byron N. Cadiz, commander, and 1st Sgt. Keith I. Nakahara -- The Active Aviation Unit of the Year Award: 3rd Battalion, 1st Aviation Regiment, Combat Aviation Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kansas. Accepting the award were: Lt. Col. Fred J. DuFault, commander, and Command Sgt. Maj. Phillip Paniagua -- The Outstanding Aviation Unit of the Year Award: 12th Combat Aviation Brigade, Ansbach, Germany. Accepting the award were: Col. Vincent H. Torza, commander, Chief Warrant Officer 5 Thomas R. Walton, and Command Sgt. Maj. Osvaldo Martell Lundy: Gold-plated gear not always best value for Army [2015-03-31] NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The Army often has the best equipment available, but considering the fiscal environment, such gear may not continue to be the best value, one of the Army's leading aviators said. During the 2015 Army Aviation Association of America summit, in Nashville, Tennessee, March 30, Maj. Gen. Michael D. Lundy, commander of the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence and Fort Rucker, said it is not always necessary for every piece of gear the Army buys to be the absolute best available. He also said it is no longer affordable. "Not everything needs to be gold-plated," Lundy said. "We have the best equipment in the world. But not every piece of equipment needs to be... We are making some really hard decisions about requirements of what's good enough. Sometimes a really kick-ass Soldier, with just a decent piece of equipment, is going to make the day. And that's good enough. We are looking hard at what needs to be good enough and what needs to be world-class. Because world-class everything is world-class unaffordable." Lundy spoke before an audience of more than 1,000 Army aviators and industry representatives - the very people who define the Army's equipment requirements and who turn those requirements into equipment. Lundy also called for more simplicity in Army gear, as one way to reduce the training burden on the force. "We have to move the complexity behind the faceplate," Lundy said. He cited one piece of gear with which he's familiar - the Advanced Special Improvement Program model SINCGARS radio - as being overly complex. It "has too many buttons on the front of it," he said. "I want the O-N/O-F-F option. Just a toggle switch would be nice." Despite amusing attendees, Lundy's message remained clear: overly complex Army gear requires too much training for both aviators and Soldiers, and requires too much specialization for those Soldiers. "We are forcing our aviators and our Soldiers to learn too much technical stuff," he said. "We need the machines to do some of this, so we can use your help out there." Lundy also pointed out that while unmanned aerial systems are firmly rooted in Army aviation - they are not going anywhere - in many cases, the term "unmanned" is misleading. "I will tell you, our unmanned formations are bigger than our manned formations," Lundy said. "For everybody developing unmanned stuff, we need you to 'unman' your unmanned stuff. It takes too many Soldiers to operate this stuff, to maintain it. They are great capabilities. As we think to the future, this is what I need you to think about: our Army will have fewer Soldiers. Every time we have a new piece of equipment, if it takes some sort of specialization, that's not a good piece of equipment." BENEFITS OF AVIATION RESTRUCTURE INITIATIVE Lundy also spoke about the Aviation Restructure Initiative, and how the effort will help close capability gaps in Army aviation. One such area, he said, involves the inability of the Army to fly and fight in all environments. "We don't have the power we need," Lundy said. A fix for that is the Army's Improved Turbine Engine Program, or ITEP, which is meant to be a "drop-in" replacement for engines on the AH-64 Apache and UH-60 Black Hawk aircraft. The ITEP is expected to provide increased range, horsepower, fuel efficiency, and engine life. It is also expected to allow those aircraft to provide lift at higher altitudes and in hotter environments. "If we are going to fight in this complex world, if you think about being in a megacity, where you have to go into these small, tight landing zones and these urban canyons, you don't need just enough power to get in there and get out of there," he said. "You need to get in there and get out of there with a lot of dynamic capability. We need to put that into the hands of our Soldiers and aviators." Lundy also cited as a gap the communications capability between ground Soldiers and aviators. "Our network is not fully tailored for air/ground operations capability," he said. The Army's network has grown, he said, "but it has grown apart from Army aviation. We are fixing that. We are accelerating getting after Soldier Radio Waveform - that is what our Soldiers are using on the ground right now ... so we can rejoin the air-ground team." He also said the Army is looking at mid-tier network capability and accelerating all that as well. Lundy told attendees the Army is looking to improve its ability to operate in degraded visual environments. He said the Army has a lot of that capability already, and must not wait to use it where it is needed most. "If we are going to maintain overmatch and truly be game-changing, we have to be able to fly and fight no matter what the weather, no matter what the visual conditions are," Lundy said. "We have to get after the degraded visual environment capability soon. That is going to give us an advantage no other nation has." Lundy said the Army is aiming funds at development of those capabilities, and said they should not be limited to aviation alone. What enables aircraft to operate in degraded visual environments should also be made available to tanks and other ground vehicles. Army to revise tattoo policy [2015-04-02] HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- The Army will update its policy on tattoos during the coming weeks, making it more accommodating to current social norms, the Army's chief of staff said. During a press conference during the Association of the United States Army Global Force Symposium and Exposition here, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno said the service regularly reviews and makes updates to Army Regulation 670-1. "As part of the regular process that we go through in reviewing regulations, covering the wear and appearance of the Army uniform, and the appearance of our Soldiers, we will be releasing in the coming weeks, an update to that policy, and the most notable change is going to be the change in the tattoo policy in the Army," Odierno said. Soldiers will no longer be limited to a particular size or number of tattoos permitted on the arms or legs, Odierno said, provided those tattoos are not extremist, indecent, sexist or racist. The policy will, however, continue to prohibit tattoos above the T-shirt neckline, on the head, face, wrists and hands. There will be an exception allowing one ring tattoo on each hand. Odierno said that changes to the policy came after listening to feedback from Soldiers, and after discussion with senior enlisted leaders. "We have listened to the Soldiers," Odierno said. "I've talked to our sergeants major and our non-commissioned officers and some of our officers and frankly, society is changing its view of tattoos, and I think we need to change along with it." During an interview last week, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey discussed the upcoming change to the Army tattoo policy. He said that the message from the Soldiers he talks to is clear: Soldiers have tattoos, tattoos are acceptable now, and the tattoo policy might affect a decision to re-enlist. "You can't go anywhere without hearing about the Army's tattoo policy," Dailey said. "It came up when I was at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy too. So it's not just Soldiers, but leaders as well." The sergeant major said American culture has changed, and that tattoos are more accepted now than they have ever been before. The Army is a reflection of American society, and American society, he said, accepts tattoos. "I think this is a realization that we are in a different generation," he said. "Tattoos are more prevalent in young Americans than I think they have ever been throughout American history." When it was implemented, the current Army tattoo policy did not force out Soldiers who had tattoos below the elbow or knee or above the neck line. However, the policy did require Soldiers to have those tattoos documented. It also limited additional tattoos in those places. "These Soldiers understand that, they know they are grandfathered in," Dailey said. "But they have fears. We have documented every one of those tattoos, and they expect that could one day be used against them with regards to promotions or things like that." Dailey said he has asked Soldiers about how the current tattoo policy might affect their decision to separate from military service. He said "overwhelmingly," Soldiers have said the policy would play a role in their deciding to stay in or to leave. Dailey said he did not want the tattoo policy to be the deciding factor for why a good Soldier might decide to leave the Army. He said he felt that the policy might in some way be at odds with the requirement to maintain an all-volunteer force. "So then we struggle with - do the standards of discipline we've established override the needs of what we need to maintain the all-volunteer force, and the quality all-volunteer force, even more so as we draw down," he asked. "When we move this standard too far to the right, can we actually maintain the all-volunteer force in the future?" Dailey's discussions with Soldiers and his concerns regarding the effects of the existing tattoo policy on the Army's ability to maintain the all-volunteer force, were included in his own recommendations regarding the tattoo policy that he made to the Army chief of staff and the Army secretary. Odierno: Army Operating Concept can help Army face fiscal challenges [2015-04-02] HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- While acknowledging the challenges that slashed budgets have wrought, the Army's chief of staff said the Army Operating Concept, or AOC, will actually help the Army address future challenges. Gen. Ray Odierno addressed Soldiers and industry representatives during the 2015 Association of the United States Army Global Force Symposium and Exposition in Huntsville, Alabama, April 1. He told them budget cuts have reduced manning, readiness and modernization, but then he spelled out some of the things that would be needed for the service to continue operating in the current and future global security environment. "I truly believe that these are really quite significant, critical times, that require action, that require important dialogue, about our enduring defense capabilities," Odierno said. Force cuts affecting the strategic global security environment mean that the Army must develop new concepts for how it operates, he said. The Army's answer to that is the new "Army Operating Concept," called "Win in a Complex World." "It's our path to discover new concepts, to synchronize, integrate, and lead..." Odierno said. "The AOC focuses our efforts to turn concepts into capabilities as we build the future force." Odierno said that in the AOC, as is the case now, the Soldier and the squad "will remain the centerpiece of our formations, and at the heart of this strategy." As such, Odierno said supporting AOC means a focus on enhancing Soldier lethality, protection and situational awareness. The Army must also increase employability, lethality, mobility and survivability of Army maneuver formations. Also to be improved, he said, mission command - with investment in networks, including expeditionary command posts. NEED FOR NEW INFANTRY FIGHTING VEHICLES AND TANKS Odierno also called for mobile protected firepower, and combat vehicles that emphasize balance among mobility, lethality and protection. He said the Army's command and control footprint must be reduced, while at the same time allowing information to continue to flow unimpeded to Soldiers on the move. The Army must also invest in light reconnaissance and security capabilities, missiles and interceptors must be upgraded, and the Army must invest in a new infantry fighting vehicle and a tank with "autonomous capabilities." "Today, our nation is facing enormous challenges," Odierno said. America is facing enemies with the desire and the capability "to threaten not only our security, but the security of our allies." RANGE OF THREATS The general laid out a series of threats, including those in the Middle East, Asia, and Russia. He said also that the United States continues to face threats stateside as well. And while those threats continue to grow and accelerate, he said the Army continues, "to divest of our military capability and capacity, and therefore our risk continues to grow." As a result of budget woes, Odierno said the Army has cut 80,000 Soldiers and reduced by 13 brigade combat teams. The Army is also in the process of eliminating three aviation brigades out of the active force. In addition to manpower and force cuts, he said, modernization has been cut by 25 percent. Included among those cuts to modernization were the infantry fighting vehicle modernization and the scout helicopter developmental program. FISCAL CHALLENGES Additionally, budget cuts have degraded readiness, he said. Only 33 percent of brigades are ready to fight, when the number should instead be 70 percent. "We are only generating enough readiness for immediate consumption," Odierno said. "We are unable to generate residual readiness to respond to unknown contingencies, or to reinforce ongoing operations. And under our current budget, Army readiness will at best, flat-line over the next three to four years, and cause us to continue to reduce our capabilities in the active component, Army National Guard and Army Reserve." Those cuts to manpower, force strength, and modernization, and the effects on Army readiness, have very real effects on what the Army will be able to do, the general said. It will be difficult for the Army to meet commitments to international partners, Odierno said. The cuts will also make it difficult, if not impossible, for the Army to conduct more than one operation at a time - to deter in one place and defeat in another. For ground forces, he said, more sequestration "puts into question our ability to conduct one prolonged, multi-phased, combined arms campaign." He said more cuts degrade the Army's ability to shape the security environment, or prevent conflict in multiple regions at the same time. Further cuts, he said, "limits our strategic flexibility, and requires us to hope we can predict the future accurately, something we've ever been able to do." Army accepts 100th Apache 'Echo' model [2015-04-03] WASHINGTON -- In late March, the Army accepted delivery of the 100th AH-64E Apache helicopter. The "Echo" model is a complete rebuild of the AH-64D model. It includes an improved drive system, composite main rotor blades, a more powerful 701D GE engine, is fully digitized, and has level-4 manned-unmanned teaming, which allows pilots to control unmanned aerial systems - such as the Gray Eagle. The Echo model, "can fly higher, faster and further than the D model - and the D model is an extremely capable aircraft," said Col. Jeffrey Hager, the Apache project manager. Hager spoke, March 31, during a media event at the Army Aviation Association of America conference in Nashville, Tennessee. "But this aircraft outperforms and outdoes the Delta model to date," Hager said. "The enemy continually [was] thrown off-base because the Echo showed up to combat operations well before the Delta could have under the same conditions." The AH-64E's recent success came in Afghanistan with the 1-229th Attack Reconnaissance Battalion, or ARB, out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. The unit was the first to be fielded with the aircraft. "They flew nearly 11,000 combat hours - that's absolutely phenomenal for what we have done with the Echo - since it's a brand new airframe," he said. "The enemy had to change up their combat operations in order to combat the effectiveness of the Echo model." Hager said the 1-101st ARB out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, will continue with that success when they replace the 1-229th in Afghanistan later this fiscal year. The 1-25th ARB has also been fielded with the AH-64E Apache. And already, training coordination has begun for the fourth unit to be equipped with the aircraft, the 3-301st ARB, out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The Echo model has maintained 80 percent operational readiness rates, whether in combat or in peacetime operations, Hager said. The Army plans to have an all-Echo model Apache fleet, for a total of 690 aircraft. Army lists top 12 items in fiscal year 2016 budget request [2015-04-06] WASHINGTON -- Topping the list of things the Army wants in its $127 billion Fiscal Year 2016 budget request are 12 critical programs that support mission command, joint combined arms maneuver, and broad joint mission support. Experts within the Army's G-8, responsible for matching programs with limited resources, were quick to point out that the list of items are in no prioritized order, but that they are all high-dollar programs that are critical to the Army mission. "It shows Congress where we are spending taxpayer dollars. These programs also provide critical capability to Soldiers," said. Col. Brian Halloran, Army G-8 force development division chief for plans, strategy and policy. "How we chose these 12 specific programs from the more than 200 we have going on is three-fold: these are programs with high-dollar investment by the nation; and they also provide very increased capability to the Soldier and they nest within our broad priorities within the strategy as well." Supporting mission command initiatives is the Nett Warrior system, which is an Android-based cell phone that has been modified to work with Army communications systems to bring critical operational information to the dismounted leaders of platoons, squads, and teams. The 2016 budget request includes funding to allow the system to be fielded at the tactical level in three brigade combat teams, said Col. Richard Price, Army G-8 force development division chief for mission command. "That will go down to the team-leader level, to allow them to use commercial, off-the-shelf equipment to display maps and position data," Price said. "It's an Android phone, where we take off the proprietary software, and we put Army software on it, so we can display Army applications, which give you maps and location data." Price said for Nett Warrior, the Army has reached a level of robustness and readiness with the hardware to field the system, but added that the software component will continue to improve for a long time. "As we continue to develop apps, it will give you the capability to display information from the Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System, unit data, war plans, operations orders and other things on the screen," he said. Price said the Nett Warrior supports the Army, and is critical in that it provides the dismounted leader - the Army's most critical "resource" - with the information he or she needs to do their job. "It allows you to share information down to the lowest tactical level, with the team leaders on the ground, and allows you to understand from a location standpoint where those team leaders are located," Price said. Price also said the Army wants to field to three brigade combat teams, or BCTs, the communications equipment included in the family of networked tactical radios, including the rifleman radio at the squad and platoon level, the "handheld, manpack and small-form fit" radios at the platoon and company level, and the maneuver radio that connects everything to Army command elements. Also making the list in support of mission command capabilities is the Warfighter Information Network - Tactical system, the Joint Battle Command - Platform, and the Distributed Common Ground System - Army. The Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, or JLTV, which is a joint program between the Army and the Marine Corps, makes the list as a contributor to the joint combined arms maneuver mission. Right now there are three commercial contractors competing to win the JLTV program contract. Those contractors include Lockheed Martin, Oshkosh Defense and AM General. Col. Michel M. Russell Sr., Army G-8 FD division chief for focused logistics, said the Army expects to exit the current engineering and manufacturing development stage of the JLTV competition, and down-select from three contractors to one as part of an acquisition decision in the fourth quarter of FY 2015. That one winning contractor will be awarded the low-rate initial production contract for the JLTV. The Army plans to eventually purchase 49,099 JLTVs, while the Marine Corps plans to eventually buy 5,500 of the vehicles. For the Army, initial operating capability on the JLTV is expected in the fourth quarter FY 2018. Russell said in light tactical vehicles, the Army looks for three primary components: payload, performance and protection. Those three characteristics together, he said, are referred to as "the iron triangle." "What JLTV does is it meets the capability gap that allows us to bring all three of those back into balance," Russell said. "We gain all that back, and it's deployable in all the different environments." Also included in the 12 critical programs for the Army is the Maneuver Support Vessel - Light, or MSV-L, a watercraft that is intended to replace the existing Vietnam-era Landing Craft Mechanized 8. The MSV-L supports the Joint Combined Arms Maneuver and the Army Operating Concept, Russell said. "It's a new start program, and is critical because it is the lynchpin to the Army's watercraft strategy," Russell said. He said the MSV-L will allow commanders to maneuver supplies, sustainment and systems in and around their waterscape. The watercraft can carry a tank, a JLTV, a Stryker, troops, or supplies. "This is a brand new program and will have to proceed through the acquisition milestone agenda, in terms of requests for production and getting bids back from original equipment manufacturers, doing testing, RDT&E [research, development, test and evaluation], procurement, the whole nine yards," Russell said. Despite this meticulous process the Army must go through to provide Soldiers the best equipment available, Russell said he expects the MSV-L can be fielded in as little as six years. The system is not a "developmental" program, in that it will not be designed from scratch. Instead, he said, it is very likely the MSV-L will be based on an existing "commercial off-the-shelf" watercraft that will be "ruggedized and made to fit the Army's mission profile." "With the current emphasis on this particular vessel, and how it anchors to the Army Operating Concept for watercraft operations for combatant commanders, there is a lot of emphasis on getting this program moving," Russell said. Also supporting joint combined arms maneuver within the 12 critical programs is the AH-64 Apache helicopter. The Army resourcing for the Apache is mostly to convert existing D-model aircraft into E model aircraft. James St. Amour, a civilian working in Army G-8 force development as a staff synchronization officer for AH-64, said the move is, "a huge underpinning of our modernization effort." The modernization effort is possible due to the cost savings and avoidance that the Army's Aviation Restructure Initiative provides. Conversion from D to E models involves "depopulating the airframe and rebuilding the helicopter from the ground up. The aircraft gets a totally new fuselage, a new rotor system and other component parts. It's like a new aircraft coming off the line," St. Amour said. "The E model resets the airframe to zero hours." Right now there are fewer than 100 E model Apaches in the Army. But the goal is to have all 690 Apaches in the Army modernized to E models. With the Apache E model, AH-64E, the Army will pair the combat helicopter with the Shadow unmanned aerial vehicle to fill the armed reconnaissance role filled by the OH-58 Kiowa helicopter. The Kiowa is being divested from the Army, and St. Amour said all will be gone from the fleet by 2018. There are 104 Shadow "systems" in the Army, each of which includes four aircraft, two ground control stations, antennas and data terminals. There are 416 Shadow aircraft in the Army, and as part of paring those aircraft with the Apache E model, the Army plans to upgrade those Shadows to V2 Shadow models. Right now, none have made the transition, but they will eventually have longer wings, better endurance, a different engine, and a different datalink, St. Amour said. As part of the Aviation Restructure Initiative, the Army plans to have all combat aviation brigades converted to the new structure by 2019. Once fully fielded, the AH-64E provides Army Aviation with a much more lethal and capable force. Rounding out the Army's Critical Programs that support joint combined arms maneuver are the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle, the Patriot Missile, the Paladin Integrated Management program, and the UH-60 Black Hawk. Both the Black Hawk and the MSV-L also add to the Army's broad joint mission support capabilities. Center shows glimpse of next-generation synthetic training [2015-04-07] WASHINGTON -- Army training will likely always involve Soldiers going to the field and firing their weapons. But in the near future, it will also involve a lot more training in "synthetic" environments to make time in the field more productive and meaningful. "The next capability will be a leader-focused, Soldier-centric capability that immerses a Soldier, wherever they are at the point of training, in a synthetic environment, that allows us to tailor that environment to the demands of the leader," said Col. David S. Cannon of the Combined Arms Center, or CAC, on Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Experts at the CAC and U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, Cannon said, believe the next evolution in Army training will be introduced between 2023 and 2031, and will involve synthetic training environments connected together by a global network that allows Soldiers all over the world to train together, wherever they are, using training regimens that were designed by experts for not just specific mission types, but for missions in specific parts of the world. "A Soldier in Korea can be trained with a Soldier at Fort Hood," Cannon said. "A Soldier preparing to deploy in support of a global operation can train his task in that immersive environment and the culture, at home station. And not just one time, like at one of our combat training centers, but numerous times." Cannon attended the Association of the United States Army, or AUSA, Institute of Land Warfare Global Force Symposium, March 31-April 2, in Huntsville, Alabama. There, he manned a display that highlighted the evolution of "training the basics" from World War II, to Bosnia to Iraq and Afghanistan. In World War II, Cannon said, it was clear who the enemy was - they wore a uniform - and there was little interaction on the part of Soldiers with the civilian population. In Afghanistan and Iraq, he said, it became more unclear who the enemy was, and there was much more interaction with the civilian population, demonstrating an increase in both "ambiguity" and "chaos" in the operating environment. Cannon said future operating environments will be different than they are today, but ambiguity and chaos on the battlefield will continue to increase. Solders must be trained for such environments, even when it is unclear what exactly those environments will look like. "The trick is to fight the unknown, to determine the unknown before we know it," Cannon said. He said the expectation is to develop training tools that are adaptable to whatever capability a commander needs to train on, and to make it possible for a commander to train his Soldiers wherever they are. "It'll be cloud-based, network-delivered, device-oriented capability that is borne on the mission command information network," he said. "It'll be wherever the Soldier is located." Training courses will be developed centrally, by academics and military experts, and will be constantly updated and upgraded to match the needs of the commanders that request them and to meet the demands of any environment or situation that needs to be trained, Cannon said. Soldiers will interface with that information and those scenarios through gear that is not-yet developed, but which help simulate various types of military equipment that a Soldier would need to train for an operation, skill or technique. "Our Soldiers can relate to this: it's not necessarily a rifle, but a device that replicates a rifle," Cannon said. "Not a tank, but a device that replicates being inside a tank. Do you need a tank to train a tank? Our answer is no. "Our answer is you have to have the haptic and tactile and immersive environment wherever you need. You will have an immersive environment, some kind of device, and maybe a projector that maps the room that provides you with what the inside of the tank looks like. And more important, what the environment looks like." Units, Cannon said, will have the necessary gear as part of their training equipment, and the information that provides the scenarios and training courses will be available anywhere via the global network. "So we are building a synthetic training environment which allows us to improve the immersion of our Soldiers - training our units, our larger formations, and our senior echelon leaders in the environment they will encounter in a complex environment." The Army already uses simulated training, Cannon said. One example was on display at AUSA. Cannon had a copy of the 3D video trainer "Virtual Battle Space," or VBS, on a computer there running a scenario that would be familiar to those who conducted operations in Iraq. But Cannon had a set of 3D goggles attached to the game that allowed conference attendees to immerse themselves in the scenario in 360 degrees - something that is not done in the Army. Putting on the 3D goggles and a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, a "player" stood in as gunner on a Stryker combat vehicle and went along on the mission. Unlike playing the game on a laptop or desktop computer - which is how Soldiers use the game now - with the 3D headset, the player was immersed in the game. A sensor in front of the player rotated field of vision in the headset as he rotated his head - as though he were actually in the game. Cannon said the 3D goggles are not yet part of the Army's VBS program, but he said the experience offers a glimpse of what the Army is hoping for with its synthetic training environment. The VBS simulator is not the only training capability the Army uses now, Cannon said. "In the games for training portfolio, we have 92 training support packages that allow a squad leader to actually train his Soldiers on a variety of tasks from home station and in a classroom," he said. "They don't have to go out to the range or field - they can do it in the dayroom using a military gaming computer." Cannon said there are applications to assemble, disassemble, or clear a weapons system, for instance. And doing it on a simulator is an inexpensive way to get in practice before doing it for real. "They will get the repetitions they need," he said. "And we make it fun for them. We make it so they compete against their buddies. So by the time they get to the range, they enter at a higher skill level than we would have if we had put them on a bus and took them to the range and started firing." There is great cost in taking Soldiers to the range or to the field to practice tasks for the first time that could have been honed in garrison, Cannon said. "We do see cost savings here. By being in an immersive, synthetic environment, I'll get more repetitions. So when I go to the live environment, I'm better. I'm more trained. I'm more capable of doing what the mission calls for. A completely synthetic environment reduces the amount of overhead. The contractors and the people you need to run these large, complex 20th-century technologies - we won't need them anymore." The complexity of the current operating environment, and the expectation of an even more complex future operating environment, means Soldiers need repetition in training, and a lot of it. Time spent training in the field is better spent learning to adapt to changing situations and scenarios than to learning basics which could be taught back home. "The last 12 years of conflict really showed us what we really need are those rich repetitions," Cannon said. "And how you achieve that richness in repetitions - you can't wait to a live environment anymore. We have to provide a synthetic environment that immerses that Soldier and that leader into the complexities that he or she will face. "We are continuing to build the architecture, leverage the technology, leverage industry, and get the requirement right, to get the capability we want right," Cannon said. "What we are trying to do is develop a future capability that outpaces technology, our adversaries and the environment." 'Team of Teams' draws down Afghan bases, equipment [2015-04-08] AFGHANISTAN -- At its peak, in early 2011, there were nearly 100,000 U.S. Service members in Afghanistan, as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, or OEF. Working alongside those Service members, were as many as 90,000 contractors working for the U.S. Department of Defense. In June of that year, President Barack Obama announced the drawdown plans for Afghanistan - it would be slow at first, but it would ultimately result in a cessation of combat operations by the end of 2014. As a result of that drawdown only about 9,800 U.S. Service members remain in country as part of Operation Resolute Support, or ORS. The follow-on mission to OEF is aimed at training, advising and assisting Afghan forces, but leaving security to the Afghans. Bringing the U.S. presence in Afghanistan down from a peak of 100,000 troops to just 9,800 was a monumental task that required more than just sending Service members home. As part of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, all the gear deployed to Afghanistan during the past 13 years had to go: combat vehicles and weapons systems, office equipment, and mission-support equipment. Additionally, the military bases that had been in use since 2001, some 200-300 of them, needed to be returned to their natural state - desert in some cases. Other facilities had to be deconstructed to satisfy the requirements of those, who the facilities would eventually be turned over to: the Afghan government or the Afghan National Army, for instance. A "team of teams" was required to tackle this monumental mission; no one command or agency could do it alone. The leader of the "team of teams" in Afghanistan was the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, or USFOR-A. They were the leaders and planners that gave the directive and provided the guidance for the equipment reduction process. Orchestrating the execution and assisting USFOR-A with the planning of this enormous mission on the ground in Afghanistan was U.S. Army Central Command's 1st Sustainment Command (Theater), or 1st TSC. The "team of teams" in Afghanistan included support from a joint force, which Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Department of Defense civilians and contractors, who operated under the mission command of the 1st TSC. To accomplish the mission, 1st TSC and USFOR-A depended heavily upon the strategic partnership with Army Materiel Command; Defense Logistics Agency; U.S. Transportation Command; the Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command; U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, J-4; the CENTCOM Deployment Distribution Operations Center; Army G-4; and the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, and others. "Our relationship with these strategic partners was the real key to success," said Maj. Gen. Darrell K. Williams, commander, 1st TSC. "This is the ultimate team sport." Since June 2013, the 1st TSC, and its strategic partners had been executing their part of the larger Operation Drumbeat - run by U.S. Forces-Afghanistan - to close out the United States' 13 years of combat operations in Afghanistan. The 1st TSC portion of that mission was called Operation Reliable Tempo, or ORT. "The team was already doing an excellent job of executing Reliable Tempo when I assumed command in January of 2014," Williams said. "Operation Reliable Tempo was our plan to execute Operation Drumbeat [ODB]." Consumable supplies and materiel such as repair parts, barrier material and medical supplies processed through retrosort yards, where they were re-introduced into Army or service inventories in support of operations in Afghanistan or redistributed in support of other operations. But not all equipment and supplies left Afghanistan, Williams said. Some equipment, based on estimates, regarding the cost of shipping gear home, stayed in country to be sold or disposed of. That was a task that, Williams said, the Defense Logistics Agency proved indispensable in achieving. Equipment and supplies, deemed obsolete or not required for future Army readiness, were transferred to the Afghan National Security Forces to increase their readiness, or were disposed of in Afghanistan to avoid transportation expenses. Equipment is returned to the United States and into the Army inventory for future contingencies and training missions. Army Materiel Command will reset and redistribute the equipment to units based on priorities established by Headquarters Department of the Army, Williams said. "Operation Reliable Tempo was a critical link in the process of moving equipment from Afghanistan and ultimately back into the hands of our Soldiers." "We've always kept in mind that this retrograde, this drawdown of materials in theater was not a mission unto itself," Williams said. "It is a mission with an end. And the end is to build Army readiness." Williams said that in their execution of the ORT retrograde mission, the 1st TSC mission planners and those who are responsible for executing the mission, kept in mind that all gear and materials brought into theater by U.S. forces had been paid for by the American taxpayer. The 1st TSC had a responsibility to ensure that gear was brought home or that the value is returned to the Army. That is called "responsible retrograde." Also, part of the 1st TSC's responsibility was the tear-down of military bases in Afghanistan to return them to the Afghan people. "As you looked around those base camps, you were essentially in a small city," Williams said. "In some cases, we literally had to turn it into the desert as it was when we first found it." When the transfer of U.S. infrastructure created by the Americans could help strengthen the Afghan forces, bases were transferred to the government of Afghanistan. In larger places, like Kandahar Air Base and Bagram Air Base, "it was a combination of reducing portions of the large bases to its original state, and returning portions to our Afghan partners. It was and continues to be an enormous effort," Williams said. At the same time they retrograded equipment from Afghanistan, and assisted in shutting down base camps, the 1st TSC continued to provide logistical and sustainment support to the train, advise and assist mission, and to the other units conducting retrograde operations. The 1st TSC had to conduct retrograde operations during an ongoing war at the same time they retrograde their organizational units - in effect, they painted themselves out of the room. "On the one hand we were supporting the ODB plan," Williams said. "And then on the other, we were retrograding ourselves - personnel and equipment. That's was a daunting task." Like ODB, of which it is a part, ORT was divided into four phases. Back in June 2013, when ODB kicked off, the 1st TSC had not yet developed their own operations order that would allow them to effectively carry out their portion of the plan. That lack of direction for executing ODB was quickly remedied, said Maj. Gen. Duane A. Gamble, who served as the deputy commanding general of the 1st TSC, from July 2013 until July 2014. "When I showed up in early July, USFOR-A's ODB order had already been issued," Gamble said. "And the first thing I asked was, 'where is the 1st TSC's operations order?' We didn't have one. The TSC spent much of Phase 1 writing our own order to support ODB with a synchronized effort not only from the TSC, but from all our strategic partners. That order is still in place today, and it complements and supports the ODB phasing." The ORT operations order, Gamble said, identified supported and supporting commands, identified the main efforts the 1st TSC should focus on, and received the 1st TSC, 15th Sustainment Brigade, 101st Sustainment Brigade, 43rd CENTCOM Material Recovery Element, 39th Movement Control Battalion, 401st Army Field Support Brigade, and others focused on the mission. "That really brought a unity of effort that was missing before the TSC writing its own operations order," Gamble said. Most of Phase 1 of ODB was focused on "getting everybody's attention," Gamble said. "It was about making sure that all commanders and supporting agencies in Afghanistan understood that the USFOR-A mission was changing; that we had to posture the force for Dec. 31, 2014, while still executing the mission," he said. "We were still about 18 months out from the end of OEF." Operation Reliable Tempo was the 1st TSC's formal effort to ensure the logistics enterprise, "team of teams," understood not only the new USFOR-A mission, but how the 1st TSC commander saw the orchestration of all support agencies in support of USFOR-A. Because one key task in posturing the force was to reduce troop strength, one of the first steps the 1st TSC took in Phase 1 of ORT was to eliminate the 311th Expeditionary Sustainment Command headquarters, which included about 270 people. Gamble said that the 1st TSC could no longer afford to have multiple general officer-level logistics commands in Afghanistan. "By Labor Day weekend 2013, we had taken our first giant step towards setting the 1st TSC up for 2014 - by eliminating one of the headquarters. That was one of the first steps towards the reduction of the footprint in Afghanistan," he said. Outside the headquarters of the 1st TSC, on the ground, the 101st Sustainment Brigade, out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, was busy executing its portion of the retrograde operation. Col. Charles R. Hamilton commanded the 101st Sustainment Brigade from June 2013 to February 2014 in Afghanistan. Hamilton said its role was sustainment of forces - providing sustenance and supplies to more than 100,000 personnel in theater when his unit arrived. The 101st also heavily supported the tactical retrograde mission, in support of ORT. The brigade also conducted security for the convoys that brought gear from outlying bases back to Bagram Air Base, where it could be accounted for in the redistribution property assistance team, or RPAT, yards and also assisted in closing installations. "There was no way I would have thought that we would have that many trucks on the road," he said. "I knew retrograde was going to be a huge part, but at that point, the ORT part had not developed. So the numbers were not there. I was prepared for retrograde - but not nearly the volume we got to." To safely move cargo in convoys from outlying forward operating bases to bases like Bagram Air Base and Kandahar Air Base, Hamilton said the 101st ran convoy escort teams. "What the CETs [convoy escort teams] do is, we move convoys from place to place," he said. "In mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles, we've got a gunner and four or five Soldiers providing security to the convoy as we move stuff." To prepare his own logistics team and units that attached to the 101st in theater for the rigors of participating in a CET, Hamilton trained them up in something he called the "Convoy Escort Team Academy." The CET academy amounts to three weeks of escort training followed by a written test. The academy, he said, provided confidence Soldiers needed to operate for the first time in theater. One key aspect of the CET academy, Hamilton said, was that Soldiers, who participated learned that their actions had an effect beyond the tactical level. Their actions, he said, could affect the strategic direction of operations in Afghanistan - and participation in the CET academy let Soldiers know of that heavy burden. "This being a critical, strategic time with all the elections going on, you had a whole bunch of dynamics above our head that were driving this thing as well," Hamilton said. The academy helped him train Soldiers to avoid what he called "strategic misfires." "That could happen when someone decides to get in front of one of my CETs that is on mission, and someone is injured," he said. "That's got a strategic impact all the way back to the White House, possibly. So our guys have to be disciplined enough to know when they were being baited, and to know when somebody was trying to create a strategic engagement." Hamilton said his team was responsible for 400 convoy escort team missions throughout 70,000 miles of "the most dangerous roads in the world," supported the closure of over 130 bases and forward operating bases - and was responsible for the movement of about 5,300 TEUs, or twenty-foot equivalent units of equipment to be retrograded. A TEU is a measure of cargo roughly equivalent to a 20-foot shipping container, such as what might be moved on a cargo ship. By September 2013, ORT had reached Phase 2. Maj. Gen. James M. Richardson, who served as the commander of U.S. Forces - Afghanistan from June 2012 to March 2014, said Phase 2 was the busiest time for the operation, when the most equipment was moved and the most bases were shut down. "Phase 2 began right after the summer," Richardson said. "So the fighting season was really drawing down. So Phase 2 was going to be a big push to get our equipment out. So there was a lot of coordination and synchronization with Army Materiel Command, with U.S. Transportation Command and with all our enablers - it was mind boggling." Richardson said that they had been used to moving around 400-500 pieces of rolling stock, or combat vehicles, out of theater each month. In Phase 2, that throughput increased substantially. "We were jumping up to 1,500 to 2,000 pieces a month," Richardson said. "There were challenges. With the great support of our enablers, we were able to overcome those challenges, and meet our objectives for the end of Phase 2." One of those challenges, a persistent problem, had been how to get cargo out of Afghanistan, Richardson said. Equipment had been leaving Afghanistan by air, or by ground through the Pakistan Ground Lines of Communication. "The majority of ground equipment went through PAKGLOC," Richardson said. "Many times the borders were closed and it would back our equipment up. Those challenges meant we had to work with U.S. Transportation Command to take that equipment we thought would originally go by ground, move it back to Bagram or Kandahar, and then fly it out." Another challenge dealt with metrics - measuring how the operation progressed. Gamble said that initially, the metrics used for tracking retrograde progress "probably weren't the best." One metric, used in Phase 1, regarded the turn-in of theater-provided equipment into RPAT yards, but not its departure from the yards. He said planners at ISAF Joint Command-level, the authors of ODB, had been "looking at it through the eyes of the tactical unit." In Phase 2, he said, that metric was split into two measurements: stuff coming into the RPAT yards, and stuff leaving the RPAT yards. Also in Phase 2, planners with the 1st TSC concerned themselves with what the theater should look like at the end of ORT, in preparation for ORS. It was expected that there would be somewhere between five and 15 U.S. military bases left in Afghanistan at the start of ORS. Additionally, the president had said there would be 9,800 "boots on the ground" to conduct that mission. "It's a very de-scoped U.S. presence," Gamble said. At the time, the 1st TSC was thinking of the future, to the very end of OEF and the start of ORS. "'What kind of retrograde and base deconstruction forces will we need?' The challenge in September 2013 was planning for the uncertain future that was going to come in about 14 months," Gamble said. "We intuitively knew that we had to plan for reduced forces, and force management levels well ahead of any political decisions that would be made." Another critical aspect of Phase 2 of ORT involved changing the way subordinate units conducted operations, and the way the bureaucracy that manages complex operations is conducted. Tactically, Gamble said, the 1st TSC had to change the procedures and processes that served Afghanistan very well for the last six to eight years of operation there. The bureaucracy - the processes and business rules and standard operating procedures that had served the Army well during the surge in Afghanistan and after in 2008 to 2011 - would no longer be good enough. Additionally, he said, the 401st Army Field Support Brigade - mostly a contracted capability - was not designed to conduct retrograde operations at the pace required by ODB. He likened adjusting the mission of the AFSB from primarily supporting and equipping counterinsurgency or counter-insurgency operations to primarily conducting retrograde operations at a pace never before achieved in Afghanistan, to turning around an aircraft carrier. In September 2013, the entire 1st TSC team, with the help of Army Sustainment Command and Army Material Command, or AMC, began the hard work to make just that happen. "When an aircraft carrier is cutting across the ocean going full bore - it's going so fast the flags on deck are cracking in the wind. It's an impressive display of American military power," he said. "But then you put it in a harbor, where it can't use its own engines. You have these worn out little tugboats bumping it in the hull to turn it around." Small, individually ineffective efforts -- like that of a single tugboat -- is what Gamble said the 1st TSC had been trying to do to get the AFSB "turned around" and transitioned from supplying a war fight, to deconstructing a war fight. "It took us from September to October to make that happen." Gamble said. A return to "full steam ahead" for the 401st AFSB, in terms of changing its mission, meant strengthening the transportation part of its contracted capabilities. "It wasn't until late in Phase 2 that I came to the realization that it's really the contractor - the contractor that does the transportation processing," he said. "We needed to modify the contract and put more capacity in there." He said it took all of Phase 2 - from September 2013 to January 2014 - to make that change happen, but the broader logistics enterprise rose to the task. AMC not only modified the contract, but also deployed military and civilian transportation experts to quickly get to the required retrograde velocity. Finally, Gamble said, a critical aspect of adjusting operations in Afghanistan to facilitate retrograde operations involved what is now called "enhanced options for cargo retrograde," and involves shortening the time it takes to get equipment out of theater. Gamble said the standard had been 60 days from equipment entering the RPAT yards to being put aboard an aircraft. But he said that time needed to be adjusted, and needed to be variable. "We were operating in a system that assumes you have 60 days from the time you turn in until the time you can ship," Gamble said. "But one day, we're not going to have 60 days. So that day is probably Nov. 1, 2014. So what are we going to do Nov. 1, 2014, when we don't have 60 days? What about after that? We needed a different process." Gamble said that the 1st TSC worked with U.S. Transportation Command and U.S. Central Command, letting them know there needed to be a change to the way "strategic transportation" happened out of theater. "We set out to practice that in November and December 2013," he said. "We set out to pretend that Dec. 31, 2013, was Dec. 31, 2014, and that we had a hard, deadline stop. It took some time to develop the agreement that a new, accelerated process was necessary, but by the end of Phase 2 of ORT, he said, they conducted an "accelerated retrograde proof-of-principle," setting up a "channel flight" to Kuwait. "The big coup, if you will, in Phase 2, the big phenomenal difference, not only the progress we made getting toward the end, but the procedural changes, the increase in the transportation capacity of the AFSB, is the changing of how we did strategic transportation," he said. "We set up Kuwait as what we call an 'equipment intermediate staging base,' so we could fly equipment out of Afghanistan, into Kuwait, and hand it off to the other AFSB that we have in Kuwait." Today, Gamble said, as a result of changes made to strategic transportation at the end of Phase 2 of ORT, equipment can move quickly to the 402nd Army Field Support Brigade in Kuwait, and that brigade does further processing there - including equipment cleaning to meet customs requirements in the United States - in an environment that does not have the same time restrictions that Afghanistan has. Phase 3 of ODB and ORT began in January, while Phase 4 of the operation began in July. Operations in both phases were spearheaded by Maj. Gen. Jeffrey N. Colt, USFOR-A deputy commanding general for sustainment, and Brig. Gen. Flem B. Walker Jr., commanding general, 3rd Sustainment Command (Expeditionary) and deputy commanding general for 1st TSC, Afghanistan. Reliable Tempo draws down 13-year combat footprint in Afghanistan [2015-04-09] AFGHANISTAN -- By Dec. 31, 2014, the United States transferred more than 300 military installations and $180 million in foreign excess personal property to the Afghan government. Concurrently, more than 30,000 pieces of rolling stock and 50,000 shipping containers of equipment were sent back to the United States, as well. Much of that work was accomplished under the direction of the Army's 1st Sustainment Command (Theater), or TSC, as part of its four-phase Operation Drum Beat, or ODB, and Operation Reliable Tempo, or ORT, from June 2012 - December 2014, which was designed to remove U.S. Service members, equipment and vehicles from Afghanistan by the presidentially-mandated, Dec. 31, 2014, deadline, thus transitioning the U.S. presence from the Operation Enduring Freedom, or OEF, combat mission to the Operation Resolute Support, or ORS, mission. The ORS mission is to train, advise and assist Afghan forces, while leaving security responsibilities to the Afghans. Under the guidance and orders of International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, Joint Commander Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson and U.S. Forces - Afghanistan, or USFOR-A, Commander Maj. Gen. Jeffrey N. Colt, who provided operational command over ODB, the 1st TSC and 3rd Sustainment Command (Expeditionary), or ESC, conducted ORT with a "team of teams," which was required to tackle this monumental mission; no one command or agency could do it alone. To accomplish the mission, the 1st TSC and USFOR-A depended upon strategic partnerships with Army Materiel Command; Defense Logistics Agency; U.S. Transportation Command; Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command; U.S. Central Command J-4; U.S. Central Command Deployment Distribution Operations Center; Army G-4; assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology; and others. "Our relationship with these strategic partners was the key to success," said Maj. Gen. Darrell K. Williams, commander, 1st TSC. "This is the ultimate team sport." "The 1st TSC's operational command post, located in Kuwait, and its main command post, located on Fort Bragg, N.C., provided tremendous reach capability fostering success in personnel and equipment management that supported the retrograde of equipment from Afghanistan," Williams said. Operating forward in Afghanistan, from April to December 2014, to conduct the ORT Phase 3 and 4 retrograde mission for the 1st TSC, was the 3rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command, or ESC, commanded by Brig. Gen. Flem B. Walker Jr. The 3rd ESC accomplished, what is seen as arguably the largest and most demanding retrograde of equipment and personnel in the Army's modern era. This is due to the challenging geographical location of Afghanistan and the aggressive timeline to retrograde equipment out of the country by the end of 2014. The 3rd ESC was involved in Ph.D.-level logistics, using lessons learned from Iraq to get the mission accomplished. Afghanistan is a landlocked country. To retrograde equipment, it was necessary to use every possible transportation node, while placing an emphasis on the stewardship of resources and creating efficiencies. "Our mission in Afghanistan was to be the single-sustainment mission command for the entire combined joint operations area," Walker said. "In concert with our doctrinal mission to serve as a forward operational command post for a theater sustainment command, we were able to serve that role operating under the 1st TSC, whose focus is on the entire [U.S. Central Command Area of Responsibility]." "Sustainment is a team sport, and it was an entire enterprise effort that resulted in our strategic and operational successes over this last year," he said. Walker said that during the retrograde from Afghanistan, the 3rd ESC's mission involved five major lines of effort: daily sustainment operations, theater provided equipment, or TPE, retrograde, materiel reduction, support to base closure/transfer, and preserving the first team. More retrograde-specific lines of effort included the collection and sending home of TPE back to the United States, which includes "rolling stock," or combat vehicles. "We executed that through the 401st Army Field Support Brigade, out of Army Sustainment Command, or ASC. TPE accountability and retrograde have been top priority missions for them and we simply could not have been as successful without their expertise." The 3rd ESC also focused on materiel reduction, which included the sorting, processing and shipment of virtually any type of standard and non-standard type of equipment imaginable that was either identified for disposal through Defense Logistics Agency-direct support or put back into the Army's inventory for future use. The 3rd ESC supervised base closures and transfer of installations. "We've been very successful in doing that through our USCENTCOM [U.S. Central Command] Materiel Recovery Element, or CMRE, Brigade, which consisted primarily of a sustainment brigade headquarters, two engineer battalions and a combat sustainment support battalion," Walker said. "The CMRE was developed based on many lessons learned from the Iraq retrograde operation and proved to be our biggest "game-changer" in terms of our success in expeditious, standardized base deconstruction efforts." The 3rd ESC also focused on preserving the 1st Team. "We practice on a daily basis the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program with all of our down-trace units," Walker said. "Engaged leadership, with emphasis on the five pillars of fitness [emotional, social, physical, spiritual, family], enabled our sustainers to remain focused and resilient throughout the deployment." TRANSFER OF BASES At one point, there were some 300 military installations that ranged in size from installations including Kandahar Airfield, also known as KAF, or Bagram Airfield, also known as BAF - two of the largest - down to "installations" that amounted to maybe just one building. The U.S. footprint included installation "clusters," where multiple smaller facilities, each with their own security, sat in close proximity to one another that they were counted as one installation. By the start of ORS, the U.S. footprint had to be reduced to less than 30 installations. Making that happen meant transferring existing installations to the Afghans. The United States worked with Afghan commanders to determine what they wanted and could sustain on their own. These installations were "de-scoped" to such a degree the Afghans could take care of them on their own. Included among the responsibilities of base closure was the removal of personnel, equipment, rolling stock and non-rolling-stock equipment, as well as either complete or partial removal of facilities before the handover to the Afghans. Lt. Col. Doug Kadetz, 3rd ESC, support operations branch at BAF, explained that situation regarding one installation case, where there had been a land dispute over what would happen to the facility once the United States handed it back to the Afghans. Cases like this could result in installations being stripped to nothing more than the concrete slabs that buildings once sat on, he said. "We had to fully reduce Forward Operating Base Walton down to basically hard stands and level the entire forward operating base," he said." That means leveling every building, every piece of infrastructure, every re-locatable Connex, t-wall and concrete barrier. That took a significant amount of effort." "Our guidance was that anything that was a sustainable structure, concrete buildings or maintenance structures for instance, be maintained or left for transition to the Afghan National Security Forces for their use," Kadetz said. Lt. Col. Mark Ogburn, commander of the 608th Construction Management Team, managed two engineer battalions in Afghanistan that conducted much of the base closure. He said his team did the coordination and synchronization of those assets throughout the Combined Joint Operations Afghanistan to determine what was needed by the customers to start de-scoping a facility. He described the work as taking the timeline for building up a base and flipping it on its head. "We manage construction. You start from zero, you pour the foundation, and you end with the roof," he said. "Then you paint everything and move in. Now we are doing that in reverse. We took our schedule and flipped it upside down and did it in reverse. It was still the same ... we just had to learn to untie our shoes instead of tie our shoes." For installations that would not be completely stripped, such as at Forward Operating Base Walton, Ogburn's team made sure the installations to be transferred met the needs of the Afghans. "What we're doing is setting up Afghans for success," he said. MATERIEL REDUCTION During the Phase 3 and Phase 4 portions of ORT, the 1st TSC set goals for itself to move a significant amount of both equipment and vehicles out of theater. The Phase 3 goal was to move more than 3,374 combat vehicles out of country. For Phase 4, that goal was 3,453. Overall, during ORT, the 1st TSC ensured that more than 14,000 combat vehicles were shipped out of the country. Similar goals existed for non-rolling stock, which could be anything from communications gear to mine-detection equipment. Phase 3 saw a goal of 240 20-foot-equivalent units of equipment slated to leave the country, while the goal in Phase 4 was to ship 232 TEU's of equipment. Significantly larger numbers of combat vehicles and non-rolling stock left Afghanistan before the start of ORT. And while some materiel was prepared to go home, much more was either sold in theater to the Afghans, or was destroyed in theater and the scrap sold off. Such equipment would have cost more to send home than it would cost to buy new back in the states, said 1st Lt. Petar Mostarac, 133rd Quartermaster Company, at the KAF retrosort yard. "With an old keyboard we've been using for 10 years, it doesn't make sense to ship that back home," Mostarac said. "It costs $20,000 per container to ship. It's better off buying it from Staples. Most of these items here are going to DLA [Defense Logistics Agency] to get destroyed. But we are capturing high-dollar items like vehicles and communications equipment." At Mostarac's retrosort yard at KAF, Soldiers received containers of equipment from the field, sometimes as many as 500 20-foot-equivalent units a month, that needed to be sorted through to determine its value and whether to send it back home or not. "We had some play," Mostarac said in making a decision. "But our biggest assistance came from the Standard Army Retail Supply System [SARSS]." Mostarac said the SARSS helped them determine the value of an item, using its National Stock Number. How much the Army needed an item back in the supply system also played a role in the decision. The partnerships with Army Materiel Command and the different lifecycle management commands that fall under them, such as Communications and Electronics Command, and Aviation and Missile Command and Tank Automotive Command, helped with the retrosort operation, Mostarac said. He said subject-matter experts from these components worked with the Soldiers at the yard to identify and sort items and look for high-value items. "You might see a toaster-sized item come through here that's worth $300,000," Mostarac said. "It's critical we capture those items." Mostarac's retrosort yard was not the only one in Afghanistan. There was another at BAF as well. In addition, teams went to outlying installations as they were closing, to capture materiels and determine if those materials were even worth sending to the larger retrosort yards for further processing. "The forward retrograde elements would pull out the scrap materiel and trash first, rather than send it back here and pay for the shipping," Mostarac said. "If it was scrap metal or a mattress, we could just as easily sell ... for 10 cents a pound or something like that, and get rid of that, and pull out the bulk stuff. And what they sent back here is the high-dollar stuff." Making such decisions at the origin means the materiel doesn't have to be convoyed back -- putting Soldiers' lives at risk, said Lt. Col. Daniel Fresh, support operations officer, 45th Sustainment Brigade, CMRE. "That materiel was either reduced or given to Defense Logistics Agency - Disposition Services, or DLA-DS, to be redistributed or scrapped out, forward," Fresh said. "The Soldiers didn't have to drive it back. About 90 percent of all materiel that was out forward, was not worth the effort to bring it back. It saved Soldier's lives, it saved money. We reduced it all forward." Defense Logistics Agency - Disposition Services operated a yard at BAF, where equipment and gear that would not be sent home or could not be sold to the Afghans or others were properly disposed of in theater. In many cases that means a large industrial shredder. In other cases, it meant something was dismantled with a torch by contractors. "All of the materiel came to our receiving area and they determined the de-mil code of the item, and that determined what happened to that property," said Kathy Wigginton, DLA-DS, BAF. "If it had to be totally destroyed or mutilated, and it's small enough to fit through the shredder, and too small to be cut up with the torch, then it comes here to be destroyed in the shredder." "We are actually the last stop for all government-owned property. Everything would come here that isn't retrograded back to the U.S.," Wigginton said. "It's our job to make sure the proper disposal is taken for that property, whether it is sold as a usable item, or if it has commercial value. If it is a military offensive or defensive piece of equipment, we totally destroy it so that it can't be used against us." A big part of the "responsible retrograde" mission in Afghanistan is ensuring that materiel that does not go home cannot be used against U.S. allies in theater. "Because of what the items are, they have trade-security control regulations, or commerce-control regulations," Wigginton said. "Those items had to be destroyed or mutilated so they could not be used for their intended purposes. We didn't want them to get into the hands of unfriendly nations." Other equipment, such as gear from Mostarac's retrosort yard, did go home, however, to be reinserted into the Army's inventory for training or the next war, it had to be accounted for and processed. Unit equipment turned in was received by 401st Army Field Support Brigade, or AFSB, for accountability and processing. Deedy Neal served with the 401st AFSB in Afghanistan as a wholesale responsible officer at the Bagram Redistribution Property Accountability Team yard. Neal's work in Afghanistan had her in-processing equipment from unit turn-ins, and accounting for that equipment. The same unit prepares the gear for shipment home to the United States. "The equipment that was brought in was handled carefully," Neal said. "It was cleaned off, brushed off, blown off, especially with the communications stuff. It was blown off with an air compressor then bubble-wrapped and put in a kicker box. That way it was not knocking together. So nothing got broken going back to the sources of repair." "The reason it's important for all the equipment to be accounted for is because it saved the taxpayers money," she said. "It put the equipment back into the system so we can have equipment if we need to go to war again. It's important we get the equipment back to the source of repair in a timely manner, so it can be ready for the next situation that occurs." The equipment going through the yard was cleaned to ensure it passed customs and agricultural inspections when it arrived in port back in the United States. Sgt. Braden Chalmers, supply sergeant, Delta Company, 1st of the 502nd, 2nd BCT, 101st Airborne Division, had an array of gear to turn in to Neal's Redistribution Property Accountability Team, RPAT yard in August 2014, including electronic countermeasure systems, countermeasure backpacks and mine detection equipment. He said his unit had closed down Torkham Fire Base, Afghanistan. "We signed for all the equipment there, packed it up, brought it to Jalalabad Airfield, when we shut down Torkham," he said. "And since the RPAT left JAF, we had to pack it up and bring it here." Chalmers said he took care of both his own organizational equipment that needed to go back to his unit in the United States, as well as the theater-provided equipment that his unit used while on their deployment. "To see the property book shrinking as we make trips to BAF - it feels good," he said. "A lot of hard work has been put in here in this country, and we're finally getting out. And that feels good too." GETTING STUFF HOME Combat vehicles, equipment taken from installations that were transferred and theater-provided equipment that units have turned in, all had to get home. During Phase 1 and Phase 2 of ORT, equipment might have gotten out of theater via ground transportation via the Pakistan Ground Lines of Communication or later the Northern Distribution Network. But toward the end of Phase 2, said Brig. Gen. Duane A. Gamble, deputy commanding general, 1st TSC, a new way was tried. Working with U.S. Transportation Command and U.S. Central Command, the command did an "accelerated retrograde proof-of-principle," where a "channel flight" was set up between Kuwait and Afghanistan. The channel flight is a rotation of aircraft would move between Afghanistan and Kuwait, and then equipment could be sorted and cleaned in Kuwait rather than in Afghanistan. Equipment could also be shipped by surface transportation back to the United States from Kuwaiti ports. "We set up Kuwait as what we call an equipment intermediate staging base, so we could fly it out of Afghanistan and into Kuwait, then hand it off to the other AFSB that we have in Kuwait - the 402nd AFSB -- instead of doing all the processing through the 401st AFSB in Afghanistan; we called it throughput," Gamble said. "We jumped over the 401st and turned it into the 402nd in Kuwait using a channel flight." "The most reliable line of communication or route from Afghanistan was the ALOC to Kuwait where elements of 402d AFSB helped download, obtain disposition instructions and prepare equipment for onward movement back to the U.S.," said Williams. During Phase 3 and Phase 4 of ORT, the 402nd AFSB in Kuwait performed "break bulk" operations there on gear that was coming into country from Afghanistan via channel flights, said Lt. Col. Dan Grundvig, brigade operations officer for 401st AFSB, BAF. In theater, he said, there might not have been enough materiel to fill a box to go to just one place back in the United States. "They would hold it there till it was full, so that stuff would sit here longer," Grundvig said. Now, Grundvig said, those same boxes could be filled immediately, with anything that needed to go home, regardless of where the final destination would be. "This helped us in several areas," Grundvig said. "One, we could do the break bulk - put things in a box and they separate it in Kuwait where they have more time and space and more manpower. And with rolling stock, it didn't have to be customs cleaned like when we sent it to other places. It took about 20 hours to do that. With Kuwait, we could wash it before it goes - but it got the full customs wash in Kuwait." "Another method of moving equipment out of Kuwait is via sealift. The 595th Transportation Brigade [Surface Deployment & Distribution Command], stationed in Kuwait assisted in the retrograde effort through scheduling transportation for movement of rolling stock [wheeled vehicles] and non-rolling stock [trailers] for movement by commercial sealift," Williams said. The new method of transportation, combined with shipment across the Northern Distribution Network, is how the United States got most of the gear out of Afghanistan during the final two phases of the drawdown. Air Force Maj. Christopher Carmichael, commander of 455th Expeditionary Aerial Port Squadron, and his team at BAF, played a huge role in airlifting cargo out of Afghanistan to Kuwait. He and his team moved more than 84,000 tons of cargo between January and August 2014, as well as 134,000 passengers. "We were the busiest aerial port in the Department of Defense," he said. He said while the number of aircraft coming into BAF was based on need, his team could work seven aircraft at a time on the ground - what he called the "maximum on ground," or MOG. "We could work seven planes simultaneously," he said. "Their ground time is roughly two hours and 15 minutes. Then the next planes come in." While Carmichael said that was the capacity of the aerial port squadron, he admitted they hadn't seen that kind of throughput. "That's a surge, a stretch. We had never worked that simultaneously all day, because the demand signal was not that great," he said. The biggest challenge to moving things, Carmichael said, was the heat. "When it's so hot, the fuel expands and they could not take as much fuel on the aircraft. So because they were not taking as much fuel, they could not take as much cargo," he said. Still, Carmichael said his team could clear a cache of 325 MRAP all-terrain vehicles in just 72 hours, about 625 tons of cargo a day, and about 1,300 passengers each day. "Our aerial port squadron played into the ORT mission by getting the majority of equipment and all the military passengers out of theater. Considering we were landlocked here in Afghanistan, the majority of cargo went out by air," Carmichael said. Lt. Col. Jamey Haukap, support operations mobility branch chief for 3rd ESC, said 2,400 pieces of rolling stock were left in country at the conclusion of ORT, which will play a part in ORS. Eventually, those will be retrograded, and divested, he said. As ORT and ODB concluded and ORS continues to support the Afghan Army, the 1st TSC and USFOR-A along with its strategic partners continue to support the warfighter providing logistical support through sustenance, descoping of military facilities, and retrograde operations. "I applaud the efforts of our "team of teams" in Afghanistan, Kuwait, Fort Bragg and around the world. The work and effort put forth by our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, DoD civilians and contractors who operated under the mission command of the 1st TSC is commendable and we could not have done it without their professionalism and dedication," Williams said. "I also thank our strategic partners the Army Materiel Command, Defense Logistics Agency, U.S. Transportation Command, Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command, USCENTCOM J-4, USCENTCOM Deployment Distribution Operations Center, Army G-4, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology and others. "Our relationship with these strategic partners was the key to success," said Maj. Gen. Darrell Williams, commander, 1st TSC. Army plans intelligence system to be lighter weight, easier to use [2015-04-15] WASHINGTON -- Future versions of the Distributed Common Ground System - Army, or DCGS-A, will be less complex and easier to use, Army leaders told lawmakers. The DCGS-A system is an intelligence collection, processing, and dissemination tool that Army leaders have acknowledged is "complex" but "complete." They say coming iterations of the tool will address the issue of complexity and will make the system easier for Soldiers to use. "'We have acknowledged that the complexity associated with the buttonology ... bringing that information together ... has been difficult," said Lt. Gen. Michael E. Williamson, military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology. "So we have tried to invest a lot of time, and we have also engaged with over 150 vendors through a series of industry days, to find out how we can improve the existing system." During a hearing on Army modernization, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, subcommittee on Airland, April 14, Williamson told lawmakers that challenges with DCGS-A are "being addressed in subsequent increments of the DCGS program." The general also said that during upcoming evaluations of the system in May, "I think you will see a completely different perception of how that tool is provided." JOINT LIGHT TACTICAL VEHICLE The Army plans to purchase 49,099 Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, or JLTV, and expects that initial operating capability on the vehicle will come in fiscal year 2018. The JLTV provides to the Army a better balance of payload, performance and protection than did the Humvee. Maj. Gen. Gary H. Cheek, assistant G-3/5/7, told senators the Army's priority for fielding the JLTV is focused on combat arms formations first. For echelons above brigade, he said, there will be some JLTV, but there will also likely be residual Humvees in those elements as well. For "tactical battalions - infantry, armor, artillery - you are going to see JLTVs there," Cheek said. "Above brigade, you are going to see some mix of those." Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Ierardi, Army G-8, also said fielding for the JLTV will be across the total force. "I believe it will be a total force issue plan, from the outset, based on the operational requirements the Army has." AVIATION RESTRUCTURE INITIATIVE Ierardi also told lawmakers that the Army's Aviation Restructure Initiative, or ARI, will enable the Army to achieve much of the aviation modernization it needs. He said the initiative will allow the Army to "enhance readiness" and "modernize." One aspect of the ARI, he said, is the divestiture of Kiowa Warrior aircraft - and all other OH-58 aircraft - that he said was "reaching its shelf life." Dollars saved from divesting that aircraft will be invested in other programs, such as the Improved Turbine Engine Program and continued improvements to the AH-64 Apache aircraft. It is expected that all OH-58 helicopters will be gone from the Army fleet by 2018. Another aspect of ARI is to have AH-64E Apache aircraft, paired with the Shadow unmanned aerial vehicle, fill the armed reconnaissance role that was performed by the OH-58 Kiowa helicopter. Ierardi said the Army plans to move Apache aircraft from the National Guard to the active component, and to also provide UH-60 Black Hawk aircraft as well as UH-72 Lakota aircraft to the National Guard. The general also said that the TH-67 Creek, a training aircraft, would also be replaced by the Lakota. RDECOM program puts Army scientists shoulder-to-shoulder with Soldiers [2015-04-21] WASHINGTON -- For 30 years now, the Army has embedded scientists and technology experts in the field - to ensure the exchange of new technology and the feedback it yields - moves efficiently between the researchers who develop it and the Soldiers who use it. Since the summer of 1985, Army science and technology advisors, part of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, or RDECOM, have provided for their assigned commands easy access to the technologies and bright minds that are available within Army research, development and engineering centers. As a result, problems that can be solved with technology can be solved more quickly, and commanders can instead concentrate on their mission. "They are senior engineers and scientists that RDECOM embeds ... to provide reach-back to the Army enterprise, in terms of research and development," said James Gibson, director of the Field Assistance in Science and Technology Directorate at RDECOM, of the command's science and technology, or S&T, advisors. "If the combatant command has an operational issue that they think might have a technological solution, then the science advisor would engage on that." Gibson said that the Army has always provided similar reach-back for fielded programs or programs of record. But the S&T advisor program increased that capability. "What was absent was a reach-back to the science and technology community," Gibson said. "Our senior commanders recognized that and asked Army Materiel Command what they could do to position people forward to assist on those issues." When it stood up, the S&T advisor program initially covered just South Korea and Germany, Gibson said. Today the program has expanded to provide advisors to the senior staff at combat training centers, major commands, combatant commands, and corps commands. In 2003, RDECOM even started provided specialized teams of S&T advisors to the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters. The advisors, mostly senior scientists, physicists, computer scientists and engineers, are already RDECOM employees. As part of the S&T advisor program, they are assigned for two-to-three year advisor roles. Gibson said the Army now has about 25 S&T advisors deployed worldwide, half officer and half senior Army civilian. ORIENTATION AND REACH-BACK TRAINING While S&T advisors are already experts in some scientific field, they must be prepared to provide to commanders input and advice on the wide array of areas of research and capability offered by RDECOM. To prepare the advisors for their role, RDECOM puts them through a three-week orientation and reach-back training program, ORBT. Two iterations of the course happen each year. "Each one of them comes to us with some level of specialty in their background," Gibson said. "What we are trying to do over this three-week program is broaden their horizons so they become exposed to the total enterprise of RDECOM. Part of this training is to position them to be somewhat conversant in other fields they may not be familiar with." The five new S&T advisors undergoing the most recent iteration of ORBT spent the last day of their first week of training, April 17, at the Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate, or NVESD, on Fort Belvoir, Virginia. There, students were exposed to the variety of night-vision equipment technology within the RDECOM domain. By the end of the ORBT, the five new S&T advisors will have visited and learned about RDECOM capabilities in Huntsville, Alabama; Natick, Massachusetts; Rockaway, New Jersey; and Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. TRANSLATOR After spending time learning about night vision goggles at the NVESD facility on Fort Belvoir, Lt. Col. Marc Meeker, a science and technology advisor assigned in South Korea for two months now already, explained how in his new role he serves as a kind of translator between the engineers and researchers of RDECOM and the Soldiers in the command he advises - U.S. Forces Korea. "I'm somebody who speaks the language of engineers and who speaks the language of Soldiers and helps to get needs and requirements from the Soldier back to the engineers," Meeker said. "I can also help to get neat ideas and solutions to these problems back down to the Soldier as fast as possible. A lot of times the Soldiers and engineers don't necessarily speak the same language." Meeker said that while conflict has now drawn down in Iraq and Afghanistan, there still hasn't been a formal peace declared between South Korea and North Korea. Because of the standing conflict, Soldiers stationed there must always be ready - and that means having the best technology available. Meeker said as an S&T advisor he provides a link between those Soldiers, the technology they need, and the technology they haven't even thought about yet. "There is always a need for technology in [Korea]," Meeker said. "Bringing the new technology out there, even prototypes to have them tested, is what I intend to do. I am very much looking forward to getting some of this technology into the hands of Soldiers and working though this ORBT program to learn about the portfolio of products that the RDECs have under RDECOM." Meeker said mastering the array of RDECOM capability is important "so when Soldiers tell you they have a certain problem set, you know what is available out there or you know who to reach back to in order to get information about what the latest and greatest is." With a background in mechanical engineering, and having served as both an Army ordnance officer and within the acquisition community, Meeker said that his Army career has led him to his role as an S&T advisor. "From the ordnance arena, I was on the receiving end of a lot of the neat technologies that got pushed out to the field," he said. "Then when I worked [for] the program manager for crew-served weapons as the sniper assistant program manager, I got to help push a lot of those systems out and help with the fielding of the M110 sniper rifle - the same in program manager-maneuver ammunition's systems, when I was working in medium caliber. Now, of course, I am looking at the newest technologies that we are doing research and development on. I am trying to get prototypes out into the field. They get moved to the program management offices for development if the technology is good." COLD IN ALASKA IS NOT SIMULATED Andrew M. Margules, a science and technology advisor, assigned to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, is participating in the ORBT alongside Meeker. Margules has been an S&T advisor in Alaska for six months now already. Margules said a goal of his tenure, as an S&T advisor to U.S. Army Alaska, or USARAK, is to increase the collaboration between the command and the Army's research and development community. He said there are advantages to working with Soldiers stationed in Alaska. "I think a lot of times [the RDECs] reach out to CONUS units because they are easier or closer," he said. "But I think USARAK and other U.S. Pacific Command units have unique opportunities to evaluate equipment in non-traditional environments - though relative environments and real environments. It's not a simulated experiment, where we are going to bring something into a cold chamber and test it out. We can actually bring it to the Arctic and test it outside and get that good data for you." Margules said he likes working in RDECOM labs, but that being out in the field among Soldiers has been a new experience for him that he has enjoyed. "I actually go out in the field with these guys ... and actually participate with them in what I can," Margules said. "In February we were doing some exercises through the FAST office - we were bringing up some kit to test out. We were walking through the woods with the Soldiers. We were in the squad, with them, walking. And every time they had a complaint - they'd ask 'where's the science guy?' And I was running up in my snow shoes right behind the guys asking what's going on. 'Show me the actual problem you're having right now,' I'd say. That they know I'm there - it's important to me. And it's important that they know I take their concern back with me." As an S&T advisor for RDECOM stationed in Alaska, Margules expects to work with not just senior leaders but with those junior Soldiers as well. And in fulfillment of his role as an ambassador for RDECOM to units around the world, he hopes to make their operations easier by ensuring the equipment and technology they use is the best possible. He said he does that best standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Soldiers. "Show me how you are actually using this equipment," he said. "Maybe I'll see something that isn't working right that you didn't pick up on. And you'll maybe see something not working right that I didn't know about. And together we'll take those two pieces and make it even better, through RDECOM." iSoldier looks at disaster aid, Army's best sappers [2015-05-01] WASHINGTON -- Earthquake response in Nepal, riot control in Baltimore, and top-of-the-line Soldiers giving their all at the 2015 Best Sapper Competition are all highlighted in the May 1 edition of iSoldier. The two-minute iSoldier program is a weekly, Internet-based newscast produced by Army Broadcasting at Defense Media Activity. This edition of iSoldier kicks off in Baltimore, Maryland. There, some 2,000 members of the state's National Guard responded to the call of their governor to help the Maryland State Police and Baltimore City Police bring peace to the city. The adjutant general of Maryland, Lt. Gen. Linda Singh, tells iSoldier that in Baltimore, the Guard is taking operational cues from the state and city police. Singh was highlighted in the March 21 edition of iSoldier as being the first African-American and first woman to serve as adjutant general of the Maryland National Guard. The latest iSoldier also touches on the most recent humanitarian and natural disaster in Asia. A magnitude-7.8 earthquake struck Nepal, April 25. At the time, 28 Green Berets were in the country conducting training. Those Soldiers have not left Nepal in the wake of the disaster there - instead, they have stayed behind to participate in relief operations Finally, iSoldier highlights the cream of the crop among the Army's elite combat engineers, who competed for the title of 2015 Best Sapper on Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, April 21-23. Army broadcaster Sgt. 1st Class Brian G. Rhodes was on scene at the Best Sapper competition to document the event for iSoldier. He said he was blown away by the intensity of the event. "I didn't know much about the competition at all before I went, and I kind of envisioned they would do a few events, then call it a day and calculate scores," Rhodes said. "But these guys would finish an event at 1 a.m. - take an hour and a half for coffee or a nap - then go on a 20-mile ruck march at 3 a.m. This was consistent throughout the competition." Rhodes said he came away from the Best Sapper competition with still images, video clips, interviews, and a greater respect for what it is Army combat engineers do. "I can't even imagine trying to do what they do. These guys are a step above, if not two. I have a lot of respect for these guys," Rhodes said. Non-commissioned officers advise care for key assignments [2015-05-04] WASHINGTON -- The Army must be more selective and careful when choosing Soldiers to serve in key positions, such as recruiters or drill sergeants, said non-commissioned officers, or NCOs, at the first-ever NCO Solarium. Master Sgt. Danny Ibarra, 21st Theater Sustainment Command (Operations and Support), said the Army needs to do a better job of identifying and selecting Soldiers for key assignments. He said the Army has been embarrassed by recruiters having improper relationships with recruits, and even by an enlisted coordinator of a Sexual Harassment and Assault Response and Prevention program on Fort Hood, Texas, who was charged with sexual misconduct. "This isn't the first time these kinds of things have happened with these personnel," Ibarra said. "This was the first time they were caught. There may be others out there doing the same thing. How do we mitigate the problem of choosing the wrong people for serving in these assignments? We need to screen them better." Ibarra was the spokesperson for the "talent management" group during the 2015 NCO Solarium on Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. During the Solarium, about 80 NCOs from throughout the Army were tasked to come up with solutions to problems involving education, Army culture, training, mission command, physical fitness, and Army vision and branding. Those Soldiers were then asked to brief the sergeant major of the Army on their findings. Ibarra said there is not a standardized selection process for such key positions, and said that there needs to be involvement of the command sergeants major, or CSMs, and an interview process for such personnel such as what is done for first sergeants. "It may help us choose the best personnel for these positions," he said. "Having CSMs vet and interview these personnel could help stop putting the wrong people in these assignments." Ibarra's team has also recommended expansion of the Multi-Source Assessment and Feedback 360 program, "requiring all sergeants first class to participate in the program." He said if that program is expanded, it could also help CSMs conducting interviews for those key assignments, so those senior enlisted leaders could "see how junior Soldiers feel about these potential selectees." Sgt. 1st Class Bryant D. MacFarlane, 1/ARB (11D), also with the talent management group, said that his group also hoped the Army could do a better job of advertising career broadening assignments, assignments that he said affect the competitiveness of the enlisted force, and also prepare NCOs to be able to better bring important skills to their organization's leadership teams. MacFarlane said there is not enough knowledge throughout the Army about the availability of such assignments, and asked that there be an effort to better publicize those assignments. "We ask that somehow these sorts of assignments be broadcast, like an ask-like database, where I can self-nominate for these positions," he said. Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey said that the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, also known as TRADOC, is working to better define what a broadening assignment is. He said Soldiers all have different interpretations. He said both experience and assignments can be broadening. He also said there are not a lot of those types of assignments available. An area of confusion, Dailey said, is the difference between what the Army might consider career broadening for Soldiers - jobs such as drill sergeant, recruiter, or Advanced Individual Training platoon sergeant - and what Soldiers might mean when they consider career-broadening assignments, such as fellowships outside the Army, with industry. Dailey said Soldiers are trained "first and foremost primarily to be able to accomplish their wartime mission on the battlefield." He said broadening assignments must serve both the Army and the Soldier. One career-broadening opportunity Dailey highlighted was the opportunity to participate in a fellowship on Capitol Hill. He said now the Army is putting sergeant majors into those positions. But Dailey said he believes that younger Soldiers could do the job, and both the Army and the Soldier would then be able to benefit from having them assigned to such fellowships. He said for older Soldiers, they are too late in their career for the Army to benefit. "If we are going to capitalize on these opportunities, we have to first access what is our intent for broadening," he said. "Why are we doing it?" Another opportunity, Dailey said, might be for a maintenance Soldier to work with a defense contractor that builds combat vehicles. But he said the Army must first determine what it is that both the Soldier and the Army get out of such an assignment, and what the Army should expect to get out of having a Soldier involved in such a non-traditional assignment. "TRADOC is working on that now," he said. Soldiers take tough stance on physical fitness test failures [2015-05-05] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers at the first-ever NCO Solarium said they felt the Army has gone soft on those who have failed their Army Physical Fitness Tests, or APFT, too many times - and called for more discipline in enforcing standards. Sgt. 1st Class Jason Ruiz, Headquarters Services Company, U.S. Army North, said allowing Soldiers, who have repeatedly failed their APFT to stay in the Army is inconsistent with the idea that physical fitness is important. "When Soldiers end up being retained, we feel it is a detriment to the unit and other units, who see that Soldier being retained," Ruiz said. "One of our recommendations is to remove the commander's ability to decline a separation packet for APFT failures." Ruiz served as the spokesperson for the physical fitness group during the 2015 NCO Solarium on Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. During the Solarium, about 80 NCOs, from throughout the Army, were tasked to come up with solutions to problems involving education, Army culture, training, mission command, physical fitness, and Army vision and branding. Those Soldiers were then asked to brief the sergeant major of the Army on their findings. 1st Sgt. Robert V. Craft Jr., 1-16 Infantry, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, was also part of the physical fitness group. He speculated that the Army was accepting poor performers on the physical fitness test as a way to retain manpower numbers - something he felt was a bad idea. "Over the last decade or so ... we have begun to accept substandard performance in order to make numbers for missions," he said. "By retaining those Soldiers, it basically leads to a consensus ... that PT [physical training] isn't important, that being in shape isn't important." The same rigorous accountability that is applied to those within the Army Body Composition Program, ought to also be applied to those who fail the Army APFT, Craft said. AFPT failures could force a separation after a second time, or after a Soldier has failed within a certain number of years, for instance. There should also be stricter Army physical fitness standards for those in leader positions, such as platoon sergeant, first sergeant or commander, Craft said. There should be stricter standards for those going off to any of the Army's professional military education, or PME, schools. "Then we are getting the best to go to school," he said. Craft said his time as a first sergeant is limited - and often heavily managed. He said he ends up spending an inordinate amount of time working with Soldiers, who have failed too many times to meet Army standards. Above his head, he said, commanders continue to file the paperwork and make the exceptions to keep those Soldiers in the unit - something he said is not good for the Army. "I can't fix a Soldier if the Soldier has quit," Craft said. "If the Soldier no longer has the desire, then get rid of him. I can do more with less [Soldiers], if I no longer have to worry about the bottom 10 percent." Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey told those NCOs at the Solarium to not refrain from sending less-than-stellar PT performers to Army PME schools. He said at an Army PME school, a Soldier cannot hide from the repercussions of failing to meet standards. "Send them to school," he said. "We'll take care of them. There should no longer be the idea that if they no longer make PT, we'll hold them back. Send them. They go to school. We'll grade them. We'll help you take care of those people. Policy is going to drive that. When you fail, when you get that referred report in your file, you're going to be eligible for QMP [Qualitative Management Program] - as you should." The QMP is a program that deals with substandard performing Soldiers, and can remove them from service. Dailey said Soldiers must meet the standards of being a Soldier the entire time they are in the Army, and there is no reprieve from the standards. "There is no pause button on being a Soldier," he said. "So nowhere in the regulations does it say two or three times you are allowed to be fat. It says you have to be skinny all the time. You should be graded from the time you enter the Army until the time you leave. Your peers are graded the same way. Don't hold them back from school anymore. Send them. We can help with that." Sgt. 1st Class Erin L. Hicks, U.S. Army Dental Activity, Fort Carson, Colorado, said her group was calling for a "supreme authority" on installations when it comes to things like nutrition and physical fitness. Right now, she said, there is no such central authority, and the network of individuals who provide that information and guidance is "fragmented." She pointed out that 68M Soldiers, nutritional specialists, are serving as cooks in military dining facilities. She said that flies in the face of the modern understanding of a nutritional specialist, which is somebody who can provide counseling and education regarding nutrition. She also said the master fitness trainer course is unit-funded, coming out of discretionary funds. With fiscal constraints, she said, "not all commanders will be able to send NCOs to that critical course, bring them back and use them in their brigade, battalion, etc." With skills like fitness training and nutritional expertise dispersed, and not guaranteed, she suggested the Army create a new position in the Army, an enlisted expert on fitness, sleep and nutrition, that can be the central go-to Soldier for what the Army is calling its Performance Triad. "Why can't we bring all that together, like I would as a civilian and seek a personal trainer, who will provide me with nutrition education, physical training, recovery training," she asked. "Why can't we make that into an MOS [military occupational specialty], bring it all together and put it at brigade level?" She said such a position would not eliminate the need for Army master fitness trainers, but would instead serve as the lead for that program. Hicks suggested the 68M be transitioned from MFT/nutritionist to be the supreme authority on installations about fitness, nutrition and sleep. She said creation of such a position, which is Army-funded, not unit-funded, will be a "constant reminder that we take total Soldier fitness seriously and that we are going to make it a priority." Ruiz also said that his physical fitness group wanted to see the Army's APFT more aligned, doctrinally with Army Physical Readiness Training, which is focused on preparing Soldiers physically for specific Soldier mission tasks. He said the AFPT does not effectively evaluate what is being done in PRT. He also said that many units are not actually doing PRT, but are doing other forms of physical fitness. Dailey told NCOs that a lot of Army units are not putting the necessary emphasis on physical training that is needed to keep the Army ready. He said today that 40 percent of Soldiers are overweight, and that there are as many as 45,000 Soldiers, who are not deployable today. "Most of those [are] associated with lower-extremity profiles," Dailey said. "And largely associated with, believe it or not, your ankles hurt when you are 30 or 40 pounds overweight. Your knees hurt when you are 30 or 40 pounds overweight. Your knees hurt? Stop eating donuts." Dailey also said that the Army must change the culture of physical fitness, and bring back accountability to the program. "You don't get good at physical training unless you do physical training," he said. "When you allow your platoons and your squads to do squad physical training, I can tell you most of the time ... it is not good. I don't know how we ever said we have to let squad leaders do physical training every day. We need to probably reel some of that in. There was a lot of goodness when the battalion had to meet in the quad and salute the flag together. It's called accountability." Noncommissioned officers want more clearly defined role in mission command [2015-05-07] WASHINGTON -- The role of noncommissioned officers, or NCOs, in mission command could be more clearly defined in Army doctrine and in the field, said Soldiers, who participated during the first-ever NCO Solarium. Sgt. 1st Class Robert Rosales III, 4th Brigade Combat Team/1st Armored Division on Fort Bliss, Texas, said that the terms "NCO" and "noncommissioned officer" do not appear in Army Doctrine Reference Publication 6.0 or Army Doctrine Publication 6.0 - both of which define mission command. Rosales said NCOs might have a better idea of their place in mission command if their roles in the process were more clearly defined in that doctrine. "Our ability to define doctrinally the mission of the NCO within the mission command process has been often unclear," Rosales said. "And although we as NCOs are currently and effortlessly working within our commander's mission command philosophy, we lack the formal doctrine to back up the NCO mission and vision within this concept. "As NCOs, doctrine is empowerment, confidence, and the guide for us to lead and train Soldiers." Rosales served as spokesperson for the "mission command" group during the 2015 NCO Solarium on Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. During the Solarium, about 80 NCOs, from throughout the Army, were tasked to come up with solutions to problems involving education, Army culture, training, mission command, physical fitness, and Army vision and branding. Those Soldiers were then asked to brief the sergeant major of the Army on their findings. The mission command group recommended that Army doctrine could be augmented to reflect the NCO duties and responsibilities, Rosales said. The mission command group at the Solarium also asked for courses for NCOs, who will serve on command staffs, to better prepare them for the role. He said the Army ought to look into the NCO education system and institutional training to develop programs of instruction, where mission command is both trained and exercised. "NCOs need to practice the military decision-making process all the way through, from receipt of the mission all the way to orders published," he said. DEVELOPMENTAL EDUCATION Another hot topic of discussion during the Solarium, and one deemed important to Army leadership, was Soldier attendance at developmental schools. "This is an ongoing issue for me, but also for the Army," Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey said. "It stems from all of those key developmental schools, additional skill identifier- and skill qualification identifier-producing schools ... Why is it that NCOs are not going? Why is there a problem filling schools?" Some of the schools in question include airborne school, ranger school, master gunner school and master fitness trainer school, Dailey said. Command Sgt. Maj. David S. Davenport Sr., of Training and Doctrine Command, said the Army has a "huge" problem filling seats in Army schools. "We have no school filled to 100 percent. And those seats are paid for," he said. For the Army's Warrior Leader Course, he said, "we did not use 2,003 seats in the first quarter," of this fiscal year. "The seats are there." Dailey recounted that he had, as a division sergeant major, called together as many as 250 NCOs and discussed with them the possibility of going to Ranger school. He said that about 150 of them raised their hands and shouted their enthusiasm for the idea when asked who was interested in attending. But ultimately, he said, "only four packets were submitted." Dailey gave one reason Soldiers might not be attending those courses in the right numbers - prerequisites, such as fitness levels, are prohibitive. He said Soldiers, who are dedicated to meeting Army standards should have no problem meeting the standards to attend developmental schools. He also said that one of the things many of the courses in question have in common is a high-attrition rate. "My perception is ... that people are afraid of failure," Dailey said. "I don't know how to overcome that. But I need those skill sets in my Army - desperately. We have to get NCOs to have the confidence and capabilities to go to these schools and achieve standards." WWII veterans mark 70th anniversary of VE Day [2015-05-08] WASHINGTON -- "I think this was a wonderful event," Floyd Brantley said. "During the war there were 16 million men. Since then we are dying out fast. We got one million now, and losing about 1,500 a day. All these men here - we're all getting older and soon there will be none left. So this event was outstanding and fascinating and I was glad to attend it." Brantley is a World War II veteran, who served in the Navy in the Pacific Theater. But that did not stop him and his son, Charles, from coming all the way from Arkansas to attend the Victory in Europe 70th Anniversary at the National World War II Memorial event in Washington, D.C., May 8. In addition to speeches by both National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice and Katherine Korbel, who stood in for her sister, former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, there was a massive laying of wreaths at the memorial's "Freedom Wall" by representatives of the Allied nations, who participated in the war. The biggest draw came at the end, when a series of military flyovers, featuring dozens WWII military aircraft, flew overhead. At the start of the event, when the first speaker took to the lectern, only the area around the memorial was filled with visitors, with WWII veterans up front. By the time the "Arsenal of Democracy Flyover" began, just a bit after noon, the National Mall was packed with spectators from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. Brantley entered the Navy in 1944, and served as a medic during the war on an island near Australia. "I was in a fleet hospital on an island in the south Pacific ... after the initial push, we'd take them in the field hospital in New Caledonia." He said that he had a brother, who had also served in the war, but was killed. "He was killed in Guadalcanal, a few years before I went in," he said. "I was in high school when I got the notice I was being drafted. They typed at the bottom that they will defer me until the end of school if I want. But I didn't want that. I cut that message off and showed them that. I had to go in. So I went on in and I kept that little piece in my billfold that said I could still be in school. " When news of the victory in Europe came, he said he knew it did not affect him just exactly, but he and his fellow Sailors were excited just the same at the turn of events. "We were thrilled to death because we knew it might soon be over for us too," he said. "We celebrated when we got the news that it was over in Europe." When his time came, and the war with Japan ended in the Pacific, he said it took a while for him to get home, off the island, because at the time there was a shortage of transportation, but no shortage of men that wanted to get back to the United States. After the war, Brantley decided to finish his education. "I was a 20-year-old kid, who went back to high school and then went to Baylor University," he said. But then war broke out again - this time in Korea. At Baylor, he had been in ROTC. And this time, he went into service as an Air Force officer. At the end of WWII, Brantley had earned the rank of pharmacist mate, third class, in the Navy. At the end of the Korean War, where he served as a transportation officer, he was an Air Force captain. And later, at 49 years old, he wanted to go back into uniform again. The military was unwilling to let him go into the Arkansas Air National Guard as a captain, but he said he was able to resign his commission and enter as an enlisted Airman, with his assignment as a cook. He finished serving in the Air National Guard as a senior master sergeant, but was allowed, after earning enough points, to retire as an Air Force captain. Brantley's son, Charles, said his dad is still active. He said he goes to the gym and has competed in bicycling racing. He is now training for another race. H. Kurt Weiser, who lives in Rockville, Maryland, attended the V-E Day event with his son, Greg, and granddaughter, Susie. Weiser said at the start of WWII, he was living in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and was "working on steam engines." He entered the service in 1942. As an Army Air Corps officer, and "ferry pilot," Weiser flew military aircraft - a lot of them. From his pocket he pulled a list of the 24 different military aircraft he has flown. Among those where the AT-6 "Texan," the P-39 Aerocobra, the P-40 Warhawk, the P-63 King Cobra, the P-51 Mustang, the B-17 Flying Fortress and the C-47 Skytrain. All of those flew overhead as part of the Arsenal of Democracy Flyover. He said that at one time, he had been responsible for flying 30 P-39 aircraft from Niagara Falls, New York, to Great Falls, Montana. "They all had red stars pained on the side of them," he said. From Great Falls, the aircraft were flown by other pilots to Alaska - where the Russians came to pick them up, he said. Weiser also served outside the United States during the war - in the China, Burma and India theater. "I was only scared once. The Air Corps training always gave you instructions on how to correct a situation. This one night I was going home - I was [in] India - and I felt something hot on my left hand and I thought what the heck is that down there? And I looked down and it was the biggest damn tiger you ever saw -- his mouth was that close to my hand," he said, gesturing with his hands. "That's the only time I was scared." When Weiser learned of the victory in Europe, he said it was "just another day," for him and his men. But his time would soon come to go home, and it would not be just another day. "I got on a boat with 5,000 other guys in India, and it took us 19 days to get from India to New York City ... and when we ... ," he paused, tearing up. "When we came into New York Harbor and saw the Statue of Liberty ... " and then he was overcome with emotion, unable to finish his thought. After WWII ended, Wiser applied for a regular commission and eventually left the Army in 1948, as an Army major. "It's great. It's the best thing that ever happened," he said of the event V-E Day event in the nation's capital - also observing, "There's a lot of old men around here." President nominates Forces Command chief to lead Army [2015-05-13] WASHINGTON -- Gen. Mark A. Milley, commander of U.S. Army Forces Command, has been nominated by President Barack Obama to serve as the new chief of staff, or CSA, of the Army. The announcement came during a press briefing at the Pentagon by Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, May 13. If later confirmed to the position by the U.S. Senate, Milley will serve as the 39th chief of staff of the Army. "Gen. Mark A. Milley [is a] warrior and a statesman," Carter said. "He not only has plenty of operational and joint experience - in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and on the Joint Staff - but he also has the intellect and vision to lead change throughout the Army. "When he was in Afghanistan as commanding general of International Security Assistance Force - Joint Command, I had a lot of opportunities to observe Mark on the ground - leading our coalition of allies and partners, and helping the Afghan people prepare to take responsibility for their own security," Carter said. "Mark and I flew to Herat the day after an attack on the U.S. Consulate there, and I saw Mark take command of the scene and stand with our people there. I was impressed by his candor and good judgement, and I knew right away that he had even more to offer to the United States Army." Milley currently serves as the 21st commander of United States Army Forces Command, a position he assumed in August 2014. In that role, he is responsible for preparing conventional forces to provide a sustained flow of trained and ready land power to combatant commanders. "Our number-one task is readiness," Milley said of FORSCOM. "Readiness - the ability to conduct a range of military operations, from humanitarian assistance to combat operations - is FORSCOM's top priority." Milley said the Army has really only two tasks: fight a war, or prepare to fight a war. "Absent the actual act of fighting, then our fundamental task is to prepare for the act of fighting," he said. "It means training. It means manning. It means equipping. It means leading." If confirmed as chief of staff, Milley will continue to be responsible for training, equipping and sustaining the U.S. Army, something Army Secretary John M. McHugh said the general is well-suited to do. "I've known Gen. Mark A. Milley since his earliest days commanding at the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, New York," McHugh said. "I've watched him lead Soldiers overseas in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as at home in Fort Hood, Texas, and most recently, as the commander, U.S. Army Forces Command. At all times, he has led with distinction in both war and peace. I not only congratulate him on his nomination, as recommended by [Defense] Secretary Carter, but also thank the president for selecting this remarkable leader. Should the Senate confirm him, I am confident that Gen. Milley will be an exceptional chief of staff and member of the Joint Chiefs. I also want to thank Gen. Odierno for his many years of service, particularly his support and partnership as the CSA over the last four years." The current chief of staff of the Army, Gen. Ray Odierno, assumed the role in September 2011. He is expected to retire in August. Odierno said he is confident in the president's choice for his successor. "The president has chosen a phenomenal leader in Gen. Mark A. Milley as the 39th chief of staff of the Army," Odierno said. "Gen. Milley is an experienced, combat-tested, and caring leader. I have known Gen. Milley for many years, have served with him in Iraq, and watched him in Afghanistan. I am confident that he is the right leader to lead our Army into the future." Milley's education includes a bachelor's degree in political science from Princeton University, master's degrees from Columbia University (international relations), and from the U.S. Naval War College (national security and strategic studies). He is also a graduate of the MIT Seminar XXI National Security Studies Program. Milley has commanded the 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry in Korea; the 2d Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, on Fort Drum, New York, where he later became the division commander; and III Corps on Fort Hood, Texas. The general has additionally served on the joint staff; as a military assistant to the defense secretary. While serving as commanding general of III Corps, he deployed to Afghanistan as the commanding general, International Security Assistance Force Joint Command, and deputy commanding general, U.S. Forces-Afghanistan. Sixty new technologies aim to cut convoys to forward operating bases [2015-05-15] WASHINGTON -- Army research to reduce the use of fuel and water, and to reduce waste output at forward operating bases, or FOBs, promises to dramatically reduce the number of convoys and hours Soldiers are exposed to threats. About 60 new technologies are being tested as part of a sustainability project that was on display at the Pentagon, May 14, at the first "DOD Lab Day" there. Dozens of Army researchers and scientists from Army labs around the nation put their most interesting research projects on display for viewing by Pentagon officials and the press. Ben Campbell of U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development, & Engineering Center, is the lead systems engineer of the Army's Sustainability Logistics Basing - Science and Technology Objective Demonstration. In the courtyard of the Pentagon, he had a small model of an Army base camp, one that would house about 50 Soldiers, labeled to indicate where several of the technologies his team is evaluating for the Army might be put to use. Included among those was a system that pulls drinking water from the air, a nanogrid power management system, bidirectional on-board vehicle power systems and shading systems to reduce the amount of power needed to cool shelters. Campbell said Army goals for the research he leads is to reduce fuel resupply to such installations by 25 percent, reduce water resupply by 75 percent, and reduce waste generation and waste backhaul -- the need to remove waste material -- by 50 percent. The 60 technologies being developed are meant to support these goals, Campbell said, and his team put them into realistic scenarios, such as at a recent demonstration at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, in April -- where they outfitted a 1,000-man base camp with such technology. At Fort Leonard Wood, they evaluated a new kitchen concept that feeds 80 Soldiers three meals a day. The new kitchen, he said, is more energy efficient -- it puts more heat into the food rather than into the kitchen environment where it not only makes Soldiers working there uncomfortable, but also wastes energy, he said. KEEPING SOLDIERS SAFE His team's technologies have proven successful in one of the Army's most primary goals -- keeping Soldiers out of harms' way, Campbell said. "Our initial analysis in one base camp scenario we had set up was almost a half a million Soldier threat exposure hours we are able to eliminate in a 180-day base camp scenario," Campbell said. One goal of water-saving, energy-saving and waste-reduction technology is to reduce the need for Soldiers to bring those things to a forward operating base via convoy. If an Army FOB can implement technology that allows it to use a quarter of the fuel it might otherwise use, or reduce the fresh water it needs delivered by 75 percent, then it will reduce the need to have convoys to deliver those supplies. For every four fuel convoys it might have needed before, it now only needs three. And it might need only one water convoy where before it needed four. That means fewer Soldiers on the road in convoys, where they are exposed to improvised explosive devices and other threats. CLOSER TO THE FIGHT Another benefit, Campbell said, is that by reducing the logistical support requirements for an installation, it can be moved farther away from a logistics supply base. A FOB could be moved father out, closer to the fight. "Resupply by air drop becomes more economically feasible and things of that nature," he said. "If you only need resupply every seven days instead of three days, then maybe you can have the base more forward deployed." With more energy- and water-efficient installations, fewer Soldiers on a FOB are involved in sustainment, Campbell said. "The more self-sufficient you can make the base camp, the more independent they can be," he said. "That means more Soldiers doing the mission rather than supporting the base camp. And it's reducing Soldier threat exposure hours; saving Soldier lives by being able to eliminate truck convoys. That's why Soldiers should care. It's a force enabler." Among the technologies that Campbell said are being evaluated by his team are those that recycle waste water, those that burn trash to create energy, and one that allows a tactical vehicle to be used to provide power to an installation until generators can be brought in. Campbell also said that while working toward the water, energy and waste goals are important, equally important is sustaining quality of life for Soldiers -- something he said has to be maintained. "The base camp is a platform to support Soldier readiness," he said. "A Soldier comes here to rest, reset, and launch missions off of. So we conduct evaluations to understand the impact of these technologies in generating quality of life support for the base camp. We could meet our water metric if we said instead of ten-minute showers, shower every other day. But what does that do to a Soldier's quality of life? We make sure the technologies we put into the camp are enablers of the Soldiers." Campbell's team is planning another evaluation at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, in July. There they will outfit one of two 150-person base camps with their technology to evaluate its effectiveness. Researchers believe capturing, processing brainwaves will better enable Soldiers [2015-05-18] WASHINGTON -- Brainwave detection may one day make it easier for Army researchers to train computers to detect threats captured in digital images of the battlefield. Jean Vettel, Ph.D., a neuroscientist with the Army Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, was wearing headgear lined with brain wave-sensing EEG, or "electroencephalography" sensors, May 14, in the Pentagon courtyard as part of the display she manned at DOD Lab Day there. She confirmed almost immediately that, in at least her part of the Army, researchers were not working on how Soldiers might one day control a combat vehicle or helicopter using only their brains. "Evolution has evolved our hands to be very effective in doing that task," she said. "So we are substantially slower and less accurate if we use brain signals - for a healthy individual - to do that task." What she and the translational neuroscience branch are working on, however, is just as interesting, if not more practical. "What we are interested in doing is recording ongoing brain dynamics so we can have technology adapt to our Soldiers," she said. Vettel said that robotic assets throughout the Army collect "millions of images." For those images to be useful to the Army, the image must be assessed to determine if it is of something that is a threat, or of something that is benign. The best way to do that now is for a human to look at the image and make that determination. "But we don't have sufficient time or resources to look though all those images," she said. So what Vettel and the neuroscience branch want to do is teach a computer to identify an image of a threat. For that to happen, there needs to be a sizable enough stack of both threat and benign images, which an algorithm can learn from. Vettel and the branch plan to use EEGs hooked up to combat-experienced Soldiers to develop the training materials for those algorithms - those stacks of threatening and non-threatening images. With EEG sensors on a Soldier's head, Vettel can flash a series of images on a screen. The Soldier, without pressing any buttons or even providing a verbal response, will be able to tag the image as threatening or not using only his brain waves. It is much, much quicker to tag images in this fashion than it would be to ask a Soldier to press a button or offer a verbal confirmation on their assessment of a photo, Vettel said. "And then when we have images labeled, we can take those images and give it to a machine learning algorithm that can learn to distinguish between threatening or non-threatening images. We'll have used Soldier expertise to train the algorithm," she said. It is not just computers that can learn from those images. Other, less combat-experienced Soldiers might also be able to learn from them as well, Vettel said. "You have Soldiers who have deployed, some who haven't," she said. "You can then have the folks who have deployed, who have the gut instinct about whether something is a threat. You can start communicating that to somebody who hasn't been deployed - not in semantics about what it is they are detecting was a threat, but by showing them a whole bunch of images that the combat-experienced Soldiers say are threatening, but that the non-combat-experienced Soldiers say are not threatening." SOLDIER AS A SENSOR This type of brain wave-detecting technology will not remain stuck in the lab, either. Vettel's branch has an Army combat helmet with EEG sensors built into the soft material inside. Soldiers wearing the helmet would have the sensors plugged into a computing device, a tablet or smart phone that they wear on their body. The entire setup makes use of what Vettel calls a "noisy sensor," that is, a Soldier himself. In a squad out on patrol, some of the Soldiers will be more experienced than others. Those more experienced Soldiers will be more in tune with threats in the environment around them. They will have a "gut instinct" for what is dangerous or threatening, Vettel said, something she said Soldiers have told her cannot be easily put into words. But they would not need to put that gut instinct into words to transmit their concerns or heightened awareness to their less-experienced teammates. With such technology in their helmets, the heighted anxiety, fear, and tension of the more experienced Soldiers will be detected by their helmet sensor and can be, when appropriate, transmitted to their less-experienced teammates. An entire squad - those who are acutely aware of even the most subtle shifts in the environment, and those who are not yet skilled enough to recognize it - can all become aware at the same time that danger is afoot. The technology would not just help those less-experienced Soldiers know what their more seasoned teammates are feeling, Vettel said, it might even provide an edge to those more-experienced Soldiers, who are fatigued. "Not only is this good for units where you have novice Soldiers," Vettel said, "but also for Soldiers who are sleep deprived." Vettel said she expects such brain-sensing technologies might be ready for the Army in the next 25 years. "We are a future capability," she said. "A lot of our research now focuses on reliably recording these signals in complex settings. It's, overall, letting the technology adapt to the Soldier, rather than having the Soldier adapt to the technology." Smart-mortar will help Soldiers more effectively hit targets [2015-05-21] WASHINGTON -- The Army hopes the 120mm Guided Enhanced Fragmentation Mortar further improves Soldiers' ability to put artillery on target. During DOD Lab Day at the Pentagon, May 14, multiple researchers from throughout the Army were available to demonstrate their projects, including Nickolas B. Baldwin, a researcher and mechanical engineer with the Armament Research Development and Engineering Center, or ARDEC, at Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey. He serves as the ARDEC project officer for the 120mm Guided Enhanced Fragmentation Mortar, or GEFM, program. The GEFM is a GPS-guided mortar that will make it easier for Soldiers to put a round on target. "With [a] conventional mortar you are at the mercy of the ballistic calculations," Baldwin said. "With a conventional non-smart round, you really have to bracket in your target. There is a certain dispersion, or round-to-round variability in shooting a conventional munition. What happens sometimes is, based on the weather for the day, or the aiming error or the weapon, there is a certain error associated with it. So you adjust fire after your first round down range and hopefully get fire for effect." A precision-guided mortar takes that variability out of the equation, Baldwin said. "You input the GPS coordinates of where you want it to go and once it gets up in the air, it figures out where it is and where it is going and how to reduce the error to the target," he said. The GEFM is the proposed government solution for the 120mm High Explosive Guided Mortar, or HEGM, program. That program will eventually release a request for proposal that asks industry to propose their own solutions for a smart mortar. The GEFM is not the Army's only smart mortar, however. One already exists in the inventory, called the Accelerated Precision Mortar Initiative, or APMI. Baldwin said that between 2007 and 2009, there had been several operational needs statements that came in from Iraq and Afghanistan requesting a precision-guided mortar for use "in urban environments, where collateral damage is a concern, and in mountainous terrain where the traditional ballistic trajectory wasn't able to get into some of the pockets the enemy was operating out of. They wanted the ability to have single-shot kill against some of these higher value targets." With a non-guided mortar, Baldwin said, "you give the enemy the opportunity sometimes to flee or take cover by the time you actually get them bracketed in to fire for effect. So based on that needs statement that came out, an urgent materials release program was set up and basically the predecessor to this, a vendor-solution, was fielded called APMI. It was great and filled the need at the time. It met the needs of the Urgent Material Request, but it had some limitations in performance due to the rapid fielding nature of the program." Today, the Army's HEGM program seeks a precision-guided mortar that improves on the APMI in areas like range, lethality, and reliability. The GEFM is the Army's suggestion as to what the HEGM program should produce. When the time comes to solicit ideas from industry, Baldwin said the Army's idea, the GEFM, will be made available to them for their use. "We are going to provide a fully mature technical data package to industry and then industry might pick that up as a low-risk, high-performing capability that is kind of ready for prime time." Baldwin said that in development of the GEFM, they worked "hand-in-hand" with those who wrote the requirements for a precision-guided mortar. He said he expects an operational demonstration of the system next year. Army aims to simplify electronics in combat vehicles [2015-05-21] WASHINGTON -- The large number of radios, computers, and other boxes inside tactical vehicles, in addition to the unique wiring for each system, makes it difficult and costly to perform maintenance and replace outdated gear, according to Army researchers who aim to remedy that through the Hardware Convergence program. "What we are working on is solving the problem of too many single-purpose boxes being put in vehicles that are there to provide the capabilities that the user requires," said Shawn M. Mathews, team lead for tech plans and programs at the Army's Communications Electronics Research Development and Engineering Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. Mathews displayed a solution to the problem in the Pentagon courtyard during a D0D Lab Day there, May 14. He had a plastic box at his display -- not the actual hardware he proposes, but rather a 3D printed mock-up of the solution. About the size of a tool box and with heat-dissipating fins on the side, it has slots on top where a user can slide in what looks like computer hard drives. But they aren't meant to be hard drives. Instead, each device is an entire computing platform or radio that is designed to replace any one of the much larger equivalents that are already inside combat tactical vehicles. Instead of each vendor providing their own wiring harness and wiring to connect to the vehicle, they instead provide only the necessary device, and configure it to use government-designed, standardized wiring. "What we are defining under this hardware convergence program is the government set of standards and architectures, to standardize, simplify, and collapse all those capabilities from independent platforms into one computing platform," Mathews said. By using a standardized central location to insert technology into vehicles, redundant power supplies and systems can be eliminated, Mathews said. One example of that is GPS. "At one point we did a survey and found five different GPS systems feeding five boxes," Mathews said. "They are all redundant, performing the same function. Each box needed that function, so it provided its own." With the RF Hardware Convergence program, there will be one GPS onboard a vehicle, and every other system that needs it can get access to it -- so they won't need to bring their own to provide a solution. In April, Mathews said, his team ran a successful demonstration of their system at Aberdeen Proving Ground. For that demonstration, five vendors came in to provide five capabilities built to government standards so they would be compatible with the hardware convergence project. "We have shown they can work together," Mathews said. "They can all compete for different capabilities to go on the platform. But it also protects their intellectual property, their 'secret sauce' on their system. What's on these cards? We don't necessarily need to know. That's how the vendors do their thing. That's what makes them special. As long as they can plug in and adhere to the standards we define, they can be integrated into the system." William R. Taylor, division chief of the Cyber Offensive Operations Division at CERDEC, said the RF Hardware Convergence program isn't limited to just combat vehicles. It could also benefit dismounted Soldiers as well. "With a single card, you could use that as a dismounted manpack system," he said. "Say you had radio functions you wanted to host, you could use that as a single system. It's scalable, from the Soldier to a vehicle." Taylor said the Army may move forward with solicitations for the system in 2017. Until then, he said, the Army must ensure that the system does what it is intended to do -- reduce infrastructure and gear onboard a vehicle -- but at the same time doesn't inhibit functionality of any of those systems. "We are proving that we can build to those open standards and specifications without degrading performance within each of those functions," he said. "That's really the research and development aspect -- proving we can get to a common set of standards and architectures without degrading the functionality of each of those domains that were purpose-built in the past.' Taylor said ultimately, the RF Hardware Convergence program will reduce cost, complexity, maintenance and training for the Army. "It also gives us the ability to do tech refresh in an easy way," he said, in that replacing or upgrading technology will involve a card swap instead of requiring a vehicle to go to a depot to have the entire system, including wiring, removed and replaced. Fuel cells increase range in unmanned aerial systems [2015-05-21] WASHINGTON -- Batteries are heavy and don't provide enough power to give unmanned aerial systems the long loiter time that Soldiers could benefit from. At the DOD Lab Day, May 14 at the Pentagon, Edward C. Shaffer, a researcher at Army Research Laboratory in Adelphi, Maryland, explained how a fuel cell, rather than a battery, is now extending the range of the Stalker XE UAS in Afghanistan. "Without the fuel cell it runs on a battery," Shaffer said. "It runs for an hour. With the fuel cell on the UAS, it'll run up to 8 hours, without recharging or landing." Fuel cells take a fuel -- such as propane -- and convert it to electricity without mechanical motion. It consumes fuel and oxygen, and produces water and carbon dioxide. Shaffer had a fuel cell with him at the Pentagon which is similar to the one used in the Stalker XE UAS. He said in Afghanistan, the fuel cell-powered UAS has been on over 80 missions. "The reason why we developed this is so we could provide that aerial system with prolonged duration, to increase the range of what they see, so they can cover their patrol, their convoy and their base. And it gives them that defensive situational awareness." The fuel cell in the Stalker XE UAS runs on propane, but Joshua P. McClure, a chemical engineer at ARL, said they hope to develop fuel cells that run on fuels like JP8, which are more common in the Army logistics inventory. He said right now, if a Soldier places JP8 into a fuel cell "it would die in a matter of minutes. The reason why is because of the sulfur impurities." "Our primary focus for the future is we are developing new types of fuel cells," Shaffer said. "We are trying to move toward logistics fuels. We want to move toward increasingly more complex fuels -- like JP8." WINS tracks Soldier movement without GPS [2015-05-22] WASHINGTON -- When Global Positioning System satellites can't be seen due to dense jungle canopy, or they are blocked due to enemy interference, Soldiers will still be able to track their location digitally using the Warfighter Integrated Navigation System. During the DOD Lab Day, May 14 at the Pentagon, Osie A. David, a researcher with Communications Electronics Research Development and Engineering Command, explained how the technology behind WINS, still under development at CERDEC labs, will one day be transitioned to an Army program manager to bring assured navigational capability to Soldiers. The WINS is a device small enough to carry in a Soldier's cargo pocket -- David actually had a larger version of the system and a much smaller version as well -- about half the size of a pack of cigarettes. "It's got a number of inertial sensors, such as a pedometer and an accelerometer, things you will find on your cell phone but of a higher quality," he said. "Even if the enemy is denying you GPS or the terrain is, you can still get known location on here so it will show up on your Nett Warrior device or your command and control system." Those inertial sensors will calculate an offset from the last-known location using footsteps taken, speed, acceleration and time, for instance. The device even has way to measure altitude. "It's got a pressure reader so it knows if you are on the third floor or first floor of a building," David said. The WINS isn't perfect. As time goes by without a new GPS signal, its estimate of current location will degrade, David said. But the device provides for the user an estimate of its own miscalculation. "After a time, it'll show you a circle radius for the error range," he said. "It's still better than having no GPS at all." David said knowing location is everything in combat, and the WINS, or a follow-on system that uses technology from WINS, will make sure that Soldiers have that no matter what happens to GPS. "Say we go to Southeast Asia and I'm in the middle of the jungle. There are not a lot of good landmarks. I'm navigating around and I lose the GPS because with the triple-canopy jungle, the GPS can't penetrate that. I don't know where I am on the map, so I'm in a bad situation. If I want to know exactly where I am so I can call for reinforcements or resupply, WINS is going to give me my location on a map, no matter where I am." David said CERDEC is still working on issues like where would be best for a Soldier to wear a device like WINS. He also said that he expects the engineering specifications for WINS to be transferred to Program Executive Office, Intelligence and Electronic Warfare & Sensors by 2017. It will be inside an Army program manager's office, not an Army lab, that WINS or the technology it contains will be made available to Soldiers. David also had with him a device he called the "Soldier Power Manager." The power manager was connected to a "conformal battery," which was also developed at CERDEC in conjunction with industry. The conformal battery is flexible and slips easily into a Soldier's tactical vest without being uncomfortable due to stiffness. It wraps around a Soldier's torso. The power manager allows multiple devices to connect to a battery, and provides a display saying how much power is left in the battery, what devices are connected to the battery, and how much power each device is using. "It lets you know how much energy is left and what is plugged in," David said. He said one advancement they have made on the system is to transfer the user interface to a Nett Warrior device, so Soldiers can see it on that screen. "It lets you see the total power left on the device and how much energy each device is pulling, so you can make a decision about what device to pull -- when energy gets low -- to make sure you have enough power to meet mission needs. We have sort of integrated the energy component with the information to make better choices in the battlefield in terms of operational energy." The device, he said, is still under development. Though "fairly mature," it is not yet fielded to Solders. Thousands ride in 28th annual Rolling Thunder rally [2015-05-25] WASHINGTON -- "I came up here to honor fallen Soldiers and kind of show my support for all the guys that are no longer here with us," Master Sgt. Edell Price said. Price was among the several thousand motorcyclists queued up at the Pentagon, May 24, to participate in the Rolling Thunder motorcycle ride around the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Now in its 28th year, the event, held on Memorial Day weekend, is meant to draw attention to Service members, who were taken prisoner of war, or who have gone missing in action. Price is an active-duty Soldier, stationed on Fort Lee, Virginia, where he is a unit supply specialist with the 23rd Quartermaster Brigade. He has deployed three times to Iraq, as well as once to Saudi Arabia. At Fort Lee, Price also serves as a motorcycle safety instructor. "I train and mentor Soldiers on motorcycle safety," he said. "We work in conjunction with the installation safety office. We partner with them, and all the units on Fort Lee, and try to get all the riders to act responsibly." He said they do training about once a month, and that includes both in a classroom and training that involves actually being on a motorcycle, including skills-training on the installation safety course. Price rode up to Washington, D.C., along with about 31 other riders who are part of the "Soldiers United" motorcycle club. The group is mostly active, retired and veteran Soldiers. Among them was Cpl. Buford Bracey, who has served in the Army for nine years now. He is also a unit supply specialist on Fort Lee with the 832nd Ordnance Battalion. "I came up today to pay my respect for fallen Soldiers, either in combat or in garrison," Bracey said. Bracey said he has been riding since he was a young boy, when he started on dirt bikes. Today he rides a Harley Davidson Ultra Classic. He said he was impressed with the showing of support for veterans at the Rolling Thunder event. "Only word I can come up with is awesome," he said. "I can't believe this many people showed up to remember fallen, POW and MIA Soldiers. And I can't believe this many people have bikes. You don't really see that many. You can tell here that people have come from all over the United States to come here and remember." Bracey said he joined the Army in 2006 as a way to get some discipline in his life, and said that the decision to join was a good one. "I joined the Army to get a better jump start in life," he said. "I came up kind of hard, and needed a route that I could take. I needed to get more discipline in life. I chose the Army as a way to get more discipline in my life, and it has worked. I can't imagine what I would be doing now if I hadn't joined the Army." Staff Sgt. Nate Washington is a petroleum supply specialist, but serves now as an instructor at the Army Logistics University, Noncommissioned Officer Academy on Fort Lee. He has been in the Army since 1998. He said it is the first time he has participated in the Rolling Thunder ride. "I'm in awe of this. I've always wanted to do this. Now that I'm here, this is great," he said. Having been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan three times each, he said he has known many Soldiers who have given everything for their country. "Too many," he said. "This is riding for the fallen, for my battle buddies. Memorial Day is riding for the fallen," he said. Like Bracey, Washington said he joined the Army for the discipline. "I was a young knucklehead. I was in the streets," he said. "Once I joined, I had a good drill sergeant who straightened me away - and that is what I wanted to do. That's why I stayed." Price said the Army has a good record of taking all kinds of people and putting them on the path to success. "One of the big things about the military is that it takes people from all walks of life and gives us a common goal," he said. "The Army is all about standards and discipline. Whether you came in as a knucklehead, or from a privileged background, we all have a common goal. That's really what being a Soldier is all about: coming together as a cohesive unit to accomplish a mission." Odierno: End-strength issue still unsettled [2015-05-28] WASHINGTON -- When the Army's chief of staff retires this August, he said one thing he will be leaving for his successor is the unfinished business of how big the Army will be and how it will be appropriated. "I thought by now we would have had that resolved," said Gen. Ray Odierno, adding that uncertainty about the final size of the Army has brought "angst to our Soldiers." Odierno spoke, May 28, during a media roundtable with the Defense Writers Group in Washington, D.C. The final end strength of the Army - the total number of Soldiers that will be allowed to serve - is still "up in the air," Odierno said. It is "based on what happens with the Congress and the president as they continue to wrestle what the budget would be." He predicts the issue will still be a concern for the new chief of staff for two to three years to come. The general said that while popular consensus might hold that the Army is now at rest because it is largely out of Iraq and Afghanistan - the opposite is true. The Army has 143,000 Soldiers forward-stationed and deployed throughout the world today, he said. Odierno told journalists that continued cuts to defense must stop, "with the world the way it is today ... this is not the right time. We've taken enough out of defense. Let's stop and move forward." Continued cuts will damage the Army's modernization efforts and readiness into the next decade, the general said. "If we don't get the dollars and continue down the road of sequestration, it's going to affect readiness," he said. "It's going to put us in a readiness hole for five years. It's going to put us in a modernization hole for 10 years. And our ability to continue to meet the current mission is going to be challenged." IRAQ Security issues, such as the city of Ramadi being taken last week by the Islamic State - and Iraqi security forces fleeing instead of fighting - persist in Iraq. Just five years ago, the general had been optimistic about the future of the country. "The violence in Iraq was at the lowest levels it had ever been. We saw the economics were starting to grow. Oil was being exported at a higher rate. I felt very good. I thought we were on the right track. But then again, the political piece of it has not taken. They have not been able to overcome the mistrust they have between sects." The general said that mistrust and conflict between Sunni and Shia, for instance, represents the kind of fractures in Iraqi society that demand a leader strong enough to pull them together to create a stable country. That continued mistrust, he said, continues to degrade the success that had been achieved in Iraq early on. "It is incredibly disappointing to me, personally, what I have watched happen," he said. "I felt in, September 2010, when I left, that we were on the right track. And I really believed at that time, that in five years, that Iraq would be doing very well. But frankly they have fallen apart." The general said he does not support sending combat formations to provide security to the country - a task he said the Iraqis themselves are best suited for. He did say additional advisors would be okay, if those on the ground who are observing the mission of those advisors were to say that additional advisors are needed. "Right now they feel we are okay with the numbers we have," he said. "If they felt we need to increase that, I'd be supportive." Odierno also said that he believes that "embedded advisors," which means U.S. Soldiers embedded with Iraqi combat units, could increase the effectiveness of those units - and make the U.S. effort there more successful. "That puts us at much more risk," he said. "We have not made that decision yet, and I don't think that Gen. Austin [Gen. Lloyd J. Austin, commander of U.S. Central Command] has asked for that capability." JOINT LIGHT TACTICAL VEHICLE The Army has said it plans to purchase 49,099 joint light tactical vehicles, or JLTVs, and Odierno said the Army has "not walked away" from that commitment. He said the JLTV is a vehicle the Army absolutely needs, that it includes enough space for Soldiers and communications gear, and that it provides adequate protection for occupants. "I feel really good about what we've done with the JLTV," he said. "I think the way we've developed the requirements, the way it is moving forward, is a really important step for us. I think as we move forward it will be a central piece of the Army." Odierno also said the Army might be looking for an ultra-light vehicle that will help move airborne Soldiers, who land as part of forcible entry operations. The Army might also be looking for a light reconnaissance vehicle, as well as "mobile-protected fire power" in light, medium and heavy versions. He also mentioned vertical lift, an infantry fighting vehicle, and "a lighter, tank-like vehicle." Using the Army Operating Concept, or AOC, as a guide, the general said, the Army has been reviewing 20 warfighting challenges and has identified "where the gaps and seams are" in terms of capability. The effort is more holistic than it has been in the past, he said. The Army is looking across all branches and centers of excellence, rather than at functional "stovepipes." "I think we are coming up with much better solutions. I think what you are going to see here, one of the things I am proud of is, we have established this AOC, we've looked at these 20 warfighting challenges, and I think now we can ease the way forward on how we start identifying near-team, mid-term and long-term gaps that we can now invest in. In terms of future modernization and acquisition, Odierno criticized the Army's previous concepts of acquisition, saying that the service had always looked for the best right up front. "I think one of the problems we've had in the past is that we tried to build a perfect vehicle," he said. "The requirements are so high, and they were difficult to meet, and it ended up being over budget and sometimes we found we couldn't meet them." Now, he said, he believes that program development might "leave room for improvement" in new systems and that the Army tries to "become iterative in development of a program." He suggested a new system, where the first iteration of a new system might meet 80 percent of what the Army wants. Later iterations would reach a goal of 90 percent, and then 100 percent. "That 80 percent is much better than what we have today," he said. "And it's easier to attain." Three women recycled again in Ranger School [2015-06-01] WASHINGTON -- Despite setbacks, three female Soldiers continue the challenge to make it through Army Ranger School. Those three women were among eight, who were attempting for the second time to pass the first phase of the course, called the "Darby phase." Of those eight, five were dropped and sent back to their units. The three were recycled back to the beginning of Ranger school in what is known as a "Day One Recycle." Soldiers, subject to a Day One Recycle, will restart the entire Ranger course, to include repeating the four-day Ranger assessment phase week at Camp Rogers. Of the 19 women, who started Ranger school, April 20, as part of the Ranger Course 06-15, only those three women remain. April 20 was the first time, which women were allowed into the course. The move, to assess female Soldier performance in the Ranger course, is part of an ongoing Army effort called "Soldier 2020." That effort is meant to allow the Army's best-qualified Soldiers the opportunity to serve in any position, where they are capable of performing to standard. RANGER STANDARDS WILL REMAIN During a recent media roundtable with the Defense Writer's Group, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno said he is "adamant" about not changing standards for Ranger school. "I do believe it's important that we maintain the integrity of the Ranger Tab and what it means," the general said. A press release from the Ranger school cites multiple reasons why a Soldier might not pass any one of the three phases of the course. Those reasons include poor performance in leading a patrol, which is something Odierno said female Soldiers are not experienced in. "I think the reason they failed is because of patrolling," he said. "Patrolling is something you learn though experience and they just have not had the experience of doing it. So I am hoping that now as they go through and recycle that they will learn some experience, and go through." Despite the setbacks, Odierno said both he and the cadre at Ranger school remain impressed with the first group of women, who embarked on the experience "I have been very proud of a lot of things. One is the way the cadre has set this up," he said. "I am going to tell you the feedback I am getting is these females, who have gone through Ranger school, are performing exceedingly well - physically, mentally. And actually, the cadre is very proud of how they have done." MORE EVALUATIONS POSSIBLE Ranger Course 06-15 was called a "Ranger course assessment" because it included both male and female Soldiers. The course was the first to include women. But Odierno said he does not think the assessments will stop. "Ranger school ... really is a leader development course," he said. "The intent is to keep working it. And I think ... we will probably run a couple more pilots. I don't think we are going to give up on it. I think it has been a real success for us as an Army. I think we have had many females who have done such a terrific job preparing themselves. And I think we will continue to do that and we will just see how it goes from there." Ranger school begins with the four-day Ranger assessment phase, called "RAP week," on Fort Benning, Georgia. Soldiers, who make it through RAP week, move on to the patrolling or "Darby" phase of Ranger school, which begins with fast-paced instruction on troop-leading procedures, principles of patrolling, demolitions, field craft, and basic battle drills focused toward squad ambush and reconnaissance missions. The next phase is the mountain phase in Dahlonega, Georgia, where students receive instruction on military mountaineering tasks, mobility training, as well as techniques for employing a platoon for continuous combat patrol operations in a mountainous environment. The last phase, located on Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, focuses on skills needed to survive in a rain forest or swamp. Gamble: Sustainers must rebuild expeditionary competency [2015-06-04] WASHINGTON -- Increased competence, within the Army sustainment community, can make better use of limited, but adequate capacity, the assistant G-4 said. The Army spent nearly 14 years in Afghanistan and Iraq. Leaders in the Army sustainment community, who grew up in that environment, cut their teeth providing goods and materials through a relatively well-established distribution network that they fell in on, said Maj. Gen. Duane A. Gamble, during a Association of the United States Army sustainment conference here, June 3. That model of sustainment, while important, is not on its own adequate enough to sustain a globally-deployed, expeditionary, regionally-aligned Army, which he said sends small units forward to places like Africa to conduct operations. "I think we must rapidly develop a competency to support expeditionary operations with the required material readiness and distribution systems," Gamble said. "And we also must develop the competency to perform phase 0 'set the theater' tasks, such as theater opening, theater distribution, and theater sustainment." Gamble said when it comes to materiel and distribution readiness, he considers capability, capacity and competency. When it comes to capability, he said, the Army's modular sustainment structure, created for Iraq and Afghanistan, "provides a more than adequate foundation for sustaining our globally-responsive and regionally-engaged Army." That modular structure includes the brigade support battalion, the combat sustainment support battalion, the sustainment brigade, the expeditionary sustainment command, and the theater sustainment command. "I think they are all exquisite formations that provide us great sustainment capability," he said. He said there is adequate capacity within the Army - across both the active and Reserve components, to meet the Army's needs. He added that the Army must find a way, however, to employ Reserve-component capacity and capabilities outside the overseas contingency operations environment. "We simply don't have that muscle group," he said. "That's what is required for theater security cooperation." Across the Army's modular sustainment structure, Gamble said, there is a "lack of conceptual unity in how we operate and employ our forces." "I think that the 'ad hoc-racy' of how we employ the forces leads to shortfalls in materiel readiness and distribution readiness," he said. "It's not because we don't know how to maintain stuff. It's not because we don't know how to set up distribution networks. Arguably we can always improve. But I think fundamentally we make assumptions at each of these layers that the other person is going to do it." With a shrinking Army, Gamble said, "we can no longer make up for lack of reflexive competence by adding more capacity. We can't throw units at the problem to make up for our inability to get it done right the first time." An increase in competence, within the Army sustainment community, can be achieved in the short term through leadership, Gamble said, with little cost to the Army. "In my opinion we can rebuild this expeditionary competency that is required for our Army, our globally-engaged, regionally-aligned Army, in the quickest manner, if the commanders at every level focus on their unique contribution," he said. "I think we have got to share a common understanding of our sustainment doctrine and how the structures at various levels come together and produce these desired effects. I think we also must be willing to broaden our doctrine to include how we build readiness at home station. I think it has to be part of our doctrine." Evaluation, education, compensation dominate discussion at Dailey town hall [2015-06-05] FORT MEADE, Md. -- The debut of the new noncommissioned officer, or NCO, evaluation report, or NCOER, expected as a cure for rating inflation, has been pushed to the new year. During an Army birthday town hall meeting with Soldiers, June 4, Sgt. Maj. of the Army, or SMA, Daniel A. Dailey said the new NCOER, which was originally slated for release in October, would instead be pushed to 2016. The additional time will allow for a fine-tuning of the process and procedures for tracking rater profiles to ensure Soldiers have a fair chance at promotions while also preventing rating inflation. During the town hall meeting at Defense Media Activity here, Dailey answered questions from more than 100 Soldiers in the audience. He also answered questions, which came into the studio via social media, and via pre-recorded video message from Soldiers throughout the world. In terms of training military human resources specialists on how the new NCOER will work - that training has already been completed, Dailey said. Those human resources Soldiers will in turn train their units on how to use the new NCOER web system and forms. One of the biggest changes to the new NCOER, Dailey said, is that it introduces rater accountability as a way to address the issue of rating inflation. The NCOER was both "out of date" with Army doctrine and subject to rating inflation, Dailey said. "We have to get at that. We have to make sure, that our people we ask to run promotion boards, have the full capability to understand and know who is best for promotion. This new NCOER is going to help do that." Dailey said that for years, those who have rated Army officers have been held accountable for how many they rate as being "the best." The new NCOER introduces a similar concept for enlisted Soldiers. Under the current NCOER, he said, "everybody in the Army had the potential to get a number 1 block. In most cases, that's what happened." When every Soldier is rated as the best, he said, it makes it difficult to decide who gets promoted. "With a rater profile, your rater is going to be limited on the total number '1 blocks' they can give out," he said. The new standard for Soldiers, he said, will be "fully qualified." Only those exceeding the standard will be marked higher. He told Soldiers that those of them who rate "fully qualified" will still be getting promoted. "We are designing the system so that you can get promoted; you will get promoted if the rest of your records are consistent with the good order and discipline of the U.S. Army," he assured them. Addressing a related question regarding promotions, the Dailey told Soldiers that one thing they should be doing each month - something many Soldiers fail to do, and pay a price for by not getting promoted - is ensure that their personnel records are maintained and accurate. "Later on in your career, when you get evaluated by a board, that's what your representation is - your file," he said. Dailey also said that there are some daily activities Soldiers can do to get a leg up on promotion: physical training and education. "Challenge yourself every day," he said. "It starts at 6 a.m. You can make a difference as early as tomorrow morning. You can add points to your promotion standing just by doing better at PT. Once more pushup is one more point. One more sit-up is one more point. And study hard, do your structured self-development." The sergeant major acknowledged that as the Army draws down, there will be fewer actual promotions, because there will be fewer Soldiers. But he said the Army still needs to promote Soldiers to have the right leaders in the right positions. He said Soldiers will still get promoted in the same percentage in order to ensure the Army structure is maintained. "As Soldiers transition and the need arises, the Army will continue to promote in accordance with these needs," he said "We will continue to, and have to continue to promote our Soldiers. Be persistent, do your best." EDUCATION From basic training, to learning their military occupation specialties in advanced initial training, attending leadership development courses, professional military education, and structured self-development, Soldiers spend a lot of time in the Army learning and developing their skills and leadership potential. Dailey said the Army wants to make sure that what those Soldiers learn is not wasted when they move on to the civilian world after an Army career. The ongoing "NCO 2020" study, in its second year, has identified that the Army must get better at certifying and credentialing Soldiers for the things they learn while serving, Dailey said. What knowledge and skills Soldiers learn in uniform must be easier to translate into jobs in the private sector - as all Soldiers eventually leave the Army. Already, Dailey said, the Army has found a way to ensure Soldiers get civilian-equivalent credit for their NCOES education. "The common core curriculum - not your specific MOS [military occupation specialty] - from the time you start your first NCOES course, to the time you graduate your last one, is worth 100 college credits," Dailey said. "That's the largest it's ever been throughout our history. But that's not enough. We are going to continue to do that, to make sure we give you the valuable credit that you have earned." The Army is still making changes to the NCOES to make it more challenging, valuable and relevant to Soldiers, Dailey said. The Army is planning on adding another level of NCOES for master sergeants, for instance, called the master leader course. Curriculum at the Sergeants Major Academy has also been re-rated, and the Army is in the process of accrediting that education at the masters level. For younger Soldiers and NCOs, he said, the Army is working with civilian counterparts to get them maximum credit for their NCOES education. Dailey said 18 months ago drastic changes were made to what is called the warrior leader course, or WLC. An additional change to that course will be a new name - the basic leader course. He said the name change is meant to help those in the private sector who might see it on a résumé better understand what it means. The SMA said that for now, beyond the name change, there are no additional changes expected for the WLC. Next year, the Army plans to bring Army University online -- part of the Combined Arms Center on Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The Army University represents a multiyear plan to better align Army education programs. The university organizes professional military education institutions across the Army into a single educational structure. Army University will supplement the current education system in the Army and help streamline the system to ensure education earned there can transfer to civilian schools. The university will also find ways for Soldiers to earn private-sector equivalent credentialing for the work they do in the Army so they don't need to be re-credentialed when they go look for private-sector work. "The intent is to be our own university, to give you the equivalent credit for the things that you do in the Army," Dailey said. "[With Army University], you can capitalize on and maintain use of your tuition assistance and partner with a university outside our gates and use your transcripts from Army University in the future to help build the degree you personally want to work on - which is part of the self-development domain." SOLDIER COMPENSATION Today, Soldiers must serve 20 years before earning a retirement. Soldiers, who serve less than 20 years, get no retirement benefits at all. Dailey said there is discussion within the Department of Defense, the Army and the other services about how that might change. "We are doing this because we need reform," he said. "We have an old retirement system ... it only compensates those that stay 20 years. What we are trying to do is make sure that we [provide] compensation and a retirement system that can carry over to all Soldiers, whether they stay three years or 30 years. They will be able to put some in, but yet take some out when they leave." Dailey said the concept is not exclusively an Army effort, but involves all services and the Department of Defense. Changes to the retirement system for Service members would also require input from lawmakers. Dailey also said that he and other senior leaders are working to ensure that if changes ever come to the retirement system, Soldiers already in uniform will be "grandfathered in" under the retirement system that was in place when they joined the military. For Soldiers and their Families, which use TRICARE medical services, Dailey said there is no charge for when Soldiers or dependents miss an appointment with a military doctor. But the sergeant major said that might not always be the case. Missed appointments, he said, are costly. He told Soldiers that missing an appointment is also unfair to other Soldiers, who tried to make an appointment but were unable to, due to a doctor already being scheduled. Dailey also told concerned Soldiers that he believed for the time being that military medical care would remain unchanged, rather than being affected by the Affordable Care Act. He said that some 51 percent of dollars the Army gets from Congress are used for personnel costs, rather than equipment. Personnel costs include medical care for Soldiers. That being the case, he said the military is pressed to find cost savings. "We are taking a look at how we can find efficiencies in our healthcare for both our Soldiers and Families," he said. "I don't think in the foreseeable future that we'll be doing [the Affordable Care Act.] I think in the foreseeable future, it is in the best interest of our Soldiers and our families to maintain healthcare within our military health system." SLOWING BAH GROWTH For Soldiers at the town hall concerned that their basic allowance for housing might be cut, Dailey said that is not the case. Rather, he said, it is the intent of the Army that the unbridled growth of the Basic Allowance for Housing, or BAH, entitlement should be slowed. Dailey said that BAH continued to grow through the recession. He said the allowance wasn't ever designed to pay 100 percent of housing costs for Soldiers, though that is what ended up happening. Nevertheless, the Army doesn't plan to "cut" BAH, he said. "What we are saying is we are going to slow the growth," Dailey said, adding that every time BAH is raised, those who rent homes and apartments to Soldiers raise the rents they charge to take advantage. "If we slow the growth of BAH, it shouldn't be hurting Soldiers." UNIFORMS During the town hall, Daily brought forward a Soldier in the audience, who was wearing the new Operational Camouflage Pattern, or OCP, uniform, which the Army will make available in July. He told Soldiers not to go out and buy it. "One thing I want to make important and let everybody know is we don't all need to rush out and get the new uniform. Be patient," he said. "We pay you to replace your uniforms every year with your clothing allowance. Part of that clothing allowance builds up to the amount of uniforms you have in your clothing bags. That's how we determine the wear-out dates." Dailey said that Soldiers have until Oct. 1, 2019, four years and three months from the time the new uniforms appear on shelves, before they will be required to wear the new uniform to work. "I expect Soldiers to use their clothing allowance to do that, over time, so we don't place a significant burden on our young Soldiers and their families," he said. Dailey said the Army doesn't have enough OCP in stock for all Soldiers to get the new uniform immediately. Instead, he said, the Army will distribute the new uniform to commands based on operational need. Those units deploying will get the uniform first. Dailey said that he will continue to wear the Army Combat Uniform until such time he needs to replace it, and only then will he begin purchasing the new OCP uniform. He also told Soldiers that he has asked commanders to respect the required wear date for the new uniform, and to not require Soldiers to spend their own money on the new uniform before the Army requires them to have it. "Allow your clothing allowance dollars to work for you," he said. Dailey also polled Soldiers at the town hall regarding the wear of black socks with the new Army Physical Training uniform. Soldiers all agreed that the uniform would be better with black socks - and Dailey said he's gotten similar input from around the force. He said the message has been conveyed to Army leadership. He also said that he is happy with other Army uniforms, including the Army Service Uniform, and doesn't believe any additional changes need to be made to the current uniform lineup. "I think we need an era of stabilization for our Soldiers and our uniforms," he said. "I think our uniforms right now are well-designed. I like our new dress blue ASU uniform, and I know that our civilian population likes it as well. I get complimented on it quite often." Following the informational portion of the town hall, Dailey and Soldiers did 24 pushups together, one for each decade the Army has been in existence. Then Dailey and a Soldier cut an Army birthday cake, to be shared by those in attendance at the meeting. The U.S. Army turns 240 years old, June 14. Army planning more combined operations with British Army [2015-06-12] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers with the 82nd Airborne Division and the British Army conducted the largest multi-national airborne training exercise Fort Bragg, North Carolina, has seen in a decade and more integrated operations are planned for the future. The Combined Joint Operational Access Exercise, or CJOAX, in April focused on enhancing interoperability between the two nations' militaries, as well as on developing their roles as their nation's go-to force for immediate response. The 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, or "Falcon Brigade" serves as the Army's portion of America's Global Response Force, or GRF. It has filled that role for eight months now and will continue to do so until the end of November 2015 -- for a total of 14 months. "We are a no-notice, wheels-up in a minimum of 18 hours with a battalion-sized force," said Col. Joe Ryan, commander, 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division. His brigade-sized unit would follow the battalion within 96 hours. Partnered with the 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division during the CJOAX was the United Kingdom's 3rd Parachute Battalion, 16 Air Assault Brigade. The 3rd Parachute Battalion serves a role similar to the current role of the 2-82nd, as their nation's crisis response force. In April, more than 900 British paratroopers from the 3rd Parachute Battalion integrated with the Falcon Brigade for the CJOAX on Fort Bragg. "That exercise was a significant milestone along the campaign plan of multi-national interoperability for the division," said Ryan of the CJOAX. He said that campaign began with an August 2014 exercise where B Company, 3rd Parachute Battalion was integrated under the command of 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division. "The natural progression moved to a battalion, the entire 3rd Parachute Battalion underneath the command of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team," Ryan said. "And then the multiple enablers, echelons of enablers that the UK brought along with the warfighting functions, to integrate as seamlessly as possible with the other enablers in the brigade and should progress in the future to a relationship where the 16 Air Assault Brigade can integrate seamlessly under the command of the 82nd Airborne Division." Ryan said there is opportunity for American units to integrate under British units as well. During one such exercise this fall, Askari Storm in Kenya, Ryan said the Americans are "committed to sending at least a platoon" to integrate under the 16 Air Assault Brigade. During the CJOAX in April, brigade planner Maj. Josh Brown said he worked hand-in-hand with British counterparts to ensure that the integration was sufficient enough to reveal conflicts that would need to be remedied -- rather than designed to ensure that there were no conflicts at all. Rather than what Brown called "inclusion by separation," where the Americans and the British each had their own battlespace, the planners worked for far more integrated operations. We "made the decision we would include them on all facets of the operation with the understanding there would be friction points," he said. "And with the intent to identify those friction points and what just didn't work, to progress along that line of effort with interoperability, specifically with 16 Air Assault Brigade and 3rd Parachute Battalion. It was a tedious exercise -- a lot of areas to continue to work on. It was proven that it could be done. It set the glide path for the future." British Maj. Ivan Rowlett, commander, B Company, 3rd Parachute Battalion, 16 Air Assault Brigade said that in planning the CJOAX, planners had made a "conscious decision not to just de-conflict ops, as we had been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan for the last 10 to 15 years, but it was about creating friction." In August 2014, when his company integrated under the Red Falcons as part of an earlier exercise, he said the experience provided his unit with the subject-matter experts needed "to feed back in the requirements and the training requirements of what we needed to get done and also the capability work which was primarily on the air delivery side, to enable us to actually deploy using American aircraft, American parachutes -- but still using our equipment harnesses and our kit." He said a lot of work was done on air delivery, including putting British equipment on American aircraft. There were many successes, Rowlett said, but also challenges, including mission command. "We found out that we are pretty efficient at executing operations," he said. "But there is still work to be done in terms of us being able to access all the data, to be able to plan operations at the right tempo, in line with the brigade. There are challenges that remain, but they are certainly not insurmountable." Ryan said during the CJOAX the integration of US and UK elements was tight. "We jumped side by side" off both U.S. and Royal Air Force aircraft, he said. And the U.S. did training on the British low-level parachute, while the British did training on the American T-11. Ryan cited examples of British troops de-rigging a parachute-dropped American bulldozer, and British and American medics treating each other's casualties that had resulted from the jumps. During the last mission of the exercise, Ryan said, "we primarily made it a 3rd Parachute Battalion-led operation to conduct a raid on the target, air assault with U.S. aircraft from the 10th Mountain Division. I embedded a U.S. company under [U.K.] command. We bounced our brigade alternate command post forward to maintain communications with 3rd Parachute Battalion, who then communicated to the U.S. company that essentially served as a reserve force for them to exploit success. It was as granular as it could get. We did everything we could think of to make it where the only difference between us was one side spoke better English. Then that's the level we wanted to get to." COMMAND AND CONTROL Both Ryan and Rowlett said there were command and control issues between U.S. and British forces during CJOAX, but not issues that were show stoppers. "We have a work-around for every friction point we have encountered," Ryan said. "Some are more cumbersome than others." One example of that, he said, is the "expeditionary digital support liaison team," or EDSLT, which puts an American Army battle command system on the secret internet protocol router, or SIPR network, embedded with a partner unit. Ryan said the EDSLT includes a team of Soldiers that "interprets and manipulates" command and control information for a partner unit, "so they can have a common operating picture with us, and they can add to the common operating picture from their perspective." The EDSLT is "cumbersome" Ryan said, and it takes Soldiers from other jobs. "We have initiatives to make that EDSLT [unnecessary]," he said. He said the plan is to use other systems and capabilities and to provide allies, the UK specifically, with Army battle command systems so they can operate them on their own. Another friction point is sustainment of forces. Rowlett said he is suggesting there be an exercise where the two units rendezvous at an intermediate staging base, rather than starting off on an operation together, "to get a better understand of how that will affect the timeline in terms of notification to actually getting on target." That type of operation would also let both sides evaluate sustainment, by having to integrate two pipelines of support, one from the U.S. side and one from the U.K. Despite a few problems with command and control differences, Ryan said the integration of U.S. and British forces during CJOAX was exceptional. He cites British commitment to the partnership as being key to that success. "They are 100 percent all in on this," Ryan said. "They have been leaning forward and making sure this is a success. I think this is a testament to our shared vision of the world. They have given as much to this as we have. In our relationship with our allies, often times I think our going-in assumption is that the U.S. has to give, give, give, and give more -- because other nations cannot -- that we have to fill the vacuum. We have not found that in this relationship." "They have given certainly as much as they have gotten. We have not asked them to give more, because they are all in on this relationship. We are proud and satisfied of their level of commitment and their level of will to engage in this relationship, left of the crisis, earlier than the crisis, to the point now that we are confident that on a distant battlefield, we can be more effective earlier." At 240 years, America's Army is 'indispensable' [2015-06-14] WASHINGTON -- "There is a lot of uncertainty that exists in this world today, in spite of predictions by others that we are entering a period of peace," said Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh. "But even with declining budgets, I know this to be certain: America is the world's indispensable nation, and you are her indispensable Army." The more than 1,000 Soldiers, civilians and family members who had gathered for the 2015 Army Birthday Ball, June 13, in Washington, D.C., roared in approval of the secretary's summation of the Army they serve. Soldiers from around the nation gathered in Washington, D.C., to celebrate the Army's 240th birthday during the 2015 Army Birthday Ball. The evening began with a tribute to fallen Soldiers by Charlene Cross, whose son, Spc. Jason Bogar, died July 13, 2008 during a firefight in Afghanistan -- the same battle that earned Staff Sgt. Ryan Pitts the Medal of Honor. Entertainment included performances by the Army Band's "Army Voices," the Army Field Band's "Jazz Ambassadors," and the 2015 U.S. Army Soldier Show. Army senior leaders also put into context the significance of 240 years of Army service to the nation. "Tomorrow, to the exact day in 1775, the Continental Congress adopted and approved the creation of the American Continental Army," McHugh said. "The very same Army each and every one of you proudly serves today. And 240 birthdays later, that same Army stands tall as the strategic land power of America's joint force, and the dominant, the unrivaled, the preeminent military force on the face of the planet." McHugh, who serves now as the 21st secretary of the Army, assumed office in September 2009. He recently announced his plan to leave the position in November. When he leaves office, he will have served in the position for more than 6 years. "In my life, in my more than 6 decades, I have seen turning point after turning point, thanks to the ... sacrifice of American Soldiers," McHugh said. "In my short time as Army secretary, I have witnessed this Army do things that others said couldn't be done. I have watched with awe, and wondered how, day after day, in every corner of the world, American Soldiers extend the benefits of liberty and security to an increasingly complex world. And I am proud to say, at the heart of it all, just as it was in Saratoga, there are individual men and women who are committed to an uncommon life of incredible consequence, men and women like each and every one of you in this room tonight: passionate, dedicated professionals who routinely display the exceptional character that you show in defense of our nation." STRENGTH OF THE NATION Gen. Ray Odierno assumed the role of chief of staff of the Army in September 2011. Since then, he has signed off on nearly every speech he has given with something nearly every Soldier has heard by now: "The strength of our nation is our Army. The strength of our Army is our Soldiers. And the strength of our Soldiers is our Families. That's what makes us Army Strong." Odierno plans to retire from the Army in August. He used his last turn behind the lectern at an Army Birthday Ball to explain what is by now a signature sentiment for the general. Calling attention to the Army flag on display in the ballroom, he pointed out that the flag bears 188 battle streamers. Those streamers, he said, represent, among other conflicts, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, both the first and second world wars, Korea and Vietnam. Also on the flag are 13 streamers that represent the war on terrorism, as well as the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. "I have lost incredible young men and women, sacrificed in Iraq and Afghanistan for this country," Odierno said. "That is why the Army is the strength of this nation." About 2.5 million Soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 14 years. Those Soldiers, he said, are what makes the Army work. "The Army is about Soldiers," he said. "It is about young men and women who are selfless, dedicated, competent, and committed; and who do their job with great character, no matter where we'll be, no matter when we ask them. And if necessary, they are willing to give their lives for this country. That is what we must never forget. That is why our Soldiers are the strength of our Army." Back home, supporting those Soldiers no matter where they go, are their families. "The strength of our Soldiers is our families," he said, calling out as an example, Charlene Cross, who had earlier stood on the stage and provided a tribute to fallen Soldiers. Among those fallen Soldiers was her own son. "That is what we are about," Odierno said. "Those that support us, no matter what, who are always there for us. Who are there to do whatever is necessary because they love their Soldiers. And they are willing to support them no matter what we ask them to do. That is what makes us so strong. That is what enables us to do the things that we are asked to do." Not forgetting the historical significance of 240 years of Army history, Odierno finally called attention to Soldiers that came before: all those who have served since the Army was first created in 1775. "What really makes us 'Army Strong,' are the millions of men and women who came before us," he said. "We stand on their shoulders every single day because of what they gave us in this nation: a nation of freedom, a nation of liberties like no other. It is because of their sacrifice and your sacrifice that we are able to continue to enjoy it." "The strength of our nation is our Army. The strength of our Army is our Soldiers. And the strength of our Soldiers is our Families. That's what makes us Army Strong," he said. Odierno retires in August from the Army, when he does, he'll have served over 39 years in the Army. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in June 1976. GREAT SOLDIERS While Odierno and McHugh cited history, the Army's senior-most enlisted Soldier called out some of the greatest Soldiers in America's Army today. Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey asked several Soldiers attending the ball to stand, and to be recognized by other Army Ball guests. Included were: -- Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Carpenter, the 2014 U.S. Army NCO of the Year -- Sgt. Thomas Boyd, the 2014 U.S. Army Soldier of the Year -- Staff Sgt. Jonathan Miller, 2014 Drill Sergeant of the Year -- Sgt. 1st Class Thomas Russell, 2014 AIT Platoon Sergeant of the Year -- Sgt. 1st Class Jeremy Lemma, 2015 Best Ranger Competition winner -- Sgt. 1st Class Timothy Briggs, 2015 Best Ranger Competition winner Briggs, Dailey said, is a two-time winner of the Best Ranger Competition. He also earned that title in 2013. "We have an Army that is full of great Soldiers," Dailey said. "And we have hundreds of thousands of dedicated, resilient, ready, volunteer Soldiers in our active, Reserve and Guard ranks, who live, eat, and breathe the Army profession, day in and day out." "For over 240 years, Soldiers have advanced our cause and they have prevailed," Dailey said. "That legacy continues through the service and sacrifice of great Soldiers, families and civilians in our Army today." Army lines of effort to define proper online conduct [2015-06-19] WASHINGTON -- "How do we ensure Army values-based conduct to prevent and respond to harm inflicted through the use of electronic communication?" Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno asked for an answer to that question earlier this year - in the wake of revelations at the February 2015 SHARP Summit in Washington D.C. At the SHARP summit, Soldiers spoke about online sexual harassment via social media. They had also discussed retribution, delivered online, against Soldiers, who had spoken up about both sexual harassment and sexual assault. In March, following the SHARP summit, Odierno directed the creation of a "tiger team" at headquarters Army level to address the issue, and to answer his question about how to prevent and respond to such behavior online. "I expect Soldiers to uphold our Army values, on and off duty, and treat each other with dignity and respect," the general wrote earlier this month on his own social media page. "This applies to our day-to-day interactions, at the office, in the field, on deployment, and at home, both in person and across social media." Odierno explained on his Facebook page that he is concerned with online bullying, cyber-stalking, and online retaliation for reporting misdeeds. "This behavior is unprofessional and should not be acceptable to any of us," he wrote. "Join with me to turn the tide; let's work together to protect each other and tackle these issues to retain a culture of professionalism; both off and online." As it turns out, the answer to Odierno's question didn't take as much work as it might have. The team uncovered a weapon to combat the problem that is already in the Army's inventory: Army Regulation 600-20. Within the existing Army regulation, said tiger team member Lt. Col. Kay Emerson, who also serves as director of the Army's Equal Opportunity policy office, is section 4-19. The section is entitled "Treatment of Persons." The policy states that the Army is a values-based organization, where everyone is expected to do what is right by treating all persons as they should be treated - with dignity and respect. Hazing, bullying, and other behaviors that undermine dignity and respect are fundamentally in opposition to Army values and are prohibited. The section defines both hazing and bullying. Mistreatment of others, it reads, does not have to be limited to in-person behavior. It can happen online as well. When commanders find their Soldiers are engaging in behavior that is contrary to the Army values of treating others with dignity and respect, and that behavior is happening online - commanders have a tool available to them already to remedy the situation. "Being that this is a punitive policy, by working with their supporting legal advisor, commanders will be able to determine the most appropriate way to take action," Emerson said. Army Regulation 600-20 specifically addresses the use of "electronic media," not "electronic communications." AR 600-20 currently addresses "other misconduct," and may more specifically describe other misconduct in the future. "Retaliation" and "reprisal" against Soldiers, who have reported the offenses and misconducts of others, is already addressed in other Army directives and policy. These issues will be readdressed in an update to AR 600-20, likely by the end of the year, Emerson said. The tiger team Emerson serves on has outlined three lines of effort to achieve their goal of curbing non-professional behavior by Soldiers online. Those lines of effort were released to the Army, June 16, as part of an implementation plan called "Professionalization of Online Conduct." The first is to update existing policy and regulations to reflect more accurately the social media landscape. They also will develop a report for senior Army leadership on online-related incidents. The report will collate incident information from Army staff offices. The team also has a line of effort related to training, to "provide commanders and leaders the information and tools they need to educate others and respond appropriately to complaints; train current and future Soldiers, Army civilians, and contractors on how to protect themselves, identify and prevent inappropriate behavior and report online-related incidents." Finally, the Army public affairs community is tasked with ensuring the Army community is aware of what online misconduct looks like, the training resources that are available, and the policy changes that are going to be made. According to the current AR 600-20, "bullying" includes, but is not limited to, "making threats, spreading rumors, social isolation, and attacking someone physically, verbally, or through the use of electronic media." Similarly, hazing "need not be committed in the physical presence of the victim; it may be accomplished through written or phone messages, text messages, email, social media, or any other virtual or electronic medium." Online conduct should reflect the tenets of the Army profession. There is no difference in standards between in-person behavior and online conduct, the regulation says. During a "town hall" meeting with Soldiers, June 4, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey wanted to know why Soldiers are willing to engage in such behavior online, and to use online forums to express opinions and say things that they would never be willing to say in public. "Why is it that Soldiers get so brave behind the keyboard," he asked. "If you go on social media today, it feels like people have this Spartan shield when they get behind their computer. They say things that they will not say, as Soldiers, in public." He told Soldiers that saying something about a Soldier online, or saying something to a Soldier online, is the same as walking up to another Soldier and saying it to them in person. Emerson said one reason Soldiers are willing to write things online that they wouldn't say in person, is because they believe, incorrectly, that they have an "online persona" that is distinct from their real-world persona - and is therefore not subject to military discipline. "As members of the Army profession, Soldiers and civilians, we have one persona," she said. "We are professionals. And so our online conduct, whether we are at work, at home, in a café, in a library -- should be consistent with the Army ethic and Army standards of conduct." Mistreatment of persons, both in person and online, is destructive to the unit cohesion that is required for the Army to conduct its mission. In short, it destroys the Army whether it happens in the unit, out in public, or online, Emerson said. "People join an organization because organizations have specific values and cultures they want to be a part of," Emerson said. "The Army has expectations of good behavior - right behavior. Not just because it's nice or we want people to be happy. It's because it's a mission imperative. When we go places to do things, fighting forest fires in Montana, or going to a foreign country as an extension of national power ... we have to do that as a team. "To be successful, that requires unit cohesion, with a positive command climate. We serve in battle and fight in the foxhole, not just for apple pie and the red, white and blue - but for the person next to us in the foxhole. When the bullets are flying, that is who we are taking care of. And we expect the same thing from him or her. We can only do that if we are mutually supporting and close-knit." LEADERSHIP FIX Army Regulation 600-20 doesn't just address what constitutes bullying or hazing or harassment - and it doesn't simply tell Soldiers what they should not be doing. It also spells out what Soldiers should be doing: it obligates Soldiers to report activities that are out of line with Army values. "Individuals are responsible for ... advising the command of any incidents of hazing or bullying ... conducting themselves in accordance with this paragraph and treating all persons as they should be treated - with dignity and respect," the regulation reads. "Service members should report hazing or bullying to their commander, law enforcement, or the inspector general." "Leadership fixes things," said Dailey, during an enlisted solarium in May. "When I was a squad leader, I had nine Soldiers," he said. "I promise you that if I looked those Soldiers in the face and said don't do this - they wouldn't. And I didn't need to say anything else. And if they did and they knew that they'd get caught and if they knew they were not representing that squad to the best of their ability - I'm telling you they knew what the consequences would be. And they knew that they didn't want to embarrass me or let the Army down." The quickest fix for the kinds of activities Soldiers are involved in today online, Dailey said, is leadership influence - especially first-line leaders. He said he is surprised that first-line leaders today don't have that level of control over their units - at least not in regard to online behavior. "I can't grasp the concept that our young squad leaders don't have that level of influence over their Soldiers," he said. "I think they do, I just think they are not telling them. I think if every squad leader in the Army sat their Soldiers down around the oak tree and said this is what you should or should not be doing, it would get taken care of. I think we are not doing it." NO INTERNET POLICE Emerson said the Army is not looking to "police" the Internet. Instead, she said, the Army is making a statement, to let Soldiers know that online is the same as offline back in the unit. Online is, like offline, a domain where professional Soldier behavior is expected of everyone. "The online environment will continue to grow and morph over time," Emerson said. "We will have to continually seize the initiative and take, retake ground or at least define what 'right' looks like for us. We're making a statement here. We are defining what right looks like. We're defining online conduct, and that it should be in concert with our Army ethic, our Army profession. Leaders, at all levels, set the example for others to follow." Emerson said the Army's intent is quite the opposite of asking Soldiers to stop using social media. The Army values social media, she said, and wants Soldiers to go online and tell their stories about serving their nation. "All of us have an Army task, an implied task, to tell the Army story," she said. "We are probably the Army's best recruiters. What can we do to tell the Army story online? We can write about how we help others and how we provide service to the nation on a day-to-day basis. There are a lot of positive things we can put on social media. "Telling mom and dad and grandma and grandpa, sharing the photos, all of that is very important. That happens countless times in social media and in other ways. We learn things from blogs. So in no way, shape or form, are we trying to limit the sharing of the Army story. It is not our intention to get people off the Internet. We need that interaction. We need to continue to modernize and adapt to the environment we are in. So we intend to stay in the media, the social media, and utilize those things in an appropriate manner." Army team gets all gold during DOD Warrior Games archery [2015-06-22] QUANTICO, Va. -- Army fans were all aquiver when scores were finally announced at the archery competition during the 2015 Department of Defense Warrior Games here, June 22. Current and veteran Soldiers took home every gold medal, which was up for grabs. Military archers from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Special Operations Command and United Kingdom competed in both compound bow and recurve bow archery during the day-long event at the Lejeune Field Tent. By the end of competition, Team Army had earned four gold medals, one silver medal, and one bronze medal - for a total of six. Perhaps the most spectacular performance came from Team Army's Chasity Kuczer. She was one of two Team Army members, who ended the day with not one, but two gold medals. Kuczer earned hers wielding the compound bow during both team and individual competition. Coming out of the first of two 300-point rounds, Kuczer had scored 286 points. "She's 13 points ahead of the next person behind her. They are all in a 13-point deficit even going into this," said Team Army archery coach Jessie White. "For somebody to come in and beat her out of it is going to be tough. She's not going to back down. She's on the gas pedal and intends to run until it's over." After scoring top marks in both 300-point rounds, Kuczer went on to compete for the gold. Before that competition started, her confidence was as high as her scores. "I'm hoping pretty damn good," she said of her chances of taking home the gold. Kuczer said getting where she was at mid-competition took a lot of practice and trying not to think too much. "My biggest thing is, I get in my head, and if I do that I start overthinking the shot and I start missing stuff," she said. "So stay out of my head." She said chanting and cheering by Team Army fans, arguably the loudest of all the fans in the field tent, helped her to do better. "It actually pumps me up," she said. "I kind of relax a little more when they do that." By the end of the day, Kuczer had earned not just one gold medal, but two. She beat her Marine competitor for the gold in compound bow by just one point. Marine Corps veteran Sgt. Clayton McDaniel took the silver in compound bow. Army Reserve Sgt. Colten Harms took bronze. Kuczer competed against both men and women in the competition. Archery this year was not split by gender. She said that wasn't a problem for her. "I've always had to deal with 'oh, you're a girl and you can't shoot.' But I've been in a lot of male-dominated things," she said. Adding advice for women in the Army who may one day move into the newly opened combat arms career fields, she said "Don't let the guys push you down. You can excel and become better than them. Keep driving on." For the compound bow team competition, Harms, Army veteran Capt. Frank Barroquiero and Kuczer took the gold. Kuczer, who is still in the Army as part of the Warrior Transition Battalion on Fort Knox, Kentucky, said she hopes to get involved in the Army's World Class Athlete Program and the Paralympics. Over on the recurve bow side, Army veteran Staff Sgt. Billy Meeks took the silver in the individual competition - losing out to Army veteran Sgt. Sean Hook for the gold. Petty Officer 3rd Class Jamie Byrd, of the Navy, took bronze in the recurve bow individual competition. Meeks said that he and Hook planned and practiced to go head-to-head for the gold and silver in the individual competition on recurve bow. "Me and Sean Hook actually trained so we could shoot together and make it to where we came out - in the silver/gold match," Meeks said. "Both of us shot our average, which is what we came out to do. That was the whole plan: shoot your game one arrow at a time. What happens, happens. If we win, we win. If not, we know we did our best." But Meeks still went home with a gold - and a silver. As part of the recurve bow team competition, he, Hook and Army Reserve Spc. Sydney Davis earned the Army another gold medal. "I feel like we were bike riders," said Meeks of the camaraderie and teamwork on Team Army. "We were pulling each other all together at the same time. Everybody was just drafting off each other. It was an amazing feeling having so many people on the podium." White said he "can't be more proud" of what the team accomplished during the 2015 DOD Warrior Games. "They literally won every single gold medal of the competition," he said. "You give them the tools and they come and they do exactly what you hope they will do. They put the work in and they deserve every bit of it. It was all about the team from day 1 with this group. Even in all the training camps, it's been about the team. That's how they win." To become 'force of future,' Army must fix personnel churn [2015-06-26] WASHINGTON -- To become a "force of the future," the Army must slow down the movement of officers and other personnel into and out of important jobs. Speaking June 24 at an Association of the United States Army Institute of Land Warfare event near the Pentagon, Undersecretary of the Army Brad R. Carson, who also serves as the acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, discussed challenges and concerns he has in developing a "force of the future," or "21st century defense department," as it specifically relates to personnel management. "It is my firm belief that the current personnel system, which has satisfactorily served us well for 75 years now, has become outdated," Carson said. "What once worked for us has now, in the 21st century, become unnecessarily inflexible, inefficient, and irreparable." Carson said he's been given an Aug. 19 deadline to deliver to the defense secretary a plan of action to reform the personnel system - a plan, which has been coordinated with all the military services. "I have promised him revolutionary change," Carson said, adding that he is working with 100 military, government and civilian academic personnel to develop his plan. Carson outlined several personnel challenges faced the Army - but also by the other military services - which he posed in the form of questions. "Should [we] accept the churn through jobs that is characteristic of the current personnel system and the requirements that it sets" Carson asked. Churn among high-ranking officers, refers to the length of time those officers stay in their positions before moving on to a new job. Fortune 500 CEOs, Carson said, typically stay in their position for maybe seven years. The Army's chief of staff holds his position for four - or less. The chief human resources officer at a Fortune 500 company has tenure of 4 years, while the average tenure of the G-1 in the Army has been about two years for a quarter-century now. For the CIO/G-6 and the G-8, he said, both have "on average half the tenure of their corporate analogues." Churn is even greater at lower levels, he said. Nearly half of the Army, 50 percent, turns over every other year. "In three years, a whole organization is a new one," he said. That level of churn in positions, he said, means Army officers don't have the time to develop in their work as fully as they might. He said general officers are put in jobs for which they have no background, but are able to do well because they are natural leaders. But by the time they gain full expertise in a particular section of the Army, "they move you on to a new position or retire you altogether. It makes no sense," Carson said. While Carson is not yet making recommendations on how to fix the problem with churn, or how to gain the benefits of eliminating it - he did say there is a way to achieve the benefits without returning to the military's pre-World War II era personnel system, which left some senior leaders in their positions until they died. During that time, he said, some military officers remained captains, in some cases, for 20 years while they waited for somebody above them to move on. "That's when we went to the current system in 1957," he said. "But there are ways to select out each year the people that aren't performing well ... that will avoid that cluttering at the top." He also said that the brightest people - the kind the military wants to employ - end up partnering with other bright people. Smart officers marry smart spouses - doctors and lawyers, for instance, he said. And having that officer move every two years means that their spouses have to move as well and "can't have a career," he said. "Moving every two years is a hardship on them," Carson said. "If we want to keep the people we want most to stay in, we have to let people stay in duty stations and jobs longer than we do today." Carson said he was also concerned with the inefficiency of Army recruiting. "Should we accept in the Army, the waste, the inefficiency in Army recruiting," he asked. The Army brings in between 60,000 to 80,000 new Soldiers a year, Carson said, a challenge to Army recruiters. "They must be what the Army operating concept calls ... resilient and fit, they must be Soldiers of character, they must be competent, committed, agile and adaptive, they must be capable of forming cohesive teams of trusted professionals, all the while representing the diversity of America ... a tall order," he said. Making recruiting more complex, he said, recruiters must filter out those who don't meet weight requirements, don't meet education requirements, have a criminal background, or have drug problems. "It's estimated that each year, less than 400,000 young people become eligible for military service," he said. "And across all the services, more than 250,000 of that 400,000 cohort, nearly 60 percent, are needed. That includes both active and Reserve components." He said the Army spends "billions of dollars" to meet that recruiting challenge. But he said that each Army recruiter averages just 10 contracts a year - less than one a month. The numbers are similar for the Navy, and the Marine Corps. Air Force recruiters, he said, are averaging about 45 contracts a year. "Almost five times the output of recruiters in other services." What concerns Carson, however, is the great cost of recruiting compared to the loss of so many Soldiers so early in their careers due to unexpected attrition. "The Army makes 16 million contacts a year - the results of various forms of marketing, in the hopes of [for] this year, writing 68,000 contracts," he said. "That's not too great a batting average. But for me the real problem is still deeper. And that is the realizing that of those 68,000 contracts, it is estimated that 40 percent will not complete their first term of enlistment. And more than 20 percent will not make it to their first duty station. That's expensive, very expensive." He said the military services have tinkered with the quality standards of the recruits they allow into service, to include reducing the number of conduct waivers and increasing the percentage of those recruits that must have high school diplomas. But the efforts have not changed the attrition rates for first-term Soldiers. "Despite these changes, the needle on first term attrition has not substantially moved," he said. ENRICHMENT LEADS TO EXODUS Carson noted a surprising finding: the more the Army invests in an officer, the more likely it is that officer will be out of the military before 10 years of service. The Army has multiple commissioning sources, such as Reserve Officer Training Corps, the military academies or Officer Candidate School. But he said for the Army, the most time and money is spent developing officers at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. Additionally, the Army makes substantial investments in future officers by providing four-year ROTC scholarships, and to a lesser degree, to students on two-year and three-year ROTC scholarship students. But retention rates for those officers, he said, are essentially the inverse of how much time and money the Army spends developing them. For 2004 West Point grads, he said only 38 percent now remain on active duty. Of four-year ROTC students in the same year, only 43 percent remain on active duty. For non-scholarship, or two-year ROTC scholarship officers, 55 percent remain on active duty. "Those officers whom we make the most investment in, and in which we spend the most time, are the most likely to leave the Army," Carson said. A FAMILY BUSINESS Also of concern to Carson is the makeup of today's military. He said the Army has become something of a "family business." About 83 percent of recruits, he said, have a Family member who has served in the military. About a third has a Family member who retired from the military. About 36 percent of recruits across all departments had a father who served in some branch of the military, he said, and six percent of recruits had a mother who served. "This level of military service in no way reflects the broader society in which we live," he said. "And indeed, while the familial aspect of this is quite noble, it does suggest that the full diversity of America's brilliant mosaic is not being captured by the U.S. military." In line with that concern, he said, the percentage of female officers in the Army today is about 22 percent. "Not nearly enough," he said. "Especially as women now predominate the higher education, and the need for knowledge workers in the Army and other services is only going to grow over time." He said more disheartening is that among female officers, approximately 50 percent leave service after their initial commitment is complete. "I don't believe we can be an effective Army, an effective military, unless we refuse to accept these things," Carson said. "That means we have to change the way we do business. "We have to move to a world where the talents of each and every Soldier, the skills knowledge and behaviors required for every job are well known, are mapped, and where we have the ability to match the demand for talent with a supply - a supply we recruit, retain and develop ... this is the force of the future. "The strength of the American military, and especially the Army, is not our expensive kit, but our priceless human capital. And I believe we must have a personnel system worthy of our mission. And on behalf of Secretary Carter, I am committed to achieving this." Army teams, Corps of Engineers named in DOD Value Engineering awards [2015-06-26] WASHINGTON -- Six teams and individuals from the Army, as well as a team and individual from the Army Corps of Engineers, were named as recipients of the 2015 Department of Defense Value Engineering Achievement Awards, June 25, at the Pentagon. "Value engineering is identifying and eliminating unnecessary costs while maintaining or improving performance -- as measured in the eye of the end user," said Stephen Welby, deputy assistant secretary of defense for systems engineering. "It's about eliminating unnecessary cost and identifying ways to shape our products to be the most effective in the environment we will use them." Welby said that value engineering is especially important in the face of declining budgets. He said dollars saved through value engineering can be used to fund combat operations, readiness, or modernization to ensure America's military is ready to defeat future threats. "Everyone involved in the value engineering program today, especially those we are going to honor ... add value to the DOD's force structuring capability," he said. "Those being honored today worked to analyze the functions, systems, equipment, facilities, services, and supplies that they were responsible for, they asked critical questions about the performance of the material they were working on and the associated cost of the individual components and systems -- analyzed those systems with an eye towards cost savings with a goal of maintaining and sustaining performance even at the lower cost. Value engineering changes allow the DOD to deliver systems that provide essential functions at the lowest lifecycle cost." He said by asking the questions associated with value engineering, those involved in value engineering have achieved more than $55 billion in cost avoidance over the lifecycle of the value engineering program -- which began in 1980. That comes to about $1.5 billion each year. "That's no small change," Welby said. "Value engineering also ensures our warfighters are equipped to face the diverse emerging threats that they deal with around the world today. In concert with sound acquisition practices, value engineering helps ensure the equipment, and material we provide, and the construction that we perform is the best in the world. " Army recipients of the 2015 Department of Defense Value Engineering Achievement Awards include: Department of the Army recipients: -- Program/Project Award: Utility Helicopters Project Office -- Team Award: Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center, Aviation Engineering Directorate, Maintenance Engineering Division -- Organization Award: U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command -- Individual Award: James Todd, lead engineer, PMTRADE -- Special Award: U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Command -- Special Award: Program Executive Office for Missile and Space, Lower Tier Project Office U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recipients: -- Individual Award: Leighann Ryckeghem, Detroit District Value Engineering Officer -- Special Award: Lower Granite Lock and Dam Barge Moorage Facility, Snake River, Washington Warrant officers critical to transformation from wartime to sustainment Army [2015-06-30] WASHINGTON -- With a shrinking end strength and budget, the Army will need to relearn how to sustain what it has, rather than depending on contractor logistics support or replacements. Warrant officers will be key to that transition, Gen. Dennis L. Via said. "I recall [that] warrants maintained everything in the division," said Via, commander of Army Materiel Command. "Maybe you had some advisors, but you maintained it all ... and your Soldiers. But we've gone the other way." Via spoke to an auditorium full of senior Army warrant officers in Alexandria, Virginia. The warrant officers were part of a first-ever "Army Senior Warrant Officer Summit," June 28-29. Via said as a result of 14 years of war following 9/11, the Army has become accustomed to a large budget, to war materials being delivered when and where they were needed, and to not having want for anything. Additionally, he said, the Army has come to depend heavily on contractor logistics support for things like vehicle maintenance. But those times are over, he said. Funding has gone down and end strength is going down as well. Soldiers will have to relearn how to sustain the Army and its equipment. And they will have to do so in a time where equipment and gear is far more complicated than it was pre-9/11. "How do you transition back to this new Apache now and the new Black Hawk [helicopter]" with only Army support and sustainment, Via asked. "How do you strike that balance? That's the transition that is so critically important, that warrant officers are key to making happen. No one else in the Army can do that. I've been doing this for 35 years. No one else can help our Army transition to where we have to go, except warrant officers." Via said that most commissioned and noncommissioned officers lack the expertise to sustain the Army in the way Soldiers were able to do before 9/11 happened. About 70 percent of Soldiers today, officers and enlisted, were not in the Army before the 2001 terrorist attacks. "How do you train colonels and lieutenant colonels to run a maintenance meeting - they've never run a maintenance meeting. How do you show them to manage a budget?" he asked. "I talk to the pre-command course every month - battalion and brigade commanders - most of them have never managed a budget," Via said. "They say 'I want' and it showed up and it was always brand new." That wartime culture where supplies are plentiful, where repairs happen elsewhere as Soldiers focus on mission rather than sustainment - must be transitioned away from, Via said. It will be the "most significant challenge we face as an Army," Via said. "With fewer funds and fewer people, we will transition to sustainment of billions of equipment with Soldiers. Warrants have to make that happen." The general also dispelled a myth that warrant officers need not be "strategic thinkers" in addition to their role as functional experts. Senior warrant officers - like senior enlisted and senior commissioned officers - are all required to be strategic thinkers, he said. "I don't know how you can be a senior leader in the U.S. Army or any organization without being strategic," he said. "We are in a mobile, complex world. And while there are functional capabilities that you require in any particular area, I expect all of our senior leaders to be strategic thinkers and be able to have a vision of how we look to the future." Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno directed the Army staff senior warrant officer to produce a unifying "warrant officer cohort" strategy to outline how future warrant officers will be accessed, developed and managed in support of "Force 2025 and Beyond." The two-day Army Senior Warrant Officer Summit served as a communications forum to enable the Army staff senior warrant officer to outline the Warrant Officer 2025 Strategy and facilitate an informative dialogue amongst senior Army leaders and senior warrant officers from throughout the Army. The forum focused on current and future strategic training and leader development issues for warrant officers. Leading the summit was Chief Warrant Officer 5 David Williams, who now serves as the Army senior warrant officer. That position is new in the Army, and was created to provide the Army's chief of staff with subject-matter expertise on warrant officer training and development. With new report, senior raters may identify just 24 percent 'most qualified' [2015-07-06] WASHINGTON -- New policy for the noncommissioned officer evaluation report, or NCOER, due out in January, includes a limit on how many "most qualified" ratings can be handed out by a Soldier's senior rater. Under the new system, a senior rater may rate only as many as 24 percent as being most qualified. That limit applies when those being rated are in the rank of staff sergeant through sergeant major. The expectation will be to make the rating of "highly qualified" as the "new norm," said Sgt. Maj. Stephen McDermid, the evaluations branch sergeant major for the Adjutant General Directorate, Human Resources Command. "It's important to understand that the 'highly qualified' selection will be the norm and that noncommissioned officers [NCOs] will remain competitive for promotion with highly-qualified NCOERs, given they complete their required professional military education," McDermid said. The senior rater profile is new on the NCOER, and similar to what is already being done on officer evaluation reports. Army leaders hope that implementation of a senior rater profile will help reduce "rating inflation" within the enlisted evaluation system, which makes it difficult for promotion boards to select the most qualified for promotion. "It's hard to use [the NCOER] as a determiner of success and for potential for promotion when everybody is a 1," said Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey. "That should be the number-one thing we are using to decide promotion potential. And unfortunately, because it is so equivalent for everybody, you can't. You have to go to other things like school reports, awards and decorations and all those other things." McDermid said the limit of 24 percent is designed to reflect the promotion percentages common across various military occupational specialties within the enlisted ranks. The intent is to make it easier for promotion boards to identify those Soldiers, who are most qualified to be promoted. The decision to set the limit to 24 percent was made by the sergeant major of the Army and his senior enlisted council. The recommendation was passed to both the Army's chief of staff and Army secretary, who both agreed with the recommendation. "It'll give promotion boards the ability to see who actually are the best by using the NCOER as a true discriminator of talent - what it's supposed to do," Dailey said. The NCOER includes a block labeled "Senior Rater Overall Potential." That block includes check boxes where senior raters are asked to compare an NCO's "overall potential" to that of other NCOs of the same grade that the senior NCO has rated in his or her career. For the NCO being rated, senior raters may select from: "most qualified," "highly qualified," "qualified," or "not qualified." They may choose only one of those ratings, and may rate up to 24 percent of their Soldiers as "most qualified." Another change to the NCOER includes the supplementary review. Army leaders have asked for a supplementary review on NCOERs when the senior rater is a sergeant first class, first sergeant, master sergeant, warrant officer one, chief warrant officer two, second lieutenant or first lieutenant. "This supplementary review will be performed by a uniformed Army Soldier, senior to the senior rater within the rated NCO's organization," McDermid said. "As designed, the supplementary reviewer will monitor evaluation practices and provide assistance and/or advice to rating officials as needed." COUNSELING REQUIRED With the implementation of the new NCOER, counseling will remain critical in reviewing the Soldier's demonstrated performance and potential while focusing on leader development throughout the rating period. Raters must counsel the rated Soldier initially and quarterly, while the senior rater should counsel the rated NCO twice during the rating period. "Ideally this will occur within the first 30 days of the rating period and then at the mid-point," McDermid said. "To account for this, senior raters will have a section on the form to annotate comments from any counseling sessions conducted with the rated NCO." The requirement for counseling is also expected to help curb rating inflation, Dailey said, because senior raters, who in the past have neglected to engage in counseling with an NCO for an entire rating period, have been reluctant to rate that Soldier as anything less than the best. "That's why they got 1 blocks in the past," Dailey said. "[Senior raters] didn't do their job counseling, so they just gave them a 1 block." Dailey said that when senior raters hold counseling with the Soldiers they senior rate, they are more comfortable providing an honest rating at the end of the year. "If I tell you all throughout the year in counseling that you are not doing a good job, I have no problem at the end of the year telling you that you are not doing a good job," Dailey said. "But if I haven't done my job in telling you what you have done wrong ... then we tend to shy away from that when it is performance evaluation time. " The new NCOER was at one point expected to hit the streets at beginning of the new fiscal year, which is Oct. 1. But Dailey asked the Army's chief of staff and Army secretary to move the date to Jan. 1. The additional time will allow for a fine-tuning of the process and procedures for tracking senior rater profiles to ensure Soldiers have a fair chance at promotions while also preventing rating inflation. Army to realign brigades, cut 40,000 Soldiers, 17,000 civilians [2015-07-09] WASHINGTON -- By the end of fiscal 2018, the active Army expects to have drawn down in size from 490,000 to 450,000, said Army officials during a press conference at the Pentagon, July 9. The service will also shrink the size of several brigade combat teams and will cut 17,000 civilian employees. "These are incredibly difficult choices," said Brig. Gen. Randy George, director of force management for the Army. "The Army followed a long and deliberate process that included utilization of a [Government Accountability Office]-endorsed military value analysis process, and an inclusive total Army analysis, in order to determine the best construct for the Army, based on the threats we face and the current fiscal environment we must operate in." The most-recently announced cuts will heavily affect six installations, where more than 1,000 Soldiers will be cut. These locations include 3,402 Soldiers on Fort Benning, Georgia; 3,350 Soldiers on Fort Hood, Texas; 2,631 Soldiers on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska; 1,251 Soldiers on Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington; 1,214 Soldiers on Schofield Barracks, Hawaii; and 1,219 Soldiers on Fort Bliss, Texas. During the press conference, the Army provided a list of 30 installations - including those six - where changes would be made. Communities outside those installations will regrettably be affected, by the changes, George said, but "the Army has to operate within the budget provided. Part of doing that is restructuring and reorganizing to be able to accomplish the Army's mission in the best manner possible." Cuts to the force will come from reductions of headquarters - focusing on two-star and above headquarters; the reduction of brigade combat teams; the Aviation Restructure Initiative; operational force design changes; and reduction to enabler and generating forces. George said that the Army will try to draw down the active force end strength gradually in order to "minimize the turbulence we have with Soldiers and their Families." By the end of fiscal 2015, the force will be at 490,000 Soldiers; at the end of FY16, 475,000; at the end of FY17, 460,000; and at the end of FY17, 450,000. In 2012, the regular Army had an end strength of about 570,000 Soldiers, during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. In 2013, the Army announced a drawdown of 80,000, to be completed by the end of FY17, that would bring the size of the Army to 490,000 Soldiers. The newest reductions of 40,000, in support of the president's budget, will further reduce the force to 450,000 by the end of 2018. Much of the initial 80,000-Soldier reduction was achieved by elimination of temporary end-strength increases, wartime allowance and reductions in Europe. With the latest reductions, the Army will try to use attrition as well, George said, and the slope of the drawdown will help with that. But with this drawdown, not all Soldier cuts will be able to come through attrition. Instead, the Army will need to continue officer and enlisted involuntary separations to meet the end-strength target of 450,000 Soldiers. There will also be early retirement boards. "We do expect that will happen." Among civilians, there will be a 17,000-person reduction in fiscal years 2016 and 2017. The Army has said that these reductions can be achieved through attrition and by not filling currently unfilled positions. The Army has already cut the civilian workforce by 8,000. The additional 17,000 cuts will mean a total loss of 25,000 Army civilians by FY17. Three of the affected Army installations will see changes to some of their largest operational units, called brigade combat teams, which typically involve about 4,000 Soldiers. At Fort Benning, the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, or BCT, 3rd Infantry Division, will convert to a maneuver battalion task force by FY17. A maneuver battalion task force includes about 1,050 Soldiers rather than the 4,000 in a full BCT. The change on Fort Benning means it no longer needs to expand its training area. The change will also reduce the competition on Fort Benning for ranges and training areas that exist now between the 3rd BCT, the Armor and the Infantry School. About 3,402 Soldiers will be cut on Fort Benning. The Army has said that Fort Benning scored in the bottom third of a military value assessment, or MVA, which is largely related to the quality and availability of its training spaces. The Army also said that despite the temporary nature commonly associated with "task forces," a maneuver battalion task force is actually a permanent part of Army force structure. Such task forces offer commanders the option to grow rapidly to create a BCT, if needed. The task force allows the Army to maintain some combat power capability and also allows "reversibility" within a force size of 450,000 Soldiers - versus completely eliminating a BCT. In January, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno had said the Army would achieve the 450,000 end strength though the elimination of four BCTs. This is no longer the plan. Instead, the Army will convert some BCTs to maneuver battalion task forces, as it will in Georgia. At Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, or JBER, the Army will also convert the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, to a maneuver battalion task force by FY17. The unit will continue to support the U.S. Army Pacific Command rapid reaction capability with an airborne capability. The reduction will also reduce training complications at JBER, which also scored in the bottom third of the MVA - due primarily to availability of quality training ranges. About 2,631 Soldiers will be cut from Alaska. In Hawaii, the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, on Schofield Barracks, will convert from a Stryker BCT to a two-maneuver-battalion infantry brigade combat team. The conversion in Hawaii maximizes collective training for both BCTs there, which can now train with existing units from the 3rd BCT. Additionally, the change streamlines logistics support, and reduces costs associated with training at a training centers, because the unit will no longer need to ship Stryker vehicles. Schofield Barracks, like JBER and Fort Benning, ranked in the bottom third of the MVA as well. The Strykers from 2-25 are expected to move to support the Army National Guard's, or ARNG's, 81st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 40th Infantry Division, in Washington, Oregon, and California. The equipment from that heavy unit will move to the active Army to establish pre-positioned stock in Europe to bolster the ongoing commitment to the European Reassurance Initiative. Officials expect it could take two years to establish the pre-positioned stocks - about one year for the ARNG to divest its heavy equipment, and one year to reset the gear and get it in place in Europe. The Army also plans to reduce the size of two-star-and-above headquarters by some 25 percent. For divisions, this means a reduction of about 225 Soldiers. For a corps-sized headquarters, this means about 222 Soldiers. Additional changes involve the 3rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command relocating from Fort Knox, Kentucky, to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, no later than the end of the year. The 3rd ESC would then be able to co-locate with its corps headquarters, the XVIII Airborne Corps. Additionally, the 1st Theater Sustainment Command will relocate from Fort Bragg to Fort Knox. According to the Army, there are adequate facilities on both Fort Knox and Fort Bragg to support the moves, without the need for additional construction. When determining which cuts to make, and where, the Army conducted environmental and socioeconomic analysis of reductions at the Army's 30 largest installations. Additionally, the Army received more than 111,000 public comments on the force structure changes. The Army also conducted "community listening" sessions at those 30 installations to receive input from residents and civic leaders. More than 22,000 attended the listening sessions to provide input. SEQUESTRATION If sequestration continues, the Army is expected to shrink further to about 420,000 Soldiers - a loss of an additional 30,000 Soldiers. George said that would happen after the recently-announced cuts were completed, so they would begin sometime in 2019. Citing earlier comments by the Army's chief of staff, George said that cuts below 450,000 Soldiers "would be significant risk" for the Army, in terms of meeting current combatant commander requirements and also "being ready for the unknowns." "Certainly it's about choices, about where you apply forces and what you want those forces to do," George said. The Army is able to now, and has been able in the past, to respond to a variety of scenarios, and multiple scenarios, at the same time. An end strength of 420,000 will mean this is no longer possible. "The resulting force would be incapable of simultaneously meeting current deployment requirements and responding to the overseas contingency requirements of the combatant commanders," George said. Under current reduction plans, the "Total Army," which includes the active force, the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve, will drop to 980,000 Soldiers. That includes 450,000 active Soldiers, 335,000 Army National Guard Soldiers, and 195,000 Army Reserve Soldiers. Were sequestration to continue unabated, the total Army end strength will drop by an additional 60,000 Soldiers. The Total Army would then stand at 420,000 active-duty Soldiers, 315,000 Army National Guard Soldiers, and 185,000 Army Reserve Soldiers. Army provides 'gravitational pull' in Europe [2015-07-15] WASHINGTON -- Where America's Army goes in Europe, others follow, said the service's lead commander on the European continent. Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of U.S. Army Europe, said when America's military shows up to training exercises in Europe, other nations follow suit, sending their own forces. He said he sees that the "U.S. Army provides a sort of gravitational pull. If we go to an exercise, if we show up to something, other people come to it. That's a big return on a relatively small investment." Hodges spoke during a media roundtable at the Pentagon, July 13. Russia has occupied Crimea, Ukraine's sovereign territory, and sent weapons and soldiers to foment violent unrest in eastern Ukraine. Hodges said that Russians have between nine and 12 "battalion tactical groups" near Rostov, just 70 miles from the Ukrainian border - outside of where they are normally stationed. He said those units regularly rotate in and out of the area. The Russian occupation of Crimea and alleged Russian support of rebels in Ukraine is unacceptable, Hodges said. "What the west has agreed is that Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea, and the use of force inside eastern Ukraine, is unacceptable behavior in the 21st century," he said. "They used force to change the internationally-recognized sovereign border of a European country." Now, he said, European nations are bolstering their militaries in response. Of the 20 nations of NATO, he said, four of those are now spending 2 percent of their gross domestic product on their militaries. Several, including all three Baltic countries and Germany have increased spending on military as a percentage of their GDP. "Nearly every country in Europe is increasing their defense spending," he said. He also said that both the Germans and the Dutch are buying back tanks they had divested. Hodges said he believes the commitment in Europe is "a positive response to U.S. presence there." The U.S. Army has 30,000 Soldiers in Europe now and that the recent announcements of troop drawdowns in the Army - a reduction of 40,000 Soldiers, which will bring the Army's end strength to 450,000 - will not greatly affect the Army in Europe, Hodges said. Additionally, the Army is committed to the European Reassurance Initiative, in increasing prepositioned stocks in the country for training and exercises, and is actively engaged in training with European partners. In Ukraine, the Army continues to conduct military training with the Ministry of Interior's "national guard." A little more than 300 American Soldiers are there at Yavariv Training Center, near Lviv, conducting that training, which includes tactical tasks, medical training and survival in heavily contested electronic warfare environments. Those forces will take a pause in their training by Americans to participate in the training Exercise Rapid Trident, and will afterward return to training with U.S. Soldiers. MINSK AGREEMENT Hodges said that as commander of U.S. Army Europe, one thing he would like to see is a successful implementation of the Minsk Agreement. That is not happening now, he said. Part of that agreement, he said was that the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, or OSCE, was tasked with monitoring such things as the withdrawal of foreign armed groups and weapons from Ukrainian territory and also withdrawal of heavy weapons to create a buffer zone. "On the Russian side, the Russians and the Russian-backed rebels have not allowed OSCE to do their mission, certainly not effectively or in a comprehensive way," he said. "The border between eastern Ukraine and Russia remains wide open, but unmonitored." He said the amount of ammunition and supplies and equipment, which is flowing into eastern Ukraine, is significant and that makes it difficult to have confidence that Minsk can be successfully implemented. "For me, what is most important is that we keep our great alliance together, that the EU [European Union] keeps the pressure on, and that we come to an agreement on - we the alliance - what do we want the security situation in Ukraine and the rest of Europe to look like," Hodges said. "Is it okay ... in the 21st century, to use force to change borders of European countries? I don't think it is." He said what has proven successful in the past might prove successful now. "Keeping the alliance together, keeping the sanctions in place, demonstrating a deterrent capability like we did for all those years when we had 300,000 American troops," he explained, as an example of a way ahead. "How do we achieve that same effect of assurance and deterrence? I think we do that by having capability and demonstrating ability to use that capability. That's what's going to be most important." Soldiers matriculate at newly-opened 'ArmyU' [2015-07-17] WASHINGTON -- The Army is consolidating Soldier education under "one roof" as part of the "Army University" concept, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey said. The Army University, officially abbreviated "ArmyU" for short, is administered by the Combined Arms Center, or CAC, on Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. While not a "brick and mortar" university, ArmyU will maximize the educational experience, which Soldiers are already getting in the Army through the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, or TRADOC. The plan for ArmyU is to organize the Army's professional military education programs into a university system to increase academic rigor, create greater opportunities for accreditation, and enhance the quality of the force, according to CAC leaders. ArmyU will integrate the education already provided in the Army for enlisted Soldiers, officers, warrant officers and Army civilians of all components. Included in ArmyU are all the Army "centers of excellence": aviation, cyber, fires, intelligence, maneuver, maneuver support, mission command and sustainment. ArmyU also includes the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy, Defense Language Institute, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, Army Management Staff College, Warrant Officer Career College, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and the Army Press. "We will work with them, and we are looking at how we can make the instructors better, and make the curriculum as relevant and as current as possible, plus meeting the need of the operating force," said Col. Michael J. Harlan, with the CAC. While not part of ArmyU, the new university will coordinate with the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, the U.S. Army War College, Cadet Command, initial military training, U.S. Army Reserve Schools, Army National Guard Schools, Army Medical Department Center and School, Judge Advocate General Legal Center and School, and the Special Warfare Center and School. UNIVERSAL TRANSCRIPT Dailey said ArmyU will be nationally accredited, and will eventually provide a "universal transcript" to make it easier for civilian colleges and universities to understand the education and training Soldiers have received in the Army, and help them build a degree program. Right now what the Army and other military services offer is a Joint Services Transcript, which provides to civilian universities a description of military schooling and work history in civilian language. Dailey said the JST will not be eliminated, but will be augmented with a transcript from Army University. "Our goal is to have the Army transcript have the same value as any other university in America," Dailey said. "It's long overdue. The Soldiers are excited about this too." Harlan said a universal transcript, along with ArmyU accreditation, will mean that many, though not all of the types of training Soldiers receive in the Army will be able to convert into civilian education credits. One of the goals of ArmyU is to ensure that the training provided across the Army meets the rigor required in the civilian academic world. This will make it easier for ArmyU to provide accredited courses, which in turn means it can provide universal transcripts of Soldier education that document coursework credits that civilian universities will be more willing to accept. When that happens, the education Soldiers complete in the Army will save them both time and money when they transition out of service. "When they walk in to that school, they have this universal transcript from the ArmyU that shows legitimate accredited credits, and they can take those and apply them towards a degree program of their choosing," Harlan said. "It'll save them money ideally if that Soldier, now a civilian, doesn't have to pay a second time for training they already possess. The other thing is it may get them a degree faster because they don't have to take as many classes, because they have already gotten that training and experience and the civilian university will acknowledge it." Harlan also described what he called a "degree engine," which would be part of ArmyU. The degree engine would use the universal transcript and compare it to the requirement for getting a particular degree at a particular university, and could help Soldiers determine what other courses they would need to take to achieve that degree, and even possibly the cost of attaining that degree. "It's a tool to help that Soldier understand how close they are to getting a degree they want from an institution they want," Harlan said. CREDENTIALS FOR A CAREER Another goal of ArmyU is to find ways for Soldiers to earn private-sector equivalent credentialing for the work they do in the Army, so they don't need to be re-credentialed when they go look for private-sector work. Soldiers, who may serve in the Army now as drivers, electricians, metal workers, plumbers, or even medical workers, will first need to be credentialed first before they can move their skills to a paying job in the private sector. The goal of ArmyU is to provide credentialing for every military occupational specialty, or MOS. Helping those Soldiers get credentialed in their skill set is important to both the Soldier and the Army because it proves "an individual is an expert in their particular area," Harlan said. Dailey said the Army has already been partnering with industry at places like Fort Polk, Louisiana, Fort Hood, Texas and Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, to help transitioning Soldiers get the right training and credentialing to move into work in the private sector. As an example, he said, "they bring in their equipment and materials and they are certifying them on a technical trades, including HVAC, pipefitting and welding." Dailey said that credentialing transitioning Soldiers to work in the private sector on the same jobs they held in the Army is difficult, because credentialing requirements vary from state to state. Sometimes, he said, requirements vary within regions within the same state. He said the Army is working with state governments to help make things easier for Soldiers. ArmyU will be a part of that. In a tri-signed letter by Army Secretary John M. McHugh, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno, and Dailey, Army leadership said the creation of ArmyU is the next "logical step" in the continued professionalization of the Army. "Understanding the historical importance of this effort, we are committed to transforming one of the largest academic systems in the United States into a premier university system that harnesses the tremendous energy, experience, and intellectual capacity in our Army to produce the professionals that the nation will need for a complex and uncertain world tomorrow," Army leaders said. Talisman Sabre means commitment, I Corps commander says [2015-07-20] WASHINGTON -- As Exercise Talisman Sabre 15 wrapped up in Australia this past weekend, the land component commander of that 15-day exercise said the United States' involvement signifies commitment to partner nations in the Pacific region. From Brisbane, Australia - his headquarters for a little more than two weeks during Talisman Sabre 2015 - Lt. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza, I Corps commander, said the United States' presence at the exercise reassures Americans, Australians and allied nations in Pacific that the United States means it when it says it's committed to the stability of the region. "It conveys to people in America our commitment to re-balance in the Pacific," he said. "The second thing is our commitment to a tremendous ally in Australia. It also conveys to Americans just how ready and trained we are to prevent and shape and win as a military. And it also conveys to our allies the commitment that we want to have, not only to military security, but also to sustaining economic security for all, and creating an environment that's productive, and where we de-escalate conflict and avoid miscalculation for the future." Lanza acted as the land component commander for Exercise Talisman Sabre, which ran July 4-19 in Australia. The exercise involved the Australian military as well as some 30,000 U.S. service members from all branches. During Talisman Sabre, the units involved acted out a scenario to restore the legitimate government of two nations, "Monmir" and "Legais," which had been taken by the unfriendly nation of "Kamaria." "Australia and the United Nations asked us, the Americans, to come in as part of a coalition to restore legitimate government to these countries," Lanza said. "My boss's mission is to compel the Kamarian withdrawal from Monmir and Legais. That's in compliance with the U.N. Security Council Resolution 2192, which gives us the legitimacy to come in ... to restore the legitimate government of those two countries." For 15 days, the Americans and Australians exercised under that scenario, using whatever aspects of military strategy and tactics were needed to achieve their goal. Exercises, like Talisman Sabre, are designed, ahead of time, to ensure that the militaries involved will need to use the skills deemed most important for possible real-world scenarios. "This exercises really coincides with unified land operations in terms of where the Army is going," Lanza said. In Talisman Sabre, Lanza said, military units exercised decisive action - a large part of combat operations. Units also exercised wide-area security and stability operations. Lanza said he was impressed with how I Corps Soldiers and all those involved, on both sides, performed in the exercise. In particular, he was impressed with the way Americans and Australians were able to work together. "The partnership with the Australians has been tremendous," Lanza said. In preparation for Talisman Sabre, Lanza said I Corps Soldiers engaged in academics back home with the Australians. Additionally, he said, I Corps held a "rigorous" command post exercise in advance of participation in Talisman Sabre. On the ground in Australia, I Corps performed above expectations, he said. "Our Soldiers are working in a joint, interagency, multi-national environment," he said. "We have some young Soldiers in G-9 that are working contingency operations with Australian interagency, as well as international organizations - such as the Red Cross, and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees World Food Program - and these Soldiers are doing that because they have a core competency of skills and they are able to adapt to work with some very complex organizations." The I Corps air and fire cells worked "very complex issues" in their effort to integrate air space between not just different U.S. services, but air space across the militaries of different nations, he said, and across the international dateline back to the United States. "This is something that our guys have adapted to in this operational environment," he said. "And every day, I'm just impressed with how much these kids do when you give them the mission and the resources, and you allow them to figure out a problem set that is very complex. They make me proud every single day." Unique in Talisman Sabre 15 was the involvement of the Australian Crisis Response Coordination Group, or CRCG, as well as implementation of the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325, which the council adopted in October 2000. That resolution involves the consideration of women as "agents of peace." "Fifty percent of the population are women," Lanza said. "This particular Security Council resolution makes sure that we account for women in the environment - how do we bring them into the discussion of transition to governance? What can they do to help us transition to stability and security, and how can they help provide some of the key aspects we need to help the government transition, and be part of the transition process and the governance process? Women provide guidance, they provide mentorship to their country, and we need to account for that in the campaign." The CRCG, made up of Australian civilians, was also new in Talisman Sabre 2015. Lanza said the group of citizens became part of the land component. "They are embedded in the organization, they are part of our planning process, they are part of our assessment and analysis," Lanza said. "Their work really feeds our decision making and my decision making, so that we are making decisions with the best input from experts that really understand not only how to do stability operations, but more importantly the conditions that need to be set for successful transition, and how to restore government." The CRCG was embedded with the land component from the beginning of Talisman Sabre, Lanza said, which he found to be more effective than bringing them in toward the end of the operation. He also said that the CRCG was able to provide a perspective on stability operations and transition of government that was different, and more appropriate, than what the Americans brought with them from lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We have a lot of experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, and sometimes we look at this through the lens of what we have done here over the last 13 years," Lanza said. "Bringing in this interagency workgroup really helps us get an understanding of how to do this with a task force of professional civilians that work in the interagency, and get us a different perspective on how to look at complex problems and then solve them in a rapid manner that allows us to transition much more quickly." Also unique to Talisman Sabre was the concurrent execution of a secondary operation, "Exercise Hamel," which also involved the Americans and the Australians. Exercise Hamel is part of the ongoing "Pacific Pathways" effort underway now in U.S. Pacific Command. Exercise Hamel involved the 7th Australian Brigade and the 3rd Brigade, 25th Infantry. Talisman Sabre was a recertification for I Corps as a headquarters so it could serve as a Combined Force Land Component Command or a joint task force. Exercise Hamel also served in a similar way as a validation exercise for the 7th Australian Brigade. After Australia, and as part of Pacific Pathways, the birgade will go to Indonesia as part of Garuda Shield, and then to Malaysia as part of the Keris Strike exercise, Lanza said. "We are very excited about Pacific Pathways," he said. "It is a new concept that is both a deployment and operation; experimentation and innovation. And it has been very, very helpful in this theater. And Pathways contributes to unit readiness." Also contributing to America's readiness and combat strength is the strong relationship between the U.S. military and the Australian army, Lanza said. That relationship has been ongoing and growing since World War I. "They have been involved with us in every campaign, they are involved with us now in actions in the Middle East," said Lanza of the United States' Australian partners. "They are a tremendous ally and a tremendous partner. They are a professional, well-disciplined, well-motivated military that is highly trained. As I watch these guys work and operate, it is a privilege and honor to work with them. They are a highly capable force, and we have learned a lot from them in the last couple weeks." As Talisman Sabre drew down, ending July 19, Lanza said he can already think of things that will make the next iteration of Talisman Sabre even better. "There is more we can integrate in terms of live training, with the virtual training, within the integrated training environment," he said. "And I think there is an opportunity here to expand the scenario in terms of a near-peer competitor and hybrid threat. Certainly we [will] continue to build on the success here we have had with the interagency and the CRCG that is embedded in the exercise. And then, obviously, we can bring in more international organizations to increase the complexity of the exercise. "It's a privilege and honor to work with the great Australian army, and the tremendous civilians here," Lanza said. "This has been a great opportunity for our Soldiers. We have learned so much from the Australian's military, from their civilians, as well as working with our great joint brothers and sisters." American flag, Soldiers in Eastern Europe, signify strength of alliance [2015-07-22] WASHINGTON -- In mid-March, about 400 Soldiers and about 100 vehicles traveled on land across Eastern Europe from Estonia to Germany, after the conclusion of a training exercise, which involved the Estonian army. The "Operation Dragoon Ride," more than 1,300 miles in length, wasn't just a way home for Soldiers of the 2d Cavalry Regiment - known as "the Dragoons." It was also a show of solidarity with Eastern European nations, allies of the United States, who in light of Russian aggression in the Ukraine and Crimea, wonder what might happen to them in their own sovereign nations. Riding in Stryker combat vehicles through Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic and finally back home to Rose Barracks in Vilseck, Germany, Capt. James M. Gibbs, commander, "Iron Troop," 3rd Squadron, 2d Cavalry Regiment, said he saw little opposition - but a lot of support - for U.S. troops involved in the effort. Gibbs, during a July 22 media roundtable at the Pentagon, said everybody he encountered on the ride had been "overwhelmingly supportive ... especially the ethnic Estonians. As far as Dragoon Ride is concerned, our trip back down to Rose Barracks, Germany, I would say probably [it was] 98 percent positive, and 2 percent negative." He said he saw a few signs telling the Americans to go home, but also "a lot of American flags." The commander of the 2d Cavalry Regiment, Col. John V. Meyer III, said he believes the "Dragoon Ride," and the American flag, represents to Eastern Europeans a commitment by the United States to the relationships it has formed there, and a commitment to participating in the protection of those nations it is now allied with, and with whose militaries it now conducts military training with, including Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania and Bulgaria. "What matters is they see the flag of the United States of America, and what we represent," Meyer said. He said he believes Eastern Europeans understand that they, and the United States, are part of an alliance, and that as long as they remain a part of that alliance, the United States can be counted on to participate in the protection of their country. "So it is really [help] that feeling, and what is represented by the commitment of our Army to Europe," Meyer said. Highlighting just one example of Eastern European sentiment, Meyer relayed a personal experience he had during the Dragoon Ride, where he interacted with a 78-year-old Czech, who had presented him with a baseball mitt. "Seventy years ago, when the U.S. Army liberated his town in [Czechoslovakia], he was playing baseball with a U.S. Soldier," Meyer said. "He ... went to give the baseball mitt back to that Soldier. And the Soldier looked at him and said, 'you know what, give that baseball mitt back to a Soldier someday in the future.' That gentleman waited 70 years. He was a 78-year-old man, and he came up and said 'I am returning the baseball mitt the U.S. Army gave me 70 years ago.'" The mitt, Meyer said, is now enshrined in their unit museum in Germany. But he said the story highlights sentiment among Eastern Europeans, which he believes is more common than what is understood. "That is the impact that the U.S. Army Europe is having in Europe today," he said. "The pictures that you may see, the stories that you may read, come nowhere close to capturing the feeling and the emotions in Eastern Europe of seeing United States Army Soldiers, and what we represent." The Army has partnered with European nations in multiple exercises this year so far, including Sabre Strike, Platinum Eagle, Cavalry March, Noble Partner, Combined Resolve IV, Sabre Junction and Atlantic Resolve in June. Maj. Bryan Frizzelle, the 2d Cavalry Regiment operations officer, said Atlantic Resolve had been a tremendous opportunity to build relationships with Eastern European allies. "Training with our Eastern European allies has easily been the best experience I've had training with allied armies, foreign armies ... anywhere," he said. "There is a sense of nationalism that you don't find in other parts of the world. There is a sense of 'we want to get better and we can do it with you.' You see it the strongest in the countries, frankly, aligned with Atlantic Resolve ... the three Baltic states and Poland. There is the ability to build a relationship with them through tough, realistic training. And then to see them get better from month to month ... to see them working through their own governments to modernize their force, to get better not just in terms of training, but in terms of equipping. It's a refreshing experience, and an awesome opportunity." Later this year, Meyer said, there will be another opportunity to build relationships with Eastern European allies. In September, 2d Cavalry regiment will be involved in Operation Brave Warrior. That will involve a more than 400-mile road march from Germany into the Czech Republic, then through Slovakia, followed by a river crossing of the Danube River with the Hungarian army, and then finally two months of training with the Hungarian army. Meyer said that the relationships the Army has built with partner nations in Europe "matter," and that the recent Dragoon Ride there demonstrated that, when partner nations were able to help his team make the Dragoon Ride successful by providing logistical support along the way. "It really taught us a lot on what we needed to be able to do to plan and prepare to sustain ourselves," he said. "And in order to do that, often our allies helped to sustain us. What they did is they provided - based off those relationships - places for us to rest at night, locations where we could stop and do maintenance ... they provided us escorts. All of that kind of came together and it taught us a lot about conducting and sustaining operations over that distance." THE STRYKER The Stryker combat vehicle is a central component to the 2d Cavalry Regiment, which includes four Stryker squadrons. Meyer said the vehicle, as demonstrated during the Dragoon Ride, demonstrates American capacity for operational mobility. "The Stryker provides a capability that other formations in the U.S. Army cannot provide right now," he said. "An infantry brigade combat team or an armor brigade combat team could not have done Dragoon Ride. What a Stryker-based regimental combat team, or the regiment can provide, is operational mobility. We reassured our allies by being able to conduct a 2,200 kilometer movement, [through] Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, [Czech Republic and] back to Germany. And we couldn't have done that with a different type of formation. It provides operational mobility to maneuver throughout the alliance. That's an incredible capability we have inside of Europe right now." Meyer has requested that those Stryker combat vehicles, about 81 of them, be upgraded with more firepower through the addition of a 30mm cannon. He told reporters the cannon is not meant to fight armored vehicles, but rather to fight other, similar light-armored vehicles. He said that infantry squads and the Javelin missiles inside of the Stryker formations serve as the anti-armor capability. "The 30mm cannon provides us an ability to destroy [light] vehicles," he said. "So it's a combination of systems that we have. It provides us an opportunity to get our infantry in position, by destroying those [light[ vehicles ... dismounted infantrymen and their Javelins can destroy the armor." REGIMENTAL WOMEN 1st Sgt. Basseal Stone, "Havoc Troop," 2d Cavalry Regiment, is the first female first sergeant ever in the 2d Cavalry Regiment. She dismissed the significance of the distinction - saying that when she puts on the uniform, gender ceases to matter. "I am a female in gender. But when I stand up in front of my Soldiers, I am a first sergeant, a standard bearer," she said. "When I put this uniform on, I don't look at myself or my Soldiers as female or male. I look at them as Soldiers." She added that both she and her male first sergeant counterparts all adhere to the same standard - "the Army standard." Meyer dismissed the distinction as well, saying that "inside of the regiment, every Soldier is afforded an opportunity to achieve, and be all they can be." He highlighted, with an anecdote from his time in Iraq as operations officer for Task Force Blue Spader, how opinions on women in the Army have changed, and how he carries that change with him to his regiment today. In June 2007, he said, a Soldier in his unit, 22-year-old Cpl. Karen N. Clifton, was killed when a rocket-propelled grenade hit her vehicle. She was the sixth Soldier killed that day. "It didn't matter if she was male or female," Meyer said. "When she passed away, she had Family, friends, and volunteered to serve something larger than herself: to support and defend the constitution - an ideal. That's the approach that we [take] having our Soldiers serve in the Regiment. [Like with] 1st Sgt. Stone ... she is a NCO [noncommissioned officer], a first sergeant in the U.S. Army. And as a first sergeant in the U.S. Army, she is expected to train our Soldiers and enforce standards, and that is what she does. It doesn't matter if you are male or female, you are Soldiers in the U.S. Army, and that is how we are approaching it." Meyer and other senior leaders from the 2d Cavalry Regiment were in the United States, away from their home in Vilsek, Germany, as part of the chief of staff of the Army-driven "Current Operations Engagement Tour." While in Washington, the team met with senior Army leaders, journalists and lawmakers on Capitol Hill to tell their story. The 2d Cavalry Regiment, one of the Army's eight Stryker Brigade Combat Teams, is the oldest continuously serving regiment in the Army. From its formation in 1836, 2d Cavalry Regiment has remained "always ready" to defend the nation's security interests, with members of the regiment consistently demonstrating gallantry in action, including 20 troopers, who have been awarded the Medal of Honor. New Army cyber officers hack improvements into DARPA's 'Plan X' [2015-07-28] WASHINGTON -- "Do you have a map in your car? When was the last time you looked at a compass? Imagine a day when we don't have that technology such as the Global Positioning System, better known as GPS. These are the things we worry about," Capt. James McColl said. Both McColl and Capt. Justin Lanahan are cyber officers, part of the newly created 17-series Army branch. They both participated in a week-long "hackathon" in Arlington, Virginia, July 20-24, in support of continued development of "Plan X," a four-year, $120-million program at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. Plan X attempts to, among other things, make it easier for humans to visualize a network and its components, to automate the task of identifying as hostile or benign the anomalies that might appear on that network, to provide intuitive symbology that accurately conveys to users the status of various components of a network, and to make it easier for even inexperienced users to take action to prevent hostile parties from gaining access to and causing damage to a network. McColl and Lanahan, both Army officers, are participating in the program on a rotational basis. Their participation involves helping develop the program, and also helping to ensure the program will yield results that are useful to the Army. Any part of a commander's command and control network might include thousands of computers and networking components. The complexity of such networks makes them hard for humans to visualize, and difficult to defend. Plan X is meant to make that task easier. Adversaries are always looking for ways to exploit networks for their own benefit, McColl said. And that doesn't always mean they use it for their own purpose, or that they want to steal information from it. They might also attack a network simply to disrupt its functionality and deny its use to those who own it. As part of development of one component of Plan X, DARPA held the week-long hackathon event in Arlington, Virginia. At the event, computer science experts, including McColl and Lanahan, were broken into teams to uncover the best ways to analyze a large set of network data they had been provided for indicators of potentially nefarious network activity. The solutions they would devise to analyze the data, and the code and algorithms they would write to make such analysis easier, would then be used to improve Plan X. "The overarching idea for the week is 'big data analytics,'" Lanahan said. "The data we have been given is what they call 'net flow.' It contains a minimal subset of all the traffic traversing a network. It tells us what the IP address was, the destination where that packet was going, how big the packet was, and the time that it happened, for instance." Lanahan, McColl, and about 90 others at the event devised new and innovative ways to analyze for anomalies the "net flow" information they had been given. They hoped to find better, faster ways to identify things that are out of the ordinary, and to be able to accurately differentiate between the anomalies that are due to a misconfiguration of the network, for instance, and the anomalies that are due to malicious activity. "Maybe you're seeing network traffic at 2 a.m., when no user should be working," Lanahan said. "But when we investigate, we could see that it's a system update, when the Windows updates come out. It could be just that generating traffic. It's an anomaly, but it's not nefarious. Or it could be somebody with a hard drive stealing company data." Either way, he said, they want to be able to find what is abnormal on the network, identify if it is innocuous or malicious, and then take appropriate action. DARPA's Plan X program aims to make it easier for users to do just that. At the hackathon, a physical manifestation of Plan X was on display. It combined both hardware and software. In the flesh, Plan X included a large touch screen monitor - as big as a flat-screen TV - connected to a computer that runs the software. On the screen, the software displayed a wiring diagram of a computer network, though in this case the network was simulated. Lanathan and McColl demonstrated how one might use the system to monitor and defend a network. Dragging their fingers across the screen, they could zoom in on portions of the network being monitored, and could also touch on individual components to find identifying information about it, or check up on its status. Lanahan said that a requirement for the system is to have intuitive symbology and indicators that help users quickly see problems as they arise. The symbol that represented one computer might change color if it were infected, for instance. Or it might pulse. Or it might change shape. Another graphic might appear to indicate that a particular part of the network was being hacked, or that somebody was trying to hack it. "Looking at the screen, you'll be able to have awareness of the network in the same way you might keep track of your unit on Blue Force Tracker," Lanahan said. The work done at the hackathon is meant to enhance the ability of Plan X to automatically identify threats to the network. During the course of the event, involved teams would periodically insert new code and algorithms into the system to see how they performed, Lanahan said. When a threat is identified, users of Plan X wouldn't need to be computer scientists or hackers themselves to defeat it. Instead, pre-written software tools that would be part of Plan X would allow users to drag their fingers over a threat to apply a software solution that could block an intrusion or defeat an infection. With Plan X, it will be easier for operational commanders to understand the network in the same way they might understand the physical world around them, said Ian MacLeod, technical director of Army Cyber Command's Advanced Concepts and Technologies Directorate. "We need technology to help us translate something we can't touch or feel easily into something we can rationalize about," he said. "To me that's what the Plan X does. It helps us operate in that environment. So the future of this is that these systems, the technology that comes out of this program, will help our forces better understand very complex actions. The domain of cyberspace is larger than any other domain. And with the speed at which it operates, we need computers to help us understand it. When Plan X gets in the hand of operators ... we will bring the military operational mindset to this domain. It helps us to understand the domain a little better." TWO SEVENTEENS: CYBER BRANCH Army Secretary John M. McHugh and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno approved the creation of the Cyber branch in September of last year. In October of this year, both enlisted and warrant officers will be included in that branch. But for now, there are only 17-series officers. McColl and Lanahan were among the first to join the branch. Lanahan said the Army is still defining the work role of a cyber officer, but said the future is promising as the branch continues to grow and evolve by the month. "At minimum, the cyber mission force is going to be the primary unit we operate in," he said. "We'll be bouncing between the tactical-level cyber mission force, and the strategic-level at the actual service component headquarters or U.S. Cyber Command. So the work roles would look like an operational planning team leader or a mission commander." McColl said that one role of the cyber officer will be to translate the sometimes arcane language of computers, networking, algorithms and the various types of threats that exist into language that kinetic commanders can understand. "One of the things we bring is, aside from a love for technology, the ability to translate between military science and computer science," McColl said. "The Army is primarily relying on us to be able to bring cyber effects into the fight. If you think about maneuver elements like infantry and artillery, they are delivering direct or indirect fire effects to a target. For us, we are trying to translate to those kinetic leaders how to use cyber effects to augment their mission. In a situation where dropping a Joint Direct Attack Munition on a building isn't necessarily the best option, we offer an alternative." Lanahan said that with the new cyber career field, it's important to understand the difference between combat operations, and supporting combat operations. Computers, networks, and radios are often seen as merely supporting a combat mission. But Lanahan said that's not the case anymore. "Cyber isn't just an enabling mission for the kinetic mission," he said. "Cyber can be an effect unto itself, not just enabling some other kinetic action." McColl said 17 series officers, and the Cyber branch, are being called on to do more than protect the command and control network so that it can be used by commanders to deliver kinetic effects. Cyber officers must show the commander how if disruption of their own network means they are crippled from doing their mission, disrupting an enemy's network will cripple their ability to do their mission - and that is the digital equivalent to kinetic effect. "If an enemy was to disrupt our ability to use our GPS, we'd have to go back to map skills," McColl said, though he was quick to point out that infantry and artillery are still adept at using maps. "But we are a more effective, lethal force when those things are protected. And our enemies are less effective and less lethal when they don't have access to the same. If we disrupt their command and control, their logistics, we can cause disarray among their forces. That will better enable our forces to overtake them, while protecting our forces from the same effect." The Cyber career field will help the Army be able to gain the edge on adversaries, who have become increasingly proficient in the use of technology, McColl said. Lanahan and McColl, who graduated together in 2011 from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, said they are excited to be among the first officers involved in the Cyber branch. The newness of the career field, and their early involvement, they say, will provide them an opportunity to chart the future of the career field, and to help the Army develop the best way ahead for cyber missions. "It's really cool to take something that is emerging, and find a way to best put it for the defense of the nation, either offensively or defensively," McColl said. "It's hard sometimes in the Army, with its size and complexity, to influence how things are done," Lanahan said. "But knowing this branch is brand new and that there are only 100 of us in the branch now - we can have an impact." McColl likened his and Lanahan's roles in the Cyber branch to that of the first aviators in the military - back when the Army signed a contract with the Wright Brothers in 1909 for the first military aircraft. Then, as now, those first involved worked daily to find new applications for a technology that continued to advance as quickly as a use for it could be found. "It's like back when airplanes just came out," he said. "First you're trying to figure out what you can do with an airplane. It can only fly for 15 minutes, maybe. Then later it flies for 30 minutes... and then it flies faster. With cyber, we're on that driving edge of how to make it better and make it do things to improve the way we fight." For those still unsure, Army defines 'online misconduct' [2015-08-03] WASHINGTON -- If Soldiers were still unsure of what bad behavior looks like online, the Army clarified it for them in an "All Army Activities" message -- commonly called an ALARACT -- that went out force-wide last week. Online misconduct, it says, is "the use of electronic communication to inflict harm. Examples include, but are not limited to: harassment, bullying, hazing, stalking, discrimination, retaliation, or any other types of misconduct that undermine dignity and respect." The ALARACT 122/2015, which comes as part of an effort to address Soldier use of social media and other online forms of communication, also defines good behavior online, "electronic communication," and "online-related incident." "The Army Values require that everyone be treated with dignity and respect," the message reads. "Harassment, bullying, hazing, stalking, discrimination, retaliation, and any other type of misconduct that undermines dignity and respect are not consistent with Army Values and negatively impact command climate and readiness." The ALARACT emphasizes commanders' responsibility to "reinforce a climate where current and future members of the Army team, including Soldiers, Army civilians, contractors, and Family members, understand that online misconduct is inconsistent with Army values." The document also said such a climate included an avenue through which "online-related incidents are prevented, reported, and addressed at the lowest possible level." In March, the Army's chief of staff directed the creation of a "tiger team" to address the issue of online misbehavior, including retribution, and to find ways to prevent and respond to harm inflicted through the use of electronic communication. One goal of the tiger team was to create a reporting system for "online-related incidents" and report those up to senior Army leadership. Tiger team member Lt. Col. Kay Emerson, who also serves as director of the Army's Equal Opportunity policy office, said members of the Army staff and command representatives are working now to identify the data fields and reporting requirements for such an online reporting system. "Once collated, senior Army leadership will have a sight picture of reported online-related incidents and actions taken by commanders in the field," Emerson said. The Army is expected to update AR 600-20 in the next published version to address online and social media violations. Emerson said she is currently re-rewriting paragraph 4-19 within AR 600-20 to incorporate the Department of Defense's drafted policy with the Army's online conduct efforts. Section 4-19 of AR 600-20, called "Treatment of persons," addresses hazing and bullying, as well as command and individual responsibilities in regards to them. Both the regulation and the ALARACT direct Soldiers and Army civilians who experience or witness online misconduct to report it to their chain of command. Additionally, section 4-19 of AR 600-20 is "punitive" in nature. It authorizes commanders to potentially punish those who are in violation of its direction, making failure to adhere to the Army's rules for online behavior a punishable offense. "Soldiers who violate this policy may be subject to punishment under the UCMJ [Uniform Code of Military Justice]," the regulation reads. "Whether or not certain acts specifically violate the provisions of this paragraph, they may be inappropriate or violate relevant civilian personnel guidance." Despite new rules and direction in regard to use of social media and other forms of electronic communication, the Army says it doesn't want to stop Solders from communicating online. Instead, said an Army official, when using electronic communication devices, Soldiers should apply "Think, Type, Post." That maxim is summarized as "think about the message being communicated and who could potentially view it; type a communication that is consistent with Army values; and post only those messages that demonstrate dignity and respect for self and others." Conventional, special forces team up during 'Joint Forcible Entry' exercise [2015-08-09] FORT IRWIN, Calif. -- Rounds from an M1A1 main battle tank followed by rockets from a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System illuminated the desert here, kicking off a "Joint Forcible Entry," or JFE, exercise. The JFE was designed to test the ability of both special and conventional forces to work together to seize an objective in a location that is controlled entirely by an enemy. As part of the JFE exercise at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California, Aug. 5 and 6, about 1,500 service members provided a demonstration of American military power. Senior military leaders and journalists were invited to the training area in the dark of night to watch portions of the exercise -- the first of its kind in years. The primary goal of the JFE was to use a joint capability to seize an airfield and then once secured, seize additional objectives and also expand the lodgment there to bring on a larger force, if needed. The concept of a joint force, working together, to come into an area held by an enemy, seize that area, and create an opening for follow-on American forces to enter into a battle space is a joint forcible entry. "This is about deterrence. We are making sure everybody knows that we have a capability, if we have to, to force our way into an area, if it is in our nation's best interest," said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno. "I think it's important for everyone to understand we have this capability. That's why it is so important we work on this and practice it." Soldiers with the 11th Armored Calvary Regiment at Fort Irwin, along with partners from XVIII Airborne Corps; 82nd Airborne Division; 75th Ranger Regiment; 3rd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne); as well as units from the U.S. Air Force were called upon, as part of the JFE, to demonstrate their ability to work together to project American military power anywhere across the globe. Showing the interoperability of forces, highlighting the interdependence, and testing the ability of joint forces to work together, was a critical part of the JFE, said Gen. Joseph L. Votel, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command. "One of the key lessons we've learned over the last 14-15 years of constant war from a Special Operations standpoint, is that we are hugely dependent on the conventional forces. We don't do anything by ourselves. We are completely enabled by them. So this interoperability, this integration, this interdependence ... is really demonstrative of how we want to work together in the future. It really provides our nation a much greater capability." At dusk, in the middle of nearly 1,200 square miles of training space inside the Mojave Desert, tanker Soldiers with the 11th Armored Calvary Regiment -- a unit stationed at Fort Irwin that usually serves as the opposing forces for units who rotate in to the National Training Center to train -- lined up nine M1A1 Abrams battle tanks and fired on near-peer enemy forces from "Denovia," one of the two fictional countries involved in the conflict that was central to the exercise scenario. Lt. Col. Jon Poole, the operations officer for the National Training Center, explained the training scenario in detail, which involved the fictional countries of "Atropia" and "Denovia." Within the scenario, the four northern provinces of Atropia held elections nine months ago that put in charge a "Balosivar ethnic group," which he abbreviated as "BFB," that subsequently began ethnic cleansing of ethnic Atropians. Three months later, "we saw some Denovian cross-border action that was condemned by the U.S. and Europe. The U.N. security council drafted some resolutions against the Denovian cross-border aggression," Poole said. A month ago, he said "based on the BFB ramping up their cleansing, as well as Denovian actions along the border, some training actions, the U.S. sent some Special Operations Soldiers to assist in training some local personnel within those provinces in Atropia -- at the request of the Atropian government, in conducting unconventional warfare operations." Finally, just nine days before the start of the JFE, he said, Denovian military forces, a near-peer army, crossed into Atropia. WATCHING THE WAR UNFOLD Spectators had been bussed into the "war zone" and set up on bleachers to watch the battle unfold. The tanks were just a short hike away from viewers. Those in the bleachers were instructed to wear ear and eye protection. Behind the scenes, an announcer called a play-by-play of the action over a loud speaker. Using their tank's main guns, along with machine gun fire, and aided by AH-64 Apache aircraft, the tankers delivered devastating blows to enemy Denovian forces. "They are holes now," said Capt. William Larsen of their targets. He served as commander of one of the tanks, as well as commander of Delta Company, 1st Squadron, 11th [Armored Cavalry Regiment], known as the "Death Dealers." "What we did was set the conditions for the bigger picture for the JFE exercise. It kind of tells the story about an artillery raid being done by the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS)," he said. "We attacked forward to create the space for that HIMARS to move in and destroy air defense in the vicinity of objective Desoto." "Everything went off as planned without a hitch," Larsen said. "All the guys were shooting great. All the crews were doing the right things. There was great movement. Everything looked and sounded great." Once Larsen and the other tanks had made the area safe, a HIMARS rolled in and fired off several rockets meant to take out enemy air defenses that were protecting a landing strip located at "Objective Desoto" -- another part of Fort Irwin where spectators would later be taken to watch another part of the exercise. "This is kind of the next step," Larsen said of the JFE. "It's something that hasn't been practiced as much in the last ten years, where we had focused on counter-insurgency. This is really to show, and practice, being able to integrate different international and intergovernmental agencies, and within the services as well; to be able to project combat power forward if needed." Sgt. Zachary Egan, in the Army for four years now, served as the gunner in Larsen's tank. He said he fired off three rounds from the tank's main gun. "It's awesome, especially when you see the round impact downrange," Egan said of pulling the trigger. Egan said he recognizes the importance of the JFE and of the spectators on the battlefield, as a way to demonstrate to decision-makers just how important it is what he and his team does. "For us as tankers, this is our job. We realize where we fit in on the battlefield. Others, they are looking at budgets. And this is kind of an expensive beast," he said, pointing to his tank. "To us, it's still a necessary beast. To me, this kind of shows other people that don't get exposed to this, how important we are on the modern battlefield." Larsen, Egan, tank driver Spc. Levi Benson and shell loader Sgt. Jonathan Oliver -- the four crew members from just one of the Abrams tanks that had participated -- made themselves available to spectators after the initial demonstration. They had driven their tank the short distance to the spectator stand. They stood near their tank and answered questions from civilian reporters and generals alike. Off in the distance, miles away from spectators, the targets of their live-fire exercise still burned. THREE OBJECTIVES The HIMARS had launched rockets over a distant mountain, not at the enemy vehicles that were visible at the base of those mountains. Where those rockets hit was not visible to spectators. But they were in fact aimed at enemy air defenses on the other side of the mountains that were protecting the landing strip American forces aimed to seize as part of "Objective Desoto." After watching Abrams tanks and three Apache helicopters eliminate Denovian forces, and the HIMARS launch its rockets over the mountains, spectators were bussed to a nearby landing strip and loaded aboard CH-47 Chinook helicopters for a 12-minute ride to Objective Desoto, where they would watch the second phase of the operation. Desoto actually included three sub-objectives -- each with their own name. First was the landing strip, called "Objective Coolidge." Rangers with the 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, flying in CV-22 Osprey aircraft from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, about 900 miles north would be responsible for securing the strip. To the west of the landing strip, about 1,500 meters away, is a small town called "Nur" on the Fort Irwin map. For visitors, it's one of a dozen or more fabricated prop-towns that are used for training purposes. The Army built these small towns, like Hollywood sets, all over Fort Irwin. For the Army Rangers participating in the JFE exercise, it was "Objective Carter." Less than 300 meters south of the landing strip was "Objective Cleveland," another training town on Fort Irwin, called "Dezashah." Paratroopers from 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne, would drop from the sky onto the landing strip -- after it had been secured by the Rangers -- and then proceed south to take control of the town. Up in the mountains overlooking Objective Desoto were Soldiers of 3rd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group, known as Green Berets. "They have been there for days, watching this objective. Real Soldiers, watching and reporting everything that's been going on out here," said Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps. Townsend explained to spectators how the Green Berets had used "covert infiltration platforms to sneak their guys into the battlefield." Outside a large hospitality tent set up near the landing strip were two trucks. One was a flatbed loaded with hay bales. The center was hollowed out so Green Berets could hide in the center. Another, a panel truck with the rear door open, looked as if it was loaded with household goods to be taken off to the city junkyard. At the very back, pointing outward was a washer and dryer unit. The door to the dryer was open and it was possible to crawl into the dryer, right through its back, into the empty space at the rear of the truck where more Green Berets could hide. Seizing Objective Desoto took the coordinated efforts of conventional forces and special operations forces. First, there were pre-assault fires around the airstrip. F-15 Eagle fighter jets, provided by the Air Force, over-flew the landing strip and dropped munitions on various enemy air-defense targets that had been highlighted by Green Berets. Clearing out those enemy forces enabled the Rangers to seize the landing strip. They had flown in from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in CV-22 Ospreys. The tilt-rotor aircraft were able to land vertically, like helicopters, and drop off the Rangers, and then quickly return to the sky. With the Rangers on the ground, the landing strip was secured. This allowed follow-on forces, the 82nd Airborne, to fly in from nearby March Air Force Base in C-130 aircraft and drop both equipment and Soldiers onto the landing strip via parachute. Spectators, who had each been given night-vision scopes with which to watch the operation at the landing strip, wouldn't be able to see the Rangers and the 82nd take the two nearby towns that were held not by Denovian conventional forces, but terrorist forces. Nor would spectators be able to see additional U.S. forces or equipment come in, or the noncombatant evacuation operation that would happen later in the day. What they had seen was the Rangers and the 82nd safely on the ground, with the landing strip secured -- thanks to a joint effort that involved both special and conventional forces, as well as the U.S. Air Force. The JFE involved special forces and conventional forces working together against a "hybrid threat" that included insurgents, terrorists, criminal elements and conventional near-peer forces. Votel said the lessons learned from the JFE will ensure the Army is ready for any fight it may face in what the Army's chief of staff has called an increasingly complex world. "This creates more muscle memory with these organizations. While we may never exactly replicate exactly what we are doing tonight, there will be lessons learned; there will be experiences out of this, we will see things that go well, things that don't go as well as we want them to, and we will learn from that," Votel said. "This is about building readiness and about creating experiences together that allow us to provide options and do things in a more effective way in the future." Odierno said the real-world missions similar to the scenario that drove the JFE could happen anywhere in the world. "It's up to us to have the capability to go anywhere anytime, no matter what continent it is, and be able to put a joint capability on the ground that can secure terrain that then allows us to bring on follow-on forces," Odierno said. "We have the capability to do this." The general said the JFE exercise is something he wants to see happen on a yearly basis. So far 63 percent of Soldiers surveyed like 'Ike' jacket [2015-08-11] WASHINGTON -- Preliminary results show that a majority of Soldiers want a chance to wear the Ike jacket for dress and black socks for physical training, but a survey on proposed uniform changes has been extended until Aug. 31. Last month, 120,000 active-duty, Army National Guard and Army Reserve Soldiers were offered the opportunity to opine, online, regarding new uniform options. While 10 percent of those who were offered the opportunity to participate logged in and voiced their opinion, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey wants a more "robust response" from Soldiers before making any further recommendations. "It's a healthy survey sample, but I'd like to be sure it's what most Soldiers want before we move forward," Dailey said. He directed the survey period be extended for an additional two weeks. Approximately 120,000 Soldiers were initially offered the option to voice their opinion on the uniform survey. A second email was sent Aug. 10 to those same Soldiers offering additional time to participate in the survey if they have not already voted. The Army has a mechanism in place to prevent the same individual from voting more than once. The link contained in the latest email will only work for those who have not already logged on to the survey site. "This survey reflects Soldier uniform suggestions collected by the sergeant major of the Army [SMA] �and other senior enlisted leaders over the last six months," reads the email invitation to Soldiers, which asks them to participate in the survey. "As the SMA prepares to make recommendations to either the Army Uniform Board or the Army chief of staff on these suggestions, he wants to know what you think. Your votes will be tallied and used to inform the final decisions on possible changes to the wear and appearance of Army uniforms." Preliminary results from the first two weeks of tabulation have been released. The first survey question asked Soldiers their opinion on the wear of black socks, rather than white socks, with the Army Physical Fitness uniform. Of the 12,050 Soldiers who answered the question, 66.7 percent - or 8,032 Soldiers - voiced support for the wear of black socks. In regards to the "Eisenhower jacket," 62.8 percent agreed that purchase and wear should be an option, but not a requirement, for Soldiers. Dailey has also received positive feedback on the Eisenhower Jacket from outside the confines of the survey respondents. "The veteran community is really excited about the nostalgia aspect of the 'Ike' jacket," Dailey said. The Army currently has two "campaign hats" for drill sergeants. Campaign hats for male drill sergeants feature a flat brim all the way around the hat. For female drill sergeants, the brim is folded up on the wearer's left side. The Army asked if there should be a "single style of headgear for all drill sergeants." More than 60 percent of Soldiers, who responded to the question, said "yes." Another question regarding headgear asked if there should be a single style of service cap for all Soldiers. In particular, the Army wanted to know if the "bus driver hat" should be authorized for both male and female Soldiers. According to the survey, 66.7 percent of Soldiers said "yes" to that question. The first four survey questions, regarding socks, the Eisenhower jacket, the campaign hat for drill sergeants and the service cap, involve changes to uniform policy that would require no cost for the Army. Black socks would be an authorized purchase for Soldiers, for instance. The Eisenhower jacket would not be a required uniform item - it would be manufactured by companies outside the Army, and would be an optional, not required, uniform item. The Army would not need to buy the Eisenhower jacket for Soldiers. Soldiers would instead buy it on their own, if they wanted it. Finally, for the campaign hat and the service cap, these items are already in the Army inventory. The Army would not need to create a new item for Soldiers. One additional question on the uniform survey asks if the blue service cap should be required headgear for use when wearing the Army Service Uniform, for senior noncommissioned officers, officers and warrant officers. A little more than half of Soldiers, or 55.8 percent, said yes to that question. For the question regarding the blue service cap, making the cap a requirement for Soldiers, who are E-7 and above, could incur a cost to the Army, as the Army would need to provide the cap or an allowance to at least some Soldiers. "Additional analysis will be used before a final decision is made on any item that could result in a cost to the Army," an Army official said. Dailey agreed fiscal responsibility is paramount to any decision on uniform changes. "Being good stewards of the tax-payers' money is critically important," Dailey said. "While we value Soldiers' preferences and opinions on uniforms, we must always consider how any changes could affect our bottom line." Dailey plans to endorse the final data. "If it's what Soldiers want, I'm all for moving the ball down the field on their behalf as long as it doesn't result in a new bill," Dailey said. Dailey must present Soldier selections to the chief of staff and in some cases the Army Uniform Board for approval before any changes can be made. If changes are approved, Soldiers would not be able to wear new items until further instructions are provided by official means. Guidelines and timelines for wear would be released via All Army Activities, or ALARACT, messages to the force. Wars fought by ground troops, new Army chief says [2015-08-14] WASHINGTON -- Continued freedom in America requires a continued commitment to maintaining strong, equipped, well-led and well-trained ground forces, said the Army's 39th Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley. "There are many who think wars only can be won from great distances - from space, the air, the sea. Unfortunately, those views are very, very wrong," Milley said. Milley spoke immediately following his oath as the new chief, assuming responsibilities from Gen. Ray Odierno, who retired during the same ceremony Friday morning on Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Virginia. "War is an act of politics, where one side tries to impose its political will on the other," Milley said. "And politics is all about people. And people live on the ground. We may wish it were otherwise. But it is not. Wars are ultimately decided on the ground, where people live, and it is on the ground where the U.S. Army, the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Special Operations forces must never, ever fail." The general warned that flagging commitment to maintaining ground forces will have a devastating cost, in terms of lives and freedom. "If we do not maintain our commitment to remain strong, in the air, on the sea, and yes, on the ground, we will pay the butcher's bill in blood, and we will forever lose the precious gift of our freedom," he said. "As your chief of staff, I will ensure we remain ready as the world's premier combat force. Readiness to fight and win - ground combat is and will remain the U.S. Army's No. 1 priority. And there will be no other No. 1. We will always be ready to fight today, and we will always prepare to fight tomorrow." Milley most recently served as commander of U.S. Army Forces Command on Fort Bragg, North Carolina, before replacing Odierno, who served as chief of staff for nearly four years and retired after having served 39 years in the Army. OUTGOING CHIEF OF STAFF Odierno began his military career after graduating from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1976. At the change of responsibility ceremony, the outgoing chief of staff remarked at how the Soldiers of the 3d U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard), performing there, reminded him of Soldiers still serving around the world. Soldiers still in Iraq "are the best of who we have - attempting to train and advise Iraqi security forces," Odierno said. "I think of our Solders in Afghanistan, continuing to build an Afghan army. I think of our Soldiers in Eastern Europe, reassuring our allies. By the way, a Soldier was the 'Man of the Year' in Lithuania last year. That's who our Soldiers are. They are in Republic of Korea, supporting our allies. [They are] fighting the global war on terror around the world. That's why I stayed in this uniform for so long - because of our Soldiers, and their dedication and commitment to this nation." Odierno also touched on both the officer and noncommissioned officer, or NCO, corps, saying they were the best in the world. The NCO corps, he said, makes the U.S. Army different than any other army in the world. "They are our standard bearers," he said. "They are what changed our Army over the last 40 years [that] I have had the opportunity to serve. It has been the changing nature of our NCOs that has transformed our Army. And they continue to do that today." Of officers, he said, he has confidence that they will continue to preserve America's freedom by providing competent leadership for the Army that protects the nation. "As we stand here, we have the finest officer corps, in my opinion, in our nation's history," Odierno said. "I have complete confidence in the officers that we have in the Army today and of their ability to lead us into an uncertain future." The Army today, Odierno said, is admired by America's allies, feared by America's adversaries, and remains an essential part of the joint force. "And I know they will continue to do whatever they are asked, wherever they might be asked to do it - they will be there prepared," he said, adding that with Milley, "The Army is in great hands." The general also credited his ability to continue to serve to the strength of his own Family - especially his wife, Linda, whom he said has stood by his side since he was a cadet at West Point. "She is the epitome of selfless service," he said. "She has always put others before herself. She has always been by my side through the good and the bad. She has always been the strength of our Family. She has been a role model for so many spouses throughout the Army, because she always treated everybody with dignity, respect, and with a little touch of love. She sacrificed her entire life for me. I can never repay her for that." During his time as chief of staff, Odierno served under Army Secretary John M. McHugh. During his tenure as secretary, McHugh worked with three chiefs of staff, including Gen. George W. Casey Jr. and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, who now serves as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Ray is as fine an officer as I have ever known," McHugh said. "He's a leader wholly committed to the Army - doing so the last four years in Army headquarters. He's wholly dedicated to the people and relationships that compel our mission and to the broader strategy framed within the Department of Defense. More importantly, at all times he's been faithfully committed to the men and women of the U.S. Army, and the men and women of the U.S. military." McHugh said that Odierno "firmly believes that Soldiers are not in the Army, but they ARE the Army. It's always been his No. 1 job to serve them well and serve them honorably. And whether it is a fighting hole in Tikrit, or visiting a wounded warrior in hospital bed at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Ray has been the consummate leader, distinguished and thoughtful. He lead with a quick mind, calloused hands and a servant's spirit." NEW CHIEF OF STAFF Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter told those at the change-of-responsibility ceremony that he has great confidence in Milley's ability to lead the Army into an uncertain future. "He's the right officer to lead the Army over the next four years, to shape our force, to continue restoring its readiness, to get there quickly and to win - as our nation expects of its Army. Mark is a leader, a warrior, and a statesman," Carter said. The secretary said he has had personal visibility of Milley's command ability. In 2013, he said, the two were together on the day that Taliban fighters attacked the U.S. consulate in Herat, Afghanistan. "As we flew there, I saw him take decisive command of the scene," Carter said. "In addition to decades of such operational experience, Mark clearly also has the strategic vision needed to build on what Ray started. I have confidence - I know he'll succeed, because he carries that same unyielding commitment to Army, to Soldier, and to family." Milley's new boss, McHugh, said he's seen Milley lead Soldiers both at home and overseas, as well as at FORSCOM. "At all times he's lead with distinction, in both war and peace," McHugh said. "He's a remarkable leader, and I'm confident he'll be an exceptional chief of staff of the Army and member of the Joint Chiefs." Dempsey said that going forward, the Army will be smaller and different than what it has been in the past. But the Army will still do what the nation asks it to do, and to do that, Soldiers must be well-trained, well-led and well-equipped. "You are an inspired choice to lead our Army into the future and you are going to be terrific," Dempsey said. Soldiers must complete school before promotion [2015-08-17] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers will no longer be promoted without first having successfully completed related professional military education, or PME, courses, according to recently-signed Army Directive. Soldiers will need to complete their schooling before they are allowed their new stripes. "By linking structured self-development and the NCO Education System [NCOES] to subsequent promotion, we better prepare NCOs [noncommissioned officers] for the complexities of today's operational environment while reinforcing the benefits of a deliberate, continuous, sequential and progressive professional development strategy," wrote Army Secretary John M. McHugh in Army Directive 2015-31, which was released Aug. 13. Beginning with the January 2016 promotion month, pinning on the sergeant will require that Soldiers have first completed the "Basic Leader Course", which was formally known as the "Warrior Leader Course." For Soldiers who want to pin on staff sergeant rank, they must first have completed the Advanced Leader Course. "Soldiers on the recommended list who are not graduates of the respective course will not be considered fully qualified for promotion pin-on regardless of their accumulated promotion points," the directive reads. "These Soldiers will remain on the recommended list in a promotable status, but they will not be selected for promotion pin-on until they become fully qualified by completing the required course and a promotion requirement exists." Soldiers expecting to pin on sergeant first class as a result of a fiscal year 2016 selection board must first complete the Senior Leader Course before pinning on their new rank. "Conditions are set so we can enforce a standard for Soldiers to complete professional military education - that is the NCOES platform - before promotion to the grade in which it was designed to support," said Gerald J. Purcell, personnel policy integrator within the Army G-1. Purcell said that a Soldier, who is otherwise qualified to be promoted from corporal or specialist to sergeant, will be on the promotion list. But when that Soldier's name is next to fill an Army promotion requirement, if that Soldier is found to have not completed PME - for a specialist seeking sergeant, this means Basic Leader Course - then the Soldier will be passed up for that promotion. "There will be a filter in place that takes their name off the list of fully-qualified names," Purcell said. "They will get skipped. Even if they have more promotion points, they will not be considered fully-qualified to pin the grade of sergeant on." The Soldier who is skipped for promotion due to a lack of PME still stays on the promotion list. But once that Soldier gets the PME, he or she doesn't automatically get stripes. Instead, the Soldier will have to wait for a future requirement. Since the 1980s, Purcell said, the Army has allowed "conditional promotions," where Soldiers could get their stripes without having had the corresponding professional military education. "We had NCOs walking around who weren't school-trained, with a follow-on requirement they complete the training or they were going to be reduced," he said. "Today, the leadership believes there is a capability to provide Soldiers an opportunity to go to training, complete the training, and consequently, have all of the fundamental training in place before they are asked to perform at the next higher grade." With the new PME requirement, a Soldier's stripes will not just be an indicator of rank or pay - it will be an indicator that the Soldier has been trained as a leader, Purcell said. "When you see a Soldier wearing a sergeant rank, you know that Soldier is going to have been trained formally through an education system to prepare him or her and give them tools to succeed at that grade," Purcell said. "So the Soldier is going to have all the tools in their kit bag to fully succeed at their grade." The new policy also similarly affects National Guard Soldiers where enlisted Soldiers on a promotion list whom have completed their structured self-development requirements will be selected and assigned to higher grade vacancies. Soldiers selected for higher grade vacancies without the NCOES requirement will have 24 months to complete the level of NCOES required for promotion pin-on or will be removed from the position. Additionally, the directive makes changes to the retention control point for active-duty and Army Reserve Soldiers. According to the regulation, effective October 1, Soldiers selected for promotion to sergeant first class and master sergeant will not get an extended retention control point until they actually pin on their higher rank. Former Army acquisition executive remembered for 'quiet professionalism' [2015-08-19] WASHINGTON -- "We had a number of spirited discussions. He had views on program management that were different than mine. And I learned to come around to his way of understanding programs." Lt. Gen. Michael E. Williamson, who serves now as the principal military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, recalled his experience working with former Army acquisition executive, Claude M. Bolton Jr., who died in his home, July 28. Bolton served as the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, or ASA(ALT), for nearly six years, beginning in February 2002. He will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Williamson and Bolton first worked together when Williamson was just a lieutenant colonel. At the time, Williamson served as the product manager for the "Global Command Control System-Army," part of Program Executive Office, Command Control Communications-Tactical. "[Bolton] brought a lot of technical understanding of program management and programs to the job," said Williamson, who looked to Bolton as a sort of mentor. "He knew what program managers and acquisition professionals had to produce." Bolton had a long military career, which started well before his time at ASA(ALT). He began working for the military in 1969, when he was commissioned in the Air Force as a second lieutenant. His duties in the Air Force included squadron and wing safety officer, instructor pilot, wing standardization and evaluation flight examiner, scheduler, test pilot and acquisition professional. Bolton is a command pilot with more than 2,700 flying hours in more than 30 different aircraft. During the Vietnam War, he flew 232 combat missions, 40 over North Vietnam. He was a test pilot for the F-4, F-111 and the F-16, and the first program manager for the Advanced Tactical Fighter Technologies Program, which evolved into the F-22 System Program Office. At the Pentagon, he was the F-16 program element monitor and also saw duty in the Office of Special Programs. He was the deputy program director for the B-2 System Program Office, program director for the Advanced Cruise Missile System Program Office, then inspector general for Air Force Materiel Command, or AFMC. Bolton also served as commandant of the Defense Systems Management College, as special assistant to the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition and as director of requirements at AFMC headquarters, the program executive officer for Air Force fighter and bomber programs with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, and the commander of the Air Force Security Assistance Center, Headquarters Air Force Materiel Command, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. By the time Bolton retired from the Air Force in 2002, he had attained the rank of major general, and had developed extensive expertise in military acquisition. "Because he had that background and experience, it was real easy for him to interact with the program executive officers, the program managers, product managers, and acquisition officials that worked with him," Williamson said. "He also had the ability to interact above, to Office of the Secretary of Defense and to industry, because he understood our business. "I would argue that he probably understood our business better than anybody that preceded him," Williamson said. "That knowledge, and his demand of program managers to understand their programs, will carry on." After Bolton left service to the Army, he moved on to be an Executive-in-Residence at the Defense Acquisition University. But the former acquisition executive continued to make visits to the Pentagon, most recently to visit with his former protegee, Williamson, who assumed the military deputy position at ASA(ALT) in April 2014. "He came up here at least once a month and we'd sit and talk," Williamson said. "What I really appreciate is that he was willing to take my inputs to look at, how do I change the institution that provides training and education to acquisition professionals, and how do I adjust to the times." Williamson said Bolton's visits were to offer assistance when needed. "There was no fanfare. It was 'hey Michael, what's going on, and is there anything I can help with?'" he said. "There is a lot of understated leadership there. We'd just sit on the couch and talk." Williamson said ASA(ALT) oversees program executive offices that handle such things as aircraft, chemical protection, combat vehicles and Soldier weapons. He said Army contracting is done out of ASA(ALT), as well as research and development, and new equipment purchases. "If the Army builds a new tank or aircraft, it starts and finishes here," he said. "The acquisition executive must have understanding of cost, schedule and performance - because we have a responsibility to deliver capability to Soldiers. When you go to war, you go with the things you have built. Mr. Bolton came to us with an experience set, and a desire to understand the Army and what our Soldiers do every day. That's a big deal." Williamson said he believes Bolton left a mark on Army acquisition. "The importance of his tenure here is the processes and discipline he put in place here," said Williamson, adding that Bolton emphasized a notion of "quiet professionalism, expertise and competence: be an expert, be competent in your field, and treat people how you want to be treated." Soldiers remember Hurricane Katrina on 10th anniversary [2015-08-20] WASHINGTON -- One of the first things Col. Rodney Painting noticed on entering New Orleans 10 years ago, after Hurricane Katrina had left the city flooded, was the smell. "There is a unique smell that comes along with a house being flooded," Painting said. "You can smell the wet sheet rock, the wet insulation, the wet furniture. It was odd. The entire city smelled like that." Painting, a National Guardsman, serves as commander of the 225th Engineer Brigade. As a civilian, he serves as director of capital improvements for the Louisiana Recovery School District, and administers the $1.8 billion Federal Emergency Management Agency grant that is meant to rebuild schools damaged by Katrina. When Katrina happened, Painting was a lieutenant colonel, and was commander of the 205th Engineer Battalion. Ten years later, New Orleans has largely recovered from the devastation rained upon it as a result of the hurricane. That storm landed in the city Aug. 29, 2005. While the wind from the storm caused damage in New Orleans and surrounding areas, and wind and flash flooding from storm surges caused damage in neighboring Mississippi, New Orleans was unique in that the flood waters came in and didn't leave until months later. Nearly 80 percent of the city was underwater. "But even after the water started to go down in St. Bernard Parrish and in Orleans Parrish, it was an eerie smell," Painting said of the city. "And even into the fall, as summer faded away and temperatures started to drop into the 70s, the 60s, and even the 50s - you still had that odor. It was an odd smell." AID FROM THE AIR After Katrina hit the southern United States, causing the most damage in Louisiana and Mississippi, National Guard Soldiers and airmen from all 50 states, as well as first responders from the local area and from around the nation, descended on the afflicted areas to provide relief, to clear away damage from roads, and in New Orleans, to rescue citizens, who were trapped in their own homes by the floodwaters. Maj. Timothy Cleighton grew up in Slidell, Louisiana. It's a city just north of Lake Pontchartrain, and is considered, like many communities on the "north shore" of the lake, to be part of the Greater New Orleans Metropolitan Area. Cleighton serves now as a full-time National Guardsman with the 204th Theater Airfield Operations Group. But in 2005, he was a first lieutenant and UH-60 Black Hawk pilot with the National Guard's 1/244th Air Assault Helicopter Battalion. He was also a graduate student. Just before Katrina, his unit had returned from a 14-month deployment, mostly in Iraq. "This was the first real 'all-hazards' event I'd been a part of as aviation," Cleighton said. "Previously I was in the engineers. My only experience with hurricanes or tornadoes was when I was maybe an E-3 gate guard over in one of the neighborhoods, trying to keep people from looting. And that was a small event. Katrina was the first full-scale natural disaster I was part of." He said in advance of the hurricane, his unit evacuated aircraft from New Orleans to Houston, Texas, and Alexandria Esler Regional Airport - about 162 miles northeast of New Orleans. Once the damage to New Orleans was evident, he said, they moved the aircraft back to the Louisiana capital of Baton Rouge to stage their operations from there. Those operations, he said, started out pretty intense. Not quite 24-hour operations for him, but 18-hour days at least. He said they were flying missions in New Orleans every day, all day, to rescue those who were trapped by the flood waters. "Because it was such a high-impacted area with the number of people, our mission every day was to go fly into New Orleans and rescue as many people as we could. That was the task," he said. He said initially, with the number of helicopters flying around the city, and from so many units and agencies, there wasn't really a plan for who would go rescue people in a particular part of the city. "What we kind of did was fly around, find a spot without a lot of activity, and start searching there," he said. "It was amazing the amount of deconfliction we could do internally. You'd see an aircraft, or five, over in the north side. So we'd slide over and go to the south side and start looking. "We'd put a wheel on top of a house and throw people on, or we'd land in the middle of the street, or the levy. Anything we could do to pick them up. I didn't have a hoist. I was kind of limited with what I could do." Initially, Cleighton said, they brought those rescued to the Superdome in New Orleans. Later, they started taking citizens to the New Orleans International Airport. "Once we did that it was just - I had to have been, sometimes, number 50 in line to drop people off," he said. "That's with a full aircraft full of people. All of us lined up to drop people off. I've never seen so many aircraft." Cleighton said he and his crew flew long hours for four or five days - from maybe 6 a.m. out of Baton Rouge until nightfall. Later, he said, relief came when other pilots from his units showed up to start relieving him and his crew. But then it was too late for the college student to start back to his regular schedule. "I was in my master's program," he said. "And I ended up just not going to class, and withdrawing, and started running missions." After the bulk of the rescue missions ended, he said, he ran other flying missions, including moving VIPs and other personnel around New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana. Included among his passengers were then-governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco, and then-adjutant general of Louisiana, Maj. Gen. Bennett C. Landreneau. "She was doing an assessment," Cleighton said of the governor. "We flew from the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain to the south shore, so she could address the damage." "It really hit home," he said of the flood. "Not so many times do you see a disaster where you see eight feet of water around a bunch of houses where you grew up yourself ... or you have friends that grew up in the area. Just to see the impact on them. There were a couple of people who had lived in the area that was flooded with water up to the rooftops. To see their reaction, it was gut-wrenching. They grew up on that street, or played football there." 'LIKE 1862' Painting said before Katrina hit, he'd been in his unit's headquarters in Bogalusa, Louisiana. The eye of Katrina passed over that city and "rode the state line" between Mississippi and Louisiana all the way to the north, he said. Afterward, his team was responsible for clearing highways in and around Bogalusa, Slidell, Covington, Franklinton and Hammond - all cities just north of Lake Pontchartrain. In fact, his area of responsibility, he said, was from the north shore of the lake about 40 miles north to the state's border with Mississippi. "We cleared a significant amount of land," he said. Additionally, his unit was responding to the storm surge from the lake that had hit Slidell. "We were doing house-to-house checks in that area, along with the local sheriff office." The storm surge had also affected Mandeville and Madisonville on the north shore. "We were going house to house, doing searches, and using the FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] marking system on the doors," he said. And at the same time, communications lines with higher headquarters were down. "It was like 1862 - like the Civil War," he said. "We had to send runners, to a certain point, to deliver hard copy messages. I remember specifically we took a convoy, after it took three days to get the roads cleared." Eventually, Painting said, he was able to link up with an Air National Guard unit that had communications capability. They stayed together for about two weeks to keep a line of connection open with the state command group to direct them on missions. While Painting said his primary area of responsibility was north of the lake, eventually "the severity of the situation in New Orleans basically dictated that nearly every National Guardsman had to surge toward the city." About a week after the storm struck, his unit went down to New Orleans to work alongside units already there, including the 769th Engineer Battalion, and the 527th Engineer Battalion. With a unit of about 600 Soldiers, and for about six months, he said, they did such work as levy repair, debris removal, and movement of huge sandbags using sling load operations. "We ran a gamut of everything," he said. "The devastation in New Orleans is tremendous," he said. "And when the flood waters went down, it left a fine layer of silt everywhere. You could always identify how high the water was on a building by the water line. And each day the water would drop it would dry at a different line. You had a line, like when your children grow up and you have them stand next to the door and you mark off a different year of their life by how tall they are. You could gauge the water going down day by day, with various water marks." 'CITIES OF THE DEAD' Heading southbound toward Belle Chasse, a community also considered part of the Greater New Orleans Metropolitan Area, and also home of the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans, Painting saw more mind-boggling damage that came as a result of flood waters. "There were two fish trawlers that had washed up onto the highway," he said. "Like ships, lying in the middle of the road. And further down the road, coffins and caskets floated in from a cemetery. All the burials in that part of Louisiana are above ground. Just like in New Orleans - they call them the 'cities of the dead.' They are all above ground because the water table is so high, so coffins float up if there is a flood. And there is also a huge citrus industry down there. So you had dead cattle that flooded in, you have these old vintage caskets that had floated in from all these old cemeteries, and you had millions of citrus lining the highways." As part of his civilian job today, Painting said, he is reminded daily of the damage from Katrina. "We were in a school a few weeks ago ... and we walked into two or three classrooms in a row and the electric clocks were all stopped at the same time, from when the power went out at that school," he said. "You still have the school dates written in chalk in the corner of the chalk board from the teacher's first lesson that never really happened." He said Katrina is like 9/11, in that it is a significant marker in people's lives by which they place other events. "For people in South Louisiana, it is a milestone in our lives," he said. "We determine things as before Katrina or after Katrina." "The biggest takeaway here is that a tragedy like this can happen to just about anybody," he said. "And depending on how the community is prepared for it before, that will dictate how they react afterward. It takes a short time to destroy a community. But it has taken 10 years here to get back to normal." Painting said the nation and the National Guard in Louisiana are now better prepared than before Katrina for another similar disaster. Painting and "about 100 percent" of his Soldiers stayed on duty in support of relief efforts for about six months. Even those Soldiers whose own homes had been destroyed stayed on to work, he said. "They returned to duty the next day," he said. "When you talk about selfless-service, these guys were the epitome of that." 60 MILES EAST Watching the news in the summer of 2005, one might have overlooked that Katrina had hit other parts of the United States besides New Orleans. Just 60 miles east of that city, in Gulfport, Mississippi, and further west in Pascagoula, Mississippi, the National Guard there was also dealing with the aftermath of Katrina, which left a different set of problems for the state. "The average American thinks Katrina only hit New Orleans," Col. Lee W. Smithson said. "But it didn't. We had a greater swath of damage in Mississippi than New Orleans did. Mississippi has 82 counties. Of those, 80 had some type of disaster declaration." Smithson serves as director of military support for the Mississippi National Guard. He said during Katrina, the Guard became the solver of problems nobody else knew how to deal with. At the time, he was responsible for the six southern counties in Mississippi, to include Pearl River, Stone, George, Jackson, Harrison and Hancock. In Gulfport, he said, home to the third-largest container port in the Gulf of Mexico, one of those problems reared its head. "Our two biggest exports here are poultry and shrimp," he said. "The port was full of poultry and shrimp when the storm surge washed all those containers off the port in Gulfport. We had a massive bio-hazard along the shore of Gulfport. Nobody knew what to do with all the dead shrimp and poultry. The local responders came to the Guard and asked us to get rid of it." He said the material couldn't be dumped in a landfill, because it would contaminate the groundwater. They loaded up all the material into dump trucks, using front loaders, and brought it out into the Gulf, past the barrier islands about nine miles to the south, and dumped it there. "We did so much more than we normally do," he said. "We had to be the coastal problem solvers." While in New Orleans the levies broke and left the city flooded for months, in Mississippi, the flooding didn't last long. It moved in and out fairly quickly, in advance of the hurricane passing over, as part of a storm surge. But the storm surge had been devastating nonetheless, Smithson said. His team weathered Katrina at Camp Shelby in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. It's about 70 miles north of the coast. On the afternoon of Aug. 29, he and about 125 military police, 100 engineers and 150 highway patrolmen traveled south to Gulfport. "It took us from 5 p.m. in the afternoon until 11 p.m. that evening to clear all the trees off the highway to get down there," he said. And when the sun came up the next day, "we were blown away by the amount of damage that had been done there in Gulfport." "We had a 32-foot storm surge," he said. "We had never seen a three-story wall of water anywhere in the United States. We had a tsunami 32 feet tall the whole length of the coast." That wall of water, he said, went up to a mile inland, except where there were rivers and bays - there it went farther inland. "We had a wall of water, 10 miles inland in Hancock County," he said. And water also pushed up the Jordan River. Bay St. Louis and Biloxi Bay faced similar devastation. Normally, he said, the barrier islands, about 9 to 12 miles off the coast of Mississippi, would protect the coast, he said. "But you can't protect against a 32-foot storm surge." 'THIRD-WORLD' Lt. Col. John B. Brown serves as the deputy human resources officer with the Mississippi National Guard. When Katrina came in 2005, he was a liaison Guard officer to Pascagoula in Jackson County. He said that the devastation in Pascagoula, as a result of the storm surge there, was the worst he's ever seen. "It reminded me [of] a third-world nation," he said. "Just because of the dirt and grime. Everything was covered in mud. The streets - you couldn't tell they were paved - they looked like a mud street. The people were out doing what they needed to be done." As a liaison officer to Pascagoula, Brown led a composite team of 25 Soldiers there in advance of the storm making landfall. "As liaison officer, our job was to coordinate with the emergency management coordinator and let him know what assets we had available and what were our capabilities," he said. "We acted as kind of a sounding board; he'd say what he needed done and ask if we could do it. And if we could, I'd go through the proper procedures to request and get those assets allocated to Jackson County." He went down with military police and engineers. The engineers, he said, brought trucks that could evacuate people in high water. "The water rises before the storm hits. So we have time before the storm actually makes landfall to make evacuations, and we needed high-water vehicles to do that." After the landfall, he said, the small composite team he had been in charge of went back to their organic units. The Alabama National Guard sent a task force of 2,000 Soldiers into Jackson County to provide assistance. "They were fully prepared, and fully organized for the task they came to do, and did a fantastic job," he said. "They were there within maybe two days after landfall." Brown said that one of the things that makes him proud of being a Mississippian is that the citizens of Pascagoula didn't wait for help to arrive before getting to work on their own. "They started doing what they needed to do: clearing roads, doing house-to-house searches," he said. "As soon as the water left, they were out there straightening up stuff. Everybody we were working with down there was affected by the storm, because they all live there. They put all that aside. They were policemen, or worked for the Red Cross, or work for the city. They all lost something. " Smithson said after Katrina, the Guard in Mississippi cleared 3,900 miles of roads with their engineering effort; handed out medicine and 1.2 million meals, ready to eat, or MREs, and almost a million gallons of water by air - which is something they hadn't expected to be asked to do - and distributed an additional 5.4 million gallons of water and 3 million MREs to civilians, across 37 counties, at ground-based points of distribution. In Mississippi, like in Louisiana, there were communications problems. But Smithson said that as a result of those communications problems, he learned something about military leadership. "If the commanders out in the field know what it is the big commander wants, his intent, and they understand what their missions are, they will figure a way to make things happen," he said. After Katrina, he said, there was a Department of Homeland Security grant to build the Mississippi Wireless Integrated Network - a voice and data network "that is second to none." It allows communications across the state, even off shore past the barrier islands. During Deepwater Horizon, he said, the National Guard could fly helicopters out to the spill site and communicate with leadership. MISSISSIPPI AFTERMATH Brown said that while the debris and the trash and the leveled homes are now gone in southern Mississippi, reminders of the storm are still evident. "You can still see some of the devastation. There are still concrete slabs that haven't been rebuilt," he said, including slabs where pre-Civil War homes once stood. "Katrina is the high watermark of hurricanes. Every year when we go through hurricane season, we ask will it be another Katrina. It's still on everybody's mind." If another storm comes, he said, he thinks the National Guard will be ready to provide support. And he said he thinks that after Katrina, and other storms that have been endured by Mississippi, the residents in affected communities will welcome Guardsmen. "Just the sight of somebody in a BDU [Battle Dress Uniform] or an ACU [Army Combat Uniform] uniform brings calm," he said. "Even [if] it's just one or two Guardsmen there trying to assess damage, people know help is there." National Guard called up in Baltimore [2015-08-28] WASHINGTON -- About 2,000 Army and Air National Guard members in Maryland were called up Monday night, by Gov. Larry Hogan, to respond to rioting in Baltimore, the state's most populous city. Protests and vandalism took place in Baltimore Saturday, but rioting broke out in force during the early evening on Monday, following the funeral of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, who died April 19 after reportedly suffering a spinal injury in police custody. "As the state aggressively takes action to restore peace and order in Baltimore City, I want the citizens of Maryland to know that the state is fully engaged on all levels," said the governor. "National Guardsmen, Maryland State Troopers, and supplies have been sent to areas within the city and we will continue to provide resources as needed." During an April 28 press briefing, Baltimore Police Capt. Eric Kowalczyk said that 27 officers have been injured, 235 arrests have been made, 144 vehicle fires have been noted. The captain said there was a 10pm curfew in place in Baltimore City. Guardsmen are providing presence patrols in the city and protection to critical infrastructure, according to a Maryland National Guard spokesman, Maj. Rick Breitenfeldt. The troops are also providing additional security to areas of the city after law enforcement clears. "We are in a support posture... supporting state and city police," Breitenfeldt said. "The Maryland National Guard personnel assigned to these missions are trained, equipped and prepared to assist law enforcement authorities with protecting lives and property of law abiding citizens of our state. We are as proud of the role we play serving our communities. Marylanders should be reassured that the National Guard is doing everything possible to ensure the safety and well-being of all law-abiding citizens." Breitenfeldt said that while 2,000 Guardsmen have been called up, about 5,000 are available state-wide should they be needed. Those Guardsmen, he said, are working in direct support of the Maryland State Police and Baltimore City Police departments and are being tasked by them for missions. "Marylanders should be reassured that the National Guard is carrying out a well-established plan to ensure the safety and well-being of all law-abiding citizens," Breitenfeldt said. Ranger School hangs out 'all Soldiers welcome' sign [2015-09-02] WASHINGTON -- From now on, the Army's Ranger School will be open to any female Soldiers who meet the criteria. That's the latest from the Army, as spelled out in a Sept. 2 "All Army Activities" message known as an ALARACT. "We must ensure that this training opportunity is available to all Soldiers who are qualified and capable and we continue to look for ways to select, train, and retain the best Soldiers to meet our nation's needs," Army Secretary John M. McHugh said. The chief of staff of the Army said the service's No. 1 priority is combat readiness, and that the leadership development that comes from attending Ranger School is a key component of that. "Giving every qualified Soldier the opportunity to attend the Ranger Course, the Army's premier small unit leadership school, ensures we are maintaining our combat readiness today, tomorrow and for future generations," Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley said. In January, the Army announced that it would for the first time open Ranger School to women, as part of a "Ranger Course Assessment." That assessment kicked off in April, as part of Ranger Course 06-15. Two women who entered Ranger School at that time, 1st Lt. Shaye L. Haver and Capt. Kristen M. Griest, eventually graduated the school Aug. 21, and a third woman is in the final phase of the school in Florida. Now, all women who want to embrace the challenge and the opportunity to earn the Ranger tab will be able to enroll in the school, if they meet the stringent requirements to attend. Maj. Gen. Austin S. Miller, commander of the U.S. Army Maneuver Center of Excellence, said during an Aug. 20 press conference that those same stringent requirements and standards were not changed as part of the Ranger Course Assessment. "Up front, what we've been very consistent on is we've said there will be no change to the standards ... and there weren't," he said. "We also said ... we're going to be professional and objective as we work our way through this process, which is exactly what you would expect from a Ranger-qualified instructor or anybody else in the Army." Just a day before her graduation from Ranger School, Griest said that for other women who want to attend the school, perseverance and confidence are key to making it through. "I personally know a lot of women interested in going, and for whatever reason, whether it is timing or deployment or they are in some school at this point in time, they weren't able to go to this assessment," Griest said. "But I know many very qualified women that I can think of that could pass the course or at least make a very good attempt. I would encourage them to go. And I would say keep doing what they are doing. They are motivated. It is definitely more of a mental challenge than physical. If you mentally know you want to get through - and you have to want to get through - than you will make it." Current Army policy allows female students who successfully complete Ranger School to receive a graduation certificate and be awarded, and authorized to wear, the Ranger tab. However, female graduates will not receive the associated Ranger skill identifiers or be assigned to Ranger-coded units or positions. According to an Army spokesperson, there are three more Ranger Schools scheduled this year, one in September, one in October, and one in November. He said it usually takes two to three months to prepare for Ranger School, so if other female Soldiers hope to attend the school, it is likely they will enter the November course. (Editor's note: A Department of the Army press release contributed to this article.) Army to enlist robots to pull Soldiers off battlefield [2015-09-03] WASHINGTON -- Most Americans have seen at least one war movie, where at some point a fresh-faced young private is hit with some shrapnel. From the ground, he calls out for the unit medic - another young guy, from another small town, whose quick reaction and skill just may save his life. In the near future, however, it may no longer be another Soldier, who comes running to his side. Instead, it might be an Army-operated unmanned aerial or ground vehicle, said Maj. Gen. Steve Jones, commander of the Army Medical Department Center and School and chief of the Medical Corps. "We have lost medics throughout the years because they have the courage to go forward and rescue their comrades under fire," Jones said. "With the newer technology, with the robotic vehicles we are using even today to examine and to detonate IEDs [improvised explosive devices], those same vehicles can go forward and retrieve casualties." Jones spoke at an Association of the U.S. Army-sponsored medical conference near the Pentagon, Sept. 22. "We already use robots on the battlefield today to examine IEDs, to detonate them," he said. "With some minor adaptation, we could take that same technology and use it to extract casualties that are under fire. How many medics have we lost, or other Soldiers, because they have gone in under fire to retrieve a casualty? We can use a robotics device for that." Jones said unmanned vehicles used to recover injured Soldiers could be armored to protect those Soldiers on their way home. But the vehicles could do more than just recover Soldiers, he said. With units operating forward, sometimes behind enemy lines, the medical community could use unmanned aerial vehicle systems, or UAVs, to provide support to them. "What happens when a member of the team comes down with cellulitis or pneumonia? We have got to use telemedicine to tele-mentor them on the diagnosis and treatment," he said, adding that UAVs could be used for delivering antibiotics or blood to those units to keep them in the fight. "So you don't have to evacuate the casualties, so the team can continue its mission." SENSORS Other technology that Jones said already exists, sensors that could monitor a Soldier's vital signs, for instance, might also one day make their way to the battlefield, being worn by Soldiers full time. "Army Medical Research and Materiel Command is actually developing physiological sensors that Soldiers can wear," Jones said. "And in a few years, they will be able to field this. They can be wearing the sensors and we can just monitor them. And we can do that remotely." The general likened the sensors to something like a "Fit Bit," which Soldiers might wear now to monitor their heart rate and steps taken. "This is just a step forward that will monitor other physiological parameters," he said. "Do they need to push more water? How many calories have they consumed? There is a lot of information we can provide commanders that they can use to manage their Soldiers." The same sensors could be used to triage casualties automatically, so that those injured Soldiers whose vital signs are the worst are the ones who get rescued first. "If you see a casualty whose heart rate is way up, whose respiratory rate is way up, that may be an indication they lost a lot of blood, and need treatment now, as opposed to a casualty whose vital signs are stable and you wouldn't have to treat as quickly," he said. The same sensors can also be installed on unmanned aerial vehicles that might one day rescue Soldiers when they go down. Jones also discussed the use of "GoPro" cameras on Soldiers to document wounds and treatment that is administered. Such video, he said, can be transmitted real-time to follow-on treatment facilities where it can be used by physicians there to better understand exactly what treatment a Soldier has already received. Additionally, such footage could be used to provide feedback to the medics who performed the initial care to help them improve their skills. The Army is doing something similar now, he said, through the use of medical simulators. "[We] train combat medics in simulators and record treatment they provide and play it back for them," he said. "We show them how they entered the scene, how they surveyed their casualties, how they decided which casualty to treat or not treat. And then we talk to them about the treatment they actually provided." 7th Infantry Division's Exercise Rising Thunder to bring aviation angle to fight [2015-09-07] WASHINGTON -- Exercise Rising Thunder kicks off for the 22nd time today at Yakima Training Center, Washington. The exercise annually brings Japanese soldiers to the United States to train alongside U.S. Soldiers. This year, the exercise runs Sept. 8-25, and involves about 300 soldiers from the 10th Division of the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force's, or JGSDF's, "Middle Army." About 275 U.S. Soldiers will participate in Rising Thunder, including Soldiers from 2-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 7th Infantry Division, who will serve as primary trainers for the exercise. Soldiers from 16th Combat Aviation Brigade will also participate. Col. Tony Aguto, who serves as the deputy commanding officer for operations of the 7th Infantry Division, will also serve as a senior trainer for Rising Thunder. He said the Rising Thunder event is designed to benefit the JGSDF by providing them access to the large training grounds and support staff offered at Yakima Training Center. "This is actually their training event," Aguto said, explaining that the Japanese units come to the United States to make use of the training ranges and training support packages offered by the U.S. Army. "It's their event, and we support them. We help them build their event to match their training objectives while they are out here. They are the lead, and we support them." Exercises, like Rising Thunder, Aguto said, contribute to increased interoperability and partnership between American and Pacific nation armies. The three-week Rising Thunder exercise will strengthen the relationship between the U.S. and Japanese armies, he said. "From the tactical level it is very important," he said. "We've been building this partnership with the Japanese divisions for a long time. From the operational/strategic level it is very important. It is part of our engagement out to the east, and something we have been doing for quite a long time." This year for the first time, he said, the Japanese hope to focus their training on use of their air assets. "They want to be able to train their helicopters in conjunction with artillery," he said. "We are conducting aerial gunnery in conjunction with their artillery and their infantry. One of the goals is to do a combined live-fire exercise, where we integrate American and Japanese units in a live-fire event. What is unique about this Rising Thunder is the use of their air assets. We are integrating their aircraft, and our aircraft - the AH-64 Apache - in the training. That's something we haven't done to this level before." Aguto said the JGSDF will bring Bell AH-1 Cobra aircraft to the exercise, and that there will be challenges to integrating their aircraft with American aircraft. But that type of challenge is exactly what exercises like Rising Thunder are meant to address. "A lot of it has to do with how we work together, as opposed to the actual technical communications systems," he said. "We will have our tactical operations centers set up right next to each other and we'll share liaison officers all the way down to the platoon level to make sure we have some sort of interoperability across the functions, from infantry, to aircraft, to artillery. It's a challenge to us to do combined live fire with just our own units. When you add in a partnered event, such as this, it's a great training event, it's a great exercise, but it adds its own unique challenges." During the first two weeks of Rising Thunder, Aguto said, U.S. and Japanese Soldiers will work hand-in-hand on training. There will be platoon live-fire exercises and bilateral heliborne training - which involves mounting and dismounting out of a helicopter in a combat environment. The culminating event this year will be a bi-lateral combined arms live-fire exercise during the last week, he said. In advance of Rising Thunder, U.S. Soldiers received training regarding how the Japanese army works, as well as some cultural training, Aguto said. During the exercise, there will be plenty of time for U.S. and Japanese Soldiers to get to know each other as well. "There is a familiarization time here with the Japanese soldiers," he said. "So when we go through these first couple weeks, just individual - and crew-level training, all that is partnered. And throughout this training, there are a number of social, team-building and athletic events. And at the end, there is a half-marathon we are running with the Japanese." Early next year, the 7th Infantry Division will continue strengthening partnerships in the Pacific though participation in a Pacific Pathways exercise, which kicks off in February. During that Pacific Pathways iteration, Soldiers, with the 7th Infantry Division, will travel to Thailand to participate in Cobra Gold, Feb. 9-23; South Korea to participate in Foal Eagle, March 7-17; and the Philippines to participate in Balikatan, April 18-30. Participation in the exercises with armies there will increase interoperability and strengthen relationships in the Pacific. "We as an Army go out to other armies in the Pacific and do joint/combined exercises with them to really build a global network of armies across the pacific," Aguto said. "Rising Thunder is just one exercise of many we do out in the Pacific to increase our partnerships, and to increase army-to-army relationships, in case we need them in the future." Capitol Hill workout commemorates 9/11 [2015-09-11] WASHINGTON -- Some congressional staffers, and even some military officers serving in legislative liaison positions here, might have never worked so hard as they did during a 9/11-themed "workout of the day" in the Upper Senate Park on Capitol Hill. "What we got going on right here today is a commemoration for 9/11," said Maj. Adisa King, who works in the Army's Senate Liaison Division. "It's a workout of the day, and it's a chance to commemorate 9/11 by looking at all the numbers." The number of repetitions for each exercise during the workout correlated with some aspect of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. King planned the early-morning event, which brought out more than 50 service members and senate office staffers. Included among those exercises were: - 220 box jumps or knee tucks representing the two, 110-story World Trade Center towers - an 11-repetition shuttle run for American Airlines flight 11, which crashed into the north tower - 175 lunges for United Airlines flight 175, which crashed into the south tower - 77 deep squats for American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon - 93-yard bear crawl for United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania - 343m Skeedco drag for the number of firefighters killed - 72 clapping pushups for the number of police officers killed - 2,977 burpees for the total number of victims killed "We are going to do something here that makes you remember those numbers," he said. When 9/11 happened, King was a first lieutenant and was in the "mountain phase" of Army Ranger School. "That's when they told us we got attacked," King said. "When they told us that, it changed everything for every Ranger School student. We were in the mountains then, and we knew where we had to go - we had to go to the mountains [in Afghanistan]. Everybody's senses turned on. It was a moment of silence as you are marching and moving out. We knew we were going to war." At about 8 a.m,, music started pumping from loud speakers, and participants broke into eight teams, each to perform a different exercise. Soldiers bear-crawled next to Sailors; Marines lunged alongside airmen and Hill staffers. Teams rotated between each of seven stations so they could perform all of the exercises. In between, everyone did burpees. And at the end of the hour-long workout, all the participants gathered in a group to do even more burpees, so that they could together accomplish a total of 2,977 repetitions - representing the lives lost on 9/11. Emma Kenyon, who works as a staff on the Senate Special Committee on Aging, said it was one of the toughest workouts of her life. "But everybody was real supportive, they gave a lot of encouragement, and I really appreciated it," she said. "This was a great way to pay homage to, or to honor the people in some way whose lives had been lost and those people who helped survivors or are survivors." Kenyon was in 5th grade at the time of 9/11 and said at the time she and her classmates weren't yet old enough to understand the meaning of what had happened. "Later, it became clear what had happened," she said. "But at that age, it didn't sink in what terrorism was, what it all meant. It was just the initial impact that something scary had happened." Army Maj. Donna Buono, who also works in the Army's Senate Liaison Division, helped plan the workout. She said she hopes the event will become a yearly thing. She was but a sophomore in college in Missouri when she first heard about the events of 9/11. "I was on my way to French class with my best friend," she said. "We heard about it on the radio on our way to class. We still had class, and we really didn't know what was going on until we got back out." She said it wasn't until she got home and turned on the news that she and her roommates learned the full scope of what had happened. While Buono was a Reserve Officer Training Corps cadet at the time, she said it didn't occur to her and her fellow cadets just exactly what the results of 9/11 would mean to them as future military officers. "But it has defined my life," she said. "Our lives." Navy Capt. Sarah Joyner, director of the Navy's Senate Liaison Office, was invited by the Army to participate in the workout. "I came out because on 9/11 I had friends in the Pentagon, friends on the ground," she said. "I lost friends and fellow shipmates in what happened in the Pentagon, and I wanted to make sure I remembered them and their families and what all the firefighters and policemen and all those people that serve our country do in their various ways." Joyner now works on Capitol Hill to help make sure the Navy gets all the information it needs from lawmakers - and the other way around as well. But she is also an F-18 pilot. When 9/11 happened, she was stationed at Naval Air Station Lemoore, California. "I was on my way to man-up a jet when I heard that the first tower had gone down," she said. "Somebody came out and said somebody just hit the tower - an airliner hit the tower. We went back in and checked out what was happening. By the time we got in, the second tower was being hit and we knew things had changed - our world had changed. " Joyner now has done five deployments. Included among those was one immediately after 9/11, where she was able to join with a multi-national/multi-service group to respond in Afghanistan. She said that the Army-planned workout was tough, and that the joint-service participation, and involvement by Capitol Hill staffers, really made it clear that defending the nation is a team effort. "This is a good workout," she said. "The Army did a nice job. They showed us what they needed us to do, and I think it was great teamwork. I think it was an awesome thing to see the staffers from various offices come out and join us. ... Defending our nation is not just service members, it's not just policemen and firemen. It's all the people, the civil servants and other people that make it work." Service members from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps participated in the workout. Additionally, staffers from the offices of U.S. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, U.S. Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho and U.S. Sen. James Risch of Idaho participated. With 'Yudh Abhyas,' 7th Infantry Division welcomes Indian soldiers [2015-09-12] WASHINGTON -- For the first time in its 11-year history, Exercise Yudh Abhyas came to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, or JBLM, Washington, bringing with it 150 soldiers from the Indian army. The annual, bilateral exercise, which kicked off Sept. 9 and runs through Sept. 23, focuses on combined U.S. and Indian army training while promoting an enduring partnership and joint interoperability. Participating Soldiers will train together in low-intensity, counter-insurgency actions; civic assistance missions; and quick-reaction team operations. There will also be a combined command post exercise. Participating in the exercise are Soldiers, from the 3-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team, or SBCT; 1-23 Infantry Battalion; 593rd Expeditionary Support Command; California National Guard; and 100th Troop Command. In all, about 225 American Soldiers will participate, with most coming from the 3-2 SBCT. From the Indian army, Soldiers from the 9th Mountain Brigade as well as from the subordinate 6th Kumaon Battalion will participate. About 150 Indian soldiers flew into JBLM aboard a C-17 aircraft to participate in the exercise. "What we hope to accomplish here is interoperability with our Indian partners," said Brig. Gen. Robert. J. Ulses, deputy commanding general for support, 7th Infantry Division. "Doing this in peacetime will ensure that if we go to a conflict, a humanitarian assistance mission, or a disaster relief or peacekeeping operation, we are familiar with each other's tactics, techniques, and procedures, and the way we work and operate together." Ulses cited the recent earthquake in Nepal as a scenario where American and Indian Soldiers worked alongside each other to provide disaster relief. The two-week Yudh Abhyas includes a brigade-level command post exercise that mimics a United Nations peacekeeping operation; a field-training exercise that is focused on counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency; and academic discussions on topics such as regional security, emerging challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, the U.S. Army Operating Concept, and amphibious operations. Ulses said exercises like Yudh Abhyas further develop interoperability between the U.S. and allied militaries in the Pacific, ensuring an easier transition into combined operations if the United States and its partners must work together in the future. "One of the objectives of the Yudh Abyahs series, for instance, is to make us more compatible, and kind of work through any issues we might have with communications gear and equipment," Ulses said. "There is a lot going on in the Pacific and the Indo-Pacific region. The more we work with our partners in that region, the better we will be able to respond to whatever contingency that may come up. India is a strong partner for us, and our relationship will continue to get stronger as we continue to do exercises like this." Yudh Abyahs, which started in 2004, is now in its 11th year. Ulses said the United States and India alternate between hosting the exercise. In even-numbered years, the exercise is held in India. In odd-numbered years, the exercise is held in the United States. For many years, the United States hosted Yudh Abyahs in Hawaii. This is the first year it has been held at JBLM. While Yudh Abyahs runs at JBLM, a similar exercise, Rising Thunder, is underway at nearby Yakima Training Center, Washington. Rising Thunder involves U.S. and Japanese Soldiers. Next year, 7th Infantry Division will continue strengthening partnerships with Pacific nations though participation in Pacific Pathways exercises. During the 2016 Pacific Pathways iteration, Soldiers with the 7th Infantry Division will travel to Thailand to participate in Cobra Gold, Feb. 9-23; South Korea to participate in Foal Eagle, March 7-17; and the Philippines to participate in Balikatan, April 18-30. Participation in the exercises with armies there will increase interoperability and strengthen relationships in the Pacific. Soldiers partner with Hungarian engineers to cross Danube tributary [2015-09-15] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers with the 4th Squadron, 2d Cavalry Regiment, plan to execute a tactical, NATO-standard crossing of a tributary of the Danube River in Hungary, early Sept. 17. Both American and Hungarian Soldiers will cross the river, as part of Exercise Dragoon Crossing, on pontoon bridges laid by engineers with the Hungarian army. The event marks the third time this year that 2nd Cavalry Soldiers, based out of Vilseck, Germany, have partnered with the Hungarian army as a way to build multi-national interoperability, improve their own readiness, and demonstrate the United States' strength and commitment to European partnerships. "It's a tactical operation, where we are doing tactical tasks," said Col. John V. Meyer III, commander of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment. "We are demonstrating operational freedom of maneuver across Eastern Europe, and that is having the strategic effect of enabling our alliance, assuring our allies, and deterring the Russians." As part of Dragoon Crossing, about 520 Soldiers from 2d Cavalry and 136 vehicles - including 24 Stryker Combat Vehicles - road marched 726 kilometers from Rose Barracks in Vilseck, Germany, to a location in Hungary, where they and their counterparts from the 25th Infantry Brigade of the Hungarian army will cross a tributary of the Danube River. Afterward, both the Americans and the Hungarians will continue road marching an additional 120 kilometers to a training location in Hungary where for six weeks they will continue to train together as part of Exercise Brave Warrior. As part of the river crossing, the 173rd Airborne and a Hungarian airborne battalion are scheduled to conduct an airdrop the night before the river crossing, to put infantry troops on the far side of the river to secure the crossing site. In the morning, the plan is to have Hungarian ground troops seize the near side of the river and then, using four BTR-80 amphibious armored transport vehicles, cross the river to secure both banks. Finally, Hungarian army engineers will bring in pontoon bridges so both the Americans and the Hungarians can cross the river. The total length of the road march, from Vilseck, Germany, to the final training site in Hungary, is about 846 kilometers. All along the way, Meyer said, Soldiers and leaders are engaging with civilians and civic leadership. "What we are doing is we are developing those leaders," he said. "The opportunities these leaders and Soldiers are having, I don't think you could get anywhere else in the U.S. Army right now. We have troop commanders and first sergeants who have planned and executed a 846-kilometer tactical movement, with multiple stops en route, and they are engaging with local populations, including mayors of towns, and senior leaders of Czech, Slovakian, and Hungarian armies." Along the route so far, Meyer said, he's seen the same level of support for the United States, the Army, and NATO that his regiment saw earlier this year with the "Dragoon Ride," where about 400 U.S. Soldiers traveled more than 2,092 kilometers across Eastern Europe from Estonia to Germany. "This has been absolutely amazing, and what an opportunity to demonstrate how the U.S. is viewed across Eastern Europe," Meyer said. "All along the Autobahn, on the overpasses, were signs of support for our country, for the U.S. Army and for NATO." He said he saw similar support in the Czech Republic, and Slovakia as well. "I was just at a static display that we had in Slovakia, and I was watching the children and the teenagers from the school that were present, and all of the civilians and the adults that came out to see our Soldiers," he said. "It was the same thing there - overwhelming support, in some cases expressed to me directly, about how thankful they were that we were in Slovakia." Meyer said that along the route, the U.S. Army got support from the Czech army, the Slovakian army and the Hungarian army as well. He said that one example of increasing interoperability was the ability of U.S. forces to get fuel from partner countries, "proving and demonstrating we can train and fight as an alliance." When the 2nd Cavalry completes the river crossing the morning of Sept. 17, the regiment will continue on toward more training with the Hungarian military - an organization that Meyer said he is impressed with, and he is also convinced that they will make excellent partners in the defense of Eastern Europe. "I have been truly impressed with the Hungarian army," Meyer said. "This Army is a strong partner to the alliance and the U.S. Army. They are very capable and very proficient at what they do. They are a professional army that is sincerely working to strengthen their ability to defend their country and defend this alliance. The Hungarian army has been very impressive with how they have been approaching this, the seriousness they put into their relationship with the U.S. Army, and their contribution to NATO as one of the alliance members." Army names best post financial institutions [2015-09-18] WASHINGTON -- The Army recently named two financial institutions that operate on its installations as being the best among their peers in 2014. Out of the 31 nominees, Fort Hood National Bank, or FHNB, on Fort Hood, Texas, and the FirstLight Federal Credit Union on Fort Bliss, Texas, best met and exceeded the criteria set by the deputy assistant secretary of the Army for financial operations, or DASA(FO), to become the Army bank and credit union of the year for 2014. SERVING FORT HOOD The Fort Hood National Bank has served the Fort Hood community for more than 50 years. Col. Matthew G. Elledge, garrison commander at Fort Hood, nominated FHNB for this honor. Providing free financial counseling to Soldiers was one of the criteria for the award. While all banks and credit unions operating on Army installations are required by their operating agreement to provide financial education, at no cost, to Soldiers and family members, FHNB provided exceptional education programs. In 2014, FHNB provided personal financial assessments to 864 Soldiers on the Texas installation. As part of the assessments, Soldiers, civilians and Family members scheduled an appointment with an FHNB representative to have their bank statements, leave and earning statement, or LES, credit reports and other supporting financial documents analyzed. Such reviews provided Soldiers with recommendations and budget plans that, if instituted, enabled them to maintain their financial credibility. The bank also provided four quarterly classes to 105 Department of the Army civilians called the Fort Hood Civilian Leadership Development Program. That class, asked for by the command, was developed as a three-hour course on banking and financial education. The class, taught by senior FHNB bank officers, provided new supervisors, team leaders and other employees with, among other things, instruction on how to identify fraud and counterfeiting. The course also included a two-hour financial literacy presentation. Ron Taylor, who served as senior vice president of the bank until Sept. 1, personally received the award, which named his financial institution as the best bank on an Army installation. Taylor passed away shortly after accepting the award. He had been with the bank since 1999. At the time of the award, Taylor said serving Soldiers and Families is at the center of what FHNB is about. "At Fort Hood National Bank, we take great pride in facilitating the financial needs of Soldiers and their Families, as well as Department of the Army civilians," Taylor said. "And what we do every year is look for new ways to help Soldiers and their Families." Stephen J. Lepper, president and chief executive officer of the Association of Military Banks of America, said FHNB is known as a bank with strong ties to the community. "They are active not only in financial education but also in other facets of the base, including community activities, community events; they support the Families that are left behind when their Soldiers deploy," Lepper said. "They are part of the fabric of the community. They have spent a lot of time and effort becoming part of the Fort Hood community, educating the troops of Fort Hood about financial responsibility, and really becoming part of the Fort Hood Family. They have done it so effectively, they have won bank of the year." The FHNB has six banking centers located on Fort Hood, services about 30,970 checking accounts, and in 2014, provided financial education to about 47,264 Soldiers and Family members. CREDIT UNION SERVES FORT BLISS Just 500 miles west, where Texas, New Mexico and Mexico meet, another financial institution, the FirstLight Federal Credit Union, was named best credit union on an Army installation for 2014 under the DASA(FO)'s program. Col. Michael J. Hester, garrison commander on Fort Bliss, nominated the credit union for this honor. Among the accomplishments of FirstLight Federal Credit Union was its work to combat predatory lending practices. One such example was called the "Pawnshop Buster Loan," which is a short-term loan developed exclusively for protection of military members and their Families in emergency situations. The loan protected borrowers from being gouged by pawnshops and payday loan facilities that may have incredibly high interest rates. Another example of how FLFCU combated predatory lending was with its "Military Turnkey Auto Program." That program was geared toward service members with little or no credit, and helped Soldiers save money on monthly auto payments by providing qualified individuals a lower interest rate. Karl Murphy, president of First Light Federal Credit Union on Fort Bliss, Texas, said the financial education that FLFCU provides on Fort Bliss is a critical part of their mission. "The biggest cause of challenges for an individual, even in a Family, is finances," Murphy said. "If we can educate them and help them, it makes them a better member and they will continue to use us. And when Soldiers get deployed or are out of the area, they are concerned about their Family. They are there with battle buddies and Soldiers, but their concern is at home with their Family - are they being taken care of? If the finances are in place and they don't have financial worries, it makes it easier for them to do their job wherever they are deployed." The FLFCU has a number of programs available on Fort Bliss to provide that financial education. The Balance Financial Fitness Program, for instance, is a free program that offers confidential financial counseling and education to service members and their Families. Additionally, more than 50 financial education classes were conducted at the FLFCU branches on and off post, for all credit union members, and provided education to over 700 Soldiers and Family members. An additional education program through FLFCU includes Fort Bliss partner Balfour Beatty Communities. That program involves monthly seminars with topics that include, among other things, reading and correcting one's credit report and home-buying tips. Artie Arteaga, president of the Defense Credit Union Council, said financially-educated Soldiers are more likely to be mission-ready than those who aren't. "A financially-prepared Soldier is able to stay focused on their mission," he said. But Arteaga also said that financially-savvy Soldiers make better customers. "We are mandated by the DOD to provide financial education at no cost," he said. "But even if that mandate were not there, we would be doing that, because we believe it's part of our mission to assist in that mission. A financially-educated and consumer-savvy Soldier will be able to make their payments on a timely basis and when they do that, delinquency rates are down, and when delinquency rates are down, that provides the credit union more money to make available to their owners in terms of loans. It also builds up good credit for these troops." Army changing basic training this October [2015-09-24] WASHINGTON -- Who's the best judge of how well a young person is performing in Basic Combat Training, or BCT? It turns out the Army thinks that other basic trainees might be really good at evaluating how their peers are doing. In October, the Army will make some changes to how it runs BCT, which serves for enlisted Soldiers as their first introduction to soldiering. One of those changes includes peer evaluations, something that is already being done in places like Ranger School. With peer evaluation, Soldiers in BCT units will evaluate each other on how they are adhering to standards, performing on tasks, and even if they shine when the drill sergeant is away in the same way they shine when he's glowering over them in formation. "Nobody is going to know you more than the guy next to you," said Command Sgt. Maj. Dennis Woods, with U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command's Center for Initial Military Training. "If I am the instructor, all of your buddies you are with know the things you are doing that the instructor never caught," he said. "Maybe you are only spotlighting when the instructor is around. But when he's not around, everybody has to pull your weight. This peer evaluation lets Soldiers see themselves through the eyes of their peers." The peer evaluation won't be entirely new for basic training. Already at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, a peer evaluation pilot program was tried out. But in October, it will be implemented at all four Army basic training locations, including Fort Jackson; Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri; Fort Sill, Oklahoma; and Fort Benning, Georgia. Woods said that the peer evaluations will primarily serve as an indicator of character for Soldiers -- that will allow the Army to better evaluate some of the things that are important about being a Soldier, but which are harder to measure through testing and performance. "Some people will get all the warrior tasks, battle drills, and skills, because they are physically inclined," Woods said. "But their character may have an issue. That peer evaluation will help us uncover that character. As a result, a Soldier may spend more time in basic training before he ships to that first unit of assignment." AN ARMY OF PREPARATION There are more changes to BCT than just the introduction of peer evaluations. The driving force behind changes to BCT is a shift in what the Army thinks Soldiers will need to have under their belt when they make their first salute at their first permanent unit -- and this is directly related to the end of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. During the 14 years after 9/11, Soldiers knew that they'd probably be going to the Middle East after basic training. During that time, the Army was well-equipped and well-funded to recruit, train and equip Soldiers for an ongoing war. That is no longer the case. Additionally, Soldiers went to their first unit of assignment ready to fight the ongoing conflict. The Army trained those Soldiers in BCT with a focus on the desert, convoys, improvised explosive devices, and countering insurgents, for instance. And when Soldiers deployed, most would fall in on a combat environment that was already manned by American Soldiers who'd warmed all the seats for them. Now, with conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan over for most all of the force, Soldiers must be ready to deploy almost anywhere in the world -- not just the desert. And when they get there, they may not find American Soldiers already on the ground. Instead, they must be ready to clear the ground for Soldiers who will follow them. Soldiers must be trained to execute decisive action through combined arms maneuver and must be trained up on wide-area security competencies. "We are transitioning from an Army at war to an Army in preparation," said James Walthes, a key designer of the new BCT program of instruction. "With that in mind, we got together at Fort Benning, Georgia, and we brought in company commanders, first sergeants and drill sergeants -- the ones that actually deal with the program of instruction on a daily basis. What we looked at was how we could go about preparing our Soldiers to meet the new demands of Force 2025 and beyond." TESTING ... RETESTING Army BCT includes a red, white and blue phase. Each includes lessons that focus on the social, physical and cognitive development of new Soldiers. At one time, the Army tested Soldiers to make sure they had learned what they were supposed to learn while in those phases of BCT. "Long ago we used to do phase testing," Woods said. "Then we quit doing that. We are bringing phase testing back. There's red, white and blue phase testing." In October, the Army will re-introduce end-of-phase testing. Soldiers will be evaluated at the end of each phase for what they were supposed to learn -- and each phase builds on and re-tests Soldiers on what they had learned in previous phases. "Testing at the end of each phase gets more difficult," Woods said. "And blue phase testing includes everything." Woods said testing at the end of phases for everything taught up until then is a change from how things had been done, which was to test Soldiers after each lesson was taught. He said that created problems with knowledge retention. There simply wasn't enough time to get in the skill and knowledge application repetition that makes new ideas stick. "I'd give you a bunch of first-aid training, and then test you on it," he said. "And if you pass, we move on to the next subject. But we weren't doing enough repetitions of these activities to make sure you have it under stress. There are more repetitions now and more time spent on a task." One reason there is more time, Woods said, is because less time is going to be spent in BCT on theater-specific knowledge. Soldiers have to have general knowledge now, rather than Iraq-specific knowledge. Clearing out lessons that prepared Soldiers for the desert means there is more room to hammer home the ideas that are more applicable the world over, he said. Soldiers failing to pass those end-of-phase tests might, at the discretion of the commander, be recycled back to an appropriate part of BCT so they can re-learn what they failed to capture the first time. Then they will be able to re-take those phase tests and prove they are good enough to be a Soldier. Systems are in place now to recycle Soldiers back into earlier parts of BCT for such things as failure to meet physical fitness requirements, or for having gotten hurt. But those recycles are at the discretion of the commander and are also somewhat ad hoc in nature. Thriso Hamilton Jr., who worked with Walthes on making changes to the BCT program of instruction, said recycles will now be standardized across all four basic training locations. "All BCT locations will be "on the same sheet of music" when it comes to recycles, he said. "When commanders identify individuals who are not able to meet the requirements of BCT, they will have the opportunity to new-start or recycle those Soldiers to a point where they are able to go back over what they were not proficient at to begin with," Hamilton said. "Those Soldiers -- instead of them progressing though and possibly not meeting the requirements to graduate from BCT -- are going to be afforded a second opportunity to go through the training and that will increase the numbers of those who graduate." FEWER WARRIOR TASKS In the new BCT Program of Instruction, the Army plans to increase focus on Army values and discipline, increase emphasis on physical readiness; update rifle marksmanship training; reduce theater-specific training; update the existing field training exercise; and increase the rigor of some existing training courses. In the past at BCT, Soldiers learned 15 warrior tasks, 81 individual tasks and six battle drills. The new BCT will drop three warrior tasks and add one. The knowledge of those warrior tasks is not gone, however. TRADOC experts said that some of the warrior tasks were repetitive and could in fact be rolled in under other similar warrior tasks. Gone is "perform counter IED" operations, "adapt to changing operational environments" and "grow professionally and personally" from the existing roster of 15 warrior tasks. Being added is "select a hasty fighting positon." Among battle drills, "performs actions as a member of a mounted patrol" and "react to indirect fire, dismounted" have been dropped as well, reducing total number of battle drills from six to four. TRADOC experts said that changes to warrior tasks and battle drills were changed based on a 23,000-person survey that concluded that WTBDs needed to be refreshed based on changes to unit missions and doctrine updates. Some instruction in the current BCT will be moved out of BCT and instead placed into a Soldier's first unit of assignment. For instance, lessons regarding interaction with news media, personnel recovery, and a class called "what is culture," will all be moved to a Soldier's first unit of instruction. HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT Instruction related to man-to-man combat, called "combatives," will also be updated. New BCT instruction will combine the use of hand-to-hand fighting techniques with rifle fighting techniques to create a Soldier who is "capable of operating across the full range of force," read a TRADOC document. Soldiers use Pugil sticks now to simulate how they might use their rifle as a weapon once it runs out of ammunition. That kind of training will be enhanced, as well as combined with combatives, which is hand-to-hand combat. "If all I ever teach a Soldier is how to shoot a rifle or throw a grenade, then when they interact with a person, death is the only thing on the table," Woods said. "Sometimes, a good smack to the face solves the problem. That's hand-to-hand fighting. Or if you are in some mega-city, and you have combatants hiding among civilians, and the civilians are agitated too, maybe to create a safe space a push or shove will suffice." SAFER PHYSICAL READINESS TRAINING "When Soldiers come in, they know nothing about how the Army conducts physical fitness," Hamilton said. "If you go to a gym to work out, one of the most important things the trainer can do for you is teach you proper technique." The Army will now ensure Soldiers are doing physical readiness training, or PRT, with the proper technique, so that they can do it safely, Hamilton said. Now, during the first two weeks of red phase at the beginning of BCT, Soldiers will learn how to do PRT in a session that is separate from where they actually perform the PRT. The Army estimates that with new Soldiers, their mental and physical capacity to absorb large amounts of new information during PRT sessions hinders the ability of a unit to exploit good conditioning. By separating the teaching of PRT from actually doing the PRT, new Soldiers will better be able to absorb instruction regarding correct movement patterns, cadence, precision and body positioning as they relate to PRT. The result, the Army estimates, will be Soldiers who are more knowledgeable on how to do PRT correctly, and this will result in fewer injuries and more physically ready Soldiers. "This ensures the Soldiers conduct exercises properly," Hamilton said. "When they do that and you train them correctly the first time, it reduces injuries because they aren't performing exercises in an incorrect manner." ADDITONAL CHANGES To increase the ability of Soldiers to find their way home -- or a combat objective -- the Army has changed the land navigation portion of BCT by reducing the amount of classroom instruction, creating more demanding end-of-course land navigation evaluations, and changing from four-man land navigation teams in training to two-man land navigation teams. Smaller teams means a decreased likelihood that Soldiers with less-developed knowledge of land navigation will be able to simply "tag along" with more skilled Soldiers. Beginning in October, Soldiers will be introduced to fewer weapons than they have been in the past. The M16 and M4 series rifles are still the centerpiece of weapons training for Soldiers. But familiarization with weapons that are less common among Soldiers, or that are similar in function and operation to weapons that remain in BCT, will instead be moved to a Soldier's first unit of assignment. Soldiers coming into BCT in October can also expect to get more training and use of weapons optics, as well as expect to shoot more often in full battle gear -- as they would in actual combat, Woods said. TRAINING THE TRAINER While BCT will change in October, the curriculum over at the United States Army Drill Sergeant Academy at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, has already changed to prepare new drill sergeants to teach the new BCT program of instruction. "There's a lot more emphasis on 'this is the weapon, this is how you use it' and more in-depth detail on how to operate the weapon," said Sgt. 1st Class Ryan McCaffrey, a drill sergeant leader at the drill sergeant school. "It's the same with PRT. We are trying to get the sergeants to understand the concepts of PRT and understand why we do movements the way we do." He said drill sergeants will be able to explain "why we do push-ups, or why we do the different exercise and condition drills, and tie it into the warrior tasks and battle drills. Then Soldiers understand how their physical training ties into what they do on the battlefield." McCaffrey, who was a former drill sergeant of the year for the Army Reserve, said that new instruction in the drill sergeant school also prepares noncommissioned officers for incoming Soldiers who are accustomed to asking a lot of questions. He said there is a course now in drill sergeant school that addresses the topic of "Generation Y," the generation now coming through basic training. "They are more apt to ask questions, and question why we do things," McCaffrey said. "I think once a person understands why you are supposed to do a task, they take more ownership of it, and they are more willing to execute it properly. We discuss that in class. We are not looking for Solders that just say yes and no. We want Soldiers who can think." Allyn: Soldiers bring talent, ethics to private workforce [2015-10-07] WASHINGTON -- During the next six to eight years, the Army will draw down by some 250,000 Soldiers. Continued sequestration will mean an additional 15,000 Soldiers could also be involuntarily separated. Those well-trained, skilled Soldiers will need jobs when they take off their uniform for the last time. During the Veterans Initiative Summit, in Washington, D.C., Oct. 7-8, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Daniel B. Allyn challenged industry to find jobs for those veterans in the private sector. Allyn warned that sequestration is going to bring with it involuntary separations. The programmed drawdown of 250,000 Soldiers will happen through attrition. But sequestration-related separations will mean that combat-experienced, developed Army leaders in the middle ranks, with anywhere from 10 to 15 years of service, will be asked to leave before their time. "These are not poor performers," Allyn said. "These are Soldiers that in a larger Army would continue to deliver high-potential for the future. We have trained them, and they are ready, and they are available to those smart enough to bring them aboard." Allyn told several hundred industry representatives - many hiring managers for private-sector companies - that bringing veteran Soldiers on board provides companies with skills and talent that might take them years to develop in-house. "Our veterans today have served their nation throughout 14 years of war," he said. "They are adaptive and creative thinkers, skilled in over 150 specialties. They are experienced leaders who are accustomed to building and leading diverse teams to solve complex problems for the nation, and they are resilient. Simply put, they are the finest team of Soldiers ever assembled." He promised those hiring managers that what veterans brought to the nation and the Army as uniformed-Soldiers, they can also bring to private industry as employees. "Your commitment to our veterans will pay huge dividends - for them, for your companies, for our communities, and for our nation," Allyn said. ACCESSING SOLDIERS While many businesses want to hire Soldiers to work for them, not all businesses are familiar with how to make that happen. Allyn said that private-sector businesses that want to become involved in hiring veteran Soldiers ought to become familiar with the Army's Soldier for Life program. Part of the Soldier for Life program is helping Soldiers prepare for post-Army civilian employment. To do that, the program partners with organizations and companies representing government agencies, non-government organizations, and private companies to train and hire transitioning Soldiers. Examples of some Soldier for Life-related programs include the Shifting Gears Automotive Technician Training Program; the Veterans in Piping, Welding and HVAC program; the Veterans in Construction (Electric) program; the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades program; the Microsoft Software Engineer Academy program; the Veterans Entering Trucking program; and the National Institute of Sheet Metal Workers program. As 250,000 Soldiers leave the Army throughout the next six to eight years, Allyn said there will be a "target-rich environment" from which private-sector companies can pluck valuable talent. "Our career skills program we run at many of our major installations enables internships, enables our Soldiers to begin that transitioning process up to six months prior to their end of service," Allyn said. "And they can actually be working as a part of your workforce as they are making that transition." The general said while there are numerous programs at installations throughout the United States, there could be more. "There is a lot more room for you to partner with our team and build some momentum that will actually create a mainstream flow of highly-talented leaders for your organization," he said. MYTHS Private sector companies don't need employees who are dependent on a hierarchy, or who are afraid to challenge the status quo. Allyn said Soldiers will not be either of those types of employees. Soldiers, he said, are adaptable and are unafraid to challenge assumptions. Drawing a chuckle from his audience, Allyn admitted that in his own job at the Pentagon, he's no stranger to having subordinates challenge his own authority. It's "challenged on a regular basis ... I am thankful for it," he said. Instead, he said, the Army trains leaders "to speak truth to power ... that means that they challenge in many cases conventional wisdom. And they are taught to think about the second- and third-order effects of one-off decisions." In the Army, he said "we are paid to solve problems. And that tends to be the focus we deliver." Army leaders, he said, are capable of operating both within, and outside of a hierarchy. During the last 14 years of combat, he said, the Army has seen "lieutenants that have to become city managers - lieutenants that have to work with governors, and city and province officials. They are pretty comfortable going from the tactical to the strategic and back on a regular basis." He said Army-trained leaders are comfortable in both a hierarchical and unstructured environment. "What I think they will bring to you is, if you have no organization with which you are trying to attack a problem, they will organize a team for success to solve really hard and complex problems - because organization helps more than it hurts, in my experience," he said. MORE THAN SKILL OR TALENT Allyn said that Soldiers can bring even more than leadership or skill to an employer. Soldiers can also bring with them the bedrock of what allows the Army to operate: ethics. "Our Army values are at the core of who we are," he said. "It's really what has enabled us to earn the trust of the American people. It's a trust that we know is revocable. So there is this daily accountability to who we are as a profession, and who we are as professionals. So for us, when we talk about loyalty, it is unconditional. When we talk about trust, it is unconditional. When we talk about duty, it is what enables you to have faith that when you give a mission to a veteran, they are going to see it through - because they know no other way." McHugh: America needs its Army [2015-10-12] WASHINGTON -- During his 7th and final opening address during this year's Association of the United States Army, or AUSA, Annual Meeting and Exposition, Army Secretary John M. McHugh hammered home the importance of ground forces in winning wars, and maintaining American security and dominance. McHugh, who said earlier this year he will leave his position no later than Nov. 1, has served as secretary of the Army since 2009. He is the second-longest serving Army secretary. During his keynote speech at the AUSA opening ceremony, Oct. 12, McHugh dismissed discussion from inside the beltway and Pentagon suggesting that the Army could be minimized while still leaving the United States as protected as it is now. With declining budgets, and an Army now targeted for reduction following the drawdowns from Iraq and Afghanistan, McHugh addressed two visions of the future for the Army. One, he said, is an Army America needs, and one Soldiers deserve. "A future of power, of readiness, where America's enemies, both known and unforeseen, respect our capabilities, and are either deterred by our strength or destroyed by our lethality." Another future, he said, is more dangerous. It's one based on "ill-conceived notions of the nature of war. One based on ... a growing discussion in this town that questions the very need for an Army at all." He said that idea is based on a "grossly naive view of the geo-political environment. A perspective rooted in unsupported optimism, which would shape our force and our military for a world as we wish it were, rather than the perilous reality we truly face at this moment. In this future, we would budget, size and train for a fight that may never come, ignoring the threats that have come and that we are facing each and every day." McHugh said what he fears most are the things the Army cannot see coming next, and if the Army will be strong enough and agile enough to meet those challenges, "or will a dark and dangerous future emerge, where the Army is built for a fantasy world that does not exist?" AMERICA WILL ALWAYS NEED GROUND FORCES While McHugh believes in the importance of the joint force, saying that land, air and sea forces all have their place in defense of the United States, he pointed out that it is on the ground where conflict must ultimately be resolved. "It would be terrific if we could fight and win only from 30,000 feet or 12 miles off shore," McHugh said. "But that's not how the world works. That's not how war works. People don't live in the air or in the sea. At its core, war is a human endeavor. And humans occupy land. And conflict can only be fully resolved when some force stabilizes the human domain, when somebody controls the land. This is a reality that is as true today as it was generations before." The secretary said that the Army is the only service that can seize and secure large swaths of land for expanded periods of time, to achieve effects. "When you are on the ground, you make the rules," McHugh said. "And until nations exist solely in the water or in the sky, land will remain critical ... to protect the freedom and interests of the United States, the Army must remain the cornerstone of our nation's defense -- there is no other way." Hammack: Installations must also be resilient [2015-10-19] WASHINGTON -- The Army's been talking about Soldier resilience for years. But Army installations must also be resilient, said the assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment, or ASA (IE&E). "We never know what the next conflict is going to be or where it is going to be, or who our partners are going to be," said Katherine Hammack, ASA (IE&E). "So we need to be ready to ensure that we can do whatever this nation asks of us. Most of our bases are deployment platforms. And so we need to be ready to support this nation, ready with enough energy to operate, with enough water to support the base population, and those Soldiers who might have to deploy on a moment's notice." Hammack and Lt. Gen. David D. Halverson, commander of Army Installation Management Command, spoke last week during a press event here. But what does resiliency mean for an Army installation? "It's the ability to remain operational with a wide ranging amount of scenarios," Hammack said. "It could be natural disaster," like the flooding that affected Fort Jackson this month. "It could be a hurricane situation, like we saw with superstorm Sandy. A resilient installation is able to operate and support its own population and the local community. In the case of a natural disaster, it's able to operate and deploy Soldiers to help in regional situations and help anywhere around the world. That means ready access to energy, to water, and the land the Army needs to train and deploy -- sometimes air space as well." "We need our Soldiers to be able to be resilient, because the Army life is a tough life," Halverson said. "They a have to be mentally fit and warfighting fit, and they have to be able to deal with the arduous aspects of war." Installations, he said, must meet the same resilience as Soldiers if the Army will continue to operate in the face of the unknown. "We are going to have things that affect us that we don't control, such as natural disasters," he said. "We need an installation that is resilient." Just as Soldiers need to be resilient, "our installations have to be resilient too." National security depends on it, he added. One of the most resilient installations, Hammack said, is Fort Drum, New York. There, an old coal power plant has been converted to a biomass energy production facility that has 60 megawatts of generation capacity, using wood chips and shrub willow as its fuel. Hammack said the facility has three months' worth of fuel situated within five minutes of the plant. "That means that the base is going to have the power it needs, and actually that plant can supply three times the amount of power that the base needs," she said. "So it can support the local community in the case of an ice storm, which they have seen, that has shut down power grids." Fort Drum is also resilient when it comes to water, she said, as the base gets its water from two sources -- including water that comes from wells on the installation. In another location, Hammack said, another installation didn't fare so well due to its lack of resiliency. "One of bases was shut down two summers ago because off base, a backhoe hit a water main and shut down water to the base," she said. "There was one pipe coming into the base and it drained the water towers. That's not very resilient. When we talk about resiliency, it's adaptability to a multiple range of solutions, by a diverse set of sources of supply." When it comes to power, Hammack said the Army is looking to partner with the private sector to get them to invest in helping the Army create resiliency on installations. The Army, she said, is looking at power generation happening closer to installations or even on installations, similar to trends in the private sector, including wind generation, solar generation, biomass, and other options. "Fort Knox, Kentucky, put in multiple natural gas fire cogeneration systems that are supplying both electricity and hot water at the point of use," Hammack said. "One is located near a hospital and another is located near the post exchange and commissary. So you have that distributed generation. That is a lesson from the private sector that we are adapting to." While not every installation in the Army currently has its own power generation capability, Hammack said it's a goal. "We made a commitment to the president we'd have one gigawatt of renewable energy on Army bases by 2025. And we are well on our way to it," she said. "In fiscal year 2015 we broke ground on over 100 MW of renewable energy systems and we are on track to meet that commitment we made." BASE REALIGNMENT AND CLOSURE On a related note, Hammack said the Army needs another round of Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC, to shut down facilities that are no longer in use, but which continue to incur maintenance costs. "We have the same number of installations, yet we are expected to operate with 30 percent less funding," Hammack said. "It's really hard when a lot of your installation costs are fixed costs. What we really need is BRAC authorization, to allow us to analyze where we have excess capacity and an opportunity to consolidate." ROTC cadets develop beyond basic learning [2015-10-20] WASHINGTON -- It's not enough for newly-minted officers to be able to replicate on command the tasks they learned as part of their ROTC experience, said the commander of Army Cadet Command. Those officers must also be agile problem solvers. "We are focused now on the officers of 2020 and beyond, on producing young leaders that can meet the challenges of a complex world," Maj. Gen. Peggy C. Combs said. "Our overarching goal is to produce officers of character that are agile and adaptive leaders." More than 35,000 college students at nearly 1,050 campuses are now participating in Army-led ROTC programs. Combs said she believes the diversity of the United States is well represented by the Army's ROTC footprint. Because ROTC happens on college campuses, Combs said the Army is in a good position to better prepare young Americans to meet the challenges of being new officers. "Because we are in an academic environment, we have the wonderful opportunity to really utilize an education platform, to really get our officers thinking up to the next level, and really develop a thinking skill," she said. As the Army moves from an "Army at war" to an "Army of preparation," she said officers will need to not just recite information, or perform tasks, but creatively solve new problems they've never seen before, using the knowledge and experience they have already learned. That means doing more than demonstrating their ability to perform a task, she said. "We're taking our officers up what they call 'Bloom's Taxonomy,'" she said. "At the very base of Bloom's Taxonomy, you have knowledge, where you memorize information and then spit it back out. But as you go up Bloom's Taxonomy, you get where you can analyze first, and then synthesize that knowledge, so you have a full understanding of everything. So when you are given a complex problem you have never seen before, and don't have a checklist to solve that problem, you have able to go into that box of knowledge you have, pull it apart, take knowledge from multiple places, and solve the problem." The Army, she said, wants "agile thinkers ... leaders that can solve a complex problem in a short amount of time using creative solutions." Also critical for new officers, she said, is an adherence to ethics. "Ethics in our decision making is front and center," she said, adding that the concept will be permanently solidified in Army doctrine by the spring, with implementation of the "Cadet Character and Leader Development Strategy." The strategy, she said, "integrates this approach individually for character development, leader development, and knowledge-based kinds of things." Today, the Army Cadet Command commissions about 5,000 officers a year into the Army. ROTC produces about 78 percent of new officers. The rest come from Officer Candidate School and from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, she said. Combs said when a commander brings a new second lieutenant into his command from a ROTC program, he can expect "a leader of character that is committed to the Army profession: a leader that can think, who is capable of solving problems, and who is responsible for him or herself and others." The Army Cadet Command is also responsible for managing the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps, or JROTC, program at high schools. "That program centers on developing greater citizens with a desire to serve their community," Combs said. More than 330,000 high school-aged cadets participate in JROTC at nearly 1,700 schools throughout the United States as well as at Department of Defense Dependents Schools overseas, she said. About 25 percent of those JROTC cadets choose, after high school, to pursue some form of military service - either by enlisting in one of the four branches of service, or by first going on to participate in a college-level ROTC program. Strategy charts path to fuel-efficient forward operating base [2015-10-22] WASHINGTON -- "Energy and water issues - operational energy, water and waste - these and other aspects of sustaining our force create vulnerabilities our enemies have in the past and will exploit in the future," Richard G. Kidd said. Kidd, who serves as the deputy assistant secretary of the Army for energy and sustainability, said he's excited to talk about "operational energy" - "I could go on all day," he said. In particular, Kidd is interested in finding ways to make it so that combat outposts and forward operating bases, or FOBs, of the future are far less dependent on logistical support than what they were during Afghanistan and Iraq. "If we are going to win in a complex world," he said, referring to the Army's operating concept, "we have to pay attention to the resource demands that we generate and we have to look at a way to increase our capability without increasing our resourcing footprint." For the Army, this means that operating bases will need to use less fuel and less water, and they will need to generate less waste. That goal doesn't mean Soldiers will need to have a lower quality of life. Laptops can still be charged, hot showers can still be enjoyed, and hot food can still be eaten, he said. But what it does mean is that the Army will find ways to do all these things that don't require nearly as many resupply missions as they have over the last 14 years. From his perspective as a warfighter, Maj. Gen. Steven A Shapiro, director of plans, operations and distribution and assistant deputy chief of staff, Army G-4, said for the force of 2025 to be successful, things must change in the way the commanders use resources on combat facilities. In World War II, Shapiro said, the Army used about one gallon of fuel each day for each Soldier. Today, that number is up to 20 gallons. "Clearly our fuel requirements, our energy requirements, have gone up significantly since WWII," he said. "But we are much more technologically based. We've got airpower now at our air bases. It's a different environment. But we must become more efficient at our FOBs, because we can't afford to sustain that pace of refueling." Concerns regarding inefficient use of fuel on a FOB go well beyond the cost in dollars, Shapiro said. What it really boils down to is that fuel used in theater, and water used in theater, both have to be delivered by re-supply convoys, through dangerous areas. Those convoys are manned by other Soldiers. Inefficient use of fuel or water on a FOB means that more Soldiers will go into harm's way as part of the logistics resupply effort. "In Iraq, as we were convoying, the predominate commodity that was being convoyed was fuel," Shapiro said. "It was the same in Afghanistan. We are consuming fuel on our FOBs and we are inefficient in our FOBs, and that generates a large requirement for fuel, which puts Soldiers in harm's way bringing fuel over dangerous roads to the FOB." Shapiro said the Army is committed to making itself more energy and water efficient at the tactical level. We are able to do this through advanced research and development that is creating more fuel-efficient power generation. These generators are able to establish plug and play power generation grids that operate at an optimum capacity, while turning generators off and on as needed. The Army will find ways to reduce both fuel and water use, to reduce re-supply missions and make installations more resilient and independent, while at the same time maintaining an acceptable quality of life for Soldiers. "We still have lights, we are still eating - we don't want to change the quality of life," he said. "But we have to change the way we do business." Guiding the Army's efforts to make more fuel and water-efficient installations, both stateside and in-theater, is the recently-signed "Energy Security and Sustainability Strategy." The Army calls it "ES2" for short. "It's worthy to note that this document doesn't make a distinction between operational energy or installation energy," Kidd said. "And it doesn't list mandates or goals. Instead, it talks about why the Army must build resilient forces, whether at the installation level, a maneuver unit, or a Soldier. We must have resilient forces that are able to anticipate, respond to, adapt and prevail when bad things happen. That's applicable in the operational energy realm just like it is on the installations." Five goals in ES2 will guide the Army toward more sustainable infrastructure across the force. The first goal is ensuring that that when commanders make decisions that affect the logistics chain, they are aware of the impact of that decision. "You don't have to cut down on the quality of life to save fuel," Kidd said. "But if you want that quality of life, you should know the operational implications in terms of convoys and others. We want to make sure the humans in this organization have the information they need to make energy-informed, or resource-informed decisions." Other goals in ES2 are to optimize use of resources; assure access to energy, water and land; build resiliency by advancing the ability of systems, installations, personnel and units to respond to unforeseen disruptions in delivery of resources; and drive innovation. "These goals should inform the development across the Army of programs and regulations and doctrine," Kidd said. Shapiro and his team received guidance from the Army Management Advisory Group, and he's been tasked to look at contingency basing, which is one aspect of operational energy where the group thinks great improvement can be made. He cited a visit to a base camp in Turkey, the problems experienced there, and the subsequent solution, as being an example of how things could change for the Army in the future. On a visit to Turkey, he had seen how a team had set up a new base camp on the top of a mountain, using "force provider sets," for about 150 Soldiers. "I have never been more physically cold in my life," Shapiro said. "It was the most remote site I'd ever been on." "The cold and wind were destroying the tents," he said. "And we were pumping heat into these tents. And the generators and the environmental control units [ECUs] were going 24 hours a day. And you couldn't keep the tents warm because it was escaping out the sides." Shapiro said he brought out representatives from the Rapid Equipping Force, and they put in rigid walled shelters. "We want to put rigid-walled shelters in our deployment packages so if you go to a remote site, either extreme cold or extreme heat, the shelter can maintain the right temperature and you don't have to use as much fuel to keep your ECUs operating," he said. Shapiro said that most recently, in Liberia, during the Army's Ebola response there, Soldiers were equipped with "fairly modern" force provider kits outfitted with equipment that has been experimented with at both Fort Devens, Massachusetts, Base Camp Integration Lab and Fort Bliss, Texas, during the Network Integration Evaluations that happen there. In Afghanistan, as forces drew down, Kidd said one thing going into the country were material solutions to decrease energy usage by increasing energy efficiency. "Operation Dynamo," in Nimroz, Afghanistan, was one such example. Kidd said the installation had started with 13 generators there when they came into the country. But that many were running at far less than their capability. The diesel engines for those generators were not reaching an appropriate temperature to burn all the fuel they were ingesting, and as a result, unburned fuel was collecting in the exhaust system, a condition called "wet stacking." "They would break down," he said of the generators. Additionally, he said "it required a fuel truck every day to fill those generators with fuel." At Nimroz, they went to one 250kw generator with a 12kw load, down from 13 generators. Also, the site got a backup generator and two "hybrid sites," which included a trailer with a generator, battery pack and solar panel, to provide power for very specific missions, such as a camera system. If the solar-charged battery didn't prove to be enough energy, the generator could kick on. Total fuel savings for the project came to about 1,600 gallons a week. There was also a reduction in labor hours for refiling of about 30 hours a week, Kidd said. And finally, there was a reduction in maintenance on the generators of about 20 hours a week. About eight of 10 maintainers could be tasked to do work elsewhere. "What's more important is the time and the Soldiers from 10 to two," Kidd said. "This platoon leader got eight Soldiers back to do what they need to do when they engage the enemy. With operational energy, fuel and money savings are great. But the real value is in Soldier time or combat assets or logistics assets freed up to do something else besides take care of fuel." Nathan Cornell, Army's program manager for operational energy, said there are some goals already set for the "basecamp for force of 2025." Included among those goals are a 50 percent reduction in fuel use, a 90 percent reduction in water use, and an 80 percent decrease in waste production. He said by 2019, the Army should know what kind of equipment set will be needed to reach those goals. "That's going to make that force more sustainable in the future and easier to deploy," he said. What the Army will get, he said, is something that is affordable, sustainable and that Soldiers can use. At the recent NIE, he said, the Army evaluated, among other things, a gray water recycling system, and two micro-grid setups as well. "What that micro-grid did is help them learn that they probably need only half as much power they used to need in order to run a camp, just because of the ability to centralize the centralization of distribution," Cornell said. Also evaluated, he said, ridged-wall shelters that are already available in force provider packages. Those kits include containers with "everything you need inside it: shelters for billeting, kitchens, hygiene, showers and latrines." "Soldiers love those," Cornell said. Carter, Milley bid farewell to McHugh [2015-10-23] WASHINGTON -- "He exemplifies leadership through heart and mind, through logic and strength and civility. Throughout a consequential career, he's earned a reputation for examining problems - and devising solutions - in innovative ways, and in doing so, has broadened our national security perspective, and helped to get our Army to the right place." Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter delivered remarks, Oct. 23, on Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, near the Pentagon, during a farewell tribute to John M. McHugh, the outgoing Army secretary. A former U.S. congressman from New York, McHugh assumed the mantle of 21st secretary of the Army in September 2009, and is on his departure, the second-longest serving Army secretary. As secretary, McHugh had responsibility for all matters related to the Army, including manpower, personnel, reserve affairs, installations, environmental issues, weapons systems and equipment acquisition, communications, and financial management. The Army's budget during his tenure, at its peak, sat at $243 billion. Army manpower now includes more than 1.1 million Soldiers across all three components, and more than 221,000 Army civilians. "As secretary, John offered the Army a steady hand, providing constancy through four secretaries of defense and four Army chiefs," Carter said. "Among many other challenges, John managed the drawdown of our ground forces from two all-in fights, where they performed magnificently. He did so in a way that honored the service and sacrifice they had made, and preserved the strength and readiness of the force. Among the many tough responsibilities of the secretary of the Army, maintaining accountability and integrity is paramount. Over six years, John McHugh has been an exemplary steward." Carter also cited McHugh's efforts as secretary to improve conditions at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, following concerns about quality of care for the veterans that are buried there. "John led sweeping reforms, ensuring that the final resting place for our nation's fallen heroes remains hallowed ground to honor and remember," Carter said. "It goes to show that in everything he did, John has always been, above all else, motivated by the people of our total Army." Carter said that McHugh served during a time of great transition for the Army, including a drawdown from two wars and extensive budget cuts. He said McHugh led the Army though those transitions and has helped prepare the Army for an uncertain future. "John has reset and recalibrated our force, and forged a strong foundation on which to build even greater excellence," Carter said. "In doing so, he will leave behind an Army that is better, stronger, and more prepared to succeed. "Thank you for raising your right hand to serve," he said. "Thank you for your civility, your devotion to our people, and for making the most professional land force on Earth even stronger, and from me, for our lifelong friendship." YOU NEVER FAILED US Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley has only served alongside McHugh for about two months now, although the two met much earlier in both of their careers, Milley said. The general said he first met McHugh when he was himself a major, serving in 10th Mountain Division (light) on Fort Drum, New York, and McHugh had just become a U.S. congressman from New York's 24th District. "He fought hard then for the U.S. Army and specifically the 10th Mountain and for all of the Soldiers and their Families who inhabited the [New York] North Country," Milley said. "He took that fight to here in D.C., and he has done that same fight for over six and a half years. As his fourth chief of staff in little over half a decade, I can tell you that it was John McHugh, perhaps more than any individual, who has brought stability to our Army, in so many ways and in so many difficult times. "From private to general, you have never failed us," Milley told McHugh. "You fought hard for America's Army ... you have led us through a number of very significant transitions over time. You guided us through an Army in transformation, downsizing us by over 100,000 troops, most importantly, with compassion and genuine care." Milley credited McHugh for leading the Army though declining budgets, for increasing Army efficiency, competence, and adaptability, and for realigning Army force structure. "Your leadership, Mr. Secretary, has assured us that we remain ready, and we remain in fact the most capable army in the world," Milley said. "Most movingly for all of us, I think, is your genuine and deep concern for our troops and their Families. It was our guiding light as you visited our wounded and buried our dead. John McHugh has set and lived the example of a true professional, with incredible integrity and incredible civility, and through it all ... you never failed to champion the Soldiers, the civilians, the Families and the veterans of the U.S. Army. You have been a class-act in every sense of the word." GOODBYE Directing comments initially to Carter, McHugh thanked the secretary for their longtime friendship, and for being there in the Pentagon in various capacities for the duration of his own tenure as secretary of the Army. "Every day has been a learning experience and I hope I've learned by your example and grown through your knowledge," McHugh said. To Milley, he expressed confidence in the general's ability to lead the Army alongside the nominee to serve as the next Army secretary, Eric Fanning. Fanning now serves as acting undersecretary of the Army. McHugh said that with Milley and Fanning at the helm, the Army has "the right leadership to take on the evolving challenges we see appearing before us. Thank you for being here today, but more importantly, for your decades of service. I look forward to watching you lead with your usual skill, determination, and success." McHugh said when he was sworn in as Army secretary in 2009, the Army was confronting a dangerous world and was engaged in two theaters of war at the same time - but that there existed a "certain sense of stability." He said that at the time, the Army, for the most part, knew who its enemy was. "Beyond those two very dangerous conflicts, few new challenges, at least in the near-term, were thought to be on the horizon." But no more, he said. In the past 20 months, "that stability has largely evaporated - dispersed by new threats and past adversaries." What has also changed, McHugh said, are the resources the Army has to challenge the new uncertainty it faces. He said in 2009, the Army's base and overseas contingency operations budget amounted to about $235 billion. Today, that's at about $150 billion. Coupled with that is a reduction in force. The active-duty Army went from about 553,000 Soldiers in 2009 to about 491,000 today - with more cuts on the way. "There's less money, fewer Soldiers, and more threats," he said. "That's a posture largely unknown in our nation's history, and one that unless something somehow changes, places this Army and indeed the very interests of this nation in a dark and dangerous place. This Army and America were born together, forged from the fires of revolution and steeled through some 240 years of conflict and challenge. Through those times, no matter what this nation has asked, this Army has answered. No matter how steep the climb or how deep the valley, your Army made every necessary effort - always reaching the top, always securing the objective." McHugh called on Congress, the administration, Pentagon leadership, and all Americans to ensure that America's Army can continue to do the jobs they ask it to do. "The people of this nation at large, we all must find a way to do better, because we know should we do even half as well by them - the men, women, Families and civilians of this Army and indeed of all of our nation's services - as they have done for us, America can, American will enjoy another 240 years of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness," he said. Just more than 1,000 feet from where he stood is the nearest grave in Arlington National Cemetery. McHugh gestured there, to the 250,000 graves, to call attention to "the lives, sacrifices and the incredible and too often overlooked courage of American heroes and American veterans. From battles long past to those still before us, those markers serve as a constant reminder that we owe them so much. "In my now more than six years as secretary, since coming to the Pentagon, I have attended the memorial services at Arlington for dozens of such heroes," McHugh said. "I take no joy in knowing that in the tomorrows that lie ahead, that number will rise. [Of those] so-called ordinary people leaving their so-called ordinary lives, in pursuit of extraordinary purpose, I cannot, indeed I did not improve or add the smallest measure to what they have done. Rather, what I did try to do, what I hope that despite my many failings I did do to some degree, is focus my every effort to ensure that this nation stands by them as they have sacrificed for us. God bless them, America's heroes, God bless America, and God bless this great and glorious Army that keeps us free." The secretary concluded with a simple "goodbye," and then returned to his seat on the podium. He, Carter and Milley finished the afternoon and McHugh's tenure as secretary, by observing a pass and review by members of the 3d U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard); the United States Army Band, "Pershing's Own;" and the U.S. Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps. Helmet that saved NCO's life returned to him [2015-10-28] WASHINGTON -- A bullet fired by a Taliban fighter in Afghanistan missed hitting Staff Sgt. Joseph McKenzie in the head by about a quarter of an inch. Instead, his Advanced Combat Helmet, or ACH, took the brunt of the impact. After he got fixed up by the medic for superficial wounds, he pressed on for another 12 hours of fighting. On October 27, Program Executive Office, or PEO, Soldier returned that helmet to McKenzie during a short ceremony at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. It was March 29, 2011, when McKenzie got shot. Back then, he was assigned to the "No Slack" 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment. The unit was involved in a firefight in Afghanistan's Ganjgal Valley. "We air assaulted on to the top of a mountain, a helicopter landing zone, and we were basically setting up a blocking position," McKenzie said. "My platoon was on one peak, and then another platoon on another peak. We were holding these peaks, and these blocking positions while another platoon pushed through the middle of the valley, and pushed out all the Taliban that were in the middle of the valley." McKenzie said once they had set up their defensive position, they started taking on enemy fire. After that enemy fire died down some, he said he got out of his defensive position. He had stooped to pick up some machine gun lubricant - and that's when he got shot. "A bullet hit me right where the night vision goggles mount in on the helmet," McKenzie said. "My helmet slammed right into my face, and I went black for a second. I thought someone had just punched me in the eye. My buddy yelled for me to jump back behind the sandbags. He told me I had been hit in the head, but at first I thought he was joking. Then, after I got under cover, I took the helmet off and could see where the bullet struck the helmet." McKenzie said the medic patched him up, but that the blood on his face made his injury look worse than it was. "Your face is pretty vascular," he said. "A little nick and it will bleed a lot." He does have a scar, under his eye, and on his shoulder, he said, from where the fragments from the bullet bounced off his helmet. The helmet fared much worse. "Down by the lip you'll see the entry wound, and then basically like the other portion is kind of blown out where the bullet actually hit and stuck," he said. The entry point on the helmet, he said, is "about a quarter of an inch from the edge of the helmet - or less." Afterward, he put his helmet back on and got back into the fight. When he was able, he was evacuated to Bagram Airfield, and then a short time after that, he said, he was back at his combat outpost and back out on patrol. Some Soldiers might have looked at the bullet lodged in their helmet and discovered a new-found respect for the gear the Army issues. Getting shot didn't change McKenzie's opinion of Army gear, though - it reinforced it. McKenzie said he was already a believer in Army protective equipment, even before he got shot. "If the equipment wasn't good equipment, they wouldn't let us be taking it out into combat," McKenzie said. "If it wasn't tested before and gone through the rigors of whatever they put it through, there would be no point for me to wear it. It'd be unproven gear. That's why in the Army you don't just get to wear what you want, because it's not proven." McKenzie now serves with the "Wolfhounds" 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division in Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. Col. Dean M. Hoffman, project manager for Soldier protection and individual equipment, part of PEO Soldier, returned the helmet to McKenzie during a ceremony in Hawaii. With the helmet that saved his life back in his hands, McKenzie said he plans to "mount it on my I-love-me wall." He also said he plans on doing 20 years in the Army "depending on how long my body holds up." VALIDATING GEAR When protective equipment like an ACH or an Enhanced Small Arms Protective Insert fulfills its role in combat - by getting shot at - PEO Soldier brings it back to the United States to evaluate how that gear performed. "The big thing is, we want to make sure that the equipment performed as it has been tested," Hoffman said. "We are analyzing and trying to determine what the threat was that hit it, did the threat act any different than what we have actually seen doing our tests, and did the helmet perform in accordance with what we've tested it to," Hoffman said. "It's a deep-dive analysis to make sure that we are maintaining that our equipment is No. 1 in the world, that we are giving our Soldiers the most up-to-date in protective equipment that technology provides today." Hoffman said that before PEO Soldier returned McKenzie's helmet, they ran tests on it to see how it stood up to the round it took, and to also get a better picture of the types of threats that Soldiers are exposed to in combat and if Army protective equipment has been evaluated against those types of threats. Regarding McKenzie's ACH, Hoffman said, "Just a quarter inch and he would have gotten it right between the eyes. But when you look inside the helmet - nothing is coming through." TRADOC opens app store [2015-10-30] WASHINGTON -- The Army's Training and Doctrine Command, or TRADOC, has stood up its own online app store to bring the command's body of knowledge to Soldiers where they are most likely to ingest it: online and on the move. "Most Soldiers have a mobile device of some sort: a cell phone, a tablet, or something," said Lt. Col. Joseph A. Harris Jr., TRADOC capability manager for mobile learning, or TCM-M. "They are using those devices every day to get the information they need. And usually, that's through a mobile app of some sort. What we are trying to do is ensure that we use what they are using already in order to get the information to them. We have a digital Army, and Soldiers have that digital mindset - and we are just capitalizing on that," Harris said. One of the things the newly-created TCM-M did was to create the "TRADOC Application Gateway," or "TAG," which will host unclassified, non-"for official use only" apps and interactive digital publications. To access the app store, Soldiers can point their mobile devices to www.adtdl.army.mil, and log in to the site with just their Army Knowledge Online login name and password. Soldiers can, but don't need to, use a common access card to access the site. Right now the TAG hosts only a tiny handful of the TRADOC-produced apps that are available elsewhere in commercial app stores, Harris said. Titles on an Android app store, for instance, include "DFAS Info2Go," "GoArmyEd," "Performance Triad," and "Army Comprehensive Doctrine." There are many others on other commercial app stores. Matthew MacLaughlin Jr., TCM-M's senior mobile instructional design specialist, said that the few apps up now on the TAG are part of the evaluation for the site. By January, he said, they expect to make available on the TAG from 100 to 150 apps that support three mobile platforms. For development of new applications to meet the needs of Army organizations, MacLaughlin said he's got a team of six developers at TCM-M that can do in-house development for Android, iPhone and Windows Phone. "Anybody can request an app," he said, or they can develop their own app. "We want to empower them and give them guidance on how to build their mobile applications correctly." In the future, MacLaughlin said, he sees teams of developers going to locations throughout the Army to train mobile app developers on-site. In that way, a proponent Army organization can learn to develop its own apps to support their own mission. "They won't have to go through us to create that mobile app. They will create it there, or as much as they can, and that can shorten the development timeline," MacLaughlin said. Before any app can make it to the TAG, it must first pass at least two forms of verification, said Brian Robertson, program integrator, TCM-M. Apps must be shown to be safe from malicious code, to make sure they don't damage the Army network where they will be hosted or the phones of the Soldiers who will install them, Robertson said. Additionally, he said, proponent organizations for the apps must review the app to ensure that it contains accurate and up-to-date information. Robertson said he expects the TAG will cover mostly learning software, and that the TAG will in the future likely be part of a larger "Army software marketplace" that might also host apps with tactical applications. He said already Army organizations who are independently hosting their own apps are asking that they be transferred to the TAG. Harris said for organizations considering transferring their own apps to the TAG, "they won't lose ownership of their apps. They'll be hosted on the TAG, but they will still own and get the credit for them." Army's MIND Lab able to decode brain waves [2015-11-05] WASHINGTON -- In an Army Research Laboratory facility here called "The MIND Lab," a desktop computer was able to accurately determine what target image a Soldier was thinking about. MIND stands for "Mission Impact Through Neurotechnology Design," and Dr. Anthony Ries used technology in the lab to decode the Soldier's brain signals. Ries, a cognitive neuroscientist who studies visual perception and target recognition, hooked the Soldier up to an electroencephalogram - a device that reads brain waves - and then had him sit in front of a computer to look at a series of images that would flash on the screen. There were five categories of images: boats, pandas, strawberries, butterflies and chandeliers. The Soldier was asked to choose one of those categories, but keep the choice to himself. Then images flashed on the screen at a rate of about one per second. Each image fell into one of the five categories. The Soldier didn't have to say anything, or click anything. He had only to count, in his head, how many images he saw that fell into the category he had chosen. When the experiment was over, after about two minutes, the computer revealed that the Soldier had chosen to focus on the "boat" category. The computer accomplished that feat by analyzing brainwaves from the Soldier. When a picture of a boat had been flashed on the screen, the Soldier's brain waves appeared different from when a picture of a strawberry, a butterfly, a chandelier or a panda appeared on the screen. TOO ... MUCH ... DATA Ries said that a big problem he sees for the intelligence community is the vast amount of image information coming in to be analyzed - imagery from unmanned aerial vehicles or satellites or surveillance aircraft, for instance. Everything must be looked at and evaluated. "Our ability to collect and store imagery data has been surpassed by our ability to analyze it," Ries said. Ries thinks that one day the intelligence community might use computers and brainwaves, or "neural signals," to more rapidly identify targets of interest in intelligence imagery, in much the same way the computer in his lab was able to identify pictures of "boats" as targets of interest for the Soldier who had chosen to focus on the "boats" category. "What we are doing is basically leveraging the neural responses of the visual system," he said. "Our brain is a much faster image processor than any computer is. And it's better at detecting subtle differences in an image." Ries said that in a typical image analysis scenario, an analyst might have a large image to look over, and might accomplish that by starting at the top left and working his way down, going left to right. The analyst would look for things of interest to him. "It takes a long time. They may be looking for a specific vehicle, house, or airstrip - that sort of thing." What Ries and fellow researchers are doing is cutting such an image up into "chips," smaller sections of the larger image, and flashing them on a screen in the same way the boats and pandas and butterflies appeared on the screen for the Soldier. "The analyst sits in front of the monitor, with the electroencephalogram on measuring his brain waves," Ries said. "All the little chips are presented really fast. They are able to view this whole map in a fraction of the time it would take to do it manually." The computer would then measure the analyst's neural response to each chip viewed. "Whenever the Soldier or analyst detects something they deem important, it triggers this recognition response," he said, adding that research has shown that as many as five images per second could be flashed on the screen, while still getting an accurate neural response. "Only those chips that contain a feature that is relevant to the Soldier at the time - a vehicle, or something out of the ordinary, somebody digging by the side of the road, those sorts of things - trigger this response of recognizing something important." Images identified by the analyst's mind as being of-interest would then be tagged for further inspection. The automated system could greatly reduce the amount of time it takes to process an image, and that means that a larger number of images - more of that gathered intelligence data - can be processed sooner, so that it can more quickly be of value to Soldiers on the ground. When Ries and his fellow researches cut a larger intelligence image into smaller parts and display them in rapid succession to an analyst, the analyst still has to look at the entire image - the same number of square inches of image overall. But Ries said that by cutting it up into smaller chips, and displaying it rapidly, they are taking much of the work out of accomplishing the analysis. Instead of sliding his fingers over the image, or marking on it, or writing something, or typing, the analyst has only to think "of interest" or "not of interest." And that kind of decision can be made almost instantly - and a computer hooked to an EEG can detect when that decision has been made, what the decision is, tag the image with the result, and then present the next image in just a split second. ELIMINATING NOISE Ries' particular research is finding out how other things an analyst might be doing as he does image analysis might affect the neural signal his brain generates. When Ries' Soldier volunteer initially put on the EEG sensors, he put up on the computer screen the output of the device - a series of what looked like sine waves moving across the screen. When he asked the Soldier to clench his jaw, the waves on the screen changed immediately and dramatically. This was due to the extraneous noise induced by muscle activity in the jaw that was picked up by the EEG sensors. While what was on the screen was in fact the Soldier's brainwaves, jaw clenched or not, the extra stimulation of a clenched jaw on the output of the EEG could make it difficult for the researcher's software to detect the important neural signals when accompanied by extraneous noise. Ries called the extraneous signals "artifacts." What Ries is looking at is how other types of tasks influence the neural signals related to target recognition. For example, what happens to the neural signal as a result of the analyst having to listen to somebody talk while they are at the same time trying to do image analysis work? He wants to figure out what needs to be done, and what information needs to be gathered, so that the algorithms that make their work possible can be adjusted to remain effective. "Maybe you have an analyst who is looking at an aerial image, but is also listening to auditory communications," Ries said. "How does multi-tasking affect the target recognition response? If we can characterize the way different task loads affect the response, we can update our classification algorithms to account for that." Ries and fellow researchers are also working on a way to incorporate eye movement into their work. Where one Soldier had volunteered to look at an array of images on a screen, another volunteered to play a game on a nearby computer. The goal was to shoot a "bubble" of one color at a cluster of other bubbles at the top of the screen. Where multiple bubbles of the same color touched, they would fall away. Typically the game would be played with a mouse or keyboard. But in this instance, it was the Soldier's eyes that told the bubble where to go. Ries told the Soldier to simply look on the screen at where he wanted the game to "shoot" the bubble, and that would be where the bubble went. And that's exactly what happened. Like a clenched jaw, eye movement also introduces artifacts into a neural signal. But if Ries and fellow researchers can feed into their algorithms when an analyst's eyes are moving, and also where an analyst's eyes lock in on a computer screen, that can help improve intelligence work. "One thing we have done is instead of having people view images at the center of the screen, we're leveraging eye-tracking to know whenever they fixate on a particular region of space," he said. "We can extract the neural signal, time-locked to that fixation, and look for a similar target response signal. Then you don't have to constrain the image to the center of the screen. Instead, you can present an image and the analyst can manually scan through it and whenever they fixate on an item of interest, that particular region can be flagged." "We want to create a solution where image analysts can quickly sort through large volumes of image data, while still maintaining a high level of accuracy, by leveraging the power of the neural responses of individuals," he said. Key to cyber success: Operators must learn land operations language [2015-11-10] WASHINGTON -- Cyber may ultimately be commander's business. But for commanders to adopt and employ capabilities that the cyber community brings to the table, operators must excel at explaining their abilities in terms commanders can understand. Maj. Gen. Stephen G. Fogarty, commander of the Cyber Center of Excellence and Fort Gordon, Georgia, said he believes now that the nation's defense, and the Army's ability to operate, is almost completely dependent on Department of Defense information network, or DODIN, operations. "I think DODIN operations, from the enterprise level [DISA] all the way down to the rifleman radio, is the most complex, most important operation that DOD conducts," he said, speaking at a conference on cyber operations, sponsored by the Association of the United States Army, Nov. 10. "We are almost completely dependent upon DODIN operations." Today, he said, mission command, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, precision fires, joint logistics and tele-medicine, among other things, all depend on DODIN operations. "We are at a point now where the network is not just an enabling or supporting capability, but is a warfighting capability and a warfighting platform," he said. "As we start to move into the offensive realm, with cyber capabilities, it becomes even more important to really recognize that fact." Ultimately, Fogarty said, cyber is the responsibility of the commander. "From the defensive to the offensive, he is the one responsible for integrating all these capabilities, like he is for fires, combat aviation or logistics," Fogarty said. Maj. Gen. Charles Flynn, commander of the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, said the efforts of cyber liaison officers, or LNOs, are pivotal in how maneuver commanders accept cyber capabilities into their arsenals and how they employ those capabilities. "These cyber teams and LNOs - they have to get out to the divisions, the corps, the Army service component commands, into the theater armies, and they need to get out there yesterday," Flynn said. "They are not coming fast enough." And those who come, Flynn said, need to be the very best the Army has to offer in the way of cyber. They must not just be experts in their own area, in cyber operations, but they must also be extremely knowledgeable in land operations as well, so that they can articulate to commanders - in language the commanders can understand - what they bring to the table. "You need to send your very best people, and they need to be reliable and incredible upon arrival," he said. "They need to be able to describe to the commanders what they offer. I cannot express to you adequately [enough], if you don't send your best people out there to talk to division, corps, and theater commanders, it will set back your efforts more than you can ever imagine." Flynn said cyber LNOs must understand maneuver warfare and doctrine, so they can convey to those commanders how cyber will fit into the fight. "And they have to convince the commanders that they are value-added to their fight." Those LNOs must understand how the maneuver commander thinks, he said. And to do that, they must form a relationship with the commander, as do other LNOs. "From that relationship [comes] trust. Then you can build teams. Without a relationship, you will not have the trust, and you will not get to building the teams required to execute this." Flynn suggested that cyber warriors be able to speak top operational commanders in "doctrinal and simple terms." "They have to be able to describe what they offer to the commander, or they will be put in what I call the 'island of misfit toys,'" he said. "They are going to go somewhere off to the side, nice to have, but they are not being employed, because they can't bring to the commander what they offer." Flynn described how he sees the network - described in the military, operational terms he thinks make it most understandable and digestible to commanders. The network, he said, is a weapons system. Bandwidth is a class of supply, he said, and commanders must anticipate their requirement for that class of supply and weigh the demands on it. "They have to understand where do they manage it at, who manages it for them, because they are going to end up using that class of supply to weight their efforts in the fight." Data, he said, is a munition, "just like a precision-guided munition, or a 5.56, the munition has to be understood by the commander or the team, so that munition can be pointed in the [right] direction." And spectrum is a terrain feature, he said. "I talked about a weapons system, class of supply, terrain features, munitions - these are all terms that are understood by company commanders, battalion commanders, brigade commanders, division commanders, corps commanders," Flynn said. "You have to speak in simple terms so they understand what it is you are bringing to the fight. So they understand, in their context, what it is you can apply for them." CYBER CAMPUS In September, Fogarty said, the Cyber Center of Excellence published a strategic plan, focusing on five lines of effort. But he instead mentioned three objectives that he called the "three Cs." First among those was a change in culture across the Army, where cyber is not considered just an issue for the signals or intelligence community, but for the entire Army. "We have to get the different tribes to work together much more effectively," Fogarty said. Secondly, he said, there must be a true "cyber campus" on Fort Gordon. "The facilities down at Fort Gordon, outside the operational facilities, are not up to the task," he said. "The Army is going to have to make a significant investment." He said already the Cyber Center of Excellence is working with the assistant chief of staff for installation management, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command and the Army staff to make that happen. Finally, he said, "convergence." He said there isn't just one network, but multiple networks. "The way we operate today is unsustainable, and frankly it's indefensible," Fogarty said. "We are going to have to drive not only the convergence of the network, but the convergence of organizations and convergence of tactics, techniques and procedures to get to the cooperation I talked about." Iraqi army 'glad to see' 82nd Airborne [2015-11-12] WASHINGTON -- Service members with the Iraqi Security Forces were glad to see the U.S. Army back in Iraq, said Soldiers with the 82nd Airborne Division, who recently returned from an advise, train and assist mission there. About 1,300 Soldiers with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, left the United States for Iraq in January of this year, and redeployed in October, following the short-notice nine-month deployment there in support of Operation Inherent Resolve. The Soldiers, part of Task Force Panther, provided advise and assist teams, trained Iraqi Security Forces, secured multiple critical facilities, and provided logistical support to further Iraq's efforts to degrade and defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. There will be other American teams that go in to perform the same advise and assist mission - including the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division who is there now - but the 3/82 was the first. "I know the Iraqis were extremely grateful to see the U.S. troopers come back, in a new role and a new capacity," said Lt. Col. Bryan Babich, commander of 1st Battalion, 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Babich had been in Iraq before. He served there from 2005 to 2006 as a battery commander. "It was a very different mission in a very different time," he said. "I was in charge of a convoy security company and we'd move logistical convoys from one forward operating base to another. It was very tactical and very different." This time in Iraq, he said, he was tasked to the advise and assist team assigned to the Ministry of Peshmerga in Erbil, where he worked with Kurds, and also with coalition partners regarding how they trained and resourced the Peshmerga, ensuring, for instance, that as training occurred, a common standard was applied. "That's critical, because if you don't have that common standard, then it's hard for the unit you are training to work in a collective way," Babich said. A big part of this deployment for the 3/82 was being the first on the ground to do the kind of work they were tasked with doing. They weren't replacing a team already there. "A big part was understanding how they were organized, what their priorities were, and then finding areas where we felt we could best help," Babich said of working with the Peshmerga. "We found those focuses, but it took time. And a lot of what goes on with the first units to go in and establish a mission is to just create that identity, and find the areas to make a difference, and set the conditions for the follow-on team that replaced us in September." While in Iraq, he said, the 3/82 wasn't doing the mission it had done during Operation Iraqi Freedom and New Dawn - even though it was able to rekindle relationships built earlier. "These were small advise and assist teams - but it resonates that this is a commitment. And that we are part of that commitment, and we are there to help," he said. "There are relationships we built in the first eight years we were there, that we were able to capitalize on in this most recent tour. We knew them before and we were able to rebuild and continue on in those relationships." One such relationship was with Peshmerga Brig Gen. Hazhar Ismail, who Babich worked alongside at the Ministry of Peshmerga in Erbil. Babich said he saw in the general hope for the future in Iraq. "He's a younger general officer within the Peshmerga, a graduate of the U.S. Army War College and very well spoken," Babich said. "It was a critical relationship for us because we could talk with a common language and what it did for me is it really resonated in the value that is bringing in foreigners into our schools and establishing relationships there, and then on how you can capitalize on that in a deployed environment. The training and the plans that we developed together were about creating something that would last, and creating something that would serve as a capable force that could ... be there for the long haul. I saw in Gen. Hazhar a hope and optimism, professionalism as a military officer, and quite possibly a glimpse ... of a better future." In Iraq, Capt. Bryan Terry served as commander of Bravo Company, 255th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Initially, Terry said, Bravo Company was going to provide security forces at Erbil. But that mission was cancelled, so the unit spent about eight weeks in Kuwait before moving into Iraq. Once in country, they moved to Camp Taji, north of Baghdad, to train brigades that were tasked with doing counter attack missions. "The Iraqi units show up to us having a basic understanding of how to do soldier tasks, with a little bit of an understanding of how to do fire maneuver at a small-unit level," Terry said. "We put them through a six-week and three-week program of instruction. Six-week instruction is really just a lot of basic buddy team movements, teaching them marksmanship, making sure they understand how to actually fire and maneuver as a small team, and then move all the way up to squad live-fires. After that they go into a three-week, short period of instruction, and that is more collective tasks, moving up closer to a platoon to a company live-fire, with them fighting as a larger element." In Iraq for seven months, Bravo Company rotated duties with other companies. They also did work in building partner capacity and in providing security forces. Terry said that the Iraqis were easily able to pick up what B Company taught them. "They were excited to see us show up and train them," Terry said. "We were definitely their first choice to have somebody come in and help them. They have a lot of trust in us from our past relationships." Terry said his team began every day of training by demonstrating how his Soldiers did a particular task - they did a demonstration. "After that we'd then put them through the lanes with collective tasks to execute a little bit of training for that day," he said. Terry said he saw in the Iraqis he trained a definite will to do the mission. There weren't any slackers, he said. "Typically we think, based on their recent defeats over the last year, that they don't really have a large will to fight," Terry said. "But they do have a will to fight. They are very prideful of their country - that is part of the reason they are fighting as Iraqi armed forces. They don't have to be there ... they are there mainly because of their sense of pride in their country." One example of that, he said, is when the Iraqi brigade commander he was partnered with would rotate through training locations to meet with the soldiers. "The younger soldiers would get frustrated they weren't in the fight and they had to continue to train ... he'd go out there and talk to his men and motivate them," Terry said. "During one motivational speech, he pulled an Iraqi flag out of his pocket that he always carried with him - they immediately got excited. He talked about how soon, when the training was complete, they would go fight the enemy forces for the government of Iraq. And there was celebration following that." TIME AND SPACE During the 3/82's nine months in Iraq, Lt. Col. Patrick Sullivan, commander of the 307th Airborne Engineer Battalion, said he personally advised the Baghdad Operations Command commander. "It gave me some pretty unique access and insight into the highest levels of Iraqi national political and military decision-making," he said. "I was able to provide reflections there and back to the coalition leadership." Sullivan said entering Iraq for the first time since 2011, it was a challenge to get the mission started - to get a foothold into what was expected of them and to what they needed to accomplish. "There was a lot we didn't know going into this mission," he said. "We had to define our own expectations and have them confirmed or denied once we got on site. One of the concerns we had was how our Iraqi partners were going to perceive us, having left at the end of Operation New Dawn, and what themes are they carrying, good or bad, that will inform our initial relationship. I was pleased to learn, and experience, that we were welcomed back with open arms." Sullivan said that as their mission solidified in Iraq, he saw that the Iraqis developed greater willingness to train with the Americans. He said he thinks what the 3/82 has done, and what follow-on units will do in the same mission, will help provide the Iraqis the space they need to defeat ISIS. "What we did creates time and space for Iraqis to achieve solutions to what is fundamentally a political problem in the theater and provided time and space for our own policy makers to define what our level of engagement and what our overarching goals are going to be, with regional partners, with coalition partners and with Iraqis," he said. Retired, current general officers mentor cadets [2015-11-13] WASHINGTON -- There are at least two things in the Army you can't choose: who you report to, and what your mission will be, the commander of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said. "All through your life you will have missions you don't like, but you can't pick your mission. And you will have bosses you don't like, but you can't pick your bosses," Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick said. "The good news is that those two things always change." Bostick and 10 other active-duty Army generals, as well as one now retired general, sat on a panel at Howard University in Washington, D.C, Oct. 10. The panel was also attended by several ROTC cadets from 13 schools in Virginia, Maryland and the nation's capital. The general officers volunteered their time to provide advice, guidance, mentorship and perspective from the top to those young Americans who are expected to, but haven't yet, entered the Army as officers at the very bottom. "You will have the opportunity to see all kinds of missions and bosses," Bostick told the cadets. "My message to you is that the Army needs you, the nation needs you, and they need you to continue to serve. You've already made the initial sacrifice by serving through ROTC." Lt. Gen. James C. McConville, the Army's G-1, told cadets to keep in mind the three things the Army expects of a second lieutenant. "One is you be physically fit," he said. "The second is we expect you to have integrity and character. And the third thing is we expect you to be willing to learn, because we are going to teach you everything you need to know." The Army provides young enlistees and young officers "the opportunity to do maybe the most important things that you can do in your lives," McConville said. "The other thing is you get a chance to serve in the most respected institution in the country. That's quite an honor. And when you get a chance to see the Soldiers that you are going to have a chance to serve with, it's just an incredible privilege." Lt. Gen. Gary H. Cheek, director of the Army staff, told cadets they should set their sights now on being honor graduates from the Army's officer basic course. "Your Soldiers are looking at you from the day they arrive. They want you to be competent and want you to be smart and know your business. You will learn that in officer basic course," Cheek said. "Soldiers also want you to treat them fairly. And the third thing is they expect you to have impeccable moral character and do the right thing. If your set yourself on that path, you will love the Army and have a great time with it and a great future." Cheek also recommended that the cadets make it a goal now to one day command a company of Soldiers. "The greatest honor we can give you is to command and lead 100 young Americans in the U.S. Army. If you focus on that as your goal starting your career, it will benefit you in enormous ways," Cheek said. "Commit yourself today that you want to take advantage of the greatest opportunity the Army can offer you: to command a company." A key proponent of the event at Howard University was Lt. Gen. Robert S. Ferrell, who serves now as the Army's chief information officer and G-6. "It's very important that we take time - we as leaders - to have a dialogue with our future leaders and entertain any questions they might have, but also provide them with an insight of the current Army today and the Army they will come into when they get commissioned," Ferrell said. During the half-day event at Howard University, the cadets were able to mingle with the general officers during an informal lunch, to ask questions of them, and then afterward ask questions of them in a more formal setting. Ferrell said the officers told some of their personal stories about their experience in the Army, letting cadets know how they as officers were able to succeed in the service. "We really focused on our current chief's priorities: readiness, building the future force, and taking care of Soldiers, Department of the Army civilians and Families," Ferrell said. "As a broadening event, this event was a home run." Maj. Gen. Peggy C. Combs, commander of U.S. Army Cadet Command, said the event provided benefit to both officers and cadets. For the generals, she said, it provided a chance to "see the future" of the Army in the young cadets that will one day lead the service. "Some of my staff mates don't get to see that, and this gives them a sense of renewed optimism about the future and what's coming in," she said. For cadets, "it gives them the role models," she said. She also said that while cadets ought to be focusing on being the best lieutenants they can be, hearing senior officer stories about growing up in the Army lets them know that it's really possible for them to one day become a general officer. "It lets them see these are real people who love what they do," Combs said. "It's not like 'those folks in the Pentagon.' Its real people who enjoy their service, and who started out like they did - not knowing what to expect in the future." Combs said that Army ROTC commissions more than 5,600 officers a year into the active-duty force, the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve. About 78 percent of commissions in the Army, she said, come from ROTC. "We develop and commission the majority of the Army officer corps," Combs said, adding that ROTC has a "huge impact" on the diversity of thought within the officer corps. "We have cadets that come from more than 1,000 college campuses. What's exciting about that is all of these folks are trained by different educators. They all bring a different way of thinking about problems. It spurs innovation in our Army when you have folks that can think differently about a problem and they all come together in a unit. I think that diversity of thought and perspective is the strength of Army ROTC." Cadet 1st Sgt. Lee RiveraResto, who is in her third year of ROTC at Norfolk State University, Norfolk, Virginia, is majoring in psychology and said she hopes to go into the Army Medical Corps or into military intelligence. RiveraResto said she was impressed by the openness of the forum at Howard University. "We had that kind of mingling session before the forum," she said. "It was a very comfortable atmosphere, and I thought that was very important. It set the tone for the panel today." While talking face-to-face with general officers during the informal lunch at the university, RiveraResto said she was able to ask questions of several of the female general officers and get back some truly honest feedback. "They were very open and honest with the answers they gave," she said. "They weren't cookie-cutter answers. They were very blunt, and they really wanted me to understand the pros and cons of being a female or wanting a relationship and Family while serving in the Army." Cadet Capt. Johnnie Jackson, now a senior at Old Dominion, also in Norfolk, is earning a degree in finance. He said he also hopes to serve as a military intelligence officer when he commissions. He said he saw the half-day event at Howard University as similar to how one commander passes command to another with a "left seat/right seat ride." Except during the forum, the generals weren't passing command but advice. "I got a lot of take-away from this, like about the basis of leadership: being able to establish loyalty, communication and trust ... and being a confident leader. It was great," he said. Ferrell also thanked Howard University for hosting the event for the second year in a row. "It took a lot of coordination to put this together," he said. "We appreciate it, from the chief of staff of the Army on down. They opened the doors and provided a truly professional event that each of these men and women will remember ... the opportunity they had to have a sit-down dialogue with the senior leaders from the Army." Officers participating in the event included Lt. Gen. Gary H. Cheek, director of the Army staff; Brig. Gen. Patricia A. Frost, U.S. Army Cyber Command; Maj. Gen. Timothy M. McKeithen, National Guard; Brig. Gen. Scott Dingle, Army Medical Command; Lt. Gen. Robert S. Ferrell, CIO/G-6; Lt. Gen. James C. McConville, Army G-1; Maj. Gen. Peggy C. Combs, Cadet Command; Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; Maj. Gen. Phillip M. Churn, Army Reserve; Lt. Gen. Flora D. Darpino, Army judge advocate general; Maj. Gen. Paul E. Funk II, Army G-3/5/7; and retired Brig. Gen. Earl Simms, chairman of "The Rocks, Inc." Army National Guard director: Two weeks annually, weekend per month enough? [2015-11-18] WASHINGTON -- Army National Guard troops go on active duty for at least 39 days a year for training and drill - but that may not be enough for the Guard, said its director, who is contemplating the amount of training time needed by Guard Soldiers so that he may provide an answer to the Army's chief of staff. Lt. Gen. Timothy J. Kadavy, Army National Guard director, addressed an Association of the United States Army-sponsored forum, Nov. 18. He said Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley has asked the components of the Army - the active-duty force, the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard - to "take a harder look at how all our components work, and how do we maintain a strong, capable, modern Army." Milley has asked in particular for more insight into how the Guard trains, and maintains readiness, something Kadavy said the Army National Guard is working on with the Army staff, secretariat and U.S. Army Forces Command. Included in that review, Kadavy said, is a look at the number of Combat Training Center rotations the Army National Guard would have. Additionally, he said, "he has challenged us to think about training days - is 39 the right number?" Current law says 39 days of training. Kadavy said that includes two drill days a month, plus an additional 15 days a year, for a total of 39. But, "that's a floor, not a ceiling. I don't think there's any law that prevents us [from going for more], there is some policy that prevents too much time spent using training dollars," he said. "The Army has already made a tremendous investment in the brigade combat teams that do go to the Combat Training Centers [CTC] - the National Training Center [NTC] or the Joint Readiness Training Center [JRTC]. Additional days and op tempo are provided for ... additional maneuver training so we can maximize the readiness and the development of the BCT [brigade combat team] as it goes through their rotation." He said the Guard gets two CTC rotations a year, one at the JRTC on Fort Polk, Louisiana, and one at the NTC at Fort Irwin, California. Kadavy said that the rules about the 39 days were based on laws written in the early 1900s, and that Milley has asked him to consider the relevance today of such laws, and if those laws still provide what is needed to the reserve components, based on what they are providing to the nation today. MAINTAIN MUSCLE MEMORY The general said that the Army National Guard has done a significant amount of "learning" as its units have geared up for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 14 years, and that is something he doesn't want to lose. "My concern is if we don't continue to do that at some level, we will lose that muscle memory," he said, adding that rotation periods for certain kinds of units have been reduced by 50 percent. "We need to continue to exercise to some degree those lessons-learned, and then learn new lessons and continue to progress," he said. "I think our Army and our nation needs us. I always believe readiness should be looked at as an investment and not simply as a measurement of cost." Increased time for Army National Guard training, however, comes with concerns that are not there for active forces, Kadavy said. "From the ANG [Army National Guard] perspective, usually the requirement that is the highest, that we have to always ensure that goes along with any op tempo, is pay and allowances," he said. "For our traditional Guardsmen, funding has to be provided to bring them on duty with pay and allowances." For commanders who run active-duty units, pay for Soldiers is not an issue when it comes to training. Those commanders need only think about the increased operations tempo, because Title 10 Soldiers are on duty year-round, and their pay is budgeted that way. However, not so with Army National Guard Soldiers. "When you think about doing additional field training exercises for the ANG or the Army Reserve, not only do you think about op tempo, but also the pay and allowances that go along with paying for the days you utilize for either training or operational purposes," he said. Continued readiness and retention of lessons-learned over 14 years of conflict - to remain warfighting capable and to provide responsiveness to state governors - is just one of Kadavy's five priorities for the Army National Guard. RESOURCE AND MODERNIZE The general is concerned about maintaining a resourced and modernized Army National Guard. To meet emerging challenges, he said, the Army National Guard "must be able to maintain a viable investment strategy for both equipment and facilities." He said there must be a balance of dollars for ensuring unit readiness and for also maintaining modernization and quality facilities for Soldiers. Now, he said, the Army National Guard benefits from equipment from the active Army and Congress. "But modernization is fleeting," he said. Kadavy said he spent time in Idaho, Nov. 17, meeting with commanders and staff of Army National Guard armored brigade combat teams to discuss, among other things, their concerns about modernization and equipping. "One of the things they commented on ... struck me as obvious," he said. "Their observation is that because of the decrease in mobilizations, and the opportunities to modernize because of mobilization, that there is this ever-growing gap that they see between their active-component brothers in ABCTs [armored brigade combat teams] and where they are today. There must be a strategy to help us maintain our equipment interoperability within the Army, within the total force. This is needed to maintain meaningful training and ensure effective domestic response when required." One area that comes to mind in terms of that gap, he said, involves mission command systems and the compatibility between such systems. "The Army, overall, is reviewing mission command systems, and is looking at the sets and kits for every one of our formations," he said. "But we have to have a viable strategy that gets after sustaining our equipment, and investing in new equipment as we move through our readiness model." DEVELOP AGILE LEADERS Kadavy also said a priority for the Army National Guard is ensuring leader development. Combat experience alone doesn't ensure success of the Guard, he said. But "leaders of character will," he said. "I depend on these leaders of character to help foster a climate of trust, because we all know trust is the bedrock of our profession." The general said the Army National Guard "embraces the Army leader development strategy. That's why we are developing and retaining qualified Army Guard leaders who understand our unique dual-mission within the ANG, and the nuances of the National Guard," which includes the role of providing support to their state governors as well as the role of providing a reserve warfighting capability to the Army. The general also pointed out that mission complexity doesn't just exist on the battlefield. It also exists in the Guard's domestic mission as well. He pointed to past missions inside the United States, including support to Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy, for instance, or National Guard support in Ferguson, Missouri, or Baltimore. The complexities of those missions require leaders who are as adaptive as what is required in combat, he said. "I think you can see, as you think about the second part of the ANG's dual mission, that adaptable, agile leaders are just as important to what we do in support of governors in time of emergencies. And this complexity, I think, is going to continue to grow as we move forward," Kadavy said. FULL-TIME SUPPORT Also priorities for the Army National Guard are an increased focus on ready Soldiers and Families, which Kadavy said the Army National Guard supports by being "full members" in the Army's Ready and Resilient Campaign, and maintaining sufficient full-time support in the Army National Guard. Today, he said, full-time support personnel in the Army National Guard man training missions, do recruiting duties, field and maintain equipment, and deliver programs. He likened managing an Army National Guard mission within a state to how the active force might manage an installation, and how those installations generate readiness to assist units as they prepare for deployments. "Just like there are tremendous differences between installations [such as] at Fort Myer or Fort Bliss, there are similar challenges to consider for 'Fort Virginia' or for 'Fort Texas,'" he said. "Each state is a little different based on the size of its end strength and the requirements of their organizations and the structure in each state." As on any installation, in each state there are programs and services to be managed, maintenance and services to be provided, and administration for pay, contracts and logistics. For the Guard, that is provided by full-time support. He said resourcing for full-time support for Guard personnel is at 70 percent. Kadavy has been on the job as director of the Army National Guard for about six months now. He said he's been working regularly with two other new senior Army leaders - Milley, and Gen. Robert B. Abrams, commander of U.S. Army Forces Command. Both of those officers came on board to their new positions in August. "We are all working together to set conditions for an empowered and total Army, moving forward, encompassing all three components," Kadavy said. He said together, they are "extremely anxious" to hear the final, February 2016 report to Congress by the National Commission on the Future of the Army. The commission will make recommendations on how to modify the Army in regard to size and structure, to include the reserve components. He said he believes in that report there will be some "lessons learned ... that we can apply to bettering our Army, and working together as all three components." Regionally-aligned Soldiers find African forces motivated [2015-11-20] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers who serve in the militaries of African nations are not interested in having Americans provide security for them or their countries - they want to get better at doing it for themselves, said U.S. Army Soldiers who recently returned from there. Soldiers, assigned to the 3rd Brigade, 1st Armored Division, or 3/1 AD, out of Fort Bliss, Texas, recently concluded a nine-month period, January through September, where they were regionally aligned with U.S. Army Africa, or USARAF. As part of the "regionally-aligned forces," or RAF, concept, Soldiers with 3/1 AD deployed to and redeployed from Africa, some of them more than once, to provide military-to-military support on an as-needed basis to USARAF-sponsored missions there. "We planned missions in Africa to support our brigade, which was regionally aligned under U.S. Army Africa," said Maj. Thomas E. Lamb, squadron executive officer for 2nd Squadron, 13th Cavalry. "We visited multiple countries, did security cooperation, participated in joint exercise lifecycle events and combined exercises with multi-national partners, such as our NATO allies and African allies on the continent, and built partner capacity within units who were actually training and prepping to go into harm's way in support of United Nations missions and other types of activities." Lamb said his unit prepared for their RAF on-call period with Africa-specific training in culture and history, with individual training for Soldiers, and by brushing up on collective tasks such as team live-fire and squad live-fire. "We re-blued ourselves on activities such as IED [improvised explosive device] training, medical training, and some of the other activities that we knew we'd be training indigenous forces in Africa," Lamb said. Overall, Soldiers from the brigade ended up going to 26 different countries throughout the nine-month mission, said Col. Barry Daniels, commander of the 3/1 AD, who personally visited 12 different African nations during his involvement in the RAF period. THEY WANT TO TAKE CARE OF THEIR OWN "Probably my first significant observation in the whole mission, shared by many of the Soldiers as well, was the level of motivation of a lot of the African partners," Daniels said. "These are people who have a vision for the future. They know what they want to be. They want - as do most people in the world - for their children to grow up with a better life than they had." Daniels said when he talked with the leaders and soldiers from the militaries of the different nations in Africa that he visited, he learned that they were adamant about getting better at taking care of their own business - rather than having somebody else do it for them. "They are interested in securing their own part of the world - their backyard, so to speak," Daniels said. "And their militaries understand they may have some capability gaps that we can help them close, and provide them some assistance in everything from tactical-level training to headquarters exercises, operational concepts, staff planning and execution. They want to do that so they can counter extremists in their own backyard and provide for this future that they want." Command Sgt. Maj. Michael C. Williams, 2nd Squadron, 13th Cavalry Regiment, traveled multiple times to Africa during the nine-month RAF period. He worked with militaries in Malawi, Ethiopia and Zambia, and said he was impressed with their willingness to be independent - to learn from, but not lean on the U.S. military to do for them what they can and should do for themselves. "I was immediately impressed by their level of discipline. They are very motivated, very energized, and they very much want to be successful in what they do," he said. "These nations want to be distributors of security rather than consumers of security from the United States. They want us to be able to come over there, and help build their capacity for security stabilization within their own region, versus having us do it for them. That is not their goal." Williams said the RAF concept is a "phenomenal" idea for the U.S. Army to be involved in. "It's a great way to allow these partner nations to facilitate their own security, and to prevent instability in their own regions," Williams said. "This is the first part of 'prevent, shape and win.' This is how we get 'left of the boom' and prevent having to go over and solve things kinetically for other people." RAF MAKES BETTER SOLDIERS, LEADERS The Army's RAF concept links U.S. Army units to combatant commands, such as U.S. Africa Command, to provide on-demand support to them when needed. But it's not just combatant commanders that benefit from RAF. The Soldiers and the units that participate in RAF benefit as well. For 1st Lt. Ashley Meadows, 123rd Brigade Support Battalion, the recent RAF rotation put her in Burkina Faso for a total of four months. It was her first time in Africa and she said it was the highlight of her Army career. "It was the best experience I've had in the Army, and also in my life - to experience the different culture," she said. "You see certain things about Africa on the news. But I was pleasantly surprised to see a welcoming community, and I would go back." During the brigade's nine-month RAF rotation, Meadows actually deployed to Burkina Faso two times. The first time she went for a month to participate in leadership training with the 1st Logistics Company in Burkina Faso. The second time, for three months, was to provide medical, resupply operations, and maintenance operations training to the same unit. "It was myself and a team of six," she said. "We interacted with 193 soldiers, day in and day out. It wasn't just training medical and resupply. We also shared stories of deployment, personal stories of the difference between Burkina Faso and the United States - so it was a marriage of culture during this training." Williams said that as a senior noncommissioned officer, or NCO, he felt his involvement in Africa as part of the RAF rotations there expanded his understanding of what kind of impact the United States has around the world. "I think it has certainly brought awareness to me personally of the fact that it is entirely possible and plausible for us as a nation to have a real geopolitical impact on our partners and to facilitate things before they become problematic, or to solve problems before they become real problems," Williams said. "I think that it has also shown me how other nations envy what we do as a non-commissioned officer corps, and it has allowed me to appreciate what we do here that much more." MEASURING IMPACT OF ROTATIONS Daniels said he thought it will be some time - perhaps years - before the long-term impact of his unit's RAF rotation in Africa can be accurately measured. "We are trying to prevent conflict by shaping the security environment and working with our partners in Africa at their request to secure their own region," he said. "Measuring the impact of that, and the effectiveness of that, is going to take time. I think we need to look at this in three- to five-year, and ten-year increments, and assess whether this investment we are making is actually shaping the security of the security environment and preventing the outbreak of large-scale hostilities." What he knows now about their RAF rotations in Africa is that it has impacted his own unit, helping young leaders to grow and develop. "There is no doubt this improved our leaders. We would send junior NCOs and junior officers over to run small teams in Africa for up to four months at a time," he said. "They are learning how to integrate with cultures that are very different from where they come from, their own background. Those cross-cultural skills are important." The colonel said his Soldiers were exposed not just to the culture of the African militaries they worked with, but also the culture of other NATO partner nations and other agencies within the U.S. government, including the Department of Defense and Department of State. "They get an appreciation for embassy operations, and what that means - what a country team does in each of these countries," he said. "They are learning that at a relatively junior level, and should we be committed to having to win decisively in a large-scale operation somewhere, they are going to already have a lot of this cultural expertise. So the leadership development aspect of it is fantastic." Strategically, he said, the partnerships that his brigade has built with African militaries, and the partnerships other Army units will build, will be useful and valuable in the future. "I think it is in the U.S. interest to have a stable Africa," he said. "They believe it is in their interest. I think we share that interest. And any work we do to help them achieve that is probably money well spent." Smaller Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Agency tackles new challenges [2015-11-27] FORT BELVOIR, Va. -- Simulating a scenario from Afghanistan, a civilian dressed in a white robe stood outside in front of a green background underneath a small, open shelter. About 200 feet away, in a tent filled with monitors and computers, an analyst looked at output from an array of sensors that were pointed at the man, and determined he was wearing some sort of explosive device. "He looks fit to shoot," said one of the engineers who work on the "Standoff Suicide Bomb Detection System," or SSBDS. It's one of the many projects funded by the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Agency under development that were on display on Fort Belvoir, Virginia, Nov. 17. "The SSBDS is the Department of Defense's only system-of-systems approach to detecting personnel-borne IEDs [improvised explosive devices]," said the engineer from the Communications Electronics Research Development and Engineering Command night vision labs, who asked not to reveal his name. "We use a multitude of different sensing modalities, because there isn't a single silver bullet, single sensor that works all the time in all places." Spaced out between the man in the robe and the tent with all the gear was an array of sensors including visible imagers, mid-wave and longwave infrared imagers, and a terahertz imager. All are commercial off-the-shelf sensors. "They cover one another's blind spots and vulnerabilities," the engineer said. "As conditions change through the day, one might work better than the other. So it keeps you covered." The engineer said that at one point, a team took the system to Afghanistan to evaluate it in a real-world environment at an entry control point on a forward operating base. Using the SSBDS, the team aided security teams there in screening personnel who were being brought onto the installation. They ended up being asked to stay for 18 months with their equipment, he said. Five rotations of teams came through, and they trained them all as operators of the system. While the team was in Afghanistan, they didn't catch anybody trying to come onto the base with an explosive device, but within weeks of their departure, the forward operating base was attacked. The engineer speculated that their SSBDS might have acted as a kind of intimidation factor that kept would-be terrorists from trying to come on to the installation. "They knew we had something," he said. "It's like putting the ADT sign in front of your house. Go find a softer target." Future work on the SSBDS, he said, is expected to include additional sensors to make the system more diverse and tailorable for different environments. Additionally, they hope to make the system more portable and compact and easy to set up. SMALLER AGENCY The Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, or JIEDDO, was established in 2006 to counter the growing threat of IEDs being experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan. Earlier this year, JIEDDO was realigned under the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. The new agency is now called Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Agency, or JIDA. Lt. Gen. Michael H. Shields, JIDA's director since July 30, said the organization has become smaller over the last two years, and now has fewer employees and a smaller budget. The agency is down now to only 400 employees with contractors to support the mission, and a budget of about $500 million. JIDA provides not only material solutions to defeat IEDs including gear, but also substantial intelligence and analytical capability to learn about and to defeat IED networks. JIDA, Shields said, maintains three distinct efforts that he characterized as "attack the network," "defeat the device," and "train the force." Now smaller, he said, it's now "more important for us to leverage other organizations and agencies with similar tech outreach capacity," leaning heavily on academia and industry partners as well. At JIEDDO, the agency's name made it clear that the focus was on the IED, called the "signature weapon" of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The new organization has a new name, suggesting a focus on "improvised threats," rather than just IEDs. Shields emphasized that JIDA still maintains a "laser focus" on IEDs, but said the agency now has a broader focus. That broader focus is a response, in part, to ISIL, which is working now with new agents such as industrial chemicals like chlorine, he said. JIDA is also looking at using new ways to innovate and improve existing technology, by asking scientists to reduce weight or size or power usage for existing systems, and by using existing sensors in new ways. NEW THREATS Since assuming the role as director of the newly-created JIDA, Shields has visited both Iraq and Afghanistan, meeting with commanders there, with special operations forces, with the rapid equipping force, with partner nations and with Iraqi and Afghan militaries to discuss the threats that are being seen now in those areas, posed by enemies such as ISIL. "This is not the fight we faced when I was a brigade commander in 2005-2006 in Iraq," Shields said. "This is very organized. They [ISIL] have an industrial capacity to produce IEDs. It's not a terrorist organization that is using them to achieve a terrorist effect. They are using them in vast quantities to help isolate and shape the battle space, in almost phased types of operations. They are covering them with observation and fires. It's caused the Iraqis and folks to re-think how we deal with these threats." Pointing out the sophistication of the enemy, Shields cited ISIL's "incredible capacity" to produce and deploy IEDs, sometimes as many as 30 at once, an "innovative use of crush switches in buildings," house-borne IEDs, as well as anti-lift and anti-tamper IEDs. All, he said, are achieving a "comprehensive effect against Iraqi security forces." The general also pointed to ISIL's use of vehicle-borne IEDs "as their precision-guided munitions," though recently Iraqi Security Forces have proven successful in their effort to stymie ISIL's use of vehicle borne improvised explosive devices, or VBIEDs. When the United States had a large and active presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, JIEDDO had more accurate and up-to-date information about the types of IEDs being used there and the frequency and location of their use. Now that the large U.S. presence is gone, he said, that flow of information has diminished. He said the agency is looking for ways to restart that flow of accurate and timely information so they can work better to defeat those threats. "If we could get improved reporting from Iraqi security forces ... " he said. "Reporting has to improve and then knowing what to report and being able to articulate why exploitation is so critical. He said it's important to articulate to ISF why capturing information and reporting information about IED encounters is crucial. Also important, he said, is establishing "a baseline bit of information" that should be captured and then having that information fed back to where JIDA can use it. VIRTUAL ASSISTANCE One solution to help Iraqi forces forward timely, accurate information regarding IEDs to JIDA is called "Virtual Advice and Assist," or VAA, Shields said. "We provide them a capability where they can catalog and capture and so forth," he said. "In a sense, meta-data tag the information and then bring it back." In a situation where U.S. Soldiers are not allowed to leave their installation in Iraq, but where they might want to be able to help Iraqi Security Forces disarm and exploit an IED they have found, as part of VAA, a tablet computing device could be issued to those Iraqi security forces. Those Iraqi security forces could then take that device out to the location of the IED they have found, and consult with American counterparts in real time over the network to disarm it, and to document key information about what they have found. The VAA has been used in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Africa as a proof of concept and feedback from the warfighter is that the capability looks promising. David Gregory, JIDAs chief engineer for deployed information technology, explained how JIDA is using another technology called the JIDA Expeditionary Team kit, or JET, to put the agency's capability out into the field. The JET kit, in version 1 right now, has been around since 2013. It fits inside just three backpacks and allows JIDA analysts to go out into the field and bring the agency's IED intelligence and analytical support to a unit, but with minimal impact on that unit. The kit includes a router, some computers, a VOIP phone, and a small satellite dish to gain Internet connectivity through Department of Defense satellites. "When they go forward to a unit ... we outfit them if the need is there, with a tailored system for their specific needs - for JIDA's needs," Gregory said. "They don't fall in on a unit and with their hands out asking for support. We send that with them." The kit allows a small team, two personnel, to connect to JIDA's "attack the network tool suite," Gregory said, that includes a suite of software applications, custom built, using databases and data sources from around the world. The JET kit provides classified and unclassified capability and also allows users to dial into a video teleconference as well. These tools allow the JET to fuse intelligence about IED networks from national resources with forward tactical operations. Gregory also said JIDA is working on a newer "JET Plus" kit that will support a team of seven to ten individuals, instead of the two that are supported by JET. The kit comes with a larger satellite dish to support more data throughput and more people. Gregory said that also on the horizon is to include hand-held units with the JET kits, such as smart phones, for instance, that can be brought right out to where American forces meet with Iraqi or Afghan forces. "This is intended for an American Special Forces Soldier, who is shoulder-to-shoulder with Iraqi police," he said. "He'll be receiving updates. He can show that guy, in whatever language it needs to be in." He said the effort is about moving critical information out of the classified networks, where it is hidden and unavailable to most, "directly into the hands of people who need it." Soldiers can mix camo patterns for cold-weather gear [2015-11-30] WASHINGTON -- As winter weather approaches and temperatures drop, Soldiers turn to their cold-weather gear to keep warm outdoors while conducting training or operations. Many Soldiers now wear their Army Combat Uniform, or ACU, in the new Operational Camouflage Pattern. But their organizational clothing and individual equipment, or OCIE, such as their wet-weather gear and their Extended Cold Weather Clothing System sport the Universal Camouflage Pattern, or UCP. Soldiers don't need to freeze so as to avoid a uniform faux pas, however, the Army wants Soldiers to know that it's okay to wear the foliage green fleece cold-weather jacket and other UCP cold-weather gear on top of their new Operational Camouflage Pattern uniform. "Soldiers should continue to use the equipment they have been provided to remain safe and warm in environments that call for it," said Sgt. Maj. Eva M. Commons, uniform policy sergeant major, Army G-1. "This is why the Army gives you this gear to wear." Cold-weather gear is not part of the "clothing bag" issued to Soldiers during basic training. Instead, Soldiers get items like the fleece cold-weather jacket, the wind cold-weather jacket, the soft shell cold-weather jacket and trousers, or the extreme cold/wet-weather jacket and trousers from the clothing issue facility, or CIF, at their installation. Commons said that no matter what ACU Soldiers are wearing - the one in UCP pattern or the one in Operational Camouflage Pattern - they are allowed to wear the winter-weather gear that is issued by the CIF. "Any item issued from CIF is permitted for wear," she said. "There is no restriction based on camo pattern or color." The Army also has two different colored T-shirts available for wear under their ACU. There is the "sand-colored" T-shirt and the "Tan 499" T-shirt. Belts are also available in both of those colors. Boots are available in sand or coyote colors, as well. The rule here, Commons said, is that when a Soldier is wearing the UCP ACU, he or she must wear the undershirt, belt and boots designed for wear with the UCP ACU. However, when Soldiers wear the Operational Camouflage Pattern ACU, they can wear "any combination" of boots, belt and T-shirt, in any of the available colors; the boots, belt, and t-shirt do not have to match each other. Commons caveated that, however, by saying "both your left and right boot must be the same color." The Army, Commons said, has an inventory of items including belts, boots, T-shirts, uniforms, and cold- and wet-weather gear. Each of those items has a certain wear life on them. Items such as cold-weather jackets last a very, very long time, she said. Other items, such as T-shirts, can be worn for less than a year before they ought to be replaced. The liberal policy for how uniform items can be mixed with the Operational Camouflage Pattern ACU allows the Soldiers more flexibility in the wear of their uniform, and additionally allows more time for the Army to eventually get OCIE in the new Operational Camouflage Pattern. "With all these different uniforms, we have to give the widest range of allowance to Soldiers to properly wear, and not have that come out of pocket," she said. "It also allows the Army to make sure they have proper stock in issuing facilities to support demand." Commons said that Soldiers can continue to wear the UCP ACU until Sept. 30, 2019. After that, they must show up to work wearing the Operational Camouflage Pattern ACU. Soldiers who are deploying or have an operational need are provided with OCIE items in the Operational Enduring Freedom Camouflage Pattern, also known as OEF-CP. "Deployers will never go without," Commons said. "The Army will ensure Soldiers get the appropriate equipment for their mission." The Army has been issuing the pattern to those deploying for some years and will continue to do so until the transition to Operational Camouflage Pattern. It will be some years before UCP OCIE is exhausted and is replaced with Operational Camouflage Pattern OCIE because the items are "quite durable," Commons said. Commons also said some Soldiers had expressed confusion about what camouflage pattern the name and service tapes should be in on their UCP-colored fleece jacket. She said the name and service tape pattern should match the color of the fleece jacket, not the pattern of the ACU the Soldier is wearing underneath. BLUE, WHITE AND READ THE REGULATIONS Commons said that for some time, the OEF-CP was worn only in Afghanistan. And while deployed to Afghanistan, the rule was to wear the tactical subdued American flag patch on the right sleeve. "Soldiers had only seen the subdued patch on that uniform, so they assumed that is the only patch allowed with that uniform," Commons said. But that is not the case. According to AR 670-1, paragraph 21-18, "All Soldiers will wear the full-color U.S. flag embroidered insignia on utility and organizational uniforms, unless deployed or in a field environment." Commons said that the OEF-CP ACU, and the Operational Camouflage Pattern ACU can, and should be, worn with the full-color American flag while in garrison. Soldiers should wear the subdued flag patch on those uniforms while deployed, or in a field environment. First sergeants, she said, will let Soldiers know when they are going to be in a field environment, and what the uniform requirements will be. World-ready officers remain just one fellowship away [2015-12-02] WASHINGTON -- Nearly every operation the Army engages in now requires, to some degree, joint, interagency, intergovernmental and international partnerships. For officers who want to excel in that type of environment, the Army offers a fellowship program through the Command and General Staff College, or CGSC. The Army's CGSC Interagency Fellowship Program accepts majors and lieutenant colonels that have achieved military education level 4 and have already filled key and developmental assignments. The deadline for applying is Dec. 30. "Everybody knows that nobody is going to operate in the future in isolation," said Tim O'Hagan, Command and General Staff College's Interagency program manager on Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. "This opportunity provides a very in-depth foundation of how our partner agencies work, so we are better able to collaborate in the future." The Army needs 50 officers, from all branches, to participate in the program, and those interested can apply for the fellowship by completing the instructions in Milper Message 15-221. Officers who are accepted into the fellowship will make a permanent change of station to Washington, D.C., in July 2016, will sign in on Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and will begin work at their agency in August. They will fill 10- to 12-month assignments at one of 28 interagency partners in Washington, D.C., including the Department of State, Customs and Border Patrol, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Marshals Service. The goal of the fellowship is to provide officers who participate with a broadening experience at operational and strategic level within the National Capital Region, O'Hagan said. "They get to understand the process, culture, capability limitations, and how that partner agency interacts internally and how it interacts with the broader interagency community, specifically the Army and DOD," O'Hagan said. When those officers return to their Army units, they can "cross-pollinate that experience and that knowledge to the larger force," O'Hagan said. Once officers complete the fellowship, O'Hagan said, the Army will take note of it so they can call on them again in the future. "There is a coding that Human Resources Command puts on their Officer Record Brief so if we need specific expertise in that partner agency, we know where to get it," he said. Col. Chuck Rush, an infantry officer who now works as an Army planner with the Office of the Chief of Staff of the Army, participated in the fellowship in 2009 and worked at the Department of State, or DOS. "I helped coordinate interagency policy, specifically I worked Afghan national security forces, and counter-terrorism issues as they applied to Afghanistan, but working for the State Department, and how they view things," Rush said. Rush said while working at DOS, he got a broader view of how different government agencies work together, and how they make decisions. "I learned about how other aspects of government works and makes decisions," he said. "In particular, how the senior political leadership across D.C. works to try to achieve - in this case it was during 2009, it was the strategic review for what we were going to do in Afghanistan after President [Barack] Obama was elected. So I really learned different aspects of how the State Department worked, how Congress worked, and how [the] State [Department] worked with other agencies within the government to try to get consensus on strategic decisions." Rush is a 1995 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. He's served in Italy, and on Fort Hood, Texas. He commanded a battalion on Fort Carson, Colorado, and worked as an operations research analyst on Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and Fort Belvoir. Rush has also deployed three times, twice to Iraq, for a year each, and once to Afghanistan in 2012 as a battalion commander. Rush said the fellowship he participated in helped better prepare him for Afghanistan. "And I think that experience was helpful to understand how the strategy was formulated and where I fit in that role when I deployed to Afghanistan in 2012. It's helped give me skill sets to reach across organizational lines," he said. "It helped me to work with other people who, while they are trying to achieve the same goals, they go about it in different ways, depending on how their organization operates. I think the fellowship helped set me up for that." For officers considering participation in the fellowship, Rush said that the fellowship prepared him to be exactly what the Army needs. "The Army is looking for and needs officers with a broad range of experiences - some of those experiences that span beyond military experience," he said. "More and more we find ourselves in deployment situations where we work with many other agencies, many other international partners. Having an understanding of how to work with people that are not from your organization is a valuable experience." There are 28 agency partners participating in the fellowship program: - Office of Management & Budget - Department of State - Department of Transportation - Drug Enforcement Administration - Department of Homeland Security - Federal Emergency Management Agency - Customs and Border Protection - Department of Agriculture - National Counter-Terrorism Center - Central Intelligence Agency - National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency - Defense Threat Reduction Agency - National Security Agency - Department of Labor/vets - U.S. Agency for International Development - Department of Veterans Affairs - Office of the Director, National Intelligence - Defense Logistics Agency - Federal Aviation Administration - U.S. Marshals Service - Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms/Explosives - Defense Intelligence Agency - Federal Bureau of Investigation - Department of Commerce - Department of Energy - Department of Justice, main - Department of Treasury - Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Army researchers developing self-righting for robots [2015-12-04] ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. -- When a Soldier trips over a rock, he picks himself up, dusts himself off, and presses on. Bomb-defusing robots, for the moment, are not so good at recovering themselves in the same way. Chad Kessens, a robot manipulation research engineer with the Army Research Laboratory, or ARL, part of the Research, Development and Engineering Command, on Aberdeen Proving Ground, or APG, Maryland, is working to make it so the autonomous vehicles used by Soldiers to investigate the inside of a room, or to defuse an improvised explosive device, can turn themselves back over, right side up, if they ever get flipped the wrong way. At his lab at APG, Kessens had an improvised explosive device-, or IED, defusing robot sitting atop a piece of plywood that was propped up slightly on one edge to create an incline. He flipped the robot over on its back. A nearby researcher initiated a sequence of instructions for the robot, and within seconds, the machine had flipped itself upright. His research, he said, will mean less time manipulating the sometimes complex controls of an autonomous vehicle to make it right itself, and fewer situations where a Soldier has to make the tough decision to either leave a robot behind or go into what may be a dangerous area to retrieve it. Kessens said he embarked on his work after having attended the Army's Route Reconnaissance and Clearance Course. "Soldiers take it to learn to use robots for finding improvised explosive devices by the roadside in theater," he said. "Through my interactions with the Soldiers and the trainers, who had been in theater using these robots, I learned that these robots turn over surprisingly often. And when they do, it can be difficult for the Soldier to return it to its upright state and continue the mission." One Soldier, he said, relayed to him a story about exactly the kind of scenario that would demand a robot perform on its own what now requires the intervention of an operator. An autonomous robot had flipped over, and the Soldier found himself spending an inordinate amount of time manipulating the controls trying to recover it. "After 20 minutes of trying, he couldn't do it," Kessens said. "He valued his robot so much that he got out of the safety of the vehicle and went over and saved the robot. And that is exactly the kind of situation that we don't want to put the Soldier in." When Kessens returned home, he looked into the scientific literature on what has been already done with self-righting robots. "I found several solutions, each for a specific robot," he said. "But the Army has several types of systems, and new systems will come out. I wanted to be able to develop a general framework for creating a self-righting solution for any robot. That includes tracked robots, legged robots, flying robots, and also very small robots that don't have a lot of memory or processing power. My work has been aimed at developing a framework that can be applied to any robot. You give me a robot, and I give you a self-righting solution for the robot, assuming it is physically possible." Kessens said that many times when a robot flips over in an operational environment, the user - the Soldier - can't see the robot, so he has no way of knowing what way the robot is actually sitting on the ground. "It can be really disorienting when the robot flips over and the camera is staring straight at the sky or the ground, and the operator might not have a good idea of how the robot is configured, which could make it challenging to make the robot return to its upright state," Kessens said. So Kessens has developed software that, when coupled with information about how a specific robot is designed, generates a set of instructions the robot can use to flip itself back upright. The software Kessens has designed does not run on the robot. Rather, the software runs on a separate computer, and develops an array of solutions the robot can use to flip itself upright, based on what orientation it might find itself in. Those solutions are then loaded into the robot, and it takes that set of instructions with it wherever it goes. "One of the nice things about the framework I've been developing is that it takes pre-processed plans and distills them down to something that doesn't take much memory or processing power," he said. "It runs before the robot ever hits the field." The smallest robots might not have on board the processing power to calculate their own self-righting solutions on the fly. But with Kessens' idea, even small robots with limited memory and processing power could carry onboard with them a set of already-developed self-righting solutions to get themselves back in the game. When a robot flips over, then it can assess its orientation, reference the set of instructions it has for that particular situation, and then use its own flippers, wheels or arms to turn itself upright again and get on with its mission. Kessens' work is fairly math intensive. His software is meant to develop solutions for any robot. But to do that, he first needs to provide to it specific information about the robot. He needs to take into account the size and weight of the robot, how many arms it has, its wheels and flippers, and how mass is distributed on the robot. If it has a mechanical arm, the software must know how long each segment of that arm is, how much the arm weighs, and if the weight of the arm is at the base, near the robot's body, or if it is at the end of the arm. Each moving part on a particular robot, he said, could potentially be moved or manipulated in a way that helps the robot right itself. On a robot with an arm, for instance, moving that arm in one direction could create the momentum needed to flip it back over. But that only works if there is enough weight on the end of that arm, if the arm is of the right length, and if the arm is moved quickly enough - and stopped quickly enough. "If I use a dynamic motion, where I drop the mass quickly and then make it stop suddenly, now we are injecting momentum into the system and we can use the momentum to make the robot right itself," he said. "It's a total physics problem." Within the "Autonomous Systems Division" and within ARL, Kessens said, researchers are working to "transform tools into teammates." "We want to take these robots and give them enough autonomy that they act more like a well-trained dog, where the Soldier can send the robot on a mission where it operates on its own for a couple of minutes, where the Soldier doesn't have to manage every joint motion and every single activity that the robot is doing," he said. If robots can be provided with a "higher level of cognitive ability," he said, then instead of multiple Soldiers needing to deploy and operate and retrieve robots, "maybe we can flip that ratio and have one Soldier command four robots, where each of those robots is doing something, and it acts more like a teammate." Kessens said that kind of relationship between a team of Soldiers and the tools they use is "a ways down the line. But self-righting is one technology that is a part of that, one step toward that vision. We want to give Soldiers a robot that has more self-reliance." Yama Sakura builds readiness for I Corps [2015-12-11] WASHINGTON -- The two-week Yama Sakura 69 exercise kicked off Dec. 5 in Osaka, Japan. The bilateral command post exercise is a key element of the U.S. shift in focus to the Pacific region. It's also one facet of I Corps' mandate to maintain readiness to operate across the Pacific, and globally if called upon. The annual Yama Sakura exercise revolves around a fictional scenario involving the defense of Japan. About 5,000 service members from both Japan and the United States are participating in the exercise, now in it's 34th year. This year, the center of the exercise is Camp Itami in Osaka. About 1,300 American forces are participating globally, and that includes service members from across the joint force. Army participation is "total force," and includes members of the active, Army National Guard, and Army Reserve forces. The primary participants in Yama Sakura 69 include Japan's Middle Army and the U.S. Army's I Corps, which serves as lead for U.S. involvement in the exercise. Planning for the exercise usually begins a year out. "The greatness of Yama Sakura is that it evolves every year with the lessons learned, as it gets passed down from every Yama Sakura in terms of our exercise design," said Lt. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza, I Corps commander. "But this is really about the defense of Japan -- the defense of Japan as a sovereign nation to restore their territorial integrity against a notional threat. It's a realistic exercise and it's portrayed from an operational perspective of what these headquarters would be doing." During the exercise, Lanza partners with Lt. Gen. Junji Suzuki, Middle Army commander, as a bi-lateral command team for the two headquarters. Yama Sakura, Lanza said, enhances regional stability and cooperation in the Pacific. "The cornerstone of our relationship with Japan is about peace and security in this region," he said. "When you look at what we are learning in the exercise, there are a couple of big things. What is the decision-making process between two commanders of different headquarters in a bi-lateral fashion? And how does that information get to the commanders as our staffs work together and are joined together, so that the commanders can make an informed decision?" Lanza also said new to Yama Sakura this year is a bi-lateral joint task force headquarters that both commanders report to, which provides additional learning opportunities for participants. Lanza said the exercise strengthens familiarity between U.S. and Japanese forces, and also keeps I Corps sharp, allowing Soldiers to maintain the readiness demanded of them so they can respond globally, or as part of their regional alignment with U.S. Pacific Command. At the forefront of that readiness, Lanza said, is familiarity of how to operate with their Japanese counterparts. "There is readiness being built here as you look at how the organizations would work together," Lanza said of the exercise. "You don't want to learn that the first time something would happen." Lanza said at Yama Sakura, I Corps develops readiness in terms of, among other things, how it works with the Japanese, how it operates as a joint task force headquarters to support U.S. Army Pacific or U.S. Pacific Command, how it works with land, air and sea components, and how it exercises its digital sustainment systems. Individual Soldiers also grow in their own readiness, he said, as they gain experience beyond the tactical level. "There is readiness going on here for how our young leaders learn to develop themselves at the operational level," he said. "A lot of our leaders just come here with tactical experience. But when you look at exercises like this, they grow as a team here in terms of how we conduct operational exercises." Also a benefit of Yama Sakura is the opportunity for learning, Lanza said. "With our mentors and our senior leaders out here, we have observer/controller teams here from the 75th Reserve Division -- there is readiness going on, because every day is a learning day," he said. "Every day we are learning as a team, we are learning what we did, how we make it better, and we are moving on with different things we can do to adjust to make our team better every single day, which is truly enhancing our readiness." COMMON LANGUAGE MEANS LITTLE FRICTION Despite the language barrier and cultural differences between the Japanese and Americans participating in Yama Sakura, Lanza said he found little friction in how the two forces operate together. "At this level, there is so much commonality of how we do operations, and there is so much here in terms of how we do fires, and how we do intelligence and how we make decisions based on sustainment -- how do we plan," he said. Contributing to the frictionless operations at Yama Sakura were language interpreters and Lanza credited their broad understanding of military terminology, which he said allows the Japanese and Americans to work together seamlessly as experienced military partners. Rather than focusing on the language differences between English and Japanese, he said, they can speak the common language of Soldiers. "I watch our kids do this. There is a commonality that you have between Soldiers that spans culture and spans language. It's the language of being a Soldier and the language of being a professional. You watch them work through that, and it mitigates any issues with language or culture. It's a privilege and pleasure to watch these kids work together and just the joy they get from being a team." PARTNERSHIP READY The United States is participating in more than just Yama Sakura in the Pacific. Yama Sakura 69 is just one part of the overall U.S. military strategy in the Pacific. Another part of that strategy is called Pacific Pathways. Participation in both Yama Sakura and Pacific Pathways are two ways I Corps develops and maintains its readiness to serve as an operational headquarters for U.S Army Pacific. Lanza said that right now the Army is gearing up for Pacific Pathways 16-01, which includes a Stryker brigade coming out of 7th Infantry Division. As part of that Pacific Pathways, the Army will partner with the military of Thailand for the Cobra Gold exercise; with Korea for Foal Eagle; and with the Philippines for Balikatan. Pacific Pathways 16-02 includes Hanuman Guardian in Thailand; Garuda Shield in Indonesia; and Keris Strike in Malaysia. Planning has also started for August's Ulchi Freedom Guardian in Korea. U.S. partnerships in the Pacific region, such as at Yama Sakura in Japan, "send a message that the U.S. wants to partner with our friends here," Lanza said. "I think when other countries watch this, and we do have some observers here that came through from different countries that the Japanese brought through, it sends a message about partnership, and sends a message about building partner capacity," Lanza said. "It sends a message about theater security cooperation, and it sends a message here that we want to work together to avoid miscalculation, and de-escalate conflict and keep this region peaceful and secure for every country that operates in this region." EVERYBODY WINS The Yama Sakura command post exercise involves a fictional scenario where the United States helps Japan reclaim sovereign territory from a fictional enemy force. At the end of the exercise, the results of the scenario are not as important as the collaboration that happened while the scenario was played out, Lanza said. "It's more than a box score at the end of the day," Lanza said. "Success started at the beginning when we brought our teams together. It started with reinforcing teamwork, our interoperability, the cohesion between the staffs. That's where it starts. "Every day we learn more and grow more as a team. At the end when we do our bi-lateral after-action review, I think the successes of what we have learned here as an operational headquarters, bi-laterally, what we have done here to increase our interoperability, and to build readiness, has made this exercise and this operation a success at every echelon." Additions to 2016 clothing bag include Operational Camouflage Pattern [2015-12-14] WASHINGTON -- Earlier this month, the Army's G-4 released the fiscal year 2016 clothing bag list for enlisted Soldiers. New additions to the clothing bag reflect the Army's adoption of the Operational Camouflage Pattern. The "clothing bag" is the name for the set of clothing items issued to Soldiers in basic training. That list of items evolves and changes year-to-year as the needs of the Army change. The clothing bag list is published yearly, and all Soldiers are required throughout their career to maintain in their possession serviceable items that match what is listed in the most current clothing bag list. New additions to the clothing bag this year include four sets of Army Combat Uniforms, or ACUs, in the Operational Camouflage Pattern, as well as a number of items that match the new color scheme. The total list of new additions is: -- tan riggers belt -- hot-weather combat boots in coyote color -- temperate-weather combat boots in coyote color -- ACU Operational Camouflage Pattern patrol cap -- ACU Operational Camouflage Pattern coat -- ACU Operational Camouflage Pattern trousers -- tan drawers, men's brief -- lightweight cold weather drawers -- mid-weight cold weather drawers -- black light duty utility glove -- coyote glove inserts -- black glove inserts -- tan moisture-wicking t-shirt -- lightweight undershirt, cold weather -- mid-weight undershirt, cold weather According to a spokesperson for Army G-4, changes to the clothing bag are made after taking recommendations from a number of sources, including Training and Doctrine Command, Soldier feedback, and limited user evaluations. The recommendations are presented to the Army Uniform Board, and subsequent adoption of new items is first approved by the chief of staff of the Army. Soldiers in basic training will start getting the new ACU in the Operational Camouflage Pattern later this month. For Soldiers already in the force, they can continue to wear the Universal Camouflage Pattern ACU until Sept. 30, 2019. It's not until Oct. 1, 2019 -- the very next day -- that they will be required to both own and wear the OCP ACU. The male and female clothing bags that are issued in basic training are similar in what they contain. Male Soldiers are issued about 83 items, while female Soldiers are issued about 74 items. Of those, more than 60 are exactly the same. Differences between the clothing bags are mainly due to clothing items that are designed specifically for either male or female Soldiers. Included in that list are male and female versions of the Army Service Uniform coat, male and female white dress shirts, male and female versions of the OCP ACU, the male neck tie versus the female neck tab, and various dress shoes. Male Soldiers are issued nine items more than female Soldiers because male Soldiers are issued seven tan underwear briefs as well as two white cotton crew neck T-shirts. Female Soldiers are provided a larger cash allowance to purchase their own undergarments. Both male and female Soldiers get cash allowances as part of their initial issue of uniforms in basic training. For male Soldiers, that $94.33 cash allowance is meant for them to purchase running shoes and socks for physical training. For female Soldiers, their larger cash allowance of $391.27 allows them to purchase running shoes, physical training socks, underwear, black dress pumps, and a handbag. To help enlisted Soldiers maintain the items they are required to have, as spelled out in the clothing bag list, the Army provides them with a yearly clothing replacement allowance, or CRA. For male Soldiers with less than three years of service, their CRA for FY2016 is $327.60. For those with more than that time in service, their CRA is $468. For female Soldiers under three years of service, their CRA is $349.20. Female Soldiers beyond the three-year mark will get an annual $468.80 CRA. Soldiers are meant to use the yearly CRA stipend to ensure they own all of the items listed in the clothing bag list, and that the items are serviceable. Soldiers are allowed to manage on their own how they use the CRA. The CRA shows up as an untaxed item in a Soldier's paycheck, annually, on the anniversary month in which the Soldier entered the service. For Soldiers who are assigned at a duty station where they are required to wear civilian clothing to work, the Army provides an initial civilian clothing allowance of $1,022.40. That clothing allowance is offered to Army officers who serve overseas, and to enlisted Soldiers world-wide. Army needs Soldiers to get amped up for Prime Power [2015-12-30] WASHINGTON -- Some know how to replace a light switch. They're electricians. Others know how to wire up an entire basecamp. Those are 12P "Prime Power production specialists," and the Army needs more of them in the training pipeline. Soldiers trained in the Prime Power production specialty deploy, install, operate and maintain power generation and distribution assets in support of theater commanders. Inside the United States, they are also part of the National Response Framework to provide power in places where the civilian power grid has gone down due to natural disasters. The Army has authorizations for 288 12P Soldiers in fiscal year 2016. In fiscal year 2017, the career field will grow to 297 authorizations, said Lt. Col. Scott L. Holland Jr., the Engineer Enlisted Branch chief with U.S. Army Human Resources Command, or HRC. Today, the Army has 293 Soldiers in the military occupational specialty, or MOS. While the 12P career field appears to be sitting pretty for now, its small size makes it susceptible to fluctuations in manning percentage, especially among sergeants. "Based on natural attrition, we anticipate the MOS to have a shortage at the entry level for sergeants," Holland said. By the end of FY16, he expects the career field to be short 12 sergeants. For FY17, that shortage is expected to grow - to a projected shortage of 39 sergeants. By FY18, he said, the career field expects a shortage of 45 sergeants. "I anticipate the in call for 12P's to remain through FY16," Holland said. Right now, the Army is accepting applications from both specialists and sergeants for reclassification into the 12P MOS, said James Bragg, chief of HRC's Retention and Reclassification Branch. "Currently, Soldiers approved for reclassification into MOS 12P may be entitled to a Tier 5 [$3,500 - $11,600] bonus upon successful completion of training," Bragg said. "In addition, Soldiers in the rank of specialist are eligible for promotion to sergeant upon graduation under the Special MOS Alignment Promotion Program." The 12P program does not accept Soldiers out of initial entry training. Instead, Soldiers who want to control all the power on a military installation must instead volunteer to transfer from their current MOS into the 12P program. Training for 12P lasts more than a year, and takes place at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. The Army needs Soldiers to apply now to the career field to ensure continuity of noncommissioned officer, NCO, leadership in the future. To apply for 12P, a Soldier must meet the minimum qualifications, including Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery composite scores of 110 on GT, 107 on TECH, and 107 on ELEC. Soldiers must have also completed high school-level algebra and have a 70 percent on the Basic Math and Science Test. The year-long Prime Power School is broken into three approximately four-month segments. First is a four-month academic period. Second is an operations phase, where every Soldier learns to operate a power plant safely. For the final phase of Prime Power School, Soldiers are split up into different tracks, where they will earn their additional skill identifier, or ASI, for 12P. Soldiers can earn the S2 mechanical equipment maintenance (power station) ASI; the S3 electrical equipment maintenance (power station) ASI; or the E5 instrument maintenance (power station) ASI. William E. Montgomery, program manager for the Prime Power School, said Soldiers can get up to 38 college credits for completing the school. A total of 32 of those credits come from nearby Lincoln University, located in Jefferson City, Missouri. Lincoln University adjunct professors teach the entire curriculum during the academic phase of Prime Power School. That phase includes mathematics, applied physics concepts, mechanical system engineering and electrical system engineering. An additional six hours of college credit is offered through the Army Education System for completing other portions of the Prime Power School. Additionally, the American Council of Education recognizes successful completion of Prime Power School with their own 38 credits. While there are small pockets of 12P Soldiers throughout the Army, about 39 percent of those assigned to the career field will end up on Fort Belvoir, Virginia; 22 percent in Hawaii; 22 percent on Fort Bragg, North Carolina; and seven percent on Fort Bliss, Texas. REWARDING CAREER Master Sgt. William P. States serves as the battalion operations NCO in charge at the 249th Engineer Battalion (Prime Power), at Fort Belvoir. He started in the Army as a heavy equipment operator, but in 2000 he made the move to 12P, and finished at the school in 2001. States said one of the reasons he thought about going into 12P was for the college credits it offered after attending the Prime Power School house. Those credits are something he said he had needed at the time to further his chances at promotion. As a 12P, States said he's been three times to Iraq, and has deployed around the United States for disaster relief "more times than I can remember." Disaster relief, he said, is one of the other reasons he signed up for the career field. "For me, it's interesting and rewarding to go out and restore power to a city that's lost power to a hurricane or ice storms, something along those lines," he said. States said that in the aftermath of natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina or Hurricane Sandy - both disasters where Army 12Ps have been called out to assist - Prime Power specialists were instrumental in getting the lights back on. "When a natural disaster hits, they will help with doing assessments, and installing back-up generators to critical facilities such as hospitals, fire stations, water pumping stations, and waste water treatment facilities," he said. "The 12P goes in, conducts an assessment to see what size generator is needed and where it needs to be hooked up, and you check for where the fuel would go. That's one of the most satisfying jobs is to help people in need, and be able to install the backup generators and restore power to critical facilities." Prime Power Soldiers also hook up the juice for commanders in deployed locations, States said. He said a Prime Power platoon could bring to a base camp four of their MEP-810 "Prime Power units," or PPUs. Each MEP-810 PPU contains two engines and two alternators, each of which produces 420 kilowatts of power. So a single MEP-810 PPU can produce a total of 840 kilowatts of power. Altogether, a Prime Power platoon could bring about 3,360 kilowatts of power to a base camp, if need be. A regular home needs about 5 kilowatts, he said. An average sized base camp, about 1,200 service members, could be powered with one 18-man Prime Power platoon, along with their four PPUs. States said that a unit of combat Soldiers who are going out to set up camp somewhere would initially make power for themselves using the tactical generators they bring with them. Such a unit might have multiple tactical generators set up all over their camp, each powering a different function or tent, for instance. In such a situation, each of those generators would end up producing way more power than what is required for the task to which it is assigned. "They might have 100 kilowatts or 200 kilowatts, but they only use half of that power - but that's what they have. That's what they use. The generator has to be on to make power. So even if they only have a couple of things on, they are using this large generator," States said. When such a unit realizes they will be on location for a while, and that the way they are producing power is inefficient, that's when States said Prime Power gets a call to come out and assist. A Prime Power unit can come in, set up a central power plant for an entire base camp, and tailor the power generated - and fuel consumed - for the actual needs of the base camp, States said. They can reduce fuel and power waste at a base camp, and as a result, they can reduce the number of times the base camp needs to have a fuel convoy come in to resupply. "If I have this central power plant, I can turn up or down, on or off, these other engines, and kind of scale it to the size of the load we need," States said. "So what we do if we have a large base camp and they are running on tactical generators, we can put our power plant in and get a lot closer to what their actual requirements are for running engines." When a base camp gets really large, contractors can come in to provide even more power - and Prime Power units remain behind to manage that. Even in this condition, 12Ps often provide a valuable service of serving as the contracting officer reps to oversee the electrical services that are being provided by the contractor. Energy security, and efficient use of power is a priority for the Army, and it's something States said has been on the minds of Prime Power Soldiers for a long time. Moving from tactical power, which is set up by a unit, to what Prime Power can provide, saves money, saves fuel, and reduces the need for convoys. One example of how a 12P unit streamlined power delivery happened at a location in al Asad, Iraq, States said. "They were running a lot of the power on spot generation," States said. In that location, multiple generators deployed across multiple locations were generating way more power than what was actually needed at the site. "By troubleshooting and fixing the grid that was there, we were able to restore utility power to those locations that were running on spot generation," States said. At the site, 12P Soldiers fixed underground cables that linked that unit to contractor-provided commercial generator power - and was then able to shut down all those spot generators. While the unit had been, altogether, generating 10,000 kilowatts of inefficiently-distributed power on its own, it was really only using about 2,800 kilowatts of that power. "So we took off the grid 10 megawatts worth of generators," he said. "In one year's time that would save them $10 million in fuel," he said. With reduced fuel use, States said, there are also reduced fuel convoys. "The amount of fuel we are using is so much less, we are taking out convoys - and that's less Soldiers on the road," he said. FOUR GREAT REASONS States said Soldiers might consider transferring to the 12P career field for several reasons. The first, he said, is that attending the school is a "great educational opportunity. They have a lot of great instructors. It's a really good year of learning." For Soldiers who pass the Prime Power School, they might, like States, also benefit from the additional college credits. Another reason, he said, is the opportunity to participate in disaster relief. "It is very rewarding to go out and help people in need. It's very gratifying." In the midst of an Army drawing down in end strength, the 12P career field, States said, is not looking to lose any Soldiers - they are struggling to keep them, he said. Soldiers who make the move to Prime Power may find more job security there. And finally, States said, "the skills and knowledge Soldiers take away after having done this job transition great to civilian life." For Soldiers concerned about finding work after time in uniform, he said, Prime Power can really electrify a resume. Soldiers interested in applying to become a Prime Power production specialist should contact their unit career counselor for details on how to make it happen. First female West Point commandant of cadets assumes new role [2016-01-05] WASHINGTON -- For the first time in its history, the Army has installed a female officer as the commandant of cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. Brig. Gen. Diana M. Holland, herself a 1990 graduate of the school, assumed the role of commandant of cadets during a Jan. 5 ceremony there. She is the 76th officer to hold the position. Last year, when the announcement was made that Holland would assume the role, acting Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning said the officer was well-suited for the position. "Diana's operational and command experiences will bring a new and diverse perspective to West Point's leadership team," Fanning said. "She is absolutely the right person for this critical position." Lt. Gen. Robert L. Caslen Jr., the academy's superintendent, said Holland is "immensely qualified" for the position, which has tremendous impact on the development of future Army officers. "The commandant of cadets has such a significant role in our mission to train, educate and inspire leaders of character for service to the nation as Army officers, as they prepare to fight in America's wars," Caslen said. "The commandant is the 'M' in military in the United States Military Academy." He said the job carries with it the burden of responsibility for the military, physical, character and social development of more than 4,400 cadets. Caslen said he felt that Holland's past performance in the Army demonstrates her suitability for leading so many young Americans in their training and development as Army officers. "[She] has a phenomenal reputation throughout the Army," he said. "The Corps of Cadets is getting a great commander and an outstanding leader." In the 1990 "Howitzer," the USMA yearbook, an entry for Holland, written by one of her peers, came near to predicting her assumption of the role of commandant. Caslen read that entry to show just how close to true the prediction came. "We knew Diana was destined for greatness when she won the drill off in Beast," Caslen read. "And now she is charge of the regimental drill. Look for her 5'1" frame in her pickup truck back at West Point in a few years as a history (professor) and many years later as the [superintendent.]" Caslen pointed out that Holland does still drive a pickup truck, that she had returned to the school in 1999 to serve as a history instructor, and that she was now assuming the role as commandant. "There is still some time for that Howitzer prophecy of one day becoming a superintendent -- so it may just come true," he said. SURREAL "Returning to West Point this time has been quite surreal for a number of reasons, not the least of which that's it's eerily close to fulfilling my Howitzer entry," Holland said. "That entry was written by Beth Richards, my roommate of three and half years, and very close friend. She couldn't be here today, but I can hear her right now, shouting from afar, 'I told you so.'" Holland said accepting the position is humbling. She said she was only able to achieve what was needed for the appointment because of the support and mentorship of those she has worked with and for over the last quarter of a century. She started off by citing her classmates at the academy -- many of whom attended the ceremony -- as having had great influence on her. "I so appreciate your demonstration of support. That sense of teamwork really started the day we came together in 1986. 'The Proud and the Mighty,' proved to be an appropriate motto," she said. "I distinctly remember challenging myself to work harder, to be as fast or as strong or as skilled or as smart as many of you. It was a healthy competition that inspired me to be better every single day. But when I wasn't as strong or skilled or smart I could always turn to one of you for help or advice. I am grateful to have served with you and most importantly, to be counted as one of you." Holland also cited a litany of Army leaders, both officer and enlisted, who influenced and mentored her throughout her career. She also named her own father, who she said had been instrumental early on in steering her toward West Point and an Army career. "It was my dad who first suggested to me that I consider attending one of the service academies, back when they began admitting women. I was only 8 at the time," she said. "But remarkably, I had already expressed the desire to serve in the military. His suggestion immediately took hold. And it was he who dropped me off here almost 30 years ago to become a West Point cadet. I appreciate your love and support for convincing me early on that I could achieve anything -- I just had to work hard and treat people right." The new commandant also thanked her husband, Jim, for his continued support. "I love you very much," she said. As the 76th commandant of cadets, Holland is responsible for the development into Army officers of more than 4,400 cadets. It's a mission she said she is ready for, and excited to take part in for several reasons. "First, to be part of a winning team that demonstrates continuous excellence and contributes to our nation in such significant ways in times of peace and conflict," she said. "Second, the opportunity to work with incredible, talented young men and women such that you find here -- they are an inspiration, and serve as a constant reminder that the future of our Army will be in good hands. And finally, to contribute to a purpose that is so consequential for our Soldiers. Our Soldiers, who achieve amazing things, overcome incredible obstacles around the world and make great sacrifices every single day. They ask for very little in return, really only that they be well-led. It is particularly gratifying to support a mission that answers that call. For those reasons, and then some, I appreciate this portent and look forward to working with this team." Holland was commissioned in 1990. She has served as a company, battalion and brigade commander. In her most recent assignment, she served as deputy commanding general (Support), for 10th Mountain Division (Light), Fort Drum, and in Afghanistan. She served twice in Iraq, and three times in Afghanistan. Ground-breaking Soldiers, vets attend State of Union [2016-01-13] WASHINGTON -- Maj. Lisa Jaster, an Army Reserve officer and the third woman to graduate the Army's elite Ranger School, was among 23 guests invited to sit with Michelle Obama during the State of the Union address, Jan. 12. "Hopefully I can be cool," she said before the speech. "I think it's a huge honor. And I look forward to it." Normally there would be 24 guests sitting with the first lady. However, during President Barack Obama's last State of the Union, there were only 23. Like the Army often does during a formal banquet, where a seat at the table is left empty to represent Soldiers who have been killed in action, the first lady left a seat to her left empty, to represent civilians who have been killed through gun violence. 'BORN TO BE RANGER' In October 2015, Jaster, an engineering officer and graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, became the third female Soldier to graduate Ranger School. It's an accomplishment she said she'd been preparing for most of her life, even before she knew she wanted to go to the school. "I've worked out. I took a weightlifting class in high school. I've always enjoyed physical challenges," she said. "I've always been interested in tactics. One of the reasons I love being an engineer[ing] officer is because part of our job is to build the battlespace for the tip of the spear. So my preparation for Ranger School started well before the concept of Ranger School came into my mind." When she learned from a first sergeant that the course had opened up to women, she said, she knew she wanted to attend. Her husband, a Marine Corps officer, agreed. "The very first response my husband had was 'you were made to do this, Lisa.'" Last year, the defense secretary announced that all military jobs across all services would be opened to women. That's something Jaster said she hadn't believed would ever happen during her time in uniform. But had those options been open to her when she was enrolled at West Point, before she got her commission, she said she thinks not much would have changed for her. She'd still want to be the engineering officer she is today, she said. "In all honesty, I love being an engineer[ing] officer," she said. "But I definitely would have gone to all the cool schools. That was just my personality back then, and 16 years later, it hasn't changed. I definitely would have tried to go to all the schools. And while on active duty, I would have tried to get company command of a Sapper unit, which is now open to women, but wasn't back then. And I would have tried to be in more forward units than were allowed." ANOTHER GROUND-BREAKING ENGINEER Another West Point graduate - and as of Jan 5, the first female commandant of cadets at the academy - Brig. Gen. Diana Holland, also attended the State of the Union address as a guest of U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York. She said the event was for her, quite memorable. "I had the opportunity to meet a number of representatives and their guests, including two wounded warriors undergoing treatment at Walter Reed Medical Center," Holland said. "The entire evening was a once-in-a-lifetime experience I will never forget." With new opportunities for women now opening in the Army, Holland said she is excited for female Soldiers now having more choices in how they serve - but for herself she said she wouldn't have done anything different. "There have certainly been a number of exciting changes in policy this year that officially allow women to serve in all specialties," Holland said. "It marks the last step in an integration process that has been ongoing for as long as I've been in the Army. I wouldn't change anything about my career. The Army and the Engineer Regiment have been good to me and provided me with wonderful experiences along the way. With the changes in policy, many more women will have the same or more opportunities." Holland assumed the role of commandant of West Point just last week. Since accepting the burden of responsibility for the military, physical, character and social development of more than 4,400 cadets at the school, she said, things have started off smoothly - and she's been glad to get back into the groove at her alma mater. "My first week back at West Point has been everything I expected and more," she said. "It has been fun to re-acquaint myself with the institution, the talented staff and faculty, and most importantly, get to know the current Corps of Cadets. As always, the cadets are impressive and inspiring. It doesn't get any better than this." VETERAN SOLDIERS Sitting with Jaster in the first lady's box at the State of the Union were three other Army veterans: Naveed Shah, Earl Smith, and Oscar Vazquez. Shah, born in Saudi Arabia, came to the United States as a boy. He was just 13 when the 9/11 terrorist attacks took place and said the experience drove him to serve his new country. "Their fear stuck with me and made me feel like joining the Army was something that would allow me to give back to a country that has given me so many opportunities," Shah said. Shah enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2006 and was assigned to 1st Brigade, 2nd Infantry as a public affairs specialist. He later deployed to Iraq in 2009 with the 13th Sustainment Command out of Fort Hood, Texas. Operating out of Joint Base Balad, Shah traveled the country and remembers seeing how the country was shaping, especially on Iraq's Election Day. "I remember we were pulling security and there were reports of violence all over, but the lines were still full. That made me never want to take voting for granted gain," Shah said. Shah left active duty in 2010 and had a rough time transitioning. Ultimately, Shah joined the U.S. Army Reserve and only recently finished his commitment in 2015. Today, Shah is a real estate agent, and is working toward a finance degree by using his GI Bill. And while he's actually been to the White house twice before - during one visit he met both the president and vice president - he was still honored to have been invited to sit with the first lady during the State of the Union. "I didn't believe it," he said. "I was floored." Army veteran Earl Smith also sat in the first lady's box during the address. He actually met the president before, back in 2008 when the president was a senator on the campaign trail. Then, Smith was director of security at a hotel in Texas and met then-candidate Obama in an elevator. There, he passed on to the would-be president a cherished memento of his time in uniform: a patch from the 101st Airborne Division. Obama initially didn't want to accept the patch, though he eventually relented and put the patch in his pocket. Smith told Obama that he could look at the patches and "remember that we are America, and this is what we are about. We are about service and sacrifice, and that we are all in this together." The president ended up carrying the patch with him for the remainder of his campaign, and the patch will end up in the presidential library after Obama leaves office. Attending Obama's last State of the Union is something Smith said "means the world to me." Also sitting with the first lady was Army veteran Oscar Vasquez, who served from 2010 - 2014, including a tour in Afghanistan. He is now an advocate for science-technology-engineering-mathematics, or STEM, education for under-served youth. Vice chief: Creative leaders needed in Army aviation [2016-01-14] WASHINGTON -- In a rapidly changing global security environment, coupled with declining military budgets, the Army needs top-notch aviators trained by creative and experienced commanders who can wring the most out of what little training budget they have, the Army's vice chief of staff said. "The creativity you apply in training your units will develop the next generation of leaders and shape the future of our Army," Gen. Daniel B. Allyn said. "Training in garrison cannot be viewed as 'routine.' It must replicate the complexity of flying in Iraq or Afghanistan and it is incumbent upon those of you who have flown and fought in these demanding environments for more than 14 years to train-up the next generation of pilots." Allyn spoke at the start of a day-long series of an aviation-related panel of discussions at the headquarters of the Association of the U.S. Army in Arlington, Virginia, Jan. 14. Allyn also laid out requirements for aviation modernization that he said were critical to ensuring Army aviation's continued prowess on the battlefield. Among those were increased manned-unmanned teaming, an accurate definition of future vertical-lift requirements, improvements to the power and agility of the current fleet, development of "lethality that pairs precision and discrimination for engagements in complex terrain," and enhancements to survivability through improvements in ability to both detect and defeat new enemy capabilities. "This is not a wish-list," the general said. "These are must-haves to deliver an aviation force capable of dominating future battlefields." Maj. Gen. Michael D. Lundy, commanding general of Fort Rucker, Alabama, and the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence, laid out the latest details regarding progress with the Army's Aviation Restructure Initiative. The aim of that initiative is to allow the aviation branch to continue to provide to the Army and the nation the same asymmetric advantage it has had for the last 14 years. Lundy said the Army has almost entirely divested all of its aging OH-58D Kiowa Warrior aircraft. There are only two squadrons left. "We will finish divestiture here during FY16, minus the 1-17 [Cavalry Regiment (AIR)], which will roll-up and be the last squadron that will operate in [South] Korea. They will do their last deployment," he said. Also on track is divestiture of training aircraft on Fort Rucker, including the TH-67 Creek and the OH-58 Kiowa. This week for the first time, he said, courses are already underway training new pilots with the new UH-72 Light Utility Helicopter. Divestiture of UH-60A Black Hawks is behind, however, the general said. "That's an issue." Those Black Hawks, moving out of the National Guard, will be replaced with more modern UH-60Ls, and those will eventually be converted to the UH-60V variant, which features a glass cockpit. DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY With programs underway now, the Army is looking to improve an aviator's ability to see in degraded visual environments, to field an improved air-to-ground missile with the Joint Air to Ground Missile, to provide improved engines in the Black Hawk and AH-64 Apache aircraft through its Improved Turbine Engine Program, and to enhance aircraft survivability. Those programs, and others Lundy called "disruptive technology," are on track and moving forward, despite earlier concerns. "A lot of these programs were at risk, or they were just good ideas," Lundy said. "I will tell you that they are all in very good shape right now. And even though they will come slower than we want because of budgetary concerns, all the programs are safe; they are on track; they are in our long-range plans, and they have got great support across the Army staff." MORE FLYING HOURS A chief concern for Lundy, he said, is the limited number of hours Army aviators are getting in the cockpit. "This is an area where I have great concern right now," he said. "Our flying hour program is not what it needs to be." The general said the Army is taking a "holistic look" at aviation flying hours to find ways to alleviate the problem of aviators flying fewer hours than what is needed to maintain proficiency. Lundy also said that every Army operation globally involves an aviation component, and that the operations tempo for aviators is "higher than what we saw, even during the surge, if you look at a mission tempo perspective. We are expecting Army aviation to be out there, to be able to do that. We need to be training at a much higher level to maintain our proficiency, especially as we think about decisive action and combined arms operations." An in-the-works solution for dealing with the increased operations tempo, Lundy said, is to finally fill the cockpits of equipment in the 11th CAB with Soldiers. That unit has the gear it needs already, but it now needs personnel. That, he said, is a priority for Army aviation. The "No. 1 priority is to man that CAB," Lundy said. "If we do that, it will help us mitigate some of the op tempo issues." Right now, he said, "demand signal is outpacing our capability to support all of it. We are having to make hard choices." Milley assesses 'aggressive' Russia, others, as challenges for US, ally security [2016-01-22] WASHINGTON -- Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley has always said readiness is his No. 1 priority. The Army has a legal and moral obligation, he said, to be prepared. During a presentation Jan. 21 here, the general laid out some ideas of what he believes the Army must be ready for - some examples of why readiness is important. Chief among the examples of what to be prepared for is Russia, a nation whose recent activities he characterized as being "aggressive." Russia, he said, poses the "No. 1 threat" to the United States. It's a nation, he said, that at least for now is the only one that poses an "existential threat" to the United States, due to its capabilities - in particular, its nuclear capability. But what makes Russia a threat, he said, isn't capability alone. It's primarily its intent. While determining intent is difficult, he said, looking at its recent activities in Europe gives a good indication. "Russian behavior, internationally, since 2008, has been aggressive," he said. He pointed to its activities in Crimea, Ukraine, and Georgia as examples. "Those have been independent, sovereign countries since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and 1991," he said. "For 25 years these have been internationally recognized countries in the United Nations. And their borders have been violated by military armed force - some surrogate and some actual." That kind of activity in Europe, he said, has not really been seen since World War II. Today, Russian activity there "has fundamentally changed people's view of the security situation in Europe." At the same time, the Russians have raised spending on their military; are modernizing their military, including aircraft, tanks and ships; have restructured their ground forces; modernized field artillery capabilities, air defense, electronic warfare and cyber capabilities; and modernized their military doctrine. "They clearly are expanding or at least trying to re-establish their global influence and their global presence," he said. Domestic issues, he said, are also good examples of the intent that is driving its activities. The Russian population, for instance, is in decline. "If you're a significant leader in the Russian government, you are seeing a demographic decline of the ethnic Russian population. That's worrisome," he said. "And if you look at that in combination with other things - health care for example - there is a steady decline in birth rate. There is a high mortality rate. And they have a stressed and poor health care system. And their labor force is declining in pretty significant rates. Even a rudimentary look at the Russian economy shows an economy under significant stress that is struggling." A look at Russian history also contributes to a better understudying of intent, when it comes to recent aggression. Russians, he said, likely view NATO differently than how Americans or Europeans do. In 1990, Germany reunified, bringing the entirety of that country inside NATO. Since then, three former Soviet nations have become part of NATO: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. NATO is growing, and its border is moving "closer and closer" to Moscow. "That's worrisome" for them, he said. "It creates fear in the mind of Russian leadership. This is a country [that] has a living memory of a land invasion that was brutal to their country: the Nazi invasions of World War II," he said. "There are many veterans and folks alive today that clearly remember those days, which were horrible to the Russian psyche." Russian nationalism and pride are also on the line - significant contributing factors to an understanding of Russian intent. "They were part of a large empire back under the czars. They were a superpower in the Soviet era," he said. "Current leadership in Russia has clearly indicated in public speeches that they thought the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet empire was the most significant negative event that has happened in the last 100 years. There is an attempt ... to recoup their place." Couple that with ongoing land disputes, he said, "All that adds up to a ... potential for bad things. And you just don't know," he said. "We can't with precision predict exactly what will happen. It is a situation that clearly bears closer scrutiny." AGGRESSIVE VERSUS ASSERTIVE In Asia, he said, there are two significant ongoing security situations. First is North Korea, the other is China. There are now more than a million service members amassed on each side of the demilitarized zone on the Korean peninsula. Koreans on both sides of the border, he said, constitute a divided ethnic-linguistic group. "And like most ethnic-linguistic groups, at some point in time, they end up being one whole people," he said. "I have little doubt that at some point in time in the future, the peninsula will be whole again." How and when that will happen and what the environment will look like afterward, he said, is uncertain. Also uncertain is how that event will play out for the United States. A recent testing of a nuclear weapon in North Korea has made the situation on the peninsula tenser. "For us, vigilance and readiness are fundamentally important," he said. In China, he said, there is an "entirely different set of geopolitical logic at play." China is a rising economic power, Milley said, adding that there is now underway a shift from a North Atlantic-based global economy to a North Pacific-based global economy, though he emphasized that it is "shifting," rather than having already shifted. It's a process he said that he believes will be permanent, but could take several generations to be complete. With such shifts in economy, he said, military power follows. And the Chinese military, he said, "is significantly modernizing their capabilities." Milley contrasted China and Russia by differentiating them with the words "assertive" and "aggressive." "The Chinese are not an enemy," he said. "Their behavior internationally, at this time, in my view, is assertive. It's different than aggressive. The Chinese, to date, are not invading foreign countries, crossing borders, doing things that would be internationally categorized with the word aggression. "That can change, but it hasn't changed yet," he said. "They are developing their capabilities, but I would caution anybody from saying that China was an adversary, from a military national security standpoint, or an enemy, at this time." Milley said the Chinese are now interested in becoming a great international power, and to "have a say in how the rules are written," though he said he doesn't believe the Chinese are interested in war. The general also said that his predecessor, now-retired Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno, has in the past met with and had a dialogue with his counterpart in China's People's Liberation Army. Milley said he too plans to have a similar dialogue, but has not yet made that happen. It's something he said is critical to have happen early, because such relationships can be useful to have in place were conflicts to arise later on. "In the moment of crisis ... you don't want to be meeting a person for the first time during the crisis," he said. "If there is a crisis and you can literally pick the phone up and literally talk to that person, because you have known each other for a while, that tends to take the edge off." The Middle East, he said, is wrought with instability now, and that instability has provided opportunity for the rise of threats such as the Islamic State or al Qaeda. He also made clear that he believes that neither the United States, not any other country outside the Middle East can solve the instability problems there. "We can help and advise and assist and do a lot of things," he said. "But solve? It's not going to happen ... the ultimate solution has to come from the peoples of those countries." Iran, he said, remains a "maligning influencer, sponsoring terrorism" which "requires vigilance and bears close watching." So Iran, North Korea, China and Russia, plus the rise of non-state actors like the Islamic State and al Qaeda "present threats or challenges to U.S. national interests," he said. "Any one of which could result in significantly more conflict than already exists, none of which we can anticipate. And each of which has a unique strategic, operational and tactical challenge. "We have to be prepared as an Army or as a military for all of it," he said. MORAL OBLIGATION For the Army, he said, the role in being ready is to deliver ground combat power, and to "win wars in defense of the United States," he said. The Army has a mandate to prepare, so readiness is the Army's No. 1 priority. "We have a moral and ethical obligation to our Soldiers and the American people to ensure our people are ready," he said. "It's the fundamental driver of all of our commanders, organizations, and staff throughout the Army." Readiness, he said, means manning units to the right strength. It means ensuring Soldiers have been to the professional military education schools they need to attend, and it means that units, from the squadron to the division - at all levels - are collectively trained. Equipping as well is critical, he said, "to make sure Soldiers have the best equipment, and that it is well maintained." And development of leadership for those Soldiers, he said, is a "key component of combat power ... perhaps the most important component." Development of that readiness, he said, takes a long time. And it's perishable as well, he said. "It takes many years to develop platoon sergeants and battalion commanders," he said. "It takes years to build the cohesion, the teamwork necessary to fight at a collective level. It takes a long time to build ready ground forces." Milley also said a critical component of readiness is taking care of a Soldier's Family. A Soldier's "first order of loyalty" is to his Family. "If you are expecting a Soldier to focus and fight in ground combat, you must ensure his Family is taken care of," he said. "Their first love is always going to be their children or spouse. If they know their children or spouse is being taken care of ... they are not going to worry about that, and they will focus on ... ground combat." REBUILDING THE FORCE By the end of fiscal 2018, the active Army expects to have drawn down in size from 490,000 to 450,000. The service will also shrink the size of several brigade combat teams and will cut 17,000 civilian employees. Were a conflict to rise quickly, the Army might need to grow in size again to accomplish its mission. Milley said one idea the Army is looking into to make that process happen more quickly is the development of several "very, very small" train, advise and assist brigades. Each of those brigades would look like a regular unit, insofar as chain of command is involved, but "you just wouldn't have Soldiers. So maybe you have one per combatant commander. You have five or six of these brigades in existence, and they would on a day-to-day basis train, advise and assist foreign armies on behalf of the U.S." Were conflicts to arise that require the Army to grow quickly, he said, "at least you have cohesive chains of command" that exist. "You can take Soldiers from basic training and Advanced Individual Training, and roll them underneath those existing chains of command and it would significantly shorten the amount of time it would take for that brigade to become combat effective." Guard should retain Apaches, force must stand at 980K, commission says [2016-01-28] WASHINGTON -- The National Commission on the Future of the Army, or NCFA, made its recommendations public today at the Hall of States in Washington, D.C. Chief among those recommendations, one of 63 in total, is that the Army National Guard should retain some of the AH-64 Apache helicopters it currently has. The NCFA was tasked by Congress to examine the structure of the Army and policies related to size and mix of the force. Additionally, the commission was charged with evaluating the Army's decision to move all Apache aircraft from the Guard to the Regular Army. The team of eight commissioners and about 40 staffers began meeting in April 2015, and were given until Feb. 1, 2016, to deliver their recommendations. Lawmakers and the Army will decide which of the recommendations to implement and how. "The Army appreciates the independent insights and recommendations provided by the National Commission on the Future of the Army," said Brig. Gen. Malcolm Frost, chief of Public Affairs for the Army. "We are currently assessing the report and expect its recommendations to provide opportunities to strengthen the effectiveness of our force. That assessment process will be led by the secretary of the Army and chief of staff of the Army and include the coordinated efforts of the director, Army National Guard and chief of Army Reserve. The Army's evaluation of the costs, benefits, and risks outlined is just now beginning. We thank the commission for their insights and hard work." ARI ANALYSIS Within the commission's report was an evaluation of the Army's Aviation Restructure Initiative, or ARI, which directs movement of all Apache aircraft out of the Guard and into Regular Army units as a readiness and cost-saving measure. The Guard, which disagreed with that initiative, championed its own solution, which involves keeping six battalions of Apache aircraft in place. "The task to evaluate the Apache transfer was perhaps the most polarizing of the issues we had to look at," said retired Gen. Carter F. Ham, former commander of U.S. Africa Command, and one of the eight commissioners on the NCFA. "There were strong feelings on all sides with regard to how Apaches should be distributed and employed across the force. We felt it important for us to try to understand the issue from as many different perspectives as we could." Ham said the ARI is a "well-crafted program, it saves costs, while retaining a good level of operational capability. But it does take all the Apaches out of the National Guard." The Guard option, he said, provides "strategic depth" for having Apaches in the Guard, but costs more than the ARI. "In some of the wartime modeling we did, the NGB [National Guard Bureau] alternative was less able to satisfy demand over time in a wartime setting," Ham said. "The commission looked at a number of other alternatives." The NCFA looked at both plans, conducted their own studies, and concluded that the total Army should keep 24 Apache battalions. Of those battalions, 20 would be located in the Regular Army, with 24 aircraft each. The Guard would retain four battalions of Apaches, each with 18 aircraft. COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW To arrive at its recommendation, the commission met with the secretary of the Army, the chief of staff of the Army, aviation leadership in the Regular Army, the chief of the National Guard Bureau, the director of the Army National Guard, and aviation experts in the Guard at both the state and unit level. Additionally, commissioners and staff held meetings with personnel in 31 aviation units: 12 Regular Army, 16 Army National Guard, and three Army Reserve. "One of the specific tasks to us in the law was to be comprehensive," Ham said. "We took that matter quite seriously." Also in the commission's report are suggestions on how the Army can fund 24 Apache battalions across the force. DRAWDOWN TOO DEEP The Regular Army expects to draw down to 450,000 Soldiers by the end of fiscal 2018. The NCFA has said that level of manning must be the bottom floor. Ham said the commission found that number to be enough, though barely enough, for the Army to accomplish the missions it will inevitably be asked to do in the future. In all, the commission recommends that the total Army not dip below 980,000 Soldiers. The breakdown by component is 450,000 in the Regular Army, 335,000 in the Guard, and 195,000 in the Army Reserve. "That's the absolute minimum necessary to fulfill the Army's requirements to the nation," Ham said. Even with that 980,000 Soldiers across all three components, there will need to be better interaction between them, he said. The commission found "gaps" and "seams" across what is supposed to be a Total Force, and they will have to be repaired, Ham said, in order for the Army to be effective at the bare minimum of 980,000. More resourcing, and difficult decisions will be required to make up for the capability gaps that limited number of Soldiers are unable to support, he said. "We identified some specific capabilities, including aviation; air and missile defense; military police; chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear response teams -- some capabilities that still have significant shortfalls even in that Army of 980K," Ham said. Dr. Kathleen H. Hicks, former principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, and one of the eight commissioners on the NCFA, said the commission supports Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley's prioritization of readiness within the Army. "The commission endorsed the CSA's priority on readiness," she said. "We agreed that readiness should be the first priority for funding. The environment is not settling down. It is an environment of persistent conflict. As a result, you need to make sure you have the forces for the Army ready for the range of missions they are facing." Hicks said the commission identified two potential areas where the Army might have its readiness tested: Europe and Korea. THREATS IN EUROPE In Europe, she said, looms the specter of an increasingly aggressive Russia. "What the commission looked at quite carefully is the threat that could be posed by Russia going forward," she said. "Russia has annexed Crimea. The neighbors to the west are quite concerned about it. And so are several NATO allies." Europe also serves as a logical staging and launch area for crisis in the Middle East as well, she said. The Army needs a strong and ready presence there. Hicks said the commission's analysis of the Army in Europe has left them concerned about the Army's ability to contribute there in the event that conflict should arise, and the ability of the force in Europe now to deter further aggression by the Russians. "As a consequence, one of the recommendations we had was to place permanently into Europe an armored brigade combat team," she said. The ABCT would replace the rotational ABCT the Army has already assigned in Europe. NORTH KOREA She said in the case of a North Korea attack on the south, or a collapse of North Korea, it is "highly likely" the Army would need to engage in long-term stabilization operations there. "We think there is significant risk in not having the Army prepared for that kind of contingency," she said. "That's why we make the recommendation that 980K is minimally sufficient. We do think there is an ability to plan for forces to be mobilized over time to deal with that contingency. But we haven't seen evidence of strong planning for that." The commission, she said, recommends against the Army's idea to replace a permanent combat aviation brigade now in Korea with a rotational one. "We felt that the decision the Army was prepared to take in 2019 to move to a rotational combat aviation brigade in South Korea is a wrong decision," she said. "We argue instead the Army should retain the permanently stationed combat aviation brigade it has in South Korea now." RISK MITIGATION Hicks also said the commission identified readiness and capability gaps within the Army, including things like Army artillery, air defense; and chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosives, or CBRNE, capability. Those gaps might be hard to fill with just 980,000 Soldiers. Hicks said the commission sees other current Army capabilities as less at risk, and said if need be those units could be reduced to provide the capabilities the commission believes the Army has in short supply. "We tried to point to different areas of potential risk mitigation inside the current Army," she said. "An example we pulled forward is that the [infantry brigade combat teams] are at less risk than other parts of the force. And if forced to make tradeoffs, we think that some key enablers and even combat aviation should be enhanced, if necessary, at the risk to reducing infantry combat team capacity." The commission recommended that if end strength cannot be increased above 980,000, the Army should consider reducing two infantry brigade combat teams in the Regular Army to get the manning it needs for those shortfalls in capability. TOTAL FORCE In the future, the Army will need to make do with a force that is barely big enough for its many missions. To make that happen, it will need to become more adept at taking full advantage of all three of its components: the Regular Army -- often mistakenly referred to as "active duty" -- the Army National Guard, and the Army Reserve. Together, the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve are referred to as the "Reserve Component." One of the primary tasks for the NCFA was to make recommendations on force mix -- how the Army makes use of Soldiers from all three of its components. "There was a lot of discourse about the mix of Regular Army versus Reserve Component, modernization, the cost, the size of the Army," Ham said. "Congress looked for an independent assessment to provide them some recommendations to work through some of these difficult issues." Ham said the commission spent a substantial amount of time looking into how the Army and the nation can make better use of the Total Force. Most of its recommendations, in fact, are a result of that effort. "The Total Force policy, of the Regular Army, Army Reserve and the Army National Guard has some gaps and seams in implementation," he said. "It's not being fulfilled in the manner that the secretary of the Army, the chief of staff of the Army, the chief of National Guard Bureau, the Congress or the president fully envisions. So we made some recommendation in regard to enhancing the Total Force policy of the Army." The commission recommended, for example, that the Army create a pilot program to test multi-component approaches in aviation, and it even identified some approaches that could be considered in designing such a program. Now retired Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III served as one of the eight commissioners on the NCFA. He, along with other commissioners, participated in some 320 engagements across the United States, during which they met with all 54 adjutant generals from across the United States and its territories. Coming away from meetings with Soldiers in Guard units, he said he was left with the understanding that Guardsmen want to be a part of the Army's activities -- they don't want to be left behind, he said. "There are a lot of Soldiers out there in a lot of the units that we spoke to that are very interested in deploying," Chandler said. "They want to be in the mix. They want to get out there and serve their country. They don't just want to go to battle assemblies." EQUITABLE DWELL AND BOG One recommendation of the commission, Chandler said, is for the Army to take a harder look at dwell time and "boots on the ground," or BOG time, for Soldiers across all components of the Army, to find a way to make them more similar. "Currently, Soldiers in the reserve components have a BOG time of about nine months for their deployment," Chandler said. "And some portions of the Regular Army are up to 12 months. You want a fair and equitable process that everybody is there for the same amount of time. It helps with unit cohesion and effectiveness." The commission recommended that the secretary of Defense allow flexible involuntary mobilization periods to achieve common deployed periods for all components. Chandler also said that for the Army to take full advantage of all three of its components, it will have to make greater strides toward bridging the cultural divide that exists between them. "We think it's important for each of the components to understand the culture that makes them specific and unique," he said. "One of the recommendations we asked for was the ability for Regular Army Soldiers to serve in the National Guard and the Army Reserve, and for Army Reserve Soldiers and National Guard Soldiers to serve [in the Regular Army.] There are some challenges with that, but we think it's doable." Chandler said that for the Army to make full use of all three components, Soldiers in those components will need to recognize that "together as a Total Force, we are a better Army and much more effective and efficient." GAPS AND SEAMS Chandler said there are several areas across the Army where fixes could be implemented, or where on-going fixes should continue to be funded, so that the Army can in the future make the best use of the Total Force. Included in those areas identified is a pay system that doesn't account for all Soldiers, an education and leadership development system that is often duplicative and non-integrated, and a recruiting system that has the components competing with each other when they should be working together. Regarding pay, Chandler said, the Army has "tried for many years to develop a process that allows each of the components to communicate with each other" in both pay and personnel issues. The Army already has a solution for that problem, Chandler said, with the "Integrated Personnel and Pay System-Army," or IPPS-A. It is a web-based, self-service, 24-7 system that integrates personnel and pay across all components for a soldier's entire career. IPPS-A has already been fielded in one Guard unit, and more will be underway in 2018. The commission recommends that the Army continue to adequately fund the program and also accelerate its deployment. COOPERATIVE RECRUITMENT To create a strong Total Force for the Army, the commission recommended common recruiting and marketing efforts across all three components, Chandler said. "One of the many challenges we have noticed is ... we are all competing for the same person, regardless of the component you are serving in. As the pool of potential recruits continues to diminish in the country, we have to have a process where we are all after the same thing: to ensure as a Total Force the Army has the people it needs, that we can recruit into the service, regardless of component." The commission noted that in 2014 the Army recruited 115,000 Soldiers across all three components, using some 11,000 recruiters. But those recruiters were all competing for the same recruits. Chandler said what's needed is a "consolidated effort that helps each one of our recruiters focus on the mission of manning the Army, and not manning the Army Reserve, the Army National Guard, or the Regular Army. We believe that will help to ensure we are not in a food fight over the same person. "So if you want to be in the National Guard, it starts off as a Total Force effort, and then when we sit you down and talk with you, we kind of help you find out where the right component is that will best serve your needs, your ideas, and where you want to go in the future." The commission recommended centralized marketing for all three components, as well as integrated recruiting. They also recommended Congress authorize a pilot program that would allow recruiters across all three components to receive credit for any Soldier they put into the Army, regardless of what component they end up enlisting into. ONE ARMY SCHOOL SYSTEM "A National Guardsman who might be an engineer in Florida, flies over Fort Leonard Wood on his way to a school in South Dakota that teaches his engineer military occupational specialty. That's a very ineffective way to deliver education," Chandler said. The Army, he noted, has an engineering schoolhouse at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and the National Guard Soldier could have gone there to school instead. The commission also noted that the Army National Guard has 54 "Regional Training Institutes" across the United States that have unused capacity, and that Regular Army Soldiers often travel long distances to attend schools when they might instead attend a Reserve Component school that is near to their home installation, or might even be on their home installation. Implementation of the Army's "One Army School System," or OASS, is already underway, and is designed to make more efficient use of all schools across the Total Force. "We have made recommendations for the Army to move out on this and accelerate the process of this change," Chandler said. Chandler said OASS provides benefit beyond efficiency. He said having Soldiers from all three components in the same school house can further the effort to strengthen the concept of the Total Force. In such an environment, he said, Soldiers from all three components "actually participate in the same classroom and start that sharing experience of what it means to be a Guardsman, a Reservist or Regular Army Soldier." The recommendations of the NCFA are not binding on the Army. Instead, the recommendations, and the entire report, will be given to Congress, the president and the U.S. Army. The U.S. Army and Congress will work together to decide what of the recommendations to implement, and how to fund those changes. "I think the commission hopes for a thoughtful assessment and review of the findings and recommendations that we have offered -- recognizing that our report is one input among many," Ham said. "We hope our report contributes to the dialogue and the hard decisions that both the Congress, and the Army will have to make, well into the future." Army needs appropriated funds to ensure energy security [2016-02-05] WASHINGTON -- While the Army is making great progress meeting its energy efficiency and renewable energy targets, this is not enough, said Richard G. Kidd, the deputy assistant secretary of the Army for energy and sustainability. What the Army needs are funds allocated specifically for energy security to improve the resiliency of installations in the face of growing threats to the energy grid, said Kidd during a presentation on Capitol Hill, Feb. 3. Gaining energy security for some of the Army's most important installations requires an array of investments, like on-site power generation and micro-grids, where the return on investment is increased security, rather than cost savings. "Their return for the country is a ... security return," Kidd said. "What the DOD gets paid to do is security." Kidd was part of a panel of nine military officials from the four military services and DOD who spoke to senate staffers on Capitol Hill about energy-security matters. The senior Army official told staffers that lawmakers have asked for more energy security on installations, citing both the National Defense Authorization Act and the "Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007" as examples. "But there is no budgetary mechanism that allows us to actually go out and do a cost-benefit analysis and buy that energy security," Kidd said. "Energy security does not fit into traditional cost-benefit analysis as applied to efficiency projects. We are including energy security as part of ... other projects. It would be very difficult within the current budget climate to get the military construction funding needed to build more resilient installations. "Congress asks the military to do more for energy security, and all services are doing a great job of incorporating energy security as part of other efforts, such as renewables, or performance contracting or test and evaluation programs," Kidd said. "But very few times are we getting the kind of security that we need to protect against current threats at the scale required to ensure mission success for an entire installation. Our doctrine requires that our installations serve as platforms of power. To ensure this occurs these same installations must also be platforms of resiliency." In Fort Drum, New York, the Army has installed technologies that help the installation increase its energy efficiency and reduce total power demands. Getting the installation to make more efficient use of its electricity was really the first step in providing energy security for Fort Drum. The second step was to work in concert with a private sector partner to install a bio-mass electrical plant on the installation - converted from a former coal-fired plant - that can provide power to the installation in the event that the civilian power grid goes down. The facility is operated by a civilian partner, not the Army. When the power goes out around Fort Drum, the Army installation keeps on humming, using the energy generated on site. In November, Fort Drum demonstrated the ability to take care of itself when engineers there shut the installation off from the civilian power grid to see if it could sustain itself under its own production capability for two days. Fort Drum, Kidd said, was able to carry out its mission without connection to the wider power grid by "proving the resilience of the installation." The Army now wants to do the same thing in Hawaii by connecting Schofield Barracks, Wheeler Army Air Field, and even a local hospital together into one micro-grid powered by on-site generating capacity. "In that case, we are going to partner with the state and the local utility. The plant is going to be well above the shoreline," he said, adding that away from the threat of tsunamis, and it will be "a platform of resiliency" in the region. The Army plans to develop a bio-fuel facility in Hawaii, and expects that by the end of the summer the deals will all be signed to make it happen, Kidd said. The plant should be producing power by early 2018. Like on Fort Drum, the electrical production facility in Hawaii won't be limited to providing power to the Army installation. Instead, it will actually feed electricity back into the civilian power grid, in partnership with the local power company. "The goal is to have an asset that is valuable to both the Army and the local community and utility," Kidd said. "If generation is built for exclusive Army use, it becomes very expensive and offers fewer benefits for the broader grid. So Hawaiian Electric gets a generating asset safe from tsunamis that they can use to manage their grid while the Army gets enhanced energy security - a win for all. It's only when the commercial power goes off locally that the Army's own power plant will shine. While the rest of the island will have to make due with no electricity, the Army installation will be able to continue to conduct its missions: providing security for the nation and providing support for local authorities. Kidd said that in places like Hawaii or New York, where utility prices are high, the savings generated by energy efficiency projects can be used to make additional investments in energy security projects. In other places, the savings from energy efficiency are not enough to invest in energy security. So in those places, Kidd said, the Army needs appropriated funds to buy that security. "Right now, all of our appropriated energy funds have to go through a cost-benefit analysis," he said. "That's how Congress racks and stacks and values our energy investments. But a micro-grid to provide energy security on our installations should be thought of as an investment in military capability. We buy it, not necessarily to use it every day, but to have it in the event of a conflict or emergency. So if you build a micro-grid, it will not necessarily have a positive internal rate of return. What it will offer is military capability to protect our installations." One place where appropriated funds for energy security could do some real good is on Fort Lewis, Washington, Kidd said. "At Fort Lewis, Washington, the Army enjoys some of the cheapest power in the country, thanks to hydroelectric dams," Kidd said. "Even if we save 50 percent of power that costs 4-cent per KwH - we can't build a micro grid on 2 cents in savings. "Fort Lewis ... is where the I Corps headquarters is," said Kidd, noting that it is I Corps that will have to fight in Korea if a situation ever arises there. "We're never going to get energy security at Fort Lewis, Washington, without appropriated dollars." FY17 budget provides raise for Soldiers but focuses on readiness [2016-02-09] WASHINGTON -- In its fiscal year 2017 budget request, the Army - similar to its sister services - has requested for Soldiers a 1.6 percent pay raise, the largest increase in four years. "The 2017 request for a 1.6 percent pay raise for our service members ... recognizes the unique demands and sacrifices of our service members," said Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Ierardi, director of force structure, resources and assessment with the J-8 directorate, part of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "It buys down that gap between where we want to be and where we are. The increase in that pay is the largest one over the last four-year period." Ierardi spoke at the Pentagon, Feb. 9, where he outlined key portions of the FY17 Department of Defense budget. The services have also requested a 2.9 percent increase in basic allowance for housing, and a 3.4 percent increase in basic allowance for subsistence. READINESS IS PARAMOUNT Outlining Army budget specifics was Maj. Gen. Thomas A. Horlander, director of the Army budget. "Prioritize readiness," said Horlander, calling out just two words on a slide he used to brief the Army's budget. "As we built this budget and sought to strike the best possible balance within our top-line funding level, we ensured that our absolute No. 1 priority remained readiness. This remains our commitment to the nation - to send its sons and daughters as ready as they can possibly be for the missions they are sent to do." That emphasis on readiness is in line with Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley's own priorities. "Readiness to fight and win - ground combat is and will remain the U.S. Army's No. 1 priority. And there will be no other No. 1," Milley said at his swearing in last August. "We will always be ready to fight today, and we will always prepare to fight tomorrow." The Army budget request for FY17 is $148 billion dollars. That includes $125 billion in the base budget, plus an additional $23 billion in overseas contingency operations funding. The request is approximately the same as what was enacted for the FY16 budget. Within the base budget, requests across all top-line budgetary categories have decreased from what was enacted in the FY16 budget. The only exception is the request for operations and maintenance. That increased from $43.8 billion in FY16 to $45.2 billion in FY17. "This is the funding primarily used to generate current readiness," Horlander said. "Resourcing constraints did not allow us to modernize our equipment and facilities at the same pace as we sought to minimize the risk to current readiness." Readiness, he said, has been maintained and protected - at the cost of modernization and end strength. For the Regular Army, the budget requests $35.4 billion for operations and maintenance funding, "that seeks to resource a more balanced readiness across the force, instead of the tiered readiness of previous years, where only approximately one-third of the Army's brigade combat teams were ready for contingency force operations," Horlander said. Now, Horlander said, the Army's readiness goals are to have two-thirds of its Regular Army forces ready at any time. To support an Army focused on "decisive action" readiness, and with a capability to conduct "major combat operations," the budget proposal requests funding to support 19 combat training center rotations. "These rotations are focused on decisive-action training for both the Regular Army and the reserve components," Horlander said. Funding is also requested for regional engagement activities and training missions with allies and strategic partners. That includes activities like Pacific Pathways. Additionally, the FY17 budget request asks for increased funding for sustainment of Army equipment and an increase in depot maintenance to bring Army equipment to a greater level of repair. For the reserve components, the budget requests $9.6 billion in operations and maintenance funding. For the Guard, the funding, like for the Regular Army, "seeks to grow readiness to include decisive action training, sustain the force, and fund critical base operations requirements." MODERNIZATION For FY17, the Army's modernization budget has gone down from an enacted $24 billion in FY16 to a requested $22.6 billion in FY17. That $22.6 billion includes $15.1 billion for procurement as well as $7.5 billion for research, development, testing and evaluation. That reduction represents a risk where the Army has opted for readiness over modernization. "We assess that this risk will continue until we achieve a greater balance between readiness, end strength and modernization, early into the next decade," Horlander said. Nevertheless, the budget request includes 12 new-start programs, and no program terminations, he said. The request supports aviation modernization, funds improvements to ground combat vehicle fleets, and begins efforts to increase lethality and mobility for brigade combat teams. "The Army requires a very broad and encompassing set of modernization efforts to be capable of being successful in any number of diverse missions in support of the combatant commanders," he said. "Our focus remains on the Soldier and the squad, providing aviation and combat vehicles that provide mobility, protection and fire power; to mission command that enables situational awareness and networking; to the Soldier portfolio that provides the individual Soldier with lethality, survivability, and increased visibility." Within the $22.6 billion modernization budget request, the Army has asked for $15.1 billion for procurement. This request focuses heavily on aircraft procurement - about $3.6 billion is requested for aviation. The investment plan is in line with the Army's Aviation Restructure Initiative, though Horlander said that with the recent release of the recommendations by the National Commission on the Future of the Army, "the Army is studying the recommendations and is assessing the impact to its FY17 funding program." For aviation, the budget request prioritizes modernization of Apache, Black Hawk and Chinook helicopter fleets, Horlander said. He said the Chinook fleet conversion, for instance, will be completed in FY18. He also said the budget includes funding for aircraft survivability improvements. Within ground combat vehicles, the FY17 request provides funding for improvements to the M1 Abrams tank, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, fielding a third Stryker double-V hull brigade set, and conversion of additional flat-bottom hull Strykers to double-V hulls for a fourth double-V hull Stryker set. The research, development test and evaluation budget request for FY17 is about the same as that which was enacted for FY16. Within that budget are two new program starts for the Army infantry, including "a ground mobile vehicle for a nine-man infantry squad, and a mobile protected fire power that enhances direct fire capabilities of infantry brigade combat teams," Horlander said. INSTALLATION READINESS The Army's FY17 budget request for facilities is approximately $1.3 billion, less than what was enacted in FY16. It includes "one of the smallest military construction budgets in recent years." For FY17, the Army hopes to fund 29 military construction projects across the force, including 15 within the Regular Army, 10 within the Army National Guard, and four within the Army Reserve. Within the facilities request, only Army Family housing saw an increase. There, growth is aimed at two Family housing construction projects in Korea. OVERSEAS CONTINGENCY OPERATIONS This year, the request for overseas contingency operations, or OCO, funds totals $25 billion, Horlander said. It supports Operation Freedom's Sentinel in Afghanistan, Kuwait and Qatar. It also supports Operation Spartan Shield within U.S. Central Command, Inherent Resolve in Iraq, and the European Reassurance Initiative, or ERI. The ERI, Horlander said, "is a means to ensure our NATO allies, and to deter a resurgent Russia, and constitutes much of the growth in the Army's OCO request." The $2.8 billion requested within OCO funds for ERI supports the rotation of an armored brigade combat team and its enablers. It also supports a full armored brigade combat team static set of prepositioned stocks. NEW CHALLENGES Horlander said the Army's budget for FY17 was designed with readiness as a No. 1 priority. But other issues have driven its development as well. Horlander cited five "evolving security challenges" that are now a threat to the United States -- challenges that have recently been called out by defense secretary. Among those challenges are a return of "great power competition" - which is evidenced by Russian actions in Europe, and a rising China; the threat to the United States and its allies by North Korea; Iranian influence; and the continuing fight against global terrorism. The general emphasized the importance of balancing readiness, end strength and modernization as a way to sustain the ground forces that will be necessary to generate support to combatant commanders now and into the future. He said reduction in modernization and equipping accounts puts the Army's technological advantage at risk. Reductions to funding for installations and infrastructure puts future readiness at risk, he said, because Army facilities will require more funding in the future to compensate for years of disrepair. "Marginalizing one component of readiness to benefit the other may net a near-term solution, but may create an unacceptable risk in the out years," he said. "The U.S. Army needs to retain force structure and end strength, readiness and cutting edge equipment - all critical components to our national security." Commission voices concern over budget cuts [2016-02-11] WSAHINGTON -- The decision to draw down the Army budget and end strength was based on a set of assumptions that has proven to no longer be true, said now-retired Gen. James D. Thurman. "I think we have major warning signs in front of us right now," Thurman said, while testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Feb. 11. "Not speaking as a commissioner, I'm telling you what I see as I watch the resurgence of Russia. They are basically in Syria, they are conducting their own National Training Center rotation. They have gone to school on us. As I watch that unfold, and I turn to Korea and I watch what is occurring over there in Korea -- [it] is probably more dangerous today than what it has been in a long time." Thurman serves as one of the commissioners on the National Commission on the Future of the Army, or NCFA. The commission was tasked by Congress to examine the structure of the Army and policies related to size and mix of the force. Additionally, the commission was charged with evaluating the Army's decision to move all Apache aircraft from the Guard to the Regular Army. The NCFA delivered a report of their findings and recommendations to Congress in late January. Thurman, along with three of the eight NCFA commissioners, was on Capitol Hill to answer questions regarding the content of that report. The global security situation has changed dramatically since the decisions were made to draw down the Army budget and end strength, Thurman said, and the assumptions that those decisions were based on have changed. "We are not out of Afghanistan. We're probably putting more in. We've got ISIS, ISIL, Iraq, Syria, we've got Africa, North Africa -- that whole issue that's going on in there," he said. Thurman recommended a serious re-look at what size the Army needs to be, and what size its budget needs to be and to include in that look the new challenges that are faced by the United States. "It's going to be expensive, and I believe we have to come to grips with that," Thurman said. When the commission delivered its report, one of its primary recommendations, one of a total of 63 was that the total Army should not go below 980,000 Soldiers. That number included 450,000 in the Regular Army, 335,000 in the Guard, and 195,000 in the Army Reserve. 'MINIMALLY SUFFICIENT' ENOUGH? Now-retired Gen. Carter F. Ham, who served as chairman of the NCFA, said the commission's recommendation of 980K was a bare minimum. The commission was asked to arrive at a number inside a set of fiscal constraints. An end strength of 980K, he said, was the smallest they thought the Army could get, given those constraints. "We were careful in the words that we chose. We chose 'minimally sufficient,' at an Army of 980K," Ham said. "Minimally sufficient. I think it's a real question to say is that the Army America wants? Does America want a minimally sufficient Army? If additional funding were available, then certainly a larger force. Personally, I'd say halt the drawdown now, and make a much more comprehensive assessment of the operating environment and then see what that cost would be." In June 2013, the Army announced it would reduce the total number of Regular Army brigade combat teams to 32, down from a total of 45. In 2015, the Army announced additional cuts that would bring the total number of BCTs down to just 30. Today, the Regular Army stands at 32 BCTs. The NCFA, in their report, suggested in one of their recommendations that cutting an additional two BCTs -- infantry brigade combat teams in particular -- might be an option to free up manpower for other areas of the Army deemed to be at higher risk. Were that to happen, the Regular Army would have just 28 BCTs. One lawmaker, concerned about that loss of BCTs, asked about the timetable needed to stand up a new BCT, if need be. Ham said he remembers in the mid-2000s watching the birth of a new BCT. The time it took to stand up that IBCT, he said, was 18 months. But he also noted that it was a period of "unconstrained resources," and that the availability of those resources might have accelerated the development of that BCT. "On a normal basis, I would say two to three years would be a more likely time frame to start from scratch and build a BCT," Ham said. GROWING LEADERS TAKES TIME Now-retired Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III also served as a commissioner with the NCFA. He told lawmakers that the biggest challenge for building a new BCT from scratch is the leader development part. It's not finding bodies to fill slots, but finding the right Soldiers, with the right experience, to put into the right positions. "It takes 20 years to make a battalion or a brigade commander," Chandler said. "It takes 20 years to grow a sergeant major, and 15 years to grow a first sergeant. Expansion -- we'll get the people into the Army. We'll get the equipment where it needs to be. But to find the leadership in order to fill out that organization and make it effective takes time. There are just not a lot of them to spare." Finding young Americans willing to join the Army remains a challenge, the NCFA commissioners said. Among those who want to join, finding those who are qualified presents an additional challenge. One lawmaker pointed out that that he had seen numbers indicating that anywhere from two-thirds to three-quarters of applicants to the Army have been rejected for physical fitness reasons. He asked commissioners how important that lack of qualified candidates is to the Army, and to sustaining the all-volunteer force. "Fundamental to this country is maintaining the all-volunteer force," Thurman said. "That is something easily broken in my view. Having available manpower that you can recruit from, I think, is very important and is something I think we should take notice of in the country, as we see this population decline." JROTC CADETS OFF-LIMITS Young Americans in high school can today join the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program, if their school allows such a program to exist. While the program is good at developing character and promoting physical fitness, it remains off-limits for recruiting, said Thomas R. Lamont, the vice chairman of the NCFA. "I think we are legislatively prohibited from actually recruiting from that base," Lamont told interested lawmakers. "But the mayors of the cities in which those schools exist, love them. I have had the opportunity to visit JROTC units in Chicago, under Mayor Daley. He said 'give me more.'" Lamont said he has visited schools with JROTC programs in cities like Philadelphia and New Orleans, and found that the schools have used the programs as a way to keep youth out of gangs, for instance, and that where the programs exist, "we have found their graduation rates, their grade rates, their ability to go into higher education far greater than in our other schools. We'd love to have the ability to recruit from those people. But we can't do that." Ham suggested the Army provide a "continued emphasis, or perhaps renewed emphasis on the JROTC program," saying that while it doesn't lead directly to enlistments or to service, "I think it does in terms of building character, physical fitness and leadership amongst America's youth, I think is a very wise investment." When it comes to finding Americans who want to serve in the Army and who are also able to meet the criteria to serve, Chandler said it's not just an Army problem, it's a national problem that is "going to take a great deal of courage and commitment and a long-term vision to solve." SOLVING RECRUITING CHALLENGES The former sergeant major of the Army said he sees two possible solutions to dealing with recruiting challenges. The first, he said, is to lower entry standards and to bring those enlistees up to what is needed once they enlist. For that option, he said, the Army accepts risk in that it would need to leave many new Soldiers in the training base for a longer period of time before they can serve. The other option, he said, is to make the Army a better deal for those who meet existing standards, but who are also looking at other services, universities or businesses. "You are going to have to increase recruitment efforts, and that's primarily other options and dollars, to get people who are qualified at the current standard to come in," Chandler said. When it comes to retention -- keeping a Soldier in service for longer -- Ham highlighted for lawmakers an issue that keeps some Soldiers from staying in service: the difficulty of moving seamlessly and smoothly from one component to another. Policies that make it challenging for a Soldier to move from one component into another might keep them from staying in the service at all. "We heard loudly and clearly from Soldiers of all components that they would like the ability to move between components more seamlessly and more easily, depending on how their life situation changes," Ham said. "If you're 18, the Regular Army might make all the sense in the world. When you get married and want to go to college, the Army National Guard might make all the sense in the world to do that. And then perhaps you find you are attracted to civil affairs, so the Army Reserve might be a good place for you. Right now the policies are constraining of that kind of movement." Naval history makes Philadelphia ideal location to recognize exemplary STEM personnel [2016-02-12] PHILADELPHIA -- Because Philadelphia has been such an integral part of Navy history and technological development for some 240 years now, said Vice Admiral Bill Moran, chief of Navy personnel, it was an ideal location for some of the brightest military officers, enlisted personnel and members of the Senior Executive Service to be recognized for their accomplishments by professionals in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. Moran served as keynote speaker for the 11th annual "Stars and Stripes" dinner and awards program, Feb. 19, which was held concurrently with the 30th annual Black Engineer of the Year Award STEM conference. This year the U.S. Navy hosted the Stars and Stripes dinner, an event that recognizes top-performing African-American military and civilian leaders in the armed forces. Before an audience of active and retired service members, defense contractors and invited students, Moran highlighted how Philadelphia was at the center of the development of the Navy technology that contributed to the United States gaining independence from the British. Philadelphia, Moran said, is a city with "extraordinary" naval history. In 1776, he said, the city was "by far the largest seaport in North America ... the home of the country's most talented ship architects, engineers and builders." Naval engineers gathered in Philadelphia and built just six frigates to defend America against the British. The British at the time had nearly 300 such ships. But the "unmatched speed, agility and firepower brilliantly designed into those six frigates was revolutionary for the time," Moran said. "Those young American engineers dreamed what they could see, and what they could dream they could make a reality." At the Stars and Stripes dinner, Moran said, participants would not only celebrate exceptional intelligence and fearless ambition, such as what was displayed in the early years of the United States in Philadelphia, "but something even more important and rare: the moral courage to do what is right and to ultimately prevail, the essential quality for those who would change the world, where change does not come easily." The Stars and Stripes dinner and awards event was just one part of the larger BEYA conference, which ran Feb. 18-20 in Philadelphia. Earlier in the day, as part of the Stars and Stripes portion of the BEYA conference, about 140 active and retired general and flag officers, members of the Senior Executive Service, and other senior professionals in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields, participated in mentoring more than 300 young American students that had come from Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia. About 100 of those students were invited to stay for the Stars and Stripes dinner. Moran told those students he hoped that if they took home just one thing from the conference, it would be that they could one day "see yourselves in our shoes." Moran had shown a short video before the start of the dinner, which highlighted Navy service and technology. It featured an array of young Sailors and naval officers who spoke about their service and what it meant to them. Moran told the students that those young people in the video, those Sailors and naval officers, were very similar to them. "Just a few years ago, the voices you heard in the video were your own ... they had many of the same thoughts, dreams and options," Moran said. "They wanted to share with you their experiences, and send you a message from their hearts. They want you on America's team, their team, to become part of something big and very important. To make a difference, but to also discover the magic of science and promise of engineering ... that is what tonight is all about. And when we're through, ask yourselves if you are ready and willing to start now. And if you are, all of us, the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force and Coast Guard -- we all have a spot for you on our team." During the awards portion of the event, eight individuals were honored for their contribution to the military. "We are here to lift those individuals up, to make them real to America, and to make them real to the young men and women who we met and mentored this afternoon," Moran said. "We applaud their service, their dedication and their humility. What better way for us to remember the legacy of this great city than to reflect on the American spirit that is still ignited and shining brightly in these individuals tonight." Those honored as part of the 11th Annual Stars and Stripes recognition program include: -- Navy Capt. Mark Glover, program manager for Navy Communications and Global Positioning System, Navigation Program Office -- Navy Fleet Master Chief April Beldo, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations N1, manpower, personnel, education and training -- Navy SES Jimmy D. Smith, director of integrated nuclear weapons safety and security, Strategic Systems Programs -- Army Brig. Gen. Carl A. Alex, assistant deputy chief of staff, G-3/5/7, U.S. Army Forces Command -- Air Force Lt. Col. Keithen A. Washington, assistant director for officer commissioning programs, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Personnel and Readiness -- Marine Corps Lt. Col. David Everly, junior military assistant to the secretary of defense -- U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Jason A. Merriweather, chief of the Office of Military Personnel, Coast Guard headquarters -- National Guard: Air Force Brig. Gen. Leonard Isabelle, chief of staff of Joint Forces Headquarters, Michigan Air National Guard; and commander, Michigan Air National Guard Via: Youth must be mentored toward STEM careers now [2016-02-21] PHILADELPHIA -- When's a good time to start mentoring youth for their futures and to get them interested in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM? Right now, said Gen. Dennis L. Via, commander of U.S. Army Materiel Command. Via was among the 140 senior-level military officers from across the U.S. armed forces, civilian senior executive service professionals, and others, who took part in a Feb. 19 series of STEM-themed mentoring sessions in Philadelphia for high school-aged youth. The mentoring sessions involved more than 300 youth from Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia, and were part of the military-related Stars and Stripes-sponsored portion of the larger Black Engineer of the Year, or BEYA, STEM conference. The BEYA conference is now in its 30th year. Via's Army Materiel Command is home to one of the largest collections of engineers and scientists in the Army -- about 12,000 in all. Those scientists, engineers and mathematics professionals will not always work at AMC, he said, they will eventually retire. So now is the time to get American youth interested in such career fields, he said, to prepare them to take over the roles of those who will eventually depart from his own organization and others like it within the other military services. The defense of the nation, he said, depends on American youth finding their footing in STEM career fields. "At AMC, our priority is always being able to ensure that our Soldiers have the best equipment and capabilities to perform their mission," Via said. AMC professionals are responsible for the researching and development of future systems Soldiers use: from the uniforms they wear, to the weapons they carry, to the platforms they travel in. Those scientists, he said, are key in ensuring America maintains the "technological advantage we enjoy currently against any other peer competitor in the world. They are constantly in search of the late-breaking technologies, game-changing technologies, to make sure that our Soldiers always have the best technology, the best systems and capabilities to accomplish their missions." So today, he said, is the time to lay the groundwork to bring new blood into AMC, by mentoring youth to let them know what is possible for them, and by encouraging them to become involved in STEM career fields. "That means elementary school and middle school," Via said. "We have to reach them at that time and make STEM exciting for them. We need to invest in the teachers we have; we need to invest in educational programs, the laboratories and facilities our children are exposed to. We have to ignite a passion in them to want to pursue a career in STEM." Via said he knows such a passion exists in youth, and must be tapped so it is not lost. He said he witnesses it first-hand when youth come to visit AMC facilities he oversees, for instance. "I see the excitement in their eyes when they visit some of our facilities, and they see technology and robotics and autonomous vehicles, and see the new materials we are utilizing to support the men and women in uniform," he said. "They want to be a part of that. But we have to reach them early." In small rooms at the convention center here, small groups of students were able to sit down at a table next to military leaders -- high school students next to four-star generals -- and ask whatever questions they wanted about possibilities for their own futures. Leaders weren't talking at students here -- they were talking with students. "We gave them tidbits for success, things we think they should know at this point in time," Via said. "We talked about the opportunities available. We talked about how important it is to prepare -- they are in school now, and they have to work hard in their studies, because the opportunities for them are limitless. We talked about what is available in the area of STEM. And finally, we tried to instill in them to believe in themselves, about what is actually in the art of possible." Like Via, many of the mentors involved were general officers and flag officers, both retired and active duty. Civilians from the Senior Executive Service and others were also involved. This year, a total of about 140 mentors participated in the mentoring sessions -- the largest number of mentors in the event's history. More than 300 students participated as mentees -- also a record. Via said that cadre of mentors embodies many years of experience. Access to that experience, he said, can be of great value to youth who are looking for direction on how to move forward on a plan for a successful future. "Being a mentor means being able to reveal to students the path ahead -- things they may not see -- but we can, because we have the benefit of time, wisdom and experience. We can share that with them," Via said. "Mentoring is so critical, especially at this point in their lives, where they are attempting to decide which path they are going to pursue. There are so many competing demands out there, so many distractions that can take them off course." Having a mentor, formally or informally, can help students keep on track when such distractions might otherwise lead them astray, Via said. "I wouldn't be here today, serving at this level, without numerous mentors throughout my career -- mentors that go all the way back to high school," the general said. QUESTION EVERYTHING Adm. Cecil E. Haney, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, was one of the 140 mentors who participated alongside Via in Philadelphia. Before the mentoring session officially kicked off, he gave those youth gathered for the opportunity a bit of advice: ask a lot of questions. "Avoid the feeling of embarrassment of asking a question or two or three," he said. "I can't say enough about that. Sometimes it's unpopular to cause a class to be a little bit longer by raising your hand and saying I don't understand that. But it's very important. That's how we grow and learn. And don't just do it today. Continue to question things. In my opinion, it makes us a lot smarter." He challenged students, before they went into the mentoring sessions, to prepare a question to ask. He also offered them anecdotal evidence -- as only an experienced mentor can do -- to demonstrate how being prepared to ask a question can keep them from being caught off guard and having to answer one themselves. Haney said in his youth he attended Eastern High School in Washington, D.C. There, he cited two instructors as having been instrumental in moving him through his education: "Mrs. White" and "Mrs. Driscoll." "Mrs. White had that innate ability to understand if Cecil Haney was either not paying attention or didn't understand the problem -- and then it would be 'get up to the board,'" Haney said. "And consequently, through that business, I learned quickly that I'd better ask Mrs. White the question first before she asked me. That's where that questioning attitude piece comes from." Haney earned the position he holds today, as do all military officers. But for him, he said, mentoring has been part of it the entire way. In his youth, he said, he had participated in what he called an "experiment" in Washington, D.C., "to take some of us off the street." He had been given an opportunity to do a kind of internship at Naval Sea Systems Command at the nearby Naval Yard on the Anacostia River. "I really got to learn a bit about computers and shipyards and manning at an early age," he said. When asked by the Navy employees he worked alongside there about his future, Haney said, he told them he was thinking of going into the Army as an enlisted man. They offered to have him work for them, and they'd send him to college. But he said he wanted to be in the military. At the time, he said, he didn't know anything at all about the military academies. "They recognized that deficiency, and had me talk to a Navy captain. That guy didn't look like me. But he brought me in and explained to me what ROTC is, and the U.S. Naval Academy, and other opportunities that were out there." They suggested he work toward being an officer in the Navy, he said. Haney said he applied to all the service academies, and the U.S. Naval Academy accepted him. There, he said, he was exposed to a whole other level of people and opportunities. He told students there that they are in a better "tactical position" today to be successful, than he had been at their age, because they now know more than he had known at the time. "Take advantage of this opportunity, ask questions, dive into the conversation...pay attention, and take advantage of this unique opportunity and tap into all the intellect that's in here," he said. "Take advantage of it, and put it into your tool bag of opportunities to go after." Army officer recognized as top performer during 2016 BEYA conference [2016-02-21] PHILADELPHIA -- Brig. Gen. Carl A. Alex, assistant G-3/5/7 for U.S. Army Forces Command, was recognized Feb. 19 for exceptional service to the nation during the 11th Annual Stars and Stripes awards dinner here. "His momentous contributions to the military, to our country and to local communities have shaped the lives of countless individuals during his more than 30 years of military service," said Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Daniel B. Allyn. Allyn spoke during the dinner, Feb.19, in Philadelphia. The annual event recognizes top-performing African-American general and flag officers, senior executive service civilians and leadership within the U.S. armed forces, and is held concurrently with the Black Engineer of the Year Award, or BEYA, STEM conference, now in its 30th year. STEM is shorthand for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Allyn highlighted portions of Alex's career that most closely align with STEM, in particular, his involvement in logistics, where he provided Soldiers with the latest equipment with which to perform their mission. "[He] served with distinction as an airborne infantry brigade commander at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and deputy commander of the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, New York," Allyn said. "As deputy commander, he was responsible for supervising all aspects of logistics planning, fielding new equipment, and operations for over 18,000 Soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq." Alex was but one of eight military award recipients at the dinner, which was this year hosted by the Navy. Vice Admiral Bill Moran, chief of Navy personnel, served as keynote speaker for the event, and explained why the recognition was so important. "We are here to lift those individuals up, to make them real to America," Moran said. "We applaud their service, their dedication and their humility. What better way for us to remember the legacy of this great city than to reflect on the American spirit that is still ignited and shining brightly in these individuals tonight." Others honored as part of the 11th Annual Stars and Stripes recognition program include: -- Navy Capt. Mark Glover, program manager for Navy Communications and Global Positioning System, Navigation Program Office -- Navy Fleet Master Chief April Beldo, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations N1, manpower, personnel, education and training -- Navy SES Jimmy D. Smith, director of integrated nuclear weapons safety and security, Strategic Systems Programs -- Air Force Lt. Col. Keithen A. Washington, assistant director for officer commissioning programs, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Personnel and Readiness -- Marine Corps Lt. Col. David Everly, junior military assistant to the secretary of defense -- U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Jason A. Merriweather, chief of the Office of Military Personnel, Coast Guard headquarters -- National Guard: Air Force Brig. Gen. Leonard Isabelle, chief of staff of Joint Forces Headquarters, Michigan Air National Guard; and commander, Michigan Air National Guard Increased manpower must come with funding [2016-02-24] WASHINGTON -- The Army would like to see a few more Soldiers in the ranks, if it were authorized by Congress -- but only if those additional Soldiers are funded to keep them war-ready, said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley. The Army has been directed to reduce its total end strength, across all three components, to just 980,000, a number deemed just "minimally sufficient" earlier this month by retired Army Gen. Carter F. Ham. Ham served as chairman of the National Commission on the Future of the Army (NCFA). Late last month, the commission released a report to Congress containing 63 recommendations about how to prepare the Army for the future. On Capitol Hill, Feb. 24, lawmakers with the Senate Appropriations Committee asked Milley if he thought increased Soldiers in the ranks would help him keep the Army more ready for future fights. In particular, one lawmaker asked, how would an additional 55,000 Soldiers help the Army increase its readiness in an increasingly uncertain world? Readiness, Milley has said repeatedly since taking his position in August of last year, is his No. 1 priority. "I think that having increased numbers would help out readiness, if and only if we had the money to support that," he said. "That's fundamental. The reason this budget has us on a glide path to 450,000 in the Regular Army, 335,000 in the National Guard and 196,000 in the Army Reserve -- that's the size force balanced with modernization and readiness that we can afford, given that top line." Milley said an increase in end strength could be helpful, but it has to come with funding that will support the preparedness of those troops for combat. Numbers aren't enough, he said. "I want to caution -- numbers are not the only thing," he said. "Quality matters. When I talk readiness, I'm talking about units that are full-up on strength, are highly trained in combined arms operations, and are capable of sustaining and executing counter-insurgency operations. "The size of a given force is important -- quantity has a quality all its own," he said. "But that is one of many factors to determine capabilities in the outcomes in ground combat. I certainly would welcome additional end strength, only if it came with the money attached to it." Both Milley and Acting Secretary of the Army Patrick J. Murphy testified on Capitol Hill in front of the SAC to defend the Army's portion of the president's budget, which was released to Congress earlier this month. Murphy was actually sworn in as under secretary of the Army just hours after his appearance on the Hill. An Army veteran himself, Murphy, like Milley, brought nearly everything he said to lawmakers back to force readiness. "With our $125.1 billion base request, our Army will focus its efforts on rebuilding readiness for large-scale, high-end ground combat today," Murphy said. "We do so because we believe that ignoring readiness shortfalls puts our nation at great risk." Readiness doesn't just allow the Army to win wars, Murphy said. Knowing that the U.S. Army is ready also deters potential adversaries from engaging. Readiness prevents conflict. With several potential adversaries around the globe, Murphy said, it's critical the Army gain that readiness edge. "We are reminded with alarming frequency that great power conflicts are not dead," he said. "Today they manifest on a regional basis. Both Russia and China are challenging America's willingness and ability to enforce international standards of conduct. A ready Army provides America the strength to deter such actions." Milley has recently laid out what he considers to be five primary threats to the United States. Included among those threats are China, which is now looking to increase its influence globally, especially in the Pacific; North Korea; Iran; and the continued threat of terrorist groups around the globe, particularly in the Middle East and Africa. But the biggest threat, Milley says, is an increasingly aggressive Russia. "In my view, Russia is the No. 1 threat to the United States," he said. "They are the only country on Earth that has the capability to be an existential threat to the United States. In addition to having the capability, they have also demonstrated aggressive intent, at least since 2008, by invading countries and using national power in ways that are not favorable to U.S. interests." A conflict with Russia, both Murphy and Milley maintain, would be nothing like the counter-insurgency operations American Soldiers had been honing their skills on for the 15 years following the 2001 fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the subsequent invasion of Iraq. Russia is a near-peer competitor, they say. And "readiness" for U.S. forces means the preparedness to go up against a near-peer, force-on-force competitor with weapons nearly as good as those the Army has, and the funding to resource such a fight. Right now, Milley said, there is a gap in U.S. capability. The Army has been involved in counter insurgency intelligence (COIN) for 15 years, he said. That combined with reduced and unpredictable budgets "has created a gap in our proficiency to conduct combined arms operations against enemy conventional hybrid forces, resulting in an Army today that is less than ready to fight against emerging threats." Getting that capability up to snuff is something the Army is going to need to work on. For instance, this year's Army budget request includes funding for 19 Combat Training Center rotations -- something Murphy says will help the Army get back the edge it needs. "Our future command sergeants major and brigade commanders have not had critical Combat Training Center experiences as junior leaders, [or] trained for high-end ground combat," he said. "Investing for readiness today builds a foundation on which future training can be retained longer throughout our Army...Our Army must be prepared to face the high-end and advanced combat power of Russia, or more likely, Russian capability employed by surrogate actors." What will a future fight bring with a near-peer competitor? Milley said it'll involve both kinetic and cyber effects. "Hybrid, higher-end threats, we will face, no doubt," he said. "We are going to face a very significant cyber threat, and a very lethal environment with the proliferation of precision-guided munitions, unmanned aerial vehicles, intense densities of artillery and so on." That battlefield, he said, will be very different than what the U.S. has experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We are preparing for that," he said. "This whole budget is all about that. It's about increasing readiness to be able to fight in that environment. That's the one we are concerned about. We need to be able to do that in a combined arms way. This won't be just light infantry and doing counter-insurgency patrols. This will require high-end, combined arms and require a joint force." The Army won't do it alone, he said. Readiness also means the ability to fight alongside sister services, integrating Army capabilities with what they bring to the table. "We have to be fully integrated with air and the naval capabilities -- stand-off weapons systems," he said. "And we have to train to it." When Milley says readiness is his No. 1 priority, he means that the Army must get ready to fight a war that is unlike what most in uniform now have seen for most of their military career. "We have to think not only about the weapons systems and the size of forces, but the ways we operate in that environment," he said. "It'll be a fundamentally different way of operating in that environment than we have seen in the last 15 years." MORE HOURS IN THE COCKPIT Right now, Army aviators are getting about 11 hours in the cockpit each month for training. Both Murphy and Milley agree that it's just not enough to keep them combat ready and to ensure they are the best in the world The NCFA report, Murphy pointed out, recommended two additional flight hours a month for pilots across the force. But he also pointed out that increase would come with a cost. The report estimates the increase would be about $250-300 million a year. Murphy said there is now a commission inside the Army, made up of representatives from all three components, to look through the NCFA report, at the 63 recommendations, and to determine how to move ahead with them. Increases to the flying hours is among recommendations on the table for review, he said. "It is critically important to make sure that our aviators are the best aviators on the battlefield," Murphy said. Milley said Army aviators used to get about 14-15 hours a month in the cockpit for training, but now it's down to about 11. "We need to crank that back up," he told lawmakers. "We do accept some risk there. We don't want to accept risk. We do need some help there." SMA outlines top Army priorities to lawmakers on Capitol Hill [2016-02-26] WASHINGTON -- As the Army draws down to 490K Soldiers, many will be looking for civilian careers, and Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey said the service has "invested heavily" in ensuring they are successful. On Capitol Hill, Feb. 26, Dailey met with lawmakers of the House Appropriations Committee, subcommittee on military construction, veterans affairs and related agencies, to discuss quality of life issues. One reoccurring topic of discussion was credentialing for Soldiers. When a Soldier drives a truck in the Army, or has been trained as an electrician, for instance, that Soldier may want to eventually take those skills out of uniform and into the private-sector workforce. Often that requires some form of credentialing in the state he or she hopes to live in. Lawmakers were interested in what could be done to make that credentialing process easier for Soldiers -- as credentialing requirements vary from state to state, and also cost money. "This is something the Army has invested heavily in over the past several years," Dailey told lawmakers. "We have made great strides. The Army has become 88 percent compliant with the VOW Act in the last three years, and we have had great help through Congress." The Army has made great strides with regards to credentialing, Dailey said, adding that it is helping communities recognize the value of military experience. The Army has already credentialed over 30,000 Soldiers with the help of Congress, Dailey said. But more could be done. Tuition assistance, he said, might be used to help Soldiers get access to credentials, for instance. That would make the skills they learned in the Army more valuable in the private sector. Dailey said so far he's seen "great improvement" in the efforts to prepare Soldiers for civilian employment. Between 2012 and 2015, "the Army alone has reduced its non-employment compensation from over $512 million to $250 million," he said. "We have to open our aperture on things like tuition assistance, and allow our young men and women who deserve those credentials -- the great skills that they hone while they are Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen and Marines can be added upon with these credentials, and they will be more valued ... when they become Soldiers for Life in the future." Dailey said such an investment would be small. Credentials, he said, cost anywhere from $150 to $500. "There is no reason we can't invest in them," he said. "We have proven that investing in them now is a great investment for us in the future." GUARD, RESERVE NEED HELP GETTING ACCESS TO SERVICES Regular Army Soldiers typically live on or near a military installation -- a nexus of services for uniformed personnel. But Army National Guard and Army Reserve Soldiers don't always live near a military installation, Dailey said. For them, accessing the resources provided to Regular Army Soldiers -- things like mental health services, for instance -- is more difficult. The Army's been trying to stem suicides among Soldiers for years now -- and has made great strides in that effort. But this year, Dailey said, the Army has seen an increase in suicides. "This year was a tough year for the U.S. Army," he said. "We actually saw an increase in suicides and some of that was in our Guard and Reserves." The Army has expanded the availability of Behavioral Health Teams to levels "greater than we have ever seen," Dailey said. Already there are 58 such teams embedded down to the unit level. But for Reserve Soldiers, that's not enough "We can do more," Daily said. "And where you can help us is getting that help out to the National Guard and Reserves. They are dispersed throughout the U.S." TOP PRORITIES Dailey also outlined top Army priorities for lawmakers. The first of those is readiness, he said -- as it is for Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley. "As we draw our Army to historic lows ... readiness will always be our No. 1 concern," he said. "That's where we need to focus our attention. We do need predictable resources to make sure our Soldiers are prepared to do the mission we ask them to do." Also a priority: the future of the Army. "We have to look beyond the next few years, and look out many years," Dailey said. "We have potential adversaries out there we need to maintain focus on. The future of the force requires consistent and reliable resourcing to make sure we stay well above the pace of our adversaries." A third priority he said is Soldiers and their families. "They are our Army," he said. "It's not just Soldiers, but Families and great Civilian leaders. And they trust us that we will maintain pace with the resourcing we need to be able to make sure they can take care of their families while our Soldiers are doing the things we ask them to do." "Our Soldiers are not asking for much," Dailey added. "We just need to be able to find them the necessary resources they need to accomplish their mission." Army wants lighter, better protective equipment for Soldiers [2016-03-02] WASHINGTON -- The Army's been focused on lightening the load carried by Soldiers for some time now, in both equipment and protective gear. The effort has benefited Soldiers in combat units -- and it will benefit the female Soldiers who will join combat units in the future, Army leaders told congressmen. "We approach the Soldier protection system from the level that we always want to find ways to improve its capability but also lighten the load -- whether you are talking about the protective vest or you are talking about the helmet," said Lt. Gen. Michael E. Williamson, the military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology. "It has nothing to do with whether you are a male or female. We can't burden our Soldiers with more weight." Both Williamson and Lt. Gen. John M. Murray, deputy chief of staff, Army G-8, testified, March 2, before the House Armed Services Committee, subcommittee on tactical air and land forces. Williams told lawmakers the Army has also made "considerable progress" in development of Soldier protective gear and uniforms that fit all sizes and shapes of Soldiers, and that the effort was designed from the beginning to benefit Soldiers regardless of gender. "We've added eight additional sizes, based on a better understanding of the stature [of Soldiers]," he said. "It's not just being smaller, it's [about] proportions. That's why there are so many additional sizes. Anybody who has worn a piece of body armor knows it's inconvenient enough without being able to appropriately size it." With new protective equipment, the Army has looked at the torso portion, which features hard armor, as well as the extremities protection, which features soft armor. Changes were made to be more form-fitting. The Army's procurement objective for more form-fitting body armor is about 7,200 sets, and so far about 5,500 such sets have been fielded, Murray said. Murray also said that Army efforts to "lighten the load" extend beyond just body armor. Those efforts extend to all kinds of gear -- including weapons systems. Army efforts also include development of systems to carry the heaviest of gear for Soldiers. "There is a very conscientious effort, and we are making pretty good progress on lightening the launch unit for the Javelin, on lightening tripods for the machine guns, on lightening the machine guns themselves," Murray said. He told lawmakers the Army is also working on development of "a robot that follows a squad that could take anywhere from 300-1,200 pounds off of an infantry squad ... and carry the load for them, so they are not carrying that equipment." Such a system, he said, would act as a battery charger as well. And that means Soldiers would need to carry fewer batteries with them on the move. Army plans for transition to Windows 10 by next year [2016-03-04] WASHINGTON -- By sometime next year, the Army, along with its sister services, will have updated many of the computer systems currently running the Microsoft Windows operating system to the latest version, Windows 10. Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter made the announcement, March 3, while visiting with military leaders in Seattle, Washington. "Microsoft has been a great partner to DOD," Carter said. "We're making a department-wide transition over the next year to the much more secure Windows 10 operating system. This is a big deal. It's unprecedented for both DOD, and I believe for Microsoft as well. And it means that 4 million desktops, laptops and tablets will be better equipped inherently to defend themselves against cyber threats." The Army has already been collaborating with the Department of Defense chief information officer and preparing a "transition roadmap" that will determine when systems, locations and units will get the new software, how it will be deployed, and how the effort will be resourced. The Army has both a strategic-level team and operational-level team assigned to make the transition happen. The strategic team provides governance and oversight, and is headed by the Army's CIO/G-6. The operational team, made up of Second Army, Network Enterprise Technology Command and others, is responsible for the implementation of the transition plan. Lt. Gen. Robert S. Ferrell, the Army's chief information officer and G-6, said the Army will derive a number of important benefits from its migration to the Windows 10 operating system. "It will enhance the Army's cybersecurity posture and improve the efficiency of our IT environment," Ferrell said. "Moving to a single operating system also affords increased consistency across the Army's systems and devices. This optimizes our ability to perform upgrades, deploy security patches and execute other critical tasks, because we're working with one operating system." Ferrell also said because it's not just the Army moving to Windows 10, but the entirety of DOD, there will also be benefits derived from the efficiencies of interoperability. "The migration will improve interoperability with our joint partners and ensure the Army is synchronized with those we work with throughout DOD," he said. Col. Mark E. Orwat, chief of the installation and integration division within Army CIO/G-6, said such interoperability is in line with the Army's network campaign plan. "It ensures that the Army has the best technology available in order to enhance our security posture, improve interoperability, and increase standardization of our enterprise-level processes," he said. In some cases, the transition to Windows 10, for desktop users in an office environment for instance, might involve a "tech refresh." As older machines are retired, newer machines will be configured with the Army's approved installation of Windows and desktop software. For machines now running Windows 7, users recognize "Army Gold Master" as that approved configuration. The Army expects to implement something similar with Windows 10, said those familiar with the matter. But the effort to migrate the Army to Windows 10 involves more than just updating the desktop or laptop computers of those who check email or run spreadsheets in offices. The Windows operating system runs on a variety of Army computer systems, including medical and tactical systems. On some of those systems, users may even be unaware that they are running a Windows OS. The backbone operating system may be Windows technology, said a CIO/G-6 subject matter expert, though the user interface doesn't include the familiar desktop or icons. For computers that are part of tactical systems, the transition will be more complex. Computers that control such equipment, or are installed in them, often run specially configured versions of the Windows operating system, which in turn runs specialty application software designed for the equipment. The Army, program managers, the vendors who developed the gear, and Microsoft will work together for systems in the Army inventory to ensure that Windows 10 can be run and that the application software for that equipment will be supported by the new OS. "This is a complex initiative that will eventually touch every end-user system in the Army that is using a version of Microsoft Windows, from business systems to tactical systems such as medical, aviation, tactical and logistics boxes," said Orwat. "The Army's people, technologies, and processes will all be challenged in some form or fashion as we move forward with this widespread migration. We will work jointly with the organizations and units across the Army enterprise to ensure we understand the impacts on the strategic and tactical mission sets." The services have been coordinating with the DOD CIO, who formally notified the services to be prepared to upgrade systems to Windows 10 in November 2015. The goal is for the services to upgrade many of their systems within approximately one year. At the same time, for systems that prove more complex to transition, and on a case-by-case basis, services have been told they can waive certain systems from upgrade by up to 12 months. Beyond that, they will need DOD approval. At the CIO/G-6 level, the Army will develop a "road map" for deployment of Windows 10 across the force through the use of data calls that will determine, among other things, how many different types of systems are now running a Windows OS, what versions they are running, where those systems are, and how critical they are. "We are approaching the Windows 10 migration methodically by setting the conditions that will allow success ... including strategic policies, deployment roadmaps, sustainment assessments (data calls and pilot tests), along with utilizing lessons learned from our previous deployments efforts and those of our partners," Orwat said. 100-hour ground war to liberate Kuwait was no fluke, Milley says [2016-03-04] WASHINGTON -- The ground war to liberate Kuwait from an occupying Iraqi army kicked off, Feb 24, 1991, and lasted just 100 hours. That effort was a success, said the Army's chief of staff, due to a variety of factors including immense preparation of the battlespace, intelligence, equipment and technology, training, leadership, and great teamwork between U.S. and international partners. "At the end of the day we destroyed thousands of enemy tanks, thousands of armored personnel carriers, captured thousands of prisoners, and literally shattered a field army," said Gen. Mark A. Milley. "There are very few examples in military history that are out there of such an overwhelming and decisive victory, in such a short amount of time, [with] such a small amount of friendly casualties." During a March 4 commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm, at the Pentagon, Milley explained the real effort that went into the ground portion of evicting a hostile nation from an allied nation in just 100-hours. "That happened because of the synergistic effects of the joint force, not just the Army," Milley said. In advance of the ground war, he said, there was a U.S. Air Force-executed 38-day air campaign involving more than 100,000 sorties, he said. The Marine Corps, the general said, conducted "tremendous operational maneuvers," and also executed a feint and a demonstration for an amphibious landing, "which fixed Saddam's forces to the coast, while in fact we were planning a big 'left hook,' a single envelopment out into the wide parts of the desert." The president, he said, along with the National Security Council also played a role by providing "set, very limited, defined and understandable objectives for the military force to accomplish. There was never doubt in anyone's mind about what we had to do." The intelligence community played a role too, he said, with "a tremendous amount of intelligence preparation of the battlefield in setting conditions with special forces, other governmental agencies, and the use of all our intelligence capability, to really pick out and pick apart Saddam's military so that we had really intelligence as to where they were, and what their composition and disposition was." More than 700,000 military personnel accomplished the mission. Of those, about 540,000 were U.S. Army Soldiers. A total of 14 divisions participated, Milley said. Seven were U.S. Army divisions, two were from the Marines, and one each came from France, the United Kingdom, Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. "That 100-hours didn't just happen," he said. "That happened because we made a concerted decision to send in overwhelming combat power. You have to have that combat power to be able to have the flexibility to be able to send it to begin with. And not only did we send just numbers, those numbers were well trained, at an extraordinarily high rate of readiness, and it was clear both then and afterwards that force was technologically superior to anything Saddam could put up. That's what caused the 100-hours." Besides the immediate effect of defeating the Iraqi army, the success there bolstered confidence in the United States and its military capacity, said Under Secretary of the Army Patrick J. Murphy, who is also currently serving as the acting secretary of the Army. Desert Shield and Desert Storm, he said "renewed the world's confidence in U.S. foreign policy," he said, and it demonstrated interoperability of U.S. air, sea and land forces as well as the use of more advanced weapons. "These advantages, first showcased in Desert Storm, have become the hallmark of the highest standard of military operations." Despite the success in Desert Storm, Murphy said there was a cost to the conflict. "More than 700,000 Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and coalition forces surged forward to secure the freedom of millions of people, ultimately ending the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait and relieving that nation from a dictator's grasp," Murphy said. But of those who went, some 383 never made it home. "Many more were wounded, and many more struggle today with their wounds, both physical and mental," Murphy said. "On the 25th anniversary of Operation Desert Storm, we remember their sacrifices and we honor their memory. We recognize their critical role in restoring the liberty of the Kuwaiti people and proving to friends and foes alike around the world that the U.S. military stands ready to defeat the enemies of freedom." CHAPLAIN IN THE WAR ZONE Brig. Gen. Thomas Solhjem, the Army's deputy chief of chaplains, was just a captain when he headed out for Saudi Arabia, in advance of the ground portion of Desert Storm. He was with the 82nd Airborne Division at the time, and the 82nd had to be ready to deploy within 24 hours. But his own battalion was actually the first to go, he said. Saddam Hussein's force invaded Kuwait, Aug. 2. Solhjem was on a plane the evening of Aug. 4. "Today, this is almost second nature how we do business," he said. "Back then, this was a big deal. Then, this was a major operation that we never engaged in before, deploying a large number of forces in a rapid succession. What I remember most is being in a situation where I couldn't tell my family what was going on." He said he started off his deployment by forgetting his dog tags -- which his wife later had to bring to him. "She came onto Fort Bragg to bring me my dog tags," he said. "I kissed her and she had no idea that we were in lock-down or anything. That's the last time I saw my wife until seven and half months later." Solhjem started his time in the Middle East in Saudi Arabia, where he said there was a lot of waiting to do for what was going to happen next, and fear about the great losses Soldiers then expected to experience in theater. "As a ministry team, we were focused on that aspect that we were going to deliver ministry to a force that was going to face a lot casualties," he said. "And it took real leadership to keep people focused, over an extended period of time, and to keep their level of training and readiness up, with limited resources to train." When the time came to go, he said, there was a feeling of relief -- Soldiers, he said, didn't want to wait around. They wanted to act. "When we were given the green light to go ... when you have been waiting that long, it's like, let's get this done and get it over with," he said. When Soldiers saw the results of the air campaign that had preceded their own efforts, he said, "there was shock at the amount of lethal force applied to the enemy. You could see the devastation as we were moving north -- and then almost immediately, the enemy giving up." A lot of Iraqi soldiers, actually, dropped their arms and surrendered to American forces. Solhjem said he was instrumental in once such instance of that -- and with an Iraqi officer, even, with whom he shared a connection from back home. Chaplains, Solhjem said, are often found in places where they can provide direct support or care of enemy combatants. He and his chaplain team were attached to a medical unit, he said, "that's the right place for the chaplain to be, you want to be where the casualties will flow in." He and his team had gotten separated from the rest of their unit and came up on a ridge in a valley where they came face-to-face with enemy combatants. "They were not more than 100 meters from us," he said. "We dismounted our vehicles and I walked down to that enemy position and asked who the ranking person was, and if they could speak English. A major came out, identified himself, and we began a conversation." Solhjem, from North Dakota, had attended college in Minneapolis. That's also where he went to seminary to become a chaplain. The Iraqi he met with had at one point been a professor at the University of Minnesota. "He not only spoke English, but my kind of English," Solhjem said. "The same accent. We're having this conversation, I take out my wallet, and I'm showing him my family. I have three sons. In that country, male children are a big deal." That's when Solhjem said he did something that as a chaplain, he probably should not have done. "Essentially, I told them there is a combatant force, and if you don't surrender, they have hostile intent," he said, relaying his conversation with the Iraqi officer. "I asked them to surrender their arms, form a line, and walk towards [that force.] I said they would be well taken care of and treated fairly. He went back, spoke to his people, and they started laying down their arms, and they came out of their fighting positions." A total of about 80 enemy combatants surrendered then, at his prompting, he said. "It seems a little out there. But when you have seen people flocking, and laying down their arms peacefully, and you watch this flow of people coming at you for hours -- it just seemed that at that moment in time, based on everything I was seeing, these people were looking for a way out. The read of the situation was they needed some encouragement, some coaching, to do it." STRAIGHT OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL A lot of Soldiers, especially in the infantry, are quite young. Sgt. 1st Class Matthew T. MacRoberts, who today serves as the noncommissioned officer in charge for the online and social media division within the Army's Office of the Chief of Public Affairs, was just a private back in 1991, during Operations Desert Shield and Storm. He had actually left high school early -- before the rest of his class -- to join the Army. MacRoberts said in May of 1990, his school principal called him to the office, where his parents were already present, and presented him with his high school diploma. "He handed me my diploma and congratulated me on graduating from high school," MacRoberts said. "The recruiter was also there and put me on a van to the Military Entrance Processing Station to send me to Fort Benning." That was mid-1990 when he got an early release from high school to serve his country. He said he completed Basic Combat Training, Advance Initial Training and Airborne School back-to-back. And after that he reported to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, from where he shipped out to Saudi Arabia to participate in a conflict that had kicked off while he was only still in training. MacRoberts said he arrived at Fort Bragg, after his new unit had already deployed. "I fell in with the rear detachment, and they then pushed us forward to line up with the main force in Saudi Arabia," he said. "I remember them opening the doors on the plane when we landed. They didn't pull up to a terminal -- it was just the tarmac. Opening the door, I remember the wave of heat that rolled in. It was oppressive." MacRoberts stayed at Champion Main in Saudi Arabia for quite some time while he and his unit prepared for the coming ground conflict. But then it was time to go. "I remember it was the middle of the night, early morning. The Multiple Launch Rocket Systems were going off -- I remember all the flashes from the rockets flying down range. We were sleeping on the ground in our sleeping bags. And we knew we were going in. And waking up -- it had been snowing so there was a light coat of snow over everything, and the rockets were going off. It was very surreal." Once the ground war kicked off, MacRoberts took part in the 82nd Airborne Division air assault that did the "left hook" into Iraq, and was also part of the unit that secured a large ammunition depot there. MacRoberts didn't spend much time in the desert after they finished their job. The ground war in Iraq kicked off, Feb. 24, 1991, and just eight days after, he was back at home in North Carolina. "Today is literally 25 years to the day when I landed back on U.S. soil," MacRoberts said, remembering his homecoming. "I have pictures of my mother, stepmother, and my great aunt meeting me at Fort Bragg 25 years ago. Of becoming a combat veteran in the Middle East, MacRoberts said the experience has stuck with him in a positive way for his entire Army career. "The friendships I made while deployed in Iraq with the men in B Company, 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment are something I will always remember," he said. "And I'm proud to have been there for our allies when they needed us." Women's History Month: First women having 'blast' as combat engineers [2016-03-07] WASHINGTON -- In June of last year, the Army opened the 12P combat engineer position to female Soldiers. Today, women are going through the school house at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and joining units around the Army. Pvts. Brianna Moore, Chrisslene Tialavea, and Lashonda Ivy are all recent graduates of the 12B course. All three enlisted last year around the time the MOS was opened to female Soldiers, and they are among the first women to be admitted to the 12B military occupational specialty. Among other things, combat engineers construct fighting positions, fixed or floating bridges, obstacles and defensive positions; they place and detonate explosives; they conduct operations that include route clearance of obstacles and rivers; they prepare and install firing systems for demolition and explosives; and they detect mines visually or with mine detectors. From Merrillville, Indiana, 18-year-old Ivy joined the Army, she said, for a lot of reasons -- though she cited educational opportunities and financial stability as leading the pack. At her recruiter's office last year, she didn't know that the 12B MOS was opening to female Soldiers, and possibly didn't know the MOS had ever even been closed to women. But her recruiter, she said, offered up an Army option to her that she said sounded enticing. "My recruiter asked me if I wanted to blow stuff up," Ivy said. "I thought that would be pretty cool -- so I picked that MOS." Now, Ivy serves as a combat engineer with 43rd Combat Engineer Company, Regimental Engineer Squadron "Pioneer", 3rd Cavalry Regiment at Fort Hood, Texas. Moore, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, now serves as a combat engineer with Company A, 3rd Engineer Battalion "Beaver," 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, also at Fort Hood. Like Ivy, she said the educational opportunities in the Army appealed to her. She enlisted in July of 2015. When she first approached the Army for a job, she said 12B wasn't yet open to women. But when the career field did open, she dove in. "When it opened up, that's when I went for it," she said. "I looked at the MOS and I thought it was pretty cool," Moore said. "I figured if I was going to join the Army, I was going to do something that was kind of out there. We use explosives ... for everything." Tialavea, originally from Queens, New York, now serves a combat engineer with Company B, 3rd Engineer Battalion "Beaver," 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team -- right alongside Moore. And like Moore, she was interested in getting paid to work with explosives. Tialavea and Ivy actually went through engineer school together -- along with about 30 other female Soldiers. Moore, on the other hand, went through the 12B schoolhouse with nothing but guys. She said that wasn't a problem, however -- everyone, she said, acted like pros. "We all worked together," Moore said. "It was Soldiers working with Soldiers." Actually, Moore, Ivy and Tialavea all say that despite being among the first female Soldiers to go through the combat engineer course, they have seen nothing but support from their male counterparts who are already on the job. "I love my platoon and my company," Moore said. "They all accept me and we continue to work together without any problems." During a National Training Center rotation last year, Ivy said, the other Soldiers in her unit made sure she knew what to do. "My platoon was really supportive. They helped me," she said. "I just got to my unit five days before I left for NTC. It was good bonding with them." Tialavea said she did get some pushback on her choice to be a 12B -- from her family and friends. "They didn't really like the idea of me doing 12B, but I did it anyway," she said. "I told them -- - look at me, I made it. All it took, honestly, was a lot of motivation and stamina and willpower." And from her unit, Tialavea said -- they've been on board with her since she came on board. "So far I've been getting along with everybody in my platoon, and they are very supporting and accepting," she said. Moore has also been out to the NTC to train with her unit, where she said she served mostly in a support role. "We got to do a little bit of demolition and movement and formations and stuff, but we didn't get to go 'all out,'" she said. "We did our MOS, but we didn't get to do it to the extreme." Ivy's unit is now getting ready for the real thing in Afghanistan this September. "We're deploying soon," she said. "We have the Route Reconnaissance and Clearance Course in about two to three weeks." After that, she said, it's off to Afghanistan. She's never left the United States before, she said, and her family is "really scared" for her. But she's not worried, or at least not willing to admit it. "I'm ready," she said. Tialavea hasn't yet gone to train with her unit at the NTC -- though they are getting ready to go in September, and she is preparing alongside them for the event with a "whole lot of training." Right now, she said, they are in the field "making sure we perform dismount training, driver training, and all kinds of training. Then we go to gunnery, and then we head to NTC." When not deployed, or at the NTC, Moore says as part of Company A, "we keep up on maintenance and take care of our vehicles that we drive, and we have specific times we go and train in the field -- we keep it moving," she said. For the future, Moore wants to get an education and "make something out of whatever it is I pursue," she said. She said she hopes to go into architectural and civil engineering in the future. Tialavea says she plans to re-enlist at least once, and looks forward to one day being a staff sergeant. "That's one of my goals," she said. Another is to pursue a master's degree in psychology. Ivy said she wants to go to the Sapper School or to Ranger School -- once she has attained the rank to allow her to do so. Moore says that she can see herself, later in her Army career, serving as a mentor to other female soldiers who come into the Army -- but now, she said, she's focused on "learning my job, and being able to perform to the expectations." Tialavea said right now for her, "my job is driving and operating a Bradley and I find that to be really fun, a cool experience," she said. "To me, this is a regular job -- there is nothing special, I guess. But I can see myself serving as a role model for the women that do plan on being a 12B in the future, by doing the right thing and setting an example for them, and when it's my time to become a leader, to just give them the mentorship." Soldier 'Digital Job Book' goes online [2016-03-09] WASHINGTON -- "Job books" will return to the Army at the end of this month, in digital form, allowing Soldiers to track such things as physical training, weapons qualification, mandatory training, scheduled classes, and unit training schedules. Command Sgt. Maj. David S. Davenport, the command sergeant major for U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, said it'll be March 25 when the new Digital Job Book goes online in beta form, within the Army Training Network. "The digital job book -- by proponent -- lists the critical tasks that Soldiers need to be proficient on, by skill level," Davenport said. "It allows leaders to record that training. What's powerful about it is it also allows chains of command to come in and insert tasks they want to work on as well." During a TRADOC-led online "town hall" last week, Davenport said the new Digital Job Book is a reincarnation of the job books of days past, which were paper, about three inches by an inch and a half in size, and carried around in cargo pockets. Soldiers initialed which tasks they had completed. The books allowed Soldiers to always know how current they were on training, and also allowed them to convey that information to their leadership. "So when the sergeant major was out running around, he could ask Soldiers what they were training on," Davenport said. "And leaders would take that book to training meetings and plan training for Soldiers." Davenport said the Digital Job Book will synch with the Army Training Requirements and Resources System and Digital Training Management System. Army National Guard Command Sgt. Maj. Brunk W. Conley said squad leaders "need to be all over this," and that they should sign up for the beta test of the Digital Job Book and start annotating their own and subordinate training. "We have to get back into a training mentality with our first-line leaders." WILL THEY GET THEIR CAMPAIGN HATS BACK? Back in 2007, the Army transitioned from using drill sergeants in Advanced Individual Training to AIT platoon sergeants. Davenport said the move was made as a way to "recognize that period of transformation that [Soldiers] were going through -- less total control." Now, Davenport said, the Army is looking at putting drill sergeants back into the AIT environment. "It's a recommendation. Of course, we have to see about funding. But, we are trying to do everything we can to make sure our Solders are successful when they transition to their first unit of assignment," Davenport said. "We lose about 12 percent in the training base, of the cohort that we get. And we want to make sure they are the fittest, and most disciplined and well-trained Soldiers that we have as we give them to their first unit of assignment." Davenport didn't say that AIT platoon sergeants weren't doing a good job now -- he said instead that drill sergeants are "a way to invest in the training of our Soldiers ... We've done the cost analysis, we're moving the case forward to see if it's first of all feasible, affordable and sustainable. Anything we do you have to look through those filters to affect change." Lots of reps prep Big Red One for near-peer confrontations [2016-03-11] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers with the "Big Red One" are getting ready for decisive action in the same way they build their biceps in the gym: lots of repetitions. In the heart of the nation, at Fort Riley, Kansas, Maj. Gen. Wayne W. Grigsby Jr., commander of the 1st Infantry Division, said he believes he's got his "Big Red One" Soldiers on the right path toward readiness for decisive action -- a term that describes a fuller set of combat capabilities that goes beyond the counter-insurgency operations the Army has mastered over the last 15 years. According to a 2014 DOD report on military demographics, about two-thirds of Soldiers are under 30 years old -- that number includes both officer and enlisted alike. Among enlisted only, about 70 percent are under age 30. If those same numbers hold true now as they did two years ago, only about one in three Soldiers in uniform today remember an Army that's done anything other than conduct COIN operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. For an Army that in recent months has put an emphasis on readiness for anything -- but on near-peer conflict in particular -- a lot of work will need to be done, a lot of training, to get Soldiers spun up on a set of capabilities that's always been in Army doctrine, but that they've never had to use before. At Fort Riley now, Soldiers are gearing up for an exercise called "Danger Focus," which will help develop leaders in the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team there prior to their National Training Center rotation in July and August. "This training will include combined, live, virtual, constructive training at a scale that is rarely seen outside the combat training centers," Grigsby said during a March 10 video teleconference with the Pentagon Press Corp. "This will be the largest maneuver live-fire exercise ever held here at Fort Riley. Literally, I'll put the entire brigade combat team in the field. I've been in the Army for 31 years, and there are very few posts, if any in the Army, that you can take the entire BCT with all their resources and put them out in the field prior to a major training exercise at NTC." While the 1st ABCT prepares for the NTC, Grigsby said, it is also one of the pilot brigades for the "Cyber Support to Corps and Below" concept, which includes the integration of cyber effects at the tactical edge to include training at home station, at the Army's combat training centers, and in support of real-world missions. To that end, a team made up of personnel from U.S Army Cyber Command headquarters at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and its subordinates -- Cyber Protection Brigade, 1st Information Operations Command and 780th Military Intelligence Brigade -- are teamed up with Soldiers at Fort Riley. "They're showing them how to harden networks, review their current cyber defense status, helping them prepare for their NTC rotation, showing them how to conduct both offensive and defensive operations -- including how to ensure they have the authority to do these things -- and also integrating our guys into the 1st ID staff," said Bill Roche, a ARCYBER spokesperson. "We're showing them how to make cyber work in tactical units. And our guys are learning too as they do this." More than once, Grigsby bragged on the capabilities he has at Fort Riley to prepare Soldiers for force-on-force conflict with a near-peer competitor. At Fort Riley, he said, he can conduct battalion-on-battalion level training. At some Army posts, he said, the most that can be done is platoon-sized training. "I can literally, every morning if I wanted to, put a battalion on the north side and a battalion on the south side and just joust, because of our training area," he said. And due to the airspace access the base has been granted, he's also been able to exercise aviation in ways that are not seen outside the National Training Center. "I can synchronize from 0 to 18,000 feet of maneuver, indirect fire, Unmanned Aerial Systems, Air Force air, attack aviation -- I can bring it all together here so they can go in at a higher level when they go to the NTC," he said. The general said Fort Riley was the first post with an FAA-approved air corridor, for instance, that allowed Soldiers with the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team there to launch an RQ7-B Shadow UAS on a 120-mile mission last September and to then bring it home -- all in national air space. "I got a pilot that is not just practicing flying for five miles, I can actually get him out there and practice for 120 miles to gain more experience that will help us go into our NTC at a higher level, but also prepare us for any operations we may have," Grigsby said. Back on the ground, for the upcoming Danger Focus, Grigsby said Soldiers will be practicing brigade movement to contact -- over and over. "There are very few posts that can do that," he said. One battalion, he said, will do live maneuver, another battalion in virtual and another in constructive. Then they will rotate through that. "They will get a bunch of repetitions. That brigade commander will get a bunch of repetitions of conducting mission command at the brigade level, prior to going to the NTC." Younger Soldiers will get those repetitions too, he said, which develop them not just as operators, but as leaders. "This whole training piece is going to build readiness," he said. "It's also going to give breadth and experience to a young company commander who will be a battalion S3 in the future, or a young sergeant first class who will be a company first sergeant in the future when he goes to the next unit. He will get a good amount of reps that will prepare him. So we continue to get better as we go." Grigsby came on board at 1st ID back in August. Early on, he said, he briefed on how he planned to get after decisive-action readiness, and how brigades are going to train up to a decisive-action model. Soldiers have been eating it up since then, he said. "Once they get a little inkling of it, and once you get them a couple of reps, they pick it up faster and they're more effective," he said. "They are simply amazing. And because of our virtual/constructive environment, I can give them 100 reps pretty cheap. That will give them some mastery, and when they go out to a live event they go to the other half of mastery: competence. They can not only fight COIN -- and they are the heroes of Iraq and Afghanistan -- but they are quickly transitioning to be the greatest leaders, the best leaders, picking up on the decisive-action offensive operations that we may conduct in the future." NOT IN KANSAS Grigsby said he's got about 15,000 Soldiers under his command. About 4,000 of those Soldiers, with the 2nd ABCT, are not currently in the United States. They are deployed to Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Oman -- and other locations in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, conducting partnership missions with militaries there. The general said that in Iraq, Soldiers are doing missions similar to what was going on when he served as commanding general of the Combined Joint Task Force -- Horn of Africa. They are "enabling regional partners to bring stability in their part of the world," he said. "What was more important were the discussions they had offline, what it's like to be a Soldier, to be a part of an Army that works in democracy, what it's like to be part of an Army that has values," he said. "That's why it takes time to build these types of leaders." In Iraq and elsewhere in the region, he said, noncommissioned officers from 2nd ABCT, 1st ID, are helping partner nations develop their own NCOs, something he said won't happen overnight. "If you are going to develop leaders of another army, it takes time," he said. "The reason we have the best army in the world is because of our NCOs. But it takes time to build them. And we have to have patience. I think we are doing the right thing by being over there, partnering with them, enabling them to execute operations. But at the end of the day, they need to solve their problems in their part of the world." Grigsby said he's been in regular contact with the 2nd ABCT commander who is deployed now in the CENTCOM AOR, Col. Miles Brown, and reports back, 'he's very impressed with the Iraqi leaders." Army sets 'leader-first' approach to full gender integration [2016-03-11] WASHINGTON -- The Army will begin training women for infantry and armor specialties later this year, according to its Gender Integration Implementation Plan released March 10. The plan will be executed in phases, first bringing female officers into combat arms this summer after they graduate from the U.S. Military Academy, ROTC or Officer Candidate School. Enlisted recruits are expected to begin training in infantry and armor MOSs beginning this fall. By the time they graduate Advanced Individual Training and report to their first combat units, female officers will already be there. It's part of the Army's "leader-first" approach to integrate the last 19 military occupational specialties that had been closed to women. "We're not going to turn our back on 50 percent of the population," said Acting Secretary of the Army Patrick J. Murphy. "We are opening up every occupation to women. I think that's pretty historic." 4-PHASE IMPLEMENTATION The Army is currently in the first phase of its integration plan. It has developed gender-neutral standards and is educating the force about its implementation policies. "An incremental and phased approach by leaders and Soldiers who understand and enforce gender-neutral standards will ensure successful integration of women across the breadth and depth of our formations," said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley. The Army has also been developing a new Occupational Physical Assessment Test. The OPAT will be administered to recruits beginning no later than June, according to Phase II of the plan. NEW TEST OPAT includes physical performance tests developed by the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine. These tests will measure the ability of a recruit or cadet to perform physically demanding MOS tasks. The new test will include a standing long jump, a dead lift, an interval run and a seated power throw to measure strength needed for tasks such as loading ammunition. Phase II is the initiation of gender-neutral training. It begins April 1 as the Army starts enlisting women under the Delayed Entry Program for armor and infantry One-Station Unit Training or OSUT. Training won't actually begin for the enlistees until fall and could be delayed for up to a year until they graduate high school. FINAL PHASES Phase III involves assigning women to operational units. Again, female officers will be assigned to infantry and armor units first, to prepare the way for enlisted Soldiers to arrive at end of the year. Phase IV is "Sustain and Optimize." In this phase the Army achieves full operational capability and revalidates MOS screening requirements. Through talent management, it continues to select the best Soldiers for the right jobs, according to the plan. Over the last four years, the Army has opened a substantial number of positions to female Soldiers. The Army opened 95,216 positions and nine occupations to women between May 2012 and October 2015, including combat engineer (12B) and artillery MOSs. The first female cannon crew member, 13B, graduated this month from Advanced Individual Training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, at the top of her class. Now under the Army's Gender Integration Implementation Plan, the final 19 MOSs will provide an additional 220,000 job opportunities to female Soldiers, though that number may change based on end strength reductions and ongoing force structure changes. Following are the 19 MOSs within infantry, armor and Special Forces that will incrementally open to women: -- 11A (Infantry Officer) -- 11B (Infantryman) -- 11C (Indirect Fire Infantryman) -- 11Z (Infantry Senior Sergeant) -- 13F (Fire Support Specialist) -- 19D (Cavalry Scout) -- 19A (Armor, General) -- 19B (Armor) -- 19C (Cavalry) -- 19K (Armor Crewmember) -- 19Z (Armor Senior Sergeant) -- 18A (Special Forces Officer) -- 180A (Special Forces Warrant Officer) -- 18B (Special Forces Weapons Sergeant) -- 18C (Special Forces Engineer Sergeant) -- 18D (Special Forces Medical Sergeant) -- 18E (Special Forces Communications Sergeant) -- 18F (Special Forces Assistant Operations and Intelligence Sergeant) -- 18Z (Special Forces Senior Sergeant) (Gary Sheftick also contributed to this article.) Army to evaluate advise, assist brigades as tools of rapid force expansion [2016-03-15] HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- As the Army draws down in size to just 980K across the total force, one consideration must be how the service can re-expand quickly, if need be, in the face of a conflict. But growing a capable brigade combat team from scratch, said Maj. Gen. William C. Hix, director of strategy, plans and policy with the Army's G-3/5/7, can take two or three years to do if the Army wants to have a quality unit. While speaking here, March 15, the general said the Army is looking at an idea proposed by the Army's chief of staff that promises to more quickly grow the Army if need be. "We have been looking at both expansion and regeneration as requirements for the last several years," Hix said. "And one of the concepts that Gen. Mark A. Milley has talked about is taking or constituting an advise and assist brigade -- which is effectively a cadre for a new unit ... so you have a cadre of officers -- and NCOs -- effectively a brigade chain of command, that can rapidly absorb troops, trained in a 'COHORT' fashion, to add to the combat power of the Army. We are going to be running pilots on that this year and next year as we go forward, and I think that will help us begin to get after this problem." In the 1980s, the Army experimented with "COHORT" units, which stood for "cohesion, operational readiness, training," that stayed together longer and were made up mostly of Soldiers who had come into the Army together and gone through basic training together. Hix said the concept makes sense because the assumption is that the Army will not anytime soon be walking away from its current mission to provide advise and assist capabilities to partner nations. It also makes sense, he said, because in a time of crisis, the Army will expand -- "we always have," he said. And finally, "It builds off our experience with COHORT units in the 1980s, in particular." READINESS, CAPACITY AND CAPABILITY Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster Jr., deputy commanding general of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, said there is increasing risk to national security because the Army may now be too small to do its mission, and may also lack the capabilities it needs to overmatch future enemies on the battlefield. "Our nation needs ready land forces, capable of operating in sufficient scale, and for ample duration, to accomplish the mission as part of joint, inter-organizational, multi-national teams," McMaster said. "Our Army needs capabilities, and also needs capacity." McMaster said capabilities are what are needed to create certain effects on the battlefield. They are the ability to achieve the desired effect under certain standards. Capacity is that capability "with sufficient scale and endurance to accomplish the mission." In years past, as far back as World War I, McMaster said, capacity could be traded for capability. Then, he said, technology "allowed smaller and smaller combat forces to have greater and greater effects on the battlefield." He cited mechanization, airpower, and radio as examples of that technology. But today, technology easily transfers to America's enemies. The enemy also has increased access to "disruptive capabilities" that challenge American "differential advantages in close combat and in combat as a joint force." Examples of that include sophisticated air defense, anti-tank systems, unmanned aerial systems and the potential to "swarm" UAS capability, long-range fires, advanced combat vehicles, and cyber and electronic warfare capabilities. "A lot of our advantage had been our ability to share information, the network strike capability," he said. "But what we are seeing now is those capabilities are under threat from cyber warfare, from electronic warfare, and also from counter-satellite capabilities." What this means, he said, is that the relationship between capability and capacity seen in the past, the one that allowed the Army to trade off capacity for a "narrow range" of capability, has changed. "I think it's bottomed out, and is now turning up, where capacity is very important." What the Army needs now, McMaster said, is well trained troops -- and enough of them. Technology alone is not enough now to overmatch the enemy and achieve a win. "We'd better be ready. We'd better have well-trained, competent, cohesive teams who know how to operate all their systems, all of their weapons, under all conditions of combat," he said. And "the size of the Army is important. The size of the Army is important because we have to not only fight ... we also have to consolidate gains to get sustainable outcomes." Finally, he said, the Army needs to develop capabilities to cope with enemy disruptive capabilities, and to also develop its own capabilities to maintain overmatch. "We don't want a fair fight," he said. Hix said that in Washington, "capability" and "capacity" are often presented as a choice -- that success can be had with ample amounts of one or the other. That's a falsehood, he said. "We must have adequate amounts of both, to deter, defend the homeland, defeat and deny and support current and future readiness," Hix said. Future of deployments: surge-ready and rotationally-focused [2016-03-16] HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- Most Soldiers who have been in the Army over the last 13 years have deployed at least once. Many have deployed multiple times. But the way their units deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan is no longer good enough if they want to be ready for everything they'll be called upon to react to, Army leaders say. The way the Army deployed for 13 years is "not useful for the world we live in right now," said Lt. Gen. Patrick J. Donahue III, the deputy commanding general for U.S. Army Forces Command, speaking at a symposium here, March 16. The general outlined a prototypical deployment for a unit during the 13 years of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan as an illustration of how what worked then will no longer work in the future. He said a unit might receive from FORSCOM a tasking to go to Diyala, Iraq, and be given a 14-month lead time to prepare for that rotational deployment. "That brigade would start focusing on that rotational mission," he said. "It would train on search and attack, it would [train on] cordon and knock, it would learn all the tribal dynamics of the Sunnis and Shias in that province, understand Kurd/Arab friction up in Khanaqin, and the Sunni/Shia friction down in Khalis, and understand the capabilities of the 5th Iraqi Army Division, and train to the tasks that were required to do those types of missions." What the unit didn't do, he said, "was combined arms breach ... it didn't do a deliberate attack and deliberate defense. And the way that brigade deployed, it would do its training at [a] Combat Training Center, and often just go back and drop its stuff off ... at home station, fly over into theater and fall in on Theater Provided Equipment." Donahue acknowledged that the Army has deployed a lot over the last 13 years, but said that "we have gotten rusty in our ability to deploy units and their equipment." G-4: BACK TO BASICS Lt. Gen. Gustave F. Perna, the Army's deputy chief of staff, G-4, said when he and other Soldiers who have been in the Army since well-before Iraq and Afghanistan think about deployments, it looks different from what the Army has been doing most recently. "Our reflections are of the days when we had to make sure our equipment was ready, we had to load out our equipment, we had to get out to the rail heads and make sure we were rail- and air-certified," he said. "We had to understand load plans on how we wanted the equipment loaded on ships so when we got to where we wanted, the equipment came off when we needed it. That skillset is lost. And so it is, literally back to the basics, and making sure we know how to do that." Donahue said FORSCOM has recently been pushing units through Emergency Deployment Reaction Exercises to bring their deployment skills up to snuff. One of the most ambitious of those EDREs, he said, involves a brigade with the 101st Airborne Division. "They thought they were going to the Joint Readiness Training Center in April, as they always do, with contracted line haul and contracted rail," he said. "Last week we alerted them to instead to deploy via sea. They are shaking up all sorts of dust and knocking off all sorts of rust, as they develop, rediscover in some, probably most cases, their ability to send their 800 vehicles and 200 containers first by rail to Jacksonville, load them on ship, sail them to Port Arthur, Texas, download them, and bring them into JRTC that way ... so we are actually executing the whole process ... to see if we can make it work." READY FOR ANYTHING Donahue said FORSCOM has a new mission statement that for the first time includes the concept of readiness -- a direct reference to Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley's No. 1 priority. And FORSCOM's commander, Gen. Robert B. Abrams, has promised that FORSCOM units will now be "surge-ready and rotationally-focused," Donahue said. Surge-ready, Donahue said, means that a unit's mission-essential task list or METL must include the ability to deploy with all its equipment. The installation must also have the ability to deploy that equipment and actually train for it, he said. A unit will still be ready for rotational missions, he said, but it will also be doing decisive-action training. A unit "will first train to decisive action. It will do a deliberate attack, it will do a defense, it will do ... a battalion time on target. You never know when you will get the call to go somewhere besides that rotational mission." The way ahead with training, Donahue said, is for units to continue to be ready for their rotational assignments. FORSCOM is "still focused on meeting combatant commander requirements," he said. But added to that is training for surge requirements. Units must first become skilled in their mission-essential task list and then train for other assigned missions, he said. "That's big change for how we have been doing training and building readiness in FORSCOM in the last 13 years," he said. Murphy: Soldiers serve for life, giving back values [2016-03-18] HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- Readiness is the Army's No. 1 priority say both the Army's chief of staff and acting secretary -- and "there is no other No. 1." But if there's a front runner for the No. 2 priority, at least for the acting secretary, it would have to be the Army's Soldier for Life Program, and the commitment the Army has to prepare for civilian life those who have volunteered to serve in uniform. Soldier for Life Patrick J. Murphy, who took the helm last year as under secretary of the Army, but who now also serves as acting secretary as well, said March 17 that for the $125 billion Americans will be asked to spend next fiscal year for the Army, they will get more than national security and peace of mind. "I get pretty ticked off when I see in the media, time and time again, that our veterans are treated like they are charity cases," he said. "They are not ... veterans on average make $10k more than their civilian counterparts. Veterans are more likely to be employed. Veterans are more likely to vote in elections. They are more likely to coach little league." After leaving the Army, he said, Soldiers bring with them to their civilian communities the principles they learned in uniform, including loyalty, duty, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage. "What we do in our Army and our military makes these young Americans -- whether they get out at age 21/22, or 52, or 62 -- civic assets that are a treasure to our society," he said. The Army's Soldier for Life program furthers the idea that Soldiers continue to serve after their time in uniform as ambassadors for the Army. "They want to continue to serve," he said "And we need to ask them to continue to serve ... we need them to be our ambassadors; we need them to go into our career centers, our recruitment centers, to go talk about what it was like." A larger aspect of the SFL program touches Soldiers before they leave the Army, helping them better prepare for employment outside the Army after they serve. READINESS Murphy said for the Army, readiness means units that are fully manned, trained in their combat tasks, fully equipped, and led by competent leaders. That readiness, he said, will win wars, if need be. It will also be a key aspect of preventing wars as well -- because a ready force deters aggressive action of would-be aggressors. "I'd rather be proactive than reactive" he said. "We are reminded with alarming frequency that great power conflicts are not dead. They manifest themselves today on a regional basis. Both Russia and China are challenging America's willingness and ability to enforce international standards of conduct. But a ready Army provides America the strength to deter such actions." Readiness makes future training less costly, he said, and also prepares the Army for transformation. "Our Army must be prepared and willing to face the high-end advanced combat power of Russia, or more likely, Russian capability employed by surrogate actors," he said. "We are dedicating resources to develop solutions for this and future possibilities to allow our force the space to develop new concepts or those suggested by the National Commission on the Future of the Army." As the under secretary of the Army, Murphy also serves as the service's chief management officer. He said another way for the Army to achieve readiness is to ensure it is spending the money it gets from the Congress as wisely as possible. That means, he said, complying with a congressional mandate to be auditable -- something the Army has yet to comply with. "Every federal agency has to be auditable. We're the only ones, the DOD and the services -- that are not. That is unacceptable," he said. "Our board of directors -- the Congress of the United States of America -- has been very clear. We need to become auditable by next fiscal year. We need to get after it this year." Murphy said the benefits of being auditable include allowing the Army to better know how it spends money, so that it can find places to save money -- and then direct those resources toward better preparing Soldiers for conflict. "Efforts like this will make our Army more efficient, investing fewer dollars to accomplish the same outcomes -- it will also make us a more effective Army by freeing up more dollars to invest in readiness," he said. "We have to make every dollar count. Our Soldiers and our nation depend on it." How long for a new pistol? [2016-03-21] WASHINGTON -- The Army's chief of staff thinks 10 years is too long for the Army to find a replacement for the M9 pistol. And he thinks $17 million for testing such a replacement is too much money. Earlier this month, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley spoke at a forum on the future of warfare, and targeted burdensome oversite, cumbersome regulations, and ever-changing and expanding requirements as the primary reasons Soldiers aren't already shooting target practice with a new handgun. "It's a relatively simple technology," Milley said of the handgun, in general. "It's been around for five centuries or so. We are not exactly redesigning how to go to the moon. This is a pistol. And arguably, it's the least lethal [or] important weapon system in the Department of Defense inventory. This thing has been out there for nine years, ten years? Requirements? A 367-page requirement document? Why?" The Army is a bureaucracy, the Department of Defense is a bureaucracy, and the federal government is a bureaucracy. All three together make one, very large, very complex bureaucracy -- and they all have competing interests that inevitably prevent the Army from putting a better pistol into Soldiers' hands. Milley said large bureaucracies like to centralize processes as a way to get a handle on perceived problems, such as with acquisition. "What large organizations do is they observe things that are screwed up in the environment and they take the problem and they centralize it and they actually make it worse," he said. The general had a better take on how to fix such problems: personal responsibility. "I think the best methods of management are to empower and decentralize," he said. "I think that I should be able to look at somebody and say here's your task, here's why you are doing it, here's the purpose, here's the end state that I want you to achieve by such-and-such a time. Go forth and have at it. If you succeed at it, you're promoted and I'll give you a medal. If you fail, you're fired ... you are operating off intent and purpose and you hold people accountable to it. That applies in acquisition just as it applies on the battlefield. That's what I would like to do." Milley said he ought to be held accountable, as the Army's chief of staff, for ensuring that the pistol purchase is done right. "Hold me accountable," he said. "Let me figure out what type of pistol we need and let me go buy it, without having to go through nine years of incredible scrutiny and testing." Milley is not alone in his feeling about acquisition. Just last week at a forum in Huntsville, Alabama, Mary J. Miller, the deputy assistant secretary of the Army for research and technology said that service chiefs like Milley need to have more authority when it comes to acquisition. "I believe the chief needs to have a bigger role in acquisition, and by acquisition I mean 'Big A' acquisition, which is requirements, funding, and the acquiring of equipment," she said. "He represents the operational Soldier, and therefore has a voice and should be heard." Maj. Gen. Cedric T. Wins, director of force development with the office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-8, said if the Army is really interested in delivering the goods to Soldiers on time and on budget, it has got to focus on three things: getting a handle on its unwieldy requirements process, finding "unwavering, clear-focused, advocacy and oversight" for its programs, and securing "stable funding layered throughout the delivery, the requirements definition, approval, the resourcing, and the delivery of the acquisition." "If you think about all three of those ... the chief and the vice chief of staff are probably the only people who can ensure that happens on a consistent basis for the major capabilities, the most important capabilities the Army needs," Wins said. Wins said with the chief being top dog on approval for requirements, those requirements would be set in stone. That would make it easier to make acquisition programs move forward, he said, because it would be harder to keep changing them. "If it goes to the most senior level, and the chief slaps the table and says these are the requirements that I approve, then you hold fast on those requirements," Wins said. "Nobody else below the chief should have the ability to change that requirement." Wins said senior Army leader advocacy for acquisition programs has not always been apparent -- and having them on board could change how quickly a program delivers capability to Soldiers. "Often times we don't, we have not gotten the full participation and the full commitment of the Army senior leaders in uniform when you talk about the acquisition strategy of a system, how it is meeting its marks, what the limits of testing will be, and what test is required," he said. For resourcing a program, finding the money to pay for it, he said the Army needs more discipline. "If you have said that over the lifecycle, you've costed it out, and this is what it's going to take to deliver on this capability, and the chief has said this is the requirement and these are the levels of funding's we are committed to for the development of this program, then nobody gets to pull away, nobody gets to cut, nobody gets to cause that program to stretch over time, if it's not approved by the chief of staff of the Army," he said. When it comes to advocacy for a program, ensuring that a program has solid funding, and making calls on what kinds of testing are absolutely necessary, Wins said, the chief of staff is the go-to guy to make it happen. "There is only one person that can sit in the middle of all that and make that happen, I believe, and that is the CSA," Wins said. Behind 'bow wave' in breaking barriers for women [2016-03-25] WASHINGTON -- In 1983, shortly after receiving her commission from the Army, Lt. Gen. Mary A. Legere remembers having a conversation with a fellow Soldier inside what was then called West Germany. "I was a signals intelligence officer, and was in our position along the border in West Germany," said Legere, who this month ended her assignment as the Army's G-2. "If the Soviet Army came, this is where we would fight and do our mission. "I remember this young female 18-year-old Soldier looked at me, a young 23-year-old, and said 'we're pretty exposed here, because the main battle positions for our cavalry regiment are behind us, ma'am. And we are in a position, based on our equipment, where if the enemy closes on us, they are going to close pretty fast. Are the Soviets aware that we are not supposed to be in combat against them?'" In 1983, there were a lot of rules and regulations about where women could serve in proximity to combat. Yet Legere and her fellow enlisted Soldier both recognized at the time the ridiculousness of having such rules in place. "It was at that moment that I had this stark realization that we had these rules that were established that were based on proximity and combat coding that made no real sense," Legere said. "Men and women -- both similarly exposed -- would need to have access to the same quality of tactical training and experience to ensure their combat readiness and survival in war." Now after 34 years in the Army, she has just recently completed her assignment as the Army's senior intelligence officer and will soon retire. For almost four years, she was the senior advisor to both the Secretary of the Army and the Chief of Staff of the Army regarding the modernization, readiness, oversight and transformation of the 58,000-person-strong Army Intelligence Corps. She has also served as the senior U.S. Military Intelligence officer in Iraq with Multi-National Force Iraq and in the Republic of Korea with United States Forces Korea. The role of the intelligence corps, she said, is to provide commanders and warfighters at the point of need the information and intelligence they need to enable decisions "to understand the enemies we face, the terrain and condition of the battlefield, and whether at a corps or a battalion, bring that fused knowledge to a commander ... It's about knowing more about the enemy than you know about yourself, and presenting that to commanders to help inform their decisions and reduce their uncertainty." MILITARY ROOTS Legere was born in New York, and grew up in New Hampshire. Her mother was an English teacher, as was her father. "In the early '60s, he had an opportunity to write a television series for a local public television station. Like my mom, he was a great writer, and his experience eventually led him to a career with Public Broadcasting." Her dad had enlisted in the Navy as a 17 year old college freshman at the very end of World War II, and later served at West Point during the Korean War. "My father left college as a 17 year old to enlist in the Navy in the final year of the war. He then returned to college, got married to my mom, then started his family," Legere said. "During the Korean War, they recalled him to teach." On her mother's side, Legere recalled, seven of her mother's brothers served in Vietnam, Korea or World War II, with two serving as career Naval officers. She had her own pack of brothers to deal with as well -- four of them. One served in the Army for 10 years and another received a commission in the Army Reserves. "When I was in junior high and high school, my brother was stationed in Korea and then Germany," she said. "And as a kid, I loved the idea of travel and seeing the world, so I thought, wow, the Army is a little like a travel agency. I visited him when I was a sophomore in college and had the opportunity to hang out with him and his fellow Soldiers. I could see how much he loved what he did and the people he served with." When Legere went off to college, she'd already had a lot of exposure to the military -- her own brother, her father's experience, her uncles and one aunt, and all the military kids of service members assigned to nearby Portsmouth Shipyard and Pease Air Force Base in Southern New Hampshire. "When I went to college I had an interest in international affairs and national security, and also an interest in leadership, but didn't want to take the business school route," she said. The Army Reserve Officer Training Corps provided a great opportunity for her at the time, she said. She got into ROTC as a college freshman and was invited by her ROTC cadre to compete for a scholarship -- which she won. She said she remembers she had to ask her parents to sign with her for the commitment to the Army that accepting the scholarship would bring, because at the time she was underage. FINDING A PLACE "My dad and my mother, very early on in my life, made it very clear that they were going to do their best to give me the education, confidence and the skill sets to succeed in life, but that employing all of those would be up to me," she said. While her parents did not oppose her decision to be a part of the Army, Legere admits it took them awhile to see how much she enjoyed it, and that a life of service was right for her. "When they had the opportunity to ... see my husband and I with our Soldiers, I remember my mother saying to me that it's an amazing thing to find a place you belong, and that offers such meaning." Her mother has since passed away, Legere said. But her father, soon to be 89 years old, and a former Sailor, "refers to me as 'the General,' but I'm his daughter first. I know that both of my parents are very proud of my service." Early on in her Army career, she said, she hadn't really planned on a career in the military. "I had a four year obligation with my scholarship and was really excited about the opportunity to serve as an intelligence officer in Europe," she said. "But I was thinking four years, and then pursuing career in the Foreign Service with the State Department". While she had expected her time in uniform to be short, she didn't glide through her commitment to the Army, she said. She gave it her all. "I always enter into things with the idea of let's give this a 1,000-percent try," she said. "I had such a great experience in my first assignment in Germany. I was really so in love with intelligence and with the idea of being a leader and Soldier and I said I'll try one more assignment. And then one more and, well, here I am." BYPASSING CLOSED DOORS Legere came into the Army in 1982, just a few years after the decision to disestablish the Women's Army Corps and integrate women into the Regular Army in 1978. And it was just two years after the first women had graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York in 1980. While women were finally being admitted into the Army as regular Soldiers, there were still many restrictions on what women were allowed to do in uniform that had little to do with their skills or abilities. Legere said it took a few years for her to recognize those roadblocks to her career. "I wasn't conscious as a young lieutenant that there was an issue, until maybe seven or eight years into my career," she said. "As in my first assignments in Germany and Korea, I had every opportunity to command and to hone my skills as an intelligence officer. I really did not realize then that there were jobs in intelligence I could not get or even compete for, because of the restrictions of where and how women were assigned." Early on, she had been assigned to all the positions that a young officer would expect to get, including platoon leader and various staff level positons. For example, she completed a tour in Korea that included time on a staff and a company command. It was during her first assignment at a division headquarters where she first recognized that some doors would be closed to her due to her gender -- doors she'd need to go through in order to advance, and to be a competent asset for the Army. "As a midlevel and junior officer, I got a little bit put off by the idea that if I have the capability, talent and the drive, why can't I have the same positions as my male peers in intelligence," she said. "At one point I thought about leaving the service over that. I just felt like I was going to constantly be behind the power curve if I couldn't have the same opportunities. Over time, I felt I wouldn't be as competent as my male counterparts -- I felt that would be dangerous for them and not really fair to me." Instead of leaving the Army, Legere said, she opted to stick it out. She figured although some doors were closed, there may be other similar assignments she could take that would provide her the type of experience she would need to progress in her career, and to further develop competence as an intelligence officer. "I'm glad I stuck with it and ran into mentors who challenged me and really pressed me into positions that would assist me. So when the opportunities did come I was fully prepared," she said. BENCHMARKING BEST Another big help to her, she said, was her own husband, who she met in Army ROTC and who was an Army combat arms officer. "Paul was progressing through the standard leadership jobs of the company-grade officer and we would always compare notes on our jobs and experiences," she said. "At some point, we had the discussion that in order to be competent as a leader, regardless of gender, we needed to seek similar opportunities in our career fields, ensuring we were always mentally and physically prepared to lead our Soldiers. So it's fair to say that in the absence of any other idea, I was consciously benchmarking against the things he was being asked to do, seeking his advice, and making sure that I sought the kinds of positions combat arms officers progress through. When I ran into obstacles, I found other positions that would suitably give me the same sort of experience, and I made great friends among many Soldiers and NCOs who helped me fill in any gaps I thought I had." Restrictions on women in the military have changed drastically, especially in the last year. Now every job in the Army, every military occupational specialty, is opening to women. The only restrictions now are personal capability. But the transition to that has not been smooth or even predictable, Legere said. "When I was a second lieutenant I was allowed to be in direct support of an armored cavalry regiment, leading my 60-person collection and jamming platoon," she said. "After Desert Storm, the Army did a review and restricted women from those positions," she said. "They no longer allowed women in intelligence, or signal logistics to serve in the armor cavalry regiment, and made it more difficult to serve, even in support branches in combat arms units, because they determined they were a little bit close to combat." Ten years later, she said, another study opened those positions back up to women. RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME Since 2001, with the onset of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, the Army has found that the undefined battlespace provides no sanctuary to male or female Soldiers. "So more and more positions within the Intelligence Corps were opened, as well as the other support [military occupational specialties]," she said. "As restrictions melted away -- and generally the restrictions melted away before the policy changed -- you had leaders who were putting women in positions that were restricted because they were the best talent and the best person for that role. I was behind that bow wave, ready with the right skill sets. "I can't tell you how much I appreciated male leaders who took the chance and selected their leaders or staff officers based on merit, vice gender," Legere said. "Their decisions provided the early test cases that proved the restrictions were impractical and unnecessary, and that as long as a Soldier is well trained, gender was not an issue. I appreciate my mentors -- men and women -- who encouraged me to go after the hardest jobs and always be prepared -- they helped me realize that by doing those two things, opportunities will come." MENTORSHIP Legere said she has been mentored by hundreds, perhaps thousands of fellow Soldiers, including her husband's father, who had been a career Marine. "Mentors come from across the ranks from the youngest to oldest, or most junior to senior leaders," she said. "They are people that just put you on the path from the start to take your profession seriously. When I am asked who were my mentors, I can see hundreds of people, if not thousands, that have contributed to my development and my sense of what this profession is about and my obligation to be prepared. I wouldn't be sitting here without my first platoon sergeant ... who just made sure my experience as a lieutenant was not lethal to either of us." She cites a professor of military science who "from the moment he met me as a young 18 year old until today has been a mentor." As well, she points to her brigade commander in Korea, whom she met as when she was a major, who perhaps had the greatest impact in guiding her in the right direction. "He was an amazingly tough and focused warfighter who was always pushing our unit to improve. He selected me for two very difficult positions," Legere said. During a counseling session Legere says she will never forget, "he said I had to start taking responsibility for my potential. I had to be a more relentless about how I went about my own self-development -- reading, writing and studying while also going after the hardest or most difficult assignments -- to ensure I was fully prepared for my responsibilities as an officer." Legere said she knew that his advice was meant for her, but that it also meant that she had to ensure those who would later be subordinate to her should be held to the same. Legere said she's always been impressed with those who "have opened doors for others, including people of other races, genders, and nationalities," and said she hopes that in her career, she has in some way has served as an example for using skill, talent and performance as an indicator of suitability for a position, rather than gender. "While it was almost always unspoken, I hoped that by performing in my positions, particularly in units or positions that weren't necessarily available to women, that I changed people's attitudes about what leadership should look like," she said. "It's not about being a man or woman, it's about an individual who's able to do the job." ADVICE TO FEMALE LEADERS Legere said that while she has advice for young female Soldiers in the intelligence community, it also applies to the young male officers as well. "The wonderful thing about the profession you are entering now is that there are no obstacles as to how far you can take your talent," she said. "But you have to take ownership of the sacrifice, the discipline, the persistence, the dedication and the selflessness that are going to be necessary for you to be successful." For women who question if they belong in particular places, she said, "I encourage them to always have a friend that holds them responsible for their potential. I have a best friend I met as a second lieutenant, who herself is a very accomplished military officer today. At every step in my military career, when I was about to take a hard job and I had a moment where I didn't think I could do it, she was somebody I knew that if I dialed the phone or sent a note, she'd talk me into never doubting my ability. "I tell young ladies to surround themselves with both men and women who will encourage them," she said. "Seek mentorship, encourage others, and take responsibility for your potential." Legere is now in the process of preparing for retirement, and says that she still has great interest in military intelligence. "I hope I will find an avenue that will allow me to continue to contribute," she said. She said she also plans to spend more time with her family -- something she said she and her husband, already retired from the Army, were not able to do much of when they were both on active duty. Missile system would greatly increase defense capability in South Korea [2016-03-25] WASHINGTON -- Right now, the United States and South Korea are in discussions regarding the feasibility of deploying a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD system there, along with its associated radar, while nearby China has voiced objections to the idea. No decision has been reached, but earlier this week Lt. Gen. David L. Mann, commander of U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command and Joint Functional Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense said such an emplacement would provide a "huge increase in capabilities," in South Korea to protect against threats posed by North Korea. Mann is aware of China's concerns. "This is a sensitive issue for the partners throughout the region, and we understand the sensitivities that are involved, especially when you look at South Korea is one of the largest trading partners to China in the region," Mann said. "We don't minimize the sensitivity of these discussions." Right now, he said, discussions are about the feasibility of putting a THAAD battery in South Korea. The system is designed to strike down incoming missiles in their "terminal" phase. THAAD missiles don't carry warheads, but rather rely on their own weight combined with the speed at which they travel to strike down the missiles they target. A THAAD battery consists of launcher vehicles with each vehicle holding 8 missiles; a radar system; and a fire control system which serves as the communications and data-management backbone. The THAAD system, he said, is designed to provide greater capability to address "more challenging threat vehicles that are out there." The THAAD system augments existing capabilities such as the Patriot Missile system and the Aegis Combat System. "THAAD, if you look at its performance, especially in past testing, it's just remarkable what its capability has proven to be," Mann said, praising the system's capabilities. Were such a system ever put into South Korea, Mann said, it would be focused not on China, but on threats coming from North Korea. "That radar and that system is not looking at China," he said. "That system, if the decision is made to deploy it, would be oriented on North Korea, quite frankly, and threats posed by the North Korean military. It's a missile defense capability, to make sure we provide our South Korean partners as well as other partners in the region, with protection." SABRE RATTLING In recent months, North Korea has become more aggressive in testing potential weapons technology. In January, North Korea detonated what it claimed to be a hydrogen bomb. Last month, it launched an earth observation satellite into space. Mann said the North Koreans are making themselves a viable threat -- the kind of threat THAAD is designed to address. "I think we need to take North Korea seriously," he said. Recent North Korean activity "shows that they have the capability for long-range flight. And so I would not minimize ... I think we need to take their capability seriously ... I think we need to take their developments very, very seriously." Right now, the Army has a THAAD system in place in Guam, and Mann said that system is likely to stay there long-term. Were a decision to be made to place a THAAD system in South Korea, it could take several weeks to make happen, Mann said. While the system is mobile, site selection and site preparation will take some time. The Army is looking at other locations for THAAD as well, Mann said. In addition to South Korea, he said, he believes Japan and other nations may also be interested in the system, but "to what degree I'm not prepared to say," he said. Mann also said the Army is seeing a "demand signal' from other areas for such a capability, including from U.S. European Command, U.S. Central Command, and other areas "If you look at their operation plan, they see a need ... for this capability," he said. OVERTAXED PATRIOTS The older Patriot Missile System has a mission similar to that of the THAAD system, though there are many more in the Army's inventory. The Army plans to have up to seven THAAD batteries, for instance, while it currently maintains 15 Patriot Battalions. Nevertheless, Patriot systems and crews are overtaxed, and Mann said it's not prudent to look to the THADD system to relieve that stress. With just seven planned THAAD batteries, he said, "you have to be so judicious, so careful as to where you deploy THAAD, because you have so few ... of that defense system. It's complementary, but I don't think you are looking at THAAD necessarily as being able to alleviate the stress on Patriot, just by the sheer numbers and where we have Patriot located throughout the U.S., and the world." Instead, he said, the Army is looking at other options that will enable it to more effectively use Patriot. One solution is purchasing a dismounted command and control system for the Patriot battery to allow for it to serve a wider area -- "instead of deploying a whole battalion we can maximize what that battalion brings to the table by not having to send the whole battalion, but by using the dismounted capability to take different components within the Patriot battalion to different locations and really kind of spread its capability ... on the battlefield." Mann also said that instead of deploying an entire Patriot battalion -- including all the equipment that supports the launchers and missiles, "maybe we can take a Patriot battery to a location and augment its capabilities by leveraging an Aegis radar, or an Air Force radar, or a coalition radar, and really kind of componentize the Patriot unit and optimize its capabilities across a battle space. Leveraging networks to be able to get the best return on investment, in order to have the best sensor, best shooter mix to address a threat." Army to debut new game-based SHARP training tool [2016-03-29] WASHINGTON -- In April, a new Army training videogame will put company, battalion and brigade commanders in the hot seat to deal with sexual assault and harassment in their ranks. The ELITE-SHARP Command Team Trainer is an interactive video game that will make its debut, April 1, just in time for Sexual Assault Prevention Month. The game will post on the Army's MILGAMING website at milgaming.army.mil, alongside the already successful "ELITE Lite counseling tool" on which it was based. The ELITE, or "Emergent Leader Immersive Training Environment" platform has been used for about 18 months now by the Army as a counseling tool. ELITE Lite Counseling is used to train junior officers and non-commissioned officers, on how to conduct more effective counseling. The U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, has used the ELITE Lite Counseling application extensively integrating it into the PL 300, Military Leadership course. With the ELITE Lite counseling trainer, the Army "wanted to get a more standardized practical exercise experience," said Maj. Greg Pavlichko, chief of the Army's Games for Training program at the Combined Arms Center, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. "So if you and I are in class together and we are discussing counseling or SHARP, and we are then asked to (role play) -- I'm the person with bad behavior and you are the leader that is asked to counsel me, well maybe I don't care, maybe I'm a terrible actor, maybe I'm just not into it," he said. "So your experience is very dependent on the student population and basically how into it they are." The ELITE-SHARP CTT takes advantage of the successes of the ELITE Lite counseling tool in that it provides a standardized avatar for students to interact with and gives everyone the same experience every time. Additionally, Pavlichko said, like with the counseling tool, the ELITE-SHARP CTT diverges from the "old paradigm" of training, which involves a prepackaged slide deck, videos and classroom discussion, and instead provides younger officers with something they are more familiar with -- gaming. "So, we're getting away from non-professional role players and just getting beaten to death with slide shows, and making it more engaging," Pavlichko said. "Plus, for a lot of younger people, gaming is kind of innate and organic to them, so they understand it right away. The predominance of Soldiers coming into the Army at this point have a pretty robust gaming experience behind them." In September 2014, the Army's Sexual Harassment Assault Response and Prevention Management Office in Washington requested that the ELITE counseling tool be further developed into a SHARP-specific tool to better prepare command teams for dealing with sexual assaults and harassment in the ranks. The ELITE-SHARP CTT program was developed to meet that need. Unlike traditional slide show-based training, the ELITE-SHARP CTT game provides command teams with animated scenarios regarding sexual assault and harassment that illustrate both the right way and the wrong way to handle such situations, and then moves into an interactive portion where commanders meet face-to-face with virtual Soldiers who have been victims of a sexual assault or sexual harassment. "We hear feedback that using slide shows for training is very ineffective," said Monique Ferrell, director of the Army SHARP Program. "This is an avatar-based platform. When a new commander takes command of a unit, by regulation there is a requirement for them to meet with their SHARP professional, their SARC, within the first 30 days. What this tool does, the ELITE-SHARP CTT, is it facilitates that discussion between the Sexual Assault Response Coordinator and the commander." Within the ELITE-SHARP CTT game, commanders learn of a sexual assault or harassment issue, and then have to figure out the best way to handle the situation. That usually starts with contacting their command's own SARC. The ELITE-SHARP CTT is meant to help commanders understand the right way to deal with sexual assaults in their commands, so they know how best to help victims, and also know how not to make the mistakes that could later on screw up prosecution of offenders, said Pavlichko. Pavlichko said early on that the Army's SHARP office had realized "a lot of issues that were happening with sexual assault and response was that command teams, especially at the company level, didn't understand what the 'golden rules' were, or what they were supposed to do with a sexual assault or harassment report, from a policy standpoint. "So you'd have an incident, the commander and first sergeant would respond to the incident in a way that was not in accordance with policy or law, and then you'd have a breakdown with the court case and things would get thrown out because they didn't do the right things," Pavlichko said. "Or they would kind of do what they thought was right, but not necessarily what the law or Army policy said you need to do." With the ELITE-SHARP CTT, those commanders will learn how to deal with sexual assaults and response the right way, the first time. Tim Wansbury, with the Army Research Laboratory, helped develop the game for the Army. He said the ELITE-SHARP CTT kicks off by showing game players two different vignettes that play out in animation. First, a sexual assault happens in the barracks at an installation, and the command team has to respond. The second, he said, involves sexual harassment in the motor pool. "There is a noncommissioned officer in the motor pool who is using foul language or making inappropriate statements," he said. "It's clearly behavior we wouldn't expect in the workplace." Both of those scenarios are illustrated with three animated segments each: one to show how a command team could handle it correctly, one to show how a command team might really screw it up, and one that contrasts the two in order to illustrate the difference. After commanders watch the animated vignettes that contrast the right and wrong way to handle both a sexual assault and a sexual harassment situation, they move into the interactive portion of the ELITE-SHARP CTT game, which features virtual avatars that commanders are meant to interact with. These practice exercises include two scenarios as well: one where a Soldier is the victim of sexual assault, and one where a Soldier is sexually harassed by another Soldier. In the latter case, the commander doing the training gets to interact with both the victim and the alleged perpetrator of the sexual harassment. Wansbury was heavily involved in development of the ELITE-SHARP CTT, though the primary game developers were at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies. He concedes that neither himself, nor the engineers, programmers, or computer scientists involved in game development are SHARP professionals. He said game development for the ELITE-SHARP CTT involved more than just programming -- it involved more than half a year of research for development of the game's content. "We relied on Army SHARP professionals, both at the Army SHARP program management office in Washington, and at the Army SHARP Academy," Wansbury said. "Game development took about 12 months. About six to seven months was spent identifying and developing the specific training content that was included in the application." Pavlichko said research also included interviews with commanders who had SHARP incidents occur within their commands in the past. Most recently, on March 21, the game received final approval to be used as an official Army training tool, and the expected release for the game is April 1. While Soldiers can go to the Army's military gaming website to download the game and play it on their own computer, Pavlichko said that's not really where the game will get the most use. He said his team is working to get the game implemented as part of the curriculum at school houses across the Army. "Most Soldiers will see it has been installed on some kind of Army computer and see it in the context of some type of course of instruction," Pavlichko said. Soldiers who have in the past been part of command teams, but who have been out of the command environment due to another assignment, might also use the ELITE-SHARP CTT as a "refresher," Pavlichko said, before returning to a follow-on command assignment. It would be those Soldiers who download the game on their own computers in order to get that refresher course. Completing the ELITE-SHARP CTT training takes about 90-minutes, Pavlichko said. ELITE-SHARP POST The ELITE environment didn't start out as a trainer for SHARP. It was actually developed as part of an effort to provide a "performance counseling" tool to officers in the U.S. Navy. The Army liked what they saw of the program, and developed it for their own use as a counseling tool, calling it ELITE, short for "Emergent Leader Immersive Training Environment." But Wansbury said that system had a large overhead -- it required lots of gear, lots of computers and lots of computing power. It wasn't portable, and it was expensive. At the request of the Army, the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California was able to "shrink-wrap the goodness of ELITE into a laptop," Wansbury said. And the end product was dubbed "ELITE Lite." The ELITE Lite counseling tool is actually on the Army's MILGAMING website now, and has been for some time. It was the success of the ELITE Lite counseling tool that spurred the Army's SHARP office to request it be further developed as a SHARP training tool, and that's how the ELITE-SHARP CTT was developed. Now, the same team that developed ELITE-SHARP CTT is developing another game, called the ELITE-SHARP Prevention & Outreach Simulation Trainer, or ELITE-SHARP POST, that will be used to train SHARP professionals on how to better interact with commanders to build a successful prevention program and effective outreach mission. While the aim of ELITE-SHARP CTT is to teach commanders to deal with sexual assaults and sexual harassment after they happen, ELITE-SHARP POST will help SHARP professionals hone their skills at preventing those things from happening in the first place. The ELITE-SHARP POST application will "give our SARCs and VAs the tools they need to help develop their prevention programs, both at the installation level, as well as with interacting with their local communities," Ferrell said. Wansbury said ELITE-SHARP POST development will mirror development of the ELITE-SHARP CTT game, will use the same platform, and will provide "upfront instruction, visual examples using animated vignettes on what good practices are and not so good practices, and then we will have a series of practice exercise where the students will be able to apply their new knowledge and develop some skills and most importantly the confidence that they will need to perform these tasks when they perform their jobs." It's expected that ELITE-SHARP POST will become available in about a year, and will also be available on the Army's MILGAMING website, right alongside the ELITE-SHARP CTT game and the ELITE Lite Counseling tool. MILGAMING FUTURE Pavlichko said the future of the ELITE platform, which now serves two purposes, counseling training and SHARP training, might in the future become more interactive through the introduction of artificial intelligence. "Instead of selecting a response from three or four responses, it's more of a robust AI you can have a natural conversation with, so if I'm counseling somebody, instead of picking a response I can speak into the microphone and have a more natural conversation with the digital avatar," he said. Such technology has already been demonstrated in the past, but he said to get it into the ELITE software platform, the Army must develop a requirement for it and also secure the resources needed to develop it. "It takes time to build momentum for new technologies," he said. "It takes senior leaders seeing these things and then starting to understand the potential." In the past, he said, gaming was "almost a four-letter word" within the Army's training community. "Games are fun. Training is not supposed to be fun," he said, paraphrasing sentiments he found to be coming from the field. "But then after enough senior leaders see the capability, they see its potential, they understand it's potential. They see Soldiers using it and start to see the results of the capability -- now with gaming, everybody wants it." Army chief information officer announces long-term network strategy, 2025-2040 [2016-04-01] WASHINGTON -- The Army's chief information officer announced, March 31, the release of the Army's new, long-term, network strategy called "Shaping the Army Network (2025-2040)." The strategy takes a long view of where the network and related science and technology efforts are headed and how the Army is looking to shape that future environment now. "Shaping the Army Network: 2025-2040 provides the long-term strategic direction for Army enterprise network modernization within the context of the Army Operating Concept," Lt. Gen. Robert S. Ferrell, the Army's chief information officer/G-6, writes in the new strategy. "Using the IT baseline described in the Army Network Campaign Plan as a starting point, the intent is to guide development of science and technology requirements to get to 'what's next,' in the evolution of the Army." The new strategy examines key technology areas that will affect networks and systems, to include dynamic transport, computing, and edge sensors; data to decisive action; human cognitive enhancements; robotics and autonomous operations; and cybersecurity and resiliency. "It really gets at the capability of internet of things, software defined networks, advanced analytics, diverse sensors and actuators, and self-healing networks," Ferrell said of the new strategy to an audience of IT industry personnel. "So you have a complete picture of what we are working on today, what we are working on tomorrow, and what we are working on down the road." The general pointed industry professionals to the newly-released strategy for 2025-2040, and also to the recently released Army Data Strategy, and documents outlining Army efforts in the near and mid-term, so that they may prepare themselves to partner with the Army to make it happen. "It's about your R&D dollars, it's about investing into the right areas into which the Army plans to head," he said. NEAR TERM Soldiers today who need email, databases, telephones and teleconference capabilities for their work are often tethered to their computers at their desks. That's not going to be the case, going into the future, said the Army's chief information officer. "If you think about our state of where we are in technology, you have your iPhone, and it has everything in one spot," said Ferrell, March 31. "For our Soldiers, we are locked into our data that is on our desktop, our phones in our office." Ferrell said the Army plans to untether Soldiers from the requirement to be at a desk, and to bring IT that keeps them there now, forward to the tactical edge. "Your office phone number that's in your office will be there, so you can't hide wherever you travel," he said. "And you'll have the ability, again, to get that VTC and that chat regardless of your location." According to the Army Network Campaign Plan's implementation guidance for the near term, defined as 2016-2017, "mobility is the core of Army operational capability." Soldiers, the plan says, must be able to execute their mission wherever they are -- at home or deployed -- and have access to the full communications, information sources and analysis they depend on. Part of ensuring connectivity to the information tools Soldiers use to do their jobs is government-issued hand-held devices, like cell phones, that "can easily be integrated into the network and withstand the operational environment," the plan reads. The Army plans in the 4th quarter of 2016 to release a mobility strategy that sets the direction for mobile technology, shapes research and development, experimentation and investment activities, and also embraces the integration of emerging technologies. Also in 2016, the Army expects deliver initial mobile access to unclassified data and information on government furnished end-user devices. In FY17, the CIO/G-6 expects to do the same for classified data. OS UPGRADES Ferrell said the Army is on track to upgrade systems across the Army to Windows 10, and plans to begin that effort most likely in Europe and then move into the continental United States. "That's a good news story ... the entire DOD and the Army on one operating system," Ferrell said. Ferrell said the transition will, among other things, provide improved network security across the Army, enable quicker patching, and increase accountability and transparency. "As you look at the mandate for the host baseline to be completed in 2017, we're on track to support ... DOD to meet that requirement," he said. "There will be some waivers, of course, with legacy systems." He said the CIO/G-6 is partnered with Army Cyber Command, the Defense Information Systems Agency, the DOD CIO and others to accomplish that mission. He also said the Army will soon produce a "roadmap" that spells out how the Army will achieve upgrades across the force. JRSS OBOARDING In 2015 Army migrated two installations to Joint Regional Security Stacks, which Ferrell has in the past referred to as a "firewall on steroids." This year, he said, the Army will migrate 19 installations to JRSS altogether. Already, six have been done, he said, and 13 more will happen this year. Europe and Southwest Asia are included in that. By 2018, he said, "the expectation is to finish the migration of over 44 installations" to JRSS. Ferrell also said the Army plans to bring the Army Corps of Engineers, the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard networks inside the JRSS, and that completion of that mission will put 60 percent of the Army's force behind the JRSS. PLAN X HEADED TO ARMY Lt. Col. Ossie Peacock, the assistant project manager for defensive cyber, with Program Executive Office Enterprise Information Systems, also said that the Army is in discussion now to transition the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's "Plan X" into the Army. Plan X is a four-year, $120-million DARPA program that attempts to, among other things, make it easier for humans to visualize a network and its components, to automate the task of identifying as hostile or benign the anomalies that might appear on that network, to provide intuitive symbology that accurately conveys to users the status of various components of a network, and to make it easier for even inexperienced users to take action to prevent hostile parties from gaining access to and causing damage to a network. "It's a platform that can be leveraged all the way down to the tactical level," Peacock said. "It's capable of scaling. There's some uniqueness to it. And it addresses the cyber mission command in a holistic manner. It does the planning, the war gaming, and actual course of action recommendations that allow the human to determine what course of action to take and it gives them feedback on expected outcomes." Peacock said there are multiple PEOs across the Army that could take advantage of Plan X, not just his own PEO EIS. Now, the Army is in the process of assessing the maturity of the Plan X technology, he said, and plans to use a Federally Funded Research and Development Center this summer to provide it with an assessment of that technology. 'Grass roots' bystander intervention [2016-04-04] WASHINGTON -- Master Sgt. Jeff Fenlason asked about 25 people to close their eyes and imagine a fictional scenario involving somebody they care about. "Imagine a party. You're not at the party. But you can see it. Like they removed the roof of the house and you are looking down at it. And you think about the person you love most in the world. The party is getting late and they are getting ready to leave. And they go to the back room to get their coat and they are followed there by a person who begins to assault them. And as the assault goes on, a third party opens the door, looks in, then closes the door and walks away." Fenlason is with Division Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion, 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, Georgia, and serves as the noncommissioned officer in charge of their "bystander intervention program" -- a program he helped create and which might right now be the only one of its kind in the Army. Two questions followed the scenario Fenlason posed during his April 4 presentation at the Pentagon, a shortened version of the one he offers to Soldiers around the Army. The first of those questions: "How do you feel about the person assaulting your loved one?" "I want to stop them," was one answer. "I want to hurt them," was another answer. "I want to kill them," was the most extreme. And a second question: "How do you feel about the person that did nothing to stop it?" "Angry" and "they are worthless," were two answers. A more detailed answer: "I was thinking that the person being assaulted was my niece, who is in college now. And I was thinking what if the third party was my daughter. Well maybe my daughter would be at risk if she tried to do something. But there comes a point where you have to be brave and do something." How bystanders to crimes or other emergencies behave, whether they identify a situation as one that needs to be intervened on, and whether they are themselves willing to intervene or choose instead to do nothing, was the focus of Fenlason's presentation. What he discussed is the result of nearly three years now of practice and development that was kicked off in the spring of 2013 when he was part of 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Divison, and was asked to look at how things could be done differently in his brigade when it comes to stopping sexual assaults. "We went looking if we could make a difference and end sexual assault in my brigade," he said. "We started looking at how SHARP training was done, and what their data said. But it was sort of a SHARP light." Where they were headed, he said, "wasn't really much different than the current SHARP training." But then he had a chance discussion with a professional at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who he said was dealing with a similar set of young people there, with a similar set of problems as the Army when it comes to sexual assault. There, he said, he heard this for the first time: "we have to empower the good people in the world to step up," Fenlason said. "And that made all the change in the world. Then we started looking at bystander intervention." "Bystander intervention is a sociological word, not a brand or a title," Fenlason said. "It speaks to the phenomenon of why people involve themselves, or don't involve themselves in a variety of situations. Once we understood the science behind that, we were able to put it into the Army culture." BYSTANDER EFFECT The bystander effect, Fenlason said, "refers to the phenomenon in which the greater the numbers of people that are present, the less likely those people are to help a person in distress." One explanation for that phenomenon, he said, includes the diminished level of personal responsibility that is felt when there are more people around. Fenlason cited a July 4, 2015, situation on the subway in Washington, D.C., to illustrate the bystander effect. Then, a man was killed after having been stabbed 30 to 40 times, and there were plenty of others on the subway, Fenlason said. But nobody responded or offered assistance, Fenlason said. Quoting a newspaper story regarding the incident, Fenlason said that one man reported he had felt he could have done something, because he thought he was big enough to, and felt confident that if he had acted others would have assisted too -- but he then opted to do nothing. He didn't take the first step. "Then you drop down three paraphrases in the story," Fenlason said, "It says law enforcement showed up and told them they'd done the right thing, because the perpetrator had a knife. You let the professionals handle it. We've gotten to a culture where you always let the professionals handle it? So that makes it somebody else's problem." But he confirmed that no matter how many others are present -- an individual, including a Soldier -- always maintains 100-percent responsibility for their own choice to do the right thing. Increased numbers of bystanders doesn't decrease their personal responsibility, he said. Fenlason said Soldier intervention to stop a sexual assault, for instance, might be a tough call, especially if by intervening the Soldier feels he might get himself in trouble. Intervention could lead to a fight, he said. And a fight could lead to the police being called. And a Soldier in a fight who has been drinking underage might find himself arrested and in trouble with his command. Fear of that, Fenlason said, might prevent a Soldier from trying to do the right thing. To get Soldiers to feel confident enough to value stopping a rape or an assault over the repercussions they might face personally for intervening requires that Soldiers have confidence that their leadership has their back. "If I don't trust that my chain of command will hear me out and will listen and invest in me, then I won't get involved," Fenlason said. Another explanation for the bystander effect, he said, is that bystanders feel the need to "behave in correct and socially acceptable ways." When other observers fail to react, he said, individuals often take that as a signal that a response is not needed or appropriate. "Everybody wants to be on a team," he said. "The problem is we have to figure out how to tell them what the team means, at the local level. It has to be about what does it mean to be a member of this squad, this platoon, this company. How do we do business? Who's setting the norms?" That answer has to come from the team leader or the squad leader, Fenlason said. "In a safety brief on a Friday, instead of telling Soldiers not to do the things they already know not to do, we can instead lay things out in scenarios," he said, offering up one of the scenarios he uses in training. "You're at a party and you see a couple go upstairs," he said. "A couple minutes later you see three other dudes going upstairs laughing and giggling. You go up to see what's going on and they have got her across the bed. One dude says 'hey man, you can either stick around or go back downstairs. She's giving up turns for the deployment. ' What are you going to do?" Discussion of that scenario, he said, happens at the unit. "You do it on Friday afternoon. You do it out loud. You do it at formation." There are a lot of different "right" answers about how to intervene, he said. Men and women, for instance, will react differently. "There are four dudes in there already intending on raping a girl," he said. "A female may leave and call somebody for help -- she doesn't want to be victim No. 2. A guy may go in and start a fight. Somebody else may call the cops. Somebody else may pull the plug on the stereo, or do anything to create a distraction. They are all fine answers. They are all okay. They are all doing something. "I often tell people if I was in charge of a unit today, I wouldn't tell you what to do. I would expect, I would demand intervention. When it's an emergency, you intervene." That conversation that starts Friday afternoon before the weekend continues the following week, he said, throughout the unit. "In the motor pool, it's 'maintenance Monday,' and somebody says 'hey first sergeant, Johnny's full of crap, that's not what he would have done.'" And the first sergeant, Fenlason said, takes that as a cue to continue the conversation there on the spot. In that way, he said, the conversation on how to intervene, and the expectation of the unit that Soldiers will intervene, is ongoing. "It becomes part of the fabric of that unit. It's full-time work. It takes an invested chain of command a lot of time if they want to have that positive effect," Fenlason said. "They have to reclaim defining what it means to be a member of that organization. If you don't do it, the kid in the barracks will do it for you. We need leadership to spend a lot of time talking about what it means to be 'Manchu,' or whatever that unit label is. "We want to educate at the lower level what it means to be a member of this organization," he said. "This organization treats women how? This organization treats people of color how? Or, this organization treats people with different sexual orientations how?" Fenlason's presentation was condensed down from about the three hours or more that's presented to Soldiers at units across the Army, and it was put on at the Pentagon as part of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response month here. Sgt. 1st Class Genita M. Ruffin, with the Army's Inspector General, and Staff Sgt. Kris Campbell, with the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, both attended the presentation and say they found it to be more engaging and more effective than training they have had in the past. "This goes completely against the standard 'check-the-block' training," said Campbell, who is an infantryman by his military occupational specialty. "This is the total opposite of that. It's a complete breath of fresh air. It's not cover-your-ass training. It's what needs to be said, no matter how uncomfortable or taboo it is. This right here would completely change everything." Ruffin, who is a petroleum supply specialist by her MOS, was also on board with what she heard. "This here was awesome training," she said. "I think this training should go to the units, to be an eye-opener to everybody. I think this right here, with the new generation of Soldiers coming into the Army? They need to hear this. That's how I feel." Fenlason said that the bystander intervention training he and his team at 3rd Infantry Division have developed is spreading across the Army -- and they are the ones making that happen. "It's completely grass roots," he said. "We've been very careful to say this is leader development. That's the responsibility of every command. It's developing trust and judgment. We're trying to help units develop the judgment of their Soldiers to intervene, and the trust that their command will at least listen to what happened and take the fullest, broadest look they can at a situation." Fenlason and his team teach two courses. The first is to actually teach Soldiers at 3rd ID the material they have developed regarding bystander intervention. The other course they teach is to prepare personnel at other commands to teach it to their own Soldiers -- a "train the trainer" thing, he said. Already, Fenlason said, they have trained 60 facilitators at 82nd Airborne Division; 250 facilitators for Army Recruiting Command; and 60 to 90 facilitators at 1st Armored Division. Throughout the Army, he said, they've trained more than 600 facilitators. Indian Army chief discuss military-to-military engagements with CSA [2016-04-07] WASHINGTON -- Gen. Dalbir Singh, who serves as chief of staff of India's army, arrived in Washington, D.C., Thursday, to meet with Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley and other members of the Army staff here to discuss, among other things, further development of relations between the two armies. While details of their discussions were private, Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter, speaking earlier this week at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, confirmed America's desire to further develop its relationship with India. Carter said the U.S. and India share much in common, including similar geopolitical and geostrategic interests. "We're looking to do ... more with India," he said. Included in that is more military-to-military engagements, and also more partnerships to develop defensive technology. "They don't want to just be a buyer. They want to be a co-developer and co-producer. They want that kind of relationship." Thursday morning, as Milley and Acting Secretary of the Army Patrick J. Murphy were on Capitol Hill, Singh laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. During the ceremonial event, Singh was accompanied by Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Daniel B. Allyn and Maj. Gen. Bradley A. Becker, commander of the Military District of Washington. Following the wreath ceremony, Becker spoke briefly on the "tremendously important" relationship between the United States and India, and said visits like Singh's as well as enhanced and continued military-to-military training exercises are key to furthering the relationship. "Our focus on the Pacific and Asia/Pacific is very important to our country, and India is a tremendously important partner," Becker said. "There are many opportunities for us to partner with them in situations like humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and that's what we're looking forward to." Later in the afternoon, Milley officially welcomed Singh to the nation's capital and to the Pentagon with a "full honor arrival" ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall. Afterward, Singh attended an office call with Milley in the Pentagon. Singh's visit to the United States is not unusual. U.S. Army chiefs of staff both invite their counterparts from partner nations to visit the United States, and also accept invitations to visit partner nations. Additionally, ground forces commanders such as Milley and Singh meet during land forces conferences around the world. In September, for instance, Milley met with chiefs of staff from partner nation armies at the 9th Pacific Armies Chiefs Conference, as well as the 39th Pacific Armies Management Seminar in Denpasar, Indonesia. In October, Milley was in Europe to meet with counterparts of European armies at the 23rd Annual Conference of European Armies in Wiesbaden, Germany. "These types of events are another way to build relationships with allies, so the first time you meet somebody is not during a crisis," said a spokesperson for the Office of the Chief of Staff of the Army. While in Washington, Singh was also scheduled to spend time meeting with other members of the Army staff inside the Pentagon, said an official with the Army Foreign Liaison Office, part of G-2. Singh was invited by Milley to tour the U.S. Army inside the United States, but began his visit in New York City at the United Nations, the G-2 official said. Afterward, Singh traveled southbound to Tampa, Florida, where he visited with leadership at both U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command. Singh then traveled across the United States to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, to meet with Lt. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza, commander of I Corps, which is regionally aligned with U.S. Pacific Command. As part of that regional alignment, I Corps has been working to further develop its relationship with the Indian Army. "I Corps has benefited from USARPAC's growing relationship with the Indian Army," said Lanza. "Our Soldiers routinely conduct military-to-military engagements which achieve consistent progress and builds readiness in both forces. Exercises such as Yudh Ahbyas and Varja PRAHAR foremost build personal relationships and trust with our partners which then makes for a more professional force in both armies. We have a lot of experiences to share and more opportunities for partnership will benefit our two countries as well as the Indo-Asia-Pacific region." 65th Infantry Regiment receives Congressional Gold Medal [2016-04-13] WASHINGTON -- Puerto Rican Soldiers who fought with the 65th Infantry Regiment through America's conflicts going back to World War II were presented the Congressional Gold Medal in a ceremony on Capitol Hill, April 13. Hosted by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and other leaders from Congress, the Borinqueneers -- named after the original pre-Spanish word for Puerto Rico by the indigenous Arawak -- were honored for their pioneering military service, devotion to duty and their acts of valor since the unit's creation in 1920. Even though the Borinqueneers were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2014 by President Barack Obama, the design of the medal was not finalized until the summer of 2015. Today's ceremony unveiled the single-cast medal in Emancipation Hall at the U.S. Capitol. Replica coins will now be presented to all living Borinqueneers. "Today we are setting the record straight by giving them the highest award in our possession -- the Congressional Gold Medal," Ryan said. "They were discriminated against... in a segregated unit -- we are forever in your debt and this medal is long, long overdue. "The story of the 65th Infantry Regiment is full of heroics and now we are weaving that into the fabric of American history," he added. The 65th is the first Hispanic unit and the sole unit from the Korean War to receive the Congressional Gold Medal and the regiment is also credited with the last battalion-sized bayonet assault in Army history. Other recipients of the CGM include the Native American Navajo Code Talkers, the African-American Tuskegee Airmen, Japanese-American Nisei, African-American Montford Point Marines and the Women Airforce Service Pilots known as the WASPs. "It is a well-deserved tribute for the brave men who fought many hard battles in Korea," said retired colonel Manuel F. Siverio, a Korean War vet who received two bronze stars for valor and later wrote the autobiography 'Against the Headwind.' "Their devotion to duty and many acts of valor demonstrated their dedication to the United States," he said. "I accept this medal in the name of all living Borinqueneers and the Families of those missing in action." Many veterans from the 65th Infantry traveled to the nation's capitol for the ceremony RAUL MALDONADO PEÑA Among the Borinqueneers recognized with a Congressional Gold Medal was Raul Maldonado Peña, who served in the Army from 1952 through 1975 -- he actually retired as an Army master sergeant. He served all over the Army during his career, seeing combat action in Korea as well as twice in Vietnam -- though in Vietnam, he was no longer with the 65th Infantry Regiment. Peña said he volunteered to join the Army, rather than being drafted. "I loved the Army. I wanted to be military and serve our country." He had been 17 at the time. And he was in a rural area and lived near Henry Barracks in Puerto Rico. He said he saw Soldiers there marching, and that had made him want to be a Soldier himself, rather than a farmer. He took basic training in Puerto Rico and was then sent to Panama to do training there as a military policeman. After, he did a 16-month tour in Korea, where he served in the infantry. "Patrolling at night -- you have to be alert all the time," he said. Of Korea, he said, "It was poor. It was terrible. People were hungry. People were dying, they had no medicine. It was hard for me to see that," he said. But he said he's proud of the efforts he and his men engaged in that allowed Korea to flourish after they left that country. Recently, he said, Koreans who now live in Puerto Rico recognized members of the 65th with a ceremony there, "they gave us recognition for helping to build a new country for them. They gave us a medal," he said. He's proud now to have Congress and the American people bestow recognition upon the Borinqueneers for their service. "It's an honor," he said. An older man now, who has spent the remainder of his life after the Army in Puerto Rico, he said he's still ready to serve, if need be. "If I got the opportunity to serve our country, I would go again." VICTOR VARGAS Victor Vargas didn't want to raise animals and be a farmer -- the very thing that he'd have to do had he stayed in Puerto Rico. "I was peeling potatoes," he said. Cutting the grass and feeding the cows wasn't for him. Recruiters came to his town to get volunteers for the Army, and he wanted to join. But he was 17 -- too young for the Army to take him. "You don't have the age, they told me," he said. He went to the local church, and there some years were added to his age with a little paperwork magic, and that helped him get to wear a uniform. He ended up serving in the Army for 23 years, from 1940-1963. He served in both World War II and Korea. The medal that Congress gave to him will share space on his chest with another such recognition medal -- one presented to him in 2013, in Washington, by the Koreans themselves, during a ceremony commemorating the 60th anniversary of the armistice. The new medal, he said, will make him "feel like a young boy," he said. "Like it was yesterday." After the Army, Vargas returned to Puerto Rico, and went back to farming -- the very thing he joined the Army to avoid. He grows plantains and raises pigs. EMILIO ZAPATO Emilio Zapato was drafted into the Army at 23 years old, and served from 1950 to 1953, including time in Korea. Before going to Korea, he said, he received just 12 weeks of training. He stayed on the front line for just about one month in Korea, before an injury left him deaf in one ear. He'd been fighting, and was wet. It was cold outside, he said. April in Korea, it was very cold. An NCO had told him to go stand behind a tank, where the air blowing off the engine would warm and dry him. "I went to the back of the tank," Zapato said. "But I liked to see what was happening, so I climbed to the top of the tank to see how the tank was fighting against the Chinese." Atop the tank, he said, he saw that a Chinese round was headed his way. So he dove to the ground to avoid being killed. The round left him deaf in one ear, and for just a bit after the attack, temporarily blinded. "And I could feel on my ear, like oil, but it was blood," he said. Still, he was alive after the incident. "He was taking care of me," he said, gesturing upwards toward the sky. Following the incident, he said, the Army sent him to recover at a hospital in Japan. There, he said, "the doctor told me, 'the war for you is over. You don't have to fight anymore.'" "But I went to see the captain, and I told him I want to go over there again," Zapato said. "He laughed at me. He told me 'you cannot go over there anymore.'" Zapato hatched a plan to get back to Korea with the 65th. He talked to an American Soldier who was Mexican. In Spanish, they discussed their plan. They'd approach a different captain with the request. This time, Zapato would play a Soldier that didn't speak any English at all. "I told him, I want you to go over there to that captain and tell him I don't know English, and I want to go back to the 65th where I can speak Spanish," he said. "The Soldier told me I am crazy!" But they pushed on and met with the captain, with Zapato pretending not to speak English, while the other Soldier translated for the two. "We talked for maybe 15 minutes." Eventually, the captain relented. Zapato was able to sign a waiver that allowed him to go back to Korea and serve again with the 65th. "That captain was very friendly to me," he said. Later, back in Korea, he was on the front lines again. But his lack of hearing in one ear proved to cause problems for his safety, and for those around him. The Army eventually removed him from combat and put him into a support role, he said. "After that, they sent me to a service company -- to serve everything to the regiment," he said. Zapato will be 90 in June. After his time in uniform, he studied business in Louisiana, and then returned to Puerto Rico. "I never spoke anymore English." BENJAMAN PAGAN AYALA Benjaman Pagan Ayala served in the Army from 1948 through 1953, including a tour in Korea. He said that during the medal ceremony, he'd be thinking how he, the other Borinqueneers, and all American Soldiers, had helped make a difference in Korea. "I'll be thinking of the country we found and the country we left behind," he said, noting how advanced Korea has become now, after the United States along with Puerto Rican Soldiers, had helped secure that nation's freedom. "I'll be thinking that I'm very proud of my men and what we did in Korea." Ayala was drafted into the Army in 1948, during a time when he was studying pre-med in New York. He later became an OB/GYN and surgeon in Puerto Rico. He did his Army training at Fort Benning, Georgia, and was commissioned there as a second lieutenant. He said he remembers how, prior to his 1950 departure for Korea, the 65th Infantry Regiment became involved in training with the 1st Marine Division at Vieques Island, near Puerto Rico. During that training, he said, the 65th "defeated the 82nd Airborne, the 1st Marine Division, and the 3rd Infantry Division." In the training exercise, the 65th was playing "the enemy" for those forces. But they played the role too well, Ayala said. "They expected to throw us out to the sea in a few days," he said. "But it didn't happen. They couldn't break our lines. They had to stop the maneuver. We had such a defense on the shore, they couldn't go through it -- wire entanglements and palm trees. They couldn't make it. They had to stop the maneuver and we had to open some gates so they could get in and the maneuver could go on. That gave us some prestige in the Army." Ayala shipped out to Korea in September 1950, aboard a ship called the "Marine Lynx." "That ship was too small," Ayala recalled. "The personnel had to share bunks. There weren't enough places to sleep. We had to train also some of the replacements that we got in order to attain full strength, while aboard the ship, during the trip." He remembers the Marine Lynx being so crowded that "the chow line never stopped, you had so many Soldiers. There were Solders having breakfast at two or three in the afternoon. It was a real mess," he said. Ayala said when they landed in Korea, they were supposed to do two weeks of training there with men from the 3rd Infantry Division, to which the 65th was attached. But those men never showed, Ayala said. So instead, "we were given 200 rounds and C-Rations -- 30 or 40 minutes later, we were under fire, ambushed by guerillas." They were put right into the fight, without those initial two weeks of training. "That was our first action," Ayala said. He was also part of the effort to break into Seoul, and then pressed on into North Korea afterward. "The winters were 30 or 40 below zero. And the topography was very, very rough, very high hills, 6,000 feet high, and steep slopes," he said. "It was a mess there. You had one hill here, another, a river and a road. You could be ambushed anywhere." Ayala left Korea in June 1951, and had four battle stars to represent the combat he engaged in, as well as a Silver Star he earned rescuing two of the most decorated Soldiers from the 65th -- men in his own platoon: Sgt. Modesto Cartagena, and Cpl. Fabian Nieves Laguer. "We were in a combat patrol and we were going over a hill ... and when we were about half way, we received orders to withdraw," Ayala said. "My platoon was ordered to cover the withdrawal of the company. So we withdrew successfully. When we reached the rally point, two men were missing." Those men were Modesto and Laguer. "I talked it over with the captain," Ayala said. "I said I'm going to bring them back. I'm not going to leave them there. When I took over my platoon, I told my men I will not ask you to do something that I can't do myself, and I will send you to no place that I can't go. I had to keep my word. The captain said to go. I went alone, under fire from the Chinese." He knew where the two men were. He found Modesto wounded, though the two men could walk. He brought them back to safety, he said. Getting the Gold Medal from Congress, he said, means a lot to him. "When we went to Korea, Korea was a very poor country," Ayala said. "You see Korea now, it is a very civilized country with a strong economy and good infrastructure. When we were there, it was no infrastructure at all. So our efforts there were not in vain. We feel proud to have restored that country to decent living. Besides that, we feel that every human being has some duties to perform: to honor his country and his family. That's what really moved us in Korea to do what we did. We were very proud of being there and doing what we were doing. And we did a good job." ('J.D. Leipold' contributed to this story) National Guard Child of Year says father is role model [2016-04-14] WASHINGTON -- Trip Landon, 17, of Ellensburg, Washington, was recognized as the National Guard's 2016 "Military Child of the Year," during an April 14 ceremony here. Trip's father, Capt. John L. Landon II, serves as a field artillery captain with the 66th Theater Aviation Command, part of the Washington National Guard. As a civilian, he is the assistant transportation director for the Ellensburg School District. As the son of a Soldier, Trip has seen his dad deploy twice as a Guardsman: once to the Mexican border, and once to Iraq -- for a whole year. During that time, Trip said, he was the man of the house. Trip was there to help his mother and a younger brother. His older brother, 22, is already in college. "I think it has helped me appreciate exactly how much of a sacrifice [Soldier make,]" he said. Military children are strong, resilient and equipped to adapt to changes such as deployments, an Army spokesman said. A homeschooler, Trip carries a 3.9 grade point average, and is a member of the National Honor Society and hopes to go into prosthetic engineering when he finishes his high school education. Between his studies, he manages to squeeze in a dizzying array of activities. He's a golfer, for instance, where he's earned Academic Athlete honors and was voted "Most Inspirational Player." As a member of the Ellensburg High School Orchestra, Trip plays both violin and piano. "It's something I started at a late age, compared to some other musically-talented kids," he said. "But I've grown to really like the music I've learned and that I can play." He's has an active interest in theatrical productions and film-making as well, along with extensive involvement in scouting. Trip achieved the level of Eagle Scout at an early age, before he turned 15 years old. As part of that effort, he led both adults and other teens in the planning and construction of an archery range backstop. Earlier he served in leadership roles within the Cub Scouts, and as a leader at scouting day camps and overnight camps as well. Trip said he's learned a lot about leadership -- but what it really boils down to is selflessness, he said. "I think the best traits of a leader are work ethic, self-awareness: you know what your weaknesses and strengths are; and also loyalty to your subordinates: you'll be with them all the way," he said. "You always admit when you're wrong and work hard all the way through." What's he's learned as a leader in scouting, as well as in other areas of his life, he said, will serve him as an adult. "I think being a leader early on in my life has helped me, so that when I am in a leadership role that is big, I will be ready and prepared and not caught off guard about what to do," he said. How does a 17-year-old manage to do so much and still keep his GPA so high? "Organization," Trip said. "You have to know how to be organized, how to prioritize your schedule. A lot of times my mom has been the backbone of that. She's taught me so much about scheduling and organizing -- she's helped me a lot there." While most of Trip's time is occupied with his education, scouting, sports and the arts -- he finds time always to take care of the one thing he says he prioritizes above everything he does in his life: the faith he shares with his family. "I believe that faith is my center priority for all the activities I do, and I believe that's what drives me on to do those other activities," he said. "It's the center and power that gives me the energy." It's his parents, he said, that drive him toward that faith. "I go with them to church every week -- willingly," he says. "They are role models in so many ways," Trip said about his parents. "...They've taught me to help others, and to share the gospel with everyone I meet." Trip and his family arrived early in Washington, D.C., in advance of the Military Child of the Year Awards. "I'm very humbled and excited at the same time," he said of the award. While in town, he said, he's already visited the Iwo Jima Memorial and wants also to see the Jefferson Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, and the Lincoln Memorial -- the one he seems the most excited about. "I've heard so much about it, and seen it on TV. So I really would like to see that." SHARP Academy at center of cultural change [2016-04-14] WASHINGTON -- The Army stood up the SHARP Academy at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in September 2014. The first classes at the school began in October 2014, and in November of that year, Col. Geoffrey Catlett took the reins as the first director of the school. The purpose of the SHARP Academy, Catlett said, is to put under one roof everything the Army does in relation to sexual assault education, leader development, and training. The school expects to receive its accreditation from TRADOC in the summer of 2017. Significantly reducing sexual assault in the Army is going to take a cultural shift, Catlett said, and the SHARP Academy will be at the center of that shift. "How do you sustain momentum in culture change? You build institutions that support it. And the SHARP Academy is such an institution," Catlett said. "I think we really are changing the culture of the Army, slowly, but surely, and seeing our peers not as objects of desire or consumption -- but as human beings, Soldiers, teammates, brothers and sisters. I think we are changing that, and then getting leaders to lead that way." In 2012, Congress directed that a full-time sexual assault response coordinator and victim advocate be assigned at every brigade-level organization in the Army. About 800 positons would need to be created across the total force to meet that requirement. All those SARCs and VAs need to be trained the same way, to ensure the same quality of effort is being applied across the Army. The academy provides that continuity and training. The school initially started off with a pilot program at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. After initial success there, the school moved to Fort Leavenworth. One of the first tasks to accomplish then was to solidify both the curriculum and the training cadre. To man the school initially, the Army provided directed military over-strength personnel in the form of seven senior enlisted service members who had been former SARCs or VAs. Those noncommissioned officers were trained for their new roles at the school by existing trainers from the 80-hour SHARP Foundation Course. Today, the training cadre at the school has matured, Catlett said. It includes military and civilian personnel, and many now are in their third or fourth iteration of teaching the course. The materiel they train has matured as well. The SHARP Academy now trains SHARP professionals to fill roles across the Army as SARCs, VAs and program managers. The academy also teaches an in-residence course for the 46 SHARP trainers responsible for teaching the 80-hour SHARP Foundation Course. That course produces collateral-duty SARCs and VAs who work at battalion and below. "We have to bring all those people together and norm them, baseline them in terms of their skill sets," Catlett said. "We have to make sure they understand all the policies and regulations, are capable of providing support to complainants of sexual harassment and victims of sexual assault, understand how to do training and prevention, and know how to do communications and outreach." The SHARP Academy has trained over 500 SHARP professionals in-residence so far. The school teaches three SARC and VA career courses each quarter, each with about 30-32 students. Also, there is one trainer course per quarter, each with about a dozen students. Next year, a program manager course will be added to the lineup. The future for the SHARP Academy involves development of continuing education programs, meant to develop SHARP professionals beyond the basics. "People can come either online or as part of an in-residence course, and take a one-week development course, an advanced education piece," he said. "You might take a 32-hour course on the dynamics of stalking, for instance. But for now, we are only 15 months into building this school. We have a long way to go." Catlett cited the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, as providing the type of completeness and breadth of education he'd like to see one day offered by the Army's SHARP Academy. "They've been there more than 40 years," he said. "We're going to get to that level: different levels of education, continuing education. We envision us as having a multi-level approach to SHARP education." BEYOND THE ACADEMY In addition to developing the curriculum it teaches in-residence, the SHARP Academy validates and maintains the SHARP-related material taught during professional military education courses Army-wide, annual SHARP training, pre- and post- deployment training, and senior leader training. The academy ensures the material meets a standard and is at the appropriate level of education for the students receiving it. "We have a lot of work to do in terms of SHARP training within professional military education," he said. "We are now systematically working our way through every school in TRADOC and reviewing their SHARP lesson plans and getting them up to standard." He said the school expects to complete that task in the next 18 months, but that the work will remain ongoing due to the complexity of the material and the pace with which it changes. CHANGING CULTURE As academy director, Catlett said one of his objectives is to conduct community outreach. "The SHARP Academy is a facilitator of this discussion, this dialogue on sexual violence in our ranks and in our society," he said. "We have numerous programs we do in terms of outreach. We are partnered with many colleges and universities in the Kansas area. We partner with ROTC in their programs. We are innovators in new training." Catlett said it's critical the Army be part of the sexual assault conversation in the civilian world because it's the civilian world that provides the Army with young Americans it can mold into new Soldiers. "If you want to really change things, you have to change the way people think about things. That's why we engage with society as a SHARP Academy," he said. "It's a social problem. All society is dealing with it, especially on college and university campuses." The school dialogues with civic, academic, and business organizations, Catlett said. Sexual assault is a daunting challenge shared by both the Army and society at large, Catlett said, and the Army is doing its part to contribute to the solution. "In the Army, we don't throw up our hands and say the Army doesn't have a problem, or that it's society's problem," he said. "The Army owns its problems. We are facing this. And we are doing what we can to change the culture in our professional space, and create people who really do treat each other with dignity and respect. We can do this." Male hazing most common type of sexual assault, expert reveals [2016-04-15] WASHINGTON -- "News reports in the past included accounts of Soldiers arriving in Afghanistan who had been held down and sexually assaulted as a form of unit initiation," said Dr. Nathan W. Galbreath, Senior Executive Advisor to the Department of Defense Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office. Dr. Galbreath provided that hazing-related anecdote following a panel discussion he participated in at the Pentagon, April 8, regarding male sexual assault. Sexual assault against male Soldiers is more under-reported than assaults on female Soldiers, Dr. Galbreath explained. For every four women that report an assault, only one male reports. "Our culture is focused on the idea that men are supposed to be strong ... there's a lot of concern for men about what a sexual assault means to them," said Dr. Galbreath of why the reporting discrepancy between males and females may exist. "Does being assaulted mean I'm weak? That's especially relevant for people who have spent most of their adult lives trying to be strong, putting on a uniform, and being a warrior. Also, does being sexually assaulted by a man make you gay? Victimized men have questions about their orientation. They are concerned about this because most men have never thought of themselves as anything other than straight." Overall, DOD's most recent scientific survey indicates that during any one-year period, about one percent of men in uniform will be sexually assaulted, Dr. Galbreath said. During that same one-year period, about 5 percent of women in uniform will be. It is important to note that the U.S. military is a unique population, with approximately six times the number of men than women in uniform. Ultimately, this means that there are more military men who have been sexually assaulted than their female counterparts. "In 2006, we estimated there were 34,000 service members who experienced some form of sexual assault, whether that was a contact crime, like groping, or a penetrative crime, like rape," Dr. Galbreath said. "After further analysis, we realized that 14,000 of those 34,000 members were women and 20,000 of those 34,000 members were men. That was a sobering statistic." A later, more recent study, conducted in 2014 by the RAND Corporation, showed that fewer military members were experiencing sexual assault. In 2014, about 20,000 of those surveyed had experienced a sexual assault in the previous year. Of those, about 10,500 were men, and about 9,500 were women. The DOD survey results also showed that of the men who experienced a sexual assault, about 60 percent of the time it was another man who committed the assault. About 30 percent of the time they indicated it was a woman offender. And for another 10 percent of the time, it was multiple individuals, including both men and women acting together. HAZING AND BULLYING Most sexual assaults typically occur between people that know each other. Often times, situations that lead to sexual assaults begin in more social settings, often when alcohol is being served. For women, such incidents often occur off base, after duty hours. However, the scenarios that involve the sexual assault of men are often different than that, Dr. Galbreath said. Relative to women, he said, men are more likely to experience multiple incidents of sexual assault, at the hands of multiple offenders, during duty hours or at their duty station, where alcohol is not a factor. "This was something that for many of us stopped us cold in our tracks," said Dr. Galbreath. "This didn't look like the typical fact pattern of sexual assaults commonly portrayed in the media." "One of the things that RAND did for us was to show our survey takers a definition of hazing," Dr. Galbreath said. "Survey takers were then asked to use that definition to indicate whether or not they would consider their experience to be at least aligned or consistent with those events we would describe as hazing. Many men endorsed that. In fact, more men than women indicated that their experience was consistent with hazing, and intended to abuse or humiliate them, rather than for some kind of sexual purpose." Hazing that involves sexual acts or sexual contact is sometimes hard for service members to recognize as criminal behavior, Dr. Galbreath said. When sexual offenders see that hazing, sexual harassment and gender discrimination are permissible in a unit, and that others appear to be tolerant of these behaviors, "it greenlights sexual assault for offenders," Dr. Galbreath said. "These forms of misconduct act as grooming tools for offenders to determine who their next victim might be. When sexual harassment is tolerated, it's a green light for that offender to target more people for more abuse." Sexual assault against men also comes in the form of bullying. In such cases, an individual is targeted for sexual assault or rape as a way to "exclude or ostracize them from the group," Dr. Galbreath said. That type of bullying involves not just sexual assault, which is used as a way to humiliate a victim, but also other forms of violence as well. Dr. Galbreath said that male victims of sexual assault are more likely than women to experience physical injuries, or threats of physical injuries, during the penetrative sexual assault. Sexual assaults are often more about violence and asserting dominance, rather than sexual gratification, he said. "My experience in treating offenders that have done this is that most of them identify as heterosexual," Dr. Galbreath said. "But often times what they are doing is forcing their control, forcing their power over somebody, and for a group of them it is sexually arousing for them to force somebody into a sexual act. But at the core of it, their motivation is to take away somebody's right to consent and force their will on them. That's what they want to achieve from that." Dr. Galbreath explained that while the RAND study included questions about hazing, it did not include questions on bullying -- though he expects in the future these kinds of questions will be included. Dr. Galbreath said that in 2014, the Secretary of Defense required the military services to look at how men are experiencing sexual assault and to continue outreach to them, and to make sure medical services for survivors are aligned to the specific needs of men following sexual assault. That's been ongoing, he said. The Secretary of Defense also asked that services advise him of the efforts they were taking to address sexual assaults on men. Dr. Galbreath said the Department has taken that information from the services for further review, and is considering that input as part of a forthcoming plan of action in FY 2016 to improve prevention and response efforts for sexual assault against men. "Essentially, this plan of action will include a number of initiatives, like how we approach men and encourage greater reporting from them, and alter our prevention methods ... all things we're going to evaluate," Dr. Galbreath said. One thing Dr. Galbreath said the Department has learned about male sexual assault is that the language used to describe it, and to describe those who have been sexually assaulted, has to change. "Men don't respond well to being called a victim," he said. "If we want to increase the number of men seeking support services, our language has got to change and our approach has got to change," he said. "We'll be making those tough choices about the language we use in our sexual assault program in the forthcoming year." Dr. Galbreath says he thinks the Department and the services have made great strides in sexual assault prevention so far. "I think that we have a number of practices that can be a benchmark for the country in terms of what we can do for people," he said. But for male sexual assault, "this is the final frontier. Civilian and military programs alike have few answers in this area and it is very difficult to discuss with survivors." A MALE SURVIVOR SPEAKS OUT Sgt. James Taylor, a paratrooper with the 509th at Fort Richardson, Alaska, joined the Army after dropping out of college. He ended his studies after he was sexually assaulted. "It took me many years, eight years, to come to terms with what happened to me," he said. In college, before the Army, and at 18 years of age, he was a college football player at his school. "I was an 'alpha male' type, I had fun, I never thought anything like this was going to happen to me," he said. He'd been invited to a party on a Friday night. "I was 18. Of course I wanted to go to a party." At the party, he said, "it was another party, another night. A random person comes up to me and hands me a drink. I don't think anything about it. I downed that drink, and then a couple more. A few hours later, I woke up, and ... pain ... horrible pain. I was in a room I'd never seen before, with a bunch of people around me naked that I'd never known. I tried to get up and get out of the situation. But I got beat, I got beat bad. I got knocked out. I don't know what happened from then on. I woke up quite a few hours later in my car, about 75 miles away from campus." Taylor said it was clear what had happened to him, so he made the decision to go to the hospital. He also made the decision then that'd he remain silent about what had happened to him. "I'm going to get fixed up, and I'm never going to say a word about this again," he said, At the hospital, he chose not to report anything, to talk to anybody, or call family members. By the end of the school semester, he said, "I'd alienated myself away from everybody, I was hidden away. I didn't want to talk to friends; I didn't want to see family. I was just done with it. I couldn't focus on school anymore, so I dropped out. The very next day, I ran into an Army recruiter's office." In less than a month, he said, he was off to join the Army. "I didn't want to see family; I didn't want to see friends. So, that was the greatest decision I made in my life. Joining the military has helped me out tremendously." In the Army he joined, at the time, he said he found that sexual assault and hazing was not a topic of discussion, as it is now. At his first unit, he said, "it was kind of a shock. I thought we were supposed to be a profession of arms. So I walk in, the hazing starts, of course, you're the new guy. At that time it wasn't 'hazing,' it was just initiation into the unit. It was just the normal thing. Everybody has seen it. It was hey, what am I going to complain about if everybody had to go through it? So I went through it." Last year, he said, he heard there was a Sexual Harassment Assault Response and Prevention brief coming up for his unit -- required training. "Another SHARP brief -- you hear the same things over and over again," he said. But he said it wasn't a normal SHARP brief. The presenter, Monika Korra, spoke to the audience about her own experience having been sexually assaulted. Korra will speak April 20 at the Pentagon about her experience. "As I sat in the auditorium with about 700 other Soldiers, I wept," he said. "It became real to me. After all the years of all the pain and burying it deep down, being married and going through a divorce -- I forgot how to communicate. I was used to hiding away. I couldn't trust people." At the end of the SHARP session, he said, he approached the presenter to share his own story with her. "She is the very first person I opened up to," he said. "I asked if I could talk to her for a minute. I sat there and cried. She sat there and cried with me. We hugged it out," he said. "This is all in front of all my Soldiers. They had no clue what was going on. I said I just don't care anymore. This is a part of me and I need to let it be known." After, he said, he also confided in a civilian friend who worked on the installation, and then also called his mother to talk with her. "I called my mom. Mom's at work. I said hey, go in the conference room, there's something I need to talk to you about that's really serious. You're going to be crying. I just need to talk to you. I start talking to my mom. She's crying. I'm crying. When I get done with my story, she says she loves me and then 'here's my story.' There is something that happened to her, and she never told me." The next day he talked to his Soldiers too, to let them know as well. He said that they are supportive. He also said that because of his own experience, and having shared it with his Soldiers, it makes them more receptive to SHARP training efforts. He said he has learned from them what it is they are looking for in SHARP education. "We have to have leaders in place that are passionate about this," he said. "Our Solders see straight through us when it's not genuine. When you have an NCO up there giving a SHARP brief, reading off a slide deck, it means nothing to them. There needs to be passion behind it, emotion. When Soldiers see that, it becomes personal to them too. They are not stupid, they know it's important to us." I Corps Pacific Pathways brings partner nations stateside to enhance readiness [2016-04-19] WASHINGTON -- This summer, for the first time, a Pacific Pathways iteration will involve bringing nations from the Pacific region to the United States to engage in exercises Tiger Balm, Arctic Anvil, and Rising Thunder. "We now have 'reverse Pathways,'" said Lt. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza, who serves as commander of I Corps at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. "So now we have countries coming to train with us at home station." During Pacific Pathways 16-3, for instance, Singaporeans will come to Hawaii for Tiger Balm in July, he said. Canadians will go to Alaska for Arctic Anvil, also in July. And the Japanese will go to Washington State for Rising Thunder in September. Pacific Pathways kicked off its first iteration in 2014, putting existing exercises with partner nations in the Pacific region under one banner and converting them from independent stand-alone exercises into a series of single, lengthy operations, each of which requires more participants, at more levels of command, to practice and demonstrate a much broader set of skills and capabilities than would normally be required during a single, stand-alone exercise. Lanza characterizes Pacific Pathways as an operation that includes multiple units participating in multiple exercises over several months. A Pacific Pathways iteration, he said, is more valuable to participants than the sum of the exercises it includes -- which independently were aimed at building relationships and the tactical skills of those involved. A Pathways operation is more than a unit moving from the United States to one nation, and then home again. Instead, a participating unit deploys from the United States to another nation, then to another nation, and then possibly to another nation as well, over the course of several months. They bring their gear and equipment with them, then move into and out of a nation's ports, and conduct reception, staging, onward-movement and integration operations. They must understand port operations, frequency management, requirements for live fire, and how to move ammunition from the port to the training area. "All of those things have to be worked through," Lanza said. On top of that, the level of command to conduct a Pacific Pathways operation is deeper than what would be required for a single exercise, he said. "We are also executing mission command, our ability to command and control at multiple echelons," he said. "From the theater all the way down to the tactical unit, we have expeditionary mission command -- and we also tie this back to the Army Operating Concept." Lanza said that during a Pacific Pathways iteration, units might be training in Indonesia and Malaysia, while the command post is in the Philippines. The breadth of what Pacific Pathways provides enriches participant experience and greatly enhances the ability for the entirety of I Corps to train, all the way up to corps level. It has pushed the value of individual exercises beyond development of familiarity between partner nations, Lanza said. "We are beyond relationships. We're now getting after readiness, both ours and theirs, in an operational environment," he said. "Pacific Pathways has helped not only our own operational readiness, but has built operational readiness at echelon, from the theater all the way down to the platoons that operate. It's built joint readiness, and it's enhanced our mission-essential task readiness. "What we found from Pathways is that every echelon of readiness has increased. We build readiness at home station, as we do more training at home station now because of our Decisive Action Training Environment rotations. We've added complexity to our home-station training; we've added changing conditions to home station. And then we take that readiness we built at home station and the combat training centers, and we have additive readiness that is built during that Pathway, not just from the training we do in the countries, but for the entire operation." TOTAL FORCE Lanza said that Pacific Pathways will grow in other ways too. Total force involvement has grown inside the Pacific Pathways operations. Army National Guard and Army Reserve involvement has increased. But that's not the only way I Corps is growing its relationship with the Guard and Reserve. "What we have been able to do at JBLM and I Corps, is we have been able to partner with the Guard and Reserve on leader development, training conferences, and bringing them in, in terms of how we build requirements," he said. "We have been able to take their requirements and bring those forward so that we have been able to take Reserve/Guard requirements and link them to our training." I Corps is already training with Guard and Reserve forces at home station, at the Joint Readiness Training Center and at the National Training Center, as well as on Pacific Pathways operations. But now, as part of the Army's recently-announces "Associated Units" pilot program, a formal relationship has been established between regular Army units and reserve-component units. As part of that pilot program, three Guard and Reserve units will be partnered with three units under I Corps: -- The 81st Armored Brigade Combat Team, Washington Army National Guard, will be associated with the 7th Infantry Division stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. -- The Hawaii-based 100th Battalion, 442 Infantry Regiment, U.S. Army Reserve, will be associated with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division stationed at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. -- The 1st Battalion, 151st Infantry Regiment from the Indiana Army National Guard will be associated with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division stationed at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. A conference in May, at U.S. Army Forces Command, will work out exactly how those relationships will happen, but Lanza said he imagines "we're going to train together, we'll have training guidance, we'll have exchanges of officers and capabilities. But we will train together; the question will be how we are going to do that. So anytime you can get the Guard and Reserve and active component to train together, you optimize the time they do have to train, and it optimizes our ability to build that relationship." Will that associated Guard or Reserve unit necessarily deploy with the active unit to a combat zone? Lanza said he thinks so, but that and other questions will be worked out in May at FORSCOM. "I think this initiative to associate Guard and Reserve units with active units, that we train together and build readiness together, is exactly what's needed for the future," he said. GROWING RELATIONSHIP WITH INDIA Gen. Dalbir Singh, who serves as chief of staff of India's army, recently toured the Army inside the United States, and during that trip, he visited JBLM to meet with Lanza. "I Corps has benefited from USARPAC's growing relationship with the Indian Army," said Lanza. "Our Soldiers routinely conduct military-to-military engagements which achieve consistent progress and build readiness in both forces. Exercises such as Yudh Ahbyas and Varja Prahar foremost build personal relationships and trust with our partners which then makes for a more professional force in both armies. We have a lot of experiences to share and more opportunities for partnership will benefit our two countries as well as the Indo-Asia-Pacific region." Lanza said I Corps is looking forward to increased partnerships with India in the Pacific. One example is the desire to expand the Yudh Ahbyas exercise with India. In 2015, that exercise was held for the first time inside the United States at JBLM. About 150 soldiers from the Indian army came to the U.S. to participate. He said the Americans and Indians have a lot to learn from each other in such exercises. "I think as we do this with the Indians, it's more than just tactical training," he said. "We're building relationships with them where we're sharing lessons learned. There is a lot we can learn from the Indians on counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations." Lanza said the Indians operate in a hugely diverse range of environments: high-mountain environments, desert environments, and jungle environments, for instance. "We pick up a lot of how the Indians operate in those different environments," he said. "When those Mountain Soldiers came to train with us from their 9th Division, they were exceptionally well trained, exceptionally disciplined and motivated. We learned a lot from them." Lanza said the Indian Army is interested also in lessons the U.S. learned during operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are also interested, he said, in U.S. weapons systems, including M777 Howitzers, and Apache helicopters, "they are looking at our capabilities to see where they can leverage that," he said. Developing further relationships with India, the largest democracy in the world by population, Lanza said, is critical to security in the Pacific. "Anytime you can build partner capacity with a partner in the Pacific, and any time you can build trust with our partners and allies, that enhances security," he said. "These opportunities to partner with India are extremely important in the Pacific. What we want to do in the Pacific is avoid miscalculation and de-escalate conflict. I think India provides a tremendous opportunity to partner with them on a military basis." Following rape, 'runner' rather than 'victim' defines survivor's identity [2016-04-21] WASHINGTON -- Monika Korra was raped in December 2009, after leaving a party with her friends. Korra and her pals left the party early because they were athletes and planned to get up early the next day to do their morning run. It was then she was kidnapped and raped at gunpoint, she told an audience at the Pentagon, April 20. Typical for sexual assault crimes, the police and media withheld her name from the public. The justice system even used a pseudonym for her to protect her identity during prosecution of the offenders. But after it was all over and the criminals had been brought to justice, Korra opted to go public with her story and reveal her identity. By that time, she'd come a long way in recovering from the rape she suffered, but the press accounts of it -- which now included her real name -- left a bad taste in her mouth. "Rape victim Monika Korra," she said, recalling the typical format for related headlines. She bristled at the word "victim." "I hated that. To see that, rape 'victim' Monika Korra? I was fighting every day to step out of that role. But that's how people were viewing me," she said. But she knew different. Korra was a runner and had been since she was a little girl. "That's who I've been my entire life and that's who I am going to continue to be," she said. She wasn't a "victim," she decided. She was a "runner." Running, she said, is her passion, "the thing that gave me identity in life. I feel like that's the thing that reassured me that I don't have to live my life as a victim. I'm a survivor and a runner. I think that's important to realize with rape. It doesn't have to identify you. It's not who you are, it's something that happened to you -- a crime committed against you. Who you are is what you are passionate about and what you love." Passion about something, Korra said, is one of the five elements of her recovery after being assaulted. The others include openness, hope, justice, and forgiveness. DALLAS Korra is from Norway. Back home she has two parents and an older sister. "Sports was a big part of what I was from two years old," she said. "In Norway we have a saying that babies are born with skis on their feet." She said she was skiing at just three years old. "From that day I've been competitive, and I knew that's what I wanted to do," she said. Korra started in cross-country skiing, and then later moved to running. In high school she represented Norway in international competition. After the Junior World Championship, she said, an event she competed in during high school, she got a call from the United States. "A voice on the phone was speaking in English," she recalled. It was a coach at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He wanted her to come to their school to run for them, on scholarship, for cross country and track. "For me that was a dream come true," she said. "I got to go to the United States to follow my dream to become a professional runner. I told him yes, I'm coming." Months later, she's in Dallas. She said she had some transition problems: a language barrier, meeting people, a different culture, being from a small town in Norway and moving to Dallas, "everything was just big," she said. But "people in Dallas just welcomed me and took care of me, my teammates and coach. I transitioned into a new way of life and I really stated to enjoy it." An injury early on in her first year kept her off the track for a few months, and provided time for reflection on her choices, but proved only a small hurdle for her. By the end of her freshman year, she'd met a guy from the tennis team who was from Sweden. He became her boyfriend. "That turns my whole world around," she said. "Everything is perfect. I'm smiling. I'm having the time of my life." A BUBBLE BROKEN During the school year she ran and studied both psychology and physiology. She had friends and a boyfriend. Life was good for her then, she said, living inside the protected world of the university. But she recalls that her boyfriend had at one point pulled her out of that bubble briefly and reminded her how dangerous the world is. At his apartment, she said, "after we watched a movie ... he looked at me in a way that told me he was worried. He took my hand and asked me if I had heard about the girl from our school, a fellow student athlete who had been raped. That was a case we had all heard about." A fellow student, Korra said, an athlete on the swim team who lived in the same apartments as Korra and her boyfriend, had been raped. "I didn't want to think about that or talk about it," she said. "I knew it had happened, but I didn't want to realize that happened in our perfect world. Rape to me was something that we read about in the media; something that happened far, far away." Her boyfriend, she said, insisted on walking her home that night. Just two weeks later, on Dec. 5, 2009, Korra was herself raped. "The worst night of my life," she said. With her friends she had gone to a student athlete party. All the students there were from SMU. She and her friends opted to leave the party earlier than others in order to be ready for their morning running ritual. Outside the party they looked for their ride home, a friend they had called to pick them up. "Three girls hand-in-hand walked towards his car," she said. "But then suddenly another car comes pulling up next to his. And I hear screaming. And the next second I have two men grabbing me from behind and I have a gun placed next to my head. And I'm pulled into their van. I realized quickly what was about to happen." The men stripped her of her clothing. "One at a time, two at a time, three at a time," she said. They raped her repeatedly, for over an hour. "I prayed I would survive," she said. "I realized rape is not about sex. It's about power, control and anger." In their vehicle, she said, she saw the shoes of another woman. "I realized they had done this before, that I was not their first victim." But after they assaulted her, they let her go, she said. They put duct tape over her eyes and pushed her out of the vehicle. "They told me to run. And that's what I did," she said. She credits the Dallas Police Department with eventually finding her after she got out of the vehicle. They'd been alerted by her friends that she'd been taken. "Luckily I was found and I was brought to safety. I was taken to the hospital for treatment," she said. "I survived. But in the hospital I just asked myself will I ever be the same again?" She said she was worried about the repercussions the rape would have on her existing relationships: with her boyfriend, with her family, with her coach and her running career "Will I ever be able to smile again?" she said she asked herself. The next day, on the way home from the hospital, she said, she acknowledged that she had survived the rape. "What were the chances of you surviving something like this," she recalled having asked herself. "I realized in that moment it's going to be a struggle, but I'm willing to fight for it. I'm 20 years old, I'm happy -- always been a happy girl -- I live a perfect, good life. I'm willing to fight for that. At that moment I made the decision, I will not let this destroy who I am. I will fight back. I will fight back to the girl I used to be before this." SURVIVORSHIP, NOT VICTIMHOOD A big part of Korra's recovery after being raped, she said, was that the perpetrators of that crime were brought to justice. "I knew we had to work to find them," she said. "And the police did a great job. But there were long hours before they were found." Those perpetrators were found, actually, and rather quickly. Just three days afterward, the police had captured them. The three men had taken Korra's cell phone from her when they kidnapped her. Because her friends were calling her repeatedly after she was taken, they had turned that phone off. The police, Korra said, knew the criminals had the phone and made efforts to track it. Later, those same criminals opted to turn Korra's phone on again "they used it for drug dealing," she said. The police were tracking the phone and that's how the perpetrators were caught. When Korra got word of that, it was "the best day of my life," she said. "That was relief. I could walk out of that police station and feel safe again." It was about a year before the first trial began for her attackers. She'd been encouraged to testify, to face them in court, and she did just that, she said. She was ready to see them again. In the end, all three of her attackers were convicted. Two of them got life in prison. One got 25 years in prison. "To see that and to know that they are locked up ... I can feel safe now," she said. "That's a mental picture I've been going back to so many times in my recovery process." CALLING MOM AND DAD "I'd been an athlete all my life," Korra said. "And in this family, we are known for being stubborn." She said as an athlete, and being stubborn, she's used to managing her goals on her own. Asking for help, she said, "I looked at that as a sign of weakness." But she saw that following a rape she knew she couldn't do it on her own. She said she knew she'd need to be open with her family and friends about what happened, and to be willing to lean on them for support. "I've come a long way from that day," she said. "I know that asking for help is not a sign of weakness. Sometimes that's what you need to do. "I realized quickly to get through this was to allow other people to help." Calling her parents after she was raped, she said, was one of the hardest things she'd ever done. "I dialed their number over and over and over. I just couldn't do it. I didn't know what to say," she said. She said she wanted to find a "good way" to tell her parents what had happened, but came to the conclusion there would be no way to soften the blow. Finally she called, making sure first that her parents were together. With her boyfriend at her side, she said, she dialed. "We were on the phone for an hour," she said. And her parents "surprised me that day." Her mother, she said, told her "Monika, I can hear strength in your voice. No matter how long it will take, no matter how much effort, we will be in this together. You are not alone." "That's what gave me hope," she said. Hope, she said, is focusing on the future, and keeping faith that things will get better. "That first year was challenging, I was waiting for the first trial to start," she said. "It took a year. I was worried I'd have to see my offenders on the street again." A few weeks before the first trial, she said, she was depressed and tired. But she was running again, and it was before finals, so she was focused on academics as well. "It was important to keep my grades up. I didn't want people to see that this affected me at all." On campus, she said she saw a poster for a "Take Back the Night" event. "I thought, I need to attend this." She walked around campus with several hundred other students during the event, shouting "take back the night!" she recalled. "That was empowering to me." Later, at the school's student center, students held candles in their hands. A student leader read statements aloud. She'd been instructed that if one of the statements applied to her, she was to blow out her candle. "She read several statements," Korra said. "And the last really touched me. She asked if somebody close to us, family or friend, our ourselves, had been victims of sexual assault." So she blew out her own candle, but the significance of that wasn't immediately apparent. "I stood there and I was questioning, what's the point of this? Now we're standing in darkness and I'm showing people I'm the victim of rape," she said. But then: "The next second, a person comes up to me. I don't know who he was. He relit my candle. And I said thank you. That's a sign to me that in the darkest of moments there is hope. Sometimes it's one simple act of kindness, somebody we don't know, to show you there is hope. That turned things around for me. That gave me strength back to get ready for that coming trial." MEETING HER ATTACKER FACE-TO-FACE Korra said that for her, "forgiveness" is also an element of her recovery from rape. People misconstrue the meaning of that, however, she said. "It's not about becoming fiends with my offenders. It's not about accepting what they did to me. It's about finding peace through letting go," she said. "I met them one night of my life. I don't want them to have a hold on my future. I don't want to spend more energy on them. I don't want to spend more time with them. I don't want to spend my time feeling anger and hate. I want to spend my time with the people I love." Korra actually pursued a one-on-one with one of those three attackers. After about a year, that meeting was set up through a program called "victim-offender mediation," that could only happen if the offender agreed. Korra was able to meet with one of the men -- the one who received the 25-year sentence. "We talked for two or three hours," she said. "When he walked into the room, he was crying. And it took him a long time before he was able to raise his head and meet my eyes. He told me how sorry he was." He had a letter he had prepared for her. And she asked him questions about himself. She learned he'd been in a gang, that he had himself been abused, that he thought the gang was a kind of family -- but later learned they were far from it. "I just felt when I walked out of the room that day I was able to leave all that behind," she said. "That day I was able to take back my past and my future." FOCUS ON THE OFFENDER Immediately after she was raped, Korra said she started keeping a journal. That journal eventually became a book, called "Kill the Silence: A Survivor's Life Reclaimed." She also has a foundation dedicated to killing "the silence surrounding rape and abuse," and to also assist survivors of any kind of violence. Korra said one thing she has learned from talking with other survivors of rape is just how "empowering it is to realize you are not alone. That there are other people out there that know what you have been through." Another thing she learned, a reason why those who have been sexually assaulted are reluctant to speak out: people have got to stop blaming the victim. "Victim-blaming is a big part of this issue," she said. "The media is a big part of that, with how they portray the victim, how they focus on the victim. 'What did you do out late at night?' 'Had you been drinking?' 'Why were you wearing a dress?' Those are questions we get all the time. Questions I got after this happened. "That is why a victim feels shame, and feels guilt and why they don't want to report," she said, pointing out that only 30 percent of rapes are reported. The Army is working to combat sexual assault in its ranks, just like college campuses are working to put a stop to rapes there as well. The demographics are similar. College campuses are largely 17 to 25-year-olds. The enlisted population is made up mostly of 18 to 25-year olds. "In the military or on a college campus, it's about awareness and openness," Korra said of what's needed to end sexual assault and rape. "We need to address this as an issue. We need to realize we have to work to prevent it. It's a culture change that we shouldn't focus on the victim, but focus on the perpetrator. We need to stop asking questions of what the victim was doing wrong and rather focus on the perpetrator, and what we can do to prevent this." Korra speaks a lot at military bases around the country, and that's a forum for her for a reason, she said. Soldiers have influence. "We know that people look up to Solders and the work they do and the risk they take for our safety," she said. "I think they can set an example if they talk about this. If they work on the awareness and prevention, I think people will listen." Climate change affecting Army training [2016-04-27] WASHINGTON -- For the Big Green Machine -- America's Army -- climate change, efforts to prevent it, or to at least adapt to it are about more than saving Mother Earth or even the whales. It's about training, training space, how the Army fights, how often the Army will be called upon to fight in the future, and where. Last Friday, April 22, was Earth Day. The day has been observed annually since 1970. In conjunction with that observance, Richard G. Kidd IV, who serves as the deputy assistant secretary of the Army for energy and sustainability, along with his counterparts from the Navy, the Air Force and the Department of Defense discussed service-related perspectives on climate change during a panel discussion, April 26, in the Pentagon. CLIMATE CHANGES TRAINING A very visible effect of climate change on Soldiering, Kidd said, involves how weather affects a unit's ability to prepare for its combat mission. Kidd said the Army needs to train. Following 14 years of counter-insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army is looking to build readiness across the "full spectrum of operations," also referred to as "decisive action in support of unified land operations." That readiness has been tagged as the No. 1 priority for the Army by its chief of staff, and large-scale training at the Army's combat training centers are a key part of that effort. "Without access to ranges and land, the Army's readiness suffers," Kidd said. "One of our key areas of training is Fort Irwin, California, where we do bridge-level maneuvers." Kidd said Fort Irwin suffered three years of drought, and so the ground there was unprepared for substantial rainfall. "Then suddenly we got all that water -- in one day. It washed out brigade-sized live-fire training complexes across Fort Irwin." The rain at Irwin, Kidd said, "exceeded the ability of the land to absorb that water, it created flash floods and erosion which destroyed the ranges: control towers, firing platforms, and target berms that come up. Much of that was destroyed. We couldn't use those ranges for training. And that's a unique asset in the Army. It affected the training cycle. And there was a significant cost to fix that." Kidd also pointed to flooding at Fort Eustis, Virginia; to melting permafrost up in Alaska which affected the ability of Soldiers there to use firing platforms; and to erosion of tank trails at Fort Benning, Georgia. At Fort Benning, "a lot of the tank trails on the installation have eroded significantly," Kidd said. "We've always had an erosion problem. But it's accelerated in the past year due to the shift in rain patterns and the amount and intensity of the rain fall." TOO HOT TO TRAIN Soldiers, Kidd said, are subject to heat stress, and their performance decreases with increased heat. Army Technical Bulletin MED 507 spells out various temperature categories and the level of intensity of activity that can safely be performed during those temperature conditions. A "Category IV" temperature condition, for instance, is defined as being between 88-89.9 degrees. A "Category V" temperature condition is above 90 degrees. The bulletin offers specific types of activity that can be performed during different temperature conditions, as well as recommendations for durations for those activities. Such activities include patrolling, calisthenics, low crawling, field assaults, walking on loose sand with a load, and construction of defensive positions. Climate change affects the number of days in certain regions of the country that are classified as either Category IV or Category V days. And that affects the Army's ability to train in those areas. Citing a temperature chart for Fort Stewart, Georgia, Kidd said "if you take a middle-road estimate of future climate change, we're going to go from around 80 days a year of Category IV or Category V weather to 130 days a year of Category IV and Category V." Fort Stewart is just 150 miles south-east of Fort Jackson, South Carolina, where the Army trains as many as 35,000 basic trainees each year. "Can we really train Soldiers if roughly half of our training days are going to be Category IV or Category V, where we have to curtail or eliminate their outdoor activity?" he asked. MORE FIGHTS POSSIBLE; ARC OF INSTABILITY The phrase "win in a complex world," is all over the Army. Factors that make the world "complex" include population growth, increasing consumption, urbanization, transitions in energy, and the spread of technology, for instance. "But the one item that cuts across all of those trends is climate change," Kidd said. "For the Army what does that mean for plans and operations?" Kidd pointed out that in any particular state, "governance capacity" describes the ability of a government to provide public goods and services to their citizens and constituents. The effects of climate change, he said, such as rising sea levels, or scarcity of fresh water, for instance, can overwhelm the capacity of a government to provide the services it is supposed to, and that makes for failed states. "If a state can't meet those requirements, it tips over," Kidd said. Areas with failed states, or other "ungoverned" areas, Kidd said, leave a vacuum that is ripe for takeover by terrorists. "These are the spaces that are the petri dishes that nurture these threats." Kidd referred to the area from sub-Saharan Africa up into central Asia as an "arc of instability." "These are the same countries that are going to be the most adversely affected by climate change," he said. "The effects of climate change, along with other global trends, have the potential to overwhelm the governance capacity of states in this region. And when that governance capacity gets overwhelmed, you have the opportunity for insecurity -- an unstable, uncontrolled space. And from that could come terrorism, crime, civil war and all of these other security threats." When that happens, he said, "The decision will have to be made by the civil command authority: is that worth the intervention for the U.S. military?" Climate change, he said, can mean increased engagement by American Soldiers. With that in mind, Kidd said, such problems can be inoculated against with the Army's regionally aligned forces concept, with development of host-nation capacity, strategic engaging by combatant commands, as well as with involvement by other government agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development. All are examples of how America can contribute to bolstering governance capacity to avoid future failed states. WHERE ARE THE BULLETS? In 2011, a tsunami, triggered by an earthquake, caused the failure of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Eastern Japan. Japanese manufacturers who relied on power produced at Fukushima were themselves responsible for producing a small plastic part that is used to attach automobile dashboards to the chassis. "Every car has these grommets in them," Kidd said, adding that Japanese manufacturers of those parts produced the preponderance of them, globally. "So When Fukushima went out, BMW lines in Europe shut down." Kidd said that today, major consulting firms in the private sector now consider supply chain resiliency for the companies they consult for. "Private industry is thinking about the potential disruptions to supply chain," Kidd said. But for the Army, he said, "we don't think enough about our supply chain and our suppliers and their vulnerability to disruptive events. Where are the vulnerabilities in the Army supply chain, to extreme weather, or in particular, to water-driven events?" "We need to get a better understanding of the vulnerabilities in our supply chain," Kidd concluded. Kidd said the Army does spend a great deal of time and effort on ensuring the adequacy and security of its supply chain. "But we need to integrate climate change considerations into our ongoing processes," he said. "We have initiated this effort within the last two years. Specifically, we have developed and are constructing a range of water savings features across our industrial facilities focused on the very large amount of water used in manufacturing." EARTH DAY FOR THE ARMY "For the military, it's about national security," Kidd said of Earth Day. "The effects of climate change and environmental degradation are going to increase our requirements while also imposing more constraints on our training and readiness and use of scarce dollars. The sooner we get started, the more prepared we will be, and the less costly it's going to be to adapt." Sikhs gather for DOD-sponsored Vaisakhi celebration [2016-04-29] WASHINGTON -- Service members and civilian members of the Sikh community from the Washington, D.C. area, as well as some Solders from as far away as Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and New York, met April 29 at the Pentagon for a Sikh Vaisakhi celebration, sponsored by the Office of the Pentagon Chaplain. The Sikh Vaisakhi, which included both prayer and music, is a celebration of the Sikh New Year. This is the third time the event has been held at the Pentagon. "This is an opportunity for us to facilitate the free exercise of religion," said Army Chaplain (Col.) Kenneth R. Williams, of the event. He serves as the Pentagon Chaplain. "We have some folks in our military that are very dedicated and faithful followers of the Sikh religion, and they have asked for us to sponsor an event. Like we usually do in the Army, Army chaplains, when we are requested for accommodation -- we try to do that. It's an opportunity to celebrate a unique and different faith and learn about each other." Ensuring equal opportunity to practice one's faith, Williams said, goes beyond the Army. Even more so, he said, it's critical to being an American. "It's at the core of who we are as Americans, because we as Americans traditionally come from a lot of cultures, national origins, races, colors, and faith groups. To respect all people regardless of their background and religion is at the core of who we are." Army Capt. Simratpal Singh, an electrical engineer with the 249th Engineering Battalion, Prime Power, at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, was one of those Sikhs attending the event at the Pentagon. Born in Punjab, India, he and his family immigrated to the United States when he was just 9 years old. He was in 4th grade at the time. "Ever since I was a little kid, I kind of had a fascination with the Soldier's life," he said. "Sikhs have a fairly rich tradition of military service back home, in India. So my great grandfather was in World War I, and I used to hear the stories. When I came to the United States, I knew I wanted to do military service." His father was given political asylum in the United States, he said, "We were given the opportunity to come here. So I knew I wanted to repay that aspect of it. Essentially, I am grateful for the safety my family got and the opportunity my family got for being here. So I knew that, combined with basically the fascination of being a Soldier, I knew I wanted to go into the Army at some point." Singh studied electrical engineering at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, where he enrolled in 2006. He was commissioned as an officer in 2010. Singh was recently granted accommodation by the Army to wear both a beard and a turban, while in uniform. Both are critical components of expression of the Sikh faith, he said. "This is how I grew up from childhood until 18," he said. "This is how I knew I was supposed to practice my faith and live my life. Now, having been granted this accommodation, I am able to outwardly express my faith, and live the way I know my religious teachings have taught me to live. And in doing that, if I am outwardly living it, then for me I am able to live it more easily on the inside ... that's the best way I can put it. It is easier for me to internalize those Sikh values if I am wearing my articles of faith." Pardeep Singh Nagra, who serves as the director of the Sikh Heritage Museum of Canada, is a historian and well-known Sikh speaker, teacher and trainer. He was one of the speakers at the Sikh Vaisakhi and explained the importance of wearing a beard, wearing a turban, and uncut hair for Sikhs. Sikhs, Nagra said, take an oath to "serve and protect." "When a Sikh sees others in need, they must come to their side, and to their aid," he said, adding that it doesn't matter what faith or nationality the person in need might be. "It could be responding to a humanitarian crisis, serving a community as a first responder, or speaking out against injustice in our society." Sikhs wear turbans and beards, Nagra said, and that provides visible accountability to others of their oath to serve and protect. "We as a society love to see individuals in uniform," Nagra said. "And it is what that uniform represents for us in society for the person wearing it. If that person wasn't in uniform, but in jeans and a tee shirt, we wouldn't necessarily have the same accountability for who and what they represent. For Sikhs, this identity has made us publically accountable in the same way." Petty Officer Feena Kaur, a sailor who works on gun systems used on naval aircraft, has served as a Sailor for six years now. She also spoke at the Sikh Vaisakhi, and said she sees her service to her country as part of her commitment as a Sikh to serve. "Since the birth of Sikhism, it has been instilled in both Sikh men and women that we must stand for something greater than ourselves," she said. "Sikhs are asked to always step forward and fight for justice, to strive every day to bring love and peace into the world and to recognize the divine everywhere and in everything. A Sikh doesn't live for himself or herself, but a life dedicated to others." She said her decision to join the Navy was part of her pursuit of the mission to serve, as well as her fascination with military service. The choice troubled her parents initially, she said. "They were terrified." Sikhism, she said, has a history of warriors -- but few are women. She said her father had said to her that the military is not a place for women. "He was concerned for his daughter entering a male-dominated field." She said it surprised her, his opinion, because Sikhism has been such a strong voice for equality between men and women. "My community always taught me men and women are equal, and equally able to shape their destiny and achieve their dreams," she said. Today, she said, after six years in the Navy, she's found that other women in the Sikh community have heard that she joined up and have looked to her as a role model -- though that's something she said she didn't plan on being. Even her parents, she said, have come around. "They couldn't be happier," she said of them now. "Sikhism taught me resilience and perseverance, traits that continue to drive my success today," she said. "To my Sikh brothers and sisters, I urge you to follow your dreams, including those who aspire to protect and serve this beautiful nation. I love this country and I am so proud to serve it. I am a proud American, a faithful Sikh and a fearless warrior. Whatever path you choose, always stand tall for justice and equality." Two Soldiers from Fort Campbell, Kentucky -- the only two Sikh Solders on the installation, they say -- also attended the Sikh Vaisakhi. Both Spc. Jagroop S. Aulakh, an infantryman with the 187th Infantry Regiment "Rakkasans," and Spc. Jagraj S. Kooner, an infantryman with the 502nd Infantry Regiment "Strike," attended the event. Aulakh said he thought that the Pentagon Chaplain Office's hosting of the event symbolized greater acceptance of different faiths in the force. "They are getting used to, or accepting new religions in the Army," he said. "They let me come here to celebrate ... this festival." Aulakh said his unit paid for his trip to Washington to attend the event. Kooner said that visibility of the event will encourage more Sikhs, already with a faith-driven propensity to serve their community, to consider the Army as a way to exercise the service imperative. "This is going to help more people coming into the Army in the future," Kooner said. "It will help them to join in the future." Both Aulakh and Kooner say that in addition to the service they provide to their country, as Sikhs they also contribute in other ways -- when they are not out training with their infantry units. The two do community service, Aulakh said, at their local gurdwara , or temple. "Whenever we get time, we do community service," he said. Music at the Sikh Vaisakhi was provided by "Sikh Kid to Kid," a Sikh youth organization, as well as by musicians Gagandeep Singh and Jason Singh. Year of global engagement wraps up for Spouse of Year [2016-05-04] WASHINGTON -- "The great thing about the award is that it opens doors and expands your circle of influence," said Corie Weathers, an Army spouse. Weathers was named the 2015 Military Spouse of the Year in May 2015 and since then she has opted to engage spouses worldwide through a podcast, discussion roundtables and speaking at various events. She has shared with other spouses insights that she gained while accompanying Secretary of Defense Ash Carter to Iraq and Afghanistan and believes understanding deployments can strengthen marriages. A new Military Spouse of the Year will be named May 5 during a luncheon at Joint Base Meyer-Henderson Hall, Virginia. "What I would tell [this year's winner] is, embrace the 'thank you' that you get from this award," Weathers said. "It's a wonderful experience to have people say thank you for what you have done. We often don't realize how powerful it is to have somebody say thank you." Weathers has been married to Capt. Matthew Weathers going on 17 years now, and they have two sons, aged 8 and 11. Her husband, an Army chaplain, has been in uniform for only the last eight years -- it's something he decided to do well into their marriage. "The day he came home and said he wanted to be a chaplain, something lit up in his eyes," Weathers said. "When he came back from chaplain officer basic, he knew that he had found what he was good at. He needed that like he needed air to breath. It's been my joy to be a part of that and support it." Corie is a professional counselor, licensed in both Colorado and Georgia. As a counselor, she sees "pretty much anybody that needs help," she said. That includes single Soldiers, couples, military spouses, and military kids. "A lot of what happens for me as a professional and as a military spouse depends on where I am stationed," she said. "If I am able to practice where I am stationed, whatever the military community needs, that's what I give." With her as a counselor, and her husband as a military chaplain, she said, the two also work as a team for marriage retreats to strengthen the relationships between military couples wherever they are stationed. She said her partnership with her husband in that regard has been around since the beginning of his decision to join the Army. "He has invited me for us to serve as a team," she said. "Everywhere we go, even though he is the chaplain, we work together with marriage retreats and supporting the families. We serve as a team." After being named Military Spouse of the Year during last year's ceremony, Weathers spent a year traveling around the armed forces for speaking engagements, hosting and emceeing events, and meeting with military spouses. "It can be quite overwhelming," she said. "Mainly, I took the opportunity for my year to encourage and thank as many military spouses as possible, because I knew from my counseling experience with military spouses, that that's really what they needed," she said. "They needed somebody who understood both the difficulties and the wonderful things of being a military spouse, but also how can I build my marriage, and grow stronger as a person." As a result of her having been named Military Spouse of the Year, Weathers was given the opportunity to see a lot of the U.S. military. "I would travel to different installations and I would do military spouse events and take the time to encourage them, or a lot of times, facilitated group discussion," she said. "That's one of the things I love to do as a counselor, sometimes in a support group or a therapeutic setting. I would kind of do the same thing and lead the military spouse roundtables and take time to connect and talk about some of the struggles that everybody goes though." In the last year, Weathers also started a military spouse podcast, "where I take a lot of my clinical wisdom when it comes to military spouses and growing personally, as well as marriage advice, interviewing some fantastic military spouses that are making a difference." The biggest thing she did during her time as the Military Spouse of the Year: she got to take a week-long trip with the Secretary of Defense to visit service members around the globe, and on deployment. "I traveled with the SECDEF during his holiday tour to visit troops overseas," she said. "I flew with them to Turkey, and two places in Iraq, Afghanistan, and two aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. I really had the opportunity from a spouse's perspective to see deployment conditions, with the intention of [finding] what would our spouses like to know about deployments that sometimes service members don't think to tell us about." She said her experience with the SECDEF turned into a project that turned into a book for her. "My trip to the Middle East was a game changer, for sure," she said. "It changed my perspective as a military spouse; it changed my perspective of my husband, and our deployment history. It was a significant experience for me in that it changed my perspective of my Soldier, why he has enjoyed deployment; and, interviewing some of these troops, why they enjoy their deployment. There are so many things as military spouses we never get to see. Things like our service member actually doing their job, doing what they are trained to do, and enjoying doing that." Weather's book, to be released in August, is called "Sacred Spaces." "This book is about me going back and understanding how deployment changed my husband, how it has also changed me back at home, and how could I figure out a way to reconnect us as a couple," she said. "Knowing that those changes happened, I wanted to find a better answer, not only for my marriage but for other military marriages, on how do we reconnect and rebuild our marriage despite all this time apart and having so many unshared experiences." The "sacred spaces" she refers to in the book's title, she said, are the "significant and life-changing" experiences that both she and her husband have had, independent of one another, while on deployment, for instance. Sacred spaces, she said, is a term she and her husband use to refer to those experiences. "That it's kind of a way of saying to my spouse, tread lightly, you can't possibly understand what this experience is like for me," she said. "We've used that terminology to say be careful with what you say or what your perspective is on this, because this is a huge moment for me." GETTING BACK TO COUNSELING Since Weathers was named Military Spouse of the Year, she and her family have moved two times, finally landing in Virginia last December. Those moves played havoc on her ability to do her professional job as a counselor, as such professions require credentialing in each state. She's credentialed in Colorado and Georgia, for instance, but because she's been busy traveling as MSOY, hasn't yet put in the work to get credentialed in Virginia. Credentialing is a "huge issue," Weathers said, among military spouses -- not just for her, and not just for professional counselors, but for anyone who requires licensing or credentials to do their job, including medical professionals and teachers, for instance. When a military family moves to a new location, Weathers said, the military member can start work immediately. But a military spouse, who may need credentialing in the new state, might need to wait months before starting to work again. And getting credentialed in the new state may require additional training that costs additional money that comes out of the family budget. "This is a really big issue a lot of military spouses are facing," she said. "It can make a huge difference on whether I am a two-income family or a one-income family. Weathers said some states are now working with military spouses to offer temporary credentials to those spouses who have moved in from another state. Those temporary credentials allow spouses to start work right away, while at the same time working toward getting full credentials in that state. "We are doing our best to make strides in helping change the state boards and get some adjustments made," she said. "We really need any support that our military leaders can provide or any of the DOD staff leaders can provide us, to back up some of the lobbying we have to do." For herself, Weather said, "we're talking about what I'll do to move forward." Weathers said she's had some job offers that she said she may pursue that will "give me an opportunity to use my profession in a way that could help military spouses who also want to become clinicians." She's doing work with the Chris Kyle Frog Foundation, providing coaching to their military and first responder couples. Her book, when it comes out, will provide speaking opportunities for her too. She's still feeling out the options for going back into professional counseling, she said, though she's got one unusual angle she'd like to pursue. "I have a huge heart for a lot of our service members who have top secret clearance and feel they are unable to get mental health care," she said. "One of my dreams would be to get clearance myself and to be able to provide for some of the service members who feel they are unable to get mental health care and give them that care." Army allows Soldiers to wear headphones in gym [2016-05-10] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers jogging or lifting in the gym may now be allowed to listen to music through small headphones or ear buds, according to Army Directive 2016-20, released May 6. Acting Secretary of the Army Patrick J. Murphy signed a memo that authorizes Soldiers to listen to music on a variety of devices and ear pieces while doing personal physical training inside gyms, though the memo does give final word on the new policy to installation or unit commanders. "Effective immediately, unless the unit or installation commander prohibits otherwise, Soldiers may use headphones, including wireless or non-wireless devices and earpieces, in uniform only while performing individual physical training in indoor gyms or fitness centers," Murphy wrote in the memo. The headphones cannot be more than 1.5 inches in diameter and the memo states violators may be subject to administrative or disciplinary action under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. To push music through "conservative and discrete" earpieces, Soldiers are also permitted to "wear electronic devices, such as music players or cell phones" on their waistband, in accordance with AR 670-1. That regulation says the color of the carrying case for such a device must be black. The directive also permits Soldiers to wear a "solid black armband" to hold their electronic device, but only while in the gym or fitness center. When Soldiers leave the gym or fitness center, however, the arm bands, the music devices and the headphones must be put away. Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey said the new policy is something Soldiers have told him they wanted for a while. "This change came about because Soldiers stood up at one of my town halls and asked about it," Dailey said. "If we can make changes that improve morale and they don't adversely affect discipline, I'm all for it." The memo applies to Regular Army, Army National Guard and Army Reserve Soldiers. It's expected that the new rules regarding the wear of music devices and headphones in installation gyms will be incorporated into the existing uniform policy, AR 670-1, by the Army's G-1. DARPA's mind-controlled robotic arm does everything [2016-05-11] WASHINGTON -- "This is the most advanced arm in the world. This one can do anything your natural arm can do, with the exception of the Vulcan V," said Johnny Matheny, using his right hand to mimic the hand greeting made famous by Star Trek's Leonard Nimoy. "But unless I meet a Vulcan, I won't need it." Matheny was at the Pentagon, May 11, 2016, as part of "DARPA Demo Day," to show military personnel the robotic arm he sometimes wears as part of research funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA is an agency of the U.S. Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Matheny lost his real left arm to cancer, and he said had doctors not cut it off -- above the elbow -- the cancer would have spread to the rest of his body. "I'd have been dead in three months," he said. Before you are dazzled by the "mind-controlled" aspect of the Matheny's robotic arm, one of the most striking things you notice is that the arm is not attached to his body with the regular fiberglass cup and straps that are common to most prosthetic arms. Instead, there is piece of metal sticking out of the end of his bicep onto which the robotic arm can be attached. The metal device has been surgically implanted into his arm, into the bone -- a true man/machine interface. That technique is called "osseointegration," and he's likely the first in the U.S. to have that done. But what's really amazing about the robotic arm he wears is that he doesn't have to use his right hand to tell it what to do. Instead, he uses the muscles and nerves in what remains of his left arm to send signals to the robotic arm and hand. And then the arm and hand respond, just like a real arm. "This is part of the Revolutionizing Prosthetics Program, where we set out to restore near-natural upper extremity control to our military service members who have lost limbs in service of our country," said Dr. Justin C. Sanchez, director of the Biological Technologies Office at DARPA. "The goal is to control the arm as naturally as possible. Before DARPA got into all of this, there weren't a whole lot of options for people living with that kind of condition. So we asked if we could develop an arm with the same size, weight, shape and grip strength compared to an adult human arm." Sanchez said Matheny has had some procedures done to re-map some of the nerves in his arm so he is able to control them in a different way, to make use of the robotic arm. "But it is a more natural way to control this arm, compared to switches or levers," Sanchez said. Matheny bragged on the arm's capabilities. "So far this thing works great," he said. "It's the arm of the future. This arm here, it can do 45 pounds. I can take on any one of these big old burley Soldiers around here. We'll get a 45 pound weight and keep going. I can keep going till the battery wears down. And when I feel it starting to go down, I say swap me out. They take it out, pop another battery in, and I keep going. I never miss a beat." The real advances in the research being done by DARPA, Sanchez said, goes beyond the myoelectric control that Matheny is now using to control his robotic arm. Instead, Sanchez said, they want to provide real, direct control by the brain over the arm, over other prosthetics, or over any device. "We are thinking deeply about how direct neural interfaces interact with complex military systems," Sanchez said. "An aircraft is one of them." They had a video on display at their booth in the Pentagon courtyard, where a completely paralyzed subject is controlling an aircraft that is part of a video game, using only her mind. "If you really want to get to natural control, you have to do this -- where we have human subjects have direct neural interfaces in their brain," he said. "They can think about moving their robotic arm and the signals come directly out of their brain, process in the arm, and can actually move the arm." That kind of control requires neural implants into the subjects. And Sanchez said that the signals between the brain implants and the potential prosthetics don't have to just flow in one direction. They can put sensors in the prosthetic that feed signals back to the brain, so users can "feel" again. "We have not only movement, but also sensation," he said. "For our most recent subject participating in this, we put sensors in their fingertips. And as you press on the fingertips, it sends signals back to the brain and he can feel you are pressing on his fingertips." Michael P. McLoughlin, the chief engineer at the Research and Exploratory Development Department at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, said the benefits of the research they are doing for DARPA are aimed at making life normal again for Soldiers and other service members who come back from conflict with missing limbs -- to provide normalcy for them again. "A lot of service members today that have come back from the current conflicts, they are teenagers, or in their 20s," he said. "They have young family members, young kids. This is about getting them back to life. That's what they want. They want to be able to go back and be able to do all the things we all did. This is about bringing them back to a capability they had before their injury." Matheny's robotic arm is completely exposed black composite material and metal. You can see how it connects to his body, and you can see how it's put together. One wonders if it will be covered one day with a material that makes it appear to be a real arm. But McLoughlin said that hasn't been a priority for the team developing the technology that makes it work. "The thing they are most interested in is that it moves naturally," he said of those who might benefit from it one day. "A lot of them like that look. They think it's cool they have a robotic arm. It's not so much a cosmetic thing, as it is functionality." Army orthopedic surgeon cited as hero for 'shining light' on combat care [2016-05-16] WASHINGTON -- "More than any other crucible, war brings out the worst and best of mankind," said Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Daniel B. Allyn. "Without question, it is our military medical professionals who reflect the amazing light of creativity, compassion and exquisite care, and it is especially brilliant in these darkest moments." Allyn was named as a "Hero of Military Medicine, Senior Leader Honoree," May 5 during the Heroes of Military Medicine Awards banquet in Washington, D.C. "For 35 years as an infantryman, I've experienced first-hand the skill, ingenuity and passion of our medical professionals across the joint force," Allyn said. "I've seen corpsmen, medics, doctors, nurses and technicians from all services leverage their craft to save lives under the most demanding environments on the face of the Earth." Included among those medical professionals is Army Col. Martha K. Lenhart. She is an orthopedic surgeon, has a doctorate in pathophysiology, and specializes in hand surgery. She is also responsible for publication of numerous medical books. Lenhart was named the "U.S. Army Hero of Military Medicine" during the same event, and introduced Brig. Gen. Robert D. Tenhet, the deputy surgeon general of the Army and the deputy commanding general (support) of U.S. Army Medical Command. "All our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines have the opportunity to represent our country as diplomats," Tenhet said. "During her Afghanistan deployment, Col. Lenhart recognized the need for a focused approach to management of the injuries of infants and children in combat scenarios." Out of her experience there, Tenhet said Lenhart spearheaded publication of a book that would be "the first-ever pediatric military medicine book," called "Pediatric Surgery and Medicine for Hostile Environments." That book was cited by the American Medical Writers Association as "the book most likely to save a life." The book informs other doctors around the world about ways to provide better care for injured infants and children in combat environments. "Some would question why we in Army medicine would ever have a pediatric orthopedic hand surgeon specialist in our ranks, and what possibly that could bring to the fight," Tenhet said. "Col. Lenhart's actions answered that question loud and clear. By looking at the battlefield's casualties through the lens of a pediatric hand surgeon, she viewed the chaos in ways others did not. She saw not only a medical need, but a humanitarian need as well. And she did something about it. "There are people in Iraq and Afghanistan who noticed, and the long-range diplomatic effects can be numerous. No amount of political propaganda can displace the emotional connectives that occur when one human connects to another human in a supportive, compassionate, and caring way." Lenhart served in Afghanistan in 2003 at Bagram Air Base, early on in the conflict, before the invasion of Iraq. "I walked into our tent hospital, our combat support hospital, and it was filled with local national children," Lenhart said. "That was my first exposure to Afghanistan, to the combat support hospital, and to our patient load -- which was largely children." Their facilities were set up then for adults -- adult Soldiers. But at the time, she said, there were "very few Soldiers." "You needed to improvise, in terms of what we did surgically," she said. "We needed to adapt some of the instruments. We also developed some ambulatory devices for some of these children. I'd draw a picture and work with our medical maintenance staff, because he would engineer it. He'd engineer this equipment." One example, she said, was for a patient with a single-leg amputation and forearm injury who couldn't use crutches appropriately without putting inappropriate weight on the injured forearm. She said they had to adapt the crutches to make them the correct height, but also adjusted them to allow those crutches to be used to not put weight on the forearm. Later in Iraq and Afghanistan, there was the Rapid Equipping Force that could bring gear in to make it easier to produce novel equipment, on the fly. But not back then, she said. "There was no 3-D printing then. There was no equipment like that. We were in a tent hospital. I slept in a GP medium tent." Lack of supplies in Afghanistan was exacerbated, she said, when the war in Iraq kicked off. "At the time it was so surreal. I was in Afghanistan, watching the invasion of Iraq on TV in the morale, welfare, and recreation tent," she said. "We watched U.S. troops go into Iraq. What happened subsequently was that our supply lines were diverted. We had a difficult time getting some of the surgical supplies we needed. "The junior officer who was an orthopedic surgeon and who had just graduated from his residency was my partner there," she said. "He'd been a rotor-wing pilot before he'd gone into orthopedics -- a really great guy. We're standing at the scrub sink and lamenting the fact that our supplies weren't what we wanted. And I said to him 'we're going to have to improvise,' and he counters, 'we weren't already?'" Lenhart served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and at least two books came out of those experiences. She served as the director and editor in chief of "Pediatric Surgery and Medicine for Hostile Environments" and also as editor in chief of the award-winning "War Surgery in Afghanistan and Iraq." On the latter, she said, in order to get that book out to medical providers as fast as possible, she worked with the Army to get the book distributed digitally into the field in advance of the availability of paper copies -- though that happened too. "It was the first time they had ever transmitted a book like that through the Theater Data Medical System," she said. For medical professionals who have never served in combat environments, she provided this advice: "You have to be very cognizant of your circumstances, use your resources wisely, and be able to improvise, but do it in a smart way. You must understand the mechanics, and understand the anatomy, and understand what it is you are trying to accomplish in those particular areas, and know that what it is you are doing in certain cases isn't the definitive surgery, but rather it is a stabilizing procedure so that you can then transport these casualties to higher levels of care." Lenhart said she accepted the award "on behalf of thousands of heroes who have served and continue to serve our country, ensure its safety, and contribute to the welling of troops." Army tests High Energy Laser in exercise [2016-05-17] WASHINGTON -- Last month, the Army's Space and Missile Defense Command proved again how effective the High Energy Laser Mobile Test Truck is at destroying unmanned aerial vehicles, quad-copters and even laptops with just a blast of concentrated light. "It completely destroyed the laptops," said Adam Aberle, the High Energy Laser technology development and demonstration lead for the Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command, or USASMDC/ARSTRAT Technical Center. "It melts all the plastic, fractures the screen, and basically renders the laptop unusable." The HELMTT includes a 10-kilowatt laser -- equivalent to about 10 million handheld laser pointers -- a beam control system, acquisition and tracking sensors, and other supporting equipment, mounted on a Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck, or HEMTT. The system is designed to track incoming threats, such as rockets, artillery, cruise missiles, UAVs, and even threats on the ground, and then destroy them with a laser, rather than with kinetic munitions. For the first time, that system went to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to participate in the April 11-19 "Maneuver Fires Integrated Experiment" there. The MFIX was hosted by the Fort Sill Fires Center of Excellence Battle Lab. For the HELMTT and the USASMDC/ARSTRAT team responsible for its development, participation in the MFIX demonstrated its ability to integrate with other military equipment and be an effective weapon system during a combat situation, said Aberle. We were able "to simulate a kind of battlefield command and control network, and ... demonstrate the interconnectivity of all these emerging systems and capabilities with the goal of looking at what could be done for the Army of 2025. "It really was a beginning-to-end experiment, from the standpoint of detecting and identifying potential threat targets by a sensor, giving that information to an Army command center, making the assessment that there are threats in the air or threats on the ground, and handing that information over to a weapons system." At the MFIX, Aberle said, the HELMTT performed as expected and caught the attention of exercise participants as well, not just for its performance, but also because it was the first time that Fort Sill had seen or had a high energy laser system on one of its ranges. "HELMTT's performance out there against the targets presented was excellent," Aberle said. "We shot down a large number of UAVs and quad-copters. Soldiers were impressed. There were lots of comments like 'I didn't know you could do this with a laser.'" During the MFIX, the HELMTT also destroyed a laptop computer as a demonstration of how the system might be used to disable enemy command and control systems, Aberle said. TWO CUPS OF DIESEL Aberle said the HELMTT is meant to provide a weapons system to Soldiers that requires less logistics support than a kinetic weapons system, and is less costly to operate. With a laser, Aberle said, Soldiers have virtually unlimited rounds to fire at incoming targets -- rounds that don't need to be replaced by the next convoy that comes in. The laser just needs electrical power. And that power is provided by the HELMTT's onboard diesel generator. "The real benefit is that you a have a large number of engagements you can conduct," he said. "You can store the power, so you have a large number of those [engagements] that can happen. And the logistics to support the engagement is easy. It just requires diesel fuel to power a generator that is onboard on the platform. The real benefit when you look at it from the 'big Army' perspective is that those engagements are very cheap to do. To do an engagement of a target is really two cups of diesel fuel. That's all the cost associated to negate an unmanned air vehicle, a rocket, artillery, or mortar threat. It's a cheap engagement." BIGGER LASERS, CLOUDS Aberle said that one challenge for the HELMTT system is the weather, and mitigating the effects of differing atmospheric conditions on how the laser is able to disable a target. For that reason, and others, he said he doesn't see HELMTT as a replacement for kinetic systems. "We view a laser weapons system as something that is complementary to a kinetic energy or gun system," he said. Aberle said his team aims to put a more powerful laser on the system to make it more effective. But he also said that Soldiers want to see it mounted on a smaller platform -- something like a Stryker or on one of the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles platforms. "We need more power," he said. "We have to integrate higher power lasers. But we also have to make them smaller and more efficient to make them fit on platforms that are maneuverable with the force of the future. We received feedback: can you put it on a smaller vehicle to move with a maneuver force? That's really the challenge for us." Next year, he said, they will replace the 10kW laser with a 60kW laser. USASMDC/ARSTRAT has also worked with two industry partners to mount a 2kW laser on a Stryker vehicle. That's called a Mobile Expeditionary High Energy Laser, or Stryker MEHEL. Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber visits Pentagon [2016-05-18] WASHINGTON -- Members of the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce visited the Pentagon today to discuss issues related to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. The delegation included a blend of civic leaders, elected officials and business leaders. They first met with Brig. Gen. Robert D. Tenhet, deputy surgeon general, Army Medical Command. Then they met with Katherine Hammack, assistant secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and the Environment. They discussed transportation, clean energy, veteran employment and other topics. Afterward they met with Air Force officials and members of the Joint Staff. The Army's objective for the visit was to build relationships with key civic leaders in order to maintain public support of the all-volunteer force, families and civilians, officials said. This was the 32nd annual trip to the nation's capital for members of the chamber of commerce representing the city of Tacoma, Washington, and Pierce County. Attendees said they anticipate sharing information they gain on the visit with more than 10,000 members of their community upon return home. No GPS? Listen to VLF radio signals to find way home [2016-05-19] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is working now to develop a backup system to be used by service members in the event that access to the Global Positioning System, or GPS, is denied to them by adversaries. Lin Haas, with DARPA's Strategic Technology Office, discussed the effort, May 11, during "DARPA Demo Day" in the Pentagon courtyard. "Our main goal is a backup position navigation and timing system when GPS is not available. We're focusing on naval surface and aviation ... and it's very applicable to Army helicopters," Haas said, adding that DARPA is working closely with the Army's Communications Electronics Research Development and Engineering Command in the effort. The "Spatial, Temporal and Orientation Information in Contested Environments" project, or STOIC, is meant to provide position navigation and timing in situations where GPS is denied to U.S. forces, he said. "Right now we don't have a backup PNT system that provides global coverage," he said. "That's what STOIC is researching -- can we provide a backup?" The STOIC system makes use of very low frequency, or VLF signals already being generated by the Navy for use in communicating with submarines. The VLF stations are located around the globe in fixed locations. In part, STOIC uses those signals to triangulate a user's position on the globe, in much the same way a GPS receiver is used. Haas had a video display at the Pentagon that demonstrated how some of their work might be applied. On the screen was an overview of a vehicle traveling along a route. Three lines on the screen traced the route of the vehicle's position. A yellow line was produced by GPS, and was extremely accurate in following the vehicle along the road it traveled. A red line traced the vehicle's route using inertial navigation -- which uses things like a gyroscope and inertial sensors to measure a vehicle's movement away from a previously-known point. The inertial navigation system was accurate for a while, then sharply diverged away from the actual route, never to return. Inertial navigation systems, because they don't use any external reference, compound on their own errors. Finally, a green line showed navigation traced by a combination of inertial navigation plus use of a VLF signal. The green line danced erratically around the actual route, but never wandered too far from the vehicle. "We took one day to plug the VLF receiver into the navigation system, and this is the result we got when driving," Haas said. "No months of optimization." Haas said one of the reasons the green line danced around the screen was due to magnetic interference from things in the vicinity that affect the VLF signals. There was no mitigation for that kind of interference in their initial field tests, he said. But they will work on that to correct it. Additionally, he said, such interference isn't a problem in the air or on the sea -- so that's where they are focusing their efforts now. "Once we get that foundation for that system in place, there is a lot of work we need to do in terms of developing VLF measurement models," he said. Haas said an important aspect of using VLF to provide PNT for use in place of GPS is to measure how various terrain affects the VLF signal, and to incorporate that information into the systems that will use VLF for navigation. "We've got a lot of hard work to do there," he said. "After that, that is when we want to focus on ground applications, and using the signals indoors. VLF can pick up indoors." Haas said they are shooting to demonstrate real-time positioning with their system by fiscal year 2018 or 2019. There will also be an at-sea demo this summer. Training deployment in Pacific offers pathway to leader development [2016-05-23] WASHINGTON -- WASHINGTON (Army News Service) -- A primary benefit to participation in Pacific Pathways, said 1st Sgt. Christian E. Lopez, is that it provides for Soldiers ample opportunity to develop for the future. "We set conditions at the Soldier level, and going into Pacific Pathways, it helps build future leaders," said Lopez, who serves in 5-1 Calvary Regiment, 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, at Fort Wainwright, Alaska. "Our Soldiers were able to train on live-fire exercises with the Japanese and Koreans. Noncommissioned officers conducted small-unit tactics with the Japan army, and we were also able to conduct force-on-force operations with both Japan and Korea." Lopez participated in Pacific Pathways 2015-3. For that Pathways deployment, some members of his unit went to Mongolia to participate in exercise Khaan Quest, while he and others went instead to Japan to participate in Orient Shield, as well as Korea, to participate in Hoguk. He discussed the effects of participation in Pacific Pathways on his Soldiers, May 18, in the Pentagon. "The reason why this is important is because it accelerates our Soldiers' development," Lopez said. "Those young Soldiers and leaders will be the key principals going forward into Pacific Pathways in the future." Lopez said that while on the Pathways deployment, his Soldiers built trust with their counterparts in both the Korean and Japanese armies. That trust and familiarity may be important in the future, were there a need for American forces to fight alongside those militaries. But there was no need to wait for future conflict to see evidence of the benefits of that trust, Lopez said -- it was evident during his own Pathways deployment. Without trust between the multi-national Soldiers participating in Pathways, "leaders might have hesitated on certain decisions," Lopez said. But that didn't happen. "Because we had good partnership, [because] we had that base of trust, they made those decisions where we could maneuver." DOCTORAL-LEVEL WORK Col. Scott W. Kelly, commander of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, participated in Pacific Pathways 15-02. That Pathways deployment involved exercise Hamel in Australia, Garuda Shield, in Indonesia, and Keris Strike, in Malaysia. Before embarking on Pathways, Kelly said his unit went for some training at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana. "When we came out of there, we were doing graduate-level work as a BCT," Kelly said. But involvement in Pacific Pathways upped their game substantially. "At the end of that, we were doing doctorate-level work," Kelly said. "That's because of the complexity of the multiple deployments into and out of these different countries, the mission command we had to execute, being able to command and control forces back on Schofield Barracks, and execute the exercises forward was extremely challenging for us. My brigade was more ready at the end of Pathways than it was at the beginning." In the past, units participating in an overseas exercise would leave home station, go to the exercise and work with a partner nation, and then return home when it was over. Under the Pacific Pathways model, they deploy overseas to the first of multiple exercises, work with a partner nation, and then move on from there to additional exercises. It requires the planning of the movement of both people and equipment from home station to a foreign country, and then movement between foreign countries as well. "As I'm moving into Australia, I'm already having to plan and prepare to move to my next country, into Indonesia and Malaysia," Kelly said. "The complexity of planning and executing that makes Pacific Pathways much more valuable at least at the brigade and higher level. It forces that engagement of theater logistics ... that's how we develop agile leaders and adaptive staffs to sort through all that." The complexity of Pacific Pathways, Kelly said, makes it an ideal environment in which to prepare new Soldiers for the future, and to also build readiness in the force beyond the counter-insurgency expertise the Army has been honing for well over a decade in the Middle East. During the Pathways deployment, Kelly said, "young Soldiers who may have never deployed were getting that connection with their counterparts, all the way up to literally theater logistics units and planners having to work through the difficulty of operationalizing these three exercises together into one Pacific Pathways." And with Pathways, Kelly said, Soldiers who participated must bring everything they need with them, and be prepared for anything, which is unlike past deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan, where most of the infrastructure was already in place. "What Pathways is doing for us is [developing] that expeditionary mindset," Kelly said. "My formation used to deploy to a forward operating base, [and] there was a chow plan for feeding the formation, easy maintenance, repair parts right there. Contractors took care of everything. When you go out on Pathways, that infrastructure is not there. It's not a mature theater you're in. It's not even a theater. You have to literally go in and build all that stuff yourselves. So [we're] getting some great repetitions on the sustainment and logistics side specifically because of Pacific Pathways." While Kelly said the Army wants to focus now more on decisive action and combined arms maneuver -- and Pacific Pathways helps develop that -- he said the Army doesn't want to lose the knowledge it built in Iraq and Afghanistan. "As we come out of Iraq and Afghanistan -- a very counter-insurgency/asymmetric type of warfare -- those are lessons we don't want to leave behind," Kelly said. "We do not want to forget all the things we learned, all the doctrine, all the capabilities we've brought from our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan." OPERATING WITH PACIFIC PARTNERS Early on in their deployment, Lopez said there were communications problems between his own Soldiers and the soldiers they worked alongside in Japan and Korea. Those problems would have to be solved to be effective partners, he said. "We figured out we need to have liaisons within the units so we could communicate," he said. "There was a liaison that would be in one of my Strykers ... being able to communicate back and forth with their formation. That was very beneficial." They also created a bilateral tactical operations center that allowed the units to better communicate with each other, he said. "The coordination piece was very important, especially in Japan where we were initially trying to conduct a foreign link-up," he said. "That coordination between the U.S. and Japanese commander had to be on-point in order for the ground elements to conduct that link-up safely." Lopez said that their creation of a bilateral TOC enabled a successful link-up. "It helped us track the reconnaissance elements, [and] understand the way they maneuver their elements," Lopez said. "It was all because we were able to communicate bilaterally, working together in the same TOC. In Korea it was the same way." IMPORTANCE OF PARTNERSHIPS "The Pacific region is strategically important to our nation," Kelly said. "If you look at the primary threats we have in terms of nation state threats ... the bulk of them are out there. [There are] huge economic ties we have in Asia. The vast majority of the world's population is out there." Pacific Pathways, Kelly said, helps the Army strengthen its readiness for a decisive action fight, and also helps strengthen existing partnerships in the Pacific region. As the U.S. rebalances to the Pacific region, Kelly said, "the Army's portion of that is reengaging or reinvigorating some of these partnerships with these various countries and allies and partners we have in the region." Pathways, he said, helps make that re-engagement happen. "I think the value of it is [that] it helps us with our interoperability, so we can work better," he said. "It improves our capabilities and their capabilities. And it reassures them that the U.S. is committed to the Pacific region. The fact you have American Soldiers out there with the shoulder patch on, it really makes a difference." When talking to his peers in the Pacific, Kelly said, he learned that they share many of the same concerns that the U.S. has, and U.S. presence in the region reinforces the message that the U.S. will stand behind its partners. "In Australia and Indonesia and Malaysia, China was a topic for every counterpart I had," he said. "They clearly are concerned with China." Kelly said that for Americans, concerns about Chinese assertiveness can seem distant -- but not for American allies in the Pacific region. "To a smaller country like Indonesia and Malaysia, it's very real for them," he said. "It's very tangible ... I think the Pacific Pathways, having American Soldiers out there with them, having us engage with them, I think it helps reassure them in terms of the U.S. commitment to that region, how important it is. The fact that we are putting boots on the ground, the fact we physically have people out there with them -- I think it helps them with their calculus, as they are thinking through the issue out there." Milley: Soldier readiness starts at home, on top-quality Army installations [2016-05-24] WASHINGTON -- WASHINGTON (Army News Service) -- A good foundation for Soldier and Army readiness, said the Army's chief of staff, is home base -- where Soldiers live, where their kids go to school, and where their spouses shop for groceries. Thirteen Army installations were cited, May 24, for providing to Soldiers just that type of home base: one where they can leave home to conduct the nation's business, without being distracted by concerns for the well-being of the families they left behind. During the 2016 Army Communities of Excellence Awards at the Pentagon, Gen. Mark A. Milley explained how installation excellence directly supports Soldier and Army readiness. About 2.7 million Soldiers, he said, have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 15 years. And for each one of those Soldiers, he said, "their first concern, actually, was not the Taliban or al Qaeda ... their first concern was always, in every case, their family." The general said that today, some 60 percent of the force is married, and has, on average, between one and two children. Those Solders, he said, could not have performed their duties abroad if they were distracted with concerns for the well-being of their families back home. "A Soldier who is deployed and who thinks his family doesn't have adequate housing, has mold in the showers, the roof is leaking, the heat or air conditioning doesn't work, who doesn't have adequate medical care for his family or children ... or a community that doesn't feel safe, or doesn't have adequate police protection ... is not going to focus on their job in training, and certainly not going to focus on their job in wartime." It's the role of installation commanders, Milley said, to ensure that there are adequate medical facilities, schools in place that are well-equipped, well-stocked commissaries and post exchanges, family support programs, recreational centers, youth centers, child care facilities and fitness centers, for instance. "The list goes on and on," he said. "These are huge responsibilities for these communities. It's incumbent upon all of us as part of the institution ... to really take care of that Soldier and importantly, their family. By doing so, we are contributing to the readiness of the force." Readiness, Milley said, is today the Army's No. 1 priority. "Those 2.7 million could not have performed their task in combat without knowing there was a rear detachment, without knowing there was a garrison commander, or hospital commander, or a school district their child was going to," he said. Well-run installations, Milley said, provide for families. And that, he said, provides Soldiers with the confidence to do their combat mission. "It's really a direct and causal contributor to the readiness of our force." For 2016, the Army recognized the following installations for providing Soldier families with the support needed so that Soldiers could confidently deploy in support of the nation: --- Regular Army -- Gold: U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Campbell, Kentucky -- Silver: U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Rucker, Alabama -- Bronze: U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Wainwright, Alaska -- Bronze: U.S. Army Garrison, Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia --- Army National Guard -- Overall Winner: Wisconsin National Guard -- 1st Place: Camp Rapid, South Dakota, South Dakota National Guard -- 2nd Place: North Carolina National Guard -- 3rd Place: Louisiana National Guard --- Army Reserve -- Overall Winner: 81st Regional Support Command, Fort Jackson, South Carolina -- Runner-up: 1st Mission Support Command, Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico --- Most Improved -- U.S. Army Garrison, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington -- U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Drum, New York -- U.S. National Guard, Illinois Changes to retention control points providing increased promotion opportunity for mid-grade Soldiers [2016-05-31] WASHINGTON -- WASHINGTON (Army News Service) -- Sergeants first class seeking another stripe saw increased opportunity during the fiscal year 2016 master sergeant promotion board, as the selection rate jumped 35 percent, from 8.4 in FY15, to 11.8 in FY16. Those increased opportunities to serve come as a result of projected openings in the master sergeant ranks that will come as a result of changes to retention control points for sergeants first class, master sergeants and sergeants major, that were announced, May 26, in Army Directive 2016-19. According Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey, the changes to RCPs are part of an effort to right-size the Army for the current mission, reduce the need for forced separations, and create increased opportunities for promotion. Similar increases in selection rate to sergeant first class are also expected during the 2016 board. Last year's board selected about 25.4 percent of the staff sergeants considered. Beginning Oct. 1, some senior enlisted Soldiers will find they have a new "expiration, term of service," or ETS, as a result of changes to their retention control points. Those changes roll back RCPs for sergeants first class and above who are in the Regular Army, or who are serving under the Active Guard Reserve program. The changes will shorten RCPs by two to three years, and will help reduce the total size of the Army, in keeping with congressional mandates to do so; shape the NCO promotion system and NCO Corps; and help ensure upward mobility for mid-grade NCOs. An RCP indicates the number of years of time in service a Soldier may not exceed for the grade they serve in. For instance, the RCP for a sergeant is 14 years. Sergeants must either leave the Army at 14 years, or get promoted to staff sergeant. The RCP for staff sergeants is 20 years. At 20 years, a staff sergeant must either retire, or get promoted to sergeant first class in order to continue to serve. For sergeants first class, including those who are promotable, their RCP will change from 26 to 24 years. For first sergeants and master sergeants, their RCP will be reduced from 29 to 26 years. For first sergeants and master sergeants who are promotable (upon graduation from United States Army Sergeants Major Academy), their RCP will drop from 32 to 30 years. And finally, for command sergeants major and sergeants major, their RCP will also drop from 32 to 30 years. The changes to RCPs will be applied incrementally to those affected over the course of three years, ensuring every Soldier affected will have at least a year's notice to plan with their family for their retirement. The first retirements due to the RCP changes will start to take place in October 2017. Most Soldiers will have well over a year to prepare. Additionally, every Soldier affected is already retirement-eligible, has more than 20 years of service under the belt, and will be able to take advantage of a full military retirement. "This is the best course of action to right-size the Army with regards to a readiness perspective for the future," said Dailey. "It's the right thing to do. This is not a small decision. It was eight months of running numbers, projections and outcomes." It's expected that approximately 3,000 NCOs will leave the Army earlier than anticipated due to the RCP changes, said Sgt. Maj. LeeAnn M. Conner, Senior Army Career Counselor. GROWING, SHRINKING, UPWARD MOBILITY Dailey said, back in 2007 the Army needed to grow in size in order to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We were at war, and the Army needed to get bigger, quick, and build more brigades and battalions," he said. The Army used recruiting and retention tools to help grow the Army. Another tool they used was to increase the RCPs for senior enlisted personnel. Now that the conflicts in the Middle East have drawn down significantly, and the Army has been told to shrink its force size, the Army is reversing the tools it used almost a decade ago to grow in size, Dailey said. "Now we are in the inverse," he said. "We were directed to make the Army smaller, historically consistent with every post-war era." Dailey said the Army is "focused on doing a talent-based drawdown." The changes to RCPs are part of that drawdown. "We wanted to keep those with the benefits of the wartime experience they gained for the last 10 to 12 years of war, and we wanted to make sure we transitioned our Soldiers appropriately," he said. The Army also wants to "maintain the skills we needed in an Army that was going to get smaller, and doing it appropriately in regards to mitigating the risk against the Soldier, the family and readiness." What Dailey said the Army hopes to achieve by putting the RCPs for senior enlisted back to where they were in 2006-2008, is to maintain upward mobility for Soldiers in the middle NCO ranks. "You have got to create upward mobility," he said of opportunities for mid-grade NCOs. "These are highly-qualified, very motivated individuals, they are aggressive seekers of further responsibility. That's exactly what we trained them to be. If you don't provide that opportunity, there is a risk you could lose talent." Dailey said Army number crunching reveals that these most recent changes to RCPs will result in increased opportunities for mid-level NCOs. NO CLIFF The new RCPs will require as many as 3,000 NCOs to leave the Army earlier than they expected, but they will not all leave at the same time. Instead, the Army will stagger the adjustment of their RCPs over a period of about three years. All of those NCOs will be able to retire with at least 20 years of service, but most will retire with more than that, Conner said. While for many NCOs, a new ETS will be a surprise for them, every Soldier affected will have more than a year to plan their retirement. For instance, for sergeants first class and promotable sergeants first class, the implementation of RCPs will be staggered in this fashion: -- Beginning Oct. 1, 2016, for SFC and SFC(P) who enlisted Oct. 1, 1992 or earlier, their RCP will be reset to 26 years. -- Beginning Oct 1, 2016, for SFC and SFC(P) who enlisted between Oct. 2,1992 and Apr. 1, 1994, their RCP will be reset to 25 years. -- Beginning Oct 1, 2016, for SFC and SFC(P) who enlisted Apr. 2,1994 and after, their RCP will be reset to 24 years. A similar staggering of RCP implementation will happen for master sergeants, command sergeants major and sergeants major so that they too will have plenty of time to plan their retirements. NOMINATIVE POSITIONS, EXCEPTIONS For the senior-most NCOs in the Army, the sergeants major, their RCPs will be moved from 32 years down to 30. But those sergeants major will be offered the opportunity to serve longer -- provided they are at Headquarters Department of the Army or Army command level, in a nominative position, and are rated by a general officer, member of the senior executive service, or equivalent. A sergeant major who is serving as the command sergeant major at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy, for instance, or as executive officer to the Sergeant Major of the Army, will also be authorized to serve beyond 30 years. But once they leave those positions, they will need to go to similar jobs if they want to continue to serve beyond 30 years. "If a sergeant major is past 30, they have to keep competing for a nominative positon," Conner said. "If they are not selected for another one of those positons, it's time for them to retire. It fits the Army's promotion modeling system." Other NCOs will also get exceptions to the new RCP policy as well, based on if their command requests an exception to policy, and if the request meets the needs of the Army. "We expect to approve some justified exceptions to policy in the first three years," Conner said. "We will publish a message that addresses exceptions for reasons such as assignment service obligations and promotions service obligations. For example, if a sergeant first class is on assignment to Germany for a three-year tour, with this change that Soldier may only be able to go for two years and some change. Human Resources Command will have to decide if they want to give an exception to policy for the assignment, an exception of policy for the RCP, or delete the assignment." Army to administer four-part OPAT to recruits [2016-06-01] WASHINGTON -- WASHINGTON (Army News Service, June 1, 2016) -- The Army currently uses the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB, as a predictor of a future Soldier's ability to meet the academic requirements needed to do well in a particular military occupational specialty. This summer, the Army will add the Occupational Physical Assessment Test, or OPAT, as a way to predict a recruit's physical fitness required to train for the high physical demand tasks for an MOS. The OPAT is currently being evaluated at a select number of recruiting stations around the Army. It involves four physical fitness tests that together measure a future Soldier's muscular strength, cardiorespiratory endurance, and lower body and upper body explosive power. The four tests include the standing long jump, the seated power throw, the strength deadlift and the interval aerobic run. The new test isn't the first time the Army has used some sort of physical assessment for future Soldiers. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Army used the "1-1-1 test," which involved 1-minute of sit-ups, 1-minute of pushups, and a 1-mile run to evaluate the physical fitness of candidates. The U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, currently does the Candidate Fitness Assessment, and the Reserve Officer Training Corps has in the past experimented with physical fitness performance as a requirement for entry into service. It's expected that this summer, recruiters around the Army will begin administering the OPAT to all future Soldiers as a way to help place recruits into a best-fit MOS, based on their physical performance, in much the same way the ASVAB is used. "A decision was made somewhere around 2012, relative to issues on placement on Soldiers into MOSs, especially high physically demanding MOSs, to come up with an assessment that would help better place Soldiers into those demanding MOSs," said Dr. Whitfield East, a research physiologist with the U.S. Army Center for Initial Military Training. "In particular, the center of gravity was the seven congressionally-restricted combat MOSs. But there are obviously a significant number of other MOS that require high physical demands." East said that a team, led by the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, developed an assessment to measure the physical abilities of Army applicants, so that the Army could better place them into MOSs with high physical demands. The OPAT was developed following "two and a half years of extensive research on Soldiers performing a large number of events, physical capacity events, and then relating ... those against the high physical demand MOS tasks, like putting an 155mm (M109) round in a ammunition rack," East said. In addition to guiding future Soldiers into the right MOS, one of the main drivers for that initiative, East said, was to reduce first-term attrition among new Soldiers, including attrition during basic training, advance initial training, and first units of assignment. Soldiers, he said, are lost to attrition at "every point along the way," from the reception battalion, through BCT, AIT and at their first unit of assignment. There are many reasons for that loss, including lack of adjustment to the Army, behavioral issues and physical fitness. "It's not just the ability to pass the APFT, but really the lack of a fundamental fitness foundation that allows them to train properly," East said. "I would argue it's always been more about looking at those foundation levels of fitness that are required to even start training, especially in the higher-demand MOSs." FOUR-PART TEST The OPAT consists of four individual tests, each designed to meet a specific component of physical fitness that has been deemed important by the Army. Those tests include: -- the "Standing Long Jump," is designed to assess lower- body power. Recruits stand behind a take-off line with their feet parallel and shoulder-width apart. They will jump as far as possible with a two-foot take-off and landing. Results of the test are measured in centimeters. -- the "Seated Power Throw," is designed to assess upper-body power. Recruits sit on the floor with their lower back against a yoga block and upper back against a wall. They hold a 4.4 pound (2 kg) medicine ball with both hands, bring the medicine ball to their chest and then push or throw the medicine ball upwards and outwards at an approximate 45 degree angle. The throw is scored from the wall to the nearest 10 centimeters from where the ball first contacts the ground. -- the "Strength Deadlift," is designed to assess lower-body strength. Recruits stand inside a hex-bar and perform practice lifts to assure good technique. Then they begin a sequence of lifts starting with 120 pounds, and working up to 220 pounds. Recruits are scored by the largest amount of weight they can properly deadlift. -- the "Interval Aerobic Run," always performed last, is designed to assess aerobic capacity. The test is similar to what is commonly referred to as the "Beep Test." The evaluation involves running "shuttles" or laps between two designated points that are spaced 20 meters apart. The running pace is synchronized with "beeps," produced by a loud speaker, at specific intervals. As the test progresses, the time between beeps gets shorter, requiring recruits to run faster in order to complete the shuttle. Recruits are scored by the level they reach and the number of shuttles they complete. East said the OPAT measures the "five primary domains of physical readiness," the Army has identified as important for performance. These include muscular strength, muscular endurance, cardiorespiratory endurance, explosive power, and speed. (Editor's note: This is the first article in a three-part series on the new Occupational Physical Assessment Test.) Recruiters in southern Virginia evaluate OPAT for Army [2016-06-02] WASHINGTON -- About 260 miles south of Washington, D.C., and just four miles from the Virginia Tech campus in nearby Blacksburg, Virginia, is the New River Valley Mall, in Christiansburg. Sgt. 1st Class Charles Rachunek, a 21-year Army veteran, and a recruiter now for more than seven years, runs Army operations at Christiansburg's Recruiting Center within the mall. The recruiting center is but one of six within the Blacksburg Recruiting Company, Richmond Recruiting Battalion, 1st Recruiting Brigade. For two months, April 1 through May 31, Rachunek administered the OPAT to future Soldiers from all six recruiting centers in his company. He was also responsible for teaching other recruiters in his company how to administer the test for themselves. It was part of a pilot program his battalion was conducting to evaluate the OPAT for Recruiting Command. Near the end of May, Rachunek said he'd administered the OPAT to about 23 future Soldiers from around the company. "They'd load them up in the van, with two NCOs from the center, bring them over to my office, we'd do the OPAT and train the NCOs to give the OPAT, and then they'd go back," he said. Rachunek's recruiting center is shared with the other military services, and is in a shopping mall. He said in good weather, they would conduct the first three tests of the OPAT in an empty retail outlet right next to their recruiting center. That would include the standing long jump portion of the test, the strength deadlift, and the seated power throw. Then they would go outside the mall to a grassy area to conduct the interval aerobic run portion of the test. "If it's not so good weather, we have a National Guard armory right down the street from my office, with a big open bay area. So we would do all four events there," he said. "We also have pretty good relationships with local high schools. So if we needed to, we could always use one of their gymnasiums to do it as well." Dr. Whitfield East, a research physiologist with the U.S. Army Center for Initial Military Training, said Rachhunek's strategy for finding a location to perform the OPAT is not unusual -- and it's actually very likely how other recruiting centers around the Army will end up administering the test to their own recruits. Innovation on the part of recruiters will be required, he said. "You'll see different administrative strategies," East said, regarding how recruiters will go about securing locations for the test. "If they have access to a YMCA or a Boys and Girls Club, that may be a good choice." Right now, Rachhunek said, his recruiting center is the only one with all the gear to conduct the OPAT, so that is one reason why he's been doing the OPAT for other recruiting centers. That should change this summer when the Army implements the OPAT Army-wide. That, and all the recruiters in his company will have been trained by Rachunek himself to administer the test -- so they won't need him to do it for them anymore. For those future Soldiers who have taken the OPAT, Rachhunek said they're all doing fairly well, having problems with only one portion of the test. "The standing long jump, the seated power throw, and the strength deadlift, the future Soldiers are having no problem with," he said. "The event we see the most issues with is the interval aerobic run." He said that their problems with that portion of the OPAT is no problem for him or the other recruiters, because recruiters in the Blacksburg Recruiting Company already spend ample time with recruits to prepare them in various ways for their Army careers, and that includes work on recruit physical fitness. "Once a week we meet with our future Soldiers," he said. "Every Thursday we have Future Soldier Training that starts at 1630 hrs. One week we might do classroom stuff, where we give classes on land navigation or the phonetic alphabet or the Army rank structure. Another week we'll do physical fitness training or the PT assessment. The OPAT hasn't added any more time we spend with them -- we already spend quite a bit of time with them." Rachhunek said that once the OPAT is implemented Army-wide, he thinks it'll give recruiters like him another tool to place Soldiers into the jobs they are most suited to, physically. "Combined with the ASVAB, it'll give the applicants a good understanding of where they will fit in best, based on those two scores," he said. East said the OPAT will not only help the Army place Soldiers where they can do best, but it will also help ensure those Soldiers are able to make it all the way through the Army's accessions pipeline, without becoming an attrition casualty before they even get started in their careers. "This is going to allow us for the first time to establish some minimal physical capabilities to enter the Army," he said. "That's the first thing. To reach those minimal physical capabilities, it may well require young people to do some type of readiness training to establish that fitness foundation. That's going to be a huge plus relative to the injury and attrition rate in IET. And some for those injuries are catastrophic." (Editor's note: This is the second article in a three-part series on the new Occupational Physical Assessment Test) SMA's new book club kicks off [2016-06-02] WASHINGTON -- Put on a pot of Earl Grey, because the next time the sergeant major of the Army comes to your installation, he just may be hosting a book club where he and Soldiers will discuss titles with subject matter relevant to the profession of soldiering. While as part of his book club, the SMA aims to visit with and talk with some Soldiers, the real goal is to provide junior leadership with an opportunity to discuss with their Soldiers, outside of normal training, the Army-relevant themes and topics present in the books selected. "We already ask Soldiers to read and understand regulations and policies -- this is an opportunity to start a new initiative that's fun, while also helping our squad leaders guide discussions on topics that relate to our profession," said Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey of the book club. "It shouldn't feel like another task. I don't want to force Soldiers to do this. I want them to want to read with me." The three books Dailey proposes be on Soldiers' reading list include one science fiction novel, and two non-fiction titles. They are: -- Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game," a science fiction novel that focuses on futuristic military space conflict and the leadership and ethics of the titular military recruit, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin. Discussion on this book should happen between July and October of 2016 -- Simon Sinek's "Leaders Eat Last," a non-fiction title that discusses how good leadership puts the needs of their team before their own needs. Discussion on this book should happen between November 2016 and February 2017 -- Simon Sinek's "Start With Why," a non-fiction tile that discusses why leaders do what they do, rather than how. Discussion on this book should happen between March and June of 2017 Right now, the SMA is reading "Ender's Game" in preparation for discussions he plans to have with Soldiers about the book, beginning in July. By then, the SMA's office will have also provided a discussion guide for that book to help junior leaders discuss it with their own troops. Master Sgt. Michelle Johnson, a spokesperson for the SMA's office, said that Soldiers who want to read along with the SMA should not be focusing now on getting all three books, but should instead focus on locating a copy of "Ender's Game" and work on that title alone. While all three titles can be purchased online or in book stores, Soldiers who want to participate should not be required to purchase any of them. Instead, Soldiers should check with their local public or post Morale, Welfare, and Recreation library to see if the title is available in a hard copy, or online for digital checkout, said Karen Cole, director of the Army's MWR Library Program. "There should be print copies of Ender's Game at your local MWR library, and there are copies available on the Army's virtual library through Overdrive," Cole said. "All you need is a library account." Cole said she is working to increase availability of all three titles in either hard copy at MWR libraries or online at OverDrive. None of the three books that have been suggested by the SMA involve the U.S. Army directly, though one does involve a futuristic, science-fiction-based military. But all three books provide opportunity to discuss themes and topics germane to professional development, as practiced by those outside the Army. According to Dailey, one of the reasons for standing up a book club was to generate discussion of leadership concepts outside of the military world. He's asked NCOs to "take our blinders off" and learn how the business world, academia, social scientists, for instance, are doing business or explaining the world. While participation in the SMA's Book Club is voluntary, Soldiers who want to participate can expect that the next time the SMA visits their installation he'll have also scheduled time with Soldiers in squads who volunteer to participate, to lead discussion on one of the titles he's recommended. Johnson said the SMA believes the book club will provide increased opportunities for squad leaders to interact with their Soldiers outside of regular training and instruction. So Soldiers can discuss the books together, even without the SMA in the room -- and it's the expectation that they will do just that. The SMA also hopes the book club concept will help establish critical reading as a crucial skill for NCOs, considering the reading, research and writing curriculum now prominent in Army professional military education, including the Basic Leader Course, the Advanced Leader Course, the Senior Leader Course and the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy. In the future, selections for the book club will come from a list generated by Soldiers themselves. It's expected there will be an SMA Book Club-related website available in July that will allow Soldiers to make such recommendations, and to also house a discussion guide, links to library resources, the SMA's book review, and on-line discussion sessions. OPAT to guide recruits to groups of, rather than specific MOSs [2016-06-03] WASHINGTON -- This summer, the Army expects to begin administering the Occupational Physical Assessment Test with new recruits. The OPAT is currently being evaluated at a select number of recruiting stations around the Army. It involves four physical fitness tests that together measure a future Soldier's muscular strength, cardiorespiratory endurance, and lower body and upper body explosive power. The four tests include the standing long jump, the seated power throw, the strength deadlift and the interval aerobic run. The OPAT is meant to help the Army place recruits into the military occupational specialties to which they are most suited. But right now, said Dr. Whitfield East, a research physiologist with the U.S. Army Center for Initial Military Training, proponents of individual MOSs have not identified all the specific requirements for their career fields that can be matched against a candidate's performance on the OPAT. More granularity on specific MOS requirements may come later, he said. Instead, he said, MOSs have been grouped into "buckets" that require similar levels of physical performance. "Every (future) Soldier entering the Army will take the OPAT, and will qualify at one of three levels for different demands of MOSs," East said. "We've created these buckets of MOSs, the highest or very-high demand, significantly high demand, and moderately high demand. It's important that we continue to focus on the fact that even the third bucket requires Solders to be able to do the high physically demanding warrior tasks and battle drills and common Soldier tasks. So it's still a relatively high-demand, even at the baseline for Soldiers." Being a Soldier is a physically demanding task, as any MOS and any duty position may need engage in combat operations. With the ASVAB, recruits who want to get into a specific MOS but who don't qualify for it based on their results, can take the test again. Those recruits will typically go on-line to practice or buy a study book for the ASVAB and brush up on the skills the test evaluates: reading skills, math skills, and mechanical skills, for instance. When they re-test, a higher ASVAB score can mean the number of opportunities for them in the Army increases. In the same way, East said, Soldiers will be able to take the OPAT multiple times. The test is administered by their recruiters, and if they don't score the way they'd like, they can seek counsel from their recruiter, practice on their own time, and come back again to take the OPAT to get a higher score. "I can tell you over a 30 to 90 day period, we can see significant improvement in physical capacity, based upon training," East said of the possibility of improvement on the OPAT. "We're going to have a significant number of young people who are going to struggle a bit with one or more of the events," East said. "So the whole intent of this is to produce an individual with the physical capacities in the three major domains we're looking at: the strength, the cardiorespiratory endurance and the explosive power. We fully expect individuals to take this as somewhat of a wake-up call -- even if they pass the first time -- to actually train, or develop a training program, or continue to train before they ship to initial entry training." East said the OPAT will not only help the Army place Soldiers where they can do best, but it will also help ensure those Soldiers are able to make it all the way through the Army's accessions pipeline, without becoming an attrition casualty before they even get started in their careers. "This is going to allow us for the first time to establish some minimal physical capabilities to enter the Army," he said. "That's the first thing. To reach those minimal physical capabilities, it may well require young people to do some type of readiness training to establish that fitness foundation. That's going to be a huge plus relative to the injury and attrition rate in IET. And some for those injuries are catastrophic." (Editor's note: This is the third article in a three-part series on the new Occupational Physical Assessment Test) ROTC has minted over 1,000,000 new lieutenants during its 100-year history [2016-06-05] WASHINGTON -- Where do new Army officers come from? They come from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York; Officer Candidate School; and, for a century now, the Reserve Officer Training Corps. The ROTC program was established by Congress, June 3, 1916. Today, after 100 years of providing officers to lead America's Army, it is responsible for providing some 70 percent of new lieutenants to the Regular Army, Army National Guard and Army Reserve -- about 5,300 new officers each year in total to the Army. The Army's ROTC program also produces officers for the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force as well. Army senior leaders, including Under Secretary of the Army Patrick J. Murphy; Gen. Dennis L. Via, commander of Army Materiel Command; and Maj. Gen. Christopher P. Hughes, commanding general of Cadet Command -- all graduates of the ROTC program -- attended a commemoration event, June 3 at the Pentagon, to recognize the 100th anniversary of the program. "ROTC is the largest producer of U.S. military officers in the United States," Hughes said. "In fact, since its inception in 1916, ROTC has produced over one million officers for our military. At the end of 1918, ROTC produced its first 103 commissioned officers, and produces more than 7,500 total, across the services, every year -- men and women who have chosen to serve our nation, as our leaders, for the Army, the Marine Corps, the Navy and the Air Force." Today, ROTC has programs at over 300 universities and campuses across the country, Hughes said. Many of those schools also offer their program to nearby college campuses who are unable to host their own program. So the total footprint for campuses served by an Army ROTC program exceeds 1,000. "Each of these programs strives to recruit the best possible cadets to lead our armed forces, and to that end, ROTC has become our nation's largest grantor of scholarships at our universities," Hughes said. "They award more than $431 million each year to roughly 23,700 cadets, putting young men and women on a pathway to advanced education at top-tier colleges and universities around the country, while volunteering to serve a cause greater than themselves: to serve their nation as leaders in one of the noblest professions in our country -- that of the U.S. military." Gen. Dennis L. Via, a 1980 graduate of the ROTC program at Virginia State University, said it was ROTC that opened his eyes to the possibilities that available to him in the U.S. Army. "Virginia State introduced me, a small country boy, to a world of endless possibilities," he said. "But it was ROTC that opened that door to the new world. When I reflect back on those days, I often think of the huge difference ROTC made in my life, and the difference ROTC has made in the lives of thousands of other former cadets like me, throughout their careers. "Today, when I visit universities and ROTC battalions across the nation, I am so very proud to see how the program and the cadets are woven into the very fabric of the campus communities. The young men and women who have passed through our ROTC battalions over the last 100 years have benefited greatly from the leadership, discipline, structure and positive environment that the program provides." In addition to creating new officers, Via said that the ROTC program is also partly responsible for creating the diversity that's now seen in the Army. "They have led the way for diversity and inclusion in our force," he said. "The Army that we have all come to know today would not exist as it does without the college and university ROTC program." While the future of conflict is uncertain, Via said, he's confident that the ROTC program will continue to provide officers that are well-prepared to lead America's Army. "I can say with full confidence that with the enduring excellence of the ROTC program, our armed forces will continue to be the best-trained and best-equipped and certainly the best-led fighting force in the world." At the Pentagon event were some of those future officers, now in the ROTC program, including ROTC Cadet Staff Sergeant Charles Derrick and ROTC Cadet Private Michael Wong -- both students at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Derrick, who studies international affairs and geographic information systems, said he plans to accept a commission into the National Guard -- something his grandfather had done before him. His service, he said, will bridge his professional and personal goals. The ROTC program, he said, is "sort of a segue between my professional aspirations and the things I care about. Helping people is something that's important to me, and this was really a way that could materialize." Wong, who studies economics and international affairs, said he's competing for a commission in the Regular Army -- he wants to go active duty as an armor officer, or possibly military intelligence or engineer. "I have the chance to compete for an active duty slot," he said. "It's not set in stone. I have to achieve a high enough grade point average, things like that. I have to do well enough to actually gain the active duty slot." For him, ROTC lets him attend a prestigious civilian university, with the end goal of serving his country. "ROTC presented the unique opportunity to study as a civilian, but also train as a future military officer, with the hopeful aspiration to serve my country in the greatest honor possible: being an officer in the U.S. Army," Wong said. At the ceremony at the Pentagon, hundreds of Army officers attended -- and the room was filled also with cadets and mid-shipmen now in the ROTC program. Derrick said he was impressed by the attendance. "It's cool to see all this support and all the people willing to come out," Derrick said. "It speaks a lot to the program and what it provides to the country." Leaders challenge Soldiers: 'Earn your cake' [2016-06-07] WASHINGTON -- The Army's 241st birthday is but a week away now, and Army leaders are saying of Soldiers "let them eat cake" ... but only if they're going to burn off the calories with some robust physical training. Under Secretary of the Army Patrick J. Murphy, a Soldier for Life, and Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey will both earn their cake and eat it too. And they will both burn off those calories during Army birthday week as part of the "Earn Your Cake" campaign, which involves Soldiers recording 15-30 seconds of their own workouts -- a demonstration of how they will "earn" the cake they eat during Army birthday week -- and then sharing those videos with Army social media "Everybody loves cake," Murphy said. "But you have to get after it physically, so you aren't packing on the pounds. 'Earn Your Cake' is something we are pushing out there to make sure people know that while we are going to take time to celebrate on our Army birthday, that doesn't preclude the fact you have to earn it. You have to get after it every morning, before the sun rises, and push yourself so you are physically fit, so that you are a warrior and ready to answer the call against our enemies." Dailey echoed Murphy's sentiment, saying "a day in the Army without PT is like a birthday without cake." Soldiers can share their workout clips via social media at Twitter #EarnYourCake and #USArmy, and also on Facebook at www.facebook.com/USArmy. They can learn more about the campaign at www.army.mil/Birthday. "The campaign is a great way to show Americans our commitment to being fit to fight tonight, if they need us," Dailey said. Both Murphy and Dailey claim the upper hand when it comes to who'll do better at earning and burning the calories in the big slabs of sponge and buttercream frosting they'll consume at the multiple cake cuttings held in the D.C. area for the Army's birthday. Already this month, the undersecretary nabbed a swipe of frosting off the sword used to cut a cake in honor of the 100th anniversary of the ROTC program. That wasn't even part of the Army birthday. Whether he later had an actual piece of that cake is unknown. There will be an Army birthday cake on Capitol Hill, June 15, and one at the Pentagon, June 16. There will also be cake involved during Army birthday-related events in Philadelphia as well, after Murphy and the Dailey conduct a demanding PT routine alongside Soldiers of the Pennsylvania National Guard and celebrity Chef Robert Irvine the morning of the Army birthday -- June 14. While in Philadelphia -- the birthplace of America's Army -- Murphy and the SMA will also do some rappelling down the side of a downtown building. Videos of that can be expected to make the rounds on social media shortly afterward. Murphy said he's got a lock on PT the SMA can't hope to touch. "We need the SMA to still drink milk, take his vitamins, keep working hard," Murphy said of Dailey. "And then someday he might be able to be a champion like myself. But, you know, I definitely, no doubt, have bigger arms than he does. But, you know, I think he might run a little faster than me, so it's going to be a good competition going into the Army birthday." He said he's also got the inside scoop on Dailey's plans to undercut his PT prowess with social media trash talk. "I was in the intelligence community for a long time when I was a U.S. congressman," Murphy said. "And my intel sources are telling me the SMA is about to talk some smack on social media to me. So we will see. And we will respond in kind. But, you know, I follow the Powell Doctrine. We all have a clear mission. I use overwhelming force to accomplish that mission. And I have an exit strategy. My mission will be that, you know, let SMA know that I'm the man. And to be the man you have to beat the man -- to quote the great Ric Flair." Dailey said of Murphy that he doesn't stand a chance of out-PTing him. "I heard USA Murphy says he's going to use overwhelming force to beat me at PT," Dailey said. "He's going to need overwhelming force to wake up before 9 a.m. We in the Army have a saying: we do more before 9 a.m. than most people do all day. And we've been doing it for 241 years. This reminds me of my favorite quote from the late, great, Muhammad Ali: 'If you even dream of beating me you'd better wake up and apologize.'" Murphy said PT, like sleep and nutrition -- all three parts of the Performance Triad -- are part of the individual readiness that ensures the Army is ready to fight the nation's wars when called upon to do so. "We need to make sure that on an individual basis, every Soldier is ready to fight tonight," Murphy said. Murphey said it's very important for each member of the team to make themselves as ready as possible for the next mission, but the unit and Army overall must prioritize readiness every day. "On a unit level, also as an institution, we need to make sure we are doing what's necessary to take the fight to our enemies and to win," Murphy said During the Army birthday week, Murphy said he hopes that Americans recognize that their Army is "America's varsity team." "We're the ones that answer the call from the president of the United States, or a governor, to answer our national challenges," Murphy said. "These young men and women who join our ranks are the best that America has to offer." And for Soldiers, he said, he wants them to remember just how far the Army has come in 241 years. "This gives us a chance to reflect on our history," Murphy said. "But also, to re-dedicate ourselves to be the best professional fighting force this world has ever seen, and we owe it to the next generation to make our Army even better." Army launches new website on 241st birthday [2016-06-13] WASHINGTON -- Deep within the Pentagon, a team of programmers and web designers have been working for over a year now to bring the Army's award-winning flagship website, Army.mil, up to the latest web standards and to add some much-needed gloss to the site. "Our Soldiers, Civilians, Family members and those who support our Army deserve a website that represents them and the greatest team on earth -- the United States Army," said Brig. Gen. Malcolm Frost, the chief of Army Public Affairs. "The new Army.mil website was built with this goal foremost on our mind. The Office of the Chief of Public Affairs has put together a modern site, viewable over all mobile devices, that clearly and simply shares the Army's story with the American people," he said. Most striking among the changes, which go live on the Army's birthday, June 14, is the implementation of a "responsive grid" design. "The idea of a responsive website is that it displays correctly on every device, including smartphones, tablets, and a variety of browsers," said Zack Kevit, the Army.mil project manager. "All of the design decisions, the layout decisions, the coding decisions, and the framework we use to display the content, has been driven by the goal to make the site more mobile-friendly -- because that's the direction our audience is moving." About 40 percent of the site's visitors now come from mobile devices. The redesign of Army.mil involved a complete re-write of all of the site's code, Kevit said. "We took a deep look at the structure of everything, including the information architecture, the file structure, the corresponding sites and all the legacy data on there," Kevit said. "It's all new now. It's lighter and faster." Army.mil Technical Director, Johnathan Howard, added that two updates contributing to both increased speed and security on Army.mil is the enabling of HTTPS and HTTP/2. Howard said "Policy mandates that all sites have HTTPS connectivity -- and Army.mil is the first among its sister services to make that happen. Enabling of the HTTP/2 protocol will also improve site performance," he said. "Pages will load more quickly." MOSAIC OF IMAGES The version of Army.mil being replaced has existed since 2006 with only a few minor design refreshes over the past decade, according to the web team. With the Army's need to highlight communication campaigns on the homepage, we decided to create a flexible mosaic like framework to bring harmony and order to a large amount of diverse content, said Lia DiValentin, a web designer with the Army.mil team. The new visual centerpiece functions as the Army's virtual "digital bulletin board," and allows the Army to easily promote different types of high priority content within one cohesive structure. The team said the new site enables them to give more emphasis to Army communication campaigns that are promoted by the Army's public affairs staff at the request of Army senior leadership. ARMY BRANDING Creative Director, Melissa Burlovich explained that another design element included in the new Army.mil is adherence to the Enterprise Army Brand. The Army has a marketing office that in addition to developing commercials and other advertising for the Army, also develops a branding strategy for the service so that magazine, television, web, and newspaper advertising, for instance, all look the same in terms of colors, typefaces, graphics and use of the Army logo and camouflage patters. "Previously, Army.mil had its own brand," she said. "Now it follows the look and feel of the overall Army brand. If somebody sees an Army commercial or poster, and then comes to Army.mil -- they will associate the colors, typography and imagery more closely." CORE -- THE ARMY'S CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM Much of what's on Army.mil -- in particular, the print news stories, and most of the imagery -- comes from a content management system called CORE. Redesign of that back-end is slated for this year. CORE is a system that is used to share articles, videos and photos produced by public affairs officers from units across the Army. Army.mil programmers have developed a new application programming interface, or API, to connect CORE to the new design. Howard said that documentation for the API will eventually be made available to other web developers, enabling them to use CORE-provided content. "Other Army websites can utilize the content as well," Howard continued. "They can do all the news management through CORE with minimal recoding of their pages." FEATURE MICROSITES The site also includes an array of feature microsites for various Army topics and themes. Chief among those are the "Valor" pages for individual Army Medal of Honor recipients. There are more than 20 of those on the site. Army.mil also hosts dozens of other microsites categorized as "Events" for things like the Best Ranger Competition, or Best Warrior Competition, "Heritage" for topics like D-Day, Battle of the Bulge, or the Korean War, and "Resources," for things like the Army values, the Ready and Resilient campaign, and Army uniforms, symbols and insignia. GREAT TEAMWORK Maj. Charlene LaMountain, chief of the Army's Online and Social Media Division, manages both Army.mil and the Army's social media efforts. She said the Army.mil team has done an exceptional job of development of the new Army.mil site, all while keeping Army priorities at the forefront. "They've done their research," LaMountain said. "The Army.mil team has put a lot of effort into delivering a great new website that shares the Army's story, and we are really proud of the result." Army leaders run 'Rocky Steps' in 'America's hometown' [2016-06-13] PHILADELPHIA -- Following a fairly long day meeting with veterans and Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps cadets in "America's home town," the undersecretary of the Army and the sergeant major of the Army burned off some calories with a run up the "Rocky Steps" in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art -- ala Rocky Balboa in the 1976 film "Rocky." The two started off their day in Philadelphia with a visit to the Delaware Valley Veterans' Home just north of the city. Afterward, with a police escort, the two made their way to the First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry armory in the city. There they met with more than 100 Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps cadets from the Philadelphia Military Academy. Afterward, the two donned physical training gear and ran more than a mile and a half to the nearby Philadelphia Museum of Art to run up the 72 stone steps there to the museum's entrance. The two were accompanied by an entourage of military personnel, also in PT gear. At the museum, dozens of others, young and old, local and tourist, were also running the steps, recreating for themselves the workout of boxer "Rocky Balboa," portrayed by Sylvester Stallone in six of the "Rocky" films, including the original. "This is how the undersecretary and I are earning our cake today, in preparation for tomorrow, the Army's birthday," said Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey, after reaching the summit of the steps. "And we are doing it in America's hometown, Philadelphia, PA." Under Secretary of the Army Patrick J. Murphy, who joined Dailey in the run said, "it's all about readiness, individual readiness ... and all about making sure we are ready to fight tonight. Thanks for being part of America's varsity team, the U.S. Army, and God bless all of you at home." Afterward, the two, with more than a dozen other Soldiers in tow, ran back to the armory. The crew carried with them an American flag. USA, SMA celebrate Army's 241st with hometown vets in Philadelphia [2016-06-13] PHILADELPHIA -- Under Secretary of the Army Patrick J. Murphy and Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey, both natives of Pennsylvania, trekked up north to celebrate the Army's 241st birthday with veterans in the Delaware Valley Veterans' Home here, just 17 miles north of the Liberty Bell. "I will tell you, all of you being here today ... to celebrate the Army birthday with these American patriots here is something very special," Murphy said. The facility is home to veterans from World War II through Vietnam, and Murphy tipped his hat to them all, making a special point to mention those from Vietnam, whom he said were unfairly treated upon their return from the conflict they fought in. "I always make a point when I see a Vietnam veteran to say thank you," he said. "The Vietnam generation -- when a lot of them came home from Vietnam they were not welcomed home with open arms. They were not necessarily treated, in my opinion, the proper way." Murphy pointed out that even though Vietnam veterans weren't given the warm welcome home that those who returned from World War II had gotten, those same veterans offered thanks and gratitude to him and his men when they returned from Iraq and Afghanistan. "I did two deployments myself," Murphy said. "And when I came home, it was the Vietnam veterans -- all the veterans really -- that made a point to say 'welcome home brother.' That's something I will never forget." Today, Murphy said, there are still Soldiers deployed or forward stationed around the world, still in harm's way, in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and South Korea. Those Soldiers, he said, "are doing what's necessary to make sure that we live and have the American way of life we have, one of liberty, freedom, justice and equality." Like Murphy, Dailey is also a Philadelphia native. He brought with him to the veterans' home a short history lesson to let veterans there know why he and Murphy had opted to spend two days during the Army birthday week in their own hometown. Philadelphia is the hometown of the Army too, he said. "241 years ago ... just a few short steps down the road, a bunch of gentlemen had a vision," Dailey said. "Exactly what the undersecretary describes: freedom, liberty, justice and equality for all. They were [traitors,] what they were doing, and would have been treated as such, had we not [won]. But they also were visionaries. They had the vision they had to produce something that preserved that way of life." On June 14, 1775, he said, those men in Philadelphia created the U.S. Army, from just six small companies of men in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland. That new Army, Dailey said, would "take on the daunting task of defeating the most capable, lethal force in the world at the time, thereby delivering the promise that those forefathers gave us today: to be able to live in a nation that prospers, that has equality and justice, and has opportunity for everybody. And each one of you in this room has contributed to that legacy. The long, hard-fought battles you fought in, the service and sacrifice that you gave to your nation, is the reason why I am here today, and why I have the privilege of being the sergeant major of the Army." Two of those veterans in attendance, both Philadelphia natives, were Venuco Carmen, who was drafted into the Army Air Corps in 1942 and who served in both theaters of World War II as a parachute rigger; and Stanley Wojnarowicz, a rifleman in the European Theater during World War II who was drafted in 1942 and served to 1946. Wojnarowicz, a rifleman, said his unit spent about a year chasing Germans from Naples, Italy, to Rome. "It wasn't just overnight, they were here, and we'd chase them, they'd move and we'd go chase them again," he said. His unit, he said, was unrelenting in their pursuit of the Germans. "They didn't have a chance to bury their dead." Wojnarowicz said he's impressed with Soldiers today. "They have all that knowledge in weapons," he said, "And there are better weapons now than we had then." Carmen served in both theaters in the Army Air Corps, and said he rigged parachutes not only for men who jumped from planes, but also for aircraft arresting devices, as well as for bombs. He said while he was in Saipan -- he was there during the invasion -- he rigged a parachute for one of the atomic bombs used in the Pacific theater. "I had to put parachutes on the bomb -- the atomic bomb -- so it goes down slow, so it gives the planes a chance to run away," Carmen said. Carmen said he spent at least a year in England, at the onset of his time in the Army Air Corps, and said he remembers that the Germans bombed England mercilessly. "They'd bomb you day and night, the Germans -- you had to run for your life." After at least a year in England, he said, he and about half his unit were sent to the Pacific theater. He was part of the invasion of Saipan, Tinian and Guam. Before departing the facility to head back to downtown Philadelphia, both Murphy and Dailey toured the remainder of the veterans' home to visit with those former service members who couldn't make it down to the celebration. Army celebrates birthday in Philadelphia with JROTC cadets [2016-06-15] PHILADELPHIA -- In the First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry armory here, June 13, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey told Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps cadets that the Army was turning 241 years old. He then asked them if they knew what was special this year about the JROTC program they are involved in. Nobody raised a hand, but Dailey gave away the answer anyway: the JROTC program -- and the ROTC program of which it is a part -- are both a century old this year. The sergeant major told the more than 100 cadets, mostly students from the Philadelphia Military Academy, that he was proud of them. He was glad they had chosen to improve themselves -- to make themselves better citizens -- by being part of the JROTC program. "We know when you become a member of JROTC, you are a better part of your society," he said. "You have a higher rate of graduating high school and being a better productive citizen within your community. You are doing your part. You don't have to serve [in the Army] to contribute to this great nation, but you do have to be a good citizen. I just want to tell you, thank you for what you are doing today. You are doing the right thing." Dailey reminded those cadets that during the Army's 241st birthday, Soldiers all around the world are protecting the nation and its interests. "All around the globe, we have just under one million serving in the U.S. Army in the National Guard, Army Reserve and active-duty Army," he said. "There are 187,000 of those Soldiers deployed around the world defending your rights, your liberty and your freedoms. They do that with honor and distinction every day." A JROTC cadet major, in his junior year at the Philadelphia Military Academy, said he was impressed with the visit by both Dailey and the Army's undersecretary -- both of whom are from Pennsylvania. "It was great they taught us a little bit of history about the Army, given that the Army's birthday is tomorrow," he said. "I enjoyed the overall presentation, and I think it's nice they are from the community and they came back to celebrate with us." He plans to do ROTC in college and then seek out a commission in the Army, he said, and hopes to pursue electrical engineering in college. A JROTC cadet sergeant first class said she doesn't plan on going into the Army after high school. Instead, she said, she hopes to pursue a career with the FBI. But she said she's surprised at what JROTC has done for her -- being a program that her mother suggested for her. "My mom made me go to JROTC because she thought it would help me out for my future," she said. "I actually thought it was going to turn out to be worse. But I like it." PT FOR LIBERTY "I'm looking forward to sharing some blood, sweat and tears with you today," Dailey said early in the morning, June 14. In downtown Philadelphia at Independence National Historic Park, the same green space that holds the Liberty Bell, and which is across the street from Independence Hall, the SMA and the undersecretary held a PT session with more than 80 Soldiers -- many of whom were recruiters from Pennsylvania, or in the Pennsylvania National Guard. Sgt. Steven S. Hass, with Mid-Atlantic Recruiting Battalion, was impressed with both the visitors and the workout location. "It's awesome, and there's nothing more American than this to me, doing PT in a place with so much history, where the Army started," he said. Haas is from the Philadelphia area, joined the Army in 2009, and has been on one tour in Afghanistan. Staff Sgt. Joel D. Kramer, with the Pennsylvania Recruiting and Retention Battalion, serves out of the recruiting and retention headquarters at Fort Indiantown Gap -- about two hours from Philadelphia. "I was asked just this last Wednesday if I wanted to come down and do PT with the SMA," he said. "Later I found out where we were doing PT, and the fact we're doing it here in front of Independence Hall -- it's unbelievable to me." Sgt. 1st Class Matthew E. Parsons is a recruiter in Philadelphia and had met the SMA the day before at an Army birthday event at the Delaware Valley Veterans' Home in northern Philadelphia. The PT was "a little tiring," he said, but the SMA's "a great guy. It's a great SMA we have here ... and I'm glad to do PT with him." Dailey said holding a PT session in such a public place, on the Army's birthday, was done on purpose, as a way to "demonstrate to our community, to the American people, that as Soldiers, we're out here, day and night, but not just here: around the world, guarding them while they are asleep, to maintain the peace, prosperity, freedom and equality we have in America. We don't do anything in the Army without doing PT first -- every single day. It's a Soldier's responsibility to stay physically fit and mentally tough." RAPPELLING After doing PT near the Liberty Bell, the SMA and the undersecretary didn't stop with the physical activity. Along with Chef Robert Irvine and Fox 29 reporter Jennaphr Frederick, they headed a block east to the Fox News 29 building, rode an elevator to the top, and then rappelled down the side, with help from a handful of rappelling experts from the "Pathfinders" of F Company, 5th Battalion, 101st Combat Aviation Brigade, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). Capt. Dan Marshall, who serves as commander of the company, said they started preparations for the exercise early on to make sure nobody would get hurt. "We came out here early to look at the site, to make sure the anchor points were safe -- safety was the biggest concern," Marshall said. "We came out here last week to look at the building, and came out here yesterday afternoon and set everything up and did a load test. Then today we got here about 6:30 and did a few rehearsals, and went down a few times." While there was a fire truck and ambulance from Philadelphia down below, Marshall said he had great faith in his team of NCOs to make sure nothing went wrong. "Sgt. 1st Class William McBride, my noncommissioned officer in charge, and the other NCOs here, are extremely good at what they do," Marshall said. "They are subject-matter experts, so I had no concerns whatsoever." Mostly, Marshall was impressed with where he was, and whom he was sending down the side of a building on a rope. "I think it's great, it's a historical city -- we're in Philadelphia on the Army's 241st birthday," Marshall said. "And them coming out and interacting with Soldiers ... I think it's great they get out here to do that, and it's an honor to get out here and be part of it." Sgt. 1st Class Robert R. Landry was one of the NCOs that made up the team of "Pathfinders" that set up for the SMA and undersecretary to rappel. He went to air assault school in 2006 and has been rappelling for the last 10 years, he said. He had some advice for those rappelling who might not be as experienced as he is: "Don't let go of the rope," he said. "Just focus on making sure your feet stay in front of you, and ensuring you keep the rope between your fingers." NEW SOLDIERS The Army was created 241 years ago, on June 14, 1775, in the building now called Independence Hall in Philadelphia. On June 14, 2016, a parade of Soldiers in both modern-day and colonial uniforms, as well as civilians in period costume, and about 70 "future Soldiers" marched through Independence Mall, into Independence National Historic Park, and stopped in front of Independence Hall for a short event commemorating Philadelphia's role in the creation of the United States, Flag Day and the Army's 241st birthday. As part of the event, commemorating the creation of the Army, the Army also used the occasion to create about 70 new Soldiers. Brig. Gen. Charles R. Hamilton, commander of Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support, headquartered in Philadelphia, administered the oath of enlistment to recruits, furthering their transition from civilian to Soldier. Devon Gallo, of Haverford, was one of those future Soldiers. "I thought it was a great opportunity," Gallo said of joining the Army. He'll be third-generation Army; both his father and grandfather were in the Army. He's signed up as a human resources specialist. Sean Small, also from Haverford, said "I've always wanted to join. My family has a military history, and I'm trying to keep that up," he said. He'll be an 11X infantryman in the Army. Their future Soldier leader, or recruiter, Staff Sgt. Samuel D Gaudy, works out of the Philadelphia recruiting station, and said both Small and Gallo will ship to basic training in just a few months. Earlier in the day, Gaudy said, he participated in the PT session with the SMA and undersecretary. "I've never met the SMA before," he said. While some of those who participated had said the workout was tough on them, Gaudy thought otherwise. "It was easy," he said. "Some people work out harder than others." Fort Hood ten-day trial to allow Soldiers to roll up sleeves [2016-06-16] WASHINGTON -- It's hot down in Texas, and Soldiers at Fort Hood are being given a reprieve from the summer swelter: Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley and Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey gave Soldiers there permission to roll up their sleeves over the course of the next 10 days. The decision came during a re-enlistment ceremony, June 16, at Fort Hood that was attended by both Milley and Dailey. Following the ceremony, a Soldier, Spc. Cortne K. Mitchell, A Company, 15th Brigade Support Battalion, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, pointed out how hot it was at Fort Hood, and asked Milley if he and his fellow Soldiers might roll up their sleeves to stay cool. The Army's chief of staff said sure, and invited Mitchell and all Soldiers at Fort Hood to do the same -- for the next 10 days. The CSA specified, however, that the sleeves be rolled differently than how they were rolled with the Battle Dress Uniforms. Back in the days before the BDU was phased out, in 2005, sleeves were rolled in a way that ensured the camouflage pattern remained on the outside. With the ACU and OCP uniform, and for the 10-day trial at Fort Hood, Milley said sleeves should be rolled the way the Marine Corps rolls their sleeves: with the inside facing out. For now, this exemption to AR 670-1 policy has several restrictions: it applies only to Soldiers at Fort Hood, it's only for the Operational Camouflage Pattern or Army Combat Uniform, it's only for in garrison, it's only with commander approval, and it's only for 10 days. It's a trial of sorts for the Army to work out the details and see how it will play out. The results of the trial at Fort Hood could later affect the rest of the Army, allowing Soldiers everywhere to roll up their sleeves this summer. But all that depends on how the Army views what happens at Fort Hood. According to Lt. Col. Jerry Pionk, a spokesperson with Army G-1, the agency responsible for developing the uniform policy for the Army that is spelled out in AR 670-1, the Army will review feedback from what happens at Fort Hood, and will look at the practicality of the sleeve-rolling experiment there before making any kinds of regulatory changes to current uniform policy. "Feedback from Soldiers resulted in us wanting to do a trial over the next ten days to see the feasibility of updating AR 670-1 and incorporating in the future for the force to give commanders flexibility in wear based upon their unit's mission," Pionk said. If sleeve-rolling eventually rolls out across the Army, it'll most likely include a stipulation that commanders will make the ultimate determination about when and where it's permissible. With the BDU, for instance, Soldiers were not allowed to roll their sleeves in field conditions during training exercises. Additionally, if sleeve-rolling is approved for Soldiers across the Army, AR 670-1 will spell out the details of exactly how the sleeve should be rolled. Implementation of any changes must eventually be approved by the Army's uniform board after reviewing input from trials like what is happening now at Fort Hood. So for the next 10 days, Soldiers at Fort Hood can cool off by rolling up their sleeves. Soldiers elsewhere can think cool by talking with senior NCOs who were around in the days, more than a decade ago, when sleeve-rolling was commonplace across the force. Soldiers are the face of our nation, Fanning says at welcome ceremony [2016-06-21] WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers, leaders from across the Department of Defense, and personal guests welcomed Eric Fanning to his new role as the 22nd secretary of the Army, during a full-honor arrival ceremony, June 20, at Summerall Field on Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall. "Secretary Fanning served as my chief of staff when I first became secretary of Defense," said Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter. "I looked to him to help me recruit and attract a talented and innovative team of civilian and military leaders, many of whom are with us today." Carter said Fanning brings with him a breadth of experience at the helm of other military departments, including time as undersecretary of the Air Force, acting secretary of the Air Force, and also as deputy undersecretary of the Navy. "That gives him a unique perspective on the pivotal connections that bind our joint force," Carter said. At a time where the U.S. is concerned about ISIL, Russian aggression, a rising and aggressive China, North Korea, and Iran, Carter said he's confident that Fanning and Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley are right to lead the Army. "Secretary Fanning and Gen. Milley understand all this, understand what must be done to ensure the readiness and strength of the Army to confront the challenges of today's security environment," Carter said. "They're working together to strengthen the Army's unparalleled ability, forged over the last 15 years, and much longer, to carry out its core mission, which is to seize, to hold, and to dominate physical and human terrain." He said that in line with the Army's No. 1 priority of readiness, both Fanning and Milley will work to strengthen the Army's ability to fight in an array of conflicts -- not just what it has been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. "They aren't resting on the current excellence of our Army," Carter said. "They're doubling down on it, ensuring that our ground forces are agile, unrivaled in posture, ready for full-spectrum operations, and always prepared to defend America's interests and values. "So it is an honor to formally welcome Secretary Fanning as Secretary of the Army," Carter said. "And I want to thank him for everything he is doing on behalf of all of the Soldiers and military families who serve today, from the mountains of Afghanistan, to the plains of Eastern Europe, to the Korean peninsula, to enabling our partners on the ground in Iraq and Syria." Fanning was initially nominated by President Obama as secretary of the Army in November 2015. He had been serving at the time as undersecretary of the Army. His confirmation to the position was delayed, however, and he left the secretary of the Army position in January 2016 without having been confirmed. He was later sworn in as secretary in May 2016, after having been confirmed by the Senate. Despite the long delay in advance of his actually taking the helm, Milley said he's known Fanning for quite some time, from back when the two were both being considered for their current positons, and says he's grown confident with Fanning's ability to lead. "We are absolutely thrilled to have you finally aboard -- there is much work to be done," Milley said. "It's no surprise to any of you who know him, but Eric Fanning is an incredible professional. He's completely committed to our Army, both the Soldiers and their families, and he is first class in every way imaginable. As an Army, we could not be luckier and more proud of our new secretary ... I can tell you he is extraordinarily talented, he is thoughtful, he is calm, and [he is] a man of immense personal courage and integrity. Eric Fanning is absolutely the right person to serve as our 22nd secretary of the Army." Together, Milley said, he and Fanning must continue to lead the Army through two conflicts in the Middle East, must continue to assure allies and deter adversaries in Europe, Asia, Africa, Central and South America -- and they must do that with a declining budget and with a drawdown in force structure. "Secretary Fanning will lead us through tough resourcing decisions and challenging fiscal realities," Milley said, "all the while setting the conditions for a future force that is balanced, modern, and takes advantage of all the talents that all Americans have to offer, regardless of the color of their skin, regardless of their religion, regardless of their national origin, regardless of their gender, regardless of their identity, or their sexual preference. The U.S. Army is open to all Americans who meet the standard, regardless of who they are. "Mr. Secretary, on behalf of all the Soldiers in the Army today, all those that are retired, and all the civilians of the U.S. Army, and all of our families, we want to welcome you from the bottom of our hearts to the team," Milley said. "And I, for one, am so very proud to call you my secretary." FINALLY ABOARD After the delayed nomination to his position, Fanning said he is glad to finally be aboard to lead more than a million Soldiers and civilians across the total force. "Too few Americans have an understanding of what their Army is doing," Fanning said. "They know about Iraq and Afghanistan, where many are serving valiantly today, and where too many made the ultimate sacrifice over the past 15 years ... but they don't understand the full impact across our country and around the world." Fanning said that Soldiers serve as ambassadors around the world, even more so than those who serve professionally in that role. "There are just over 15,000 foreign service members in our government," Fanning said. "And as the chief said today, there are over 180k Soldiers outside the United States in over 140 countries. They don't just fight for our freedoms, they represent us. Our Soldiers are the face of America." Last week Fanning visited Poland, where American Soldiers were engaged in Anaconda 2016, a military exercise with partner nations that involved more than 30,000 participants from 24 countries. "I asked a 19-year-old Soldier what his biggest surprise was, and he said 'support,'" Fanning said. "He meant the support of the Polish people. Crowds of Poles turned out, flags waiving, as their convoy moved across Poland. And when they took a Bradley fighting vehicle to a nearby town for a static display, that young Soldier beamed with pride when he told me about the waves of children clamoring onto the vehicle for pictures." Fanning said that the young Soldier he had met in Poland was thinking about the impact he and his Soldiers are having now. But what he didn't realize, Fanning said, is that "the impact of his and his Soldiers' presence will last for years to come. And it happens all over the world." Fanning also expressed pride in leading a service that is typically the first called upon when nobody knows who else to call. He cited the Army Corps of Engineers and their response to natural disasters as an example of that. "When the problem is so big that they can't think of who else can tackle it, they turn to the U.S. Army," Fanning said. During Hurricane Sandy, he said, the Corps drained 286 million gallons of saltwater in just nine days from the New York City subway system. In the 10 years following Hurricane Katrina, he said, the Corps designed and built a $14.5 billion, 100-year storm protective system for New Orleans. It's "a feat of engineering that included 133 miles of protections, 350 miles of canals, and a gated storm barrier that contains more concrete than the Hoover Dam, and is visible from space." Fanning also recognized the 400,000 Department of the Army civilians who support Soldiers, saying that those civilians include scientists, inventors, teachers, technicians, maintainers and weapons experts, and are responsible for running schools, test ranges, installations and commissaries. "Like them, I am committed every day to do what is necessary to support our Soldiers as individuals and as an Army, to do what is asked of them, because much is and much will be," he said. Fanning said he is committed to an Army that makes resilient Soldiers that are both trained and equipped. He said the Army must also "redouble our efforts to eliminate sexual assault and suicide, we must ensure that everybody has access to behavioral health services, and that we eliminate the stigma attached with seeking health -- [it's] a sign of strength not weakness." When it comes to readiness, he said, he is committed to ensuring Soldiers are prepared to fight across a wide range of contingencies -- "not just the kind of fighting we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan," he said. "That means the kind of large-scale, integrated, decisive action training I witnessed in Poland last week. And to make sure they are equipped in a way that always maintains a decisive advantage over any adversary, we must work to get capability to them more rapidly, and as efficiently as possible, and we must find more ways to cut time and money out of acquisition processes to better serve our Soldiers, to be better stewards of taxpayer money, and to streamline the system for the many talented Army civilians who slog through the processes we put in their way." Finally, the Army's new secretary touched on diversity in the Army as a strength. "We must continue to open up opportunity for those who meet standards, that were previously denied the opportunity to serve," he said. "By leveraging diversity, and creating an inclusive environment in which all are valued, we engender opportunities to be part of the greatest mission there is: defending our nation's security." Massive Detrick solar array only fraction of Army's renewable energy capacity [2016-06-22] FORT DETRICK, Md. -- A 59,994-panel solar array, spread over 67 acres of Army land that's been leased to a private developer, provides 15 megawatts of electricity, or 12 percent of the power used by this central-Maryland Army base. Fort Detrick, about 50 miles west of Baltimore, is a center for strategic medical research and communications in support of the national defense, said the garrison commander, Col. Robert A. O'Brien IV. At a small ceremony here, June 17, O'Brien, along with Army, DOD, federal government, and private industry officials, provided remarks and cut a ribbon to commemorate the opening of the solar array, which took a little over a year to build, and which is expected to provide nearly $3 million in cost avoidance over the duration of the 25-year electricity purchase agreement the Army has with the project's private developer and owner. The solar array actually started providing power in February, O'Brien said, and since then his installation has saved considerably on its electric bill. "What we have found as it has produced energy is that the cumulative savings in power cost, based on what we are getting from the solar field versus what we were getting straight off the grid, is about $136,000 in those two and a half months that we have recorded savings," he said. "It's functioning well and is providing about 12 percent of our power needs for the installation." When it comes to money to run his installation, that solar array has been a boon for his bottom line. O'Brien said he gets to keep that money and apply it to other places inside his operation's budget. "We're rolling that into base operations to use for other purposes, so we can use it for other projects we have," he said. "We can divert it to other priorities. It allows us to have quite a bit of freedom with the budget we have got, and not have to go out and seek other funding sources to meet some of our other priorities." Funding is of course a critical issue for Fort Detrick, as it is for any Army or federal installation or agency. But construction of the solar array now in operation there was always about more than shaving dollars off a budget. More than being about money, the array contributes to something else: energy security and resilience. Because Fort Detrick generates enough of its own electricity -- with the solar array and through other means, it can keep on doing what it does to contribute to the national defense, even if the civilian power grid were to shut down. "We can direct the energy to the critical infrastructure nodes where we need it first," O'Brien said of what happens during a civilian power grid failure. "We have several backup capacities as well, including generators and a central utilities plant here that provides backup power -- prime power and backup power into the research laboratories." Katherine Hammack, assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment, said she envisions a future where the entire Army is capable of doing what O'Brien can do at Fort Detrick: continue to execute its critical national defense mission, without needing to depend on anybody else for power. With renewable, on-base generation, Hammack said, "we are augmenting power that comes from the power grid. And we always have multiple sources. That's what we want, multiple options. We have diesel generators. We have co-gen coming from natural gas, so you're making heat, hot water and electricity from natural gas. We have traditional power that comes from the grid, and then we have renewable sources." A resilient installation, she said, can't just depend on one or two sources of power. An installation that might use diesel generators as it's back up to the power grid, for instance, still relies on diesel fuel coming in so that it can produce power. That's a vulnerability, she said. "So if you are entirely dependent on diesel generator sets, then you are subject to the logistics resupply that could be interrupted," she said. Solar power doesn't have that kind of problem. "The nice thing about the sun is, unless you have three or four rainy or cloudy days, it's a resource that is always there." At Fort Detrick now, the renewable power provided by the solar array produces 12 percent of the power used on the installation. Ideally, the Army would like to get that number up to 25 percent. In fact, the Army wants, by 2025, to be able to say that 25 percent of all the electricity used by the entire Army is provided by renewables -- and that's a tall order. According to Hammack, the Army is the single largest user of electricity within the entire federal government. The Department of Defense uses more electricity than any other department, she said, and of that, the Army uses about 35 percent. "Last year alone, our facilities consumed over $1.3 billion dollars of facility energy," she said. "Recognizing that, we need to be more resilient and we need to manage our cost. We made a commitment to the president of deploying 1 gigawatt of renewable energy on our installations by 2025." That 1 GW of renewable energy that was promised to the president represents about 25 percent of what the Army uses. So far, the Army has achieved 12 percent across the total force in renewables generation. So Fort Detrick's percentage of renewables generation is on par with that of the larger Army. Hammack said she doesn't see a problem reaching the 25 percent renewables goal. "We're going to beat that," she said. "We're going to do more than that." Down south, in Georgia, Fort Benning is already running a 30 MW solar array -- that's double what Fort Detrick has, and is for now, the largest solar array in the Army. But they won't have the distinction for long. Also underway in Georgia are two additional 30 MW solar arrays, one each at Fort Gordon and Fort Stewart. Both of those arrays are expected to come online before the end of this year. Solar isn't everything, however. Michael F. McGhee, the executive director of the Army's Office of Energy Initiatives, said down at Fort Hood, they're generating 50 MW of wind power, offsite, and are also making use of their own 15 MW solar array. "That hybrid project, as we call it, not only provides additional energy security and resiliency for the grid that serves the base, but it also offsets and avoids future costs to the Army to the tune of about $160 million. We have a lot of activity in the Army, looking at renewable energy, energy efficiency, and also energy security -- which is a big issue to the Army and the Department of Defense." Up in New York, Fort Drum is making use of a 60 MW bio-mass facility that burns wood clippings and wood pulp from the logging industry there. "It's stuff that would have otherwise been buried or burned, but we're using to generate power," Hammack said. She said the Army is also using geothermal and hydroelectric in other areas. "There's a steady pipeline of projects that are either being evaluated or already undergoing the contracting process," Hammack said. EXPANDING AT DETRICK Fort Detrick is divided into three areas. There's the main post, where most of the research facilities and base housing are located, there's an "Area B," where the solar array is located, along with a small farm-type facility that houses animals and a paint ball facility. And about 35 miles south, near the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, is the "Forrest Glenn Annex." On the main post, O'Brien said, the Army is looking beyond its own efforts to get to its overall goal of 25 percent renewables. The privatized housing partner there, responsible for about 600 homes, is also in on the effort. They've recently installed solar panels on top of many of the privatized homes, he said. Those panels are not online yet, though, so it's unclear for now how much they will contribute to Fort Detrick's overall percentage of renewables, but O'Brien is optimistic of their contribution. "Those homes are energy consumers, off the grid, that we are tracking right now," he said. "We are anticipating our power costs to go down another pretty big chunk. O'Brien also said he'd have liked to see an energy storage capability included with the solar power project, which would have further enhanced the base's resiliency in the face of major power outages. But at the time the project kicked off, it was deemed too expensive to pursue. But, he said, that won't always be the case. "One of the future development opportunities for this is, as the price of battery storage for power comes down and the capabilities increase, we're looking at should we build a storage facility to be able to store power for when we need it, for during surge times," he said. The colonel said there are still other opportunities to be exploited at Fort Detrick. The solar array in Area B has room to expand, he said, and "there are lots of building tops, and we could build micro solar panels or wind turbines." Online town hall to focus on NCO development [2016-06-22] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers don't need to read the NCO 2020 Strategy before participating in the June 23 TRADOC-sponsored town hall online, but it might help them better understand what the Army is doing to prepare the NCO Corps for the challenges of an uncertain future. In March, Command Sgt. Maj. David S. Davenport, the top enlisted advisor for U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, hosted an online forum to discuss issues related to the NCO 2020 strategy. The event went on for two hours and questions from Soldiers were all over the map, he said. "I made the assumption that everybody had read the NCO 2020 Strategy," Davenport said. "But they really had not read it." So for this next online town hall, which runs 5-6:30 p.m. eastern time, June 23, Davenport said the topic of conversation will be a bit narrower. It'll be limited to just the first of the three lines of effort spelled out in the NCO 2020 Strategy: "leader development." "NCOs develop as leaders over time through deliberate progressive and sequential processes incorporating training, education, and experience across the three learning domains throughout the Soldier Lifecycle," reads the 13-page strategy -- which includes only seven pages of actual reading material. Soldiers who want to brush up on the relatively short strategy document, which in many ways spells out how their Army career will progress, can read it here: http://www.tradoc.army.mil/FrontPageContent/Docs/NCO2020.pdf The other two lines of effort in the NCO 2020 Strategy are "talent management" and "stewards of the profession." In advance of the town hall, Davenport talked with reporters about the topics he looks forward to discussing with Soldiers. First among those topics is the addition of two new NCO professional military education courses. There are now six such courses: -- Basic Leader Course -- Advanced Leader Course -- Senior Leader Course -- Master Leader Course (this is new) -- Sergeant Major Course -- Executive Leader Course (this is also new) Davenport said a survey a while back revealed educational gaps in professional military education. The biggest gap was the time between the Senior Leader Course and the Sergeant Major Course. "It could be ten years," he said. "And there was a promotion inside of there, from sergeant first class to master sergeant. And so in the gap analysis, we needed a way to close that gap between those two PMEs. We came up with the Master Leader Course." The Executive Leader Course, also new, is for nominative sergeants major who will work for general officers, he said. BIG STEP Davenport said that last year there was a huge number of Soldiers, about 14,000, who hadn't actually gone to the professional military education schools that were required of them. The PME schools line up with enlisted promotions, and Soldiers were not attending. Operational tempo, due in part to conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, contributed to some of that backlog. But that optempo has died down, and Davenport said that now the Army's implanted a new system -- which he's pretty proud of -- called STEP. That stands for Select-Train-Educate-Promote. The STEP program virtually guarantees Soldiers will get the right schooling and education before their next promotion, because if they don't get it, they don't get the stripes. In addition to attending the correct PME that is associated with the next rank they want, under STEP, Soldiers must also take the corresponding structured self-development, or SSD. If they don't, then they won't get the promotion. "What that means to our forces, is that Soldiers must attend PME and graduate the level commensurate with the standing list they are on," Davenport said. "If they want to be sergeants, they have to graduate the BLC." Under STEP, the following promotions require these educational requirements be completed: -- To go from SPC to SGT: you need SSD-1 and BLC -- To go from SGT to SSG: you need SSD-2 and ALC -- To go from SSG to SFC: you need SSD-3 and SLC -- To go from SFC to MSG: you need SSD-4 and MLC -- To go from MSG to SGM: you need the SGM Course Today, due to STEP, Davenport said, that 14,000-Soldier PME backlog has been reduced. "I'm proud to report because of STEP and communicating to the force why education is important for promotion and continued service, we have cut that down to a little over 8,000 in the backlog," Davenport said. "The word is getting out that education is important." SELF-STRUCTURED DEVELOPMENT Davenport said that the Army and TRADOC are also revising that pre-classroom SSD to "add rigor to them, reduce the amount of hours, and make sure the content is needed." The SSDs, he said, will prepare Soldiers for what they'll see in the follow-on classroom instruction. And also, the SSDs will reach back to previous education. SSD-2, for instance, will reach back to BLC in order to "tie it all together, to reinforce, to build on your knowledge base as we move forward." Inside classrooms, he said, things are also changing. It's not just the number of courses, but how the courses are taught and how the programs of instruction are constructed. "We're running our POIs through Army University to make sure they have academic rigor that can help out Soldiers earn college credit by attending these courses," Davenport said. "These POIs will cause a change in the way we teach." With the MLC course, he said, Soldiers who have taken the course are impressed with the depth and challenge the course presents, Davenport said. "Soldiers are saying they enjoy the rigor of having to read more, having to talk more in conceptual knowledge rather than just memorizing answers," he said. "We're changing the POIs, we're changing the testing methods." TRADOC is also upping the standard of how Solders perform in PME as well. It's not just going to be pass or fail. "We have a form called the Academic Evaluation Report ... we're changing the content of what an instructor is going to tell us about the Soldiers," he said. Within the Army Form 1059, PME instructors will record a Soldier's grade-point average during a PME course -- or how Soldiers perform on the material -- and also class standing, for instance. Instructors will also record performance on the Army Physical Fitness Test, height and weight, and will ensure Soldiers have completed the Multi-Source Assessment and Feedback, or MSAF 360 Self-Assessment, "so they are aware of any blind spots they can work on in their self-development domain," Davenport said. THERE'S READING ... AND THEN THERE's WRITING Another facet of a Soldier's 1059 coming out of PME will be a writing assessment score. "At each level of their PME, they will take the writing assessment and we can tell if they are improving, not improving, or getting worse," Davenport said. "So when they come into the academic environment, we can tailor training to help them improve." Davenport said there's been a writing pilot in the BLCs, and in Fiscal Year 2018, there will be a requirement to have a writing assessment prior to attending resident PME. "They will have two distance-learning requirements," he said, prior to each in-class PME. That includes the SSD and a writing assessment prior to going into the classroom. "They go to a website, it's a drop-down menu, they're given a subject to write about," Davenport said. "They bleed on the keys. Once they finish, they upload it, and in a matter of minutes it comes back with ... you need to work on your spelling, your grammar, sentence structure, the body, the flow. It prints out an after-action report on things you need to work on to improve." He said Soldiers can take information and use tuition assistance to take civilian courses to improve their writing. Also, he said, TRADOC is working with the Military Intelligence Center of Excellence on distance-learning packages for writing that the center has developed for their officer and enlisted service members. "We're seeing how we can apply that across the Army to improve writing of the NCO corps," Davenport said. ONE ARMY SCHOOL SYSTEM Soldiers have to go to school, and the Army is not going to let a lack of schools or classroom slots prevent any Soldier from getting the PME they need to get their new stripes. "If we're going to require every Soldier to have PME completed before we promote them, then we have to make sure we have capacity to train them," Davenport said. One Army School System is about making use of all schools available, across the total force -- Army Reserve, Army National Guard and Regular Army -- to ensure that classrooms meet standards and can be attended by Soldiers from any component to get the schooling they need. TRADOC has to look at all schools and all courses, and make some changes to find the efficiencies needed to make sure everybody has a seat in a school when they need it. "And so what we're doing is that we are tapping into every source that we can find to educate our Soldiers," he said. "There has been no loss of capacity. There will be some repurposing of facilities. But there is no removing of courses. We have moved them around." He said they've finished adjudication of courses between Guard, Reserve and Regular Army schools, with decisions based on weighted criteria such as facilities, per diem, and proximity to airports, for instance. He said they also looked at populations of types of Soldiers and where they are concentrated most. "I'm proud to say that we are already leveraging the Guard and Reserve training facilities to get at that education backlog -- the 8,000," he said. "We've already begun with HRC to schedule all three components at each other's schools that our One Army School System recognizes. And then over time what will happen is, is that we will have not only a facility identified as a One Army School System, but we will have all three components educated together and taught by all three components." Davenport said he's found that Guard and Reserve schools are equal to Regular Army schools. "We have a fantastic quality assurance program that TRADOC is the lead for any school, regardless of component. There is a common standard out there." He also said that all changes being made to NCO leader development have been worked with the Guard and Reserve leadership. STEP, for instance, applies to all Soldiers, he said. "All of this work is being done to improve our education system regardless of what component it may belong to." DIRECT LINE TO SOLDIER'S BRAIN Davenport says he's been in the Army since 1983, about 33 years ago. A lot has changed since then. One example, he said, is how Soldiers get information from the institutional Army. Back then, when he was a private, Davenport said, "my squad leader lined us up by date of rank. So that made Davenport, the brand new private, the last Soldier in the last rank of the formation. I very rarely heard what the first sergeant put out. And I was dependent on my platoon sergeants and squad leaders, of course, for telling me or showing me what I should be doing." He said he didn't think then that was the best way to get information into the heads of every Soldier. "I've always made communications with Soldiers one of the foundations of my leadership style," he said. "I think it's important that leaders put things in context for Soldiers." He said putting things in context helps Soldiers understand, and that leads to getting more effort out of Soldiers. That's why, he said, he makes such extensive use of social media, online town halls, and opens the floor to questions from Soldiers. During the last town hall, he said, that meant over 1 million social media accounts were involved, an average of 300 Soldiers showed up in the chatrooms, and Soldiers in 18 different countries participated. "It's a very effective way to communicate directly to a wide range of audiences," he said "And it's two-way. They can hear what I'm saying, and they can chew on it, think about it and respond back." He said with the last town hall, "Soldiers really liked the candor, they really liked what they were hearing, but they wanted to ask more questions." He said this time, they will open the chat board earlier to let more Soldiers ask more questions. The social media hashtag for the event will be #tradoctownhall, and it's also a forum for questions. Soldiers who want to participate in the town hall can point their web browsers to www.emc.army.mil/broadcast to watch. If Soldiers want to read up on NCO 2020 in advance, they can also point their browser to http://www.tradoc.army.mil/FrontPageContent/Docs/NCO2020.pdf Fanning says Army will not judge by gender, race, religion or sexual orientation [2016-06-22] WASHINGTON -- "When the shooting starts, when the battle is joined, it doesn't matter whether the Soldier next to you is black or white, Christian or Muslim, gay or straight, it only matters that he or she can do their job. That's a story as old as the Army itself," said Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning. The Army's secretary spoke June 21 during the Department of State's annual lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex pride event. Fanning told attendees at the event that the Army's and the military's strength now, and into the future, is dependent on diversity and on pulling on the talents and skills of a wide range of individuals. Gender, race, religion or sexuality, he said, should not be a factor in deciding who brings much-needed talent to the table. "We've grown stronger as a military and as a nation as we've opened up opportunities for those who previously didn't have them," Fanning said. "By leveraging diversity and creating an inclusive environment in which all are valued, we engender opportunities for people to be part of the greatest mission there is: Defending our nation's security." Facing the challenges now and in the future, such as those posed by Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and international terrorism, Fanning said, requires creative, adaptive, well-trained leaders, he said. "It takes decades to grow and train such leaders, and we can ill afford to close ourselves off to anyone," he said. "Our national security will suffer if we allow bias or prejudice or ignorance to close doors and discourage great future leaders from serving." Fanning said the Army and the Department of Defense, of which it is a part, have been moving toward greater diversity and inclusion for all Americans. One example of that, he said, is the repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' back in 2011. Another example of that, he said, is the recent opening of all positions in the services to women. Not only are all jobs open to men and women -- but the pay is the same as well. "Just last year, we opened all remaining jobs in the military to women, including combat arms," Fanning said. "And we provide equal pay for equal work -- we pay privates and sergeants, lieutenants and generals equally, regardless of gender or race or sexual orientation." Fanning said this increasing diversity and inclusion supports one of his goals as secretary -- bridging the divide between the Army and a diverse American public. "The military is more powerful when the American people know that no matter what their background, religious beliefs, political views, sexual orientation, or gender identity, we serve and sacrifice on their behalf -- on behalf of this country we all love in order to protect all of our freedoms," he said. Fanning has only served as secretary of the Army for a short time. He was initially nominated by President Barack Obama as secretary in September 2015. He had been serving at the time as acting undersecretary of the Army, and served as acting secretary from November 2015 until January 2016. His confirmation to the position was delayed, however, and he was not confirmed by the Senate and sworn in as the 22nd Secretary of the Army until last month. During his brief time as secretary, Fanning said he has been "pleasantly" surprised by "how closely the core Army values that every Soldier is required to memorize and live by -- loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage -- could very well capture and characterize the LGBT community's struggle for equality. These values have served as a guide to Soldiers and leaders as we incorporate our diverse culture into the ranks. They are not slogans that are paid lip service but bedrock principles that dictate how Soldiers live, train and fight in order to succeed." At the State Department event, Fanning said he initially planned to tout the Department of Defense's own pride month observance, themed "Celebration," but said in light of the recent shootings in Orlando, a celebratory mood would not be appropriate. "It's hard to be in a mood for celebration after the horrific attack in Orlando less than two weeks ago," Fanning said. On June 12, 2016, 49 patrons of the gay nightclub "Pulse" in Orlando, Florida, were killed by ISIS-sympathizer Omar Mateen. Among those killed, Fanning said, were former Army specialist Angel Candelario-Padro and Capt. Antonio Brown, an Army reservist. "Like so many families in Orlando and across America, our Army family was deeply hurt and saddened by such tragic, senseless loss of life," Fanning said. Fanning said another military veteran, Marine Corps veteran Imran Yousuf, was working at the nightclub that night, and is credited with saving the lives of up to 70 people. "As horrific as this attack was, it wasn't an attack on Orlando; it wasn't an attack on the LGBT community; it was an attack on America, and our nation has come together, as one, to mourn those we lost, to help those who survived, and to comfort those left behind," Fanning said. Fanning said that while much progress has been made in making the Army and the military more inclusive, more work must be done. "As Army Secretary, I am confident that our intuition is committed to judging people not by where they came from or who they love, but by how they train and fight," Fanning said. "Only then can we truly say we have embraced and lived the Army values that are the bedrock of our profession." The Department of State's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex pride event was sponsored by GLIFAA, an LGBTI group for foreign affairs agencies, and by the Department of State Office of Civil Rights. Excess facilities must close, Army tells veterans [2016-06-23] WASHINGTON -- The Army is spending at least $500 million annually to maintain excess infrastructure, a facilities expert told veterans and other groups visiting the Pentagon. About 30 representatives from veterans' service organizations, military service organizations, non-federal entities and defense community associations met for a summit in the Pentagon, June 23 to meet with Army leaders on an array of topics relevant to their own service missions. Andy Napoli, assistant for Base Realignment and Closure with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment, discussed the urgent need for the Army to reduce excess infrastructure, as a way to free up now dwindling resources for use in more critical areas. "The real issue is underutilized capacity that is costing a lot of money," Napoli said. "It costs roughly the same amount of money to heat and cool a building and operate it, whether it has 100-percent occupancy or 50-percent occupancy." Napoli said that there are not a lot of empty buildings on Army bases, but there are a lot of buildings that aren't fully utilized. Whether full or only partially full, he said, it costs roughly the same to sustain that infrastructure. He said Army-wide, it's about an average of $3 per square foot to maintain that infrastructure. "When you run the math of 170 million square feet of underutilized space times $3 a square foot, you end up with about $500 million of carrying cost," he said. "That's a conservative estimate." "It's not enough though to shut down those buildings," Napoli said. Rather, missions and capabilities must be consolidated on other installations, and whole installations must be closed to find truly beneficial cost savings. Running a whole installation, he said, is extremely costly, as there are services that must be provided across an installation at a cost that really can't be reduced along with the number of Soldiers and families on an installation. A sexual assault program costs about the same on a large base as it does on a small base, for instance -- it's a pretty fixed hierarchy to run such a program. And base services still need to be provided -- garbage collection, for instance, or pothole repair. "What that really means is that our force structure and our population goes down, unless you are closing an installation and permanently eliminating that requirement, you're not going to have a lot of opportunity to save money," Napoli said. "If we try to spread declining resources across all 155 installations the Army owns and operates, you are going to get mediocre services everywhere," he said. "If you can concentrate the resources at a smaller number of installations, you can get better service." Diane Randon, the acting assistant chief of staff for Installation Management, told MSO and VSO visitors that ACSIM is responsible for getting resources to installations for things like fire and emergency services, law enforcement, family programs, Soldier readiness programs, and training ranges, for instance. Also, she said, they are responsible for the infrastructure piece -- investing in facilities and military construction, for instance. But the Army is not getting the funding it needs to sustain these things, she said. "We don't really get what we say we need," she said, though she conceded, "we haven't gotten the worst we could have gotten." She said the Army isn't getting the appropriate funding it needs for its restoration and modernization account -- "that account is also deficient" she said, as is military constriction, or MILCON. "It's at a historic low." She said the Army needs to "reduce the footprint" it maintains. With reduction of end strength, with less people, and less families, there is excess capacity. "When we have excess capacity of our infrastructure, and we really don't have the investment that we need to preserve that current footprint -- which includes leases - what strategy do we employ to drive footprint reduction?" She said figuring out how to reduce that footprint has senior leader attention, to figure out how the Army can consolidate into its best facilities, and then how to divest or repurpose current facilities. Maj. Gen. Michael Smith, acting chief of the Army Reserve, said the Reserve is "really here for one purpose, and that is to support the Army." The Reserve, he said, is authorized 198,000 Soldiers, but stands at a little more that than about 199,000. "Our retention rate's up, and we are hitting our recruiting targets," he said. But Smith said he's concerned that the Reserve doesn't really have the right people at the right ranks right now. He said the Reserve has a lot of junior Soldiers, and plenty of lieutenants. It needs captains and majors, as well as staff sergeants and sergeants first class. "Our challenge is to continue to grow those young adults," he said, to get them to re-enlist, for instance, and then at the five-to-seven-year mark, "they begin filling those ranks that we are in need of, so we can round out our formation." He said one way of getting more experienced Soldiers in the ranks is the Soldier for Life program. He is looking at active-duty Soldiers who are leaving the services, and offering them the chance to do what they want: pursue a civilian career, and also continue to wear the uniform. A little less than 20 percent of active-duty Soldiers, he said, will stay for a full 20 years to earn a retirement there. Many could continue on in the Army Reserve. "When somebody joins the active duty, they serve, do their time, six years or eight years, and then they want to pursue their civilian career -- they want to pursue their dream," Smith said. "They have served; they enjoy wearing the uniform, but now they have a family ... they want to be part of the community again. We like to talk to them and encourage them to serve in uniform." Smith also assured MSO/VSO representatives that following the release of the National Commission on the Future of the Army report, which came out in January, that decisions on how to react to the recommendations laid out in that report would be a total-force effort. He said general officers from the Regular Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard were working together on how to respond. Col. Sam Cook, director, U. S. Army Reserve Strategic Equipping Division, said he's primarily concerned that the Army Reserve will fall behind in technological savvy without appropriate funding. He compared the concern to that posed by his own daughters, whom he said tease him about his now-antiquated flip phone that is incompatible with the latest technology now available. Reserve Soldiers today the best trained and equipped that they have ever been, Cook said, but hot spots are popping up around the globe. "I see an increase in demand for reserve-component capabilities and assets," he said. He's concerned that limited funding to the reserve-component will mean that Reserve Soldiers might not always have the best, and will not be able to keep up or be compatible with Regular Army Soldiers they support. "I'm concerned maybe some of the fiscal and budgeting and resourcing are not keeping pace," he said. "It'll take dedicated and sustained funding to ensure our Soldiers are always equipped with the latest and greatest, the most modern equipment, so they can be seamlessly integrated into the operational force and they can continue to answer our nation's call." Nine-month Army Central rotation proves total force concept [2016-06-24] WASHINGTON -- Col. John L. Rafferty Jr., commander of the 18th Field Artillery Brigade out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, didn't say exactly what his opinion was about the total force concept back in August 2016, when he left the U.S. for a deployment to Jordan. But upon his return, he said, he was sold on the concept. Rafferty took command of the 18th Field Artillery Brigade in June 2015, and August of that year, he'd been shipped off on a nine-month deployment to the United States Central Command area of responsibility, where he set up shop in Jordan. He took with him from Fort Bragg about 75 Soldiers from his own headquarters, and about 20 Soldiers who'd end up manning AN/TPQ-53 Counterfire Target Acquisition Radars in theater. In theater, he commanded the Combined Force Land Component Commander's "Force Field Artillery Headquarters," both under U.S. Army Central Command. The FFA HQ included about 650 Soldiers who manned about 24 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems in five locations throughout AOR. Battalion-sized units from the New Hampshire and Michigan Army National Guard, along with battery-sized units from Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, manned those HIMARS systems. "It was my first experience as an officer commanding a mixed force of active and reserve component troops," he said. Now, "I can honestly say that I'm a believer in the total force concept, and really believe that we are one Army. In many cases our forces are interchangeable. And in some cases our skills complement one other, which makes for a very strong and effective team. It really was a thrill to command that force, and I did learn an enormous amount as a brigade commander with that new force that I hadn't been exposed to." From his headquarters in Jordan, Rafferty was responsible for, among other things, maintaining contingency plan readiness to defend multipole countries in the AOR. They had 24 HIMARS systems spread out across five locations in the AOR to support a requirement "to deter potential adversaries, be prepared to fight as required alongside our partners," he said. Rafferty also had to stand up "Joint Fire Cell - Syria," a targeting and intelligence fusion cell he said was focused on eastern Syria, north of the Euphrates River Valley. "It was really the ISIS, or Da'esh support zone that provided fighters, equipment, and resources from Syria down into the fight in Iraq," he said. "So in that way we were supporting the fight in Iraq." Also, Rafferty was responsible for building partner capacity with allies in the CENTCOM AOR, including Jordan, United Arabian Emirates, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Bahrain, Qatar, Tajikistan, and Oman. "We touched nine different countries. In some cases they were established relationships. And we begin to see what the potential is for interoperability. In other cases, interoperability is the goal." In UAE and Jordan, where most of the artillery forces are, the Jordanians and UAE military have systems similar to the United States, Rafferty said. The "have a very professional and focused army and artillery force," he said. "They are willing partners and great hosts." He said the opportunities there went beyond typical familiarity training, to training with the goal of "fighting alongside one another. That's interoperability. Our path to getting there was through training and combined live-fire. That's what builds trust. Trust is the basis for interoperability. With like-systems and a willing partner, you can get towards interoperability." In Saudi Arabia, he said, they focused on building partner capacity. U.S. artillery, he said, hasn't done much if any "meaningful" training alongside Saudi partners for some time. "We built a relationship with the corps artillery commander, a two-star general in the Saudi land forces," Rafferty said. They were able to identify things the general wanted to accomplish in the way of training and work with him to accomplish that. "We put together a triaging program with his staff, and a couple of months later we spent two weeks in Khamis ... where we trained alongside one of his artillery staffs and one of his artillery firing batteries," Rafferty said. "We exchanged techniques, and we observed and provided feedback, and built a pretty strong relationship. That, I would say, would be working towards building partner capacity. They learned from us, and we learned some things from them." Along with his replacement, Rafferty later went back to meet with the Saudi Arabian artillery commander. Rafferty said that commander had already prepared a list of new things he wanted to train on, and in new locations, to expose more of his soldiers to working with American forces. Rafferty characterized that as the start of a lasting relationship. "If they move towards like equipment, then we'd have the conditions set to move towards interoperability," he said. Now, he said the Saudis have they have mix of U.S. and Chinese systems. He said he thinks they may be moving towards HIMARS systems, though he can't confirm that. Rafferty said he was impressed with the relationships he was exposed to with partner nations in the CENTCOM AOR, but also with the impact of having worked with U.S. forces from outside the Regular Army. Working with the National Guard, he said, was pretty much like he expected it to be -- especially at the lowest levels "I expected almost exactly what we found: that the platoons and squad level would be extremely good, and in some cases maybe better," he said, describing them as "crews together for a long period of time, really entrenched and tight teams. "I didn't know much about above the platoon level. I didn't know what to expect from battery commanders, from battalion commanders. And like any unit what you find is a range of experience levels. So that's my job as a commander, to apply leadership to places that require more. That's what you do for an active duty, that's what you do for a National Guard unit." Now, coming back from the CENTCOM AOR, he said, he's got plans for the future. First is to create to create more training opportunities with reserve component units. The way the Force Field Artillery Brigade fought -- multi-compo -- is the way it's going to stay, he concluded. "That's how we are going to fight as field artillery brigade in the future: a mixture of active and reserve components," he said. "We'd be stupid not to train that way. That's one of my tasks for this year ... to either incorporate ourselves into National Guard field artillery brigade training, or incorporate them into ours. Either way, we have to develop a training relationship that is going to prepare us for how we are going to fight." Also, he said, he was impressed with the communications capabilities he experienced in theater, and wants to sustain at home what the Soldiers learned in theater. In the AOR, he said, the brigade there was split across five countries, and he said he'd been impressed with how the communications and mission command capabilities he used there allowed him to run his mission across that distance. "It really is very impressive," he said. "Every day I was impressed of what our mission command systems enabled us to do." Now he wants to exercise that at home. Though it'll be hard to replicate the CENTCOM AOR on Fort Bragg, he said, the Global Response Force recently went out to Nellis Air Force Base and Creech AFB to train with the Air Force. That's on the other side of the country from where he is, and he said he'd like to get involved in that training in the future, to bring his headquarters in on it. That will provide his team "an opportunity to exercise the theater-wide fire control capabilities that is a core competency of us. I can't let it deteriorate over time." Army looks to integrate cyber capabilities into training simulations [2016-07-08] WASHINGTON -- Researchers at the Army Cyber Institute want to discover both what cyber effects can be inserted into current Army training simulations, and also how to do that, so that the capabilities cyber warriors bring to the fight can reflect inside kinetic simulations for training in the same way they will reflect on a real-world battlefield. "How do you integrate these very mature kinetic simulations with cyber, so that if you're going to attack an outpost and the lights are on, you can call in your cyber support element to turn the lights off for you, so you move in under the cover of darkness?" asked Fernando Maymi, a researcher with ACI, which is collocated with the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. At the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, the Army is already working to bring cyber effects to the battlefield there, Maymi said. And the ACI is part of that effort. But while there, they are looking for ideas on what commanders expect from their cyber counterparts, and what cyber personnel can provide, so that those effects can be integrated and represented in existing training simulations and modeling, the same as kinetic effects. They are also looking to find ways to mesh existing cyber simulations with existing kinetic simulations, so that the effects of actions taken in one simulation will be seen in the other. "In the simulated environment ... we have the constructive simulation that allows us to train units," Maymi said. "You can simulate artillery fires, you can simulate jet fighters. And we also have virtual ranges for cyber exercises. What we are trying to do is figure out how do you integrate the two, so the cyber warriors are shutting down power on a grid, and the people who are actually moving in that sector of the target see the lights go out. And the defenders mitigate whatever we did to turn the power off to turn the power back on -- and sure enough, they come back on in the simulation, and we have to deal with that too." Just what kinds of cyber effects are the right ones to emulate inside training simulations is one of the things researchers at ACI are working on. "What we are working on at West Point is trying to figure out what effects we would want to provide to a brigade command," said Col. Andrew Hall, the director of ACI. "An artilleryman, who is a fire supporter, is going to say I'm going to bring you effects -- it might be cannon or might be rocket fire. Similarly, we need to find out how to add those kinds of cyber effects -- what are the things they would like to have us do. We want to bring it to the real world, but the only way we can test without going to war is in the simulation environment." Hall said his team is working to determine what cyber capabilities need to be reflected in the simulation environment, and that they are looking to real-world activities for clues in formulating that opinion. "We're looking at what the Russians have been demonstrating as capabilities in some of their most recent engagements," he said. "So we have got cyber for intelligence, and we are pretty fleshed out there. And we have cyber engaging against other cyber maneuver elements -- so cyber versus cyber. So in this effort what we are trying to break out into is how does cyber really help a maneuver unit." Such capabilities might include dealing with the smartphones enemies use on the battlefield, as well as the proliferation of store-bought drones. "Our enemies can now buy drones off the street and there is quite a bit of intelligence information they can gain," Hall said. "And you have to start working on information decisions like do we want to jam their drones, do we want to shoot down their drones, do we want to change the feed on their drones. Those are all the kinds of decisions the commander would have to go through." Maymi pointed to "smart homes," as another target for cyber warriors that needs to be considered. "If you want to move cyber to the forward edge of the battlefield, it would be more like smart homes," Maymi said. "How do you turn off power in a particular house because it has smart electronics in it. As we expand the internet of things, to where everything is smart, then that attack surface increases. Those are things we are looking at." Both Maymi and Hall were on Capitol Hill, July 7, along with others involved in simulation and modeling, to make themselves available to lawmakers there and to discuss their efforts. "We want lawmakers to know that we are working on modeling cyber effects in conventional warfare," Hall said. "We are trying to figure out how cyber works in ground combat. Not just cyber for intelligence, not just cyber versus cyber, but cyber for ground combat. That's what we are working on, and finding out what that means for our future Army." Vietnam War Commemoration committee honors Kettles, fellow vets [2016-07-17] WASHINGTON -- A day before retired Lt. Col. Charles Kettles was scheduled to go to the White House to receive the Medal of Honor, he and seven of his comrades from his time in Vietnam were recognized here for their service with the presentation of a commemorative pin by the director of the United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration on Sunday, July 17. The pin features an eagle and American flag on the front, with six stars that represent the United States and the five other nations that helped during the conflict, including Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea and Thailand. On the reverse side of the pin are the words "A grateful nation thanks and honors you -- USA Vietnam War Commemoration." The pin is "a small token," said now-retired Maj. Gen. Jim Jackson, who serves as director of the commemoration. It's presented "on behalf of the government and on behalf of the country." The United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration kicked off Memorial Day 2012 and runs through Veterans Day 2025. It is meant to recognize, thank and honor U.S. military veterans who served during the Vietnam War. Veterans who served on active duty in the U.S. armed forces at any time during the period between Nov. 1, 1955 and May 15, 1975 are eligible to receive the pin. So far, Jackson said, some 850,000 pins have been handed out, not just by the commission, but also by partner organizations around the country that now number around 10,000. Jackson said there are about 7 million living veterans who served during Vietnam. He said he knows he won't be able to thank them all, but he wants to. "There are a whole lot who will not participate," he said. "And we are losing 380 a day. When you calculate that out, my gut tells me if I can get between 4 to 5 million veterans, and give them a pin, we're probably going to get all that we're going to get. But I'd like to pass out 7 million." In addition to Charles Kettles, seven other Vietnam veterans where honored by the commission. Included were Matt McGuire, Don Long, Ron Roy, Dewey Smith, John Osborne, Roland Scheck and Patrick Cleary. All were either involved with or affected by Kettles' actions May 15, 1967, which ultimately earned him the Medal of Honor. Jackson told the veterans that America thanks them not only for their service during the Vietnam War, but also for what they did after the war: they returned to the United States and either became productive citizens who contributed to their nation, or they stayed on in the Army and contributed to its betterment. "When you all came home, those of you who stayed in the service, and many did, you went on to rebuild the military," Jackson said. "What I try to tell veterans when I talk to them is that all the goodness you see in the U.S. military today is a direct impact of what the Vietnam veterans did when they came home to restructure, rebuild, reorganize, and re-arm the military; to build new standards, develop new training programs, and put that in place. The junior people who came home actually made that happen." The United States has already done a commemoration for World War II and for Korea, Jackson said. Now is the time for the nation to recognize the service of those who served in Vietnam. "It's important for a variety of reasons," he said. "One, there is a requirement in our country to continue the recognition of service to our country. It started back in the 1700s and has continued to today. We don't want a break in that. We think service to the country is worth recognizing." Additionally, he said, service members returning from Vietnam never got the kind of recognition for their service that is common today. Recognition is long overdue, he said. "Fifty years ago when these guys came home, they were not afforded the welcome we see today. These people did the country's bidding; they did what the country asked them to do. None of them purchased their own cruise ship to go to Vietnam. They went on behalf of the country, they did what they were told to do, and they deserve that recognition." The United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration was commissioned by Congress. Its primary objective is to thank and honor Vietnam veterans and their families for their service and sacrifice. Additionally, Congress asked the commission to highlight the service of America's armed forces and support organizations during the war, recognize the wartime contributions of citizens back at home, highlight the technological and medical advancements made during the war, and recognize America's allies. Vietnam War aviator inducted into Pentagon's 'Hall of Heroes' [2016-07-19] WASHINGTON -- "Of all the details of this mission on the table, saving the 44 men is the only thing that matters," said retired Army Lt. Col. Charles Kettles, the most recent recipient of the Medal of Honor. Kettles was inducted into the Pentagon's "Hall of Heroes," on Tuesday, July 19. During the induction ceremony, Kettles was joined by several hundred others, including Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter, Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Daniel B. Allyn and Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey. Nearly 50 years ago, on May 15, 1967, Kettles led a team of helicopters into the jungles of Vietnam under heavy enemy fire to rescue Soldiers from an enemy engagement where they had been severely overmatched by enemy combatants. Later that day, just when everyone expected that the rescue operations were over, they learned that eight more Soldiers remained behind. "Charles didn't hesitate, he immediately broke off, passed flight lead to another aircraft, and returned for a fourth landing into that landing zone, to bring everybody home," recounted Allyn. "Kettles once again vanquished his fears, bouncing several hundred feet into that landing zone. There, the enemy was able to concentrate its efforts on Kettle's single aircraft. Smoke billowed inside, the aircraft lurched from left to right, but somehow, some way, he was able to fly it, coax it, will it out of that landing zone." "Lt. Col. Kettles demonstrated his commitment and deep-seated loyalty to all those men, and our entire nation, by his actions that day. He did not quit. He refused to leave any Soldier behind," Allyn said. In all, the total rescue operations involved some 74 helicopter crewmembers who ended up saving the lives of 44 Soldiers. "It is fitting that we acknowledge and share the honor with the 74 helicopter crewmembers who were involved in the total mission on that date," Kettles said. "It belongs to them, who, with their deep regard for their fellow Soldiers, minimized the losses that day." A plaque bearing Kettles name will soon join those of other Medal of Honor recipients that line the walls of the Hall of Heroes, commemorating his having received the Medal of Honor for his action back in Vietnam. But across the river, in Washington, D.C., there is another wall with some 58,000 names engraved on it. "Every name represents great loss for a family and our nation," Carter said. The names of the 44 men Kettles was credited with helping save are not on that wall, however, because he fearlessly led the team that ensured those men got home from battle that day, Carter said. "How many Thanksgiving tables have had an extra chair through the years because of his actions?" Carter asked. "How many weddings, childbirths and graduations were made possible because Maj. Kettles and his crew returned again and again to the hot landing zone in the Song Tra Cau riverbed?" Nobody but Kettles knows exactly what he was thinking that day in Vietnam or what he expected to happen exactly, Carter said. But Carter believes he knows what motivated Kettles. It's the same thing that motivates all good Soldiers. "Duty, honor, country and the deeply held conviction that we will never leave a Soldier, sailor, airman or marine behind," Carter said. "For many American service members in harm's way, the first indication they would see their family again was the sound of helicopter blades beating against the sky. Without the valor of the helicopter pilots in Vietnam, countless additional names would have been added to the wall across the river." Today, Carter reminded his audience, military pilots still undertake that same mission over Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. In his remarks, Fanning said he and Kettles share a kinship of sorts, being that the two are both Michigan natives. He said that as a "Michigander," and with the heart of America's auto industry nearby in Detroit, "chances are you spent some time with machines." "For Chuck Kettles, that meant a love affair with engines and aviation form the very start of his life, from his education at Edison Institute in Dearborn, where he practiced on the flight simulator, to his work with cars and engines at his Ford dealership, we see some of what prepared him to be an Army aviator," Fanning said. "The Huey that Chuck flew was a pioneering machine at the time, but he knew instinctively how to get the most out of it. While the deeds we honor today are the product of great courage and valor, they have their roots in what he learned growing up in Michigan." While Kettles had trained to fly early in life as a "Citizen Soldier," it wasn't training alone that accounted for his heroic achievements in Vietnam, Fanning said. "Our admiration for Lt. Col. Kettles comes from his acts of heroism, but also from his quiet professionalism -- from how, on the day of his greatest testing, just with all other days, he embodied the Army values: loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage." Kettles remained humble after the plaque bearing his name and the names of other Medal of Honor recipients was revealed. The Hall of Heroes contains more than a dozen plaques, bearing the names of more than 3,400 Medal of Honor recipients from all services, grouped by conflict. Kettles knows personally at least two of those recipients, including Master Sgt. Raul Perez "Roy" Benavidez and Maj. William E. Adams, both of whom earned the honor for their own actions in Vietnam. He said that while the Meal of Honor he wears around his neck can be worn by just one person, it represents the heroic actions of all the soldiers involved in the operation that day in May 1967, in Vietnam. Some of those men had been with Kettles at the White House, the day before, when President Barack Obama placed the medal around his neck. At the Hall of Heroes induction ceremony in the Pentagon were two of Kettles' battle buddies, Don Long and Ron Roy. "Between lifts into the landing zone, [they] brought ammunition in for resupply," Kettles said of the two men. "One such trip they took a mortar round on the mast of the helicopter." The two had to exit the helicopter as a result of the damage. Long was injured. They joined up with the infantry. "There were forty infantrymen, and four crew members with .38s. We didn't add a lot to the firepower. We were kind of in their way at times. We had a great leader who got things done," said Roy of their experience being with the infantry that day. "To go borrow aircraft from another company, after all yours got shot down, that takes a lot of guts. And guts in the other unit too, pilots that came back in with Lt. Col. Kettles to come get us. Everybody knew what they were flying into. There was no question. It was not going to be pleasant." John Osborne, who was crew chief on the helicopter that Kettles flew into the landing zone for that last mission, also attended the induction ceremony Pentagon with Kettles and his battle buddies. "During that mission he took a shrapnel round in the knee," Kettles said of Osborne. "He refused to accept a Purple Heart -- he regarded as nothing." "At one point I was scared to death," Osborne remembered. "I regained a little bit of composure, and we had set back down. That's when we really took the heat. But thank God we were able to get these people out. This man saved all of our lives. He got us out under adverse conditions." Of Matt McGuire, a gunship leader, Kettles recalled, "in spite of the damage to each of his helicopters, Matt was always there." "On that final extraction, there was only one aircraft for everybody to focus on and shoot at," McGuire said of Kettle's helicopter on the last run. McGuire attended the Pentagon ceremony too, and was present at the White House to see Kettles receive his medal. "And the courage and the valor and commitment to the mission, saving those souls...is truly more than deserving of the Medal of Honor," he said, "because you were going into a really bad area. There wasn't much predictability of success. You believed in your skill, you believed in your crew, and that's what made a difference. That's why I am proud to be part of the brotherhood of aviation." Roland Scheck, Kettle's door gunner, was also at the ceremony. Kettles said Scheck came to him from Germany, by way of Canada, though they met at Fort Benning, Georgia. "Roland Scheck ... he was my door gunner, he had been from day one at Fort Benning," Kettles said. Scheck was a German national who had gone to Canada to join the militia, expecting to be able to go to Vietnam. But when he learned that the Canadians were not going to Vietnam, he traveled to the U.S., to Detroit, Michigan, to join the Army. "I had the good fortune of having him for my gunner," Kettles said. Scheck said he was grateful to have Kettles too. Kettles saved his life. "I want to thank him and all my brothers for what they did for me that day," Scheck said. "He didn't have to come back to get me. I was the first guy he had to haul away. He's been my hero ever since that day. And I'm sorry I couldn't stay for the rest of the day." Also at the Pentagon was Dewey Smith, one of the last eight rescued on Kettles' last run. Richard Ammons, also one of the eight, had wanted to attend but was unable to make it due to medical reasons, according to Kettles. "I was with the 101st Airborne," Smith remembered. "I was on the ground. I was one of the eight men that were picked up last. It was extremely heart dropping when the flight took off. Those of us in the rear guard, back in the brush, they didn't see us. They took off." "But when I saw the one helicopter coming in, that made the day," he continued. "And it was unbelievable that he was able to bring it in considering the amount of fire it was receiving. I have nothing but gratitude for the man and his crew, and for all the helicopter pilots that day. They all did a good job bringing in resupplies, taking out our wounded, bringing us in new guys. It was amazing." In the conclusion of his remarks, Kettles demonstrated the same patriotism and commitment to the nation he showed long ago in Vietnam. "I have a deep sense of gratitude for the opportunities that each person is afforded by this nation," he said. "I also believe that there is no price for anyone to pay that contributes to the preservation of our great nation. I have faith in each generation that has come along and will in the future." Army reviews diversity in combat arms leadership [2016-07-19] FORT EUSTIS, Va. -- The Army has done a good job of increasing diversity in the force in terms both race and gender. But there's still work to be done. At Fort Eustis, Virginia, July 12 through 14, the Army's Training and Doctrine Command convened the 2016 Army Diversity Summit to examine the reasons why the top tiers of leadership remain so homogeneous while much of the rest of the Army has become increasingly diverse. The summit was convened, in part, to solicit subject-matter experts for proposed solutions to the problem. Diversity in race, gender and even social and economic background bring value to the Army, said Under Secretary of the Army Patrick J. Murphy at the summit, because diverse teams of people produce better outcomes. And as the demographics of the United States change, so too must the Army. "The Army is in the people business," Murphy said. "And to be here with subject-matter experts to figure out how to make us an even better force that is more diverse, that is more adaptive, and is more innovative is critically important to our future." While the Army as a whole is a diverse force, there is still a lack of diversity in the top ranks, said Warren Whitlock, the Army's deputy assistant secretary for diversity and leadership. "Somebody can look and say the Army is diverse," said Whitlock. "But that's not taking into account inclusion. Inclusion is when you have a synergistic relationship of people who are historically under-represented in positions where they can weigh in on the current and future operations of the organization. Inclusivity means having those diverse faces, those diverse perspectives, the diverse demographic perspectives at high levels of the organization." Going into the summit, the Army provided insight it views as a starting point for those subject-matter experts to consider: first, that 65 percent of Army general officers are drawn from either combat arms or special operations forces. And second, that minority officers are underrepresented at the ranks of colonel and above in the combat arms branches of infantry and armor. "I think one of the unfortunate trends is that we have seen some African Americans in our Army, officers specifically, not go into the infantry or armor branches," said Murphy. "We need to double down in recruiting them to go into those branches. When you look at our three and four star generals, the majority of them come from combat arms." At the summit, three teams of about 20 experts each, made up of both Army officers and civilian subject-matter experts, were asked to develop recommendations on how best to improve the diversity of combat arms officers in the Army. Teams examined the problem from three different perspectives: accessions, development and employment, and retention. At the conclusion of the three-day summit, those teams briefed senior Army leaders, including Murphy, on their recommendations. Among the recommendations was the proposal to review how Human Resources Command distributes combat arms branches to the various sources of commission, which include the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York; the Reserve Officers Training Corps; and Officer Candidate School. A review of the branch distribution could potentially better allocate infantry and armor branches across a more diverse pool of candidates. Ensuring the Army provides the best opportunities to the best qualified is an important step toward talent differentiation and inclusion. Another proposed solution presented to Army senior leaders was increased mentorship opportunities for minority officer candidates before they choose their branch. While at West Point, cadets are exposed to a wide variety of officers from multiple Army branches. But in Reserve Officer Training Corps detachments across the country, cadets are exposed primarily to their professors of military science. Studies show that cadets tend to emulate their professor of military science when it comes time to choose a branch in the Army. Increasing the number of infantry and armor officers who serve as professors of military science and assistant professors of military science at ROTC detachments around the country, while targeting schools with high minority attendance in the ROTC program, would put combat arms officers front and center in the lives of minority cadets. That increased opportunity for mentorship from combat arms officers could increase the likelihood that those cadets would choose combat arms for their branch. As a result, more minority officers might volunteer to serve in the combat arms branches and, when the time comes to choose general officers from their officer cohort, there would be a larger number of minority officers competing for those positions. Brig. Gen. Wilson Shoffner, director of the Army Talent Management Task Force, said that good mentorship must exist throughout an officer's career to help guide officers to where they should serve in the Army, such as in what units, installations and jobs. "We can do better at the role of mentoring, and at the role of coaching," Shoffner said. The recommendations briefed at the summit will be considered by the Army as possible ways to increase minority representation in senior Army leadership. They were heard by Murphy, Whitlock, Shoffner, and Lt. Gen. James C. McConville, the Army's G-1. "We have to have a plan of action, and we have to have a way to follow up," said Shoffner. "One of the recommendations is we use the Army Diversity Council as a way to make sure we implement the recommendations we are making today." Energy security, 'reduced footprint' top priorities for lieutenant general [2016-07-22] WASHINGTON -- Recently-promoted Lt. Gen. Gwen Bingham is the first officer in 10 years to serve as the assistant chief of staff for Installation Management without also serving as commander of Installation Management Command. Bingham still has a lot on her plate, though. She oversees the planning of funding and development of management policy for more than 150 installations. That includes every property worldwide in the Army inventory. The Army recently decided to split her present role from the other command, adding a new three-star general to its roster, Lt. Gen. Kenneth Dahl, to serve as commander of Installation Management Command, which is headquartered in Fort Sam Houston, Texas. In that role, Dahl oversees the day-to-day management of about 68 Army installations. That division of the commands, Bingham said, should allow both her and Dahl to focus better on their respective areas. "Installation management is complex business," Bingham said. Freed from day-to-day responsibility of managing those 68 installations, which required her predecessor to travel regularly between Fort Sam Houston and the Pentagon, Bingham can now focus on the development of regulations, programs and directives that support Soldiers and family members, as well as the funding of a wide array of properties and programs at a time when Army budgets are being pared. Bingham said her top priority mirrors that of Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning and Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley: readiness. For Army installations, that means ensuring that installations can serve as "power projection platforms" for the Army even under the worst conditions, such as during power outages from the civilian power grid, or natural disasters that could disrupt regular services like gas, water, sewage or trash collection. "Energy security is becoming an area of increased focus," she said. "I see it ... as a form of force protection and mission assurance. So being able to secure our energy on our own posts, camps and stations and installations is critical. That's an area we are putting a lot of emphasis on. We have to make sure those installations are able to do their mission." With budgets shrinking, manpower on Army installations is also shrinking, and Bingham would like to shrink the size of the Army's "footprint" accordingly. Her focus is part of the Army's ongoing "Reduce the Footprint" initiative that seeks reduce the overall of cost maintaining infrastructure to the Army by eliminating excess infrastructure, including buildings and entire properties. Bingham estimates that about $450 to $500 million a year is spent Army-wide maintaining buildings on Army properties that are underused. "Right now we are in fiscally-constrained times. So being able to garner back dollars on reducing excess infrastructure is important," Bingham said. "If you could imagine recouping that amount of money every year, and think about how we can invest that in the readiness of our Soldiers -- that's huge." According to Army budgeting documents, the Army has requested funding for fiscal year 2017 for 19 combat training center rotations. A single such rotation costs the Army about $25 million. If estimated savings from infrastructure reductions were aimed entirely at force readiness, the Army could double the number of CTC rotations it currently funds each year. Among Bingham's other responsibilities is to provide oversight of morale, welfare, and recreation programs as well as family support programs Army-wide. According to Bingham, such programs sustain one million Soldiers, and 2.2 million family members across the Army. And with declining budgets, she is looking to identify efficiencies and build and strengthen partnerships to sustain that vital support for Soldiers and families. "Realistically speaking, we won't be able to do everything at the same level that we used to do it," she admitted. "But I can assure you we will spare no effort to make sure that our Soldiers and their families have that quality of life that they so richly deserve." She believes that partnerships with military service organizations offer one solution to maintaining continued support for Soldiers and their families. "Any which way that we can partner to help retain as many of those programs we've had in the past, we are certainly going to do that," she said. "We've been doing that already. That's not a new initiative. Partnerships occur at every level on the installation." Bingham has served in the Army for nearly 35 years, receiving her commission in August 1981 after graduating with a degree in management from the University of Alabama. Her first assignment in the Army put her at Fort Lewis, Washington, where she served as platoon leader of A Company, 9th Supply and Transportation Battalion, 9th Infantry Division. Bingham has attended the U.S. Army Quartermaster Officer Basic and Advanced Courses, as well as the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. She was sworn in as the assistant chief of staff for Installation Management on June 29 and stepped into the role the following day. She is the Army's second African-American woman to make lieutenant general. Army recruiting aims to reconnect with America, dispel myths [2016-08-01] WASHINGTON -- It's a myth that enlisted Soldiers don't get an education past high school. That's according to the Army's senior recruiter, Gen. Jeffrey J. Snow, commander of Army Recruiting Command, and it's one that might discourage otherwise interested American youth from pursuing a great opportunity with the Army. The general knows that, despite the high value the Army places on education for its enlisted service members, there is a perception among the civilian population that officers go to college and enlisted Soldiers don't. It's one of many myths his recruiters face. "I will tell you, the vast majority of NCOs I know serving in the Army may have come in with just a high school diploma, but over time they have [obtained] an associate's degree, a bachelor's, or a master's," he said, "because of the Army's emphasis on education." Snow believes that the reason so many civilians are ill-informed is that so few actually know somebody who is in the Army. That's a problem, Snow said, and one recruiting command is working to address through its "Reconnect with America" campaign. "It's our effort to make sure the American public understands us," he said. Another myth, according to Snow, is that the Army is a "last resort" for those who enlist. He said it's a common belief that those who choose to enlist do so because they can't get into college or they can't find a job. "I just don't find that to be the case," he said. "The young men and women I interact with in my own formation, they had choices. This myth that the Army is a last resort, I just don't buy it." He bristles at the notion that the Army would meet its recruiting goals by harvesting desperate recruits who are driven by a lack of opportunity, but he concedes the Army always wants the best, and the best can come from anywhere in the country, including high-unemployment areas. Another potentially misleading belief found among young people and their families is that joining the Army means that they will be injured in combat, or develop post-traumatic stress disorder, or lose a limb. It's not an unfounded belief, Snow admitted, but many overestimate the threat. Is soldiering dangerous? It sure is, Snow said. But it's not as dangerous as some parents may think. "Obviously, we are charged with defending our country. But the reality is, only [a small percentage] of young men and women [who join, will face] direct or indirect fire, [and] are actually subject to those types of threats." ON-TARGET RECRUITING For the first time in half a decade, Army Recruiting Command will meet its recruiting goals for both the Regular Army and the Army Reserve. This year, for the regular Army, that goal is 62,500 people. For the Army Reserve, the goal is 15,400. The Army National Guard conducts its own separate recruiting, but if their numbers were included, the total Army recruiting goal for 2016 would be nearly 120,000 Soldiers, by Snow's estimate. "That's certainly a credit to the hard work of our 12,500 recruiters and staff stationed around the world," he said. Some may wonder why it is that, with the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq drawn down and the Army downsizing, the Army should continue its recruiting efforts. It's just another myth, Snow said, that the Army needs to recruit only during wartime. "The Army is a pyramid, and we continue to bring in the new people at the bottom each and every day," he said. "So yes, we are downsizing, but also yes, we are open for business." A new twist on recruiting now, Snow said, is the pursuit of female recruits for combat duty. In years past, women were denied the opportunity to select combat arms jobs like their male counterparts. That's no longer the case. So far, he said, just over 100 women have enlisted into combat Military Occupational Specialties that were formerly designated only for men. That might not seem like much, he said, but it's just the beginning. It remains to be seen how the combat roles of women will evolve in the future. "We expect this to be gradual over time," he said. "But the fact that these remaining MOSs are open now -- essentially, the sky is the limit for them. We expect that...there will be a gradual increase in desire to pursue some of these other specialties." Snow said the Army's initial approach to integrating women into combat arms roles -- through the use of a "leader first" approach, "is the right approach." That involves putting female officers first into traditionally closed specialties, and then following that with training for NCOs who have reclassified. Women make up about 51 percent of the general population of the U.S., but within the Army, women represent about 14 to 15 percent of Soldiers. And within the recruiting community, women make up only about 8 to 9 percent, according to Snow. That's a problem for the Army, he said. It should be easier to bring women into the Army with a cadre of recruiters who better represent women in service. It's one of the things Snow is focused on now, he said, but it'll be a multi-year effort to make improvements in female representation among recruiters. In the meantime, the Army will begin training new women recruits next spring, between January and March 2017, for those combat arms roles. 3,000 voting assistance officers stand ready to help Soldiers register [2016-08-11] WASHINGTON -- This election season, many Soldiers will face the same crucial question, and it's not necessarily the one you think. It's not, "Who do I vote for?" It's "Can I vote?" For the many Soldiers stationed overseas or facing deployments, the answer isn't always clear. In 2014, 69 percent of the active-duty Army was registered to vote, compared to 65 percent of the civilian population, according to a 2014 Federal Voting Assistance Program report to Congress. But when it actually came to voting in the 2014 election, only about 20 percent of active-duty Soldiers did, compared to 42 percent of the general population. This election season, the Army is making sure that, for Soldiers who do choose to take advantage of the freedom they signed up to defend, the answer is always, "yes." They can cast a vote from wherever they are. Rachel Gilman, who manages the Army Voting Assistance Program, oversees the more than 3,000 voting assistance officers Army-wide who are dedicated to ensuring Soldiers everywhere have the tools and information they need. "Our program really focuses on awareness, assistance, providing education, and really training voters about where to go and what information they need," Gilman said. "Voting is a very personal choice. If they decide to vote, we are there to help them. If somebody wants to make changes on issues that are important in their hometowns and communities, that's what we are there to provide." Soldiers who want to vote in November should act now, Gilman said. Whether the Soldier is stateside, forward-stationed overseas, or deployed, the way to do that is by seeking out a unit voting assistance officer and then filling out a Federal Post Card Application. "The [Federal Post Card Application] ... that's your form, your go-to form," Gilman said. Also known as GSA Standard Form 76, the Federal Post Card Application will begin the process of registering a Soldier to vote in his or her correct voting district. It will also inform election officials as to which voting district to send the ballot to. The form is not just for Solders, but for any voter who wants to cast a ballot outside of his or her home district. To obtain the form, Soldiers can download it from the Federal Voting Assistance Program website at the FVAP.Gov, or visit a voting assistance officer wherever they are stationed. The voting assistance officer can also help Soldiers determine the state and location of their voting district, information that is required on the Federal Post Card Application. Soldiers can also use the FVAP website to make that determination. The FVAP.Gov website provides deadlines for registering to vote, requesting a ballot, and mailing a ballot. Each state has different requirements, Gilman said, but kicking off the process now is better than waiting. "It's really important, especially for overseas voters and those Soldiers who are deployed," she said. "Once they receive their ballot, it's important that they immediately fill it out and send it back due to the mailing time." The Army doesn't require Soldiers to vote or even register to vote, Gilman said. But she thinks it's important that they do. Preserving the right to vote, she said, is one of the reasons that Soldiers serve in the first place. "I think it's really important for Soldiers to vote, because it's a freedom they defend," Gilman said. "I think it's an opportunity to have their voices heard. It's important for them if they want to change issues in their communities, their home towns, for their families. I think it's very important that they have their voices heard." Army mariners sail for Japan in support of Pacific Pathways [2016-08-16] WASHINGTON -- Most civilians might not know it; in fact, most Soldiers might not know it either. But the Army has its own fleet of ships and its own cadre of mariners to run them. This month, 31 of those ocean-going Soldiers will set sail for Japan as part of a Pacific Pathways deployment. "We don't call ourselves 'sailors,' because that title is already taken," said Sgt. 1st Class Timothy Carmen, with the 605th Transportation Detachment, 8th Theater Sustainment Command. "But we are Army mariners, and it is a full-time job, absolutely." On Friday, Aug. 12, Carmen and 30 other Soldiers -- about eight warrant officers and 23 enlisted in all -- boarded Army Vessel CW3 Harold C. Clinger, in Hawaii, and set off on an 18-day cruise that will take them to Nagoya, Japan, to drop off gear to be used in the Orient Shield exercise. Carmen has been in the Army for 17 years now and, except for a three-year stint as an Army recruiter, he has worked with Army watercraft the entire time. He's accumulated about eight years of "sea duty" during his time in uniform. LOGISTICS SUPPORT VESSEL The 272-foot USAV Clinger is a "logistics support vessel," or LSV. The Army has eight of these cargo ships in its inventory, and each can carry a load up to 2,000 short tons, whether it's 37 Stryker vehicles, or 24 M1A2 Abrams tanks, or 50 20-foot cargo containers. For security, the USAV Clinger is armed with four M2 .50-caliber machine guns, two M249 Squad Automatic Weapons, or "SAWs", and two Mk 19 grenade launchers. The enlisted crew also carries M16 rifles, while the warrant officers carry 9mm pistols. A 12-guage shotgun is also available to protect the ship, said Chief Warrant Officer 4 Michael Lloyd, who serves as master maritime of operations with 8th TSC. "Just like any mariner out there in the world, like the U.S. Navy and Merchant Marine, we follow a set of drills from abandon ship, to man overboard, to fire drills, and in the case of our vessel, we also do battle drills," Lloyd said. According to Carmen, the crew on this mission will be responsible for delivering to Japan about 9,000 square feet of cargo, which will consist mostly of rolling stock and cargo containers. PORTS PROVIDE PRACTICE The gear they'll carry to Japan belongs to the 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, whose Soldiers will use it while participating in the Orient Shield 16 exercise, part of Pacific Pathways. The USAV Clinger will deliver the gear to the port at Nagoya, and then move north to Yokahama for the duration of Orient Shield -- about 20 days of waiting. Around mid-October, they will return to Nagoya to retrieve the gear and return it to their home port in Hawaii. During the Orient Shield 16 exercise, Soldiers with the 3rd IBCT will partner with their Japanese counterparts on training missions, while soldiers of the 605th Transportation Detachment aboard the USAV Clinger will flex their logistics muscles. "This is a great training opportunity for the crews to go to multiple ports and experience the difficulties or challenges that come along with moving a ship into a foreign country," said Lloyd. While combat arms Soldiers practice their skills on the ground, these soldiers will tackle logistics operations that they wouldn't be able to practice back in Hawaii, like obtaining clearances to dock and move cargo, and undergoing customs inspections. "Every country has its own policy on importing equipment, whether it be military or civilian," Lloyd pointed out. "Every country is different." ARMY MARINERS Lloyd said there are fewer than 1,000 Soldiers across four military occupational specialties that make up the community of Army mariners. Back when he joined the community 17 years ago, he anticipated a different kind of life as a mariner. "I kind of envisioned the patrol boats going up and down rivers," Carmen said. "But being on the larger vessels going out to sea? That's not what I imagined." Unlike many Sailors in the Navy, Army mariners don't live on their ships, Carmen said. They stay in barracks like any other soldier, but the maintenance requirements of the vessels are such that the Mariners must attend to them on a daily basis. The Army's water operations also differ from that of the Navy in that Army mariners don't occupy bodies of water as part of their mission. Instead, their role is to deliver goods for the warfighter. "The Navy is a combat force and their responsibility is very similar to the Army's, as far as their role for being theater commanders for their battlespace -- which is the ocean," Lloyd said. "For the Army, it's the land; for the Air Force, it's the air. So as part of that need to have organic intra-theater movement -- [the Army has] trucks. But how do we move stuff on water in our theaters of operation? That's where Army watercraft comes in." LIFE ON THE SEA Life aboard an Army vessel like the USAV Clinger is likely similar to that experienced by Sailors in the Navy, Lloyd said. He may be biased, but he suspects it's probably better. "Everybody has their own bunk, and we live more comfortably than the Navy," he said. "Each Soldier definitely has more square footage than the Navy. But it's still tight living. All the enlisted crew are two-man rooms and the officers are single occupancy, but a little smaller." Ships are underway for periods that usually last no longer than 30 days at a time. Communications on board are limited, Carmen said. You can send emails and phones are available for an emergency, but if you want to call home just to say hi, you will have to wait to get to port." When not working, crew members busy themselves with playing cards or board games or watching TV in the crew's mess. A small weight room is available as well, though it's used mostly when the ship is at port. "If we're in anything over just a couple feet of waves, it becomes somewhat of a safety concern to be down there lifting weights," Carmen said. And while experienced mariners are seldom bothered by rough seas, such conditions can be frightening for others. Soldiers will strap themselves into bed with bungee cords to keep from rolling out of bed. And nearly everything else on board the ship must be locked down and secured. But not everything can be tied down. "We were in some pretty nasty seas on the LSVs, and the cooks were trying to cook eggs," Carmen remembered. "Every time they'd crack an egg on the grill top, it would slide from one end of the grill to another. They couldn't make a sunny-side up egg to save their lives." Mariners face many of challenges at sea. "We are trained to deal with it," Lloyd said. "The new crew, when they get their first experience, they tend to talk about it for a while. But for SFC Carmen and me, it's just another day on the water. We fill up our coffee cup and do our duty." New directive: officers must be vetted before promotions are confirmed [2016-08-23] WASHINGTON -- A change to Army regulations now requires that the Army determine the suitability of each officer considered for promotion before that officer's name ever crosses the desk of the Army secretary. While the Army has always investigated officers to ensure they are suitable for promotion, in the past such vetting usually took place at the same time that senior Army, Defense and congressional leadership were considering them, rather than before. Now, the directive published Thursday, July 18, requires that officers who are selected for promotion be vetted for mental, physical, moral, and professional fitness and meet the standards for exemplary conduct before their names are forwarded to the secretary of the Army for certification. The previous concurrent vetting process sometimes resulted in the Army having to remove officers from promotion lists, resulting in embarrassment for the individual and the service. "Previously, the Army did not systematically screen all officers recommended for promotion or federal recognition for adverse or reportable information prior to nomination or confirmation," said Albert S. Eggerton, chief of Officer Selection Board Policy. "Consequently, some officers confirmed by the Senate were not discovered to have adverse or reportable information until just prior to appointment." According to Army Directive 2016-26, "a post-board screening initiated by the director of Military Personnel Management will be conducted on officers selected for promotion to captain through colonel and CW3 through CW5 before the results of the promotion selection board are forwarded to the secretary of the Army." The post-board screening includes a review of information in official files maintained by the Army Criminal Investigation Command, the Department of the Army inspector general, the restricted portion of the Army Military Human Resource Record, and a query for suspension of favorable personnel actions. "Adverse information" can include, among other things, SHARP-related offenses; domestic assault or child abuse; DUIs/DWIs; possession or involvement with child pornography; positive urinalysis; false swearing; patterns of misconduct; or ongoing investigations or cases under review with Criminal Investigation Command, the Department of the Army, the Inspector General, or their unit. Similar changes have been made for officers who are being considered for promotion to first lieutenant or chief warrant officer. SecArmy lays out priorities at his first town hall [2016-08-24] WASHINGTON -- Reflecting on his most recent trip to the Pacific, which included a stop in Malaysia, Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning said he was impressed by the interaction he observed there between American Soldiers and Malaysian forces, who are now participating in Exercise Keris Strike. "It impressed upon me something that I didn't see in my time in previous services that do a lot of exercises as well," said Fanning, who has served in the past as acting Secretary of the Air Force, and also as an undersecretary with the Navy. "When the Army interacts with another army, it is from the most junior soldier all the way up to the most senior soldiers. There is interaction between soldiers at all levels that you don't see with the way other services do their exercises, just by nature of how they fight, how they are organized, and the platforms they use." That kind of interaction between soldiers he said, puts a face on the United States in a way that is not possible through other diplomatic efforts. "There are 15,000 ... United States Foreign Service officers," he said. "We have 150,000 Soldiers outside the continental United States right now today, 10 times as many U.S. Army Soldiers around the world than there are foreign service officers. And many of them are interacting and representing the United States and doing it really well. Those Malaysians were really excited to be exercising and to be learning from Americans." Fanning spoke on Tuesday, Aug. 23, at the Pentagon to a packed house of Army Soldiers and civilians on his priorities for the coming months as part of his first town hall meeting there. He said he plans to give such talks more often in the future. TAKING CARE OF SOLDIERS "For me, we have to keep the pressure on prevention of sexual assault. We have done a lot on responding to sexual assault. But I'd like to make the response stuff unnecessary," Fanning said. "We get a lot of heat on that issue -- and we should. We should be held to a higher standard. But the benefit of that for the country is that we do lead the way on working on a lot of these issues. We've made a lot of progress that people outside the military are straining to look into and learn from and build on. We have to keep the heat on." Suicide prevention, he said, is another area where the Army has led the way. That's an area where he wants to keep the pressure on to solve as well. "I get asked about this a lot," he said, noting that there is a misconception about the prevalence of suicide in the Army. The Army's rate is generally equivalent to that of the U.S. population of comparable age. "But one is too many," he said. "What I really want to focus on is where that's related to behavioral health issues." He said researchers in and out of the military are looking at the issue -- and that the research has given rise to even more questions. Researchers are still learning about post-traumatic stress disorder among World War II veterans, for instance. "But if somebody joins the Army, serves their country, is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, we need to know from the behavioral health side if they have done anything in the line of service that has caused them problems," he said. "They deserve to have it diagnosed, and they have earned the treatment that comes with it. We need to do some more work on that." RAPID CAPABILITY OFFICE New on the horizon for the secretary is the newly created "Rapid Capability Office." "It's really designed to focus on [those times] where we see our overmatch on our capabilities isn't really where we thought it was going to be," he said. Most recently, that's been informed by what Russia is doing in Ukraine and Syria, in the way of cyber, electronic warfare, position navigation timing and survivability. What's being seen there raises questions about Army readiness in those areas, Fanning said. "These are anti-access-type capabilities where we need a larger gap than what we have," he said. The Rapid Capability Office is not about getting equipment out to the field faster, he said. It's about capabilities. "We're not going to use this office to build a new helicopter," he said. "We're going to use this office because some technology on the helicopter isn't giving us the edge over the adversary we thought it was going to be." He said that much of what the Rapid Capability Office will do will be aimed at streamlining bureaucracy in places that now stymie efforts to bring the latest technology to the warfighter as quickly as possible. ARMY HEADQUARTERS ORGANIZATION Fanning also said he and Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley will soon be looking at how the Army headquarters is organized. He was quick to add that this had nothing to do with the number of people involved or the dollars going toward personnel. "I think we have cut the headquarters enough, and I think in many places we have cut too far," he said. "This is trying to get at the hardest part of reorganization, which is what do you do differently, and what do you stop doing." Primarily, he said, he is hoping to streamline communication efforts to ensure that he and the chief of staff are getting the information they need in time to make decisions using that information. And at the same time, he said, to provide the right information to those on the staff -- so they too get the information they need from the top. "We want to find ways to inject our thoughts and guidance earlier in the process, which hopefully saves you a lot of time, because you're not having to move something up through the system and get it thrown back down and back up and back down, he said. "So hopefully it's a better flow of information for us, and a better flow of information for you all, and a more efficient way of doing some things." 75,000 U.S., Korean, Canadian forces commence Pacific exercise [2016-08-26] WASHINGTON -- It's been five years since the White House first announced an American "pivot to the Pacific," now characterized as a "rebalance." That rebalance came as the United States was drawing down operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and aimed to refocus on partnerships in the Pacific region, including Japan and Korea. As part of that ongoing rebalance, this week about 400 Soldiers in I Corps, headquartered out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, headed to South Korea to participate in the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise, a joint and bilateral exercise involving as many as 75,000 military personnel from South Korea, the U.S. and Canada. "It is the largest exercise we do with Korea all year," said Lt. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza, I Corps commander, who departed for the Korean peninsula on Tuesday, Aug. 23, to take charge of the I Corps operational headquarters during the exercise. I Corps will have about 300 Soldiers participating in Korea, with an additional 100 from its support element. The rest of the corps will participate in the exercise from back at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. In total, 25,000 U.S service members, with about 50,000 Republic of Korea service members will participate. "We'll be training also with the 1st Canadian Division, the 3rd Infantry Division, the 25th Infantry Division, and we'll have both our command post forward in the Pacific, and our main command post operating back here at Joint Base Lewis-McChord." Soldiers from the 25th ID will participate from their headquarters in Hawaii, and American Soldiers in Japan will participate from their location. Also participating in Korea will be command posts from 1st Canadian Division and the 3rd Infantry Division. The goal of Ulchi Freedom Guardian is to enhance training and readiness across the corps, at all levels, and develop relationships between U.S. and its partner forces. With increasing tensions between North Korea, and America's partner, South Korea, Lanza said the continued training is preparing I Corps to be a dependable partner should conflict arise. "I'm very confident in the training and readiness of I Corps, whether it be to go to Korea or any place in the world," he said. "Obviously, there are contingencies for that. But I Corps remains ready, trained and ... able to respond to any contingency, whether it be in the Pacific or globally." While the future remains unclear, Lanza said, one thing is certain: the Army will tackle any future conflict as a total force. That means the regular Army will depend on and fight alongside the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve, in the same way that the total force is now training together at Ulchi Freedom Guardian. Given that the Army will be reduced in size in the coming years, Lanza said, more training in the future will have to be conducted collectively. In October, he said, he will participate in a senior leader conference at Joint Base Lewis-McChord involving I Corps, Guard and Reserve partners to plan just that kind of training. I Corps is the only Army Corps currently assigned to a geographic combatant command. It has been aligned for more than four years now to U.S. Pacific Command. Its regional alignment, Lanza said, has enhanced trust with partner militaries and ensured the freedom within the Pacific needed to conduct operations. "I've seen this grow. I've seen this progress," he said, "and I've seen it be very helpful to achieve [the goals of Adm. Harry Binkley Harris Jr., commander, U.S. Pacific Command] ... and his strategic approach to the security environment in the Pacific." Meet Your Army: Women's equality keeps improving says 'Soldier for Life' [2016-08-26] WASHINGTON -- Joyce Myers grew up as a military "brat." Both her parents served in the Air Force. But she said she never saw her mother in uniform, because she had been forced to leave the service before she was even born. "Back then, they made the women get out when they got pregnant," Myers said. "So she had to get out of the Air Force." Her dad still served in the Air Force as a supply specialist though, and that took Myers around the world as a youth. She was born at Tripler Army Hospital in Hawaii. Then her family moved to California, Texas, Germany, Michigan and finally Oregon. She spent a significant amount of her grade-school time in Germany and said she speaks German. "I think being a military brat makes you so much more open to cultures and so much more patient with people," Myers said. "What it does do is when you settle down you have this urge to move all the time." As a young adult, Myers had earned an associate's degree in structural engineering before deciding in 1984 to go off to join the service like both her parents had done. "The Air Force recruiter told me they weren't taking any women in the Air Force. They didn't want any women in the Air Force at that time," Myers said. "So I went down the hall and joined the Army." Both her parents ribbed her some about choosing the Army over the Air Force -- but she said they both remained proud of her decision to serve. "After they gave me a hard time for picking the Army, they were both very, very proud," she said. "They were very proud and supportive -- minus the hard time for having picked the 'wrong' branch.'" Her mother had gotten out of the Air force in 1964, Myers said. She remembers her mom commenting on the opportunities afforded to women in the service in 1984, when Myers signed up, compared to her own service in the early 1960s. "She said 'you guys are lucky,'" Myers recalled, relaying bits of the conversation she'd had with her mother about her own service "'You get to wear pants. We had to wear dresses. And you get to have children and family, and they made me get out.' She said she wasn't able to have a career, but that I get to have the best of both worlds: the job, the adventure, and my family." When Myers initially approached the Army about a job, she said she had wanted to enlist as an "engineer," believing that the job described something similar to what she'd studied in college. The recruiter told her that the Army didn't let women enlist into that career field. "I wasn't savvy enough about the Army to realize it was a 'combat engineer,'" she said. "I asked them what I could do in the Army, where I could get a job when I got out," Myers said. At the time, she'd hoped to do just one enlistment in the Army. She ultimately chose to go into military supply -- it was the same career field her father had in the Air Force. And she also said that as a supply Soldier, there were great opportunities for her as a woman -- at least for a while. "I liked it. And I saw I was able to go to promotion boards and it didn't matter if I was a man or woman," she said. "I was able to get promoted. I think once I got in and went to basic and advance initial training, I actually liked my job. I liked it. I enjoy numbers, and I enjoy data. And I enjoy that linear kind of thinking." Myers said up until about the rank of sergeant first class, things were pretty equitable for men and women in the Army, though after that, she said, "it was pretty much turned into a man's world. There were not a lot of women in my career field above that rank." Still, Myers said, she thought at the time, the Army was a good option for her -- "I never felt I was personally treated unfairly," she said. And she also thought that at the time, the Army was a better choice, with more opportunity for her as a woman, than what would have been offered in the private sector. Myers retired from the Army after 20 years, as a sergeant first class. She said she's augmented her associate's degree in structural engineering with a bachelors in business, and a master's in education. After some time as a defense contractor, she came on board as a Department of the Army civilian, and works now at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. Myers now serves as the chief of the Process Integration Division, Supply and Item branches, within the Logistics Support Activity, U.S. Army Materiel Command. There, she's responsible for, among other things, maintaining the catalogue of materiel that units across the Army can purchase, a catalogue she describes as being somewhat akin to the Sears catalog -- but much bigger. "If you go to the Sears catalogue, it's got a part number and it tells you how much it costs and what the part number is, and how much it weighs and what it's measurements are and all of the attributes of it. We do that for everything in the Army: every nut, bolt, part, truck and tank -- if you can order it through the Army system, we keep that master catalogue," she said. The catalogue her team maintains for the Army consists of some 6 million standard items, and over 250,000 "non-standard" items. That catalogue is part of a Defense Logistics Agency-managed product called "Fed Log." Within the Item Branch, she said, they manage information regarding the status of items ordered -- though they don't handle the actual ordering for items. "You have an Army unit, and they are authorized 10 trucks," Myers said. "So the item branch tells them all the information about those trucks in the catalogue. Then they order that truck. And we track all of the statuses of that order. The status that says it was an initial order, the status that says it was back ordered, the status that says you have this much time to wait, and all of the in-transit statuses as well -- the transportation data. You know when you go on Amazon and it says your stuff is shipped and it's here, then here. We do that for Army stuff." SOLDIER FOR LIFE At lot has changed since Myers first joined the Army more than 30 years ago -- in particular, for women. "When I joined, hardly any of us were women," she said. "When I went to a school, I was the only woman there, or one of two or three. And when I'd go places, it would be all men. But when I'm on a post with Soldiers now, there's a definite equality with the numbers. I think that's because the opportunities are open. Now, more and more, women will choose to take advantage of them. I think we'll see more women leaders." Myers said that policy and law changes slowly -- but not as slowly as cultural change. "While I personally do not want to be a Ranger, I think it shows great strides that women that choose to and can meet the qualifications have that option," she said. "I think it will still take a while," she said about the Army's culture changing to completely accept female leaders in combat arms. "The opportunities will be there, and the military will allow the women to strive and grow as far as they need to. And on the civilian side too. We have women Senior Executive Service members. So the opportunities are there." Myers said she opted to come on board as an Army civilian, after 20 years of service in uniform, because she felt an emptiness that can only be remedied by being around Soldiers. "When you are part of the Army, you belong to something: a team, a squad, a platoon or a company," she said. "You have this common bond, this common mission, this common training. If somebody went to AIT, or basic, you have that bond. It doesn't matter if you have ever met before, there is this family, or camaraderie, or esprit de corps. It's just there. When you get out, there is a hole, a pretty big hole. The Army gave so much to us as far as skills and adventures and family and bonds and experiences and benefits -- you want to kind of give something back to the Soldiers that are coming after you, and to the Soldiers that paved the way before you. You want to keep being part of that." Following are some questions she answered in her own words: Q: What does it mean to you as a woman and a former Soldier to see all the opportunities that are open to women in the Army now? A: As a woman that joined the Army in 1984, I was part of a very small percentage of the Army. It makes me proud to know that society and the Army has realized that women can and do make extremely significant contributions to the success of our military. Q: What made you become an Army civilian? What are some of the similarities and differences to being a Soldier? A: I knew that when I left active duty I still wanted to support my fellow Soldiers. After my retirement I worked as a contractor supporting an Army program. I worked side by side with Army civilians. Having been an NCO for most of my adult life, I knew that I still wanted to lead. An opportunity presented itself for me to apply for a position as an Army civilian and I was fortunate enough to be selected and eventually move into a supervisory position. The similarity between being a civilian and a Soldier is that both play a critical role in support of the Army's mission. While the roles may differ significantly, it is the combination of all those skills, duties, and missions that each performs that allows the United States Army to continue to be the best even with the reduction in our forces. Q: How has working within Army Material Command broadened your professional development? A: Working at Logistics Support Activity has exposed me to multiple logistics disciplines and allowed me to meet and work with some of the most knowledgeable functional logisticians in the Army. I am constantly challenged to understand different logistics data and how to integrate it to provide the Army with usable information. As the Army moves to enterprise logistics, I feel that I am fortunate to be part of the team that is helping define how the Army sees itself from a logistics and master data point of view. Q: What do you consider to be your greatest achievement both personally and professionally? A: My greatest achievement personally is that I believe I was able to raise both of my children while serving in the Army as a single mother and that they both are wonderfully kind, caring, and generous adults that I am proud to know. My greatest achievement professionally is that even though I am often considered "strict" or "hard", I have many former Soldiers and employees that still reach out to me for guidance and encouragement. Q: As a civilian working for the Army, do feel like the work you perform plays an important role in the Army's mission? A: Absolutely. The work that I perform, as well as my entire organization, provides a critical role. The civilians I work with are dedicated to doing the best they can to provide quality products and support to our Army even with reduced resources and competing priorities. I believe that our Army's mission and the ability of leaders at all levels is directly impacted by the work that our team provides each day to ensure the best possible data and information is available to support the decisions that need to be made. Q; When you reflect on the fact that Aug. 26 was Women's Equality Day, what thoughts come to your mind about where the Army is today as compared to when you first enlisted? A: I was recently able to tour the Women's Veteran Museum at Fort Lee, Virginia, while I was there for a workshop. It was amazing to me to realize that when I joined in 1984, I was a part of history. When I joined, I was told that only 2 percent of the Army was women. I served 20 years and retired in 2004. The changes in those 20 years and the 12 since absolutely make me proud to know that I was a part of something so large. I was able to compete (within my field) and be paid the same as my male counterparts in the Army and can still do so as a civilian. I know that I was considered on my merit and not on gender and it makes me proud that there is that equality in the Army for Soldiers and civilians. Q: What hobbies do you enjoy when you are not at work? A: When not at work I am part of Team Red, White, and Blue (RWB) and participate as a volunteer leader. I also love working in my flower bed, reading, and occasionally I like to participate in 5Ks, 10Ks, and half marathons (as a walker). Army stands ready to defend Korea, USARPAC commander says [2016-08-29] WASHINGTON -- In North Korea, Kim Jong-un bragged this month about launching a missile from a submarine. "That'll make 31 launches in four years," said Gen. Robert B. Brown, commander of U.S. Army Pacific Command, speaking at an Aug. 24 media roundtable. He said the former regime had nine launches in 17 years. "That tells you a lot about North Korea's intentions." Brown said the U.S. Army presence on the Korean peninsula is solid, and stands ready to defend South Korea from any threat posed by its unpredictable northern neighbor. "We have a lot of forces postured and ready to go should something happen in Korea," he said. "That's my No. 1 priority: readiness and the ability to fight tonight. And nowhere I believe is it more important to be ready to fight tonight, than in Korea." A rotational brigade stationed in Korea now, on nine-month rotations, provides a new level of stability and predictability, Brown said. Currently about 4,500 Soldiers from 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, out of Fort Hood, Texas, serve as the rotational brigade in Korea. They arrived there in early 2016. Brown said that Army training for units that are posted in Korea or are shipping to Korea focuses on potential future conflict. Right now, as many as 25,000 American forces are in Korea to participating in the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise, along with 50,000 Republic of Korea soldiers. "The more exercises we can do together, and all the contributing nations, the better prepared we will be should North Korea do something stupid and try to attack South Korea," Brown said. "We are constantly working on our readiness." South Korea, Brown said, is worth protecting. "We have maintained that prosperity for South Korea and (helped allow its) democracy to flourish," he said. "We've been there well over 60 years maintaining that peace. I am very worried, as you look at the trend. You have to be ready." UNCERTAINTY IN PACIFIC Elsewhere in the Pacific, there have been multiple instances of uncertainty, though Brown believes they are unlikely to affect continued U.S. partnerships with Pacific countries. A 2014 coup in Thailand, for instance, has left the military there largely in charge. In the Philippines, the President Rodrigo Duterte threatened to withdraw from the United Nations in response to criticism from a U.N. human rights expert of his handling of drug crime (Duterte later backtracked on his threat). The U.S. Army partners with the militaries of both of those nations as part of its Pacific Pathways operations, Brown noted. Additionally, the U.S. has five mutual defense agreements that are focused in the Pacific and include both the Philippines and Thailand. Brown expects that, despite these recent developments, the U.S. Army will continue to participate in military-to-military partnerships and training opportunities with the militaries of both countries. "With the Thai government, we mostly focus in our exercises -- Cobra Gold as an example -- on humanitarian aid and disaster relief, defense professionalization, and some of those areas," he said. "We are looking to the Thais to get a democratically elected government ... but we continue to exercise in areas where we will build areas of mutual interest. We don't' see it slowing down." Regarding the Philippines, he said, "we have maintained very close relations in the Philippines, and continue to do a number of exercises there ... The Marines are the lead in the Philippines, and so we work closely with our Marine partners there, and work with the Philippine army. But they are a treaty ally." As with Thailand, he said the frequency of military-to-military exercises in the Philippines is not decreasing, but increasing. INDIA COOPERATION "[I'm] excited about our relationship with India," Brown said. "When you look at the finalization of the logistics exchange, a memorandum agreement, for example, those agreements enable us to do even more together, exchange ideas, and cooperate and enhance the U.S.-India partnership." The Pacific region is frequently hit by natural disasters that affect large numbers of people, Brown said, which makes it an area where maintain strong working relationships are crucial -- relationships with partners like India, for example. "More people die in the Pacific from disasters than anywhere in the world," he said. "If you've worked together and you know each other and you understand and you can exchange ideas. Then when the crisis happens, you can save a lot of lives." An upcoming exercise involving both the U.S. and India, the Yudh Abhyas exercise, should prepare U.S. and Indian forces for just such an occasion. New office to keep Army ahead of technological change [2016-09-01] WASHINGTON -- Modernization in the Russian military has resulted in exceptional cyber, electronic warfare, and anti-access/area-denial capabilities that have raised concerns in the U.S. Army, particularly in the wake of Russia's 2014 invasion of Crimea and subsequent involvement in Syria. "What we saw is that even though we are the best trained and best equipped Army in the world, our adversaries and technology don't wait on our timetable," said Maj. Gen. Walter E. Piatt, director for operations of the newly created Army Rapid Capabilities Office. "Things keep moving. And we saw that very clearly with Russia's efforts in Crimea and Ukraine." In an effort to ensure a rapid boost to the U.S. Army's own similar capabilities and prevent capability gaps from developing in the future, Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning has directed the creation of the Army Rapid Capabilities Office. That office stood up on Aug. 11. "Its purpose is to really look at urgent, immediate or emerging threats that are defined by the combatant commands that the secretary and the chief of staff believe are critical in nature," said Doug Wiltsie, who serves as director of the Rapid Capabilities Office. The goal of the office, according to Piatt, is to ensure that the capabilities of U.S. forces supersede those of current and potential adversaries. "We need to ... make sure that they are offset from us, not the other way around," he said. "Operations in Ukraine showed some really good examples that our adversaries developed while we were fighting a long war, mainly a counter-insurgency war in Afghanistan and Iraq." The Army already employs multiple avenues to develop and procure gear and equipment. The traditional acquisitions process, for instance, is meant for long-term development and procurement of systems like the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle and the Future Vertical Lift. "[Such systems are] designed for all phases of war in all types of terrain. So they require a much longer development and testing process," Wiltsie said. Development through the traditional acquisition cycle typically takes longer than five years, he said. On the short side of acquisition is the Rapid Equipping Force, which allows Soldiers or units in immediate need to file an urgent operational needs statement; the REF will respond, typically in fewer than six months, with a materiel solution that in most cases is developed on-the-fly by the Army, sometimes even in theater. Output from the new Rapid Capabilities office is meant to hit a "sweet spot" in development timelines of between one and five years, Wiltsie said. It is meant neither for immediate solutions, nor long-term development of projects like aircraft or vehicles. Its purpose is close the capability gaps with rapidly evolving technologies that require a dedicated fast-track to approval. "The Rapid Capabilities Office is focused on what it says: capabilities," Fanning said. "We're not embarking on creating new systems or new platforms. We're not focused on building a new helicopter, for instance. "We're going to use this office because some technology on a helicopter isn't giving us the edge over an adversary that it should. But it might mean that some capabilities being developed for a future helicopter need to be developed faster." A TEAM OF EXPERTS Right now, the staff of the Rapid Capabilities Office is a bit of a skeleton crew, with Wiltsie and Piatt at the top of the pyramid. It will require more than just two men and a staff to identify the most critical capability gaps, develop solutions, and then deliver them to the field in less than five years. And it will require a process different than the traditional acquisition process. What it will take, according to Wiltsie, is active interest from senior leadership in the Army. To that end, a board of directors led by the secretary of the Army himself will serve as the top decision-makers. But other top leaders and organizations will also influence the Rapid Capabilities Office, Wiltsie said. "In order to provide a holistic solution and a holistic assessment of what capabilities we are trying to bring to bear, you have to have Army Training and Doctrine Command's involvement as the subject matter experts in doctrine, organization, training and leadership," Wiltsie said. "And [also] Army Forces Command, clearly, because they are the generating force command. Their operational units will be receiving the equipment, so we need FORSCOM performing the operational assessment of the equipment." With that level of Army leadership directly involved in the identification of capabilities and procurement objectives, solutions are apt to move along much more rapidly than they would through traditional acquisition, Wiltsie said. "You reduce the number of levels of oversight," Wiltsie said. "But it's the most immediate, urgent, or emerging threats that they believe the Army will encounter. So you shorten the level of oversight and you get decisions fast." The board of directors will be responsible for identifying the procurement objectives to be developed. As of this writing, the board hasn't met, so it has yet to pass on its first development objectives. The general direction, Wiltsie said, will involve cyber, electronic warfare, and positioning, navigation and timing capabilities. Wiltsie said the board will take counsel on the Army's needs directly from combatant commanders, and those requirements will follow the operational needs statement process. FASTER PROCESS Once the Rapid Capabilities Office board of directors decides on an objective, Wiltsie said, his office will perform an analysis and return to the board with their results and request approval to move forward for prototyping of a solution. Upon receiving approval, the Rapid Capabilities Office will develop and test a prototype and then perform an operational assessment of the prototype's effectiveness, as well as the training and maintenance required to implement it. Wiltsie said the Rapid Capabilities Office will make use of every opportunity to perform operational assessments, including the Network Integration Evaluations and Army Warfighting Assessments held at Fort Bliss, Texas and White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Involvement of Army Forces Command at the level of the board of directors will ensure that Army units will be available to run the operational assessments. After analysis and prototyping, Wiltsie said, the Rapid Capabilities Office will either enter limited production, further refinement, or shelve the idea. Piatt said the Rapid Capabilities Office can count on senior leader buy-in, because the leaders will be involved from the start in identifying capability gaps and in the decision-making process to move forward. That means solutions should reach the Army much faster than they would though traditional procurement. But the process should also ensure more robust and future-proof solutions than those typically provided through the REF process. "We're filling a gap that can meet a tactical need, in the near term, but also helps close a strategic gap, and move existing technology together so the Soldier doesn't have that demand," Piatt said. "The Army is always evolving." Piatt cited Army chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley's remarks on always being prepared "for the last war," in part as an impetus for creation of the Rapid Capabilities Office. "If we have a capability that the Rapid Capabilities Office can give the Army to [meet] that near-term need and emerging far-term gaps, we are going to close that gap," Piatt said. "I think the best thing we will be able to do for Soldiers is not put them at an un-readiness in the future, but make them ready for today and also prepared for the future." Fanning said the Rapid Capabilities Office will help the Army do what successful armies in the past have always done: anticipate the future. The Rapid Capabilities Office, he said, will ensure Soldiers always have the capabilities they need to achieve a decisive win. "Our Army, as the principal land force of a global power, does not have the luxury of preparing to fight only one type of enemy at one time, in one place. We must be prepared across the full spectrum of conflict," Fanning said. "The Rapid Capabilities Office will enhance the Army's ability to confront emerging threats and improve our acquisitions process; it will improve our ability to provide our Soldiers what they need when they need it, and it will allow our Army to be more nimble in our efforts to stay ahead of change and innovation." Army recognizes bank and credit union branches as best of 2015 [2016-09-06] WASHINGTON -- The Army recently named two financial institutions that operate on its installations as the best among their peers in 2015. The Fort Hood, Texas branch of Pentagon Federal Credit Union and the Fort Riley, Kansas branch of Armed Forces Bank were recognized as Army credit union and bank of the year for 2015. The two were among 22 nominees to be judged according to criteria set by the deputy assistant secretary of the Army for financial operations. "The importance of having the financial institutions on post, it's really for the young Soldiers' financial education," said Maj. Gen. David C. Coburn, commander of the Army Financial Management Command, who handed out the awards. "And one of the big things they are doing now, as I just learned as we were going through the nomination packets, is to provide a lot of help with predatory banking, with the payday loans." Financial institutions on Army installations also provide financial education to Soldiers, Coburn said, and financial education promotes financial readiness. "When a Soldier is not worried about what is going on at home financially, or worried about putting food or milk on the table, they can do their job, whether it's in garrison or out in the field," Coburn said. SERVING FORT HOOD "Pentagon Federal Credit union" continues to be a primary resource for Fort Hood Soldiers and their families for financial matters," wrote Col. Todd M. Fox, garrison commander, when nominating the institution for recognition. Fort Hood is the largest active-duty post in the U.S. More than 74,000 Soldiers, family members and Department of Defense contractors are associated with the installation. In 2015, the Fort Hood branch of Pentagon Federal Credit Union provided more than $1.5 million in interest-free "micro loans" to Fort Hood Soldiers as part of their "Asset Recovery Kit" program to counteract the effects of payday lending. The branch provided 2,472 such loans to Soldiers. It also offered Soldiers car loans with interest rates as low as 1.49 percent, and provided financial readiness briefings to more than 500 Soldiers. As part of its involvement with the community around Fort Hood, the branch "adopted" Fort Hood's middle school and Bronco Youth Center and conducted a school supply drive. The branch conducted money management presentations for the school students. The effort yielded more than $300 worth of school supplies. "These are just a few of the ways that [Pentagon Federal Credit Union] strives to take care of Soldiers, families and civilians on and around the Fort hood community," Fox wrote. BANK SERVES FORT RILEY At Fort Riley, Kansas, Soldiers can conduct banking operations n the Armed Forced Bank branch at the post exchange as late as 8 p.m., six days a week and until 7 p.m. on Sunday. "One of the niche things we have is that seven-day-a-week banking," said John P. Baeuchle, executive vice president of Armed Forces Bank. "We can bank a Soldier whenever they need to be banked." In 2015, the Armed Forces Bank branch at Fort Riley provided financial education to more than 5,000 Soldiers on topics like savings, budgeting basics, debt reduction and credit. For the Fort Riley School District, the bank offered "money matters" courses to 2,850 students, on topics such as the importance of banking, saving and budgeting basics. "I think we're a true partner to Fort Riley," observed Baeuchle. "I think mostly it's being engaged and understanding the military." The Army bank of the year winner was recognized Aug. 30 at the 2016 Association of Military Banks of America conference in Middleburg, Virginia, while the Army credit union of the year winner was recognized Aug. 16 at the 2016 Defense Credit Union Council conference in Boston. Army Finance Command growing, preparing for service-wide audit [2016-09-06] WASHINGTON -- About seven months ago, the Army sent a requested budget to Congress, as it's done for more than 200 years now, and asked for $148 billion to fund its operations around the globe. With a U.S. population approaching 320 million people, paying for the Army averages out to about $462 per American per year, for a service that spends about $16 million every hour. It seems like a lot of money -- and it is. But that funding pays for Soldier salaries, new rifles, ammunition, food, vehicles, gasoline, aviation fuel, tents, clothing, computers, body armor, medical care for Soldiers and families, facility maintenance and every other product, resource or service the Army consumes. Both Congress and taxpayers have a right to know that the money they give to the Army is being well spent, said Maj. Gen. David C. Coburn, who took command of United States Army Financial Management Command in March, and who was promoted to major general in June. The Army will need to become "auditable" in order for the Congress and the taxpayer to be assured that the Army is spending taxpayer dollars exactly the way it's directed. Auditability is supposed to be achieved by the start of fiscal year 2017 -- that's Oct. 1, 2016. "We are just not there," Coburn said. "So what we are trying to do now is show progress, show Congress we are serious about this, and that we are doing the things we need to do to march toward auditability." The USAFMCOM didn't always have a two-star general at the helm. In fact, Coburn is the first two-star to take command of the organization. Previously, USAFMCOM was headed by an Army colonel, and had significantly less clout than it does now. But changes that came at the direction of then Secretary of the Army John McHugh, have put more stars at USAFMCOM, and laid more responsibility at its doorstep. Right now, Coburn said, USAFMCOM is undergoing a transformation that will enable it to provide the Army with full financial operations oversight; manage a range of fielded enterprise resource planning systems and ensure they "talk to each other"; move the Army toward sustainable auditability; and train the financial management units that go to war. "It all comes back to let's get auditable, let's optimize financial management, and in order to do that, we'll put a two-star at that headquarters so they can go out and ensure this stuff is happening," Coburn said. Part of the change to USAFMCOM involves growth in personnel. Coburn said he's now at about 70 percent of their projected end strength of 217 people, most of whom are civilians. "As we hire the civilians, making sure we are getting the right people with the right skill sets" is important, he said. One of the primary reasons for that increase in authority is that USAFMCOM will spearhead the Army's efforts to get its books in order, in ways that meet global standards of accounting, so that it can finally be audited in the same way any private sector company can be. "Auditability brings a level of trust from Congress, and from the American people," Coburn said. "Right now there are horror stories that go out to the American people that with DOD, they don't know where the money is going. In Afghanistan, we had stories that said the Army has lost control of $10 billion dollars. It's not that we lost control of it. We knew where it was, we knew what it was spent on. We just couldn't do it to the fidelity that the auditors needed to have to prove that that's exactly where the funding went." Once the Army becomes auditable, impartial third-party auditors will be able to move through Army accounting books and enterprise resource planning systems, or ERPs, recognize a standard way of accounting, and provide a stamp of approval on the Army's bookkeeping that will assure the Army's shareholders -- Congress and the taxpayer -- that their hard-earned tax dollars are being well spent. "It's substantiating documentation," Coburn said, explaining that every transaction must be reconciled. "If you say you have equipment on the floor and you've issued it, you can show that it was on the floor, that you issued it, the people that you issued it to had the proper authority to take that equipment, and that they've accounted for it as it has gone forward. There is a lot to auditability." That is, the Army's financial record keeping, from top to bottom, must be standardized and transparent so that when auditors come to visit, they can do a complete review of the Army's books and validate where the money is going. "The things we have to do as an Army, before we can even get an auditor -- an independent public accounting firm -- to start an audit, is we have to be able to show our universe of transactions," Coburn said. "Every transaction the Army does, we have to be able to show that, and also show that it's been reconciled and it's complete. It's an incredible amount of work." One tool USAFMCOM will use to prepare the Army to be audited is the General Fund Enterprise Business System. The GFEBS is an enterprise resource planning system, or ERP, that replaces more than 80 accounting and finance systems across the Army. An ERP is software used to organize data that affects Army financial reports. "The most basic part of [GFEBS] is that it's the accounting system of record for the Army to have," said 1st Lt. Andrew Weston, who has a background in finance and who works now as the aide-de-camp for Coburn. "It integrates all kinds of 'enterprise-wide' management information. Everything from a tank to a Soldier's BAH. The Army's ERPs, particularly for financial accounting and budgetary accounting, will ultimately converge in GFEBS. What this does is it's a tool for decision makers, to see all kinds of data about the Army's business." GFEBS isn't the only ERP the Army has. There are others, including the Global Combat Support System-Army (GCSS-A), the Logistics Modernization Program (LMP), and soon the Integrated Personnel and Pay System -- Army (IPPS-A). "All these systems have to interface with GFEBS," Coburn said. "That's one of the things we do within our System Support Operations, is making sure those interfaces are correct." Older computerized financial systems the Army used, Coburn said, were not capable of doing what GFEBS can do now. "They were very archaic," he said. "They couldn't do the reconciliations. They couldn't provide the substantiation. So as we have come on with ERPs, now we are starting to look at the people, the processes and the technology that the Army has, and optimize that toward auditability." Getting every part of the Army on board with those ERPs is also critical. And that means refining Army business processes to make use of the ERPs, so that ever financial transaction in the Army is done the same way, and recorded the same way, inside a system that is accessible across the Army. "One of the main functions that USAFMCOM is doing now is a thing called business process standardization, or BPS," Cobrun said. Coburn said BPS involves making sure that every business process used by the Army is mapped out "to the most minute detail," so that across the Army, everybody is doing them the same way. If every business process is being done the same way, he said, and everybody is using the same ERPs, and inputting all the required information, then auditors will be able to find what they are looking for wherever they go, and deliver to the Army a clean audit that shows the Army is spending taxpayer dollars exactly the way it says it is. "This is something we can do," Coburn said. "With the people we have, with the proper training, with the processes that we have, with the standardization of the technology we brought on with the ERPs, this is attainable. We just have to do the things that set the Army up for success, so the auditors can come in and give us a clean opinion. And part of that is by optimizing financial management through our people processes and technology, and getting those processes standardized so when the auditors go out, they see the same picture across the Army. So this is definitely something that can be done, and we are committed to accomplishing it." Empire Shield: Soldiers stand watch to prevent another 9/11 [2016-09-09] NEW YORK CITY -- Musician John Legend performed Aug. 16 at the opening of a new shopping mall inside an 800,000-square-foot facility which serves also as a commuter hub at the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan. It's expected some quarter million commuters will move daily though the facility. About 20 Soldiers from the New York National Guard were there at that event as well, though they weren't invited guests and they weren't there to shop or travel, either. They were working as part of a unique kind of security detail not seen elsewhere in the United States. Since 9/11, Soldiers with the New York National Guard have signed on as part of Joint Task Force Empire Shield, or JTFES, which puts a military presence on the ground around New York City at transit hubs such as at the new shopping mall, Grand Central Station, Penn Station, LaGuardia Airport, JFK airport, the Port Authority Bus terminal, and various bridges and tunnels in the city: all places where there are a lot of people who are in the process of moving into or out of the city. Headquartered at Fort Hamilton, an active-duty Army installation in Brooklyn, New York, JTFES is a response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. "Our mission is to deter and detect terrorism," said task force commander, Lt. Col. Peter P. Riley. "We're not law enforcement. We're there to support law enforcement. We're not there to arrest people for minor crimes. We're there to deter terrorism and notice any type of inappropriate activity or suspicious activity that could be terrorist-related. We're also able to do any type of civil support operations like we did in Hurricane Sandy ... we were actually first responders for Hurricane Sandy. "It's one of the best jobs in the National Guard," Riley said. "You're keeping your country safe and your city safe. There's a lot of stress, but it's very rewarding at the same time." DAY THAT 'CHANGED IT ALL' Riley is himself a native New Yorker, and was working at a financial institution across the Hudson River in New Jersey, just a short ride to the World Trade Center towers, when 9/11 happened. He said his employer was actually the largest tenant in the twin towers there, and employees would go into NYC for training there. "I actually had an appointment there on the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001," he said. "But I never went. They got hit at 8:46 a.m. I called my wife and said the plane struck the World Trade Center. We didn't know about the second one, so we didn't think it was a terrorist attack at first. I could actually see it from our offices. You could see how bad it was. Then of course when the second plane hit, we were evacuated as well." That attack changed everything for Riley, he said, for New Yorkers as well, for Americans, and for the National Guard too. "9/11 really changed the country," Riley said. "But it really changed NYC in particular. Prior to 9/11, you didn't have National Guard troops on duty in NYC at all." When the attack happened, he said, he was just a young captain in the National Guard. He said he got called up for duty with the Guard immediately after the attack. He said he remembers the support New Yorkers gave then to those in uniform. "People clapping for the military, people cheering for the military, right after Sept. 11 happened -- that was unique in NYC," he said. "Prior to that, you didn't really have much appreciation or knowledge about what the military does here in the city." Now 15 years after the attack, that's all changed. About 500 service members of all ranks from within the New York National Guard are part of the JTFES mission that Riley leads. Most of those are Soldiers, but there are also Airmen and members of the New York Naval Militia as well. EMBEDDED IN CITY'S CULTURE The JTFES is made up of three companies, Alpha, Bravo and Charlie. And daily, it's different companies that are tasked to cover different locations within the city. Some come on in an early morning shift, and some come on later in a noon shift. Soldiers are always rotated around the city. "It keeps it new, it keeps it exciting," Riley said. "Nobody is going to get bored if they are at a different location each week, at a different spot. It keeps it interesting, and it keeps everybody on their toes, but it also keeps the bad guys on their toes." New Yorkers see those service members at mass transit hubs around the city: armed American service members, typically in pairs, in uniform, wearing body armor, and working in partnership with other agencies to keep NYC safe. "Now we are part of the culture in NYC, we are embedded with all the different law enforcement agencies," Riley said. "It's actually a good thing. You have that unified effort where you have all the different agencies working together to defeat terrorism in the No. 1 terrorist target in the world: NYC." The JTFES mission is a small part of a larger counter-terrorism effort within NYC, which involves a wide variety of partner agencies, including the New York State Police, the City of New York Police Department, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police, the Amtrak Police, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Coast Guard. ELITE UNIT Service members who want to be a part of the JTFES mission must already be part of the New York National Guard. And JTFES is full-time work in lieu of civilian employment, so those who want to be on the task force must make arrangements with their civilian employer to participate. And the task force doesn't take everybody. Service members must apply and be accepted into the highly-selective positons. "You have to be in the National Guard, you have to be in good standing, and you still drill with your unit," Riley said. "You still do your weekend a month, two weeks in the summer. You have to get a letter of good standing from your unit, pass a physical training test, do weapons qualification, and have a clean record. Then we conduct panel interviews." Task force members who aren't on post guarding different parts of the city will find themselves training for when they do go on duty. "It's a specialized unit, and I think we're very unique inside the United States," said Command Sgt. Maj. Arnold G. Reyes. "There's no other unit that quite does this. We're actively improving everything we do now, especially with the training. So we are making sure that they're ready. We just don't do it for the country, we do it for Soldiers. If something does happen, they can rely on their training to react." Service members in the unit train on use of deadly force, rules of engagement, tactics for how to clear a room, for dealing with active shooters, and for dealing with what happens after an attack, Reyes said. "So you're looking at almost tactical combat casualty care," Reyes said. "They are doing all that not only to safeguard the citizens, but because it's the aftermath they also have to deal with. Our job is not only to deter, but to help after the fact." SGM: SECURITY EXPERIENCE Born in the Philippines, Reyes came to the United States when he was young, and has spent most of his life in New York -- though not in NYC. Today, his civilian job is as a police officer in Suffolk County, Long Island -- about 60 miles east of NYC. He takes military leave from his job as a police officer to be part of the task force. When 9/11 happened 15 years ago, Reyes was a sergeant first class on recruiting duty on Long Island. "As soon as it happened, just like everybody, I had the sense to go to the armory," he said. "I packed up and went to the armory, and that following night we were pretty much mustered and headed into the city. I was with the 'Fighting 69th' at that time. We all showed up at the armory and just waited for orders to see what we were going to do. The following morning we marched into Ground Zero." Reyes most recently came from a job as the battalion command sergeant major for the 2-108th Infantry Battalion out of Utica. Now, he said, he's proud to work with the Soldiers of JTFES, and to protect a city he said he knows is important to the whole nation. "These Soldiers pride themselves on professionalism," he said, adding that he hopes their presence in transit hubs makes New Yorkers "feel safe and secure, and that we've got it. And it's not just New Yorkers that we're giving the impression that things are okay. You have international people coming from all over. At JFK they see the Soldiers. When you have people coming here from foreign countries, hopefully they are feeling secure here too." Soldiers who take part in the JTFES mission don't act as a police force while on duty. Instead, they are a deterrent. Their role isn't to stop petty theft, for instance. When they see such crimes, they alert the NYPD, who they partner with on their mission inside transit hubs. Instead, they are on the lookout for suspicious activities that could be indicators of terrorist activity. COMPANY COMMANDER ON PATROLS "If we see a crime being committed, somebody being assaulted, we are allowed to intervene," said Capt. Rafael O. Ramirez, who serves as the Charlie Company commander in the task force. "But if we see somebody shoplifting, that's not our jurisdiction." Ramirez has a civilian job as a corrections officer in Westchester County, but he's been with JTFES since October 2011. He started as a first lieutenant, as a platoon leader, and worked his way up to executive officer for a company. When he became a captain, he was promoted to commander of Charlie Company, which now has 150 Soldiers in it. When 9/11 happened, Ramirez said he was in a job interview on 42nd Street in Manhattan. "It just really hit home," he said. "At the time, I was a reservist in the Marine Corps. As soon as I heard what was happening, I had to right away walk all the way to uptown Manhattan, in shoes and suit and tie, and then packed my stuff and reported to the base up in Newburgh. For about the first two months I was base security up in Newburgh." Ramirez never deployed as a Marine. But in 2003, he enlisted in the Army National Guard, and deployed in 2004 with his unit, as a logistics clerk. He also earned a degree in economics from Binghamton University, and got a commission in 2007. "I told myself, I'll never come back to a warzone country as an enlisted Soldier," he said. Next time he deployed, he wore silver bars. Mostly what the Soldiers in his company do, is provide presence in the areas they work in, and "pretty much keep their head on a swivel, as we say in the military," Ramirez said. Soldiers are on the lookout for things that look suspicious in their surroundings. "What looks suspicious? If it's a warm day, and somebody is wearing a baggy overcoat, and they look like they are hiding something, what is that? Or people that look nervous, or are constantly filming us, anything that looks out of the ordinary," Riley said. "Another thing I've been harping on for years is the unattended bags. Bad guys only have to be right once. We can be right 999 times, but that one time we're wrong, a lot of people can die." PRESENCE AND PRIDE The mere presence of an armed, uniformed Soldier in the transit hubs is meant to make a would-be terrorist think twice about causing harm to this international city which sits in the center of a metropolitan area that's home to more than 20 million people. "If somebody wants to do something here, and he wants to come first and see this place, he will see Soldiers here," said Sgt. Erislav J. Astanov, who stood guard in the new mall and transit hub, while hundreds of commuters passed by him every minute. "He will think twice: should I do this or not? He sees police and Soldiers, and thinks 'maybe I need to do it not here, not this time -- maybe next time.' But if something happens here, we are going to act." Astanov has been in the Army for five years now, and serves in the New York National Guard as a wheeled vehicle mechanic. He said as part of JTFES, he knows he's doing something important, because of the thousands of people that pass him by every day, many stop and thank him for what he does. "A lot of people appreciate us," he said. "They say thank you for your service, thank you for being here. A lot of people tell me that. A lot of people shake our hands. People like us. They like the Army. I'm proud to be here." EARLY MORNING START The JTFES headquarters is on Fort Hamilton, in Brooklyn, right underneath the approach to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which connects Brooklyn to Staten Island. Every morning, Soldiers who are on tap to provide presence at transit hubs around the city gather there early to start their day. "We come in early ... getting here at about 5:30 in the morning," said Riley. "We do pre-combat checks and inspections. You get your weapons, you put your body armor on and have formation and then go out to a mission site which is all the transportation hubs in NYC." Sgt. Tiffany E. Roman, with Bravo Company, is a carpentry and masonry specialist with the New York National Guard and has been part of JTFES for the last three years now. She's got a routine now for the demanding mission. "I meal prep everything the day before," said Roman. "They make fun of it, they call it my suitcase. But it saves me a lot of money. I prep all my meals the night before. I take all my clothes out the night before. I get up around 4 a.m. I get ready and come to work in civvies, and I head to Brooklyn, to Fort Hamilton. It takes me about 20 minutes. And then I come in and change and I go draw my weapon and head to formation." Roman was only 9 years old, in grade school, when 9/11 happened. "It was early morning. It was just kind of chaotic. We didn't know what was going on," she said. "I knew something bad happened and I didn't know what. And I remember seeing everybody get these phone calls. And everybody's mom and parents were picking them up from school. And I thought my mom is going to pick me up early. But my mom couldn't pick me up. She worked for the city. And she had to come down and clean up the debris and everything. She didn't get home until 11 that night." As a youth, Roman said she'd always been "intrigued" with the military, but it didn't occur to her that it could be a career choice until she was in her teens. "I saw G.I. Jane, and I was like wait a minute -- she's pretty bad ass." Roman joined the Army at 17. DIVERSE TASK FORCE The vast majority of Soldiers who are part of JTFES are from NYC, said Riley, and that gives them an advantage on the job. "They are very familiar with the terrain," Riley said. "They've been taking public transportation their whole life, so they know their mission sites quite well. They know the culture of the city." Demographically, the task force is as diverse as NYC itself. About 1/3 are African-American, 1/3 Hispanic, 5 percent Asian, and 5 percent from Eastern European countries. And like residents of NYC, there's a good chunk of task force members who are from other countries. "We have Soldiers from all walks of life, from all over the world," said Ramirez. "Some of the Soldiers recently migrated from some of the African nations; I'd say they came to this country in 2009 and 2010. They got a waiver to learn English, and joined the military. And now they are protecting the country that gave them the opportunity to live the American dream. They are excellent Soldiers." Riley said the diversity is good for the mission. "It's good we have so many people that understand different cultures and speak different languages," he said. "Because at the mission sites, a lot of time you may have somebody injured, who doesn't speak English, and we always have plenty of translators available." Spc. Omar M. Alkasimi is one of those Soldiers on the task force who came from outside the United States. He's from Yemen, and came to the United States in 2004. At the time, his father had already been a resident of NYC for almost 30 years. Now, Alkasimi said, NYC is his home as well, "I can't ever go anywhere else." He describes the city he defends as being universally diverse. "It's a multi-culture here, it's a melting pot," he said. "Anybody from anywhere in the world could fit in NYC. No matter what language they speak, somebody in NYC speaks that language too." When 9/11 happened, Alkasimi was just a boy in Yemen. He said the impact of that event hadn't affected him much from so far away. "We didn't have TVs over there," he said. Alkasimi said his dad had been visiting in Yemen when 9/11 happened, and his return back to New York was delayed by the shut-down of airports that came as a result. "That's how I found out," he said. "I was from a third-world country, and they were saying two buildings got destroyed in NYC. We're thinking: 'two buildings?' The tallest building I probably saw in Yemen was like six stories. I couldn't imagine those two huge towers." Now Alkasimi is a field artilleryman with the New York National Guard, and drills in the Bronx. He's been in the Army for just three years, and joined up with JTFES right after he got out of Advanced Individual Training. Being part of JTFES, and defending his new home, is something he said he's proud to do. And he said what he learns working at JTFES, he can take back to his Guard unit. "Every day we learn a lot from each other," he said. "We learn teamwork. You learn from our higher-ups. Everything goes downhill on how to learn new things that you apply to your unit. You learn something and you take it back to your unit and you teach it to somebody else." Alkasimi said he wants to eventually become a police officer in the city. PROTECTING THEIR CITY Many on the task force were affected by the events that created JTFES, and remain proud to wear their uniform while on duty in the city. Spc. Andres Medina, originally from Harlem, now lives in the Bronx. He's a wheeled vehicle mechanic in the New York National Guard. He joined the Army in 2012, under advice from his barber -- a personal friend. "I thought it was a great thing, something I could do that would change my life and it really pushed my life in a great direction forward," he said. He did an initial turn with the honor guard, and joined JTFES just two years ago. As a New Yorker, he said, he remembers seeing the JTFES Solders in the transit hubs, well before he himself joined the Army. "I thought it was awesome. I used to come through and I'd see the Soldiers in the terminal. And I never even knew about the task force until I talked to a sergeant in my unit. He was on the task force, and he told me it's great, it's fun, it's good opportunities, you meet great people, it's great networking, it's great pay, and it's an awesome thing to do while you're in the service." Medina was just 9 years old when 9/11 happened. He too was in class, in Manhattan, he said, in a school on 103rd Street. "My mom came to get us," he said. "I remember all the parents -- a lot of kids started to get picked up. They took all the kids to the gym area. And the whole school was in the gymnasium. And my mom came and got me around lunch time. "When we went home, that's when we found out what happened. My mom put the news on. My brother came home, he was a teenager at the time. He came home from school early. We were watching the TV as they replayed it over and over." Initially, he said, he thought it was exciting, because he didn't understand the context of what had happened. "But my mom told me it's not cool. She explained that people died. I remember being a young kid, I was shocked," he said. "I didn't know anything at that time about terrorism. As a young kid you don't think things like that happen." But now, he said, he's in uniform and he's defending the city he said he's proud to have lived in his whole life, a city where you can get anything you want, any time of day -- where people are up all the time making things happen. "You can go to the store or supermarket at 12 at night," he said. "You can go on the train at 2 or 3 or 4 -- and people are going to work. I love it," he said. And guarding his city? "I think it's a great thing, to be honest. The civilians love us. They walk by us all the time and tell us thank you, that we look so ready, and so vigilant," he said. "That's an automatic great feeling. I think it's a great thing to have military in the city, protecting the people, mingling with the people. It's straight deterrence, and it's a beautiful thing. I feel real proud to do it. It gives you a sense of pride, especially being from New York." MAKING A DIFFERENCE Sgt. Marius Donadelle was "born and raised in Queens" and went to Adelphi University on Long Island to earn a political science degree, but now lives in Westbury, on Long Island. He was in college when 9/11 happened, and said he remembers his professor getting a page, alerting him to what had happened. He said students in the class initially were disgusted by the incompetence of a pilot who might let his plane drift into a building -- initially they were, like many, thinking it was an accident. But in the hallways of his school, he said, he and his fellow students watched the news on television, and saw the second plane crash into the tower. "Then we knew for sure it wasn't an accident, it was deliberate." Donadelle didn't join the Army right away after 9/11. He said he applied for a few jobs, in particular with the FBI and the U.S. Marshall Service, but found that they were all looking for a resume bullet he didn't yet have. "They asked me if I had military experience. I said no," he said. "The interview kind of changed." At the same time, he said, he lost his civilian job, and "everything was steering me, you know ... I might as well join the military." Donadelle signed up with the JTFES two years ago, where he said he knows he's contributing to the safety of his hometown. "I think it makes a difference," he said. "It's one thing when you see a cop, a law enforcement officer. You think you see that every day. But it's another thing when you see a man or woman in a military uniform standing there with a weapon. It makes you think twice about doing something stupid. We're showing our face, we're showing that we're a presence, and that if you try something, you're going to have a problem. That's what we're here for." BRIGHT FUTURE Roman said she loves being out in the city, her city, and keeping it safe. In the busiest locations they provide presence, such as at Grand Central Station, she said she sees a lot of tourists -- and they want her help. "A tourist sees us and they want to gravitate towards us," she said. "They want to ask us questions. It's hard to maneuver sometimes. Most of the time they ask for directions. And a lot of times, I have people tell us they are more comfortable talking to us than the cops." Some parents, she said, even want their kids to get their pictures taken with the Soldiers, she said -- something she's more than happy to do. "The parents will want pictures of us and their kids. And the kids are scared. But some kids are like 'mommy, wow!' And if they are excited, you're like, yeah, come take a picture," she said. Roman was young when 9/11 happened, but now, she said the city has recuperated. Resilience, she said, is a defining characteristic of being a New Yorker. "We're very hard-headed," she said. "We're very tough. You see something happen here, we'll bounce back. All right, you got us. But that's not going to hold us down, we'll keep going. 9/11 is a perfect example. You took down our towers? We're going to build a bigger tower." The JTFES has been ongoing now for 15 years, and Riley said he's not sure when it will end -- or if it ever will. "The future of the task force will depend on the threat," he said. "The world seems to be more dangerous than it has been. It seems to be getting more dangerous every year. So I think as long as we can continue to add value and (be an) asset to our partner agencies, and detect and deter terrorism, I think the future for the task force looks bright. We have great individuals, we have great leadership, and we have great NCOs that really make it what it is." Army returns life-saving helmet to engineering sergeant [2016-09-13] WASHINGTON -- Staff Sgt. Frankie Hernandez might not be around today were it not for his Army-issued advanced combat helmet. On Saturday, Sept. 10, Hernandez was reunited with the helmet that saved his life as part of Program Executive Office - Soldier's "Personal Protective Equipment Returns" program. Hernandez, an Army Reservist, is a platoon sergeant with the 668th Engineer Company out of Orangeburg, New York. Four years ago, on May 18, 2012, while on deployment to Afghanistan, Hernandez was driving an up-armored D7 bulldozer in Afghanistan during an operation to build a road that would serve a U.S. Army infantry unit. "It was in the afternoon, closer to the end of the evening," Hernandez remembered. "It was towards the end of the mission when we came to a point where we needed to adjust the direction we were going." Hernandez stepped out of his up-armored bulldozer to consult with two Army infantry officers who were leading the way on how to proceed with the construction mission. They had come to a swampy area and were trying to determine the best route of approach to continue building the road. While he was consulting the map with the infantry captains, they heard a loud noise coming from the engine compartment of the bulldozer. All three turned to look. "The captain that was on my right asked me what it was," Hernandez said. "As I turned to answer -- I don't remember what I was going to say to him -- I felt the impact on my helmet, and on my head." Hernandez had been fired upon, but his advanced combat helmet had stopped the bullet from hitting his head. "I was kind of numb. I didn't know what had happened," Hernandez said. "So I told the captain to my right, I told him, 'I think I got hit.'" The captain confirmed for Hernandez that he'd been hit on the helmet. At that point, the men dropped to the ground and sought cover on the other side of the bulldozer. Hernandez called for the other bulldozer to pull up to provide additional cover. An infantry captain called for gun support. Today, Hernandez finds it hard to describe exactly what was going through his mind after being hit by gunfire. "One second you're talking normal," he said. "And then the next your whole body goes numb. You get like a ringing sensation in your ear. ... I thought about a lot of things: family, friends, my Soldiers. Everything was going through my head at the same time." One thing Hernandez knows for sure about the moments immediately after being fired upon is that his battle buddies were there for him when he needed them most. "It felt like I was alone," he said. "Then all of a sudden, out of everywhere, I had back up. They came and they had my back and they helped me. That was such a relief." He remembers feeling angry at being shot, but concerned for the other troops and concerned for his own welfare, because he had no idea of the degree of seriousness of his injury. "I didn't know whether or not we were going to get back up, or get cover fire, or get support," he said. "Everything goes through your head really fast." Hernandez received the Purple Heart in July of 2012 for the wounds he received that day. Back home in the United States, Hernandez said, he had a fiancée, Deborah Galdames. He knew she was worried for his safety. Since Hernandez and Galdames had become a couple, Hernandez had already served two deployments. This was the third. It was the first time he had been seriously injured. She was the first person he told that he had been shot. She wasn't pleased. "I started picturing different things in my head, like how serious is it? Is he coming home?" she said. "Is this it? Is it ending his military career? Luckily, it's not so serious. He's okay. And he's able to continue to do what he has to do." Galdames said that the best advice she can offer to other fiancées of service members and for military spouses is just to be there for their Soldiers to provide support and understanding. "Even though we're together and building a life together, the military is his life too," she said. "I try to stand by his side and be there for him and be understanding." During his Afghanistan tour, Hernandez was able to return home on leave to visit his friends and family, knowing full well he would eventually have to go back, even though he had been shot. He said that was difficult for his friends and family to accept, especially his mother. "They weren't too happy about that," Hernandez said. "But they have been with me through thick and thin since I joined the military. If it wasn't for the love and support and encouragement, I probably wouldn't have been able to come back." For his mother's part, Hernandez said, she wanted to know why he had to return. She asked if he could get out of it somehow. He told her that he couldn't, that he had to go back. For Hernandez, serving in the Army was about more than a fulfilling a contract, or earning a paycheck -- it had to do with his brothers in arms. "It has to do with the guys I go back to," he said. "That's it." REUNITED When protective equipment like an advanced combat helmet or an enhanced small arms protective insert fulfills its role in combat -- by taking fire -- Program Executive Office (PEO) Soldier brings it back to the U.S. to evaluate how well the gear performed. During the Sept. 10 presentation ceremony at the Orangeburg Reserve Center, the Army returned the helmet to Hernandez. His fiancée and several members of his unit attended the event. Members of the 668th chain of command were also part of the ceremony. Col. Dean M. Hoffman, the program manager for Soldier Protection and Individual Equipment, part of PEO Soldier at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, said that such events remind Soldiers of the value of their personal protective equipment. "When we do a ceremony like this, what it does is it says, one, you're going to get the best equipment the Army can provide, and two, that it works," Hoffman said. "And that's the big takeaway. But you've got to wear it and use it to your advantage, with that same heart and dedication we saw with Sergeant Hernandez. He's been shot, been through two improvised explosive devices, but he still continues to be in the fight. He does what he loves." Hoffman said that Hernandez is alive today because of the work of the PEO Soldier team, industry, Army scientists and engineers, and places like Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center, Army Research Laboratories and the Defense Logistics Agency. "Everybody in the lifecycle plays a key role," Hoffman said. "We can't do it alone. We need that total team working together to provide the best equipment." Army's Lean, Six Sigma practitioners free up $1.1 billion in 2015 [2016-09-15] WASHINGTON -- In 2015, the top implementers of Lean and Six Sigma across the Army yielded a cost savings or avoidance of some $1.1 billion dollars. In theory, that savings could enhance Army readiness by funding about 44 infantry brigade combat team rotations at one of the Army's combat training centers, at a cost of $25 million each. Under Secretary of the Army Patrick J. Murphy presided over the awards ceremony for the 2015 Army Lean Six Sigma Excellence Awards Program, known as LEAP, held on Wednesday, Sept. 14, in the Pentagon. A total of 10 awards were given, though two organizations, 21st Theater Sustainment Command and Corpus Christie Army Depot, each took home two awards. Murphy said that of the 1,374 projects submitted for consideration, the 10 projects chosen as winners yielded some $1.1 billion in cost savings to the Army. "You are all getting after it, on behalf of our Soldiers," he said. "It makes such an incredible difference. And we are so incredibly grateful." Murphy, a one-time congressman from Pennsylvania who is familiar with government funding, said in recent years the Army budget has been cut dramatically. When he left office as a congressman in early 2011, he said, the Army budget was about $240 billion. The enacted Fiscal Year 2016 budget, which the Army operates under now, is $148 billion. That's a reduction of about $92 billion. Today, he said, the operations tempo for the Army is still high, adding, "[But] we are going to have to do more with less," he told Lean and Six Sigma practitioners who attended the awards ceremony. "What you are doing to do more with less, and what you are doing to lead by example -- is just awesome." CW4 Ronald Baird of the Indiana National Guard attended the awards and was himself an award recipient. He won the award for his leadership on a project to reduce costs associated with the purchase of wet cell batteries for tactical vehicles. "We were able to do the data analysis to expand the life expectancy of the batteries," he said. He and his team found that the wet cell batteries in their tactical vehicles were losing their charges as a result of not being properly maintained. As a result, he said, units had to buy new batteries. That came at a substantial cost to the Indiana National Guard. Baird explained that by using solar chargers, they could maintain fully charged vehicle batteries all the time and avoid the cost of new batteries. Additionally, they changed the type of batteries they used to gel-filled versions. Those, he said, are also more environmentally friendly. "Not only did we save money but we reduced the environmental impact, because there's no more hazardous waste with these types of batteries," Baird said. Additionally, the gel-filled versions are more robust and ready to go at lower operating temperatures than wet cell batteries. That, he said, increases unit readiness. Of the award, he said, "It's a team effort. I appreciate the guys back in Indiana that helped. This was outstanding. It not only shows we're able to go fight the fight but also save money for our citizens." Dr. Donna Whittaker serves as the Lean Six Sigma deployment director of Army Medical Command, one of the award recipients for Lean and Six Sigma programs in 2015. Whittaker said she believes MEDCOM's Master "Black Belt" training program contributed to MEDCOM's recognition this year. A "black belt" designates the highest level of expertise in the implementation of Six Sigma process improvement. "We have a training program that's really second to none for our master black belts," she said. While Headquarters Department of the Army actually trains Six Sigma black belts, she said, MEDCOM's program is meant to prepare those who will attend that training. As a result of preparation within the MEDCOM course, she said, there were "zero failures on the master black belt exam." According to Whittaker, this is the second year in a row that MEDCOM has received a Lean and Six Sigma award. "It really validates that we have a strong program and we are really focused on improvement and innovation," she said. Whittaker also cited Angela Koelsch as contributing to MEDCOM's success. Both Whittaker and Koelsch serve as co-directors of MEDCOM's Lean Six Sigma deployment program. The 2015 Lean Six Sigma Excellence Award Program winners are: -- The 2015 Lean Six Sigma Headquarters Department of the Army Principal Staff Organizational Deployment Award: Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. Accepting the award were Fred Moreno, acting deployment director, and Dr. Beverly Knapp, acting director, human systems integration. -- The 2015 Lean Six Sigma AR 10-87 Organizational Deployment Award: U.S. Army Medical Command. Accepting the award were Dr. Donna Whittaker, MEDCOM Lean Six Sigma deployment director and Robert Goodman, MEDCOM chief of staff. -- The 2015 Lean Six Sigma Subordinate Organizational Deployment Award: 21st Theater Sustainment Command, U.S. Army European Command. Accepting the award was Lt. Col. Chris Bachmann. -- The 2015 Lean Six Sigma Excellence Award Program Process Improvement Project Team Excellence Award, non-Enterprise Level, Black Belt: 21st Theater Sustainment Command, U.S. Army European Command. Accepting the award was Lt. Col. Chris Bachmann. -- The 2015 Lean Six Sigma Excellence Award Program Process Improvement Project Team Excellence Award, non-Enterprise Level, Black Belt: Abrams Program, Ground Combat Systems Program Executive Office. Accepting the award were Larry Marino, team lead, and Andrew DiMarco, project director. -- The 2015 Lean Six Sigma Excellence Award Project Team Award, non-Enterprise Level, Green Belt: Aberdeen Test Center of the Army Test and Evaluation Command. Accepting the award was Tracy Sheppard, director, survivability and lethality. -- The 2015 Lean Six Sigma Excellence Award Project Team Award, non-Enterprise Level, Green Belt: Corpus Christie Army Depot, Army Materiel Command. Accepting the award were Pamela R. Janek, team lead, and Mark Wagner of Aviation and Missile Command. -- The 2015 Lean Six Sigma Excellence Award Project Team Award, non-Enterprise Level, non-gated: Corpus Christie Army Depot, Army Materiel Command. Accepting the award were Eric Andreas and Mark Wagner of Aviation and Missile Command. -- The 2015 Lean Six Sigma Excellence Award Project Team Award, non-Enterprise Level, non-gated: Program Executive Office -- Simulation, Training and Instrumentation. Accepting the award were Dr. Jeremy Lanman, team lead, and Col. Timothy Domke, program manager. -- The 2015 Lean Six Sigma Excellence Award Project Team Award, non-Enterprise Level, non-gated: Army National Guard. Accepting the award were CW4 Ronald Baird, project lead, Brig. Gen. Wayne Black, assistant adjutant general of the Indiana National Guard, and Col. Christopher Michael Pfaff, with the Indiana National Guard J-5. Rising Thunder builds interoperability with Japanese, leaders say [2016-09-26] YAKIMA, Wash. -- American and Japanese Soldiers here held a ceremony Friday to close out the three-week-long bilateral "Rising Thunder" exercise, which was held to enhance interoperability between the two nations' armies and to increase their readiness. Rising Thunder kicked off Sept. 6. About 900 Soldiers overall participated: 300 from Japan's 12th Infantry Regiment, 8th Division, Western Army, out of Kirishima, Japan; and about 600 Soldiers from 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, along with other Soldiers from 2nd SBCT, all part of the 7th Infantry Division out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. The exercise took place at the larger than 500-square-mile Yakima Training Center. Maj. Gen. Thomas James, 7th Infantry Division commander, said he's participated in the Rising Thunder exercise twice already since he took command of the division in August of 2015. He said the exercise builds trust, familiarity, and interoperability with Japan, an important ally in the Pacific. It also gives the Japanese an opportunity to do something they can't do at home. "It's critically important because of the relationship we build -- the bilateral relationship with the Japanese -- but also to leverage this great training facility," James said. "They don't have this opportunity in Japan to be able to really get out here in this battlespace and really train what they need to be able to train. So building that partnership and leveraging this capability is what's so important with Rising Thunder." Lt. Gen. Takashi Motomatsu, commander of the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force's 8th Division within the Western Army, said training at Yakima Training Center allowed his Soldiers to use their equipment to the fullest. At Yakima, he said "we can fire with maximum range. There are so many ranges at Yakima Training Center." And by working together during Rising Thunder, he said, the alliance between the United States and Japan is strengthened. "We have the alliance between the U.S. and Japan, to facilitate the security environment in the Asia and Pacific region," he said. "If we conduct the bilateral exercise, it means flexible military deterrence options to cope with any contingency." While Rising Thunder has happened for more than 20 years now, only recently, James said, did it become part of the Pacific Pathways series of deployment-styled exercises, something his division is already involved in, in multiple places. "We constantly rotate our battalions through different Pathways," James said. "It's kind of interesting right now. We have one battalion that's doing Orient Shield over in Japan and one battalion over here doing Rising Thunder. And we have one battalion doing Yudh Abhyas, an exercise with the Indian Army. We are constantly engaged in the region in working with other armies." As a part of the Army's Pacific Pathways series of exercises, Rising Thunder is unique in that it doesn't involve an American unit deploying to a foreign location, but rather a partner nation coming to the United States. James said that makes Rising Thunder a "reverse Pathways" exercise. At the onset of the U.S.-hosted Rising Thunder exercise, Japanese forces participated in "functional training" at the individual, team, squad and platoon level, said Maj. Danny Zimmer, executive officer with 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, part of the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team. He said nearly everything was done bilaterally. "It was an opportunity for Soldiers and leaders at all levels to practice their skills either with close-quarters marksmanship, sniper training, sniper stalk training, indirect fire training, or maneuver training," Zimmer said. Beyond functional training, the three-week "decisive action" exercise, Zimmer said, was capped off with a more comprehensive platoon and company-level maneuver event, where Japanese and American Soldiers conducted an attack on an enemy force. On Sept. 19, both Japanese and American snipers had entered and taken control of a multi-level building to provide sniper support for the taking of a mock village that was down range. "The first thing that's going to happen is a Japanese helicopter is going to come in and engage the targets on the open ground, from the air," said 1st Lt. John Temme, a scout platoon leader with 2-1 Infantry. "He'll fly right in front of us, kind of hover here for a minute, fire a few rounds, and then fly off. At that point, the snipers will open up on targets of opportunity in the village." In the facility with Temme was his own sniper section, about 19 Soldiers, and a Japanese sniper section was positioned on the roof as well. "The helicopters won't fire into the village. They'll fire into the open ground. And once the helicopter is gone and cleared, we'll start shooting into the village and taking out the targets you see in the doorways and in between the buildings. As that's happening, our Charlie company element will move up and will establish a support-by-fire right on the other side of the road. And following them will be the Japanese tanks, and they will set up their support-by-fire right here next to the building." Their goal was to clear the village. And both Japanese and American forces would participate in making that happen, Temme said. It was his first time working with the Japanese, he said. "They are really good," he said. "Their equipment is a little bit older than the U.S. equipment. They don't use computers like we use, they just use their brains and a piece of paper." For his own team, he said, what he hopes they are able to learn is "mostly how to work with and how to learn from and also teach another country's snipers. We do a lot of training setting up sniper schools in other countries. And so we learn how to interact with them, how they are different, and their differences actually help us in a lot of ways too. We learn from each other." Outside the urban training facility where snipers would provide support for the taking of a village further down range, Sgt. Ryan Casner, a squad leader with Charlie Company's 1st Platoon, 2-1 Infantry, and his Soldiers were loaded up inside two Stryker combat vehicles. They evacuated the vehicles, and each Soldier took his place on the ground outside, with his weapon pointed down range. Then they loaded up and did it again. They did it again and again. He and his squad were preparing for operations later that night and the next day, part of a company-level maneuvering exercise at another location on Yakima. "Our mission is coming up later this evening. And pretty much we're working with the Japanese on the mission. We'll be online and maneuvering through terrain to get to a certain objective, and then at which time both the Japanese and U.S. forces will engage the targets," Casner said. He's been in the Army for almost four years now. Casner and his Soldiers were drilling on how to safely and effectively exit the Stryker. "It's a baseline for our entire squad to conduct just the little things: getting out of the Strykers, getting back on the Strykers, emplacing into a security position. This job isn't about the big picture all the time. It's the little things that'll be the determining factor on how successful you are with your mission," Casner said. Getting in and out of the Stryker might seem to the untrained to be a simple exercise. And it actually might be in regular circumstances. But combat, or even combat training, is not a regular circumstance, Casner said. "As simple as it sounds, when you throw adrenaline in there, you throw in live ammunition, and you throw in a guy shooting live rounds, a lot can go wrong," Casner said. "Getting in and out of the Stryker, and making sure your team leaders have control of their guys as they are getting out, comes down to muscle memory. It's about keeping guys from falling down and tripping over themselves, just deliberate movements. You get to the point where you have that muscle memory, and it flows much, much better. The mission has a much higher success rate than it does if you just jump out and jump back in." Spc. Christopher Page, a team leader under Casner, was one of the Soldiers participating in the training. He's deployed to Afghanistan twice, and has been in the Army going on five years now. He explained there's a formula for the right way for infantry Soldiers to exit the Stryker and to then subsequently position themselves on the ground outside the vehicle and get into fighting positions. "You want to put your team leader to the rear, so he's the first man off the vehicle and he can control the rest of his team," Page said. "You're going to want your most important pieces out with you," he said. Among those, he said, are the Soldiers with the machine gun and the Squad Automatic Weapon: "the most casualty-producing weapon in the Army." Working with the Japanese, both Page and Casner said, has been good for them and their squad. "It's pretty great. They are very intelligent. Their standards and standard operating procedures are very tight," Page said. "They know exactly what they want to do. They know exactly how they want to accomplish their mission. It's nice working with someone who is very prepared to accomplish any tasks, this far from their home." Casner said working with the Japanese has allowed him to see different ways to do things he does all the time with his own squad. "You learn so much more about how missions can go," Canser said. "You see different vantage points and viewpoints of a different nation. The way we attack an objective is, we have our standards, we have our field manuals. That's what we go by, our doctrine. And then to see the Japanese go through a maneuver, it's a little different. You get a couple different viewpoints of a way a mission can go, and how you can accomplish the mission." Later that evening, Soldiers moved to the Multi-Purpose Range Complex at the center of Yakima Training Center to prepare for a larger exercise on Tuesday. Many would stay the night on the range. At nightfall, said Lt. Col. Troy Meissel, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, Soldiers from both the Japanese Army and the American Army would prepare for the next days' exercise. "We have Soldiers at mortar firing points, and at field artillery," Meissel said. "They are in preparation for the next phase of the operation, where we are going to destroy the enemy's recon. That will be conducted tonight. They will be providing illumination rounds: mortars and artillery; 122mm mortar sections for the Japanese and our battalion; and field artillery howitzers." It's mostly Meissel's Soldiers who are participating in the Rising Thunder exercise. He has Solders from his own battalion, as well as Soldiers with a company from a sister field artillery battalion, with him: about 600 American Soldiers all working alongside the 300 from Japan. Meissel said for his Soldiers, he hopes they will develop an "appreciation of another country's military, and understanding that language barriers are one thing, but military doctrine is universal." He also said he hopes the Japanese see the way the American Army makes use of its noncommissioned officer corps. "I'm hoping that they see how our American NCOs are a key part in what makes our military so much better than other militaries in the world." Meissel also said he knows that the Americans and the Japanese working so closely together at Yakima provides the right strategic message to send to the rest of the world. "It allows the rest of the world to understand that the American and Japanese close relationship, militarily, is such that we'll always be there for each other," Meissel said. On Tuesday at Yakima's Multi-Purpose Range Complex, there were Japanese tanks and American Strykers -- more than a dozen of them -- lined up and ready to move out on an assault that would involve both Japanese and American forces on the ground, and in the air. The event involved two company-sized elements, about 150 Soldiers each, one from Japan and one from the United States. Even before the event was over, Col. Jerry Turner, who commands the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, said he knew the entire Rising Thunder exercise was a success. "I've decided: it's successful," he said. "If you ask me now, what we are doing out here right now, even if we had a problem arise, that's okay. That's why we are training." Zimmer said just watching American and Japanese Soldiers interact, even off the training ranges, was a mark of success as well. "To walk down the street here in the cantonment area, and see U.S. Soldiers talking to Japanese Soldiers outside of the barracks, just shows we've already built relationships," Zimmer said. "And the fact this exercise has run so smoothly so far, shows both units have come together and planned effectively, and synchronized effectively." While both the Japanese and the Americans have training goals for the exercise, Turner said achieving those training goals together is the real purpose: to achieve interoperability, to ensure that when a real-world contingency comes up, the Americans and the Japanese know how to work alongside each other already. "Interoperability is really the ability to show up in a crisis and be able to conduct operations together. That's harder than it seems," he said. "There are things like language we have to work through, things like culture we have to work through; we have to be able to talk on radios that can talk to each other, we have to be able to share fuel, we have to be able to share food. We have to be able to share all those things, because many times one country may take the lead, and the second country is providing assistance, and you have to be interoperable to pull that off." Among the kinds of interoperability issues that must be hashed out between the Japanese and Americans, Turner said, is how ammunition is issued, for instance. An agreement had to be worked out. And Zimmer said that communications technology is always an issue as well -- it's something that always comes up when conducting Pacific Pathways exercises with foreign nations. "Our networks, our digital systems, FM communications, differ from those countries," Zimmer said. "It's always a friction point. So just conducting these exercises with our partnered nations allows us to get past these friction points easier, and more efficiently, so in case a global crisis does arise, we don't have to spend time figuring it out then." Zimmer said that the American Army has been impressed, however, with how the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force sets up their own network. "And just bottom-line, that's something that every organization, civilian and military, wants to improve. We want to get better. Learning from them how they do that has been good training for us." Rising Thunder is a combat exercise, "high-end combat," Turner said. But working together with the Japanese, he said, on the most challenging of engagements, means the two nations will be better prepared for contingencies that require less. "Most militaries will plan for the worst, prepare for the worst," Turner said. "This level of training means we can do anything below. We can certainly do disaster relief, humanitarian assistance is very important for us in the Pacific, based off the things that happen there: the tsunamis, the volcanoes, the fires. So our country works really hard at building those relationships to do those kinds of things, as well as fight." Army ranking 780 programs to make 'tough choices' about resources [2016-09-27] WASHINGTON -- This year, as part of a strategic portfolio analysis and review, or SPAR, the Army will "rank order" all 780 or so of its equipment programs -- from helicopters to boots to rifles -- in terms of their impact on warfighting. The results of that analysis will be made available to Army leaders to help guide them in making decisions on how to allocate dwindling Army modernization funds better. In the fiscal year 2017 budget request presented to Congress, about $125 billion was allocated to the Army. Of that, about 18 percent, or $23 billion, was earmarked for modernization, including research, development, testing and evaluation, as well as procurement of new equipment. That's about a 33 percent drop in modernization funding from 2011, said Lt. Gen. John M. Murray, deputy chief of staff, Army G-8. That drop in funding comes because the Army doesn't expect to get an increase in its base budget, and it is prioritizing readiness and force structure over modernization. "The priority is retaining force structure and readiness -- nobody tells us to do that," Murray said. "That is a deliberate choice by the senior leaders of the Army. They understand the risk we have taken in modernization. And they understand it's a compounding risk." Still, Murray said, the Army must plan now to provide the Army of the future with the tools it will need to fight, and the Army must take action now to make that happen, despite an understanding that more money is probably not going to materialize. "It would be irresponsible of the Army, of me in particular, to sit back here and say there's nothing we can do until we get more money," he said. The idea of the SPAR, which is an idea that originated inside the G-8, is to take a look at all existing Army programs, as well as some concepts or ideas the Army might like to have, and prioritize them in a way that will allow Army senior leaders to make "some very tough choices" about what should be kept and what should be let go. Working with Army Training and Doctrine Command, Army Forces Command, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, and others, the G-8 will evaluate each of the Army's 780 or so equipment programs to determine their relative worth to the Army. "[With modeling and simulations] we'll try to measure their contribution to what the chief has talked about, a decisive action, high-end warfight," Murray said. "[For instance] what does an M1 tank contribute to a high-end warfight?" In this case of the M1 tank, Murray said they would run a simulation with the tank and measure the outcome of that scenario. They would then run the same simulation without the tank. "When the capability is in, you are going to come to a certain outcome," Murray said. "If the capability is out, that end state should be different. If it's not, then you have to question the value that capability adds to that warfight." Murray acknowledges that, when it comes to the fate of Army programs, "everything we're doing is important to somebody." Nevertheless, all equipment programs, regardless of their portfolio, will be evaluated as falling into one of four "buckets," that will determine recommendations for Army leaders on how limited modernization resources might be applied to them moving forward: I: Accelerate or find a way to bring into the portfolio. II: Sustain at current level of resources. III: Reallocate resources to invest elsewhere. IV: Divest most or all resources. The SPAR process will be completed and the outcome of that process will be presented to the secretary of the Army and the chief of staff of the Army sometime before April of 2017, for use in the development of the 2019-2023 program objective memorandum. Murray said the SPAR will not be the final decision on the future of Army programs, but is instead meant to provide well-researched material upon which Army leaders can make those decisions. "One of the intended outputs is to tee up some hard decisions for the senior leadership," Murray said. "And whether those decisions get made or not, that's not my purview but is well within their purview." Another aspect of SPAR, Murray said, is that it will provide him with some support for the answers he often provides whenever he is asked what he believes the Army could do with additional funding. "I've been asked 50 times, 'if you had more money what would you do,'" he said. "And when you give an answer, they say, 'show me the analysis.' Well, this is the analysis. If we need to modernize, and we need to get ready for the next fight that is coming, then we need to start laying a mark on the table." In addition to evaluating existing Army programs, SPAR will be used to evaluate concepts that the Army doesn't currently have as programs of record but might want to become involved in. One such example is directed energy weapons. "We would make some assumptions of what it would perform like, what kind of vehicle it would be mounted on, and play it the same way in the model, and see if it makes a significant difference in the outcome of the scenario," Murray said. Evaluation of Army programs with SPAR is already underway. Should the analysis turn out to be valuable, he expects the Army to repeat the process again each year in time for providing input to the following year's program objective memorandum. "It's all about finding resources within the budget we've been given to accelerate the critical capabilities for our future warfight, or to go after new programs, new technologies, for that future warfight," Murray said. Vets honored by Korean government, recall wartime experiences [2016-09-28] WASHINGTON -- About 88 veterans of the Korean War arrived in the nation's capital this week for a visit to the Korean War Memorial Saturday, Sept. 24. The veterans, who came to Washington, D.C., courtesy of Blue Ridge Honor Flight out of Ashville, North Carolina, laid a wreath at the memorial and also received from the Korean government a medal commemorating their service. Attending the event with the veterans was U.S. Forces Korea commander, Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, and Maj. Gen. Shin Kyoung-soo, a Korean defense attaché to the United States. Shin told the veterans who gathered around him and Brooks near the memorial that he disagrees with the common characterization of the Korean War as "the forgotten war." Instead, he told them, he prefers "the forgotten victory." Korea, he said, is now one of the world's top economies, one of the top trading partners of the United States, and one of the most innovative nations in the world. And like the U.S., Shin said, Korea can now also afford to send its own soldiers around the world to preserve the peace and maintain democracy. Korea, he said, is modern, well-off, and free. "During the Korean War, and even after, Korea was a country who needed support from the United Nations," Shin told veterans. "Now Korea is a donor nation. Now Korea is enjoying freedom, democracy, and a market economy. How did this happen? How is this possible? It's because of your sacrifice, your dedication to protect my country and my people." The general told the veterans that he and his countrymen remember what they did for Korea, because they now enjoy daily the prosperity that was made possible by American service members, 63 years ago. "The Republic of Korea and the Korean Army will not forget your sacrifice and your dedication during the Korean War, and even after the Korean War," he said. "We will remember your sacrifice forever. We will pass down your legacy to our future generations." The Korean War began June 25, 1950, and ended with an armistice on July 27, 1953. In all, on both sides of the conflict, more than 4.4 million military personnel and civilians were wounded, killed or went missing in action. Today, the United States military maintains a presence on the Korean peninsula and remains committed to the defense of that nation, which is one of America's greatest allies in the Pacific. "Our numbers are lower than they have been in history, but our commitment is no less," Brooks said. Brooks, who is responsible for the more than 28,000 U.S. service members forward-stationed on the Korean peninsula, told veterans at the memorial that the troops he commands today are carrying on the legacy that established during the veterans' own service during the Korean War. "I want to tell you how much I personally appreciate all that you did in your time," Brooks said. "You would be very pleased if you had the chance to come back to the Republic of Korea to see what that looks like. It is impressive. There is no question that what you did made a difference. And we who serve now are simply following in your footsteps to make sure that nothing ever puts that at risk." Initially, Brooks had not planned to be at the memorial with the veterans. But he was, coincidentally, visiting the U.S. at the same time to meet with senior Army leaders at the Pentagon, and discuss the current situation on the Korean peninsula with defense and policy leaders. "When I heard there was going to be an honor flight with 88 Korean War veterans on the day I was scheduled to fly back, I didn't want to miss it," he said. "I chose to come here, and I'll fly back to Korea as soon as I leave the ceremony." Even now, 63 years after the end of the Korean War, Brooks said, it remains important that we recognize the service of veterans. "For those of us who served, we need to make sure we are acknowledging that we are part of a long line," Brooks said. "And these veterans are that line. So while we can recognize them, we should do so." TIME IN HELL Brownie McCall was among the 88 veterans who came to Washington, D.C., to visit the Korean War Memorial. He was drafted into the Army in 1951. "I was invited in by my president," he said. He recalled his arrival in the country in 1951: "There was a sign up when we got there," he said. "A big sign hanging on an arch. It said 'don't worry about going to heaven, because you spent your time in hell.' That's what I think about it." In Korea, he said, he initially served as a combat infantryman with the 1st Cavalry Division and carried an M1 Garand rifle. He was ultimately injured in combat and received a Purple Heart for his injuries. "It was about midnight," he said. "When the Chinese send all those troops against you, they are going to run over you. Some of them ran by me. I ran out of hand grenades, but they didn't. I was lying in a prone position, and I was firing the M1, and a hand grenade rolled up on me and I tried to throw it, and it went off." He said he was knocked out for about six hours. "I came to before daylight," he said. "I was bleeding fiercely, from my nose and ears and eyes. My rifle was blown apart too." As a result of his injuries, he said, he was unable to continue to fight. He was later transferred to military intelligence and served with the 45th Infantry Division. For McCall, it was his first trip to the Korean War Memorial. "I'll never forget it," he said, gesturing to the 19 stainless steel statues within the memorial that represent a platoon on patrol. "The Soldiers there ... seeing them with their M1 Garands and walking through that foliage ... that brings back memories." THEY SAY THANK YOU Hilliard Staton, who joined the Navy in 1947, eventually got a commission in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1952. He found himself in Korea in 1953, where he was a tank platoon leader with 1st Marine Division, 1st Tank Battalion. Staton was one of two veterans who laid a wreath at the memorial during the honor flight visit. "Seeing this monument today brings back a great deal of memories," he said. "And they're not all pleasant. This is the most magnificent memorial I can imagine. It reminds me of the darkness of the night. I think about the cold, and I think about the variety of men who served with me during that period." Staton said he arrived in Korea during the last year of conflict there. "By the time I got there ... it was more like World War I," he said. "We were almost trench warfare along the line. We were in support of the Turkish brigade. Our primary job was to fire at night to prevent the Chinese from taking more land. We had the lines, they wanted the lines. Our job was to not let them take it, and their job was to try to get it back. That's mostly what we were doing." Not all Korean War veterans have been back to Korea since the end of the conflict there. But Staton has been. And he said he's impressed by what he saw there. "It is a most fantastic country now," he said. When he was there in 1953, he said, he never saw so much as a paved road or glass in the windows. He never even saw a town. "But now, the town of Seoul could be Chicago, or Philadelphia. It is a most modern, beautiful city," he said. "And the Korean people are the most wonderful people you could imagine: very industrious, hardworking, and can accomplish anything they want to do." A NATION'S BIRTH James Jean, who enlisted in the regular Army in June 1950, laid a wreath at the memorial along with fellow veteran Staton. He served as a cryptographic specialist, arriving in Korea in May 1951. "I came in through Busan, and went by train up to the central front, and joined the 7th Infantry Division there," he said. "I remember the smell. It was a poor country. The houses they lived in. The powder on the road. The rice patties. We never saw paved roads. When we had a monsoon, the mud was so thick you couldn't drive a jeep, and the tank couldn't move. Nothing could move. It was eight or nine inches of mud." Since then, he said, he has returned to Korea three times to visit. Much has changed since he first arrived there more than 60 years ago, he said. "I stood on the 12th floor of the hotel and looked out on the boulevard," he said. "It's eight paved lanes of traffic. Two middle lanes were busses. There were 12 different bus routes. There were nine subways. You could get on a train in Seoul, and be in Busan in 2 hours and 10 minutes. You can't do that here." On one trip he made to Korea, he said, he visited Panmunjom, at the Joint Security Area on the demilitarized zone between South Korea and North Korea. There, he was paired up with a Korean school girl as part of the educational tour set up for him and fellow veterans by the Korean government. He said he continues to correspond with her. She calls him "halabeoji," which means "grandfather." He calls her "sonnyeo," which means "granddaughter." "She sent me an email, and she said, 'You were at the birth of my country,'" he said. "And that really, really set in. We were at the birth of their country. And when you look at what it was when I was there, to what it is now? Yeah, she was right." Army Secretary: SHARP needs to increase focus on prevention [2016-09-29] WASHINGTON -- The Army's Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention program has done a lot of good work responding to sexual assaults, Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning told an audience of more than 100 Army SHARP professionals at the SHARP Program Improvement Forum. At the event, Wednesday, Sept. 28, which took place just miles from the Pentagon, Fanning added that, while the Army is doing a good job of meeting the needs of victims, it's time to move beyond response and into prevention. "I feel like we've done a really good job of thinking through and applying resources. But we're not done," he said. "We also need to get focused on getting to the point where we don't need to provide response." Throughout his career in the Navy, the Air Force, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and now the Army, Fanning said, he has seen how the military has responded to sexual assault. "I've watched this issue over seven and half years and seen how it's evolved in terms of where we put emphasis, where we put resources, where we've had success," he said. The Army's SHARP program has always included prevention efforts that, in theory, would preclude the need to respond to sexual assaults if they were 100 percent effective. But Monique Ferrell, the director of the Army's SHARP program, said prevention efforts have been second to response efforts. And now, the Army must double its prevention efforts, and change the nature of them. "What we know is, we have put a lot of our emphasis on the response to sexual assault," she said. "And our primary focus on prevention has been on training. But training in and of itself is not a strategy. We need more. We are now shifting. We are going to do more things in terms of prevention. Our prevention plan is going to be more of action, versus just education." Part of that shift, she said, will be figuring out what "perpetrator behavior" looks like, she said. "We need to do research on that, and to tap into experts," she said. "And then educate the force on that." Also, she said, there will need to be what she called an "environmental scan." Primary intervention involves looking at the risks, which will vary on the installation, unit makeup, the gender makeup, and other factors. Prevention means first understanding the factors in that environment that can contribute to sexual harassment and sexual assault. "We need to understand ... those unique attributes, by installation, and help those sexual assault response coordinators and victim advocates work with their commanders," she said. "And then [do] what they can do specifically to address those issues, to reduce the incidence of sexual harassment and sexual assault." Now, she said, the Army is working with the Department of Defense Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office on an "installation prevention project." For that, a team visited Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, where they interviewed Soldiers, commanders, and stakeholders in the legal, medical and SHARP community about the response and prevention efforts on the installation. "So we can understand the environment and develop a strategy tailored to that specific installation," she said. "We have a lot of work to do. We can, from [headquarters] level, develop an overarching strategy, but then it will require local work for them to understand what their environment looks like and develop tailored strategies." Janet Mansfield, with the Office of the Judge Advocate General, also spoke at the forum as part of a panel discussion. She said the recently created special victim prosecutor program, which includes 23 lawyers Army-wide who are specially trained in prosecuting special victim cases, was recently augmented with a new team member position called a "special victim witness liaison." There are now 23 of those new positions across the Army, she said. "They are GS-11s with a social work background, and specialized military justice training," she said. The [new team member] will be a primary source of information for the victim, [providing] the status of the case, explanations of the legal process, and assistance with referrals. Mansfield also said there is a "myth" in the Army, which should be dispelled, that once somebody has consumed one drink of alcohol, they are no longer legally capable of consenting to sexual activity. "That's not true," she said. She said that information has been added to training material, but she hears that out in the field, not all trainers are using the training materials, so they miss it. "Or worse, we have trainers who put that slide up and then say that it's not true," she said. She said recently the conviction of a Marine for sexual assault was overturned after the case went up for review because of the misinformation regarding the amount of alcohol needed to render a person incapable of providing consent. "The judges overturned that conviction, threw it out, in part, because the panel members -- those are our juries in the military -- had received official Marine Sexual Assault Prevention and Response training that included this misinformation about alcohol and consent," she said. "And that meant that the judge and the appellate court felt that these panel members could not properly apply the law, and that this accused Marine had not had a fair trial. It matters." She said right now, Army prosecutors tell her that when they interview jury members prior to a court martial and they ask about who has had training that contains the incorrect information, "at least half the hands go up every time." Soldier remains from Mexican-American War returned to United States [2016-09-30] WASHINGTON -- The remains of an unknown number of what are presumed to be American Soldiers who fought at and died during the Battle of Monterrey, part of the Mexican-American War, were returned Sept. 28, to the Port Mortuary at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware. The remains come from a site in Monterrey, Mexico, where human remains have been uncovered over a series of excavations that have taken place over the last 20 years. The Mexican government's National Institute of Anthropology and History has studied the remains from the site and determined that some of those found are likely to be American Soldiers who were killed during the Mexican-American War, which was fought between April 25, 1846 and February 3, 1848. Those remains have been turned over to the United States. "This is a good institute, an equivalent of our FBI-level forensics," said Gregory L. Gardner, who serves as branch chief for the Past Conflicts Repatriation Branch at Army Human Resources Command at Fort Knox, Kentucky. "They believe [the remains] are all American. They would not have released them to us if they had not believed that." The Army got involved in repatriation of the remains about five years ago, Gardner said. "It took us quite a while, working with the State Department, to get the Armed Forces medical examiner down to Mexico," he said. "We were able to do that in early 2015, and the Armed Forces medical examiner went down to Mexico with another anthropologist and they were able to view the remains there in Monterrey. They were allowed to take DNA samples of the remains, and they brought those DNA samples back to the Armed forces DNA identification laboratory at Dover Air Force Base." While not all the remains made available to the examiner yielded usable DNA samples, several of the DNA samples were able to be sequenced, Gardner said. "They concluded they were European in origin, which led them to believe that they were probably American service members from the Mexican-American War," he said. News of that finding was shared with the Mexican government and the Army, and earlier this year, the Mexican Foreign Service allowed for repatriation of the remains to the United States for more testing. Col. Andrew Doehring, deputy commander of the Army Reserve Aviation Command, along with three Army warrant officers, flew two C-12 Huron aircraft from Fort Knox to Monterrey on Sept. 27, to collect the remains. It's something Doehring said he is immensely proud to have been part of. "Something like this doesn't come across your desk every day, especially with remains that are basically 170 years old," he said. "When they came to us and asked, it was kind of like, this is special. It's a historical event. That was a big a part of it as well. "It was really inherent, it being Army Soldiers to recover down there, we really wanted it to be an Army mission," he said. "It's something we really wanted to do, it's the right thing to do, it's Army taking care of Soldiers that have bene missing since 170 years ago." Doehring said he and his team spent about 90 minutes on the ground in Mexico and then flew back to the United States. They stopped at Fort Hood, Texas, for refueling and crew rest, and then departed early Wednesday morning for Dover Air Force Base. At Dover, Gardner said, the military performed a "standard repatriation and dignified transfer of remains," similar to what happens when fallen Soldiers are brought home from Iraq or Afghanistan. "Any time we can bring Americans Soldiers home and put them in their rightful burial place, American soil, then that's the ultimate thing," Doehring said. "It honors their service and everything they fought for." Now that the remains are back in the United States, they have been turned over to the Armed Forces Medical Examiner, Gardner said. "So now we start the process of trying to confirm that these are all Americans." It's believed that around 11 individuals are included in the remains, though determining the exact number of individuals represented will be part of the work done by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner. Gardner said that right now, one family from Tennessee has stepped forward to say they believe one of those among the remains might be a relative of theirs. He said that if more families are able to do the same, and able to provide family DNA reference samples, then identification of individuals within the remains might be possible. But he also said those involved in the project remain cautious about what can actually be done. "We'll do our best to identify any individuals," he said. "But I think that everybody involved in this project understands that's going to be difficult." He said if it were possible to confirm the identity of any of the remains, then those remains would be turned over to next of kin for burial. One factor complicating the matter of identification is that many of the Soldiers were likely recent immigrants to the United States, he said. Another is that record keeping from the period is not what is common today. "The records were not that great from that period," he said. "We don't have what we would have today from a Soldier, with next of kin and all that. And many of the next of kin might not have come to the United States." What's more likely, Gardner said, is that the remains will be determined to be American Soldiers, but that their individual identities will remain unknown. He said if it proves possible to separate out individuals from the collection of remains, then those remains will likely be buried separately, as an "unknowns." For the rest of the remains, he said, it's likely they will be buried as a group of unknowns from the Mexican-American War. The final decision on what to do with the remains will determined "much higher up" in the government, Gardner said. The Army would also like to find out, if possible, what unit the remains came from. Gardner said there were many units involved in Mexican-American War, including units from Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas. New personnel system key to ferreting out untapped Soldier talent [2016-10-05] WASHINGTON -- There's a lot of untapped talent in the Army, especially among Soldiers who serve in the reserve components, but that's going to change, according to the Army's senior personnel officer. Most Citizen-Soldiers put on their uniforms at least two days a month, but they still spend most of their time in civilian clothes doing jobs that require skills and talents the Army hasn't really ever paid much attention to, said Lt. Gen. James C. McConville, the Army's deputy chief of staff, G-1. That will change with full deployment of new personnel software, called the Integrated Personnel and Pay System-Army. IPPS-A will provide a huge range of human resources and pay capabilities for the regular Army, the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve, McConville said. One of the capabilities IPPS-A will provide Army leadership is the ability to track talent inside the force, across all three components of the Army. It will track the skills and talents and capabilities that individual Soldiers might have, outside their regular Army job. "It'll be the first time in the history of the Army that we have all three components, the active, the Guard and the Reserve on one system," McConville said. "That's a huge deal. Right now as the G-1 of the Army, I can't screen for the talent I have in the Guard and Reserve." At the 2016 Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition, leaders said IPPS-A will replace 45 existing systems that currently do things independently of each other. McConville relayed a scenario from about eight years ago, back when he was serving as deputy commanding general (support), 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), and Combined Joint Task Force-101, Operation Enduring Freedom, in Afghanistan. Then, he said, there was a surge, and "we needed a lot of skill sets that would help us build up Afghanistan." There were Reserve and Guard forces there, he said, and those Soldiers were asked to provide information about talents and skills they used during their civilian jobs. "Basically what we found out, the Army is managing this person as a supply sergeant, but they might have been running a construction company," back home, McConville said. "Or they were an S-3, or a captain or a major in infantry, but we found out this person was the head of the Texas Highway Department." In the reserve components, the Army has an array of talents, right at its fingertips, he said. But until now there's been no way to document that talent, or to identify who has it, so the Army could make use of it. The Army's Talent Management Task Force will use IPSSA-A as a way to document those talents and exploit them where needed, he said. "We mange people in the Army basically by two variables: what is your rank and what is your occupational specialty," McConville said. "We don't know enough about them. We truly don't know what their knowledge, skills and abilities are. Now we have a million folks that we can tap into and get them on the field in the right position, in the right place at the right time." Now, McConville said, the Army will be able to use IPPS-A to define Soldiers by as many as 25 variables, for instance, instead of just rank and specialty, and that will provide much more detail on what a Soldier can do beyond what the Army currently thinks might be the capability. That will help the Army put the best people into the jobs it needs to fill, he said. "We're going to be able to screen their name for their cognitive and non-cognitive skill sets. So if we're hiring somebody, and need somebody who is a very good writer or good speaker, we'll know that. And if we want somebody that can work with the interagency, we'll know that ... or they speak this language, or have this type of skill set. Maj. Gen. Wilson A. Shoffner, director of the Army Talent Management Task Force, said IPPS-A will provide "talent matching" for Army jobs. "There are some social apps out there that do that," already he said. "But this is on a very large scale, almost 1.1 million people. It's an information technology system that will allow us to see the talents that are out there, to forecast the requirements of the jobs we need done, and those jobs may have to do with a deployment or upcoming operation, and then make that automated match, so the individual can see it, the assignment officer can see it, and leaders and officers can see it. "The best way to think of it is an open market place for allowing units, allowing individuals to compete for talent, and to allow individuals to tell us what they want, and to be able to see the jobs that are out there in the future." Because IPPS-A works across all three components, it'll allow the Army to dip into the total force for talent, Shoffner said. That's something it couldn't do before, and something it will benefit greatly from when IPPS-A comes fully online. "It's going to be a game-changer once we get the system in place," he said. This winter, Shoffner said, a "bridge" to IPPS-A called the "assignment interactive module" will be piloted with students from the Command and General Staff College. "We're going to use our normal distribution cycles, our normal assignment cycles, to take a look at that population -- it's about 900 officers -- and that'll be our first stab or attempt at trying to get this right," he said. The Army should have an automated talent management capability established by late next summer, he said. Milley: Army on cusp of profound, fundamental change [2016-10-06] WASHINGTON -- The future of the Army may not involve divisions, corps, tanks or Bradley fighting vehicles, said the Army's chief of staff. And that future isn't 100 years away, or even 50. It's only about 25 to 30 years away. Gen. Mark A. Milley spoke Oct. 4 at the 2016 Association of the U.S. Army Annual Meeting and Exposition's Eisenhower Luncheon. The Army of the future he described in his remarks bore little resemblance to the Army that Soldiers know today, not just in its technology, but also in how it fights and where it fights. "I suspect that the organizations and weapons and doctrines of land armies, between 2025 and 2050, in that quarter-century period of time, will be fundamentally different than what we see today," he said. He cited the scenario of a Civil War combat Soldier attempting to visualize a World War II or Vietnam Soldier as the appropriate comparison for what Soldiers of today should expect in the way of change over the next two decades. While the evolution of soldiering from the Civil War era to Vietnam took about 100 years, Milley said it won't take a century for that level of change to happen again. It will happen in the next 20 to 30 years, the amount of time it takes a second lieutenant who commissions next spring to become a general. "Rapid change has become increasingly compressed," he said. "Those of us today will find it difficult to recognize the battlefield of 2035, let alone 2050." Future conflicts will come about in the same way conflicts come about today; nation states will fight to protect their interests, he said, and engage in conflict over territory or resources. But the ways in which nations wage war will change dramatically. The weapons, the technology, and the domains will change. The battlefield will no longer be the battlefield that the Army Soldiers and the Army leadership train for today. Preparing for that new era will be one of the toughest challenges the Army will face in the next 25 years. "Crisis will unfold rapidly, compressing decision cycles and response times," Milley said. "Ambiguous actors, intense information wars, and cutting-edge technology will confuse situational understanding." That overload of information, he said, will be possible only when the communications technology works. But Soldiers of the future, he said, should expect that all their communications, including communication with their higher headquarters, will be contested -- and will probably fail. They should expect to work without it, he said. "[Soldiers will] operate routinely in a partially or significantly degraded environment," he said. "That means we must invest in hardening our systems and, equally important, train on the techniques of operating with limited electronics. That'll be a shocker for all of us. We may have to read a paper map again and learn to use a magnetic compass." More significantly, when electronics fail, Soldiers will have to operate without communication with their higher headquarters. Milley suggested at an Oct. 3 press conference that lack of contact might continue for days, weeks, or even months at a time, and that Soldiers might need to operate knowing only the overarching strategic goal of their higher level of command. Under those conditions, small units would be called upon to execute the intent of their commander, Milley said "without ever having actual contact with our higher headquarters for extended periods of time ... This method will have to become a reality in everything we do." Operating without supervision, he said, will require a new kind of leader. "The willingness to disobey specific orders to achieve the intended purpose, the willingness to take risks to meet the intent, the acceptance of failure and practice in order to learn from experimentation: these are all going to have to be elevated in the pantheon of leader traits," Milley said. The environment those Solders will operate in, he said, will be "highly lethal," and "unlike anything our Army has experienced, at least since World War II." Milley then drew attention to the proliferation of technology and its decreasing cost, which makes it possible to connect everything -- and to put sensors everywhere. "It has become cheap, to the point where there are way more [internet-connected] communication devices than there are people ... no matter where you go in the world today, it's observable from some device," he said. With sensors everywhere, he said, Soldiers in the future will have to operate with the understanding that, "the probability of being seen is very high. And as always, if you can be seen, you will be hit, and you will be hit fast." Milley said formations will need to be small, on the move constantly, and will have to "employ every known technique of cover and concealment." That also means an end to the warfighting environment that Soldiers know from serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. In future conflicts, there won't be a place for something like Victory Base Complex in Baghdad, or an installation like Bagram, Milley said. "That fact requires a significant change in our current methods of thinking, training and fighting." The warfighting environment for the Soldiers of the future, he said, "will be extremely austere. Water, chow, ammo, fuel, maintenance and medical support will be all that we should plan for." Soldiers will no longer be able to count on comforts like fast food and showers. "Being surrounded will become the norm, the routine, the life of a unit in combat," he said. "In short, learning to be comfortable with being seriously miserable every single minute of every single day will have to become a way of life for an Army on the battlefield that I see coming." Even the meager resupply will be different. Soldiers might , in some cases, be expected to produce water for themselves, Milley said, or even devise replacement parts for their gear with 3D printing. When lines of communication are open, a robotic supply convoy might be "the only acceptable method of supply that we can get to forward troops." Milley described the battlefield of the future as non-linear and predicted that friendly forces may face significant geographic dispersion. "This type of battlefield will place a very high premium on independent, relatively small formations that are highly lethal and linked to very long-range precision fires," he said. "Our formations will come under enemy fixed-wing, rotary-wing, [unmanned aerial vehicle] and missile attack on a routine basis." Ground forces will no longer be able to depend on the dominance of the air provided by another service, but instead, "units are going to have to be combined arms, multi-domain capable." "We will still have to fight and destroy land-based enemy units and seize terrain," Milley continued, "but the Army ... we're going to sink ships. And we're definitely going to have to dominate the airspace above our units from hostile air or missile attack. This is going to require sophisticated air defense capabilities that are not currently in our unit inventories." And there will be somewhat of a role reversal as well, he said. Land-based forces will need to penetrate denied areas to assist air and naval forces, which is "the exact opposite of what we have done for the past 70 years, where air and naval forces have enabled ground forces." Will the Army be able to achieve the changes Milley predicts? He thinks so. "We're the United States Army," he said. "And our enemies need to know these colors don't run from tough fights. We will adapt and we will evolve our current force. But in the end, we will win. That much I can tell our enemies ... They can take it to the bank." Additive manufacturing 'big part' of Army future, AMC commander says [2016-10-06] WASHINGTON -- Take a walk through Best Buy or Microcenter, and you'll likely find a 3D printer there making some sort of bauble out of extruded plastic. Army leaders say that kind of additive manufacturing technology has a role in the future of Army logistics and supply. "I'm a huge advocate," said Gen. Gustave F. Perna, the new commander of Army Materiel Command. "I believe that our two greatest things that we can really make advancement on are robotics and additive manufacturing. I think there is great strength in additive manufacturing." Perna spoke, Oct. 5, at the Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition, alongside Katrina McFarland, who serves as the assistant secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology. He said additive manufacturing could find a home in two places within the Army of the future. At the strategic level, he said, it would work at depots, and with Army prepositioned stocks. "We can use it to reduce the supply chain requirements and help us ensure that we get the products moving through our lines in a timely manner," he said. "I think that would be powerful for us. We have to take the depot workload, and really operationalize it to the requirement, and connect it to the sustainment readiness model. I think additive manufacturing will help us there." Additive manufacturing might also be found forward-deployed, to provide on-demand fulfillment of Soldier and commander needs, without having to depend on resupply missions. "Where do we put it on the battlefield to eliminate supply chain requirements? For example, put something in a convoy?" he said. "Or reduce the time it takes to repair something that we know is down. Truthfully, I believe we have to work through that. We have to come to consensus on the business rules for that. We have to understand the impact to supply chains and support requirements, and then we have to direct the execution." One could easily imagine a future where any part a Soldier needs in the field, to fix a vehicle, for instance, could be produced by that Soldier in the field -- without the need to call in delivery from higher headquarters or a supply depot through the use of a convoy. That capability would reduce the number of Soldiers put in harm's way. Getting to that future, though, will require some advance planning, Perna said. In particular, the Army will need to work with industry on the intellectual property rights for the things it might want to manufacture on-demand in the field. "Up front, in the acquisition process, we'll have to come to terms with owning the intellectual property for the things we've purchased," he said. "If we don't own the intellectual property, we won't be able to really utilize the additive manufacturing to its fullest capability." Perna also commented on the Strategic Portfolio Analysis and Review, or SPAR, recently undertaken by the Army's G-8. The SPAR will look at 780 Army equipment programs, and through modeling and simulation, evaluate their relative contribution to the Army's warfighting capability. Output from that review will be used to inform decisions by the chief of staff of the Army and the secretary of the Army about the futures of some of those programs. "I see great advantage of this initiative," Perna said. "It's about looking at the programs in depth, and then understanding how do we create space to give the secretary and chief more maneuver room to bring the right programs in. I think the SPAR will allow us to present information to the secretary and the chief so they can make decisions; more importantly, not what are we going to do, but what are we not going to do. For us it's about presenting the information so that they understand, so they have courses of action, they understand the risk, and then they will make the decision and we will execute it." Another recent development at Headquarters Department of the Army that affects Perna's AMC, is the Rapid Capabilities Office. The new office is meant to fill a gap in acquisition timelines between what the Rapid Equipping Force is capable of -- fewer than six months delivery -- and what traditional acquisition can do, which is typically longer than five years. The Rapid Capabilities Office brings something else to the table that hasn't been there before, which is the involvement of both the secretary of the Army and the chief of staff. "If it's something that's high risk, and it's an enterprise issue: that really needs the senior leadership's direct focus, immediate focus," said McFarland. "We want to know that we can actually see the progress, and pull in that decision on risk right to the senior leadership, those that would get held accountable for that issue's failure or success. We want to pull that to that level." Key focus areas now for the Rapid Capabilities Office are position navigation timing, electronic warfare, advanced protection systems and cyber capabilities. "We know and we have had quite a bit of dialogue in history that shows us those are areas of concern at the Army enterprise level," McFarland said. "So the focus is along that area. Try to focus on a one-to-five-year, get it out. Focus on the high priorities to the enterprise, get our partnerships on the floor together: AMC, the G-2, all the folks that are immediate players of the senior leadership, to advise the secretary and the chief on why or what that risk equation is that they can deliberate on." Fanning: Soldiers carry 'lion's share' of nation's commitments [2016-10-06] WASHINGTON -- U.S. military commitments are global because our interests and partners are global, said Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning during the opening of the 2016 Association of the U.S. Army Annual Meeting and Exposition Monday, Oct. 3. Since he moved from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to the Army in 2015, Fanning has visited more than 24 Army installations in 12 nations on four continents. Wherever he traveled, he said, he found Soldiers "laser-focused on our Army's most solemn mission: fighting and winning our Nation's wars." In Iraq and Afghanistan, he observed that the missions in that part of the world are carried out predominantly by Soldiers. "Whether in our mission to degrade and defeat ISIL, or in the support we provide Afghan partners against the Taliban, the Army carries the lion's share of our nation's commitment," he said. "Fully 60 percent of U.S. forces in Iraq and 70 percent in Afghanistan are Army. A key takeaway for me is just how much we're asked to do, and how few fully understand all the Army brings to the joint fight." Fanning called into question the notion that the United States spends too much on defense. "I'm often asked if we really need to spend as much as the next nine nation's combined," he said. "The answer is simple: yes, if you want us to do all that is asked of us." The Army currently has well over 100,000 troops deployed in 140 nations, supporting commanders around the world. "While other nations simply have to deny, we have to project," Fanning said. "While others have to jam, we have to penetrate. While they have to disrupt, we have to dominate. While other nations have to defend a small corner of the world, our commitments are global. ... And wherever America's interests are, our Army is there." Fanning pointed to the past to illustrate the investment the Army makes in the conflicts that the United States becomes involved in. "From the Revolutionary War onward, it has been the Army that bears the greatest share of our Nation's loss," he said. "It is Soldiers and their families who have carried the greatest burden from multiple, lengthy deployments in combat theaters." If America wants an Army that will partner with allies in Europe to deter Russian aggression, support South Korea against the increasingly aggressive North Korea, support state and local authorities, and undertake a host of other critical missions at home and around the world, Fanning said ... "You have to pay for it." Army tests new warfighting tech at Army Warfighting Assessment [2016-10-18] WASHINGTON -- The first full "Army Warfighting Assessment," AWA 17.1, kicked off here Monday. The two-week exercise is meant to gather feedback from Soldiers on the performance of new warfighting capabilities like robotics systems and autonomous weapons systems in a life-like combat situation, according to Maj. Gen. Terry McKenrick, commander of the Army's Brigade Modernization Command. "How well do these capabilities perform?" he said during a media day Friday, describing the questions the AWA is intended to answer. "Do they meet the requirements? Are the requirements right? Is there a way to make this capability better?" Participants in AWA 17.1 include Soldiers from the regular Army, Army National Guard, and Army Reserve, as well as soldiers from the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Denmark and Italy. During the AWA, Soldiers will implement 41 concepts and capabilities designed to meet 20 "warfighting challenges" posited by the Army. The exercise will be stopped three times so the Soldiers can provide insight on how the new capabilities helped or hindered the execution of their mission. McKenrick said the feedback will be analyzed by the Brigade Modernization Command. "We determine some findings and recommendations; we then brief that through a series of governance forms, and then it goes up to the Department of the Army, where senior leaders ... can prioritize and make decisions," he said. In some cases, the new capabilities will be fielded to the Army; in others, improvements will be called for; and in still others, the capability will be judged ineffective or incapable of meeting the capability gap for which it was designed. Capabilities being assessed at AWA 17.1 include unmanned aerial systems, including the micro UAS, a "leader-follower" capability that is meant to increase the safety of convoy operations by limiting the number of drivers needed for vehicles. The Army defines the 20 "warfighting challenges" that new capabilities like the micro UAS are meant to answer as "enduring first-order problems, the solutions to which [will] improve the combat effectiveness of the current and future force." "We vet every concept and capability for [Network Integration Evaluations and AWAs] against those warfighting challenges, making sure we're focused on solving the highest priority problems and gaps affecting our Army," McKenrick said. In the past, the Army conducted an array of NIEs, 11 in all, at a rate of two per year. Such evaluations are meant to determine how well equipment works within the existing Army network. That's not the goal of the AWA, McKenrick said. Its purpose is to examine how new concepts and capabilities integrate into the war fight, rather than whether equipment works on the Army network. The AWA also brings in multi-national partners -- because the Army doesn't fight alone, McKenrick said. The AWA is meant to further develop interoperability in a joint, inter-organizational, and multinational environment -- one of the 20 warfighting challenges. The AWA 17.1 is the first AWA, which is being held this year instead of an NIE. According to McKenrick, the Army will host one AWA and one NIE each year, in lieu of two NIEs a year. In July the Army will host NIE 17.2 at Fort Bliss. The Army already has plans for AWA 18.1 and NIE 18.2; as well as AWA 19.1 and NIE 19.2. AWA brings 3-D printing, customized missile warning, autonomous vehicles to warfight [2016-10-20] FORT BLISS, Texas -- Capt. Jonathan Janiszewski doesn't want to be accused of crying wolf. But he might have been in the past, at least by some Soldiers. As an Air Defense Airspace Management, or ADAM, officer, Janiszewski and his team monitor airspace for 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division at Fort Bliss. They're participating in the two-week Army Warfighter Assessment 17.1 that began Monday. The exercise is meant to gather feedback from Soldiers on the performance of new warfighting capabilities. Among the many roles of the ADAM team is to monitor the sky for incoming airborne threats -- rockets, artillery, and mortars for instance -- and warn Soldiers in the brigade combat team that they ought to take cover. Right now, Janiszewski says, when his team senses such a threat, they send out alerts to warn everybody. But that's the problem -- not everybody is actually in danger. And when Soldiers are warned too often of impending doom from the sky that never comes, they can get complacent. And that's dangerous, too. At the AWA 17.1, Janiszewski and his team are trying out a software upgrade for their existing Air Missile Defense Workstation and Forward Area Air Defense system. The software allows his team to warn specific Soldiers -- the Soldiers who would actually be hit -- so they can take protective measures. It's called, "Leader Effects Tool Suite and Localized Warn to the Edge Capability," or "LETs Warn" for short. "So, we're not crying wolf," he said "We're informing the exact individual who is going to be impacted by that threat, of that threat, and that allows them to react accordingly. It allows those Soldiers to take cover, get inside hardened shelters." In addition to warning just those Soldiers who will be affected by the impending impact of an attack, LETs Warn also ensures that others who aren't in immediate danger receive an advisory or situational awareness-type message. "We're only warning the individuals affected by that threat," Janiszewski said. "As a result, we end up with a situation where everyone else continues to maneuver. Adjacent units continue their mobility, their attack, whatever it is they are in the midst of executing." At AWA 17.1, the ADAM team will use the LETs Warn system to alert Solders to air strike warnings. Soldiers will receive those messages on either Joint Battlefield Command Platform/Joint Capabilities Release systems or the Nett Warrior system. "If you tell somebody over and over they are about to take fire, and they never actually receive fire because it lands two miles away, then it desensitizes the Soldier," Janiszewski said. "We're saving lives because we send the right message to the right people at the right time." PRINTING A TANK TREAD Chief Warrant Officer 2 Ron A. Billingslea is an allied tradesman with the 47th Brigade Support Battalion, part of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division. He oversees the fabrication of wood and metal projects to support his brigade. At AWA 17.1, he's got the ability to work in plastic, too. Billingslea is assessing the Rapid Fabrication via Additive Manufacturing on the Battlefield system, or R-FAB. The R-FAB amounts to a mobile container with an array of 3-D printers on board that allow him to fabricate plastic parts on-demand for Soldiers in the brigade. "As allied tradesmen, this is one of the biggest tools we've been waiting on for a couple of years," Billingslea said. "This, along with the Metal Working and Machine Shop Set, will give us a full-circle of what we can possibly do." Inside the R-FAB, Billingslea has the handful of 3-D printers grinding away, extruding plastic to manufacture parts he thinks brigade Soldiers will need during the AWA. One printer was producing plastic washers while another produced treads for robotic ground vehicles. The 3-D printers themselves are commercially available and are not the focus at AWA 17.1. The focus is assessing how having those devices on hand help him better serve the bridge. "Soldier readiness and Soldier innovation," are the goals of the system, Billingslea said. Getting started, he said, when they first set up for AWA 17.1, they found they had a generator but no tool to lock down the grounding rod. "So instead of using a normal socket wrench or monkey wrench, where we'd have metal-to-metal contact, we came in and printed out a plastic wrench," he said. "It took us a couple hours to make it, but we were able to ground our generator." Using 3-D printing, they also came up with a device to allow Soldiers in the motor pool to open 55-gallon drums. Soldiers had been using hammers and screwdrivers to pound away at the lids on the drums, in an attempt to open them, Billingslea said. "We came up with a way to carbon-inlay a tool to just push in a little, apply some pressure and it opens perfectly fine." Billingslea said his team is also working now on a "skid" they could manufacture on-site that will allow radios to be removed quickly from combat vehicles in the event that Soldiers need to evacuate. Capt. Jeremy R. Pinson, of Combined Armed Services Command, who was also inside the R-FAB, said when a Soldier needs a part, such as a tread for an autonomous robotic ground vehicle, they can manufacture it on-demand with the R-FAB, but they will still order a replacement. While it may take 12 hours for the part to arrive, a temporary part could be printed in 10 hours. With the ability to manufacture just about anything, it may seem as though ordering replacement parts would be a thing of the past. But for now, 3D-printed parts will serve as a novel stop-gap solution for the period between when a part breaks and when a replacement part arrives, rather than a permanent substitution. Pinson said there remains one hurdle to that concept of operations: intellectual property. Manufacturers often own the design patents on the parts inside the machines they sell the Army, which means the Army can't simply manufacture new parts in lieu of purchasing parts from the manufacturer. Pinson said the Army is currently looking for a model to make good use of the 3-D printing capability while also ensuring manufacturers are compensated for their intellectual property. Before AWA 17.1 began on Monday, Billingslea had already found one flaw in the R-FAB system: a camera used to model real-world objects in 3-D so they can be modified and manipulated in computer design software and then printed. The camera was not rugged enough for the combat environment. LEAD, FOLLOW OR GET OUT OF THE WAY On a dirt road outside the 47th Brigade Support Battalion camp here, Capt. Octavia Heningburg described the synchronized ballet of Palletized Loading System vehicles that lumbered down the road, kicking up dust. The two PLS vehicles were equipped with a "Leader/Follower" system that allows one vehicle to follow the other, without needing a driver. Whatever the first vehicle does, Heningburg said, the second vehicle "will do the same thing. If it stops, the second vehicle stops." The Army thinks the system might be great for convoy operations. Where a five-vehicle convoy might need 10 Soldiers, two in each vehicle, "Leader/Follower" would mean they need only two drivers. The lead vehicle would have two live drivers, while the next four "follower" vehicles would be driverless and simply follow the lead vehicle's every move. At the demonstration at Fort Bliss, there was actually a person in the second vehicle, though Heningburg said he wasn't touching the steering wheel. He was just there for safety, she said. "His hands, during this demonstration, are going to be outside the vehicle, to demonstrate that he is not moving this vehicle," she said. "It's getting control based on the first vehicle." Each Leader/Follower vehicle can be programmed to be either a leader or a follower, as needed. The vehicles are equipped with features normally found on today's high-end passenger vehicles like collision-mitigation braking, lane-changing assist, backup warning, and backup-assist. The system also notifies drivers to danger with visual and audio alerts. If the driver doesn't take action, the system can apply brakes and steering to avoid accidents. At Fort Bliss, as part of the AWA 17.1, five Palletized Loading System vehicles were equipped with Leader/Follower capability, and two additional Humvees were equipped as "command" vehicles. The vehicles could all actually operate driverless -- with the "leader" vehicle taking direction from GPS-cued waypoints rather than a Soldier operator, according Maj. Mark A. Gesky, of Army Capabilities Integration Center. But he said Leader/Follower is the near-term goal. Adopting the system could increase Soldier safety, because with vehicles that drive themselves, fewer Solders will be on the road and in harm's way. "It's a force protection issue, primarily," Gesky said. "We can take Soldiers out of vehicles that are less protected and transfer them into better-protected vehicles, whether that be mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles or other up-armored vehicles." And when a commander discovers he needs fewer Soldiers as drivers on convoy operations, that means those Soldiers can be used elsewhere, to support other missions. "It'll increase our throughput capability," he said. "With the same [number] of people, you can do more operations. You don't' have to worry about crew rest." UNDER EVALUATION, DOCTRINALLY SOUND As with every capability under evaluation at the AWA, Soldiers will be asked to provide feedback on the Leader/Follower system, said Col. Charles Lombardo, 2d Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division. The 2nd BCT has been at Bliss, and involved in past Network Integration Evaluations since 2011. Lombardo said AWA 17.1 will be their last such assessment, as they are reintegrating into U.S. Army Forces Command rotations. But for now, he said, his brigade is well-versed in assessing the impact of new equipment like the Leader/Follower system, the LETs Warn, the R-FAB, or any of the 41 concepts and capabilities under evaluation. "It's not only what we take forward, it's what we don't take forward," he said. "And with the Soldiers here, working it at the ground level, you get very frank, honest feedback at the user level, which you may not always get if you don't have an active brigade actually testing this." Starting in June and all the way though the kick-off of AWA 17.1 Monday, Lombardo and the Soldiers in his brigade went through "doctrinal integration" of the concepts and capabilities that would be assessed at AWA 17.1. "We kind of study what [Army Training and Doctrine Command] is thinking about, and how they want to employ [a capability]," he said. "We match that to our current doctrine, so we are doctrinally sound ... [and] we employ it in the correct manner." Lombardo noted that the AWA will be stopped three times so that Soldiers can provide their feedback to data collectors from Brigade Modernization Command -- which runs the AWA -- and the Army Test and Evaluation Command, the Army Capabilities Integration Center, Army Training and Doctrine Command, and others. "This is Soldiers providing frank feedback to the data collectors," he said. "It's unfettered. People aren't editing that. It's from the Soldiers." Vice chief lays out objectives for future unmanned systems [2016-10-26] WASHINGTON -- In the future, defense contractors who want to build unmanned systems for the Army must focus on increased situational awareness, lightening the load on Soldiers and force-protection capabilities. Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Daniel B. Allyn was the keynote speaker Wednesday morning at an Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International conference just walking distance from the Pentagon. He told a room full of defense industry insiders just exactly what the Army is looking for going forward when it comes to both ground-based and aerial unmanned systems. For the Army to be interested, he said, new unmanned systems must first "increase situational awareness" for Soldiers. "Going where manned systems cannot, thereby increasing standoff, survivability, and agility for our Soldiers in our units," he said. The general pointed out that late next year, the Army will begin fielding improvements to the MQ-1C Grey Eagle unmanned aircraft, providing greater payload capacity and increased range. "We are developing multi-functional electronic-warfare payloads for our Grey Eagles to sustain critical-information dominance on this future battlefield," Allyn said. New unmanned systems must also lighten the Soldier's load. They must make it easier for Soldiers to operate physically, and must also be easier for Soldiers to operate, with less training and less complexity, Allyn said. "Heavy loads increase fatigue and limit commanders' options in both space and duration," Allyn said. "Therefore, we are focused on capabilities like the Squad Multipurpose Equipment Transport, an unmanned system capable of carrying a squad's worth of equipment, life support and combat gear, with multi-functional flexibility for key contributions to power generation and casualty evacuation during dismounted operations." While the SMET can carry the heavy gear for Soldiers, taking the burden off their backs, Allyn also said future unmanned systems must also lighten a Soldiers cognitive load. They must be less complicated to operate, require fewer types of operators, and less training. One solution, the One System Remote Video Terminal, can be used to operate more than one type of unmanned aerial system. "This breakthrough technology, enabling a common interface for multiple types of unmanned systems, means that both Shadow and Grey Eagle operators, who today use different displays, will enjoy commonality, along with as-yet undeveloped unmanned systems, on the same interface," Allyn said. "This capability will provide commanders greater flexibility; they will reduce operator workload, and increase interoperability within the Army and the joint force." Allyn also said future unmanned systems must help sustain the force with increased distribution, throughput and efficiency. He cited ongoing testing of the "Leader/Follower" capability, now being evaluated at Fort Bliss, Texas, as part of Army Warfighter Assessment 17.1, as an example. "They must be capable of moving material to the battlefield, while providing commanders a broad array of distribution options," he said. The Leader/Follower capability puts a driver in but one vehicle in a convoy, with an additional four vehicles that can follow, unmanned -- they drive automatically, taking cues from the single manned vehicle. "Similar to autonomous driving efforts being tested around the country, this capability, set to go into production by 2024, will reduce the threat to our Soldiers, increase commanders' range of options, and improve our sustainability and endurance," Allyn said. Early evaluations of Leader/Follower, he said demonstrate that manned/unmanned teaming "isn't something that just works in the air, it works on the ground." Future unmanned systems must also facilitate movement and maneuver, "the core business of our Army," Allyn said. The Army is interested in "scalable control," he said, where UAV operators and recovery teams, for instance, can transfer control of systems to other Soldiers in other units that need assistance. "This will enable ground combat units to positively control UAV assets, prioritizing efforts as needed, in support of a broader array of mission objectives," Allyn said. "It'll also free up UAV operators -- always in short supply -- for other missions." Allyn also pointed to the Common Robotic System-Individual as an example of an unmanned system enhancing movement and maneuver. He said the man-portable CRS-I, which weighs less than 25 pounds, provides dismounted forces with ground-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear detection, and explosive-ordinance disposal capabilities. "Once fielded, this capability will provide our Soldiers with on-sight abilities that now reside only at higher command echelons," he said. Finally, future unmanned systems must help "protect the force," Allyn said. Already, unmanned systems help secure bases and routes in theater, and unmanned robotics are used by explosive-ordnance disposal teams to diffuse improvised explosive devices. "In the future, route clearance and interrogation systems will provide route clearance teams an unmanned semi-automated capability to interrogate, excavate and classify deeply-buried IEDs and caches," he said. "This will increase Soldier stand-off, and ability to detect and neutralize IED threats." Army researchers engage in quantum entanglement research [2016-10-27] ADELPHI, Md. -- At the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, scientists are looking at new ways to exploit the most fundamental or "quantum" component of light -- the photon -- to enhance communications, sensing and cryptography, and anything else they can think of. "We don't really know what all the applications are. But our mandate, in part, is to find those applications," said Michael Brodsky, a physical scientist at Army Research Laboratory. "If a sufficient number of parties share a sufficient number of entangled particles, is there any application?" Brodsky asked. "That's what we're looking for. Ten years from now, we'll have a better answer to that question." Brodsky is setting up a new lab at the ARL, located about 12 miles north of the Pentagon in Adelphi, Maryland. He has boxes there that generate entangled photons -- the smallest measure of light. It's entangled photons that are of interest to Brodsky and the Army. A pair of entangled photons exhibits a unique property that Brodsky and his team hope to exploit. A single photon, on its own, can be captured in a memory unit -- or "quantum storage" -- and subsequently measured. The measurements can be recorded as well. But when two entangled photons are captured and measured in the same way, they yield the same measurements every time, Brodsky said. Those same two entangled protons could be split up, on different sides of the lab, on different sides of a research campus, or on different sides of the country, and still, because they are entangled, they behave the same way, and so they yield the same measurements no matter where they are. The results of those measurements are unpredictable -- completely random -- and can be converted to a string of zeros and ones, Brodsky said, but "you get identical strings of zeros and ones at two remote locations. Which, for instance, could be used as a key for secure communications." A critical part of cryptography and secure communications is the use of random numbers. On both sides of the communication, both parties will need the same string of random numbers to encrypt that communication. If both parties had one half of an entangled pair of photons, then they would both have an endless supply of random numbers at their disposal, and those random numbers would be the same. So a pair of entangled photons, distributed to two parties, could be used to encrypt communications between the two parties. Distributing those entangled photons is a key issue for Brodsky and his team -- how to get the entangled photons to where they need to be, to multiple parties, so everybody can make use of the properties of the entangled photons. One way to do that is with fiber optics. A photon, which is light, can be sent by fiber optics. "We've looked at how to take classical networking devices and integrate them in a fashion that would allow us to perform that function," said Robert J. Drost, also with ARL. "The idea is that a conventional networking design has requirements that are more restrictive than what we need to do. Because we have less restrictive requirements, we are able to optimize this design to minimize the loss that these photons experience through the network, and minimize the number of devices that are needed to be able to perform the function that we wanted." It's not just two parties that can make use of the properties exhibited by entangled photons. It's multiple parties. And at ARL, they are looking at how to build networks of fiber optics with fiber-optic switching devices, to distribute those photons where they need to go, without degrading the photons themselves. "The question is, how many switches you need to serve all possible entanglement requests from 6, 8 or 10 parties," Brodsky said. "We developed a theoretical framework, and subsequently performed some optimization routines, based on which we said these designs are optimal; the least number of switches you could possibly use to satisfy all possible entanglement requests." Brodsky and his team will be working to develop networks where command posts or stations, called nodes, can get what they need, and where it's possible to distribute entangled photons in every combination to every node, but at the same time, also use the least amount of hardware so as to ensure the least amount of degradation. Having entangled photons generated from a single, central node, and then distributed outward to other nodes, is one idea. "At this central node, we're going to generate entangled photons, but we need to know how to get those entangled photons to the ... neighboring nodes that are necessary to allow one particular node and another to do some quantum communications," Drost said. "And then maybe an hour later, this same node wants to do some secure communications with a completely different node. We need a device that will allow us to reroute and send those entangled photons to those new pair of users that want to perform some sort of quantum protocol." Another quirk of entangled photons is "entanglement swapping." Two photons can be entangled: A1 and A2, for instance. And two other photons are also entangled: B1 and B2. A1 and A2, because they are entangled, behave the same, as do B1 and B2. Brian Kirby, a post-doctoral fellow at ARL, explained that by doing a particular "operation" on B2 and A1, those two photons will be destroyed. But as a result, A1 and B2 will become entangled, even if they've never been together. "This idea of distributing entanglement in this way has been thought of before. And we're interested in how it would work for the warfighter, and how it would work in very noisy, realistic situations," Kirby said. "I did a lot of modeling on how this operation, this spreading of entanglement, would work if you are in a very noisy environment, places that have low signals and things like that. So for example, how it would be on the battlefield, where it's messy and loud and things don't work very well." Finding ways to distribute entangled photons, and using those entangled photons for secure networking are just two challenges that ARL is working on now. But they are looking at other ways to use entangled photons as well, such as enhancing sensors and quantum computing, for instance. "We need to search for more applications. We need to see what is possible -- what this quantum relation can be used for," Brodsky said. New sensors and cameras may help defeat improvised threats [2016-10-28] WASHINGTON -- Earlier this month, the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Organization held an open house at Fort Belvoir, setting up display tables on a field overlooking the bank of the Potomac River. More than a dozen programs from academia, industry and the government's own labs were on display, highlighting the best of what JIDO is involved with in the way of countering improvised threats, improvised explosive devices, enemy use of unmanned aerial vehicles, and helping to support the counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency missions of combatant commanders. The "Dream Catcher" program, for instance, aims to make it easier for those running security outside a forward operating base to identify would-be threats well before they approach the checkpoint. "The notion behind the Dream Catcher project is this can be used as a system to identify people trying to get into a restricted access area," said a program spokesperson. "If you're in a scenario where you've got people that are supposed to be there, you bring them in and enroll them into a very high-definition scan. And if somebody is approaching the gate, you can reach out and see them ... and you can get identification on them. If you have somebody driving in with a passenger, and you recognize the driver and you don't recognize the passenger, you can say these guys need to get diverted over to the secondary screening." The Dream Catcher project aims to fuse together input from multiple sensors -- well before they get close enough to do harm -- and match that information against what's already stored in a database. Anybody who's not already in the system would put security personnel on alert. TETHERED AIRBORNE MINE DETECTION Set up near a Husky Vehicle Mounted Mine Detection System was the "On-the-Move Exploitation and Reconnaissance" system. They called it "MOVER" for short. For the moment, the MOVER consists of a Humvee with a camera-enabled unmanned aerial vehicle tethered to its front end. While the Husky VMMD system uses ground-penetrating radar to discover land mines, it moves slowly. And it's radar system has to be over the top of the land mine in order to detect it. The goal of MOVER is "forward-looking" detection, rather than the Husky VMMD's right-over-the-top detection, said a MOVER spokesperson. Right now, the MOVER is in developmental stages. The tethered UAV it currently uses is commercially available, and used elsewhere to inspect powerlines. But when implemented, the MOVER system will consist of a tethered UAV with more than just visible sensors, but also long-wave and thermal as well. Route clearance teams would be able to use the system to see the ground ahead of them, from up in the air, while moving at full speed. Sensors onboard the UAV would see in multiple spectrums to look for earth that has been disturbed. And imagery taken from the UAV could be compared to imagery taken from the last time the route was cleared, to see if any changes could be detected that might indicate emplacement of explosive threats. Software would handle such comparisons. The Husky VMMD would still look for mines, but it could move much faster than it does now, the spokesperson said, because the MOVER would essentially be calling out the stretches of road that are safe, and indicating when the Husky should slow down so that it could more cautiously approach a suspected explosive emplacement. 360 VIEWPORT Right now, there are only a few cameras found onboard the Stryker combat vehicle. In some cases, there may be a camera available as part of a Common Remotely Operated Weapon System. There may also be a camera for commanders to use, to look around at what's going on outside the vehicle. Others inside the vehicle can also make use of built-in periscopes to see what's going on outside. But to get full awareness of what's going on outside the Stryker, Soldiers routinely drive around with their head sticking out of the top of two ports on the vehicle -- which exposes them to danger. The Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate, along with the Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Command, or TARDEC, are working to fix that for Soldiers, to provide them 360 degrees of situational awareness through the use of video cameras mounted on the outside of the Stryker. On the Stryker kitted-up at Fort Belvoir, there were six video cameras mounted on the vehicle's outside. Three were on the front, one on each side, and one on the rear of the vehicle. The cameras provide 180 degrees of visibility to the driver -- more than the driver currently has -- and 360 to the commander of the vehicle and others aboard. Through the use of software enhancement, those cameras will allow Soldiers inside the Stryker to see through dust that might be kicked up by other vehicles that are traveling in advance, and to also detect muzzle flash, so they can determine where threats might be, a spokesperson for the project said. While the project is now in just testing phases, the same spokesperson said he thinks if the project comes to fruition, those cameras will display their imagery on video screens that are already onboard the Stryker, rather than on new screens that would need to be installed. He also said project engineers are interested in development of head-worn displays -- goggles for instance -- that would allow Soldiers inside the vehicle to look around while seated in the vehicle, and see what's going on outside, as though they could see through the hull. Acquisition official to retire, will leave legacy of advancement [2016-11-01] WASHINGTON -- Katrina McFarland, the Army's assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics and technology, is retiring Tuesday after nearly 30 years of public service and nine months with ASA(ALT). McFarland joined the Army in February 2016 to serve as the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology. In that role, she oversaw the execution of the Army's acquisition function, including life-cycle management and sustainment of Army weapons systems and research and development programs. During her time at the helm of ASA(ALT), she advanced two elements the Army deems critical to its future: modernization and acquisition reform. She was also responsible for managing the Army Acquisition Corps and the greater Army acquisition workforce, and she served as the science advisor to the secretary of the Army and as the Army's senior research and development official and senior procurement executive. McFarland also held principal responsibility for all Department of the Army matters related to logistics. Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning said he was impressed with McFarland's ability to move his modernization and acquisition reform agenda forward. "Katrina has done a fantastic job of focusing the department's efforts on the challenges of streamlining acquisition and on bringing Army modernization efforts to the forefront," Fanning said. "She may have only been in the Army a brief time, but I've worked with Katrina in OSD and elsewhere within the Pentagon. She's a fantastic engineer, a thoughtful mentor for so many, and has been a close, trusted advisor to me and General Mark A. Milley. She'll be greatly missed in the Army, but the legacy of her work lives on in all the places she's contributed to our Nation's defense, and all the people she's taken the time to teach and develop." McFarland said she knew she would be with the Army for just a short period of time. Her position, a political appointment, would by tradition end with the election of a new president. Knowing her time would be limited, she said, she entered the office with specific ideas she wanted to implement. "I felt there were things I could contribute ... So I focused on those," she said. "A lot of them were about programs, capability, process, practice, pretty much all-around things I had sort of targeted. I went into the chief and the vice and the acting secretary, and ... said, 'Here's what I think I should be doing. Do you have anything different?' They gave me a couple of additional items to pull together." One new priority that McFarland spearheaded was the Army's Rapid Capabilities Office, which stood up Aug. 11. She had already helped the Air Force stand up its own Rapid Capabilities Office in a previous role as the assistant secretary of Defense for acquisition. She describes that office and the Army's own Rapid Capabilities Office, as being similar to Lockheed-Martin's "Skunk Works." "It's a means of achieving a quick, non-risk-averse delivery of capability," she explained. "It requires people who have skills to identify and understand risk well. It requires senior leadership to be there to afford them the direct insights they need to answer to senior leaders' needs that are oftentimes not a corporate view -- which we tend to focus on." The Army's Rapid Capabilities Office provides a "sweet spot" for the acquisition and delivery of critical technologies that are of immediate need to warfighters. The goal is to deliver those new capabilities to the force between one and five years, much faster than traditional acquisition -- which can take decades -- but not quite as fast as the Rapid Equipping Force capability, which can deliver in less than six months. At the helm of the Rapid Capabilities Office will be the Army's senior-most leadership. The reasoning is that the interest and buy-in of senior leaders will ensure the Rapid Capabilities Office can deliver new technologies to the force quickly. "When I came here, it was very clear that the Army wanted a Rapid Capabilities Office," McFarland said. "And luckily, having had some experience in the matter, ... it was one of those things where we were able to take advantage of [what] they learned, and create our own. ... We're in the process of executing it. ... And we have some very good talent to help that understands risk well." Another priority developed by McFarland was the "program management review" process, which was meant to address what she described as "a lot of churn" among program managers that could sometimes divert them from their regular duties. "We didn't have a standard method of agreeing on how programs were being executed," she said. In the program management review process, when a program was proceeding according to plan, program managers would have the latitude to make decisions on their own -- freeing them up from repeatedly having to return to higher authorities and stakeholders to explain their decisions. "As long as they are on track and show me they are on track, I don't ask them to come in," McFarland said. "And that's the agreement with the stakeholders as well. So the burden of how many reviews, how many times they go up to the Hill, how many times they are trying to convince somebody who is new in the organization, is limited. That allows them freedom of motion." McFarland said she had about 68,000 acquisition personnel working for her while she headed ASA(ALT). "They are phenomenal," she said. "They are the under-spoken, often over-burdened, and [often-criticized] people who execute what's been imposed upon them. But you can't believe how much they have been able to put out the door. It's amazing. We do chemical/bio for the entirety of the DOD. We built the Zika vaccine, the Ebola vaccine. People don't realize how much we transition from government to the rest of the world." McFarland started in government in 1986 as a general engineer at Headquarters Marine Corps. Returning to a ground-combat community, she said, felt like coming home. "Any ground-combat community is most-loved by me," she said. "My background is having spent 27 years of my life with the Marine Corps, coming back to ground combat is lovely. And also the whole mission of what we do in terms of national security runs in my blood." CWARD may be master repository of cyber talent for reserve component [2016-11-04] WASHINGTON -- Beyond looking at what Soldiers have officially documented in their military records, commanders really have no way to know for sure the full breadth of skills their Soldiers possess -- and which of those skills could potentially be tapped in order to enhance the mission -- unless they ask the Soldiers directly. Col. James Chatfield Jr., the G-3/5/7 and cyber director for 335th Signal Command, for instance, said he's personally aware of two examples where a Soldier's skillset -- what could rightly be called "extra-military" talent, for instance -- is now being tapped to make the cyber mission stronger. "He happens to have about 25 years of experience in the logistical process of power management," Chatfield said. "He's not an integrated control system/supervisory control and data acquisition expert, but he understands how power destitution works and what are the centers of gravity. So on his battle assembly weekends, guess what Cyber Command has him helping with? Contingency plans and dealing with power management. He comes in, he's a cyber planner, that's his role, but he brings that additional skill set." A reserve-component colonel Chatfield knows is similarly skilled in his daily job. "He's the cyber security chief for the Florida court system. That guy has put together more honeypot concepts -- because people are constantly trying to get in and steal vital information," Chatfield said. "He's probably a pretty good advisor that we might want to leverage when we're looking to do a honeypot of some type of nature in a particular operation -- especially when it's dealing with legal and financial systems." Chatfield said the Army Reserve, on a regular basis, gathers information from Soldiers about the breadth of their experience in the private sector, not just for readiness, but also for its applicability to the Army mission. He also said the Army Reserve started working with Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, about a year ago, to develop a database of sorts, called the "Cyber Warrior Database" or CWARD for short, that will help the Reserve track the skills Soldiers are developing on their civilian jobs, so that those same skills can be taken advantage of when they don their uniform. He likened CWARD to being the kind of tool a casting agent might use to find the right actor for a particular film. "Maybe you have a bunch of actors that you represent. When the movie agent comes to you and says they need a particular talent set, you can go into your talent management system and say 'I've got 10 candidates I can send you,'" Chatfield said. "This is very similar to that." Except instead of acting ability -- skills like crying on cue, or feigning a foreign accent -- the CWARD tracks cyber talents the Army might want to tap into. "This person knowns how to work on a Linux system -- but this other person knows how to work on a Linux system inside a financial management environment, and has experience with the vulnerabilities associated with that," Chatfield said, citing an example of the types of skills the Army might be looking for among cyber personnel. Chatfield said the CWARD system is still a pilot program, not yet a system of record, but that the Army Reserve is in discussion with Army Cyber Command about adapting it as a standardized tool for talent management of the cyber force. He also pointed out that CWARD wouldn't be a replacement or competitor to the Army's own Integrated Personnel and Pay System-Army -- which will also do similar talent-management functions -- but will complement it. Chatfield said there are also individual training vignettes that go along with CWARD, so that the skills and talents of the Soldiers it tracks -- right now that's about 400 or so -- can be validated. "That data then automatically records into the CWARD database," he said. "So let's just say somebody says they know how to do Linux security fundamentals. We have them take a Linux fundamentals course ... and the test results feed automatically into the CWARD database." While the CWARD system is still a pilot program, Chatfield said it has the potential to make easier the identification of talent for the entire Army. It allows us to know "that someone is not only qualified in all the standard Army MOSQs and ASIs, those things we normally have, but also they have mission experience on these kinds of missions," Chatfield said. "They have practical experience on these kinds of missions -- both in their civilian lives, the training that we put them through -- and as they get more experience as a Cyber Soldier, as a Reservist -- their operational experience." Diversity critical to future of Army, Fanning tells ROTC cadets [2016-11-07] WASHINGTON -- More than 300 Reserve Officer Training Corps cadets, representing more than a dozen colleges and universities, gathered Tuesday at Howard University in Washington, D.C. for the Army Senior Leader/ROTC Professional Mentor Forum. During the event, Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning provided keynote remarks and took questions from cadets on subjects ranging from leadership, the value of diversity, and the critical role ROTC cadets play as ambassadors to bridge the civilian-military divide. "The Army is a people-based organization," Fanning told cadets. "I've seen how people are the strength of our Army. And the Army's people cannot accomplish their many missions without strong and steady leadership -- which is where each of you comes in." For the Army to accomplish all that the America public expects of it, Army leaders must harness the power of diverse teams, Fanning urged. "We need experience, critical thinking and creativity in our force, but most importantly, we need teams of people who think differently from one another and yet are connected through unity of mission," he said. According to Fanning, multiple studies have demonstrated that teams with a diversity of races, genders, religions and backgrounds perform better and deliver better outcomes. "The verdict is in," Fanning said. "For the Army of tomorrow to be as strong as the Army of today, we must ... draw further from one of America's greatest advantages: our diverse population." Historically, senior officers in the Army have risen to their positions through the combat arms branches. That means, Fanning said, that a diverse leadership must rely on achieving diversity across all branches, not just in raw numbers within the Army. "I really want to come here today to challenge some of these cadets to think a little bit more broadly about what branches they might consider and what branches they might enter," Fanning said. A MENTOR FORUM The night marked the third year for the forum at Howard University, and the third year that attendance has increased, both in terms of the numbers of cadets and schools represented. During a 90-minute panel discussion and question-and-answer session involving more than a dozen general officers, Maj. Gen. Darrell K. Williams, commander of the Combined Armed Services Command at Fort Lee, Virginia fielded questions from cadets. He said the event made him recall his cadet days at Hampton Institute, which today is known as Hampton University. "I really do believe that senior Army leadership engagement with the cadets, [who are] soon to be the lieutenants and officers of our future, is a very powerful engagement" he said. "Hopefully we'll have an impact on many of them and their diction to enter the military." Lt. Gen. Robert S. Ferrell, the Army's chief information officer and G-6, was instrumental in organizing the event in years past, getting it off the ground as a forum where young ROTC cadets could interact with senior Army leadership. The focus of the event, he said, is to provide outreach to schools and ROTC cadets and share insights and information on Army life, issues, and policies. "[ROTC cadets] come here, and they can ask any questions they have about information presented to them throughout the year," Ferrell said. "And this is a good opportunity to socialize, network, and share feedback about what the Army life is really about." ROTC Cadet Gartrell Anderson, a senior at East Carolina University, North Carolina is a criminal justice major. He said his own participation in ROTC has provided structure. He plans to go into the Military Police Corps when he joins the Army. "[ROTC has] given me ... a lot of time to actually think about what I want to do with my future," he said. ROTC Cadet Trevon Johnson, a senior at Norfolk State University, Virginia, who is majoring in sociology, said he is interested in the National Guard and the Signal Corps. He would like to do military intelligence and cyber security. He was taking advantage of the rare opportunity provided by the event to shake hands and speak with Army general officers and practice his networking skills. "It can be hard to communicate with people in the military," he said. "But being here has definitely broken my shell, and I've been able to talk to higher ranking officials. A lot of these officers have been in my shoes. They've done what I've done. They've been to the schools I've been to. And they've done what I want to do." Hackers may have place in the Army [2016-11-08] WASHINGTON -- Cyber professionals are often capable of doing much, much more than what the law allows. In their private-sector jobs, they've got to be on the right side of the law if they don't want to end up in a prison cell. But those same skilled cyber professionals may be able to cut loose if they were in the Army. In fact, that potential for greater freedom in cyberspace might entice some of those professionals to don a uniform and practice their craft safely inside the Army tent. It may also serve as an enticement for cyber professionals who are already serving in the Army to stay in the Army, the Army's vice chief of staff said. "The good news is, for our cyber professionals, they can do things in defense of our nation that they would get arrested for in the outside world," said Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Daniel B. Allyn Thursday, while speaking at a cyber forum at the Association of the U.S. Army headquarters. "That's very attractive to those who are very, very skilled and committed to the security of our country. And for that, we are thankful for both their skill and, just as importantly, for their desire to continue to serve and protect our country." The Army is currently in the midst of growing its cyber force of commissioned officers, noncommissioned officers, and warrant officers to defend the Army network and apply effects against adversary networks, if need be. The Army has its own cyber branch now, career field 17, for cyber professionals, and a schoolhouse as well at Fort Gordon, Georgia. Right now the branch has 397 officers, 141 warrant officers and 560 enlisted Soldiers in its ranks, Allyn said. "Army is on track fielding our cyber mission force, from 41 teams today, to eventually a full fill of 62 total force teams," Allyn said. The Army's Cyber School stood up in 2014. This year, 21 officers graduated. The Army is on track to beat that number next year, Allyn said. In March 2017, enlisted Soldiers will for the first time attend Army Advanced Individual Training for cyber. Also in March, Army-developed AIT to defend the network will begin at Fort Gordon, Georgia. Allyn said he expects an initial 300 Soldiers to graduate from that course. Attracting and retaining cyber talent remains a concern for the Army, Allyn said. It's not just Army networks that need to be protected -- commercial networks require protection as well -- and the Army must compete with the private sector to attract the best cyber talent. One way to make Army cyber more attractive, Allyn said, is through lateral accessions, a strategy used in other career fields in the Army to compete with the private sector, like medical -- where officers can be brought in at a higher rank and higher pay. "The ability to laterally access skilled professionals is something we do already in the Army in some of our skills," Allyn said. "But we have recognized that this has applicability in specialty fields like cyber. And that is being matured and developed as an option for the chief and the secretary." Allyn said the possibility of lateral accessions for cyber was considered as part of the Army's "Force of the Future" analysis conducted last year. "Not only will we have to apply new accessions tools, but we are going to have to consider, 'How do you retain this incredible talent?'" he said. With Fort Gordon solar array, Army nears renewable power goal [2016-11-18] WASHINGTON -- Army officials on Wednesday cut the ribbon on a 270-acre, 30-megawatt solar power array at Fort Gordon, Georgia. It's the second of three such facilities planned in the Peach State as part of an effort dubbed "3x30." The new solar array doesn't yet provide direct power to Fort Gordon, though that's a goal to be met in later phases of the project, said Michael F. McGhee, executive director of the Army's Office of Energy Initiatives. Instead, the 137k-panel array, which produces enough power to run 4,300 homes, pushes electricity into the civilian power grid on which Fort Gordon relies. The new solar array sits inside the protected gates of Fort Gordon on government-owned land that was made available to Georgia Power as part of a 35-year easement. Georgia Power owns the array, operates it, and maintains it. Fort Gordon and the Army benefit from the project because it indirectly enhances energy security for the installation -- which is a goal the Army is aiming to reach across the force. With the completion of Phase I of the project there, McGhee said, Fort Gordon stands to benefit from several enhancements to the civilian power grid, among them "distributed generation." "Rather than [generating power] in one large centralized capability, it adds improved resiliency to the grid," McGhee said. "That way if something goes down over here, not necessarily everything goes down everywhere else." Because the solar array also sits inside the Fort Gordon perimeter, the generation source is as close as possible. "There's less opportunity for disruption of the power from that source," McGhee said. "Meaning that the local grid that serves us has a better chance of surviving some sort of outage that may be caused by an accident 200 miles away." Also, he said, the solar array is well protected at Fort Gordon, where it sits safely behind the Army's physical security perimeter. "[The solar array] is less subject to some sort of mischievous action or some sort of malicious act by some party," McGhee said. Across the U.S. government, there is a growing appreciation that certain vulnerabilities exist right now within in the power system, according to McGhee. "There are determined attackers who would try to take advantage of our power system and do it harm, which could do the nation harm," McGhee said. He cited weather events and hackers as potential threats to secure electricity. "As we become increasingly interconnected, our power system is no different," he said. "It's increasingly relying on the connectivity, and that presents a potential cyber vulnerability." Across the force, the Army is looking for ways to mitigate power supply vulnerabilities and increase the resiliency of its installations. For now, Fort Gordon will benefit just indirectly from the solar array. But McGhee said, the goal for the future will be to provide more direct advantages. Those will include the ability to store power generated by the array in battery storage, and the ability to distribute that energy directly to the installation with micro-grid technology in the event of a civilian power grid failure. The biggest roadblock to making that happen now, McGhee said, is the current cost of battery storage. Battery storage is needed both to "level the load" of the solar power, so that it can be safely distributed on the installation, and to store that solar power so that it can be used after sunset. According to McGhee, the Army's deal with Georgia Power ensures that the solar array will be equipped to be connected, at a later date, to a micro-grid that can distribute power directly to Fort Gordon. Right now about 20 similar projects are underway across the Army to enhance energy security, McGhee said. Before the end of the year, another 30-megawatt solar array will be in place at Fort Stewart, which would make it the third 30-megawatt array in Georgia. The 30-megawatt solar array at Fort Benning, which opened in June, was the first. Another Army energy security project is underway at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. That project is not a solar energy project, but instead a biofuel project, which will be completed sometime in 2018. There, McGhee said, Hawaiian Electric is constructing a power plant on Army land that will provide power to Schofield Barracks, Wheeler Army Airfield, and Kunia Field Station -- as well as to parts of the civilian community -- in the event of a civilian grid failure. In June, the Army also opened a 67-acre, 15-megawatt solar facility on Fort Detrick, Maryland. That facility provides about 12 percent of the power used by the installation. During transition, Soldiers should experience 'no gaps' in commitment, Secretary Fanning says [2016-11-18] WASHINGTON -- In January, a new commander in chief of the U.S. military will move into the White House. Over the next 60 days or so of that transition period, Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning's priority will be the 1.1 million Soldiers of the Army, among them the 100,000 who are currently deployed or forward-stationed outside the United States in some 150 countries. As the Army transitions from one administration to another, "there can be no gaps, there can be no seams" in providing those Soldiers with the resources they need to do their jobs, Secretary Fanning said. "That's the first and only priority, and we are completely dedicated to that," Fanning told his audience during a discussion Thursday at a forum sponsored by "Defense One" in Washington, D.C. Over the course of his government career, Fanning has worked through two presidential transitions. "As is the case in every transition, the main message is, 'We are here, and we will do whatever is necessary to make this [transition] as smooth as possible,'" he said. Fanning has already formulated several ideas about how he will advise the transition team for the new administration on the matter of ensuring the Army's continued success into the future. Chief among his concerns, he said, is "further defining what the Army of the future needs to win." Since 9/11, the Army has focused on the near-term, the day-to-day operations that it has been called upon to conduct around the world, Fanning said. Over the past 15 years, the Army has served as the vanguard of the U.S. military's commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result, the Army has "stripped a lot of investment out of the future," Fanning said. He also plans to discuss restructuring " the Army for the way innovation exists today and technology is fielded today." Since taking office in May, Fanning has focused his efforts on Army modernization and acquisition reform. He believes the Army must be more agile and prepared to do business with all sectors of industry -- including its own organic industrial base -- and more willing to consider commercial off-the-shelf technology as a way of quickly providing Soldiers with the best tools available. "I believe the faster you get things into the hands of Soldiers, the better," he said. "They figure out how to adjust, and use things differently, and give us feedback very quickly. Technology is being developed differently and in faster and faster cycles now." Secretary Fanning also hopes that his drive to change the conversation in the Army about behavioral health services, which he outlined among his priorities shortly after confirmation, will continue after his tenure. "The Army has done a lot to move behavioral health out into the field at the operational level, so it is there if it's needed," he said. "[But] we need to fundamentally shift the paradigm here." Right now, he said, many Soldiers consider behavioral health services just something that's available to them if they need it. "We need to shift the paradigm from 'if you need help' to 'of course you will need help,' and then bake that into our post-deployment transition programs," he said. "This should be an expectation, based on what we ask a Soldier to do day after day, deployment after deployment." Such a shift could remove the burden of having to reach out for help. In a culture that recognizes that most Soldiers will at some point need some level of behavioral health service, all Soldiers could access them without fear of stigma. Fanning also underscored the importance of the fundamental changes instated over the course of the Obama administration regarding both who is allowed to serve in the military and in what positions they can serve. The new policies and their implementation, Fanning said, build on "shared values of opportunity and inclusion." The changes will be hard for the next administration to roll back completely -- for a number of reasons. "The path to do this over decades, going back to the integration of the military, has never been purely linear," he said. "Society is changing very quickly. The Soldiers we accessed just in the active component -- 60,000 a year -- they come out of a different society than I grew up in." Ultimately, Fanning said, any move to reverse those changes may face greater challenges than the Army faced in its efforts to increase its inclusiveness. "Whether or not you are going to let somebody wear a uniform ... is a very different discussion than whether or not you are going to make somebody take the uniform off," he said. Diversity strengthens America and its Army, Fanning tells new citizens [2016-11-23] WASHINGTON -- More than 160 candidates for American citizenship from more than 40 nations swore allegiance to the United States of America and became citizens Monday as part of a naturalization ceremony at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning, a vocal proponent of the idea that diversity strengthens the Army he leads, served as a guest speaker at the event. He told the new American citizens and their families that he finds great parallels in the strength diversity brings to the Army and to the United States. "You took an oath, an oath to a constitution," Fanning said. "You are now Americans. As I look out at each of you, I see the diversity that makes us strong as a nation, that defines who we are as a people, and it's a beautiful thing." Among those who became citizens were two military veterans and men and women who were born in Afghanistan, China, Egypt, France, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam. "As Army secretary, when I look at a formation of Soldiers, I want to see strength, I want to see resilience," he said. "I see that as I look around this room today. As I think about the diverse paths to citizenship that each of you has taken, I also see grit, perseverance and determination. These characteristics are what makes Americans and America great." Fanning assured the new American citizens that the diversity they bring to the United States from their home countries is present not just in the United States, but also in the Army that defends the United States. Diversity is part of what makes America and America's Army the strongest in the world, he said. "Those who wish to do us harm and those who want to challenge America don't have what we have right here in this room," Fanning said. "They don't have men and women from more than 40 countries seeking to earn citizenship. They don't have citizens who have left everything behind to forge a better future. They don't have dreamers and builders from every part of the world striving to better their country. We do." At the naturalization ceremony, retired Army Capt. Florent "Flo" Groberg, who earned the Medal of Honor for actions in Afghanistan in 2012 was named an "Outstanding American by Choice." The honor is a recognition bestowed upon naturalized citizens who have made significant contributions to their community and their adopted country through civic participation, professional achievement and responsible citizenship. An immigrant himself, Groberg was born in Poissy, France in 1983. He was naturalized as an American citizen in 2001, at 17 years old. After earning a degree in criminology and criminal justice, he joined the Army in 2008. "This is a great day," Groberg told the new citizens and their families. "I am so honored to be here. I know this is a day that you will never forget. This is a moment in your life that you worked so hard for and you deserve. You've earned it. But now comes that responsibility of being just great citizens." Groberg told the new Americans that the range of opportunities to achieve great things in their new country is boundless -- that anything is possible if they are willing to work for it. "If a kid from Poissy, France, who didn't speak English, gets to have an opportunity to meet the president of the United States at the White House, it should tell you a little bit about this country: anything is possible if you work for it," he said. "You are now in a position where you can change not only your life but the lives of your families and your community. Never settle, always seek to be more and do more." Close to 20 percent of those who have received the Medal of Honor were immigrants like Capt. Groberg. In his remarks, Secretary Fanning expressed his wish that this legacy of contribution to the United States and its military would continue, and he acknowledged the long journey the new Americans had already made. "The dynamism and diversity you bring to this nation will be a catalyst for a stronger more prosperous America, just as it has always been," Fanning said. "Having the chance to welcome you and acknowledge your citizenship is one of my proudest moments as Army secretary. Thank you for all you have done to arrive here today and all you will do to make our America proud for generations to come." Dailey: Accessing behavioral health care should be as easy as seeing a medic [2016-11-29] WASHINGTON -- Both the Army secretary and the sergeant major of the Army are on the record: There must be a substantial change in the way Soldiers think about behavioral health care. "There needs to be a paradigm shift in how we look at behavioral health," said Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey. "It needs to become common practice -- an everyday event." Dailey believes that, across the force, seeking out such assistance must be as common and accepted as going to the dentist for a checkup or to see the doctor for an injury. Soldiers ought to value being squared away psychologically as much they value being squared away physically. The Army aims to promote this attitude, Dailey said, by making behavioral health assistance as common as medical health assistance. "We screen all of our Soldiers for all kinds of medical reasons," he said. "One of those [reasons] should be behavioral health. And it should be a common practice ... That way, we become accustomed to ... [it as] an acceptable thing to do. It is acceptable to ask for help." Right now, Dailey said, it's expected that a Soldier who gets hurt will seek medical assistance. It's also expected that a Soldier who sees another get injured will get that injured Soldier to a medic. In the Army, seeking help under such circumstances is not a sign of weakness. The same ought to be true for behavioral health assistance, Dailey said. "Just like you would rush to their aid on the battlefield when they are wounded, you should rush to their aid if you see the signs and symptoms of behavioral health issues," he said. According to Dailey, the Army's behavioral health care system has grown tremendously over the past several years, including at unit level, where it takes the form of embedded behavioral health programs that promote behavioral health right where Soldiers work and live. As of October, the Army had filled 100 percent of its planned 61 embedded behavioral health teams. Each team typically involves about 12 to 13 members, including 10 service providers. Currently, the teams provide direct support to 31 brigade combat teams across the Army, as well an additional 142 other battalion and brigade-sized units. Already, the Army deployment of embedded behavioral health has achieved statistically significant improvements in areas such as mission readiness, outpatient behavioral health care services and acute inpatient psychiatric care. Not every Soldier who deploys will need behavioral health assistance, but research has shown that 20 percent of the Soldiers who deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom meet the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder, while 15 percent of those Soldiers will likely experience other behavioral health problems that could benefit from treatment. "This is not something we can change, but it is something we can treat," Dailey said. "[I] urge everybody to break the silence and promote dialogue within your formations at home and in your communities. Seek help and take the first step in recovery in overall resiliency." The Army must also still contend with the stigma associated with seeking behavioral health assistance, Dailey said. "I know for a fact we've done a lot to break that paradigm," he said. "I'll tell you, we have to continue to do it. ... It needs to become common practice that leaders and Soldiers and everybody seek behavioral health assistance when they need it." In addition to lifting the stigma, the Army must ensure that Soldiers can recognize when their fellow Soldiers need behavioral health assistance and are prepared to intervene -- so their units will be ready to fight when called on. "It's a real injury, and it needs real circumstance to fix it," Dailey said. "I think as we continue on our path we finally will break that stigma ... Soldiers will seek behavioral health assistance, and leaders will encourage and even mandate it when they know their Soldiers need it." Army graduates 13 women as armor officers [2016-12-02] WASHINGTON -- At Fort Benning, Georgia, the Army for the first time Thursday held a graduation for the Armor Basic Officer Leader Course that included female Soldiers among the graduates. "It's a great day," said Maj. Gen. Eric J. Wesley, commanding general of the Army Maneuver Center of Excellence, during a press conference in advance of the graduation. "You're going to see today 65 great armor lieutenants walk across the stage as graduates of the ABOLC." Of the 65 graduates, Wesley said, 13 are female officers. All had met the objective criteria that define the role of a combat leader, he said. The Army's decision to open the course up to women, he believes, will have the overall effect of strengthening the Army through diversity. "It's broadened the pool from which we draw to promote to platoon leaders in the armor branch because we've extended the opportunity to be armor leaders to women in the Army," he said. "So we have a much broader pool of talent, all normalized, based on the standards that we have emplaced on armor leaders." The ABOLC is attended by second lieutenants who are new to the Army. The 19-week, three-phase course provides commanders in the field with armor or cavalry platoon leaders trained in the fundamentals of tank and reconnaissance platoon weapon systems and capabilities, combined-arms maneuver and area security tactics. Staff Sgt. George M. Baker, an ABOLC cadre member, said that initially there was skepticism among trainers about how the women would perform in the course. That skepticism, he said, soon vanished. "As soon as they started performing to those same standards -- because we didn't change anything -- and they performed to those same standards, they met and exceeded those standards," Baker said. "It solidified that they have a place here." Fellow ABOLC instructor, Staff Sgt. William J. Hare, said that, after pushing through the latest iteration of ABOLC, he wouldn't have a problem serving as a Soldier under any the women he was charged with instructing. "They have been astronomical. They blew us away during our field training exercises" Hare said. "Their ability to plan and execute on the fly and execute that plan in a clear and concise manner and communicate plan changes on the go was amazing." STANDARDS STANDARDIZED A key to ensuring that only the best officers would make it into the armor branch, Wesley said, was the development of a set of standards that would apply equally to both men and women who go through the ABOLC. The high physical demands of the course are gender-neutral and difficult, he said. They define what an officer must be able to do physically to serve as an armor officer. "The beauty of the high physical demands test is that it eliminates or removes the whole question of gender relevance," Wesley said. "If you base your performance and the graduation on standards, that just falls away and disappears. And it becomes a merit-based effort." The course's physical demands included dragging a 188-pound casualty over a 15-meter distance in 60 seconds; a 12-mile foot march with 68 pounds of gear and uniform lasting five hours; removing a 188-pound casualty with 19 pounds of uniform and equipment from a vehicle; and moving a dozen 55-pound, 155-millimeter multi-purpose anti-tank projectiles from an ammo point to a tank in five minutes. In recent months, women Soldiers have also endured and graduated Ranger School and the Infantry Basic Officer Leader Course. There, too, standards were applied equally both to men and women, Wesley said. "We spend a lot of time measuring the metrics we use to assess the performance of leaders in training," Wesley said. "And as we scrutinize those, we collectively come to agree on ... the important, critical tasks. Then we charge the lieutenants to perform in accordance of those tasks. And when they do, they become graduates of the institution, who are fully qualified in accordance with Army standards." Wesley hasn't failed to notice the intense media interest that greeted the graduation of female Soldiers from Ranger School back in August 2015. In October, when 10 women graduated IBOLC, he noted that the media interest had dwindled. There was even less interest in the ABOLC graduation, he said. "It tells you that this is business as usual," he said. "We train leaders at Fort Benning. We just got done with a session of triaging 65 brand new armor lieutenants, and they will walk across the stage today. What stays the same? At Fort Benning, we train combat leaders." Fanning: Equality, inclusivity are not experiments, but American values [2016-12-09] WASHINGTON -- For more than 150 years, almost as soon as men and women from Asia began arriving in the United States, they began defending the United States, said Army Secretary Eric Fanning. "Asian Americans and Pacific islanders have contributed to the power of our example and the example of our power. It's a tradition that dates back to the Civil War," Fanning told his audience during keynote remarks for the National Forum for Asian American and Pacific Islander Military Members and Veterans Monday. The event, which was held at the Women's in Military Service to America memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, was sponsored by the President's Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, a commission that was restored in 2009 by President Barack Obama. "This initiative by the president is to support military members and veterans in all of our diverse groups, particularly in the Asian-American and Pacific Islander demographic," explained Ravi Chaudhary, a member of the commission. According to Chaudhary, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are the largest and fastest growing demographic in the nation. "As this demographic grows, so too are the men and women who are raising their right hand to serve," he said. "This forum is about serving them, giving them a voice, and ensuring that both the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs hear their voice and take a look at policies going forward." The day-long event included panels on the future of diversity and inclusion in the DOD. Speakers discussed the successes of Asian Americans and Pacific Islander service members and the challenges they face. Panels also touched on challenges faced by veterans, including post-traumatic stress disorder and the risk of suicide. Secretary Fanning opened the forum by highlighting the importance of diversity in the armed forces and went on to point out how recent policy changes have increased the opportunity for all Americans to serve and, as a result, strengthened the military by bringing aboard an array of diverse viewpoints. He cited as examples of the military's leadership in furthering diversity both the desegregation of the armed forces a full 16 years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the military providing equal pay to women 40 years ago, at a time when women were not widely represented in the private-sector workforce. "When critics said our military was too set in its ways, too big, or too afraid to move forward with change, our men and women in uniform proved them wrong," Fanning said. "In the process, they've proved what's right about our country. Today, when critics say the military is not a place for social experimentation, they may be right. But equality and inclusivity are not experiments, they are American values." Today, while the U.S. military is growing smaller, it is still challenged with deterring Russian aggression alongside European allies, providing stability in the Pacific, and serving as the backbone for the nation's counter-terrorism mission, Fanning said. "Our Soldiers alone are serving in more than 140 countries worldwide," he said. "For our Army and military to accomplish this diverse set of missions, we need our men and women in uniform to harness the power of diverse teams. We need experience, critical thinking, and creativity in our force, but most importantly, we need teams of people who think differently from one another and yet are joined together in common cause." Fanning said the strongest Army, and the strongest military, will represent the entire U.S. population, regardless of faith, race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity. "When the people of the world see the ability of the American people to join together, reflecting every party of this country, and every thread of our American fabric, within our military, they see the power of our example," he said. "And it is both the power of our example and the example of our power, which makes our military the most powerful fighting force in history." Changing military families require more flexible support, Army secretary says [2016-12-12] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning believes the Army needs to change how it provides support to Soldiers and their families. Speaking at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C. Thursday before representatives and members of the Blue Star Families, an organization founded in 2009 that performs one of the largest surveys of military families and directs them to sources of support, Fanning noted the number of military families with stay-at-home spouses is shrinking. "The Army needs to recognize that more military spouses are working now," Fanning said. "We must adjust to a reality where it's no longer expected that married Soldiers will have a stay-at-home spouse who takes care of the family and homestead and does volunteer work on the side." The Army must invest more in programs that support families, Fanning said, in recognition that a growing number of military spouses will want to pursue their own career paths, independent of their serving partners. Additionally, in order to remain a competitive career option, the Army must be able to attract men and women who have career-oriented spouses. Fewer Americans will choose to join the Army if progressing in their careers requires having an "infinitely flexible, stay-at-home-spouse." "We need to work on employment opportunities for spouses that aren't in the military," Fanning said. "And we need to do more to make career paths for dual-military families workable. All too often, it works for a little while, and then one of the two has to make a decision to get out to support the other one. We need to make daycare more available." Fanning suggested that it might also be time to rethink career paths in the military to offer more support for families. For instance, it might be possible, he said, for the Army to extend the number of years it takes for Soldiers to chart a successful career. "We have these pole years, and you have to hit a year every single year," he noted. "In fact, in many of the services to really excel you have to hit that year early. There is no reason we can't, for example, stretch things out a little bit more to give people more time ... for developmental opportunities and to make decisions for their family that doesn't take them off the track to get them to general officer." Fostering such stability in family life would go a long way toward helping Soldiers cope with deployments and the stress of being separated from family for extended periods, he said. BEHAVIORAL HEALTH PARADIGM SHIFT The Army must also continue to advance its approach to behavioral health, Fanning said. Currently, behavioral health assistance must be initiated by Soldiers, meaning the burden is on the Soldier to proactively seek help after a deployment. That behavioral health paradigm needs to change, Fanning said. "We should expect, [and] you should expect you're going to need it," he said. "So you're going to have to go through it when you come back." Special Operations Command has already implemented successful measures to provide behavioral health services to all its Soldiers immediately upon returning from deployment. Fanning said these efforts are worth replicating elsewhere. "We need to move it across the force as a whole," he said. Meet Your Army: 1st Lt. Lopez is making sure the inaugural parade is 'dress-right-dress' [2016-12-12] WASHINGTON -- A native of Tecumseh, Michigan, 1st Lt. Tyler J. Lopez joined the Army for the discipline he craved and the direction he knew it would bring to his life. Today he finds himself in the nation's capital, assigned on a temporary duty to Joint Task Force-National Capital Region in support of the 58th presidential inauguration, which will take place Jan. 20. The task force is charged with coordinating the military ceremonial support for the inaugural period. Lopez is working as part of the joint planning team for the inaugural parade. He's in charge of the route control portion of the parade and what he calls the parade's "merge point." "If you think of a parade, there's going to be different elements," he explained. "We'll have anything from military marchers, bands, and all that good stuff, to horses and floats. The merge point is where everything comes together in the parade to actually get in file order." On inauguration day, or "I-Day," he said, he will be responsible for making sure that, at the merge point, everything looks "dress-right-dress." Right now, Lopez said, not all of the task force's service members are on board. The full contingent will arrive later. For now, he said, they're still in the planning stages of meetings, slides, and briefings. Over the next few weeks, however, task force participants will pick up the pace with more hands-on tasks like a windshield tour of the parade route and a map exercise that will run task force participants through scenarios on working with the civilians who will attend the parade. On Jan. 15, just five days before I-Day, there will be a "full-blown Department of Defense rehearsal" to get ready for the main event. For Lopez, mission success on the day of the inauguration will mean ensuring that "everything that happens between the start point of the parade and the release point of the parade looks dress-right-dress [and] ... that the president, [who will be] watching in the reviewing stand, is proud of what he sees." TECUMSEH, MICHIGAN Lopez calls the city of Tecumseh, near Ann Arbor, where he grew up with his brother and sister, "a small city, a beautiful city." His dad was one of 18 children, so Lopez has a good number of aunts and uncles. "They all live generally in that same area," he said. "So Christmas and Thanksgiving are kind of big events -- everybody comes back to town." Several of Lopez's uncles also served in the military, including one who was killed in Vietnam. Lopez has visited the Vietnam Wall in Washington to see his uncle's name there. Back in Michigan, though, he said, there wasn't much of a military influence. None of his family enlisted voluntarily, he said. His uncles who served were drafted. While the tragic events of 9/11 inspired many military-age Americans to enlist, Lopez was in the fifth grade at the time, too young to fully grasp what had happened. So unlike many who joined the Army since that day, the event had little impact on his decision to join. Even when he was in high school, he said, it didn't occur to him to enlist. But when his two best friends went off to join the Marine Corps after graduation, that did have an impact on him. "I think I envied that a little bit," he said. It wasn't until 2009, during his freshman year in college, that he finally became interested in the Army. At the University of Michigan, a friend exposed him to the Reserve Officer Training Corps. Lopez said during a career day at the school, he stopped by the ROTC table to talk with Army representatives about opportunities. "I was kind of searching for something to grab onto and drive my life a little bit," he remembered. "I liked the idea that ROTC is all about building leadership, building decision-making, building how you handle people and Soldiers. I like discipline, discipline in life and in decisions. That kind of background for me tied in well with the Army." Lopez also liked the idea of being a leader. "I like having responsibility, making decisions, and that feeling when people take your decisions and then act upon them," he said. "The Army kind of gave me a path to have that ... and I never looked back." In 2013, just weeks after graduating from college, he was off to the Basic Officer Leaders Course. He is now assigned permanently to Fort Eustis, Virginia, where he serves as a training officer with the 53rd Transportation Battalion Movement Control. He handles ammunition, land and range management, and ensures that units headed to field training exercises have everything they need. PREPARING FOR TOMORROW Since he was commissioned, Lopez has also been to Afghanistan. His tour was supposed to last nine months, but it was cut short at four months. While there, he was in charge of an entry control point for a month in Kandahar and later volunteered for another position in Bagram as a contracting officer. In Afghanistan, Lopez briefly experienced only the tail end of a conflict that he had watched unfold on television during most of his youth. Lopez's time in uniform, he believes, will be defined not by the conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan, but instead by the Army's preparations for the next conflict, one that will likely be very different. The next conflict could be with a nation that can match the United States -- a near-peer competitor for the Army. "What's going to define my career in the Army is how we take Soldiers who have fought the counterinsurgency their entire career and transition them back to focusing on standard armies ... countries that have air power, land power and sea power," Lopez said. MAKING A MARK AS A LEADER Right now, Lopez is defining mission success according to his current responsibilities. He wants his part of the inaugural parade to go off without a hitch. The judges of his performance at the inaugural parade in January will be the hundreds of thousands of spectators who line the streets of the nation's capital. But for his Army career, success will involve much more. Career success for Lopez means being the best leader he can be. The judges of that will be the Soldiers he leads. Ultimately, they will be the ones who will determine whether he's become the kind of officer he wants to be. "I didn't do this because I wanted to have some fun. I joined because I think I have something to give," he said. "And I hope that when my career is over, whenever that may be, that the Soldiers that I led can say that I gave that to them: a proper leadership." Lopez's duties in Washington will end sometime in early February, he said. After that, he will return home to Fort Eustis. In April, he will go to the Maneuver Captains Career Course. And after that, he said, he hopes the Army's will have bigger, better leadership opportunities for him to pursue. "I would kind of like to see the more traditional Army side," he said. "Fort Hood, Fort Bragg, Fort Campbell, and getting into like a normal brigade combat team element, and see the tactical side of the Army a little more. "That's what I'm hoping for. I'd kind of like to maybe get to Special Operations Command, or U.S. Army Special Operations Command, and kind of try to get one of the Special Forces units and try to be a group support battalion member over there." Trust bedrock of Army profession [2016-12-13] WASHINGTON -- Trust, say Army leaders, is a key component of the Army profession and it is critical to everything Soldiers do. Army leaders from across the force met last week in Fairfax, Virginia, during the Army Profession Forum, hosted by the Center for the Army Profession and Ethic, to discuss, among other things, the role trust plays in the Army profession. Kicking off the day-long event, Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning addressed several hundred Army senior leaders regarding Soldiering as a profession. "We must train on this, train on what we define as our profession, like we train on everything else, so that it's instinctual in a way that maybe isn't for other people, again, because of the incredible things we ask the Army to do, that we ask our Soldiers and civilians to do," Fanning said. "This needs to be ingrained in a way that we wouldn't expect for others outside this profession." A key component of the Army profession is trust, said Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley, who outlined three areas where trust manifests itself inside the Army. First, he said, the Army must maintain trust with the American people. "We are the people's Army, and we always have been," he said. "We come from the people and we defend the people. That's our purpose. That's the only reason we exist. And we have to maintain the trust of the American people. Right now you have it. We have it. But trust is a fragile thing. And every time somebody breaks the trust, you're chipping away at the trust, the bond, the cohesion, between the people, and the people's Army," said Milley. Individual acts, or institutional acts can destroy that trust, he said. When high-ranking Army officers are in the news, or the public eye for misdeeds or misconduct, he said, that "breaks the trust with the American people, and we are diminishing this institution's esteem in the eyes of the people we serve." Secretary Fanning's comments elaborated on these thoughts "In order to build and sustain trust across the force, we must promote understanding within the Total Force of the roles and unique capabilities of each of the three components -- Regular Army, Army National Guard, and Army Reserve, as well as U.S. Army Civilians." Another facet of trust in the Army, said Milley, is trust that goes vertically up and down through the chain of command, as well as laterally amongst peers. Trust for leadership, he said, means that Soldiers who have problems with their bosses must have the confidence to approach and confront their bosses, rather than "snipe" or undermine them amongst peers. Amongst peers, said Milley said, "destructive competitiveness" destroys trust. "It's the guy who stabs you in the back in order to advance himself," he said. "Sometimes it's done in a subtle, snide, snipey ways. Sometimes it's done in open, gross, disgusting ways. Either way, whatever the technique of the guy sniping, it's wrong. It breaks down trust. So, if you are like that, cease fire. And if you see people around you like that, crush them. But don't put up with it. You have to be able to trust the person on your left and right." Trust must also be earned down the chain of command. "Don't be that general, don't be that officer who is always looking upward and outward, and looking for your next job," he said. "Take care of those Soldiers, and civilians and family members that you are in charge of. And take it to heart. You must love your Soldiers." Finally, trust manifests itself in warfare, said Milley. And in the near future, that trust will become increasingly important, as enemy advancements in electronic warfare might mean that Army leaders in the field will have to carry out their missions even in the absence of direct lines of communication with or oversight by their superiors. "Our purpose, in order to defend the Constitution and defend the American people, is to kill people who threaten our people, kill people who threaten that Constitution. Our purpose is to close with and destroy the enemies of our country," he said. "And for that it requires trust." In the future, said Milley, that requirement for trust is going to be compounded exponentially. "We're going to operate in a very compartmented, distributed battlefield," he said. "All these communications and all this network stuff may or may not work, and I would bet on the not-work." In the absence of that communications capability, Soldiers will need to be trusted to know the mission objective -- what's expected, what the goal is -- and carry it out, even without direct supervision from their superior. "You can take it to the bank you're not going to get directions right from the West Wing of the White House or the Pentagon," he said. "You might not even get direction from your next level of higher headquarters." So how will Army officers of the future be able to execute their missions, even without being able to talk with their superiors for days, weeks or even months at a time? "You achieve it through trust, you achieve it through mission command and intent-based tactics," said Milley. "Understanding the purpose of the higher headquarters operational design, understanding why you are doing the task, not just to do the task." In the future, he said Soldiers will need to achieve their purpose in the absence of orders. "That's the very essence of mission command, and it's all built upon that single word that's in the doctrine, the bedrock of the Army ethic: which is trust," he said. "I trust that you will achieve the purpose, and you will do it ethically and morally and legally correct. And that takes an immense and off-the-charts level of character. You'll have to have a spine of titanium steel to withstand some of the pressures of intense ground combat, and you'll always have to do the right thing when no one is looking." US, Japanese forces enhance interoperability, decision-making at Yama Sakura [2016-12-14] WASHINGTON -- The bilateral command post exercise Yama Sakura 71 concluded Tuesday in Japan, where U.S. forces and Soldiers with the Japanese Western Army trained together to defeat a near-peer competitor. This year's Yama Sakura -- a yearly exercise -- involved more than just Japan's Western Army and U.S. Army Soldiers with I Corps out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. Also participating were the 5th Air Force, the 7th Fleet, and the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force. Special Forces played a role as well. Chief among the goals during Yama Sakura, according to I Corps commander, Lt. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza, was the enhancement of the bilateral decision-making process between Japanese and U.S. military partners. "The Japanese have a different decision cycle than we do. They have a different way they make decisions than we do," Lanza said. "Overcoming those differences and finding common ground there was a top priority." Increasing interoperability was also a priority, Lanza said, "so both U.S. and Japanese forces have the same picture of what's going on from an operational perspective and an intelligence perspective." "What we've seen with the Japanese is that they have grown -- at least in the short time I've been in command," Lanza said. "[They've grown] in terms of not only their interoperability with U.S. forces, but their ability to apply joint resources to an Army operation." The Japanese Army has enhanced their ability to call on air power, amphibious operations, and their navy, and Lanza attributed the vision of increasing joint interoperability to the Japanese leadership. "It was really the vision of Gen. Kiyohumi Iwata, ... their chief of staff, who said we need to move in a different direction and break down the ability of services to work on their own and be able to do these joint operations," he explained. "Any time you have the opportunity ... where you are actually training together as a headquarters, that forces that relationship and trust with the organization." PACIFIC PATHWAYS In addition to Yama Sakura, Lanza said that I Corps has undertaken a series of Pacific Pathways exercises over the course of three years. With Pathways, he said, I Corps has deployed on multi-month tours of multiple countries. "The key for Pathways is that we want it to be additive to our home-station training readiness," Lanza said. "So as we train in other countries, as we go through the sustained readiness model, we're actually increasing more live-fire opportunities." Right now, Lanza said, Pathways involves the U.S. Army and a few other U.S. military partners engaging with one country. In the future, he thinks, these Pacific Pathways could be enhanced through the inclusion of even more nations. "Perhaps there are opportunities for multilateral pathways, where you have multiple countries working together," he said. "Right now it is just one country at a time." Lanza suggested that including multiple domains of battle, including air, space and cyber, could also enhance Pacific Pathways. He nonetheless praised Pathways for increasing readiness for American Soldiers enhancing the partnerships between the United States and partner countries. "The intrinsic value that we get, when you see the U.S. military operate in these different countries, is it enhances the professional militaries of these other countries as well, which then leads to better governance and better stability," he said. "We see growth in their professionalism -- in their ability to be a professional military -- growth of their NCO corps, and growth of their leaders as well as ours." 13,000 service members to support 58th presidential inauguration [2016-12-19] WASHINGTON -- The still relatively short-staffed Joint Task Force-National Capital Region hosted a rehearsal of concept drill Wednesday to demonstrate the roles the members will perform Jan. 20 during the 58th presidential inauguration. Using a 60-by-40-foot map of the nation's capital, spread out on the floor of the D.C. Armory, Army Master Sgt. Aaron Lovely walked journalists and other guests through the plans for the inauguration, detailing the various roles military elements would play during the event. "Across the Potomac River, we have the Pentagon north parking lot," he said as he walked across the floor map and gestured downward to the image of the Department of Defense headquarters. The location, he explained, will play host to the largest number of participants on inauguration day. "In addition to [hosting] the joint service men and women who make up the military cordon, the 1,500-person formation who will stand shoulder-to-shoulder across Pennsylvania Ave," he said, "[the location] will also be the starting point for both the civilian and military participants in the parade." The senior enlisted inauguration planner for the task force, Lovely also serves as a tuba player in the Army band "Pershing's Own." The upcoming presidential inauguration will be the fourth one he has played a role in, though it's his first time as the task force's senior enlisted planner. He considers it an honor. Every day, he said, it's exciting to get up and go to work. "Normally, I'm in an Army environment, but this is a joint-service environment," he said. "Our sister services and the teammates I get to work with are stellar, and I enjoy the product we're able to put together in preparation for whatever the Presidential Inaugural Committee is going to ask us to do." When inauguration day rolls around, about 13,000 military personnel will be on hand to provide support. That number will include about 7,000 active-duty military personnel and 8,000 National Guard members from more than 40 states and territories -- some as far away as Guam. The inauguration will involve the participation of all five military services. This year active-duty personnel will provide support in musical units, marching bands, color guards, salute batteries, and honor cordons, said Maj. Gen. Bradley A. Becker, commander, Joint Task Force-National Capital Region. "Along with orchestrating the ceremonial aspects of the inauguration," Becker said, "Our [task force] provides substantial assistance to the Presidential Inauguration Committee, the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, and the U.S. Secret Service, as well as other federal, state and local agencies, to ensure a safe and secure environment." Maj. Gen. Errol R. Schwartz, commander, District of Columbia National Guard, said the guardsmen, many of whom come from military police and secretary forces backgrounds, will provide support to local law enforcement. They will provide crowd control and security assistance to the Metropolitan Police Department, the Capitol Police and the U.S. Park Service Police. According to Schwartz, the Guardsmen will be deputized by the Metropolitan Police Department before going on duty during the inauguration. But it will be local law enforcement who will be calling the shots. "If something goes bad, it's up to the law-enforcement agency to make the first move," Schwartz said. "We look forward to having a peaceful transition of power on the 20th of January. And we will continue to work with our state and interagency partners to make sure that we have a peaceful transition of power." The Guardsmen working with local police to keep order the streets in D.C, Schwartz said, will not be armed. Neither will the active-duty personnel. THE UNKNOWNS The U.S. military has participated in every inauguration since the very first one, which took place April 30, 1789. Even with that long history and tradition, Soldiers and organizers will nonetheless have to adapt to a number of unknowns when the event finally plays out in January. Among them will be the weather. Depending on the conditions that day, it's possible, however unlikely, that the inauguration could take place without any outdoor events at all, Becker said. Becker expects to know early that morning, around 4:30 a.m., whether outdoor events will proceed as scheduled. He will then issue orders to ensure all participants are wearing the appropriate uniforms. Schwartz expressed some concern for Guardsmen who are traveling from warmer areas like Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands. "My concern is that they find their cold-weather gear before they get here," he said. "But we make sure all of our service members have all of the equipment they need, whatever weather may come at us." Also currently unknown are the wishes of the president-elect himself. Ultimately, how the events of inauguration day play out will be determined largely by the Presidential Inaugural Committee. And that committee takes its marching orders from the incoming president. Fanning appoints new aides to foster 'fundamental bond' between Army and public [2017-01-11] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning swore in nine new civilian aides to the secretary of the Army, or CASAs, Monday, in the Pentagon Hall of Heroes. In his remarks, Fanning called the CASA program a critical link between the public and the military. CASAs, he said, promote understanding of the military's role in America life at a time when a divide is growing between those who serve and those who are protected. The CASA program is as important today as it has ever been, Fanning said. CASAs serve in regions around the United States and territories as liaisons between their own communities and the Army, through the secretary. "We are the sum of our Soldiers, Civilians and their Families, and their collective contributions," Fanning said. "[But] the Army is only as strong as our connection to the American people. Our CASAs are our front line of maintaining and strengthening that fundamental bond." The appointment of the nine new CASAs raises the total number to 105, all of whom represent the secretary's priorities within their civilian communities, ensuring the Army story is told -- even in areas that lack a strong military presence. After being sworn in as one of the newest civilian aides to the secretary of the Army, retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré said that returning to the Army was like coming home. "It's like fitting on a good pair of shoes," said Honoré, a veteran who is widely known for his efforts at the helm of Joint Task Force Katrina, the 2005 interagency operation that organized relief efforts along the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. "It's a good fit," he added. Fanning reminded his audience that, during his time as secretary of the Army, he has made diversity a top priority. The nine new CASAs he appointed, he said, were emblematic of the nation's diversity and the level of diversity needed in the Army. "Both our nation's history and the best scientific studies show that diverse teams are the most effective teams," he said. "And it is diverse teams that we need to build as an Army to confront the complex challenges of the 21st century." Janet Chin, a former Soldier who served in the signal corps on active duty and transitioned into the National Guard, was among the new CASAs sworn in. She will go on to serve in Los Angeles. "We don't have very many Army installations out in California, or in the Los Angeles area," she said. "So there will be a lot of listening to stories and a lot of meeting and greeting with a whole lot of individuals who want to do great things for the Army." Chin said being part of the CASA program brings her "full circle" with the Army. "It's part of being a Soldier for life," she said. Honoré said as a new CASA, he will work informally in the New Orleans area to build relationships and foster understanding of the Army mission and the needs of Soldiers. "We sometimes can open doors for recruiters, getting into educational institutions, or represent [the Army] if the local government or education systems would like somebody to come over and speak about the Army and Army roles and missions," he said. As a CASA, Honoré said he may also, if called upon, represent the Army secretary at military funerals. Concluding his remarks, Fanning thanked the appointees. "On behalf of the Army, I want to thank our newest CASAs for making a commitment to our Solders and to our nation's security, for agreeing to give of your time and talent and insights for our nation's future," Fanning said. "Thank you for your commitment to renew and strengthen the Army's solemn connection to the American people and communities." The nine new CASAs are: -- Mr. Allie L. Braswell Jr., Tampa Bay region, Florida. -- Ms. Janet Chin, Los Angeles region, California. -- Mr. Mario E. Diaz, northern region, Arizona. -- Mr. Mario A Guerra, Los Angeles region, California. -- Mr. Russel L. Honoré, southern region, Louisiana. -- Mr. Ronald L. Johnson, northern region, Georgia. -- Dr. Alan F. List, Tampa Bay region, Florida. -- Mr. C. Dana Waterman III, eastern region, Iowa. -- Mr. Ronald O. White, Capital Region, Virginia. Milley: Larger Army without funding to support it would be 'hollow force' [2017-01-13] WASHINGTON -- Gen. Mark A. Milley believes the Army needs more Soldiers, but he also believes that growth in end strength must be paired with funding that ensures those additional Solders are trained and equipped. "We the Army think that our capacity needs to increase," the chief of staff of the Army said Thursday at a breakfast hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army. "We think our capability ... and we think our readiness [need] to increase. And we fully understand that's an expensive proposition for the U.S. Army." The recent National Defense Authorization Act of 2017 puts the Army at an end strength of 476,000 Soldiers by Sept. 30, 2017. "If we just get additional people or additional end strength, but we don't have the money, then that leads you down the road to a hollow force," Milley said. "If you increase the end strength, you have to increase the money to go with the end strength to pay for the readiness." More people would likely be put into operational units, he said, if the Army could obtain the funding to ensure they are ready to fight. Some, he said, can go to the institutional Army, but right now combat units are undermanned. "Units going to training sometimes are down around 80 percent or, in some cases, even lower," Milley said. "Which is not good." Milley said he has a list of priorities for the next presidential budget. While he declined to specify exactly what's on that list, he offered hints. Air defense and ground mobility, for instance, are top priorities for the Army, he said. The Army must increase the ground mobility capabilities of its light units, Milley said. And aviation, he said, remains "very vulnerable" against a near-peer threat. "It's one thing to fight guerrillas and terrorists where you have almost exclusive freedom of the air, freedom of action of the air," he said. "But it's another thing to fight some near-peer ... threats. So protection of our aviation is a big deal." A variety of initiatives are already underway to protect rotary wing aviation and extend their range, he said. Also among his priorities are electronic warfare and nontraditional kinetic weapons like rail guns and lasers, he said, though he admitted that's "years from now." Extending the range for a variety of the Army's firing platforms, "specifically artillery, both rocket and tube artillery" is also under consideration. In the past, Milley has publicly described his vision of the future of warfare that he believes the Army must be prepared to fight. According to his vision, that includes degraded communications environments where units may be out of contact with their leadership for days or weeks at a time. Under these conditions, units of the future must be capable of operating on their own. They must be trusted to know their mission and their goals and how to achieve them. In preparing for the future of warfare, he said, the development of command and control systems must also be a priority. "The probability of us having the freedom of action in the electromagnetic spectrum that we have enjoyed for the last 15 years of war, for example, against terrorists, the probability of that happening against a near-peer is zero," he said. "You're just not going to have that kind of freedom of action." Included among the systems that could face threat during near-peer competition in the electromagnetic spectrum are radios, GPS and other position, navigation, and timing (PNT) systems. "All that stuff is dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum, and the electromagnetic spectrum will come under significant stress," he said. The Army is making advances on strategies to protect PNT systems and developing mission-command systems that are mobile, he assured his audience. "We're not going to be static against a near-peer competitor like we've been for the last 15 years," he said. The Army is looking to implement "systems that can move, that are hardened and protected and are resilient and reliable in high-paced, fast maneuver combat operations." National Guard Soldiers keep the peace during inauguration [2017-01-23] WASHINGTON -- On inauguration day, there were reports of trouble on the streets of the nation's capital, but down below, in the city's subway system, the situation remained relatively calm, according to Army Sgt. William S. Taylor. A military police officer with the 268th Military Police Company out of Ripley, Tennessee, Taylor was one of the many Tennessee National Guard Soldiers invited to the nation's capital to provide support during the inauguration of the 45th president. In all, about 7,500 Guard troops provided security. That Friday night, after the inauguration was over and the parade had ended, Taylor was standing guard as a team leader on the lower platform of the Metro Center station of the Washington, D.C. subway system. "We're tasked, along with civilian law enforcement, to handle anything that may arise," he said. "We're [here] to make sure that everybody is safe traveling though this particular station, getting on and off the trains. And if there is any kind of incident, civilian authorities are the ones to take care of it." Taylor led a team of four National Guard Soldiers who were all on the lower platform in the station, where supporters and protestors of the new president mingled. Some metro passengers carried signs from the protests they had attended, while others wore hats indicating support of the new administration. But by evening, Taylor said, he hadn't seen any conflict among passengers. "For the most part, it's been very, very peaceful. It's been crowded," he said. "People are just trying to get where they are supposed to go. Even people ... like protestors, they are all trying to get to the same place. Nobody's been upset with each other." Taylor is a police officer in the Tennessee National Guard. He has served in the Army for eight years now. In his civilian job, he serves as a police officer with the Metro Nashville Police Department. For inauguration day, however, he was deputized as part of his duties in the subway system by the Washington D.C. police department. "Normally I'm a Nashville police officer," he said. "But today, I'm a special member of the D.C. Metro police." He wore an identification badge on his uniform indicating as much. He said the opportunity to visit Washington, D.C. to participate in the inauguration was a privilege, but one that demanded a high level of responsibility. "They're not going to pick anybody to come here," he said. "They pick people with integrity and pride. And they pick Soldiers that are going to be able to have respectability. ... It's not just looking the part, you have to act the part as well." On the upper platform of the Metro Center station were Pfc. Kevie C. Davis and Pfc. Destinee M. Chambers. Both serve as supply specialists in the Tennessee National Guard. "It's something I never done before, and it's stepping out of my comfort zone," Chambers admitted. "They told us we'd be doing crowd control and guarding the subways and making sure everything was safe for the people. I like trying new things." While working in the subway, Chambers said, passengers repeatedly stopped to thank her for her service. "They say, 'Keep doing what you're doing and thank you,'" she said. "That's what they told us." Chambers has served in the Army only a short time now. She has been in uniform for less than two years and joined the Army so she could take advantage of the educational benefits. She plans to study criminal justice. But she expressed pride in wearing the uniform. "I feel like I'm helping my country out a lot," she said. Davis has been in the Army for three years. As a civilian, he is studying information systems at the University of Memphis. He and his fellow Guardsmen had been in the city for just a few days prior to the inauguration. "We had fun, we enjoyed our time here," he said. "We had good training, and our superiors made sure we were well taken care of." Turbans, beards, dreadlocks now permissible for some Soldiers [2017-01-24] WASHINGTON -- Female Soldiers may now wear dreadlocks and male Soldiers whose religious faith requires beards and turbans may now seek permanent accommodation. Army directive 2017-03, signed earlier this month, spells out changes to Army Regulation 670-1, the uniform policy, for the turban, worn by male Soldiers, the under-turban; male hair worn under a turban; the hijab, which is a head scarf worn by females; and beards worn by male members. Sgt. Maj. Anthony J. Moore, the uniform policy branch sergeant major inside the Army's G-1, said the policy change was made largely as a way to increase diversity inside the service and provide more opportunities for Americans to serve in uniform. "This is so we can expand the pool of people eligible to join the Army," Moore said. "There was a section of the population who previously were unable to enlist in the Army. This makes the Army better because you're opening the doors for more talent. You're allowing people to come in who have skills the Army can use." DREADLOCKS Female Soldiers have been asking for a while for permission to wear "locks," or dreadlocks, Moore said. "We understood there was no need to differentiate between locks, cornrows, or twists, as long as they all met the same dimension," Moore said. "It's one more option for female hairstyles. Females have been asking for a while, especially females of African-American decent, to be able to wear dreadlocks, and locks, because it's easier to maintain that hairstyle." The Army directive says that each lock, or dreadlock, "will be of uniform dimension; have a diameter no greater than 1/2 inch; and present a neat, professional, and well-groomed appearance." All female Soldiers can opt to wear dreadlocks, Moore said. RELIGIOUS ACCOMMODATION The Army has granted waivers to Sikh Soldiers since 2009 to wear a turban in lieu of issued Army headgear and allowed those same Soldiers to wear the turban indoors when Army headgear would normally be removed. Moore said for those Soldiers, the waivers were permanent, but that it was unclear whether this was the case Army-wide. That is no longer true, he said. The new policy is that a Soldier seeking religious accommodation to wear a turban must make the request only once, and the accommodation will apply to the Soldier for the Soldier's entire Army career. In an Army directive dated Jan. 3, then Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning made official the policy regarding the wear of turbans, beards, hijabs, and under-turbans. "Based on the successful examples of Soldiers currently serving with these accommodations, I have determined that brigade-level commanders may approve requests for these accommodations, and I direct that the wear and appearance standards established in ... this directive be incorporated into AR 670-1," Fanning wrote in the directive. "With the new directive, which will be incorporated into the Army regulation, religious accommodations are officially permanent for Soldiers," Moore said. The level at which requests for such accommodation can be approved has also changed. Whereas requests in the past rose to the Pentagon before they could be approved, permission can now be granted by brigade-level commanders. Bringing approval down to that level, Moore said, speeds up the approval process dramatically. That was the intent, Moore said. "They are trying to speed up the process for the Army and for the Soldier." Moore said the same religious accommodation rules apply for Soldiers seeking to wear a beard for religious reasons as well as female Soldiers who want to wear a hijab. If brigade-level commanders feel it inappropriate to approve the accommodation for some reason, he said, then they can recommend disapproval, but the recommendation must be channeled to the GCMCA for decision. Under the new policy, requests for religious accommodations that are not approved at the GCMCA-level will come to the secretary of the Army or designee for a final decision. GAS MASK ISSUE Still at issue for Soldiers is wear of a beard in conjunction with a gas mask. In the Army directive, Fanning wrote that study results have shown that beard growth can degrade "the protection factor provided by the protective masks ... to an unacceptable degree." "Although the addition of a powered air-purifying respirator and/or a protective mask with a loose-fitting facepiece has demonstrated potential to provide adequate protection for bearded individuals operating in hazardous environments," Fanning wrote, "further research, development, testing, and evaluation are necessary to identify masks that are capable of operational use and can be adequately maintained in field conditions." Moore said that, until further testing is completed and alternatives are found to protect bearded Soldiers in environments affected by chemical weapons, Soldiers with beards may be told to shave them in advance when there is specific and concrete evidence of an expected chemical attack. If a chemical warfare threat is immediate, Moore said, instructions to Soldiers to shave their beards would come from higher up, at the General Court-Martial Convening Authority-level -- typically a division-level commander. Likewise, Soldiers who seek religious accommodation to wear a beard will not be allowed to attend the Army schools required for entry into chemical warfare-related career fields, Moore said. BEARDS AND MUSTACHES For wear of the beard, Moore said, the new directive allows for beards to be as long as the Soldier wants, so long as the beard can be rolled up and compressed to less than two inches from the bottom of the chin. Additionally, for those Soldiers wearing a beard under a religious accommodation, the rules for wearing a mustache are also new. Mustaches may extend past the corners of the mouth but must be trimmed or groomed to not cover the upper lip. Maj. Kamaljeet Kalsi, a civil affairs officer in the Army Reserve's 404th Civil Affairs Battalion at Fort Dix, New Jersey, is a Sikh Soldier who wears both a turban and a beard. He sees the new policy change as an indication the Army is looking to accommodate his faith and open its doors to talent in the United States that previously might have gone untapped. "To me, it says the nation is moving in a direction that the founders intended, a pluralistic democracy that represents all," Kalsi said. "I think we're a stronger nation when we can draw from the broadest amount of talent, the broadest talent pool. And it makes us a stronger military when the military looks like the people it serves." Capt. Simratpal Singh, with the 249th Engineer Battalion prime power section, said for him the policy is about acceptance. "On a personal level, it means that I can serve freely and without having to worry about any stipulations or constraint," he said. "That's all I want is to serve in the U.S. Army, just like any of my peers." Because the next edition of AR 670-1 is expected to be published next month, the Army will not be able to include the new rules. But Moore said Soldiers can expect to see these most recent changes in the AR 670-1 that comes out at this time next year. Podcast series explores 100-year history of 82nd Airborne Division [2017-01-26] WASHINGTON -- With just 18 hours of notice, the 82nd Airborne Division can deploy and conduct a forcible-entry operation in support of U.S. interests. But the division wasn't always that ready, and they weren't always airborne. With 2017 marking the division's 100th anniversary, the 82nd is now launching a series of initiatives to commemorate its history, share the story of how it became the unit it is today, and celebrate all that the paratroopers have done for the United States and the world. "This is our centennial, our 100th anniversary, and the entire calendar year of 2017 is a celebration of our legacy," said Lt. Col. Joe Buccino, with the 82nd Airborne Public Affairs office. Among those initiatives is a new podcast series, "All American Legacy Podcast." The 82nd plans to produce one or more podcast episodes each week, over the course of the year. The first of those episodes, "All American Legacy Podcast: Episode 1 - Birth" details how the division was formed back in 1917. The episode went live on YouTube, iTunes, Google Play and the 82nd's Facebook page, Jan. 17. FROM INFANTRY TO AIRBORNE As the first podcast explains, the 82nd started off in August 1917, at Camp Gordon, Georgia, to contribute to the fighting in World War I. At the time, there was no airborne capability in the U.S. Army. The 82nd was an infantry division. It would go on to fight in some of the critical battles of the First World War. "St. Mihiel comes to mind, as does Meuse-Argonne," Buccino said. "Alvin York was our biggest moment in that war: Alvin York in the Argonne Forrest. A lot of people, I don't think, associate Alvin York with the 82nd, but he was our second Medal of Honor recipient." In 1919, after the First World War, the 82nd was deactivated. In 1921, it stood up again, going on to operate for 20 years in the Army Reserve as a drilling Reserve unit. In March 1942, a little more than three months after the attacks at Pearl Harbor, the 82nd was recalled to active duty. At the time, Buccino explained, the Allies were looking to "introduce this new airborne concept: vertical envelopment." "Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, the commanding general at the time, had trained the division above the platoon level," Buccino said. "He trained so efficiently that the 82nd was selected to become an airborne division." So it was, in August 1942, that the 82nd Infantry Division became the 82nd Airborne Division, just 25 years after it first stood up at Camp Gordon. "It was chaotic because the division had been trained for standard infantry operations in World War II," Buccino said. "And the division had to be reorganized. Half the division was sent off to the 101st." JUMPING INTO WWII Around that time, the airborne concept was still new, Buccino said. The Germans had been doing it, he said, and now the allies wanted to do it, too. But it remained to be seen whether the concept would work in large numbers. "When Gen. Ridgway announced that ... we're going to an airborne status for the European theater," Buccino said, "[Soldiers] had the option to stay in the division, or leave, or go somewhere else. But the overwhelming majority decided to stay in the 82nd." In 1942, commercial aviation in the United States was still in its infancy. Most Soldiers in the 82nd Airborne had likely never even been on an airplane. And now, the Army was asking them to jump out of one. Many of them were terrified, Buccino said. "We know now when we do these airborne operations that the equipment will work, and that we will arrive safely on the ground," he explained. "But then, people didn't really have that reassurance." When the first paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division embarked on the first operational jump mission in Italy, many of them were just novices at parachuting by today's standards, Buccino said. "They all had done this less than 10 times in training -- as aircraft to train on this were not available in the U.S. back then," he said. "Today, we have paratroopers here who have jumped 70 or 80 times. They are very familiar and comfortable with it." Today, he said, at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, 82nd Airborne Division Soldiers conduct 10,000 training jumps a month. ALL AMERICAN LEGACY PODCAST Buccino said the division plans to cover as much of the 82nd's 100-year history as possible in the "All American Legacy" podcast series, in many cases, through the voices of its own veterans. "There's an awful lot to cover here Buccino said. "What we're looking to tell are unique and cool stories that people are going to be interested in. It's an in-their-own-words format." Buccino said his office at the 82nd has been seeking out not just veterans, but relatives of veterans as well, through social media and the 82nd Airborne Division Association to ask them to come in and tell their stories. The team developing the podcasts has already spoken with the family of Alvin York, for instance, and also with his grand-nephew, who is serving in the 82nd. "It's kind of a coincidence there," Buccino said. "We talked to him for this next podcast." Future topics include the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, an all-black parachute battalion, he said, who "served as smoke jumpers on the West Coast of the United States during World War II and were incorporated into the 82nd after the war. That's a great story." They also plan to feature Dan Carlin in an episode and will cover the 82nd's involvement in the Cold War as well, including operations in Panama, Honduras and the Dominican Republic. Soldiers interested in learning more about the 100-year history of the "All-American" division can find the podcasts at youtube.com/user/82ndAirborneDiv1, on iTunes, or on Google Play. Seeding Excellence: Premier of 'Soldiers' shows in-depth look at Sullivan Cup competitors [2017-01-30] FORT MEADE, Md. -- Two M1A2 tank teams from the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia, competed early last year for the privilege of representing their division in the Army's 2016 Sullivan Cup at nearby Fort Benning in May 2016. Journalists with Army Broadcasting at the Defense Media Activity followed those two teams as they competed for the honor, and then went on to document one of the teams competing at the Army's third annual Sullivan Cup -- all part of the special two-episode premier of "Soldiers," a new Army television show aimed at exposing the human side of those who serve in the Army. "When we started this project, we asked ourselves one question: who is a Soldier?" said executive producer Lance Milsted, responsible for producing the two-episode premier of "Soldiers." "The Army story is touching, it moves, and we want people to feel the way we feel about Army stories." The two new episodes, available here for viewing, are titled "Seeding Excellence." In the first of those two episodes, Sgt. 1st Class Todd Poisson, the 3rd Infantry Division's master gunner, explained how he developed a unique six-week program to determine which one of the two best tank crews in the division -- "Team Cannonarchy" and "Team Count Trackula" -- would be most likely to succeed if sent forward to the Army-wide competition. Part of that program: operating their tanks, and performing all the functions the Army wants Soldiers to perform with them, without the aid of the on-board computers, in a so-called "degraded mode." "Back in World War II, that was the norm," Poisson said. "I created an entire Table Six of nothing but degraded engagements. And I took almost everything away from them." Young Soldiers from both of the eight-man tank crews talked about their experience competing to advance to the Sullivan Cup. "I'm getting the chance to represent the entire division," said Pfc. Matthew McLain. "Eight people, and I'm one of them. I'm really grateful for the opportunity. It's really humbling." After six weeks of competition at Fort Stewart, only one of the two teams from 3rd Infantry Division, "Team Cannonarchy" or "Team Count Trackula," would be selected to move forward to the Sullivan Cup competition. The second installment of "Soldiers" documents their competition there, pitted against the best of the best from eight other Army divisions, the Marine Corps and the Canadian Army. Other episodes of "Soldiers" will become available later this year, at an expected rate of one each month. Other episodes to air this fall in the first season include: The series will also be available on DefenseTV.com and through the Defense TV app on Apple TV and Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Google Chromecast and iOS mobile devices. Air defense community needs large, collective exercise, says brigadier general [2017-02-09] WASHINGTON -- The Roving Sands air and missile defense exercise, last held 28 years ago, served as a platform for doctrine development, a demonstration of technology, and ultimately as a validation of the expertise of the units who participated. These days, Army air and missile defense exercises of that sort are a thing of the past, but that soon may change, if Brig. Gen. Christopher Spillman has his way. "One of the things we in the air defense community don't have ... is a combat training center-like evaluation," said Spillman, who serves as commander of the 32nd Air and Missile Defense Command. "We don't have external evaluation." Speaking at an Association of the U.S. Army event Tuesday in Arlington, Virginia, Spillman said the air defense community needs that validation back to demonstrate to the rest of the Army what the defense community already knows. "Only we know if we are good or not," he said. "The rest of the Army doesn't, because they lack the expertise. We in the air defense artillery, we have the skills; we have the expertise; we know whether or not we're good. So we need an external evaluation. We need a combat training center-like evaluation." The general said he has already made efforts toward rebuilding a large, collective training exercise like Roving Sands, and he speculated that such an event could be held at Fort Bliss, Texas. "I'm going to try to figure out a way to resource that thing and demonstrate from a 32nd [Army Missile Defense Command] down to the lowest fire team ... our ability to execute air and missile defense ... So it's something I'm going to tee up here fairly soon," Spillman said. Roving Sands involved multinational partners working together to hone their air and missile defense skills, and that's something Spillman said must return -- but it won't happen right away. Initially, Spillman said, efforts toward rebuilding an air and missile defense training and validation exercise will involve "baby steps," but it's a goal worth working toward. GUARD PARTNERS In March 2016, the Army announced the Associated Units Program, which matches regular Army units with Army National Guard units to enhance training and readiness. A total of 27 units are participating in the program: 14 National Guard units are matched up with 13 regular Army units. But none of those are air and missile defense units, and Spillman said he thinks the Army Missile Defense Command community ought to participate in the program. "I have expressed to [Lt. Gen. Patrick J. Donahue, deputy commander, Army Forces Command] that we ought to be under consideration as a potential associate unit member with a National Guard battalion," Spillman said. "I think it makes a lot of sense." The general said there is a continuing demand for short-range air defense capability and for taking short-range air defense capability to the combat training centers. "I've advocated that [32nd AMDC] should be seeking an associated unit relationship with the 1-204th [Air Defense Artillery] out of Mississippi, and the 1-188th out of North Dakota," Spillman said. "Both of those battalions are standalone battalions," he added. "They don't have a higher air defense artillery brigade structure on top of them. I think there is a lot of synergy that can be gained by putting a brigade commander over the top of those battalions." Army on track to meet 2025 data center reduction goal [2017-02-13] WASHINGTON -- The Army has reduced the number of data centers across the force by about 38 percent and has, in one area, already exceeded a reduction goal set by the Office of Management and Budget. In December, then Army Secretary Eric Fanning issued a memorandum re-emphasizing Army goals for data center consolidation, as well as the reduction in enterprise applications that must happen in tandem with the consolidation. As part of its data center consolidation plan, 1,157 Army Enterprise Data Centers have been identified for closure across the force. According to a Feb. 6 report from the Army's Office of the Chief Information Officer/G-6, 94 of 230 "tiered data centers," or 41 percent, have been closed already. That exceeds OMB's requirement of 25 percent. Additionally, 344 of 927 "non-tiered data centers," or 37 percent, have been closed. GOAL OF 10 The end-state for the Army, according to Gary Wang, the deputy CIO/G6, is to bring the total number of Army Enterprise Data Centers down to about 10 by 2025. Six of those will be located outside the continental United States. The other four, inside the continental United States, will be located at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama; Fort Knox, Kentucky; Fort Carson, Colorado; and Fort Bragg, North Carolina. "Security has been a driver," said Wang of the reason for the closing of so many Army data centers. "But cost efficiency has also been a benefit. The other intangible kind of benefit that industry has kind of noticed is that it forces the organization to be more agile, in terms of being able to adjust to environmental kinds of things that happen." Preparing the 10 data centers that will remain ready to service the entire Army is also part of the initiative. That will mean, according to Wang, ensuring the data centers are consistent in terms of standards and "how they offer their services." "Part of it is making sure ... the environments are consistent across the board, so essentially you can go to any one of the four [U.S. locations], and ideally they would be identical," he said. "But I'd be happy with 95 percent." SAVING $56 MILLION To date, progress on Army Enterprise Data Centers consolidation has included the decommissioning of 2,848 servers, the reduction of the amount of floor space housing servers by about 154,000 square feet, and a cost savings of more than $56 million. According to A.J. Bognar, the Army's lead for data center consolidation, a data center can be a single server under a desk, or much more. "If it computes and stores data, it's a data center," he explained. "It could be one server, or it could be a more traditional type of facility, a brick-and-mortar facility with many racks of computing equipment, many servers and storage devices." The data centers being targeted for closure and consolidation are typically those that host a large number of Army enterprise applications that serve more than one installation, according to Wang. Those applications are typically multi-user, web-based applications that perform business, warfighting, command and control, and other enterprise functions. A reduction of the number of applications the Army uses across the force will be required before the remaining applications can be migrated to the data centers that will remain, Bognar said. "The biggest part is getting the applications out of the data center," he said. "In order to do that we have to make sure the application is ready to move into the enterprise environment. Is the application virtualized?" SHARING VIRTUALIZED ENVIRONMENT Bognar said that applications the Army now uses -- some of which are decades old and were written for now-outdated operating systems -- typically run one application to one server. To achieve a consolidation of data centers, those applications will need to run in a virtualized environment. That means that many applications, Bognar said, could end up running on a single server. "You can see how we can gain efficiencies there," Bognar said. "Instead of hosting 100 racks, I can go down to five racks." To make that happen, application owners must first invest to update those applications to run in such an environment. "We have to modernize as well if we want to be successful in an enterprise-hosting environment," he said. In addition, the applications must be updated to comply with more robust security requirements, he said. The Army also hopes to reduce the total number of enterprise applications in use. "Part of the cloud drive is what we call application rationalization," Wang said. "What we found is a number of commands may procure or buy commercial off-the-shelf applications, but it could be six flavors of the same function. It becomes very unwieldy. Sometimes they can have interoperability issues if you want to move data." Wang said supporting such a wide variety of applications, many of which perform the same function as other applications already in use by the Army, is both costly and complex. Application rationalization, he explained, is an effort to reduce the number of applications in use across the Army in areas such as human resources, finances, logistics and engineering. "[It's] saying we don't need three versions of financial manipulation software," he said. EFFICACY AND EFFICIENCY Wang envisions the Army ultimately turning to commercial cloud services later in the consolidation effort to provide a portion of the computing power to the force. For now, he said, it's likely that about 90 percent of applications would run on government-owned, government-operated systems, with the remaining 10 percent running on corporate-owned, corporate-operated systems located on military bases. But he hopes that will change. "Over time I'd like it to be the other way, where it's maybe 10 percent where we own stuff," he said. The Army will need to keep some computing power in-house, he agreed, for certain applications such as quantum computing or other highly classified operations. But eventually, he said, he envisions that "most of the stuff," such as "back-office stuff and programs-of-record kinds of things," should be running on commercial cloud services that are located on military installations. As the Army marches toward its 2025 goal of 10 data centers, Bognar said, the effort will increase not just the Army's efficiency, but mission efficacy. "As we advance toward the end state, we will be driving more and more toward a cloud type of environment. In a cloud environment you have this ability to provide the appearance of infinite computing power to the user," he said. "You have the ability to scale up and down on-demand. And you also have metered services: you only pay for what you use." Army team simulates $5 million Stryker with plywood, touch screens [2017-02-13] WASHINGTON -- The Army has about 4,500 Stryker combat vehicles in service today, at a cost of about $5 million each. What the Army hasn't had, until now, was an inexpensive way to conduct collective training for the Stryker teams. Inside the Combined Arms Center's Training Innovation Facility at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the "Stryker virtual collective trainer" demonstration doesn't look like much. But it has proven effective, according to Lt. Col. Michael Stinchfield, who leads a team that writes the requirements that fill capability gaps such as the one for collective Stryker training. Stinchfield's team comes up with low-cost solutions that rely on existing commercial off-the-shelf technology rather than costly government-funded engineering development, which is why their demonstration of the collective trainer is built from square steel tubing, the kind that can be purchased at a hardware store, plywood, and a whole lot of computers. The goal of the collective trainer is not to teach Soldiers or teams of Soldiers how to use the Stryker, but rather to teach a team in one Stryker how to work together with teams in other Strykers while conducting a shared mission. Back in 2013, then I Corps commander Lt. Gen. Robert B. Brown had identified the need for collective training for the Stryker vehicle. The general asked for a "CCTT-like thing" to fit the bill, Stinchfield said. The Army's close combat tactical trainer (CCT) provides Soldiers with a virtual, collective training capability for vehicles like the M1 Abrams tank and the M2 Bradley fighting vehicle, but it's big and expensive, and the Army knew, given budget constraints, a collective trainer for the Stryker would have to be less sophisticated and cheaper. "We understood the budget wouldn't allow the Army to rebuild the inside of a Stryker," Stinchfield said. Instead, the Army's Training and Doctrine Command in February 2015 stood up the Combined Arms Center Training Innovation Facility, which Stinchfield took the helm of as chief just six months later. His team pursued a different option for collective training on the Stryker -- one that would be far less expensive, could be replicated many times wherever it was needed, and would be based mostly on existing technology. So the team at CAC-TIF built a general box model of the Stryker to provide "general spatial awareness of where they are at in the vehicle," Stinchfield said. "It helps for context." Computer screens emulate the controls a Soldier would find inside the real vehicle. Whereas a defense-contractor solution might have replicated the inside of a Stryker, down to every button and knob, Stinchfield's team opted to recreate the vehicle's control panels with software and display them on touch screens. A CCTT-type solution for emulating the fire control unit for the remote weapons system, Stinchfield explained, would have involved rebuilding the fire control center, a full box of real buttons and switches. Such a solution would have been pricey. He estimated the cost at about half a million. The CAC-TIF solution was significantly cheaper. "We bought a $550 touch screen, [and] we did some software work, which allows us to have this touch screen here that is as fully functional as the buttons are," he said. Emulating the controls with software should prove advantageous as new versions of the Stryker using different controls come out. With each new version, the software interface in the collective trainer can be modified to reflect the changes. Now the Army will push the Stryker virtual collective trainer requirements and recommendations to the Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation for a materiel developer to create a Stryker simulator. According to Col. Jay P. Bullock, who serves as the director of the TRADOC Capability Manager-Integrated Training Environment, it's likely the Army could equip eight different Stryker brigade combat teams with a six collective trainers each -- a total of 48 in all -- for about $11.5 million. Dailey calls for recruiting from 'entire nation,' improved training opportunities [2017-02-17] WASHINGTON -- The Army has long said that only one in four Americans are fit to enlist. But that pool of American youth from which recruiters draw is improving, according to Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey. "I'm very proud of the young generation," Dailey said of those young Americans who are now of age to join the Army. "I've seen an uptick in capability, physical capability ... resiliency. I think we're on the rise with America's youth now." Dailey spoke during a morning breakfast discussion hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army Tuesday. During the breakfast, Dailey, who now serves as the 15th sergeant major of the Army, discussed current Army topics with retired Sergeant Major of the Army Kenneth O. Preston. Dailey told Preston he'd recently visited with Soldiers in advanced individual training, about 200 in all, who were about to embark on their daily physical training regimen. He ran with them after hearing a cautionary note from their training cadre warning him to take it easy on the Soldiers because they were so new. "Soldiers bend, they don't break," Dailey recalled telling the cadre. Dailey led the run, he said, at a seven-minute mile pace. "We extended the run a bit longer," he told Preston. "That's one of the benefits you have as SMA: You don't have to listen to cadre. But every single Soldier in that formation stayed in that formation. They were highly motivated. I'll bet there wasn't a single person in that formation with more than 12 percent body fat." FAMILY BUSINESS OF SOLDIERING Dailey also touched on some issues he sees in recruiting young Americans. He said a high percentage of those who join the Army today were likely inspired to join because somebody in their family had served. That makes the Soldier profession highly insular -- joining the Army tends to be a family business, Dailey said. And that has to change. "We need more of the broader population for the Army," he said. "We think the best representation of the United States of America is to recruit from the entire nation. We've lost some of that ability to do that based on a lot of things: competing efforts, [the] amount of education provided in those areas. But I think we have to continue to invest." The Army continues today to recruit from the same areas of the country, Dailey said. He wants that to change. He wants to increase recruiting efforts in parts of the country that haven't traditionally provided a lot of Soldiers: the northeast and the northwest, for instance. Still, last year, Dailey said the Army pulled 14,000 female Soldiers into the Army. "This last year we did an excellent job of recruiting females," he said. "It was one of our best years in a decade." COMMITTED TO EDUCATION The top two reasons for joining the Army, according to Dailey, remain patriotism and educational benefits. He firmly believes that continuing to allow the benefits that entice civilians into enlistment to erode will place the Army's all-volunteer force at risk. "I think we have [made] some tough choices in the past because of the fiscal constraints we're in," he said. "But we can't sustain any more of those in the future. We have to continue to invest in the Soldiers because that is an investment in the future." One such benefit cited by Dailey derives from the National Defense Authorization Act, which this year gave the Army the authority to credential Solders who have jobs that translate to skills in the private sector. That allows Soldiers to walk out of the Army with paperwork that will allow them to perform the same job as a civilian that they gained experience on while serving in uniform. It's something Dailey said he has been developing since he served as the sergeant major for Army Training and Doctrine Command. "Since 2008, we've dropped unemployment compensation from over $500 million a year, and it landed around $172 million this year from those efforts," he said. Dailey said that achievement is firmly in line with the commitment the Army makes to the parents of youth who opt to join. "When we send them home, they are going to be better than we received them," he said. "That's our commitment to the American Soldier." DISTRACTION TO READINESS Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley's No. 1 priority is readiness, a point he has emphasized repeatedly since being sworn in to the position in August 2015. But there are distractions to that readiness, Dailey pointed out. As he has heard from both officers and enlisted members, not every Soldier is always available to train when it's time to train. Oftentimes, that comes as a result of having to sustain base operations. "We've had to put Solders in jobs that were contracted during the war," he said. "That's things like gate guards, emergency services, and to help fill gaps in our morale, welfare, and recreation facilities." When Soldiers are pulling duty outside their own units, they aren't available to go train with their units. And that hampers unit readiness. Dailey said that, for NCOs and officers alike, it was their No. 1 complaint. "'Sergeant major, we can get after the task, we just need all of our Soldiers back to do it,'" Dailey recalled them saying. "We need to reduce our non-deployables; we need to get our Soldiers off these other tasks and get them back to their warfighting tasks." According to Dailey, it's a problem that Installation Management Command is currently committed to resolving. "We're going to reinvest in some of those things so we can get Soldiers back to doing their traditional jobs," he said. But Milley's readiness mandate applies not just to regular Army forces, Dailey said. It applies to the total force, Army National Guard and Army Reserve included. And Dailey said the Guard and Reserve are being used now more than they ever have been in the past. And for them, he said, it's even tougher to maintain readiness, due to their limited training opportunities. "We have to be cognizant of that, because they are citizen Soldiers, and they are employees out in our great hometowns of America," he said. "Less than half of the U.S. Army now is active forces ... We constantly rely on [Reserve forces] to fill out the gaps and seams we have across 140 countries ... and the constant demand for brigades." This year, Dailey said, the Army is doubling the capacity at combat training centers to ensure more training opportunities and improved readiness for Reserve component forces. Painting by Army Soldier displayed in museum in Rome [2017-02-28] WASHINGTON -- Since he turned 18 just 15 years ago, Army Spc. Zee H. Leung has achieved four of his lifelong dreams. First, his family finally immigrated to the United States from China in 2006 after a long process they kicked off when they filed the paperwork in 1998. Second, Leung became a citizen of the United States in 2012, six years after arriving in New York City. Third, he became an American Soldier, joining the U.S. Army and shipping off to basic training just months after earning his college degree. And fourth, as part of his official duties now as a multimedia illustrator for the Army, he has painted a picture that now hangs in a museum in Rome, Italy. PROXIMITY BREEDS OPPORTUNITY Leung works as a 25M, or multimedia illustrator, for the Army, and is assigned now to the Army Multimedia and Visual Information Directorate at the Pentagon, where he and his teammates provide graphic support to Headquarters Department of the Army. In June of 2016, the executive officer with the Army Provost Marshal, approached AMVID staffers with a proposal: Maj. Gen. Mark S. Inch's counterpart in the Italian military, Gen. Tullio Del Sette, would be visiting later in the year, and Inch wanted to present him with a painting. He hoped AMVID could make that happen. As a graphic artist trained in painting and drawing, Leung was asked to produce the painting. He was, in essence, commissioned like a modern-day Michelangelo. Today, Leung waxes ecstatic about Italian art and the opportunity to paint something for the Italians. "It was very high-profile and an honor to do this for them," he said. "I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to paint this painting that showcased the long history and achievements and cooperation between the U.S. military police and Italian military police." FIVE MONTHS OF WORK Though he was a trained artist, the Army hadn't really drawn on his painting skills as much as it has his graphic arts skills. As a 25M Soldier, he spends more time producing work on a computer than he does on canvas. So he worried that his painting skills might have gotten rusty from disuse. To make the painting happen, Leung also had to conduct a lot of research into both the U.S. Army military police, and the Italian military police. "I started my research right away," he said. "I used that five months very productively. I wouldn't say I was confident all of the time, but .... to be able to create this little piece of artwork, and use it at in international level to strengthen the relationship between our countries, was just a great honor." The final work was presented to the Italians in November, about five months after he was asked to start it. "General Inch was meeting with his counterparts," Leung remembered. "They were nice enough to let me unveil that painting myself. They put a cloth over it, and I got to unveil it with the Italians. ... It was an exciting day for me to see my work recognized." SYMBOLIC GUARDIANS The painting features both Inch and Del Sette, as well as representations of the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Division and Protective Services Battalion. Representing the Italians, he included Carabinieri police officers, as well as the Cuirassiers' Regiment, who serve in a role similar to the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard). Also included in the painting is the U.S. Capitol, and matching the U.S. Capitol is the Roman Coliseum, its presence symbolizing, according to Leung, "the glorious past the Italians have and also what their MP Corps is there to protect: the heritage, cultural heritage, the rich fantastic art they have." The background of the painting features the colors of the Italian flag: green, white and red, and also features the two pistols that symbolize the U.S. Army's MP Corps, as well as the flaming grenade that symbolizes the Italian MP Corps. Today, the painting hangs in the Carabinieri museum in Rome. "I love Italian art so much," Leung said. "it's really a great honor." DISCIPLINE AND ART Looking back on his grade school days in China, when his family first applied for permission to come to the United States, Leung said he was no stranger to that kind of strict discipline he would later encounter in the Army. "The schools [in China], they always push you," he recalled. "I had like three sessions a day, every day, from morning until 9 o'clock at night. ... For me it was very intense. But it was rewarding, because it gave me some discipline to push myself ... I think it set me up for success in the long run." At a young age, Leung was already pursuing an interest in art and when he reached high school, he concentrated on the fine arts, painting and sketching and drawing with different kinds of materials: watercolor, gauche and acrylics. Leung knew early -- from grade school -- he would eventually come to the United States. His grandmother had paved the way, he said. "My grandma was in the U.S. for a long time," Leung said. "She applied for my family to come here. We started the process back in 1998." With visas in hand, Leung and his family finally came to the United States in 2006. Leung was about 18 or 19 years old at the time, he said. Leung, however, was unable to resume his art education right away. Before he could pursue an education in the fine arts, he realized, he first would have to master English. In the United States, he attended a community college in New York City to improve his language skills. After two years, he transferred to State University of New York at New Paltz to continue his art education. In 2012, just as he was closing in on graduation and a degree, he underwent two dramatic life events; the first was becoming an American citizen. It was one of the proudest days of his life, he said. "Because actually, when I was very young, very small, I was already dreaming about coming to the States. I had dreams about walking through the streets of New York, before I came here." The other was that he decided to join the Army. "I was getting ready to graduate, and I didn't know what to do next," he recalled. "But the Army was always something I wanted to do, because of the discipline." MIXING IT UP Immediately after graduating in May of 2012, Leung returned to New York City and paid a visit to the recruiting center in Brooklyn. The recruiter there told him about an opening for the 25M career field, which -- compared to a career field like the infantry -- is relatively small. He swore into the Army at Fort Hamilton, New York, and they shipped him to basic training in July. "I was really lucky to get into that spot," Leung said. "So I signed right up. That was exciting too. I finally get to do what I always wanted to do: a multimedia illustrator, in the Army." Leung recognized the contradiction between the creative freedom he wanted as an artist and the discipline that comes with serving in the Army, but he always knew he could make it work. "I like creative freedom, no restraints. I want to be myself," he admitted. "But I also wanted to see if I could do this as a Soldier. ... As an art student who graduated with a Bachelor of Science fine arts degree, I thought I could make use of my creative skills and benefit the Army." Leung's first assignment was not at the Pentagon, but rather at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where he served with Bravo Company, 6th Military Information Support Battalion. Between his advanced individual training and Bragg, he also attended airborne school at Fort Benning, Georgia. After Fort Bragg, Leung came to the Pentagon to work at AMVID. He is now applying to work at the White House Communications Agency. "Hopefully I'll get that," he said. "Hopefully I'll be doing greater works.[It's] really ... the highest position you can think of as a 25M, to work for the president. It's a very exciting assignment." And when his Army career one day comes to a close, Leung said, he plans to use veteran educational benefits to get a master's in fine art at New York University or Columbia. "I'm looking at a couple of art schools," he said. Acquisition community: The Army can't wait for 'perfect solutions' [2017-03-01] WASHINGTON -- To get Soldiers the latest equipment they need now, say Army acquisition professionals, the Army must accept that it can't have perfection right up front. Maj. Gen. David G. Bassett, the Army's program executive officer for Ground Combat Systems, said Monday during a public forum on Capitol Hill, that the Army must be willing to accept some temporary shortcomings if it's going to meet the chief of staff's demands to get needed capability out to the force quicker. One example where this strategy has proven successful was with the Stryker Double V Hull capability, which provides additional protection to Soldiers in the Stryker. "The traditional acquisition process would have held it out and not fielded it," Bassett said at the forum, which was hosted by the Lexington Institute, "because the automotive systems under Stryker, the engine, was not enough to meet all of its mobility objectives." Still, the Stryker with the DVH went out to the force -- with less than the best mobility under the hood -- because without that extra protection, Bassett said, Soldiers were at risk. "So what changed in Stryker DVH? We had a willingness to accept the shortcoming in mobility until we could offer more protection to our Soldiers," he said. "People were getting shot at." Stryker DVH is doing "very well," today, he said. And there's now an engineer change proposal to upgrade the Stryker with a bigger engine and transmission to give it improved mobility. "Senior leaders were willing to accept that shortcoming for some period of time," he said of the Stryker DVH. As a result, an improved protection capability was fielded. Also, some of the Strykers now have improved lethality that comes with the addition of a 30 mm cannon. Strykers equipped with the new cannon are referred to as "Dragoons." "We delivered the first vehicle on Stryker lethality within 15 months of receipt of funds," Bassett said. "In the old way of doing business, we might have had some folks in the requirements community who would say, 'Don't field Stryker lethality, because it doesn't have an airburst munition ready.'" According to Baseett, in the past, the fielding of the Stryker with the 30 mm cannon in Europe might have been delayed until the airburst capability was ready for it. "We said field it without airburst," he said. "And as soon as that munition is affordable and capable, we'll make sure it's [good] to fire a round, but we're not going to hold it up for just airburst." In his remarks, Bassett also pointed to advancements with the M109 self-propelled howitzer. He said the M109 needed both a better cannon and better mobility. The Army opted to upgrade the automotive capability before outfitting it with a new cannon. "We know the Russians outrange us; we need to extend the range of our cannon," Bassett said. "But we also realize that, until we got the automotive portions in place, getting at the cannon wasn't going to do us much good, so we broke it into two pieces." Maj. Gen. Walter Piatt serves as director of operations for the Army Rapid Capabilities Office, which stood up about six months ago under then Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning. Piatt said the Rapid Capabilities Office was established so the U.S. could keep pace with its adversaries. "While we are meeting current demand," he said, "our adversaries have been modernizing at an alarming rate." Development through the traditional Army acquisition cycle typically takes longer than five years. On the short side of acquisition, the Rapid Equipping Force can respond to an urgent operational needs statement from Soldiers or units with a materiel solution, typically in less than six months. Output from the Rapid Capabilities Office, however, is meant to hit a "sweet spot" in development timelines of between one and five years. It's not meant to provide immediate solutions, nor long-term development of projects like aircraft or vehicles. Its purpose is to close the capability gaps with rapidly evolving technologies that require a dedicated fast-track to approval. Right now, Piatt said, the Rapid Capabilities Office is focusing on electronic warfare capabilities as well as position, navigation, and timing. "We cannot wait for something to be developed in a perfect solution that would come to us in five or 10 years," Piatt said. "What do we have in the inventory today that could be repurposed that would give us the ability to do electronic support and electronic attack [in addition to] electronic protection?" According to Piat, waiting for a perfect solution would mean failing to meet the timeline provided by the chief of staff of the Army. "We're going to do rapid prototyping of these, or re-engineering, or a tweak to something that's existing," he said, "[and] issue it in a smaller formation in Eastern Europe ... assess it in the field, do an operational assessment, and learn earlier so that we can get to right faster." The Rapid Capabilities Office answers to the secretary of the Army, chief of staff of the Army, and the Army's chief acquisition executive. Other stakeholders include the G-2, the intelligence community, Army Forces Command, Army Materiel Command, and Army Training and Doctrine Command. "They inform how we are getting after this problem," Piatt said. "All agree we are focused on the right two [EW and PNT] to get out of the gate. We have to be able to solve ground maneuver in this contested and congested domain." 1st ABCT brings improved readiness home from Korea [2017-03-03] WASHINGTON -- After nine months as the second brigade to deploy to Korea as part of a rotational force, the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, out of Fort Hood, Texas, found they'd developed a stronger mindset regarding mission readiness -- something they brought home with them to Texas. Col. John P. DiGiambattista served as the commander of 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team during its nine-month rotation into Korea last year, which lasted from February through the end of October. The 1st ABCT, with about 4,200 Soldiers, was the second brigade to rotate into Korea to perform a mission focused on, among other things, supporting the Korean/American defense alliance, "making sure we are trained and ready, our equipment was ready to fight, and our Soldiers were prepared," DiGiambattista said. "In the time I've been in the Army, it was one of the most complex missions I've had to deal with," DiGiambattista said. "Working from our mission to fight decisive action, or be prepared to fight tank-on-tank or infantry soldier-on-infantry soldier, but also, countering weapons of mass destruction as another task, and living and working right there in the Republic of Korea, living among the people. The brigade's Bradleys had to share roads with civilian vehicles when the BCT went to train, DiGiambattista said. "So our Soldiers had to take some of the lessons we learned in recent conflicts about dealing with culture and people and apply those on our time in Korea." IMPROVING READINESS After they got home to Texas, he said, they brought that experience on the Korean Peninsula home with them -- improving their readiness stateside. In Korea, the 1st ABCT focused on maintaining its equipment. "We had this 'fight tonight' mindset that really made sure that every night we went to sleep, I knew how many tanks could run and how many artillery pieces could fire," he said. His Soldiers also had that same situational awareness about their unit readiness, he said. "We brought that back to Fort Hood, and we have been able to maintain our equipment at a higher level because of that experience in Korea," he said. "We are thinking in a different way about how do we make sure things stay working and stay functional." Even more than equipment readiness, DiGiambattista said, Soldiers were professionally improved as well as a result of their deployment. "We built squads, platoons, teams that were more proficient, just because of the amount of time they got to spend together and the number of exercises they were able to undertake," DiGiambattista said. "The end result is we developed professional depth, expertise in the formation, that as we come back and redeploy from Korea, we maintained in the brigade -- but also, those leaders that leave, those Soldiers that leave, have more experience." The U.S. Army has been in Korea for more than 65 years now. The 2nd Infantry Division has been there for 50 years as a permanently stationed presence. But in 2015 its 1st BCT inactivated and the division ID began relying on a rotational BCT. ROTATIONAL MODEL The 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division was the first unit to participate in the rotational model. It deployed to Korea in the summer of 2015 and served there for nine months. In February 2016, they rotated out and were replaced by the 1st Cavalry Division's 1st ABCT, a sister unit, led by DiGiambattista. When DiGiambattista's ABCT rotated out in October of last year, after having served its nine months, the unit was replaced by 1st ABCT, 1st Infantry Division. That ABCT has been in place now on the peninsula for about four months, and will be relieved this summer. In advance of their Korea rotation, DiGiambattista's ABCT prepared with a rotation at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California. "In our normal train up, as we went to the National Training Center, we really focused on some skills the brigade would need, from Soldiers through myself, in Korea," he said. "Embedded in that, we did a counter-WMD event. The result of that was that the brigade had worked together to develop the skills, develop an ability to fight a counter-fire fight, and to coordinate our armored battalions together against an enemy." Once in Korea, he said, his brigade conducted counter-WMD training, emergency readiness exercises, and focused also on development of power projection. "One of the things we discovered in Korea: we hadn't put U.S. Army tanks on the Korean rail system in a long time," he said. "So on day No. 1, we had people out there with rulers measuring the tanks to make sure they were on those train cars properly. They weigh 70 tons. And it took us quite a while that day to work it out. But what we found is, the next day it moved much faster. And by the third day we were loading equipment, we moved just as fast as we do it anywhere else. And what that brought home to me is: if we don't practice deployment, if we don't practice moving our equipment through and around areas like Seoul or driving on the roads there, we don't perfect the skill." Recognizing the threat of chemical weapons use from North Korea, DiGiambattista's brigade also practiced on its counter-WMD skills, as they had done at NTC. "At the brigade level, once a week, we put on all of our equipment for a number of months while we were there," he said. "We also did exercises where we practiced being in that environment, practiced cleaning our vehicles, and then maintaining our chemical detection equipment -- all hazardous-material detection equipment." NIGHT ALERTS For some Soldiers, DiGiambattista said, there were also late nights -- surprise exercises to test their readiness to fight at a moment's notice. "Sometimes we'd say get all of your equipment ready to alert + four hours," he said. "And that would be essentially making sure we could get our equipment on our vehicles." One company, he said, got late-night orders as part of an emergency deployment readiness exercise. "We called them at 2 in the morning," he said. "We said we want you to start walking at 0400 hours. You carry this much weight. You're going to go six miles. At the end you are going to shoot your weapons and we want to see how you qualify, how fast you can walk six miles." He said the company was able to accomplish the six-mile walk faster than expected -- and that the Soldiers' weapons qualified at a higher rate than what was expected as well. "To see those Soldiers out there, the company commander making a plan, planning routes, focused on it as a mission, and then able to meet the marks that we expected, was pretty neat," he said. "One of the other things we did was for our tank companies-- more focused on making sure all the systems worked -- we'd have them roll the tanks out about 5 kilometers, and then we would check their maintained status, again to make sure those things functioned, and then our Soldiers had the mentality -- understood what was required to respond if there was some kind of emergency." The South Korean Army, DiGiambattista said, is highly trained and professional. He said just working with them was a benefit for his brigade. "For some of our junior leaders who may have been recently deployed to other places, it was really eye-opening and refreshing to work with a professional force that was focused on their own security and driven by their needs," he said. "We did some phenomenal training with them." Early on in their rotation, the brigade conducted a river crossing over the Imjin River, which crosses the demilitarized zone between North Korea and South Korea. The crossing gave the Americans an opportunity to learn from the Republic of Korea Army. "For two days, we used U.S. boats and U.S. rafts to build that river crossing," he said. "But the last two days we had the [ROK Army] come in and we used their boats and their bridging equipment. It was a tremendous opportunity for us to understand how they approach the problem -- but also to put our tanks and Bradleys on their equipment on their bridge. And that built some tremendous trust and confidence." That wasn't the only opportunity, he said, where American Soldiers were able to learn from their ROK counterparts. "One of the ROK battalions in the [16th Mechanized Infantry Brigade] planned a week of training," he said. "They took one of our infantry companies and embedded it in their battalion training. That's the first time that we know of that happened: that instead of the U.S. leading training, the ROK Army led that training. And it was another great experience. They had some unique training facilities that we had access to because we were training with them, and really got to understand how they approach that fight. And those junior leaders learned a great deal." Overall, DiGiambattista said, his brigade learned a lot in Korea -- and took a lot home. "We called it 'moving to mastery,'" he said. "We got a lot more opportunities to exercise our craft. Whether that was working with the Korean army, the Korean local people, or local Korean government, practicing our decisive action missions, firing live weapons and training in Korea, or practicing even moving non-combatants out of the country. All of those things made us better at our job. And we built readiness, and sustained our proficiency while we were there." New Army jungle wear gives trench foot the boot [2017-03-06] WASHINGTON -- The standard issue combat boot most Soldiers wear today, the one most commonly worn in Iraq and Afghanistan, is great for sandy dunes, hot dry weather, and asphalt. But it's proven not so good in hot and wet environments. So the Army has developed a new jungle boot that some Soldiers will see this year. In September, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley directed the Army to come up with a plan to outfit two full brigade combat teams in Hawaii, part of the 25th Infantry Division there, with a jungle boot. The Army had already been testing commercial jungle boots at the time -- with mixed results -- but didn't have a specialized jungle boot, so Program Executive Officer Soldier, headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, had to get a plan together to make it happen. By October, the Army had made a request to industry to find out what was possible and, by December, contracts were awarded to two boot manufacturers in the United States to build more than 36,700 jungle-ready combat boots, enough to outfit both full IBCTs in Hawaii. "This is important to the Army and important to Soldiers in a hot, high-humidity, high-moisture area," said Lt. Col. John Bryan, product manager for Soldier Clothing and Individual Equipment with PEO Soldier. "We are responding as quickly as we possibly can with the best available, immediate capability to get it on Soldiers' feet quickly and then refine and improve as we go." MIXING LEGACY WITH TECH Right now, the new jungle boot the Army developed will be for Soldiers with the 25th ID in Hawaii -- primarily because there are actually jungles in Hawaii that Soldiers there must contend with. The new boots look remarkably similar to the current boots Soldiers wear. They are the same color, for instance. And the boots, which Bryan said are called the "Army Jungle Combat Boot" or "JCB" for short, sport a variety of features drawn from both the legacy M1966 Vietnam-era jungle boot and modern technology. The M1966 Jungle Boot, which featured a green cotton fabric upper with a black leather toe that could be polished, had a solid rubber sole that Soldiers reportedly said had no shock-absorbing capability. The new boot uses a similar tread, or "outsole," as the M1966 "Panama style" -- to shed mud and provide great traction, but the added midsole makes it more comfortable and shock absorbing, according to Albert Adams, who works at the Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center. The outsole of the new boot is connected to the leather upper via "direct attach," Adams said. That's a process where a kind of liquid foam is poured between the rubber outsole and leather boot upper. "[It's] a lot like an injection molding process," he said. The foam layer between the rubber sole and the upper portion of the boot not only provides greater shock absorbing capability, but it also keeps out microbes in hot, wet environments that in the past have been shown to eat away at the glues that held older boots together. So the new boots won't separate at the soles, he said. "It provides a high level of durability, and it also adds cushioning." Also part of the new boot is a textile layer that prevents foreign items from puncturing the sole of the boot and hurting a Soldier's foot, Adams said. The M1966 boot accomplished that with a steel plate. The new boot has a ballistic fabric-like layer instead. Staff Sgt. Joshua Morse, an instructor at the Jungle Operations Training Center in Hawaii, said the puncture resistance is welcome. He said punji sticks, familiar to Vietnam War veterans, are still a problem for Soldiers. "They use these punji pits for hunting purposes," he said. "In Brunei, you are literally in the middle of nowhere in this jungle, and there are natives that live in that area and still hunt in that area, and it can be an issue." And in mangrove swamps, he said, "you can't see anything. You don't know what's under your feet at all. There are a lot of sharp objects in there as well." The new JCB also features a heel with a lower height than the M1966 model to prevent snags on things like vines in a jungle environment. That prevents tripping and twisted ankles. The boot also has additional drainage holes to let water out if it becomes completely soaked, speed laces so that Soldiers can don and doff the boots more quickly, a redesigned upper to make the boots less tight when they are new, an insert that helps improve water drainage, and a lining that provides for better ventilation and faster drying than the old boot. "You're going to be stepping in mud up to your knees or higher, and going across rivers regularly," Adams said. "So once the boot is soaked, we need it to be able to dry quickly as well." FEEDBACK FORMED FINAL DESIGN Morse has already been wearing and evaluating early versions of the JCB, and he thinks the results of the Army's effort to provide him with better footwear are spot on. "The designs were conjured up in a lab somewhere, and they were brought out here, and the main focus was the field test with us," Morse said. "A lot of us have worn these boots for a year now, different variants of the boots. And all the feedback that we've put into this, and given to the companies, they have come back and given us better products every single time." Morse said he was initially reluctant to wear the new jungle boots he had been asked to evaluate. On a trip to Brunei, he recalled, he went instead with what he was already familiar with and what he trusted -- a pair of boots he'd worn many times, the kind worn by Soldiers in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan. "I wore a pair of boots I'd had for a couple of years," he said. "I wore them in Brunei and I had trench foot within a week. But then I thought, I have this brand new pair of test boots that they asked me to test; they are not broken in, but I'm going to give them a shot. I put them on. After 46 days soaking wet, nonstop, my feet were never completely dry. But I wore those boots, and I never had a problem again." The Army didn't design the new JCB in a vacuum. Instead, it worked with Solders like Morse to get the requirements and design just right to meet the needs of Soldiers, said Capt. Daniel Ferenczy, the assistant product manager for Soldier Clothing and Individual Equipment. "We take what Soldiers want and need, we boil that down to the salient characteristics, hand that over to our science and technology up at Natick; they work with us and industry, the manufacturing base, to come up with this product," Ferenczy said. "This is a huge win, a great win story for the Army because it was such a quick turnaround." In March, the Army will begin fielding the current iteration of the JCB to Soldiers in the first of two brigade combat teams in Hawaii. During that fielding, the boots will be available in sizes 7 to 12. In June, the Army will begin fielding the JCB to the second BCT, this time with a wider array of sizes available: sizes 3 to 16, in narrow, regular, wide and extra wide. They will also go back and take care of those Soldiers from the initial fielding who didn't get boots due to their size not being available. A third fielding in September will ensure that all Soldiers from the second fielding have boots. Each Soldier will get two pairs of JCBs. In all, more than 36,700 JCBs will be manufactured for this initial fielding -- which is meant to meet the requirement laid out in September by the Army's chief of staff. By December, the Army will return to Hawaii to ask Soldiers how those new boots are working out for them. "Al Adams will lead a small group and go back to 25th ID, to conduct focus groups with the Soldiers who are wearing these boots and get their feedback, good and bad," said Scott A. Fernald, an acquisition technician with PEO Soldier. "From there, the determination will be made, if we had a product we are satisfied with, or if we need to go back and do some tweaking." AUTHORIZED FOR ALL Fernald said that sometime between April and June of 2018, a final purchase description for the JCB will be developed based on feedback from Soldiers who wore it. He expects that in fiscal year 2019, an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract will be signed with multiple vendors to produce the final version of the JCB for the Army. Bryan said the JCB, when it becomes widely available, will be wearable by all Soldiers who want to wear it -- even if they don't work in a jungle. "From the get-go, we have worked with the G-1 ... to make sure we all understood the Army wear standards for boots," he said. "One of the pieces of feedback we have gotten from Soldiers before they wear them, is they look a lot like our current boots. That's by design. These will be authorized to wear." While the JCB will be authorized for wear by any Solider, Bryan made it clear that only some Soldiers in some units will have the JCB issued to them. And right now, those decisions have not been made. Soldiers who are not issued the JCB will need to find it and purchase it on their own if they want to wear it. "We are not directing commercial industry to sell them," Bryan said. "But if they build to the specification we've given them for our contract, they can sell them commercially and Soldiers are authorized to wear them." New Soldier armor weighs less, offers more options [2017-03-16] WASHINGTON -- The average generation II improved outer tactical vest weighs about 26 pounds. But the new torso and extremity protection system, or TEP, under development now at Program Executive Office Soldier, sheds about five pounds of weight and also adds a wide degree of scalability that commanders can make use of depending on threat level and mission. The TEP is part of the new Soldier Protection System under development now at PEO Soldier. The SPS includes both the TEP and the integrated head protection system. RANGE OF OPTIONS The TEP can replace the IOTV, at less weight and greater scalability, depending on the mission. It includes the modular scalable vest, the ballistic combat shirt, the blast pelvic protection system, and a battle belt, which is aimed at getting weight off a Soldier's shoulders and onto the hips. With the TEP, commanders can require Soldiers to go with full protection -- which provides the same level of protection as a fully-loaded IOTV -- or go all the way down to wearing soft armor under their uniforms for missions that require less protection. "It's about giving commanders on the battlefield the ability to use the modularity capability of the equipment to fit their particular mission profile or protective posture level," said Lt. Col. Kathy Brown, the product manager for Personal Protective Equipment at PEO Soldier, Fort Belvoir, Virginia. BALLISTIC COMBAT SHIRT The IOTV sometimes required Soldiers to wear the deltoid auxiliary protection -- cumbersome parts that snapped on to the IOTV and protected their shoulders. Soldiers might have also been asked to wear the smaller, easily-lost collars that also snapped on to the IOTV. Both are gone with the TEP. They've been replaced by the ballistic combat shirt, which is a shirt with breathable fabric and which also includes those smaller ballistic protection parts built in. Soldiers would wear the BCS under the TEP's modular scalable vest. "We have tested it," Brown said of the ballistic combat shirt. "Soldiers like it. There is 95 percent Soldier acceptability of it. What we are working on now is tweaking the sizes." NEW PELVIC PROTECTION The TEP also includes the blast pelvic protection system, which is designed to protect a Soldiers thighs and groin against ballistic threats and burns. The BPPS is meant to replace the current combination of the pelvic undergarment and the pelvic outer-garment, or "PUG" and "POG." The PUG has sometimes been referred to as "ballistic underwear." Brown said the BPPS "provides the same level of protection" as the PUG and POG combined, including both burn and fragment protection. She said Soldiers have reported that it feels more like it is "part of the pants." BELT TAKES LOAD OFF SHOULDERS The battle belt included with the TEP is part of a weight management system, but it also offers some protection as well. "It's designed to remove the weight from your shoulders and put it on your hips," Brown said. Whereas Soldiers might strap a radio or other gear onto their IOTV in the past, the battle belt can now take that gear and move the weight onto a Soldier's hips. Brown said that after successful ballistic testing, production of the TEP will begin in probably May of this year, and that Soldiers could see it in 2018 or 2019. NEW HELMET Another part of the Soldier Protection System is the integrated head protection system, or IHPS. In its full configuration, it looks similar to a motorcycle helmet. The IHPS consists of a base helmet, similar to the polyethylene enhanced combat helmet that some Soldiers are already wearing. The IHPS also includes add-ons for the base helmet, including a visor, a "mandible" portion that protects the lower jaw, and a "ballistic applique" that is much like a protective layer that attaches over the base helmet. The complete ensemble is known as the "high threat configuration." Brown said that eventually all deploying Soldiers will get the IHPS with the base helmet, which is the standard configuration. Other Soldiers, vehicle gunners in particular, will also get the mandible portion and the ballistic applique as well, known as the turret configuration. The IHPS currently has a Picatinny rail mounted on the side for attaching gear, and will also provide for attaching head-mounted night vision goggles. NEW SUNGLASSES The visor portion on the IHPS provides ballistic protection to a Soldier's face but doesn't provide any protection against the sun. So Soldiers wearing it will need to wear darkened sunglasses underneath the visor if they are in bright environments. Maj. Jaun F. Carleton, also with PEO Solider, had a pair of new sunglasses that are authorized for use by Soldiers if they want to buy them, or if their commanders buy them for them. The sunglasses, which also come in a face mask version as well, start off as un-darkened -- offering no protection against the sun. But with the press of a button, LCD modules that adhere to the lenses darken and provide protection against the sun. That happens in less than a second. "The benefit is that using one pair of protective eyewear, you wouldn't have to switch from a clear goggle to a dark goggle -- you'd have one protective eyewear for all conditions," Carleton said. Brown said the goggles will be available for units to be able to requisition as part of the Soldier Protection System. "If we are able to drive the price down, the Army could eventually make a decision to include that on the list of items that we carry for deploying Soldiers," Brown said. SOLDIER TESTING Brown said the IHPS will likely be available to deploying Soldiers sometime between 2020 and 2021. As part of extensive human factors evaluations, Brown said that PEO Soldier has used Soldiers, extensively, to evaluate the new gear. "We had a massive scale of Soldiers to evaluate the equipment, usually over a three-week to month-long timeframe, where they would perform their different mission sets, where they will execute basic rifle marksmanship, and ruck marches," she said. Afterward, she said, those same Soldiers were asked what they think of the gear through a qualitative evaluation methodology (Soldier survey). "They would give us the good, the bad, the ugly," Brown said. "It's extremely important to get Soldiers' input. First, Soldiers are brutally honest and they are going to tell you exactly how they feel about the equipment. Second, why buy equipment Soldiers won't wear? And third, who's better to give us the best answer about how the kit should be designed than the Soldier who will actually wear the equipment?" Aircraft protection will be priority if sequestration continues, says G-8 [2017-03-20] WASHINGTON -- If sequestration continues in fiscal year 2018, active protection systems for Army aircraft will remain a top priority, said the Army's chief resource officer. "We haven't reached that point yet. Hopefully, we won't," said Lt. Gen. John M. Murray, the Army G-8. "But I would prioritize active protection systems for our aircraft. There are threats out there right now [for which] we just need to develop some new technologies -- and we are -- to provide protection for our aviators. I'd put that as No. 1." Active protection systems, which the Army wants for both ground vehicles and aircraft, provide combat vehicles with automated protection against armor penetrators and direct-fire threats, such as rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank guided missiles. Both Murray, and Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, the Army G-3/5/7, testified March 16 before the House Armed Services Committee's subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces on the effects of sequestration and continuing resolutions on Army modernization and readiness. Beyond the prioritization of active protection systems, he said, sequestration would pose a challenge to prioritizing modernization for Army aircraft like the AH-64E Apache, the UH-60M Black Hawk or the CH-47 Chinook Block II. Priorities for divestiture under sequestration, he said, include the aging OH-58 Kiowa aircraft, the TH-67 Creek trainer, and the UH-60A Black Hawk. Additionally, he said, as the Army moves to Block II of the CH-47 Chinook, the Army expects to divest itself of older models of that aircraft. Both Murray and Anderson told lawmakers that continued sequestration and the unpredictability of funding that comes with continuing resolutions have a continuous and compounding deleterious effect on both Army modernization and Army readiness. Anderson said the effects of continued sequestration reduces training dollars and decreases the level of training proficiency that can be achieved within a brigade and battalion, requiring the Army instead to train up only to the platoon and smaller levels. Lack of training dollars, he said, reduces combat training center rotations, decreases mission command training programs, and reduces seats in schools where the Army teaches Soldier skills. Instead, he said, the Army would only be able to focus on maintaining readiness within units that are going after "named operations," such as Freedom Sentinel, Inherent Resolve, or for maintaining the readiness of the global response force. Murray said if sequestration comes back in 2018, it would affect the Army's modernization of the Abrams and Bradley. Murray told lawmakers the Army now has half the funding for modernization and equipping the force that it had just eight years ago. Sequestration, he said, as well as years of continuing resolutions in the absence of a budget, has forced the Army to put resources into keeping Soldiers ready for the current fight and to forgo modernization that would provide future Soldiers with the tools they will need to fight. "We find ourselves in a situation where our most capable enemies are closing quickly," Murray said. "We are losing overmatch in every domain: land, air, maritime, space and cyberspace." After years of only being able to sustain, maintain and improve existing combat systems, Murray said, the Army must start developing future weapons for future fights. "I believe we have reached a point in time where we can no longer afford to do just one or the other: improve existing systems or develop new ones," he said. "We must find a way to do both." Stryker teams proving value of simulation [2017-03-21] JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. -- In advance of a late-March Stryker gunnery qualification, Soldiers here honed their communications skills on Stryker Virtual Collective Trainers. The trainers were installed late last year at two locations on JBLM. Since then, they've proven to be valuable tools to better prepare Soldiers for actual live-fire training in the field. The simulators provide a way for teams to inexpensively get multiple training repetitions on important Soldier tasks, said 1st Lt. Alexander Morales, a platoon leader with Bronco Troop, 1-14 Cavalry, as he prepared his Soldiers for live fire at Yakima Training Center. AHEAD OF THE PACK The Army is developing a Stryker Virtual Collective Trainer, or SVCT, that will eventually be fielded to all Stryker brigade combat teams across the force. But JBLM has an SVCT capability now, in advance of everyone else, because they developed it on their own initiative, in conjunction with the Combined Arms Center-Training Innovation Facility, at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The eight JBLM simulators are made primarily of painted plywood and are designed to very basically mimic the shape of the inside of a Stryker combat vehicle. Each simulator has a spot for each position that might ordinarily be found inside a Stryker. For Soldiers who might pop their heads up out of Stryker, such as a gunner, there are holes cut into the top of the SVCT to simulate vehicle hatches. When Soldiers stand and look outside the simulator through those holes, they are surrounded by computer monitors that display scenes from Virtual Battlespace 3 -- a computer-game used to tie the entire simulation together. More than a dozen computer monitors, the computers that drive them, and the cables that hook them all together, adorn the SVCT. And each simulated Stryker is hooked into the next, so that every Soldier is included in the same virtual environment provided by VBS3. DIMENSIONAL ACCURACY What the setup lacks in aesthetic military authenticity, it makes up for in dimensional accuracy, said Capt. Aubrey Dustin, chief of small unit training at JBLM's Mission Training Complex. He was instrumental in developing the SVCT at JBLM. Dustin said he and his team went out and measured a real Stryker when considering how to design their SVCT. "We took maybe 400 to 500 measurements," he said. "I drew that all out in AutoCAD in order to gain an understanding of where things needed to be inside the modules that we were building ... I had to look at all the measurements I'd taken and then decide which ones were critical to duplicate in the model we built." Additionally, Dustin was quick to point out that what was developed at JBLM was done in partnership with CAC-TIF at Fort Leavenworth. In fact, he said, both JBLM's SVCT and the SVCT design being developed for the rest of the Army by CAC-TIF have benefitted from the partnership. The initial design measurements from CAC-TIF had proven to be not as accurate as the measurements that Dustin and his team took. So Dustin was able to give those measurements back to CAC-TIF for use in the design that will be fielded to the rest of the Army The concept of the 360-degree view screens for Soldiers in the trainers came from JBLM as well -- and that is also now included in CAC-TIF's design. In addition to other things, CAC-TIF came up with the software modules that modify VBS3 to allow it to serve as the virtual environment for training within the SVCT. FIRST-GENERATION SVCT Dustin said he calls the version of SVCT now at JBLM "SVCT 1," and refers to the simulators being developed by CAC-TIF as "SVCT 2." He acknowledges that the SVCT models are much simpler than a real Stryker. But 100-percent accuracy isn't the goal. Soldiers who train in the SVCT already know what a Stryker looks like inside and out. They also know how to operate the vehicle. Familiarity with the Stryker isn't the goal of training with the SVCT. Instead, familiarity with team dynamics, working together, and accomplishing Stryker missions -- without having to use a real Stryker and fire real bullets and burn real fuel during a costly day at the range -- that's the goal of the SVCT. So while the SVCT Strykers at JBLM are much simpler than real Strykers, "spatially, they feel about accurate," Dustin said. "Where the Solders sit and where the controls are that they manipulate, is exact, so it feels familiar when they start using it. And that gives them the ability to allow the simplification of this model to fade into the background and to mentally be more immersed in the simulation." The SVCTs at JBLM provide simulated training for Stryker crews like that of Bronco Troop, 1-14 Cavalry. MANEUVER PREP In early March, Bronco Troop's 2nd Reconnaissance Platoon -- one of two such platoons in the troop -- trained on the SVCTs. Platoon leader Morales, who has served in that role for almost a year now, has about 30 Soldiers working for him who operate with six Stryker vehicles. They are a reconnaissance platoon. "Our job is to create reaction time and maneuver space for the brigade. We are the eyes and ears of the brigade commander," he said. Sometimes conducting reconnaissance and security operations calls for the platoon to be kilometers ahead of the infantry battalions in the brigade, Morales said. With the SVCT, Morales said he is able to provide Soldiers with more than what might be possible out on the range. Virtual training is less expensive, it's easier to "reset" a scenario and start over if mistakes have been made, and a lot more can be configured into a virtual scenario than what can be put out on an actual range. During one day of training in the SVCT at JBLM in early March, Morales' Soldiers crawled into the Stryker simulators, taking up spots they'd normally occupy in a real Stryker. Morales had asked facilitators to set up a scenario where the reconnaissance platoon would do recon on an airfield. "They were able to practice maneuver, how we get to the named area of interest, tactically," he said. "We practiced bounding, practiced actions on contact. On the route from our tactical assembly area to our objective, we had the contractors just sporadically place enemies in our path. So we were able to train that skillset -- how will we react to enemy if we come across them." At the airfield, the team was able to practice reconnaissance skills, Morales said. "Where do we deploy dismounts. How do the dismounts do when it comes time to report what they see. What's our proficiency when we call for fire on the enemy we are observing." ANY SCENARIO POSSIBLE Morales also had the simulation facilitators build into the scenario the appearance of 14 tanks -- something a Stryker is not really capable of confronting in real life -- to evaluate the reaction of his platoon. "I wanted to see how the platoon would react to an overwhelming force," Morales said. "I think they did really well." Adding those tanks is something that would not be possible at nearby Yakima Training Center. The only likely place those tanks could have made an appearance would be the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California. But he doubted his ability to make that happen even at NTC. But within the SVCT simulation, he said, it's all doable. "They have everything there," he said. "An entire spectrum of enemies we can face." Training on the SVCT doesn't just allow the addition of any enemy -- it also allows Soldiers to train in any environment, Dustin said. It's all possible within the simulation. "We have any terrain they will operate in, anywhere in the world," Dustin said. "So if they are going to Iraq ... they can learn all about that location in the game. We can put them anywhere on any training terrain, in the United States or a foreign country, so they are able to have geo-specific terrain. Also, we can build any time of scenario necessary in order to accomplish their training objectives." Ideally, Morales said, training for that mission would happen with real Strykers, on a live range with a lot of space. But that is neither cost nor time-efficient. Training on the SVCT allows him to accomplish a lot, he said -- at a fraction of the cost. "We were able to practice those skills in an environment that is more forgiving," he said. "We were able to identify those mistakes and commit some muscle memory to them, so we are able to execute later on with live ammunition. It gives these guys a chance to kind of visualize themselves in those platforms and practice their fire commands and make sure they are cohesive as a crew, so when the time comes to actually shoot rounds down range, they are more proficient." Training in the SVCT both mitigates risk and saves resources, Morales said, adding "I think it's a great tool." OVERCOMING SKEPTICISM Not all leaders or Soldiers have started off as supporters of virtual training such as in the SVCT, Dustin said. But opinions have changed when Soldiers got hand-on experience with the simulators, he added. "Any initial skepticism that the Soldiers have seems to fade very quickly as they get in and start to do Soldiers' work on these systems," he said. "Some people come in feeling like it might be like a game they play at home, like Call of Duty. But as soon as you incorporate leadership and training objectives into it, and you get busy doing training, they quickly fully invest themselves in what we are trying to accomplish.," he said "And they all seem to come away feeling that they have gotten a lot of value for their time and effort." Right now, many Soldiers on JBLM don't know that the trainers even exist, and so they don't know the value they could provide in the way of training, Dustin said. He aims to improve awareness of both the availability of the SVCTs and their capability across the installation. TRAINING vs. GAMING A lot of young Soldiers are already "gamers," playing combat-like video games on their home computers or game systems. A lot of older Soldiers are not. Both initially have problems in working in the VBS3 simulators, Dustin said -- but for very different reasons. "The older generation has a difficult time manipulating a gaming system," Dustin said. "They aren't gamers. They have to be taught how to use the computer and what a gaming environment is. The younger Soldiers have those skills. They don't need to be taught that. But they do have a habit of playing games. And we don't play games. We train. So the younger generation needs to overcome the mindset that this is a game." Cpl. Daniel Urena, a cavalry scout with Bronco Troop, is one of those younger Soldiers, part of Morales' platoon, who has trained on the SVCT. The SVCT, he said, is "a good tool to get the crew more comfortable with each other." Urena hammered home on the improvements in crew familiarity that can be gained with the SVCT. "You're going to be able to talk to your driver," Urena said. "And he's going to get the sense for being in the Stryker and looking through tunnel vision, the periscopes. The gunner is going to be able to be on top of the Stryker and manipulate the weapons system. And for the TC, you can actually sit up inside the Stryker and manipulate the Stryker and get a feel for your crew and how they move and react to what you say and different ways to communicate. And you're kind of getting a better gel for each other." Even though he's only a young Solider, Urena understands how the virtual trainer allows his team to get in plenty of quality repetitions of critical Soldiers skills, and working together, that wouldn't be possible if they tried to do it in real Strykers out on the range. "This is a good way to get the training, crew training, without being involved with the Stryker," he said. "You don't have to get a Stryker ready to go. You don't have to get fuel, you don't have to get supplies ready. You don't have to go out and request land to do this. This is a good precursor to going live. This is a good starting spot. You can get a little more comfortable with the Stryker." Pfc. Christian Jordan, a Stryker driver with Bronco Troop, agreed with Urena. He's a video gamer. And like in a video game, where players get more than one "life," he said, working inside the SVCT in a virtual environment is much more forgiving than what would be possible inside the steel shell of a Stryker, with live rounds in gun. "It allows you to make mistakes," Jordan said. "And you learn from it without it being costly. I've met a lot of people in the Army that don't play Call of Duty or Battlefield. If they don't like playing video games, this might be a learning curve. They might have to figure it out and get used to it. But value-wise? The risk is lower. You can make a mistake. You can actually shoot somebody and it's not a real-life injury, it's just a video game. And you re-generate and you move on." Spc. Anthony Bonilla, a one-time Stryker gunner turned dismount with Bronco Troop, agreed that training in an SVCT before going to the field was less expensive. But he put a finer point on that assessment when it comes to working with live ammunition. Training in the field, he said, is "more than expensive. God forbid, it could be somebody's life," Bonilla said. "You want to learn from what you are doing here now. If you can learn here, and make mistakes here, you can fine-tune your team and your truck internally, when it comes to the real thing. That's why I think this is a great trainer." LOOKING AHEAD The Army recently changed the way Stryker scout teams operate, from using four vehicles, to using six vehicles. At JBLM today, Dustin said, there is a set of four SVCTs on the south-base Mission Training Complex where he works, and an additional four trainers set up in a complex on the north side of base. Dustin said he expects that he'll build at least two more of his own version of the SVCT to bring one of the two four-Stryker sets on JBLM up to the new six-vehicle standard. Eventually, when the new SVCTs are fielded to Stryker brigades around the Army, he expects to get two sets of six. All those trainers are connected together so Soldiers using them can play together in the same virtual space. He said JBLM will be able to train four Stryker platoons at a time with all the gear in place. "Gaming is a huge savings for the amount of familiarity and repetitions it allows a Soldier to get as he prepares to go to war," Dustin said. Social media misconduct won't be tolerated, Army leader says [2017-03-24] WASHINGTON -- Army policy states that hazing, bullying and other behaviors that undermine the dignity and respect of Soldiers and Army civilians are strictly prohibited. That policy doesn't apply just to the way Soldiers conduct themselves in the real world, said Maj. Gen. Jason Evans. It also applies to how they conduct themselves online, such as in emails, online chats, instant messaging, blogs, social media sites and web or video conferencing. Evans, who serves as director of Military Personnel Management within the Army G-1, was on Capitol Hill, Wednesday to discuss the Army's policies on social media with the House Armed Services Committee, subcommittee on military personnel. "Harassment, bullying, hazing, stalking, discrimination, retaliation, and any type of misconduct that undermines dignity and respect will not be tolerated," Evans told lawmakers. "And those found in violation will be held accountable." Back in 2015, then chief of staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno attended a Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention summit in Washington, D.C, where he learned that Soldiers were reporting sexual harassment via social media. Other Soldiers spoke about online retribution against Soldiers who had spoken up about sexual harassment and sexual assault. The next month, Odierno convened a team to address the issue and find a way to respond to and prevent such behavior online. That team outlined three lines of effort that include updating existing Army policies to reflect social media, updating training materials and infusing the training base with information and best practices, and sharing information regarding responsible online conduct. The Army released an All Army Activities message in July 2015, and then re-issued it in February 2017. It required commanders to "reinforce a climate where current and future members of the Army team ... understand that online misconduct is inconsistent with Army values, and where online incidents are prevented, reported, and addressed at the lowest possible level." Also in that ALARACT, the Army first introduced the "Think, Type, Post" mantra to help Soldiers practice appropriate and responsible conduct while online. "Think about the communication you are about to send and who is going to review it. Type a communication that conforms with Army values, and post a communication that demonstrates dignity and respect for both self and others," Evans said, explaining "Think, Type, Post" to lawmakers. Evans told lawmakers that Soldiers now receive training on online conduct as part of equal opportunity and Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention training. That training is included as part of the coursework at all levels of professional military education, from initial entry training to pre-command courses. "Thereafter, that training is required on an annual basis," Evans said, responding to one lawmaker's question about the frequency of such training. To share information across the Army about responsible online conduct, Evans told lawmakers, the Army has developed a social media handbook that outlines proper online behaviors and responsibilities and includes a "best practices" section on protecting oneself and reporting online misconduct. The Army has also developed methods to track and report online misconduct, Evans said, similar to the way it tracks misconduct related to equal opportunity, equal employment opportunity, SHARP, inspector general investigations, UCMJ dispositions, and law enforcement investigations. Evans also told lawmakers about the Army's "Not in my squad" effort, which he said was designed to help Soldiers assess the state of mutual trust and cohesion within their squads. The 'Not in my Squad' campaign, he said, "facilitates leader involvement and accountability, and aids in the creation of a professional and ethical culture among members of the Army team." Evans also assured lawmakers that the Army is aware of the dangers of social media, and their capacity to serve as a forum for the kind of inappropriate behavior that is already known by most Soldiers to be unacceptable in person. "The Army recognizes the potential dangers concerning social media, and is proactively working to ensure Soldiers are aware of the standards of conduct and policies, training and programs," he said. "We will continue to enforce standards and imbue Soldiers and Army civilians with Army values, and emphasize professional behavior in all that we do." Latin America partner nations look to US in modernizing armored fleets [2017-03-29] WASHINGTON -- Several Latin American nations are modernizing their armored vehicle fleets, including Peru, which may soon finalize a sales deal with the U.S. to purchase Stryker vehicles. The threat from "illicit networks" in Latin America continues to grow. And armored vehicle modernization efforts by partner nations there will play a part in combating the threat -- but the deals must be done right, said the deputy commander of U.S. Southern Command. Latin American nations like Colombia, Brazil, and Peru, for instance, are demonstrating the right way to modernize existing fleets of armored vehicles, including training and doctrine packages, said Lt. Gen. Joseph DiSalvo, deputy commander, U.S. Southern Command, during a conference here on armored vehicles. Columbia, DiSalvo said, is now in its fifth year of a 15-year plan to modernize its armored vehicle fleet, which includes the Light Armored Vehicle family of infantry fighting vehicles. "They are striving to get a combined arms combat capability right now," DiSalvo said. He characterized Colombia's efforts to modernize their fleet as a "well-thought-out total system development of a legacy platform," that they expect will last them another 30 to 40 years. "They are getting the institutional side of the house in foundation right now, with their doctrine and training." Colombia's neighbor, Peru, he said, is on a similar path with their own vehicle modernization effort. They are "on the verge of signing a letter of acceptance for foreign military sales for Stryker vehicles." It'll be the first FMS deal for the Stryker vehicle, he said. "They are doing a very prudent approach in accounting for the total system," he said. That includes consideration of training, doctrine and sustainment. And Brazil, he said, is active in upgrading some legacy systems as well, such as their M113 armored personnel carriers, and M109 howitzers. "They know they have got to adjust the doctrine side, the training side, and the personnel side of the house," he said of Brazil. "We're seeing good examples here of smart modernization that's within budget and that will hopefully be successful for a legacy platform that will last them years out." According to DiSalvo, the threat of state-on-state military action in Latin America is negligible. The real threat, he said, comes from the "illicit networks" operating there and "the ability of these networks to move the drugs." Included as part of that threat are gangs, special-interest alien movement, foreign terrorist fighter flow, illegally armed groups, and mass migration. "There are a bunch of different activities that go to undermine the security and governance and stability within Latin America -- all because of the existence of these illicit networks," he said. Illicit mining operations also threaten effective governance and the environment in Latin America, he said, including mining operations for gold and other minerals. "Right now that's generating more illicit revenue than the drug trafficking," he said. "It's a huge concern, plus the environmental damage being done, all pose a serious threat to the region." Considering the threats they face and their needs in combatting them, governments in Latin America should look to wheeled armored combat vehicles, he said. Already, nations in Latin America have such capability: the Swiss-designed Piranha, the Brazilian-made Cascavel, the Russia-made BTR, and the American-made Humvees, for instance. But the technology, he said, is old. "Right now, it probably isn't sufficient enough to do what is necessary for the survivability, maneuverability, and lethality to go ahead and degrade the [illicit] networks for them." Such vehicles, he believes, will need to operate in a range of complex environments, like mountains, deserts and jungles. When partner nations in Latin America are looking to modernize their capability, he said, consideration must be given not just to the hardware, but also the training, doctrinal changes and sustainment. "The whole bit," he said. That requires a commitment to a long-term plan. In the past, he said, the standard for buying gear or for modernization of existing gear, was to field a system and then let the training and military occupational specialization and maintenance training "catch up later." But now, he said, partner nations know they have to "build that doctrinal base and training foundation first. There is progress being made for that now, and the professional education on that." DiSalvo warned against modernization "on the cheap." Dealing with the United States for foreign military sales isn't inexpensive, he said. But partner nations in Latin America should resist the temptation to do modernization "the easy way," which might involve buying equipment from other nations that don't provide the training, support, and partnership that comes with buying from the United States. If they go that route, he said, the "good news" is that they'll get gear quickly. But the bad news is that "it won't be a total-systems-type program." Such systems might initially be operational and meet partner nation needs, but "when you don't have the sustainment, the training, or the legacy infrastructure to support [those] systems ... you probably just bought a 30-ton paperweight 10 years down the road. You've added another variant to an already too-many-fleeted program, which will make it impossible to sustain, and you've done nothing to get that legacy system you can afford for 30 to 40 to 50 years." Buying on the cheap, he said, "in zero to five years it seems advantageous, but in the long run it winds up being counterproductive." Modernization for ground combat vehicles in Latin America, DiSalvo said, must be "a very deliberate process." What the Army tells partners is that "you have to commit to an investment" when it comes to modernization, and U.S. platforms, he said, will provide a "total system." G-6 helped move Army from switchboard to network culture [2017-03-31] WASHINGTON -- In 1977, when the Army's current chief information officer and G-6 first put on a uniform, IBM had just recently released the IBM 5100 "portable" computer, which weighed about 50 pounds, and cost as much as $20,000 to purchase. "It was the size of an average suitcase," said Lt. Gen. Robert S. Ferrell, who has served in the Army now for a total of 37 years and who will officially retire next month. "It came with a whopping 64 kilobits of memory." That's 64,000 "bits" not 64,000 "bytes," and that early portable computer had just about enough memory to store 60 modern-day tweets from Twitter. And back in 1977, nobody in the Army had a computer on their desk, so there was no email, no web browsers, and no Internet. The Army has come a long way since then, Ferrell said. MANY ICONS Ferrell wasn't the first in his family to serve in the military. During his retirement ceremony March 31, two uncles who served and his father, who also served, will be in attendance. One uncle, he said, landed at Normandy during World War II, an infantryman. The other uncle served in the Air Force in both Korea and Vietnam. His father also served in Korea and Vietnam. "Those were really the three icons that sparked me," Ferrell said of what prompted him to enlist in his youth. Also encouraged to join the military were five of his six siblings, he said. Ferrell said he had to attempt enlistment more than once. On his first attempt, he said, he didn't meet height/weight requirements and he was rejected from joining. "I was, at the age of 19, at least 10 pounds under weight," he said. But he was determined to serve. "I went home and gained the weight and came back in," he said. "I really wanted to follow in my dad's and uncle's footsteps to serve." As an enlisted man, Ferrell said, he served initially as an administrative troop. But he said he wanted to do more than that for the Army. So he applied to join Special Forces, and was eventually a light infantryman there. "It's really the opposite ends of the pole from admin to infantry," he said. Making the move from admin to Special Forces wasn't the only bold move Ferrell made early in his career. While enlisted, he said, he attended school. And at the end of his four-year enlistment contract, he'd completed two years of college-level education. "I loved the military and didn't want to get out," he said. But he'd have to get out, at least temporarily. He left active duty in 1981 and went to finish college. While doing that, he joined the Virginia National Guard as a field artilleryman, and also joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps program at Hampton University in Virginia. He paid for school with his GI Bill. By 1983, Ferrell said, just about two years after he left the enlisted force, he was back in uniform as an Army officer in the Signal Corps. EARLY DAYS OF TECH "Back then, I remember being a 'cable dog,' walking the lines, spinning wire," he said of his first, early experiences as a Signal Corps officer. "I remember fielding the first automated switchboard, SB-3614, in Korea, during my first assignment in the Army. There was no Internet, no Wi-Fi, no Facetime, no Skype." Back then, telephones and "snail mail" were how the Army communicated with each other, he said. "One of the most common questions a commander would ask to a deployed Soldier in the field was 'are you getting mail?'" he said. "It was a legacy environment, a simple environment. The speed of mail was the speed of information." By the mid-1980s, he said, he remembers the first computers coming into the Army. The burden then wasn't just teaching Soldiers who'd operated without computers for their entire careers how to use the new technology, but also convincing them that they needed the new technology. "Anything new for the Army is changing culture," he said. "That's probably the toughest challenge of it all: which is changing individual behavior of what they are comfortable with doing, technology-wise. It wasn't a very smooth transition. But effective, with the art of training." NETWORKED ARMY Today, of course, the Army couldn't operate without computers. The entire Army is networked. In December 2013, Ferrell took the helm as the Army's CIO/G-6, where he is responsible for the entirety of the Army's network. As the CIO/G-6, he oversees the Army's $10 billion information-technology investments, manages enterprise IT architecture, establishes and enforces IT policies, and directs delivery of operational command, control, communications and computers, information-technology capabilities to support warfighters and business users. Since that time, Ferrell has had a little over three years to make significant headway into several lines of effort he laid out for himself and his organization. Chief among those lines of effort, he said, was ensuring that the Army Signal Corps, of which he now served as the most senior member, was robust enough to provide the Army with the support it needs. He said that involved an increased focus on the training, manning and equipping of signalers coming in and out of Fort Gordon. It entailed looking at unit manning, the equipment, the capabilities, and the training of all signalers in the Army. Another line of effort was to learn to embrace, and to also enhance the Army's nascent cyber capabilities, which had just stood up three years earlier as U.S. Army Cyber Command. "That was emerging at the time I came into the CIO/G-6," he said. "I knew it must be a partnership. I put that as my goal: to make sure we were able to partner with the military intelligence community, partner with the new cyber community." By the standards of 1977, when Ferrell first joined the Army, the status of the Army network in 2013 was lightyears ahead of what it had been. But even that wasn't as good as it needed to be, Ferrell said. And that was another of his goals then: to improve the connectivity -- the backbone -- of the Army's network capability. "The enterprise when I came into the CIO/G-6 was global, but when you look at the capacity of the enterprise, it was running at only 10 gigabytes," he said. "That's not a lot for the backbone of the entire global enterprise. You could have that amount on the desktop in your house right now. For it to be the main highway for the enterprise, it wasn't large enough to add on new technology." And at camps, posts and stations, he said, the connectivity was even less, he said, at about 600 megabytes. "That's really nothing," he said. "Imagine Fort Hood having one or two 600 megabyte pipes to really push all of the data around. That's the second largest installation for the Army in the continental United States." Ferrell said he wanted to increase the main pipeline for the Army to 100 gigabytes, and to give each post a bump to 10 gigabytes. "We opened up the pipes, to allow us to put more capabilities across the entire enterprise, to set the stage for cloud technology," he said. Soldiers then had a lot of IT capability at home station, Ferrell said. But what he wanted to do in 2013 was ensure that when Soldiers went forward, when they deployed, they'd have that capability with them the entire way: at home, while traveling, and once they arrived at their deployed location. "That was looking at all the things that Soldiers are used to in their command posts or offices, when it comes to all of the software, systems that you have, in those two environments, and having it provided all the way to the forward edge," he said. He pointed to logistics, finance and personnel systems as things that would be critical for Soldiers to have access to no matter where they are. "All of the efforts we're working on will ultimately integrate together to optimize the Army IT enterprise, so that when all is said and done, we will move our force to a global, plug-and-play environment," Ferrell said. LOTS MORE WORK When Ferrell leaves the Army, his successor as CIO/G-6 will still have plenty of work to do, he said. Included in that, he said, is network modernization for the entire Army -- new gear, new switches, at every camp, post and station. Also, getting the entire Army on board with the Joint Regional Security Stacks, to ensure that not just the Army, but all the services are able to use a common network standard and one security standard. "Right now we are all separate and distinct," he said. "This new joint regional security environment is something that will take us up to 2020 to complete." Ferrell also said that there are really 23 different "enterprises" inside the Army. Among those, the National Guard network, the Army Reserve network, the medical community's network, and the network that Army Materiel Command runs on. They will all have to be merged, he said. "To achieve having transparency, the other initiative we have is to converge all those onto one environment, one Army environment," Ferrell said. "That's going to take a little time." Another huge effort that is ongoing, Ferrell said, is the effort to reduce the number of datacenters across the Army from a whopping 1,500 to just 10. And to then, eventually, move those datacenters to the cloud. He also said there will need to be more work done to enhance the ability of the Signal Corps to serve the Army. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he said, the Army inactivated the signal battalions. But now, he said, the Army is looking at force structure to identify capability gaps, and to use that information to make future determinations about the potential to grow the Signal Corps -- but only if it needs it. "We hope that our network efforts will result in the Army turning a corner and that we have set the conditions to move to a more software-defined environment, continue to improve the ability of our network to support multiple types of hardware, and to further enable the operational Army," Ferrell said. IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT THE NETWORK For several years now, Ferrell has spearheaded an effort at Howard University in Washington, D.C., to put senior Army officers in front of young Army ROTC cadets to encourage mentoring efforts, and to help better prepare incoming officers for life in the Army. "I'm a big believer in building the bench, talent management, and being able to reach back to the next generation," he said. "I was afforded many opportunities throughout my career -- many. And lots of senior leaders, peers and mentors were there to help me. The least I could do, in my mind, was to figure out how to provide that same opportunity to young officers who are just starting off on their journey in the military." Now Ferrell takes a panel of his own peers, other Army general officers, with him to Howard University to meet with and develop mentoring relationships with the ROTC cadets who attend school there, and who attend schools with ROTC detachments from the surrounding area. "The first time we came together, it was a hit," he said. "The students really loved the dialogue of just being able to have access to senior officers, and that dialogue just grew and grew." Ferrell said he also goes to schools on his own to talk with ROTC cadets about the military and to talk about his own journey. While Ferrell has done a lot of work during his career in developing and improving the Army network, what he's most proud of, he said, is the work he's done mentoring cadets, Army officers and Army civilians. "It's about the people you come in contact with, and being able to help them, to share experiences, and watch them grow from that connection," he said. "I leave, very confident that the Army is in very good hands -- especially with the kids coming out of the colleges. They are really thirsting. They are educated, they are motivated. They just need a little bit of coaching to give them the right mindset. Leaving the Army, and understanding that I was able to make a difference in somebody's life, is what warms my heart the most." Ferrell will have an official retirement ceremony March 31 at the Pentagon. He said after taking off the uniform for the last time, he looks forward to spending more time with his family, especially in the Virgin Islands where his wife Monique Ferrell, a member of the senior executive service and director of the SHARP program, hails from. Second Army cases colors for fourth time [2017-04-03] WASHINGTON -- The Second Army cased its colors Friday at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and was inactivated for the fourth time in its nearly 100-year history. "Today is not an end, but the recognition of another chapter in Second Army's distinguished history. The legacy and spirit of Second Army will live on in the men and women of Army Cyber Command," said Lt. Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, commander of Army Cyber Command, during the casing ceremony. The Second Army was last activated in 2014 to improve command and control between Army Cyber Command and the Army's Network Enterprise Technology Command, with the ARCYBER commander being dual-hatted as the commander of Second Army. NETCOM was assigned to Second Army. But the move, to make Second Army the parent organization for NETCOM, was a unique situation that had never happened in the Army as it was not technically assigned any Soldiers. At the time, the commander of ARCYBER opted to use his staff from ARCYBER to also run Second Army. "In our case, we were not in accordance with the regular process," said Dr. Lawrence M. Kaplan, the ARCYBER command historian. "There was no precedent for this in Army history." Nevertheless, while activated for only about three years, the Second Army served an important role by allowing for the facilitation of a better command and control relationship between ARCYBER and NETCOM. Today, that relationship is even stronger. Now, NETCOM reports directly to ARCYBER. And ARCYBER serves as an Army Service Component Command responsible for operating and defending all of Army networks, as well as delivering defensive and offensive cyberspace effects in support of the Army and the joint force. ARCYBER is an Army service component to the joint U.S. Strategic Command and closely supports U.S. Cyber Command, which is located at Fort Meade, Maryland. Kaplan said that the inactivation of Second Army facilitates command and control, and will "improve the ability of Army Cyber Command to operate and defend all Army networks." But it wasn't a fluke that Second Army was involved with ARCYBER since its creation, back in 2010. There is an important relationship there, Kaplan said. And that relationship is that it is common in the Army for commands, such as ARCYBER, to "associate" with historical units like the Second Army. In a typical implementation of such an association, Kaplan said, the Second Army would not be activated. Instead, ARCYBER would receive the "lineage and honors" associated with Second Army. "It's the bragging rights, if you will, to be associated with Second Army," Kaplan said. Those bragging rights, Kaplan said, allow ARCYBER to hang on its own flag a campaign streamer earned by Soldiers with the Second Army back in World War I. While Second Army inactivated Friday at Fort Belvoir, and cased its colors, ARCYBER does continue to get to associate with its history. And that is common across the Army, Kaplan said. "The thing to keep in mind is the system of lineage and honors has been used throughout the Army to associate linage and honors of units with other units," he said. "That's been going on a long time. And units should be proud of their affiliations." SECOND ARMY IN THE WORLD WARS The Second U.S. Army began as a fighting army on the battlefields of France in the waning days of World War I. Eager to maintain a hard-fought momentum to drive the Germans out of France, on October 10, 1918, Gen. John "Black Jack" Pershing, then the commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, selected Lt. Gen. Robert L. Bullard to command the newly-activated Second Army, AEF. Bullard, a Spanish-American War veteran, earned Pershing's confidence and reputation as an aggressive commander after leading the 1st Infantry Division during the battle of Cantigny. At Cantigny, Bullard delivered the first American victory of the war. Bullard's orders for Second Army were to hold the line on a portion of the St. Mihiel sector along the Lorraine front. In November, Pershing ordered Second Army to advance toward Metz. Bullard subsequently launched rigorous attacks against the Germans on November 10. The 7th, 28th, 33d and 92d divisions, then on the Second Army front, began the attacks. Encountering stubborn resistance, Second Army made a considerable advance, recovering a total of approximately 25 square miles of French territory before the armistice terminated hostilities on November 11. During its first month of combat operations, 102 soldiers serving under Second Army earned the Distinguished Service Cross. After the armistice, Second Army occupied an area in Belgium and Luxembourg, remaining there until the end of March 1919, and demobilized in France in April 1919. During World War II, Second Army served as a training army, and trained 11 corps, 55 divisions, and 2,000 smaller units of all arms and services, composed of almost a million men, for employment in all theaters of operation. During its history, Second Army has undergone several name changes. It was Second Army from 1918 to 1957; Second United States Army from 1957 to 2014; and Second Army from 2014 to 2017. (Editor's note: Dr. Lawrence M. Kaplan contributed the history of the Second U.S. Army that is included in this article.) Short-range air defense tops review of Army programs, G-8 says [2017-04-05] WASHINGTON -- Last year the Army kicked off an effort called the Strategic Portfolio Analysis and Review, or SPAR, to review 780 programs and evaluate their impact on warfighting. Now, said Lt. Gen. John M. Murray, deputy chief of staff, Army G-8, that effort has been completed. Topping the list of most important programs to emphasize for the Army is "maneuverable, protected, short-range air defense" capability. Primarily, Murray said, SHORAD's ranking at the top has been in response to what's being seen in the Ukraine, and also comes as a result of the Army's de-emphasis on that capability. "We have not worried about air defense in years because we had the best air defense system in the world: the U.S. Air Force." Murray told a room full of defense industry representatives in Tyson's Corner, Virginia, March 28, that the Air Force may not be as effective in the anti-access area-denial environment as once assumed. That, coupled with a proliferation of unmanned aerial systems and the fact the Army has not invested anything in SHORAD in years, Murray said, makes SHORAD a top priority for the Army. As part of the SPAR, a total of 780 existing programs were evaluated by the Army and were categorized according to their contribution to the Army's warfighting capability. Those categories included: -- Accelerate or find a way to bring into the portfolio. -- Sustain at current level of resources. -- Reallocate resources to invest elsewhere. -- Divest most or all resources. Ultimately, the future of Army programs will not be decided by the SPAR, but will be decided by the decisions of senior Army leadership, who are informed by findings of the SPAR, Murray said. It's expected the SPAR will be a yearly process. Other programs that top the list of importance to the Army, Murray said, include long-range precision fires; buying out munition requirements, meaning ensuring there are enough mentions to fire for the weapons systems the Army has; lethality, mobility and protection of combat systems, such as for the Bradley and Abrams, as well as acceleration of the armored multi-purpose vehicle; active-protection systems for air and ground systems; ensured position navigation and timing; electronic warfare; both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities; assured communications; and vertical lift. Murray said the Army is now considering several active-protection systems, known as APS, including the "Trophy" system from Israel, which he said "has a great reputation in terms of being effective." He said the Army bought a number of Trophy systems, and a number of another kind of system as well, to evaluate them, including one called "Iron Fist," also from Israel, and another from a U.S.-based manufacturer called "Iron Curtain." He said the Army aims to put Iron Curtain on a Stryker, Iron Fist on a Bradley, and Trophy on an Abrams tank, to evaluate their effectiveness. "The one that is farthest along in terms of installing it is ... Trophy on Abrams," he said. "We're getting some pretty ... good results. It adds to the protection level of the tank. Trophy has an interesting capability, slew to cue. We're finding that we can incorporate that into the installation on the Abrams." Iron Fist on the Bradley is also "moving along," he said. Though he cited a problem with installing the system on the Bradley, due to the size, weight, and power requirements of the system, plus the amount of space available on top of the turret of the Bradley APS systems, he said come with additional considerations. In particular, he said, are considerations for the safety of Soldiers alongside the vehicles who are dismounted. "As we do this, the interesting thing is going to be safety concerns," he said. "Anything that shoots off an armored vehicle, 'x' amount of meters, and makes something blow up, is not good for the integrated dismounted/mounted operations. So we have some concerns about tactics, techniques, and procedures and how we adjust those." Murray also cited resistance to the primary purpose of having an APS, which is to reduce passive armor. He said there's a trust issue there with such systems. "There has to be a level of trust in whatever it is that you're trying [to use] to displace that passive armor," Murray said, adding that he's not sure Soldiers right now trust the protection offered by an APS enough to lose the passive armor that is currently on systems. "I struggle with when we start significant money in the next-generation tank, based upon a breakthrough in armor technology," he said. "I want a material that is three-quarters the weight or half the weight but offers the same level of protection. If we start building a new tank tomorrow, seven years from now, we'd have a new tank and it'd weigh 75 tons. We'd put the same level of protection on it. Even with enhanced situational awareness, even with the APS." With no budget, all Army training comes to 'screeching halt' by July [2017-04-05] WASHINGTON -- In the absence of a fiscal year 2017 budget, the Army, like the rest of the U.S. military is still operating under a continuing resolution. It's a situation that Army officials are warning Congress is unsustainable. "Funding under a continuing resolution for a year will result in a dramatic decrease in training, starting next month, in May," said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley. "By July 15, all Army training will cease, except those units deploying to Afghanistan or Iraq." With the exception of those units who are scheduled to go into combat operations, Milley told lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday, combat training center rotations would stop if the Army doesn't get a budget. What will also stop, he said, is basic combat training -- the training that turns young civilian Americans into Soldiers. Milley pointed to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, as an example. That location is one of four where the Army conducts BCT for new Soldiers. Other locations include Fort Sill, Oklahoma; Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri; and Fort Benning, Georgia. "At Fort Jackson alone, on an annual basis, we train -- we recruit and bring into basic combat training -- the equivalent of the British Army, every year," Milley said. If the Army and the rest of the services don't get a budget, by July the Army will have to stop teaching young Americans how to be Soldiers. "That basic training will stop in July," Milley said. "We will run out of money next month. And then over the following 60 days, we're going to not have the gasoline, the fuel, the ammunition, etc. And basic training will stop." Those basic trainees won't be able to move forward to their next operational unit. "We'll have to keep them right there at the fort," Milley said. "They won't be doing anything, they won't be training, they won't be doing anything of substantive value. And then we won't be able to recruit and bring in more trainees." With no budget, Milley told legislators, and without the supplemental budget as well, Fort Jackson and other locations "for all intents and purposes, will be coming to a screeching halt for all of the activities and training that goes on." Milley also said it won't just be junior enlisted Soldiers who would be unable to enter the Army. Junior officers as well would lose an opportunity to serve. This summer, he said, required camps for ROTC cadets, for instance, will need to be cancelled if a budget isn't passed. Milley said that "74 percent of second lieutenants in the U.S. Army won't get commissioned in fiscal year 2018, because they won't be qualified, because their summer camp will be missed." Training for Soldiers at the combat training centers such as Fort Irwin, California; Fort Polk, Louisiana, and Hohenfels, Germany, will also have to be cancelled, except for units deploying, Milley said. "If it's a year-long continuing resolution, we'll end up having to cancel the National Training Center rotations out in California, and we'll end up cancelling Joint Readiness Training Center rotations. And we'll also end up canceling significant collective training for home-station training for all of the active units." Units that are preparing to go into combat operations typically will go first to the Army's combat training centers. In such locations, large-scale exercises can be held that test the ability of brigade-sized units to conduct combat operations. The CTCs provide room and resources that aren't available to those units at home. "Training across the board, beginning shortly after we run out of money in May, looking at June or July, training will be reduced to individual squad training," Milley said. Soldiers, he said, need to be trained at the squad level, which is one of the smallest units within an infantry brigade combat team. But squad-level training is not enough. For the brigade to be fully trained and ready, training must be done at company, battalion, brigade and higher levels, he said. Training for those larger units can often not be done at home, and must be done at a CTC. Not every unit that trains at a CTC is scheduled to deploy for combat. But sending units to the CTCs ensures that those units are combat-ready if called upon for a mission that is unexpected. Failing to provide those units with that training puts risk into the force -- risk that Soldiers could be forced to deploy without being adequately prepared. "What ends up happening is, if called upon -- this is for the bench now -- if called upon for some unknown contingency, that nobody can predict right this moment, but if it happens, people are going to be going out the door with equipment that is less than optimally maintained, units that are not properly trained, and we are going to be putting young men and women into harm's way that are not ready for that level of combat," Milley said. "That's what's going happen with a lack of training." NO BUDGET MEANS UNDER-FILLED UNITS The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act authorized the Army to reverse its downward trend on end strength. In the NDAA, the Army was authorized to bring the regular Army up to 476,000 Soldiers, the Army National Guard up to 343,000 Soldiers, and the Army Reserve up to 197,000 Soldiers, all by Oct. 1, 2017. Milley said that plus-up of Soldiers isn't going to make the Army bigger, at least not in terms of force structure. With that increase in Soldiers, there won't be more brigades, battalions, or companies in the Army. Instead, he said, those new Soldiers the Army is authorized to bring onboard -- if training and recruiting doesn't halt as a result of not having a budget -- will be used to fill gaps in existing units, which are currently undermanned. "It's to make the units that do exist, whole, and to make them capable of doing adequate levels of training," Milley said. "Training a unit at 65 or 70 percent strength is inadequate. If you take 10 percent casualties in combat, maybe 15 percent, you're going to be a combat-ineffective unit." He said the Army is now training some units that are manned between 65-75 percent strength at CTCs. "This increased end strength, I want to be careful it's not mischaracterized as an increase in the Army. It's not. It's a filling of the holes in the existing force structure," Milley said. The Army and the rest of the U.S. military has operated under continuing resolutions for eight years now. Offered the opportunity to consider not having a budget to be a "new normal," Milley said he didn't think that was an acceptable option. "Candidly, failure to pass a budget, in my view, as both an American citizen and the chief of staff of the United States Army, constitutes professional malpractice," Milley said. "I don't think we should accept it as the 'new normal.' I think we should pass it, and pass the supplemental with it. And get on with it. The world is a dangerous place, and it is becoming more dangerous by the day. Pass the budget." Army marks centennial of U.S. entering World War I [2017-04-06] WASHINGTON -- One hundred years ago today the United States formally declared war against Germany and entered the bloody conflict that had already consumed the European continent for more than two years. By the end of World War I on Nov. 11, 1918, more than 38 million were dead. About 117,000 of them were American Soldiers. During a WWI commemoration ceremony Thursday at the Pentagon Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley outlined the events that quickly followed the June 28, 1914, assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and drew the nations of Europe into war. And he asked his audience whether the leaders of today have the vision to prevent such a conflict from happening again. "Are we better at decision-making today?" Milley asked his audience. "Are there similarities in the structure or rising powers? Are there similarities and interconnectedness where nobody can fathom or imagine or believe conflicts of this size and scope and levels of violence could ever happen?" In response to the assassination, Ferdinand's uncle -- the Emperor of Austria, Franz Joseph -- mobilized the Austrian army against the Serbians. The Russians, in turn, mobilized their army to support the Serbians. The Germans, Milley said, couldn't allow the Russians to "pick on their Germanic brothers in Austria," so Kaiser Wilhelm II mobilized the German army against the Russians. And because France and Russia were treaty allies, France mobilized its army as well. And the British, Milley noted, "were allied with France, and they mobilized as well." No one believed the conflict would last long, Milley explained. But the series of mobilizations and the initiation of Germany's Von Schlieffen Plan and France's Plan 17 launched Europe into a conflict that was unprecedented in world history in the scale of its slaughter and destruction. "There was absolutely no logical reason, most thought, to have a war," Milley said. "Yet each of the decision makers in those respective countries mobilized and launched their nations into an incredible cataclysm of war." On the 100th anniversary of the United States entry into WWI, Milley said, we owe it those who donned uniforms 100 years ago to go overseas and fight to reflect on the causes and nature of the war that took so many lives. "We owe it to the 99 divisions that were mobilized in World War I," Milley said. "Even though none of them are alive today, we owe it to all of them to clearly and unambiguously understand what World War I was about, how it started, and vow -- vow upon their graves -- that we never let it happen again." Expanded Pacific Pathways forging readiness, says outgoing I Corps commander [2017-04-07] WASHINGTON -- The outgoing commander of I Corps said work on Pacific Pathways and a strong relationship with the Air Force have been highlights of his tenure at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. Lt. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza spent the last five years in the Pacific Northwest, first as commander of the 7th Infantry Division there, and then as the commander of both I Corps and JBLM. He'll retire from the Army in June, after 37 years of service. A primary effort of the Army while Lanza has been in command of I Corps has been the development of relationships with partner nations in the Pacific region. For I Corps, the Pacific Pathways series of exercise-based deployments has been a central part of that effort. "Pacific Pathways first started out as a rehearsal, as reconnaissance, as an ability to look at deployments and conduct reconnaissance in theater," Lanza said. "It has morphed to where it is actually building readiness of our brigades and also in the countries that we work with." Today, Lanza said, Pacific Pathways involves Soldiers from I Corps and other U.S. Army units embarking on multi-month deployments to participate in exercises with partner-nations in the Pacific. Among those exercises are Cobra Gold and Hanuman Guardian with Thailand; Foal Eagle with South Korea; Balikatan with the Philippines; Garuda Shield with Indonesia; and Keris Strike with Malaysia. "Pathways has expanded into three or four-month deployments," Lanza said. Those deployments, he said, have enhanced readiness for the U.S. Army as well as for partner nations. "We have seen considerable readiness being built in these countries doing live-fire exercises that is additive to what we are doing at home-station training," he said. Partnering on exercises with Thailand, the Philippines, Korea, he said, not only builds readiness for the U.S. Army, which is the No. 1 priority for Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, but also builds readiness for partner nations, Lanza said. "It evolves the readiness of the militaries in these different countries, it increases their leader development and proficiency, and then it continues to help us work together," Lanza said. "These are our coalition partners that we have to continue to train and potentially work with in the future for different operations. So there are tremendous benefits here to what we have learned here in Pathways that will continue to move us forward." While early on, Pacific Pathways involved the U.S. military traveling to other nations to participate in exercises, the relatively new "reverse" Pacific Pathways concept involves partner nations traveling to the United States. Examples of that include Singapore service members coming to Hawaii for Tiger Balm, the Canadian military in Alaska for Arctic Anvil, and the Japanese military in Washington State for Rising Thunder. Lanza said he's seen that more nations are asking to partner with the United States in Pacific Pathways operations. Additionally, he said, there will be more "total force" participation in Pacific Pathways. He cited the 76th Infantry Brigade from the Indiana National Guard as one example of that. "I'm very proud of the work that's been done, and I think with future initiatives, we'll see Pathways continue to expand as part of PACOM's engagement strategy in the Pacific," Lanza said. "I'm very proud of the fact that it's also built readiness for our home-station training with our brigades and our task forces that are conducting those operations." EXCEPTIONAL PARTNERSHIP Lanza arrived at JBLM in 2012, just two years after Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base merged into a joint base. He said today the relationship between the two partners on the installation is exceptional. "We could not ask for better partners than the U.S. Air Force on this base," he said. "As I tell senior leaders ... that come to visit, I think we are the model here at JBLM for what 'right' looks like as a joint base, and what a team of teams can do when we all work together." Lanza said the joint construct has helped facilitate increased training opportunities between I Corps and the Air Force's 62nd Airlift Wing. "We have been able to actually become one team and not a bifurcated organization," he said. Lanza described JBLM as both "America's premier joint base," and one of "the military's premier power-projection platforms." JBLM features both air capabilities with the Air Force wing, four airstrips, easy access to ports in Tacoma and Seattle, and rail connections. "Our location allows us to get anywhere, not just in the Pacific, but globally," he said. "I think we are well-positioned to do that. And JBLM has a tremendous capability to deploy Soldiers and to deploy equipment. And we have taken advantage of that a lot. We have deployed Soldiers out of here all over the world." Right now, Lanza said, I Corps has 3,500 Soldiers deployed to Afghanistan, Kuwait, Qatar and Iraq. In the Pacific, he said, there are Soldiers deployed now supporting Pacific Pathways. He said Cobra Gold and Foal Eagle just wrapped up. The Balikatan exercise in the Philippines will wrap up in May. There are also Soldiers deployed to support other combatant commands as well, including U.S. European Command, U.S. Northern Command, Southern Operations Command, and U.S. Africa Command. After he retires in June, Lanza said, he hopes that leadership at JBLM will continue to sustain the relationship the base has with the local community, will continue to look for new and innovative ways to train at home station, as well as off-post training for aviation, and will continue to develop joint relationships with the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. Lanza said he plans to stay in the area around JBLM while his son finishes school, and will look for work there. With no bullets, Mobile High-Energy Laser shoots drones from sky [2017-04-13] FORT SILL, Okla. -- A Stryker combat vehicle equipped with a 5kW laser and an array of sensors spent several minutes scanning the horizon for a wayward "enemy" drone. On a television screen in a nearby tent off Thompson Hill -- a range used during the 10-day Maneuver Fires Integrated Experiment here -- observers watched the black and white output of those sensors on two flat-screen televisions, April 12. A crosshair was centered on the screen. When what appeared to be a drone entered the frame, the crosshairs locked on to it and followed it. After a few attempts to destroy the drone with the laser, the drone fell from the sky, crashing to the ground. Not a bullet was fired, and no sounds were made by the system that accomplished the kill -- an experimental project called the Mobile High-Energy Laser, or MEHEL. The MEHEL is just one system the Army is looking at to deal with the growth of inexpensive off-the-shelf unmanned aerial systems that are being seen in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. 2017 MFIX EXPERIMENTS Lt. Col. Jeff Erts, who serves as the chief of experimentation and wargaming with the Fires Battle Lab at the Fires Center of Excellence here, said the MEHEL was just one of three drone-killing systems under evaluation at the 2017 MFIX, which ran April 3-13. Also included, he said, was a system called the Anti-UAV Defense System and another branded "Hunter/Killer." There were also command and control systems that provide a common air picture down to platoon and company level, radar systems that can conduct counter-artillery missions, but can also look into the sky, and an unmanned aerial system that can haul supplies to Soldiers on the front lines of combat. That equipment and the personnel tasked to evaluate it, came to Fort Sill to participate in the 2017 MFIX, which Erts said is a collaboration between the Fires Center of Excellence and the Army Capabilities Integration Center. At MFIX, he said, over 40 industry partners and government leads participated, as well as Soldiers from around the United States. At this MFIX, the Army was looking to accomplish several goals. At the top of that list was finding better ways to pinpoint targets to put fires on, Erts said. "We'd like to know where our targets are at," he said. "So the targets are out on the battlefield somewhere. We'd like to know exactly where they are, so we can use one of our precision munitions to hit it." Another priority, he said, involved a bit of doctrinal work. Erts said the Army is interested in knowing if traditional fire supporting Soldiers are capable of executing a counter-unmanned aircraft system mission alongside their traditional artillery mission. "We're going to see if their plate is too full, or if they can do everything at once," he said. "[But] so far, it looks like they can do it." Also on the agenda at the 2017 MFIX was a continued look at the use of high-energy lasers, he said. The MEHEL made its first appearance at MFIX last year, but then with a less-powerful laser. "We are working with Space and Missile Defense Command, using their MEHEL to engage various targets, to include low-flying UAS," he said. This is the first year, he said, that uniformed Soldiers were actually tasked with using the system to take down actual aerial targets. "They love the system and they are excited about not only what they can do with it in the air, but what they can do with it on the ground as well," he said. Finally, Erts said, at this year's MFIX the Army looked at new ways to deliver supplies to the edge of the battlefield using unmanned aerial systems, rather than convoys. At the center of that effort was a project called the Joint Tactical Aerial Resupply System, which was also on display at MFIX. "Let's say a Soldier is out of ammunition and they need a resupply in an emergency situation," Erts said. "They could launch the UAS, and without putting any Soldiers in harm's way, they could deliver that box of ammunition to the front lines." NOT STAR WARS If the 2017 MFIX had a "star," it was probably the MEHEL. This year, the Stryker configured with that system was marked "MEHEL 2.0," and it sported a 5kW laser versus last year's 2kW laser. The MEHEL 2.0 includes on-board radar, a second optic, increased laser power, and increased engagement range, Erts said. In addition to doing a "hard kill," such as what was seen when the on-board laser shot a drone out of the sky, the system can also do a "soft kill." That means instead of using a laser to destroy a drone, electronic warfare capabilities can be used to disable the communications link between a drone and its ground control station. Then, Erts said, "we can send artillery after the ground control station." Also a possibility after a soft kill on a drone is collecting that drone to gather intelligence information from it. One thing the MEHEL does not do is make noise, or create any Star Wars-like visual effects. When the laser fires, there's no sound that comes from the vehicle. And observers can't actually see the laser emanating from the "beam director" on top of the Stryker, though if they were close enough to the target, they might see a hole being burned into it from the laser's heat. ENVISIONING LASER USE Capt. Theo Kleinsorge, who came last month to Fort Sill to participate in the MFIX, serves as the commander of Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2-12 Cavalry at Fort Hood, Texas. During the MFIX, he replicated the role of an infantry company commander inside the MEHEL 2.0-equipped Stryker. His primary role was to help determine if the MEHEL was something a forward-observer crew could handle, or if the capability needed to be moved somewhere else, such as into the air defense community. He said he was impressed with the MEHEL system, and sees the usefulness of directed-energy weapons elsewhere in the Army. "It is absolutely a valuable system," Kleinsorge said, even beyond the ability to destroy a UAS. "Directed energy will hopefully very quickly see itself useful in the realm of breaching obstacle belts, in the realm of active defense, of not just shooting down UASs, but the ability to destroy incoming anti-tank missiles, mortars, field artillery rounds, across the whole of what the counter-rocket, artillery, and mortar mission is currently." One benefit of the MEHEL system is that it doesn't use ammunition to take down either a UAS or ground target. Practically speaking, the only thing MEHEL needs is fuel. The batteries required to fire the laser can be recharged from generators, which are powered by the same fuel that runs the Stryker's engines. "If the entire Army today adopted directed energy and it was able to solve all of our engagement problems, Class V ammunition would no longer exist, and Class III, our fuel, would now be essentially our only logistical requirement for the vehicle to be offensive," Kleinsorge said. At MFIX, Kleinsorge said, his team took down about 50 actual targets using the laser onboard the MEHEL. Using directed energy to kill a target is something he said that none of the Soldiers involved had ever done before. Now, he said, he's sold on the idea. "From my foxhole as a young captain, I say I am excited to see this in the Army," Kleinsorge said. "We were skeptical at first, when we were first briefed we'd be shooting down drones with lasers. And by the end of it, it is absolutely more than feasible. We achieved a success rate well beyond what we expected we'd have. And we are excited to see this go to the next step of the experiment, shooting beyond the horizon, and showing this technology can solve the problem." SOLDIER'S VIEW Spc. Brandon Sallaway, a fire support specialist and forward observer from Fort Carson, Colorado, was one of the crew that participated in the MFIX and who worked on the crew that piloted the MEHEL. He said he found the system was easy to use, and easy to learn as well. "It uses stuff, controllers, that we're all familiar with," he said. "It takes about half an hour ... to figure out the system, and then you're good to go." Sallaway was also the first uniformed Soldier to actually use the MEHEL to take down a target. Outside the vehicle, plastered onto the side, are an array of stickers that mark each kill the vehicle has made. He pointed to the one that represents his own kill. "I'm really excited to be part of a historical event," he said. "And it's really exciting ... to see the Army working on the next generation of tools for us so that we can maintain our edge, the cutting edge. It's mind-blowing stuff to think you are shooting a laser at something. Sometimes it's hard to fathom." UNMANNED AIRBORNE RESUPPLY At MFIX, Soldiers aimed to do more than just blow up or disable enemy drones. Also on the agenda was using friendly drones to deliver supplies to Soldiers in need, so that manned convoys wouldn't be needed. "The problem we are trying to solve with the Joint Tactical Aerial Resupply System is how we conduct assured resupply over the last tactical mile to the point of need," said Capt. Dustin Dunbar, with the Combined Arms Support Command, Sustainment Center of Excellence, Fort Lee, Virginia. The JTARS used at MFIX was a 1/3 scale model "trainer," that really served as an example of what could be done, Dunbar said. The JTARS is meant to be a system, rather than particular vehicle. At MFIX, the JTARS team demonstrated the capability the Army is after by using the trainer model. They had to move a pair of individual first aid kits from one location to another. They attached a few light-weight kits to a specially-built drone to serve as the payload. Then the drone lifted up off the ground and flew a preplanned route to a target destination, without needing a Soldier to guide it with a controller. The current demonstration model carries about 5 pounds. The expectation is that eventually the JTARS could provide the capability to carry up to 600 pounds from a rear location to the front lines, where Soldiers might need anything from food to ammunition. "So if you can imagine a Stryker is out on the battlefield and it goes down," Dunbar said. "And that field maintenance team is working on it but they need a part from the rear. Rather than taking an entire convoy and going through convoy planning missions and stuff like that and getting on the road, instead you are just loading one piece of equipment -- a repair part -- within the JTARS and sending it point to point." Critical to the JTARS concept is reaction time and assured resupply, Dunbar said. Right now, Dunbar said, the model they have is capable of demonstrating what they want to do, though it might not be the final product. The existence of what they do have allows them to practice delivery of unmanned supplies and also allows them to practice getting access to airspace -- something that sustainment units would have to learn to do if they were going to employ JTARS in a theater of operations. "Your typical sustainment unit within the Army doesn't have air assets," Dunbar said. "Plus, they lack the personnel, the structure, and the capability to plan, coordinate and deconflict airspace. So we came out here with the Fires Battle Lab, essentially running the mission command piece of how to conduct this and the best practices to take back to hopefully make it to doctrine." Sexist humor more than just offensive, expert says [2017-04-21] WASHINGTON -- For some time, through its Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention program, the Army has asserted that sexist humor is unacceptable in the workplace. Sexist humor, however, is more than just offensive, according to Dr. Gail Stern. More important than the joke itself, and the immediate effect it has on people who hear it, is the desensitizing effect it has on listeners, she says. Stern, a researcher, victim advocate and subject-matter expert on sexual assault prevention, spoke Tuesday at the Pentagon about the effects of sexist humor on listeners and how acceptance of such humor affects the social environment. Stern's presentation involved a selection of anecdotes from her experience as a sexual assault prevention professional, as well as a series of slides featuring advertising that employs rape as a component and rape "jokes." During her presentation, Stern provided two examples of rape jokes for her audience: "What do nine out of ten people enjoy? Gang rape!" "Hello, my name is 'Rape.' Remember it. You'll be screaming it later." Stern said some people will find such jokes offensive, while others will find humor in them. But the more those types of jokes are told, the more accepting people will become of the subject matter. That type of humor, she said, desensitizes people to rape, and the effect is that rape itself is considered less of a problem. "The rape jokes -- it's not about sensitivity," she said. "Anybody that tells you it's about sensitivity is full of it. It's not about sensitivity. It's about how it conditions [listeners] cognitively to accept violence and abuse toward another group." Stern also referred to a number of print advertisements that made light of rape. In one advertisement for a brand of vodka, the text suggests that, unlike "some people," this brand's vodka always "goes down smoothly." The ad's imagery features a terrified woman being grabbed from behind by an amused man. "What's the joke here?" Stern asked. The woman in the photo, apparently, didn't want what the man wanted. The ad is a play on words in which sexual assault is part of that word play. Stern noted that advertising executives must have discussed it. "Before they went with this, they were like, 'Guys will laugh at this,'" she said. "Thought went into that. People said OK to that." Another ad features a man and woman dressed for a party and standing against a white background. The woman, on the left side of the ad, has her head turned and is looking out of frame and laughing as if engaged in a conversation. On the right side of the ad, a man leers at her, as though noticing she is distracted. The ad's copy suggests "spiking" your best friend's drink when she's not paying attention. "[The advertiser is] not saying 'knife' your best friend while she's not looking," she said. "There's an implication that he'll get out of the 'friend zone' maybe, right? If it's spiked, he'll have an easier time at this party? And that's not considered rape by many people. It's not saying 'roofie.' We'd be like, that's too dark. But 'spike' is sort of neutral enough; we are willing to grant this guy a little latitude." The Army has been pushing "bystander intervention" training as a way to encourage Soldiers to step up and prevent sexual assault before it happens. Stern identified four factors that must be present for an effective bystander intervention. Those factors are: 1) Notice the situation. 2) Define the situation as problematic. 3) Feel the responsibility to act. 4) Have the skills to act. The problem with bystander intervention, however, is the assumption that everybody will be able to notice a situation and identify it as requiring intervention. That's not always going to be true, Stern said. Jokes about rape, and sexist humor, she said, have "numbed our assessment abilities, to the point where we are less liable to ... notice it and ... define it as a problem ... or even think we are responsible to do anything about it if it's not that big a deal anymore." Rape jokes, Stern said, "make rape acceptable at some cognitive level. If I think that sexual coercion is acceptable or is just a normal part of the culture, I'm going to call it sex. Maybe bad sex. But I'm not going to call it rape." Stern said it's not necessary, every time a Soldier, for instance, hears a sexist joke, to make "a federal case" out of it. But calling out the teller of such a joke, she said, goes a long way toward ensuring that culturally, in whatever group you are in, rape, sexual assault, and sexual coercion do not become acceptable at any level. "You do have to say, 'Buddy, come on. Rape jokes aren't funny' ... something that calls out that negativity," she said. "If that person gets approval for it ... if we stay silent, we have cosigned on that. We've said you're good to go. " Soldiers, Stern said, have a responsibility to challenge such behavior -- the jokes and comments -- as a way of changing what is culturally acceptable. "In order to create a culture that doesn't tolerate sexual assault, you have to challenge sexism," she said. "And you have to do it at every different stage." That means not just challenging jokes that make light of sexual assault, she said, but also challenging a Soldier who belittles another's performance because she is female, or who talks about why women shouldn't be in the Army, for instance. Army's illustrated preventative maintenance magazine to go all-digital this summer [2017-04-25] WASHINGTON -- For 66 years now, since the Korean War, the comic book-like "PS Magazine" has been published monthly to provide Soldiers with tips on maintaining their Army gear. This summer, the magazine will go digital only. PS Magazine is available now in app form for both Android and Apple phones, said magazine editor Jonathan Pierce. The app first became available in June 2016 -- exactly 65 years after it was first published in print. The June 2017 edition of the magazine will be the last to be printed on paper. It'll be the 775th edition. "We wanted to reach out to Soldiers who have grown up in a generation that is used to using mobile apps," Pierce said. "We wanted to extend the reach of the printed magazine and use the mobile app to reach this younger audience of Soldiers." After trying out the app-version of the magazine, Pierce said, it was decided that eliminating the print version made sense. "We have been pleased with what has happened with the mobile app," he said. "And the commanders involved have decided we can just go with the mobile app. So the decision was made to stop printing the magazine and rely entirely on the mobile app." While Soldiers will still be able to download digital copies of the magazine from the PS Magazine website, accessing the content through the app will provide a much richer experience, Pierce said. "What the mobile app does, is instead of being this 2D printed product, now we have a mobile app where we can add a video that will show a maintenance procedure, or add resource material that will for instance show sample preventive maintenance checks and services forms." Other resource material can be linked to though the app as well, Pierce said, and the app also includes a search tool to find related material from past editions of PS Magazine. "The app actually enables us to provide more information to Soldiers than we were able to do with the printed publication," he said. "The mobile app is really a fully functional tool that will provide much more than the printed publication could ever provide." PS Magazine was first published June 1951, during the Korean War, to help Soldiers better maintain their equipment. Today, the magazine has a staff of six writers and three editors. Illustration for the magazine is done via contract. To get ideas for the magazine, PS Magazine writers regularly travel to the field to meet with Soldiers. "They will talk with people who are actually doing maintenance on their equipment," Pierce said. "They get them talking about what they are doing. And then it becomes a discussion of what problems have you had in the past? And from that discussion we gain these story ideas." Then his team finds the answers to those problems through their own research, and generate stories for the magazine. "If one Soldier has the problem, it's likely other Soldiers do too," he said. Pierce said ideas for PS Magazine also come from Army lifecycle management commands such as Tank Automotive Command or Aviation and Missile Command, for instance. Pierce said he expects that PS Magazine characters Master Sgt. Half-Mast, Connie Rodd and Bonnie will continue to provide preventive maintenance advice to Soldiers for years to come. "I fully expect this thing will continue on for the foreseeable future," he said. "Because we are adding so many new features to what we are able to provide for Soldiers, I believe we will be around for a very long time. I think it's the right move. I think that we are really going to provide a better product for Soldiers and they'll enjoy and benefit from using it." The PS Magazine app is available now at: -- https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/p.s.magazine/id1082232259?mt:8 -- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id:mil.logsa.army.psmag&hl:en Past issues of the magazine can also be viewed online at the PS Magazine website, located at https://www.logsa.army.mil/psmag/pshome.cfm. It's time to move past incremental modernization in aviation, says major general [2017-04-28] NASHVILLE -- The Army must move past incremental modernization to existing systems and make the leap forward to new capabilities if it wants to maintain overmatch against adversaries, said Maj. Gen. Robert Marion. "Across the Army and over the last 15 years, we have continued to modernize capabilities and have done so incrementally, with great results," Marion said. "I believe we are at a nexus in time, technology and treasure that requires us to move beyond incremental modernization and in some key areas, focus on leap-ahead capabilities." Marion, who serves as the military deputy for the assistant secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, offered this assessment while speaking at the 2017 Army Aviation Mission Solutions Summit, sponsored by the Army Aviation Association of America, April 26-28 in Nashville, Tennessee. Marion said while at war for 15-plus years in Iraq and Afghanistan, adversaries have watched the United States, how it fights, and the capabilities that it has. And those same adversaries have also been developing their own technology. "Our adversaries have watched us, they have learned our strengths, our vulnerabilities, they have seen our tactics, techniques, and procedures, and they understand how we operate," Marion said. "In order to remain decisive against an elusive and increasingly capable enemy, we cannot wait to develop new capabilities, or we risk being too late." While continued modernization of existing capabilities, like the Bradley fighting vehicle, Abrams tank, Patriot missile system, AH-64 Apache, and UH-60 Black Hawk continue to be important, he said -- and those systems will be valuable to the Army for years, if not decades to come -- development and investment in new systems and new capabilities must start now. "It's time to look ahead to the next leap-ahead capability, and that's Future Vertical Lift and the joint multi-role technical demonstration that will inform the requirements for FVL," Marion said. The FVL capability is expected to include an array of helicopters that share similar sensors, avionics and engines, for instance, but that perform a variety of different roles that will allow them to replace a range of older, existing Army helicopters. "Our Army and our Soldiers need all of us, throughout this entire enterprise, and throughout the entire supply chain, to be at our absolute best as we execute the Joint Multi-Role Technical Demonstration, and as we prepare to execute the FVL program," Marion said." Forward movement on FVL, as well as on other modernization programs, Marion said, has been stymied by a series of unpredictable budgets. At the start of April, for instance, a budget for fiscal year 2017 had still not passed. Under a "continuing resolution," which allows the government to continue to be funded with dollars equivalent to what it received in the last passed budget, "new start" programs cannot begin. That makes it hard for the Army to modernize. "Our lack of a 2017 budget is keeping nearly 50 new-starts, across the Army, from starting in 2017," Marion said. "Among those is the FVL program." Marion also said about 80 Army programs will need to be maintained at fiscal year 2016 funding levels. One of those programs is the Improved Turbine Engine Program, which is meant to provide a new engine to the Apache and Black Hawk fleet. "We awarded two contracts in 2016 for competitive technology maturation and risk reduction phases, and both of those vendors developed schedules and are executing to that program," Marion said, saying those vendors' work in 2017 is constrained to 2016 budget levels. "Both those vendors, this week, will stop. Because they will exceed their 2016 funding levels. Marion emphasized that for the Army, and for Army aviation, "sustained, long-term and predictable funding is essential ... to maintain current readiness and build a modern capable future force." Define aviation requirements operationally, says Maj. Gen. Gayler [2017-05-01] WASHINGTON -- Defining what the Army needs for aviation is a challenge, and everyone has an idea for the best way for Army aviation to write out its requirements, said Maj. Gen. William K. Gayler. "When you look at the capability that you want, everybody will bash the process and say ... you ought to write requirements better," Gayler said. "Industry says you need to write them where I can test them easily. It's challenging from all our perspectives." Gayler, who serves as commander of both the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence and Fort Rucker, Alabama, spoke at the 2017 Army Aviation Mission Solutions Summit, sponsored by the Army Aviation Association of America, April 26-28, in Nashville, Tennessee. "From a requirements perspective, it should be 'I want better than we have today, for our ground force.' Better, no less capable, better," he said. "But to give more specificity, you have to describe it -- potentially, operationally." Before an audience of several hundred Soldiers from the Army's aviation community as well as several hundred more attendees who represented the defense industry, Gayler offered some examples of what the Army is looking for in aviation modernization, and he did it in "operational" terms. "I want the capability to move one brigade combat team, over one period of darkness, over an operationally significant distance," he said. "I want aircraft that are quicker to the place of need on the battlefield. I want airframes that can transit the depth and breadth of a division and corps battlespace, in the future, of potentially 500 kilometers, as quickly as we transit them today with 200-kilometer fronts. I want the option for a combatant commander to self-deploy with the speed necessary and range necessary to do that." Also a necessary capability, Gayler said, is the ability to protect airframes and Soldiers who ride in them, and, he said, "we have absolutely got to be able to carry more stowed kills onboard our airframes." "That's kind of operationalizing of a requirement. And that's exactly what we have got to provide our Soldiers ... in the future. And we will stay focused on that like a laser beam," Gayler said. Army aviation will also stay focused on current modernization priorities that include the Improved Turbine Engine Program for the AH-64 Apache and UH-60 Black Hawk, the Block II CH-47 Chinook, progress with aviation survivability, and improvements for aircraft that must operate in degraded visual environments, Gayler said. He also said Army aviation is focused on future unmanned aerial system solutions, small precision-guided munitions capabilities, and continued development of the Future Vertical Lift capability. Gayler said what Army aviation is asking for is not really for the aviation community itself but, rather, for those the aviation community serves. The Army's aviation branch has been around now since 1983, he said. One thing that's been made clear in that 34-year history, he said, is who the aviation branch exists to support. "When you think about the vision for the branch, the vision for the branch is a professional, modernized force ... that is solely focused on the ground forces whom we support, to provide capabilities and options for combatant commanders, through reach, protection, and lethality, to win in a complex world," Gayler said. "That is the vision for the branch," he continued. "That is why we exist. When we start thinking of a capability for our branch, it's not a capability for aviation. It's a capability for a commander on the ground. Every dollar we spend in aviation is a dollar spent on the ground force. We do not exist for ourselves." Deterrent forces ready to 'fight tonight' in Europe, general says [2017-05-03] WASHINGTON -- Does Russia really feel threatened by NATO? Probably not, said the deputy chief of staff for NATO's Multi-National Corps Northeast. Instead, said Brig. Gen. Frank W. Tate, he believes Russian leadership is more likely concerned about the loss of regime if something happened there similar to an "Arab Spring" or another Colour Revolution in former Soviet states. Tate spoke April 28 at the 2017 Army Aviation Mission Solutions Summit, sponsored by the Army Aviation Association of America, in Nashville, Tennessee. "Some people say Russia feels threatened; they feel surrounded," Tate said. But Tate doesn't believe that's true. Instead, he said, Russian leadership is more likely concerned that the Russian people will see success and prosperity elsewhere in Europe and want the same for themselves. Tate said he believes Russian leadership will "do anything" to cause turmoil in the European Union, and among NATO partners, so that the appearance of success and prosperity in Europe is less apparent. The illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia, Tate said, is one such example of that effort. After that happened, he said, NATO and the U.S. "got that wake-up call." "There was a decision to take some action, to return to a focus on the defense of Europe," he said. That began with the Wales Summit in September of 2014. There, NATO made the decision to increase the responsiveness and capability of NATO forces to respond to threats in the east. One effort involved the creation of enhanced NATO response forces capable of deploying their first battalion within two days, Tate said. There are also now eight NATO force integration units. "It's a 40-person team that integrates host-nation capabilities with NATO capabilities, and facilitates the rapid movement of forces into countries, predominantly along the eastern boundaries." Tate said NATO also dramatically increased the readiness of Multi-National Corps Northeast, "which for many years had been a NATO corps of low or no readiness," Tate said. Beyond NATO efforts, Tate said, the United States embarked on the Atlantic Resolve series of exercises "Gen. Hodges and his team created this mantra of taking the only 30,000 U.S. troops that we have remaining in Europe and making them look like 300,000, which they have done through an unbelievable series and OPTEMPO of exercises integrated with NATO partners all throughout Europe," Tate said. Still, Tate said, the Russians didn't change their stance. He said there are "continued fly-bys of ships and airspace violations [and] continued low-level cyberattacks. Low-level information warfare occurring all throughout the Baltics." At the Warsaw Summit in 2016, Tate said, NATO knew it had to do more. "We recognized that we needed more than just the assurance measures that we had in place for two years, and we needed to switch to deterrence," Tate said. At the Warsaw Summit, he said, "NATO took another very significant move for NATO, which was to create enhanced forward presence battlegroups." There are four of those battalion-sized battlegroups, which include enablers, he said. They are led by Great Brittan and Estonia; Canada and Latvia; Germany and Lithuania; and the United States and Poland. Right now, he said, the U.S-led group is in place, as is the German-led group. The British-led group will be in place soon, and the Canadian-led group will be in place this summer. "That's real boots on the ground," Tate said. "These forces are designed to be 'fight tonight' combat-ready forces. We have a given mission ... to not just deter, which is our primary function, but to be prepared to defeat a limited incursion, potentially up to as large as a brigade-sized incursion. So this is a very serious ongoing operation and mission set that is occurring in Europe today." Bolstering that deterrent force, Tate said, is the deployment of an American armored brigade combat team -- the 3-4th Infantry Division, as well as deployment of the 10th Combat Aviation Brigade. Bringing the 10th CAB into the mix, Tate said, lets observers know the United States means business. "Everybody that watches the way the U.S. Army fights realizes that if Army aviation isn't there, then we aren't serious," he said. "But when you deploy a CAB, the Russians know we are coming prepared to fight, if we have to -- a credible deterrent force." Army aviation may mean that the Army means business, but there are significant challenges in Europe for rotary-wing units, Tate said. For starters, the weather in Europe is different than what the Army got used to in the deserts of the Middle East -- where the climate is unusually suited for year-round flying. "For many years we have gotten used to flying and operating in desert environments, which have their own unique challenges, but also provide 340 or so flyable days every year," he said. Flying in the Middle East, he said, was also unimpeded by the dense air-defense capabilities that aircraft would likely encounter during any possible conflict in Europe. In Iraq and Afghanistan, that relative freedom to fly meant secure forward operating bases that aircraft could operate out of. "We will not have big aviation FOBs that will be unthreatened anywhere in Europe if we get into a fight with Russia," Tate said. "We are just going to have to go back to dispersion." Tate recalled operations he experienced as a new lieutenant in Korea. "I remember ... where every troop and sometimes even below troop level, would be in a different field, and we are doing maintenance out there in the field, truly, not in a hanger or a tent," he said. "This is a lost art in many ways, something we have to train to and develop." He said the Army will prepare for that environment through about 54 exercises in Europe that will happen in 2017. Aviation will participate in those exercises as well. That will involve six different airfields in five countries, with 23 countries participating in some way. Also a concern for Army aviation, Tate said, are overwater kits, fast-rope insertion and extraction systems, very small aperture terminals, and mission command equipment. That type of gear doesn't exist organically in a CAB, he said. If it were provided to the CAB in Europe now, would it stay in Europe, or rotate back to the United States? "We are probably going to have to develop something for this rotational force that doesn't keep coming back and forth," he said. Also, ADR-certified vehicles are an issue. That is, ensuring Army vehicles meet standards in Europe to travel on roads while carrying hazardous materials. "Any truck moving fuel, ammunition, explosives, or any other HAZMAT, must be fully certified," he said. "We spent $500,000 and several months getting the heavy expanded mobility tactical trucks and heavy equipment transport systems from the 10th CAB certified to do that. Is it going to make sense to then send those back and do the same for the follow-on CAB?" For aviation specifically, Tate said UH-60s in Europe must get onboard with the RNAV, or "area navigation" standard in Europe to be compliant. "I know the product manager is working a ... solution that is going to work for us by August, I think," he said. "But again, are we going to rotate and then are we going to start kitting up every set of UH-60Ms that deploy to Europe with this, or are we going to end up having a forward-deployed force? Something for the enterprise to consider." Tate also highlighted challenges to the movement of both personnel and aircraft throughout Europe. Rules in each country are different, and military vehicles and aircraft are not as free to move easily between nations as are individual civilians who can move freely within the European "Schengen Zone." "We made huge progress on the ground," he said. "But we are not where we need to be. When I arrived in Poland two years ago, in order to move a military vehicle across the border from Germany into Poland, you needed to provide ... 28 working days' notice." That's now down to about three working days. "But that's not yet the standard across all of Eastern Europe, or across all of Europe," he said. There's some desire to close borders in Europe, he said. But for now Schengen Zone still exists for individuals, and that kind of ease of movement must exist for military operations in Europe as well. "We need that same capability if we are going to be able to rapidly bring forces in the NATO alliance, including U.S. forces, through Europe to the place and the time where they are needed," he said. Right now Army aviation can't move as quickly as needed to support Soldiers on the ground; nevertheless, Tate said, "progress is being made in all these fields." Aviation efforts in Korea focused on countering special operations forces, WMD [2017-05-04] WASHINGTON -- In 2016, North Korea conducted about 22 missile launches and two nuclear tests as part of an effort to gain nuclear missile capability. They also served as provocation against its neighbor to the south, the Republic of Korea. "The concerning part about this is not necessarily that they are doing provocations," said Brig. Gen. David J. Francis. "What is a problem is they are getting better every time they do a missile test and every time they do a nuclear test." Francis, who serves as deputy commander of the 2nd Infantry Division, 8th U.S. Army in South Korea, spoke Friday during the 2017 Army Aviation Mission Solutions Summit, sponsored by the Army Aviation Association of America, in Nashville, Tennessee. North Korea, Francis said, is likely looking for a "seat at the table." And while the North Koreans have a significant conventional threat at their disposal -- one of the largest militaries in the world -- and a sizable special operations capability as well, he said, "their ability to use it and sustain it over time is very questionable." Instead, Francis said, the North Koreans are looking for an "asymmetric capability" that will give them the leverage they need to get that seat at the table. And that includes, he said, having a nuclear capability. In South Korea, the militaries of the United States and the Republic of Korea -- long-time allies -- are working on ways to counter the threats posed from the north. Aviation is a big part of that, Francis said. Army aviation units in Korea now have two mission sets they are focused on: maritime counter-special operations forces, and counter-weapons of mass destruction. COUNTER-SOF Maritime counter-SOF is designed to defeat a special operations force infill via sea, either to the west or east of the Korean peninsula, Francis said. But for now, he said, they are focused on the west. "The primary mission is to defeat that SOF threat before it reaches the mainland," he said. That counter-SOF mission, he said, has "matured to the point where we have an attack helicopter battalion that for a portion of time works for the 2nd ROK fleet and the 2nd Maritime Battle Group. And their sole purpose for a period of time is to in fact defeat and destroy this threat." Conducting that counter-SOF mission, he said, is a multi-domain effort for the Army, partnering traditional land forces with naval forces over land, air and sea. "We are in a situation where we are flying out over water in direct support of our surface commander, who in this case is a naval commander, to defeat a specific threat," Francis said. "Using direct fire from our AH-64s, we are guided onto targets by ROK controllers in some cases, and in other cases depending on the scenario, we might have some U.S. folks out there." The bottom line, Francis said, is that U.S. Army AH-64 Apache helicopters are partnering with the ROK Navy to provide security on the Korean peninsula. "We take an Apache helicopter battalion and we execute attack operations over the water to find and destroy enemy targets," he said. He said right now there continue to be challenges, though they aren't insurmountable. Communicating with the Koreans is one example, he said. One possible solution is putting liaison officers on ships and ad hoc mission command packages together to enable them to communicate with ROK and U.S. forces out at sea. Another challenge is target handovers. The current interoperability between systems means they can't happen automatically, he said. "We are doing manual target handovers, because their ... aircraft and ours aren't able to talk from a common operating picture point of view," he said. "So target handover is done manually." Exacerbating that problem, he said, is that there are more than just attack helicopters out over the water conducting the counter-SOF mission. "You have all the joint fires, you have ground-based artillery that is shooting into this airspace," he said. "And we have close air support from both the ROK and U.S. naval forces and the U.S. Air Force." COUNTER-WMD When it comes to weapons of mass destruction, Francis said, "we know for a fact [North Korea] has multiple locations that have WMD, and those sites are important to us. So while we are conducting direct action, combined arms maneuver to defeat and destroy enemy forces, we are also focused on getting in control of all of those sites that contain WMD." Francis said the "Warrior Strike" exercises are enabling the Americans and South Koreans to practice going after such sites together. This week, Francis said, the 1-16 Infantry, out of the 1st Armor Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, will work with the Korean Navy on an air assault training mission. It's the first time in recent history the Americans have been able to conduct an air assault off an ROK Navy ship, he said. "We believe ... it's a capability we're going to need, whether it's off a ROK ship or a U.S. ship, or any other type of platform out there," Francis said. "We are going to have to have the ability to maneuver from different places so that we create options for the commander, put ourselves in a positon of relative advantage over the enemy, and create multiple dilemmas for the enemy force from different locations and different domains." Diversity more than black and white, Army leaders say [2017-05-05] WASHINGTON -- What is diversity? It's more than a matter of race or gender, say Army leaders. "Diversity isn't about looks, it's about perspective," said Brig. Gen. Lapthe Flora. "It's a different mindset, different thinking, different thought processes." Flora, originally born in Vietnam, came to the United States in 1980 as a refugee from that country. He served as keynote speaker at an Army Diversity Reception, Wednesday, on Capitol Hill. For the Army, increasing diversity among the uniformed and civilian workforce means making military service appeal to a wide array of Americans from a variety of faith groups, ethnicities, backgrounds, upbringings and geographic locations. The goal is to create a system that maximizes individual talent, increases morale and enhances military effectiveness. Today, 37 years after he arrived in the United States, Flora serves as the assistant adjutant general for strategic initiatives with the Virginia National Guard. "However you were raised in your family defines who you are," Flora said. "And whoever you are, you have a different thought process and a different perspective. That to me is diversity, and that kind of gives you a richness. You need to harness those different ideas. It definitely makes the Army better and stronger." Flora is an Army infantry officer who originally fled the cities in Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975. He and his brothers lived for more than three years in the jungles there, he said, to avoid the North Vietnamese military. "My unyielding resolve to stay alive motivated me to endure three and half years of harsh jungle life in Vietnam, where there was no electricity, no running water, where we grew and hunted our own food, and built our own thatch hut," he said. Later, he made the bold choice to flee Vietnam. He spent five days on a fishing boat without food or water, he said, traversing the South China Sea, before he finally landed in Indonesia. Going into the trip, he said, he knew he had poor odds for survival. "I beat those odds and lived to tell the tale," he said. In May 1979, he found himself in a refugee camp in Indonesia, where he was able to plead his case for a chance to live in the United States. "As a result of your generosity, I was blessed with the privilege to migrate to the United States, a year later, arriving April of 1980," Flora said. "Today I stand before you as a humble servant who owes a great debt of gratitude to America, a debt which I can never fully repay, especially to our Vietnam veterans. I am humbled when recalling who I once was, while beaming with pride and gratitude at who I have become: a proud citizen-Soldier of this great nation." ARMY NEEDS DIVERSITY NOW MORE THAN EVER Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who represents the state of Illinois and who is herself a decorated Army veteran, a wounded warrior, and a UH-60 Black Hawk pilot, said the world is in conflict now and the Army needs the strength that diversity provides to continue to protect the nation. "We are at uncertain times on a global scale right now, at a time when American leadership is ever more important than it has ever been throughout our nation's history, probably since World War II," she said. When the Army goes overseas, Duckworth said, the diversity that it brings with it in its formations has an impact on those who witness it, and even on the Army's ability to operate. "Diversity is so ... critical to who we are and how we can function as a nation but also to the readiness and our ability to project our forces overseas," she said. Duckworth cited the Illinois National Guard's Partnership for Peace program with the nation of Poland as an example. She said when the Illinois Guard goes to Poland, they bring with them native Polish speakers to facilitate the mission. Likewise, she said, when Soldiers deploy from Hawaii to go to the Philippines, they bring with them native speakers of Tagalog. "This is why we are so effective on a global stage," she said. "The fact we can have a Sikh officer show up wearing his turban and represent the greatest military the world has ever seen, and for the rest of the world to say 'that's America' is really important. The importance of diversity to our nation's strength, on an ongoing basis, cannot be underemphasized. And the fact that we have a former refugee who is now a general in the U.S. military says something about who we are as a nation." Now is not the time, Duckworth said, to limit who can join the U.S. Army. Instead, it's a time to bring more kinds of people into the Army to serve. "To limit who can serve in the military, to limit who we are as a nation, will limit our strength," she said. "I want us to continue to lead the free world the way we have and to lead into the next century. The way we do that is to emphasize what makes this nation great: our values, and our values is why we are diverse." Warren Whitlock, who serves as the deputy assistant secretary of the Army for leadership and diversity, said events like the reception on Capitol Hill are meant to highlight the diversity already in the Army. Whitlock said the more Americans know about how diverse the Army is, the more likely they will be to consider the Army as an opportunity for themselves. "The history of the Army is one that has always been an organization that embraces diversity," he said. "It is a tremendous place to work, and a tremendous place to seek careers, and at the end of the day we are serving our nation to protect our interests." Future warfare requires 'disciplined disobedience,' Army chief says [2017-05-05] WASHINGTON -- Following every order to the letter is largely understood to be a way of life in the Army. But that may not always be the best course of action. In fact, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley said he expects Soldiers to know when it's time to disobey an order. "I think we're over-centralized, overly bureaucratic, and overly risk-averse," Milley said while speaking Thursday at the Army and Navy Club in Washington, D.C., as part of the Atlantic Council Commanders Series. That overly bureaucratic environment may work in garrison, during peacetime, he said, but it's "the opposite of what we are going to need in any type of warfare -- but in particular, the warfare I envision." VISION OF FUTURE WARFARE During last year's Association of the U.S. Army symposium in October, Milley laid out just exactly what his vision of future warfare would be. He said then that he expects conditions "will be extremely austere. Water, chow, ammo, fuel, maintenance and medical support will be all that we should plan for." He also said that Soldiers could expect to be surrounded all the time, so they will always need to be on the move if they hope to stay alive. "In short, learning to be comfortable with being seriously miserable every single minute of every single day will have to become a way of life for an Army on the battlefield that I see coming," he said. Leaders on the battlefield could expect to be out of contact with their own leadership for significant periods of time. Those officers would still need to accomplish their commander's objectives, even when the conditions on the battlefield change and they are unable to send word up the chain of command. "We are going to have to empower [and] decentralize leadership to make decisions and achieve battlefield effects in a widely dispersed environment where subordinate leaders, junior leaders ... may not be able to communicate to their higher headquarters, even if they wanted to," Milley said. In that environment, Milley said, the Army will need a cadre of trusted leaders on the battlefield who know when it's time to disobey the original orders they were given and come up with a new plan to achieve the purpose of those orders. MISSION COMMAND "We're the military, so you're supposed to say, 'Obey your orders,'" Miley said. "That's kind of fundamental to being in the military. We want to keep doing that. But a subordinate needs to understand that they have the freedom and they are empowered to disobey a specific order, a specified task, in order to accomplish the purpose. It takes a lot of judgment." Such disobedience cannot be "willy-nilly." Rather, it must be "disciplined disobedience to achieve a higher purpose," Milley said. "If you do that, then you are the guy to get the pat on the back." Milley said that when orders are given, the purpose of those orders must also be provided so that officers know both what they are to accomplish and how they are expected to accomplish it. To illustrate his point, Milley offered the example of an officer who has been ordered to seize "Hill 101" as part of a larger battle plan. "I've said the purpose is to destroy the enemy," Milley said. "And the young officer sees Hill 101, and the enemy is over on Hill 102. What does he do? Does he do what I told him to do, seize Hill 101? Or does he achieve the purpose, destroy the enemy on Hill 102?" The answer, Milley said, is that the officer disobeys the order to seize the first hill because following that order would not achieve his commander's purpose. Instead, he takes the other hill. "And he shouldn't have to call back and say 'hey boss ... can I go over to 102?' He shouldn't have to do that," Milley said. "They should be empowered and feel they have freedom of maneuver to achieve the purpose." Right now, Milley said, the Army already has doctrine that describes what he envisions for the future: "mission command" doctrine. Part of that doctrine, he said, instructs commanders to tell their subordinates the purpose of what they are doing. "That's important for subordinates to understand the why, the purpose," he said. But the Army, he said, has a hard time practicing what it writes into doctrine. "My point is what we do in practice is we micromanage and over-specify everything a subordinate has to do, all the time, in regulations, in ALARACT messages, in rules," he said. "That is not an effective way ... to fight. Not an effective way to conduct operations. You will lose battles and wars if you approach warfare like that." "We must trust our subordinates," he added. "You give them the task, you give them the purpose, and then you trust them to execute and achieve your intent, your desired outcome -- your purpose." Getting Soldiers and leaders to do that will require training, he said. And it will require encouraging them to operate that way. "You have to train to it, you have to prepare for it, and you have to live it and do it every day," he said. FUTURE TECHNOLOGY OF WARFARE Milley acknowledged that it's impossible to predict exactly how warfare in the future will play out, but he did say there are some "broad outlines" that can be drawn upon to help with the development of decisions regarding doctrine, organization and equipment. Technology, he believes, will have a huge impact on warfare. "I think we are at the intersection of a variety of technologies that are happening in time and space, all about the same time, that are going to have a fundamental change or result in fundamental change to the character of warfare." One technology of today that has already been around for a while, he noted, are precision-guided munitions. "For a long time, the United States dominated precision-guided munitions," he said. "Now, precision-guided munitions have proliferated throughout the world." Information technology also will have a dramatic effect, he said, citing the iPhone as an example. He said that today, through existing technology, one has access to high-quality imagery, communications, and real-time data on the location of people, equipment and formations, for instance, nearly anywhere on Earth. "I would argue that we are at a point where ... almost anything militarily can be seen," he said. "So when you combine the ability to see ... with precision-guided munitions, that's like going from the smoothbore to the rifle. That's going to rapidly and radically increase lethality on the battlefield." He noted that robotics are now used in the air and sea domains but currently play a limited role on the ground. Over the next decade, however, he expects to see a "rapid introduction of robotic systems in ground warfare." OPTIMIZING FOR URBAN CONFLICT Demographic changes also will affect the character of war, he said. In particular, he pointed to increases in urbanization. According to Milley, social scientists predict that by 2050 about 90 percent of Earth's projected population of more than 8 billion people will likely live in "highly dense, complex urban areas." As a result of that shift, he said, it's probable that armed conflict will occur in those same densely populated areas. "The U.S. Army has been optimized to fight in rural terrain, to fight in the plains of Northern Europe, North America [and] the deserts of the Middle East," he said. Optimizing for urban warfare, he said, will require changing not only how Soldiers fight, but how equipment is used. "A tank's barrel can elevate to a certain degree," he said. "In an urban environment, it might need to elevate to almost a 90-degree angle. That has huge implications." Likewise, much consideration must also be devoted to such practical matters as the wingspans of unmanned aerial vehicles, casualty evacuation in densely populated areas, and the ability of current command and control systems to function in the concrete jungles of the future. "The list goes on and on," he said. "There are about maybe 100 or 150 significant implications to that fact of urbanization and the likelihood that armed conflict is going to be more in urban areas than not." Right now, he said, the Army has optimized for non-urban areas. But he said, "we are probably going to have to shift gears significantly over the coming decade or so to optimize the Army, or land forces -- I would argue the Marines as well -- to be able to operate successfully in combat operations in highly dense, complex urban areas." Caregivers mark National Nurses Week with wreath at Arlington National Cemetery [2017-05-10] WASHINGTON -- "Nurses are the cornerstone of medical care. They are all about the care of the patient. They are the golden children of patient care," said Col. Sandra McNaughton. McNaughton, who serves as the senior nurse executive at the Army's Office of the Surgeon General, has been a nurse for 28 years now. She was one of four military nurses who laid a wreath Monday at the Nurses Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery during the start of National Nurses Week. "I just really love caring for others," McNaughton said. "My mom was a nurse for probably 38 years. And I have just always had a true desire to take care of others." While she might have served as a nurse in the private sector, McNaughton said, she chose the Army to practice because she knew it would offer more of a challenge for her. "It serves such a bigger mission," she said of Army nursing, saying that she knew going in she would get to take care of Soldiers, which is something she wanted to do. She also knew that, as an Army nurse, she'd be on call to deploy at a moment's notice, if needed. And that too appealed to her. "It's a huge challenge," she said of being a nurse in the Army. "And it offers all these opportunities that a civilian nurse may not have." McNaughton, along with Air Force Maj. Gen. Dorothy Hogg, the deputy surgeon general for the Air Force and chief of the Air Force Nursing Corps; Air Force Col. Deedra Zabokrtsky, director of Air Force Nursing; and Navy Capt. Deborah Roy, deputy chief of nurses for the Navy, participated in laying a wreath at the Nurses Memorial in Section 21 of Arlington National Cemetery. In that section of the cemetery, hundreds of military nurses have been laid to rest. "For more than two centuries, military nurses have served America, on the water, in the air and on land, in conflicts stateside and abroad," said Hogg, who offered remarks before participating in laying the wreath. "However, it wasn't until [the] establishment of the Army, Navy and Air Force nurse corps that military nurses were trained, paid and recognized as a necessary part of the U.S. fighting force." Today, Hogg said, wherever military medicine exists, military nurses are involved in some way. "Military medicine takes on the biggest and toughest missions in every corner of the globe," Hogg said. "It performs research, it educates tens of thousands of students per year, and it responds to disasters and performs heroic humanitarian work. But no matter how varied the mission, one constant is military nurses. The perseverance of all these military nurses, from all walks of life, paved the way for us to serve in various capacities and roles around the world: from the front lines to our hospitals and in our research labs. "Today in Section 21 of Arlington National Cemetery, this sacred place, on this sacred ground, we lay this wreath in recognition of all the nurses who exemplify selfless service ... and voluntarily chose to serve in harm's way to heal and help others." Hollyanne Milley, a cardiac nurse, also attended the ceremony. She is the wife of Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley. While she had never been a nurse in the Army, she has served as registered nurse in a civilian capacity for 30 years now. "Nurses make a difference every day they go to work," Milley said. "They apply their clinical skills in their area of expertise and work with the entire medical team to deliver quality patient care. They are often the team member that spends the most time with patients, establishing a relationship with them and assessing and communicating their needs to the team." Milley said nurses are often the first to notice when a patient's condition changes, and are the ones who most often bring that to the attention of doctors. Nurses are also the ones that interact most often with patients' families, she said. "Nurses have the opportunity to educate and empower patients and their families," she said. "They offer comfort, compassion and support during very challenging times." As a nurse herself, Milley recognizes the unique roleArmy nurses serve play medical professionals. "Army nurses are more than just nurses working in the Army," she said. "They are a unique brand of professionals who care for our Soldier's and their families in performing their professional responsibilities; but who also are always ready to deploy into harm's way to perform those same duties as Soldiers themselves, under the most austere conditions, to save lives and preserve function. "Happy Nurse's Week and thank you for the meaningful work you do every day!" Milley said. Security force assistance brigades to free brigade combat teams from advise, assist mission [2017-05-18] WASHINGTON -- Last week, the Army established the first of what will eventually be six security force assistance brigades, or SFABs. That unit, now assigned to Fort Benning, Georgia, has already identified about 70 percent of the personnel who will ultimately serve under its flag and wear its patch -- though right now, both the patch and the flag are still being designed. The new SFAB and the five others planned -- a total of five in the active component and one in the National Guard -- will each have 529 Soldiers assigned and will be tasked to conduct advise and assist missions for the Army, said Lt. Col. Johnathan Thomas, who serves with the Army's G-3/5/7 force management directorate at the Pentagon. "The SFAB is designed to rapidly deploy into a theater of operations in support of a combatant commander," said Thomas. "Once it arrives in that particular theater, it will begin to work with, train, advise, and assist those partner nation security forces on anything they need help with, be it logistics, be it communications, be it maneuver. Anything they need help with to improve their capacity and capability, that's what the SFAB is designed to do." Thomas said SFABs could deploy to places such as Africa, South America, Europe, or anywhere Army senior leaders decide. The units will have the capability to deploy anywhere. The advise and assist mission is one the Army has done for years, Thomas said, but it's something the Army has until now done in an "ad hoc" fashion. Brigade combat teams, for instance, have in the past been re-tasked to send some of their own overseas as part of Security Transition Teams or Security Force Assistance Teams to conduct training missions with foreign militaries. Sometimes, however, the manner in which these teams were created may not have consistently facilitated the highest quality of preparation. The SFAB units, on the other hand, will be exclusively designated to conduct advise and assist missions overseas. And they will be extensively trained to conduct those missions before they go. Additionally, he said, the new SFABs mean regular BCTs will no longer need to conduct advise and assist missions. "The SFAB, because it is going to go forward and advise, will somewhat relieve the pressure on our BCTs to go forward and do that mission," Thomas said. Instead, he said, BCTs can now concentrate on training and preparing for their next deployment. He said that because the advise and assist mission is considered an enduring mission, "the Army decided ... we should have a dedicated, permanent structure to get after this mission on behalf of our partnered forces and partner nations." THE FIRST SFAB Col. Scott Jackson, an infantry officer who has served in the Army for 27 years now, has been named the first commander of the Army's first SFAB. His unit, the 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade, which is headquartered at Fort Benning, Georgia, was established last week, but will officially activate this October. Right now, he said, the unit is just getting started, so it is short on Soldiers. But he did say that about 70 percent of those who will ultimately join the unit have been identified. "They will slowly start arriving over the summertime to begin training this fall," Jackson said. And when fall rolls around, he said, training will be extensive. "The really unique aspect of the SFAB, as a concept, is the training we are going to give the organization," Jackson said. "We are starting with a very talented pool of officers and leaders all around. But then we are going to give them an unbelievable training plan." Jackson said that training will include immersive language training. Some Soldiers, he said, will get as much as 16 weeks of training in a language that will assist the unit as they deploy. That level of language training, he said, "is unheard of in the conventional force." Additionally, leaders in the formation will attend a recently-established six-week "Military Advisor Training Academy" in addition to the language courses. "They will also receive training in foreign weapons, so they can properly advise their counterparts in foreign countries on how to employ those weapons," Jackson said. "They will receive advanced medical training, and advanced driver training. The level of skill preparation is really unseen in our efforts of doing combat advising up until now." Thomas said training for all SFABs will begin at Fort Benning, and will also include survival, evasion, resistance and escape training as well. Jackson said about 370 of his unit's 529 Soldiers, or 70 percent, will get the extensive training and will be coded as advisors. The rest, he said, will be mission-command personnel to operate the brigade. ALREADY READY TO LEAD, TO TRAIN Another unique aspect of the SFAB is how the leadership was selected. All leaders in the Brigade have already served in their current positions. Jackson, for instance, already served as a brigade commander at Fort Stewart, Georgia; while his Command Sergeant Major Christopher Gunn is a former Brigade Combat Team CSM. Jackson also has experience as an advisor. On the second of his three tours to Iraq, he served as a military advisor to an Iraqi provincial governor. There, he said, he "straddled the line between military and political advising." He provided updates for the governor on what was going on militarily, the threat situation, and how the governor could best support military operations. "What I got out of that was the power of personal relationships," Jackson said. "You have got to have patience. You have to establish a strong personal-level relationship. You can't be in a rush. You have to be patient." Jackson also said that part of advising, such as in Iraq, is knowing that the "American" way of doing things is not always the best way to do things with a partner. "There is an Iraqi way of doing things. There is an Afghan way of doing things," he said. "If you don't realize that, if you are not sensitive to their way of business, what you propose as an advisor will have no credibility, and you will have no trust. And you will be an ineffective advisor." In part, it was his experience in the past as a brigade commander, and his experience as an advisor in Iraq that helped him secure the position as commander of the 1st SFAB. Battalion and brigade leaders were selected by a panel of general officers and command sergeants major. And like Jackson, all of those have already served in similar positions within a brigade. It is uncommon, Jackson said, for an officer to hold a command position at the same level more than once. "That's a unique aspect of an SFAB," he said. "Because we're advisors, we're expected to be extremely knowledgeable at our job. We can't be learning our job. We already have to have done it. Every officer, every leader in the organization, has already done their job previously, and have proven themselves in their positions." ONLY VOLUNTEERS At least for now, the Army isn't assigning Soldiers to SFAB units. Instead, the SFAB units will be manned exclusively with volunteers, said Thomas. "We are going to reach out across the Army to get volunteers for the SFAB," Thomas said. "And we are looking for senior individuals, staff sergeant and above, across a variety of experiences and capabilities." Thomas said the SFABs need experienced infantrymen, artillerymen, engineers, and logisticians, among other skill sets. The Army also needs Soldiers with experience as squad leaders, first sergeants, and platoons sergeants. For officers, the Army wants those with experience as company commanders, battalion operations officers, executive officers, battalion commanders, and brigade commanders. To help facilitate more volunteers to the SFAB mission, Thomas said, the Army has approved assignment incentive pay for enlisted Soldiers. "It is an imperative that we want volunteers for this," Thomas said. "That's why the Army approved the $5,000 assignment incentive pay for this; it was that high of a priority. We want individuals who want to be there. We don't want to force individuals, or simply assign them to the SFAB. People with a passion to deploy and do this kind of work -- that's who we want inside the SFAB." Jackson said that while most of his unit's personnel have already been identified, he's looking for people who are excited about the prospect of doing something new within the Army. He wants people for whom the mission is exciting, and for whom being part of a new kind of unit is also exciting, he said. "The first thing that should excite you about the SFAB is that it's a chance to write history," Jackson said. "This is an exciting part of the U.S. Army history and it's a challenging time in the world. And the SFAB is going to be at the forefront of that." Jackson said that the first Soldiers onboard at the 1st SFAB, and in the other SFABs that will form, will have an opportunity to define what it means to be in an SFAB. They will set the standard for the unit and for those who come after them. "The real history of the SFAB will be written by the folks, the collective folks, assigned to the first several SFABs, as we establish what the SFAB ethos is, and the culture, and the organizational standards," he said. "It's like any high-performing organization when it's first stood up. Initial benchmarks have to be established. The folks in this organization -- the folks that work with us -- are going to be the ones who are writing that history." Jackson also said he expects those in the SFAB will be among the best Soldiers the Army has in their particular career field. He said partner nations will expect that of them -- as they are there to train others how to do their jobs. "If you are a Soldier who wants to be a true master at arms, well, we are going to be recognized as the experts at what we call combined arms maneuver," he said. "If you are in the SFAB, other coalition partners are going to look at you to be the experts in how to do warfighting with conventional forces. Most people join the Army to go do Army things, to go out and deploy and be involved in operations. If that's you, then you should come to the SFAB." BRIGADE COMBAT TEAMS IN WAITING The SFAB concept is a key priority of Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, to get after and to institutionalize the concept of the advise and assist mission within dedicated force structure. But the SFAB does more than that. While the SFAB will have just 529 Soldiers within its ranks, those Soldiers will constitute "primarily a very senior force," Thomas said. With senior leadership already in place that mirrors a standard brigade combat team, the SFABs will be able to quickly grow into a full-sized BCT with as many as 4,000 Soldiers, if the Army needs to increase combat capability. "We call it regeneration," Thomas said. "And the regeneration capability of the SFAB is one of its features. The SFAB will provide a cadre of officers and [noncommissioned officers] who will facilitate the regeneration of an SFAB into a full-blown brigade combat team." Were a generation order given, Thomas said, any of the six SFABs the Army expects to build could grow quickly into a full-sized infantry brigade combat team, Stryker brigade combat team, or armored brigade combat team. "The Army will have to bring Soldiers, NCOs and officers into the SFAB from various locations across the Army," Thomas said. "That'll be part of the normal transition and assignment process that will help facilitate the growth of the SFAB into a BCT." Thomas said it would take a lot of Soldiers to fill an SFAB and turn it into a full-sized BCT. But he also said that it will be much faster for the Army to convert an SFAB into a BCT than it would be to stand up a new BCT from scratch. So the SFAB, in addition to institutionalizing the advise and assist mission, will also enable the Army to build combat forces faster if it needs to. What the SFAB also does, Thomas said, is get after the Army's No. 1 priority: readiness. "Being able to provide advisors to assist our partner nation security forces not only helps them defend their country and their interests, and put down existing threats or emerging threats in their area, but also helps us with our readiness," he said. "Because now we don't have to send our forces forward and do those things. Those forces are capable of doing it for themselves." Thomas said Soldiers interested in volunteering for SFAB duty should contact their branch manager at the Army's Human Resources Command to discuss the assignment and to learn more about the assignment incentive pay being offered. 3-D printed grenade launcher only tip of future manufacturing possibilities for Army [2017-05-19] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers will probably not be 3-D printing entire weapons in theater anytime soon. Instead, they'll continue to bring weapons into theater the old way: slung over their shoulder. But the Army is exploring 3-D printing technology that promises to make it easier for Soldiers to complete their missions without being stymied by broken parts. At a Department of Defense-sponsored "Lab Day," May 18, at the Pentagon, James L. Zunino, a materials engineer with the Armament Research Development and Engineering Center at Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, showed off a 3-D-printed grenade launcher the Center had manufactured in its lab. Like parts made on the 3-D printers that are common in many electronics stores today, most of the launcher was constructed of plastic. But the barrel was made of aluminum and was also 3-D printed using "laser sintering." In that process, powdered aluminum serves as the raw material, and a laser pointed at the powder heats up certain portions to melt it into a solid. Using this process, the printers were able to generate a complete all-metal barrel for the launcher, along with the plastic upper. While Zunino said it's unlikely the Army will manufacture entire grenade launchers in theater, it is a valid possibility that parts could be manufactured to modify existing weapons to make them fit the needs of Soldiers who will use them. "It's for things the Soldiers could modify for themselves, you could do mass customization, you could print in the field," he said. "If you prefer a 45-degree grip on the front ... you could print that in the field. Or if you wanted to use a 90-degree grip, you could have that. Then you can actually tailor a weapon for how the Soldier wants to use and operate it. If you want to add more Picatinny rails, to add your flashlight mounts, or different scopes, you could easily do that." While printed weapons are still in the developmental stages of production, Soldiers may soon see the Army's Rapid Fabrication via Additive Manufacturing on the Battlefield capability in the field, also called RFAB. With the RFAB, the Army has assembled several commercial 3-D printing technologies into one portable facility that allows users to manufacture parts on-the-fly to repair broken gear in the theater. That way, those Soldiers can continue their mission and not have to wait for the logistics supply chain to deliver new parts. The RAFB capability has already been to the Army Warfighter Assessment at Fort Bliss, Texas. Last October, it demonstrated the ability there to print up treads and flippers for the robots used to disable IEDs. "Sometimes they have a hard time getting those parts fielded forward," Zunino said. "So we are telling Soldiers to make it, to get through the mission." Timothy Phillis, an engineer with Armament Research Development and Engineering Center at Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois, had a tiny plastic handle with him in the Pentagon courtyard. He said the part is worth about $8,000 -- sort of. "This is a handle on a nitrogen purge pump," he said. "When this handle breaks, and it breaks frequently, it's an $8,000 handle because the entire pump has to be replaced. So a unit got eight of them in and seven had handles that were broken. So they took the eighth one, they took the 3-D scanner that's in RFAB, they scanned the good one, and then they printed the other seven. So now, from a readiness perspective, they're not one-of-eight -- they're eight-of-eight ready." Phillis also offered another example of 3-D printing enhancing readiness at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where a forklift in use had a lifting pin break. A replacement part was put on order. But to keep the mission running -- and the forklift running -- operators there opted to use 3-D printing to make a new pin, at least as a temporary stop-gap solution. Six months later, he said, they are still operating with the 3-D printed pin. The actual part, he said, "is still on back order." An improved version of the RAFB, updated with input from Soldiers, will be used at the upcoming Pacific Pathways in Japan and Thailand this summer. The RFAB will also go to Joint Warfighter Assessment 18 in Europe next spring, Phillis said. Also coming to RFAB, Zunino said, is "Raptor," the name for a software catalog of nearly 500 commonly-broken parts that have already been stored as digital files for 3-D printing. "It's a repository for additive parts for tactical and operational readiness," Zunino said, as he demonstrated the software using a laptop computer. "If you are looking for your part, and you don't know the exact model number of the piece that is broken, that's okay. You know that you have a PackBot, and you can click on the PackBot picture. And you know the flipper system is bad, and it will bring up all the components you can print." On the screen, there were several pictures of systems, and after clicking a system, several pictures appeared of commonly-broken parts that could be 3-D printed by just clicking on them. "We're trying to get as close to click-to-print as possible for Soldiers," Zunino said. The Raptor system appeared to be an easy-to-use interface that would allow Soldiers to quickly find the part they need and have it manufactured on-sight. But the 3-D printing capability is not meant to replace traditional ordering, Zunino said. "You're still going to order the part number or the NSN to order a replacement, but you can print the temporary to complete your mission immediately, while the logistics chains and supply chain catches up with you," he said. Both the RFAB and the Raptor parts catalog will be available for viewing at the Pacific Pathways in August and September. Auto-targeting technology to reduce 'aim error' in crew-served weapons [2017-05-25] WASHINGTON -- Soldiers may now pride themselves on being a good shot, on scoring high in marksmanship, but one day that may not be as important as it is now. Earlier this month, during "Lab Day" at the Pentagon, Terence Rice, a researcher with the Armament Research Development and Engineering Center out of Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey, demonstrated an engineering model of what one day might make it into the field for Soldiers. What Rice had on display was a plastic M4 rifle replica that was cradled inside a larger, rifle-like shell. A lot of Soldiers and Marines had gathered around his tent in the Pentagon courtyard to hear what he had to say. "We're trying to attack the problem of aim error. When you want to hit a target, you have to take into account the weapon, the ammo, the environments and the shooter," Rice said. "And given the fact that we're using sensors, computers and hardware ... we can engage targets faster now. What this concept does is reduce aim error and engage targets quicker." What Rice was demonstrating was technology that automatically aimed the M4 rifle at the target, so Soldiers could be a more effective shooter without actually being a good aim. A series of sensors and motors in the outer shell that held the M4 were responsible for moving the rifle around and keeping it pointed at the target. All the Soldier had to do was aim the entire setup in the general direction of a target. The motors and sensors took care of making sure the M4 was accurately aimed, so that any bullets fired by the Soldier would hit their target. The engineering model was heavy, and it's certainly not ready for prime time, Rice said. "This is just a prototype demonstrator. It's not meant to be a fielded-type system," he said. "But we want to get the concepts to folks to say, hey we have the ability to make computers smaller and faster nowadays, so embed this in a weapons system and see what we can do with it. So what we are doing here is using this system to find a target, engage that target and always be on that target at all times, whether you are standing prone, or moving, or in a vehicle, or a helicopter." While what Rice was demonstrating for individual weapons might be years away, that's not the case for larger, crew-served weapons, such as what may be found on a boat or off the top of a Stryker combat vehicle, for instance. "What we are looking for is to apply this more in a crew-served, or a vehicle, or a helicopter-type system, because you have the real estate in there, you have ability for more computing power and for more constant power," he said. Rice had a video on display that showed a person on a platform aiming a crew-served weapon at targets being projected on a screen. The platform moved back and forth as if on hydraulics. It was meant to simulate how a sailor, for instance, might aim a weapon while standing onboard a rocking boat. "That's a simulation of firing off of a boat, and trying to keep it steady and on target," Rice said. "It's very difficult when you are going up and down." But in the demonstration video, the subject was able to have a computer help aim the weapon and keep a lock on the target, similar to something Luke Skywaker might have had access to when shooting at enemy fighters from within the Millennium Falcon. "You use the computer to lock on to the target at all times," Rice said. "That's what we are working on here. All he does is pull the trigger." Rice said the Army isn't quite ready to take the hand-held, individual weapon version of the system and field it to Soldiers. "There's a lot of work to be done to make this as light as an existing M4, and build in all these stabilization concepts," he said. But the software that is inside that system is the same software that's inside the version for the crew-served weapon. And the system to automatically aim a crew-served weapon is likely to be available to Soldiers sooner. Rice said that in about two years, they expect a user assessment of the software to be applied for use in a crew-served weapon. "There is a foundational technology with software that's similar, no matter what system," he said. "It doesn't make any difference what caliber weapon either. It could be 5.56, 7.62, or .50-cal." Rice said that with either a crew-served weapon or, one day when the concept is further developed for individual weapons, the technology will make it easier to be a more effective Soldier. Soldiers will be able to "engage targets quicker, kill them quicker, and survive them," Rice said. Army budget request asks for raise in Soldier pay, housing, subsistence [2017-05-30] WASHINGTON -- If Congress approves what was asked for in the Fiscal Year 2018 defense budget request, Soldiers can expect to see a bump in their paycheck come January. The FY18 budget request, released by the Army on May 23, includes $58.3 billion for military personal funding to support an Army of 1,018,000 Soldiers across the total force. This increase is $2.8 billion over last year's enacted budget, and that extra money will not only pay for sustaining the additional Soldiers authorized in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, but will also pay for an increase in Soldier compensation. The FY18 budget asks for a 2.1 percent increase in Soldier basic pay, a 2.9 percent increase in basic allowance for housing, and a 3.4 percent increase in basic allowance for subsistence. If enacted, those increases will go into effect Jan. 1, 2018. Maj. Gen. Thomas A. Horlander, director of the Army budget, provided highlights of the Army's $137.2 billion FY18 base budget request May 23 at the Pentagon. "The funding levels of the recently enacted FY17 budget and this FY18 base request are consistent with the administration's goals for the U.S. Army to rebuild readiness, reverse end strength reductions and prepare for future challenges," Horlander said, adding that this year's budget request is designed to provide combatant commanders with the "best trained and ready land forces that we can generate." A $38.9 billion request for operation and maintenance dollars in the FY18 budget -- a $2.7 billion increase over the enacted budget last year -- is designed to "resource a more balanced readiness across the force," Horlander said. That includes funding for 19 combat training center rotations for both the regular Army and the National Guard, as well as funding for increased home station training that will focus on both decisive action and counter-insurgency operations. EQUIPMENT PROCUREMENT AND MAINTENANCE That O&M budget for the regular Army also provides funding for equipment sustainment, with an increase in depot maintenance "to help bring our equipment to a greater level of repair, and by enhancing Army prepositioned stocks that will improve global responsive capabilities," Horlander said. The recent release of the "Strategic Portfolio Analysis and Review," or SPAR, spelled out the top Army priorities in modernization. From that review, the Army has documented 10 top-level areas on which to focus limited modernization dollars. Chief among those areas are air and missile defense, long-range fires and filling a munitions shortfall. All three of those priorities are adequately addressed in the FY18 budget proposal, where $26.8 billion has been requested for procurement, as well as research, development, testing and evaluation (RDT&E). In that RDA budget, procurement dollars requested actually decreased from last year, while the requested amount for research has increased, Horlander said, "to enable the Army to retain our advantage against advanced adversaries and to address a broader range of potential threats." Within the procurement dollars, he said, air and missile defense, as well as long-range fires, represent "the most urgent and pressing capability needs. Given the possibility of confronting a force with substantial anti-access and area-denial capabilities, the Army needs to advance its short-range air defense and long-range fires capabilities." In keeping with that priority, he said, the FY18 budget funds procurement and installation of 131 Patriot Missile modification kits, as well as investment in Avenger surface-to-air missile system support. For long-range fires, Horlander explained that the FY18 budget supports a 10-year service life extension of 121 currently expired Army Tactical Missile Systems, procurement of 6,000 Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, and continued enhancement for 93 Patriot Missile systems with the Missile Segment Enhancement program, which increases altitude and range of the rockets. MORE MUNITIONS As part of the Strategic Portfolio Analysis and Review, the Army identified a munitions shortfall as one of the top three priorities it hopes to address. Horlander said the FY18 budget request "will help ensure the availability of critical munitions for the combatant commands." Inside that request, he said, the Army asks for funding to buy 88,000 unguided Hydra 70 rockets, as well as 480 M982 Excalibur guided bombs for war reserve inventory replenishment. The budget also asks for funding to support modernization of the Army's ammunition industrial facilities, including a multi-year effort to improve the Holston Army Ammunition Plant in Tennessee. On the ground, the Army aims to improve mobility, lethality, and protection for its brigade combat teams. The FY18 budget request supports combat vehicle modernization for the Abrams, Stryker, Bradley and Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle, as well as the Howitzer fleet. Horlander said the Army plans to procure 42 of the AMPV systems within the FY18 budget request, as well as purchase active protection systems for Abrams tanks within Europe-based BCTs. Aviation, which makes up the largest portion of the FY18 procurement request at about $4.2 billion, asks for funding for 50 remanufactured AH-64 Apache aircraft, 13 new Apaches, as well as funding for 48 UH-60M Black Hawk aircraft and six CH-47 Chinooks. The $9.4 billion in RDT&E funding, he said, aims to "put technologically advanced equipment and more lethal weaponry in the hands of Soldiers sooner," Horlander said. Focus in that portion is on continued development of air and missile defense, long-range precision fires, and weapons and munitions technologies, he explained. The Army is planning on investing in the Stinger Product Improvement Program as well as the Patriot Product Improvement Program. The Army is "investing RDT&E funds to increase range, volume of fire, and precision and guidance of our cannon and missile systems and to further enable precision fires in a GPS-denied environment," he said. Operations in GPS-denied environments are also a priority, Horlander stated, as RDT&E has a focus on development of assured position navigation timing -- which will allow for navigation even if adversaries deny use of GPS systems. Overall, the Army's FY18 budget request, supports a "vast complexity of requirements needed to restore and rebuild America's Army for today's and tomorrow's missions," Horlander explained. "It represents a balance between the size of the force, current readiness requirements, and the necessary investment in modernization to ensure our Army remains the premier ground force of the future, capable of protecting the national security interests of our country." Army teaching robots to understand language [2017-05-30] WASHINGTON -- Earlier this month at the Pentagon, a robot called "RoMan," which stands for "Robotic Manipulation," demonstrated how it could pick up a tool box and then put it back down. Nearby, a scientist from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) manned the robot's controls. The future of Army warfare will likely involve robotics deployed to perform an array of functions that Soldiers today perform for themselves, ARL researchers say. But what will likely not be part of that future, they say, are Soldiers who operate those robots with a controller or stick. Instead, those robots will operate independently, after having been issued verbal instructions by a Soldier. Dr. Stuart Young, who serves as the chief of the asset control and behavior branch at ARL, was at the Pentagon in May as part of the annual Lab Day exhibition. Along with other DOD researchers, he manned a booth in the Pentagon courtyard where he met with military personnel to discuss his team's current projects and innovations. Young said his team's project involves making robots more capable of understanding natural language, so that they can function more like members of a team rather than just tool that has to be controlled by a Soldier. Robots, he explained, should be more like teammates to the Soldiers they work with, and should, like the Soldier, understand the intent of the mission they are executing. "We are focusing on natural language dialogue, which is a bi-directional conversation we can have with the robot," Young said. "I want to be able to naturally engage with the robots. So if I for example say go to that building over there, you might say 'which one?' And I could say 'the tall one.' It's a way for us to have a dialogue and disambiguate what you intend for the robot to do." Right now, Army robots are tele-operated and require Soldiers to control them directly. With the current technology, Soldiers who are operating the robot must stop their other duties to focus on directing the robot. To operate a robot, for instance, the Soldier might have to put down his own gun and pick up a controller. This might mean that another Soldier has to provide security for that Soldier while he controls the robot -- so operating a robot might take two Soldiers out of the fight. That's got to change, said Dilip Patel, a researcher from General Dynamics who works with ARL. "Now you have a Soldier managing and operating a robot, instead of having their fingers on the trigger," he said. "We don't want that. We want these robots to be autonomous so you just tell the robot, 'Robot, go in that building. And if you have to break down the door, break down the door. Go inside and communicate with the occupants and tell me what is going on in there.' So the robot is looking at the Soldier and listening, through natural language communication, and knows exactly what to do." Patel is part of the Robotics Collaborative Technology Alliance Program, managed by the ARL. He explained the goal of their program -- which focuses on robotic perception, intelligence, human-robot interaction, and dexterous manipulation and mobility -- is to provide autonomous, robotic teammates to dismounted Soldiers. "When dismounted Soldiers are approaching an area that requires somebody to go in and either break down a door or interact with an improvised explosive device, we don't want our Soldiers doing that," Patel said. "We want the robots doing that. That's the purpose of this program, to lay the foundation, the research, that's going to make this happen." There's a lot more work to be done to get robots to respond to Soldiers the way other human Soldiers do, Young said. And there's a lot of work to be done getting robots to perform like Soldiers as well. "The robots don't have common sense," Young said. "So we use tools like knowledge bases to be able to imbue the robots with that common sense understanding of the world, so they can understand what the human wants them to do, in context. And once we understand that, then the robots have the difficult challenge of being able to understand the environment. It's perception of the world." Young said that robots must understand their environment beyond just knowing what things are -- like a building, or stairs or asphalt, for instance. They must understand what those things mean to them as well. "The grass, the concrete: Those are not just things. They are things you can walk on, or you can drive on," Young said. "If I detect mud, well mud is something you can drive on, but it might not be as optimal, or it may have a higher risk -- I might get stuck. So that's the type of thing we have to look at. And then that goes into some sort of cognitive architecture so we can do intelligent behaviors." Young also said those robots need to be able to adapt to environments without having prior experience in that particular setting, and they must do so at a speed that allows them to keep pace with Soldiers performing the mission. "We need platforms that can manipulate the environment and maneuver with the Soldiers at operational tempo, at the speed they need to operate at, so the robots are not slow and deliberate, but are able to keep up and have resiliency," he said. Dr. John Fossaceca, a research scientist at ARL, predicts that the robot as a teammate concept is about 20 years away for the Army. "In the future, I envision that Soldiers and robots will be working together as teammates, fully dismounted, and robots will be able to understands the intent of the commander, and will have a feedback loop where the robot can get clarification of instructions and understand even the tempo of the operation, understand the context of the environment we're working in, be able to do automatic exploration, come back with reports, and basically save Soldier's lives," he said. "In 20 years, this will be working." Army installation chief asks for new BRAC round to improve readiness, morale [2017-06-09] WASHINGTON -- There's a lot of excess infrastructure in the Army -- about 161 million square feet of it. And paying to maintain that is costing the Army a lot of money. These vital resources could instead be used to reduce maintenance backlogs on about 33,000 facilities across the force that are now deemed in "poor or failing condition." Lt. Gen. Gwen Bingham, the Army's assistant chief of staff for installation management, told lawmakers during a June 6 hearing on Capitol Hill that the Army has a deferred maintenance backlog on infrastructure of about $10.8 billion. That accounts for about 22 percent of the Army's buildings and means more than one in five buildings are in poor condition. "The condition of these mission facilities -- airfields, training areas, maintenance facilities, roads, ports, dams, bridges, housing and barracks -- directly impacts the readiness of our units and the morale of our Soldiers, civilians and families," Bingham said. Bingham testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee -- Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans' Affairs and Related Agencies. Another round of base realignment and closure, or BRAC, she said, would mean that excess facilities around the Army could be closed, and would no longer need to be maintained -- they could be demolished. Additionally, dollars saved from no longer having to maintain those facilities could also be applied toward repairing facilities that the Army continues to need, and toward other readiness priorities of the Army. "The Army has infrastructure capacity in excess of any foreseeable future force structure, not always located where it is needed, but consuming precious dollars that could be better invested elsewhere," Bingham said. "BRAC preserves irreplaceable training land and airspace, while eliminating unneeded assets and excess buildings to efficiently facilitate future growth." The fiscal year 2018 budget request for the Army, released May 23, includes about $1.79 billion for facilities. That's allocation for $1.2 billion for military construction, $529 million for family housing, and $58 million to continue execution of the last BRAC round, which happened in 2005. Bingham said she's grateful for the budget request, and hopes Congress will approve it, but that the request is still lower than what is needed. Because the Army continues to prioritize readiness over everything else, she said, it is taking risks in facilities maintenance. Still, she said, the budget request for military construction this year is 40 percent more than what it was in 2015. "This increase demonstrates the Army's intention to reverse past underfunding, admittedly over an extended timeframe," Bingham said. "When you combine the sustainment funding, the restoration and modernization, coupled with the [military construction], this FY18 budget request, if approved, will be able to arrest the accelerated trend in facility degradation. We are grateful for that." Bingham also explained to lawmakers the Army's "three-pronged" effort to reset its backlog of facilities that are in poor condition. First, she said, resources are being directed now to sustain facilities that are currently in good condition, so that those facilities don't fall into a state of disrepair. Additionally, she said, the Army is applying resources to go after the $10.8 billion deferred maintenance backlog. "We apply resources to modernize and upgrade our facilities to keep pace with our execution of our missions," she explained. As part of that, the Army will demolish some buildings as funds are available. Finally, she said, the Army started a new initiative about a year ago called "'Reduce the Footprint." "We are consolidating all of our men and women into our best facilities first, and then being able to rid ourselves of facilities that are in failed conditions," she explained. "We know we have about 161 million square feet of excess capacity. We programmed that we could probably account for about 33 million in excess." Even with the "Reduce the Footprint" initiative, she said, the Army will be left with about 128 million square feet of excess facility space. And she said that the Army would like to stop worrying about maintaining that space. "Save from having a BRAC, that's about all we'll be able to do as it relates to diminishing our excess," she said. Bingham also told lawmakers that the return of sequestration or another continuing resolution would "have a devastating impact on our men and women. Not only the morale, but also the state of affairs of our infrastructure." She said that Army installations can only be ready and resilient with "adequate, predictable, and sustained funding -- and the authority to implement efficiency measures such as closing and realigning our installations." With US help, Ukraine may put brigades through new combat training center by 2018 [2017-06-12] WASHINGTON -- By 2018, Ukrainian brigades will be better equipped to face separatists in the Donbass region after rotating through a combat training center in western Ukraine that the California National Guard helped to establish. Col. Nick Ducich, who serves as commander of the 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, which is part of the California National Guard, was instrumental in helping the Ukrainian military build the combat training center. He began formulating the idea for the center back in November 2015, when he was beginning a 14-month deployment to the region. Ducich met June 7 with reporters in the Pentagon to discuss operations in Ukraine during his deployment. He relayed that he took 54 Soldiers from the California National Guard with him to the Ukraine, which has had a partnership with the California National Guard for more than 24 years as part of the National Guard State Partnership Program. Ducich explained that the new combat training center is co-located with the existing International Peacekeeping and Security Center (IPSC) in Yavoriv, near the country's border with Poland. The IPSC already hosts the Rapid Trident exercise each year and so is used to the demands of a training center, Ducich said. "It's a pretty immense training area, so the foundation was there," Ducich said. At the IPSC, he said, efforts focused on the training and mentoring of newly assigned personnel, including Ukrainian staff, instructors, and observer-controller trainers, and the soldier participants. The effort was part of an ongoing effort to help Ukrainian forces to achieve defense reform as well as full interoperability with NATO by 2020. The IPSC added infrastructure such as a site for dedicated to training for military operations in simulated urbanized terrain. Staff instituted "effective range control for terrain management, safety procedures and remediation of unexploded ordnance, among other requirements," Ducich said. These additions "elevated the efficiency and effectiveness of the training area." During his time in the Ukraine, Ducich reported that he saw five battalions of soldiers from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense rotating through the training center, with each unit on 55-day rotations. Those battalions had previously been fighting separatist forces to regain full control of the Donbass, a heavily populated region that makes up the eastern half of Ukraine. "These rotations consisted of individual and collective training requirements, emphasizing leader development, team building, and combat arms synchronization, to reflect the necessary interoperability defense reforms," Ducich explained. "The individual training included marksmanship, movement techniques, communications, and medical combat care," he continued. "The collective training began with pairs, elevating through squad, platoon, company and finally battalion-level events, highlighting defensive operations." After their training rotations, the Ukrainian units returned to fighting. Ducich said some of the soldiers from each rotation were interviewed within 60 to 90 days after their rotations regarding the effectiveness of their training they received at the center. "From that, we also learned what the newest techniques that the enemy was using, to try to see how we could adjust the training," Ducich said. "So we were a learning, adaptive organization, within ourselves, of taking that flow of combat scenarios and actualities from the Donbass and incorporating them into the training plan within the 55-day construct." Those lessons learned helped refine the focus at the training center to implement enhancements in training for large-scale movement, gunnery, indirect fires, and integration of weapons systems such as air defense capabilities. The new combat training center is in its infancy, according to Ducich, and there's still a lot to accomplish. Right now there are only battalions rotating through the training center, but he hopes that brigade-sized elements will be able to rotate through by 2018. Ducich said that from what he has seen, he thinks the Ukrainian ground forces are doing remarkably well. "At brigade level, they are outstanding," he said. "They have been able to hold the line and begin the integration of the new weapons systems and rectify some of the logistical shortfalls that those brigades went to the Donbass with. I see the Ukrainian armed forces getting only stronger each day, whether it be logistically, or in their defensive posture, and in their capabilities." Ducich said the Ukrainian army had suffered from more than 20 years of "neglect" in terms of funding, but the country is now mobilizing its defense industry, ramping up new capabilities, and focusing on both officer and NCO development. "So they are playing catch-up while engaged in conflict at the same time," he said. "So I have a lot of patience for where they are right now. They are getting stronger every day. They had so many obstacles they had to overcome, on top of engaging an enemy in their own backyard." End strength increase to save units, fill shortfalls [2017-06-15] WASHINGTON -- The 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, part of the 25th Infantry Division in Alaska, was all but shut down before recently receiving a reprieve. End strength increases for the regular Army, spelled out in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act -- to the tune of about 16,000 active-duty Soldiers -- means the 4/25th can stay open. Other units that had been marked for shutdown, but will remain active, include the 18th Military Police Brigade Headquarters in Europe; the 206th Military Intelligence Battalion at Fort Hood, Texas; and the 61st Maintenance Company in Korea. "These units were starting to downsize," said Brig. Gen. Brian J. Mennes, who serves as the director of force management for the Army's G-3 in the Pentagon. "In the 4/25th, the human resources people had stopped sending people there. When we got this great news, we started plussing them up to their full strength." Now nearly 100-percent manned, the 4/25th is preparing to deploy this fall, Mennes said. Mennes explained that the recent end-strength increase for the Army is right in line with Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley's No. 1 priority of readiness. The Army is hiring to fill positions, and will provide more recruiters to meet its goals. With more manpower, the Army is going to create some new units, Mennes said. For instance, there will be three new Multiple Launch Rocket System, or MLRS battalions, each with nearly 370 Soldiers. Those units will be placed where needed throughout the Army, in some cases bolstering existing brigades, and in other cases creating new units. In one location, an MLRS battalion had been assigned rotationally -- and now, as a result of the three new battalions, that command will have a permanent MLRS battalion. Mennes also noted that this means there will be one additional MLRS battalion inside the United States, full-time, that Gen. Milley "can use for flexibility." These new MLRS battalions will use advanced rocket systems, such as the M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System, which is mounted on a Bradley chassis, Mennes noted. There will also be an air defense unit of about 465 Soldiers that use the Avenger system, which is a Stinger-based air defense platform. That system is mounted on a Humvee. "It's got great forward-looking infrared radar, with actually ridiculous sensing," Mennes said. "It's connected to radars, anti-air radars. And they have eight Stingers located in two pods." With the increase in personnel, Mennes said the Army will now need more gear to equip those new units. "We are going back to the folks that produce [Avengers] and back to the depot to refit those systems to move them forward," Mennes said. "So in addition to the personnel manning, we have got to match equipment. We have got to build Short-Range Air Defense, and we have got to build MLRS unit equipment." The Army also plans to build two Security Force Assistance Brigades, or SFABs, each with about 530 Soldiers. If end strength continues to go, the Army has plans to build up to six SFABs, Mennes said. Those SFABs -- the first of which launched earlier this month -- are meant to conduct, advise and assist missions exclusively overseas. Soldiers in those units will be provided foreign language training, as well as training in the use of foreign weapons. SFAB Soldiers will also attend a recently established six-week Military Advisor Training Academy at Fort Benning, Ga. Mennes said the force structure update will also include a 10,000-Soldier readiness enhancement account, which will allow units to deploy fully manned -- even when some of their Soldiers need to go off to professional military education schools, or are unable to deploy for medical reasons. "We can plus-up the units that are on a high deployment, or about-to-deploy status, to get them closer to 95 or 100 percent," Mennes explained. "We were challenged to meet that number while allowing NCOs (non-commissioned officers) to go to school or recover from injuries." The readiness enhancement account will provide flexibility to the Army's Human Resources Command to ensure units are fully manned before they deploy, Mennes said. The plus-up of Soldiers in the active force overall is "encouraging" for the Army, Mennes said. The general also said the Army could always use more Soldiers -- and remains hopeful the Army will get them. "We still think, based on what the national defense planning guidance is to us, the chief still assesses we are at high risk," he said. "That would mean additional rocket units, additional armored BCTs (brigade combat teams), additional air defense capabilities." In addition to the regular Army increase allowance of 16,000 soldiers, the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard also gained end strength. The National Guard will be approved to grow by 8,000 Soldiers, while the Army Reserve will be approved to expand by 4,000 soldiers. That will bring the total force to about 1,018,000 Soldiers, which is about 8,000 Soldiers over what the Army might have been at under previously directed force cuts. "The nation sees that we are a high-tempo force," Mennes said. "That we are ready, but need to continue to stress that our sole existence -- why we are sitting here today -- is to face our nation's adversaries. I think [the end-strength increase] makes us more ready." 35 future Soldiers take oath on Army's 242nd birthday [2017-06-15] WASHINGTON -- The Army turned 242 years old yesterday, and in conjunction with this momentous occasion, 35 future Soldiers from around the country opted to raise their hands and join a life of service. Unlike the oath of enlistment taken by most future Soldiers, however, this one was administered by Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley during a twilight tattoo ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall. During the tattoo, the Army not only recognized its 242 years of existence, but also commemorated a century of the "modern" Army and total force -- born as a result of World War I. In fact, this year marks the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I, and the theme for this year's Army birthday is "Over There! A celebration of the WWI Soldier." Before Milley administered the oath to the future Soldiers, he explained to several hundred attendees at the ceremony the significance of the words the future Soldiers would recite. "It's a solemn oath," he said, noting that the president, senators, cabinet members, and even he had taken a similar oath. And among the nearly 190 nations on earth, he said, "We are the only country whose military ... takes an oath not to a king or a queen, or a dictator or to a government ... we're the only country that takes an oath to an idea." That idea, Milley said, is embedded in the U.S. Constitution. "That idea is incredibly powerful," he said. "It's an idea that has given birth to nations, ourselves included. It's an idea that puts fear into the hearts of our foes. An idea that they are so scared of they are willing to strap on suicide vests and blow themselves up to defeat this idea. And it's an idea that those of us in uniform are sworn to protect and defend, even at the cost of our life. That's the oath they are about to take." The idea, Milley said, is simple: equality. "In these United States, in this country for which you and I are willing to die ... for which those 35 are signing up to defend: every single one of us is created by God and the laws of this land to be free and equal. That is the idea of America." Among the 35 enlistees, Milley said, there were 18 who will go into the Regular Army, seven who will go into the Army Reserve, and ten who will go into the Army National Guard. The pool of future Soldiers, he said, represents the total force. Those future Soldiers, he said, chose to enlist into 21 different military occupational specialties, and come from five different states, the District of Columbia, and multiple nations. Among the future Soldiers were representatives from Egypt, Morocco, Mexico, Jamaica, Ghana and Cameroon. While there was great diversity amongst them in where they came from and where they go while in the Army, Milley said, "All of them know full well the hazards of their chosen profession on which they are about to embark. I want to thank all of them for the service they are going to render to our nation in the years to come." Among those who took the oath was Brittany S. Miller, of Chesapeake Beach, Md. "I want to travel and just get into something," Miller said of her choice to enlist. She also has family in the service, she said, adding that "I want to do something honorable." Miller said she leaves home for basic training June 20, and has chosen chemical operations specialist as her military occupational specialty. "There's different parts of the job," she said. "But one of them is going out to the field and getting samples if a bomb is dropped, and stuff like that. There's also lab time, decontamination of vehicles and people that come from bomb sites." She said she's enlisted now for three years, but "I want to see if I like the job that I have, and if so, then I'll probably re-enlist." Abdullah A. McKinney came from Brooklyn, N.Y., originally. But he lives now in Maryland. "I joined the Army to travel the world and help pay for college," he said. Initially, he said, he's chosen combat engineer as his career field. But he said while he's in the Army he hopes to earn an engineering degree and become an officer, so he can be the kind of engineer that builds structures rather than demolish them. He said also that he hopes to serve in the Army for a full 20 years or more. He ships for basic training July 11. Not even a Soldier for a day, McKinney said he recognized the significance of being sworn in by the Army's chief of staff. "This is really big, and I'm glad to be a part of this," he said. "Not a lot of people get the opportunity to be sworn in by the chief of staff. I'm glad I get the chance." Tate A. Perusse, from Lexington Park, Md., graduated high school a year ago. For him, there was some time between high school and the Army. But that time wasn't wasted, he said. In addition to doing a year of college, he also prepared himself to be accepted into the Army as a warrant officer candidate. When Perusse finally arrives at his first duty station, he said, he expects to be flying Black Hawk helicopters. Getting to where he wants to go in the Army has not been easy so far, he said. "I had to get a lot of letters of recommendation, and I had to go to a board and I was interviewed," he said. "It was a long process and it took about a year. I'm just waiting to ship at this point." After basic training, he said, it'll be warrant officer school and then flight school. He said he expects to be in the cockpit within 18 months. After the 35 future Soldiers took the oath of enlistment, they were treated to a twilight tattoo ceremony, performed by members of the 3d U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard). The tattoo was hosted by Acting Secretary of the Army Robert M. Speer, and was held in honor of the Army's 242nd birthday. First fallen aviator of World War I honored with Distinguished Flying Cross [2017-06-16] WASHINGTON -- Capt. James E. Miller, one of the first aviators in the U.S. military and the first U.S. aviation casualty in World War I, has been named recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross more than 99 years after his heroic actions over France in 1918. On the 242nd birthday of the U.S. Army, during a twilight tattoo ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Va., Acting Secretary of the Army Robert M. Speer presented the Distinguished Flying Cross to Miller's great-grandson, Byron Derringer. We're very proud today to have some of the descendants from James Miller's family here and able to represent him and a lineage of what he achieved on those battlefields as the first individual who gave his life in that war in aviation," Speer said. The presentation of the Cross to a WWI Soldier is significant, given that the theme for this year's Army birthday is "Over There! A celebration of the WWI Soldier." "This is the 100th anniversary of World War I," Speer said. "And it's the 242nd birthday of our Army. But 100 years ago, there were significant changes in terms of the character of war. You had at that time, for the first time, the Army going off to war in foreign lands with our allies, fighting side-by-side with our allies, and representing the United States -- which placed the United States into a significant leadership role in the world." Speer said several aspects of warfare changed during WWI, including the development of armor units and precision artillery. One of the most significant developments, however, was that the U.S. military had "aviation for the first time as part of the U.S. Army Air Corps," he said. "We have a privilege today to be able to recognize not only the heraldry of our total 242 years but also that point and time, where we recognize, late, a Distinguished Flying Cross for an American hero," said Speer. As a Soldier in World War I, Miller was one of the first to make use of new aviation technology. The captain took command of the 95th Pursuit Squadron on Feb. 10, 1918 -- just 10 months after the United States declared war on Germany. The men in the squadron were the first American-trained pilots to fight in the war. On March 9 of that year, Miller, Maj. M. F. Harmon and Maj. Davenport Johnson began the first combat patrol ever for the U.S. Army Air Services. They flew 180-horsepower, French-built SPAD XIII aircraft. The aircraft, a bi-plane, is named for its developer, the Société Pour L'Aviation et ses Dérivés. Harmon's plane experienced trouble early in the sortie, and so he was unable to continue on the patrol. But Miller and Johnson pressed on together and crossed into enemy territory. There, they fought off two German aircraft, but soon met more. It was then that Johnson's aircraft experienced trouble with the machine gun. According to the DFC citation, Johnson was forced to leave Miller to continue the fight against German aviators on his own. "Miller continued to attack the two German biplanes, fearlessly exposing himself to the enemy, until his own aircraft was severely damaged and downed behind the German lines, where he succumbed to his injuries," the citation reads. "Miller's actions are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, the United States Army Air Services and the American Expeditionary Forces." As the great-grandson of Miller, Derringer received the DFC on behalf of his great-grandfather. After, he said of both the recognition and the twilight tattoo that accompanied the recognition, "it's spectacular, I know that the family, everybody, is just honored to be here." Infrastructure investment can enhance deterrence, military mobility in Europe [2017-06-22] WASHINGTON -- European allies in the NATO partnership don't necessarily need to grow their own force structure to increase their contributions to the alliance, said Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who serves as commander of U.S. Army Europe. Instead, the general said, during a June 20 discussion sponsored by the Association of the U.S. Army, NATO partners could contribute by assisting in developing an infrastructure in Europe that enables the alliance to work more efficiently. Hodges suggested that NATO allies purchase heavy equipment transport systems, or HETTs, to enable movement of materiel goods through the European continent, for instance. He also asked for NATO nations to find ways to improve the efficiency of movement through the continent on rail and road -- which is made difficult now by regulations required to move between countries. "Provide transportation for us," Hodges said. "Guaranteed rail access. 48 hours. Enough rail to move a brigade." He also asked nations to spend to upgrade rail heads in their own countries. "Anything that improves frequent movement, I think those are quick ways," Hodges said. "Buy fuel. Buy ammunition. Provide storage sites. I'm not looking for more German tank battalions, or more British artillery battalions, but ways they can contribute to the alliance, and improve the infrastructure, and improve freedom of movement ... these are some ways, I think." Movement of forces in Europe, Hodges said, is a complex task, not just due to the diplomatic clearances required, but also to the distances that must be traveled. He said he thinks that as the United States makes the move from an assurance posture in Europe to a deterrence posture, it will become increasingly more important to streamline the movement of forces and materiel. He also said understands why some nations might be resistant to making changes in how military forces can move through their borders. "There is going to be a natural reluctance and resistance to do anything that is provocative, if they can avoid a crisis," he said. In the short term, the general said, he recognizes that deterrence operations such as the training and exercises conducted with allied nations, for instance, and the movements throughout Europe that will need to happen to make those exercises possible, will have to happen under "peacetime conditions." "Anybody that thinks, don't worry we'll be able to drive anywhere. Not true. Anybody who thinks you'll be able to fly anywhere at night. Not true. Anybody who thinks you won't have to have ADR-compliant fuel trucks and ammo trucks. Not true. Everything we do prior to declaration of Article 5, is going to be done in peacetime conditions." Despite concerns about movement throughout Europe, and contributions to defense by partner nations, Hodges was clear to point out the commitment the United States has to partner nations in NATO and the significance of those relationships. "We are not going to go anywhere by ourselves," he said. "So we need to have people we trust, that we train with, that we know." VISIBLE COMMITMENT TO EUROPE While Hodges said the U.S. commitment to Europe is strong, he said he learned that something as simple as vehicle color might convey the wrong message about that commitment. Hodges said he recalls seeing a video of tanks rolling down a ramp in Bremerhaven, Germany. He said he'd been initially excited about seeing the video and the message he thought it conveyed about the strength of the U.S. Army and the commitment the Army and the United States had to European partners. He recalls an Air Force friend of his asking him why the tanks in the video were painted tan, telling him "nothing says transient like a tan tank in Europe." "So that morning green paint became a strategic communications goal," he said. "We reminded the Army that there are three places we probably want to fight with tanks, and two of them are green." For 20 Euros, Hodges said, "you can paint entire Stryker group with green paint, and the troops are doing it. And it'll wear off by the time their rotation is over." Four women become first female cavalry school graduates [2017-07-26] WASHINGTON -- On June 22, four women became the first female graduates of cavalry school at Fort Benning, Georgia. While the occasion is a milestone for continued gender integration in the Army, the cavalry school environment was nothing out of the ordinary for the Soldiers involved, both male and female. As part of the effort to bring female Soldiers into combat arms career fields, the Army has worked to institute a standard set of entry and graduation qualifications to ensure an equal opportunity for all Soldiers. Col. John Cushing, commander of the 194th Armored Brigade, reiterates that the male and female cavalry scouts who just graduated met "the same graduation standards that we have established in every previous cycle." Cushing is in charge of the training that guides these young Americans from basic Soldier to cavalry scout as part of One Station Unit Training, known as OSUT, at Fort Benning, Georgia. In late February, 80 male and 8 female enlistees entered OSUT at Fort Benning to receive basic training. After successfully completing this first round of training, the Soldiers then moved on to training at the Armor School with the hopes of becoming cavalry scouts. It was the first time in Army history that females entered cavalry scout training. More than 16 weeks later, 75 Soldiers, including four women, graduated as cavalry scouts. Cushing said that there was plenty of preparation for the arrival of women at the school, including bringing in female drill instructors 18 months before the arrival of the first female students. "Bringing on the female drill sergeants taught us a lot about our formation, a lot of good things, and certainly prepared us as we got ready for the females to show up," Cushing said. But the training environment and course of instruction were not heavily modified, Cushing said, because leaders determined early on that training would be the same for both sexes. "The only thing we did is that Army regulation dictates to us that we have to separate them in the barracks," he said. "So we made those changes. But beyond that, these are the only modifications we made in order to execute what we did." "We didn't change any of the program of instruction," he said. "We didn't change any of our end-of-cycle tests, ruck march standards, weapons standards, qualification standards, none of that was changed at all." Staff Sgt. Jordan Miller, who has been a drill sergeant at the school for 12 months now, is also an Army pharmacy specialist. She helped push both male and female Soldiers through the OSUT on their way to becoming cavalry scouts, and confirms that the training for women was no different than that for the men. "They all had one standard to meet," she said. "And everyone got treated the same, regardless of gender. The females had to pass the Army physical fitness test, the same as the males. They all had to ruck 12 miles with 68 pounds. They all had to complete obstacles and confidence courses together. So there was no difference." One male OSUT Soldier who went through the training said that after he saw female Soldiers perform an exercise that involved pulling a 220 pound dummy to simulate removing an injured Soldier from a combat situation, he gained confidence that the women Soldiers were just as good as the men, saying that he'd trust his life to those women to recover him if needed. Sgt. 1st Class Alonso Deleon, himself a cavalry scout, has been in the Army for 15 years and has been a drill sergeant at the school for two years. A cavalry scout, he said, is "basically, the eyes and ears of the commander out on the battlefield. They are responsible to collect information on the enemy, terrain, infrastructure -- whatever the commander requests -- and report that up, so the commander can make an informed decision as far as the battlefield is concerned." To become a cavalry scout, Deleon said, students have to work together during training -- and that's what he saw happen with the students that he helped push towards graduation. "Both of them combined, both genders," he said. "They worked together. They have to, or they wouldn't be successful in every task that was assigned to them. From my point of view, they had no issues working together at any time." Another male OSUT Soldier who graduated from the program said that the men and women Soldiers worked together effectively -- motivating each other to succeed, he said, without concern for gender. On one of the ruck marches, he recalled how one of the female Soldiers was starting to fall out. He said he fell back to motivate her and some of the other Soldiers who were falling behind. But over the next few weeks, that same female Soldier pushed herself to do better, and became a Soldier who motivated other Soldiers to do better -- including the male Soldiers. One of the female OSUT Soldiers who graduated as a cavalry scout said she'd first considered going in as infantry -- but changed her mind when she learned more about the cavalry. She recalled that while going through the 16-weeks of training at Fort Benning, the female and male Soldiers worked side by side to get through the course. In her experience, the female Soldiers were not treated any differently than their male counterparts. The sense of camaraderie and teamwork made her excited about her future prospects in the Army as she moves forward to her first assignment. Currently, the Army has identified two units where gender integration will begin in earnest. Those units include a brigade within the 1st Cavalry Division, and a brigade within the 82nd Airborne Division. All four women graduating in Thursday's class at Fort Benning will go together to the 1st Cavalry Division. In those units, the Army has already placed female officers to pave the way for the follow-on female junior enlisted Soldiers. Cushing said that probably about eight to ten female Soldiers will continue to enter each follow-on course for cavalry scouts. He also said that the Armor School is responsible for training 19K armor crew members as well. The first class of armor crew members to include female Soldiers will graduate July 19, he said. Acting Army Secretary: Army needs additional, predictable funding [2017-07-28] WASHINGTON -- After several years of budget cuts, the Army needs additional and predictable funding, said Acting Secretary of the Army Robert M. Speer. "To be able to meet mission requirements, we need the resources to be able to do that," Speer said during a fireside chat Wednesday with AUSA President and CEO, retired Gen. Carter Ham, at AUSA headquarters. "We are finding emerging near-peer adversaries that potentially out-gun us and out-range us." Speer highlighted that resources are necessary to ensure that the Army can continue to fulfill its mission of protecting the American people. "I would like to convey to the public that the freedoms we enjoy and what we enjoy regarding economic success is much due to the national security provided by our Soldiers and is assured through our Constitution," Speer said. The U.S. military is "highly respected" in the United States, Speer said, even among the many citizens that are unfamiliar with exactly what it is the Army does. "So what you try to convey (to the public) is the operational tempo and the things Soldiers are doing for you," Speer said. "You convey our role in deterrence for Europe and that the Army is ready to go when you see a nuclear threat in places like Korea. You have to be ready to go, and it takes resources to do it. Your Army is extremely busy. It's providing close to 50 percent of the current global force required by commanders." Speer testified to Congress and has repeatedly spoken about the need for stable and predictable funding. For the U.S. Army to match emerging threats, it'll take the commitment of the entire nation, he said, "to ensure the freedoms and the security we have." To get the money it needs to continue to operate, of course, the Army must ask the Congress for funds. And that's a problem, Speer said, because even in the face of declining budgets that dramatically affect readiness, the Army has always been reticent to suggest that it's anything less than fully capable of performing its mission. "We don't convey the negative impact of it," Speer said of the lack of resources. "It's hard for us to convey to both stakeholders and the American public the negative impact of continuing resolutions and the negative impact of underfunding." But Speer said he thinks that recently the Army has been getting better at portraying the real damage to readiness caused by continuing resolutions. "We've done a good job laying out what the Army needs to be able to fill some of the gaps that we've got in readiness," he said. OPERATIONAL TEMPO SURPRISE Speer came on board as the acting secretary in January. Since then, he said, he's had ample opportunity to meet with Soldiers around the globe. He stated that on those trips he'd been surprised to learn just how much the Army does, and the breadth for which the Army is responsible. "The operational tempo surprised me," Speer said. "It's not quite the same to look at a patch chart on paper and seeing the Army going off to individual requirements around the world. A lot is going on to get ready for the deployment. "Whether it is getting ready for rotation, or you are filling in gaps as an observer controller at one of the national training centers, such as NTC, JMTC or JRTC. Or, you are getting into where you go on the next rotation and the impact it has on families. I was amazed at that overall fast pace of the operational tempo," he said. Also, he said, he's been impressed at the breadth of things the Army does, from the role of the Corps of Engineers to the efforts at Arlington National Cemetery, to the heel-to-toe rotations in Europe to deter aggression in that region. "It is amazing what we are asking our Army to do," he said. "We are a relatively small Army. We are about the smallest we've been since World War II, and yet the amount of involvement and impact we make for the security of our nation, and what the Soldiers and civilians do, is remarkable." Army aims to field new weapon sight that wirelessly pairs with night vision goggles [2017-08-01] WASHINGTON -- In the next 18 months or so, the Army expects to field two new systems to dismounted Soldiers that will allow for more rapid acquisition of targets, even those hidden by darkness, smoke or fog. First out of the gate will be the Enhanced Night Vision Goggle III, expected to be fielded sometime between April and June of 2018. Shortly after, the Army hopes to field the Family of Weapons Sights - Individual, between January and March of 2019. The FWS-I and ENVG III are unique in that the FWS-I, which would be mounted on a Soldier's weapon, wirelessly transmits its sight picture to the ENVG III, which a Soldier wears on his helmet. Additionally, the ENVG combines thermal imaging with more common night vision image intensification technology, which is recognizable by the green image it creates. Under starlight, targets may blend in with the background. But with the thermal capability overlaid on night vision, targets can't hide in smoke or fog. They "really pop out with that contrast," said Dean Kissinger, an electronics engineer who is currently assigned to Program Product Manger Soldier Maneuver Sensors at Program Executive Office Soldier here. Lt. Col. Anthony Douglas, who serves as product manager for Soldier Maneuver Sensors at PEO Soldier, said the two sensors have benefits beyond helping dismounted Soldiers better visualize targets. By paring the two systems wirelessly -- allowing what the weapon-mounted sight is seeing to be beamed directly to the Soldier's eye -- these systems also help the Soldier acquire a target faster. RAPID TARGET ACQUISITION "The capability gap that we were tasked with [closing] by developing this was the rapid target acquisition capability," Douglas said. "We are allowing the Soldier to actually see what is on their weapons sight, saving them time from having to bring the weapon to his eye." Master Sgt. Lashon Wilson, the senior enlisted advisor for product manager Soldier Maneuver Sensors, explained how the system will work and make it easier for a Soldier to acquire a target. "This weapon-mounted system talks wirelessly to the smart battery pack that is on the Soldier's head, that then transmits a signal to the ENVG III, which now displays a reticle onto the Soldier's optic," Wilson explained. "So now what this does is, while the Soldier is on patrol and he has his ENVG III on and he is looking, he has a greater field of view of what is going on in the battlefield." Soldiers wearing the ENVG III, which is mounted on their helmet, can choose to see both night-vision imagery and thermal imaging as well in their goggle. But they can also choose to see the image coming off the FWS-I that is mounted on their rifle. A variety of modes allows Soldiers to see in their goggles only the image from the ENVG III itself, only the image from the FWS-I, or a combination of the two. Using a "picture-in-picture" mode, for instance, the image from their FWS-I is displayed at the bottom right of the image that is coming from the goggle. In another mode, however, if the FWS-I on the rifle and the ENVG III on the Soldier's helmet are both pointed in the same direction and seeing essentially the same thing, then the image from the FWS-I can project a reticle into the goggle. The Soldier can see the full image of what his goggle normally sees, but a circle representing the reticle from the FWS-I is overlaid onto that image, letting the Soldier know where his rifle is pointed. What this means is the Soldier doesn't need to actually shoulder his weapon to acquire a target. That saves time for the Soldier in acquiring that target. "We are saving him three to five seconds, and increasing their situational awareness on the battlefield," Douglas said. Additionally, because the reticle is projected onto what the Soldier is already seeing in his goggle -- a much wider view of his environment than what he would see if he looked through his rifle scope -- he is able to acquire a target while maintaining situational awareness of what else is going on around him. STEEP LEARNING CURVE At Fort Belvoir, members of the press were allowed to shoot an M-4 rifle that was equipped with the FWS-I, while wearing a helmet equipped with the ENVG III. Several man-shaped targets were spaced out in the firing lane, each equipped with thermal blankets to simulate body heat. A pair of fog machines simulated battlefield smoke to make it difficult to acquire those targets using only day optics. Using night vision goggles alone, some of the targets could not be seen. But when combined with the thermal imaging capabilities built into the ENVG III and FWS-I, those targets were easily visible. Using the system proved a bit challenging, however. When looking through the goggle, which was at one point displaying the image transmitted from the rifle-mounted FWS-I, it was hard to tell if it was the helmet that was crooked, the ENVG III that was crooked, or the shooter's own head that wasn't on quite straight. "The gun is tilted," Wilson confirmed. He served as a trainer for members of the press who were allowed to shoot. Maj. Kevin Smith, who serves as the assistant product manager for FWS-I, said there is a "steep learning curve," for the system. "We just got through with the tests with the 4th Infantry Division out of Fort Carson, Colorado, back in June," he said. "We only spent about 40 hours of in-classroom training. But we also spent about a week on the range or so. That's where the Soldiers were really starting to get it and understand it and feel it, on the range." Smith said one such training event was held at Fort Carson, and two were held at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. "Once they get comfortable with it, they really love it," Smith said. "One Soldier, a noncommissioned officer who didn't like it at first, later on during the last test we did, asked me when are we getting this fielded. He said he wanted it now. They want to take them to war and they want to use them." A FAMILY OF SIGHTS The soon-to-field FWS-I is meant for the M4 and M16 rifles, and can mount on those rifles in front of day sights that have already been bore-sighted, Kissinger said. What this means is that Soldiers can pop the FWS-I onto and off of their rifle without having to remove their day sights first. The FWS-I will also work with the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, the M141 Bunker Defeat Munition, and the M136 AT4 Light Anti-Tank Weapon. Kissinger said the FWS-I actually provides capability to both light and medium weapons. In the past, there had been sights fielded for both types of weapons. Now that FWS-I provides capability to both, he said, there will be less variations in weapons sights, and a smaller logistics trail. More capability is also coming to this "family" of weapons sights, Douglas said. There will be a crew-served variant and a sniper variant as well. Both are still under development, he said. Both the FWS-I and the ENVG III are currently in low-rate initial production. The Army hopes to buy 36,000 of the FWS-I, and about 64,000 of the ENVG III, Smith said. He also said that the new gear is targeted squarely at dismounted Soldiers with infantry brigade combat teams and special operations forces. For now, he said, he expects it will be squad leaders and two team leaders within a squad that might first see the FWS-I. "This is a day or night capability," Douglas said. "We're talking about dismounted Soldiers who would use this. For our mounted soldiers, those on the Stryker or Bradleys ... they do not operate without their thermal on all the time. So we are giving the dismounted Soldier the same capability the mounted Soldiers have." Augmented reality soon possible for MK-19 training [2017-08-17] WASHINGTON -- Setting up a range day for training on the MK-19 grenade launcher is no easy task. Researchers at the Army Research Laboratory-Orlando have an idea about how to change that, however, through the use of augmented reality. To train on the MK-19 with real grenades "range cadre have to be available," said Dean Reed, a software developer and team lead at ARL. "And it requires a very long training range. You need that long distance." Not so at ARL Orlando. There, they demonstrated that one might need only 25 meters to get Soldiers the practice they need on the MK-19. "We use augmented reality. We're just firing out into the parking lot," he said. "It takes us under 30 minutes to set up the system." Instead of going to a range, getting range time and range cadre, as well as expensive rounds, the researchers at ARL Orlando have the MK-19 -- augmented with computer hardware and a head-mounted display or HMD -- pointed out into the employee parking lot out of a garage door at the rear of their facility. The HMD is equipped with video cameras that stand in for a Soldier's eyes. The goggles put LCD modules in front of the Soldier's eyes, so they see what is coming in through the cameras. And with the augmented reality turned on, the computer system inserts synthetic elements, like enemy soldiers, into the vision. Using a tablet computer, which the system runs on, operators can create a custom scenario for the Soldier to train on. Putting on the headset that's attached to the MK-19, Soldiers can look out into the parking lot behind the ARL facility and see the employee cars parked there. They see exactly what they'd see without the head-mounted display. When they turn their head, the image turns with them. But then, a pickup truck rolls onto the scene. The truck is synthetic -- generated by the tablet computer. The synthetic truck image is merged with what's coming in from the cameras mounted on the HMD, before it's put in front of the Soldier's eyes. The truck appears to have actually driven into the lot. If the Soldier takes the HMD off, the truck is gone. "These things will actually drive around appropriately on the trails that you give them," Reed said of the synthetic elements the software can add as part of a training scenario. The scenario also includes a truck driver and another individual standing outside the truck and milling about. Wearing the HMD, A Soldier can look down at the MK-19 and see the weapon and the triggers. Looking up into the parking lot, he can also see an indicator projected into his vision, showing him where the grenade will likely land. The indicator moves when he moves the MK-19. Firing the weapon, the Soldier can hear the computer-generated sounds of a round being fired. And if he's on target, he can also see the enemy combatant fall, and the truck collapse to the ground and go up in flames and smoke. ARL didn't invent the MK-19, or the concept of augmented reality. But they did, at ARL Orlando, merge existing hardware together with software algorithms they wrote to create the MK-19 trainer. Getting the computer to accurately merge the direction of the weapon, and the trajectory of the grenade into a simulation, and to create the correct visuals to project into a Soldier's eyes to make it all seem real -- that's the big challenge for the researchers at ARL Orlando. "It's really the computer vision algorithms that merge the real world with the virtual world," Reed said. "It's kind of a mixed-reality system. That's the hard bit, getting that orientation and realistic projection of those models, in the real world." Taken together, Reed says, he thinks the concepts proven by the MK-19 trainer at ARL Orlando are the future of training for Soldiers. "The accessibility this gives you is dramatic," he said. "You don't have to go sign out the expensive equipment and have a whole organized day. Usually there are range officers involved and safety officers. Here, you can literally just go to the motor pool, open the high bay door and get tracking." In a real training environment, getting repetitions means getting more expensive rounds and reloading, and taking the range cold and then hot again in between. With the trainer, a reset can be done much more quickly. "To reload this, it's basically click on the tablet," Reed said. "It clears the scenario, reloads it and you're ready to go again. Normally you could rerun the same scenario within a minute." That short reset time means Soldiers can get as many repetitions on the weapon as needed before going out to the real range and firing the weapon for real. That means Soldiers get the confidence and skill they need for less money. The MK-19 trainer is not quite ready for the field just yet. For now, Reed said, the HMD on the system needs to be improved. Indoors it's good, he said. But outdoors, where it's extremely bright and hot outside, it might not work. "The HMD are not really bright enough to handle all the timing conditions that we are going to see," he said. But still, the MK-19 trainer demonstrates what's possible with augmented reality training for the Army -- and that's the goal of ARL Orlando: to conceptualize what can be done and to prove it's possible to achieve. Sexual assaults down across Army, SHARP program director says [2017-09-01] WASHINGTON -- Results of the 2016 Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of Active Duty Members, or WGRA, point to an estimated decrease of 2,100 sexual assaults in the Army, as compared to the results of the same survey done in 2014. Additional information from the Army indicates that reporting of sexual assaults has gone up slightly over those same two reporting periods. In 2014, for instance, the Army received a total of 2,335 reports of sexual assault, both "restricted" and "unrestricted. In 2016, that number went up to 2,497. Increased reporting is generally thought to relate to improvements in command climate, where Soldiers who are sexually assaulted feel more comfortable coming forward and reporting that assault. The 2016 WGRA actually showed a decrease in sexual assaults across the armed forces, but Monique Ferrell, the director of the Army's Sexual Harassment Assault Response and Prevention program, cited the Army as having contributed most to that positive trend. "The Army numbers drove that decrease," she said. Following the opening events of the third annual SHARP Program Improvement Forum, Ferrell discussed other positive trends for the Army in relation to its effort to eliminate sexual assault and harassment in the ranks. One example of progress, she said, is the update of important SHARP policy in Army Regulation 600-20, which is titled "Army Command Policy." Ferrell said the SHARP program has a full chapter in that regulation. The full regulation, which includes a wide range of Army command policy, is currently being staffed through officials in the Pentagon. "We are hoping that document will be published and distributed to the field by the end of the year," she said. "That is going to be tremendous." Ferrell said a plus for having critical SHARP-related policy in writing is that it makes it easier for commanders and SHARP professionals to execute and comply with those policies when they can see it in official Army regulations. While the SHARP office has one chapter in AR 600-20 -- the current edition numbers 140 pages -- it will have an entire regulation to itself by spring of 2018, Ferrell said. By then, she said, the SHARP program office will have published its own 600-series regulation that goes into more detail than what is in AR 600-20. "What we are in the process of doing is developing a SHARP regulation that we will have control of," she said. "The great thing about it is that we pulled folks together who have worked in the program for a long time. We are now in the process of staffing it with the field. When we receive their comments and adjudicate them, we'll send it for legal review and will be able to publish." One benefit to that, she said, is the SHARP office will be able to update its own policies more frequently and with less difficulty than it is able to update them as they appear in the larger AR 600-20. "This is a very dynamic program and there are changes that come about very frequently," she said. Congress also frequently makes changes to how the program is conducted, she said, through legislation that appears yearly in the National Defense Authorization Act. With the SHARP program set to have its own Army regulation, changes required by Congress, and changes developed in-house, will be able to appear in print more quickly than they do now. "We can control how frequently we update it," she said. Also in that new regulation will be two annexes that detail how the Army Reserve and Army National Guard implement the SHARP program within their own ranks. "We've done the hard work," Ferrell said. "We brought them to the table. We charged them with writing their chapter. So, we have an annex for the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard to tell them how this program applies to them." When it comes to SHARP training, it's not typical for the SHARP program office at the Pentagon to develop training plans for the field, Ferrell said. Instead, the headquarters-level office defines what must be taught, while the SHARP Academy at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, develops training support packages, and Soldiers in the field decide how to deliver that training to Soldiers and DA civilians. But Ferrell said that reports from the field have indicated that Soldiers have grown numb to SHARP training as it was delivered in years past. In order to increase the effectiveness of that training, Ferrell said, the SHARP program office has been recommending changes in how that training is delivered. "What we do is encourage them to develop unique, creative ways to deliver training," she said, explaining that slide show-based presentations are being discouraged. Instead, she said, "we encourage small-group, scenario-based discussions, and games, where you quiz members. What we are hearing from the field is that when they get that kind of training, it is much more effective, they remember it, and they don't look at it negatively." One training program that is being driven from the SHARP program office is a leader development training course called "Mind's Eye 2." Ferrell said the original "Mind's Eye" was developed within the 3rd Infantry Division, and she had been impressed with it when she first saw it in action. "It causes the people who take the training to do self-reflection and to understand why they do the things they do, how their past experiences impact whether they will recognize an emergency when they see it, and if they would intervene or take action to stop that incident from happening," Ferrell said. The Mind's Eye 2 program is aimed at "influencers," Ferrell said. That doesn't necessarily mean Soldiers who are in a leadership position in a unit, but rather, any Soldier who has great influence over other Soldiers. It will be up to leadership to identify those influencers in their units. The Mind's Eye 2 program is going to be piloted next year, in January and February, within units inside U.S. Army Forces Command, she said. The results of that training will be used to determine if the program should go Army-wide. This is the third year the Army's SHARP program office has held its Program Improvement Forum. Ferrell said the forum will provide training to SHARP professionals on areas where they may have challenges such as resource management, for instance, as well as data management. She cited as an example use of the Defense Sexual Assault Incident Database. Some SHARP professionals in the field, she said, have reported problems with using the system. At the SHARP Program Improvement Forum, SHARP professionals will discuss the challenges they are having with reporting, for instance, and try to find ways to improve it. Lt. Gen. Thomas C. Seamands, the Army's G-1, opened the SHARP Program Improvement Forum, speaking to several hundred SHARP program managers, lead sexual assault response coordinators, and victim advocates gathered to share ideas. "You have an incredible opportunity over the next two days to make a difference; you can share, you can grow, and you can sharpen your skills and help others do the same," Seamands said. "SHARP is a high priority for our Army leaders and we are committed to making the programs and processes, through forums like this, successful." Vietnam War Soldier to receive Medal of Honor for actions in Laos [2017-09-20] WASHINGTON -- The White House announced today that retired Army Capt. Mike Rose will receive the Medal of Honor at a White House ceremony on Oct. 23. President Donald J. Trump will present the medal, which commemorates Rose's heroic actions in Laos during a four-day mission, Sept. 11-14, 1970. Rose served as a medic during the Vietnam War. As part of the Army's Special Forces, Rose took part in missions in nearby Laos that were meant, in part, to engage with North Vietnamese Army troops who had amassed there, and to possibly prevent them from returning to the larger fight back in Vietnam. Laos, a landlocked nation in the center of the Southeast Asian peninsula, shares a 1,300-mile border with Vietnam, to the east. While conflict raged on in Vietnam, North Vietnamese forces used Laos to their own advantage -- forcing the American military to also enter the country at times to stop the progress of the NVA through its jungles. During one mission in Laos, called "Operation Tailwind," which began, Sept. 11, 1970, Rose, then a sergeant, along with one other Vietnamese medic, was responsible for providing medical care to a company-sized element of special forces troops made up of 16 American Soldiers and 120 Montagnards. Under Rose's care, all 16 American Soldiers returned alive from that mission, though many were injured in some way. A total of three Montagnard soldiers would be killed by the time that four-day mission had ended. One of the most unexpected parts of that mission happened when all involved thought the task was all but over. Four helicopters had been dispatched to bring the team home from their mission in Laos. Rose said that the entire company was able to board just the first three helicopters, leaving the fourth unused. Rose, along with about 30 others who were involved in Operation Tailwind, boarded the third helicopter to head home. On the way back to safety, that third helicopter crashed to the ground, injuring many on board, and killing one Montagnard soldier. Rose knew the helicopter might explode as a result of that crash. He ignored his own injuries -- which included not just those that resulted from the crash, but also injuries sustained earlier in the mission from a rocket-propelled grenade -- and re-entered the crashed helicopter to pull soldiers to safety. Shortly after that crash, the fourth helicopter, which was empty, arrived to pick them up and bring them home. Rose said he is honored to be selected for the Medal of Honor, but maintains that it is the entirety of Soldiers within the Military Assistance Command Studies and Observations Group, the unit in which he served, that the medal is actually for. "There were only about 2,000 people who were ever in MACSOG from 1965 to 1972," Rose said. "I can tell you that our raids and our reconnaissance into Laos tied up some 40,000 to 50,000 NVA troops originally sent going south to fight American units." Rose pointed to the 58,000 names on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. He said he thinks there might have been more names on the wall if MACSOG Soldiers hadn't prevented NVA troops amassed in Laos from moving south to become involved in the fighting. "That medal, to me, recognizes finally the service of all the men in all those years that served in MACSOG. It's a collective medal from my perspective," he said, which represents "all the courage and honor and dedication to duty that those men served." Rose said he is also excited to visit Washington, D.C., and the White House, and to meet with the president. "How many people get the chance to meet the president of the United States?" he asked. "I am going to have the privilege of being able to meet the president of the United States with my dear wife, in the Oval Office, I have been told. And that is something I will treasure until the end of my days." Rose grew up in southern California, and enlisted in the Army in 1967. He attended basic training at Fort Ord. After, he was sent to Fort Gordon, Georgia, for advanced individual training, where he learned to be a mortarman. But while there, he caught the eye of Special Forces recruiters, who recruited him and later trained him to be a combat medic. After his tour in Vietnam, Rose opted to pursue a commission in the Army. His career took him to, among other places, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and Panama. Also during his Army career, he met and married his wife, Margaret. The two have been together for over 45 years now. Rose served 20 years in the Army, and retired in 1987, as a captain. Army to prioritize top equipment programs in service-wide review [2017-09-20] WASHINGTON -- Over the next several months, some 820 equipment programs -- including combat vehicles, aircraft, and even gear worn or carried by Soldiers -- are expected to be rank ordered by their importance to the Army's warfighting mission, as a way to determine if the Army is spending its limited resources in the best ways possible. The Strategic Portfolio Analysis and Review for this year, or SPAR 20, is the second of its kind in recent years. The first was completed earlier this year, in April, to feed the 2019-2023 Program Objective Memorandum. This newest SPAR will in turn feed the 2020-2024 POM. The last SPAR looked at 780 programs and as an end result produced a "top ten" list of near-term capabilities the Army deemed most important. Topping that list was "maneuverable, protected, short-range air defense" capability, said Lt. Gen. John M. Murray, Army G-8, during a conference earlier this year. Other programs that made it onto the list of most-important Army programs were long-range precision fires; munition shortfalls; lethality, mobility and protection of BCT's; active-protection systems for air and ground systems; assured position navigation and timing; electronic warfare; both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities; assured communications; and vertical lift. During an early morning forum Tuesday, Murray announced the kick-off of the latest SPAR. "Once again we will work through each portfolio to prioritize within that portfolio," Murray said. The Army's G-8 expects to again use the SPAR process to identify long-term resourcing strategies for each of the 820 programs in the Army. Murray said the Army will "look for opportunities where we can take risk to free up resources, by either cancelling programs, (or) scaling down procurement objectives." As part of the SPAR process, the Army will put its multitude of competing programs into one of four "buckets," as it did the first time around, to create a list of recommendations for Army leaders on how limited modernization resources might be applied moving forward. As part of the 2020 SPAR, the Army's 820 programs will be divided up into four categories: I: Accelerate or find a way to bring into the portfolio II: Sustain at current level of resources III: Reallocate resources to invest elsewhere IV: Divest most or all resources This year, the Army will do something differently than what it did last time for the SPAR -- which, in 2016, was the first time the Army conducted such a top-down review of its equipment portfolio. "We will put together an ends, ways and means strategy for certain critical combat systems in order to make sure we understand exactly when we run out of physics, if you will, on incremental upgrades and when the Army must begin to invest in next-generation systems," Murray said. Essentially, Murray said, the Army hopes to be able to determine when it's time to stop investing in incremental upgrades to existing systems -- when the payoff for doing that might no longer be worth it -- and instead look at entirely new replacement systems. "When we make that decision, the Army creates risk for itself," Murray said. "Because to do that, we will have to free up resources and to free up those resources, it has to come from the incremental upgrade, unless the Army's budget goes up -- which I am not expecting." Murray was reticent to go into great detail about the future direction of Army modernization. Less than three weeks away, many Army leaders will attend the 2017 Association of the U.S. Army Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C. There, it's expected, the Army's chief of staff and the acting secretary of the Army -- or secretary, if one is confirmed by that time -- will be more forthcoming on details for Army modernization. Murray opted to not get out ahead of them. Instead, he laid out some of what he called personal and professional opinions about the way ahead for modernization. "I'm almost certain the Army will have to continue to incrementally upgrade combat systems to ensure the U.S. Army can fight tonight against a near-peer," he said. "We will a have to continue to invest in incremental upgrades in order to ensure our Soldiers have the best possible equipment when called." The Army must also prioritize within its science and technology budget, he added. "I am convinced that our Army should only be investing in the things that are most important to us, and most likely in only the things that industry is not already heavily invested in," he said. The general also said he expects the Army will see increased investment in prototyping of some next-generation combat systems. "I am also thinking you will see the Army try to put prototypes into the hands of Soldiers as quickly as we possibly can, to gather their input and their feedback, do experimentation, all before we write the requirements documents," he said. Murray also said he thinks there will be a desire for more non-developmental solutions that can be rapidly delivered to the field. One recent example is with short-range air defense systems, something the Army has identified as a capability gap for itself. The Army recently held a demonstration of four such existing systems at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Those four systems already exist, though the Army doesn't use them. They could quickly be brought into the Army, and delivered to the field, with limited or no modification. That differs from a developmental solution, where the Army may spend years working with a defense contractor to develop a brand-new solution from the ground up. Finally, the general said, he envisions the Army focusing on sustaining its support fleets, and combat service support fleets as a way to free up resourcing for more critical investments and also, he said, a continued effort "to divest old, obsolete and excess equipment as quickly as we possibly can in order to once again free up resources for higher priorities." For Fiscal Year 2017, Murray said, the Army got approximately $26.2 billion for its procurement/research, development, testing and evaluation budget. This year, in the FY18 budget, the Army requested about $26.8 billion, an increase of about $600 million over what it got in FY17. All of that increase, he said, will go to procure munitions to replace consumption rates and a dwindling stockpiles throughout the world. It is the procurement and RDT&E budget that he says will benefit most from the prioritization provided by the SPAR process. Modular handgun to begin fielding before Christmas [2017-10-03] WASHINGTON -- Come November, the XM17 handgun, also called the "Modular Handgun System," or MHS, will drop the "X," which designates it as "experimental" and will instead be called the M17. At that time, the Army is expected to reach a conditional material release for the MHS, and will issue some 2,000 of the pistols to the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The "Screaming Eagles" will be the first in a long line of units to receive the new 9mm pistol, which is meant as a replacement for the existing M9, which is quickly approaching the end of its useful service life. Also among the first to receive the new pistol will be the 3rd Cavalry Regiment at Fort Hood, Texas, as well as one of the Army's new security force assistance brigades. All three units will have the new M17 handgun issued to them by the end of the year, said Brig. Gen. Brian P. Cummings, who serves as Program Executive Officer Soldier at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. While the XM17 pistol is manufactured by Sig Sauer and is based on Sig Sauer's existing P320 pistol, Cummings brushed off comparisons between the two weapons. "It's a different weapons system," Cummings said. As the Program Executive Officer Soldier, Cummings is responsible for managing those Army programs that provide most of the things Soldiers carry or wear. That includes, among other things, individual and crew-served weapons, protective gear, weapons sights and sensors, and uniform items. The general said that both the M17, which is a full-sized version of the pistol, and the M18, which is a compact version, include different safety features than the P320 pistol, as well as different requirements for accuracy and reliability. Cummings also said that the new pistol may see more action than its predecessor, the M9, which was primarily issued as a personal protection weapon. "We're looking at more than the traditional basis of issue, where we are doing a one-for-one replacement," he said. The M17 and M18, he said, have also proven good for close-quarters combat, and so might be issued to some units and Soldiers to fill that role as well. STILL ON TARGET FOR NEW RIFLE Despite some reports to the contrary, the Army is still looking for a new rifle that uses a 7.62mm cartridge. "The chief [U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley] wanted an interim combat rifle, or he was only going to fulfill a requirement to have a squad-designated marksman in each squad, called a squad-designated marksman rifle," Cummings said. "So, there are two efforts going on to get a 7.62 inside the squad." What are those two efforts? Cummings said that course of action No. 1 is to have one Soldier in a squad carrying the Squad-Designated Marksman Rifle, or SDMR. Course of action No. 2, he said, is to have multiple Soldiers in a squad with the Interim Combat Service Rifle, or ICSR. Both are 7.62mm weapons. The SDMR is already a program of record for the Army, Cummings said, and there is a weapon already identified to fill that role: the M110A1 Compact Semi-Automatic Sniper System, or CSASS. That weapon is undergoing testing now, Cumming said. But the ICSR and the SDMR do not represent the future for what weapons will be issued to most Soldiers. "Right now, many are focused on the ICSR or SDMR," Cummings said. "But that's not the long-term way ahead. The long-term way ahead is a brand new rifle for all of the Department of Defense called the Next Generation Squad Weapon." The Next Generation Squad Weapon, or NGSW, is actually two weapons, he said. It will include one rifle to replace the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, and then a carbine that replaces the M4. Both the M249 and the M4 use the 5.56mm cartridge. The NGSW will likely use a different caliber cartridge than 5.56mm. "For the next-generation, we wanted to make one end-all solution," Cummings said. "With the M4, when you look at it, it's got all these things hanging on top of it. We keep evolving by putting on things. The next-generation is going to be kind of like what we did with the pistol, with the modular handgun system. It'll be one complete system, with weapon, magazine, ammo and fire control on it and we will cut down on the load and integration issues associated with it." The general said the U.S. Marine Corps is "on board" with development of the NGSW, and the British are interested as well. Cummings said the Army can expect to start seeing the Next Generation Squad Weapon by 2022, in about five years. That will include the weapon, magazine and bullet. Later, by 2025, he said, Soldiers can expect to see a fully-developed fire-control system. Until then, Cummings said, the Army is working on an interim solution to get a larger-caliber rifle into the hands of at least some Soldiers. It'll either be the SDMR in the hands of one Soldier, or the ICSR in the hands of some Soldiers. But, he said, "the final decision has not been made." Presidential Rank awardees save Army $20 billion [2017-10-05] WASHINGTON -- A total of 13 Army senior executives were recognized as being the best among the best, June 28, during the Army's presentation of the 2016 Presidential Rank Awards at the Pentagon. Those 13 senior civilians, said Robert M. Speer, who was serving as acting secretary of the Army at the time, have nearly 140 years of experience among them. Together, as part of the efforts they each made to be recognized with a Presidential Rank award, they found cost savings for the Army of some $20 billion dollars, Speer said. They additionally implemented a reduction in energy consumption Army-wide of 8.2 percent, a reduction of water usage by 18.6 percent, and a reduction in petroleum usage by 38 percent. Also among their achievements was $33 million in humanitarian projects across 63 nations. "Almost everywhere we are at," Speer said. Speer said civilians have a long history of service to the Army. "I found that Army civilians have been here as long as the Army has," Speer said "You can trace them all the way back to the Revolutionary War, and their contributions to our military since then." What he found most important, he said, are civilian contributions to the war fight. He said warfighting readiness across the total force is not just a product of uniformed Soldiers, but of civilians as wall. "Civilian control and political leadership is extremely important, but senior executive service, in terms of their leadership, commitment, and guidance direction for the mission, is what this is all about," he said of the significance of the Presidential Rank awards. The Fiscal Year 2016 Presidential Rank awards recognize senior executive service members in two categories: "distinguished" and "meritorious." Only 1 percent of SES members are eligible to earn a distinguished-level award, while only 5 percent will earn the meritorious-level award. "Again, the cream of the crop in terms of the senior executive service," Speer said. "So congratulations to all of you, it has been an honor to have recognized your service ... and to be a part of this great Army team. Congratulations to all of you -- well done." Distinguished Executive Rank recipients included: -- Lloyd C. Caldwell Jr., director of military programs; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers -- Krystyna M. Kolesar, deputy director, Program Analysis and Evaluation Directorate; Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-8 -- Levator Norsworthy Jr., senior career official performing the duties of the general counsel; Office of the General Counsel Meritorious Executive Rank recipients included: -- Richard G. Kidd IV, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for strategic integration; Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment -- Robert L. Moore, deputy to the commanding general; U.S. Army Security Assistance Command -- Diane M. Randon, senior career official performing the duties of the assistant secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs -- Karl F. Schneider, senior career official performing the duties of the under secretary of the Army -- Anthony J. Stamilio, retired, served as deputy assistant secretary of the Army for military personnel and quality of life; Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs Meritorious Senior Professional Rank recipients included: -- Augustus W. Fountain III, senior research scientist in chemistry; U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center; U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command -- Rickey E. Smith, senior professional for training and doctrine, G-9 (engagement); Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-9 (engagement); U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command The Meritorious Rank Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service recipient was: -- Thomas F. Greco, deputy chief of staff for intelligence; Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-2; U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command Meritorious Rank Defense Intelligence Senior Level recipients included -- Dr. Michael R. Rosene, chief scientist; Office of the Commander, National Ground Intelligence Center -- Richard H. Saddler, special advisor for operations; Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3; U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command Army medic to accept Medal of Honor for all who served in Laos [2017-10-06] HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- "Do you know how you can tell the veterans from the new guys?" asked Mike Rose, relaying advice given to him decades ago by his father. "The new guys are kind of looking around, seeing what's going on," Rose said. "The veterans are over there shaking and can hardly keep hold of their rifle because they have been there before and know what's about to happen." Rose, who will receive the Medal of Honor, Oct. 23, for his actions as a combat medic in Laos, Sept. 11-14, 1970, discussed his first flight into combat aboard a military helicopter. That happened in June 1970, three months before the mission that would earn him the nation's highest award for military valor. "On my first ride I was somewhat like that," Rose said. "You're looking at the terrain, you're looking around like you're on one of those helicopter rides as a tourist in Hawaii. But it wasn't Hawaii. And then you hit the ground, and that's when the fun starts. What my father said proved to be true." Rose's dad might have been spot-on about combat, likely because he had some perspective on the subject. He had served in the Marine Corps in World War II. And Rose, just 22 years old when he first entered Laos, and having been in the Army only three years at the time, likely took with him any advice his father had given him about the military, as well as the advice of other family members who had also served. WATERTOWN TO THE WEST COAST A baby-boomer, Rose was born in 1947, in Watertown, New York, a city up north near the Canadian border, and part of the military community that surrounds nearby Fort Drum. Rose's father had been a Marine who served in the South Pacific during World War II, in places like Guadalcanal and Okinawa; he left the Corps as a staff sergeant after the war and moved to Watertown with Rose's mother. While in the Marines, Rose said his father was both a rifleman -- like every Marine -- and a mechanic. Two years after Rose was born, his father was offered a chance to capitalize on the experience he had gained while in uniform. "He'd gotten a job offer to go and work at an aircraft plant as a mechanic in southern California," Rose said. "So in 1949, my dad and mom and I moved from Watertown to Southern California. I was 2 years old." His father wasn't the only one in the family who had military experience, Rose said. While his dad had been a Marine, he also had uncles who served in the Navy, and cousins, he said, that served at various times in wars and in between wars. He said his family has had "in one capacity or another, since 1917, people serving in the military." His mother, he said, was involved in the war effort as well. "She was a 'Rosie the Riveter,'" he said, working in a facility that manufactured aircraft. "She tells me one time she was riveting the side of a B-24, and was distracted and riveted her hand to the side of the aircraft," Rose said. "She would ask 'You know what hurts worse than riveting your hand to the side of an aircraft?' I had no idea. She said 'When they removed the rivet from your hand that's attached to the side of the aircraft. That hurts a lot.'" Rose himself flirted with the service at an early age. In fourth, fifth and sixth grades, he attended the now-shuttered Sepulveda Military Academy in Sepulveda, California. "I did fairly well. I made first sergeant," he said of his schooling at the military academy. "My mother wanted me to have a better start. I got a good education there. I developed a study ethic in that three years that carried me all the way through college. It was worth it." Following high school, Rose attended college for about 18 months, he said. "But by the end of 1966, I was just running out of money." Only 19 at the time, he decided to look into the armed forces. ARMY GREENS In April 1967, the United States was embroiled in the Vietnam War, and the nation was drafting young men to go fight. "I was in the North Hollywood draft board area," Rose recalled. "And they were heavily drafting at that time. A lot of the draftees in that area were ending up in the Marine Corps. I knew there was a very good chance I was going to get drafted. And I didn't want to be a draftee in the Marine Corps. So I went down and I joined the Army." He said he knew if he enlisted, he'd have a better chance of making his own decisions about what he wanted to do while in uniform than he would if the military snatched him up off the street as a draftee and told him where to go. As an enlistee, or volunteer, rather than a draftee, Rose would be considered among the "Regular Army Soldiers," rather than a "U.S. Army Soldier," something he said was reflected in his service number. He recited it as if giving a reporting statement: "RA18846904." "I will go to my grave remembering that," he said. "The first two months I was in the Army, you couldn't go to bed, you couldn't eat, you couldn't go to the bathroom without telling the drill sergeant your service number." After volunteering to enlist, Rose was shipped off to basic training at Fort Ord, California, right up the coast from where his own family lived. Shortly after, he shipped off to Fort Gordon, Georgia -- clear across the country -- to train as an "indirect fire infantryman," or mortarman. It was there, he said, where the trajectory of his Army career would change dramatically. Rose described having taken some kind of test, similar to a component of today's Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery -- which is a prerequisite now for any young American to join the military. He'd done well on that test, he said, good enough that it attracted attention from some of the Army's most elite Soldiers, the Special Forces. "Some guy in a green beret came by," Rose said. "I didn't know what Special Forces was then. You'd get called out of formation and go into this room and talk to this recruiter. It sounded interesting, so I said why not?" Toward the end of his infantry training, Rose found that he had orders to jump school -- a Special Forces requirement. He also had orders to go to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for more Special Forces training, and assignment to a new military occupational specialty. At Fort Bragg, Rose said, it was determined he could best serve the Special Forces as a combat medic. It took about 18 months for Rose to complete the basic training at Fort Ord, the infantry training at Fort Gordon, and the Special Forces and combat medic training at Fort Bragg. After that, he said, he was assigned to the 7th Special Forces Group -- also at Fort Bragg. Rose said he knew two things for sure after that first 18 months in the Army. The first, he said, was that he still wasn't really ready to deploy overseas to a combat zone. "There was still a lot more you needed to learn," he said. "When I wasn't in the field with my unit, I would be up at the hospital." The other thing he knew for sure, he said, "I really wanted to get out of Fort Bragg." Rose said he learned that at 18 months, the Army offered Soldiers who had been drafted the opportunity to enlist -- if, for instance, they had come to love the Army way of life. While he hadn't been drafted, he learned that he too could re-up in the Army at 18 months and extend his time in uniform. That action on his part, he said, was a surefire way to get out of Fort Bragg. So in February of 1969, he said, he told the Army he'd like a little more time in uniform than what he initially signed up for. And in exchange, the Army sent him overseas -- to Thailand. MORE PAD THAI, PLEASE Arriving at the 46th Special Forces Company in Thailand, Rose was farther away from home than he'd ever been -- a full 8,000 miles. He'd been out of the United States before, he said, on day trips to Canada or Mexico. But Thailand was totally new. And while the cultural learning experience there would inevitably enrich him personally, the professional opportunities he experienced would make him a better Soldier and combat medic. "I'm glad I did that," he said. "Working in Thailand, I learned more about -- not combat stuff -- but my medical skills went way up." In Thailand, he worked with the Thai National Police Force, in Bangkok, and the team treated ax wounds, typhoid and other medical issues. Rose also helped stand up a medical training school there for Thai nationals who were members of the police force. "They wanted them to be trained. They didn't have a school," Rose said. "What we did was we created curriculum. We ran the first couple of classes through in Bangkok." After Rose and fellow noncommissioned officers trained the trainers, the Americans pulled out of the school, leaving further training and the fate of the school in the capable hands of the Thais. Rose spent only a year in Thailand before he volunteered for service in Vietnam. IN THE THICK OF IT Rose arrived in Vietnam in April 1970. That's where he first reported to MACSOG, the Military Assistance Command Studies and Observations Group, and where he would, only two months later, make his first foray into combat in nearby Laos. On that first helicopter ride to Laos, he said, "That's when it hit me, holy ... whatever. What have I gotten myself into?" While his actions on that first mission in Laos would earn him a Purple Heart and Bronze Star with Valor, it would be his second trip to Laos, in September 1970, during "Operation Tailwind," where his actions as a Solider, as a medic, and as a man, would earn him the recognition of the entire nation. In Vietnam, and as part of MACSOG, Rose was one of many medics assigned as part of a dispensary system. He and the other medics, about ten in all, were regularly tapped to go on operational missions with MACSOG units. For the Sept. 11, 1970 mission, Rose was selected to participate as the medic on what would be his second trip into Laos. Then-Capt. Gene McCarley -- who would eventually retire from the Army as a lieutenant colonel -- would be commander for that mission, which would be called Operation Tailwind. He said he had met Rose just a few months earlier and already thought highly of him. "Mike was a very competent individual," McCarley said. "He was a good Soldier. And I think the best thing I could say about Mike is that he is probably the kind of individual that a mother would want their daughter to marry. He was just, in addition to being a top-notch medic and a good Soldier, he was an all-around good person." What would Tailwind accomplish in Laos? McCarley said their mission would support a Central Intelligence Agency operation that was already underway. "Our mission was, we were a diversionary force," McCarley said. "The CIA, along with a Laotian force, were in control of what they called the Bolaven Plateau. It is an enormous plateau up in Laos, with several airfields on it." Pathet Lao, or communist Laotian forces, along with North Vietnamese Army forces, were attacking those airfields. Friendly forces, the Hmong, who were being led by the CIA, were in danger of losing the airfields as a result of those attacks. "That would have been a disaster," McCarley said. "The CIA director came to special operations group and asked us if we could insert personnel a short distance away from this airfield and just go in and start a fight and create a diversion and draw some of the troops away from the airfield," McCarley said. The plateau and the airstrips, in southern Laos, lay near the path of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which communist Vietnamese used to supply their own forces. Having control of the airstrips on the Bolaven Plateau would have made things easier on the NVA. "It would just give them freedom of the trail," McCarley said. "And they could have done just about anything they wanted to. The CIA did not want to lose, they couldn't afford to lose the airfields on the plateau. So our job was to go in and create a diversion and draw troops away from that operation." Where Operation Tailwind Soldiers needed to be inside Laos was farther than Rose expected, he said. Rose said he recalled that he was struck by the length of the flight that took them from their launch point inside Vietnam -- which was just minutes by air from the Laos border -- to their final destination. A total of about 45 minutes in the air, he said, traveling at a speed of some 100 MPH or more, meant they were deep inside the country. "So we're way in there," he said. Rose also said he knew the mission would be tougher than what he had experienced the first time going into Laos, in part because he was told to carry many more medical supplies than what he felt he would normally take with him. "Most of my rucksack, and my pockets and my pants had medical supplies," Rose said. "Koch, my Montagnard medic, had basically the same stuff. And every American, their left breast pocket, I owned that. I put morphine in there and I put extra stuff I might need." The Soldiers on the mission knew too that they were in for the kind of trouble Rose characterized more than once as "deep doo doo." McCarley said he had told the Soldiers to prepare for the worst. "We didn't know what we were going to run into," McCarley said. "We knew we were probably going to meet with a lot of enemy resistance but we had absolutely no intelligence, simply because the U.S. troops had never been that deep into Laos. So when I got the mission, I assembled my company sergeants and I just told them we had what appeared to be a real tough mission and to go extra heavy on ammunition and any kind of munitions that they desired to carry and the demolitions, the C4. We went in about twice as heavy as we would normally go on a hatchet force mission." Also different this time was that he entered Laos with a company-sized element, rather than a platoon-sized element, as he'd done the first time. In that company were about 120 Montagnard fighters who were Vietnamese, and 16 American Soldiers, including himself. "The second time, I knew more," Rose said of their movement into Laos. "By then, you're a veteran. You've seen the elephant dance, as they used to say. The second time, it's a little scarier, because you've seen the results of what mortars and rockets and men getting hit with a bullet can do." It was late morning on Sept. 11, 1970, when Rose entered Laos for the second time. And members of that team were already sustaining the kind of injuries that would take them out of the fight, even before they touched down on the ground, Rose said. Flying into Laos at around 4,000 feet, and escorted by Air Force A1E aircraft, Rose said their helicopter was already being hit with rounds fired from the ground as they approached their landing zone. About six of the Montagnards fighters were injured as a result of that gunfire, Rose said. Those men, while not killed by their injuries, never left the aircraft, but were instead taken back to be patched up. That left about 130 U.S. Soldiers and Montagnards to complete the Operation Tailwind mission. "We actually had to step over them to get out of the helicopter," Rose said. Getting off that helicopter in Laos, he said, he and his teammates encountered enemy combatants right away. "People got hurt immediately," Rose said. "We hit the ground, and we were skirmishing from the first day. We started taking injuries. It was a running gun fight for four days." Right away, he said, his buddy, Sgt. 1st Class Bernie Bright, was hit in the head. Another Soldier took a round through his protective mask, though Rose said that later proved to be not as bad as was initially suspected. Two Montagnard fighters were also killed on the first day, he said. Rose himself took a bullet that first day, though as he remembered, it turned out to have been much less damaging than it could have been. Rose said he'd brought with him a canteen strapped to his side, with a tube running to his mouth so he could drink. That lasted only one day in combat. After receiving gunfire, he thought he felt blood running down his leg. "I realized it was water," he said. He survived, but his canteen was among the first casualties. The second day on the ground in Laos, Rose found himself tending to the bodies of the two Montagnard fighters who had been killed the day prior. It was then he would receive the most serious injuries of the mission. "I had their bodies wrapped in ponchos. We had good intention to take them with us," Rose said. "And I was messing with that and that's when the rocket-propelled grenade went off. And that's when I got hit in the foot and the hand and the back. And I ... the wound in my foot was about the size of ... about a half-inch in diameter." While Rose was tending to the dead, he said an enemy fighter had fired on him with a B40 round -- a rocket-propelled grenade -- from about 30 feet away. "That night I took my boot off and I slipped this finger into my foot," he said, holding up his hand and finger. "I pulled it back out and I thought, well, I'll deal with that later. So I put my sock and boot back on and didn't think about it for another two days. When you're worried about your ass, a hole in your foot doesn't even make the list." McCarley remembers the injury Rose suffered from the RPG attack. He also remembers Rose's selfless dedication to the men he was responsible for keeping alive. "He wrapped his boots back on his foot with a bandage and hobbled around on a crutch the remaining four days," McCarley said of Rose. "Mike treated all of us and never once treated himself. Not until he got back to our base camp." The damage Rose sustained from the shrapnel created by the RPG stayed with him until well after he left Vietnam, he said. "When that thing went off, I got peppered from the back of my head all the way down to about halfway down my calves. For a year after I got back from Vietnam, I'd get boils on my back," Rose said, adding that his wife Margaret would offer assistance. "She would pop them and pull a piece of bamboo or metal out." Rose said that night there was no rest for the Soldiers and Montagnard fighters who were part of Operation Tailwind. Fighting had continued and at night, Air Force-operated AC-130H "Spectre" gunships laid down fire around them. "We weren't getting much sleep," Rose recalled. "And we weren't eating, but we had water." Also possibly keeping Rose awake were thoughts about the bodies of the two Montagnard fighters who had been killed. Rose had wanted to take them with him. But ultimately, it proved not possible. "We just couldn't carry them," Rose said. "I knew the casualties were going to mount." Choosing to not take those fighters along, Rose said, was a decision he has regretted for the rest of his life. SAVING LIVES On the ground in Laos, Rose's role as a combat medic, he said, was not to fix wounded Soldiers. It was only to keep them alive long enough to get them to a hospital. "Your job is not to repair," he said. "Your job is to ensure the person survives to be put on a helicopter so they can get to a facility that has proper skilled physicians and nurses that can begin to repair the damage done. Your job, as a medic, is to maintain the person's life. That is, to keep them out of shock, to stop the bleeding, and also as much as possible prevent infection if you could." McCarley estimates that Rose laid hands on and provided medical assistance to more than half of the 130 or so U.S. Soldiers and Montagnards who were involved in Operation Tailwind -- saving lives each time. "He treated probably 70 wounded," McCarley said. "He definitely saved the lives of two individuals that I know of personally. The entire operation, Mike never slept or ate or rested. There were at least three or four occasions were we had a wounded man out in the area, away from the company area, and Mike went out and carried the wounded, and treated them on the spot, despite being fired upon the whole time. "He carried the men back on his shoulders," McCarley said. "With one of the men, the fire was real intense and Mike shielded the wounded man with his own body while he was treating him." Rose said that taking care of Soldiers on the battlefield includes more than just the mechanical aspects of applying the medical care he had learned at Fort Bragg. "You have got to talk to the person," Rose said. "You have got to convince them they are fine. You distract their minds by talking about other things. Even in the chaos of battle, that's one of the things you have got to do is make sure that person, who knows they are badly hurt, has got a mental state that they are convinced they are going to be okay as soon as we get them back. You let them know we're going to get you out of here, we're going to get you back to the hospital, and you're going to be fine. And you're going home." Ideally, Rose said, injured Soldiers get evacuated. But that was a problem in Laos. "Every time you tried to get a helicopter in, they shot at it, or it got shot down, or it took so much ground fire that the pilots couldn't get in," Rose said. It proved tough, he said, to get the wounded out of the fight. So instead, the wounded had to come along. Some injured would be able to come along with help from Rose's dwindling supply of morphine. Rose had morphine syrettes available to him -- tiny tubes of morphine with a needle already attached. "You pull the cover off and you push the pin down, pull it out, and that breaks the hole in the bag, and then you squeeze it," he said. They look like tiny tubes of toothpaste, he said. Rose said in the field environment, Soldiers don't get nearly as much morphine as they would get in the hospital. "You only want to give them enough morphine to take the edge off the discomfort," he said. "It's not like a hospital where the doctor and the nurse are trying to make you comfortable. I'm not trying to make you comfortable. I'm trying to take the pain away just enough where you are not going to be screaming or moving around or jerking." Rose said he wanted to make some of the injured Soldiers comfortable enough so they could walk, and travel with the unit under their own power. "I'd dope them up enough where they could take the pain and I'd tie their hand to the guy's ruck in front of them and he's going to walk behind the guy in front of him," Rose said. The alternative, he said, would be that those men would have to be carried. And that, he decided, was not acceptable. "I'd have to pull people off the line to help me carry the ones that couldn't walk," he said. "And that would reduce the perimeter strength, which would probably increase the casualty rate." For those Soldiers who absolutely couldn't move on their own, even with the help of some morphine, Rose devised his own field-crafted solution. "I strapped them to a bamboo pole with a poncho hung there, and put rappelling ropes underneath them," he said. "We cut poles long enough for people to carry one guy on each end, to carry the wounded." FIRST TRY TO GET HOME On the fourth day in Laos, four Marine Corps CH-53D Sea Stallion helicopters arrived to extract the Soldiers who were participating in Operation Tailwind. At the landing zone, where the participants of Operation Tailwind awaited extraction, there was intense enemy fire. "About 1,000 or maybe 1,800 were charging us," Rose recalls. The Air Force came in and laid down riot control, or CS gas, to disable enemy forces and give friendly forces an edge. "CS will make your eyes water shut," Rose said. "What can you do if your eyes are shut, with a weapon? Not much. And the care and treatment for CS is fresh air. So fresh air and maybe water in the eyes. So that stopped the charge." Still, Rose said, the company was still taking a lot of enemy fire. It took only three of the four helicopters to pick up everybody, Rose said. The first of those helicopters was packed. "The first helicopter came in and we got the wounded on. I'm hesitant about saying 'the panic.' But the Montagnards were itching to get out of there. And I can't blame them," he said. "That helicopter probably took off with probably more people on it than it was designed to take." More Soldiers and Montagnards boarded the second helicopter, leaving just 35 Operation Tailwind participants, including Rose, to board the third aircraft. "We were fighting. And they were loading on. And I'm out there with the perimeter. I remember one of the Montagnards went down in front of me. I'd given my weapon, and I'd given most of my magazine at that point to some other people. And I went forward and picked up that Montagnard," Rose said. "Lt. Langdon fired my weapon and he ran out of ammo. So Lt. Langdon reached down and grabbed the web gear of the Montagnard with me. And he and I pulled him up onto the helicopter." The helicopter Rose boarded for extraction was piloted by then-1st. Lt. Don Persky, a Marine Corps officer. Persky said that the extraction might have been doomed from the get-go. "I was the third helicopter going in," Persky said. "There was going to be a fourth helicopter behind me. And we started taking such intense fire that I asked them to get everybody on board my aircraft, because I didn't see any possible way of getting another helicopter in there." Persky said the remaining 35 got on board, but his aircraft took a lot of enemy fire in the process. "Just as I was pulling out of the zone, I had an engine that was shot out -- it failed -- so we took off single-engine, and we barely made it out," Persky said. By the time it lifted off, Persky said, his aircraft was leaking fuel and hydraulic fluid, and operating with just one engine. Aboard the damaged helicopter, Rose said, he sat down next to his buddy, Sergeant Bright. The two sat together on the tailgate of the aircraft and talked. Then, Rose said, "the helicopter went dead silent." The aircraft had been operating with just one engine. Now it had none. "Bernie says, or I said, one of the two of us said, 'We're going to crash,'" Rose said. "And the other said 'Yeah, I guess we are.' And we were just holding each other and watching the ground come up." Persky explained that when both engines go out on a helicopter, there will be time to land the aircraft safely. "It doesn't fall out of the sky like a brick," he said. Instead, Persky said, a skilled pilot will "auto-rotate" the helicopter safely to the ground, in most circumstances. It's something he said helicopter pilots are trained on. It meant there would be a few minutes between the time when the engines quit and the aircraft hit the ground. Rose said he remembered, after the second engine on the helicopter fell silent, that he was called away to tend to another wounded service member. A Marine door-gunner aboard the aircraft had been shot through the neck and needed medical attention. Persky said he remembers too when Rose saved that Marine, not by seeing it with his own eyes, but by hearing it. Around the landing zone, the Air Force had used CS gas to disable enemy troops. Because of that, the aircraft crews had been wearing gas masks. Those masks necessitated that everyone onboard was on a "hot mic" that day, Persky said. Aircrew would typically hold down a button to initiate conversation with other crew members over the aircraft intercom. But with a hot mic, everyone heard everyone else all the time, Persky said. "You get a staticky sound on the intercom, and if anybody is talking at any time, or if anybody is breathing, you hear them breath," Persky said. What Persky and other crew members were hearing that day over the hot mic, he said, were the sounds of that young Marine choking to death on his own blood. "When we pulled out of this zone, all hell was breaking loose," Persky said. "We had numerous bullet holes, we were leaking fuel, we were leaking hydraulic fluid. And my right door gunner, Lance Corporal Stevens, took a round through his neck. And from the time we started pulling out of the zone -- it's kind of gross -- but he was gurgling. I'm sure it was blood mixed with trying to breathe. And breathing, and making really horrific sounds. And this was over all of our communications." About then, Rose came to the Marine's aid. "He was bleeding pretty bad," Rose said. "And as I recall, he was sitting up against the hull. At that point in time I needed to make sure he was breathing. But with the damage to his neck, I was concerned for him drowning on his own blood. So I got him on all fours, in a crawl position, so that he wouldn't aspirate on his own blood." Rose said the young Marine was "lucky" in that nothing vital, such as the carotid artery, had been damaged. He felt confident the young man would live, and he told him so. But still, he was not in good shape, Rose said. "This whole area was chewed," Rose said, gesturing to his own neck. "Like somebody had taken an egg beater with sharp blades and just ... but the carotid, the veins were okay." Rose said he took material from another service member, something like a bandana, and used it to wrap the Marine's neck. "Mike went up there and pulled Stevens out and pulled the mask off him and stopped the sound from the hot mic," Persky said. "He patched him up and got him calmed down. I didn't witness these things firsthand, but I certainly was a recipient of that effort. Thank God for Mike, because he got him off the hot mic. It was a pretty big deal." AFTERMATH It wasn't long after tending to the wounded Marine that Rose found himself back on the ground sitting next to the Marine he had just tended to. The helicopter had crash-landed back in the jungle of Laos, and Rose had been thrown from the aircraft as a result. "I remember sitting on a bank in Laos, watching this big bright silvery thing coming at me," Rose said. The very helicopter from which he'd been thrown, which had crash-landed, was still in motion. It lurched toward him on one final roll or slide before settling onto the jungle floor, just a few yards from where he had landed. "The next thought I guess I must have had was, I need to get on there to get these guys out," Rose said. "There were people probably hurt. At that point I didn't know how badly anybody was hurt. Aircraft can create some awful messes with people, depending on how badly the aircraft comes apart when it hits the ground." Rose said he didn't remember how he got back inside the helicopter -- either through a legitimate hatch or door, or through a gash or hole that was torn into the side as a result of the crash. But he knew he needed to get in there quick. Not just because there were people inside that were hurt and needed to be tended to, but also because the helicopter itself, leaking fuel and other flammable fluids, might ignite with all those service members inside. "He went back into the helicopter and ... there were a couple of pilots that were injured," McCarley said. "He got one of them out. He got the wounded Americans and the wounded Montagnards. He was probably responsible for getting 15 or 20 people that were in a dazed condition." McCarley said he doesn't remember how he got out of the helicopter. But once he realized what was going on, he helped Rose pull out the other Soldiers. "We started hauling the individuals out of the ship," McCarley said. "It was smoking and in danger of blowing up or catching fire at any time. And Mike went in and he passed them out to myself and it's several of the other guys who were helping him unload the guys." Rose and other teammates did eventually get everybody off the wrecked aircraft: passengers, crew and pilots too. McCarley had injured himself in the crash when his face smashed against a bulkhead and knocked out a mouthful of his teeth. Nevertheless, Rose said, McCarley went back into the aircraft to secure critical intelligence material that Soldiers with Operation Tailwind had captured during their mission. "McCarley is tired, exhausted and hurt," Rose recalled. "But he had enough sense to go back in there to look and make sure he had that rucksack with all the intel. That was gold. We weren't going home without that." McCarley confirmed that the intel they had gathered during the mission would provide valuable insight into how enemy forces were using the Ho Chi Minh trail. "It identified a lot of the traffic on the Ho Chi Minh trail and it also identified a major transportation battalion that higher intelligence had thought was down south around the Saigon area, but instead they were up in the northern part of Laos," McCarley said. "General Abrams ... said that was about the best intelligence find during the entire war, as far as providing information on the Ho Chi Minh trail." Rose said he doesn't remember how much longer after the crash happened that the fourth helicopter arrived to take them home. It was more than five minutes, he said, but probably less than 30. And he doesn't remember getting aboard. "It's really foggy," he said. "Like a dream." McCarley said that Operation Tailwind, made up of both American Soldiers and Montagnard fighters, had been successful. "Not only did we accomplish it, but shortly after the operation, the friendly forces drove the communist troops off the plateau," McCarley said. "In addition to that, on the last day of the operation we overran a large base camp. And we got several footlockers of intelligence." Years later, Rose said, he learned that his missions into Laos actually kept as many as 50,000 North Vietnamese Army troops "off balance" along the Ho Chi Minh trail. He believes that if not for the efforts if his and other MACSOG units, more NVA troops might have made it to the fight in South Vietnam, and that might have meant more American deaths. "There are 58,000 names on [the Vietnam Memorial Wall,]" Rose said. "I think that without our efforts in MACSOG, there might have been 100k names on that wall." All 16 American Soldiers who had gone on the mission came back alive, Rose said, but they were all wounded. Between the 16 Americans, 33 Purple Hearts were awarded. Rose received two of them. For a medic, getting all those American Soldiers home might have been reason to celebrate. But there weren't just Americans on the mission. There were also Montagnard fighters. Some never made it to the ground due to injuries sustained while flying in. Three others never made it home at all, Rose said. Two Montagnard fighters were killed the first day in Laos, and the unit was forced to leave them, because taking their bodies along would have endangered the mission. A third Montagnard fighter had been killed underneath the helicopter that crashed. The bodies of all three likely remain in Laos today. "It's the one thing that haunts me," Rose said. "I don't know those three men's names. I wouldn't recognize them if you showed me a picture. I don't know if they were Buddhist or Catholic. But what bothers me was that we were not able to retrieve them and they couldn't come home for a proper burial. I will regret that until the day I pass out of this world. I've had a good life since Tailwind, but theirs ended there, so long ago. I don't think about it all the time. But when the subject comes up, or September 11 to 14 comes by every year, I think of those three guys." WHITE HOUSE CEREMONY On Oct. 23, Rose will travel to the White House to meet with President Donald J. Trump, who will put the Medal of Honor around his neck. Rose said it's the opportunity of a lifetime for him. "I am going to have the privilege of being able to meet the president of the United States with my dear wife, in the Oval Office," Rose said. "And that is something I will treasure until the end of my days." For years, neither the United States, nor the U.S. Army, openly discussed the operations that happened in Laos during the Vietnam War. As a result of that silence, Rose said, many Soldiers who might have been due the Medal of Honor went without the recognition. Rose said he feels like the medal he'll receive is meant to recognize all those other Soldiers who are today unknown to the rest of America. That's why he's adamant about sharing the medal with them all, about 2,000 other Soldiers, in his estimate, that served in MACSOG between 1965 and 1973. "That medal, and the presidential unit citation, recognizes, finally, the service of all the men in all those years that served in MACSOG," he said. "It's a collective medal from my perspective. All the courage and honor and dedication to duty of those men who served. They went for 30 years not even being acknowledged." After his tour in Vietnam, Rose opted to pursue a commission in the Army. His career took him to, among other places, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and Panama. Also during his Army career, he met and married his wife, Margaret Rose. The two have been together for over 45 years now. Rose served 20 years in the Army, and retired in 1987, as a captain. His wife will accompany him to the White House to receive the Medal of Honor. And while his parents have long since passed, Rose said, he thinks they'd be proud of what he's done. His father, he said, "would have been proud to see me make staff sergeant, because he was a staff sergeant in the Marine Corps. And I think he would have been really pleased." Making better dummies to save lives [2017-10-10] WASHINGTON -- "It's one of the least dramatic tests you'll ever see. You hit start, you go get coffee, maybe lunch, come back and download the file," said Jack Norfleet at the Army Research Laboratory. What Norfleet and a summer intern in his lab were actually doing was using a piece of precision equipment to slowly stretch to the point of breakage a small piece of artificial material that might one day stand in for human tissue on medical training devices. Norfleet said that Soldiers in the Army's medical community regularly train on simulators -- mannequins and dummies that look like real people -- to practice critical lifesaving skills such as hemorrhage control, needle chest decompression and airway management. Those dummies, he said, are meant to simulate the human body as closely as possible. But they are not real humans, just simulators. They use rubber and plastic as analogues for skin and bone and other tissues found in the human body. But they are not always spot-on in mimicking how the human body actually behaves, Norfleet said. And that can be a problem for Soldiers who need the most accurate training possible. One type of tissue that needs a better stand-in on medical dummies is the human pleura, Norfleet said. To explain what the pleura is, he referenced a rack of barbeque ribs. "You know that real clear tough membrane on the inside? That's the pleura," he said. Humans have a pleura lining their own ribs. And Soldier medics will encounter the pleura when treating a collapsed lung, or "tension pneumothorax," Norfleet said. "It means there's air around the lung, it builds up pressure, and the lung cannot expand," Norfleet said. "It's the second-most common preventable killer on the battlefield. It doesn't have to be a sucking chest wound, but a sucking chest wound will create a tension pneumothorax. It could be a close blast injury, or even an impact in a car accident." When medics need to treat a collapsed lung, they might have to drive a needle between the patient's ribs, pushing through the pleura, to create a path for air and fluid that's trapped between the lung and chest wall to escape. In training and in real life, Soldiers will know they've made it through the pleura when they feel the needle "pop" through that tissue. They have to be skilled at knowing where to place the needle, how far to push the needle in, and how hard to press the needle into the patient. On a training dummy, having all those factors correct is not so important, because the dummy can't be injured. But on a real Soldier, incorrect placement of the needle, or pushing it in too far can be life-threatening. "If you are in the wrong place, you can hit a nerve bundle, or you can hit a major vessel," Norfleet said. So training for Soldiers on dummies is important. And ensuring those dummies simulate human tissue as closely as possible is also important, he said. A real human pleura, Norfleet said, breaks at about 2 megapascals, and can stretch to about 1.7 times its original length. The material that simulates the pleura, on modern-day training dummies, however, doesn't accurately simulate that. "It breaks at 14 megapascals, and stretches at three times as long," he said. Those dummies, he said, have been used to train "over a million medics." "We're training them to drive a nail with a sledge hammer, when what they need is a detail hammer," Norfleet said. Norfleet said that Soldiers who aren't aware of the difference between how much pressure they apply in training, versus how much pressure they should actually apply on a real human, might do more harm than good -- pushing their needle all the way into the lung, he said, which will "make the problem worse." He said the Army, and the researchers at ARL, would like to find better materials to use in training dummies so that when medics actually perform procedures on real Soldiers in the field, their experience there is as close as possible to what they saw while training on the dummies. At ARL-Orlando, Norfleet is testing various types of rubbers and other artificial materials to see how far they can stretch before breaking, and what it takes to puncture them. It's part of an effort to document the properties of various materials that might be used in training dummies and other medical simulators. While in Orlando they test only artificial tissues, similar testing on actual human tissue is being done elsewhere. "We have an exact duplicate of this test up at the University of Minnesota, and another at the University of Washington," he said. "They are taking the human tissues from donors and running the exact same tests." What Norfleet can do then is use test data from an actual human pleura, and then using his own tests, try to find suitable artificial materials that will mimic it for use in training simulators. In addition to finding suitable stand-ins for human pleura, they are also looking at substitutes for airway tissues, the fascia and lower-leg tissues, among other things, he said. The testing that Norfleet is doing in Orlando, coupled with the testing done on actual human tissue, will eventually yield better physical training simulators for Soldiers. But the work benefits more than the dummies. It will also benefit robotic-aided surgery and virtual simulators as well. Both require accurate information on how human tissues behave, so that they can, for instance, provide accurate haptic feedback to a surgeon who might be doing surgery with a robotic arm rather than his own hand. "We think the application [of our work] is much greater in virtual simulations, because more and more procedures are being done with laparoscopic or robotic tools," Norfleet said. "So the human hands on the body during surgery is going to start to become rarer. And the tools in the body surgical procedures are becoming more prevalent. So the virtual trainers, where you never actually touch the tissue, are going to be the higher demand area. If you are programming grasping a polyp in a colon and pulling it with a certain amount of force, this data will tell you how much it stretches and how much force it's putting back against you and also when it will tear." Army's planned modernization command supports DOD's primary lines of effort [2017-10-10] WASHINGTON -- As part of an effort to face down the issues outlined in a complex problem statement, the Department of Defense has laid out three lines of effort -- one of which the Army has already moved out on in a big way. At the Association of the U.S. Army's Annual Meeting and Exposition Monday, Acting Secretary of the Army Ryan D. McCarthy revealed that the Army has plans for a "modernization command," to stand up by summer of 2018. Speaking during a press conference at the exposition, alongside Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, McCarthy said that existing Army systems are becoming outdated as compared to what adversaries might produce, and also that the processes the Army now uses to field potential new systems are themselves outdated and slow by comparison to how adversaries operate. McCarthy pointed to systems like the Abrams tank, the AH-64 Apache helicopter, the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, and the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter as examples of systems that were developed long ago -- in the early 1970s -- and which have since been incrementally upgraded to keep pace with competitors. But that incremental upgrade cycle, he said, is no longer enough. "There is a limit to the incremental improvements that can be made before they no longer offer the degree of overmatch the Army requires," McCarthy said. While modernizing those platforms "has yielded benefits," he said, "we're squarely on the curve of diminishing returns." Peer competitors, he said, are developing new systems today -- and quickly. "Our peer competitors have continued to invest in technologies that counter what have traditionally been the strengths of the American military, and they are doing it faster than us," he said. "The U.S. Army has to adapt." The U.S. Army, McCarthy said, is now at an "inflection point," when it comes to modernizing its force. "To prevail in the future, we now must reform how we modernize the Army. The roles, responsibilities, structures, and organizations we have to address this challenge are disparate and in many respects, born of a bygone era." McCarthy said to streamline the modernization process, he plans for the Army to have a modernization command. He said he has approved a 120-day task force, which starts this week, and which will be led by Lt. Gen. Edward Cardon, "to frame and present decisions about the ultimate form and function of the new command." Details about how the command will work, he said, are still to be decided. But he said the scope of the command "will extend from idea to delivery" of the gear and tools the Army will ultimately need to modernize. Earlier at the exposition's opening ceremony, Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis touched on what it is the Department of Defense is facing today -- including terrorism in the Middle East, provocations from North Korea in the Pacific, and changing borders in Europe. "In Europe, for the first time since World War II, we've seen national borders change by the force of arms, as one country proved willing to ignore international law to exercise a veto authority over its neighbor's rights to make decisions in the economic, diplomatic and security domains," Mattis said. To face that security environment, Mattis said, "we must have militaries fit for their purpose, fit for their time, in these days of emerging challenges ... your Department of Defense is adapting." Mattis laid out a complex "problem statement" that outlines how DOD sees the challenges it is facing. "How do we maintain a safe and effective nuclear deterrent, so these weapons are never used, and our non-proliferation efforts can be recharged," Mattis asked. "Second, how to maintain a decisive conventional force at the same time as that nuclear deterrent, one that will include space and cyberspace capability to deter war or end it decisively if conflict occurs. And third, we must at the same time maintain an irregular capability so we can fight across the spectrum of conflict." The secretary spelled out three lines of effort the Department of Defense is pursuing now as answers to that problem statement. First, he said, "Everything we ... do must contribute to the increased lethality of our military. We must never lose sight of the fact that we have no God-given right to victory on the battlefield." He said McCarthy and Milley are now examining "every personnel policy, our training times, our organization and more, to ensure they contribute and make us the most lethal joint force in the world." Second, Mattis said, the Department of Defense is strengthening existing alliances with partner nations and allies, while at the same time working to build new partnerships. And finally, Mattis said, the Department is reworking business practices "to gain full benefit from every dollar spent on defense." The Army's effort to build a modernization command supports two of those three lines of effort, and Milley said that command will work to advance the Army's six modernization priorities, to include long-range precision fires, a next-generation combat vehicle, future vertical lift platforms, a mobile and expeditionary Army network, air and missile defense capabilities, and Soldier lethality. "What do you want the Army to do? You want them to win," Milley said. "So in combat operations, you win on the offense." That means, Milley said, mastering the fundamentals of "shoot, move, communicate, protect and sustain." All the Army's modernization priorities are in line with those fundamentals -- fundamentals necessary to win wars, he said. Long-range fires, for instance, support the fundamental of shoot -- "we assess there is a gap, or at least a closing of the capability overmatch we've had in long-range fires," he said. A next-generation combat vehicle and future vertical lift platforms give Soldiers the ability to move, he said, and the Army's rotary-wing, wheeled and tracked vehicle fleets are at end of what can be done with product improvements. "That's why you see those in the top three." The mobile and expeditionary Army network supports the communication fundamental, he said, and ballistic missile defense is a priority for protecting ground forces. "We have to create a layered defense around our combat formations if we are expected to fight combined arms maneuver against a near-peer competitor in a dynamic environment," he said. Finally, he said, "We want to go to great lengths to increase the lethality of our Soldier and their systems. Everything from small arms to body armor, you name it. Everything about the Soldier, we want to increase the lethality, to include their training, with things like synthetic training environments so they get multiple repetitions and they become much better at their skills." The modernization command, Milley said, will deliver on those priorities. Army Chief of Staff urges Soldiers to take responsibility for unit, individual readiness [2017-10-11] WASHINGTON -- Readiness has always been Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley's No. 1 priority. Now he's got the Secretary of Defense underwriting that opinion. "Secretary Mattis, just yesterday, very clearly tasked the U.S. Army to be ready; his words were carefully chosen," Milley said. "So our No. 1 task, bar none, remains readiness. Readiness for what? Readiness for war. Readiness for the intense combat of ground operations of any type, anywhere in the world. That is our task. And I can tell you that it has never been more important than it is today." Milley spoke Oct. 10 during the Eisenhower Luncheon, part of the Association of the U.S. Army Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C. The general pointed out several hotspots around the globe where he said the Army must be ready to engage in ground conflict. He was also very clear that readiness to fight doesn't just increase the odds that the U.S. Army could win in a conflict. Readiness can also prevent conflict from happening in the first place. Readiness is a deterrence, he said. "Un-readiness results in paying the butcher's bill in the blood of American Soldiers," Milley said. "But being combat-ready, on the other hand, deters enemies, it keeps the peace. And in the event of conflict, combat readiness provides the capability to end the war quickly, on our terms, in the shortest amount of time and with the least amount of friendly casualties. "As Soldiers, as America's sentinels of freedom, we will pray for peace every day," Milley said. "But at the same time, we will prepare for war." Milley said over the past few years, the Army has sent fewer Soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan. And in that time, the Army has taken advantage of the operations tempo decrease, he said, and "arrested the readiness decline we were experiencing." He attributed that success to work by U.S. Army Forces Command, Army Materiel Command, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, component commands overseas, and also Congress. Included among the efforts that have helped stabilize readiness in the Army, Milley said, is a shift to sustainable readiness and away from the Army Force Generation model "in order to get our Army ready for high-intensity conflict." It also includes the elimination of unnecessary training "to give time back to commanders to focus on the preparation for combat;" and an increase in combat training center rotations. Also, the Army has grown by 28,000 Soldiers in the last year "to strengthen our formations," he said. The appearance of those new Soldiers in formations will likely mean that other, more-experienced Soldiers will be available to participate in any of the five Security Force Assistance Brigades the Army is building in the active force. An additional SFAB, or a sixth, is also being built in the National Guard. Those SFABs will specialize in performing advise and assist missions with partner nations, freeing up regular infantry brigades to focus on their own preparation and training for war. Those are just some of the examples Milley offered for how the Army is improving readiness across the force. He said the Army isn't where he wants it to be yet, in terms of total readiness. "We must continue to lean into the readiness with a laser-focused sense of urgency that we've never had before." While Milley made clear the Army will continue from a top-level to make decisions and changes that will enhance total readiness for whatever warfight comes next, he laid the ultimate responsibility for that readiness at the feet of commanders. "Do not wait on orders and printed new regulations and new manuals, do not wait on force structure changes,"' he said. "You and you alone are responsible for the readiness of your unit. You know what to do. Your mission is to focus solely on what is essential to increase the lethality of your unit for the unforgiving crucible of ground combat. Put simply, I want you to get ready for what might come. And do not do any tasks that do not directly contribute to increasing the combat readiness of your unit." Milley delved into what the Army is doing in the way of modernizing the force. He laid out six priority areas for modernization that include long-range precision fires; a next-generation combat vehicle; future vertical lift platforms; a mobile and expeditionary Army network; air and missile defense capabilities; and Soldier lethality. All of those, he said, will be focus areas for a new Army modernization command, the creation of which was announced Monday at the AUSA exposition. That sixth priority, he said, "Soldier lethality," will produce new weapons systems for Soldiers, such as a next-generation individual and squad combat weapon that he said will be a "10x improvement over any existing current system in the world." That Soldier lethality priority will also bring improved body armor, sensors for Soldiers, small-unit radios, and other things to improve Soldier endurance. But new equipment, he said, is only part of what the focus on Soldier lethality will be. Also a focus, he said, is training for Soldiers. It will be training, Milley said, that really gets at Soldier readiness. Advancements such as synthetic training will allow commanders to make their units more lethal by honing the skills of individual Soldiers and Soldier teams through inexpensive repetitions. "Training is the key," Milley said. "Hard, rigorous, realistic, repetitive training. That is the ultimate form of taking care of an American Soldier. And the only way to do that is through repetition in combat-like conditions. Repetitive practice in the right conditions builds skills and intuition that each of our leaders will need to make thousands of decisions in actual combat." The Army's modernization focus on Soldier lethality will provide commanders with the tools to get those repetitions for their Soldiers, Milley said. "We want our leaders at all levels, at all echelons to make thousands of simulated combat tactical decisions against a thinking and adaptive enemy, in order to gain confidence and skill, and to learn from their mistakes," he said. Live-fire exercises, as well as combat training center exercises that use an opposing force, are always best, Milley said. But that kind of training is expensive, he said, and doesn't provide the number of repetitions needed to get Soldiers trained the way they need to be trained. To get that repetition, he said, the Army's modernization will focus on "radically improving our synthetic training environment." Air Force, Navy, and even Army helicopter pilots and tank crews get ample simulator training before going into actual combat vehicles, he said. "Tens of millions of dollars are spent and invested in teaming and simulation for an F-35 pilot before they are ever allowed to come near a fifth-generation fighter," Milley said. "Well, we have fifth-generation fighters in our squads and platoons and they are actually fighting every day. So we must do the same thing for them. "Any Soldier that engages in close-quarters combat deserves the same investment [as] anyone who is flying at 30,000 feet. There is no reason we do not do that." Milley said the technology already exists to provide that type of training for squads of Soldiers all over the Army, to allow commanders to get their Soldiers ready for any kind of combat. "Every line company in the Army can have multiple simulators to train under varied combat conditions, so that units and Soldiers [can] practice warfighting skills literally every day," Milley said. "The technology exists now in order to conduct realistic training in any terrain in all of the urban areas of the world, with any scenario, with any enemy. Anything the commander deems necessary, that is possible today." Making that happen for commanders, he said, is now an Amy priority. "We just need, at our level, to focus our resources to provide them the opportunity," he said. Army looking into unmanned medevac, medical resupply [2017-10-13] WASHINGTON -- Although a fully-equipped medical evacuation aircraft with a trained crew and pilot will likely always be the best option to get a wounded Soldier off the battlefield, the Army is looking at unmanned aerial systems as a possible "plan B" for when that ideal isn't possible. "There's really a lot of opportunity to be gained if we learn how to leverage these unmanned systems for medical missions, as a tool to augment our existing medical assets," said Nathan Fisher, an engineer with the Army's Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Fisher was available Oct. 10 during the Association of the U.S. Army Annual Meeting and Exposition. On the display floor of the convention center, where hardware from hundreds of defense contractors was being showcased, he discussed research he and others are involved in that may one day make it possible to deliver medical supplies to the battlefield by UAS, and to also send that UAS back to base with a wounded Soldier tucked away safely inside. FUTURE DEMAND AUTONOMY During last year's AUSA exposition, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley laid out a nearly apocalyptic vision of what Soldiers would face on battlefields of the future. Milley told Soldiers they should plan on being miserable, that access to supplies would be limited, and that they should expect lines of communication between themselves and those in the rear to be nearly non-existent. When those lines of communication open, a robotic supply convoy might end up being "the only acceptable method of supply that we can get to forward troops." It's that kind of environment that Fisher and fellow researchers at TATRC are developing solutions for today. "In situations where we're up against a near-peer type adversary in a complex environment, like in a megacity for example -- we're tasked to support these dispersed units from a medical perspective," Fisher said. "It boils down to a situation where air superiority is not something that we can assume. At least not for an extended period of time. So how do we support these units from a medical perspective?" Two types of support in particular are of concern to Fisher. First, how to get medical supplies out to the field if no aircraft or crew are available, or if the flying conditions won't permit it. Second, how to get wounded Soldiers from the field back to treatment facilities in the rear, without using manned aircraft. To help the Army one day provide both of those kinds of support, TATRC is making use of a UAS called the DP-14 "Heavy Fuel Tandem Helicopter" as a platform to test concepts and work out the issues associated with unmanned resupply and unmanned medical evacuation. Fisher said the dual-rotor DP-14 was chosen as a testbed because, among other things, it can carry a 450-pound payload, it has a small footprint, and it can do vertical take-off and landing. All make it ideal to deliver goods, or retrieve injured Solders from just about anywhere. NO HUMANS ALLOWED ... YET The Army has yet to fly a human inside its DP-14, and may actually never do that, Fisher said. Right now, it's not permissible to fly persons inside unmanned systems, at least not in the U.S. One of the things TATRC is working on now, Fisher said, is instrumenting the DP-14 to determine what conditions might be like inside the UAS if a patient were to actually ride inside it. What they want to discover, he said, is if a UAS like the DP-14 can be built to support human life while in the air. Using a system he called the "Environmental Factors Data Acquisition System," they are measuring factors like shock, vibration, noise, temperature, pressure, acceleration, and pitch of the aircraft. All are factors that affect how safe it will be to put a person inside. He said a similar test will be done on the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, which is already used to do medical evacuations, to establish a baseline for what is permissible. Then, he said, they will "really start determining, in a quantitative way, what's the difference in exposure levels," and then look for ways to mitigate the difference. Fisher also said that putting a patient inside a UAS will require some form of patient-support system be available, and that system will need to transmit patient data to caregivers on the ground. Developing those systems, or configuring existing systems for life aboard a UAS is also part of their project. EASY ON THE MEDIC Another issue associated with using a UAS for casualty evacuation -- or even for supply delivery -- is ensuring that its operation doesn't become a burden on the Army medics who are most likely to be its primary users. "Kind of the general problem that we run into is that you have a combat medic out there in the field providing care," Fisher said. "And they are really focused on the patient and they need to remain focused on the patient, both cognitively and with the use of their hands. How do you introduce technology in that environment without diverting attention away from providing care?" The UAS must be truly autonomous, Fisher said, such that the medic only interacts with them in a kind of "supervisory role." "What's the field interface with the medic, and how do they interact with the vehicle?" Fisher asked. "And how do we provide them with situational awareness, and a limited amount of command and control, just to do that high-level interaction?" Fisher suggested that the kinds of interaction a medic might need to have with the UAS would be limited to something as simple as providing an indicator that it's safe for the UAS to land, versus waving it off. When it comes to casualty evacuation, Fisher said, "The ideal scenario is that you have a medevac platform in there with a dedicated medical crew that can take care of a patient while flying en route. That's always plan A." But if it's not possible to get a medevac crew to a location, Fisher said, then a UAS may end up one day being the solution. "I like to call it a plan B," he said. "It's a situation where you can't get a medevac there in time, or there's no medevac assets available due to the threat situation or due to the fact that they are just at capacity." New uniform provides lighter weight without breaking sweat [2017-10-24] WASHINGTON -- The current Army Combat Uniform top weighs in at about 650 grams, or about 1.4 pounds. It's got a lot of pockets and multiple layers of fabric. When it gets wet, it tends to stay wet. And when it's hot out, it tends to keep Soldiers hot. The Army has a solution for that: the Improved Hot Weather Army Combat Uniform that has a whole lot fewer pockets, layers of fabric and Velcro, as well as a new fabric that is actually lighter than the current ACU. "You can hold that uniform up with one finger," said Brig. Gen. Brian P. Cummings, who serves as Program Executive Officer Soldier, out of Fort Belvoir, Virginia. The organization is responsible for managing those Army programs that provide most of the things Soldiers carry or wear. That includes, among other things, individual and crew-served weapons, protective gear, weapons sights and sensors, and uniform items. Cummings said the current Army uniform has a lot of good feedback from Soldiers. But, he said, those uniforms have "all this stuff on it." He was talking about shoulder pockets, and pen pockets and leg pockets and Velcro swatches to hold flags and unit patches. Each one of those pockets requires multiple layers of fabric and fastening material, and buttons. "And they all hold water," Cummings said. "And they cost money." A new uniform on display at PEO Soldier changes all that. While only the top was available for viewing, it has a lot fewer pockets on it, and less extraneous fabric. And the fabric it's made from is lighter than the fabric the current ACU is made from. The Army wants to bring that uniform first to Soldiers in jungle environments, the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii, in particular, where it's both hot and wet. But Cummings said the Army also hopes to bring the uniform to all Soldiers -- to make it available for purchase in military clothing stores. Cummings said he hopes to have a light-weight uniform available within a year, saying that because it is based on an existing uniform that has already been extensively tested, getting this light-weight uniform to the field will take less time. "We've tested the heck out of these," Cummings said. One issue with the light-weight uniform's new fabric is that it might prove itself more susceptible to wrinkling after washing. That could be fixed, Cummings said, with the application of an anti-wrinkle treatment. But that would only happen if it didn't interfere with the uniform's ability to wick away water. Also for consideration, he said, is flame-resistant capability. ...AND A LIGHTER BOOT, TO BOOT Already the Army is looking at a new jungle boot, something requested by senior Army leadership. Thirty thousand pairs were provided to Soldiers in the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii last month for evaluation. Initial feedback on those jungle boots has been positive, Cummings said, but he did say Soldiers are asking for something that is more comfortable even if it means the boots are less durable. "It's over-designed," Cummings said. Cummings said Soldiers want the new jungle boot to be lighter and softer. And they have asked also that the soles of those jungle boots be thinner than what they are now. Cumming said that's going to happen. The next iteration of samples, he said, are "a lot more pliable. And able to serve the Soldier well. But instead of lasting five years, they last two years." Those newer boots, he said, will also go through evaluation with Soldiers, and will have the same capabilities as the jungle boot Soldiers are currently testing. Among other things, those abilities include puncture resistance, more drainage holes, the ability to wick away water, the ability to push water and mud off the soles, speed laces, and lower profile heels so as not to catch on vines on the jungle floor. Medal of Honor awarded to Capt. Gary M. Rose for actions in Laos [2017-10-24] WASHINGTON -- More than 47 years after his heroic actions in the nation of Laos, during the Vietnam War, Capt. Mike Rose was recognized with the Medal of Honor. "This will enshrine him into the history of our nation," said President Donald J. Trump, during the Oct. 23, 2017 Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House. During the Vietnam War, Rose served as a combat medic with the Military Assistance Command Studies and Observations Group, part of Special Forces. He was recognized for actions during a four-day period that spanned Sept. 11 through 14, 1970, in Laos. The mission he was part of, called "Operation Tailwind," had for many years been classified. Trump said Operation Tailwind was meant to prevent the North Vietnamese Army from funneling weapons to their own forces through Laos, along the Ho Chi Minh trail. The operation involved about 136 men, including 16 American Soldiers and 120 Montagnard fighters, who were Vietnamese indigenous people from the Central Highlands. The operation put those involved deep inside Laos. The men had been inserted by helicopter. "Once they landed in the clearing, they rushed to the jungle for much needed cover," Trump said. "Soon, another man was shot outside their defensive perimeter. Mike immediately rushed to his injured comrade, firing at the enemy as he ran. In the middle of the clearing, under the machine gun fire, Mike treated the wounded Soldier. He shielded the man with his own body and carried him back to safety." That was just the start of the four-day mission, Trump said. There was much more to come. "Mike and his unit slashed through the dense jungle, dodged bullets, dodged explosives, dodged everything that you can dodge because they threw it all at him, and continuously returned fire as they moved deeper and deeper and deeper into enemy territory," Trump said. "Throughout the engagement, Mike rescued those in distress without any thought for his own safety," Trump said. "I will tell you, the people with him could not believe what they were witnessing. He crawled from one Soldier to the next, offering words of encouragement as he tended to their wounds." Rose would repeat those selfless actions throughout the four-day Operation Tailwind mission. Rose was himself injured, Trump said. On the second day, Rose was hit with a rocket-propelled grenade, which left shrapnel in his back, and a hole in his foot. "For the next 48 excruciating hours, he used a branch as a crutch and went on rescuing the wounded," Trump said. "Mike did not stop to eat, to sleep, or even to care for his own serious injury as he saved the lives of his fellow Soldiers." On the fourth day in Laos, Rose and others boarded the third of four helicopters that had been sent in to evacuate participants of Operation Tailwind. So many had boarded those first three helicopters that the fourth remained empty. It would seem to be the end of his mission and a return to safety. But it was not. That third helicopter was already damaged by enemy fire when it picked up Rose and the remainder of the fighters, and it took off with only one engine operational. Shortly after lifting off, its remaining engine failed, meaning the aircraft would have to be "auto-rotated" to the ground. On board that aircraft was an injured Marine door gunner who had been shot through the neck and was bleeding profusely. As the helicopter pilots attempted to bring a helicopter with no power safely to the ground, Rose tended to that young Marine's neck -- saving his life. Ultimately, that helicopter crashed to the ground, and the resulting wreckage would provide yet another opportunity for Rose to prove his valor. "Mike was thrown off the aircraft before it hit the ground, but he raced back to the crash site and pulled one man after another out of the smoking and smoldering helicopter as it spewed jet fuel from its ruptured tanks," Trump said. At the conclusion of Operation Tailwind, thanks to the efforts of Rose, all 16 American Soldiers were able to return home. All of them had been injured. All but three of the Montagnard fighters returned as well. During those four days in Laos, "Mike treated an astounding 60 to 70 men," Trump said. And of the mission, which proved to be a success, "their company disrupted the enemy's continual resupply of weapons, saving countless of additional American lives." At the White House for the event were members of Rose's family, including his wife, Margaret Rose, his three children, and two grand-children, and nine previous Medal of Honor recipients. Also in attendance were 10 service members who fought alongside Rose during the operation. They included Sgt. Maj. Morris Adair, Sgt. Don Boudreau, 1st Sgt. Bernie Bright, Capt. Pete Landon, Sgt. Jim Lucas, Lt. Col. Gene McCarley, 1st Sgt. Denver Minton, Sgt. Keith Plancich, Spc. 5 Craig Schmidt, and Staff Sgt. Dave Young. "To Mike and all the service members who fought in the battle: You've earned the eternal gratitude of the entire American nation," Trump said. "You faced down the evils of communism, you defended our flag, and you showed the world the unbreakable resolve of the American armed forces. Thank you. And thank you very much." After speaking, Trump placed the Medal of Honor around Rose's neck. Following the Medal of Honor ceremony, Rose said he believed the medal he'd been awarded was not only for him, but for all those who served -- especially those who had fought in combat but who had not been able to be recognized due to the classified nature of their operations. "This award, which I consider a collective medal, is for all of the men, to include the Air Force and the Marines who helped us," Rose said. "This is our medal. We all earned it. And to a great extent, it is for all the men who fought for those seven years in MACSOG, and even further than that, for all the Special Forces groups who fought and died in that war. "In honor of all those individuals that went for so many years, when the military didn't recognize the fact that MACSOG even existed, and all of those men that fought -- this kind of brings it home. And now our story has been told, and now with this award I am convinced that they have been recognized for the great service they provided to this country. Thank you and God bless the republic of the United States." AER funds available now for Soldiers affected by hurricanes Maria, Irma, Harvey [2017-10-30] WASHINGTON -- Nine weeks ago, Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas -- the first of three devastating storms this year to wreak havoc on the United States and its territories. Since then, Army Emergency Relief has been ready to help Soldiers affected by those storms. "AER is there to help Soldiers and their families," said C. Eldon Mullis, the deputy director and chief operating officer of Army Emergency Relief. "They need to come to us and tell us what their need is. We want to make sure there is a valid need, and if we can help, we certainly want to do that." According to a document released by AER earlier this month, financial assistance is available to qualified recipients affected by those three hurricanes to, among other things, purchase immediate-need items such as food, clothing and shelter; replace essential furniture; fund replacement of damaged or destroyed automobiles; conduct minor home repairs; and purchase generators. "Since our founding in 1942, whenever and wherever AER is needed, we are there; which is particularly important when Soldiers are facing the financial burden of recovering from the devastating impact of natural disasters, such as the recent hurricanes and wildfires," said retired Lt. Gen. Raymond Mason, the director of AER. "AER is all about taking care of the Army team." Mullis said that many recipients of AER had also asked for assistance in advance of Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma so they could evacuate Texas, Georgia and Florida. "Evacuation was the biggest piece, in Texas, Georgia and Florida," he said. But after those storms passed, the requests for assistance changed. "After the hurricanes, what we are seeing is requests for help for things like covering costs for immediate needs until insurance and FEMA claims can be filed," he said. "If they need help with a down payment on another car, because theirs is flooded, we can help with that." AER can assist up to $4,000, for instance, if the cost to repair a flood-damaged vehicle exceeds the value of the vehicle. Already, Mullis said, AER has provided $380,000 worth of assistance to 540 qualified recipients in Texas, Georgia, Florida and Puerto Rico. But he said he thinks more people can be helped in those areas -- if only they'd come forward. "I would hope that everybody who is eligible and has a valid need would come by and ask for help," he said. "We want to be there for them. Call your AER officer, speak with the staff there, tell them what you need assistance for, and if the need is there, they will cut a check." Eligible recipients of AER assistance include active duty Soldiers and their Families, retired Soldiers, and National Guard and Reserve Soldiers on Title 10 orders for more than 30 days. As a result of the recent spate of natural disasters, including all three hurricanes and the wildfires in the U.S. Northwest and California, eligibility for AER funding has also been extended to National Guard Soldiers who have been called up by their state to assist in natural disaster relief. That includes the many Soldiers in the Puerto Rico National Guard who are assisting there with Hurricane Maria relief, and who may have themselves been affected by that storm. Mullis invited those Soldiers to visit the Army Emergency Relief office located at Ft. Buchanan. Soldiers can also contact the Primary AER officer there at 787-600-9026, he said, to seek assistance. "Please come," he said. "We want to give out money to help those in need." In nation's capital, ground officially broken for National WWI Memorial [2017-11-15] WASHINGTON -- Descendants of Soldiers and other veterans of World War I will soon be able to visit a national memorial in the nation's capital that commemorates the sacrifices of their great-grandfathers who fought in "the Great War." An array of politicians, military leaders, veterans and officials from the World War I Centennial Commission officially broke ground for the National World War I Memorial, Nov. 9, at Pershing Park in Washington, D.C. This year marks the 100th anniversary of U.S. involvement in World War I. It was April 6, 1917, when the United States declared war on Germany. The first American Soldiers would make their way across the Atlantic in June of that year. The new memorial to those who served in World War I will share a space with an existing memorial dedicated to General of the Armies John "Black Jack" Pershing, who served as commander of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. The site is a short walk east of the White House. Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley attended the groundbreaking as one of more than a dozen officials. He told those in attendance that World War I provided many lessons learned. Along with lessons in strategy, operations, and tactics, the world also learned lessons in politics and government, he said. "But if there is one lesson most of all to learn, it is the lesson to vow to never let it happen again," Milley said. "The way to prevent war is to maintain your preparedness for war, in the words of George Washington, our first president." Milley said the pre-WWI Army was made up of fewer than 200,000 Soldiers who were spread across the nation in mostly law enforcement-type roles. To accommodate the needs of conflict in Europe, the Army grew quickly to some 4 million Soldiers. Still, the United States military was unprepared for that conflict. "A state of unpreparedness led to many casualties in the battles of the Argonne and many others," Milley said. "So if there is one lesson for us to learn as a nation, it is to be prepared. If you want to sustain the peace, then have large, ready, credible military forces that can do whatever the nation asks it to do in order to ensure this experiment in liberty is passed on to the next generation and the generation after that." Milley said the new WWI memorial will help Americans today fulfill their duty to remember what has happened in the past, and to honor those who sacrificed. "As the chief of staff of the U.S. Army, it is my deep honor to be here today and honor those Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines that perished in the first world war," Milley said. "It is our duty to remember what they fought for, and why they fought. It is our duty to carry on that legacy and ensure the peace goes on into the future." A MEMORIAL THAT RESONATES Seated next to Milley at the ground-breaking event was Joe Weishaar, the now 27-year-old architect, who at just 25 was chosen to design the memorial. "For the last two years it has been my privilege and honor to be a part of what I consider one of the most noble undertakings today, and certainly in my own life," Weishaar said. "Rather than design a landmark that is pompous, ostentatious, or bombastic, we find ourselves here, in a small park, on America's main street, tasked with the creation of a memorial to a group of men and women who gave themselves in service and sacrifice without the thought of how or why or when they would be remembered." It will be Weishaar's architectural design, and the artistry of sculptor Sabin Howard, that will finally provide a memorial to give those WWI veterans the recognition they earned, but never asked for. "It may be long overdue, but today marks another point in the journey of making sure they are not forgotten," Weishaar said. Weishaar said it was back in June 2015 that he first saw a notice advertising a design competition for a national WWI memorial to be based in Washington, D.C. At the time he'd never been to the nation's capital, he said, and had just assumed such a memorial already existed there. "We had memorials to the other notable three wars of the 20th century," he said. After reading that notice announcing the design competition, he said he went online to research WWI, including photos from the war that he found through the National Archives. "The thing that pulled me in were the faces and the names and the stories of the young men I was looking at," he said. "As somebody who grew up in a quiet corner of Arkansas, I felt these people were kindred spirts. We came from small towns, we were roughly 25 years of age, some even five or six years younger, and we were experiencing the larger world for the first time in our lives. The fact that these were men and women who boldly stepped out into the world to defend countless others only cemented my admiration for them. Deciding to submit a design was one of the easiest choices I've ever had to make in my life." The centerpiece of the new memorial will feature a large bas relief bronze sculpture that follows a single Soldier through his own personal WWI experience, beginning with that Soldier leaving home, and his daughter handing him his helmet. Other scenes depict the Soldier marching off to war, fighting, and eventually returning home. Other elements in the memorial will include a pool and green space. "I wanted to create something that would resonate with people the same way it did when I looked at those photographs," Weishaar said. "That somehow you could reach across time and touch the people of a generation past. Those people were real, they were courageous, and they sacrificed everything for a better future. To everybody who has ever served to protect this nation and to everybody who will visit this memorial, there will now be a new place to be reminded of the past and a new place to say thank you." The World War I Centennial Commission expects the new memorial to be dedicated Nov. 11, 2018, which is the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, marking the end of World War I. Army chief of staff: no reduction of standards to meet recruiting goals [2017-11-17] WASHINGTON -- Despite news to the contrary, the Army will not be recruiting bipolar personnel, the Army's chief of staff said, even if those individuals apply for a waiver. "There has been no change in standards," said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley during a Nov. 15 meeting with members of the press. "The Army hasn't reduced standards or changed standards." What has changed, Milley said, is where decisions on waivers are made. In 2009, the Army pulled approval authority out of the hands of U. S. Army Recruiting Command and brought it up to Headquarters Department of the Army level. In August of this year, that decision authority was pushed back down to USAREC, where he said it rightly belongs. "A decision was made in August to re-empower the commanding general of recruiting command with the authority to consider, grant and waive things and approve people in the Army," Milley said. In the Army's sister services -- the Navy, the Marine Corps and the Air Force -- Milley said the approval authority for waivers sits with equivalent agencies. CLARIFYING "CONSIDERATION" Milley parsed out the meaning of the word "consideration" to ensure the definition was clear. He said all services have always considered all waivers. "When someone's application comes in and someone's paperwork is filled out, then someone on the Army's side has to physically look at the paperwork," Milley said. "So you always are considering." Essentially, he said, consideration happens when Army personnel read a waiver. All waivers, then, are considered, in that all waivers are read. But, Milley clarified, "considering a waiver is not the same as granting a waiver." TYPES OF WAIVERS DISALLOWED Milley cited Department of Defense policy, regarding both conduct and mental health, that outline what kinds of waivers cannot be granted. Included among waivers that cannot be granted for entry into service are those for: -- conviction or adverse adjudication for a sexual offense -- major misconduct involving an adult conviction or adult adverse adjudication, which Milley clarified as an "adult felony" -- misconduct or juvenile major misconduct for criminal drug use, for drugs other than marijuana -- mood disorders, to include major depression, cyclothymia, bipolar and other mood disorders -- drug or alcohol use disorder, not in sustained remission (less than 12 months since last occurrence of any diagnostic criterion other than craving) -- any overdose of any medication (prescription or over the counter) accidental or otherwise -- any condition involving self-mutilation as a means of emotional coping -- any suicidal attempt or gesture, to include ideation with plan "Those are the categories," Milley said, where "you aren't coming in the U.S. military." QUALITY TRUMPS QUANTITY Milley said Army recruiters have a tough job filling the ranks with new Soldiers, and those recruiters have to meet both numbers of new recruits, and quality of new recruits. But it's quality that has to be considered first, he said. "If you make the numbers, great. That'll be awesome," Milley said he tells recruiters. "But make the standard. There will be no reduction in accessions standard. No change. You will not reduce quality to gain quantity." Despite a challenging recruiting environment, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey said he thinks Army recruiters will be able to meet their recruiting goals -- even if they have to maintain both Army and DOD standards for new recruits. "It's a tough task, there are 350 million people in America," Dailey said. "And there is a decreasing population of eligible 18-24 year olds. We know that. But I have no doubt that we will be successful in doing that. We demonstrated that last year. We met all DOD thresholds for requirements for our young Soldiers. We had one of the best retention years we've had in over a decade in the U.S. Army by retaining very high quality Soldiers. "Numbers are important, end strength is important," Dailey said. "But quality and standards are paramount and they will not be violated." More 'robust' promotion list offers specialists, sergeants improved upward mobility [2017-12-14] WASHINGTON -- This month, the Army could have selected for promotion over 8,700 additional Soldiers to either sergeant or staff sergeant across more than 90 military occupational specialty and grade combinations. Because not enough Soldiers are integrated on the promotion-recommended list, the Army was unable to fill available positions with Soldiers of these grades. Army personnel data, for instance, shows that less than 20 percent of specialists who were otherwise "fully qualified" and who met Army standards to be recommended for promotion to the rank of sergeant, were actually integrated on a promotion list. A new Army policy released earlier this month aims to ensure that in the future, enough Soldiers will be integrated onto the list. The result will be that more fully-qualified Soldiers get to see promotion, and the Army gets to fill leadership slots. "When leaders at the headquarters level see these integrated promotion list trends, there is a perception and concern that 80 percent of the specialists have no potential to be sergeants in the Army," said Gerald J. Purcell, who serves as the personnel policy integrator within Army G-1's directorate for military personnel policy. "We are sure this is not the case," Purcell said. "However, to enhance the selection process and ensure it is more competitive, fair and equitable for our Soldiers and the Army, we made changes to the relative policies." Purcell said the changes do not lower promotion standards. Instead, he said, they afford fully qualified, quality Soldiers the opportunity to perform at higher ranks. Additionally, he said, the changes enable the Army to maximize the unique talents of those Soldiers. "Our policies must support an Army commitment to retain the talented men and women we have accessed and trained," Purcell said. "These Soldiers are our future." Now, the Army has codified changes to the semi-centralized promotion process to ensure that more Soldiers appear on the promotion recommendation list than have in years past. The changes affect Soldiers in the Regular Army as well as Soldiers in the Army Reserve (Active Guard Reserve.) Under the new policy, every Soldier in the "primary zone" for promotion, and who is also "fully qualified" and meets Army standards for promotion to the next rank, is required to appear before a local promotion board. "Appearance before a local promotion board is mandatory for all Soldiers upon initially reaching primary zone eligibility," reads an Army directive, signed by Secretary of the Army Dr. Mark T. Esper, which spells out the new policy. "All Soldiers approved for promotion list integration will be integrated into the promotion recommended list with all earned promotion points." The semi-centralized promotion process -- which is how specialists become sergeants, and how sergeants become staff sergeants -- requires that commanders recommend fully qualified Soldiers to go before a local promotion board when they display potential to perform at the next higher grade. Soldiers who do well at that local board are then placed on the promotion recommended list, or PRL. The Army uses the PRL to select Soldiers for the next pay grade, based on how many promotion points a Soldier has earned. There are no changes to how promotion points are calculated, Purcell said. For a Regular Army or Army Reserve Soldier to be deemed "fully qualified," they must, among other things, have a high school diploma or GED, have a passing score on their Army Physical Fitness Test, meet weight standards, and not be involved in the Army Substance Abuse Program as a result of a command referral. For specialists seeking promotion to sergeant, they must also have completed Structured Self-Development level 1. For Soldiers seeking promotion to staff sergeant, they must have completed SSD level 2. Specialists reach the primary zone for promotion to sergeant at 35 months' time in service, and 11 months' time in grade. Sergeants reach the primary zone for promotion at 71 months' time in service, 17 months' time in grade. "These policy changes do not equate to automatic promotions," said Purcell. Nevertheless, Purcell said, the changes are expected to reinforce a Soldier's responsibility for taking charge of their careers and opens the opportunity to position themselves for advancement. Some Soldiers who go before that local promotion board may not get a recommendation to the PRL. If that happens, those Soldiers must be counseled on why they were not recommended. "Counseling must identify what Soldiers must do to improve their knowledge, skills, and attributes and to prepare themselves for increased responsibility," reads the directive. "The counseling also must address the consequences of not being integrated into the promotion recommended list. This policy change enhances leader and professional development by reinforcing and getting the most out of existing counseling requirements." Eventually, all fully qualified Soldiers who meet Army standards, but have not yet been recommended by a promotion board for inclusion on the PRL, will be integrated onto the PRL through a new mandatory list integration requirement. For specialists, that mandatory list integration comes at 47 months' time in service, 23 months' time in grade. For sergeants, it comes at 83 months' time in service, 23 months' time in grade. Commanders will not have the ability to stop mandatory list integration, however, when a commander feels a Soldier has no promotion potential, they must use the "bar to continued service," along with counseling, to keep them off the promotion list. The Army Directive makes it clear that unit leaders are responsible for training and developing Soldiers for increased levels of responsibility by the time a Soldier attains promotion eligibility in the primary zone. The newly established mandatory list integration policy, one full year following primary zone eligibility, reinforces an up-or-out Army system. "Retention of Soldiers with no potential is inconsistent with Army service," Purcell said. The bar to continued service puts those Soldiers identified as having no potential on notice that their continued service may not be in the Army's best interest. Soldiers who reach the "secondary zone" for promotion -- which is earlier than the primary zone -- and who are also fully qualified, will still need to be recommended to a promotion board by their commanders. NOT ENOUGH SOLDIERS "There are not enough Soldiers integrated onto the recommended list for us to promote to actual requirements," said Purcell. "We want to promote Soldiers by military occupational specialty, but they are not there to promote." What Purcell said he and his team perceived was that unit leaders may opt to only recommend the "best of the best" of their Soldiers to appear before a local promotion board -- which is completely understandable. But often, that practice excludes many other quality Soldiers who are also fully qualified for promotion. Additionally, having local standards for who should be recommended to go before a promotion board creates an uneven playing field for Soldiers across the Army when it comes to advancement. If a commander at "Unit Alpha," for instance, sets the bar extremely high for his board recommendation, and across the country at "Unit Bravo," another commander sets the bar just slightly lower, then it's possible for a Unit Bravo Soldier to get promoted over a more qualified Soldier from Unit Alpha -- because the Unit Alpha Soldier was never recommended to a board, and thus, never had his name appear on a PRL. "The commanders look at Soldiers and they recommend their best people for promotion," Purcell said. But, "there is this perception among Soldiers that the leaders at the company level are not being fair. I think that's not the case. What I think is happening is unit leaders are thinking the best people in their unit should be promoted. But what happens is when one limits those individuals at the unit level to 'the best,' there is no robust list for us at the department level to select the best in the Army as opposed to the best in one's unit. That's a big problem because it negatively impacts readiness and morale. Today, because there is no depth, as soon as a Soldier is recommended for promotion in many MOSs, they immediately make the cutoff score." Under the new policy, every Soldier who reaches the "primary zone" and who is fully qualified, will have a shot at the next pay grade by competing against every other Soldier in their MOS, based on the promotion points they have earned. "What we are doing is enhancing Army readiness levels by strengthening the NCO Corps," said Purcell. "We will do this in part by getting all fully qualified Soldiers who meet Army standards on the list so that when we pull all the names in from across the Army, we have a robust list that will allow us to ... meet enterprise-wide requirements, and have enough people to meet competing demands." That new process, Purcell said, places the responsibility on each individual Soldier to strive for increased promotion points. It also drives their behavior towards self-improvement. Additionally, because of the increased competition, the new promotion policy improves the overall selection process by ensuring the best qualified Soldiers are selected for promotion from a list of fully qualified Soldiers. The Army's intent with the policy changes is threefold, Purcell said. The first intent is to improve Army readiness by addressing skill and grade shortages, the second is to enhance promotion rates, and the third is to further develop Soldiers. The refined polices ensure fully qualified, quality Soldiers who meet Army standards, are afforded promotion opportunities. Conversely, the same policy denies continued service to those Solider who demonstrate no potential increased responsibility. "This strengthens our Army and our NCO Corps," Purcell said. Army secretary brings combat experience to Pentagon [2017-12-14] WASHINGTON -- Less than a month ago, on Nov. 20, Dr. Mark T. Esper was sworn in as the Army's 23rd secretary. With Esper now on board, the Army gets not only a top Civilian leader with experience in both government and the private sector -- but also a leader who has a deep understanding of what it means to be a uniformed Soldier. ACADEMY GRAD Esper grew up in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, south of Pittsburgh, and first donned an Army uniform in 1982, when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. "It was probably more of a calling than anything," he said of his choice to join the service. Short of a few uncles who had been drafted during Vietnam, Esper said he really had no immediate military influence in his family. "But I was intrigued by the academy, its educational opportunities and I always enjoyed playing Army, so to speak, growing up," Esper said. "I loved the Army. And it all came together at the academy." Like all cadets at the time, Esper was destined to earn an engineering degree while at West Point. But his focus area, he said, was on international relations and political science. Esper branched into infantry, and graduated from West Point in the spring of 1986. His first assignment was with the 3rd of the 187th Infantry Regiment, the "Rakkasans," part of the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. "When I arrived at the post, they were out in the field," Esper said. "So they issued me my equipment. And they said 'Lieutenant, go join your platoon.' And so I joined my platoon like at midnight on a cold winter night at Fort Campbell. And they said 'Oh, by the way, the helicopters are due in at 0600', and 'You are leading the battalion air assault. Welcome to the Army.'" In 1990, four years into his 10-year active-duty stint, Esper said he was on PCS leave and headed to Fort Benning, Georgia, to attend the Infantry Officer Advanced Course. That's when he heard the unit he'd just left, the 101st, was going to go to war in the Persian Gulf -- a response to Saddam Hussein's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Esper said he knew then he couldn't go to school, not with a war about to happen. He said he knew he had to go back to his infantry unit. "That's what we do," Esper said. "That's our duty. My unit was going, my friends were going. It's just what we do." After contacting the unit he'd just left, he said, the right phone calls were made that allowed for his orders to be changed so that he could go back to Fort Campbell and rejoin his fellow Soldiers. Still, all his stuff was at Fort Benning, where he'd been planning to go to attend school. "I had to go to Benning to find all my gear and get clothes for my wife, and then rejoined the unit," he said. "And then we deployed." While deployed, Esper said, he served as the assistant operations officer for his unit. He earned a bronze star there for his achievements in planning operations for Task Force Rakkasan. "What we did was we lifted lots of vehicles. We took the whole force, helicoptered up to just south of Highway 8 as I recall, in southern Iraq," he said. "And then we had to ground march there. I was the S3 in part of that, the planning and the execution of all of that. We took Task Force Rakkasan from the staging area all the way up to our battle positions and where we fought for three or four days." Esper retired after 21 years in the Army, serving in all three components. In 1996, he left the active force and joined the Virginia National Guard, where he served as part of the 29th Infantry Division. After a few years in the Virginia Guard, he transitioned to the D.C. National Guard. And finally, before retiring from the Army in 2007 as a lieutenant colonel, he did time with the Army Reserve as well. Having seen all three components of the total force, Esper is well-positioned to understand the value each brings to the fight. He has a high opinion of the National Guard, for instance. "When I left active duty and reported into the 29th Infantry, I found there were a lot of folks in the Guard who had prior military experience -- they had the benefit of that behind them," Esper said. "I came to find that the National Guard and Reserve was more than just a weekend a month and two weeks a year. Folks were putting in multiple nights during the week, multiple weekends. I found a lot of dedication and commitment to the cause, and I came to really respect the Guard." One thing Esper said he sees as a challenge for the Army National Guard is finding ways for those Soldiers to get more training. He said he didn't see a shortfall in their performance in combat, of course. "I thought they were as capable as many active-duty units," he said. "And I think that proved itself out in 2003 when we went to war." But he does think it is both necessary and a challenge to provide Guard Soldiers more time to train. "Many of them want to train," Esper said. "But the challenge is, you still have employers who have to give up a Soldier for months at a time. And that's tough on an employer. You have to be conscious of the balance you strike there. What concerns me is we are on this deployment cycle right now where dwell-to-deploy time is one to one. And it's tough for everyone: active duty, Guard and Reserve. And Guard and Reserve more uniquely, because they have employers." While Guard and Reserve Soldiers won't lose their private-sector jobs as a result of military deployments, Esper said, they may lose out on opportunities there for advancement. "That's what I've seen from friends. They get off track in a civilian career. That can be a challenge." FIVE PRIORITIES Esper has laid out five priorities for the Army. Two, he said, are "enduring" in nature and are at the very core of what it means to be in the Army. Those enduring priorities, Esper said -- which he mentioned last month on Capitol Hill as part of his confirmation hearing -- include taking care of people and remaining focused on the Army's values. "I've asked everybody to take a look at our Army values," Esper said. "I think they are comprehensive. I've asked leaders specifically to recommit to those. I think with the challenges we face with sexual harassment and assault in the ranks, and things like that, I think getting back to those Army values where we treat everybody with dignity and respect will help us move forward." Three other priorities Esper calls "focused" in nature. These are familiar to those who have been paying attention to the Army's chief of staff and other Army leadership, and include readiness, modernization, and reform. Readiness, as first articulated by Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley when he was sworn in back in 2015, remains the Army's top priority. "It's making sure we are ready to deploy, fight and win against a high-end threat, tonight," Esper said. "That means do we have enough munitions, are our vehicles well-maintained and taken care of, is training focused on the high-end fight, and last, are we, do we have sufficient personnel in the units?" On a recent trip to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, he was able to get a glimpse of Army readiness in action. "I was able to see all those components," he said. "I was able to get a good feel for munitions ... a good feel for where we are on maintenance training and personnel. And clearly, the training is going in the right direction. I think we need to do better in terms of fleshing out the units and spare parts, particularly for the vehicles." Modernization, he said, is "making sure we have the means to build greater capacity and capability into the future force so that we have future readiness. And that means, as I said on the Hill, I don't believe we can get there without overhauling, without reforming our current acquisition system. It's more than just acquisition. It's about how do we fight doctrinally. It's about our formations. But most of the energy is on the modernization piece." Helping with modernization, Esper said, will be Army Futures Command, first announced in October. The new command, Esper said, is "more than just equipment. It's an organization that will help us try to identify the future in terms of future threats. There will be a part of it that deals with the technology, the acquisition piece, if you will. There will be a part of it that helps us map out the future. And there will be another part that helps us determine what the requirements are. The future is more than technology. That's why we are tending to lean toward Army futures command as the name." The new command is expected to stand up by summer of 2018. In addition to being a Soldier, Esper has worked in the private sector for a defense contractor that counted the Army as among its customers. Seeing the Army from the outside looking in has given him a perspective into how the Army conducts business operations. That experience, Esper said, is going to help him with his third Army priority, which is reform. "How do we free up time, money and manpower to put into other areas?" Esper asked. "DOD is not getting nearly as much funding as we need. So we have got to be better stewards of the taxpayer dollar and figure out where we put our priorities." One area ripe for reform, Esper said, is the requirements process within the Army acquisition process -- "that is getting a set of requirements more quickly that are reasonable to achieve." Esper said he remembers being in industry and looking at how the Army defined to industry what it needed. "Somebody might say 'Hey, it would be neat if we could do this,'" he recalled. "And then industry, trying to serve the customer, would run off in a direction and try to fix something or adapt something that would end up adding time and cost to the schedule. There has to be discipline in that requirements process and how both sides interact." Finding that discipline will be a priority for Esper during his term as secretary. Helping him do that will be the Army Futures Command. "This new Futures Command that we are talking about standing up should take us a major step forward in terms of getting there," he said. He imagined that requirements for new systems could be defined 70 to 80 percent up front. "We can't let the perfect be the enemy of the better," he said. Once requirements go out to industry, though, they should be locked in, he added. "Once we set them, don't change them. What you do is you build that first increment, if you will, of whatever it is, and then you have to leave room in the architecture, the modularity, the scalability, so that you can continue to upgrade on subsequent increments of whatever platform or weapon that you are designing or developing." Also helping reform the way acquisition is accomplished, Esper said, will be the Army's Acquisition Corps -- a cadre of men and women he said who need to be "re-empowered" to do their jobs. "For any number of reasons over the years, the entire acquisition process has become much more risk-averse," he said. "And the program managers and program executive officers have been inundated with people, stakeholders from other parts of the Army, coming up with great ideas on how to do their jobs. I think we need to re-empower them in this process and move them toward a less risk-adverse posture. I will have a lot to do with that." Reform of Army business processes, including acquisition, sometimes seems like dry subject matter, he said. But the end result will be better tools delivered more quickly and at less cost, to enable Soldiers to do their job. "At the end of the day ... the outcome has to be that we are delivering to Soldiers what they need when they need it, and at much better cost than what it is today," Esper said, adding that he envisions the Army now on a path to fielding new platforms, new weapons, including a combination of manned and unmanned vehicles, "sometime in the next 10 to 15 years." READING SOLDIERS' NEEDS Esper's been on the job for about a month now, and one thing his new role involves is getting out to visit Soldiers. He's been to Fort Irwin already to meet both Soldiers and their Families. In the new year, he said, he plans to get out to other areas of the Army as well, including to both Europe and the Pacific. "I'll visit units and Soldiers and talk to Family Readiness Groups and get a good feel for how the Army is doing, and how the Soldiers, commanders and NCOs feel about readiness, modernization -- future readiness -- and a good feel for do they think we're taking care of them? How do they feel about MWR? Schools?" ALL-ARMY LEADERSHIP Neither the secretary of the Army nor the undersecretary are required to have military experience. But both Under Secretary of the Army Ryan D. McCarthy and Esper are veteran Army officers, and he believes that's a plus. "We all work well together," Esper said of working with the Army's top uniformed leaders such as Milley, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. James C. McConville and Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey. "We are all focused. We're a leadership team that has all been in the Army and has seen combat, and we are all focused on readiness. "I think we share that vision and we are getting great support from SecDef [Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis], because that's his benchmark. And we are entering an era where we can really apply that common philosophy, that common viewpoint to really double down on near-term readiness and future readiness. It's essential to have that leadership focus and I think we have it with this team." Easy fixes for certain issues to get Soldiers moved from non-deployment status, SMA says [2018-02-14] WASHINGTON -- Being ready to go to the fight is at the top -- the very top -- of the list of things a Soldier needs to be in order to be successful in the Army. "The No. 1 responsibility as an individual is to maintain deployability," said Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey, during a Feb. 8 forum at the Association of the U.S. Army. With the Army now looking at new ways, in particular through policy, to reduce the number of Soldiers in the ranks who are unable to deploy, Dailey said the fix at the individual Soldier level is quite easy. "It's not as big a problem as people make it out to be," Dailey said. "This is as simple as going to the dentist." Not having been to the dentist, for instance, might mean a Soldier is marked as not being completely ready to deploy, and that means the Soldier will be among the many who are marked non-deployable for combat. That's a mark against Army readiness. "We have to be creative and incentivize deployability in the Army," Dailey said. "That's an indication of our readiness, but it's a negative indication. Making sure they are doing their post-deployment health assessment, their annual checkups with their doctor, getting all their shots. The simple things. That accounts for the largest non-deployable rate." Dailey also said there is an inherent risk in what Soldiers do. The Army must be ready to help Soldiers recover who get hurt doing their jobs, either in combat or back home during training. "We need to put sports medicine doctors down in the unit level, just like we do in our special mission units and our Ranger battalions. We know for a fact that doing that will reduce that down time for those Soldiers and increase our readiness rates in each one of those organizations. And we are doing just that. So we have to invest in those Soldiers." A change in Army culture is also needed, Dailey said. "That culture has to exist all the way down to individual Soldiers," he said. "This is an institution that requires you to be ready to fight and win. Stand up to the oath you gave: defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. I tell our Soldiers all the time, we don't play home games. Our job is to play away games only. And you have to be ready to fight, and you have to be deployable to do that." The Army is looking into policies that will attempt to reduce the number of non-deployable Soldiers in the ranks. Included among those polices are those that affect Soldiers who remain non-deployable for a continuous 12-month period, as well as Soldiers who are non-deployable for 12 non-consecutive months during an 18-month period. Such policies will require that commanders initiate separation action for those Soldiers. Dailey said that the Army will still take care of those Soldiers, however. "That doesn't mean we're not going to take care of people," he said. "It means we have to be focused on readiness ... We have a commitment to the sons and daughters that are given to us. We have a responsibility to take care of them for the rest of their lives, if we hurt them, if they are hurt ... doing the duty we ask them to do." Still, Dailey said, with the Army chief of staff's number one priority being readiness, and with Soldier deployability being a necessary component of readiness, the Army must get after the number of non-deployable Soldiers. "To wear the uniform, we have to make sure they are ready to fight and win," Dailey said. "Because deterrence is our main goal. And we do that through strength." First class of AIT drill sergeants graduate 'conversion' course [2018-03-12] WASHINGTON -- Last Friday, 84 noncommissioned officers graduated from a 10-day course at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, that ended with them becoming Army drill sergeants with the right to wear the coveted campaign hat. The Soldiers were the first to graduate from a 10-day "conversion" course designed to convert NCOs who had previously led advanced individual training platoons into full-fledged drill sergeants. For the last decade, two types of NCOs have helped move new Soldiers through the Army's "soldierization" process. At basic combat training, there were drill sergeants. And when those new Soldiers moved on to AIT, they fell under the guidance of an AIT platoon sergeant. But that is no longer the case. The Army made a decision earlier this year to eliminate the position of AIT platoon sergeant and replace those NCOs with drill sergeants. The move, which is a return to what the Army had done a decade ago, is designed to take advantage of the symbolism of the campaign hat worn by drill sergeants. "When you see somebody walking around with a drill sergeant hat on, you understand that's the best of the best and you need to go ahead and shape up, because you know he's going to make an on-the-spot correction," said Command Sgt. Maj. Edward W. Mitchell, of the Center for Initial Military Training, at Fort Eustis, Virginia. Drill sergeants, Mitchell said, are symbols of excellence in initial entry training and are themselves experts in all warrior tasks and battle drills. Those with the campaign hat, he said, live the Army values and exemplify the warrior ethos. One benefit of having drill sergeants at AIT is that now, for new Soldiers, the campaign hat will serve as an ever-present, easily identifiable symbol of professional excellence from the moment they arrive at basic combat training to the time they depart for their first duty assignment. Another benefit to the Army, he said, is that instead of two schools and two types of NCOs involved in training new Soldiers, there will now be just one kind: the drill sergeant. And that provides greater flexibility to the Army, Mitchell said. "If we need to use them, they can be used anywhere across the enterprise," he said of drill sergeants. Mitchell said that the NCOs who serve now as drill sergeants or as AIT platoon sergeants are "the best the Army has to offer." And those top-notch AIT platoon sergeants, about 600 of them, will all be going to the conversion course to be made into drill sergeants. The Army expects it will need to run a total of seven cycles of that specialized conversion course before all 600 AIT platoon sergeants are converted. After that, the special course will no longer be needed. The drill sergeant course at the U.S. Army Drill Sergeant Academy lasts about nine weeks, Mitchell said. And NCOs who in the past trained to be AIT platoon sergeants went through the first six weeks of that school alongside those learning to be drill sergeants. After that, those destined to be AIT platoon sergeants would split off from drill sergeant school and go learn other things. Part of their specialized AIT platoon sergeant training involves attendance at the master resilience course. During the 10-day conversion course, those AIT platoon sergeants will pick up on some additional skills that will allow them to become drill sergeants. Some of those skills include rifle marksmanship, drill sergeant duties and responsibilities, drill and ceremony, and chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense training. By the time they are done, the knowledge they learned from when they trained to be AIT platoon sergeants, plus the training they get at the conversion course, will mean they have what it takes to be a drill sergeant. They'll be entitled to the campaign hat and badge, along with the special duty assignment pay that comes with being a drill sergeant, Mitchell said. Mitchell said it's expected that by October, there will no longer be any AIT platoon sergeants in the Army, only drill sergeants. Army Secretary Esper: Budget flexibility, Congress' support can help Army modernize [2018-03-14] WASHINGTON -- The Army is grateful for increases offered in the Fiscal Year 2018 budget, said the service's secretary, but added greater flexibility on how to use that money is needed to make the best use of it. "Giving us flexibility -- and there's a lot of talk on the Hill of doing that -- to spend those dollars, in my mind, will make sure we spend it smartly, more effectively," said Secretary of the Army Dr. Mark T. Esper. He also said that with more flexibility in spending, he will be able to provide "better training for my Soldiers, better maintenance, and I can deliver better outcome for the taxpayer." As part of a discussion Monday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., Esper, along with other service secretaries, spelled out what Congress might do to help their services besides additional funding. Esper said he is looking for legislative assistance in the future, possibly with revisions to the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act, as a way to better manage personnel and talent in the Army. In the short term, Esper said there may be a need for legislative changes that will allow the Army more flexibility in the way it conducts acquisition, especially as the Army plans to stand up its Futures Command this summer. The new command is expected to go a long way toward furthering the Army's six primary modernization goals. "I think helping us follow through and overhaul the acquisition system, geared toward Army Futures Command and what we are building, would be helpful," Esper said. MODERNIZATION In October 2017, the Army spelled out six primary capabilities it wants to modernize. Those capabilities include long-range precision fires, a next-generation combat vehicle, future vertical lift platforms, a mobile and expeditionary Army network, air and missile defense capabilities, and Soldier lethality. Also in October, the Army announced it would stand up a new command this summer called the Army Futures Command. This command would bring the pursuit of those modernization goals and other goals that arise in the future under one roof, as well as the acquisition efforts that will be needed to move them all forward. Esper told those at the CSIS event that now is the right time for the Army to build Futures Command. "The Army has had its share over the years of good programs," Esper said. "But we've also had our share of programs that have gone bad. Billions of dollars spent, years behind delivery, or maybe a product never appearing." Future Combat Systems and the Comanche helicopter program are examples of failed programs, he said. Failed programs such as these "hurt us from a fiscal standpoint," Esper explained. "And it's denied the Soldiers the tools, equipment and weapons systems he or she needs to be effective on the battlefield." Army Futures Command will solve the problems that led programs like Comanche or FCS to fail, he said. Right now, Esper noted that the critical components for Army acquisition are spread through multiple commands. "What we are proposing to do with Army Futures Command is to pull in all those disparate elements that are critical to the modernization process and put them under a single command, with a single person in charge, a single general officer, who is now responsible, and who is accountable to me and the chief of staff of the Army for delivering those products on time and on schedule within the key performance parameters," Esper said. The new command "really promises us the ability to deliver what the Soldier needs, when he or she needs it," he added. BEST SOLDIERS Esper also said that while other nations and potential adversaries may continue to develop new weapons systems -- which the U.S. will match -- what sets the U.S. military apart from other military forces is not gear, but people. "I think what distinguishes our military, which makes us the premiere fighting force in the world, which guarantees, I'm confident, that we will prevail in any conflict, is the quality of our service members, of our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines," Esper said. "They are, bar none, the best in the world. They are smart, they are aggressive, they are persistent, and they have a lot of grit." Esper said he Army needs modernized gear for Soldiers, and he plans on getting the Army started in that pursuit. But what the Army also needs, he said, are "a lot of these service members." 'We are not going to yield the air domain': Future vertical lift team aims to elevate Soldiers [2018-03-22] WASHINGTON -- Historically, it has taken well over a decade to bring a new aircraft into the Army's inventory. But the Army can't wait that long to replace its fleet of rotary-wing aircraft, said Brig. Gen. Walter Rugen. So now, the Army plans to deliver a whole family of new vertical-lift aircraft in less than 10 years. Rugen, a rotary-wing pilot with more than 2,200 hours of flight time in the MH-60K/L Black Hawk, UH-1 Iroquois, and OH-6 Little Bird, serves as deputy commander for support with the 7th Infantry Division at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. He is also now dual-hatted as the head of the Army's newly-created Future Vertical Lift Cross-Functional Team. The team is one of eight designed to expedite the Army's pursuit of six modernization priorities. Those priorities, first laid out in October by the Army's Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley, are air and missile defense; long-range precision fires; a next-generation combat vehicle; future vertical lift; the Army's network; and Soldier lethality. The Future Vertical Lift Cross-Functional Team, or FVL CFT, is focused on replacing legacy Army aircraft such as the CH-47 Chinook, the AH-64 Apache, and the Black Hawk with a new family of aircraft that share a common architecture. New FVL aircraft must "increase our reach, our lethality, our sustainability, protection, or survivability, and maintainability," Rugen said. "This is going to be something that we are open to rotorcraft, not necessary helicopters," Rugen explained. "It'll be vertical-lift rotorcraft, but maybe some things that are different, more compound, advanced designs." FVL will also be "clean-sheet" designed, Rugen said -- that is, completely new. "We don't want to take a form factor like Apache or Blackhawk or Chinook and apply something to it," he said. Instead, the Army hopes to "make the next generation of those vehicles." Rugen said the goal of the CFT is to deliver that new family of aircraft to the Army in record time, on budget, and within the confines of existing acquisition law. Achieving that goal will require a keen understanding of acquisition regulations, direct access to the senior-most decision makers in the Army, and a full understanding of the aircraft and capabilities that peer adversaries could potentially yield. Time is of the essence, Rugen said, and the FVL CFT must overcome where other acquisition efforts have failed. The standard for delivering an aircraft is 15 years, though certainly some programs have taken longer. He said he's got to beat that -- by a lot. "There is going to be significant time chopped off what is the standard," he said. "I don't think that they would allow me to do a ten-year program. They just won't. It's not accepted. Ten years? Too long. The chief has challenged us for things in the mid-term. That's certainly our goal. The warfighter cannot wait for the increased reach, protection, lethality that we are going to bring and the resilience we are going to bring in this rapidly changing, very complex world we find ourselves in." GETTING TO FVL, FAST The new cross-functional teams are designed to circumvent bureaucracy that has hindered progress in earlier programs. CFTs are plugged in at the very top to the undersecretary of the Army and the vice chief of staff of the Army, and cut across functional communities like acquisition, resourcing, science and technology, and operations. "We have to crush the bureaucracy," Rugen said. "The threat is going to compel us to succeed, and we have some great strategies on cutting though some of the bureaucracy created by the current acquisition process." Rugen said he wants to get requirements for FVL hammered out this year, which would be way ahead of schedule. "Requirements generation that typically took two to three years, we're going to take three to four months. That's an example." Requirements generation may be tough for a program as big as FVL. But what may be tougher is sticking to those requirements, especially if program managers become tempted by new, emerging technologies, where last-minute decisions to include those technologies could mean program delays. There's plenty of examples of that, Rugen said. "We have learned from our past program failures," he said. "When you think about Comanche, when you think about Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter and Armed Aerial Scout, we're informed by that. We have really stated across the Army aviation community that we are going to pick a requirement and stick with it. There's not going to be requirements drift. We're not going to be adding the latest gizmo or flavor of the month. We have to get an air vehicle out to the field and then spirally develop it afterward." Contracting is also an area where Rugen said the CFT can shave off time in bringing FVL to the force. "We're not going to take two years to write a contract," he said. "We're going to use other authorities and things that are 100 percent within the spirit and intent of the laws and policies that are out there, but allow us to go much faster." Rugen added that the FVL CFT will also "do early and often prototyping," and look at things that are already available that might be easily adapted to the Army's needs. "We are going to buy, try and decide things that are already on the market," he said. "And in this way I think we are going to use what industry has already produced and done and get it into Soldiers' hands much quicker than what we have done in the past." Rugen said that FVL CFT members have already been doing maneuverability and agility testing on future vertical lift technology demonstrators out in California. OPEN ARCHITECTURE AIRCRAFT CAN FLY ITSELF Rugen said with the FVL family of aircraft, the Army wants a common, open architecture that is resilient against cyber intrusion, but at the same time allows for rapid upgrades when necessary. "I think there's going to be a lot of commonality in the sub-systems" between aircraft, he said. "So if you think about the processing, the digital cockpit, the weapons, those are all going to be common." And it goes beyond just the Army, he said. There's joint interest in FVL, and that open architecture will allow other services to benefit from the efficiencies of commonality between their own aircraft, and with aircraft flown by sister services. "The Air Force part and the Marine Corps part can go on an Army helicopter," Rugen said. "And Army mechanics can fix a Marine Corps variant, potentially. The commonality is a little bit deeper than just the parts. It's also some of the fundamental things we do." Rugen also said the CFT envisions that FVL might even fly itself, if need be. "We are going to build these air vehicles so they are optionally manned," Rugen said. "We are going to do that through digital flight controls and fully coupling them, so if we need to be unmanned with the rotorcraft, we can." Rugen also added that part of the FVL CFT's domain will be advanced unmanned aircraft systems, or AUAS, that can team with FVL and do the "dull" and "dangerous" work, such as conducting long-term persistent surveillance, or operating in a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high yield explosive environment. "That advanced UAS is going to help us penetrate contested airspace in conjunction and in teaming with our lethal, capable future vertical lift rotorcraft," Rugen said. "That advanced team is going to be kind of an ecosystem that we kind of bring to the fight, that is going to be able to dominate a corridor or a window in a certain time where the enemy brings significant capabilities, so we can flow through as a joint force." DISCIPLINE Like most things in the military, discipline is at the root of success, Rugen said. Keeping his team on track, and delivering FVL to the Army on time will require plenty of discipline. "As a leader, we need to effectively communicate the risk to the force, if we drift, if we become ill-disciplined," Rugen said. "We have some pretty compelling problems out there, with the peer and near-peer threats we see." Looking at what the Army sees now and what's on the horizon in terms of future combat should be enough to keep everybody on track to deliver a future vertical-lift capability with improved reach, lethality and survivability, Rugen said. "Our warfighter needs them," Rugen said. "I go back to the degraded and contested environments we talk about, the anti-access/area-denial, the megacities, and these very complex spaces. And I think that's going to be a kind of clarion call to everyone to say, hey, stay focused, because we have to deliver ... we are not going to yield the air domain." Army 'confident in current capabilities' chief of staff says [2018-04-18] WASHINGTON -- There is no doubt it will take a lot of work to maintain the existing military edge the U.S. has now over adversaries, said the Army's chief of staff, but right now, the service feels good about its current capabilities. "We are confident in our current capabilities, and we are confident in our current systems, relative to Russia, China, or anyone else, for that matter," said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, during testimony Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The general, sitting aside Secretary of the Army Mark T. Esper, told lawmakers that despite the advantage the Army currently has, others are working very hard to catch up. "We are keenly aware of the modernization programs of both Russia and China right now," Milley said. "And we are aware that we need to shift gears rapidly, into the modernization, in order to make sure that we don't have parity or that they don't close the gap. We want a military, across the board, to be unbelievably lethal and unbelievably dominant, so that no nation will ever challenge the U.S. militarily." The Army announced in October plans to build a new Futures Command dedicated to expediting development and delivery of new combat capabilities to Soldiers. That command will focus on the Army's six modernization priorities, including long-range precision fires, a next-generation combat vehicle, future vertical lift platforms, a mobile and expeditionary Army network, air and missile defense capabilities, and Soldier lethality. The location of the new command has yet to be decided, but Esper told senators the Army initially identified as many as 150 possible locations and has since narrowed that list down to about a dozen. Where the Army ultimately decides to put the Futures Command will depend in large part on the talent and amenities available in the surrounding community. "We want to make sure we can attract the top talent, with access to an ecosystem of talent," Esper said. "It's critical we have access to talent ... not just on the material side, particularly with the hard sciences, but also talent to think about the future strategic environment -- thinking in the 2030s and the 2040s." Esper said availability of talent, proximity to innovation, and academia, along with quality of life and cost of living, will all be key factors in determining where the Army decides to locate Futures Command. Eight Cross-Functional Teams dedicated to supporting the six modernization priorities have already been stood up and are now actively working toward the modernization goals they support. Eventually, each of the teams will fall under the Army Futures Command. Even before Futures Command stands up, however, the Army is working toward its modernization goals. One effort the Army is already pursuing is development of a replacement for combat vehicles such as the Bradley, Stryker and Abrams tank. "These systems were designed and came online many years ago," Milley told lawmakers. While they have had incremental upgrades since, he said, "they are products of technologies and ideas that come out of the 1960s and the 1970s." Development of the Next Generation Combat Vehicle is underway, Milley said. The NGCV will replace existing combat vehicles, which he said right now have about 15 years of useful life left in them. "We think by 2028, we should be able to begin fielding the NGCV that is optimized for urban operations, that is both either manned or unmanned for ground operations, [and] that has lethality, power, speed, and weight optimized for the next generation of the battlefield we perceive." Milley told senators that while the NGCV will include the capability to be driven by an actual Soldier, it will also have the option to be driven remotely. And the requirement for that capability -- to operate autonomously -- is not limited to just ground vehicles, he said. "Every ground and rotary-wing vehicle that the U.S. Army produces from now on -- the next generation, after Bradley, after Abrams, every single one of them -- has to have the base requirement that it has to be either manned or unmanned ... either fully autonomous or semi-autonomous, built in its very basic requirement," Milley said. "It has to be able to have that option so the commander on the battlefield of the future has that option, based on mission, enemy, terrain, time and troops available, to pick whether he wants [an] objective to be seized with manned vehicles or not." Esper said the same applies to vehicles such as trucks that perform logistics operations. "We hope to accelerate that as well, so we can be experimenting in the next couple of years with regard to unmanned sustainment and logistics support," Esper said. Milley said that while the Army is developing the NGCV, it is also "aggressively" providing upgrades to existing Abrams, Bradley, and Stryker combat vehicles across all Army formations. "I am very confident that those weapons systems will continue to serve us well, even against a Russia or a China in the near term," he said. Another area of modernization the Army is focused on now is the network. "We know that we have learned from various studies of what we saw the Russians do in Ukraine, that we need a network that is reliable, that is resilient, that is mobile, and that can meet our needs in such an environment," Esper said. Esper said next-generation network and communications technology is just one aspect of maintaining an edge on adversaries in terms of communications. Another aspect, he said, is training for Soldiers. "We need to look at trying to make sure Soldiers are training now to operate in an environment in which they have either no data or communications are limited," he said. "I was pleased to see on my first trip to the National Training Center in November that the [1st. Cavalry Division] was actually doing that. The OPFOR out there were presenting that type of scenario, and we were training in an environment of limited communications." Milley confirmed that while the modern Army is very dependent on GPS and position navigation and timing to conduct operations, Soldiers are being trained and are capable of operating in an environment where those capabilities are degraded or unavailable. The top modernization priority for the Army, Esper said, is long-range precision fires. Ongoing efforts with that modernization priority involve the Paladin Integrated Management System, the Extended Range Cannon Artillery, and at the strategic level, hypersonics. With hypersonics and other kinds of advanced technologies, Esper said, the Army is working with the Navy and the Air Force to advance joint efforts in parallel. "We really need to pool our efforts together, and look at how we can make sure we are making advancements and not duplicating efforts to get more bang for every dollar we put toward it," Esper said. Vietnam helicopter pilots, crewmembers memorialized in Arlington National [2018-04-19] WASHINGTON -- Nearly 5,000 helicopter pilots and crewmembers lost their lives conducting aerial operations in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. On Wednesday, a monument to those service members was dedicated in Arlington National Cemetery. The Vietnam War was "the helicopter war," said now-retired Maj. Gen. Carl H. McNair. "Over 12,000 helicopters -- Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps -- carried the fight to the enemy." McNair was himself a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War. He served in theater from June 1967 to May 1969, and retired in 1987, after having served as the chief of staff for U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. Of the more than 12,000 helicopters operating in Vietnam, more than 5,000 were destroyed by combat or accidents. Helicopters were used in more than 850,000 medical evacuation missions conducted during that war, and were responsible for boosting survival rates for the wounded to as high as 99 percent, according to the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association, which sponsored placement of the Vietnam Helicopter Pilot and Crewmember Monument at the cemetery. The granite monument bears an engraving that depicts the UH-1 Huey aircraft, which was used by all branches of the service in Vietnam. "It was only fitting that our monument be dedicated today, bearing the iconic symbol of the UH-1, the Huey," McNair said. "Over 10,000 were built for that war, and over 7,000 saw service in theater, flying over 7.5 million flight hours -- more combat time than any other aircraft in the history of warfare. Over 3,000 of those aircraft did not return." Lawrence Lanier, who retired from the Army as a chief warrant officer 4, flew the UH-1 in Vietnam. He said he's got about 4,000-plus hours in the air over the duration of his Army career, with about 800 combat hours in the Huey in Vietnam. "Most of my time was spent flying command and control for the brigade commanders or the battalion commanders, whatever mission came up," he said. Lanier, who was born in Lumberton, North Carolina, and who still lives there today, said it's about time there's a monument for those who lost their lives in Vietnam flying helicopters into and out of combat zones. "It's well deserved and just a little late," he said. "But it happened." Dave Hause, also in attendance, served as a UH-1 crew chief in Vietnam for most of 1971. "A crew chief was the only person assigned to an aircraft," he said. "I was supposed to keep the maintenance records. I would fly with that aircraft all the time. They'd change pilots, they'd change gunners -- but I was with it all the time." Hause said he remembers early on during his time in Vietnam, his aircraft hadn't been hit with enemy fire. "Probably about three months in, everybody said you have to fly with Hause -- he's lucky, he never gets hit." But as time went on, he said, and his aircraft still didn't get hit, Soldiers got worried he was tempting fate and that he was due for something bad. "Near the end they were saying 'don't fly with Hause ... because he's bound to get hit,'" he said. "But I was fortunate. I was shot at, but the aircraft never got hit." Hause may have been lucky, but for those who weren't, he said he's glad now that there's something to remember them in Arlington National Cemetery. "This memorial is for those who didn't make it home, it's not really for us," he said. "It's for them. And we all know ones who didn't make it home and that's why we are here." Larry Earles served back-to-back tours in Vietnam, from 1968 through 1970, where he flew the OH-6 Cayuse aircraft. "It had a gunner in the back with an M60 machine gun," Earles said. "Our job was to go out and draw fire." His aircraft was knocked out of the sky seven times, he said. But "only one of them burned and exploded ... but it was after we hit the ground, and we were able to get away." Earles said he remembers coming back from Vietnam and the reception he got from Americans when he got off the plane. "We didn't have the technology then that we do today, so I had no idea what I was coming back to," he said. "I didn't know the country was in chaos and protesting. I walked into Seattle-Tacoma airport, off the airplane, and I was cussed at and spit at. I saw lines of people and I thought gosh, what a welcome home. I wanted to turn around and go back." More than 1,000 people gathered in the amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery to participate in the dedication of the monument. That gathering of people and of goodwill, Earles said, was welcome. "It feels like the thank you, the welcome home, the respect, that would have been appreciated 50 years ago," he said. But Earles was quick to point out that while a thank you would have been nice, he didn't think it was required. "We volunteered, we went in, we believed in what was going on, didn't know anything about the politics," Earles said. "And the government and the public don't owe us anything." The Vietnam Helicopter Pilot and Crewmember Monument is carved in Barre granite, which was quarried in Vermont. It is located in Section 35 of Arlington National Cemetery, and is located near the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The monument is 32 inches wide and stands 22 inches tall. It bears engravings of the seals of each military service, as well as a depiction of the UH-1 helicopter. Additionally, the monument bears the words: "1961 - 1975 In honored memory of the helicopter pilots and crewmembers who gave the full measure of devotion to their nation in the Vietnam War." Army researchers headed for development of high performance lightweight helmet [2018-06-04] WASHINGTON -- Army researchers in Massachusetts are developing technology that may soon yield a lightweight combat helmet that provides more protection than anything ever fielded. Representatives of the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center, out of Natick, Massachusetts, had an array of combat helmets on display at the Pentagon, May 24 and 25, as part of a "Close Combat Lethality Tech Day." Included among that protective gear was the Personnel Armor System for Ground Troops, or PASGT helmet, first fielded in 1981; the Advanced Combat Helmet, first fielded in 2003; and the Light Weight-ACH, which first appeared in 2013. All three of those helmets make use of para-aramid fibers to protect Soldiers, and each successive helmet weighed less than its predecessor. The LW-ACH, for instance, is more than a half-pound lighter than the PASGT helmet for a size large. Newer helmets on display made use of a different material: ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene, or UHMWPE. The Advanced Combat Helmet Generation II, for example, weighs 22 percent less than the ACH and is designed to protect Soldiers from fragmentation as well as from rounds up to 9mm. The Enhanced Combat Helmet, and the most-recently fielded Integrated Head Protection System with ballistic applique, provide protection against rifle fire as well. That increased protection, however, comes at a cost in terms of weight. The helmet display made clear the challenge posed to those responsible for designing gear that keeps Solders safe. "There's kind of a competition between increased threat and weight," said Richard Green, the director of the Soldier Protection and Survivability Directorate at NSRDEC. "We want to protect against increased threat, while minimizing the weight. That's our goal." The centerpiece of the NSRDEC helmet display, the NSRDEC prototype helmet, met the protection versus weight challenge head on. Weighing in at just 2.5 pounds for the shell, and an estimated 3.5 pounds final weight, the NSRDEC prototype provides the same protection as the currently-fielded IHPS. But the NSRDEC prototype doesn't require the modular IHPS ballistic applique that attaches over the base helmet. With that applique in place, the IHPS system weighs over five pounds. The NSRDEC prototype weighs less than half that and provides the same protection. It protects Soldiers against fragmentation, against 9mm weapons fire, and against what Green called a "prevalent rifle threat." The NSRDEC prototype helmet is made of the same class of material as the IHPS, the ECH and the ACH GEN II: UHMWPE. But what researchers at NSRDEC have done is developed new ways to process UHMWPE so that it will be stronger than it has been in the past. "It's stronger, so you need less of it," Green said. The new processing methods NSRDEC researchers have developed for UHMWPE has improved the ballistic performance for that material within a helmet. That means Soldiers may one day see a finished helmet that weighs the same as the ECH, but provides more protection. "The processing of that material has enabled us to optimize its performance," said Kenneth Ryan, the Warfighter Protection Branch chief at NSRDEC. "Decreasing the load helps optimize Soldier performance, and that helps them to be more lethal." The NSRDEC doesn't manufacture helmets for the Army. Instead, it is the defense industry that ultimately provides that function, Ryan said. But when the time comes, it'll be research done at NSRDEC that industry uses to make the next generation of helmets that will help keep Soldiers safe on the battlefield. Ryan said he expects it will be about 12 months before these advanced technology developments that yielded the current incarnation of the NSRDEC prototype helmet can move forward to a point where the Army may request industry to develop mass-produced helmets for fielding to Soldiers. New SMET will take the load off Infantry Soldiers [2018-06-07] WASHINGTON -- Infantry Soldiers often carry an array of supplies and gear that together can weigh anywhere from 60 to 120 pounds, said Capt. Erika Hanson, the assistant product manager for the Squad Multipurpose Equipment Transport. But the SMET vehicle, which the Army expects to field in just under three years, "is designed to take the load off the Soldier," Hanson said. "Our directed requirement is to carry 1,000 pounds of the Soldier load." That 1,000 pounds is not just for one Soldier, of course, but for an entire Infantry squad -- typically about nine Soldiers. Late last month, during a "Close Combat Lethality Tech Day" in the courtyard of the Pentagon, Hanson had with her on display the contenders for the Army's SMET program: four small vehicles, each designed to follow along behind a squad of Infantry Soldiers and carry most or all their gear for them, so they can move to where they need to be without being exhausted upon arrival. "I'm not an Infantry Soldier," Hanson said. "But I've carried a rucksack -- and I can tell you I can move a lot faster without out a rucksack on my back. Not having to carry this load will make the Soldier more mobile and more lethal in a deployed environment." The four contender vehicles on display at the Pentagon were the MRZR-X system from Polaris Industries Inc., Applied Research Associates Inc. and Neya Systems LLC; the Multi-Utility Tactical Transport from General Dynamics Land Systems; the Hunter Wolf from HDT Global; and the RS2-H1 system from Howe and Howe Technologies. Each was loaded down with gear representative of what they would be expected to carry when one of them is actually fielded to the Army. "Nine ruck sacks, six boxes of MREs and four water cans," Hanson said. "This is about the equivalent of what a long-range mission for a light Infantry unit would need to carry." Hanson said that for actual testing and evaluation purposes, the simulated combat load also includes fuel cans and ammo cans as well, though these items weren't included in the display at the Pentagon. These small vehicles, Hanson said, are expected to follow along with a squad of Soldiers as they walk to wherever it is they have been directed to go. The requirement for the vehicles is that they be able to travel up to 60 miles over the course of 72 hours, she said. Three of the vehicles are "pivot steered," Hanson said, to make it easier for them to maneuver in off-road environments, so that they can follow Soldiers even when there isn't a trail. One of the contenders for SMET has a steering wheel, with both a driver's seat and a passenger seat. So if a Soldier wanted to drive that vehicle, he could, Hanson said. Still, the Army requirement is that the SMET be able to operate unmanned, and all four vehicles provide that unmanned capability. All four contenders include a small, simplistic kind of remote control that a Soldier can hand-carry to control the vehicle. One of those remotes was just a light-weight hand grip with a tiny thumb-controlled joystick on top. A Soldier on patrol could carry the light-weight controller at his side. More advanced control options are also available for the SMET as well, Hanson said. "All can be operated with an operator control unit," she said. "It's a tele-operation where you have a screen and you can operate the system non-line-of-site via the cameras on the system." When Soldiers on patrol want the SMET to follow along with them, they can use the very simple controller that puts a low cognitive load on the Soldier. When they want the SMET to operate in locations where they won't be able to see it, they can use the more advanced controller with the video screen. Hanson said the Army envisions Soldiers might one day use the SMET to do things besides carry a Soldier's bags. "It's for use in operations where some of the payloads are like re-trans and recon payloads in the future," she said. "In that situation, it would be better for a Soldier at a distance to be able to tele-operate the SMET into position." The "re-trans" mission, she said, would involve putting radio gear onto the SMET and then using a remote control to put the vehicle out at the farthest edge of where radio communications are able to reach. By doing so, she said, the SMET could then be part of extending that communications range farther onto the battlefield. One of the vehicles even has an option for a Soldier to clip one end of a rope to his belt and the other end to the vehicle -- and then the vehicle will just follow him wherever he walks. That's the tethered "follow-me" option, Hanson said. In addition to carrying gear for Soldiers, the SMET is also expected to provide electric power to Soldiers on patrol. She said while the vehicle is moving, for instance, it is required to provide 1 kilowatt of power, and when it's standing still, it must provide 3 kW. That power, she said, could be piped into the Army's "Universal Battery Charger," which can charge a variety of batteries currently used in Soldier products. Vendors of the SMET have each been provided with a UBC so they can figure out how best to incorporate the device into their SMET submissions. Hanson said the Army hopes that the SMET could include, in some cases, up to five UBCs on board to ensure that no Soldier in an Infantry squad is ever without mobile power. NEXT STEP In November 2017, the Army held a "fly-off" at Fort Benning, Georgia, where 10 contenders for the SMET competed with each other. Only the developers of the vehicles were involved in the fly-off. "From those, we down-selected to these four, based on their performance," Hanson said. To make its choice for the down-select, she said the Army looked at things like mobility and durability of the systems. Now, the Army will do a technology demonstration to down-select to just one vehicle, from the remaining four. To do that, Hanson said, the Army will first provide copies of the competing SMET vehicles to two Army Infantry units, one at Fort Drum, New York, and one at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Additionally, Marines at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, will also get a set of the vehicles. "Over the course of the tech demo, we'll be getting feedback from the Soldiers and the Marines on what systems best fill the need for the infantryman," she said. The technology demonstration, she said, will last just one year. And when it's complete, feedback from Soldiers and Marines will be used to down-select to just one system that will then become an Army program of record. "I think the best part of the program is the innovative approach the team is taking to field them to Soldiers before they select the program of record," Hanson said. "That way, it's the Soldier feedback that drives the requirement, not the other way around." Hanson said she expects the program of record to begin in the first quarter of fiscal year 2020, after which the Army will go into low-rate initial production on the SMET. By the second or third quarter of FY 2021, she said, the first Army unit can expect to have the new vehicle fielded to them. Hanson said the Army has set a base price of $100,000 for the SMET. On Capitol Hill, Army leaders, lawmakers toast Army birthday, 243 years of defending freedom [2018-06-13] WASHINGTON -- Why does the Army do what it does? To preserve equality for all Americans, and to preserve the United States -- forever, said the Army's chief of staff. On Capitol Hill, Wednesday, Army leaders, including Secretary of the Army Mark T. Esper, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, and Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey met with lawmakers to toast the service's 243rd year of defending the United States from enemies both foreign and domestic. Before using a military sabre to ceremoniously slice into a four-tiered birthday cake, Milley posited aloud just why it is that the Army, and the uniformed men and women who voluntarily serve within its ranks, have continued to do what they do now for nearly two and a half centuries. It's all about an idea, Milley told a crowd of Soldiers, legislators and Congressional staffers. "We're the only military in the world that takes an oath of allegiance to an idea," he said. "An idea that's embedded within the Constitution of the United States of America." The idea helped bring down the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, he said. It also helped end communism in Europe and inspired the rise of other democratic nations around the world. And today, that idea strikes fear into the hearts of the terrorists who make up ISIS and Al Qaeda. "It's a simple idea," Milley said. "In this country, the core organizing principle for which I and everybody in uniform is willing to die ... says that you and I are born under God, free and equal. And it is our task to make sure that that exists for all eternity, and that this nation never perishes from this Earth. That's what this Army's birthday is all about." Esper said right now he is confident that the Army is ready to continue defending freedom both at home and abroad, if called upon to do so. "If conflict were to happen today, anywhere in the world, there is no doubt in my mind the U.S. Army would prevail, hands down," he said. He attributed that level of readiness to Milley. Readiness, Esper said, has been one of his top priorities since he took office in November. It's also been Milley's top priority since he assumed the role of chief of staff in August 2015. Now, Esper said, the Army has a vision for how it can remain prepared for anything it is asked to do into the future. The Army Vision laid out by both Esper and Milley predicts an Army that by 2028, "will be ready to deploy, fight, and win decisively against any adversary, anytime and anywhere, in a joint, multi-domain, high-intensity conflict, while simultaneously deterring others and maintaining its ability to conduct irregular warfare." That Vision also calls for, among other things, modern manned and unmanned ground combat vehicles, aircraft, sustainment systems, and weapons, as well as "exceptional leaders and Soldiers of unmatched lethality." "This birthday is really all about them," said Esper of those Soldiers who have defended the nation and who will continue to do so into the future. He made them, and the Americans gathered to celebrate the Army's birthday a promise. "I guarantee you that wherever we are going now, the path that we are set on is outlined in the vision that the chief and I put out just two weeks ago," Esper said. "Our country, our Army, will prevail in the future, in the next ten years, and we will prevail for the next 243 years as well." Corps of Engineers ready for Hurricane Lane [2018-08-24] WASHINGTON -- As Hurricane Lane approaches Hawaii, and rain pours down on the island paradise, the Army's Corps of Engineers has said it's ready to provide help if called upon to do so. Ray Alexander, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers director for contingency operations, told reporters Friday morning that the Corps already has experts in Hawaii in advance of Hurricane Lane's landfall, so that leadership structures will be in place if the Federal Emergency Management Agency calls upon Army engineers to provide assistance. "The Corps is fully engaged and prepared to respond as needed," Alexander said. "Our Pacific Ocean Division leadership -- they're headquartered on Oahu -- are forward subject-matter experts for temporary power, debris removal, and infrastructure assessment." Those experts, Alexander said, are now working with both Hawaii state leadership and FEMA personnel to anticipate what might be needed in the way of recovery assistance, and to plan the post-hurricane response. Those experts, he said, are on the Island of Oahu and Kauai. "What we have in place are temporary power subject-matter experts and planning and response teams," Alexander said. "They are forward and working with state and local officials in identifying the requirements so that as we get mission assignment to begin installation of generators -- we are prepared to do that." Alexander also said that the Corps is working with the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to ensure that federal waterways in Hawaii "are quickly surveyed and opened" following the hurricane. As of 8 a.m. eastern time Friday, NOAA predicted that Hurricane Lane "will move over, or dangerously close to portions of the main Hawaiian islands" by evening. The agency said rainfall could be anywhere from 10 to 20 inches in some locations, and as much as 40 inches in other locations. "Over two feet of rain has already fallen at a few locations on the windward side of the Big Island," reported the agency, which also added that the continued rain could lead to "life-threatening flash flooding and landslides." NOAA also reported that winds are expected to exceed 120 mph in some cases. While the hurricane is expected to weaken some by Saturday, NOAA said "Lane is expected to remain a dangerous hurricane as it approaches the islands." On-Scene Doc Keeps Secret Service Employees, Protectees, Fit For UNGA [2018-09-25] NEW YORK CITY -- No minor illness is going to derail this week's United Nations General Assembly here -- not for the leaders of the more than 140 member states who will participate, nor for the special agents, uniformed division officers, or other Secret Service employees who facilitate the protection of those leaders. For the sixth year now, Dr. Asa Margolis, a specialist in emergency medical services from Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore and also the deputy medical director for the United States Secret Service, will be on call for the duration of the 73rd annual United Nations General Assembly. He is there to make sure agents and officers can get medical care where they need it and when they need it. He'll make sure the agents and officers don't have to drop out of their protective or other details to seek medical care elsewhere in the city just when the activity in New York is at its peak. "Our job is to provide operational medical support," Margolis said. "What that means is to be able to deliver care to our law-enforcement providers, our Secret Service agents, in an environment where they might not otherwise be able to seek care. We want to treat them where they are, to make it more convenient for them, so they don't have to seek out medical care at a hospital or at an urgent care clinic. We want to keep them healthy and working." What that mission means for Margolis and his team is that unlike many doctors today, he's making house calls of sorts. "We go from person to person," he said. During UNGA 73, Secret Service employees who need to see a doctor can contact the Multi-Agency Communications Center co-located with the New York City Field Office and make a request and Margolis can show up wherever the employee is to tend to his or her needs -- so the agent or officer doesn't ever have to leave their post. And the doctor doesn't just see Secret Service employees, either. "If a detail has a protectee, and that protectee is requesting or requiring medical care, they would call us, and we would come and meet up with them wherever they are, whether at a hotel or an offsite meeting location, to provide care to that protectee as well," Margolis said. The doctor said like the agents themselves, he's typically in a suit when on duty at UNGA, rather than in a lab coat. And that, he said, is partly for the benefit of any of those world leaders or agents who might need his services. "I try not to be overtly doctor-ish, if that's a thing," he said. "My goal is to blend in. The number 1 thing is to maintain people's privacy. Whether you are a Secret Service agent, or you are a protectee from a country, you don't want people knowing that you need medical attention. The idea is to sort of blend in, provide care in an environment that protects who they are, and just do it in a way that doesn't draw any attention." Most world leaders for UNGA 73 arrived in New York City Sept. 22-23, and by then, Margolis had already been on the ground for about a week with his team treating Secret Service agents in need. Margolis and his team, which includes a Secret Service EMT Agent and a Secret Service Emergency Services Provider, who is a paramedic, travel around the city in an SUV "fully stocked with a compliment of basic life support, advance life support equipment, and sick call medication," he said. The team is on duty for 12 hours, and on call for the remainder of the day. Once all the world leaders arrive in NYC, he said, a second medical team, just like his own, will show up to share the burden of ensuring Secret Service employees who are assigned to the UNGA mission can see a doctor without ever having to leave their post. Margolis said during the years he's served as the on-scene doctor for UNGA, he's treated a lot of employees -- about 100 each year, he said. But thankfully, the calls are typically not too bad. The worst he's seen? Man's best friend bit the hand that feeds it. "Significant dog bites," he said. "We had a dog bite one year where one of the dogs latched onto somebody's arms. And routine stuff -- nothing serious," he said, adding there's a lot of intestinal issues, sometimes a kidney infection, and an occasional skin infection that needed treatment in a hospital. Margolis also said if he determines that an employee he's seeing needs to go to the hospital, or if an employee went on his own to a hospital to seek care, he can be right there to advocate on that employee's behalf with the hospital staff. What world leaders will accomplish during UNGA 73 won't be known until the last of them returns home next week. But Secret Service agents and officers will keep those world leaders safe until they're ready to return home, and Margolis and both medical teams will keep the employees fit for duty. "For us it's a tremendous honor and privilege to be able to work with the men and women of the Secret Service and make sure the job I'm doing is contributing to making them healthier and if they are feeling ill, feeling better," Margolis said. "That's a great thing for a physician anyway. But it's even more of an honor to be able to do so in a way that allows those who play a large part in keeping this general assembly running to do their job, which is the protection of dignitaries." Agent Who Lept to Protect Jackie Kennedy, Recognized by Home State [2018-11-21] WASHINGTON -- Clint Hill joined the Secret Service as a special agent in 1958 and served under five presidents. But he's probably best known as the agent who leapt on to the rear deck of President Kennedy's limousine in Dallas, Texas, in order to protect then-first Lady Jackie Kennedy after the president was shot. Among modern-day Secret Service agents, Hill is a legend. Now 86 years old, the North Dakota native has now been recognized as a legend in his home state as well. On Nov. 19, in Washburn, North Dakota, Governor Doug Burgum presented native son Hill with the "Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award." "North Dakota has long welcomed and been home to men and women with the drive to be legendary -- people like the man Clint Hill who we're here to celebrate today," Burgum said of having selected Hill for the award. Named after the nation's 26th president, the Rough Rider award is given to North Dakota natives who, through excellence in their professional lives, bring credit to their home state. Hill is the 44th North Dakotan to be honored with the award, and the first law enforcement officer as well. "It's a real honor to be recognized by one's home state," Hill said. "It's one of those things that's very unusual: to be singled out and identified by your home state for what I consider to be an enormous award. I feel that way because I am very fond of North Dakota. It's still my home state insofar as I'm concerned, even if I haven't lived there for years now. It's such an honor to be recognized." Special Agent in Charge Joe Scargill of the Minneapolis Field Office traveled to Washburn to participate in the award ceremony. For an audience who might not be familiar with the work of a Secret Service special agent or of the history of Hill, Scargill spelled out some of the challenges of the job that Hill and other agents endure while serving the nation. "Life on a protective detail with the Secret Service is demanding," Scargill said. "It requires focus, commitment, dedication, and most of all sacrifice. Life on a detail requires being away. It requires being away from home, it requires being away from the warmth and comfort of your loved ones, and it requires disappointing those you love most to accomplish the mission: missing birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries. It requires long hours, working in inclement weather, traversing rough terrain, going days with no sleep, and ultimately being in the line of fire." Also, he said, being a Secret Service agent requires being prepared to make "the ultimate sacrifice for God and country." Scargill also touched on the historical tragedy that Hill had been witness to: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. "As the first shot rang out on that tragic day, Special Agent Hill immediately ran into the line of fire with no regard for his own personal safety," Scargill said. "He leapt onto the back of a rapidly moving presidential limo and shielded the president and first lady with his body." At the time, Scargill noted, agents were not yet issued body armor. "Special Agent Hill has made all these tremendous sacrifices," he said. "He's walked through the fire and he stands as tall today as ever. And the impact that Mr. Hill has had on the Secret Service is tremendous; its powerful and timeless." Having been a special agent for decades, Hill already had firsthand familiarity with what Scargill was saying -- he'd lived it himself. But Scargill also provided comments to Hill directly -- "agent to agent," he said, letting the audience now it was okay to listen in. "Sir, I've never met you before, but I know you," Scargill told Hill. "I know you not because of your heroism and courage that day (in Dallas, Texas), and not because you have been a personal hero of mine. But because you were worthy of trust and confidence from the day you came on the job and you still are now. Congratulations, sir. We are all impressed by you. You are a legend to me and the rest of the agents on the job. Thank you very much." ROUGHRIDER STATE Born in 1932, Hill grew up in Washburn, a city of about 1,300, an hour's drive north of the state's capital. He said back then he was a busy youth who stayed out of trouble. "Everybody in the town knew me and I knew everybody in the town and all the children were that way. You didn't get into trouble because you knew if you did get into trouble, your parents would find out before your got home," Hill said. "We participated in everything. All the kids did. We were involved in Scouts and our church. In high school, I played football, basketball, ran track, played American Legion junior baseball, sang in the glee club, acted in plays, and played in the high school band. If there was an activity to be done, I was willing to participate." Hill had plenty to do outdoors as well. He said he hunted, among other things, pheasants, ducks and deer. And in the winter, being that far north, winter sports were popular as well. "If we weren't indoors, we were outdoors ice skating, playing hockey, or skating long distances. There's a place near Washburn called Painted Woods Creek. I used to skate on that for miles," Hill said. "It was a pleasure to be out in the elements. It could be ten degrees above zero, or down to zero, and you'd still be out there skating away and enjoying life. It's a real tough, rugged place to live. All that gave me a really well-rounded background." PUBLIC SERVICE AS A SOLIDER After high school, Hill left for college in Moorhead, Minnesota. By 1954, he'd earned himself a degree in history and physical education, with a minor in education. The Korean War had ended less than a year before Hill graduated, and he'd been deferred from the draft -- still on-going -- so that he could attend college. He still owed his country some military service, he said, and after college he went into the Army, where he said he was trained to be an agent in counter intelligence. He spent most of his Army time stationed in Denver, Colorado. "The training I received to be an agent in counter-intelligence was very thorough, it was a lot of investigative training," Hill said. "We had some of the best instructors in the business at the time. The kind of work I was doing in Denver, we were running a lot of different kinds of investigations." In September 1955, then President Dwight D. Eisenhower was vacationing in Colorado and suffered a heart attack. Hill said he remembered the president was taken to Fitzsimons Army Hospital, in a nearby suburb of Denver. "He was the president at that time and had a Secret Service detail with him. Because [Fitzsimmons] was an Army facility, and because we were in counter-intelligence for the Army, our paths crossed with those of the Secret Service agents," Hill said. "We got to know some of them, and I was very pleased to find that they were a very efficient group of individuals. They were determined, dedicated, and I wanted, from being around them, I wanted to be like they were. I wanted to be one of them." Hill was discharged from the Army in 1957. And while the Secret Service didn't hire him immediately as a special agent, by 1958 positions did open up, and Hill was brought on board. He was assigned to the Denver Field Office. SECRET SERVICE STAR As a special agent in the Secret Service, Hill said he worked on investigations involving, among other things, forgery of U.S. government financial instruments such as checks and bonds. He also worked on cases involving counterfeiting. President Eisenhower's wife, Mamie Eisenhower, had family in Colorado. Her mother, Elivera Doud, lived there and Hill said the president was concerned for her well-being. "The president had directed that we, the agents in the Secret Service office in Denver, would have an agent in Ms. Doud's house from 7 o'clock at night until 7 o'clock in the morning," Hill said. "She was an elderly lady. She had a full-time nurse. And he was always concerned about her health and well-being. And he didn't want anything to happen to her." Agents from the Denver Field Office, Hill said, took turns covering the 12-hour shifts at the Doud home to look after the president's mother-in-law. He said during that time, he got to know the Eisenhower family quite well, endearing himself to the family and, apparently, to the president. "It wasn't too long before I was sent back to the White House for a 30-day evaluation period," he said. "I apparently passed, because a couple months later I was permanently assigned to the White House detail." As a new agent in the Secret Service, Hill had moved from investigations to the presidential protective detail in less than two years -- something he said is not likely to happen today. MRS. KENNEDY In early November 1960, the nation elected Kennedy to be Eisenhower's successor as president of the United States. At the time, Hill had been assigned to the presidential detail for only a year, and Eisenhower would still serve as president until Kennedy's inauguration only ten weeks later. But the Secret Service moved Hill off presidential protection and assigned him to Jackie Kennedy's protective detail. "I was one of two agents assigned to Mrs. Kennedy," Hill said. Just three years later, during a presidential visit to Dallas, President Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade through the city. Film of the assassination shows Hill jumping onto the back of the presidential limousine just seconds after the assassination so that he could get closer to the first lady and better protect her. After the assassination, Hill remained on Mrs. Kennedy's protective detail for a year, until November 1964. SECRET SERVICE CHANGES Four U.S. presidents have been assassinated, including Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James A. Garfield in 1881, William McKinley in 1901, and Kennedy in 1963. It wasn't until after the assassination of McKinley, in September 1901, however, that the Secret Service was asked to provide protection for the president. Kennedy's assassination, Hill said, changed things dramatically inside the Secret Service. "The first thing they did was eliminate the use of open cars," Hill said. "Additional personnel [were hired.] Training was changed, very much so." Hill said he remembers his own initial training in the Secret Service had been "minimal." "We had classroom training as agents, with other agents from agencies within the Treasury Department," he said. "We all trained together. And then about a year or so later you would be sent to what was called Secret Service School in Washington, D.C. But most of the things we actually learned the first few years we were in the Secret Service we learned on the job from other agents." After the Kennedy assassination, he said, training became "much more professional, much more intense. It was like night and day, almost." TODAY'S AGENTS Hill retired from the Secret Service in 1975. But he said he still meets with and talks with Secret Service agents who are on the job today. "The personnel are excellent," he said. "And they have a greater challenge today than we ever had. There's no question. It's much more difficult today than it was back when I was an active agent in the 1950s and 1960s. Some is due to technology or social media. But just probably the attitude of the general population has changed somewhat." Hill's written three books about his time in the Secret Service, one about working on Mrs. Kennedy's protective detail, one about the events surrounding the Kennedy assassination, and another that covers the entire span of his Secret Service career. All three have been on the New York Times best seller list, and all illustrate why joining the Secret Service back in 1958 was for him, at least, a great idea. "The best decision I had ever made was to come into the Secret Service," he said. "I worked with an enormous group of wonderful people. They were just the very best of the best. I couldn't have asked for a better way of life. I couldn't have asked for better people to work with. It was an honor for me to be accepted into the Secret Service, and I was very fortunate to be in the various places that I was at the times I was there." 5 Things to Know About Operations in Iraq [2018-12-11] WASHINGTON -- Army Col. Jonathan C. Byrom serves as commander of the 3rd Cavalry Regiment and deputy director of Joint Operations Command Iraq. Byrom provided an update to reporters at the Pentagon on continued efforts to find and eliminate any remaining pockets of the largely defeated ISIS. Here are five things to know about current operations in Iraq, according to Byrom: 1) While the government of Iraq has declared the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria to have been defeated, pockets of ISIS fighters remain. Iraqi security forces work daily to ferret out those enemies and their caches of weapons to prevent the terrorist group from ever again regaining any kind of power or influence in Iraq -- something Byrom said ISIS is certainly interested in achieving. In October, for instance, Iraqi forces initiated Operation Last Warning to target pockets of ISIS forces in the rough desert terrain of Iraq's Anbar province. Also, Iraq Federal Police are conducting large-scale clearance operations in Hawijah. 2) The efforts to permanently eradicate ISIS forces are being planned and led by Iraqi security forces, but the United States military assists in that effort by providing intelligence support, joint fires, aerial surveillance and training opportunities. 3) While the fight against ISIS has all but eliminated the group in Iraq, the weapons of that fight, such as improvised explosive devices, remain in many places and continue to pose a threat to honest, hardworking Iraqis. In response to that threat, Iraqi forces in September planned Operation Heroes Resolve, a massive clearance operation across Iraq that resulted in the discovery and destruction of hundreds of IEDs. 4) With the threat of ISIS largely eliminated in Iraq, civilians there are returning to a sense of normalcy. In Mosul, Byrom noted, students once denied the ability to seek an education are returning to recently opened schools. Businesses are also reopening, and 4 million displaced Iraqis have returned to their homes, though some 2 million remain in camps across the country. 5) The effort to suppress ISIS in Syria is supported by an ever-strengthening international coalition of 74 nations and five international organizations. U.S. and partner artillery, including M777s, near the Iraq-Syria border at Iraqi Firebase Saham support partners in Syria in their effort to defeat ISIS there. Navy Shipyard Upgrades Get Underway [2018-12-12] WASHINGTON -- Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer assured lawmakers that as part of the service's efforts to modernize the force, it was moving forward on plans to upgrade and improve the Navy's public shipyards, during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee's seapower subcommittee. -- What you need to know -- -- The Navy's four public shipyards: 1) Norfolk Naval Shipyard at Norfolk, Virginia; 2) Portsmouth Naval Shipyard at Kittery, Maine; 3) Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility at Bremerton, Washington; 4) Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. -- Ownership, Readiness The shipyards are all government-owned, government-operated facilities, part of the Navy's organic industrial base, and are all considered critical to national security and readiness. The shipyards do depot-level maintenance on the Navy's fleet of nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines to ensure those ships and boats remain ready to fight. -- The Navy's first-ever "Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Plan" This was delivered to Congress earlier this year, and spells out how the four shipyards will be upgraded and improved to better serve the fleet. That plan focuses on shipyard drydock recapitalization, facility layout and optimization and equipment modernization. -- Cost, Timeline Overall, the Navy's plan to bring into the modern age its four shipyards will cost some $21 billion and take approximately 20 years to complete. That effort is underway now. ''The fact of the matter is, until we get our shipyards -- specifically for our underwater fleet, our public shipyards, primarily -- increased flow and increased efficiencies for throughput, we are hurting ourselves,'' Spencer told the committee. -- Other Improvements While physical infrastructure improvements at Navy shipyards are underway, improvements in other areas, such as the training of workers, has already shown great success, the secretary said. Spencer told lawmakers that in years past, training a shipyard employee might have taken as many as four years. But now, he said, that training time has been reduced to as little as a year for skills like marine machinists and pipefitters. Artificial Intelligence Can Free Imagery Analysts to Focus More on the Unknown [2018-12-14] WASHINGTON -- Analysts at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency may spend as much as half their time poring over satellite imagery of activities they're already familiar with, taking place in locations where everybody is already looking. Their time could be better spent doing other things, said Susan Kalweit, director of analysis at NGA. During an artificial intelligence-themed panel discussion here Thursday, Kalweit said human analysts could be freed up by AI to spend more time doing the cognitively difficult work of identifying and determining the significance of unfamiliar activities that take place in unfamiliar locations. "That's the discovery piece," Kalweit said. "That's where you want to anticipate where, when and how will Russia go into central Europe. That's a key question around anticipatory intelligence. And unfortunately, because we spend so much of our time at the (other places) we have less than ten percent of our time to spend on those really key questions, the unknown/unknown, and the black swans -- trying to anticipate what's going to happen." Kalweit actually divvied up analyst time into four groupings, based on known or unknown locations and known or unknown activities, and offered up a Punnett square-like model as a way to visualize that. More than 90 percent of analyst time is spent in three of those locations, she said, while less than ten percent of time is spent in the "top-right" square, analyzing the unknown/unknown -- and that's the type of work best done by human analysts. "[That's] where really you want the human brain to spend most of its time," she said. "And where machines augment that is in the hypothesis analysis: the highly cognitive analysis, providing alternatives of what this activity might be, being able to put together multiple signatures and looking at trends from multiple years in multiple locations over very different sorts of scenarios and giving us hypothesis on what might happen or might be happening." Kalweit said her analyst workforce remains positive about machine augmentation in their work, "especially for monitoring the mundane" and "work that now takes time and is not cognitively challenging." That might include change detection or object identification, for instance. Friction points in the future, however, might arise if AI encroaches on work analysts value the most and see themselves as being best at. What It Means "Contextualization," she said. "What does it mean? The idea that a machine would be able to spit out 'this is what it means' is really where that friction lies. They want help with analysis of alternatives, to expand their thinking, to provide hypothesis that they can work with other analysts and their counterparts in testing, but not for the machine to spit that out." Ironically, it may be the analysts themselves who will help AI systems eventually supplant them. Kalweit has top-level visibility on development of AI systems that are used by NGA and said the greatest advancement there comes when developers work side by side with those who use those systems. "Where we have had absolute success in a very consistent way is when our industry partners are paired with our image scientists or our analysts and are doing the development in real time, together," she said. "So the true DevOps, true paired programing, has resulted in the greatest successes that we have had in this new world." U.S. Will Pick Up Pace in Race to Space With China, DOD Official Says [2019-01-08] WASHINGTON -- The United States isn't out of the game yet when it comes to space, but if it wants to remain on top, it will need to do more and do it faster, a senior Defense Department official said today. "China is integrating certain new technologies and fielding those capabilities faster than the U.S.," said Chris Shank, director of DOD's Strategic Capabilities Office. "That means we have to be more responsive." Shank spoke during a presentation in San Diego hosted by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, where he pointed out some statistics regarding space launches last year. "China had 39 launches, the U.S. had 31, Russia had 20, [and] Europe had eight," Shank said. "And [China] landed a robotic mission on the dark side of the moon -- a first." Shank said that while he doesn't think the U.S. has lost leadership in space, it is losing ground. After all, he noted, the United States isn't without its own recent achievements in space. Space Development Agency "In the same week that they land on the moon, we are at the furthest reaches of the solar system at Ultima Thule," he said. NASA's New Horizons probe flew by and observed the trans-Neptunian object about 4 billion miles from the sun last week. It's the farthest object ever explored in space. Shank said to stay relevant in space, the United States will need to speed up its development cycle for space-based technologies significantly. "The DOD is committed to creating a Space Development Agency," Shank said. "That would be a joint organization ... to rapidly develop and field the next generation of space capabilities. I think that a Space Development Agency will represent a real investment in experimenting and prototyping of the rapid field of capabilities. ... So buckle up -- 2019 is going to be busy." Shanahan: ISIS Crippled in Syria [2019-01-29] WASHINGTON -- Meeting with the reporters for the first time since assuming office Jan. 1, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan touched on the Syria withdrawal, success in Afghanistan, the U.S. Space Force, and his role as the head of the U.S. Department of Defense. Shanahan, who had served as deputy defense secretary until the first of the year, said that from his new position, "the terrain is not different." What has changed, he told reporters, is that he sees the president more often, and works more closely with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Cabinet members and defense counterparts in Europe and Asia. As acting secretary, he said, he expects to travel less, and to "drive more integration between the services and the combatant commands." -- On Syria -- Shanahan said the withdrawal is in the early stages. "We're on a deliberate, coordinated, disciplined withdrawal," he said. ISIS is no longer able to govern in Syria, he said. "ISIS no longer has freedom to amass forces. Syria is no longer a safe haven. We've eliminated a majority of their leadership. We've significantly diminished their financial capabilities," Shanahan said. "The way I would probably characterize the military operations conducted in Syria is that the risk of terrorism and mass migration has been significantly mitigated." Inside Syria, he said, "99.5 percent plus" of territory controlled by ISIS just two years ago has been returned to the Syrians. "And within a couple of weeks, it'll be 100 percent," he added. Along Syria's northeastern border, some 3.5 million Syrian refugees are in Turkey, Shanahan said, and significant numbers of internally displaced people are on the Syrian side of the border. To ameliorate this crisis, he said, military-to-military conversations are happening, and the State Department is involved as well, looking for solutions. "There are very important dialogues going on in major capitals in Europe about support to that portion of Syria, as well as very important discussions with our [Syrian Democratic Forces] counterparts there in northeastern Syria," he added. "The discussions hold real promise." -- On Afghanistan -- Coalition forces and Afghan national security forces "have been doing a tremendous job," the acting defense secretary said. There is no change to the "realign, reinforce, regionalize, reconcile and sustain" plan, known as 4R+S, he said. Discussions are now between Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and the Taliban. Khalilzad is the State Department's special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation. "The talks were encouraging," Shanahan said. "I would just add to that, we have to give people time." The acting secretary noted "a new level of energy" in the situation. "The reconciliation portion our 4R+S is working," he said. "Now we need to give the diplomats time and space to advance those conversations." -- On Space Force -- The Defense Department is looking at some individuals who might lead U.S. Space Command, Shanahan said. The Space Force will focus on faster development of technology, faster delivery of technology, and leveraging of commercially available technology, he explained. Concerns on Capitol Hill involve avoiding unnecessary cost and not growing a bureaucracy, he said. His idea of Space Force is that it have a small footprint, he told reporters. "That's why I recommend it sits under the Air Force," he said. Service Members Reap Benefits of Tax Law Changes [2019-02-04] WASHINGTON -- Recent changes in tax law mean that many in uniform could see big returns when they file their 2018 taxes. "This last tax year has been quite exciting with all of the changes that occurred to it," said Army Lt. Col. David Dulaney, executive director of the Armed Forces Tax Council. "The good news is that most of our service members should see a substantial reduction in their overall federal taxes for 2018." One way service members can maximize their tax refund is to log onto Military OneSource and take advantage of MilTax, a free suite of services designed specifically for service members. MilTax includes personalized support from tax consultants and easy-to-use tax preparation and e-filing software. -- MilTax is available to active-duty, reserve and National Guard service members. Additionally, thanks to new language in the National Defense Authorization Act, "service" has been expanded to included transitioning service members -- those who have separated or retired will be able to make use of MilTax for up to a year after leaving the military. -- MilTax is available through www.militaryonesource.mil and includes online tax preparation software designed specifically for military personnel and the unique circumstances that surround military life. -- Through Military OneSource and MilTax, service members have access to expert tax consultants specially trained to address tax issues related to military service. During tax season, consultants are available seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. in the Eastern time zone at 800-342-9647. -- Using MilTax, eligible individuals can file one federal and up to three state tax returns through the Military OneSource website. The service is available now through Oct. 15, 2019, for extended filers. -- At some installations, the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program, or VITA, allows service members to sit down face to face with a tax professional to help prepare their tax forms. -- All service members are required to pay taxes. Military service doesn't mean service members don't have to pay. Fortunately, MilTax is free to those eligible to use it. "One of the worst things we can hear is a military service member went out and paid for tax services that we provide for free through the DOD," said Erika R. Slaton, program deputy for Military OneSource. "We want to ensure our service members and families know they are supported and we provide the best possible support for them in completing their tax services." Improving Combat Lethality, Performance [2019-02-05] WASHINGTON -- Experts from the military, academia and industry -- representing about 60 different organizations in all -- met earlier this month to discuss new ways human performance could be tweaked to increase the lethality of close combat formations. The Human Performance workshop, organized by the Defense Department's Close Combat Lethality Task Force, was set up to "develop recommendations on potential programs that address the challenges of physical preparedness in close-combat formations and the increasing cognitive demands of modern combat," said workshop coordinator Army Col. Joey Polanco. Human performance is just one dial that can be tweaked to enhance the lethality of a close combat formation, Polanco said. Other variables that can be adjusted include manpower policy, training, equipment and weapons, science and technology, and research and development. The CCLTF aims to look at all of those things as part of an effort to make sure that after a close-combat interaction, it will be American ground troops who make it back to base in one piece, while enemy forces are left licking their wounds. Polanco said during the workshop, experts considered multiple aspects of a soldier's performance, not just physical strength. Additional domains, such as the cognitive and social, involve looking for ways to help soldiers make decisions faster in a combat environment or recover more quickly from traumatic events so they can return to their units. During the workshop, attendees teamed up to identify requirement gaps in human performance, and postulate potential solutions. Below are some examples of what they discussed: -- Within the physical domain, one team said the U.S. military needs "the ability to provide nutrition targeted at improving close-combat formations through education and quality food in garrison, training, and operations." That team said dining facility and food acquisition policies are not currently targeted toward performance nutrition. They recommended, among other things, policy updates that would allow the purchase of supplemental nutrition products for use in the field training and deployed environments. -- Within the cognitive domain, another team identified a requirement to optimize "squad decision-making at the time of need during complex, dynamic operations." That team said for now, squad-level technologies don't incorporate the kinds of artificial intelligence-related capabilities that would enabling warfighter/AI teaming. They recommended more research and training to develop a suite of tools that will enable development of teams consisting of humans, AI and autonomous assets. Across the DOD, in the academic world, and in professional athletics, experts are working on these types of issues independently of one another -- sometimes unaware that elsewhere, another researcher is attacking the same problems but for possibly different reasons. The CCLTF, Polanco said, is "trying to raise awareness of all the different stakeholders in this community of interest and trying to help them connect so that we have more cross-talking and more collaboration occurring." Survey Says: Most Spouses Satisfied With Military Lifestyle [2019-02-05] WASHINGTON -- In the old days, the running joke was, "If the military wanted you to have a spouse, they would have issued you one!" But the end of the draft and the dawn of the all-volunteer force meant the Defense Department had to provide a more family-friendly quality of military life. Pentagon officials are still listening to see what they can do to make the lifestyle better for the nation's military families. The latest survey of active-duty and reserve-component service members' spouses shows the spouses are, by and large, happy with the military lifestyles they lead. Defense Department officials briefed reporters at the Pentagon on the results of the surveys, which were conducted in 2017. The survey of active-duty spouses and a similar survey of National Guard and Reserve spouses showed similar results, they said. Among active-duty spouses, 60 percent claimed they are "satisfied" with their military way of life. Among the reserve components, 61 percent were satisfied. While both surveys showed a slight decrease from the last previous survey, conducted in 2015, the 2015 and 2017 results both were higher than results from the same question on the 2008 survey, officials noted. Click here for more on what Pentagon officials had to say about the latest surveys and how past surveys have led to quality-of-life improvements. Shanahan: Important Work Remains in Afghanistan [2019-02-12] WASHINGTON -- Important work remains to be done in Afghanistan, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan told reporters traveling with him while en route on his first trip to the country Feb. 10. "I have not been directed to step down our forces in Afghanistan," Shanahan said. "The direction -- and this is in close coordination with Secretary [of State] Mike Pompeo and [National Security Advisor] John Bolton -- is to support Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad in these peace negotiations." Khalilzad is the State Department's special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation. As Shanahan traveled to Afghanistan, negotiations between the United States and the Taliban for peace in Afghanistan were underway. Efforts to make that happen, he said, rest primarily on Khalilzad's shoulders. Shanahan likened Khalilzad's role in the effort to that of a quarterback on a football team. Also part of that team is the U.S. military, Shanahan said. Strong Security Interests "I think the U.S. military has strong security interests in the region," Shanahan said. "Its presence will evolve out of those discussions of where, what, concentration [and] how. All of that is extremely important, but we're going to leave it to the teams to start to look at what mix combination makes the most sense." Also a part of the team is the Afghan government, Shanahan said, adding that their involvement is critical. "It's important that the Afghan government is involved in discussions regarding Afghanistan," he said. "The Afghans have to decide what Afghanistan looks like in the future. They're all -- it's not about the U.S., it's about Afghanistan. The U.S. has significant, significant investment in ensuring security. But the Afghans decide their future." As to how or when the U.S. should leave Afghanistan, Shanahan emphasized that any withdrawal would be cautious and measured. "I think the presence we want in Afghanistan is what assures our homeland defense and supports regional stability," he said "And that any type of sizing is done in a coordinated and disciplined manner." Acting Secretary Stresses Iraqi Sovereignty, Security in Visit to Baghdad [2019-02-14] WASHINGTON -- On his way to Brussels earlier this week for meetings with his NATO counterparts, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan talked with reporters traveling with him about his visit to Baghdad. In Iraq, Shanahan met with Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi. The two discussed issues related to Iraqi politics and sovereignty. "A very good energy in that meeting," Shanahan said. "I was pleased that it was very interactive dialogue." Sovereignty, Security, Stability During that meeting, the defense secretary said, he reiterated U.S. recognition of Iraqi sovereignty and a focus on security. "I made very clear that we recognize their sovereignty, their focus on independence and that we're there at the invitation of the government and that our role there is to advise and assist and to grow the -- not just the capability of the Iraqi security forces but also the capacity." he said. Security stability is fundamental to economic growth in Iraq, Shanahan said. "In his position in the country, economic growth is so important," he said of the prime minister. The two also discussed the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. "We talked about how we can generate more capacity and capability for the Iraqi security forces, and in his view, the success that's been realized over time." U.S. Forces Shanahan also met in Iraq with Army Lt. Gen. Paul J. LaCamera, the commander of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, and discussed the movement of U.S. forces out of Syria. The defense secretary also visited Afghanistan, where he met with Army Gen. Austin S. Miller, commander of NATO's Resolute Support Mission and U.S. Forces Afghanistan. "I really enjoyed my time with General Miller and having a chance to meet his team," Shanahan said. "When you think of words that stick in your mind, 'opportunity' was the one I took away from my visit with General Miller." Shanahan said he was impressed with the work Miller had been doing in Afghanistan related to development of the Afghan commandos. The secretary said success there provides "leverage" for the ongoing peace negotiations between the U.S. and the Taliban. The U.S. is represented there by Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation. "So when you think about the command force, the Afghan commando force ... I think of it as a real opportunity, because the work the commando force, the special forces is providing is really driving this negotiating opportunity," Shanahan said. Cyber Command Expects Lessons From 2018 Midterms to Apply in 2020 [2019-02-14] WASHINGTON -- Efforts to protect the 2018 midterm elections from foreign interference are expected to be studied and reapplied to protect the November 2020 elections, the commander of U.S. Cyber Command said on Capitol Hill today. During testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Army Gen. Paul M. Nakasone told lawmakers that protecting the 2018 midterms from meddling adversaries was both a priority and a challenge. "The defense of the 2018 midterm elections posed a significant strategic challenge to our nation," the general said. "Ensuring a safe and secure election was our No. 1 priority, and drove me to establish a joint U.S. Cyber Command/NSA effort we called the Russia Small Group." Nakasone serves as commander of Cybercom and as director of the National Security Agency. In submitted testimony, Nakasone said agencies including U.S. European Command, U.S. Northern Command, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and others had been asked to defend the integrity of America's 2018 midterm elections. The Russia Small Group resulted from their partnership, he said. Persistent Presence in Cyberspace "We created a persistent presence in cyberspace to monitor adversary actions and crafted tools and tactics to frustrate their efforts," Nakasone said. Now, Nakasone told senators, Cybercom is reviewing lessons learned from securing the midterm elections and is focused on potential threats that may arise during the 2020 presidential elections. Nakasone told the Senate panel that new language in the fiscal year 2019 National Defense Authorization Act has enhanced the ability of Cyber Command to perform its mission. That language allows the command to both better partner with other agencies and to operate outside DOD networks, he said. "I would also offer that the FY19 NDAA was critical for us at U.S. Cyber Command," Nakasone said. "It gave us capabilities and authorities that were important for us as we look to further enable. That included the ability for us to rapidly deploy elements of our force to the Department of Homeland Security, the ability for us to look at networks that are not part of the DOD network, and ... the idea of cyber as a traditional military activity. I think those are areas that are going to help us immensely with near-peer competitors." Survey Says: Majority of Spouses Satisfied With Military Life [2019-02-22] WASHINGTON -- The latest survey of active-duty and reserve-component service members' spouses shows the spouses are, by and large, happy with the military lifestyles they lead. Defense Department officials briefed reporters at the Pentagon yesterday on the results of the surveys, which were conducted in 2017. The survey of active-duty spouses and a similar survey of National Guard and Reserve spouses showed similar results, they said. Among active-duty spouses, 60 percent claimed they are "satisfied" with their military way of life. Among the reserve components, 61 percent were satisfied. While both surveys showed a slight decrease from the last previous survey, conducted in 2015, the 2015 and 2017 results both were higher than results from the same question on the 2008 survey, officials noted. James N. Stewart, performing the duties of the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, told reporters the surveys cover areas including satisfaction with military life, spouse employment, deployment and reintegration. Questions also touch on issues such as finances and the impact of deployments on families and military children. -- Survey Results Inform Decisions -- Results are used to inform decisions about how the U.S. military provides services to families, he said. "These surveys allow us to identify areas of concern and understand what's working, and more importantly, what's not," Stewart said. "This information also helps our internal leaders evaluate programs, address issues and gaps, and determine the need for new services." Paul Rosenfeld, the director for DOD's Center for Retention and Readiness, said positive results of the surveys included general spouse support for military members continuing to serve. Among reserve component spouses, for instance, 81 percent support continued service for their spouse. Regarding financial matters, 71 percent of active-duty spouses report being comfortable with their financial situation, while 68 percent of reserve-component spouses say the same thing. Of concern, Rosenfeld said, is that among active-duty spouses, 61 percent support continued military service for their spouse -- that's a drop from 68 percent in 2012. "Spouse support for service members staying on duty predicts actual member retention," Rosenfeld said. Other points of concern revealed by the surveys are high levels of "loneliness" reported by spouses when military members are deployed and unemployment rates for active-duty military spouses. Among active-duty spouses, Rosenfeld said, unemployment sits at 24 percent. Among the spouses of junior enlisted members in the E-1 through E-4 pay grades, he said, that number sits at 29 percent. -- It's All About the Kids -- When it comes to military spouses, Rosenfeld said, family is most important, and children top the list. "Child care continues to be a key need for active-duty families," he said, adding that 42 percent of active-duty spouses with children under age 6 report regularly using child care. It's 63 percent for spouses who are employed. Carolyn S. Stevens, director of DOD's Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, said some 40 percent of military members have children. Of those children, she said, about 38 percent are under the age of 6. Past survey results showed that availability of child care -- in particular, hours of operation -- had been an issue for military families, Stevens said. Where hours of operation for child care may have affected service members' ability to do their mission, hours were expanded, she added. Subsequent survey results show that now, among those who don't make use of child care on installations, only 2 percent say it's due to hours of operation, she said. "We believe, then, that those responses are a confirmation that we've listened to a concern, that we've responded to that concern, and that in fact we've hit the mark," she said. Also of concern when it comes to child care is cost and availability. About 45 percent of respondents on the survey say cost of child care is a problem for military families, Stevens said. She noted that in some situations, appropriated funds can be used to lower the cost of child care for families who use installation child care. And for some families, she said, fee assistance programs can be used to lower costs for those who use community-based child care. Still, Stevens acknowledged, that's not possible for every family who needs it, and more work needs to be done. "We are unable to provide fee assistance to all of our families, and we continue to see this as an issue that requires more attention and focus as we try to find solutions for families," she said. -- Next Survey: 2019 -- For the 2017 survey, about 45,000 active-duty spouses were asked to participate, and about 17 percent of those responded. Among reserve-component spouses, 55,000 were invited to participate, with a response rate of 18 percent. Invitations to participate in the 2019 survey went out to reserve component spouses in January. An invitation will be sent to active-duty spouses in May. A.T. Johnston, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for military community and family policy, said the results from the 2017 survey, and the now ongoing 2019 survey, will continue to be used to improve quality of life for military families. "The research information we receive guides me and my team to ensure we provide the tools, information and services that military families need to be successful, fulfilled, and able to manage the challenges they may encounter during military service," Johnston said. Go to https://www.militaryonesource.mil/web/mos/reports-and-surveys for full results of the 2017 surveys. Great Power Competition's Resurgence [2019-03-01] WASHINGTON -- What's great power competition? It's when large nations vie for the greatest power and influence -- not just in their own parts of the world, but also farther out. The United States enjoys a lead there now, but other nations are nipping at its heels. In the 1990s, the U.S. didn't have a peer competitor, economically, diplomatically, or militarily, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said during an event in Washington held as part of the NATO Atlantic Council's Commanders Series. From a military perspective, Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford said, the path of capability development both nations have pursued challenges the United States in a number of areas. The U.S. military strategy considers the U.S. military network of allies and partners as one of its greatest strengths. The ability to project power, when and where needed, is another great strength, the chairman said. "They both recognize those strengths," he said. "They both recognize the strength of our allies and partners. ... "Having carefully studied the U.S. ability to project power in 1991, 1992, and 2003, ... they recognize the competitive advantage we've had historically, and what they are seeking to do is undermine the credibility of our alliance structure in Europe and in the Pacific, as the case may be." From a military perspective, Dunford said, those two nations are developing capabilities of their own to contest the U.S. ability to move to meet alliance commitments, or operate once there, in air, land, sea, space and cyberspace. Send More Boats, Eucom Commander Tells Senate [2019-03-05] WASHINGTON -- More maritime power, including surface vessels and anti-submarine capability, are needed in Europe to counter threats there, the commander of U.S. European Command told the Senate Armed Services Committee at a hearing here today. "As you know ... we're looking at an evolving and modernizing Russian fleet," Army Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti told the committee. "If we want to remain dominant in the maritime domain -- in particular, the undersea, which we are today -- we have got to continue to modernize and continue to build capacity." The specifics of what Scaparrotti needs in Europe would be revealed later in the day during a closed session with the committee, but he openly said he'd need two more naval destroyers and that Eucom would need to enhance its anti-submarine warfare capability as well. Naval Rotations Additionally, the general said he'd like to see rotations of naval components, including carrier strike groups and amphibious strike groups, "at a little better pace than I've seen in the three years I've been in command." It wasn't just maritime forces that need bolstering in Europe to counter threats there or to enhance deterrence, Scaparrotti said. Ground forces also need to be strengthened, he told the Senate panel, and he's looking for enhancements to critical mission support as well. "Finally of concern is my intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capacity, given that increasing and growing threat of Russia," he said. "I need more ISR." Mobility Challenges Moving military troops and equipment through Europe has been challenging, the general said, given varying rules and regulations related to the weight of and kinds of things that can move over the roads and rails of European nations. Adding to that is the incompatibility of the rail networks of western and eastern European countries, he said. "It's a serious issue," Scaparrotti said. "We need to be able to move 360 in Europe, with our forces and the allies as well." The general said Congress has been helpful in remedying transportation issues in Europe through funding of the European Deterrence Initiative. "Congress has supported, particularly through EDI, some of the key infrastructure improvements that we need, particularly in the east, to support our movements, reception of our troops, and support of the troops we put in place there," Scaparrotti said. "But also it helps the allies. And the allies as well are financing along with many of those projects things that they should do with regard to airfields, fuel lines, rail, etc." Interoperability A recent NATO study on logistics and infrastructure highlighted many of the interoperability challenges in Europe, Scaparrotti told lawmakers, and that has resulted in a commitment of about $7 billion by the European Union to invest in logistics and infrastructure over the next five or six years. "We've got to follow up and make sure that investment goes to the right places and make a difference in military mobility," he said. The threats faced by the U.S. and allies in Europe are real, and growing, Scaparrotti told the panel. "They are complex, transregional, all-domain, and multifunctional," he said. "This remains one of the most dynamic periods in recent history, in my view. Russia has continued its reemergence as a strategic competitor, and remains the primary threat to a stable Euro-Atlantic security environment." While progress has been made in Europe, including adding new forces and capabilities, as well as improvements to readiness, Scaparrotti said more remains to be done. "I would tell you ... I'm not comfortable yet with the deterrent posture that we have in Europe in support of the National Defense Strategy," he said. 3 Things to Know: The U.S.-North Macedonia Defense Relationship [2019-03-07] WASHINGTON -- The burgeoning military-to-military relationship between the United States and North Macedonia, continued U.S. commitment to the mutual defense of Europe and North Macedonia's impending accession into the NATO alliance were among the topics discussed in a meeting at the Pentagon between Defense Minister of North Macedonia Radmila Sekerinska and Katie L. Wheelbarger, the U.S. acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. Here are three things to know about the U.S.-North Macedonia relationship: It's a Long-Standing Partnership North Macedonia and the Vermont National Guard have worked together since 1993 under the National Guard Bureau's State Partnership Program. In 1995, North Macedonia joined NATO's Partnership for Peace initiative. Today, North Macedonia is a strong contributor to the NATO missions in Afghanistan and Kosovo. Its military also is a partner in regional initiatives to enhance cooperation and security in the Western Balkans, which includes Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia. North Macedonia is increasing defense spending, with a clear plan to invest 2 percent of its gross domestic product in defense by 2024, in line with the level agreed upon by all NATO members. More Cooperation is on the Horizon Moving forward, the United States is committed to increasing partner capacity with North Macedonia and regional integration for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief events -- one of the greatest challenges facing Western Hemisphere nations. North Macedonia's NATO Accession At the alliance's summit in July, the 29 NATO nations invited North Macedonia to start its membership accession process to join NATO. Once all 29 NATO allies ratify the accession protocol, North Macedonia will become the alliance's 30th member. The United States, along with NATO allies and partners, are supporting efforts by countries like North Macedonia to achieve peace and prosperity for their people, to chart their own course, and to build the resilience necessary to resist Russian influence and meddling, Pentagon officials said. The U.S. supports North Macedonia's efforts to achieve full Euro-Atlantic integration, implement judicial reforms, strengthen its democratic institutions, combat corruption and develop a competitive free-market economy, they added. Senate Youth Program 'Delegates' Meet DOD Leaders at Pentagon [2019-03-08] WASHINGTON -- The weeklong U.S. Senate Youth Program trip to Washington concluded with a visit to the Pentagon. The 104 high school participants had a tour, a quick lunch and a meet and greet with David L. Norquist, who is performing the duties of deputy secretary of defense, and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Paul J. Selva. Norquist spoke to the youth about his own public service, and the wide variety of opportunities in federal government. "I would encourage you, if this week is inspiring you, and these sorts of things are interesting to you, keep that in mind as you go through college, as you look at the opportunities," Norquist said. "The councilors will give you great advice. And frankly, there's a wide range of things that we do down here in D.C. and across federal agencies, like NASA and others that you can find a niche for the types of things that you do." The students, or "delegates" in program parlance, represent each of the 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and Department of Defense Education Activity schools. The program, now in its 57th year, began in 1962 with a Senate resolution "to increase young Americans' understanding of the interrelationships of the three branches of government, the caliber and responsibilities of federally elected and appointed officials, and the vital importance of democratic decision making not only for America but for people around the world." While in the nation's capital, the delegates visited a variety of locations, some of which are not seen on an average tour, including Mount Vernon, the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Pentagon, the U.S. Senate, Arlington National Cemetery and the White House. They also met some of the U.S. government's most important executives, officials and elected leaders, including President Donald J. Trump, Sen. Joni Ernst, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John G. Roberts. Program delegates weren't on their own in Washington. Guiding them on a tour of the world's most powerful city were a team of military officers representing every branch of the military. Learn more about the program here. Military Officers Guide Students Through Weeklong Senate Youth Program [2019-03-08] WASHINGTON -- For Navy Lt. Bradley Lentz, this is the second time he's spent a week here as part of the U.S. Senate Youth Program. This time, he served as a mentor for the program. The first time, he was a high school participant. "In 2009, I applied for the program as a student, and I was accepted," said Lentz, who today is assigned as an ROTC instructor at the University of South Florida in Tampa. "It was a phenomenal experience -- one of the most exciting experiences of my life. I got to see all branches of federal government, and I was really inspired to a career in public service after that." Like Lentz a decade ago, some of the brightest high schoolers from around the country wrapped up a weeklong visit to the nation's capital today as part of the Senate Youth Program. Among those students -- 104 in all -- are two from each state, two from Washington, D.C., and two representing Department of Defense Education Activity schools. Their week in Washington was an opportunity to learn about government, democracy and in particular, the U.S. Senate. Not a Vacation During their time here, they didn't just visit tourist locations -- they met with and interacted with the government executives, leaders and elected officials who run the federal government. Among those on the itinerary were President Donald J. Trump, Sen. Joni Ernst, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John G. Roberts. On Friday, the 104 "delegates," as they are called, were able to visit the Pentagon for lunch and to hear from and meet with David L. Norquist, who is performing the duties of the deputy secretary of defense. The secretary told the youth he'd done a trip similar to theirs when he was in high school. "I do remember that from that week and from that trip, I found how much interest I have in what was going on in D.C.," he said. "So, 30 years from now, it doesn't matter if you remember me or you just remember a guy with a tie, but if you find this week inspiring, and you find the kinds of things happening in D.C. exciting, and you make a career of it -- then this will be worthwhile." Norquist also told the students that there are opportunities across the federal government for whatever career choice they might be interested in. The DOD in particular, he said, has opportunities for whatever kind of career they might choose. After remarks, he took questions from students on a wide array of topics, including budget, how the department makes decisions to enter into a conflict, and how DOD and the United States can work to prevent future conflict. Mentoring Opportunity Military officers from all branches served as mentors and guides on the trip, each shepherding a group of about eight delegates, to make sure nobody missed out on an opportunity to engage with and learn from some of the nation's most important leaders. But those officers were also there to impart their own wisdom, hoping to enlighten the students about the value of public service. "I want the delegates to learn that the stereotypes of military may not all be true from what they see in the popular culture," said Air Force Capt. Patrick Lin, an engineer assigned temporarily as an intelligence officer at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. "We could be your neighbors, with similar values from where you come from. I'd like them to be able to be able to relate better to the military service members that they'll hopefully get to work with in the future." The Senate Youth Program was created in 1962 by a resolution passed in the Senate "to increase young Americans' understanding of the interrelationships of the three branches of government, the caliber and responsibilities of federally elected and appointed officials, and the vital importance of democratic decision making not only for America but for people around the world." Informed Citizens The program is now in its 57th year, and Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Megan Drewniak, with the USCG Marine Safety Unit in Toledo, Ohio, said she can see why exposing students to government is beneficial to not just those who participate, but to America as a whole. "Being educated, and being able to make informed decisions is important, particularly in this day and age, during a somewhat tumultuous time," Drewniak said. "So, I think the more that young people are exposed to really how things work, how they can work, bipartisan relationships, things of that nature, I think the better off we will all be. We'll all be in really great hands if some of these young folks continue to move up in the world." Shannon Ryu is a senior at Seoul American Middle High School, a DODEA school in Seoul, South Korea. She's currently serving as her senior class president and president of the National Honor Society. She said that at the start of the Senate Youth Program week she was overwhelmed by the large number of speakers, but excited at the prospect of meeting government officials that she'd only read about. "There aren't any words to describe how excited I am to listen to all the speakers on the list," she said. "But particularly, I am looking forward to meeting Chief Justice of the Supreme Court [John] Roberts. I think that is one branch of government that I don't really know that much about compared to the executive and the legislative branches. I really want to see how checks and balances play out in the judicial branch, as well as just how the Supreme Court works." Understanding How Democracy Works Daniel Posthumus, a junior at Nile C. Kinnick High School, a DODEA school in Yokosuka, Japan, serves as student council treasurer at his school, and is also the president of the Spanish Honor Society and a member of the National Honor Society. He said he has an interest in politics and public service and thinks Washington will be a great place to learn things about democracy that can make anybody a better citizen. "I think that Washington, D.C., is where most of our democracy takes place, so I think if we have a good idea of what happens in Washington, D.C., then by extension, we must have a good idea if what happens in our democracy," he said. "I think that's really necessary for a healthy democracy. I think sometimes you have voters who may not understand how government works and may not understand the responsibilities of the citizen." Posthumus said he thinks a responsibility of citizenship is to understand how government works, and that Washington is a place to see it happen. "This will help us become better citizens and better use our knowledge to vote for the candidates who we think can make positive change," he said. Early Work on Arlington Cemetery Expansion Starts Next Year [2019-03-13] WASHINGTON -- For its second act of expansion, Arlington National Cemetery plans to grow southward onto property formerly occupied by the Navy Annex. Work there will begin next year, said the cemetery's executive director. Karen Durham-Aguilera spoke Tuesday before the House Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on military construction, veterans affairs and related agencies. She told lawmakers the cemetery plans to break ground on the first phase of the project in 2020. She also thanked them for providing the appropriate funding to make it happen. "With Congress's support, the Defense Access Road project is fully funded with $60 million and the Southern Expansion is partially funded with $219.1 million dollars no-year funding, toward a $350 million requirement," she said. Both projects, which include a plan to reroute Columbia Pike, which runs alongside the cemetery to the south; and a plan to develop reclaimed land and bring it up to the standards of the cemetery, are currently underway. The road project should finish by 2022, Durham-Aguilera said. The second phase of the project should begin in 2022, and complete in 2025. "Southern Expansion will add 37 acres of burial space and extend the cemetery's active life," Durham-Aguilera said. "We will continue to provide quarterly report to Congress, outlining the progress of these important projects." To move forward on the project, Durham-Aguilera said the Army is working with Arlington County, the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Federal Highway Administration. Other Progress Durham-Aguilera also told lawmakers about additional projects that have either been completed at the cemetery, which are underway, or which are currently in the planning stages. Since 2013, she said, 70 infrastructure projects have been completed. Today, an additional 25 are underway. We have completed or are currently rebuilding more than eight miles of roadways, with approximately ten additional miles in planning or design," she said. "We have replaced about one-third of the cemetery's storm sewer lines ... since 2013, we have replaced over 1,000 feet of sanitary line, typically, as an emergency repair. We plan to replace or rehabilitate an additional 5,000 feet to prevent further failures." In submitted testimony, Durham-Aguilera said the cemetery will also do work on its administrative building where families gather in advance of a funeral. Eligibility Criteria In fiscal year 2018, ANC buried nearly 6,500 service members, veterans and eligible family members, Durham-Aguilera said. While the expansions will extend how long the cemetery can remain active, it will not be enough, she said. "Expansion alone will not keep ANC open well into the future -- defined as 150 years," Durham-Aguilera said. "The [fiscal year 2019] National Defense Authorization Act requires the secretary of the Army, in consultation with the secretary of defense, by Sept. 30, 2019, to prescribe and establish revised criteria for interment that preserves ANC as an active burial ground. Evaluation of multiple options is ongoing to inform the secretary of the Army's decision." To help inform that decision about eligibility criteria, Durham-Aguilera said, ANC has, among other things, conducted two public surveys of nearly 260,000 respondents and held meetings and listening sessions with key stakeholders -- including more than 25 veteran and military service organizations. "Arlington National Cemetery's enduring mission is to represent the American people for the past, present and future generations by laying to rest those few who have served our nation with dignity and honor, while immersing guests in the cemetery's living history," Durham-Aguilera said. "We are committed to ensuring confident graveside accountability, our cemetery maintenance, our fiscal stewardship, and preserving the iconic look and feel of the cemetery." Challenging Russian Information Operations Requires Whole-of-Government Approach [2019-03-14] WASHINGTON -- When it comes to competition "below the level of armed conflict," such as information operations meant to influence adversaries, the U.S. can do more -- and has the capacity to do so, the commander of U.S. European Command said yesterday. "I think we could do more, that we have greater talent, we need more focus and energy," said Army Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti during a hearing held by the House Armed Services Committee to discuss national security challenges and U.S. military activities in Europe. Scaparrotti was joined by Kathryn Wheelbarger, the acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. "Russia's ability to make the West ... question its own institutions is one of the biggest challenges we have," Wheelbarger told the House members. "It sort of takes a whole-of-government effort to respond to it. Militarily, I think we are very adept and I trust our forces to be able to always outmatch any adversary, including Russia." "But our ability as a society to ensure we trust our own institutions in the face of their particularly aggressive information operations and use of social media to undermine us is significant," she said. Russia Influence Group Scaparrotti told lawmakers they've already contributed to at least one effort to counter Russian influence: the Russia Influence Group. Scaparrotti co-chairs the interagency group with the State Department and said over the last few years it's grown in capability. The RIG, he said, and its subcomponent, the Communications Engagement Group, are already doing successful work in Europe. The general also cited work with NATO to counter Russian meddling. "NATO has developed what I think is a pretty effective communications strategy and framework that they adjust over time," he said. "We have actually shown that we can develop a message that has greater depth penetration and volume than the Russians have on the eastern side." "We've done this on several occasions, where we've set out early to be proactive," Scaparrotti said. So to me it shows that we can do this. But we need to have greater focus and make this more the norm of what we do ... they are pretty agile at this and they are everywhere." 'Bold Assumption' Brings Warrior Games to Tampa [2019-03-15] WASHINGTON -- This year's Department of Defense Warrior Games competition -- which enhances the recovery and rehabilitation of wounded, ill, and injured service members through adaptive sports -- kicks off June 21. In past years, the games have been hosted by the Defense Department, the Navy, the Air Force, the Army and the U.S. Olympic Committee. For the first time this year, the games are being hosted by U.S. Special Operations Command on its home turf in Florida's Tampa Bay area, June 21-30. During a news conference to announce this year's games, Army Gen. Tony Thomas, Socom commander, explained why the 2019 games will be headed farther south than they've ever been before. "I've had the great opportunity to participate in the Warrior Games for the last three years over the course of my command tenure," Thomas said. Those games were held in West Point, New York; Chicago; and Colorado Springs, Colorado. The general also said he's attended the Invictus Games -- a similar competition created by Britain's Prince Harry -- in Toronto. Thomas said Socom has some 15,000 service members in its own warrior care program, including both active duty and retired personnel. Socom has fielded a team in the Warrior Games for almost as long as the games have existed. "We've been participating in these games for almost a decade now," Thomas said. "Why don't we get a chance to host it?" The simple answer was that no one had asked Socom to host, he said. "The bold assumption we made was, 'Do we think the Greater Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater environment would support us?'" he said. "We knew, going away, the answer was yes. We went out on a limb a little bit and asked our department, 'Can we host it here?' and at the same time socialized it with the great leadership here in the local area. The outpouring, as expected, has been nothing short of extraordinary." Around 300 athletes will participate in the 2019 Games. The Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force and Socom are again fielding teams, as are allied nations including the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. And this year for the first time, both Denmark and the Netherlands will participate. Those athletes will compete in 11 adaptive sports, including archery, cycling, indoor rowing, powerlifting, shooting, sitting volleyball, swimming, time trial cycling, track and field and wheelchair basketball. The Warrior Games, Thomas said, is "a showcase of our extraordinary warriors who have been dealt a tough hand of cards in terms of being wounded, ill, or injured across the course of their time in service. But more importantly, it gives them an opportunity to shine and demonstrate their resilience, their extraordinary resilience in the face of those challenges in a variety of adaptive sports programs." "You will see courage and resilience like you have never seen before," he added. "If you don't walk away inspired, you don't have a pulse. It's that level of commitment and fortitude that's displayed." 4 Things to Know About the U.S.-France Relationship [2019-03-19] WASHINGTON -- Acting Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan met with French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly at the Pentagon Monday to reaffirm the defense relationship with the United States' oldest ally. Here are four things to know about the U.S.-France relationship: -- The United States and France partnered for the first time 244 years ago, when France supported what was then a British colony in its bid for independence. Our bond with our oldest ally remains strong. -- Because the U.S. West Coast lies on the Pacific Ocean and France has islands in the Pacific, including French Polynesia and New Caledonia, both are Pacific nations. Together, the United States and France work to support operations to ensure maritime security in the Pacific. In the coming months, the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle is expected to arrive in the Pacific to support these efforts. -- As a member of the global coalition to defeat ISIS, France is a strong ally of the U.S. in a collective effort to deter violent extremism around the globe and a leader in counter-terrorism efforts in the Sahel. -- In NATO, France has committed to spending two percent of its gross domestic product on defense by 2025, and is on track to meet commitments to collective European security. Space Force Looks to Stay Light-Years Ahead [2019-03-20] WASHINGTON -- The recently announced U.S Space Force won't be deploying space cadets on bug hunts any time soon -- at least it's not in the plans for now. Instead, its primary role will be to maintain and increase the gap between existing U.S. space capabilities and those of America's nearest competitors. Acting Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan discussed the now-blossoming U.S. Space Force as well as other Defense Department developments to grow America's dominance in the final frontier. Space Force will be an "advocate" for space, Shanahan said, and will fall under the Air Force in the same way the Marine Corps falls under the Navy Department. But Space Force won't be as big as the Navy, the Air Force, or the Marine Corps. It'll be less than 20,000 strong, and have a budget matching that of U.S. Special Operations Command. DOD efforts to maintain an edge in space also involve standing up a space-focused combatant command -- for the second time. The first stood up in 1985 and shuttered in 2002. U.S. Space Command will "change the mission of space from a support function to a leading role," Shanahan said. Delivering research, space-age gear and equipment to U.S. Space Force and U.S. Space Command will be the Space Development Agency. That's the third prong of the DOD's rocket-like drive into space. The Space Development Agency will have work to do on the day it opens its doors, including finding ways to track and warn against hypersonic weapons, and discovering an alternative to GPS. To read more, look here. Shanahan: Space Force to Preserve Margin of Dominance, $19 Trillion Economy [2019-03-20] WASHINGTON -- If the gap is to be maintained between what the United States has in space technology and capability and what its closest competitors have -- a gap that's closing fast -- it'll be the recently approved Space Force that maintains it, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan said here today. Shanahan spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies about the Defense Department's reorganization to support space, Space Force's roles and responsibilities, providing some of the details of what it might look like. "My goal and the department's goal is to grow what we call our 'margin of dominance' in space. This margin is now contested," he said. "What is vital is that we protect a $19 trillion economy and the systems our military runs on." That protection includes ensuring U.S. satellites aren't incapacitated, the secretary said. "If our satellites were attacked, we would be blind, deaf and impotent before we even knew what hit us," Shanahan said. "Everything from ATM machines to Zumwalt destroyers would be paralyzed." Shanahan said it makes sense that DOD would reorganize itself to make space a new warfighting domain and put as much effort and consideration behind that domain as it does for land, sea or air. A Strategic Choice "If you are faced with threats like this, you say yes to change," he said. "And so we make a strategic choice to organize to ensure American dominance in space for decades." The department's reorganization to support space involves three large areas, he said. First is the much-discussed U.S. Space Force, which will fall under the Department of the Air Force in a way similar to how the U.S. Marine Corps falls under the Department of the Navy. "To move forward effectively, space needs an advocate," he said. "That advocate will be the Space Force. The Space Force will operate like other branches of the armed services, organizing, training and equipping the force with Title X authorities. It will have formalized leadership, including a new undersecretary for space, and a chief of staff of the Space Force, to focus on developing space warfighting doctrine and culture." Like the other military services, he said, the Space Force will have an internal culture that focuses on professional development of its members, and "creating a pipeline of space experts." Compared to its sister services, Space Force will not be large. Shanahan estimates it will number about 15,000 to 20,000 people and will have a budget similar to that of U.S. Special Operations Command. A second part of the department's reorganization to support space will include development of U.S. Space Command as the nation's 11th combatant command. DOD once had a space command, which operated from 1985 to 2002, but it was shuttered to make way for U.S. Northern Command, Shanahan said. Space Command will change the mission of space from a support function to a leading role, Shanahan said. The commander of Space Command, he said, will "wake up every morning thinking of two things: how to win in space and how will space help the joint force win in the land, sea, air and cyber domain." Finally, a Space Development Agency will be developed to perform what Shanahan called a "pacing function." "Our space presence will be enabled by new capabilities delivered by the Space Development Agency," he said. Leveraging Commercial Space Investment Shanahan pointed out that about 2,500 active satellites are in orbit now. In the next 10 years, he said, American companies expect to launch an additional 15,000 satellites with capabilities such as communications and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. "In the next decade, we expect to see commercially available persistent surveillance of the globe from space," he said. "We need to leverage this commercial space investment and tap into the advancements to help solve the next generation of warfighting challenges." The Space Development Agency, he said, will focus at first on delivering capabilities related to hypersonic weapons tracking, warning and targeting, as well as alternatives to GPS-based position navigation timing for use in GPS-denied environments. Shanahan also touched on why the decision was made to put Space Force underneath the Air Force, rather than making it a completely separate department. He explained that a lot of emphasis was placed on getting to the ability to deliver capability the fastest way, noting that might not be possible if DOD was focused on standing up a completely new department. "What is the best organizational construct so you can go the fastest?" he asked. "Given the need for speed and how much time you might spend just reorganizing, we landed in a place that said, 'Draw off the synergy of the Air Force.' We have significant learning from the Marine Corps about how to have a service within a department. The biggest thing we've been working to do with the Space Force is focus on delivering capability faster." Pentagon Official: U.S., Partners Must Lead in 5G Technology Development [2019-03-26] WASHINGTON -- The next advancement in cellular technology, 5G, is expected to be so fast that it's able to surpass the speed of wired internet now provided by cable companies. Current 4G technology provides download speeds of about 1 gigabit per second. With 5G technology, download speeds are expected to increase to 20 gigabits per second, said Ellen M. Lord, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. Lord spoke yesterday at the Atlantic Council here to discuss the Defense Department's efforts to advance 5G technology in the United States and to ensure that when 5G does make its debut, it's secure enough to transmit information between U.S. military personnel and its allies without being intercepted by potential adversaries. --U.S. and Allies Must Take Lead-- That means the U.S. and its allies will need to take the lead in developing this next generation of telecommunications technology, she said. "When we talk about 5G, everything is going to be moving over it, eventually," Lord said. "What we need to do is make sure how that information is moving, and how you can get at it, and how you can keep it secure." Lord likened development of the 5G infrastructure and technology to that of a new home. She said new home owners certainly would want to know that whoever built their home, wired it for electricity, installed the communications systems, or installed the doors and windows hadn't also built in a way for them to sneak back into that house undetected after the new owners had moved in. "That's where we are with 5G," Lord said. "If we are going to run our entire warfighting ecosystem though communications -- which is where we are today -- we need to make sure that when we send a critical message that others aren't hearing it. We need to be able to test that." On the modern battlefield, and on the battlefield of the foreseeable future, communications is going to play a critical role, Lord said. Information must flow between mounted and dismounted soldiers, from ships at sea and from those under the sea, as well as to space and aircraft. "In order to get relevant situational understanding, we are trading information back and forth all the time," she said. "What will happen is, if we do not embrace 5G, and we are just getting going in 4G in a lot of areas, we are going to have a latency or a delay in those conversations that could render everything we have as ineffective." --U.S. Industry and Partners Must Provide Advancements-- Advancements in 5G must come from U.S. industry and U.S. partners to be trustworthy and reliable, Lord said. "Right now there is quite an intensive dialogue going on to understand where in Europe we might partner," Lord said. "And there has been an enormous amount of discussion about the threat that we see by the Chinese -- theft of intellectual property -- coming into our networks. We have to collectively decide how we are technically going to secure our networks -- how we legislatively have to have protection." Lord said a whole-of-government approach is needed to get a handle on 5G. The State, Treasury and Commerce departments and the National Security Council should be involved along with DOD, she said. "I think you are going to see a huge call to action this year to come together with really what is almost a national industrial policy for 5G, because the stakes are high," Lord added. "5G from a technology point of view is a huge opportunity, but it's a huge threat. "If we don't embrace it and apply it towards our goals, we could be overcome quickly with technical overmatch," she continued. "And we can't allow that to happen. ... We have a warfighting imperative. If we cannot communicate as quickly, or quicker than our adversaries, if we cannot have situational understanding as to what is happening on the battlefield, then we are going to be in a position where our national security is threatened." Top Sustainment Official: Housing Privatization ‘Right Thing to Do’ [2019-03-27] WASHINGTON -- Despite reports of poor conditions in some privatized military family housing across the continental United States -- about 200,000 homes in all -- the Military Housing Privatization Initiative was a good idea, the assistant secretary of defense for sustainment told lawmakers yesterday. Robert H. McMahon said the initiative was focused on "improving the quality of on-base housing and providing the necessary long-term investment our personnel deserve." He spoke during a hearing of the House Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on military construction, veterans' affairs and related agencies. McMahon acknowledged that deficiencies in military family housing must be addressed and told lawmakers that the Defense Department will work with both housing privatization partners and Congress to "provide the best housing possible" to service members and their families. --Mitigation Efforts Underway-- In submitted testimony to the committee, McMahon said efforts are already being made to ameliorate the issues that have been raised. "I am increasing the oversight my office provides to ensure the military departments fully and effectively exercise their responsibilities to ensure that privatized housing is managed in a manner protective of human health and the environment," he said. "This includes establishing new reporting requirements and programmatic reviews regarding military department monitoring of potential hazards in privatized housing, such as reporting on the number of child falls from windows in both privatized and military-operated housing," McMahon said. A "Resident Bill of Rights," is the start of an increased effort by DOD and housing privatization partners to ensure military families have a positive experience in privatized housing, he said. "Through increased engagement, we will better educate military families about their roles and responsibilities to help identify any issues with housing conditions, and the roles and responsibilities of the privatized partner and the installation housing teams," McMahon said. About 99 percent of military family housing in the United States has been privatized, he said, and the effort to do so has "dramatically improved the quality of on-base housing and has facilitated the long-term investment necessary to maintain high quality housing." --New Housing-- McMahon was on the Hill as part of a series of hearings on the fiscal year 2020 defense budget request. Within that request is about $1.3 billion targeted toward DOD's worldwide family housing inventory -- which includes 34,000 government-owned and 7,100 leased family housing units. About $293 million of that total is targeted towards construction of new housing, and about $1 billion is targeted at operation and maintenance of DOD's government-owned and -leased family housing units and oversight of privatized housing on U.S. installations. Additionally, DOD requested about $674 million to support construction and renovation projects to support unaccompanied service members, including nine such projects that are expected to improve the living conditions of more than 3,900 trainees and permanent party individuals. Major projects include $73 million for the second phase of a training barracks at Fort Sill, Oklahoma; $164 million for a barracks complex at Navy Base Guam; $110 million for recruit barracks at Joint Base San Antonio; and $134 million for a barracks project at Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Honolulu. "Our modernization effort includes a focus on improving privacy and access to amenities that are important to our unaccompanied personnel," McMahon said. DOD Official: Maintaining Space Dominance ‘Pivotal’ for U.S. Warfighters [2019-03-29] WASHINGTON -- The United States was the first -- and still the only -- nation to put a man on the moon. Nobody will forget that. But come July, that first manned lunar landing will have been exactly 50 years ago. A lot has changed in space in the last half century, including the number of countries that are capable of putting things on the moon, launching rockets with complex satellites, or building space stations. The United States still has a lead in space, but that might not last long. Russia and China, for instance, "are looking to asymmetrically undermine our space-based capabilities," Kenneth P. Rapuano, the assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and global security, said at a March 27 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee's strategic forces subcommittee. "Space is a vital national interest," Rapuano said. "It underpins our economy and way of life, supporting our academia, agricultural, banking and travel sectors, among others. Moreover, the rapidly growing commercial space sector offers enormous promise for the prosperity of Americans and our global partners." But space also offers the U.S. military an advantage that Rapuano said America must fight to maintain. Just how important is space to uniformed gunslingers on the battlefield? "It's pivotal," Rapuano said. "Our targeting. Our communications. Positioning, timing, location for GPS. And all of the ... capabilities in terms of surveillance and reconnaissance that we get from space. Real-time situational awareness of adversaries' locations and activities. To lose those capabilities would be very significant, and that is why we are so focused on defending and protecting them." --U.S. Edge at Risk-- Rapuano let senators know the U.S. has got to step up its game or risk losing its edge to the Chinese or Russians, both of whom are vying for the top spot in the space race for the strategic advantage it provides. "China has expanded by orders of magnitude," Rapuano said. "The Russians have grabbed back. They have newly invested in space and developed some relatively exquisite capabilities. But the scale of the Chinese investment is the lead in terms of everyone else out there, including Russia. They have more rocket launches this year than the United States. They are the lead rocket-launch nation in the world." Rapuano said China and Russia are developing military capabilities, doctrine and organizations intended to place U.S. space systems at risk, including anti-satellite weapons, ground-launch missiles and directed energy weapons. Additionally, he said, they continue to launch experimental satellites that conduct sophisticated on-orbit activities to advance counter-space capabilities. "The department must do more to accelerate its response to the changing dynamics of space by adapting our organizations, policies, doctrine, capabilities and joint force employment to more effectively deter aggression, protect our interests and enhance our lethality," Rapuano said. The DOD's proposal for U.S. Space Force, establishment of U.S. Space Command as a unified command, and establishment of a Space Development Agency are all part of DOD's efforts to move forward, Rapuano said. 4 Things to Know About the U.S. Nuclear Deterrence Strategy [2019-04-01] WASHINGTON -- U.S. military leaders went before lawmakers to emphasize a handful of critical, but immensely important points about America's nuclear weapons capabilities. Acting Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan and Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified at a House Armed Services Committee hearing. David Trachtenberg, deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, spoke before the HASC strategic forces subcommittee. The fiscal year 2020 budget request from President Donald J. Trump was the impetus for both hearings, but America's nuclear defense strategy was clearly important to lawmakers on both days. Important takeaways from this glowing-hot topic? 1) Nuclear deterrence is a top priority within the U.S. military. "It's our singular, most important mission," Dunford told lawmakers. "Nuclear deterrence is the bedrock of U.S. national security," Trachtenberg said. "Our nuclear deterrent underwrites all U.S. military operations and diplomacy across the globe. It is the backstop and foundation of our national defense. A strong nuclear deterrent also contributes to U.S. non-proliferation goals by limiting the incentive for allies to have their own nuclear weapons." Nuclear deterrence means that when the U.S. has nuclear weapons, it tempers in some fashion the activities of potential adversaries around the globe -- helping to ensure those adversaries don't make dangerous miscalculations about what they can get away with based on what they think the U.S. is capable of or willing to do in response. 2) Recapitalization, often referred to as modernization, of America's strategic nuclear capability is critical, defense officials have said. Recapitalization means that existing weapons will be replaced with completely new weapons or will be overhauled from the ground up and equipped with the latest technology. Recapitalization of the nuclear force during the next 20 years will comprise, at its highest point, about 3.7% of the DOD budget, a defense official said. This year's request to recapitalize the nuclear enterprise comprises about 1.2% of the total DOD budget request, the official noted. 3) America's strategic capability includes nuclear weapons such as those in missile silos, on submarines, and on bomber aircraft. The U.S. refers to those weapons, in those three locations, as "the nuclear triad." Weapons within the triad include ground-based Minuteman III weapons, submarine-launched Trident II missiles, and an array of nuclear bombs designed to be delivered aircraft such as the B-2 Spirit or the B-52 Stratofortress. These weapons systems are getting old and must be modernized to ensure they continue to operate and that they retain their deterrent capability, defense officials have said. "Nuclear forces are the ultimate foundation of our nation's security," Trachtenberg said. "Our deterrent forces must be modernized to remain credible. Delay is not an option." Defense officials have said China and Russia are prioritizing high levels of defense spending to modernize their nuclear forces and the U.S. must invest in its systems to maintain parity. A Pentagon official noted that the Russian defense minister has said that 90% of the country's strategic nuclear forces will be armed with modern weaponry by 2020. 4) The U.S. military further seeks to strengthen deterrence by addressing an imbalance in its nonstrategic, or low-yield, nuclear weapons without matching Russia system for system, a defense official said. The official added that these supplemental capabilities will help ensure Russia, China and others do not believe they can benefit from using low-yield nuclear weapons on the battlefield against the U.S. or its allies and partners. The defense official said these capabilities do not require nuclear testing, do not violate arms control treaties, and in the end will reduce the likelihood that Russia will use its large number of non-strategic nuclear weapons, thereby strengthening deterrence and helping prevent conflict in the first place. The U.S. recently suspended its obligations under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and gave notice of its intent to withdraw after long-term violations of the treaty by Russia, a defense official said, adding that U.S. allies fully support the decision. "Russia is in material breach of the INF Treaty and must use the next six months to return to full and verifiable compliance or bear sole responsibility for its demise," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg wrote on Twitter, Feb. 1. The United States is now examining options for its conventional ground-based intermediate strike missiles, a defense official said. The official noted that the initial developmental work is designed to be reversible should Russia resume complying with the INF Treaty before the six-month period expires. Shanahan: Space No Longer Peaceful [2019-04-09] WASHINGTON -- Though there once may have been tranquility in space, that's likely no longer the case, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan told the 35th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado. "We're in an era of great power competition, and the next major conflict may be won or lost in space," Shanahan said. "Space is no longer a sanctuary -- it is now a warfighting domain." The secretary told U.S. military and defense industry space experts that the Defense Department is embarking on a massive effort to ensure the United States maintains its dominance in space amid competitors' challenges to that dominance. In addition to the proposed U.S. Space Force, the effort includes a new joint combatant command -- U.S. Space Command -- and the Space Development Agency, which will ensure those fighting to maintain space dominance always have the best gear. Shanahan said the Space Development Agency is expected to do three things for the U.S. military: 1- Provide consolidation of activity and integration at scale. Shanahan said the Army, Navy and Air Force all maintain space satellite communications systems and have deployed more than 130 different types of wide-band terminals, in addition to narrow band and protected satellite communication terminals. The SDA will provide a "once-in-a-generation opportunity" to consolidate systems and provide a unified, multidomain command and control system. 2- Lead a true national team systems engineering effort. Shanahan said the SDA can be a central figure in engineering the multiple and complex components of space systems. This might include, for instance, launch vehicles, the satellite bus, the payload, the standards and protocols, the mesh network, the ground stations and the terminals. 3- Harness the innovation and investment taking place in commercial space. The SDA will not equip America's warfighters all alone, the secretary said. It will, as the Defense Department and the services have done all along, work hand in hand with the defense industry. Shanahan said revenue generated by the global space industry may increase to more than $1.1 trillion by 2040. "DOD must leverage the private sector investment chasing this opportunity," he added. Learn more here about what's driving DOD's efforts to increase its space capability. Shanahan: Next Big War May Be Won or Lost in Space [2019-04-09] WASHINGTON -- Wars have been fought on land, on the sea and in the air. But the next conflict may be a war in the immediate area above the breathable atmosphere, amid the satellites now circling Earth, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan said today. Shanahan spoke during the 35th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado, an event that brought representatives from the space community to one place to discuss and focus attention on space-related issues and promote dialogue. The secretary told attendees from both the military and the private sector that U.S. competitors already are gearing up for conflicts overhead. "Weapons are currently deployed by our competitors that can attack our assets in space," Shanahan said. Both China and Russia have weaponized space in ways that put existing U.S. space capabilities at risk, he said. The Chinese have developed jamming capability that can affect U.S. satellite communications; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets; and the GPS. China also is deploying directed-energy weapons and has developed advanced hypersonic weapons the United States can't track. The Russians, he said, are doing much of the same. "The threat is clear: we're in an era of great power competition, and the next major conflict may be won or lost in space," Shanahan said. "Because of their actions, space is no longer a sanctuary -- it is now a warfighting domain. This is not a future or theoretical threat; this is today's threat. We are not going to sit back and watch. We are going to act. We are going to deter conflict from extending into space, and ensure we can respond decisively if deterrence fails." To protect a $19 trillion dollar U.S. economy that relies heavily on space, Shanahan said, the Defense Department must step up and protect a domain that is increasingly becoming as important as land, sea and air. Space is Fundamental to Modern Life "From the GPS you use to navigate, to the delivery drones and self-driving cars of the future, to the phone you're using to tweet quotes from my remarks today, ... space is fundamental to our modern way of life," Shanahan said. "America's future depends on space, so we will develop the forces and capabilities to protect and defend our space interests." The first part of that effort, the secretary said, is the development of a space force similar to the military services that fight on the land, on the sea and in the air. The U.S. Space Force will organize, train and equip a fighting force in the same way as the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, he explained. The Space Force likely will start small, he said, with about 15,000 to 20,000 people drawn from existing forces. "The Space Force will be responsible for developing military units that can protect and defend America's space interests," Shanahan said. "By creating the new service inside the Air Force, the additional cost is less than one-tenth of 1% of the DOD budget. Or put another way, the Space Force will cost about $1.50 per American per year." The second part of DOD's effort is the creation of a joint combatant command, U.S. Space Command. Shanahan said this will allow for a warfighting commander that can focus exclusively on space, and he noted that President Donald J. Trump has nominated Air Force Gen. John W. "Jay" Raymond to lead the new command. Finally, Shanahan said, a Space Development Agency "will architect our future space ecosystem." One immediate benefit there is that the SDA can look for efficiencies in existing U.S. military space systems, he said. Each military service currently runs its own unique satellite communications systems, Shanahan said, which involves more than 130 different types of wide-band terminals deployed to access these systems. The SDA can work across that system of communications capabilities and look for efficiencies and cost savings, he explained. An Eye Toward Consolidation "As we look to future architectures, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to consolidate and provide the department a unified, multidomain command and control system for the first time," Shanahan said. The secretary also said the SDA will work to combine the best that U.S. industry can develop for space with DOD's unique needs to help build the capabilities needed to protect America's future. "These will include sensors that can detect and track hypersonic threats, machine learning to make sense of the enormous data we will collect, [artificial intelligence] to link sensors and shooters, and cybersecurity designed in from the beginning," Shanahan said "The result will be a space architecture that is resilient, responsive and ahead of the threat. These breakthroughs will empower our forces with multidomain command and control." Though DOD is moving "with purpose and speed" to get its plans in motion, Shanahan said, the department will not go it alone. "Our objectives are too far-reaching to be achieved by any one entity, even one as large as the Department of Defense," he said. "We need to leverage the asymmetric advantages provided by American industry and our allies that no competitor can match." "Together, we're going to maximize and protect space," he continued. "The end state is a national security space architecture that is proliferated, affordable, persistent and provisioned for AI. When we're done, it should look something like the cell phone network we have on Earth." Shanahan said those who wish to partner with DOD in this endeavor should "buckle up." "We are seizing on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," he added. "We are starting now because we refuse to fall behind. We can outpace our competitors and make it impossible for them to contest our dominance in space." DOD Official: ‘Intense Campaign’ Addressing Military Housing Issues [2019-04-09] WASHINGTON -- Site visits to military housing by defense officials to hear firsthand accounts of problems there are just one step being taken to ensure military families have safe places to live. Robert H. McMahon, the assistant secretary of defense for sustainment, told lawmakers on April 4 that the military services are aware of problems in privatized housing and have embarked on a series of house calls to let families know they're going to fix issues they find. "Since the beginning of the year, the military departments have conducted an intense campaign, consisting of site visits, reviews of privatized housing conditions, meetings with families and communities, and senior-level discussions with privatization partners to address property management issues," McMahon said in testimony during a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee's readiness subcommittee. Complaints Taken Seriously McMahon said that the Defense Department had an open-door policy when it comes to reporting housing issues. He said all resident complaints are taken seriously and acted upon by the housing privatization project entity and staff, and that when he's fielded such a complaint, he's then followed up with other service-level officials to help fix problems. Included among those officials were Thomas B. Modly, undersecretary of the Navy; John W. Henderson, assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, environment and energy; and Alex A. Beehler, assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment. All three testified alongside McMahon at the hearing. Services Taking Action Modly told lawmakers the Navy is reaching out to "every single person in the Navy and Marine Corps who lives in privatized housing." So far, he said, they've identified about 4,700 issues with family housing for sailors, and that about 2,800 of those families have asked leaders to visit their homes personally. "We're well on the way of ticking away on that," Modly said, noting that about 900 visits have been made to Navy personnel and 7,000 personal visits have been made to family housing. "I think we are taking it extremely seriously, as well as taking it personally," he said. "But we're trying to do everything we can immediately to address the immediate concerns." Henderson said nearly 50,000 Air Force families have been contacted and interviewed regarding their concerns with family housing. Accordingly, he said, some 4,700 work orders have been opened up to address issues that were found. "They are now surging on [those work orders] and we're battle tracking here with the Air Force," Henderson said. The Army has also stepped up efforts to correct any problems in privatized family housing. Following the hearing, Beehler said leaders across the Army have been visiting soldier homes to assess problems that might be found there. "The chain of command for each soldier has visited their on-post housing -- that's more than 87,000 homes," Beehler said. "These home visits will continue at the request of our military families until the issue is resolved. Furthermore, we are hiring additional personnel on the ground to provide quality assurance oversight for all housing. We have also established 24-7 hotlines that are live at every single installation that soldiers and families can call and connect with key garrison and command personnel to discuss any housing concerns. We want to ensure our soldiers and families are getting the best quality housing that they deserve." Systemic Corrections At the DOD level, McMahon said the department is committed to providing a safe and secure environment on all bases and installations for service members and their families. He said a series of corrective actions are underway already to address problems found in privatized housing. "Examples of these actions include implementing a residents' bill of rights. Determining the feasibility of developing a common tenant lease, clarifying processes for tenants to raise health concerns and for health providers to report issues as appropriate and establishing resident customer care advocates." In 1996, legislation established the Military Housing Privatization Initiative, or MHPI. As part of this initiative, the military departments conveyed 99 percent, or more than 200,000 units of installation family housing in the United States to private entities. The MHPI leverages private investment and expertise to significantly improve the quality of on-base housing faster than traditional military construction and facilitates long-term investment necessary to maintain high quality on-base housing. Reserve Components Are Focused on Readiness, Leaders Say [2019-04-11] WASHINGTON -- Readiness was a top priority for both the National Guard and the services' Reserve components when planning budgets for fiscal year 2020, their leaders told Congress yesterday. During a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee, the chiefs of all four service reserve components and the National Guard Bureau briefed lawmakers on the status of the components they lead, and some of the priorities that went into developing their budget request for fiscal 2020. Air Force Gen. Joseph L. Lengyel, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said the three priorities for the National Guard included preparing to fight overseas, defending the nation and building partnerships. Each of those missions supports the national defense strategy, he said. Lengyel also told lawmakers that for the National Guard to be ready to do what it needs to do -- to be deployable, sustainable and interoperable with the active component of the Army and Air Force -- "we require such things as appropriate levels of full-time support, and replacing and upgrading old, worn-out facilities. We require parity in equipping our force through concurrent and balanced modernization and recapitalization of our force along with our active components." Service Plans Army Gen. Charles D. Luckey, chief of the Army Reserve, highlighted "Ready Force X" in his submitted testimony. "This construct, Ready Force X, remains the way in which we focus energy, optimize our process, and prioritize our resources to deliver capabilities at the speed of relevance for a major war," he said. Ready Force X, or RFX, Luckey said, begins at the individual soldier level. "While many aspects of collective readiness at the unit level can be tuned up quickly upon mobilization, the key individual soldier requirements of physical fitness, medical readiness, tactical discipline, professional education, and fieldcraft proficiency must be 'baked in' to the entire force," he said. "Put simply, at a profound level, we are all in RFX." Air Force Lt. Gen. Richard W. Scobee, chief of the Air Force Reserve, said his focus is to "prepare to operate in tomorrow's battlespace while providing excellent support to our airmen and their families." In the past year, Scobee said, the Air Force Reserve activated its first cyber wing and its first intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance wing, which is expected to help the service further expand its support off those missions. Vice Adm. Luke M. McCollum, chief of the Navy Reserve, said recapitalization of aging hardware "is critical to ensuring the highest levels of readiness and interoperability with the active component." A No. 1 priority there, he said, is recapitalization of the Navy Reserve's Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Force capability. Two Navy Reserve units, one at Whidbey Island, Washington, and the other at Jacksonville, Florida, currently operate P-3C maritime patrol aircraft. Plans are to replace those with the P-8A Poseidon aircraft. "Recapitalization of the two RC squadrons currently operating the legacy P-3C's, through FY 2022, with additional P-8A aircraft, aircrews and associated military construction, will buy down warfighting risk," McCollum said in his written statement. The budget request seeks funds to help accomplish that, McCollum said, as well as other Navy Reserve priorities such as avionics upgrades for the C-130T aircraft, 40-foot patrol boats and the Joint Reserve Intelligence Centers. Maj. Gen. Bradley S. James, commander of Marine Corps Forces Reserve, told senators how they could contribute to a "more ready and lethal Marine Reserve force." First, he cited continued support of the National Guard and Reserve Equipment Appropriation, and he asked for "greater spending flexibility within this appropriation in order to procure critical shortfall items, and modernize equipment and systems." Second, he highlighted the timeliness of the fiscal 2019 budget and said the predictability has a positive impact in the training of Reserve Marines. "I would like to thank you for this year's appropriations," he told the panel. "On average the Marine Corps Reserve [members] only have 38 training days a year, which places an increase in importance on adequate and timely appropriation." Part-Time Service Members, Full-Time Citizens [2019-04-11] WASHINGTON -- Not every service member wears a uniform full time. Some hold down civilian jobs most of the time and only occasionally put on their uniforms for regularly scheduled training; for deployments in support of the U.S. government when called upon or, in the case of National Guardsmen, to support their home state governors in times of local emergency or natural disaster. What National Guardsmen and reservists have in common is they provide much-needed support to their active-duty counterparts, and they are an integral part of the U.S. military mission. 1- The National Guard includes nearly 450,000 soldiers and airmen. 2- On any day, some 30,000 guardsmen are mobilized around the world in support of combatant commanders. 3- The National Guard is represented in 2,600 communities across U.S. states, territories and the District of Columbia. 4- Some 10,000 guardsmen are involved in ongoing missions daily across the U.S. supporting North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command to protect the skies above the United States and participate in drug interdiction missions. 5- The Army Reserve has a presence in all 50 states, five U.S. territories and 30 countries. It has more than 200,000 soldiers and civilian employees spread across more than 2,000 units in 20 different time zones. 6- The Air Force Reserve's 70,000 airmen are operationally integrated with their active component counterparts. 7- The Navy Reserve is composed of 101,000 sailors: 48,000 reservists, 43,000 individual ready reservists and 10,000 full-time support members from every state and territory. 8- Since 2001, Navy reservists have mobilized more than 84,000 times to every theater of operation, including 3,310 mobilizations in fiscal year 2018. 9- In 2018, 2,135 reserve Marines mobilized supporting 35 operational requirements in each of the six geographic combatant commands. Likewise, nearly 14,000 reserve Marines participated in 76 training exercises, supporting requirements in 41 countries. Leaders from the National Guard and Reserve components were on Capitol Hill April 10 to tell lawmakers just how busy their service members are. Click here to learn what National Guard and reserve leaders said to Congress. Warfighters Need ‘Uncompromised’ Technology, Official Says [2019-04-24] WASHINGTON -- Adversaries shouldn't already have read the manual on a new U.S. gun before the first soldier has had a chance to fire one, the Defense Security Service's director of counterintelligence said here today. "We are in a very highly contested environment, with our opponents quite successfully taking our stuff," William Stephens said at a forum on supply chain security and software at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noting that U.S. intelligence analysts and other sources support that assessment. Stephens spoke on the importance of delivering and how to deliver "uncompromised" technology and capability to the warfighter. What that means in practical terms is that when new technology arrives in warfighters' hands, the only people who should know how it works, what it does and what its limits and capabilities are include the defense contractor that built it, the military service that paid for it, and the service member who's going to use it. Techniques adversaries use to figure out new U.S. technology before soldiers or airmen get a chance to use it vary greatly, he said, but include such things as exploitation of relationships in the technology community -- such as at conferences and trade shows -- as well as email and mail, surveillance, exploitation of cyber operations, exports or supply chains, and even insider access and outright theft. Americans pay for a lot of technology to support the warfighter, Stephens said, and when that technology is compromised before the warfighter is able to use it, Americans lose out on their investment. But the biggest threat from compromised technology, he added, is to warfighters themselves. Some nations, Stephens said, are "exceedingly well-focused on coming after American technology, and that's got to stop." Delivering Uncompromised Technology How can the Defense Department improve upon its ability to deliver uncompromised technology to warfighters? Stephens said that might include telling program managers at the beginning of a program they need to deliver a technology uncompromised. That directive is passed down to a prime contractor who will develop the technology. The contractor must operate at a "certain state of care," and that certain state of care, which could be established "legally as a definition." If a company is operating at that state of care, Stephens said, it can achieve "safe harbor" status, which protects it from litigation. While it will never be 100 percent possible to prevent adversaries from taking U.S. technology, contractors will be able to show they are doing their best to protect technology development from compromise. "They aren't expected to be magic, but they are expected to operate with a significant capability," he said. If technology is compromised and a company is determined to be responsible for the loss, it may have safe harbor if it had been operating at the legally defined "appropriate state of care," Stephens explained. If the company was not operating at the appropriate state of care, then it may be exposed to litigation and Americans can get back some of their investment. Stephens said it's possible that insurance markets might grow up around this concept, where companies that are good at establishing and maintaining that state of care will pay lower premiums than those that aren't. The extensive security needed to provide uncompromised technology is expensive, Stephens acknowledged, and he suggested that small businesses that want to provide technology to the military might be offered tax breaks or low-interest or no-interest loans to help. DOD Lab Day Showcases Latest Mine-Killer Technology [2019-04-25] WASHINGTON -- During Defense Department Lab Day at the Pentagon, the Army, Marine Corps and Navy all touted autonomous solutions for either finding or killing mines that might put service members in danger. The Army and the Marine Corps combined existing tools -- the Army's old-school M58 mine-clearing line charge and the Marines' modern expeditionary modular autonomous vehicle -- to create an autonomous, remotely controlled device that will shoot 350 feet of roped C4 plastic explosive out over a minefield to clear a path for follow-on service members. The technology mashup is only a proof of concept and it's expected to be tested this summer, likely at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California. -- Navy Mine-Killer Deployment -- The Navy likes to kill mines in the ocean. They've already got a tool to help them locate mines: the MK-18 MOD2 unmanned underwater vehicle. The MK-18 prowls the sea to identify the location of mines and then signals their location to those who will later destroy them. The only problem with the MK-18 is that it requires sailors in rigid inflatable boats to manually deploy it -- and that puts sailors in danger. The newly-developed "Airborne Surface Quad Thruster Underwater Interface Device," or ASQUID, grips on to the MK-18 and is lowered via tether from a hovering MH-60S Seahawk helicopter. The ASQUID can both deploy the MK-18, and recover it, without having to put sailors on the water. Suspended from a helicopter, ASQUID can deploy the mine-hunting MK-18, even when the seas would be too rough to deploy it via boat. Navy Could Use AI to Combat Swarms of Enemy Boats [2019-04-26] WASHINGTON -- If you've ever walked through a cloud of gnats, you'll know what a nuisance a swarm can be. On the sea, Navy vessels occasionally encounter swarms as well, in the form of tiny, less-than-friendly enemy boats. Navy destroyers, cruisers and littoral combat ships are powerful weapon systems, but a dozen or more tiny boats, each with a cache of weapons, can be a problem for large, less-agile vessels. And big Navy ships are not optimized to fight dozens of boats shooting from different angles. That kind of problem is why Matt Ward, a researcher with the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Port Hueneme, California, is developing "SWARM-Tac." He explained the motive for the project during Defense Department Lab Day at the Pentagon, April 25. "Some of our adversaries use lots of small boats to kind of harass our ships," Ward said. "While we have a single, high-capability ship, they will have a lot of these small craft that may not have as [powerful] weapons, but just a significant number of them. What [we're] trying to do is use machine learning and artificial intelligence to generate tactics for the ship to maximize its probability of success against that type of an attack." SWARM-Tac is software, Ward said. The AI-driven technology ingests sensor information already available on a Navy ship -- radar and other things used to give sailors situational awareness of what's going on around them, as well as information about the ship itself, its available weapons, and the number of attackers. The software synthesizes all that information into solutions -- and determines the probability for success of those solutions if chosen -- for how to evade or destroy a nasty swarm of enemy boats. Ward said that although SWARM-Tac is still in the development phase, an at-sea test conducted last year using a ship similar to a U.S. Navy vessel yielded "pretty good results." Middle East Security Still Critical to U.S. [2019-04-30] WASHINGTON -- Though the National Defense Strategy has shifted U.S. focus to China and Russia as near-peer competitors, North Korea and Iran as "rogue state actors," and has also placed emphasis on counterterrorism as a priority, the Middle East is still going to be getting U.S. attention, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East said yesterday. Mick P. Mulroy discussed current threats in the Middle East, U.S. priorities and future plans for military involvement during a forum at the Center for a New American Security here. -- Threats From Iran -- Iran, he said, poses a threat in five distinct spheres. First, Mulroy said, is the threat of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon. "We have plans to prevent that from happening, and the president has been fully clear in his intent to not let that happen," he told Ilan Goldenberg, a senior fellow at CNAS, and director of the Middle East security program there. Second, Mulroy said, are threats to maritime security in the region. He noted that countering that threat includes keeping safe and open navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, between the United Arabian Emirates and Iran -- where the Persian Gulf opens into the Gulf of Oman and then to the Indian Ocean; and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, between Yemen and Djibouti -- where the Red Sea opens into the Gulf of Aden and then to the Indian Ocean. "A substantial portion of our energy trade and commercial goods ... go through those straits," Mulroy said. "The Iranians are constantly threatening those. We of course have plans to make sure that doesn't happen, and we keep those trade routes open." A third threat from Iran includes support to proxies and terrorist organizations, including Lebanese Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Hashd al-Shaabi in Iraq. "They're housing and safe-harboring senior al-Qaida leaders," Mulroy said. Ballistic missiles are the fourth theat, he said. Iranian-made missiles emanate from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen toward allies in Saudi Arabia -- where there are many American citizens; and also on the border with Israel, advanced weapons there are of concern. Finally, cyber is an issue. "It comes up in literally every discussion about anything now," Mulroy said. He said when he started his career around the time of 9/11, cyberterrorism was something "very fragmented. And then we figured how to work together as interagency." -- Planning the Pushback -- Mulroy said one way the U.S. will push back on Iran is through the extensive planning he's witnessed on the part of the U.S. military -- something he said he's been impressed with for years. "As CIA personnel, I was uber-impressed with how much the military plans for everything," Mulroy said. "And Iran is no exception." He said the Defense Department plans include defending key allies to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons; opening the Strait of Hormuz; and responding to any aggression. Defense posture is also important. There are bases throughout the Middle East," Mulroy said, where U.S. forces are ready, if needed. "We are on bases with our key allies throughout the Middle East," Mulroy said. "That limits the Iranian freedom of movement. That protects the key straits, the key choke points of maritime trade. It's important in that regard." He also pointed to the U.S. military's proven ability at executing expeditionary warfare. "One thing I would add to that is the U.S. is by far the most capable when it comes to expeditionary warfare, and the ability to project power anywhere in the world to create effect," he said. "That and what we call dynamic force employment, where we routinely have forces show up in an area that may not be expected, shows our ability to do that." -- Regional Partnerships -- Building up partnerships such as the Middle East Strategic Alliance is critical, he said, adding that the NDS requires that kind of partnership building. The MESA is a security partnership between Gulf Cooperation Council nations, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, with the addition of Jordan and Egypt. It was announced in May 2017. Mulroy said the U.S. wants the MESA "to be a holistic agreement. We want an economic part, we want an energy part, we want a political part, we want a security part. I fully recognize there are challenges in many of those." Politically, he said, there's a rift, specifically with Qatar. And there's an array of diverse economies in the Middle East as well to contend with. He added that MESA will not supersede of pre-existing agreements in the Middle East. But on security, MESA looks for a "realistic approach," Mulroy said. One area of focus is on capabilities, he said, which includes a center to teach best practices when it comes to maritime, air defense, water, cyber, asymmetric warfare, and then command and control. "We're going to look for places we already have infrastructure," Mulroy said. "This isn't about spending more money. This is about us being in a role of facilitator and instructor, and the countries themselves adding to the and basically at their expense." Another key security focus of MESA is the establishment of a common picture, he said. That includes joint strategy and identifying threats, Mulroy said. "This is not an alliance to counter Iran," he noted. "This is an alliance to defend ourselves. That's the current threat. It could change in the future." Finally, Mulroy said, regional security requires a collective effort. "We need to have the ability to talk to each other. Interoperability. Which still isn't completely fixed in NATO. And we need to have common munitions, weapons, and the ability to actually work together," he said. Mulroy stressed that MESA is not meant to establish an "Arab NATO." "[There's] no intent to turn this into an 'Article 5'-type situation where we have a treaty and are required to defend. This is an attempt to work together with our GCC+2 -- Egypt and Jordan -- partners, to make them more effective so we can best defend ourselves and stabilize the region." Middle East Strategic Alliance Effort Aimed at Stabilization [2019-04-30] WASHINGTON -- The idea of a Middle East Strategic Alliance, a security partnership between Gulf Cooperation Council nations, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, with the addition of Jordan and Egypt, was announced in May 2017. The Saudi-drafted declaration was aimed at enhancing the partnership amongst the Arab countries of the region and the U.S. to "confront extremism, terrorism, achieving peace, stability and development, on regional as well as international stages." At the Center for a New American Security in Washington, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, Mick P. Mulroy, spoke about the alliance during a discussion that covered current threats in the Middle East, U.S. priorities and future plans for military involvement there. Mulroy said the U.S. wants the MESA "to be a holistic agreement," and include economic, energy, political, and security elements. That security portion will involve multiple components, including: 1) A focus on capabilities, which includes a center to teach best-practices when it comes to maritime, air defense, water, cyber, asymmetric warfare, and command and control. 2) Establishment of a common picture, to include joint strategy, and also identifying threats. 3) Better interoperability, to include common munitions, weapons, and better ability to work together. Mulroy also said that MESA is not meant to establish an "Arab NATO." "[There's] no intent to turn this into an 'Article 5'-type situation where we have a treaty and are required to defend," he said. "This is an attempt to work together with our GCC+2 -- Egypt and Jordan -- partners, to make them more effective so we can best defend ourselves and stabilize the region." To learn more, click here. No Margin for Error: Nuclear Capability Must be Upgraded Now, Defense Official Says [2019-05-02] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. doesn't have any wiggle room in the effort to upgrade its nuclear capability: modernization must be done now, without interruption, or the U.S. stands to lose its deterrence edge, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment told the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday. The Russians and the Chinese are doing a fine job of upgrading their own nuclear capability and developing new delivery tools as well, Ellen M. Lord said. The U.S. is doing the same. But, she said, "We are living now with Cold War technology. We have put off modernizing the triad for multiple decades. So now we have no margin. We need to move forward. So, any cut in funding would essentially have us unilaterally stand down in terms of our capability to have a credible nuclear deterrent." The deterrence capability of the U.S. nuclear triad underwrites national security, Lord said, and the weapons that make up that triad are fast approaching an age where their last-century capability set may no longer be enough of a threat to keep adversaries from guessing about what the U.S. is capable of doing. That nuclear triad includes ground-based missiles -- commonly referred to as intercontinental ballistic missiles; submarine-launched ballistic missiles; and air-launched cruise missiles dropped from bomber aircraft. In all three areas the U.S. modernization effort is underway. -- Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent -- Lord said it no longer makes financial sense to continue to upgrade or extend the life of existing Minuteman III ICBMs. New systems must be brought online. The U.S. is pursuing the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent for that, she told lawmakers. "There is no margin to do another service life extension program on Minuteman III, because not only would it be more expensive than developing GBSD, but you would not have the resiliency in the capability because you would not have the modern equipment, you would not have the actual capabilities from a functional range point of view [or] warhead capability," Lord said. "So we need to, by 2028, start replacing [ICBMs]." The U.S. has about 400 deployed Minuteman III ICBMs and is developing replacements through the GBSD program. The Minuteman III has been in place since 1970 and has been life extended several times. The GBSD is expected around 2028. -- Sea-Based Deterrence -- For sea-based nuclear deterrence, the U.S. has 14 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines armed with Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The subs were originally designed with a 30-year life expectancy, which has been extended now to 42 years -- but further extension is not possible. The follow-on submarine will be the Columbia-class, which is in development now. It's expected to last until 2084. For now, the life extension of the Trident II will allow it to continue to serve aboard the upgraded Ohio-class vessels and then move on to serve, at least initially, aboard the Columbia-class. Production of the first of those ships will begin in fiscal year 2021. -- Air Defense -- In the air, the U.S. uses B-52H Stratofortress and B-2A Spirit bombers to deliver nuclear weapons, including the AGM-86B air-launched cruise missiles. The Air Force is now upgrading the B-52, initially introduced in 1962. The B-2A will also get upgrades. Eventually, the Air Force expects to procure 100 B-21 Raider aircraft to replace both legacy bombers. The nuclear capability of the AGM-86B ALCM is also expected to be replaced by the Long Range Standoff weapon by the early 2030s. -- Plutonium Production -- Lord also told lawmakers the U.S. is also standing up a new facility to develop the "nuclear pit" that is the heart of any nuclear weapon. The U.S. can already construct this portion of weapons at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, she said. DOD wants to be able to produce as many as 30 plutonium pits a year by 2026, and produce 80 per year by 2030. "We do not have any margin at this point, because for decades we have delayed," Lord said. To add resilience to that capability, she said DOD is also looking at opening a second pit-production facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, about 25 miles southeast of Augusta, Georgia. U.S. Needs New Nukes Now, DOD Officials Say [2019-05-02] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. needs to upgrade its nuclear capability now, DOD officials told Congress recently. And while those efforts are already underway, it'll take continued funding from lawmakers to ensure the U.S. can maintain its nuclear edge. The U.S. nuclear deterrence capability relies on the "nuclear triad," which includes ground-based nuclear weapons that launch from silos; sea-based nuclear weapons that launch from submarines; and air-based nuclear weapons that are dropped from aircraft. Here's what the U.S. is doing to keep its nuclear edge sharp: 1) For ground-based deterrence, the U.S. is developing the "Ground Based Strategic Deterrent," which is expected to replace about 400 existing Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Minuteman III has been around since 1970. 2) At sea, the U.S. is looking to replace about 14 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines with the Columbia-class submarine. Development of that sub is underway now, and the first is expected to begin construction in 2021. 3) In the air, the U.S. uses B-52H Stratofortress and B-2A Spirit bomber aircraft to deliver nuclear payloads. Eventually, it expects to replace those with the now-under-development B-21 Raider aircraft. The nuclear capability of the AGM-86B air-launched cruise missiles is also expected to be replaced by the Long Range Standoff weapon by the early 2030s. Ellen Lord, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, discussed U.S. efforts to upgrade its nuclear triad yesterday during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Click to learn more about the work to upgrade the triad. DOD, OPM Team Up for Improved Online Training [2019-05-06] WASHINGTON -- A new memorandum of agreement between the Defense Department and the Office of Personnel Management promises to reduce the cost for training for defense employees and enhance the training experience. The two agencies signed the memo May 3, making OPM's "USALearning" program DOD's partner as the "centralized source for training, education, and domain-specific expertise." The agreement will save DOD money and will make training employees easier, said Lisa Hershman, DOD's acting chief management officer. The move also is squarely aligned with the president's management agenda, she added. "Talking about the USALearning reform initiative is actually very exciting," Hershman said. "You know the president's management agenda has prioritized three areas of reform: information technology modernization, data transparency and accountability, and the workforce of the 21st century. This reform initiative is one of those rare initiatives that addresses all three." As part of the agreement, DOD will centralize the creation, procurement and distribution for online learning and training programs for its employees. As many as 50,000 courses exist across 161 training distribution platforms within DOD, Hershman said. -- Consolidating Platforms -- The partnership will help consolidate DOD learning technology software platforms, associated cloud server delivery platforms, licensing, and related training and education activities through the USALearning shared services center. The partnership is expected to produce a DOD-wide common course catalog and online access portal hosted by USALearning, as well as a DOD-wide common record repository. Partnering with OPM is expected to save the DOD $22 million in 2020, and over the next five years, it's projected to save $122 million. Hershman noted that some 40,000 employees move from one DOD agency to another each year, often requiring them to repeat mandatory online training they'd already completed at their previous agency. The partnership with OPM will mean not only a centralized course catalog for training, but also centralized learning records so that when employees move, they will not have to retake training. "This is a pivotal step in becoming easier to do business with, and that's usually thought of in terms of our customers and our constituents," Hershman said. "But this is actually one that will greatly reduce the complexity for our employees." -- Benefits Go Beyond DOD-OPM Partnership -- Acting OPM Director Margaret Weichert said that working with DOD, considering its size, will benefit not just DOD and OPM, but the rest of government as well. "We're now at a place where we can actually leverage the scale that we've got and take it to the next level," Weichert said. "This partnership is obviously going to benefit DOD, but it benefits the broader government environment as well. It leverages the shared infrastructure, and it leverages data," she continued. "Looking at a large population like the DOD population -- the largest population in government -- and being able to consistently look at how we are training what the outcomes are, what does that mean for mobility in terms of serving the mission, the agility of the workforce, responding to new changes in this mission? The learnings we're going to get here will enable us to do more for the rest of government, at scale." Success of First SFAB in Afghanistan Proves ‘Army Got it Right,’ Commander Says [2019-05-08] WASHINGTON -- The 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade deployed in March 2018 to Afghanistan to carry out the inaugural mission for the newly-created SFAB concept. They brigade returned in November, and they now say their experience there has proven successful what the Army hoped to accomplish with the new kind of training units. Army Brig. Gen. Scott Jackson, 1st SFAB commander, spoke today at the Pentagon as part of an Army Current Operations Engagement Tour. He said the Army's concept for the new unit -- one earmarked exclusively for advise and assist missions -- was spot on. During their nine-month deployment to Afghanistan, Jackson said the 800-person brigade ran 58 advisory teams and partnered with more than 30 Afghan battalions, 15 brigades, multiple regional training centers, a corps headquarters and a capital division headquarters. "That's nearly half of the Afghan National Army," he said. "I believe we could only accomplish our mission and reach these milestones and validate the effectiveness of an SFAB because the Army got it right -- the Army issued us the right equipment, and provided us the right training to be successful. But most importantly, we selected the people for this mission ... the key to our success is the talented, adaptable, and experienced volunteers who served in this brigade." Lessons Learned Jackson outlined two key lessons-learned from their time in Afghanistan. First, that learned their ability to affect change within those they advise and assist was greater than they thought. "As our Afghan partners began to understand the value of 1st SFAB advisors, they asked us for more," Jackson said. "So our teams partnered with more and more Afghan units as the deployment progressed." Another lesson, he said, was that persistent presence with partners pays off. "Units with persistent partners made more progress in planning and conducting offensive operations and in integrating organic Afghan enablers like field artillery and the Afghan air force than unpersistent partnered units," Jackson said. Those lessons and others were passed to the follow-on unit, the 2nd SFAB, as well as to the Security Force Assistance Command. Another observation: the Afghan military is doing just fine. They're in charge of their own operations. And while U.S. presence can provide guidance when needed -- and it is asked for -- the Afghans were proving successful at doing their own security missions without U.S. soldiers running alongside them. It turns out that just having an SFAB advise and assist presence has emboldened Afghan security to success. "We saw enormous offensive maneuver generated, and not just at the brigade level," said Army Lt. Col. Brain Ducote, commander of the 1st Battalion, 1st SFAB. "They weren't overdependent. They were able to execute offensive operations themselves. It was a huge confidence builder when we were sometimes just present. Even if we didn't support them, just us being there gave them the confidence to execute on independent offensive operations." Confidence is Contagious Ducote said that the confidence moved from brigade level down to battalion, or "kandak" level. Commanders there also began running their own offensive operations, he said. "They believe in themselves," the lieutenant colonel said. "The Afghan army has tremendous freedom of maneuver and access to areas where they want to go. If they put their mind to it and they say we're going to move to this area to clear it ... they are good at it. And they can do it. Would they, given the choice, want advisors with them? Absolutely. Why not? But let there be no mistake: the Afghans are in the lead, and the Afghans can do this." Ducote said Afghan success is evident by their expansion of the footprint they protect, such as in Kunar and Kapisa provinces, for instance. "[There are] all sorts of provinces where they expanded their footprint and influence," he said. "And the people absolutely support their security forces." Also a critical takeaway from Afghanistan and an indicator of the value of the SFAB mission there, is the authenticity of relationships between SFAB advisors and Afghans. Building Real Relationships During their nine months in theater, the 1st SFAB lost two soldiers to insider threats. Army Capt. Gerard T. Spinney, team leader for 1st Battalion, 1st SFAB, said that what happened after the attacks revealed the strength and sincerity of the relationship between Afghan leadership and SFAB leadership. Army Cpl. Joseph Maciel was working for Spinney in Tarin Kowt District, Afghanistan. He was killed there by an Afghan soldier in July -- a "green on blue" threat. "His sacrifice will never be forgotten," Spinney said. "But we still had to continue advising afterward. That day, my partner, a kandak commander ... wanted to come see me." Spinney said the Afghan soldier who had killed Maciel didn't belong to this commander -- but that commander still wanted to meet with him. "He was very adamant coming to see me," Spinney said. "He was angry. He was embarrassed. He was determined to rid [his own] unit of anything like this. And it was sincere. During the deployment he lost many soldiers. I had to sit with him and almost echo the same sympathies. I think the relationship got stronger." "You have to be there with them, good times and bad times, successes and failures," the captain said. "That's how you build trust, that's how you show you care. He was there for us that day. Our relationship survived. And I'd say from that point on he wanted to make us feel safer. From that point on we saw differences in security ... they took care of us because they wanted us there." Jackson said that insider threat might have derailed the 1st SFAB mission. In fact, he said, he suspects, that was the intent of the enemy that carried out those threats. But it didn't happen that way, he said. "It didn't derail the mission," Jackson said. "Despite a brief pause maybe, as we reassessed what happened and what we needed to do both on the Afghan side and the American side, in the end our relationship was stronger." Ensuring Success The SFAB concept was first proposed by Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley. And since then, Jackson said, the Army has put a lot of effort into ensuring the success of the SFAB mission. That includes, among other things, training, people and gear. Ducote said the equipment provided to 1st SFAB was critical to its success in Afghanistan. "These teams are operating at distance, in austere environments," Ducote said. "In some cases without electricity. We need the right equipment to be able to extend the trust that we give to them, and the trust that we extend to them. We want that to be manifested through the right equipment -- communications specifically." He said the gear that proved essential to SFAB success included medical, communications and vehicles -- and all were adequately provided for by the Army. "The Army got it right what they gave us," Ducote said. "We were able to do that mission, at distance." Home Again Back home now for six months, Jackson said the brigade is back to repairing equipment, replacing teammates and conducting individual and small-unit training to prepare for its next mission. He said their goal is to provide the Army a unit ready for the next deployment, though orders for that next mission have not yet come down. The advise and assist mission is one the Army has done for years, but it's something the Army had previously done in an ad hoc fashion. Brigade combat teams, for instance, had in the past been tasked to send some of their own overseas as part of security transition teams or security force assistance teams to conduct training missions with foreign militaries. Sometimes, however, the manner in which these teams were created may not have consistently facilitated the highest quality of preparation. The SFAB units, on the other hand, are exclusively designated to conduct advise and assist missions overseas. And they are extensively trained to conduct those missions before they go. Additionally, the new SFABs mean regular BCTs will no longer need to conduct advise and assist missions. The Army plans to have one National Guard and five active-duty SFABs. The 1st SFAB stood up at Fort Benning, Georgia, in early 2018. The 2nd SFAB is based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, but is now deployed to Afghanistan. The 3rd SFAB, based at Fort Hood, Texas, is now gearing up for its own first deployment. The 4th SFAB, based at Fort Carson, Colorado, is standing up, as is the 54th SFAB, a National Guard unit that will be spread across six states. The 5th SFAB, to be based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, is still being planned. "As subsequent SFABs come online, it creates a huge capacity for the rest of the combatant commands in the world," Jackson said. "I would be confident to say that there are assessments ongoing to see where else you could apply SFABs besides Afghanistan." Commander: Army 'Got It Right' With Brigade's Afghanistan Deployment [2019-05-08] WASHINGTON -- The Army's security force assistance brigades are specialized units that conduct training, advising, assisting, enabling and accompanying operations with allied and partner nations. Soldiers in SFABs are highly trained and among the top tactical leaders in the Army. Their work strengthens U.S. allies and partners while supporting national security objectives and combatant commanders' warfighting needs. The 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade returned from Afghanistan in November, after a nine-month advise-and-assist mission there. It was the first mission of its kind for the new unit. -- What did the 1st SFAB learn in Afghanistan? -- "Persistent presence" with those being advised ensures greater success. "Units with persistent partners made more progress in planning and conducting offensive operations and in integrating organic Afghan enablers like field artillery and the Afghan air force than unpersistent partnered units," said Army Brig. Gen. Scott Jackson, 1st SFAB commander. -- The SFAB fills a greater need than anticipated. -- "As our Afghan partners began to understand the value of 1st SFAB advisors, they asked us for more," Jackson said. "So our teams partnered with more and more Afghan units as the deployment progressed." In all, Jackson said, during their nine-month deployment to Afghanistan, the 800-person 1st SFAB ran 58 advisory teams and partnered with more than 30 Afghan battalions, 15 brigades, multiple regional training centers, a corps headquarters, and a capital division headquarters. -- People, equipment and training matter. -- "I believe we could only accomplish our mission ... and validate the effectiveness of an SFAB because the Army got it right -- the Army issued us the right equipment, and provided us the right training to be successful," the general said. "But most importantly, we selected the people for this mission ... the key to our success is the talented, adaptable, and experienced volunteers who served in this brigade." To learn more about the 1st SFAB's experience in Afghanistan, go here. Marine Corps Wife Earns Honors as Military Spouse of the Year [2019-05-10] Fort Myer, Va. -- Holly Vega, the spouse of Marine Corps Lt. Col. Javier Vega for 18 years, was named the 2019 Armed Forces Insurance Military Spouse of the Year during a ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Virginia. Vega was chosen for the honor from a pool of candidates, one each from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and National Guard. The Vega family, including the couple's three children, is stationed at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. "Holly's volunteerism, generosity, and passion to serve military families in her community has earned her this award," said Catherine Thomas, spouse of Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Gary Thomas. "Holly is passionate about consistency in education for military children, which is why she supports and volunteers for the 'Purple Up' kids' program. She not only volunteers in her community, but she also works part time for Military Home Base and is a full-time student at Park University, studying social psychology and organizational communication. "Fellow military spouses describe Holly as a ray of sunshine, full of warmth and life, and she has a reputation for being generous, kind, and is known for lifting up other military spouses when they need it most." Vega stays extremely busy at MacDill, serving as an ambassador to the South Tampa Chamber of Commerce, a "Heart Heathy Advocate" and co-leader with Military Hearts Matter, a co-leader of a Girl Scouts Brownie troop, co-leader for the Military Kids Club at Lithia Elementary School, co-facilitator for Our Forces Book Club, and other activities. "Serving my community has been a joy, and I am privileged and grateful every day for it," Vega said. "I am pleased and honored to be so humbled to be selected as the overall 2019 Armed Forces Insurance Military Spouse of the Year." Having been previously nominated as the 2019 AFI Military Marine Corps Spouse of the Year "was like waking up on Christmas morning, coming downstairs and finding that bright, shiny red bike that you thought you were never going to get," Vega said. "Those feelings of excitement are right now." Before the ceremony, each military service chose its own nominee for the award. Those awardees include: Maria Reed, an Army spouse, stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, with her husband of 16 years, Army Sgt. 1st Class Patrick Reed, and their two children. As an advocate to improve the quality of life of military families, Reed produces the web video series "Moving with the Military," which can be seen online at http://www.movingwiththemilitary.tv. Reed says the series "not only celebrates military families, but encourages, inspires, and empowers military spouses to discover their passion." Michelle D. Norman, a Navy spouse, stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, with her husband of 23 years, Navy Capt. Cassidy Norman, and their two children. The two met while studying engineering in Texas. In 2003, their daughter, Marisa, was born early, at just 27 weeks. "It was the beginning of my new life of advocating," Norman said. Since that time, Norman has worked tirelessly to advocate for better education for special-needs children, and for improvements to the military's Exceptional Family Member Program. Katelyn Tinsley, an Air Force spouse, stationed at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina, with her husband of eight years, Air Force Tech. Sgt. Mark Tinsley, and their three children. Tinsley founded a nonprofit organization in 2016 called "Homefront Room Revival" to help military families improve resilience and to enrich their lives. "As both a military spouse and veteran, I saw several gaps in targeted community programs for families and found a need to creatively innovate something new to help others who have had struggles through military life," Tinsley said. Jessica Manfre, a Coast Guard spouse, stationed in Cape May, New Jersey, with husband of 11 years, Coast Guard Senior Chief Petty Officer Scott Manfre and their two children. During the recent government shutdowns, Manfre started up a food pantry -- sponsored by the Jersey Cape Military Spouses Club -- to help Coast Guard personnel feed their families when they weren't getting paid. "It grew to the point that it proudly could support not only southern New Jersey families in need, but also those in several other states across the country," she said. Samantha Gomolka, a National Guard spouse who lives in Kingwood, West Virginia, with her husband of 14 years, Army Warrant Officer 2 Michael Gomolka and their three children. She and Mark are setting up a nonprofit organization called "Project 33 Memorial Foundation" to create awareness of Special Operation Soldiers who have been killed in action since Sept. 11, 2001. "We honor one soldier per year and tell the story of their life and sacrifice from January through May. A voice for the quiet professionals," Gomolka said. "We had our inaugural event last May, a 6.9-mile run through our hometown on Memorial Day." Persistent Engagement, Partnerships, Top Cybercom’s Priorities [2019-05-14] WASHINGTON -- As it embarks on its second year as a unified combatant command, U.S. Cyber Command is taking stock of its first year and looking toward the future. Cybercom was created in 2008 as a subunified command under U.S. Strategic Command. On May 4, 2018, it became a full-fledged unified combatant command. "We have an obligation to defend the nation, ensure the security of DOD information systems, and help joint force commanders achieve their missions," said Army Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, Cybercom commander, National Security Agency director and chief of the Central Security Service. He called attention to how adversaries are undermining national security through incremental gains below the level of armed conflict. "Through persistent presence, persistent innovation, and persistent engagement, we can impose costs, neutralize adversary efforts, and change their decision calculus," he said. "In doing so we build resilience, defend forward, and contest adversary activities in cyberspace." Leaders at Cybercom expanded on how the organization has put that strategy into practice. "During the past year we've made a great deal of progress," said David Luber, Cybercom's executive director. "We were elevated to unified combatant command, [and] we've also deepened our partnership alongside the NSA. And thanks to Congress with the passing of the [Fiscal Year] 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, there's been some new authorities that we're also very happy about for the command, as well as some changes in presidential policy." Luber said Cybercom has been involved in "outstanding teamwork" across the DOD and with U.S. government and industry entities that has both been emboldened by its elevation to a unified combatant command, and helped it succeed as one. Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles Moore Jr., the command's director of operations, spelled out several focus areas Cybercom has pursued in its first year as a unified combatant command. Chief among those priorities, he said, is "persistent engagement" -- being fully engaged with adversaries in the cyber domain, full-time. "We recognize and understand the importance of being in constant contact with the enemy in this space, especially below the level of armed conflict, so we can defend ourselves and impose cost," Moore said. Persistent engagement also involves persistent presence -- the sharing of information to enable partners -- and persistent innovation of technology and techniques with partners that include other government agencies, allied nations and industry, Luber said. Both are critical to Cybercom's success as it moves into its second year. Persistent Engagement With Persistent Force "In the face of cyber threats, we've adjusted our strategic vision to one of persistent engagement with a persistent force," Luber said. "No longer reactive, but actually working in cyberspace in an area where there is no sanctuary or operational pause. It is the center of strategic rivalry in this era of renewed power competition. We are in constant contact with our adversaries. Success is determined on how we enable and act." Getting outside of just U.S. networks and working with allies -- "defending forward" -- is a second area of focus for Cybercom, Moore said. It's something lawmakers have enabled the command to do. Changes to national policy and language in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, for instance, have in a limited way enabled Cybercom to step outside the Defense Department information networks and given it additional authorities to operate more effectively. NDAA language, Moore said, declared cyberspace operations as a "traditional military activity." Without that, he explained, Cybercom would have to "declare or make very overt any of our operations, and acknowledge that it's being done by the DOD and the USA -- not very conducive to being successful inside the cyber domain. By declaring it a traditional military activity it allowed us to move away from that." Focus on Readiness and Enabling Partners Readiness is another top area of focus for Cybercom's leadership. Moore said the command at one point was focusing on building up cyber teams by manning and equipping them, but that work is largely over. Now, he said, they've moved into using those teams to operationalize the command. "We've changed the readiness question from just building the teams to now, 'How do you work with the services, who of course organize, train and equip our warfighting command ... to standardize what they are presenting in terms of people, in terms of how they are trained, in terms of the equipment they are presented to us with, so that we can sustain the readiness over the long term?'" Moore said. Partnerships are a big part of what makes Cybercom successful, Moore said. "There's probably not a greater team sport than cyberspace operations out there," he said. "We recognize we can't be successful in executing our mission against any of our adversaries if we are not working very closely with our interagency partners, with our friends and allies around the globe, with industry and academia, etc." Today, the command partners with other federal agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security, Defense Intelligence Agency, Defense Information Systems Agency, the Energy Department and the FBI. Last fall, DHS and DOD signed a memorandum of agreement to spell out how the two departments will work together to protect critical infrastructure. "As the capacity in the department grows to be able to counter these malicious threats, how can that be brought to bear to defend the critical infrastructure?" asked Air Force Brig. Gen. Tim Haugh, Cyber National Mission Force commander. "We do that in lockstep with DHS." During the 2018 midterm elections, Cybercom worked hand in hand with DHS and the FBI to defend election integrity. "Both of those organizations -- DHS and FBI -- were really good teammates," Haugh said. What Cybercom learned working with DHS and FBI "has set a foundation for us as we look to 2020, which will certainly be an area where we continue to grow the partnership with DHS and the FBI and across industry, to make sure we are doing our part in that role to defend the electoral process." Haugh said partnerships with industry have involved discovering new ways adversaries are exploiting the network and sharing that information with those most suited to develop countermeasures. "We've done that by leveraging VirusTotal, which is a platform for sharing of malicious activity," he said. "We've taken malware we've found in the conduct of our operations and we've posted it directly to VirusTotal, with the goal of allowing industry then to quickly build countermeasures." Fighting Election Interference During the 2018 midterm elections, Cybercom partnered with allied nations, including Ukraine, Macedonia and Montenegro, to ferret out potential inference in the election process. Were Cybercom to find election interference, Cybercom would not be responsible for directly notifying targeted candidates. The command would share what they found through established reporting channels. Haugh said that instead, the Office of Director of National Intelligence, DHS, or FBI would likely be involved in whatever notifications would be appropriate. "Our goal is to have no interference in our elections," Haugh said. "We're going to support DHS and the FBI in the missions they've been assigned. But ideally, no foreign actor is going to target our electoral process." And of course, the U.S. is partnered with traditional allies, including those that are part of "Five Eyes," including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The U.K. and Australia already have a presence on the Cybercom campus here. Probably the most important partner for Cybercom, however, is the National Security Agency. Both agencies are located on the same campus and are led by the same person: Army Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, who serves both as NSA's director and as Cybercom's commander. A recent cyber exercise, Moore said, revalidated "the importance of having unity of command by having one commander who runs both of those organizations. Both organizations seeking to achieve the same overall outcome is a critical component of Nakasone's strategy. "The partnership between U.S. Cybercom and NSA fosters speed, agility, and unity of effort," said Nakasone. "Addressing future cyber security challenges will require a whole-of-nation effort, to include both public and private sectors." Innovation at Speed In addition to building relationships and finding industry solutions for unique challenges, the command has several initiatives and capabilities that enable its agility and flexibility to innovate. One of these initiatives is the Joint Cyber Warfighting Architecture, or JCWA. "You notice it's not called a platform, because you can't buy one," said Army Maj. Gen. 'Karl Gingrich', the Cybercom director of capability and resource integration. JCWA covers everything from access platforms where the command gains access to the internet, to data management, to command and control, to the tools they use during operations. "We need to constantly innovate in this space because our adversary gets a vote. So... we have to be adaptable to that," he said. "We are a learning organization across the Department of Defense and the Cyber Mission Force, so we have to have an architecture that is capable of allowing us to innovate and go where we need to go." Gingrich also noted the importance of the Command's limited acquisition authority. The authority gives Cybercom up to $75 million each year for its own procurement purposes in order to "meet the needs of our Cyber Mission Force through innovative acquisition and capability development." Cybercom Cites Priorities Key to First-Year Success [2019-05-14] WASHINGTON -- With a year under its belt as a full and independent unified combatant command, U.S. Cyber Command is reflecting on lessons it has learned so far and their effect on the way ahead. Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles Moore Jr., Cybercom's director of operations, spelled out several areas on which the command has focused: 1 Persistent engagement, which means being fully engaged with adversaries in the cyber domain all the time. "We recognize and understand the importance of being in constant contact with the enemy in this space, especially below the level of armed conflict, so we can defend ourselves and impose cost," Moore said. 2 Readiness Moore said the command at one point was focusing on building up cyber teams by manning and equipping them, but that work is now largely over. "We've changed the readiness question from just building the teams to now 'How do you work with the services, who, of course, organize, train and equip our warfighting command ... to standardize what they are presenting in terms of people, in terms of how they are trained, in terms of the equipment they are presented to us with, so that we can sustain the readiness over the long term?'" Moore said. 3 Partnerships "There's probably not a greater team sport than cyberspace operations out there," Moore said. "We recognize we can't be successful in executing our mission against any of our adversaries if we are not working very closely with our interagency partners, with our friends and allies around the globe, with industry and academia, etc." To learn more about Cyber Command, click here. Pentagon Police Remember Their Own During Police Week [2019-05-14] WASHINGTON -- Police officers with the Pentagon Force Protection Agency gathered in the courtyard at the Pentagon to recognize the valor and sacrifice of their own as part of the 2019 National Police Week events in Washington. This week in the nation's capital, at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, the names of an additional 144 police officers from around the United States who died in the line of duty during 2018 will be inscribed alongside the more than 21,000 names already there. "It is our duty to let the survivors, families, friends and coworkers know that our fallen officers have not, and will not, be forgotten," Pentagon Police Chief Woody Kusse said at the memorial today. Remembering a Fallen Comrade Among the names already engraved on the memorial is that of PFPA's own, Officer James. M. Feltis III. "Always seeking challenges, James stepped forward to meet the threat to our community during the anthrax investigation by serving in the hazardous material response unit," Kusse said. "It was in that spirit that he was struck by a fleeing suspect on the morning of Jan. 11, 2005, as he stepped forward once again to protect who he thought was a citizen in mortal danger." Feltis was awarded the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Valor in February of that year. Since 9/11, a total of 27 PFPA officers have earned that medal. Many were recognized in person at the Pentagon. Feltis eventually succumbed to his injuries and passed away on Feb. 14, 2005. His window, Mary Feltis, said she remains grateful to PFPA for continuing to remember their own, and for remembering her and keeping her as part of the family. "A lot of us survivors, a lot of us feel, but I've never felt -- I'm so blessed -- is that survivors are sometimes forgotten," Mary Feltis said. "After a year or two, it's over. For a lot of people. But it's never over for us. So it's wonderful to have the organization continue to support us and to be able to know that they still remember James and the sacrifice he made. And thanks also to a lot of the people here in this department who have been so great and not left our sides." Officer Duties For many in the Pentagon, PFPA officers are most visible at entry control points -- checking badges and verifying access for employees and visitors to the building. But Kusse said the agency does much more than that. Inside the Pentagon, PFPA officers provide security and protection for nearly 23,000 individuals. The agency provides protection also for an equal number of individuals that work in the "scores of buildings we have responsibility for in the [National Capital Region]," Kusse said. Moving between those buildings, PFPA officers can also provide police services to civilians in need when they find them. "We'll run into a citizen in distress, or a traffic accident or some other need for police services," Kusse said. "We are empowered to take action then. We are not just security guards. We are fully-fledged law enforcement officers." The chief said the PFPA team includes not just law enforcement, but chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high explosive protection directorates as well as intelligence and counterintelligence assets. "There is no mission, no single DOD agency that has a mission quite like ours," he said. "We are fusion of all the things that are required for force protection. You name the discipline, and we are all fused here. The strength that we have in our relatively small 1,200 employee agency is in our diversity, and how well we are fused together in one cohesive team." DOD Cyber Leaders Address Threats, Resilience, Working With Industry [2019-05-17] WASHINGTON -- A lot's changed on the cyber front in the year since U.S. Cyber Command became a full and independent unified combatant command, and since Army Gen. Paul M. Nakasone took over as commander and as director of the National Security Agency. Nakasone and Dana Deasy, the Defense Department's chief information officer addressed those changes to the cyber security environment and how DOD is responding at the 2019 Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association conference in Baltimore, May 14. Changing Threat Environment "First of all, I would say certainly the threat is more adaptive, the threat is more capable and the threat is more pervasive," Nakasone said. "All of the things that you've heard in so many different spectrums: the barriers to entry remain low, the capacity and capabilities of our adversaries are improving." Nakasone said what's also changed is the focus of the National Security Strategy. The strategy has shifted to "great power competition" with near-peer adversaries, versus the 17 or more years of operations involving violent extremist organizations, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We're very proud of the work that's been done," he said. "At the same time, we also know that our adversaries have changed and so the targets ... what we have to be concerned about for the future are obviously there as well." Other changes include technology, he said, including 5G wireless, which promises to be as fast if not faster than today's wired broadband technology. "We stand on ... the verge of fifth-generation wireless in the next 12 months," Nakasone said. "Both Dana and I have been very, very busy with regards to machine learning and artificial intelligence. How do we ensure that you know the power of data that we know is there can be applied to utilized and leveraged by our department? Those are the things that are driving us right now." Nontraditional Solutions As DOD's top information technology executive, Deasy said the department will need to do some work to help industry better understand the things it needs to meet new challenges in cyber. "This is where something's not that different coming from [the] private sector into government, insofar as I think [for] CIOs, generally one of the responsibilities they have is to make sure that industry understands what we're looking for, [and] can explain it in a way that makes it accessible for them to describe products and solutions," he said. Deasy said he's encouraged leadership within the department to look at both traditional and nontraditional defense providers for cyber solutions. "We need to think about nontraditional players and ... that's all about how do you access them, how do you make them aware that we're interested in conversation with them ... how do we get them to think about us as not being so complicated and so hard to come and have a conversation with," he said. "So it's breaking it down in a way where they feel like we're accessible and they can grab hold of a portion of something we're trying to solve for and help us solve for them." Joint Artificial Intelligence Center Deasy said the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center is one example of that effort to help include industry players who don't typically work with DOD. The center was created, he said, "to set up an entity of people, to teach them how to just scan the universe of what I call 'the art of the possible' out there, and just to teach them in [the] kind of ways that were maybe were different than our normal acquisition approaches, to how we scan for technology, and that's been really an importance." As part of the JAIC, he said, they've learned to look for what's available in the private sector that may be useful to DOD, to hold conversations with nontraditional players in the defense sector, and to make it participation accessible for them to come in and start to show the department what they can do and possible participate in pilot opportunities. "This is where I think we can help private sector help out and teaching new ways for us to do these things inside of government, where you have to do them with a great deal of speed," Deasy said. Deasy said with the JAIC, the department has been able to question if solutions need to always be built in-house, or can solutions be adopted that might already exist "somewhere out there in the world, maybe at a university level or it could be a small start-up or it could be a very large established supplier, that we can reach out to." Nakasone also pointed to the Defense Innovation Unit, previously DIU-Experimental, and the Defense Digital Services as examples of new ways the department looks for solutions. "These guys are at the Pentagon, I mean they're working at the Pentagon, doing a number of different projects that we find of great interest and as I think has been pointed out, turning us on to the areas we should be thinking about and looking at," Nakasone said. DOD Resilience Deasy said Nakasone, as lead for Cybercom and the NSA, runs defense on the DOD network. But he said there's still concern about the breadth of the attack surface exposed to adversaries. "You have this entire surface space called 'every place that an adversary will look to try to get in' from an endpoint all the way through an application through data, through networks, through a weapon system etc.," Deasy said. "I worry about the resiliency. How do we make the Department of Defense more resilient? We fix the sins of our past. But I look to [Nakasone] to answer the question: do you see us every day as you defend our networks that we're becoming more resilient?" Nakasone said he has several ways to evaluate the effectiveness of efforts to increase resiliency of the DOD network. "The first measure of success -- do we have awareness of what we're facing? We do have awareness. I mean there is clearly a delineation of the most important things that we're going to address based upon the vulnerabilities that we're seeing," he said. "Secondly, I would measure do the senior leaders of our department listen, care, understand? They do. I can tell you that we brief them regularly, there is interest in it and I think that, you know, as we take a look and say, 'Can solutions be had here?' 'Yes.' You have leadership that says, 'We're going to fix this."' Finally, he said, is resourcing available to defend the network. "Based upon last year's success, I think the work that's being done to get ready for the '21 budget build -- yes -- those are all very good areas," Nakasone said. 5 Installations Lead the Way in Suicide Prevention Efforts [2019-05-17] WASHINGTON -- A handful of common themes have emerged from among the installations named as top performers in the effort to reduce suicide numbers among service members, families and civilians, the director of the Defense Human Resources Activity said. "The theme has been consistent among these award winners: community, family, connection, connection, connection. And more connections," William H. Booth said. "That's the way we can drive the numbers in the right direction. Across our department right now, the numbers are not going in the right direction. So from this group of award winners, we need to take those best practices and try to drive it across the entire Department of Defense." The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and National Guard each identified one installation they believed was doing the best work toward suicide prevention during Suicide Prevention Month last year. Representatives from each of those installations traveled to Washington to be recognized for suicide prevention efforts. Winning Installations 1) Fort Carson -- Fort Carson, Colorado, whose Suicide Prevention Month program adopted a "Value of Life" theme, which was promoted throughout September. Message boards were placed across the installation that encouraged individuals to post and share inspirational and motivational thoughts. Fort Carson's kickoff event was a community picnic that was attended by more than 600 soldiers, family members, veterans and local residents. During the month, Fort Carson also expanded awareness about suicide prevention strategies and resources through unit-level awareness and resource briefings that reached more than 400 soldiers. 2) Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni -- Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, kicked off Suicide Prevention Month with an American Forces Network radio live stream that provided factual suicide prevention and intervention information to more than 3,000 listeners. They also published articles on behavioral health and suicide prevention in the September issue of their installation magazine and hosted events that provided information about suicide prevention, including strategies for assisting distressed individuals and accessing installation resources. Nearly 600 active-duty service members, dependents and civilian personnel visited these events. 3) Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam -- At Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, the Suicide Prevention Month program focused on community engagement and increasing awareness about the power of bystanders through publications, a targeted social media campaign, outreach to high-risk populations, awareness and prevention training, and engagement with installation leadership. They kicked off the month with a joint-service suicide prevention proclamation signing and a resource fair that had nearly 1,000 participants. The event also featured a pledge drive for participants to commit to take steps to prevent suicide and interactive photo opportunities using the #BeThere and #PreserveOurOhana slogan. 4) Misawa Air Base -- The Suicide Prevention Month program at Misawa Air Base, Japan, was focused on educating the community about suicide prevention and strengthening interpersonal connections. The base developed conversation cards that encouraged participants to discuss suicide prevention topics, including stress management and tips for building connections. More than 17,000 Misawa Connect cards were placed in various locations, including dining facilities, the bowling alley, the base chapel and the golf course. 5) Camp Atterbury -- The Indiana National Guard's Camp Atterbury hosted the "Got Your Six, Be There: Your Action Could Save a Life" 5K run/walk/bike event to bring attention to service members who have died by suicide and to support individuals currently struggling with suicidal thoughts and behaviors. The run was held in conjunction with Camp Atterbury's community day to emphasize the importance of community involvement in preventing suicide and to highlight suicide prevention resources. More than 130 people, representing nearly every branch of the military, participated in the race. In addition, 44 deployed service members participated in a shadow run in Kuwait. Suicide prevention efforts at all five installations, as well as by similar teams at other installations across the department have "worked hard to create opportunities for their community members, both military and civilian," said Karen A. Orvis, director of the Defense Suicide Prevention Office. "We know that's so important for suicide prevention. They built on that 'be there' theme through a variety of activities. From suicide prevention trainings, publications, media efforts, and community activities to foster engagement and connections and a variety of other means to get out that critical information about suicide prevention and intervention strategies and resources." Elizabeth P. VanWinkle, executive director of the Office of Force Resiliency, said that suicide prevention efforts don't just touch the lives of those who might have considered suicide, they touch the lives of those who surround those individuals. Suicide affects the lives of coworkers, teammates, families and friends, she said. When intervention can prevent a suicide, all those individuals benefit. "You may not know the names or faces of every individual you have helped," VanWinkle told installation representatives. "But you have been there for them. You may not know the names or see the faces of the children whose parents or siblings are still with them today because of the efforts you do. But you have profoundly affected their lives. They are out there, and when you pause and reflect on your work, please know that you have played a vital role in all of their lives." DOD Official Urges Recapitalizing Nuclear Triad Now [2019-05-23] WASHINGTON -- The deterrence provided by America's nuclear triad -- nuclear capability delivered by submarines, from the ground, and from bomber aircraft -- underwrites everything its men and women in uniform do, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear matters said. "Our nuclear deterrent is used every day," Peter Fanta said, speaking at a Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Studies breakfast May 23 in Washington. "It is the reason we can sail a carrier strike group through the South China Sea. It is the reason we can draw down our troops from hundreds of thousands in Europe to a couple hundred thousand and then going down from there. It is the reason we do not have to have bombers on strip alerts -- because we have a triad." That triad needs to be recapitalized now, or the United States will find itself with zero deterrence capability, Fanta said. "If we do nothing at this point, we will rapidly start to obsolesce to zero," he said. "If we do nothing just after that, we will rust to zero. We have to start building every single platform we have. We have to start rebuilding the weapons at this point. We are at a point where if we do not turn this around, we are going to be stuck without a nuclear deterrent when our kids, our grandkids, face an extremely complex world." Recapitalization of the nuclear triad involves new submarines, such as the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines; new intercontinental ballistic missiles as part of the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program; and new bomber aircraft, such as the B-21 Raider. The U.S. needs to ramp up production capability now for the weapons that will be used in those delivery systems -- a task shared between DOD and the Department of Energy, Fanta said. "It's a volume issue at this point," he explained. "It's spinning up our industrial base to get to those numbers. We understand how to do it. The designs are successful. The production capacity at this point is there. We are there on capacity. We need the subcomponents, and we just need to catch up." One critical component of a nuclear weapon is its plutonium pit -- something the U.S. can build now at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. It's considering also the stand-up of a second pit-production facility in South Carolina, at the Savannah River Site, which is 25 miles southeast of Augusta, Georgia. Fanta said pit production needs to start moving ahead fast. "Plutonium production needs to get moving," he said. "Stop studying it, stop arguing about it, stop looking at it, stop deciding on it, and start building it. One sites, two sites, ... get moving. Savannah River? We need it. Los Alamos? We need. We need to train people how to build nuclear weapons again in Los Alamos and spread that to Savannah River. We need Los Alamos concentrating on building the next generation of systems so we build it faster, smarter, and better. We need to take it from a 1950s and 1960s production model to a modern production complex." Rigorous Training, High Readiness Continue in Korea, General Says [2019-05-23] WASHINGTON -- Last year's U.S. suspension of some military exercises it conducts in South Korea represents neither a concession to other actors in the region nor diminishment of training or readiness for U.S. or South Korean forces on the peninsula, the top U.S. commander there said. Army Gen. Robert B. Abrams, commander of United Nations Command, Combined Forces Command and U.S. Forces Korea, spoke May 22 at a symposium on land forces sponsored by the Association of the United States Army in Honolulu. "As I've stated -- and I want to be crystal clear about it: Combined training and readiness? It hasn't slowed down one bit," Abrams said. "And we are continuing to conduct very rigorous combined training at echelon." Already in 2019, he said, more than 100 exercises have taken place. The biggest difference now, is that neither the United States nor South Korea is as vocal about that training, he added. "We go about the quiet, professional work that our militaries [do], continuing to keep our readiness at a very high level," Abrams said. "All contributing to very strong combined defense posture." In the past, he said, large-scale military exercises served both as high-profile deterrence efforts and as a means to maintain proficiency and competency. While newer exercises will be lower key, the general told the symposium, they do continue to reinforce mission-essential tasks for both U.S. and South Korean forces at all levels. Abrams said adjustments have been made to the size, scope, volume and timing of those exercises. "This was a prudent action in support of diplomacy," he said, the result of which is "bringing us into harmony with ongoing diplomatic efforts." The United States and South Korea "field the most capable and the most disciplined ready combined force anywhere on the planet," the general said. Abrams also hammered home, several times, that the relationship between the two nations is as strong as it ever has been. "We refer to it as 'ironclad,'" he said. "In fact, I can confidently stand before you this morning and state that the alliance remains not just ironclad, but stronger, and more ready than ever." Three elements contribute to that strength, he said, including shared sacrifice, common core values, and a demonstrated commitment to the partnership. That commitment is evidenced by the strong U.S. forward-posture on the Korean Peninsula, its deployment of defense technology and resources, and its rotation of personnel and equipment. The South Korean commitment is evident in part by the emphasis it has put on its own defense, Abrams said, noting that South Korea not only has grown its economy since 1960, but also has put equal emphasis on its military capability. "When it comes to fielding and resourcing a highly capable, disciplined, ready force postured for self-defense and to contribute to regional security and stability, we describe [South Korea] as an exemplary ally," Abrams said, adding that its armed forces have "come of age." The South Korean government has committed to growing its defense budget "to historic levels" -- up to 8.2% growth by 2020 -- Abrams said, which will bring its total defense budget to 3.7% of the nation's gross domestic product. Southcom Chief Outlines Keys for Success in South America [2019-05-24] WASHINGTON -- Despite terrorist groups, narcoterrorism and the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, South America remains "the largest, free and peaceful ... most prosperous democracy region in the world," the commander of U.S. Southern Command said. Navy Adm. Craig S. Faller said he has plans to help allies and partner nations in the region not only maintain that prosperity, but also improve upon it. During a May 22 presentation before the 4th Annual Hemispheric Security Conference at Florida International University in Miami, Faller said key to Southcom's strategy is recognition of the commonalities the United States already shares with South American nations. "We're a neighborhood," he said. "We are connected, not only in the traditional domains that we think about when we talk about military operations -- those domains being land, sea, air, space and cyber. But we're connected, importantly, by values and democracy." While the U.S. already has great presence in South America, the admiral noted, China, Russia and Cuba are making inroads there as well. "Russia, China and Cuba, of course, [are] problematic and involved deeply in protecting Maduro," Faller said, adding that democracies are fragile and must be protected from interlopers. "Corruption is a national security concern in this hemisphere, and these great powers take advantage of that," he said. "When you don't adhere to the rule of law, you use corruption as an advantageous tool for your autocratic goals." China is working now on as many as 56 port deals in Latin America and the Caribbean, he said, "to lock up in terms that are favorable to 'One Belt, One Road' -- with the emphasis being on one." One Belt, One Road is the name of China's global development strategy. Russia, he said, is involved in the spread of disinformation in South America. Faller said Russian television reported he was on the border of Venezuela "and that we were getting ready to launch an invasion, complete with b-roll footage of Marine amphibious landings, and you can't make this stuff up." Countering malign influence in South America involves strong partnerships in the region, Faller said. That involves education, key leader engagements, exercises, and other things "that don't get a lot of news, but create lasting relationships." One example of that is the presence of the USNS Comfort, a hospital ship providing assistance in South America. "Comfort was providing help to migrants, people devastated by the travesty in Venezuela," he said. "We saw 8-year-old, 7-year-old children that were emaciated, that never had medical care. We saw mothers crying because they recognize that their children were getting the attention they needed." Faller also said the professionalism of U.S. forces helps to create better partners in South America. "Professionalism equals legitimacy," he said. "And legitimacy includes respect for the rule of law, and human rights, and those things that we find dear and fundamental. And we see that in our partners. They value that, too." DOD Officials Urge Troops to Seek Mental Health Help Without Fear [2019-05-28] WASHINGTON -- In 2018, more than 320 active duty service members committed suicide. Among reserve component service members, 144 did the same. One lawmaker called it "an epidemic." One problem that may contribute to suicide numbers is a reticence to seek assistance from mental health providers due to fears that such help may damage careers, especially when it comes to security clearances. But that fear is unfounded, one defense leader told lawmakers May 21. "We absolutely need to get the word out that it's almost impossible to lose your security clearance from endorsing a mental health history on your SF-86 question 21," said Navy Capt. (Dr.) Mike Colston, the Defense Department's director of mental health policy and oversight. "We really have data -- [this has happened to] a couple dozen out of nearly 10 million security clearances," Colston said. "So when we look at the process of 'Let's get down to the data,' are we going to kick you out for having a mental health condition? Probably not." Elizabeth P. VanWinkle, executive director of DOD's Office of Force Resiliency, told lawmakers during the joint hearing of the House Armed Services Committee's subcommittee on military personnel and the House Veterans Affairs Committee's health subcommittee that solving suicide is a shared challenge in both the military and civilian societies. "Nationwide, suicide rates are alarming, and increasing," VanWinkle said. "None of us has solved this issue, and no single case of suicide is identical to any other case. The scientific research surrounding prevention of suicides is both complex and ever-evolving. Suicide is the culmination of complex interactions between biological, social and psychological factors, operating at individual, community and societal levels. Our data also tells us it is often a sudden and impulsive act." One effort already underway to help take better care of service members, VanWinkle said, is codification of a framework to more efficiently transition outgoing personnel from active duty to the Department of Veterans Affairs "to make sure service members leave the military with an understanding of, and easy access to, all of the benefits and resources that they require." Colston said as many as 10,000 behavioral health professionals are now embedded in primary care clinics and line units across the Defense Department to assist service members in need. "It really speaks to ... interaction with those line commanders," Colston said. "That's vitally important, and really getting a pulse of the unit." VanWinkle said there's ample training for both junior and senior leaders to recognize indicators that might lead to suicide within the force, including relationship, financial and legal issues. Suicide, she said, ''reverberates beyond the unit, beyond the commander and beyond the service." "It is a loss for our country. ... We truly must show as much commitment and dedication to the well-being of our service members as they have demonstrated on the day they stepped forward to volunteer and serve our country." Defense Digital Service Delivers Mission-Aligned Tech for DOD [2019-05-29] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Digital Service office in the Pentagon looks like no other. The door buzzes open to a bustle of activity and energy. It's no cube farm. Instead, it feels like a Silicon Valley startup environment. There's no foosball table or free breakfast cereal, but the place is set up for collaborative work. Launched in 2015, DDS is charged with bringing the best available technology in an efficient way into the DOD. DDS uses private-sector tools, approaches and talent to help the DOD solve high-impact challenges. Project results have included getting veterans benefits faster, finding bugs in government systems, and helping military families change stations more easily. Brett Goldstein is the newly-appointed DDS Director. A wiz from both the public and private sectors, Goldstein helped to develop OpenTable, a popular online restaurant reservation system, and he was the first chief data officer in the United States. He also boasts City of Chicago CIO, police commander, academic and venture capitalist on his resume. "DDS was created to bring in the best and brightest, to help advance the mission to solve some of our hardest technical problems, and to make sure technology doesn't get in the way of our mission: national defense," says Goldstein. "I think one of the things we've learned in government is that technology needs to enable the mission." DDS has roughly 70 technologists, including 19 active-duty service personnel. The civilians tend to come from private-sector backgrounds and are on two-year term-limited appointments. Goldstein refers to his team, which includes engineers, designers and developers, as a "SWAT team of nerds" that reports to the secretary of defense. "They come here, they work the mission for a few years, and then they go back," Goldstein said. "There's some beauty to that model, where you come in and you are a hard charger and passionate about the mission. They are super passionate about the mission. And they know there is an expiration. Then they return to the private sector or academia." Goldstein was selected and appointed by Acting Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan to grow the work underway by the DDS team. "We are excited for Brett to be taking on this role to build and expand the DDS team and its work," Shanahan said. "His public- and private-sector knowledge, technical expertise and commitment to improving government through technology will be invaluable to a range of critical missions across the department." As an advisor to the secretary, Goldstein says DDS projects are positioned to complement and support the department's modernization priorities. Specifically, Goldstein is focusing on continuing to recruit top technical talent from the private sector along with supporting and empowering skilled technical personnel and service members within the department. Supporting data science, cybersecurity, and better technology platforms across the DOD will be among his early priorities at the department, Goldstein said. Goldstein takes pride in the team's ability to execute quickly. "When you look at our process, no one else has that ability," he said. "We can immediately go into development, produce something top-notch, and be able to show something real, in an amount of time you can't see throughout the DOD." DDS experts don't dwell in the office, either. They travel to where service members are to see how DDS can help use technology to address challenges. Goldstein said he's been to Afghanistan three times so far, and that the project pipeline for DDS originates directly through the critical needs of the services and combatant commands. He also said he's recently been visiting various commands as well, including U.S. Transportation Command, Army Cyber Command, U.S. Central Command, U.S. Special Operations Command, and U.S. Strategic Command as he works to further hone DDS priorities to have the biggest impact possible. Goldstein acknowledged that not everything can be taken on. He says that criteria for project selection include the potential for impact, sustainability, and long-term ownership within the department. Since launch, DDS has worked on a variety of projects. Its first project helped veterans get treatment faster by more quickly processing medical records. Flaws in Veterans Affairs software meant about 5% of health care requests were being denied. DDS engineers were able to correctly process 20,000 related documents and get veterans the care they needed, while at the same time addressing software flaws and reducing the time to transfer records from three months to just one day. Another project focused on strengthening the security of DOD systems. In the private sector, many of the largest companies use "bug bounty programs" or have their systems evaluated by vetted outsiders known as "ethical hackers" to find and report bugs -- and then pay cash when flaws are discovered. The federal government had never done that before until DDS launched the "Hack the Pentagon" program in 2016. It was the first federal bug bounty program, and it has led to thousands of vulnerabilities reported in government systems. Yet another project is helping to ease stress for the roughly 450,000 military families that move each year. DDS has worked to help optimize and improve the Defense Personal Property System to help make those moves go smoother. DDS helped to reduce system latency rates, support more users and increase successful household moves. Looking forward, some near-term efforts under Goldstein will include expanding the DDS "Jyn" program that pairs cyber soldiers and other military tech talent with DOD experts on special projects; launching a pilot to help modernize and automate portions of the security clearance process; building out a new satellite office in Augusta, Georgia, near the Fort Gordon community; and continuing to advise on the JEDI cloud procurement. Goldstein, who recently took the DDS reins from its inaugural director, Chris Lynch, said he understands the importance of mission-driven work and how it resonates with technologists who want to make a difference. "I met this team," he said, "and I realized we had this enormous talent here that was working the mission, and the concept had been proven, and now we had to take it to the next level. ... When I talked with [Shanahan], I realized he completely gets technology. It's top-of-mission for him. He has a focus on data and analytics, and he cares about this. And he wants strong, disruptive change in this space. Those were the tipping points for me." Goldstein says his goal is to support the secretary of defense in his focus on IT modernization, supporting military personnel, and the secretary's overall vision for the DOD. "I have amazing partners across the department, including in Shanahan," says Goldstein. "We have a critical mission. This is the most important job I will hold, and it's an honor to be able to service in that way." Shanahan: Partners Must Join U.S. in Investing in Indo-Pacific Region [2019-06-01] WASHINGTON -- At the International Institute for Strategic Studies-sponsored defense summit today, the acting defense secretary said the U.S. has more than 370,000 service members in the Indo-Pacific region, training and working alongside allied and partner forces there. The U.S. Pacific Command, he said, has four times more assigned forces than any other geographic combatant command. "Across the Indo-Pacific, the United States has more than 2,000 aircraft, providing the ability to rapidly project power across the vast distances of this region," said Acting Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan. "More than 200 ships and submarines ensure freedom of navigation, search and rescue, and rapid assistance in the event of natural disasters. We are investing in advanced missile defense systems, interoperable with allied systems in Japan, Australia and South Korea." The acting defense secretary called on partner nations to do their part to build security in their own countries, and strengthen alliances with neighboring nations. "The Indo-Pacific is our priority theater," he said. "We are where we belong. We are investing in this region. We are investing in you, and with you, and we need you to invest further in yourselves. We need you to invest in ways that take more control of your sovereignty and your ability to exercise sovereign choices." Every nation, Shanahan said, has a responsibility to contribute to a free and open Indo-Pacific region. The United States will uphold its commitments to the region, he said, but allies and partners must contribute their fair share to the combined efforts to secure freedom and prosperity there. "We need you to invest sufficiently in your own defense," he said. "It strengthens deterrence. Build third-party capacity -- it helps the network scale. Uphold rules-based international order -- it keeps the playing field level. Provide access to address contingencies -- it makes us more responsive. Strengthen interoperability and think carefully about the implications of defense sales; you are buying a long-term relationship, not just a platform." Shanahan said the U.S. has a long history of engagement and partnership in the Indo-Pacific region, and that relationships there are growing. "Our defense relationships have expanded along with this region's prosperity," he said. "And as our own economic interests have increased, this region's prosperity has increased by the stabilizing influence of our defense relationships. So the synergy between prosperity and security is well understood." For that security, and prosperity to continue, the acting defense secretary said that investments in partnerships and security will need to continue. "As you invest in yourself, know that we are strengthening even further our unrivaled networks of alliances and partnerships," Shanahan said. "We know this region's size and complexity requires the greatest degree of cooperation." Changing Technology Landscape Biggest Challenge for DOD's CIO [2019-06-03] WASHINGTON -- Dana Deasy addressed an audience at Marine Barracks Washington May 31, before an evening parade there. He was the guest of honor at the event. "Episodic and Changing Landscape" "There is no doubt, if you think about how we deter, and if we find ourselves in a conflict -- how do we win swiftly and decisively, and how do we make sure that the men and the women in the air, at sea, under [water], or on land, have the right tools available to fight the fight? That is a huge burden," Deasy said. "I feel it every day when I come through the doors of the Pentagon." It's the "episodic and changing landscape" of technology, he said, that provides the biggest challenge to him as he leads departmentwide efforts to equip warfighters with the latest tools needed to operate and communicate across the globe. "It's all about how we ensure that wherever [warfighters] are, that they have what they need to be successful," Deasy said. "When you think about the scale, when you think about the terrain of what we cover, having the technology they need to fight is extremely important." He said his team has a plan to make sure America's warfighters are ready to compete. "We put together a strategy that consists of how we become world-class," Deasy said. "Having all of the necessary [computing] power through a cloud, how do we fight through the use of artificial intelligence? How do we have the best command, control and communications? And how do we have great, great strength when it comes to cyber -- both on the offensive side and the defensive side?" Russia Makes Unreliable Military Partner, Defense Leader Says [2019-06-03] WASHINGTON -- There's no question that Russia has a presence in the Middle East -- in particular, in Syria -- the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs said during a forum hosted by the Atlantic Council in Washington. Russia's also working with Turkey and Iran and would like to do more, Kathryn Wheelbarger told the audience at the trans-Atlanticism-focused think tank's headquarters yesterday. But its capability to project forces is limited, she said, and when it does, its track record as a partner makes it a less-than-desirable suitor. "Russia's ambitions and its success ... should not imply that Russia does not face its own challenges operating abroad," Wheelbarger said. "Its military, while growing and modernizing in some areas, has significant limitations," she noted. "Years of neglect have atrophied much of its force-projection capabilities. Indeed, it has very limited military commitments in the Middle East at all. Even its force projection into the eastern Mediterranean, which is a complicating development for us, for sure, highlighted Russia's logistical and capacity challenges when attempting to maneuver in different spheres." The U.S presence in the Middle East differs greatly from Russia's, she said. "The United States maintains tens of thousands of troops in the region, including [the] headquarters of our 5th Fleet, and a U.S. presence at numerous bases in the region, where we augment partner capacity and facilitate their defense," Wheelbarger said. When it comes to foreign military sales of weapons systems to partner nations, the U.S. and Russia differ greatly as well, she said. When the U.S. sells weapons to partner countries, they get not only new equipment, they get an ongoing commitment from a strong, proven partner. "Unlike the relationship with the United States, [Russia's] military sales do not come with long-term commitments of maintenance, sustainment and interoperability that the U.S. routinely provides," Wheelbarger said. "Russia is a transactional partner seeking its own benefit. It thrives in chaos, and therefore does not seek the best interests of its transactional partners. Any regime that thrives on chaos cannot be trusted to strive for stability." Wheelbarger said the U.S. interest in the Middle East continues. Even as the National Defense Strategy puts emphasis on China and Russia, Wheelbarger joined a number of other defense officials who have said that emphasis also includes the Middle East. The U.S. values its partnerships in the Middle East, she said, and wants to continue those relationships and strengthen them, for both its own interests and for those of what are considered true partners in the region. "We don't see these as 'client states' that we are just working with transactionally," Wheelbarger said. "It's a challenge, because the region is so volatile, and there are so many different centers of power. Our image is really to try to build our security architecture with those countries that we can work with, that over time, they work successfully together to shore up their own defenses, and see that cooperation with each other is better than fighting with each other." She asked Middle Eastern partner nations to recognize the difference between a U.S. commitment in the region and a Russian one. "We urge them to see that Russia remains an unreliable partner," Wheelbarger said. "By striving to accommodate all sides in regional disputes, Russia shows it can't be trusted when true choices need to be made and friends need to be known." U.S. to Remain Partner of Choice for Military Hardware, General Says [2019-06-05] WASHINGTON -- Why do nations looking for reliable international partners choose the United States? One reason is that U.S. military hardware is simply better than that of any other nation, the director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said. "Our stuff is better -- it's just better," Army Lt. Gen. Charles Hooper said yesterday during a discussion of issues surrounding U.S. security cooperation at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "As we know, we are in the information-based age of warfare," Hooper said. "Our equipment, our articles and services offer countries not only the best kinetics and mechanics in the world, but potential access to the information that will make them much more efficient and effective in support of our mutual interests, and also reduce the probability and possibility of civilian casualties and collateral damage." The DSCA is responsible for executing all U.S. military security cooperation. Some of that -- foreign military sales, in particular -- is on behalf of the State Department. The agency also is responsible for helping partner nations build institutional capacity, something Hooper described as a "complement to [foreign military sales] that ensures that our partners have the human resources and the defense institutional development to properly utilize the equipment we [provide] for them in the interest of national security." Hooper said he's aware of about 14,000 open cases of potential sales to partners across 185 countries. About half of those cases, he said, are likely to be completed in as few as 52 days. Why would nations continue to choose the U.S., rather than other nations that might offer similar gear? One reason, Hooper said, is the U.S. commitment to its partner nations. The United States doesn't just sell gear, he said. It builds relationships with those nations when it provides them with hardware. "Our great-power competitors have perfected the art of transactional diplomacy," the general said. "We have four values at DSCA -- the last one is commitment. The U.S. remains committed to long-term relationships. For us, the point of sale -- to paraphrase [former British Prime Minister Winston] Churchill -- is not the end. It's not even the beginning of the end. It's merely the end of the beginning." When the U.S. sells hardware or services to partners, it is typically accompanied by long-term agreements regarding training and maintenance -- cementing a relationship, not just a sale -- Hooper said. The U.S. also maintains remarkable transparency and integrity in dealings with foreign military sales, something other potential sellers might not do, he added. "We talk about the integrity of the U.S. process -- many stakeholders, many legal reviews, to ensure that the process remains corruption-free," Hooper said. "I tell partners and allies around the world, 'When you do business with the U.S., the books are always open.'" Despite the aggressive nature of strategic competitors, including those looking to encroach on markets that were formerly dominated by the United States, Hooper said, he believes the U.S. will prevail. "I am absolutely confident that we can succeed in this competition, and that we will remain the partner of choice," he said. Reading of Names Commemorates D-Day [2019-06-06] WASHINGTON -- A day in advance of the 75th anniversary of D-Day, guests and visitors to the National World War II Memorial in Washington were invited to read the names of nearly 9,000 American service members who were killed as part of their participation in D-Day operations. Jonathan Rath Hoffman, the assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, was among those who read names at the event. "Few days in our national conscious so clearly capture the public's understanding of the monumental and desperately paid-for turning point in world history as June 6, 1944, does," Hoffman said. "One day tyrants rule Europe, and on the next, a force of good such as the world has never seen before or since ... valiantly established a beachhead for democracy on the continent." Among those who landed at Normandy that day were British, French, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, Polish, Belgian, Czechoslovakian, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Greek and American service members, Hoffman said. "The battle of Normandy is a totem of how free nations can come together at a decisive time and place, and place the entirety of their shared resources, treasure, knowledge and men, toward a common mission," he added. "The invasion forged partnerships and reinforced crucial bonds that remain to this day." On D-Day, Hoffman said, Americans ought to remember the sacrifices made by both American service men and women and Allies to secure a freedom on the European continent that has survived until today. "To all who were part of the D-day operation, your bravery and heroism still resonates with our military today," Hoffman said. "We are forever indebted to you for your service. We seek to follow in your footsteps, and we honor you -- not only on the 75th anniversary of D-day, but every day, as we remain ready to defend our nation, our friends and our allies, as you did so courageously 75 years ago." Josiah Bunting III, chairman of Friends of the National World War II Memorial, said that while many remember operational details about D-Day, it's more important to remember the individuals who sacrificed to secure victory. "When others talk of war and victory, too often they talk of divisions and regiments and victory," Bunting said. "And they forget what those who fell gave up. God bless them, on this solemn day. And let all of us who are privileged to be here and participate in this commemoration remember our own obligation to see the succeeding generations of Americans not be allowed never to know of that sacrifice and their indebtedness to these brave men and women." Volunteers read the names of nearly 9,000 service members who died on D-Day or shortly after as a result of their participation, and who are buried at Normandy American Cemetery in France. The names were read one by one, with each participant reading 20 names before yielding the microphone to the next volunteer. At nightfall, participants held a candlelight vigil to accompany the reading of names. DOD Sets Date to Begin 'Unwinding' Turkey From F-35 Program [2019-06-07] WASHINGTON -- In a letter sent to Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan explained that the S-400 program is incompatible with the F-35 program, and that the two systems could not exist side by side. "While we seek to maintain our valued relationship, Turkey will not receive the F-35 if Turkey takes delivery of the S-400," Shanahan wrote. Still, Turkey may continue in participation in the F-35 program by shutting down procurement of the S-400 system, said Ellen M. Lord, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, during a June 7 news conference at the Pentagon. "None of the steps we are taking are irreversible," Lord said. "If Turkey wants to stop procurement of the S-400, we would very much like them to continue in the F-35 program." Shanahan's letter said U.S.-based training of Turkish personnel on the F-35 system would stop by July 31 if Turkey does not discontinue its S-400 purchase. Additionally, Shanahan wrote that the U.S. will not plan for Turkish participation in the June 12 F-35 Chief Executive Officer Roundtable, and that planned updates to the F-35 program's governing documents will continue without Turkish input. Lord explained in more detail how the U.S. would "begin unwinding Turkey's participation in the F-35 program" if plans for the S-400 purchase continue. "If the United States and Turkey cannot reach a mutually agreeable resolution to this issue by July 31, all Turkish F-35 students and instructor pilots currently in the United States will be required to depart the country," Lord said. Already, she said, a group of new students who were to arrive in June for training in the U.S. did not come for that training. Turkish students currently in training have not yet been asked to leave, however. "What we are trying to do is be respectful with the Turks as we move along," Lord said. "And we are hopeful that they will stop the acquisition of the S-400." It's not just training on the F-35 that will cease if the Turkish don't discontinue their purchase of the S-400. The F-35 is an international program, and the aircraft itself is produced by multiple countries, including Turkey. Were the Turkish to proceed with the S-400 purchase, their involvement in F-35 production would also need to end. "Turkey will receive no new work share in the F-35 program," Lord said. "Its current work share will be transitioned to alternate sources as they are qualified and come to rate production." Lord said Turkish manufacturers are involved in building some 937 parts for the F-35, including many that make up the landing systems and the center fuselage. She said about 400 of those parts are sole sourced in Turkey -- meaning there's no other partner manufacturing those parts. For those parts of the F-35 being manufactured solely in Turkey, other manufacturers will need to be found. Lord said for now, that's going to be mostly U.S. manufacturers, and that the Defense Department is working with both Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney to accomplish this. The United States and other F-35 partners "have been working in earnest for the last six months to develop and implement changes to our supply base to accommodate the potential for Turkish suspension from the program," Lord said. "We are well underway" on that effort. If S-400 procurement proceeds, Lord said, Turkish manufacturers will only be able to continue to make parts for the F-35 until sometime next year. Lord described it as "a wind-down in early 2020," a process not disruptive to the F-35 program, and one that "allows the Turks to wind down their activities as well." The F-35 aircraft is designed to destroy weapons like the S-400, while the S-400 is designed to destroy weapons like the F-35. Because the two systems are meant to combat each other, Lord said, "we do not want to have the F-35 in close proximity to the S-400 over a period of time, because of the ability to understand the profile of the F-35 on that particular piece of equipment." Lord said that the actions that will be taken to move Turkey out of the F-35 program are not a done deal, and that Turkey does have other options for air defense beyond the Russian-made S-400. "The U.S. has been in active negotiations with Turkey over the sale of the Patriot air and missile defense systems since 2009, to satisfy its legitimate air defense needs," Lord said. "Should Turkey agree to suspend its S-400 acquisition, the U.S. is willing to partner with Turkey immediately to study ways to enhance Turkish security and address allied concerns with Turkey's S-400 purchase." The U.S. goal, Lord said, is to protect the long-term security of the F-35 program as well as the capabilities of the NATO alliance. "Turkey still has the option to change course," she said. "If Turkey does not accept delivery of the S-400, we will enable Turkey to return to normal F-35 program activities. Turkey is a close NATO ally, and our military-to-military relationship is strong." Andrew Winternitz, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Europe and NATO, pointed out how Turkey might go about indicating their interest in continuing in the F-35 program. "I think it would be great if they started winding down their acquisition of the S-400," he said. "I think, obviously, a good signal would be if they were to stop the training in Russia. That would be a great signal to us." Polish Defense Minister Visits F-35 Facility in Florida [2019-06-11] WASHINGTON -- Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak visited Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, to take a look at the F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter aircraft. Senior U.S. defense officials said the Polish government has submitted a letter of request to purchase the F-35 aircraft, and that the Defense Department is working through the foreign military sales process to develop an offer for the Polish government. Poland's Defense Ministry highlighted yesterday's visit to Eglin through a statement on Twitter: "On June 10-13, Mariusz Blaszczak visits U.S.," the ministry statement reads. "On the first day he visited ... Eglin Air Force Base, where he got acquainted with F-35 -- the latest generation aircraft-development program: 'Soon we will join the elite group of countries using the best #F35,' said Mariusz Blaszczak." Today, Blaszczak met with Acting Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan at the Pentagon. "We respect and appreciate Poland's contributions, in terms of burden sharing, capacity building, readiness and the ability to conduct joint operations and just a whole host of what I would call model capabilities," Shanahan said. Blaszczak reflected on a century of U.S. and Polish relations. "It's been 100 years since we have established our diplomatic relations," he said. "Throughout those 100 years, our countries have experienced many examples of mutual support. A great example of that is the 20th anniversary of Poland joining NATO -- which we are celebrating this year -- which would have not been possible if not for the U.S.'s strong support." U.S., Polish Leaders Agree to Increased American Presence in Poland [2019-06-12] WASHINGTON -- More than a year of intense Defense Department-led negotiations between the United States and Poland have yielded an agreement that involves additional U.S. infrastructure in Poland, as well as an increase in the number of U.S. rotational forces that operate there. President Donald J. Trump and Polish president Andrzej Duda signed the agreement Wednesday. "As stated in the joint declaration, the U.S. and Poland continue to enhance our security cooperation," Trump said. "Poland will provide basing and infrastructure to support military presence of about 1,000 American troops. The Polish government will build these projects at no cost to the United States. The Polish government will pay for this. We thank President Duda and the people of Poland for their partnership in advancing our common security." The president also thanked Poland for meeting the security demands of NATO, saying that insofar as burden-sharing is going, Poland is contributing its fair share to NATO. "It is among eight NATO allies, including the United States, currently meeting the minimum 2% of [gross domestic product] ... for defense spending," Trump said. "And Poland is there." Duda said the agreement is a "calm but consistent policy" in terms of security cooperation between the United States and Poland. "This is of breakthrough character," Duda said. "It moves us to another era. So far, we can say, the Americans were testing the situation in Poland, how it looks, how it feels -- what about logistics, whether it is possible to stay in Poland and to successfully attain the goals and implement the tasks of a defensive nature." Duda said he thinks U.S. military leaders have determined it is possible to do those things, and this is why the agreement was signed. He also said rotational forces are a good choice. "It is a rotational presence, yes it is," Duda said. "This is most beneficial from today's perspective to train soldiers through rotational presence. By having rotational presence, more soldiers can come to a country, be present there, look at a culture, at the conditions in place in a given country." Acting Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan said the signing of the agreement underscores the shared values of the United States and Poland, and will serve to strengthen defense ties between the two nations. "Enhanced bilateral cooperation in security will deepen our Polish-American partnership, which is vital to addressing today's current threats and challenges," Shanahan said. "We look forward to this continued defense relationship, and friendship, for years to come." While the United States doesn't permanently station forces in Poland, it does maintain a rotational force in the country. On average, about 4,500 rotational U.S. military personnel are in the country during any month. According to the agreement, the presence is expected to grow by about 1,000 personnel. Those troops will provide additional defense and deterrence capabilities in Eastern Europe. The declaration also indicates the United States will establish a division headquarters in Poland, and that a combat training center will be established at Drawsko Pomorskie in northern Poland for use by both U.S. and Polish forces. Additional training centers around Poland are also called for. Under the agreement, the U.S. also plans to establish an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance squadron in Poland made up of U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles, to establish an aerial port in the country, and to build infrastructure to support an armored brigade combat team, a combat aviation brigade and a combat sustainment support battalion. Initial infrastructure to support this U.S. growth in Poland, as well as establishment of a U.S. special operations capability and an area support group, are expected to be funded by the Polish government, at no cost to the United States. "Both countries seek to conclude international agreements and other arrangements necessary to realize the common vision for enhanced defense cooperation, including the streamlining of the functioning of the U.S. forces in Poland," the agreement reads. "The United States and Poland are to have a regular process to consult and plan for potential force posture adjustments and related infrastructure requirements for the U.S. forces deployed to Poland." Previously, Poland had been a member of the Warsaw Pact with the Soviet Union from 1955 to 1991. As a member of NATO since 1999, Poland now is looking to expand its contribution to the common defense of NATO partner countries. The U.S. will help Poland to accomplish that goal, Shanahan said. "The United States and Poland have a long-standing and fruitful defense relationship. Over time, our shared history of military cooperation, collaborative partnerships, and continued commitment to security in the region have resulted in a strong and prosperous friendship," Shanahan said. "There is no question among NATO allies that the U.S. military presence in Poland contributes to security in the region, providing deterrence and strengthening the alliance, and that by enhancing that presence, we will continue to ensure democracy, freedom and sovereignty." Naval Engineers Must 'Lean In' to Advance Technological Agility [2019-06-20] WASHINGTON -- Rebuilding "strategic momentum" and growing advantages in the maritime domain are challenges Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John M. Richardson addressed in "A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority, Version 2.0," which updated a 2016 document. At an annual meeting of the American Society of Naval Engineers today in Washington, Richardson said meeting those challenges is a "human problem" that must be met, in part by naval engineers. A man in a military uniform stands behind a lectern which bears a logo with the words "American Society of Naval Engineers - 1888." His plan for how the Navy will maintain maritime superiority relies in part on three aspects of agility. "With the joint force, we will restore agility -- conceptual, geographic, and technological -- to impose cost[s] on our adversaries across the competition-conflict spectrum," the report reads. For engineers, Richardson focused on their contribution to technological agility. An aircraft carrier moves through the ocean. In the sky above, 11 aircraft fly in a diamond formation. "The technological landscape is changing so fast across all of technology," Richardson said. "It's really fueled by this information revolution that we are in the middle of right now. And so as we think about the Navy as a learning engine in and of itself, restoring these technical agilities is really important. We do need to move at pace." For comparison, the admiral referred back to Dec. 8, 1941 -- a day after the bombing at Pearl Harbor. It was then, Richardson said, that the Navy began a quick transition from battleship-based tactics to aircraft carriers and aerial battles. He said the switch in strategy wasn't a surprise for the Navy, because it had been researching and engineering for that possibility for years. "We had been 20 years into naval aviation," he said. "This was not just something that we did as a pickup team on Dec. 8. We had been putting investments in with folks like [Joseph Reeves] and [William Moffett] and all those pioneers of naval aviation. We had evidence. A lot of experimentation, a lot of engineering that had gone into that." A fighter jet lands on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Now, Richardson said, the Navy must again have that kind of experimentation, engineering and prototyping to ready it for the next conflict -- and it must get on that mission quickly to stay ahead of adversaries. "We do not want to be the second navy on the water with these decisive technologies: the directed energy, unmanned, machine learning, artificial intelligence, etc., you name it," he said. "That's the great challenge now: to get out, start prototyping, get at this pace, plus evidence ... to yield a relevant Navy that is ready to defend America from attack and protect our interests around the world." An aircraft carrier moves though the ocean. In the background are snow-covered mountains. The admiral said that a knee-jerk reaction might be to cite Defense Department acquisition regulations, like DOD 5000, for inhibiting the type of rapid development, engineering and research he thinks will be needed to maintain maritime dominance. But he said that's not entirely correct. "I think a new set of rules would help," he said. "But this is, I think, a human problem at the end of the day. If we are all biased for action, if we all lean into this, we will get it done. There is nothing that will prohibit us or inhibit us from getting that done if we are all leaning in." DOD Commemorates Founding of POW/MIA Advocacy Group [2019-06-22] WASHINGTON -- In the Pentagon courtyard yesterday, Kelly McKeague, director of the Defense POWMIA Accounting Agency, told several hundred family members gathered for the event that they are more than just the families of those who were lost in conflict overseas. A man speaks from behind a microphone. In the background is a blue curtain. In the foreground are the backs of the heads of the audience. "We call you family members, but you are so much more than that," he said. "You perform multiple roles for us: You are partners with us. You are influencers. You are evangelizers. You are friends. And more importantly, you are loved ones to us." McKeague told those gathered that he regularly reminds members of his DPAA team what the most important aspect of their mission is. "I don't care how many Ph.D.s you have, I don't care how well-renowned you are in your career field -- and we have some very talented, world-renowned individuals -- none of that matters when serving this mission," he said. Pointing to his own heart, McKeague said, "what matters is what they bring from here, and it's here that allows them to serve you with passion, with talent, and, I don't say this lightly, with devotion." Ann Mills-Griffiths, chairman of the board of the National League of POW/MIA Families, said she and all those waiting for the return home of their loved ones deeply appreciate the work of the DPAA. A man and woman stand outdoors and speak to each other, face to face. "We're all grateful for the support that is given to us by the Department of Defense writ large, as well as DPAA and all of the other agencies, certainly including [the Defense Intelligence Agency's] Stony Beach [element]," she said. "They are there to help DPAA, and they are the only group focused solely on what you are interested in -- Vietnam War accounting. So they are very special to us." A Lost Brother Joy Brinduse and her brother, Peter Lautzenheiser, attended the ceremony in the Pentagon. The two lost their younger brother, Michael Lautzenheiser, in October 1971, when the CH-47 Chinook helicopter he was in went down in Vietnam. He was serving as an Army helicopter flight engineer. A man and woman stand aside each other. Brinduse said the bodies of four of the 10 men who had been on board the aircraft that day eventually washed up on shore and were repatriated, but her own brother is still missing. "He just turned 20 and he was on his second tour in Vietnam," said Lautzenheiser, who served in Vietnam as an Army helicopter pilot, and who retired after 42 years of service in 2011. "We both enlisted voluntarily. I think I was 19 when I entered service. He was 18. We had a family history of military service. Our father was in the Air Force even during the time we served in Vietnam." Joy said another brother also served in the Navy. The two siblings say they hope to find their brother soon. Their parents are both still alive, they said, and their father will turn 100 years old in just a month. "That's part of our story, that our parents are both still alive," Lautzenheiser said. Brinduse said she knows, from talking with many other families whose loved ones have been returned, that it brings great closure. A man leans over to shake hands with a woman seated in a chair. "Peter and I have spoken at quite a few events," she said. "And one of the themes of our talks is you don't have closure. We have met enough people who have had the remains of their family member returned, who told us it does give closure. So that's what we're looking for." Meeting Others Like Yourself Cindy Stonebraker's father, Air Force Lt. Col. Kenneth Stonebraker, went missing in Vietnam in October 1968. He had been on a night reconnaissance mission. She had just turned five less than two weeks before she learned of the loss. "I remember the blue car with the yellow writing that said United States Air Force on it coming to the door," she said. "Even as a little kid, we knew what that meant. I remember two men coming to the door -- one an older man and one a younger man. The older man did all the talking. You could tell the younger man didn't want to be there either. He just looked down. And I was a little girl, and was looking up. I vividly remember his face." Stonebraker said her family never talked about the loss, and so for some 45 years, she'd made no inquires about the remains of her father. She said she hadn't known that it was even possible to do such a thing. Then, she said, about seven years ago, she came across a group of motorcyclists at a rest stop who were carrying the POW/MIA flag. "I walked up to them and said my dad is still missing in Vietnam," she said. "They told me that I was the reason that they did what they did." That meeting got her started in looking for her dad. Sometime later, Stonebraker said, she was invited to ride with those motorcyclists to Americus, Georgia. There, she met seven other people who had lost parents in Vietnam. "That forever changed my life," Stonebraker said. "It was the first time in my entire life I felt like I belonged someplace, and I was around people who completely understood me." A circular logo bears the words "Honor Their Service -- Fulfill Their Trust" and "POW/MIA -- You Are Not Forgotten." Later, she said, she attended a meeting of the National League of POW/MIA Families where she learned she could have a memorial marker for her dad at Arlington National Cemetery, and also have his records. She said she also met men who had known her father. "One of them actually participated in helping my dad buy a dollhouse for me for my birthday," Stonebraker said. "I had tons of questions about everything, not only about the planes and the missions, but also the stupid things, the stuff I never got to learn as a little girl: what his favorite color was and was he good at math, and what was his first car? They couldn't answer all the questions, but they were able to answer some of them. These guys spent a lot of time together." Stonebraker said she thinks DPAA will eventually find her father. "It would mean everything," she said. "It would mean everything." DPAA, she said, is impressive in that it is one of very few government agencies that makes such an effort to connect directly with those it serves. She said she's impressed that it's possible, for instance, for family members to meet with and talk with DPAA's leaders to address issues and concerns. "I don't know of one other organization that allows you access to their top people," Stonebraker said. "It is really great to see them, us, all working together for one common goal." The Best Tools McKeague said that over the years, since the first missions were undertaken to find those lost in Vietnam, DPAA and its predecessor organizations have found and repatriated close to 1,000 service members. But work remains, he said. Today, about 1,588 still remain missing in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and China. Technology, he said is helping DPAA with that search. "DNA is first and foremost in having the most progress," he said. "The Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory at Dover Air Force Base, [Delaware,] are patenting techniques now that can take a degraded sample of bone and extract DNA from it." Scientists at the forensic laboratory in Honolulu are also patenting a new clavicle comparison technique, he said, explaining that a clavicle is as unique as a fingerprint. New technology to aid in the search also includes underwater excavations, unique sonar systems, and the use of unmanned underwater vehicles that can sonar scan and map out a search site. A diver swims in green waters under a ship. Finding lost service members and finally bringing them home is much more than a job, McKeague said. "It's a fulfillment of an obligation made to the service members who we sent off to war, that they went missing in combat, made the ultimate sacrifice," he said. "It's fulfilling that promise to them. It's also a fulfillment of an obligation and promise to the family members who, decades later, still have a void, and are still waiting." "I think it also sends two strong signals: to veterans who have served -- these are their comrades in arms," he continued. "And more importantly, it sends a strong signal to those currently in uniform today, that should they go missing, this nation will do everything humanly possible to bring them home." Following the courtyard event, visitors were taken into the Pentagon to view the exhibits on display in the POW/MIA corridor. DOD to Take Over Background Checks by Fiscal 2020 [2019-06-25] WASHINGTON -- By October, the Defense Department will be assuming responsibility for background investigations for U.S. government personnel and contractors seeking the various security clearances required to do their jobs. Right now, the Office of Personnel Management conducts those investigations through its National Background Investigations Bureau. But language in the fiscal year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act directed the government to move responsibility for the lion's share of those investigations over to the Defense Department. According to one senior defense official, about 4.2 million personnel from the federal government and government contractors are cleared for access to secret and above information. Around 3.6 million of those are DOD employees or contractors. A presidential executive order in April 2019 further directed that all of the investigations be done by the DOD. The decision is an "economical, business-smart and process-smart solution," said one senior defense official during a background briefing at the Pentagon, June 24. By Oct. 1, it's expected that every security clearance investigation will be conducted by a newly created DOD agency called the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency. The DCSA will be formed from the existing Defense Security Services, already part of DOD, and the existing National Background Investigations Bureau, which is part of OPM. As part of that changeover, National Background Investigations Bureau employees will become DOD employees, though they will remain working in the same location, and in almost every case, continue under their current chains of command. The director of the National Background Investigations Bureau at OPM, Charles S. Phalen, has been identified by the secretary to be the acting director of the newly created DCSA agency beginning July 1. Phalen will be dual-hatted until a permanent director can be named. In early 2018, the bureau had about 725,000 outstanding security clearance investigations underway, "an all-time high," said a senior administration official. Now, that backlog has dropped to about 410,000. He said he expects by the end of the year that backlog will drop to about 300,000. He also noted that about 200,000 ongoing investigations would be considered normal. The agency gets about 50,000 to 55,000 new requests for investigations each week, the official said, though many of those are not for secret or top secret clearances, but are instead for lower-level investigations to determine suitability for federal employment. About 60-65% of security clearance investigations are performed by contractor personnel, and that is not expected to change. Additionally, said the senior administration official, there's no expectation that there will need to be any new hires to staff the new DSCA. "The workforce is already there," that official said. A senior defense official also said the National Background Investigations Bureau has been making almost "nonstop" improvements to the process of security clearance investigations, and that those improvements will continue at DOD. An administration official said the bureau is still not where it wants to be when it comes to the speed of processing an investigation, though significant improvements have been made. That official said top secret investigations take about 150 days to complete, but ideally, the official said, that would drop to about 80 days. And where it takes about 90 days to complete a secret investigation, the official said the bureau would like to get that down to about 40 days. DOD More Assertive, Proactive in Cyber Domain [2019-06-28] WASHINGTON -- The primary concept put forth in DOD's cyber strategy is "defend forward," but also a priority is more assertiveness in the face of growing threats from outside U.S. borders, the deputy assistant defense secretary for cyber policy said. "We have shifted from ... a more reactive stance as a department, with regards to national security threats in [the cyber domain] ... into a much more proactive, assertive stance/posture," B. Edwin Wilson said yesterday during a cyber forum hosted by Defense One. Adversaries are now taking advantage of the cyber domain in a way they haven't in the past, so DOD must step up to defend in ways it hasn't in the past, Wilson said, noting that adversaries now are engaged in persistent, ongoing campaigns, not merely one-off attacks. "Adversaries are using this domain, especially operating below the threshold of a traditional response, in enduring campaigns," he said. "[These are] sustained campaigns that are creating strategic risk for the nation, not just for the military, but for the nation, our allies and partners, and industry." Delivering cyber effect, he said, is now considered a tool similar to other instruments of national power. "We may use trade sanctions, we may use attribution in terms of key actors, designations of malicious actors," Wilson said. "There have been several in the last couple of years: Russia, China, ... Iran. Those are techniques. We can also now have a process in place ... to put cyber effects operations, either defensive or offensive, as a potential instrument of national power. We use it all the time. But it is now considered on par with all the other tools of power for the nation." The United States has a strong partnership with NATO nations, Wilson said, and cyber is now making its way into NATO dialogue. He said that the U.S. is one of nine NATO partners that have volunteered to respond to an Article 5 declaration when the attack is actually cyber, rather than kinetic. Article 5 of the treaty that created NATO states that the alliance considers an attack on one member to be an attack on all. "We would be willing to use offensive cyber operations, mostly in a defensive capacity, in support of an Article 5 declaration by NATO," he said. "We are working through 'What does that really mean? What is the criteria for that? What nations have capability? What would that look like? How would we coordinate those activities?' and start working through that now." The digital transformation taking place globally, Wilson said, demands quick U.S. action. That transformation, he said, is taking place at an unprecedented pace. "I doubt that in history we've seen anything that would match the changes that are coming at us," he said. "It's both challenges and opportunities, no matter what walk of life you're in." For industry, he said, those changes present "tremendous opportunity for productivity." For those charged with defending the nation, he said, "that speaks to threats, and what are we going to do about those threats?" The best indicators of those threats, he said, are China and Russia -- both bellwethers of what's to come. "Both have the technology wherewithal, as well as the capacity to put these technologies to use in a significant way," he said. To prepare itself for the opportunities and the threats posed by cyber transformation the Defense Department is clarifying for itself and others what its role will be in defense of the nation, when it comes to the cyber domain, Wilson said, noting that this effort has been defined as "defend forward." "When we went to craft the strategy last year, we began to look at what was different in the strategic environment we are operating in today as compared to 2015," Wilson said. "2015 doesn't seem like a long time, but when you do operations in cyberspace, defense operations, etc., that's an eternity." Theft of intellectual property and malign influence activities are just two examples of what the department is facing, he said. "We were having trouble articulating what is the DOD's role in this strategic environment," he said. "When we moved through it, we were looking for a concept that articulated the unique attributes of the department, as well as our roles and would help clarify roles and responsibilities next to other departments and agencies." The "defend forward" concept is the name given to what crystalized, from the department's efforts to define its role in cyber defense. "As the Department of Defense, we focus on a really external, outward-facing environment," he said. "Our job is to worry about significant threats to our country, to the nation, to our allies, to our partners. So that's what we do. ... We defend the homeland, we defend our allies and partners. In cyberspace, should it be different than any other domain?" "Defend forward," he said, means DOD must identify the significant external threats to the nation and act on those -- but not alone. "Our job as a department, alongside the intelligence community and other departments and agencies ... is to be able to see threats as they develop, to be able to understand those threats, if there are imminent threats, then be able to pivot on behalf of the nation in a defensive role," he said. That role, he said, isn't much different from what the department does in other domains. "Disrupt, preempt, dissuade, deter ... to be able to blunt those attacks before they reach the homeland," he said. "That's a very similar construct as we use in any other domain." U.S. Security Requires Multiple Elements of Deterrence [2019-07-03] WASHINGTON -- In the context of U.S. defense policy, "deterrence" is typically understood to mean "nuclear." And America's nuclear triad -- ground-based missiles, air-delivered bombs, and submarine-launched missiles -- serves as America's biggest form of deterrence, which underwrites everything its men and women in uniform do. But according to Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John M. Richardson, nuclear weapons are just one of multiple elements of deterrence the U.S. must consider either for itself, or for being aware that other nations might be using them. During a July 2 breakfast presentation hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in Washington, Richardson laid out five such elements of deterrence already in use or that must be considered more deeply. Nuclear "It's an incredibly powerful military capability where potentially everybody gets destroyed," Richardson said. "We must maintain our ability to be competitive and relevant in this domain ... [and] strike back at anybody who can pose an existential nuclear threat to the homeland." The triad itself includes ground-based missiles -- commonly referred to as intercontinental ballistic missiles; submarine-launched ballistic missiles; and air-launched cruise missiles dropped from bomber aircraft. In all three areas the U.S. is underway with modernization efforts. But the nuclear environment globally is changing, Richardson said. "More nations are seeking to join the club," he said. Some of those nations can bring high-tech weapons, while some are using low-tech, including dirty bombs and systems that can be manufactured with 3-D printers. Additionally, not all nuclear weapons are "strategic" in nature. Some are smaller "tactical" weapons. "The nuclear element of this mix remains very relevant, very active, and deserves a lot more attention in my mind," Richardson said. Cyber Richardson said when it comes to cyber as a deterrent, the U.S. can't maintain only defensive capabilities. "We have to have an ability for offensive cyber to truly achieve a sense of deterrence there," he said. Recent cyber provocations, he said, are "multidimensional in ways that may or may not have been expected." Included there, he said, are theft of intellectual property, invasion of privacy, invasion of identity, distortion of identity, "and most recently, perception management. This perception management idea ... might be kind of our new Sputnik moment." Space "The competition is absolutely heating up in space," Richardson said. "Of these elements that are going to constitute a tailored strategic deterrent approach, space has got to be one of those." Richard posited that in space, it might become apparent that, using directed energy weapons, it proves far easier to destroy something in space than it is to put something back up into space. "These things operate really fast ... and space goes away as an asset," he said. "You can see kind of a mutually assured destruction scenario in space pretty easily. Have we thought about that going forward?" Chemical, Biological Capabilities Increasingly, Richardson said, chemical and biological deterrence will come into the mix, especially as technologies such as CRISPR -- a genome editing tool -- allow for more tailored capabilities. "One of the self-deterrent aspects of chemical/biological is that it's very hard to control. It goes viral, if you will," he said. "But with these tailoring things, you can get a lot more specific. It becomes a lot more targetable. And so, it's something we have to mind." Conventional Weapons U.S. deterrence advantages in conventional weapons have relied, so far, on superior targeting ability, Richardson said. But that may become less important. "We have better sensors, better satellites, better ways to connect that data with our command and control systems, our targeting systems," he said. "We had an advantage in terms of precision." Now, he said, such sensors are ubiquitous, and commercial and military sensors are going up into space. There are cameras everywhere. "This idea of being able to locate things with precision is becoming more ubiquitous," he said. "It's less of an advantage. It's really the team that can manage that information better that's going to achieve the advantage." Cyber Flag Exercise Focuses on Partnerships [2019-07-05] WASHINGTON -- More than 650 cyber professionals from across the Defense Department, other federal agencies and partner nations worked together at the Joint Staff's facility in Suffolk, Virginia, as part of Cyber Flag 19-1, a weeklong cyber exercise designed to enhance readiness for cyberattacks and to build partnerships among those who would be called upon during a real-world event to keep malicious actors out of critical cyber infrastructure. Twenty teams -- including some that were multinational or multiagency -- worked individually June 21-28 to thwart malicious attacks and intrusions on an Industrial Control Systems/Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition network built specifically for the exercise to simulate one that might be used by a U.S.-based port facility. "Cyber Flag 19-1 focuses on tactical, on-keyboard defense against a live adversary," said Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger, U.S. Cyber Command's director of exercises and training. "The exercise is set up to increase the readiness of the cyber mission force and deepen partnerships and increase the readiness of allies and interagency participants that are involved in the exercise." All five members of the "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance -- which includes the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada -- participated in Cyber Flag. Interagency partners included the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the Department of Energy. Cyber professionals from the House of Representatives and the U.S. Postal Service also participated. To ensure a greater understanding across participating agencies and nations, some of the teams were mixed. Army Cyber Command worked with the Texas National Guard, the Marine Corps worked with the United Kingdom, the Georgia National Guard was paired with Canada, and the Pennsylvania National Guard worked with the Georgia National Guard. "We have more than half the entirety of the teams here with an outside person who doesn't belong intrinsically to their organization," said Capt. Shae Luhowy of the Canadian air force. "The teams jumped on it. We encouraged it, and we got an overwhelmingly positive response for this exact reason. The teams are very happy to be able to pick up some ideas and learn from the other teams they may be sharing with." Mauger said this was the first time that the Persistent Cyber Training Environment was used to prepare participants for Cyber Flag. Cybercom and the Army are developing it to enable collective training. The PCTE allows cyber professionals "to recreate a bit of what we have done here, but recreate it on a frequent basis to get the sets and reps and do this at the training scale that we really need to further hone our warfighting capability," he explained. Also for the first time this year, the exercise planner for Cyber Flag 19-1 is not an American. Luhowy has worked full-time with Cybercom since August, and he said he's been planning Cyber Flag since he came on board. Marine Corps Chief Warrant Officer 3 Chris Wild watched over the combined Marine Corps-U.K. team. "This is the first time in one of these exercises we've intentionally merged two of the teams," he said. "We've had onsies, twosies, straphangers before. But this is the first time, where in this scenario we attached our Marine Corps cyber protection team element to the U.K. forces." The two teams mesh in some places, and of course, they clash in others, he said. "When it comes to the guys down at the tactical edge, our host subject matter experts -- who may focus on Linux, or Windows or databases -- were able to easily spot the same skill sets on the other side and created a fusion cell to work towards that." Analyzing network traffic is the same, he said. But the Brits and the Marines do some things differently that need to be ironed out -- and Wild was there to smooth out the wrinkles. "The U.K. writes orders different than we do," he said. "They have different meanings for some of the tactical tasks than we do. And they also spell things a bit differently too. We found the best way to do that is get on a table together and put it on the big screen and go through it." Army Capt. Jesse Nangauta, a battalion senior intelligence officer with Army Cyber Command's 1st Information Operations Command, was the "red team" leader in charge of the 100 cyber professionals playing the adversarial role. "We refined the plan based on the overall design of the range and what that network environment looks like, and really refined it in the last two months or month prior to the execution of the exercise," he said. "We really go in and test and rehearse." The red team provided a contested environment for the exercise's cyber protection teams. "We are essentially trying to maneuver on the network, or conduct malicious activity on the network, like picking up the targets and moving them across the network and leaving indicators related to those targets," Nangauta said. "We also provide feedback to the cyber protection teams as to whether they properly identified us ... or appropriately conducted the defense measures to prevent us from continuing to maneuver with that malicious activity." Most of the teams did surprisingly well at defeating his team's network aggression, Nangauta said, adding that based on what he saw at Cyber Flag 19-1, he's not concerned for the future. "I would absolutely state I am very impressed with our abilities to adapt to meet the current threats that currently exist," he said. "We are doing all the right things when it comes to training." To sufficiently challenge the teams in a way that prepares them for the pressures and the demands they'll face in the real world, Mauger said, Cybercom worked with the Pacific Northwest National Lab and the Sandia National Lab to build a complex ICS/SCADA network so that the teams could operate in a realistic environment against the red team adversary. But the partnering was just as realistic, and that was the top priority during Cyber Flag 19-1, the admiral said. "Our allies and partners are a key strategic warfighting advantage for the U.S.," he said. "When we go into combat, we do so with a whole host of support and capability and commitment from other nations. And that makes us unique, especially when contrasted against some of our key adversaries at this time." "The depth of integration between our U.S. teams and our allied teams is something we just haven't seen before in this exercise environment," he continued. "I am confident that through the work that has been done in this exercise to integrate teams and have them work as one and fight together, that we will present an imposing force for our adversary in this space." Southcom Chief Stresses Need for Partnerships, Security Cooperation [2019-07-10] WASHINGTON -- External states are working hard to get a foothold in South America, and they want to exert even greater influence there than they already do. Strong partnerships are the way to counter that effort, the commander of U.S. Southern Command said in a Senate hearing. "Competition is happening globally, and right here in our neighborhood: the Western Hemisphere," Navy Adm. Craig S. Faller told the Senate Armed Services Committee. n Venezuela, he said, Russia is propping up the illegitimate regime of Nicolas Maduro with loans, technical and military support. China, he said, is the country's largest creditor. "[China has] saddled the Venezuelan people with more than $60 billion in debt and is exporting surveillance technology used to monitor and oppress the Venezuelan people," he said. Iran, he told the senators, has recently restarted direct flights from Tehran to the Venezuelan capital of Caracas. Faller said China does have legitimate financial interests around the globe, including in South America. "We're working hard as a nation to figure out how those legitimate international interests can actually be played using the rule of law," he added. Still, he said, China's investments in 56 port facilities in South America as well as investment in cyber and information technology infrastructure sets the stage "for future access and influence that would have clearly military dimension." Russia, he said, can best be characterized as a "wounded bear" wanting power. "Their principal objective is to make the U.S. look bad at whatever turn they can do, and do anything that would blunt a U.S. advantage, even if that advantage is for the international good and the people, as it is in Venezuela," he said. The activities of China, Russia, Iran and Cuba, he said, are "profoundly unhealthy" for democracy and regional security in South America, and also are counter to U.S. interests there. "China, Russia and others want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian models," he said. "They're blurring the lines of what constitutes a military threat through economic coercion, the systemic stealing of technology, influence campaigns and malicious cyber activity." Pushing back in South America, Faller said, requires the United States to focus on what it does best there already: partnership building. "The best way to outcompete is by focusing our strengths: the strong and enduring ties that we have with our neighbors," he said. "Security cooperation is our best tool to continue building these strong partnerships and turn the challenges of our hemisphere into opportunities. Working together, training and exercising shoulder to shoulder with American military professionals is our competitive edge, and no one can match our system." Partners in South America want to work with the United States and value what it brings to the table, including military-to-military relationships, military exercises and schools, Faller said. "They want the advantage of a U.S. education, training, exercises and military equipment," he said. "It's the best in the world. So it's up to us to deliver that in a way that's relevant and also provides a return on investment for American taxpayers." Faller said more could be done in the way of training with increased funding. He told lawmakers that the International Military Education Training account run by the State Department has "basically been flatlined for as long back as I can do the math." This, he told the Senate panel, has meant decreasing seats for schools that partner nation military personnel can attend. "I've advocated and former defense secretaries have as well, that we would be well served to look at an increase in this," he said. "The overall account for the entire Department of Defense is somewhere just north of $100 million, and for Southcom it's about $11 million. I think I could absorb $18 million, a modest increase. When you look at the kinds of monies we're spending in other areas, this is a low amount of money for a high dividend, high payoff." Milley Talks Modernization at Confirmation Hearing [2019-07-11] WASHINGTON -- The effects of delayed defense budgets, the dearth of confirmed civilian leadership in the Pentagon, modernization, Afghanistan, and great power competition were all topics the president's nominee to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff faced from the Senate Armed Services Committee at his confirmation hearing. If confirmed, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley would be the 20th military officer to fill the role, succeeding Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, whose term expires Sept. 30. The general opened today's hearing by acknowledging to lawmakers that the international order, in place now for over 70 years, is under threat. "From East Asia to the Middle East to Eastern Europe, authoritarian actors are testing the limits of the international system and seeking regional dominance while challenging international norms and undermining U.S. interests," Milley said. "Our goal should be to sustain great power peace that has existed since World War II, and deal firmly with all those who might challenge us." Also what has changed is warfare itself, Milley told the senators. New characteristics of warfare include space, cyberspace, and new technology that's not been seen before. Competing in the new environment, he said, will require great adaptation by the U.S. military. If confirmed, he said, his priorities are to "provide the best military advice, to maintain steady continuity of military leadership, implement the National Defense Strategy with emphasis on increasing the readiness and modernization of the joint force, maintain and grow our network of allies and partners, sustain great power peace in an era of great power competition and provide unwavering support, care and leadership to our troops and their families." Of interest to many lawmakers was Milley's insight into how delayed defense funding, continuing resolutions, and even the possibility of a yearlong continuing resolution, might affect military readiness. "I think the impact would be significant," he told the Senate panel. "I think a CR [would be], in the words of the National Defense Strategy commission, they said the word 'reckless.' I think a CR has a very significant negative impact on the training, equipping, readiness and modernization of the U.S. military." Without a timely defense appropriation bill, Milley said, "I think you're going to have issues with procurement, new starts, and delays of acceleration of programs that are already there. I think your research, development, science, technology, [and] the modernization we are talking about to face the challenge of China in the future or any other country in the future. All of those will be negatively impacted unless we have the full budget passed." More than just money, Milley said, lack of a timely budget sends a message to adversaries, allies, and service men and women about the importance the U.S. places on defense. "Those are also negative impacts," he said. Modernization of the joint force has been a buzzword of the Defense Department for years now, and it's been a focus of Milley's since he took the helm at the Army in August 2015. If confirmed as the top military leader in the Pentagon, Milley said, his No. 1 modernization priority for the department would be the nuclear triad. The nuclear triad: submarine-based, land-based, and air-delivered weapons -- provide deterrence that has kept war from breaking out again since World War II, Milley said. Redundancy within the triad is not an issue, he told lawmakers -- it's critical. "Each leg of the triad gives you a different capability. ... All three present different problem sets to any adversary or enemy," he said. "I think it's important to keep all three." Milley also said that non-nuclear conventional weapons are no substitute for the deterrence provided by the nuclear triad. A second priority for modernization, he said, is space. "It's a new domain of military operations," he said. "We've got a considerable amount of both commercial and military capability in space that need to be protected, and all the technologies that go with space. In addition to that, I would say artificial intelligence and hypersonics, and there's many, many other technologies." China is providing the impetus to modernize more quickly, Milley said. Chinese modernization is underway, and it's moving fast, he added. "I think China has, for going on 30, 35 years now, embarked upon what they refer to openly in the media and their speeches as 'the China dream,'" Milley said. "That is to be at least a peer competitor, a world-class military with the U.S. military, by the mid-2030s. And they want to have the capability to defeat us by mid-century. They are moving out on that in all the domains." Meanwhile, more than a dozen key Defense Department civilian leadership roles are filled by those in an acting or "performing the duties of" capacity. That's a problem for lawmakers, and Milley confirmed it's a problem for uniformed personnel as well. "I think it is very important to fill the nominated positions and get them through the system as quickly as we can, properly vetted and confirmed," Milley said. "Having a confirmed person in place, I think, clearly helps out us in uniform, and it also clearly delineates civilian control of the military -- I think it reinforces that. The civilian oversight is of critical importance, and they interface with Congress and others [in the] interagency." Since 2001, the United States has been at war in Afghanistan. Milley said the end to that war must not come until conditions are met. "I think that the war in Afghanistan, at least American participation in the war in Afghanistan, comes to an end when our interests are met, and I think that will be met through a negotiated settlement with the Taliban," he said. "I think we're seeing some progress." Milley said the U.S. has goals in Afghanistan, such as ensuring that it is never again a safe haven for terrorists who might threaten the United States. Continued presence in Afghanistan by American forces is an important part of ensuring that an agreement with the Taliban can happen, Milley said, adding that "pulling out prematurely would be a strategic mistake." Milley told lawmakers he's grateful for being nominated to the position of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he pledged to work with Congress in the role to keep the country safe. "I'd like to thank the president of the United States for the trust and confidence he has placed in me," Milley said. "If confirmed, I pledge to you and to the American people and to the president that I will always provide my best military advice to him, the secretary of defense, the National Security Council and the Congress to ensure America's global national security interests are assured." Northcom Commander Cites Arctic as Area of Concern [2019-07-23] WASHINGTON -- Air Force Gen. Terrence J. O'Shaughnessy, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and Northcom, told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington about the role both agencies play in homeland defense. While he embraces cooperation in the Arctic, O'Shaughnessy said, care must be taken not to let potential adversaries take advantage of that cooperation. "The rules-based international order [that's] alive and well in the rest of the world has to be applied with that same template in the Arctic," he said. As avenues of navigation open in the Arctic region, so to do avenues of approach to the United States, O'Shaughnessy noted, so the United States, and Northcom in particular, must remain vigilant and prepared. "The Arctic is not just a place you can pick up and go to," he said. Unlike the tropical, temperate or desert environments where the U.S. military typically operates, the Arctic region requires specialized training and gear. Northcom is working with the services on how they operate and exercise in the Arctic, the general said. Turning to missile defense, O'Shaughnessy said defense against cruise missiles is something that needs more attention. "The overall push to emphasize cruise missile defense is something that is gaining some traction," he said. He noted that discussion of ballistic missile defense is common, and the United States spends as much as $12 billion a year on ballistic missile defense. There's also growing discussion on defense against hypersonic weapons, he said. "But surprisingly, there is not that much conversation about cruise missiles," he told the audience. "When I look at the cruise missile threat, I see that as one of the biggest threats we face." But the cost of defense against cruise missiles -- missiles that are guided and which fly within the atmosphere -- is high, he acknowledged. Interceptors for cruise missiles cost more than the inbound missiles, he said, and the United States must "find a way that we can have a deep magazine with a high rate of fire." Officials must find a way to "flip the cost curve on cruise missile defense," he added, and as the cost for defense against cruise missiles is lowered, he said, the United States must be able to defend larger areas against them. The nation must develop a "defeat mechanism" that can grow from just a point defense capability to a broader area defense capability, he added, and ultimately have it at a cost that would allow setting up a system that would be national. In addition, O'Shaughnessy said, increased domain awareness and development of an architecture that can tie tighter an array of sensors are priorities for NORAD and Northcom. "We have to advance from these stovepipe systems to this broad-level architecture ... that's clearly joint," he said. "It's got to be coalition. It has to be able to ingest all of the various sensors we have out there and be able to bring it to a command and control capability." Esper: Operation Sentinel Prevents Escalation of Middle East Waterways Conflict [2019-07-24] WASHINGTON -- Just three hours into his new job, Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper met with reporters at the Pentagon to discuss Iran, China and the proposed defense budget. A top priority: Operation Sentinel, the U.S. Central Command effort to promote maritime stability, ensure safe passage, and de-escalate tensions in international waters throughout the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab el-Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Oman. The point of Operation Sentinel is to "de-escalate by deterring an escalation -- any unnecessary provocation that leads to an unnecessary conflict," Esper said. "[We're] trying to de-escalate and at the same time message [Iran] very clearly, that without precondition, any time, any place, we're willing to meet with them to talk about how we get back on into a negotiation." The secretary said that for now, the United States would work to make sure U.S.-flagged ships have safe passage over the waterways in the Middle East. "To the degree that circumstances warrant that, if we think a U.S. ship may be under some type of threat -- being stopped or being seized -- we would want to make sure we have the capacity to make sure that doesn't happen," Esper said. That may include overhead monitoring by unmanned aerial vehicles or could also mean having U.S. warships nearby, he said. "As long as you are in the area, that you can react quick enough to deter the provocation, that's the key," he added. Esper said he'd be meeting with officials at Centcom and its Navy component to talk more about how Operation Sentinel will work. He emphasized that while de-escalation of conflict is a priority of Operation Sentinel, so too is ensuring safe and free navigation for U.S. ships in the region. "My view is ... we would want to prevent the Iranians seizing or stopping a ship, certainly, for any arbitrary reason whatsoever," he said. Turning to a new budget deal announced this week that allows $738 billion in funds for the U.S. military. Esper said he has "no complaints" with those numbers and the predictability the plan brings over two years without reliance on continuing resolutions. During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, Esper explained that a continuing resolution, among other things, prohibits starting of new programs and changes in production quantities and affects how the military departments are able to predictably fill training seats. "It impacts everything we do across the board," he said. "And in many cases, you can't reclaim that ground. You can't go back and fill a seat in a class. So it has a direct impact on training." The Defense Department has 59 positions that require Senate confirmation, and more than a dozen of those are now filled by people serving in an "acting" role. Esper said it's critical for those positions to be filled with Senate-confirmed individuals. "We need to get staffed up quickly," he said, adding that he thinks there's a commitment within Congress to fill the positions. "We have some other people [whose nominations] should be coming out of the White House soon. My key is to get those positions filled as quickly as possible and move people through the system." Despite Risk, Recruits Want to Serve, Enlisted Leaders Say [2019-07-25] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military has been in Afghanistan since 2001 -- nearly 18 years now, and the war in Iraq lasted eight years. But despite the risk involved in participating in combat operations, senior enlisted leaders from across the U.S. military say, young Americans still want to serve. "People want to come serve in the military," said Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. Troy E. Black. "They want to come serve their country. And the risk of it is just part of the deal." Black has been the sergeant major for manpower and reserve affairs for the Marine Corps. Friday, he'll assume the role of sergeant major of the Marine Corps. He spoke at the Pentagon as part of the Defense Senior Enlisted Leader Council, which includes the senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the senior enlisted leaders of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, the National Guard Bureau the combatant commands and the subunified commands. Command Sgt. Maj. Christopher S. Kepner, senior enlisted advisor to the National Guard Bureau, said National Guard service members -- who make up more than half of all uniformed personnel in the U.S. military -- are not overly concerned with having to fight. Instead, he said, they're concerned they might not get a chance to. "The biggest question I get from our young men and women today is not 'Will I have to go downrange?'" Kepner said. "It's 'Deployments are not going to stop, are they, Sergeant Major?'" Though those who choose to enlist are willing to participate in combat activities, the services do face a challenge getting people in the door. Some of the biggest obstacles are competition with the private sector and a new set of "influencers" who help young Americans make the decision to serve, said Command Sgt. Maj. John Wayne Troxell, the senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "About 1% of [the nation] has served," Troxell said. "Who are the influencers of the young men and women now? It's not so much the parents. It's the grandparents, and more and more, it's educators and coaches and people like that. We have to continue to leverage ... in our recruiting areas these people that may be outside the family that are influencers to help us look for the talent we need for this force here." Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Russell L. Smith said he's found that a lack of military "bloodlines" -- or potential recruits with parents who served -- hasn't much affected those who step up. Los Angeles, for example, has a scarcity of military personnel, so recruits with military ties are limited. But it still provides plenty of recruits. "Los Angeles is not just one of our most productive districts," Smith said. "It's the most productive." Smith said he was talking with some of those recruits, and he asked how many had parents who served. "About 3 out of 15 hands went up," he said. "What it tells me is that when recruits see some sort of opportunity, they are willing to seize it. What we have to do is make them understand the value of service and what it is the military can provide. When they see it, they are moving towards it." Security Clearance Employees at OPM Get DOD Welcome Notice [2019-07-30] WASHINGTON -- As many as 3,300 employees at the Office of Personnel Management's National Background Investigation Bureau, or NBIB, have received notice they'll be moving to the Defense Department by Sept. 30. In fact, a senior defense official said, those employees got two letters delivered by email. One was from their current employer, informing them of their move to DOD as part of an official and legal "transfer of function." The second letter came from DOD, welcoming them into the fold. While those OPM employees will be working for a new organization, a lot of their experience will remain the same. "With the transfer of their jobs, the grade does not change, the workspace does not change, the supervisor does not change except for a few executives, and the pay stays the same. They are just in a different payroll system," a senior administration official said during a briefing at the Pentagon today. The official also said the transfer to DOD and its newly created Defense Counter-Intelligence and Security Agency, or DCSA, will provide new opportunities. "This is not just an NBIB employee opportunity, this is an everybody-in-DCSA opportunity -- an opportunity to have a much broader career opportunity within that framework of the security function that DCSA is picking up," the official said. "That's really the overriding message we're picking up." Executive Order 13896, issued in April, and language in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act have both been drivers to transfer the security clearance processing function from OPM to DOD. Beginning in fiscal year 2020, responsibility for conducting background checks will reside with DCSA. NBIB employees will officially transfer from OPM to DOD on Sept. 29. The notification to those employees was just one step needed to transfer NBIB to DOD, a senior defense official said, with about 100 major projects underway, some 480 milestones to be met, and another 2,000 "big tasks" that must be completed to make the transfer a success. By October, the start of the fiscal year, DOD will be responsible for background investigations for U.S. government personnel and contractors seeking the various security clearances required to do their jobs. About 4.2 million personnel from the federal government and government contractors are cleared for access to secret and above information. Around 3.6 million of those are DOD employees or contractors. The decision to move the security clearance function to the DOD is an "economical, business-smart and process-smart solution," a senior defense official said during a June 24 background briefing at the Pentagon. By October, it's expected that every security clearance investigation will be conducted by DCSA, which will be formed from the existing Defense Security Services and the NBIB. In early 2018, the NBIB had about 725,000 outstanding security clearance investigations underway, "an all-time high," a senior administration official said. That backlog has dropped to about 410,000, the official added, and expectations are that by the end of the year that backlog will drop to about 300,000. The official also noted that about 200,000 ongoing investigations would be considered normal at any given time. The agency gets about 50,000 to 55,000 new requests for investigations each week, the official said, though many of those are not for secret or top secret clearances, but rather are for lower-level investigations to determine suitability for federal employment. About 60% to 65% of security clearance investigations are performed by contractor personnel, and that is not expected to change. Additionally, the senior administration official said, there's no expectation that the new DSCA will need new hires. "The workforce is already there," the official said. A senior defense official also said the NBIB has been making almost "nonstop" improvements to the process of security clearance investigations, and that those improvements will continue at DOD. Northcom Wants Industry Partnerships to Advance Tech Capability [2019-07-31] WASHINGTON -- While the U.S. military is still a technology leader in a lot of respects, the private sector has surpassed it in many ways, the commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command said. Speaking at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington on July 23, Air Force Gen. Terrence J. O'Shaughnessy told a conference on public-private partnerships how he's seen the Defense Department's technology dominance change. As the commander of an air operations center in Hawaii in 2009, he said, he'd bring civilian counterparts in to see the technology the Air Force was using at the time. "They would just be amazed at our capability," O'Shaughnessy said. "Amazed at our domain awareness, amazed at the computers and the screens and everything that we had." Now, he said, it's a little different. They're still amazed, he said, but for the wrong reasons. "It's like, 'That's what you got?' It's not so much that we haven't advanced -- because we have. We have some great systems," he said. "But the commercial world has just leapt forward, and they've gone at a pace that we have not been able to do within our own command-and-control structures within the military." O'Shaughnessy said that what he really wants is industry's help to catch up. "More and more, we're counting on the commercial world," he said. "For all of you out there that represent companies that have done some great investment, we're looking to partner with you and find ways that we can leverage your advancements, to help our cause, not only in the broader Department of Defense efforts, but also specifically as we apply that capability here in the homeland." In a statement from Northcom, O'Shaughnessy said NORAD and Northcom are committed to working with civilian industry to find solutions that better enable it to detect, defeat and deter enemies, including detection technology for hypersonic cruise and ballistic missiles. Additionally, he said, the newest submarines now have a much greater ability to evade military sensors, and help there also would be welcome. Today, O'Shaughnessy said, the private sector has greatly increased its expenditures on research and development, and their efforts can help the U.S. military improve its own capability to detect threats. "We want to leverage these advancements to provide improved capabilities to our forces, and at quicker cycles than our current acquisitions process," he said. "With Russia and China attempting to hold us at risk and achieving parity with our capabilities, we need strong public-private partnerships to ensure we maintain our strategic advantage." O'Shaughnessy said NORAD and Northcom maintain connections with industry and academia at conferences, during exercises and at educational and other forums. But he also said those with tools they think might be able to contribute to the national defense can also initiate a partnership with NORAD and Northcom through its Private Sector Office within its Requirements, Analysis and Resources Directorate. "Homeland defense is a team endeavor," he said. "Public-private partnerships are critical to ensure we are on the leading edge of technology and help us expand the competitive space [and to] discover and explore new ideas." U.S. Withdraws From Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty [2019-08-02] WASHINGTON -- The United States has officially withdrawn from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, an agreement with the Russian Federation that limited the types of weapons systems the nations involved could pursue. "Russia has failed to comply with its obligations under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and as such, the United States has withdrawn from the INF Treaty effective today, Aug. 2, 2019," Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper said in a statement today. "This withdrawal is a direct result of Russia's sustained and repeated violations of the treaty over many years and multiple presidential administrations." The agreement, signed in December 1987 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, limited both nations from fielding both "short range" and "intermediate range" land-based ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and missile launchers that could be used to house either nuclear or conventional payloads. Esper said that despite U.S. objections, the Russians have continued to violate the treaty, and this is why the U.S. withdrew. "The facts are clear. The Russian Federation is producing and fielding an offensive capability that was prohibited by the INF Treaty," Esper said. "Russia's material breach erodes the foundation of effective arms control and the security of the United States and our allies and partners." The United States is not alone in its condemnation of Russian actions, nor in its decision to withdraw from the treaty. A statement today from NATO support the U.S decision. "Russia today remains in violation of the INF Treaty, despite years of U.S. and allied engagement, including a final opportunity over six months to honour its Treaty obligations," the statement reads. "As a result, the United States decision to withdraw from the treaty, a decision fully supported by NATO allies, is now taking effect." No longer bound by the rules of the INF -- rules the United States followed to the letter for nearly 32 years -- the Defense Department is now in a position to pursue its own delivery systems that are capable of countering the threats Russia has been developing in violation of its agreement. "Now that we have withdrawn, the Department of Defense will fully pursue the development of these ground-launched conventional missiles as a prudent response to Russia's actions and as part of the joint force's broader portfolio of conventional strike options," Esper said. Esper said that prior to the U.S. withdrawal from the INF Treaty, DOD embarked on its own treaty-compliant research into conventional, not nuclear, capabilities. "The department's initial research and development efforts focused on mobile, conventional, ground-launched cruise and ballistic missile systems," the secretary said. "Because the United States scrupulously complied with its obligations to the INF Treaty, these programs are in the early stages." While withdrawal from the treaty affects how the U.S. military operates, as well as the weapons systems it pursues and operates, it is the State Department, not the Defense Department, that made the final decision regarding the treaty. "The United States will not remain a party to a treaty while Russia is in deliberate violation," Esper said. "The Department of Defense will work closely with our allies as we move forward in implementing the National Defense Strategy, protecting our national defense and building partner capacity." New DOD Program Leaves Sexual Predators Nowhere to Hide [2019-08-05] WASHINGTON -- A new Defense Department program called Catch a Serial Offender, or "CATCH," aims to make it more difficult for perpetrators of sexual assault to evade identification and capture by law enforcement. While the new tool isn't good news for offenders, it's expected to allow victims making a restricted report of sexual assault -- a reporting mechanism that allows a victim to remain confidential -- to help investigators do a better job of finding wrongdoers and bring them to justice. "Victims of sexual assault deserve our best support and resources," said Dr. Nathan W. Galbreath, acting director of the DOD Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office. "We're excited for the launch of CATCH, which will empower victims to disclose information about their assailant or assault in a safe and confidential way." Sexual aggressors don't always limit themselves to just one victim, said Galbreath, a forensic psychologist who has assessed and treated a variety of offenders. What's more typical, he said, is that they tend to commit multiple assaults over time. "Research suggests that some suspects commit multiple incidents before being reported or caught. With the launch of the CATCH Program, the department has a new tool to identify these suspects," Galbreath said. DOD's new CATCH Program allows victims of sexual assault who've opted to file a restricted report to anonymously put the details of the assault into an online repository. Details can include such things as the name of the perpetrator, rank, height, tattoos or other distinguishing factors. Both recent victims and those from years past can participate in the program, Galbreath said. "What's great about this new program is that both currently serving and veteran service members who made a restricted report can participate," he said. "We hope that those who have since left the service will consider contacting a sexual assault response coordinator and opt into CATCH." The CATCH Program database is accessible worldwide. As a new entry into CATCH is created in one location, the details regarding the perpetrator can be compared to the details of other unrestricted reports of sexual assault that have happened elsewhere at other times. Victims of sexual assault remain anonymous when they volunteer to add information into the CATCH Program. After details of an alleged assault are entered into the system, it's criminal investigators at the headquarters of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations -- not agents at local installations -- who analyze suspect information that has been entered. These investigators will never know the name of the victim. If those agents find a "match," which means that one victim's submission describing a suspect matches the submission of another victim's suspect -- then those investigators will notify Sexual Assault Prevention and Response personnel of their findings. Once that notification is made, a CATCH Program representative or a sexual assault response coordinator will contact the victims to let them know. Victims can then use the new information to decide whether they want to convert their restricted report to an unrestricted report, which will allow a criminal investigation into the assault allegations to go forward. If victims choose not to convert their restricted report to an unrestricted report, they continue to be anonymous -- their names are never revealed. CATCH submissions remain in the system for up to 10 years. "We are constantly looking for new ways to empower victims to participate in the military justice process through our Sexual Assault Prevention and Response programs," said Elizabeth Van Winkle, executive director of DOD's Office of Force Resiliency. "We encourage greater reporting to connect victims with the care they need and as a way to hold offenders appropriately accountable." For more information on the CATCH program, go to https://www.sapr.mil/catch. Next-Generation Air Dominance Will Rely On Data Sharing [2019-08-07] WASHINGTON -- For about two decades, the Air Force has fielded both the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Lightning II -- both billed as technical marvels. But what's next for the Air Force? Developing what officials call next-generation air dominance likely won't require a new aircraft at all, Air Force leaders have said. The United States is facing an increasingly competitive global security environment, Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael A. Fantini, director of the Air Force Warfighting Integration Capability said today at a Mitchell Institute-sponsored panel discussion on next-generation air superiority in Arlington, Virginia. Nevertheless, he said, the U.S. military will need to continue to execute its core missions of homeland defense and nuclear deterrence. It also will need to be able to defeat a peer adversary while holding another at bay while continuing to engage in countering the violent extremist challenge. "We will not be able to accomplish that without the ability to continue to control the skies," Fantini said. The Air Force's next-generation air dominance program is meant to help it maintain control of the skies -- and that doesn't necessarily mean a new fighter jet, said Air Force Maj. Gen. David A. Krumm, director for Air Force Global Power Programs. "It is not a thing. It is not a platform," he said. "The next generation of air superiority is a network-connected family of systems that works together to get after the things we need to get after for our nation to ensure air superiority. It's not one thing; it's a multitude of things." Next-generation air dominance involves ensuring that everything can share data with everything else, across services and across domains, including air, land, sea, space and cyberspace, Krumm said. "All of that connected is what we want it to be," he added. And it takes into account the incredible pace of technology advancement as well, he said, noting that it will be constantly evolving and constantly changing. The Air Force will look for capabilities that are rapidly upgradable and modular in nature, Krumm said. Hypersonics Remain Top Priority for DOD [2019-08-14] WASHINGTON -- A hypersonic weapon moving at five times the speed of sound can travel across the Pacific Ocean in just over 100 minutes. U.S. adversaries are developing such weapons now, said Michael D. Griffin, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. "They are quite capable," Griffin said. "The advantage offered by a hypersonic offense is that it overflies air defenses as we understand them today, and it underflies our missile defenses. It goes into the gap between air defense and missile defense." Speaking during a discussion at the Hudson Institute in Washington yesterday, Griffin told Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Rebeccah L. Heinrichs that hypersonic threats move so fast they're almost too fast to stop. "By the time we can see it on defensive radar systems, it's nearly too late to close the kill chain," he said. "It would be difficult to close that kill chain for one threat. But in a raid scenario, you just can't get there from here, ... so we have to see them coming from further out." Detecting the threat from hypersonics in enough time to neutralize, Griffin said, will require new detection systems in low Earth orbit. "We need a proliferated layer of sensors, because we can't see these things from a few spacecraft in geostationary orbit," he said. "So the requirement leads you to a proliferated sensor layer in relatively much lower orbit." Griffin said it's the Missile Defense Agency where the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor will be developed. Connecting those sensors together into a network, he said, is a separate problem being developed at the Space Development Agency. He described what they've been asked to do as "a resilient, highly proliferated mesh network communications system in low Earth orbit, ... similar to what you see commercial companies talking about for LEO broadband." That communications layer, he said, is central to hypersonic defense. "The sensor layer is critical, but if it can't talk among itself, it will not be effective," Griffin said. "The ability to communicate underlays every other layer we wish to deploy, whether it is for space situational awareness, or hypersonic threat detection and tracking, or maritime domain awareness, or whatever. Whatever other functions we want, they are enabled first by the ability to communicate in a resilient fashion, which we don't have today." Hypersonic defense, he said, is not limited to just the Missile Defense Agency and the Space Development Agency. It's an across-DOD effort that touches nearly everything. "It touches space, it touches ground stations, it touches detection and tracking algorithms, and fire control algorithms," the undersecretary said. "Dealing with the hypersonic threat is even more of an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary problem than ground missile defense was." DOD Agency Keeps File Swaps Safe [2019-08-16] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Information Systems Agency has taken over an online resource that allows Defense Department personnel to swap files too large to be sent via email. Now in the wheelhouse of DISA at Fort Meade, Maryland, the file transfer capability has been rebranded DOD SAFE, or secure access file exchange. The DOD SAFE capability is part of DISA's Defense Collaboration Services suite of applications. The file transfer capability was initially established about 18 years ago by the Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center, or AMRDEC. SAFE initially stood for "safe access file exchange." It allowed users to transfer files as large as two gigabytes to other users. "We specifically kept the name SAFE because we wanted people to associate it with the Amrdec product and this was the follow on to AMRDEC SAFE," said Mark Youmans, the chief of DISA's enterprisewide services development division. He said taking on the responsibility for SAFE made sense in the context of what the service does. File transfers were "never AMRDEC's core function," said Youmans, adding that such work is the core function for DISA Enterprise Services. "So the DOD [chief information officer] directed DISA to deploy SAFE earlier this calendar year." The AMRDEC SAFE website was disabled as of Aug. 15. The new DOD SAFE application is online now at the new URL: https://safe.apps.mil. Other changes to SAFE include an increase in the allowable file size to eight gigabytes, the ability for users to continue to access files on the SAFE site for up to seven days, the ability to download a file multiple times and the ability to transfer up to 25 files at a time. Additionally, security on the system has been enhanced. Now, files are encrypted "at rest" on the system, said Youmans. He explained this means users can transfer files with personally identifiable information or personal health information, and that the files are encrypted from sender to receiver. "As the file that sits out there on SAFE, it is not accessible to anybody, including system administrators," Youmans said. Another security aspect of DOD SAFE is that it now requires that a common access card holder be involved. "A DOD employee has to be in the loop," said Karl Kurz, chief engineer for the enterprisewide services development division. Kurz said this means that a CAC holder has to be the person who transfers the file, or, if a file transfer is going to go from a non-CAC holder to a CAC holder, the CAC holder has to request the transfer. The non-CAC holder will then get instructions on how to proceed. "This service requires what we refer to as 'CAC in the middle,'" Kurz said. According to a DISA message released just last month, DOD SAFE is not intended to allow for transfer of files to classified domains. From the user's perspective, said Youmans, the experience of using DOD SAFE will continue to be largely the same as when the system was operated by AMRDEC. Kurz said that while the two systems will operate the same, they are completely different on the back end. He said DISA learned that Army Research Laboratory was using open-source software to perform a similar file-transfer function as what was needed for DOD SAFE. DISA partnered with ARL to reuse that software in a different capacity. Changes to that software included making it compliant to operate in the DISA environment, enabling it to securely transfer information and to scale it to the number of users expected on DOD SAFE. According to Kurz, when the SAFE capability rested with AMRDEC, more than 11,000 "packages" were transferred each day -- around 4.1 million a year. Additionally, some 600,000 unique users made use of the system in fiscal year 2018. Global Markets, Shipping Shape Military Ops [2019-08-21] WASHINGTON -- About 85% of the joint force resides inside the continental United States. When they need to move to an operation overseas, and their equipment needs to go with them, U.S. Transportation Command will be doing the heavy lifting. Speaking yesterday at the Department of Defense Intelligence Information Systems Worldwide Conference in Tampa, Florida, Transcom's commander said much of Transcom's capacity to project U.S. military power around the globe relies on commercially procured transportation. Just who is the ultimate owner of that commercial transportation -- friend or adversary -- is something Army Gen. Stephen R. Lyons said is being looked at all the time. "When the sealift industry reorganized -- when it was really in a downturn a couple years ago and reorganized and came out with three major alliances -- one of those alliances was led by a French company. CGM, I think, is the name of the company," Lyons said. CGM has alliances with COSCO Shipping, "the leading state-owned enterprise for China that is buying up all the ports globally, owns all the sealift, includes the sealift that will support PLA activities," he said. The French-owned CGM also has an alliance with American-owned APL," which is one of our U.S.-flagged companies," Lyons said. The general said he has spoken with the APL's CEO to discuss concerns, "The question was, 'What does that kind of alliance mean?'" Lyons said. "You have to recognize that our traders have to trade with [the] Asia-Pacific. That's the vast majority of the trade. But what does that really mean in terms of data sharing and their level of understanding?" Right now, he said, "it's a pretty clear bifurcation." "But it's something we watch pretty closely," he said, "because we're not only competing for allies and partners, we're also competing for business partners that we're going to count on, that fly the U.S. flag, particularly on the sealift side." Lyons said a "vendor vetting cell" is helping Transcom keep abreast of who is partnering with whom -- and who owns ships that Transcom may one day need to call on to ship troops or tanks overseas. "It's probably only one of two that are in the department," he said. "[U.S. Central Command] has one focused on their Centcom theater operations. But we have one ... [that] looks inside the subcontracting networks to make sure that our primes are doing business with the folks we want to do business with. We found a few that we didn't want, and we've got to work that through the broader acquisition communities." DOD Honors Employers of Guardsmen, Reservists [2019-08-23] WASHINGTON -- Fifteen private-sector and municipal employers received the 2019 Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award at a Pentagon ceremony for providing exceptional support to their employees who serve in the National Guard or Reserves. The Defense Department's Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve agency manages the program. Members of National Guard and Reserve components make up nearly 40% of the total force. But unlike the active force, who balance military service and family, guardsmen and reservists must also factor in an obligation to their private-sector employers. James N. Stewart, performing the duties of undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, was once a reserve Air Force officer. At today's awards ceremony, he said defense of the nation would not be possible without the support of private-sector employers. "In today's security environment, we need to leverage our advantage that we have," Stewart said. "That's our people, and their skills. ... Having these employers here to go ahead and support them is absolutely essential. If we are going to meet all of the National Defense Strategy objectives we've laid out, you have to have the people." It is employers, Stewart said, who ensure that when those Guard and Reserve service members are needed by their country, they are made available to serve. "Really, it's very important that we recognize all of you today as employers, because you make it happen," Stewart said. "If we did not have you there with your support network, our members would not be able to go ahead and serve, because they would be too worried about their job and their families." Recipients of the 2019 Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award are: -- Archer Daniels Midland of Chicago; -- Barclays of New York; -- Callison Tighe & Robinson of Columbia, South Carolina; -- Chevron of San Ramon, California; -- Cracker Barrel Old Country Store of Lebanon, Tennessee; -- Delta Solutions & Strategies of Colorado Springs, Colorado; -- Direct Supply Inc. of Milwaukee; -- Eversource Energy Hartford of Connecticut and Boston; -- Houston Police Department; -- Kauai Auto Repair of Kalaheo, Hawaii; -- Levi Rodgers Group - RE/MAX Military City of San Antonio; -- LG&E and KU Energy of Louisville, Kentucky; -- Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. of Columbus, Ohio; -- The Steel Network of Durham, North Carolina; and -- The city of West Valley City, Utah. Each year, Guard and Reserve employees, or family members acting on their behalf, nominate employers for the award. The ESGR state committees review nominations and submit recommendations to advance to the next round. A national selection board composed of senior DOD officials, business leaders and past winners selects up to 15 employers to receive the award. Social Media Security: Tips From an Army Special Agent [2019-08-26] WASHINGTON -- Even the most innocuous data posted to a social media feed can be married up with other publicly available information to provide online criminals the tools they need to exploit members of the military or general public, an Army special agent said. Special Agent Deric Palmer, program manager for the Digital Personal Protection Program, part of the Major Cybercrime Unit at the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, explained how those who aren't careful or aren't paying attention can unwittingly provide scammers and other online criminals all the information they need to exploit them. Social media accounts, Palmer said, serve as fertile ground for digging up the kinds of information that can be used to impersonate someone, steal identities or break into other online accounts, such as banking or insurance. A Facebook page, for example, might contain current and past physical addresses where a person has lived, phone numbers, email addresses, names of pets, significant events such as birthdays and anniversaries, hobbies and other interests. Just browsing a Facebook page, Palmer said, he can figure out your favorite music, books, TV shows, political and religious leanings. All that, he said, serves as "an attack vector" that an unscrupulous person can use to communicate with users further and gain their trust. Additional communications can bring out even more details that might later be used to break into online accounts or exploit users in other ways. Some social media users, Palmer added, even volunteer critical information that could be used to access their online financial accounts that they'd never divulge if they were asked by a stranger. Some online memes, he noted, pose as games that get users to volunteer information that, coupled with other easily obtainable information, can be used to exploit them. A quick search online reveals a simple graphic meme that purportedly allows users to choose "your new cat name" and then post the results, along with the meme itself, on their own social media feed. For the "cat name" meme, users would use the last digit of their phone number as a selector for any of nine name prefixes, their zodiac sign to choose from a list of 12 middle names, and their favorite color to choose from a list of eight potential last names. A user might end up with "Count Sassy Pants" as a silly name for their cat. When they post that on their social media feed, along with the meme image itself, would-be criminals will know their phone number ends in 8, they were born in either August or September, and that their favorite color is yellow. Coupled with data already on their social media feed, and with data that can be obtained from data brokers, the information makes it easier to exploit users, Palmer explained. Military personnel also are candidates to be impersonated online -- malicious users might opt to use imagery of real-world service members available online to exploit other users. The U.S. military is one of the most trusted institutions in the nation, and online criminals, Palmer said, take advantage of that. "The U.S. military is viewed as a prestigious club. ... It's an indicator of prestige," Palmer said. "It's instant respect. If I can pretend to be a U.S. general, unwitting people will respect me immediately." With that respect, he said, a criminal can exploit other users while pretending to be a member of the U.S. military. Palmer's advice to service members: don't post your picture in uniform with the name tape visible. "It immediately makes you a target," the special agent said. Palmer offered some tips to avoid being scammed: -- Immediate red flag! Be suspicious if you are asked for money or a wire transfer to pay for a purported service member's transportation, medical bills, communication fees or marriage-processing charges. -- Be suspicious if the person with whom you are corresponding wants you to mail anything to a foreign country. -- Be aware that military members at any duty location or in a combat zone have access to mail, cyber cafes, Skype and other means of communicating with their families, and they have access to medical and dental treatment. -- The military will ensure that family members are notified should a service member is injured. -- Insist on a "proof of life." The scammers will not video chat with you, because they know you will catch them in their lie. -- Trust your instincts! If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. The special agent also provided eight points for better security online, and to make users less likely to be victimized by online criminals: -- Permanently close old, unused accounts. -- Enable two-factor authentication on any platform that allows it. -- Use strong passwords, and use different passwords for every account. -- On social media, accept friend requests selectively. -- Configure the strongest privacy settings for each social media account. -- Think before you post. -- Limit use of third-part applications on social media applications, read the license agreement, and be sure exactly what those applications want to be able to access. -- Change answers to security questions, and use false answers so that online criminals can't use information they gather online to gain access to your accounts. Military Health Care Consolidation Moves to Next Phase [2019-08-27] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Health Agency will take the next step this fall in evolving health care across the Military Health System, which oversees the care and well-being of some 9.5 million people, including service members, families and retirees. As part of Phase 2 of the MHS overhaul, half of the roughly 375 military treatment facilities in the United States that had been previously operated by the Army, Navy or Air Force will move under the control of the DHA. Eventually, every military treatment facility will move under the DHA, and the agency has opted to manage those facilities by dividing them into a variety of "markets." The large-market segment includes the national capital region, San Diego, San Antonio and Southwestern Kentucky, among others. The DHA has identified about 20 such large markets. Small markets will include Central Louisiana, Las Vegas, New England, Central Virginia and Central Oklahoma. About 16 similar small markets have been identified. Finally, the nearly 70 treatment facilities that don't fall within the boundaries of either a small or large market will be part of a "stand-alone" segment managed by the same office that manages the small markets. Similar markets eventually will be formed in Europe and the Indo-Pacific region, home to about 75 military treatment facilities. Navy Vice Adm. (Dr.) Raquel Bono, the Defense Health Agency's director, said these changes should be transparent, rather than disruptive, to health care beneficiaries around the nation. "From the patient's perspective, the way I like to describe it is that at first it should be very transparent to them," she said. "They won't see any real visible changes." What will eventually change, Bono said, is that things across all military treatment facilities will become easier for patients. For example, Bono said, as the military treatment facilities and the markets continue to evolve under the DHA, beneficiaries will find that how they make an appointment in the Tidewater area of Virginia will be the same way they make an appointment at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio or at a facility in San Diego. A move to joint electronic health records also is part of the Military Health System transformation, making the movement of beneficiary health records between different facilities seamless, Bono said. This will them to be treated anywhere, including at facilities run by the Department of Veterans Affairs, she added. "This is one of those efforts we've been trying for some time now to accomplish," Bono said. "Being able to share the medical data in a seamless way and make it actionable is a very big step in the right direction. And it's a direction that private health care or commercial health care is also trying to do, ... making the data about patient and patient care more visible not only to the patient, but also to other people that are providing care to that individual." That data sharing, she said, means patients won't have to retrieve their records and make copies of them and bring them to their provider. This makes things easier for patients and also ensures that different providers don't run tests multiple times because they can't access existing results, the admiral noted. Bono retires next month, and she said she hopes her successor will be able to keep the changes and improvements happening at the same pace they are already moving. "Going forward, what I'd like for all the folks to bear in mind is that we've built a head of steam," she said. "We've got now some momentum. More and more people are becoming more informed about the reasons for why we are doing this in the first place, and I think it's easier for them to see now the role that they have in being able to make these changes happen. I think this is a real pivotal time. I think we are at a major inflection point for military health." Phase 3 of DHA's transformation of the MHS is slated for October 2020, and includes bringing the rest of U.S.-based military treatment facilities under its purview. Overseas facilities will move under DHS during Phase 4 in October 2021. Disputes Between U.S. Allies Hinder Indo-Pacific Security Cooperation [2019-08-28] WASHINGTON -- South Korea's announcement that it will not renew an information-sharing agreement with Japan when it expires in November complicates the ability of the United States to continue its trilateral security cooperation with both countries, a senior Defense Department official said. South Korea announced last week that it would not renew the General Security of Military Information Agreement, or GSOMIA, with Japan. The agreement expires Nov. 22, and both countries announced this week that they had removed each other from their trusted trade partner "white lists." "It is remarkable how quickly political disputes can push aside discussion of our cooperation and our future progress that our countries seek to accomplish," said Randall Schriver, the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, during a discussion today at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The GSOMIA was a point of discussion when he and Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper visited South Korea and Japan earlier this month, Schriver said. "But in terms of the actual decision to not renew," he added, "we were not forewarned." The existing agreement spells out a more efficient way for Japan, South Korea and the United States to communicate critical security information to each other, Schriver said. One way it benefits the United States, he said, is that it allows Japan and South Korea to communicate directly with each other, ensuring the United States isn't needed as a middleman to facilitate communications. The benefit to South Korea and Japan, he said, is the increased efficiency of communication between the neighboring countries. "GSOMIA is an agreement through which they can share information directly -- sensitive intelligence information -- and do so in a timely way, as fast as technology can move information," Schriver said. "In the complex security environment we are in, often times, time is of the essence. So when you are looking at potential missile launches, or you are looking at other activity, you don't want a cumbersome, unwieldy process for information sharing, which is what we had before, with us in the middle, passing information back and forth between the two parties, but not between one another." Plenty of scenarios of interest to both Japanese and South Korean security don't involve the United States, Schriver noted, making an agreement like GSOMIA useful. In counterpiracy operations, for example, should South Korea get information about a threat to a Japanese aircraft, or vice versa, time is of the essence, he said, and having to relay the information from one to the other via the United States would take up valuable time. South Korean Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon has said it's possible for his nation to reenter the GSOMIA. Schriver said if that doesn't happen, it will damage security cooperation among the United States, Japan and South Korea. If the agreement is terminated, he said, "it means that the ability to share information and intelligence among the three parties becomes more cumbersome and unwieldy, and in the security environment we are operating in, that adds risk and is sub-optimal." "When you are looking at challenges ranging from ballistic missiles to cyber and space, all these things, we are much better off when we are removing obstacles and facilitating the exchange of information, not making it more difficult," he said. Schriver said the only winners when Japan and South Korea don't cooperate are their competitors. Both nations, he said, share a variety of common security goals, including a commitment to a fully verified denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Both nations are also active participants and leaders in the Proliferation Security Initiative, an international effort to halt the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, missiles and other similar materials. Both continue to cooperate with the United States to support efforts to counter terrorism and violent extremism. Both are working to prevent piracy in the Indian Ocean, and both continue to participate in either joint or trilateral military exercises with the United States. "In the immediate near term, we do call on the Republic of Korea to recommit to GSOMIA and to renew that agreement, and we also call on both sides to participate in meaningful dialogue to address their differences," Schriver said. "Meaningful dialogue means coming to the table with a mindset of problem solving, not a mindset of airing grievances further." Northeast Asia, the Indo-Pacific region and the world will be safer only when the United States, Japan and South Korea work together in solidarity, Schriver said. "Our three countries are resilient, and we share common security objectives. And our trilateral defense cooperation has withstood the test of time to meet our security challenges and will do so in the future, should all three countries commit to it," he said. DOD Commemorates 75th Anniversary of Paris Liberation [2019-08-30] WASHINGTON -- Just over 75 years ago, the German occupiers of Paris relinquished control of the City of Lights to invading Allied forces there. At the time of its Aug. 25, 1944, liberation, the French capital had been under Nazi Germany control for just over four years. American and French military units -- including the U.S. 4th Infantry Division, the French 2nd Armored Division, and the French Forces of the Interior -- made it possible to return control of the city to the French people. The effort helped restore national pride in France and enabled establishment of a provisional government by Gen. Charles DeGaulle. During a commemoration event yesterday at the National World War II Memorial in Washington, Deputy Defense Secretary David L. Norquist paid tribute to veterans who participated in the Liberation of Paris. "You embody the essence of what makes America great. This nation will never forget the world you helped make possible," Norquist told veterans at the event. Norquist said there were many significant events in World War II, but the liberation of Paris was special. "This wasn't just any city. This was Paris," Norquist said. "Few cities have the same cultural and historical significance. And the ability to free that city while preserving its beauty and history is one of the remarkable twists in our history. "It is an epic story," he continued, "and one I remember being captivated by in high school. Hitler had given clear instructions to destroy the city. But thanks to the actions of the people we honor today, that city was freed, and his wishes were thwarted." The deputy secretary thanked the veterans in attendance and all veterans for the freedom enjoyed by all Americans. "Today and every day, we remember the incredible courage of all those that fought for freedom in World War II and all those who supported them back home," he said. "We thank them and their families for their sacrifice." Earlier yesterday at the Pentagon, the Defense Department held its own commemoration of the liberation of Paris. Kimberley Joiner, the deputy assistant to the secretary of defense for strategic engagement, introduced former Army Sgt. Herman Zeitchick, who participated in the liberation of Paris. "Throughout your life, Mr. Zeitchik, you have led by example -- whether it was leaving high school to join the war effort, storm the beaches of Normandy, or be one of the first soldiers marching into Paris," Joiner said. Army Maj. Gen. William Walker, commander of the District of Columbia National Guard, said that Zeitchik, though his service, had undeniably fulfilled any obligation to his country that might be expected of him. "When the high court of history sits in judgment of each of us, recording whether in our brief span of service we fulfilled our obligations to the state, the answer to that question is found in the responses to four questions," Walker said. "First, were we truly men of courage? Second, were we truly men of dedication? Third, were we truly men of wisdom? And fourth, were we truly men of judgment? Sergeant Zeitchik, you resoundingly, demonstratively, fulfilled your obligation to the state." During a 2016 event at the Women in Military Service to America Memorial in the nation's capital, Zeitchik talked about his memory of the liberation. He had been 19 years old at the time, and was among the first troops to enter Paris. "The French people woke up in the morning and found the American trucks sitting on a main thoroughfare, and there where we were," Zeitchik said. "They brought down whatever food, flowers [they had] and just wanted to do everything with us." For his efforts in Paris, Zeitchik was made a Chevalier in the French Legion of Honor. Zeitchik joined the Army before he had graduated from high school. He said he remembers when he first learned that he and other young men his age would be required to go into service. "What happened was, we were playing stickball out on the street and one of the boys came over and told us that the Japanese just bombed Pearl Harbor," he said. "Roosevelt was president at the time. And he said everybody 18 and older had to register at the local post office. I went to the local post office with my dad, and they gave us a number. Sure enough, that number came up very quickly." After training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, Zeitchik found himself in England for additional training. And then, he said, he found himself on a ship crossing the English Channel, headed for France. He and his unit would participate in the D-Day landing there. "It so happens there were two points to going in, and ours happened to be Utah [Beach]. We landed there just as the light was starting to come in," he said. "I landed on Normandy on D-day, H-hour, ... I think they tell me that we lost 5,000 boys the first day." Zeitchik said that although he missed his high school graduation as a result of being in the military, he does have a high school diploma now. "Seventy years later, I got a call that the governor of New Jersey wanted me at the high school to present my high school diploma," he said. "I did go there -- and it was wonderful." World War II ended Sept. 2, 1945, with the signing of the Japanese instrument of surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Japan's Tokyo Bay. The 75th anniversary of that event, which DOD also will commemorate, is scheduled for Sept. 2, 2020. Joiner said a primary goal of the World War II Commemoration Program is to draw attention to the significance of many of the key events of the war and to those who served in it. "We hope to honor the past, and let veterans know that we are forever indebted to them for their selfless sacrifice," she said. DOD Seeks Ethicist to Guide Artificial Intelligence Deployment [2019-09-03] WASHINGTON -- The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, stood up just last year, has plans to hire an ethicist to help guide the Defense Department's development and application of artificial intelligence technologies. "One of the positions we are going to fill will be somebody who is not just looking at technical standards, but who is an ethicist," said Air Force Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, the JAIC's director. "We are going to bring in someone who will have a deep background in ethics, and then the lawyers within the department will be looking at how we actually bake this into the Department of Defense." Speaking Aug. 30 at the Pentagon, Shanahan provided an update on the JAIC, where he's been since January. He'd previously led Project Maven, an artificial intelligence machine-learning pathfinder project under the undersecretary of defense for intelligence. The JAIC, Shanahan said, was stood up to "accelerate DOD's adoption and integration of artificial intelligence to achieve mission impact at scale." Just a year ago, he said, the JAIC had a skeleton crew, no funds and no home. That's no longer true. Today, he said, it has about 60 employees, a headquarters and a budget. This year's budget request, he said, was $268 million. Nevertheless, he said, "we still have a long way to go to help bring pilots, prototypes, and pitches across the technology 'valley of death' to fielding and updating artificial intelligence-enabled capabilities at speed and at scale." Ongoing JAIC projects include predictive maintenance for the SH-60 Seahawk helicopter; humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, with an emphasis on wildfires and flooding; information operations; and intelligent business automation. In fiscal year 2020, the general said, the biggest project will be artificial intelligence for maneuver and fires, "with individual lines of effort or product lines oriented on warfighting operations -- for example, operations intelligence fusion, joint all-domain command and control, accelerated sensor to shooter timelines, autonomous and swarming systems, target development, and operations center workflows." Shanahan said he sees the JAIC not just as a place to develop and push artificial intelligence capabilities to the field, but also as a "center of excellence" concept. "Within that, our team is spending a lot of time working with Defense Innovation Board, but also just internally and with the service components on this question about the ethical use of AI, the safe use of AI, the lawful use of AI," he said. "I would tell you that in 35-plus years in uniform, I have never spent the amount of time I am spending now thinking about the ethical employment of AI. We do take it very seriously. It is core to what we do in the DOD." One challenge in the development of AI for use by the United States is that potential adversaries don't share the same ethical values the U.S. does when it comes to collection or use of information. Artificial intelligence systems are as smart as the data they have access to, Shanahan said, and China and Russia don't have the same restrictions the United States has on data collection. "The fewer restrictions they have on privacy and civil liberties gives them some advantages in getting data faster and then building capabilities faster as a result of what they have available in data," he said. Still, he added, it's not a foregone conclusion that this is benefitting the Chinese or Russian militaries. "Just the fact that they have data doesn't tell me they have an inherent strength in fielding in their military organizations," he said. "What's important for us in the JAIC -- as part of the department's center of excellence for artificial intelligence -- is really getting to the facts on what China and Russia are doing on the military side." Shanahan also said a potential advantage China has over U.S. AI development is its top-down directed integration between industry and government when it comes to developing AI to further national interests. That's something that doesn't exist in the United States, he said. "If we don't find a way to strengthen those bonds between the U.S. government, industry and academia, I would say we do have the real risk of not moving as fast as China when it comes to this," he said. "It does give them a leg up. We have to work hard on strengthening the relationships we have with commercial industry and prove that we are a good partner and that they will be a good partner with us. We want to work with companies that want to work with us. It's a two-way street. We want to get those relationships better." DOD Educates Employees About Insider Threats [2019-09-03] WASHINGTON -- During September, the Defense Department and other federal agencies are teaming up to raise employee awareness of indicators that a co-worker may pose an "insider threat" -- of violence or a cyberattack -- during the nation's first Insider Threat Awareness Month. "Insider threats are posed by persons who use trusted access to do harm to the department's facilities, resources or people," said Dr. Brad Millick, director of the Defense Department's counter-insider threat program within the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. Spies, workplace shooters and disillusioned employees who post sensitive or classified documents on the internet are examples of insiders and their harmful activities. Their actions put lives, missions and dollars at risk. Millick said an insider may be a DOD employee or contractor or others granted access to DOD facilities, and the threat posed to the department could involve more than stealing classified data. Malevolent insiders could commit workplace violence, sabotage, or unauthorized disclosure of protected information. Joshua Reese, policy and program advisor for the Defense Department's counter-insider threat program, said DOD has two goals for the inaugural Insider Threat Awareness Month: -- Educate the DOD workforce about the existence and purpose of the department's insider threat programs. Every Component has one. -- Encourage the reporting of indicators and potential threats by employees. Reese said reviews conducted after an insider threat incident -- such as the loss of classified information or an active shooter -- have shown that many of the insider's colleagues were aware something was off, but they never said anything. "The people of the department, they are the sensors for anything bad that could potentially happen," he said. And Millick said insiders who plot to do damage often talk about their plans before they act; a phenomenon psychologists call "leakage." "Workplace vigilance is the key to early detection of potential insider threats," he added. "We want to provide employees with the knowledge to identify warning signs and the ability to report concerning behaviors or indicators." The Center for Development of Security Excellence, an organization under the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, developed a communications packet to assist Counter-Insider Threat Program managers at each DOD organization in engaging with their respective workforce. The packet includes awareness training, eLearning games, case studies, posters and videos, and all can be found at cdse.edu, including the communications packet itself. DOD to Divert $3.6 Billion to Fund 11 Barrier Projects at Southern Border [2019-09-04] WASHINGTON -- Defense Department officials say 127 military construction projects in both the United States and overseas will be deferred to free $3.6 billion for construction or augmentation of barriers along 175 miles of the southern U.S. border. The Department of Homeland Security sent a list of prioritized border construction projects for DOD review in February, Jonathan Rath Hoffman, assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, told reporters yesterday. DOD determined which projects were necessary to support the use of the armed forces in conjunction with the national emergency at the southern border, he said, and also determined which military construction projects could be deferred. Hoffman said Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper "has determined that such construction projects are necessary to support the use of the armed forces, and, therefore, DOD will undertake 11 border barrier military construction projects on the southern border pursuant to section 2808 of Title X, U.S. Code." Family housing, barracks or dormitory projects were not considered for deferment, nor were projects that had already been awarded or those that were expected to be awarded during fiscal year 2019. The $3.6 billion will be delivered to the Army in two allotments, Hoffman said. The first $1.8 billion is associated with deferred overseas projects, he said, and the second half of the money, associated with deferred projects in the United States and its territories, will be made available to the Army only if needed. Kenneth P. Rapuano, the assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and global security, said the 11 projects at the southern border involve strengthening or augmenting existing, less effective barriers, as well as installing barriers where none currently exist. The projects will enhance about 175 miles of the border, he added. Hoffman said Homeland Security data shows that the number of resources needed to patrol an area "drops dramatically" where a border barrier has been completed. He said construction of the border barrier will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of DOD forces supporting DHS's border security mission. Over time, Hoffman said, border barrier construction may reduce the demand for DOD personnel and capabilities in particular areas. As additional barriers are built, and the current humanitarian and security crises changes, he said, DOD and DHS will continue to evaluate capabilities needed to support the DHS border security mission. The construction and augmentation projects will happen on property owned by DOD or another federal agency, said Elaine McCusker, the Pentagon's deputy comptroller. Construction could begin on DOD-owned land within 130 to 145 days. The start of construction on other property will have different timelines, she said. Hoffman said that DHS, DOD and the Army Corps of Engineers are moving as expeditiously as possible. "They have been going through the planning, the permitting process, and the [engineering] process to begin the projects," Hoffman said. "So, the goal is to move out as quickly as possible." Space Expansion Presents Opportunities, Challenges for DOD [2019-09-06] WASHINGTON -- As more nations, businesses and militaries become involved in space, the amount of data that will become available will also increase, as will challenges and opportunities for the Defense Department, a panel of defense intelligence experts said yesterday. "All the potential information that will be accessible on demand anywhere around the world will be exciting," said Stacey Dixon, deputy director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, during the Intelligence and National Security Summit, Sept. 5, at National Harbor, Maryland. More daunting, she said, is what resources will be needed to create tools to use and store all that new data. "We know that we can't expand the number of people to be able to look at everything," Dixon said. "So, it's about really moving towards having that machine/human teaming, which provides a lot of other new challenges in the way we do things." She also said there will be opportunities to leverage partners -- not just for the sensors they have, but for how they see fit to use the data created. Tina Harrington, director of signals intelligence at the National Reconnaissance Office, said private sector advancements in space will allow the government to focus on "the things that we and we alone need to do, not the things that others can do." Harrington noted that adversaries will also operate in the new space domain. The U.S. will need to treat them the same way it treats their involvement in air, sea and land -- "understanding what adversaries are doing, but we are not going to stop them," she said. Increased opportunities in space by industry can also be exploited by the DOD, said Maj. Gen. John Shaw, deputy commander of Air Force Space Command. "The economic engines have been unleashed," he said. "I hope that they are sustained, and that we would simply want to leverage the best of that from a government perspective and realize there are challenges associated ... providing security in that environment, incentivizing further economic investment, but also being prepared for new threats." One risk of new ventures into space involves concern over the validity of data -- ensuring, for instance, that it's not compromised. Dixon said industry must acknowledge that everyone is a target for somebody else. Transparency in what they're doing about cybersecurity, she said, "will help us as a consumer of the information and the capabilities [they're] providing." Still, she said, the government must take on the responsibility of validating the data it uses. Harrington said she's concerned with how data integrity and complexities in the supply chain might affect intelligence-gathering, especially when considering who is manufacturing tools or components of tools used to collect, process and store information. "Supply chain is probably one of my biggest risk areas ... [given] the number of things that have gone offshore," she said. For example, Harrington said, if U.S.-based suppliers no longer see manufacturing a particular component as a viable business model, and those components are being supplied by an unverifiable vendor, "that very much hurts us from a government perspective." It's not just government that needs to be concerned, either, she said. Top-level suppliers purchase subcomponents from their own pool of vendors. "We want to know they have a trusted supply chain as well," Harrington said. Despite increased commercial interest in space -- billions are being spent in the private sector, and competition for talent in that sector is increasing -- Harrington said she's not concerned the allure of money in the private sector will keep new talent from knocking on government's door. "Young people are really excited about space again," she said. "When we go to these recruitment activities there are a lot of folks very interested in getting into the government side in space." Dixon noted that 300 interns have recently done work with NGA, and those young people are excited about what they saw. "Many of those end up converting to government," she said. "There are people who are still interested in coming though and working government missions and will sacrifice the potential money they can make somewhere else for that opportunity." Both Harrington and Dixon said a different challenge looms -- the possibility that changes in the workforce will mean new talent will be interested in moving back and forth between government and the private sector throughout their careers. "We need to be ready for that, so that it's good for their career and it's good for us," Harrington said. Intelligence Communications System Gets Tech Refresh [2019-09-06] WASHINGTON -- An overhaul of the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, or JWICS, is underway to make it better able to serve its expanded mission and to potentially extend its capabilities to other parts of the defense community and to more parts of government, the deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency said. Suzanne White spoke Sept. 4 during the Intelligence and National Security Summit at National Harbor, Maryland. White said that JWICS -- a top secret, "sensitive, compartmented information" network designed initially to serve the intelligence community -- has seen great growth in use since it was created. "JWICS needs to be modernized, ... and we are undertaking some investments and some approaches to do exactly that," she said, adding that it's a top priority for DIA. The JWICS system started as the core network for the military intelligence community on which to conduct intelligence operations, White said, but users are asking more of it now and are using it as "the daily system." Rather than switch back and forth between using JWICS and SIPRNET, another classified military network that handles a lower classification of information, users might instead just use JWICS. "It's very useful and efficient to many users," she said. "So we're trying to generate more of that conversation of 'If we were to create JWICS today, what would it look like for the entire community, the [intelligence community], the DOD and even broader, federal?'" Questions involve how such a new system would be structured and how it would be managed. "We're looking at this as an opportunity to have exactly that conversation, because there is such a demand signal," White said. "So we are trying to understand that so that as we head down our path of modernization, we are addressing all of those concerns and those potential scenarios for where JWICS will go." Deterrence in Cyberspace Requires Multifaceted Approach [2019-09-11] WASHINGTON -- Defending in cyberspace is only half the battle. Making it clear to adversaries that the United States is capable of engaging in damaging cyberattacks of its own is a way of deterring adversaries from acting in the first place, a senior Defense Department official told lawmakers on Capitol Hill. B. Edwin Wilson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, spoke yesterday during a joint hearing of the House Armed Services Committee's intelligence, emerging threats and capabilities subcommittee and the House Oversight and Reform Committee's national security subcommittee. Securing the nation's internet infrastructure was the hearing's topic. Wilson told lawmakers one form of deterrence involves denying adversaries what they are looking for: seeing effects from their attacks. "We want to deny adversaries the benefit of what they are trying to achieve through a cyber-effects operation or any other type of activity directed at the U.S. or allies or the nation at large," he said. "That's where you see the partnership between Department of Homeland Security and the other departments and agencies of the U.S. government -- where we have stepped in to begin to assist, enable [and] support the resiliency of our critical infrastructure segments." Deterrence also includes letting adversaries know the United States has the ability to strike back, Wilson told lawmakers. "We look very hard at the ability, if called upon, to deliver consequences, not just kinetically or in all the other domains of operations the department has, but also in the domain of cyberspace," he said. Congressional involvement has enhanced the department's ability to deter, specifically with clarity on the authorities DOD has to act when needed, Wilson said. Additionally, National Security Presidential Memorandum 13 also focuses on the decision process for either offensive or defensive cyber-effects operations, he said. "Our strategic competitors such as Russia and China are conducting persistent cyber-enabled campaigns to erode U.S. military advantage, threaten our nation's critical infrastructure and reduce our economic prosperity," Wilson said. "In response, the department adopted a proactive posture to compete with and counter determined and rapidly maturing cyber adversaries. Our objective is to prevent or mitigate significant threats before they reach U.S. soil. We refer to this strategy as 'defending forward.' It is the core of our DOD Cyber Strategy." Wilson said the approach is focused on enabling interagency, industry and international partners to strengthen resilience, close vulnerabilities and defend critical networks and systems while simultaneously imposing cost on adversary malicious cyber actors when called upon. Army Secretary Nominee Talks Housing, Readiness at Hearing [2019-09-12] WASHINGTON -- The Senate Armed Services Committee quizzed Acting Army Secretary Ryan D. McCarthy on military housing problems, force readiness, sexual assault and modernization during his confirmation hearing for secretary of the Army. "If confirmed as secretary of the Army, I will continue to champion the Army strategy and vision, with an emphasis on readiness, modernization and reform," McCarthy told senators. "It is only through the care of our people that these priorities will be achieved." Since the fall of 2018, the Army -- as well as the other military services -- has had problems with military housing. Most military housing is now provided to service members through partnerships with the private sector as part of the Residential Communities Initiative. McCarthy said getting housing right for service members and their families is a key component of quality of life and retention of soldiers. But he said the Army has already made progress in addressing the issue. Former Secretary of the Army Dr. Mark T. Esper, who now serves as defense secretary, initiated an inspector general investigation February, McCarthy said. "We just recently released the results to the entire Congress. There were a series of recommendations, about 90% of which we are definitely going to implement." Documents submitted to the Senate by the Army also reveal that the Army has, among other actions, increased personnel in housing offices to better perform quality assurance and control of base housing; agreed to increase the frequency of Army-funded resident satisfaction surveys to two times a year; and provided commanders with defined roles and responsibilities related to ensuring quality of life in base housing. The Army also plans to incorporate resident feedback into a tenant "bill of rights" and then incorporate that bill or rights into a universal lease. McCarthy also said the Army is also investigating quality housing for single service members who live in barracks. A READY FORCE "Readiness is a constant state of vigilance, you can't ever take your foot off the gas," McCarthy told lawmakers. "Every day we have to get as many repetitions as we can -- physically, individual training, collective training. One of the greatest deterrents we have in the military is having as many formations at the highest levels of readiness capable to meet national objectives." McCarthy credited former Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley with setting the Army on the path for the readiness it will need for the next war, which he said includes adjusting training at home station to deal with near-peer threats [and] scenarios we'd see against near-peer competitors. A MODERN FORCE The Army stood up Army Futures Command in August 2017, but before that it had established cross-functional teams to focus on its six modernization efforts. Those priorities include long-range precision fires, a next-generation combat vehicle, future vertical lift platforms, a mobile and expeditionary Army network, air and missile defense capabilities and soldier lethality. "We believe we have the organizational construct right," McCarthy said. "We stood up the cross-functional teams in the fall of 2017. And we had prototypes delivered in 18 months that we were testing. I fired the next-gen squad weapon at Fort Bragg last July. We are testing Spike [Non Line of Sight], we've tested the extended range cannon ... the prototypes are delivering, and we are starting to yield results. Reducing the span time is everything. We'll go [from] five to seven years, [down to] to 18 months." A STRONG TEAM Sexual assault has been a concern across all four military services and has been high on the list for lawmakers for several years. "I am ... committed to the prevention of sexual assault and harassment in our formation, which tears at the very fabric of our institution," McCarthy said. "Leadership at every level must build a team of teams, protecting our brothers and sisters to our left and right, reinforcing there is no place for suicide and sexual assault and harassment in our Army." Chief of Staff of the Army James C. McConville and Sergeant Major of the Army Michael A. Grinston, McCarthy said, are credited for changing the direction for how the Army is training to eliminate sexual assault in the ranks. He also named Lt. Gen. Darryl A. Williams, the superintendent at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, as a good example of what's possible. McCarthy said he was encouraged by the feedback from a new kind of sexual assault training Williams implemented for cadets at West Point -- training that moved away from briefings and computers. "He brought in outside experts," he said. "They did scenario-based training in front of rooms full of people. We are getting away from the compliance on an iPad or Power Point, and making it much more interactive. Clearly, the methods we've been using have not been working." McCarthy served in the Army from 1997 to 2002 and was involved in combat operations in Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom with the 75th Ranger Regiment, U.S. Special Operations Command. He is currently serving as the acting secretary of the Army. If confirmed by the Senate, he will be the 24th secretary of the Army. DOD Strengthens Ties With Nordic, Baltic Nations [2019-09-13] WASHINGTON -- Maritime security, threat identification and resource gap identification were on the agenda as representatives of eight Nordic and Baltic nations and the United States met this week for the annual Nordic-Baltic-U.S. Forum. The meeting kicked off Sept. 9 in Washington and moved to Norfolk, Virginia, Sept. 10, where representatives from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the U.S. discussed their interests in commerce and security in the Arctic. Officials talked about "what we can do further together in support of our shared interests," said John C. Rood, the undersecretary of defense for policy and the chief U.S. delegate. Rood said one of the great things about the nations participating in the forum was that it included NATO and non-NATO members -- including Finland and Sweden, who are not part of NATO but who collaborate closely on shared objectives, such as issues in the Middle East and Asia, defending the rule of law, and the desired type of market operation in places such as Europe. Meeting at U.S. Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk enabled the group to focus on one of the forum's most important topics: maritime security. "Part of our focus this year, the main focus this year, is how we can do more on maritime security," Rood said. The group also discussed identifying threats in areas such as the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and the North Atlantic, and the capability and resource gaps for addressing those threats, Rood said, as well as roles in the Arctic. "The Arctic is growing in importance substantially for all of our countries," he said. "The Arctic is changing and becoming more important for commerce. It's more of a competition area for security interests. All of these countries and the United States have a lot in common in that area." Rood said standards for interoperability between NATO and non-NATO partners was also a topic of discussion at the forum and that there's an interest in terms of burden-sharing. He noted that participating nations already agreed on a set of shared values before coming into the forum. "We have a foundation of shared values, shared orientation on the world. And when I look around the world -- whether it's the news from Hong Kong or some of our recent travels in the Middle East or elsewhere -- freedom is always under pressure," Rood said. Shared values of freedom, democracy, free markets, support of individual rights, and the rule of law are important, he said. U.S., Allies Remember Operation Market Garden [2019-09-17] WASHINGTON -- Shortly after the invasion of Normandy and the liberation of Paris during World War II, Allied forces in Europe wanted to create an invasion route into northern Germany from the Netherlands. Operation Market Garden, meant to achieve that objective, kicked off 75 years ago, on Sept. 17, 1944. At the National World War II Memorial in Washington today, representatives of the Allied nations that participated in Operation Market Garden -- including Canada, the Netherlands, Poland and the United Kingdom -- participated in a commemoration of Operation Market Garden. Maj. Gen. Mark C. Schwartz, a special assistant in the Office of the Director of the Army Staff, discussed the Allied operation. "They deployed airborne and armored forces with the sole objective to capture key bridges in the Netherlands that would open the routes across the Rhine River and into the Third Reich's industrial complex at the time the Ruhr Valley," Schwartz said. As many as 20,000 Allied airborne soldiers participated in the operation, as did more than 3,600 Allied bombers, fighters and transport aircraft. Schwartz said Operation Market Garden was actually two operations: Operation Market, and Operation Garden. Operation Market was led by the British 1st Airborne Division, under the ultimate leadership of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, he said. Junior officers from the Canadian armed forces augmented the 1st British Airborne Division because of the many junior-officer casualties the British had suffered in the war up to that time, the general said.​ Several thousand paratroopers and soldiers in gliders from the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division and 82nd Airborne Division, along with Poland's 1st Independent Parachute Brigade, participated in the operation. "They conducted their airborne infiltration more than 60 miles behind enemy lines without any support," Schwartz said, enabled by the Dutch resistance, who played a key role in the intelligence preparation and the actual execution of Operation Market Garden. The paratroopers captured several key points in the Netherlands, including those in Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem, to allow for the eventual advance of the 30th British Corps during the follow-on operation, code-named "Operation Garden." Schwartz said British armor and mechanized forces were to link up with the paratroopers and push through across the Rhine River. "Despite early successes, there was a lack of understanding and appreciation for the two Panzer Divisions that were actually garrisoned and arrayed around these key bridge crossings," Schwartz said. "With the combination of bad weather that slowed reinforcements to include the deployment of the Polish Airborne Brigade, the hold on the corridor and the key bridge crossings weakened." Ultimately, Schwartz said, Allied forces had to withdraw. They suffered as many as 13,000 casualties. "This was a very bold operation, but it ultimately did fail, leaving the Allies to find another way through Germany's western defenses -- the Siegfried Line, as it is well known," Schwartz said. Schwartz said that even after 75 years, it's still important to remember the sacrifices of past service members and their battles. "We can't ever forget the sacrifices and the leadership that was demonstrated by those that have served before us," Schwartz said, adding that Americans and service members of today must "take time to reflect on the sacrifices, the leadership and the service of those that have come before us." "They are a great example of what Americans should strive to be with every generation that has come forward from the greatest generation of World War II," he said. After Nearly 75 Years, 'Eagle 7' Tankers Pinned With Bronze Stars [2019-09-18] WASHINGTON -- A 95-year-old Army Pershing tank gunner was awarded the Bronze Star medal in a ceremony at the World War II Memorial in Washington today, nearly 75 years after he and his crew helped take Cologne, Germany, from the Nazis on March 6, 1945. Clarence Smoyer received the award himself. Tank crewmembers Homer Davis, a bow gunner, William McVey who was a driver, and loader John DeRiggi -- all part of the Eagle 7 tank crew -- were also recognized posthumously with Bronze Star medals -- families accepted on their behalf. Tank commander Bob Earley had previously received the Bronze Star for his actions. Smoyer and his tank crew were among the first into the city, which was of great importance to the Germans. Upon entering the city, Smoyer recalled what his lieutenant said over the radio. "'Gentlemen, I give you Cologne. Let''s knock the hell out of it,' and we obliged," Smoyer said. Smoyer said while in Cologne, he and his crew had to be aware of what the Germans were doing to stymie their forward advances. "The Germans had a history of dropping Molotov cocktails from the upper stories -- bottle filled with gasoline with a fuse on it. When it'd hit the tank, it would splatter fire all around the tank," he said. American forces were hoping to capture Cologne from the Germans, said Adam Makos, author of "Spearhead," a book that tells the story of both Smoyer's crew and that of the German tank crew they had faced. Cologne "was Germany's fortress city," Makos said. "We had to capture it -- the third largest city." Makos said the battle in Cologne was nearly over on that day, and two Sherman tanks were moving toward the Cologne Cathedral. "Once they took the cathedral, the battle would be won." One of those tanks was hit by German fire and some of the crew evacuated. Among those was 2nd Lt. Karl Kellner, just 26 years old and already a Silver Star medal recipient. He had been severely injured by the attack. His right leg, Makos said, "had been torn off at the knee. He was bleeding." That tank's gunner also escaped and dove to the ground. Kellner was carried to a shellhole, Makos said -- where he bled to death. Three others in that crew never escaped and died inside their tank. A German Panther tank was parked in front of the cathedral, Makos said, "daring anyone else to come forward." Going against that German tank, Makos said "was a suicide mission. That tank crew had come out to stay and to fight to the last round." Nearby, however, was Eagle 7, the Pershing tank crew with Smoyer and his men. "They made a plan, they volunteered," Makos said. Their Pershing tank was one of only 20 in use in Europe at the time -- and it had a 90 mm gun on board. Smoyer and the rest of the crew volunteered to face that Nazi tank at the cathedral. "William McVey held a steady throttle," Makos said. "Bob Earley in the commander's position was talking on the microphone, urging them forward. Clarence Smoyer had prepositioned the gun to the right and lowered it to where he thought that Panther tank would be when they turned the corner. And when they breached the intersection, Homer Davis saw it first. He let out a cry. They were muzzle to muzzle with this German tank, separated by 70 yards." Smoyer didn't just fire once on that German tank -- he fired three times. He said he did so because he'd learned a lot about the Germans being a gunner in an American tank. "A German could be injured and he'd just crawl up to the gun and pull the trigger," Smoyer said. "I wanted that tank to burn up, which it did -- it eventually caught fire." After three shells from the American Pershing, the German tank went up in flames, Makos said. Nearby, an American cameraman had captured footage of the entire thing. And footage of that battle went around the world to be seen by everyone -- including Smoyer's own sister. "My sister had gone to the theater with her girlfriend, and as the news came on, I popped up out of the tank. And she said 'oh my God, that's [Clarence]!' ... And she asked the people in the theater if they'd reshow it the next day so they could get my mother and dad to see it." Smoyer had initially been put in for the Bronze Star -- way back in 1945. But his own innocuous actions put the kibosh on that effort. "The day after we knocked the tank out my friend and I were walking down the street. Everything was fine, no fighting anymore. But as we walked down the street, these two little kiddies come running out and they're saying 'Kaugummi! Kaugummi!' They wanted bubble gum," Smoyer said. "I tried to explain to them I didn't have anything. I pulled my pockets out to show them they were empty," he continued. "I took them by their hands and took them back to their mother. And then I turned around and started to walk away, and the MPs pull up alongside of me, and ask for my name and rank. 'You're not supposed to be talking to the Germans' they told me. I think that caused me to lose the Bronze Star." Now, 75 years later, the bubble gum infraction has been forgiven. Smoyer is now wearing the Bronze Star on his lapel -- and all of his fellow crewmembers have one as well. "It's an honor. It is an honor, and I will always honor that. I'll do that in remembrance of all the young boys that were killed over there," Smoyer said. The event at the National World War II Memorial was made possible by the efforts of the Friends of the National World War II Memorial. Additionally, efforts to recognize Smoyer, Davis, McVey and DeRiggi with a Bronze Star were kicked off by Makos. Prisoners of War, Missing in Action, Remembered at Pentagon Ceremony [2019-09-21] WASHINGTON -- More than 81,000 Americans who served in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the wars in the Persian Gulf and other conflicts have still not returned home. Many were taken prisoner of war or went missing in action long ago. Deputy Defense Secretary David L. Norquist paid tribute to them, and paid respect to their families during the 2019 National POW/MIA Recognition Day event yesterday at the Pentagon. "We will never let your sacrifices be forgotten," Norquist said. "Nor will we ever forget or stop working to bring home those who are still missing." Attending the event were several former POWs representing many conflicts the United States has participated in. Among those veterans were Jerry Wolf, who was with the Army Air Corps. He'd been a top turret gunner in a B-17 Bomber and was captured by the Germans on his 25th bomber mission in late May 1944, just 10 days before D-Day. John Pedevillano, a bombardier, was shot down over Nazi Germany in April 1944. He was held captive by the Germans at Stalag Luft III. Yale Feingold, another World War II veteran, was shot down on his 24th mission over Germany and captured March 16, 1944. In the Indo-Pacific region, former soldier James Diggs, was captured during the battle of Chongchon River in Korea, Dec. 1, 1950, and was held at POW Camp 5. Robert H. Shumaker, a naval aviator, was shot down by anti-aircraft fire, Feb 11, 1965. He was captured by North Vietnamese. "We thank each of you for your service and sacrifice," Norquist said. Recalling the words of President Ronald Reagan, he said "You, our prisoners of war, are the bravest of the brave. You are as the great always are, more than the sum total of yourselves. You are a testament to the strength and character of the American people. You are a symbol of our spirit and an expression of American trust, and your heroism is as old as war itself." Earlier in the day, President Donald Trump reaffirmed America's commitment to finding and bringing home all those who have gone missing defending U.S. interests overseas. Norquist said the Defense Department is working tirelessly to make that happen. In the last year, Norquist said, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency has conducted 65 recovery missions and 50 investigative missions in countries around the world to uncover personnel lost during World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and other conflicts. "As a result of these efforts, so far this year, they have identified over 202 U.S. personnel who were previously unaccounted for," Norquist said "Five from the Vietnam War, 127 from World War II and 70 from the Korean War --providing families long sought-after answers about what happened to their loved ones." Norquist said those recently repatriated include twin brothers Leo Blitz and Rudolph Blitz -- Navy sailors who were lost at Pearl Harbor. They recently were returned to their families and are buried near one another in Lincoln, Nebraska. Roy Knight an Air Force pilot lost over Laos during the Vietnam War, was also recovered through a joint effort between the DPAA and the government of Laos. "His remains were flown home to Texas by his son, Brian, himself an Air Force veteran and now a captain with Southwest Airlines," Norquist said. Finally, Norquist said, Henry Hoover Jones, a 19-year-old army infantryman, was recently buried in Arlington National Cemetery. His three sisters, now in their 90s, attended the funeral. Jones was the second to be identified from remains turned over by North Korea earlier this year. "I am humbled by the tireless commitment and fierce resolve shown by all who are devoted to this mission," Norquist said. "You are an inspiration to us all, and your work gives today's war fighters the confidence that no matter what happens, their fellow Americans will do whatever it takes to bring them home." As part of the recognition event, ceremonial units from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard, and the U.S. Army Band entertained attendees. Additionally, the U.S. Army Special Operations Command's Black Daggers and the United Kingdom's Red Devils parachute teams dropped five parachuters onto the parade field. DARPA Director Talks Promise of Life Sciences Research [2019-09-24] WASHINGTON -- It's not artificial intelligence, quantum computing, or anything involving lasers that the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency believes to be the coolest area of research for DARPA. It's the life sciences, he said, and it's a field with a lot of avenues to be explored. During a discussion with Northeastern University President Joseph E. Aoun at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington yesterday, Steven J. Walker said the life sciences trumps other areas of research as holding the most promise for the future. "That's the area that I see the most incredible technical leaps and bounds every day," Walker said. "DARPA researchers looking at how to make gene editing safe and actually reverse a gene edit if they need to," he added. "You might think that gene editing and biology and [the National Institutes of Health] has billions of dollars. Yes, that work is ongoing, it's being funded. But it's not ... as purpose driven as we'd like." One DARPA program called "Safe Genes" is meant in part to enable reversal of gene editing's effects if need be, he said. "We have actually made a lot of progress there in being able to control gene edits," he added. "That will, I think, change our world and the ability to actually cure disease." Walker also said DARPA would like to be able to protect soldiers from disease and chemical or biological warfare agents by modifying those soldiers genetically to make them able to resist. "Can you actually protect a soldier on the battlefield from chemical weapons and biological weapons by controlling their genome, ... having their genome produce proteins that would automatically protect the soldier from the inside out?" he said. "Just the amount of technological change in that area and the ... more capability we have to engineer biology for use, is why I think it's the most exciting field at DARPA right now, and why we stood up an office in 2014 to focus on it." Walker said making soldiers biologically adaptable to threats is a good idea because it no longer makes sense to have medications or remedies stockpiled for every possible threat. "You can't stockpile enough of the vaccine or antivirus capability to protect the population against that in the future. ... This is all research at this point -- we don't have the capability yet," he said. "But that is why you want to be able to actually have your body be the antibody factory, if possible." Walker said the goal is not to use genetics to make super soldiers, but rather to make soldiers who can be kept safe. "I think our focus is about the protection aspect and the restoration, versus enhancements," he said. "All these technologies, they are dual use. You can use them for good, and you can use them for evil. DARPA is about using them for good to protect our warfighters." Another DARPA project is rapid development of vaccines for never-before-seen viruses. "This is about being able to inject the cells in your muscles, say to produce antibodies automatically, for a vaccine that we've never seen before, and do it in 60 days or less to protect a large population," Walker said. "This is work we've been funding for about 10 years at universities, and now we are going into clinical trials with this as we speak." Assume Networks Are Compromised, DOD Official Urges [2019-09-24] WASHINGTON -- No matter how secure a computer network or the environment it's used in may seem to be, users should just assume it's compromised, the deputy undersecretary of defense for research and engineering said. "This is something I'm very much behind," Lisa Porter said during a panel discussion yesterday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. During her time as the first director of the U.S. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, Porter said, she saw a growing emphasis on cybersecurity. The organization was created in 2008. "At that time, cybersecurity became really, really important," she said. "It had been important before, but people were really emphasizing it. And unfortunately, there was a huge emphasis on primitive defense models." The thinking at the time, she said, was that as long as perimeters were put in place, everything inside would be safe, including the data and the networks. That turned out to not be true, Porter said, and security requires more than just building a barrier around the network. "It leads you to a false sense of security. ... Think 'Edward Snowden,'" she said. "So then we said, 'Maybe this perimeter defense model has some flaws in it.'" Instead, Porter said, users should assume the network is compromised already -- either from outside or from bad actors on the inside. "When you change your mindset to ... 'I have to assume that my networks aren't trusted -- that no matter where I am, I have got to go in with an assumption that I can't trust what I am using as the backbone of my communications -- it changes how you think about the technological solution," she said. Now, she said, cyber professionals are thinking about "zero-trust architecture," which assumes that no one who uses the network can be trusted. In such a setup, users might be allowed access only to that information and those applications that they are pre-authorized to use. Past network security might have put a wall around the whole network, and once inside, a user would free rein to move about. A zero-trust environment uses "microsegmentation," which divides the network into smaller zones, each requiring special access. "I think we've been lulling ourselves into a false sense of security by thinking we can build perfectly secure enclaves," Porter said. "There is no such thing as a secure system. So we have to deal with that reality whether we are doing cyber, whether we are doing supply chain, whether we are doing 5G. You will see the zero-trust reference across many of [the Defense Department research and engineering] domains, because we are really trying to advocate for that perspective." New Defense School to Certify Security Cooperation Workforce [2019-09-26] WASHINGTON -- The newly stood-up Defense Security Cooperation University, aimed squarely at creating, training and certifying a professional community from the Defense Department's security cooperation workforce, will spend the next 24 months ensuring that some 20,000 personnel get the most basic level certification in their career field. Defense officials -- including John C. Rood, undersecretary of defense for policy, and Army Lt. Gen. Charles Hooper, director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency -- attended a ribbon cutting ceremony near the Pentagon yesterday to officially open the new DSCU's doors. The first president of the school, Cara Abercrombie, said the biggest task ahead is ensuring the 20,000 or so DOD personnel who are involved in security cooperation-related work get certified in that work. "That's an extremely ambitious goal," Abercrombie said. "A lot of it will hinge on making sure all the curriculum is fully developed. But our goal is making sure we get them certified at the basic level by 2022." Security cooperation is the effort to advance U.S. national security and foreign policy interests by building the capacity of foreign security forces to respond to shared challenges. That effort involves, among other things, building and maintaining military-to-military relationships, combined training efforts, and foreign military sales. The idea behind DSCU, she said, is to change the way the department is approaching security cooperation by making sure everyone involved has a basic understanding at least of the big-picture objective how security cooperation links to national security strategy. "Even people in the workforce for 20 years are not necessarily aware of new policy initiatives," Abercrombie noted. "DSCU will teach the security cooperation workforce, with a focus on meeting the requirements of the certification program," Abercrombie said. "When Congress mandated that program in the 2017 [National Defense Authorization Act], it also directed DSCA to establish and maintain a school to train, educate and certify the security cooperation workforce. DSCU is that school." Abercrombie said eventually, all personnel who spend more than half of their time doing security cooperation work will be initially certified at a basic level. Work done before DSCU stood up identified nine competencies security cooperation personnel must have, one of which is understanding defense strategy, she said. "We have a basic course online that covers the waterfront on those competencies, including how security cooperation aligns under the National Defense Strategy and the National Security Strategy," she added. Basic-level certification will happen with online coursework, Abercrombie said, allowing the new university to get over its initial hurdle of certifying so many people. Additional levels of certification that include intermediate, advanced and expert will also involve both online and in-class work. Hooper said security cooperation is "uniquely American" in nature, adding that "[it's] this premise that by strengthening the militaries of our allies and partners, you actually strengthen your own security." The general said that the school will serve in part as a "center of excellence" for the security cooperation community, and will also serve to make the security cooperation career field a profession, which he said involves: -- Having accountability to society for maintaining standards of ethics and integrity; -- Possessing a common body of knowledge based on research and experience; -- Participating in and encouraging continuous intellectual and practical development; and -- Being held accountable for acquiring and maintaining knowledge and skills through rigorous means. "The security cooperation profession has not been truly complete until today," he said. "Any profession requires an institute of higher education dedicated to supporting the tenants I told you about." Rood said professionalization of the security cooperation workforce is right on time, as the need for that work has become even more important, considering today's global security environment. "When we look at our National Defense Strategy -- what we are trying to accomplish and what we are up against -- one of America's core competencies has been our ability to build and maintain, sustain growing alliance relationships, to have our partners operate with us seamlessly in coalitions, to see them grow in their capabilities year after year. "It's one of the areas where we are able to exercise tremendous influence," he continued, "and it gives us a comparative advantage ... that is just tremendous. Security cooperation plays a very central role in building those alliance relationships, in building those coalitions and those capabilities." The DSCU currently has two campuses: one in Arlington, Virginia, near the Pentagon, and a "DSCU-West," created from the former Defense Institute for Security Cooperation Studies at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. It's expected that more than 13,000 students will attend the school in fiscal year 2020, with nearly 10,000 of those attending online. DOD Releases Report on Suicide Among Troops, Military Family Members [2019-09-26] WASHINGTON -- Defense Department officials have released a report focused on prevention and analysis of service member and family member suicides. The report, released today, contains substantial suicide-related data and represents the first time DOD released numbers related to suicide of military family members. The report shows that in 2018, 541 service members across the military's active and reserve components died by suicide. Within the active component, the suicide rate was 24.8 per 100,000 personnel, an increase from 2017's rate of 21.9. In the service reserves, the suicide rate for 2018 dropped to 22.9 suicides per 100,000 from the 2017 rate of 25.7. In the National Guard, the suicide rate rose to 30.6 per 100,000 in 2018 from 2017's 29.8. "Across all of our populations, active component, reserve and National Guard, the 2018 suicide rate is statistically consistent over the past two years," said Elizabeth P. VanWinkle, DOD's executive director of force resiliency. "However, rates from the active component are statistically higher than rates from the last five years." Van Winkle also explained how suicide rates within the military, a population that is younger and has more men than the nation's overall civilian population, compares to a similar populations among civilians. "While we hold ourselves to a higher standard than the civilian population, we are often asked how we compare," Van Winkle said. "This year's report indicates that suicide rates for active-component and reserve members are comparable to U.S. population rates after accounting for age and sex. But rates for the National Guard are higher than the U.S. population after similar adjustments." Although the suicide rate among military populations is comparable to broader civilian rates, Van Winkle said, this is hardly comforting, and the numbers are not moving in the right direction. The report shows that suicide rates for family members, as for active and Reserve components, are comparable to civilian rates. Karin A. Orvis, director of the Defense Suicide Prevention Office, said DOD "will focus on fully implementing and evaluating a multifaceted public health approach to suicide prevention, and we will target our military populations of greatest concern: young and enlisted service members, and members of the National Guard, as well as continue to support out military families." For young enlisted service members, Orvis said, the department will pilot an educational program to teach stress-coping skills and how to pass those same skills on to others. Additionally, she said, the department will teach service members skills to identify suicide "red flags" on social media to help service members recognize how they can reach out to help others who might show warning signs. The Suicide Prevention and Readiness for the National Guard, or "SPRING," initiative will examine protective factors, risks and promising practices related to suicide and readiness in the National Guard, Orvis said, and DOD is partnering with the Department of Veterans Affairs to help guardsmen gain better access to mental health care. "The department is committed to the well-being of our military families and ensuring families are best equipped to support their service members and each other," Orvis said. "We will continue to pilot and implement initiatives forced on increasing family member awareness of risk families for suicide, to help our military community recognize when they are at risk so they seek help." Spacecom Built for Today's Strategic Environment [2019-09-27] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Space Command that activated last month is quite different from the U.S. Space Command that stood up when Ronald Reagan was president, Spacecom's commander said. Spacecom's earlier incarnation started in 1985, when the United States was still involved in the Cold War. In 2002, it was shuttered and folded into U.S. Strategic Command. During a presentation in Washington today sponsored by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, Air Force Gen. John W. Raymond, the Spacecom commander, explained some of the ways the new command will be different from the old. One difference is scope, Raymond said, noting that today's Spacecom is a geographic combatant command. "The last combatant command was a functional combatant command," he said. "This combatant command has an area of responsibility that's 100 km above mean sea level, globally, and higher. We did that to solidify space as a warfighting domain and to allow us to have a clear, tighter partnership with the other geographic combatant commands and other combatant commands that we have to operate with." The new Spacecom will work much closer with partners -- not just with American partners, but with other nations as well. One of Spacecom's operational components is the Combined Force Space Component Command, Raymond said. "Combined" applies to an organization involving partnerships with foreign allies, as compared to a "joint" command, for which the partnerships that are limited to U.S. military services. "Based on the Five Eyes order being releasable, we now have partners that have signed up to it," the general said said. "We now have a combined command that is going to provide great advantage for our nation and for our partners." The United States, along with the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, make up an intelligence partnership called "Five Eyes." The U.K. was the first of those U.S. partners to sign on to be part of the U.S.-led Operation Olympic Defender Defender, which started in 2013 as an effort to deter hostile actions is space. Raymond also said today's Spacecom will enhance partnerships with the joint force as well. "We've got a tighter link to our joint warfighting partners," he said. "We're going to stand up integrated planning elements of space professionals that will be embedded in all the combatant commands we partner with." An integrated planning element for Stratcom is already in place, and small teams are working with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and U.S. European Command. Teams will be formed for the other combatant commands as well, Raymond said. Today's Spacecom also enjoys a closer relationship with the intelligence community. "If you look at the mission statement of the command, we are to protect U.S. and as directed, partner satellites," the general said. "A couple months ago, we came to an agreement with the intelligence community. Today we operate on what we call a unity-of-effort basis." Under that agreement, he said, during times of a heightened state of readiness in which decisions must be made quickly, Spacecom will make those decisions. "The intelligence community will take direction from the U.S. Space Command commander to protect and defend our nation's critical capabilities," he said. "In higher states of conflict, we'll work tighter and they will take direction, so we can make sure we can ... defend the capabilities that we rely so importantly on." While a U.S. Space Force has not been established, Raymond said, he remains confident that Congress will do so. "We are very hopeful that ... we will get a sixth branch of the armed forces that will be a Space Force," he said. "It's a national imperative that we do this. U.S. Space Command will only be as good as the capabilities that a Space Force will provide." South Korea's Role Key in Advancing Indo-Pacific Vision [2019-10-01] WASHINGTON -- Competing, deterring and winning in the face of revisionist competitors such as China and Russia won't be easy, the undersecretary of defense for policy said. John C. Rood said that while the U.S. vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific region is inclusive and promotes principles shared by many nations, it's not a vision that all nations share. Rood, spoke and served as the chief U.S. delegate yesterday during an event in Washington sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo. To maintain and build upon values that benefit all nations, the United States must grow a more lethal joint force as well as a more robust constellation of allies and partners, Rood said, adding that the strengthening of regional alliances will help deter bad behavior and keep peace. The U.S.-South Korean alliance is central to efforts to accomplish that, Rood said. "[South Korea] is a defense partner that is trusted across the region, and as we look beyond Northeast Asia to the new challenges of the future, we expect South Korea to continue to be a source of stability and prosperity." The U.S.-South Korea relationship has strengthened, Rood said, noting that South Korea has gone from a net security recipient to a net security provider. Rood pointed to several examples of the strong, and growing relationship between South Korea and the United States. One example, he said, is the large number of American forces the South Koreans host on the Korean Peninsula. About 28,500 U.S. military personnel and their families work and live in South Korea, many on U.S. Army Garrison Humphreys, which Rood said is the largest U.S. overseas military facility. Additionally, he said, the United States and South Korea have made progress to expedite the fulfillment of the agreed-upon conditions required to transition wartime operational control from the United States to South Korea. "The effort is to transfer operational control, in a crisis, in war, with one of the largest armies in the world from the United States to our Korean partners," Rood said. "That's a very substantial activity where our combined command will be essential to execute that. These are things that we want to be able to exercise and do under the most stressing situations. And lives depend on the success of that endeavor, and we take it incredibly seriously, and so do our South Korean allies." South Korea also is doing its part to contribute to its own security, Rood said, having been in the top 20 nations for U.S. foreign military sales for nearly two decades, including more than $19 billion over the last 10 years. South Korea approved an 8.2% increase in its defense budget last year, he added, allowing further advancements in defense modernization and preparing for that operational wartime control being transitioned to its forces. In preparation for that transition, Rood said, the United States continues to encourage South Korea to make further investments, particularly in the ability to counter North Korea's missile and nuclear threats. South Korea will host an upcoming commemorative joint summit with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the inaugural Korea-Mekong Summit, the undersecretary noted. Rood also discussed the trilateral relationship among the United States, South Korea and Japan. Political and social conflict between the two Pacific nations has upset that relationship, he acknowledged, but he added that what they have in common is more important than their differences. "They have shared values. They have committed to a free and open Indo-Pacific based on a rules-based international order," he said. "Both understand the long-term risks of a rising China, and both understand the importance of standing up for international norms on intellectual property, on prevention of cyber theft, on the concerns that we have about China aggressively and opaquely modernizing their military, while also trying to change the geopolitical status through coercive diplomacy." Still, friction between South Korea and Japan has been higher than in recent years, Rood said. "What should be the U.S. role? Encouraging our true friends and allies here to try to work out some of the issues," he added. "These are not easy things, I know, having heard from both parties, ... but that being said, it's worth it." The U.S. must point to "the big picture," and to the concerns all three nations share, he said, and the United States encourages South Korea to recommit to and renew its General Security of Military Information Agreement with Japan. "We call on both countries to participate in meaningful dialogue to address their differences," Rood said. Aid to Ukraine Successful, DOD Spokesman Says [2019-10-03] WASHINGTON -- Earlier this year, the Defense Department made plans to provide some $250 million in aid to Ukraine, with the goal of transitioning that aid before the end of the fiscal year. The department was largely successful in that goal, a Pentagon spokesman said. "As of today, the bulk of this $250 million is on contract, the rest should be out soon," Jonathan Rath Hoffman, the assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, said during a news conference at the Pentagon today. "As the secretary stated, the brief pause on obligating funds did not negatively affect our national security," Hoffman said. Around 85% of the funds have already been transitioned to Ukraine, and Hoffman said the remainder "will be going out in the next few days to a week." Those funds, he said, provide equipment to support Ukrainian training programs and operational needs. Hardware includes rigid hull boats, sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, counter-artillery radars, electronic warfare detection equipment, secure communications gear, night vision equipment and military medical treatment devices. "This assistance helps to build Ukraine's capacity to defend itself against aggressive Russian actions in the region," he said. In July, President Donald J. Trump spoke on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and discussed, among other things, the aid the U.S. would provide to Ukraine. Hoffman said no DOD personnel were listening in. "To my knowledge, no one from the DOD was on that call," he said. "I specifically asked the secretary of defense that question -- and he was not on that call." The department's inspector general requested any documents and communications related to the security assistance aid to Ukraine for cataloging and review, Hoffman said. That collection of documents, Hoffman said, is a fairly standard practice if there's congressional or inspector general interest in a matter. It's a "fairly routine, but proactive measure we're taking." he added. Today, Hoffman said, the department's stance on security remains the same as it has been in the past. "We have been very consistent that we are going to be supportive of our allies and partners," he said. "We are going to follow through and present and press forward on aid packages. One thing that's been consistent that the administration has said, and the president has reiterated and the secretary has reiterated to our allies and partners, is that we are expecting our partners ... to do more. We want partners and allies to not only be standing with us, but to have capabilities when they are standing with us." Hoffman also said Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper has continued to stress the need for a fiscal year 2020 budget. The federal government, and the department, are operating on a continuing resolution. "In the near term of one to three months, continuing resolutions disrupt major exercises and training events, effect radians and maintenance, [delay] hiring and recruitment actions, and adversely impact contracting negotiations," Hoffman said. "The department's ability to implement the National Defense Strategy depends on steady predictable funding from Congress, and Secretary Esper will continue to engage with members on this topic." Southcom Commander: Foreign Powers Pose Security Concerns [2019-10-04] WASHINGTON -- In South and Central America, four foreign powers are operating with differing involvement across all elements of national power, the commander of U.S. Southern Command said. At a Defense Writers Group event in Washington today, Navy Adm. Craig S. Faller said he's seen Russia, China, Iran and Cuba operating in varying capacities in Southcom's area of responsibility. Russia Russia, he said, is helping to prop up the Nicolas Maduro regime in Venezuela with weapons sales and security assistance. They're operating elsewhere, too, he added. "They have traditional arms sales relationships with countries in the region, and that continues, particularly in Venezuela [and] Nicaragua," Faller said. "Russia has deployed nuclear-capable bombers [and] Russia has deployed their most advanced warship that is capable of firing nuclear cruise missiles throughout the region, all within the last year. Russia has provided significant assistance to Venezuela." Hundreds of Russians -- both forces and contractors -- are in Venezuela "helping Maduro continue his reign of terror on the nation," the admiral said. In Nicaragua, he told the defense writers, Russia runs a counternarcotics and counterterrorism training center that "has dubious dual purposes." Russian information operations are strong in South America as well, he said, with a large Spanish-language media presence. "It is Russia's largest language operation outside of their native language, outside of Russia," he said. "It's pumping a lot of information out in those spaces, and then misinformation." Faller said at one point, he was in Washington meeting with lawmakers and Russian propaganda outlets reported he was on the Columbia-Venezuela border planning an invasion into Venezuela. China China has legitimate economic interests in the region, the admiral said, but it also is involved heavily in the information space, including in the information technology, cyber and space realms. "Their arms sales have grown," he said. "They have deployed some assets -- that's ticked up consistently in the last couple of years. They are also increasing their military engagement." He said the Chinese have created Spanish-language schools and training centers and in addition to military sales, have been giving hardware to various nations. There is significant evidence of investment in Chinese and Russian weapons systems in Southcom's area of responsibility, Faller said. "Russian weapons systems sales [are] in the billions, and China's [are] increasing. China is also gifting a lot of military hardware to ... partners. The extent to which it undermines partnerships with the U.S. [and] contributes to instability ... is a concern for the security of the U.S." Dozens of Chinese infrastructure projects in South America are contributing to instability, Faller said, noting that China is working on 56 port deals in the region. Some of those deals are locked up with onerous leasing agreements, he said, and some of those agreements have left host nations with little access to and little control over what the Chinese have built. In one partner nation, he said, a Chinese-built road has a 99-year lease in which the Chinese have land rights on both sides. "Thousands of acres, and they have the ability to control the tolls on that road for 99 years," the admiral said. "That's the price you get for having the Chinese come in and build a road. We've been watching that closely, and it has our attention and has contributed to a sense of urgency I feel about the overall security." Cuba While Russia has hundreds of people in Venezuela, Cuba has thousands, Faller said. In fact, he told the writers, 100% of the Venezuelan "palace guard" protecting Maduro are Cuban. Iran When it comes to terrorist activity, he said, Iran's influence and presence are felt in South America. "We have uncovered terrorist plots," he said. "We know that there is a significant Lebanese Hezbollah presence through the region with connections back to Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran. ... Iran's hand is in this. They are the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world. And the long arm of Iranian malfeasance is alive and present around the world, not just in the Middle East. We are continuously keeping our eye on that ball, along with interagency partners." Key to Countering Threats Faller said strengthening U.S. partnerships in the Southcom area of responsibility is the key to countering threats from Russia, China, Iran and Cuba. The best approach is to work with those partner nations, learn their needs and determine how those needs support the defense of the hemisphere and the United States, he said. "That's where we focus," he added. "And it's different country to country." DOD Looks to Future of Logistics [2019-10-08] WASHINGTON -- The most junior personnel in logistics today are going to have to come up with creative ideas on how to set and sustain a theater of operations for logistics, resupply and repair in a new world dominated by global power competition, a senior Defense Department official said. During the fall meeting of the National Defense Transportation Association and the U.S. Transportation Command in St. Louis, today, Robert H. McMahon, assistant secretary of defense for sustainment, pointed over the heads of older transportation and logistics leaders gathered near the front of the conference and placed responsibility for the future on the shoulders of the young and creative. "If you are a program manager in the private sector, 10 years from now you could be the CEO responsible for helping develop that solution," McMahon said. "If you are a field grade officer, you are going to be one of the flag officers in the future that will be executing in that environment. And if you are young company grade officer, you will be one of those commanders responsible for achieving that which you are asked to do, and leading men and women to protect this nation and preserve it as it exists." McMahon said the status quo for getting materiel and people around the globe is no longer sufficient. He cited logistics support to Afghanistan as it relates to the 2010 coup in Kyrgyzstan and the shuttering of the Pakistan Ground Lines of Communication in 2011 to illustrate that what worked before can't be expected to be options in the future. "We were flying everyone to Afghanistan though Manas and running our tanker operations out of Manas," McMahon said, referring to an air base in Kyrgyzstan. "A coup takes place in Kyrgyzstan. In a matter of about four of five days, we simply swing the effort to move through Kuwait." When the Defense Department's ground-based trans-Pakistan supply route into Afghanistan shut down in November 2011, "we simply began flying stuff in," McMahon said. There's no guarantee that the United States will continue to have access to alternative options in the future, he said. "The environment we face in the future will not allow us to do that," McMahon said. "We need to find new solutions, new ideas. It begins with defining what it is we're trying to achieve, and working back from that." Current senior leaders don't have the answers for how the department will ensure continued access to all the places where the United States might operate in the future, he said, adding that he doesn't have those answers, either. Instead, he said, today's leaders need innovative and imaginative young people to help them think differently, because today's environment demands that. Challenges that have included cyber, weather, water and climate continue to involve violent extremist organizations, but now also include new adversaries such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, McMahon said. Setting a theater of operations in the South Pacific will prove a daunting challenge, he added, considering the size of the Pacific and the chains of islands that exist there. "We have got to set the theater and then set the theater in ways that we have not even begun to think about," he said. "How do you get fuel to where you need to be? How do you take a new concept of operations that the Navy is talking about, or that the Air Force is talking about, in this enhanced agility, and the ability to sustain that? How do you get fuel to an F-35 when you don't know where that F-35 is going to be four hours from now?" Europe, he said, poses different challenges, including the rail system and other infrastructure that may not be able to support large-scale movement of military materiel. "That's not somebody's problem," he told the transportation-centric audience. "That's our problem, in this room." McMahon cited the comic book detective Dick Tracy's two-way wrist TV as an example of technology that seemed absurd when it debuted as fiction in the early 1960s, but has proven to have been prescient. "What's the transportation concept that we are drawing up today that's just as absurd, that 10 years from now one of you will dream of -- to be able to create, to be able to make happen -- to give us what we need in this kind of environment?" McMahon challenged. "The real challenge is for you ... to be able to think about these questions, ponder these questions, debate these questions and ... with your partners between military services, between the military and the private sector, between modes of transportation, to talk about what the solutions might look like as we get ready for the threat that may be here sooner than we think -- or perhaps, if we don't act, sooner than we are prepared for," he said. U.S. Sends Additional Capabilities to Saudi Arabia [2019-10-11] WASHINGTON -- In the wake of an Iranian attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities last month, Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper announced that more capabilities have been authorized to deploy in support of the long-time U.S. partner. At a Pentagon news conference today, Esper said he authorized the deployment of two fighter squadrons, an air expeditionary wing, two Patriot missile batteries, and a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system to Saudi Arabia. This latest show of support involves some 3,000 U.S. personnel, Esper said, adding that ongoing Iranian provocations have resulted in an even larger support effort in the region. Since May, Esper said, the United States has deployed as many as 14,000 additional U.S. forces to the region, as well as a wide variety of military hardware, including airborne early warning aircraft squadrons, maritime patrol aircraft squadrons, Patriot air and missile defense batteries, B-52 bombers and a carrier strike group. "Today I spoke with the Saudi minister of defense to discuss the status of Saudi Arabia's defensive capabilities and our ongoing efforts to protect our partners from further Iranian aggression," Esper said. "Saudi Arabia is a longstanding security partner in the Middle East and has asked for additional support to supplement their own defenses and defend the international rules-based order." The defense secretary said the United States remains committed to protecting its allies in the region and its own interests. "I urge other like-minded countries, especially our allies in Europe, to follow the U.S. lead and join us with their own defensive assets to ensure stability in the region," Esper said. While Esper said the Iranians continue to deny the attack on Saudi oil facilities, evidence recovered so far proves their involvement. Additionally, he said, he's continued to hear concerns from partners and allies in the region about continued Iranian behavior. "There are things we pick up, if you will, through intelligence that we thought it was important to continue to deploy forces to deter and defend, and to send the message to the Iranians: do not strike another sovereign state, do not threaten American interests, American forces, or we will respond," he said. "I've said time and time again, do not mistake our restraint for weakness. If you will, you will regret that." Employment Options, Tools Abound for Military Spouses [2019-10-15] WASHINGTON -- Military spouses looking for employment have a lot of options and a lot of tools available to them. During a briefing today at the Association of the U.S. Army 2019 Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, Lee Kelley, the Defense Department's director of military community support programs in the Military Community and Family Policy Office, said military spouses can access career coaches through the Military OneSource website from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays and all day on Saturdays. Military OneSource career coaches work with military spouses all day, she noted. "It is hard to stump them with a career obstacle," she added. Kelley also pointed out that Military OneSource provides the MyCAA Scholarship, a $4,000, noncompetitive scholarship for spouses married to service members in pay grades E-1 through E-5, O-1 and O-2, and W-1 and W-2. "It can close the gap in expertise needed to enter portable job opportunities," she said. "It can be used for associate degrees, licenses and certifications." Kelley said a RAND Corp. survey about MyCAA found the scholarship results in increases in spouse wages, likelihood of employment and service member retention. The Military Spouse Employment Partnership, or MSEP program, involves more than 400 companies who have committed to providing job opportunities to military spouses, Kelley said. An account within the program allows prospective employers to search the resumes of military spouses. Some 139,000 spouses have found employment that way, she said. Suzanne King, with the Army Installation Management Command's family child care program, said becoming a child care provider can be a double opportunity for some spouses who are looking for a job. Certification as a family child care provider, King said, allows military spouses to augment their family's income, while providing care for their own children without having to pay for it. "You can earn an income, run your own business, stay at home with your child, have the same hours as your [spouse] for the most part, receive great training which could lead to even greater opportunities and have a career that can [move] with you," King said. King said the Army provides support to military spouses who want to become a family child care provider. "As soon as a provider comes on board, they are placed on an 18-month training program that includes CPR, first aid, identifying, preventing and reporting child abuse, various areas of child development, special needs, creating appropriate environments and more," she said. The Army even provides training to help military spouses learn to manage a child care business. Once certified, Children and Youth Services officials will also work to ensure that family child care professionals are able to move between installations when a military service member is transferred, and continue to work at the new duty location, King said. Twenty-six Army facilities have the family child care program, King said. For locations that don't have it, the required training program allows those military spouses to find work in installation child development programs and youth centers, she said. "FCC providers will need to apply for positions at the [child development centers], but may come in at a much higher caregiving level and rate of pay," she said. "Family child care and [Children and Youth Services] are the perfect career choice, one in which passion may become a profession." Sgt. Maj. Kristopher Rick, senior Army fellow with Veterans' Employment and Training Services in the Labor Department, said the department also has a great program to help military spouses make the move from one state to another and keep their employability through the transfer of credentials. The department's veterans.gov website helps military spouses with license portability so they can move from camp, post and station to camp, post and station, he said. The website puts all of the state legislation about portability of licensing and credentials in one place, he noted. An interactive U.S. map allows users to hover over a state and see a brief description of how the state handles license portability. Rick said he believes the availability of the site prompted many states to change their laws to be more accommodating to military spouses. He said it created competition among governors to see "who could move that ball the furthest." The site also provides robust information on how states deal with the transfer of licenses for attorneys, emergency medical services personnel, nurses, physical therapists and physicians, he added, and there's also a search engine that allows users to find the licensing board in each state for a variety of other professions. "Now a military spouse is armed with the current state legislation and how that applies to the occupational licensure board within that state," Rick said. "Then, they can build their roadmap ... on how to engage that state when they are preparing to move to that location." Military Exchanges Extinguish Vape Sales [2019-10-15] WASHINGTON -- The Army and Air Force Exchange Service and the Navy Exchange have temporarily stopped selling vape-related products. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics report that 1,299 lung injury cases and 26 deaths are related to e-cigarette or vaping product use. AAFES temporarily removed vape-related products from its shelves Sept. 30. Navy Exchange Service Command temporarily removed products from NEX retail shelves and directed NEX concessionaires and vendors to temporarily discontinue the sale of vaping products after Oct. 1. Vape products, including e-cigs, e-cigarettes, vapes and e-hookahs, are electronic nicotine delivery devices that heat a sometimes flavored nicotine-infused liquid into a vapor that users inhale. In recent months, there have been reports of illnesses and deaths that are believed to be associated with the use of vape products. "The vapor that users inhale can contain ultrafine particles, carcinogens, volatile organic compounds and heavy metals," said Public Health Service Capt. Kimberly Elenberg, director of Total Force Fitness for the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. "Vaping is not harmless, and researchers are still trying to understand the long-term impacts and health effects from inhaling the vapor." NEXCOM officials said Navy exchanges carried two vape-related products in the tobacco sale area of their stores. Those products, "e-cigarettes," have been temporarily removed from shelves. Additionally, NEXCOM directed Navy Exchange concessionaires and vendors to temporarily discontinue the sale of vaping products in any NEX location. AAFES officials said their stores' offering of vape-related products already was limited, and that its exchanges had already stopped offering flavored vape liquids because of Food and Drug Administration concerns with the appeal of the products to underage customers. By the end of September, AAFES had removed products from two manufacturers from its shelves. While proponents of vape products argue that vaping is safer than using traditional tobacco products such as cigarettes, Elenberg said it's actually too early to tell. "E-cigarettes generally contain less chemicals compared to traditional products like cigarettes, but since the long-term effects of vaping are unknown and not understood, there is not enough information at this time to make a determination on whether it is safer or healthier than other tobacco products," she said. Even if the ingestion of nicotine is deemed safer through vaping than through traditional products, nicotine itself is still a dangerous chemical, said Dr. Donald Shell, the director of disease prevention, disease management and population health policy and oversight in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Services Policy and Oversight. "Nicotine is an extremely addictive, naturally occurring toxic chemical derived from the tobacco plant that affects the nervous system and the heart," Shell said. "Nicotine is a teratogen, as it is capable of causing birth defects. Other developmental or reproductive toxicities associated with the use of nicotine are unknown." While current information regarding nicotine as a carcinogen is inconclusive, Shell said, nicotine is highly addictive, and young adults and adolescents are especially vulnerable to its addictive properties. DOD Improves Construction Standards After Natural Disasters [2019-10-17] WASHINGTON -- In October 2018, the Category 5 Hurricane Michael caused billions of dollars in damage to Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida. This summer, earthquakes in California wrought extensive damage to Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake. But lessons learned from those incidents are being incorporated into the standards for future construction projects at military installations to increase resilience. Robert H. McMahon, assistant secretary of defense for sustainment spoke before a joint hearing of two House Armed Services Committee subcommittees yesterday. "We take the lessons we learn from each of these installations -- whether it is the construction, whether it's the roofing, what we are doing on one floor versus another -- and roll that in on an annual basis to continuously update what those standards are to ensure that, as we get to the next either rehab or new construction, that those standards are, in fact, reflected in the way that we build the facility," McMahon said. The hearing, before the subcommittees on intelligence and emerging threats and capabilities as well as readiness, focused on the resiliency of military installations to emerging threats. "As we look out over the last decade or two decades, the challenges and threats we face within our installations have grown dramatically," McMahon said. "It's climate. It's the challenge we also face with regards to natural disasters, whether that be earthquakes, whether that be forest fires, whether that be deforestation or drought." McMahon said the department must acknowledge the climate is changing and find solutions to ensure military installations remain resilient and ready. "We look at the way that we proactively put together our standards, our building standards, they need to be continuously updated as we learn about what is occurring with these natural disasters," he said. Other threats to military installations include electromagnetic pulses and unmanned aerial vehicles. McMahon said the department is aware of both types of threats and is working towards solutions. McMahon said Ellen M. Lord, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment is working on solutions to counter possible drone threats to military installations, as are the Joint Chiefs of Staff. An executive order issued earlier this year provided guidance to move forward with mitigating the threat from electromagnetic pulses, he said. Not every facility needs to be hardened against electromagnetic pulses, he added, but understanding which ones do and how to accomplish that is critical. Lawmakers were also concerned about the use of PFAS -- per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances -- foams in fire-fighting applications. "We are concerned about three things," McMahon said. "One, how do we mitigate what we are doing today? [Two,] how do we ensure that we understand the health of the individuals that may have been affected by this? And, finally, how do we clean up the messes that are out there today? This is a national issue, not just a DOD issue." McMahon said the department is working aggressively to find an alternative to firefighting foams that contain PFAS. In November, he said, there will be a summit with representatives of the military departments to discuss work that's already been done. Representatives of the military departments, who were also at the hearing, confirmed for lawmakers that PFAS foam is no longer used in training exercise. "Our goal is to make sure the only time it's used is in an actual emergency and that it's treated as a spill and cleaned up appropriately, which ought to dramatically reduce any additional exposures until we find that replacement," McMahon said. Persistent Spouse Unemployment Affects Military Families [2019-10-21] WASHINGTON -- For many families, a dual-income household is needed to get by, but that's a challenge when one of those earners is a service member. The cost of things like education and housing have gone up greatly in the past 50 years, compared to the value of the dollar, meaning things are more expensive now than they were in the past, said Holly Petraeus, the former assistant director for Service member Affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, during a panel discussion today at the Brookings Institute in Washington. "Can the single income family really still do it anymore, and if they can't ... given the need for two incomes in military families and the challenges that presents to military spouses, is this changing the nature of today's military families?" Petraeus said. Mike Haynie, the executive director of the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University, said spouse unemployment, and the financial burden it brings, has already changed military families. "Today, military families are more and more less likely to recommend military service to their children than they were as recently as five years ago," Haynie said. "That should tell us something and it should scare us." Haynie also said that today, about a third of military spouses aren't living in the same location as their military service member, likely for financial reasons. "There is not enough research being done as to the issues, questions, concerns impacting this community, certainly from an economic perspective," he said. "Undoubtedly, we are in a position where ... the stability and the health for those families is compromised as a function of the economic situation they face today." He also said unemployment for military spouses is higher than for their civilian peers, as is underemployment. Elizabeth O'Brien, the senior director of the Hiring Our Heroes Military Spouse Program at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said military spouse unemployment was at 30% in 1985 -- and not much has changed in the last 30 years. "Why is the needle not moving?" she asked, adding that when veteran unemployment was a problem in the U.S, the nation rallied to address the problem. Today, she said, the U.S. is at a historic low for veteran unemployment. "Dual income families are part of American life and we need that same access and opportunity," she said. "If we intend to keep our best and brightest service members in the military ... we have to provide an opportunity for military families to have economic stability." That means, she said, that military spouses need more opportunities to be able to work. "We have to find ways to put military spouses to work so that our families, not only are we retaining them, but when the service member transitions we are now going from two salaries to one salary, not from one salary to zero," she said. Marcus Beauregard, director of the State Liaison Office within the Defense Department, said military families, like families in the civilian community, increasingly need a dual income to survive. If military service proves an impediment to that survival, he said, a family may opt to discontinue that commitment. "It's a family decision," he said. "It's almost an axiom now: we recruit the service member, we retain the family. I think the last statistic I saw was something like 65% of families make that determination around the kitchen table. And it's a determination of what are we going to do next?" The Defense Department, he said, is increasingly seeing spouse unemployment as critical to maintaining military readiness. "The Department is very cognizant of that and sees that as an important part of the strategy to maintain lethality," he said, adding that Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper said taking care of families would be part of the national military strategy. Stratcom Nominee: Nuclear Triad Modernization Must Continue [2019-10-24] WASHINGTON -- The nominee to be commander of U.S. Strategic Command told lawmakers at his confirmation hearing today that adoption of a "no first use" policy for nuclear weapons is a bad idea. "My best military advice would be to not adopt a no first use policy," said Navy Vice Adm. Charles A. Richard, before the Senate Armed Services Committee. A "no first use" policy is commitment by a nuclear power, such as the United States, to only use nuclear weapons in response to the use of such weapons by an enemy. Richard said the adoption of such a policy would impact its relationship with partner nations. "I think adoption of a no first use policy would have a significant negative effect on our commitments to our allies," Richard told senators. Richard was also clear that modernization needs to continue moving forward on the U.S. nuclear triad, which involves ground-based missiles -- commonly referred to as intercontinental ballistic missiles -- submarine-launched ballistic missiles and air-launched cruise missiles, dropped from bomber aircraft. In all three areas, the U.S. modernization effort is underway. "We have delayed and life-extended the triad systems to the maximum extent possible," said Richard, who serves now as commander of Navy Submarine Forces. "What I mean by that is we are bumping into physics and engineering limits." Richard said the Ohio-class submarine, which carries the Trident II D5 missile, for instance, was designed for 30 years of use. It's been in service now for 42 years. "[That's] a great credit to the people that put it together," Richard said. "There are only so many times you can take a high-strength piece of steel tubing, subject it to the great pressures of submergence, cycle it by taking that off, to the point where you just don't want to get in the tube anymore." Richard said a similar lack of confidence is in other systems that make up the triad. Right now, he said, it's expected the follow-on to the Ohio-class submarine, the Columbia class, would enter service in 2031. Recapitalization of the nuclear triad, Richard said, is needed, worth the investment and doable. "That's only 3.5% of the defense budget on top of the 3.5% we spend to maintain the system that we have," he said. "That defense budget is itself a fraction of the discretionary budget of this nation ... that's what buys our deterrence and defense against the only existential threat this nation faces. I think that is a good investment, and in the words of the former secretary of defense, James N. Mattis, this nation can afford survival." If confirmed, Richard said, he pledges to work closely with the Senate Armed Services Committee and with congress regarding U.S. strategic security challenges. "I firmly believe that open, honest and timely communications will be necessary to address these challenges," he said. "With the return to great power competition ... we must never lose sight of the fundamental nature and importance of our nation's strategic forces, a powerful ready triad remains the most effective way to deter adversaries from conducting attacks against the U.S. and our allies." If confirmed, Richard would also be promoted to the rank of admiral. DOD Focuses Early AI Use on 'Low Consequence' Applications [2019-10-28] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department has a long way to go in developing artificial intelligence and applying it to the most pressing military problems. For now, DOD is applying AI toward humanitarian assistance and predictive maintenance, the director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center said. ''We start with low-consequence use cases for a reason,'' Air Force Lt. Gen. John Shanahan said during a panel discussion last week at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Because they are ''narrow'' applications, he explained, it's easier to assess results. Shanahan said AI hasn't yet achieved the readiness level to apply toward more complex issues such as nuclear command and control or missile defense, which carry a much higher risk if it doesn't work as expected. ''I think that's not where any of us are interested in heading right now,'' he said. One measure the department is willing to apply now is the perceived risk versus the potential reward for using AI in a particular application, and reward outweighing risk is something Shanahan said he's not seeing now. ''I can't show the rewards right now on mission-critical systems,'' he said. ''On decision support, every single combatant command wants help on decision support systems: 'How can I do an operational plan in two weeks instead of two years?' That's very, very challenging ... to take on.'' The reward is great for solving a problem like decision support, he said, especially in terms of saving time, but only if an AI system can get it right -- and that's just not happening yet, Shanahan said. ''Nobody has proven that those rewards justify the risks we're going to take right now,'' he said. ''Everything that we do in the business I am in is about risk. Who incurs the risk? What's the risk to mission? What's the risk to force? Is it a risk worth accepting? What I am having a hard time getting through right now is [that] I am not seeing the rewards outweigh the risk in those mission-critical cases.'' Still, Shanahan said, he's confident AI is going to be a big part of the department's future. ''There is no part of the Department of Defense that cannot benefit from AI,'' he said. Problems beyond risk exist as well, he said, including overcoming hurdles in military culture, talent and data. Military culture requires long-term planning for the development of new systems, he explained, and a new aircraft might take decades to deliver. ''There are a lot of people that want to go forward very quickly with AI capabilities in the department, but we live by five-year budget cycles and weapons system milestones that are measured in five-to 10-year increments, as opposed to how quickly can I take an algorithm, update it and put it back into the field,'' Shanahan said. ''We have a long way to go to really embrace the speed and the scale of what's happening in commercial industry.'' The Defense Department, he said, is making progress in learning to do acquisition and contracting more quickly. He cited as examples the Defense Digital Service, which hires top experts from industry and academia for short tours to help overcome defense challenges, and the Defense Innovation Unit, which provides funding to private sector companies to solve defense-related problems. DOD Finalizes Purchase Plan for F-35 Aircraft [2019-10-29] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department finalized an agreement to purchase 478 additional F-35 Lightning II airplanes in a deal totaling $34 billion, officials said. Ellen M. Lord, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, announced yesterday's agreement between DOD and aircraft manufacturer Lockheed Martin during a briefing today at the Pentagon. The F-35s will form the backbone of the U.S. and allied fifth generation inventory for the foreseeable future, she said. According to Lord, the agreement involving Lot 12 includes 149 aircraft, Lot 13 includes 160 aircraft, and Lot 14 includes 169 aircraft. Air Force Lt. Gen. Eric T. Fick, the F-35 program executive officer, said those lots include 351 of the F-35A aircraft, which is the standard model used by the Air Force. There are also 86 of the F-35B aircraft, which is the vertical-takeoff model used by the Marine Corps, and 41 of the F-35C aircraft, which are for carrier-based operations. Those aircraft are not all for the United States. Some of the planes are for partner nations, as well as nations that have purchased through foreign military sales. Lord said acquisition and sustainment and the F-35 Joint Program Office are "laser-focused" on reducing costs for the aircraft, bringing up quality, and achieving timely deliveries. "We will reach a unit recurring flyaway cost-per-aircraft target of $80 million for a U.S. Air Force F-35A price, by Lot 13 -- which is one lot earlier than planned," she said. "A significant milestone for the department." Lord also said that there's a per-unit cost reduction for each variant of the aircraft that averages around 12.7% when comparing Lot 14 purchases to Lot 11 purchases. "These represent some of the largest achieved savings lot-over-lot for the program." Fick said that the most recent contract award slows production of the F-35 from previous awards, giving a break to contractors involved in the aircraft's manufacture. The lot 12 purchase of 149 aircraft, for instance, is just slightly higher than the 141 aircraft in Lot 11. "With this award we see from a production perspective the most dramatic rate increases in the production line are now behind us," Fick said. "This dramatic production rate increase has proven to be challenging for the supply chain, but the comparatively minor quantity changes across lots 12 through 14 should give it some breathing room as we move forward." He said that breathing room for manufacturers allows for more timely delivery of parts to the production line and spares and repair parts to the field. Currently, some 440 F-35 aircraft have been delivered to military organizations around the world -- including the United States, Norway, Israel, Italy, the United Kingdom, Australia, South Korea and Japan. Losing Technology to Competitors Threatens Force Lethality [2019-10-31] WASHINGTON -- The loss of technology to strategic competitors has a direct effect on the joint force's lethality, the director of the Defense Department's Protecting Critical Technology Task Force said. And while those technology transfers -- some legal and some not quite -- are almost always unwanted, they've certainly been enabled by a lack of U.S. attention on stopping them, Air Force Maj. Gen. Thomas E. Murphy said during an Association of the U.S. Army forum on Russia and China. ''We are in a competition,'' Murphy said. ''China and the others are stealing our stuff, and it is causing the erosion of the lethality of the joint force.'' China, in particular, is employing a comprehensive national strategy to acquire critical U.S. technologies through both licit and illicit methods, the general said. ''They are pretty good about it,'' he added. ''They are unrelenting in hacking our businesses, both big and small. It's no wonder why their stuff looks remarkably like ours. Look at their airlifter and their newest fighter. It looks just like a C-17 and an F-35. That's not a coincidence. We've unwittingly become the [research and development] base for adversary capabilities and for our strategic competitors.'' Murphy's task force, stood up about a year ago, has been tasked with stopping the exfiltration of critical U.S. technology to adversaries. A big part of that, he said, starts with identifying what that critical technology is, ''If you protect everything as if it's critical, we protect nothing very well,'' he noted. The task force now has a list that lays out critical programs and technologies, he said, and it is is ensuring those technologies are prioritized and tiered and that protections for that technology are based on the level of criticality. If, for example, artificial intelligence technology is considered a ''Tier 1'' technology -- the most critical level -- he is ''going to mandate a lot of things for you to do to protect it cyber-wise, personnel security, operational security, physical security, and the whole nine yards,'' he said. For those that develop and handle defense technology, he said, the systems that process information related to that technology must be secure enough to withstand intrusion from adversaries. A recent audit shows many companies don't have even the most basic of cyber security controls in place, the general said. The Defense Department is working on cybersecurity maturity model certification, or CMMC, for potential technology partners that would rate their readiness safely process and store important technology information, he added. This will have five levels, he explained. To get contracts to do technology work for the DOD, he said, industry or academia would need to achieve the CMMC level commensurate with the nature of the work. ''So up your game, and get your cybersecurity in order,'' he said. Security will also need to be built into the acquisition process from the onset, he said. Program managers tend to focus on cost, schedule and performance when it comes to contracts, he noted, not the company's ability to keep the technology it will be developing secure. ''I don't believe today that we sufficiently consider security when determining with which companies to do business,'' Murphy said. As a result, he added, there is limited financial incentive for companies to get more secure. ''We're changing that as well,'' he said. ''We're going to work through a series of initiatives to elevate the importance of security to ensure that it's as important as cost, schedule and performance.'' The department must ensure industry and academia do a better job of knowing who is working with critical defense technology -- where their allegiance lies and who they really work for, Murphy said. ''China devotes significant resources at a national level to infiltrate our universities and our labs,'' he said. ''And they are doing it for a reason. They've even coined the phrase ... 'Picking flowers in the U.S. to make honey in China,' which I would say perfectly illustrates their deliberate plan to steal R&D, knowhow and technology to advance their military capability. They are not even hiding it.'' Researchers shouldn't be getting paid both by the U.S. government and a foreign government at the same time, Murphy said, and competitors shouldn't be allowed into labs where new technology has been developed. ''We can't let our competitors into a lab where a breakthrough advance is discovered only to have them take it back to their country to advance their military capabilities,'' the general said. ''We must know if you are a member of a foreign talent program. If we don't ask the questions, we're never going to know.'' A completely legal way adversaries get U.S. technology is to simply buy it, Murphy said. ''This is why we are working to strengthen our ability to stop the unwanted transfer of defense-related technology,'' he said. ''We need to do a better job of closing the export control loopholes, and getting ahead of these business mergers and acquisitions.'' Doing nothing, Murphy said, might mean ''the lethality of the joint force is diminished to a point that is irreparable.'' Teacher, Military Spouse Uses Law to Improve Employment Options [2019-11-01] WASHINGTON -- After moving to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, with her Air Force officer husband, Brianna McKinnon learned just how hard it is to be a professional and a military spouse. She also learned how working with state government can make a difference. ''I knew there would be difficulties,'' McKinnon said of her family's move. ''I thought I was prepared to handle them, but I could not have anticipated the amount of issues there would be.'' McKinnon has a bachelor's in elementary education with an emphasis in special education that she earned while living in Spokane, Washington. At the time, her husband attended engineering courses for the Air Force. In 2017, the Air Force moved the couple to Ohio, and Brianna was able to work as a teacher there for just a year using a temporary license. To work longer, she'd need to get a permanent licence in the state -- which proved more difficult than she thought. McKinnon said Ohio required her to complete three exams, which cost $150 each. She said that was something she could have done, but there was more. ''The killer was I had to enroll in an Ohio college and take a phonics class,'' she said. This would have cost $2,000 to take the course and required that she attend a semester of school. ''I'm already completing my master's degree right now,'' she said. Without meeting certification requirements for teaching in Ohio, she wouldn't be able to work at all, she said. And that wouldn't just be in Ohio. Every state has different requirements for teachers, and each time the family moved, she'd have to re-certify in the new state. Meeting new certification requirements with each military move is just one of the challenges spouses face with professional careers. ''Certification is huge,'' McKinnon said. ''Another big problem is pay for military spouses. We often get a large amount of pay cuts from where we move to and from because we are starting from the bottom. Also, a lot of it is [that] as you become an adult, getting a job is based on who you know and not what you know. So, we moved to a state where we know no one. So, it is starting from scratch every single time, in a lot of ways.'' McKinnon's not the only military spouse to face obstacles to employment -- she's one of many. ''I've talked to so many spouses who are 10 or 20 years in who said, 'I've given up everything so that my husband can be in the military,''' she said. ''It's kind of just a known thing between spouses that if your husband is in the military, you kind of give up what you love to do.'' Three years into the assignment in Ohio, McKinnon still isn't teaching. That does give her more time to take care of her two young children -- albeit with only one salary, which McKinnon said isn't nearly enough for her family. But during that time she also met with an Ohio lawmaker, and she shared her problem with him. ''I just started talking to people and eventually ran into Rick Perales,'' she said. Together, they were able to develop legislation that would allow military spouses from a wide array of careers that require certifications and licenses to work in the state using credentials they'd earned elsewhere, McKinnon said. ''We have created [an] ... automatic reciprocity bill for all military spouses of any certification,'' she said. If the bill is signed into law, which may happen in March, military spouses in Ohio will be able to work in just about any career that requires a license or certification by using the credentials they bring with them. That means more military spouses will be able to continue their careers and supplement their family's income. ''It's going to take care of families,'' she said. ''Doing what I do as a career, that's why I do what I do. I love kids. So this is going to help thousands and thousands of kids.'' While McKinnon was able to make a difference in Ohio, she said she knows the future will require more moves to new states and additional challenges for her when it comes to employment. Their next assignment, she said, is in Oklahoma. Her husband is training to be a C-17 transport jet pilot. The couple have also decided that active-duty life is not for them. He'll eventually join the Air Force Reserve, she said. Then, they'll be able to take their family back to Washington state where she can put her degrees to use. ''My goal is to get behavior analysis into the foster care systems,'' she said. ''I want to move back to Washington, open up a practice that serves foster children, and make money to support my kids.'' On Oct. 28, McKinnon met with Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper so she could share with him some of the challenges of staying employed as a military spouse. She said spouse employment is a top priority for Esper and others. 40 Years After Hostage Crisis, Iran Remains Hotbed of Terrorism [2019-11-04] WASHINGTON -- Forty years ago today, a crowd of college students broke into the housing complex at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, and took 66 Americans hostage, including 26 service members. Some of the hostages were released two weeks later, but the majority -- 52 in all -- were held for 444 days. They were released on Jan. 20, 1981. As part of U.S. efforts to free the hostages, eight U.S. service members were killed during a failed military operation called Operation Eagle Claw. The White House says the political climate in Iran hasn't changed much since then. "The Iranian regime continues to target innocent civilians for use as pawns in its failed foreign relations," according to a statement from the White House press secretary. "Until Iran changes this and its other hostile behavior, we will continue to impose crippling sanctions. "The Iranian regime has a choice," the statement continues. "Instead of being the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, it can put the Iranian people first. It can choose peace over hostage taking, assassinations, sabotage, maritime hijacking and attacks on global oil markets. The United States seeks peace, and we support the Iranian people. It is time for the Iranian regime to do the same." On Friday, the State Department released a statement saying the department looks forward to a day when the United States can safely send diplomats to Iran. "It's unfortunate that this anniversary serves as a reminder of the long history of malign behavior by the Iranian regime and the danger it has posed to the United States and the world over the past 40 years. The United States government continues to call on the Iranian regime to release all missing and currently detained U.S. citizens, including Robert Levinson, Siamak Namazi, Xiyue Wang and others." Among those killed on April 25, 1980 as part of Operation Eagle Claw were three Marines: Sgt. John D. Harvey, 21, of Roanoke, Virginia; Cpl. George N. Holmes, Jr., 22, of Pine Bluff, Arkansas; and Staff Sgt. Dewey L. Johnson, 32, of Jacksonville, North Carolina. Five service members from the Air Force were also killed in the rescue attempt. These service members include Capt. Richard L. Bakke, 34, of Long Beach, California; Capt. Harold L. Lewis, 35, of Mansfield, Connecticut; Tech. Sgt. Joel C. Mayo, 34, of Bonifay, Florida; Capt. Lynn D. McIntosh, 33, of Valdosta, Georgia; and Capt. Charles T. McMillan II, 28, of Corryton, Tennessee. U.S. Needs WWII-Like Momentum to Advance AI, Esper Says [2019-11-05] WASHINGTON -- To get where it needs to be with artificial intelligence, the United States is going to need government, academia and industry to pull together like it did during World War II so that the technology can advance as quickly as what's needed, Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper said. Speaking today during a conference hosted by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence in Washington, Esper said that during WWII, "titans of industry" had transformed Detroit into an "arsenal of democracy" to feed the U.S. war effort. Following the war, when the Soviet Union launched the satellite sputnik, the U.S. created the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and "took control of the space race," Esper said. "Mastering artificial intelligence will require similar vision, ambition and commitment," he said. "We need the full force of American intellect and ingenuity working in harmony across the public and private sectors. We need your leadership and vision to ensure we maintain a strategic edge." During the conference, Esper said China has set a goal for itself of being the world leader in AI by 2030. For instance, their efforts have helped them develop autonomous vehicles, Esper said. He said the People's Liberation Army is moving "aggressively to deploy them across many warfighting domains." At the same time, he said, China is also investing in low-cost, long-range autonomous and unmanned submarines, as well as exporting advanced military aerial drones. The U.S. military, he said, "will harness the potential of AI to create a force fit for our time. We believe there is tremendous opportunity to enhance a wide range of the department's capabilities from the back office to the front line, and we will do this while being recognized as the world leader in military ethics by developing principles for using AI in a lawful and ethical manner." Esper said he places development of artificial intelligence capabilities at the top of the list for technology the department needs, closely followed by directed energy weapons and hypersonics. Advances in AI, he said, have the potential to change the character of warfare far into the future. "Whichever nation harnesses AI first will have a decisive advantage on the battlefield for many, many years," he said. "We have to get there first." Syrian Democratic Forces Reap Benefit From Oil Money [2019-11-07] WASHINGTON -- Revenue from oil fields in Syria supports the Syrian Democratic Forces, not the United States, said a defense official. "The revenue from [oil fields] is not going to the U.S. [It] is going to the SDF," said Jonathan Rath Hoffman, assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, during a news conference today at the Pentagon. According to Navy Rear Adm. William D. Byrne Jr., the vice director of the Joint Staff, ISIS was in control of the oil infrastructure in Syria in 2015 and was producing 45,000 barrels a day -- worth about $1.5 million. Hoffman said ISIS used that money to fund operations not just in Syria and the region, but throughout Europe and the world. "And we want to prevent that from happening," he said. The U.S. military and partners in Syria now work "shoulder to shoulder" to keep ISIS forces from ever again having access to the Syrian oil infrastructure and the revenue it produces, Byrne said. Nevertheless, controlling the oil fields in Syria is not the U.S. mission in the country. "The mission is to defeat ISIS," Byrne said. "The securing of the oil fields is a subordinate task to that mission. And the purpose of that task is to deny ISIS the revenues from that oil infrastructure." Hoffman said ISIS is not eliminated, rather, it's weakened from what it once was. "The physical caliphate, the physical ownership and control of land, has been defeated," he said. "We've not said that ISIS as an ideology and ISIS as an insurgency has been eliminated." Now, he said, ISIS conducts insurgent operations in the country, but continues to look for opportunities to regain its strength. "One of the ways they would be able to grow that back is by obtaining access to revenue, including the oil fields." Hoffman said U.S. efforts to secure oil fields in Syria serve two purposes. The first is to keep ISIS from benefiting from the revenue the oil fields provide. The second, he said, is to provide Kurds in the area and the SDF with the funding they need to keep pressure on ISIS. "It's preventing ISIS from getting it," Hoffman said, while at the same time allowing the Kurds and the SDF to have control of it, as well. DOD Expects Significant Progress on Critical F-35 System [2019-11-13] WASHINGTON -- Nearly 460 F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter aircraft have been delivered to military organizations around the world -- including the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, as well as to a handful of partner nations. But a critical component of the F-35 program, the Autonomic Logistics Information System, or ALIS, has proven less stellar than the aircraft itself. Defense Department officials say that's going to change soon. The F-35 manufacturer bills ALIS as the "IT backbone" of the F-35 system. ALIS is meant to be involved in aircraft sustainment, maintenance, planning and support. For example, both operators and maintainers would use it for work orders and automatically ordering spare parts. The F-35 has a wide array of sensors that can upload data into ALIS after it lands. The system can analyze how the jet performed and identify parts that might be wearing out -- and then order them. "Sadly, as presently constituted, ALIS is not delivering the capabilities the warfighter needs," Ellen M. Lord, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said today during a joint hearing of two House Armed Services Committee subcommittees. "The problems with ALIS are ones we can and must solve." Lord told lawmakers the Defense Department has a plan to make ALIS work the way it was intended. DOD has assigned ALIS issues to specific individuals with dates that they need to meet, she said. "What we are doing is re-architecting ALIS to make sure it meets the needs of the warfighter while making good use of taxpayer dollars, and we are working on a detailed plan right now as to when that capability will be delivered," Lord said. Air Force Lt. Gen. Eric T. Fick, the F-35 program executive officer, said the version of ALIS in the field now is 3.1.1.1, but that version 3.5 is being fielded now. "That will bring about 300 stability fixes to that baseline functionality to allow it to be a better system for the users," he said. Fick said he expects "significant progress" on ALIS by fall of 2020, when existing "squadron operational units" -- the individual ALIS systems used by units that operate the F-35 -- might be shut down in favor of a new version. Ongoing efforts by the Air Force, aircraft manufacturer Lockheed Martin, and DOD will coalesce into a "single new version of ALIS marching forward that leverages an underlying data architecture that's expandable with the expanding fleet in ways that the current ALIS is not," Fick said. DOD Mission Big Draw for Cyber Defense Job Applicants [2019-11-14] WASHINGTON -- Pay matters, but sometimes the mission is itself a big draw. That's the case for at least some who are hired on to do cyber protection work within the Defense Department, the deputy chief information officer for cybersecurity and chief information security officer said today in Washington. Jack Wilmer said industry can pay more for cyber professionals than can the government. "The interesting thing we have, and what I've found when I talk to most of the folks in our organizations across DOD, is that obviously what brings people to the DOD is not going to be the salary -- but it is that mission. It's people that like a challenge, that want to be able to go up against some of the world's best cyber actors and want to be able to have an opportunity to try to defend against those attacks, and contribute to our other missions as well," he said. The DOD mission itself, Wilmer said, for those who join in uniform and for those who become involved as a civilian, "is much more compelling than anything we can do salarywise." Speaking during a forum on the federal workforce, Wilmer discussed challenges to recruiting and retaining talent for the cyber mission within DOD. He said one area the department has made great strides in is recruiting. The DOD Cyber Excepted Service Personnel System, he said, has allowed the department to reach out and recruit some of the best and brightest. The authorities granted by Cyber Excepted Service Personnel System have been rolled out already to agencies like U.S. Cyber Command, the Defense Information Systems Agency, and most recently the Navy and the Marine Corps this summer. One benefit is shortening the amount of time it takes to bring a new hire into federal service. "They were able to take the average time to hire from 111 days down to about 44," he said. "Anything that we can do to help shrink that down is going to increase the likelihood that people will actually join our organization. That's a huge win in terms of being able to leverage those authorities to be able to bring people in faster, that frankly, we run into fewer cases where a person accepts a job initially, but because it takes so long to actually bring them on board they end up finding another opportunity before they can join our organization." Another avenue for bringing in new talent is retraining existing federal personnel, Wilmer said. The department has some 70,000 cyber professionals, but he said there are thousands of positions open that need to be filled. Looking inward -- even at those who aren't currently doing cyber work, is an option. Wilmer pointed to the federal CIO Council's efforts to bring existing federal employees into the cyber workforce. The "Federal Cybersecurity Reskilling Academy" provided two cohorts of federal employees with hands-on training in cybersecurity. "We've already sent a number of DOD people through that program and I'm really excited to see where that program can take us," Wilmer said. "People compete for it. They basically apply with their background, take some basic skills tests and those that seem like cyber might be a good fit for them are able to then apply for some of the new opportunities." Diversity in hiring also matters for the department, Wilmer said. Given the complexity and variety of what adversaries are doing in terms of their attacks, he said, a good defense is implemented by a diverse defenses force. "When you look at what our adversaries are actually doing, the approaches they are taking, they really do have some very clever and creative things they are doing," Wilmer said. "If we only have a set of people that all think kind of the same way and were taught and grown up the same way, we're probably not going to be able to come up with the right set of things the adversary might try to use against us. So diversity in terms of recruiting is really important for us." Wilmer said bringing more women into the federal cyber workforce, on both the military and civilian side is important. "But diversity as a whole I think is a really important aspect." New Book of WWII Photos Highlights Significance of Army Signal Corps [2019-11-16] WASHINGTON -- A new book featuring many previously unseen images from World War II reveals just how important to the war effort were the photographers of the Army Signal Corps, and how significant to history the collection of Signal Corps images stored at the National Archives is. "The Army Signal Corps photographic collection is one of the largest in the National Archives still picture branch," said David Ferriero, the archivist of the United States. "The roughly one million images covering World War I through 1981 chronicle military activities during war and peace on the front line and on the home front." Ferriero spoke during a presentation Nov. 14 in Washington that was co-hosted by the National Archives and the U.S. Army Center of Military History. During the event, two of the three authors of "Aftershock: The Human Toll of War," discussed how they chose images for the new book and how the work of Army Signal Corps photographers and the availability of those images in the National Archives made it possible. Lee Reynolds, with the U.S. Army Center of Military History, explained the impact of Signal Corp photographers on U.S. history. "These Signal Corps photo teams, carrying what was then state-of-the-art equipment, would go out into combat operations, often by themselves, and cover the events where civilian journalists either wouldn't go, or couldn't go," Reynolds said. "The results ... captured on film through their lenses, were some of the most iconic pictures of World War II," he said. "These images [were] not just used by the U.S. Army, but they could be seen in newspapers, magazines and films throughout the United States and the world." Richard Cahan, one of the three authors of "Aftershock," explained that the new book focuses on imagery taken in World War II during 1945 -- the last year of the war. "We decided to concentrate on 1945 because many of the still photos and films that Signal Corps photographers took of '43 and '44, the action photos that we are all aware of -- they've been shown [already] in a lot of books," Cahan said. Cahen also explained why he and fellow book authors Mark Jacob and Michael Williams chose to focus on imagery from the Army Signal Corps. "The Army was on all continents across the world during World War II and they were on the ground in World War II," he said. "So even though the Navy and the Marines and the Coast Guard produced great photographs, we thought there was continuity among Army photographs and Signal Corps photographs." Cahen said he and fellow authors chose historically important images as well as those photos that were artistically significant. "We wanted to show truly the human toll of war but we also look a lot for humanity." The book also demonstrates the efforts and challenges faced by the photographers of the Army Signal Corps, he said. "This is a book about men ... in World War II, who went to work with cameras instead of guns," he said. "The truth of it was that they were provided a sidearm, but as every photographer said there was no way to shoot pictures and shoot guns at the same time -- they all chose cameras." "They went through months of training to become photographers along with becoming soldiers," Cahen continued. "I believe that they left an incredible gift to future generations, and our generation right now, by the photographs that they took of the war, because they teach us -- and the ... subtitle of the book is 'The human toll of war.' They teach us exactly that. And that is why their photographs are important." DOD Official: Iran's Military Strength Relies Partly on Nonstate Actors [2019-11-19] WASHINGTON -- Iran relies in part on terrorist organizations, proxy groups and militant partners to protect its interests and to further its agenda of expanding influence in the Middle East, a defense official said. Christian Saunders, a senior Defense Intelligence Agency analyst for Iran, spoke to Pentagon reporters today ahead of the release of the new report titled "Iran Military Power" -- the third in a series that also includes China and Russia. "As Tehran expands its capabilities and role as both an unconventional and conventional threat in the Middle East, it is more important than ever that we understand Iran's military power and the threat it poses to our interests, our allies and our security," Saunders said. The use of unconventional capabilities, including the use of partners and proxies, is one of three core capabilities the Iranian regime uses to ensure its own survival and secure a more dominant position in the region, Saunders said. "The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods Force, Iran's primary tool for unconventional operations, maintains a wide network of nonstate partners, proxies and affiliates throughout the region," Saunders said. To advance their agenda, Iran, he said, provides financial, political and material support, as well as training, to groups that include Hezbollah, Iraqi Shia militias, the Houthis, some Palestinian groups, the Taliban and Bahraini Shia militants. Ballistic missiles also play a substantial role in the Iranian military effort. Iran has the largest cache of ballistic missiles in the Middle East, Saunders said. With an antiquated military, he said, missiles play a large role in the Iranian military effort. "Iran has embraced ballistic missiles as a long-range strike capability to dissuade its adversaries from attacking Iran," he said, adding that Iran's arsenal includes short, medium and long-range ballistic missiles that can strike targets throughout the region as far as 2,000 kilometers away. Saunders said he expects Iran will focus now on increasing the number of more accurate and lethal ballistic missiles, as well as fielding land-attack cruise missiles. Its space launch vehicle program, he said, might also serve as a test bed for the development of intercontinental ballistic missile technology. Iran is strategically positioned along the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz and maintains naval forces capable of threatening navigation in those strategically important waterways, Saunders said. "Iran's naval capabilities emphasize an anti-access, area denial strategy," Saunders aid. "Iran's layered maritime capabilities emphasize asymmetric tactics using numerous platforms and weapons intended to overwhelm an adversary's naval force." Those capabilities include ship- and shore-launched anti-ship cruise missiles, small boats, naval mines, submarines, unmanned aerial vehicle, anti-ship ballistic missiles and air defenses, he said. Saunders said Iran's continued use of cyber capabilities as a safe, low-cost method of collecting intelligence is a concern to the U.S. -- and it's something they continue to improve on. He also said that, while Iran has no nuclear weapons, it continues to ignore commitments it made as part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Sanders said in July, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed Iran had exceeded limits it agreed to as part of the joint plan of action. Additionally, he said that while now Iran is prohibited from buying most kinds of weapons from foreign powers due to a United Nations security resolution, that limit will expire in October. That expiration provides Tehran with an opportunity to acquire some advanced capabilities that have been beyond its reach for decades, Saunders said. Military Services Strengthen, Modernize Industrial Base [2019-11-21] WASHINGTON -- The military services are making progress on strengthening and modernizing their organic industrial base, service officials said. Lt. Gen. Duane A. Gamble, Army deputy chief of staff for logistics, said the organic industrial base in important to strategic readiness. "The material readiness it enables is critical to ensuring our Army can provide the responsiveness, the depth and the capability demanded of us in the National Defense Strategy." Gamble was among the representatives of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps who appeared Thursday before the House Armed Services Committee's subcommittee on readiness to discuss the modernization of the organic industrial base. The industrial base includes the infrastructure and facilities owned by the government to maintain and refurbish military hardware, including aircraft, tanks and ships. Gamble told lawmakers the skilled workforce at its facilities is the backbone of that industrial base and attracting the best talent is critical. He said Congress has helped that effort through legislation that grants authority to do direct hires into the workforce. That authority helped the Army process 3,560 personnel actions during 2019, and more than 4,800 since 2017, he said. "It's helped us reduce our hiring time from 114 days to 85 days, which allows our [organic industrial base] to remain competitive with industry employers seeking the same critical skills," he said. "It's a competition for talent." Gamble also said the Army has an infrastructure master plan to help it maintain the appropriate level of readiness with an aging organic industrial base, more than half of which was built before 1945. "That plan will carry us over the next 20 years," he said. "This plan is a forward-looking and forward-thinking solution that will keep our OIB, facilities and infrastructure postured and programmed to sustain Army readiness." Representatives from both the Navy's Sea and Air Systems Commands also testified about the status of the Navy's organic industrial base. Vice Adm. Thomas Moore, commander of the Naval Sea Systems Command, said four shipyards have seen a 25% increase in planned work since 2010. To match that growth, the Navy has increased the size of the public yards by more than 9,000 people: from 27,368 in 2010, to 36,696 in 2018, he said. The Navy achieved that growth about a year sooner than planned, which has allowed backlogs to be eliminated earlier than expected. One drawback of that expansion is that the workforce is fairly new -- about half of workers have been on the job less than five years. Because of that, the Navy has responded with changes in training. "The shipyards have transformed how they train new employees through learning centers that use both virtual learning tools and hands-on work," Moore said, which has cut in half the time it takes to make a productive worker. Moore also said the Navy is now in the second year of a 20-year, $21 billion shipyard infrastructure optimization plan that will support current and future ships. "The Navy fully understands that on-time delivery of ships and submarines ... is a national security imperative," Moore said. "The department has taken a holistic approach to ensure both our public and private yards have the information, people and equipment needed to maintain the world's greatest Navy." In addition to ships and boats, the naval aircraft also take off from carriers. Vice Adm. Dean G. Peters, commander of the Naval Air Systems Command, discussed successes in efforts to modernize the organic industrial base that keeps Navy aircraft ready. Peters said improvements can be seen in the 80% mission-capable rates for F/A-18 Hornets, F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, and EA-18G Growler aircraft. He said the Navy surged to 372 mission-capable Super Hornet aircraft on Sept. 30, 2019, after years of having an average of 250 to 260 mission-capable aircraft. "Our aircraft depot lines and component repair lines are now delivering more effective and reliable products with reduced turnaround times and significant improvements in quality," Peters said. Such depots now do much more than completing repairs and then sending them back to the fleet, he said. Now, the depots return fully restored aircraft to promptly support squadron flight schedules, he said. The first of the new KC-46 Pegasus refueling aircraft, meant to replace aging KC-135 Stratotankers, was delivered to the Air Force in January of this year. Lt. Gen. Donald E. Kirkland, commander of the Air Force Sustainment Center, told lawmakers that just last month the service opened the first hanger of a depot campus dedicated to the KC-46 at Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma. Kirkland also said the Air Force is continuing to expand support of the F-35 Lightning II aircraft at both the Ogden Air Logistics Complex in Utah and at Warner-Robbins AFB, Georgia. The Air Force is also making preparations for depot support to the B-21 Raider aircraft, Kirkland said. The general told lawmakers that current funding is not enough to achieve and maintain the depot capacity that is needed to keep the Air Force's fleet ready. "Over the next 20 years, we will need resources above current thresholds to modernize across four major dimensions of our industrial base," he said. Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Shrader, commander of the Marine Corps Logistics Command, said the Marine Corps has a plan to repair, repurpose, consolidate and construct new facilities within its organic industrial base. "We are pursuing innovative and state-of-the-art technologies, such as robotics on our main production lines and sub-shops, also 3D printing and additive manufacturing to augment the supply chain and extend our operational reach," he said. Shrader also said that the Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, Georgia, will be one of the first Defense Department locations to get 5G to better enable them maintain Marine Corps gear. "Our commandant's vision for the Marine Corps is to be manned, trained and equipped as the world's premiere naval expeditionary force in readiness, forward postured with the Navy's fleets to deter conflict and respond to crisis and to be globally recognized as an elite corps of Marines of exceptional talent," Shrader said. "A ready and modern organic industrial base plays a key role in achieving the commandant's vision." Esper Asks SEALs, Navy to Focus on Standards, Ethics [2019-11-25] WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper said he wants the Navy and the SEALs to focus now on professionalism and ethics following the resignation of Richard V. Spencer as Navy secretary. "I want the SEALs and the Navy to move beyond this now and get fully focused on their warfighting mission, and I also want them focused on resetting their professional standards, ethics and conduct," Esper said Monday at the Pentagon. "These two issues are related and I know the service has plans to address this head-on." Esper said he asked for Spencer's resignation because he had lost trust and confidence in Spencer, citing several rules of conduct for defense leaders that he said Spencer had violated. Among those rules is a respect for the chain of command, supporting an agreed-upon decision in both public and private, being willing to resign if you don't like an agreed-upon position, and refraining from discussing "sensitive internal deliberations." "Secretary Spencer broke these rules and, thus, lost my trust and confidence," Esper said. The resignation came after Esper learned the Navy secretary had been working on a proposal different from one Pentagon leaders previously agreed upon regarding Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL. Esper said he learned of that deal after meeting Saturday with President Donald J. Trump at the White House. "We learned that several days prior, Secretary Spencer had proposed a deal, whereby, if the president allowed the Navy to handle the case, he would guarantee that Eddie Gallagher would be restored to rank, allowed to retain his Trident, and permitted to retire," Esper said. "This proposal was completely contrary to what we agreed to, and contrary to Secretary Spencer's public position." He and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley had been "completely caught off guard by this information, and realized that it had undermined everything we had been discussing with the president," Esper said. On Sunday, Esper contacted Spencer to ask for his resignation. "He took it in stride and said he would have a letter to me in 30 minutes, and he did," Esper said. Currently, Thomas B. Modly, the undersecretary of the Navy, is serving as the acting secretary. Esper said both Modly and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday "are capable leaders and I am confident in their ability to lead the Navy." Esper said the president told him on Sunday that Gallagher will keep his Trident. He is expected to retire at the end of the month. Task Force Curbs Technology Theft to Keep Joint Force Strong [2019-11-26] WASHINGTON -- The officer who leads the Defense Department's efforts to protect critical U.S. technology affirms that foreign nations steal billions per year in technology from the United States. But the negative effect this theft has on the military's capabilities is what concerns Air Force Maj. Gen. Thomas E. Murphy most. "The consequence is the erosion of the lethality of the joint force," said Murphy, director of the Defense Department's Protecting Critical Technology Task Force. "You cannot put a price on that." The task force's beginnings date back about four years, when a nation stole technology after hacking into a company's computer network, Murphy said. Which nation and what technology aren't relevant -- what is relevant is that DOD didn't find out about the loss for over a year, he said. The revelation that technology had been taken led to an investigation of how it happened, what the effects would be and how such a loss might be prevented in the future, Murphy said. "We gave a series of recommendations, and a series of mitigation activities based on what we believe to have been stolen," he said. One recommendation based on the yearlong investigation was to stand up department-level oversight of the exfiltration by adversaries of DOD-controlled unclassified information from the defense industrial base networks, the general said. Later, he added, then-Defense Secretary James N. Mattis selected him to lead a new task force to focus on keeping the DOD and services from losing more technology and information to adversaries. "The direction I was given was pretty clear: be bold, break glass, don't accept the status quo," he said. That's not how the Pentagon typically operates, Murphy said. "We tend to be more measured," he said. "But I have a time-limited task force. I don't have time to go slow and steady. And neither does our nation when it comes to losing our critical technology to China." Though the Protecting Critical Technology Task Force is small, the general said, he doesn't need a large group to accomplish its goals over its expected two-to-three-year lifespan. The task force operates along four lines of effort: -- Protecting the defense industrial base; -- Protecting the research and development enterprise, which includes academia, labs and universities; -- Using existing authorities such as export controls and the authority of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States through the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018 to keep U.S. technology from being purchased by adversaries; and -- Operationally responding. One of the task force's most critical jobs is to identify exactly what technology is most important to protect -- what adversaries might want most and what would be most devastating if it were lost and to ensure those priorities are protected accordingly Murphy said. "If you treat everything as if it's most important, you protect nothing very well," he said. "You have to make those tough choices." To help with that, he said, his task force is developing a methodology to prioritize the most important technologies, a task mandated by the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. "Most importantly, we are going to mandate protection measures against those programs and technologies based on the criticality; that is, where they are in the priority and tier," he said, adding that the final list of critical technologies that must be protected, and the level of importance placed on each will be classified. Murphy said some mistakenly believe the Protecting Critical Technology Task Force is only about cyber activities, but it's not. "We are concerned with all means by which a competitor might get our technology, our information or our data," he explained. U.S. technology can fall into an adversary's hands in many ways, Murphy said -- some that are legal, and some that are not. Hacking, or network infiltration, is just one example of how U.S. technology can be taken, Murphy said. For example, technology is also transferred when a foreign company buys an American company and gets all the technology the American company owns, he noted, including defense capabilities. Another key avenue for loss is through the faculty members and students selected by universities to conduct DOD-funded research. Increasingly, the Department is finding that some of these faculty members and students, have undisclosed ties to a foreign government that is incentivizing them to transfer that know-how or technology out of the U.S. to a strategic competitors military. Many times, Murphy said, DOD has no way of knowing who those researchers are. We need to increase awareness of the problem and create a culture in which securing technology is as ingrained as buckling a seat belt in a car. Another step the task for is taking is elevating the importance of security in the requirements and the acquisition processes, ensuring it is considered alongside cost, schedule and performance. "The Pentagon needs a vote as to whether or not a particular acquisition or merger has national security implications," he said. "That's what we do. We need to accelerate that. These things are happening every day." In addition, program security should be part of the criteria for evaluating program managers, the general said, and defense contractors' ability to keep details about what they are working on out of adversaries' hands must also be considered. That's not currently the case, he said. "I'm not sure that today a company's security, or lack thereof, actually has any effect as to whether or not we do business with that company," he added. "That needs to change." High cybersecurity standards also are important, Murphy said. Though they're not perfect, he acknowledged, larger defense contractors tend to have stronger cybersecurity measures. "Smaller companies have a harder time and oftentimes can't afford the cybersecurity that some of the bigger companies do," he said. To address that, the task force has developed a series of pilot programs to help the smaller companies affordably improve their cybersecurity. Meanwhile, the general said, larger companies must know how their subcontractors operate, how secure their networks are and who their employees are. "Supply chain understanding is something that the task force is going to take on in a big way in its second year," Murphy said. "I want to have total situational awareness and understanding of all the companies in our supply chains." Through its new Defense Industrial Base Cybersecurity Assessment Center, the Defense Contract Management Agency has begun evaluating the cybersecurity posture of some of the larger defense contractors, Murphy said. But that effort can't be applied to every situation, he acknowledged. "It's not scalable for a department organization to be assessing the entire industrial base," he said. With that in mind, DOD's Acquisition and Sustainment Office came up with the "cybersecurity maturity model certification" concept, through which a third party would evaluate cybersecurity capabilities of large and small companies and rate them based on their performance. That rating would need to be at a certain level based on the criticality of the program for the company to be competitive for the associated contract. Bottom line, technology theft puts the United States at a disadvantage in its strategic competition with China and Russia, the general said. "In most competitions, there's a winner and a loser," he said. "I know what end we want to come out on. We are in a fight every day with our strategic competitors on our university campuses, in our businesses, in cyberspace. And the prize is military technological advantage. We need everyone in this business to smarten up and to have a shared belief of the threat, and a sense of urgency to correct the path that we are currently on." Air Force Space Command Works to Counter Adversary Exploits [2019-12-04] WASHINGTON -- From GPS location services to communications, the United States' dependence on space capabilities is well documented, the vice commander of Air Force Space Command said. The command is focused now on finding ways to ensure the nation's continued access to space and to prevent adversaries from disrupting it. Chief among those efforts is recognizing threats posed by adversaries to current capabilities and finding ways to prevent them from being exploited, in particular, by hardening existing systems against threats, Air Force Lt. Gen. David D. Thompson said. "We are building in capabilities to protect and defend the space systems that we have today on orbit and we expect to have on orbit in the near future," Thompson said yesterday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce-sponsored 2nd annual space summit in Washington. "A large majority of them have not been designed to operate in conflict, to operate under threat. But we are very quickly adapting them to be able to be defended, to provide capabilities to defend them and to develop tactics, techniques and procedures under which to defend them," he said. Thompson also said that the United States is now, for the first time, doing in space something that it has done for decades -- centuries even -- on land, on the sea and in the air: partnering with allies. For a long time, Thompson said, the U.S. was going it alone in space. "We relied on nobody else," during the Cold War. He said that's no longer true. "We are rapidly moving to a new approach ... a coalition of the willing, a coalition for the like-minded, a coalition that brings the capabilities that they need and we need to various scenarios and presents complicated situations to any potential adversary." Those partnerships aren't just with militaries, but also with civil agencies like NASA and with commercial industry, he said. Part of that partnering with commercial industry is in itself a specific effort the command is exploiting to keep abreast of adversaries, Thompson said. He said it's critical for the command to pay attention to what industry is doing in order to have the best, most game-changing technology possible. That includes new manufacturing techniques, the reusability of space systems and the proliferation of low Earth orbit satellite constellations, Thompson said. "It is, in fact, a whole host of technologies and ideas, but first and foremost, it's a matter of understanding what's happening in the commercial sector today," he said. "It's understanding the investments that are made, understanding the capabilities they intend to provide and determining how we can adapt and apply and partner with parts of the commercial sector for the support of civil society, public safety, the commercial sector, but in our case especially, national security." Developing a "warrior culture" within the Space Force is also part of the effort that Thompson said the command is undertaking. That includes how Air Force Space Command conducts exercises, training, operational planning and wargaming. "We are now building those exact same things into the training programs, the exercise programs, the operational programs for our space operators," he said. DOD Takes Public Health Approach to Suicides [2019-12-05] WASHINGTON -- In September, the Defense Department released a first-of-its-kind report on suicides in the U.S. military. Among other things, the report reveals that active duty suicides have risen over the past five years. For the National Guard, suicides are higher than those of comparable communities within the civilian population. ''We continue to observe heightened risk for our youngest service members and our National Guard members,'' said Karin A. Orvis, Defense Suicide Prevention Office director during a hearing yesterday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, subcommittee on personnel. The department is concerned about suicide rates across the entire military, Orvis said, adding that suicide numbers ''are not going in the desired direction. The loss of every life is heartbreaking and each one has a deeply personal story.'' Orvis told lawmakers DOD is taking a ''public health approach'' to suicide prevention and laid out several initiatives the department is taking to curb suicides in the military. Those initiatives involve: -- Strengthening economic support -- Strengthening access and delivery of suicide care -- Creating protective environments -- Promoting connectedness -- Teaching coping and problem solving skills -- Identifying and supporting people at risk -- Lessening harms and preventing future risks An example of ''identifying and supporting people at risk,'' she said, involves teaching young service members to better see who among them might be at risk for suicide. ''We will be teaching young service members how to recognize and respond to suicide red flags on social media to help others who may be showing warning signs,'' she said. Supporting the ''strengthening access and delivery of suicide care'' initiative, she said, is a partnership with Veterans Affairs. ''We're partnering with the VA to increase National Guard members' accessibility to mental health care via mobile vet centers during drill weekends,'' she said. Related Video: Veterans Affairs/DOD Suicide Prevention Conference The Defense Department has also launched initiatives to reduce the stigma associated with seeking mental healthcare. An example there is a pilot training program meant to address concerns service members might have about seeking mental health care, such as those involving their career, security clearances, loss of privacy and confidentiality. Orvis said the act of suicide can often be impulsive, and that research shows there can be as little as ten minutes between contemplating suicide and acting on those thoughts. Putting time and distance between an individual and a lethal means may save a life. To ''create protective environments,'' she said, DOD is creating ''a communications campaign to promote social norms for safe storage of firearms and medication to ensure family safety.'' Regarding ''teaching coping and problem solving skills,'' Orvis said DOD is ''piloting an interactive education program to teach foundational skills early in a member's career to help with everyday life stressors.'' Those skills include such things as rational thinking, emotion regulation and problem solving. ''With each death, we know there are families and often children with shattered lives,'' Orvis said. ''The DOD has the responsibility of supporting and protecting those who protect our country. And it's imperative that we do everything possible to prevent suicide in our military community.'' No Plans to Leave Iraq, Defense Official Says [2019-12-05] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military presence in Iraq is predicated on permission to be there from the Iraqi government, and U.S. forces will remain so long as the Iraqi government agrees, the undersecretary of defense for policy said. "Our intention is to stay. Do we plan to change the posture of U.S. forces? Not at this time," said John C. Rood, who spoke yesterday during a Defense Writers Group meeting in Washington. "We are very clear that we are there with the permission of the Iraqi government," Rood said. "And that is a necessary condition for U.S. forces to be there." U.S. military initiatives in Iraq have been effective, he said. Those initiatives include helping Iraqi military forces build their capabilities, providing other types of assistance and also assisting with the conduct of the fight against ISIS. "ISIS at one time occupied and controlled large swaths of Iraqi territory," Rood said. "The fight against ISIS is not done. There are still a substantial number of ISIS fighters there. And the Iraqi government knows that and they really value -- and I heard this directly from them -- the partnership with U.S. forces, the partnership with the U.S. military in addressing that." Protests in Iraq, which kicked off in October, have been met in some cases with violence on the part of the Iraqi government, he said. This is something that Rood said the U.S. has addressed. "Obviously, the violence occurring in the protests and against the protestors is also something we persistently express concerns about, directly, and I did, to the Iraqi leadership," he said. "We've made no secret of the fact we'd like to see greater restraint exercised in terms of the use of violence there." Rood also said, however, he finds the tone of those protests to be noteworthy -- especially in the national identity being expressed by the Iraqi population. "There is an Iraqi identity that is evident in the protests and in the reaction to them throughout the country that is more pronounced, I think, than most Iraq observers have seen in recent months and years," he said. "[It's] an Iraqi identity and a willingness and a desire to be a state that stands on its own two feet to a greater extent, and a reaction against some of the negative Iranian influence, the influence of other countries trying to interfere in internal Iraqi activities." Time to Move Forward With Space Force, Air Force Secretary Says [2019-12-08] WASHINGTON -- A lack of understanding by Americans of the importance of space is hurting the effort to establish the Space Force, the secretary of the Air Force said yesterday. "Communication, navigation, information: everything is dependent upon space, but people don't recognize that," Barbara A. Barrett said at the Ronald Reagan National Defense Forum, in Simi Valley, California. "There isn't a constituency for space -- even though almost everyone uses space before their first cup of coffee in the morning." The Space Force is expected to be a separate service under the Department of the Air Force. Barrett said she believes most Americans remain largely unaware of the extent to which they depend on space in their daily lives. Water and power systems, for instance, depend on space technology, as do things such as ATMs and gas pumps. "I'll bet fewer than 10% of the American public recognizes that since 2011, the only way American astronauts can get to our $110 billion investment, 225 miles up at the International Space Station ... is by buying a seat from the Russians," Barrett said. "We are dependent upon others for much of our space access. And that's just not the position that America should be in or want to be in," she said. For decades, Barrett said, the U.S. has led the way in space. Though it is still a leader, losing that edge has become a real risk, she said. And the secretary said the nature of the space environment has changed, making the U.S. vulnerable. "Our capability in space was predominantly built at a time when we thought space was a benign environment," Barrett said. "In 2007, the Chinese demonstrated their ability to take satellites -- their own satellite in that case -- out of the skies," she said. "So we know we are now vulnerable. So the assets upon which we depend are now vulnerable." The U.S., Barrett said, has more to lose than any other nation from malicious activity in space. This makes a space force even more critical. "Our way of life is more dependent upon space than any other nation," she said. "It is important for America to get on the case of space. And we have got to be able to deter derogatory action in space, and if deterrence doesn't work, we need to be prepared to be something other than a victim with our space assets. So where we are is ahead, but that lead is shrinking, and our vulnerability and our dependence is greater than anyone else. It is time for us to move forward with a space force." A Dual-Purpose Mission Barrett said the new Space Force would be responsible for defending assets in space -- to protect defense and commerce systems already there, for instance -- but also responsible for creating and using space assets to enable forces on Earth. "We have to be able to defend what we have there that we count on," she said. "We need to build, put things in space that can themselves be defended. We need to then be able to use space as an enabler for our war fighters in other domains. So we need to be able to have free access to space for ourselves and others -- benevolent others." While the Air Force became an independent service in 1947, its lineage traces directly back to the Army's Aeronautical Division, which was established in 1907. In a similar fashion, the Space Force is expected to be largely carved out of the Air Force. It's been more than 100 years since the United States military has created a new service in the way it now hopes to build the Space Force. "This will be a ... talent-driven, technologically-based entity," Barrett said. "We'll get a lot of help and a lot of input on how to do it. But we're putting the A-team on it and we're working to build the very best system. There will be a lot of contested elements as we go through the process. But I think what you can rely upon is that there are people looking at this that are doing it with a lot of thought and a lot of attention." DOD Will Help Small Companies Meet Cybersecurity Requirements [2019-12-08] WASHINGTON -- As the Defense Department moves forward in implementation of its cybersecurity maturity model certification, small suppliers to the department won't be left behind, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment said yesterday. "The cybersecurity maturity model certification is generically what ISO standards are for quality," Ellen M. Lord said at the Ronald Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California. "Right now we know that we have incredible vulnerabilities due to cyber threats. We really are at a cyberwar to some extent. So it is not practicable to not have some level of standards that have to be met." When it comes to working on defense contracts, she said, cybersecurity standards are non-negotiable and can't be traded as part of contract negotiation, as are things like cost, quality or schedule. "We have rolled out a five-tier set of standards," Lord said. "The challenge is that we know our most vulnerable links are not the first, second or third tier in the supply chain. It's four, five, six, and seven." Those lower tiers in a supply chain -- typically smaller companies that are just one of many providing products or services as part of a larger contract -- might not be able to afford to meet the department's increasingly demanding cybersecurity requirements. "So what we look to is our primes to help those small companies," she said, referring to the primary company on a contract. "We also look at the department as having resources to help bring those companies into compliance." Lord said the department has been working closely with industry associations, and holding listening sessions to understand the challenges small companies might have coming into compliance. "We understand there is a challenge and we don't want to lose those small companies," she said. "We actually have a couple of very innovative concepts that have just recently been put out to us about how to deal with this in terms of broader certifications that are easier for small companies. So I think in the next three months you'll hear more about that." The Defense Department, through CMMC, is looking to ensure that every company that works on a contract -- no matter the size of their contribution -- meets at least a basic level of cybersecurity that fulfills the security requirements of the contract. While companies aren't all now able to meet those requirements, Lord said the department won't leave them behind. "Cybersecurity is critical," Lord said. "We understand the challenge to small companies. We are not going to put small companies out of business. We need them. We will find innovative ways to help make them cyber secure with the help of our large primes as well." Cybersecurity Requirements Likely for Defense Contracts by June 2020 [2019-12-10] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department expects that by June 2020, industry will see cybersecurity requirements included as part of new requests for information, which typically serve as one of the first steps in the awarding of new defense contracts. Ellen M. Lord, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said the new cybersecurity maturity model certification program is a critical part of ensuring that companies hoping to do business with the department meet important cybersecurity requirements. "The cybersecurity maturity model certification, or CMMC program, establishes security as the foundation to acquisition and combines the various cybersecurity standards into one unified standard to secure the DOD supply chain," Lord said. She said the program will establish five levels of certification tailored to the criticality of a system or subsystem that a contractor might hope to do work on. The CMMC framework was developed by working with the defense industry, leadership on Capitol Hill and engagement with the public. "These levels will measure technical capabilities and process maturity," Lord said. "The CMMC framework will be made fully available in January 2020." The program's concept is designed to ensure that any business doing work for the government can demonstrate that their computer networks and cybersecurity practices are up to the task of defending against intrusions by adversaries who want access to information about government contracts and weapons systems development. "Cybersecurity is a threat for the DOD and for all of government, as well as critical U.S. business sectors, such as banking and healthcare," Lord said. "We know the adversary is at cyberwar with us every day. So, this is a U.S. economic security issue, as well as a U.S. security issue. When we look at cybersecurity standards, I believe it is absolutely critical to be crystal clear as to what expectations [and] measurements are, what the metrics are and how we will basically audit against those." The government itself won't audit potential contractors for compliance with the program's standards. Instead, a third party will perform those audits. Lord said DOD is working with multiple companies that are interested in performing that work, and she said she expects a decision by January. Lord said DOD expects some challenges for small businesses to meet the program's requirements. DOD is aware of industry's concerns, and efforts are being made to alleviate some of those concerns, she said. "We know that this can be a burden to small companies, particularly, and small companies is where the preponderance of our innovation comes from," Lord said. "So, we have been working with the primes, with the industry associations, with the mid-tiers, with the small companies on how we can most effectively roll this out so it doesn't cause an enormous cost penalty for the industrial base." Making a Difference Fuels Retention in Space, Cyber Commands [2019-12-10] WASHINGTON -- More than anything, making a difference and staying on mission are the keys to retention in U.S. Space Command and U.S. Cyber Command, the senior enlisted leaders for those two organizations said. "Retention is a challenge that we face in Cyber Command and with our cyber workforce," Marine Corps Master Gunnery Sgt. Scott H. Stalker, the senior enlisted leader for Cybercom, said during a briefing yesterday at the Pentagon. "What we've found is there are a lot of factors to keeping that talent in and keeping them on the mission." One way Cybercom retains talent is that the military services offer certain bonuses, up to $90,000 in some cases, to those qualified, Stalker said. Some offer special duty assignment pay as well, up to $1,500 a month in some cases, he added. "But what we found is, with all of that, you are going to keep in manpower, but not necessarily talent," he said. "So we have go to look at our high-end talent, our top 25%. What are the things that keep them in? And more often when I talk to them, they want to have stability. They want to do something that is important and hard." Stalker said there's no shortage of hard, challenging work at Cybercom and the National Security Agency, both at Fort Meade, Maryland. "So we really focus on the job that they have to do -- not so much 'Here's more money, we'll keep you in,'" he said. "We want them to know that what they are doing is relevant. ... When it comes to targets like China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and violent extremist organizations, on a daily basis they are employed. They are working hard. That's what they want to be doing. They want to be on mission doing their job. I'd say that's probably the same in most domains. They want to do the job they came in for." Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Roger A. Towberman, the senior enlisted leader for Spacecom, said the command's work is so exciting that he's not really concerned about retention of the force -- or even about recruitment. "From a space perspective, there's never been a better time to be in this business," he said. "Getting people excited about space isn't one of our current challenges. People are really excited. They are asking all the time. They want in. They want to be a part of it. And so I am not too concerned with retention, certainly not in the short term. There is just so much work to do, and it's such an exciting business to be in right now. We've got lots of folks ready to step up and help us out." Towberman said he sees first hand the new talent that's coming through the door -- and he's impressed with what America has to offer. "What's really interesting is [that] the raw material we're getting from America has never been more incredible," he said. "The digital natives that are coming into the military today are exactly the warfighters we need for the future. And it's more about figuring out how to unleash the talent and capability that's within them than it is kind of teaching them things." Army Command Sgt. Maj. John Wayne Troxell, the senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the young Americans coming into careers in space and cyber have other options, but the military provides something else that keeps them interested. "I will tell you most of these high-end warriors like cyber and space, ... they want to make sure that what they are doing is having an impact," he said. "That they belong to a team that is cohesive, and they know that they are valued members of that team, and finally that their families are being taken care of. They are at a place they want to serve, and they are comfortable doing it." "So more and more," he continued, "as we move forward and we look at these critical skills we have to be in the talent management business, as opposed to potentially a personnel management business." U.S. Will Withdraw From Syria When Local Forces Can Keep ISIS in Check [2019-12-11] WASHINGTON -- U.S. forces in Syria will leave when local forces are capable of keeping ISIS in check on their own, Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper said. "In short, the mission remains the enduring defeat of ISIS," Esper told the House Armed Services Committee today during a hearing on U.S. policy in Syria and the broader region. U.S. forces in Syria are working in partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces, he noted. "The SDF has been a great partner in the sense of providing very capable ground forces," Esper told the panel. "What we provide for them are the enablers -- principally, the air support and intelligence, things like that -- that help us defeat ISIS as we see ISIS pops up." U.S. forces are fighting ISIS from Africa into Afghanistan, Esper said. "The metric we have set out for this in terms of when we could consider redeploying ... would be when we feel confident that local security and police forces are capable of handling any type of resurgence ... of ISIS," he added. Esper told lawmakers the United States already has had success in defeating ISIS, including the destruction of the physical caliphate, the liberation of 7.7 million people who had been living under the caliphate's rule, and a series of successful operations that resulted in the deaths of ISIS's leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi and a top deputy. "The Department of Defense remains committed to working with our partners to ensure ISIS is unable to mount a resurgence," the secretary said. Esper also told the House panel that while the National Defense Strategy prioritizes nations such as Russia and China as top security challenges for the United States, vigilance in countering threats posed by Iran and violent extremist organizations remain a priority. "The United States strategy in the Middle East seeks to ensure the region is not a safe haven for terrorists, is not dominated by any power hostile to the U.S., and contributes to a stable global energy market," Esper said. The secretary laid out six objectives for the U.S. military in the Middle East: 1) Using dynamic U.S. military presence with strategic depth to deter and, if necessary, respond to aggression; 2) Strengthening the defensive capabilities of regional partners; 3) Advancing partnerships and burden-sharing with allies and partners to address shared security concerns; 4) Protecting freedom of navigation; 5) Denying safe haven to terrorists that threaten the homeland; and 6) Mitigating threats posed by weapons of mass destruction. "As the DOD continues to implement the [National Security Strategy], the stability of the Middle East remains important to our nation's security," Esper said. "As such, we will continue to calibrate all of our actions to deter conflict, to avoid unintended escalation, and to enable our partners to defend themselves against regional aggressors. In doing so, we will preserve the hard-won gains of the past and ensure the security of the United States and our vital interests." Troxell Reflects on Four Years in Military's Top Enlisted Post [2019-12-12] WASHINGTON -- After 37 years in the Army -- and having served the last four as the third senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- Army Command Sgt. Maj. John Wayne Troxell is ready to move on. Troxell will turn over his responsibilities during a ceremony tomorrow at the Pentagon. Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Joint Chiefs chairman, named Air Force Command Chief Master Sgt. Ramón "CZ" Colón-López to succeed Troxell in the military's top enlisted post. Traveling to and taking care of enlisted troops around the world and making a difference in their lives, Troxell said, ranks high among the highlights of his time in the position. "What I was pleasantly surprised about is that I was able to go to places and see our troops doing wonderful things," Troxell said during a Dec. 9 briefing at the Pentagon. "Or, I could get into a place where there might be some contentious issues going on -- like troops operating in an environment where they didn't have requisite resources like joint fires or [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] or personnel recovery, or something like that -- and I could report that back to my leadership, and it made an impact." Over the past four years, Troxell said, he's traveled to nearly 60 different locations around the globe to meet with service members, including places such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. He said he's also met with wounded service members, military families and Gold Star families to hear their concerns. As a leader within a military that includes the strengthening of alliances and the attraction of new partners within the National Defense Strategy, Troxell said, he's also been proud of the work done during his tenure to help allied and partner nations realize the significance of their own enlisted forces. In 2005, Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, then the Joint Chiefs chairman, appointed Army Command Sgt. Maj. William Gainey as the first senior enlisted advisor to the chairman. Not all nations' militaries have such a position, but that is changing. "Based on the collective work the Defense Senior Enlisted Leader Conference has done with our international partners over the past four years, 27 countries have instituted a position of a senior enlisted advisor to the chief of defense," Troxell said. Colón-López most recently served as U.S. Africa Command's senior enlisted leader. Troxell said he has great faith in Colón-López's ability to take over for him, and that the two of them have talked about the challenges of the job. "[He] just spent the last three years as a combatant command senior enlisted leader in one of the most contested combatant commands, and people forget about U.S. Africa Command," Troxell said. "So he is well-versed on how to operate at the strategic level. I think the advice he and I continue to talk about is [that] it's a marathon, not a sprint. And you're in here for two years with an extension for two more years, and when you become the SEAC -- and this is I'm speaking on my experiences -- you know, you look at the globe and say, 'Well, this is the operating environment for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, so if I gotta gain the pulse for him, I gotta make sure I get out and about.'" Colon-Lopez said that during his tenure, he will continue to support the chairman and enlisted service members. He cited the chairman's five priorities -- sustaining values, improving joint warfighting readiness, developing the joint force of the future, developing and empowering joint force leaders, and taking care of people and families -- as his starting points. "You can see how much work needs to be done in every single one of those areas," he said. When it comes to service members, he said, it's impossible to do enough for our them compared to what they do. "So our duty is just to keep them fighting and figure out exactly what needs to get done, when it needs to get done, to ensure that they're taken care of so they can continue to protect us." Colon-Lopez made reference to a sticker he said he once had on the motorcycle helmet he wore. The sticker read, "For those who have fought for it, freedom has a taste that the protected will never know." "That is what every single one of those young men and women are doing daily for each and every one of us," he said. "So I'll be shamed and damned if I don't put every ounce of effort into making sure that I make life better for them." Esper Commemorates Battle of the Bulge at Ceremony in Luxembourg [2019-12-16] WASHINGTON -- More than 19,000 U.S. service members lost their lives fighting the Nazis during the 40-day-long Battle of the Bulge, which commenced 75 years ago today in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany. The battle was pivotal in the ultimate Allied defeat of the Nazis just a little over four months later. "By the time the Battle of the Bulge was over in January of 1945, the Allies had retaken all of the territory lost to the Nazis and were headed toward Berlin," Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper said during a commemorative event at the American Cemetery in Luxembourg today. "But the real story of the Battle of the Bulge is the story of the soldiers who banded together, who fought together, and who worked under the most trying circumstances to preserve the Allied victory that was years in the making." The American soldiers who fought at the battle were resourceful, skilled and innovative; having been hardened by growing up during the Great Depression, Esper said. "[They] knew hardship. When chaos ensued, units were broken apart. Men were driven from their positions," Esper said. "These soldiers rejoined together and rebuilt their defenses. They were tough and tenacious and showed an indomitable spirit despite the adversity they faced." Toward the end of the Battle of the Bulge, more than 600,000 soldiers were engaged in the fight. Nearly 90,000 Americans ended up as casualties from the battle, with some 19,000 killed. "They faced an enemy who was determined to change our way of life by stealing our liberty and stealing our freedom," the secretary said. "But together they fought with honor and distinction, with undaunted courage, with great skill, and with an unmatched determination that all but assured victory." Esper said those who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, more than 5,000 of whom are buried at the American Cemetery in Luxembourg, must never be forgotten. "For a moment in history, the fate of the free world rested on their shoulders -- rested on your shoulders," he said, with a nod toward living veterans of the battle in attendance at the event. "Today, 75 years later, we remember these great men." World's Two Largest Democracies Share Interest in Free Indo-Pacific Region [2019-12-18] WASHINGTON -- The United States and India, the world's two largest democracies, share mutual interests in many areas, including defense, the U.S. defense secretary said. "Our defense relationship is strong, and since the establishment of the 2+2 ministerial last year, it continues to improve," Dr. Mark T. Esper said during a news conference today after the second U.S.-India 2+2 ministerial conference at the State Department in Washington. "Our discussions during this year's ministerial reinforce the strategic interests shared by our two countries and helped us build upon the gains from last year. As democracies, the U.S. and India have an abiding interest in advancing a free, open and prosperous Indo-Pacific region." Esper spent much of the day meeting with officials from India, including Defense Minister Rajnath Singh and External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. The three met at the Pentagon in the morning and later moved to the State Department for meetings with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The defense secretary said the United States and India are taking steps to strengthen their maritime partnership and to expand military-to-military cooperation, including the two nations' ground forces, air forces and special operators. Esper noted that the two nations launched a new annual exercise called Tiger Triumph. Its first iteration was the first time the U.S. military participated in a military exercise with all three of India's military services. The exercise will enhance tri-service coordination and allow the exchange of knowledge and expertise, the secretary said. "Our forces successfully completed the first exercise under this initiative last month," he added, "and we look forward to the next one in 2020." Also of importance, Esper said, is continued growth between the United States and India on defense trade and technology. He said the two nations finalized three agreements under the U.S.-India Defense Technology and Trade Initiative, or DTTI, which he said will enhance the ability of both nations to co-produce and co-develop critical military technologies. Esper said defense trade between the two nations now stands at about $18 billion annually. But the secretary said that trade is not just about the selling of equipment. "It gets to the improved interoperability between our two countries, our two militaries," he said, as well as a better understanding and a way to work and fight better together if called upon to do so. Deepening and broadening that effort was key to today's discussions, the secretary said. Esper acknowledged that much work remains to continue building the U.S.-India defense relationship, but he expressed confidence that the defense relationship will grow stronger "as we work together to defend the international rules-based order and advance our vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific." Defense Bill Funds Space Force, Pay Raises [2019-12-20] WASHINGTON -- The $738 billion defense spending bill signed into law today by President Donald J. Trump funds the largest pay increases in a decade and the creation of the U.S. Space Force. Defense officials said service members and families will benefit from a $19.5 billion increase of the Defense Department's 2019 funding, including a 3.1% pay raise for military and civilian personnel and paid parental leave for civilians. "This is a well-deserved pay raise for the men and women of the military, who continue to make great sacrifices for the nation as they stand watch all over the world to protect America," Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper said. "It will also ensure that we continue to recruit our country's best talent into the armed forces." The fiscal year 2020 budget gives the DOD a $622.6 billion base budget, $70.6 billion for overseas contingency operations and $1.8 billion in emergency funding. The overall defense budget also includes funding in separate authorizations for military construction and $8.1 billion in emergency defense funds. During a briefing today at the Pentagon, Esper thanked Congress and the president for getting the department funded and for establishing the Space Force -- something he noted for its historical significance. "This historic initiative ... will posture us to effectively defend our national interests in space," the secretary said. "The last time we developed a new branch of the military was over 70 years ago when we separated the Air Corps from the Army in 1947, creating the U.S. Air Force." Esper said that because the United States relies so heavily on space for commerce and defense and because space has evolved into a new warfighting domain, it's only appropriate that there be a new service to focus on defending U.S. interests there. "Maintaining American dominance in that domain is now the mission of the U.S. Space Force," he said, adding that details about implementation and the timeline for the new service will be announced in the next few weeks. Esper said the new bill also supports taking care of military families. Included in the law are: programs to offset the costs of professional licenses for military spouses; reforms to privatized base housing; and provisions to increase childcare capacity on military installations -- including $110 million across the services for child care programs. "These are all very important to the readiness of the force and follow through on our commitment to take care of our service members and their families," the secretary said. Also included in the bill is $108 million for the hypersonic and ballistic tracking space sensor, as well as $230.9 million to accelerate hypersonic defense programs within the Missile Defense Agency. The Congress has provided $1.87 billion for 20 additional F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft, $23.9 billion for 14 battle force ships and $1.7 billion for upgrades to Abrams tanks. "We appreciate this strong demonstration of bipartisan support from the House and the Senate," Esper said. "This legislation is a big step forward and will enable the department to adapt to the challenges posed by great power competitors." Esper: Kataeb Hezbollah Will 'Likely Regret' Further Provocative Behavior [2020-01-02] WASHINGTON -- U.S. forces in Iraq were attacked Dec. 27 near Kirkuk by Kataeb Hezbollah, a group with links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force. The attack, which involved 31 rockets fired, killed one American civilian contractor and injured four American service members as well as two partners in the Iraqi security forces, Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper said. "The U.S. military responded, and took defensive actions by striking KH bases in western Iraq and western Syria, striking a combination of the command and control [center] or weapons caches with considerable effect," Esper said during a press gaggle in the Pentagon today. "The attacks were quite successful." In the wake of the KH attack, the defense department has deployed an infantry battalion -- about 750 soldiers -- from the Immediate Response Force of the 82nd Airborne Division to the U.S. Central Command area of operations. Additional forces from the IRF prepared to deploy over the next several days, the defense secretary said. "They are deploying to the region to, on order, reinforce our facilities and to protect our personnel in the region as called upon, and obviously they have the capability to perform other missions as well, as need be," Esper said. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark A. Milley described the forces from the 82nd Airborne as a "general-purpose unit," on a defensive mission, adding that such a unit exists precisely for the types of situations it was called upon to respond to. "It's going over there, it's going to be in Kuwait, and they may have follow-on missions in other places," Milley said. "But their purpose is defensive in nature, to defend U.S. personnel, equipment and facilities." The chairman said other U.S. forces have been alerted, though no decision has yet been made to deploy those forces. "But there are a variety of forces that are alerted and prepared if necessary depending on the situation, as we move forward," Milley said. Esper said "provocative behavior" by Iranian-backed Shia militias has been ongoing for several months. The Dec. 27 attack was the latest, he said, adding that while he believes the attacks may continue, the U.S. is ready. "They've been shooting rockets, indirect fire, any type of things, attacking our bases for months now," the defense secretary said. "In the last two [months] alone we've [had] nearly a dozen attacks against U.S. forces, against our coalition partners. So do I think they may do something [else?] Yes. And they will likely regret it. And we are prepared to exercise self-defense, and we are prepared to deter further bad behavior from these groups, all of which are sponsored, and directed and rescued by Iran," Esper said. Esper: Iran Has 'Big Off Ramp' to Avoid Further Conflict [2020-01-07] WASHINGTON -- The United States does not want a war with Iran, and it's not leaving Iraq, Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper said. "As we defend our people and interests, let me reiterate, the U.S. is not seeking a war with Iran," Esper said during a Pentagon news conference today. "But we are prepared to finish one. We are seeking a diplomatic solution. But first this will require Iran to de-escalate. It will require the regime to come to the table with the goal of preventing further bloodshed. And it will require them to cease their malign activities throughout the region." There's a clear-cut way to avoid further conflict between the two nations, the secretary told reporters. "There is a big off ramp sitting in front of Tehran right now," Esper said. "That is to de-escalate, to message us that they want to sit down and talk -- without precondition, by the way -- to the U.S. about a better way forward, about a way forward which would constitute a new mode of behavior by Iran where they behave more like a normal country." Tensions have flared since the United States launched an airstrike in Iraq that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force. Esper said the protection of American personnel and partners remains a top priority of the DOD, as does maintaining readiness to conduct operations to respond to Iranian aggression. "Since the strike, I have spoken with the commanders on the ground to ensure they have the resources they need to protect their people and prepare for any contingencies," Esper said. "As a result, we have increased our force protection postures across the region and will continue to reposition and bolster our forces as necessary to protect our people, our interests and our facilities." Within Iraq, Esper said, the risk of retaliation by Iran has not deterred continuing U.S efforts to secure the enduring defeat of ISIS. "We have received widespread support for our actions from our allies and partners in the region, and we will continue to work with them to protect our gains against ISIS," he said. "I have been in constant communication with our counterparts, and I've called upon them to stand with us in the defense of coalition forces in Iraq. Working through NATO, the defeat-ISIS coalition, and with our partners on the ground, we continue to bolster Iraqi institutions to ensure the lasting defeat of ISIS." The secretary also told reporters the United States is not leaving Iraq, "Our policy is unchanged," he said. "We are not leaving Iraq. ... We are in Iraq, and we are there to support Iraqi forces and the Iraqi government [to] become a strong, independent and prosperous country." Chairman: Defensive Measures Prevented Casualties in Iranian Attack [2020-01-08] WASHINGTON -- Although Iranian missiles damaged equipment and infrastructure at U.S. and ally-occupied military installations in Iraq yesterday, training and defensive readiness paid off in no lives being lost, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. "There's sirens that go off on these bases. ... There's bunkers and jersey barriers, and there's places to go hide and all that," said Army Gen. Mark A. Milley told reporters at the Pentagon today. Milley and Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper briefed reporters after spending most of the day on Capitol Hill talking with lawmakers. "We have various levels of protective gear, and we have various scatter plans that do certain things," the chairman said. "They are all tactics, techniques and procedures -- normal defensive procedures that any military unit would do that would come under rocket attack, indirect fire, mortars, large-scale missiles, etc. So in this particular case, Al Asad is a big base -- they put 11 large rockets [with] 1,000-, 2,000-pound warheads in them -- but we took sufficient defensive measures that there were no casualties to U.S. personnel, coalition personnel, contractors or Iraqis." Esper said good discussions took place on Capitol Hill. "We covered a number of issues in both the House and Senate, everything ranging from authorities and imminence, all the way though force posture, next steps, etc.," he said. "So a very good discussion, a very robust discussion, and you know I thought it was a good chance for all of us to kind of share our views and to consult on next steps." The secretary said Iran launched 16 ballistic missiles into Iraq. He said he believes the missiles were short-range ballistic missiles and that the missiles landed in at least two spots. Both landing spots were Iraqi military bases that played host to American and coalition forces, including service members from the United Kingdom, Denmark and Canada. At least 11 of the 16 missiles struck at Al Asad Air Base, about 175 miles from Iraq's border with Iran, and about 115 miles from Baghdad. At least one missile also hit at a military installation near Irbil, Iraq, some 200 miles north of Baghdad and about 60 miles from the border with Iran. The secretary said the current battle damage assessment includes loss of such things as tents, taxiways, parking lots and damage to a helicopter, but "nothing I would describe as major, at least as I know it at this point in time." While no lives were lost, Milley said, he believes the Iranians intended to cause deaths. "The points of impact were close enough to personnel and equipment ... that I believe, based on what I saw and what I know, is that they were intended to cause structural damage, destroy vehicles and equipment and aircraft, and to kill personnel," Milley said. "That's my own personal assessment." Esper and Milley both said professional intelligence analysts are working on a final assessment. The secretary said he remains cautious about drawing any conclusion that if the Iranians intended to kill Americans and did not accomplish that during the attack, they may consider the attempt a failure and try again. "I think we have just got to assess the situation. Let's see what they are saying publicly, see what they are saying privately, look at our intelligence, all those things," he said. "We are not going to do anything imprudent. ... These are serious times, and we take things one step at a time." Veterans, Officials Mark 75th Anniversary of Key WWII Battle [2020-01-09] WASHINGTON -- World War II veterans and military attachés from Australia and the Philippines commemorated the 75th anniversary of one of the bloodiest battles of World War II in the Pacific in Washington today. The Battle of Luzon took place on the largest island in the Philippines, which is where the nation's capital, Manila, is located. Jan Scruggs, the founder of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, spoke during a ceremony at the National World War II Memorial. The Battle of Luzon, Scruggs said, dealt a severe blow to the enemy forces and placed the Allies one step closer to total victory and ending the war. On March 11, 1942, Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur left the Philippines for Australia, Scruggs said. In his place, Army Gen. Jonathan Wainwright took over as general of the armies of the Philippines. Army Maj. Gen. Edward P. King Jr. served as commanding general of the Philippine-American forces. On April 9, 1942, Scruggs said, King surrendered to the Japanese at Bataan. About 75,000 U.S. and Philippine forces were part of that surrender. Later, as part of the Bataan Death March, thousands of them would die. Less than a month later, Wainwright and about 10,000 soldiers also surrendered. "General MacArthur made a promise," Scruggs said. "He said, 'I shall return,' and this is exactly what he did. Victory would come in 1945, after the long and bloody battle of Luzon." On Jan. 9, 1945, 175,000 U.S. troops landed on Luzon and established a 20-mile beach head, Scruggs said. The Australians provided air and sea power to assist in the invasion. The Mexicans also provided air support to help in the liberation. "Filipino and American troops fought back [and] took very heavy casualties, particularly when they moved into Manila and had to fight house to house at very close range and in difficult fighting," Scruggs said. "By May 1945, most of the fighting was over in the Philippines. There were some scattered Japanese units who actually fought until the end of the war and stayed deep in the jungle. But the liberation of Luzon avenged the harsh treatment and defeat of the island and achieved a major objective for the war in the Pacific." As part of the Battle of Luzon, about 10,000 American service members gave their lives. The Japanese suffered about 200,000 combat deaths. Between 120,000 and 140,000 Filipino civilians and combatants were also killed, Scruggs said. "Today we remember the brave soldiers who fought for freedom and to end World War II," he said. Wreaths were laid at the National World War II Memorial in honor of combatants from the United States, the Philippines, Mexico and Australia who fought at Luzon. Ira Rigger of Cockeysville, Maryland, participated in the presentation of those wreaths. While he didn't participate in the Battle of Luzon, he said, he did serve in the Navy in the Pacific during World War II, and he provided construction support to that battle as a Navy Seabee. Rigger joined the Navy in January 1943. His first assignment was to Guam. "We built a harbor there," he said. "The harbor that is used now to bring all the cruise ships in. When we got there, you couldn't even go in there with an outboard." Later, he said, he was moved to Peleliu, an island about 1,000 miles southeast of Luzon. He said the island came to serve as a supply base to the Battle of Luzon. "It was used as a storage place, a supply base for the Philippines," Rigger said. "That was the idea of it. MacArthur wanted it. It cost 4,000 Marine lives. We built a way to get the supplies in. It was a canal, a channel." Rigger said he also served on Iwo Jima. "I'm one of the very few people who have ever been underground at Iwo Jima," he said. "They were mining sulfur there. So Iwo Jima was actually a mine, not just an air base for the Japanese. They took the sulfur back to make gunpowder. I snuck down there one day when I didn't have anything else to do." While he didn't fight the Japanese at Iwo Jima, he said, the Japanese fought him: "I had bullets come all around me -- they just missed." Rigger said he was proud to have participated in the commemoration and proud to have served in World War II. Most importantly, he said, he was proud to have contributed to the Allies winning the war. "It was crucial that we won," he said. "That's the point. If we hadn't have won, we'd have been serfs." Going for Gold for the Rosies [2020-01-11] WASHINGTON -- Since March, Mae Krier has traveled a lot. She's been to the Pentagon four times, to the Capitol three times, all over the United States, and even to Normandy, France, for the 75th anniversary of D-Day. During World War II, Krier worked at an aircraft factory in Seattle building B-17 Flying Fortress and B-29 Superfortress aircraft. She wasn't the only one. One estimate puts the number of women working in the defense industry during WWII at more than 4 million. Those women today are collectively known as "Rosies," after the fictional "Rosie the Riveter" character that came to represent them. During the war, while a great majority of the men were off fighting, the women who stayed behind were put to work building the war machines their brothers, fathers and uncles would use to defeat the Germans and the Japanese. Now, Krier said, she hopes America will recognize those efforts. "What our goal is, is to get the gold medal. ... That's what we want to get for the Rosie the Riveters, the Congressional Gold Medal -- the highest civilian award," she said. "We're running out of time. We're living history, what few of us are left. In a year or two, a few years, we're just going to be a page in a history book ... it's just the fact we want to be recognized for what we did ... we did so much. We really worked hard." Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, it was clear that a lot of the young men in the United States would be going off to war. Krier said that growing up on a farm near Dawson, North Dakota, "Times were hard for us and for everyone else." She noted that it was the time of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression in the 1930s. Krier said she and her sister had been at the movies when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. When she returned home, she said, she found her parents by the radio wearing grave expressions on their faces. It wasn't too long after the nation would be at war. "All of our young men enlisted right away," Krier said, including her brother, who went into the Navy. "The day we put my brother on the train to go to war, I came home and I found my father crying. And that was one of the memories I will never forget. Families all over the country were putting their sons on the train to go to war, and so many didn't come back." While the men went off to fight, there were opportunities for women to help the war effort, she said. The vacuum in the workforce created by so many men leaving for the military meant women would be needed to fill roles that would have previously been filled by men -- especially in the defense industry. "As the boys left, the girls didn't want to hang around either," she said. "My sister and I and my girlfriend went to Seattle to work for Boeing." Krier was just 17 at the time. She said she thought of the effort as a lark -- they'd work for the summer. "We thought it'd be a lot of fun. But the way it turned out, we loved it and we stayed through the war," Krier said. At the aircraft factory, she crawled around inside the wings of military aircraft to rivet them together. Krier said she believed that in the plant where she worked, she and the other women built 6,000 B-17 aircraft, though not nearly as many of the B-29s. "You had to weave between the ribs in the wing," she said. "Now you're a bucker in there and you can't hear what the riveter is on the outside is doing. You sort of have a rhythm. You knock once for 'hit it again,' or twice if you want to take it out. You just sort of had a method of our own." Krier said she remembers the work being noisy, but fun. "I look back on it now, when I see a complete B-17 and I just stare at it and think, how did I ever get in there?" she said. What Krier said she remembers most is that she and other young women proved they were capable of filling roles no one thought they could. "Up until 1941, it was a man's world," she said. "They didn't realize how capable American women were. We'd never had a chance to prove it. Hitler had said that he wouldn't have any trouble defeating us because he said American women couldn't produce. He said we spent too much time on cosmetics and silk stockings and frivolous things." "I think we showed Hitler what American women were made of," Krier said. (David Vergun contributed to this story.) Esper: Information Indicated 'Broad Scale' Attack Within 'Matter of Days' [2020-01-12] WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper reiterated his belief on Sunday morning talk shows that elimination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani would prevent an attack that could lead to more dangerous, open conflict with Iran. "We had information that there was going to be an attack within a matter of days, that would be broad in scale, in other words more than one country, and that it would be bigger that previous attacks, likely going to take us into open hostilities with Iran," Esper said, while speaking today with Margaret Brennan on CBS's "Face the Nation" news program. That attack, Esper said, was being orchestrated by Soleimani, who was killed in Iraq Jan. 3 by a United States-launched airstrike. Soleimani was head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force, which is designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization. "He was the one who has led the attacks against America for 20 years now," Esper said. "So we had every expectation to believe that this would happen." A "very senior" member of the intelligence community, Esper said, has said the risks associated with doing nothing to prevent the attack was greater than the risk of taking action. "That was compelling for me," he said. The secretary said intelligence was briefed to lawmakers who are members of the "Gang of Eight." That bipartisan group includes members of both the Senate and the House. While Esper himself didn't sit in on the briefing, he said he spoke to one of the intelligence briefers who was in on the meeting. "What the briefer said to me, coming out of that meeting, was his assessment that most if not all of the members thought that the intelligence was persuasive," Esper said. He also said that members of the group felt the intelligence should not be released to the broader members of Congress. While speaking with Jake Tapper on CNN's "State of the Union" news program, Esper said he thinks the threat of direct action against the United States by Iran has diminished, but that Iranian "malign behavior" is likely to continue. "I think our watchword is 'vigilance,'" Esper said. "We have to remain vigilant. What we have got to do though is get back to a position where they will come sit down with us. We can talk about how we get Iran to act like and behave like a normal country. That's what all of us want. That's what the regional partners want. That's what the Europeans want, is to get Iran to behave like a normal country." Esper characterized that normalcy as meaning no nuclear weapons program, no long-range ballistic missiles, no hostage taking and no support to proxy groups. "The United States is safer today than we were just a few short weeks ago," Esper said. "We eliminated the world's foremost terrorist, Qassem Soleimani, who had the blood of hundreds of American service members on his hands. Secondly, we restored deterrence with Iran and we did so without American casualties. And third, we reassured our friends and allies in the region that the United States will stand up and defend our interests." Recruiting Challenges for Chaplains Mirror Other Military Jobs [2020-01-16] WASHINGTON -- With more than 2,800 chaplains across the U.S. military, representing dozens of faith groups, maintaining adequate manning is a challenge. Those challenges are not unique, however, in that they match those faced by recruiters for other officers and enlisted personnel as well. During the annual Armed Forces Chaplains Board endorsers conference today at the Pentagon, Lernes Hebert, the deputy assistant defense secretary for military personnel policy, spoke with chaplains and chaplain endorsers. He addressed the complexity of recruiting chaplains from a population of Americans that are today more unfamiliar with the military than they have ever been in the past. "Somehow you have to communicate to an American population who is getting further and further removed from its military," Lernes told endorsers, who are the civilian representatives of faith groups responsible for helping chaplains into the military. "Less than 1% of American youth actually have somebody in their immediate family who has served at any time in their lives," he said, further illustrating how unfamiliar the civilian population is with military service. "The vast majority of American youth today can't name all four services. Throw the Coast Guard in, and it drops down to 17%. Imagine that -- just a generation or two ago, it was pretty common knowledge who the military was, what we were about." Surveys of American youth, Lernes said, demonstrate that many in the civilian community are burdened with myths about service that keep them from considering a military career. Some of those myths include not being able to have children while in uniform, not being able to see their family and unrealistic beliefs about the potential for suffering from the loss of a limb or post-traumatic stress disorder. Also, a challenge for bringing chaplains into the military are record low unemployment numbers and a reticence to consider military service fueled by a news cycle that regularly highlights challenges faced by service members but not the benefits. "Somehow, you as a recruiter have to get through all that, have to be able to articulate in a meaningful way to the chaplain candidates what military service is truly about," Lernes said. "It's about caring for their brothers and sisters, it's about caring for individuals who have dedicated themselves to public service, and sacrificing things the American people typically don't fully appreciate." DOJ Finds Pensacola Attack 'Act of Terrorism;' New Rules for Foreign Military Students [2020-01-17] WASHINGTON -- The results of a Justice Department investigation into the Dec. 6 attack at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, were released this week and investigators have declared the attack was an act of terrorism. Garry Reid, the director for defense intelligence, spoke with reporters today via conference call to spell out what DOJ investigators found and what new rules the Defense Department will implement as a result of the attack. "The evidence shows that the shooter was motivated by jihadist ideology and the DOJ concluded that this was an act of terrorism," Reid said. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, a member of the Saudi air force, was attending aviation training at NAS Pensacola. On Dec. 6, he opened fire in a classroom. The attack killed three U.S. service members and wounded another eight. Reid said DOJ investigators found no evidence of assistance or pre-knowledge of the attack by other members of the Saudi military who were involved in training. However, the investigation found "derogatory material" was possessed by 21 of the students. "The relevant U.S. attorney's offices independently reviewed each of the 21 cases involving derogatory information and determined that none of them would in the normal course result in federal prosecution," Reid said. All of those students have since been returned to Saudi Arabia, Reid said. "Our service secretaries and the Defense Security Cooperation Agency determined that these international military students failed to meet the professional standards expected of students participating in our foreign military training programs." In the aftermath of the attack at Pensacola, new policies and security procedures have been put in place to prevent any further such attacks, Reid said. The new restrictions relate to the possession and use of firearms by international students, for instance, and also implement control measures to limit access to only those military and government facilities necessary for the training they are involved in. "We will also impose new standards for training and education on detecting and reporting insider threats and establish new vetting procedures that include capabilities for continuous monitoring of international military students while enrolled in U.S.-based training programs," Reid said. Going forward, Reid said, current and future students will need to acknowledge their willingness to comply with the new standards and with U.S. law on and off duty, in order to embark on training in the U.S. Once the new policies are in place, Reid said, military departments will be able to resume training activities with foreign students inside the U.S. DOD Agency Offers 'milDrive' Desktop-Integrated Cloud Computing [2020-01-23] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Information Systems Agency has been offering "milDrive," a cloud-based storage solution for desktop users, for nearly a year. The cloud service already has about 18,000 users across 20 organizations, the program manager said. "There's quite a large user base in the queue right now that's interested, and we are currently piloting with and developing a migration strategy for them," said Carissa Landymore. "The need is definitely there." The milDrive service is available for users on DODIN, the unclassified Defense Department information network. Users often store files on network drives so they can be shared with others within their organizations. The milDrive service gives users that ability, and it also allows them to access files from any common access card-enabled computer on the network and from their government cell phones and tablets. Typically, network shared drives only allow users to access files when they are on their home network. Unlike other cloud-service solutions in use by some DOD agencies, milDrive allows users to store files that contain personally identifiable information, personal health information and "for official use only" information because the storage for milDrive is maintained by DISA, rather than by a commercial provider, Landymore said. "From a security perspective, all the data is always encrypted, in transit and at rest," she said. "So, it's always providing that extra blanket of security." Also, unlike with typical network shares, milDrive users can grant access to their files to any milDrive user in the Defense Department, Landymore said. Users can even share files with other DOD personnel who don't have milDrive access through a web-based interface. And unlike some web-based cloud service solutions, milDrive is thoroughly integrated into the desktop environment, which means users can create, read and manipulate files stored in the cloud using the software already installed on their desktop computers. "It's completely integrated and transparent on your desktop," she said. "It's the same traditional look and feel as Windows File Explorer and used like any other location to open or save files. Landymore said DISA offers 1 terabyte or 20 gigabyte licenses for individual users. Both licenses cost less than $10 a month. Organizations can also order "team drives" starting at 1 TB. As with traditional network shares; milDrive "Team Folders" allow organizations the ability to collaborate traditionally with the added benefits of online and offline access, mobility and portability of group data they do not have today. Guidance from the DOD chief information officer and DISA direction is going in the direction of the cloud, Landymore said. "MilDrive is going to help the department get there faster," she said. "It's going to help folks immediately migrate off their end-of-service-life equipment right onto another service that DISA is already invested into. We've made that investment to really help the department long-term, getting to a cloud solution and realizing our cost savings with economies of scale." Jeremiah Collins, the information technology services deputy director at Army Futures Command in Austin, Texas, said milDrive has provided the command with cost savings over traditional storage solutions and a reduction in workload for a limited information technology staff. Army Futures Command stood up in July 2018, and Collins said the command has used milDrive as its storage solution from the start. "When we were standing up the command, we really needed a storage solution that would support a mobile workforce beyond just the installation boundaries," Collins said. "So, where teams are collaborating, no matter where they are located, they can reach back to those documents. Traditional network storage doesn't allow for that. But with milDrive, anybody that has a CAC can access it from any web browser. That was monumental in our decision to choose milDrive." Additionally, Collins said, the low cost of storage was a deciding factor in the command's decision to go with milDrive. "The DISA milDrive was about a third of the cost of traditional storage," Collins said. "It wasn't even close." The cost of milDrive isn't the only way the command saves money, he said. There's also a reduction in workload by information technology support staff -- something Collins said is important in Army Futures Command, where they have both limited space and a limited staff. "For us, we don't have the luxury of a lot of resources in our IT shop," he said. "We have to be very diligent in what we assign for tasks. With milDrive, it's simply provisioning a user to a milDrive account, which is exponentially easier for the staff here to execute based on our current resourcing thresholds." To achieve a seamless, transparent use of milDrive, software does have to be installed on a user's computer. Until that software is installed, users can access files via a web-based application. Collins said initial use of milDrive at Army Futures Command was complicated by that requirement, but those challenges disappeared after the software was approved for use on their network. "Quite frankly, ever since the application was installed, we've received zero complaints," Collins said. Landymore said organizations that want to make use of milDrive can check out the services catalogue on the DISA website. In addition, she said, DISA can help organizational IT staffs migrate data on existing storage services to milDrive. 'You Make Us ALL Proud' Esper Tells Pensacola First Responders [2020-01-23] PENSACOLA -- Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper met with some of the first responders at Pensacola Naval Air Station, Florida, who reacted to the shooting incident that left three sailors dead and eight other victims injured at the training installation Dec. 6. At the air station's headquarters yesterday, Esper shook hands with and presented secretary of defense coins to Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class David Link Jr., Navy Patrol Officer Daniel Dugger, Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Donald Scott, and Capt. Robert Johnson, a civilian with the Navy Department police force. "Thank you all for your courage, your bravery, your quick response," Esper said. "You guys just did a great job. You make us all proud, and you make the community feel secure. And I want to thank you." Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, a member of the Saudi air force who was attending aviation training at Pensacola, opened fire in a classroom. A subsequent Justice Department investigation declared the attack an act of terrorism that had been motivated by jihadist ideology. Link was one of the responders who rushed to the scene of the attack. When he heard the call on the radio, he said, he'd been conducting a traffic stop. "I had just gotten on shift, and I was in the middle of pulling two vehicles over for speeding when the call came out over the radio," Link said. "It said reports of active shooter, Building 633, and that there were active shots. Once I heard that, I immediately ceased pulling over the vehicles, did a U-turn and headed straight towards the building." There, he said, he blocked off the road to make sure that only police personnel could get into the area. "I grabbed my rifle and ran straight towards the front door, where I met up with my team, who was already there." Link said this was the first time in his nearly five-year Navy career he'd experienced an actual shooting event. But he said it was familiar to him just the same. "It was very much like our training. We train how we fight," he said. "I had my team, and my team was there already. So knowing they were there kind of put me at ease a bit." About 60,000 students attend classes each year at Pensacola, including enlisted personnel, officers and foreign military students. While 12 Saudi Arabian students were made to leave the installation following the shooting, about 140 Saudi students remain. Base spokesperson Jason Bortz said he believes sentiment in the local community remains supportive of the schools and mission on the installation, the presence of international students, and even the Saudi Arabian students who remain. After the shooting, he said, he learned some of the Saudi students were concerned that they might be painted unfairly as a result of the actions of just one. Some of those students were at a restaurant in the community, Bortz said, and the owner brought them an apple pie. "He said, 'I know how hard this is, how this must be difficult for you. I just want you to know we don't judge you based on the actions of this one individual,'" Bortz said. "I think our community in general has kind of gripped that. We're not going to base our opinions off of one individual, what he did." Most of the students at Pensacola, he said, are young --, about 18 to 22, he noted. "They are just here to learn to be a pilot like anybody else," he said. "It could have been anyone," Link said. "It could have been anyone." After meeting with first responders, Esper told journalists that this had been his first visit to Pensacola as the defense secretary. He said the international training mission is an important tool in helping the United States build allies around the world. "The United States is safer when we have more allies and partners -- our country is more secure,'" he said. New directives have been issued to help prevent future such attacks, the secretary said, adding that they address subjects such as enhanced screening of foreign students, additional credentialing and weapons policies. "Today I had a good discussion with the command about actions they've taken," Esper said. "And we discussed some other possible things we may do in the future." While at Pensacola, the secretary received briefings from the FBI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service on the terrorist incident. Esper: More Comprehensive Vetting for Foreign Students on the Way [2020-01-23] PENSACOLA -- As many as 60,000 students pass through Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida each year for a variety of training opportunities, including new pilots, new sailors, and students from as many as 150 foreign countries, and new vetting is on the way for those foreign students, Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper said. "The vetting changes will be far more comprehensive," Esper said yesterday while speaking with reporters inside an aircraft hangar at the base. "It will look at every aspect of their background, it'll look at social media, and it will also involve continuous monitoring once they are here in the United States. ... We've taken any number of measures like that to ensure that we have a much higher degree of confidence with regard to each of the students." The changes come on the heels of a terrorist attack at the school perpetrated by an aviation student from Saudi Arabia. On the morning of Dec. 6, Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, a member of the Saudi air force who was attending aviation training, opened fire in a classroom. A subsequent Justice Department investigation declared the attack an act of terrorism that had been motivated by jihadist ideology. Pensacola, which bills itself as "the cradle of naval aviation," is home to the Naval Education and Training Command and the Naval Air Technical Training Center. For sailors and naval officers, Pensacola provides training to pilots, aviation maintenance crews, and intelligence and cryptology specialists, among a variety of other specialties, many involving aviation. While at Pensacola, Esper met with four of the first responders to the terrorist act, toured housing on the installation, and met with sailors in training to be ordnance technicians. The secretary also met with Navy Capt. Timothy F. Kinsella Jr., the installation commander, and received a briefing on the shooting from the FBI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. "We learned a little bit more in the wake of the investigation that was conducted by the FBI, NCIS and others," Esper said, adding that the session included lessons learned. While talking with the installation commander, the secretary said that aside from new vetting procedures for foreign students, some immediate actions can be taken at the installation to increase security and make those living, working and training at the station feel more secure. That includes possibly increasing roving patrols and setting up stationary patrols on the installation, Esper said, to give both students, permanent party personnel and families a greater sense of confidence that security is in place that can be even more responsive. Some flight training for foreign students at Pensacola remains suspended. The secretary said resumption is pending a decision by the acting secretary of the Navy and the Pensacola installation commander. Esper said training of international students at Pensacola would continue and that it remains important to the United States. "It's very important to us building alliances and partnerships, all of which makes us more safe and secure," the secretary said. "And I'm thankful for it." Nationals Take World Series Trophy to Pentagon [2020-01-27] WASHINGTON -- The Washington Nationals, winners of baseball's 2019 World Series, brought the Major League Baseball Commissioner's Trophy to the Pentagon so baseball fans inside the U.S. defense headquarters could get their pictures taken with it. Hundreds of fans lined the A-ring of the Pentagon today, waiting to take their turn in front of the trophy. While they waited, Nationals mascot "Screech" gave high-fives to excited fans. "We are just so proud of our Washington Nationals and their big accomplishment in winning the World Series," said Kimberley Joiner, the deputy assistant to the secretary of defense for strategic engagement. "This is an opportunity for people who work in the Pentagon every day to get out of their offices and enjoy the joy the Nationals have brought to our community." Gregory M. McCarthy, the senior vice president for community relations with the Nationals, said the Pentagon is just the latest military-related stop for the trophy. "This trophy is a very special thing that says a lot about American history and American culture," McCarthy said. "The first visit outside our ballpark for this trophy was to the commander in chief himself. And the second visit was to Walter Reed [National Military Medical Center], where the trophy was visited by the men and women recuperating there." McCarthy said the trophy has also been to Joint Base Bolling-Anacostia and the Navy Yard, both in Washington, as well as to Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, and Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia. The trophy also went along on a USO tour to Poland and Romania. "The Nationals have a long-standing connection to the military and the civilians that support them," McCarthy said. "We like to say this trophy was earned by the 25 guys on the field who dedicated their lives and training, but it belongs to our fans. It belongs to the military and the civilians that support them." Army Sgt. 1st Class Dustin Hall, the garrison first sergeant at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Virginia, was one of the hundreds in line to get a selfie with the trophy. He's only been in the Washington area for only a short time now and says he's not always been a Nationals fan. "I live right next to the stadium," he said. "I've only been a Nats fan for a year. I'm originally a Pirates fan, but it's hard to cheer for the Pirates. My wife says we live right next to the stadium, so let's cheer for the home team. We made that switch last off- season." While fans, both military and civilian at the Pentagon were grateful for the opportunity to see a bit of baseball history up close, McCarthy said he and the team are grateful for the fans. "Thank you for all you do," he said. "This team has a great connection to the military and their families and the civilians that support them, and we are grateful for you being fans." Used Ships Could Solve Sealift Readiness Issues [2020-01-29] WASHINGTON -- The aging vessels used to move personnel, equipment and supplies around the world pose a readiness concern, the commander of U.S. Transportation Command said. In September, the command held a "turbo activation" exercise, activating more than 30 transport vessels with no notice to assess their ability to get ready for operations. "We kind of confirmed what we knew. The readiness of the fleet today is not where it needs to be," Army Gen. Stephen R. Lyons told an Atlantic Council panel in Washington yesterday. Through the Military Sealift Command, Transcom relies on about 125 civilian-crewed surface vessels averaging about 50 years old to replenish Navy ships, conduct specialized missions and transport personnel, cargo and supplies. "It's very hard to conduct service-life extensions on a ship that is that old," Lyons said. "What we are finding is the money that is provided against it is woefully insufficient to come back out of the shipyard in a ready status." Lyons said he thinks purchasing used ships to augment the fleet is a good solution to the problem. "Congress has granted us the authority -- granted the Navy the authority -- to purchase seven used ships on the open market," he added. By the end of this year or the beginning of the next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1, the Defense Department expects to buy the first two of those used vessels, followed up with two or three more, the general said. The president's budget proposal will be released next month; following that, Lyons and other leaders within the U.S. military will testify on Capitol Hill to explain their portions of that budget proposal. The general said he expects he'll ask Congress for money for used ships, rather than new ones. "What I'd like to see is more money to accelerate the used-buy move ahead," he said. "I frankly think the 'new buy' piece is going to be very, very difficult for the Navy to go after. My own personal view is the faster we can move to demonstrate good faith in what the Congress gave us to do, the faster we can demonstrate that this is a viable way to move forward." DOD Aims to Certify Security Cooperation Workforce as Profession [2020-01-30] WASHINGTON -- More than 20,000 employees involved in Defense Department security cooperation activities will get about two years to meet new training requirements to be certified in their areas of expertise and forge the diverse workforce for the first time into a profession. "Until this point we have not sought to create a profession, but there is a great demand for this community to be treated as a community and to be considered part of a profession," said Cara Abercrombie, the first president of the Defense Security Cooperation University and the principal director for workforce development with the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. The goal now, Abercrombie said, is to create an educational framework for everybody in the security cooperation workforce. "What we are giving them is the training and experience they need to effectively perform their assigned security cooperation responsibilities," she said. "We are also, with the continuous learning process, going to ensure they remain up to date in what's happening in their community. We are basically creating the industry standards for security cooperation." In September, DSCA stood up the Defense Security Cooperation University, which has campuses in Arlington, Virginia, and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. As president of the DSCU, Abercrombie is responsible for a large part of providing training to every DOD employee who is involved in security cooperation. Over the next two years, Abercrombie said, each of those employees will be responsible for attaining at least a basic-level certification in one of five security cooperation areas of concentration. Those areas of concentration include security cooperation case lifecycle management; execution support management; planning, oversite and execution management; security cooperation office operations and management; and acquisition management. Certification levels include basic, intermediate, advanced and expert. Abercrombie said there is a deadline for employees to complete that certification. This year is a transition year, she said. By January 2021, participation will become mandatory. "You will have one year to be certified at the basic level, then two years to get up to the intermediate level, then two additional years to the advanced level, if that is what you need for your position," she said. All of the basic level training can be done online, Abercrombie said, while intermediate and advanced level will also include classroom training. For individuals in designated SC positions, DSCA will pay for that training and transportation to and from the training, which takes the financial burden off an employee's agency. Most in-residence training will last three to five days, she said, though some security cooperation officers who operate downrange may need as many as five weeks of in-residence training. Abercrombie said DSCA is preparing to "surge" staff and classroom space to handle the influx of members of the security cooperation workforce who will need to become certified. "It's going to be a challenge for the workforce and for us to get everybody in residence," she added. Security cooperation, Abercrombie said, involves all the DOD interactions, programs and activities done with foreign security forces and their institutions. This includes exercises, armaments cooperation, information sharing, collaboration, foreign military sales, ministry advising and humanitarian assistance. "The reason we do it is we are looking to build relationships that promote our interests, enhance our military-to-military interoperability, as well as build and apply partner operational and institutional capacity in support of shared interests," she said. The effort to create a professionalized, certified security cooperation workforce was first laid out in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, Abercrombie said. In that law, legislators instructed DOD to create a security cooperation workforce development program. The program's goal, lawmakers said, is to ensure the security cooperation workforce has the capacity, in both personnel and skills, needed to properly perform its mission, provide appropriate support to the assessment, planning, monitoring, execution, evaluation and administration of security cooperation programs and activities. When DSCA first embarked on developing the program, Abercrombie said, the agency had been unclear on how many people across DOD were involved, noting that while they might be part of the security cooperation effort, the majority do not work for DSCA. "We surveyed the department's enterprise and came back with more than 20,000 civilian and military positions across the Department of Defense who are supporting the security cooperation enterprise," she said. Abercrombie said DSCA has been working with the Defense Civilian Personnel Advisory Service to help in coding employee positions within personnel systems to designate employees as being part of the security cooperation enterprise, so that DSCA officials know who is affected. Civilian position descriptions will be also updated, she said. "Eventually, everybody in the workforce will have basic-level, consistent understanding of what we are trying to accomplish in security cooperation," Abercrombie said. "Even if they are only working one little piece of it, they will understand how that connects to the broader enterprise and how their role is supporting the larger national interest." The effort will improve outcomes in security cooperation, Abercrombie said. DOD to Require Cybersecurity Certification in Some Contract Bids [2020-01-31] WASHINGTON -- By the end of September, the Defense Department will require at least some companies bidding on defense contracts to certify that they meet at least a basic level of cybersecurity standards when responding to a request for proposals. DOD released its new Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification today, billed by the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment as "Version 1.0." By June, the department plans to publish as many as 10 requests for information on contracts that include CMMC requirements, Ellen M. Lord said during a Pentagon news conference announcing the certification effort. By September, she said, the department will also publish corresponding requests for proposals that include those requirements. By fiscal year 2026, all new DOD contracts will contain the CMMC requirements, Lord said. "I believe it is absolutely critical to be crystal clear as to what expectations for cybersecurity are, what our metrics are, and how we will audit for those expectations," Lord said. "CMMC is a critical element of DOD's overall cybersecurity implementation." Lord said cybersecurity risks threaten the defense industry and the national security of the U.S. government, as well as its allies and partners. About $600 billion, or 1% of the global gross domestic product, is lost through cyber theft each year, she noted. "Adversaries know that in today's great-power competition environment, information and technology are both key cornerstones," she said. "Attacking a sub-tier supplier is far more appealing than a prime [supplier]." The CMMC gives the department a mechanism to certify the cyber readiness of the largest defense contractors -- those at the top who win contracts are called "primes" -- as well as the smaller businesses that subcontract with the primes. The new CMMC provides for five levels of certification in both cybersecurity practices and processes. "Something ... simple in Level 1 would be, 'Does your company have antivirus software? Are you updating your antivirus software? Are you updating your passwords?'" said Katie Arrington, DOD's chief information security officer for acquisition. "CMMC Level 1 is the basic cyber hygiene skills we should be doing every day. They are there to protect yourself, your company and your own information." By CMMC Level 2, Arrington said, the department will also begin looking at cybersecurity processes as well, to ensure cybersecurity is not just practiced, but that a company is effectively documenting, managing, reviewing and optimizing its practices across its entire enterprise. Arrington said that for the roughly 10 requests for information and requests for proposals DOD is expected to publish later this year for potential contracts, she expects a mix of CMMC certification levels will be required. "We'll have some CMMC Level 3, CMMC Level 1, and there may be one or two with the 4 or 5 CMMC levels going out," Arrington said. The department will not be certifying potential defense contractors for CMMC on its own. Instead, Lord explained, a series of CMMC "third-party assessment organizations" or C3PAOs, will conduct those assessments. The C3PAOs will also not be paid by the department, Lord said. "That's a private transaction between industrial base companies and those of certification bodies," she added. No C3PAOs have been designated to conduct the assessments yet, Lord said. noting that while multiple companies are interested, DOD has not yet designated who is qualified. A newly created 13-member CMMC accreditation body, made up of members of the defense industrial base, the cybersecurity community and the academic community will oversee the training, quality and administration of the C3PAOs, Lord said. Meanwhile, she said, the department is drafting a memorandum between DOD and the CMMC accreditation body to outline its roles, responsibilities and rules. She said one area of concern will be to ensure no conflicts of interest are involved in accreditation. For example, a C3PAO would not be able to accredit itself for CMMC. No existing contracts with the department will have CMMC requirements inserted into them, Arrington said. Subcontractors to a prime contractor will not all need to have the same level of CMMC certification to win a contract, Arrington said. "Security is not one size fits all," she added. Instead, she said, depending on how controlled unclassified information flows between those parties involved in a contract, subcontractors might need only be a CMMC Level 1 company. CMMC will ensure a more level and fair playing field for companies bidding on DOD contracts, Arrington said. Today, she said, some small businesses bidding on work might self-attest that they meet requirements to handle certain kinds of information, but in fact only are planning to meet those requirements, while another business might actually be meeting the requirements. CMMC, she said, will ensure that only companies that actually meet requirements can compete for contracts. "We need to make sure our industry partners are prepared to take on the work, and our third-party auditors will ensure that they are implementing the practices that we need in place to secure that national defense and our industrial base," Arrington said. Lord said the department is aware that CMMC requirements could be a burden to some smaller companies and that DOD is working with primes and smaller companies to help them overcome that burden. "We need small and medium businesses in our industrial base, and we need to retain them," she said. "We will continue to work to minimize impacts, but not at the cost of national security." Space Force Making Measured Efforts in Absorbing New Personnel [2020-02-07] WASHINGTON -- As it stands now, the new U.S. Space Force has one member: its commander, Space Force Gen. John W. Raymond. But there will be more -- enlisted, commissioned officers and civilian members will be part of the new force before the end of the year. Those who are currently assigned to, but aren't members of the Space Force say bringing aboard new personnel will take some time to get right. "The commissioning and enlistment and appointment of officers and enlisted members of a military service, much of that is controlled by law, statute and Congress," said Air Force Lt. Gen. David D. Thompson, vice commander of U.S. Space Force, during a Feb. 5 discussion at the Pentagon. "That's the first part. We need to go through a process with Congress to have them authorize, provide authorization for specific names and specific individuals to transfer into that service. And we are working with Congress on that right now, and that will take a little bit of time." Thompson also said that, similar to the other military services, those who commission or enlist have expectations regarding benefits, pay and other things. Those details haven't yet been worked out for the Space Force, he said, but they have to be in place before new members can come aboard. "The last thing we want to have happen as we go through this process with excitement and enthusiasm and people are happy, ... but then they don't get paid." Air Force Maj. Gen. Clint E. Crosier, director of the U.S. Space Force planning office, explained in more detail the significance of transferring from an existing service into the new service. "We want to be very deliberate about the transfer process," Crosier said. "The transfer piece involves raising your right hand -- because, literally, our enlisted members are terminating their enlistment in the U.S. Air Force or Army or Navy and enlisting in the Space Force. And our officers are resigning their commissions. That's a very formal process." Changes regarding financial management, personnel systems and even the Uniform Code of Military Justice will all need to be addressed before new members can come aboard, he said, so that when people formally leave their prior service and come into the Space Force, everything is ready for them and it's a smooth transition. Eventually, the Space Force will recruit new members directly from the civilian world. But initially, Crosier said, Space Force will fill its ranks with personnel who transfer in from the Air Force, the Army or the Navy. That mix of cultures will mean the new service will need a plan to ensure that personnel coming in are treated equally, he noted. "You can imagine then -- fast forward to a time in the future where I hold my first promotion board and I have ex-naval officers and ex-Army officers and ex-Air Force officers all meeting a common promotion board and ensuring I have fair and equitable way to run that board so that everybody has a fair chance of getting promoted," Crosier said. Air Force personnel will be the first to transfer into the Space Force in fiscal years 2020 and 2021. Thompson said all of the Air Force's space operations capabilities will transfer into the Space Force. Ultimately, officers and enlisted personnel currently involved in things such as space operations, space intelligence, space acquisition, space engineering, space communications and space cyber may transfer into the Space Force. After that, Crosier said, the new service will do the planning to account for the different cultures, different promotions processes and different training processes that incoming personnel from the other services are familiar with. "So that when we are ready to ask Army and Navy folks to raise their right hand and transfer, that we have got all those pieces in place," Crosier said. One thing unknown now, Thompson said, is what members of the Space Force will be called. Already, the U.S. military has soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. But Space Force has yet to decide what it will call its own personnel. "We are taking steps to broaden our aperture and bring in a larger set of groups," Thompson said. The Space Force is looking to Defense Language Institute, the language department at the Air Force Academy, and other English and language centers, as well as to its own people, to come up with the best possible suggestions for names, he added. The service has "a couple of really strong options on what we might be called, and some pretty strong opinions," Thompson said. "But what we would like to do is ensure we've thought as broadly as we can, gotten the opinions of the people who matter ... and considered as best as we can what that ought to be, before we land on an answer." FY 2021 DOD Budget Request Seeks 3% Pay Raise for Service Members [2020-02-10] WASHINGTON -- President Donald J. Trump's request for $705.4 billion to fund the Defense Department in fiscal year 2021 prioritizes readiness and modernization, the strengthening of alliances, performance and accountability reforms, and service members and their families. The president released his fiscal 2021 budget request today. For those in uniform, the department has asked for a 3% pay raise across the board, along with increases to the allowances for housing and subsistence. DOD also is seeking $8 billion for a range of programs to support military families, including professional development and education opportunities for service members and spouses, child care for more than 160,000 children, youth programs for more than a million family members and support to the schools that educate more than 77,000 students from military families. Top priorities for defense in the budget request include nuclear modernization, missile defeat and defense, space and cyberspace. For fiscal 2021, DOD is asking for $28.9 billion to fund modernization of the nuclear defense program, covering all three legs of the nuclear triad: land, sea and air. Around $7 billion is targeted at nuclear command, control and communications. Another $2.8 billion is earmarked for the B-21 Raider long-range strike bomber. The Air Force eventually expects to get some 100 of the aircraft, which will carry the B61-12 and B83 nuclear gravity bombs, as well as the long-range standoff cruise missile. The request for nuclear modernization also funds procurement of the Columbia-class ballistic submarine at $4.4 billion, and the ground-based strategic deterrent at $1.5 billion. The GBSD is expected to replace about 400 existing Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles. DOD's request also includes $15.4 billion for the newly created U.S. Space Force, $337 million for the Space Development Agency, and $249 million for U.S. Space Command. Around $7 billion is targeted at nuclear command, control and communications. Another $2.8 billion is earmarked for the B-21 Raider long-range strike bomber. The Air Force eventually expects to get some 100 of the aircraft, which will carry the B61-12 and B83 nuclear gravity bombs, as well as the long-range standoff cruise missile. The request for nuclear modernization also funds procurement of the Columbia-class ballistic submarine at $4.4 billion, and the ground-based strategic deterrent at $1.5 billion. The GBSD is expected to replace about 400 existing Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles. DOD's request also includes $15.4 billion for the newly created U.S. Space Force, $337 million for the Space Development Agency, and $249 million for U.S. Space Command. In the air, the budget request seeks $3 billion for 15 KC-46 Pegasus tankers to replace aging Eisenhower-era KC-135 Stratotankers and KC-10 Extenders. The request also provides $11.4 billion for 79 F-35 Lightning II variants. On the sea, the budget request would fund a new Virginia-class submarine at $4.7 billion and two DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers at $3.5 billion. On the land, the Army and Marine Corps would receive 4,247 joint light tactical vehicles at $1.4 billion, as well as $1.5 billion for modifications and upgrades to 89 M-1 Abrams tanks. Norquist: Budget Request Represents 'Next Step' in Implementing Defense Strategy [2020-02-10] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department's $705.4 billion budget request for fiscal year 2021 focuses on preparing the U.S. military for all-domain, "high-end" warfare, Deputy Defense Secretary David L. Norquist told reporters at the Pentagon. "The FY2021 budget request is the next step in implementing the National Defense Strategy and focuses on all-domain operations," Norquist said during a briefing today at the Pentagon. The budget request aims to sustain readiness, recapitalize U.S. nuclear deterrence capabilities, strengthen homeland missile defense and expand investment in hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence and autonomous platforms, Norquist said. "In short, this budget invests in bringing the capabilities of tomorrow to life," he added. "The result is a budget that puts us on a path to develop a future force that will prevail in each and every domain -- air, land and sea, space and cyber -- leveraging the capabilities of each in a synchronized fashion while fighting seamlessly across them all." Acting Defense Department Comptroller Elaine McCusker said the budget provides funding to support three lines of effort, including building a more lethal, resilient, agile and ready joint force; strengthening alliances and attracting new partners; and reforming for greater performance and affordability. The 2021 budget request also focuses on service members and their families, she said. "The budget we are submitting today builds on the last four years by continuing our focus on the National Defense Strategy priorities of nuclear modernization and homeland defense, and while refining our focus on the cyber and space warfighting domains and joint enablers for all domain operations," McCusker said. "We will keep our attention on long-term sustainable readiness while we shed non-core functions and better align resources to save money, manpower and time for lethality." In addition to requesting a 3% pay raise for service members, the fiscal 2021 budget request seeks $28.9 billion for nuclear modernization, $20.3 billion for missile defeat and defense, $18 billion for space and $9.8 billion for cyberspace activities. It also includes the largest research, development, testing and evaluation request in more than 70 years. For that effort, the department is asking for $3.2 billion for hypersonic weapons; $1.5 billion for microelectronics; $1.7 billion for autonomy -- which enhances speed, maneuverability and lethality in contested environments and develops human/machine teaming -- and $800 million for artificial intelligence. To Avoid 'Bureaucratic Inertia' With Space Force, DOD Must 'Think Differently' [2020-02-12] WASHINGTON -- Just in time for Christmas, President Donald J. Trump gifted the nation with a new military service: the U.S. Space Force. But ensuring the new service doesn't become just another bloated government bureaucracy will take a bit of work and planning, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy said. "The pitfall we have to avoid is submitting to the bureaucratic inertia of the way we have always done things before," Stephen L. Kitay said during a Feb. 6 breakfast hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in Washington. "This is our opportunity to think differently. It is not only our opportunity, it is our imperative to think differently." "Thinking differently" when it comes to the U.S. Space Force, Kitay said, involves embracing originality and joint principals, empowering those who work within the space community and focusing on increased partnerships. "The joint force in all domains is facing potential threats that challenge our freedom of operation across the strategic environment, making our ability to provide advanced space capabilities to the joint force all the more important," Kitay said. "To respond effectively to these cross-domain and multi-domain challenges we must extend our culture of joint integration. And to do this well, we must ensure the Space Force is not simply part of an Air Force rebranded, but rather is able to leverage the best of all the services." Empowerment, Kitay said, involves ensuring Space Force personnel are not burdened with unnecessary bureaucracy. "Our space professionals may be a relatively small group of about 15,000 people within the Department of Defense, but I can tell you that their power is mighty," Kitay said. "As we set up our new organization, we have to ensure we are not creating unnecessary layers of bureaucracy and we have to ensure there is clear alignment of accountability and roles and responsibilities. As we empower, we have to provide clear guidance and enterprise alignment and prudent oversite to enable a culture of speed and innovation." Kitay also said thinking differently about Space Force will mean the strengthening of relationships with multiple partners, including interagency colleagues, international allies and partners, and the private sector. He said he's met with many of these partners. "The message from all of our allies and partners that I've met with is clear and consistent," he said. "They recognize the importance of space; they are concerned by the growing threats in the domain; and they are ready to work together. It's fascinating and it opens up tremendous opportunities. We recognize that in any domain we never fight alone, and space must be no different." U.S., Taliban Negotiate 7-Day Proposal for Reduction in Violence [2020-02-13] WASHINGTON -- The United States and the Taliban have agreed to a proposal for a reduction in violence in Afghanistan, and the Defense Department is working with allies on the path forward, Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper said. "The best, if not only solution forward is a political agreement," Esper said following his meeting with NATO defense ministers in Brussels today. "We have the basis for one on the table, and we are taking a hard look at it. We are consulting with our allies. We are consulting with Congress and others. And I think peace deserves a chance." At a news conference today, Esper said a positive outcome will require that all parties comply with obligations. "For the United States, the key thing will be continued support to our Afghan partners, and it will need to be a conditions-based approach to all of this," he added. NATO has agreed in principle to expand its role in the Middle East, the secretary said. "We have also asked NATO's military leaders to consider what more the alliance could do to assist the Iraqi security forces," he told reporters. "Looking beyond Iraq, I welcome follow-on discussions on how to broaden NATO's role in the Middle East to defend the international rules-based order, to include deploying air defenses and other capabilities that would deter aggression and reassure partners." In addition to discussing operations in the Middle East, Esper said he also emphasized to NATO defense ministers the importance of burden-sharing within the alliance, including the commitment of member nations to invest 2% of gross domestic product toward defense. That commitment will bolster progress already made, he said. Between 2016 and 2020, NATO allies increased their investments by some $130 billion. Esper said the ministers also discussed the NATO Readiness Initiative, which he said is critical to a culture of readiness within the alliance, and he called for routine tests of that initiative to evaluate readiness. The "Four Thirties by 2020" pledge, part of that initiative, he said, "is just the start of our work." The pledge was for NATO to have 30 battalions, 30 battleships and 30 air squadrons ready to deploy within 30 days by this year. When it comes to technology, Esper said, NATO allies must carefully consider the long-term risks of the economic and commercial choices they make, especially in regard to telecommunications. In particular, he added, commercial 5G technology from China could put NATO security at risk. "At the end of the day, Chinese telecom firms have a legal obligation to provide technical support and assistance to the communist party, and that concerns us deeply," he said. "Reliance on Chinese 5G vendors could render our partners' critical systems vulnerable to disruption, manipulation and espionage." The potential for that, he said, puts communications and intelligence-sharing capabilities and NATO partnerships at risk, he said, and too counter this, the United States is encouraging allied and U.S. tech companies to develop alternative 5G solutions. Esper said the United States remains committed to the NATO partnership and the security it provides. "The U.S. commitment to NATO remains ironclad," he said. "Together we form the most powerful, multilateral military alliance in the world, one based on our shared values and our shared interests." Joint Exercise to Test Tactical Forces in Cold-Weather Environment [2020-02-19] WASHINGTON -- Some U.S. forces stationed in Europe will head north March 2 to participate in Cold Response 2020, a biennial exercise hosted by Norway focusing mostly on operations at the tactical level in cold-weather environments. "All U.S. military services will participate to sharpen our military capabilities and allied cooperation in high-intensity warfighting in a challenging Arctic environment with rugged terrain and extreme cold weather," Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Patrick J. Hermesmann, commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces Europe and Africa, said yesterday during a news conference at NATO headquarters in Belgium. Between 15,000 and 16,000 service members from the U.S., Norway, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium, Denmark, Finland and Sweden are expected to participate in Cold Response 2020, said Norwegian Rear Adm. Sverre Engeness. This is "an exercise designed for and focused on the tactical units," Engeness said. "They are the primary training audience." He said the exercise will predominantly involve land and amphibious forces, but sea and air forces also will participate. While the exercise has been in the planning stages for months, the units at the lowest levels will not get a real sense of that planning, he said. Instead, he explained, "they will have all the challenges they require for tactical interoperability and integration and so forth." Hermesmann said Cold Response 2020 will exercise the ability of American forces to deploy large numbers of service members inside Europe in support of NATO allies and European partners. "By aggressively training and conducting these realistic exercises in some extremely harsh environments, these participating U.S. forces, alongside forces from Norway and allies and partners, will hone their lethal skills, fine-tune their interoperability, nurture key working relationships and acclimate to the challenges posed by fighting in extreme cold and in rugged mountainous terrain," Hermesmann said. While the U.S. military has areas available for cold-weather training, Hermesmann said, the environment in Norway is unlike anything else on Earth. But that's not the only reason the U.S. wants to participate in Cold Response, he said. "We have a critical ally, which is the Norwegian military and Norwegian people. For those reasons, that's why we are here in Norway," he said. "Exercises such as Cold Response 2020 exhibit the capabilities and cooperation, the strength and steadfast commitment, as well as the determination and dedication of the U.S. and allied and partner nations have for maintaining the secure and stable Arctic." The Cold Response 2020 exercise takes place in an area of northern Norway that stretches from the town of Narvik to the Finnmark district. The main part of the exercise will be located in the district of Troms. More Young People Need to Pursue the 'Magic of Engineering' [2020-02-20] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department's chief technology officer said more must be done to encourage young people to pursue engineering careers. "One of our critical tasks is how to induce more young people into the magic of engineering, as opposed to being a Hollywood star, an NBA basketball player, [or] a denizen of Wall Street," Michael D. Griffin, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said during a National Engineers Week event yesterday at the Pentagon. "When I am asked to talk to younger folks about just this, I often say -- and I will pass it along to you -- that my favorite quote about what it means to be an engineer comes from Theodore VonKármán, one of the great engineers of history. Von Kármán said about engineering, versus science in particular, 'Scientists study the world that is. Engineers create the world that has never been.'" Engineering, Griffin said, is every bit as creative a pursuit as art, music, literature or poetry. "Our tools are just different," he said. "Our tools are the tools of physical law and mathematics, but also of human ingenuity and creativity." For example, Griffin said, if a young woman aspires to creativity, she is as apt to accomplish that within engineering as in any other field. "That applies to any of us," he said. "I would offer that as something to pass along to the next generation. A new engineering creation is something that has never existed before in the history of the universe. ... It's an awesome thought when you realize as an engineer you can divine an idea, bring it to practice, something that has never existed before in the history of the universe." Griffin is responsible for the research, development and prototyping activities across the Defense Department enterprise. Among other things, he ensures technological superiority for the department and oversees the activities of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Missile Defense Agency, the Defense Innovation Unit and the DOD Laboratory enterprise. Esper: Nuclear Triad Must Remain Effective, Reliable, Credible [2020-02-20] WASHINGTON -- The fiscal year 2021 defense budget request places a high priority on modernizing the nation's strategic nuclear triad, Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper emphasized during a visit to Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota. The secretary met yesterday with leaders and airmen at the 91st Missile Wing and the 5th Bomb Wing, and he toured a B-52 bomber and a nuclear launch silo. Bombers and ground-launched missiles make up two-thirds of the nuclear triad, with submarine-launched missiles providing its third leg. "It's been a very good education for me," he said. "The nuclear strategic triad is the most important part of our military. It's key to our nation's defense. It provides that strategic nuclear deterrent that we depend on day after day -- that we've depended on decade after decade." For that reason, Esper said, modernization of the nuclear triad is of top importance to both the White House and the Pentagon. "The president was very clear to me, to the Pentagon, to the Hill, that modernization of our strategic nuclear forces is priority No. 1," the secretary said. "So, we made it priority No. 1 in our budget, and the numbers should show that." Top priorities in DOD's budget request include nuclear modernization, missile defeat and defense, space and cyberspace. For fiscal year 2021, DOD is asking for $28.9 billion to fund modernization of the nuclear defense program, covering all three legs of the nuclear triad. Around $7 billion is targeted at nuclear command, control and communications. Another $2.8 billion is earmarked for the B-21 Raider long-range strike bomber. The Air Force eventually expects to purchase 100 of the aircraft, which will carry the B61-12 and B83 nuclear gravity bombs, as well as the long-range standoff cruise missile. The request also funds procurement of the Columbia-class ballistic submarine for $4.4 billion and the ground-based strategic deterrent for $1.5 billion. The ground-based strategic deterrent is expected to replace about 400 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles. Esper Urges South Korea to Contribute More to Its Defense [2020-02-24] WASHINGTON -- Though the U.S.-South Korea alliance remains strong, South Korea must bear a more proportional share of the cost of maintaining its security, Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper said. Esper hosted South Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo at the Pentagon today. DOD officials said the two leaders discussed a range of issues including the regional security environment, policy toward North Korea, transition of wartime operational control, and the special measures agreement between the United States and South Korea. As the 70th anniversary of the start of the Korean War approaches, Esper said, the U.S. alliance with the Republic of Korea remains strong. "The United States stands fully committed to the defense of the ROK," he said. "Forged through years of combat and shared sacrifice, our alliance is ironclad and remains the linchpin of security, stability and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula and in the larger Indo-Pacific region. Our shared values, interests, and commitment to the rules-based international order form the foundation of an alliance that is as vital today as it was in the 1950s." But South Korea must contribute more to its own security, the secretary said. "Shouldering the cost of the common defense cannot fall disproportionately to the American taxpayer," Esper said. "As such, we must find a more sustainable and equitable means of sharing the costs of our combined defense with the Republic of Korea. As a global economic powerhouse and an equal partner in the preservation of peace in the peninsula, South Korea can and should contribute more to its defense." Esper noted that the United States is asking many security partners around the globe to step up and contribute more to mutually beneficial partnerships. In particular, he pointed to U.S. relationships in Europe. "Increased burden-sharing is a top priority for the United States across our alliances," he said. "We consistently urge NATO allies to contribute more to our shared defense, and we ask the same of South Korea and other partners." Esper said he and the South Korean defense minister also discussed continued efforts toward the common objective of the complete denuclearization of North Korea and the importance of the trilateral relationship among the United States, South Korea and Japan. That relationship includes high-level policy consultations, shared military exercise and information sharing; and progress toward meeting the conditions needed for the eventual transition of operational control to a South Korean commander. Jeong said that the operational control transition will happen in a systematic manner "based not on timing, but on conditions." Certification of those conditions, he said, will be assessed jointly by South Korea and the United States "in a transparent and credible manner." Afterward, he said, guiding principles agreed upon during the 50th Republic of Korea-United States Security Consultative Meeting will ensure a continued strong defense of South Korea. The alliance and its posture will only strengthen as a result of continued presence of U.S. Forces and the guaranteed role of the United Nations Command, he said. DOD Adopts 5 Principles of Artificial Intelligence Ethics [2020-02-25] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department has formally adopted five principles for the ethical development of artificial intelligence capabilities. Artificial intelligence is the department's top technology modernization priority, DOD Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy said yesterday. The new principles lay the foundation for the ethical design, development, deployment and use of AI by DOD he said. "These principles build upon the department's long history of ethical adoption of new technologies," he added. The Defense Innovation Board spent 15 months developing the principles, and consulted with leading AI and technical experts, as well as with current and former DOD leaders and the American public. Those principles, Deasy noted, apply to the use of AI in both combat and noncombat situations. The five AI ethical principles, based on recommendations from the Defense Innovation Board, are: 1) Responsible: DOD personnel will exercise appropriate levels of judgment and care while remaining responsible for the development, deployment and use of AI capabilities. 2) Equitable: The department will take deliberate steps to minimize unintended bias in AI capabilities. 3) Traceable: The department's AI capabilities will be developed and deployed such that relevant personnel possess an appropriate understanding of the technology, development processes and operational methods applicable to AI capabilities, including with transparent and auditable methodologies, data sources and design procedures and documentation. 4) Reliable: The department's AI capabilities will have explicit, well-defined uses, and the safety, security and effectiveness of such capabilities will be subject to testing and assurance within those defined uses across their entire life cycles. 5) Governable: The department will design and engineer AI capabilities to fulfill their intended functions while possessing the ability to detect and avoid unintended consequences, and the ability to disengage or deactivate deployed systems that demonstrate unintended behavior. Air Force Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, said AI is a powerful emerging and enabling technology that is rapidly transforming culture, society, and eventually, even warfighting. "Whether it does so in a positive or negative way depends on our approach to adoption and use," he said. "The complexity and the speed of warfare will change as we build an AI-ready force of the future. We owe it to the American people and our men and women in uniform to adopt AI ethics principles that reflect our nation's values of a free and open society." Shanahan also said that he believes, and leaders in the Defense Department believe, that the nation that is first to master AI will be the one that prevails on the battlefields of the future. "We also believe that the nation that successfully implements AI principles will lead in AI for many years," he said. "The U.S. military intends to do just that." Stratcom Commander: Failing to Replace Nuclear Triad Akin to Disarmament [2020-02-28] WASHINGTON -- With both Russia and China making great advances in their strategic weapons arsenals, the U.S. must update its nuclear triad or risk the prospect of existing systems needing to be dismantled due to age -- an outcome tantamount to disarmament, a top Navy official said. ''When we talk about the modernization of the triad, what we leave out is the 'or else.' And the other choice that we have is not to keep what we have. The entire triad is reaching the end of its useful life,'' Admiral Charles A. Richard, commander of United States Strategic Command testified. Richard appeared yesterday before the House Armed Services Committee's strategic forces subcommittee. ''So, either we replace what we have now, or we start to divest, almost on a path to disarmament, in the face of this growing threat.'' Dr. James H. Anderson, who is currently performing the duties of the deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, reminded lawmakers that the fiscal year 2021 budget request for nuclear forces is $28.9B -- roughly 4.1% of the total DOD request. Modernization and recapitalization of those nuclear forces is a mere 1.7% of the total DOD budget request, he said. ''This committee is well aware of the age of the Triad systems and the challenge the department faces in sustaining these systems as we proceed with modernizing U.S. nuclear forces after decades of deferred recapitalization,'' Anderson said. ''Funding these critical requirements ensures that modern replacements will be available before the nation's legacy systems reach the end of their extended-service lives and we lose them altogether.'' Recapitalization of the U.S. nuclear triad involves new submarines, such as the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines; new intercontinental ballistic missiles as part of the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent program; and new bomber aircraft, such as the B-21 Raider. Richard told lawmakers he characterizes Russia's efforts as an ''explosion in capability,'' that extends beyond a mere recapitalization of its own triad, and includes nuclear weapons and nuclear-powered weapons that are not strategic and are non-treaty-accountable. Russia is also developing new kinds of delivery systems -- including hypersonic glide, nuclear-powered cruise and undersea unmanned nuclear-powered systems. ''But it goes beyond that,'' Richard said. ''They have new command and control. They have new warning systems. They have new doctrine. They are exercising [at] a level that we hadn't seen before. They even do civil defense. That is a concept the U.S. abandoned back in the early '60s. This is a very comprehensive approach that Russia is undertaking.'' China, Richard said, is doing much the same thing -- but the key difference is that China doesn't talk about it. ''While they are very opaque and they don't speak about it very frequently, they will have all the same capabilities that Russia has, giving them all the same options,'' he said. The U.S. maintains sea-based, land-based and air-launched nuclear capabilities -- collectively referred to a ''nuclear triad.'' The Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent is expected to replace about 400 existing Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles. Richard said eliminating one leg of the triad -- for instance, forgoing ground-based missiles to create a two-pronged nuclear response -- changes the calculus for executing U.S. strategic deterrence. ''We went through a nuclear posture review and determined that we needed tailored strategies for each of our adversaries,'' Richard said. ''The triad is what gives me the capabilities; it's the inherent flexibility in the triad that enables me to execute those strategies. If we don't modernize, I don't have those capabilities.'' 250-Patient Army Field Hospital in Seattle Expected to Open Next Week [2020-03-02] WASHINGTON -- The Army is assembling a 250-bed field hospital at the CenturyLink Event Center in Seattle that's meant to treat non-COVID-19 patients so area hospitals will be able to free up their own beds to care for those who have contracted the coronavirus disease, the commander of the 627th Hospital Center said. "We have an important mission," Army Col. Hope Williamson-Younce said during a telephone news conference with reporters at the Pentagon today. "We are expeditionary, we're agile, and we're responsive. We have medical doctors, nurses and support staff from all over the world -- they mobilized in a moment's notice to support the American people." The field hospital, Williamson-Younce said, will relieve some of the burden on local hospitals, allowing them "freedom of maneuver" to better take care of patients who have COVID-19. "That is the best place for those patients to be -- inside the fixed facility in a controlled environment," she said. The field hospital involves about 500 military medical personnel from multiple units, including the 627th Hospital Center's 10th Field Hospital; the 62nd Medical Brigade; the 47th Combat Area Support Hospital; and the 520th Area Support Medical Company. Army Lt. Col. Jason Hughes, commander of the 10th Field Hospital, said his unit will be providing 148 beds to the facility, including 48 intensive care unit beds. The 10th Field Hospital also includes an emergency room, operating suites, a lab, a microbiology unit, blood banking capability, X-ray capability and services for mental and spiritual health. He described it as "a one-stop shop for your mind, body and soul." "These soldiers are excited to be here and do their mission," Hughes said. "That's why they signed up: to serve the nation, raise their right hand and come and serve the American people, whether that's abroad or, in this case, at home." The field hospital is still being set up, and the expectation is that by next week it will be ready to take on patients, Hughes said. While some of the 500 personnel assigned to the field hospital are busy constructing the facility, others are working closely with local officials to develop plans for determining what patients will come to the hospital and how they will get there, he said. "While we're building this hospital, we have the clinical teams integrated and discussing with the Department of Health here at Washington state and the local medical community to make sure that we do this the right way and the patients that come here get the care they deserve without compromising this facility," he added. Because the field hospital is to receive only non-COVID-19 patients, Williamson-Younce said, patients will be screened at both the referring hospitals and then again at the field hospital to ensure they are not afflicted with COVID-19. Another challenge at the field hospital is providing for civilian patients the kind of experience they would get in a civilian hospital -- which is understandably different from the kind of care service members would expect in a wartime environment. "When we go to war, we set up on a field and we set up in tents," Hughes said. "We construct a tent city, and we have beds that are close, near to each other. So [there are] privacy concerns that we have for civilian patients. We're constructing barriers in between the beds that we wouldn't normally have in a field setting." Hughes also said they are keeping in mind concerns about noise, such as that from power and oxygen generation systems, while setting up the hospital. While that kind of noise might be common around a field hospital at a forward operating base, he said, it would be unusual for civilians. The team is working to ensure civilians treated in the field hospital have "an experience commensurate with what they'd have in a local hospital," he said. Hughes said that while it's likely that patients will begin arriving early next week, the numbers of patients coming to the field hospital is not yet known. "Whether the hospitals offload patients to us immediately, that remains to be seen," he said. "But we'll be ready, whether they come or not. We'll see what the local network can handle. But we'll be ready to go early next week." U.S. Seeks to Maintain Credible Nuclear Deterrent [2020-03-03] WASHINGTON -- The United States maintains a robust nuclear arsenal that consists of ground-based, air-launched and sea-launched weapons. Together, it's commonly called the "nuclear triad," and it remains the centerpiece of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. The triad is fast approaching the end of its service life and must quickly be replaced before it's lost. Victorino G. Mercado, currently performing the duties of the assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities testified today before the House Armed Services Committee, subcommittee on strategic forces. He told lawmakers that efforts to replace the triad are not part of an arms race. "The U.S. seeks only what it needs to maintain a credible nuclear deterrent," he said. "In contrast to Russia, who maintains about 2,000 non-strategic nuclear weapons and are pursuing and fielding other novel nuclear capabilities, we have no desire or intent to engage in an arms race nor match weapon-for-weapon the capabilities being fielded by Russia." The DOD's fiscal year 2021 budget request for nuclear forces, Mercado said, is $28.9 billion, or 4.1% of the total DOD request. The funding request to modernize the existing triad is about 1.7% of the budget request, he added. "The nation's nuclear modernization program is affordable," he said. Mercado said that after decades of deferred recapitalization of the nuclear triad, the U.S. must move ahead with modernizing its nuclear forces. Additionally, as defined in the Nuclear Posture Review, the U.S. must also pursue additional flexibility with systems like the sea-launched cruise missile, he said, "to ensure that there are no gains to be made through the use of any nuclear weapon, strategic or otherwise." As part of the modernization of the triad, the DOD is asking for around $2.8 billion for the B-21 Raider long-range strike bomber. The Air Force eventually expects to purchase 100 of the aircraft, which will carry the B61-12 and B83 nuclear gravity bombs, as well as the long-range standoff cruise missile. The Department also seeks funds for the procurement of the Columbia-class ballistic submarine for $4.4 billion and the ground-based strategic deterrent for $1.5 billion. The ground-based strategic deterrent is expected to replace about 400 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles. "Nuclear attack is the only existential threat to the United States, and our nuclear arsenal is the nation's only ultimate insurance policy against such an attack," Mercado said. "Our nuclear triad underwrote every U.S. military operation around the world and also provided extended deterrence guarantees to over 30 allies and partners, precluding the need for them to pursue their own nuclear arsenals. This is the return on investment of our nuclear forces." Policy Changes Underway for International Military Students After Pensacola Shooting [2020-03-04] WASHINGTON -- Late last year, a Saudi Arabian service member training at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, opened fire in a classroom, killing three U.S. service members and wounding eight. The Justice Department determined the attack to be terrorism. Now, new policies are being put in place to mitigate the likelihood of a repeat attack, Garry Reid, director for defense intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee's subcommittee on emerging threats and capabilities at a hearing today. Following the attack, Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper directed that vetting be strengthened for international military students. He also ordered a comprehensive review of the policies and procedures in place for screening foreign students and granting them access to U.S. bases, Reid said. "With regard to the first task, we screened all current Saudi Arabian military students immediately using new procedures that we had recently put in place as part of our personnel vetting transformation initiative," he said, adding that DOD is moving toward a "continuous vetting process" that relies on automated data record searches. Saudi students were the first to be screened using the new procedure, he said. Now, all international military students are also being screened. That screening is still underway for the roughly 5,000 international military students inside the U.S. right now, he said. Those automated searches look at government, commercial and publicly available data, he said; the results are analyzed by trained security experts. For the 10-day policy and procedure review, Reid said, the team found that DOD was "overly-reliant" on vetting conducted by the State Department for issuance of A-2 visas -- the type issued to foreign government officials on business in the U.S. Additionally, he said, information sharing between DOD and the State Department is insufficient. "We also found that DOD programs meant to detect and mitigate events, such as the Pensacola attack, did not cover international military students," he said. Additionally, Reid said that policies varied from installation to installation regarding possession, purchase or handling of firearms by international military students. This has been addressed with the new policy. International military students are now prohibited from buying, owning or handling firearms, he said. Students must acknowledge that they are, regardless of other laws, not allowed access to firearms as part of their training in the United States. The report generated following the policy review is classified, Reid said, but it did yield 21 findings and 6 recommendations. The department is "well underway" on implementing those six recommendations, he added. "Protecting our personnel on our military bases is a top priority for Secretary Esper. Across the department we are actively reinforcing our insider threat programs, improving base security, and strengthening our counter-intelligence posture," Reid said. Army Lt. Gen. Charles Hooper, director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, told lawmakers that the training and education of foreign military personnel is one of our most effective tools to strengthen alliances and attract new partners. "These training programs build the capacity of our allies and partners to provide for their own defense and to contribute to shared security challenges," he said. "Education and training in the United States is foundational to building an enduring interoperability with our partners and allies." The general said that since 2000, more than a million international military students have trained in the United States. Additionally, the U.S. has trained more than 28,000 Saudi Arabian students over the duration of the U.S.-Saudi Arabia security cooperation relationship, Hooper said. Readiness Up Across the Force, Chairman Says [2020-03-05] WASHINGTON -- The fiscal year 2021 Defense Department budget request is driven by the National Defense Strategy, and also furthers the department's readiness and modernization efforts, said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "We are recovering from readiness shortfalls and modernization deferments from 20 years of continuous warfare and a decade of fiscal instability," said Gen. Mark A. Milley during testimony yesterday before the Senate Armed Services Committee. "This year's budget builds on previous readiness and modernization gains and I believe the fiscal year 2021 budget submission is the best allocation of resources in a balanced way to support the NDS. It builds a more lethal force, it strengthens allies and partners, and it reforms the department for greater performance and affordability." While Milley didn't provide examples of readiness gains for either equipment or personnel, he told lawmakers that substantial gains have been made over the last two years. "I can tell you that [readiness] has improved," he said. "I would put it in about a third or so, as I look at these numbers -- about a third improved over the numbers that you probably saw anywhere between 12 and 24 months ago." Milley said that with the continued support of Congress, all the military services "are scheduled to meet their readiness recovery goals in this future year's defense plan." The fiscal year 2021 budget request, Milley said, is driven by the National Defense Strategy, which identifies both China and Russia as long-term strategic competitors. "Our competitive advantage has eroded, and no one should have any doubt about that," Milley said. "China and Russia are increasing their military capabilities to outmatch the United States and its allies in order to exert their global influence, and China's objective is to do that by mid-century." As part of efforts to build a more lethal force -- one of the strategic priorities of the National Defense Strategy -- Milley explained to lawmakers why some existing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms, which have always been in high demand, may be retired. "Many of the ISR systems that we have today that are in very high demand are very, very useful against terrorists and insurgents, against fixed sites, etc.," Milley said. "They have clear penetration capability when there is no significant air defense threat or there are no other types of threats." But those types of ISR capabilities, he said, are less useful against peer or near-peer competitors. "If you are talking about great power competition, which is what this NDS talks about, and what this budget is all about, that is a different type of ISR," Milley said. "So we are trying to divest ourselves of the ISR that is not particularly useful against a Russia or China or even [the high-density] air defense systems of an Iran or North Korea, and invest in those ISR systems that do have penetration capability. ... It makes no sense to me to continue to buy stuff that isn't in alignment with the NDS." Military Doing Better Today Than 4 Years Ago, Norquist Says [2020-03-10] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military is doing better today than it was four years ago based on several metrics, Deputy Defense Secretary David L. Norquist said. "We are in a very different place than we were four years ago," Norquist told lawmakers today during a hearing before the House Budget Committee. "The readiness of our forces are up, the quantity of munitions they have is up, [and] the training level is up." Norquist told lawmakers, specifically, that the Defense Department has increased the number of ready brigade combat teams by 33% and raised the readiness of the Air Force's lead pacing squadrons by 35%. While the military is traditionally thought of as fighting on land, in the air and on the sea, Norquist told lawmakers that space and cyberspace are two new domains where the DOD has made significant investments over the past three years. The department established the U.S. Space Force, for instance, elevated U.S. Cyber Command to a unified combatant command, and created the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. The Defense Department's fiscal year 2021 budget request of $704.5 billion is the next step in implementing the National Defense Strategy, Norquist said. The focus for the budget request, he said, is on all domain operations and preparing for future challenges. He said the budget focuses on recapitalization of nuclear deterrence capabilities, strengthening homeland missile defense and expanding investments in technologies -- such as hypersonic weapons, directed energy, 5G, microelectronics, artificial intelligence and autonomous platforms. Last November, Norquist told lawmakers, the DOD completed its second departmentwide audit, which he said drives both near-term savings and long-term departmental reforms. One example of success has been the uncovering of available inventory for the department. "The audit is not just a paperwork trail, they go and they open warehouses," he said. "We found places where there were items in inventory, many times known to the locals but not ... across the services because it wasn't in the database. That freed up $167 million worth of supplies, put those back into inventory, [we were] able to close out requirements." The audit also revealed places where savings could be had using automation, Norquist said. He also said long term benefits of the auditing are that private sector firms will have access to more timely and accurate data that can be used to drive decision-making. When it comes to getting the FY2021 budget passed, Norquist told the committee how damaging continuing resolutions are to the department and its ability to operate. First, he said, continuing resolutions prevent the start of new programs. "If we have a technology that the department recommends, and the House and Senate both agree, and Republicans and Democrats think are valuable, we can't start it on 1 October. We have to wait," he said. "So, each year you give the other team a three- to four-months head start every time you are under a CR because you're delaying these new technologies." The same problem occurs with planned increases in production, he said. "There's a factory that's scaled to go from 50 to 100, but it has to operate at 50, inefficiently, at extra cost to the taxpayer, until the budget ... passes and allows them to go up to the hundred that the Congress authorized and appropriated and the department supported." The real risk of the continuing resolution, Norquist said, is that federal agencies and the DOD get used to them and make adjustments. "It just moves its contracts to the spring and builds a six-month ... delay because it just assumes it will not get the budget on time," he said. "So, in a government where speed and efficiency is always a challenge and you're trying to push, the continuing resolution pushes things to be slower and more inefficient and wasteful." Right-Sizing, Not Reduction at Guantanamo, Southcom Commander Says [2020-03-12] WASHINGTON -- Since the Guantanamo Bay detention camp stood up in 2002, nearly 780 prisoners have been housed there. Today, the facility holds just 40 men, one who has been convicted and 39 others who are detainees, said Navy Adm. Craig S. Faller, commander of U.S. Southern Command. Now, there are plans to adjust operations at the facility to reflect this new reality. ''There's a heavy guard footprint,'' Faller said, speaking during a briefing at the Pentagon. ''What drives the size of the guard is, in some respects, the spread-out layout of the detention facility.'' The admiral said that as part of a Combatant Command review process, Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper had raised the issue of increasing efficiency and effectiveness at the detention facility, while at the same time not compromising force protection, security of information or the mission of the Guantanamo military commission. ''We've gone through a number of courses of action, and we think there's a way to consolidate footprint and not compromise force protection, and not compromise in any way the Commission process and so we're on a conditions-based path to do that. As we meet conditions, we're going to look to best consolidate the footprint.'' Faller said that he doesn't consider possible changes at the detention facility to be a ''reduction.'' Rather, operations will be adjusted to meet the mission requirement as it currently exists. ''I think that the way I would look at what we're doing in the detention facility ... is we are right-sizing that. We're making it fit for the task, the purpose and the numbers,'' he said. ''So there'll be savings and a tremendous manpower savings and a cost savings for consolidation on footprint, but it's absolutely the right thing to do. And so I wouldn't look at it as a reduction so much as a re-balance.'' Faller was in Washington so that he could testify on Capitol Hill regarding the Southcom portion of the DOD's fiscal year 2021 budget request. The admiral said that, among other things, he discussed with lawmakers the importance of maintaining a competitive edge in Central and South America. ''It's our assessment that the neighborhood's becoming an increasingly contested strategic space in the global competition with China and Russia,'' he said. ''And we do maintain our positional advantage here. However, that advantage is eroding and it's challenging our ability to maintain the favorable balance of regional power that's strictly called for here in this hemisphere in the National Defense Strategy.'' DOD Should Focus on Short-Term Goals in Quantum Science [2020-03-12] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department is focusing a lot of effort on an array of technologies involving quantum science, but the department's chief technology officer says it's important to be realistic about timelines for the most fantastic applications of that technology -- and to focus on what's plausible in the short term for best equipping the warfighter. During testimony Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee, Michael D. Griffin, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said quantum computing and quantum communication are not beyond the boundaries of physics, but are still long-term prospects for use in the department. "We caution that the hyperbole surrounding these topics may be getting ahead of their military and economic utility," Griffin wrote in testimony he submitted to Congress. Instead, Griffin said, the department is focused on quantum technology that's going to be of use to the force in the shorter term. "First and foremost [are] quantum clocks to give us timekeeping, precision, synchronized timekeeping and precision [that are] two, or possibly even three, orders of magnitude better than we have today," Griffin told lawmakers. "That's critically important for maintaining communications in a GPS-denied environment where we might have to fight a war." Quantum sensors for inertial navigation or navigation by other means, as well as quantum magnetometers to improve navigation information, are also critical technologies, Griffin said. "These are the things that we will see in the next few years and where we are focusing a substantial amount of our effort," Griffin said. In the department's fiscal year 2021 budget request, Griffin said, DOD has asked for $23 million to further the development of an enhanced-stability atomic clock that will provide a constant connection to sensor networks and encrypted communication channels that support DOD's most critical missions. Griffin also said the department is focusing on modernizing space architecture, both offensive and defensive hypersonics capabilities, and microelectronics as priorities. "We rely on our commercial partners completely for everything we do in microelectronics, and none of our systems will work without it," he said. "So, we are fully embracing the need to be able to produce trusted microelectronics on a risk-assessed basis all the way from initial design right through fabrication and assembly," he said. "That's a critical area, and our industrial base is under siege from abroad." The FY2021 budget request includes $597 million to improve security related to the department's use of microelectronics. U.S. Strikes 5 Kata'ib Hezbollah Targets in Iraq [2020-03-13] WASHINGTON -- Just days after Wednesday's rocket attack on Camp Taji, Iraq, killed two U.S. service members and a military medic from the U.K., the United States struck back by attacking five weapons sites, the commander of U.S. Central Command said during a Pentagon briefing today. Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. said the U.S. used manned aircraft to attack weapons sites associated with Iranian-backed militia Kata'ib Hezbollah yesterday at 6 p.m. EDT. McKenzie said those sites -- all within a 30-mile radius of Baghdad -- were: the Nawar Ahmad rocket storage site; the Kata'ib Hezbollah advanced conventional weapons storage facility in Karbala; the Al Musayyib weapons storage site; and two locations at Jurf as Sakhr, one for storage of improved heavy rockets and another for propellant production and storage of advanced conventional weapons. "We assessed that each location stored weapons that would enable lethal operations against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq," McKenzie said. "We also assessed that the destruction of these sites will degrade Kata'ib Hezbollah's ability to conduct future strikes." Weather issues around Baghdad have prevented U.S. forces from doing a complete battle damage assessment of the sites following the attacks, but McKenzie said he remains confident that the attacks were effective. "We're confident that we've effectively destroyed these facilities and expect they will no longer be able to house the type of advanced Iranian-supplied weapons that were used in the Kata'ib Hezbollah attacks on the Iraqi base at Camp Taji," McKenzie said. The general also said he thinks collateral damage from the attacks was low and that there will be fatalities at the sites, but numbers can't be confirmed right now. McKenzie said that the Kata'ib Hezbollah attack on Camp Taji was meant to include a total of 33 Iranian-supplied 107mm Katyusha rockets, but only 30 had been fired. "Three were left in the vehicle and failed to ignite," he said. "Of the 30 that were fired, between 8 and 12, or 8 and 15, landed in Taji; that's a large strike ... that's intent to produce a lot of casualties." Radar information, he said, was able to track the origin of the launches, and Iraqi forces were able to capture the launch vehicle and the remaining unlaunched rockets. "The Iraqis actually went out and got the vehicle for us, which was very much appreciated," he said. "But, as usual, typically, the vehicles are left with a timer. There is nobody there when the rockets are fired, which is why the remaining three probably couldn't be ignited because they set a timer on them and ran away. It's a particularly cowardly way to fight, but there you go." The U.S. will process the captured vehicle and the remaining rockets and get intelligence from them. While there are a lot of other weapons sites in Iraq similar to the ones the U.S. struck yesterday -- and the U.S. knows where most of those sites are -- McKenzie said the United States carefully considers attacking such sites, taking into account the relationship with the Iraqi government and also the potential for collateral damage. "We work with the government of Iraq to go after these sites all the time, with varying degrees of success," McKenzie said. "If we have information on a site, we share it with our Iraqi partners, and they'll go after those sites, sometimes effectively, sometimes not effectively. I'm not going to say that it always works, but it is their country, we need to give them the opportunity to do it." The general also said consideration for civilian activities are also a consideration for why additional weapons are not attacked. "When we look at sites, often they're commingled with civilian activities and there's a very high probability of civilian damage if we strike those sites," he said. "The United States is not going to do that. If we strike a site, we're going to find a site that provides collateral damage consistent with the law of armed conflict and our values." Following the attack on Camp Taji, McKenzie said he has asked for two carrier strike groups to remain in the Centcom region. Both the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and the USS Harry S. Truman were approved to stay on. "We're going to keep them for a while," McKenzie said. "We can move [them] around to present a completely changing potential threat to an adversary. So, the carriers are very ... important to us and we know that the Iranians watch them very closely, too." McKenzie also said the U.S. is moving Patriot missile batteries into Iraq, as well, along with other systems, including a counter rocket, artillery, and mortar system, to defend the Patriot once it's in place. "We are in Iraq to support the people of Iraq in their fight against ISIS," McKenzie said. "We always reserve the right to defend our forces whenever they're attacked or threatened ... I would caution Iran and its proxies from attempting a response that would endanger U.S. and coalition forces or our partners. U.S. Central Command is well postured to defend our forces around the region and respond to any further aggression against our forces." Pentagon Spokesman: DOD Ready to Help With Coronavirus, but Capability Limited [2020-03-16] WASHINGTON -- As concerns of coronavirus grow, the Defense Department stands ready to provide support wherever it's asked to do so, the assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs said. "The Department of Defense is ready, willing and able to support civilian authorities to the greatest extent possible with the direction of the president," Jonathan Rath Hoffman said during a Pentagon news conference today. "We just want to make sure that the conversation that is being had is informed by the facts of what is possible, what is not, and what those trade-offs are." While the U.S. military is often depicted in movies and on television as having the capacity to stand up vast medical capabilities at a moment's notice, both Hoffman and Air Force Brig. Gen. (Dr.) Paul Friedrichs, the Joint Staff surgeon, cautioned against overestimating the department's capacity to provide medical capabilities to support a contagion like coronavirus. Hoffman told reporters that DOD has only about 2% to 3% of the number of hospital beds that the private sector has. The department runs only 36 hospitals in the United States, Friedrichs said, many of which are ill-suited for caring for large numbers of contagious patients. "Many of them are configured to support, as you might imagine, our immediate military needs," Friedrichs said. "They take care of the active duty population and their families and some retirees. Some large facilities such as the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, have much more diverse services," he added. "We have a number of smaller facilities in more remote locations, like Fort Wainwright, Alaska, [which] has a small hospital that offers obstetrical services and basic community hospital type services," the Joint Staff surgeon said. Hoffman pointed out that military doctors are better trained for wartime injuries than for treating communicable illnesses such as COVID-19. "Our doctors are, unsurprisingly, trained highly in traumatic injuries and [for] dealing with traumatic injuries," he said. "We have a much younger population that we're dealing with treating in our hospitals. And so all of these kind of factor into what is that capability we have for a potential outbreak that generally has been more devastating to older persons who require a different type of attention than we normally do." Even military tent hospitals that can be set up ad-hoc to respond to an emergency are designed for trauma care, not contagious diseases, Friedrichs said. "We do have tent hospitals. They are deployable hospitals. ... The challenge is they're designed to take care of trauma patients and combat casualties," he said. "We have supported humanitarian operations. ... We've supported relief efforts during natural disasters. But what we're trying to be very careful of is not over-promising, you know. We want to be factual about what we have. "Our fixed facilities are designed to the force that we have," he continued. "There are not thousand-bed medical centers all over the United States. They are, for the most part, small community hospitals. Our deployable hospitals range in size and range in capabilities that are very much focused and designed to take care of those in combat." While both the National Guard and the Reserve components have medical doctors that can be called out to provide support, if needed, both Hoffman and Friedrichs noted that medical personnel in the Guard and Reserve are often also medical personnel in their private-sector jobs. "If you mobilize the Guard and Reserve medical personnel from their civilian jobs, they're no longer in their civilian jobs, and that directly impacts the community where they worked, and that's the trade-off that -- whether it's a natural disaster, or the coronavirus or anything else -- that's part of the trade-off that we look at as we offer options going forward," Friedrichs said. So far, Hoffman said, the Defense Department has received requests for assistance from the Department of Health and Human Services for quarantining and housing of people who were evacuated from China, those who had been on the Grand Princess and Diamond Princess cruise ships, and those who flew back to the United States through 11 feeder airports and needed to be quarantined. "We have not received any other [requests] at this time that we have responded to," he said. Hoffmann told reporters that DOD has seen 37 reported cases of COVID-19: 18 military personnel, 13 military family members, three civilian employees and three contractors. To stem further spread of the coronavirus, he said, the department has issued updated guidance on domestic travel. Effective today though May 11, all domestic travel for military personnel is halted unless it's for mission-essential travel or humanitarian reasons. Additionally, he said, DOD has given directors of installation commissaries additional authorities to manage their inventory to provide the best service to military members and their families. "Today the department has given authority to local commissary store directors to impose restrictions on purchasing high-demand products," Hoffman said. "This will be in coordination with base leadership. The department is working to make sure that service members and their families on base understand these changes and have access to the goods that they need." DOD Poised to Provide Masks, Ventilators, Labs for Coronavirus Fight [2020-03-17] WASHINGTON -- As part of the president's whole-of-government approach to fighting the coronavirus pandemic, the Defense Department has agreed to provide medical supplies and capabilities to the Department of Health and Human Services to help combat further infections, Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper said. The Defense Department will make available up to 5 million respirator masks and other personal protective equipment from its strategic reserves to the Department of Health and Human Services for distribution, Esper said during a news conference at the Pentagon today, adding that the first million masks would be made available immediately. Esper said some 2,000 deployable ventilators would also be made available to HHS. Those devices, he said, are different from civilian equivalents and will require special training for civilian users, so DOD personnel likely will provide that training. To help measure the spread of the coronavirus, the Defense Department has also made 14 certified testing labs available to test non-DOD personnel, and two labs would be added to that total, the secretary said. Additionally, Esper said, DOD officials are considering use of the National Guard, the Reserve components, and capabilities such as the Navy's hospital ships USNS Comfort and USNS Mercy. He said the Comfort is undergoing maintenance now and the Mercy is in port. "We've already given orders to the Navy, a few days ago, to lean forward in terms of getting them ready to deploy," Epser said. But while those ships and other DOD medical facilities such as hospitals and tent-based deployable medical facilities do provide capability, the secretary said, those capabilities are geared in many cases toward trauma care, rather than patients with COVID-19. "They don't necessarily have the space, the segregated space, you need to deal with infectious disease," he said. Still, he added, those facilities might be used to take loads off civilian medical facilities so those civilian facilities might treat COVID-19 cases. "One of the ways you could use the field hospitals, the hospital ships or things in between is to take the pressure off the civilian hospitals when it comes to trauma cases to open up civilian hospital rooms for infectious diseases," Esper said. He also pointed out that DOD medical facilities such as the Navy medical ships require staff, and getting that staff in place means pulling them from elsewhere. "All those doctors and nurses either come from our medical treatment facilities, or they come from the reserves, which means civilians," Esper said. "What we have to be very conscious of and careful of as we ... use them to support the states [is] that we aren't robbing Peter to pay Paul, so to speak. What I don't want to do is take reservists from a hospital where they are needed just to put them on a ship to take them somewhere else where they are needed." Esper spent the first part of the day today visiting some of the DOD doctors and scientists at Fort Detrick, Maryland, who are working on advancing vaccine and treatment efforts to combat the coronavirus. While there, he said, he visited both the Army Medical Research and Development Command and the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases to learn about those efforts. "They have incredible capabilities," he said. "They're well-knitted, extremely well-knitted into the interagency efforts." Esper said he learned at Fort Detrick that the expectation is about 12 to 18 months for a vaccine, but that facilities there have the ability to help in vaccine production if a private-sector facility were to develop a vaccine earlier. He also said he was told Fort Detrick officials will soon increase their capacity to conduct virus testing with the purchase of new equipment. "In my conversations with governors and members of Congress about the DOD's resources, I've made it clear that we will continue to support the administration's comprehensive efforts and the country every step of the way, while ensuring our nation's security remains the top priority of the Department of Defense," Esper said. High-Resolution Virus Pictures Help Researchers Develop Vaccines [2020-03-17] WASHINGTON -- There isn't much nice to say about SARS-CoV-2, HIV or the common flu virus -- but they all do make a fascinating picture. Those images, seen on TV, in newspapers and on the web are produced by researchers like Dr. Gordon Joyce to help other researchers better develop the vaccines that will eventually destroy the viruses. Years ago, if researchers wanted a visualization of a virus, they'd have to do a sort of artist's rendering, said Joyce, an employee of the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, which supports the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research Emerging Infectious Disease Branch through a cooperative agreement. "A few years ago, we would have these sort of cartoons or artistic representations," Joyce said. "But now, as technology has improved, we are able to actually use real images from a cell and real images of the virus." The high-resolution graphic of SARS-CoV-2 seen on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's website is partially artistic -- but the red "spikes" seen on the virus's grey body were created using an electron microscope, Joyce said. "You have this circle, which is the virus, and then protruding from the circle are these spikes," Joyce said. "The spike is the name for this external part of the virus, and that's what gives it the name 'corona.'" The word "corona," he said, means "crown" in Latin. Joyce said X-ray crystallography and electron microscopy are two ways that researchers can take such breathtaking images of viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, HIV-1, MERS-CoV, influenza, the human metapneumovirus, or the respiratory syncytial virus. Using a scanning electron microscope, he said, researchers take as many as a million images of a virus. Then, he said, maybe the best 100,000 of those are assembled to produce a composite image. "There's a lot of math behind that as well to actually align those pictures, one on top of the other, and that's how you can get these high-resolution images now," he added. In years past, he said, the technology and processing power was not available to accomplish such a gargantuan task. But advances in computing power have now made it possible. "Our group at WRAIR are experts using X-ray crystallography, and that's what we've used to capture images of the SARS-CoV-2 target. This is like getting a high-resolution satellite image of your target. With that information you can best design your attack," Joyce said. For that, he explained, researchers at his lab grow protein crystals of a virus -- just portions of the virus -- and then cool those crystals using liquid nitrogen. Those crystals are sent off to Argonne National Laboratory in Lamont, Illinois, where they'll be bombarded with X-rays along a beamline inside the Advanced Photon Source, which is a particular kind of particle accelerator called a synchrotron. The scattering of X-rays by the crystal can be measured to determine the atomic structure of whatever is being evaluated, Joyce said. "From that diffraction pattern," he said, we use a set of mathematical formulas to actually convert back to the atomic detail that we need for many things -- for vaccine design, for therapeutics design and for diagnostic information." While the samples of crystallized proteins from the SARS-CoV-2 are off at the Argonne National Laboratory, Joyce and fellow researchers control the experiment. "We actually remotely control the loading and diffraction experiments on what is called a beamline," he said. "So on a synchrotron there's maybe about 40 different beamlines, and we use one of those beamlines to diffract our crystals." X-ray crystallography doesn't require nearly as many images to be captured. Instead, anywhere from 100 to 400 images, rather than 100,000 for electron microscopy, are acceptable, he said. "It's much less from that aspect," he added. "But you have to grow a very good crystal, a very good protein crystal. And that's sort of the tricky part. But once you've got a good crystal, then data collection can be very fast, and structure determination can be very fast." The SARS-CoV-2 virus is shown with spikes in red. Gordon said that images of viruses are captured initially in black and white and are colored using imaging software to draw attention to the most relevant parts of a virus. Researchers typically select the colors they think are most suited to illustrate a virus. "With the programs we use, we can pick and choose what color we would like," he said, "But generally we color the viruses sort of these hot colors, such as red, and we tend to color the human proteins sort of cooler colors like blues and greens. It's up to the user." Gordon is going to publish one of the highest-resolution images of SARS-CoV-2 ever made, but his image isn't an image of the entire virus. Rather, it's a portion of the virus -- a portion of one of those "spikes" on the surface. That's where the action is, he said. It's that spike that penetrates cells in the human body and causes infections, he explained, and it's the spike about which the researchers need the most detailed information so they can develop a vaccine. "Today, this is the highest-resolution that is available for one part of the spike protein," Joyce said, adding that it will help small-molecule drug developers understand on an atomic level the most important parts of SARS-CoV-2. "Moving one atom or replacing one atom within a drug can make a huge difference in potency and activity," he said. Joyce also said researchers have imagery of a human antibody binding to SARS-CoV-2 -- an antibody that was able to bind to earlier variations of SARS, about 15 years ago. That bodes well for the development of a new vaccine for the most recent version of coronavirus, he said. "It's able to do that because of where exactly it binds on the viral spike," he said. "That region is the same between the two viruses. So in some ways, that's very useful right now. ... Our group is also using that antibody to assess our vaccine candidates." Images of viruses allow everyone to visualize what is making them sick, of course. Those pictures are fascinating on the news, but they aren't just artwork, Joyce said. They serve as tools for researchers who want to find a cure. "The high-resolution images are really critical for many reasons," he said. "That atomic detail is what we really need to actually make better vaccines." Behind the scenes, in labs around the world, Joyce said, researchers can use virus images and the data files that come with them to get detail on the atomic level about how a virus is structured. "That's being used every day to help design vaccines and also small-molecule inhibitors," he said. "That's our No. 1 [goal] right now: to get a vaccine for the serviceman and for everyone in the United States. There are many groups that are working on that endeavor. In a year or two, we will know which group has been successful, but right now, everybody needs to do their best efforts to get a vaccine. We're one arm of that effort." Hospital Ships, Other DOD Assets Prepare for Coronavirus Response [2020-03-18] WASHINGTON -- Two Navy hospital ships will be part of the Defense Department's response to the coronavirus pandemic, the Pentagon's chief spokesman said. The USNS Comfort and USNS Mercy are being prepared for deployment "as needed to assist potentially overwhelmed counties with acute patient care," Jonathan Rath Hoffman, assistant to the defense secretary for public affairs, said during a news conference today at the Pentagon. He was joined at the briefing by Air Force Brig. Gen. (Dr.) Paul Friedrichs, the Joint Staff surgeon. The Comfort is now in Norfolk, Virginia, for maintenance, and the Navy has been asked to expedite that, Hoffman said, adding that it may take "a little while" for that ship to be ready to go. It will go to New York when its maintenance is complete. The Mercy is on the West Coast and is ready to go in "days, not weeks," he said, and where it will go will be determined when it's ready to sail. Both ships face issues with manning, however. Friedrichs, said the ships would likely be manned with typical staffs of personnel trained for combat casualty care, rather than for dealing with a contagious disease like the coronavirus. "Our understanding is that the intent is the ships will be used to take non-coronavirus patients, which is what our staffs are best assigned and organized to do," he said. Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper suggested yesterday that one role for military medical professionals in regard to coronavirus response would be to take non-coronavirus patient care off of the hands of civilian hospital staffs so that those staffs could instead deal with coronavirus patients. Military medical personnel, and military medical facilities are geared more toward trauma care than dealing with contagious patients, he said. The Defense Department has also put a number of active duty medical units on alert. That includes different types of units, Friedrichs said. "Right now, what we are trying to do is make sure we have a range of options available to meet the requests that may come to us from [the Department of Health and Human Services] and from communities." Altogether, Friedrichs said, enough units have been put on alert to provide 1,000 beds, a number that doesn't include those on the Navy's hospital ships. DOD has a variety of deployable medical units it could draw on to provide those 1,000 beds, Friedrichs said, including Air Force Expeditionary Medical System units that can be transported rapidly on aircraft; the Army's much larger Combat Support Hospitals, which can also be deployed by air or over the ground; Army field hospitals; and Navy Expeditionary Medical Facilities. Hoffman also said that as of 5 a.m. today, 49 military personnel, 14 civilian employees, 19 military family members and seven contractors had confirmed cases of coronavirus. Coronavirus Fails to Affect Eucom Readiness [2020-03-20] WASHINGTON -- In the U.S. European Command area of responsibility, where approximately 35 cases of COVID-19 have been reported among the 72,000 service members assigned there, some participation in Exercise Defender-Europe 20 has slowed -- but readiness to participate in the defense of the continent hasn't changed at all, said the Eucom commander. "We in the military plan for tragic events like this often, and we continue to adjust not in weeks, not in months, but in days and in hours," said Air Force Gen. Tod D. Wolters, Eucom commander, who dialed into a teleconferenced press briefing at the Pentagon today. "As we currently sit, based [on] the trajectory of the virus spreading across Europe, we're in a position, based [on] the commanders in the field at all components and in all domains, to be able to sustain the current readiness posture that we have." Wolters said planners in Eucom are preparing for "worst-case scenarios" in regard to the spread of coronavirus. A worst-case scenario, he said, might mean having to call on U.S. forces from outside Eucom to pick up the mission there. "At this point, we don't forecast that to occur, but conditions in the environment will dictate that in the future." For now, Wolters said, he thinks Eucom will be able to handle its mission on its own and continue to effectively participate in the defense of Europe, along with partner nations. "Based on all the factors that we've been able to embrace, we should be in a position to where we can sustain our force at a readiness level to effectively deter on [the] continent," he said. While readiness remains, Wolters said, Exercise Defender-Europe 20 activities have been slowed. The exercise, which runs February through May of this year, is in part meant to demonstrate the U.S. military's ability to deploy a large combat force to Europe in support of both U.S. and NATO objectives there. As part of the exercise, more than 20,000 U.S. service members were expected to deploy from the U.S. to Europe. "What we're going to wind up getting when it's all said and done is approximately 5,000 to 6,000 additional U.S. soldiers to be able to accommodate the pieces and parts of Defender-Europe 20," Wolters said. "We've had to cancel some exercises that were live-play exercises that extended out of Poland and that extended outside of Germany." Nevertheless, Wolters said, portions of training will continue inside of Germany and Poland. "We've been able to take the forces that we have up to this point, and we'll be in a position to where they'll get some part-task training on shoot, move and communicate within the confines of Germany and Poland," he said. "And they'll certainly get the basic gunnery training requirements filled that they need to get." As a result of coronavirus concerns, Wolters said, Eucom will see less of Defender-Europe 20 that it had hoped -- but there will still be some gains. "We've been able to get 30% or 40% accomplished, and as time goes on between now and the middle of May, and we continue to fine tune the number of forces that we have, we'll be able to get part-task training completed to the point to where, at least from a large exercise like Defender Europe 20, we'll wind up with a 40% to 45% readiness gain as a result of what we're able to do," Wolters said. When it comes to partnerships involving the fight against coronavirus, Wolters said there's been no reduction at all. There, he said, the partnerships between the U.S. and NATO nations on the continent are strong. "I would contend that the solidarity that I've witnessed for NATO and NATO partners has been incredibly powerful," Wolters said. "I don't think there's any shortage of energy for the nations to come forward and join hands to make sure that we're all doing all we can to beat this virus." DOD Aims to Fill Medical Gaps With Military While States, Cities Ramp Up [2020-03-24] WASHINGTON -- The Navy hospital ship USNS Mercy will go to Los Angeles to help relieve pressure on hospitals there so they can focus more on COVID-19 patients, Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper said. "We're working closely with [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] to set the conditions for the ship's arrival later this week, so that she can start receiving non-COVID-19 medical patients to free up bed space in some of LA's most heavily stressed hospitals," Esper said during a news conference today at the Pentagon. Esper said in the next couple of weeks, the USNS Comfort, currently at Norfolk, Virginia, will head to New York City for the same purpose. The crew and staff there, he said, are preparing for that mission. Five military field hospitals and expeditionary medical units are on "prepare to deploy" orders, Esper said, and are expected to mobilize this week to various parts of the country. Where those units go, he added, will be based on discussions with FEMA. "Right now, I anticipate sending a hospital to Seattle and a hospital [to] New York City," Esper said. "Beyond that, once that's confirmed, we will look at sending to other places and, as necessary, we will continue to alert units to prepare to deploy and then deploy them as appropriate." The hospital ships, military field hospitals and expeditionary medical units must all be manned by medical personnel, Esper said, and a majority of them are drawn from Reserve units. If those personnel are called to active duty to man military medical facilities, he noted, they will need to be pulled from their civilian jobs elsewhere. "We're very conscious as we draw people to staff up the ships or the hospitals, where we're pulling them from," he said. "You want to make sure that you don't, you know, have an impact on an area that really needs it simply because you're trying to staff up a ship or hospital." Esper said military medical personnel will also come from active duty units, and he added that DOD is limited in what it can provide if it is going to safeguard the ability to run its own military missions. The secretary said he sees the military filling gaps in cities that need assistance until those cities can deal with COVID-19 on their own. During the early stages of the pandemic as cities ramp up capability, DOD can come in for a few weeks to provide that capacity until the cities can convert gyms, hotels and college dorms into medical facilities, he said. "I see us playing this role where we're the gap-filler for a period of weeks with our capabilities, once the capacity is met through these other mechanisms," Esper told reporters The Army Corps of Engineers is also now beginning work around the country to use contracting capability to convert nonmedical facilities such as hotels, dormitories and other buildings into temporary medical facilities, Esper said. "Constructing [new] facilities, hospitals, whatnot, would take far more time than it would to take existing infrastructure and convert it," he said. Esper said the state of New York has been "very aggressive" in identifying sites to be converted. He said the Corps has a four-phase model to make that happen. That includes identifying sites; converting locations to enable them to provide medical capability; installing equipment; and having the state provide medical staff. "That's the way you can expand capacity in the volume you need -- we're talking thousands -- but it takes some time," Esper said, adding that he's been in contact with the state of New York and other governors about how the Corps can help. Nearly 10,000 Guardsmen Called Up for COVID-19 Response [2020-03-24] WASHINGTON -- Nearly 10,000 National Guardsmen called up across the United States, with more expected soon, are performing a variety of missions in response to COVID-19 pandemic response efforts. Some are even federally funded, though they remain under the control of their respective state governors, but none of those Guardsmen are involved in law or quarantine enforcement, the chief of the National Guard Bureau said. "There's no discussion, ... there's no plan to use the National Guard in Title 32 or state active duty status or in any other status to do quarantine [enforcement] or enforce shelter-in-place operations," Air Force Gen. Joseph L. Lengyel said during a telephone news conference today. Though it's possible the National Guard could be used in such a capacity if governors ask the Guard to do so, the general said, that has not happened. "Once again, [there is] no plan to use the National Guard in any kind of large-scale lockdown capacity of the United States of America," Lengyel told reporters. Rather, he said, guardsmen who have been called up are providing transportation, command and control functions, engineering, and planning and logistics throughout the country. In 12 states, he added, Guard members are also either directly administering tests or supporting medical professionals in their efforts. In Arizona, he said, some Guard members are even helping to keep the supply chain afloat for their local communities. "They've got trucks showing up at stores [with] nobody to unload the trucks," he said. "In some cases, they're using National Guard members to ... assist, if you will, that supply chain, to keep products available to people in the community." Lengyel said the federal government is helping out by providing funding to the National Guard at some locations in the United States. "The president recently approved 100% federal funding for the National Guard in some of the hardest hit states: Washington, New York and California," he said. That funding, he said, doesn't mean those Guardsmen are now under federal control. Those Guardsmen remain in support of their governor. "[The president] left control of the National Guard to the governors and the adjutant generals, who are the people who know best how to apply these resources and people to fix problems in their states," Lengyel said. The general said that as the number of Guardsmen called up increases by as many as 1,000 a day, the military and civilian experience inherent in the National Guard will prove that those citizen soldiers and airmen are ideal candidates to assist in combating COVID-19. "Our combined combat and civilian-acquired skills helps to create a blueprint for an ideal military component capable of addressing a myriad of challenges presented by this COVID-19 response," he said. "If you need us to drive trucks, fly planes, be mechanics, or plan large response efforts, the National Guard is able to adapt to whatever mission the governor may need us to." DOD Modeling for Coronavirus Helps With Response Planning [2020-03-25] WASHINGTON -- Though Defense Department modeling of the COVID-19 virus isn't quite robust enough yet to determine where the next outbreak will happen, the modeling is good enough now for general planning efforts, the Joint Staff surgeon said. "Right now, the modeling that we're able to do is for planning, but it is not yet sufficiently firm to say that it's predictive in nature," Air Force Brig. Gen. (Dr.) Paul Friedrichs told reporters at the Pentagon today. "We've not tried to predict that we're going to see a hotspot here, or we're going to see X number there. We used it for broad planning. Like in the community, if the outbreak occurs and X percent of people are infected over time, what does that mean as far as health care requirements?" Friedrichs said information sharing among nations that have been afflicted by the coronavirus is increasing the value of data and that this additional data may soon make it possible to build predictive models. "The good news is our allies in Korea and in Italy and in Europe are sharing data very transparently with us, and we're building a much more robust database," he said. "I think in another few weeks we'll have better fidelity on that data." The modeling now available on the coronavirus and the resulting cases of COVID-19 is used to decide where best to place the Defense Department's medical resources, the Joint Staff surgeon said. "The approach that we've taken, as we do our modeling and as we look at where to place capabilities, is based on how do we balance the immediate needs, either for a DOD population, or as in the case of New York -- where we're sending the [hospital ship USNS] Comfort and two of our field hospitals -- the needs of other citizens and supporting that whole-of-government approach," Friedrichs said. "It is a balancing act, there's no question about it. Our health care system across the United States is not designed or sized to deal with a pandemic." Pentagon Press Secretary Alyssa Farah said Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper released guidance to raise the health protection condition, or HPCON, across the department, to HPCON Charlie. That level limits installation access to essential personnel and reduces the number of installation access points that are open. Farah said the move to HPCON Charlie also includes measures such as going to maximum telework, cancellation of large-scale meetings, and taking people's temperature at certain access points within buildings. "This will vary from installation to installation," she said. "But these are concrete measures we can be taking now to stop the spread, lower the curve." The press secretary said these actions are designed to protect DOD's people and their families. "The department will take every step necessary to ensure the wellness of our service members, civilians and families," she said. "Further guidance as it relates to the safety and health of our workforce will be coming soon." Launch of Space Force Largely Unaffected by Coronavirus, Top Space Officer Says [2020-03-27] WASHINGTON -- The Space Force launched in late December and, as it approaches its 100th day, its forward momentum is unabated by the coronavirus pandemic, the chief of space operations said. "The men and women in U.S. Space Command and the U.S. Space Force are executing our 24/7, no-fail missions to protect and defend our nation's space centers," Space Force Gen. John W. Raymond, who also serves as commander of U.S. Space Command, said during a telephone news conference today at the Pentagon. "Whether it's operating in an increasingly competitive, congested or contested space domain hundreds of thousands of miles above us or continuing to provide space-enabling capabilities to the joint and allied force, mission partners and commercial sector, we're safely and effectively conducting our missions," he said. An "advanced, extremely high frequency" military communications satellite launched into orbit for the Space Force yesterday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., is the nation's sixth such satellite. Raymond said Spacecom has worked to provide additional communications bandwidth in response to requests from the Navy hospital ship USNS Mercy as it heads to Los Angeles to handle trauma patients, freeing up civilian hospitals to handle more COVID-19 patients. "We optimize the constellation or the payloads to be able to provide that support," he said. "We're doing that for every request that we may get." Raymond currently is the only member of the Space Force, but he said Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Roger A. Towberman, his senior enlisted advisor, has been identified as the second person who will be sworn into the Space Force. That swearing-in will be delayed until a ceremony can be held to welcome him into the new service, the general said. In May, 64 cadets enrolled at the Air Force Academy are expected to graduate and be direct-commissioned into the Space Force, Raymond said. Additionally, he said, the Space Force is "on track" with plans for transferring as many as 16,000 people attached to the Space Force from other services into the Space Force as permanent members. The Space Force is "moving out at full speed" to make announcements on a variety of topics that will be of interest to future Space Force members and the entire Defense Department, the general said. "We have our first flag, for example, and we'll do a presentation on that flag," he said. "We've got the naming of our space professionals -- we did a crowdsourcing." Officials received more than 700 responses to a call for suggestions, he added. "We're narrowing down that list, and I think you'll be hearing an announcement on that in the very near future," Raymond said. Also, he said, some Air Force installations that have mostly space-related missions will be renamed. Some of those bases that will eventually be renamed are Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, and three bases in Colorado: Schriever Air Force Base, Peterson Air Force Base and Buckley Air Force Base. "That requires a ceremony," Raymond said. "We want to do that right. We want to do that safely, so we'll schedule those when we can do that in an appropriate manner and keeping everybody that would attend that ceremony safe." When it comes to protecting Space Command personnel from coronavirus to ensure continuation of the mission, Raymond said appropriate guidelines are being followed. "We have enhanced our disinfectant consistent with the national guidelines," he said. "We have done the social distancing; we spread our crews out. We have monitored them before they come into the operations floor to make sure that they don't have temperatures, for example. We have taken some pretty significant steps to make sure that those airmen that are absolutely critical to our nation are protected, that their families are protected, and that we can continue to provide those capabilities for a nation." The general also said that if members of critical mission crews contract COVID-19, there are "backup crews" segregated from other crews who could fill in. "We have multiple layers of defense to protect the remaining crews," he said. Transcom Looks for Ways to Safely Move COVID-19 Patients [2020-03-31] WASHINGTON -- Last week, U.S. Transportation Command was responsible for moving a patient with COVID-19 from Djibouti, Africa, to Landstuhl, Germany, for medical treatment. Moving a contagious patient isn't easy, Transcom's commander said, but efforts are underway to make it safer. "The movement of a highly contagious patient is a much different challenge," Army Gen. Stephen R. Lyons told reporters via teleconference today. "We are also working ... to increase our capacity to be able to meet these kind of requirements, because we know they're increasing." Patients with COVID-19 can be moved in an air ambulance or with a transportation isolation system, which was designed in response to the Ebola outbreak in 2014, but those systems have limited capacity, he said. So, additional work is being done in partnership with the Air Force, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, NASA and other agencies to find additional ways for air crews to safely move COVID-19 patients. "We're working with scientists ... to really study the aircraft circulation flow and the implications of the movement of those particulates and potential impacts on crews, so that we can indeed move COVID-positive patients and passengers without an isolation unit while adequately protecting the crew," Lyons said. "We think we're making some progress." Transcom also has adapted operations in other ways in the face of COVID-19, Lyons said. For instance, it's not possible for air crews to telework, nor is it possible for those same crews to practice social distancing while on board. Nevertheless, precautions are being taken to ensure continued health and safety of crews -- something Lyons called "isolation in motion." "When you're in the cockpit, there's no way to get 6 feet apart," Lyons said. "The way that we're managing our flight crews is unique in many ways, ... where we billet them is controlled, where they eat from, their food is delivered. So, we're trying to create a very concerted cocoon, if you would, over our entire flight crew apparatus. And ... that seems to be working to date. It allows us to continue [the] mission and protect the force at the same time." Air crews arrive at a destination and move directly to their temporary housing, and then they don't leave until it's time to depart on the next mission, Lyons said. They don't go out to eat, he said, and they don't leave the installation. "Even inside that base, they're very, very controlled," he said. "That's the way we're managing that." While Transcom is still running its standard mission set, those missions have been augmented by new takings related to coronavirus. "We are supporting the State Department and their Task Force Repatriation effort," he said. "We have moved things in support of Health and Human Services, for example, [coronavirus] test swabs across the globe. We've helped to move field hospitals that you see being built in places like New York and in the state of Washington where we're pleased to help. We're proud of all that we do every day." Lyons said there is some concern about maintaining the mostly civilian-operated transportation capacity, which Transcom contracts with, to perform much of the transportation it facilitates for the Defense Department. Civilian airlines are struggling with the drop in commercial air travel that has come as a result of the pandemic, Lyons noted. "So, any opportunity we have to push workload in their direction, we're doing that," he said. "We're doing that largely with repatriation efforts and other efforts of that sort." Additionally, Lyons said, as a result of reductions in movement for military personnel, many of the permanent changes of station that would happen in the summer might not happen. "I am very concerned, especially for our small-business partners that make up so much of the ... household goods moving industry," he said. "You know, we're very active in our communication both with the industry sector and the services who are managing the exception to policy on the moves to make sure we're at least seeing things the same way in terms of managing expectations and workload." Despite challenges with the coronavirus, Lyons said, Transcom is still ready to move whatever the DOD needs moved. "We're still operating the global mobility enterprise," he said. "We still must do that to maintain our level of readiness for the secretary, and, so, I believe we are doing that. I believe we are ready. I've reported to the secretary that we are ready to meet our mission requirements as they come." Corps of Engineers Converts NYC's Javits Center Into Hospital [2020-04-01] WASHINGTON -- The New York District of the Army Corps of Engineers has completed its conversion of the 1,800,000-square-foot Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City into an alternate care facility for more than 2,000 non-COVID-19 patients. More than 165 New York District personnel provided design, engineering and construction support to facilitate the conversion in response to a Federal Emergency Management Agency request, said Michael Embrich, a Corps of Engineers spokesman. The Corps of Engineers got the call from FEMA about two weeks ago to outfit the convention center into an alternate care facility, Embrich said. Work began about a week later, and was complete just a week after that. The speed at which the Corps was able to get the project completed is unusual, he said, but the circumstances warranted the extra effort. "It was much quicker than we usually design, engineer and construct a project," he said. "We worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week with our vertical team to spec out the sites [and] award contracts, and then began work immediately after the contracts were awarded." Patients were able to move into the converted facility March 30, Embrich said. The alternate care facility will not be used for COVID-19 patients. It will be used for non-COVID-19 patients, allowing area hospitals more room to treat patients infected by the coronavirus. Contracts were recently awarded to convert additional locations in New York into alternate care facilities. Included among those are the Westchester County Community Center in White Plains, New York, and at the State University of New York's campuses at Stony Brook and Old Westbury on Long Island. Work should begin on those projects soon, Embrich said. It wasn't the Corps of Engineers alone that made the effort at the convention center possible, Embrich said. This effort wouldn't be possible without the "phenomenal teammates" the Corps of Engineers has at the state of New York, the city of New York, the New York National Guard, FEMA, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the General Services Administration, as well as the Defense Department and the armed forces, he said. "There are so many people from the health care professionals to the staff at the Javits Center who are still working throughout New York and New Jersey," he added. "Truthfully, there are too many to name." Embrich said that during emergencies, the Corps of Engineers serves as the federal government's lead public works and engineering support agency. "The New York District works 365 days a year in New York and in the surrounding communities," he said. "Currently, the Corps has numerous studies that will help bring more constructed projects to New York City that will increase resiliency and reduce risk to persons, property and infrastructure in the city." Air Force to Make 9th Flight to Deliver Testing Swabs [2020-04-03] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force's Air Mobility Command is preparing for a ninth flight next week that will bring coronavirus testing swabs from Italy to Memphis, Tenn., for distribution across the United States, a top Air Force official said. "AMC routinely responds to emergent airlift requirements and in coordination with our interagency and international partners, AMC has been flying COVID-19 testing swabs from Italy to Memphis for nationwide distribution," said Lt. Gen. Jon T. Thomas during a telephone press briefing today. "Since March 16, C-17s have delivered three and a half million swabs on seven missions, with the seventh mission arriving last night in Memphis, Tennessee." The eighth mission is scheduled for arrival in Memphis today, he said, bringing another half-million swabs. AMC will continue to fly those missions as long as the command is tasked to do so by U.S. Transportation Command, Thomas said. Medical supplies aren't the only thing AMC is transporting, Thomas said. While most Americans who are overseas return to the U.S. via commercial aircraft, AMC does have a role there, too -- especially for those who are stuck overseas due to coronavirus. "Recently, and with the approval from the secretary of defense, AMC transported 86 Americans back to the United States from Colombia and Panama," Thomas said. "These resubmissions bring the total number of Americans returned by AMC gray-tail organic airlift missions to more than 350 since March 19." Thomas said AMC is also responsible for flying other missions in support of the nationwide effort to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, he noted, AMC was at least partially responsible for moving gear needed to set up field hospitals on both U.S. coasts. "AMC C-130s flew equipment and personnel to help establish Army field hospitals in New York and Washington state that will provide additional medical capacity in those areas," he said. "We've got air mobility liaison officers that are helping to coordinate those movements, as well as commercial air movements totaling nine missions, transporting 7.8 tons of cargo and hundreds of personnel to those locations." To maintain a global mobility capability, Thomas said, AMC has taken steps to ensure the safety and health of personnel -- including staff, maintainers and air crew. Thomas said AMC has a variety of missions that are all influenced by local conditions and situations. Both installation and wing commanders within AMC, he said, have been empowered to take the actions needed to protect their force and the missions required of them. "It's really important for everybody to understand how valuable ... the secretary of defense's guidance [is] on allowing local commanders to make decisions on how to best protect the force," Thomas said. Some of those actions, he said, include limiting the movement of certain service members, using staggered shifts, telework and implementation of health protection condition Charlie, which means there is sustained community transmission, at all AMC installations. Efforts also include medical screening, temperature checks and other measures for both air crew and passengers. "Our national response to COVID-19 is an all-hands-on-deck effort, and Air Mobility Command is doing its part to support this fight," Thomas said. "Through our active reserve and international guard components, we stand ready to do everything possible to mitigate the effects of the outbreak and ensure we continue to execute rapid global mobility." Comfort, Javits Center Open Care to COVID-19 Patients [2020-04-07] WASHINGTON -- The Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort and the Defense Department-run alternate care facility at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, both in New York City, are now taking patients with COVID-19, defense medical officials said. "For the Comfort to really ... be a part of the relief for the pressure on the New York City hospitals, we have to be able to do this," said Navy Vice Adm. Andrew Lewis, Commander of the U.S. 2nd Fleet, during a telephonic news conference today. "This is where there are a tremendous number of patients in the hospitals, most of which are COVID-positive." Lewis said that among patients hospitalized for something other than COVID-19, many are also COVID-positive. So for the Defense Department to really be a part of the solution in New York, the Comfort and the Javits Center must also take patients with COVID-19. And they've done a good job at configuring their efforts to make that happen, he added. "We're fully transitioned," Lewis said. "We've done some minor configurations on ship, and there is no risk to any of the patients that are non-COVID at this time. We were able to isolate within the ship non-COVID patients from the COVID-positive patients." To ensure the ship's crew remains healthy, Lewis said, the ship has been divided into a "red zone," in which patient interaction occurs with medical staff, and a "green zone," where the ship's nonmedical crew operates. "They don't cross back and forth from red to green," he added. Lewis added that there are no plans for the hospital ship USNS Mercy, now in Los Angeles, to make the same transition. However, he said, procedures are in place to do so if needed. At the Javits Center, which is expected to be able to house up to 2,500 patients eventually, they are looking to accept convalescent COVID-19 patients -- that is, patients who have mostly recovered from COVID-19, but who still need to be tended to. The Comfort has 100 intensive care unit beds with ventilators. Military leaders are hoping to expand total patient capacity on the Comfort to 500 beds. The Javits Center alternate care facility has 42 ventilators, with more on the way. Another 48-bed intensive care unit is en route from the Army Support Activity located at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey, Army Maj. Gen. William A. Hall, commander of Joint Task Force Civil Support, said. "It will arrive later today, and then in another 48 hours we'll have it up. So that'll give us 96 ICU beds to be able to receive patients as required." Hall also said that better communication in New York between DOD and the local medical community has helped local hospitals better understand what the department can provide. "The level of understanding [about] what we're able to provide has grown, and so we're seeing our patient count go up," Hall said. "We're continuing to work that every day to make sure that we can help them offload the patients that we can accept at the Javits Center." Lewis added that DOD medical leadership in New York sees both the Javits Center and the USNS Comfort as a "single ecosystem," with the Comfort providing care for emergency trauma and urgent care patients and Javits primarily for COVID-19 convalescence. The number of patients at both the Javits Center and the Comfort is expected to grow, said Jonathan Rath Hoffman, assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, and the Defense Department, he said, is "flooding the area with medical teams." The Comfort is staffed by 1,000 medical personnel, while the Javits Center has a medical staff of 917. Hoffman said additional Army urban area medical task force units with 340 personnel are expected to arrive in New York today, while three others will report to New Jersey and Connecticut. Additionally, Hoffman said, 325 DOD medical professionals recently arrived in New York and will support 11 public hospitals beginning tomorrow. Each of those hospitals will receive anywhere from 20 to 30 medical personnel, including doctors, assistants, nurses, respiratory therapists and other professionals. "We also expect an additional 775 medical professionals to travel to New York City in the coming days to further support our efforts," Hoffman said. "These will be a mix of Army, Navy and Air Force personnel, including Air Force reservists." Hoffman also told reporters that DOD has provided 5 million N95 masks to the state of New York and that the New York National Guard has helped to deliver 350,000 meals in all five boroughs of New York City. "The Department of Defense stands with New York and its strong frontline medical personnel who have been fighting the virus for months," Hoffman said. "They're an inspiration for the millions of men and women at the DOD and indeed all Americans." DOD Ramps Up COVID-19 Response Efforts From Coast to Coast [2020-04-08] WASHINGTON -- The coronavirus pandemic is slowing down a lot of things, but not the Defense Department's medical apparatus, which is now operating from coast to coast to bring its medical expertise and capacity to bear on the medical crisis around the nation. In Seattle, the Army's 627th and 47th Field Hospitals are now fully operational and maintain a 250-bed medical treatment facility at the CenturyLink Events Center. "We have an important mission," Army Col. Hope Williamson-Younce, commander of the 627th Hospital Center, said last week as the facilities in Seattle were set up. "We are expeditionary, we're agile, and we're responsive. We have medical doctors, nurses and support staff from all over the world. They mobilized in a moment's notice to support the American people." In California, the Navy hospital ship USNS Mercy arrived at port in Los Angeles 12 days ago and started accepting patients just two days later. "I couldn't be more proud of our crew for all the hard work they did to get us here and ready in such a short time," said Navy Capt. (Dr.) John Rotruck, the Mercy Military Treatment Facility's commanding officer. The Mercy has treated 28 patients so far and currently has 11 beds occupied. If the situation in Los Angeles is anything like that in New York, where the hospital ship USNS Comfort is aiding the effort, then the number of patients aboard the Mercy will start to rise as local hospitals learn about DOD's capabilities. Army Maj. Gen. William A. Hall, commander of Joint Task Force Civil Support in New York, said better communication between DOD medical professionals now operating in New York City and local civilian medical providers there have helped with that level of understanding, so the Comfort's patient count has gone up. In New York, considered by many as the epicenter of COVID-19 in the United States, DOD is working hard to crush the spread of the virus. A Pentagon news release said today that the department is "aggressively pursuing a three-pronged effort in New York City." That effort involves augmentation of area hospitals with military medical professionals, the Comfort being expected to eventually have 500 patient beds, and the standing up of a medical care facility at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. Both the Comfort and the Javits Center are now taking on patients with COVID-19. The Comfort has treated 58 patients so far, while the Javits Center is currently treating 104 patients. More military service medical professionals are also arriving in or headed to New York and the surrounding region each day. Eight Army urban augmentation task forces began deploying yesterday, with four going to the Javits Center, three headed to the New Jersey Exposition Center, and one to conduct operations in Stamford, Connecticut. An additional 775 Air Force and Navy medical personnel arrived yesterday at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey, about 60 miles south of Manhattan, and will continue their movement to New York City to support relief operations there. On the Gulf Coast, a Navy expeditionary medical facility is now operational at the Ernest M. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans and has started medical operations with the treatment of COVID-19 patients. Also in Louisiana, the National Guard is managing multiple food banks across the state and is distributing more than 134,000 pounds of food at five locations. In other states, nearly 24,000 National Guardsmen are joining the fight against the coronavirus as requested by their governors. Those citizen soldiers and airmen are focused on supporting community-based testing sites, creating additional medical capacity and providing logistical support such as transportation and distribution of medical supplies and food. In Connecticut, Guard units are expanding hospital capacity across the state with a focus on creating space for non-COVID patients to be seen. In Georgia, guardsmen are deploying infection control teams to nursing homes, assisting staff with cleaning facilities and training on proper cleaning methods to prevent the spread of disease. In New Hampshire, guardsmen are supporting 14 alternate care sites with about 1,700 beds. Jonathan Rath Hoffman, assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, said that in addition to providing personnel to directly work with COVID-19 patients and to bring relief to communities where needed, DOD is one of many agencies and businesses working on the medical science side to find a cure for COVID-19. "While the DOD emergency science efforts don't physically touch New York, they are taking place in our labs around the country," he said. "U.S. military researchers are at the forefront of vaccine and therapeutic development." Hoffman said the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases began non-human primate vaccine testing April 6. Despite COVID-19, U.S. Military Remains Ready to Fight [2020-04-09] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department is doing a lot to combat the spread of COVID-19 across the nation, but its primary mission -- the defense of the nation and its interests -- continues unabated, Deputy Defense Secretary David L. Norquist said. "To those who wish us harm, make no mistake: even with the challenges that this disease has brought to our shores, the Department of Defense stands ready to meet any threat and defend our nation," Norquist said during a news conference today at the Pentagon. "Over the last four years, we have rebuilt our military from the negative effects of sequestration. We have more people, more advanced equipment, more munitions and are better trained. If our adversaries think this is our moment of weakness, they are dangerously wrong." Norquist said DOD support of state and local authorities in the fight against the coronavirus means that DOD people might end up with a higher rate of infection from the virus than other populations. But at the same time, he said, the youthful demographic of the U.S. military means that fewer of those who contract the virus will suffer severe consequences. According to Defense Department statistics, of the 1,898 current coronavirus cases among active duty service members, only 64 required hospitalization. Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said readiness across the department is where it needs to be. "We watch the readiness of the force every day. And the readiness of the force, in aggregate, has not dropped as we've gone through this," Hyten said. "That's something that we have to watch very, very closely." While there are "pockets" of degraded readiness across the force, such as the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt staying in port in Guam longer than it normally would, the aggregate readiness is unaffected, he said. What may eventually affect readiness, Hyten said, is a prolonged reduction in numbers of new recruits entering basic training for military service. "We've had to cut down the pipeline into basic training in order to make sure that the folks that go into basic training, go into basic training in a safe, secure way. Each of the services, working in a different way, have constricted the pipeline of folks coming in," Hyten said. "For a short period of time, that's not a big issue. If that continues long, then all of a sudden our numbers come down. And that will eventually impact readiness if it goes on month after month after month." But for now, Hyten said, "our readiness is still full up." Hyten also said the department has some 50,000 personnel involved in the fight against the coronavirus -- of those, he said, about 30,000 are from the National Guard and reserves. The general cited one team of reservists, led by Col. Hans F. Otto at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, as being emblematic of the dedication reservists and Guard members have had since being called up to duty to fight the coronavirus. "They call themselves the 'COVID Commandos,'" Hyten said. "Just four days ago, ... their team -- one doctor and six nurses -- packed their bags, said goodbye to their families, [and] deployed to New York with 24 hours' notice. ... There's been thousands of stories like that since the president mobilized the reserve [March 27]." Across the department, military doctors, nurses and enlisted medical professionals are leaving home to deploy to places across the country to aid civilian doctors and protect the nation, the general said. "They're moving fast to help their fellow citizens in a time of crisis," he added. "They're helping to support the heroic doctors and nurses already there who are tired and have been fighting that disease for the last few weeks, and they need support. That's what they're there for. And that's just a few examples of the sacrifice that citizen airmen and citizen soldiers are making from all units in order to fight and improve the lives of Americans." First 'Tele-Graduation' Marks Last Iteration of CIO Leader Course [2020-04-10] WASHINGTON -- As the coronavirus pandemic disrupts everything from church services to basic training, the latest cohort of students in the Chief Information Officer Leadership Development Program at the National Defense University still held its graduation ceremony -- online. It's both a first and a last for the course, as the program is being discontinued after a 30-year run. "The NDU is a second-to-none institution when it comes to those of us who are interested in the national security of our great nation," Dana Deasy, the Defense Department's chief information officer, said in his remarks to the graduates today. "Each and every one of you should be proud that you have completed the CIO Leadership Development Program at NDU." This year, 15 students, including civilians from across the federal government as well as military personnel from two partner nations graduated from the course. The graduation ceremony and the last weeks of their course were conducted online as a result of social-distancing requirements related to stemming the spread of COVID-19. Deasy said it's fitting that information technology prevented COVID-19 from being able to disrupt the advancement of students through the remainder of the CIO leadership course or to their graduation. The same is being seen elsewhere in the nation, he added, as technology has enabled a resilience that would not have been possible just 40 years ago. "I cannot help but wonder what a pandemic of this scale would look like if the year was 1980," Deasy said. "Nearly everything would have been grounded to a halt if everyone were at home. [Yet] tens of millions of jobs across all major industry sectors are still being performed today because we have the tech-enabled connectivity to continue to work and create value." That same kind of technology advancement has also increased capability in support of the nation's defense, Deasy said. "Information technology has also risen to the occasion to enable the nation to perform critical missions in many areas, including national security," he said. "Despite COVID-19, the department remains ready and able to execute critical missions. Every day I see how access to information and our technological capabilities is an enduring source of U.S. military strength and critical to survival on the future battlefield." The students graduating today will be at the forefront of leading continued advancement in information technology in the coming years, Deasy said. "Everyone here today is serving their country in some capacity," he added, "and I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your past and future service, where you will continue to provide your dedication to the mission." Dr. Cassandra C. Lewis, the acting chancellor of the College of Information and Cyberspace, which hosts the CIO Leadership Development Program at NDU, said the program has had great effect on the Defense Department and the federal workforce. "For three decades, the CIO LDP has been our nation's flagship program for rising senior leaders and managers working to achieve national and international security goals through the use of information and information technology," Lewis said. "This prestigious program has served countless standout leaders, both within the federal government as well as our partners and allies." More than 1,500 students have graduated from the 14-week program since it began in 1990. The program is targeted at senior-level managers and leaders responsible for promoting and attaining national and international security goals through the strategic use of information and information technology. The program provides participants with the chief information officer certificate, a diploma, and course work applicable toward a master of science degree in government information leadership. "Over 14 short weeks, [students] have completed six courses, they met with ... leaders inside the Beltway, [and] participated in a pretty rigorous and engaging domestic field study experience all to gain first-hand knowledge about how public and private senior leaders are advancing CIO competencies and leading in this complex environment," Lewis said. This graduation was the last scheduled iteration of the CIO LDP, and the College of Information and Cyberspace is also slated for elimination within the next two years as part of a transformation effort at the NDU. The College of Information and Cyberspace, or CIC, was established in 1964 as the Department of Defense Computer Institute, or DODCI. In 1988 the school transitioned to the Information Resources Management College, also called the "iCollege." In 2016, it became CIC. Early on, Navy Adm. Grace Hopper was an instructor at the school. "One thing that has remained consistent throughout all of those evolutions [is the] steadfast, fierce determination of our faculty and staff, and their commitment to bring innovation into the classroom [and] to advance through their thought leadership, information, cybersecurity, emerging technology and cyberspace," Lewis said. "They've also been steadfast in their commitment to prepare senior military and government leaders to lead and meet the challenges that we know they are bound to face in this ever-evolving world." Growth in DOD Telework Capability May Outlive Coronavirus Pandemic [2020-04-13] WASHINGTON -- To keep business on track during the fight against coronavirus, the Defense Department has greatly expanded its telework capability with a variety of tools. Once the coronavirus threat has receded, some of those enhancements for telework may continue on in some capacity, DOD's chief information officer said. "We are creating a much more robust enhanced teleworking capability, [and] we've obviously always had one. What we've now done is we've just put a multiplier effect into the quantity, the types of services, the collaboration tools, etc.," Dana Deasy told reporters today at a Pentagon news conference. "So there will be some permanency to what we have here. ... There is going to be an enhanced teleworking capability that will be sustained at the end of COVID-19." The telework capability that might outlive the pandemic will be related to enhanced network capability, and will also include a larger base of teleworking equipment, Deasy said, but it's not just limited to technology. "We've also just developed some new tactics and techniques that allow us to ramp up quite quickly," he said, adding that the department had "significant help" from industry partners to support the large numbers of Defense Department employees who are working offsite due to social distancing and stay-at-home orders. Air Force Lt. Gen. B.J. Shwedo, the Joint Staff's director for command, control, communications, and computers/cyber and chief information officer, said as many as 4 million DOD military and civilian workers are now teleworking. The Army, he said, has about 800,000 telework-enabled members on Defense Department networks, and the demand is increasing daily. The Navy, he said, had 100,000 remote workers on its networks before the coronavirus pandemic, and that has more than doubled to 250,000 workers. "Planned improvements in the next two to three weeks will bring the total to 500,000 remote users," Shwedo said. The Navy's use of Outlook Web Access, he said, was at about 10,000 users before the pandemic, and usage may climb to some 300,000 users by the end of the month. The Marine Corps, he said, expects its OWA users to increase from about 70,000 to more than 105,000. The Air Force, he added, has increased virtual private network capability from 10,000 to more 100,000 today, with an expectation to go to 200,000 in coming weeks. "They're now using a tool that is going to bring this capability to over 400,000 users," Shwedo said. The many telework-enabling tools now available to Department employees are explained at http://public.cyber.mil, Deasy said. One of those, he said, is the "commercial virtual remote" environment that provides collaboration capabilities including video, voice and text. "CVR was created to support the department during the current large-scale teleworking environment due to the COVID-19 national emergency," he said. "The tool is just one of several tools available to the workforce and provides remote workers with enhanced collaboration capabilities." The rollout for CVR began March 27, and it already has more than 900,000 activated user accounts, Deasy said. "At one point last week, we added over 250,000 accounts in a single day," he said. "This is the largest rollout ever implemented in this short amount of time." The recently stood-up COVID-19 Telework Readiness Task Force has spearheaded much of the effort to get employees online from home to keep doing their jobs, Deasy said. The task force, he said, focuses on areas such as equipment needs, network capacity, operational readiness, information technology personnel, contracting readiness, supply chain, finance requirements and cybersecurity. "We meet daily for about two hours to review and address various technical issues and requests as they arise," he said. Deasy also said efforts during the coronavirus pandemic are not just related to getting employees online for telework. DOD also is helping on the front lines of the coronavirus fight as well. In New Orleans, he said, the department provided two field hospitals with a one-gigabyte internet connection, [internet protocol] phones, connectivity between locations and switches to connect it all together. "A request such as this generally requires months of planning, procuring equipment, and, of course, hiring the teams to install," he said. "Due to our strong partnership with industry, the job was completed in just one day." One effect of increased telework and the coronavirus pandemic has been an increase in "spear phishing" -- attempts by malicious actors to compromise target computers. "I'll tell you that [with] the insight that we're receiving, we're getting better and better at getting their [tactics, techniques and procedures] and finding out where these threat vectors are coming from," Shwedo said. Defense Production Act Contract to Provide 39 Million Masks [2020-04-14] WASHINGTON -- A Defense Department contract under the Defense Production Act will provide more than 39 million N95 respirator masks over the next 90 days to help in the fight against the coronavirus, Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper said. "This will help ensure our government has the industrial capacity to meet the nation's needs," Esper said during a Pentagon news conference today. Also, he said, a $415 million contract awarded by the Defense Logistics Agency is providing 60 systems that can decontaminate as many as 80,000 N95 respirator masks each day, allowing those masks to be reused. "This will allow medical professionals to reuse masks up to 20 times and will reduce the nation's need for new inventory," Esper said. Six decontamination units have already been delivered to cities including New York; Columbus, Ohio; Boston; Chicago; and Tacoma, Washington, and the rest should be available by early May, he added. Combined, the 60 systems will allow for the decontamination of some 4.8 million masks each day once they're all in place. Distribution of those systems will be handled by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services, Esper said. DOD has delivered 10 million of the new N95 masks to FEMA and HHS already, the secretary said, and is prepared to provide 10 million more. The Defense Department has more than 50,000 service members from all services deployed in support of the fight against the coronavirus, Esper told reporters, with more than 4,000 of those being military doctors, nurses and medical professionals. Around 2,100 of those are now in New York City, including 300 who are in civilian hospitals to relieve civilian medical professionals. Experience has shown that local hospitals in cities such as New York do, in fact, have the number of beds needed to treat patients, but that medical professionals in those facilities have been overtaxed, Esper said, so that is where the U.S. military is focusing its assistance now. "What's obviously become strained, stressed, are these hard-working nurses and doctors and respiratory therapists and everybody who's been at this now for weeks," he said. "They're getting burned out and worn down." They're also falling victim to the coronavirus themselves, he added. "So that's where we've now pivoted in the last week or so -- to move our doctors -- and we're doing that now," Esper said. DOD is moving some doctors off the Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort, which is docked in New York, and putting them into the New York City hospitals to provide relief, he said. Meanwhile, Esper said, the department is deploying 14 Army urban augmentation medical task forces to priority regions. Six of those task forces are in New York, three are in New Jersey, two are in Massachusetts, and Connecticut, Michigan and Pennsylvania have one each. The Navy, he said, now has fully established expeditionary medic medical facilities in New Orleans and Dallas, while the Army Corps of Engineers is constructing 25 alternate care facilities around the nation that are expected to make available an additional 15,500 beds in cities such as New York, Detroit and Chicago. Construction of a 450-bed medical facility in Miami also is being discussed, Esper said. Truth, Accuracy Part of Democratic Value System, Eucom Commander Says [2020-04-16] WASHINGTON -- Two harmful things are spreading across the globe now: the coronavirus and disinformation. The commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Europe says they're working to conquer both. "As military forces, we have an obligation to be truthful, timely and accurate in what we say and what we do," Air Force Gen. Tod D. Wolters, commander of U.S. European Command and NATO's supreme allied commander for Europe, said during a telephone news conference today. "That's exactly what we continue to do here from a U.S. perspective, and certainly from a European perspective," he added. "It's part of our democratic value system. Transparency is vital right now. Neutralizing misinformation and delivering accurate and truthful facts is paramount. Our partnership and trust with one another is steadfast." As medical goods have been moved among NATO nations, Wolters said, Russia has inserted itself into the conversation, downplaying the value of those transactions. "That in itself is a form of disinformation," the general said. At the same time, he said, the news media have also reported that goods Russia has delivered to European nations have been "flawed." "What we owe our citizens is to ensure that we tell the truth," Wolters said. "We want to make sure that we continue to stick with our democratic values and stay very, very laser-focused on the facts so that our forces understand exactly what we're doing, and anybody that attempts to provide malign influence to our forces must understand that we're in the business of passing on the facts, not falsehoods." Wolters said part of countering disinformation is recognizing when it's happening -- to have a "sensing system" in place that recognizes those falsehoods and is prepared to counter them. Another part, he said, is deterring that disinformation. And that, he said, starts with leadership and military personnel. "That has to do with your field commanders and your operators and your maintainers and your mission supporters and your medical specialists understanding what it is their forces are effectively doing to improve health and to improve our ability to deter and defend," he said. Wolters said he's asked uniformed military members to be knowledgeable and equipped to speak honestly about their accomplishments. "That in itself is telling the truth, and it's part of more effective deterrence and defense," he said. When it comes to helping to defeat COVID-19 in Europe, Wolters said, Eucom has provided for more than $500,000 in essential equipment and medical supplies from Defense Department stocks in Italy alone. "We've leveraged long-standing bilateral relationships to coordinate access to supplies in Luxembourg," he said. "Under NATO's lead, we've joined with allies to lift much-needed medical supplies from the Pacific to Romania." Last week, he said, President Donald J. Trump authorized contributions of $4.7 million to fund locally procured personal protective equipment. The general also said Eucom is executing 10 "quick reaction" projects that are delivering $150,000 in personnel protective equipment to eight different locations on the continent, with eight more projects in the works. "None of these events would have been possible without the trust and confidence and coordination between allies and partners," he said. "This is proof that the alliance remains ready and capable to support one another in these tough, tough times of need." COVID-19 Doesn't Stop Homeland Defense [2020-04-21] WASHINGTON -- The ongoing war against the coronavirus hasn't kept U.S. Northern Command or North American Aerospace Defense Command from defending North America against meddling Russian aircraft or North Korean missile launches, the commands' top officer said. "Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, as well as our components and regions, are conducting our no-fail mission of defending our homeland," Air Force Gen. Terrence J. O'Shaughnessy, who commands both organizations, said during a telephone news conference today. Earlier this month, he said, NORAD forces intercepted two Russian IL-38 aircraft near Alaska. "This is the third time in two months we've intercepted Russian military aircraft in our [air defense identification zone]," the general said. NORAD continues to track and remains ready to respond to North Korean missile activity as well, O'Shaughnessy said. North Korea launched a short-range missile March 29, which was identified by the Japanese coast guard. North Korea also had launched three missiles March 9, and two additional missiles March 21. Both the Russian aircraft and the North Korean missile launches are considered typical activity, rather than an effort to take advantage of any ill-conceived perception the U.S. military capability might be diminished due to COVID-19, O'Shaughnessy said. Rather, the general said, he believes Russian activity is part of an ongoing effort to probe and check the U.S. ability to respond. "We just wanted to make it very clear to them -- which we did by the way we intercepted them -- that there are no vulnerabilities as a result of COVID-19," the general said. "We are postured to maintain that ability to respond at a moment's notice and have no degradation in our ability to defend the homeland." The same is true of North Korea, he said. "We have seen continuous activity," he told reporters. "It's not necessarily outside of the realm of historical norms, especially given some of the significant dates that have gone by. And so, as always, we're ready to defend the homeland with the ballistic missile capability, defense capability, to be able to respond." Russian aircraft and North Korean missiles aren't the sole focus, O'Shaughnessy noted. "As our commander in chief and secretary of defense have stated, we are at war with COVID-19," he said. "To win this war, which we will, we have approached it as we would any large-scale military campaign, and we're laser-focused, and will remain agile in adjusting our approach to match the circumstances on the ground." Almost 15,000 active-duty personnel are deployed in response to COVID-19, including nearly 4,500 medical personnel. "As we've expanded our operations to more than a dozen states, we've implemented an adaptive medical concept of operation," O'Shaughnessy said. Based on lessons learned during operations in New York City, Northcom has developed three medical force employment options that O'Shaughnessy said are "dynamically scalable and tailorable." The first, he said, involves embedding Defense Department medical providers directly into civilian hospitals or treatment facilities. The second involves the department adding modular capability to existing civilian facilities by working within a portion of an existing facility, such as in a wing of a hospital. Third, he said, are DOD-run alternate care facilities, such as at the Javits Center in New York City. Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, he said, the DOD has changed its operations to align with the needs of local communities. Initially, he said, the DOD officials believed the department could best serve the nation by acting as a "relief valve" for non-COVID patients, expecting that hospitals would be full and that it could best contribute by taking on the care of non-COVID-19 patients so local hospitals could focus on those affected by the coronavirus. But as the situation unfolded, he said, that changed. "It wasn't just the capacity of hospitals, it was literally our health care workers and the staffing of them," he said. The amount of work needed to treat patients, both COVID-19 patients and others, was exhausting civilian health care workers, O'Shaughnessy said, and that's where DOD really stepped up. "Really, in a matter of days ... of understanding that our plan that was in place was not going to be the most effective, we were able to change," he said. Those changes included opening up both the Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort and the Javits Center to treating COVID patients, as well as putting DOD medical personnel into local hospitals to better support civilian medical personnel. "Whether defending our homeland or providing much-needed military capability and capacity to win this war against the invisible enemy, know that our commands are responding now and are prepared to respond where they're needed in the future across all 50 states -- part of a unified whole-of-America effort, orchestrated by [the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services] and the National Response Coordination Center," O'Shaughnessy said. "This is truly a unified response, and U.S. Northern Command is honored to be part of the team." Learning Continues for DOD School System Students Despite COVID-19 Restrictions [2020-04-28] WASHINGTON -- While students in Department of Defense Education Activity schools might have imagined an early start to summer vacation as a result of the first of the brick-and-mortar schools shutting down in February due to COVID-19, the learning stopped for only a few days before instructors and students were back to reading, writing and arithmetic via digital learning efforts. "What I'm so remarkably proud of is that our teacher workforce, our educational leaders in the field and our [information technology] specialists ... have all been remarkably resilient and effective in trying to provide quality instruction to kids that are stuck at home," DODEA Director Tom Brady said. Across the U.S. military, DODEA runs 161 schools for about 71,000 pre-kindergarten through high school students worldwide. The first of those schools shut down in late February, said Patrick Martin, the acting chief of education operations at DODEA. "We started in hot spots where host nation countries were beginning to take steps, so Daegu, [South Korea], was the first community to close on Feb. 20," Martin said. "Then Vicenza and Aviano in Italy followed just a few days later, in line with local authorities." The last of the schools to close was at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on March 25, he said. But for students, the disruption in learning was short-lived, thanks to work by instructors, principals, district superintendents, and IT professionals with DODEA, Martin said. "In all cases, we were able to transition from a closed school to the first learning activities being sent out in four days or fewer," he said. "I think that was a testament to the hard work on the part of our teachers and leaders in the field." A large part of that online-learning capability comes through Google Classroom, Martin said. And while DODEA already had some online and digital learning capability, he said teachers were asking for Google Classroom capability, and the IT staffs were able to make that happen. Between March 10 and March 25, he said, more than 16,000 Google classrooms were created and populated for students. That's essentially one online classroom created for each course that had been taught in shuttered brick-and-mortar classrooms. "It wasn't perfect in four days, but they got it going in four days," he said. "I'd say it's still not perfect, but it is amazing what talented and dedicated educators can do when they're put to the test and provided the tools that they need." Michael Morris, a 3rd-grade teacher at a DODEA school in Vicenza, said he thinks he and his students have made a successful transition to digital learning. "Overall, I would say that we are very successful, given the situation," he said. "There are varying degrees of success, and we are learning as we navigate through the virtual platform and making adjustments as we progress." One adjustment is that what happens online is different from what can happen in a real classroom, Morris said. "The digital learning platform looks much different than a day at school, at the elementary level," he said. "We strive to create assignments that students work on independently and without always being at the computer, which is challenging." One concern is that students aren't spending all day online in front of the computer. It's not only not good for them, it's not good for learning either, Brady explained. "About two weeks ago, we started looking at what do we need to do to make sure that we minimize digital fatigue," Brady said. "We put out some guidelines on how many hours that we're targeting for instruction for each kid, you know, by grade level, by elementary and high school ... what can we do to make sure that we're still hitting standards, but we're not trying to overload parents and overload kids." Teachers are mindful of student computer time when planning lessons to minimize the amount of time they need to be in front of the computer, Morris said, but they still meet with students online each day. "We meet with students in small groups or one-on-one for instruction, and we are constantly looking at ways to maximize that time for learning and keeping student engagement," he added. David Rudy, the community superintendent for DODEA Europe South District, said that as part of the digital learning effort, students experience both "synchronous" and "asynchronous" learning. Synchronous learning involves face-to-face time with the teacher through online tools, while asynchronous learning involves students working on their own without involvement of the teacher. "As part of the weekly digital learning plan, teachers publish their synchronous meeting schedule so that students and parents know exactly when and where they will be meeting with their teacher," Rudy said. In Italy, he said, that means students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade will have two scheduled sessions per week with their instructors. For students in grades 6 through 12, these synchronous sessions happen during regularly scheduled class time once or twice a week for each student. "Classwork and homework blend together in the asynchronous learning time, where students are engaging in learning activities that their teachers have designed for them to complete on their own time and schedule," Rudy said. "Of course, these activities have due dates and expectations attached to them, so students have to be diligent to 'be in school' and complete the assigned work as laid out by their teachers." Another concern for educators is that while students might be learning online, and doing homework assignments as well, they are missing out on the important social aspects of being in class, being in school, participating in extracurricular activities, meeting with their teachers and friends, and developing the independence that comes with being away from their parents and on their own for a portion of each day. "The thing that is pretty heartbreaking is you know students are going to miss proms, basketball championships, jazz competition, the kind of stuff that happens in schools all the time," Martin said. "Some of those kids put on an athletic uniform or stepped up to a microphone for the last time a couple of months ago, and they didn't know that was the last time. Students are grieving the loss of some of these experiences, and our hearts are broken for those kids." Morris said that in his own classroom, and in some of the other classes at the school, there's an effort to try to replicate some of the socializing that happens in schools that is so important to the development of young students. "We were very fortunate to have entered into this digital learning platform with relationships already built," he said. "But the school provides a community that you just can't capture in the virtual platform. We have informal Google Hangout [meetings] together twice a week, celebrate birthdays, and students constantly text, to continue those relationships and times to share, but as you know, sharing through a screen is just not the same as face-to-face interaction. Students are persevering, but overall, they are having a difficult time socially and emotionally ... and really missing school. I can say that for teachers, too." Not all students who attend DODEA schools were able, at least initially, to get on board with digital learning. Some lacked the technology in their homes to participate. That's something DODEA worked hard to fix early on, so that every student could continue to learn, Martin said. "Equity was the focus of the education directorate from the beginning of this process," he said. "Leaders in the field are hustling to get systems in place, to get teachers ready. We had a lot of honest conversations early on about what we can do to ensure that this model provides all students the best we can under these circumstances." For some students, Martin said, DODEA had to provide technology to ensure they could get in on the online learning. That meant handing out more than 7,000 computing devices to those who needed them. "We issued hundreds of hotspots for students that needed more reliable internet connections, just to make sure everybody had the same kind of access," he said. Rudy said students in Italy initially had been asked to use personal digital devices to participate in digital learning. But a survey was sent to families asking if they needed additional devices to support multiple children in the home working at multiple grade levels and subjects. "As a result, the district offered families the use of school Chromebooks and wireless access points such as iPhones and hot spots, depending on community availability," he said. "To date, the district has distributed 577 Chromebooks and 44 wireless access points." Martin cited a term in education called "the 'summer slide.'" "It's pretty well documented that students lose a certain level of skill over the summer," he said. "So they leave, and they show us what they know in math and reading, specifically. They come back, and it's dipped a bit. They've forgotten some things -- the skills aren't where they used to be." Martin said researchers are predicting something similar -- a "COVID slide" -- that's related to the time students are out of the classroom due to COVID-19 -- even if they are learning things online. The COVID slide, he said, is likely to exacerbate the typical summer slide. Brady said DODEA has plans to address this. "No. 1 is that we're going to have an assessment -- a test that's going to be administered at the beginning of the new school year -- to be able to measure where students are in knowledge of standards," he said. Based on the results, he added, decisions can be made about what additional learning must happen to get students where they need to be. Brady also said that over the summer, some additional learning opportunities will also be offered to attempt to help curb loss of skills. "It's going to be a digital thing, focusing on reading and mathematics and on what we can do to help our students better prepare for opening, when it does come," he said. Eventually, students will go back to their classrooms, though whether that comes in September or later is unknown. If a vaccine isn't available by then, but students are allowed to return to the classroom, things will need to be different than they have been in the past, Brady said. "What kind of social distancing are we going to have to implement? What type of face masks?" he asked. "Until there's a vaccine, what flexibility do we have to build into our system? That's what's keeping us up at night and trying to figure out options." Brady said that what happens in the fall will depend largely on geography, local military communities, and what's happening in host nations or communities. "We're going to be remarkably flexible, and we're going to work with our partners," he said. One segment of the DODEA community is going to be particularly affected by the COVID-19 social distancing: high school seniors. For many, graduating from high school will be one of the most significant events of their lives so far. For those students, it's unlikely they will have the traditional high school graduation they had been expecting. School leaders and DODEA officials are working to make sure that those students still have a graduation experience that suits them best, Brady said. "We asked [students] through the chiefs of staff and the three [DODEA] regions to hold virtual get-togethers in each one of the high schools and ask them what they would like to do in terms of digital graduations or graduation ceremonies," Brady said. One school, he said, plans to have students come in with parents one at a time to get their diplomas, and they will wear their caps and gowns. Another school wants to have students come in and have photographers shoot pictures of them where they would be sitting in the room if they could all be there together, he said. "We are working on trying to personalize the graduation event to meet the needs of the students and parents in this very, very strange time," Brady said. Rudy said that in Italy, school principals are planning graduation ceremonies in conjunction with student councils and parent input. "All DODEA schools in Italy are planning virtual graduation ceremonies that will be streamed on YouTube and/or Facebook," Rudy said. "Most schools appear to be settling on prerecorded content vs. live streaming to reduce any technical hiccups. We want these ceremonies to go off without a hitch, of course, for such an important event, especially given the impact of the pandemic on our students' senior year in high school." Service Personnel Policies Help With Retention During Pandemic [2020-04-29] WASHINGTON -- While the private sector suffers from social distancing and the effects of illnesses and forced shutdowns related to COVID-19, the U.S. military must continue to do its job. And though it's too early to tell if challenges with employment among civilians have driven more people to military recruiting stations, one thing that has benefited is retention, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness said. Speaking yesterday as part of an online discussion with the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in Washington, Matthew P. Donovan said that because of the increased social distancing and quarantine requirements, the military services have had to reduce the numbers they move through basic training. That reduction might leave a gap in total end strength, he said, because service members might still retire or separate in the same numbers as usual. To address that issue, Donovan said, the military services have adjusted personnel policies to get existing service members to perhaps stay longer -- and many are doing so. As the services put voluntary extensions on enlistments and voluntary extensions on retirement dates or dates of separation into effect, that is making up for some of that gap now, Donovan said. "Folks are deciding to stay longer because they look on the outside and they [say], 'You know, I've got a pretty good job now, so I want to stay,'" he added. "It's one of the things that we're tracking, but it seems to be evening out right now." Over the long term, the military does face competition with the private sector for talent, Donovan said, and changes might need to happen in the future to address that competition. One possibility, he said, is looking at existing "up or out" policies requiring service members to meet timed promotion milestones or risk being asked to leave the service. Some he noted, may be happy in a particular place and in their current rank. Other considerations include providing the opportunity for personnel to "take a pause" in their career without suffering a penalty. For example, service members might be able to leave or pause their service to start a family and then come back at a later time and pick up where they left off. "One of the things that we're working with the Congress is to apply more permeability, the ability to move between the different components at different times in your life," Donovan said. "It may be when you're younger and you want to start a family. And that applies to either males or females, depending on who has the career going at the time." And many senior service members have parents who may be aging and in need of care, he noted, and they may want to be able to take time off and return without any penalty. Such policy changes wouldn't mean that during such a pause personnel would get promotions or advance in seniority, but "you ought to be able to come in at the same place you left," he said. Donovan said the Defense Department is in close consultation with Congress on these types of personnel issues. U.S. Must Prepare for Current, Future Pandemics [2020-04-30] WASHINGTON -- As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, the United States must bolster its medical-industrial base to deal with both the current pandemic, a potential resurgence in the fall and any pandemics that may come in the future, the Defense Department's undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment said. "How much longer are we going to be cranking out the masks? For a very long time," Ellen M. Lord said during a news conference today at the Pentagon. Lord told reporters she expects the department and the nation will be battling COVID-19 for six months to a year or more, and she has several materiel-related objectives being prepared for that continued fight. "We need to take care of the demand we have right now that started with medical personnel," she said. "But we need the country to get back to work, and that is going to require some personal protective equipment that includes masks. So, No. 1, we have to bridge beyond nonmedical personnel PPE, and masks are very significant." As part of an ongoing effort to equip service members with PPE, she said, the Defense Logistics Agency continues to work with the military services to get them what they need. She said the agency has procured more than 5.9 million N95 respirator masks, 14.2 million nonmedical and surgical masks, 92.2 million exam gloves, 2.4 million isolation and surgical gowns and 8,000 ventilators. "Delivery of over 5 million nonmedical cloth face coverings to our military services, combatant commands, U.S. Coast Guard and several federal agencies has begun," she said. For the nation as a whole, she said, it'll also be necessary to refill the national U.S. stockpile of personal protective equipment. "Then we need to look forward to what the data is telling us -- that there may well be another significant outbreak this fall. We want to be prepared for that," Lord said. Also important, she said, is being prepared for the next pandemic that might come in the future. "We see this as an ongoing issue, both within the Defense Department -- because we need to not only support the nation with everything we're doing with Health and Human Services and Federal Emergency Management Agency -- but we have our primary mission here of national security, and we have to be ready to go ahead and do that." While HHS and FEMA have the infrastructure and the overall mission of fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, DOD, with its sizable acquisition workforce, has the ability to surge the medical-industrial base. She said the industrial base, however, may need some changes if it's going to be ready to address future pandemics. "We've learned that we've had fragility in it on a number of fronts," she said. "We were overly dependent on foreign sources; we still have the air bridge working to bring all kinds of medical resources back to the United States. So, we need to make sure that we have security and resiliency in our medical-industrial base." Lord said the DOD acquisition apparatus can help ensure the medical-industrial base has both the capacity and capability to provide for both the current medical crisis and future crises. "What I would like to see is the U.S. have the capacity and throughput to take care of ourselves in times of need," she said. DOD Focuses on Sustaining Industrial Base Through Pandemic [2020-05-05] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department is using an array of tools to ensure the defense industrial base stays afloat so it can provide critical materiel now and remain robust after COVID-19 has passed. Ellen M. Lord, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said last week that DOD is "carefully and methodically" tracking the state of the defense industrial base, which includes businesses large and small that have direct business with DOD or provide important components or support to companies with defense contracts. "Our acquisition and sustainment team remains focused on partnering with industry to maintain readiness and drive modernization," Lord said. "Our industrial policy team continues to lead multiple industry calls every week with 18 Industrial associations. I am proud of the department's responsiveness in addressing defense industry concerns that are outlined during these calls." One agency heavily involved in ensuring that the defense industrial base remains strong and capable throughout the COVID-19 pandemic is the Defense Contract Management Agency, which manages some of the largest contracts for the department, including that of the F-35 joint strike fighter aircraft. Navy Vice Adm. David Lewis, agency director, said when the first of the COVID-19 closures started happening, he told the defense industrial base businesses the agency works with that if they stayed open, DCMA would be there to support them. "If you're open, we're open," he said. "I said that, like, Day One or Day Two when this started happening. My point in that is we need the industrial base to stay open. We're still building airplanes. We're still building tanks. There are still soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in harm's way around the world. They still need their parts, they still need their equipment. We're still deploying. People are still shooting at us. We're still shooting back." While DCMA works with nearly 10,500 businesses, the actual defense industrial base is much larger, Lewis said. A sister agency, the Defense Logistics Agency, also works with many companies, though there may be great overlap between the companies DLA and DCMA work with. Globally, the number of domestic and foreign companies in the defense industrial base could exceed 160,000. One tool the department is using to ensure the companies remain viable is a memorandum published in March and signed by Lord. That memorandum defines the defense industrial base as the industrial complex that enables research and development as well as design, production, delivery and maintenance of military weapons systems/software systems, subsystems and components or parts, as well as purchased services to meet U.S. military requirements. In the memorandum, Lord identifies the defense industrial base as a critical infrastructure sector as defined by the Department of Homeland Security. This allows companies to stay open even when other businesses have been directed to close. "I've given the memorandum to every single DCMA employee, and we have given those to every company that wanted one and told them to give them to their employees," Lewis said. "That has been hugely helpful." Another tool the department is using to help are changes made to increase the "progress payment" rate on some defense contracts. Those payments are made to improve cash flow for industry involved in the ongoing production of large defense items. "There are about 1,500 contracts that [DCMA] pays every couple of weeks based on the progress that they've done," Lewis said. "They don't have to deliver a product. It's such an expensive thing that we pay them incrementally as they build it." The progress payment rate increase from 80% to 90% for large businesses and from 85% to 95% for small businesses, Lewis said. "That has the effect of pushing $3.3 billion into the defense industrial base," he added. Last week, Lord said about $1.2 billion in invoices were processed at the higher progress payment rate. "We have spoken with each of our major prime companies, and they have each confirmed their detailed plans to work with their supply chains to accelerate payments, and to identify distressed companies and small businesses," she said. "I want to particularly commend Lockheed Martin, who publicly committed to accelerating $450 million dollars to their supply chain, again, focusing on distressed and small businesses who need it most." It's important that extra funding from the government gets pushed down from large "prime" contractors -- such as Lockheed Martin or Boeing -- to their smaller suppliers, Lewis said, because those small businesses are also a critical part of the defense industrial base and are more vulnerable to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. "If you are a big company, you've got cash in the bank, you've got money on hand, you can probably work through things financially -- it may not be pleasant, but you're OK," Lewis said. "If you're a small wiring harness maker, you might be living paycheck to paycheck, as a company." Lewis also said that DCMA is working with companies to continue to provide payments even if those businesses are unable to keep the original agreed-upon schedule for product delivery. "We'll give them grace -- if you're supposed to deliver 10 this week, but you completed eight -- that's fine," he said. "We've allowed partial payments. We'll relax some of our normal contract provisions for penalties ... we'll relax our penalties if you're late on deliveries. So you're still producing, you're compliant with the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidelines for the health of your workforce ... but you're still producing product, which means you're still getting paid, which means you have an income stream and you can stay open." DOD also has made changes in what's allowed within a "request for equitable adjustment." The changes were part of the recent Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. Lewis likened a request for equitable adjustment as something that might be used by a small business to recoup additional, unforeseen costs associated with a contract. A contractor, he said, might agree to replace a customer's roof for $15,000. If during the execution of that work the roofer discovers extensive termite damage to the customer's home, then this would increase the cost of the roofing work. The roofer would need to work with the customer to get additional funds beyond what was initially agreed upon. Businesses doing work with the government who suffer similar unforeseen circumstances -- such as costs associated with COVID-19 -- would use the request for equitable adjustment to seek additional funding. "The company could say, well, 'I was supposed to deliver ten, but because of the pandemic I could only deliver eight, ... [or] it took me longer to make up the difference and that cost me extra, I had to expedite things, I had to air-freight stuff, so I'm requesting a request for equitable adjustment,'" Lewis said. Part of the DCMA mission involves having representatives embedded in businesses who would witness the kinds of problems that might give rise to a request for equitable adjustment, Lewis said. "We're the ones that will say, 'This is what happened on April 29 at a facility with this delivery,' for instance," he said. "So we provide the facts to the contracting activity, the buying activity, the company provides a request for equitable adjustment, and then the buying activity and the company negotiate that." While businesses in the defense industrial base can submit a request for equitable adjustment at this point, Lewis said he's not aware that any company has done so. Lord said that, as of last week, 93 of the companies that DCMA tracks are closed, and that's down 13 from the week before. As a result of COVID-19, she said, a total of 141 of those companies had closed and then reopened. She said the trend now is that DOD is seeing more companies reopening from a closure, than new companies closing. Of the companies tracked by DLA, she said, 437 were closed last week, with 237 having closed and reopened, up almost 100 companies from a week before. While any company within the defense industrial base suffers when it's forced to close as a result of COVID-19, small companies are hit especially hard, Lewis said. But the worst case scenario, he said, is if a company is closed permanently as a result of COVID-19. It's a loss for that business, and for those employees who are out of a job. It's also, he said, a loss to DOD. "A lot of our stuff is niche, specialty equipment," he said. "If a company packs up, shuts down, and sends their people away, the question is how many other companies do that work? There might only be one, there might be just a couple. It would be a challenge if we couldn't get the material that we needed to support the warfighter." Defense Security Cooperation Agency Sees Growing Interest in Partnerships [2020-05-06] WASHINGTON -- Strengthening alliances and attracting new partners is one of the National Defense Strategy's lines of effort, and the Defense Security Cooperation Agency is a large part of that effort. Attracting new partners doesn't get as much discussion as it should, but that doesn't mean the Defense Department or DSCA hasn't been effective in meeting the requirement, the agency's director said. "The initial instructions that I received upon taking this position were, we were to push forward and adhere to line of effort two in the National Defense Strategy, which is, strengthening alliances and attracting new partners," Army Lt. Gen. Charles Hooper said during a discussion with the Atlantic Council yesterday. Hooper said attracting new partners is something DSCA takes as seriously as every other mission for which it is responsible, and that the U.S. effort at growing alliance relations is strong. "I will tell you that I've seen a strengthening of our existing alliances and relationships," he said. "And I'm proud to say that I've seen efforts by countries not normally aligned with the United States that are moving in our direction to align with us. I've seen us attracting new partners. So I'm very optimistic about it. I think it's strong, and I think it's so strong that we're attracting new partners." One reason, Hooper said, is the way the United States conducts partnership agreements, noting that DSCA operations are driven by four principles: transparency, responsiveness, integrity and commitment. "Transparency in everything that we do. ... The United States is the only great power where the entire menu and procedure for procuring weapons and equipment is online and a matter of public domain and public record," he said. The United States also is fast in responding to partner needs, he said, and conducts relations with an integrity that's unmatched by other potential partners. "The integrity of the U.S. approach to security cooperation ... is virtually incorruptible," the general said. "I like to tell many of my interlocutors, counterparts and defense ministers that I deal with [that] when you do business with the United States, the books are always open for inspection." The U.S. approach to partnership differs from other great powers in that the United States enters relations with partner and allied nations with more than simple sales or profit in mind, Hooper said, adding that the United States enters such partnerships with long-term relations in mind. "I think that that is one of the most unique characteristics of this very American approach to security cooperation," he said. DOD Aims to Make Moves Easier With New Contract for Household Goods [2020-05-06] WASHINGTON -- A new contract to facilitate the movement of household goods, an integral part of any move to a new duty location, is expected to make things easier for both service members and their families. The U.S. Transportation Command awarded the contract to American Roll-On Roll-Off Carrier Group Inc. on April 30. The first move under the new contract won't take place until February, Transcom's director of acquisition said at a news conference today. "The ... contract is an important component of improving service members' experiences during the relocation process, and fundamentally restructures DOD's relationship with the household goods industry in order to improve access to, and management of, quality capacity to meet peak demand and enable the department to fix the accountability and responsibility lacking in today's program," Ken Brennan said. The New Jersey-based business was chosen for the contract because the proposal the company submitted provided the best service for the best value for service members, Defense Department civilians and their families, Brennan said, adding that the carrier group beat out six other competing proposals. Rick Marsh, the director of the defense personal property program at Transcom, said the new contract will bring great benefit to service members and their families. Right now, he said, there's no single contractor the DOD uses to move household goods. As a result, he said, no portion of the industry is motivated to spend money to enhance the service they provide to service members and their families. "There is ... no rationale to invest in quality suppliers and invest in your network," Marsh said. "You can't forecast the work that you're going to perform. Our current model leads to using day laborers and other folks that maybe aren't as well-trained as moving professionals should be." By centralizing the work in one company, he said, DOD lets industry know what the demand is for household goods movement, and that allows for investment. "They can hire and invest in very highly trained employees to come into service member homes to handle pack out or delivery," he said. As far as accountability is concerned, he said, the department has more than 300 personal property offices at installations and another 42 shipping offices around the world that will have formally-appointed contracting officers and quality assurance evaluators. "We're going to be working off of a centralized quality assurance surveillance plan to ensure we have accurate, rigorous oversight over the contract," Marsh said. For families who have issues with their move, he said, there will be new avenues to rectify problems. "I would say most of the issues that we have in our current program revolve around communication," he said. "We're going to be able to bring tools to the table that we simply can't deliver today under the current program, to be able to put families in touch with representatives from industry faster -- to make the claims process much cleaner, much simpler, and for them to be, to have it settled and to be made whole ... much faster than they are today." Currently, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many service members are unable to relocate as they might have expected during the summer months, while others will be allowed to move if granted an exception, Marsh said. For those who are allowed to move under such an exception, efforts will be made to protect both families and movers from COVID-19. "In an effort to protect the force and deliver a safe moving experience to DOD families, DOD has directed a series of health protection measures for personnel moving during the stop-movement period," he said. DOD has directed that industry personnel adhere to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's health protection protocols, Marsh said. That includes wearing face coverings, minimizing crew sizes, cleaning frequently-touched surfaces and practicing good hand hygiene while conducting moves in family housing. Additionally, Marsh said, moving crews will need to verify the health of their teams upon arriving at military families' homes. "When a moving crew arrives at the curb for a pack out or delivery, moving companies will present written verification that members of the crew have been screened for illness and will be properly equipped to adhere to these protocols," Marsh said. If a family does have concerns about the health of the team that arrives to move their household goods, Marsh said, they are also empowered to ask those movers to not come into their home. "If families aren't comfortable, they should stop work and reschedule their move," he said. "A DOD representative will contact every DOD member during every move, in-person or virtually, to ensure protocols are being followed. And if something's not right, local transportation offices and the personnel's chain of command will get involved to make it right." President Leads Nation in Commemorating Anniversary of Nazi Defeat in Europe [2020-05-08] WASHINGTON -- President Donald J. Trump, Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark A. Milley commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Allies' victory over Nazi Germany in Europe at the National World War II Memorial in Washington. The president and wife Melania Trump laid a wreath at the memorial at today's event. They also toured the memorial and met veterans in attendance. "Seventy-five years ago today, the last remnants of the Nazi regime unconditionally surrendered to the Allied Powers, marking the end of World War II in Europe," Trump said in an official statement. "Today, we celebrate the forces of freedom who defeated tyranny and emerged victorious in that monumental struggle. We pay tribute to those who served for their service and pause to remember those who gave their last full measure in defense of the flames of liberty." On Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. When the United States declared war on Japan the following day, the country officially entered World War II. By Jan. 11, both Germany and Italy had declared war on the United States, and the U.S. responded in kind, involving the nation in a global war on two fronts: Europe and Asia. When the U.S. entered the European conflict in 1941, war had been raging there for more than 14 months since Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. In Europe, the Americans joined with the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and other nations to defeat the rise of fascist Germany. "The campaign to end fascism in the European theater is a somber reminder of the price of freedom," Trump's statement reads. "More than 30 million lives were lost and tens of millions more were shattered in the war. Most of those who perished in Europe were civilians, including 6 million Jews and millions of others from Poland and the former Soviet Union." U.S. participation in Europe resulted in 552,117 American casualties, with 104,812 killed in action. "Most of these selfless and heroic warriors had never known life in a prosperous America," Trump said. "They grew up during the Great Depression, when America's economic prospects seemed bleak. Yet, they answered our country's call of duty because they believed in the principles that lie at the foundation of our nation ... these American heroes would not relent in their noble efforts until they had liberated all of Europe from the abhorrent Nazi regime." The president said fewer than 400,000 of the 16 million Americans who served during World War II are still alive. "Their generation -- the Greatest Generation -- will never be forgotten," he said. "We are forever grateful for their immeasurable contributions to the success and prosperity of our nation." The fighting in Europe ended May 8, 1945 -- Victory in Europe Day -- when the Allies formally accepted Germany's unconditional surrender, but World War II was not yet over. The fighting in the Pacific continued for another four months. It ended Sept. 2, 1945, when the Japanese signed an instrument of surrender aboard the USS Missouri. As in Other Domains, U.S. Use of Electromagnetic Spectrum Is Contested [2020-05-20] WASHINGTON -- That the U.S. military is no longer the only -- or even the dominant -- user of air, land, sea, space and cyberspace is not disputed. In every domain where the U.S. military once went unchallenged, newcomers hope to usurp its long-held dominance. Less well-known are new challengers in the electromagnetic spectrum, the deputy director for the Defense Department's Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations Cross Functional Team said. "The joint force is critically dependent on [the electromagnetic spectrum] across our joint functions and our domains, yet often it is viewed as a commodity. It's viewed as a utility, and it is assumed that it can be accessed at will," said Air Force Maj. Gen. Lance Landrum, who spoke as part of a forum today with the Association of Old Crows. Landrum also serves as the deputy director for requirements and capability development in the Joint Staff's force structure, resource and assessment directorate. The electromagnetic spectrum, or EMS, includes the array of frequencies used by communications equipment such as radios, GPS, cell phones and remotely controlled devices, for instance. While the United States has assumed in the past that it was alone or nearly alone while operating in this area, this is no longer the case. Both commercial interests and adversary militaries are now actively using the EMS for their own interests. "For decades, the United States has enjoyed uncontested or dominant superiority in every operating domain," Landrum said. "We generally could deploy our forces when we wanted, assemble them where we wanted and operate how we wanted. Today, every day, every domain is contested." American adversaries have been fielding systems and platforms to challenge U.S. traditional areas of advantage such as precision guidance, timing, low observable technology, space-based communications and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems, the general said. Additional advances in technology, he noted, have led to an increase in commercial and military EMS-enabled capabilities over the last few decades. "The spectrum has become increasingly complex. More players are accessing and leveraging sections of bandwidth, making it congested," he said. "And the spectrum is still constrained by the physics and the reality of that space." To deal with the complexities of new challenges in the EMS, Landrum said the Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations Cross Functional Team and the DOD chief information officer have been drafting a new EMS superiority strategy. He said he believes that strategy can be signed by July and then work can start immediately to implement it. That implementation will be overseen by the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "The vice chairman will address the changes necessary in governance, manpower, training, readiness and capabilities to achieve the strategy's vision, which is freedom of action across the electromagnetic spectrum," Landrum said. To address capability gaps in the EMS, Landrum said the team is analyzing past and present investments in EMSO capabilities, and is also providing guidance to inform future DOD investment strategies in EMSO capabilities. Landrum said that first priority is challenged, in part, by defining what constitutes an EMSO system. "A lot of EMS-related capabilities are integrated into other items," he said. "And while some are very clear -- things like jammers, electronic countermeasure systems and things like that -- others are more nuanced. For instance, is investment in a new tactical radio an EMSO investment, or is it a sub-element of the radio, such as software that encrypts the communications or allows for dynamic spectrum maneuver?" In terms of informing future investment in EMSO capabilities, the strategy is a comprehensive approach to acquire EMS capabilities suitable for great power competition, Landrum said. "The DOD EMSO investment strategy seeks to achieve this objective by providing specific top-down recommendations related to concept-driven, threat-informed, EMSO capability development, addressing and prioritizing gaps across the requirements, acquisition, budgeting and operations processes in the department," he explained. DOD Adopts 'Zero Trust' Approach to Buying Microelectronics [2020-05-20] WASHINGTON -- Microelectronics are in nearly everything, including the complex weapons systems the Defense Department buys, such as the F-35 joint strike fighter, the Pentagon's director of defense research and engineering for modernization said. "It is so ubiquitous and because it is ... so fundamental to everything we do," Mark J. Lewis said via video conference today as part of a forum sponsored by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association. Because of the importance of microelectronics, he said, the department is shifting the way it goes about buying microelectronics and ensuring they are secure to use. "We want the Department of Defense to have access to state-of-the-art capabilities, which we do not have today," he said. That's because the department is not buying on the commercial curve, he explained. In the mid-1990s, DOD adopted a "trusted foundry" model for procuring microelectronics, Lewis said. "The idea [was] that in order to deliver parts that we could trust, we would enable foundries that would manufacture our microelectronics where we had control over every step of the process -- or so we thought," he said. "That model, we think, has failed." The department isn't a large purchaser of microelectronics, Lewis said, so companies that adhered to the department's "trusted foundry" model were unable to make a business case for following it. "As a result, they haven't been investing," he said. "The chips that we buy, the microelectronic components that we buy from those trusted foundries, are in some cases two generations behind what's available on commercial state-of-the-art." Also, he said, the "trusted foundry" model does pose risk -- from the inside. "We've seen a number of examples where the biggest threats that we face often are the insider threat. It's the people inside the fence line, behind the guards, who we think we've cleared," he said. "They're the ones that pose the biggest threats to us." Now, he said, the department looks instead to a "zero trust" approach to purchasing microelectronics. That assumes that nothing the department buys is safe, and that everything must be validated before it can be used. "You depend on data, you depend on validation and verification, you depend on standards that will make sure that what you have has no surprises, doesn't have back doors that are going to injure you or damage you, and doesn't act in a malicious way," he said. "We're actually extremely comfortable now -- we believe that the technologies already exist for us to be able to do that." By using "zero trust," he said, the department will be able to gain access to the most modern technology. "Our goal is to allow the Department of Defense to purchase on the commercial curves, from state-of-the-art," Lewis said. "That will put us on ... par with our strategic competitors." Lewis laid out 11 department technology priorities. Those include microelectronics; autonomy; cyber; 5G communications; fully-networked command and control communications; space; hypersonics; quantum science; biotechnology; artificial intelligence; and directed energy. Of those, he said, microelectronics are the top priority. On 5G, he said, that communications technology is "an absolutely essential, high-priority monetization element for us." "5G brings data rates, it brings low-latency, it brings a volume of data that will be far greater than what we operate with today," he said. "The implications for the Department of Defense, we think, are quite profound." The department wants for the U.S. to be setting international standards for 5G and also wants to ensure DOD's needs and requirements are driving the direction in which the technology moves, he said. The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the importance of biotechnology, he said. But for the department, dealing with and defeating pandemics is only part of that technology space, he added. "We view biotechnology also, as using synthetic biological processes and using biotechnology to enable and enhance new manufacturing capabilities," he said. He cited microorganisms that can produce materials with properties similar to concrete as an example. Some of the work from organizations such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency can actually grow a runway, Lewis said. "You can sprinkle these organisms and have them produce runway material, instead of the old fashioned way," he explained. Other microorganisms can concentrate rare earth metals, providing a new supply chain for those materials, Lewis said. Air Force Officer, Retired Marine Head for International Space Station [2020-05-20] WASHINGTON -- NASA and SpaceX launched NASA astronauts Air Force Col. Robert L. Behnken and retired Marine Corps Col. Douglas G. Hurley into space at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, as part of NASA's Demo-2 mission. The two lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at 3:22 p.m. today aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft, which sat atop a Falcon 9 rocket. It was the first time the Falcon 9 carried humans into orbit. During the mission, the spacecraft reached speeds as high as 17,000 mph. Following the launch, President Donald J. Trump spoke from the Kennedy Space Center about what the launch means for Americans. "As we gather in this special place to celebrate not only the launch of a new spacecraft but also our nation's bold and triumphant return to the stars, it's a special day," Trump said. "Moments ago the world bore witness to the flight of the first, new manned U.S. spacecraft in nearly 40 years, since the Space Shuttle launched in 1981 -- a long time ago. I am thrilled to announce that the SpaceX Dragon capsule has successfully reached low Earth orbit and that our astronauts are safe and sound." The president said the successful launch marks a new age of American ambition in space. "We once again proudly launch American astronauts on American rockets -- the best in the world -- from right here on American soil," he said. "Those of us who saw the spectacular and unforgettable liftoff this afternoon watched more than an act of history. We watched an act of heroism. Every time our astronauts climb aboard a rocket ... and vault across the sky, they display breathtaking valor. What Col. Douglas Hurley and Col. Robert Behnken did this afternoon was pure American genius and courage." Trump also said Hurley and Behnken will be remembered for that valor, genius and courage in American history books, and the nation is grateful for their service. "Now, these brave and selfless astronauts will continue their mission to advance the cause of human knowledge as they proceed to the International Space Station before returning to Earth," he said. "We wish them Godspeed on their journey, and as one proud nation, we salute their fearless service." Once in orbit, the crew conducted tests to ensure the spacecraft was performing the way it should. It will take about 19 hours for the craft to meet up with the International Space Station. After docking with the space station, Behnken and Hurley will perform tests aboard the Crew Dragon and the space station as part of its Expedition 63 crew. The launch marks the first time a private company has launched a crew into orbit. The Crew Dragon is a commercially-produced spacecraft; this mission will help NASA certify the craft for further missions to the space station. Before his service with NASA, Behnken served as a flight test engineer with the Air Force. Hurley served as a fighter pilot and test pilot in the Marine Corps. Commander Discusses a Decade of DOD Cyber Power [2020-05-21] WASHINGTON -- Ten years ago, U.S. Cyber Command passed its first milestone: the ability to conduct cyberspace operations as the new sub-unified combatant command. While the command's mission has evolved over the last decade, defense of the nation in cyberspace remains just as important, if not more, than ever before. "The initial vision for Cyber Command focused heavily on the defense of the military's networks," Army Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, who is also the director of the National Security Agency and chief of the Central Security Service, explained. "The dominant threat at the time was cyber-enabled espionage," Nakasone said. "However, there was an increasing recognition that the military needed the ability to defend against a significant cyberattack on the homeland. As other parts of the joint force saw what cyber effects offered, Cyber Command grew to support their requirements as well." In 2008, the Defense Department experienced an intrusion into its networks -- both classified and unclassified. Then-Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates saw it as a warning and knew the department would need to prepare for a future of cyberspace threats that was as dangerous as those in air, land and sea. Gates directed U.S. Strategic Command to establish Cybercom in 2009 as a sub-unified command. Within less than a year, Cybercom stood up and merged joint components that had previously performed offensive and defensive cyber missions. "What was clear was that we had only just begun to understand how cyberspace would become a pivotal forum for great power competition," Nakasone said. In the last decade, Cybercom has seen increased instances of adversaries operating below the level of armed conflict, from stealing intellectual property to attempting to influence and disrupt democratic processes. "This has led us to our current focus on persistent engagement as our approach to implement the DOD Strategy of Defend Forward -- the idea we must always be active in cyberspace by enabling our partners and acting against our adversaries," he said. The Cybercom mission has evolved to address multiple threats: cyber threats to critical U.S. infrastructure; terrorists using the internet to recruit, fundraise, and attack; and authoritarian regimes seeking to influence and disrupt U.S. social cohesion and democratic processes. Due to the changing nature of warfare and the growing importance of cyberspace to national security, President Donald J. Trump announced in August 2017 that Cybercom would be elevated to a unified combatant command in 2018. With an expanded mission and additional authorities, Nakasone said, "Cyber Command is prepared to generate cyber effects in a responsible but decisive manner." To bring cyber power to bear, Nakasone leads a 133-team "cyber mission force" across the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. This force includes 13 national mission teams to defend against the most significant cyber threats to the nation; 68 cyber protection teams to defend DOD networks and systems against threats; 27 combat mission teams to conduct integrated cyberspace attacks; and 25 cyber support teams to provide analytic and planning support. Cybercom has achieved much in its first decade of existence, including fighting ISIS in cyberspace, supporting forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and defending the 2018 midterm elections. Even in the last few years, the command has deployed multiple cyber teams around the world to counter malicious cyber actors on critical networks. By outing more than 40 malware samples since 2018, Cybercom has bolstered network security and imposed costs on adversaries in the way of time, money and tools. The command's most recent initiative is the Cyber 9-Line, an online portal with the National Guard to enable states and counties to quickly diagnose malware within their networks. "We have delivered success by creating a well-trained force, building teams to defend the nation and mount offensive operations when authorized," Nakasone said. "Perhaps the mission that was least predictable a decade ago was election security, which is itself only one aspect of a broader revolution in influence operations. Keeping the 2020 elections safe, secure and legitimate is my top priority." To support U.S. cyber defense, Cybercom works closely with other federal agencies outside of the DOD, including key partners at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security. "With the authorities to act in cyberspace diffused throughout the government, Cyber Command can contribute to whole-of-government objectives by enabling partners like DHS and the FBI with threat information and other resources," Nakasone said. "Just because Cyber Command can't act on something doesn't mean someone else can't. This is an area that's seen marked improvement over the last few years." Recognizing that the threats of a decade ago still exist today, Nakasone is confident that Cybercom stands ready for challenges in the future. "The number of bad actors and their sophistication have increased. The return of great power competition means we should expect to see adversary cyber activity not just in terms of espionage, but also in terms of disruption, destruction and, certainly, influence," said Nakasone. Part of Cybercom's success is due to its close and enduring partnership with NSA, he noted. "As the leader of both organizations, I see the speed, agility, and unity of effort that can be brought to bear against hard problems." Another key to Cyber Command's success is the great support from Congress and DOD, as well as the ability to bring in the best cyber operators to work within its ranks. "We recruit amazingly talented young people into the military's cyber positions when they could easily separate for more lucrative careers," he said. "And we're building better partnerships with industry so those that want to continue to support national efforts in cyberspace can do so. Our alliances and foreign partnerships are second to none. So there's a lot to be confident about for the future." With one decade down, Cybercom looks forward to an even greater impact and contributions in the future. For Some, Teleworking May Continue as Post-COVID-19 Option [2020-05-21] WASHINGTON -- In April, the Defense Department's chief information officer said some of the tools and infrastructure put in place to support the rise of telework due to COVID-19 might remain after the pandemic subsides. Now, department leaders say, it is possible telework itself may live on. "We've learned a lot of lessons about the ability to telework, and how we keep our productivity up," Matthew P. Donovan, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said during a briefing today at the Pentagon. "I think moving forward ... as we step through a phased approach on reopening, ... we're going to continue to maximize the teleworking. We've made a lot of progress with making sure that the network capacities are available and people have access to the materials and documents that they need from a teleworking location." Also included in discussion of a military rebound from COVID-19 was the status of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, which has been at port in Guam since late March as a result of the pandemic. The ship is now once again underway, said Jonathan Rath Hoffman, assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs. "We're proud to say that the USS Teddy Roosevelt is underway today," he said. "The ship left Naval Base Guam and entered the Philippine Sea to conduct carrier qualification flights for the embarked Carrier Air Wing 11. We wish the very best to the Roosevelt and her crew." Aboard, Roosevelt's crew is practicing better social distancing effort to ensure continued crew health and safety, Hoffman said. "We're concerned for any additional outbreaks, but we have learned a lot over the last couple months," he added. As a result, he said, the ship is operating with a reduced crew to ensure additional spacing between crew members. The crew is wearing masks and gloves, and will have increased COVID-19 testing. Additionally, Hoffman said, the ship will have longer dining hours to ensure that fewer individuals are in the dining facilities at the same time. "There's a bunch of different lessons learned that they've taken and that they're using," he said. "No one is going into this believing that this is the last we've seen of coronavirus. But they're trying to be very diligent and very careful and thoughtful in how they move forward and be very assertive in confronting the virus whenever they see it." Hoffman said the Roosevelt has no change in its mission -- it will pick up where it left off in late March. The carrier air wing is being recertified, which should take up to two weeks to complete, he added. "They're recertifying the flight deck, recertifying the crew," Hoffman told reporters. "It's something that happens after a ship has been in port for an extended period of time. At that point, the ship will return to Guam, pick up the remaining crew members who are still quarantined and who are still recovering from COVID. They'll get back on the ship, and then the ship will move out for the rest of its mission, ... the tour that it started earlier this year." Spacecom, Space Force Officials Discuss Planetary Defense, Astronaut Launch [2020-06-02] WASHINGTON -- It's possible one day an asteroid may threaten the Earth and the threat would need to be mitigated -- possibly by the U.S. military. It's a scenario considered in a paper titled "Whither Space Power?" co-authored by two Air Force officers in 2002. "Should be found on a collision course, whose job should it be to divert the threat, and how?" wrote Air Force Maj. Gen. John Shaw -- then a major -- and his co-author, Air Force Brig. Gen. Simon Worden. "It is our view that an organization the people have placed their lives in the hands of for the past several centuries -- the U.S. military -- is best suited to provide protection from either natural or man-made threats." Today, Shaw is dual-hatted as commander of the Combined Force Space Component within U.S. Space Command, and also serves as commander of Space Operations Command within the newly created U.S. Space Force. During a June 1 webinar sponsored by SpaceNews, he explained what "planetary defense" is. "Planetary defense, as we talk about it in the space community today, refers to defense of the planet against asteroids, natural threats ... that could potentially collide with the Earth with calamitous results," Shaw said. Shaw said today NASA has an office responsible for cataloging things within the solar system that potentially could threaten the Earth. While he said that years ago he was on board with the idea that the Defense Department might be primarily responsible for dealing with those kinds of threats to the planet, today he has more of an open mind about how those threats might be mitigated. "We're happy to team with NASA in that regard," he said. "If a small asteroid or meteorite did hit the Earth, there would be some sort of emergency management response on the part of our nation to support wherever that landed, and the Department of Defense would be happy to be a teammate in that regard." Shaw also discussed the May 30 launch of NASA astronauts Air Force Col. Robert L. Behnken and retired Marine Corps Col. Douglas G. Hurley into space from Kennedy Space Center in Florida as part of NASA's Demo-2 mission. An important part of that launch, he said, involved Defense Department personnel being ready to recover those astronauts if the mission failed and they had to return to Earth. The Defense Department has done the mission before -- for the space shuttle, he noted, but it's been a long time since recovery personnel have had to be ready to retrieve astronauts from a capsule such as the "Crew Dragon" craft that was used in the Demo-2 mission. "We really [had] to go back to 1975 to remember when we were last supporting capsules for personal recovery operations," he said. "And that's a whole different profile in terms of mission planning and contingency scenarios than the shuttle." The space shuttle, he said, could maneuver and land at an airfield, if needed. Not so with a capsule. "A capsule doesn't have that maneuverability, but it has the possibility of landing just about anywhere, and it can land just about anywhere," he said. "That means our ability to support that ... has to be able to cover that total footprint, and that's different." Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Thompson serves as commander of Detachment 3 of the 45th Space Wing's 45th Operations Group. His detachment was responsible for being ready if anything went wrong with the Demo-2 mission and astronauts needed to be retrieved. "The last two years have really been kind of the fourth quarter, getting ready for this," he said. "We've been working with Boeing and SpaceX, especially SpaceX, over the last year as we finalized and put the finishing touches on the tactics, techniques and procedures for this rescue scenario." Thompson said his detachment is actually small -- about 30 people. And for the last year that small team was preparing for the launch of the Demo-2 mission. When the launch approached, he said, "Task Force 45" stood up, and the team grew to about 150 personnel. That's still much smaller than what was available in the 1970s for Apollo missions, he said, which included as many as 6,000 personnel, 24 aircraft and seven Navy ships. "Today we posture, like I said, 150 members," he said. They also have eight aircraft at their disposal, in three different locations. "Over the last couple years, we've been putting those plans together," he said. "We went through this last weekend. It went exactly as we had planned, where we were on alert ... once the Merlin engines fired up. That's really when our mission began." He said the team is ready for medical evacuation support three hours prior to liftoff, but it's when the rocket fires up that they are really expected to be ready to go. "It's really exciting, you know, to see that the team of professionals here are some of the best," Thompson said. "When we talk about combat search and rescue professionals worldwide, these are the men and women that we look to. The same pararescuemen that are saving lives in the combat theater in Iraq, have been in Afghanistan, doing global ops, those are the same pararescuemen that are here executing this mission." Air Force Brig. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess, commander of 45th Space Wing, said the May 30 launch involved weather issues up until about 30 minutes prior, and that there had also been issues with the Eastern Range that supports both Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Those issues, he said, had been cleared up by range technicians in time for successful launch, however. "Once we got about four minutes to go, I knew we were going to be good," Schiess said. "Then my activity really was focused on Task Force 45, where the men and women of Det. 3 and airmen across the Air Force came together, and across the world." Det. 3, he said, had been preparing for its mission for several years. "This team, they are a bunch of rescue experts and they do an incredible job," he said. "I can't just say anymore how proud I am of the men and women of the 45th Space Wing, Det. 3, and the Task Force 45 for the efforts that we did over the last couple weeks, and specifically this weekend, all the way up to docking and then watching our two astronauts, Bob and Doug, go through the hatch into the International Space Station." DOD Announces New Locations for Additional 5G Testing, Experimentation [2020-06-03] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department already is heavily involved in investigating how 5G technology will best serve the warfighter. Experimentation is ongoing at five installations across the United States, with seven more to come, as part of the department's second tranche of test beds for 5G communications capability, DOD's technical director for 5G said. "DOD recognizes that industry is driving 5G technology with massive investments in the many hundreds of billions of dollars," Joseph B. Evans said during a news conference today at the Pentagon. "Because of that, DOD is working closely with industry partners to leverage those investments for military applications. In the coming weeks, the department will issue requests for proposals from industry from those industry partners to prototype and experiment at these Tranche II bases." Evans said he expects that by the end of fall, those new test beds will have stood up and that industry partners will be working at those sites. The seven new locations where DOD will begin testing and evaluating 5G technology include: - Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, to evaluate shipwide and pier connectivity; - Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, to evaluate enhancement of aircraft mission readiness; - Joint Base San Antonio, Texas, to evaluate augmented reality support of maintenance and training; - The National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, and Fort Hood, Texas, to look at wireless connectivity for forward operating bases and tactical operations centers; - Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California, to evaluate wireless connectivity for forward operating bases and tactical operations centers; - Joint Base San Antonio and multiple remote locations to evaluate DOD's 5G core security experimentation network; and - Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma, to evaluate bidirectional spectrum sharing, both in DOD and the commercial sector. "5G technology is vital to maintaining America's military and economic advantages. 5G will be the advent of ubiquitous connectivity, that is the conductivity of everything and everyone, everywhere, through wireless communications," Evans said. "It is a transformational technology. With this latest tranche of bases and experiments, DOD is ensuring that our military can make use of 5G capabilities based on the innovations from U.S. industries." Already, the department is conducting similar evaluations at five other locations, including Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, Georgia, where evaluations are underway for using 5G technology to enhance the warehousing of vehicles such as the Humvee. At Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, and its associated Yakima Training Center, 5G evaluations are underway for how to enhance augmented reality and virtual reality training. Other locations doing work with 5G include Naval Base San Diego, California; Hill Air Force Base, Utah; and Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. During an earlier event today, sponsored by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, Evans said interest from industry to participate in those first five bases has been enthusiastic. For Nellis, he said, the department is days away from releasing the first request for proposals for the test bed there, and within a few weeks, the department will release RFPs involved in disaggregating command and control capabilities and conducting network experiments. "I'm actually very excited about this one, where we're looking at basically disaggregating command and control," Evans said. "Take an air operation center, think of the command center, and break it into its constituent pieces -- connected by 5G technology. Start by just breaking it apart. Secondly, make it transportable so you can move around easily. Third part, make it mobile. We're really excited about that. We're thinking it could have a big impact on operations." Space Development Agency Works Closely With Army, Its Biggest Customer [2020-06-05] WASHINGTON -- With the 2019 creation of the Space Force, U.S. Space Command and the Space Development Agency, the Defense Department has a lot riding on space. But the agency's big focus now is on taking care of its biggest customer -- the Army -- the Space Development Agency's director said. "The largest user of national security space is the Army," Derek Tournear said during a June 4 teleconference hosted by the Aviation Week media company. "We view the Army as our closest partner. They're the ones, actually, that I work with most closely every day." Tournear said his agency is responsible for orchestrating development of the whole national defense space architecture, which eventually will include a "mesh network" of hundreds of optically interconnected satellites in orbit that make up its "transport" layer. "That layer is what communicates directly with weapon system via the tactical data link," he explained. "It also receives data from other sensing layers that are able to do those other missions." The architecture involves six additional layers, he said: tracking, custody, deterrence, navigation, battle management and support layers. Tournear said the SDA's efforts in developing the national space defense architecture is focused on two priorities that are meant to provide space-based capabilities to the warfighter. "The first one is beyond line-of-sight targeting for mobile targets -- for time sensitive targets," he said. There, he said, the agency wants to find ground and maritime targets that are moving, detect them, fuse data together, create a fire control solution and then give that fire control solution directly from space to a weapon system. "We would use Link-16 as our tactical data link to be able to do that," he said. "So you detect it, fuse data, send that data fire control solution directly down, all on orbit." The second priority is to do something similar to the first priority, but with advanced missile threats. "These are your hypersonic glide vehicles or any kind of next-generation advanced missiles," he said. "We would want to be able to detect that, come up with a fire controls track that we could send down directly to a weapon system to be able to engage on remote that way." The Army will be a big beneficiary of the SDA's efforts, Tournear said. "The Army has their Titan program," he said. "At the brigade level, they want to be able to have a ground system that can communicate with satellites to be able to get mission data directly down from those satellites to help them do what we're calling the custody mission, that beyond-line-of-sight targeting." The SDA is working closely with the Army to make sure the Titan system will work well with whatever the SDA develops as part of the national defense space architecture, Tournear said. "We will use that system, that box, to be able to get our data from transport down there, down to Titan, so then Titan can rebroadcast that out via UHF or whatever other means they would like to be able to get it directly to the front line," he said. "Our main way that we're going to get the data from our transport satellites to weapon systems is via this Link-16 ... link." While not all weapons systems have Link-16, he said, Titan will be able to receive data from the SDA's mesh network of satellites and then send it out to anybody who needs it, Tournear said. "Titan can rebroadcast that out to actually the edge of the sphere -- folks that just might have a UHF or an HF [high frequency] radio, something like that," he said. We're working very closely with them to ensure that the Titan plugs and plays directly with our transport satellites." He also said the agency is working closely with the Navy to ensure similar kinds of compatibility when SDA's satellite network comes online. "They have some programs that are doing similar things," he said. "But really, the Army is the one leading the charge on that." Tournear also said one aspect of development for the national defense space architecture is to not have to have users make use of special terminals to get access to what the system provides. Instead, he said, the system should work with the gear warfighters are already using. "User terminals are always a long pole, and typically they cause a lot more cost than what people really focus on," Tournear said. "Our plan is to never require any special user terminals. In fact, our plan is and has always been [that] the baseline is to get our data down via existing tactical data links ... I want to be able to get our data down and the community's data that is provided to transport, directly to systems that are already fielded with no modification." Domestic N95 Mask Production Expected to Exceed 1 Billion in 2021 [2020-06-10] WASHINGTON -- Thanks to work by the Defense Department's COVID-19 Joint Acquisition Task Force, U.S. industry is expected to greatly increase the production of N95 masks next year, the task force's director said. During a House Armed Services Committee hearing today, Stacy A. Cummings told lawmakers that nationally, the U.S. was consuming about 50 million N95 masks each year. During the COVID-19 crisis, demand for masks increased substantially to about 140 million during a 90-day peak-use period. DOD investments to help domestic industry ramp up production of those masks and other equipment will help ensure that in the future the U.S. will better be able to meet demand for personal protective equipment with domestic production, she said. Based on the investments made by the department, Cummings told the House panel, an increase in production of 450 million masks a year will be attained by October, with a rate of more than 800 million masks per year by January. "Starting in 2021, we anticipate our total domestic production to be in excess of a billion per year," Cummings said. Ellen M. Lord, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, told lawmakers that increasing domestic production capabilities has been a focus of the department. "In order to decrease our dependence on foreign suppliers for medical resources, DOD has focused on increasing domestic industrial capacity and capabilities," she said. "To that end, we executed some $284 million in industrial expansion efforts during the first two weeks of May 2020. Reconstituting domestic production or creating new production that shifted offshore years ago often requires capital expenditure, capital equipment expenditures, retooling and retraining of the workforce." Lord also said DOD has been focused on maintaining the health of the defense industrial base during the COVID-19 pandemic. The DIB includes a wide array of businesses that produce weapons, equipment and supplies for the U.S. military. During the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses that make up the DIB suffered as other U.S. businesses did, Lord said. Should some of those businesses fail as a result of COVID-19-related disruptions, it might result in the department not being able to procure important defense-related supplies, equipment or weapons, she added. Lord said the department is using $688 million of CARES Act funding to address impacts to the DIB by directly offsetting financial distress and providing investments to regions most severely affected. She also said that increased communication between the department and the DIB were key in allowing defense officials to better understand where the industry was hurting most, and where the need existed most. When first she stepped into the A&S leadership role in 2017, she said, she set up quarterly meetings with DIB representatives to better assess their needs. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated that communication. "When the pandemic hit and we saw how catastrophic it could be to our defense industrial base, what we did was just really amped up those engagements," she said. "So starting on March 17, we had our first [teleconference] with industry, and we broadened beyond just the three industry associations that we worked with, to really start including nontraditionals and others." The number of industry representatives involved in those meetings also increased, Lord said, "For multiple weeks, we had calls three times a week. One of those calls per week was focused on small business, and we listened to what the problems were," she said. "As a result of that, ... a lot of the leadership of A&S listened to what the issues were, and we tried to start taking the first small steps." Lord said as a result of that communication, the department worked to simplify how to do business with the military, including raising the threshold for micropurchases and increasing the progress payment rate from 80% to 90% for large businesses, and from 90% to 95% for small businesses. "This change will infuse an estimated $3 billion in cash to all levels of the DIB," Lord said. "Further, the department has partnered with the major primes to ensure this increase in cash makes its way throughout the supply chain." Esper: We'll Handle Our Own Alleged War Criminals [2020-06-11] WASHINGTON -- The United States has a good track record of investigating and prosecuting the alleged criminal actions of its own service members, and the International Criminal Court should stay out of U.S. business, Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper said. In 2017, the International Criminal Court announced its intention to investigate U.S. service members for alleged crimes related to missions in Afghanistan. The United States was not a party to the Rome Statute, which created the ICC. President Donald J. Trump has signed an executive order calling ICC claims to jurisdiction over U.S. personnel "illegitimate." During a briefing for reporters today at the State Department, Esper said the executive order was spot-on. "The International Criminal Court's efforts to investigate and prosecute Americans are inconsistent with fundamental principles of international law and the practice of international courts," Esper said. "That is why our nation and this administration will not allow American citizens who have served our country to be subjected to illegitimate investigations. Instead, we expect information about alleged misconduct by our people to be turned over to U.S. authorities so that we can take the appropriate action as we have consistently done so in the past." Esper said the United States has a sovereign right to investigate and address any alleged violations of the laws of war by its own military personnel. "There is no other force more disciplined and committed to compliance with the laws of war than the United States military," he added. The secretary cited as examples the U.S. military-led efforts at Nuremberg to prosecute Nazi war criminals, and the U.S. military's support of the International Criminal Tribunal for crimes committed in the former nation of Yugoslavia. "We have consistently provided training on the rule of law and given related assistance to scores of partners and allies around the globe," Esper said. More than 800,000 United States military personnel have served in Afghanistan since 2001, Esper said, with over 20,000 wounded and nearly 2,000 killed. Those Americans, he said, fought and died to stop terrorism and to protect the citizens of the United States and allied nations. American service members are still fighting that conflict today, he noted. "That is why the Department of Defense fully supports the president's executive order and will take every action to defend our service members," Esper said. "Rest assured that the men and women of the United States armed forces will never appear before the ICC, nor will they ever be subjected to the judgments of unaccountable international bodies." Operation Warp Speed Accelerates COVID-19 Vaccine Development [2020-06-16] WASHINGTON -- The national effort to accelerate the development, manufacturing and distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine, called "Operation Warp Speed," will hasten the delivery of that vaccine by conducting steps concurrently that normally would be conducted sequentially, senior administration officials said. Operation Warp Speed is a partnership among components of the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as the Defense Department. Speaking on background during a conference call today, officials said that when creating a vaccine, things such as development, clinical trials and manufacturing typically would occur one after the other. In some cases, officials said, Operation Warp Speed will do them at the same time. "We expect to be producing large quantities of vaccines while the clinical trials are still underway," one official said. "That is, when safety and efficacy have been demonstrated, there isn't a day's delay due to manufacturing ramp-up timelines. We will still complete all of the necessary clinical trials to determine safety and efficacy." Another senior administration official said that the manufacturing capacity for three to five selected candidates will be advanced while those vaccine candidates are still in development. "That capacity will be used for whatever vaccine is eventually successful, regardless of which firms have developed their capacity," that official said. Private-sector drug companies would not develop a drug in such a fashion, the first official said, due to the financial risk. But for a COVID-19 vaccine, the official added, Operation Warp Speed and the federal government -- not private companies -- will be assuming the risk. "The return on this investment to our country in terms of lives saved and economic confidence is far greater than that of any single vaccine developer," an official said. "So while we'll be lowering the financial risk for these companies, we will not be lowering any standards of development, safety and efficacy." While the timeline is speeding up, the science will not be compromised, the official said, nor will the safety of the American public, adding that Operation Warp Speed hopes to have a vaccine by January. So far, the effort has yielded 14 vaccine candidates from more than 100 that are in development. Some of those are in clinical trials now. Those 14 will be further narrowed down to seven candidates, and the most promising of those will get further testing and clinical trials. Operation Warp Speed has also been working with multiple companies to quickly manufacture a vaccine and to develop solutions for distribution of that vaccine once it is ready. This includes tools such as pre-filled syringes, vials and containers. Vaccine development is already proceeding at a record-setting pace, the second official said. He also discussed vaccine distribution. "A tiered approach will be used for this vaccine distribution," he said. "This approach will be based on the methodology that has been used for pandemic influenza planning for decades, as well as what we've learned from the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic." In a tiered system, he said, the elderly, those with preexisting conditions and people performing essential services would be given higher tiers. OWS is a partnership between the Defense Department and the Department of Health and Human Services. Specific DHS components involved include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. Over-Prescriptive Requirements Hinder Defense Innovation [2020-06-17] WASHINGTON -- Getting innovation into the Defense Department more quickly and effectively might require the department to reevaluate how it asks for what it needs, the director of defense engagement within the Defense Innovation Unit said. "I think one of the key words ... and I think that this is actually starting to happen, it's going to take some time, but from the government, is humility," Air Force Col. Michael McGinley said yesterday during an online panel discussion hosted by Defense One. An issue with the department getting the innovative technology it needs quickly has been a departmental tendency to tell industry how to solve its problems, rather than telling industry leaders what the problem is and letting them figure it out, McGinley said. He described this as the difference between the DOD culture, which is intent on just meeting requirements, and a culture that focuses on solving a problem. Current efforts might produce a 40-page requirements document, he said. "That's me telling you how to do it," he said. "Now, what you're seeing is a flip. So we're really asking them, how would you help us solve this problem? And that has been somewhat recent of a change." Defense Innovation Unit requests to industry are typically two or three paragraphs of plain text that outline the problem they're asking industry to solve, he said. "We found that to be very effective," he added. DIU is focused on fielding and scaling commercial technology across the U.S. military, with a focus on artificial intelligence, autonomy, cyber, human systems and space. While DIU and industry move quickly, McGinlley said, the rest of the department has been slower to adapt itself to change. That might be part of the military's bureaucracy, he said, and DIU works to overcome that. "One of the things that DIU is doing just to address that is on the defense team," he said. "Every time we get this great nugget of an idea that comes in, we really think across three levels of internal DOD engagement: One, we have to find the headquarters organization. Two, the acquisition organization who's going to really help us implement lifecycle management. And the third is the end user. If you're not moving and engaging those in parallel, you're going to lose." Cultural change is needed for the newest technology to move more quickly into the Defense Department, McGinley said, adding that it's going to require DIU-type innovation units, departmental agencies and the services working together, he added. Defense Space Strategy Addresses Militarization, Competition [2020-06-18] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department's newly released Defense Space Strategy addresses new realities in space: great power competition and militarization of the domain, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy said. "The Defense Space Strategy provides strategic direction for department-wide changes to policies, doctrine, capabilities, operations and partnerships, to ensure U.S. space superiority, to secure our nation's vital interests in space," Stephen L. Kitay told reporters during a news conference yesterday at the Pentagon. "Our desired conditions are a secure, stable and accessible space domain." The new strategy, he said, involves maintaining space superiority; providing space support to the national, joint and combined operations; and ensuring space stability. The department will achieve these conditions with four lines of effort: 1 Building a comprehensive military advantage in space; 2 Integrating military space power into national, joint and combined operations; 3 Shaping the strategic environment; and 4 Cooperating with allies, partners, industry and other U.S. government departments and agencies. "The Defense Space Strategy lays out a path that embraces space as a unique domain of national military power, and together with other domains, underpins joint and combined operations to advance national security," Kitay said. The new strategy comes as the intelligence community has begun to understand that competitors are now moving aggressively into the space domain and have made efforts to weaponize it, Kitay told reporters. "China and Russia have weaponized space and turned it into a warfighting domain," he said. "Their actions pose the greatest strategic threat with the ongoing development, testing and deployment of counterspace systems and the associated military doctrine designed to hold the allied and U.S. space systems at risk." As examples, Kitay said China and Russia are now developing jamming and cyberspace capabilities, directed energy weapons, on-orbit capabilities and ground based anti-satellite missiles to achieve their own goals in space. He cited two reports -- "Challenges to Security in Space" by the Defense Intelligence Agency and "Competing in Space" by the National Air and Space Intelligence Center -- in providing examples of both Russian and Chinese militarization of space. "These documents will tell you that China and Russia are developing and planning to use capabilities that threaten our space systems and those of our allies," he said. "Since last year, when those [reports were released], China and Russia have been conducting highly sophisticated on-orbit activities, which pose unprecedented new dangers to U.S. and allied space systems." Kitay said he believes the United States is still ahead of Russia and China in space, but that the lead is diminishing rapidly and the U.S. is "absolutely at risk" with the pace at which they are developing capability. "The Defense Space Strategy lays out a path that embraces space as a unique domain of national military power, and together with other domains, underpins joint and combined operations to advance national security," he said. Hypersonics Testing Accelerates [2020-06-18] WASHINGTON -- The March 19 test of a hypersonic glide body at the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii is just the start for the Defense Department, the assistant director for hypersonics in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering said, and after ample flight testing, the department will move toward developing weapons from the concepts it's been testing. "Over the next 12 months really what we will see is continued acceleration of the development of offensive hypersonic systems," Michael E. White said today during an online panel discussion hosted by Defense One. Hypersonic weapons move faster than anything currently being used, giving adversaries far less time to react, and they provide a much harder target to counteract with interceptors. White said DOD is developing hypersonic weapons that can travel anywhere between Mach 5 and Mach 20. The March test of the hypersonic glide body successfully demonstrated a capability to perform intermediate-range hypersonic boost, glide and strike, he said. That test, White added, begins a "very active flight test season" over the next year, and beyond, to take concepts now under development within the department and prove them with additional tests. "A number of our programs across the portfolio will realize flight test demonstration over the next 12 months and then start the transition from weapon system concept development to actual weapon system development moving forward," he said. Also part of the department's efforts is the defense against adversary use of hypersonic missile threats -- and that may involve space, said Navy Vice Adm. Jon Hill, director of the Missile Defense Agency. Land-, silo- or air-launched hypersonic weapons all challenge the existing U.S. sensor architecture, Hill said, and so new sensors must come online. "We have to work on sensor architecture," Hill said. "Because they do maneuver and they are global, you have to be able to track them worldwide and globally. It does drive you towards a space architecture, which is where we're going." DOD is now working with the Space Development Agency on the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor to address tracking of hypersonics, the admiral said. That system is part of the larger national defense space architecture. "As ballistic missiles increase in their complexity ... you're going to be able to look down from cold space onto that warm earth and be able to see those," he said. "As hypersonics come up and look ballistic initially, then turn into something else, you have to be able to track that and maintain track. In order for us to transition from indications and warning into a fire control solution, we have to have a firm track and you really can't handle the global maneuver problem without space." Hill said the department already has had a prototype of such satellites in space for some time, and is collecting data from it. In the early 2020s, he added, additional satellites will also go up to demonstrate tracking ability. Navy: Former USS Theodore Roosevelt Commander Will Not Be Reinstated [2020-06-19] WASHINGTON -- Following the release of a report into the events surrounding an outbreak of COVID-19 on the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, Navy Capt. Brett E. Crozier, the ship's former commander, will not be reinstated, Navy Adm. Michael M. Gilday, chief of naval operations said at a Pentagon news conference. Based on facts found in the report, which Gilday and Navy Secretary Kenneth J. Braithwaite characterized as both thorough and fair, Gilday said his initial recommendation that Crozier reinstated was proven wrong. In addition, Navy Rear Adm. Stuart Baker's pending promotion to two-star rank has been put on hold, pending further review, Gilday said. Baker, the commander of Strike Group 9, was Crozier's immediate superior. "I previously believed that Captain Crozier should be reinstated following his relief in April, after conducting an initial investigation," Gilday said at today's news conference. "The much broader, deeper investigation that we conducted in the weeks following that had a much deeper scope. It is my belief that both Admiral Baker and Captain Crozier fell well short of what we expect of those in command. Had I known then what I know today, I would have not made that recommendation to reinstate Captain Crozier. Moreover, if Captain Crozier were still in command today, I would be relieving him." Crozier will not be reassigned as the commanding officer of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, nor will he be eligible for future command opportunities. Instead, he will be reassigned to other work. "Captain Crozier's primary responsibility was the safety and the well-being of the crew, so that the ship could remain as operationally ready as possible," he said. "In reviewing both Admiral Baker and Captain Crozier's actions, they did not do enough, soon enough, to fulfill their primary obligation." Both Crozier and Baker failed to move sailors off the aircraft carrier as quickly as they could have, and failed to move them to a safer environment more quickly, Gilday said. Additionally, he said, Crozier "exercised questionable judgment when he released sailors from quarantine on the ship, which put his crew at higher risk and may have increased the spread of the virus aboard the Theodore Roosevelt." Crozier was relieved of duty April 2 following the leak of a letter he wrote to those higher up in his chain of command. In the letter, he asked for more assistance in dealing with the outbreak of COVID-19 on the ship. Gilday said it is the findings of the more detailed investigation, rather than the existence of the leaked letter, that have prevented Crozier from being reinstated as commander of the Roosevelt. "As Captain Crozier stated in his email, he should have been more decisive when the ship pulled into Guam," Gilday said. "He also said that he was ultimately responsible for his ship and his crew. And I agree. In the end, the email and the letters sent by Captain Crozier were unnecessary. Actions were already underway to acquire [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]-compliant off-base hotel rooms for the crew before he sent that email." Gilday said it's rare for ship commanders to directly communicate as high up in their chain of command as Crozier did. "If they do, they must ensure that all of the means of communication within the chain of command have been thoroughly exhausted and that they have a full understanding of all the facts, and that they include all members of their chain of command in that communication," he said. At the time the letter was sent, Gilday said, the Navy already had made arrangements for off-ship lodging for Roosevelt sailors. Braithwaite said he's satisfied with the depth and fairness of the report, and its conclusions. "I am satisfied that it was conducted in an extremely thorough and fair manner," he said. "Moreover, I fully support its findings and recommendations, and I'd like to take this time to commend the investigation team led by [Adm. Robert P. Burke] under the direction of our chief of naval operations [on the work that they did, under very demanding conditions." The secretary also commended Guam Gov. Lew Guerrero; Navy Rear Adm. John Menoni, the commander of Joint Region Marianas; and Navy Capt. Jeffrey Grimes, commander of Naval Base Guam, for work related to finding facilities on Guam to house sailors from the Roosevelt. "Their outstanding efforts greatly contributed to the health, safety and recovery of the crew of USS Theodore Roosevelt," Braithwaite said. Braithwaite also expressed condolences for Navy Chief Petty Officer Charles Robert Thacker Jr., a USS Theodore Roosevelt aviation ordnanceman, who died April 13 of COVID-19. He was the only sailor aboard the Roosevelt to die from COVID-19. Risk Aversion Impedes Hypersonics Development [2020-06-30] WASHINGTON -- Speeding ahead with the development of hypersonic weapons, both offensive and defensive, will require the Defense Department to look back to the 1960s -- a time when it was far less risk-averse than it is now, the department's director of defense research and engineering for modernization said. "We need to be less risk-averse. And that doesn't mean we seek to maximize risk. But it also means we're not afraid to take risks, or we're not afraid to fail, as long as they're what I term noble failures," Mark J. Lewis said during a discussion today with Rebeccah L. Heinrichs of the Hudson Institute in Washington. The speed, maneuverability, and trajectories of hypersonic weapons will give whomever masters them first an advantage, Lewis said. A hypersonic weapon traveling at Mach 5, faster than around 3,800 miles per hour, he said, presents challenges to adversaries. "That doesn't give your potential adversary a lot of time to figure out what you are, decide that you're coming, and then take some action," he said. "So speed is essential." But developing and delivering a hypersonic cruise missile or a hypersonic boost/glide system will take some time, he said. He said he expects the department to be able to deliver whatever systems are determined to be most useful "at scale" sometime around the mid-2020s. That's going to require the department to change the way it operates -- to accept more risk in testing and development -- much moreso than what it's got a taste for now, Lewis said. To illustrate, he contrasted development of the Air Force's X-51 program just 10 years ago, and the X-15 program during the 1960s. The X-51 hypersonic aircraft did four test flights, Lewis said. It wasn't until the fourth that it had a truly successful flight. But the initial failures, and the amount of time in between test flights to determine what happened, presented problems. For one, he said, between the first and second test flight -- a span of more than a year -- the original pilot for the B-52 "mother craft" that launched the X-51 had retired. At the same time, more than 70% of the ground crew associated with the first test flight was no longer around. "We had a loss of expertise," he said. The third test flight came more than 14 months after the second, and the final flight close to nine months after that. Fear of failure was a key factor in the slow movement, Lewis said. "We had people in the program saying, 'Well, we can't fly that vehicle, because what if it fails?' I remember having these surrealistic conversations. ... If we don't, we paid for it," he said. "It's sitting in the hangar, why wouldn't we fly it? 'Well. [they said] if we fly it, if it doesn't work, then we're done.' We did finally fly it. But there was so much hand-wringing. There was so much worry about this, about what would happen if [it failed]. That kind of illustrates the situation we've gotten ourselves into." The 1960s-era X-15 program, he said, was a remarkably different situation. "The X-15 program flew 199 flights, roughly once every two weeks," he said. "When things went wrong, they figured out immediately what went wrong, and they got those vehicles back in the air." While the loss of a fin on the X-51 program during its third test flight led to hand-wringing and fear, he said, the X-15 program managed to press on after researchers lost an entire aircraft, and even a pilot. "They had one case where a vehicle landed hard, broke in half, and they said, 'Great -- we wanted to make one a little bit longer anyway,'" he said. "They weren't afraid of failure. They even had a tragedy in the program. They lost one of the vehicles, they lost the pilot. It didn't end the program. So that's kind of the mindset that we're trying to get into." Part of that will mean a lot of testing, Lewis said, and over the next four years, he expects as many as 40 different flight tests of hypersonic systems. "We need to fly early. We need to fly often," he said. A robust program with limited time between tests means there's less chance of losing talent and knowledge between tests, he noted. "We learn as we're doing," he said. "We're not constantly relearning how to do what we used to know how to do. And that, I think is the secret. I think it's the path we're trying to get ourselves on." July 4th 'Salute to America' Honors U.S. Military Personnel [2020-07-05] WASHINGTON -- Before military aircraft screamed over the National Mall and fireworks lit up the night sky yesterday as part of the "2020 Salute to America" event in the nation's capital, the president spoke from the South Lawn of the White House about the contributions of U.S. military personnel to American freedom and history. "Tonight, we will salute the greatness and loyalty and valor of the men and women who have defended our independence for 244 years," said Donald J. Trump. "We will honor the amazing men and women of the United States military. Never in history has a nation used so much power to advance so much good." The president said that service members who fought to defend the United States should be remembered for future generations. "These are great, great people. These are great, great heroes," he said. "Our greatest leaders and heroes should be recognized and even immortalized for coming generations to see." The president also highlighted military achievements over the last year, including a raid that resulted in the death of ISIS founder and leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, and a strike that resulted in the death of Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. The president also highlighted efforts to rebuild and modernize the U.S. military. "We have worked to fully rebuild the armed forces of the United States," he said. "No enemy on Earth stands a chance. $2.5 trillion we've invested -- all made in the USA. We've never had anything near the power in the equipment that we have right now -- we did that over the last three years." After Trump's speech, a flyover of military aircraft preceded a fireworks display on the National Mall. The flyover included representative aircraft from military conflicts of the last 75 years, including World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam and Operation Desert Storm. Modern military aircraft, such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter also performed flyovers. Also part of the event was a cannon salute, and a parachute jump by the Army's Golden Knights, who landed on the National Mall near the White House. "Today we thank God for the gift of life and for the blessings of liberty," the president said. "We honor the legends of our history, the glories of our founding fathers and the giants of the past, and the heroes of today, who keep us safe, who keep us strong and proud, and who keep us free." Urgent Acquisition Effort Provides Safe COVID-19 Patient Transport in 95 Days [2020-07-07] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force, Air Mobility Command and U.S. Transportation Command have a new capability to bring large numbers of COVID-19 patients home via airlift without putting associated flight crews at risk -- and the solution arrived quicker than expected. The "Negatively Pressurized CONEX," or NPC, flew its first operational mission June 30 out of Ramstein Air Base, Germany, just 95 days after Transcom published a joint urgent operational need statement that spelled out the requirement for the high-capacity transport for large numbers of individuals each month who might be infected with COVID-19. The NPC is a 40-foot metal shipping container outfitted with air-handling and other equipment that can be carried aboard a C-17 transport jet. The NPC can be used to move up to 23 COVID-19 patents who need the attention of medical personnel. The system's onboard equipment ensures negative air pressure on the inside so that the aircrew responsible for transporting it and its patients won't be put at risk for infection. The system also can be configured to hold as many as 30 ambulatory passengers who might potentially be infected with COVID-19 and need to be kept quarantined during an airlift operation, but who don't need the attention of medical personnel. Navy Capt. Jeff Stebbins, deputy director of the Joint Rapid Acquisition Cell, commended the Joint Staff, the Air Force, AMC and Transcom for taking a requirement spelled out March 28 and turning it into a product that meets warfighter needs in just 95 days, when the process might normally take more than a year to complete. "Our work with the Joint Staff and Transcom was done in parallel, not sequentially," Stebbins explained. "That allowed us to move faster." Stebbins said Transcom sent the joint urgent operational need statement to the Joint Staff for validation on the same day that the Joint Rapid Acquisition Cell assigned it for execution to the Air Force. The Air Force assigned the Program Executive Office for Agile Combat Support as its lead for the effort. "Everybody was working together, and there was a lot of crosstalk," he said. "Because we all worked effectively together and in parallel across departments, across agencies, we were able to move all of the authorities necessary to execute this mission quickly." Within the Air Force PEO Agile Combat Support, it was Air Force Lt. Col. Paul Hendrickson, the materiel leader for Air Force chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense -- CBRN for short -- and Air Force Capt. Alexis Todaro, Joint CBRN Collective Protection Program manager, who first conceived of the NPC. "When the COVID crisis kicked off, Transcom and Air Mobility Command began to see a need for the transport of COVID patients," Hendrickson said. "They took a look at their inventory. And the only system that they had readily available was the 'transport isolation system,' or TIS. It was developed through a JUON for the Ebola outbreak in 2014." The TIS, Hendrickson said, is basically a metal frame with plastic sheeting surrounding it. While functional, it has operational limitations, and it can accommodate only about six people. Another option was the Portable Bio-Containment Care Module, a system owned by the State Department, Hendrickson said. At the time, a cross functional Air Force team was working to get the PBCM its flight-worthiness certification for transport on the C-17 aircraft. The PBCM effectively carries only three people for aeromedical missions, only four of the systems exist, and it would take a long time to get more of them purchased, he said. Neither solution was ideal to meet the needs to move so many COVID-19 patients. Hendrickson said his team was working on a solution for agile and adaptive "collective protection" to provide CBRN protection to groups of people. For example, he said, airmen who perform aircraft maintenance when required to wear the full array of individual CBRN protection equipment will eventually suffer exhaustion due to the thermal burden. They ideally need a need a place to go that is near their work area between tasks where they could be safe from a chemical attack, but at the same time be able to remove their individual protection suits so they could recover. "We had been working with Osan Air Base and the 51st Aircraft Maintenance Squadron [in South Korea] to figure out how to get them more agile collective protection," he said. "We were working on a rapid technology demo of what we call the 'Collective Protection CONEX,' which is taking a 40-foot ISO container and retrofitting it to be a collective protection facility." The "Collective Protection CONEX" or ColPro CONEX, was conceived to keep people inside it safe from dangers that might be outside. The concept of the ColPro CONEX might be flipped on its head, Hendrickson thought, to keep people on the outside safe from people on the inside who might be contagious. He asked Todaro, who was leading the ColPro CONEX effort, if such a thing could be done -- and within just a few hours, he said, she had a design of what would eventually be the NPC. Air Mobility Command liked the idea, he said, and with the help of the Joint Program Executive Office for CBRN Defense and numerous experts across the CBRN, aeromedical and air worthiness communities, by April 7 a contract was awarded using the "other transaction authority" process. The first proof of concept NPC was constructed in only 13 days and delivered to Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina on April 20 for validation testing. That testing concluded April 30, at which point Air Mobility Command green-lit the NPC as the system to meet its requirements under the JUON. Hendrickson credited the contractors involved in building the NPC and NPCL -- UTS Systems, Highland Engineering Inc. and Delta Flight Products -- along with the C-17 and C-130 program offices; the Air Force Lifecycle Management Center's engineering directorate and human systems division; Air Force Research Lab; personnel at Joint Base Charleston; members of Detachment 2, Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center; the 28th Test and Evaluation Squadron and the 417th Flight Test Squadron out of Eglin Air Force Base, Florida; Air Mobility Command's surgeon general, A5Q requirements division and aeromedical standards evaluation shop; three bio-containment and pathogen experts from the Center for Sustainment of Trauma Readiness Skills Omaha; the Army's Combat Capabilities and Development Command and Public Health Center; and others as being instrumental in getting the NPC developed, and then proven airworthy and safe to fly. The first production NPC was delivered to Joint Base Charleston on June 7, where it was subjected to a rigorous series of tests, Hendrickson said. It had its test flight June 15, and flew its first operational mission June 30. In addition to the NPC, the team simultaneously developed a "NPC-Lite" model, which is a custom-built aluminum structure about 12 feet shorter than the NPC. It carries fewer passengers, and it will fit on the smaller C-130 aircraft. The NPCL, he said, is designed to move patients inside a theater of operations, while the NPC will be used to move patients out of theater. The first production NPCL was delivered to Joint Base Charleston on June 1, where it was subjected to similar tests as the NPC but on three variations of C-130 aircraft, and it had its final test on June 24. It arrived at Ramstein Air Base on July 3 and is expected to enter operations imminently. Currently only one NPC and one NPCL exist, but officials expect that the Air Force will get 30 of each system and that the first NPC will roll off the assembly line in mid-July and the NPCL end of July. Hendrickson said he expects the manufacturers could produce systems as quickly as three or four per month once their production lines are established. "The Air Force and what Lieutenant Colonel Hendrickson's team has done is a phenomenal job at developing an initial capability," Stebbins said. "We believe this serves as an excellent case study for urgent capability acquisition -- that when a combatant command has an urgent need, we use every tool available to rapidly develop and field a capability." Where it Counts, U.S. Leads in Artificial Intelligence [2020-07-09] WASHINGTON -- When it comes to advancements in artificial intelligence technology, China does have a lead in some places -- like spying on its own people and using facial recognition technology to identify political dissenters. But those are areas where the U.S. simply isn't pointing its investments in artificial intelligence, said director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. Where it counts, the U.S. leads, he said. "While it is true that the United States faces formidable technological competitors and challenging strategic environments, the reality is that the United States continues to lead in AI and its most important military applications," said Nand Mulchandani, during a briefing at the Pentagon. The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, which stood up in 2018, serves as the official focal point of the department's AI strategy. China leads in some places, Mulchandani said. "China's military and police authorities undeniably have the world's most advanced capabilities, such as unregulated facial recognition for universal surveillance and control of their domestic population, trained on Chinese video gathered from their systems, and Chinese language text analysis for internet and media censorship." The U.S. is capable of doing similar things, he said, but doesn't. It's against the law, and it's not in line with American values. "Our constitution and privacy laws protect the rights of U.S. citizens, and how their data is collected and used," he said. "Therefore, we simply don't invest in building such universal surveillance and censorship systems." The department does invest in systems that both enhance warfighter capability, for instance, and also help the military protect and serve the United States, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Project Salus effort, for instance, which began in March of this year, puts artificial intelligence to work helping to predict shortages for things like water, medicine and supplies used in the COVID fight, said Mulchandani. "This product was developed in direct work with [U.S. Northern Command] and the National Guard," he said. "They have obviously a very unique role to play in ensuring that resource shortages ... are harmonized across an area that's dealing with the disaster." Mulchandani said what the Guard didn't have was predictive analytics on where such shortages might occur, or real-time analytics for supply and demand. Project Salus -- named for the Roman goddess of safety and well-being -- fills that role. "We [now have] roughly about 40 to 50 different data streams coming into project Salus at the data platform layer," he said. "We have another 40 to 45 different AI models that are all running on top of the platform that allow for ... the Northcom operations team ... to actually get predictive analytics on where shortages and things will occur." As an AI-enabled tool, he said, Project Salus can be used to predict traffic bottlenecks, hotel vacancies and the best military bases to stockpile food during the fallout from a damaging weather event. As the department pursues joint all-domain command and control, or JADC2, the JAIC is working to build in the needed AI capabilities, Mulchandani. "JADC2 is ... a collection of platforms that get stitched together and woven together[ effectively into] a platform," Mulchandani said. "The JAIC is spending a lot of time and resources focused on building the AI components on top of JADC2. So if you can imagine a command and control system that is current and the way it's configured today, our job and role is to actually build out the AI components both from a data, AI modeling and then training perspective and then deploying those." When it comes to AI and weapons, Mulchandani said the department and JAIC are involved there too. "We do have projects going on under joint warfighting, which are actually going into testing," he said. "They're very tactical-edge AI, is the way I describe it. And that work is going to be tested. It's very promising work. We're very excited about it." While Mulchandani didn't mention specific projects, he did say that while much of the JAIC's AI work will go into weapons systems, none of those right now are going to be autonomous weapons systems. The concepts of a human-in-the-loop and full human control of weapons, he said, "are still absolutely valid." Army, Air Force Meet Numbers for Basic Trainees Despite COVID-19 [2020-07-10] WASHINGTON -- The COVID-19 pandemic hasn't put a damper on the production of new soldiers or airmen at basic training facilities. Basic training throughput for the Air Force is at about 90% of "traditional capacity," Air Force Maj. Gen. Andrea D. Tullos, commander of Second Air Force, said during a press conference at the Pentagon today. "But we are at 100% production for what the Air Force is asking us to produce for the end of this year," she said. "We had lowered our production to around 60% capacity when COVID began so that we could evaluate the ability of our trainers and the trainees to fight through. But we have since ramped back up." Initially, the Air Force had wanted about 38,000 new recruits this year, Tullos said. But the service has reduced that to about 35,500. That, she said, is due in large part to better retention. "We are actually retaining above historic norms," she said. "So we are going to actually hit our end-strength ceiling with our current production rate." Army Maj. Gen. Lonnie G. Hibbard, commander of the Army Center for Initial Military Training, said the Army's recruitment and retention is similarly situated. "Right now we're filling, as of this last week, at 90% fill for all three [components] arriving into the training base," he said. He also said that graduation rates for basic trainees is higher than usual -- it sits now at about 92%. Hibbard said the target for producing new soldiers is "in flux," for the same reason it is for the Air Force: retention is high. "End strength is the combination of recruiting and retention and because of the current environment in the civilian sector, our retention is also through the roof, and headquarters Department of the Army keeps adjusting our targets to keep us within guidelines of our Army end strength," he said. Keeping airmen and soldiers safe in basic training is a priority for both services, the generals said. Testing recruits for the coronavirus when they arrive at basic training, continuous monitoring and quarantining those who test positive has ensured that training can continue and young airmen and soldiers can stay healthy. Both the Army and the Air Force are now testing new recruits for COVID-19 upon arrival on station. Both have reported similar numbers regarding the results. About 2% of those new recruits test positive for COVID-19 and, of those who test positive, about 60% are asymptomatic. Those who test positive are moved out of training and into quarantine. "All soldiers who screen or test positive for exposure or symptoms of the virus are quarantined and given proper medical care, and after recovery, are cleared medically and returned to training," Hibbard said. Tullos said the Air Force is also quarantining new recruits who test positive for COVID-19. When they are healthy again, they get back to basic training. "Someone who tests positive when they arrive at basic training is removed from their flight and placed into isolation," she said. "I can tell you that all of our trainees who tested positive upon arrival have recovered and then reentered into the training pipeline." The Army has basic training facilities at Fort Benning, Georgia; Fort Jackson, South Carolina; Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri; and Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Hibbard said that if any of those facilities reaches capacity as a result of COVID-19, the Army is leveling out the training load by directing trainees to different locations. The Air Force has historically trained new recruits at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, but as a result of COVID-19, opened a second facility at Keesler AFB, Biloxi, Mississippi. "The addition of basic military training here at Keesler Air Force Base, has successfully reduced the stress on Lackland's infrastructure, while maintaining quality training and enabling us to sustain our production goals," Tullos said. "We plan to conduct training here at Keesler through the end of fiscal year 2020." DISA Boosts Telework Connections in Response to Pandemic [2020-07-15] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Information Systems Agency plans for a lot of different situations to provide network capability to the joint force and to protect that capability. A pandemic was not in DISA's strategic plan, but the coronavirus hasn't stopped the agency from carrying out its mission or doing additional work to keep the rest of the department working, DISA's director said. "Since March, like the rest of the Department of Defense, we've been supporting the whole-of-government response to COVID-19," Navy Vice Adm. Nancy Norton said during a keynote address to the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association today. "At DISA and Joint Force Headquarters Department of Defense Information Networks, I am proud to say, we have never shut down and we have never stopped working since this pandemic began." Norton said the DISA and JFHQ/DODIN team has helped to orchestrate an exponential increase in networking capacity to help department employees continue to operate in a telework environment. This includes new circuits, increased bandwidth and increased conference call lines, she said. Since March, DISA has provisioned circuits that increase network capacity by nearly 500 gigabits per second, Norton said. Since the start of the pandemic, 63 new circuits were added, and 39 more are pending activation. Some of those circuits supported the hospital ships USNS Comfort and USNS Mercy while they provided medical support in New York City and Los Angeles, the admiral said. DISA increased the Army's virtual private network access and reliability by nearly 300%, and provided significantly increased capability to the Air Force as well, Norton said. For joint partners, she added, DISA efforts increased VPN access by more than 1,000%, to about 122,000 telework connections a day. The increased capabilities for mobile work, she said, are something that DISA is looking to maintain even after the COVID-19 crisis subsides. "For years, we have been moving toward a more mobile, capable workforce, where data are accessible anywhere and at any time," she said. "Together with our mission partners, we are capturing the processes and lessons learned for what we do for our mission partners, and we want many of these force-strengthening changes to be enduring." COVID-19 Pandemic Reveals Supply Chain Vulnerability [2020-07-16] WASHINGTON -- If there's one silver lining from the COVID-19 pandemic, it's that it's helped expose vulnerabilities in the U.S. and Defense Department supply chain, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment said. Ellen M. Lord discussed acquisition in the face of COVID-19 during a virtual "fireside chat" today with the Ronald Reagan Institute. Efforts that followed an executive order by the president to assess the defense industrial base and the U.S. supply chain have proven useful in the face of COVID-19, Lord said. "One of the most useful things that came out of that was we segmented the base, we all had the same lexicon, then we could identify fragilities," Lord said. "We identified a lot of single-source offshore supply chain critical items. So we have used that as a platform over the last couple of years to try to make sure that we strengthen that industrial base." COVID-19, she said, has helped to accelerate efforts to strengthen the industrial base. "Not only for the rare earth elements or the microelectronics that we all know so well," she added, "but also for the advanced pharmaceutical ingredients that go into our drugs that obviously are important for the nation and also very, very important for DOD," she said. "So we've been able to really get that message out and frankly, get a little bit more support from Congress and the administration to strengthen our domestic industrial base." For microelectronics, she said, as with other manufacturing, there's risk associated with much of the intellectual property being based in the United States, while much of the manufacturing is based overseas. One risk, she said, is the security of the supply chain. With COVID-19, she explained, many international commercial flights were halted. DOD had to respond by providing a military air bridge to bring supplies into the United States in support of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "We set up flights to bring back all kinds of medical equipment and personnel protective equipment that was produced offshore that we owned, but we couldn't get back here," she said. Another risk, she said, is that manufacturing overseas might produce equipment and gear that's not entirely what it seems. "We could have implants in those electronics," she said. "So all of a sudden ... we have U.S. systems calling home to China. We also have the theft of intellectual property that is very well documented, where what we think we licensed for a specific use is all of a sudden repurposed into capability organic to China." Other factors with off-shore manufacturing involve workers themselves, Lord said. "Manufacturing know-how accumulates with the experience of actually producing something -- and that's lost in the U.S. if workers here aren't doing the work," she said. And when work is done overseas, she added, it means Americans aren't doing the work stateside. "We lose those good jobs that we really need here in the U.S.," she said. "So [there are] all kinds of risks associated with that, that we're concerned about." Public-private partnerships might be able to bring some manufacturing of microelectronics back to the United States, Lord said. One way to do that, she said, is using Defense Production Act Title III authority to grant loans to re-shore critical capability to the U.S. "We again are working through all the legalities of that," she said. "We are looking at what are those critical capabilities that we should re-shore, both in the medical resources side of things, as well as the industrial base writ large -- but where defense really has a critical need that then could help industry in general, and microelectronics is one of those." A number of CEOs have reached out to DOD to discuss issues related to dependence on overseas manufacturing and the risk it poses to national security, Lord said, including a willingness now to discuss a consortium coming together for trusted microelectronics. "They are also being very, very generous with their time explaining to a variety of government officials how their business works, what they need, what they don't need," she said. "I will say right now, we are in the midst of really some dynamic discussions that I think are very, very exciting." Lord said she thinks the time is coming for policy that makes the government more supportive of having businesses bring critical capabilities back to the United States. "That ranges all the way from capital to make the investments, to local and state and federal tax incentives to regulatory easing of burdens," she said. "We really have to look at the entire scope of that kind of supply chain, the whole thread, and understand what makes sense. And frankly, as DOD, we have a compelling, urgent and ... large need here. And we can be the leaders, and I think we have a lot of fast followers." Artificial Intelligence Deployment Requires Diverse Image Data [2020-07-20] WASHINGTON -- Ensuring that technology powered by artificial intelligence will work anywhere requires that AI is "trained" on a diverse data set that readies it for deployment anywhere in the world. That's something the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center is well aware of as it pushes forward with the Defense Department's AI strategy, the center's director said. Diversity in training models is a challenge, Nand Mulchandani said during the VentureBeat Transform 2020 virtual conference on artificial intelligence July 17. "When you think of sort of an oxymoron like mass customization, think of a single system that's deployed worldwide, globally," he said. "We've trained the model on a particular training data set. But that data set is not representative of say, global terrain, or global information, or even things like faces. So when you think of the diversity of ... humankind out there, ... if you're doing something like facial recognition or something, the training data set from a testing and representative perspective is so important." From the testing and evaluation side, Mulchandani said, it's important for the JAIC to be able to ensure an AI system is trained in a diverse enough way that it can be deployed globally and work anywhere. "What we're finding is ... we're still in the early days of AI where the ability for a single dataset to perform in multiple different environments and applications is incredibly important," he said. Mulchandani also addressed concerns that DOD might be difficult to work with for smaller companies involved in artificial intelligence research and development. "From the outside, there seems to be this idea that the DOD, the Pentagon, has a very hard time liaising and working with tech startups and even large tech companies," he said. However, he added, there's a lot of change going on at DOD as the department partners and works directly with large and small tech companies. The JAIC now has projects going on with startup companies that have as few as seven employees, he noted. "The ability for us to have those direct conversations, direct work with them -- the environment has never been better," he said. "And there's huge changes going on in terms of how acquisition gets done, how we actually acquire, procure and deliver software inside the DOD from a cloud perspective, and other things." Air Force Reveals Cold Facts on New Arctic Strategy [2020-07-21] WASHINGTON -- As conditions change in the Arctic region, the Department of the Air Force has revealed a new strategy for how it will contribute to regional stability there, what new partnerships it should pursue and how its mission might evolve. Within the U.S. military, the Department of the Air Force has the largest presence in the Arctic region, with assets in both Alaska and Greenland. As the environment changes in the Arctic, new routes for transportation have opened up and new resources are being discovered. This creates both new opportunities in the region as well as new security challenges, the secretary of the Air Force said. "Historically, the Arctic, like space, was characterized as a predominantly peaceful domain," Barbara A. Barrett, said today during a panel discussion hosted by the Atlantic Council. "This is changing with expanded maritime access, newly discovered resources and competing sovereign interests." Russia, she said, has the largest permanent military presence in the Arctic -- no other country matches its presence there. "Recent Russian investments in the Arctic include a network of offensive air assets and coastal missile systems," she said. "The Arctic defines Russia. Almost 25% of Russia's [gross domestic product] comes from ... north of the Arctic Circle, ... mostly from hydrocarbons." Barrett said that Russian economic reliance is one explanation for its growing military initiatives in the region. But Russia is not alone in its interest in the Arctic. China, which is not itself an Arctic nation, has also staked claims there, she said. "China is trying to normalize its presence in the Arctic to gain access to regional resources, which are said to include over 90 billion barrels of oil and an estimated trillion dollars' worth of rare earth metals," she said. "In 2018, China linked its Arctic activities to its 'One Belt, One Road' initiative. Many are concerned that China may repeat what some see as predatory economic behavior, to the detriment of the region." As long-time Arctic occupants increase their activity there, and newcomers begin staking claims as well, the Department of the Air Force has developed, as part of its Arctic strategy, four strategic priorities to guide its involvement in ensuring the United States is equally and fairly represented in the region. First, Barrett said, the department is increasing vigilance for both deterrence and defense in all domains. "Vigilance encompasses everything from weather forecasting and consistent communications, to threat detection and tracking," Barrett said. "Physical facilities delivering vigilance include advanced systems like the long-range discriminating radar at Clear, Alaska, and the north warning system, stretching from Alaska to Labrador." Second, Barrett said, is a focus on projecting power through a combat-credible force. "Bases in Alaska benefit from the region's strategic geography," she said. "When the full complement of planned F-35s arrive at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska's unparalleled concentration of fifth-generation fighters will project unmistakable influence." Third, the Department of the Air Force will continue to focus on cooperation with existing allies and partners and on building new partnerships -- a goal aligned with the National Defense Strategy. "The United States deeply appreciates its strong defense relationships with six of the seven other Arctic nations," she said. "Building upon past collaboration and expanding existing cooperation in the Arctic will continue as our priority. Already, air and space forces are increasing interoperability with allies and partners through everything from military exercises to satellite launches." Finally, she said, the Department of the Air Force will focus on preparation for Arctic operations. "For example, at Alaska's [Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex], the Air National Guard and the Air Force Reserve augment specialized exercises and training to prepare for Arctic air and space missions." The Department of the Air Force isn't alone in operating in the Arctic, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein said. Successfully operating in the Arctic and ensuring free access to the region by the United States and its allies will require a joint effort from all U.S. services, including the Coast Guard. "The Department of Defense does its very best work when we operate as a joint team," Goldfein said. "While this is [the] Department of the Air Force strategy, it is completely nested with and must stay nested with the Coast Guard, ... with the Navy, and with the Army, and with the Marine Corps." Goldfein said he and Space Force Gen. John W. Raymond, the chief of space operations, are working through a concept called "joint all-domain operations" that addresses the need for a joint effort in the Arctic. "It's a technological approach, but it really at the end feeds a leadership approach to joint operations, across the spectrum, from peacetime and competition, all the way to open warfare," he said. "No one domain is going to be dominant in that operation. The whole idea is to connect this team so that we can bring to bear military capabilities, from air, from space, from surface, from subsurface, manned, unmanned, all of the above." The Space Force is new to the Department of the Air Force, but Raymond said space operations have happened in the Arctic for a long time now -- and the environment in the Arctic is ideal for conducting those operations. "If you look at one of the most critical missions that we do, and that's missile warning, the Arctic is our front edge of that mission," Raymond said. "We do that mission both at Thule, Greenland, north of the Arctic Circle, with our space professionals that are assigned there at Thule Air Base. We also do it in Alaska, at Clear Air Force Station." Raymond said the Arctic's geographic location makes it the best place to conduct space operations. "If you look at the key terrain aspect of that environment, we also command and control satellites," he said. "If you're going to command and control satellites that are in polar orbits, where better to do it then on top of the world at the pole? It allows us to get great access to those satellites to be able to command and control and do that business. So that geography and the position on the globe ... makes it an extremely advantageous place to operate from." Barrett said the Department of the Air Force's new Arctic policy involves both the land-based military air power the Air Force provides and the space-based capabilities provided by the Space Force. "The U.S. air and space forces value the Arctic," she said. "Access and stability require cooperation among America's allies and partners, along with a commitment to vigilance, power projection, and preparation. The Arctic should remain a free and open domain for benevolent actors, and it is a critical domain to protect America's homeland." Defense Department Improves 'Ready for Issue' Rate for F-35 Parts [2020-07-22] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department has been working to improve issues that affect the ready-for-issue rate for F-35 joint strike fighter parts, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment told Congress. Parts for the F-35 should be accompanied by an "electronic equipment log" through the jet's Autonomic Logistics Information System, but that doesn't always happen, Ellen M. Lord said. Without this log, dubbed EEL, parts are not deemed to be ready for issue and might not be able to be installed on the aircraft. "The department has taken near-term action to address key degraders of ready-for-issue or RFI rate," Lord said during testimony today before the House Oversight and Reform Committee. "But the long-term solution to the problem depends on the already underway effort to replace [the autonomic logistics information system] with a more stable, capable system." Lord said those near-term actions have resulted in increased RFI rates at Hill Air Force Base, Utah; Luke Air Force Base, Arizona; and Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Arizona. She said those rates have moved from about 43% in February to more than 70% in every month since April. In June, she said, the RFI rate achieved a high of 83%. A more long-term solution to ensuring parts for the F-35 arrive with EELs will involve replacing the ALIS with a different system called the Operational Data Integrated Network, or ODIN, a government-owned product. Lord announced that system to Congress earlier this year. "The department will introduce the first tranche of ODIN capability fleetwide by the end of 2021," she said. "In the interim, the department has been working to develop solutions to the legacy ALIS system to improve EEL's accuracy, tracking and transmission performance to reduce maintenance workarounds and to mitigate potential risks to the fleet." Air Force Lt. Gen Eric T. Fick, program executive officer for the F-35 Lightning II Joint Program Office, explained to lawmakers why a missing EEL is a problem for aircraft maintainers. "It takes a significant effort in time for maintainers to reconstruct the part history and create a digital record for that part," he said. "This activity diverts time from scheduled maintenance, increases the probability of human error, adding cost to the program. The bottom line is, we must receive our parts on time and with all the required identification markings and electronic records." Of about 50,000 parts on an F-35, only about 1,000 require an EEL, the general said. "It's a very small number of parts that actually require EELs," Fick said. "We're actively looking to reduce the number of parts that have EELs, so we reduce this problem." Esper: DOD Involved in COVID-19 Fight 'From Day One' [2020-07-23] WASHINGTON -- Since the COVID-19 crisis first threatened the United States earlier this year, the Defense Department has been at the forefront of America's fight against the pandemic, said Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper. "We've been in it from day one, going back to late January, when I started taking reports on COVID-19," said Esper, during a press briefing yesterday at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri. "If you recall, way back then, it was the Air Force. In fact, the Air Force Reserve, that opened up a base in California in late January to bring American citizens back from China to deal with it." Since that time, Esper said, the department has opened more bases to take care of Americans who've been repatriated and taken to the streets to bring assistance directly to citizens. "At one point, well over 45,000 guardsmen [were] out distributing supplies, setting up testing stations in nearly all 50 states and territories," he said. "[It's] just a remarkable effort by the active duty and mostly the Guard to do that. And now, of course, we're all in with regard to Operation Warp Speed and driving toward a therapeutic and a vaccine to get there." America's soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, Esper said, continue to stand ready to provide support to the people of the United States in the fight against COVID-19. "We've been there from day one. We've been ahead of the curve every step of the way. We will continue to be there," he said. At Whiteman AFB, Esper also met with airmen and civilians to discuss issues related to diversity and equality within the department -- something he said is critical to the department's strength. Among the many issues discussed was finding ways to make the promotion process blind to both gender and race to avoid gender and race biases, he said. "All those things we can do to get rid of things that might trigger conscious, more importantly, unconscious bias, I want to do to move forward," he said. "We need to be as meritocratic as possible in the military. That's our commitment. The military is very diverse. That's a strength of ours to be diverse. At the end of the day, it's all about improving cohesion, morale and readiness. And the more that we can have a diverse, inclusive force that everybody believes offers equal opportunity, the stronger we will be in defense of the American people." Whiteman AFB, about 60 miles outside Kansas City, is home to the B-2 Spirit bomber, a wing-shaped stealth aircraft that's operated at the installation by both the active duty 509th Bomb Wing and the Air National Guard's 131st Bomb Wing. At Whiteman, Esper said, he was impressed with the multi-component cooperation he witnessed between the guard and active duty personnel to carry out the mission. "As some of you know, I served in both active duty and the ... Army Guard," he said. "I've never seen integration like this. Its hand-in-glove relationship is seamless, and I'm very impressed by what I saw today. I've got to say the Air Force overall does this very well." U.S. Space Effort's Future Hinges on Private Industry [2020-07-28] WASHINGTON -- When the United States sent men to the moon in the 1960s, the effort was largely driven by the government. But the future of the U.S. space effort will be agile innovators in the private sector who partner with the government, the Space Force's chief scientist said. "We're very much at a precipice where private investment in space is driving the technology, not necessarily government investment as it has been in the past," Dr. Joel B. Mozer said today during a virtual panel discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The U.S. government, in its pursuit of advancements and participation in the space domain, can contribute through investments in science, technology, infrastructure and science, technology, engineering and math -- or STEM -- education, Mozer said, as well as through development of policies and regulations that strengthen space efforts. Defense Department officials must have a unique perspective on space, how it can be used, and what must be done to achieve national security objectives, Mozer said. "Firstly, it's going to shape the environment that we operate in and will evolve our mission to protect U.S. interests both here on Earth and beyond in the future," he explained. "Second, many of the technological innovations that are now coming and will continue to come from entrepreneurs and industrialists in the space business are from those entrepreneurs. We must harness those innovations for our mission to support the joint fight when we're called upon to do so." Finally, Mozer said, those involved in the military's pursuit of space must overmatch America's strategic competitors. "Space is now a warfighting domain," he said. "We must work with industry, as well as our allies, to protect our ability to operate in that domain and to defend our capabilities and ensure that they're there when needed as well as to ensure that the technological advantage in space goes to freedom-loving states who desire to keep space lines of commerce open for all." In May, NewSpace New Mexico sponsored a four-day conference to discuss civil, commercial and national security space strategy. That conference produced the nearly 90-page report "State of the Space Industrial Base Report 2020." Mozer, one of the report's authors, said 10 recommendations regarding the future of space -- six for the U.S government and four for industry -- were the key takeaways. The No. 1 recommendation, Mozer said, is that the U.S. government develop and endorse a whole-of-government "North Star" vision and strategy for the industrial development of space and that a presidential task force be established to execute that strategy. "This recommendation is particularly important, and I believe that we're getting there," Mozer said. "In recent years and months, we've seen a lot of action and direction in this direction." As examples of progress, he cited NASA's Artemis mission, which plans to put the first woman and the next man on the moon by 2024. The establishment of the Space Force is also an example of progress. "There's a lot of thought being put into this 'North Star' vision, and we're laying some groundwork for it," he said. "However, it is still significant that this recommendation came out on top from the workshop. It tells me that we still have some work to do to describe this future vision, a vision that the nation could get behind and adopt." The "North Star" vision must be specific about what the United States wants its future in space to look like, and U.S. officials must make sure the decisions they make now move the nation toward a future in space that Americans can aspire to and be proud of, Mozer said. Other nations, specifically China, already have a long-term vision of the future of space and are making investments toward their own visions, he noted. "The importance of such a vision is that it has the potential to derive national pride and to instill a culture of progress, and it highlights the value of STEM education for aspiring youth," he said. "There's lots of benefits of such a vision. The value is immense of a 'North Star' vision, and the consequences of a lack of such visual are potentially disastrous." DOD Proposes Removing More Than 11,000 Troops From Germany [2020-07-29] WASHINGTON -- The United States will bring some American service members home from their forward stationed assignments in Germany, while other service members will move to other locations in Europe to improve the commitment to NATO and the defense of Europe, Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper said, adding that the proposed changes are firmly in line with the National Defense Strategy. The plan is for U.S. European Command to reposition 11,900 personnel who are currently stationed in Germany to other locations, Esper said during a news conference today at the Pentagon. The move will reduce the number of U.S. military personnel in Germany from about 36,000 to 24,000. Repositioning could begin in weeks, he said, adding that with 24,000 American service members, Germany would still host the highest number of U.S. troops of any nation in NATO. About 5,600 service members being moved out of Germany will stay within Europe. They will be moved to other NATO nations, Esper said. An additional 6,400 personnel will return to the United States, though Esper said this will not mean less support of NATO allies, because instead of having permanently stationed forces in Germany, other military units will begin rotational deployments farther east on the continent in more strategic locations, such as near the Black Sea region. ''Our aim is to implement these moves as expeditiously as possible consistent with the principles I set forth from the beginning, particularly being fair to, and taking care of our service members and their families,'' the secretary said. ''We could see some moves begin within weeks. Others will take longer. As anyone can see, the repositioning of our forces in Europe constitutes a major strategic and positive shift, wholly in line with the NDS and consistent with other adjustments the United States has made within NATO in previous times.'' Air Force Gen. Tod D. Wolters, commander of U.S. European Command and NATO's supreme allied commander for Europe, spelled out some of the specific movements planned for forces in Europe. The Eucom headquarters and the associated U.S. Special Operations Command-Europe headquarters, for example, would move from Germany to Mons, Belgium, where they would be located with Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe. ''This will improve the speed and clarity of our decision-making and promote greater operational alignment,'' Wolters said, adding that a similar relocation could happen for U.S. Africa Command headquarters and the associated U.S. Special Operations Command-Africa, though no new location has been determined. Wolters also said Eucom intends to reposition three brigade-sized headquarters, an air defense artillery battalion, and an engineering battalion to Belgium from Germany, as well as move two smaller support and contracting organizations to Italy. He said the 52nd Civil Engineering Squadron, an Air Force unit, could be one of the first to move. The plan is to put that unit in Italy. Eucom also proposes relocating an F-16 fighter squadron and elements of a fighter wing to Italy. Esper said the move will put those units closer to the Black Sea region, better enabling them to support NATO in the southeast. ''The proposal to reposition forces back to [the United States], ... with respect to the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, will allow those units to regain maximum U.S. at-home-station readiness and more effectively support global contingencies while still maintaining a keen focus on Europe,'' Wolters said. There are also plans to rotate forward the lead element of the Army's 5th Corps headquarters to Poland, Esper said, contingent on Warsaw signing a defense cooperation agreement. There may also be other opportunities to move additional forces into Poland and the Baltics, the general said. ''This rebalance, consistent with the NDS, will align NATO and Eucom capabilities, better distribute forces across Europe and increase the use of rotational forces, thus bolstering our commitment to Europe,'' said Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. ''It enhances deterrence and improves operational flexibility. Repositioning our forces and making consolidations will provide General Wolters, as the commander, increased ability to dynamically employ his force. This effort will increase opportunities to partner with and strengthen our bond with allies and partners in the region. It will also require additional planning and consultation with our allies.'' DOD Medical Officials Outline COVID-19 Testing Approach [2020-07-30] WASHINGTON -- Though the rate of confirmed positive COVID-19 tests among those in uniform is lower than that of the nation's civilian population, the most junior service members have a slightly higher rate than that of their civilian counterparts, the medical advisor to the Defense Department's coronavirus task force said. "From a data standpoint, after adjusting for the age of our force, the confirmed case rate in our active duty service members remain slightly lower than the U.S. average in all age groups except those aged 18 to 24 years old," Air Force Brig. Gen. (Dr.) Paul Friedrichs said at a Pentagon news conference today. Department leaders, Friedrichs said, believe the slightly higher rate among the youngest service members is due in large part to more testing done within the military -- for example, the services test service members at the entry to basic training and at the end of basic training. "We think that this is a reflection of our commitment to the [Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper's] first priority of reducing risk to the force and protecting them as they go through performing their duties to protect and defend our nation," Friedrichs said. Air Force Maj. Gen. (Dr.) Lee E. Payne, the DOD lead for COVID-19 testing, said the department has increased the amount of COVID-19 testing it does fivefold over the past three months. "To date, we've conducted over 540,000 tests since January," Payne said. "And DOD testing capacity has expanded greatly since March." Now, he said, the department has 125 labs certified to test for COVID-19 -- up from 15. That greatly expanded testing capacity can do more than 200,000 tests per week if needed, he added. However, the department instead works to meet a goal it set for itself in May to conduct 56,000 tests a week, Payne said. "Thanks to the tireless work of thousands in the Military Health System, we have met that goal, administering nearly 60,000 tests per week over the last several weeks," he added. Payne said the active duty positive rate is holding at about 5.3% over the last several weeks. That, he said, is lower than in the civilian population. While increased testing and technology efforts such as the "Negative Pressure CONEX" for transporting infected patients on military aircraft while at the same time keeping the crew safe are all important parts of the department's response to COVID-19, and individual efforts are just as important, Friedrichs said. "The foundation of our response has been and remains both the individual and the collective commitment to those basic public health measures that we've talked about over and over again -- things like social distancing, washing hands, [and] wearing a mask," he said. "While not necessarily high-tech, they are incredibly effective, and we're grateful for the support from everyone who's embraced those in order to reduce the risk to the force into the mission." Tenets of National Defense Strategy at Heart of Defense Department CIO Efforts [2020-07-30] WASHINGTON -- The National Defense Strategy, which provides momentum to the Defense Department, also drives its information technology efforts, DOD's chief information officer said. "The efforts of the NDS are all about getting modern, effective technologies into the hands of our warfighter," Dana Deasy said during a conference call today. "Our program ... covers cloud, artificial intelligence, command, control and communications -- or C3 -- cybersecurity, and our latest effort, data." Efforts in all of those areas, he said, address and advance National Defense Strategy priorities, which include lethality, partnerships and enterprise reform. Cloud efforts such as the commercial virtual remote environment, which enables online collaboration between both teleworking and in-office department employees, is now enabled for more than 3 million DOD employees. It has contributed significantly to lethality by ensuring the work of defense employees around the globe has not been stymied by the COVID-19 pandemic. Deasy said department personnel were able to roll out that program in less than 60 days and delivered it in late March. "Normally a program of this scale and complexity would take over a year to design, engineer and deploy," he said. Also supporting lethality are department efforts to push the latest, most secure software to warfighting systems as quickly as possible. "Our software modernization effort, which is being worked collaboratively across many offices of the DOD, works backward from the goal of delivering new capabilities directly into the hands of the warfighter and addresses both the technical and, I must emphasize, ... the nontechnical obstacles to that vision," Deasy said. One example there, he said, is his office's designation of the Air Force's DevSecOps platform, "PlatformONE" as an enterprise service for the Defense Department, which Deasy said ensures departmentwide availability of that capability. Efforts at the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center are "laser-focused on the priorities of the National Defense Strategy," Deasy said. Using AI-predictive analysis, he said, the JAIC is working to develop an "operations cognitive assistant" to enhance human-machine teaming and to drive faster and more efficient decision-making in direct support of the Joint All-Domain Command and Control concept, or JADC2. In support of the NDS's partnership focus, the JAIC's international engagement team is facilitating discussion with allies and partners, he said-- including those in NATO, the European Union, and the Indo-Pacific region -- about how AI can shape security cooperation and defense partnerships. "AI is just one example of how the department is preserving its military and technological advantage as outlined in the National Defense Strategy, as well as leveraging the innovation of America's technology industry to deliver safe, responsible and effective solutions to our warfighters," Deasy said. The "Mission Partner Environment," with the Air Force as the executive agent, will also facilitate stronger relationships with partnerships with allies, Deasy said. "When fully deployed in fiscal year 2028, it will provide information sharing, command and control, intelligence collaborative capabilities, supporting the full range of military operations," he said. Deasy said this office is running a robust digital modernization program focused on delivering the capabilities that are called for in the National Defense Strategy. "Each element of that program builds upon the next element," he said. "We face a future battlefield environment across all domains that will be more complex, more lethal, and more dynamic than ever before. We also know that competitors including China and Russia are pursuing many of the same technological advances that we are. To maintain our edge, we have to adapt to this future in a way that is faster, smarter and more flexible than our adversaries." Military Alliances, Partnerships Strengthened Through Defense Strategy Execution [2020-08-05] WASHINGTON -- In a rapidly changing world, the United States must defend its interests and values against new threats and new competitors, especially from China and Russia. But it can't do it alone. Instead, the U.S. must strengthen relationships with existing partners and allies while also building new partnerships. Strengthening alliances and attracting new partners is one of three lines of effort central to the National Defense Strategy laid out in 2018. It's something Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper has been focused on since he took office last year. The secretary said developing a coordinated strategy for American allies and partners is among his top priorities. "These like-minded nations are an unmatched advantage that China and Russia do not have," Esper said. Over the past year, with encouragement from the United States, NATO has enhanced its readiness by continuing to secure pledges from alliance members to increase their defense spending. About two-thirds of NATO nations have pledged to increase defense spending to 2% of their gross domestic product by 2021, but all have increased spending to some degree already. In the Indo-Pacific region, the department has strengthened alliances and partnerships by deepening interoperability, expanding deterrent networks, and executing maritime security and awareness operations. Also in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. conducted a record number of freedom-of-navigation operations in the South China Sea over the past year, more than any other year since 2015, to deter China's malign behavior. For example, in July 2019, the USS Nimitz conducted exercises with the Indian navy in the Indian Ocean. That exercise, Esper said, demonstrates a shared commitment between the two nations to support a free and open Indo-Pacific region. In November 2019, the United States also participated in its first joint military exercise with India -- a partnership Esper called "one of the all-important defense relationships of the 21st century." In the Middle East, the United States has led a coalition of more than 80 partners to ensure the enduring defeat of the ISIS physical caliphate. And in September, the United States joined a group of nations to establish the International Maritime Security Construct, in which the U.S. partners with eight countries, Lithuania being the most recent. The goal of the group is to maintain order and security in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. When it comes to foreign military sales, the department has improved policy and practices by lowering costs and introducing competitive financing opportunities, which have increased U.S. competitiveness and improved interoperability among partners. In fiscal year 2019, the department maintained sales of more than $55 billion for the second consecutive year, which increased the three-year rolling average for sales by 16 percent. Additionally, the department improved the time it takes to respond to partner nation requests by 17%. Also, the State Department recently approved a possible sale of 105 F-35 aircraft to Japan and the sale of All Up Round MK 54 lightweight torpedoes to Belgium. And in Asia, the United States may also allow the sale of eight MV-22 Osprey aircraft to Indonesia. Efforts involving arms sales to partner and allied nations not only increase interoperability between the U.S. military and the militaries of partner and allied nations, but also mean that the U.S. military and those nations will work together in ongoing training and technical assistance as part of the deal. Ongoing Defense Department Reforms Align With National Defense Strategy [2020-08-05] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department is responsible for defending the nation and its interests around the globe, and must also be ready to help partners and allies as well. Maintaining the lethal, combat-ready force to carry out that mission is expensive. The department can increase its own combat effectiveness by pursuing new ways to make the dollars it gets from Congress go farther than they have in the past. That means reforming how it does business to become ever more efficient and responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars. Reforming the department for greater performance and affordability is one of the lines of effort central to the National Defense Strategy laid out in 2018. It's something Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper has been focused on since he took office last year. "This means making difficult choices across the DOD, which are essential to ensuring that our time, manpower, and resources are directed toward NDS priorities," Esper said. "We have already made great strides to that end." As part of the reform effort, a defensewide review identified around $5.7 billion in defense reforms and efficiencies across the DOD's "Fourth Estate," which includes 29 separate agencies and organizations within the department that are not part of the military services. These agencies include the DOD Education Activity, the Defense Health Agency, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the Defense Media Activity, among others. A departmental audit also helped to accelerate reform efforts. In the last year, the department completed its second-ever annual departmentwide financial statement audit, which covered assets of more than $2.9 trillion. The effort improved the quality of enterprise data used to drive decision-making and also helped to ensure the department remains good stewards of government resources, Pentagon officials said. The department also reviewed all of its existing regulations as part of its reform efforts and reduced regulatory burdens to save $132 million. Now, Esper said, the department is working toward a 15% reduction in DOD solicitation provisions and contract clauses. That effort should be complete by the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year. A "blank-slate" or "clean-sheet review" of combatant commands is also aiding reform efforts. The review was undertaken to consolidate and reduce legacy missions, tasks and posture to optimize their operational footprint. Those clean-sheet reviews have already generated savings in time, money, and manpower that can be realigned toward higher-priority NDS requirements. At the same time, changes made as a result of the reviews will improve posture, readiness and flexibility of U.S. military forces around the globe. Guided by National Defense Strategy, Defense Department Increases Force Lethality [2020-08-05] WASHINGTON -- The best way the United States can avoid war is for everyone to know it would win. That means having the best, most modern equipment, a highly trained, ready, and well-organized force, and a demonstrated ability to rapidly deploy anywhere, across all domains, to defend its interests and to help defend the interests of allies and partners. The U.S. military must be the most lethal combat force on the planet. Building a more lethal force is one of three lines of effort central to the National Defense Strategy laid out in 2018. It's something Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper has been focused on since he took office last year. Esper said the department must modernize the force, to include investing in "game-changing" technologies to transition from a legacy military to a capable force of the future. "This will allow us to maintain our long-held battlefield overmatch, which is more important than ever, as China and Russia continue to modernize their militaries and pursue advantages in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and 5G," Esper said. In the last year, the department has also requested the largest research and development budget in its history, and has secured funding for its 11 modernization initiatives, including hypersonics and artificial intelligence. Within hypersonics, the department is accelerating development of weapons with plans to start fielding systems in 2023. The department has also ramped up flight testing of hypersonic systems with 40 tests planned in the next five years. On the AI front, the department is accelerating the fielding of AI capabilities to meet warfighter needs through the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. The department also announced its "AI Ethics Principles" to ensure the U.S. is the global leader in the responsible development and use of AI. Also a priority is the modernization of all three legs of the nuclear triad, including air-launched systems, ground-based systems and sea-launched systems. Coupled with that is modernization of the nuclear command, control, and communications infrastructure. Over the past year, the department has fielded the new W76-2 submarine-launched, low-yield ballistic missile warhead. The department is also now developing next-generation interceptor and ballistic missile defense systems to keep pace with adversary missile systems and ensure layered defense of the homeland. In cyber, a relatively new domain, U.S. Cyber Command is supporting the department's "defend forward" strategy. This ensures the U.S. is persistently engaged with cyber actors to defeat them online, improve the lethality of combatant commands, and support a whole-of-government effort to deliver a safe, secure and legitimate election. Space, an even newer domain, has received a boost as well since Esper took office. In December, the department stood up the U.S. Space Force, an entirely new military service under the Department of the Air Force. Earlier in 2019, the department also stood up U.S. Space Command. With both of these new activations, the department recognizes the growing importance of space as a warfighting domain. DOD Amplifies Focus on People in Executing National Defense Strategy [2020-08-05] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military employs more than 2 million uniformed service members, both on active duty and in the reserve components. Off duty, those service members are supported every day by 2.6 million family members -- without whose support they wouldn't be nearly as able to serve their country. In addition, more than 700,000 DOD civilian employees support the armed forces. More than aircraft, boats and tanks, the U.S. military relies on its men and women in uniform, and the family members who support them every day, to accomplish the warfighting mission. The National Defense Strategy, laid out in 2018, defined three lines of effort: building a more lethal force; strengthening alliances and attracting new partners; and reforming the department for greater performance and affordability. When Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper came on board in July 2019, he added a fourth line of effort: taking care of military personnel and their families. It's something he's been focused on since his first day in office. "We recognize that our people are our greatest resource," Esper said. "Their hard work at home and abroad keeps our nation safe and determines the success of the NDS. That is why I continue to prioritize the well-being of our service members and their families, and routinely hold family and force town halls during my domestic and international trips to hear directly from them about their concerns." One of the most important things for military personnel and their families is that which is closest to home: where they live and what they get paid. To support families, the department has worked to secure robust pay and benefits packages for military personnel. The department has also worked to improve child care availability for uniformed personnel and directed that spousal license reciprocity be a factor in basing decisions. Working with the State Department, DOD also hopes to improve on-and off-base hiring of spouses and dependents. To make military housing feel more like home, the department has also implemented improvements to on-base housing, including the implementation of a "Tenant Bill of Rights." Recent health concerns with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, which have been used on military bases as part of fire-fighting efforts, have resulted in the creation of a PFAS task force to better protect service members and the communities that surround military installations. To ensure every service member is truly treated as an equal among peers, new departmental initiatives promote equal opportunity, diversity, and inclusion in the ranks. There is a short-term "sprint" to identify immediate actions, such as removing photographs from consideration by promotion boards and selection processes. An internal, mid-term Defense Board on Diversity and Inclusion will undertake a more comprehensive evaluation and assessment of military policies, processes, and practices to improve racial diversity and is expected to provide ideas by the end of the year. The department is also creating a long-term Defense Advisory Committee on Diversity and Inclusion in the armed services. To provide better equality and opportunity for pregnant service members, the secretary has also directed the department to adapt policies related to deployments, assignments, professional military education, and other matters to remove barriers to professional advancement. DOD also implemented all 22 recommendations from the Sexual Assault Accountability and Investigation Task Force, and the department launched a program to help identify serial offenders. Overall, DOD has seen a more than 30% decrease in sexual assaults from 10 years ago and a four-fold increase in reporting. After Explosion, U.S. Military Planes Deliver Aid to Beirut [2020-08-06] WASHINGTON -- The United States is sending humanitarian aid, including food, water and medical supplies, to Beirut to provide much-needed assistance in the aftermath of a massive explosion in the Lebanese capital, the chief Pentagon spokesman said. "We ... want to express the department's sympathies in mourning the lives of so many lost in Lebanon on Tuesday. This is a horrific tragedy," Jonathan Rath Hoffman said during a Pentagon news conference today. Hoffman said Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., commander of U.S. Central Command, has talked with the commander of the Lebanese armed forces to inform him that three C-17 aircraft will bring relief supplies to Lebanon. The first C-17 Globemaster III aircraft has already arrived in Beirut to deliver supplies, a Centcom statement said today. Included in those supplies are 11 pallets of food, water and medical supplies. Over the next 24 hours, the Centcom statement said, two additional C-17s will depart Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar to deliver additional supplies to Beirut. Hoffman said the Defense Department will continue to work with the State Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development on any additional aid missions. The exact cause of the Aug. 4 explosion in Beirut is not known, Hoffman said, but the Lebanese government is investigating and the U.S government is ready to assist if asked. "The investigation into the explosion is ongoing. We're going to defer to and give the Lebanese government space to complete their investigation and reach their conclusions," he said. "We're going to work with them. If they ask for assistance, the U.S. would be willing to provide that." CIO Says Top-Level Leadership Helped DOD Navigate COVID Crisis [2020-08-06] WASHINGTON -- Clear guidance early on from Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper ensured the Defense Department would be able to continue operating through the COVID-19 crisis, the department's chief information officer said. ''Our secretary of defense did a great job of making it perfectly clear what his expectations were,'' Dana Deasy said yesterday during a discussion with Martin Giles of the Forbes media company. ''Very early on, he said, 'Protect our employees.' I took that to mean from an IT standpoint that anybody and everybody who needed to work outside their normal environment could do that without any failure. Failure was never going to be an option for us.'' Esper also emphasized that the mission must be protected as well and that the department could not fail in its responsibility to protect the United States, Deasy said. ''That means Protect our country,''' Deasy said. ''That means anywhere around the world, any mission that needed to be done, there could be no interruption. From a technology standpoint, that simply meant [that] while we were driving a lot of people outside the Pentagon and to home, we need to somehow to make sure those same people that were now working from home were going to be able to support the mission.'' Protecting the workforce and keeping the mission on track involved significant involvement from the CIO workforce -- in particular, with implementing telework capability to a large number of employees, Deasy said. Before COVID-19, he said, about 80,000 to 90,000 people per day were teleworking across the department. The numbers of people who would need to be able to work from home once COVID restrictions were put in place weren't known at the time, the CIO noted. ''We now know it was a 10 times growth,'' he said. ''We are supporting somewhere between 1 and 1.2 million people concurrently, all working from home at the same time.'' A big part of making that happen, Deasy said, was the department's implementation of the ''Commercial Virtual Remote'' tool, which allows teleworking employees to form teams and collaborate online. Within two weeks, he said, about a quarter million employees were connected with the CVR. Within 90 days, he said, that was up to a million. The defense secretary also emphasized the department's commitment to contribute to the whole-of-government effort to combat COVID-19, Deasy said. From the CIO's perspective, that involved providing IT and networking support to a variety of missions, including the Army Corps of Engineers setting up field hospitals in convention centers, National Guard efforts in local communities, and Navy hospital ships in New York and Los Angeles. Deasy also discussed efforts to evaluate how the department's digital modernization strategy might be accepted by the DOD workforce -- in particular, the service members at the tactical edge who might be affected by changes. The department's digital modernization strategy touches on cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and cloud computing. All are common factors in similar modernization plans for private-sector companies, but Deasy pointed out that a unique focus of DOD's strategy is command, control and communications, or C3. ''What I think was quite fascinating was how we went about actually testing whether that strategy was going to make sense to the warfighter,'' he said. In his first six months as the CIO, Deasy said, he traveled to Afghanistan to meet with warfighters and commanders who might be most affected by DOD's digital modernization strategy. ''I [talked with] the warfighters that were going out every night on a mission -- whether that was to a village, whether it was in caves, the side of the mountain -- and actually have them show me how they were using the stuff we were putting into our digital modernization strategy,'' he said. Service members are not shy about sharing their opinions, Deasy said, and they made it clear the strategy was good. ''They're very clear to tell you how they feel about your digital modernization,'' he said. ''They were in environments where they were constantly getting degraded, they were getting denied by the adversary. So the C3 strategy was actually validated by looking about what you could and could not do.'' For 2020 Election, Threat is Bigger than Russia [2020-08-08] WASHINGTON -- As November approaches and a new general election is on the minds of most Americans, preserving the security of that election is on the minds of cyber experts at U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency. Officials there say that unlike in 2016, where Russia was the biggest threat to election security, there are now new threats that pose a risk. "We're looking at the spectrum of all of our adversaries, Russia, China, Iran, and ransomware actors," said Dave Imbordino, the election security lead with the National Security Agency, during a panel discussion Friday that was part of the 2020 DEF CON convention. For the 2020 election, Imbordino said, there are more threats to consider, and it's easier for those threats to get involved. "There's more people in the game," Imbordino said. "They're learning from each other. Influence is a cheap game to get into now with social media. It doesn't cost a lot of money. You can try to launder your narratives online through different media outlets. That's something we're laser-focused on as well." Army Brig. Gen. Joe Hartman, commander of the Cyber National Mission Force at U.S. Cyber Command and also the election security lead for Cybercom, said that since 2018, Cybercom hasn't let its guard down in regard to election security. While in 2016, he said, the Defense Department was focused on other things, by the 2018 midterm election, Cybercom and NSA had set up the "Russia Small Group" to deal with potential Russian interface during that election. They haven't lost focus since then. "For us that never stopped. I got back to the command about a year ago in 2019. And we didn't start up ... this thing called the election security group. It was already working, and it never stopped working [since] 2018," he said. "We think we're in a much better position now, certainly, than we were in 2016 or 2018." What are the threats to U.S. elections? Influence operations are a primary threat. That involves the creation of information online by adversarial nations, often through proxy groups, to create discord and influence opinion in the U.S. Imbordino said the Russian-operated Internet Research Agency, for instance, has set up operations overseas to generate misleading and divisive information to influence voter opinion. "They have set up something in Africa, Ghana, in terms of ... having people there trying to put stuff online, posting things about, you know, socially divisive issues, using covert influence websites to be able to get their narrative out," he said. "That's kind of a shift in tactic we've seen from Russia side." China, he said, has proven effective in doing the same in their own part of the world, in Taiwan and Hong Kong, for instance. "Them becoming potentially more aggressive in the U.S. space is something that we need to monitor and be prepared for," Imbordino said. "For the Chinese cyber threat ... they're a little bit different in terms of the scale and breadth of the targets they go after. Every U.S. citizen is a target of China, just because of the big data, the PII [personally identifiable information] that they're interested in collecting ... I think that sets them uniquely apart." Iran is also getting into the influence game, he said, and is learning from what other adversaries are doing. Hartman said Cybercom has capabilities now on the home front to defend against threats to national elections, including on-call defensive cyber elements in "war rooms" that are ready to respond if called upon by agencies like DHS or FBI, for instance. But that's not all, he said. "We have elements that are sitting over in other op centers, and they are prepared. If we see an adversary that's attempting to do something to interfere with that election ... we have the ability to play the away game," he said. "We have the ability to go out in foreign space and look at what you're doing. And we have the ability to make you stop doing that." AMBIT Gambit Pays Off, Advances U.S. 5G Efforts [2020-08-10] WASHINGTON -- Thanks to efforts by the White House and the Defense Department, a newly devised spectrum-sharing plan will make 100 megahertz of mid-band spectrum currently used by the military available for sharing with the private sector for use in development of 5G technologies. Earlier this year, the White House and DOD formed "America's Mid-Band Initiative Team," or AMBIT, with the goal of making a contiguous, 100 MHz segment of mid-band spectrum available for use in 5G development by the end of the summer. Today, after just 15 weeks of work, that effort has been realized. The AMBIT has identified a segment of spectrum from 3450-3550 MHz as available for sharing. Coupled with already available spectrum from 3550-3980 MHz, this creates a contiguous 530 MHz band for use by the U.S. technology sector. 5G networks require a mix of high-, mid- and low-band spectrum. The low band carries signals over long distances, whereas the high band travels shorter distances but is good for data intensive tasks. Mid-band spectrum is attractive for 5G because it can deliver high capacity and reliability over larger geographic areas. The Defense Department uses the segment of spectrum from 3450-3550 MHz for such things as radar operations that support missile defense, countermortar capabilities, weapons control, electronic warfare, air defense and air traffic control. The spectrum-sharing solution proposed by AMBIT will ensure the spectrum band continues to be available to the department, while it also becomes available for use by the private sector in the lower 48 states. As part of the U.S. military's participation, the department established a Mid-Band Spectrum Working Group that included experts in fields such as ship, ground, electronic warfare, test and training capabilities. All four services, as well as representatives from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, were represented. The AMBIT also leveraged technical work performed by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to develop a spectrum-sharing solution that would allow 5G development to progress in the private sector, while at the same time, allow the U.S. military to continue to use that spectrum to meet national security requirements. After additional work by the services, the Federal Communications Commission will auction off use of the newly available spectrum to the private sector to support 5G network deployments. Advancement of 5G technology and networks, and having the United States be a leader in that development, isn't just of interest to the private sector. DOD also has an interest in 5G development. 5G networks are one the department's 11 modernization efforts, and 5G is key to departmental efforts to increase the lethality of the U.S. military, as spelled out in the National Defense Strategy. Already, the department is or will be testing and evaluating 5G technologies at a dozen U.S. military installations around the country. At Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, and its associated Yakima Training Center, for example, the department has 5G evaluations underway for how to enhance augmented reality and virtual reality training. At Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, Georgia, evaluations are underway for using 5G technology to enhance the warehousing of vehicles such as the Humvee. Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows co-chaired the White House steering group that oversaw the AMBIT. They were supported in their efforts by Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council; DOD Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy; and Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Centcom Chief: Enduring ISIS Defeat Requires Plans for Refugees, Local Security [2020-08-12] WASHINGTON -- While ISIS no longer has the ability to hold ground, the terrorist organization isn't completely defeated. An enduring defeat, the commander of U.S. Central Command said, will require, in part, plans for refugees displaced by the Syrian civil war and for local security forces to be able to handle ISIS on their own. "One of the very highest priorities I have at Central Command is dealing with displaced persons and refugees," Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. said during a discussion today with the U.S. Institute of Peace. "I think it's an unfortunate byproduct of the conflict in the region." Displaced people now in camps may be radicalized and susceptible to influence later on by ISIS, McKenzie said. Those men, women and children will need to be returned home, and they need to be deradicalized, the general said, noting that it's a strategic problem for those most interested in keeping ISIS at bay perpetually. "Unless we find a way to repatriate, to deradicalize, to bring these people that are at grave risk in these camps back -- preferably to their nations that they came from or to stay in Syria where appropriate, but with some form of deradicalization -- we're buying ourselves a strategic problem 10 years down the road, 15 years down the road," he said. "Young people grow up, and we're going to see them again, unless we can find a way to turn them in a way that will make them productive members of society." An enduring defeat of ISIS, McKenzie said, also depends on the strength and capabilities of local and state-level security -- home-grown, organic security. It's something he said both Centcom and coalition forces will support. "We need sufficient security capacity at the local and state level to prevent ISIS remnants from posing a threat to stabilization efforts and governance," he said. "Where authorized, Centcom and coalition forces will support the development of operational and institutional capacity to sustain ... hard-won partner gains at the tactical level." Victory against ISIS, McKenzie said, will not involve a clear-cut military victory. What it will involve, he said, is trained, capable local security forces in support of legitimate local governments. "The future, particularly in Syria, is not going to be bloodless, or in Iraq, either. But we can look to a future where security forces, local security forces, answerable to local elected leadership or appointed leadership, are going to be able to handle it without extensive outside help. That's what we need to aim for." DOD Focuses on Minimizing Cyber Threats to Department, Contractors [2020-08-13] WASHINGTON -- Cyber threats against the United States and the Defense Department are very real, and efforts related to the department's Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, released earlier this year, are underway to mitigate risks as they relate to both the department and contractors. "It's no secret that the U.S. is at cyber war every day," Ellen M. Lord, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said, as part of a keynote address during the Professional Services Council's 2020 Defense Services Conference. "Cybersecurity risks threaten the industrial base, national security, as well as partners and allies." The CMMC, Lord said, is the DOD's metric to measure a company's ability to secure its supply chain from cyber threats, protecting both the company and the department. The department is now focused on implementing the CMMC. Lord said these efforts support the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement rulemaking process while completing a no-cost contract with the newly established CMMC accreditation body, registering and training candidate CMMC third-party assessment organization assessors, conducting risk reduction through CMMC pathfinder and pilot programs and developing the CMMC database infrastructure. As part of CMMC, the accreditation body will accredit third-party assessment organizations, or C3PAOs, to evaluate a business's compliance with CMMC standards. The CMMC-AB started registering such third-party assessors in June, Lord said. Lord also said the Office of the Chief Information Security Officer for Acquisition and the Missile Defense Agency are now also completing a CMMC pathfinder on an existing contract, which involves acquisition tabletop exercises, training of mock assessors and conducting mock assessments of a prime contractor and three subcontractors. These efforts, she said, are for evaluation only and are non-punitive and not for attribution. The OCISO-A and another DOD stakeholder will begin a second CMMC assessment pathfinder on an existing contract in September. That second pathfinder will also be nonpunitive and not for attribution, she said. The OCISO-A is also looking for other contracts on which to conduct CMMC pilot projects. "These pilots will be implemented on new DOD contracts to further reduce the risk of CMMC phased rollout, by focusing on the flow-down of controlled unclassified information ... and CMMC requirements through the supply chain and conduct of mock CMMC assessments," she said. As part of developing the CMMC database infrastructure, Lord said, the department is now working with the Defense Information Systems Agency's Enterprise Mission Assurance Support Service to develop "CMMC EMASS," which will serve as the infrastructure for CMMC assessment reports, certificates and data analytics. "The initial development for this is planned to start this month," she said. "The certification body will train and credential candidate-assessors and accredit CMMC third-party assessment organizations. In fact, the first CMMC training course for candidate-assessors is also on track for this month." Southcom Chief: Venezuela's Maduro at Center of 'Vicious Circle of Threats' [2020-08-13] WASHINGTON -- Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, aided by allies including Cuba, Russia, China and Iran, continues to serve as a threat to the democratic freedom in neighboring nations in South America, the commander of U.S. Southern Command said. "When we look at this region, there is so much promise and so much potential," Navy Adm. Craig S. Faller said during a panel discussion today with the Atlantic Council. South America is home to a number of democracies that share values with the United States, and are rich in resources, including human intellectual capital, Faller said. "All that is under assault. It's under assault by a vicious circle of threats, the center of which is ... Venezuela," the admiral said. A big part of the threat, he said, is a drastic increase in narcotics trafficking coming out of Venezuela, which he said not only threatens lives throughout North and South America, but also corrupts the institutions critical to the maintenance and development of the young democracies that surround Venezuela. "At the heart of the threat, it's the lives that are we're losing unnecessarily, and it's the undermining of democracy," Faller said. "That was a choice Maduro made to take the once thriving state into the current dictatorship that it is." The COVID-19 pandemic has allowed Maduro to even further lock down Venezuela and increase his power, Faller said. At the same time, he added, organizations such as FARC, and the National Liberation Army of Colombia are able to expand territory in the country. "All those threat vectors are headed in a negative direction, which is a significant reason why we have upped the amount of engagement we're doing with our partners and launched our enhanced counternarcotics operation," Faller said. One tool to fight narcotics trafficking, Faller said, includes Southcom's Joint Interagency Task Force South and Key West, which has the involvement of 22 partner nations behind its efforts. "They're all aligned there under the common threat of narco trafficking," Faller said. "The connection to Maduro is his complicity in that threat. The nations that go there, they go there for their national interest, but working together for the good of the hemisphere. It's been a success. And we have actually seen an increase in partner nation involvement, year to year, last year to this year." Faller said that about half of Southcom's counternarcotics operations include the involvement of partner nations. He also cited as a success the U.S.-Colombian Action Plan, in which Colombians train partners across Central America to conduct operations against narcotics trafficking and terrorists. He also pointed out the Central America Regional Security Initiative and the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative as being important investments for the United States. "The United States' time and financial resources will pay forward for enhanced stability," he said. "That's part of the solution set here, ... making sure we have it right in those investment areas to keep the democracies that have made progress in Central America and South America and the Caribbean [in] keep them moving forward against this vicious circle of threats." DOD Can Lead Microelectronics Manufacturing Back to U.S. [2020-08-20] WASHINGTON -- For a variety of reasons, while many of the microelectronics available in the United States are designed here, they are manufactured overseas. This presents problems for national security, and for the Defense Department, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment said. Ellen M. Lord discussed the state of microelectronics during a prerecorded "fireside chat" today as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Electronics Resurgence Initiative Summit. "While we still design components, [field-programmable gate arrays], [application-specific integrated circuits], and printed circuit cards in the U.S., the majority of fabrication, packaging, testing etc., is done offshore," Lord said. "We can no longer clearly identify the pedigree of our microelectronics. Therefore, we can no longer ensure that backdoors, malicious code or data exfiltration commands aren't embedded in our code." The United States must find a path to domestic sources for the important microelectronics that are used in defense weapons systems now, and for the microelectronics that will be needed for future use, Lord said. "I believe that we in defense need to lead," she said. "Working with my colleagues in the administration, both inside and outside of DOD, we are charting a path forward to bring microelectronics fabrication, packaging and testing back to the U.S. in order to ensure a secure and resilient microelectronics supply chain." The U.S. government, through public and private partnerships, can provide capital and a "demand signal" for domestically manufactured, tested and packaged microelectronics to encourage manufacturers to bring microelectronics production back home, Lord said. "Then we partner with other industrial sectors to sustain that," she said. "And we have a pretty strong demand signal in order to be able to do that." Over the last several decades, Lord said, things such as governmental policies and regulations, environmental constraints, safety constraints, wages, and taxes drove up the cost to manufacture microelectronics in the United States, and that this was one of the causes of industry moving manufacturing overseas. "That's what we need to reverse," she said. The Defense Department isn't just interested in reshoring microelectronics manufacturing, Lord said. The department also has an interest in developing the talent needed to manufacture microelectronics. "DOD not only drives research and development, but we also work on developing the workforce of the future we need," she said. "We can partner with our other government agencies and together fund schools in terms of education ... to develop the workforce we need to be able to deal with the automation to produce these, to continue to design. If you take a holistic approach, I think we can create a sustainable microelectronics industry, but it's not just about that first plant with some equipment in it. It's about the workforce. It's about all the policy, nationally, to make this attractive." Acquisition Enterprise Capabilities to Continue Post Pandemic [2020-08-21] WASHINGTON -- When the COVID-19 virus developed into a pandemic in the United States, the nation needed large quantities of medical supplies that were not readily available. In response, the Defense Department stood up the COVID-19 Joint Acquisition Task Force to help other government agencies meet their needs by tapping into the department's acquisition enterprise. While the JATF itself will not last forever, the capability it provided will endure even after the COVID-19 crisis passes, Ellen M. Lord, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said. During a press briefing at the Pentagon, Aug. 20, Lord said that the department is working to transition current JATF operations into an enduring policy and oversight office within the existing Joint Rapid Acquisition Cell. This will prepare the department to readily help other federal agencies with acquisition, should the need arise again. "What we are doing is we are taking all of our learnings from what we have done with the JATF and we are reducing that to a playbook that can respond to any type of federal emergency where acquisition and sustainment support is needed," Lord said. "It could support another pandemic, but it could respond to other types of federal disasters as well." The capabilities of the JATF will be folded into the existing Joint Rapid Acquisition Cell, Lord said. The JRAC was designed to help combatant command and warfighters already on the ground get the kinds of equipment they need more quickly than usual through traditional acquisition. Later this fall, the personnel currently in the JATF will return to other duties within the department. "But we will maintain the capability to rapidly reconstitute [it], if needed," Lord said. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the department has worked with other federal partners, including Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to help the U.S. industrial base meet the demand for medical supplies. Lord noted that the department has partnered with HHS to invest nearly $630 million to expand the domestic industrial base for medical resource suppliers. Included in those efforts, she said, are $279 million to increase N-95 respirator mask production by nearly 100 million units per month by January 2021, $127 million to increase production of swabs by 65 million units per month for testing kits, $138 million to advance syringe technology and production of over 45 million units per month in support of the U.S. vaccine development strategy, $22.4 million to increase domestic glove manufacturing by 450 million units annually and $35 million to increase domestic manufacturing of COVID-19 testing kits by 10 million tests per month by February 2021. "Through assisted acquisition, DOD continues to support HHS efforts to lead the interagency in replenishment of the strategic national stockpile and the distribution of supplies to states, territories and nursing homes to respond to the coronavirus outbreak," Lord said. Defense Innovation Unit Teaching Artificial Intelligence to Detect Cancer [2020-08-24] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Innovation Unit is bringing together the best of commercially available artificial intelligence technology and the Defense Department's vast cache of archived medical data to teach computers how to identify cancers and other medical irregularities. The result will be new tools medical professionals can use to more accurately and more quickly identify medical issues in patients. The new DIU project, called "Predictive Health," also involves the Defense Health Agency, three private-sector businesses and the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. The new capability directly supports the development of the JAIC's warfighter health initiative, which is working with the Defense Health Agency and the military services to field AI solutions that are aimed at transforming military health care. The JAIC is also providing the funding and adding technical expertise for the broader initiative. "The JAIC's contributions to this initiative have engendered the strategic development of required infrastructure to enable AI-augmented radiographic and pathologic diagnostic capabilities," said Navy Capt. (Dr.) Hassan Tetteh, the JAIC's Warfighter Health Mission Initiative chief. "Given the military's unique, diverse, and rich data, this initiative has the potential to compliment other significant military medical advancements to include antisepsis, blood transfusions, and vaccines." A big part of the Predictive Health project will involve training AI to look at de-identified DOD medical imagery to teach it to identify cancers. The AI can then be used with augmented reality microscopes to help medical professionals better identify cancer cells. Nathanael Higgins, the support contractor managing the program for DIU, explained what the project will mean for the department. "From a big-picture perspective, this is about integrating AI into the DOD health care system," Higgins said. "There are four critical areas we think this technology can impact. The first one is, it's going to help drive down cost." The earlier medical practitioners can catch a disease, Higgins said, the easier it will be to anticipate outcomes and to provide less invasive treatments. That means lower cost to the health care system overall, and to the patient, he added. Another big issue for DOD is maximizing personnel readiness, Higgins said. "If you can cut down on the number of acute issues that come up that prevent people from doing their job, you essentially help our warfighting force," he explained. Helping medical professionals do their jobs better is also a big part of the Predictive Health project, Higgins said. "Medical professionals are already overworked," he said. "We're essentially giving them an additional tool that will help them make confident decisions -- and know that they made the right decision -- so that we're not facing as many false negatives or false positives. And ultimately we're able to identify these types of disease states earlier, and that'll help the long-term prognosis." In line with the department adding an additional line of effort focused on taking care of people to the National Defense Strategy, Higgins said using AI to identify medical conditions early will help to optimize warfighter performance as well. "Early diagnosis equals less acute injuries, which means less invasive procedures, which means we have more guys and gals in our frontline forces and less cost on the military health care system," he said. "The ultimate value here is really saving lives as people are our most valuable resource." Using AI to look for cancer first requires researchers to teach AI what cancer looks like. This requires having access to a large set of training data. For the Predictive Health project, this will mean a lot of medical imagery of the kind produced by CT scans, MRIs, X-rays and slide imagery made from biopsies, and knowing ahead of time that the imagery depicts the kind of illnesses, such as cancer, that researchers hope to train the AI to identify. DOD has access to a large set of this kind of data. Dr. Niels Olson, the DIU chief medical officer and originator of the Predictive Health project, said DOD also has a very diverse set of data, given its size and the array of people for which the department's health care system is responsible. "If you think about it, the DOD, through retired and active duty service, is probably one of the largest health care systems in the world, at about 9 million people," Olson said. "The more data a tool has available to it, the more effective it is. That's kind of what makes DOD unique. We have a larger pool of information to draw from, so that you can select more diverse cases." "Unlike some of the other large systems, we have a pretty good representation of the U.S. population," he said. "The military actually has a nice smooth distribution of population in a lot of ways that other regional systems don't have. And we have it at scale." While DOD does have access to a large set of diverse medical imaging data that can be used to train an AI, Olson said privacy will not be an issue. "We'll use de-identified information, imaging, from clinical specimens," Olson said. "So this means actual CT images and actual MRI images of people who have a disease, where you remove all of the identifiers and then just use the diagnostic imaging and the actual diagnosis that the pathologist or radiologist wrote down." AI doesn't need to know who the medical imaging has come from -- it just needs to see a picture of cancer to learn what cancer is. "All the computer sees is an image that is associated with some kind of disease, condition or cancer," Olson said. "We are ensuring that we mitigate all risk associated with [the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996], personally identifiable information and personal health information." Using the DOD's access to training data and commercially available AI technology, the DIU's Predictive Health project will need to train the AI to identify cancers. Olson explained that teaching an AI to look at a medical image and identify what is cancer is a process similar to that of a parent teaching a child to correctly identify things they might see during a walk through the neighborhood. "The kid asks 'Mom, is that a tree?' And Mom says, 'No, that's a dog,'" Olson explained. "The kids learn by getting it wrong. You make a guess. We formally call that an inference, a guess is an inference. And if the machine gets it wrong, we tell it that it got it wrong." The AI can guess over and over again, learning each time about how it got the answer wrong and why, until it eventually learns how to correctly identify a cancer within the training set of data, Olson said, though he said he doesn't want it to get too good. Overtraining, Olson said, means the AI has essentially memorized the training set of data and can get a perfect score on a test using that data. An overtrained system is unprepared, however, to look at new information, such as new medical images from actual patients, and find what it's supposed to find. "If I memorize it, then my test performance will be perfect, but when I take it out in the real world, it would be very brittle," Olson said. Once well trained, the AI can be used with an "augmented reality microscope," or ARM, so pathologists can more quickly and accurately identify diseases in medical imagery, Olson said. "An augmented reality microscope has a little camera and a tiny little projector, and the little camera sends information to a computer and the computer sends different information back to the projector," Olson said. "The projector pushes information into something like a heads-up display for a pilot, where information is projected in front of the eyes." With an ARM, medical professionals view tissue samples with information provided by an AI overlaid over the top -- information that helps them more accurately identify cells that might be cancerous, for instance. While the AI that DIU hopes to train will eventually help medical professionals do a better job of identifying cancers, it won't replace their expertise. There must always be a medical professional making the final call when it comes to treatment for patients, Higgins said. "The prototype of this technology that we're adopting will not replace the practitioner," he said. "It is an enabler -- it is not a cure-all. It is designed to enhance our people and their decision making. If there's one thing that's true about DOD, it's that people are our most important resource. We want to give them the best tools to succeed at their job. "AI is obviously the pinnacle of that type of tool in terms of what it can do and how it can help people make decisions," he continued. "The intent here is to arm them with an additional tool so that they make confident decisions 100% of the time." The Predictive Health project is expected to end within 24 months, and the project might then make its way out to practitioners for further testing. The role of DIU is taking commercial technology, prototyping it beyond a proof of concept, and building it into a scalable solution for DOD. Operation Warp Speed More Than Halfway to Enrolling Participants in Vaccine Trials [2020-08-28] WASHINGTON -- Two of the six candidate vaccines for COVID-19 are now in Phase III trials. Each of those trials will require about 30,000 participants, and Operation Warp Speed is about half finished finding participants for the clinical trials, the deputy chief of staff for policy at the Department of Health and Human Services said. "We're past the halfway point in terms of enrollment," Paul Mango said. "We feel very good about that enrollment in terms of the overall diversity." He said the population participating, so far, is varied in age and race, as well as among individuals with varying medical conditions. "We feel very good about those clinical trials," Mango said. "We would expect that two more of our candidate vaccines will go into Phase III clinical trials by the middle of September. Maybe one of those even sooner, though we're feeling good about the fact that we'll have four vaccines in Phase III clinical trials by the middle of next month." Operation Warp Speed is the program designed to find a vaccine for COVID-19 before the end of the year, and to quickly get a vaccine out to Americans by January 2021. Part of that effort involves manufacturing vaccines before they are even approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration. In the event a vaccine is approved, this means it will already be available for distribution. For those vaccines that are not approved, the already-manufactured doses will be destroyed. Manufacturing is underway now for three of the vaccines, Mango said. For the other three, facilities are being set up, and manufacturing will start shortly. "We feel we are absolutely on track, if not a little bit ahead in terms of our overall objective, which is tens of millions [of doses] of safe and effective vaccine approved before calendar year-end," Mango said. One challenge for meeting the goal of Operation Warp Speed is the logistics of distributing the final, approved vaccine. Planning for that is complicated by the fact that some of the candidate vaccines are single-dose, while others require multiple doses, Mango said. "We have to deal with the difference between single doses and double doses," he said. "We also have to deal with different storage and transport requirements. So when you add all this up, there's five or six major independent variables, and when you run the number of combinations that we're planning for, it's quite extraordinary." Another factor, Mango said, is the ancillary material that comes with distributing a vaccine -- syringes, hypodermic needles and vials, for instance. He said he's confident Operation Warp Speed is ahead in that area. "We have hundreds of millions of those already received," he said. "We have hundreds of millions of those that are on order and will be delivered as we approach year-end and into the early part of the new year. So we feel we have the vast majority of our logistical needs either already covered or underway." Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also discussed planning where the vaccines will go first when they're ready and who will interact with recipients to administer the vaccine. "Right now, the CDC is focused on leveraging the existing systems we use every day to deliver vaccines across the U.S., as well as building on state and local planning that is underway around pandemic influenza," Redfield said. Initially, he said, availability of the vaccine might be limited, and it's important that decisions are made now about which populations should have first access to the vaccines. "CDCs advisory committee on immunization practices, along with other groups like the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, are evaluating the safety and immunogenicity data of vaccine candidates and examining the epidemiology of COVID-19 in focus populations and will eventually make recommendations about which populations to prioritize for vaccine," Redfield said. Due to teleworking as a result of COVID-19, adults may not be able to get the new vaccine where they have gotten vaccines in the past -- in some cases at their place of employment, for instance, Redfield said. "A successful vaccine program will require a combination of traditional and innovative approaches to how vaccines are administered," he said. "So pharmacies and other complementary community-based locations may be important in our response to this pandemic." Redfield also said that a distributor for the future COVID-19 vaccine has been chosen. He said the CDC and that distributor typically deliver as many as 80 million doses of vaccines to providers. "During an emergency, this system can be scaled and has the capacity to manage and distribute up to 900 million vaccine doses," he said. "Our goal is ensure that there's no delay in the handoff between the FDA authorizing a vaccine and the implementation of vaccine programs nationwide." Operation Warp Speed is a partnership between the Defense Department and the HHS. Specific HHS components involved include the CDC, FDA, the National Institutes of Health, and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. China Pursues Own Nuclear Triad, Doubling of Nuclear Capability [2020-09-01] WASHINGTON -- Over the next 10 years, it's expected China will double the number of nuclear warheads it possesses, while embarking on an effort to expand the ways it can deploy its nuclear capability, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for China Chad L. Sbragia said at the American Enterprise Institute. He discussed findings of a just-released Defense Department report, "Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China -- 2020." "The report does contend that there are currently an estimated low-200s in terms of warhead stockpiles, and it's projected to at least double in size over the next decade as China expands and modernizes its nuclear forces," Sbragia said. But equally as important is how China would be able to deliver those warheads. It intends to develop a "nuclear triad" similar to the one the U.S. has and is currently working to modernize. "The report [also] notes that China is expanding, modernizing and diversifying its nuclear forces across the board," Sbragia said. "Just looking at the number of warheads by itself is not the entire picture, or doesn't paint a holistic understanding of where the Chinese are or where they want to go." A nuclear triad, as it exists in the U.S., allows for land-based missile delivery, sea-based delivery from submarines and air-based delivery with bombers. Within the next decade, Sbragia said, China plans to expand its ballistic submarine fleet and field more capable, longer-range, sea-launched ballistic missiles. It also plans to complete the development of its nuclear-capable, air-launched ballistic missiles along with bombers to deliver them. On the ground, he said, China plans to field additional mobile ICBMs and also possibly expand its silo-based ICBM capability. "As has been noted by others, and then as the report contends ... they're obviously in pursuit of the full suite of capacities ... to include the building out of infrastructure for a more modernized, capable and larger capacity in this area," Sbragia said. Sbragia said that the report also concludes that, besides its investments in nuclear capability, China aims to transform the People's Liberation Army into a "world-class military" by around 2050. "While China has not defined exactly what 'world-class military' means, it is likely that China will seek to build a military that is equal to or in some cases superior to the U.S. military or the military of any other great power that China perceives as a potential threat," Sbragia said. One aspect of that advancement towards a world-class military, he said, is power projection. The Chinese want their military to be able to operate anywhere on the globe. One step towards that is the establishment of a more robust overseas logistics network. According to the report, China is "very likely already considering and planning for" the establishment of military logistics facilities outside China that can support naval, air and ground forces. Some locations that they may now be considering include Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the United Arab Emirates, Kenya, the Seychelles, Tanzania, Angola and Tajikistan. China already has a military installation in Djibouti. "The Chinese do have ... an aspiration for great power status by virtually every measure of comprehensive or composite national power that you can measure," Sbragia said. "To achieve that, it means that they have to have ... global convergence at the broadest scale possible. For the PLA, that means that they do have the intent to go out. I think that's certainly one of the aspects of what 'world-class military' means ... the capacity to have influence at distance, at a time and place of their choosing. They certainly aspire to do that." Full Impact of COVID-19 on Industrial Base Not Yet Known [2020-09-09] WASHINGTON -- While it appears the defense industrial base has fared well through the COVID-19 crisis, the full impact has yet to be seen, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment said. "We use the Defense Contract Management Agency and the Defense Logistics Agency to track about 22,000 key companies that the department works with," Ellen M. Lord said today in an online discussion during the 2020 Defense News Conference. "Going back over the last six months, we did have hundreds of companies shut down, but now we're down to only about 30. So, that's very, very good news." The department monitors the health of the defense industrial base, or DIB on a daily basis, Lord said. "We look at on-time-deliveries, deliveries missed, and, most importantly, we listen to what the issues are, really leveraging the industry associations, to do a lot of listening," she said. "What we are looking for is whether or not we're maintaining warfighter readiness for our production programs. And then relative to modernization, whether we are hitting key milestones relative to development programs." While the Defense Department has done a lot to help ensure the stability of the DIB during the COVID-19 crisis, Lord said it'll be a while before the DOD knows for sure just exactly how healthy the industrial base is following COVID-19. Right now, she said, it's too early to tell how well companies have fared during the crisis. "All the reports that have come out in large part don't reflect the hits that were taken by business," she said. "There have been mixed reports in terms of revenue and profitability. I would contend that most of the effects of COVID haven't yet been seen, because most companies gave their employees time off -- they stretched out production, paid a lot of people for working 100% when, perhaps, they were only getting 50% of the hours in, and so forth." Lord said the department would like to get a solid accounting of the effects of COVID-19 on the DIB for a defined period of March 15 through September 15 in order to make the best determination on how else the department can help. One part of that will be businesses within the DIB writing up how they were affected by the pandemic and submitting those to DOD where they would be assessed. "We think it would take five to six months, because once we got an appropriation, we would go out for a request for proposal," she said. "The larger companies are going to have to flow down those RFPs through their supply chain to gather the data. This has to be a very data-driven drill. So we would get all of that back, we think that would take two to three months, then we want to look at all of the proposals at once. It isn't going to be a first in first out. And we have to rationalize using the rules we've put in place, what would be reimbursable and what's not. So overall, we think five to six months in terms of a process." DSCA Encourages Partners to Look Beyond Gear to Multi-Domain Ops [2020-09-10] WASHINGTON -- While it's true the Defense Security Cooperation Agency is most-closely associated with foreign military sales, that is not all they do. When it comes to working with security partners, there's an effort now to focus on multi-domain operations to improve teamwork in regards to air operations, Heidi H. Grant, DSCA's new director said. "To effectively build a partnership and team in air operations, we work with our allies to bring them into a multi-domain environment," Grant said, during a conversation at the Defense News Conference today. "In this era of renewed great power competition, our adversaries will not be operating in singular land, air or sea domains. They will be operating in multi-domain environments to include cyber and space." Operationalizing a multi-domain approach, she said, allows for more effective air-power teaming, for instance. "One of the challenges is to get our partners to look beyond what I call the 'bright and shiny aircraft' to the added necessity to connect and develop a net-centric capability, which will ... make it more effective," she said. To further push the multi-domain approach, Grant said the DSCA team works actively with geographic combatant commands, military departments and the U.S. defense industry to ensure defense sales are more holistic. She also said the agency monitors international competitions to create further opportunities to expand the use of U.S. platforms with allies and partners. "Currently, we're monitoring 48 international competitions with 24 partners," she said. "Of those, 70% are air-power based and primarily rotary wing and fighter jets." Grant also said that DSCA is working to ensure that the exportability of U.S. capabilities is built-in to both programs of record and non-programs of record so that defense partners can have access to the capabilities they need more quickly. "We're doing our best to lean forward with new emerging technologies to ensure we have a determination on release in advance of actual system deployment by the U.S. military forces," she said. While it makes sense that U.S.-developed capabilities would be fielded to the U.S. military first, she said partners have said that more could be done earlier in consideration that they also might want access to those capabilities. "I think this has been one of the complaints of FMS ... we think about the U.S. first, and we don't think about our allies and partners in advance," she said. Now, she said, there's significant effort across the U.S. government and within industry to consider the exportability of U.S. military hardware early on in its development so that it will be easier to share that technology with partners. That way, partners will consider U.S. technology first -- and the compatibility that comes with it -- rather than looking elsewhere. "I think it's ... important to recognize the market is becoming increasingly competitive overall," she said. "Allies and partners don't want to wait to procure the most advanced technology." New Director Grant has been on board as director of the DSCA, an agency with a civilian and military workforce of about 20,000 personnel, for just over four weeks now. As the new director, she said she plans on implementing a "partner culture" within the agency to better serve stakeholders. "This is something that's been important to me in the last couple of ... leadership roles that I've held, this 'partner culture,' and it fits very nicely here in the organization. It's what I value," she said, during an earlier telephonic conference Sept. 9. Grant used the word "partner" as a mnemonic device to spell out the priorities she thinks will enhance the partner culture she hopes will grow within DSCA. "I want the agency to be proactive, in how we do business -- proactive in identifying what our stakeholders need so that we can develop policies and plans to ensure they're successful," she said. The DSCA will also remain accountable to stakeholders, including Congress, she said. "I can tell you my predecessors have done a tremendous job in reforming our processes to streamline how we do business. And I want to build on that success and will hold the organization accountable for achieving the tangible results," Grant said. Agency work will also be conducted with respect, she said. With a diverse array of stakeholders, including the defense industry, foreign partners and agencies within the U.S. government, there are bound to be disagreements on how to proceed with agency work. "What we'll do is navigate our work, leading a diverse stakeholder group, with respect for each other's organizations, equities and responsibilities," she said. "I really believe in order to make progress, we really need to roll up our sleeves and understand each other." As with nearly every government agency, transparency is also a key facet of Grant's partner culture, she said. "I want to make sure our stakeholders understand the context associated with process improvement, policy development or funds management and have the opportunity to contribute and provide feedback," she said. The National Defense Strategy has called for building new partnerships and alliances and strengthening existing ones -- DSCA is a key part of that. But as the Defense Department and the DSCA make greater pushes into areas like space and cyber, Grant said, the DSCA itself will need to grow its network of stakeholders -- that's the 'n' in partner -- to be successful. "The importance of this mission has grown, and it will only continue to grow and expand into new mission areas," she said. "As the opportunities increase, we'll continue to build our network of stakeholders who will contribute to our success." Grant also said that there's significant talent within the 20,000 personnel inside DSCA, and that agency success will require empowering those individuals to work closely with foreign governments and industry counterparts to advance agency efforts. Finally, she said, DSCA's work must always represent the values of the United States and its people. China's Africa Investments Could Benefit All If International Rules Are Obeyed [2020-09-10] WASHINGTON -- Recently, during a closed-discussion facilitated by the African Center for Strategic Studies in Washington, D.C, U.S. defense officials joined African, European and U.S. scholars to discuss China's involvement in the world's second-largest continent. One takeaway was that China's investments and involvement there can be beneficial and welcome -- so long as China plays by established global norms. "The expectation is that China will be in Africa for a long time -- and that's OK," said Chad L. Sbragia, the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for China. But, Sbragia explained, the U.S. and African partners want China to conduct itself fairly. "The expectations are that when the United States or China engages in Africa, it's done so in accordance with the practices that we all hold, including African nations, most dearly," Sbragia said. "That's with transparency and an understanding of meeting international standards." Transparency, Sbragia said, means being open and honest about how and why activities are being conducted and also fully publicizing what's being done. "There's a lot of issues that revolve around debt, loan transfers, investments that are made, monies that are paid out," he said. "Those should all be done in the most illuminated way possible." That straightforward approach, Sbragia said, is something the U.S. brings to the table during its negotiations with partners, both in Africa and elsewhere. "That's part of what I think our greatest contribution is from the United States, is to showcase and help underscore the best practices of the international system," Sbragia said. "We help screen foreign investments, ensure that all those are done with high quality, that they'll support long-term development in support of Africans' interests and don't undermine the sovereignty of those nations or the global system that we are all stakeholders in." Ronald W. Meyers, acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs, added that African nations face an array of challenges, so it should not be surprising that they are seeking to diversify their partnerships. "On the security front, they want partnerships to address local concerns over insecurity from violent extremist organizations (VEOs) and foreign intrusion into sovereign spaces, such as in the maritime space, among other priorities," Meyers said. "These are areas where we share common concerns, already work closely together, and have a vested interest in seeing international rules obeyed." The Department's security cooperation efforts are one way we advance mutual interests. "U.S. Africa Command oversees many of these efforts for the Department under the valuable stewardship of General Stephen Townsend and his team" Meyers noted. The United States offers its partners in Africa quality training and equipment, with an emphasis on support that increases the accountability and resiliency of African defense institutions. U.S. assistance works towards long-term stability -- as our training is often multi-year and requires consistent U.S. investment -- a reflection of the U.S. enduring commitment to our partners, Meyers explained. Meyers stated the U.S. has mutually-beneficial partnerships on the continent today and, in some cases, those relationships date back more than 60 years. "African nations are global security exporters," he said. "They are the biggest contributor to peacekeeping missions in the world. They are trying to do things their way. And they're committing their own personnel to address our shared mutual interests." African nations play an important role in international politics and in the global economy. With a booming youth population, rapidly expanding markets, and occupying the biggest United Nations voting bloc, many experts predict that African voices will only grow louder going forward -- and the U.S. is ready to listen. Meyers said, "We want to work more with African nations on issues relating to global security. We want to know how we can better work together to jointly see stability not just in Africa. We have a lot to learn from each other." With 54 nations on the African continent, there are opportunities to strengthen and grow U.S. security partnerships there, said the acting Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, James H. Anderson, who's also Sbragia and Meyers' boss. "As China makes potential useful contributions in peacekeeping and anti-piracy, it is important that we look closely to understand which contributions truly advance African interests, and which mask harmful intentions," said Anderson. "China has expanded its global military presence as a means of protecting investments and exerting economic leverage over host countries. Notably, China is seeking to build overseas logistics and basing infrastructure beyond the People"s Liberation Army (PLA) base it established in Djibouti in 2017," Anderson elaborated. Both Meyers and Sbragia say that African partners have said they don't want to have to choose between the U.S. and China -- but they have already made a choice about the world they want to be a part of. "You hear this from some countries, not just in Africa, which is, don't make us choose between China or the United States," Sbragia said. "But when they talk about the choices they have already made, it's clear they support the same type of system the U.S. advocates for -- a system built on good governance. We all have a stake in the system the way it is, not in the one that the Chinese are trying to impose upon us." 'Victory Garden' Approach Could Aid AI Effort [2020-09-10] WASHINGTON -- Americans bolstered the war effort during World War II by planting "victory gardens." Every citizen's small contribution to the war effort added up to a lot of support. The same can be done to further the Defense Department's efforts to advance artificial intelligence, said the acting director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. "The first step in doing this involves thinking critically about the work that you do," said Nand Mulchandani yesterday during the opening session at the DOD AI Symposium. "Can you do it more efficiently? Can you rethink it? Could it benefit from automation, analytics or predictive capabilities? Is it 'data-rich?' If so, it might be a perfect candidate to build your own AI victory garden around." Mulchandani said DOD employees can plant "technological seeds" by learning more about AI, defining areas within their own work environment where AI could help solve problems, developing business strategies to implement AI capabilities, organizing and preserving data, starting an AI project, and sharing lessons learned from their own AI efforts with others across the department. "The good news is that you'll have support from the JAIC and the AI community that we're building across the government, industry and academia," Mulchandani said. The JAIC was begun in 2018 to accelerate DOD's adoption and integration of AI. From the start, Mulchandani said, the JAIC was meant to serve as an AI center of excellence and to provide resources, tools and expertise to the department. Today, the JAIC is involved in pathfinder technology projects, coordinating with industry and academia on AI, training and education, AI governance and policy, testing and evaluation, international engagement, and AI ethics implementation. While the mission of the JAIC is broad and far-reaching, Mulchandani said the JAIC alone can't make AI happen across the department. "This is a massive effort and is one that the JAIC embraces because we understand that all of these initiatives will help create the conditions for us to achieve victory with AI," he said. "But we cannot do this alone ... no single organization can tackle the challenges of fielding AI on their own -- it will take our entire community." Space Force Chief: U.S. Doesn't Want War in Space, Must be Prepared for It [2020-09-15] WASHINGTON -- The United States doesn't want to engage in warfare in space, but like in all domains, the U.S. military must be prepared for such a conflict, and that'll take a lot of preparation and change, Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. Raymond, said. He said the U.S. does not want to get into a conflict that begins or extends into space. "We want to deter that from happening. However, if deterrence fails, a war that begins or extends into space will be fought over great distances at tremendous speeds," Raymond said. The chief of the newly-created Space Force spoke during a presentation that was part of the 2020 Air Force Association Air, Space and Cyber Conference, held this year virtually as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. To plan for warfare at the speeds and distances required to operate in space, the Space Force must be lean, agile and fast. The new military service has been working on all of those things since it stood up in December, Raymond said. A big part of the leaning effort, he said, is the reduction of bureaucracy. "Since establishment, we've been in the business of slashing bureaucracy, delegating authority and enhancing accountability at every crossroad," Raymond said. "My opinion: big organizations are slow. We must move at speed to outpace the threats that we face." The general said the Space Force, in an effort to reduce bureaucracy, implemented a large-scale reorganization that involved removing two echelons of command, including a numbered Air Force and an O-6-level command. "We've also reduced the size of our planned staff at the Pentagon," Raymond said. "Back when we started, the Pentagon staff was going to be over 1,000 people. That was the initial plan. We've slashed that by 40%. We're shortening the distance between decision makers and you, the experts, conducting our mission." Also part of eliminating bureaucracy, Raymond said, is a hard look at the agencies that exist now that are involved in acquisition for the space enterprise. He said Congress has identified some 65 different organizations involved in space-related acquisition. The Space Force chief said there is a mandate for change, adding that we must bring unity of effort across the department, reduce duplication of effort, all while slashing costs, and increasing our speed. "If we get this right, we will be the envy of the other services, because we are not tied to business of the past," Raymond said. The Space Force is also proposing a new acquisition system for space, something Raymond said Congress agrees with. "We've already begun implementing that," he said. "We've already delegated the head of contracting authority down from the Pentagon staff to the acquisition experts in the field. We know from experience this kind of delegation speeds up acquisition decisions, and makes us better partners for the industry." Partnership is also key, both inside the Defense Department and outside. Partnerships with the intelligence community, sister services, the total force and space allies are all being looked at for development, Raymond said. As part of partnership development, he said the Space Force established a chief partnership office at the Space and Missile System Center, and that team is working to expand space partnerships with nations such as Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. Right now, he said, Space Force is working with Norway, for instance, to host American payloads on Norwegian space launches. That combined effort, he said, will save the U.S. about $900 million and also put those capabilities into space sooner. The U.S. is also working with the Japanese to put U.S. capabilities into Japanese satellites. "These efforts improve our capabilities, and they strengthen our partnerships between our great nations," he said. Raymond also drew attention to verbiage on a display at the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C. On the floors of both the north and south pavilions are etched the words "Victory on Land, Victory at Sea, Victory in the Air." Now, he said, those three domains are no longer enough to ensure victory. Today's security environment, he said, requires even more of American warfighters. "I am not confident that we can achieve victory or even compete in a modern conflict, without space power," he said. "I am not willing to lose in order to learn. Today the Space Force in answering that call to compete, forging a warfighting service that is always above." Defense Experience, Capabilities Further 'Herculean' Operation Warp Speed Efforts [2020-09-16] WASHINGTON -- Since announced in May the "Operation Warp Speed" program has worked to develop, manufacture and distribute medical countermeasures for COVID-19. Along with the Department of Health and Human Services, the Defense Department is an integral part of that effort, said the DOD's chief of supply and distribution for OWS. "HHS was never manned to be able to simultaneously and as rapidly go through clinical trials, go through the development, go through the manufacturing, and then distribute six separate vaccines in a pandemic environment," said Paul A. Ostrowski. "That is a Herculean task. What we bring is a bandwidth and the enablers to allow that to happen -- not only for vaccines, but also for therapeutics." What capabilities and experience does DOD bring to the OWS effort? It turns out quite a bit -- mostly stemming from the fact that the DOD has decades of experience making and managing large contract purchases with the private sector and also handling the logistics of distributing what it buys globally. At the top of the list, Ostrowski said, the department brings program management and contracting expertise to OWS. That involves not only helping OWS to get contracts awarded, but also to administer those contracts after they are awarded. "Getting exactly what the government has paid for by each one of these particular companies is extremely important," Ostrowski said. "[That] program manager and contracting experience and expertise is critical to our successful mission here at OWS." Logistical support is something else the DOD brings to the table, including the ability to secure supply chains for manufacturers of vaccines, Ostrowski said. "The manufacturing capacity within the United States for vaccines ... did not meet the amount of demand that we're going to get with respect to this COVID pandemic," Ostrowski said. The DOD has assisted in securing supply chains for the vaccine manufacturers, including finding both raw materials and equipment to manufacture the vaccines. Operational planning and information technology experience and expertise is something the department has brought to the table, as well. Many of the vaccines under consideration now, Ostrowski said, will require more than one dosage. That means people getting the vaccine will need to come back more than once to get the complete vaccine regimen. Health care professionals who administer the vaccine will need to track what particular vaccine patients got for the first dose, so that when they come back a second time, they get the correct vaccine. While privately run health care providers maintain their own databases to track such information, those independent systems may not talk to one another -- and that means that if a vaccine recipient goes for a second dose at a different facility, information about his or her first dose might not be available. "What we're in the process of doing is being able to help allow those different databases to talk with one another through a data link that we're developing and testing as we speak," Ostrowski said. When the Defense Department awards a contract to a company, it sometimes puts DOD personnel inside that company to ensure the contract is handled according to the department's specifications and the contract is running smoothly. That's also a capability the DOD is providing to the Operation Warp Speed effort. "Having people in plants, controlling supply chain management, and ensuring that the contracts -- the terms of the contract with each one of these companies -- is being lived up to, that is extremely important, as we ensure that America's taxpayer dollars do not go to waste," Ostrowski said. Also, the department has helped build capacity for the nation's vaccine manufacturing capability, he said. "The production capacity for vaccines in the United States did not sit on the shelf," Ostrowski said. "It's not out there. We had to develop it; we had to build it -- whether it be brick and mortar, whether it be the tooling itself. The role of the Corps of Engineers has been critical in this as we went through the process of getting our manufacturing capacities to where they need to be." Operation Warp Speed is a partnership between the DOD and the HHS. The HHS components involved include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. Technology Proliferation, Influence Ops May Be as Disruptive as COVID-19 [2020-09-16] WASHINGTON -- The COVID-19 pandemic has been globally disruptive in nearly every facet of life. But other things may prove as disruptive in the future, said leaders of the military intelligence community. One advancement that may possibly be as disruptive as COVID-19 is the revolution in information technology that's available to everybody -- not just the U.S. and its allies, Navy Vice Adm. Robert Sharp, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, said during an online forum today with the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association and the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. "It's this revolution in remotely-sensed and geo-located data, which is available to everyone," he said. "It's available to us, but it's also available to our competitors. [Also] the revolution in smart machines and artificial intelligence -- once again, [it's a] great opportunity for us, but it's not only our opportunity. That's the competition space." Another area of concern is something Sharp called "GEOINT assurance." With the growth of open-source geospatial intelligence coming from multiple sources, it becomes less certain that the information can be trusted, he said. "How do you have confidence in the ones and zeros that you're using for making decisions based off of," he asked. Army Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, director of the National Security Agency and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, cited influence operations as the next possible great disruptor. Influence operations, he said, have a very low barrier to entry, enabling just about anybody to engage in them. "We've seen it now in our democratic processes," Nakasone said. "I think we're going to see it in our diplomatic processes, we're going to see it in warfare, and we're going to see it in sowing civil distrust in different countries." Influence operations, he said, are all enabled by the proliferation of inexpensive technology that allows anybody with an agenda to get online. "The great technology that's enabling so much of what we're doing is also that dual-edged sword that malicious cyber actors and others are being able to use to create doubt, or to be able to question authority, or to be able to ... to spread messages that are far from true," he said. "I think influence operations, just in general, will be for us one of the things that we'll be dealing with not just every two or four years, but this is the competitive space that we're going to be in as intelligence agencies and as our nation. 'Tipping Point' Is Here for Nuclear Modernization, Defense Official Says [2020-09-17] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department has long talked about modernization of the nuclear deterrent capability it maintains and operates and has issued warnings about the risks of allowing that deterrent, the nuclear triad, to become too old to effectively perform its mission. Now, Ellen M. Lord, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said the nuclear enterprise has reached a critical juncture beyond which failure to act will have devastating consequences going into the future. "Today, we face a stark reality: the long-standing and repeated warnings about the need to modernize and recapitalize the U.S. nuclear deterrent is no longer a warning about the future," Lord said during testimony today on Capitol Hill before the Senate Armed Services Committee. "The tipping point in recapitalization that we have long tried to avoid is here. And we believe the condition of the nuclear enterprise now poses possibly the greatest risk to deterrence." In a prepared statement to the committee submitted by Lord and Navy Adm. Charles A. Richard, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, both of whom testified, more details about the state of the U.S. nuclear deterrence were spelled out. "Previous and well-intentioned directive policy changes and de-emphasis of our nuclear deterrent resulted in decades of deferred investments in nuclear warheads, delivery systems, platforms, nuclear command, control, and communications and supporting infrastructure," the statement reads. "Although sustainment efforts have allowed us to maintain a viable nuclear triad and to defer modernization investments for many years, continued delays are no longer an option." The statement from both of those defense leaders concludes that nearly all of the systems currently a part of the nuclear deterrent are beyond their original service lives and can no longer be cost-effectively maintained to meet future requirements. Additionally, they said, the nuclear weapons production infrastructure used to develop new weapons dates to the 1950s or earlier. "The majority of this infrastructure is rated as being in no better than fair condition," the statement reads. The department is now engaged in a recapitalization of the nuclear triad, which involves new submarines, such as the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines; new intercontinental ballistic missiles as part of the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program; and new bomber aircraft, such as the B-21 Raider. That effort, Lord said, is something the department will need help with. "DOD has embarked upon the first recapitalization of our triad since the end of the Cold War, and we cannot do it alone," she said. Lord cited partnerships between DOD, the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration as critical to continued work to rebuild the U.S. nuclear deterrence capability. Also a critical part of that partnership, she said, is the Nuclear Weapons Council, an interagency group made up of both the DOD and the NNSC that oversees sustainment and modernization of nuclear weapons and supporting infrastructure. Lord serves as chairwoman of the NWC. "On behalf of the NWC, I strongly urge full support for the NNSA's budget request, as well as successful resolution of the language in various FY21 congressional bills that would prevent the NWC from carrying out its statutorily mandated responsibilities," Lord said. "I want to thank this committee for its long standing bipartisan support to our nuclear deterrent mission and the men and women in uniform who are its backbone." DOD Anticipates Significant Troop Reduction in Afghanistan [2020-09-22] WASHINGTON -- Based on the current conditions in Afghanistan, the Defense Department expects there will be fewer than 5,000 U.S. military service members in that country by the end of November, said David F. Helvey, who is currently performing the duties of assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs. "We've long maintained that our force presence in Afghanistan is conditions-based," said Helvey during testimony today before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, national security subcommittee. "This August, the president [decided] that the conditions of Afghanistan were sufficient to reduce our force presence to between 4,000 and 5,000 by the end of November 2020." At that force level, Helvey said, the U.S. maintains an ability to conduct the core aspects of its existing missions in Afghanistan. One of those missions is to participate in the NATO-led Resolute Support Mission, which is focused on training, advising and assisting the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces. The U.S. also conducts a counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan that works with partners to mitigate terrorist threats there. Right now, there are no orders to reduce the force presence any further, Helvey said, though there is planning to draw down to zero troops in Afghanistan by May 2021. But those plans can't be implemented unless the conditions of an agreement with the Taliban are met, he said. "As [Secretary of State Mike Pompeo] said in Doha, the Taliban must uphold their counterterrorism guarantees to the United States," Helvey said. "We also expect the Taliban to meaningfully participate in Afghan peace negotiations, and to do their part in preventing outside actors from negatively impacting the peace process." In late February of this year, the U.S. and the Taliban signed an agreement that includes, eventually, the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. Since the signing of that agreement, the U.S. has reduced forces to 8,600. Part of that agreement also requires the Taliban to agree to no longer allow its members, or other groups, to use Afghanistan as a location from which to threaten the security of the United States or its allies. Since the signing of that agreement on February 29, Helvey said, no U.S. military personnel have been killed in Afghanistan. "Ultimately, what we want to be able to see in Afghanistan, is an enduring peace," Helvey said. "In that type of environment ... the terrorist organizations, terrorist groups, will not be able to operate, will not be able to plan, will not be present. That's the focus, and we're looking to get the Taliban to adhere to its commitments." Defense Security Cooperation University Hits One-Year Milestone With Great Success [2020-09-25] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Security Cooperation Agency opened the Defense Security Cooperation University in September 2019 as part of an effort to professionalize the SC workforce and to serve as the Department of Defense's Center of Excellence for the SC community. A year later, the DSCU is well on its way to meeting the goals it set when it first opened its doors, DSCU President Cara Abercrombie, the school's first and current president, said. She said despite the obstacles placed in their way by the COVID-19 pandemic, their workforce and university should be proud of what they have achieved together after just a year. Security cooperation involves all the DOD interactions, programs and activities done with foreign security forces and their institutions. This includes exercises, armaments cooperation, information sharing, collaboration, foreign military sales, ministry advising and humanitarian assistance. Across the Defense Department, about 20,000 personnel are involved in facilitating these activities. The DSCU, which has campuses in Arlington, Virginia, and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, was set up to, among other things, provide that workforce with the training they need to excel in their careers, accountability for maintaining standards of ethics and integrity in the work they do, a common body of knowledge based on research and experience, and avenues for continuous intellectual and professional development. Early on, Abercrombie said, goals were set for workforce development. For instance, each of the 20,000 employees in the SC workforce is responsible for attaining at least a basic-level certification in one of five SC areas of concentration. Areas of concentration include SC Case Lifecycle Management; Execution Support Management; Planning, Oversite and Execution Management; SCO Operations and Management; and Acquisition Management. Certification levels include basic, intermediate, advanced. In January, the DSCA set a deadline for employees to complete certification. Abercrombie said 2020 was a "transition year," for meeting that goal, but by January 2021, participation in that certification effort becomes mandatory. To date, 26 new basic- and intermediate-level courses have been developed by DSCU to provide members of the SC community with the knowledge needed for their professional development. Already, more than 25,000 discrete courses have been completed by SC members, over 13,000 personnel are in progress toward certification, over 2,000 personnel have completed their basic-level certification, and over 500 are certified at the highest level required for their position. For SC community members, certification at the most basic level was always going to be virtual, Abercrombie said. But for certification at other levels, and for many other courses the school has available, school leaders expected that students would attend courses in residence at one of its two campuses. Social distancing requirements changed those expectations. "The COVID-19 pandemic required us to adapt to a new reality that has demanded extreme flexibility," Abercrombie said. "The SC workforce has risen to this challenge and excelled." As a result of COVID-19, the school rapidly adjusted expectations and training efforts to accommodate the pandemic and keep SC community members learning. For instance, 20 of the courses the school teaches were rapidly transitioned to virtual experiences as a result of the pandemic. Additionally, the school converted all DSCU executive education courses to be completely online so that SC community members across the globe could attend schooling. At the one-year mark for DSCU, Abercrombie said the school has accomplished a lot -- especially in light of the unexpected burden of COVID-19. But the education of SC community members, she said, must continue unabated. "Though we have accomplished much, there is still much to do. DSCU's first year has been highlighted by standing up the university, initiating the transition year of the SC Workforce Development Program and adjusting to a completely virtual environment," Abercrombie said. "Now we need to focus on the strategic and more difficult goals of advancing SC as a profession and further strengthening our curriculum and knowledge base while continuing to support those within our SC workforce as they move towards mandatory certification next January." COVID-19 Response Sparks Efforts to Strengthen Supply Chain [2020-09-29] WASHINGTON -- The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the fragility of the Defense Department's supply chain. As a result, the department is taking a variety of steps to strengthen that supply chain, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment said. "One of our first actions was to ensure that the defense industrial base was essential and designated as critical infrastructure," Ellen M. Lord said today in an online discussion during the ComDef 2020 conference, a virtual conference providing insights and perspectives on issues facing the international defense communities. "We quickly took measures to increase communication and gain greater insight into potential delivery and production challenges." In March, Lord stood up the Joint Acquisition Task Force, or JATF, to work with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help those agencies get access to the department's robust acquisition capability. "JATF's goals included bringing analytic, program management and contracting expertise from the services and DOD agencies to quickly respond to demand from FEMA and HHS," Lord said. The department also used about $215 million of funding through the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act, to increase capacity and throughput of the domestic healthcare supply chain, Lord said, as part of an effort to re-shore critical healthcare manufacturing capability. Over the last six months, she said, the department has also invested about $640 million in industrial base expansion to support increased capacity for production of materials related to COVID-19 prevention, detection and treatment. To help businesses within the defense industrial base better cope with COVID-19, the office for Defense Pricing and Contracting issued a memorandum in March that encourages telework for contractors, even if the initial contract didn't specify that as a possibility, Lord said. To further strengthen the DIB during COVID-19, Lord said the department raised progress payments from 80% to 90% for large businesses, and from 90% to 95% for small companies. "In August, DPC also issued a class deviation providing policy and guidance to contracting officers for reviewing and processing contractor requests for reimbursement of paid leave costs under the authority of Section 3610 of the CARES Act," she said. The industrial policy team within A&S also began hosting daily calls with industry and industry association leaders to discuss their most pressing needs during COVID-19, and to improve their knowledge of how DOD could help. "While the calls are no longer held as frequently, they have reached 15 industry associations, which collectively represent 3 million companies around the world," Lord said. "They are an important conduit of information, both to and from the private sector." The COVID-19 pandemic, along with other government reports have highlighted the need to re-shore critical industries related to defense, including microelectronics, rare earth minerals and unmanned aerial systems. In particular, Lord said, the U.S. currently manufactures just 12% of microelectronics, and just 3% of packaging and testing of those electronics happens in the U.S. At the same time, she said, more than half the intellectual property associated with microelectronics is generated inside the U.S. Lord said that the reliance on off-shore semiconductor manufacturing, packaging and testing strains the department's ability to acquire and sustain the potent microelectronic components that are embedded in defense systems. "Experts within A&S and throughout the DOD are working to develop a microelectronics strategy to ensure currently-fielded and future DOD systems have secure components," Lord said. "This strategy requires novel business concepts, such as public-private partnerships, allowing the DOD to leverage commercial market advancements and demand in order to reassure microelectronics production and testing." New Policy Makes U.S. More Competitive Partner [2020-09-30] WASHINGTON -- A new "term of sale" opens the doors to more nations that want to approach the United States about foreign military sales, and that makes the U.S. more competitive in seeking partnerships, the director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said. Just last year, DSCA created the "risk assessed payment schedule," or RAPS, term of sale, which offers more nations better opportunities to acquire U.S. military hardware through foreign military sales, Heidi H. Grant said today in an online discussion during the ComDef 2020 conference, a virtual conference providing insights and perspectives on issues facing the international defense communities. "[This is for] countries that are on the cusp of what people are familiar with, dependable undertaking," Grant said. "This is a new financial opportunity, so we can be more competitive ... and we've approved already three countries for this RAPS opportunity. One of them has actually acted on it. And we won a competition out there, I would say, because of this financial opportunity." Some nations interested in FMS may qualify as "dependable undertaking," which means those countries have been evaluated as most likely to be able to meet financial obligations made as part of their FMS request. Nations not able to meet qualifications for dependable undertaking, or that are only on the cusp of meeting those requirements, have, in the past, been able to engage in FMS using "cash with acceptance," which requires they pay in full for their FMS purchase at the time the sale is approved. For nations that are approved for the risk assessed payment schedule, it isn't necessary to pay in full before delivery of FMS materiel. Instead, those nations would agree to alternative payment schedules, including paying a deposit that amounts to 100% of the cost of terminating their agreement. Grant took the helm at DSCA in August and brings nearly 30 years of federal experience to the job, with about 20 years in security cooperation. She said that while the agency is still calculating the FMS "success stories" for fiscal year 2020, in FY 2019, DSCA had oversight of 14,700 FMS cases, executed $55.4 billion in arms sales, and worked with over 160 countries. But she pointed out that weapons sales are not the only thing DSCA does. "Foreign military sales often seems to be the focus when people talk about DSCA -- that's what we're most well-known for," she said. "But we provide much more than just defense equipment to our allies and partners. Security cooperation includes international military education and training, advising on defense doctrine, rule of law, human rights, civilian harm mitigation, and other institutional capacity-building programs." As the new director of DSCA, Grant said her focus will be on expanding opportunities for which the defense industry could compete; identifying barriers to progress and developing plans to remove those barriers; and fostering innovation across the security cooperation enterprise. DOD Set for Third Military Spouses Hiring Fair [2020-09-30] WASHINGTON -- The COVID-19 pandemic won't put a crimp on the next Military Spouse Employment Partnership Virtual Hiring Event, said the director of military community support programs within the Defense Department. A related event held in April, the Virtual Military Spouse Symposium, saw a 125% increase in attendance over the previous year, said Lee Kelley. "We really saw that participation rate go up, not down." If that's any indication, the next virtual hiring event should be an even greater success than the one held earlier this year. The event, scheduled for Oct. 14, is sponsored by Military OneSource's Spouse Education and Career Opportunities Program and the Military Spouse Employment Partnership. Already, more than 100 of the 450 corporate, nonprofit and federal organizations within the partnership have signed up to participate, said Kelley. Those partners will be available online during the hiring event to interview military spouses for potential jobs. "The one thing that all of these partners have in common is that they're committed to recruiting, hiring, promoting and retaining military spouses," said Kelley. Because the event is virtual, military spouses from all over the world will be able to attend. Spouses from more than a dozen countries are expected to participate. And employers aren't just looking for new employees to work in the U.S., said Kelley. "We have companies signed on to the partnership who may have their headquarters in the states, but who have positions [to fill] around the globe," she said. The MSEP's virtual hiring event is about more than just helping military families augment their finances with a second income, Kelley said. The program also makes it possible for spouses to bring valuable skills and much-needed talent to the private sector, government and nonprofit agencies. "Military spouses deserve to have recognition of their skill sets and the value that they bring to the table in the workplace," she said. "These events are important because we can say confidently that these are employers who recognize the value of military spouses and who recognize the vast breadth of expertise across industry sectors that spouses have." The Military Spouse Employment Partnership Virtual Hiring Event begins at 11 a.m. EDT, Oct. 14. Those interested in participating should go to https://myseco.militaryonesource.mil to sign up. Kelley said she also encourages military spouses who wish to participate to first call Military One Source at 1-800-342-9647 and get in touch with a career coach there to discuss their employment goals. "Touch base with one of our certified, master's-level career coaches in advance of the hiring fair to make sure your resume is polished and to make sure your skill sets are represented in the best possible light," she said, adding that would-be hiring fair attendees can also go over interview skills that might be helpful. "My hope would be that every spouse who attends the hiring fair and is ready for employment gets an opportunity in their desired career fields for an interview," she said. Agency Awards Contracts for Tracking Layer of National Defense Space Architecture [2020-10-05] WASHINGTON -- The Space Development Agency announced today that two companies won bids to build out Tranche 0 of the tracking layer for the National Defense Space Architecture. Together, those contracts amount to more than $342 million. Both L3Harris Technologies, Inc., of Melbourne, Florida, and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., of Hawthorne, California, also known as SpaceX, were successful in their bids to participate in the NDSA. Each company is expected to build four overhead persistent infrared imaging, or OPIR, satellites for the tracking layer of the NDSA. Those satellites should be ready by the end of fiscal year 2022. "The satellites will be able to provide missile tracking data for hypersonic glide vehicles and the next generation of advanced missile threats," said Derek Tournear, the director of the Space Development Agency. Tournear said both L3Harris and SpaceX will build satellites of their own design, but that meet criteria set by the SDA. They must all be able to do the missile tracking mission, and then also be able to communicate directly with transport layer satellites via laser communications link. This most recent contract award is the second for development of the NDSA, Tournear said. About a month ago, he said, contracts were awarded for transport layer satellites. Those contracts went to Lockheed Martin and York Space Systems. Each of these companies will build ten satellites. The contracts for both the tracking and transport layers are part of Tranche 0 of the NDSA. Tranche 0, he said, comprises 28 SDA satellites: 20 transport satellites and 8 tracking layer satellites. Tournear said there will be a separate solicitation to launch those 28 satellites. "We call it 'tracking' because it's missile tracking -- so it provides detection, tracking and fire control formation for hypersonic glide vehicles, ballistic missiles ... any of those kinds of threats," Tournear said. When tracking layer satellites detect a threat, such as a ballistic missile, they send that information to satellites in the transport layer. "The transport satellites are the backbone of the National Defense Space Architecture," Tournear said. "They take data from multiple tracking systems, fuse those, and are able to calculate a fire control solution, and then the transport satellites will be able to send those data down directly to a weapons platform via a tactical data link, or some other means." The development of the NDSA is based on two pillars: proliferation and spiral development. Ultimately, Tournear said, there will be hundreds of satellites that make up the NDSA. "With Tranche 0 in 2022, we will provide enough capability to where people can start to experiment with what those data could do, and figure out how they could put that into their operational plans for battle," Tournear said. Tranche 1, due in 2024, will include a couple hundred satellites in the transport layer, and a few dozen in the tracking layer. With Tranche 2, in 2026, the SDA would continue to build out the system as needed. By then, he said, the SDA would have global coverage, ensuring that the capabilities provided by the NDSA could be available to warfighters anywhere in the world. "Every two years thereafter, we would continually spiral out and proliferate more satellites with new capabilities and, in essence, retire satellites with older capabilities as we develop new tranches," he said. Tournear said that the NDSA is certainly based in space, its focus is mostly back on Earth -- in support of service members conducting operations on land, at sea and in the air. "Our architecture is entirely warfighter-focused for the terrestrial battlefield," Tournear said. "Our goal is to be able to provide real-time targeting data for targets, for time-sensitive targets and for missiles, so that the terrestrial warfighter can utilize space to be able to affect their mission in real time. We're focused on making sure that we can provide capabilities from space." DOD Makes Progress Implementing Women, Peace, Security Act [2020-10-06] WASHINGTON -- Back in October 2017, the U.S. Congress passed -- and the president signed -- legislation that identified the active participation of women as crucial to maintaining peace and security around the globe. "The meaningful participation of women in conflict prevention and conflict resolution processes helps to promote more inclusive and democratic societies and is critical to the long-term stability of countries and regions," reads the "Women, Peace, and Security Act of 2017," or WPS, which was signed into law on Oct. 6 of that year. Lawmakers and the president even agreed U.S. policy should not just identify women as being critical to conflict resolution and the preservation of peace, but should also promote their participation. "It shall be the policy of the United States to promote the meaningful participation of women in all aspects of overseas conflict prevention, management, and resolution, and post-conflict relief and recovery efforts, reinforced through diplomatic efforts and programs," the law continues. The law specifically directs the Defense Department to ensure, among other things, training for personnel in conflict prevention, peace processes, mitigation, resolution and security initiatives that address the importance of participation by women, as well as strategies and best practices for ensuring meaningful participation by women. Stephanie Hammond, the acting deputy assistant secretary for stability and humanitarian affairs, said the department is thoroughly on board with the intent of the law and is on track with implementing its requirements. "DOD very forcefully supports the whole-of-government implementation of the WPS Act and strategy," Hammond said during a virtual presentation today at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. "The United States faces an increasingly complex global security environment ... the United States and our partners must be better prepared to meet these security challenges, which means we cannot afford to overlook half the population." In June, she said, the department launched DOD's strategic framework and plan for implementing the Women, Peace, and Security Act. "In recognition of the relationship between our own ability to implement the intent of the WPS mandate abroad and how we organize, train and equip our own forces, our plan acknowledged the need for the department to model and employ the WPS principles it advises other partner nations to uphold," she said. In implementing the plan, she said, the department has a network of WPS advisors and subject matter experts who advise and train senior leaders, commanders and staff on how to integrate WPS principles into policies, plans, operations and partner-nation engagements. "To date, we have engaged with more than 50 partner nations to demonstrate the value of women's meaningful participation to national security and to share best practices on the recruitment, employment, development, retention and promotion of women in military forces," she said. The department has also developed a number of formal training programs as part of its WPS implementation efforts, Hammond said. These training programs are aimed at WPS advisors, but development is also underway on training for senior defense leaders and augmenting existing training programs -- such as the defensewide training on combating human trafficking -- with relevant WPS material. Hammond also said the department is working with the Defense Security Cooperation University to put WPS material into that school's curriculum. Plans for the future, she said, involve more closely integrating WPS concepts not just into department policies, plans, doctrine, training and education, but also into the department's security cooperation, guidance, training and activities with partner nations. "We've made a tremendous amount of progress on WPS implementation in these past few years, and the department has an opportunity and the momentum and capacity right now to carry this work much further," Hammond said. DOD Kicks Off World’s Largest Dual-Use 5G Testing Effort [2020-10-09] WASHINGTON -- Defense Department officials announced yesterday the awarding of $600 million in contracts to 15 prime contractors to perform testing and evaluation of 5G technologies at five military installations across the United States, said the acting undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. "5G networks -- and the technologies that will be built upon them -- are an integral component of the National Defense Strategy," said Michael Kratsios, during a teleconference from the Pentagon. "We at the DOD are committed to the advancement of this critical emerging technology to improve the lethality and modernization of our force." Five installations, including Hill Air Force Base, Utah; Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington; Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, Georgia; Naval Base San Diego; and Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, will serve as locations for the application and evaluation of a variety of 5G technologies. The effort -- Tranche 1 of the department's larger 5G initiative -- will accelerate adoption of 5G technology, enhance the effectiveness and lethality of U.S. combat forces, and further the development and use of common 5G standards to ensure interoperability with military partners and allies. Kratsios also said the department's efforts in 5G will benefit participating industry partners, as well, because operating on U.S. military installations allows industry to move faster in their own experimentation and testing than what would normally be possible. "Outside of the department, in order for private sector companies to test the capabilities and functionality of 5G communications, they face an onerous process -- negotiating agreements with state and local officials, attaining pole permits, funding the construction of antennas, and the list goes on," Kratsios said. "At the DOD, we already have the personnel, operational capacity, facilities, scale and regulatory green light to get the job done." At Joint Base Lewis-McChord, four vendors will work to build a 5G-enabled test bed to enable augmented reality and virtual reality training. The effort will enhance mission planning and distributed training. To enhance naval logistic operations, four industry partners will develop a 5G-enabled "smart warehousing" capability at Naval Base San Diego. The project there is focused on transshipment between shore facilities and naval units and includes using 5G to improve the identification, recording, organization, storage, retrieval and transportation of materiel and supplies. At Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, four vendors will be focused on warehousing capabilities, similar to what's happening in San Diego; however, the focus in Georgia will be on the storage and maintenance of Marine Corps vehicles. Nellis AFB will serve as a test bed for the use of 5G technology to enhance operational and tactical command and control applications and services. There, a 5G network will be employed to disaggregate and mobilize existing C2 architectures in a combat employment scenario. Finally, at Hill AFB, six industry partners will work to develop better ways to allow Air Force radar systems to share spectrum with 5G cellular services. "We look forward to great progress to come from these test sites in the months and years ahead," Kratsios said. "Nations that master advanced communication technologies will enjoy long-term economic and military advantages." Work on the test bed sites will last approximately three years, with the sites expected to be set up within the first year. Full-scale experimentation will happen by year two. Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Hill AFB, Naval Base San Diego and Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany were named as Tranche 1 test beds for 5G capabilities in October 2019. The requests for proposals from interested industry partners went out earlier this year. In May, Nellis AFB was named as an additional Tranche 1 test bed. The five Tranche 1 test sites were selected for their ability to provide streamlined access to site spectrum bands, mature fiber and wireless infrastructure, access to key facilities, support for new or improved infrastructure requirements, and the ability to conduct controlled experimentation with dynamic spectrum sharing. In June, the department also announced seven new locations to serve as Tranche 2 test beds for additional 5G capability testing. The Tranche 2 locations include Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia; Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii; Joint Base San Antonio; the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California; Fort Hood, Texas; Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California; and Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma. Dr. Joseph B. Evans, the principal director for 5G in the office of the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, expects the first solicitations to industry partners at Navy and Marine Corps bases in Tranche 2 to happen this month. Solicitations for the involved Army and Air Force installations should be ongoing through December. For the Tranche 1 locations, prime contractors include AT&T, Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Ericsson, Federated Wireless, GBL System Corp., General Dynamics Mission Systems, Inc., GE Research, Key Bridge Wireless LLC, KPMG LLP, Nokia, Oceus Networks, Scientific Research Corporation, Shared Spectrum Company and Vectrus Mission Solutions Corporation. "These sandboxing activities at military bases harness the department's unique authorities to pursue bold innovations in game-changing technologies," Kratsios said. "By increasing our coordination among partners in the services, industry and academia and by renewing our commitment to fundamental research and development, we will preserve our nation's technological edge and the innovative genius that has long been the source of American strength and leadership." DOD's COVID-19 Response Illustrates Commitment to Families, People [2020-10-09] WASHINGTON -- Priorities within the 2018 National Defense Strategy include lethality, partnerships and reform. After assuming office in August 2019, Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper added his own fourth priority: taking care of people. While the impact of COVID-19 has been an unexpected challenge to implementing the NDS, it hasn't stopped the department from prioritizing its people and families, Esper said. "These men and women serve our great nation every day, bearing the burden of long deployments, short-notice permanent change of station moves, and many other challenges," Esper said today during a recorded address to participants of the 2020 Virtual Military Family Caucus Summit. "We, in turn, must do our utmost to improve their quality of life and give them the support they need -- and so rightfully deserve. This is especially true during the global pandemic." During the pandemic, Esper said, the department has especially prioritized the protection of service members, families and Defense Department civilians. When the pandemic began, he said, the department initially suspended international travel as a way to prevent the spread of the virus. Later, that suspension transitioned into a conditions-based, phased approach to allow units and personnel to move as needed. The department also gave installation commanders the authority to deal with COVID-19 restrictions as they saw fit, to ensure the best balance between health protection and mission readiness, he said. Across the force, and to ensure the needs of families were met, he said, commissaries and other support facilities were deemed "mission essential" to ensure they could stay open. Military pharmacies also offered curbside prescription pickup to ensure service members and families could continue to get important medications. While DOD civilian employees are already authorized to telework, that wasn't the case for military personnel. The department addressed that as well. "The department expanded telework opportunities for active duty and reserve component members to mitigate risks associated with the virus," he said. To protect military children, he said, the department is also working to provide safe learning environments for dependent children returning to school. This also includes virtual learning opportunities. Not everything the Defense Department is doing for its people and families involves COVID-19, however. "The NDS recognizes the importance of recruiting, developing and retaining high-quality service members for our warfighting success," Esper said. "To do so, we will continue to advocate for robust pay, better benefits packages and stronger support for their families." In 2020, for example, military basic pay increased by 3.1 percent, he said. That's the largest pay raise in more than a decade. To make childcare easier for uniformed personnel and their spouses, Esper said that in February he directed a change in departmental policy to give service members priority access to childcare. During the coronavirus pandemic, he said, the department has kept a majority of child development programs open to better serve mission-essential personnel. The employment of military spouses is also a big issue for military families -- and the department continues to make progress in helping spouses find employment, he added. "The department has also placed special importance on the employment and licensure of our spouses," he said. "Many of you know well the difficulty of sustaining civilian careers, particularly when faced with moves every two to three years." Through the Military Spouse Employment Partnership program, nearly 175,000 spouses have been hired over the past nine years, according to a DOD press release dated August 27. And because many military spouses are employed in jobs that require state licensing, the department has worked to help make it easier for military spouses to work after making a permanent change of station to a new state, said Matthew P. Donovan, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, who also spoke at the summit. "We're working very hard on military spouse licensing laws in between states ... and we've made some good progress, even to the point where that could become criteria for making basing decisions in the future," Donovan said. "So, if we were fielding a new squadron of airplanes, say, and we're trying to decide where to put them, that would be a scored basing criteria -- the spouse licensing." Donovan also said the department is working on another issue related to military spouses -- drivers licenses. While service members can keep their home state license when they make a permanent change of station, the same is not always true for their spouses. "Some states don't recognize a spouse and their driver's license and force them to get a new driver's license at a new location within a certain period of time," Donovan said. "Our Defense State Liaison Office works hard on all these issues." On the medical front, Donovan said, the department has made it easier for military families to get access to care through the use of telemedicine. "We have expanded telehealth greatly during the pandemic to accommodate folks ... including tele-mental health," he said. "We've actually waived the co-pay requirements ... to make it easier for folks to do that, and also incentivize folks. We understand that during these pandemic conditions that some folks are leery of going ... physically into a hospital or to a clinic to be seen. So we want to make sure that we provide every avenue we can." Within the Exceptional Family Member Program, Donovan said, the department is looking to smooth the transition for family members as they move between installations due to permanent changes of station. When that happens, sometimes there are hiccups, he said, as families move from one provider to the next. "Some of the challenges that we see are when people move from one location to another, they end taking a long time for referral medical appointments for their special needs family members," Donovan said. Now, he said, the department is making changes to TRICARE so that when families move between TRICARE regions, their referrals will follow them. The implementation of that, he said, will happen over the next couple of months. In addition to that, he said, the department is also working to ensure there will be a "warm handoff" between EFMP case workers as military families change stations. That means case workers from the losing location will contact the case worker at the gaining location to make them aware of the incoming family. "The secretary and the entire Department of Defense have an unwavering commitment to taking care of our service members and their families," Donovan said. "In personnel and readiness, we work tirelessly to lead the way in this effort and meet with the secretary weekly to update him on our progress. We understand how much our service members and their families rely on the resources we provide. So this is a no-fail mission for us." People, Policy, Performance Readiness Mean U.S. Prepared to Fight [2020-10-15] WASHINGTON -- Can the U.S. fight tonight if called upon? Is the U.S. military ready to fight if a conflict arises? The Defense Secretary says he thinks so. "Today, given our efforts over the past few years, I am fully confident the answer to that question is a resounding yes," Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper, said, while speaking today with the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. Lethality and readiness for conflict is just one of three pillars of the National Defense Strategy. The other two include: partnerships strengthening alliances and attracting new partners; and reform the department for greater performance and affordability. When he took office in August 2019, Esper added a fourth priority, which is taking care of service members and their families. As a goal for the Defense Department, restoring readiness in the U.S. military has focused on policy, people and performance, Esper said. Policy changes to enhance readiness have involved both implementation of "dynamic force employment," he said, as well as increasing the number of highly-ready immediate response forces and follow-on contingency response force units. "These policy shifts -- which constitute another one of our top ten NDS objectives -- have enabled us to think and act globally and with speed, unencumbered by limitations within individual geographic combatant commands," he said. "This construct has also allowed us to be much more confident in the joint force's preparedness, and in directing readiness levels from the services, while also creating predictability and efficiency within our programming and budgeting system." One example of how policy change has enhanced readiness, Esper said, was evident in December. When Pentagon officials learned of protests outside the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and later learned of a possible embassy breach, U.S. forces were ready to respond. "This triggered the requirement to deploy an immediate response force, which was successfully accomplished within 19 hours of the incident," he said. "Over the next three days, an entire infantry brigade combat team consisting of more than 3,000 soldiers and equipment was deployed halfway around the world to secure American lives and property in Iraq." Individuals must also be ready to fight tonight, Esper said. The department has pursued several initiatives to ensure its people are prepared for great power competition. When it comes to training those people, he said, he has directed the National Defense University to reorient its curriculum onto China, in much the same way the curriculum had been focused on the Soviet Union during the Cold War. "I also tasked the military services to make the People's Liberation Army the pacing threat in our professional schools, programs and training," he said. It's not just enough that the department has people available, Esper said. Those service members must be ready to go to combat. So while the department has added some 30,000 personnel to the ranks over the last 4 years, he said, there has also been a greater push on the military services to ensure those people are actually ready to deploy at a moment's notice. "This was the result of close, senior-level and senior leader attention to needed reforms such as quickly resolving medical conditions, enabling service members to get back to a ready status sooner," he said. Esper said the department has been able to get the number of non-deployable service members down below its goal of 5%, which he said returned tens of thousands of personnel to deployable status ahead of schedule. "For example, over the last few years, the army's non-deployable population has decreased well over 50 percent, meaning many more soldiers are available for a potential, high-end fight if called upon to go," he said. Readiness also means that both equipment and people are performing well, Esper said. That includes proper maintenance and sustainment of equipment, as well as high-end training of personnel. As an example, Esper cited the Navy's efforts with the F/A-18 Hornet aircraft. There, he said, the mission-capable rate has increased from 55% to 80%, as of last year. He said the Navy got rid of older Hornet aircraft and used repairable parts for spares. As an example of enhancements to training, he said, the Air Force migrated to a common aircraft simulator platform, replacing stand-alone devices that trained pilots for specific airframes. "The department's vision for readiness is one in which our people are focused on great power competition from day one, and trained to deter and prevail in the high-end fight, while able to perform across the full spectrum of combat operations," Esper said. "It is a vision in which we have more planes in the air, more ships at sea, more units prepared to go into combat at a moment's notice, more cyberwarriors online and more space assets ready to defend the high ground." DOD, HHS Name Partners to Administer COVID-19 Vaccines in Long-Term Care Facilities [2020-10-17] WASHINGTON -- As part of the Operation Warp Speed effort -- a partnership between the Defense Department and the Department of Health and Human Services -- long-term care facilities across the U.S. will be able to sign up to have one of two major U.S. pharmacy companies come to their facilities and administer COVID-19 vaccines to residents at no charge. "This is very consistent with our overarching objective, which is to protect the most vulnerable Americans from COVID[-19]," Paul Mango, the deputy chief of staff for policy at HHS, said during a teleconference on Friday. "This relationship is principally about getting vaccines quickly and effectively into all of our nursing homes and assisted living facilities and senior care locations." On Friday, OWS named Walgreens and CVS as nationwide partners in the effort. Long-term care facilities will be able to sign up to have either CVS or Walgreens come to their locations to administer COVID-19 vaccinations to residents and staff. The program is free of charge to facilities, and is opt-in only. "We are not imposing the solution on any nursing home," Mango said. "This is voluntary, they have to opt in. This is an adjunct to what other solutions may be, but this will be something that will be available to every nursing home and senior living facility in the country." Army Maj. Gen. Christopher J. Sharpsten, the director of supply and distribution for OWS, said that to ensure vaccinations are as easy as possible, OWS has been working to ease any logistical burdens for vaccine administration. "In addition to placing advanced purchase orders with vaccine manufacturers, and coordinating for government-funded distribution, the U.S. government is also providing ancillary kits to the sites of administration," Sharpsten said. Those kits include things such as needles, syringes, alcohol prep pads, surgical masks, face shields and vaccination cards, he said. "Through our CDC colleagues, we're coordinating the distribution of vaccines and ancillary kits so that they're synchronized in time and space so that they arrive at the site of administration together," he said. Since it stood up in April, OWS has worked with private industry and other federal agencies to put everything in place to get COVID-19 vaccines administered to as many Americans as possible, as soon as a vaccine becomes available. Choosing CVS and Walgreens as partners to administer vaccines, when one becomes available, in long-term care facilities is part of the OWS effort. "Within 24 to 48 hours of the time an [emergency use authorization] is authorized, we expect to be putting needles in people's arms," Mango said. "All of this is a pre-staging for what will be a rapid deployment of vaccines. This is again the pledge that we have made to the American people, and we intend to deliver on that pledge." Operation Warp Speed is a partnership between the Defense Department and HHS. Specific HHS components involved include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. Families, People Have Been Priority Since Start of COVID-19 [2020-10-21] WASHINGTON -- As early as January, Defense Department officials were aware of the possibility of a medical crisis due to the coronavirus, and began then to issue guidance to be ready, Matthew P. Donovan, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness said. "After consulting with Secretary [Mark T. Esper], by the end of January, I issued the department's first force health protection guidance addressing COVID-19 to protect our people," he said, speaking today during a virtual discussion with the Blue Star Families and the Association of Defense Communities. Since that time the department has issued a total of 13 force health protection supplements to address issues impacting service members and their families. Along with maintaining the national security mission and supporting the whole-of-nation response to COVID-19, taking care of military personnel and their families have been a top priority for the department since the beginning of the pandemic, Donovan told families at the event. He said in the face of the uncertainty the pandemic has brought, Defense Department policies that have empowered installation commanders with the authorities needed to make the best decisions for their commands based on local conditions. "These adjustments help people impacted by travel restrictions, extended expiration dates of military and dependent ID cards and allowed service members to carry over up to 120 days of accrued leave into fiscal year 2023," he said. To help military personnel and their families, the department also declared commissaries and other facilities "mission essential" during the pandemic to ensure they could stay open, Donovan said. For medical care, he said, the Defense Health Agency and TRICARE expanded and incentivized telehealth services to ensure beneficiaries were better able to receive necessary care, he said. "[We also] extended licensed providers greater flexibility to provide health care services in other states and waived co-pays and cost shares for in-network telehealth services," Donovan said. To better support families during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to keep them abreast of support options, Donovan said, the department increased military community and family policy efforts. "We launched a section on our Military OneSource website specifically dedicated to COVID-19, to ensure our military community received the latest and most accurate information," he said. "Just this month, we launched the My Military OneSource mobile application, which is available for download on smartphones and tablets to provide easier access to information, support and referrals." Within military-operated schools across the department, he said, the Department of Defense Education Activity, or DODEA, early on responded to the transition of over 70,000 students and 14,000 faculty members to remote education environments. As part of that effort, he said, they also issued around 8,000 laptop computers to students and set up 250 internet hotspots to connect students to educational opportunities. As part of the greater, whole-of-nation response to COVID-19, the military health system has also played a part in trying to stop the spread of the pandemic, he said. "Our military health system also quickly responded by making significant investments to accelerate the research and development of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics," Donovan said. Part of that is the Defense Department's partnership with the Department of Health and Human Services as part of Operation Warp Speed. "All of us at the Department of Defense hold an unwavering commitment to caring for our warfighters and their families," Donovan said. "In personnel and readiness, we understand how much our people rely on the resources we provide. This is a no-fail mission for us." Army Financial Management Office Partners With DOD for AI Solutions [2020-10-23] WASHINGTON -- The Army has multiple enterprise financial management IT systems, some decades old, that account for the majority of the service's financial, acquisition, and logistic transactions. These systems communicate transactions in a variety of ways through a complex architecture, but that communication is far from perfect. When a financial system communicates inconsistent or no data to another system, it creates a problem that requires human intervention. "One of our consistent issues within Army financial management is caused by our large portfolio of legacy systems executing hundreds of thousands of transactions per week with one another,'' said Jonathan Moak, who serves as Army's principal deputy assistant secretary for financial management and comptroller within the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army, Financial Management and Comptroller (ASA (FM&C)). ''Incorrect information is often generated or reflected in a system during these constant transactions, which can create the issue called an unmatched transaction.'' The Army experienced somewhere between two and three million of these unmatched transactions (UMTs) in the 2019 fiscal year, driven by its multiple enterprise system, each built with different requirements. These UMTs, all of which need correcting, have included inaccurate data of obligations for financial payments and issues with the mismatching fields between a financial and logistics supply system. "It's a big problem...with a total value of several billion dollars,'' said Moak. ''These mismatches lead to a general lack of accountability, funds control, and have a negative impact on buying power -- all of which are critical to auditability." Before the Army can be deemed auditable, a majority of these UMTs must be resolved. Resolving just one UMT is a labor intensive process that can take multiple hours. Since there are currently millions of UMTs that need resolving, the problem cannot be solved by manual labor alone. The Army is building the requirements to field a core enterprise system where UMTs are not created in the first place. In the interim, Moak said that a team led by Chase Levinson in ASA (FM&C) has implemented robotic process automation, or RPA, to help resolve UMTs as they occur. RPA is an automation tool where RPA ''bots'' follow the strict business rules given to them by developers. "RPA relies on conditional statements that say if you see this, then do this, which requires a well-defined process with very clear rules to fix a UMT,'' said Levinson. However, Levinson said that some UMTs do not always have a clear path to resolution, which means that when the RPA bot can't resolve the UMT, humans still have to fix them manually. According to Moak, continuing this process with UMTs is not an optimal use of manpower, which can be redirected to higher-level financial management operations and analysis by implementing a more effective solution. ''Our priority is to give the right tools to our workforce to accomplish the mission at the greatest level of efficiency,'' said Moak. Artificial Intelligence To further add to its capabilities to solve the UMT problem within its financial management enterprise, the Army turned to the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center and the Defense Innovation Unit. While the Army was already using robotic process automation as a partial solution, a new solution, driven by artificial intelligence, could be even better. A well-trained AI-driven solution would better be able to deal with the variety of nuances that crop up due to the large number of financial systems the Army uses and the wide variety of transactions that take place. "The Army came to us with this issue, saying that they had tried to do some initial modeling to automatically resolve these errors without human intervention, but hadn't been successful" said Rachael Martin, Mission Chief for Business Process Transformation at the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. Martin said the Army wanted to know if there was anything JAIC could do to help them not only build out a capability to help resolve problems with UMTs, but also have the capacity to do a better job in the future building predictive models and unburden human analysts from unnecessary work. Martin said JAIC worked with the Defense Innovation Unit to identify existing best practices in the industry that might help the Army fix the problem with UMTs. She also said that at the same time, the Comptroller within the Office of the Secretary of Defense became interested in the effort, as OSD had problems similar to those of the Army. "We were able to leverage the resources we allocated to support the Army to bring in a similar use case from Comptroller, and do some really innovative industry competition," Martin said. "We awarded contracts to two different companies with different approaches to building a UMT model so that we could test both and find the most promising solution.'' It was DIU that put out a request for industry solutions. The DIU, with headquarters in Silicon Valley, maintains relationships with best-in-breed vendors focused on solving similar problems for commercial customers from across the country and can quickly bring the best of what's happening in the commercial world to the Defense Department. "When DIU put out requests for solution briefs, we received over 50 from commercial AI companies. And from there, they were down-selected through a couple of different rounds, and used demonstrations to help us down-select and interview them," said Eric Dorsey, the government contractor who is the project manager on the DIU team. "It finally came down to two companies to award what's called prototype contracts." Now, each of those companies has been assigned to work with either the Army or the OSD comptroller to find an AI-driven solution to solve problems like the Army has with UMTs, Dorsey said. The two companies will have about six months to accomplish their work, Dorsey added. "Using machine logic, which is more sophisticated than RPA -- the goal is to solve up to 70% of these UMTs automatically and correct them," Dorsey said. "The result is we could save millions of labor hours for the Army and the DOD each year." After six months of work, around mid-March 2021, both companies will have completed their work with the Army and the OSD comptroller and will have working prototypes. The Army and comptroller will then go into field trials and decide, ultimately, if they want to go into production with the product, Dorsey said. "We're hoping to take lessons learned with these efforts and scale to the other branches of the military -- Navy, Air Force, Marines -- to also help them solve some of their unmatched transaction problems in their accounting system," he said. While the work of the JAIC and DIU may eventually help multiple services and the OSD, Moak said bringing in AI assets for financial work is going to be a necessity for the Army going forward. ''Our collaboration with DIU and JAIC on this effort is a tremendous opportunity for Army financial management, and will hopefully inspire others,'' said Moak. ''Applying these innovative tools now allows us to shift our focus to optimize our systems environment, and building a core enterprise system -- a sustainable solution for improving financial operations.'' Military to Play Logistics-Only Role in COVID-19 Vaccine Effort [2020-10-24] WASHINGTON -- U.S. military personnel won't be administering any COVID-19 vaccines to the American people once the vaccines are approved for use. But the U.S. military will lend it's experienced hand in logistics to ensure the vaccine is available across the nation, said Paul Mango, the deputy chief of staff for policy at the Department of Health and Human Services. "The overwhelming majority of Americans will get a vaccine that no federal employee, including the Department of Defense, has touched," Mango said during a Friday teleconference regarding Operation Warp Speed, the DOD and HHS effort to find a vaccine for COVID-19. "That said ... we have the best logisticians in the world at the Department of Defense, working in conjunction with the CDC, to guide ... every logistical detail you could possibly think of." That effort, Mango said, involves things such as needles, syringes, swabs, adhesive bandages, dry ice and trucks, for instance. "Gen. [Gustave F. Perna], and his team ... are guiding all of that with scores of folks from both the CDC and the DOD," Mango said. "We will have an operation center that will tell us at any given time exactly where every dose of vaccine is." Those operations centers, he said, will be similar to those set up for things like hurricanes. "We're going to have one just for vaccines that Gen. Perna, his team and the CDC are going to man 24 hours a day," Mango said. "They will know where every vaccine dose is. If a vaccine dose is at risk of expiring, they will guide the movement of that to someplace else." What Mango also said, however, is that federal military personnel will not be involved in touching the vaccine or administering it to Americans. He did add that if state governors want their own National Guard personnel to be involved as part of a state-run effort, they will do that at their discretion. "The federal military will not be involved in moving any doses or injecting any vaccines," he said. More Volunteers Needed for Vaccine Trials Right now, there are six vaccine candidates that must be evaluated in clinical trials, and volunteers are needed to participate in those trials, said Dr. Matt Hepburn, vaccine lead for Operation Warp Speed. "We are anticipating large-scale clinical trials -- 30,000 patients each for these products," Hepburn said. "Therefore, we do need more people to be willing to sign up... if people are looking for a way that they can help us, help us as a nation, fight this pandemic, one of the ways they can do that is volunteer for these clinical trials." While more are needed to participate in trials for vaccine candidates, many have already signed up. Dr. Jerome Adams, the U.S. surgeon general, said he's been impressed, so far, with the diversity of the candidates who've volunteered, and he said such diversity is important in a vaccine trial. Vaccine candidate developer Moderna, for instance, announced it had completed enrollment on its Phase 3 clinical trial. Of the 30,000 participants, 37% are part of minority populations, with over 10% from African-American communities, Adams said. "We want to applaud the recruitment outreach that's been done by Moderna," Adams said. "They were able to turn around what were initially low minority participation rates by removing barriers and meeting folks where they are and by harnessing relations with researchers who have long-standing trust with minority communities. ... We need this to continue for other trials." Adams said those wishing to participate in trials for one of the COVID-19 vaccines can do so by visiting coronavirus.gov. Operation Warp Speed is a partnership between the DOD and HHS. Specific HHS components involved include the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. In Warp Speed Effort, Knowing Where Vaccines Are Is Key to Distribution Strategy [2020-10-28] WASHINGTON -- Right now, six vaccines for COVID-19 are in development as part of Operation Warp Speed, said the program's chief operating officer. Once one or more of those vaccines proves both effective and safe, their fast and efficient distribution will require knowing where every dose is at all times. When planning for the distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine, Army Gen. Gustave F. Perna said he kept four tenets in mind. The first of those, he said, is visibility and control. "We need to know where every vial was, whether it was in the factory, or it was on a truck, or it had been distributed down to an administration site; we must have 100% accountability of all vaccines every day," said Perna, who spoke yesterday to the Heritage Foundation in Washington. Also key to effective distribution efforts, he said, is tracking the uptake of vaccine -- how many people are actually taking it. The primary reason for that, he said, is that of the six vaccines in development, five require two doses. It'll be important that everybody who takes a first dose gets the correct second dose when they come back for it. Uptake tracking is also important, he said, because the amount of vaccine being distributed will dramatically increase shortly after the first doses become available. "Initially, there will be tens of millions of doses available," he said, but beginning in January, the number of doses will quickly ramp up to hundreds of millions. "It'll be essential that we maintain the right flow of vaccine to the American people." A third tenant of vaccine distribution, he said, is knowing where the vaccine is going. "We must make sure that we have traceability of the vaccine, and that we know where the vaccine is going at all times," he said. "It'll be a hot commodity, of course, and we need it to get to the places where it will be distributed based on state priorities and requirements in accordance with the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine." Finally, he said, OWS wants to make sure that the entirety of the American population is covered, including all of the continental U.S. and every island, as well as to those Americans serving overseas at military bases and diplomatic locations. Perna also said COVID-19 vaccine distribution, both initially and into the foreseeable future, will differ from other types of vaccine distribution efforts in that a COVID-19 vaccine will be "pushed" out to the American population, rather than "pulled." For influenza vaccines, for instance, distribution happens when hospitals and pharmacies order it from manufacturers -- that's a "pull" model. With the COVID-19 vaccine, the U.S. government has already paid for the vaccine. It will be sent out where it's needed without individual administration sites needing to ask for it. "We are going to allocate equitably vaccine doses to all of America simultaneously," Perna said. "As doses become available, we're pushing down and out to the United States of America." DOING THE IMPOSSIBLE It wasn't until May that Operation Warp Speed stood up. It's a partnership between the Defense Department and the Department of Health and Human Services. One of the program's goals is to find a vaccine for COVID-19 before the end of the year and to quickly get that vaccine out to Americans by January 2021. Most vaccines take years to develop, but OWS embarked on an effort to develop and distribute one in just nine months. Dr. Matthew Hepburn, head of vaccine development for Operation Warp Speed, says many people ask him how that's possible. "The simple question is, how can you achieve the impossible? How can you take a vaccine development process that typically can take five years, eight years, 10 years, and truncate that into the timelines of Operation Warp Speed?" One of the ways that's been possible, so far, Hepburn said, is modern vaccine technology. "I think it's very helpful to point out the efforts that have gone on for decades in terms of developing vaccines," he said. "We stand on the shoulders of giants -- of the people that worked on polio, measles, the smallpox eradication campaign." Before OWS started, he said, there had already been great progress in terms of how to accelerate vaccine development. There had already been investments by HHS and the National Institutes of Health, he said. And DOD is also working on ways to make vaccines more quickly. "Now. I feel like they're really paying off," he said. "That's how we're in phase III clinical trials now ... because of those investments and those technologies that were started in the spring that are now really paying off both for their ability to be developed quickly and prove that they work in animal models, but also that they can be manufactured at a very large scale." Another angle making OWS successful in achieving its goal, Hepburn said, is the manufacturing process. For the COVID-19 vaccine, manufacturing of the vaccine candidates is happening while they are still being evaluated for effectiveness. For vaccines candidates that prove ineffective, the already manufactured doses will be disposed of. But for those that are proven to work, millions of doses will be ready to go immediately. "We've run these processes in parallel, and really made investments where large amounts of vaccines are being made much sooner," Hepburn said. "By those investments, we're able to have millions of doses available much sooner than we ever would." Large, diverse, safe clinical trials are also playing a role in OWS's effectiveness, Hepburn said. Clinical trials for the vaccine candidates involve some 30,000 individuals each, and safety has been a priority, he said. Two manufacturers, for instance, had their trials put on a "safety pause." While those pauses have been lifted, he said, they demonstrate the level of commitment to both a safe and effective vaccine, Hepburn said. "We are following the highest ethical standards to ensure that these vaccines are safe, and that those clinical trials are conducted to the highest regulatory and ethical standards, as well," Hepburn said. The clinical trials themselves are also large, involving 30,000 volunteers. Typically, he said, such a trial might involve 5,000 or 8,000 persons. The increase means better results. "We want to gather as much safety information as we possibly can," he said. "And we also want to know if they work. With the more people you enroll, the sooner you're going to be able to evaluate the effectiveness." Finally, Hepburn said, teamwork among multiple agencies and industry has helped OWS be effective in vaccine development. "The way we fight the virus is really getting the best from all of us," he said, adding that this includes extraordinary cooperation among DOD, HHS and the private sector. "I've seen some of the best teamwork that I've ever been a part of as part of Operation Warp Speed -- and it is the essential fourth ingredient on how we achieve the impossible." DOD Looks for More Robust, Enduring Telework Capacity [2020-10-28] WASHINGTON -- When the COVID-19 pandemic started, many Defense Department employees began teleworking. The department brought on board the "commercial virtual remote" environment in March to enable that telework. The department's principal deputy chief information officer said the CVR effort has paid off well. "This has been nothing short of amazing the way the Department of Defense responded to the COVID crisis, particularly from a teleworking perspective, deploying the commercial virtual remote, or CVR, capability in March in just mere weeks," John Sherman said today at C4ISRNET's Cybercon 2020 conference. Over a million users are now making use of the CVR environment to do telework, teaming, calls and video conferences, Sherman said. "This required a lot of leadership," Sherman said. "It required a lot of backbone sort of things like increasing our internet access points, and increasing our network capability, and also being on our toes from a cybersecurity perspective. And we're moving out with that. And this is something we've been very proud of. ... I think this is a gold standard for the government, what we've been able to do here in DOD." Sherman said the department is looking to the future now for telework. The CVR capability has been extended to June 2021, for instance. "We are currently working on a more enduring Office 365-based capability," he said. "CVR is what we call 'impact level two' or IL2. ... We're moving to an IL5 solution. IL2 was fine for where we [are] in telework. But we know we need a more enduring solution that keeps the same functionality of CVR, which allows us to talk to people at IL2, talk to people not on the Department of Defense Information Network." According to the Defense Information Systems Agency, "impact levels" describe the sensitivity of information to be stored or processed in the cloud and also the potential impact of an event that results in the loss of confidentiality, integrity or availability of that information. Currently, CVR operates only with impact level 2, or IL2 data. That kind of information includes public or non-critical mission information. Impact level 5, or IL5, information includes higher sensitivity, controlled unclassified information and mission critical information, as well. Right now, with CVR users can use their own authorized device, something Sherman called "BYOAD," or "bring your own approved device." That's something that will be considered in the future, as well, he said. "We're working to bake that into an enduring solution in the run up to June of 21, when we hand the baton off from CVR to the more enduring solution," he said. New Strategy Details Department Goals for Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority [2020-10-29] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department today released the "2020 Department of Defense Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority Strategy," a road map for how the U.S. military can maintain freedom of action in the electromagnetic spectrum at the time, place, and parameters of its choosing. The electromagnetic spectrum is the range of radiation frequencies used to transmit information wirelessly. While frequencies above 300GHz make up infrared light, visible light, ultraviolet light and x-rays, frequencies at 300GHz and below are used to transmit information for cell phones, television, radio, satellite communications, GPS and hand-held, two-way radios. The Defense Department is one of the largest users of the EMS. For many years, the U.S. military remained uncontested in its use of the spectrum, meaning either domestically or abroad, wherever the military went, it was able to use whatever portion of the spectrum it wanted to facilitate its own communications. It is no longer the case that the U.S. military has uncontested use of the EMS. Speaking on background during a conference call early today, two defense officials explained how the strategy will be instrumental in helping the department maintain mastery of the EMS against near-peer adversaries, who are developing their own expertise in the EMS. The strategy, one official said, aligns the department's spectrum-dependent activities with the National Defense Strategy's focus on lethality, alliances and partnerships, and reform with the goal of achieving operational superiority in the electromagnetic spectrum. The strategy includes five goals to help the department attain that superiority: Develop superior EMS capabilities. Evolve to an agile, fully integrated EMS architecture. Pursue total force EMS readiness. Secure enduring partnerships for EMS advantage. Establish effective EMS governance. In the coming months, another official said, the strategy will be followed by an implementation plan that will operationalize and institutionalize the strategy. Development of the implementation plan has already started, the official said, through work with the department's chief information officer and other stakeholders in the department. ''The rise of mobile systems and digital technology across the globe has placed enormous strain on the available spectrum for DOD's command, control, and communication needs,'' said Dana Deasy, the DOD chief information officer. "This strategy will help set the conditions needed to ensure our warfighters have freedom of action within the electromagnetic spectrum to successfully conduct operations and training in congested, contested and constrained multidomain environments across the globe." During COVID-19, Use of Non-Medical Family Counseling Remains Strong [2020-10-29] WASHINGTON -- During the COVID-19 pandemic-related lockdowns, the use of counseling support, such as what's available through Military OneSource has continued to rise -- something that's actually been happening since before lockdowns began in March, said Lee Kelley, the director of Military Community Support Programs. "We've seen a steady increase in Military OneSource utilization of non-medical counseling that has continued throughout COVID-19, but did not start at the onset of COVID-19," Kelley said, adding that during COVID-19, the lockdowns and the pandemic itself have increasingly shown up as stressors in counseling sessions. The Military OneSource program has always provided non-medical counseling, Kelley said, for such issues related to military life that are under the threshold of what would be needed for a mental health diagnosis. Included in issues covered there, Kelley said, are relationships, anger, communications issues, grief and loss, for instance. The non-medical counseling provided through Military OneSource can be provided face-to-face, she said, but more often it's provided via telephone or video. The related Military and Family Life Counseling Program, on the other hand, has always been face-to-face. That is, Kelley said, until COVID-19 closed down so many resources. "What happened during COVID-19 was [that] a demand signal immediately went up from our military community, service members and families around the globe," Kelley said. "[They said] ... we don't want to lose the capability of the counseling support provided by the Military and Family Life Counseling Program. So the program quickly transitioned in a matter of days to provide telehealth support ... so that same counselor that you knew from your child's school, you were then able to connect with via video." Kelley said a commonality between both counseling programs is that the most frequent topic for personnel seeking assistance from both services is relationship issues. "That's the top issue people seek non-medical counseling through our programs for: relationship support," she said. As a result, Kelley said, Military Community Support Programs has created a new program to focus specifically on highlighting the issue. "We've been focused on a public-facing relationship campaign to help pull back the curtain on what relationship support looks like for couples in the military," she said. "And we're looking internally at how we provide that relationship support to determine how we can do it in the most effective manner possible." No Rise in Domestic Abuse While there have been some reports in the civilian community of a rise in reports of domestic abuse during COVID-19, the same hasn't happened in the military community, defense leaders said. "Certainly, we see the news and we know that in the civilian community there are increases in the number of reports," said Carolyn S. Stevens, the director of the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy. "We are not currently seeing that within our military services. In fact, the number of reports now are very similar to the reports a year ago this time." Nevertheless, she said, because there have been reports of such an increase in civilian communities, the department needs to keep an eye on the issue. "We are concerned ... and this is an issue that we do need to maintain watch [on]," she said. Rewrite of Acquisition Regulation Helps U.S. Build Hypersonic Arsenal More Quickly [2020-10-30] WASHINGTON -- With both Russia and China developing and building hypersonic weapons, the U.S. military must get in the game or risk being left behind. In the past, regulations have slowed acquisition of advanced technology. But the Defense Department has rewritten the rules for acquisition -- the 5000-series of policy -- to make it easier to more quickly deliver hypersonic weapons. "We need to build a more lethal force and speed delivery of capability to the warfighter," said Ellen M. Lord, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, during an address today at the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement's Hypersonic Weapons Summit. "In other words, DOD acquisition needs to move at the speed of relevance." One way that goal has been advanced, Lord said, is with the recent publication of a rewrite of the DOD's acquisition policy. "One of my team's most significant accomplishments has been rewriting the DOD 5000 series, the overarching acquisition policies that focus on what I call creative compliance, so that acquisition professionals can design acquisition strategies that minimize risk." That renaissance in DOD policy is going to help the department get on board with hypersonics more quickly. One area the new policy focuses on is an early consideration of sustainment of weapons systems. "Our biggest sustainment concerns with hypersonics are ensuring that subcomponents have a resilient supply chain with secure microelectronic components and that the services, the military services, have a strategy for spares and repairables that provide sufficient annual quantities to ensure predictability for suppliers and readiness for the warfighter," Lord said. "The 5000 rewrite, specifically the product support and sustainment functional policy, places more emphasis on designing and contracting for sustainment." Lord said changes in the acquisition policy can reduce sustainment costs by up to 20%. "We can achieve real savings that can be used for our future investments, instead of unnecessarily paying to disassemble systems to replace parts, for example, because the maintainer cannot get their hand inside of an enclosure to remove and replace a component -- something we often see," Lord said. The "Adaptive Acquisition Framework" in the newly modified 5000 series includes six acquisition pathways: urgent capability acquisition, middle tier of acquisition, major capability acquisition, software acquisition, defense business systems, and acquisition of services. "These pathways implement the six main tenets of the Defense Acquisition System: to simplify policy, tailor in approaches, and empower program managers, facilitate data-driven analysis, actively manage risk and emphasize sustainment," Lord said. The AAF provides program managers with a way to more quickly and affordably field capability, Lord said. And that includes important developments in hypersonic weapons systems. "It's paramount that we drive affordability into hypersonic weapons manufacturing to ensure that we can procure sufficient quantities," Lord said. "Previous efforts reduce technical risk by designing and producing developmental flight test demonstration vehicles. Now, we will prioritize manufacturability and producibility with hypersonic prototype development programs." Hypersonics War Room Hypersonic weapons systems require special consideration to account for, among other things, their high speeds, Lord said. And the industrial base that is helping the department grow its hypersonics capability is working to meet those unique challenges. Hypersonic weapons also require effective sensors, mission planning, command and control and launching platforms, Lord said. To ensure the department and industry can most effectively work together to meet the unique challenges of hypersonic weapons development, Lord said the department has created a "hypersonics war room" to help the department better understand the constraints that might exist in industry right now that could hamper development of hypersonics. "The war room will help both DOD and industry understand the total demand on the industrial base as the department is ramping up production for hypersonic weapons," Lord said. Warfighters, Decision-Makers at Center of DOD Data Strategy [2020-11-03] WASHINGTON -- At its simplest, the Defense Department's new data strategy, released in September, aims to make it easier for users to get access to the data they need to do their job. At the center of that, however, are the warfighters and decision makers who are most reliant on critical, accurate and timely data to carry out the department's mission, said the department's chief data officer. "This strategy is for warfighters and decision makers," said David Spirk, who spoke Oct. 28 at the National Defense Industrial Association. "It's 100 percent focused on improving the speed and execution of decisions -- to support informed decision making, to improve situational awareness and knowledge at every level, to improve our ability to anticipate events and resource needs before they were known." To ensure the fastest, smoothest distribution of data to warfighters, decision makers, and even artificial intelligence systems, the DOD data strategy lays out a plan to, among other things, standardize how data is collected, categorized, tagged and distributed. The strategy sets goals for the department to build a data environment that makes it easy for would-be users of data to not only find what data they need, but to also get access to it -- wherever that is. That data must also be adequately described in language that is standardized across the department, so that would-be users can easily identify its relevance to their portion of the mission. Also important within the strategy is that data be trustworthy. The strategy calls for development of standards to ensure that when users get ahold of data, for instance, it's always accompanied by additional, standardized information that makes it clear where that data came from. The strategy demands a lot of changes from those across the department who collect, generate and maintain data, so that users in other areas can always have what they need, when they need it. Spirk said getting those people on board will be critical to the success of the data strategy. One way to do that, he said, is creation of chief data officer positions, where appropriate, to ensure the data strategy is being implemented and, also, to build relationships and trust between agencies so that data can move to where it needs to be more efficiently than it may be doing now. Spirk said the department will know it has been successful in implementing its data strategy by how the warfighter responds. "The measure of our success is going to be a recognizably faster warfighting operation tempo," he said. "This will be achieved by treating data as a weapon system, effective partnerships and a collective focus. And when I say weapon system, I mean we need to think of the data ecosystem as the weapon system that fires the data and ensures it's available to our warfighters at the time and place they need it before they realize that they did." New Spectrum Strategy Reveals DOD's Plan to Master Airwaves [2020-11-03] WASHINGTON -- Short of face-to-face conversation, wired internet or telephone land lines -- a mystery to many young Americans -- nearly every form of communication the Defense Department uses today, especially on the battlefield, is wireless. Some U.S. adversaries are working very hard to cut off that form of communication. Last week, the Defense Department released the "2020 Department of Defense Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority Strategy." This document not only lays out how the military will guarantee its continued and unfettered access to the airwaves, or spectrum, which facilitates GPS, radio, satellite and cell phone communications. This document also shows how the military plans to master that spectrum while on the battlefield. "The rise of mobile systems and digital technology across the globe has placed enormous strain on the available spectrum for DOD's command, control and communication needs," said Dana Deasy, the department's chief information officer. "This strategy will help set the conditions needed to ensure our warfighters have freedom of action within the electromagnetic spectrum to successfully conduct operations and training in congested, contested and constrained multi-domain environments across the globe." The electromagnetic spectrum is the range of radiation frequencies that are used to transmit information wirelessly. While frequencies above 300GHz make up infrared light, visible light, ultraviolet light, and x-rays, frequencies at 300GHz and below are used to transmit information for cell phones, television, radio, satellite communications, GPS, hand-held two-way radios and even key fobs that lock and unlock cars. Those who want to transmit information over those communication frequencies typically apply to the federal government for a license. This ensures that only one entity is attempting to use a frequency at a time. There are hundreds of locations on the electromagnetic spectrum blocked out by the U.S. federal government -- and by governments globally -- for specific applications by specific users in every part of the world. The Defense Department is, perhaps, the biggest user of spectrum in the United States, said Frederick D. Moorefield, the deputy chief information officer for command, control and communications. "DOD uses spectrum for almost everything wireless, everything from tactical radios that the soldier uses in the field, or in operations, to satellite communications, to radar that we use to track objects and devices," he said. "We use it for everything wireless." For a long time, Moorefield said, DOD was uncontested in its use of the spectrum. That means either stateside or abroad, wherever the U.S. military went, it was able to use whatever portion of the spectrum it wanted to facilitate its own communications. Other nations weren't technologically capable of using spectrum. But that is no longer the case. Now, due to the low-cost of entry into spectrum use and ubiquity of wireless communications equipment, any adversary, not just peer and near-peer competitors, has as much access to the spectrum as the Defense Department. That means that in any conflict, any adversary may be using spectrum crucial to the department and preventing the military from being able to use it. Adversaries may also use jamming techniques to actively block DOD from using portions of the spectrum. "Technologies evolved and our peer competitors have improved and watched us over the years and have gotten smart," Moorefield said. "We're getting jammed on everything from GPS to our [unmanned aircraft systems.] That's why we have our counter-UAS program out there. Everything's getting interfered with. That is a contested environment. Everything's getting jammed." It's not just on the battlefield where the U.S. can be jammed either, Moorefield said. Jamming is happening while doing training overseas and in other places as well. "Just during our training and exercises, we're getting jammed," he said. "Stuff is going on -- GPS is getting denied and jammed all the time in different countries. Our UASs are getting jammed and spoofed." Even stateside, Moorefield said, the department finds itself in competition in the electromagnetic spectrum with industries and communities around military bases. "It is getting more and more crowded," he said. "At some of our bases we used to be able to go out and do training and testing and exercises -- just go out and do whatever we wanted to do. But now, the surrounding neighborhoods and the surrounding communities are just getting more and more crowded using wireless. So that access that we used to use, and freedom that we used to have using the spectrum on those bases is diminishing as the communities are growing." The department's electromagnetic spectrum superiority strategy is driven by three "C's," Moorefield said: a contested environment, spectrum congestion and spectrum constraint. A contested environment, he said, means adversaries have gotten smarter in how they jam the spectrum. Even if an adversary isn't using a portion of the spectrum, he said, they can prevent the U.S. from using it through jamming. "We have to figure out how to be smarter than them and develop capabilities to allow us to be able to get access to the spectrum whenever we need it, and however we need it and to also be able to deny the enemy the same access," Moorefield said. "We call that 'freedom of maneuver' within the electromagnetic spectrum." The congested environment, he said, means there's simply more people wanting to use spectrum. That might mean stateside or abroad, in actual warfare or in training, the department will find that there's just a lot more users now of the electromagnetic spectrum than there have been. "The spectrum space is getting more and more crowded," Moorefield said. "That includes 5G, the next G coming, SATCOM, tactical radios, commercial and federal -- everybody's using spectrum more and more. So, we have a congestion problem, everything is crowded." Finally, he said, there is constraint. Whereas the department in the past had more freedom to move about the spectrum when it needed to, domestic and international regulations have decreased the amount of spectrum available for military access. "We don't have that big access and use that we used to have. DOD used to use a spectrum any way they wanted to. Those days are over," he said. "That constraint is limiting us in our ability to train as we fight." To ensure that in the future the U.S. military has the ability to operate in the electromagnetic spectrum, the department has developed the "2020 Department of Defense Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority Strategy." "Superiority means being able to access the spectrum, use any frequency you want to, be able to maneuver ... and deny the enemy access to the spectrum at the same time," said Moorefield. The strategy includes five goals to help the department attain that superiority: 1 Develop superior EMS capabilities.​ 2 Evolve to an agile, fully integrated EMS architecture.​ 3 Pursue total force EMS readiness.​ 4 Secure enduring partnerships for EMS advantage.​ 5 Establish effective EMS governance.​ For the U.S. military to attain that superiority, there will need to be modernization and reform, new policies put in place, and new gear -- all of that is spelled out in the strategy. "The department's evolution in the EMS is necessary for the U.S. military's ability to effectively sense, command, control, communicate, test, train, protect and project force," said Ellen Lord, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. "Modernizing to maintain competitive advantage over near-peer adversaries will enable DOD to assert EMS superiority and mitigate risks to U.S. national and economic security." One part of reform, said Moorefield, is a change in the way spectrum is managed today. "Today, spectrum is managed by static frequency assignments and licenses. We have to get dynamic, flexible and cognitive to be dynamic enough to be able to move around at different frequency bands." Also involved, and part of the strategy, is development of spectrum sharing capability. That means acknowledging that there are other users of a segment of spectrum the DOD wants access to, that there are benefits to U.S. commerce if the private sector or even other federal agencies have access to that spectrum, and then developing a system whereby more than one entity can take turns using that part of the spectrum when needed. That's not happened in the past, but it's happening now, Moorefield said. EMS superiority will also involve new kinds of technology that are able to determine on their own what frequency they ought to be on at any time, Moorefield said. That technology will be able to assess the environment to see what else is using spectrum, and what part of it, and then find the best available portion of the spectrum to use to accomplish the communications it needs to accomplish -- all without the assistance of users. "We're trying to get to autonomous kinds of operations, meaning machine-to-machine," he said. "You've got the machines talking to each other. You won't have to have segregated allocations. You'll have the machine built to be able to tune across a variety of different frequency bands. It'll listen within the environment. And it'll be talking to another machine and say I'm using this frequency; you move to another frequency." Policy changes are needed, as well. The department's acquisition elements must be allowed to obtain the right kind of equipment to attain spectrum superiority, he said. "We have to be able to reform acquisition [policies] so that they know that they can build capability to do that -- to be able to be dynamic," he said. "Today we can't do that. The regulations don't support it. We have to reform the regulations to allow dynamic spectrum operations. We have to inform acquisition so they can now acquire those kinds of capabilities. We need to inform research and engineering so they can do the research and development, so that acquisition can purchase it." There's a lot of equipment in the department's inventory today that was designed to operate in the EMS. But that equipment was built to operate in clearly-defined areas of the spectrum. Eventually, all that gear will need to be replaced with new gear that can operate more freely in the spectrum, and share spectrum with other pieces of gear. That's going to take several years to make the transition, Moorefield said. But along the way, new gear will be cognizant of the older equipment on the battlefield, and will be able to work alongside it. "We've got old stuff out there, we've got medium stuff and we've got new stuff," he said. "As you do your tech refresh, and you implement the policies into the acquisition reform, to be able to build dynamic spectrum stuff, that new capability will be able to cohabitate around the old stuff because it now has that dynamic flexible operation. So it's not sitting on a single frequency. I don't care what your old stuff is doing, I'm going to operate around you. And when that old thing expires, then they're going to tech refresh and become dynamic. Over time, we'll get there. But it's going to take us time to do that." Another big part of the superiority strategy is the blending of the electromagnetic warfare and electromagnetic spectrum management communities into one "electromagnetic spectrum operations" or EMSO community, Moorefield said. "In the past, the electronic warfare community kind of did their own thing," he said. "They're out there doing jamming, electronic attack and the protect mission without any regard to the other communication equipment in the battlefield." The result of that, he said, sometimes created spectrum "fratricide" on the battlefield, where blue force use of the spectrum to damage enemy forces also hurt other blue force operators. "The guys on the ground were getting blasted -- they couldn't even talk on their radios anymore because you got a big platform flying through and he's just blasting out, jamming the entire battlefield," Moorefield said. The merging of the existing electronic warfare and EMSM communities into an EMSO community, he said, can fix this. "This now blends this all together and forces us as a department to be able to orchestrate this battlefield," he said. "Now you have EW, you got all your other comms -- whether it's tactical radios, radars, EW, all being orchestrated in the environment. Our goal is to develop a common operating spectrum picture so that the commander can see what those operations look like and he can command and control those operations, based on that spectrum picture." The strategy doesn't lay out a timeline for how the Defense Department will get mastery of the EMS. Instead, Moorefield said, the strategy sets a "broad vision of where we go and how we get there." What's clearer, he said, is the consequences of not achieving spectrum superiority. "If we don't figure out how to dominate the spectrum space we're going to be at the mercy of our peer competitors," he said. Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the 2020 Department of Defense Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority Strategy is what the Defense Department needs to ensure U.S. warfighters continue to have freedom of action wherever they are asked to fight. "The department is dedicated to a unified, holistic electromagnetic spectrum operations approach which ensures our freedom of action in the EMS at the time and place of our choosing," Hyten said. "We cannot expect military success in any domain if we fail to take bold action to ensure that the United States and its allies have freedom to act in the spectrum. Implementing the EMS Superiority Strategy enables us to take that bold action so we are able to dominate the spectrum in all domains and, if challenged, win against our enemies." Nation Honors Veterans at Arlington National Cemetery [2020-11-11] WASHINGTON -- At Arlington National Cemetery today, President Donald J. Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Robert Wilkie, secretary of Veterans Affairs, participated in a Veterans Day wreath ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to honor those who have served in the U.S. military. Earlier, the president issued a proclamation on the White House website to commemorate the day. "America's veterans have fought to defend our country, its values and its interests since the first days of our founding," the president said. "They have defeated tyrants, eliminated terrorists and secured freedom at home and abroad. Their courage and fortitude in the face of adversity serve as an example for all Americans." Veterans Day was originally known as Armistice Day and was first observed on Nov. 11, 1919, exactly one year after the signing of the armistice that ended World War I. In 1954, the observance was renamed Veterans Day. Veterans Day honors all those who have served. The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates there are nearly 20 million veterans living today in the United States. More than 15 million of them have served during an era of war, including World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf War. "On Veterans Day, we pause to pay tribute to all who have proudly worn our Nation's uniform," Trump said. "These soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen selflessly placed lives, well‑being and security of others before their own. We enjoy the privileges of peace, prosperity and freedom because of our veterans, and we are forever indebted to them beyond measure." New Museum Tells the Story of the U.S. Army [2020-11-11] WASHINGTON -- The National Museum of the United States Army officially opened today at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. It is the first museum to tell the entire story of the Army, which has existed since June 14, 1775 -- even before the existence of the United States itself. The Army "has been a force for profound good in our world," said Acting Defense Secretary Christopher C. Miller, who spoke at the museum's opening event. "From the fields of Lexington [and] Concord to the hills of San Juan and from the cliffs of Normandy to the Korangal Valley, more than 30 million brave men and women have donned the Army uniform to fight for freedom at home and abroad," Miller said. "For more than 240 years, they made innumerable contributions to our nation and the world -- not just in combat, but also in humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, international cooperation and other vital missions. Their feats are enshrined throughout this museum." Construction on the 185,000-square-foot museum, which is just a 16-mile drive from the National Mall in Washington, began in 2017. The museum is a joint venture between the Army and the Army Historical Foundation. The museum includes the "Soldiers' Stories Gallery," which features pictures and biographical information for more than 40 soldiers from all periods in Army history. Additionally, various galleries cover Army involvement in significant periods of U.S. history. These include the Revolutionary War and the founding of the United States, the period leading up to and including World War I, World War II, the Cold War and the "Changing World Gallery," which chronicles the period from 1990 to today. Special features of the museum include a theater; a gallery that focuses on the Army's relationship with civilian society; an immersive experience that allows visitors to attempt to experience what trench warfare was like during World War I; and a gallery that documents the experience of World War II's Nisei soldiers, who were born in the U.S. to parents who emigrated from Japan. In all, there are 11 galleries and nearly 1,390 artifacts available for visitors to see. "The exhibits shown here promote a deeper understanding and appreciation of the Army's achievements," Miller said. "They illuminate the hard-earned lessons of war and tell us why we must continue to adapt and lead in a world fraught with danger. And the personal narratives woven throughout these halls will encourage and inspire the next generation of soldiers, who will lead the world's finest fighting force to even greater heights in the future." Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark A. Milley said the museum will finally allow visitors to understand what the Army does to protect American freedom. "We cannot truly appreciate the sacrifice of our soldiers, from the Continental Army to today, or comprehend what they went through unless we see the weapons they used, feel the uniforms they wore, hear the stories they told, or read the letters they wrote," he said. And while visitors of today will never experience what soldiers of the past have gone through fighting America's wars, Milley said, the National Museum of the United States Army will allow them to see all that history in one place for the first time. "[We] will never fight through the haze and the mustard gas of the Meuse-Argonne. We're not going to hear the whiz and the snap of their ... rounds while assaulting the last 100 yards of Omaha Beach. And, no, we're not going to suffer the blistering cold of the Chosin Reservoir or smell the smoke [of] the la Drang Valley," he said. "But we can come here -- we can see the relics and hear the stories through the eyes and the voices of the individual soldiers who endured so much for the cause of freedom and their unrelenting devotion to the Constitution of the United States." Those wishing to tour the museum can do so by first visiting the website at www.thenmusa.org and ordering a free ticket. Small Businesses Key to Nation's Defense [2020-11-16] WASHINGTON -- Small businesses are the backbone of the American economy and a large part of the defense of the nation, the Defense Department's director for the Office of Small Business said today. Small businesses make up 99.7% of U.S. firms and create 64% of net new private sector jobs, said Amy Murray, who spoke during a keynote address before members of the National Defense Industrial Association. Murray also serves as the department's deputy director for industrial policy. In fiscal year 2019, Murray said, DOD awarded over $75 billion in prime contracts to small businesses, providing an opportunity for those business owners to contribute to national security by providing both combat power to U.S. troops and economic power to the nation. "Small businesses are the backbone of the American economy," Murray said. "[They] represent 67% of businesses that are awarded contracts in the DOD -- creating hundreds of thousands of jobs." By their very size, Murray said, small businesses also benefit the department's need to more adequately adapt to the new security environment. "Small businesses are key to DOD's mission and innovation initiatives," she said. "Their agility delivers the speed and performance to transform the defense industrial base and provide competitive advantage. And this agility drives ... value faster by increasing innovation, responsiveness, customer satisfaction, productivity and quality." The mission of the Office of Small Business Programs, or OSBP, Murray said, is to maximize opportunities for small businesses. She said the department has achieved it's small business prime contracting goal every year since fiscal year 2014 and received a procurement scorecard grade of 'A' for six consecutive years. Why do we have these goals, and why do we need small business participation?. Murray said 99.7% of all employer firms are small businesses, and 97.5% of all identified exporters are small businesses. "Small businesses produce 16.5 times more patents than large patenting firms and create more than half of non-farm private gross domestic product -- which is significant to our economy," she said. Protecting the Industrial Base for U.S. Security The industrial policy team's efforts also protect American businesses from being influenced by investment by foreign adversaries. That's part of the industrial policy team's "protect" line of effort, Murray said. "These are the hard tools that we use to deter those who would seek to use America's traditional strengths -- openness and fair competition -- against us," she said. "This is the team that identifies those transactions, or economic activities, which undermine our economic and national security." Much work done in this area is in partnership with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS. As part of the mission to protect American companies from adversarial investment, she said, it is important to recognize that during a crisis such as that posed by COVID-19, the defense industrial base becomes vulnerable to adversarial capital. "We need to ensure companies can stay in business without losing their precious intellectual property, the foundation of so many critical technologies," Murray said. "CFIUS now has jurisdiction over non-controlling investments for innovative technology, critical infrastructure, and personal data, and certain real estate transactions, in addition to the long-standing jurisdiction over transactions that could result in foreign control of a U.S. business." During the COVID-19 crisis, Murray said, the department became more acutely aware of the fragility of the U.S. industrial supply chain. In response, more investments through the Defense Production Act have been made to further strengthen the U.S. defense industrial base. DOD Diversity Must Start With Youngest Americans [2020-11-17] WASHINGTON -- Diversity and inclusion are a top priority for the Defense Department, the Joint Staff's director for manpower and personnel said today. "The department has undergone a tremendous task force effort with regard to diversity and inclusion, and the secretary is soon to approve and publish that document," Air Force Maj. Gen. Lenny J. Richoux said during an online discussion hosted by the Department of Energy. "For [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark A. Milley], one of his desires is to diversify the senior leadership, the joint senior leadership and senior leadership writ large across the department," Richoux said. "Everyone knows it takes about 24 or 25 years to make a general officer and can take almost that long to make an E9 -- a senior leader E9 in all the branches." The length of time it takes to develop a senior leader in the department means that in order to reach diversity and inclusion goals, the department must now start eyeing the youngest Americans as candidates for future leadership positions. "We've been working on this for a long time. But the department has made some substantive changes to improve diversity and inclusion," Richoux said. "I think one of those areas that I've been trying to work with the services on is how and from where we recruit." There are more than 100 historically black colleges and universities in the U.S. today, and those schools are great places, Richoux said, to start looking for America's next military leaders. "[We're] increasing scholarship opportunities and feeding into ROTC," he said, adding that Americans even younger than college-age students are also candidates to one day be leaders. The Reserve Officer Training Corps programs at HBCUs are fed by other, more junior programs, such as Junior ROTC, Civil Air Patrol, Sea Cadets or the Young Marines, he said. Richoux said those programs marry STEM with military service and drive a culture as a sense of purpose and service for our young people. "I think it starts young ... when they're formative, when they're figuring out what they want to do in these programs that tie them to service, STEM ... I think it's a thread of interest," he said. Richoux also said private industry might take an interest in such programs because by encouraging participation early and by being involved, those young Americans will eventually transition out of military service -- as 200,000 persons do each year -- and seek jobs in the private sector. That will constitute a pool of potential private sector employees who are equipped with both STEM training and leadership skills. DOD Prioritizes December Launch of 'Trusted Capital Marketplace' [2020-11-18] WASHINGTON -- While plans are underway for a change in administration, officials within the Defense Department still have several goals they'd like to achieve. Among those is implementation of the "Trusted Capital Marketplace," the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment said. "[One] area that we want to bring over the finish line here is our trusted capital project," Ellen M. Lord said during an online discussion today as part of the three-day American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics ASCEND Summit. "We'd like to think the capital markets are very, very efficient. But we work with the Council on Foreign Investment in the U.S. to block or undo a lot of transactions where our adversaries are coming in and buying companies that are critical for our national technology initiatives." The Trusted Capital Marketplace project is a department effort within A&S meant to both support the defense industrial base and limit adversary nation access to American technology. The effort is in response to a mandate by Congress laid out in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act. Within the Trusted Capital Marketplace, the department will be involved in matching up businesses in need of investment with investors that have been shown to not have ties to adversarial nations. "What we want to do is instead of driving companies, or driving people trying to sell real estate to these adversarial and nefarious kinds of actors out there, we want to be able to partner people with clean money with companies where we understand the beneficial ownership and grow that capability for the betterment of our national security and economic security," Lord said. To facilitate that, there's going to be an electronic marketplace, she said, something she said pairs up cleared investors and companies in need of investment in much the same way a dating website might work. "What we're doing is clearing people with money, investors, and then companies that have critical technology for the Department of Defense, and giving them a place where they can get together and talk and hopefully do some deals," she said. Lord said she expects the Trusted Capital Marketplace to be available in December. "We are literally just going through federal paperwork right now to launch this," she said. "I'm really excited about our Trusted Capital Marketplace." Warp Speed Readies to Distribute New Therapeutics for COVID-19 [2020-11-23] WASHINGTON -- On Saturday, the Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization, or EUA, for casirivimab and imdevimab. Administered together, intravenously, this drug "cocktail" has been shown in trials to reduce hospitalization or emergency room visits in patients who have contracted COVID-19. The investigational monoclonal antibody therapeutic cocktail of casirivimab and imdevimab, from drug maker Regeneron, is not for COVID-19 patients who are already hospitalized, but instead for patients who have mild to moderate COVID-19 symptoms and who are at high risk of disease progression. According to the FDA, administration of casirivimab and imdevimab proved better than a placebo at reducing viral load in infected patients. Additionally, the FDA said, for high-risk patients, only 3% of those treated with the drug cocktail eventually required hospitalization or emergency room visits, versus 9% for those who received the placebo. "Keeping patients out of the hospital with this therapeutic can reduce the strain on our healthcare system, help hospitalized patients receive better care, and in all likelihood, save lives," Alex M. Azar, secretary of Health and Human Services, said during a conference call today. Operation Warp Speed plans to begin distribution of the new drug cocktail where it's needed most around the country beginning Nov. 24. To start with, Azar said, about 30,000 doses will be available for distribution initially, with more becoming available in the coming weeks. Dr. John Redd, the chief medical officer for the office of the assistant secretary for preparedness and response within HHS said distribution of the casirivimab and imdevimab cocktail will be similar to the distribution of another monoclonal, bamlanivimab. That drug is manufactured by Eli Lilly and Company, and it received a similar FDA EUA November 9. "We will continue to manage the allocation and distribution of COVID-19 treatments in a manner that is fair, equitable, accessible and understandable to the American public," Redd said. With bamlanivimab, distribution is now in the third week. Already, Redd said, more than 120,000 patient courses for that drug have been allocated across the nation, and over 85,000 patient courses of bamlanivimab have been delivered to nearly 2,500 care sites across the nation. "In so doing we've taken into account both ethical and clinical considerations as part of the allocation methodology," Redd said. "We will continue to use this methodology for allocation of the Regeneron therapeutic as well." Redd said distribution will make use of existing infrastructure within the federal government as well as the manufacturer and distributor channels. Allocations to state and territory health departments are proportionally based on confirmed COVID-19 cases in each state and territory over the previous seven days, he said. "The federal government allocates the medication to state and territorial health departments," Redd said. "Those health departments will, in turn, continue to determine which treatment facilities in their respective states and territories actually receive the drug, as it is the health departments, not the federal government, that have the greatest insight into the needs of their jurisdictions." OWS is a partnership between the Defense Department and the Department of Health and Human Services. Specific DHS components involved include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. Artificial Intelligence Enablers Seek Out Problems to Solve [2020-11-24] WASHINGTON -- The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center began in 2018 to accelerate the DOD's adoption and integration of artificial intelligence. From the start, it was meant to serve as an AI center of excellence and to provide resources, tools and expertise to the department. The JAIC's new director said that while the center's early efforts bore fruit, the overall effort was not transformational enough and a more aggressive approach is needed. "In JAIC 1.0, we helped jumpstart AI in the DOD through Pathfinder projects we called mission initiatives," said Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Michael S. Groen, during a briefing today at the Pentagon. "We learned a great deal and brought onboard some of the brightest talent in the business. It really is amazing. When we took stock, however, we realized that this was not transformational enough. We weren't going to be in a position to transform the department through the delivery of use cases." Now, Groen said, he refers to the center's change in effort as "JAIC 2.0," which includes a more aggressive push for adoption and proliferation of AI throughout the department. "We seek to push harder across the department to accelerate the adoption of AI across every aspect of our warfighting and business operations," Groen said. "While the JAIC will continue to develop AI solutions, we're working in parallel to enable a broad range of customers across the department." Groen said the JAIC must have a broader range of department participants getting involved with AI, and that this can happen with a renewed focus on the Joint Common Foundation -- a cloud-enabled AI platform to accelerate the development, testing and fielding of new AI capabilities that is expected to reach initial operating capability in 2021. "It's a resource for all, but especially for disadvantaged users who don't have the infrastructure and the tech expertise to do it themselves," Groen said. "We're recrafting our engagement mechanism inside the JAIC to actively seek out problems and help make others successful. We will be more 'problem pull' than 'product push'." Defense Department Seeks to Achieve Agile, Adaptive Acquisition [2020-11-30] WASHINGTON -- The acquisition and sustainment community recently rewrote the Defense Department's 5000-series acquisition regulations. America's modeling and simulation community will be able to help the department achieve some of the goals it hoped to reach with the rewrite, the deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment said. "The same technologies ... you investigate at I/ITSEC are the ones that will allow us to move to an agile and adaptive acquisition framework and be much more agile," Alan R. Shaffer said today during a presentation to the National Defense Industrial Association's virtual Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference. Digital engineering, digitization, modular open systems architecture and model composability are all key within the I/ITSEC community, Shaffer said. "They're also the bedrock for an agile acquisition framework and will provide us the tools we need to cut development time," he said. Modeling and simulation, Shaffer said, can be an integral part of speeding delivery of the tools the U.S. military needs to be competitive. "We should be able to do a much better job in assessing to be fit for purpose by use of simulation and the performance of red versus blue systems and simulators to really understand how what we are going to buy in the Department of Defense will operate in a real world," Shaffer said. Digital engineering, digital twins and systems engineering, Shaffer said, can provide greater capability to U.S. forces, reduce acquisition cycle times, reduce costs and schedules for testing, and bring about a reduced cost for sustainment of systems after they are delivered. "This cumulative effect of capabilities is what I/ITSEC is all about," he said. Shaffer industry attendees of the virtual conference to think about the convergence of technologies that allow tools to be used for both operational assessment as well as testing and training. "Think about software that will allow us to support acquisition development, training of troops, and test, all simultaneously -- I think it's within our grasp," he said. The department also needs help from the modeling and simulation industry to accelerate acquisition and fielding timelines and to provide more depth in its analytic understanding necessary for decision making, Shaffer said. COVID-Related Telework Accelerates DISA's Zero-Trust Adoption [2020-12-01] WASHINGTON -- The incredible increase in telework within the Defense Department as a result of COVID-19-related social distancing requirements has provided U.S. adversaries more attack surface to cause harm to defense networks. This, among other factors, has increased the department's focus on zero trust architecture, the director of the Defense Information Systems Agency said. "The move to maximum telework has also accelerated a cybersecurity paradigm shift that we will outline in our upcoming 'zero trust' reference architecture," said Vice Adm. Nancy A. Norton during a keynote address today at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's virtual TechNetCyber 2020 conference. Under the "zero trust" model, Norton said, DISA makes the assumption that the DOD's internal networks are as hostile as external networks. "We are being attacked in the cyber domain constantly, with state and non-state actors generating more than a billion cyber events a month on our networks across every DOD component around the world," Norton said. To defend against that, Norton said, the defense department must get better at defending its network. That's something DISA and Joint Force Headquarters Department of Defense information networks are working on. "We are moving towards more micro-segmentation in this cybersecurity model with zero trust," she said. "It will apply to our data and critical resources from our data centers to our mobile devices." As a naval officer, Norton used the compartmentalization within a ship or submarine to prevent flooding as an example of how a network can be protected against attack from adversaries. "Segmenting critical assets ensures that when -- not if, but when -- your network is compromised, the damage is limited, the loss of data is limited and your mission is assured," Norton said. "In a traditional perimeter defense model to network defense, if an adversary got through the perimeter, they would have free rein throughout the network. We wouldn't want a [similar] ship design that would allow one flooded compartment to sink a warship." Norton said the paradigm change for zero trust comes through three principles. The first of those is to never trust, but always verify. "It ensures that all users and devices are treated as untrusted and everything is authenticated and explicitly authorized to the least privilege required using dynamic security policies," she said. Second, she said, that users will always assume a breach of security and will intentionally operate and defend as if an adversary is already present inside the IT environment. "We will scrutinize each request for access, users, devices and data flows using a deny by default approach and logging and inspecting all traffic," she said. Finally, the third principle is to verify explicitly, she said. "All resources must be consistently accessed in a secure manner using multiple attributes to build confidence levels for appropriate access to resources," she said. "With zero trust, we will affect every arena of our cyber domain, allowing us to shield our data better by closing every compartment in the ship." In 2019 Spouse Survey, 70% Report Good, Better Finances [2020-12-02] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department just released the results of the 2019 Survey of Active Duty Spouses. The survey is conducted every two years, and this year's report, like those in other years, provide the department with guides on how to adjust family policy in the coming years, the principal deputy under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness said. "These survey results are important because they help us evaluate policy and program success, address issues and gaps in resources and identify areas for necessary improvement," said William Bushman during a virtual conference today where the results of the survey were revealed. As part of the 2019 survey, more than 65,200 active duty military spouses were invited to participate, a little over 10,000, or 16.5%, opted to take part. Survey topics covered employment, deployment, reintegration and satisfaction with military life. Because the survey was completed in 2019, the effects of COVID-19 did not play a part in the survey. "While many of the 2019 survey results are consistent with past years, the survey indicates that there are areas where we are doing well, findings that may be of some concern and findings that need to be watched," said Dr. Paul Rosenfeld, director of the Center for Retention and Readiness within the Office of People Analytics. Family finances and personal health were among the positive trends highlighted in the 2019 ADSS, Rosenfeld said. According to Rosenfeld, the survey shows that 70% of respondents reported their family financial situation as either "comfortable" or "very comfortable." This contrasts with only 64% reporting the same way in 2012. "This encouraging finding mirrors results we have found on a status of forces survey of military members," Rosenfeld said. Also in the report, he said, is that 41% of spouses reported that in the past 12 months, their financial condition had improved, and reasons cited included reduction in debt and better financial management. The majority of spouses who participated in the survey also reported overall satisfaction with their marriage as well as lower levels of marital instability as compared to the average married civilian. While positive trends appeared throughout the report, there are areas of concern, Rosenfeld said. "Satisfaction with the military way of life and support for a spouse to stay on active duty both decreased, although the findings still reflect that the majority of spouses are satisfied, while over half -- 56% -- are satisfied or very satisfied with the military way of life -- that is lower than past years," he said. In 2017, for instance, that number was at 60%. Around 59% of survey respondents indicated that they favored their military spouse staying in the military service. That number has dropped. The most recent peak put that statistic at 68% in 2012. Since 2006, survey respondents most likely to say they prefer their spouse staying in the military have invariably come from the higher ranking personnel, both enlisted and officers. Other areas of concern within the survey involve spouse employment, Rosenfeld said. According to the 2019 report, approximately 22% of active duty spouses are unemployed. "Although the rate has been stable since 2012, it is higher than the civilian rate," he said, adding that the rate of unemployment is higher for spouses married to junior service members, female spouses, ethnic and racial minorities, spouse's under 26 years of age and those with no college or some college. Childcare is also a concern for military families, Rosenfeld said. Approximately 43% of spouses with children under 13 reported using some form of childcare so that they can go to work. Only about 39%, however, used on-base child care, Rosenfeld said. "Those spouses who do not routinely use on-base child care indicated availability, inconvenient location and affordability were the top reasons that they did not use on-base child care," Rosenfeld said. With the results of the survey now compiled, Bushman said the numbers will be used in coming years to continue to shape policy to improve the lives of service members and their families. "As we review the results of the 2019 survey, we can gauge the impact of the changes the department has made since our 2017 survey and determine which policies and programs we need to refine so that we can provide the necessary support to our military families, for them to flourish, stay connected and be mission ready." The OPA also conducted a 2019 survey of reserve component military spouses. The results of that survey are still being processed and they will be released when that review is complete. COVID-19 Draws Attention to Defense Industrial Base Vulnerabilities [2020-12-04] WASHINGTON -- When COVID-19 flared up earlier this year, the government and military looked for the medical supplies needed to keep citizens and medical personnel safe. The search put a spotlight on a fact the Defense Department had become aware of but not many had talked about: Many goods and supplies critical to the nation are not made in the U.S., but overseas -- and, many times, their manufacture was by nations the U.S. doesn't consider to be allies, said the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. "When the pandemic rolled around and everyone realized how vulnerable we were as a nation without the [personal protective equipment] and the pharmaceuticals that we needed where we depended on offshore sources, that heightened everybody's awareness of how that spreads through the defense industry, as well," Ellen M. Lord said during a discussion with the Hudson Institute that was recorded Dec. 1. "COVID was a type of silver lining for us in a way." Lord said the department worked in 2017 and 2018 on a study, in response to a presidential executive order, to look at the defense industrial base, or DIB. "We published a report in 2018," she said. "What that really did was segment the defense industrial base, and it gave us a lexicon to talk about what that industrial base consisted of. We also identified where we had vulnerabilities and fragility in the industrial base -- and a lot of that was where we had 100% dependency offshore, and especially when we were relying on nations who aren't particularly our partners and allies for critical items." As a result of COVID-19, it became apparent to even those outside DOD the nature of the problem of the U.S. not manufacturing stateside the critical goods and supplies it needs for its own health and national defense. "We, therefore, were able to move out and make some investments in industrial capacity and throughput," she said. Two areas identified in the 2018 report as being critical are rare earth minerals and microelectronics, both of which she said are necessary for weapon systems and the nation at large. Lord said the U.S. has some capacity for mining rare earth minerals domestically, as do partner nations Australia and Canada. But for processing of those minerals, she said, the U.S. depends mostly on China. "We are beginning to re-shore capability for [the] processing of rare earths, as well as working on a strategy to bridge from where we are today with our programs of records and our legacy systems, in terms of microelectronics, until we can get to the future a quantifiable assurance, and knowing what we have in these different chipsets we're buying," she said. Another issue Lord addressed is "adversarial capital." That's money invested by adversarial nations in U.S.-owned businesses responsible for defense production or other critical products and supplies. "We use the Council on Foreign Investment in the U.S., CFIUS. DOD is very active in that," she said. "What we are seeing is, unfortunately, nations such as China have taken advantage of the pandemic. They've come in with what we call 'adversarial capital.' And they have bought critical national assets, whether that [is] in terms of intellectual property or whether that [is] technology development or manufacturing." The DOD, through a variety of methods, has the ability to intervene in such purchases, Lord said. And also important, she said, is to work with allied nations to let them know how the problem of adversarial capital affects both them and the U.S. "When we work with our partners and allies, that's an even stronger position," she said. "Our adversaries are pretty smart. And they can often go to another country and have shell organizations and so forth. So, when we can partner with other nations to get at that, it's a powerful thing." Space Agency Hopes to Gain Industry's Trust With Proliferated Satellite Marketplace [2020-12-07] WASHINGTON -- The National Defense Space Architecture will include hundreds of Earth-orbiting satellites that gather targeting and tracking information and instantly transmit it to war fighters. Getting the defense industry on board with this means gaining their trust. Part of that will require the creation of a stable market for those satellites and technologies, the director of the Space Development Agency said. "We're trying to get industry to think differently -- and actually, the commercial industry is more aligned with this, and [the] aerospace and defense industry is coming along," Derek Tournear said during a virtual panel discussion today as part of Via Satellite's MilSatCom Digital Week. "We are setting and establishing a new market. And that market is based on the proliferation of these systems." The SDA, in its plans for the NDSA, expects to launch hundreds of satellites every other year. Those satellites will provide beyond-line-of-sight targeting for time sensitive targets as well as beyond-line-of-sight targeting and tracking of advanced missile threats. That's going to require a mesh network of satellites in space to be able to communicate with each via optical cross-link technology, and also communicate with the ground via tactical data links, Tournear said. Rather than have each satellite or tranche of satellites be built as part of a program, such as with other weapon systems the U.S. military may buy, Tournear said he hopes to convince industry that there will be an ongoing market for these satellites. Who makes them or what they look like is less important than that they all work together once in the air, and that they all accomplish the mission. "Our plan is to say, look, we are going to launch hundreds of satellites every other year in these tranches," Tournear said. "What I need industry to do is to partner with me on that and develop their own products internally, that then they will bring to bear in a fixed price bid against those capabilities and against that market." Tournear said he hopes the industry will feel comfortable investing in products they can sell in that market, to capture market share, rather than thinking about trying and then succeeding or failing to bid on a program. "That's what I'm trying to start, that kind of mindset in industry, to help us work together," he said. "I think that's the best way. That will prevent me from asking for something that can't be delivered. And it will allow industry to actually come up and develop a product that they have competence they can build at a fixed price model under a short timeframe." First COVID-19 Vaccine May Be Distributed Next Week [2020-12-09] WASHINGTON -- An assessment by the Food and Drug Administration shows the COVID-19 vaccine developed by U.S. drug company Pfizer is around 95% effective. The vaccine will soon be considered by the FDA for emergency use authorization. If that happens, Operation Warp Speed is ready to distribute the vaccine immediately. It could happen by next week, the secretary of Health and Human Services said. During a briefing today in Washington, Alex M. Azar said the FDA's assessment of the Pfizer vaccine shows it to be effective across different groups of Americans, including the elderly and those with comorbidities. The vaccine also did not show any significant safety concerns. He said the analysis will go before the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee on Thursday. That committee will be part of determining if the vaccine can be given an emergency use authorization, or EUA. "We could then have an EUA within days and be administering doses of vaccine to our most vulnerable next week," Azar said. "As we've discussed, based on current production schedules, we expect to have enough doses to vaccinate 20 million Americans by the end of this year, 50 million total by the end of January, and at least 100 million total by the end of the first quarter." Army Gen. Gustave F. Perna, who serves as chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed, said that within 24 hours of an EUA by the FDA, the vaccine could be shipped out to distribution sites across the United States to be available to the Americans who need it most. "Our goal is to make sure that we can ensure the vaccine is delivered in a timely manner, is to be delivered safely, securely, and it's ready to be utilized to start administering the vaccine as soon as possible," Perna said. The drug alone is not enough for ensuring distribution of vaccines across the U.S., Perna said. Additional supplies are also needed to administer a drug, and the general said those supplies are also on the way to the 636 locations across 64 jurisdictions where the vaccine will be sent. "I gave permission to already distribute syringes and needles, alcohol wipes, and diluent -- which is required in support of the Pfizer vaccine," Perna said. "We'll begin that today. Distribution will be completed by Friday." Decisions about where the vaccine goes and how much is sent to a particular location have been made in close coordination with state and jurisdiction officials. "We are going to allocate equitably vaccine doses to all of America simultaneously," Perna said during a similar briefing in October. "As doses become available, we're pushing down and out to the United States of America." In addition to the Pfizer vaccine, another manufacturer, Moderna, is also close to getting an EUA. Perna said OWS is ready for that as well. "This week, we're focusing not only on the final planning for the Pfizer vaccine, but we're in deep coordination for the micro plans for the Moderna vaccine," he said. "Last night, final lock of allocations were provided to the jurisdictions. Today, tomorrow and Friday, they will lock in locations and quantities, and we'll be prepared for follow-on -- eventual approval of the EUA for Moderna." Operation Warp Speed is a partnership between the Defense Department and HHS. Specific HHS components involved include the CDC, FDA, the National Institutes of Health and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. Effective Use of Data in DOD Requires the Right Leaders [2020-12-14] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department released its new data strategy in September, with a focus on joint all-domain operations, senior-leader decision support and business analytics. Across the department, agencies are now appointing their own chief data officers to become part of a community that wants to be able to use the DOD's vast amount of data to make better decisions faster. David Spirk, DOD's chief data officer, identified "strategic impatience" as a characteristic of those who will end up being the best CDOs within the department. "The right person for a leadership job in the data front in the department right now ... [is] somebody who knows when to be patient and impatient with extreme precision," Spirk said Dec. 10 during ThoughtSpot's virtual Beyond 2020 Digital conference. "We can only push these organizations so far, so fast because it is a cultural change." As the department moves toward using more data to make better, faster decisions, organizations that have in the past been reticent to share their data will need to open up to the idea if they want to reap the benefits that come from matching data with artificial intelligence and machine learning tools, Spirk said. Many organizations -- with the right CDOs in place -- are making such shifts now in their thinking. "Some of the legacy concepts around 'this is my data' just naturally change when we start using data to drive some of our senior leader-most decision-making forums," Spirk said. "I think at the department level we're blasting through some of those legacy cultural tendencies." One way that's happened, Spirk said, at least at the department level, is through the newly-created Deputies Management and Action Group, which involves the deputy secretary of defense, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the service chiefs and the service secretaries, Spirk said. "The fact is we sit with Deputy Secretary of Defense [David L. Norquist] a couple times a week, as a small team, and talk him through where we're at, what data are we unlocking, what data-driven decision-making forum can we put this in front of next. This senior leader attention is [now] foot-stomping and smashing through resistance from middle management because the tactical elements are now asking for the same ," he said. Spirk said there is now a data community across the department that is growing, and this data community is helping break down barriers that have in the past prevented the sharing of data. The new data community includes chief data officers, data stewards, data custodians and data managers, he said. "As we start stitching this team together and looking at hard problems that we can help each other out with, there's a growing team of data professionals who can go in and explain to [their] senior leaders that this isn't as scary as they might have thought in the past," he said. "Making our data visible allows us to more quickly get predictive analytics so we can create training quality data sets and really unleash the power of AI across our decision making." What's With All the U.S. Space-Related Agencies? [2020-12-14] WASHINGTON -- For centuries, the U.S. military has fought wars on land and sea. For that, America has the Army, the Navy and the Marine Corps. Then, in 1909, the U.S. Army bought America's first military aircraft with a $30,000 contract awarded to the Wright brothers. Less than four decades later, in 1947, the U.S. military gave birth to the U.S. Air Force to operate in the air domain. Now, the Defense Department sees another domain beyond land, sea and air: space. To fight and win in that domain, the DOD created the U.S. Space Force, a new service, in December 2019. The Space Force is not alone in its focus on space, however. Alongside the Space Force is the U.S. Space Command, which stood up in August 2019, and the Space Development Agency, which was created in March 2019. All three are partners in ensuring the U.S. maintains and strengthens its leadership position in space. But all three also have different roles in that regard. U.S. Space Force The Space Force is the newest of the bunch, standing up in December 2019. Its current commander is Gen. John W. Raymond. Like the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, the Space Force is a military service, and its mission is to organize, train, equip and provide forces and capabilities to the U.S. Space Command and the other unified combatant commands around the world. But in the same way the Marine Corps falls under the Department of the Navy rather than having its own department, the Space Force falls under the Department of the Air Force as it was originally Air Force Space Command. Like its sister services, Space Force will recruit young men and women into service and those men and women will attend basic training and wear uniforms unique to their service. As of late 2020, there are more than 2,000 uniformed personnel in the Space Force. As with the other services, there are civilian employees as well. About 6,000 civilian professionals are working within the Space Force. At the same time, as a brand new service, there are individuals who are not in the Space Force, but for the time being, are assigned to it while it gets on its feet. Right now this includes about 8,000 additional military and civilian personnel. As part of America's new focus on space, the Space Force has a mandate to be both "pathfinder and protector" of America's interests as a space-faring nation. As the newest military service, the Space Force will partner with and lead others to further responsible actions in, and use of, space to promote security and enhance prosperity. Should an aggressor threaten U.S. interests, America's space professionals stand ready to fight and win. U.S. Space Command The U.S. Space Command stood up for the first time back in 1985 as a functional combatant command. In 2002, it rolled up its flag and shut its doors. At that time it'd been in existence for nearly 17 years. On Aug. 19, 2019, however, Space Command stood up a second time. This time, Space Command is a geographic combatant command. While the U.S. European Command is meant to protect and defend U.S. interests in Europe, and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command protects and defends U.S. interests in the Pacific, U.S. Space Command protects U.S. interests in space. It's domain starts at about 60 miles above the surface of the earth and goes up from there. Army Gen. James H. Dickinson currently serves as the commander of Space Command, which includes about 1,000 people. Like other combatant commands, the number of personnel assigned to Space Command can shrink and grow based on the nation's needs. At the request of Space Command, and in the face of potential conflict, military services including the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Space Force will provide ready forces to Space Command so that it may carry out its mission to protect and defend the U.S. interests in space. Space Command also has service components provided to it. From the Navy, there is Navy Space Command or NavSpace; from the Army, there is the Space and Missile Defense Command, or SMDC; from the Marine Corps, there is Marine Forces Space Command or MARFORSPACE; and from the Space Force, there is Space Operations Command or SpOC. What is Space Command's mission? The command's mission focuses on four specific areas: deter aggression; defeat the nation's enemies through posture and preparedness; deliver space combat power; and defend U.S., allied and partner interests. With warfighters represented by every service trained to seek out and deter hostile activity, Space Command is prepared to defeat threats to U.S. and allied interests. Should that deterrence fail, Space Command is ready to transition from competition to conflict and achieve space superiority. Space Development Agency The Space Development Agency, which stood up in March 2019, is a much, much smaller entity than either Space Force or Space Command. At about only 100 people now, and an expectation to grow to only twice that, it also has a very specific mission -- but it's a big one. The SDA, led by its director, Dr. Derek Tournear, is tasked with one thing: build the National Defense Space Architecture. When completed, the NDSA will be a collection of satellites in space -- hundreds and hundreds of them -- that allow for the tracking and targeting of missile threats on earth and other time-sensitive targets. The NDSA includes seven "layers." Those are transport, tracking, custody, deterrence, navigation, battle management and support layers. The whole architecture will eventually include equipment on the ground and a lot of small satellites in low-earth orbit. Everything that makes up the NDSA, and the goal of the SDA in creating it, are focused on one thing: making sure America's warfighter has the best tools possible to do their job. The SDA is using a "proliferation" model to build the NDSA. In the case of SDA's development of the NDSA, this means to rapidly increase the number of satellites in space every other year. SDA hopes to launch hundreds of satellites into space every two years, in tranches, and to keep doing it for a long time. To keep the pace needed by the NDSA to design, build, procure and launch so many satellites, the SDA is relying heavily on industry and is encouraging new ways of thinking within the industry about how to provide capabilities to the government. Instead of the kinds of big contracts that end up producing things like new airplanes or carriers, SDA wants the industry to understand that there will be an ongoing market for satellites -- lots of them. And that if they keep making the right kind of satellite, the SDA will likely be interested. Tranche 0 of the NDSA, to be ready in 2022, includes 28 satellites: 20 for transport and 8 for tracking. Tranche 1, due in 2024, will include a couple hundred satellites in the transport layer, and a few dozen in the tracking layer. With Tranche 2, in 2026, the SDA would continue to build out the system as needed. By the time Tranche 2 satellites are going up, SDA leaders say, the agency would have global coverage, ensuring that the capabilities provided by the NDSA could be available to warfighters anywhere in the world. Ultimately, that means that the NDSA would be able to deliver information, including things like ultimately fire control solutions to the battalion level, in a very reduced timeframe over what exists today. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in Midst of Revolution [2020-12-15] WASHINGTON -- In existence for almost a quarter-century, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has been providing geospatial intelligence to policymakers, the intelligence community and warfighters since 1996. Now, says its director for operations, when it comes to geospatial intelligence, the agency is in the middle of a revolution. "From a strictly GEOINT standpoint, we're in the midst of a revolution right now," said Army Maj. Gen. Charles Cleveland today during an online conversation with the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. One aspect of that revolution, he said, is the growth in commercial GEOINT capability. "The explosion of commercial capabilities has just changed the entire opportunity for GEOINT," he said. "We're soon moving to a point where we think, essentially, every part of the planet will be imaged on a daily basis. And so we also then look at all that data coming in, and we struggle, and we think about the opportunity, though, with how to handle all of that data." One way to handle and extract value from large amounts of GEOINT, both from the commercial sector and from government assets, he said, is through the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning. That's a second aspect of the revolution Cleveland identified -- ways to use AI and machine learning to empower human workers with the best of what's possible. "We know that our adversaries really do have some significant capabilities," he said. "They are in many ways beginning to close the gap on us. As we move forward ... we really do think that, frankly, we are not going to be able to compete, we're not going to be able to do what we need to be doing by just simply trying to do what we were doing yesterday just a little bit faster ... we really do think that we've got to adjust the direction that we're going." Already, he said NGA is heavily invested in AI and machine learning. "We already have a number of efforts underway that are paying off and that are showing promise," he said. Some of that work, he said, is in capturing, cataloging, and tagging parts of images to be fed into larger systems. Another part is standardizing data and making sure it's understandable and accessible to the entire workforce. Ultimately, he said, the goal is to get computers, AIs, to free up human employees to do more challenging work. The NGA, he said, already has had some success on automatic reporting and automatic tipping and queuing, for instance. "We want to be able to move our analyst workforce ... from focusing on kind of the known-knowns to shifting that paradigm, so that they have time to think and they have time to work on the unknown-unknowns," he said. "Frankly, we want those machines to be able to take care of things that machines should be taking care of, so of course we can get our team focused on the thoughtful efforts." Perna: Whole-of-America Operation Warp Speed Effort 'Remarkable Feat' [2020-12-30] WASHINGTON -- With two vaccines for COVID-19 -- one from Pfizer and one from Moderna -- now available to Americans following emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration, Operation Warp Speed has been moving quickly to get those doses out to everyone who needs them, OWS's chief operating officer said. "We are really doing well, in my opinion, in the distribution," Army Gen. Gustave F. Perna said during a briefing today from the Pentagon. "Over 14 million doses of vaccine have been distributed to date. And every day we push more vaccine." Operation Warp Speed stood up just seven months ago, in May, to help bring a vaccine for COVID-19 to the American people. Since then, Perna said, OWS has been instrumental in the development of two vaccines, and Americans are now receiving those vaccines. Perna also said OWS worked to develop manufacturing capacity for the vaccines while they were still in development -- including the construction of new manufacturing facilities. The general also explained other efforts OWS has undertaken since it stood up, to further the goal of getting vaccines and therapeutics to the American people. "We've issued 18 Defense Production Act ratings, which allows us to prioritize materials, supplies and equipment essential to the U.S. government contracts," he said. "It puts them at the front of the line." Also part of the OWS effort, Perna said, was the development of a system that can connect existing vaccine tracking systems across the U.S., to, among other things, ensure anybody who receives the first dose of a vaccine will get the correct second dose when needed. "We developed and launched a new data system that connects hundreds of existing systems at the state [and] local level, to allow us to have visibility so that we can see ourselves across the entire United States," he said. The OWS team has also ensured state and local governments are involved every step of the way in how vaccines would be distributed, Perna said. "We've executed extensive planning, starting with the CDC putting out their playbook in September, and then extensive coordination with the state health officials every day, every week and every month since, and it continues as we go forward," he said. "We dedicated regional planning teams that are ... available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at the CDC, in support of the state and local governments." In October, OWS announced a partnership with CVS and Walgreens where those two pharmacy chains would provide free-of-charge vaccination services to long-term care facilities across the U.S. "Over 906 clinics [have been] conducted to date, as we ramp up to 4,000 a week," Perna said. Now, he said, OWS has also entered into a partnership with 19 additional pharmacy chains to expand the capacity of distribution throughout the U.S. Already, OWS has distributed more than 14 million doses of vaccine to over 10,800 locations around the U.S., and a total of 2 million doses have been administered in the last two weeks. "[It's] really a remarkable feat," Perna said. "Everybody collectively should be very proud -- the federal government, industry, academia, state and local governments, it has been a whole-of-America approach." After 75 Years, Veteran Will Receive Honors for WWII Service [2020-12-31] WASHINGTON -- The Navy and the Connecticut Air National Guard on Monday will honor Connecticut native son Dan Crowley for fighting against the Japanese in the Philippines 75 years ago. Gregory J. Slavonic, who is performing the duties of the Navy undersecretary, will present Crowley with an honorary Combat Infantryman Badge in recognition of the fighting he did while in the Philippines, and a Prisoner of War medal. Crowley will also be promoted because he attained the rank of sergeant in October 1945, but he was never notified. The ceremony will be held at the Bradley International Airport/Air National Guard hanger in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, on Jan. 4 at 11:30 a.m. The event can be viewed live on the 103rd Airlift Wing's Facebook page at http://www.Facebook.com/103aw. Crowley enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in October 1940 at the age of 18. Less than six months later, in March 1941, he arrived at the Nichols Field air base near Manila in the Philippines. In December 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Almost immediately afterward, they bombed airfields in the Philippines -- including Nichols Field where then-Army Pvt. Crowley was stationed. That raid destroyed all the hangers there and other infrastructure. Crowley and others worked to defend that airfield against the Japanese attack, but their efforts ultimately proved unsuccessful. Weeks after the bombing of Nichols Field, Crowley and others sailed about 25 miles across Manila Bay to the Bataan Peninsula in the dark of night. Fighting on the Bataan Peninsula eventually forced the Americans there to surrender -- but Crowley and others didn't want to give up. Instead, they snuck off to Corregidor Island, which was about five miles south. But about a month after Bataan was surrendered, Corregidor also fell to the Japanese, and Crowley and others were held as prisoners of war. The Japanese took the POWs from Corregidor back to Manila and held them at Camp Cabanatuan. To escape the horrid conditions at the camp, Crowley volunteered for a work detail to help build an airfield for the Japanese on Palawan Island. He and others worked to build an airstrip using only hand tools. After Crowley and others returned from their work on the airstrip, Crowley was shipped off to Japan to be a slave laborer in a copper mine in March 1944. After being liberated on Sept. 4, 1945, Crowley returned home to his family in Connecticut. He was honorably discharged from the Army in April 1946. While in the Philippines, Crowley participated in combat against the Japanese as part of the Army's Provisional Air Corps Infantry Regiment on Bataan and later with the 4th Marines Regimental Reserve. DOD's Inaugural Foray Into 5G Experimentation on Track [2021-01-05] WASHINGTON -- The United States Department of Defense has taken historic action to advance the application of 5G communications for America's warfighters. In October 2020, Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Michael Kratsios announced $600 million in award contracts to 15 prime contractors to perform testing and evaluation of 5G technologies at five military installations across the country. This initial Tranche 1 effort represents the largest full-scale 5G test for dual-use applications in the world. Since then, the Department has made important progress in establishing the Tranche 1 sites and preparing the upcoming Tranche 2 requests for proposals. "With these test beds, the Department of Defense is at the forefront of cutting-edge 5G research that will strengthen America's warfighting capabilities and accelerate advancements in commercial 5G technologies," Mr. Kratsios said. Dr. Joseph B. Evans, principal director for 5G in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, provided an update on the Department's 5G testing and experimentation efforts, as well as its 5G Strategy Implementation Plan. The latest information can also be found at the newly launched CTO.mil/5G. "So far, the Department's 5G experiments are coming together as expected," Evans said. "In addition to the Tranche 1 sites getting stood up, we also have the Tranche 2 sites that are in the process of releasing requests for proposals ... the Department is on track for 5G testing in 2021." The 5G wireless communications technologies in development now offer great improvements in speed, connectivity and reduced latency, Evans said. He also said it's critical for the DOD to be involved in accelerating the development of that technology, as well as in ensuring those systems are robust, protected, resilient and reliable. "5G is important to the Department because it will enable new capabilities, such as machine-to-machine communication, that will help us to improve our efficiency and our processes, and enable us to react more quickly," Evans said. In the same way traditional telecommunications and the internet have enhanced DOD operations, 5G is going to do the same -- but to a much, much greater extent, Evans said. Establishing the Tranche 1 Sites Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, Georgia; Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington; Naval Base San Diego, California; Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada; and Hill Air Force Base, Utah, were designated as "testbeds" where commercial 5G technology would be evaluated for its ability to enhance military and service-specific operational challenges. Together, the five installations make up "Tranche 1" of the department's efforts. "We've formulated these experiments as three- to four-year projects," Evans said. "We've built them as multiyear projects with iterative development. After a year, we'll look at the initial experimental results and metrics and then go forward in future years based on how those technologies are evolving, reviewing on an annual basis." Further down the road, Evans said, the department will be able to identify what particular technologies and systems are able to make a useful transition into the services or the broader Defense Department. "Our 5G prototyping and experimentation effort is an ongoing, iterative evaluation of the different uses cases and technologies, and how they can transition," Evans said. So far, more than $600 million has been awarded in over three dozen prime contracts, with more than 100 companies participating, to evaluate 5G technology at those testbed installations. There, 5G technology will be applied to problems and challenges identified in collaboration with the military services. At Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, experimentation will focus on efficiency improvements within warehouse operations, including receipt, storage, inventory control and tracking, issuance, and delivery. There, Federated Wireless has signed a contract to deploy 5G within and around an existing Marine Corps warehouse to provide the platform for a 5G-enabled "smart warehouse." Other partners at MCLBA include GE Research, KPMG LLP, Scientific Research Corporation, Virginia Tech Applied Research and Alion Science. Also involved in smart warehousing is Naval Base San Diego. There, AT&T has signed a contract to deploy 5G infrastructure, including millimeter wave technology. In San Diego, the 5G-enabled smart warehouse experiment will be a proving ground for, among other things, real-time asset tracking, predictive analytics, environmental sensing, robotics and augmented reality. Partners there include GE Research, Vectrus Mission Solutions Corporation, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Perspecta, XCOM, Parallel Wireless, Qubitekk, Secure G and GenXCom. It's early in the Tranche 1 experiments, with contracts just having recently been awarded. The next big step for Tranche 1 installations, Evans said, will be to get those testbeds set up and running. It's expected that all Tranche 1 testbeds will be operational by the fall of 2021, he said. Preparing for Tranche 2 The Department has also announced a second set of installations where 5G experimentation would take place. Those installations include Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia; Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii; Joint Base San Antonio; the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, and Fort Hood, Texas; Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California; and Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma. "What we are really focused on with Tranche 2 is getting those solicitations out so that we can get the best industry performers and industry players involved in these projects," Evans said. "We're really trying to reach out to the entire 5G industry -- from the big companies to the traditional defense industrial base, and to small businesses and startups that are trying to create new and interesting technologies in 5G that can support DOD missions. We're focused on getting those solicitations out and making sure we get the best players providing technologies to DOD." Already, Evans said, solicitations for some of the Tranche 2 installations have taken place. A white paper solicitation was released for work at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Camp Pendleton, and for Naval Station Norfolk. "The solicitation for white papers closed on December 15," Evans said. "We're in the process of evaluating those. The next step -- hopefully late January or early February -- will be a request for proposals for those three bases." Evans said the Department is also working with the National Spectrum Consortium on solicitations for four other Tranche 2 sites. "We hope those will be out in a similar time frame, early in the new calendar year," he said. "Those solicitations will be for experiments at Joint Base San Antonio, for experiments at the National Training Center and Fort Hood, as well as an experiment at Tinker Air Force Base. We are looking forward to getting exciting responses." The DOD's Strategy Implementation Plan In addition to launching the test sites, the Department released its 5G Strategy Implementation Plan. The plan discusses DOD's work to carry out its 5G Strategy, signed in May, outlining four lines of effort, including promoting technology development; assessing, mitigating, and operating through 5G vulnerabilities; influencing 5G standards and policies; and engaging partners. "The strategy is an across-the-board plan for what DOD can do with 5G and how it can advance DOD's capabilities and U.S. capabilities in 5G," Evans said. "The implementation plan then goes into each of those areas and describes how we'll be going about each of those lines of effort. It's comprehensive view of what we should be doing and will be doing to implement that 5G strategy." World War II Vet, POW Who Endured 'Hell Ship,' Gets CIB, Promotion, POW Medal [2021-01-06] WASHINGTON -- An Army veteran who served in the Pacific theater in World War II was finally recognized for his courage in a ceremony on Jan. 4. "Courage means to me that when the time came, that you were called upon to do the right thing, you did it," Dan Crowley said. Crowley was awarded a Prisoner of War medal and an Army Combat Infantryman Badge; he was also promoted to sergeant. At an Air National Guard hangar in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, Gregory J. Slavonic, who is performing the duties of the Navy undersecretary, presented Crowley with the long-delayed honors and recognition. "I have to say that to be able to do this today is a rare and humbling opportunity for me as the undersecretary of the Navy -- to be able to recognize Dan for his many sacrifices and accomplishments," Slavonic said. "He truly represents members of the greatest generation, who did so much but asked so little from their country. The valor and professionalism demonstrated by you, Dan, has earned you a permanent place in the heart of every American." A Connecticut native, Crowley joined the Army Air Corps in October 1940 at the age of 18. For his first duty assignment, Crowley was assigned to an aircraft unit on Nichols Field near Manila, the capital of the Philippines. He arrived there in March 1941. At the time, the U.S. was not involved in the world war that had ravaged so many other nations. But after being on station in the Philippines for just nine months, things changed dramatically. On Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. On the same day, the Japanese attacked the Philippines, bombing several military airfields. On the next day, the U.S. declared war on Japan, and the Japanese bombed Nichols Field where Crowley was assigned. Crowley wasn't trained in combat arms, but when the bombs started falling, he and other soldiers had to act. "Dan and his unit participated in an improvised air defense at this location, welding antiquated British Lewis machine guns together to form a single, more powerful gun," Slavonic said. The Japanese raid at Nichols Field destroyed all the hangars, most of the aircraft and other infrastructure. While Crowley and others worked to defend the airfield against the Japanese attacks, their efforts ultimately proved unsuccessful. On Dec, 24, 1941 -- about 15 days after the Japanese bombed Nichols Field -- Crowley and others sailed about 25 miles across Manila Bay to the Bataan Peninsula in the dark of night, leaving their former home abandoned. "The Japanese controlled the air over the Philippines, [and] completely eliminated the U.S. Far East Air Force as an effective defense of Asia," Slavonic said. "The Philippines now had to rely solely on its ground forces, which at the time had no lines of supply nor escape." On the Bataan Peninsula, the fighting continued. The soldiers from Nichols Field -- including Crowley -- became part of the U.S. Army's Provisional Air Corps Infantry Regiment. The regiment was joined in their efforts by the Philippine Scouts. "[They] worked hand-in-hand to fend off three amphibious landings by the Japanese on the west coast of Bataan in the Battle of the Points," Slavonic said. "Imagine the courage and determination it required for Dan to stay alive, yet remain engaged in these assaults." After three and a half months of fighting, it was apparent the Japanese were going to prevail at Bataan. It was then, on April 9, 1942, the American leadership on the peninsula opted to surrender in order to prevent further casualties -- something that had never before happened. As part of the surrender, they ordered troops to move south on the peninsula and congregate there in Mariveles. While the U.S. forces had been ordered to surrender, Crowley wasn't in agreement with his leadership. "The men did not surrender, either on Bataan or on Corregidor," Crowley said. "They were surrendered by their commanding officers to prevent a massacre, which was threatened by the Japanese commander." Instead of surrendering, Crowley and others made other plans to escape the clutches of the Japanese. "Refusing to become prisoners, he and a number soldiers and sailors hid among the rocks in the breakwater near the shore, and, at nightfall, they made their way through the three miles of shark-infested waters, swimming to Corregidor and clinging to lifeboats or debris from the various ships that were bombed or scuttled," Slavonic said. On Corregidor island, just off the southern tip of the Bataan Peninsula, Crowley and others were met by a Marine Corps unit -- the 4th Marines Regimental Reserves. Crowley and the others who had escaped Bataan fought alongside Marines to keep Corregidor from falling into the hands of the Japanese. "These Marines fought a dangerous and desperate shore defense until Corregidor fell on May 6, 1942," Slavonic said. He also noted that Dan, along with nearly 12,000 other POWs, were held at the 92nd Garage Area on Corregidor, an exposed beach with little water or food and no sanitation. By the end of the month, Crowley and others were taken by boat from Corregidor to Manila where they were paraded through the city as part of the "March of Shame" on May 25, 1942. Eventually, he was housed as a POW at Camp Cabanatuan. "To escape the unspeakable conditions of the camp, Dan volunteered to work the airstrip in Palawan Island where he and other laborers were given only hand tools to carve out the runway for the enemy," Slavonic said. On Palawan Island, Crowley worked for nearly 18 months to build a runway for the Japanese. He was eventually returned to Manila in February 1944, but not everyone who'd gone to Palawan Island was returned. "[The Japanese] burned alive a hundred-plus Americans on the island of Palawan," Crowley said. "The Japanese proved their threat of massacre was not an empty threat. They did proceed to murder about 150 Americans by burning [them] alive with gasoline. They forced them to dig a long ditch ... they were forced into it, and then [the Japanese] poured gasoline on them and the guards ... they ignited it with torches. Some men actually survived, so we have eyewitness accounts to it." Back in Manila, Crowley had escaped that death sentence, but the Japanese had other plans for him. To support the Japanese war effort, he was to mine copper as a slave laborer. In March 1944, the Japanese put him on a boat bound for Japan. "[Dan survived] a hellish transit that would last for weeks, ultimately arriving in Japan," Slavonic said. "The stories of what transpired on those 'hell ships,' have driven many sailors, as Dan has said, to have all sorts of nightmares and post-traumatic stress disorder. Ultimately, Dan would spend three-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war, enduring the most unspeakable tortures, and witnessing many of his closest friends suffer the most inhumane murders of the war." On Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. detonated a nuclear weapon over the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, the U.S. detonated another weapon over the city of Nagasaki. On Sept. 2, 1944, the Japanese signed documents of surrender aboard the USS Missouri. Just two days later, Crowley was liberated. After spending some time in an American hospital, he was able to return home to his family in Connecticut. Crowley was honorably discharged from the Army in April 1946; however, Army records show he had been promoted to sergeant in October 1945, but Crowley never learned of that promotion. On Monday, Crowley finally received the chevrons of an Army sergeant -- bringing him into the ranks of the noncommissioned officer corps. Recognizing the years he spent as a prisoner of war in the Philippines and Japan, he was awarded a POW medal. And, finally, in recognition of the armed combat he participated in at Nichols Field, on Bataan and on Corregidor, he was given the Army's Combat Infantryman Badge. "As every generation learns, freedom is not free," Slavonic said. "This is Dan's story. Many others like it remind other service members of the dedication and service displayed by the greatest generation. We have an obligation to remember these brave men and women who fought so hard and expected so little from their nation." States Can Accelerate Vaccinations by Broadening Recipient Pool [2021-01-06] WASHINGTON -- Uptake of newly-available COVID-19 vaccines from both Pfizer and Moderna has not been as fast in some places as expected. State governors have been encouraged to expedite uptake, if needed, by expanding eligibility for those vaccines to ensure that no vaccine goes wasted. "States can ... accelerate vaccine administration by moving on to providing vaccinations to broader populations right now," Alex M. Azar, the secretary of Health and Human Services, said during an Operation Warp Speed briefing today. "There is no reason that states need to complete, say, vaccinating all health care providers before opening up vaccinations to older Americans or other especially vulnerable populations." Azar said how vaccines are delivered to Americans is entirely up to the states -- not the federal government. Bearing that in mind, he said, it's more important now to get the vaccine into arms quickly, to save lives, than it is to keep it locked up until Americans in the right candidate pools step up to get their shot. While the CDC and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices have made recommendations about who should get the vaccines first -- healthcare workers are high on that list -- Azar reiterated that they are just recommendations. "They should never stand in the way of getting shots in arms, instead of keeping vaccines in the freezer, or even, heaven forbid, wasting a dose of vaccine in a vial," Azar said. "It's more important to vaccinate. I have encouraged our governors, and I will continue to do so, that if they are using all of the vaccine, that is ... allocated, ordered, distributed, shipped -- and they're getting it into healthcare provider's arms, every bit of it, that's great. But if for some reason their distribution is struggling, and they're having vaccines sit in freezers, then by all means you ought to be opening up to people ... 65 and over. You ought to be making sure that the nursing home patients are getting vaccinated." Army Gen. Gustave F. Perna, the chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed, said right now, OWS is focused on ensuring that states have the vaccine they need when they need it. "Nearly 20 million doses of vaccine [have been] already delivered," Perna said. "We have delivered that to over 13,000 different locations throughout the United States ... simultaneously, fair and equitable distribution of vaccines so that everybody has the opportunity to distribute simultaneously to the American people. I would tell you that it's going very well and our goal is to maintain the steady drumbeat so that the states have a cadence of allocation, planning and then the appropriate distribution to the right places, as designated." Another way to speed up vaccine delivery, Azar said, will be with the early launch of the federal "Pharmacy Partnership" program, which will eventually cover more than 40,000 pharmacy locations within 19 pharmacy chains and associations across the U.S. "This partnership allows states to allocate vaccines directly to these partners and these partners can then administer vaccines to particular groups, like those over a certain age or in certain occupations, and eventually to the general public," Azar said. "To help give states as many options as possible for vaccine administration, we're launching the program this week and states can choose particular partners to send vaccines to now." Those partners can then provide easier access to vaccines in settings that might be more convenient and efficient to Americans, Azar said. OWS is a partnership between the Defense Department and the Department of Health and Human Services. Specific DHS components involved include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. Trusted Capital Marketplace Reduces Vulnerability to Adversarial Capital [2021-01-13] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department stood up the Trusted Capital Marketplace in December, and already both capability and capital providers are signing up to participate, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment said today. In order to ensure adversary nations are not investing in U.S. defense and technology companies -- and undermining national security in the process -- the department created the Trusted Capital Marketplace. "Trusted capital works by providing opportunities for trusted financial institutions and qualifying companies to explore mutually beneficial partnerships in support of national security goals," Ellen M. Lord said during a briefing at the Pentagon. The marketplace is an online forum where technology and defense industry companies, both large and small, can be paired with investors who are interested in contributing to the national defense. Participation in the marketplace requires businesses within the defense and technology industry and capital providers to be vetted in advance. "Each will undergo a rigorous due diligence process before they are accepted into the marketplace to ensure foreign ownership control and influence is nonexistent," Lord said. "Specifically, trusted finance partners will be able to apply via the trusted capital landing page and technology innovation providers will be required to receive a recommendation once going through our security screening processes." Both small and mid sized companies in the defense industrial base are vulnerable to adversarial capital, Lord said. The Trusted Capital Marketplace is designed to fix that. "We need to make sure companies can stay in business without losing their intellectual property -- the foundation of so many critical technologies," she said. "Economic security can be undermined by acquisition of companies in the defense and dual-use sectors by entities that are U.S.-based, but are actually owned or controlled by adversarial foreign entities." Citing an example of concern, Lord said that from January to April of 2020, China announced 57 outbound mergers and acquisitions worth $9.9 billion and an additional 45 outbound investments worth $4.5 billion in both the United States and other allied nations. Lord said the Trusted Capital Marketplace, part of the department's Trusted Capital Program, is a way for businesses in the defense sector to ensure that when they accept investment, they will always know where that money is coming from. "The defense industrial base ... really represents the nexus of economic and national security in the U.S. In addition to supporting and encouraging small businesses, our responsibilities in A&S include establishing policies to maximize United States competitive advantage, and ensuring robust, secure, and resilient national industrial base capabilities," Lord said. "The Trusted Capital Program provides a more lethal force by creating new partnerships in order to reform the way the government will provide opportunity for innovation." Lord said the Trusted Capital Marketplace is just one tool the department uses to address economic and national security concerns related to adversary capital. The A&S mergers and acquisitions team and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, also play a role. DOD's Autonomous Vessel Sails Through Transit Test, Participates in Exercise Dawn Blitz [2021-01-13] WASHINGTON -- A Ghost Fleet Overlord unmanned surface vessel, part of a partnership between the Defense Department's Strategic Capabilities Office and the Navy, recently traveled a distance of more than 4,700 nautical miles, almost entirely autonomously. Afterward, it participated in exercise Dawn Blitz where it again spent nearly all of its underway time operating autonomously. "This is a historic milestone for the program and the Navy. It represents what SCO does best: integrate mature technologies to accelerate service priorities and create new capabilities for our warfighters,'' Jay Dryer, director of the SCO said. The Ghost Fleet Overlord program is part of an effort to accelerate the Navy's push to incorporate autonomous vessels within its fleet to better expand the reach of manned vessels. Autonomy includes more than just straight-line passage through large areas of the ocean; it also involves such things as collision avoidance and following the rules of the sea. The Navy's efforts to adopt the unmanned vessel concept involve several classes of ships and an array of missions, such as offensive operations and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance with reduced risk to crew and legacy vessels. The Ghost Fleet Overlord program has demonstrated continued maturity in the autonomous USV concept since it stood up in late 2018. The most recent display of that maturity involved a USV traveling from the Gulf Coast to the coast of California, moving autonomously approximately 97% of the time. While the USV did have a crew on board, remote mission command and control for the trip was done from a remote location by sailors with Surface Development Squadron One. One of the few times the USV was guided by its onboard crew was when it traversed the Panama Canal. Optionally manned vessels provide a stepping stone to allow the Navy and its sailors to more easily become familiar with the concept of autonomous operations than what would be possible with a fully autonomous ship. After arriving on the West Coast of the U.S., the Ghost Fleet Overlord USV participated in December's Dawn Blitz exercise with the Navy and Marine Corps. There, it successfully demonstrated compliance with international regulations for preventing collisions at sea, station keeping, loiter and transit missions. It was the first time a Ghost Fleet Overlord USV interacted with actual assets in the Navy fleet. During its participation in Dawn Blitz, the Ghost Fleet Overlord USV operated autonomously for more than 130 hours and traversed roughly 950 nautical miles -- accounting for approximately 98% of its underway time. The Ghost Fleet Overlord program has been an accelerant to the Navy's adoption of unmanned surface vessels, enabling it to more rapidly bring such vessels into the fleet. "Our close partnership with SCO on the Overlord program is accelerating the technology demonstration, CONOPs development and operational command and control of unmanned surface vessels in direct alignment with the Navy's plans," CAPT Pete Small, Navy Program Manager for USVs, said. To help the Navy advance its goal to incorporate autonomous vessels within the fleet, the SCO's Ghost Fleet Overlord program has taken commercial ocean-going vessels and integrated both commercially-available and government-provided equipment on board to create unmanned surface vessels. Phase II of the Ghost Fleet Overlord program, which focuses on the integration of government-furnished command-and-control systems and payloads and more complex and challenging naval operations experimentation, began in September. The SCO will transition its two Ghost Fleet Overlord prototypes to the Surface Development Squadron One by the end of fiscal year 2021. The Navy is currently acquiring two more Ghost Fleet Overlord prototypes to accompany the two SCO built to continue unmanned systems testing and fleet experimentation. DOD Aims to Bring Industrial Base Back to U.S., Allies [2021-01-15] WASHINGTON -- While the defense industrial base is healthy, there are single points of failure and dependencies on overseas suppliers that must be addressed, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment said. "Over a period of years, we have offshored many, many sources of supply," Ellen M. Lord said during an online discussion Thursday with the Hudson Institute. "It's not for one reason; it's for a variety of reasons, whether it be regulations, whether it be labor costs, whether it be government support of different industries." The deindustrialization of the U.S. over the last 50 years, the end of the Cold War and the focus it gave the U.S. on defeating the Soviet Union, digital technology and the rise of China have all created challenges to national defense. In the newly released Fiscal Year 2020 Industrial Capabilities Report to Congress, Lord said the department looked into those challenges and their effects on the defense industrial base and proposed key actions to address them. "What we did in this report was try to really capture those risks, look at the opportunities and come up with some specific steps that we can really take to reform how we go about looking at that supply chain and, in the endgame, really get capability downrange to the warfighter as quickly and cost-effectively as possible," she said. First, Lord said, the U.S. must re-shore more of its industrial base -- bring it back to the U.S. and U.S. allies. "There are a couple [of] key areas there with shipbuilding, as well as microelectronics -- fundamental to our capability," she said. Development of a modern manufacturing and engineering workforce along with a more robust research and development base is also critical. Declines in U.S. science, technology, engineering and mathematics education and industrial jobs hurt the ability of the defense industrial base to innovate, Lord said. "We want to make sure that we have modern manufacturing and engineering expertise," she said. "We do not have nearly the number of scientists and engineers as China has. We need to make sure that we develop our talent to be able to leverage on these critical areas." The department must also reform and modernize the defense acquisition process to better meet the realities of the 21st century, Lord said. "We've started with a number of those, but there's much further to go," she said. "We want to make sure that our traditional defense industrial base is widened to get all of those creative, innovative companies. We know the small companies are where most of our innovation comes from, and the barriers to entry -- sometimes to getting into the Department of Defense -- are rather onerous." Lord said part of modernizing and reforming defense acquisition is the recently announced Trusted Capital Marketplace, which will match potential defense suppliers -- many of them small companies that have never done business with DOD -- with the investors they need to keep operating and innovating. The Trusted Capital Marketplace will vet investors to ensure foreign ownership, control and influence is nonexistent. Finally, Lord said, the department must find new ways to partner private sector innovation with public sector resources and demand. "We, as the government, I believe, need to work with industry to make sure that we diversify that industrial base and, also, that we much more quickly translate technological capability into features of current platforms and weapon systems, as well as incorporate it in new ones," Lord said. Despite COVID-19 Restrictions, Service Members Play Important Role in Inauguration [2021-01-19] WASHINGTON -- While the COVID-19 pandemic has curtailed much of the military-influenced pomp and circumstance that typically surrounds a presidential inauguration, service members will still play an important role during the event, said the commander of Joint Task Force -- National Capital Region, which orchestrates the military's involvement. During a teleconference Tuesday afternoon, Army Maj. Gen. Omar J. Jones, who also serves as the commander of the U.S. Army Military District of Washington, outlined the roles service members will play during the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. First, he said, will be to provide security support to civilian law enforcement personnel. "All security support from the DOD [Defense Department], to the inauguration, to civil law enforcement organizations is being provided by Title 32 forces ... all through the National Guard," Jones said. Title 32 service members are National Guard personnel who are operating in support of state governors. Active duty service members operate under Title 10. "There are no Title 10 forces that are conducting security operations in support of civilian law enforcement for the inauguration," Jones said. Active-duty service members from all branches of the service do have a role in the inauguration, however. They will perform traditional ceremonial roles as well as provide consequence management support, Jones said. "Consequence management is something we do all the time, and we absolutely do for national special security events ... bottom line is that America's military is ... always ready across the components, always ready across the joint force," Jones said. Consequence management involves U.S. military personnel being ready to provide support to civilian authorities if requested by them to do so and if that request is approved by the secretary of defense. Jones said there are soldiers and Marines stationed within the National Capital Region ready to provide that support. There are also Navy airborne search and rescue crews and Army and Air Force helicopters, as well. "Those are the kind of capabilities we have available ... again, if directed to provide Title 10 consequence management support," Jones said. The most visible role the U.S. military will play is in providing ceremonial support to the inauguration, Jones said. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, there will be no inaugural parade this year, and so the military's role has been reduced. For previous inaugurations, Jones said, some 5,500 personnel have been brought into Washington from around the world to participate in the inauguration. This year only about 2,000 personnel will participate -- and most of those are from the local area. "We have tried as much as we can ... to take from local forces," Jones said. "It hasn't been 100%, but it's been pretty darn close because we are, as you can imagine, very conscious of the pandemic, very conscious of the increased risk both to our force but also to the American public by folks having to travel. So, as much as possible, we've tried to resource all the Title 10 regular military requirements from members of the DOD team here in the National Capital Region." This year, service members will participate in a pass and review for the new president on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. There will also be a new element to the inauguration this year. Biden will lay a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery following the swearing in ceremony, Jones said. "It's an honor to have our new president honor both our fallen as well as our unknown who are memorialized at Arlington National Cemetery, and it's humbling to be a part of that," Jones said. Service members will also escort Biden to the White House -- which is a tradition more than 230 years old. "[It's] in keeping with the tradition that goes all the way back to our first inauguration of George Washington in 1789, when the military escorted George Washington from his swearing in to his residence in New York City," Jones said. "Frankly, it's an honor for the joint task force and for the U.S. military to be part of that and to sustain that tradition." As part of all the U.S. military support to the inauguration, Jones said, military personnel will practice necessary social distancing. "You will see physical distancing among all the service members, [among] the formations for the presidential escorts you will see us wearing face coverings ... to protect the force, to protect our mission, consistent with the pandemic that all of us continue to be faced with," Jones said. Defense Official Discusses Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Human Decision-Making, AI [2021-02-03] WASHINGTON -- Defeating a swarm of small unmanned aircraft systems may one day require faster decision making than what a single human being can provide, and may mean the use of artificial intelligence to make those decisions. Right now, though, rules of engagement still require a human in the loop. "Right now we don't have the authority to have a human out of the loop," Col. Marc E. Pelini, the division chief for capabilities and requirements within the Joint Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office, said during a teleconference. "Based on the existing Department of Defense policy, you have to have a human within the decision cycle at some point to authorize the engagement." But given the threat of UAS swarms, Pelini said he knows there is talk about developing artificial intelligence capabilities to enable "in-the-loop" or "out-of-the-loop" human decision-making. "When you're starting to see swarming activities of hundreds or potentially thousands [of UAS] in the future, obviously you want your system to operate as fast [as possible] to provide those weaponeering solutions to the operator, or operate within a set of parameters," Pelini said. "But that's really kind of defined right now in the policy realm." In January, the Defense Department published the Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Strategy to provide a framework for addressing small UAS hazards and threats in the U.S., host nations and contingency locations. One aspect of the department's strategy will be the development of a Joint Counter UAS Center of Excellence, which Army Maj. Gen. Sean A. Gainey, the director of the Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office, said is being developed now under the guidance of the Fires Center of Excellence. A Joint Counter UAS academy is also expected to be developed to train service members and leaders on how to fight the threat posed by UAS. "The intent of the academy is to ... not only provide the opportunity for training but to start training leaders on counter-UAS and have the basic understandings and ... go from basic to advanced understanding of the threat and then how to employ these capabilities," Gainey said. The concept of the schoolhouse is likely to involve both resident and non-resident training opportunities for a variety of students, Pelini said. "Your non-resident personnel would really kind of be the operators that are operating a specific piece of equipment ... that would be taught utilizing a joint common core," Pelini said. With in-resident students, he said, the school would strive to accomplish two things. "The first one is training experts -- so kind of building those, for lack of a better term, master gunners on the Army side, that would help the commanders develop and evaluate and implement the counter-UAS training plan for the particular unit," Pelini said. "The other piece of the puzzle of the resident course is developing the joint architecture and joint systems experts ... understanding how systems interact with each other, getting more to the technical granularity, and understanding electronic warfare fratricide, radar fratricide, etc." Pelini said in-resident students would be developed into subject matter experts to serve at battalion, brigade or higher commands to allow leadership to make optimal use of counter-UAS systems. Online Tool Focuses on Exceptional Family Members [2021-02-10] WASHINGTON -- The Exceptional Family Member Program's online tool, EFMP & Me, recently got an upgrade that provides leadership and program service providers with access to an array of information and checklists curated especially for them. "There are four specific users we identified for EFMP & Me, and now they each have their own section, their own content and an information source for their particular role within the Exceptional Family Member Program," said Karen M. Terry, program analyst with the Defense Department's Office of Military Community and Family Policy. The four identified users are family members, service members, leaders and providers. The DOD identifies family members in the Exceptional Family Member program as having a special medical and/or educational need that meet the criteria for enrollment into the program, Terry said. Terry said the Defense Department created the Exceptional Family Member Program to ensure the department considers the needs of military families during the assignment process. The online tool is part of the suite of resources on Military OneSource. Planning and development began a few years ago when leaders in the Military Community and Family Policy Office recognized that families with special needs may have concerns unique to their situation that are not addressed elsewhere. MC&FP developed EFMP & Me to provide service members and their families an online tool to explore information and resources of interest to them. Users can access the tool via a mobile device or desktop. "For example, these families have additional concerns or considerations when they're moving," she said. "So, we put together a working group to kind of talk about the idea of checklists. And what became very apparent very quickly was because of the differences in each family's individual concerns and where they might be in their military career, a one-size-fits-all approach would not be sufficient. There are so many variables in every family's military life, and even more so with families in EFMP." The EFMP & Me tool was born out of those discussions. The tool initially launched in June of last year with resources and checklists tailored for family members. They cover multiple concerns within 10 different topic categories and are customizable to the needs of the user. "The tool also gives suggestions of resources and tools that they can check out for more support or guidance, like who to ask a particular question to, so that they experience less guesswork and less running around. With EFMP & Me, they have more information on exactly what they need to do to get that PCS move, or whatever it is, done as efficiently as possible," Terry said. Family members were just the first "profile" available under EFMP & Me. The next profile, made available in August 2020, was for service members. Terry said they added two new profiles to EFMP & Me in January. One is for military leaders who have service members in their ranks with family members in the EFMP, and one is for service providers within the program. "The leader's role is to make sure service members are ready to deploy or whatever the military needs them to do and part of that is ensuring family members are being cared for," Terry said. "A lot of times we find, with family members who have special needs, there's a lot going on at home, and there are a lot of considerations," Terry said. "It may be that you don't just need to find a babysitter; you need to find a babysitter who is skilled at taking care of a child with a particular disability. For those families, it's helpful for the military leader to understand not just that the service member has a family member with special needs, but also that the service member is going to have additional concerns and priorities on their mind." The EFMP & Me tool gives leaders access to resources that allow them to better understand the Exceptional Family Member Program and better help their service members. It should be a tool that leaders use to be more effective ensuring their units are ready for whatever the military asks the unit to do, Terry said. Content for the leader profile is organized in a way that is more intuitive to common questions or situations a leader might face when working with service members who have exceptional family members. Any leader, no matter the rank or number of people he or she leads, can benefit from the information. "We did our best to anticipate what those questions and situations might be and organized the content accordingly," Terry said. "We wanted to make it less intimidating and easier to get them the information they need quickly. The resources included in EFMP & Me can help promote a service member's readiness and, therefore, help the leader in what he or she is trying to do, which is to maintain a high level of overall readiness." Terry said service providers are the fourth profile on EFMP & Me. Providers can log in to get program information, as well as professional updates, such as continuing education within the EFMP provider community and news from the Office of Special Needs. "There are a lot of things on EFMP & Me for service providers that's beyond just the basic information that they should already know as a provider," she said. "It's going to be more of a communication hub for our service providers, as well." Interested family members, service members, leaders and EFMP service providers can access the EFMP & Me tool at https://efmpandme.militaryonesource.mil/. They can also contact Military OneSource 24 hours a day at 1-800-349-9647. Two Federally Supported Vaccination Sites Open In California, More to Follow [2021-02-17] WASHINGTON -- Two federally supported COVID-19 vaccination sites have opened in California -- one in Los Angeles and the other in Oakland. While the Oakland site is primarily supported by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the site in Los Angeles is staffed by active-duty U.S. military personnel. Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, commander of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said the community vaccination center at California State University Los Angeles is impressive. "All along we worked with FEMA and the department," he said during a teleconference on Tuesday. "The target goal for this site was 16 February, and that was delivered on. The site is ramping up quickly ... it'll get towards 6,000 vaccinations per day." VanHerck said the site in Los Angeles -- where people will be able to get COVID-19 vaccinations from active-duty military personnel -- is a Type 1 site capable of administering as many as 6,000 vaccinations a day. The site is supported by a 222-person Type 1 team consisting of active-duty Army personnel who administer vaccinations and provide supervisory and pharmacy support. In all, VanHerck said, FEMA has asked the Defense Department for as many as 50 Type 1 teams to man similar sites that may open in the future, as well as 50 Type 2 teams. A Type 2 team consists of about 139 personnel and can administer 3,000 vaccinations per day. Right now, the department has identified personnel to man 25 teams, including five Type 1 teams in tranche 1 and 10 of each type of team in tranche 2. So far, the Type 1 team manning the vaccination site in Los Angeles, is the only one that has been deployed; the other 24 teams are on prepare-to-deploy orders. "They haven't been given a tasking to deploy at this time," VanHerck said. The sites in Los Angeles and Oakland are only the first. Additional sites are planned in Texas and New York, VanHerck said. A 222-person Air Force Type 1 team will support a community vaccination center in Houston, while a 139-person Army Type 2 team will support a facility at the Cotton Bowl Stadium in Dallas. In Arlington, Texas, a 139-person Marine Corps Type 2 team will support community vaccinations at the AT&T Stadium and Globe Life Park. All those sites should be running by Feb. 24, the general said. In addition, about 280 service members will arrive Friday to support two centers in New York City. It's expected that a 139-person Navy Type 2 team will support a community vaccination center at York College in Queens, while a 139-person Air Force Type 2 team will support a community vaccination center at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn. Those sites are also expected to be ready by Feb. 24, VanHerck said. Robert J. Fenton Jr., the senior official performing the duties of FEMA administrator, said the two pilot sites in California and the follow-on sites in Texas and New York are designed to augment those states' vaccination efforts. "We are committed to ensuring everyone who wants a vaccination can get one," he said. Iraqi Government Examines In-Country Missile Attacks on U.S. Bases [2021-02-21] WASHINGTON -- The Iraqi government is investigating three attacks on U.S. bases in the country and is doing a careful and complete job, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said. "We had a very good discussion with our Iraqi partners a couple of weeks ago, in the wake of the Irbil attacks," Kirby told reporters today. "They made it very clear to the [secretary of defense] that they're taking this seriously, and they want the chance to investigate it for themselves ... we're going to let them do that." The attack in Irbil killed a U.S. contractor and wounded a service member and others, while the attack in Baghdad's Green Zone caused property damage. In addition, an attack at Balad Air Base wounded personnel. Despite the suspicions about the source of the weapons used and who backed those responsible, Kirby said the attacks remain unrelated to any diplomatic activities that may be happening between the U.S. and Iran. "This has nothing to do with ... any diplomatic efforts that may or may not be happening," he said. "It has to do with trying to make sure we judge accountability the right way. And that's what the secretary wants to give our Iraqi partners the time and space to do." Despite that commitment, Kirby said the Defense Department is aware of the threat Iran continues to pose in the region. "Nobody's backing away from the significant security challenges that Iran still poses, ... and we've not been bashful about that at all," he said. "And nobody also is in a rush to judgment here on these particular attacks ... historically, we have seen these attacks from Shia-backed militias on our facilities, our people, and those of the Iraqis, as well, being conducted with weaponry, rockets that have Iranian origin." Kirby said the department has concerns Iranians are using proxies in the Middle East to create insecurity and instability in the region. "Their malign activities in the region are a matter of record," he said. "And nothing has changed about our desire to be able to address those malign activities in the appropriate way." Engineers Key to Defense Space Efforts: 'We Have Your Back' [2021-02-23] WASHINGTON -- During Engineers Week, the Defense Department is highlighting its efforts to develop a diverse and well-educated future engineering workforce and to increase understanding of and interest in engineering and technology. Engineers are critical to the Department of Defense achieving goals and priorities in space, said the department's principal director for space. "There are many important roles that engineers play" said Lindsay Millard, the principal director for space with the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. Top among the priorities that engineers are tackling now is how to use cislunar space -- the area between Earth and the moon. "There are many ongoing efforts in this area across the department and agencies," said Millard. "We're going to be taking a look at how we can best enable and use the space between the Earth and the moon, especially because we have humans who will be traveling in that space in the future." With travel into space becoming a priority, Millard said, the way humans leave Earth's surface is also becoming more critical. She said that engineers are now focused on both rapid and responsive launch. "Rapid implies launching on a cadence. There are some companies that are achieving that goal right now, and other companies are moving toward it," Millard said. "Responsive launch is actually having satellites ready to go on the ground, should there be an unexpected event." DOD will be putting several satellites in space in the coming years, Millard said. Finding ways to protect what's already on orbit is also a priority for department engineers. "Satellites are easily tracked," Millard said. "How do we protect and defend those if needed because they are key to enabling our DOD forces on the ground?" Building a robust space infrastructure to take care of service members on the ground will require advancements in communications and encryption technology -- another area where department engineers are now laser-focused, Millard said. "There are a lot of new encryption types that are coming on board," she said. "Finding a way to get those into satellites quickly is important to help us remain secure across constellations, but also for single satellites, in general." Getting artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities into those satellites is another area department engineers are currently investigating, Millard said. "We're leveraging cloud-enabled computers on the ground to put signatures or secure dynamic tasking across satellites in orbit that have relatively less compute power," Millard said. "We're also looking at how to make big capabilities on smaller satellites." Among other things, engineers across DOD are focused on space, cyberspace, hypersonics, directed energy, quantum science and fully networked command, control and communications. As an aerospace engineer, Millard said she's guided in her work by the idea that she's responsible in many ways to the service members who depend on something she may have had a part in designing for them to do their jobs or even to protect them. "For me, personally, I'm very much motivated by protecting the people who are in harm's way," Millard said. "I think that DOD has a unique perspective and opportunity to do that in the sense that we can hope to decide how to best protect them." Engineer Week runs Feb. 21-27, and Millard said it's a good time for aspiring engineers and engineering students to think about working within the DOD. She said the defense department is a unique employer that, in her own experience, offered opportunities that might not be found in other places. When service members don protective gear, use new equipment that's been fielded, or connect across space with the latest communications tools, they might not be thinking of the engineers who designed them. But, Millard said, those engineers are absolutely thinking of service members. "We need and want to support you," she said. "If you ever want to talk with us, please do so -- because we've got your back." Engineers With Both Government, Private Sector Experience Make 'Most Impact' [2021-02-23] WASHINGTON -- During Engineers Week, the Defense Department is highlighting its efforts to develop a diverse and well-educated future engineering workforce and to increase understanding of and interest in engineering and technology. Engineers who have experience in both the public and private sector bring a lot of value to their employers, said the principal director for fully networked command, control and communications within the office of the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. "Both the DOD and commercial sector are great places to work with interesting projects that are building a bridge to the future," said Michael Zatman. "In my experience, people who have experienced both make the most impact in both. Spending time working in the DOD will reward you with stimulating challenges while serving our nation, and also seeding capabilities that will transition back to the commercial sector and lead to a better world for all." Engineers are the focus of the Defense Department during this year's National Engineers Week, which runs February 21-27. The importance of engineers and engineering was first recognized in 1951 by the National Society of Professional Engineers. It's something the DOD has been observing as well for years now. Zatman leads the department's efforts to attain fully networked command, control and communications, or FNC3. "Command and control is an application, and we think of that as something that allows machines to exchange information, make decisions and then transport those decisions to each other in order to accomplish a goal," Zatman said. "The networking communications is the infrastructure that allows these different machines and these different applications to talk to each other." The United States and its allies need FNC3 to be able to more reliably move increasing amounts of data and information across a growing collection of diverse platforms, Zatman said. Additionally, each of those platforms may be supporting multiple missions in a variety of environments, including those that are contested or benign, as well as environments that may also be congested. While the department has many engineers now, it's looking for and needs many more, especially engineers interested in the areas that will support the furthering of the DOD's FNC3 efforts. "Being able to develop, and then field these technologies requires engineering expertise that the DOD needs to have internally since many of the environments that the DOD works in are unique to the Department of Defense, and different from those that are encountered in the commercial sector," Zatman said. "The DOD needs to have engineers who are actually familiar with the environments and the kinds of systems that the Department of Defense is working with, in order to often apply commercial ideas and commercial concepts in order to improve our own capabilities." Young Americans who want to support the defense of the nation are encouraged to do so by pursuing an education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, Zatman said. "Students interested in pursuing a career in this area typically have degrees in electrical engineering or computer science," he said. "However, most important is to have a strong analytical background. I have skilled colleagues with degrees in physics and other sciences, mathematics and even economics. The best engineers I know also have a breadth of experience gained from working in a variety of different areas." During Engineers Week, Defense Department 'Problem Solvers' Asked to 'Imagine Tomorrow' [2021-02-23] WASHINGTON -- During Engineers Week, the Defense Department is highlighting its efforts to develop a diverse and well-educated future engineering workforce and to increase understanding of and interest in engineering and technology. There's a lot that engineers within the Defense Department have in common with counterparts in the private sector, but it's what's different that makes them so important to the defense of the nation, said the department's acting deputy director for engineering and director for engineering policy and systems. "First and foremost, we are responsible for national security," said Stephanie L. Possehl. "We provide the systems that keep our warfighters safe. We are focused on the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, above all. What we keep foundational to what we do every day is how what we are doing in our problem-solving aspects serves the warfighter, how it keeps them safe, how it gives them better tools to do their job." Engineers are the focus of the Defense Department during this year's National Engineers Week, February 21-27. The importance of engineers and engineering was first recognized in 1951 by the National Society of Professional Engineers. It's something the DOD has been observing as well for years now. This year, due to COVID-19, the usual activities highlighting the week have been scaled back, Possehl said. But the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering will co-host an event with Washington Headquarters Services, Facilities Services Directorate on Wednesday that features presentations by Vivek Lall, Chief Executive, General Atomics Global Corporation; David W. Pittman, who serves as director of the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center and director of research and development and chief scientist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; and Daniel Ragsdale, the acting director of defense research and engineering for modernization. Ragsdale said it's an exciting time now to be an engineer, especially so for those in the Defense Department who are working on modernization projects that will provide direct benefits to the warfighter. The theme of this year's Engineers Week, "Imagining Tomorrow," is aptly named, he said. "I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to speak about how we, as scientists, as technologists, as engineers, have the opportunity not only to imagine tomorrow but, through our professional activities, to make a positive difference. "It's a time of great challenge, but it's also a time of great opportunity; opportunity, not only to foster the development of new concepts, but also to develop and deploy vastly enhanced capabilities that will provide overmatch against our increasingly formidable, and capable great power competitors. This represents a clarion call to the [engineering] community, to the science community, to the technology community, a call which enlivens, inspires and brings a heightened sense of urgency to all of our activities," he said. Just what is an engineer, exactly? According to Possehl, an engineer is more than just a tinkerer or mechanic. "I think that most engineers will tell you that fundamentally, we are problem solvers," Possehl said. "We turn concepts into reality. I think that if you think about a phrase that applies to engineers, it is that necessity is the mother of invention. We're those kind of people [who] take a problem and find a solution to it." In years past, Defense Department engineers have greatly advanced the capabilities of both the military and society, as a whole. Many of the contributions of Defense Department engineers and professionals in related science, technology and mathematics areas, are well known to Americans -- though they might not know they came from the military, Possehl said. "GPS and the internet -- these are things that we rely on every day that came out of the Department of Defense," Possehl said. "Your microwave oven was a spinoff from radar projects that we had going on. Duct tape, the [autoinjector] aerosol bug spray -- all of these things came from Department of Defense projects. People might not know that the DOD was the home of those things that we use every day. So, while you might think that all we do is weapon systems programs, there's a lot of stuff, including medical technology, that comes out of the Department of Defense." The foundations for the internet were laid in Defense Department labs more than 50 years ago. But the department has new projects today that are equally important to its future. Right now, said Ragsdale, the problem-solving skills of DOD engineers are focused heavily on 11 areas where solutions will provide the most benefit to the warfighter. Those areas include artificial intelligence; biotechnology; autonomy; cyber; directed energy; fully networked command, control and communications; microelectronics; quantum science; hypersonics; space; and 5G. Those areas are so critical, Ragsdale said, the department has assigned directors to oversee the advancement of each -- all subject matter experts and well-respected thought leaders in their respective technology areas. "They each bring a great sense of urgency to all of their undertakings and they fully appreciate the critical need to leverage and integrate emerging technology to facilitate the development of new concepts and advanced capabilities," he said. "Equally important, they have established mutually beneficial relationships with a wide array of stakeholders, from across the department. Our principal directors are actively engaging with warfighters -- with the joint staff, with the combatant commands, with the services, as well as with members of the DOD science, technology, engineering and acquisition workforces. The department already has a lot of engineers in the workforce, Possehl said -- she estimates the department employs some 100,000 of them, in fact, possibly making it the largest employer of engineers in the world. Still, with 11 areas of focus that are so important to the nation's defense -- and with other projects underway as well, the department isn't exactly turning down those who have engineering credentials and a desire to serve the nation. "The Department of Defense always has a need for quality engineers," she said, adding that others with credentials in science, technology and mathematics are needed as well. "I will say that we continually do assessments of particular skill sets we might need ... it's not just about engineers. We need those kinds of technical skill sets within the Department of Defense, across the board." For young Americans considering engineering or already studying to be an engineer, she said, the Defense Department has several programs to make national defense more attractive. One example of that, she said, is the DOD's SMART Scholarship program, which she said provides scholarships and intern opportunities as well as a job with the DOD upon graduation. Possehl was herself enticed by the Defense Department at an early age. "When I was 16, I came and did an internship in the Department of Defense, and I was hooked," she said. "This is where I wanted to spend my career." During this year's Engineer Week, Ragsdale said he wants engineers both in the department and outside of it to consider this year's theme, "Imagining Tomorrow." "We challenge those in the science, technology and engineering communities across the department, and in other public and private sector settings, to imagine tomorrow by conceiving, designing, building, testing and rapidly deploying capabilities that will serve as a strong deterrent to future adversaries, causing [them] to see the futility of crossing the threshold of armed conflict," he said. Engineers should also look at themselves and consider what they contribute to the nation's defense, and to society at large, Possehl said. "Engineers Week is about encouraging young people to pursue careers in engineering and other STEM areas," she said. "But I'd also like to take the opportunity for folks who are already engineers, who are already working in STEM fields, to take a moment and just reflect on how great you are. We tend to be kind of a quiet and unassuming bunch of folks, and we don't stop and sort of pat ourselves on the back that often. If you're already an engineer ... take Engineers Week as an opportunity to say 'yay us!'" Joint Warfighting Is the Future, SEAC Says [2021-02-24] WASHINGTON -- Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman Ramón "CZ" Colón-López said his leadership philosophy has remained largely unchanged from his time in the Air Force: "collaboration without encroachment." "I see myself as a sensor, a synchronizer and an integrator for the total force," said Colón-López, during an online discussion today that was part of the Air Force Association's 2021 Virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium. "A lot of that comes with understanding the issues that are exclusive to the services." The SEAC said he always works in partnership with senior enlisted advisors from the military services to solve problems in a joint way. "The one thing that we're in the habit of doing is always getting around a table to discuss the issues, find the connective tissue between those particular items and then come up with the best solutions," he said. For most of the last 20 years, the U.S. military has been fighting a counter-insurgency and counter-terrorist war, Colón-López said. That fight has been successful because it was a joint fight from the start. "It has taken a joint effort, a multinational effort, to get after the mission at hand," he said. "That is the model that we're going to follow from now on. So the joint perspective is critical to the success of future missions." A new document, titled "Developing Enlisted Leaders for Tomorrow's Wars," is scheduled to be released by the Joint Staff this week, Colón-López said. That document will spell out expectations for enlisted leaders in the joint force. "The intent and the purpose of this particular document is to provide you a foundation of expectations from every member fighting a joint war," Colón-López said. He said the professional military education vision document was written in collaboration with all the service senior enlisted advisors, the National Guard Bureau and the Coast Guard. "The reason we did that is because the multiple approaches to leadership that we have, based on the different cultures of the services, is what matters the most for a joint warfighter," he said. "Once we build the right airman, soldier, guardian, sailor, Marine and Coast Guardsmen, to be able to go ahead and fight in the joint arena, there are three things that we require, and that is character, competence and commitment. And from that, we start growing you into a more rounded entity to be able to go ahead and execute the mission, anytime, at any place." Solving Problems at the Lowest Level Colón-López also said that the No. 1 solution to sexual assault, harassment, suicides and other issues in the services won't come from the Pentagon, it'll come from enlisted leaders. "It's no secret that we have been living in some pretty tough times here lately ... we're dealing with sexual assault, harassment, suicide, many other issues -- diversity and inclusion -- that are plaguing and eroding the cohesion of military services," he said. Fixing those problems must start at the lowest level -- where those problems occur -- not at the highest levels, where policy is made, Colón-López said. "You deserve what you tolerate," Colón-López said. "If you see a problem, don't walk past it -- take action. If you have a fix, voice it. And if you need to stand up for somebody, stand tall and make sure that your voice and your actions carry the mail to the people that need to correct that. This is all about personal involvement and accountability -- and we can do that at the lowest levels. Do not wait for the institution to spoon feed you the solutions that are intrinsic to mission command." Former White House Advisor to Lead DOD Commission on Sexual Assault [2021-02-26] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department announced today that Lynn Rosenthal will head an independent review commission on sexual assault in the military, the Pentagon press secretary said. "To carry out the president's direction, [Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III] ordered the establishment of a 90-day independent review commission on sexual assault in the military ... to review department policies and processes as directed by the president," John F. Kirby said during a briefing today. "The secretary has designated Lynn Rosenthal, formerly the first-ever White House advisor on violence against women and a longtime advocate for survivors of gender violence, to lead this commission." In addition to the independent review commission, Austin has also directed actions to bring the department in compliance with evidence-based practices to ensure accountability of sexual assault and harassment efforts at every level across the department, Kirby said. "Every member of the total force deserves a workplace free of sexual assault and harassment and personal fear," Kirby said. "We must commit ourselves to eliminating this illegal and corrosive behavior." All Options on the Table "The trauma and life-altering effects of sexual assault are devastating in any context," Rosenthal said. "What I'm struck by here, as I listen to stories of military survivors, is how much their service meant to them, how their life was about this dream of serving in the military, and the dream was a part of their identity. And for many, their dreams were shattered by the trauma of sexual violence and sometimes retaliation for coming forward. This must end." While the commission's primary task is to provide accountability for those who commit crimes of sexual assault, Rosenthal also said the commission will be looking at climate, culture and prevention. Right now, she said, the commission is working with Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks on developing a charter for the commission. Rosenthal said within 60 days the commission will have initial recommendations, including those on accountability issues. The commission's membership will include military leaders, former military leaders, advocates for those who have been sexually assaulted, and experts on the crime of sexual assault, she said. "We want to hear a diversity of views from every level of the services and in civilian society," Rosenthal said. "We will take all of those views into account in our deliberations and our recommendations." Discussions about solving the sexual assault problem within the ranks and improving the climate so that those who are sexually assaulted feel comfortable coming forward have frequently involved the idea of removing commanders from the process of investigating sexual assaults. Rosenthal said that is something that will be looked at by the commission. "The president and the secretary have said that all options should be on the table," she said. "I don't think we have a predetermined outcome of this question, which we must very carefully examine." By 90 days, she said, the commission's work will have finished, but work on sexual assault in the military will continue long after it is done. "I think the secretary is our greatest asset in fighting this problem," she said. "He gets it so deeply. He cares about it so much. He cares about his service members. And, so, the commission ends in 90 days, but the implementation of the recommendations will certainly continue." Drop in Sexual Assault Reports at Service Academies May Be Coronavirus-Related [2021-03-01] WASHINGTON -- Reports of sexual assault by cadets and midshipmen at the three military service academies dropped from 122 in the 2018 school year to 88 in the 2019 school year. But the biggest changes happened in the fourth quarter, defense officials said, and those changes may be due to COVID-19. The numbers were reported in the just-released Annual Report on Sexual Harassment and Violence at the Military Service Academies for the academic program year 2019 -- 2020. For both the 2018 and 2019 school years, reports of sexual assaults matched up pretty closely for the first three quarters. It wasn't until the fourth quarter where the number of reports for the 2019 school year fell below the numbers reported for the previous year, Nathan W. Galbreath, deputy director of the Department of Defense Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, said during a telephone briefing on Thursday. "You will see that this year's academic program year matches almost, very well, quarter-for-quarter in the number of reports that they received, up until quarter four, when the pandemic response measures hit," he said. "As a result, we saw a decrease in quarter four of the number of sexual assault reports made at the academies, and we do attribute that to the fact that cadets and midshipmen were sent home." While military service academy students were sent home as part of the COVID-19 pandemic response, Galbreath said, the ability to report sexual assaults and response and support measures remained. "All sexual assault response coordinators and victim advocates remained available for cadets and midshipmen to make a report throughout the pandemic response," he said. "In addition to that, we saw excellent evidence that all of them went above and beyond in supporting ... the victims that were out there." Also of note is that the DOD's SAPRO team expected to conduct a prevalence survey this year, which is an anonymous survey meant to ascertain the number of sexual assaults that occur in the group surveyed. "That measure gives us an idea of the full scope of the problem, whether it's in the active force or at the academies," Galbreath said. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Galbreath said, the survey was not conducted this year. He said the nature of the survey and the accuracy it provides, requires it be done in person, rather than via computer. He also said the DOD SAPRO team expects to attempt to conduct that survey again in April 2022. Also of note in the most recent report is that while service academy students report confidence in their officer and academy leadership, they don't have the same trust in their student leadership, Galbreath said. "Overall, our surveys and our focus groups tell us that student culture really impacts the experience of cadets and midshipmen," he said. "What we find is that our feedback and our focus group data says that the cadets and [midshipmen] don't have a lot of confidence in their cadet chain of command to step-up and do the right thing, when placed into positions of learning how to lead." Galbreath said the DOD SAPRO team asked the service academies to take steps to better prepare those student leaders to intervene and enforce standards of discipline, dignity and respect. "Sexual assault and sexual harassment are persistent and disruptive problems that have no part in military service," Army Maj. Gen. Clement Coward, the director of DOD's SAPRO, said. "The academies are making progress, but considerable work remains to continue reducing and stopping sexual assault at the academies. We look forward to visiting the academies this summer to review their efforts in depth and align them with the secretary of defense's vision and direction to eliminate the scourge of sexual assault and sexual harassment from our military." Any Response to Early Morning Rocket Attack Will Wait on Investigation [2021-03-03] WASHINGTON -- Ten rockets were launched at the U.S. and ally-occupied Al Asad military base in Iraq early this morning. One American contractor who was sheltering suffered a "cardiac episode," and later died as a result, the Pentagon press secretary said. There is an investigation into who is responsible for the attack. "We cannot attribute responsibility for the rocket attacks at this time, and we do not have a complete picture of the extent of the damage on base," John F. Kirby said during a press briefing Wednesday afternoon . "We stand by as needed to assist our Iraqi partners as they investigate." Kirby said he's not aware that the Iraqis have asked for assistance in investigating the rocket attacks and that any response to the attacks will need to wait until that investigation is complete. "Let's let our Iraqi partners investigate this, see what they learn, and then if a response is warranted, I think we have shown clearly ... that we won't shy away from that. But we're just not there yet." On the ground at Al Asad, Kirby said, the department has counted ten "impact points" from rockets that are believed to have been launched from points east of the installation. He also said the counter-rocket, artillery and mortar system, or C-RAM, also engaged those rockets, but that there's no indication now as to how successful the C-RAM's engagement was against them. "I suspect as time goes on, we'll know a little bit more," he said. Just last week there were three other rocket attacks in Iraq. One attack in Irbil killed a U.S. contractor and wounded a service member and others, while an attack in Baghdad's Green Zone caused property damage. An attack at Balad Air Base also wounded personnel there. The U.S. responded to those attacks Feb. 25, with airstrikes against infrastructure used by Iranian-backed militant groups in Eastern Syria. "When we conducted this strike last week in Syria," Kirby said, "we believed that it was measured and proportionate. It was intended to take that compound out and not allow these groups to use it, but also to send a signal about how seriously we take our responsibilities to protect our people." It's the hope of the department, Kirby said, that the strike would have a deterrent effect, rather than escalate the situation. "Nobody wants to see this escalate into ... a tit for tat," Kirby said. "That is, that's not in our interest. It's not in the Iraqi people's interest." Just last year, in January 2020, as many as 16 missiles were launched at Al Asad, with 11 of those missiles striking. Although the Iranian missiles damaged equipment and infrastructure at the installation, training and defensive readiness there paid off in no lives being lost, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark A. Milley said. 'Warfighter Council' Guides Capability Development for Space Development Agency [2021-03-04] WASHINGTON -- As the Space Development Agency builds out the National Defense Space Architecture, it looks to a biannual "warfighter council" to provide guidance about what is actually important to those who will use the systems, the agency's director said today. "We want to make sure that we address our customers," Derek Tournear said. "The customers, in this case, are the combatant commanders." The warfighter council meets twice a year to ensure the agency is aligned with upcoming exercises that will provide SDA a chance to demonstrate its capabilities, he said. "And then, most importantly ... to make sure that everyone is aligned with what is included in our minimum viable product for the next tranche," Tournear said. National Defense Space Architecture The National Defense Space Architecture will include hundreds of Earth-orbiting satellites that gather targeting and tracking information and instantly transmit it to warfighters and weapons systems. The architecture involves seven layers: transport, tracking, custody, deterrence, navigation, battle management and support. As part of the SDA's focus on proliferation of satellites and spiral development of the NDSA, officials have said, new tranches of satellites with improved capabilities are expected to be launched every two years. Tournear said the NDSA will provide two capabilities to warfighters. The first, he said, is beyond-line-of-sight targeting for time-sensitive ground and maritime targets. "We want to be able to detect, track and target anything that is a mobile missile launcher or ship and be able to send those targeting solutions directly down to a weapons platform," he said. The second capability is similar to the first, but it focuses on a different target: enemy missiles already in flight, such as cruise missiles or hypersonic glide vehicles. "Everything we do is focused on these two capabilities," he said. "How can we get these capabilities in the hands of the warfighter as rapidly as possible?" Warfighter Immersion Satellites for Tranche 0 of the NDSA are expected to launch in fiscal year 2022, Tournear said. For that, the "minimum viable product," he said, is warfighter immersion. "The whole goal there is to allow people -- allow the warfighters -- to see what the data are, to start to use those data in their exercises and have familiarity so that they can include that in their operational plans moving forward," he said. The warfighter council is tasked with ensuring that SDA is on target with what the minimum viable product should be for each tranche, Tournear said. "We have a warfighter council coming up on March 31," he said. "That warfighter council will essentially decide what the minimum viable product is for Tranche 1." "That's how SDA works to ensure that we meet the needs of the warfighter," Tournear added. The Tranche 1 request for proposals will be released to industry in August, he said, and the plan is to have those satellites on contract for by the end of the calendar year. "In other words, we are developing these products on the spiral mindset," Tournear said. "And the product is then going to be used by the customer, which is the [combatant commanders]. So, we want to make sure that whatever we are doing aligns with their needs and [that] we can address those without following the standard requirements-based products that get you into that incremental innovation approach." DOD Identifies More Troops to Help Administer COVID-19 Vaccine [2021-03-06] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department has identified additional personnel authorized to support the Federal Emergency Management Agency in administering COVID-19 vaccinations at community vaccination centers around the country. "The secretary authorized an additional 10 Type 2 teams for future FEMA support," said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby during a briefing yesterday. FEMA has asked the Defense Department for as many as 50 Type 1 teams to support community vaccination centers, as well as 50 Type 2 teams. A Type 1 team is made up of 222 service members, and can administer about 6,000 vaccinations a day, while a Type 2 team is made up of 139 service members and can administer about 3,000 vaccinations a day. The department is also staffing 25-person teams as well in some locations. Right now, about 6,235 active duty service members have been identified by the Defense Department to support COVID-19 vaccination centers, though not all of those personnel have deployed yet as part of a team. Just over 2,200 service members are deployed now in 17 teams to California, New Jersey, Texas, New York, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Pennsylvania, Florida, Illinois and North Carolina. Those teams are made up from service members from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. In the coming weeks, Kirby said, additional teams -- about 444 service members -- will deploy to both Ohio and Georgia to support vaccination efforts in those states. Together, they will be able to provide around 12,000 vaccinations a day. The first community vaccination center to be supported by U.S. military personnel opened in mid-February at California State University in Los Angeles. At that location, 222 soldiers provide vaccination support, and are able to offer 6,000 vaccinations a day. Guard Works to Ensure Troops Defending Capitol Have Safe, Nutritious Food [2021-03-08] WASHINGTON -- Recent news reports have said National Guardsmen in Washington, D.C., who are providing protection to the U.S. Capitol there have been served substandard food and that some have gotten sick. Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said he met last week with the chief of the National Guard Bureau, Army Gen. Daniel R. Hokanson, and that the National Guard and its leaders have stepped up efforts to ensure that all guardsmen working on Capitol Hill are getting healthy meals. "[Hokanson] and National Guard leaders are taking very seriously the need to make sure that the troops have safe and nutritious food," Kirby said during a briefing today. "There's routine inspections. He himself goes down there multiple times a week to eat with the National Guardsmen -- to eat what they're eating." The National Guard is working with the contractors who provide food to the guardsmen to address any concerns, and are also visiting the businesses supplying the food to assess the quality of meals being prepared, Kirby said. "We do spot check on meals for cooking temperature and overall quality," Kirby said. "The vendor facilities have been inspected multiple times with no substantial ... issues having been recorded. So again there [is] a lot of activity on this, a lot of visibility, and rightly so." According to Kirby, no National Guard members have been hospitalized because of illness from food. Additionally, he said, of 26,000 who have been deployed, and of the 5,100 who remain on duty at the Capitol, about 50 have been treated for gastrointestinal complaints. "Six of them were treated as outpatients at military treatment facilities, others were handled at an aid station set up as part of the task force," he said. Secretary of Defense's Trip to Asia to Focus on Strengthening Partnerships With Japan, Korea, India [2021-03-10] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department announced today the first international trip by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, who will visit three nations in the Indo-Pacific region to discuss the strengthening of existing partnerships and alliances there. The secretary will depart on Saturday to visit the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command headquarters in Hawaii, followed by visits with officials in Japan, South Korea, and India, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said during a briefing today. "This trip is about working to revitalize our alliances and partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region, in particular with Japan and South Korea," Kirby said. "We want to reenergize our commitment to those treaty alliances. And that's really the message going forward; we know we need strong allies and partners and friends in that part of the world." In both Japan and Korea, the secretary of defense will be accompanied by Secretary of State Antony Blinken during meetings with government officials. Kirby also said that today is the tenth anniversary of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan, which caused major devastation there including the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. In the aftermath of that disaster, the U.S. stood up "Operation Tomodachi," to offer assistance to Japanese allies. That operation, Kirby said, which ran from March 12 to May 4, 2011, involved some 24,000 U.S. service members. "Together with our Japanese partners, we remember those who lost their lives and suffered greatly from the natural disaster," Kirby said. "And we also thank all those who supported the relief efforts." The U.S. maintains positive relations with both South Korea and Japan, but in recent years, those two nations have experienced some diplomatic challenges that could weaken security cooperation in the region. In 2011, for instance, South Korea announced plans to not renew the General Security of Military Information Agreement, or GSOMIA -- an intelligence-sharing agreement between the two countries. While South Korea later reconsidered that decision, tensions still exist between Japan and South Korea. "Recognizing that there are tensions between those two countries, we still encourage them to work together, and we look forward to exploring trilateral ways where we can all work together to address security challenges in the region," Kirby said. COVID-19 Efforts This morning, Austin also visited with the Defense Department team that has been working on the federal COVID-19 response for vaccines and therapeutics for nearly a year now, Kirby said. "Under [Army Gen. Gustave F. Perna] and his leadership, [the team] has supported the mission to accelerate the development, manufacturing and distribution of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics for the American people," Kirby said. "And they did it in record time." As part of the visit, Austin saw the vaccine operation center and received an operational update on vaccine manufacturing distribution efforts. Kirby said the team's efforts led to development of three COVID-19 vaccines, and that, to date, 130 million doses of vaccine have been delivered across the country, and more than 93 million vaccinations have occurred. Defense Department Approves Continued Guard Presence on Capitol Hill [2021-03-10] WASHINGTON -- Nearly 2,300 National Guard personnel will continue providing support to the U.S. Capitol Police until May 23, said Pentagon press secretary John F. Kirby in a statement from the Defense Department released Tuesday evening. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III approved the extension. More than 5,000 National Guardsmen are currently assigned to Washington to help provide security to the Capitol. During a press briefing earlier on Tuesday, Kirby told reporters the Guard presence in the nation's capital was about more than just a reaction to the events of Jan. 6. "The Guard presence on [Capitol Hill], while certainly there to address a requirement that is based on law enforcement's concerns, is also there to help bolster and support the Capitol Police and their capabilities, which may not be at the level where [they] need to be, given the fact that we're in sort of a new environment in this country," he said. "It's not just about a threat assessment, it's about assisting and supporting capabilities that the Capitol Police may now lack and may need to look at improving on their own." Kirby told reporters he thinks that the enabling support the Guard brings to make up for possible gaps in Capitol Police capabilities might be one of the reasons behind their request to extend Guard support on Capitol Hill. "Part of this is obviously valid requirements to have them there, but also to help backfill some of these capabilities as they look at themselves as an institution and what they need to do for their long term future," Kirby said. Department Stands By F-35 While some on Capitol Hill have questioned the continued involvement in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, Kirby says the department considers it a valuable weapons system. "The F-35 remains a premier air system of choice for three of the armed forces, seven international partners, six foreign military sales customers, it routinely demonstrates high-end capabilities at the hands of our joint and international warfighters, and it's performing in combat operations from land and sea," Kirby said. "The department will continue the low-rate initial production at the planned rate that we're currently seeing as directed by congressional authorization and appropriation." Kirby also said the department looks forward to working with Congress to address the needs of the department and the advancement of the F-35 program. SEAC: DOD Will 'Move Fast' Against Extremism After Completion of Stand Downs [2021-03-18] WASHINGTON -- The services have just two weeks left to complete a military-wide stand down to conduct training on and discussion of extremism in the ranks with every service member, a task assigned in early February by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III. On April 1, the services must collect data from subordinate commands and provide notification to senior Defense Department leadership about having completed the training for every service member, and any feedback they received during the training stand-downs -- information the department will use in finding better ways to educate the forces about extremism in the ranks and root it out, Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman Ramón "CZ" Colón-López said. "I will tell you that we are wanting to move fast on all these initiatives because we're dealing with people, and we just need to make sure that we provide the results that they need to have an environment that is worthy of serving," Colón-López said during a press briefing today, adding that extremism is not going to be tolerated. "We're committed to confronting and rooting out extremism in the military." The initial training is just the beginning, Colón-López said. In the future, there will be more training and that follow-on-training will be developed and revised based on feedback from the services. "Training may actually evolve into something else that we need to go ahead and give [to] specific people, like first sergeants as an example, [who] are the ones that are gauging the behavior of units," Colón-López said. "I foresee that there will be some changes coming based on what we learn from people." Something else, he said, is that the military services must collaborate on how to set policy regarding extremism and the training on extremism as well, so that it's relatively uniform across the services, because the future wars we fight are going to be joint. For that to happen, there must be uniformity across all services in how things like extremism are addressed. "We see that we need to collaborate a lot more," he said. "Nothing that we do is unilateral by service. Everything that we do is likely to be joint. And if you have a commander that's in charge of different people ... then I cannot be applying different rules for [one or the other] ... we need to have a common understanding. And that is the direction that the military needs to go." Military leaders have speculated that the number of extremists in the ranks is not high, though concrete numbers are not yet available. Colón-López said that right now, what's important is that those who are in the ranks know the military is seeking them out and will put an end to extremism. "What is most important to me right now is the prevention of that behavior," he said. "Because even if they exist right now, if they know that the department and the institution is looking for that behavior, and wanting to crush it, then they will think twice about performing those acts. This is all about prevention. We don't want people to commit criminal activities. ... The key point here is that we need to make sure that we let our personnel right now, past and present, know that we do not tolerate that behavior, and that we're going to educate our people to know right from wrong." Improvements to Organic Industrial Base Prepare Services for Future Fight [2021-03-19] WASHINGTON -- The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps are all putting significant effort into improving their portions of the organic industrial base -- that Defense Department-owned collection of depots, arsenals, shipyards and ammunition plants that repair and maintain military weapons systems, as well as some specialized ammunition. While the commercial defense industrial base builds most of the weapons systems and gear for the military, the organic industrial base is often responsible for ensuring those systems stay maintained and operational for the decades that they stay in service. It's for that reason that the military services are all focused on modernizing their organic industrial base to keep it strong and ready for the future. "The Army and our OIB must modernize for the future," said Army Lt. Gen. Duane A. Gamble, deputy chief of staff, G-4, during a hearing today before the House Appropriations Subcommittee. "As I testified to this committee before, we have World War II-era facilities, and many of them are outdated for today's requirement, let alone for the needs of the future force." The Army has spent more than $3 billion since 2009 to upgrade its facilities and infrastructure and operating environment, Gamble said. Included there, he said, is a new nitrocellulose facility at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant in Virginia. The Army is also working on a new nitric acid facility at Holston Army Ammunition Plant in Tennessee. "Both create a safer and more productive environment for our employees and for readiness," Gamble said. "In FY21 alone, we're executing $800 million to make essential improvements and upgrades to our depots, arsenals and ammo plants." Gamble said the Army does have a ways to go before its OIB is fully modernized, however. "We are actively working to that end state, and we're executing the plan that I briefed this committee on in November 2019," he said. "While we execute that plan we continue to update the plan to ... keep pace with modern technology. And as we modernize our Army, we must ensure we modernize the OIB and the workforce and that the workforce is highly trained and on the cutting edge of technology." Right now, he told lawmakers that the workforce at Army industrial base facilities is, on average, 46 years old. "That is a rejuvenated workforce just in the last few years, and the authority we used to do that was granted by this committee -- the direct hiring authority that we put to good use bringing the average age of the workforce down," he said. "Those 22,000 skilled employees operating across our depots, arsenals and ammo plants are absolutely the backbone of our country's readiness for the next war and our OIB." For the Navy, both ship and aircraft maintenance facilities are a focus. Navy Vice Adm. William J. Galinis, commander of Naval Sea Systems Command told the committee the Navy has been executing its Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program, or SIOP, since 2018 now. "The SIOP will deliver the shipyards our Navy and our nation needs by upgrading and expanding ... our dry dock capacity, but also optimizing and improving our infrastructure and workflow within the shipyard, as well as recapitalizing obsolete equipment," he said. When that program is finished, he said, Navy shipyards will be ready to take care of the submarines and aircraft carriers for generations. Galinis said more work still needs to be done, however. "I will tell you in no uncertain terms, we need now to expand the productive capacity of our naval shipyards, or we run the risk of not being able to perform the required maintenance and repair work for our nuclear powered fleet, principally our submarines and aircraft carriers, a decade from now," Galinis said. To accomplish that, Galinis said, the Naval Sea Systems Command has looked to what's being done at Naval Air Systems Command with its Naval Sustainment System-Aviation program and created its own Naval Sustainment System-Shipyard program. "NSS-shipyard combines the extensive use of data and data analytics," he said. "It targets areas of opportunity with transparency to highlight key problems to improve our outcomes. We're committed to doing this with a sense of urgency across our enterprise." Navy Vice Adm. Dean G. Peters, commander of Naval Air Systems Command, said the Navy is continuing to prioritize investments in industrial capabilities and capacity. "This is informed by the fleet readiness centers infrastructure optimization report, or FIOP, and that identifies sustainment requirements," he said. "It identifies capital investments for machinery and equipment and military construction needs." Peters said those investments are important to ensure repair of newer Navy aircraft, such as the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye, the H-53K helicopter and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. "They require specialized paint, composite repair, advanced propulsion repair and enhanced security," he said. Air Force Lt. Gen. Donald E. Kirkland, commander of the Air Force Sustainment Center, told lawmakers the Air Force has invested more than $2 billion during the previous four fiscal years to maintain and improve its depot infrastructure and equipment. "As detailed in our organic industrial base report, we're structuring our optimization plan over the next 20 years along a three-pronged investment strategy: keep up, catch up, and leap ahead," he said. Since 2019, he said, the Air Force organic industrial base has brought in the first KC-46 Pegasus refueling aircraft for depot maintenance at Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma, and is also expanding F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Aircraft depot maintenance at its Ogden Air Logistics Complex in Utah, as well as F-35 avionics repair at the Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex in Georgia. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Shrader, commanding general of the Marine Corps Logistics Command, said a key component of organic industrial base modernization for the Marine Corps, has been recent Defense Department-driven tests of 5G capabilities at Marine Corps depots. "As a DOD-selected 5G test site, we are working with OSD to develop 5G-enabled smart warehouse technologies -- such as handheld scanners, optical character recognition, passive RFID and robotics," he said. "This state-of-the-art technology vastly improves our supply chain efficiency, auditability and support to the fleet marine force." If DOD Wants AI In Its Future, It Must Start Now, Official Says [2021-03-23] WASHINGTON -- Now is the time for decision makers, commanders and policymakers within the Defense Department to get on board with fully implementing artificial intelligence, the director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center said. Right now, said Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Michael S. Groen, AI is being used in many places across the department -- but not at scale. "I think you know you can see 1,000 flowers blooming across the Department of Defense and that's really powerful -- it's a step in the right direction," he said, speaking at the National Defense Industrial Association. "But we need to start building on it. This is a truism that I think bears repeating again and again: If we want artificial intelligence to be our future, then we have to start building it in the present." Accomplishing that will mean a lot of change and work within the department, he said. "We have to do this comprehensively," he said. "Transformation has to be wholesale if it's going to be effective. The magic really starts happening when you connect automated processes. So if you have a data-driven process and it can drive another data-driven process -- now you're starting to execute at scale." Groen said the entire warfighting enterprise must be modernized to accommodate full integration of AI. "We have to think about enterprise effects, decision tools that derive from massive data flows and integrated infrastructure that allows any sensor to inform any decision maker or any sensor to inform any system," he said. It's not just warfighting that has to evolve -- the systems that support the warfighting effort must as well, he said. "[When] you think about the Department of Defense, there's the warfighting end of the Department of Defense, but there's the large gears that turn underneath the department that make warfighting possible and make warfighting successful," he said, citing agencies like the Defense Health Agency, the Defense Logistics Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency. "Think about all of these activities that occur that are really the gears that the department rides on for effective warfighting," he said. "These enterprises are sitting on massive amounts of data. It's a natural target for AI implementation to create more efficiencies and economies and effectiveness in those large scale enterprises." Modernizing business processes within the department is also important, he said, in part to help the department become more compliant with auditability requirements. "The department has historically been challenged from an audibility perspective, being able to account for where all of our dollars are ... it's a natural playground or natural implementation ground for artificial intelligence right in our business practices," he said. The JAIC, he said, is aiming to help the Defense Department achieve the efficiency and effectiveness seen in commercial enterprise. "We believe that's possible, and we think that's necessary," he said. Achieving national security objectives with AI can't be accomplished by the DOD alone, Goren said. Industry must be a part of that, he said. "I don't want you to underestimate the key role that you play in underpinning national security," he said. "Your participation in this dialogue, and your participation in this transformation, is going to be absolutely critical." Commission Begins 90-Day Look Into Sexual Assault in Military [2021-03-24] WASHINGTON -- The independent review commission charged with looking into sexual assaults in the U.S. military kicked off its 90-day investigation today with an online meeting for the highly qualified experts and leads for the commission's four lines of effort. During a press briefing at the Pentagon, commission chairperson Lynn Rosenthal explained the importance of the IRC's mission and what it's been asked to do. "The charge of the independent review commission is to make this broad assessment and then make recommendations to the secretary of defense and ultimately to the president," she said. "These people will be deliberating on those recommendations. I don't expect an in-the-weeds view of 150 policies that should be tweaked around the edges. That is not what we are about. We are about looking at major shifts and big picture items that could really change the culture, improve care for victims, bring about evidence-based prevention and hold offenders accountable." Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III announced the creation of the commission in a Feb. 26 memorandum to Defense Department leaders. "Sexual assault and harassment remain persistent and corrosive problems across the total force," wrote Austin. "I expect every member of our total force to be part of the solution and leaders -- both civilian and military -- across the Department to take direct accountability to drive meaningful change." In the memorandum, Austin ordered the establishment of the 90-day "Independent Review Commission on Sexual Assault in the Military," which he said supports the president's efforts to address sexual assault and harassment in the military. Sexual assault has been a problem in the U.S. military for many years. The services have been trying to solve the problem for decades now. Rosenthal said she believes the IRC will have a new take on the issue and will be looking at new aspects of the problem to try to find a solution that works. "I think what we'll be asking: what hasn't been tried, what happens in civilian society that is a best practice that we could try on the military side, and then what are the unique attributes of the military environment that [allow] us to do things that we can't do on the civilian side," she said. "I think that these folks that we're bringing in will be looking at this with fresh eyes. I also think that what makes this moment in time different are the words of President Biden and Secretary Austin who have both said that all options should be on the table -- and one of those is carefully examining the role of command in decisions to refer cases to prosecution. We will be assessing that very carefully." According to the IRC's charter, signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks, the commission will focus on evaluating military policies, programs and processes related to sexual assault. It will also review and assess the best practices from industry, academia and other organizations. Finally, the IRC will generate recommended policy changes and proposals to improve prevention efforts in the services. Making all that happen will be four IRC working groups focused on each of four lines of effort during the 90-day look into sexual assault in the U.S. military. Those lines of effort include accountability, prevention, climate and culture, and victim care and support. Commissioners focusing on accountability will assess the role of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in addressing the prevalence of sexual assault and harassment, survivor likelihood of reporting and the ability to appropriately bring alleged perpetrators to justice. The prevention working group will assess the services' ongoing prevention efforts so they may identify potential gaps there. They also will attempt to identify where additional resources might be needed. To address climate and culture regarding sexual assault, that working group will review the implementation of existing support policies and resources across the department. They will also propose new approaches to improve climate and culture that can better ensure all service members feel comfortable reporting sexual assault and using existing services. Finally, the victim care and support working group will review both clinical and non-clinical victim services currently in place to ensure comprehensiveness and availability to all victims regardless of how those victims report. According to the charter, each working group will be led by full-time highly qualified experts who will develop their insights and observations from meetings and discussions with subject matter experts and stakeholders both inside and outside the military. Rosenthal said a lot of effort went into choosing the 12 individuals who will be involved in the working groups and who will develop the insights and recommendations the IRC will put forth to the secretary and president. "This group is impressive," she said. "It's made up of two civilian prosecutors, including one who served eight years in the Army JAG corps, prevention specialists, two West Point grads who have gone on to have distinguished careers in the service, civilian advocates, experts in gender integration, one of the first female Super Cobra attack pilots in the Marine Corps, and experts from [Veterans Affairs] and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So, we took the time to get the right group of people to engage in these deliberations." The progress of the IRC and information they produce will be available to the public and service members on the recently created website. Entire Force May Be Vaccinated for COVID-19 by Early Summer [2021-03-26] WASHINGTON -- Defense Department officials have said the department will be ready to offer COVID-19 vaccinations to all eligible beneficiaries by May 1, in keeping with a White House announcement that on that date, all Americans will be able to get vaccinated if they want to. "We are committed to contributing to the president achieving his goal of 200 million shots in 100 days," said Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Dr. Terry Adirim during a briefing today at the Pentagon. Army Lt. Gen. Ronald J. Place, director of the Defense Health Agency said that depending on the rate at which the DOD can get vaccines, and the uptake rate -- that's the number of personnel who step forward to get vaccinated -- it's possible that by early summer, every person in the DOD could be vaccinated. "Based on the projections that we have, both supply side and vaccination side, we do fully expect to be open to all ... of our DOD eligible populations on or before the first of May," Place said. "At current uptake rates for those who want to get it, we think by the middle of July or so ... the department will be vaccinated." Place said right now that the military health system is administering COVID vaccine at 343 sites around the world. Also, he said, there are almost 3,000 military personnel providing vaccination support to FEMA-led community vaccination sites around the country. "A special thanks goes out to our superbly trained enlisted medical forces carrying out these responsibilities with compassion and with distinction," he said. Within the department, Place said, more than 600,000 service members from all three components have gotten at least their first COVID-19 vaccine. "I want to use this opportunity to thank every service member who has gotten vaccinated," said Adirim. "They are not only protecting themselves but they're also contributing to the safety of their teammates, their families and their communities." Right now, there are three COVID-19 vaccines available. Those include vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, both of which have cold-storage requirements, and both of which require two injections. The Johnson and Johnson vaccine requires only a single shot, and has no cold-storage requirement. All three vaccines are effective, Place said, but the single-shot Johnson and Johnson vaccine has been beneficial for use in austere environments. "Every single one of these vaccines are shown through rigorous clinical trials to be safe and effective," he said. "The ... unique advantages to this third vaccine is first it doesn't require that cold chain requirement and second only requires one dose, all of which make its efficacy ... the actual effectiveness at the operational force to be greater. So we think this is a better vaccine for the circumstances in those austere environments." Adirim said she hopes that more service members will step forward to take whatever COVID-19 vaccine is eventually offered to them because doing so is the key to getting the nation back on track. "Vaccination is one critical part of getting our country back to normal, along with continued testing and adherence to public health measures like masking and social distancing," Adirim said. "We just can't let up at this point. Our DOD personnel have done a phenomenal job. I'm very proud of all of them. We've administered more than 1.8 million shots within DOD and more than 5 million shots have gone into arms by military service members in support of the FEMA mission." Military Using Alternatives to Suez Canal In Middle East [2021-03-29] WASHINGTON -- Last week, the container ship "Ever Given" became lodged in the Suez Canal, the 120-mile long man-made waterway that runs through Egypt and connects the Red Sea with the Mediterranean Sea. The waterway allows commercial vessels to travel more quickly between the Far East and Europe. The route is also used by military ships, including those of the United States Navy. The blockage is not a show stopper for the U.S. military, however. "Because we've long recognized the fact that narrow waterways like this are maritime chokepoints, we always make sure that we have alternate capabilities to meet mission requirements," Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said during a briefing Monday afternoon. "We have recognized the fact that chokepoints like the Suez Canal could suffer blockages like this, and it's factored into just normal operational planning." Beyond that, Kirby said, the temporary shutdown of the Suez Canal has not caused the U.S. military to rethink its posture in the Middle East or its mission requirements there, because there are already other plans in place for such situations. "In any circumstance around the world, the U.S. military has ... at its disposal any number of alternate ways of achieving mission success and meeting our mission requirement," he said. Kirby also commended the Egyptian government for its work so far in getting the ship freed from the canal and its efforts to re-open the canal to maritime traffic. "I would also say that we want to commend Egyptian authorities for -- the only way to put it is -- a Herculean effort to get this ship free," Kirby said. "Clearly they have done just amazing work getting that freighter off the ... canal bank, and back in the middle of it again ... I think they deserve a lot of credit for that." Extremism Stand Downs Focus on Oath, Not Data Collection [2021-03-30] WASHINGTON -- Across the Defense Department, in units large and small, commanders and leaders held stand downs to address extremism in the ranks. The direction for those stand downs came in early February from Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III. By Thursday, as directed by the secretary, all those stand downs should be complete, every service member should have been involved in a conversation about extremism, and any feedback the services might think is important enough to share with department leadership will be readied for transmission upstream. The overall goal of the 60-day stand down has not been about collecting information from the force, but rather, to reiterate to the force something they all heard the first day of their military or civilian service: the commitment they made to the U.S. military, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said during a briefing Tuesday, "It was meant to do two things: to reinforce our values and, specifically, the importance of the oath that everyone takes here to the Constitution and what that oath requires of you," Kirby told reporters. "There are active verbs in that oath that matter. And it was a chance to revisit what we've all promised to do, and what we've all promised to serve." The stand down was also about listening to service members and civilians and their own feelings about extremism, he said. "To get a sense from the men and women of the workforce about how they view this issue, if they have any lived experiences that they would be willing to share, and to solicit their ideas and thoughts," Kirby said. "It was not a data collection exercise." Right now, Kirby said, the defense department doesn't have an idea about the scope of an extremism problem in the ranks. He said the service knows it's a problem greater than zero, but also likely not one that's as large as what some speculate. "We don't have a perfect understanding of the scope of it," he said. "I think we want to get a better sense of it and the stand down was just a first step in doing that ... It's just a first step -- not meant to be a panacea, not meant to solve all the problems -- just to reorient everybody to the importance of service to this country in the Defense Department and the chance to listen to them." Having hard numbers on extremism in the U.S. military was not a prerequisite to discuss the issue, Kirby said. That there are no numbers is, in itself, a reason to conduct a stand down. "It is precisely because we don't have a complete granular body of knowledge about the full extent of the problem that we wanted to conduct this stand down and why the secretary wants to take the issue so seriously," he said. "I don't know that you have to have a specific set of data in front of you to know enough that you've got a problem." While Kirby told reporters that Secretary Austin has said he doesn't believe the problem is as big as some believe it is, he's also said it does exist. The department, he said, needs to get a better idea of the problem. "We owe it to the country ... the taxpayers that fund us and support us, to get a better sense of this," Kirby said. "The secretary has said, every time he talks about this, that the vast majority ... are serving this country, whether they're military or civilian, contractor or in uniform -- they're serving this country with honor and character and dignity, they uphold the values that we espouse, they certainly uphold their oath to the constitution." When the extremism stand downs are complete, and the services have confirmed that to the department, what the next steps will be is unclear at this time. What is very clear, Kirby said, is that there will be follow-on efforts. "I think you will see the secretary make some decisions about how he wants to approach this going forward," he said. "He wants this to be considered an ongoing enduring leadership issue and I think you'll see that reflected in whatever decisions he makes." To Better Equip Warfighters, Sustainment Must Be Built In [2021-04-02] WASHINGTON -- Most of the life cycle costs of a U.S. military program are spent on sustainment and operations -- not acquisition. To better support warfighters, sustainment must be considered early on in a program's development, said the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. "On average, 70 cents on the dollar over the life cycle of a program is spent on sustainment and operations," said Stacy A. Cummings during a keynote address today before the 2021 Logistics Officer Association Symposium. "With this in mind, we must continue to emphasize the importance of designing for sustainment in order to reduce the demand for logistic support and maximize the availability of systems over their long life cycles." Sustainment requirements must be "baked into" the design of a material solution in order to deliver long-term operational availability and better support warfighters, Cummings said. Cummings said several efforts her office is working on now or has worked on in the past year support that goal. In August 2020, A&S published a major revision to DODI [Department of Defense Instruction] 4151.22, "Condition-Based Maintenance Plus for Materiel Maintenance," Cummings said. "CBM+ is the cornerstone of DOD strategy to shift weapon system sustainment from reactive to predictive maintenance approaches," she said. "Through a combination of predictive maintenance concepts, enabling technologies and data analytics, CBM+ strategies will transform sustainment to achieve better performance and affordability." Cummings said acquiring or establishing agreements to access necessary technical data, provisioning and cataloging spares, and establishing organic repair capabilities are just some of the areas where planning for sustainment is often lacking. To address those things, she said, A&S is in the process of publishing DODI 5000.91, "Product Support Management for the Adaptive Acquisition Framework." "This instruction lays the foundation for planning and managing product support in each of the adaptive acquisition framework's six pathways," she said. "It details the statutory directive and regulatory product support requirements, and it enables tailored product support solutions for each pathway." The six adaptive acquisition framework pathways are: urgent capability acquisition, middle tier of acquisition, major capability acquisition, software acquisition, defense business systems and acquisition of services. The A&S office is also revising the DODI 3110.05, or "Readiness-Based Material Condition Reporting," a document she said serves as DOD's authoritative material readiness reporting guidance. "It leverages the collective work accomplished by the services and OSD to reform logistics for better performance and affordability," she said. "This and other ongoing initiatives will provide a lexicon and common metrics for measuring and reporting the status of DOD sustainment enterprise weapon systems. Ultimately, these changes will better enable the services to target the most promising systemic cost and material readiness drivers." DOD Closely Monitoring Russian Activities in Arctic [2021-04-05] WASHINGTON -- Russian military activities and infrastructure build-ups in the Arctic are not going unnoticed, the Pentagon press secretary said. "Without getting into specific intelligence assessments, obviously we're monitoring it very closely," said John F. Kirby during a briefing today at the Pentagon. As ice melts in the Arctic, new options for transiting the Arctic open up -- and also remove natural barriers that Russia once relied on to protect its own interests there. Now, it is seeking to bolster its security through the refurbishing of Soviet-era airfields, the expansion of its network of air and coastal defense missile systems and the strengthening of its anti-access and area-denial capabilities. But the U.S. has its own interests in the Arctic as well, Kirby said. "[We] obviously recognize that the region is key terrain that's vital to our own homeland defense and as a potential strategic corridor between the Indo-Pacific, Europe and the homeland -- which would make it vulnerable to expanded competition," Kirby said. "We're committed to protecting our U.S. national security interests in the Arctic by upholding a rules-based order in the region, particularly through our network of Arctic allies and partners who share the same deep mutual interests that we do." In the 2019 DOD Arctic Strategy, the Defense Department told Congress it has three objectives in the Arctic. Those objectives include defending the homeland, ensuring common areas remain free and open, and competing when needed to maintain a favorable regional balance of power. "The Arctic is a potential corridor -- between the Indo-Pacific and Europe and the U.S. homeland -- for expanded strategic competitions," the report reads. "Strategic competitors may undertake malign or coercive activities in the Arctic in order to advance their goals for these regions. The DOD must be prepared to protect U.S. national security interests by taking appropriate actions in the Arctic as part of maintaining favorable balances of power in the Indo-Pacific and Europe." Kirby said the U.S. military is well aware of Russian activities in the Arctic, and reiterated that the U.S. has its own interests it will defend as well. "Obviously we're watching this, and as I said before, we have national security interests there that we know ... we need to protect and defend," he said. "And as I said, nobody's interested in seeing the Arctic become militarized." At Pentagon, Sexual Assault Awareness Is a Full-Time Effort [2021-04-07] WASHINGTON -- April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month -- first declared in 2009 by President Barack Obama. Inside the Defense Department and the Pentagon, efforts to eliminate sexual assault in the ranks isn't limited to just a month -- it'll be a full-time effort until the problem is gone, the Pentagon press secretary said. "April may be Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Month, but for Secretary Austin, it's something he focuses on every day," said John F. Kirby, during a briefing at the Pentagon today. "It is something he has repeatedly, continually talked about and stressed. So, it's everyday here at the Pentagon." In February, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III announced the establishment of an independent review commission on sexual assault. According to the IRC's charter, the commission will focus on evaluating military policies, programs and processes related to sexual assault. It will also review and assess the best practices from industry, academia and other organizations. Finally, the IRC will generate recommended policy changes and proposals to improve prevention efforts in the services. That commission, chaired by Lynn Rosenthal, has 90-days to conduct its work before reporting back to Austin and the president. It has just recently entered the third week of its efforts. "Just today [Rosenthal] conducted the second of what will be three engagements, virtual engagements, with ... sexual assault survivors and advisory groups associated with victims and survivors, as well as military service organizations," Kirby said. "She wanted to introduce them to the highly qualified experts that she has enlisted to join the commission." The IRC includes working groups focused on each of four lines of effort, including accountability, prevention, climate and culture, and victim care and support. Eliminating sexual assault in the ranks, Kirby said, is something the department is working on full-time, not just for a month each year. "It is something we're pressing on every single day," he said. "It is still a problem in the ranks, it's still a serious threat to the men and women who serve in the United States military, and I think you'll see Secretary Austin continue to keep the pressure on the entire time he's in office." Deputy Defense Secretary Evaluates Effects of Climate on Military Operations [2021-04-12] WASHINGTON -- During a windshield tour of Naval Air Station Pensacola on April 8 in Florida, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks saw firsthand the damage caused by last year's Hurricane Sally to the home of the Navy's Blue Angels. Around the installation, wind had damaged the roofs of historical homes, making some uninhabitable. Trees were felled, windows were broken, and there was flooding and power outages base-wide. Overall, the air station suffered about $450 million in damages. Twenty-seven football fields worth of temporary blue roofing now covers many facilities. While the NAS Pensacola and Navy Region Southeast teams have managed to keep operations running at the air base, which trains about 59,000 students a year, the 2021 hurricane season still looms in the near future. "We wanted to come to a place where we could see firsthand how the effects of climate change are playing out at an operational and installation level," said Hicks of the trip. "Pensacola was hit just in September. So because it's hurricane Sally, it's one of our most recent. So it was pretty fresh. We were able to see a lot of what they're still going through there." But Pensacola wasn't even the most egregious example of damage to Defense Department installations as a result of hurricanes. Tyndall Air Force Base, about 100 miles down the coast from Pensacola, was destroyed by 2018's Hurricane Michael. "The entire base was completely devastated," Hicks said. The estimate for rebuilding Tyndall sits around $6 billion, she said. As part of the trip, Hicks participated in a climate change-related video conference with leaders from other vulnerable installations around the region. "At the Department of Defense, we know that the readiness of the force is very much tied to how well we manage through and think about resilience in the face of climate," Hicks told the leaders. "So this is an effort by the team and I to make sure that we understand, again, how that plays out in your plans, in the missions you have to execute, in your budgets, so we can get a better sense of how to help at the high end." Because it's a challenge to push responsibility for developing resilience against the effects of climate change all the way down to installation commanders, Hicks said, the biggest lift must come from the department itself, through better policies that focus on helping ensure the nation's defense can withstand climate effects. "I think what we have to do across the entire enterprise for DOD is set as a priority the resilience of our facilities, the resilience of our operations," she said. "Just like we focus on cyber defense -- because we know there are threats from cyber -- it's the same kind of thing for climate. We need to be focused on that resilience so that we can be ready in the face of challenges." Some approaches to ensuring resilience, she said, are investments in different kinds of technology, upgrades in military construction and upgrades in utilities. "Those are all things we can help by prioritizing," she said. In the short term, Hicks said her focus is to get a better understanding of what climate-related challenges exist across the DOD. "Part of it is just assessment," she said. "We've got to assess where we are as a department, identify the really challenging areas, and identify the opportunities." There will be other trips, she said, to visit other installations to help with that assessment. In the long-term, we will be finding ways to take action on that new understanding. "I suspect what we will find is those actions will involve how we ensure our installations are more resilient... how we ensure that we aren't as reliant on our fuel lines as we have been in terms of our operations," she said. "And then, how we make sure that we have the capabilities we need to operate in a world with a different climate." As part of her initial efforts to get a grasp on how climate affects U.S. military readiness and operations, Hicks said the visit to Pensacola was an eye-opening experience. "The most important thing to me was seeing, down at that installation level, what we talk about in Washington as a crisis," she said. "We know from looking at the dollars that we're paying a high price for not being prepared and not dealing with the climate crisis more broadly. When you get down to Pensacola, you look at the damage and the reality of living in those constant conditions of potential storm effects. It gave me a very strong sense of how much it can affect how an installation has to operate and what the negative consequences can be over time." Not all of what Hicks saw at Pensacola was related to climate. She also visited several of the school houses there to see how training is conducted and met with some of the sailors there as well. "They are incredibly impressive -- so talented," she said. "They had really thoughtful questions on China and deterrence and sustainability of the aircraft maintenance in the Navy, to just every kind of big-think question -- budget top lines. So that was incredibly impressive. On the cyber side, just seeing the ability to have innovation occurring at the ground level, where individual sailors and officers are making contributions that change the way we think about how we train and fight, that was really inspiring." DOD Modernization Can't Happen Alone, Defense Official Says [2021-04-13] WASHINGTON -- Technology development that's competitive with that of adversaries is something the Defense Department can't accomplish on its own. It must be done in partnership with academia, partner nations and the U.S. private sector technology industry, said the DOD official who's performing the duties of the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. "Presenting a credible deterrent to potential adversaries requires us to develop and field emerging technologies," Barbara McQuiston, told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee. "We must innovate at speed and scale. Success requires more than a go-it-alone approach. We must explore more flexible partnerships with the private sector and academia, with small businesses and [historically black colleges and universities]. We must reinvigorate our federal research capabilities, elevate science, promote technology and expand partnerships with our allies." One area where that effort is happening now, McQuiston said, is at the Defense Innovation Unit. The DIU was designed to more quickly bring technology being developed within the private sector into the DOD. "With the activities to date, they have 189 companies now on contract," McQuiston told senators. "75% are small business, 32% are first-time vendors and 10% have already transitioned into military use -- and that's the key, to be flexible and to work at speed, at commercial speed, in order to integrate the technology rapidly into the service." Also part of research and engineering is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which has been at the very edge of technology development of the Defense Department for more than 60 years, said Stefanie Tompkins, DARPA's director. Tompkins told senators DARPA has partnered with academia and the private sector to bring to fruition technologies, including stealth, precision-guided weapons, unmanned aerial vehicles, the internet, automated voice recognition, language translation and GPS receivers. DARPA's role today is equally important, she said. "At DARPA, we think not just about scientific and engineering innovation, though, but also about the 'innovation ecosystem.' That ecosystem includes many overlapping and adjacent communities from academia, industry and government," she said. At DARPA, she said, program managers come from outside DARPA, do time within the organization on specific projects, and then return to other places in government, academia or the private sector. In the process of doing that, they enrich both DARPA and the organization from which they came. A recent example of the value of DARPA, Tompkins said, is with the fight against COVID-19. When she was serving at DARPA about five years ago, she said she often discussed ongoing investments and work DARPA had been involved in regarding messenger RNA vaccines. Messenger RNA, or mRNA, induces the body to produce some harmless spike protein, enough to prime the immune system to react if it later encounters the real virus. "mRNA vaccines are pretty much a household word today, but at the time, they were much, much more obscure," she said. The DARPA investments in mRNA vaccines at the time were based on insight from forward-thinking program managers who saw value in mRNA vaccines for both military use and for public health applications, she said. "The research that DARPA first initiated more than a decade ago is now playing a leading and catalytic role in today's fight against COVID-19," she said. Today, Tompkins said, DARPA is involved in vaccines and diagnostics, defensive and offensive hypersonic technologies, artificial intelligence, quantum systems, microelectronics solutions and more. "DARPA has forged new paths and continues to deliver on our mission," she said. Southcom Can Use More ISR Capacity, Security Cooperation [2021-04-15] WASHINGTON -- With transnational criminal organizations trafficking drugs, guns and people in South and Central America and China, Russia, Iran and Cuba meddling and peddling influence in the region, U.S. Southern Command has its hands full working to keep the neighborhood safe. Increased intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capacity and a greater ability to offer security cooperation opportunities to partner nations can help with that, Southcom's commander said today. "Modest investments in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, security cooperation and presence go a long way in the hemisphere and will help us and our partners counter these global threats," said Navy Adm. Craig S. Faller, commander of U.S. Southern Command, during a House Appropriations Committee hearing. In addition to threats posed by transnational criminal organizations and the involvement of China, Russia, Iran and Cuba, environmental threats -- such as hurricanes and the COVID-19 pandemic -- have made keeping Southcom's area of responsibility safe an even greater challenge, Faller told lawmakers. "Now, more than ever, I feel a deep sense of urgency that our region is under assault from a vicious circle [of] threats," said Faller. "And these are global threats, and they are right here, right now in our neighborhood." Faller told lawmakers that an increase in ISR capabilities for Southcom would be helpful to the command. Right now, he said, Southcom uses only about 1% of U.S. ISR capabilities. "Our intel drives everything we do," he said. "We turn it into knowledge; we share it where we can, particularly with our own U.S. government agencies. It helps us understand what's on the field and how to best respond long term." Faller said, in the past, a special "ISR transfer fund" provided additional funding to support ISR activities in the department -- including for Southcom -- but that fund wasn't present in the FY2021 budget. "We've used that ISR transfer fund money to do work in that environment, and we've uncovered a considerable amount of useful information that we've been able to pass to the host nations for their action, our law enforcement partners, and, in some cases, it's ... used to be able to illuminate malign Chinese and Russian behavior," he said. The admiral said he would like to see additional support for ISR at Southcom in the upcoming budget. "While we have not seen the full budget for FY22, I would anticipate that the top of my unfunded requirements list will be ... the need for additional ISR, to include what we call non-traditional ISR," he said, adding that this includes machine learning and artificial intelligence to look through the large amounts of commercially-available data on foreign adversaries. A big part of what Southcom offers in its area of responsibility is security cooperation through the military-to-military relationships the U.S. forges with partner nations there. "Security cooperation is key," he said. "That's what builds partner capacity. That's how we become more interoperable with partners. The U.S. has the best equipment in the world, and partners want our equipment; and it's a long-term relationship." Additional funding for enhanced security cooperation opportunities is something Southcom needs more of, he said. "As the budget is unveiled, I believe that'll be at the top of my unfunded priorities," he said. "There's more that could be invested in the capacity. We sit at about $120 million for 28 countries to help them build. It's a good investment long-term for both the United States and our partners. It keeps them close; it's a relationship." Faller also cited, specifically, the importance of defense attachés in U.S. embassies. "Those are our frontlines in our embassy," he said. "We should look at the manning of our embassies. It is very, very lightly manned for today's competition. And then look at where we're postured as a military and where is the United States postured? In this hemisphere, it's the right thing to not have permanent bases, to have light locations where we can come in and out and work with our partners on their training and readiness." U.S. Must Get 'On the Field' in Arctic to Defend National Interests There [2021-04-15] WASHINGTON -- As changes in climate affect ice melt, opportunities are developing in the Arctic for both resource development and transportation. Russia is already there defending what's theirs and seeking out new opportunities. China is a player as well, as a "near-Arctic nation." But the U.S. is going to need to develop more "persistence" in the region if it wants to be a player there, according to the commander of U.S. Northern Command. "To compete in the Arctic, you have to be on the field," said Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, who also commands the North American Aerospace Defense Command, during a hearing yesterday before the House Armed Services Committee. "And currently, our capabilities, I would assess that we're in the game plan development [stage]. We're not able to have the persistence that I need to compete day-to-day in the Arctic." The general said the U.S. military, along with the Canadian Armed Forces, are now in the early stages of modernization in building additional military capabilities in the Arctic. A priority for VanHerck, he said, is domain awareness. "It starts with the ability to communicate and provide data and information so that we can operate and have persistence in the Arctic," he said, thanking lawmakers for $46 million in funding the department received toward that effort. He said the U.S. currently has 10 satellites in orbit that help with that domain awareness, and about 100 more of those satellites will come in the future. But communications and domain awareness are only part of the picture, he said. Perhaps even more critical is actually having presence on the water there. "To be persistent, you also have to be on the playing field and that requires fuel so that Coast Guard cutters, Navy destroyers and cruisers, can remain persistent in the Arctic," he said. Right now VanHerck said he has a requirement for fuel north of Dutch Harbor, Alaska -- in the Aleutian Islands -- that will help with that persistence and will also provide infrastructure for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms and fighter aircraft. All of that, he said, will help the U.S. better compete in the Arctic and continue to be aware of Russian activities in the region. VanHerck said Russia pulls about a quarter of its gross domestic product from its activities in the Arctic. Moreover, they have reopened and strengthened Cold War military installations that were once shuttered. "They absolutely have a vested interest in the Arctic, and they also want to ensure that it's secure for their efforts, if you will," he said. China is not actually in the Arctic, but considers itself a "near Arctic" nation and seeks increased influence there, Both Russia and China are interested in changing international rules-based norms to better serve themselves, he said. "It's incumbent upon us to be persistent, working with allies and partners and like-minded nations to ensure that we maintain the consistency of the international rules-based norms and laws that have served us well over time," he said. Flag Raised for First Time at National World War I Memorial [2021-04-16] WASHINGTON -- The nation's capital has national memorials commemorating the sacrifices of service men and women who died in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Until this year, there hasn't been a national memorial commemorating World War I. Today, during a "first colors" ceremony, the U.S. flag was raised for the first time over the newly-constructed National World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C.​ Nearly 4.7 million Americans served in uniform during WWI, with more than 2 million of those deploying overseas. By war's end, 204,000 of those who deployed had been wounded, and nearly 117,000 had been killed. "The Great War [touched] almost every American family at the time," President Joe Biden said during a recorded presentation before the raising of the flag. "For too long, that nationwide service has not been fully commemorated here in the nation's capital. This memorial finally will offer a chance for people to visit and reflect and to remember. More than 100 years has passed since WWI ended, but the legacy and courage of those Doughboys sailing off to war, and the values they fought to defend, still live in our nation today." The new memorial features sculptures, fountains and quotes which pay tribute to those who served in World War I. It shares a space with an existing memorial dedicated to General of the Armies John "Black Jack" Pershing, who served as commander of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. The site is a short walk east of the White House. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley said the site is a testament to the strength of the American people, and that it honors the bravery and sacrifice made by service members during what was known as "the Great War," which he characterized as a war of stalemate, trenches and attrition. "It is our duty to remember what they fought for and why they fought," Milley said. "Thought to be the war to end all wars, those who lived it experienced unimaginable carnage. And by the end of the conflict, it ripped apart four empires and killed more than 22 million people, and it set the conditions for World War II, 20 years later -- which was the most destructive war in human history." World War I ended 102 years ago, but the effects of that conflict are still felt today, Milley said. "It was one of the most significant events to fundamentally shape the modern world," he said. At the memorial, the 3d U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard) raised the American flag for the first time over the site, while a bugler from the U.S. Army Band "Pershing's Own," played "To the Colors" on a bugle once owned by Pershing himself. As an added tribute, there was a flyover by two F-22 Raptor aircraft from the 94th Fighter Squadron, Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia. Clinic Doors Open Wide for Those Wanting COVID-19 Vaccine [2021-04-19] WASHINGTON -- As of today, just about any adult in DOD can get a COVID-19 vaccine if they want one. That includes military personnel, adult dependents, retirees and civilians. "All Defense Department-eligible and authorized adults are able to make an appointment by contacting their local military treatment facility for a COVID vaccine directly, or using their military treatment facility's appointment process," Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said during a briefing today. To help ensure military personnel and their families stationed overseas are taken care of, the military services are getting an additional 31,500 doses of the Moderna vaccine for use at locations within the U.S. European Command. On the other side of the globe, an additional 30,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine are targeted at locations within both the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and the U.S. Central Command. By the end of May, he said, over 80% of overseas personnel should have received initial doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. The Defense Department, Kirby said, has outpaced the national average in administration of the vaccine it's received. Of the more than 3 million doses of vaccines it's received, more than 2.5 million have been administered. "We're not keeping vaccines on the shelf," he said. With the DOD having administered about 83% of the vaccine it has received, "it's not waiting too long before ... we're getting [vaccines] into arms." About 1.5 million individuals within the department have received their first shot, he said, and about 1 million have received both shots. More than 60,000 have received the single-dose vaccine as well, he said. "We believe we're making progress here," he added , but "there's a lot more work to do." The COVID-19 vaccine is still under emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, and so it remains voluntary for personnel. Individuals must choose to take the vaccine, Kirby said. "What we want is to provide enough information and education so people can make the right decisions," Kirby said. "If the vaccine makes sense for you from a medical perspective, that should be incentive enough to get it so that you're helping out your teammates and your family and your friends." While the DOD is moving quickly to provide vaccines to service members, and now family members and retirees who want it as well, it's also working equally hard on a different front: to provide the vaccine to the American people. Right now, he said, the DOD has 30 active duty teams spread out around the nation, in support of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to provide vaccinations to the American public. In addition to active duty forces involved in that effort, he said, around 20,000 National Guard personnel have also been called up by their governors to provide assistance in their home states. U.S. Plans to Keep Threats in Check Even After Afghanistan Withdrawal [2021-04-20] WASHINGTON -- By Sept. 11, 2021, all U.S. forces must be out of Afghanistan. But that doesn't mean that the U.S. will be at the mercy of groups like ISIS, al-Qaida or the Taliban if they want to create problems and threaten U.S. interests, the commander of the U.S. Central Command said. While the 3,500 troops currently in Afghanistan will leave that country by the end of the summer, some will remain in the region, Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. said during a hearing today before the House Armed Services Committee. "I think some of the forces are going to remain in Central Command, because we are going to look at offshore, over-the-horizon options," he said. Right now, McKenzie said, he's figuring out how the U.S. will be able to conduct counter-terrorism activities in the area without being in Afghanistan. "I'm actually conducting detailed planning, by the direction of the secretary, to look at those options right now. I will report back to him by the end of the month with some alternatives," he said. Broadly, McKenzie said, if a crisis arises in Afghanistan and the U.S. needs to go back in, three things will need to happen that the U.S. can still do -- though with more difficulty than it can do right now. "You need to find the target, you need to fix the target and you need to be able to finish the target," he said. "So those three things all firstly require heavy intelligence support. And if you're out of the country and you don't have the ecosystem that we have there now, it will be harder to do that. It is not impossible to do that. It will just be harder to do it." For intelligence assets in the region, he said, U.S. diplomats are working now to find new places to base them, he said. "There are ways to get to the find and the fix part," he said. "The fix part is very important though, because if we're going to strike something, we're going to strike it in concert with the law of armed conflict and the American way of war." It's the striking of a target -- if need be -- that's going to be an even bigger challenge than it is now, McKenzie told lawmakers. "It's difficult to do that at range -- but it's not impossible to do that at range," he said. The general said long-range precision fires, manned raids and manned aircraft are all possibilities for strike options, if need be. All are on the table, and all are doable -- though with increased risks and costs. "There are problems with all three of those options, but there's also opportunities with all three of those options," he said. "I don't want to make light of it. I don't want to put on rose-colored glasses and say it's going to be easy to do. Though I can tell you that the U.S. military can do just about anything and we're examining this problem with all of our resources right now to find a way to do it in the most intelligent, risk-free manner that we can." When forces do leave Afghanistan, McKenzie said, there's the risk that there could be attacks at that time. He said he's confident, however, that while such a redeployment is complex, U.S. forces will be safe. With the Afghanistan withdrawal, he said, equipment will need to leave the country, installations will need to be turned over and people will need to leave. McKenzie said discussions with Army Gen. Austin S. Miller, commander of the Resolute Support mission and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, have left him assured that redeployment can be done safely. "I'm confident that we will have the forces necessary to protect our forces should the Taliban decide to begin attacking us on [May 1] or any other date," he said. Military, Environmental, Agricultural Interests Align in Chesapeake Bay Region [2021-04-23] Vienna, MD. -- About 70 miles southeast of Washington is Vienna, Maryland. It sits on the Nanticoke River, which drains into the Chesapeake Bay. Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks visited the Middle Chesapeake Sentinel Landscape in Vienna yesterday on the 51st anniversary of Earth Day to highlight the Sentinel Landscape partnership there. At locations designated as sentinel landscapes, a multiagency and multi departmental partnership connects private landowners with government assistance programs that fund land protection and natural resource restoration projects. By aligning these programs in sentinel landscapes, the departments of defense, agriculture and the interior use taxpayer dollars more efficiently and accomplish more on the ground with fewer resources. Environmental conservation groups in the region are interested in preserving the wetlands and natural habitats that surround the Nanticoke. But there's broader interest, as well, in preserving larger sections of the region -- not just to keep agriculture strong, but to preserve the Navy's use of that airspace for testing and flying aircraft. A big part of that preservation effort is DOD's Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration program. The program allows the military services to partner with state and local governments to preserve land use around military installations and ensure DOD's continued ability to train in those areas. If agricultural land inside the bounds of the Atlantic Test Range, where Naval Air Station Patuxent River tests aircraft, is opened to commercial or residential development, the Navy may no longer be allowed to fly over those areas. Ensuring the Navy's continued use of that airspace is one of the key responsibilities of the Middle Chesapeake Sentinel Landscape Partnership. In the Chesapeake Bay area, REPI helps fund the Middle Chesapeake Sentinel Landscape Partnership, which involves a multitude of state, local and environmental organizations in addition to DOD, DOI and Agriculture. We all work together to advance a set of shared land-use goals around our military installations and ranges," Kristin Thomasgard, REPI director, said during a gathering of conservation partners in Vienna on Thursday. "Over the six-year lifespan of the Middle Chesapeake Sentinel Landscape Partnership, we've been able to see just how valuable these partnerships can be." She said REPI has been able to leverage about $17 million in DOD funding with over $88 million in federal, state, local and private funds to protect more than 50,000 acres of land within the Middle Chesapeake Sentinel Landscape Partnership area of concern and enroll 131,000 acres of land in technical assistance programs that lead to sustainable land-use practices. "What this really demonstrates to me is that together we have been able to achieve outcomes that go far beyond what we can do individually," Thomasgard told partners. "Through this remarkable investment, this partnership has been able to sustain local, historical, agricultural, and fishing traditions; to protect critical forest habitats; improve community resilience to climate change; and to strengthen military readiness at one of the Navy's most important aircraft testing locations in the country." Funding from REPI helps support the Middle Chesapeake Sentinel Landscape Partnership's efforts to preserve agriculture in the area, maintain natural habitats, and keep Navy aircraft flying, Hicks said. "That's why programs like REPI are so important for how we think about maintaining the quality of our training environment, the longevity of our assets and also the relationships with the communities that we work so closely with that surround our installations," she said. Use of the airspace that makes up the Atlantic Test Range is at the heart of the mission at NAS Patuxent River, where airborne research and development testing help bring aircraft -- including the F-35 Lightning II -- into the Navy. Navy Capt. John Brabazon, the commander of NAS Patuxent River, said REPI and the Middle Chesapeake Sentinel Landscape Partnership keep his installation's mission viable. "To date, REPI funding has been used to preserve 63 separate parcels -- that's 63 willing land owners, 63 conservation partners doing the very time-consuming work to preserve more than 12,000 acres, so far, beneath the range air space," he said. Brabazon also said he believes that the goal of preserving 50,000 acres of land can be met by 2045 with continued help from conservation partners. "Through conservation of land by willing land owners we'll ensure that our mission, aircraft testing and training, can be accomplished safely," he told conservation partners gathered at a community center in Vienna. "Your Maryland naval air station could not protect its research, development and test mission without you." Hicks told conservation partners that another issue that affects their waterside community -- climate change -- is important to DOD as well. "In the national security community where DOD sits," she said, "we have long understood the effects of climate change and the devastating consequences it can have, both for our own installations and also for the way in which the world community grapples with change and has to deal with consequences of things like resources scarcity, shifting migration patterns, and the opening up of regions of the globe like the Arctic to new kinds of competition. These are all things we have to think long and hard about." Adapting to and mitigating the effects of climate change, Hicks said, are considered "mission essential" within DOD. "The cost of not paying attention to climate change can be quite devastating," she said. Earlier this month, Hicks visited Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida, which suffered damage from last year's Hurricane Sally. Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, suffered around $6 billion in damage from the same hurricane. "We were learning about the billions of dollars in damage caused from extreme weather events, like [the] increasing frequency of hurricanes," she said of the trip. Hicks said the effects of environmental change, such as rising sea levels and wildfire fires, greatly affect DOD's ability to operate. "These are major challenges -- rising sea levels if you're in Norfolk, [Virginia], if you're in Camp Lejeune, [North Carolina] -- major challenges to how we think about the safety and security of not only our personnel and the cost of our installations, but, frankly, the readiness -- our ability to actually the execute mission," she said. "How many days, for instance, are we down, not able to train, because we're not able to due to weather events? That's why DOD cares a lot about thinking through, in the long-term, how we manage." DOD to Assist in Search for Indonesian Submarine [2021-04-23] WASHINGTON -- Earlier this week, on Wednesday, the Indonesian submarine KRI Nanggala disappeared while conducting training operations in the Bali Sea. More than 50 individuals were on board at the time. The Defense Department is providing assistance to help the Indonesians search for that submarine. "At the request of the Indonesian government, we are sending airborne assets, to include a Navy P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, to assist in the search of their missing submarine," said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby during a briefing today at the Pentagon. Kirby told reporters that Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III spoke today with Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto to ensure he knew the aircraft was coming and also to offer any additional support or assistance that might be needed. "Indonesia is a good friend and strategic partner. We were all deeply saddened to see the reports about their submarine and our thoughts and our prayers are with the Indonesian sailors, the Indonesian navy, and of course all their families," Kirby said. Kirby told reporters that the Navy P-8 Poseidon is a maritime patrol aircraft specially designed to look for things, in particular for submarines. "It's a sophisticated platform that could be helpful in leading the Indonesian government to a better idea of the location," he said. Right now, he said, he is not aware that the Indonesian government has asked for any additional kinds of assistance from the U.S. military -- although the defense secretary has offered the DOD's help. "I know of no other requests right now by the Indonesian government for other help that could exist either on the surface or subsurface," Kirby said. "Certainly, we have lots of capability, but I won't characterize what kind of mission this is." Ultimately, if the submarine is found, it will be up to the Indonesians on how to proceed, Kirby said, adding that a task like raising a submarine to retrieve it is challenging work. "So much depends on if you're going after an object underwater, whatever it is, the condition it's in and how deep it is, and also what the ... bottom is like and what the currents are like," he said. "I mean, there's a lot to take in. And raising something from the bottom of the sea is dangerous, painstaking work. We have some capabilities to assist in that." Right now, he said, beyond the P-8 aircraft that's being provided, additional aspects of how DOD might help are unknown. "We want to help them find the submarine and we want to do whatever we can, whatever they need us to do, or would like us to do, to help them find it," he said. Defense Secretary Says 'Integrated Deterrence' Is Cornerstone of U.S. Defense [2021-04-30] WASHINGTON -- Deterrence has always been the first line of defense. Preventing conflict, when possible, is greater than engaging, said the secretary of defense. "The cornerstone of America's defense is still deterrence, ensuring that our adversaries understand the folly of outright conflict," Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said in Hawaii Friday during a change of command ceremony for the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. "Throughout American history, deterrence has meant fixing a basic truth within the minds of our potential foes: And that truth is that the costs and risks of aggression are out of line with any conceivable benefit," Austin said. But Austin said that, going forward, deterrence must be different from what it has been in the past, characterizing a new approach as "integrated deterrence." "To make that clear today, we'll use existing capabilities, and build new ones, and use all of them in networked ways -- hand in hand with our allies and partners," he said. "Deterrence still rests on the same logic -- but it now spans multiple realms, all of which must be mastered to ensure our security in the 21st century." Integrated deterrence, Austin said, includes having the best weapons systems and the latest technologies that make adversaries think twice. This includes development of tools that make use of artificial intelligence and quantum computing, for example. Integrated deterrence also includes new concepts of operation, the elimination of stovepipes between services and their capabilities, and coordinated operations on land, in the air, on the sea, in space and in cyberspace. "We can't predict the future," Austin said. "What we need is the right mix of technology, operational concepts and capabilities -- all woven together and networked in a way that is so credible, flexible and so formidable that it will give any adversary pause. We need to create advantages for us and dilemmas for them." Most significantly, Austin said, integrated deterrence means working together in ways that were not done before. "Integrated deterrence means all of us giving our all," he said. "It means that working together is an imperative, and not an option. It means that capabilities must be shared across lines as a matter of course, and not as an exception to the rule. And it means that coordination across commands and services needs to be a reflex and not an afterthought." As a former soldier and one-time commander of operations in Iraq and U.S. Central Command, Austin said he understands the instinctive impulse to trust first those who wear the same uniform. "I've been there," he said. "I'm a former combatant commander and senior service leader. I get it. I know the temptations and the impulses, the desire to preserve what you believe is your equity. I indulged in that kind of thinking myself back in the day. But I also see what's coming. And there's some old habits that just don't serve our core mission anymore." Now, he said, every service and agency -- each of which brings its own unique capability for deterrence, first, and conflict, when needed -- must be willing to draw on the capabilities of partners. Those partners include not just the U.S. military services, but federal agencies, partner nations and allies, as well. "We have to redouble our efforts to work together -- across commands, across services, and across stovepipes," he said. During Friday's ceremony, Navy Adm. John C. Aquilino took the helm of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command from outgoing commander Navy Adm. Philip Davidson. U.S. Sends Medical Supplies to India to Help in COVID-19 Fight [2021-04-30] WASHINGTON -- A lot of progress has been made against COVID-19, but it's still a global pandemic. As part of a whole-of-government effort to slow and eventually end the pandemic, the United States is sending medical supplies and equipment to India as that country battles the most recent outbreak. Wednesday evening, a C-5M Super Galaxy aircraft loaded with oxygen cylinders and regulators, N95 masks and COVID-19 rapid diagnostic kits left Travis Air Force Base, California, bound for India. Wednesday's shipment was just the first. In all, the United States expects to deliver more than $100 million in medical supplies to the U.S. partner nation. Thursday morning, a C-17 Globemaster III departed Travis for India carrying additional oxygen cylinders and diagnostic kits. The medical supplies were donated to India by the U.S. government though the U.S. Agency for International Development. Airmen with the 60th Air Mobility Wing are responsible for delivering those supplies. In the coming week, more oxygen cylinders will be sent, as will oxygen concentrators, oxygen generation units, additional personnel protective equipment, rapid diagnostic tests and therapeutics. The U.S. is also providing vaccine manufacturing supplies. In fact, the U.S. has redirected its own order of AstraZeneca manufacturing supplies to India, which will enable the country to make over 20 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. India is a major defense partner to the United States and providing assistance is just something partners do, said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby during a press briefing earlier this week. "The United States deeply values our partnership with India," Kirby said. "We are determined to help the people in India as they bravely combat this outbreak." During a visit to India last month, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said India is a major partner in the effort to keep a free and open Indo-Pacific region. "As the world faces a global pandemic and growing challenges to an open and stable international system, the U.S.-India relationship is a stronghold of a free and open Indo-Pacific region," he said. "And it's clear that the importance of this partnership, and its impact [on] the international, rules-based order will only grow in the years ahead." Austin Says POW/MIA Agency's Mission Gives Confidence to Service Members in War [2021-05-01] WASHINGTON -- During a Friday visit to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, the secretary of defense visited the agency charged with attempting to locate, identify and return to families the remains of service members who were lost in combat. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III told the civilian and military personnel at the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency that their mission not only brings closure to families whose loved one never came home from conflict, but it also provides confidence to those who are in the fight today. "You have a more profound impact on the business than you can imagine," said Austin. "I spent a lot of time in combat and told them that, whatever happens, I would never leave them if they went down; I would come to get them. That instills great confidence in them and allows them to fight fiercely. No other country in the world can make that claim." During his tour of DPAA, Austin was able to see the research areas and labs and meet the professionals who work to return home the U.S. service members who were lost during World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Cold War. Today, more than 81,000 Americans remain missing from those conflicts. DPAA aims to locate them and return them to the United States. On missions to recover remains, DPAA personnel travel around the globe to locations where service members once fought or where aircraft may have gone down. Many times those locations are still dangerous decades after conflict has ended. "It's dangerous; it's hard; it's tedious ... but the fact that we have people like you who are committed to do what you're doing is just absolutely terrific, and it sets us apart and it makes us different, so I want to thank you for what you do," Austin said. "I want to encourage you to keep doing it, and I really applaud the teamwork and the camaraderie." Defender Europe 21 Exercises Multinational Interoperability, Readiness, Transparency [2021-05-03] WASHINGTON -- Exercise Defender Europe 21 has started once again. This year's exercise involves 26 nations, including the U.S., and around 28,000 multinational forces all focused on building operational readiness and interoperability between NATO allies and partners. "It's defensive in nature, focused on deterring aggression, while preparing our forces to respond to crisis and conduct large-scale combat operations if necessary," said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby, during a briefing today at the Pentagon. Another key attribute of Defender Europe 21, Kirby said, is the transparency surrounding what it is all about, who will participate, what is meant to be accomplished. "[Defender Europe] is an exercise that's annual. We've been doing it a long, long time ... it's a defensive exercise. And it's one that helps us build interoperability," Kirby said. "Here's the other thing that's different: we actually come to the podium and tell you about it." Kirby said that openly discussing the Defender Europe 21 exercise and why U.S., NATO partners and other European allies are gathering troops is an important facet of the operation. Other nations have not been so clear or forthright about their own amassing of troops, he said. "I'm going to continually talk about what we're doing -- it's called transparency -- it's a wonderful thing," he said "And we're not getting that out of Moscow and we haven't. So that's a big difference right there. It's a defensive exercise and you will be able to hear us talk about it and communicate to you and to the world what we're doing and why." In past weeks, Russia had amassed more than 100,000 troops on the Russian side of its border with Ukraine -- alarming the Ukrainians and allies. In recent days, those troops have started to pull back, but many still remain. "There's still quite a few, I mean there's still a lot of forces arrayed against, or aligned along the border with Ukraine and in occupied Crimea," Kirby said. "And it's still never been completely clear what the intentions were." Defender Europe is an Army-led exercise, though this year it has significant Air Force and Navy participation. Last week, for instance, the USNS Bob Hope arrived off the coast of Albania in advance of its participation in a joint logistics over-the-shore exercise there. The Defender Europe 21 exercise will also include several smaller "linked" exercises, Kirby said. Those include Swift Response, which involves airborne operations in Estonia, Bulgaria and Romania; Immediate Response, which involves more than 5,000 troops from eight nations conducting live-fire training in 12 different countries; Saber Guardian, which includes more than 13,000 service members doing live-fire training as well as air and missile defense operations; and a command post exercise with 2,000 personnel exercising the ability of a headquarters to command multinational land forces. "The Defender Europe exercise is going to conclude in June, but not before demonstrating joint force readiness, lethality and interoperability, reinforcing the U.S. commitment to our allies and partners, and providing an outstanding opportunity to highlight the superb job our men and women are doing every day and in the region -- the Balkan and Black Sea regions in particular, and throughout Europe and the Africa area of operations," Kirby said. There Must Be Rules for How We Use Space, Defense Leaders Say [2021-05-06] WASHINGTON -- With more nations using space for both commercial and defense purposes, there must be rules that allow everybody to operate safely -- and to be able to identify what's going to be considered a threat, say defense leaders. "There are many benefits to having common guidelines for space operations," John D. Hill, who is performing the duties of the assistant secretary of defense for space policy, said. He testified yesterday before the House Armed Services Committee. "Among these are a safer, more sustainable, more stable and more predictable space operating environment for all space operators," he continued. "Importantly for [the] DOD, such an operating environment can also facilitate indications and warnings of hostile intentions and hostile acts." Right now, Hill said, the DOD's policies and practices for its operations in space serve as a model for space behavior. "[The] DOD models responsible behavior through our routine space operations, and [the] DOD works carefully to ensure that our space operations are consistent with international measures the United States supports, with relevant domestic and international law, including the law of armed conflict, and the inherent right of self-defense," he told lawmakers. Further development of internationally agreed-upon rules for operations in space will benefit both the Defense Department and commercial space operations, Hill said. "From the DOD perspective, United States leadership and the development of a rules-based order for space activities reap benefits for U.S. civil, commercial, scientific and national security space operators," he said. "As space activities worldwide become more prolific and more varied, voluntary non-binding international norms, standards and guidelines of responsible behavior can benefit U.S. national security and foster a conducive environment for growing global space activities." Right now, said Space Force Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting, the commander of Space Operations Command, the U.S. is already very transparent about its activities in space. One example of that is the U.S.-run website, space-track.org, which makes available space situational awareness services and information. "Given our imperative to help keep the domain safe, our command ... has for many years, with the support of Congress, been providing orbital conjunction assessments to any space owner and operator around the globe, while also making available space-track.org to foster openness and transparency in the tracking of tens of thousands of objects on orbit," Whiting said. Having agreed-upon internationally accepted rules for space operations is increasingly important now, Whiting said, given recent examples of the increased weaponization of space. In 2007, he said, the Chinese conducted a test to demonstrate their ability to destroy an orbiting satellite with a kill vehicle launched from the ground. And the Chinese, he said, have continued to demonstrate a willingness to showcase capabilities to interfere with assets already in space. "We continue to see the Chinese building satellites like the Shijian 17, which is a Chinese satellite with a robotic arm that could be used to grapple U.S. or allied satellites," he said. "We know they have multiple ground laser systems which could blind or damage our satellite systems." The Russian can also interfere with space-based assets, he said. "Russia has several ground-based lasers that can jam or blind our satellites and it's probable [that] they'll field more later this decade," he said. The Russians have also launched satellites, such as Kosmos 2519 and Kosmos 2542, both of which demonstrated abilities to interfere with other assets in space. Kosmos 2542, launched in late 2019, Whiting said, was able to synchronize its orbit with a U.S. satellite. When the U.S. moved that satellite, the Russian satellite synchronized its own orbit a second time. "Russia is a sophisticated space actor, so they must have known what they were doing, and obviously we do not support weapons tests near our satellites," Whiting said. "But let me be clear, even with this weaponization of space, we do not want a war to extend into space, and we want to do everything possible to deter that." On-Time Delivery Top Priority at Space Development Agency [2021-05-07] WASHINGTON -- Cost, performance and delivery drive acquisition across the Defense Department, typically in equal measure. But the Space Development Agency has prioritized delivery above all else in its effort to get satellites into space that will deliver non-line-of-sight targeting to warfighters across the globe. "The key thing is always to focus on getting these capabilities up and operational as rapidly as possible," said Derek Tournear, director of the Space Development Agency, during an online discussion today with the Space Force Association. "We will trade performance for schedule to make sure that we can maintain that." Budget professionals, Tournear said, are concerned about cost. "They want to make sure that the cost is correct and under control." And program managers are concerned about performance, he said. "They want to make sure that they can hit everything ... they want to get the last ounce of performance out of their program as possible." But delivery, or schedule, is about getting an acquisition product to the end user on time. "Who cares about schedule?" he asked. "The warfighter is the one that cares about schedule. No matter how good or how affordable a program or platform is, if it is not there when you need it, it's worthless ... we're always focused on schedule. We're going to get these capabilities up on time." The Space Development Agency is working now on delivering the National Defense Space Architecture. That system includes hundreds of satellites, delivered in "tranches" every two years, with each tranche providing more capability than the last. The NDSA's network of hundreds of optically-connected satellites will deliver two primary capabilities to warfighters on the ground, Tournear said. First is beyond line-of-sight targeting for ground and maritime time-sensitive targets, which includes mobile missiles and ships, for instance. The system will provide the ability to detect those targets, track them, calculate a fire control solution and then deliver that solution down to a weapons platform so that the target can be destroyed. "I want to do all of that in space, and I want to be able to close that chain in single-digit seconds -- that's what we're focused on," Tournear said. The second capability is the same as the first, but for enemy missiles already in flight, he said. "Everything we do ties back to being able to do these main mission areas," Tournear said. This year, Tournear said, the SDA, in partnership with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Missile Defense Agency, will launch about five satellites in support of the NDSA that will demonstrate the capability of the future system. The Tranche 0 set of satellites, about 28 in all, will go up in 2022 and 2023 -- it'll give warfighters a taste of what's to come, he said. "The whole point of Tranche 0 is to demonstrate a capability so that the warfighter can start to use that in their tactics, techniques and procedures," he said. After that, expect to see a lot of launches as part of Tranche 1 -- which will put as many as 150 satellites into the sky beginning in September 2024. "That's when we can actually start to affect a fight," he said. "We want the warfighter to already have been using our Tranche 0 satellites in their exercises, so they're ready when [Tranche 1 satellites] come online in 2024." Tournear said right now SDA is locked in on all the important details to get Tranche 0 satellites into the sky. "SDA is not messing around," he said. "We have all of our contractors on contract for Tranche 0 on firm-fixed-price contracts to push forward to deliver. September 2022 is when we're going to be launching these capabilities. We delivered the first two satellites. We delivered them to the launch vehicle nine months after we received funds. We're all about speed." Military Spouses Enable Mission by Maintaining the Home Front [2021-05-07] WASHINGTON -- More than half of active-duty service members and about 44% of reserve service members are married. Together, that's nearly a million military spouses who stay behind during deployments and temporary duty assignments to maintain the homestead and care for about 1.6 million children, sometimes while also working their own job. Military Spouse Appreciation Day is observed each year on the Friday before Mother's Day and recognizes the contributions to the nation's defense by the spouses of military service members -- spouses who struggle every day to keep families together and safe while their service member is away. "Military spouses may not always wear a uniform, but they serve and sacrifice alongside their service members and keep our military strong," President Joe Biden said in a White House proclamation released yesterday. "On Military Spouse Appreciation Day, we recognize and thank the military spouses who serve our nation and are critical to our national security." During the COVID-19 pandemic, military spouses have worked harder to keep their families together. They've had to struggle with school shutdowns, limited child care options and, for some, a loss of income as well. In some cases, their spouses had to stay deployed longer due to COVID-19 restrictions. "Still, military spouses have done what they do best: adapt, persevere and keep going," President Biden said. Programs like First Lady Dr. Jill Biden's Joining Forces and the Defense Department's Military Spouse Employment Partnership are two efforts designed to help improve the ability of military spouses to keep families strong while their spouse defends the nation. During a virtual event last month, Dr. Biden told military spouses and stakeholders in the Joining Forces program that they are a critical part of what keeps the nation strong. "You are the rudder that steers our military, and supporting your physical, social and emotional health is a national security imperative," Biden said. Over the next few years, Joining Forces will focus on several key issues to help strengthen military families and reduce the burden on military spouses, she said: -- Military family employment and entrepreneurship. Before the pandemic, the Defense Department estimated the military spouse unemployment rate was about 22%, she said. "All of you deserve opportunities to do the work you love, whether that means keeping your job when you move from base to base, or owning your own businesses." -- Quality child care when families need it. Families do not have to feel like they're choosing between their job and taking care of their children. -- Education for military children. There are more than 2 million children whose parents are service members, National Guard reservists or veterans. Schools want to support all students, but they don't always know how to do so, she said. "We're going to work with educators and our government partners to make sure that your military-connected kids have what [they] need to succeed." -- Military family health and well-being. Because only 1% of our country has shouldered the burden of 20 years of war, no one has more strength, grit and resilience than our military families, Biden said, adding, "But you can't do this alone. We have to help you carry this weight by improving access to mental health resources, ensuring everyone can put food on the table and supporting caregiving families and survivors." In Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Vessels Exercised Right to Self Defense [2021-05-10] WASHINGTON -- Earlier today, 13 "fast boats" with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy precariously approached U.S. Navy and Coast Guard vessels that were operating in the Strait of Hormuz. After those ships failed to heed warnings to move away to a safe distance, the U.S. fired warning shots, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said. During a briefing today at the Pentagon, Kirby said it was six U.S. Navy vessels that were escorting the guided missile submarine USS Georgia which were involved in the incident. "This group of fast attack boats approached the U.S. formation at high speed, closing in as close as 150 yards," Kirby said. "After following all the appropriate and established procedures involving ships: horn blast, bridge-to-bridge radio transmissions and other ways of communicating, the [U.S.] Coast Guard Cutter Maui ... fired approximately 30 warning shots from a 50 caliber machine gun. After the second round of warning shots, the 13 fast-attack craft from the IRGCN broke contact." Kirby said the Coast Guard cutter fired warning shots while the IRGCN ships were at the 300-yard mark and then again when they were at the 150-yard mark. It's not clear now under whose direction those IRGCN ships were operating, Kirby said. But he also added that harassment from the IRGCN is nothing new. "Harassment by the IRGC Navy is not a new phenomenon," he said. "It is something that all our commanding officers and crews of our vessels are trained ... for when serving in the Central Command area of responsibility, particularly in and around the Gulf." The U.S. response to the harassment, Kirby said, was appropriate for the situation the American ships were in. "Our commanding officers and crew of our ships -- they have the right of self-defense and they know how to use that right," he said. "They have the means at their disposal to defend their ships and their crews and they also, as I think we've seen now in this second incident, are very stringent about following the proper procedures for providing warnings: verbally first, and then if need be, through the use of warning shots to try to change or mitigate the Iranian behavior." Late last month on April 26, three IRGCN fast inshore attack craft approached U.S. Navy vessels in a similar fashion as today's incident. Then, U.S. ships issued warnings as they did today. When those warnings failed, the USS Firebolt fired warning shots and the IRGCN ships moved away to a safe distance. "This kind of activity is the kind of activity that could lead to somebody getting hurt, and could lead to a real miscalculation in the region, and that doesn't serve anybody's interests," Kirby said. Defense Acquisition University Plows Through Pandemic With Online Offerings [2021-05-11] WASHINGTON -- Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, acquisition professionals were able to keep learning and training thanks to the Defense Acquisition University's ability to respond quickly to changing requirements. With the COVID-19 pandemic, travel was curtailed across the department, and the Defense Acquisition University's physical training locations closed March 13, 2020, said Stacy A. Cummings, who is performing the duties of the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. She spoke today during a virtual discussion as part of the Naval Postgraduate School's 18th Annual Acquisition Research Symposium. "In spite of this, DAU was able to preserve over 80% of student capacity by converting classroom courses very quickly to virtual offerings," she said. Since then, she said, DAU has ensured that more than 30,000 acquisition professionals were able to receive necessary training. In 2021, she said, DAU increased the number of short topical webcasts they offered by 250% and also added online workshops. "These online offerings have reached more than 28,000 live attendees," she said. "Webcasts, workshops and webinars are constantly happening." Cummings also said that the DAU's credential program, which began in late 2019, has grown and is providing defense acquisition professionals with skills and knowledge more finely focused on their specific areas of expertise. "DAU's credentials program provides responsive and timely learning experiences that participants can self-select in order to grow and deepen their skills," Cummings said. "By offering learning in smaller, more job-specific credentials, DAU is aiming to help DOD evolve beyond today's three-level certification framework and more effectively meet the intent of the Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act." Most recently, for instance, DAU added a small business professional credential to its portfolio. As part of earning that credential, students apply basic and intermediate knowledge of the legislation, policies, acquisition process and market research techniques required to advise stakeholders effectively, advocate for small business participation in defense acquisitions, and educate small businesses to do business with the defense department. DAU now offers credentials in a dozen areas, including acquisition law and policy, foundational intellectual property, and cybersecurity for program managers, Cummings said. "The result is that personnel are better prepared to perform their jobs and can get the additional training they need -- and less of what they don't need -- at a much faster rate when job requirements change," Cummings said. "The credential program ... has helped train nearly 11,000 people to date." Right now, she said, 30 additional credentials are in development at DAU. Nuclear Deterrence Remains Department's Highest Priority Mission [2021-05-13] WASHINGTON -- While the Defense Department is conducting a series of strategic reviews that will include U.S. nuclear policy and posture, the department still considers nuclear deterrence its highest priority mission, defense leaders said. "Our nuclear forces remain essential to ensure that no adversary believes they can ever employ nuclear weapons for any reason, under any circumstances, against the United States or our allies and partners without risking devastating consequences," Leonor Tomero, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. The department plans to begin specific reviews of nuclear posture and policy soon, Tomero said, and those reviews will extend through the summer and fall. "Our reviews will assess the U.S. nuclear modernization programs to ensure that they deliver on time and are aligned with policy," Tomero said. "Importantly, the reviews will include a renewed focus on strategic stability, including risk reduction and arms control." Right now, the Defense Department is engaged in a recapitalization of the "nuclear triad," which involves new submarines, such as the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines; new intercontinental ballistic missiles as part of the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program; and new bomber aircraft, such as the B-21 Raider. Modernization of that triad remains a top priority for defense leadership, Tomero said. "There is very strong support for modernization of the triad, as Secretary Austin testified before Congress, as Deputy Secretary Hicks testified," she said. "And so that will be a high priority for our review....to ensure that we continue to modernize the triad. Of course, we'll look at how the programs are doing, what the program risks are to make sure that we have the capabilities we need when we need them." While the president's fiscal year 2022 budget has yet to be given to Congress, Tomero did say she's aware there is support for nuclear modernization and sustaining U.S. nuclear forces, but she didn't go into more detail. "Having a strong nuclear deterrence is one of our highest priorities," she said. "And, so, we will continue to maintain a strong and reliable nuclear deterrence, which has been the cornerstone of our national security." In Cyber, Differentiating Between State Actors, Criminals Is a Blur [2021-05-14] WASHINGTON -- Who's hacking U.S. networks? It's not an easy question to answer, defense leaders told lawmakers, as determining if a malicious cyber attacker is a foreign government, a cyber criminal or a cyber criminal supported by a foreign government is never clear. "The line between nation-state and criminal actors is increasingly blurry as nation-states turn to criminal proxies as a tool of state power, then turn a blind eye to the cyber crime perpetrated by the same malicious actors," said Mieke Eoyang, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, during a hearing today before the House Armed Services Committee. Russian security services, Eoyang said, are known to leverage the activities of cyber criminals and to then shield them from prosecution for crimes committed for personal benefit. "We have also seen some states allow their government hackers to moonlight as cyber criminals," she said. "This is not how responsible states behave in cyberspace, nor can responsible states condone shielding of this criminal behavior." For the U.S., Eoyang said, knowing who is responsible for malicious cyber behavior is important because it determines who can respond to it. When non-state actors are engaging in financially motivated crimes, for instance, it is the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice who are responsible for pursuing those criminals, she said. "The challenge I think that we have is that when those attacks first come across the network and impact us, when we see that malicious activity, it's always a challenge of attribution to be able to pull it apart and figure out who are the state actors and who are the non-state actors, [and] which elements of government would then be tasked with the lead to disrupt that activity varies based on location and whether or not they are criminal or not," she said. While the FBI and DOJ handle criminal activities inside the U.S., it is the role of Cyber Command to focus on cyber threats against the homeland from adversary nation-states. It's an effort the Cybercom commander and National Security Agency director, Army Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, said he's proud of. One area where the role of Cybercom has been important is in the 2020 election. Nakasone said the security of the 2020 election was ensured through the Election Security Group, which is a combined effort of Cybercom and NSA. "We built on lessons from earlier operations and honed partnerships with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, sharing information with those who needed it as fast as possible," Nakasone said. "To protect the 2020 elections," Nakasone said, "Cybercom conducted more than two dozen operations to get ahead of foreign threats before they were able to interfere with or influence elections. "I'm proud of the work the command and the election security group performed as part of a broader government effort to deliver a safe, secure, 2020 election," Nakasone said. Air Force Can Retire KC-135, Transcom Commander Says [2021-05-19] WASHINGTON -- U.S. Transportation Command is responsible for moving people and materiel around the globe in support of the nation's defense needs. It relies, in part, on the use of the Air Force's aircraft to do that. When the Air Force hoped to retire some aircraft within the KC-135 Stratotanker fleet in order to make way for the new refueling aircraft, the KC-46 Pegasus -- which was delayed -- Army Gen. Stephen R. Lyons, commander of Transcom, thought it inadvisable. But that is no longer the case. "At that time, the ... implications for day-to-day operations were significant," Lyons told lawmakers yesterday before a hearing at the House Armed Services Committee. "Since that time, the United States Air Force has done some incredible work, first to make sure that Boeing is signed up to complete the work that they're under contract to complete. Second, to work through some interim capability releases to allow us to use the KC-46 in operations." Lyons said that while the KC-46 refueling aircraft is not compatible now with every aircraft that might need to be refueled, it's compatible "across a large portion" of them. The Air Force has also delayed retirement of some KC-10 Extender aircraft, Lyons said. And this puts Transcom in a good position, Lyons added. "I really appreciate the support of the Air Force," Lyons said. "I've talked to the chief about this, I think we're in a very good place. I do think it's the right decision to allow the Air Force to retire the KC-135s that they requested to retire." Transcom is also responsible for the movement of household goods when service members make a permanent change of station. To better serve customers there, Lyons told lawmakers, improvements are underway to better assess how customers rate their experiences with the contract movers Transcom uses to move service members. Right now, less than a third of customers respond to post-move surveys. "When we look at the survey information that comes in, our estimate is about 30% of the customers ... respond on surveys," Lyons said. "My guess is we get both extremes. But we could do better in that population. We have taken initiative and have put a company under contract to improve our survey process, and that's underway at the moment ... to make sure it's more accurate, more thorough, easy, and the analytics on the backend are more meaningful to drive better business decisions. That's one of many initiatives in the area of defense personal property reform." DOD Official Discusses 'Moral Obligation' to Help Those in Afghanistan Who Helped U.S. [2021-05-20] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military is currently conducting retrograde operations to leave Afghanistan. U.S. military personnel there now will come home, and equipment in the country will also be shipped back, sold, destroyed or moved elsewhere. The deadline for withdrawal is Sept. 11, 2021. While soldiers leave the country, many Afghans who provided support to the U.S. and its allies will remain behind. They and their families may face the threat of retribution for having provided support to the Americans. The Defense Department believes it's important those individuals and their families are taken care of. "We have a moral obligation to help those that have helped us over the past 20 years of our presence and work in Afghanistan," David F. Helvey, the acting assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, said during a hearing today before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Right now, Helvey said, the DOD is working with the State Department and other government agencies to look at programs, including the Special Immigrant Visa Program, as a solution to help partners in Afghanistan who won't be retrograded out of the country along with soldiers, helicopters and weapons systems. But the program is limited in its ability, Helvey said. "We'd like to be able to work with Congress to be able to increase the quotas and the resources for special immigrant visas," Helvey said. "But there are certain categories of our Afghan partners that wouldn't meet the thresholds for special immigrant visas, so we need to look at other tools and other mechanisms to help those that have helped us." Two other options, he said, might include humanitarian or significant public benefit parole, which U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services can use to let some classes of individuals who are currently outside the United States into the country. "We are working within the interagency to be able to identify those and get the proper resources attached to them," Helvey said. "With respect to Special Immigrant Visas, we're working very closely with the State Department to identify and provide data that can help to provide the identification and the identities of those employees of the Department of Defense that would qualify. We're also looking at biometric data which can also help to provide information and insight on who may qualify for that type of benefit." The U.S. entered Afghanistan in October 2001, following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S., as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. OEF shut down in 2014, but some U.S. forces stayed on after. Helvey said he believes the U.S. accomplished what it set out to do in Afghanistan. "It was a counterterrorism mission," Helvey said. "That's why we authorized forces to go there ... it has largely succeeded. We brought the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks to justice. And we have significantly reduced the threat of international terrorists emanating from Afghanistan." While the U.S. will no longer be in Afghanistan, the U.S. relationship with Afghanistan will not end -- it'll just change, he said. "We will continue to work with the Afghan government, we will continue to maintain a diplomatic presence, and we will continue providing support to our Afghan partners because we do have interests still in Afghanistan," he said. Following the U.S. withdrawal, any number of possibilities might arise, including a takeover of the country by the Taliban -- or a defeat of the Taliban by the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces. "I will acknowledge the range of potential outcomes in the months as we go forward," Brig. Gen. Matthew Trollinger, the deputy director of politico-military affairs for the Middle East, on the Joint Staff, said. "I will say the ANDSF -- they're a capable force. They have capable ground, air and special operations forces, and here, very recently, they've effectively both defended against Taliban attacks as well as gone on the offensive to disrupt Taliban activities." Energy, Water Resilience on Installations Critical to Operational Security [2021-05-20] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department's evaluation of new heat pump technology at a National Guard installation proved the technology viable and meant the department now has another tool to enhance energy security, said the deputy assistant secretary of defense for environment and energy resilience. "We have a process in place to help commercialize new and emerging technologies and to prove that they are cost-effective and to encourage uptake across the department," Richard G. Kidd told lawmakers during a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday. "An air source heat pump, developed in the Department of Energy, in concert with the private sector, moved through our ESTCP/SERDP program, was demonstrated at the National Guard Armory in Maine where it worked during the extremes of winter, and was proven to be cost effective." The Environmental Security Technology Certification Program, or ESTCP, and Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, or SERDP, take advantage of the latest science and technology to improve the department's environmental performance, reduce costs and enhance and sustain mission capabilities. The department now encourages other installations to take advantage of that technology, Kidd said. As a result of the evaluation, the department is able to provide to those installations numbers that prove the technology's effectiveness. "The department has a record of doing that," Kidd said. "We did that for ground-source heat pumps, ground-source batteries -- sort of like a heat-storage battery -- and a variety of other technologies," he said. "It's a good little program that works with DOE and the commercial sector to leverage the purchasing power of the department." The evaluation of heat pump technology is just one way the Defense Department is working to enhance energy security and operational resilience against climate change, which Kidd called a critical national security issue and a threat multiplier. "Climate change will continue to amplify operational demands on the force, degrade installations and infrastructure, increase health risks to our service members, and may require modifications to much of our existing or planned investment in equipment," he said. In recent years, weather events such as Hurricane Michael in 2018, have cost the department billions of dollars in damage to installations. "These costs are likely to increase as climate change accelerates," he told senators. "Not adapting to climate change, though, will be even more expensive, with failure measured not only in additional repair dollars, but also in terms of lost military capability, lower readiness, missed opportunities for technical innovation and economic growth." Climate change isn't the only threat. Military installations, like the civilian communities that surround them, depend on energy and water to operate. Cyberattacks from adversaries can shut down the infrastructure that provides energy and water, rendering communities and military installations inoperable. The department must be resilient to such attacks to ensure continued operations. "Enhancing energy and water resilience on our installations is essential to preserving our operational capabilities, regardless of the threat -- man-made or natural," Kidd said. To be resilient to the effects of climate and the threats from adversaries, he said, the Defense Department is conducting climate assessments, updating directives at unified facilities, and building energy and water resilience plans at installations. "The department's efforts to address climate change are directly aligned with and supportive of the department's overall efforts to ensure mission continuity and preserve resilience," he said. Ending Mission on Capitol Hill, Guard Personnel Prepare to Go Home [2021-05-24] WASHINGTON -- For the nearly 1,000 National Guardsmen who have remained in Washington, D.C., and who have been providing security assistance to the Capitol Police for the last five months, it's now time for the mission to end and to return home. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III thanked the service members in a statement released today. "They came here from all 54 states and territories, leaving behind jobs, homes and families, to bolster security at the Capitol in the wake of the dramatic events on January 6th," Austin said. "Many of them volunteered for this duty, and most of them did so on little notice. In good weather and bad -- sometimes cold and wet and tired -- they provided critical capability to the Capitol Police and local authorities." While about 1,000 personnel still remain in Washington, D.C., said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby during a briefing today at the Pentagon, their primary mission now is to prepare to leave. "[It's] truly extraordinary work, oftentimes in pretty extreme and nasty weather," he said. "But they chipped in and performed an invaluable service and it was important for the secretary to say thank you to them as they now begin to transition out of the area." According to Kirby, there are no plans for the National Guard to leave behind a "quick reaction force" in Washington, nor is there a plan to leave behind any kind of military equipment either. "I'm not aware of any residual equipment that's going to be left behind," he said. "Remember, most of these soldiers were essentially acting as physical and barrier sentries." Additionally, Kirby said, right now he's not aware of any additional requests by the Capitol Police for residual capabilities from the National Guard. "As these troops depart for home and a much-deserved reunion with loved ones, I hope they do so knowing how much the nation appreciates their service and sacrifice -- and that of their families and employers," Austin said. "I hope they know how very proud we are of them." Afghanistan Retrograde Nearly One-Quarter Complete [2021-05-25] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. plans to be completely out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 2021. U.S. Central Command announced today they estimate the withdrawal is now somewhere between 16% and 25% complete. Already, the command says, approximately 160 C-17 loads of materiel and equipment have left Afghanistan. Additionally, more than 10,000 pieces of military equipment have been turned over to the Defense Logistics Agency. U.S.-controlled installations in Afghanistan must also be returned to the Afghan Defense Ministry, and so far, five installations have been handed back. After 20 years, the U.S. is leaving Afghanistan because the mission there is complete, said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby during a press briefing today at the Pentagon. "The president has been very clear that our troops accomplished the mission for which they were sent to Afghanistan," Kirby said. "That was to prevent the country from being used as a safe haven for terrorist attacks on our homeland, and there hasn't been another attack on the homeland emanating from Afghanistan since 9/11. So the president believes the mission has been completed." Now, Kirby said, there is a new mission: withdrawal from Afghanistan and development of a new relationship with the government of Afghanistan and the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces. The United States will create a "new bilateral relationship with Afghanistan across the government: diplomatically, economically, politically and certainly from a security perspective," Kirby said. "Our relationship with Afghan National Defense and Security Forces will continue, but it will continue in a different way." The U.S. is not leaving the Centcom region outright, however. There are still threats in the region, and Kirby said the U.S. will be ready to meet those threats by strengthening existing "over-the-horizon" capabilities there and growing new ones. Kirby said the U.S. already has some over-the-horizon capacity in the region, by virtue of forces already stationed there and long-range capabilities that are outside the region. "We know we need to think through this more deliberately and more thoughtfully going forward as we get closer to completing the withdrawal, and we're working on that," he said. Air Force Academy Grads to Keep Competition From Becoming Conflict [2021-05-26] WASHINGTON -- Since the end of World War II, there've been many other wars -- but not another global war between great powers. The balance and stability that's existed for more than 75 years is now at risk and for recently-commissioned young officers out of the U.S. Air Force Academy, it'll be their job to maintain a now fragile world peace, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said. "We are now in the 76th year of the great power peace following World War II -- and the structure is under stress," Army Gen. Mark A. Milley said while speaking to more than 1,000 cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy commencement ceremony today in Colorado Springs, Colorado. "We can see it fraying at the edge. With history as our guide, we would be wise to lift our gaze from the never-ending urgency of the present, and set the conditions for a future that prevents great power war." Right now, Milley said, the United States is in great power competition with nations like Russia and China. That competition must not escalate, he told cadets -- who will soon be out in the force as second lieutenants. After four years at the Air Force Academy, he told them, they move from being students, sons and daughters, to being servants of the nation -- ready now to shoulder the burden America places on them. "Your parents see their sons and daughters on the field before you, but your nation sees lieutenants, sees airmen, sees space Guardians, who will lead our Air Force and our Space Force as pilots and navigators, engineers, intelligence officers, special tactics and combat rescue officers -- each one critical to the joint force mission." The threat landscape that exists now, Milley said, includes artificial intelligence, robotics, human engineering, hypersonics and long-range precision fires that all provide capability beyond what has ever existed in human history. As defenders of the nation, Milley said, the new officers will need to be agile and adaptive -- they will not have the luxury of time their predecessors might have had to make decisions. The new face of warfare, he said, moves too quickly and changes too unexpectedly. He challenged them to be ready for that. "The country that masters these technologies, combines them with doctrine and develops the leadership to take advantage of it -- the side that does that best -- is going to have a decisive advantage at the start of the next war," Milley said. "It's your challenge to be on that side. You will lead us as a nation, not just as an Air Force or a Space Force." Defense Office Brings Small Tech Companies Into Big League [2021-05-26] WASHINGTON -- The biggest U.S. defense contractors -- such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics and Raytheon -- provide many of the technologically advanced weapons and systems used by U.S. service members. But there are thousands of other technology companies in the U.S., some large and many quite small, with big ideas and capabilities that have never had the opportunity to contribute to the nation's defense, even though the idea may appeal to them. In March, the Quick Reaction Special Projects program, which is part of the Rapid Reaction Technology Office within the office of the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, published the "2021 Global Needs Statement." The Global Needs Statement -- which is just one of several proposal calls per year that RRTO engages with small and non-traditional companies to incubate innovation by showcasing new ideas and concepts to a Defense Department audience -- asks interested companies to provide their most compelling and innovative technologies and ideas in areas involving artificial intelligence and machine learning; autonomy; biotechnology; cyber; directed energy; fully networked command, communication and control; hypersonics; microelectronics; quantum technology; space and 5G communications. Those technology areas are of great interest to the Defense Department and were spelled out in the 2018 National Defense Strategy; respondents to the Global Needs Statement aren't expected to be the big players who usually get the government contracts. "For this particular initiative ... the vast majority of the companies that submit applications are companies that DOD doesn't do business with on a regular basis or at all," said John Lazar, RRTO's Director. "We're trying to bring in more companies that DOD either doesn't know about or rarely does business with. We limit companies to 100 words on their applications to make it even easier to get their ideas in front of DOD." Working with DOD can be quite daunting or bureaucratically challenging for some small companies, which can have a chilling effect on engagement. It's something RRTO can help with, Lazar said. "Part of what our RRTO engages in, not just in this particular program but with many of our programs, is mentoring and teaching these businesses how to do business with the Defense Department," he said. "We help them with white papers, proposals -- whatever the DOD customer is looking for. We help them communicate." While the window for submitting proposals for the 2021 Global Needs Statement closed in April, more than 650 responses to the statement were received. A second needs statement is open through early June, and more will occur throughout the year. RRTO will then read through the submissions and evaluate them with subject matter experts, finding the best of the best to bring forward to potential customers inside the Defense Department. Then, Lazar said, DOD customers such as the military services, combatant commands and defense agencies will help decide which submissions they think have the highest potential for payoff. "Those companies will then engage directly with those DOD customers ... from there, it's out of RRTO's hands, and it's between the company and that defense customer," Lazar said. The DOD customer will work with the company in question to further develop technology proposals that have been brought forward into products that can meet their needs, Pena said. By the end of June, about 35 of the 650 companies who submitted proposals this year will have been selected to move forward with continued talks with DOD customers, and eventually, that number will be down-selected further. But the end result will be Defense Department access to new companies bringing ideas that might not have been seen before. Last year, as part of the Quick Reaction Special Projects program's "innovation outreach" effort, 1,600 companies responded to open-ended DOD needs statements. In previous years, new companies such as FireEye (cybersecurity), MotionDSP (software and image processing), Saratoga Data (software/engineering), and Tectus (virtual/augmented reality) became DOD partners -- joining the ranks of much larger defense contractors who for decades have helped meet warfighter needs. With this latest Global Needs Statement effort, Lazar said, DOD once again hopes to bring on board new companies with new ideas that can provide even better tools to help service members meet the nation's defense needs. "What we're looking for are highly innovative companies with new technologies that have the potential to provide leap-ahead capabilities against near-peer adversaries and fill gaps in critical joint mission needs," Lazar said. Austin, Milley: President's FY22 Budget Request Sufficient for Defense Mission [2021-05-27] WASHINGTON -- The president's budget request for fiscal year 2022 is expected to contain $715 billion in funding for the Defense Department. DOD leaders have said they believe this is ample to accomplish things the department wants to do in the coming year. While the full presidential budget request has not yet been made public -- that should come on Friday -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and lawmakers were aware of the total dollar amount for the Defense Department. "This budget provides us the ability to create the right mix of capabilities to defend this nation and to deter any aggressors," Austin said during testimony today before the House Appropriations Committee, subcommittee on defense. "It adequately allows us to begin to prepare for the next fight ... it in fact does provide us the ability to go after the capabilities that we need." Within the FY22 budget, Austin said that the department has prioritized several capabilities to ensure future readiness and modernization of the force. According to Austin, the budget invests in, among other things, hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence, micro-electronics, 5G technology, cyber capabilities, shipbuilding and nuclear modernization. "The budget also invests in efforts to counter the damaging effects of climate change and to be prepared for potential future challenges like another pandemic," Austin said. Also in the budget, he said, is funding to help the department resist Russian cyberattacks, counter the threats from the ballistic-missile capabilities of countries like North Korea and Iran, and maintain troop presence and counter-terrorism capacity in both the Middle East and South Asia to counter threats from Iran, and terrorist groups like ISIS, Al Qaeda and al Shabaab. The FY22 budget request, said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley, is appropriate to meet the Defense Department's needs. "It strikes an appropriate balance between preserving present readiness and future modernization," Milley said. "It is biased towards [the] future operating environment and the readiness it's going to take in the future for this fundamental change in the character of war that we are currently undergoing." Milley told lawmakers it's imperative that the level of funding for modernization for advanced technologies such as hypersonics, precision munitions, robotics and artificial intelligence, continues to be funded as it has been in the FY22 budget for the long-term. "If we do not put a lot of money towards those [advanced technologies] and develop them to a level of capability to deploy in our joint force, then we will be at a significant disadvantage to those countries that do develop them," he said. "China is investing heavily in all of those capabilities. We need to definitely do that, [and] this budget does a lot of that. It will have to be a sustained level of effort over many years. But it's critical to the defense of the United States that we invest in advanced technologies. President: America's Fallen Defended 'Vital, Beating Heart of Our Nation' [2021-05-31] WASHINGTON -- Memorial Day originated 153 years ago to commemorate the lives of those who died defending the United States during the Civil War. Today it is the day set aside to honor and recognize all who have died while fighting in the nation's service. Many of the service members who died most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan are now buried in Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery. While speaking today at the Memorial Amphitheater at the cemetery, President Joe Biden said that while walking though Section 60, he is reminded of the cost of war. "Hundreds of graves are here from recent conflicts," Biden said. "Hundreds of patriots gave their all ... each of them leaving behind a family who live with their pain in their absence every single day. I want to assure each of those families -- we will never forget what you gave to our country. We will never fail to honor your sacrifice." Biden said that as vice president, he began to carry with him in his pocket the number of troops who had died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, he said, that number stands at 7,036. "[That's] 7,036 fallen angels who have lost their lives in these conflicts," he said. "And on this Memorial Day, we honor the legacy and their sacrifice: duty, honor, country. They live[d] for it. They died for it. And we as a nation are eternally grateful." What America is grateful for, the president said, is the freedom those men and women secured by conducting operations on the nation's behalf, and dying while doing so. "America has been forged ... in the fires of war," Biden said. "Our freedom and the freedom of innumerable others has been secured by young men and women who answered the call of history, and gave everything in the service of an idea." The idea, he said, is that every American is created equal. "We're all created equal in the image of almighty God ... we're all entitled to dignity, as my father would say, and respect. Decency and honor, love of neighbor -- they're not empty words, but the vital beating heart of our nation. Democracy must be defended, Biden said, because it is democracy that makes possible the idea that is the United States. "Democracy -- that's the soul of America," he said. "I believe it's a soul worth fighting for, and so do you -- a soul worth dying for. Heroes lie in eternal peace in this beautiful place, this sacred place, [and] they believed that too." President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, and Maj. Gen. Omar J. Jones, commander of Joint Force Headquarters-National Capital Region and U.S. Army Military District of Washington, laid a wreath today at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Austin recalled meeting with the widow of one of the service members who was killed in Afghanistan, and who now lies buried in Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery. Marine Corps reservist Staff Sgt. Chris Slutman was killed by a suicide bomber in Bagram in April 2019; his widow Shannon and their three children today struggle with the loss. "She told us that before her husband left on one of his deployments, she sat him down and said, 'God forbid something happens to you, but if it does, where do you want me to bury you?' And he told her, 'I don't care -- I just want to be near you,'" Austin said. Gold Star families, such as Shannon and her children, Austin said, continue to struggle long after the funerals for their loved ones have ended. "It is our sacred duty to do more to ease the burden that they shoulder, on Memorial Day and every day," he said. "For as long as America has sent our sons and daughters into harm's way, those on the homefront have also been on the front lines." More than 1.3 million American service men and women have died as a result of American wars. Memorial Day commemorates their sacrifices. "For the loved ones of those who have fallen, let me simply say: We know the depth of your sacrifice," Austin said. " But we can never truly know the depth of your loss. What we can do is honor the memory of those you lost -- by caring for those who mourn them ... by seeking to perfect our union and defend our democracy ... and by striving to live our lives in ways that advance the ideals for which they gave their own." Memo Outlines DOD Plans for Responsible Artificial Intelligence [2021-06-01] WASHINGTON -- From the battlefield to the back office, artificial intelligence has the potential to transform how the Defense Department does business in areas like increasing the speed of decision making, making sense of complex data sets and improving efficiency in back-office operations. Ensuring that AI is developed, procured and used responsibly and ethically is a top priority for the department's top leader. "As the Department of Defense embraces artificial intelligence, it is imperative that we adopt responsible behavior, processes and outcomes in a manner that reflects the department's commitment to its core set of ethical principles," Deputy Secretary of Defense Dr. Kathleen H. Hicks wrote in a department-wide memorandum released last week. As part of that commitment to responsible artificial intelligence, or RAI, the memorandum sets forth foundational tenets for implementation across the department including a governance structure and processes to provide oversight and accountability; warfighter trust to ensure fidelity in the AI capability and its use, a systems engineering and risk management approach to implementation in the AI product and acquisition lifecycle; a robust ecosystem to ensure collaboration across government, academia, industry, and allies and build an AI-ready workforce. The memorandum also spelled out how the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center will serve as the lead to coordinate the implementation and oversight of the department's RAI efforts. Hicks also reaffirmed the Defense Department's AI Ethical Principles adopted in February 2020. The DOD was the first military in the world to do so. That commitment involved the adoption of five principles for the ethical development of artificial intelligence capabilities. Those principles include: Responsible: DOD personnel will exercise appropriate levels of judgment and care while remaining responsible for the development, deployment and use of AI capabilities. Equitable: The department will take deliberate steps to minimize unintended bias in AI capabilities. Traceable: The department's AI capabilities will be developed and deployed such that relevant personnel possess an appropriate understanding of the technology, development processes and operational methods applicable to AI capabilities, including transparent and auditable methodologies, data sources and design procedures and documentation. Reliable: The department's AI capabilities will have explicit, well-defined uses, and the safety, security and effectiveness of such capabilities will be subject to testing and assurance within those defined uses across their entire life cycles. Governable: The department will design and engineer AI capabilities to fulfill their intended functions while possessing the ability to detect and avoid unintended consequences, and the ability to disengage or deactivate deployed systems that demonstrate unintended behavior. "Achieving RAI for the department is a collective effort that requires strong leadership, robust governance, oversight and sustained engagement at all levels of our organization," Hicks wrote. "Applying RAI across a wide range of warfighting, enterprise support and business practices is essential to ensure military advantage, support our people and safeguard the nation." Lebanese Armed Forces Remain Top-Notch Security Partner [2021-06-02] WASHINGTON -- The exercise Resolute Union 21 closed out May 28 in Lebanon. Over the 11-day multinational and joint exercise, the Lebanese Armed Forces, or LAF -- security partners of the U.S. -- exhibited top-notch performance, said the deputy director of strategy, plans and policy with U.S. Central Command. "The word is that the LAF was an outstanding professional participant [that was] most engaged in the largest and most complex exercise in ... history to take place in Lebanon there," Air Force Brig. Gen. Duke Pirak said today during an online discussion with the Middle East Institute. "The fact that this type of exercise is going on and we're able to exercise this partnership, despite the conditions, is proof positive of the LAF being a responsible actor in a relationship that we'd like to continue to mature." From a security cooperation perspective, the U.S. is looking for partners with shared security goals, said Dana Stroul, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East. "We are looking for capable, committed partners who share our security goals," Stroul said. "With the LAF ... we are interested in developing a long-term partnership with an institution that responds to the Lebanese people, is committed to what's in their interest, and is a national representative institution to provide an alternative to Lebanese Hezbollah." In Lebanon, inflation is high now, and the value of the pay received by members of the LAF has diminished greatly, which makes it difficult to provide for their families. Yet, the LAF continues as a valuable and competent partner in the security relationship it has with the United States. "Right now, what we're seeing that is remarkable -- but that I think is very much a strain on the LAF -- is their willingness to step in and provide some humanitarian response, humanitarian distribution at the very local level," she said. In regard to the exercise Resolute Union 21, she said, even with the economic strain being experienced by LAF personnel, it still performed beyond what might have been expected. "Despite the multiple ways in which the LAF is being asked to respond far beyond its written terms of what a traditional military or conventional military should do, it still participated in this incredibly impressive exercise with us," she said. "And we've seen them continue to maintain commitment to counterterrorism, to border security despite the fact that the real value of a salary of a[n] LAF soldier and what that salary means for the family that let that LAF soldier supports is diminishing every single day." From the perspective of U.S. Central Command, Pirak said, the U.S. relationship can only continue to grow and should be maintained and strengthened. "Security cooperation activities focus on supporting the continued development of the LAF and the capable, competent, reliable security force -- mostly based on the principles of supporting territorial integrity and sovereignty -- that which is basic to supporting the nation state," Pirak said. "We believe the LAF is a security partner of choice and [we] continue to invest in the strategic partnership." Military Leaders Plan for Post-Withdrawal Financial Support for Afghans [2021-06-02] WASHINGTON -- Following the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the U.S. plans to continue providing financial support to the Afghans and to build on existing "over-the-horizon" anti-terrorism capacity in the region. "I want to stress ... that, right now, the focus of the post-withdrawal support to the Afghan ... National Defense and Security Forces is going to be largely through financial means, with some over-the-horizon logistical support," Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said during a media briefing today. "For example, aircraft maintenance, that's really where the focus of the efforts are." Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the commander of U.S. Central Command, and his staff are working now to develop that plan in Afghanistan before the U.S. leaves, Kirby said. The Defense Department is also working with the State Department regarding the diplomatic efforts required for over-the-horizon basing opportunities in the region. Financial support for the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces -- meant to provide resources for such things as salaries for soldiers and police -- is expected to continue much as it has for most of the last 15 years, Kirby said. Over-the-horizon capacity includes the ability to continue to protect the United States from the terrorist threats that exist in any nation in the region, even if the U.S. is not specifically in that country. The U.S. already has such capabilities in the Middle East, and more will come. "We already have at our disposal over-the-horizon counterterrorism capabilities to support our desires that no additional threats to our homeland can emanate from Afghanistan," Kirby said. "That said ... we want to have additional capabilities, and we're working through that." Kirby also explained why it's important, once the U.S. leaves Afghanistan, that the airport in Kabul remains secure and open to operations. "The airport would provide, obviously, aside from the transportation support for people and for equipment ... it would also provide a needed logistical hub, not just for our embassy, but for the embassies of other nations that want to maintain diplomatic presence there in Afghanistan," he said. "Obviously, in a country like Afghanistan, security of that logistical hub is important, and you want to make sure that, that it can ... be properly ensured and protected." Centcom is now working to get U.S. forces out of Afghanistan. Yesterday, the command reported that nearly 13,000 pieces of gear have been turned into the Defense Logistics Agency there, and around 300 C-17 loads of materiel have been moved out of the country. The command has also turned six facilities over to the Afghan Ministry of Defense. The command estimates that the retrograde from Afghanistan is between 30% and 44% complete. DOD Vaccine Centers Draw Down to 5 [2021-06-08] WASHINGTON -- Back in February, the Defense Department partnered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to set up community vaccination centers to administer COVID-19 vaccines to Americans who wanted them. Since that time, 16 million vaccinations have been administered. At the peak of the effort, there were 35 locations across the U.S. where teams of service men and women -- as many as 222 -- worked to provide vaccinations. Now, after much success, that effort has drawn almost completely to a close. "As of today, we are supporting eight vaccination sites and expect to reduce that to five by the end of today," Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said. "We are proud of the support, of course, that our service members -- both active duty and National Guard -- have provided to combat this pandemic." By Wednesday morning, he said, only five sites will remain open. Those sites are in New Jersey, Oklahoma, Oregon, Minnesota and Kentucky. The Defense Department's fight against COVID-19 isn't limited to the U.S. Currently, DOD is also working to provide COVID-19 support to nations in South Asia, Kirby said. "If you didn't see it over the weekend, Travis Air Force Base remains extremely busy supporting government efforts to provide emergency assistance to countries in South Asia," he said. Travis Air Force Base in California is helping the U.S. Agency for International Development airlift much-needed medical supplies to help Bangladesh battle its latest COVID-19 surge, Kirby said. "An Air Force C-17 flight departed late Friday from Travis for Dhaka, Bangladesh, carrying over 2 million pieces of personal protective equipment to protect thousands of health care workers in Bangladesh," Kirby said. The U.S. military has also helped USAID provide assistance to other nations, including India, Nepal, Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The partnership between USAID and the DOD, he said, demonstrates the United States government's global response to ensure that life-saving assistance and supplies reach those who need it most. DOD Announces Center to Collaborate on, Advance Shared Interests in Arctic Region [2021-06-09] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department announced today the creation of a new DOD center to focus on issues related to the Arctic. The Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies will be the sixth such regional center for the department, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said during a briefing today at the Pentagon. "The Ted Stevens Center will provide a new venue to collaborate across the U.S. government and with our allies and partners to advance shared interests for a peaceful and prosperous Arctic," Kirby said. "Defense Department regional centers are international academic venues for bilateral and multilateral research, communication and training, with the goal of building strong, sustainable, international networks of security leaders." The center's focus will support U.S. Interim National Security Strategic Guidance and will work with partner nations to ensure that a stable, rules-based order in the Arctic will benefit the United States and all Arctic nations, including Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States. Like existing Defense Department Regional Centers, the Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies will fall under the oversight and management of the undersecretary of defense for policy. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said the center will facilitate close partnerships between the U.S. and Arctic nations with shared values. "The center will support the U.S. Interim National Security Strategic Guidance direction to work with like-minded partners and across the interagency to pool our collective strength and advance shared interests," Austin said. "It will address the need for U.S. engagement and international cooperation to strengthen the rules-based order in the region and tackle shared challenges such as climate change." Other regional centers include the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany; the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii; as well as the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, and the Near East-South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, all three of which are in Washington D.C. Right now, no location has been chosen for the new arctic center. Missile Defense Review Will Address Growing Threats From Iran, North Korea, Others [2021-06-11] WASHINGTON -- With nations such as North Korea, Iran, Russia and China all maturing their missile technology, the Defense Department plans to launch a review of its own missile defense policies, strategies and capabilities over the next few months, said the deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy. "The review will align with the National Defense Strategy and contribute to the department's approach to integrated deterrence," Leonor Tomero said during a Wednesday hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The review will be coordinated across the department, including such entities as the Missile Defense Agency, U.S. Northern Command, NORAD and the acquisition community, Tomero said. "We'll look at the threat in the changing security environment ... how do we improve and have effective and affordable missile defense for both the homeland and regional defense," she said. That review will be a part of the National Defense Strategy, which Tomero said should be completed by January 2022. According to testimony filed by Tomero with the committee, the review will be guided by a handful of principles from defense against rogue states' intercontinental ballistic missiles to assure allies the U.S. continues to be committed to security partnerships. With ICBMs, Tomero said, the missile defense review will focus on ensuring the U.S. has an affordable defense against rogue state ICBMs. There, missile defense must protect against limited attacks by those ICBMs, she said, and also limit their use as a threat. "This protection will also contribute to diminishing the coercive potential of these states who may seek to constrain the ability of the United States to provide credible security assurances to our allies and partners during a crisis or conflict," she said. The missile defense review will also evaluate the ability of U.S. missile defense capabilities so that the U.S. can operate with allies and partners on exercises and regional defense. "Our regional missile defenses will continue to contribute to the United States' ability to operate throughout the world," she said. "They will enable regional and transregional military operations and exercises, providing force protection in contested environments." Finally, the review will evaluate the continued ability of the U.S. missile defense capability to assure allies of the United States' commitment to security partnerships. "Not only will missile defense partnerships reinforce the indivisibility of U.S. and allied joint security interests, these relationships will also provide opportunities for allied and partner cooperation, co-development, and burden sharing," she said. Defense, State Agree: Diversity, Inclusion Important for Mission Success [2021-06-16] WASHINGTON -- Diversity and inclusion are as important to the State Department's ability to conduct diplomacy as they are to the Defense Department's ability to defend the nation. At a town hall meeting at the Pentagon for the department's industrial policy community, Stacy A. Cummings, who is performing the duties of undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, met with Ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, the chief diversity and inclusion officer at the State Department, to discuss the importance of diversity and inclusion in the success of their respective agencies. "The [secretary of defense] looks at the department, leading through values. And diversity, equity, and inclusion are part of our values as a country and our values as a department," Cummings said. "His intention is that we incorporate that into our work and everything that we do. It is a strategic imperative, and it's critical to mission success and accomplishment that diversity and inclusion are included in our strategies." Cummings said leaders across the Defense Department have been challenged by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III to leverage the strength of the total force, including military personnel, civilians and in the acquisition and sustainment community, industry partners as well. "The way that I personally think about diversity and inclusion is from the perspective of competing for talent," Cummings said. "In order for us ... to get the best possible capability, we need to have a structure and an environment that incorporates the totality of the United States of America as well as the capabilities of our allies and partners. And if we want to get the best skills, the best capability, the best thought, the best innovation, the only way for us to do that is to encourage everyone to want to compete to be part of our team." When diversity and inclusion are at the forefront of defense leaders' decision-making, Cummings said, the best people will come forward to be part of not just the A&S team, but also to be a part of the teams that make up the industry partners who provide capabilities for warfighters. Diverse teams, she said, create diverse ideas that are more capable of providing the department with what it needs to keep the nation safe. Those diverse ideas, she said, answer the call for the innovation and modernization at the center of the president's interim national security strategy. "It is very strongly focused on bringing in innovation and modernization in a way that's affordable so that we can balance innovation and modernization with sustainment or continued current readiness," she said. "And the only way we're going to do that is if we bring in new ideas, and if we bring in new thoughts and technologies." Ensuring those diverse new ideas come into the department is only possible, she said, if there is an environment within the department itself that invites it in. "We can only do that when we create an environment that's open for everyone to have ... not just a seat at the table, but a voice -- and actually be able to share their thoughts," she said. Abercrombie-Winstanley said that at the State Department, she's now working to do much the same -- bringing in diverse talent to strengthen the ability of her own agency to conduct its diplomatic mission. "Our biggest challenge, we know, is the system," Abercrombie-Winstanley said. "Many people in our organization do not believe that our system will serve them well, either that they are equally valued, have the same access to assignments that lead to promotion, that lead to retention. And that is where the Department of State struggles most -- not with recruiting, but with retention." In much the same way that diversity and inclusion can bring a broader range of ideas to the Defense Department's acquisition and sustainment community, which translates to better capability for the warfighter, Abercrombie-Winstanley said diversity and inclusion will strengthen the State Department's ability to conduct diplomacy on behalf of the nation. "The secretary was clear ... we are doing this not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it's going to make our work better," Abercrombie-Winstanley said. "Anyone knows if you got a group of people trying to resolve a problem, the wider array of backgrounds and perspectives that you have at the table are going to give you a wider array of options and recommendations for resolving the issues or the challenges before you." That wider array of backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences, Abercrombie-Winstanley said, will help the State Department the way it helps the Defense Department. "People who come from the region, or have lived experiences in the region, the way of thinking, perspective, culture -- all of those things brought to bear are going to help us with our foreign policy," she said. "So that, that's our bottom line there." COVID-19 Effects Waning Across Defense Department, Pentagon [2021-06-21] WASHINGTON -- By Wednesday, the restrictions on Pentagon personnel that were the result of COVID-19 will lift a bit, providing the ability for more personnel to work in the building and for larger numbers of people to gather in one location, the Pentagon press secretary said during a briefing today. According to John F. Kirby, the Pentagon will drop from Health Protection Condition "Bravo-Plus" to HPCON Bravo, beginning June 23rd. "Under HPCON Bravo, the occupancy goal will be no more than 50% in workspaces," Kirby said. "That's up from 40% ... where we are now. Supervisors will continue to provide maximum telework opportunities to eligible employees." Gatherings in the building are currently limited to just 25 people. By Wednesday, that number will go up to 50. Kirby also said workers who are not fully vaccinated should continue to follow DOD mask and social distancing guidelines while in the building. For the time being, he added, workers entering the building will continue to be screened at a rate of about 10 to 20%, while all visitors will be screened. Additionally, he said, the Pentagon remains closed to public tours and the Pentagon's 9/11 memorial is also closed. In February, the Defense Department partnered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to set up community vaccination centers where military personnel were available to administer COVID-19 vaccines to Americans who wanted them. The last of those vaccination sites -- this one in New Jersey -- shut down yesterday, Kirby said. "More than 5,100 active duty service members supported 48 federal sites across the country, including Guam, [the Northern Mariana Islands] and the Virgin Islands, and provided nearly 5 million COVID vaccines," Kirby said. The National Guard continues to operate under guidance from their state governors, he said. To date, the National Guard has administered more than 12 million vaccines to the American public. "Combined, that's over 17 million vaccines by service members," Kirby said. "As we often see in times of crisis, our troops are marshaled to care for their fellow Americans, and the secretary is very, very proud of the critical role that they played throughout this pandemic and thanks them and their families for the sacrifices and the service that they rendered their fellow citizens." Aboard Commercial Rocket, Space Defense Agency Sends Up Satellites for First Time [2021-06-23] WASHINGTON -- The Space Development Agency -- charged with building the National Defense Space Architecture -- will, for the first time, put satellites into orbit aboard SpaceX's Transporter 2 commercial rocket when it launches Friday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The Falcon 9 mission will include five SDA satellites. These include a pair of "Mandrake II" satellites; two "Laser Interconnect Networking Communications System," or LINCS, satellites; and a satellite carrying the SDA's Prototype On-orbit Experimental Testbed, or POET, experiment. The SDA is working now on delivering the National Defense Space Architecture, which includes hundreds of satellites delivered in "tranches" every two years; each tranche will provide more capability. The NDSA's network of hundreds of satellites will provide beyond line-of-sight targeting for ground and maritime time-sensitive targets and the same for enemy missiles already in flight. The system will provide the ability to detect those targets, track them, calculate a fire control solution and then deliver that solution down to a weapons platform so the target can be destroyed. It's expected that the NDSA's hundreds of satellites will communicate with one another using a network of lasers through optical communication terminals, or OCTs. For this initial mission, Mandrake II will carry an OCT from SA Photonics while LINCS will carry an OCT from General Atomics. Two of each type of satellite will go into orbit, and the SDA will evaluate the ability of each OCT to operate in space. "We're trying to figure out the acquisition, the pointing and the tracking," said a senior SDA official. "Can we make the connection; can we hold that connection; and can we exchange data between two terminals in space with that connection?" The official said the tests will put the satellites as far as 2,400 kilometers apart in order to test their ability to communicate via laser with an OCT. "We're going to try to send data essentially from D.C. to Denver at the speed of light," he said. "And that's what we're going to bring to the warfighter over the next several years." SDA's priority with the NDSA is staying on schedule and delivering capability to the warfighter as quickly as possible. "The key thing is always to focus on getting these capabilities up and operational as rapidly as possible," said SDA Director Derek Tournear during an online discussion last month with the Space Force Association. "We will trade performance for schedule to make sure that we can maintain that. "No matter how good or how affordable a program or platform is, if it is not there when you need it, it's worthless ... we're always focused on schedule," Tournear said. "We're going to get these capabilities up on time." As part of that focus on schedule -- and cost -- the SDA is hoping to build a "market" for the satellites it plans to put into orbit. It will buy a lot of those satellites and put them up regularly. Agency officials expect that a market for satellites would cause many vendors to compete regularly with their latest technology, and many would have compatible technologies. "SDA does not believe in the concept of incumbents," the SDA official said. "SDA believes in building markets. We believe in building industrial capacity to do the kinds of things that we need to do. As we proliferate across [low-Earth orbit], we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we can't depend on a single vendor for a key technology. So, we want to make sure that multiple vendors have the capability of building the systems that we need and that the warfighter needs." The POET experiment will also go into space on June 25. While Mandrake II and LINCS will evaluate optical communication terminals, POET will be an experiment on how to process information in space so that time isn't wasted sending it down to Earth to be processed. The SDA official said POET is a "battle management capability" that will be in space. "We're going to actually load data and algorithms into that on orbit, and we're going to test out data fusion in orbit for the warfighter," the official said. Having processing capacity on the ground means unnecessary latency in the process, which is unacceptable. "The more processing that we can move into space, the better off we're going to be," he said. "POET is going to give us the first opportunity to actually do that, ... so we're really looking forward to getting some data out of this." Nuclear Posture Review, National Defense Strategy Will Be Thoroughly Integrated [2021-06-25] WASHINGTON -- A new National Defense Strategy is in the works and is expected to be completed early next year. When delivered, it will provide a new set of goals and priorities for America's defense. The Nuclear Posture Review, or NPR, will come on the coattails of the NDS and will be fully nested within it, said Colin H. Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, Wednesday during a virtual discussion at the 2021 Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference. "We want to make sure that the nuclear posture review does not stand on its own in its own silo, no pun intended, but is rather integrated into the analysis of the NDS." The NPR will spell out, among other things, priorities for modernizing the U.S. nuclear triad and ensure that the United States has the right capabilities matched with the national nuclear strategy. The review will also examine how the United States can take steps to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in its national security strategy while ensuring the strategic deterrent remains safe, secure and effective and that the extended deterrence commitments to its allies remain strong and credible. It will be informed by the current and projected global security environment; threats posed by potential adversaries, and the capabilities of the United States and its allies and partners to address those threats; and the impacts of policy, posture and capabilities on strategic stability and the risks of miscalculation. Both documents will figure into the fiscal year 2023 budget deliberations, Kahl said. Especially important to the FY 2023 budget will be decisions the department makes about modernizing and replacing the aging systems of the nuclear triad, which includes ground-launched, submarine-launched and air-launched nuclear weapons. Modernization also involves new submarines, such as the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines; new intercontinental ballistic missiles as part of the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent program; and new bomber aircraft, such as the B-21 Raider. "I do think we need to have a modernized triad as a hedge against an uncertain technological future, but one where we expect our adversaries to be quite competitive and building up their own capabilities," Kahl said, adding that, in addition to triad modernization, related nuclear command and control systems must also be upgraded. While Kahl said he can't predict exactly how the NPR will look when it's complete, he did say the U.S. remains committed to its nuclear deterrent and its extended deterrence commitments. "I don't know exactly where we're going to land on numbers on all of this, but what I can guarantee you is that we are committed to having a safe, secure and reliable deterrent, and one that is credible -- not just to our adversaries, but to our allies, over which we have extended our deterrence commitments," he said. The U.S. nuclear deterrent is expected to protect the U.S. and its allies in a rapidly-changing nuclear environment, Kahl said. "As we look at the strategic environment ... I think we see a couple of things," Kahl said. "First, obviously, I think it's widely recognized that we're in a period of accelerating great power competition. But it's more than that. We're also increasingly in a multipolar nuclear world." Russia, he said, continues to develop new kinds of nuclear weapons and also continues to expand its arsenal of non-strategic nuclear weapons -- typically smaller, lower-yield "tactical"-style nuclear weapons designed to attack troops or facilities, rather than entire nations. "We also see that ... the role that nuclear weapons play in Russia's doctrine is quite elevated in the sense that, I think, Russia sees much higher utility for nuclear weapons than any other state," he said. Nearby, China wants to grow its own nuclear arsenal both in numbers and technological capacity, he said. "I think within the next decade we might see the number of nuclear weapons in China double," he said. "But they're also developing new kinds of nuclear weapons ... I think that what that suggests is that they may be moving beyond, kind of, their traditional view of a kind of minimal deterrent towards seeing nuclear weapons as something that they might require in a regional conflict." The U.S. has long-standing security commitments around the world to a number of treaty allies. Those allies know the U.S. nuclear deterrence capability underwrites the U.S. security commitment to them. What comes out in the NPR will be just one of the signs that the U.S. continues to be committed to ensuring its extended nuclear deterrence commitments remain strong and credible. Kahl said anxiety among America's traditional allies has been high. But recent efforts by the president, the secretary of defense and the State Department have gone far to reassure those allies of America's continued commitment to partnership and mutual security. "You saw a lot of great statements coming out of the G7 and NATO and U.S.-E.U. meetings this past week to include issues like China, where the countries have not always been closely aligned," Kahl said. "But I think ... we all have to admit there's real anxiety among our allies. So, I think whatever we do on the nuclear piece has to take into consideration this ... emerging multipolar nuclear world where, really for the first time, we're going to face two peer competitors in the nuclear space, plus ... the North Koreas and Irans of the world." COVID-19 Pandemic Not Over, Concerns Over Delta Variant Growing [2021-06-30] WASHINGTON -- Nearly 68% of active duty personnel have been vaccinated against COVID-19 with at least one dose. But that still leaves many service members vulnerable to the delta variant of the virus, health officials at the Pentagon said. Due to the effectiveness of the Defense Department's ongoing vaccination program, COVID-19 case counts across the department are dropping and installation commanders have been reducing local health protection conditions, or HPCON levels, Dr. Terry Adirim, the acting assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said during a press briefing today at the Pentagon. "However, the delta variant poses a threat to that return to normal," Adirim said. "We are particularly concerned with the impact of the delta variant on our unvaccinated or partially vaccinated population, and its potential spread at installations that are located in parts of the country with low vaccination rates." According to the military health system, the delta variant of the COVID-19 virus is more transmittable, causes more severe disease, and results in higher cases of hospitalization and death than any other strain of the virus. The DOD has an active whole genome sequencing program in place to identify what strain of the virus is present in those who test positive for COVID-19, Adirim said. "We're closely watching our DOD case counts, positivity rates and the prevalence of the delta variant among all the other variants of concern," she said. "We anticipate that health protection conditions could change at some of our installations in the future based on outbreaks that result from the high transmutability of the delta variant." The more virulent delta variant is spreading quickly through communities with lower vaccination rates, she said, and it is likely to become the predominant variant in the United States. "The delta variant poses a threat to our service members who are not fully vaccinated," Adirim said. "The best way to beat the delta variant is to be fully vaccinated." Studies have shown that one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine is only about 33% effective against the delta variant, while two doses are at least 88% effective, Adirim said. "We are investing great effort into ensuring our service members and other beneficiaries get both doses," she said. "So the bottom line is: get vaccinated, they are safe and effective." Across the entire Defense Department, including military personnel, family members, civilians and contractors, there have been 303,000 cases of COVID-19 and 355 deaths related to the disease. Right now, there are about 21 individuals hospitalized for COVID-19 in DOD facilities, Army Lt. Gen. Ronald J. Place, director of Defense Health Agency, said. "This is a decline from a peak of 240 inpatients on January 8 of this year, essentially the lowest point we've had since the earliest days of the pandemic," Place said. If those who have not yet been vaccinated need further proof of the vaccine's effectiveness, Place said, it's the status of those currently hospitalized within the military's health system. Of the 21 COVID-positive individuals in DOD hospitals, he said, none of them are vaccinated. "As we approach Independence Day, all indicators within the Department of Defense are moving in a positive direction," he said. "We thank our service members and DOD personnel who have been vaccinated and continue to strongly encourage our remaining service members, DOD retirees, all of their families, and DOD staff to get vaccinated -- for themselves, for their families and for the community." Leaders Committed to Transparency With African Partners [2021-07-01] WASHINGTON -- China, Russia and the United States are all on the African continent, each with their own interests. But while the commander of U.S. Africa Command said the U.S. would not ask African nations to choose between the U.S. and other countries as a partner, he did say they should pay close attention to what partnering will actually mean. "Both China and Russia are ... competing fiercely in Africa," said Army Gen. Stephen J. Townsend during an online discussion Tuesday with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "I think the Russian's competition there is very self-interested and exploitative. I don't believe either one of these actors are really there to help Africa in the long run. But in Russia's case, I think they're there to exploit the continent for their own gain." Some Russian-based mercenary groups operating in Africa, for instance, are suspected of committing atrocities in the Central African Republic, Townsend said. "We have pointed out the actions of [The Wagner Group] in Libya just a few months ago," Townsend said. "I don't think these actors are helping Africans, that's what I believe." China has done much investment in Africa on infrastructure. Townsend said while the U.S. is not going to compete with Chinese investment in infrastructure, it does have its own benefits to offer. What the U.S. does offer, he said, is always tied with democratic values and transparency -- just like what is offered by the European Union. "That's what we bring," he said. "We play with our cards facing out, as the saying goes. And we offer our skills. And I think that's an attractive proposition for most of our African partners." Townsend said that while the U.S. doesn't ask African nations to choose between it and China, for instance, he does offer caution about what's being offered and what the terms are. "I think that these countries ought to just go into these relationships with their eyes wide open," he said. "I don't think Russia is out for the best interests of Africa and probably in the long term, neither is China. But China is bringing a lot of investment to the continent and I would just urge our African partners: try to take advantage of that without getting taken advantage of." Combined African Exercises Last year's exercise Flintlock 2020 was held across multiple locations in Mauritania and Senegal, and involved more than 1,600 service members from 30 African and Western nations. It's an example of successful partnerships in Africa, Townsend said. "Flintlock 2020 was a fantastic exercise," he said. "Our view of these exercises is it's ... one of the best ways to bring allies and partners together to work on common security objectives and to share knowledge and best practices." The Flintlock exercise is a Special Operations Command Africa led all-domain exercise meant to strengthen the ability of partner nations to counter violent extremist organizations, protect borders and provide security to civilians. "I think these things are important because they allow us to share best practices and improve our interoperability," Townsend said. "If we are going to operate together on the battlefield, we have to exercise so we know how ... each of our armies work." He said exercises like Flintlock allow partners to better understand each other's equipment, procedures and communications. "I think the exercises are very important and we seek, in U.S. Africom, to continue our exercises not only in West Africa but across the continent on ... air, land and sea," Townsend said. Africom conducts six annual multinational exercises including Flintlock; Africa Lion and Justified Accord, both led by U.S. Army Southern European Task Force Africa; and the Express Series consisting of Phoenix Express, Cutlass Express and Obangame Express, all led by U.S. Naval Forces Africa Command. Sexual Assaults Will No Longer Be Prosecuted by Commanders [2021-07-02] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III accepted all of the recommendations of an independent review commission that stood up in March and delivered its findings just last week. The commission recommended an array of changes in how the defense department and the services that fall under it will handle sexual assaults. "On my first full day as secretary of defense, I committed that we must do more as a department to counter the scourge of sexual assault and sexual harassment in our military," wrote Austin in a memorandum published today. "As I stated then -- this is a leadership issue and we will lead." Austin reviewed recommendations made by the IRC and said he agrees with everything submitted. Chief among the recommendations Austin has agreed with is who will be charged with prosecuting those suspected of committing sexual assault in the ranks. Until now, it's been the domain of commanders to decide how to move forward when made aware of a sexual assault. That is no longer the case. Based on recommendations from the IRC, Austin has directed that the department will work with the Congress to make changes to the Uniform Code of Military Justice in such a way as to shift responsibility from military commanders for prosecuting sexual assaults and related crimes, as well as domestic violence offences, child abuse and retaliation. With commanders no longer handling the prosecution of sexual assaults, the department plans to create dedicated offices within each military service to take over the role. As recommended by the IRC, the secretary is also seeking to have sexual harassment added to the list of offenses spelled out in the UCMJ. Sexual assault is already detailed there as an offense. Making those changes to the UCMJ, which is part of federal law, requires congressional approval. But non-judicial punishments are within the purview of the military services. The secretary has directed each service to standardize, across the force, non-judicial punishments and to establish a separation process for service members against whom are substantiated claims of sexual harassment. The secretary has also directed the military services to create professional career paths within their respective legal communities for both lawyers and investigators to specialize in the handling of sexual assault cases. The IRC began its 90-day review of sexual assault in the U.S. military March 24. The commission's director, Lynn Rosenthal, said in conducting their work, her team met with over 600 individuals in the U.S. military, including survivors, researchers, current and former service members, commanders, junior and senior enlisted members and advocates. During a briefing July 2 at the Pentagon, she laid out exactly why the commission was asked to conduct their review and make recommendations. "Twenty thousand service members experience sexual assault every year," she said. "Less than 8,000 report those sexual assaults, less than 5,000 of those are unrestricted reports -- meaning the victim has said that he or she wants a full investigation -- and only a tiny fraction of those end up with any kind of action at all in the military justice system. So that's the chasm that we're talking about." Rosenthal said the recommendation that sexual assaults be prosecuted outside the chain of the command is in part because commanders themselves are not equipped to handle the complexity of a sexual assault scenario. The military justice system itself is also not ready for that, she said. "These crimes are interpersonal in nature and have the potential to be re-traumatizing for victims as their cases move forward, so they need specialized care and handling," she said. When it comes to caring for victims, Rosenthal said, victims' advocates are largely collateral duty roles -- they have another job in the military besides taking care of sexual assault victims. The IRC recommended changes there as well. "Those recommendations include shifting sexual assault coordinators and victim advocates out of the command structure -- largely eliminating collateral duty victim advocates -- although you might need them in isolated deployed environments or on ships," she said. "This kind of independent advocacy, where someone is 100% focused on the victim and reporting outside of the command structure, is a best practice. It's what victims need -- somebody 100% on their side." Austin said he's directed Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen H. Hicks to prepare a roadmap to implement recommendations from the IRC. Following his approval of that roadmap, he said, it will be the role of the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness to oversee the implementation of recommendations. "Our most critical asset as a department is our people, and our people and readiness are inextricably linked," Austin said. "We will remain the preeminent fighting force in the world because we strive to take care of our people. Our values and expectations remain at the core of addressing this problem and I have every confidence that our force will get this right." DOD Aims for New Enterprise-Wide Cloud by 2022 [2021-07-07] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department announced it's going in a new direction for enterprise cloud services to provide capabilities to warfighters across the joint force. This new effort is called the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability. The new contracts are expected to be awarded by April 2022, said the department's acting chief information officer. "We are launching what we call the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability, or JWCC, which will be based initially on direct awards to fill our urgent, unmet requirement for a multi-vendor enterprise cloud spanning the entire department in all three security levels with availability from CONUS to the tactical edge, at scale," said John Sherman during a media discussion at the Pentagon. The JWCC will support such warfighter capabilities as joint all domain command and control, or JADC2, and the DOD artificial intelligence and data acceleration initiative, or ADA. At the same time the department announced the launch of JWCC, it also announced the cancellation of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, request for proposals and initiated the process to terminate the JEDI contract. "JEDI, conceived with noble intent and a baseline now several years old, was developed at a time when the department's needs were different and our cloud conversancy less mature," Sherman said. "The JWCC's multi-cloud environment will serve our future in a way that JEDI's single award, single cloud structure simply cannot do." As part of the JWCC, the Defense Department is looking at two primary U.S.-based hyperscale cloud service providers for direct solicitations. Those two companies are the Microsoft Corporation and Amazon Web Services. While neither of the two companies will automatically win awards, it's expected that by October both companies will receive direct solicitations from the department requesting proposals on how they might participate in JWCC. The department hopes by April 2022 to have contracted for a multi-award, multi-vendor cloud solution with a performance period of no more than five years, consisting of a three-year performance base period and two one-year option periods, Sherman said. Microsoft and Amazon will not be the only companies approached by the department, however. While Sherman said current market research indicates Microsoft and Amazon are capable of meeting the department's immediate needs, he will also be reaching out to IBM, Oracle and Google. "If we determine that additional vendors can also meet our requirements, then we will extend solicitations to them as well," Sherman said. But Sherman said he hopes that by early 2025 the department will have moved on to the next step: a full and open, competitively awarded multi-vendor contract providing cloud capability to the Department. For now, though, Sherman said the JWCC will fill the urgent need the department has to bring cloud capacity to the joint force. "The JWCC will serve that purpose and be a bridge to our longer term approach, allowing us to leverage cloud technology from headquarters to the tactical edge, which will bolster our knowledge even further as we move to a full and open competition," he said. "We're excited about the opportunities that JWCC will provide and are ... ready to enable JADC2, ADA and all the other functions that rely on this critical capability." After Authority Transition in Afghanistan, Airport Security Remains Top Priority [2021-07-12] WASHINGTON -- Following a transition of authority for the Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan, a four-pronged mission remains in the country for the U.S. military. Among the continuing roles, there is security at the Hamid Karzai International Airport, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said. "On the airport ... we already have some, and have had for quite some time, some troops dedicated to security at the airport," Kirby said at a Pentagon briefing today. "There's an aviation support element there, there are some defensive capabilities." Kirby said that through the drawdown, which is expected to be complete by the end of August, the U.S. will continue to ensure the airport remains safe. "We will have requisite capabilities there at the airport to assist in the security," Kirby said. Long-term security at the airport, following the U.S. departure from Afghanistan, will be handled by Turkey. Discussions between the U.S. and Turkey about what that will look like are ongoing and have been "productive," Kirby said. "We are still in discussions with the Turks about what security at the airport is going to look like," he said. "We're grateful for their willingness to lead this effort. ... As President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan said, we're still hammering out the scope of what that is. And then when we get that all solidified we'll be able to talk in more detail." The U.S. and other nations have diplomatic presence in Afghanistan. Ensuring that Hamid Karzai International Airport remains open and secure is critical to the successful operations of those diplomatic missions. "The president has made it very clear we're going to maintain a diplomatic presence in Kabul," Kirby said. "We know that in order to do that, you have to have adequate security at the airport. We are very aware of the need for adequate security at the airport, so as to protect our diplomats and the work that they need to do in Afghanistan." This afternoon, authority for the continuing counter-terrorism mission in Afghanistan transitioned from Army Gen. Austin S. Miller, who commanded the Resolute Support mission there, to Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., who serves as commander of United States Central Command. Miller had served as commander of United States Forces-Afghanistan and the Resolute Support mission since 2018. "Both Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. McKenzie have expressed their thanks to Gen. Miller ... and his team for their diligent execution of the retrograde of millions of tons of equipment [and] thousands of personnel, all conducted with great efficiency and without a single casualty," Kirby said. "I think that's historic." Kirby said that the transition of authority is just a milestone in the ongoing drawdown there. Until the U.S. is completely out of Afghanistan, he said, the ongoing mission there will continue to focus on protecting the U.S. diplomatic presence in Afghanistan, enabling the safe operation of the airport, continuing to provide appropriate advice and assistance to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces and supporting counterterrorism efforts. Ethics Key to AI Development, Austin Says [2021-07-14] WASHINGTON -- China -- along with the United States and partners -- are all hoping to come out on top when it comes to the mastery and application of artificial intelligence. But the Defense Department and its partners don't just aim to be masters of AI, they aim to do it ethically, said the secretary of defense. "China's leaders have made clear they intend to be globally dominant in AI by the year 2030," Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said during remarks to the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. "Beijing already talks about using AI for a range of missions -- from surveillance to cyberattacks to autonomous weapons." The U.S. military has its sights on the same target, Austin said. But its approach is going to be different. "In the AI realm as in many others, we understand that China is our pacing challenge," he said. "We're going to compete to win, but we're going to do it the right way. We're not going to cut corners on safety, security or ethics. And our watchwords are 'responsibility' and 'results.' And we don't believe for a minute that we have to sacrifice one for the other." The department's "responsible AI" effort, Austin said, is at the center of ensuring the DOD does AI the right way. "Responsible AI is the place where cutting-edge tech meets timeless values. You see, we don't believe that we need to choose between them, and we don't believe doing so would work," he said. "Our use of AI must reinforce our democratic values, protect our rights, ensure our safety, and defend our privacy." The Defense Department's use of AI, Austin said, will enhance its military operations, which is why those efforts are being pursued. "But nothing is going to change America's commitment to the laws of war and the principles of our democracy," he said. Right now in the department, Austin said, there are more than 600 efforts underway to enhance the nation's defense using artificial intelligence. "[That is] significantly more than just a year ago," he said. "And that includes the Artificial Intelligence and Data Acceleration initiative, which brings AI to bear on operational data." Also included there is Project Salus, which began in March 2020 in partnership with the National Guard, Austin said. Project Salus used artificial intelligence to help predict shortages for things like water, medicine and supplies used in the COVID fight. Also included in the current AI efforts is the Pathfinder Project, which Austin said is an algorithm-driven system to help the department better detect airborne threats by using AI to fuse data from military, commercial and government sensors in real time. Increasing the department's AI capability and providing tools to better enable warfighters will mean getting the right people on board to make it happen, Austin said. That's not just civilian experts on the topic; it means service members, as well, he said. Austin said DOD is going to have to do a lot better at recruiting, training and retaining talented people -- which are often young people -- who can lead the department into and through the AI revolution. "That means creating new career paths and new incentives. And it means including tech skills as a part of basic-training programs." Emerging technologies, he said, are going to be at the center of the department's strategic development, Austin said, and the department must overcome its ingrained culture of risk aversion. "We need to smarten up our sluggish pace of acquisition," he said. "And we need to more vigorously recruit talented people and not scare them away. In today's world, in today's department, innovation cannot be an afterthought. It is the ballgame.'' Defense Department Will Provide Options for 'Operation Allies Refuge' [2021-07-14] WASHINGTON -- For 20 years in Afghanistan, brave Afghan nationals lent assistance to the military operations led by American service personnel. With operations in that country closing out by the end of August, the U.S. government has made plans to move those civilians and their families to other locations. As part of "Operation Allies Refuge," by the end of the month the U.S. is expected to begin relocation flights for eligible Afghan nationals and their families who are currently within the Special Immigrant Visa program, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said during a briefing today at the Pentagon. Kirby said the Defense Department has not been asked, as of now, to provide military flights to support that relocation effort. Instead, he said, the department is involved in identifying potential relocation options for those Afghan nationals. "The department's role in Operation Allies Refuge will continue to be one of providing options and support to the interagency effort that's being led by the State Department," Kirby said. "To date, we have identified overseas locations and we're still examining possibilities for overseas locations, to include some departmental installations that would be capable of supporting planned relocation efforts with appropriate temporary residences and associated support infrastructure." While Kirby didn't name specific locations, he did say "all options" are being looked at, to include locations overseas and within the U.S. "All options are being considered and that would include the potential for short-term use of CONUS-based U.S. installations," he said. "We're trying to provide as many options to the State Department-led effort as we can." As of now, he said, no final decisions have been made. Kirby also said the department has stood up an internal action group that will, in part, work with the State Department to help better identify which Afghan nationals might be considered for relocation under the special immigrant visa program. "We will do what we can to help the State Department in terms of the identification of those who should be validly considered as part of the SIV process," Kirby said. "The department remains eager and committed to doing all that we can to support collective government efforts -- U.S. government efforts -- to help those who have helped us for so long." DOD Holds First Public Outreach Event to Engage With PFAS Stakeholders [2021-07-19] WASHINGTON -- On Wednesday, July 14, the Defense Department hosted, for the first time, an online forum that allowed for an open and transparent dialogue between the department and stakeholders affected by the presence of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. Department leaders created the event, the first of what is expected to be a continuing series of engagements, to increase the department's communication with affected communities and other stakeholders, and to enhance transparency regarding the department's PFAS-related activities. Richard G. Kidd, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for environment and energy resilience, hosted the forum and told attendees that while it may take years for the department to fully define the cleanup requirements for PFAS -- and possibly decades to actually do the cleanup -- the department would remain committed to both the cleanup effort itself and communication with those affected by what is happening. "We are intent on making sustained progress on all PFAS challenges," Kidd said. "We will continue to invest in science and technology, and we will demonstrate a commitment to clear and constructive dialogue with all stakeholders, such as ... the participants today." To fight aircraft fires on flight lines, the U.S. military has, for years, used aqueous film-forming foam, or AFFF, that contains PFAS. PFAS is a group of man-made chemicals that includes perfluorooctane sulfonate, or PFOS, and perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA. Over time, those substances have migrated into the groundwater under military installations and into drinking water. The department has been working for years to address these PFAS-related challenges, and continues to work in partnership with federal, state, and affected community stakeholders. This week's inaugural public forum strengthens the DOD's commitment to an open, ongoing and transparent dialogue about PFAS with affected stakeholders. Before taking questions from forum participants, Kidd discussed where the department is now in its cleanup effort. The DOD "follows the federal cleanup law, the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act, [or] CERCLA, also known as Superfund," for its PFAS cleanups. He said the department is approaching the 20% mark in conducting preliminary assessments and site inspections at installations that potentially used PFAS. "The Department of Defense has identified 698 installations, including National Guard sites, where PFAS may have been used or potentially released," Kidd said. Of these 698 installations, he said, initial investigations are complete at 129. During the preliminary assessments and site inspections, the department evaluates historic records of PFAS use at installations; conducts site visits; and takes samples of drinking water, groundwater or soil to determine what, if anything, must be done. So far, 63 of the locations assessed need no further action, while 66 need more detailed investigation before determining cleanup actions, Kidd said, adding that when it's needed, the department can react quickly to provide immediate, short-term remediation. "This allows the department to take quick actions to provide alternative water when PFOS or PFOA from DOD activities is found in drinking water above EPA's health advisory," he said. One example of a quick reaction was when the DOD recently provided bottled water to residents within 96 hours of PFOS or PFOA from DOD activities being found above the EPA health advisory, Kidd said. DOD can also provide filtration systems for well heads or connection to municipal water sources. So far, short term actions have been conducted at 49 locations. "This step enables the Department of Defense to stop exposure to PFOS and PFOA in drinking water while we continue the long-term investigation and remediation activities," he said. Long-term solutions can take years, Kidd said. "After we have defined the extent and nature of the plume in the groundwater, the department will drill wells at strategic locations and pump the PFAS-containing water out of the ground, through a filter and back into the ground," he said. "This process is known as pump-and-treat and has been used for decades for the cleanup of other chemicals; [it can] take a long time, especially when the standard is measured in parts per trillion. In light of that, [the] DOD is investing significant amounts of funds in research and development of new technologies." The department is making significant efforts to develop and evaluate new technologies for the treatment of PFAS, Kidd said. It has invested $90 million through fiscal year 2021 toward that effort and plans an additional investment of $70 million through fiscal year 2025. "These efforts include a range of activities related to PFAS detection, analysis, treatment and in situ destruction," he said. Right now, Kidd said, the defense department no longer uses PFAS-containing AFFF for firefighting training events unless it can be contained during their use. Additionally, he said, the department is looking for alternatives to PFAS-containing AFFF for use in fighting fires. "Since 2017, we have spent $28 million to test nearly 20 potential PFAS-free AFFF replacements, some of which are commercially available," he said. "We are moving through that testing process ... and we believe that we have a number of promising candidates." What remains a challenge, he said, is finding a good replacement for suppressing jet fuel-based fires that also considers other factors -- like compatibility, corrosiveness, viscosity and human health and ecological toxicity concerns. Kidd responded to submitted questions and addressed topics including how state standards for PFAS play into the federal cleanup effort. "We follow the CERCLA process. State standards factor into that process," Kidd explained. The DOD is also required by statute to comply with state drinking water standards when the DOD supplies the drinking water. Fort Lee Chosen as First Stop in U.S. for Relocating Afghans Under Operation Allies Refuge [2021-07-19] WASHINGTON -- Over the weekend the State Department asked the Defense Department to provide a location where it could temporarily house as many as 2,500 Afghan citizens as part of the "Operation Allies Refuge" program. "We have recommended, based on this initial request for assistance, the use of Fort Lee, in Virginia, as a temporary host installation," Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said during a briefing today at the Pentagon. For 20 years in Afghanistan, Afghan nationals lent assistance to U.S. military operations there. With operations in that country closing out by the end of August, the U.S. government has made plans to move those civilians and their families to other locations. "This initial group of [special immigrant visa] applicants would be able to, while at Fort Lee ... safely complete the final steps of the SIV process, such as final medical screenings and final administrative requirements," Kirby said. "These initial relocation movements -- the first that are under Operation Allies Refuge -- will again reaffirm America's commitment to those who have helped us and to whom we owe so much." This initial group of Afghans -- about 700 Afghan citizens who participated in helping the U.S. military and 1,800 family members -- are in the final stages of the SIV process, and are expected to stay at Fort Lee for just a few days before being resettled elsewhere in the United States, Kirby said. At Fort Lee, the Army will provide food and housing for both individuals and families. The Army will also provide medical care if it is needed. Kirby also said that all those coming to the U.S. will be medically screened before boarding planes to the U.S. and will also have already undergone an SIV-related security vetting process. Right now there are no requests to find more space for additional Afghans under the Operation Allies Refuge program, but Kirby said if and when those requests do come, the department is ready. "We're mindful of the large number that are in the SIV program right now at various stages and we have said all along that DOD will contribute to the interagency effort ... to help in the relocation efforts of all those in the SIV program that are interested and eligible to come to the United States," Kirby said. "Clearly, we are planning for greater numbers than just this initial 2,500." Kirby said that additional DOD supporting locations may be needed, and that the department is examining other options. DOD, Navy Confront Climate Change Challenges in Southern Virginia [2021-07-21] WASHINGTON -- The Navy and Defense Department have efforts underway to mitigate the challenges posed by climate change in one of the most military-dense regions of the country. The Hampton Roads area in southern Virginia is home to dozens of military installations, including Naval Station Norfolk, the world's largest naval facility. On the Atlantic Ocean and an important part of the Navy's ocean-faring capability, it's a unique example of how the nation's defense can be affected by the environment. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III went to Naval Station Norfolk just last month to visit the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman and to discuss the impact of climate change on security and military readiness. It's an issue that's been a priority for him. "Since 2010, the Department of Defense has acknowledged that the planet's changing climate has a dramatic effect on our missions, plans and installations," Austin said earlier this year. "The department will immediately take appropriate policy actions to prioritize climate change considerations in our activities and risk assessments [in order] to mitigate this driver of insecurity." The kind of work the secretary alluded to is already taking place at Navy installations in Hampton Roads according to Rear Adm. Charles Rock, the commander of Navy Region Mid-Atlantic. The command is responsible for, among other things, shore infrastructure at Navy bases in the Hampton Roads area. "Every installation within Navy Region Mid-Atlantic continuously evaluates the impact of climate and weather effects on our readiness and identifies opportunities to mitigate operational impacts by cooperating with nature, designing and building resilient infrastructure, and reaching out to our community partners to develop holistic responses," Rock said. Responses to climate change in the Navy Region Mid-Atlantic region include natural solutions, such as dune restoration or sustaining coastal marshes and vegetation, Rock said. Man-made solutions are used, as well. "Navy engineers construct berms and floodwalls to prevent erosion, retrofit critical infrastructure with new building techniques, and build new facilities with future climate protection already built-in," he said. "The Navy engages communities, non-profit organizations and academic institutions to increase understanding of climate risks and develop cooperative adaptation strategies for communities and our bases." Over the last 100 years, average sea level -- as measured by a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency tide gauge that's been in place for a century at Naval Station Norfolk -- has risen 18 inches. According to NOAA projections, it is expected to rise between 1-3 feet by 2050. That increase in sea level, coupled with the typical rise and fall of the tide and seasonal weather events common to an oceanside community, poses a risk to the Navy's ability to conduct and support operations in the Atlantic. "We are looking both on-base and off-base to help mitigate operational impacts to the mission," Brian P. Ballard, a community planning liaison officer with Navy Region Mid-Atlantic in Norfolk, said. "With flooding off-base, we want to make sure that we have access to the base from the roads. We don't control the roads, either local or state roads. We want to make sure that we have continuous access to our installations." Utilities are also an off-base concern, Ballard said. The Hampton Roads area of Virginia has about two-dozen military facilities. About a quarter of those -- including Naval Station Norfolk -- are Navy facilities. And most utilities for those facilities come from the civilian community. "As we work to improve our on-base infrastructure, we have to make sure that there's no flooding impact to our utility connections or off-base utilities," he said. The Hampton Roads area is home to about 1.7 million people, and it's home to the second largest population of military personnel in the nation. Many military personnel and their families, along with defense civilians and contractor employees who support military operations, live in the civilian community and rely on services there, Ballard said. "The broader piece from off-base is that our sailors and civilians and families live and work and go to school in the community," Ballard said. "For the key community facilities -- hospitals and schools, for instance -- we want to make sure they're not impacted and that public safety is not impacted by flooding. We're a part of the community. We want to make sure that those are resilient to the impact of flooding." Ballard said the Navy has great local community partners that understand the potential impact of flooding in the area. He said they have been working with the Navy to evaluate which roads and other local infrastructure needs to be improved to increase climate resiliency for both local residents and to support access to the installations. On base, he said there are also issues that can affect the mission. "The effects of tidal changes and seasonal events, like hurricanes, are exacerbated by rising sea levels, and that means increased chance of flooding in the areas that support the Atlantic fleet," Ballard said. "The occasional flooding of roads and dry docks at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, for instance, has prevented work from getting done on ships and submarines there." In 2019, he said, there were 14 days in Hampton Roads where high tides were a half a meter above the daily average high tide. According to NOAA, this is projected to increase up to 25 days by 2030 and to 65 days by 2050. While the 75 or so ships that homeport in the area can be sent out to sea and the more than 130 naval aircraft can be flown away if need be, this brings with it an adverse impact on training and readiness. Flooding also means administrative, maintenance and logistical support operations there could be hampered or come to a stop if facilities are flooded, utilities stop delivering, or roads are flooded and people can't get to work. For major events, like a hurricane, Ballard said, the Navy is always prepared. But sea level rise changes things for the Navy's normal contingency plans. "It makes the problem worse, because when you have these tidal surges, it could exacerbate the level of flooding just based on the higher sea levels," he said. "You can't really do your job if you can't get to the base through the flooding. And if your building is damaged, it's hard to do the mission." Ballard also said that a changing climate may also lead to an increase in the intensity and frequency of storms, which means additional operational impacts such as increased sortieing of ships and planes away from the installations. Steeling For Disaster Both on and off its installations in the Hampton Roads area, the Navy is working hard to ensure that no matter what the weather brings, the mission can go on. "Inside the base, I think one good thing that has occurred recently is that we have updated the unified facilities criteria," Ballard said. "That's the building code that the DOD uses when they construct facilities and infrastructure on their bases." As part of the UFC, any new construction takes into account climate change and ensures those new facilities are ready for future impacts. Direction from the UFC manifests itself in things like the elevation, design and materials used in the building. "The UFC has now incorporated standards that address where and how you should build to be more resilient to flooding," he said. "When we build a new road or when we rebuild the sea walls on the shoreline, or if we rebuild a new pier for the ships or that kind of thing, all of that new construction will incorporate resilience to flooding, which will help us sustain our mission." Ballard said facility master plans now also take flooding into account when it comes to placement of new construction projects. "The master plans basically say how we want to site new facilities on the base, and how we want to evolve our base in the future," he said. "With this master plan process, it's another area where we're incorporating some resiliency. We're looking at what the projections may be for future flooding, and then we're trying to build that into the plan so that we're not siting critical facilities at risk." At other Navy installations in the Hampton Roads region, work is being done through the Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration, or REPI, program to preserve lands that protect facilities from flooding and damage. At Naval Weapons Station Yorktown, which is experiencing the loss of critical shoreline, wetlands and piers due to flooding and erosion, the REPI program will provide funding to restore three acres of coastal land and stabilization of 900 feet of shoreline, in part through the use of artificial oyster reefs. The Navy and the rest of the U.S. military has a large presence in the Hampton Roads area and ensuring the missions they perform can continue uninhibited by flooding and coastal erosion is a priority for the department. To ensure that the mission continues, the Navy and the department are partnering in Hampton Roads with federal, state and municipal agencies as well as academia to preserve the environment there in order to preserve the mission. At Naval Station Norfolk, Ballard thinks efforts to improve resilience to climate impacts are effective and are happening at the right pace. "We're not having severe flooding impacts currently in Hampton Roads, so I think we have the time to improve our infrastructure," he said. "I think the outlook is good for both the Hampton Roads region and the military bases that operate here." DOD Takes Phased Approach to Implementing Recommendations on Sexual Assault, Harassment [2021-07-21] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department plans to move forward with all of the recommendations made by an independent review commission on sexual assault in the military. The commission's findings and 82 recommendations were made public earlier this month, and the department will move cautiously and deliberately in implementing each of them, the deputy defense secretary said. "I am taking a phased approach to developing comprehensive implementation plans across all of these recommendations," Kathleen H. Hicks said during testimony yesterday before the House Armed Services Committee. "Although we are on a fast timeline, our approach is methodical and deliberate." The Defense Department, Hicks reminded lawmakers, is the largest organization within the federal government, with nearly 2.9 million service members and civilians working at 4,800 sites in more than 160 countries. It'll be a challenge to implement the IRC's recommendations, she said. "This issue set will require substantial leadership at all levels to ensure changes that challenge us in culture, resources and time ... are effective and enduring," she said. "We have no intention of rushing to failure and risking the loss of faith from those who have trusted us and to lose the trust of another generation of service members." Hicks said she's been given until the end of the summer to go through all 82 recommendations and find a path forward for implementing each of them. "Once we have our roadmap in place, our efforts will be consistently monitored by me and the department's senior-most leadership via the deputy's workforce council," she said. "The secretary and I are committed to ensuring sustained attention to drive these changes as effectively and expeditiously as possible." Chief among the recommendations of the IRC is who will be charged with prosecuting those suspected of committing sexual assault in the ranks. Until now, it's been the domain of commanders to decide how to move forward when made aware of a sexual assault. With commanders no longer handling the prosecution of sexual assaults, the department plans to create dedicated offices within each military service to take over that role. Also among recommendations made by the IRC is that sexual harassment charges be handled by investigators trained to handle special victims cases. The services will also create professional career tracks for lawyers and investigators in sexual assault investigation and prosecution. "We will see to it that every corner of the department implements these changes in letter and in spirit," Hicks said. "Our service members deserve no less, and our combat effectiveness depends on our success." DOD to Modernize Intelligence Information Apparatus With 'Back to Basics' Approach [2021-07-22] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department's information technology capacity provides intelligence information to leaders and warfighters to give them a decision-making advantage. The legacy systems that provide that capacity, however, must be modernized to ensure the United States doesn't fall behind its competitors, said the deputy chief information officer for special access program information technology. "Our nation continues to face a complex, evolving and diverse set of threats," Cynthia J. Mendoza said yesterday at a forum sponsored by GovExec. "To counter these threats and remain ahead of our adversaries, it's very important that we have timely, insightful and accurate data and information." U.S. adversaries, Mendoza said, are advancing in areas such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, machine learning and supply chain risk management. The U.S. must do the same. "To confront these technology challenges, we must be united across the DOD in how we are scaling and operationalizing the IT infrastructure and securing it to provide for the best advanced technologies," she said. "As we look forward, our challenge will be to scale and operationalize IT-enabling capabilities by leveraging key advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, 5G wireless technology and quantum computing." Mendoza said she's guided by three principles she believes will help her move the department ahead, but which are not at all new. Those basic tenants include building trusted partnerships, understanding mission results and outcomes, and leveraging best practices and lessons learned. "I call these 'getting back to basics,'" she said. Stakeholders in the IT modernization strategy don't just include the department, the intelligence community, international partners, the private sector, academia and Congress, Mendoza said. "I honestly believe people are the 'secret sauce,'" Mendoza said. "They will make the capability real. It all begins with building and developing a stakeholder engagement strategy that is inclusive of all key enterprise stakeholders and focused on a particular capability gap." She said trusted partnerships with stakeholders enable DOD to rally around a common purpose with accountability to deliver capabilities with an enduring commitment for success. Mendoza also said the department needs to be clear on what it wants to do -- it must understand mission results and outcomes. "What problem are we trying to solve?" she asked. "We need to be clear on the result and the outcome we are all working to accomplish. We need to ensure that we validate this with our stakeholder community and that they understand the intended outcome." Leveraging best practices and lessons learned is also critical to avoid "reinventing the wheel" when addressing DOD's mission goals and objectives, she said. "We leverage lessons learned from our colleagues who are doing similar things," she said. "Best practices and best solutions go hand-in-hand, and so do best approaches: reference architecture frameworks, service-centric and platform based environments, common operating principles, speaking and operating from the same ontology. These are fundamentals, best practices that eliminate our need to reinvent the wheel." 'Zero-Based' Reviews of DOD Advisory Committee Nearly Complete, Decisions Come Soon [2021-07-23] WASHINGTON -- In January, 40 defense-related advisory committees were told to suspend their activities pending the results of "zero-based" reviews that would evaluate their missions. With those reviews now complete, the secretary of defense is reviewing the findings and making decisions on the futures of each of those committees. The department is close to finishing that process, and it's expected that soon the department will be able to make public the results of those reviews and the related decisions. "Largely, the committee-level work has been completed," said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby during a meeting with the press on Thursday. "We are examining those committee recommendations -- the secretary is -- to determine how he wants to move forward." Across the department, a variety of advisory boards, councils, panels and committees provide insight and guidance on things such as security cooperation, diversity, science, engineering and medical topics. In a memorandum published in January, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III provided the names of 42 such groups. Of those, 40 were directed to suspend their activities pending a review of their function. Two groups were not subject to the review either because their mission had already been completed, or because there were no members within the group that were appointed by the secretary of defense. The secretary directed each group's DOD sponsor to conduct the zero-based review. "Each DOD sponsor will conduct an in-depth business case of every sponsored advisory committee, supported by fact-based evidence for continued utilization of the advisory committee," the secretary wrote in the memorandum. Those business cases, he said, were to consider, among other things, the committee's mission and function as it relates to DOD strategic priorities and National Defense Strategy; potential functional realignments to create a single cross-functional advisory committee, and potential legislative changes to non-discretionary advisory committees to properly align them with the department's strategic priorities. In addition to directing those groups to suspend their activities, the groups whose members were appointed by the secretary of defense, those members were asked to conclude their service and thanked for the work they had done. While no final decisions have been made yet, Kirby said he expects information to come out of the department soon about the future of the affected committees. "I do think you'll start to see us be able to communicate in more detail very soon about what boards are going to be reconstituted and how they're going to be both chaired and populated," he said, adding that he expects groups such as the Defense Policy Board, Defense Science Board, and Defense Business Board are likely to be reconstituted. DOD Unveils 2021 POW/MIA Recognition Day Poster [2021-07-27] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department today revealed the prisoner of war/missing in action commemorative poster which, leading up to POW/MIA Recognition Day in September, will highlight ongoing efforts made by the department to provide the fullest possible accounting of the soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen still missing from past conflicts. Each year, the department creates a poster in advance of POW/MIA Recognition Day, which will be commemorated on Sept. 17. Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks explained that since the Revolutionary War, more than a half-million U.S. service members have, at one point in time, been held as prisoners of war. Today, nearly 82,000 service members remain unaccounted for, from conflicts dating back to World War II, she said. More than 72,000 of those were lost during World War II, nearly 8,000 from the Korean War, and around 1,600 remain unaccounted for from the Vietnam War. The department remains committed to bringing all of them home, she said. During the event, which was held near the POW/MIA exhibit in the Pentagon, Hicks, along with Ann Mills-Griffiths, the chairman of the board of directors of the National League of POW/MIA Families; retired Air Force Col. Michael Brazelton, a pilot and former prisoner of war; and Justin Hart, assistant national service director for Disabled Veterans of America, unveiled the poster. The poster features multiple images featuring the POW/MIA flag, as well as the words "America's commitment -- Globally Fulfilled." "It is an homage, a reminder of our commitment to the noble mission of full accounting of our missing, and providing answers to their families," Hicks said. Brazelton, who flew 120 missions in the F-105 aircraft and was held as a prisoner of war for 2,402 days in North Vietnam, said he always thought he'd be released from captivity at the end of the war. "I always knew I'd get home," he said. "I thought I'd probably be sent home. After the war was over, I was repatriated. Unfortunately it took a really long time." Today, he said, he's a supporter of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency efforts to bring home those who are currently unaccounted for. "I'm really happy about that," he said. "I'll do whatever I can to help them." DOD Directs Employees to Start Wearing Face Masks Again [2021-07-28] WASHINGTON -- Following guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Defense Department has directed employees working in areas at high risk for transmission to begin using face masks again as a measure to prevent the continued spread of the COVID-19 virus, especially the fast-moving, highly-transmittable Delta variant. The new guidance for the department came in a memorandum signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks. "In areas of substantial or high community transmission, DOD requires all service members, federal employees, onsite contractor employees and visitors, regardless of vaccination status, to wear a mask in an indoor setting in installations and other facilities owned, leased or otherwise controlled by DOD," the memorandum read. The memo also says that those who have not been vaccinated will need to continue to wear masks, as they have been required to do all along. DOD installations are also being asked to post signage and update their websites to let visitors know of mask policies in place at those locations. CDC guidance issued July 27 recommends that even individuals who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 start wearing a mask again while indoors if they are in an area of "substantial or high transmission." "To maximize protection from the Delta variant and prevent possibly spreading it to others, wear a mask indoors in public if you are in an area of substantial or high transmission," the CDC recommends. Information about areas of the country that are most at risk for transmission can be found on the CDC website. Guard Well-Equipped to Handle West Coast Wildfires [2021-07-29] WASHINGTON -- When wildfires happen out west, National Guard service members are there to fight those fires. And for now, they've got a good handle on the effort, the director of the National Guard said. "We've got 500 people and about 19 aircraft," on the firefighting mission, Army Gen. Daniel R. Hokanson said. "I think we have the capability to put over 200 aircraft ... and all the support personnel to do that. It's roughly probably less than 10% of what our capability is right now. So, we're in a pretty good spot right now." According to the National Guard Bureau, guardsmen from California, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Nevada and Wyoming are participating in firefighting efforts in five states, including California, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Montana. In northern California, guardsmen are helping with the Dixie fire in Butte and Plumas counties that has burned more than 200,000 acres. It's about 23% contained right now, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. In Oregon, guardsmen are helping with the Bootleg fire, which has burned across 413,000 acres of land and is about 53% contained, according to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center. The Lick Creek fire in Washington, originally caused by a lightning strike, is about 90% contained. Guardsmen in the fight are using the "mobile airborne firefighting system," or MAFFS. Already, according to National Guard sources, four MAFFS crews from three different states have made 273 drops and completed 280 sorties. "When you see a plane come in and leave that big red streak of fire retardant, those are [MAFFS]," Hokanson said. "We use our C-130s to do that. And then we use a lot of helicopters as well, with buckets. And they usually scoop up water nearby and drop it on the fire." The National Guard, and the states, used to prepare for an upcoming fire season. But now, Hokanson said, the guard has to be ready year-round for what may come. "We used to talk about [the] fire season ... it's really a 'fire year' now," he said. "Fires really, almost, go year-round now. And, so, that has added a little bit [of] higher demand. But usually in the fall, winter and early spring, there's enough civilian resources to cover that." Hokanson said the National Guard pays close attention to how those civilians fight the fires, looking at the resources they are using in the way of people and aircraft, to better assess when they may reach their capacity so that the guard can be ready if called upon to contribute. "As those numbers start to creep up and get near their limit, that's when we really start looking at what the total level of support we are going to provide," he said. A changing climate has affected how the National Guard readies itself for things like wildfires and hurricanes, Hokanson said. That includes things like tracking precipitation in forests to determine humidity levels there, which can affect the likelihood of a fire, for instance. "We just look at the environment and do everything we can to prepare for it, which in some cases means getting trained earlier in the year," he said. "And then sometimes we have to make sure that we're ... programmed to go the duration. Fortunately, like on the Dixie fire, they had rain the other day, which really helped. I wish we could predict that, but we can't. We're just there to do everything we can and what we can control." Space Command, Navy Share Commonalities in Keeping Open Lines of Communication [2021-08-03] WASHINGTON -- The oceans are big, but space is even bigger, the commander of U.S. Space Command said. Still, the Navy and Space Command share a lot in terms of what they do, and there's opportunity for both to leverage off of each other to increase their effectiveness in carrying out their missions. "Just like the Navy protects our sea lines of communications, U.S. Space Command's mission is to protect our space lines of communications," Army Gen. James H. Dickinson today told attendees of the 2021 Sea-Air-Space Exposition at National Harbor, Maryland. "Despite considerable differences in maritime and space operating environments, the strategic level objectives of naval forces and space forces are more similar than they are different." Dickinson said there's a "natural synergy" between naval and space operators that, if taken advantage of, could yield benefits for both. "I think the opportunity for further integration between the Navy and U.S. Space Command is quite frankly boundless -- or infinite," he said. One of the roles of the Navy, Dickinson said, is to keep open sea lines of communication, which means ensuring the safe and free movement of people and cargo over the world's oceans. That's similar to the mission of U.S. Space Command, he said, which involves ensuring the United States can continue to operate safely and freely in space without interference from adversaries. "Both are central to free and open opportunity to traverse and enjoy the benefits of their respective domains," he said. "Today, we're pretty good at operating in vast areas of the universe -- or space; however, our ability to operate freely in it is being challenged, and significantly challenged, every day. That's not unlike the circumstances the Navy faces, too, in the world's contested waters." Dickinson said some examples are Lagrange points, which are locations in space where the gravity of the moon and Earth are balanced. "These gravity wells are ideal for positioning spacecraft where they can remain indefinitely with only using a small amount of fuel," he said. He compared the importance of those locations in space to the small islands in the Pacific Ocean that the Navy would like to keep secure to ensure continued free navigation of the oceans and security in the Pacific. Long-haul satellite communications and theater intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities are also common concerns for both Space Command and the Navy, he said. Because of the similarities in the maritime and space operating environments, Dickinson said it's imperative to enhance collaboration between Navy and Space Forces. "In that end-state collaboration, we should strive for full integration between us and the Navy in concepts of operation; in systems development; in refinement of tactics, techniques and procedures; in requirements definition; in wargaming; and in war planning," he said. "You name it -- anything, basically, having to do with how we collectively prepare for the joint operations and how we take those forces into the fight -- if required. We need to find the right balance between our mutually supported and supporting functions." U.S. Will Continue to Operate in South China Sea to Ensure Prosperity for All [2021-08-04] WASHINGTON -- There's a variety of concerns that keep Indo-Pacom on its toes -- many centered around the activities of China, which quite often don't match up with the words that come out of Beijing, its commander said. "We certainly view with concern many of the actions that we've seen from Beijing," Navy Adm. John C. Aquilino said during a presentation today at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. "I think what I view with most concern are certainly not the words, but the actions that we've seen." China's actions in Hong Kong, for instance, reneging on promises of autonomy guaranteed there under agreement in 1997 with the British government, are of concern, Aquilino said. "Those actions were completely disconnected from the words from Beijing to adhere to the agreement that was in place," he said. "We see similar actions if you were to look at the border of India -- we view that with concern. If you look at the actions associated with the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and the violations of what we believe -- the dignity and respect and human rights -- that we view those actions with concern." Also of concern for Indo-Pacom are China's claims on the South China Sea -- which Aquilino said interfere with the wellbeing and prosperity of all nations in the region. "We view with concern [China's] unlawful claim to the entire South China Sea -- directly and negatively impacting all of the countries in the region, from their livelihood, whether it be with fishing or access to natural resources," Aquilino said. "Those are the things that lead me to believe that our execution of integrated deterrence has to occur now, and with a sense of urgency." Ten nations border the South China Sea, and many more nations depend on it for trade with all of those countries, Aquilino said. The prosperity of all depends on continued free access to the waters there. Roughly a third of liquid natural gas and a quarter of all global trade flows through the South China Sea, Aquilino said. Bordering nations also rely on the sea for resources as well, such as fishing. "It's critically important for all nations," he said. "The unlawful claim to the entire South China Sea threatens all of that. When we talk about the South China Sea, understanding the importance is critical." The U.S., in part through Indo-Pacom, works with allies and partners in the region to reduce tensions there, he said. "We spend a lot of time with our allies and partners to ensure that the international rules-based order is maintained and unlawful claims don't go without challenge," he said. "But the Chinese just recently unilaterally renamed 80 geographic features in the area, with an inherent claim that goes with. That's just counter to what all of the nations in the region would expect, believe, and what they need to maintain their prosperity." The U.S. has been operating in the Pacific for more than 80 years now, said Aquilino, and will continue to do so, including in order to maintain the agreed-upon international rules-based orders that the U.S. and all pacific nations depend on to ensure prosperity. "This attempt to restate what a revisionist history view of claims is just counter to everything that those nations with common values believe," he said. "We will operate here to ensure that freedom of navigation for all is maintained, and that we will preserve the stability and peace in the [region's] shared prosperity." Services Will Make Call on Religious Exemptions to COVID-19 Vaccines [2021-08-10] WASHINGTON -- In a memorandum released yesterday, the secretary of defense explained how he will ensure the continued health and safety of the U.S military through the use of the available COVID-19 vaccines. "I will seek the President's approval to make the vaccines mandatory no later than mid-September, or immediately upon the U.S. Food and Drug Administration licensure, whichever comes first," said Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III. Right now, there are three COVID-19 vaccines available. All are currently being used across the United States under "emergency use authorization," or EUA, from the Food and Drug Administration. Those vaccines include the ones from Pfizer and Moderna, both of which require two injections. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine requires only a single shot. If any of the three vaccines receive full licensure by the FDA before mid-September, Austin said, they will become mandatory immediately. If they do not receive the licensure by mid-September, however, the secretary will request a waiver from the president to make them mandatory. For service members who have religious objections to receiving a vaccine, the path for how they might seek an exception to the vaccine is defined by their individual military service's regulations, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said during a meeting with the media on Tuesday. "There is a religious exemption possibility for any mandatory vaccine, and there's a process that we go through to counsel the individual both from a medical and from a command perspective about using a religious exemption," Kirby said. Counseling, he said, includes a discussion with both a medical professional and a commander about the risks of not being vaccinated as well as how not being vaccinated might affect deployability, assignments or travel. Requests for religious exemption differ by service, he said. "We take freedom of religion and worship seriously, in the military, it's one of the things that we sign up to defend," he said. "And so it's something that's done very carefully." There are exemptions for mandatory vaccines for medical reasons as well, Kirby said, including pre-existing medical conditions. "The primary care physician will be able to help make that determination," he said. Nevertheless, the defense secretary and the department are confident that once the vaccines are mandatory, service members will do their part. "We have every expectation that once the vaccines are made mandatory, the troops are going to ... do the right thing," he said. "Going forward with this particular vaccine, the secretary's expectation is that commanders are going to treat the administration of that vaccine with -- as he wrote in his memo -- professionalism, skill and compassion." Kirby also said the department will ensure that every individual with reservations about getting a vaccine gets proper counseling on its safety and efficacy as well as how not getting the vaccine could affect teammates, readiness and the mission. Vice Admiral Discusses Potential of AI in Missile Defense Testing, Operations [2021-08-12] WASHINGTON -- Mountains of data are generated when the U.S. military conducts missile testing, and not all of that data is even used, simply because there's more information to be processed than there are people to process it, the director of the Missile Defense Agency said. "When you look at the amount of data we pull from a test, let's just pick a [ground-based midcourse defense] test -- terabytes of data," Navy Vice Adm. Jon A. Hill said during a presentation at the Space & Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama. "Are we assessing all that data? The answer is no." Hill said that following such a test, even one that has been by all measures successful, engineers might come back later, after looking at portions of the data that resulted from the experiment and find things that reveal important facts about what happened -- things that wouldn't otherwise be readily apparent. "It's not unusual for one of our great engineers to come back later and say you know in this telemetry stream I found something really interesting here. This valve did not do what we thought it was going to do," Hill said. That's just one engineer looking at a portion of a stack of data that he couldn't possibly get through on his own. Processing all that information is a good task for artificial intelligence, Hill said. "With machine learning and artificial intelligence, you can go into that whole vast amount of data and you can start to see interesting attributes rise and we're seeing that now once we start to institute artificial intelligence and machine learning," Hill said. But in the world of missile defense, there's much more than just the testing and assessing of systems. There's also actual operations: the detection of threats, command and control of systems and engagement with a threat. Those areas can also be enhanced by artificial intelligence, Hill said, "and this is the challenge to industry." A big priority for MDA, Hill said, is making life easier for the operators of the complex systems used to protect the U.S. from missile threats. AI can help make their job easier, he said -- and put their attention on things that matter. "The more artificial intelligence capability/machine learning that comes in to make the load easier -- to get rid of some of these tedious tasks in the planning thing -- that takes advantage of the brain of our sailors, our soldiers, our airmen, our guardians -- that allows them to think about fighting the battle, not fighting the system," he said. Right now, Hill said, MDA is starting to look at places where AI can be used to detect, track and discriminate targets, conduct command and control operations, and engage targets. "How does that translate into some of these major functions of the system? That's what we're going after now. You start to see areas where you can improve algorithms and how you do that detect-control-engage sequence," he said. "I'm pretty excited about this. But I want to get it into an area to where we can start having more discussions about how we take what is in now primarily in the science and technology world and port that right into [the] No. 1 priority in my mind: making the operator's life easier, so we can get weapons on target." New Jersey Military Base Available to Receive Afghan Evacuees [2021-08-23] WASHINGTON -- Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey is now ready to receive Afghan evacuees, the Joint Staff deputy director for regional operations said. The Joint Base is the latest of four installations hosting eligible Afghans seeking a special immigrant visa, said Army Maj. Gen. William D. Taylor at a press briefing this morning. The other three are Fort McCoy, Wisconsin; Fort Bliss, Texas; and Fort Lee, Virginia, Taylor said. U.S. Northern Command continues to build out capacity to ensure the Afghans are accommodated, said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby, noting that the goal is to be able to receive about 25,000 in the coming days and weeks. After Afghan evacuees are flown out of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, they're screened at temporary safe havens across Europe and the Middle East, including U.S. installations in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Italy, Spain and Germany. "We deeply appreciate the support from these countries. This is truly a testament to the importance of our alliances and our partnerships," Taylor said. As of this morning, 25 U.S. military C-17 aircraft, three U.S. military C-130 aircraft, and a combination of 61 charter commercial and other military flights had departed Kabul within the last 24 hours, he said. The total passenger count for those flights was about 16,000. Of that number, the U.S. military transported just under 11,000 personnel, he said. "Our mission remains focused on ensuring a steady flow of evacuees out of Kabul," Taylor added. In a statement today, Navy Capt. William Urban, U.S. Central Command spokesman, said: "No U.S. or coalition forces were hurt during a brief exchange of gunfire last night outside the north gate of Hamid Karzai International Airport. The incident appeared to begin when an unknown hostile actor fired upon Afghan security forces involved in monitoring access to the gate. The Afghans returned fire and, in keeping with their right of self-defense, so, too, did U.S. and coalition troops. "One member of the Afghan forces was killed by the hostile actor and several Afghans were wounded during the exchange. The wounded are being treated at an airfield hospital and are reported to be in stable condition. "Our condolences go out to the teammates and loved ones of the fallen Afghan soldier," he added. Kirby said U.S. forces continue to maintain open communications with the Taliban to ensure coordination between the Taliban and the U.S. military and facilitate the safe passage of Americans and eligible Afghans to the airport, a process the military refers to as deconfliction. "What we have seen is that this deconfliction has worked well in terms of allowing access and flow to continue, as well as reducing the overall size of the crowds just outside the airport," Kirby said. In a Defense Department press announcement yesterday, Kirby said the U.S. Transportation Command will activate Stage I of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet. CRAF activation provides the department with access to commercial aircraft to augment support to the State Department during the evacuation of U.S. citizens and personnel, SIV applicants and other at-risk individuals from Afghanistan. The current activation is for 18 aircraft: three each from American Airlines, Atlas Air, Delta Air Lines and Omni Air; two from Hawaiian Airlines; and four from United Airlines. The department does not anticipate a major impact to commercial flights from this activation, Kirby said. CRAF-activated aircraft will not fly into Hamid Karzai International Airport. They will be used to move passengers from temporary safe havens and interim staging bases. Activating CRAF increases passenger movement beyond organic capability and allows military aircraft to focus on operations in and out of Kabul, Kirby said. Fast-Paced Airport Ground Ops Keeps Evacuees Moving [2021-08-23] WASHINGTON -- In the last 24 hours, more than 10,000 evacuees have been moved out of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. It's an exhausting pace the U.S. military will sustain so that everyone eligible to leave the country can get out, the commander of U.S. Transportation Command said. "I'm very confident that we'll sustain that effort, and improve that effort, to be honest with you," said Army Gen. Stephen R. Lyons, during a briefing today at the Pentagon. Airlift is a huge part of the effort to evacuate U.S. citizens and Afghan civilians with special immigrant visas out of Kabul, Lyons said. Since August 14, about 37,000 have been evacuated from the country. But other factors are also important in making the mission happen. Chief among those efforts, he said, are the ground operations in Afghanistan that are under the control of U.S. Central command. Those efforts ensure that those who want to leave are where they need to be so planes can load up. "Critical to the throughput is also ground operations and we're trying to synchronize that as we go," he said. "We are clearly laser focused on clearing the international airport of every evacuee that can move." Right now, Lyons said, Transcom's air component has over 200 aircraft dedicated to the effort and is working to keep those aircraft on the ground for less than an hour to on-board evacuees. "You know we've got a number of planes in the system, but we have twice as many crews. The idea is to keep those planes moving all the time -- either by extending the crew day or preferably by swapping crews and keeping the iron in motion," he said. "The faster we can turn, either load or discharge, the faster we can turn that aircraft ... I really appreciate the work on-going in Afghanistan to bring down the time on ground to under an hour." Additionally, he said, every effort is being made to ensure every plane is full when it leaves the airport in order to maximize throughput. That requires constant communication with Centcom, he said. "I talk to Gen. McKenzie on a continuous basis, so we're synched up. The idea is we never want to leave Kabul airport on an empty plane or even a partially full plane if we can avoid it," Lyons said. "We're filling the aircraft to about 400-450 passengers in the floor load configuration." Lyons also said that due to conditions at Kabul, Transcom isn't refueling aircraft there, but is instead ensuring aircraft that arrive bring enough fuel with them to leave. If need be, he said, aircraft can also use aerial refueling. "We are pushing the limits to do everything we can to get every single evacuee out of Kabul," he said. Nearly 22k Personnel Out of Afghanistan in Last 24 Hours [2021-08-24] WASHINGTON -- Using U.S. C-17 Globemaster III and C-130 Hercules aircraft along with coalition and partner airlift, about 21,600 personnel have been evacuated from Afghanistan in the last 24 hours, said the Joint Staff deputy director for regional operations, who said the numbers are the best since evacuation operations started. An increase in flight operations has resulted in one aircraft now leaving Hamid Karzai International Airport about every 45 minutes. About 58,000 American citizens, civilian allies, Afghan special immigrant visa applicants and other vulnerable Afghans have been taken out of harm's way since August 14, Army Maj. Gen. William D. Taylor said during a briefing today at the Pentagon. "I want to reiterate that we're able to achieve this level of increased departures because of U.S. military personnel and our partner's work around-the-clock to conduct this highly important mission, including airport security and flight operations," Taylor said. Those aircraft are now taking evacuees to one of the 14 intermediary locations in Europe and the Persian Gulf region. Additional intermediary locations in Germany, Spain and Italy are being considered as well. "This allows us to expedite movement out of Kabul and gives us flexibility from these intermediate staging bases," Taylor said. "We are appreciative of the support in this global effort from our allies and partners. We remain focused on the mission of bringing as many people home as we can, as quickly as we can." In the United States, four U.S. military installations, including Fort Lee, Virginia; Fort Bliss, Texas; Fort McCoy, Wisconsin; and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey, are now playing host to evacuees from Afghanistan. In the past 24 hours, Taylor said, four flights landed at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, with more than 1,000 passengers. "These passengers and their families will go to one of the four military installations, designated as processing locations," Taylor said. "All this progress stems from the teamwork and professionalism -- especially of our interagency partners here in the States. We know more hard work remains and that our personnel in Afghanistan remain vigilant, and we share the sense of urgency in this effort." While many Afghan citizens hope to leave Afghanistan and start a new life elsewhere, there are also many Americans still in Afghanistan who want to leave. Already, several thousand have been evacuated, and continuing that mission remains a priority for the department, said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby. "We continue to make progress every day in getting Americans, as well as SIV applicants and vulnerable Afghans out," Kirby said. "We ... remain committed to getting any and all Americans that want to leave -- to get them out." Kirby said with recent increases in capacity and the flow, the department has the ability to get that mission done by the end of the month. Eucom Ready for 25,000 Afghan Evacuees at a Time [2021-08-25] WASHINGTON -- Military installations in the U.S. European Command are now ready to accept thousands of evacuees from Afghanistan at a time, the commander of Eucom said. Across Europe, eight military installations in four nations stand ready to take on as many as 25,000 evacuees coming out of Afghanistan, Air Force Gen. Tod D. Wolters said during a briefing today at the Pentagon. The eight locations include Ramstein Air Base, Rhine Ordnance Barracks, Spangdahlem Air Base, U.S. Army Garrison Grafenwoehr, and U.S. Army Garrison Hohenfels, in Germany; as well as Naval Air Station Sigonella, Italy; Naval Station Rota, Spain; and Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo. Right now, it's Ramstein and Sigonella that have been receiving evacuees, Wolters said. Ramstein alone can house up to 12,000 evacuees at a time. The German installation has received 55 incoming flights, and currently has more than 5,700 evacuees on site. The general also said that more than 1,600 evacuees have departed Ramstein for the United States. In Italy, there are about 662 evacuees awaiting onward movement. "This is a whole-of-government, whole-of-nation, whole-of-partner, whole-of-ally process," he said. "The trust and transparency that we've constructed over the course of the last several decades, in particular with our NATO allies and partners, has paid huge dividends with respect to the effectiveness of this operation." The general said the assistance of Germany, Italy and Spain have been particularly effective in helping the U.S. carry out the evacuation mission. "I'd like to make a special shout out to the government of Germany, and the government of Italy and now the government of Spain for their whole-of-government work ... the cooperation has been seamless and has allowed us to do our job from a U.S. perspective," he said. When evacuees land in Eucom, the general said, they get food, water and shelter. They are also given medical screenings and are provided any follow-on medical care, if needed. All evacuees are screened for symptoms of COVID-19 as well, he said, adding that evacuees were also screened before leaving the Middle East and will be screened again when they arrive in the United States. They are also getting security screenings in Europe, Wolters said, including meeting with personnel from the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security and the State Department. Wolters said that about a third of the evacuees are children, and they and their parents are grateful for the work being done in Eucom to expedite movement to the United States. "I will tell you that they are very, very appreciative and excited to be here," he said. "And what they're getting as far as treatment is concerned, at Ramstein and Sigonella, they are very, very much in favor of. And we're proud of the opportunity to be able to be part of this operation." With Afghanistan Evacuation, It's Lives Over Equipment ... Period, DOD Spokesman Says [2021-08-25] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military is planning to leave Afghanistan by August 31. The plan for that departure includes not just U.S. service members, but also some of the important military equipment still in the country. But, right now, the Defense Department is busy getting American citizens, Afghans with special immigrant visa applications in process, and other vulnerable Afghans out of the country. And that will continue to be the No. 1 priority right up until the very end, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said. "Lives are always going to be the priority ... period," Kirby told reporters at a press conference today at the Pentagon. "As we get closer to the end, there will be some equipment and systems that we will probably take with us as we leave ... but lives will always be the chief priority throughout this entire process." In the past 24 hours, 90 flights left Hamid Karzai International Airport carrying about 19,000 people, Army Maj. Gen. William D. Taylor, the Joint Staff deputy director for regional operations, said. Of those flights, around half were U.S. military aircraft, including 37 C-17 Globemaster III missions and five C-130 Hercules missions. Other U.S. aircraft carried about 11,200 passengers. "These numbers are a testament to the hard-working and brave service members, carrying out this mission," he said. "Our focus is continuing to get as many people out as efficiently and safely as possible." As of Wednesday morning, Taylor said, there were 10,000 individuals waiting at Hamid Karzai International Airport to leave the country. To date, about 88,000 have safely departed Afghanistan, and some have already made their way to the United States. Yesterday, five flights carrying 1,200 passengers landed at Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia. Today, six flights carrying 1,800 Afghans will leave Germany for the United States, Taylor said. "As part of this process, these individuals completed biometric vetting and screening in accordance with the FBI, NCTC and Customs and Border Control standards, all directed by the Department of Homeland Security," Taylor said. "We are working around the clock to provide safe, sanitary and appropriate receptions at processing at all of our locations throughout the world." Tragic Deaths of U.S. Service Members in Afghanistan Won't Stop Evacuation Mission [2021-08-26] WASHINGTON -- A dozen American service members were killed, 15 more were injured and a number of Afghan civilians were also killed or injured during attacks this morning in Afghanistan. The attacks involved an explosive set off by a suicide bomber near the Abbey Gate entrance to Hamid Karzai International Airport. Nearby, another suicide bomber set off an explosive at the Baron Hotel. Those attacks were followed by gunfire from ISIS gunmen. Despite the tragic loss of life, the mission to evacuate American citizens and vulnerable Afghan civilians from Afghanistan will continue undeterred, Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., commander of U.S. Central Command, said during a briefing today at the Pentagon. "Let me be clear: while we're saddened by the loss of life, both U.S. and Afghan [citizens], we're continuing to execute the mission," the general said. Right now, that mission is to evacuate from Afghanistan U.S. citizens, third-country nationals, special immigrant visa holders, U.S. embassy staff, and at-risk Afghans. Currently, there are now some 5,000 individuals awaiting evacuation from the country, McKenzie said. Since Aug. 14, he noted, more than 104,000 civilians have been evacuated -- including about 5,000 Americans. He said he believes there are a little over 1,000 American civilians left in the country now. "We're doing everything we can, in concert with our Department of State partners, to reach out to them and to help them leave, if they want to leave. And remember, not everybody wants to leave," he said. The risks to U.S. forces conducting evacuation operations in Afghanistan are well-known, McKenzie said, and include a number of what he described as "tactical threats." Those threats include rocket attacks, which he said could be countered by anti-rocket and mortar systems in place at the airport. "We feel that we'd be in good shape should that kind of attack occur," he said. Also a risk, he said, are larger suicide bomb attacks similar to the ones this morning. "We also know they aim to get a ... vehicle-borne suicide attack in if they can -- from a small vehicle to a large vehicle -- they're working all those options," he said. "All of those things we look at." The Taliban is now doing security outside the airport and McKenzie said the U.S. military is working with them so they can help mitigate some of the threats. Right now, it's not 100% clear exactly who is responsible for planning the bombings, but McKenzie said that the U.S. military is looking for the perpetrators and will take action once it is discovered who is responsible. "If we can find who's associated with this, we will go after them," he said. "We've been clear all along that we're going to retain the right to operate against ISIS in Afghanistan, and we are working very hard right now to determine attribution to determine who is associated with this cowardly attack, and we're prepared to take action against them. 24/7, we are looking for them." Inside Afghanistan, U.S. Central Command continues to execute the mission to evacuate as many civilians as possible. Back in the U.S., the military services will conduct next-of-kin notifications to the families of those service members who were killed, McKenzie said. Earlier today, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III expressed condolences to the families, loved ones and colleagues of those lost in the attacks. "On behalf of the men and women of the Department of Defense, I express my deepest condolences to the loved ones and teammates of all those killed and wounded in Kabul today," he said. "Terrorists took their lives at the very moment these troops were trying to save the lives of others. We mourn their loss. We will treat their wounds. And we will support their families in what will most assuredly be devastating grief." Like McKenzie, Austin reiterated the U.S. commitment to continue the mission in Afghanistan until it is complete. "We will not be dissuaded from the task at hand," he said. "To do anything less -- especially now -- would dishonor the purpose and sacrifice these men and women have rendered our country and the people of Afghanistan." DOD Building Capacity to Support up to 50,000 Afghan Evacuees [2021-08-27] WASHINGTON -- As part of Operation Allies Refuge, the Defense Department is building capacity to house up to 50,000 Afghan evacuees on seven different military installations across the United States. "The request for assistance from the State Department specifically requested that the Department of Defense provide culturally appropriate food, water, bedding, religious services, recreational activities and other services such as transportation from the port of entry to the location of accommodations, and some medical services as well," Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, commander of U.S. Northern Command, said during a press conference today at the Pentagon. Those services are now either being provided, or will be provided at Fort Bliss, Texas; Fort McCoy, Wisconsin; Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey; Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico; and Fort Lee, Marine Corps Base Quantico and Fort Pickett, all in Virginia. Right now, capacity at Fort Lee, Fort Bliss, Fort McCoy, and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst stands at about 21,000 persons, though as the other three bases start bringing in evacuees, that number will grow. The department expects by Sept. 15 to reach the full capacity of 50,000, and it's possible also that new installations could be opened up to provide additional space if needed, VanHerck said. Ports of entry for those evacuees now include both Dulles International Airport in Virginia, and Philadelphia International Airport in Pennsylvania. VanHerck said Northcom is supporting the Operation Allies Refuge at those transportation hubs by providing services and additional forces, including assisting with managing the flow of evacuees. Onboard the installations currently housing evacuees, VanHerck said military efforts have been augmented by local communities and non-governmental organizations who are pitching in to ensure Afghans are well taken care of. "They're coming here, starting over with what they bring with them," he said. "We've been incredibly well supported by the local communities, by the non-governmental organizations, etc., that have jumped in to help these families with things of need, such as diapers, formula, clothing -- you name it." The general said at one location he could visit with one of the Afghans there to inquire about the conditions for him and his family. "I asked them if they had what they needed, if they were doing okay, getting enough to eat, and getting enough ... sleep," he said. "The father thanked me, saying they had what they needed, and that it was the first time in a long time that he has slept without being afraid for his family's safety." VanHerck said it's been the tireless work of service members across the United States who have so far made the evacuation and resettlement effort a success. "Thousands of Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines are working across the United States to complete this incredibly important mission to provide our Afghan colleagues a safe harbor while they finalize their immigration process," VanHerck said. "I'm also grateful for the support of the community surrounding each of our bases and for the volunteers and others who are aiding in all of these efforts -- together we are honoring our commitment to our Afghan partners and their families." 'Over-the Horizon' Air Strike Kills 2 High-Profile ISIS-K Targets [2021-08-28] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military conducted an unmanned drone strike in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan -- to the east of Kabul -- which killed two ISIS-K individuals who were known to be responsible for planning and facilitation activities within the organization, the Pentagon's joint staff deputy director for regional operations said. During a briefing today at the Pentagon, Army Maj. Gen. William D. Taylor said that an additional ISIS-K member was also wounded in the strike, and that there were "zero civilian casualties." "We will continue to have the ability to defend ourselves and to leverage over-the-horizon capability to conduct counter-terrorism operations as needed," Taylor said. The U.S. military has said since the departure from Afghanistan was announced that it has the ability to conduct "over-the-horizon" operations as part of its ongoing counter-terrorism mission. That means it would continue to be able to conduct an operation such as the drone strike in Nangarhar Province, without having to actually launch it from within Afghanistan. While two ISIS-K members were killed and one was injured, the security situation in Afghanistan is still dangerous, said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby. "The threat stream is still active, still dynamic. We're still laser focused on that and force protection, and we aren't thinking for a minute that what happened yesterday gets us in the clear," Kirby said. "Do we think that that will have some impact on their ability going forward? Absolutely. What and to how much we're just going to have to keep watching the intelligence going forward." The U.S. military expects to be out of Afghanistan by August 31. Until then, noncombatant evacuation operations, or NEO, continue at Hamid Karzai International Airport to get as many American citizens, Afghan special immigrant visa applicants and other vulnerable Afghans out of the country. At the same time that evacuation is happening, the U.S. military is also conducting retrograde operations to get out military equipment and people not involved in the NEO. Taylor said both of those operations -- the NEO and the retrograde -- can happen concurrently and both will continue until the last U.S. aircraft and service member leaves the country. "We have the ability to include evacuees on military airlift out of Afghanistan until the very end," he said. "This is a massive military, diplomatic, security and humanitarian undertaking for the United States and our allies." In the last 24 hours, he said, 32 U.S. military aircraft left Hamid Karzai International Airport with about 4,000 personnel. An additional 34 coalition aircraft departed the airport with approximately 2,800 personnel. So far, he said, more than 117,000 have been evacuated from Afghanistan, with approximately 5,400 of those being American citizens. "This is an incredible number of people who are now safer thanks to the heroism of the young men and women who are putting their lives on the line each day to evacuate American and vulnerable Afghans out of Kabul," Taylor said. Thursday morning outside the gates of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, 13 of those American service members were killed as the result of an enemy attack while supporting the NEO there. A number of Afghan civilians were also killed, and both American service members and Afghan civilians were injured. Those service members killed came from the Marine Corps, the Army and the Navy. From the Marine Corps, the deceased include Sgt. Darin T. Hoover, Sgt. Johanny Rosariopichardo, Sgt. Nicole L. Gee, Cpl. Hunter Lopez, Cpl. Daegan W. Page, Cpl. Humberto A. Sanchez, Lance Cpl. David L. Espinoza, Lance Cpl. Jared M. Schmitz, Lance Cpl. Rylee J. McCollum, Lance Cpl. Dylan R. Merola, and Lance Cpl. Kareem M. Nikoui. From the Navy, Seaman Maxton W. Soviak was killed. And from the Army, it was Staff Sgt. Ryan C. Knauss who was killed. New Pentagon Exhibit Details How Department Keeps Its Edge [2021-08-31] WASHINGTON -- The multimedia exhibit "Keep the Edge: Security, Law Enforcement and Counterintelligence," was unveiled at the Pentagon. The exhibit aims to inform Defense Department employees on what it takes to keep the workforce safe, what threats to the department have been neutralized in the past, and what they can do to help the department keep the razor-sharp edge it needs to defend the nation. "In conjunction with the ribbon-cutting for this new display, the theme of which is 'Keep the Edge,' we are also recognizing that September 1 marks the beginning of the third annual National Insider Threat Awareness Month," said Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks. "All members of the Defense Department are called to redouble their efforts in practicing sound security habits and looking out for the wellbeing of their coworkers in a complex and challenging security environment." In addition to documenting the crimes of those who have harmed the United States though terrorism and the passing of information to adversaries, the exhibit, Hicks said, highlights the responsibility of existing department employees to prevent those crimes from happening in the future. Members of the military train every day to defend the United States and its interests from threats posed by adversaries. But who defends the mission and its defenders from terrorism, cybercrime, espionage, active shooters, insider threats, information leaks, fraud, theft and other kinds of crime? Each of the military services has an organization dedicated to protecting its service members, civilians and contractors from those kinds of threats, and also to ensure DOD employees themselves aren't using their access to pose threats to the nation, their co-workers or the mission. The Navy and the Marine Corps have the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, for instance -- which has been popularized on a fictional television series for more than 18 years now. The Air Force and Space Force have the Office of Special Investigations, and the Army has both the Criminal Investigation Command and Army Counterintelligence. At the top, the department has the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. But those agencies can't do their work alone. To ensure success, they depend heavily on an educated and knowledgeable workforce to serve as live sensors who are always in tune with what might pose a threat to the force. Together with that tuned-in workforce, those agencies keep the department and its employees safe from crime and violence and also work to prevent insiders from either intentionally or inadvertently leaking critical information that could put the nation or department at risk. In short, the effort ensures the military keeps its edge, so it's always ready to do its job. The new exhibit at the Pentagon was funded by USD(I&S), with NCIS contributing manpower, video and still imagery, and the OSI, CID and ACI contributing still imagery as a way to highlight their mission and the work that all DOD employees do to keep the nation safe. The exhibit features several screens running video content and an array of artifacts. There are also dozens of informational cards with details about hundreds of individuals who have harmed the United States, said the project's lead. "We have them hanging there from a bar with handcuffs," said MaryAnn Cummings, who also serves as the senior strategic communications advisor at NCIS. "We wanted to show that these are convicted criminals -- with the exception of about two that fled the country -- and they've freely admitted their criminal activity. We don't feel bad putting them in handcuffs." Cummings also said that using handcuffs rather than chains or loops to attach the cards to the display sent a message to visitors. "We wanted to find a way to put these people's image up without honoring them," she said. "Everywhere in the Pentagon there are photos of heroes and leaders -- all good people. But this exhibit has bad guys -- nobody looks good in a mug shot." Pentagon employees will be able to browse the content on display to better learn what is being done to protect the force and how they can contribute. "For the workforce -- those in uniform or civilian employees -- we hope that they get a better understanding, a higher level understanding of the threat that's out there and what their role is to prevent it or to mitigate the effects of it," Cummings said. For visitors to the building, those who are guests of employees or who will be able to take a tour of the Pentagon once the COVID-19 restrictions are lifted, Cummings said she hopes to increase awareness that the nation is vulnerable to attacks from criminal activity and malicious actors. For anybody who visits the exhibit, she said, there's a common takeaway. Cummings said that responsibility extends beyond just knowing policy, it includes also looking for the warnings and indicators of those who may be committing espionage, sabotage or criminal leaking and then reporting that. A History of Treason The new educational exhibit includes details of hundreds of crimes against the Defense Department and the federal government; many of those stories include photographs as well. One section provides the narratives of 345 individuals who committed espionage against the United States. Many of those were trusted agents of the government, going as far back as 1775 during the Revolutionary War. Dr. Benjamin Church, for instance, served as the senior physician in charge of medical requirements of and support to Gen. George Washington's army. "Church was providing information to a British general about the health of the military of Washington's forces," Cummings said. "Obviously, that was not a good thing. And he was eventually found out. We even have some of the coded letters that are going to be on display." Perhaps the most well-known name associated with treason is that of Benedict Arnold, a one-time American military officer who in his earliest days fought honorably for American independence. "A lot of people don't realize that Benedict Arnold was a very successful Army general -- until he became disillusioned, for a number of reasons," Cummings said. As an American military officer, Arnold was given command of the Army post at West Point, New York. He made a deal with the British to surrender the post in exchange for 20,000 British pounds and a position in the British army. Arnold's plans were discovered, and he was not able to carry them out. The British officer he worked with was captured and hanged by the Americans, but Arnold himself was able to escape and flee to England. Modern Day Spies, Killers and Terrorism The new Pentagon exhibit isn't just a history lesson of long-ago conflicts. It's a well-researched museum-like presentation with video, artifacts and printed material that tells the stories of hundreds of Americans who hurt the department or nation through espionage, the selling of secrets or violence. Modern threats include Aaron Alexis, the DOD contractor responsible for the shootings at the Navy Yard in Washington in 2013, and Nidal Hasan, the Army officer responsible for killing 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009. The exhibit includes video content on both incidents. On the modern-day espionage front, the exhibit discusses Navy engineer Mostafa Awwad who, in 2015, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for attempting to provide schematics of the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford to Egyptian authorities, and FBI Special Agent Robert Hanssen who, in 2001, pleaded guilty to passing classified national security and counterintelligence information to the Russians. He is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. When it comes to terrorism, the exhibit details 30 attacks against the U.S. and the department, including the 1996 attack on Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 Air Force personnel; the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 sailors; and the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania. In all, the new exhibit covers around 600 individuals, many of them insiders, who harmed the nation or the department through terrorism, violence, espionage, or the illegal release of information. Maintain the Edge The original idea for the "Keep the Edge: Security, Law Enforcement and Counterintelligence" exhibit was initiated in 2018, Cummings said, but work was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, with help from graphic artists, videographers, photographers and researchers at the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Defense Media Activity, and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, along with assistance from the International Spy Museum in Washington, the project has come to fruition, Cummings said. Cummings said that even her own mother was able to offer assistance by reading all the material for the exhibit to ensure it made sense to individuals who are not familiar with the law enforcement community. "I asked her to review all of the narratives, all of the stories, all of the information that would be out in the public," she said. "She read every single one and provided me [with] some great feedback. She was my focus group. Unfortunately, she passed away this past January, so she won't ever know the full magnitude of it." America depends on its soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and guardians to defend the nation. But for those service members to do their job, the information they use, the facilities they operate in, and the service members themselves must be kept safe from threats both inside and out. The new exhibit demonstrates how everybody in the Defense Department helps those service members stay sharp. "That's why we call it keeping the edge," Cummings said. "Our military forces have a strategic advantage, a strategic edge over adversaries -- and we want to protect that. That means protecting the people, protecting the technology and protecting the facilities. All of us have a requirement to keep our information safe, to keep ourselves safe, to keep our teammates safe. We do that by protecting our information, but also looking and seeing those indicators or warnings and reporting." Artillerymen Must Be Ready to Operate in Space Degraded, Denied Environments, Spacecom Leader Says [2021-09-02] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Space Command provides capability to warfighters, including those in precision fires; leaders involved in fires should also be prepared -- and prepare soldiers -- to operate without that space capability in case the environment is denied or degraded, the Spacecom commander said. Spacecom provides, among other things, position navigation and timing, satellite communications, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities and missile warning to warfighters, said Army Gen. James H. Dickinson, who spoke Wednesday at the 2021 Fires Conference at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. "I'm responsible for providing that to you as the warfighter," he said. "I want to make sure you know where you're at. [I] want to make sure that you should know if that's been denied to you or degraded for you. In other words, when you go out to your units, when you become commanders, you should always remember that you may be in a degraded or denied environment." Dickinson said he was pleased to see at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, that artillery soldiers were practicing use of the M2 aiming circle -- a non-electronic, mechanical and optical device -- to aim their guns. "They were setting in that weapon system ... they weren't using GPS," he said. "They were doing something that they absolutely have to be able to do in the event that they don't have that signal. And that might not be for a long time, but it might be at a critical point on the battlefield where you have to be, in order to provide your effect -- whatever that is -- and you can't get to that." Dickinson told officers at the Fires Conference that the capabilities Space Command provides -- GPS, communications, and ISR, for instance -- are phenomenal and greatly enhance their ability to operate. But they must be prepared for when, even for a short time, that capability is denied them by the enemy. The general said he believes that at training centers, scenarios now involve degraded environments to force participants to fall back on older methods to accomplish their mission. "I think they are creating those effects at the National Training Center, at combat training centers, so that you get a feel for what that's like and having to go back to like an M2 aiming circle or even a lensatic compass and a map, if you have to," he said. "But I think you, we, have to be prepared that you will be in a degraded or denied environment. And, so, understanding what that means and how you can mitigate that will be even more important." DOD Recognizes 50 Years of Security Cooperation [2021-09-03] WASHINGTON -- There have been relations between America's military and the militaries of other nations since the United States first became a country. However, it wasn't until 1971 that the Defense Department created the Defense Security Assistance Agency -- later renamed the Defense Security Cooperation Agency -- to make security cooperation a formal function of the Defense Department. Now a half century later, as DSCA turns 50 years old, it is still focusing on its original mission to build enduring partnerships between U.S. and partner nation militaries, making both participants stronger. There have been many changes over the past five decades, but the value of Security Cooperation, or SC, to achieve our strategic goals has endured, according to DSCA Director Heidi Grant, the first permanent SES civilian to lead the agency. "Senior leaders across the U.S. government turn to the SC enterprise for solutions to help solve the most pressing U.S. defense and foreign policy challenges. In this era of renewed strategic competition, DSCA must play a leading role, guiding the SC enterprise into a new age of transformation and innovation," she added. Security cooperation involves all the DOD interactions, programs and activities carried out with foreign security forces and their institutions. This includes exercises, training, armaments cooperation, information sharing, collaboration, foreign military sales, ministry advising and humanitarian assistance. "Security cooperation is one of the most potent tools we have to affect U.S. national security interests and to influence the trajectory of the security environment around the world," said Jedidiah P. Royal, the deputy director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. It is DSCA that integrates activities across the entire security cooperation enterprise, Royal said. "Security cooperation is our business," he said. "That manifests in a lot of different ways. But in particular, what we want to make sure is that for any objective that we have with an ally or partner nation or group of ally partner nations, that on a pragmatic, practical level, we are servicing what we have committed to." That, he said, includes weapons sales, follow-on training and material support. DSCA facilitates a lot of weapons and equipment sales to foreign allies and partner nations. But those sales don't just materially benefit those nations who buy American equipment -- that's only part of the plan. "I've been really pleased to see just how much growth there has been on doctrine level and on strategy development level, on the absorption of logistics and sustainment for these various pieces of equipment that we might be supporting our allies with, building their institutional capacity," Royal said. "In the past, it may have just been a little bit more focused on individual pieces of equipment. Now we're really looking at a relationship, a long-term relationship, and making sure that we attract allies and partners through not only a piece of equipment, but for a full spectrum approach." Education for partner nation military personnel is a big part of what DSCA does, Royal said, and in fiscal year 2020 there were more than 27,000 students in the Defense Department's international military education and training program -- helping the service members of foreign militaries develop their own skills, while at the same time learning how the U.S. military itself does business. "We want the individuals in the loop that are making decisions from a strategy perspective or from a tactical perspective to be familiar with the way the United States incorporates our values into our national security enterprise," Royal said. "We want to see them doing the same things." DSCA isn't just facilitating training and development for officers and leaders within the militaries of partner and allied nations. It's also working to ensure development of enlisted personnel, said Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Daniel Simpson, the senior enlisted advisor to the director at DSCA. While the United States military has a strong noncommissioned officer corps, that isn't always the case with the militaries of other nations. A stronger NCO corps is something DSCA would like to help allied and partner nations develop for themselves as well, Simpson said. "The enlisted corps forms the backbone of any military force," Simpson said. "You can't fly the planes, you can't operate the tanks, you can't operate any of the systems unless you have trained professionals to maintain, sustain, and in many cases employ them." In the U.S., he said, those trained professionals are most often enlisted personnel. DSCA works to develop the enlisted forces or allied and partner nations through professional military education as well as through training and exercises, where the U.S. military services work face-to-face with allied and partner nation militaries on things like doctrine development, operations, maintenance and sustainment, said Simpson. Another thing DSCA does is work to help partner and allied nations build their human resources capacity to better support a professional enlisted corps, Simpson said. When it was first stood up on Sept. 1, 1971, the then-DSAA included the Foreign Military Sales Credit Program, the Military Assistance Program; the International Military Education and Training Program; and the Foreign Military Sales Program. Back then, the new agency had only 90 employees dedicated to security cooperation. Today, DSCA has grown to more than 1,000 employees. And in 2019, DSCA stood up the Defense Security Cooperation University as well -- a huge milestone not just for the agency, but for the 20,000 security cooperation professionals across the security cooperation enterprise. DSCU and DSCA, have played a critical role in educating and professionalizing the broader security cooperation workforce and enterprise. DSCA schoolhouses, the Defense Institute of International Legal Studies and the Institute for Security Governance now fall under DSCU. DIILS serves as the lead U.S. defense security cooperation resource for professional legal engagement with international defense sector personnel. ISG was established as an international schoolhouse focused on strengthening civilian control of the armed forces and democratic governance, with particular emphasis on emergent democracies worldwide. The realignment of these institutions under DSCU enhances DSCA's Institutional Capacity Building programs. "The vision of the university is to bring the entire education element and professionalization element of [the] security arm of the U.S. government under a single entity," Royal said. The university concept, he said, among other things, provides rigor to security cooperation education and ensures more efficient and complementary relationships between once stand-alone security cooperation school houses. Standing up DSCU, he said, was a "significant, inspired vision." Today, to further enhance development and professionalization of the security cooperation workforce, Royal said DSCA is revising curriculum at the university and looking to also incorporate concepts from the Department of State as well. "We're trying to bring them in more to be able to speak to those national security objectives ... and look for linkages between the diplomatic arm of the U.S. government and the security cooperation arm," he said. Going forward, for the next 50 years, Royal said the agency is working on a strategic transformation to further enhance how the U.S. military does security cooperation. "How we're moving forward is to focus our security cooperation efforts on a full spectrum, whole-of-nation approach with allies and partners, while simultaneously strengthening a diverse, certified, adaptable and resilient security cooperation workforce," he said. "I think that's really the driving thought behind us looking both externally and making sure that we are the tangible manifestation of the security interests from the White House on down, but also making sure that we're continuing to improve the overall workforce and our ability to meet those objectives." DARPA Looks to Microbes to Process Rare Earth Elements [2021-09-08] WASHINGTON -- Rare earth elements -- a group of 17 metals, including neodymium -- are used in lasers, precision-guided weapons, magnets for motors and other devices that are at the heart of many critical technologies the Defense Department depends on. While the U.S. has domestic access to rare earth elements, it doesn't have a strong domestic base for processing that supply, Stefanie Tompkins, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, said during an online discussion today at the 5th Annual Defense News Conference. To get after that, Tompkins said DARPA recently embarked on a new program called the Environmental Microbes as a BioEngineering Resource, or EMBER program, to secure America's rare earth elements supply chain. "From a DARPA perspective what we're looking at are what are some of the barriers that have made it difficult for the U.S. to maintain dominance in rare earth processing," she said. "One of the things we just launched a new program in is related to bio-mining. The program is called EMBER, and that is about actually designing microbes who can more efficiently and at scale and in an environmentally sound way, separate out these rare earth elements from the ore in which they're actually found." Right now, the most common practices for processing rare earth elements are chemically intensive and frequently toxic to the environment, she said. "Because of all of that, it's caused the U.S. to sort of back away ... from those sort of expensive and environmentally painful processes. And so we need to find new ways," she said. "Biological is one of the things that we're exploring." Rare earth elements aren't the only thing the Defense Department depends on and needs a more secure supply of. Microelectronics are at the heart of nearly every modern technology used by the Defense Department, and Tompkins said that with the DOD's Electronics Resurgence Initiative, DARPA is working to ensure America's warfighters continue to have access to the latest technologies. "This is focusing on sort of transforming the space of semiconductors, bringing it back to being a national strength, and at the same time moving into sort of the ... next generation of what microelectronics will really look like," she said. While military capabilities like aircraft rely on mechanical technologies to make them fly, Tompkins said what really makes something like a fighter jet a truly powerful tool in the U.S. military's arsenal are the microelectronics it has on board. "Microelectronics are really sort of what make all of our different platforms and systems operate the way they do," she said "If you think about an aircraft, there's the part of it that actually flies -- there's sort of the aeronautical piece of it. But almost everything that really gives it the power and capability of a U.S. defense capability will come from the microelectronics." Those capabilities include sensors, communications, avionics, radars and more. Tompkins said industry is approaching a "plateau" in electronics capability now where it's getting more difficult to put more capability onto microchips. "We have to start innovating and moving into different directions," she said. "That might mean completely new materials ... it might mean moving from what has typically been a flat, two-dimensional structure where you're sort of putting things side-by-side on a chip into three dimensions, where you're building them up, more and more." Another element factoring into how the DOD stays on top of the latest advancements in microelectronics is how it differs from the commercial sector in what it purchases, Tompkins said. "A really interesting difference between sort of a lot of commercial thinking and the DOD thinking is that in commercial thinking you're going to be looking heavily for general purpose capabilities, general purpose processing," she said. "In the national security world, we often have to think about applications for which we could actually do much better if we specialize. Those are all areas in which we're putting a lot of investment." DOD Extends 'Firefly,' Related 'FireGuard' Support to Extinguish Wildfires [2021-09-08] WASHINGTON -- Since the launch of a 2019 pilot program, the National Guard's "FireGuard" program, in conjunction with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's "Firefly" capability, has provided actionable information to help fight wildfires on the United States west coast. The results of the effort have been good, and now the Defense Department has agreed to extend use of NGA's Firefly program through September 2022. With Firefly extended for another year, the National Guard's FireGuard program will continue as well. The FireGuard program includes two teams of Air Force and Army National Guard intelligence analysts -- one in California and another in Colorado -- who use the Firefly algorithm from NGA to help interpret data from multiple sources and sensors, including imagery from satellites and UAVs. "Imagine Firefly as a funnel above FireGuard," Maj. Jan Bender, who serves as the commander of FireGuard's team in California, said. "We receive an array of information from multiple sources, and our analysts ... pull this information, aggregate it, analyze it, assess it, and then from that they produce sanitized unclassified products that go out to the wildland firefighting community." Bender said the products produced by FireGuard allow for overhead maps to be generated with what he described as "polygons" laid on top that depict fire-affected areas. The firefighting community might receive updates to those products as often as every 15 minutes. While the intelligence products the FireGuard team produces don't replace anything the wildland firefighting community already uses, they do offer firefighters things they don't currently have access to. "It complements and helps complete the picture on the ground for wildland firefighting partners," Bender said. "We are one of the first incident awareness and assessment tools that offers an overhead visualization of initial detections on wildfires and rolling assessments. There are a number of tools that come into play as a fire becomes a larger incident, but many times [firefighters] are not able to leverage them until the incident is a significant size. In our program, we excel at initial detections on wildfires in remote locations and [at] odd hours." Phillip SeLegue serves as the deputy chief for the statewide intelligence program for CalFire. He's been in the firefighting business for 22 years now and says that right now in California there are 10 active wildfires all classified as "major attack fires," which he said is the highest level. Since the start of the year, nearly 3,000 square miles of California has been destroyed by wildfires, he said, but the tools provided by FireGuard have improved the ability of the nearly 15,000 firefighters on the ground to do their job. SeLegue said the tools provided by FireGuard and from Firefly provide information that allows him to better know where fires are and how they are spreading. "As an intel person at our incident command post, it alerts me when fire continues to propagate in the field ... it allows me to be notified of the continued spread of it, so then back at the command post I can continue to produce models and advise operations." At the broader level, SeLegue said, the tools from FireGuard allow him to see from the strategic level what is happening with wildfires in California so he can make the best decisions on how to request and allocate firefighting resources. In one incident the tools provided by FireGuard were even able to help save lives, SeLegue said. "There have been use cases where it's absolutely assisted in saving lives," he said. "The most notable was last year on the Creek Fire, where we were able to extricate civilians that were stuck at a campground as the fire converged and they were cut off from evacuation routes." This year the DOD has again extended use of the NGA's Firefly program through the end of the fiscal year 2022, and SeLegue said he's glad to have it for that much longer. "I think that this program is essential -- that it's highly valuable, and assists us with our daily operation," he said. 9/11 Pentagon Survivors Talk With High School, College Students About Experience [2021-09-09] WASHINGTON -- When American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon at approximately 9:37 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, Cassandra Johnson said she had barely noticed. Johnson now serves as the associate deputy general counsel for the Office of the Army General Counsel. In 2001, she worked as a civilian within the Defense Department's legal community as well. On the morning of Sept. 11, she was headed into a 9 a.m. meeting and her office's secretary let her and others know that an aircraft had hit one of the towers at the World Trade Center in New York City. "We all looked at each other and said, was it cloudy? Was it some kind of pilot error? We just didn't know how to react and we just continued with our meeting," Johnson said today during an online forum hosted by the Defense Department which allowed college students to hear the stories of survivors of the 9/11 Pentagon attacks. Johnson's meeting was interrupted twice by somebody coming into the room and whispering something into the ear of her supervisor. Soon after the meeting was dismissed. As she walked out of the office, the television showed President George W. Bush's visit to Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida, where he had just been informed about the planes crashing into the World Trade Center buildings. Back at her desk, Johnson said she returned to business as usual. "I continued back to my desk and started returning some phone calls," she said. "And I didn't feel the building shake or anything like that -- but I did hear a very light, like a pop almost. And that was about it." Shortly after, she said, she learned that pop would change everything. "The next thing I know, our executive officer comes by very calmly and says 'Can you all just pick up your belongings, your purses, whatever, just leave the building. Let's leave quietly.' I remember putting my hands down on the desk saying I've got nothing to worry about, I'm in the Pentagon. I'm safe here." Outside the building, she learned quickly that she wasn't safe -- nobody was. "I saw this big bellow of smoke -- I had no idea what that was," she said. "We proceeded very calmly, 25,000 people, if you can imagine, just emptying out. We came out into what is the south parking lot. At that moment, I know I went into shock. What I saw was, the only way I could describe it was when you hear people talk about an out-of-body experience." The nearby highway, she said, was stopped -- like a parking lot. Police cars and firetrucks were everywhere, and the morning sky was filled with smoke. Johnson and her co-workers heard from a police officer who told them to move away from the building because there was another hijacked aircraft in the air that could cause even more damage. The coworkers moved to nearby Pentagon City, a commercial district on the other side of the highway. While Johnson made it home safe that night, she learned that a friend and mentor of hers, Ernest Willcher, had been killed in the attack. She said Willcher will be honored and remembered Sept. 10 at a ceremony in the general counsel's office at the Pentagon. Going Back Robert Hogue, now serves as the acting assistant secretary of the Navy for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. In 2001, he was a military officer who served as the deputy counsel for the commandant of the Marine Corps. That morning, he said, he had initially misinterpreted what he was seeing happen in New York City. After the first plane struck in New York, he said he wondered how the pilot hadn't seen the tower. Later, when he saw the second plane hit, it still didn't immediately click for him what it all meant. "My first thought was, wow, lucky they got that on video. Just one of those weird things, right? The camera was in the right place at the right time," he said. "And then I realized, holy crap -- that's a second building. And then, we're a nation at war, and we work in the National Military Command Center. Oh my God, this is D-Day." As a military officer, Hogue said it occurred to him that the Pentagon, being in the flight path for nearby Reagan National Airport, might also be a good target for terrorists. Hogue had been headed to discuss those fears with his boss when his concerns proved to be correct. "Right when I passed the admin chief's desk, that's when the plane hit," he said. "I only have a recollection of hearing a very loud grinding noise and a vibration. And then boom -- the next thing I know I'm in the corner on the north side of the office. I've been blown from the south side, through the ceiling tiles and the lights. And I woke up on my face looking to the west wall." He said he could see a cloud of smoke tumbling outside the window of the office -- though the reinforced office windows had stayed intact. "As I was looking at it I realized it was actually orange and black and then the realization, that's a fireball. Then I see my boss in the foreground, he's on the floor. There's a major in there trying to pick him up. And slowly as it unfolds, we realize we've been hit -- we've got to get out of here." A fog hung in the legal office there, he said. At first he thought it might be smoke, but then realized it was a haze of jet fuel from the aircraft and was flammable. The offices beneath his own, he said, were on fire. And he realized the danger of the situation. "We pulled and pulled and got the door open just enough to squeeze out into the hallway," he said. "At that point, the south side of the building is in the process of collapsing." In the hallway, he said, a Navy chief who was standing near where there was a construction door was calling people in the direction of safety. "He's using ship-board fire procedures -- if you can hear my voice come this way," he said. "Now we know we're going to live." But because his boss was incapacitated and he was in charge, Hogue said he had to make a leader decision that would put the wellbeing of others before his own safety. "I said no -- we are going to search these offices first," he said. "And we did. And we found people, and we got them out from under the desks, and we made our way down the hall for the construction entrance. And more or less, when we got to the construction entrance, by my recollection, the building fell in behind us." Remembering Flight 93 On Sept. 11, 2001, three aircraft crashed into buildings: two in New York City, and one in Washington, D.C. But a fourth aircraft, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Johnson said she and her husband recently visited the memorial site there. She said she thinks it's important to make an effort to remember what happened to Flight 93, because the civilians on that flight banded together to prevent another tragedy on the ground. "I encourage you to go to Shanksville -- it's almost the forgotten sight," she said. "If it hadn't been for those heroes -- who got that plane right into the ground and smashed into obliteration -- that plane, clearly we know, was destined for Washington, D.C. I think about that every day. And that was a major sacrifice." Johnson said the passengers on Flight 93 had known about the Pentagon and the World Trade Center towers and made a decision to not let their own plane be used the same way. "It was up to them to not let that happen to any other people," she said. "When you go to Shanksville, you appreciate what they did. They took a vote on the plane -- are we ready to unite and take this plane down on our terms, not theirs? And that just resonates." DOD Leaders Recall Americans' Resilience After 9/11 [2021-09-10] WASHINGTON -- The 9/11 attacks made most Americans who are old enough to remember both confused and angry about what had happened. The attacks weren't just on people or buildings, but on the nation's guiding ideals of freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Early that morning, two aircraft hit the tallest towers of the World Trade Center complex in New York City. At 9:37 a.m., another plane hit the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., killing 184 innocent individuals both onboard the plane and in the building. Less than 30 minutes later, another plane crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks was working at the Pentagon that day, and her son was enrolled in the child care center there, as well. She said she and her son were lucky to get home that night, adding that it took hours to make the trip. But the following day, she said, she knew America was back on its feet. "On 9/11, the next day, and in the months and years that followed ... we saw this Pentagon community respond to that attack with incredible resiliency," she said during a memorial event in the Pentagon courtyard today. "We saw resiliency through acts of selflessness: Pentagon employees and first responders on that day who worked to rescue survivors and fight through an inferno. Incredibly, they rushed into danger, just as they did in New York, into the suffocating black smoke and unbearable intense heat." Even after the attack on the Pentagon, Hicks said, the building never closed. "That night, Secretary [Donald Rumsfeld] held a press conference to let the American people know that the Pentagon would continue to operate," she said. "There was the resiliency through duty. That next day, like many other employees, I headed back into this building. The Pentagon, in fact, has never closed its doors fully since the completion of its construction." While planners in the Pentagon worked out America's response, construction crews worked endlessly to put the building back together, Hicks said. "The team's goal in [the Phoenix Project] was to rebuild the damaged sections of the building and have it ready to be staffed within one year," she said. "They put a large digital clock up, and it displayed to the construction team the remaining days, hours and minutes until September 11, 2002." Hicks said crews worked tirelessly to complete that task -- some putting in 20-hour days. That effort, she said, didn't just result in them meeting their goal -- it resulted in them beating it. "Incredibly, that work of the Phoenix Project was finished in August of 2002, more than three weeks early," she said. "And as we are here commemorating the 20 years since the attacks, this is a fitting moment, I think, to rededicate ourselves to that resilient spirit, one that seeks to act selflessly, uphold our duty, and is dedicated to perseverance." The planning of America's response to 9/11 began almost immediately. Following the attacks, said Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the deaths of Americans in New York City, the Pentagon and Shanksville united the nation in an effort to rebuild and defeat those who had both perpetrated the attack and those who harbored them. "All these people inspired a generation who responded to the call of our nation, as one, to fight and defend our way of life," Hyten said. "[It's] a generation that has fought tirelessly to defeat terrorists and terrorism in Afghanistan and around the world. And for more than 20 years, we successfully prevented another major attack on our homeland. Never before in our history has America asked so much over such a long, sustained period of time of an all-volunteer force. We kept our nation safe." The U.S. ceased operations in Afghanistan at the end of last month, and those who fought in Afghanistan have strong feelings about what happened there, Hyten said. But one emotion they should all have, he said, is pride. "We feel every emotion that you can imagine: anger, frustration, confusion," he said. "But we also feel pride -- pride for doing the job our nation called us to do; pride in doing it right and doing it well; pride in doing it as one nation." The job of American servicemen and women is not done now -- nor will it ever be, he said. Every American who puts on a military uniform has committed to a job that continues for as long as they are in the service. "We must continue our hard work to protect the lives of all Americans, our country, the values we cherish," he said. "We must stay ready and resilient. So, I thank you for your commitment to our country; I thank you to everyone who serves, and I'm proud of everything that you do to defend this nation, our citizens, and our way of life." Guard Pilot Who Flew Over D.C. Following 9/11 Likened Attacks to Modern-Day Pearl Harbor [2021-09-10] WASHINGTON -- Two decades ago, Air Force Lt. Gen. Marc H. Sasseville, now the vice chief of the National Guard Bureau, was a lieutenant colonel with the D.C. Air National Guard. When aircraft hit the World Trade Center towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, the nation went on alert -- and so did he. "As a military pilot, I had a couple thoughts," he said. "Short term, [we] need to get in the air -- we're under attack. All I could think about was Pearl Harbor, to December 7, 1941, and showing some kind of ability to respond. We didn't know what was behind these initial hits on America. There could have been multiple waves." He also realized that something big had happened -- a game-changing event for the United States that would alter its course for a long time. "This was the start of something that was going to be much bigger and which was going to last much longer," he said. "We had clues about our enemy before then, but we really hadn't put the picture -- the gravity of the situation -- together until 9/11. And then we realized that we're on to something that was going to take us decades, if ever, to resolve." By the time Sasseville and fellow F-16 pilot Heather R. Penney -- then a first lieutenant -- got into the cockpits of their F-16 aircraft at Andrews Air Force Base, they already knew that hijacked aircraft had hit the Pentagon and the towers in New York. Their mission was to prevent further damage -- in particular from that posed by United Airlines Flight 93. When Sasseville and Penney left Andrews, their aircraft launched without any missiles on board. They had embarked on what amounted to a suicide mission. Without missiles, the two pilots were prepared to ram their own aircraft into Flight 93 in order to keep it from causing any damage to the nation's capital. Flight 93 was originally supposed to go from Newark International Airport in New Jersey to San Francisco International in California. Just 45 minutes into that domestic flight, hijackers took control of the plane and redirected it toward Washington. The goal of the hijackers still remains unknown, perhaps it was to crash the plane into either the U.S. Capitol Building or the White House. Sasseville and Penney were supposed to prevent something like that from happening. "We had gotten a call from the White House Joint Operations Center, and they could see the picture," Sasseville said. "They knew that Flight 93 had turned back. And they had basically asked if we had any airplanes that could go up the river." It made perfect sense what they were being asked to do, Sasseville said. The hijackers might not be able to fly by instruments and get the aircraft where they wanted it. But if they looked at the ground -- at the Potomac River -- they could use that as a guide to get them where they wanted to be. "You call them geographic references," Sasseville said. "Flying down a river, flying down a highway or a power line is a great way to help guide you to a certain point. That's what it looked like on the radar scope, that there was an airplane flying down the river." Resistance from passengers aboard Flight 93 eventually thwarted the hijackers' plans; and ultimately, the plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, about 130 miles northwest of Washington. All of that happened before Sasseville and Penney even got into the air -- though they didn't know it at the time. While neither pilot saw Flight 93 on that mission, they did see the results of American Airlines Flight 77 -- which had crashed into the Pentagon. "The piece that I remember most was being at 6,000 feet, right there, smelling the fumes from the fire and looking down and seeing chaos, and just feeling sick to my stomach," Sasseville said. "I wasn't sick because of the fumes. I was sick because I knew that we had been attacked." Sasseville said the United States had been attacked that day because it failed to see such a thing coming. He called it a "failure of imagination." The United States must ready itself for another attack, he said, because America's enemies will try again. "The next one won't be like this one was, but there will be another attack. There are still people out there that do not want us to have the liberties and freedoms that we enjoy today," he said. "We need to thoroughly examine our vulnerabilities and our weaknesses ... and we need to shore up those vulnerabilities and expect the unexpected and not be surprised by it." On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Sasseville had been attending meetings at the 113th Wing, part of the D.C. National Guard. His unit had just come back from a training deployment, and manning was low. "[It was a] skeleton crew because those same guardsmen ... go back to their normal jobs," he said. "We typically don't see them for a while. And so what we had there that day was a skeleton crew of the full-time operators and maintainers and logistics and support people inside the wing." After the terrorist attacks, he said, things changed dramatically at the unit. "It was an entire wing effort that really started to swing into motion," he said. "We started refueling airplanes, loading up airplanes with weapons, assembling the weapons, and we just got into [being like] a machine that went out and collected our part-timers that had gone back to their employers, to bring them back to begin to set alert, because we knew we were going to need a lot more help and this was going to go on for some time." One big change for the 113th Wing at Andrews was that it became part of Operation Noble Eagle, part of which is to protect the skies over the Nation's Capital. "We became part of the air defense structure," he said. "And everything started to set into motion that kicked off almost 90 days of 24/7 airplanes continuously in the air defending the nation's capital. So that was our reaction. We became part of Noble Eagle -- we became part of the air defense structure overnight." Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the 113th Wing changed in another big way as well -- along with the rest of the National Guard. It grew and developed in importance and how it can be used to carry out the defense of the nation. "We have this duality of mission where we go to fight the nation's wars, and we support our communities back home," Sasseville said. "These two decades-plus have really reinforced the professionalization and the operationalization of the National Guard to make us the most ready we have probably ever been in our history." After 20 years of growth and development through participation in and planning of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, that growth is something Sasseville said he hopes the National Guard will never lose. "We need to be incorporated in all the training, and we need to be used as part of the joint force, so that we don't lose that investment, that muscle memory," he said. "I know that there's plenty of desire for, on the part of our guardsmen, to continue to serve in that capacity." Long-Term U.S., Australian Relationship Will Ensure Free, Open Indo-Pacific Region [2021-09-15] WASHINGTON -- Despite continued Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific region, the long-standing relationship between the United States and Australia -- and the strong partnership between their militaries -- is expected to enhance stability, security and freedom in the region not just for Australia but for all nations with an interest in the Pacific. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III met this morning with the Australian Minister for Defence Peter Dutton, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said during a briefing today. "We're proud to stand alongside our Australian allies to strengthen deterrence and defend our shared values and our shared interests in the Indo-Pacific region," Kirby said. "The U.S./Australia relationship is what we're proud to call 'the unbreakable alliance.' Our increasing convergence and alignment on the most important strategic issues attest to the enduring value of this partnership." Kirby said the two nations are cooperating on things like force posture, strategic capabilities, regional engagement and military operations. "Ultimately, we're cooperating on all that strengthens our ability to deter threats to a free and open Indo-Pacific," he said. When it comes to threats posed by China, such as reneging on promises of autonomy guaranteed in Hong Kong under a 1997 agreement with the British government, or its unlawful claim to the entire South China Sea, which interferes with the wellbeing and prosperity other nations in the region, Kirby said it's one of the main focus areas of the U.S. and Australian partnership. "I think without question ... the kinds of aggressive activities that we're seeing out of China in the Indo-Pacific region, [are] causing all of us, the international community, not just the United States, to make sure that we're focused appropriately on that behavior," Kirby said. During remarks earlier this morning, Dutton said the security situation in the Indo-Pacific region is "deteriorating" and that only with continued partnerships, such as with "Five Eyes" -- which include the U.S., Australia, the U.K., New Zealand and Canada -- can security be achieved. "We certainly share the concerns that the minister has ... about the aggressive behavior, the coercive and intimidating activities that the Chinese are making throughout the region -- not just militarily but diplomatically and economically as well," Kirby said. "We're going to stay laser-focused on that. Our relationship with Australia ... is a key part of our ability to continue to maintain that focus and to make sure that we and our allies and partners are properly postured to be able to push back appropriately and to help ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific." U.S. Military-Sourced Aircraft in Tajikistan Last month, a number of pilots and personnel with the Afghan air force fled Afghanistan aboard aircraft that had been supplied to the country by the United States. Many of those Afghans and aircraft are now in either nearby Uzbekistan or Tajikistan. Kirby said while the U.S. doesn't currently have information about the status of Afghan air force personnel, it is working now to find options for what will happen to the aircraft -- at least those that made it to Tajikistan. "I don't have any updates for the pilots, aircrew and I think some families that might be in Tajikistan," Kirby said, referring questions about the status of those individuals to the U.S. State Department. "As to the aircraft -- as I said the other day, we have numerous options available to explore with respect to the disposition of those aircraft and we haven't made any final decisions and we're working our way through what those options are right now." DoD: Best Time to Take Military Spouse Survey is Now [2021-09-17] WASHINGTON -- Back in July, the Defense Department released the Active Duty Spouse Survey -- something it does every two years. In the past, the survey was available by invitation only to a select few military spouses. But not this year. Through late October, all spouses of active-duty military members -- more than 600,000 of them -- can visit the OPA Survey Portal and tell the Pentagon what they think about being 'married to the military.' The results of the survey will be used to give Pentagon decision-makers a better idea about how they can adjust family policy and programs in the coming years -- especially in relation to military benefits, financial stability, spouse employment, child care, and the overall health and well-being of spouses, children and families. "Leadership across the DoD takes the [survey] seriously," said Eddy Mentzer, the associate director for strategic initiatives within DoD's military community support programs office. "From the office of the secretary of defense to the military service headquarters, [survey] results are shared and utilized to shape future programs and resources. The survey results are also shared outside the DoD with Capitol Hill and the White House." This year, some military spouses will still get mail and/or email invitation to participate. Those spouses will get a "ticket number" they can enter to begin the survey. All military spouses can get a ticket number by selecting "click here" at www.DoDsurveys.mil. The DoD ID number on the back of the spouse's common access card, along with the date of birth, will be used to access the survey. While some military spouses will remain silent about life being married to an active-duty service member, others will want to let the Pentagon know directly what's grinding their gears. Mentzer said more spouses should let military leadership know what's going on in the trenches at home. "While military spouses share common experiences, each military spouse has a unique story," Mentzer said. "Military life can result in a number of challenges. By allowing their voice to be heard and sharing their experiences, military spouses can ensure they are able to have a voice in the future programs that support them." According to the Defense Department's Office of People Analytics, which is conducting the survey, the data collected is reported in aggregate to protect the identity of participants. That aggregate data will eventually be made available publicly so participants can see how other military spouses responded. Information from the 2019 survey is available online at the link below. DoD: August 29 Strike in Kabul 'Tragic Mistake,' Kills 10 Civilians [2021-09-17] WASHINGTON -- The strike by a Hellfire missile in Kabul, August 29, which was launched in an effort to kill ISIS-K planners, instead killed 10 civilians, the commander of U.S. Central Command, Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr. said. During a briefing today at the Pentagon, McKenzie outlined the findings of an investigation he directed following that strike, after reports said civilians may have been killed. "Having thoroughly reviewed the findings of the investigation and the supporting analysis by interagency partners, I am now convinced that as many as 10 civilians -- including up to seven children -- were tragically killed in that strike," he said. "Moreover, we now assess that it is unlikely that the vehicle and those who died were associated with ISIS-K or were a direct threat to U.S. forces." The general offered condolences to the family and friends of those killed but said that at the time of the strike, the intelligence that was being reported left him and others confident the strike would have averted a threat to U.S. military forces at the nearby Hamid Karzai International Airport, or HKIA, who were busy evacuating civilians. "Our investigation now concludes that the strike was a tragic mistake," he said. The general said military intelligence indicated a compound located about 6 kilometers from the airport was being used by ISIS-K planners to plot attacks similar to the one that killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 100 Afghan civilians just three days earlier near the Abbey Gate entrance to HKIA. The same intelligence also indicated that a white vehicle would play an important role in one of the attacks being planned. Based on that intelligence, McKenzie said surveillance assets, including as many as six MQ-9 Reapers, were focused on that compound. On the morning of Aug. 29, he said, observers spotted the white vehicle arriving at the compound. The observers spent the rest of the day following it from the air as it moved throughout the city and watched as the vehicle occupants moved supplies into and out of the vehicle and later exited the vehicle permanently at locations throughout the city. Late in the afternoon, the general said, the vehicle dropped off its last passenger and drove to a location approximately three kilometers from the airport. "We were very concerned that the vehicle could move quickly and be at the airport boundary in a matter of moments," McKenzie said. "By this time, we'd observed the vehicle for about eight hours. While in the compound, the vehicle was observed being approached by a single adult male assessed at the time to be a co-conspirator. The strike was executed at this time, because the vehicle was stationary, and to reduce the potential for civilian casualties." McKenzie said a Hellfire missile hit the vehicle at 4:53 p.m., and had been configured to detonate inside the vehicle as a way to minimize the chance of civilian casualties. "It is my assessment that leaders on the ground and in the strike cell had achieved a reasonable certainty at the time of the strike to designate the vehicle as an imminent threat to U.S. forces at the airport, and that they made this self-defense strike in accordance with established rules of engagement," McKenzie said. Still, McKenzie said, while Centcom believed the strike would prevent an imminent attack on U.S. forces and civilians at the airport, he now understands that to be incorrect. "It was a mistake, and I offer my sincere apology," he said. "As the combatant commander, I am fully responsible for this strike and its tragic outcome." The general also said the department is exploring the possibility of ex gratia payments to those affected by the strike. Investigation of Aug. 29 Airstrike in Kabul to Get Its Own Review [2021-09-20] WASHINGTON -- The investigation performed by U.S. Central Command to look into the Aug. 29 airstrike in Kabul will itself undergo further review, the Defense Department announced today. Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby today announced that Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has asked Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall to task a military officer -- three-stars or higher -- to conduct a review of the Centcom investigation. "Part of that review will be to examine the investigation itself, the thoroughness of the investigation, to study the degree to which any policies, procedures or targeting mechanisms may need to be altered going forward, if any, and of course to then take a look at what levels of accountability might be appropriate and if so at what level," Kirby said during a briefing today at the Pentagon. According to Kirby, the secretary of defense has asked that the review be completed within 45 days. He also said that the role of that officer would be to make recommendations, rather than to take actions. He said if the reviewing officer believes that there needs to be accountability, that should be annotated in the report when it is passed on to the secretary of the Air Force and the secretary of defense. On Friday, the commander of U.S. Central Command, Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr., briefed the findings of an investigation into an August 29 airstrike in Kabul, where a Hellfire missile was launched in an effort to kill ISIS-K planners, but instead killed 10 civilians. "Having thoroughly reviewed the findings of the investigation and the supporting analysis by interagency partners, I am now convinced that as many as 10 civilians -- including up to seven children -- were tragically killed in that strike," McKenzie said. It will be this investigation that was conducted by Centcom that will undergo further review by the senior Air Force officer. As a result of that airstrike, the Defense Department has said it is looking into ex gratia payments, or payments made out of a sense of moral obligation rather than legal requirement, to the family members of those killed. Additionally, media has reported that some of the surviving family members have expressed concerns about staying in Afghanistan and that some of those family members have expressed an interest in coming to the United States. Kirby said Centcom is now looking into both issues. "We know that Central Command is working through how best to reach out to them for the issue of payments, but also to determine the validity of this interest in moving out," he said. While Kirby said Centcom is still looking into both issues, and that it was too early to announce any decisions there, he did say he believes the secretary of defense would support those individuals coming to the U.S. "I believe the secretary of defense would absolutely support, if the family wanted to leave Afghanistan and come to the United States. I believe he would support that," Kirby said. "[That is] assuming that ... all the proper legal hoops were worked through. I don't want to get ahead of a process or decision that hasn't been made yet, but I think he would absolutely consider that." Low-Level Commanders Need Authority to Counter Information Operations, Northcom Leader Says [2021-09-22] WASHINGTON -- How's the United States doing in its efforts to counter the information and propaganda campaigns waged by adversaries to undermine American democracy? Not so good, the commander of U.S. Northern Command said. "I think we're getting, and I'm on the record, I think we're getting our rear end handed to us in the information space because we're so risk-averse in the environment that we operate in today," Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck said yesterday, during a presentation with the Air Force Association. The general said he thinks the United States must speed up its ability to respond if it's going to protect things like elections or prevent the spread of misinformation and propaganda by the likes of Russia and China. "I think we need to be a little more aggressive," he said. "I think, right now, we should change the paradigm [for] the way we do information operations." Right now, he said, information operations plans might go through a combatant commander, to the Defense Department, bring in the National Security Council and involve the White House as well, he said. "That is a very slow process, and in the environment we're operating in right now ... in about 12 hours to 24 hours in the information space, you're irrelevant. It has moved on," he said. "I believe we need to flip that paradigm and push down, use mission command -- the lanes in the road, the rules of the road -- and allow commanders of the lower level to be able to execute within the mission environment that we're operating in to be more effective in real time." More Than Nukes Northcom is responsible for protecting the U.S. homeland -- its people, national power and freedom of action. Right now, VanHerck said, more of that protection is dependent on nuclear power than what should be. "Homeland defense today is too reliant on what I think is the foundation of homeland defense, and that is our nuclear deterrent and deterrence by punishment," he said. "But what that doesn't do for us is give us opportunities to deescalate early and deter earlier." Deterrence with nuclear capabilities he said, while useful, are too escalatory in nature and other avenues must be looked at. "What I'm trying to do is fill that gap and focus on a little bit of deterrence by denial," he said. "Ballistic missile defense is deterrence by denial. But I also believe hardening resiliency, or the way we project our force, creates deterrence options on a day-to-day basis." The homeland defense of tomorrow, he said, won't look like what it does today. Getting there starts with changes to policy -- which he said will need to involve civilian policy makers rather than uniformed military personnel. "It needs to be our policymakers that decide what we must defend kinetically," he said. "And it's not everything. So I'm reaching out, trying to work through the department, trying to work through the interagency, to figure out what that is." Certainly, he said, things like continuity of government, nuclear command and control capabilities, forward power projection capabilities, and the defense industrial base are included. Beyond that, he said, homeland defense can also include things like resilience, deception and information operations. But those are not enough either. VanHerck said he wants to go even further to the left -- meaning to get ahead of crises before they happen. "I believe that takes a layered defense, a layered defense focused on forward capabilities," he said. "I don't want to be shooting down cruise missiles over the National Capital Region. I think we need to be partnered with [our] 11 combatant commands, allies and partners forward, to generate deterrence day-to-day, and then in crisis and conflict, utilize those capabilities to deter and defend forward before it becomes a threat to our homeland. That's where my homeland defense design is focused." New Branding Freshens Up DOD Flagship Website [2021-09-23] WASHINGTON -- A new Pentagon logo, along with a new color palette and a new set of standard typefaces, now adorns the Defense.gov website. Additionally, changes have been made to the site's navigation to make it easier for readers to find valuable content. The most visible change to the site is a new Pentagon-shaped logo that sits at the top left of the page. The site has used a highly-stylized Pentagon logo for years, but the new logo for the website includes more detail. Additionally, the typeface for the words "U.S. Department of Defense," has changed as well. The changes to these design elements are the result of a new DOD branding guide recently published by the department. The guide includes a variety of new "Pentagon" logos with varying levels of detail customized for various use cases, and also provides specifics on how to place the logos into content. Other changes include a new color palette and typeface specifications. The branding guide is expected to affect more than just the department's flagship website, however. "We'll use this in any online or offline materials where using the DOD seal doesn't make sense," said Andy Oare, the department's director for digital media. "Publicly, you'll see it most prominently on Defense.gov websites, graphics and videos. Within the department, it will be used on memos, presentations and other materials." The new logo was designed in-house by artists at the Defense Media Activity and was partially inspired by another graphic representation of the DOD headquarters -- the Pentagon logo that appears behind the lectern during press briefings. Such changes must come periodically to keep things fresh, Oare said. "Branding elements should always be dynamic, always be re-examined," he said. "The old Pentagon logo had been in place for several years, and as an effort to take a look at various branding elements, it made sense to include the logo in our assessment." Oare said with the new design changes, the department was looking for a more classic and formal feel. In addition to a changed look, there's also structural changes to the Defense.gov site as well, Oare said. Those changes came after analyzing how users interact with the site and considering what things they look at most often. "One notable change is the emphasis on our Spotlight pages," he said. "Spotlight pages go into detail about a specific initiative or issue, and they do it by displaying information in a variety of mediums. Not everyone likes long articles, and not everyone likes videos -- Spotlight pages aim to provide content that cater to consumption preferences." According to the new branding guide, authorized users may employ the logo, in keeping with brand standards, in all DOD communications across all media platforms. That branding guide can be found at https://www.defense.gov/Brand-Guide/. DOD Says It's Time to Renew Extended ID Cards [2021-09-24] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department is asking as many as a half-million ID card holders to go online now and make appointments to renew their IDs -- many of which are past the expiration dates printed on them. DOD extended the expiration dates electronically to account for the challenges of renewing them in an COVID-19 environment. Last year when it became apparent that COVID-19 was going to dramatically affect the ability of individuals to congregate or wait in line at ID card offices, the Defense Department electronically extended the expiration dates for many ID cards for several months to allow cardholders a greater amount of time to get those cards renewed. The extensions primarily benefited the dependents of active-duty service members, Reserve and National Guard service members and their dependents, as well as retirees and their dependents. Currently, there's a backlog of more than a half-million people who have ID cards that are past the expiration dates printed on them, and it's time to go online and schedule an appointment to get those cards renewed, said Stephen Wellock with the Defense Manpower Data Center. Right now, the previously extended ID cards for dependents of active duty service members, as well as Reserve and National Guard service members and their dependents, can be used until Oct. 31, 2021. The cards of retirees and their dependents can be used until Jan. 31, 2022. But Wellock also said some might not have the time they think they have. For those service members and their dependents and retirees and their dependents whose ID cards expired after July 31, 2021 -- there is no extension. "You have no extension, your ID card is expired," he said. "You need to get it replaced, for both active duty, Guard and Reserve dependents, and for retirees. So, if a service member's dependent is out there, and their ID card expired on Sept. 7, they don't have until October to get it replaced; their ID card has expired, and they need to make an appointment as soon as possible." While some family members may have an expired ID card, Wellock said that just because an ID card expires doesn't mean health benefits expire. Those benefits are managed by a different system, he said. "Their health care is managed by the fact that they're enrolled in DEERS, in the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System. That's what determines their eligibility for health care. So if somebody's ID card expires on Aug. 7, they don't automatically lose their health care because their card is expired." An additional change is that while currently cards were previously issued to dependents as young as 10 years old, going forward, cards will only be issued to those dependents who are 14 or older. Wellock said the department is not planning any further extensions on the renewal of expired ID cards. He said cardholders should begin scheduling appointments now to get their cards renewed. Appointments can be made online to renew ID cards, he said, and cardholders don't need to limit their appointment to the card office they typically visit -- there are many locations that can handle renewals, and many provide a "walk-in" service capability. The DOD ID card facilities are managed and operated by the local installations, so if service members are having difficulty making appointments, they should inform their chain of command. DOD Leaders Address Bagram Departure, Noncombatant Evacuation Operation Timing [2021-09-29] WASHINGTON -- Following the U.S. departure from Afghanistan in August, some questioned the hand-over of Bagram Air Base -- about 27 miles north of the capital city, Kabul -- saying the move was ill-advised and had been a tactical mistake. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said maintaining a presence there would have been costly, and would not have helped the U.S. mission during the waning days of the 20-year war the U.S. waged in Afghanistan. "Retaining Bagram would have required putting as many as 5,000 U.S. troops in harm's way just to operate and defend it," Austin told the House Armed Services Committee during a hearing today on Capitol Hill. "It would have contributed little to the mission that we had been assigned, and that was to protect and defend the embassy which was some 30 miles away." Additionally, when the noncombatant evacuation operation, or NEO, began, Bagram's distance from Kabul would have offered little help. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley said it was expected that it would be Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul, not Bagram, that would play a central part in any NEO. "Most of the people that were required to be in an NEO were going to come out of Kabul ... HKIA was going to be the center of gravity for any NEO," Milley said, saying the U.S. didn't have the forces to defend both airports. Staying at Bagram to continue counterterrorism operations there would also not have been advisable, Austin said. "[That] meant staying at war in Afghanistan, something that the president made clear that he would not do," Austin said. The noncombatant evacuation operation to get American civilians, Afghan citizens with special immigrant visa applications underway and at-risk Afghans out of Afghanistan, began Aug. 14 -- just 17 days before the U.S. military planned to be completely out of the country. Austin said the decision on when to start the NEO came from the State Department and that a variety of factors figured into when an NEO should begin. "On the issue of why we didn't bring out civilians and as SIVs sooner ... the call on how to do that and when to do it is really a State Department call," Austin said. "Their concerns, rightfully, were that ... they were being cautioned by the Ghani administration that if they withdrew American citizens and SIV applicants at a pace that was too fast, it would cause a collapse of the government that we were trying to prevent. And so I think that went into the calculus." Despite what some consider to have been a delayed start for noncombatant evacuation operations, Milley said the operation was a success, being the largest air evacuation in history, which got 124,000 individuals out of the country. Austin said work continues now to get Americans out of Afghanistan. "We're not finished and we'll make sure that we stay focused on this to get out every American citizen that wants to leave and has the right credentials to be able to leave," he said. While the U.S. is now out of Afghanistan, it still has the ability to conduct over-the-horizon operations to deal with any threats to the homeland, which includes assets and target analysis that comes from outside of the country in which an operation occurs, Austin said. "These are effective and fairly common operations," he said. "Just days ago we conducted one such strike in Syria, eliminating a senior Al Qaeda figure. Over the horizon operations are difficult, but absolutely possible. And the intelligence that supports them comes from a variety of sources, and not just U.S. boots on the ground." Security Issues Among 'Allies Welcome' Population Often Less Than in Comparable U.S. Civilian Communities [2021-09-30] WASHINGTON -- With as many as 53,000 Afghan civilians living across eight U.S. military installations, a certain amount of law enforcement issues are bound to arise -- and such incidents have happened, the commander of U.S. Northern Command said. But the numbers of incidents are similar to or less than comparably-sized U.S. populations across the nation. "For a population of approximately 53,000 personnel -- I've done some research and how that compares to populations across the United States -- and what we're seeing is law enforcement violations that are on par, and in most cases, significantly lower than the rates that we're seeing in similar-sized populations across the United States," Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck said during a briefing today at the Pentagon. The general said that over a six-week period in the Operation Allies Welcome population, there were eight reported cases of robbery and theft, for instance. For an average six-week period in a similar-sized place in the U.S., there are typically more than 150 such reports. "I'm extremely proud of our team," he said. "We have on average more than 600 security and law enforcement professionals at each task force, each and every day ... that is about three to four times the average of most cities around the globe." As part of Operation Allies Welcome, the Defense Department is currently housing, feeding and providing medical services to 53,000 civilians who were evacuated from Afghanistan in late August. The Department of State and Department of Homeland Security are working to get those civilians resettled elsewhere in the U.S. DOD locations housing those civilians include Fort Bliss, Texas; Fort McCoy, Wisconsin; Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey; Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico; Camp Atterbury, Indiana; and Fort Lee, Marine Corps Base Quantico and Fort Pickett, all in Virginia. The total capacity at these installations is enough to house more than 64,000 individuals. Insofar as violent crimes are concerned, VanHerck said two Afghan civilians are currently detained in federal custody and will be charged through a federal process, not by the Defense Department. The general also said that for the security issues that are being looked into at the eight Operation Allies Welcome locations, it's often due to those issues being reported by the Afghans themselves, and he sees this as a positive sign. "That Afghans are reporting incidents is a good indicator of their commitment to keeping the community safe, as well as their confidence in our people," he said. "Our commitment to maintain safety and security for the entire population at each installation remains steadfast." Living conditions at the eight locations, VanHerck said, are similar to what U.S. service members experience during exercises or training missions. "The task force has stood up to build eight small cities under emergency conditions," VanHerck said. "While it hasn't been perfect, I have seen firsthand how committed our teams are to improving every single day." Afghan civilians living at the eight Operation Allies Welcome locations, he said, are living in secure environments and in climate controlled billets. They are also offered three culturally appropriate meals each day -- which he confirmed as being Halal, or permissible according to Islamic law. Eating options also include a 24/7 "grab and go" option, he said. The Operation Allies Welcome locations also include areas appropriate for religious needs, as well as recreational and classroom space. "While areas for improvement are identified, either by the Afghan guests or task force teams, we work with our interagency partners, volunteers and Afghan guests to address them quickly," he said. The DOD is also taking care of medical needs of Afghan guests as part of OAW, VanHerck said. That includes more than 1,700 medical professionals and staff providing family medicine, pediatric care, emergency medicine and dental care, as well as basic laboratory, radiology and pharmacy services. As of today, 100% of Afghan civilians have been vaccinated against measles, while the vaccination rate for COVID-19 is currently at 84%, VanHerck said. At U.S. installations now there are about 53,000 Afghans. An additional 14,000 Afghans are at locations in U.S. European Command and U.S. Central Command, awaiting a move to the U.S., VanHerck said. So far in the U.S., more than 2,600 Afghans have moved off military installations to a final destination, while more than 4,000 have completed processing and will be relocated once a location becomes available. Northcom is ready to continue providing services for as long as directed to do so by the secretary of defense, VanHerck said. Supply Chain Resiliency Is Whole-of-Government Effort [2021-09-30] WASHINGTON -- Ensuring the U.S. military's continued access to critical materials to enable the nation's defense is a priority of the Defense Department. But the dependability of America's supply chain doesn't just affect the military, it's a concern for the entire U.S. government, said Jesse Salazar, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for industrial policy. "President Biden's executive order on America's supply chains ... distinctly focused on changes in policies and processes geared toward a new approach for 21st century supply chains," Salazar said during remarks at ComDef2021. "Building on the work of prior efforts, the conversation of industrial base security and resiliency has expanded beyond the Department of Defense to a whole-of-government effort." At DOD, Salazar is responsible for development of policies for the maintenance of the United States defense industrial base. In Executive Order 14017, published in February, the president asked for a 100-day supply chain review, where the Department of Energy would report on high-capacity batteries; the Department of Commerce would report on semiconductors; the Department of Health and Human Services would report on pharmaceuticals; and the DOD report would identify risks in the supply chain for critical minerals and other identified strategic materials, including rare earth elements. Those four reports together, Salazar said, provide a clear outline of our approach to tackling supply chain resiliency from a whole-of-government perspective. The department's own report laid out a set of recommendations to ensure the U.S. has continued access to strategic and critical minerals needed for economic security, addressing the climate crisis and national defense. The recommendations in the department's report are focused on developing and fostering new sustainability standards for strategic and critical, material-intensive industries; expanding sustainable domestic production and processing capacity, including non-traditional mining and recycling; strengthening U.S. stockpiles; and working with allies and partner nations while promoting greater global transparency. The president's executive order also requires DOD and five other federal agencies to submit within one year a report on supply chains in their sectors of the economy. The DOD report will focus on the defense industrial base. That report must also identify areas where civilian supply chains are dependent upon competitor nations. Salazar said development of this report is in progress now; its expected release date is in February. Salazar also said a supply chain resiliency working group was established in August to address systemic barriers limiting supply chain visibility, conduct resilience assessments and develop effective mitigation assessments. "The two-year effort will leverage work already being performed around supply chain resiliency across the department and interagency," Salazar said. "Initial findings will be included in the one-year report, as well." Central to ensuring the reliability of America's supply chain is working closely with allies and partners, Salazar said. "Our supply chains are -- and continue to be -- global and complex," he said. "It is only with support from our allies and partners, many of whom provide key components and expertise for our weapons systems, that we will be successful." More Stable Networks Among DOD Cloud Goals for Outside U.S. [2021-10-06] WASHINGTON -- This spring, the Defense Department spelled out a strategy for cloud computing outside the continental United States, or OCONUS, including ways to better support service members at the tactical edge. During a virtual discussion today with GovernmentCIO, Danielle Metz, the deputy chief information officer for information enterprise outlined the three goals that define the strategy. The first of those goals is to provide robust and resilient connectivity all the way to the tactical edge, Metz said. Right now, network connectivity where warfighters operate can be spotty -- and that's a problem when it comes to connecting to the cloud and getting warfighters the information they need to carry out their missions. "[It] really impacts the ability for [the] cloud to work," she said. "You have to have a network that is resilient and capable to be able [to] operate in a distributed environment." In the OCONUS Cloud Strategy, the department lays out several objectives to achieve robust and resilient connectivity, including modernization of in-theater communications infrastructure, leveraging of state-of-the-art technology that can operate in denied, degraded, intermittent or limited environments, and enabling access to critical information from a variety of devices -- not just laptops or desktop machines. A second goal is to provide computing power that enables forces at the tactical edge -- which means putting processing power overseas, as close to the warfighter as possible. "Right now the way that we have things structured is that we're doing a lot of backhauling from those OCONUS locations back to the United States," she said. The kind of information the warfighter needs to make decisions puts a lot of strain on the network, Metz said. And the long-haul for that data -- from the warfighter back to the U.S. and then back to the warfighter again -- can introduce a lot of latency in that data that can adversely affect decision-making. "It is creating significant delays and increasing the [likelihood] of putting our people and our allies in harm's way," she said. Either mobile or regional data centers located overseas can help with that, Metz said. The DOD's strategy recommends enterprise management of OCONUS cloud computing capability in order to let critical data be processed as close to the warfighter as possible. Finally, Metz said, it's critical that warfighters be proficient with what the department builds. They must be educated on how to use the systems they are provided -- and DOD must ensure they are trained. "We need to cultivate the talent and ensure that we have a continual cultivation as we rotate service members from those locations serving at the edge," she said. "We recognize if we're able to fix problem 1 and problem 2, but we don't address problem 3, everything is for naught. It really has to be a symbiotic relationship in terms of ensuring that we have the right infrastructure in place, that we have the computing edge pushed to where the warfighter is, and then the third piece is ensuring that once we have all those things, the warfighter and the people who are actually at the edge know how to use it, and they can use it well and it's seamless for them." All three goals can be achieved, Metz said, but some will take much longer than others -- and accomplishing all three will require more than just the efforts of the Defense Department. "It's a whole-of-government approach in terms of working with members of Congress, with other federal partners, internal to DOD, also with our cloud service providers and developing a cohesive strategy that works for the department to be able to deliver these much needed services, to where they are needed," she said. DOD Finds Top-Notch, Reliable Defense Partner, Supplier in Italy [2021-10-07] WASHINGTON -- Developing and strengthening the relationships between U.S. partners and allies is a top priority for Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III. For a long time, Italy has been one of the nations the U.S. military depends on for both defense relations and military supplies and equipment, the DOD's deputy director of international and strategic engagement for foreign investment review said. "The United States has consistently and always relied upon our allies and partners for strategic and critical materials that cannot be domestically produced, even in war time," Irmie "Ike" Blanton said during an online discussion today at the Atlantic Council. "Italy has provided those to us in spades throughout this relationship." Italy is an important supplier to the DOD of things like weapon systems, small arms, chemicals and aircraft components, said Blanton. "Our supply chains with Italy are very closely connected and interlinked and intertwined, as most modern supply chains are," Blanton said. For example, he said, Italy is a critical supplier of parts for and is involved in the development of both the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Air Force's MH-139A Grey Wolf helicopter. "Both of those programs in particular play a very important role in advancing the strength of the United States, as well as that of our allies, protecting and transporting our warfighters for these missions that are important to our national security interests," Blanton said. An Italian defense contractor was also chosen to build a key new weapons system for the U.S. Navy -- the Constellation-class frigate. According to the Navy, the new class of frigate includes, among other things, an Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar, Baseline Ten AEGIS Combat System, and an Mk 41 Vertical Launch System. That new ship will be built at a shipyard in Wisconsin. Construction of the ship in Wisconsin enhances the significance of that shipyard, Blanton said, but it also strengthens the existing relationship between the U.S. and Italian industrial bases. Italy is one of nine nations -- along with Australia, Canada, Finland, Norway, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom -- to maintain the security of supply arrangements, or SOSAs, with the United States. These non-binding arrangements allow participants, when needed, to request priority access to critical supplies, even when others have orders in ahead of them. Four of those participating nations, including Italy, also include in their SOSA a code of conduct to govern SOSA implementation for priority assistance. "Italy is an exemplar nation when it comes to both the arrangement itself, but also the code of conduct that they have with their defense industrial base partners within Italy," Blanton said, adding that the Italian SOSA includes 60 defense industrial partners who have signed on to the related code of conduct. As an example of how the SOSA provides value to partners and enhances relations between participating nations, Blanton cited an example from 2008 where Italy needed a specific type of night-vision equipment and was unable to find it. "They reached out to the United States to really start the SOSA process ... it was one of the first uses of the SOSA," he said. "The parts were very scarce at that time, there [were] a lot of orders and orders were being backed up. But because of ... the SOSA relationship and our foundational relationship with Italy, the DOD granted the Italian request, and they were able to obtain the parts in a ... relatively fast and efficient manner." He said it might have taken many more months for the Italians to get those parts had the SOSA not been in place. "I want to stress again the importance of these types of agreements," he said. "Not only do they signal the depth and importance of a relationship with a country and their defense industrial base, but they also serve an actual purpose in that they allow the industrial base partners to make use of the niche capabilities of each other's industrial bases," Blanton said. DISA Director Says Common Access Card Showing Age [2021-10-08] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department has used the common access card, or CAC, for more than 20 years now, and there's no sign, as of yet, that the department is planning on doing away with the ID card. But the director of the Defense Information Systems Agency said he thinks it might be time to look for better ways for department personnel to prove who they are to gate guards, computers and chow hall personnel. During a conversation today as part of the 2021 Billington Cybersecurity Summit, Air Force Lt. Gen. Robert Skinner, who serves as both DISA director and commander of Joint Forces Headquarters, Department of Defense Information Networks, said that identity management -- which the CAC now plays a significant role in -- is one area where the department can look to industry for a way ahead. "I have this notion of -- this little mantra of -- I want to kill the CAC as the primary authentication mechanism for the department," Skinner said, adding that it will be the defense industrial base, and the U.S. industrial base, who will play a big part in helping the department find better solutions. "We have to have something that's better," he said. "Industry has been, I'll say, using other authentication mechanisms -- other things for leveraging identity management, access control. I want to leverage that. We want to leverage that technology to be able to provide greater options, so it's not just two-factor authentication, but it's truly multi-factor -- and it's with the individual, it's with the device." Identity, credential and access management, or ICAM, Skinner said, is the foundation for everything he said must happen within the department to improve data security. Being able to prove that an individual is who they say they are, that they are using a secure access device, and that they have the right privileges to access the information they want to see is a big part of that. Skinner said the department must leverage what's happening in industry, and undergo a change in culture, to get to a "data-centric" environment versus a "network-centric" environment. It's an environment, he said, where the department is more concerned with making sure data is protected and secure and less concerned about the infrastructure itself. Getting there, he said, will require the department to lean more on industry. "We're really looking at the future of the SIPRNET, and the secure environment and how we take advantage of technology today -- how we take care of what industry is able to do -- to really transform, not just modernize, but how do we transform so that we can truly have the multi-factor, multi-level security, multi-level environment, so that it doesn't matter where you're trying to go, that you can get access to it as long as you have the right privileges and accesses," he said. While China's Intimidation of Taiwan Continues, U.S. Remains Committed to Taiwanese Self-Defense [2021-10-12] WASHINGTON -- Since October 1, more than 100 Chinese military aircraft have moved provocatively through the air defense identification zones of nearby Taiwan -- just over 100 miles to the east. Those military maneuvers serve only to create uncertainty in a part of the world where the U.S. wants to see stability and peace, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said. "The PRC [Peoples Republic of China] has stepped up efforts to intimidate and pressure Taiwan and other allies and partners, including increasing their military activities conducted in the vicinity of Taiwan, the East China Sea and the South China Sea, which we believe are destabilizing and only increase the risk of miscalculation," Kirby said during a briefing today at the Pentagon. Despite the recent Chinese show of force, Kirby said the U.S. remains committed to keeping the Taiwan Strait a peaceful region. "We will continue to support a peaceful resolution of cross-strait issues, consistent with the wishes and best interests of the people of Taiwan, and our commitment to Taiwan is rock solid and contributes to the maintenance of peace and stability across the strait and within the region," Kirby said. Kirby also said that the U.S. is interested in ensuring that Taiwan continues to be able to defend itself. "We have an abiding interest in peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and that's why we're going to continue to assist Taiwan in maintaining a sufficient self-defense capability," he said. Kirby said the department would like for Beijing to honor its own commitments to peace and stability in the region. "We're urging Beijing to cease this military, diplomatic and economic pressure, and the coercion against ... Taiwan," he said. Development Programs Keep DOD's Workforce Strong [2021-10-27] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department's military and civilian workforce have always worked together to successfully defend the nation, said the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. "They can only continue to do this through a sustained emphasis on workforce development, one that focuses on [the] recruiting, retention, training and education of a workforce that can compete and win against our most advanced competition now and in the future," said Gilbert R. Cisneros Jr. during testimony yesterday before the House Appropriations Committee. When it comes to bringing in and maintaining a strong uniformed force, Cisneros said diversity plays a central role. "The department relies on multiple levers to [support] recruiting efforts, including financial incentives and advertising campaigns," he said. "We also recognize that to recruit and retain the best and brightest we must have a diverse and inclusive force representative of the nation they serve." To that end, he said, the department uses relationships with historically Black colleges and universities and institutions that serve minorities to help those communities better understand the benefits of military service. The department also regularly reviews how military personnel are compensated to ensure the services remain competitive in attracting the best talent, he said. One way the department is working to keep the competitive edge its civilian workforce now provides, Cisneros said, is by increasing the use of skills and competency-based assessments in the recruitment of that force. "In June of this year, we launched the DOD civilian career website to promote civilian employment opportunities and career paths and to debunk [the] perception that DOD service is solely a uniform service," he said. Congress has also helped out by allowing the department to streamline direct hiring authorities for high-demand skills, he said. "On September 30, I provided guidance to DOD components on maximizing the use of hiring flexibilities to include direct hiring, which will allow us to attract and recruit civilian talent with expertise in [artificial intelligence], data science and software development," he said. For developing future talent, the department has also used a variety of internship, scholarship and fellowship programs and has seen great success with the effort, Cisneros said. "We must also provide adaptive and relevant professional civilian education that emphasizes innovative thinking, ... ingenuity and warfighting concepts; ensures responsibility, management of national defense assets; and builds expertise through a concentration on data-centric digital skills and culture," he said. Cisneros also told lawmakers it's more important to focus on what the civilian workforce does and the value they bring to the department, rather than on striking a balance between the number of civilian and uniformed personnel. "I do not believe we can put a ratio or a number on the amount of civilians that we have," he said. "The civilian workforce that we have at the Department of Defense is an integral part of the defense of our nation. They play critical roles and, in the work that we do. ... it's not proper for us to put a number on it." DOD Metrics-Based Goals Will Strengthen Organic Industrial Base, Official Says [2021-10-28] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department's organic industrial base -- which includes things such as maintenance depots, shipyards, fleet readiness centers, air logistics centers and manufacturing arsenals -- needs to be modernized and updated in order to keep serving America's warfighter. The department has a plan to make that happen, the acting assistant secretary of defense for sustainment said today. "At present, the [organic industrial base] continues to fully support warfighter requirements, but also faces a number of challenges including the ongoing effects of COVID-19, aging infrastructure and equipment, workforce development and retention, supply chain instability and the need to balance sustainment requirements of new and legacy systems," Steven J. Morani told the House Armed Services Committee. "The department is taking action to address these challenges." He said some of those efforts include ensuring that measures are in place to protect the workforce while continuing to meet production schedules, a $241 million investment in maintenance technologies, and supply chain risk assessments. The department has also issued policies for the integration of new capabilities -- such as condition-based maintenance plus, additive manufacturing, intermittent fault detection, and robotics, Morani said. One example of the use of robotics to enhance capability of the organic industrial base is at the Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex in Georgia. "There is some tremendous work going on at Warner Robins," Morani said. "Warner Robins is actually leading the department when it comes to implementation of robotics. They have right now over 40 robotic machines that are ... taking the place of the human. They're increasing productivity; they're increasing quality; they're increasing health and safety." The department also has a working group, the Joint Robotics Organization for Building Organic Technologies, to further the use of robotics in the organic industrial base, or OIB, and also has a policy in place now for how it will implement and use robotic systems for manufacturing and sustainment. Morani said it's the first policy of its kind in the department. The department's strategy to rebuild and strengthen the OIB has four main strategic areas of focus, Morani said. Those include revitalizing the OIB infrastructure, improving equipment modernization of the OIB, developing and supporting the OIB workforce, and continuous assessment and reporting. "Focusing on these areas and continuously improving will provide a future OIB that is safe and properly sized, with modernized facilities and equipment, and supported by a highly competent and innovative workforce," he said. "Each area also has metrics-based goals that are specific, realistic and measurable to determine the success of and compliance with the strategy." Continued, stable and predictable funding is something the department needs to continue to modernize its OIB, Morani said. "When we're in the continuing resolution ... we get no new starts -- so new contracts can't be let," he said. "That compounds, and then in the remaining fiscal year, the workforce that's available to put on contract, to sequence that work ... they're [on] compressed schedules, it compresses the work. So, again, it throws our planning out of synchronization. It doesn't allow us to fully execute in a fiscal year." With Vaccination Deadlines Approaching, Commanders Asked to Use Compassion in Enforcement [2021-11-01] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military services have all set deadlines for when service members must be vaccinated against COVID-19. The first of those deadlines, for active duty Air Force personnel, arrives tomorrow. Right now, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said about 97% of the total force has been vaccinated with at least one dose. During a press conference today at the Pentagon, he told reporters this includes 99% of sailors, 97% of airmen, and 93% of Marines. Among soldiers, he said, the vaccination rate is above 90%. "So just in terms of first dosage, there's been a lot more progress and we continue to see the men and women of the force doing the right thing -- which is getting vaccinated," he said. Kirby said commanders have plenty of options for enforcing vaccine mandates short of resorting to actions under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has asked commanders to execute those options first. "I think the secretary has been very clear with the leaders of the military departments that he wants them to execute the mandate with a sense of compassion and understanding," he said. "I know he made this clear to them that he knows as a former commander himself, that leaders have a range of tools available to them to help troops make the right decisions for themselves, for the units, for the families, short of using the Uniform Code of Military Justice, therefore, short of punitive measures." Nevertheless, Kirby said, the vaccine mandates are lawful orders, and commanders may eventually need to escalate the pressure they put on servicemembers to get vaccinated. "He also trusts that commanders ... will ultimately do what they need to do for the readiness of their unit, and if that comes to doing something of a punitive nature, they certainly have that right and that authority," Kirby said. When it comes to service members being deployment ready, based on their vaccination status, Kirby said the secretary of defense is relying on the individual services and commanders to make those calls. "The secretary will delegate that specific decision down to commanders at the appropriate level," Kirby said. "When you say deployable, what does that mean? They're different units, different services, define deployments differently. And so he wants to let the services manage that decision-making process for themselves and the commander specifically. Obviously, though, he wants as much of the force as possible vaccinated, because he still believes that a vaccinated force is a more ready force." Registration Open for November's Inaugural 'Relationship Wellness Summit' [2021-11-01] WASHINGTON -- Strong relationships make for strong families, and with a strong family back at home, service members can focus on providing the nation with a strong defense. To better help service members build a strong relationship or strengthen an existing one, the Military Community and Family Policy office will host the inaugural "Relationship Wellness Summit," on November 16 and 17. The completely virtual event aims to provide military couples with tools and techniques to help them strengthen their marriages and to help parents develop stronger relationships with their children. Single service members are not left out. The summit also will feature a variety of experts with tips on how to navigate the social minefield of dating and provide techniques on how to stay resilient when dealing with the emotional complexities of a breakup. "Our target audiences are military couples, single service members and parents," Kelly Smith, with the Military Community and Family Policy office, said. "Within each session, participants are going to be able to walk away with strategies that they can use to improve their relationships -- really, tips and strategies they can use right there on the spot." Military Community and Family Policy runs the Military OneSource website and Smith says that the No. 1 reason service members and spouses seek non-medical counseling is for relationship issues. That observation, she said, served as a catalyst for adding a relationship component to this year's Virtual Military Spouse Symposium, which happened earlier this year. That pilot effort gained a lot of attention. Another driver for the summit, she said, has been the change in family and relationship dynamics that have arisen from COVID-19. "A couple of our sessions, within the parenting track and the couple's track, are focused on strengthening your relationship during COVID and also how to parent through COVID," she said. Another big area of focus, she said, is the amount of time spent online using social media, playing games or watching streaming services. "It's an area where people struggle -- how to find that balance with managing time on social media or screen time," she said. "We've seen couples and parents struggle to set healthy social media and screen time boundaries." Among single service members and Americans in general, Smith said the struggle to deal with the fallout of a breakup can be hard. And evidence of that has shown up in numbers reported regarding suicidal ideation. "There is a correlation between relationship challenges and risk for suicide, particularly within single service members who have experienced a breakup and started exhibiting maladaptive coping strategies," she said. "We want to have a conversation around managing and breakups and how to identify when extra help, like non-medical counseling, is needed," she said. The two-day relationship summit includes 20 sessions, meetup mixers and panels with experts on a variety of topics including breathing life into an existing relationship, dating in the 21st century, maintaining a long-distance relationship, positive parenting, the effects of social media on relationships, parenting in the COVID-19 environment and techniques on how to restore trust. Relationships, counseling and dealing with emotional issues are subjects some service members tend to shy away from. But mission effectiveness and combat readiness are things the same service members are proud to embrace. Relationship challenges can negatively impact mission readiness and combat effectiveness, and it's something Military Community and Family Policy is committed to helping service members overcome. "We believe in what we can see anecdotally from the relationship counseling provided through our non-medical counselors: when our service members are able to focus on the mission and not be concerned about their marriage, their relationships, or how their children are doing at home with regards to parenting, they can focus on the mission," Smith said. Service members begin military-related training from the day they put on a uniform, and it never stops, Smith said. But nobody gets trained on how to build and maintain a strong partnership with a spouse or a child. And that's something the Relationship Wellness Summit looks to address. "We will equip servicemembers with the tools they need to help strengthen and support their relationships, and I feel that's directly connected to being mission ready," Smith said. Single service members, married service members and spouses interested in securing mission readiness by squaring things away on the home front with their own interpersonal relationships, can sign up for the Relationship Wellness Summit by clicking here. China Military Power Report Details Advances, Goals in 2020 [2021-11-03] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department today released its annual report on military and security developments involving China, commonly referred to as the China Military Power Report. The report provides background on China's national strategy, foreign policy goals, economic plans and military development. "The report provides a baseline assessment of the department's top pacing challenge, and it charts the modernization of the PLA [People's Liberation Army] throughout 2020," a defense official said Tuesday. "This includes the PLA developing the capabilities to conduct joint, long-range precision strikes across domains; increasingly sophisticated space, counterspace and cyber capabilities; as well as the accelerating expansion of the PLA's nuclear forces." A key revelation in the report are China's advancements in its nuclear capability, including that the accelerated pace of their nuclear expansion may enable China to have up to 700 deliverable nuclear warheads by 2027. "The accelerating pace of the PLA's nuclear expansion may enable the PRC [People's Republic of China] to have up to about 700 deliverable nuclear warheads by 2027," the official said. "And the report states that the PRC likely intends to have at least 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030 -- exceeding the pace and the size that we projected in the 2020 China Military Power report." The report also reveals that China may have already established a nuclear triad, which includes the ability to launch such missiles from the air, ground and sea. "The PRC has possibly already established a nascent 'nuclear triad' with the development of a nuclear-capable, air-launched ballistic missile and improvement of its ground- and sea-based nuclear capabilities," the report reads. New to the report this year is a section on the Chinese military's chemical and biological research efforts. It says China has engaged in biological activities with potential dual-use applications and that this raises concerns regarding its compliance with the Biological and Toxins Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention. The report concludes that China continues to be clear in its ambitions to be competitive with world-class military powers, the DOD official said. "The PLA's evolving capabilities and concepts continue to strengthen its ability to fight and win wars, to use their own phrase, against what the PRC refers to as a 'strong enemy' -- again, another phrase that appears in their publications. And a 'strong enemy,' of course, is very likely a euphemism for the United States," he said. According to the report, a big part of China's effort to match the strength of a "strong enemy" involves major modernization and reform efforts within China's army. Those efforts include an ongoing effort to achieve "mechanization," which the report describes as the Chinese army's efforts to modernize its weapons and equipment to be networked into a "systems of systems" and to also utilize more advanced technologies suitable for "informatized" and "intelligentized" warfare. Also of significance are China's efforts to project military power outside it's own borders. "The PRC is seeking to establish a more robust overseas logistics and basing infrastructure to allow the PLA to project and sustain military power at greater distances," the DOD official said. "We're talking about not just within the immediate environments, environments in the Indo-Pacific, but throughout the Indo-Pacific region and indeed, around the world." The official said China's army has sought to modernize its capabilities and improve its proficiency across all warfare domains, so that, as a joint force, it can conduct the range of land, air, and maritime operations that are envisioned in army publications, as well as in space, counterspace, electronic warfare and cyber operations. DOD Focused on Readiness, Instead of Intent Behind Chinese Military Exercises [2021-11-08] WASHINGTON -- Media reports have called attention to mock-ups of U.S. aircraft carriers the Chinese have built in the desert, presumably to train their own military for confrontation with the U.S. Navy. But the Defense Department is, instead, focused on its own preparation and readiness and current Chinese behavior with neighbors in the Indo-Pacific region. "What we're concerned about ... is the increasing intimidation and coercive behavior of the Chinese military in the Indo-Pacific, and also the coercive tactics they're using, even using economic tools around the world to bend other nations to their will or to their view of what's in their best interest," Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said during a briefing today at the Pentagon. The U.S. supports a free and open Indo-Pacific region, Kirby said, saying also that the U.S. is going to continue to work with allies and partners toward that end. "You've heard the secretary talk about this many times -- he holds [China] as our No. 1 pacing challenge," Kirby said. "What I can tell you is we're focused on developing the capabilities, the operational concepts, making sure we have the resources and the right strategy in place so that we can deal with the PRC as the No. 1 pacing challenge." Last week, the Defense Department released its annual report on military and security developments involving China, commonly referred to as the China Military Power Report. "I think [the report] makes it very clear what our understanding of their intentions are and their capabilities are and how they're developing those capabilities and to what ends," Kirby said. "Clearly, they have invested a lot in particularly air and maritime capabilities that are designed largely to try to prevent the United States from having access to certain areas in the Indo-Pacific. What we're focused on is that pacing challenge and making sure that we maintain the right capabilities and the right operational concepts to meet our security commitments in that part of the world." According to the report, a big part of China's effort to match the strength of a "strong enemy" -- which is understood to mean the likes of the United States -- involves major modernization and reform efforts within China's army. Included there are efforts to achieve "mechanization," which the report describes as the Chinese army's efforts to modernize its weapons and equipment to be networked into a "systems of systems" and to also utilize more advanced technologies suitable for "informatized" and "intelligentized" warfare. Also of significance in the report are Chinese efforts to project military power outside its own borders through the establishment of overseas logistics and basing infrastructure not just inside the Indo-Pacific region, but elsewhere in the world. U.S. Nuclear Power The DOD is currently working on a new National Defense Strategy, which is expected to be complete by early next year. At the same time, the department is working on the NDS, it is also working on the Nuclear Posture Review. The NPR will spell out, among other things, priorities for modernizing the U.S. nuclear triad and ensure that the United States has the right capabilities matched with the national nuclear strategy. The review will also examine how the United States can take steps to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in its national security strategy while ensuring the strategic deterrent remains safe, secure and effective and that the extended deterrence commitments to its allies remain strong and credible. Development of the NPR isn't conducted in a vacuum, Kirby said. The U.S. is soliciting the input of strategic allies in the development of the review. "Across the review itself, the views and perspectives of our allies and partners are important and consultations with them and hearing them out and their perspectives has been and will continue to remain important as the review continues down the path," Kirby said. "We are, as appropriate, consulting with allies and partners in the course of this review and certainly remain open to listening to and hearing out their perspectives." Tuskegee Airman Recalls WWII Service, Calls Freedom Key to Opportunity [2021-11-10] WASHINGTON -- In March 1942, college student Charles E. McGee was studying engineering at the University of Illinois in Champaign. Less than four months prior, the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, and the U.S. was at war. "In ROTC I learned to handle a rifle pretty well," he said. "But because I was in school, my draft board wasn't pulling my number." McGee figured it couldn't last long; the draft wouldn't come after him, especially as things heated up in Europe. "Had they, I would have probably been on the ground with that rifle," he said. In nearby Rantoul, Illinois, McGee said he learned the Army Air Corps had set up a training school for Black aircraft mechanics on Chanute Air Field. "I was in school [at the] university 14 miles away -- and that's really where I learned about the program," he said. "The Army policy was they couldn't use [Black] pilots because they had no Black mechanics." The Army training Black aircraft mechanics meant the Army was also looking for Black pilots as well, McGee figured -- something which interested him more than the prospect of being a ground-pounder with a rifle. McGee opted to get involved in something that interested him, and soon found himself in Tuskegee, Alabama, learning to fly military aircraft. "I heard about the aviation opportunity and passed the exams," he said. "[After] my first flight in a PT-17 -- to be able to go up there and loop roll and spin and come back and put your feet on the ground -- I was hooked! Never have I forgotten that first day." McGee ended up flying in World War II for the Army as part of what are now called the Tuskegee Airmen -- a group of Black pilots and ground personnel with a remarkable service record during the war. "I served in the Mediterranean theater in WWII in the 302nd Squadron of the 332nd Fighter Group," he said. "We went directly to Italy in the spring of 1944, and I served almost a year because I ended my time there in November." In Europe, he said, one of his proudest missions involved providing an escort for aircraft that would repatriate hundreds of downed crewmen who were being protected from the Germans by the Yugoslavians. "It was just wonderful to realize that the hundreds of Americans were able to get back home," he said. The second world war ended in 1945, and shortly after, in 1947, the U.S. Air Force was created from the Army Air Corps. McGee stayed on and became part of the new service. It was around that time, he said, the U.S. armed forces began to integrate -- and the Air Force was the first to make it happen. Another war would speed things up for the services who were dragging their heels. "The Navy and the Army were pretty slow," he said. "Well, they really got on board in the Korean timeframe. But the Air Force led our country in providing equal access and equal opportunity for all." McGee served in WWII, the Korean War and Vietnam, and flew more than 400 combat missions across all three wars. He also earned a Distinguished Flying Cross while serving in Korea -- it was one of his proudest moments, he said. He retired from service in 1973 as an Air Force colonel, and in 2007 was, along with other Tuskegee Airmen, awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. In February of last year, President Trump promoted McGee to brigadier general. In WWII, McGee and other pilots who were part of the Tuskegee Airmen had broken down barriers for the Black service members who would follow. But he said he and the others didn't see it that way when they were training or flying missions. "We didn't go south to say we're going to go set the world on fire," he said. "For some it was an opportunity that they had always wanted -- they saw an airplane when they were little, or had a ride and wanted to do that. They were there for that. For myself, or [the] country to come out of 10 years of depression, the declaration of war to support our allies in Europe -- it didn't change segregation, but it changed opportunity. The need opened that door." While McGee said he didn't think about changing the world when he chose to go fly for the Army, two things he was thinking about were freedom and opportunity. "What freedom means to me is the fact that although there were those who said I couldn't do something because of my happenstance of birth," he said. "Freedom provided the opportunity to serve and prove that it's not just an idea for somebody to tell you can't do something -- it also requires the endeavor from yourself, that yes I can. And it's in freedom that you get the opportunity to prove that you have abilities. They can be developed to not only help you as an individual, but what it means in the area of business, jobs and opportunities -- you can't beat it. Freedom is the key to providing such opportunity for one and all." Now more than 100 years old, McGee talks today with a lot of young people at schools and other public-speaking events. To emulate his success, he said, he's got a formula he calls "the four Ps," something he said works equally well for adults. "Perceive, dream your dreams," he said. "Find out what your talents are. And I like to add, and hopefully among them is something you really enjoy doing, as I enjoyed my flying experiences." Preparation is also important, he said. And that means getting a good education. "Learn to read, write and speak well, and develop those talents," he said. "Unfortunately, all of our youngsters aren't getting that opportunity." Once you've set a goal for yourself, he said, and you've gotten the education for how to do it, it's all about doing it and doing it well. Performance matter, he said. "Always do your best with excellence as your goal in everything you do -- that's good for you," he said. "What you do good that way is good for your family, what's good for your family is good for our community, [and] what's good for the community is good for the country." And finally, he said, is perseverance -- pressing on even when there is something pushing back. "Don't let circumstances of folks telling you you can't do something be an excuse for not achieving," he said. "We could have gone off, bowed our heads, and said they called me names and they don't like me and don't want me and not served our country. But look at what that would have meant, what we did accomplish." Perhaps a fifth "P," not included in his four, is "patriotism" -- which McGee has quite a bit of. "America is the greatest nation on Earth because of the values that we like to sustain," he said. "Some of them aren't always supported by everybody around the country. But the fact that the chance for opportunity is there -- and of course you have to prepare. A good education program is very important -- there's more than one step for that accomplishment. ... We adults need to mentor the young folks because they are our country's future. And there are many things out there they don't need to get into, but there are many things they do need to, to keep America the greatest." Moscow Should Be More Transparent About Activities Near Ukraine [2021-11-10] WASHINGTON -- With Russian activities in Eastern Europe increasing, including a buildup of forces near the Ukrainian border, Moscow must be more transparent about what its intentions are there, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said. "What we continue to see is unusual military activity inside Russia, but near Ukraine's borders, and we remain concerned about that. It's not exactly clear what the Russian intentions are," Kirby said during a briefing today at the Pentagon. "We obviously would like to better understand that. And we don't want to see any action further destabilize what is already a very tense part of the world. And we urge Russia to be clear about their intentions and to abide by their Minsk agreements." According to the Ukraine Ministry of Defence in a report published last week on their website, their intelligence service indicated a force of about 90,000 Russian troops concentrated near the Ukraine border. Those troops, the report said, include elements of the Russian Federation's 8th and 20th armies and parts of Russia's Black Sea Fleet. Air force elements were also present, the report said. "It's unusual because of the size and the scope, and it's got our attention, no question about that," Kirby told reporters. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to conduct operations in the region as part of being a NATO partner nation, Kirby said -- and will continue to do so. "As a NATO ally ourselves ... we will continue to fly, sail and operate in international airspace and international waters as appropriate," Kirby said. "We'll continue to do that. There's a couple of U.S. Navy ships in the Black Sea as we speak. And we believe that's an important principle to stand up for." Kirby said he sees no linkage right now between the operations the U.S. is conducting in Europe as a NATO partner and what the Russians are doing near the Ukraine border. "As you heard Secretary Austin say many times when we were in Europe just a couple of weeks ago, our support for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine is unwavering," he said. World War II Veteran, Prisoner of War Dies at 99 [2021-11-12] WASHINGTON -- Army veteran Daniel W. Crowley, who saw combat in the Philippines and was also a prisoner of war, died of natural causes at his home in Simsbury, Connecticut, Sept. 16; he was 99. Crowley's heroic, wartime efforts were recognized during an event earlier this year at an Air National Guard hangar in Windsor Locks, Connecticut. During the event, Crowley was awarded a Prisoner of War medal and an Army Combat Infantryman Badge; he was also promoted to sergeant. Gregory J. Slavonic, who was at the time performing the duties of the Navy undersecretary, presented Crowley with the long-delayed honors and recognition. "I have to say that to be able to do this today is a rare and humbling opportunity for me as the undersecretary of the Navy -- to be able to recognize Dan for his many sacrifices and accomplishments," Slavonic said at the time. "He truly represents members of the greatest generation, who did so much but asked so little from their country. The valor and professionalism demonstrated by you, Dan, has earned you a permanent place in the heart of every American." A Connecticut native, Crowley joined the Army Air Corps in October 1940 at the age of 18. For his first duty assignment, Crowley was assigned to an aircraft unit on Nichols Field near Manila, the capital of the Philippines. He arrived there in March 1941. At the time, the U.S. was not involved in the world war that had ravaged so many other nations. But, after being stationed in the Philippines for just nine months, things changed dramatically. On Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. On the same day, the Japanese attacked the Philippines, bombing several military airfields. The next day, the U.S. declared war on Japan, and the Japanese bombed Nichols Field where Crowley was assigned. Crowley wasn't trained in combat arms, but when the bombs started falling, he and other soldiers had to act. He and members of his unit welded British Lewis machine guns together to form a single, more powerful gun and provided air defense. The Japanese raid at Nichols Field destroyed all the hangars, most of the aircraft, and other infrastructure. While Crowley and others worked to defend the airfield against the Japanese attacks, their efforts ultimately proved unsuccessful. On Dec. 24, 1941 -- about 15 days after the Japanese bombed Nichols Field -- Crowley and others sailed about 25 miles across Manila Bay to the Bataan peninsula in the dark of night, leaving their former home abandoned. By then, the Japanese controlled the airspace over the Philippines, and this meant the island nation depended entirely on ground forces for its defense. On Bataan, the fighting continued. The soldiers from Nichols Field -- including Crowley -- became part of the U.S. Army's Provisional Air Corps Infantry Regiment. The regiment was joined in its efforts by the Philippine Scouts, a unit of Filipino soldiers organized by the U.S. Army after the Spanish American War. During the Battle of the Points on the west coast of Bataan, Crowley and the regiment used hand-to-hand combat to fend off three amphibious landings by the Japanese. After three and a half months of fighting, it was apparent the Japanese were going to prevail at Bataan. On April 9, 1942, the U.S. leaders on the peninsula surrendered in order to prevent further casualties. As part of the surrender, they ordered troops to move south on the peninsula and congregate in the municipality of Mariveles. While the U.S. forces had been ordered to surrender, Crowley wasn't in agreement with his leadership. "The men did not surrender, either on Bataan or on Corregidor," Crowley said. "They were surrendered by their commanding officers to prevent a massacre, which was threatened by the Japanese commander." Instead of surrendering, Crowley and others made plans to escape the clutches of the Japanese. He and other service members instead swam for Corregidor, another island in the chain. On Corregidor, which is just off the southern tip of the Bataan peninsula, Crowley and others were met by a Marine Corps unit -- the 4th Marines Regimental Reserves. Crowley and the others who had escaped Bataan fought alongside Marines to keep Corregidor from falling into the hands of the Japanese. While the Marines, Crowley, and the servicemen who escaped with Crowley continued to fight valiantly on Corregidor, the island fell to the Japanese on May 6, 1942. After that, Crowley and nearly 12,000 other POWs were held on Corregidor at an exposed beach with little water or food and no sanitation. By the end of the month, Crowley and others were taken by boat from Corregidor to Manila where they were paraded through the city as part of what the Japanese called a "march of shame" on May 25, 1942. Eventually, Crowley was housed as a POW at Camp Cabanatuan. On Palawan Island, Crowley worked for nearly 18 months to build a runway for the Japanese -- who had provided only hand tools to do the back-breaking work. He was eventually returned to Manila in February 1944, but not everyone who'd gone to Palawan Island was returned. "[The Japanese] burned alive a hundred-plus Americans on the island of Palawan," Crowley would later say. "The Japanese proved their threat of massacre was not an empty threat. They did proceed to murder about 150 Americans by burning [them] alive with gasoline. They forced them to dig a long ditch ... they were forced into it, and then [the Japanese] poured gasoline on them, and the guards ... they ignited it with torches. Some men actually survived, so we have eyewitness accounts to it." Back in Manila, Crowley had escaped that death sentence, but the Japanese had other plans for him. To support the Japanese war effort, he was to mine copper as a slave laborer. In March 1944, the Japanese put him on a boat bound for Japan. Prisoners of war who were aboard that boat and others like it would later refer to them as "hell ships" due the conditions on board. Crowley spent three-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war and slave laborer in Japan. On Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. detonated a nuclear weapon over the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, the U.S. detonated another weapon over the city of Nagasaki. On Sept. 2, 1944, the Japanese signed documents of surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Just two days later, Crowley was liberated. After spending some time in a U.S. hospital, he was able to return home to his family in Connecticut. Crowley was honorably discharged from the Army in April 1946; however, Army records show he had been promoted to sergeant in October 1945, but Crowley never learned of that promotion. On Jan. 4, 2001, Crowley finally received the chevrons of an Army sergeant -- bringing him into the ranks of the noncommissioned officer corps. Recognizing the years he spent as a prisoner of war in the Philippines and Japan, he was awarded a POW medal. And, finally, in recognition of the armed combat he participated in at Nichols Field, on Bataan and on Corregidor, he was given the Army's Combat Infantryman Badge. Results of DOD Financial Statement Audit Supports Focus on People [2021-11-16] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department has completed the fourth annual department-wide financial statement audit, and the results were released Monday evening. The audit, conducted by the DOD inspector general and multiple independent public accounting firms, covered DOD's more than $3.2 trillion in assets and $3.0 trillion in liabilities. Efforts to begin doing departmentwide audits began in 2010, said Michael McCord, undersecretary of defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer, during a briefing Monday afternoon. "We've expanded greatly since we started on this path about 10 years ago," McCord said. "Although we do not yet have a clean opinion and we have a long way to go, I will note that over this past decade we have done what we have told the Congress we would do when we said we would do it. So when we said we would start something, we started it, and we said we would go into audit in 2017, [and] we did go into audit in 2017." The results of this year's audit, McCord said, show support for one of the priorities of Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III -- taking care of people. When it comes to how the DOD pays its people -- both military and civilian -- McCord said processes used by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service passed muster through the audit. "Those are separate processes that are validated -- the military pay process is separate from the civilian pay process," he said. "Each got an unmodified opinion or passed its test. I highlight this because -- when you combine the fact that our military and civilian pay processes pass muster, along with the clean opinion on the Military Retirement Fund, and a qualified opinion on the Medicare-Eligible Retiree Health Care Fund -- I think it shows that we are strongest on the audit where it matters most: and that is meeting Secretary Austin's imperative of taking care of our people." As of Monday afternoon, it was expected that a total of eight reporting entities would sustain unmodified audit opinions, McCord said, including the Military Retirement Fund; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers -- Civil Works; the Defense Health Agency -- Contract Resource Management; the Defense Commissary Agency; the Defense Finance and Accounting Service Working Capital Fund; the Defense Contract Audit Agency; the DISA Working Capital Fund; and the DOD OIG. "We remain committed to sustaining progress made to date and increasing our unmodified opinion counts in the coming years," McCord said. Aegis Ashore in Poland on Target for 2022 [2021-11-19] WASHINGTON -- The Aegis Ashore capability planned for Poland is moving ahead to be operational by the end of next year, said the program executive officer for Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense. The Aegis Combat System was originally designed as a shipboard system to track and destroy incoming enemy targets, but now the system has also been deployed for use on land, as "Aegis Ashore." Already an Aegis Ashore capability is up and running in Deveselu, Romania, about 90 miles from Bucharest. The site, which is under the control of NATO, has been in operation for more than five years now. A site similar to the one in Romania is also planned for Redzikowo, Poland, near the Baltic Sea. But that site has been delayed due to construction issues -- though efforts are now underway to get the site operational by the end of next year. "My part, which is to install the Aegis Weapon System, has been delayed as we work the military construction with our contractors," said Rear Admiral Tom Druggan during a discussion on Thursday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. "We are behind, given the original schedule, no question about that. The good news is we're getting the quality we want for a facility that's going to be there 50 to 75 years, and we now have the right management in place in order to move ahead and complete this." Over the summer, Druggan said, the Aegis system in Poland was pulled out of storage there and assembled to test it's operations. "We ... put the whole weapon system together with the exception of the antennas," he said. "We energized it. And the equipment had been in the containers for a while. We found some issues -- [but the] good news is we fixed them. And then we did an upgrade, which is saving time from a future availability. So that system is actually our most upgraded system today, ready to be installed." In an unusual move, Druggan said, the Aegis Ashore capability in Poland is now being set up as the infrastructure on the ground to support it becomes available. He said antennas for the AN/SPY radar system have already been set up. "We're installing the backbone of the radar behind it," he said. "We've installed some [command, control, communications, computers and intelligence] systems. And we're going to keep installing our pieces in parallel to the commissioning of all the industrial equipment, power, cooling, ventilation, that's going on, on the construction side." Normally, he said, installing an Aegis system wouldn't happen until all the supporting construction was complete. "I made the decision long ago that we were not going to wait," he said. "We were going to do what we could, when we could, based on the conditions within the deckhouse. That has proved to be a successful strategy. And now we've got good momentum." Druggan said he expects the Aegis Ashore site in Poland to be operational by the end of 2022, and at that point the transition of the system can happen first to the Navy, then to U.S. European Command, and finally to NATO. Socom Commander Says Taliban Aren't Counterterrorism Partners in Afghanistan [2021-11-22] WASHINGTON -- Following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan at the end of August, the only semblance of government remaining there is the Taliban. But the Taliban are not partners in defeating terrorism there, the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command said. "I don't see them as a partner -- I'll just be frank," Army Gen. Richard D. Clarke, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, said Friday at the annual Halifax International Security Forum event in Nova Scotia, Canada. "I think we have an interest from the U.S. perspective that the ISIS threat that is in Afghanistan is disrupted, that it can't roost so that it could actually affect one of our nations. But I wouldn't, as we look at the Taliban, I don't think they're an entity, today, that should be ... a counterterrorism partner." That doesn't mean that the U.S. or its allies are without recourse should threats in Afghanistan arise that could harm the U.S. homeland or that of allies, Clarke said. The U.S. and its allies have options they've developed over 20 years of war. "We built up amazing counterterrorism capabilities over the last 20 years," he said. "Some of those capabilities can still be used in Afghanistan today." Clarke said those capabilities involve working with partner Afghans who still remain in Afghanistan and also working with regional allies as well. There are also embassies in Afghanistan that have insight into what's going on, and there are other intelligence assets that the U.S. can rely on as well. "The most important thing for us in Afghanistan is to ensure we understand the intel picture of where [the] ISIS-K that exists there today actually is, and if it becomes such a threat that it could come back to the United States or could come to one of our allies and partners -- we've built up capability," he said. "We can go to where the enemy is. We've proven that time and time again with the counterterrorism forces that all of us have built up." The U.S. has said that it retains over-the-horizon capabilities that can be used in Afghanistan, even if it doesn't have a presence on the ground. Clarke said it'll be tough, but not impossible, for the U.S. military to accomplish the things it might be asked to do without boots on the ground. "It's going to be harder. Anytime you have physical presence on the ground, it stimulates the enemy forces -- you see and sense, you're with partner forces," he said. "It is going to be harder. However ... the unique capabilities that we've built with airborne unmanned aerial vehicles, presence with Afghan partners, the ability to talk with them and continue to work with allies -- it's going to be what we're going to continue to do. While hard, we've done hard, and we can do hard, and we're going to continue to persist." Clarke also said the special operations community has realized that it can't always be the answer -- that others are capable and must also be part of solutions. This is different, he said, than the way special operations were used immediately following 9/11. "At a certain point after 9/11 -- if any group raised their hand and said 'I'm part of al-Qaida,' or ... 'I'm part of ISIS,' we generally would send special operations teams to that location to try to disrupt or defeat, and found that that's not a sustainable approach," he said, adding that the special operations community must now prioritize where it responds. Now, he said, it's important to work more closely with other capable communities to see who is best able to respond. "What we have to do is work with allies, and particularly indigenous partners from that region, to actually defeat that threat and try to contain it inside their borders, so that it doesn't, in fact, grow," he said. "So, we have gone to a more sustainable approach to the counter-VEO approach." The answer doesn't always need to be a kinetic response either, Clarke said. "It doesn't always have to be the warhead on the forehead to defeat this, but really, it has to be an entire government approach, and it has to be ... ensuring allies and those partner nations are capable to [meet] the threat." Bidens Share 'Friendsgiving' Dinner With Fort Bragg Troops, Families [2021-11-23] WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden enjoyed a "Friendsgiving" dinner with troops and their families last night at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The president and first lady touched on the upcoming holidays and the struggles endured by military families -- struggles which are often amplified when service members are deployed during family-focused holidays. "I want to thank your families because they stand and wait," the president told service members. "I know how hard it is to have someone who's not at the table on a holiday -- that are in harm's way, that find themselves out of the country." The president said that he and the first lady are aware of the struggles of having a family member away during the holidays because their son, Beau, served as a major in the Delaware National Guard and was away during the 2008 holidays on a year-long deployment to Iraq. "You do so much, and your families give so much," Biden told service members. "You're the ... finest military that the world has ever seen." Through the "Joining Forces" initiative, the first lady has made military families a major focal point of her time in the White House, both now and when her husband served as vice president. Joining Forces is an initiative to support the families of service members, veterans, caregivers and survivors. "I know what it's like to see that empty seat at the table and ... just how hard it is for the families," the first lady said. "I want to thank all of you. That's why we came to have dinner with you, to say 'thank you' to you. We're so grateful for everything that you do." DOD Looks at Ways to Improve Child Care Access [2021-11-24] WASHINGTON -- During the COVID-19 pandemic, the challenges faced by service members and their families in getting child care demonstrated just how important child care is to the military mission. And now the department is working hard to find new ways to ensure that those who need child care can get it, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for military community and family policy said. "What the pandemic did, and what it showed us was that child care is not just a 'nice to have,'" Patricia Barron, who spoke on Tuesday as part of the Association of the U.S. Army's "Thought Leaders" seminar, said. "You've got to have it. If you're going to go to work, you've got to have your child care in place." Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks has challenged the department, and MC&FP to uncover new and innovative ways to expand access to quality affordable child care for military families, Barron said. "We've been working really hard on what that could look like," she said. "And we've had a couple of things that I'm very, very proud of." Earlier this year, Barron said, the department kicked off a pilot program that allows military families to seek in-home child care providers, and the department will help pay for the cost. "Now you can hire someone that comes into your home. They still need to be vetted, and still kind of have to go through the process that we would if we were to hire anybody to work in our centers. But you hire someone that comes into your home. And we will provide you with fee assistance to help pay for their salary," Barron said, adding she hopes the program will be expanded next year. Barron also highlighted the DOD's "Military Child Care in your Neighborhood +" effort, which aims to get more child care providers eligible for fee-assistance by the DOD. Right now that effort is underway in Maryland and Virginia, but Barron said the program is expanding into other states as well. "That'll provide more opportunities for access to fee assistance," she said. For parents needing short-term child care -- such as a babysitter -- Barron said the DOD has partnered with "Sittercity." "If you go on to Military OneSource, we have waived the registration fee," she said. "You can go right into the portal there and you can put in your information and a list of people will come up -- and of course it's up to you to talk to them and vet them and all of that. But they've had their background checks done." Barron said both the DOD and the services are working hard to improve access to child care for military service members and their families. "There's just never enough child care, because we have a young force," she said. "You know, we're always going to have young people coming in, we're always going to have babies ... and children." Mission Partner Environment Cuts Decision Making, Kill Chain [2021-11-29] SUFFOLK, Va. -- Earlier this month in Suffolk, Virginia, the Joint Staff's J-6 and members of the Defense Department's cyber community -- along with military representatives from the U.K., Australia, Canada, Sweden, Germany and other partner nations -- concluded an experiment to demonstrate the effectiveness of the department's mission-partner environment and SABRE software. SABRE is short for secret and below releasable environment. It's a software tool to help DOD and it's partners more easily and efficiently share information between the computer networks of the U.S., partner nations, and military services during combined and joint operations. "SABRE is the material solution to the mission-partner environment that will enable our partners ... to share information, and for the U.S. to share information with them," Cliff Fagert, the director of the Mission-Partner Capabilities Office, said. "That can be anything as simple as sharing a document, as complex as combined fires or combined medevac information, or any type of mission application." Fagert said that while "partners" is typically understood to mean the militaries of foreign nations, it might also include other agencies of the U.S. federal government or even municipal law enforcement agencies, when needed. Over the past 20 years of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. has partnered with a multitude of foreign militaries in countless operations. Command and control of those operations often involves an array of computer networks brought along by each participating nation. Facilitating the movement of information among those disparate networks as part of executing those combined and joint operations has been a challenge. Simplifying those operations is the goal of the MPE and SABRE. "SABRE allows us to come together much quicker, much more flexibly," Maj. Gen. Thomas Copinger-Symes, the U.K. chief information officer and director for military digitization, said. "Critically, it takes the lessons from the last 20 years of campaigning where we were, frankly, too slow to be able to interoperate in fixed infrastructure. We've learned those lessons, and we're now embedding them into SABRE so that we can plug-and-play together in a much more rapid, much more agile fashion as crises emerge, to deal with those crises and get back to competition." In past operations, the U.S. and partner nations brought their own computers and networks along with them -- though due to both incompatibility and security issues, these networks could not be connected. For some operators, conducting operations in such an environment might have meant fielding a call for an airstrike using one computer attached to one nation's network, then manually typing information about that airstrike request into another nation's computer on a different network. Frederick Stanley, the lead for the coalition's interoperability assurance and validation assessment within the Joint Staff's J-6, explained the pace of information sharing during Operation Inherent Resolve in 2017. "We did some initial analysis, and we identified through deliberate processing maps and analysis that with the current environment they had, which was not data-centric, you would have to manually move products between partners in the same community of interest, which took four to six hours per manual move of that product," Stanley said. "It took approximately 10,000 hours to share those data products to execute ... 100 targets a day at the height of that mission." The problem, he said, wasn't with how the targeting process worked. It was an information-sharing problem that needed to be fixed. "When we identify targets ... all of our nations do intelligence collection on those targets. Because we had a poor ability to share information, we had multiple partners collecting the same intelligence information on top of one another, which means we weren't utilizing our collection resources in the most efficient manner possible," he said. "What that led to was target deconfliction challenges, it led to production of the air-tasking order that couldn't be shared at the same level with all the same organizations, and it led to an inefficient targeting process ... because network-centric security prevented us from being able to share those products quicker and faster." The clumsiness of operating that way and the amount of time it might take to move information among decision makers from different nations created delays in carrying out airstrikes and also in arriving at other kinds of decisions. The DOD's Mission Partner Environment will allow partner nations to use their own networks -- which might not otherwise be compatible with each other -- to connect to SABRE and seamlessly share information between them so that decisions can be made more quickly. Ensuring that partner nations can communicate effectively is critical because future operations are not expected to be conducted by only one nation -- but by a team of nations. "There's going to be no action in the future where we're operating alone," Maj. Gen. Robin Anderton-Brown, UK Strategic Command capability director, said. "We're going to be operating with our partners and our allies. And the importance of sharing information is only going to get more acute. Going forward, the importance of information and data -- and to be able to share that more seamlessly -- is going to require greater standardization of how we approach it. And SABRE is a great initiative to drive that coherence and standardization across the nations." The DOD is now also focused on Joint All Domain Command and Control, or JADC2, which is, in part, an effort to connect together the sensors from all of the military services into one tactical network. JADC2 will play a big part in the MPE and SABRE. "From a U.S. perspective, SABRE is really the linkage between our mission partners and our JADC2 environment," Brig. Gen. Robert Parker, the deputy director for command, control, communications, and computers with the J-6, said. "When we think of the JADC2 framework, it's not an either/or with MPE and SABRE, it's one." Parker said adversary nations are moving quickly and are agile. Technology is changing quickly, as well; for the U.S. and its allies to remain competitive, they must also be agile and move more quickly. "When we think of this, this isn't about just one ally, one partner, one specific environment," Parker said. "The future has to be a persistent, connected, mission-partner environment, enabled by SABRE, that really allows us the flexibility necessary to respond to the knowns and unknowns that the future joint warfighting environment will present to us." On the ground in Suffolk, a pair of tents set up on a parking lot there mimicked -- to a small scale -- the kind of command and control element that might be present in any combined operation around the globe. Inside the tents, laptops were set up that could connect to SABRE. Military officers from multiple U.S. ally and partner nations were there to conduct simulated operations using SABRE and to provide feedback on how using it was different from how they've worked in the past as part of a coalition. Swedish Navy Col. Olle Mobergh, a liaison officer from the Swedish armed forces to the Joint Staff's J-6, was one of the officers who worked with SABRE and the MPE. He said in using the system he saw value in it immediately. "[It] gives us the benefit of each nation being able to use their national systems," Mobergh said. "You don't have to buy a specific gadget to interconnect. It's all done virtually in a computer system. We can plug in the Swedish system, having the right data format, and the right way of compiling information, and we can then share our information to whatever level we are entitled to [and] to whoever is supposed to receive it." Mobergh also pointed to an important feature of the MPE and SABRE -- "data-centricity" versus network-centricity. "We should invest in the continuation of implementing this technology and also look into policies because that's where I think we need to do the most work ... writing our policies so that information is eligible to be shared on different levels," he said. "Because today, we write policies for specific systems for specific tasks -- and that's not the future." On today's military networks, users are authenticated into a system. Their access and clearance is first verified, and then they are given access to an entire network in which to roam -- and on which they can, with few exceptions, view all the data housed there. This is a network-centric approach. To let a visitor from another nation view a series of files that are housed on such a network, that user would need to be cleared for access to the entire network -- and that can't always happen. SABRE and the MPE aim to do away with that and instead implement a data-centric environment. In such a system, all users are cleared for access to the same network -- but the data stored there has been tagged with information pertaining to those with permission to access it. Many users may browse such a network, but they will only be able to see or modify information that has been tagged in a way that makes it available to them, based on their individual access level. Army Lt. Col. Eric Tapp, the Centcom data centricity lead and joint test director, said implementing data-centricity for SABRE within DOD's enterprise-level MPE and Centcom's own Centcom partner environment will be a challenge for users. Those users will need to think differently about how they tag data when they're planning to share it with partners through SABRE and the MPE. "We're going to be asking a lot of our users in the future," Tapp said. "They've got to think differently about how they create information and how they share information. This is a true paradigm shift from what they're used to today ... There's a lot you need to be aware of, but there are not going to be that many additional steps for you to effectively share and greatly increase the speed at which you can share amongst your partners." While the DOD is developing the enterprise-level MPE with SABRE as the material solution, Centcom has developed its own compatible CPE -- or Centcom partner environment. The CPE is expected to roll out in January. The DOD has been working on the MPE and SABRE for about two years now, Fegert said, and it's just about ready to be released. It's expected to be fielded to the first combatant command sometime in late fiscal year 2022. Fegert said recommendations for which combatant command would receive the MPE first have been made. Once it is fielded to that command, they'll begin rolling it out to other combatant commands, as well. "What we intend on doing is, as we progress with command one, do kind of a rolling rollout to the rest of the combatant commands," he said. "It's not get one command all up and running and then go to the next one. It's [that we'll] get one going, take the lessons learned, then go to the next one, go to the next one, go to the next one." Army Lt. Col. Matthew Hicks, the Centcom engineering innovation branch chief and the technical lead for the Centcom's CPE, said the data-centric capability of the MPE and Centcom's own CPE will be a benefit for service members and for the sharing of information between partner nations and between military services. "For a sailor who's on a ship in the future, as we move towards this data centricity concept, they're going to be able to function on a single network," Hicks said. "As they deploy as part of Centcom operations into the Gulf, they will stay on that network and continue to operate on it as they transition into the Pacific in support of Indo-Pacom [Indo-Pacific Command] operations. They won't need to pull hard drives; they won't need to be able to change networks. Globally, they will be able to stay on a single U.S. mission-partner environment regardless of where they deploy to, where they practice, where they train, where they execute the mission." Most critically, implementation of the MPE and SABRE will mean that decisions, which are critical to service members, will come more quickly [and] with less delay. And that can save lives. "This will do two things with respect to any type of operation, but particularly combat operations," said Fegert. "It will shorten the time zone. And as we go against near-peer, high-end enemies, time, nanoseconds are going to be critical. And it will make it much easier for not just our sailors, soldier, airman, Marine and guardians, but our partners' sailors, soldiers, airmen, Marines and guardians to engage in a meaningful manner to deter, defend, and, if we have to, defeat so that the U.S. can retain its national sovereignty along with our partners. This is one of the things in 36 or 37 years, I'm actually proud to deliver -- this is a game changer." Austin Orders Review of 2019 Baghuz Airstrikes, Which Killed Syrian Civilians [2021-11-29] WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon announced today that Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has asked for a review of the March 18, 2019, airstrikes that occurred in Al-Baghuz Fawqani, Syria, which resulted in the deaths of more than 60 civilians there. The incident took place as part of efforts by U.S. and Syrian Democratic Forces to defeat ISIS in Syria. The secretary has tasked Army Gen. Michael X. Garrett, commander of U.S. Army Forces Command, to conduct the review, said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby during a briefing today. Garrett will review the reports of an investigation already conducted into the incident and will conduct a further inquiry of his own as well. The general has been tasked to submit his findings within 90 days to the secretary, Kirby said. "The inquiry will include an assessment of the following things: the civilian casualties that resulted from the incident; compliance with the law of war; record-keeping and reporting procedures; whether mitigation measures identified in previous investigations into the incident were in fact implemented effectively; whether accountability measures would be appropriate; and finally whether authorities, procedures or processes should be altered," Kirby told reporters. Guard Vaccinations The secretary of defense has mandated all service members, including active forces, Reserve and National Guard personnel, be vaccinated against COVID-19. Deadlines for National Guard personnel to be fully vaccinated have already been set by the military services. Air National Guard personnel must be fully vaccinated by Dec. 2, 2021, while Army National Guard personnel must be vaccinated by June 30, 2022. Failure to be vaccinated could affect a Guard member's ability to continue to serve, Kirby told reporters. "By not taking the vaccine, therefore not meeting a mandatory readiness requirement, an individual in the National Guard could put in jeopardy their ability to continue to serve in the National Guard," Kirby said. "The National Guard, as you know, even under Title 32, is funded by the federal government. So training operations that come under Title 32 -- much less Title 10 -- come under the secretary's purview. One could elect not to take the vaccine, of course, but then you would be putting at jeopardy your ability to stay in the National Guard." Without meeting the vaccine requirement, Kirby said, Guardsmen wouldn't be allowed to train, drill or contribute to operations under Title 10 or Title 32. "That could lead to potential decertification of their skill set -- whatever that is -- and of course that ... could lead to no longer being able to serve in the National Guard," he said. For Contingencies in Indo-Pacom, Army Will Serve as 'Linchpin' for Joint Force [2021-12-01] WASHINGTON -- While the U.S. was involved for 20 years in the Middle East with conflicts in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the Chinese military studied how the U.S. military operates and also embarked on its own large-scale modernization effort. "A more powerful Chinese military helps to underwrite Beijing's strategy to achieve the 'great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation' by 2049 -- to include development of the PLA [People's Liberation Army] into a 'world class military' by midcentury," Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth said during a conversation today with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "China's focus on modernizing its military capabilities will strengthen its ability to coerce Taiwan and rival claimants in territorial disputes, project power globally, and counter interventions along the PRC's [People's Republic of China] periphery," she said. Right now, the Chinese military is manned with about two million service members -- 975,000 of them in army combat units. It also has the most ships of any navy in the world, Wormuth said. And within the Indo-Pacific region, the Chinese military also has the largest air force. China now has the ability to attack U.S. sensors and communication links in space and also has missiles that can sink U.S. ships and take down aircraft, Wormuth said. "They have missiles that can reach U.S. bases in Japan and Guam, exposing our planes and runways to attack," she said. "Not only does China have advanced precision weapons, it has them in large and growing quantities. And just recently, China conducted a missile test that sent a missile around the world, dropping off a hypersonic vehicle that glided all the way back to China where it then struck a test target." Considering the advancements made by the Chinese military and the challenges it poses to the U.S., Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has identified China as a "pacing challenge" for the Defense Department. The entire U.S. military must be prepared to meet that pacing challenge, Wormuth said, but as the secretary of the Army, she laid out capabilities she thinks the Army will be able to bring to that joint effort. "In my view, the Army will have at least five core tasks if a conflict breaks out, and these are tasks the Army can usefully perform without presuming substantial expansion of Army permanent presence in the region in the near term future," Wormuth said. First, she said, the Army will serve as the 'linchpin" service within the joint fight. "The Army will establish, build up, secure and protect staging areas and joint operating bases for air and naval forces in theater," Wormuth said. "We will be prepared to provide integrated air and missile defense, both for fixed sites and using mobile elements. We will provide area security and quick reaction forces where needed." The Army will also use its vast logistics capacity to sustain joint force partners across the Indo-Pacific region, she said. "The Army, for example, will provide much of the secure communication network background. We will generate intra-theater distribution networks to keep the joint force supplied from dispersed locations, and we will maintain munition stockpiles and forward arming and refueling points," she said. The Army can also provide command and control capability at multiple levels to ensure coordination and synchronization across the joint force. "The Army, with its substantial planning and operations capacity at the division and corps level, is uniquely well placed to provide command and control for the joint force," Wormuth said. Beyond just mission support, Wormuth also said the Army brings substantial combat capability to the joint force. For instance, she said the Army will provide ground-based, long-range fires to enhance the joint force's strike capability. "Using our long-range hypersonic weapons, mid-range capability and precision strike missiles -- all of which we will begin fielding in fiscal year 2023 -- we will be able to interdict fires across sea lines of communication, suppress enemy air defenses and provide counter fires against mobile targets." Finally, she said, the Army can provide counter-attack capability using its maneuver forces. Infantry stryker elements or combat aviation brigades, for instance, can be used to restore territorial integrity of allies and partners. While Wormuth said the Army is currently capable of providing such capabilities to the joint force without changes in its existing permanent presence in Indo-Pacom, some changes would be useful. Right now, the U.S. military footprint in Asia is oriented towards the northeast, in places like Japan and Korea, for instance. "I think there is very much a desire to be able to expand our access and basing arrangements more into Southeast Asia; because, if we were able to do that, we would have ... a more dispersed posture that would give us much more flexibility," she said. "I think it is very much in our interest, and in the interest of our allies and partners, to explore how we can shift that posture over time." Nevertheless, considering where the U.S. operates now in Asia, she said it's important to maintain realistic assumptions about where the U.S. will be operating from, at least in the near future. "The Indo-Pacific ... is a region of great opportunity for the United States, but also real challenges," she said. "The Army is stepping up to that challenge, both in terms of how we contribute to the country's ability to compete with China and our ability to deter coercion and aggression in the region." Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence, Security Launches at University of Maryland [2021-12-02] WASHINGTON -- Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie, and representatives of the University of Maryland today officially launched the Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security, or ARLIS, at College Park, Maryland, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The event highlighted the partnership between the Defense Department and the university in furthering intelligence efforts, innovating in the national security arena and shaping future workplace development in the intelligence and national security career fields. ARLIS is one of just 14 university-affiliated research centers, or UARC, in the U.S. for the Defense Department. The laboratory supports the department with both basic and applied research into human and sociotechnical systems; artificial intelligence, automation, and augmentation; and advanced computing and emerging technologies. "ARLIS is the only UARC focused on the intelligence and security communities," said Hicks. "It is a flexible and responsive organization. It leverages technology and science to meet increasingly critical national security challenges. It could not have come at a better time." The deputy secretary said the U.S. faces a challenging global security environment, including threats from Russia, Iran, and North Korea, as well as from transnational and non-state actors. The department has also identified China as a pacing challenge. "Destabilizing actions threaten our critical infrastructure, undermine democratic institutions, and seek to erode our military readiness and competitive advantage," Hicks said. "This dynamic threat landscape requires the Department of Defense to conduct research, innovate, and undertake dynamic experimentation. ARLIS will enable us to do exactly this." The office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security sponsors the ARLIS, and Moultrie said that partnership has paid off. "Our partnership with the University of Maryland and the results we are achieving today are emblematic of one of our most critical intelligence and security needs: a UARC committed to evolving our capabilities by emphasizing a human-centered focus," Moultrie said. "The future of intelligence and security needs both advanced technology and advanced human understanding. We need human and technological capabilities, and we need to integrate them into our tradecraft. That is precisely what I see happening here at ARLIS." Moultrie said one of his priorities within the department is the exploration of innovative new approaches to enhance the nation's security, including the reimagining and discovery of new ways of approaching, building, delivering and integrating new capabilities into the department's intelligence missions. "Our goal is to identify, analyze and implement the technological advances that are vital to our nation's intelligence and security mission," he said. "ARLIS's applied research is already enabling our enterprise to determine how we can get new technologies into users' hands faster, use these advances to further our current mission needs and protect as well as modernize our technology so that we can anticipate and achieve future mission successes." DOD Must Act Early to Extract Much-Needed Tech From Nation's Industrial Base [2021-12-06] WASHINGTON -- America's technology companies make a lot of great products -- but most of that is for the commercial market. If the Defense Department wants to get in on that product development cycle -- and extract from it the things that are valuable to warfighters -- then it must get in early and let technology companies know what it needs. "I've seen a lot of really innovative small companies ... a lot of these commercial companies, their product is commercial," Heidi Shyu, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said during a discussion Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California. "If we can work with them upfront early in the design stage, we can leverage their capability for a commercial product into the DOD." Many companies tell her they are interested in working with DOD, but that the cost is too high to develop a commercial product into a defense product after the commercial product is already to market, Shyu said. The Defense Department is simply not a high-volume enough consumer to warrant retooling an existing product to include the features DOD needs. "The early engagement -- they value that so much," Shyu said. "This is a piece that we're trying to flex and push ahead: engage with the commercial company upfront, early in their design for the next generation of whatever product they are working on. [There is] great enthusiasm in that area." Equipping the Warfighter Through Joint Efforts Bringing advanced capabilities to the warfighter is a priority for the department. Bringing it to all warfighters -- jointly -- is even more so. And Shyu said efforts are underway now -- already being put into the fiscal year 2023 budget, to make that happen. "What we've done is take a look at the joint warfighting capability gaps -- not just to a single service but across the joint warfighting capability gaps," she said. Shyu said the department asked combatant commands what their shortfalls and capability gaps are. And then the department went to the services to look for what solutions might be underway, in development, that could fix those shortfalls. "What we have done this summer ... we went to the services and asked them, do you have prototypes you would like to demonstrate in a joint experimentation," she said. "In five weeks we received over 100 white papers. There is that much enthusiasm. We reviewed all these white papers, racked and stacked them in terms of which project has the best bang for the buck in terms of fulfilling these joint capability gaps that were defined by the joint services and COCOMs." She said 32 of those projects have gotten a "thumbs up" to advance and are now in the FY2023 budget. "The COCOMs are already asking me how quickly [we can] get these capabilities in our hands," she said. "I said you guys will be the ones evaluating the capabilities. If you like it, we can go into rapid fielding. That is the path we have to be on: rapid development in terms of prototypes, rapid experimentation; get it into the hands of the users, the operators, the warfighters." Long-Range Discrimination Radar Reshapes Adversaries' Calculus for Attacks Against U.S. Homeland [2021-12-07] WASHINGTON -- The Missile Defense Agency, U.S. Northern Command and the Space Force marked the completion of construction on the long-range discrimination radar site at Clear Space Force Station, Alaska, during a ceremony on Monday. The multi-mission LRDR is designed, for now, to better track incoming ballistic missiles. It combines the capabilities of lower frequency radars -- which can track multiple objects in space at long range, but are not able to help warfighters determine which objects are a threat -- with the capabilities of higher-frequency radars, which have a more limited field of view but are better able to "discriminate" among multiple objects and figure out what of those is dangerous. As ballistic missiles are launched and shed portions of themselves along their trajectory -- including decoy and countermeasure material -- the LRDR will help to determine which of those objects must be targeted by the missile defense system. When fully operational, the multi-face LRDR -- equipped with a 220 degree wide field of view and arrays measuring 60 feet high by 60 feet wide -- will provide the ability to search, track and discriminate multiple, small objects in space, including all classes of ballistic missiles. Future iterations of the radar's software will allow it to also track hypersonic missiles. The information the LRDR provides will increase the effectiveness of the missile defense system and help the U.S. Northern Command better defend the United States. The capabilities the LRDR provides will also serve as a new kind of deterrent against potential missile attacks by adversaries, said Army Lt. Gen. A.C. Roper, the deputy commander of U.S. Northern Command. "For years, the Department of Defense has subscribed to a mindset of deterrence through punishment -- taking advantage of our global response to execute retaliatory strikes," Roper said. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has challenged the military to instead approach deterrence from a different perspective: deterrence through denial, Roper said. "It's a defense designed to give our potential adversaries pause," he said. "It is the type of deterrence that shifts [their] cost-benefit calculus, providing doubt that an attack will be successful. And the LRDR helps to shift that calculus." The general told those responsible for designing and building the new LRDR system that they have given potential adversaries something to think about if they're contemplating an attack on the U.S. homeland. "This long-range discrimination radar is designed to defend the homeland by providing [the] unparalleled ability to search, track and discriminate multiple objects simultaneously," Roper said. "This radar provides a much-needed improvement to Northcom's homeland ballistic missile defense mission, ultimately resulting in more effective and efficient employment of the ground-based interceptors." Full operational capability for the LRDR is expected in 2023, Navy Vice Adm. Jon A. Hill, director of the Missile Defense Agency said. Right now, the newly built LRDR will be evaluated and integrated into existing systems. "This initial delivery is an important step to declare that we're done with a major construction. We are now fully into the test mode of this radar," Hill said. "That testing is so critical because it pushes you right into the integration, command and control into ground-based midcourse defense. That integration work will be complete and, then, in 2023, we'll be able to do operational acceptance for Northern Command." Right now, the primary requirement met by the LRDR is against a ballistic missile threat, but in future iterations of the LRDR, tracking of hypersonic weapons can also be included without significant changes to the system, Hill said. "That is what the radar filters are designed to go after," Hill said. "To bring in what I call a filter -- which means you can then space your tracking and your timing to go to hypersonic -- that's not a big leap ... that is a software upgrade, but it is not the driving requirement for LRDR today." Small Arms, Ammunition From U.S. Headed to Ukraine's Defense Forces This Week [2021-12-08] WASHINGTON -- The final elements of a $60 million security systems package to Ukraine -- initially announced in August -- will ship this week, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said. During a briefing today at the Pentagon, Kirby told reporters that the last portions of the existing security package, which includes small arms and ammunition, is shipping now. Other parts of that security assistance package, meant to help Ukrainians defend their sovereignty against Russian aggression, included the Javelin missile system, which is already in the hands of Ukrainian servicemembers. Kirby said as with all security assistance packages, the material provided can be used as the recipient nation sees fit -- but that it will be used for self-defense purposes only. "Our expectation for use of the Javelins ... [is] that they are to be used in a self- defensive mode ... for self-defense purposes," Kirby said. "There is no geographical restriction on where they can be used inside Ukraine. We expect them to use them responsibly and for purposes of self defense." Right now, Kirby said, there are no additional announcements or decisions about additional security assistance to Ukraine. Fuel Storage Tanks in Hawaii The Navy has shut down use of the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility in Honolulu, Hawaii, after reports that some of the fuel stored there had contaminated drinking water. "The secretary is obviously aware of this issue, and he's following it closely," said Kirby. "Nothing's more important to him or to the department -- and I know the Navy feels this way as well -- than the health and welfare of our people and their families. And obviously, we're all deeply concerned by the prospect that contaminated water would have found its way into on-base residences and into the daily lives and diets of our people. So it's of significant concern to the secretary." Kirby said Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has been communicating with Secretary of the Navy Carlos DelToro. They attended town halls together in Hawaii just a few days ago and to meet with experts to get a better understanding of the issue. Right now, Kirby said, the Navy is leading the investigation within the department. "I certainly won't get ahead of their investigative efforts or what decisions they might make," he said. "But it is something that the secretary is very closely monitoring and very much in touch with Navy leaders on." The fuel facility, while operated by the Navy, supports all branches of the military, and can hold up to 250 million gallons of fuel. Time for Guam Missile Defense Build-Up Is Now [2021-12-08] WASHINGTON -- There's no time to spare when it comes to getting the tools in place to defend Guam -- a U.S. territory, home to 168,000 Americans, and a centerpiece of America's defensive abilities in the Pacific region. "Guam represents the region's most critical node for not just command and control but also logistics and for our power projection," Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Stephen D. Sklenka, the deputy commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said during a conversation Monday with the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. "It's key terrain and it enables the success of our operational framework and its strategic importance can't be overstated." Right now, he said, the Defense Department has committed about $11 billion in funding for military construction projects on Guam over the next five years, and that will help ensure Guam remains a place from which the U.S. military can fight, if needed, in the Indo-Pacific region. "Guam is a place where our combat power will aggregate and congregate and from which it will emanate," Sklenka said. "From there we send a powerful strategic message to our allies and our adversaries that the United States has invested in this region -- we prioritize the Indo-Pacific." One area that needs work, Sklenka said, is Guam's missile defense system. "Today's missile defense capabilities in Guam are, as we know, only sufficient to protect against yesterday's threats," he said. "To defend Guam against the [Chinese military's] evolving capabilities ... we require a land-based, persistent, 360-degree system. There's no getting around that. The Guam defense system has got to be an architecture that fuses the most capable integrated air missile defense programs of record today and those that are developing into the future." Funding such a system, Sklenka said, is a top priority for Indo-Pacom, and has been for a while now. "It's been our top priority for the last three years going on four, and the past two successive commanders have gone on the record to state this," Sklenka said. "They've warned all that will listen that the threat to Guam will only increase over the next five years. Those aren't idle threats. Those are based off of events that we're seeing unfold around us right now." While the Missile Defense Agency is a likely candidate to lead the development of a more modern missile defense system on Guam, Sklenka said it's not important if it's MDA or one of the services -- of more importance, he said, is that it gets done. "Our point is, we need something," he said. "We don't care whether it's led by [the] Army, whether it's led by [the] Navy ... or whether it's led [by] MDA. What we're saying is we need the decisions to be made, the architecture to be agreed upon, and to move out. Because this is a problem that we don't have the luxury anymore of waiting and analyzing and assessing. We've done all that stuff. We've done all the studies, it's time to move out, to get this thing into action. And if the best way to do that is to have MDA lead it, then let's figure out a way to give them the opportunity to lead it." Iran Top Priority for U.S., Israel [2021-12-09] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III met today with Israeli Defense Minister Benjamin "Benny" Gantz during a closed meeting at the Pentagon. A top priority for both defense leaders was a shared concern regarding the aggressive actions of the Iranian government. "We share Israel's deep concerns about the Iranian government's destabilizing actions, including its support for terrorism and its missile program, and its alarming nuclear advances," Austin said in advance of the meeting. "We are completely aligned in our commitment to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon -- this is a national security interest of the United States and Israel and the world." While Austin said diplomacy is the first tool that should be used to address threats posed by Iran, he said it is not the only tool the U.S. has at its disposal. "The president has made clear that if the policy fails, we are prepared to turn to other options," Austin said. "The Department of Defense will continue to work closely with all of our partners throughout the region, including Israel, first and foremost, to ensure that we're working together to address Iranian threats. We will defend ourselves, we will defend our friends, and we will defend our interests." Austin also told the Israeli defense minister that the U.S. remains committed to Israel's ability to continue to defend itself. "As you know, the United States remains unwavering in its commitment to Israel's security, including maintaining Israel's qualitative military edge," Austin said. Included in that commitment, Austin said, is a strengthening of U.S./Israel bilateral defense cooperation, with an emphasis on air and missile defense. Gantz reminded Austin that it is the government of Iran that Israel is at odds with -- not the Iranian people. "They are being held hostage by a tyrannical regime which violates their human rights," Gantz said. "Iran is not just a threat to our physical security. Iran possesses a concrete threat to our way of life, and our shared values. In its aspirations to become a hegemon, Iran seeks to destroy all traces of freedom, human dignity, and peace in the Middle East and beyond." Iran's nuclear program, Gantz said, is its means to achieving its goals both regionally and globally, and he counts on the United States to ensure it doesn't advance. "I am totally confident in the commitment of the administration of the United States as a global power to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons," he said. "The international community, with the United States' leadership, has an opportunity to act against Iran's hegemonic aspirations, restore stability, and prevent the oppression of nations across the region." Bump in COVID-19 Cases in D.C. Area Spurs Additional Mitigation Efforts at Pentagon [2021-12-28] WASHINGTON -- An increase in new COVID-19 cases in the National Capital Region -- the area including and surrounding Washington, D.C., where most of the Pentagon workforce lives -- has spurred Defense Department leadership to implement some additional safety measures to prevent its own workforce from becoming ill or contributing to new cases. In a memorandum dated December 27, Michael Donley, director for administration and management at the Pentagon, discussed Defense Department concerns and detailed additional safety measures. "We have seen an increase in coronavirus disease 2019 and positive test results in the National Capital Region in recent weeks," Donley wrote. "Additional mitigation measures will be implemented on the Pentagon Reservation to protect the workforce and our support to the no-fail mission of the Department of Defense." According to the memorandum, beginning January 3, food concessions at the Pentagon will no longer have seating available for diners. Those who purchase food at those locations will need to eat elsewhere. Because the Pentagon is in health protection condition "Bravo +," organizations in the building are maintaining occupancy rates at less than 40%. That will continue, and Donley asked supervisors and managers to "strongly encourage" the personnel they lead to telework at least through the end of January 2022. Virtual meetings or seating with physical distancing should be maximized. Additionally, through the end of January, unofficial visitors will not be allowed in the building, and parties of official visitors must be limited to the minimum required for mission-critical meetings. Beginning January 5, military personnel, DOD civilians and on-site contractors at the Pentagon will again have access to COVID-19 vaccinations and boosters at both the DiLorenzo Pentagon Health Clinic and at the Pentagon Library Conference Center. Personnel who wish to get the vaccine will need to make an appointment. Shared Challenges, Strengthening Alliance at Center of U.S.-Japan Defense Meeting [2022-01-06] WASHINGTON -- Increased tensions in the Indo-Pacific region and the strengthening of military relations were the topics of discussion when U.S. and Japanese diplomatic and defense leaders met virtually for the 2022 U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee Meeting. Participating in the discussion from the U.S. were Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Rahm Emanuel, ambassador to Japan. Japanese Foreign Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa and Defense Minister Kishi Nobuo represented Japan. During opening remarks, Austin touched on the strength of the U.S.-Japan alliance. "We know how strong that alliance is today," Austin said. "It remains the cornerstone of peace and prosperity in the region. We're rightly proud that it's built upon a foundation of not just common interests but also shared values." However, Austin also noted that some of the interests shared by the U.S. and Japan are at risk due to growing aggression in the Indo-Pacific. "We're meeting against a backdrop of increased tensions and challenges to the free, stable and secure Indo-Pacific region that we both seek ... challenges posed by North Korea's nuclear ambitions and by the coercive and aggressive behavior of the People's Republic of China." Austin said. To counter those threats, the U.S. and Japanese militaries are looking for ways to enhance readiness and strengthen integrated deterrence capabilities. Last month, he said, the U.S. and Japan concluded participation in the military exercise Yama Sakura 81. This latest iteration of the exercise was the largest it has been in 40 years. The Yama Sakura annual training exercise focuses on the defense of Japan with bilateral planning, coordination and interoperability between the Japanese Ground Self Defense Force and U.S. military units. Austin also noted that last month the U.S. and Japan completed the military exercise Resolute Dragon, a bilateral field training exercise held in Japan which focused on integrated deterrence and involved over 4,000 service members from the U.S. Marine Corps and the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force. "We truly remain grateful for the support that Japan continues to provide U.S. forces deployed there ... and for an extraordinary level of mutual cooperation against the full spectrum of military capabilities," he said. "We will -- and we must -- continue to work even more closely together." Thursday's virtual meeting builds on discussions held last year in Tokyo, Austin said, and will help the two nations develop a framework for cooperation going forward. "This framework will include, first, enhancing alliance capabilities across all domains; also evolving our roles and missions to reflect Japan's growing ability to contribute to regional peace and stability; and optimizing our alliance force posture to strengthen deterrence," he said. Pentagon Moves to Health Protection Condition Charlie [2022-01-10] WASHINGTON -- Due to recent increases in COVID-19 positivity case numbers, the Defense Department headquarters has moved to Health Protection Condition Charlie, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said during a briefing today. "Due to the recent increasing spread of COVID-19 ... this morning the Pentagon officially went to HPCON Charlie, to protect our workforce, their families, our communities and our support to the absolutely critical mission of this department," Kirby said. Officials continue to monitor COVID-19 conditions in the community surrounding the Pentagon, Kirby said, and any additional changes in health protection conditions will be based on an analysis of those conditions. DOD has five "health protection conditions," beginning with 0, or "routine," and then to Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta. When the HPCON is C, or "Charlie," an area is experiencing "sustained community transmission." Under HPCON Charlie, employees can expect cancellation of in-person gatherings, a restricted ability to travel and severely restricted access to military installations. As a result of the move to HPCON Charlie, a number of measures were put in place at the direction of Michael Donley, the director for administration and management at the Pentagon. Included among those measures are that organizations within the building are expected to maintain occupancy rates of less than 25% of what is considered normal. Individuals in the building, regardless of vaccination status, must wear masks at all times except if they are alone in a closed office, while eating or drinking, or when pulling the mask down for identification purposes. The memorandum also said that COVID-19 vaccinations, including booster shots, remain available at the Dilorenzo Pentagon Health Clinic, which Kirby said the department continues to recommend to all personnel. "We continue to encourage all DOD employees and their eligible family members to get a booster shot, and obviously ... to get fully vaccinated," he said. Right now, COVID-19 vaccinations are a requirement for all U.S. military personnel, while booster shots are not required. Kirby told reporters that no decision has yet been made about making booster shots a requirement. "We are still in discussions here at the Pentagon about the booster shots and there's been no ... decision made about making them mandatory," he said. "But as the secretary has said many times to the force ... If you're eligible, if you meet the criteria, we absolutely encourage those members of our workforce to get the booster shots because it really does help lessen the effects if, in fact, one contracts the virus." More Active Troops to Help Take COVID-Related Pressure Off Civilian Hospitals [2022-01-13] WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon announced today that an additional 1,000 active duty military personnel will be made available to help with a whole-of-government approach to combating the nationwide COVID-19 pandemic. During a meeting with the media today, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby told reporters that next week the first of an additional 1,000 active duty service members will be teamed up to deploy to civilian hospitals across the U.S. to help take pressure off medical staffs there as they battle the effects of the omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus. Already as many as 400 active duty troops are assisting civilian hospitals across the United States, Kirby said, and the additional 1,000 will augment their ongoing work to support federal and state partners, Kirby said. Right now, it's expected the first wave of those servicemembers will be headed to six facilities, including Cleveland Clinic; Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn, New York; Rhode Island Hospital in Providence; Henry Ford Hospital just outside of Detroit; University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque; and University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey. "They'll be providing relief, triaging patients, helping to decompress overwhelmed emergency departments and freeing up healthcare providers to continue other life-saving care," Kirby said. "They will be working alongside health care workers on the frontlines to give them the support they need. So it's not just about COVID medicine necessarily, they're going to be acting as a relief valve for our civilian health care workers." Right now, Kirby said, it's not clear from where the active duty personnel will come, though he did confirm that it will likely be individuals called upon to participate, rather than entire military units. "Most of these teams ... they're not coming from set units," he said. "These are personnel that are being assessed from their own military treatment facilities or where they are around the country and fashioned together into teams. So it is more of an individual deployment scheme than it is a unit deployment scheme." The press secretary also said it's not clear now how long these deployments will last. "Nobody expects that these deployments will be open-ended and you know, over a long period of time," he said. "Nor have we set finite specific periods of time on it right now. They are temporary deployments. We don't think that they will last an inordinate amount of time. But it is a chance to just relieve the pressure." Early on in the COVID-19 crisis, the U.S. military set up field hospitals and deployed medical ships, along with personnel, in anticipation of seeing massive numbers of COVID-19 infections overrunning the capacity of city hospitals. Those numbers of patients never materialized and many of the facilities set up by the Defense Department never saw a significant number of patients. This most recent effort is not the same as efforts earlier on, Kirby said. "These are smaller teams and they're going to hospitals ... brick and mortar hospitals, to help alleviate the strain on the health care workers that are already there," he said. "They all won't necessarily be doing COVID-related stuff." Instead, he said, military personnel will be "taking up the slack" in those hospitals to help doctors and nurses get their own work done. "The secretary is committed to this mission, and he's committed to alleviating the stress and pressure on the civilian health care system to the degree that we can," Kirby said. "We're going to be watching it ... in real time and making decisions about who to deploy, when to deploy, when to redeploy, based on the need in these hospitals around the country." Kirby also said the department will keep an eye on how the deployments affect the department's own capacity to provide medical care to its people. "These individuals are coming from military facilities," he said. "We also have to be mindful of our own ability to run our own facilities and to take care of our troops and our families ... we're going to be watching that as closely as we can, too." Tuskegee Airman Charles McGee Dies at 102 [2022-01-18] WASHINGTON -- Tuskegee Airman Charles E. McGee died in his home Jan. 16, 2022. He was 102 years old. According to a news release put out by Tuskegee Airmen Inc., McGee died peacefully in his sleep. "He had his right hand over his heart and was smiling serenely," his youngest daughter, Yvonne McGee, said. McGee was preceded in death by his wife, Frances. The couple raised three children, were grandparents to ten children, and also had numerous great-grandchildren. "He was a wonderful human being," McGee's son, Ron McGee, said. "I feel proud and privileged to be called his son." In March 1942, McGee was a college student studying engineering at the University of Illinois in Champaign. Less than four months prior, the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, and the U.S. was at war. "In ROTC I learned to handle a rifle pretty well," McGee said during an interview several years ago. "But because I was in school, my draft board wasn't pulling my number." McGee figured it wouldn't be long before the draft board would come for him, especially as things heated up in Europe. "Had they, I would have probably been on the ground with that rifle," he said. In nearby Rantoul, Illinois, McGee said he learned the Army Air Corps had set up a training school for Black aircraft mechanics on Chanute Air Field. "I was in school [at the] university 14 miles away — and that's really where I learned about the program," he said. "The Army policy was they couldn't use [Black] pilots because they had no Black mechanics." The Army training Black aircraft mechanics meant the Army was also looking for Black pilots as well, McGee figured — something which interested him more than the prospect of being a ground-pounder with a rifle. McGee opted to get involved in something that interested him, and soon found himself in Tuskegee, Alabama, learning to fly military aircraft. "I heard about the aviation opportunity and passed the exams," he said. "[After] my first flight in a PT-17 — to be able to go up there and loop roll and spin and come back and put your feet on the ground — I was hooked! Never have I forgotten that first day." McGee ended up flying in World War II for the Army as part of what are now called the Tuskegee Airmen — a group of Black pilots and ground personnel with a remarkable service record during the war. "I served in the Mediterranean theater in WWII in the 302nd Squadron of the 332nd Fighter Group," he said. "We went directly to Italy in the spring of 1944, and I served almost a year because I ended my time there in November." In Europe, he said, one of his proudest missions involved providing an escort for aircraft that would repatriate hundreds of downed crewmen who were being protected from the Germans by the Yugoslavians. "It was just wonderful to realize that the hundreds of Americans were able to get back home," he said. The second world war ended in 1945, and shortly after, in 1947, the U.S. Air Force was created from the Army Air Corps. McGee stayed on and became part of the new service. It was around that time, he said, the U.S. armed forces began to integrate — and the Air Force was the first to make it happen. Another war would speed things up for the services who were dragging their heels. "The Navy and the Army were pretty slow," he said. "Well, they really got on board in the Korean timeframe. But the Air Force led our country in providing equal access and equal opportunity for all." McGee served in WWII, the Korean War and Vietnam, and flew more than 400 combat missions across all three wars. He also earned a Distinguished Flying Cross while serving in Korea — it was one of his proudest moments, he said. He retired from service in 1973 as an Air Force colonel, and in 2007 was, along with other Tuskegee Airmen, awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. On February 4, 2020, President Donald J. Trump promoted McGee to brigadier general. In WWII, McGee and other pilots who were part of the Tuskegee Airmen had broken down barriers for the Black service members who would follow. But he said he and the others didn't see it that way when they were training or flying missions. "We didn't go south to say we're going to go set the world on fire," he said. "For some it was an opportunity that they had always wanted — they saw an airplane when they were little, or had a ride and wanted to do that. They were there for that. For myself, or [the] country to come out of 10 years of depression, the declaration of war to support our allies in Europe — it didn't change segregation, but it changed opportunity. The need opened that door." While McGee said he didn't think about changing the world when he chose to go fly for the Army, two things he was thinking about were freedom and opportunity. "What freedom means to me is the fact that although there were those who said I couldn't do something because of my happenstance of birth," he said. "Freedom provided the opportunity to serve and prove that it's not just an idea for somebody to tell you can't do something — it also requires the endeavor from yourself, that yes I can. And it's in freedom that you get the opportunity to prove that you have abilities. They can be developed to not only help you as an individual, but what it means in the area of business, jobs and opportunities — you can't beat it. Freedom is the key to providing such opportunity for one and all." As a veteran of World War II, Korea and Vietnam, McGee had a lot to pass on to America's youth, so he spent time in schools talking with young people. To emulate his success, he said, he's got a formula he calls "the four Ps," something he said works equally well for adults. "Perceive, dream your dreams," he would tell students. "Find out what your talents are. And I like to add, and hopefully among them is something you really enjoy doing, as I enjoyed my flying experiences." Preparation is also important, he said. And that means getting a good education. "Learn to read, write and speak well, and develop those talents," he said. "Unfortunately, all of our youngsters aren't getting that opportunity." Once you've set a goal for yourself, he said, and you've gotten the education for how to do it, it's all about doing it and doing it well. Performance matters, he said. "Always do your best with excellence as your goal in everything you do — that's good for you," he said. "What you do good that way is good for your family, what's good for your family is good for our community, [and] what's good for the community is good for the country." And finally, he said, is perseverance — pressing on even when there is something pushing back. "Don't let circumstances of folks telling you you can't do something be an excuse for not achieving," he said. "We could have gone off, bowed our heads, and said they called me names and they don't like me and don't want me and not served our country.But look at what that would have meant, what we did accomplish." Perhaps a fifth "P," not included in his four, is "patriotism" — which McGee has quite a bit of. "America is the greatest nation on Earth because of the values that we like to sustain," he said. "Some of them aren't always supported by everybody around the country. But the fact that the chance for opportunity is there — and of course you have to prepare. A good education program is very important — there's more than one step for that accomplishment. ... We adults need to mentor the young folks because they are our country's future. And there are many things out there they don't need to get into, but there are many things they do need to, to keep America the greatest." During his military service, McGee was awarded, among other things, the Distinguished Flying Cross with two Oak Leaf Clusters, the Legion of Merit with one Oak Leaf Cluster, a Bronze Star, an Air Medal with 25 Oak Leaf Clusters, an Army Commendation Medal, a Presidential Unit Citation, a Korean Presidential Unit Citation, and a Hellenic Republic World War II Commemorative Medal. [An earlier version of this story has been removed from this website.] Defense Microelectronics Activity Designated Center for Industrial Technical Excellence [2022-01-18] WASHINGTON -- Last week, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III designated the Defense Microelectronics Activity as a center for industrial technical excellence, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby told reporters today. "This designation allows greater utilization of small runs of DOD-critical microelectronics and semiconductors both inside and outside the DOD," he said. "It also allows the use of public-private partnerships that provide opportunities to promote partnering agreements between depots and private industry." The DMEA provides a stable, guaranteed supply of microelectronics to the Defense Department and U.S. government agencies by developing partnerships with defense contractors or by securing intellectual property license agreements from the nation's leading technology providers. Microelectronics enable many key weapon systems, Kirby said, adding that the department considers the designation to be a positive step toward ensuring that critical mission areas stay relevant and invaluable into the future. U.S. Aircraft Will Not Return to Taliban When the U.S. left Afghanistan in August 2021, so too did many members of the Afghanistan Air Force. Some Afghan pilots took themselves and their families out of the country to nearby Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, aboard aircraft which had belonged to the Afghanistan Air Force. Included among those aircraft were some which had been provided by the United States. The Taliban, who overran Afghanistan as the U.S. exited the country, would like to have those aircraft back now. According to the Defense Department, when it comes to the U.S.-made helicopters, that's not likely to happen. "We're still working out the disposition of those helicopters ... I don't have an update ... on any decisions about how they will be handled," said Kirby. "But I think it's safe to assume that they will not be sent into Afghanistan to be used by the Taliban." The final decision on what happens to those aircraft, Kirby said, is something the Defense Department is still working on. Currently, Kirby said, the Taliban are not recognized by the U.S. as the official government of Afghanistan, though he added that such decisions are not the purview of the Defense Department. "What we would say is I think what everybody has said across the administration: that we want to see human rights, civil rights, we want to see the promises made by the Taliban actually delivered in terms of how people are going to be treated in Afghanistan." Kirby also told reporters that the Defense Department's mission is to continue to protect the United States, including from any terrorism threats that may emanate from Afghanistan. "We're going to stay eyes-on to what's going on there," he said. "We have serious, significant counterterrorism responsibilities. We have over-the-horizon capabilities that we can avail ourselves of, and we're going to continue to make sure that Afghanistan doesn't serve as a safe haven for an attack on the homeland again." Also in the Middle East, Kirby touched on a terrorist attack in Abu Dhabi, which killed three civilians. "We remain committed to the UAE's security and ability to defend itself," Kirby said. "We stand united with our Emirati partners in defending against all threats to their territory." Simplified Human/Machine Interfaces Top List of Critical DOD Technologies [2022-01-19] WASHINGTON -- A modern-day cell phone packs quite a wallop when it comes to computing technology and capability. But most cell phones barely come with a "quick start guide," let alone an instruction manual that spells out how to use all the features. Cell phone companies have mastered the interface between humans and technology, making their use entirely intuitive and rendering thick instruction manuals a thing of the past. The same thing should be happening for weapons systems used by servicemembers, Heidi Shyu, who serves as the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said. During a virtual discussion today with the Potomac Officers Club near Washington, D.C., she said intuitive, easy-to-use human/machine interfaces is something that's a priority for her and the Defense Department. "When I [served as an executive for the] Army before, one of the experiences I learned is with a lot of our weapons system, you really have to have a manual and go through weeks of training, if not months and years to be proficient, which is ridiculous," she said. "[Weapons systems] ought to be designed with the appropriate ease-of-use human/machine interface, so it will become much more intuitive." As the Defense Department's chief technology officer, Shyu said she's interested in developing better ways to simplify the way service members use the technology they are given in order to reduce the training burden and learning curve. "I really would like to see how we can change our weapons systems' human/machine interface to be a lot more intuitive, to ease the amount of training that's required," she said. For most service members, combat means use of a weapon such as a rifle, an aircraft that can drop a bomb or launch a missile, or a ship or tank that fires a large gun that requires a round to be loaded. All of these kinetic weapons systems fire solid projectiles which need to be carried along with warfighters, and which may eventually run out. But a new generation of weapons systems, which uses directed energy rather than expendable ammunition or ordnance, is on the horizon, Shyu said. "In the area of directed energy, we're ... finally at the cusp of developing laser technology," she said. "After 30 years, we're finally getting to the point of fielding the prototypes. So I'm thrilled. Army and Navy are [both] fielding laser systems. I'm really happy to see that. We're also developing high-power microwave systems as well." The Optical Dazzling Interdictor, Navy program, or ODIN for short, is a nonlethal weapons system used to confuse and perhaps render harmless an enemy drone -- rather than shooting it down. The ODIN system is already installed on multiple Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers within the Navy's fleet, and there are plans to install additional systems as well. The Army is also developing several directed energy systems. One of those is the Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense, or DE M-SHORAD system, which involves a 50kW-class laser to protect divisions and brigade combat teams from unmanned aerial systems, rotary-wing aircraft, and threats from rockets, artillery and mortars. The department is also interested in the development of advanced materials, Shyu said. "I'm certainly interested in materials that can handle higher heat, higher temperature, next-generation hypersonic materials," she said. "I'm interested in material that's stronger, but lighter weight. It certainly can help us reduce the logistics burden; and also materials that can have higher efficiency -- materials that can potentially change properties. [There are] a lot of different areas within advanced materials we need to continue to push the research in." The department is also doing its part to bring the manufacture of microelectronics back to the U.S. to improve supply chain reliability, Shyu said. "You guys have all heard about the situation that we're in with the supply chain, where 70% of our chips are coming from Asia," she said. "That poses a supply chain risk. You can see there's a lot of interest on the Hill in terms of helping out the microelectronics foundries to try to onshore some of the capabilities." Shyu said the Defense Department is working closely with the Department of Commerce and with foundry companies to make that happen. "We also work very closely with intelligence communities to make sure we understand all the needs and figure out how we can leverage commercial processes which can evolve at a much faster rate than just the defense-unique foundry," she said. Finally, Shyu said, the department is interested in having the U.S. take the lead on the development of 5G technologies -- and the advancement of the next-generation of radio communications as well. "I call it the 'next G'," she said. "Namely, beyond 5G. What I don't want to happen is for us to take our eyes off the ball and play catch-up. I'm interested in making sure we're developing technologies on 6G and 7G, so we, the U.S., can shape the standards, as opposed to some other country shaping the standard and us playing catch-up." Neptune Strike '22 Kicks off Monday in Mediterranean [2022-01-21] WASHINGTON -- Starting Monday, NATO partners, including the United States, kick off the 12-day maritime exercise "Neptune Strike '22" in the Mediterranean Sea, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said during a briefing today. The USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, along with it's carrier strike group and air wing will be the Defense Department's primary contribution to the exercise. The exercise will be led by U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Eugene H. Black III, who serves as Strikeforce NATO commander and also commander of the Navy's Sixth Fleet. "[Neptune Strike '22] is designed to demonstrate NATO's ability to integrate the high-end maritime strike capabilities of an aircraft carrier strike group to support the deterrence and defense of the alliance," Kirby told reporters. "The USS Harry S. Truman carrier strike group will be placed under NATO operational control and serve as the centerpiece for this long-planned activity that fosters NATO allies' ability to cooperate and integrate effectively." Neptune Strike '22 has been in the planning stages since 2020, Kirby said, though he told reporters that the current tensions in Europe due to the uncertainty about Russia's intentions regarding Ukraine were considered when deciding whether to press on with the exercise. "There was due consideration ... given tensions right now, about our exercise posture," he said. "After all that consideration and discussion with our NATO allies, the decision was made to move ahead." Kirby also told reporters that because planning for Neptune Strike '22 began in 2020, the exercise is not designed to incorporate scenarios which are directly related to current events in Europe. "It wasn't planned back in 2020 anticipating ... a Russian move on Ukraine," he said. "The exercise itself is not designed against the kinds of scenarios that might happen with respect to Ukraine. It really is a NATO maritime exercise to test ... really a wide range of maritime capabilities that we want to make sure we continue to improve." Right now, Kirby said, the U.S. sees a sizable Russian troop presence in the western part of Russia near the border with Ukraine. It's unclear now as to why those troops are there. "It continues to be concerning," Kirby said. "You heard [Secretary of State] Blinken talk [about] this earlier today. We believe that there's still a path to diplomacy here and we would like to see the situation deescalated. And as I've said before, one significant key way for it to get deescalated is for the Russians to pull some of those forces back out away from the border with Ukraine. They have shown no inclination to do that. In fact, quite the contrary, I think they continue to add to the force presence there." While Neptune Strike '22 is not related to that Russian aggression towards Ukraine, Kirby did say the Defense Department remains committed to Ukraine's ability to defend itself, and to having options available should NATO allies ask for assistance. "We're going to make sure that we have options ready to reassure our allies, particularly on NATO's eastern flank," Kirby said. "If there's another incursion and if they need that reassurance, if they need the capabilities to be bolstered, we're going to do that. And we're going to make sure that we're ready to do that." Kirby also said readiness isn't just a Defense Department responsibility or effort. "I think this is a whole-of-government approach," he said. "It's not just about the Department of Defense, and quite frankly, as you've been seeing from other NATO allies who have also not only spoken to their concerns about what Russia is doing but actually moved on delivery of security assistance to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, it's an international community effort." Additional Security Assistance Headed to Ukraine [2022-01-25] WASHINGTON -- Yesterday the Pentagon announced that some 8,500 U.S.-based military personnel have been put on a high state of alert. While none of those troops has yet been asked to deploy, Pentagon spokesperson John F. Kirby told reporters the Defense Department and the U.S. government continue to be actively involved in addressing concerns of NATO allies about a possible Russian incursion into Ukraine. During a press conference today, Kirby told reporters the U.S. continues to send security assistance to Ukraine. "We're shipping over additional security assistance to the Ukrainians as we speak," he said. "[Planes] are taking off and landing in Kyiv. So, we are acting." President Joe Biden has also spoken twice with Russian President Vladimir Putin and explained that there will be "severe consequences," largely economic, if there were to be a Russian invasion of Ukraine, Kirby said. The United States is also having active dialogues with allies and partners in Europe about what they think is necessary to bolster their own defensive capabilities. "We are increasing the alert posture on quite a number of U.S. troops here, stateside, as well as taking a look at what could possibly be moved around on the European continent," Kirby said. Russia has amassed many troops in Russia and Belarus near the border with Ukraine. The number of troops there continues to rise. "We have seen a consistent accumulation of combat power by the Russians in the western part of their country around the borders with Ukraine and Belarus," Kirby said. "[Putin] continues to add to his force capability in western Russia and in Belarus. We've seen no signs of de-escalation ... what we're hoping for is a de-escalation. And one of the best ways they could de-escalate the tension would be to remove some of those forces away from Ukraine." That de-escalation hasn't happened, yet, Kirby said. The 8,500 troops alerted to ready themselves for a rapid deployment if called upon are still inside the U.S., Kirby said. They will mostly be assigned to the NATO Response Force. So if and when they deploy, it will only be after being requested by NATO. "That would be a NATO decision," Kirby said. If any additional U.S. troops would deploy or would be readied to deploy to support individual NATO allies, Kirby said. Such a decision would come as a result of conversations with that ally directly. Right now, he said, there's no official word that such conversations have happened. Right now, Kirby said, the United States still believes there is time for diplomacy. "We still don't believe Mr. Putin has made a final decision whether to conduct another incursion/invasion into Ukraine," Kirby said. "We still think there's time and space here for diplomacy and dialogue to work. ... We still think there's room and time for diplomacy, and the department wants to make sure that we help provide that ... time and space for the diplomats." 'Major Non-NATO Ally' Designation Will Enhance U.S., Qatar Relationship [2022-01-31] WASHINGTON -- During a meeting today with Qatari Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, President Joe Biden indicated plans to nominate Qatar as a "major non-NATO ally" for the United States. The designation will change the way the United States and its military interact with that country, said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby. "It does open up a full new range of opportunities: exercises, operations and you know, perhaps, the ... acquisition of capabilities as well," Kirby told reporters during a briefing today at the Pentagon. The Amir also met today with Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III at the Pentagon. "The secretary reiterated his heartfelt gratitude to the Amir's indispensable and, quite frankly, ongoing support to our efforts to continue to get Americans and our Afghan allies out of Afghanistan," Kirby said. The two leaders, he said, discussed shared regional security interests including de-escalating tensions in the region, countering terrorism and the threats represented by Iran. "Secretary Austin shared his vision for integrated deterrence, emphasizing the importance of multilateral efforts and integrated operations with partners like Qatar, to address threats confronting the region," Kirby said. According to the U.S. State Department, a designation as major non-NATO ally, or MNNA, serves as "a powerful symbol of the close relationship the United States shares with those countries and demonstrates our deep respect for the friendship for the countries to which it is extended." Nations with the MNNA designation are eligible to, among other things, host U.S. war reserve stockpiles of material inside their countries. Private companies within those nations are also eligible to bid on contracts to maintain, repair or overhaul U.S. military equipment. Those nations can also enter into agreements with the United States for training. More than 15 nations, including, but not limited to Australia, Bahrain, Japan, Kuwait, and the Philippines, are currently designated as major non-NATO allies by the United States. Health, Security, Environment Are Key Motivators in DOD Response at Red Hill [2022-02-01] WASHINGTON -- In November, fuel from the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility in Honolulu contaminated water supplies there. Today the Defense Department is still working to address the issue, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said. "[The] No. 1 priority is to make sure we're looking after the military personnel and their families as well as the residents, [and] civilian residents affected by this contamination," Kirby told reporters during a briefing today at the Pentagon. The Navy, he said, continues to work to remedy the issue, and right now, Kirby said, around 4,000 military families are displaced as a result of the water contamination. "We're trying to get them ... back into their quarters as quickly as possible," he said. A second priority is ensuring the contributions to national security provided by the Red Hill facility will continue -- regardless of what happens to Red Hill itself, he said. Red Hill is responsible for fueling most operations in the Indo-Pacific region. And finally, he said, is the Defense Department's commitment to the environment. "We ... want to make sure that we are absolutely being good stewards of the environment," he said. "And we do that all around the world. We know we particularly need to do that here in Hawaii. It's an environment that that we enjoy, that we appreciate ourselves. We're living in it and we know we have significant responsibilities there." Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks met yesterday with Hawaii Gov. David Ige to discuss the situation at Red Hill. "We discussed how we can work together through some pending legal matters," Hicks said in a statement released following her visit. Hicks said the department continues to act as part of an emergency order by the Hawaii Department of Health, which includes, among other things, suspending operations of fuel transfers at Red Hill, implementing a series of testing and sampling protocols, and installing new equipment to treat the water resources in Oahu. "As required by the emergency order ... we will submit to the Hawaii Department of Health a work plan and implementation schedule for a qualified, independent third party commercial firm to assess the facility operations and system integrity necessary to safely operate and/or defuel Red Hill," Hicks said, adding that the plan must be submitted by Feb. 2, 2022. Regarding the future of the Red Hill facility, Hicks said the Department is right now analyzing the distribution of fuel reserves in the Pacific theater. "This analysis by the Department of Defense will be completed within sixty days to enable the Secretary of Defense to make a decision on the role of Red Hill moving forward," she said. Another order by the Hawaii Department of Health was to drain the fuel in Red Hill. The Department can file an appeal to that order and plans to do so. "This will afford us time to make evidence-based and transparent decisions," Hicks said. Right now, Kirby said, fuel operations at Red Hill have been suspended. Going forward, the Department has responsibilities to those affected by the contamination, the environment and national security. "We know we've got responsibilities here to get this right -- to get this right for families affected -- not just military families -- but residents of the state of Hawaii," he said. "We don't have all the answers figured out right now and where we're going to go with Red Hill long-term, but one thing is for sure: that we are going to have security commitments in the Indo-Pacific long-term ... we've got to make sure that whatever plan we have in place, whatever we do here, that we can continue to defend the nation from the Indo-Pacific Theater." Recapitalization of Refuelers, Transport Ships Critical to Transcom Mission [2022-02-03] WASHINGTON -- Much of the U.S. military's fleet of refueling aircraft is old -- the newest KC-135 Stratotanker, for instance, was built in 1965. And sealift ships available to the U.S. military are also nearing the time when they'll be expected to retire. "When I look at the capabilities that Transcom has, [when] I look at the sealift, our ships are 46 years old," said Air Force Gen. Jacqueline VanOvost, the commander of U.S. Transportation Command, during a discussion today with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The reserve fleet, she said, even includes steam ships. "You can't even find engineers that work on steam ships," she said. "We have to keep 60-, 70-year-old engineers around to keep running them. We must recapitalize that." Refueler aircraft and sealift ships are important components of the U.S. Transportation Command's mission, and both must be recapitalized sooner rather than later if Transcom is going to continue to be as effective as it is. Van Ovost said one way to get newer ships into the sealift fleet, at least in the short term is through the purchase of used vessels. It's something the Navy is working on now. "In our discussions with the Navy, there is a strategy out there to begin to purchase used ships, which essentially was our strategy almost 30 years ago," she said. "It's to purchase some used ships and get them into the fleet because our fleet is old." Right now, she said, 37 of the 50 large "roll-on, roll-off" ships available to Transcom for moving large military equipment are expected to retire in the next decade. "We've got to begin a stabilized program of recapitalization," she said. "We're working with the Navy on this strategy to purchase used in the beginning, and we're working with Congress and we've been authorized to purchase up to nine used ships in combination with some new ships." Equally important is new growth in U.S. ship-building capacity, she said. "We've got to revitalize our shipbuilding capability and our ability at the docks to do repairs and maintenance and modifications," she said. "That is critical for our defense industrial base -- not just for sealift, but frankly for all of our sea power." When it comes to aircraft that provide refueling capability -- an important mission for Transcom -- the KC-135 Stratotanker and the KC-10 Extender have been workhorses for decades. The KC-135 was first built in 1955, while the KC-10 entered service in 1980. Both aircraft are well worn from their time in service. "We look at the KC-10, in particular; it's very expensive to keep that airframe going," she said. "It's going to cost a lot of money to keep it going. We need to replace it, and frankly, we need to also start replacing the KC-135, as well." The KC-46 Pegasus, now in limited service in the Air Force, is a suitable replacement aircraft, Van Ovost said, and is capable of doing more than just the tanker mission. "It can do aeromedical evacuation. It can do cargo. It can do probe-and-drogue and boom refueling, and it's connected to the net. It's ... Link-16; it's our ability to see the battlespace, transmit as a node in the network, which makes everybody better," she said. When it comes to recapitalization of the capabilities used by Transcom, Van Ovost now is the time. "It is absolutely necessary that we recapitalize on a schedule that we're not finding ourselves throwing good money after bad," she said. "What I look at is what is the problem set, where are the gaps we're trying to get after, and how do we get the services to purchase the capabilities necessary to close those gaps as soon as possible." U.S. Needs More Icebreakers for Arctic [2022-02-08] WASHINGTON -- It's true that ice is melting in the Arctic, but this doesn't mean the U.S. no longer needs icebreaker ships to operate in the region. And right now, the U.S. needs more than what it currently has. The Navy doesn't operate icebreakers, but the Coast Guard does. According to its website, the Coast Guard currently has only two operational icebreakers in its fleet. "Strategically, icebreakers provide persistent presence in a way that's not met by anything else in the maritime region," Randy Kee, who serves as the senior advisor for arctic security at the Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies, said. "Remember, the Arctic is a maritime region, and icebreaking provides you year-round access to be able to go in the region." With ice melting in the Arctic -- but not entirely gone -- routes of passage for shipping are opening up there in ways that have not existed before. Additionally, there are ample opportunities for commercial fishing and the mining of minerals. By some estimates, there is as much as 90 billion barrels of oil yet untapped in the Arctic. U.S. access to the region will require that all nations operating in the Arctic play by internationally established rules. But unless the U.S. can operate freely there -- which will surely require the use of icebreakers -- it may not be able to participate in the opportunities opening up or protect its interests. "You need icebreaking to be able to project year-round presence and when it's [of] your time and choosing," Kee said during a virtual panel discussion today with the Atlantic Council. Currently, six new polar icebreakers capable of operating in the Arctic are authorized for bolstering the Coast Guard's icebreaking fleet, Kee said, adding that the Coast Guard has said they need all six of them. According to a Coast Guard spokesperson, there are no plans right now retire to either of the Coast Guard's existing icebreakers. Kee also addressed concerns about the Russian Federation's own "vast number of icebreakers." He said that while the Russians do use some of those icebreakers to maintain a sovereign presence in the Arctic, others are necessary for running logistics operations in the region, where Russian communities dot the coast of the Arctic Ocean. "They also use [them] for logistics support to their northern communities, because they don't have any other way to get the products to those communities," he said. Increasing Production Is Important for Hypersonics, Defense Official Says [2022-02-08] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department is working hard on developing both hypersonic offensive and defensive capabilities. But in the immediate future, one of the most important areas to be developed is increasing the capacity at which such systems can be produced, said Gillian Bussey, director of the Joint Hypersonics Transition Office. "I would say that everything we're doing in terms of the interceptors, the strike weapons isn't going to make a difference unless we have sufficient quantities," Bussey said during a discussion today with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Having a dozen hypersonic missiles -- regardless of whether they're really hypersonic or not -- isn't going to scare anyone." The biggest technological and industrial capability the department can invest in right now, she said, is to increase production rates, particularly for thermal protection systems for glide vehicles and additive manufacturing for cruise missile engines. "I think those are the long poles in the tent when it comes to production," she said. "Those are the things that take the longest. If we can reduce the production time and increase the capacity and you know double, triple, quadruple those production numbers, I think that's how we'll really make a difference." Investing there, she said, needs to start now in order for capacity to be there when the department is ready with a program of record. Bussey also said that defending against hypersonics is an expensive and complicated endeavor, while it remains less expensive to develop and launch a hypersonic offense. That's why, even though the department is focused on both offensive and defensive capabilities, it's prioritizing offensive systems. "Essentially, this means it's a lot easier to attack than it is to defend against such an attack," she said "Despite the obvious threat, as a department, we've chosen to focus on offense first because a good offense is the best defense, and offense is a lot easier." At the same time, she said, research into both defensive and offensive systems yields valuable knowledge that can be used for both. "What has the maneuverability, altitude, reach and speed to hit a hypersonic missile? A hypersonic missile," she said. While technology for defensive and offensive systems are different, including seekers, guidance and booster technology, the fundamental design of an offensive or defensive kill interceptor vehicle can be the same, Bussey said. "We've seen a number of proposals using what could be an offensive strike weapon used as an interceptor and vice versa," she said. Former NYC Mayor Tapped to Lead Defense Innovation Board [2022-02-09] WASHINGTON -- Mike Bloomberg, the three-time mayor of New York City, has been nominated by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III to chair the Defense Innovation Board, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said. "The secretary has nominated Mr. Michael Bloomberg to serve as the chair of the Defense Innovation Board to leverage his experience and strategic insights on innovation, business and public service," Kirby told reporters during a briefing today at the Pentagon. "His leadership will be critical to ensuring the department has access to the best and brightest minds in science, technology and innovation through the team of diverse experts that he will lead as chair of that board." Established in 2016, the Defense Innovation Board provides Defense Department leadership with advice and recommendations on innovative ways to address departmental challenges with a focus on people and culture, technology and capabilities, and practices and operations. Across the department, a variety of advisory boards, councils, panels and committees have historically provided insight and guidance on things such as security cooperation, diversity, science, engineering and medical topics. In early 2021, Austin directed 40 of those groups to suspend their activities pending the results of "zero-based" reviews that would evaluate their missions. In recent months, 36 of those groups have been directed to resume operations, including nine announced today by the Pentagon. Groups announced today include the National Security Education Board; the National Security Agency Emerging Technologies Panel; the Advisory Board for the National Reconnaissance Office; the Army Education Advisory Committee; the Education for Seapower Advisory Board; the Board of Visitors for the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation; the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program Scientific Advisory Board; the Board of Regents, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences; and the Defense Innovation Board. Kirby said positions on the other boards will be filled in the coming weeks. "The department's boards and committees have been and will continue to be a valuable resource as we defend the nation, take care of our people, and succeed through teamwork," he said. "And I know that the secretary and all our department leadership look forward to working with these advisory boards going forward." DOD Report: Consolidation of Defense Industrial Base Poses Risks to National Security [2022-02-16] WASHINGTON -- A report just released by the Defense Department reveals consolidation in the defense industrial base, which poses risks to national security. The report lays out a series of proposed efforts by the department -- including finding ways to help more small businesses get involved -- to help mitigate that risk. The "defense industrial base" refers to the collection of businesses, large and small, that DOD relies upon to provide the materials, equipment and weapons systems needed to defend the nation. In recent years, the report shows, the number of companies within the defense industrial base has shrunk dramatically. The decrease in participation decreases the diversity of suppliers and at the same time decreases the kind of competition that spurs innovation and lowers prices paid for defense materials by the taxpayer, the report says. "Since the 1990s, the defense sector has consolidated substantially, transitioning from 51 to 5 aerospace and defense prime contractors," the report states. "As a result, DOD is increasingly reliant on a small number of contractors for critical defense capabilities." Over the last 30 years, the report continues, the number of suppliers for things such as tactical missiles, fixed-wing aircraft, and satellites have all declined dramatically. For instance, 90% of missiles now come from just three sources, the report says. During a background briefing in advance of the report's release, senior administration officials discussed measures the department will take to increase competition within a shrinking defense industrial base and why those efforts are important. "Competition within the [defense industrial base] is vital to the department because it improves cost and performance and fosters greater innovation for the products and services needed to support national defense," one official said. "Competition is also an indicator of the necessary industrial capability and capacity to deliver the systems, key technologies, materials, services and products DOD requires to support its mission." Within the DOD report are five recommendations for how to increase participation in the existing defense industrial base and spur increased completion there, as well. "The department's specific actions will address the systematic challenges to expanding competition and ensuring a sufficient domestic capacity and capability in the priority industrial base sectors while promoting greater competition," the official said. First, the department plans to strengthen oversight of mergers between companies within the defense industrial base. The report says when new mergers between existing defense contractors are proposed and the department identifies such mergers as posing a risk to DOD interests, the department will support the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice in antitrust investigations and recommendations. The report highlights the challenges to planning for and securing the intellectual property rights and data needed to promote competition over the long term. "We'll ... address the challenges to acquiring intellectual property and associated technical data rights to support greater competition throughout a system's lifecycle," the official said. The number of players now in the defense industrial base is insufficient, the report says, and the department would like to see more companies involved competing to support defense priorities. One way to do that is through the use of acquisition authorities such as "other transaction authority," as well as commercial solutions openings that will allow the department more flexibility to better operate in the commercial space and make it easier for contractors who haven't worked with DOD to become involved. Small businesses also play a big part in DOD's plans. "Specifically for the small businesses, I would say that we've seen a decline in our small business prime contractors, and we believe that increasing that, reversing that downward trend will help us and help the mission and the warfighter," the official said. Finally, the department hopes to increase supply chain resiliency in five areas designated as priorities. These areas include casting and forgings, missiles and munitions, energy storage and batteries, strategic and critical materials, and microelectronics. DOD Kicks Off 17th Annual Engineers Week [2022-02-24] WASHINGTON -- For the 17th year now, the Defense Department is recognizing the important role engineers play in advancing the mission of defending the nation. During a virtual event today to highlight Engineers Week 2022 -- this year with the theme of "Reimagining the Possible" -- under secretary of defense for research and engineering, Heidi Shyu. discussed how critical the advancement of new technology is for the United States within the global security environment, and how engineers will help make that technology possible. "We live in an era in which technology competition is the new battleground," Shyu said. "Our adversaries are investing heavily, they're acting nimbly and building strategically ... furthering science and technology innovation across the department could not be more important than it is today." Shyu recently made public a list of 14 technology areas she believes are the most important for the department to focus on. Those areas include biotechnology; quantum science; future-generation wireless technology; advanced materials; trusted artificial intelligence and autonomy; integrated network systems-of-systems; microelectronics; space technology; renewable energy generation and storage; advanced computing and software; human-machine interfaces; directed energy; hypersonics; and integrated sensing and cyber. "The DOD must harness the incredible innovation ecosystem both domestically and globally in order to see ahead of our adversaries," Shyu said. "The challenges facing our military are both diverse and complex, ranging from sophisticated cyber attacks to supply chain risks, to defending against hypersonic missiles, to responding to biothreats." The Defense Department's strategy for meeting those challenges, Shyu said, includes taking advantage of America's existing innovation potential, building a stronger technical workforce, and leveraging partnerships. Among those partnerships, she said, are universities, university-affiliated research centers, federally funded research and development centers, the defense industry, the private sector and allies and partners. "By working together we can solve the toughest challenges," she said, telling engineers who attended the virtual event that they are central to accomplishing the Department's goals. "This engineers week is a celebration of your innovation, your creativity, your dedication and your passion to make this world a better place," she said. "Thank you all for what you do." Service Academies Directed to Build Up Sexual Assault Prevention Programs  [2022-02-24] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military service academies are doing a good job taking care of victims of sexual assault, but they can do more in the way of preventing those assaults from happening in the first place, the acting director of the Defense Department's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office said. During a virtual briefing February 17, following the release of DOD's Annual Report on Sexual Harassment and Violence at the Military Service Academies, Nate Galbreath said academy programs are "heavily response-oriented," noting that they're good at taking care of victims once they report, ensuring they're given proper support, and following through with criminal investigations. "With that being said, prevention is what actually moves the needle with regard to decreasing how often sexual assault and sexual harassment happen," Galbreath said. "This is where we're directing that the academies build up those programs." Already, the academies have been strengthening their programs over the past three years; but more can be done, he said. For instance, while all the service academies have prevention plans, the plans need to be put into policy. "These comprehensive prevention plans are in place, but they're at risk because right now they are just words on paper," he said. "What we're looking for them to do is to issue a prevention policy at each of ... the academies to lock these plans in and make sure that they're part of how the academies do business in the future." Also, he said, the service academies need an individual on board at each school that can oversee prevention efforts. "We also need the academies to hire a prevention champion, a violence prevention program integrator, to address how well the academies' programs are working together and also to make recommendations to the superintendent about what programs are doing well, what programs could be fine-tuned for better performance, and what programs could be discontinued because they're not a good return on investment," he said. For prevention programs already in place, Galbreath said that the department is evaluating the efficacy of existing programs to best determine where limited resources should be directed. "We are currently involved in a number of evaluation activities," he said. "These involve scientific testing of prevention programming at each of the three academies." For instance, he said, his own organization has contracted with an outside evaluation organization to look at the prevention education programs in place at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, and the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. Ashlea Klahr, the director of health and resilience research with the Office of People Analytics, also discussed research designed to inform the academies' prevention efforts. One such effort was the 2021 Academy Climate and Networking Study, which looked at which students held the most influence over other cadets and midshipmen. Additionally, she said, evaluations were done to assess student perceptions regarding how cultural norms are upheld. "For example, we see that 90% of cadets and [midshipmen] are saying that they expect one another to confront sexist behavior when they see it," Klahr said. "However, we see that when we ask folks what they actually do, that the behaviors are not in line with those expectations. There's a gap there." The results show, for instance, that the majority of cadets and midshipmen report taking personal responsibility for confronting sexist behavior, but those same cadets do not always see academy peers confronting sexist behavior. "This gap is really an opportunity for the academies," she said. "By sharing these results with the cadets and midshipmen, the academies can let students know that their peers actually expect them to confront sexist behavior when they see it and not let it slide. Students may be reticent to speak up because they don't realize that most of their peers are not okay with it either, and that if they're going to take that first step forward that most of their peers will be behind them." With Activation of NATO Response Force, U.S. Military Ready to Provide Forces [2022-02-25] WASHINGTON -- In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg today announced activation of the alliance's defense plans, which means also that it can deploy the NATO Defense Force. The U.S. Defense Department now stands ready to provide capabilities to help fill that defense force, if asked to do so, said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby. "There's a historic nature to all this," Kirby told reporters during a briefing at the Pentagon today. "This is the first time that the alliance has employed these high readiness forces in a deterrence and defense role. So it's not an insignificant move by the alliance." The activation serves as a notice to NATO nations that they may be called upon to provide military support to the NATO mission, Kirby said. This also means the United States may be called upon to provide both personnel and equipment to support the NATO mission -- and that's something the U.S. and the department has been preparing to do for quite some time. Kirby said what kinds of assistance NATO may request from the United States, or other alliance nations, is unknown at this time, as is what specific U.S. military units may end up being assigned to what roles. Still, Kirby said, the U.S. has put as many as 12,000 service members on "prepare to deploy orders" so they will be ready if called upon to participate in the NATO Response Force. Some of those U.S. personnel may also be called upon to participate in any unilateral actions the U.S. may undertake. "The department has placed a range of multi-mission units in the United States and Europe on a heightened preparedness to deploy, which increases our readiness to provide for the U.S. contributions to the NRF on a shorter tether than what we could do before," Kirby said. "We stand ready if called upon by NATO to support the NRF in the defense of the alliance, and will absolutely do that." While President Biden has said U.S. troops will not enter Ukraine to participate directly in the fight against Russia, U.S. forces may eventually be called upon to participate in NATO-led missions as part of the NATO Response Force to bolster the defense of alliance partner nations should they ask for assistance. "We're going to do everything that we need to do to defend our country, and as the President has said, we're going to do what we need to do to defend every inch of NATO territory -- and we take those obligations seriously," Kirby said. At the same time, Kirby said, the U.S. continues to provide security assistance to Ukraine to help that country defend itself against an unlawful invasion by Russia. "We're continuing to look for ways to support Ukraine to defend themselves," Kirby said. "We have continued to do that and we're going to look to do that going forward. And we're very actively engaged in those efforts, to help them better defend themselves through both lethal and non-lethal assistance." SEAC: 'Character, Competence, Commitment' Are Bedrocks of U.S. Credibility [2022-02-25] WASHINGTON -- Working to maintain credibility against an onslaught of misinformation from adversaries is something service members need to stay focused on full time, said the U.S. military's highest-ranking enlisted service member. "[For] our enemies, their No. 1 task right now in this information environment is nothing more than to chip away at the fabric of our nation -- specifically our pride, our nationalism and our loyalty to institutions," Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman Ram�n Col�n-L�pez said yesterday. Misinformation campaigns and false flag efforts will continue, he said. From the most junior service member up, strong individual ethics will be central to ensuring the U.S. military maintains credibility, he told the Air Force Academy's National Character & Leadership Symposium during a virtual presentation. "Because of our military might, the enemy is looking for ways around it to be able to best a superpower that we call the United States of America," Col�n-L�pez said. "And they're doing it at a rapid pace. And that is really important for us to understand because our credibility can easily dwindle away if we have one misstep on the way that we conduct ourselves." Going forward, service members -- the human component of combat operations -- will require critical thinking skills, knowledge and intellect, Col�n-L�pez said. "This starts with credible leaders that are built on those three things that I've talked about: character, competence and commitment," he said. "Character is nothing more than who you are, you were growing up, the values that your family gave you, and the values that you gained once enlisted in service by [the] sworn oath that we spoke about." Competence, he told cadets, is dependent on commitment to training and learning what was taught. "[And] commitment -- that is, your loyalty and your belief in the system and belief in our way of life -- to make sure that you fight for one thing only, and that is the United States of America," he said. "And make sure that that banner flies proudly for the rest of our days and future generations. That takes something special -- someone that is willing to sacrifice." Cadets at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, are not yet military officers -- but they will be one day. And while those cadets are meant to be focused on the educational material their instructors put before them, events in Europe might now be distracting them from their studies. What cadets can do now if they want to contribute to what's going on in Europe, or to prepare for what contributions they might be asked to make once they graduate, is something akin to what they've been doing since they entered the academy on their first day -- and that is to study, Col�n-L�pez said. "The best thing that every single one of you in the audience can do is start studying what's happening in the environment right now, the decisions that your key leaders are making in this conflict now, [and] the power that has been employed by our partners and allies," he said. "Then you start studying that national defense strategy, that national military strategy and understand the instruments of power that the United States has to bear." Most importantly, he said, cadets should familiarize themselves with the limits of U.S. military power. "War is not always the answer. You have to employ diplomatic means, information means, and economic means ... across the board in order to go ahead and thrive as a superpower," he said. "The best thing that you can be doing right now is just learning from what is going on. Pay close attention to the key decisions that your top leaders are making, from the president on down." Defense Department Engineers Drive Mission Success [2022-02-25] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department is likely the largest employer of engineers in the United States, and the department will need even more to continue to protect the nation, said Barbara McQuiston, who now performs the duties of the deputy undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. "The DOD has over 100,000 engineers, and they are incredibly important to us," McQuiston said. "You can imagine the range of capabilities and personnel that we have working on the hardest problems -- from civil engineers and software engineers to material engineers and chemical engineers -- just a whole range of engineers looking at some of the toughest problems for DOD. We couldn't function without them. They touch everything that we do. [They] create the possibilities for the future and the solutions we need for today." Engineer Week, which runs Feb. 20-26, is an opportunity for DOD to highlight the role engineers play in both arming service members and keeping them safe. Engineers, McQuiston said, are first and foremost problem solvers. "Engineers are people who apply science and creativity to solve problems and make new solutions and new possibilities for us," she said. "They really like to work on the hardest problems. And when you think throughout humankind, there's a lot of engineers. Leonardo da Vinci was an engineer, Tesla, Edison, Faraday [the] Wright brothers. It's incredible, the amount of discipline and the new possibilities these engineers have created for us." In years past, engineering challenges for the department have included the development of new weapons systems, aircraft, construction projects, and combat vehicles. Those challenges still exist, of course, but now the department faces new challenges, McQuiston said. And DOD engineers are being asked to solve those problems too. "Critical technology areas where we're developing capabilities include renewable energy, biotechnology, trusted AI [artificial intelligence] and machine learning, the future of manufacturing and digital engineering, programs like hypersonics, advanced computing, autonomous systems, and the development of new materials," she said. "The list of possibilities is only constrained by an engineer's imagination." Getting the best and brightest engineers into the DOD is a challenge, McQuiston said. Government employment and work within the government is often weighed down by bureaucracy, and there's also the matter of compensation. "There are challenges for us recruiting engineers, retaining engineers," she said. "There are the economic challenges ... a commercial engineer has the opportunity to work for companies, and right now, the competitive wages in the commercial sector make it very difficult for the government to match that." But McQuiston said the department is working to iron out the complications that might keep an engineer who could be the key to solving the department's biggest challenges from ever signing on in the first place. "We're looking to create more ways and more opportunities to have flexibility and be able to reach out and offer opportunities for these highly sought-after professionals," In colleges across the U.S., she said, the DOD is making inroads with young people who are studying science, technology, engineering and math, but who might not yet have decided about where they want to work. "The Defense Department is doing quite a bit to support universities and STEM education and engineering," she said. DOD-funded programs like the SMART Scholarship Program and the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship, for instance, are investments the department is making in the development of new engineers, McQuiston said. "We're making investment in equity and diversity in the nation's historically Black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutes, along with 14 other university-affiliated research centers," she said. "We are always investing in the workforce of today and the workforce of the future in engineering and the sciences." Despite the challenges the department sees in getting the best and brightest engineers on board, McQuiston said DOD offers plenty to new engineers looking for a challenge and an opportunity. "As an engineer coming right out of school, you have the ability to make a real difference while serving your country ... to work on our most advanced systems and technology and participate in some really cool projects that are often at the edge of science" she said. "These opportunities are unique. They will help you for the rest of your life, giving you an experience where you can see how you can contribute to the challenges that we face today, both in national security and globally." Engineers within the DOD don't just better the department, however. McQuiston said the department and its engineers contribute to improvements in technology across the U.S. commercial space as well. "DOD investments in technology have had a huge impact on the U.S. economy," she said. "DOD has a long and storied history of technology investments leading to transformational shifts in the American economy and society at large." McQuiston said things like transistors, cell phones, 5G cellular technology, computers and the internet all point back to DOD investments. "We are putting a special focus right now on partnering with the private sector on dual-use technologies," she said. "There are so many key technologies that we've invested in that you see today -- whether it's Kevlar, high-speed materials, or vaccines. These have all had a huge impact on the economic future of the United States." Pioneering investments being made by the DOD in a variety of areas, including energy efficiency, food security, biofuels, and biotech materials, will lead to new defense capabilities and increased economic activity for the U.S., she said. This will all be made possible thanks to the hard work of DOD engineers. "The engineers that work on DOD programs are incredible," she said. "Without our engineers, we'd come to a screeching halt. They are essential to everything we do, and I think their passion and their creativity is what's going to move us forward in the future." DOD: In Ukraine, Every Lost Soul is on Putin  [2022-02-28] WASHINGTON -- Since Russian military forces illegally invaded Ukraine last week, Ukrainian civilians and soldiers, as well as Russian soldiers have been killed in the conflict. Estimates are in the thousands.  Every one of those deaths is directly attributable to Russian president Vladimir Putin, said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby.  "He's perpetrating violence on a neighboring nation state that presented no threat to him, and innocent lives are being ... taken. And we've seen casualties ... we know there's casualties on both sides of this conflict. All of this ... was avoidable," Kirby said during a briefing today at the Pentagon. "This is a war of choice ... and all the casualties are on his hands -- all the blood is on Mr. Putin's hands."  In furtherance of Russia's illegal war, a convoy of Russian military forces, by some estimates as long as 17 miles, continues to move towards the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv.  "I think the main conclusion we can draw ... is that ... they continue to want to move on Kyiv, to capture Kyiv, to take Kyiv," Kirby said. "Although we don't know everything about this convoy, it is certainly in keeping with what we believe to be their intent, with respect to the capital city."  How the Russians plan to capture Kyiv once the convoy reaches its destination, Kirby said, is unknown right now.  "Whether it's encirclement, or bombardment, or street-to-street fighting, I mean, I just don't think we have that level of dexterity now to give you that kind of detail in terms of Russian planning," he said.  The Ukrainian military has so far provided a "stiff and determined resistance" in defense of their country which has appeared to slow Russian plans there, Kirby said.  And the U.S. military, along with other nations have continued to provide security assistance packages to Ukraine to help them defend their country.  On Saturday, Kirby said President Biden had authorized an additional $350 million of military assistance to Ukraine from Defense Department inventories. Included there are anti-armor, small arms and various munitions, body armor and other related equipment.  "We know that the Ukrainian armed forces are using a lot of the systems and equipment that had been provided to them not just by the United States, but by other nations," Kirby said. "The Ukrainians have been effective at using these weapons and these systems, and ... at resisting and pushing back Russian forces."  Kirby said while it's not possible to know exactly what the Russian war plan is for Ukraine, it's believed that their plans may have been delayed so far by a few days as a result of unexpected resistance by the Ukrainian military. Nevertheless, he said, he recommends caution right now in assessing the situation in Ukraine, especially when it relates to drawing conclusions about Russian military plans, efforts or capabilities, just days into an illegal war.  "This is a dynamic situation. It's war, and war can be unpredictable," he said. "And I don't think that anybody, including, perhaps especially Ukrainians, are sniffing at Russian capabilities that they're facing." Addressing DOD's Tech Focus Areas Requires New Approaches [2022-03-03] WASHINGTON -- Earlier this year, the Defense Department's chief technology officer, Heidi Shyu, released a list of 14 technology areas deemed most critical for investment, including biotechnology, advanced materials, trusted artificial intelligence and microelectronics. A handful of products related to those focus areas -- such as hypersonics and directed energy weapons -- are almost exclusively military-related, but the majority are already being developed for the commercial market by private companies that may not have done business with the federal government. Those innovations include next-generation wireless communications, microelectronics, and human-machine interfaces. For DOD to have its needs addressed by the private sector with or without DOD involvement, the department will need to do a better job of engaging with those companies. DOD's Defense Innovation Unit is one segment of the government already on board with locating companies involved in the development of critical technologies and helping them become suppliers. "We're really trying to look at what all of the innovative companies are doing around the country ... because most of what we need to do to modernize the Defense Department is led by industry now; it's commercial technologies," Mike Brown, director of the DIU, said during a discussion Wednesday at George Mason University's Center for Government Contracting in Northern Virginia. "We have to be harnessing what the private industry is doing if we're going to be giving our warfighters the capability that they need," Brown said. DIU, Brown said, has been working to accelerate adoption of commercial technology using "other transaction authority," which is different from classic procurement contracts and is instead used for things like research or prototyping. The approach DIU uses is called "commercial solutions open," and Brown said this includes things like agile work statements, modular contracts and working at commercial speeds. "We don't start with requirements, which often dictates how the department might start to bring in a new capability -- a process that's well-honed if you're going to build a new aircraft or tank," Brown said. "If you're going to look at commercial technology, you don't need to start with requirements. The commercial market has already built that." When DIU was looking at counterdrone technologies, Brown said, it didn't need to specify requirements because the commercial market had already developed things DOD could use. With modular contracts, he said, comes the flexibility to bring in different vendors and have them work together and go from a successful prototyping effort directly into production. Finally, modular contracts can limit the challenging requirements for intellectual property that might delay the transition of a capability from the private sector into warfighter hands, he said. "We're trying to get companies on contract in 60 to 90 days, in commercial terms -- that means no onerous IP [intellectual property] requirements for companies that we work with," Brown said. Budgeting is also an issue, Brown said. Traditional budgeting requires planning as much as two years in advance before dollars can be spent. "That's not the agile process we need to compete with China in technology," he said. "We need to be able to move not the whole $750 billion defense budget, but we need some flexibility at the edges to respond to emerging threats and plug in new commercial technology solutions that address those threats. The Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Reform, as directed in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, is looking now at better solutions to budgeting so that the department can be more agile in the technology it procures. That's something Brown said he's glad to see. U.S. Provided More Than $1 Billion in Security Assistance to Ukraine in Past Year [2022-03-04] WASHINGTON -- Contents of the most recent security assistance package approved for Ukraine -- valued at $350 million dollars -- is on its way now and is billed as "the largest presidential drawdown package in history," a senior defense official said during a briefing today at the Pentagon.  The official said, $240 million of that package, which includes things like anti-armor capability, has already been delivered to Ukraine to support them in their fight against an unprovoked and illegal Russian invasion.  Over the past year, the official said, as much as $1 billion in aid has been delivered to Ukraine, though not all of that may have been classified as "drawdown."  A "drawdown," according to documentation available from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, allows the president in certain circumstances -- including for such things as peacekeeping operations, narcotics control, international disaster assistance, antiterrorism assistance, nonproliferation assistance, migration and refugee assistance -- to withdraw existing weapons, ammunitions and material from existing U.S. military stocks and provide that to other nations.  The process of delivering this kind of aid, the official said, begins with the State Department requesting drawdown authority from the president, and also the Defense Department doing an analysis of what the Ukrainians need -- in consultation with the Ukrainians -- and then seeing what is actually available.  "Because drawdown is taken from the stocks of the services," the official said, "we're not going out on the market and purchasing new items. We have to actually have it in hand to be able to deliver it."  Back in August, the U.S. provided just such assistance to Ukraine, valued at $60 million. Already, the entirety of that assistance has been delivered. In late December, the official said, another $200 million drawdown package was approved, and most of that package is now in the hands of the Ukrainians, though the official said the U.S. is still delivering some portions of that package -- including ammunition.  The official said that typically, the back-end processes for making security assistance happen might take weeks or even months, but that for Ukraine the department has been able to significantly compress that back-end process into hours or days -- which has helped greatly to expedite the effort to provide the Ukrainians the assistance they need.  The U.S. is not alone in assisting the Ukrainians, the official said. In fact, some 14 other nations have also been helping.  "Since the invasion, we have seen ... 14 separate countries actually deliver security assistance to Ukraine -- and some of these countries don't have a record of providing as substantial assistance to Ukraine," the official said. "That also represents a real bureaucratic feat for their ministries of defense to be able to move that quickly, so I think we have to give credit to our allies and partners here."  The official said security assistance to Ukraine will continue and that the U.S. will continue to work with Ukraine to find out what is needed and how the U.S. can help.  "We are always ... looking at what Ukraine needs, and we've been doing this for years now," the official said. "We have just accelerated our process of identifying requirements and accelerated our consultations as well with Ukrainians -- talking to them daily, as opposed to periodic meetings that we did before this crisis."  The official said the administration has made a request for additional funding, and the department plans on continuing to provide presidential drawdown assistance to the Ukrainians. Additionally, the official said, the department is seeking assistance from Congress to replenish the stocks that were drawn down to provide the assistance already rendered to Ukraine.  "This will continue, and as President Joe Biden has stated, we will continue to support the Ukrainians moving forward," the official said.  Integrated Deterrence at Center of Upcoming National Defense Strategy [2022-03-04] WASHINGTON -- With China, Russia, Iran and North Korea all pursuing advancements in their own nuclear capabilities, and both China and Russia developing advanced hypersonic weaponry and space capabilities, the United States will continue to rely on nuclear weapons as a central part of its own strategic deterrence. But there will need to be more than just nuclear weapons if the U.S. is to maintain its own security, said Sasha Baker, the deputy under secretary of defense for policy. Right now, a new National Defense Strategy is in the works, and Baker said the new NDS, when released, will include the Missile Defense Review and the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review nested within it. "As directed by the president, the NPR has examined opportunities to reduce the role of nuclear weapons while maintaining a safe, secure and effective nuclear deterrent and a credible extended deterrence," Baker said. "In order to do so we will continue to sustain and modernize U.S. nuclear capabilities. And as we develop and implement integrated deterrence, nuclear weapons will continue to serve a unique role in our defense strategy." At the core of the National Defense Strategy will be "integrated deterrence," which Baker said is a framework for working across warfighting domains, theaters and the spectrum of conflict, in collaboration with all instruments of national power, as well as with U.S. allies and our partners. Right now, Baker told lawmakers, potential U.S. adversaries are modernizing and expanding their own strategic capabilities China, she said, is expanding its own nuclear forces and is investing in a nuclear triad like that of the United States -- which includes land, sea and air-based delivery of nuclear weapons. "The PRC is investing in a triad, implementing a launch-on-warning posture with advanced command and control architecture and increasing its stockpile," she said. In space, China remains the primary, long-term competitor for the United States and seeks to exploit U.S. reliance on space and space systems. Army Gen. James H. Dickinson, commander of U.S. Space Command, told lawmakers that in January, China demonstrated the capabilities of its SJ-21 satellite, for instance. "The recently launched SJ21 'Space Debris Mitigation' satellite docked with a defunct PRC satellite and moved it to an entirely different orbit," he said. "This activity demonstrated potential dual-use capability in SJ-21 interaction with other satellites. U.S. Space Command is committed to deterring the use of these types of capabilities for nefarious purposes within the framework of the Department of Defense's integrated deterrence initiative." Russia also continues to modernize its nuclear, space and hypersonic capabilities, Baker said, while North Korea demonstrates advancements in both nuclear capabilities and delivery systems pose in both Asia and the U.S. homeland. Navy Adm. Charles A. Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command said he previously said that the U.S. must be able to deter two adversaries at the same time, but now that need is "an imperative." "I've said this before and I think it's worth repeating: every operational plan in the Department of Defense and every other capability we have, rests on an assumption that strategic deterrence and in particular nuclear deterrence is holding. And if strategic or nuclear deterrence fails, no other plan and no other capability in the Department of Defense will work as designed," he said. Richard said the strategic security environment is now a three-party reality. "Our existing nuclear forces are the minimum required to achieve our national strategy," he said. "We must modernize and recapitalize the nation's nuclear triad, nuclear command and control, nuclear complex and supporting infrastructure to meet presidential objectives." Defense Department Reports Airspace Above Ukraine Remains Contested  [2022-03-07] WASHINGTON -- Ten days into Russia's illegal invasion of neighboring Ukraine, the airspace above Ukraine remains contested, as Ukrainian pilots continue to defend their country, a senior Defense Department official said yesterday. "In the airspace, we continue to observe that the airspace over Ukraine is contested," the official said in statement released Sunday evening. "Ukrainian air and missile defenses remain effective and in use. The Ukrainian military continues to fly aircraft and to employ air defense assets." The Ukrainian military has also released videos of Russian military aircraft that have been shot down, though the official said that the U.S. Defense Department is not in a position to either confirm the validity of those videos or refute them. "Both sides have taken losses to both aircraft and missile defense inventories," the official said. "We are not going to speak to numbers. We assess that both sides still possess a majority of their air defense systems and capabilities." While the official did say that since the invasion began Feb. 24, the Defense Department believes Russian forces have launched approximately 600 missiles of various types. At the same time, the department is unable to corroborate reports of the use of cluster munitions or thermobaric weapons by the Russians, the official said. On the ground, the official said, the U.S. Defense Department has observed limited changes in the past day. "Russian forces continued efforts to advance and isolate Kyiv, Kharkiv and Chernihiv across the north and east are being met with strong Ukrainian resistance," the official said, adding that leading Russian elements remain outside these city centers and the Russian convoy continues to be stalled. In the far south of Ukraine, the official said, the DOD has observed fighting near Kherson, on the Dnieper River, and near Mykolaiv -- a location for major shipbuilding operations -- on the Pivdennyi Buh, or "Southern Bug," river. In Mariupol on the Sea of Azov in southern Ukraine and just 30 miles from the Russian border, the official said DOD has observed continued fighting and efforts by the Russians to encircle the city. "There continue to be reports of widespread utility outages," the official said, to include both water and electricity. Southcom Commander Says Partnerships Key to National Defense in Western Hemisphere [2022-03-08] WASHINGTON -- In just four months of leading U.S. Southern Command, there's one thing that's become apparent to Army Gen. Laura J. Richardson. The key to addressing security threats in South America, and by extension to the U.S. itself, doesn't just lie with America's own military but with the militaries of the partner nations already there. "In my initial travels in the region, it has become obvious to me that our partners are our best defense," Richardson told members of the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. "We must use all available levers to strengthen our partnerships with the 28 like-minded democracies in this hemisphere, who understand the power of working together to counter these shared threats." Threats in South America, Richardson said, include transnational criminal organization as well as the meddling of both China and Russia. In South America, she said, China continues to expand economic, diplomatic, technological, informational and military influence, which challenges U.S. influence in those areas. "Without U.S. leadership, negative PRC influence in this region could soon resemble the self-serving predatory influence it now holds in Africa," she said. Also, a threat in South America is Russia, Richardson said. "Russia, a more immediate threat, is increasing its engagements in the hemisphere, as Putin looks to keep his options open and maintain relationships in our neighborhood," she said. Earlier this year, Russia's deputy prime minister, Yury Borisov, said he could neither affirm nor exclude Russia would send military assets to Cuba or Venezuela, Richardson told lawmakers. Then, just days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Borisov visited Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. All are nations Richardson said maintain close ties with Russia and which offer Russia a foothold in the western hemisphere. "Finally, recent visits between the presidents of Brazil and Argentina with Putin in Russia, demonstrate and concerning potential broadening of Russian ties in the region," she said. Farther north, Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, commander of the U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command said the U.S. needs to do more to be ready for operations in the Arctic. One thing he said is needed now is presence and persistence in the Arctic, and all the infrastructure required to do that. That could include, he said, maritime infrastructure, such as ports deep enough for cruisers, destroyers or Coast Guard cutters, for instance. Also needed are communications capabilities to operate north of the 65th parallel and infrastructure from which to operate daily air missions not only in Alaska but across Canada and into Greenland as well. One lawmaker asked VanHerck how Northern Command plans to improve training for U.S. forces to ensure they are ready to operate in the Arctic. Right now, VanHerck said, the U.S. doesn't have a ready force to operate in the Arctic, but he said he hopes he'll see efforts to fix that in the fiscal year 2023 budget. "I'm ... encouraged by the strategies -- the department has a strategy and the services all have strategies," he said. "Now the question is, are we going to fund those strategies? I look forward to seeing the FY23 budget to see if we do fund as part of the Arctic strategy, the actual capabilities that you're talking about." DOD Wants to Shepherd Small Business Innovators [2022-03-08] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department needs innovation now -- and too often the best new technology from America's small business innovators dies before it can become a program of record for the military, said the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. Heidi Shyu said the DOD spends over $2 billion annually on Small Business Innovation Research, or SBIR, in a variety of technology areas. "I'm personally engaging with small businesses, small business roundtables to understand the impediments in doing business with them and what are the impediments that they see that we can help them out [with] in terms of removing the roadblocks," said Shyu said yesterday at the National Defense Industrial Association's science and technology conference in Hawaii. One road block the department hopes to overcome involves how some technologies that originate in small business are unable to make it to fruition due to lack of funding. "We are submitting a legislative proposal to enable more funding of multiple tranches of Phase II funding," she said. "Phase I funding is usually pretty small, $50 to $75k over a period of six months -- basically to flesh out your concept." The second phase, she said, is for a small business to think about developing a prototype. She said funding there typically ranges around $1.5 million dollars. "After Phase II, SBIR ends," she said. "Phase III is up to the program of record, the services, to fund, so they have to catch the football. The problem here is typically the technology's not mature enough at a [technology readiness level] six to enable a successful transition into a program of record." What that means, she said, is that promising technology might make it through Phase II, but never make it to Phase III -- adoption by a military service -- because it's not quite ready yet to make that transition. So, any hope a small business might have of putting their new technology into the hands of service members comes to an end. "What I would like to do is have Congress approve to allow us to form multiple tranches of funding -- Phase IIa, Phase IIb, Phase IIc -- so we can continue to mature the technology and bridge over, I call it 'the valley of death,' for small companies," she said. "This way we have a much higher probability of helping them to transition into a program of record." Shyu also said the office of research and engineering is redesigning its website to make it easier for small businesses with ideas to make inroads with DOD. "We are also in the process of rebuilding the USD [undersecretary of defense] R&E [research and engineering] website ... to help small business, especially, to navigate the Byzantine DOD," she said. "A lot of the small businesses, they have no idea who to even go talk to ... it's this giant wall in front of them. And, hopefully, once we get our website up and running, they can be able to Google and input whatever product that they have to help them figure out who to go talk to." At Manda Bay, Investigation Finds No Single Point of Failure, But Many Recommendations for Improvement [2022-03-10] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department today announced the investigation by U.S. Africom of the January 2020 attack by terrorist group al-Shabab at Cooperative Security Location Manda Bay, Kenya, which killed three. A secretary of defense-directed follow-up review of that initial investigation found no single point of failure for the loss of life or property damage. But both teams looking into the incident agreed on factors that contributed to the outcome of the attack and on recommendations for improved security operations. In the early morning of January 5, 2020, between 30 and 40 al-Shabab fighters launched an attack on Cooperative Security Location Manda Bay. The attack resulted in the deaths of Army Spc. Henry Mayfield Jr., as well as civilian contractors Dustin Harrison and Bruce Triplett. The attack also destroyed six U.S. aircraft, one aircraft owned by the Kenyans and several vehicles. Army Gen. Steve Townsend, U.S. Africom commander, directed an investigation into the attack. In April of last year, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III directed a follow-up independent review of Africom's investigation. That independent review was conducted by Army Gen. Paul Funk, commander of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. During a briefing today at the Pentagon, both Townsend and Funk discussed their findings. "U.S. Africom took our investigation seriously and has taken extensive steps since the attack to make Cooperative Security Location Manda Bay, and all of our operating locations across Africa, more secure," Townsend said. "I found the investigation team's work to be comprehensive, credible and thorough. The independent review conducted by Gen. Funk and his team validated that extensive work." The follow-on review fundamentally agreed with the initial Africom investigation, Funk said. "I found that the U.S. Africom investigation was thorough, detailed, and supported by the evidence," Funk said. "I concurred that the proximate cause of the death of three U.S. citizens, injuries to three other U.S. citizens, and the loss of U.S. aircraft and property, was the attack by a massed force of determined, disciplined, and well-resourced al-Shabab fighters. No single point of failure directly caused the loss of life and damage to the property at Manda Bay." Funk also addressed the possibility of criminal negligence or misconduct on the part of leaders on the ground at Manda Bay -- and said like Africom, the independent review found none. "Both Gen. Townsend's investigation and my review found that neither criminal negligence nor misconduct by any U.S. personnel was the proximate cause of loss of life or property at Cooperative Security Location Manda Bay," Funk said. "But because the charter of the independent review resulted in a more in-depth analysis of individual leader actions, I was able to identify multiple personnel whom I deemed negligent in their actions or inactions, which contributed to creating a vulnerable airfield." Townsend outlined four factors he said contributed to the loss of life and property damage at Manda Bay as a result of the attack, and those four factors were echoed by Funk's review. First among those factors, Townsend said, was an inadequate focus on potential threats and force protection at multiple levels. "For a number of successive years, there was complacent leadership and command and control at the tactical level, and poor oversight at the operational level," Townsend said. Second, Townsend said, there was an inadequate understanding of the true threat to the installation, which he attributed both to years of local threat assessments and shortcomings in the resourcing, sharing and dissemination of intelligence. Third, he said, were deficiencies in the organization, preparation and training of security forces. And finally, he said, were problems with mission command, including unity of command at the tactical level and flawed staff processes which failed to account for the growth of Cooperative Security Location Manda Bay from a training base to a counterterrorism support and airbase. "We were not as prepared at Manda Bay as we needed to be," Townsend said. "Security on a key part of the base proved inadequate, with a security force that was insufficiently prepared for their mission." As a result of the Manda Bay attack, Africom has directed all its subordinate components to implement a variety of corrective actions meant to improve security. Actions across all of the Africom area of responsibility include prioritizing physical defense improvements; conducting more frequent leadership visits and security inspections; enhancing intelligence sharing; increasing the size of security forces and adapting their focus and capability according to the threat at a location; including defensive plans in pre-deployment training; ensuring clear command and control relationships, especially regarding force protection; and employing mobile surgical teams. At Cooperative Security Location Manda Bay specifically, additional improvements include clearing vegetation around Magogoni Airfield to improve fields of observation; establishing 360-degree defense at the airfield; improving defensives, fighting positions and indirect fire protection at Camp Simba; increasing Kenyan participation in security operations; increasing frequency and range of patrols; and improving the communications function and capability of the base defense operation center. Brig. Gen. Roy Collins, the Air Force Director of Security Forces, said already the Air Force has made changes in how security forces troops are prepared for operations in the Africom area of responsibility. "Based on the tactical training deficiencies identified in the investigation, our Regional Training Center developed a robust mission-focused rehearsal training course designed to close the gaps identified with collective training, team cohesion and leadership, core skills training, rehearsals, battle drills and mission preparation." Collins also said there was a need to develop training scenarios informed by real-world threat information to ensure security forces personnel are adequately trained. "Prior to the rehearsal training course completion, aggregated Security Forces members must complete a culminating capstone field-training event to ensure deploying forces are mission ready," he said. "The rehearsal training course greatly exceeds the previous pre-deployment courses and focused on providing the base defense mindset and force protection posture needed to operate in a hostile environment." This updated rehearsal training course, Collins said, was implemented in fall 2020, and all follow-on forces going into the Africom area of responsibility now receive the training. "Service in parts of Africa can be challenging, even dangerous at times," Townsend said. "The threat from al-Shabab remains dangerous and real. Al-Shabab is the largest and most lethal arm of al-Qaida, an enemy America knows all too well for its ambitions and appetite for destruction. What we do with our African international partners to counter violent extremism in Africa is more important than ever. We hold a responsibility to Spc. Mayfield, Mr. Triplett and Mr. Harrison, and work every day to learn from this tragic event and to keep an attack like this from happening again." Russian Targets More Than 'Messaging,' Pentagon Spokesperson Says [2022-03-14] WASHINGTON -- On Sunday, long-range Russian airstrikes hit the city of Yavoriv in western Ukraine, less than 15 miles from the Polish border -- which is NATO territory. The location is where National Guard troops from Florida just weeks ago trained alongside Ukrainian troops -- though Americans are no longer at the location.  It's just one set of several strikes by the Russians that recently hit western Ukraine, said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby during a briefing today, and illustrates an effort by the Russians to expand their target set in the country.  But the press secretary also said while the United States doesn't have insight into why the Russians are choosing the targets they've chosen, it's more likely the targets are meant to achieve a military objective than it is they are meant to be symbolic or send a message to NATO nations.  "They are clearly expanding some of their target sets here," Kirby said. "I can't get into their heads and to tell you exactly what was behind that target on that day with that many cruise missiles. I don't want to just reduce this to some sort of signaling."  If the Russian president hoped the specific targets or the war itself is meant to send a message to NATO about the size of or strength of the alliance, then the war is a failure, Kirby said.  "He's getting exactly what he says he doesn't want: a strong, united NATO on his western flank," Kirby said. "Just over the last few days, we moved some Patriot batteries from Germany to Poland. And we're going to continue to look at potential repositioning if we need to, to defend NATO's eastern flank."  "For our purposes, the military capabilities that we are adding to NATO's eastern flank are designed to protect and defend and deter against attacks on NATO territory -- that includes NATO airspace," he said.  So far, Kirby said, Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine has killed thousands, displaced many, many more and destroyed homes and other property.  "He clearly has more than a message in mind here," Kirby said. "He clearly has the occupation of Ukraine in mind ... I want to be careful here that we're not reducing the kind of damage and death he's causing to some sort of message signaling. I think that's being way too generous to what the Kremlin's trying to do inside Ukraine."  Over the weekend, an additional "drawdown" package of security assistance, worth $200 million, was authorized for Ukraine.  A "drawdown," according to documentation available from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, allows the president to withdraw weapons, ammunitions and material from existing U.S. military stocks and provide that to other nations.   "I can tell you that experts here at the Pentagon have pen and paper in hand and they're working out how we would realize that drawdown as quickly as we can," Kirby said.  The last drawdown package of security assistance material for Ukraine was worth $350 million, and Kirby said the delivery of the supplies from that package are now nearly complete.  U.S. security assistance continues to flow into Ukraine, Kirby said, and will continue to flow as it's needed, based on ongoing discussions with the Ukrainians.  "We're going to continue to flow security assistance to the Ukrainians as fast as we can and as nimbly as we can," Kirby said. "As we stand here today, those shipments are getting into the hands of the Ukrainians and we're going to keep looking for ways to make sure that that continues."  The U.S. isn't the only nation sending security assistance to Ukraine, Kirby said. Right now, there are 14 other nations contributing needed materiel to the Ukrainians.  NATO Chief: There Will Be 'High Price to Pay' for Russian Use of Chemical Weapons [2022-03-15] WASHINGTON -- Russia is lying again -- this time about biological and chemical weapons. "They are making absurd claims about biological labs and chemical weapons in Ukraine," said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who spoke today during a press conference in advance of tomorrow's meeting of NATO countries' defense ministers. "This is just another lie. And we are concerned that Moscow could stage a false flag operation, possibly including chemical weapons." Stoltenberg said Russia has already staged "false flag" operations within Ukraine to justify its actions there. A false flag operation is a hostile action made to appear as if it were perpetrated by another party, then used to justify other aggressive actions. "We have seen that they, throughout this crisis, have tried to create different kinds of false flag operations to try to provide excuses for use of force," Stoltenberg said. "We saw that in the lead-up to the intervention. And now we are seeing them accusing Ukraine and also NATO allies of producing and developing chemical weapons, and that's an absolute lie." The secretary general said Russia's false claims that Ukraine and NATO operate chemical and biological weapons labs raise the specter that Russia itself may be planning to use such weapons. "The president of the United States and other allies also made very clear that if they use chemical weapons, there will be a high price to pay," he said. Russia is one of the nations that signed on to the Chemical Weapons Convention prohibiting the development, production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons, but it has not held true to the commitments it made there, Stoltenberg said. "Russia has used chemical agents before to attack and actually kill political opponents," he said. "We have also seen that Russia has supported the [President Bashar Assad] regime in Syria and helped to facilitate the use of chemical weapons several times in Syria." Any use of chemical weapons is absolutely unacceptable, Stoltenberg said. "It is also extremely important that Russia understands that it is unacceptable if they consider any use of chemical weapons, and we are also very vigilant about the possibility of them trying to stage some kind of pretext, false flag operation to provide the excuse for any type of use of chemical weapons," he said. While Russian aggression continues in Ukraine, Stoltenberg said NATO will do what it's designed to do: defend the alliance. "NATO's core task is to protect and defend all allies," he said. "We have responded to this crisis quickly, activating our defense plans, raising our readiness, and deploying the NATO Response Force for the first time for collective defense." Right now, there are hundreds of thousands of NATO forces on heightened alert. Already, Stoltenberg said, there are 100,000 U.S. troops in Europe and around 40,000 troops under direct NATO command, as well. Many of those are deployed in the eastern part of the alliance and are backed by major air and naval power, as well as air defenses. "The U.S. is currently deploying Patriot batteries to Poland and Germany, and the Netherlands are also deploying Patriots to Slovakia," he said. "All of this sends an unmistakable message: An attack on one ally will be met with a decisive response from the whole alliance." Tomorrow's meeting of defense ministers, Stoltenberg said, will focus in part on a reset of NATO's military posture in the face of Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine. "Ministers will start an important discussion on concrete measures to reinforce our security for the longer term in all domains," he said. "On land, this could include substantially more forces in the eastern part of the alliance, at higher readiness and with more pre-positioned equipment." Also to be considered are increases to air and naval deployments, the strengthening of integrated air and missile defense, the reinforcement of cyber defenses, and more military exercises for NATO partners. Stoltenberg also commended NATO nations that are increasing their own commitment to defense -- something he said is now truly necessary in the face of Russian aggression. "Major reinforcements of defense will require major increases in investment," he said. "I welcome that Germany and other allies have already announced they're stepping up, and I encourage all allies to spend the minimum 2% of GDP on defense. We must do more, so we must also invest more to protect peace and freedom and uphold our values at this critical time." Continued strengthening of the alliance, he said, will involve continued strengthening of air and missile defense -- which is ongoing, as well as investments in more advanced conventional capabilities, including fifth-generation aircraft, Stoltenberg said. "I welcome the German decision to invest in fifth-generation aircraft," he said. "We need also to increase readiness and our ability to monitor and detect. And, of course, we also need to make sure that NATO's nuclear deterrent remains safe and secure and effective." When it comes to Ukraine, Stoltenberg said that for many years now NATO allies have been training Ukrainian soldiers -- many who are now fighting on the front lines in Ukraine. And now allies of Ukraine are providing to that country critical equipment -- including anti-tank and air defense weapons, drones, ammunition and fuel -- to help them in their fight. "This training and equipment is helping Ukraine to defend itself," he said. "Ukraine has a fundamental right to self-defense enshrined in the U.N. charter, and NATO allies and partners will continue to help Ukraine uphold that right by providing military equipment and financial and humanitarian assistance." Slovakian Defense Minister Says Military Spending at 2% Should Be Base, Not Target [2022-03-17] WASHINGTON -- Among NATO partners, an expenditure of 2% of gross domestic product may no longer be enough for military spending, said Slovakian Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad' during a press briefing today in Slovakia's capital, Bratislava.  "We talked about the fact that 2% of GDP [gross domestic product] as the cost of defense is not a level that should be our objective, rather it should be just a base," Nad' said after a meeting with Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III. "I can confirm that a number of allies already declared at the ministerial meeting that they envisage to achieve as much as 3%."  Poland and some Baltic countries might achieve 2.5%, he said.  Nad' also thanked Austin for a commitment of U.S. troops in Slovakia to enforce the defense of that country.  "The capabilities that they will provide is something that we are lacking here in Slovakia, and that will strengthen our defense and will strengthen it in a significant way," Nad' said. "The enhanced forward presence troops, this is a significant contribution to improving the defense of Slovakia."  Austin told Nad' the U.S. supports Slovakia's willingness to host NATO troops in their country to bolster the defense of Europe and for its continued assistance to Ukraine.  "I commend Slovakia for its contributions to NATO, for the humanitarian and military assistance that you provided to Ukraine, and for the generosity that you've shown to the innocent refugees fleeing [Vladimir Putin's] war of choice," Austin said. "Your actions speak volumes. The United States deeply values its bilateral cooperation with Slovakia. We stand together with Slovakia as a valued member of NATO and will stand together with you to defend our values and our common security."  The two defense leaders also discussed modernization of the Slovakian military, which includes development of mechanized brigades and replacement of military equipment, including fighter aircraft.  When it comes to Ukraine, Austin said the Ukrainian military has so far been able to, through a variety of means, prevent the Russian military from gaining air supremacy. It's an effort the U.S. hopes to continue to support.  "They've done that through effective use of air defense systems, both medium-range and short-range air defense systems," Austin said. "Our goal has been to continue to reinforce those things that have worked for the Ukrainian forces. So, we are talking to a number of our allies and partners to ensure that we get as much capability as we can to continue to provide help to the Ukrainian forces."  Austin also said that continued Russian attacks on civilian populations might be construed as war crimes if those attacks were deliberate.  "These attacks that we've seen most recently ... appear to be focused directly on civilians," Austin said. "If you ... target civilians purposely, then that is a crime. So, these actions are under review by our State Department, and, of course, ... there's a process that we'll go through to review all of this. But we call upon Mr. Putin to cease these horrible actions. Again, these are civilians and not combatants, and so they should not be targeted."  Wearable Sensors May Be Future Option for Assessing Toxin Exposures [2022-03-21] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department, military services and Veterans Affairs are doing a lot now to assess the effects of airborne hazards, including open burn pits, on the health of current and veteran service members who may have been exposed while deployed overseas in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Capitol Hill lawmakers on Wednesday were also interested in how the military services might one day evaluate an individual service member's exposure to toxins with wearable sensors, rather than with the kinds of static sensors being used today. "We're very interested in wearables," said Dr. Terry Rauch, the acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for health readiness policy and oversight. "The reason is because our emphasis, our focus really needs to be on individual exposure monitoring." Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee's subcommittee on personnel, Rauch said wearable technology may allow the department to one day more closely monitor an individual's precise exposure to health-affecting toxins in a way that's just not possible today. "If we can't figure out what the dose of the exposure was and what they were exposed to, then it's very difficult to capture their response," he said. Navy Capt. Brian L. Feldman, commander of the Navy and Marine Corps Public Health Center, told lawmakers the Navy is already looking at such wearable technology for use on submarines. "One unique thing that Navy medicine is doing with research and development [is that] we've got some very robust submarine atmospheric monitoring, quite a robust and safe program. And R&D [research and development] is looking at silicone bands, wearables so that you can get individual-level exposure data on a submarine," he said. Both Air Force and Army witnesses at the hearing also said that their respective services are interested in wearable detectors. When it comes to better understanding how service members will react to exposure to toxins -- such as those produced by exposure to burn pits, fuels, solvents, or even dust and sand, Rauch said it's also important for the services to know how an individual service member's personal health habits and history might affect his or her response. "In addition to wearables, we need to understand more about how the individual responds to environmental exposures," Rauch said. "What risks do they bring [and] other background lifestyle factors, such as smoking a pack a day before you deploy, [as well as] other lifestyle factors or even what genetic background individuals bring. We need to understand those because they're going to have an impact, and science isn't there, yet, but we're pursuing it." Rauch also said the Defense Department is working with the Department of Veterans Affairs on a variety of tools to better inform health care providers about what a service members' past exposure to toxins might be. One such tool -- the Individual Longitudinal Exposure Record -- is expected to reach full operational capability in 2023. It allows medical professionals to match an individual service member's or veteran's location data -- such as where they were deployed and when -- against existing databases that document exposure risks, so doctors can get a better picture of what a patient might have been exposed to. "The department remains committed to continually improving our understanding of exposures of concern and potential health effects in order to prevent and mitigate exposures and clinically assess, treat and care for our service members and veterans," Rauch said. Russian Military Activities in Ukraine Conducted 'In Silos' [2022-03-21] WASHINGTON -- It's been nearly a month since Russia illegally invaded Ukraine, and Russian forces have been unable to achieve what Pentagon leaders believe to be their goals. "We're on day 26 [and] the Russians have clearly not achieved many, or almost all of the objectives that ... we believe they were setting out to achieve," said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby during a briefing today. "They wanted to get after population centers so that they could take control of key ports, key cities, key government institutions. And supplant the government of Ukraine with one more friendly to Russia and then, basically, over time, erase the sovereignty of Ukraine." So far, Kirby said, Pentagon leaders believe the Russians have taken Kherson, and the Ukrainians have launched a counterattack there. Pentagon leaders also assess the Russians control Berdyansk, a port city on the Sea of Azov, but nearby Mariupol hasn't fallen. "The Ukrainians are fighting, as you all have seen very, very easily for yourself, how bravely they're fighting to defend that city," Kirby said. "I think what we're seeing here is the Russians have been flummoxed, they've been frustrated. They have failed to achieve a lot of their objectives on the ground." A response to that, Kirby said, is that Russian forces have stepped up long-range fires on cities they hope to take in an effort to weaken them. "They are essentially still stalled outside Kyiv, outside Kharkiv, outside Chernihiv and so many other places that they are stepping up their -- what we in the Pentagon here call long-range fires, bombardment from afar," Kirby said. "Whether that's cruise missiles, ballistic missiles [or] artillery fire, they're lobbying an awful lot of hardware into these cities to try to force their surrender." Those bombardments, he said, have increased in the last few days and are taking a toll on civilians and civilian infrastructure. "That's resulting in more civilian casualties, more damage to residential areas, hospitals, schools, and innocent victims at greater rates and at greater numbers," he said. "And ... in many ways, it's largely indiscriminate." One reason the Russian military may have failed to achieve its goals, Kirby said, involves logistics, sustainment and other basic military functions. "They're still having fuel problems," he said. "They're still having trouble feeding some of their troops. They're having trouble with command and control on the ground, so they've made missteps of their own. And that would also include what we in the Pentagon called 'jointness.' We don't see a level of integration between their air forces and their ground forces with any level of efficiency." There has not been a lot of maritime activity since the start of the invasion, Kirby said, though in the last few days there's been increased maritime activity in the Black Sea aimed at Odesa. Still, the lack of jointness extends to the Russian navy as well. "It appears as if a lot of these operations are being conducted in silos, not necessarily integrated across the force," he said. Another reason the Russians are not having the success they might have hoped to have is the exceptional resistance put up by the Ukrainians themselves, Kirby said. "I would say that Ukrainians have been extraordinarily effective at preventing the Russians from achieving air superiority by the agility and the nimble way in which they are marshaling their own air defense resources," he said. "And that includes everything from aircraft to surface-to-air missile systems, both short range and long range." Kirby told reporters that the United States continues to provide such systems to the Ukrainians and is also working with allies and partners to help find others who are also willing to provide assistance. On Thursday of last week, the president committed an additional $800 million in security assistance to the Ukrainians including 800 Stinger anti-aircraft systems, 2,000 Javelin anti-tank missile systems, 1,000 light anti-armor weapons, 6,000 AT-4 anti-armor systems and 100 tactical unmanned aerial systems. Kirby said the Defense Department is now actively working to fill out this most recent drawdown package for Ukraine and that "shipments will be arriving very, very soon." JADC2 Implementation Plan Finalized, Signed by Defense Leadership [2022-03-21] WASHINGTON -- Last week, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks signed the implementation plan for Joint All Domain Command and Control, or JADC2. It's the final step needed before moving forward on delivering JADC2 capabilities to the warfighter, which will bring a better way to sense, make sense of and act on the volumes of information generated into today's joint, all-domain warfighting environment. The finalized and approved implementation plan serves as the critical final step needed before building out JADC2 capabilities, said Marine Lt. Gen. Dennis A. Crall, who serves as the director of command, control, communications and computers/cyber as well as chief information officer on the Joint Staff. "[It's] the seminal document that we've been waiting for -- and it's been difficult for the reasons you might expect, it's so comprehensive," Crall said during a virtual briefing today at the Pentagon. Crall said the implementation plan is important because it defines who will do what in building out JADC2 for the warfighter. "This is what the I-plan actually does for us," Crall said. "It takes a look very clearly at specific and prioritized plans. How are we going to accomplish the very things that we said, again, in what order, how do you measure them, how do we leverage the boards, bureaus, working groups, cells, committees that are in the building, to empower them, to move these to fruition?" The implementation plan for JADC2 also provides a plan for who will be doing what -- so everybody working on execution of JADC2 knows what everybody else is doing, he said. "We don't always know what others are working on," Crall said. "The I-plan captures that at its fullest, so you can look across your lane of expertise, be informed by some of the other efforts, and maybe that provides opportunity to come up with a better way." The implementation plan also outlines, among other things, milestones for delivery of JADC2 and plans for funding as well. "That's why the implementation plan is so critical and important to what we do," Crall said. With the delivery of the implementation plan, Crall said it's now time to move ahead with building out JADC2. "This is the year of delivery," he said. "And that's exactly what we intend to do. I think we've talked, we've studied, we've interacted, we've mapped, it's now time to put these together and learn by doing." DOD Grows University Affiliated Research Center Partnerships With HBCUs [2022-03-23] WASHINGTON -- Maintaining technological superiority for the nation is a top goal for the Defense Department, and ensuring that happens means DOD must seek out diverse input from a variety of sources, including researchers at historically Black colleges and universities, as well as minority-serving institutions, also known as HBCU/MIs, David A. Honey, the deputy undersecretary of defense for research and engineering said. "As the federal department with the largest research and development investment, the DOD must continue to make strides in removing the barriers of equal opportunity in contracting and research partnerships," Honey said. "This begins with developing an inclusive culture to help build trusted relationships between our university-operated contract laboratories and the HBCU/MI community." The undersecretary spoke today during the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Town Hall Series, which is funded by the Office of the Secretary of Defense through the HBCU/MI program. The department has 14 university-affiliated research centers, or UARCs, which Honey said serve as a critical element of its innovation base. They also provide some of the independent and objective scientific and technical expertise that the department relies on to develop and maintain the nation's technological superiority. "These research centers act as trusted advisors to the DOD by utilizing their core competencies to address the department's priorities," Honey said. Already, Honey said, the department is working to build more partnerships between its UARCs and HBCU/MIs. One example of that is a pilot program at the University of Maryland, College Park's Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security. That UARC now has a partnership with three HBCU's, including Howard University and the University of the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C., as well as Morgan State University in Baltimore, he said. "[They] are supporting research projects addressing the modernization priorities established by the DOD, to include 5G, artificial intelligence and machine learning, cyber assessments, and the chat bot testbed, which will explore the deployment of a multilingual solution that is usable for understanding problems in influence information operations and insider threats," he said. "I'm very confident that additional partnerships like this will continue to be explored and established in the future." To keep building and maintaining technological superiority, DOD will continue to work with universities, including HBCU/MIs, to ensure the best talent is tapped to meet the needs of the nation, Honey said. "We are striving to level the playing field for all research institutions, so that the best possible expertise is made available to the department," Honey said. "The DOD strives to harness the technological and scientific knowledge of a community that represents the wide-ranging backgrounds of the American people." In Ukraine, Russian Activity Now More Focused on Donbas Than Kyiv [2022-03-25] WASHINGTON -- In Ukraine, the Russians are still launching airstrikes on the capital city of Kyiv, but it appears the Russian military is less interested now in conducting ground operations there than they have been in the past and are instead now focused on an eastern area of the country known as the Donbas. During a background briefing today, a senior defense official said an official from the Russian Ministry of Defense publicly announced the Russians are now prioritizing the Donbas. "They are putting their priorities and their efforts in the east of Ukraine," the DOD official said. "That's where still there remains a lot of heavy fighting and we think they are trying to not only secure some sort of more substantial gains there as a potential negotiating tactic at the table, but also to cut off Ukrainian forces in the eastern part of the country." When it comes to the capital, Kyiv, the senior defense official said air strikes continue, but the activities of ground forces have changed. "It appears that the Russians are, at least for the moment, not pursuing ... a ground offensive towards Kyiv," the official said. "They are digging in. They are establishing defensive positions. They don't show any signs of being willing to move on Kyiv from the ground." Nevertheless, the official said, there are still airstrikes on Kyiv, but nothing from the ground. "It's interesting that the bulk of [Russian] air activity is really only Kyiv, Chernihiv -- which remains a very bloody fight -- and then the Donbas," the official said. "That's where we're seeing the air activity. So again, all of that sort of reinforces this idea that, at least for the moment, they don't appear to want to pursue Kyiv as aggressively or frankly at all. They are mostly focused on the Donbas." The same official also confirmed reports that Ukrainian forces had destroyed a Russian navy vessel on the Sea of Azov at the port city of Berdyansk. "They did strike a Russian LST while it was pier-side in Berdyansk," the official said. "It appears from the imagery we've seen that they destroyed that ship." The destroyed Russian ship, called the Saratov, was an Alligator-class amphibious landing ship that could carry up to 20 tanks. The term "LST" means "Landing Ship Tank." The official said the DOD is unaware of how many Russians were on the ship when it was hit, or how many casualties there had been. Additionally, the official wouldn't say what weapons system the Ukrainians had used to destroy the vessel to protect their operational security. The official also said the department believes the ship was in port at Berdyansk as part of a mission to resupply Russian combat operations near Mariupol. Also of significance, the official said, is that the Russian military now appears to be pulling troops it has in nearby Georgia to participate in operations in Ukraine. "We've seen our first indications that they are trying to send in some reinforcements from Georgia," the official said. "We have seen the movements of some number of troops from Georgia." The official couldn't say how many Russian troops would leave Georgia for Ukraine, or where those troops would be going when they arrived in Ukraine. 6 Navy Growler Aircraft Headed to Germany to Support Deterrence Mission [2022-03-28] WASHINGTON -- Six U.S. Navy EA-18G Growler aircraft out of Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington state are on their way to Europe and are expected to arrive today in Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said. "This is in order to bolster readiness, enhance NATO's collective defense posture and further increase air integration capabilities with our allied and partner nations," Kirby said. "These Growlers ... are equipped for a variety of missions. But they do specialize in flying electronic warfare missions, using a suite of jamming sensors to confuse enemy radars, greatly aiding in the ability to conduct suppression of enemy air defense operations." The six aircraft are from VAQ 134, an electronic attack squadron also known as the "Garudas." The EA-18G Growler is a variant of the F/A-18 aircraft and combines the "Super Hornet" platform with an electronic warfare suite. According to a Navy fact sheet, the EA-18G Growler integrates the latest electronic attack technology, including the ALQ-218 receiver, ALQ-99 tactical jamming pods, ALQ-227 Communication Countermeasures Set and Joint Tactical Terminal -- Receiver satellite communications. About 240 Navy personnel, including maintainers and pilots, will accompany the aircraft to Germany, Kirby said. Those aircraft will remain based in Germany and are expected to fly missions in support of eastern flank deterrence and defense. "They are not being deployed to be used against Russian forces in Ukraine," Kirby said. "They are being deployed completely in keeping with our efforts to bolster NATO's deterrence and defense capabilities along that eastern flank." Kirby also said there was no specific threat or incident that drove the decision to send the aircraft to Germany. "They are being deployed, as we have said all along, [because] the secretary wants to keep options open," he said. "He's in constant consultations with [Gen. Tod D. Wolters, commander of U.S. European Command and NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe]. And as a result of discussions with Gen. Wolters, as well as the German government, this was deemed to be an additional move that could continue to bolster and reinforce our defenses on the eastern flank." Navy Capt. Christopher M. Bahner, who serves as commander of Electronic Attack Wing Pacific, said the team from VAQ-134 is prepared to carry out whatever mission is asked of them while in Germany. "I am extremely proud of the men and women in VAQ-134," Bahner said. "The Garudas have performed exceptionally well during their planned work-up cycle and stand ready to support U.S. expeditionary and allied task forces in Europe. Expeditionary EA-18G squadrons integrate with joint and coalition forces to provide our commanders capabilities to defend our forces in all potential phases of operation, while allowing our Carrier Air Wing EA-18G squadrons to remain at sea, defending freedom of navigation with our carrier strike group teams." Defense Official Not Ready to Call Russian Activity in Ukraine a Retreat or Withdrawal [2022-03-29] WASHINGTON -- The Russians have said they are withdrawing forces from around Ukraine's capital city of Kyiv, and so far, reports show that some -- but not many -- Russian forces have indeed moved away from the area. But where those troops are going and why is likely less about signaling a willingness to end a bloody and illegal war, and more about repositioning of forces elsewhere to focus on alternative and potentially more successful military objectives.  "Has there been some movement by some Russian units away from Kyiv in the last day or so? Yeah. We think so. Small numbers," said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby during a briefing today. "But we believe that this is a repositioning, not a real withdrawal, and that we all should be prepared to watch for a major offensive against other areas of Ukraine."  A real commitment, a believable one, Kirby said, would involve a complete withdrawal of all Russian forces from Ukraine.  "They have an opportunity here, an opportunity that they have missed, many, many times over the last month to end this war and to do it responsibly and to negotiate in good faith," Kirby said. "We hope that they'll do that. But the war could end today if Mr. [Vladimir Putin] did the right thing and actually did withdraw all his forces from Ukraine and respect Ukrainian sovereignty."  From the onset, Kirby said, the Russians have attempted to mislead the world and its own people about its intentions for Ukraine.  "We've seen that Russia has attempted now for going on a month to sell this war of theirs to its domestic audience as a 'liberation of the Donbas,'" Kirby said. "However, the intensified rhetoric over the last year and in the lead-up to Russia's invasion, demonstrated that the Kremlin's real intent was to overthrow the democratically elected government and to occupy or annex large portions of Ukraine."  Kirby outlined a three-pronged approach for how the Defense Department has assessed Russia might have planned to achieve that objective.  In the north and northeast, he said, the Russians focused efforts on the cities of Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Kharkiv.  "That whole northern grouping was really designed against the capital city -- the effort to cut off Kyiv," he said. Down in the southern part of Ukraine, coming out of Crimea, he said the Russians split forces northeast against Mariupol and then northwest to Kherson, where they also made an attempt to take Mykolayiv -- something they've been unable to do.  In the east, in the Donbas, he said, there has already been conflict there for eight years now, and the Russians have put more resources there to further their objectives.  All of those efforts, Kirby said, were believed to be part of a Russian effort to subjugate Ukraine. But so far, the effort has not been successful.  "Now we think that they're going to prioritize the east," he said. "They have been stalled in the north, and the progress in the early days they had made in the south -- they had made progress -- now that stalled out."  Despite Russian promises to move out of Kyiv, Kirby said, the city can't be considered safe. It's still at risk from continued Russian aggression.  "Russia has failed in its objective of capturing Kyiv," he said. "It's failed in its objective of subjugating Ukraine. But they can still inflict massive brutality on the country, including on Kyiv. We see that even today in continued airstrikes against the capital city."  Kirby said it's unclear now what actions Russia will take next in Ukraine, or what their ultimate goals there have metastasized into. Briefings from the Russian Ministry of Defense, he said, have been misleading and amount to efforts to recast recent missteps as intermediary steps to its ultimate goals.  "It's too early to judge what additional actions the Kremlin may take," Kirby said. "No amount of spin can mask what the world has witnessed over the past month -- and that's the courage and the military prowess of Ukraine's armed forces and its people, which are proving to be more than what Russia bargained for in its unprovoked and unjustified invasion."  Underlying that military prowess, Kirby said, has been years of military training for the Ukrainians by U.S., allied and partner nations, as well as the continued material support being provided -- support he said will continue.  "The United States, together with our allies and partners ... are going to continue to provide that support going forward to meet their security needs as they bravely stand up to this Russian aggression," he said.  Official Says U.S., Allies Concerned That Putin Is Misinformed About Ukraine War [2022-03-31] WASHINGTON -- Russian military leaders have not been honest with Russia's President Vladimir Putin about the realities on the ground in Ukraine, and Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said Wednesday that the lack of honesty between Putin and his generals is a concern to the United States and allies. "It understandably would be an issue of concern ... for not just our European allies and partners, but certainly for Ukraine if Mr. Putin is misinformed or uninformed about what's going on inside Ukraine," Kirby said. "It's his military. It's his war. He chose it. So, the fact that he may not have all the context, that he may not fully understand the degree to which his forces are failing in Ukraine, that's a little discomforting, to be honest with you. And certainly one outcome of that could be, could be a less than faithful effort at negotiating some sort of settlement here." Kirby said if Putin is not fully informed about how Russian military forces are faring in Ukraine, then it makes it far more difficult for negotiators to draw up an enduring agreement between the two countries. Earlier this week, the Russian military said it would move military forces away from Ukraine's capital city of Kyiv. Kirby said the Defense Department has seen that is starting to happen, but, so far, in small numbers. What's more important, he said, is where those troops are going -- not merely that they are moving away from Kyiv. "We have seen over the last 24 hours the repositioning of a small percentage of the troops ... and the battalion tactical groups that Russia had arrayed against Kyiv -- probably in the neighborhood of 20% of what they had -- they are beginning to reposition," Kirby said. Some of the troops moving away from Kyiv are headed north into Belarus, but none are headed back to their garrisons in Russia, he said. "That's not a small point," he said. "If the Russians are serious about de-escalating, because that's their claim here, then they should send them home. But they're not doing that -- at least not yet. So, that's not what we're seeing." The department's assessment of why troops are being moved to Belarus, Kirby said, is that those troops would be resupplied and then possibly moved elsewhere in Ukraine. Europe Is Changing Late last year, DOD released the results of its Global Posture Review, which is a detailed study of where the United States currently has forces stationed outside the U.S. and where it might be more beneficial to station troops. At the time, Russia had not yet begun its most recent invasion of Ukraine, and Kirby told reporters that recent events in Europe have changed things, including how the United States thinks about its current force posture. The change to the security situation in Europe, he said, may mean a U.S. force posture in Europe that is different than what was initially envisioned. "The security environment is different now. And however this war ends, and we don't know when and we don't know what that's going to look like, I think we are working under the assumption that Europe's not going to be the same anymore," Kirby said. "Therefore, we probably shouldn't have the same outlook to our posture in Europe." How the U.S. force posture in Europe might change as a result of recent events is not yet known, Kirby said, though decisions would be made in consultation with allies and partners there. In the past few weeks, for instance, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has visited several nations in Europe to meet with counterparts, and discussions have turned to how the U.S. might change its posture in Europe. "In every one of those conversations when he meets with his counterparts, there's a discussion about U.S. leadership in the region and what it means and what they want it to look like," Kirby said. Aid to Ukraine The department is underway now in delivering to Ukraine the military supplies and weapons that make up the $800 million security assistance package recently approved by the president, Kirby said. "What I can tell you is that material is getting into the region every single day, including over the last 24 hours," Kirby said. "We are in the first half a dozen shipments of what will probably be around 30 or so of this $800 million that the president signed out. It's already moving into the region." Kirby also said the department is prioritizing what equipment goes first based on what is most urgently needed by the Ukrainians. The $800 million package to assist Ukraine includes 800 antiaircraft systems, 9,000 anti-armor systems, 7,000 small arms, 20 million rounds of ammunition, and drones. Former Centcom Chief of Staff Assumes Role of Commander [2022-04-01] WASHINGTON -- In Tampa, Florida, today, Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth Frank McKenzie Jr. passed command of U.S. Central Command over to Army Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, who at one time served as the command's chief of staff. From Egypt to Kazakhstan, the Centcom area of responsibility covers some 21 nations in both Asia and Africa, spans more than four million square miles, and is home to more than 560 million people. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said running Centcom and its mission is one of the most demanding jobs in the Defense Department. "This region is where we protect waterways so that global commerce can flow. It is where we fight terrorists who threaten our citizens, and it is where we work with our partners to confront instability from Iran and its proxies," Austin said. "Centcom is central to our security, it is central to our readiness and it is central to our mission." Partnerships in Centcom, Austin said, are critical. It's something he said Centcom is focused on -- a credit to McKenzie, who served as the commander of Centcom for three years now -- and a challenge to Kurilla who now assumes responsibility. "Partnerships are especially important because of China and Russia's ambition in the region," Austin said. "But I am confident that Centcom will ensure that the United States remains the partner of choice. That means doubling down on security cooperation. It means allowing our partners even deeper into our training and our exercises, and it means continuing to be a credible and dependable friend. When it comes to deepening partnerships and forging new ones ... Centcom is getting it done." Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley said the Centcom area of responsibility is a part of the world nearly every person now in uniform has visited in their career -- the U.S. was at war there in Afghanistan and Iraq for 20 years. "Centcom is truly critical to the security of our nation, and really to the stability and security of the entire world," Milley said. "It's quite literally the crossroads between Europe, Asia, and Africa. The world's energy supplies come through the Centcom AOR." Exceptional leadership is needed in Centcom, Milley said. And the passing of command from McKenzie to Kurilla represents a continuation of that leadership. "I have personally an incredible amount of trust, confidence, and personal respect for Frank McKenzie. He has guided Centcom, and by extension the nation, through some of our most tough times, and he always did it with honor, integrity, tact, competence, humility, operational skill, and on occasion, a bit of humor," Milley said. For new leadership in Centcom, Milley said Kurilla was custom-made for the job. "If there ever was some way to feed into a machine the requirements for the perfect leader of Centcom -- the character traits, the attributes, the experiences, the knowledge, and the personality that would be ideal -- that machine would spit out Erik Kurilla," Milley said. "Erik's got vast experience in combat [and] on staffs. He's a visionary, he's a thinker, and he's a doer. He understands both the physical and human terrain, and is able to identify root causes of problems and develop systems. He's not at all a linear thinker. He's actually a very gifted problem solver." McKenzie, the outgoing Centcom commander, will retire. He said he's proud now to have his name listed among those who have led Centcom for the last 40 years -- including the likes of Army Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr., Marine Corps Gen. Jim Mattis, Army Gen. John Abizaid, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, and Army Gen. Joseph Votel. Of Kurilla, McKenzie said he's confident the tradition of excellent leadership in Centcom will continue -- and that he's leaving the command in good hands. "I can't think of anybody better qualified to lead Centcom's next chapter than Erik Kurilla," McKenzie said. "He's no stranger to the Centcom AOR. He's no stranger to the headquarters." Kurilla served previously as the chief of staff of Centcom from August 2018 to September 2019, McKenzie said. "It's only fitting now that he's returned to Tampa to command the joint force's premier combatant command," McKenzie said. "You are in very good hands. Erik, I'm proud to pass the guidon to you." After assuming command of Centcom, Kurilla discussed some of the challenges he knows await him in one of the most dynamic regions of the world. "The regions that comprise Centcom: the Levant, the Middle East, South and Central Asia, are home to some of the most important and extraordinary scientific, artistic and social contributions to human history," Kurilla said. "Yet, they are home to violence, instability and conflict. There are areas of great suffering, abuse and human misery." American leadership in Centcom, he said, can prevent regional threats there from threatening both U.S. interests and the U.S. homeland. "We therefore must remain fiercely, actively engaged in the 21 countries of Central Command," he said. "We must ensure a favorable balance of power in the region." Centcom, he said, must participate in ensuring that global trade can continue in the region, and must also ensure that threats there don't develop the capability to harm the U.S. homeland. "Our adversaries are looking for any sign that America's commitment to the collective security of the region is wavering," he said. "Our adversaries are poised to capitalize on any opportunities that emerge -- we must not grant them any." First Lady, President Officially Commission Navy Attack Submarine [2022-04-02] WASHINGTON -- First Lady Dr. Jill Biden and President Joe Biden today participated in the official commissioning of the Virginia-class attack submarine USS Delaware at the Port of Wilmington in Delaware. The first lady serves as sponsor of the ship and participated in its christening in October 2018. Officials had planned to commission the Delaware much sooner, but due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, the official commissioning ceremony was delayed in favor of an administrative commissioning in April 2020. The ship has been in operation since then. In addition to the Bidens, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, Delaware Governor John Carney, U.S. Sens. Tom Carper and Chris Coons of Delaware, the ship's crew, and others officially commissioned the ship. As the ship's sponsor, Jill Biden has been involved in key events in the ship's history. She has also spent significant time during her husband's presidency and vice presidency working with and supporting the families of military service members -- including those of the Delaware's crew. "Jill has watched over the progress of the USS Delaware for years," Biden said. "[As] the daughter of a Navy signalman during World War II, the mother of a member of the Delaware National Guard, and the grandmother of children who experienced having their father deployed away from home for a year at a time, she always holds our military and their families in her heart." The president said he's proud of the work his wife has done on behalf of the USS Delaware, but more so of the work she's done to support the families of the ship's crew and the families of service members across the nation. "I'm deeply proud of the work she's doing as first lady with the Joining Forces Initiative," he said. "It's a true passion for Jill and for our entire family." The first lady said she learned she'd been selected as the ship's sponsor back when her husband served as vice president. "I'll never forget the pride I felt when I stood at the Pentagon with [then-] Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus ... to announce that I would be the ship's sponsor," she said. "The USS Delaware was nothing more than a drawing then." In 2018, the first lady said she attended the christening of the ship in Newport News, Virginia, where the ship was built, and saw what had previously been only a drawing "come to life in a shower of champagne." "I saw the truth of what Secretary Mabus said when it all began, that this vessel will always uphold the first state's motto of 'Liberty and Independence,'" the first lady said. At the ship's official commissioning, Jill Biden told the Delaware's crew of the confidence both she and the president have in their ability to carry out the mission of the ship and the Navy: defending the nation. "Today marks the beginning of an incredible journey, the ship's long and faithful service to our country," she said. "We may not know what's to come, but we do know this: The challenges will be met with the honor, distinction and valor of the 125 sailors who serve on her decks. You will lead with unparalleled character and courage." Families who remain behind have a role, as well, the first lady said. "As we look at this warship, we see its steel bulkheads and unbreakable hull," she said. "We see that it's strong enough to withstand the most crushing pressure and slip silently through the deadliest waters. And yet so much of its power is unseen: the engines and sonar, the rudders that give it direction and purpose. You, the families of this crew, may not wear a uniform. But with your love and support and with your sacrifice and devotion, you are as critical to our mission as the rudder is to this submarine." Navy Cmdr. Matthew Horton, who now serves as commanding officer of the USS Delaware, thanked the first lady for serving as the ship's sponsor and for supporting the families of U.S. service members, including those of the USS Delaware. "The personal interest you've shown [for] the well-being of the families of [the] USS Delaware is unmatched," he said. Horton said sailors have known since antiquity that the best way to conduct naval operations was not on the surface, but beneath the waves. A naval vessel like the USS Delaware accomplishes what they had only dreamed of, he said. "The USS Delaware stands before you as the world's best effort to master the undersea domain," he said. "Delaware stands before you as the ideal ship: limitless in range, unmatched in power, precision and stealth. Her engineering renders her nearly undetectable, and her sensors reveal the presence of her foes." Despite the ship's advanced technological prowess, Horton said the best system on board the USS Delaware is not it's hardware or its weapons systems -- it's the sailors who operate it. "The submariners who makeup Delaware come from all parts of our great country, and their dedication to the profession of submarine warfare is unmatched," he said. "We stand before you not as a crew fresh out of new construction, but a crew that has been evaluated in engineering and tactical performance and taken their place in the battle force. Today, Delaware upholds a proud tradition of the submarine force, ready to sail in harm's way, alone, forward and unafraid." The USS Delaware is the seventh Navy ship and first submarine named after the state of Delaware. The Virginia-class submarine is multi-mission platform that will carry out the seven core competencies of the submarine force: anti-submarine warfare; anti-surface warfare; delivery of special operations forces; strike warfare; irregular warfare; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; and mine warfare. FY2023 Budget Request Includes $246 Million for SOCOM's 'Armed Overwatch' Program  [2022-04-06] WASHINGTON -- Special operators need an eye-in-the sky to look out for them as they operate in dangerous environments across the globe. And it's not always practical for that overwatch to come from high-end combat fighter jets, which are better suited for countering threats from nation states.  This year's budget request includes funding for U.S. Special Operations Command to advance efforts to put smaller aircraft, uniquely suited to Special Operations Forces needs, in the skies over special operators.  "The budget ... supports the 'Armed Overwatch' program to ensure our SOF have the required support in remote and austere environments where they operate," said Christopher P. Maier, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, during testimony Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee.  About $246 million for nine aircraft was requested this year to support procurement within USSOCOM's Armed Overwatch program so that SOF deployed to remote locations can get the close air support, precision strike capability, airborne intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities they need to execute their missions.  "The investment into the Armed Overwatch program will ensure that this dedicated capability exists, allowing high-end fighter aircraft to orient towards other critical needs," wrote Maier in submitted testimony to the SASC. "The Armed Overwatch platform will deliver a capability that ensures our SOF can continue to operate wherever we need them, whenever they are needed."  The budget request also seeks funding to support SOF Undersea program, Maier said, which includes both manned and unmanned underwater systems to provide intelligence and transport capabilities to special operators.  "We are working with the Department of the Navy to ensure the integration of modernized SOF operational concepts and investments intended to facilitate access in denied areas and greater range for longer periods of time with less risk to the operator," Maier said.  Maier told lawmakers this is the first year that both the Armed Overwatch and the Undersea programs have been formally designated as "special interest" acquisition programs.  "[This ensures] more comprehensive oversight so that any problems or issues may be identified early and rapidly remedied," Maier said.  Also part of the budget request, Maier said, is continued funding to support USSOCOM's most important asset, which are its people.  "As reflected in the FY23 budget, we continue to invest in the health and well-being of our SOF warriors and their families," he said. "Our flagship Preservation of the Force and Families program, or POTFF, complements service-administered programs to address the unique physical, cognitive, psychological and spiritual health needs of our SOF community."  Maier also thanked lawmakers for allowing the POTFF program to be extended to Gold Star families -- the families of SOF servicemen and women killed while on duty. Congress made that possible through language in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022.  "[This will] enable the SOF enterprise to extend the POTFF family support program to our Gold Star families and embrace surviving families as important members of the SOF community," Maier said.  DOD: More Javelins Approved for Ukraine; Switchblades On their Way [2022-04-06] WASHINGTON -- An additional $100 million in presidential drawdown to support Ukraine was approved yesterday. Part of that will be used to provide additional Javelin anti-armor systems to Ukrainian forces, said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby.  "This $100 million is designed to help us meet an urgent Ukrainian need for additional Javelin anti-armor systems, which the United States has been providing to Ukraine," Kirby said during a press briefing at the Pentagon today. "They've been used very effectively to combat the Russian attack on the Ukrainian homeland."  Kirby said that the total number of Javelin systems being sent to Ukraine doesn't necessarily match a specific type of target, such as Russian tanks, for instance. Instead, he said, the Javelin, while designed for anti-armor use, is fairly versatile.  "[The Javelin] can be used on other vehicles as well and even fixed targets if need be," Kirby said. "And there have been thousands of Javelins that we have provided to Ukraine and we know they're using them. You can see the evidence for yourself when you look at the videos and the images on TV of these burnt-out tanks and burnt-out trucks and armored personnel carriers."  Kirby told reporters this is the sixth drawdown of equipment from DOD inventories for Ukraine since August of 2021.  A "drawdown," according to documentation available from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, allows the president in certain circumstances -- including for such things as peacekeeping operations, narcotics control, international disaster assistance, antiterrorism assistance, nonproliferation assistance, migration and refugee assistance -- to withdraw weapons, ammunitions and material from existing U.S. military stocks and provide that to other nations.   Along with the $300 million in military assistance announced last month, Kirby said, the total U.S. security assistance commitment to Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion has been more than $1.7 billion.  "The United States, along with our allies and partners, will continue to work closely with our Ukrainian partners to evaluate their specific requirements, to ensure that our assistance meets their highest priority needs, as again they continue to courageously defend their country," Kirby said.  The U.S. has also agreed to send 100 Switchblade unmanned systems, or drones, to the Ukrainians, Kirby said, adding that those drones are already in Ukraine or will be arriving there shortly.  "We're in discussions with Ukrainians about future ... usages of Switchblade drones, and of course we'll keep that option open going forward," he said.  Ukrainian soldiers do not typically use the Switchblade, Kirby said, and because of this, some amount of training will be needed to familiarize them system, as was mentioned during testimony on Capitol Hill yesterday by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley.  "It is not a very complex system," Kirby said. "It doesn't require a lot of training. An individual could be suitably trained on how to use a Switchblade drone in about two days or so."  Kirby told reporters the training mentioned by Austin and Milley involved a small number of Ukrainian soldiers who are already in the U.S. and have been in the U.S. since the fall for professional military education.  "We took the opportunity to ... give them a couple of days' worth of training on the Switchblade so that they can go back, and they will be going back soon, back home, to train others in the Ukrainian military," Kirby said. "We'll look at other suitable opportunities if needed to provide more training on the Switchblades if it's necessary."  Cyber Mission Force Set to Add More Teams [2022-04-06] WASHINGTON -- Right now, U.S. Cyber Command has about 133 cyber mission teams spread across the services, which make up its Cyber Mission Force -- the "action arm" of Cybercom, said Army Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, who serves as both the commander of Cybercom and the director of the National Security Agency. "We originally built the force in the department -- 133 teams -- that were dedicated to our Cyber Mission Force," Nakasone said during testimony Tuesday before the House Armed Services Committee. "The previous secretary of defense has approved a 14-team growth in the future years defense plan. We're going to grow five more teams this year." The general told lawmakers that may not be enough. He said there's an on-going study within the department to look at how many teams will really be needed. Also, he said, operations involving Ukraine are teaching Cybercom a lot about how it conducts operations, and that this will inform decisions going forward about how many teams the Cyber Mission Force will need. "We're a different force today than we were even four years ago when I took over," Nakasone said. "My sense is that while 14 teams is likely the start, I would not be surprised if the department comes to a determination that more are necessary." Cybercom's Cyber Mission Force ensures commanders across the services are able to freely operate in the cyber domain and accomplish their missions. The CMF's work includes defending the use of friendly cyberspace capabilities, as well as protecting data, networks, net-centric capabilities and other systems. It also involves projecting power in and through cyberspace through the employment of cyberspace capabilities. As Cybercom increases the number of service-based teams in the CMF and increases its own workforce to meet current and projected mission needs, officials will need to rethink how the command accesses new talent, Nakasone said. That doesn't just involve Cybercom itself, but also the military services that are responsible for recruiting and training service members assigned to Cybercom. Bringing in new talent is not a problem, Nakasone told lawmakers, but retaining that talent is. There will need to be new tools and new ideas explored to keep the brightest employees on board. "We continue to recruit a population of young men and women that want to serve our nation -- and they want to work in cyberspace, which is incredibly attractive to them," Nakasone said. "The challenge is not necessarily the recruiting. The challenge isn't the training. The challenge is ... the retention. And that's both for military and civilian." Nakasone discussed several ideas Cybercom has looked at as ways to enhance retainability for those who sign on. "One is certainly targeted supplements to very, very high-end capability," he said. "This is targeted local supplements based upon people that are coders or people that have significant technical abilities that pay them at 28% more than the going rate." While that might not be enough to be fully competitive with the private sector, he said it gives Cybercom and the services a leg up over what's available now. Other possibilities, he said, might include military officers with the right credentials in cyber to come aboard at a higher grade than what is typical, as well as offering enlisted personnel opportunities to enhance their own careers and develop their skills by working with industry or attaining advanced degrees. "These are all areas that perhaps we haven't traditionally done within our services," Nakasone said. "But this is the dynamic nature that I think we've got to approach the problem here in cyberspace." The ideas are coming from Cybercom and will certainly benefit Cybercom, Nakasone said, but they can't be entirely implemented by Cybercom. The military services will need to get on board. "As I've talked to the service chiefs, one of the areas that I've mentioned is, this is a shared responsibility," he said. "[It's] shared in terms of what you have to do as leading your service, but also shared in the idea of we have a lot of different areas that we need to be able to make sure that we keep our best people." Security Assistance to Ukraine Continues Unabated [2022-04-11] WASHINGTON -- While Russia targets Ukraine's Donbas region for continued aggression and Ukrainians shift their efforts to confront that aggression, the U.S., allies and partners continue their efforts to get security assistance to the Ukrainian military. "Regardless of the Russian refocus on the Donbas, we're not slowing down," Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said during a briefing today at the Pentagon. That stuff continues to move, [and] it's going to continue to move. We said as much as we can, as fast as we can -- and we mean it." Just last Wednesday, President Joe Biden authorized an additional $100 million in security assistance to support Ukraine. Included in that were additional Javelin anti-armor systems for Ukrainian forces. This most recent package was the sixth drawdown of equipment from DOD inventories for Ukraine since August 2021.  Along with the $300 million in military assistance announced in April, the total U.S. security assistance commitment to Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion has been more than $1.7 billion.  Kirby said equipment still flows to Ukraine to help that nation defend its sovereignty against an unprovoked Russian invasion that began Feb. 24. "We are working very, very hard every single day to continue to get security assistance to the Ukrainians," Kirby told reporters, adding that anywhere from eight to 10 flights full of ammunition, hardware and other equipment are headed to Ukraine every day. "[It's] not just from the United States, but from other nations, as well," Kirby said. "And that stuff isn't sitting around ... it gets to these transshipment sites. They're put onto trucks, and they're moved into Ukraine very, very quickly. In some cases, stuff coming from the United States takes no more than four to six days from the time the president authorizes drawdown authority [until] it gets into the hands of the Ukrainians. That's an incredible rate of speed, and we aren't slowing down." Kirby told reporters that despite Russia's efforts to refocus their fight on the eastern part of Ukraine, in the area called the Donbas, nothing has changed about how the U.S. is getting much-needed supplies to the Ukrainians. "The reprioritization of the Russians on the east hasn't had an effect on our ability to help coordinate the delivery of massive amounts of security assistance from the United States and other nations," he said. "That flow still continues." Defense Intelligence Agency Report Details Space-Based Threats From Competitors [2022-04-12] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Intelligence Agency today released the new unclassified report, "Challenges to Security in Space 2022," which is a follow-up to its similarly titled report in 2019. The new report examines the space and counterspace programs which could pose significant challenges to U.S. or partner interests by China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, said John F. Huth, the DIA defense intelligence officer for space and counterspace, during a briefing today at the Pentagon. "This new edition of 'Challenges to Security in Space' provides an updated, unclassified overview of current threats to U.S. space-based capabilities, particularly from China and Russia, but also to a lesser extent, those emerging from North Korea and Iran," he said. "This edition examines the expansion of space operations and details Earth-focused space services, as well as growing efforts to explore the moon and beyond." New this year in the report is an expanded assessment of the impacts of space debris. The report indicates that the probability of collisions of massive derelict objects in low Earth orbit is growing and will likely continue to grow due to the rising numbers of space launches, the continuing fragmentation from collisions, battery explosions, and further anti-satellite testing events. As strategic competitors, Huth said both Russia and China are taking steps now to undercut the United States and allies in the space domain. "Both nations view space as a requirement for winning modern wars, especially against Western nations, and look to prove themselves as world leaders," he said. "Since early 2019, competitor space operations have increased in pace and scope across nearly all major categories: communications, remote sensing, aviation and science and technology demonstration." Kevin Ryder, a DIA senior defense intelligence analyst for space and counterspace, explained just how much China and Russia have grown their space capabilities. "Evidence of both nations' intent to undercut the United States and allied leadership in the space domain can be seen in the growth of combined in-orbit assets of China and Russia, which grew approximately 70% in just two years," Ryder said. "This recent and continuing expansion follows a more than 200% increase between 2015 and 2018." Ryder said that China has launched a robotic lander and rover to the far side of the moon as well as an orbiter lander and rover on a mission to Mars. China has also launched multiple missiles which are capable of both destroying satellites and deploying jammers to deny satellite communications and GPS. The Russians, Ryder said, have developed mobile missile technology that is able to destroy satellites and crewed space vehicles. They've also developed counterspace weapons capabilities, including those capable of conducting electronic warfare operations, to affect communications and deny others the use of space-based imagery. Ryder also discussed the goals of China and Russia when it comes to the moon and Mars. "Both nations seek to broaden their space exploration initiatives, together and individually, with plans to explore the moon and Mars during the next 30 years," he said. "If successful, these efforts will likely lead to attempts by Beijing and Moscow to exploit the moon's natural resources." While the number of space-faring nations grows, Ryder said the U.S. space posture will continue to be challenged and U.S. space assets will face new risks. "A secure, stable and assessable space domain is crucial as challenges to the United States' and our allies' space capabilities continue to increase," Ryder said. The new report, "Challenges to Security in Space 2022," he said, offers insights from space intelligence experts on those threats and will be used by defense leaders to make future decisions regarding space operations. Howitzers, Helicopters, Humvees Headed to Ukraine [2022-04-13] WASHINGTON -- An additional $800 million drawdown package of security assistance is on its way to Ukraine. Efforts to get the newly authorized equipment and supplies to the Ukrainian military will begin immediately, said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby. "As you've seen [it] go in the past, from the time the president authorizes drawdown until the first shipments actually start landing in the region can be as little as four to five days and then another couple of days once they're there to get processed and actually in the hands of Ukrainian frontline forces," Kirby said. The Defense Department is still delivering equipment from the last $800 million package for Ukraine, and Kirby said that'll likely be complete by the middle of this month. But the shipment of new equipment will begin immediately, he said. "We're not going to wait," he said. "We're going to start getting these articles on the way, as well. So, we will literally start right away." This most recent authorization is the seventh drawdown of equipment from DOD inventories for Ukraine since August 2021, Kirby said. About $2.6 billion in security assistance has been provided to Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion on Feb. 24. According to Kirby, the array of equipment that will be sent to Ukraine as part of the new drawdown package is broad. It includes 18 155 mm Howitzers, along with 40,000 artillery rounds. Also included are the AN/TPQ-36 counterartillery and AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel air surveillance radar systems. To move Ukrainian troops around the battlefield, the package includes 100 armored Humvee vehicles, 200 M113 Armored Personnel Carriers, and 11 Mi-17 helicopters. The helicopters will augment the five Mi-17 helicopters sent to Ukraine earlier this year. Additional Switchblade drones, Javelin missiles, medical equipment, body armor and helmets, optics and laser rangefinders, and M18A1 Claymore mines are also included in the package. "Some of [these capabilities] are reinforcing capabilities that we have already been providing Ukraine and some of them are new capabilities that we have not provided to Ukraine," Kirby said. "All of them are designed to help Ukraine ... in the fight that they are in right now." In addition to gear, the Department expects that there will need to be training provided as well. So far, much of what has been transferred to the Ukrainians have been systems they are already familiar with. An exception to that has been the Switchblade Tactical Unmanned Aerial System. For those, the Department trained Ukrainian servicemembers who were already in the U.S. for other kinds of training, allowing them to train others upon their return home. This latest round of security assistance includes new kinds of capabilities the Department believes the Ukrainians may need training on before putting it to use. That includes the Howitzer system, the two radar systems, and possible the optics and laser rangefinders as well as the Claymore mines. There may also be additional training for the Switchblade system. Because the Ukrainians are in an ongoing fight, any training will likely follow a "train-the-trainer" approach, to ensure the least impact, Kirby said. "We're still working our way through what that's going to look like, where, when, how many," he said. "It's more likely than not that what we would do, because they are in an active fight, is a 'train-the-trainer's' program. So, pull a small number of Ukrainian forces out so that they can get trained on these systems and then send them back in." It's also expected that specific types of troops will be trained on specific types of systems. "It'll likely be tailored," he said. "We'll pull troops out that, for instance, are artillerymen, to learn the Howitzer and then go back in and train their colleagues, rather than take an artilleryman and make them responsible for ... training everybody on all these systems." Right now, it's unclear where such training might occur, Kirby told reporters, though he said it might happen in "multiple locations." Additionally, training on these systems by U.S. forces would likely happen with forces already in the region. DOD: Security Assistance Support to Ukraine Not Affecting U.S. Readiness [2022-04-14] WASHINGTON -- Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Feb. 24, the U.S. government has provided $2.6 billion in security assistance to the Ukrainians to help them regain and defend their sovereignty. Much of what has been sent has come straight out of U.S. military stockpiles. Nevertheless, the U.S. military's own readiness has not been affected by having sent that gear overseas, said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby during a briefing today. "I can assure you that we are not at the point where our inventories of these systems have ... or will imminently affect our readiness," Kirby said. "We're comfortable that our stocks are in keeping with our readiness needs. But we obviously know that, as these packages go on, and as the need continues inside Ukraine, we want to lead turn. ... We want to be ahead of the bow wave on that and not get to a point where it becomes a readiness issue." Yesterday, the Defense Department announced an additional $800 million security assistance "drawdown" package to support Ukraine. A drawdown package allows the president, in certain circumstances, to withdraw existing weapons, ammunitions and material from U.S. military stocks to provide to other nations.  The support package announced yesterday is the seventh security assistance drawdown package that has been sent to Ukraine. During a briefing yesterday, Kirby said Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks met with leaders of U.S. defense contractors to discuss production of the very kinds of systems, equipment and weapons the U.S. is sending to Ukraine. "We wanted to make sure that we had a good, honest, candid discussion with these CEOs about the systems that they're producing; about the rate at which they're being produced; about the possibility for accelerating some of those production lines and expanding them based on the heavy draw on our inventory to support Ukraine," Kirby said. While Kirby said the focus of Wednesday's meeting with defense contractor leadership was heavily focused on their ability to produce the very kinds of things that are being sent over to Ukraine, he also said the meeting was part of a regularly occurring series. For instance, there was a similar meeting focused on hypersonic technologies held several months ago. At yesterday's meeting, Kirby said, defense contractors such as Boeing, L3-Harris, Raytheon, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Huntington-Ingalls, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman were all represented. "It was a good discussion," Kirby said. "We were very grateful ... for their willingness to come on in and have this discussion." So far, Kirby said, the Defense Department has not seen any efforts by Russia to interdict the security assistance being sent to Ukraine, but the U.S. remains cautious about its ability to provide the Ukrainians with what they need. "We don't take ... any movement of weapons and systems going into Ukraine for granted," he said. "That's why we're very careful about how much information we put out there about it. That's why ... we are careful to modulate that activity on any given day. We're not taking it for granted." The Ukrainians are not taking the provided weapons and systems for granted, and they are moving the supplies inside their country, said Kirby. According to a Defense Department fact sheet published today, as of April 14, the U.S. has provided or committed to provide Ukraine, more than 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems; 5,500 Javelin anti-armor systems; 700 Switchblade tactical unmanned aerial systems; 7,000 small arms; 50,000,000 rounds of ammunition; and 18 155mm Howitzers with 40,000 155mm artillery rounds; 16 Mi-17 helicopters; hundreds of armored Humvee vehicles and 200 M113 Armored Personnel Carriers. Russian 'Shaping' Operations in Donbas Point to More Aggressive Plans in Future [2022-04-18] WASHINGTON -- Recent Russian activity in the Donbas region of Ukraine, the Defense Department believes, portends future, more aggressive operations, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said during a briefing today. "It's been, just over the last several days, you can see ... the Russians are doing what we call shaping," Kirby said. "They're trying to set the conditions for more aggressive, more overt and larger ground maneuvers in the Donbas." Those "shaping operations," Kirby said, involve putting more forces, enablers and command and control capability into the Donbas. "We have seen the Russians continue to flow in enablers, capabilities that will help them fight in the Donbas going forward," he said. "That's artillery, rotary aviation/helicopter support [and] command and control enablers. And we do believe that they have reinforced the number of battalion tactical groups in the east and the south of Ukraine." Kirby said the Department has seen the Russians add about 10 additional tactical groups over what they already had in the Donbas, though it's unclear for now where they are going. The Russians have also brought in additional artillery to the Donbas region, Kirby said, and the Ukrainians are doing the same. Some of those artillery pieces will be American 155mm Howitzers -- a total of 18 -- which are part of the most recent $800 million security assistance drawdown package that was announced last week. Along with those howitzers come 40,000 rounds and some light training for a few Ukrainian artillerymen that should begin in the next few days. "That training will occur outside of Ukraine. It'll be more of a 'train-the-trainer's' kind of environment," Kirby told reporters. "It'll be a small number of Ukrainians that will be trained on the howitzers and then they will be reintroduced back into their country to train their colleagues." Kirby said Ukrainian forces are already familiar with how to use artillery, such as what the U.S. is sending. But the Ukrainian military, he said, uses 152mm shells, rather than 155mm shells. "They understand how to use artillery," he said. "We don't believe will take very long or require much detailed training to get them up to speed on American howitzers, an artillery piece, so I've been told, [that] is not unlike other artillery pieces. The basic outlines of the system are the same. We'll just have to get them up to speed on the particulars of our howitzers." The artillery, Kirby said, was something the Ukrainians specifically asked for, and was something the U.S. provided in the latest security assistance package. Shipments from that package have already been sent to Ukraine. "That authorization from the president was on the 13th [of April]," Kirby said. "The execute order was issued on the 14th. And on the 15th -- two days later -- the first shipment started arriving in the theater of stuff from that $800 million drawdown package ... That is unprecedented speed -- 48 hours after authorization from the president -- [the] first plane was on its way. And there have been subsequent shipments since then, almost a half a dozen." DOD: U.S. Security Assistance to Ukraine Provides What's Needed, as Needed [2022-04-19] WASHINGTON -- As the conflict in Ukraine changes, the types of security assistance the U.S. is sending changes as well, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said. Last week, the U.S. announced another $800 million in security assistance to Ukraine. It's the seventh package of weapons, ammunition, vehicles and protective equipment the U.S. has provided to Ukraine since August of 2021. During a briefing today at the Pentagon, Kirby told reporters that what's being sent to Ukraine is done so in consultation with that country, and what's included is tailored to what's needed at the time to meet the needs of the Ukrainian military for the conflict they are in. In February, Russians were attacking the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv, Kirby said. Concerns were high then that Kyiv would fall. The U.S. provided the Ukrainians what was needed then, for that fight -- Javelin missiles. Kirby said they played an important role in preventing Russians from taking the city. Now the conflict has changed, with the Russians turning away from Kyiv and toward the eastern part of Ukraine -- in the Donbas. As a result, the makeup of U.S. security assistance has now shifted to help the Ukrainians fight there instead. "It's the middle of April, the Russians have had to recalibrate," Kirby said. "They're focusing on the Donbas. That is a different terrain. That is a different fight. It requires different capabilities for both sides." During what he described as "iterative" conversations with the Ukrainians about how the U.S. could help, it was artillery support that was requested. And last week, the U.S. responded by promising 18 howitzers, along with 40,000 rounds of ammunition to go with them. What the U.S. is sending to Ukraine now, Kirby said, is what the Ukrainians are asking for, tailored for the fight they are in -- a fight that is expected to continue to change in unpredictable ways as the conflict progresses. "Everything we're sending is a result of iterative conversations that we're having with the Ukrainians, literally in real time, about what they need, and what we can provide," Kirby said. "We do the best we can with each package to tailor it to the need at the time. And now the need has changed, because now the war has changed." While Kirby didn't have any announcements about future security packages, he did say it was "within the realm of the possible" that the Ukrainians would want additional artillery support and rounds to go along with them -- and that the U.S. would "do everything we can" to meet that requirement. Beyond that, he said, future security assistance packages bound for Ukraine would continue to be specifically tailored to what the Ukrainians need, as they need it, to meet the challenges they face as the conflict on the ground continues to evolve. "We've got to make sure that we're helping [Ukraine] in the most effective way and we believe we are," Kirby said. "And we'll see what ... future packages look like. But I guarantee, whatever they look like, they're going to be tailored based on the Ukrainian's needs, in the moment, and what ... they most require." This most recent security assistance package for Ukraine, worth $800 million, was announced April 13. It includes 18 155 mm Howitzers, along with 40,000 artillery rounds. Also included are the AN/TPQ-36 counter artillery and AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel air surveillance radar systems. To move Ukrainian troops around the battlefield, the package includes 100 armored Humvee vehicles, 200 M113 armored personnel carriers and 11 Mi-17 helicopters. The helicopters will augment the five Mi-17 helicopters sent to Ukraine earlier this year. Within 48 hours of the approval of that security assistance package, Kirby said, the first shipment was on its way to Ukraine. Army Announces 2 New Rifles for Close-Combat Soldiers [2022-04-20] WASHINGTON -- The Army recently awarded a contract to manufacturer SIG Sauer for two new soldier weapons: the XM5 rifle and the XM250 automatic rifle. For soldiers involved in close-quarters combat, the XM5 will eventually replace the M4/M4A1 carbine rifle, while the XM250 will replace the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon. Additionally, both new rifles will use the new 6.8 mm common cartridge family of ammunition as well as a new fire control system. "We should note that this is the first time ... in 65 years [that] the Army will field a new weapon system of this nature: a rifle, an automatic rifle, a fire control system, and a new caliber family of ammunition," Army Brig. Gen. Larry Q. Burris, the Soldier Lethality Cross-Functional Team director, said. The new system also arrived much quicker than anticipated, Burris said. "This is revolutionary, and we arrived at this point in record time because we leveraged [the] middle-tier of acquisition rapid fielding authorities to enable speed and flexibility in defining requirements," he said. Burris said the Army was able to do in 27 months what might otherwise have taken anywhere from eight to 10 years. It's expected that the first unit of soldiers involved in close-quarters combat will be equipped with the new system in the fourth quarter of 2023, Burris said. Soldiers involved in close-quarters combat include 11B infantrymen, 19D cavalry scouts,12B combat engineers, 68W medics, and 13F forward observers. "The fielding of the weapon is based upon ammunition production," Burris said. "As the vendor is able to produce ammunition and then Lake City [Army Ammunition Plant in Missouri] ultimately comes on, what we don't want to do is field a capability to a unit where we don't have training ammunition or contingency ammunition, if required. That's what drives the fielding of the weapons." Army Brig. Gen. William M. Boruff, the program executive officer in the Joint Program Executive Office, Armaments and Ammunition, said the new 6.8 mm ammunition will initially be produced by SIG Sauer, but that the Army will eventually take over production of ammunition at Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Missouri. After that, SIG Sauer will become a second-source provider of the new ammunition. "We already have started preparing the site for the new building," Boruff said. "The new building will be stood up in Lake City Army Ammunition Plant and it will start producing around [fiscal year] 25/26. We'll work with SIG Sauer. We're clearing some space now at the Lake City facility to start production." When the time comes, Boruff said, the Army will have enough of the new ammunition to begin fielding the new rifles. "The capability increase that these weapons provide over the M4 and the M249 is what's really exciting," Army Col. Scott Madore, the project manager for soldier lethality, said. "It's a significant change: the way it fires, the way, when you apply the fire control -- which was previously awarded back in January -- when you apply that to these weapons systems, it improves or increases the probability of a [hit] for the individual soldier. It reduces aim error, and it's a game changer. That's really what excites me about these two systems as we saw them go through testing." Burris also said that in addition to improved accuracy, the new system also provides greater energy on the target. The XM5 weighs about two pounds more than the M4 it will replace, Madore said, while the XM250 weighs about four pounds less than the M249. The initial ten-year contract with SIG Sauer allows for up to 250,000 weapons to be purchased, but that allows for other services, such as the Marines, to also be fielded the weapons if they express interest. For the Army's close-combat and special operations forces, about 120,000 weapons will be needed. The new rifles will be paired with the XM157 Fire Control system, which will increase accuracy and lethality for the close-combat force. The XM157 integrates, among other things, a variable magnification optic, backup etched reticle, laser range finder, ballistic calculator, atmospheric sensor suite, compass, visible and infrared aiming lasers, and a digital display overlay. DOD Aims to Close Gap in Bringing U.S. Tech Innovation to Market [2022-04-20] WASHINGTON -- The United States today is responsible for only about 12% of microelectronics production globally, with most production now in Asia. The U.S. also lacks much of the capacity to confirm the viability and marketability of new microelectronics technologies so that American industry might be convinced to invest in them. The Defense Department-led "microelectronics commons" aims to close the gaps that exist now which prevent the best ideas in technology from reaching the market. It will involve the identification of existing production facilities that are willing to participate and use DOD and federal funds to finance the initial investments. Victoria Coleman, who serves now as the chief scientist of the Air Force, originated the concept of the microelectronics commons around seven years ago while working at the University of California at Berkeley. "The genesis of this idea was in a conference room at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab," she said. "The context was an understanding from really top-tier academics that investments that we were marking in early-stage microelectronics research could not be proven in the facilities that we have here at home. We had to go instead off to overseas places, in particular [Asia], to do the work that is necessary to prove out the innovation. That kind of blew my mind." As an example, she said, one researcher in neuromorphic computing at Stanford had the ability locally to manufacture only a handful of the microelectronics he'd devised. Neuromorphic computing emulates how the human brain interacts with the world to deliver capabilities closer to human cognition and power future autonomous artificial intelligence solutions that require energy efficiency and continuous learning. "But in order to prove it out, you need hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of these things," she said. "You need them at scale ... [The researcher] had to go to [Asia] to go make them, which, if we're worried about vendors infiltrating us, they didn't need to do it. I mean because we went right to them. And these are the crown jewels of what we are investing in as a nation for the next generation. So, why did you go there? Because there was no other place to go." The idea for the microelectronics commons was further developed while Coleman was at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. She said it was there, that she worked with staffers on Capitol Hill to get the idea put into the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors Act, commonly called "CHIPS." Coleman said U.S. researchers in both academia and industry still develop fantastic concepts for new microelectronics technologies, including for things such as novel photonics, spintronic materials, quantum computing, or non-volatile memory, among others. In a research lab at a university, for instance, technological advancements in microelectronics that exist now or that may be invented in the future, might only exist on paper or in a handful of real-world prototypes. Ultimately, the goal for the innovator of a new technology is to have a market interested in making use of it and a producer interested in manufacturing it. Proving that a new microelectronics technology works and is marketable requires innovators to first find somebody willing to take on the initial risk of investing in their ideas. It may require the production of as many as a million quality protypes to prove the technology works and that businesses would be interested in integrating it into the products they produce. That intermediary step between a researcher's concept and a manufacturer's commitment — called "lab-to-fab" — is largely happening now in overseas semiconductor fabrication plants, the FABs, rather than the U.S., Coleman said. "In microelectronics [there is a] 'canyon of death.' You may have a theory about a new kind of device that will give you lots of computational advantages, but nobody will invest the money to go and build a FAB — take $20 billion to build something — unless you can show in practice, not just theory, that it will give you the advantages, the compute advantages that you are expecting," she said. "The microelectronics commons sits in the middle. The commons straddles these two extremes, where at one end you can build three devices and at the other end you need to build literally billions of them at very high cost." With the microelectronics commons, Coleman says DOD proposes to, at least initially, fill in the intermediary step that allows the best new technologies being developed in U.S. labs to make the significant jump to commercialization. Development of the microelectronics commons will first involve facilities that already exist stepping forward to act as "hub nodes." These facilities would be able to produce 200 mm wafers for microelectronic production and might be developed from existing facilities already in the U.S. Where such facilities exist, they could be augmented by funding from DOD to make them compatible with the microelectronics commons. Coleman said the government wouldn't pay to build new facilities, but would pay to augment staff or invest in new equipment. In addition to the hubs, there would also be "core nodes" capable of producing larger 300 mm wafers more suitable to make the transition to commercial production. About 10 hub nodes and two core nodes are expected to be needed to make up the microelectronics commons. "Our [notion] was that you will have one place where you do 300 mm, and then you can have multiple places where you do 200 mm," Coleman said. "Each one of these places was specialized in a lot of these technologies. Maybe one will be photonics, maybe the other will be memory, maybe another will be logic. And then when, you know, when they are mature enough at the hubs, they move into the core. Then you go from the 200 mm to 300 mm." With the microelectronics commons operating, novel technology developed domestically could make it from lab to market entirely inside the United States. The commons would both ensure that American ingenuity stays inside the U.S. and isn't stolen by adversaries and that the nation rebuilds the capacity to do on its own what it must now depend on foreign nations to do. While DOD plans initially to pay for development of the commons, it's not expected to have to pay for forever, Coleman said. "The notion is that eventually the commons becomes self-sustaining," she said. "You know, after the initial set of investments, maybe the government maintains a 10% investment. But it's managed as a business with different kinds of profit margins depending on who the customer is. It's a national facility that is used by multiple actors — both professors, small businesses, and startups and large businesses — with differential kind of access rates." Getting microelectronics design and production back in the U.S. is critical, Coleman said, because anything less means the U.S. might end up entirely dependent on an adversary to produce the electronics the U.S. needs for defense. "What it means is that, first of all, we will not be relying on our on our peer adversaries to prove out our innovations," she said. "Because today they have us in a chokehold. So we can invest a little money on what we think might pay off. But in order for us to prove out our innovations, we depend on them, and that is an unacceptable situation to be in." A common misconception is that so long as the U.S. remains the innovator — the designers and developers of technology — it makes no difference where the technology is finally built. But Coleman said that's wrong. "If you let go of production, that means that you are de-skilling the workforce, and it eventually brings you to the place where you can't do design either," she said. "It's a really kind of insidious cycle that needs to be broken, and CHIPS kind of recognized that. So, all these things — design, production, assembly, packaging and testing — they all need to be, we all need to have them here at home." She said another option is what's being referred to "friend-shoring," where if those capabilities are not inside the U.S., they reside with allied and partner nations. "The key message should be that we are captive for proving out our innovations to China and our adversaries, and that is a national emergency," she said. "There's no other way to talk about it. It's just unacceptable that we found ourselves in that situation. ... The solution to that is this commons. This is what the commons is all about." More Howitzers, Artillery Rounds, UAVs Headed to Ukraine [2022-04-21] WASHINGTON -- Another $800 million in security assistance is headed to Ukraine, the Pentagon announced today. This is the 8th drawdown package announced, which is gear pulled from existing U.S. military stock. Included in this package are 72 155 mm howitzers, 144,000 artillery rounds, 121 Phoenix Ghost unmanned aerial systems and vehicles with which to tow the howitzers. The Phoenix Ghost Tactical Unmanned Aerial System, said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby, is a system developed by the Air Force in response to Ukrainian requirements. "Phoenix Ghost is a tactical, unmanned aerial system ... [it] provides similar capabilities to the Switchblade series of unmanned systems -- similar capabilities, but not exact," said Kirby. At this time he was not willing to elaborate further on the capabilities of the Phoenix Ghost. The Phoenix Ghost system, he said, will likely require minimal training for Ukrainian users who are already experienced in operating other UASs. "We're going to be working through those training requirements directly with the Ukrainian Armed Forces," he said. Last week the U.S. announced it would ship 18 howitzers to Ukraine, along with 40,000 artillery shells to go with them. The U.S. will now ship 72 additional howitzers to Ukraine and 144,000 additional shells. That brings the total number of howitzers to 90. "These additional 72 howitzers will help basically fit out five more ... artillery battalions for the Ukrainians," Kirby said. "This was ... very much in keeping with their needs, specifically in the Donbas, and the kind of fighting that has already started there and we expect to continue over days and weeks ahead." The latest security assistance package also includes 72 tactical vehicles which can be used to tow the howitzers. So far, eight drawdown packages of security assistance have been targeted at Ukraine. Helping move that equipment and also to move equipment and supplies donated by U.S. partner and allied nations, is the Eucom Control Center - Ukraine. During a background briefing this morning, a senior defense official said Eucom Control Center - Ukraine was established in March in Stuttgart, Germany, to support both security force assistance and humanitarian assistance to the Ukrainians. "[It's] responsible for consolidating Ukrainian assistance needs. The Eucom Control Center coordinates and synchronizes timely delivery of U.S., allied and partner contributions of assistance," the official said. "This cell is co-located with the UK-led International Donor Coordination Center, which coordinates resources from amongst our international community partners to enable donor countries from around the world to provide military equipment and aid to the armed forces of Ukraine." The official said for the latest security assistance package, Eucom Control Center - Ukraine has been working with the services and with the joint staff on sourcing solutions for the equipment and material. It's expected the first flights will leave the U.S. in the next 24 to 48 hours and that the first rounds of that equipment will be in the Ukrainian hands by the end of the weekend. Austin to Host Meeting in Germany to Discuss Ukraine's Long-Term Defense Needs [2022-04-21] WASHINGTON -- Next week, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III will travel to Ramstein Air Base, Germany, to meet with his counterparts from a handful of nations to discuss both the current and future defense needs of Ukraine, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said. "The secretary will be hosting a number of his counterparts for a Ukraine Defense Consultative Group at Ramstein Air Base on [April 26]," Kirby told reporters today. "The goal [is] to bring together stakeholders from all around the world for a series of meetings on the latest Ukraine defense needs and -- and this is critically important -- ensuring that Ukraine's enduring security and sovereignty over the long term is respected and developed." Kirby said topics of discussion will include, among other things, the latest battlefield assessment of the Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine and energizing the defense industrial base in order to ensure a continued flow of security assistance. Also on the agenda, he said, will be a discussion about what Ukraine will need after the current conflict concludes. "Part of the agenda will be to talk about Ukraine's long-term defense needs in a postwar environment and what that might look like," Kirby said. "The secretary ... believes that it's not too soon to begin to have a longer-term discussion with allies and partners about what Ukrainian sovereignty needs to look like going forward." Right now, Kirby said, the list of participants for the meeting is not yet finalized, though he did say participants would include more than just NATO nations. Also announced today was an additional $800 million in security assistance to Ukraine. This is the eighth "drawdown" security assistance package aimed at Ukraine. Included in this package are 72 M777 155 mm howitzers; 144,000 artillery rounds for those howitzers; 72 tactical vehicles with which to tow those howitzers; more than 121 Phoenix Ghost tactical unmanned aerial systems; and an array of field equipment and spare parts. "This commitment, together with the 18 howitzers that were announced on the 13th of April, provide enough artillery now to equip five battalions for Ukraine for potential use in the Donbas," Kirby said. "I want to stress again that what we're providing is done in full consultation with the Ukrainians and that they believe that these systems will be helpful to them in the fight in the Donbas. Where and when they employ them and how they employ them, of course, is going to be up to them." Since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February, the U.S. has provided $3.4 billion in security assistance. "The United States also continues to work with its allies and partners to identify and provide Ukraine with additional capabilities," Kirby said. "We're going to continue to utilize all available tools to support Ukraine's armed forces in the face of Russian aggression." DOD Announces Winners of Environmental Award on Earth Day [2022-04-22] WASHINGTON -- Today, on Earth Day, the Defense Department announced the nine winners of the 2022 Secretary of Defense Environmental Awards. "[The awards] recognize installation teams and individuals for their accomplishments and innovative and cost-effective environmental management strategies, which support critical mission readiness here at the department," said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby during a briefing at the Pentagon. Nominees for the 2022 award, he said, were involved in efforts to conserve the nation's natural and cultural resources, protect human health, prevent or eliminate pollution at the source, and clean up hazardous substances, pollutants, contaminants and munitions at DOD sites. Kirby also said the department's environmental efforts are focused on incorporating environmental requirements into weapons system acquisition. "We want to continue to leverage technology to develop innovative solutions to existing and emerging human health and environmental challenges," Kirby said. A total of 26 nominees were evaluated for the awards by a panel of 53 judges from federal and state agencies, academia and the private sector. The winners of the nine awards are: -- Natural Resources Conservation, Small Installation: Marine Corps Base Hawaii. -- Natural Resources Conservation, Individual/Team: Naval Air Station Pensacola Natural Resources Team, Florida. -- Environmental Quality, Non-Industrial Installation: Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina. -- Environmental Quality, Individual/Team: Air Force Radioactive and Recycling Disposal Team, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. -- Sustainability, Industrial Installation: Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach and Detachment Fallbrook and Norco, California. -- Environmental Restoration, Installation: Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. -- Environmental Restoration, Individual/Team: Glenbrook Road Remedial Action Team, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers North Atlantic Division, Maryland. -- Cultural Resources Management, Large Installation: Texas Army National Guard. -- Environmental Excellence in Weapon Systems Acquisition, Individual/Team: C-130 Program Office and Support Team, Robins Air Force Base, Georgia. The Secretary of Defense Environmental Awards have honored service members and civilians across DOD for environmental efforts since 1962. DOD's Chief Technology Officer Shares Career Advice With Women STEM Majors [2022-04-22] WASHINGTON -- Believing in yourself is key for professional advancement, said Heidi Shyu, who serves as the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. Speaking earlier this month with students at the 2022 Women in STEM conference at the University of California - Los Angeles, Shyu discussed her own career progression, challenges she faced, and the lessons she learned that allowed her to advance in her career. After receiving her bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics at UCLA, Shyu applied for work at a defense contractor. A man conducting the interview looked over her resume and asked what made her think she was qualified to be an engineer. "I was rather shocked at that question," she said. "I leaned into him and told him, you know I took a complex analysis course in my junior year in which everyone else in the class was an engineer? I was the only female in the class. By the way, I came in No. 1 in the class -- by far." After the interview, Shyu said she wasn't sure she'd get the job. But, weeks later, she got an offer from the company. "I started working in May ... 1978, way before you guys were born," she said. "But the key lessons learned there is you must have self-confidence. You have to believe in yourself." Another lesson, she said, is that respect must be earned -- it's not given freely. A senior scientist in her company had been trying to solve a mathematical equation for months, but was stumped, Shyu said. "I came back from lunch, and a group of guys in my department were just standing in the hallway," she said. "When they saw me walking down the hallway, one of the guys sarcastically said, 'Maybe the new math hire can solve this problem,' and they also all laughed and chuckled among themselves." After approaching that senior scientist, Shyu asked him if she could help. "The way he answered me, I could realize he didn't think I was of much value," she said. "He was very dismissive. He said, 'Yeah, I'm just trying to solve this problem.' And I said, 'Well, sir, may I take a look at it,' [and] he sort of gave me the problem he was trying to solve." That had been a Friday, Shyu said. And the next morning, she got up early to look at what had stumped the scientist for so long. "I had my cup of coffee and solved the problem ... in one hour," she said. With plenty of time left that weekend, she provided extra input that allowed her solution to be even more useful. "Monday morning, I walked into the senior scientist's office and said, here's a solution to the three-dimensional problem you're trying to solve,'" she said. "He was shocked, and he was so happy. After that, I earned his respect. He was teaching a UCLA extension course. I was invited to attend that class without paying tuition ... and I did. What are the lessons learned? Respect is not automatic. You have to earn it." At another company, Shyu said male co-workers resented her presence in a leadership position. While there, she said she had a deputy working for her who was trying to sabotage her work. "The key thing I did is, I didn't play dirty politics," she said. "I've never been a fan of playing dirty politics. I want to rise above that. I kept on working very hard, six days a week, and I worked long hours. I realized that we're on a very tight schedule. I put all my energy and focus on learning as much as possible, so I don't have to rely upon a couple of people that's on the team that are trying to sabotage me." She said her hard work paid off because customers took notice of her efforts and the product she was producing. "I was incredibly dedicated and focused on solving the problems, trying to understand what my customers' problems are, and doing the best job I can for my customer," she said. "That actually was the best thing I ever did because it was my customers that raved about me to my managers. The key lessons learned there: Put yourself in your customers shoes, trying to understand from their perspective what problems that they have that you can try to help them to solve. You will delight your customers, and in return, they will brag about you." Shyu also told participants at the conference that it's important to speak up -- to have your voice heard, especially in meetings. In one position, she said she noticed her male co-workers getting promoted much faster than she was and wondered why. "I didn't complain to anybody. I just decided I need to observe my peers," she said. "What are they doing that helped them to get promoted? What are the things I am not doing? One thing I observed is they're very good at speaking up in meetings. I was just very quiet; even though if I had an idea, I kept it to myself. I didn't articulate my opinion or my ideas." After that realization, she said she learned to speak up in meetings and offer her own opinions and ideas, so that leadership and co-workers would hear what she was thinking. "Once I started doing that, well, it was amazing," she said. "The very next year, I got promoted. And two years after that, I got promoted again. So, my promotion came much more rapidly once I learned to communicate and articulate." From college students all the way down to kindergartners, Shyu said the Defense Department is doing a lot now to provide those pursing STEM degrees to come to work within the department or expose young people to STEM concepts so that they might one day choose it as a career. Last year, for instance, the DOD handed out 416 scholarships for undergraduate and graduate degrees as part of its 2021 Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation -- or "SMART" -- Program. For each year of schooling DOD pays for, recipients are obligated to do one year of work at DOD. The program sponsors undergraduate, graduate and doctoral studies in 21 academic disciplines critical to national security and DOD's future. "When you get your degree, I let you come into the department and work in one of the DOD laboratories," Shyu said. "We have 100 different laboratories. Not only do we pay for your education, you've got a guaranteed job for four years afterwards. It is pretty cool." Last year, half of the recipients of the SMART scholarship were women, and 20% were from underrepresented minority groups. Shyu said about 70% of SMART scholarship recipients ultimately decide to continue working within DOD after they finish their service commitment. In addition to scholarships, the department has held 10 different STEM "summer camps" for junior high school students and hosted robotics competitions for students from kindergarten through high school. This month, DOD is serving as a sponsor for the 2022 FIRST Robotics Competition Championships. Now the chief technology officer for DOD, Shyu said she's had her share of challenges in her career. She wanted to share some of those challenges -- and solutions -- with women students involved in pursing STEM degrees. "I know [you] ... will face similar types of challenges in your career," she said. "It's important for you to realize that you're not alone facing these challenges, and you too, can overcome these challenges. This country is full of opportunities, and you can achieve anything if you're dedicated, if you're determined, and if you have the drive to succeed. Just remember one thing: Never, ever give up. That is your secret to success." Austin Meets With Nations to Intensify Support for Ukraine [2022-04-26] WASHINGTON -- In a forum hosted today in Germany by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, nearly 40 nations met to discuss current and future efforts to provide support for Ukraine in maintaining its sovereignty. "We're all coming away with a transparent and shared understanding of the challenge that the Ukrainians face," Austin said during a press briefing that followed the conference. "I know that we're all determined to help Ukraine win today and build strength for tomorrow. The work that we've done together in record time has made a huge difference on the battlefield." During the briefing, Austin announced that several nations have agreed to step up support for Ukraine, even beyond the valuable work they are already doing. The German government, for instance, agreed to provide 50 Cheetah anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine. The British government also agreed to provide Ukraine with anti-aircraft capabilities, Austin said, along with Canada's offer of eight armored vehicles. "That's important progress," Austin said. "We're seeing more every day. I applaud all of the countries that have risen and are rising to meet this demand. But we don't have any time to waste. The briefings today laid out clearly why the coming weeks will be so crucial for Ukraine, so we've got to move at the speed of war. And I know that all the leaders leave today more resolved than ever to support Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression and atrocities." Before the conference kicked off, Austin said he believed all participants started off from the same position of "moral clarity." "Nobody is fooled by Putin's pretexts or by his phony claims on the Donbas [region]," Austin said. "Let's be clear -- Russia's invasion is indefensible, and so are Russian atrocities. We all start today from a position of moral clarity: Russia is waging a war of choice to indulge the ambitions of one man." What Russia is doing, Austin told participants at the meeting, affects more than just Ukraine. "Russia's invasion is baseless, reckless and lawless," he said. "It is an affront to the rules-based international order. It is a challenge to free people everywhere. And, as we see this morning, nations of goodwill from around the world stand united in our resolve to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia's imperial aggression. And that's the way it should be." While the meeting today in Germany lasted just one day, Austin said a decision was made to extend the forum so more work could be done. Going forward, Austin said, there will be a monthly "contact group" to further discuss how best to assist Ukraine. "The contact group will be a vehicle for nations of goodwill to intensify our efforts, coordinate our assistance, and focus on winning today's fight and the struggles to come," Austin said. "The monthly meetings may be in-person, virtual or mixed. And they'll extend the transparency, the integration and the dialogue that we saw today." Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Austin said, more than 30 allied and partner nations have committed to providing more than $5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine. The U.S. alone provided some $3.7 billion in assistance. "Ukraine needs our help to win today. And they will still need our help when the war is over," Austin told meeting participants. "As President Biden says, our security assistance has gone 'directly to the frontlines of freedom ... and to the fearless and skilled Ukrainian fighters who are standing in the breach.' My Ukrainian friends, we know the burden that all of you carry. And we know, and you should know, that all of us have your back. And that's why we're here today -- to strengthen the arsenal of Ukrainian democracy." Military Hospitality Returns as Pentagon Reopens for Guided Tours [2022-05-02] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department has reopened its doors to military-style hospitality. Beginning May 10, and on a limited basis, visitors will again be able to take a guided tour of the Pentagon and see where the world's greatest military minds plan the defense of the nation. In years past, school groups, scouts and others could sign up to take a guided tour of one of the largest office buildings in the world and visit the multiple displays in the building which, among other things, pay tribute to military services, commemorate military conflicts and veterans, highlight U.S. military relationships with partner nations, recognize the contributions of outstanding individuals and provide information about topics important to the defense of the nation Tours were stopped in March 2020 due to concerns over the spread of COVID-19. But the doors are opening again, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby told reporters today during an afternoon briefing. "I'm pleased to announce that on the 10th of May, the Pentagon will reopen tours on a limited basis," Kirby told reporters, flanked by a group of Pentagon tour guides from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. "They've been ... preparing for quite some time here to showcase the more than 30 exhibits that provide the history and the accomplishments of the U.S. armed forces and the Department of Defense," Kirby said of the tour guides. "These are our finest young men and women. ... They represent the very best of the best of each service. It takes a lot to become a member of the Ceremonial Guard and then to go from that to becoming a Pentagon tour guide. I know how excited they are about getting back to work and getting back at it. And I know how proud they're all going to continue to make us." Kirby said tours in the Pentagon will take place at 10am and 1pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays -- a limited schedule from what was the pre-COVID-19 norm -- and that those interested can schedule a Pentagon tour by visiting the Defense Department website. The detail-rich Pentagon tours involve approximately 1.5 miles of walking and last about an hour. Parent Services Integration a Top Priority for Special Operations Components [2022-05-02] WASHINGTON -- Better integration with parent services is just one way leaders of the four service components of U.S. Special Operations Command believe they can enhance their own readiness for the future. The U.S. military spent 20 years in the middle east -- in Iraq and Afghanistan -- fighting a counter insurgency. It gave America's adversaries plenty of time to evaluate how the U.S. military operates and how they might go about finding ways to undermine its effectiveness. Now, the U.S. is largely out of the Middle East and has turned its attention to the prospects of conflict with near-peer adversaries -- nation-states who, unlike combatants faced in the Middle East, may be able to match the U.S. military's prowess on the battlefield with both manpower and equipment. On Capitol Hill Wednesday, commanders of the four military service components of U.S. Special Operations Command discussed what they think will be necessary now to prepare for possible near-peer competition with nation-state militaries. "I believe that the service components of special operations forces are most effective when we're closest to our parent services," said Air Force Lt. Gen. James C. Slife, commander of Air Force Special Operations Command. "I think one of the places where we see a value proposition for SOF is enabling our -- particularly in conflict-type scenarios -- enabling our broader service, you know, parents, to be effective." Slife also told lawmakers at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that within AFSOC, there's work to be done in the areas of integrated air defense and counter-space operations. "There are a lot of very critical capabilities our adversaries rely on in those areas that I think SOF brings unique ability to effect," he said. Naval Special Warfare Command said they will need to refocus their own efforts on the unique capabilities only they can bring to the joint forces fight, a departure from two decades of a focus on counter-terrorism. "For Naval Special Warfare, we over-rotated on counterterrorism, clearly," said Navy Rear Adm. Hugh W. Howard III, the NSWC commander. "We lost some ground in the distinctive things that only we can do -- and we are moving with urgency to make the main thing, the things that only we can do in the maritime domain." Howard also told lawmakers that both cyber and electronic warfare are part of NSWC's future as well. "With cyber and electronic warfare, with our proximity access to hard targets, we see ourselves as part of that kill chain, in extending the reach of the cyber and electronic warfare enterprises," he said. Finally, he said, is fleet integration -- where he said it would be important for NSWC to make use of the larger Navy fleet and the joint force to exercise its own survivability and lethality. Army Lt. Gen. Lieutenant General Jonathan P. Braga, commander of United States Army Special Operations Command said the development of information operations capabilities is critical to his community. "Information advantage [and] information operations -- I think we're watching it daily, the strategic impact that it has," Braga said. "I cannot envision a future where that does not increase in importance, affecting target audiences, general populations, governments, armies, morale and eroding their overall effectiveness." Braga also characterized special operations forces, space and cyber operations as a "modern-day triad." "I think we owe you the best military advice and options -- and the National Command Authority -- for flexible deterrence, flexible response options, that involve and optimize those three legs of the triad for options both in deterrence, but also maintaining dominance in the domains for high-end conflict in supporting the joint force," Braga said. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. James F. Glynn, commander of United States Marine Forces Special Operations Command said the Marine's special operations component will need to look at what it's done over the last 20 years that can be carried forward. "The choices that we're having to determine right now is what of the ... counterterrorism skill sets, the stuff that we've invested in, developed very well over the last 20 years -- how much of it translates, how well does it translate and what else do we need to be able to do," he said. An area of focus for MARSOC, he said, will be both cyber and space capabilities and its integration with special operations. U.S., South Korean Defense Leaders Condemn North Korean Missile Launch [2022-05-05] WASHINGTON -- The North Koreans yesterday launched another ballistic missile over the waters to its east, alarming South Korea, Japan and the United States. The launch is the 14th this year and is part of an effort by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to speed up development of its own nuclear capability so it can hold at risk those it perceives as adversaries. During a press briefing today, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby told reporters that this morning, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III talked with Republic of Korea Minister of National Defense Suh Wook via telephone to discuss both the missile launch and other defense issues. "The two leaders strongly condemned yesterday's ballistic missile launched by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, which they noted threatens the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula and the Indo-Pacific region," Kirby said. "They committed to close cooperation to enhance the U.S./ROK alliance, deterrence and defense posture." Kirby also said Austin reaffirmed the ironclad commitment the U.S. has to the defense of the South Korea, which leverages the full range of U.S. military capabilities, to include "extended deterrent capabilities." Next week, on May 10, Yoon Suk-yeol will assume the role of president of South Korea from incumbent Moon Jae-in. As a result of the change in administration, Suh will leave his position as minister of national defense -- a position he's held since September 2020. "The secretary also congratulated the minister on his successful tenure as Minister of National Defense, noting that the alliance had in fact been strengthened under Suh's leadership," Kirby said. According to a press release from U.S. Forces Korea, Suh had served previously as ROK Army chief of staff, chief director of operations for the ROK Joint Chiefs of Staff, and commanding general of First Corps and 25th Infantry Division. More Chances to Participate in Exercises Will Enhance National Guard, Chief Says [2022-05-09] WASHINGTON -- If he had his way, the chief of the National Guard Bureau said there would be more resources available to allow Guard units involved in the State Partnership Program to participate in more of the exercises that build interoperability between the United States and foreign partner nations. "The one thing I would really focus on is ensuring that we resource more exercises," Army Gen. Daniel R. Hokanson said during a discussion today with The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. The National Guard's State Partnership Program is a security cooperation program managed by the National Guard Bureau that links a state's National Guard with the military of a partner nation. The relationship allows both the Guard unit and the partner nation's military to further their respective defense goals. Today, 87 such partnerships with 93 countries exist. "As we look further in the future, any chance we can to send units like platoons, companies or battalions to train with our allies and partners, it just ... helps us become more interoperable," Hokanson said. "It gives us more opportunity to work together to understand tactically, how you work together ... if we ever get into a situation where we're on a battlefield together, and so that would be it -- as much training as I could, training funds, so we could participate in more of that." The National Guard's State Partnership Program doesn't just benefit the partner nations that participate -- it benefits greatly the U.S. servicemen and women who participate as well, Hokanson said. "The one thing it does for the National Guard is it allows our soldiers and airmen to really visit a lot of other countries, to look at the environment that they operate in, and to really see, in many cases, the same problems -- just approached from a different angle," Hokanson said. "We learn a lot in those countries and in those interactions, that we bring back to make our organizations better, and I like to think vice versa." In Europe now, Hokanson said, it was initially a surprise to some the skills the Ukrainian army is displaying on the battlefield. But it was something the National Guard expected. "When events started to occur, some folks were surprised by how Ukraine performed," he said. "And everyone within the National Guard says it's not a surprise to us at all, because they've been training them, and training with them, for almost 29 years." As early as 1993, he said, the California National Guard has partnered with the Ukrainian military to conduct training, Hokanson said. Since then, they've conducted over 1,000 engagements together. After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Hokanson said, the U.S. stood up the Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine, which was initially filled by an active-duty unit. But since 2016, National Guard units have been participating there in the training as well. Most recently, he said, it was the Florida National Guard that was in Ukraine training with the Ukrainian military. Now, he said, it's evident that the training between the U.S. and Ukrainian military has paid off. "What you're seeing now is some of the areas that they're being very successful in ... obviously completely attributable to the fact that they're standing up and they're fighting for their nation and their sovereignty," he said. "But within that, I think, we're also seeing some of that training has been very beneficial to them as well." Within FY23 Budget Request, Three Approaches Help DOD Meet Defense Strategy [2022-05-11] WASHINGTON -- This year's $773 billion presidential budget request for the Defense Department uses three approaches to support the nation's defense strategy, which was transmitted to Congress in March, said Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks, during a keynote address Friday at the Reagan Institute. Those three approaches include integrated deterrence, campaigning and building an enduring advantage. Integrated deterrence has been a main talking point for Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III since he took office in January 2021. Integration means all domains, including conventional, nuclear, cyber, space and the information domain. Integrated deterrence also includes the use of all instruments of national power -- not just the military -- as well as leaning on partnerships with American allies and partners. "We seek to network our efforts across domains, theaters and the spectrum of conflict to ensure that the U.S. military, in close cooperation with the rest of the U.S. government and our allies and partners, makes the folly and costs of aggression very clear," said Hicks. "The combat credibility of the U.S. military to fight and win is the cornerstone of integrated deterrence -- that is why our top-line request for [Fiscal Year 2023] includes $276 billion for procurement and for research, development, test and evaluation." The second approach to pursing the objectives of the National Defense Strategy is campaigning, where the United States will operate forces, synchronize broader Department efforts and align Department activities with other instruments of national power, to undermine competitor coercion, complicate competitors' military preparations, and develop U.S. warfighting capabilities together with allies and partners. "Readiness for the threats of today is central to campaigning," Hicks said. "Which is why we invest almost $135 billion in military readiness. And while we maintain the ability to respond across the globe, our campaigning efforts will be focused on the Indo-Pacific and Europe." As part of the Pacific Deterrence Initiative and other regionally focused efforts, Hicks said, the Department will continue to make investments that support the U.S. comparative military advantage and bolster its posture and logistics in the Indo-Pacific region. Regarding Europe, the FY 2023 budget request supports the European Deterrence Initiative, U.S. European command, and the U.S. commitment to NATO. "America's ongoing support to the people of Ukraine exemplifies these priorities in Europe," Hicks said. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, the U.S. has delivered over $3 billion in aid to Ukraine. The president has asked for an additional $33 billion of assistance for Ukraine, $16 billion of which will be for the Department of Defense, Hicks said. A third approach to pursing the objectives of the National Defense Strategy is the building of an enduring advantage for the joint force involves. That means undertaking reforms that accelerate force development, getting needed technology more quickly, and making investments in the Department's most valuable resource -- it's people. "This requires us to invest in our people, like providing the largest pay raise in 20 years to our military personnel, investing in affordable childcare and ensuring their food and housing security," Hicks said. Beyond people, building an enduring advantage for the joint force also means ensuring service members have the right tools -- the best tools -- to do their jobs, Hicks said. In the FY2023 budget, some $130 billion has been marked for RDT&E -- which is the largest request ever. "Our budget requests makes the critical investments we need to defend our nation," Hicks said. "But our security depends on more than just dollars. We must outperform and out innovate would-be threats. This means making sure that at the Department we knock down barriers that stymie innovative thinking. Simultaneously, DOD faces external barriers to innovation, like delays in annual appropriations. Moving forward, both inside and outside the five sides of the Pentagon, we must work to find solutions to problems such as these to realize the concepts and capabilities that this century demands." Ethical Behavior More Than Just Yearly Online Training  [2022-05-12] WASHINGTON -- Service members and civilians throughout the Defense Department complete an array of training sessions annually related to topics such as insider threats, anti-terrorism awareness and cyber security. All are important to the well-being of the department. But compliance with ethics standards -- another topic with an annual training requirement -- is important enough that Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has drawn special attention to it this year.  "Our mission is to defend the United States, and we do it seven days a week, 24 hours a day," Austin said in a recently released video which supports the department's ongoing efforts to ensure every employee is aware of and understands ethical standards.  "It's a big job, one that requires skill and focus," he said. "It also demands the highest standards of conduct. I know that you and your teammates take this responsibility seriously. I know that you serve with honor and integrity ... and that each day you strive to do the right thing. But I also know how important it is to occasionally refresh our understanding of that code of conduct ... of our ethics ... of our values."  Annual ethics training for service members, as well as civilians within the Defense Department and the military services, focuses on topics like avoiding financial conflicts of interest while conducting official duties; conducting fair and impartial relations with, and support to, non-federal entities; and rejecting any sense of personal entitlement while employed by the federal government.  Sometimes, even the appearance of unethical actions -- even if they wouldn't break a rule -- can damage the trust the public has in the U.S military. And that's something Austin said service members and civilians must also be aware of. "We should avoid even the appearance of unethical behavior," Austin said. "We're all role models for the department. And the way our actions appear often affects our reputation, as individuals and as an institution. A lot of times, when faced with an ethical dilemma, we ask ourselves, 'can I do this?' I would like you to also ask yourself ... 'should I do this?' Something may be perfectly permissible by the rules, but it still might set the wrong example. It still might be the wrong thing to do at the wrong time."  Service members and civilians across the Defense Department may be asked again this year to complete annual government ethics training. That training is developed to ensure employees know what is right, so they are always able to maintain and strengthen the trust the American people have in the U.S. military.  "Ethics is a part of everything we do in the department," Scott Thompson, director of the standards of conduct office within the Defense Department's Office of General Counsel, said. "An important part of our ethics program is annual training. Ethics attorneys work with leaders to create realistic and challenging scenarios. This scenario-based training helps ensure employees are ready to make the right decision when confronted with an ethical dilemma."  DOD Must Take Action to Keep Tech Edge [2022-05-13] WASHINGTON -- As America's strategic competitors advance their technological advantage, the U.S. must take action to avoid losing its edge, said the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. On Capitol Hill Thursday, Heidi Shyu told lawmakers at the House Armed Services Committee what the Defense Department must do to maintain its technological advantage. The first step, she said, is building a strong foundation for research and development within the department. The second, she said, is changing how DOD does business. "Every strong structure needs to stand on a solid foundation to ensure this country retains our edge and fuels the future technologies and capabilities," Shyu told lawmakers. "We must make a commitment to science and technology, particularly in basic research." Shyu said the department must, among other things, increase efforts to attract the best talent, must build more robust and necessary infrastructure for R&D, must perform joint experimentation and must do better at collaborating across the technology ecosystem. "If we expect the department to attract the world's best and brightest, to produce state-of-the-art technologies, we must modernize our laboratories and test ranges," she said. "The future of the department depends on talented people, and we're committed to developing this talent." As part of that commitment, she said, the department has invested in a variety of workforce, educational and research programs ranging from K-12 robotic systems to STEM scholarships and social science research. The Defense Department has historically been a leader in R&D and still is. But now, in the U.S., the private sector's capacity for R&D -- without the DOD's involvement -- has exploded, Shyu said. "As seen in Ukraine, novel commercial technology, paired with conventional weapons, can change the nature of conflict," she said. "The department's processes, ranging from programming, to experimentation, to collaboration, should be updated to reflect the dynamic landscape of today and anticipate the needs of tomorrow." The U.S. private sector, Shyu said, is America's competitive advantage. "We must focus on improving how the government and private sector work together," she said. "I am committed to working with you to ensure the department can move as quickly as possible as it engages with the private sector, and the whole innovation ecosystem, to rapidly transition technology to future capabilities." U.S. to Resume Small, Persistent Presence in Somalia [2022-05-16] WASHINGTON -- For 16 months now, American military personnel in the U.S. Africa Command area of responsibility have provided advise-and-assist support to forces in Somalia on an ad hoc basis -- traveling into the country when needed and then leaving afterward. U.S. forces are helping Somali forces in the fight against al-Shabab. But the ad hoc model will soon change to one of persistent presence in the country, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said. "The president has authorized the Department of Defense to return a small, persistent U.S. military presence to Somalia," Kirby told reporters today during a briefing in the Pentagon. "This decision was based on a request from [Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III] and included advice from senior commanders and, of course, concern for the safety of our troops who have incurred additional risk by deploying in and out of Somalia on an episodic basis for the past 16 months." Plans are being made now for just how and when that change will be implemented, Kirby said. But he did add that the mission for U.S. forces involved will be the same -- they will provide advise-and-assist support but will not be directly involved in conflict. "Those forces, as they have been, will continue to be used in training, advising and equipping partner forces to give them the tools that they need to disrupt, degrade and monitor al-Shabab," Kirby said. "Our forces are not now, nor will they be, directly engaged in combat operations. The purpose here is to enable a more effective fight against al-Shabab by local forces." Kirby told reporters the Department recognizes that al-Shabab has increased in strength and so poses a heightened threat. The existing model of U.S. assistance moving into and out of the country as needed, he said, is inefficient. "The advise-and-assist mission, as we've seen in many places around the world, is best done when you're on site, and you can develop those relationships and keep those conversations going and stay as relevant as possible," he said. "When you're coming and going, that ... contact is a little bit harder to work." Kirby also said that just moving into and out of the country, rather than staying in place, increased the risk to U.S. troops. "Shifting to a persistent presence will not change the mission and it will not imply substantial changes in resources," he said. "We're working now to evaluate local conditions, including those following the Somali presidential election yesterday. And we're engaging partners in the region, including the Somali government to determine the best way forward." DOD Names Lead for Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee [2022-05-17] WASHINGTON -- In March, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III announced the establishment of a Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee to address suicides in the U.S. military. Today, the department announced that Dr. Gayle Iwamasa of the Department of Veterans Affairs will lead the committee. Iwamasa will lead a team of nine, which includes an expert on sexual assault and suicide, an epidemiologist, an expert on substance abuse, retired military personnel, a public health expert and a retired military chaplain. "The committee members are in Washington this week to begin their work and in July they will start visits to the installations that were named in the onsite installation evaluation report back in March," Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said during a briefing today. "The review of these initial installations will yield recommendations for the department that can be applied across our force." Kirby said the committee's initial report is due to the secretary in December, and their final report and recommendations are due to Congress in February 2023. As part of their work, committee members will conduct a comprehensive review of the department's efforts to address and prevent suicide. This will involve visits to military installations, focus groups, individual interviews and a confidential survey of service members at the designated locations. Committee members will visit an array of installations both inside the U.S. and overseas. Included among those installations are Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada; Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Naval Air Station North Island, California; the North Carolina National Guard; Camp Lejeune, N.C.; and Camp Humphreys, South Korea. Committee members will also visit three facilities in Alaska. Deliverables from the committee include both a report to the secretary of defense and to the congressional armed services committees. The reports will detail actionable improvements to policies, programs, processes and resources to prevent suicides in the military. "We have the strongest military in the world because we have the strongest team in the world," Austin wrote in March in a memorandum that directed the establishment of the committee. "It is imperative that we take care of all our teammates and continue to reinforce that mental health and suicide prevention remain a key priority. One death by suicide is one too many. And suicide rates among our service members are still too high. So, clearly we have more work to do." Additional $100 Million in Howitzers, Tactical Vehicles, Radars Headed to Ukraine [2022-05-19] WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon announced today that another tranche of presidential drawdown support is headed to Ukraine. The latest package is worth $100 million and mostly includes more of the same items the U.S. has sent to Ukraine in the past. Included in the latest package are 18 155 mm howitzers, 18 tactical vehicles to tow those howitzers, three AN/TPQ-36 counter-artillery radars and additional field equipment and spare parts, said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby during an afternoon briefing today at the Pentagon. "That stuff will start to flow very, very soon," he said. "I cannot give you an exact date of when it's all going to show up in Ukraine, but you can imagine having seen us do this in the past that we're not going to sit on our hands. We'll start flowing that stuff immediately." Since the start of the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the U.S. has provided nearly $4 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, Kirby said. Prior to the most current presidential drawdown package, the U.S. provided 90 155 mm howitzers to Ukraine, along with more than 200,000 artillery rounds. The U.S. has also provided over 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems, over 5,000 Javelin anti-armor systems and more than 700 Switchblade tactical unmanned aerial systems. The U.S. is not the only nation sending assistance to Ukraine, Kirby said, and the U.S. will continue to work with partner and allied nations to provide the Ukrainians with what is needed to defend their national sovereignty. Baby Formula While parents struggle with a nationwide shortage of infant formula, U.S. Transportation Command is working with the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration to support "Operation Fly Formula," Kirby said. "U.S. Transportation Command will leverage its partnership with commercial air carriers to contract and accelerate the importation of infant formula into the United States that meets our government's health and safety standards," he said. "The first step of that is ... working with the interagency to identify locations where formula can be had overseas and then getting the right aircraft in place to bring that to the United States, and then of course working out the destinations." While he didn't say when the first of those flights would happen, Kirby did say it appears unlikely it would be military, or "grey tail" aircraft that perform the work. "We believe at this point that probably the most expeditious and, quite frankly, the most cost-efficient way to support this immediate need would be through commercial contract carriers," Kirby said. Kirby also pointed out that much of the security assistance going to Ukraine is traveling on commercial contract carriers rather than on U.S. military aircraft. U.S. Commitment to Indo-Pacific Region Not Limited by Security Assistance to Ukraine [2022-05-19] WASHINGTON -- As of May 6, the U.S. has committed about $4.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine. Thousands of pieces of military hardware and over 50 million rounds of ammunition were included. But U.S. assistance to Ukraine doesn't affect its focus on the Indo-Pacific region, or limit its ability to ensure partners in the Pacific get the hardware and supplies they need, a senior defense official said during a briefing today at the Pentagon. Most of the hardware that's been provided to Ukraine, the official said, comes through presidential drawdown authority -- which means they are pulled directly from existing military stocks. "We're taking things that are off our inventory shelves, and giving them directly to Ukraine," the official said. "Most of the military capabilities, the systems, the weapons, the platforms that our allies and partners in the Pacific use, they get it through foreign military sales ... It's a completely different set of priorities, a completely different set of sources." As of April 21, the U.S. has provided, over 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems; more than 5,500 Javelin anti-armor systems; 700 Switchblade tactical unmanned aerial systems, 90 155 mm Howitzers and 208,000 155 mm artillery rounds; 17 counter-artillery radars; and over 50,000,000 rounds of ammunition to the Ukrainians. Today, President Biden embarks on his first trip to Asia as president. That trip, is only part of the U.S. continued commitment to the Indo-Pacific region. "The president's trip is proof positive of that, as well as everything else we've been doing in the Indo-Pacific," the official said. "Everybody is focused on Ukraine, and we understand that. But that doesn't mean that we've stopped working with allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific, it doesn't mean we stopped our air and naval activity in the Indo-Pacific -- and we've been talking about that throughout the last 85 days." DOD: It's Not Just State Actors Who Pose Cyber Threat to U.S. [2022-05-20] WASHINGTON -- It's not just hackers operating at the behest of adversarial nation states who pose a threat to U.S. cyber infrastructure -- it's cyber criminals who are just in it for the money, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy said. Many in the Defense Department have long viewed the cyber threat in terms of nation-on-nation said Mieke Eoyang, who spoke Friday at TruCon2022, the Truman Center for National Policy's annual conference. "I think that's because we thought that those are the most technical, the most sophisticated and the ones that would have the greatest impact," she said. "But I think we've seen over time with the development of the non-state actor -- the criminal cyber market -- is that capabilities that were once reserved for state actors are available on the dark web for purchase." The criminal hacker, Eoyang said, is also able to act in a disruptive manner and greatly impact the American way of life -- such as with last summer's attack on Colonial Pipeline. Differentiating between the criminal hacker and the nation state hacker complicates the defense of the nation, Eoyang said. Further complicating the issue is that some nations, while they may not have ever directly perpetrated a cyber attack on the U.S., do make themselves hospitable to criminal hackers who are interested in benefiting from such attacks. "How do you then make decisions about how to impose costs if you're not confident that it is in fact a state actor, a criminal ... [or] a state actor pretending to be a criminal," Eoyang asked. "This is really a very complicated environment." The Defense Department is frequently unwilling to talk about its security capabilities when it comes to cyber, but Eoyang did let out a glimpse of the U.S. capabilities when it comes to cyber criminals. "We have publicly acknowledged that there are categories of criminal actors who have capabilities that are sophisticated enough that we consider them targets that we might choose to disrupt," she said. "I'm not going to talk about who; they probably know who they are. We're coming for them." It's not the DOD alone that defends the nation's cyber network. Eoyang said DOD works closely with law enforcement to keep the U.S. safe. "We have very strong partnerships with law enforcement, because at the end of the day, many of these people are motivated by money," Eoyang said. "They're in it for the ransom. They're not necessarily in it for harming [the United States.]" Working alongside law enforcement, such as the FBI, Eoyang said, allows DOD to make sure that adversaries can't find safe haven in the United States. "We can share that information and where it's happening in the United States, then law enforcement can disrupt," she said. "We've actually seen our law enforcement colleagues become very creative and very innovative in their use of lawful tools to be able to go after this. You may have seen some reporting on the FBI's ability to seize malware that the [Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation] have inside the United States." When the Defense Department can work together with U.S. law enforcement to defend the networks, Eoyang said, both are able to do more to protect the United States. Sweden to Host Upcoming BALTOPS 22 NATO Exercise [2022-05-26] WASHINGTON -- Early next month, NATO kicks off the 51st iteration of its annual Baltic Operations exercise, which this year runs June 5-17 in the Baltic Sea, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said. "[The exercise] provides a unique training opportunity that strengthens combined response capability and is critical to preserving the freedom of navigation and security in the Baltic Sea region," Kirby said during a briefing today. "Participating nations will exercise a myriad of capabilities that demonstrate the inherent flexibility of maritime forces, including amphibious operations, gunnery, anti-submarine, air defense exercises, as well as mine clearance operations, explosive ordnance disposal and diving and salvage operations." A total of 14 NATO nations, including Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States will participate, Kirby said. Additionally, NATO partner nations Finland and Sweden will also participate this year -- both nations have recently applied to join NATO. In total, Kirby said, about 45 maritime units, 75 aircraft and around 7,000 military personnel will participate in the exercise. At the same time Sweden hosts this year's BALTOPS 22 exercise, Kirby said, it also recognizes the 500th anniversary of its own navy. "We're grateful for their ability to lead and to host this year," Kirby said. "It's a big exercise, lots to get done, and I know they're looking forward to it." As in previous iterations of BALTOPS, maritime and air forces will work together to exercise medical evacuation, joint personnel recovery, air defense, maritime interdiction operations, anti-submarine warfare, mine countermeasures and amphibious operations, to strengthen the cohesion and capabilities of NATO allies and partners. This year's BALTOPS exercise is led by U.S. Sixth Fleet and will be executed by Striking Forces NATO. 600-Mile Memorial Day Race Caps Off Monthlong Military-NASCAR Partnership [2022-05-27] WASHINGTON -- This Memorial Day weekend's Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina features 37 race cars, 600 miles of racing, more than 150,000 fans and a whole lot of service members and equipment representing those who defend the nation. The three-day event, which kicks off Friday, involves a joint color guard, and personalized introductions of race drivers by service members. Each of the services will also have an array of equipment on-site to allow fans to interact with military equipment and service members. The Army, for instance, is scheduled to conduct Howitzer and UH-60 Black Hawk demonstrations courtesy of soldiers from Fort Bragg, the 82nd Airborne Chorus will perform "God Bless America," among other selections, and a soldier will sing the National Anthem before the start of the race. The Air Force will conduct a flyover of C-17 aircraft and swear in new Airmen who are currently in the delayed entry program. A Marine from the "The Commandant's Own" U.S. Marine Drum and Bugle Corps will play "Taps," and Marines with the Marine Corps Silent Drill Platoon will conduct multiple precision drill performances for attendees. "The show includes a lot of drill movements, throwing of rifles and spinning of rifles," said Capt. Nick Maguire, commander of the Silent Drill Platoon. "But the platoon is basically the embodiment of our institutional Corps values of honor, courage and commitment. Really, professionalism and discipline are the two words that come to mind for me with watching these guys operate." In some years the platoon has logged as many as 200 performances. However, in recent years, the number of performances has been diminished by COVID-19, Maguire said -- but the team is now working its way to nearly a full schedule. Their performance at the Coca-Cola 600 race will be their first NASCAR-related event this year, and Maguire said the team at Charlotte Motor Speedway has made it easy for his platoon to showcase the best of the Marine Corps. While the Silent Drill Platoon certainly entertains and dazzles spectators with their precision maneuvers, Maguire said entertainment is only part of the mission. Showcasing the best qualities of the Marine Corps to the next generation of Marines is really at the heart of what they do. "At the race, you get young high school kids who potentially are thinking about joining the service -- they're looking at what branch to join, and they see our platoon," he said. "It's not just the crisp uniforms, the discipline or the professionalism -- it's that you see an E-2, E-3, E-4 with enormous responsibility performing in front of tens of thousands of fans at a NASCAR race. I think that that's really a special thing." "They've been just incredible hosts," Maguire said. "The planning has been incredibly detailed. And we're just excited to get back in the mix doing these NASCAR events and we hope that we can partner with NASCAR for years to come." The Silent Drill Platoon is based in Washington, D.C., at the Marine Corps Barracks, Maguire said. Being based in the Nation's Capital, which is saturated with military personnel, veterans and bureaucracy, means the mostly young members of the platoon could lose sight of just how highly most Americans think of their service. That's not the case when they leave town to perform at events like the Coca-Cola 600, Maguire said. "When you go on the road and you go to places where there's not necessarily a huge military footprint, the reception is always incredibly overwhelming," Maguire said. "Of course, the NASCAR fans are excellent. The word I would use is it's just humbling -- the support and the care and the appreciation that we get from fans everywhere." In North Carolina, Greg Walter serves as the executive vice president of and general manager for the Charlotte Motor Speedway. The U.S. military's participation in the Memorial Day Coca-Cola 600 race activities is something he's seen happen for years now -- and something he said he's proud to be a part of. "The Coca-Cola 600 weekend has become and has been this traditional salute to the military," he said. The race draws spectators from all 50 states, he said, and this year from 12 different countries as well. "What we want to do through the weekend is provide a platform for people to be able to engage, to hear the stories," he said. At the Memorial Day NASCAR event at Charlotte, he said, stories include those of service members as told to fans and veterans who talk with service members. He said he knows of one military unit -- veterans of Desert Storm -- who is making the race event a reunion for former members. Stories also happen without words, such as when military units like the Silent Drill Platoon convey more than 240 years of Marine Corps history through their performance. "A sporting event is an emotional time," Walter said. "And when you tell stories during an emotional time, they stick. They leave memories. People hold on to those. So, what we do with this weekend is we get a chance through our relationship with the Department of Defense to tell some of these stories." The Coca-Cola 600 race event will bring more than 150,000 fans to the racetrack, Walter said. He also said the NASCAR fan base has an unusually high number of military veterans who will both appreciate and connect with the military presence at the racetrack. "The fans that we have, the people who follow the sport -- have a keen sense of patriotism and of the sacrifices of our men and women in the service," he said. "I've seen it out here in the fan zone, I've seen it during pre-race ... there's this admiration." In the month leading up to the Coca-Cola 600 event, Walter said, other partnership events happened at military bases around the country -- events that allowed drivers and race teams to interact with military members across the force. "We take the stars, the drivers from our sport and juxtapose them in experiences with servicemen and women," he said. Drivers, he said, were able to visit with service members at places like Seymour Johnson Air Force Base and Fort Bragg, both in North Carolina; Parris Island in South Carolina; and Norfolk Naval Base in Virginia. Another NASCAR driver also visited Arlington National Cemetery and laid a wreath there. He also said that since COVID-19, NASCAR has been able to work with the Defense Department to do virtual visits as well. "Through technology, we would have a driver interact with a tank team in Kuwait or ... an infantry team or brigade and talk about fitness and how teamwork plays into what a NASCAR team does and what a small unit would do in the field in combat," he said. "Those have been wonderful juxtapositions of the two worlds and how much they align, how much it requires -- teamwork, communication, selflessness -- for a NASCAR team to be successful, and certainly for those who are serving in the military." A lot of work goes into orchestrating both the pre-race events and the race events. And in the planning among the Defense Department, NASCAR, the miliary services and Charlotte Motor Speedway, Walter said, the Defense Department has been an exceptional partner. "They've been amazing," he said. "We know that this is something added to their plate. And we try to be very conscious of not burdening too much the units and the people that we interact with. But the professionalism that we encounter with them is unparalleled, as is their commitment to mission, and making this the best that we can." Austin Says DOD Must Increase Efforts to Destigmatize Mental Health Care [2022-05-29] WASHINGTON -- Both the White House and the Defense Department, said Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, have made taking care of military families a priority. Included in that "sacred obligation," he said, is an increased commitment to providing support to families who have lost a service member and destigmatizing mental health care. "This is a national commitment, and it's on all of us," he said. "That means working alongside our friends at the VA [Department of Veterans Affairs]. That means working with lawmakers here in Washington and in state and local governments. And that means being good partners with community organizations big and small." Austin spoke May 28 during the National Military Survivor Seminar and Good Grief Camp's banquet in Arlington, Virginia. The 28th annual event was sponsored by the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors. The secretary explained some of the challenges faced by military families and their loved ones who serve -- all challenges DOD can help with; one challenge involves mental health care. "It ... means redoubling our efforts to reduce the stigmas on getting help and to lower the barriers and increase the access to mental health care," Austin said. "We continue our critically important work to prevent suicide within our military community and our veteran family. You have heard me say this before, and I intend to keep on saying it: mental health is health, period." The secretary also said DOD must do more to support families who have lost a service member. "We've got to make sure that we're doing everything we can to support those who have lost loved ones," he said. "We've got to do more to help our newly bereaved families on every level, [from] finding comfort to figuring out benefits. We know how heavy that load can be. We also have to find more ways to stand together and do whatever we can to make the load even a bit lighter." The Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors provides care and assistance to families who are grieving the loss of a family member who served in the military. TAPS is one of the organizations, Austin said, that is helping DOD meet its obligation to take care of military families. "Last year this organization connected with more than 9,000 newly bereaved family members ... and to help on some of the worst days that anyone can go through," Austin said. "You've taken families to ball games so that they can meet one another. You've helped thousands with your training programs on grief, trauma and suicide prevention. You've provided space to support children and teenagers going through unbearable loss, and you've given people new hope and a strong community that they can rely on." The TAPS organization, Austin said, makes a difference every day within the military community. "It's moving, it's important, and it is inspiring," he said. "Thank you for all of your hard work." Austin also noted this is the first Memorial Day to follow the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. "This year, I am especially mindful that we're observing the first Memorial Day since the end of America's longest war, and we remember the 2,461 American service members and personnel who fell in Afghanistan serving their country," he said. "For surviving family members, we know that grief is with you every day and not just on Memorial Day. We know that, after losing a loved one, it can feel like time grinds to a halt." Biden Says U.S. Has Sacred Obligation to Fallen Service Members [2022-05-30] WASHINGTON -- Americans have many obligations, President Joe Biden said. But one of them rises above all others: doing right by the service members who fight on behalf of the United States. "I've often said that, as a nation, we have many obligations," Biden said today during a Memorial Day commemoration at Arlington National Cemetery. "The only one that is truly sacred, the only truly sacred obligation we have is to prepare and equip those women and men we send into harm's way and care for them and their families when they return home ... and when they don't." That obligation, Biden said, is one that unites all Americans. "It brings us together to make sure that the women and men who are willing to lay down their lives for us get the very best from us in return," he said. The president said one effort underway now to live up to that obligation involves legislation moving through Congress that will deliver health care services and benefits to veterans and the survivors impacted by toxic exposure to things such as burn pits. "We have a duty to do right by them," the president said. "I'm determined to make sure that our brave service families and [service] members that served alongside them do not wait decades for the care and benefits that they deserve. That's why we're working so hard to find out what the facts are." Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said this Memorial Day is the first since the end of America's longest war -- the 20-year conflict in Afghanistan. "In the year since we last gathered on this solemn day, America's longest war has come to a close," he said. "Today, we remember the 2,461 American service members and personnel who fell in Afghanistan. And we remember all those who still carry the wounds of that war to body and to soul. We hold them in our hearts alongside the patriots across generations who gave their lives to defend us all." Many of the veterans who were killed in Afghanistan, Austin said, are laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery with veterans from other U.S. conflicts. Memorial Day is for them all. "The heroes here are joined together -- united not just by their final resting place, but by their devotion to the values that gave life to our democracy," Austin said. "And they came from every state, from every territory, from every background, and from every creed. But they were all patriots who loved their country, who marched to defend our democracy, and who fought to forge a more perfect union. Their sacrifice demands more than even our deepest gratitude." Another thing that unites those fallen service members was their dedication to the idea responsible for making the United States a nation, an idea embedded in the founding documents of the nation, said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark A. Milley. "Our fallen fought and gave their lives for an idea," Milley said. "A simple, yet powerful, idea. The idea that is America -- embedded in our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution -- for which we swear an oath. The idea that here in the United States of America every single one of us is born, free and equal. No matter who you are. No matter where you came from." Under the flag of the United States, Milley said, America's fallen lived knowing that freedom, and the idea that is America, is worth fighting for. "It's up to us, the living, to ensure they did not die in vain," he said. "And we do that by recommitting ourselves to the idea, the values, that constitute America." Fallen U.S. service members, said Biden, are often survived by family members who will forever remember the sacrifice their loved ones made the loss they feel. "Every Gold Star family, every survivor and family member and caregiver, this grateful nation owes you, as well as the person you lost," Biden said. "We could never repay the sacrifice. But we will never stop trying. We'll never fail in our duty to remember. With their lives, they bought our freedom. And, so, with our lives, we must always live up to their example: putting service before self, caring for our neighbors as ourselves, working fervently to bring our union just that much closer to fulfilling the founding creed." Review Board Gives Vets Another Chance to Upgrade Discharge Characterization [2022-05-31] WASHINGTON -- Veterans who left the military after Dec. 20, 2019 with a discharge that's less than honorable will now have the opportunity to appeal that discharge characterization via the Discharge Appeal Review Board and have their military record changed. When a service member leaves the military, their discharge paperwork indicates the character of their discharge on a DD214. Most veterans will leave service with an honorable discharge. But due to their own actions while in uniform, a service member might receive a less favorable characterization of their service such as a bad conduct discharge or a discharge under other than honorable conditions. The characterization of a discharge can affect the types of benefits a veteran is eligible for after military service -- including educational benefits -- and can also affect the kinds of jobs a veteran might be able to apply for after their military service concludes. Veterans can already appeal the status of their discharge by having their own military service's discharge review board, or DRB, reconsider the discharge status. Following that, they can also appeal to their service's Board for Correction of Military/Naval Records, or BCM/NR. Those avenues for reconsidering a discharge status are managed by individual services, each with their own cultures, customs and norms. Because of this, one veteran who hopes to change his or her discharge status might get a different outcome than a service member from a different service, even if their circumstances are similar. "There may be a possibility of different outcomes, as each service has its own regulations for discharge in relationship to the type of offense, and some may emphasize certain factors over others," said Phyllis Joyner, who chairs the DARB. "Commanders have the discretion to consider a wide variety of factors in determining what actions they take." Joyner explained that many times, the less favorable discharge characterizations are decided by service members at discharge boards or courts-martial. When it comes to dismissals and dishonorable and bad conduct discharges, these are part of a court-martial sentence meted out by a military judge or military court members. Similarly, the administrative discharge characterizations are at times decided by a panel of board members, not just the commander. "The combination of service culture, command discretion, and service characterization being determined by boards or courts composed of different service members leads to individualized outcomes, which may, at times, create unintended disparity," noted Joyner. "The DARB will offer service members a final opportunity to seek relief at the DOD level," Joyner added. "We just want to make sure that applicants receive a fair, just and equitable discharge from the outcomes across the services." The DARB, which was established by the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, operates independently of the military services and sits at the level of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. It provides veterans with a review of their discharge status that adheres to a consistent standard. If a veteran has already appealed to their service's DRB and Board for Correction of Military/Naval Records, and they are unhappy with the outcome, they can now appeal to the DARB as well. There are many reasons a veteran may believe their discharge status warrants a change, Joyner said. One example may be that the event that led to a less-than-honorable discharge characterization may have been driven in part by the presence of a traumatic brain injury or by post-traumatic stress disorder, which might not have been considered when someone was initially discharged. Another reason might be that due to policy changes in the military, a service member who committed a similar offense might today be discharged with a different characterization. A service member might also have faced a court-martial for an offense at one duty location, even though the same offense is routinely handled administratively at other duty locations. Before a veteran can appeal to the DARB to have their discharge characterization changed, they will first need to apply to their own service's DRB and BCM/NR, Joyner said. Once that's happened, if they are unhappy with the outcome, they can appeal to the DARB which will review the records that were submitted to those boards and make their own recommendation. "Some things that we would look at ... remembering that each case is unique ... include the length of time since the misconduct occurred, their positive impact on society since they've been discharged. Also ... accepting responsibility or atonement for the misconduct that happened while they were in the military service," Joyner said. "Even age may play a factor -- if the offense occurred when they were young while in the military. But every case is unique and there're a lot of factors to consider." The DARB cannot investigate a veteran's history -- it can only review documents from the boards a veteran has previously appealed to, Joyner said. Additionally, the DARB does not make the final decision to change a veteran's record -- they make a recommendation, and the respective service secretary will make the final decision to change a veteran's record. Veterans have a better chance of gaining a favorable outcome from the DARB, Joyner said, if the information they have previously provided to their service's DRB and BCM/NR was complete and compelling. According to Joyner, a veteran might provide a written statement which explains any extenuating circumstances that may have led to their discharge but which might not have been originally considered by their service. If they suffered from PTSD, for instance, and that contributed to the circumstances that led to a less-than-honorable discharge, and there are medical documents or other proof that points to that PTSD, then those documents should also be provided to all review boards. "They need to provide as much information in their package to tell the parts of the story that may be missing," she said. "We want them to fill in the gaps of why the misconduct happened and/or why clemency should be considered." Not every service member who received a less-than-honorable discharge should have their discharge characterization upgraded. But some veterans do deserve such a change, Joyner said, and all are entitled to have their case heard. "The military is a microcosm of society -- you are going to have some people who make mistakes. But everyone deserves second chances. The DARB provides that additional chance to have a discharge characterization reconsidered," Joyner said. Veterans who would like their discharge characterization reconsidered, and who have already appealed to both their service's DRB and BCM/NR, can apply to the DARB by visiting the board's application website. Advanced Rocket Launcher System Heads to Ukraine [2022-06-01] WASHINGTON -- As part of the latest presidential drawdown package for Ukraine -- this one worth $700 million dollars -- the Defense Department has included four M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS. The M142 HIMARS system allows for the launching of multiple, precision-guided rockets. Along with the HIMARS system, the department is also including the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System to be used with HIMARS. Those rockets are capable of hitting a target more than 40 miles away. "What the HIMARS will allow them to do is to get greater standoff. Right now, the howitzers we provided them have about a 30 km range; the HIMARS have more than twice that, which will allow them -- even with fewer systems -- greater standoff," said Colin H. Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy, during a briefing today at the Pentagon. The HIMARS system also provides increased precision, Kahl said. "These are precision guided systems with extended range," he said. "For high value targets, that, that allows them to keep some of the pressure off of Ukrainian forces on the front, [which] we think these systems will be very useful." To ensure the most rapid delivery of HIMARS systems to Ukraine, Kahl said DOD pre-positioned systems inside Europe in anticipation of the president's decision to approve their transfer to Ukraine. Before that transfer happens, Kahl said, the U.S. will provide training on the system to both Ukrainian users and maintainers. "These, of course, are systems that the Ukrainians need to be trained on," he said. "We think that'll take around three weeks. They need to know not just how to use the systems, but, of course, how to maintain the system -- so, think of logistics, maintenance, things like that. So, it'll be a number of weeks until that training is complete." In addition to the four HIMARS systems, this latest package of equipment for Ukraine will include five counter-artillery radar systems; two air-surveillance radars; 1,000 Javelins and 50 command launch units; 6,000 anti-armor weapons; 15,000 155-mm artillery rounds; four Mi-17 helicopters; 15 tactical vehicles; and additional spare parts and equipment. The latest equipment package for Ukraine will likely not be the last, Kahl said. "We will continue to closely consult with Ukraine and surge additional available systems and capabilities in support of its defense," he said. Since the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by Russia on February 24, the U.S. has provided $4.6 billion in assistance to Ukraine. Recently, Congress approved, and the president signed, an additional $40 billion in support to Ukraine -- $8 billion of that is for additional presidential drawdown authority. But the U.S. isn't the only nation helping the Ukrainians defend their sovereignty. "Even as we continue to provide vital assistance, I would be remiss if I failed to recognize and commend our allies and partners from more than 40 countries who have joined us to continue supporting Ukraine with heavy weapons, munitions and other vital security assistance," Kahl said. "Our support for Ukraine and that of the international community remains unwavering." Service Members Find Civilian Career Opportunities Through SkillBridge [2022-06-03] WASHINGTON -- Separating service members who are preparing to enter the civilian workforce can use the Defense Department's career transition program, SkillBridge, to explore career opportunities through internships and apprenticeships. SkillBridge is one DOD effort to help service members more successfully transition from military life into the civilian workforce. Now, after service members complete the Transition Assistance Program before separating from the military, they can also apply to participate in SkillBridge to help them find meaningful civilian employment.  Skillbridge has been around for about 10 years. It started as a pilot in 2011 to address concerns about U.S. military personnel returning to civilian life following the 2008 financial crisis. Lawmakers wanted to ensure service members leaving the military at that time would be able to find work. According to Caroline Baxter, deputy assistant secretary of defense for force education and training, more than 50,000 service members have participated in the program with external employers, developing skills to help them secure post-military employment. "SkillBridge is a critical part of the investment the department makes in the future success of those who serve our nation in uniform," said Baxter. "We are proud to see the number of companies and service members participating in this vibrant and consequential program grow year over year, and we are meeting this growth in demand with redoubled oversight to ensure this opportunity retains its promise to service members for years to come." Well before their last six months of military service, eligible service members should meet with a career counselor at their military installation to begin the process of using Skillbridge. There, they can use the SkillBridge website and professional SkillBridge social media networks to learn about careers with as many as 1,700 different private sector companies now offering internships and apprenticeships.  With the support of their commander, service members can then move into a private sector internship or apprenticeship program as early as six months before their end of service.  "The SkillBridge program is an opportunity provided to service members during the last 180 days of their time in service to give them valuable civilian work experience through industry training, apprenticeships or internships," said Gary J. Schaub Jr., senior advisor for professional military education. "This establishes a connection between an industry partner and a service member in a real-world job to facilitate their transition to employment after separation." SkillBridge was recently highlighted as part of President Joe Biden's Trucking Action Plan, which aims to address supply chain concerns and trucking industry workforce shortages. SkillBridge has several apprenticeship programs to help transitioning service members and veterans obtain their commercial driver's licenses. Baxter indicated that the White House considers SkillBridge to be an essential part of providing this critical industry with a trained and capable workforce. Military careers that do particularly well within SkillBridge include those in medical, transportation and logistics. Service members who are approaching separation and are interested in finding post-military employment can visit the SkillBridge website at https://skillbridge.osd.mil.   "We don't keep service members in for life," Schaub said. "Instead, we have a force where people come in and serve for a set period of time -- normally between four and 30 years. SkillBridge helps us set our people up for success and is a great way to transition to a civilian career." Modernized, Interoperable Guard Is Hedge Against Peer Competitors [2022-06-07] WASHINGTON -- As Congress mulls over the president's fiscal year 2023 budget request, the way the National Guard will use its portion of the funding to prepare for near-peer competition was of interest to some lawmakers. "When we look at the threats that we face, the biggest thing we want to do is deter that [threat] so we do not get into a fight," said Army Gen. Daniel R. Hokanson, chief of the National Guard Bureau. "By having a modernized, relevant and capable reserve component to augment our active forces -- I think is perhaps one of the best deterrents that we have." Speaking Tuesday before the Senate Appropriations Committee, subcommittee on defense, Hokanson said modernization is a key part of deterrence. "We just have to make sure that as we go through the modernization process of all of our services, to make sure that our reserve components -- particularly the National Guard, as the combat reserve of the Army and the Air Force -- our equipment is deployable; it's sustainable, and it's interoperable on the battlefield." One particular area of modernization, Hokanson said, involves the aircraft flown by the Air National Guard -- in particular the fighter aircraft fleet, which includes the F-22 Raptor, F-15 Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon and A-10 aircraft. "If I could pick one field, I would say [it's] the fighter fleet that we have in the Air National Guard," Hokanson said. "We've got six squadrons of F-15Cs and Ds, which need to be replaced, and seven squadrons of the pre-block F-16s, the older ones." The National Guard, Hokanson said, has 25 fighter squadrons -- each critical to national defense. "It's important that we identify, really, a way forward to recapitalize those fleets with newer aircraft so they can continue to provide ... 30% of the Air Force's air capability," he said. "When we look at the future threat environment, we want to make sure that, No. 1, we can meet everything we're being asked to do, but then we can also operate on that battlefield successfully to fight and win." Maintaining a credible National Guard -- one that can effectively deter -- requires more than the best equipment. It also requires the best people. The Air National Guard has more than 106,000 officers and enlisted members serving in 89 flying units and 579 mission support units. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Guard has faced challenges in finding Americans to serve. "It's a very difficult environment now," Hokanson said. "A lot of competitors for the young men and women that we're trying to bring into organization are offering a lot of the benefits that historically only we provided." On the front lines of the fight to bring in new talent, Hokanson said, are National Guard recruiters -- an indispensable tool for getting the right people into the Guard. "What we have found, however, is there's really, there's no replacement for having the right number of recruiters," he said. "Coming out of the COVID environment, where after the past two years it's been difficult to have face-to-face interactions, we're getting our recruiters back out there." Challenges facing those recruiters include the dwindling number of Americans who are eligible to serve and stiff competition from the private sector, which is also looking for good talent. "[We're] looking at the right bonuses to bring people in," he said. "But most importantly is having the right number of recruiters so that they can get out there, identify and have the conversation; ... [we've] got to find the right people." DOD Looks at U.S.-South Korea Technology Collaboration [2022-06-09] WASHINGTON -- The partnership between the United States and South Korea has grown for more than 70 years now and continues to strengthen every year. One area that the Defense Department emphasizes is in technology development between the two nations, said David A. Honey, deputy undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. President Joe Biden recently visited with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol to discuss, among other things, efforts to broaden cooperation on technologies, such as semiconductors, batteries, civil nuclear power, space development and cyberspace. "Fully recognizing that [the] scientists, researchers and engineers of [their] countries are among the most innovative in the world, both presidents agreed to leverage this comparative advantage to enhance public and private cooperation to protect and promote critical and emerging technologies, including leading-edge semiconductors, eco-friendly EV [electric vehicle] batteries, artificial intelligence, quantum technology, biotechnology, bio-manufacturing and autonomous robots," said Honey during a keynote address today at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Honey said DOD officials have identified five, key technology areas the department aims to develop further in partnership with South Korea. All, he said, have an impact on global supply chain security, and first among those is artificial intelligence. "As AI, machine learning and autonomous operations continue to mature, the DOD will focus on evidence-based AI assurance and enabling operational effectiveness," he said. In communications, 5G technology and the next generation of communications technology are also critical to the department, he said. "As fifth generation wireless technology is adopted and provides building blocks for capability, the DOD will also look forward to future G [generations] for leap-ahead technologies to lead in creating future standards," Honey said. "The department will invest in future G technology development to lay the groundwork for continued United States leadership in information technology, which is vital to maintaining our economic and national security." Quantum computing, Honey said, can provide DOD with computational speeds that are unprecedented and will allow the department to solve some of its most difficult analytical problems. "Quantum sensors promise the ability to provide unprecedented accuracy in position, navigation and timing," he said. "Our near-term technology focus is on advanced atomic clocks and quantum sensors to improve navigation and timing reliability beyond GPS and improve our access to the spectrum." Further investments in biotechnology, Honey said, can help with everything from fighting global pandemics to reducing logistics and sustainment costs and increasing energy efficiency. "Biotechnology can help change the way the department conducts missions, performs in contested logistics environments, and adapts to major global changes," he said. "Biotechnology innovation is largely through global collaborations. DOD partnerships domestically and internationally de-risk and accelerate the transition of research to operational demonstrations and capabilities." Finally, he said, renewable energy generation and storage are critical to DOD's future operations. "Renewable energy generation and storage promises to decrease warfighter vulnerability and deliver new operational capabilities for the department," he said. "From more efficient batteries to diversifying energy sources and reduced fuel transportation risks, renewable energy generation and storage will add resilience and flexibility in a contested logistics environment." Leadership Key to Moving Defense Department Toward Data-Driven Future [2022-06-10] WASHINGTON -- In April, the Defense Department hired a former computer science professor and head of machine learning for Lyft to elevate digital and artificial intelligence strategy development and policy formulation.   As chief digital and artificial intelligence officer, Craig Martell is responsible for accelerating the adoption of data, analytics, digital solutions and AI functions. But shifting the largest agency in the federal government toward a data-driven future is a tall order. Such a task will require a skilled leader and will require a lot of people to be convinced of the value of what DOD is trying to achieve, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks said.  "I think leadership is incredibly important," Hicks said. "And the ways in which leadership speaks, use their time, drive the system, hold people accountable -- will be very important here. The secretary and I are ready to be at the forefront of that, to be part of that change and to help Dr. Martell do the same, along with the team and CDAO."  A key part of leadership is holding people accountable, Hicks said, and that can be a challenge. Unlike in private corporations, there are, legally, many different subcomponents with different mandates -- some of which might not always align completely with what the department is trying to achieve. Additionally, she said, lawmakers may also have different ideas about the way the Defense Department should go about its mission -- they have a say, as well.  Hicks said getting after what motivates people -- the incentives -- is how the department will further it's data and AI goals.  "The heart of how you change culture is you go after the incentives," Hicks said. "So far, part of our theory is showing, particularly combatant commanders or commanders at the operational level ... what can they not live without."  What that means for the department's drive toward a data-driven future is showing those most invested in DOD's mission just what the department is trying to achieve, how it'll make it easier for them to accomplish their own part of the mission, and how it will save the department money in the process.  "More than anything, what we want to do is be able to find those use cases and unlock the potential for decision-makers like the secretary, out to the field, to the warfighter to show them how they can achieve their objectives, their military objectives, operational objectives on behalf of the United States -- better, smarter, faster with ... this toolkit," Hicks said.  Right now, Hicks said, the Defense Department is not where it needs to be in its exploitation and analysis of the data. Part of the CDAO's [chief digital and artificial intelligence officer] mandate will be to change that.  "I sit as the COO [chief operating officer] of DOD, on top of the largest organization in the world," she said. "And we are under-gunned in terms of the analytic capability that we tend to bring toward problems relative to the scale of both our size and then the kinds of the consequences of the challenges we're looking at. Data is another way, an avenue, toward better analysis, better fact finding, understanding how to see ourselves, understanding how to see our adversaries and all the other facets of a situation."  From understanding the true costs of sustainment efforts or the logistics underway to help Ukraine, Hicks said, the effective analysis of data is key.  "What if we could really analyze all that data in a way that's speedy -- with AI -- and also even then be predictive?" she said. "That shows so much potential ... and then, as you get closer in the ... sensor-to-shooter piece of it, you start to see the advantage for data and for AI and the CDAO [chief digital and artificial intelligence officer] construct ... as that tech stack comes tighter together and there's a virtuous feedback cycle, in really giving the United States that advantage on the decision-making side, [and the] accuracy/prediction side." Harpoon Weapon System, More Howitzers Headed to Ukraine [2022-06-15] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department announced today an additional $1 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, which will include Harpoon coastal defense systems, more 155mm howitzers, and more ammunition for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS. The latest tranche of security assistance bound for Ukraine was announced earlier today by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley, who are both participating in the third meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels. Senior defense officials later discussed the announcement in more detail during a background briefing at the Pentagon. "The United States will be providing Ukraine with another $1 billion of security assistance," an official said. "This new assistance will support Ukraine's most urgent needs for artillery, as well as near-term priorities for coastal defense, secure communications and optics." This latest package of security assistance come in two forms. First is a presidential drawdown authority, or PDA. A "drawdown," according to documentation available from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, allows the president in certain circumstances to withdraw existing weapons, ammunitions and material from existing U.S. military stocks and provide that to other nations.  According to a fact sheet published on the Defense Department website, about $350 million of the $1 billion announced comes from presidential drawdown authority. This drawdown, the twelfth of its kind so far, includes 18 155mm howitzers, 36,000 rounds of 155mm ammunition, 18 tactical vehicles, additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, four additional tactical vehicles and spare parts and other equipment. The remainder of the $1 billion support comes from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, or USAI. One defense official said this is an authority the department has been using to support Ukraine since 2015, when Russia first invaded Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. Support under USAI differs from that provided as part of PDA in that it must be purchased or contracted rather than being pulled from existing military inventory, the official said. "It enables the department to make direct purchases of equipment as well as contract for training and maintenance and sustainment, including in support of equipment provided through presidential drawdown," the official said. "The USAI programs, in addition to meeting Ukraine's shorter-term needs, also help ensure Ukraine's enduring strength by providing for procurement and training of Ukrainian forces on NATO standard equipment." Of the $1 billion announced, $650 million is made up of USAI. This includes two Harpoon coastal defense systems; thousands of secure radios; thousands of night vision devices, thermal sights and other optics. It also includes funding for training, maintenance, sustainment, transportation and administrative costs. "The provision of [the] Harpoon is not in response to any particular piece of new information," the official said. "It's a combination of continued consultation with the Ukrainians, and coastal defense still being near the top of their urgent requirements list." Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Feb. 24, the U.S. has provided approximately $5.6 billion in security assistance support. Congressional Action Can Help DOD Weather Microelectronics Supply Crunch  [2022-06-15] WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers on Capitol Hill can help the Defense Department make it through supply shortages for microchips and microelectronics both now and into the future, said Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks.  "The most important thing that can be done right now is that the Congress can pass the American Innovation Act, the CHIPS Act, to get us on-shored here in the United States -- microchip processing capability, manufacturing and processing capability," said Hicks, who spoke Monday at the Defense One Tech Summit.  While the DOD and other federal agencies would certainly benefit from such a move by Congress, Hicks said the U.S. economy itself would also benefit greatly.  "That move will, more than anything, help the overall economy of the United States where we're relying on chips in many, many, many different kinds of devices," she said. "What we need and what that American Innovation Act ... would help us get is a national security approach, an enclave approach that helps us go after the kinds of higher-end capabilities that we need with a secure, assured supply chain."  Already, Hicks said, the department has made billions in investments in both microchip processing and microelectronics, for both research and manufacturing.  "There's no doubt that any kind of microelectronics crunch that we feel across the economy will also be felt in DOD," Hicks said. "It's an imperative that we have on-shored capability, allied-shored capability as well, to secure the supply chain we need inside our defense department."  Similar to how challenges in getting microelectronics pose a risk now to the Defense Department, Hicks said, the department also recognizes the risk of its dependence on petroleum products for operations. The recent rise in fuel costs, she said, just underlines the emphasis the department is already putting on finding new ways to power the warfighter.  Hicks said the Defense Department must be a "fast follower," in the transition to alternate fuel sources for things like automobiles because industry is already moving quickly in that direction.  "The U.S. commercial automobile industry is already there on electric vehicles," she said. "If the Defense Department did nothing, we would not be able to sustain our vehicle fleet in the future because commercial industry, which includes parts, maintenance, all of that, would have moved on."  The U.S. commercial sector, Hicks said, already understands the effects of fuel and the dependency on fuel and is leading the way in finding alternatives. The Defense Department, Hicks said, has its own reasons to shift away from dependency on fossil fuels, including the complex logistics tail associated with getting fuel where it's needed.  "I think we are motivated at a more strategic level to make sure that we can free that tether on fossil fuel, to the extent that we can," Hicks said. "It's not an overnight issue but I think there's a lot we can do to move this system and when we do that, we're going to help ourselves with that combat credibility, particularly in places like the Pacific where the logistics lines are very long."  Defense Security Cooperation Agency Commemorates 50 Years of Partnership, Ally Support  [2022-06-21] WASHINGTON -- Last September, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency marked its 50th anniversary. Due to COVID-19 restrictions in place at the time, commemoration events were muted at best. But agency leaders and employees, dignitaries, ambassadors, and representatives from U.S. military and allies and partner nations finally had the opportunity to toast the work DSCA has been doing for more than a half century during a June 14 event at Mount Vernon, Virginia.  "You lead the department's security cooperation enterprise, and you build up the capacity of our friends," said Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III in a pre-recorded message to attendees. "That helps us all respond together to shared challenges."  One such challenge, Austin said, was that of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. DSCA has done much work to ensure the Ukrainians have what they need to defend their sovereignty against the unjustified Russian invasion.  "We've all seen how crucial security cooperation is since Russia's unprovoked and unjust invasion of Ukraine," Austin said. "I'm proud that countries around the world have rallied swiftly and surely behind Ukraine as it defends its citizens, its sovereignty and its democracy. I want to thank you for all that you've done to urgently get capabilities to Ukraine. I've spoken about moving heaven and earth to help Ukraine defend itself -- and you are doing that every day."  Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, DSCA has been instrumental in helping Ukraine's military to obtain critical equipment to help them defend their nation. Since February 24 -- the date of the Russian invasion -- the United States has helped channel nearly $5.6 billion in security assistance to Ukraine.  Included in that assistance are over 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems, 6,500 Javelin anti-armor systems, 700 Switchblade tactical unmanned aerial systems, 108 155 mm Howitzers with over 220,000 155 mm artillery rounds, and multiple High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems along with ammunition.  While DSCA is often thought of as the agency within the Defense Department responsible for helping partner and allied nations obtain U.S. military hardware, agency Director James A. Hursch said DSCA is about much more than just arms transfers. The DSCA mission, he said, also includes activities such as institutional capacity building, education and training, and humanitarian and disaster assistance.  DSCA's efforts to build relationships with allies and partners and help them to strengthen their own security, Hursch said, have been central to U.S. security for 50 years.  "Ingrained in our national defense strategy is the concept that ... mutually beneficial alliances and partnerships are an enduring strength for the United States, and critical to achieving our objectives," Hursch said. "Security cooperation is not a standalone undertaking. We all need committed allies and partners to succeed in our mission."  Relationships with allies and partner nations matter, Hursch said, and DSCA is fundamentally about building and maintaining those relationships.  "At its core, DSCA is the defense-based olive branch from the United States to the world," he said. "None of us here wants to fight, but if we must, we want it to be triumphant. In the words of George Washington, to be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace." Colin H. Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy, told attendees that he believes the greatest strength the United States has is its partners -- partners DSCA helps develop and grow.  "Our greatest asymmetric advantage in the entire world is our unparalleled network of allies and partners," he said. "DSCA plays a vital role in ensuring that that network of allies and partners is as capable as possible in meeting our common challenges."  The forthcoming National Defense Strategy, Kahl said, is a call to work more closely with allies and partner nations; and security cooperation, such as what DSCA provides, is a key tool in achieving that goal.  "Let me be clear, if we fail to realize this objective, we will have failed to implement our strategy," he said. "Our strategy cannot succeed without all of you. That means those of you that are helping to implement our security assistance and cooperation programs, but [also] all of our allies and partners who work every day tirelessly alongside us. To realize the NDS will first require employing the full breadth of the security cooperation toolkit and focusing hard on the impact of our systems."  Among other things, he said, that toolkit includes engagement tools, institutional capacity building, humanitarian assistance and professional military education -- all activities where DSCA is the DoD lead.  "Security cooperation is a tool of first resort, building preparedness so frontline partners have the capacity to defend themselves when necessary, just as we have seen throughout the current conflict in Ukraine," Kahl said. "Put plainly, the work that DSCA has done in the past 50 years, and that I expect that they will continue to do in the next 50 years and beyond to support our allies and partners, helps DOD advance and safeguard vital U.S. national interests: protecting our people, expanding our prosperity, realizing and defending our democratic values, and protecting our allies and partners around the world."  DOD stood up DSCA on Sept. 1, 1971. After 50 years, it still focuses on its original mission to build enduring partnerships between U.S. and ally and partner nation militaries, making both participants stronger.  Security cooperation involves all the DOD interactions like the programs and activities carried out with foreign security forces and their institutions. This includes exercises, training, armaments cooperation, information sharing, collaboration, foreign military sales, ministry advising and humanitarian assistance.  When it was first established, the then-Defense Security Assistance Agency included the Foreign Military Sales Credit Program; the Military Assistance Program; the International Military Education and Training Program; and the Foreign Military Sales Program. Back then, the new agency had only 90 employees dedicated to security cooperation.  Today, DSCA has grown to more than 1,000 employees. And in 2019, DSCA stood up the Defense Security Cooperation University -- a milestone for the agency and for the 20,000 security cooperation professionals across the security cooperation enterprise.  "For half a century now, DSCA has been bringing together the United States, our allies and our partners to build a unified front, to extend our strength and to deepen our security," Austin said. "We've needed that for the past 50 years, and we're going to need it for the next 50 as well. So keep up the great work. Congratulations DSCA. And thanks for everything that you do."  DOD Addresses Supply Chain Resiliency With Lone Star State Industry [2022-06-22] WASHINGTON -- Even before COVID-19, the Defense Department had identified supply chain vulnerabilities for things like microelectronics. There, the onset of the pandemic exacerbated a problem the department was already aware of. But the pandemic also highlighted other areas of supply chain vulnerability in the U.S., some of which affect national security. Deborah Rosenblum, who performs the duties of the assistant secretary of defense for industrial base policy, met June 16 with stakeholders from across the industrial base in Texas to discuss the department's efforts to strengthen supply chain resiliency. The event, held near Fort Worth, was in partnership with the National Economic Council and the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station. "We are very aware that we are facing critical shortages across a multitude of areas including microelectronics for car manufacturing and baby formula," Rosenblum said. "The last two years have revealed critical gaps in the U.S. industrial base and an overreliance on foreign manufacturing. As such, supply chain resilience has become not just an economic priority -- it's not just about quality of life issues -- it's become a national security imperative." Addressing members of the Texas business community, Rosenblum outlined three areas where the industrial base can help the Defense Department, strengthen the supply chain and contribute to a more robust defense of the nation. Those three focus areas include supply chain transparency and resilience; work force development; and increased support of small businesses. "Supply chain resiliency is a top-of-mind issue in a way it has not been for decades, and efforts are underway across the U.S. government to understand and mitigate some of our most glaring supply chain vulnerabilities," Rosenblum said. For years, Rosenblum said, industry has focused almost exclusively on supply chain efficiency over supply chain resiliency. That laser-like focus on efficiency, she said, has created risk for both the department and the nation. The Defense Department, she said, has prioritized five areas important to national defense where the supply lines are challenged. Those include castings and forgings; missiles and munitions; energy storage and batteries; strategic and critical materials; and microelectronics. "The President's budget request invests directly in these high-priority, defense-critical sectors, including over $250 million dollars for strategic and critical materials and over $600 million dollars for kinetic capabilities, such as missiles and munitions," Rosenblum said. Some of those investments, Rosenblum said, have been made in Texas, including in areas like rare earth elements and magnets as well as medical supplies like retractable syringes for vaccine and therapeutic delivery. Right now, Congress is working to pass the Bipartisan Innovation Act, which Rosenblum said makes investments in securing the supply chains and creating efficiencies for things like semiconductors. "The bill supports the sort of research and development that have given American businesses and workers a competitive edge against their competitors around the world," she said. Another avenue the department deems worth pursuing as a way to strengthen the supply chain is development of the workforce responsible for creating the materials and supplies the United States and Defense Department need, said Rosenblum. "Workers are a critical component of supply chains, and make them possible," Rosenblum said. "In U.S. manufacturing, the gap between open positions and available workers is not expected to close, with an estimated 2.1 million unfilled jobs by 2030." Through the industrial skills initiative, part of the Defense Department's Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment program, the department has invested over $80 million in industrial workforce development and training projects since 2019, Rosenblum said. "The intention of this initiative is to support a variety of defense weapon system development, production and sustainment needs, with a focus on skills such as welding, advanced machining, electronics, precision optics, metrology, digital/additive manufacturing and other emerging Industry 4.0 skills," she said. "These efforts will grow and strengthen the manufacturing workforce pipeline, provide skills to new workers and upskill existing workers, and improve public perception of industrial skills careers." A final component of the department's effort to create resilient supply chains is greater investment in and support of small businesses, Rosenblum said. "American small businesses spur innovation, represent most new entrants into the defense industrial base, and through their growth create the next generation of suppliers with increasingly diverse capabilities," she said. Despite that, she said, the role of small businesses in the defense industrial base has shrunk by over 40% over the last decade. The department, she said, spends over $80 billion each year with small businesses. But more must be done to reverse the overall downward trend. "Small businesses are the heart of American manufacturing and DOD is committed to seeing them succeed, prosper and remain competitive," she said. "Our goal is to increase the innovation capacity of the defense industrial base and systematically identify and mitigate pain points [of] doing business with DOD -- particularly for new entrants and non-traditional players." Rosenblum said one way larger companies might help is by participating in the department's mentor-protege program and by investing time and effort to help qualify new small businesses in their own supply chains. "We at the department will continue to find new ways we can partner going forward to build enduring advantages as we advance America's national security and sustain America's economic future," Rosenblum said. Exporting Repression: 'Made In' Labels Not as Important as Technology Itself  [2022-06-23] WASHINGTON -- The United States government has imposed restrictions on certain Chinese companies citing threats to U.S. security. In some cases, this means U.S. businesses are prohibited from doing business with those Chinese companies unless they first get a license to do so. In other cases, this means the U.S. government itself is prohibited from purchasing supplies from those companies.  The deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy said when it comes to restrictions on Chinese technology, it's not the "made in China" label alone that warrants such restrictions -- it's what the technology is designed to do.  "I think one of the challenges when we talk about these things, there's a sort of temptation to say this is about a 'Made in China' label versus a 'Made in U.S.' label," said Mieke Eoyang, who spoke Tuesday during a discussion in Washington, D.C. which was hosted by the think tank Third Way. "It really is about the difference in technology approaches and what that means for us from a security perspective."  Some Chinese-made technologies, Eoyang said, even those for export around the world, include tools the Chinese Communist Party wants to put in place to allow them to control their own population.  Eoyang said colleagues in Lithuania, for instance, confirmed through technical analysis that some Chinese devices contained embedded censorship technology.  "It is exporting a certain kind of repression with the device, which is an external expansion of [China's] own internal need to control the population and what the population says and thinks," she said. "If it were not that kind of a technology, if it was from a level playing field on that, it would be different ... if the data on Americans were not being sent back to China."  Technology with capabilities to censor and to send data back to the Chinese government, Eoyang said, is a security risk for the U.S. government and military.  "From the Defense Department perspective, this becomes a national security risk -- where the data of U.S. government personnel is being sent back to China is a challenge," she said.  Also a risk, she said, is what happens if trusted U.S. allies are themselves using technology that can't be trusted. When that happens, the ability to maintain partnerships is also at risk.  "If our allies are adopting Chinese network technology, it puts a lid on how much cooperation we can have with them and how much information we can share with them because of our concerns about visibility onto the networks," she said. "This is not just about labels of one country versus another. It is about the kind of technology that we're talking about here that poses a security risk to the United States."  Two Security Assistance Packages for Ukraine Contribute to Coastal, Waterway Defense [2022-06-24] WASHINGTON -- In the last month, the U.S. pledged more than $1.4 billion in security assistance to Ukraine. Some of that assistance is aimed at helping the Ukrainian military better defend their coast and waterways. On Thursday, the U.S. promised $450 million in security assistance through presidential drawdown authority -- the 13th such outlay this year. Included in that package were 18 coastal and riverine patrol boats. Earlier this month, the U.S. pledged $1 billion in support through both presidential drawdown authority and the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. Included in that support package were, among other things, two Harpoon coastal defense systems. Included in the package announced Thursday are two 35-foot, small-unit riverine craft; six 40-foot maritime combat craft; and ten 34-foot, Dauntless Sea Ark patrol boats. "These are largely to protect the riverways and to enable Ukraine to maintain its control of the riverways. They can also be used in ... close-in coastal areas," said a senior defense official during a briefing today at the Pentagon. To contribute to coastal defense, the official said, the United States, along with partner and allied nations, have provided the Harpoon system. Earlier this month, the U.S. committed to the donation of two Harpoon launch systems, which the Ukrainians have asked to have mounted on trucks. Other nations have also agreed to provide the Harpoon missiles themselves to be used in those launchers. "This will be helpful in enabling the Ukrainians to defend ... Odessa and other positions along the Black Sea coast," the official said. In addition to the coastal and riverine patrol boats, the latest presidential drawdown authority security assistance package to Ukraine includes four High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS; 36,000 rounds of 105 mm ammunition; 18 tactical vehicles with which to move 155 mm artillery; 1,200 Mk 19 grenade launchers; and 2,000 machine guns. "Obviously with each of these packages, we [also] provide a lot of spare parts," the official said. "We want to make sure they can keep the systems up and running." The United States is not alone in providing military assistance to the Ukrainians, who have been defending their sovereignty against an unprovoked and illegal invasion by Russia since February. "This isn't just a U.S.-only effort," the official said. "We're really proud of Secretary Austin's leadership through the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, where he has brought together ... roughly 50 defense ministers from around the world, certainly many Europeans but also others from other parts of the world, to show their support for Ukraine and to provide tangible support." Last week in Brussels, the official said, 50 nations participated in the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting. "At that meeting, we heard 20 countries announcing new donations," the official said. "When I talk about the HIMARS system, this is part of the category of multiple-launch rocket systems, and the allies are also providing these systems." Germany, the official said, has promised the M270 MLRS system, while the U.K. is already providing that system. Slovakia, Canada and Poland are also providing additional artillery capabilities. "It really is a global effort and one that we are happy to be playing a leadership role in," the official said. Air Force, DOD Plan to Create First Historically Black Colleges and Universities-led Affiliated Research Center [2022-06-28] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force and the Defense Department have announced a plan to create a 15th university affiliated research center, or UARC. The new center will be the first to be associated with an historically Black college or university and will also be the first UARC associated with the Air Force. "This is an opportunity to tap into universities that have an enormous amount of capability in science and technology," Frank Kendall III, the secretary of the Air Force, said during a briefing Monday at the Pentagon. Historically Black Colleges and Universities graduate about 30% of African American science, technology, engineering and mathematics students, and the Defense Department and the Air Force want to tap into that talent, said Heidi Shyu, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. "This nation must have a strong national STEM workforce, since the future of our national security is dependent on our ability to grow our STEM talent," she said. "We'll only accomplish this through the cultivation of a highly diverse workforce. Diversity of background and a diversity of ideas has always been the strength of this country ... We must tap into the HBCUs to grow a well-educated and well-trained workforce for the Department of Defense and this nation." Currently the Defense Department has 14 university affiliated research centers around the country. These DOD-supported organizations are each affiliated with a university and each has a set of core research competencies tailored to meet the long-term needs of the Defense Department. Existing UARCs include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies; the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory; and the University of Maryland, College Park Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence & Security. The Air Force and the DOD aim for the newest UARC to focus its research efforts on "tactical autonomy." According to the Air Force Research Laboratory, this means "autonomous systems acting with delegated and bounded authority of humans in support of tactical, short-term actions associated with a longer-term strategic vision." That capability, Kendall said, represents a gap in what existing UARCs are currently providing to the DOD. "[We're] very focused on the threat of Chinese military modernization and what that means in terms of the viability of our forces," Kendall said. "Part of the future of the military is going to be autonomy. There's no doubt in my mind ... we're seeing increasing evidence of that almost in every conflict that that occurs ... it's here to stay, and we need to be at the front edge of that. This is an opportunity to tap into universities that have an enormous amount of capability in science and technology." To create the newest UARC, the Air Force is working with the DOD to reach out to HBCUs with qualifying research programs and asking those schools to consider competing to be lead school for the new UARC. According to the most recent data from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, there are currently 11 HBCUs with a "high-research activity" or "R2" rating. Any one of those 11 schools qualifies to lead a university affiliated research center. As part of the program effort, the school chosen to lead the UARC would not be solely responsible for doing research at the new center. Instead, they will be responsible for building a consortium of additional HBCUs who will participate in conducting research efforts at the UARC. Victoria Coleman, the chief scientist of the Air Force said that while the primary goal of this effort is to provide valuable research for the Air Force and the DOD, a secondary goal is to help participating HBCUs increase their own research capacity. Right now, while 11 HBCUs have a Carnegie Foundation Research Classification of R2, there are no HBCUs with the R1, or "very-high research activity" classification. "Through this effort. We're hoping to ensure that at least one, if not more, institutions become R1," she said. Coleman said over the next several months the Air Force and DOD will reach out to HBCUs to let them know what the department is looking for and to explain more about the selection process. By December, it's expected there will be an announcement regarding which university was chosen to lead the new UARC. To fund the new UARC, the Air Force has committed a total of $12 million dollars a year over the course of five years. Shyu also said that both her office and the office of the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment will each contribute $2 million per year to the effort. Team Investigating Racial Disparity in Military Justice Embarks on Installation Visits [2022-07-07] WASHINGTON -- In May, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks directed the creation of an internal review team to look into the root causes of racial disparities in the military's investigative and justice systems. Now, members of that team have embarked on conducting a series of listening sessions and visits to military installations to undertake the work that will help them deliver a final report to the deputy secretary. "Racial disparities in the investigative and military justice systems have been a problem for far too long, and it is incumbent on the Department to take immediate action to correct these issues wherever they exist," Hicks wrote in a memorandum delivered May 3 to Pentagon leadership, commanders of combatant commands and others. "Our people deserve nothing less." In the memorandum, the internal review team was given three months to look into the root causes of racial disparities in the investigative and military justice systems. "The review will provide actionable recommendations that the Department can implement to improve policies, programs, processes and resources to address these disparities," Hicks said of the team's work. "It will incorporate ongoing work within the military departments and complement independent external reviews of this issue." The team began work June 1 and will deliver the findings to Hicks by August 24. Precision Artillery Rounds Included in Latest Security Assistance Package to Ukraine [2022-07-08] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. is planning to provide more assistance to Ukraine with another presidential drawdown authority security package valued at $400 million. Included in this latest set of gear and supplies is something the U.S. has previously not sent to Ukraine: 1,000 rounds of 155 mm artillery billed as having greater precision. "This is a new type [of] 155 mm artillery ammunition," said a senior defense official during a background briefing today at the Pentagon. "It has greater precision. It offers Ukraine precise ... capability for specific targets. It will save ammunition. It will be more effective due to the precision. It's a further evolution in our support for Ukraine in this battle in the Donbas." The same official noted that the precision rounds, for use in howitzer artillery systems already in place in Ukraine, are something the U.S. military already uses and has in its own stock. The systems are new in that this is the first time the U.S. has sent them to Ukraine. Also included in the latest package, are four additional High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems which will complement the eight already in place. There is also additional ammunition for those HIMARS systems, some tactical vehicles, demolition munitions, spare parts and other equipment. The Russians illegally invaded Ukraine in February and the Ukrainians have been fighting since then to maintain their sovereignty. While it's not clear how much longer the fighting will continue, the senior defense official said what is clear is a commitment by the U.S. to continue helping Ukraine maintain their independence. "From a security assistance perspective, this is a steady drumbeat now, and it is a long-term commitment to Ukraine," the official said. "We'll be ready for whatever the experts tell us is required for the battlefield." The U.S., the official said, has been providing training to the Ukrainians since 2015. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. has provided, among other things, Stinger anti-aircraft systems, Javelin anti-armor systems, Switchblade unmanned aircraft system, howitzer artillery systems and rounds, helicopters, tactical vehicles, ammunition, radar systems, HIMARS, body armor, helmets and Harpoon launch systems for coastal defense. U.S., Italian Defense Leaders Discuss Shared Interests, Concerns for Ukraine [2022-07-14] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III hosted a visit by Italian Minister of Defense Lorenzo Guerini today at the Pentagon. The two defense leaders discussed the U.S. and Italian defense relationship, mutual concerns over Russia's actions in Ukraine and shared interests outside of Europe, such as operations in Africa. "Our meeting today underscores the importance of our transatlantic relationships to our shared unity and security," Austin told Guerini. "That's especially crucial as Ukraine continues to fight back against Russia's unprovoked and unjust invasion ... I want to thank you for everything that you're doing to support Ukraine in the face of Russia's indefensible assault on its peaceful neighbor." Austin also noted Italy's contributions outside the scope of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, such as taking the lead on the NATO mission in Iraq in May 2022, and taking the helm of the Kosovo Force mission again this fall. "Your military's presence in the Baltics, Romania, Iceland, Lebanon and in several countries in Africa, demonstrates again that Italy is one of Europe's most reliable security providers," Austin told the Italian defense leader. Guerini thanked Austin for leading the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which has met several times since its first meeting in April. "Let me express my gratitude for your leadership of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which contributes in a decisive way to supporting resistance in Ukraine, allowing a coordination between all contributing countries which would have been otherwise impossible," Guerini said. The Italian defense leader said Italy has played an important role in helping Ukraine defend its sovereignty against Russia's illegal invasion of their country. "So far we have already delivered three packages of equipment, including some of absolute relevance, and we will continue to do so in close synergy with allied countries, starting from the United States," he said. The Italian military has expressed willingness to further contribute to NATO's defense efforts. "In addition to what we are already doing, the Italian armed forces are ready to send further units in order to strengthen the defense of our allies on the eastern flank," Guerini said. Italy is also committed to the southern flank of NATO defense, he said, noting that decisions made during the recent summit in Madrid ensured a stronger NATO commitment there. "NATO is even stronger after the Madrid Summit, where we have made important decisions such as 360-degree strategic flexibility. Within this framework, Italy welcomed and fully shared the confirmed centrality of the southern flank," he said. It is on the southern flank, on the Mediterranean, Guerini said, where a recent photograph he and his staff had seen illustrated not only Italy's commitment to NATO, but its partnership with the U.S. "We recently saw a picture of the U.S. and Italian naval groups with the carriers [USS Harry S.] Truman and [Italian aircraft carrier ITS] Cavour navigating side by side in the Mediterranean," he said. "This image gives the image of our friendship better than any speech could do, and of the special relation between the United States and Italy, as well as underscoring the importance of the southern flank." DOD to Fund Better Detention Facilities in Syria, But Best Solution is Detainee Repatriation  [2022-07-14] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. and partner nations continue with the "Defeat ISIS" mission in Syria, while the more than 10,000 ISIS fighters who have been detained within makeshift detention facilities there and the approximately 60,000 displaced persons at the al-Hol and al-Roj camps remain a challenge. The Defense Department has plans to address that challenge. "The threat which we all know is that ISIS views the detention facilities where its fighters are housed as the population to reconstitute its army," said Dana Stroul, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, during a conversation yesterday at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. "And [ISIS] looks at al-Hol and al-Roj, and the youth in those camps, as the next generation of ISIS." ISIS collapsed quickly, Stroul said, and there weren't viable facilities to house all the captured ISIS fighters who were placed in makeshift detention facilities, such as in schools or office buildings. The detention facilities, she said, are overpopulated, insecure and guarded by the Syrian Democratic Forces, who are under significant pressure from multiple armed adversaries, a deteriorating economy that's exacerbated by a historic drought, and a potential Turkish operation in northern Syria. The Defense Department, she said, is working on three lines of effort to support the SDF in its efforts to provide for the humane and secure detention of ISIS fighters in its custody. First, she noted, is construction of new detention facilities. "These new DOD-funded detention facilities will also help enable critical U.S. stabilization priorities, ensuring detainee access to medical care, providing youth detainees with distinct programming and facilities to address their safety and rehabilitation," Stroul said. The second effort, Stroul said, is growing and professionalizing the guard force responsible for securing those facilities. Finally, Stroul said, DOD provides logistical support to State Department-led efforts to repatriate non-Syrian detainees to their home countries. "On al-Hol, the Department continues to work with the SDF to disrupt ISIS activity and networks that threaten the camp's residents as well as the broader population of northeast Syria," Stroul said. "This support includes efforts to reinforce the camp's physical security architecture, increase the number of security forces operating in and around the camp, and ensure that those forces are appropriately trained to the unique needs of that population." Such improvements, she said, enable greater access to the camps for non-governmental organizations, and allow the camp administration to provide services which have been hampered by the security conditions at the camp.  "The most durable solution to the challenges of these detention centers and the displaced person camps is for countries of origin to repatriate, rehabilitate, reintegrate and where appropriate, prosecute their nationals residing in northeast Syria," Stroul said. Iraqis comprise a majority of the foreign population in detention facilities and a majority of the entire population at al-Hol, Stroul said, and DOD continues to support State Department efforts to work with the SDF and the government of Iraq to accelerate the pace of Iraqi repatriation efforts. "[We] commend the real progress that Iraq has demonstrated to date in repatriating its nationals, both detainees and displaced persons from northeast Syria," she said. "Since May 2021, Iraq has repatriated approximately 2,400 individuals from al-Hol, with the most recent transfer occurring this past June." U.S.-Provided HIMARS Effective in Ukraine [2022-07-15] WASHINGTON -- American High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems being used in Ukraine are making an impact on the conflict there between Ukrainians fighting to preserve their national sovereignty and Russian forces who have illegally invaded that country. The M142 HIMARS system allows for the launching of multiple, precision-guided rockets. Already, the U.S. had provided eight of the systems to Ukraine and last week promised to send an additional four, for a total of 12 of the systems. During a background briefing today at the Pentagon, a senior military official said the Defense Department believes the HIMARS are having an indirect, but significant impact on front line operations. "I think there has been significant impact on what's going on, on the front lines," the official said. "If you think about the fact that the Ukrainians have been talking about a number of the targets [they] are hitting ... they're spending a lot of time striking targets like ammunition, supplies, other logistical supplies, command and control. And all those things have a direct impact on the ability to conduct operations on the front line. ... Although they're not shooting the HIMARS at the front lines, they are having a very, very significant effect on that." The Russians illegally invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The conflict there between the invading Russians and the Ukrainians has been ongoing now for 142 days, the official said. And while the Russians have made some incremental gains, they have been hard earned. "We assess that Russian forces are limited to incremental if any gains around the northern Donbass, held up by Ukrainian defenses," the official said. "Russian forces continue to employ indiscriminate artillery bombardment along with air and missile strikes." Near Kharkiv, the official said, the Department assesses that the Ukrainians are continuing to defeat Russian attempts to gain ground. The same is also true in the vicinity of Sloviansk. The same official also said that the Russians have publicly said they'd also like to move on Sloviansk, but still have not been able to do so. Defense Leaders Unveil Portrait of Former Defense Secretary [2022-07-15] WASHINGTON -- Defense leaders today unveiled a portrait of former Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper during a ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Virginia. The portrait is destined to hang alongside those of dozens of other defense secretaries on the walls of the Pentagon's E Ring. Esper served as the 27th secretary of defense, taking office in July 2019. As secretary, he led the department through the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the creation of the Space Force, and a refocus on strategic competition, said Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III. "You led DOD through the frightening early months of the COVID-19 pandemic," Austin said. "That was a time of dread, uncertainty and terrible loss. Yet, thousands of DOD personnel helped to get desperately needed supplies and care to Americans around the country." During that time, the department, led by Esper, also worked with other government agencies and the private sector to increase domestic production of COVID-19 tests, protective gear and the COVID-19 vaccines that have since saved countless lives, Austin said. "You also worked to focus this department's attention and resources on China -- an effort that we are carrying forward as we speak," Austin said. "You pushed to rebalance our posture around the world, including bracing for competition with other great powers. And you worked hard to modernize our military and to improve its lethality and readiness." Like Austin, Esper also focused on taking care of service members and their families, Austin said. "I know that you're especially proud of your efforts to improve the quality of life for our service members and their families," he said. "You worked to improve military pay and benefits, to improve on-base housing, to provide greater career flexibility for service members with families, and so much more. And that touched the lives of thousands of men and women who served." Esper thanked Austin and the many of the military officers, government civilians and other cabinet secretaries who worked for him and with him through his tenure as secretary of defense. "Dr. Seuss once said, 'life's just one great journey. It's a road we travel as we go from point A to point B. What makes that journey worthwhile is the people we choose to travel with, the people we hold close as we take steps into the darkness and blindly make our way through life. They are the people who matter.' Thank you all very much for traveling with me on my journey," Esper told those who attended the event. Esper, who also served as the 27th secretary of the Army, is a 1986 graduate of the U. S. Military Academy and received his commission in the infantry. After completing Ranger and Pathfinder training, he served in the 101st Airborne Division and participated in the 1990-91 Gulf War with the "Screaming Eagles." He later commanded a rifle company in the 3-325 Airborne Battalion Combat Team in Vicenza, Italy. He retired from the Army in 2007 after spending 10 years on active duty and 11 years in the National Guard and Army Reserve. The former defense secretary is a recipient of the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service. Among his many military awards and decorations are the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star Medal, the Kuwait Liberation Medal, Kuwait Liberation Medal-Saudi Arabia, and the Combat Infantryman Badge. "Secretary Esper, thank you for serving at a time of great uncertainty and challenge," Austin said. "Thank you for your love of this great institution. Thank you for your profound care for this department and the people of this department, and thank you for this capstone and a long life of service." Strategic Port Access Aids Support to Ukraine, Austin Tells Greek Defense Minister [2022-07-18] WASHINGTON -- Priority access to the Port of Alexandroupolis in northeastern Greece has allowed the U.S. military to continue to support Ukraine as that nation fights to maintain its sovereignty following the unprovoked February 24 invasion by Russia, the U.S. defense secretary told his Greek counterpart. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III hosted a meeting at the Pentagon today with Greek Defense Minister Nikolaos Panagiotopoulos. The two defense leaders discussed the growing partnership between the United States and Greece and the close cooperation between the two countries on basing, defense modernization and collective defense, particularly in the face of Russia's aggression toward Ukraine. "The defense relationship between the United States and Greece has never been stronger," Austin said. "The updated U.S.-Greece Mutual Defense Cooperation Agreement reflects our nations' unshakeable commitment to shared peace and security. And it has enabled the expansion of U.S. forces in Greece to support the United State's and NATO's objectives for strategic access in the region." Two examples of that partnership, Austin said, include the continued hosting of U.S. Naval forces at Souda Bay and priority access granted to U.S. military forces at the Port of Alexandroupolis in northeastern Greece, just 60 miles north of the Dardanelles Strait in Turkey. Port access allows quick entrance to the Sea of Marmara and then on through the Bosporus into the Black Sea. "That access allows us to continue to provide military assistance to Ukraine and to counter malign actors and exercise and operate in the Balkans and eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea region," Austin said. Panagiotopoulos thanked Austin for his leadership of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which stood up in April, and said Greece remains committed to providing continued support to Ukraine. "The reaction of Greece to the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine was indeed swift and decisive," Panagiotopoulos said. "We offered all the assistance we could afford Ukraine, a country that is under attack in violation of every rule of international law. We implement those sanctions imposed on the aggressor. Despite their cost to us, we're willing to contemplate any other action, any other type of assistance that will [help.]" Greece's location on the Mediterranean Sea, makes it a strategically positioned defense partner that can and does provide access to ensure NATO allies are able to defend their mutual interests. Panagiotopoulos said that part of the world now faces various forms of revisionism which pose a threat to all nations. "Greece is a key hub for supporting and ... projecting allied presence in a region facing various forms of revisionism," Panagiotopoulos said. "Revisionism, whether it takes the form of questioning basic rules governing the international legal order, or whether it's expressed as the pursuit of changing internationally recognized borders -- or both, as is often the case -- constitutes a major threat to the interests of Greece, the interests of the United States, and the North Atlantic alliance in general. Revisionism of any form is against stability ... revisionism must not prevail." Defense Leaders Meet to Bolster Ukraine Support [2022-07-20] WASHINGTON -- Defense leaders from some 50 nations met today as part of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group to discuss the ongoing international support provided to Ukraine as it fights to maintain its sovereignty following an illegal invasion by Russia. "Russia's cruel and unprovoked invasion has spurred the international community into action," said Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III during a briefing after the group's fourth meeting. "Today's meeting is just another sign of the way that nations of goodwill are rising to the moment. The security assistance that we are rushing to Ukraine is making a real difference in real time. And everyone in the contact group has been inspired by the courage of the Ukrainian people and the skill of the Ukrainian military." In attendance at today's meeting, Austin said, were Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov and Ukrainian Deputy Defense Chief Lt. Gen. Yevhen Moisiuk, who provided critical insight into what's happening in Ukraine and what Ukraine needs. "I'm grateful to these brave leaders for taking the time to update us on Ukraine's most urgent requirements," Austin said. "They also provided us with an important battlefield update. And they described how Russia is massing artillery and rocket fire in its desperate, aggressive push to seize sovereign Ukrainian territory in the Donbas." The equipment and support provided by nations involved in the contact group has already demonstrated value in the way it's been successfully employed by the Ukrainians, Austin said. "Ukrainian forces are now using long-range rocket systems to great effect, including HIMARS provided by the United States and other systems from our allies and partners," Austin said. "Ukraine's defenders are pushing hard to hold Russian advances in the Donbas, and the international community has also worked hard to provide Ukraine with better coastal defense capabilities. And that directly contributed to Ukraine's victory on Snake Island, and it has helped prevent a Russian landing in Odesa." Still, Russia is keeping up the pressure, Austin said, and nations involved in the Ukraine Defense Contact Group will continue to help Ukraine keep up it's defense by providing even more support. "We're pushing hard to maintain and intensify the momentum of donations," he said. "And that includes many new announcements made this morning." Some nations, Austin said, are providing training to the Ukrainian armed forces; others are refurbishing Ukrainian equipment, while some are providing spare parts. "Countries -- including the Czech Republic, Poland and the U.K. -- are working with their domestic industrial bases to find ways to help Ukraine even more quickly," Austin said. "Other countries, such as our Baltic and Australian allies, continue to generously deliver items from their own stockpiles." The secretary called out Poland for acting as a "linchpin" for security assistance efforts, as well as for its assistance, so far, of more than $1.7 billion in military equipment. He also thanked Norway for providing Ukraine with its advanced surface-to-air missile system. "I'm very thankful to these countries and to all the countries that have offered aid," he said. "I'm confident that these efforts will continue to grow." U.S. security assistance to Ukraine so far has included, among other things, over 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems, more than 6,500 Javelin anti-armor systems, and more than 700 Switchblade drones. The U.S. has also provided 126 155-mm howitzers with up to 411,000 155-mm artillery rounds and a dozen High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems along with associated ammunition. "As you know, we've provided the Ukrainians with 12 HIMARS multiple-launch rocket systems to further strengthen their long-range fires capability," Austin said. "I think that everyone here understands the difference that they've made on the ground." The secretary said the U.S. will send four more HIMARS to Ukraine, for a total of 16, and that an official announcement about that will come later this week when another security assistance package is announced. That package will be the 16th sent to Ukraine, so far, and will also include additional Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, which are used in HIMARS. Austin said he expects that security assistance will continue for Ukraine -- both from members of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group and the United States. "We're going to keep moving at the speed of war," he said. "We're going to make clear that might does not make right. We're going to stand strong with our fellow contact group members, and we're going to support Ukraine's self-defense for the long haul. And we're going to defend the rules-based international order that protects us all." The Ukraine Defense Contact Group met for the first time in Germany in April and serves now as a way for participating nations to coordinate their assistance Ukraine and focus on Ukraine's future defense needs. At the time, Austin said he expected the group to continue to meet on a monthly basis. "As this fight rages on, the contact group will keep finding innovative ways to sustain our long-term support for the brave men and women of the Ukrainian armed forces, and we will tailor our assistance to ensure that Ukraine has the technology, the ammunition and the sheer firepower to defend itself," Austin told contact group participants. Northcom Commander: We Need Better Domain Awareness [2022-07-22] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Northern Command is responsible for protecting the U.S. homeland. Domain awareness is a major part of defense, and it's in President Biden's 2023 budget request currently before Congress. "What ... challenges us is the unknown," Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, the commander for U.S. Northern Command, said while speaking at the Aspen Security Conference in Colorado on Thursday. "What I mean by the unknown is domain awareness challenges. The first one I would tell you is undersea domain awareness. As competitors develop capabilities, the challenges of monitoring submarines in the future will only grow." Domain awareness challenges also exist for hypersonic cruise missiles and cyber domain awareness as well, VanHerck said. "The good news is we're working to fix this," he said. "And the department did a fantastic job in the budget this year -- the president's budget for domain awareness," he said. "There's four over-the-horizon radars in the budget, so I look forward to that." As for North American Aerospace Defense Command modernization, VanHerck said Canadian Minister of National Defense Anita Anand recently announced plans for new over-the-horizon radar systems that will provide better domain awareness when it comes to tracking threats from the Arctic Circle all the way down to the border between the U.S. and Canada. Also in the 2023 budget proposal, VanHerck said, is additional capability for undersea domain awareness in the Navy. "I'm very encouraged with where we're going, but we still have some challenges to work on," he said. Another aspect of domain awareness and allowing Northcom to stay on top of threats posed to the U.S. involves better use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, VanHerck said. "We need to go faster in developing these capabilities," he said. "When you have information and data, the question is 'how are you going to process that and disseminate it in a timely manner?'" Accurately processing information from sensors provides intelligence that allows leaders, such as the president, to make important decisions regarding the defense of the United States, VanHerck said. "What I'm trying to do is create decision space; decision space equals deterrence options," he said. "The way you do that is through analyzing that data and information -- that domain awareness data -- through the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence. The machines can count numbers of cars in parking lots, numbers of vehicles in weapons loading areas, and alert you to changes. Today, oftentimes, we don't use the machines to analyze that data in a timely manner. So, I do think we can go faster there." The Defense Department has characterized China as a "pacing threat." Right now, the threat from China may not be as immediate as it seems, though the threat is growing, VanHerck said. "Let me just say first, we have the most powerful military on the planet," VanHerck said. "But the Chinese want to displace us. And they're on a path to gain significant capability." VanHerck, who also commands NORAD, said evidence of China's military advances include growth of both their nuclear and conventional forces, including hypersonic technologies. "They're on a path to approach a peer status with us," VanHerck said. Russia is now also identified as an "acute threat" by the United States. And while it appears Russian efforts in Ukraine have not yet panned out the way U.S. defense leaders believe Moscow might have hoped, VanHerck said the threat Russia poses should not be dismissed. "I don't want to say that ... Russia has failed," he said. "They've struggled in the land domain. What I would tell you is in their conventional capabilities, their long-range standoff capabilities, they're displaying significant capability. That's the threat that I worry about to the homeland. So, I would not undersell Russia, and I would not say China is 10 feet tall right now, but they do certainly have aspirations to compete at a peer level with us." More HIMARS, Phoenix Ghost Drones Bound for Ukraine [2022-07-25] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department has announced another package of security assistance for Ukraine, which will include additional High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, ammunition and a substantial number of Phoenix Ghost unmanned aerial systems. This latest package includes about $175 million in equipment pulled from existing U.S. military stocks through presidential drawdown authority and $95 million in equipment from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, or USAI fund, said a senior defense official during a background briefing at the Pentagon. Included in the latest presidential drawdown authority package are four additional HIMARS systems, which will give Ukraine a total of 16; four command post vehicles; additional anti-armor weapons, spare parts and other gear; and 36,000 rounds of 105 mm ammunition. "This is ammunition that is actually going to support a donation that the United Kingdom is making of Howitzers, and this is something that we do quite frequently where we match countries that maybe have one part of a capability with another donor country to create a complete capability for the Ukrainians," the senior defense official said. "It's something that EUCOM has been facilitating through their cell in Stuttgart, Germany." As part of the $95 million USAI outlay, the Defense Department has also committed to sending as many as 580 additional Phoenix Ghost tactical unmanned aircraft systems to Ukraine. Under USAI, these systems will be purchased from manufacturers so they can then be delivered to the Ukrainian military. "The Ukrainians have been making excellent use of the Phoenix Ghost system," the senior defense official said. "This action allows us to go out and procure from industry additional capability. That's where USAI is different from drawdown -- this is actually a procurement action. And with the Phoenix Ghost system, what we'll be able to do is ensure steady deliveries of this capability starting in August to ensure that the Ukrainian Armed Forces have a continual supply of this capability." While Russian advances in Ukraine are slow -- and costly -- there's also evidence that Russian morale is retreating, said a senior military official. "We continue to see increased signs of discipline and morale problems in the Russian army," the military official said. "The Ukrainian will continues to be incredibly strong. And what we're seeing is that will kind of ... push the Russians around pretty decently." When it comes to Russian morale, the official said there are many reports that detail soldiers at all levels deserting posts or refusing to fight. "We continue to see that in reflections and conversations with Ukrainians that affirm that," the military official said. Rededicated Korean War Memorial Lists Names of Fallen [2022-07-27] WASHINGTON -- The Korean War Veterans Memorial was rededicated today with a new feature: a "Wall of Remembrance" that features the names of the more than 43,000 U.S. service members and Korean augmentees to the U.S. Army who were killed during the war. "Today ... we commemorate the sacrifice of those Americans and Koreans who bravely fought together, side-by-side to defend our freedom, laying the foundation for a thriving Democratic Republic of Korea and a strong, unbreakable United States/Republic of Korea alliance," Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff said. The Korean War Veterans Memorial on the National Mall in Washington was first dedicated 27 years ago, on July 27, 1995. Construction on the rededicated memorial began in March 2021. The $22 million project was funded by donations from the peoples of the United States and South Korea, formally named the Republic of Korea. The names on the Wall of Remembrance are arranged in order of rank and branch of service to demonstrate to visitors how the war's burden fell unevenly across the military. Another important element of the wall is that the names of U.S. service members and Korean augmentees to the U.S. Army are not listed separately. Instead, they're mingled together -- just as they fought together during the war. Korean augmentees to the U.S. Army, or KATUSAs, are members of the Republic of Korea Army who are assigned to the U.S. Army, wear U.S. Army uniforms, and are equipped with the same gear as U.S. soldiers. They also live and fight alongside U.S. soldiers. The KATUSA concept was first developed during the Korean War and continues today. "This wall reminds us of the depths of their sacrifice and instills in us a call of duty to carry on their fight," Korean Ambassador to the United States Cho Tae-yong said. "The service members we are here today to honor stood their ground in battlefields so that future generations could live in a vibrant democracy -- indeed, the Republic of Korea is a vibrant democracy today. Recognizing this, I promise to follow their lead and work to build an even stronger ROK/U.S. alliance. On behalf of the whole of Korean people, I'd like to express my gratitude to all the veterans of the Korean War and their families. We are eternally and profoundly grateful." According to statistics from the Korean War Veterans Memorial Foundation, the Wall of Remembrance features the names of 29,857 U.S. soldiers, 4,522 U.S. Marines, 668 U.S. sailors, 1,587 U.S. airmen, and 7,174 Korean augmentees to the U.S. Army. A total of 43,808 names appears on the wall. "It's beautiful monument," Emhoff said. "It's a poignant reminder of the individual sacrifices of the more than 36,000 U.S. service members and the more than 7,000 Korean troops who served together and died together in Korea. Their names are now forever engraved here on our incredible Washington mall." In addition to the Wall of Remembrance, work at the Korean War Veterans Memorial included: refinishing the 19, 8--feet--tall, stainless-steel statues that represent service members from each of the U.S. military services that fought in the war, replacing the engraved names of participating countries and casualty figures with stainless steel letters, and extensive landscaping efforts. Chairman of the Korean War Veterans Memorial Foundation, retired Army Gen. John H. Tilelli Jr. said the Wall of Remembrance and enhancements to the memorial will better educate visitors on the importance of remembering the Korean War. "We are hopeful that this memorial will remind the millions of people who visit here each year that freedom is not free," Tilelli said. The foundation, he said, had three goals when redesigning and rededicating the memorial: 1: To honor those who fought in the war and ensured a free and democratic South Korea. 2: To educate visitors about the cost of war. Nearly 1,000 soldiers died each month during the 37 months the war was fought. 3: To show the strength of the existing ironclad ROK/U.S. alliance. "Today, we honor the veterans of the Korean War and the families of the fallen heroes," Tilelli said. "With this dedication ceremony, I hope that it is no longer the 'Forgotten War,' but the 'remembered victory' that was won by these veterans." Building Asymmetric Advantage in Indo-Pacific Part of DOD Approach to Chinese Aggression [2022-07-27] WASHINGTON -- In the Indo-Pacific region, Chinese aggression demonstrates an effort by Beijing to deconstruct core elements of the international rules-based order and assert greater control over the waterways that connect it with its neighbors, the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs said. Last month, for instance, a Chinese fighter aircraft cut across the nose of an Australian aircraft which was conducting legal operations over the South China Sea. The Chinese aircraft released chaff that was sucked into the engine of the Australian aircraft, said Ely Ratner, who spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Chaff" consists of fragments of aluminum, or another material, released from an aircraft as a radar countermeasure. That incident, Ratner said, came shortly after another series of incidents where Chinese aircraft unsafely intercepted Canadian aircraft who were also conducting legal activities on behalf of the U.N. Security Council over the East China Sea. Another incident, he said, involved a Chinese naval vessel endangering another Australian aircraft by aiming a laser at it. "These are not isolated incidents," Ratner said. "Over the last five years, the number of unsafe PLA [People's Liberation Army] intercepts, including U.S. allies and partners operating lawfully in international airspace in the South China Sea has increased dramatically with dozens of dangerous events in the first half of this year alone. In my view, this aggressive and irresponsible behavior represents one of the most significant threats to peace and stability in the region today, including in the South China Sea." Ratner said if the Chinese military continues that unsafe behavior, in short time, it might cause a major incident or accident in the region. Chinese actions, he said, are part of an effort by Beijing to systematically test the limits of U.S. and partner resolve and to advance a new status quo in the South China Sea that disregards existing commitments to a respect for sovereignty, peaceful resolution of disputes and adherence to international law. "What this demands of us is that we demonstrate the will and capability to properly deter PRC aggression," he said. The Defense Department has a strategy, Ratner said, which is aimed at ensuring the U.S., its partners and allies can continue to enjoy a free and open Indo-Pacific region where both international law and national sovereignty are respected. "Without question, bolstering our partners' self-defense capabilities in the South China Sea, and across the region, is a task of foremost importance for the Defense Department," Ratner said. "DOD is taking an increasingly proactive approach in looking at new options to support these efforts." Underlying that approach, he said, is an understanding that deterrence doesn't mean matching competitors' capabilities directly. "We've seen reminders in Ukraine that smaller nations can outmaneuver larger aggressors through smart investments in self-defense technologies, anti-aircraft weapons and other anti-access/denial capabilities," he said. Information can also be as powerful a tool as hardware, he said. And to that end the Defense Department is providing better support to partner intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities and rethinking how it manages and shares information. "We're doubling down on our efforts to build a common operating picture with our partners that will allow them to better detect and counter illicit activities in their territorial waters," he said. "Our new Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness ... which we launched at the Quad Leaders Summit in May, is just one way that we're doing so." The Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness, he said, will allow the U.S. to share near-real-time satellite data with partners. Building a more combat-credible forward presence in the Indo-Pacific, Ratner said, means a focus on day-to-day campaigning, and the harnessing of new capabilities, operational concepts, and combined warfighting development with allies to complicate competitor military preparations. "We're building a more dynamic presence in the region," he said. "In practice, this means we're operating forward and more flexibly, including through a regular tempo of rotational activities." As examples, he said, last fall, two U.S. carrier strike groups were joined by a Japanese helicopter destroyer and a U.K. carrier strike group to conduct multilateral, multicarrier operations in the Philippine Sea. "When the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group rotated through the Indian Ocean and ultimately the South China Sea last spring, we conducted multidomain operations with the Indian navy and air force that integrated air, anti-submarine and command and control elements," he said. Across the Indo-Pacific, Ratner said, the U.S. military has been increasing the complexity, jointness, duration and scale of combined exercises with allies. "As we continue to shore up our position in the region, we will not relent in our commitment to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows to ensure that all nations are able to exercise this right," he said. Another of the department's effort to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific region, Ratner said, is better enabling the U.S.'s more capable partners and allies in the region. "The United States' ability to pursue common security and economic goals with like-minded nations is the cornerstone of our success and at the root of our strategy," he said. "For the U.S. military specifically, our defense relationships and our ability to bind them more tightly together into more deeply interoperable coalitions can make clear the costs of aggression." U.S. alliances with Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand, for instance, remain at the center DOD's approach here, he said. During a recent trip to Thailand, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and his counterparts there discussed opportunities to expand bilateral training and exercises, including the establishment of a working group on reciprocal access, Ratner said. The U.S. is also working with the Philippines to develop new bilateral defense guidelines to clarify respective roles, missions and capabilities within the framework of the U.S. and Philippines' alliance, Ratner said. Already, he said, the U.S. and the Philippines participate together in more than 300 exercises and military to military activities annually. "We do not seek confrontation or conflict," Ratner said. "We say that publicly, we say that privately. Our primary interest is in upholding the order that has for decades sustained the region's peace. And while we will always stand ready to prevail in conflict, it is the primary responsibility of the Department of Defense to prevent it and deterrence is the cornerstone of our strategy." 4 Nominees for Positions Within DOD Testify Before Senate [2022-07-28] WASHINGTON -- On Capitol Hill today, four nominees to positions within the Defense Department met with senators to discuss their vision for how they might handle their roles if confirmed. "We have the finest military in the world and the creativity and competence of a thriving commercial sector that is also the envy of the world," said Radha Plumb, nominated to be the deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. "If confirmed, my task will be to match warfighter requirements from our military with the technologies in that vibrant industrial base to ensure our military has the capabilities it needs to prevail in critical missions anytime, anywhere." If confirmed, Plumb said she believes the department must establish clear transition pathways for critical new technologies such as hypersonics, artificial intelligence and directed energy. She also said the department must find ways to leverage new acquisition pathways to acquire software and software-intensive systems to meet the needs of warfighters and also invest in the defense industrial base to reduce foreign dependency. Plumb currently serves as the chief of staff to the deputy secretary of defense. She has previously held positions at Google, Facebook, the RAND Corporation, the Department of Energy and the White House National Security Council. "Defense, intelligence and security efforts provide critical support to the secretary's national defense strategy and are essential to ensuring the United States retains its strategic advantage today and in the future," Milancy D.Harris said. "I approach my nomination with a clear focus on ensuring we are best positioned to collaborate with allies and partners, collect information, conduct analysis on intelligence priorities and protect our intelligence and innovations." Nominated as the deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security, Harris told senators the department should ensure it recruits and retains a workforce that reflects the diversity of the nation and must also increase reciprocity across the intelligence community and create educational and broadening opportunities. Harris currently serves as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for irregular warfare and counterterrorism. She's also held positions within the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Counterterrorism Center and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Nominated as assistant secretary of defense for industrial base policy, Laura Taylor-Kale said that her tenure in the role, if confirmed, would be shaped by her belief that U.S. economic security is fundamentally national security. "My experience in international economics and development finance has reinforced my view that our open democratic system and market-driven, rules-based economy is our strength," she said. "And that our resilience and innovative defense industrial base powers our ability to prevail in an age of strategic competition against China and other competitors." If confirmed, Taylor-Kale said she'd focus on key issues that include, among other things, engaging industry and strategic allies as partners to mitigate the department's supply chain risks, increasing competition and supporting small business and non-traditional suppliers, protecting the defense industrial base from foreign adversary capital, and increasing domestic production of critical minerals and strategic materials. Currently, Taylor-Kale serves as a fellow for innovation and economic competitiveness at the Council on Foreign Relations. She has held previous positions within the International Trade Administration, the U.S. Development Finance Corporation, the State Department and the World Bank. Nominated to, among other things, manage the Defense Department's global portfolio of real estate, Brendan Owens said if confirmed, he'd be honored to serve the men and women who defend the nation. "I will do everything I can to ensure their ability to decisively execute their mission, while those of us serving in support of that mission safeguard their well-being," he said. "For most of the force, this starts by ensuring they have safe, healthy, efficient and resilient places to live and work. These places should be enhancing the health, well-being and readiness of our servicemembers and their families." If confirmed, Owens said he will be a champion for service members to ensure their environment, homes, workplaces and infrastructure serve to enhance their ability to complete their mission and thrive. He also noted that nearly every military installation in what would be his portfolio is dependent on local communities for their energy needs and that this presents risk to the department. He told lawmakers he believes that due to the large size of the Defense Department, ongoing efforts by the department to enhance energy resilience on military installations through things like microgrids, building-to-grid integration, energy generation and storage, could benefit not just local communities but also the nation as a whole. Owens, an engineer, currently serves as a principal of Black Vest Strategy, a consulting firm he founded. He also served for 19 years within the U.S. Green Building Council and before that as an energy manager at Fort Belvoir. All four nominees will need to be confirmed by the U.S. senate before assuming their roles within the DOD. Women's Health Care in DOD Unchanged by Supreme Court Decision [2022-07-29] WASHINGTON -- While last month's Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization means each state now makes its own laws regarding abortion services, the health care that the Defense Department provides to service members has not changed, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness said. "Service members can receive the same reproductive health care after Dobbs as they did before the ruling," Gil Cisneros testified today before the House Armed Services Committee. "Consistent with long-existing federal law, 'covered abortions' -- those cases that involve rape, incest or where the life of the mother would be endangered -- will continue to be authorized to use federal funds and facilities. There is no interruption to this care." Travel policies related to health care also remain, Cisneros said. If a service member must travel to obtain a covered abortion, she may do so on official status and will not be charged leave. While the department will continue to be able to provide to service members the same level of health care it has always provided, Cisneros said the department is aware that the Dobbs decision will change available options for some service members when it comes to abortions that are not covered under department policy. Based on laws that may be in effect in the state where a service member is stationed, abortion services may not be available. "Service members are now having to navigate additional challenges to access essential women's health care services," he said. "Service members and their families, who were previously able to make very personal decisions about when to have a family, may now face greater burdens depending on where they're stationed." Cisneros told lawmakers that the DOD continues to review its personnel and medical polices as a result of the Dobbs decision. "We understand the very personal nature of how the court decision impacts families," he said. "We are being very deliberate in analyzing Dobbs with both focus and compassion. We want to make sure we get this right because it impacts access to essential women's health care and reproductive care." Another aspect of reproductive health care that lawmakers were interested in concerned the availability of contraception within the military health care system. Seileen Mullen, the acting secretary of defense for health affairs, testified that until recently DOD had contraceptive clinics set up at 18 military treatment facilities across the department. Now, she said, the plan is to have those clinics at all military treatment facilities across the department. "We have expanded where we have military treatment contraceptive clinics -- walk-in clinics," she said. "A woman or man could come up, get counseling, and decide what contraceptives they need that day." Cisneros said the department is changing policy on one form of contraception in particular -- the intrauterine device, or IUD -- to make it available to more service members. "We are currently updating our policies so that service members and their families will be able to receive those IUDs through the TRICARE health care system without having to pay a copay, which is currently the thing right now," he said. "We're changing our policy, updating it, so that the copay will be eliminated with that." Mullen also told lawmakers that the department will soon release results of a survey on women's reproductive health conducted by the RAND Corporation, which reveals a lack of knowledge among service members regarding contraceptive options. "It's the first time that has been done in 30 years," Mullen said. "It's given us quite a bit of information ... includ[ing that there's] a lack of education about women's options around contraceptives, which are free in our MTFs. All active-duty service members get free contraceptives within the MTFs and in our retail pharmacies." Right now, Mullen said, there is a small copay for active-duty service members to get contraceptives, but congressional legislation might change that -- making contraception totally free to service members and their families. "We also ... have an app called 'Decide and Be Ready' that men and women can use to go through their contraceptive options to decide what's best for them," she said. "We also have those walk-in clinics that are ... being expanded this year, as well. But ... it's sort of astonishing how our young men and women really don't fully know of what their reproductive rights and health care consists of, and we need to do a better job." National Reconnaissance Office Looks for More Commercial Services [2022-08-04] WASHINGTON -- In May, the National Reconnaissance Office announced the award of three contracts to private-sector companies for commercial imagery. It's something the agency would like to do more of, said its director. "Certainly we are looking for more commercial services, Chris Scolese said, during a discussion Thursday with the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. "We kind of have a motto of 'buy what we can, build what we must.' But really what it comes down to is the commercial market has really grown. And we're seeing a lot of capability out there that the commercial companies are providing." Looking to the private sector to provide satellite imagery, he said, can be less costly but equally valuable than what the NRO might do with its own assets, Scolese said. It also means the NRO can direct resources towards intelligence gathering that's important to the warfighter but has no commercial value. "It ... allows us to focus on those things ... that are critically important that have either no commercial value at all, but have incredible intelligence value, that we need to go off and do," he said. "And oftentimes, those are extremely complex systems that would be very expensive to develop and therefore ... the lack of commercial interest in them." Right now, Scolese said, NRO's relationships with the three companies it signed to contracts in May are going well. But he said the NRO is looking forward to bringing in new entrants and new capabilities, and that the agency has a plan for that. "About yearly we're going to ... go off and ask for commercial companies to come in with their ideas so that we can engage early, prior to having to award of contract, so they can understand what the government's needs are and we can understand what their capabilities are," he said. "When it comes time to go off and have a contract like we have for electro-optical imagery, for radar, they'll be ready and we'll be ready." Commercial imagery isn't the only place NRO has opted to work with partners. Launch is another such area. The U.S. continues to launch capabilities into space from both the Eastern and Western Ranges, which include locations such as Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. But the NRO has also now partnered with New Zealand to launch smaller assets into space and will soon work with the U.K. on air-launching assets as well. Scolese said it gives his agency more flexibility as it tries to proliferate the number of assets it has in orbit. "Having the capability to launch pretty much from almost anywhere in the world gives us great flexibility," he said. "It adds to our resilience, because we're not relying on just one or two launch bases. It allows us to reconstitute if we want to do that. It gives us a greater flexibility because we now have the opportunity to sort of pick launch bases." Also, he said, launching from locations like New Zealand or the U.K. has another added benefit as well. "I think it sends a message to the world that we really value our partnerships with our international communities," he said. $1 Billion Support Package for Ukraine, Largest Yet [2022-08-08] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department today detailed the contents of the latest security assistance package to Ukraine, which is worth $1 billion. Provided under presidential drawdown authority -- the 18th drawdown so far -- the package includes additional ammunition for both the high mobility artillery rocket and howitzer systems. "This is the largest single drawdown of U.S. arms and equipment utilizing this authority to date," Colin H. Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, said. "The package provides a significant amount of additional ammunition, weapons and equipment -- the types of which the Ukrainian people are using so effectively to defend their country." Among the items included in the latest package are additional ammunition for the high mobility artillery rocket system, or HIMARS; 75,000 rounds of 155 mm artillery ammunition; twenty 120 mm mortar systems and 20,000 rounds of 120 mm mortar ammunition; munitions for the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, or NASAMS; and 1,000 Javelin and hundreds of AT4 anti-armor systems. "These are all critical capabilities to help the Ukrainians repel the Russian offensive in the east, and also to address evolving developments in the south and elsewhere," Kahl said. Since the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the U.S. has sent about $9.1 billion in security assistance to the Ukrainians through both the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and presidential drawdown authority. Presidential drawdown authority, or PDA, allows the president in certain circumstances to withdraw weapons, ammunitions and material from existing U.S. military stocks and provide that to other nations. As part of the USAI, the DOD contracts for the purchase of materiel to be sent. "The United States continues to work with its allies and partners to provide Ukraine with capabilities to meet its evolving battlefield requirements and our allies and partners have stepped up to provide billions of dollars in their own assistance," Kahl said. "We will continue to closely consult with Ukraine and surge additional available systems and capabilities in support of its defense." While this security assistance package doesn't contain additional HIMARS launch systems, it does contain additional munitions for systems the U.S. has already sent to Ukraine, Kahl said. One type of munition the department has sent to Ukraine for use in the HIMARS is the "Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System" or GMLRS, which are precision-guided systems with a range of about 70km. Kahl said the U.S. had provided "hundreds" of those systems in the past few weeks and that the Ukrainians have been using them successfully. "The munitions themselves, these GMLRS ... are having a very profound effect," he said. "This is a 200-pound warhead, it's kind of the equivalent of an airstrike, frankly -- a precision-guided airstrike. These are GPS-guided munitions. They've been very effective in hitting things that previously the Ukrainians had difficulty hitting reliably." Kahl said the Ukrainians have used the HIMARS along with provided GMLRS rockets to hit Russian command and control nodes, sustainment and logistics hubs and key radar systems, for instance. "It's made it more difficult for the Russians to move forces around the battlefield," he said. "They've had to move certain aspects back away from the HIMARS. It's slowed them down. It's made it harder for them to resupply their forces. So I think it's having real operational effects." The latest security assistance package also includes 50 armored medical treatment vehicles; Claymore anti-personnel munitions; C-4 explosives, demolition munitions and demolition equipment; and medical supplies such as first aid kits, bandages, monitors and other equipment, Kahl said. CHIPS Act Advances DOD's Emphasis on Microelectronics [2022-08-10] WASHINGTON -- In February, Heidi Shyu, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, spelled out 14 technology areas of critical importance to the Defense Department. Among those are biotechnology, renewable energy generation and storage, and directed energy. But the $54.2 billion CHIPS Act, signed yesterday, advances another of those top priorities for the department: microelectronics. "Let me take a moment and share with you what a banner day yesterday was [with] the signing of the CHIPS Act -- revitalizing the domestic capabilities for microelectronics," Barbara McQuiston, deputy chief technology officer of science and technology, said during a virtual discussion today at Federal Computer Week's Emerging Technology Workshop. The CHIPS Act, she said, provides both investment and incentive funding to build semiconductor manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and to advance research and development activities at both the national and regional levels. In addition, the law includes large investment in a national research and development center, an advanced packaging manufacturing program, and up to three manufacturing institutes in the U.S. for semiconductor-related manufacturing, McQuiston said. "The legislation also provides $2 billion over five years for microelectronics, which envisions a national network of onshore prototyping, lab-to-fab transition in semiconductor technologies, including the Department of Defense-unique applications, and semiconductor workforce training," she said. "I think this is incredibly important for emergent technology, because as we have new ideas -- new technologies coming forward -- they can be rapidly prototyped and tested and put forward for accelerating technology into the marketplace and into the industrial base." McQuiston said investment in all 14 technology areas is vital to maintain U.S. national security. "As we work on our own science and technology portfolio, we strategize on these investments as our allies and we work together along with industry and domestic partners to prioritize investments in these emerging areas," she said. The 11 other critical technology areas outlined by Shyu include quantum science; future-generation wireless technology; advanced materials; trusted artificial intelligence and autonomy; integrated network systems-of-systems; microelectronics; space technology; advanced computing and software; human-machine interfaces; hypersonics; and integrated sensing and cyber. DOD Releases First Departmentwide Social Media Policy  [2022-08-15] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department today released a policy that for the first time spells out, from the highest levels of the defense community, how DOD military and civilian personnel should use official social media accounts to best advance the mission of the U.S. military and further instill trust in the credibility of the DOD.  DOD Instruction 5400.17, titled "Official Use of Social Media for Public Affairs Purposes," provides principles for social media use within DOD, direction regarding records management procedures for social media accounts, and guidance to ensure personal social media accounts are not misrepresented or misinterpreted as official accounts. While some of the military services and other agencies published social media policies years ago, DODI 5400.17 is the department's first instruction that provided Pentagon-level, departmentwide guidance that specifically addresses the use of social media. The DOD chief information officer previously issued DODI 8170.01, "Online Information Management and Electronic Messaging," to provide broad policy guidance on the secure and appropriate use of social media. The new policy specifically addresses public affairs uses and responsibilities. "It's long overdue," Andy Oare, director of digital media for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, said. "There have been efforts in the past to do this, but in an organization of this size and magnitude, you need to fully coordinate and ensure all viewpoints are heard and represented. We wanted to make sure the services were collaborators from the very beginning."  Because social media changes rapidly, Oare said policies that the department may have started developing in the past but had never finalized would quickly show their age. That won't happen with the newly published instruction, and he stressed that this policy will be continually refined and updated based on the evolving social media landscape.  "We'll work across the department to be agile and responsive in our day-to-day operations as we implement this policy and update it where and when we should," Oare said.  "Social media has an effect on every one of our service members, civilians, contractors and their families -- whether they run an official account or have never heard of Twitter," Oare said. "We owe it to all of them to have one central policy that provides a clearly articulated standard of operation and accountability."  The DOD social media policy applies to Office of the Secretary of Defense personnel, the military departments, the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Joint Staff, the combatant commands, and other DOD offices and agencies. In some cases, this means the new policy will supersede preexisting social media policies, but close coordination throughout its development ensured that all perspectives were considered and integrated. "We deliberately wrote it in a collaborative manner, and it encourages component heads to continue establishing component-specific social media regulations," Oare said. "Our aim is not to be prescriptive or restrictive, but rather to lay out some commonsense rules that simply have not been formally articulated at this level."  In addition to detailing the roles and responsibilities of DOD leadership in enforcing responsible social media practices, the new policy offers guidance to department personnel who generate content on official social media platforms to ensure responsible use of the medium, key elements to consider when establishing a new presence or expanding into new platforms, and on the authority to close unused accounts.  "If social media is mismanaged or mishandled, the U.S. government's reputation with the American public; relationships with interagency, international, state, local and tribal entities; military operations; and reputation for a high ethical and professional standard may be compromised," the policy warns social media practitioners.  The guidance in DODI 5400.17 is meant to ensure DOD's credibility and avoid controversy, while using social media to share its missions with the public, Oare said.  "In a digital world where lines of truth and authenticity are so often blurred, it's important that institutions like us have trusted, verifiable and reliable presences," Oare said. "We have a duty to the American people to show the work we're doing, to tell the story of our service members, and to present that information though channels they use in their daily lives." Midcourse Defense, Guam, Hypersonics Lead Issues at Missile Defense Agency [2022-08-16] WASHINGTON -- Last year, the Missile Defense Agency awarded contracts to Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin to advance development of its next generation interceptor, or NGI program -- a key component of its ground-based midcourse defense, or GMD, system. Both companies have said they are on track to deliver faster than what the government initially asked, according to the director of the Missile Defense Agency.  "I will tell you both companies are saying they can get to first emplacement earlier than the government reference schedule of 2028," said Navy Vice Adm. Jon A. Hill, during a virtual discussion Friday with Defense News. "I will tell you that there is a long road between now and then. And so, we'll just keep on path. Both are performing very well. Two different designs, both incorporating multiple kill vehicles -- that's where the threat drives us."  The GMD is a part of the U.S. ballistic missile defense system, which is meant to engage and destroy limited intermediate- and long-range ballistic missile threats in space. Part of the GMD are ground-based interceptors, which are the missiles that engage and destroy incoming threats to the United States. The NGIs will be advanced interceptors designed to protect the nation against intercontinental ballistic missile attack from rogue nations.  Continued development of the GMD program is the top priority for MDA, said Hill. Also on his list of priorities are the defense of Guam and countering the threat posed by hypersonic missiles.  On Guam, the MDA is working with the Army on the initial steps of placing missile defense capabilities on the island, Hill said. Plans for that system are included in the president's 2023 budget submittal.  "The nice thing about PB23, it does lay down the basic architecture of the systems that will go on to Guam," Hill said. "The department did fund us at a level that allows us to start environmental impact surveys. That allows us to do the sighting work."  Last week, MDA finished a "sighting summit" and was able to visit each site in Guam which has been proposed as a location for elements of missile defense there, Hill said.  "It's not final, but we have a very good feel for at least technically and operationally where things should go in order for it to function as a system," he said.  The MDA is working closely with the Army on the defense of Guam, Hill said. The MDA, he said, has funding in PB23 for both ballistic missile defense capability and hypersonic missile defense capability, while the Army has funding for cruise missile defense.  "What's great is both systems kind of have a crossover in what they can do," he said. "And so the integration of those into a command suite with command-and-control battle management on top of it is the basic architecture."  For development of the glide phase interceptor, of GPI program, part of a defense against hypersonic missiles, the MDA in early 2021 initially chose three contractors to compete on the design. In June, the MDA narrowed it down to just two companies, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, said Hill.  "We developed the glide phase interceptor concept because when you look at that threat, its vulnerability occurs in the glide phase," Hill said. "It's through its ballistic boost, or its through its launch or it's coming up as a cruise missile. But when it's in that glide phase, that's where it does broad maneuvers, that's where it's bleeding off heat, [and] that is where it's the most vulnerable. And you can track it, and you can see it and you can develop fire control on it. And we know that we can do that now. So what we're missing is that weapon."  Hill said following winnowing the selection from three companies to two, MDA is on path to a system requirements review later this year for GPI. Deputy Secretary Discusses Roles for Universities in Nation's Defense  [2022-08-25] WASHINGTON -- Last week Deputy Secretary of Defense Dr. Kathleen H. Hicks toured the Midwest, visiting U.S. Transportation Command in Illinois, the Air Force Research Laboratory in Ohio and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. As part of the trip, the deputy secretary also stopped by Purdue University in Indiana to meet with ROTC cadets there, to look at research facilities at the school, and to talk about how universities such as Purdue can best contribute to the nation's defense.  At a gathering of students, faculty and guests at Purdue, Hicks noted that the school had recently been selected as the lead academic partner and headquarters for the Air Force Research Laboratory Regional Research Hub -- Midwest.  "[AFRL's goal is] to create a collaborative science and technology ecosystem, bringing together government, academia and the private sector that will accelerate the collision of ideas and talent to produce solutions for both DOD and commercial use," Hicks said.  While at Purdue, Hicks visited the school's Zucrow Lab and Hypersonics and Applied Research Facility -- both responsible for development of hypersonics capabilities the department has prioritized.  "The research here will not only help develop the capabilities we need to defend the nation, but it will drive progress beyond DOD for the aerospace sector and other industries, shaping the next generation of commercial air travel, space exploration and beyond," Hicks said.  Also a part of the tour was a visit to Birck Nanotechnology Center that, among other things, focuses on development of microelectronics and semiconductors -- another critical priority for the Defense Department.  Purdue University is developing technology that benefits the Defense Department in areas like hypersonics and microelectronics, Hicks acknowledged. But she also said an area where Purdue is doing well, and where other universities like Purdue might follow, is in the creation of environments where research that benefits the department is able to flourish.  "It's really about creating the kind of ecosystem that you've done so well here," Hicks said. "That is bringing together innovators in the commercial sector alongside world-class research capabilities, investing as you are doing here in the facilities that make that possible and that attract talent, and then bringing government dollars, research and development dollars and talent as you're seeing around this room with your ROTC and your graduate student population from the U.S. military together. That's what you can keep doing so, I appreciate it."  This type of environment, Hicks said, was also evident at both Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Air Force Research Lab.  When it comes to microelectronics, Hicks said what's needed at universities is the ability to take an idea for a microelectronics component all the way from a concept in a laboratory to manufacturing in a fabrication facility.  "What we need here is that lab-to-fab capability and so that means having the whole development cycle ... right here accessible to a community, so that development cycle from the innovator on the outside -- the basic research, the innovator on the outside -- connecting, and then the fabrication capability for microelectronics here on shore, which we do not have today," Hicks said. "That's really vital to us."  Another priority for the Defense Department and other federal agencies, Hicks said, is in radiation-hardened microelectronics, and that is something she recognizes is a research priority at Purdue.  "Those are the areas to keep going after, those kinds of capabilities that we are specifically reliant upon and [which] really help us in the national security community and throughout the U.S. economy by putting that whole development cycle here, together, to get the most innovation as quickly as possible," she said.  When it comes to hypersonics, Hicks pointed out how a new facility being built at Purdue will ultimately help the Defense Department achieve it's goals. The school is underway now in constructing the Hypersonics and Applied Research Facility, which will be host to two new wind tunnels. The new facility will include both a Mach 8 "quiet wind tunnel" -- which will be the only one of its kind in the world -- and the hypersonic pulse, or HYPULSE, shock tunnel.  "Just having that quality facility attracts the world-class talent to advance the research," Hicks said. "One area we're also very focused on at the Defense Department is counter-hypersonics. To the extent that that's a research priority here at Purdue, and you can bring your scientists and engineers to bear on that, we certainly would welcome more collaboration in that area. But by and large, we're down a very strong pathway right now in hypersonics. And I think the quality of what you all are bringing is a big piece of why."  DOD Creates New Infrastructure Focused on Mitigating Harm to Civilians [2022-09-01] WASHINGTON -- Defense leaders have noted that the mitigation of civilian harm during armed conflict is a strategic and moral imperative. The Defense Department is putting that idea into action with the publication of Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan, or CHMR-AP. The plan details an array of efforts the department will employ to reduce harm to civilians during combat operations and exercises and respond appropriately when civilian harm does occur. "This plan improves DOD's approach to mitigating and responding to civilian harm by creating a reinforcing framework and processes and institutions specifically designed to improve strategic outcomes and optimize military operations," said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder during a recent discussion with the media. Development of the CHMR-AP came at the direction of Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, who outlined his expectations earlier this year in a January 27 memorandum. "Secretary Austin made clear that the protection of civilians is fundamentally consistent with the effective, efficient and decisive use of force in pursuit of U.S. national interests, and that our efforts to mitigate and respond to civilian harm are a direct reflection of U.S. values as well as a strategic and moral imperative," Ryder said. Ryder told reporters that Austin has designated the secretary of the Army to serve as DOD's joint proponent for CHMR-AP. During a background briefing in advance of Ryder's media engagement, a senior defense official provided more details of CHMR-AP. "The plan incorporates lessons learned from recently completed studies, including DOD Office of the Inspector General evaluations and independent reviews of strikes that have resulted in civilian casualties," the official said. "And while it's meant to be forward-looking, we're very much informed by the lessons of those studies and the previous incidents they covered." The plan provides a systemic approach to considering, mitigating, assessing and responding to civilian harm caused by military operations, the official said. "The action plan, we think, improves our ability to understand the causes of civilian harm and continually [improves] our approach to civilian harm mitigation response," the official said. An important aspect of the CHMR-AP is the establishment of a Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, which is expected to achieve full operational capability by fiscal year 2025, the official said. "The center of excellence is really intended to be a hub and a facilitator for the DOD-wide analysis, learning and training related to civilian harm," the official said. "And we would envision it going even beyond that to incorporate inputs from partners and other departments and agencies as necessary." It's expected that implementation of the CHMR-AP will affect the full spectrum of military operations, the official said. One of the most important areas will be improving knowledge of the civilian environment for commanders so that they have more comprehensive information available to inform targeting decisions. The official also said that knowledge and insights gathered by the center of excellence will affect operational strategy and doctrine. "As we operationalize this action plan, ... civilian harm mitigation will be built into exercises, training and professional military education going forward," he said. "We envision the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence actually leading much of that and ensuring that this type of curriculum and these types of lessons learned are built into the education process of our military officers and civilians." Another key area of the CHMR-AP is development of related data management processes and a standardized system for the reporting of civilian harm that results from DOD operations, the official said. "This is the less glamorous piece, but it has been pointed to by a number of the studies that the lack of a centralized approach across the department has hurt us," the official said. "The action plan envisions a centralized, enterprise-wide data management platform that would handle all of these instances, information, and really be the foundation that allows greater collection, sharing and analysis." Because the United States military almost never operates alone, successful implementation of the CHMR-AP will involve involvement and input of partner nations and allies the U.S. might fight alongside, the official said. "We have a number of allies and partners who are keen to understand our best practices and provide some of their own in this process," he said. "This really becomes an effort across more than just the Department of Defense, but across our like-minded allies and partners." China May Draw Lessons From Russian Failures in Ukraine [2022-09-08] WASHINGTON -- Chinese president Xi Jinping has set a timeline for his nation's military to be capable of taking Taiwan by 2027 -- just five years from now. Recent events in the Taiwan strait have some questioning the strategic situation and prospects of a near-term invasion.  Colin H. Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, said that while China is very interested in expanding its sphere of political and military influence in the Indo-Pacific region, it's likely going to be more cautious when it comes to a move as aggressive as an invasion of Taiwan. "I do not think that China wants to put themselves in a position that Russia finds itself in today, which is invading a democratic neighbor -- one that I think would generate an enormous amount of global sympathy," Kahl said during a discussion Wednesday at the Defense News Conference 2022, adding China would risk broader military tensions at significant political and economic costs.   China might instead draw lessons from Russia's experience invading Ukraine over the last six months, Kahl said.  "I would hope that they would draw the lesson from Russia's experience that, 'Hey, maybe ... we shouldn't do that,'" he said. "I don't think that they've sped up their clock. ... It's no mystery that Xi Jinping has given his military until 2027 to develop the military capabilities to forcefully reunify with Taiwan -- if he makes the decision to do that. But I've seen no indication that he's made that decision to do so."  Of greater concern is China's increased aggression in the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, and other areas in the region, and how that increased aggressive action might lead to unintended consequences that could result from misunderstandings.  "As China becomes increasingly assertive in kind of asserting its prerogatives around Taiwan, ... do they take the next step of trying to enforce those changes in the status quo in a way that runs the risk of an incident -- an incident with the United States, and incident with one of our allies and partners?" Kahl asked. "We have seen the [People's Republic of China] engage in, over the last year or two, ... a trendline of increasingly unsafe and unprofessional encounters -- both in ... the skies and at sea."  Now, Kahl said, the U.S. and its allies must watch out for aggressive actions by the navy and air force of the People's Liberation Army that could run the risk of causing an international incident. In the meantime, he said, the U.S. will continue to operate in the Indo-Pacific as it always has.  "We're not going to change our operating procedures," he said. "We're not going to do things that ratchet up tensions. We're going to do things that assert our continued support for the rules-based international order in the Indo-Pacific and our support for our allies and partners, and not be backed away."  After Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the Defense Department identified that nation as an "acute threat," which Kahl has further clarified as meaning "both immediate and sharp." But he's also now identified Russia as being "reckless" as well, considering the actions it's taken after failing to achieve the goals it set for its invasion of Ukraine.  "I think that Russia is ... a capable military power -- perhaps not as capable, frankly, and conventional as some of us may have assessed six or eight months ago ...," he said. "But they've also demonstrated that they're an extraordinarily dangerous and reckless power. And there's a way in which ... a weakened Russia becomes more dangerous on the international stage."  In desperation, Kahl said, Russia has aligned itself more with and reached out to both North Korea and Iran for assistance. Moreso, he said, because Russia's conventional forces are so heavily occupied in Ukraine, he suspects they will be forced to rely more now on unconventional capabilities such as nuclear, cyber and space, as well as misinformation and disinformation campaigns.  "Russia does not pose the challenge to the United States and the rules-based international order over the long term that China does," he said. "But in the immediate term, it's a very dangerous actor."  Department Moves Quick to Replenish Weapons Sent to Ukraine [2022-09-09] WASHINGTON -- Following Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the United States embarked on a long-term commitment to provide Ukraine with the tools and equipment it needs to defend its sovereignty. Since that time, more than $14.5 billion in assistance has been committed to Ukraine. Some of the assistance provided has been new and purchased on contract from defense industry manufacturers as a part of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. But much of the equipment, some $12.5 billion worth, has been provided as part of presidential drawdown authority. That means things such as Javelin and Stinger missiles, HIMARS rocket launcher systems, and Switchblade unmanned aerial systems, for instance, have been pulled directly from existing U.S. military inventory to be sent overseas. Because so much gear has been pulled from U.S. military units, that equipment must now be replaced in order to sustain America's own readiness, and the Defense Department has already contracted with an array of manufacturers to give back to military units what was taken from them in order to support Ukraine. "As we work with industry to accelerate production on both replenishment systems and direct procurements under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative or USAI, we're using a number of tools to get the funding moving, and the contracting happening quickly," Bill LaPlante, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said during a briefing today at the Pentagon. Already, about $1.2 billion in contracts are underway to replenish U.S. military stocks for weapons sent to Ukraine, LaPlante said. That includes about $352 million in funding for replacement Javelin missiles, $624 million for replacement Stinger missiles, and $33 million for replacement HIMARS systems. Another $1.2 billion in contracts are underway now for equipment promised to Ukraine under USAI, including for things like 155mm ammunition, Switchblade unmanned aerial systems, radar systems and tactical vehicles. The Department is expediting these efforts by using undefinitized contracting actions, or UCAs, to get industry working on contracts before they are definitized, LaPlante said. "You can put a UCA together within a week, and we're doing that," he said. "We're also making use of indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contracts, or IDIQ. If you have IDIQs, and we have many of them, what you can do is just add task orders to them very quickly to get equipment on contract." In late April, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III participated in the first meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group where leaders from about 40 nations met to discuss both current and future efforts to provide support for Ukraine and to help Ukraine maintain its sovereignty going forward. Today, the contact group includes about 50 nations, and the group concluded its fifth meeting just yesterday in Germany. Now, as a kind of offshoot of the contact group, LaPlante said he will meet Sept. 28 with the national armaments directors from other contact group nations to discuss how the global defense industrial base can continue to support Ukraine both now and into the future. "Right now we have three kind of themes -- but this will evolve as we build the agenda," LaPlante said. "The first is comparing notes and giving situation reports on ramping up production of key capabilities. We have a lot to learn from each other." Also on the agenda is developing a global picture of the defense supply chain, he said. "[This includes] what are we seeing in the supply chain ... the typical things in the supply chain are microelectronics and the obsolescence of them, things like ball bearings even, and solid rocket motors [and] other sensors," he said. "We want to compare notes on what people are seeing in their supply chain and what answers people have had." Finally, he said, a topic of discussion will be to build both interoperability between systems and also to increase interchangeability as well. "That is the ability for us to take a munition from one country and use it in a weapons system of another, and vice versa. Just yesterday, the Defense Department announced a new presidential drawdown of security assistance valued at up to $675 million. The package includes, among other things, more munitions for HIMARS, four 105mm Howitzers with 36,000 accompanying rounds, additional high-speed anti-radiation missiles, and 1.5 million rounds of small arms ammunition, said Sasha Baker, the deputy under secretary of defense for policy. "This represents the 20th drawdown package we've provided to Ukraine," said Baker. "It includes equipment ... the Ukrainians have already demonstrated, in many cases, that they can use to great effect." The latest security assistance package brings the total amount of U.S. assistance to Ukraine since the February invasion to more than $14.5 million, Baker said. "We think this underscores our unwavering support for Ukraine as it continues to defend its sovereignty in the face of Russian aggression," Baker said. "We believe, at the end of the day, that Russia's efforts have not succeeded and will not succeed. And when it comes to helping Ukraine to defend itself, and when it comes to making sure that there is significant pressure on Russia to end this conflict, [that requires] making sure that our own alliance is as strong and as resolute as it can be to deter Russian aggression." That unity of effort and resolve, Baker said, was evident in the most recent meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, and has been evident all along as demonstrated by the Ukrainian people. Nominee to Lead Space Force Testifies Goals, Priorities Before Senate Committee [2022-09-13] WASHINGTON -- Adversaries are moving aggressively to dominate in space and put U.S. interests there at risk, the general nominated to lead the U.S. Space Force said. "The most immediate threat, in my opinion, is the pace with which our strategic challengers -- first and foremost the Chinese -- are aggressively pursuing capabilities that can disrupt, degrade and ultimately even destroy our satellite capabilities and disrupt our ground infrastructure," Space Force Lt. Gen. B. B. Chance Saltzman said during a nomination hearing today before the Senate Armed Services Committee. If confirmed, Saltzman will serve as the second chief of space operations. He told lawmakers that the Chinese have paid attention to how the U.S. fights and how important space is to its operations, and they have adjusted to take advantage. "They have watched how we perform joint force operations; they know how critical ... U.S. space capabilities are to the joint force; they've learned from that, and they recognize that it is an asymmetric advantage of theirs to go after our space capabilities and deny them to the joint force," he said. "They've invested heavily and demonstrated capabilities that can deny us this." Saltzman said it would be a priority of his to ensure the Space Force is on track to build and field effective space capabilities and to also ensure guardians are trained to operate in a contested domain to be able to counter activity by strategic competitors. Recognizing the small size of the Space Force and the level of skills that are required for the mission, the general also acknowledged there would be challenges in ensuring individuals with the right skills are both accessed and retained. Those challenges would be something he said he'd need to take on if confirmed as the service's new chief. "We're also looking at flexible and innovative ways to make sure that we have viable and flexible career paths for our guardians," Saltzman said. "It's important that we retain this talent for an extended period of time to get the most out of them. If confirmed as CSO, I would certainly welcome the opportunity to continue to work with members of this committee and other stakeholders to make sure that we get the right organizational structure to take advantage of these capabilities." Saltzman told senators that while he expects the Space Force will primarily provide forces to U.S. Space Command, but other combatant commands will also need what he can provide. Commanders there could expect his cooperation. "The responsibilities of the chief of space operations are to make sure there are ready forces that have the flexibility, the agility, the training and experience necessary to support all combatant commanders," he said. "Of note, of course, is that U.S. Space Command has primary responsibilities for that space area of responsibilities, as well as some key missions of providing capabilities for the joint force. While over 90% of the Space Force capabilities are presented to U.S. Space Command, there are critical other capabilities, regional capabilities, that are also presented to the other combatant commands to fulfill their missions as well." Saltzman serves now as the deputy chief of space operations for operations, cyber and nuclear within the Space Force. Pending confirmation, he will replace Space Force Gen. John W. Raymond, who is the first to fill the role. Opportunities Expand Through Military Spouse Employment Partnership [2022-09-13] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department's Military Spouse Employment Partnership program expects to add more than 70 new companies to its roster during the upcoming "MSEP Engage" event next month. Currently, more than 540 government organizations, nonprofits and private sector companies have made a commitment to the Defense Department to recruit, hire, promote and retain military spouses, said the associate director of military community support programs. "Annually we bring all of our partners together for what has traditionally been a two-day event," Eddy Mentzer said. "The first day is spent with our new partners -- this year, we have a class of more than 70 new MSEP partners that will be joining us. We conduct a number of orientation sessions with those partners that focus on how they can engage with the military spouse community and we have a formal induction ceremony." The second day of the event, Mentzer said, is typically spent in several networking and breakout sessions focused on areas such as recruiting military spouses, understanding the challenges that military spouses face, and making their companies more military friendly and specifically, military spouse ready. This year's MSEP Engage event kicks off October 25 in Arlington, Virginia. For the first time, Mentzer said, a third day has been added to the event where military spouses looking for work can meet with potential employers. "This is the first time that we've actually done an event that includes our employer partners and spouses together," Mentzer said. "We're going to host our first-ever MSEP in-person hiring fair. We'll have a number of our MSEP employer partners that are present, and the opportunity for military spouses to come and meet with those companies that have really made this commitment to open that aperture and hire military spouses." While the MSEP Engage event in October will mostly serve military spouses in the Washington, D.C., area, Mentzer did say that the program's primary method for matching spouses with employment opportunities is through the program's website and events that allow spouses to meet virtually with employers. The program plans to host several virtual hiring events in 2023, he said. Since the MSEP program began in 2011, the program's partnering efforts have helped 220,000 military spouses find work with more than 540 partners, Mentzer said. And right now on the MSEP website, there are more than 600, 000 jobs posted. It's important to understand that each of these jobs has been posted by a committed, engaged MSEP employer partner. Mentzer said helping military spouses find work is an important aspect of military readiness because while the military recruits individuals to join the service, it must create an environment that retains that service member's family. "The challenges faced by military spouses are not new," Mentzer said. "This is a historic challenge. Over the last decade, our unemployment rate for military spouses has hovered well above 20%, which is more than five times the national average. And it presents a huge challenge for our military families." Family satisfaction, Mentzer said, plays a big part in the retention of married service members, and the Department wants to ensure that it's doing everything it can to keep those families strong. Part of that means ensuring that military spouses can be employed if they need to be. "We know that the majority of military families want or need to be dual-income families," he said. "That's not different than the rest of society. And we want to make sure that our spouses have those opportunities." Austin Remembers Prisoners of War, Service Members Deemed Missing in Action [2022-09-16] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III met today at the Pentagon with former prisoners of war, families of military members missing in action and staff from embassies of nations. The DOD works with these groups to account for missing American personnel and commemorate National POW/MIA Recognition Day. "Every year on National POW/MIA Recognition Day, we gathered to honor American service members who were taken captive to stand with the families of the missing and the unaccounted for and to renew our commitment to bring home our missing heroes," Austin said. The Defense Department works to recover those who have been taken captive or who are lost in combat, Austin said. And earlier in the week, the remains of one such service member finally came home. In 1943, During World War II, Austin said, Army Air Corps Lt. Col. Addison Baker led pilots on a low-flying attack on enemy-controlled oil fields near Ploiesti, Romania. "As he neared his target, the enemy hit him with an anti-aircraft shell," Austin said. "His plane was burning and damaged and he could have chosen to land. But Lt. Col. Baker was determined to complete the mission. He kept going until he hit his target. But afterwards, his damaged plane tragically crashed into the town below." The next, year, Austin said, Baker was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions, even though the whereabouts of his remains were unknown at the time. The Defense Department, Austin said, never stopped looking for Baker. "Nearly eight decades after his daring mission, scientists at Offutt Air Force Base used innovative forensic techniques to identify him," Austin said. "This week his family got to say a proper goodbye and to bury Lt. Col. Baker at Arlington." Baker's family members were present at the event. Austin met privately with them prior to the ceremony. Thanks to the work of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Austin said, thousands of prisoners of war and service members who went missing in action have been recovered and their remains returned home to loved ones awaiting news back in the United States. Still, there are many more yet to be found, Austin said. The DPAA estimates as many as 81,000 American service members and civilians remain unaccounted for. "This is a monumental task, but it's also a sacred obligation," Austin said. "Everyone who serves in the United States military makes a solemn commitment to this country, and their families do as well. And this country makes a solemn promise to them in return: to provide the fullest possible accounting for anyone who goes missing in the line of duty. And it's our solemn obligation to do right by those who sacrifice to defend our security and our democracy." Experts at the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Austin said, work in 46 countries around the world, searching for remains and using cutting-edge forensic technology to identify the missing. The DPAA doesn't do that work alone, however. "Our partners around the globe lend vital support, including former foes that have become friends," Austin said. "And family and veteran service organizations, many of them here today, shine a spotlight on this important cause and help us fulfill our pledge to those who have served." Today, the DPAA estimates there are more than 81,000 Americans still missing from past conflicts ranging from WWII until the Gulf War. So far in fiscal year 2022, the DPAA has completed nearly 100 missions in 37 countries searching for American personnel and has accounted for more than 140 missing American military members, each with their own story. "These are stories of pain and uncertainty, but also of hope and endurance and relief, when long-sought answers are finally found," Austin said. "The black and white flag that we fly in honor of our POWs and MIAs, bears a simple but powerful message to the families of those still missing and to all those who serve, and to our nation. And that message is that we will never forget. We will never give up hope, and we will never stop working to find answers and to bring home our missing." National POW/MIA Recognition Day was established in 1979 through a proclamation signed by President Jimmy Carter. Since then, each subsequent president has issued an annual proclamation commemorating the third Friday in September as National POW/MIA Recognition Day. Diversity in U.S., Partner Militaries Is a Strategic Strength [2022-09-21] WASHINGTON -- Diversity in the U.S. military and in the militaries of partner nations is a strategic imperative, the commander of U.S. Transportation Command said. "The bottom line for diversity, equity, and inclusion [is] a lethal, agile and resilient joint force, but a joint force that can manage the strategic environment and these complex situations," Air Force Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost said yesterday, adding that it will take a diverse group of people, with diverse ways of thinking and diverse experiences to be successful in an increasingly complex strategic environment. Speaking at the Air and Space Forces Association's 2022 Air, Space and Cyber Conference, Van Ovost cited the book "Divided Armies: Inequality and Battlefield Performance in Modern War," by Jason Lyall, as providing examples of how diversity in a military force provides the strength needed to win in combat. "He looked back in the last 200 years on battles around the globe," she said. "What he did was he linked the citizen status within the nation and in their military to battlefield performance." The author's research revealed that internal discrimination with a military force leads to defeat on the battlefield, Van Ovost said. "You don't see any of those results when you have a more inclusive force," she said. "That's what we want to avoid is over time if we don't have that diverse recruit ... we could be in for failure into the future. It is a strategic imperative that we have and raise an army that is reflective of our nation and reflects the core values for which our nation was founded." It's not enough that the U.S. alone be involved in having a diverse military, the general said. The U.S. military must set an example so that allies and partner nations are also drawing on all the capacity, skill and diversity in their own nations, so when working together, everybody brings the best possible force to the table. One example of that kind of effort, Van Ovost said, is the Defense Department's progress toward advancing the goals of the U.S. Women, Peace, and Security Strategy. DOD participates in that effort with the Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Department of Homeland Security. "We deployed gendered advisors to support the Afghan refugees flow, really to communicate and support them as they were going through the process," she said. "And this program is led by the combatant commands. So, we send out officer [and] enlisted leaders to go to different countries to help them understand better ... how to manage all of their resources and how to be more effective as a team in leadership. And it's making a difference." In Chad, Ghana, El Salvador and other places, the work is making a difference, Van Ovost said. "It's American leadership," she said. "And when we can do it right here, we are that beacon. And we can translate and show them those policies and show them the way that they can do it." As an example, Colombian officials last week announced the appointment of the first female, senior-enlisted advisor to their chief of defense, Van Ovost said. "That's a huge step there," she said. "Just like we want to use 100% of what is in America, we want to use 100% of what our allies and partners can bring to the fight every day. And it truly makes a difference. So, as I think about, it takes this team from recruiting all the way to force development, to continued development in your career, to then showing our allies and partners what it is we can do. And that's the value factor for what we're talking about." Spectrum Sharing is Way Ahead to Maintain Economic Dominance, Defense Official Says [2022-09-21] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department is, perhaps, the biggest user of the spectrum within the United States. But for the U.S. to remain economically competitive, the DOD must share the spectrum. The DOD's chief information officer said it's possible to do that without compromising national security.  "As the DOD CIO, we absolutely get it at the Department of Defense that we need to balance our economic advantage by maximizing spectrum, as well as being able to preserve our national security responsibilities," said John Sherman, during a keynote address recently at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's Spectrum Policy Symposium. "We have to be able to balance that."  China, named by the Defense Department as a pacing challenge, is moving along technologically, economically and militarily "at a very fast clip," Sherman said.  "I would say they're challenging us in many spaces -- not just with defense and military, but in economic, technology, spectrum and otherwise," he said. "We all better be able to rise to the challenge of what they're presenting; finding the spectrum way ahead is critical to our nation."  Already, Sherman said, the DOD has had success in sharing spectrum with industry and doing it in a way that balances the Nation's defense and the needs of industry. "Most recently, there was 'America's Mid-Band Initiative Team,' or AMBIT, making available spectrum to industry between the 3.45 to 3.55 [GHz] part of the spectrum, which raised in an auction last fall, $21 billion," he said. "That took a lot of work and a sprint by our collective team at DOD and working with the interagency to make that happen." In August 2022, AMBIT identified a segment of spectrum from 3450-3550 MHz as available for sharing. Coupled with already available spectrum from 3550-3980 MHz, the effort created a contiguous 530 MHz band for use by the U.S. technology sector. The DOD was also part of establishing the sharing framework in the Citizens Band Radio Service, or CBRS, in the 3550-3650 MHz band.  Today, Sherman said, the DOD is working with partners, including NTIA, on finding ways to share the 3100-3450 MHz portion of the spectrum. The effort is called Emerging Mid-Band Radar Spectrum Sharing, or EMBRSS. The effort, he said, is built on the successes and lessons learned from other spectrum-sharing activities.  As part of EMBRSS, Sherman said, it's critical that DOD share, rather than give up entirely, access to the 3100-3450 MHz portion of the spectrum, considering the use of that spectrum by critical U.S. military radar systems.  "We have many radars ... land, air and sea-based, that are critical for our service members to train on before they deploy into harm's way overseas, and also to protect our homeland, day in and day out, both against threats such as Russian 'Bear' bombers flying off our coastline, to emerging threats from our pacing challenge that can reach out and touch our homeland in a conflict situation, as well as border security and other very important missions," Sherman said. "As I said during my confirmation hearing last fall, sharing of the spectrum space must be our watchword."  Vacating the 3100-3450 MHz band would take decades and would cost the DOD billions of dollars, Sherman said.  "But sharing offers us a way ahead out of this and we've proven we can do this with the other initiatives I've talked about," he said. "We can make sharing work in collaboration with you all in industry and with our interagency partners."  Sherman said the DOD has already held ten meetings as part of the Partnering on Advanced and Holistic Spectrum Solution, or PATHSS, task group established last year with the National Spectrum Consortium to bring together DOD, interagency partners, industry and academia to work through how the department can do spectrum sharing in the 3100-3450 MHz spectrum band.  "This is our effort to reach out [and] hear other voices -- not just look at it through a defense prism, but try to balance all the different equities there," Sherman said.  A subset of the PATHSS task group, the PATHSS-C, he said, where the "C" is for "classified," is working at a classified level to get into the details of how DOD can share the spectrum used by military radars and still defend the nation.  "We're going to figure this out together," Sherman told industry attendees at the symposium. "I need your help as the DOD CIO to continue to get through this. And I don't say this with hyperbole about what it would take for us to move these radars. I want us to be successful economically, but I also want to work with you to ensure we can keep this nation safe, and our women and men safe downrange wherever they have to deploy now or in the future. And that is a sacred obligation I have as DOD CIO."  DOD, Services Moving Ahead on Recommendations to Combat Sexual Assault [2022-09-22] WASHINGTON -- Last year, an independent review commission ordered by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III put forth an array of recommendations designed to stop sexual assault and harassment in the military. Today, the Defense Department is well underway in implementing those recommendations, said the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. On Capitol Hill Wednesday, Gilbert R. Cisneros Jr. told lawmakers at the House Armed Services Committee that the Defense Department now has a framework in place to track the implementation and effectiveness of its efforts and to provide regular progress reviews through senior leadership forums that includes membership from across the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the services. "The level of oversight is a significant departure from previous reforms efforts in this area, and not only are we making progress, we're building the infrastructure needed to make real, lasting change and rebuild trust with our service members," Cisneros said. One part of that infrastructure, Cisneros said, is development of a professional sexual assault and sexual harassment workforce. "At full operating capacity [it] will include over 2,000 personnel stationed around the world," he said. "The department has worked to create a targeted recruitment plan to support the services in their hiring efforts, and I established a dedicated direct hiring authority, which I signed out last week, to more quickly identify and onboard these prevention workforce professionals." The DOD is also working with the military services to professionalize the victim response workforce, Cisneros said. Professionalization of that task means the Defense Department and services would no longer need to rely on military members who may be doing that same work now as a collateral duty in addition to their regular military job. Additionally, as part of an effort to regain the trust of victims of sexual assault and harassment, that workforce will be outside the chain of command. Cisneros also told lawmakers the department will soon reach initial operating capability with its Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Training and Education Center of Excellence. "Another significant undertaking at the [Defense] Department is military justice reform, through the implementation of the Offices of Special Trial Counsel," Cisneros said. "This effort will ensure independent expertise and prosecutorial decisions and is essential to the restoring of trust and to hold perpetrators of sexual assault accountable." According to Cisneros, the Offices of Special Trial Counsel will ensure independent, specialized expertise in prosecutorial decisions for the covered offenses of sexual assault, domestic violence and related crimes. "The department has clearly heard from our service members that action and change are desperately needed, and the department is answering that call," Cisneros said. "Getting this right requires we move as expeditiously as possible to implement change, while also ensuring we do not rush to failure." Austin Pledges to 'Ease the Load' for Service Members  [2022-09-22] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department today laid out an array of efforts -- some already underway and some on the horizon -- that address the needs of married service members and their families, as well as single service members. In a memo titled "Taking Care of Our Service Members and Families," Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III outlined those efforts in greater detail, saying that taking care of people is a critical component of defending the nation. "The Department of Defense has a sacred obligation to take care of our service members and families," Austin wrote in the memo. "Doing so is a national security imperative. Our military families provide the strong foundation for our force, and we owe them our full support." As a former Army officer himself and onetime vice chief of staff of the Army, Austin said he's aware of the challenges faced by service members and their families, and he's made taking care of people a priority for his tenure as the defense secretary. "I have seen firsthand how much our military families sacrifice to keep our force strong, healthy, and ready to defend this exceptional nation," Austin said. "In the face of challenges and frustrations, our families show incredible resilience." The memo spells out efforts across four areas deemed most critical to service members and their families. These include: -- Securing affordable basic needs -- Making moves easier -- Strengthening support to families, especially for such things as child care -- Expanding military spouse employment Among service members' most basic needs are housing and food, and DOD has efforts underway to ensure service members and their families can afford those things, Austin said. "Our service members and families must be able to secure affordable basic needs," he said. "It is a matter of bedrock, financial security and a critical, individual readiness issue." Among the efforts is a review of the prospective 2023 basic allowance for housing rates to ensure they reflect the unusual fluctuations in the housing market. Additionally, in the 28 areas the DOD has identified as having a more than 20% spike in rental housing costs above BAH, the secretary has directed automatic increases in BAH. Those increases will happen automatically for the service members affected and will begin in October. Austin also wrote in the memorandum that he has directed the DOD to fully fund installations' commissaries to cut food prices for service members. As part of that effort, Austin said his goal will be to ensure that prices at commissaries achieve at least a 25% savings on grocery bills compared to what's available on the local economy. Finally, Austin said that starting in January, some eligible service members will get an additional allowance in their paycheck -- the "basic needs allowance." The supplemental allowance will be provided to those who qualify based on their gross household income. According to Jeri Busch, director of military compensation policy, the basic eligibility criteria for that allowance includes service members and their families with a gross household income below 130% of the federal poverty level. "The allowance is designed to bring them back up to that level, and so the amount will vary according to their gross household income," Busch said. Financial Aid for Moves Military families are required to move often, Austin said, and those moves disrupt both family life and the social lives and schooling of children, as well. In the memo, Austin laid out several efforts underway to ensure that required permanent changes of station, or PCS moves, don't cause financial burdens on families that may already be strapped for cash. One effort directed by the secretary is an extension of temporary lodging expenses from 10 to 14 days. The temporary lodging expense covers the cost of temporary housing for service members and their families while they look for a home at their new duty station. Also, part of the plan is to extend the temporary lodging expense coverage to up to 60 days if a service member has moved to an area that is known to have housing shortages. The secretary has also directed an increase in the dislocation allowance for service members below the paygrade of E-6. This allowance, expected to be paid a month prior to a PCS move, helps offset any out-of-pocket expenses associated with the move. Changes to both the temporary lodging expenses and the dislocation allowance are expected to happen in October. Child Care Assistance Many military families with young children require some form of child care. Unfortunately, the cost of child care is cost prohibitive for many families, and Austin said that the DOD has several initiatives underway to ensure more child care is available to military families, and that it's more affordable. "We must continue to push hard to provide even more affordable child care options for military families," Austin said. "Military child development centers have extended their hours to provide additional coverage for our service members to account for the varied schedules of military service. The department has reached out to additional high-quality, community-based child care providers who agree to provide care for military families using our fee-assistance program." To further help military families secure quality child care, Austin has directed increased investment across the department in child development program facilities and infrastructure to expand capacity. The secretary has also asked the Defense Department to standardize a minimum 50% employee discount for the first child of direct-care workers employed within the child development program so the program will attract more staff and increase child care capacity. The DOD last year kicked off a pilot program that provides fee assistance to military families with unusual work schedules. The program allows those families to have in-home child care during hours when they might not be at home, including nights or weekends. The pilot program covers full-time, in-home care for a minimum of 30 hours and a maximum of 60 hours per week. The initial implementation of the that pilot program was limited to just five locations around the United States, but Austin has directed its expansion to additional states in order to provide more options to military families. The department also plans to improve access to the Military Child Care in Your Neighborhood program as well. Spouse Employment Many military families, like most civilian families, need both partners working in order to make ends meet. Due to the number of moves a family must endure over the course of a military career, it's often a challenge for a service member's civilian partner to find sustained, meaningful employment. Part of Austin's commitment to taking care of people involves ensuring that military spouses can find meaningful, sustained work so they can contribute to the well-being of the family. "Military spouses provide the strong foundation upon which their loved ones in uniform stand -- and our communities and our nation rely on their resilience," Austin said. "We owe them our energetic, unwavering support." To support the efforts of military spouses to find and maintain employment, the DOD has several initiatives underway, including acceleration of the development of seven additional interstate compacts on occupational licenses in multiple professions. That effort will ease the burden on military spouses who struggle finding work because licenses required for their jobs don't transfer when they move from one state to another. Before a spouse could start looking for work in new duty location, for instance, he or she might need to apply for -- and possibly pay for -- a new license in a different state. Spouses are unable to work while they wait to obtain sometimes-costly new licenses or credentials. Austin also directed the DOD to increase the use of noncompetitive, direct-hiring authorities and expand remote-work and telework options. He also ordered the DOD to launch a new pilot initiative in January to provide military spouses with paid private-sector fellowships in a variety of career paths. Finally, Austin has directed the number of partners in the Military Spouse Employment Partnership program to increase by 10% before the beginning of 2023. Currently, more than 540 government organizations, nonprofits and private sector companies have made a commitment to the DOD to recruit, hire, promote and retain military spouses as part of the MSEP program. In October, the program expects to add an additional 70 partners. "These actions reflect the department's sacred obligation to honor and support our service members and families," Austin said. "We remain profoundly committed to doing right by our military families, just as our military families remain profoundly committed to their loved ones and to the nation that they all do so much to defend." DOD Readies in Florida for Hurricane Ian [2022-09-27] WASHINGTON -- With Hurricane Ian expected to hit Florida tomorrow, the National Guard troops in the state stand ready to be called into service, the Pentagon press secretary said during an afternoon briefing. Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said the Florida National Guard has more than 3,200 troops called on to state active duty and an additional 1,800 are standing by to be called upon, if needed. "Florida has pre-positioned Guard soldiers, airmen and equipment at bases and armories around the state in preparation for deploying them to areas impacted by the storm," Ryder said. "These Guardsmen will provide route-clearing [and] search and rescue teams to support flood control and security." Ryder also said aviation assets, such as helicopters, are on standby if needed, and that neighboring states are prepared to make 2,000 of their own Guard troops available. The department has also identified Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, as well as Moody Air Force Base, Warner-Robins Air Force Base and Marine Corps Logistics Base--Albany -- all in Georgia -- as both incident support bases and federal staging areas, Ryder said. In those roles, they will provide logistics support to disaster areas, if needed. The headquarters for both U.S. Special Operations Command and U.S. Central Command are located in Tampa, Florida, near where Hurricane Ian is expected to make landfall, but Ryder said that's unlikely to have an effect on operations for either command. "Hurricanes hitting the state of Florida are not new," Ryder said. "There are very comprehensive contingency plans that are put together to address these types of eventualities to ensure that there's 24/7 connectivity and command and control capability. The bottom line is neither of those commands will miss a beat regardless of whether the storm hits in the Tampa area or not." No Evidence of Russian Nuclear Advancement Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin's comments about the lengths to which Russia would go to achieve its goals led some to believe he had threatened the use of tactical nuclear weapons. But, as of yet, the Defense Department hasn't seen any change in Russia's nuclear posture, Ryder said. "We obviously take these threats seriously, but, at this stage, we've not seen anything that would cause us to adjust our own nuclear posture at this time," Ryder said. "And as we've said previously, our focus continues to remain on supporting Ukraine in their fight and working closely with our allies and partners in terms of Russian force posture." In the Donbass region of Ukraine, Ryder said, the Russians are making only small gains in their effort to take territory there -- "hundreds of meters" in some cases, while the Ukrainians have been largely effective in defending their territory. "[It's] nothing that I would consider significant," he said. "The Ukrainians have, so far, done a good job of holding the line there and repulsing those offensive operations." In both northern and southern Ukraine, the general said, the Russians are mostly on the defense. "The Ukrainians continue to make deliberate movement forward," he said. Latest U.S. Support for Ukraine Targets Long-Term Security Investment [2022-09-28] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department today announced an additional $1.1 billion in aid to Ukraine that is part of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. An array of important warfighting equipment is included in the package, but one portion is aimed at supporting Ukraine's defense needs long-term, a senior defense official said during a background briefing today. The latest USAI package includes 18 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, along with associated ammunition. Being part of USAI, the United States will purchase those systems from the manufacturer in order to provide them to Ukraine, rather than pull them directly from U.S. military inventory, as has been done previously with the 16 HIMARS sent to Ukraine under presidential drawdown authority. It may take a while for the latest HIMARS promised to Ukraine to arrive, the senior defense official said. "The procurement and delivery of these HIMARS systems and associated ammunition will take a few years," the official said. "Today's announcement is only the beginning of a procurement process." While the long-term purchase of newly manufactured HIMARS for Ukraine doesn't preclude the U.S. from continuing to pull existing systems from inventory if need be, it does serve a larger purpose to have those systems on contract and in the pipeline for delivery at a later date, the official said. "If we don't invest today to procure HIMARS for the future, they won't be there when the Ukrainian armed forces need them down the road," the official said. "This is a really sizable investment and it's intended so that down the road, Ukraine will have what it needs for the long-haul to deter future threats. It in no way rules out us continuing to invest in their current force with capabilities that are available today, and that we can draw down today from U.S. stocks." Planning now for Ukraine's future defense needs, post conflict, is not a new concept. In April, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III hosted the first of what has been an ongoing series of meetings by the Ukraine Defense Contact Group. The first meeting was held in Germany. Back then, the secretary alluded to the need to not only provide for Ukraine's immediate needs, but also for its future defense needs. "Ukraine needs our help to win today," the secretary said at the time. "And they will still need our help when the war is over." The senior defense official pointed out that in addition to the 16 HIMARS systems that the U.S. has already provided to Ukraine, allies have provided Ukraine with another 10-equivalent multiple-launch rocket systems. The official said the Ukrainians have used these systems to great effect. "We've all seen how Ukraine has leveraged this system to push back against Russia's war of aggression, disrupting ammunition depots, supply lines and logistical hubs far behind the frontlines," the official said. Also included in the latest USAI package are 150 Humvees, 150 tactical vehicles, explosive ordnance disposal equipment, body armor and an array of tactical secure communications systems, surveillance systems and optics. The official also said the package includes 20 multi-mission radars that can track airborne objects and threats, including mortar and artillery fire, along with enemy unmanned aerial systems. "As with every package, we provide funding for training, for maintenance and sustainment of this equipment," the official said. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the U.S. has provided approximately $16.2 billion in aid to Ukraine, both as part of presidential drawdown authority and USAI. The Russians have also recently announced that they plan to pull up some 300,000 conscripts from Russian society to send into the fight in Ukraine. The reaction among the Russian population has not been positive to the announcement. A senior military official said it's not the first time the Russian's have done something similar, and that dipping into the civilian population to find new warfighters demonstrates the challenges they are facing in meeting their goals with the military they have in place already. "They've mobilized twice before this, one was in 1914 and one was in 1941," the senior military official said. "If you think about the consequences that they kind of feel that they're in right now and you compare that to World War I and World War II, that certainly says a lot about what the Ukrainians have been able to do ... to the Russian army." That same senior military official said there might be challenges with outfitting so many civilians for military service so quickly, and said that many of the military personnel who would need to train those new conscripts are unavailable now because they are already in Ukraine. The official reported having seen one open-source report online that said conscripts might have seen as little as one day of training before being shipped off to Ukraine to enter the fight. "I just think about the level of training that we put in our own armed forces and know that that's ... pretty inadequate," the official said. More Can Be Done to Bring Hispanic Americans Into DOD, Defense Official Says [2022-09-30] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department provides broad opportunities for service members and civilians alike, but more can be done to increase the diversity of those holding DOD positions, including Hispanic citizens, said the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness.  "The department offers a variety of career opportunities in and out of uniform that span from astronomy, to nuclear science, to human resources and education -- not to mention the vast array of opportunities in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, which are in great demand," Gilbert Cisneros said at the 19th National LATINA Symposium's Distinguished Military Service Awards.  Cisneros also serves as the DOD's chief diversity officer, and he told the audience that he wants future generations of young people to see the Defense Department as a model employer and want to serve their country in uniform or as DOD civilian employees. But he also said the department must do more to increase the diversity of those who choose to serve in either capacity.  While Hispanics are well represented in the enlisted force, the same can't be said across the board, he said.  "We still need more improvement in Hispanic representation in our officer corps and especially in our general and flag officers," he said. Within the civilian workforce, he said, there is also a discrepancy in Hispanic representation.  "While the DOD has made progress in increasing the presence of Hispanics in the Department of Defense military and civilian ranks, there is still much work to be accomplished. This is where I need your help," Cisneros said, calling on Hispanic symposium attendees to represent military service in their communities.  "To each of you in this room, as an influencer in your community, I call upon you to help increase awareness for what the Department of Defense has to offer by sharing with young people the value of public service, particularly service to our country, either in the military ranks or as a civilian servant," Cisneros said. "DOD will do its part to build more inclusive cultures and communities that work together to influence constructive change."  Charmane S. Johnson, who serves as DOD's director of policy for special emphasis programs, touted the size of the U.S. military and the significance of its mission.  "For those who are not aware, DOD is the biggest employer in the United States with a total force population of approximately 2.5 million military service members and over 900,000 civilians," she said. "We are also the largest government agency, we own the most land, and we are the biggest part of the president's budget. And, not to mention, we have the best mission in the world -- at least in my opinion -- because we get to solve problems no one else can, and that makes DOD a pretty exciting place to work."  For DOD to maintain the successes it already has, Johnson said, it needs something else: diversity.  "We need talent from every community in America to help us get the job done," she said.  At the symposium's awards ceremony, about two dozen Hispanic women from all branches of the military, both uniformed and civilian, were recognized for service to the Defense Department. Johnson asked all those in attendance to look to those women to see how diversity is helping the DOD accomplish its mission.  "As we learn more about their accomplishments, I hope you will also take note of the vast opportunities to grow and excel in DOD, whether in uniform or as a civil servant," Johnson said. "As we celebrate this great heritage month for many years to come, we hope to tell even more successful stories, like how women, especially women of color, many in this room, how they will be seated at the table and represented in senior ranks at the same rate as their male counterparts."  Johnson said DOD recognizes the importance of diversity, including Hispanic women, to its mission, and failure to recognize that will be detrimental to its mission.  "DOD will continue to play a role in advancing equity in Hispanic communities because we understand that readiness requires people, and, when talent is marginalized, organizations lose," she said.  The 19th National LATINA Symposium Distinguished Military Service Awards event was held during National Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs Sept. 15 through Oct. 15.  Senior Military Official Says Russia in 'Defensive Crouch' in Kherson [2022-10-03] WASHINGTON -- As fighting continues in Ukraine, the Ukrainian military's counter-offensive operations in the south of their country have Russian forces in a "defensive crouch" said a senior military official during a background briefing today at the Pentagon. "Down in the Kherson region where Ukraine is conducting their counter-offensive ... the Russians essentially are in a defensive crouch. They are fighting, obviously. But they're in a defensive crouch, as opposed to further north up near Bakhmut where it's more offensive in nature." In the north of Ukraine, the official said, Ukrainian forces have entered the city of Lyman and now control the city, following Russia having ceded that territory. "It's our assessment that many of these Russian forces have moved back towards Kreminna, just east of Lyman, and are likely prioritizing that location to hold the line and rebuff further Ukrainian advances," the official said. "We believe Lyman was being employed by Russian forces as a logistics hub, so its liberation by Ukraine is a significant operational accomplishment." The official said the loss of Lyman poses logistical challenges for the Russians. "It impacts the ability to resupply forces along the forward line of troops," the official said. "Anytime that you remove any type of C2 hub like that, it's going to impact your ability to respond quickly. It's going to impact your ability to essentially drive the pace of the operations." The same official said Russians continue to fire artillery into the area around Kupiansk, but that the Ukrainians continue to defend the area, and that in Bakhmut, heavy fighting continues as Russian forces have tried to push west. "No significant shifts on the ground have occurred as Ukrainian forces continue to hold the line there," the official said. Near Kherson, over the weekend Ukrainian forces were also able to liberate two villages, including Arkhanhelske and Myrolyubivka, both near the Dnieper river, the official added. The Russians have said they aim to conscript some 300,000 new soldiers to augment troops already in Ukraine, but so far, the official said, the Defense Department has seen few of those new troops in Ukraine, though eventually they will have to make an appearance. "We know that they're looking to mobilize upwards of 300,000 troops and that, you know, as that mobilization continues, we would fully expect that some of those troops eventually will be assigned to locations inside Ukraine," the official said. "[But] broadly speaking, we've seen relatively small numbers at this stage. In other words, we're not talking about brigade-sized forces coming into Ukraine. We're seeing ... some replacement forces coming in to assist as ... they are attrited and as they've [fallen] back to try to shore up some of the defensive lines. But nothing large-scale at this stage of the game." The official said the department does expect those new troops will appear on the battlefield at some point in the future, however. HIMARS, Excalibur Rounds Headed for Ukraine in $625 Million Security Assistance Package [2022-10-04] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department today announced an additional $625 million in security assistance headed to Ukraine as part of the 22nd round of presidential drawdown authority. The equipment in the new package is specifically tailored to what Ukraine needs in the short term, and Ukraine continues to use what has been provided by the United States to great effect, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia said. "Ukraine has demonstrated the ability to use these capabilities to degrade Russian logistics and command and control, creating opportunities for Ukraine to maneuver and to advance," said Laura Cooper. "This has created, as [Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III] said recently, a change in battlefield dynamics." Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed "accession treaties" illegally claiming that the Ukrainian territories of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia are now part of Russia. However, Ukrainian efforts on the ground, using equipment provided by both the U.S. and allies, demonstrate a different reality, Cooper said. "The Ukrainian armed forces continue to reclaim territory and to consolidate their gains," Cooper said. "The liberation of Lyman was a significant operational accomplishment, and Ukrainian forces continued to make deliberate progress in the Kharkiv region, and also further south around Kherson. [The] Ukrainian counter-offensive in Kherson has made significant advances over the last 24 hours, and Ukrainian forces continue to liberate villages as they press forward." Included in the latest package are four High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, also called HIMARS, and associated munitions; 16 M777 155 mm Howitzers; 75,000 artillery rounds for the Howitzers, as well as 500 M982 Excalibur precision-guided rounds; 1,000 155 mm rounds of remote anti-armor mine systems; 16 105 mm Howitzers; 30,000 120 mm mortar rounds; 200 MaxxPro mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPs; 200,000 rounds of small arms ammunition; obstacle emplacement equipment and Claymore anti-personnel munitions. The entire package, said Cooper, was developed in conjunction with the Ukrainians, based on what they need. "These are capabilities that the Ukrainians have received previously, and have requested additional capabilities," Cooper said. "And it also responds to, in terms of ... the volume of ammunition that they need on the battlefield today. We're looking very closely at their consumption rates for ammunition to make sure that they have what they need for the counter-offensive." Warfighting materiel provided under presidential drawdown authority, or PDA, is pulled directly from U.S. military stocks. The U.S. has also provided support to Ukraine through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. Under USAI, the U.S. purchases materiel directly from defense contractors, and that material must be manufactured first before being sent overseas. The U.S. has committed more than $16.8 billion to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia's February 24, 2022 invasion, and Cooper said more will come. "The United States will continue to provide Ukraine with the weapons and equipment to meet its urgent needs on the battlefield, while also building Ukraine's enduring strength to defend its sovereignty over the long term," Cooper said. "The United States will continue to consult closely with Ukraine to meet its evolving battlefield requirements, in coordination with our allies and partners, to provide Ukraine with the capabilities it needs." North Korean Missile Launch Last night, said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea conducted a ballistic missile launch which flew over Japan. "The United States condemns these actions and calls on the DPRK to refrain from further unlawful and destabilizing acts," Ryder said. In response to that missile launch, Ryder said the United States conducted two bilateral exercises, one with Japan and one with the Republic of Korea. With Japan, he said, U.S. Marine Corps fighter aircraft partnered with Japan Air Self-Defense Force fighter aircraft in an exercise over the Sea of Japan. U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and Republic of Korea personnel also conducted a bilateral exercise over the West Sea. "These engagements were taken to showcase combined deterrent and dynamic strike capabilities, while demonstrating the interoperability our nations share," Ryder said. Ryder said that today, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III spoke with his Japanese and Korean counterparts to discuss the threats posed by North Korea and reaffirm the U.S. commitment to the defense of Japan and the Republic of Korea. Defense Official Says Multiyear Appropriations May Help Recruiting [2022-10-13] WASHINGTON -- In fiscal year 2022, only the Marine Corps met its recruiting goals, said Stephanie Miller, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for military personnel policy. She said she expects it to be equally tough to convince young people to serve in FY 2023. Miller participated in a panel discussion Wednesday at the Association of the United States Army's annual meeting and exposition. She and others discussed the challenges of recruiting. "[The] Army is not the only service that's facing this challenge -- it's all the services," she said. "For those of us that really work these problems every day, we'll say that fiscal year '23 is looking just as challenging, if not more, than '22. All the services are headed into this recruiting year with probably some of the most shallow [delayed entry program] pools that they've ever had. And the market dynamics have not significantly changed. And one of the biggest challenges we have is just that propensity to serve." Young Americans, Miller said, are driven by a passion for purpose, relationships and a clear path to success. Military service provides all of those things, she said, but the department and services might not be clearly communicating that. In many cases, she said, the potential recruits simply don't know that the military can give them what they are looking for. "It's not that they're necessarily saying no ... it's just that they don't know ... about what those opportunities are and how we can ... meet their drive for passion, for purpose, for relationships and a clear path to success," she said. The Defense Department, Miller said, is working with Congress on the authorities it has for marketing and advertising. She said existing authorities are antiquated. "We do a lot, both internally and with our strategic marketing and advertising partners, to work creatively within those authorities," she said. "But really, what we're able to do on a day-to-day basis is nowhere near what you see coming out of the more sophisticated marketing and advertising that you see particularly from ... Silicon Valley, or Chicago, or Boston, or New York. We're really a blunt force instrument in many respects." What the department looks to do and to help the services do, Miller said, is to more precisely deliver messaging to target audiences. "If you work with the generation that we're trying to recruit from or you have them in your family, you know that they are very market savvy, they're very attuned to filtering out the messages that they're not really interested in," Miller said. The department and the services, Miller said, must work harder to ensure recruitment marketing and strategies are getting in front of people. One effort underway, she said, is that the department is working with Congress to look at how existing authorities and how they might be adjusted to provide the department and services with better ways to reach target audiences. "The other thing that we're trying to do is work with [Congress] to take a look at our existing authorities for money and whether it's appropriate to still try to approach some of our appropriations as one-year appropriations or would it be better to do two-year appropriations for certain program lines aligned to the accession and recruiting side of the house," Miller said. "Because, with that, then we can actually do earlier market buys, we can get better advertising placement. It just might be better for us all around." The department is also looking for support to regain access to potential recruits within high schools and local communities, Miller said. Data have shown that there's less connection now between the military and high schools, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic because high schools were operating remotely. But another reason is that students, parents and school personnel have put a greater emphasis on going to college. "Sometimes going into an enlistment path in the military is looked upon as not having achieved the level of success that ... may have had been ... kind of drummed into them," she said. In line with that, Miler said, is that many potential recruits also have parents who are the first to graduate from college, and military service might not be seen as a viable path to success. "For them, particularly in some minority or diverse populations, they see not going on to a secondary education opportunity as not being successful," she said. "We certainly believe that going into the military, whether it's an officer path or an enlistment path, is going to drive you along the path to success that includes a lot of different education opportunities. We need to do a better job of making sure that we are explaining that -- not only to youth [but to] influencers." For Northcom, Autonomous Systems May Be Key to Homeland Defense [2022-10-13] WASHINGTON -- U.S. Northern Command is responsible for defending the U.S. homeland against threats from adversaries--and there are many such threats, said Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, who serves as commander of both Northcom and the North American Aerospace Defense Command. During U.S. operations in the Middle East, China and Russia watched how the U.S. operated and developed their own systems that put the U.S. at risk. "While we were focused on violent extremists for last 20-plus years, they were developing capabilities to hold our homeland at risk," said VanHerck, who spoke Tuesday at the Association of the United States Army's annual meeting and exposition in Washington, D.C. The general said that while both nations have developed systems to put the U.S. at risk, but he characterized Russia as the primary threat to the U.S. homeland right now. "About three to four years ago, Russia fielded the first hypersonic glide vehicle sitting on top of an ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] that's nuclear capable," he said. "It's been out there for, you know, four years operational, with the United States of America and North America in its sights." Those missiles, he said, make the U.S. northern warning system "look like a picket fence," the general said. Russian submarines, he added, particularly of the Severodvinsk class are set to become a threat, as well. "They just moved subs, their first [Severodvinsk] into the Pacific," he said. "Another [Severodvinsk] is out in the Mediterranean right now and another that's out on its way into the Atlantic. That will be a persistent, proximate threat capable of carrying a significant number of land-attack cruise missiles that can threaten our homeland." China isn't far behind Russia's ability to directly affect the U.S. homeland -- about seven to 10 years, VanHerck said. But both nations are active in the Arctic, which is an easy way to attack the U.S., and he also characterized both China and Russia as peer competitors in both space and the cyber domain. VanHerck said defending the homeland against existing threats, growing threats and future threats will mean his own command needs to do things differently. One of those changes is the speed at which sensor-to-decision maker data moves between stakeholder. "Data and information are strategic assets that we need to take advantage of now," he said. "Google, Amazon, others have figured out how to share data and information. What we need to be focusing on is making our data available, not in stovepipes, and being able to receive that data." Assignment of forces to Northcom can also be quicker and more efficient, VanHerck said. "I think there's things that we can do as a department, and I'm encouraged where we're going. The Global Force Management implementation guidance will give me some additional help with having forces that are available to me in a timely manner," he said. "What I told the secretary is one of my biggest challenges with executing my [contingency] plans and [operations] plans is access to organized, trained and equipped forces in a timely manner to operate through my AOR [area of responsibility]." Right now, he said, more than half of the Northcom area of responsibility is in the Arctic, though forces are not organized, trained or equipped to operate there. When Northcom requests forces through the "request for forces" process, VanHerck said, consideration is also given to the needs of other combatant commands, such as U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, U.S. European Command] and U.S. Strategic Command, for instance. There may be other needs that end up overriding what Northcom needs. "That adds risk in the time of crisis," he said. "I think we need forces that look vastly different than what we have today, that reduce the demand for tankers, that reduce the demand for fighters. And what I'm talking about is autonomous and unmanned systems." VanHerck said he envisioned a future where unmanned systems might be parked "off the coast" near some of the threats to the homeland, and that those same unmanned systems would have domain-awareness capabilities and might also be armed with both kinetic and non-kinetic weaponry. "Think of [position navigation timing] denial and deception or high-power microwave or laser capabilities," he said. "Now, I'm not asking for all the fighters that are competing directly with [Indo-Pacom] or [Eucom]. And I don't need all the tankers for that, if we position those in key locations around the country. The same thing can be said for autonomous air platforms that give me domain awareness, that can loiter for 18, 24 hours and beyond, that provide domain awareness, but they also provide potentially that kinetic effect or non-kinetic effect." Right now, VanHerck said his vision appears to be science fiction. But he said he thinks it would become possible in less than a decade. "Those are things that we need to be thinking about." Defense Innovation Board Holds Inaugural Meeting at Pentagon [2022-10-18] WASHINGTON -- A new roster of members of the Defense Innovation Board met Monday at the Pentagon for the first time. Michael Bloomberg is the board's chair. The DIB was established in 2016 and provides Defense Department leadership with advice and recommendations on innovative ways to address departmental challenges with a focus on people and culture, technology and capabilities, and practices and operations. The board held closed sessions early in the day when they met with Pentagon leadership to discuss Defense Department priorities and challenges, including investment capital and the department's National Defense Science and Technology Strategy. In the afternoon, the board held a public session to introduce new members. "I know I speak for all my fellow board members when ... I say we're honored to have been asked to serve at such a critical time," Bloomberg said. "The U.S. Department of Defense has built the greatest military force in the world, and it's always incredibly impressive to hear from Secretary Austin and his senior team -- as we've done throughout the day today. There's certainly no shortage of challenges and opportunities facing them right now ... adaptability and innovation have become increasingly critical to the Pentagon, and to American security and leadership around the world." With increasing challenges for the United States and the U.S. military, Bloomberg said partnerships with the U.S. private sector are more critical now than ever before. "America's private sector leads in global R&D ... and the private sector has a vital role to play in expanding our nation's capabilities," Bloomberg said. "That requires not just new ideas, but also new partnerships that can better connect businesses, government and academia." Helping to identify those partnerships, and to make those partnerships happen, Bloomberg said, is one of the primary roles of the DIB. "Put simply, we are not doing our jobs here if we are not ... drawing on the strengths of the private sector and helping service members do their jobs across the globe," Bloomberg said. "The DIB was established to help spur innovation across the department and bridge the public and private sectors," Bloomberg said. "Over the years the board has been successful in bringing new ideas forward, including on talent and culture, digital transformation, software acquisition, and artificial intelligence. It's also adopted principles and best practices from business to help the department run more smoothly. There is much more that we can do -- and I'm looking forward to the challenge." In addition to Bloomberg, the DIB includes seven new members from across industry, government and academia. New Defense Innovation Board Members -- Gilda Barabino, president at Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering -- Susan Gordon, a member of the boards of directors at CACI International, Avantus Federal, MITRE, and BlackSky -- Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, co-founder of Inflection AI, and partner at Greylock -- Navy Adm. (ret.) Michael G. Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former chief of naval operations -- William Roper Jr., distinguished professor at Georgia Tech, senior advisor at McKinsey and Company and former assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology, and logistics -- Ryan Swann, chief data analytics officer at Vanguard -- William "Mac" Thornberry, former chairman of the Armed Services Committee and member of the board of directors at CAE USA U.S. Can Support Ukraine While Meeting Its Own Security Commitments [2022-10-18] WASHINGTON -- On Friday, the Pentagon announced the latest security assistance package for Ukraine. It's worth around $725 million and contains additional munitions for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System along with ammunition for other systems, as well. While the U.S. military has provided a substantial amount of material from its own inventory to Ukraine, Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said the Defense Department is always cognizant of its other security commitments and is ensuring it maintains what is needed to support those commitments. "There is a very detailed process ... as we look at our security assistance to Ukraine, we weigh it against a lot of various factors to include our own readiness," said Ryder. "This is something that we constantly take into account." Last month, for instance, William A. LaPlante, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, chaired the first meeting of national armaments directors from member nations in the Ukraine Defense Contact Group to discuss the status of the defense industrial base and look at opportunities to increase production of capabilities critical to Ukraine's long-term defense. Ryder said that type of meeting is part of an effort to ensure that the U.S. and partner nations continue to be able to support Ukraine while maintaining their own defense and keeping true to other commitments around the world. "The key point here is that the United States, the international community, our allies and our partners are all working together as an international community to make sure that we can continue to meet our security commitments while at the same time supporting Ukraine -- and that we're doing this together," Ryder said. "At the end of the day, the United States military is going to be ready. We're going to ensure that we're ready to meet our security commitments around the world." The latest assistance package includes, among other things, ammunition for the HIMARS system; 23,000 155 mm artillery rounds; 500 precision-guided, 155 mm artillery rounds; 5,000 155 mm rounds of remote anti-armor mine systems; 5,000 antitank weapons, high-speed anti-radiation missiles; and more than 200 Humvee vehicles. As winter approaches, the weather will begin to affect fighting in Ukraine. Ryder said questions about how Ukrainian soldiers can be equipped for that fight are being addressed within the Ukraine Defense Contact Group and in discussions with Ukraine. "Winter definitely will present some challenges to all parties on the battlefield," Ryder said. "I think that when you look at things like ... rain, snow, mud [and] the impact that it has on the terrain, it definitely will add another level of complexity to an already very dynamic battlefield. This is why ... you see us continuing to work very closely with Ukraine, with our international partners and allies to identify what Ukraine's needs are." Ryder also told reporters that Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III met today with British counterpart Ben Wallace. The two discussed support to Ukraine and the importance of cooperation between the two nations as it relates to Russia's invasion in Ukraine. Department Recognizes 28 Civilian, Military Personnel for Enabling Disability Inclusion [2022-10-20] WASHINGTON -- An array of problem-solvers, leaders and exceptional performers were today recognized by the Defense Department as part of the 42nd Annual DOD Disability Awards. "Today, we celebrate the core element of our unmatched strength as a military and Department of Defense -- our people," said Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks. "Maintaining that strength requires tapping into every reservoir of talents and skills that America has to offer. That includes people with disabilities -- who bring so much to this department through their talents, skills, education and motivation to serve." This year's awards ceremony, held virtually online, recognized four departmental components and 28 civilian and military personnel. Among those are engineers, analysts, instructors, machinists, IT specialists, human resources managers and software developers, Hicks said. "In nominating them for these awards, many of their leaders described them as out-of-the-box thinkers, innovative problem-solvers, natural leaders and exceptional performers -- exactly the kinds of qualities we need to win the competition for the 21st century," Hicks said. The deputy secretary said efforts such as the Wounded Warrior program, Operation Warfighter, and the Workforce Recruitment Program allow the department to continue bring in the right kind of talent, and to benefit from the skills and patriotism of all Americans, including those with disabilities. "These programs have been instrumental in increasing the number of people with disabilities who are serving their country, in a wide range of critical jobs throughout the department," she said. The efforts of the individuals and military components recognized, Hicks said, are completely in line with the goals set by leadership at the highest levels of the Defense Department. [Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III] and I are committed to making sure DOD draws from all of America's many and diverse strengths -- and that in so doing, we also reflect the nation we're sworn to defend," she said. "Their work has also been exemplary -- implementing model programs, policies and practices that we encourage other components to adopt and expand, so that every part of our department benefits from the unique talents and skills that people with disabilities bring to the table." 42nd Annual DOD Disability Awards Individual Recipients: -- Air Force Staff Sgt. Lewis C. Drake, a security control supervisor at Kirkland Air Force Base, New Mexico -- Air Force civilian Beau Robert Chastain, an explosive ordnance disposal instructor at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas -- Navy civilian George I. Moore, an operations analyst with Strategic Systems Programs Navy civilian Allen R. Naugle, a facilities engineer and strategic planner at the Naval Surface Warfare Center - Crane Division, Crane, Indiana -- Navy civilian Steven R. Sabol, chief audit director with the assistant secretary of the Navy's energy, installations, and environment office -- Navy civilian Dayne K. Seminara, a machinist with Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command, Hawaii -- Navy civilian Antoinette L. Teixeira, and information technology specialist with Naval Information Warfare Center -- Pacific -- Navy civilian Wendy S. Brooks, acting corporate business office division head with Naval Sea Systems Command -- Navy civilian Christopher J. Caltrider, a management and program analyst with Naval Supply Systems Command Weapon Systems Support -- Navy civilian Mario Cardoza, a systems engineer with Naval Sea Systems Command -- Navy civilian Steven L. Elliott, the medical supply director for Naval Special Warfare Group One -- Marine Corps civilian Jose R. Inoa-Jovine, an information technology specialist with United States Marine Corps Training and Education Command -- Navy civilian Doreen M. Laub, a training Manager with Naval Supply Systems Command -- Army Sgt. 1st Class Robert Brown -- Army civilian Norvel C. Turner, safety and occupational health manager with U.S. Army Central Command -- Army civilian Robert C. Bender, a live training systems program specialist with U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command -- Army civilian Kenlyn W. Evelyn, a human resource specialist and Functional Area 40 force manager with U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command -- Army civilian Diana Guevara, an accounting technician with the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York -- Army civilian April S. Pellegrino, an administrative specialist and operations officer with U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command -- Defense Commissary Agency civilian Rachel Blanchard -- Defense Logistics Agency civilian Steven Chu, a management and program analyst with the Defense Logistics Agency -- Defense Finance Accounting Service civilian Amy Umhoefer, the lead accountant for departmental reporting within the accounting operations directorate at DFAS --Indianapolis -- Defense Contract Management Agency civilian Teresa Szawlowski, the contract administrator for DCMA Chicago -- DOD Education Activity civilian Rene Samreth, the lead licensing analyst for the DoDEA Americas Southeast District -- Army and Air Force Exchange Service civilian Freddie K. Sheldon, a customer experience associate at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri -- Defense Contract Audit Agency civilian Cristy Campbell -- Washington Headquarters Services civilian Catherine L. Russo, lead American Sign Language interpreter -- Washington Headquarters Services civilian Channelle M. Heth, a human resources specialist at WHS 42nd Annual DOD Disability Awards Component Recipients: -- The Department of the Air Force is recognized with the Secretary of Defense Award for the Best Military Department for Achievement in Advancing Employment Opportunities for Individuals with Disabilities. -- The Defense Logistics Agency is recognized with the Secretary of Defense Award for Best Mid-Sized Component for Achievements in Advancing Employment Opportunities for Individuals with disabilities. -- The National Security Agency is recognized with the Secretary of Defense Award for Best Intelligence Component Award. -- The Department of Defense Office of Inspector General is recognized with the Secretary of Defense Award for Best Small-Sized Component for Achievements in Advancing Employment Opportunities for Individuals with Disabilities. U.S. Space Command to Transfer Space Object Tracking to Department of Commerce [2022-10-21] WASHINGTON -- Right now, U.S. Space Command tracks more than 47,000 objects in space. But there are plans to transfer that responsibility to the Department of Commerce, an effort that will allow Spacecom to focus more on what's happening in space rather than just on the tracking of objects there, the Spacecom commander said. "My current priority is to invest in space domain awareness. To ... gain a better understanding of the activities in space," Army Gen. James H. Dickinson said. "Our challenges center on ensuring the warfighter has relevant and timely data to execute missions in a very complex and changing environment." Dickinson outlined priorities for his command and how industry might contribute to supporting them during a Thursday conference hosted in Los Angeles by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association. "Operationally our allies and partners are increasing their investments in [space domain awareness], offering enhanced capabilities that can augment U.S. Space Command's globally-distributed sensor network," Dickinson said. "We must find innovative ways to create an integrated sensor network on a global scale. Through an integrated network we can build knowledge of the environment. Through knowledge, we know we can gain better wisdom." Space superiority, Dickinson said, means warfighters are getting the right data, in a timely manner, to allow them to make the decisions they need to make. "Our sensor network must better enable battle management of increasingly dynamic and changing environments," he said. What Spacecom is looking for, Dickinson told industry members, are new, state-of-the-art technologies not dependent on limited, onboard consumables. "Next-generation spacecraft require renewables and resupply to extend their lifespan and assure they are available for many, many years," he said. "This is where our partnership with industry converges. Given our pacing challenge and expansion of dynamic space operations, we need to leverage commercial capabilities that are available today or maybe tomorrow." The general said Spacecom is looking for "existing viable capabilities that are good enough," and pointed to systems such as the Army's Gunsmoke-J satellite program as an example. "We are filling space domain awareness capacity gaps with missile warning and defense sensors such as the Army/Navy's TYPY2, and the Navy's Aegis BMD ships," he said. "I encourage aerospace companies to become partners with U.S. Space Command in our mission ... by joining the Commercial Integration Cell and/or the Commercial Operations Cell." Spacecom's commercial integration strategy, Dickinson said, is meant to set priorities and synchronize industry integration to mitigate capability gaps, but that it's not an acquisition strategy. "Commercial mission partners can formalize their provision of space capabilities through cooperative research and development agreements with our functional and service component commands," he said. "We pursue the objectives of commercial integration because we know that industry contributes greatly to our ability to protect and defend the United States, our allies and our partners. Our mission success is dependent on the partnerships and relationships that we build with all of you." Dickinson said Spacecom needs a comprehensive and diverse space domain awareness network capable which is capable of supporting dynamic space operations, and that industry will be key in making that happen. "As America has always done, we must harness the best and the brightest to address our most significant operational challenges," he said. "Military cooperation with the commercial sector is essential to our national defense. Industry is a solution provider and force multiplier, which expands the military's warfighting capabilities. U.S. Spacecom will not go it alone in our commitment to ensure, along with all of you, that there is never a day without space." More Partners Sign on to Hire Military Spouses [2022-10-25] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department today signed up an additional 70 government organizations, nonprofits and private sector companies to participate in its Military Spouse Employment Partnership program. With the new additions, there are now more than 600 such organizations committed to recruiting, hiring, promoting and retaining military spouses. Gilbert R. Cisneros Jr., the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, welcomed the new companies into the partnership during an induction ceremony at the three-day MSEP Engage 2022 event in Northern Virginia. "I want to welcome and congratulate and thank the more than 70 new employer partners who have joined the Military Spouse Employment Partnership here today," Cisneros said. "Today we're celebrating your commitment and induction, and this marks the culmination of a robust vetting process, all of which clearly demonstrated that you, the class of 2023, are truly committed." Since the MSEP program began in 2011, the program's partnering efforts have helped connect more than 250,000 military spouses to employment opportunities across all industry sectors, Cisneros said. "You've joined an elite group that opens you to the military spouse community and the diverse skills and talents that they offer," he said. "With these latest inductions we're up to more than 600 total MSEP partners since we started this program back in 2011." Additionally, more than 40,000 military spouses were reported as hired by MSEP partners since last October, Cisneros said. "[That's] our largest hiring level ever," Cisneros said. "This is a testament to all of you, our enduring and new MSEP partners, and I can't wait to see those numbers in 2023." This week during the annual MSEP Engage 2022 event, new and long-time MSEP partners meet for orientation sessions where they discuss how new partners can engage with the military spouse community. During the second day of the event, partners engage in networking and breakout sessions to focus on areas such as recruiting military spouses, understanding the challenges that military spouses face, and making companies more friendly to military spouses. This year's event also features, for the first time, a third day where MSEP partners will meet with military spouses seeking employment. Military families, like most civilian families, need both partners working in order to make ends meet. Because of the number of moves a family must endure over the course of a military career, it's often a challenge for a service member's civilian partner to find sustained, meaningful employment, said Patricia M. Barron, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for military community and family policy. "Our unemployment rate kind of hovers around 21%, which is far above the civilian rate, as many of you know." As a military spouse herself, Barron said with each military move she made, she had to rely on her own creativity and resilience, along with the generosity of those she found work with. "I do owe my employers so much because of their ability to support me and be flexible with my needs," she said. "Partners, please know you make spouses feel very special. You give them a sense of relief, but more importantly, you give them a sense of self ... I encourage you to go explore, get creative, get to know the military spouses that you hire, because you'll be very, very glad that you did." Programs like MSEP support the goals of Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III to better support taking care of people across the force. "Military spouses provide the strong foundation upon which their loved ones in uniform stand -- and our communities and our nation rely on their resilience," Austin wrote last month in a memorandum to the force. "We owe them our energetic, unwavering support."  Next week, more than 30 new employer partners will become part of a new initiative called "MSEP Small Business," said Eddy Mentzer, the associate director of military community support programs. Mentzer also said that in January, the department will put the first military spouse fellows into the DOD's new Military Spouse Career Accelerator Program. "Military spouses will be placed into 12-week fellowships where they will gain valuable skills while being compensated with the goal of full-time employment at the end of their experience," Mentzer said. DOD Releases National Defense Strategy, Missile Defense, Nuclear Posture Reviews [2022-10-27] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department today for the first time released the public versions of three strategic documents -- the National Defense Strategy, the Nuclear Posture Review and the Missile Defense Review -- together after having developed both the classified and unclassified versions of all three in conjunction with one another. Producing the documents together, said Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, ensured tight linkages between DOD strategy and resources. "By weaving these documents together, we help ensure that the entire department is moving forward together, matching our resources to our goals," Austin said. "The strength and combat credibility of the joint force remains central to integrated deterrence." The 2022 National Defense Strategy, or NDS, places a primary focus on the need to sustain and strengthen U.S. deterrence against China. It also advances a focus on collaboration with a growing network of U.S. allies and partners on shared objectives. In addition to addressing both China and an increase in the importance of partnerships, the NDS also takes into account the challenges posed by Russian -- especially considering its invasion of Ukraine -- along with threats posed by North Korea, Iran and violent extremist organizations. The NDS also includes a focus on challenges to security, such as pandemics and climate change. The NDS lays out four top-level defense priorities the department must pursue. They include: 1) Defending the homeland, paced to the growing multi-domain threat posed by China 2) Deterring strategic attacks against the United States, allies, and partners 3) Deterring aggression while being prepared to prevail in conflict, when necessary; prioritizing the challenge posed by China in the Indo-Pacific region the Russia challenge in Europe 4) Building a resilient joint force and defense ecosystem The NDS provides three ways to advance those priorities, Austin said. These include integrated deterrence, campaigning, and the building of an enduring advantage. "We're seamlessly integrating our deterrence efforts to make a basic truth crystal clear to any potential foe," Austin said. "That truth is that the cost of aggression against the United States or our allies and partners far outweigh any conceivable gains." To do that, the secretary said, the department is aligning its activities and investments across all theaters, across the full spectrum of conflict, and across all domains. This includes also space and cyberspace, he said. With the U.S. nuclear capability remaining the "ultimate backstop" for strategic deterrence, the secretary said the department plans to continue modernization efforts on the nuclear triad. The fiscal 2023 budget request, for instance, includes some $34 billion to sustain and modernize nuclear forces, he said. The budget request also includes more than $56 billion for air- power platforms and systems, more than $40 billion to maintain U.S. dominance at sea, and nearly $13 billion to support and modernize land forces. "Integrated deterrence isn't just about steps that we take on our own," he said. "It also means working even more closely with our unparalleled network of allies and partners to deter aggression in region after region," he said. In the Indo-Pacific region, he said, that's evident with the Australia, U.K., U.S., or AUKUS agreement, and in the trilateral cooperation agreement with Japan and Korea. Across the Atlantic, he said, partnerships that support integrated deterrence efforts include NATO and the recently created Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which helps support Ukraine's self-defense goals. Campaigning, Austin said, means conducting and sequencing the military activities which over time shift the security environment in favor of the United States. "It means working to limit and disrupt malign activities by our competitors," he said. "We're building and exercising the forces that we'll need in a crisis or a conflict, including requesting $135 billion dollars in last year's budget to further invest in our readiness." To build an enduring advantage for the United States, Austin said, the department is working to further strengthen the foundations of the defense enterprise. "Innovation is central here," he said. "Last year, for instance, we established the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve, which funds different parts of the department to work together to fill critical joint warfighting gaps. And our fiscal year 2023 budget request included more than $130 billion for research, development, testing and evaluation -- that's the largest R&D budget number in DOD history." The department is also working with industry partners to strengthen supply chains within the defense industrial base, and tackling the dangers of climate change, including ensuring that the military can continue to operate in both hotter and harsher environments. "Above all, the NDS demands even deeper investments in our people," Austin said. "They will always be this department's most valuable resource and the bedrock of American security. And that's why the president's budget includes a 4.6% pay raise for service members starting January 1, 2023." The secretary announced in the Sept. 22 memorandum "Taking Care of Our Service Members and Families", departmental efforts to better take care of both service members and their families, including efforts to make it easier to secure housing, to move to new duty stations, to find childcare, and help military spouses find work. "Our outstanding service members and their families do everything that we ask of them and more," Austin said. "Doing right by them is a national security imperative, and it's a sacred trust. So, we're looking forward to working with Congress to secure on-time appropriations to finalize this year's National Defense Authorization Act, and to continue to implement this strategy." The classified versions of the NDS, NPR, and MDR were transmitted alongside the FY 2023 budget submission to Congress. The unclassified versions of the three documents are also available on DOD's website. HEART 22 Strengthens Partnerships in Central America [2022-10-31] GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala -- Last month, airmen and soldiers from Joint Task Force-Bravo, headquartered at Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras and working directly for the U.S. Southern Command, concluded an operation where they led and supported medical professionals from the U.S. military on a unique dual-nation effort to provide dental, orthopedic and vision care to hundreds of Guatemalans and Hondurans.  While JTF-B is headquartered in Honduras and regularly engages in medical operations there, the HEART 22 — which stands for Health Engagements Assistance Response Team 2022 — operation was different in at least two ways. First, HEART 22 was much larger than what JTF-B typically engages in. The event lasted longer, involved more participants, and covered two nations.  The HEART 22 operation was also unusual in that it wasn't exclusively a "humanitarian" event, but rather a partnership activity.   "Joint Task Force-Bravo is involved in a lot of medical operations in Latin America," said commander, Army Col. Phillip B. Brown Jr. "But HEART 22 was different in that it was longer, it was in two nations, it covered a lot more ground, and it involved a lot more partnering with doctors already in the region than what the JTF normally does."  Brown said a recent JTF-B surgical readiness medical mission in Belize was indicative of some of the smaller missions the task force is typically involved in.  "They were partnered alongside with Belize physicians," he said. "They were doing procedures, they were working primarily gallbladder surgeries, and hernias, and focused procedures like that. So, you have six people from JTF-B and they did about 14 procedures during that two-week period directly assisting the Belizean doctors. Clear impact to those local communities, but at a smaller scale."  The HEART 22 mission was different in scope, he said.  "They were in Honduras for approximately four weeks," he said. "You have anywhere from a medical staff underneath JTF-B from 30 to scale up to 50. So, a lot more U.S. staff involved in it. They're working in a larger-scale hospital — Hospital Escuela was one of them, which is one of the primary hospitals in Honduras. And then in Guatemala, a similar situation."  The number of procedures performed, and the number of patients seen was also greater. Between Honduras and Guatemala U.S. doctors saw about 1,000 patients, said Brown.  "That's a pretty big impact," he said. " I think for me, it's a good tie into how the Southcom [U.S. Southern Command] commander asks us to engage in the region and strengthen partnerships."  The biggest indicator of HEART 22's success, Brown said, is that requests are coming in to do it again, and that the American and Latin American doctors involved have built professional relationships they want to continue to develop. "What we want to do is essentially do more HEART missions across the region," Brown said. "When we talk to our partner nations, they want it. It's valuable to them. So, it's not the caseload. What makes HEART valuable is the cooperation and the partnership at the provider level and at the staff level."  One example of that, he said, is that he witnessed an ophthalmology procedure where an American doctor and a Guatemalan doctor were working together to heal a patient with cataracts. Both professionals were bringing their expertise to the table and sharing with one another, Brown said.  Another example, Brown said, is that during HEART 22, U.S. military providers conducted medical training classes with the medical residents — which has impact across more than just Guatemala and Honduras.  "These are medical residents, not just from Guatemala or Honduras, but also from Mexico and Nicaragua — these are areas where we definitely have partnerships across the Southcom region," said Brown. "That's another sort of outsize impact for HEART."  Medical missions like HEART 22 are about more than just providing medical care for civilians in partner nations in Central America. They're also about showing those partner nations that the United States is dedicated to the partnerships it forms, Brown said.  "I think the message that we send throughout the region is that we are the enduring partner of choice," Brown said. "From these medical missions that have a very positive impact ... [and] it's a repeatable medical mission, whether it's a large-scale HEART or some of the smaller-scale things the JTF does, it demonstrates that we're valued, that we're trusted, and that we're the enduring partner of choice throughout the region."  Brown is new to JTF-B, and, so far, he said, especially with what he's seen on HEART 22, he's been impressed with the unit he's become a part of.  "I'm extremely proud of them," he said. "As the new guy coming in, you just don't really know how your command works and who's who and who performs at what level. It's been incredibly impressive at every turn, at every detail. Every component of the HEART mission has been professionally executed. Everywhere they've gone they've represented the United States very well. They've represented the Department of Defense very well and certainly Southcom and Joint Task Force-Bravo."  The HEART 22 mission kicked off in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in mid-July and closed out in early September in Guatemala. About 50 U.S. military medical professionals and support personnel from both the Air Force and the Army participated in the operation. HEART 22 Mission Results in Healthy Teeth, Strong Partnerships [2022-10-31] GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala -- Building partnerships with local dental professionals while promoting healthy smiles was the focus of the recent HEART 22 operation, which concluded last month in Guatemala.  As part of HEART 22, which stands for Health Engagements Assistance Response Team 2022, soldiers and airmen of Joint Task Force-Bravo, Soto Cano Air Base, Honduras, led U.S. military medical professionals on a mission in Honduras and Guatemala to provide dental, orthopedic and ophthalmology services to citizens in both nations. A big part of that mission was building enduring partnerships and relationships with medical doctors already there.  About 70 miles west of Guatemala City, the capital of Guatemala, is Quetzaltenango, also called Xela. Air Force Maj. (Dr.) Rondre F. Baluyot, who's stationed at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, and Air Force Master Sgt. Julian Blyden II, who's stationed at Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi, helped relieve the burden experienced by dentists there who are overtaxed and who have limited equipment.  "What we saw here in Xela [is] they're pretty limited with the [number] of dental procedures that they can do," Baluyot said. "It's mainly extractions and no type of fillings or cleanings or anything like that. There was a limitation to the amount of work that we're able to do."  What Baluyot said he saw in Guatemala at the facility in Xela was different from what he saw in Honduras at Hospital Escuela, in the capital city Tegucigalpa.  "As far as Hospital Escuela in Honduras, they did have a [few] more procedures we were able to do there," he said. "We were able to do fillings, we were able to work with children; there were a couple of cases that I was able to do prosthetic work. And they even had orthodontics and oral surgery. At Hospital Escuela, we were able to see pediatrics to geriatrics."  What was the same in both places, he said, were the struggles with age of equipment and lack of supplies.  Blyden said the game plan for the two locations was different -- but the goal was the same -- to treat patients and create professional partnerships.  "In Honduras, we had the opportunity to come together as a team and come up with a game plan and figure out exactly how the patient loads were looking for the day," Blyden said. "We spoke with the director at the dental clinic there at Hospital Escuela and figured out exactly how many patients they were seeing that day and assisted as much as possible with them."  In Guatemala, he said, it was unknown each day how many patients would need care, as patients arrived at-will for treatment.  "The patients typically would just show up and we had to diagnose exactly what was going on, and then treat the patient," he said.  In both places, both medical professionals said they think they made a difference with the work they did.  In Guatemala, Baluyot said he was able to work together with one dentist  "The one dentist that I was able to work with we were able to share ideas," Baluyot said. "We were able to look at radiographs and ... confirm ... each [diagnosis]. And a lot of times we came up with the same thing. Even though we had a little bit of a language barrier we always had, when we concurred with a diagnosis or a treatment, it was the 'yes' and then the nice camaraderie that we actually agreed, even though there was that language barrier there."  In Guatemala, Baluyot said, the biggest contribution might have been to relieve the dentist there of the grueling patient load they often experience.  Further south, in Honduras, Blyden said he saw there had been more opportunity for U.S military dentists to partner with Honduran dentists.  "I think we have more opportunity to actually train and run different ideas against each other," Blyden said. "One of our providers, our periodontist, was able to set up a briefing and a training for a lot of the local dentists there. And he was able to provide [education about] different surgery procedures that they were able to sit in on and watch. He was able to educate them and show them the reasoning behind certain procedures and how to provide those procedures to the patients."  In all, Baluyot said U.S. military dentists saw about 350 or so patients in Guatemala and Honduras, and the work they did there as part of HEART 22 didn't just benefit the patients. It also benefited the doctors in Honduras and Guatemala and the U.S. military medical professionals, as well.  Baluyot said in Honduras, the work he did there as part of HEART 22 highlighted the training he got in the Air Force, due to the diverse array of cases he saw there -- which is a different mix than what he might see back home.  "We had a diverse [number] of cases there ranging from pediatrics to fillings, to extractions, to [prosthodontics,]" he said. "It really made me just dig back into a lot of the knowledge that we are trained for in the Air Force with my program. I think it also strengthened my passion for teaching. I had an opportunity to work with the Honduran oral surgery residents and the pre-doctoral dental students. And I think that was probably one of the highlights, so far. of just my whole dental career was working at the dental school. Being able to teach dental students from a different country, I think that just strengthened my passion for teaching others."  He said he looks forward to taking what he learned and the experience from HEART 22 and bringing it back home to teach other dentists at Minot AFB.  What the HEART 22 experience provided Blyden was a different perspective on dental care and service.  "I always knew there were different countries that are at different levels than we are," he said. "But it made me have a better appreciation for what I do, and how taking care of patients is very important. Also, even after the procedures were done, the gratitude the patients felt for us was phenomenal. Even though ... there's a language barrier, we understood how grateful they were. Compassion is a universal language."  The HEART 22 mission kicked off in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in mid-July and closed out in early September in Guatemala. About 50 U.S. military medical professionals and support personnel from both the Air Force and the Army participated in the operation. HEART 22 Mission Strengthened Bones, Relationships in Latin America [2022-10-31] GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala -- Healthy bones and muscles were just one of the goals of the recently concluded HEART 22 mission, which finished up last month in Guatemala.   The Health Engagements Assistance Response Team stood up in mid-July in Honduras.  As part of that operation, the soldiers and airmen of Joint Task Force-Bravo out of Soto Cano Air Base, Honduras, led U.S. military medical professionals on a mission in Honduras and Guatemala to provide dental, orthopedic and ophthalmology services to citizens in those nations.   Air Force Lt. Col. (Dr.) Jacob F. Riis, an orthopedic surgeon stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, was a big part of the HEART 22 mission.  "We specialize in treatment of conditions of the musculoskeletal system," he said. "It's bones, muscles, joints, tendons and ligaments. My primary focus in the military is with sports medicine, which, again, focuses primarily on the shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles."  Riis also does trauma work, which he said was the primary focus for him during HEART 22.  In Honduras and Guatemala, Riis said his role was a kind of "advise and assist" type of mission. As part of the HEART mission, he said he worked alongside national partners in both Honduras and Guatemala, including medical professionals there, as well as medical residents, on cases that might have already been scheduled.  But the difference, he said, is that in his work in the United States, the patients he'd see were past emergency care. If they'd experienced trauma, he said, his patients in the U.S. would have already been through the emergency medicine department.  "The trauma that I see has already been kind of managed at an emergency department, and then, I come along later and do the surgery, which is not an urgent procedure," he said. "[As part of HEART 22], we're in bigger hospitals. And, so, the trauma and things that we're seeing are more like what I would see in a larger hospital in the states. It's all within our purview, but it's a little bit higher-level of injury and a little bit more complicated surgery than we would do on a day-to-day basis in my outpatient clinics."  Like the ophthalmologists, Riis said his work as part of HEART 22 involved more partnering than humanitarian work.  "I would characterize it as information exchange," he said. "There are international standards for management of trauma. And all of the hospitals we worked in were aware of those standards. And so as opposed to maybe an operation where we come in and set up a tent and we bring all of that equipment and we just bring patients in and knock them out, this is more of we're working alongside them."  As part of HEART 22, Riis said he found himself being asked to weigh in on and participate in treatment of trauma patients that he knew either Honduran or Guatemalan orthopedic surgeons could handle, but that they wanted another set of eyes on.  "I've had several physicians, both in Honduras and Guatemala, ask me to help them with more complicated sport medicine cases that they certainly could do themselves, but they'd like to have somebody else who does things a little bit differently walk them through the case," he said. "Then, we get to obviously experience some of the limitations that they have and, in some ways, support in areas where we can. It was less of a set up a tent and run the place and more of come alongside and just demonstrate that we're strategic partners with them."  What HEART 22 showed Riis was how to operate in an environment that doesn't have all the things he'd have back in the U.S. That's something that might come in valuable to him as a military doctor as part of a U.S. combat operation.  "It's good exposure to operating in a little bit more austere environment than we're typically used to," he said. "In my practice in the states I kind of have what I want, when I want it all the time. We've been exposed to a system here that has some limitations. They're not limitations to prevent you from doing patient care. But they're limitations that if you weren't able to adapt, you'd find it difficult to provide consistent care. That perspective has been helpful because if I were tasked to run an austere clinic, then I would have already had the experience I've had here to know how to manage with a little bit less than I'm used to."  As part of HEART 22, he said, he saw that everybody on the U.S. team was able to adapt to the different environment.  "I think that's probably the biggest takeaway," Riis said. "There are some things that they have to do because they have limitations here that I probably wouldn't do in the states; not that they're wrong, it's just different. But that perspective has probably been the most valuable thing, I would say."  Another takeaway from HEART 22 was the importance of working within the system already in place, such as for finding necessary medical supplies. Riis said sometimes there's a mindset that the U.S. must bring in a lot of U.S.-procured supplies and dump them and expect recipient nations to make use of them. But that isn't always the case.  "What we found on this mission -- particularly in ortho, and I think also in dental and maybe ophthalmology -- is that sometimes using local supply chains and developing relationships with the country's system, which already exists and already functions really well, that we can leverage that in the future and maybe tailor the missions to make them even more hard-hitting and also more efficient in terms of monetary and fiscal responsibility," he said.  What also made an impression on Riis, he said, is that the U.S. military can be more than just a fighting force.  "It's opened my eyes up to the opportunities and the impact that we can make outside of some of our primary missions," he said. "I was fortunate to be involved with special operations for several years, and there's obviously an emphasis in asymmetric warfare -- in winning hearts and minds and building up communities and developing relationships -- which sometimes is lost in the bigger military picture."  As part of HEART 22, he said he was impressed that the Air Force, Army, and other components of the U.S. military were able to come together to support a mission focused on partnering.  "We're not here to just dominate your system or change you to doing the things that we always want to do, we're here to work alongside you within your system and within the setup that you have already in place," he said. "We don't have to come in and do things necessarily our way. But we can share and grow together ... I think that that's the most valuable thing that I've seen from this type of operation."  Relationship building was also a big part of HEART 22, Riis said. And after working in both Honduras and Guatemala, he said he was able to build lasting professional relationships he thinks might come in useful later.  "We certainly have built relationships and opened up doors for, I think, future opportunities in these places," Riis said.  Over lunch one day, Riis said one of the doctors he worked with told him the HEART 22 experience had been better than other similar experiences in the past with other foreign nationals or even U.S. teams.  "For me, the indicators of success are that ... one, they want us to come back. Two, I get text messages and WhatsApp images in follow-up from fellow surgeons," he said. "[They say,] 'This patient's doing well ... here's a video of him walking after we did surgery.' For me, as a physician and surgeon where my primary job is to take somebody who's unable to do something and then make them potentially able to do something again, the biggest indicator of success is getting that feedback from others, the surgeons that I worked with."  The HEART 22 mission kicked off in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in mid-July and closed out in early September in Guatemala. About 50 U.S. military medical professionals and support personnel from both the Air Force and the Army participated in the operation. In Latin America, HEART 22 Mission Focused on Vision, Partnerships [2022-10-31] GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala -- Last month, airmen and soldiers from Joint Task Force-Bravo, Soto Cano Air Base, Honduras, concluded a more-than-month-long operation in Guatemala and Honduras meant to improve not just eyesight, but also the relationships and partnerships between U.S. military medical doctors and Latin American doctors.  The HEART 22 operation -- which stands for Health Engagements Assistance Response Team -- began in July in Honduras and ran all the way up to early September, finishing in Guatemala. During the operation, dental, orthopedic and ophthalmologic professionals from around the U.S. military partnered with local medical professionals in both nations to provide care for citizens there, and build enduring partnerships . In Guatemala City, for instance, a handful of uniformed ophthalmologists from around the U.S. military worked together with skilled ophthalmologists and ophthalmology residents from around Latin America to perform critical eye surgeries, including corneal transplants and cataract surgery at the Guatemala National Ophthalmology Unit, also called UNO.  At the clinic, U.S. military medical professionals weren't just reducing backlogs of patients or treating patients that might not otherwise get treated. Instead, they were developing and strengthening peer-to-peer relationships between U.S. military and Latin American ophthalmologists, while sharing professional knowledge, said Air Force Lt. Col. (Dr.) Richard Townley, an ophthalmologist who participated in HEART 22 and is stationed in Alaska.  "This was about skills transfer and partnerships," Townley said. "We're hoping to establish relationships here, since this is the central Mecca of ophthalmology training for Central America."  The UNO clinic in Guatemala City is well-known by ophthalmologists throughout Latin America and has become a choice location to complete their residency training. This means that U.S. military ophthalmologists participating in HEART 22 had plenty of opportunity to meet some of the residents and form relationships that might be useful later during other operations in Latin America.  "When we want to go to any remote region, we may be able to entice them to partner with us or they will have contacts in those locations to partner with," Townley said.  Having those partnerships is important, Townley said, because when the U.S. military wants to go into a country on a medical mission, advance coordination with local medical providers ensures the most successful mission possible.  "As Americans, we sometimes see an area of need, and we want to immediately fix it without taking everything into consideration," Townley said. "On the civilian side, they would sometimes go into an area and see there's a lot of blind people [and want to] do a mission there. But if you do it without actually getting to know what resources are there already, if there's any specialists there already, you can actually do more harm than good."  Even when good work is being done, Townley said if medical treatments such as eye surgery are done without working closely with resources already available in a region, it's possible to undermine the fragile economies in place that might support doctors already there. It's also important that if U.S. medical doctors go into an area to do work, they ensure those patients will have access to any follow-up care once the U.S. doctors depart. Without making sure that follow-up care is available, then doctors might be doing more harm to those patients than good.  Also, a benefit of HEART 22 is that when U.S military ophthalmologists work with Latin American counterparts, everybody learns something, Townley said. For U.S. military ophthalmologists, that meant learning how to work with less than what's expected back in the U.S. while still being successful. That's a skill that's important anytime the military goes into combat.  "It exposes us to situations where we may have to work with less," he said. "It's important to know if there [are] other ways of doing things and how do people with [fewer] resources work in a resource-constrained environment."  In a peer-to-peer conflict, Townley said, the U.S. might not have the air superiority necessary for providing medical personnel with the supplies they expect.  "What I see in this environment, is that it helps us learn other techniques, and how to utilize our resources more fastidiously so that we can potentially reuse stuff, know what we can get away with and what we can't, and safely," he said. "I've learned new techniques that I wasn't aware of, that we don't need in the U.S., because we don't necessarily have as advanced diseases. But I've learned ways of sterilization that are more efficient."  In Latin America, Townley said, ophthalmologists are more likely to perform manual small incision cataract surgery, or MSICS. The MSICS procedure is faster and less resource-intensive than the more traditional cataract surgery ophthalmologists in the U.S. are used to. The technique is popular in developing nations because it doesn't require as much equipment or supplies. In Guatemala and Honduras, he said, American ophthalmologists were able to become more familiar with the technique, which he said is a good thing.  "In the military, we want to make sure as many ophthalmologists are exposed to this as possible," he said. "By doing more of these missions we can keep our ophthalmologists more current and ready for deployment."  The U.S. medical providers brought a knowledge exchange to their counterparts as well, Townley said. For example, neuro-ophthalmology is not something they had in Guatemala, and Townley said it was something he knew could be useful.  "We actually brought a neuro-ophthalmologist with us on our team to teach them one-on-one," he said.  The UNO clinic director, María L. Ruíz-Rodríguez, said in the past she knows that U.S. military doctors have come to offer only medical services, as a kind of humanitarian mission. And while she said she, the doctors at her clinic, and other clinic stakeholders appreciate the effort, it's not how they like to do business.  During this first iteration of HEART, she said, things were different. She said early in the planning there was a focus on partnering and education rather than on just performing work. That was a welcome change, she said.  At the clinic, she said, there are residents from all over Latin America, including Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, Honduras and El Salvador.  "The students come here and study ... we have had people from everywhere," she said. "It's better to come and teach these kids new techniques, because they're going to go back to their countries and they're going to replicate it there. So, you're just not [benefitting] the patients. During a surgery, you are [benefiting] the doctor, the technologist and other people they're going to work with in the future."  Another thing the U.S. military brought to Guatemala through HEART 22 was the promise of a new electronic patient records system for the UNO clinic, which Ruíz-Rodríguez said will change things dramatically.  The records room at the clinic is stacked high with thousands of paper records. And around the clinic, wherever patients are, their paper records must go with them so doctors can refer to them and update them.  Implementation of electronic records will save a lot of time for doctors, Ruíz-Rodríguez said, which means they can spend less time filling out paperwork and spend more time seeing patients. She said she expects the clinic will be online with the new system by January.  Air Force Staff Sgt. Brian C. Russell, an ophthalmic technician stationed at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, was one of the handful of enlisted medical personnel who participated in HEART 22. He's been in the Air Force for nine years now and has deployed in his career field to Afghanistan. He's also completed a humanitarian mission to Panama.  In Guatemala and Honduras, he said, his role is to assist medical providers with their work, set up equipment and order supplies.  While both American military and Latin American ophthalmologists learned from each other during HEART 22, Russell said he learned as well, including about operating in an environment that's not as well-resourced, and also with new techniques.  "There's been a whole slew of knowledge exchange between not only our docs, but also the doctors here teaching our doctors different methods of surgery that we don't normally do back home," he said. "Back at Lackland we don't see as many trauma-related eye injuries. I've had experience with those before, but here we're just seeing more. It's more common here. That helps me as a technician learn how to assist in different procedures that we don't normally see."  In terms of supplies, he said, not everything they'd have at home made it down to Guatemala or Honduras -- and that's a learning experience as well, he said.  "There is a lot of utilizing the resources that we have and kind of making do with what we have," he said.  The HEART 22 mission kicked off in Tegucigalpa, Honduras in mid-July and completed the mission in early September in Guatemala. About 50 U.S. military medical professionals and support personnel form both the Air Force and the Army participated in the operation.  Stratcom Commander Says U.S. Should Look to 1950s to Regain Competitive Edge [2022-11-03] WASHINGTON -- The current conflict in Ukraine is not the worst that the U.S. should be prepared for. Around the corner, said the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, the U.S. must be prepared for much more. "This Ukraine crisis that we're in right now, this is just the warmup," Navy Adm. Charles A. Richard, commander of Stratcom, said. "The big one is coming. And it isn't going to be very long before we're going to get tested in ways that we haven't been tested a long time." During a speech at the Naval Submarine League's 2022 Annual Symposium & Industry Update Richard said the U.S. must get itself prepared. "We have to do some rapid, fundamental change in the way we approach the defense of this nation," he said. "I will tell you, the current situation is vividly illuminating what nuclear coercion looks like and how you, or how you don't stand up to that." Competitors like China, Richard said, are outcompeting the U.S., and in a dramatic fashion. The U.S. must step up its deterrence game, he said, or it's going to be bowled over. "As I assess our level of deterrence against China, the ship is slowly sinking," he said. "It is sinking slowly, but it is sinking, as fundamentally they are putting capability in the field faster than we are. As those curves keep going, it isn't going to matter how good our [operating plan] is or how good our commanders are, or how good our forces are — we're not going to have enough of them. And that is a very near-term problem." One area where the U.S. still dominates is with its underseas capabilities — the U.S. submarine fleet, Richard said. "Undersea capabilities is still the one ... maybe the only true asymmetric advantage we still have against our opponents," Richard said. "But unless we pick up the pace, in terms of getting our maintenance problems fixed, getting new construction going ... if we can't figure that out ... we are not going to put ourselves in a good position to maintain strategic deterrence and national defense." Regaining the advantage in other areas might mean looking backwards, as much as 60 or more years, Richard said, to a time when the U.S. military was able to do things faster than what it does today. "We used to know how to move fast, and we have lost the art of that," he said. One example he provided was that of the AGM-28 Hound Dog cruise missile, which entered service in 1960. "The Air Force went from a request, almost written on a napkin ... when they figured out in the late 1950s that the Soviet integrated air defense systems were getting to the point that the B-52 just wasn't going to make it in, and we needed a thing called up 'cruise missile.' And so, they envisioned what a standoff weapon looks like." The U.S. military was able to deliver the Hound Dog cruise missile in just 33 months. "We had two squadrons of B-52s equipped with this 800-nautical-mile Mach two-plus, one megaton nuclear warhead with accuracy that was really good for its day, hanging off the wings of B-52s in less than three years," he said. "This weapon was so cool you could actually turn the engines on, on its cruise missiles on your wings, to give you additional thrust on takeoff." Richard said there are other examples of how the U.S. military was able to rapidly develop and field capability to meet its needs, and that the U.S. must get back to that. "We have got to get back into the business of not talking about how we are going to mitigate our assumed eventual failure to get Columbia in on time, and B-21, and LRSO, and flip it to the way we used to ask questions in this nation, which is what's it going to take? Is it money? Is it people? Do you need authorities? What risk? That's how we got to the Moon by 1969. We need to bring some of that back. Otherwise, China is simply going to outcompete us, and Russia isn't going anywhere anytime soon." $400 Million Security Package Headed to Ukraine [2022-11-10] WASHINGTON -- Missiles for the HAWK air defense system, along with four Avenger air defense systems and Stinger missiles are headed to Ukraine as part of a presidential drawdown authority security assistance package worth up to $400 million, the Defense Department announced today. Due to Russia's continuing air attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, additional air defense capabilities are critical, said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh during a briefing today. "The HAWK missiles, which will be refurbished using Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funds, will complement Spain's recent commitment of HAWK launchers to help Ukraine meet this threat," she said. "The Avenger short-range air defense systems will also provide Ukraine with capability to protect Ukrainian troops and critical infrastructure against unmanned aerial systems and helicopters." As part of this drawdown, Singh said, the U.S. will provide Ukraine with an unspecified number of HAWK missiles from its own inventory, but that those missiles would first need to be refurbished. That refurbishment will be done using funds from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. Once those missiles are refurbished, they will then be paired with HAWK system launchers that have been provided by Spain. The Avenger air defense systems, which use Stinger missiles, is a capability the U.S. has not previously provided to the Ukrainians. "These are mobile, short-range air defense systems that can ... protect against cruise missiles, helicopters [and] unmanned aerial systems," she said. "They're shorter in range, but with some of the additional capabilities that we and Spain and others have provided, like the HAWK missiles. This is something [that] I think fits in well with some of the capabilities that [the Ukrainians] are already using on the battlefield." The addition of the Avenger system to what the U.S. is providing to Ukraine comes after consultation with the Ukrainians on what they need in their fight against the Russians, Singh said. "We discuss with them what they need in this fight. We assess what we can provide and what makes the most sense. This was a request that fulfilled a need ... that they wanted," she said. "I think this is an air defense system that's going to complement the other air defense systems that not just the U.S. has provided, but other countries as well." The total list of equipment in the latest security assistance package also includes: -- Ammunition for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System -- 21,000 155 mm artillery rounds -- 500 precision-guided 155 mm artillery rounds -- 10,000 120 mm mortar rounds -- 100 High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles, or Humvees -- 400 grenade launchers -- Small arms, optics and more than 20,000,000 rounds of small arms ammunition -- Demolition equipment for obstacle clearing -- Cold weather protective gear Singh also told reporters that next week, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III will host the seventh meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group. "This meeting will be hosted virtually, here at the Pentagon, and will allow for the secretary and ministers of defense from nearly 50 countries to discuss efforts to supply Ukraine with the means to defend its sovereignty from further Russian aggression," Singh said. Since the beginning of Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the United States has committed more than $18.6 billion in security assistance. At Vietnam Wall, Austin Remembers Veteran's Past, Present [2022-11-11] WASHINGTON -- In front of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall today, during a Veterans Day commemoration, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III recalled the service of some of the veterans of that war and how their service both served the nation, and in one case, his own call to serve. "For 40 years, this granite wall has never been just about history," Austin said. "This solemn place has beckoned visitors to feel the profound connection between the past and the present in the simplest of ways -- by reaching out a hand and touching a name. Standing at the wall, hand outstretched, we feel that the sacrifices of these 58,281 fallen Americans remain with us. They shape who we are today, and they urge us to live up to America's full promise." Every veteran who has served or who still does, Austin said, has made the United States safer and stronger. "That is the lasting legacy of your service," Austin said. "And it demands our lasting gratitude." The secretary recalled Vietnam veteran and Medal of Honor recipient Alfred V. Rascon. Born in Chihuahua, Mexico, Rascon served in the war but didn't become a naturalized American citizen until after his initial service ended. "In Vietnam in 1966, [Spc. Rascon] found his platoon under assault," Austin said. "Defying orders, he ran towards the firefight to help, and surrounded by teammates and severely injured himself, he threw his body in front of a comrade to shield him from enemy fire. Incredibly, Spc. Rascon repeated this act of bravery two more times, covering two other teammates with his own body to absorb the explosions." After becoming a U.S. citizen, Rascon became an Army officer and returned to serve again in Vietnam. In 2000, he was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions as an enlisted service member during a ceremony at the White House, and in 2002, he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as the 10th director of the Selective Service System. Austin also remembered Army officer, and nurse, Lola Olsmith, who he said joined the military after seeing a recruiting ad for Army nurses on television. Olsmith later found herself in a hospital in Vietnam, working 12-hours shifts, and treating both American and Vietnamese personnel. "They would travel into villages and treat anyone who needed it," Austin said. "One night during the Tet Offensive, when an explosion tore through their building, the young nurse lifted up a pregnant Vietnamese woman by herself and sheltered her under a bed for protection. So Lola Olsmith had found her calling." After her time in Vietnam, Austin said, Olsmith remained an Army nurse and treated patients around the country, eventually progressing in rank to colonel as a nurse recruiter. "During Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Col. Olsmith found herself treating the war wounded overseas once again, a quarter century after she went to Vietnam," Austin said. "And years later, reflecting on her military career, Col. Olsmith simply said, 'I'm just very proud to be a part of it.'" Finally, Austin remembered one other Vietnam veteran -- his own uncle. "I come from a family with a proud history of military service, and one of my uncles served in Vietnam as a communicator," Austin said. "He was the very first African-American Green Beret that I ever saw. He came home wearing ... his jump boots and that green beret ... those jump wings ... he was very impressive. My uncle was deeply and quietly proud of what he had contributed. And his pride helped to inspire me to serve as well. My uncle showed me how meaningful service could be. And he showed me the way that one act of service can lead to many, many more." Austin himself went on to serve in the U.S. Army, graduating from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1975. During his time in uniform, he served as both the vice chief of staff of the Army and as the commander of United States Central Command. After his military service, he was nominated to serve as the 28th Secretary of Defense, a position he still holds. "Let us never underestimate what service can mean," Austin said. "Never forget the ripples set in motion by the Americans who fought in Vietnam, including veterans who may never have fully realized what a difference they made to those around them. Because service lifts up others, it enriches your own life, and it makes you part of a proud American story." The Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall has stood in place for 40 years now, and in that time a new crop of veterans has both deployed to combat in a war overseas and returned home. Those veterans have also contributed to the story of the United States, Austin said -- and contributed to the freedom Americans today continue to enjoy. The secretary also highlighted the service of U.S. military veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, tying their service to the heroism of those memorialized on the wall. "In 2008, one of my fellow Iraq vets came to this sacred place and he left a pair of his combat boots at this wall -- size 12. And along with the boots he left a note on Marine Corps stationery," Austin said. "He wrote, 'brothers, these are my lucky boots. They got me through two wars on the ground in Iraq. I figured you would appreciate them more than the garbage man.' And his note continued: 'The truth of the matter is that we owe you an awful lot. If your generation of Marines had not come home to jeers and insults and protests, my generation would not have come home to thanks, and handshakes and hugs.'" American service members have made a commitment to the American people to protect the nation, Austin said, and to always defend this democracy. "These aren't just words, these are vows, and we can make them real because of the long unbroken tradition of sacrifice that joins those who served to those who serve now and those who will step up to serve in the years to come," he said. "For that, we owe our veterans not only our deepest gratitude, but also our unwavering commitment to the democratic values that you have been so proud to defend. Thank you to all of our veterans for answering your country's call. We will never forget what you have given us." Harris: For Service to Nation, America Incurs Obligation to Care for Veterans [2022-11-11] WASHINGTON -- Since the founding of the United States, service members have defended the nation. In return, the nation has an obligation to take care of those same veterans, the vice president of the United States said during a Veterans Day address at Arlington National Cemetery. "Since 1789, American service members have sworn an oath, not to a person, not to a party but to the Constitution of the United States, to support and defend the principles of liberty, equality and justice -- to preserve and protect our democracy," Kamala Harris said. In order to serve the nation, Harris said, those veterans had to leave their loved ones, often missing birthdays, holidays and graduations. Some even missed the birth of their children. "You risked everything and you gave up so much to safeguard the lives and the liberty of people who you may never meet," she said. "To be a veteran is to have truly known the true cost of freedom and to have borne it for all of us. That is a debt that must always be remembered." Today, Harris said, Americans owe a debt to military veterans, a responsibility to ensure they are taken care of and that the wounds of war that were inflicted upon them as they did the nation's work are tended to, both while they wore the uniform and after as well. "I'm proud to serve alongside one of the greatest, greatest champions of our nation's warriors, our president, Joe Biden," Harris said. "President Biden and I believe that as Americans, we have a sacred obligation to take care of our veterans and our military families. Fulfilling that obligation means making sure veterans can access the support and the resources they need to thrive." One example of that, Harris said, is finding ways to ensure veterans can find work after their military service ends. "It has meant connecting thousands of veterans with job training to help them leverage the skills and experience they gained while serving, to build a new career and to strengthen America's workforce," she said. For veterans who fall on hard times, the homeless, they too must be taken care of, Harris said. "This year alone we have placed 31,000 veterans in permanent housing and we are on track to house thousands more by year end," she said. Even the families of veterans are owed a debt, Harris said. While service members deployed to foreign nations, spouses and children stayed at home -- wondering if their husbands, wives, fathers or mothers might ever come home again. "Taking care of our veterans also means taking care of those who love them," Harris said. "Because while our veterans wore the uniform, they were not the only ones who served. And no one understands that better than Dr. Jill Biden. Through her leadership of Joining Forces, Dr. Biden fights for military families, caregivers and survivors. And Dr. Biden, our nation applauds your extraordinary work." The Department of Veterans Affairs plays an important role in providing veterans the service they need, Harris said. And that includes making sure those veterans receive the benefits they have earned. "Since we took office, we have worked to reduce the VA claims backlog by upgrading technology, hiring more claims processors and streamlining evaluations. And as a result this year, and under the leadership of the secretary, we processed more VA claims than ever before in history," Harris said. "We also came together, Democrats and Republicans, to support millions of veterans exposed to toxic substances while working and living near burn pits and other dangerous environments." The PACT Act, she said, a new law that expands VA health care and benefits for Veterans exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange and other toxic substances, represents the most significant expansion of health care and benefits for veterans and their survivors in three decades. "It was passed because of the leadership of our president and because of the leadership of so many of you," she said. "We are indebted to you for that hard work and success." Even after wars conclude, and service members take off their uniforms and return to civilian life, they continue to serve, Harris said. "Veterans, after all, are nurses and firefighters, little league coaches and small business owners, faith leaders and elected officials, mentors and teachers," she said. "Every day, through your life's work, and your example, you make America stronger. And on Veterans Day we come together as a nation, then, to express our profound gratitude for all you have done and continue to do." Liberation of Kherson 'Significant Accomplishment' for Ukraine [2022-11-14] WASHINGTON -- Over the weekend, Russian forces withdrew from Kherson in Ukraine, a city of more than 280,000. It's a big win for the Ukrainian people and for its military, said one senior military official during a briefing today at the Pentagon. "The most significant development over the weekend was the Russian military's withdrawal from Kherson City and the west bank of the Dnipro River," the official said. "While we continue to monitor, we do assess that Russian forces have relocated onto the eastern side of the river and established their defensive lines, thus ceding a significant amount of territory to the Ukrainians to include your Kherson City." The official said Ukrainian forces continue to consolidate gains and are now busy clearing obstacles and mines left behind by the Russians. The Ukrainians are also assessing the damage done by the Russian occupiers before they departed; the official said indications are that the Russians did significant damage to civilian infrastructure in Kherson, including water and other utility systems. "The Russians don't appear inclined to depart the rest of occupied Ukraine, [and] there's undoubtedly still tough fighting ahead," the official said. "But the liberation [of] Kherson City is a significant accomplishment and a testament to the grit, determination and tenacity of the Ukrainian people and their armed forces as they fight to defend their nation." As winter approaches, it's possible that fighting in Ukraine might slow. But official said plans for U.S. support isn't predicted to slow, as that support is not predicated on weather, but on what the Ukrainians say they need. "We will continue to work with them, alongside our international allies and our partners, to ensure that they have what they need to succeed on the battlefield," the official said. We're prepared to do that for as long as it takes." The official said the department has seen Russian missile and drone strikes slow down some since the end of October, but that the Russians do continue to strike at civilian infrastructure, such as the Ukrainian electrical grid. "Air defense continues to be a priority for the Ukrainians," the official said. "This continues for us to be an area of discussion in terms of how the United States and the international community can continue to support them when it comes to their defense needs." Last week, the U.S. announced an additional security package for Ukraine that's valued at $400 million. That package is part of some $18.6 billion in assistance the U.S. has committed to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia's unprovoked invasion. Included in that presidential drawdown package were missiles for the HAWK air defense system, along with four Avenger air defense systems and Stinger missiles. Both of those contributions to Ukrainian defense assist them with air defense. The Avenger system, for instance, can help protect against cruise missiles, helicopters and unmanned aerial systems. The package also included, among other things, 20,000,000 rounds of small arms ammunition and cold weather protective gear. DOD Survey Asks Participants to Weigh in on Exceptional Family Member Program [2022-11-17] WASHINGTON -- For the first time, the Defense Department will offer those enrolled in the Exceptional Family Member Program, also called EFMP, an opportunity to provide detailed input about their experiences. Feedback will be used to improve how the program provides services to participating families. "It's pretty exciting because it's the first official DOD survey about EFMP," said Jennifer Wong, a program analyst with the Defense Department's Office of Special Needs. "It's a phenomenal chance for families who are enrolled in the program to be heard directly at the DOD policy level."  About 105,000 active-duty service members are part of the EFMP, which provides support to families with children or adult dependents who have special medical or educational needs.  Every service member with a family member enrolled in EFMP is eligible to take the survey, Wong said. Service members will receive an announcement e-mail containing a unique ticket number. Service members with a ticket number will be directed to go to www.dodsurveys.mil and enter the ticket number to take the survey. It's expected that those emails will be sent out on or after November 17, 2022.  According to Wong, EFMP ensures that, among other things, special needs are taken into consideration when a military family is moved to a new duty assignment.  "When a family PCSs to the next location, they may be looking for particular medical services, specialists, therapies, behavioral health -- those types of services -- and we want to make sure that when they do PCS, they'll have continuity of care," Wong said.  Wong said the results of the survey will be used by the department to both improve the program and standardize delivery to all families across the services.  "Within the Office of Special Needs, we are committed to improving support for military families with special medical and/or educational needs," Wong said. "A vital part of that ... is hearing from families who are enrolled in the program. It's very important to hear from the families who are in the program so we have feedback that's representative of the families we serve, and it's based off their real-life experiences and their interactions with the program. That's why it's a great opportunity for families who are enrolled to participate in the survey."  The EFMP is made up of three components: Identification and enrollment of family members into the program, which is completed by the medical commands; an assignments component that ensures the medical and/or education needs of the family member are taken into consideration with an upcoming PCS, which is completed by the medical and personnel commands; and a family support component, which families can reach out to for information regarding resources and non-clinical case management.  "The survey is going to ask about all three components and what a family's experience or interaction has been ... so we can see all those different touch points for a family, what's working or what can be improved upon," Wong said.  Every family enrolled in the EFMP will be able to take the survey and share their own family experiences with the program. While Wong said invitations will be sent out to service members only, she recommends that the survey -- which should take about 15 minutes to complete -- be done with all adult service and family members' involvement.  "We encourage the service member to maybe sit down, have a conversation with other adult family members, and perhaps take the survey together ... to provide that full perspective of EFMP and also services outside the program such as medical or educational services," Wong said.  Also of note, Wong said, is that while the department expects to invite every EFMP family to participate in the survey, it is possible that recently enrolled members might not get an invitation. It's also possible that if a military service doesn't have an accurate email address for a service member, then that service member might not get an invitation. Those EFMP families will still be able to participate in the survey, however, and are encouraged to do so, Wong said.  "We want maximum participation," she said. "This is a great opportunity to give your feedback straight to DOD -- straight to your service level leadership."  For service members with family members enrolled in the EFMP who don't get an invitation and ticket number to participate in the survey, they can go to www.dodsurveys.mil, click the "Click Here" button below the "Don't have a ticket number?" message, and then enter their DOD ID number and date of birth to take the survey.  U.S. Participates in Multi-carrier Exercise to Showcase Cohesion, Interoperability [2022-11-17] WASHINGTON -- U.S. aircraft carriers USS George H.W. Bush and Gerald R. Ford are now engaged in a regularly scheduled multination multi-carrier exercise to showcase the cohesion and interoperability of participants. The operation takes place in the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea and parts of the Mediterranean Sea, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said. The maritime operation is formed around the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, and also includes the Italian carrier Cavour, and the United Kingdom's HMS Queen Elizabeth. "These operations present an opportunity for allied nations to coordinate credible combat power throughout the Euro/Atlantic area, while showcasing NATO cohesion and interoperability," Singh said during a briefing today at the Pentagon. "It is also an opportunity to test allied cooperation and to practice NATO's deter and defend concepts across all geographic areas, operational domains and functional areas of the Alliance." On the other side of the globe, Singh said, the U.S. Marine Corps and the Japan Self-Defense Force have partnered up for Exercise Keen Sword 2023. "This field training exercise will increase the readiness and interoperability of ... [III Marine Expeditionary Force] and our Japanese and joint force partners in order to protect and preserve regional peace and stability," Singh said. "This biannual exercise will test Marines and their Japanese counterparts in command and control of maritime strikes and amphibious force actions. This demonstration of stand-in force capabilities provides assurance to our partners and allies of readiness to rapidly counter aggression in the region." During this year's Keen Sword 2023, the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force's Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade and Marines from III MEF will conduct amphibious landings side-by-side in the vicinity of mainland Japan. On Tuesday, a missile struck Przewodow, inside Poland, near its border with Ukraine. While there's been speculation on what type of missile that was and who might have fired it, President Joe Biden has said, based on the trajectory of the missile, it is unlikely the missile was fired by the Russians. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has also said the department has not yet seen any indication that might contradict the assessment from Polish President Andrzej Duda, who said the missile was likely launched by the Ukrainians as part of air defense efforts, and that it unfortunately landed in Poland. Singh told reporters that Poland is conducting the investigation into the missile strike and the department is ready to assist, if asked. "As you know, the Polish government is leading the investigation. We have full confidence in their deliberate manner and how they're conducting the investigation," Singh said. "The secretary spoke with his Polish counterpart earlier this week ... [and] the secretary made clear also here yesterday following the Ukraine Defense Contact Group that we've offered our support to Poland as they conduct this investigation." DOD Releases Path to Cyber Security Through Zero Trust Architecture [2022-11-28] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department on Tuesday released its Zero Trust Strategy and Roadmap, which spells out how it plans to move beyond traditional network security methods to achieve reduced network attack surfaces, enable risk management and effective data-sharing in partnership environments, and contain and remediate adversary activities over the next five years. "Zero trust is a framework for moving beyond relying on perimeter-based cybersecurity defense tools alone and basically assuming that breach has occurred within our boundary and responding accordingly," David McKeown, the department's acting chief information officer, said. McKeown said the department has spent a year now developing the plans to get the department to a zero trust architecture by fiscal year 2027. Included in that effort was development of a Zero Trust Portfolio Management Office, which stood up earlier this year.  "With the publication of this strategy we have articulated the 'how' that can address clear outcomes of how to get to zero trust -- and not only accelerated technology adoption, as discussed, but also a culture of zero trust at DOD and an integrated approach at the department and the component levels."  Getting the Defense Department to reach the goals laid out in the Zero Trust Strategy and Roadmap will be an "ambitious undertaking," McKeown said. Ensuring that work will largely be the responsibility of Randy Resnick, who serves as the director of the Zero Trust Portfolio Management Office.  "With zero trust, we are assuming that a network is already compromised," Resnick said. "And through recurring user authentication and authorization, we will thwart and frustrate an adversary from moving through a network and also quickly identify them and mitigate damage and the vulnerability they may have exploited." Resnick explained the difference between a zero trust architecture and security on the network today, which assumes a level of trust for anybody already inside the network.  "If we compare this to our home security, we could say that we traditionally lock our windows and doors and that only those with the key can gain access," he said. "With zero trust, we have identified the items of value within the house and we place guards and locks within each one of those items inside the house. This is the level of security that we need to counter sophisticated cyber adversaries."  The Zero Trust Strategy and Roadmap outlines four high-level and integrated strategic goals that define what the department will do to achieve that level of security. These include:  -- Zero Trust Cultural Adoption -- All DOD personnel understand and are aware, trained, and committed to a zero trust mindset and culture to support integration of zero trust.  -- DOD information Systems Secured and Defended -- Cybersecurity practices incorporate and operationalize zero trust in new and legacy systems.  -- Technology Acceleration -- Technologies deploy at a pace equal to or exceeding industry advancements.  -- Zero Trust Enablement -- Department- and component-level processes, policies, and funding are synchronized with zero trust principles and approaches.  Resnick said development of the Zero Trust Strategy and Roadmap was done in collaboration with the National Security Agency, the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Defense Manpower Data Center, U.S. Cyber Command and the military services.  The department and its partners worked together to develop a total of 45 capabilities and more than 100 activities derived from those capabilities, many of which the department and components will be expected to be involved in as part of successfully achieving baseline, or "target level" compliance with zero trust architecture within the five-year timeline, Resnick said. "Each capability, the 45 capabilities, resides either within what we're calling 'target,' or 'advanced' levels of zero trust," he said. "DOD zero trust target level is deemed to be the required minimum set of zero trust capability outcomes and activities necessary to secure and protect the department's data, applications, assets and services, to manage risks from all cyber threats to the Department of Defense." Across the department, every agency will be expected to comply with the target level implementation outlined in the Zero Trust Strategy and Roadmap. Only a few might be expected to achieve the more advanced level.  "If you're a national security system, we may require the advanced level for those systems," McKeown said. "But advanced really isn't necessary for literally every system out there. We have an aggressive goal getting to 'targeted' by 2027. And we want to encourage those who have a greater need to secure their data to adopt this advanced level."  Resnick said achieving the target level of zero trust isn't equivalent to a lower standard for network security.  "We defined target as that level of ability where we're actually containing, slowing down or stopping the adversary from exploiting our networks," he said. "Compared to today, where an adversary could do an attack and then go laterally through the network, frequently under the noise floor of detection, with zero trust that's not going to be possible."  By 2027, Resnick said, the department will be better poised to prevent adversaries from attacking the DOD network and minimize damage if it does occur.  "The target level of zero trust is going to be that ability to contain the adversary, prevent their freedom of movement, from not only going laterally but being able to even see the network, to enumerate the network, and to even try to exploit the network," he said.  If later on more is needed, he said, the requirements for meeting the target level of compliance can be adjusted.  "Target will always remain that level to which we're seeing and stopping the adversary," he said. "And for the majority of the DOD, that's really our goal." DOD Begins Hiring 'Prevention' Workforce [2022-11-30] WASHINGTON -- Last month the Defense Department released the Annual Report on Suicide in the Military for 2021, which showed a 15% decrease in suicides from 2020 to 2021. But that hasn't meant the department can shift focus away from suicide prevention, the deputy secretary of defense said. "There's so much more work to do, and we will not be satisfied as long as there is a single suicide remaining in the force -- and that includes the family members of the force," Kathleen H. Hicks said during an online discussion Tuesday with Washington Post Live.  One example of work being done by the department involves creating the healthy climates necessary to address a range of problematic and harmful behaviors, including suicide. This will be accomplished, in part, with a new and dedicated primary prevention workforce focused on community-based prevention.   "We have worked across a bipartisan coalition in Congress to support the department having a prevention workforce that will ultimately be about 2,000 people," Hicks said. "We have, right now as we speak, several hundred openings available."   Interested professionals can apply for those positions by visiting www.usajobs.gov, Hicks said. The public health or social science professionals who sign on to be part of that workforce will be responsible for helping to provide military commanders with the tools needed to reduce a wide range of risk factors -- such as substance misuse, toxic leadership or financial stress -- and build up important protective factors -- such as healthy coping mechanisms and cohesion -- that will ultimately prevent harmful behaviors. "[These are] all the factors that go into causing stress and harm behaviors, including ... suicide," Hicks said. "We are quite confident that's a very science-based approach that we're using. It's the largest effort like ... this that has ever existed at an unprecedented scale .... This prevention workforce will be a first-of-its-kind, and we're going to do it right here in the United States military because that's what we owe our people and their families." Also, part of the effort to continue to reduce suicides in the military, Hicks said, is the removal of any stigma associated with seeking mental health care. "We have a number of initiatives underway now to make sure we remove that stigma, not just that it's not ... bad to seek help, if you will, for your behaviors, for your mental health, but really that it's a sign of strength," she said.   One example of a program designed to help reduce the stigma of seeking mental health assistance is the REACH program, which stands for "Resources Exist, Asking Can Help." The program was initially piloted at six installations across the department and was shown to reduce a service member's reluctance to seek assistance. The department continues to expand the program for military spouses and remote and overseas locations.   Finally, Hicks said the department continues to focus on "lethal means safety," which includes the safe storage of firearms and other means for suicide, such as medications. In the military and across the country, she said, firearms are the most common method of suicide.   "We know, and it's well documented, that if we can create a little time and space between that ideation, that idea of having concerns about ... potentially committing suicide and those lethal means -- obviously, firearms being foremost, but also medications -- if we can create that time and space, create some safety, then that reduces the likelihood of suicide." As part of its focus on lethal means safety, the department continues implementation and evaluation of CALM, or Counseling on Access to Lethal Means education. CALM trains mental health professionals and others who work with at-risk individuals on ways to reduce access to safely store lethal means for suicide including firearms and medications.  New Defense Office Connects Next-Gen Tech Developers With Much-Needed Capital [2022-12-01] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department announced today creation of the Office of Strategic Capital, or OSC. The new office is meant to ensure that technologies under development right now or in the future, which may be critical to U.S. military requirements, are able to get the funding they need to make it to market. "Next-generation biotechnology and quantum science often require long-term financing to bridge the so called 'valley of death' between the laboratory and full-scale production," Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said during a briefing today. "These technology companies also suffer from a limited supply of longtime-horizon 'patient capital,' which results in an inability to transition technology into military capabilities, even for technologies developed with the help of federal research grants or contracts."  The OSC was stood up by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, and aims to help find funding to ensure companies who are developing technology that may one day be used to support the nation's defense, are able to bring that technology to maturity and then into full-scale production. Included among the types of technologies the OSC is interested are those that would typically have mostly commercial interest and not be purchased directly by the department, but which would enable future defense capabilities.  The OSC is not unique in its mission, Ryder said. Other innovation organizations within the department, such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, also known as DARPA, and the Defense Innovation Unit are also working to support the development of critical technologies. "OSC aims to scale investments between science and technology-focused organizations, such as DARPA, and commercially-oriented organizations such as the Defense Innovation Unit, by increasing the capital available to critical technology companies to help them reach scale production," Ryder said. The OSC aims to be different in how it provides support, Ryder said, and is investigating the use of non-acquisition-based finance tools, such as loans and loan guarantees.  "Given the fact that the department relies on advanced technology for a lot of the capabilities we need to stay competitive, this gives us another capability to work with investors and to work with industry to ensure that programs that otherwise may not be funded, or may not be attractive to investors, can be funded in a way that gets them across ... the so-called 'valley of death,'" Ryder said. "It gives us another tool in the toolkit to be able to ensure that we can stay competitive against our strategic competitors, like China and Russia." World Gets First Look at B-21 Raider [2022-12-03] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department unveiled its newest bomber aircraft, the B-21 Raider, yesterday evening in Palmdale, California. As the first strategic bomber in more than three decades, the Air Force's B-21 will serve as the backbone of America's bomber force, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said. The B-21 Raider is expected to serve within a larger family of systems for conventional long-range strike, including intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; electronic attack; communication; and other capabilities. It is nuclear capable and designed to accommodate manned or unmanned operations. Additionally, it will be able to employ a broad mix of stand-off and direct-attack munitions.  At the hangar of aircraft manufacturer Northrop Grumman, the B-21 was unveiled amidst dramatic music and lighting effects. The new bomber has a silhouette similar to that of the B-2 Spirit bomber.  "The B-21 looks imposing," Austin said. "But what's under the frame and the space-age coatings is even more impressive."  The range of the B-21, Austin said, is unmatched by any other bomber.  "It won't need to be based in-theater, it won't need logistical support to hold any target at risk," the secretary said.  Like the B-2 Spirit, the B-21 Raider is a stealth aircraft. It will be hard for adversaries to see that it's coming, Austin said.  "Fifty years of advances in low-observable technology have gone into this aircraft," he said. "Even the most sophisticated air-defense systems will struggle to detect a B-21 in the sky."  Austin also said the B-21 Raider is designed to be easily maintainable, which will help ensure that the aircraft is always ready to go when its needed.  "We don't really have a capability unless we can maintain it," he said. "The B-21 is carefully designed to be the most maintainable bomber ever built."  As a dual-capable penetrating strike stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider is capable of delivering both conventional and nuclear munitions. It will be able to support joint and coalition forces across the full spectrum of operations, Austin said, and is also designed to be flexible enough to meet the evolving threat environment. "The Raider was built with open-system architecture, which makes it highly adaptable," Austin said. "As the United States continues to innovate, this bomber will be able to defend our country with new weapons that haven't even been invented yet. And the B-21 is multi-functional. It can handle anything from gathering intel, to battle management, to integrating with our allies and partners. And it will work seamlessly across domains, and theaters, and across the joint force."  The B-21 Raider was built by Northrop Grumman and was developed through deep partnership with stakeholders in the U.S. military, Austin said.  "The B-21 is the result of deep teamwork at this plant," he said. "Our Air Force pilots, maintainers and DOD civilians have worked shoulder-to-shoulder with their industry counterparts. In fact, they've been on the production line here in Palmdale to assist. The B-21 is a testament to the best of America's vibrant and diverse industrial base. This sort of advance that makes us great, and this sort of advance doesn't just happen. It takes investment. It takes cooperation. And it takes partnership."  The secretary said he and the Defense Department are committed to continuing with that kind of cooperation with the defense industrial base to ensure that the best technology America can offer will be available to contribute to the nation's defense.  "The Department is going to continue to invest in tech," he said. "We're going to bring new companies into our supplier base, and we're going to keep honing our acquisitions process to get the right capabilities before we need them."  Development on the B-21 Raider began in 2015 when the Air Force awarded the engineering and manufacturing development contract. The Air Force expects to acquire a minimum of 100 of the aircraft.  The "B-21" designation, according to the Air Force, was chosen because the aircraft is the first new bomber of the 21st century, while the name "Raider" was chosen to represent the Doolittle Raiders, who flew a surprise attack during World War II.  "Eighty years ago, on a cold and rainy April morning, four months after Pearl Harbor, 16 U.S. Army bomber planes took off from an aircraft carrier in the Pacific," Austin explained. "Then-Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle embarked on a daring mission. At high cost, he and his team of aviators flew more than 650 miles to strike distant enemy targets. And the Doolittle Raiders, as they came to be known, showed the strength and the reach of American airpower."  Like the Doolittle Raiders defended America during WWII, the B-21 Raider is expected to do the same now and into the future, Austin said.  "This isn't just another airplane. It's not just another acquisition," Austin said. "It's the embodiment of America's determination to defend the republic that we love. It's a testament to our strategy of deterrence -- with the capabilities to back it up, every time and everywhere. That's what America does."  Strong Deterrence Enables U.S. to Ensure Global Rules, Rights [2022-12-03] WASHINGTON -- With many hotspots around the globe creating uncertainty, the United States will need more than the assistance of Congress and American industry to build, maintain and strengthen the deterrent capability needed to defend democracy and maintain a free and open global world order. "These next few years will set the terms of our competition with the People's Republic of China, and they will shape the future of security in Europe, and they will determine whether our children and grandchildren inherit an open world of rules and rights, or whether they face emboldened autocrats who seek to dominate by force and fear," said Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III during a keynote presentation Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California. Deterrence is at the heart of the National Defense Strategy, which the Defense Department released just last month, Austin said.  "We've got the right strategy and the right operational concepts," Austin said. "And they're driving us to make the right investments for our warfighters. So we're upgrading and honing and strengthening our armed forces for a changing world."  In an imperfect world, Austin said, "deterrence does come through strength. We will continue to make clear to any potential foe the folly of aggression against the United States at any time, or any place, in any theater, or any domain."  Austin laid out some of the efforts the U.S. military is undertaking to strengthen that deterrence, including that on land, air and at sea.  In the fiscal year 2023 budget, he said, the Defense Department requested more than $56 billion for airpower. That is focused on the F-35 Lightning II, the F-15EX fighter, the B-21 Raider and other systems. "American airpower helps deter conflict every day, from joint exercises with our Indo-Pacific partners, to aerial drills with our allies to protect NATO's eastern flank," Austin said.  Deterrence also happens on the ocean, he said. There, the Defense Department is investing in construction of nine battle-force ships, and continuing to invest in the Ford-class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and the Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarines. Just last month, he said, an American Ford-class nuclear powered carrier made its first transit to Europe. Also included in deterrence are long-range fires -- the kind finding success now in Ukraine.  "Long range fires will be vital for contingencies in the Indo-Pacific as well," he said. "We're investing in land-based hypersonic missile batteries and in an air-launched hypersonic cruise missile. And the USS Zumwalt will become the first Navy platform to field hypersonics."  Perhaps the strongest deterrent, Austin said, is America's nuclear capability. And there's plenty of investment there as well, he told the audience.  "Deterrence means a safe, secure and effective nuclear arsenal as the ultimate backstop to deter strategic attacks on our country and our allies, including NATO, Japan and the Republic of Korea," he said, adding that the fiscal year 2023 budget includes $34 billion to modernize the nuclear triad and to bolster nuclear command, control and communications.  Austin called on Congress to pass an on-time appropriation to ensure the department gets the capabilities needed to further strengthen its deterrent capability. Australia, U.S. Agree to Expand Defense Cooperation [2022-12-06] WASHINGTON -- A discussion between the U.S. secretaries of defense and state and their Australian counterparts ended with a commitment to deepened defense cooperation. "The bonds between our democracies and our peoples have been forged by shared sacrifice, shared values and shared history," said Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, who spoke today at the conclusion of 32nd annual Australia-U.S. Ministerial Consultations. "As we look to the future, those bonds are stronger than they've ever been. That was clear throughout the outstanding discussions that we had today."  Austin said that he, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles discussed, among other things, Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and the increased tensions in the Indo-Pacific.  "The United States and Australia share a vision of a region where countries can determine their own futures, and they should be able to seek security and prosperity free from coercion and intimidation," Austin said. "Unfortunately, that vision is being challenged today."  Austin said China's actions in the Indo-Pacific--including with Taiwan, in the East and South China Seas, and with other island nations in the Pacific--threaten regional peace and stability. Additionally, he said, Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is an attack on the international rules-based order and is a threat to nations all over the world.  Austin said those threats have led the U.S. and Australia to agree to an increased defense partnership.  "Today, we agreed to deepen our defense cooperation in several important ways," Austin said. "Based upon today's talks, we will increase rotational presence of U.S. forces in Australia. That includes rotations of bomber task forces, fighters and future rotations of U.S. Navy and U.S. Army capabilities."  The secretary also said the U.S. and Australia will expand logistics and sustainment cooperation and look for ways to further integrate their defense industrial bases.  Austin also said the U.S. and Australia are not alone in their concerns about increased tensions in the Indo-Pacific, and he said both countries have agreed to invite Japan to integrate into the new force posture initiatives.  Marles said he and Australia's foreign minister will visit Japan later this week to discuss that increased involvement.  "It is a great outcome of today's meeting that we can go to Japan at the end of this week with an invitation for Japan to be participating in more exercises with Australia and the United States," Marles said.  The Australian defense minister also said he's excited that there were discussions about further integrating the U.S. and Australian defense industrial bases.  "Today, we have also taken steps to create a more seamless defense industrial base between our two countries," he said. "We need to be working closer together to enhance our military capability and to develop new technologies."  For that to happen, Marles said, regulatory barriers must be broken down that now inhibit greater cooperation.  "We couldn't be more pleased in the sense of shared commitment that there has been on the part of both the U.S. and ourselves in relation to making real steps forward in terms of breaking down those barriers to create that seamless defense industry environment," Marles said. U.S. Military Readiness Goes Beyond Just China, Russia  [2022-12-08] WASHINGTON -- Inside the Pentagon, China as the pacing threat and Russia as an acute threat dominate planning and discussions. The Defense Department, for instance, just released the 2022 China Military Power Report last week, and both China and Russia were central in October's National Defense Strategy. But the Pentagon is ready for things beyond just China and Russia, said deputy assistant secretary of defense for force readiness.   "Strategic readiness, it's about balance," said Kimberly Jackson, during a discussion Wednesday with Center for a New American Security. "We are not foregoing the absolute need to be ready in the near-term, because we are thinking about readiness from a strategic perspective."   Readiness, Jackson said, means also ensuring that the department is able to conduct the operations and respond to the contingencies it can't predict, such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February.   "That's not something that we planned for years before," Jackson said. "We need to be able to have our processes enable the predictability that allow us to plan and to resource into the future and to think thoughtfully about how we divest, how we modernize, how we ensure that readiness for years out -- but at the same time have enough flexibility built into the system and into our decision making so that we can respond, and we can be agile when things like that ... emerge."   How the department has been able to respond in Ukraine, Jackson said, is at least partly because it has in place already a process that is adaptable enough to let the department respond to anything.   "We have been able to take a contingency, to take a problem that has been posed to the department and figure out a responsible and rigorous and repeatable and somewhat agnostic process that can be applied to a whole lot of different readiness challenges," she said. "Even if that process were perfect -- and of course it's not -- we're constantly iterating on it."   Such processes rely on data and analysis, she said. But more than that, they also rely on discipline, Jackson said.   "In order to be disciplined and make sure that we have the resources and the capabilities that we need in the future, that means that we as decision makers have to have real and tough conversations about whether or not we're willing to incur those risks that are presented to us with every single choice that we make," she said.   CIO Recognizes Top Tech, Cyber Performers Across Defense Department [2022-12-09] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department's chief information officer and the commander of U.S. Cyber Command teamed up today to recognize more than two dozen individuals and teams who contributed to the advancement of department-wide information technology goals. Among the areas those individuals and teams excelled in are cybersecurity; information enterprise; cloud computing; electromagnetic spectrum superiority; command, control and communications; electronic records management; and Section 508 compliance efforts. John Sherman, the DOD's CIO, said the work department personnel do within the information technology realm, including the work done by those recognized, is ultimately to support the warfighter.  "When we talk about computing and data and information, this is really about decision advantage -- so our warfighters can stay one step ahead of those who would seek to challenge us on a battlefield, currently now in places like Syria, or potentially in the future in places like the Western Pacific or Eastern Europe," Sherman said. "That's why we come to work and do what we do every single day, and work through these very hard technical problems."  Those being recognized, Sherman said, have helped the department solve some of these hard technical problems, and have been recognized for approaching problems differently. "[They] are making sure, as the United States military, we're staying ahead of those potential challengers," Sherman said.  Army Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, who serves as both the commander of U.S. Cyber Command and as director of the National Security Agency, said those recognized contribute to his own organization's ability to do their work.  "The awardees today represent the department's top talent as we're driving towards a data-centric organization that is continually leading innovation, Nakasone said. "As the DOD data strategy recognizes, data really is a strategic asset, like a weapon system that can create and maintain battlefield advantage -- information that is accurate, timely and certainly actionable. Your work to support the warfighter and senior policymakers and intelligence leaders allows my command, U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, to use data and information to rapidly drive operational effects at speed, and scale."  Nakasone said as the Defense Department, and agencies such as the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command work to meet the challenges posed by strategic competitors such as China, their work is focused on supporting the core principles embodied in the National Defense Strategy: integrated deterrence, campaigning and building an enduring advantage. "The command and NSA can only meet these long-term objectives with your continued innovation," Nakasone said. "Thank you for what you've done. Thank you for what you will do. And thank you for the future that you're going to bring to our department."  As part of the 2022 DOD Chief Information Officer Annual Awards for Cyber and IT Excellence, both teams and individuals were either named recipients of awards, or for honorable mentions. Those honored include:  Individual Awards -- Army Maj. Robert Killian, Army National Guard  -- David Tucker Sr., United States Army  -- Air Force Staff Sgt. Sandra Blakeslee, National Security Agency  Individual Awards Honorable Mentions -- Air Force Tech. Sgt. Brian Henson, United States Air Force  -- Kenneth Fort, Missile Defense Agency  -- Air Force Master Sgt. Sebastian Zelazny, Air National Guard  -- Christopher Denfeld, Defense Information Systems Agency  -- Michael St.John, United States Army  Team Winners -- Army Food Management Information System Modernization Team, Defense Finance and Accounting Service  -- Department of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office Software Team  -- Deputy Chief of Staff G-6 Cyber Directorate Army, Project Sentinel RMF 2.0, United States Army  -- Deputy Chief of Staff G-6 NC4SI Army 365 Fusion Cell Team, United States Army  -- Defense Industrial Base Vulnerability Disclosure Pilot Team, United States Air Force and Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency  -- Department of the Air Force Customer Relationship Management MyFSS Team Team Honorable Mentions -- 10th Medical Group Information Systems Team, United States Air Force  -- Defense Finance and Accounting Service - Microsoft Azure Migration Team  -- Defense Finance and Accounting Service - Joining Artificial Intel Team  -- Ukraine Supplemental Funds Reporting Team, Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)  -- Satellite Terminal (transportable), Non-Geostationary (STtNG) Team, United States Navy  -- 508 Information Technology Accessibility Management Team, Defense Intelligence Agency  -- Torch Team, Defense Intelligence Agency  -- TARDyS3 Software Development Team, Defense Information Systems Agency  -- J6 Joint All Domain Command and Control Team, Joint Staff  -- Cyberspace Mission Support Team, Missile Defense Agency  -- Special Operations Forces Cross Support Element Team, Special Operations Command DOD Prepares for U.S.-Africa Summit [2022-12-09] WASHINGTON -- Next week, the Defense Department will participate in the White House-led U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and his counterparts from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development will also co-host the associated Peace, Security and Governance Forum.  "The African Leader Summit comes at a very important time for U.S.-African relations," said a senior defense official during a briefing today. "The United States has recognized the enormous potential and promise in Africa, and this is something that we definitely want to lean in on."  To develop that potential, the official said, the U.S. seeks to work with African partners to address the most pressing challenges on the continent, including political instability, insurgent groups, democratic backsliding, pandemics, environmental degradation and climate change.  As part of the three-day summit, Austin will co-host the Peace, Security and Governance Forum alongside Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Samantha Power, administrator of USAID.  "Together, the Department of Defense, State and USAID will share perspectives on the importance of our '3D' approach to Africa and share the stage with our African partners to hear their perspectives on security and the challenges in their countries," said the official.  The '3D' approach leans on defense, development and diplomacy as a way to address the root causes of instability in Africa.  "This engagement will help us refine our approach to working with our African partners on the continent," the official said. "This forum will also be an opportunity to discuss the national defense strategy priorities for Africa, such as countering [violent extremist organizations;] bolstering allies and partners; and strategic competition."  Also on the table at the forum will be discussions about the White House's strategy for Sub-Saharan Africa, where DOD hopes to work with African partners to develop African-led solutions and utilize civilian-led defense tools, such as institutional capacity building, security sector reform and building partner capacity and capabilities, the official said.  "Africa is important to the United States, and our engagement and partnership is key to the U.S.'s approach towards strategic competition," the official said. "While we do not wish to make our African partners choose sides, the U.S. strives to be the partner of choice by offering a relationship based on mutual respect and values, by providing higher-quality products and services, and by working together with our partners on issues that are important to them."  The U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit runs Dec. 13-15, 2022.  Department Names Vendors to Provide Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability [2022-12-12] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department awarded contracts to four technology companies to provide services in support of its Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability. The four companies include Amazon Web Services Inc., Google Support Services LLC, Microsoft Corporation and Oracle. "This is a huge day for the department and what we can bring to our warfighters, particularly for areas like Joint All Domain Command and Control," John Sherman, the DOD's chief information officer, said.  The department announced plans for JWCC back in July 2021 and Sherman said it took 17 months of work by the CIO, the Defense Information Systems Agency, Washington Headquarters Service and others to arrive at contract award. "It's been a been a lot of work to get here, and I'm proud of where we've landed," Sherman said.  The JWCC is a multiple-award contract vehicle that allows the department to acquire commercial cloud capabilities and services directly from commercial cloud service providers. "It brings us really cutting-edge cloud capabilities, to the entire department here," Sherman said. "Very importantly, it brings us cloud computing at all three security classification levels: unclassified, secret and top secret."  The DOD currently has other cloud computing capabilities, which are expected to remain complementary to JWCC. But those cloud capabilities don't bring the breadth and depth that JWCC will have, Sherman said. "We've got other types of clouds here within the department, but none of them do this at all three security classification levels, spanning the entire enterprise from the continental United States all the way out to what we call the tactical edge -- way out, whether it's Western Pacific or Eastern Europe or onboard a ship," he said. "That tactical edge piece is very critical for our warfighters. Whether it's, as I've noted, on a small coral atoll, or somewhere in sub-Sahara Africa or somewhere else."  The JWCC contract also allows the department to have direct access to the four cloud providers, Sherman said, rather than having to go through an intermediary or a reseller. "This creates for more efficient and effective leveraging of these capabilities," he said. "And this is something we're very excited about. So we're leaning forward on this. This is a big day in the Department of Defense. It's been a long, long journey to get here, and I'm very proud of what the team has done to provide this capability to the Department of Defense."  The JWCC is an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract vehicle which offers commercial pricing, or better, and streamlined provisioning of cloud services. As part of JWCC, warfighters will have the opportunity to, under one contract, acquire capabilities such as global accessibility; available and resilient services; centralized management and distributed control; ease of use; commercial parity; elastic computing, storage and network infrastructure; advanced data analytics; fortified security; and tactical edge devices.  Air Force Lt. Gen. Robert J. Skinner, who serves as the director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, said the department has more to be excited about than just the cloud capability that JWCC provides.  "We're also really developing an environment," he said. "That environment includes some great accelerators, as we call them -- those capabilities that help enable our mission partners, those warfighters, to be able to leverage cloud a lot more than what they are today." One such "accelerator," Skinner said, allows JWCC users to make use of pre-configured templates so that those less familiar with cloud computing will be able to make use of it in a much faster environment. He also said there is a cloud provisioning tool that enables users to manage accounts and how they use the cloud capability.  "If you look at this as one of many things that are going on within the department, as we improve the transport layer and how we're transporting data, the integrated data layer that you've heard department leadership talk about, those, along with this cloud contract, and JADC2 ... all those together really improve the resiliency, the capability and the readiness of the department, across the board, in support of those warfighters, whether they're at the strategic level, or down in that foxhole," Skinner said. Austin: Listening to African Partners Critical to Development of Productive Relationships  [2022-12-14] WASHINGTON -- How the Defense Department approaches its activities on the African continent is remarkably similar to how it approaches its activities elsewhere in the world, the secretary of defense said on Tuesday.  "The first thing that we always want to do from a department standpoint is develop the right relationships that will be conducive to promoting stability and security," said Lloyd J. Austin III. "And as we develop those relationships, we want to listen."   Austin spoke Tuesday as the host of the Peace, Security and Governance Forum at the White House-led U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, D.C. The forum was co-hosted by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Samantha Power, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.   "We want to listen to what's important to the leaders in the region and the specific countries," Austin said. "And we want to understand what's really important to you."   Also central to the forum were Chairperson of the African Union Commission Moussa Faki Mahamat, President of Mozambique Filipe Nyusi, President of Somalia Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and President of Niger Mohamed Bazoum.   The U.S. has military personnel based in all three of those nations, Austin said, and he thanked the leaders for allowing the U.S. to partner there with their forces to advance mutual security internists.   "We want to make sure that we are doing the things to develop and empower your security forces and help you work on your security architecture in ways that you think benefit you and that certainly will promote regional stability," Austin said.   The secretary also addressed climate change, and how the U.S. Defense Department has the challenges posed by climate change written into its own defense policies.   "One of the things that we have done in terms of the United States is we have addressed climate change in our National Defense Strategy, which is our guiding document," he said. "And as we interact with other countries, we certainly encourage them to do the same thing."   Climate change, Austin said, is causing both mass migration and a greater competition for resources.   "We had a great discussion this morning with the president of Niger about the impact of climate change, and it's very interesting to hear his insights because they directly match our insights and our concerns," Austin said.   Central to how the U.S. operates in Africa is its "3D" approach. That approach leans on defense, development and diplomacy to address the root causes of instability on the continent. It means that U.S. relations in Africa are not based only on defense and the military.   "It's fascinating to hear our guests, each one of them makes that case, that ... providing additional security alone won't solve the problem," Austin said. "We really have to do the right things in terms of diplomacy and providing assistance and aid to create the long-standing conditions that we're looking for -- the long-standing peace and stability."   Military efforts provided by the Defense Department, in partnership with the defense forces of African nations are important, Austin said. That work sets the conditions for the even more important follow-on work, such as that provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department.   "I don't ever want to see a day when we're not resourcing our diplomats to the full extent that they need to be resourced," he said. "Because that's going to make me buy more bullets. Because, you know, you can't solve every problem with a military solution. And certainly, if you're not addressing the long-standing, long-term issues, whatever solution you put into place will not ... prevail."   When the U.S. partners with African nations, Austin said, military power is not the only tool in play -- it's always coupled with development and diplomacy.   "This is a way of life for us," he said. "And we think it's a way that ... you have to do business, and it's certainly the approach we're taking on the continent. And I want to applaud all the leaders who are here who have embraced that concept as well."   In New Year, BAH Rates Will Increase By Average of 12.1% [2022-12-15] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department has released the basic allowance for housing, or BAH rates for 2023. Those rates have risen, on average, by 12.1%, said the Pentagon press secretary during a briefing today.  "The significant increase in average BAH rates is reflective of the unique market conditions experienced across many locations nationwide over the past year," said Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder. "The department is committed to the preservation of a compensation and benefits structure that provides members with an adequate standard of living to sustain a trained, experienced and ready force, now and in the future."  The BAH increase is not unexpected. In a memo dated Sept. 22, 2022, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III outlined an array of efforts to address the needs of married service members and their families, as well as single service members.  "The Department of Defense has a sacred obligation to take care of our service members and families," Austin wrote in the memo. "Doing so is a national security imperative. Our military families provide the strong foundation for our force, and we owe them our full support."  Part of that effort was a review of the prospective 2023 basic allowance for housing rates to ensure they reflect unusual fluctuations in the housing market. Additionally, in the 28 areas DOD identified as having a more than 20% spike in rental housing costs above BAH, the secretary directed automatic increases in BAH, which took place in October.  According to a DOD release, the October rate increases were temporary and will expire Dec. 31, 2022. Those who had received the temporary rate increases will switch over to the new BAH rates in the new year. In addition to increased BAH rates to help military families, the Defense Department is also working on other initiatives, including efforts to make military moves less onerous, make securing childcare less difficult, and expand military spouse employment.  "These actions reflect the department's sacred obligation to honor and support our service members and families," Austin said in his memo. "We remain profoundly committed to doing right by our military families, just as our military families remain profoundly committed to their loved ones and to the nation that they all do so much to defend." U.S. Plans Combined Arms Training for Ukrainian Soldiers [2022-12-15] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. has provided both equipment and training to help Ukraine defend its sovereignty against an illegal invasion by Russia that began in February. Now the U.S. will provide Ukrainian soldiers with combined arms and joint maneuver training as well. "[This] is a logical next step in our ongoing training efforts, which began in 2014, to build the Ukrainian armed forces capacity," Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said during a briefing today. "While there's an understandable focus on the equipment being provided to Ukraine, training is and has been essential to ensuring Ukraine has the skilled forces necessary to better defend themselves."  Soldiers from U.S. Army Europe and Africa Command's 7th Army Training Command will provide the combined arms and joint maneuver training, Ryder said. It's expected that training will happen at U.S. ranges in Germany and will begin in the January timeframe.  The Ukrainians will determine which service members from Ukraine's armed forces will participate in the training, Ryder said, but it's expected about 500 Ukrainians a month will participate. "What you can expect to see is that we will ... bring in battalion-sized units, and it will begin with things like live fire exercises, followed by squad, platoon and company level training that will then culminate in battalion-level maneuver training," said Ryder. "Importantly, it will also include battalion headquarters staff training."  Training, he said, will begin with classroom exercises and then shift to practical applications in the field beginning with work amongst the lowest-level units and working up to larger-unit training.  "You've heard Secretary Austin talk about that the equipment is important, but it's how to take that equipment and apply it in the field in a way that's going to enable you to do combined arms and achieve decisive effects on the battlefield," he said. "This training will contribute to that." The U.S. has already been involved in providing training to the Ukrainian armed forces, in particular with regard to equipment the U.S. is providing or has committed to provide. Since April, Ryder said, about 3,100 Ukrainians have been trained.  Ryder also said it's not expected that additional U.S. troops will need to go to Europe to become involved in the new training. DOD Official: Norms Must be Established in Space [2022-12-16] WASHINGTON -- Last week, the United Nations approved a resolution calling on nations not to conduct destructive, direct-ascent antisatellite missile tests. The United States agreed to the resolution, while China and Russia were among just nine countries that voted against it. Refraining from conducting those kinds of tests in space, in part, prevents the creation of new and dangerous space debris. John F. Plumb, the assistant secretary of defense for space policy, said the agreement not to conduct such tests is just one of many norms that will need to be established in space to make that domain safe for everybody who wants to operate there. "Voting against it ... could be for all sorts of reasons," Plumb said during a Wednesday discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "I'm not giving them [Russia and China] an excuse, [but] you don't have to vote for it to comply with it. You don't have to vote for it to have some version of it that you might enforce." Norms in space, he said, can be established without a vote. As the U.S. and other nations move into space, there will need to be norms established just as there are norms in place for operations on land, in the air, at sea, and even under the sea, Plumb said. "We have established, over long periods of time, norms at sea to avoid collision [and] norms in the air to avoid collisions. Norms undersea. All sorts of places--ground, surface, air, subsurface-- [in] any operational domain," Plumb said. Those established behaviors, he said, do more than just avoid collisions. They also provide a way for everybody operating in a domain to know when another actor's intentions are hostile. "[They] give you an understanding of if someone is accidentally or, frankly, intentionally violating those norms," Plumb said. "It gives that trigger ... to let you know something is amiss here; we need to be on guard and be careful of what's happening." Norms on the sea have existed for generations, Plumb said. In the air, for a little over 100 years. But in space, they must be established, because it is a relatively new domain for many of the nations and businesses operating there now. "There are all sorts of commercial companies operating all sorts of craft ... the number is going up," he said. "I think the more we can develop norms that make sense for protection of a safe, secure, stable space environment, the better it is for all spacefaring nations. It lowers the risk of miscalculation and potential escalation, accidental escalation." With so many entities operating in space -- many in the U.S. and many that are partners or aspiring partners of the federal government, Plumb said an issue his office is tackling is the overclassification of information in the space domain. Overclassification of information -- where information is marked at a higher classification than it might need to be -- makes it more difficult to share information with mission partners, including partner nations, other federal partners, and commercial entities. "I think there's clearly industry ramifications," he said. "Especially companies that might have to build entire architectures of classified information handling that can't talk to other parts of their company. We have to solve these problems so we can have our industrial base be able to move faster." Addressing the issue of overclassification is one of the priorities of the department, Plumb said. "I ran a ... summit for internal DOD [Defense Department] space stakeholders and [intelligence community] stakeholders focused on what are those things that are limiting our ability to do deeper operational cooperation with our spacefaring allies," Plumb said. "And it turned out that most of the problems there are related to overclassification because ... some things are classified in a way that I cannot share them with allies, even if they're highly capable." Plumb said his office is working with the intelligence community on reducing some of the classification issues so information can be better shared with operational partners. "That is a huge, huge problem for us where we're really starting to dig into," he said. "And when I talk about that DOD/IC [intelligence community] cooperation, this is one of those things that is ... it's the right time, it's the right place, it's the right window of opportunity to fix it." DOD Office Moving Ahead in Mission to Identify 'Anomalous Phenomena' [2022-12-17] WASHINGTON -- In July, the DOD set up the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office to, among other things, identify 'unidentified anomalous phenomena' which might pose a threat to national security and the operations of both the military and other federal agencies. "Unidentified anomalous phenomena," is anything in space, in the air, on land, in the sea or under the sea that can't be identified, and which might pose a threat to U.S. military installations or operations.  "We have an important and yet challenging mission to lead an interagency effort to document, collect, analyze and when possible, resolve reports of any unidentified anomalous phenomena," said Sean M. Kirkpatrick, the director of AARO.  Since the AARO office stood up this summer, Kirkpatrick said his team there has made significant headway in setting up its mission.  "We've transferred the data and responsibilities from the previous Navy-led UAP task force, and disestablished it," he said. "During that transition, we've taken the opportunity to expand and standardize and integrate UAP reporting and reevaluate the data we've collected."  The AARO has an array of UAP reports that are historical in nature to evaluate, and it is also getting new reports in as well. Kirkpatrick said the AARO will need to apply "a rigorous methodology" to the work of analyzing both old and new reports and that his team has developed an analytic framework to do just that.  In the past, the type of work AARO is charged with performing now involved only reports of anomalous phenomena that were seen in the air. But that has changed. Now, AARO expects to evaluate anomalous phenomena across all domains. And that means that individuals who operate in those other domains are also free now to file UAP reports. That's something Kirkpatrick said the AARO has been working with the services on.  "[We're] working with the military departments and the Joint Staff to normalize, integrate and expand UAP reporting beyond the aviators -- to all service members -- including mariners, submariners and our space Guardians," Kirkpatrick said.  Also, an effort of AARO, Kirkpatrick said, is working with both the military services and the intelligence community to ensure that the activities of the U.S. government itself don't end up as reports of a UAP.  "We are setting up very clear mechanisms with our 'blue' programs, both our DOD and IC programs, to deconflict any observations that come in with 'blue' activity to ensure that we weed those out and we can identify those fairly early on," Kirkpatrick said.  AARO is a new office within the DOD, and Kirkpatrick said that from the start, the office is working hard to establish a standard of operations that is both thorough and rigorous.  "We apply the highest analytic and scientific standards," he said. "We execute our mission objectively and without sensationalism and we do not rush to conclusions."  The work of the AARO is not done in a vacuum. Instead, it's obligated to keep Congress abreast of what it is doing with regular reports, said Ronald Moultrie, under secretary of defense for intelligence and security.  "Since establishment, AARO has been providing regular updates to Congress on its efforts to document, analyze and resolve reports of anomalous phenomena," Moultrie said. "The department has already submitted its first congressionally-mandated quarterly reports on UAP in August and November, and we will continue to provide quarterly updates."  Congress is not alone in wanting to know more about unidentified anomalous phenomena. The American public does as well, said Moultrie. And AARO and the department are committed to transparency there.  "The department takes public interest in UAPs seriously," Moultrie said. "As I said to congressional leaders in May, we are fully committed to the principles of openness and accountability to the American people. We are committed to sharing as much detail with the public as we can."  Ukrainian Troops Headed to U.S. for Patriot Missile Training [2023-01-10] WASHINGTON -- Weeks after announcing that the U.S. would send one Patriot air defense battery and associated munitions to Ukraine, a Pentagon official said Ukrainian soldiers will come to the U.S. to train on the Patriot system so they'll be ready to use it when it's delivered. "Training for Ukrainian forces on the Patriot air defense system will begin as soon as next week at Fort Sill, Oklahoma," Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said today. "The training will prepare approximately 90 to 100 Ukrainian soldiers to operate, maintain and sustain the defensive system over a training course expected to last several months." In the past few months, the Russians have increased their aerial bombardment of Ukraine, Ryder said, and the Patriot will help the Ukrainians stand up to that assault. "The Patriot will contribute to the air defense capabilities that Ukraine already has," he said. "It's something that will enable them to take down ... ballistic missiles, adversary aircraft; [it's] really up to them on how they employ it. But this is part of a broader effort by the United States and the international community to provide Ukraine with the air defense capabilities that it needs to defend its population and its armed forces." Fort Sill is home to the schoolhouse where the Army trains its soldiers and service members from allied and partner nations on using the Patriot system. Now, Ukrainian soldiers will train there, as well. Ryder said training for those Ukrainian soldiers will include classroom work, hands-on training with the Patriot systems, as well as a simulation lab. It will also focus on what the Ukrainians will need once they are back home. "The training will be tailored to provide relevant tactics, techniques and procedures based on the battlefield conditions in Ukraine to enable them to employ that to maximum effect once they are back in Ukraine," Ryder said. Since Russia's invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the United States has provided Ukraine with more than $24.2 billion in security assistance. That assistance has included ammunition, vehicles, aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, radar systems, small arms, artillery, air defense systems, anti-aircraft and anti-armor systems. Next week, Ryder said, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark A. Milley will travel to Germany to host another meeting of the Ukraine contact group of international defense chiefs. Ryder said the group has helped identify, synchronize and ensure delivery of the capabilities the Ukrainians have needed to defend against Russian aggression. "The secretary looks forward to meeting with defense leaders from the approximately 50 nations [comprising] this important group dedicated to Ukraine self-defense," he said. U.S., Partners Find Success in Mission to Defeat ISIS [2023-01-12] WASHINGTON -- Last year, U.S. Central Command conducted 313 operations in Iraq and Syria as part of the mission to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, also known as ISIS. More than 95% of those operations were in partnership with either the Iraqi Security Force or the Syrian Democratic Forces. As a result, nearly 700 ISIS fighters were killed and another 374 were detained. No U.S. service members were killed as part of the efforts. "This really speaks to the professionalism of our men and women in uniform and also the enduring commitment of the United States--from the strategic all the way down to the tactical level--to completing this fight," said Dana Stroul, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East. During a conference call Wednesday, Stroul told journalists the mission to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria remains a key priority of the national defense strategy, and it's one senior leaders in Washington follow closely. She also said that, despite successes, ISIS remains a threat, and there is still more work to be done. One advantage the U.S. has against ISIS is the relationships it has, not just with Iraq and the Syrian Democratic Forces, but also with partners around the world. Stroul said a recent trip to Finland to discuss the state of the fight against ISIS, demonstrated this. "What was striking to me is the enduring commitment not only of the United States, but of our European partners, as well as New Zealand, Australia and others," she said. "Our partners across the world recognize the importance of this mission, recognize that ISIS still remains a threat, and are committed to this coalition." Also of value are the advancements made by Iraq since the U.S. transitioned a year ago to an advise, assist, enable and intelligence-sharing mission there, said Army Maj. Gen. Matthew McFarlane, commander of Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve. He said the U.S. continues to retain a presence in Iraq, at the invitation of the Iraqi government. "In Iraq, things continue to improve in terms of their ability to demonstrate and actually execute independent operations as they're building capabilities, capacity and competence towards gaining an independent ability to conduct enduring operations, sustainable, enduring operations against ISIS," he said. The general said much has changed in Iraq since the last time he was in the country in 2005. Baghdad, he said, is "alive and awake and illuminated at night," and the Iraqi military is engaged in operations that are part of the "Defeat ISIS" mission in Iraq, as well as providing security for the Arabian Gulf Cup soccer tournament being held Jan. 6-19 in Iraq for the first time in 44 years. "So, [there is] progress and continued room to grow and build the capacity and capability, but [also a] very capable force," he said. Stroul said the U.S. also remains committed to the D-ISIS mission in Syria, in partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces. "Not only are U.S. forces continuing to prosecute unilateral operations against ISIS, but we maintain a robust pace of partnered operations with the SDF, who are the only combat-credible, capable and committed partner present in northeast Syria today willing to join us in this fight," she said. Of importance are the number of ISIS detainees--as many as 10,000--who are in the custody of Syrian Democratic Forces in northeast Syria. "We know that ISIS continues to have its eyes on these detainees and sees them as the path to reconstituting and resurging across the Middle East, which is why we must stay the course [and] continue to work with the coalition in supporting the SDF to maintain custody of these detainees in a secure and humane manner." Austin to Convene Meeting on Ukraine Defense [2023-01-19] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III will convene another meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group tomorrow at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. The meeting will be the eighth in a series of meetings, initiated in April 2022, to discuss current and future efforts to provide support to Ukraine in maintaining its sovereignty. "The contact group has been instrumental in identifying, synchronizing and ensuring the delivery of military capabilities the Ukrainians need to defend their homeland against Russian aggression," Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said during a briefing today. "The secretary looks forward to meeting with defense leaders from approximately 50 nations that comprise this important group dedicated to Ukraine self defense." Also expected to be forthcoming is another announcement regarding U.S. assistance to Ukraine, though the specific date hasn't been announced. Singh couldn't say what would be in that package, but she suggested that, like packages in the past, it would align closely with both what the Ukrainians need most on the battlefield and what the U.S. is able to provide. "We should expect another security package coming soon," she said. "But we know that the Ukrainians have continued to ask for, ... one of their main priorities, is more armored vehicles, air defense systems. And, so, each package, as you've seen, sort of matches some of their biggest needs and requests. And, so, I'd expect with the next packet you'd see something like that." Retaking Crimea Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov has said he expects Ukraine will reclaim the Crimean Peninsula from Russia, and that his country will use weapons provided by the West -- including the U.S. -- as part of that effort. The Russians invaded Crimea in 2014 and claimed to have annexed it as part of Russia. The Ukrainians and the United States consider Crimea to be a part of Ukraine, which is now illegally occupied by Russia. Singh reiterated to reporters what the U.S. has said in the past: Crimea is Ukraine, and the U.S. will continue to help Ukraine reclaim its sovereignty. "Crimea is part of Ukraine. We've long held that position ... We certainly support the Ukrainians taking back their territory by any means that they can and whatever weapons they are using. We have not shied away from stating that fact from the very beginning." Howard University Will Be Lead Institution for New Research Center [2023-01-23] WASHINGTON -- Defense Department leaders today announced the creation of a 15th university-affiliated research center associated with Howard University in Washington, D.C. The research center is sponsored by the U.S. Air Force and focused on tactical autonomy. The announcement represents two firsts for the U.S. military: It's the first university-affiliated research center associated with one of America's historically Black colleges and universities and the first sponsored by the Air Force. "Today as we work to build enduring advantages for our brave men and women in uniform, we must seek the latest innovations in science and engineering," Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III told students and faculty at Howard University. "That means building more bridges to America's outstanding STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] community. You see, we need your ideas; we need your creativity and we need to draw on the skills of all of our people." Some 30% of African American STEM professionals graduate from one of America's historically Black colleges and universities, Austin said, yet only a small fraction of the Defense Department's research funding is directed towards HBCUs. That's something Austin said he's determined to change. "To sharpen America's technological edge and to strengthen America's outstanding military, the department is committed to investing even more in HBCUs and minority-serving institutions," he said. "Today, we're taking that commitment to a new level." The new research center will be led by Howard University and will focus on tactical autonomy, which is an area of research which is central to U.S. security, Austin said. "Responsibly used autonomous systems make our military faster, smarter and stronger," Austin said. "They can identify threats to our troops in real-time and they can help our technical crews conduct maintenance more safely. And they can equip our commanders with the best available information to make life and death decisions." The research expected to take place under the leadership of Howard University, Austin said, will focus on those important areas, and will help to protect the men and women who serve the nation's armed forces. "Ladies and gentlemen, the United States of America has the strongest fighting force in human history," Austin said, "And thanks to new partnerships like this one, we're going to keep it that way. That's the American way, and it's the Howard way." A UARC is a DOD-supported non-profit research organization affiliated with a university that has a specific area of domain expertise or specialization, and which supports the long-term needs of the Defense Department. With the addition of the newest UARC, to be led by Howard University, the Department will have 15 such research organizations. Howard University was chosen to lead a consortium of universities that will participate in the newest UARC. Those universities include Jackson State University, Mississippi; Tuskegee University, Alabama; Hampton University, Virginia; Bowie State University, Maryland; Norfolk State University, Virginia; Delaware State University, Delaware; Florida Memorial University, Florida; and Tougaloo College, Mississippi. Howard University will receive $12 million per year for five years to fund research, faculty and students. "America is at its best when we knock down barriers, when we search for great ideas wherever they reside and when we draw on the full talents of the American people -- all of the American people," Austin said. "So to Howard and the other schools in the consortium, thank you for lifting up the next generation. Thank you for all that you do for our outstanding men and women in uniform. And thank you for making our democracy more secure." U.S., Israel Begin Juniper Oak Exercise [2023-01-24] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. and Israel yesterday kicked off Juniper Oak 23.2, a bilateral, live-fire exercise that takes place in both Israel and the Mediterranean Sea, said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder. "It's the largest and most significant exercise we have engaged in together and is intended to demonstrate that the U.S. commitment to Israel's security is ironclad and enduring," Ryder said during a briefing today at the Pentagon. The exercise, Ryder said, enhances the United States' ability to respond to contingencies and underscores the U.S. commitment to the Middle East region. "Throughout the week-long engagement, more than 140 aircraft, 12 naval vessels, High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, and multiple-launch rocket systems will be used during this combined, joint, all-domain exercise, increasing our ability to interoperate on land, in the air, at sea, in space and in cyberspace." Participants in Juniper Oak will exercise U.S. and Israeli command and control capabilities, air operations in maritime surface warfare, and combat search and rescue abilities. U.S. and Israeli partners will also work together to enhance interoperability on electronic attack, suppression of enemy air defenses, strike coordination and reconnaissance, and air interdiction. "This exercise is focused on interoperability and strengthening our security relationship in terms of working together," Ryder said. "As evidenced by ..., most recently, the counter-ISIS campaign, the ability to pull air forces together seamlessly and operate in a way that is going to be effective is vital. This is one aspect of that, although the exercise is obviously more than just about airpower." Ryder said the Juniper Oak exercise is not focused on defeating one adversary or threat, but rather the interoperability of U.S. and Israeli forces. "The United States maintains many relationships in the Middle East region with many countries," he said. "Israel is one of our closest partners in the region ... this gives us the opportunity to work together to increase interoperability, to be able to respond to a variety of contingencies and threats ... that should we need to operate together, we can do so seamlessly." Ukraine Training During the briefing, Ryder also touched on the war in Ukraine. In mid-December, the Defense Department announced plans to provide Ukrainian soldiers with combined arms and joint maneuver training. Soldiers from U.S. Army Europe and Africa Command's 7th Army Training Command are now providing that training, Ryder said. It's expected to last about six weeks. "The training has begun," Ryder told reporters. "It started mid-January ... Once that training is complete, ... those forces will go back into Ukraine." The department is keeping open the option to repeat the training if the Ukrainians ask for more, Ryder said. "It's not a 'one and --done' type of program, he said. "That'll be Ukraine's decision in terms of providing additional forces to go through that cycle. We certainly expect them to do that. But at the end of the day, that's their decision given the situation on the ground." Ukraine, Asia Drove 50% Increase in FY22 Arms Sales [2023-01-25] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Security Cooperation Agency last year saw a substantial increase in the arms sales it administers, including arms purchased directly by partner nations with their own funds and sales funded through the Foreign Military Financing program. Total arms sales in fiscal year 2022, about $52 billion worth, exceeded FY21's $34.81 billion in sales by nearly 50%. James A. Hursch, the director of DSCA, cited factors such as the waning effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and concerns about China's rising influence in the Pacific as possible reasons for increased sales. "Perhaps most importantly, [we attribute this to] the understanding among our partners and allies that we're back in an age of great power competition," Hursch said. "They see what's happened in Ukraine. Central European countries, for example, are looking to get some of the same capabilities that have worked well for the Ukrainian army, and to increase their own capabilities for deterrence." In the Pacific, allies and partners are wary of China's increasing dominance. "Allies are looking at China and the situations with China in Asia, and thinking they need to increase their capabilities," he said. Last year's increase can also be attributed to existing partners now opting to buy more expensive gear, Hursch said. "As we continue to improve our equipment, it tends to get more costly. Buying a HIMARS system, for example, is more expensive than buying a Howitzer," he said referring to the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System. "And that's the sort of upgrade that several of our allies and partners are looking to do." While large equipment purchases are responsible for much of last year's increase, it can also be attributed in part to some of DSCA's less costly programs which help partner nations build institutional capacity, he said. "We do things like making sure they have the capacity to do coastal surveillance or maritime surveillance," he said. "We work with countries that are working to build their own airspace surveillance." To help with that capacity building, Hursch said DSCA last year deployed 42 defense advisors to 23 different countries through DSCA's Ministry of Defense Advisors program. "These are folks who are actually embedded in foreign governments to provide advice to countries, which could be about their procurement stuff, but could also be about helping set up a national security strategy," he said. In the coming years, Hursch said, he expects to see continued increases in arms sales -- but he also said it would be difficult to predict by just how much. One contributing factor which he said makes him confident of increasing sales is that many allies have publicly committed to spending more on their own defense. "When you look at our allies and partners, a lot of them have increased their defense budgets in recent years, or in the last year or so, in response to what's happened in Ukraine," he said. "I think we will continue to see strong demand signals because of that ... It's a little hard to tell exactly how much the increase will be, but I think it will be at least as strong as this year and probably a little higher." Also, a possibility for increased sales in the future, Hursch said, is that allies and partners in Eastern Europe may be interested in providing their own Soviet-era equipment to Ukraine and would then be interested in buying replacement equipment from the U.S. to backfill their own capabilities. "We have had those conversations," he said. "In fact, in last year's foreign military financing budget, the State Department had a certain amount of money that was given out to help replace Soviet-era systems that might have been donated to Ukraine, and to help them buy Western systems in the future. So, there have been some of these conversations." Between the Feb. 24, 2022, Russian invasion of Ukraine and the end of FY22, the U.S. committed to more than $14.9 billion in security assistance to Ukraine through both presidential drawdown authority and the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. A drawdown allows the president in certain circumstances to withdraw existing weapons, ammunitions and material from existing U.S. military stocks and provide that to other nations. Support under USAI differs from that provided as part of PDA in that it uses money appropriated by Congress to purchase new equipment for Ukraine rather than having it be limited to pulling from existing military inventory. DSCA was involved in helping the U.S. meet both of those kinds of commitments to Ukraine, Hursch said. "All of those presidential drawdown authority execution orders -- telling the military departments and service to actually do that -- are done by DSCA," Hursch said. "And we're intimately involved ... in working through the demand signals that come from theater and from U.S. European Command, working through shaping and putting together the packages of presidential drawdown amount and getting that coordinated within the U.S. government and the department." DSCA, Hursch said, was also involved in several tranches of providing USAI support to Ukraine as well. DSCA has more than 1,200 authorized military and civilian positions and contractor personnel. But the total workforce involved in security cooperation efforts across the entire Defense Department exceeds 16,000. While some of those security cooperation professionals don't work directly for Hursch, they are accredited in their work and are also trained at the Defense Security Cooperation University, a part of DSCA which stood up just a little over three years ago. Meeting 2022's security cooperation efforts around the globe, Hursch said, required the efforts of all of those professionals. "The enterprise as a whole, not just DSCA, stepped up last year," he said. "As a whole, we have increased our focus on trying to get things done quickly, to get the foreign military sales process to work more quickly and to get wherever possible contracts to be let faster." Hursch said DOD has been directed by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III to improve their own part of the Foreign Military Sales process. "The secretary asked us to look at ways in which we can improve the FMS process as a whole," he said, adding that it's not the first time DSCA has been asked to streamline and improve their portion of FMS. He said as part of the SECDEF's most-recent direction, the team has looked at several case studies so that they might draw from those some lessons on how to improve. "One [lesson] is the continued need to better educate and prepare our workforce over time, which we put some effort in, but we need to do more on," he said. "Another is questions about the acquisition system -- which is something which we're working on altogether, with the acquisition and sustainment folks." As a result of COVID-19, he said, there have also been concerns about the capacity of the U.S. industrial base to manufacture and provide the materiel foreign nations might want to procure from the U.S. "Our acquisition and sustainment people have been working hard to try to make progress on that," he said. "In terms of actual recommendations, we have talked about some places where we can try to decrease bottlenecks in the process. We've talked about whether we can improve our ability to forecast demand signals to help the industrial base. And we're putting in place processes -- some committees and structures within the department -- to try to make sure that we keep this sort of continuous process improvement moving forward." DSCA also serves as executive agent for six regional centers for security studies. The newest of those, the Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies, opened in August in Anchorage, Alaska. The center will in part help the U.S. security apparatus navigate new opportunities and challenges opening in the Arctic, Hursch said. "They have taken off fairly quickly to do several things," Hursch said. "One is to undertake work that helps U.S. government personnel understand the challenges of doing business in this incredibly fragile environment -- an increasingly and strategically important environment." The center, he said, has already been working with international partners in the Arctic, including Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Canada and Norway, to discuss challenges there and to ensure interoperability and mutual understanding between nations operating in the region. Topics of discussion include climate change, hard power in the region, and working with indigenous populations who live in the Arctic. "[The center has] been very active in sort of creating this community of interest," he said. "There's a lot of different work that they've been engaged in." Hursch said in the last year, he thinks DSCA and security cooperation have moved to the center of the U.S. national security policy as a primary tool for what's happening in both Eastern Europe and Asia. "We think there'll be more of that," he said. "I think the centrality of our security cooperation mission will only continue to increase. If you look at the National Defense Strategy, and the National Security Strategy, you will see stronger words about the need to work with partners and allies -- integrated deterrence has a very strong role for working with partners and allies." Working with partners and allies, Hursch said, is what DSCA does -- and well. "We set up the relationships and we increase the capabilities through security cooperation," he said. "I think that will continue to increase." U.S. Tracking High-Altitude Surveillance Balloon [2023-02-02] WASHINGTON -- An intelligence-gathering balloon, most certainly launched by the People's Republic of China, is currently floating above the United States, the Defense Department announced Thursday evening. "The United States government has detected and is tracking a high-altitude surveillance balloon that is over the continental United States right now," Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said during an impromptu briefing Thursday evening. "The U.S. government, to include NORAD, continues to track and monitor it closely." Ryder said the balloon is well above commercial air traffic and doesn't pose a threat to civil aviation. He also said this isn't the first time such a balloon has been seen over the United States. After the balloon was detected, Ryder said, the U.S. government "acted immediately" to protect against the collection of sensitive information, though he didn't detail what measures were taken. A senior defense official who participated in the briefing on background only said the U.S. intelligence community has "very high confidence" the balloon belongs to the People's Republic of China, and that the United States has engaged with Chinese officials "with urgency, through multiple channels" regarding the presence of the balloon. "We have communicated to them the seriousness with which we take this issue," the official said. "We have made clear we will do whatever is necessary to protect our people and our homeland." Right now, the official said, following recommendations of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark A. Milley and Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, commander of U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, the U.S. position is to allow the balloon to continue to float above the United States, rather than attempt to shoot it down. The official said the risk of using kinetic force to take the balloon out of the sky might put civilian communities at risk, and that the threat the balloon poses now to both safety and U.S. intelligence doesn't justify such an action. "Currently, we assess that this balloon has limited additive value from an intelligence collective collection perspective," the official said. "But we are taking steps, nevertheless, to protect against foreign intelligence collection of sensitive information." The official said this is not the first time such a balloon has been seen above the United States, but did say this time the balloon appears to be acting differently than what has been seen in the past. "It's happened a handful of other times over the past few years, to include before this administration," the official said. "It is appearing to hang out for a longer period of time, this time around, [and is] more persistent than in previous instances. That would be one distinguishing factor." While the senior defense official would not say how large the balloon is, the official did say its size did figure into the calculation to not use kinetic force to take it out of the sky. "We did assess that it was large enough to cause damage from the debris field if we downed it over an area," the official said. "I can't really go into the dimension -- but there have been reports of pilots seeing this thing, even though it's pretty high up in the sky. So ... it's sizable." As early as yesterday, the official said, the balloon was seen over Montana. Chemical, Biological Defense Community Names Top Performers for 2022 [2023-02-06] WASHINGTON -- The Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Chemical and Biological Defense named top performers for 2022 during its second annual awards ceremony at the Pentagon on Feb. 2.  Leanne A. Chacon, of the Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense , was named recipient of the Chemical and Biological Defense individual-junior award.  "Her actions and effectiveness have been exceptional and contributed significantly to the JPEO-CBRND's efforts," said Col. Bill Epolito, the chief of staff for CBD. "Her extraordinary leadership and accomplishments as the assistant product manager, successfully leading the Cue Health Industrial Base expansion acquisition on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services, were instrumental in providing the U.S. pandemic response with a critical test capability."  Chacon also provided support to Next Generation Diagnostic System 2 chemical diagnostic program, which Epolito said provides a critical capability to warfighters for the diagnosis and protection against chemical nerve agents.  Named as the individual-senior award winner was Christopher Earnhart from the JPEO-CBRND.  "His superior leadership and accomplishments as the chief technical officer for the joint project lead for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear-defense-enabling biotechnologies, were instrumental in providing modernized threat response models to quickly develop medical countermeasures and decrease time-to-field to the warfighter, and allow the joint forces to fight and win, unencumbered, in any CBRN environment," Epolito said.  Earnhart also facilitated science and technology, advanced development, manufacturing and acquisition of medical solutions to provide U.S. military forces with safe, effective and innovative ways to enhance the nation's bio/defense response capability, Epolito said. A group award was given to the seven members of the Joint Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution Science & Technology Program Identification Restructure Team. Team members came from both the Joint Science and Technology Office as well as the Joint CBRN Defense Program Analysis and Integration Office.  Those team members included Morya Wallace, Cheri Withers, Anna Young, Tom Yuzuik, Bill Thomas, Sandy Rausch and Dawn Do. The seven were joined in receiving the award by their leadership, including Army Col. Christopher Grice, from JSTO; and Candace Montville of the Joint CBRN Defense PAIO. "[The team] exemplified outstanding teamwork, supporting project efforts to streamline and automate science and technology financial data across multiple financial systems," Epolito said. "The synergies established have provided substantial movement forward in sharing the chemical and biological defense S&T financial data in support of the chemical and biological defense program enterprise advocacy management and reporting efforts into the future."  U.S. Aids Turkey After Devastating Quakes [2023-02-08] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. -- including the Defense Department -- has multiple efforts underway to provide assistance to Turkey following devastating earthquakes, Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said today. "In coordination with USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development], the State Department and the interagency, the Department of Defense has responded to the government of Turkey's request for earthquake relief support and will continue to provide support as requested by the Turkish government," Ryder said. Two massive earthquakes have hit Turkey near its southern border with Syria since Monday. The magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 quakes were centered in the Pazarcik and Elbistan districts of Kahramanmaras, according to a Turkish government website. Some reports have said the death toll in Turkey and Syria is approaching 12,000. On Monday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III offered condolences to Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar. During the call, Austin offered U.S. support to Turkish relief efforts and pledged ongoing assistance as Turkey's needs evolve. Yesterday, U.S. rotary wing assets based at Incirlik Airbase in Turkey began transporting first responders to the most impacted populations affected by the earthquakes, Ryder said. "In addition, DOD transported two civilian urban search and rescue teams from the United States to Turkey," he said. "U.S. Transportation Command supported this movement Tuesday via C-17 from Dover Air Force Base and March Air Force Base to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. Those teams arrived Feb. 8 and will soon begin aiding the relief efforts there." U.S. European Command, Ryder said, is also deploying a team to Incirlik Air Base to assist the USAID Disaster Assistance Response Team, and the expectation is that the team will be in place tomorrow. Eucom is also working to pre-position additional assets to support relief efforts and respond to new requests from the Turkish government, he added. "We offer our sincere condolences, and we'll stand with our ally Turkey as they work to save lives and recover from this horrific disaster," Ryder said. U.S., Gulf Nations Assess Same Threats in Middle East [2023-02-13] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department early this morning led two working groups at the invitation of the Gulf Cooperation Council, including one on air and missile defense and another on maritime security. A takeaway from the discussions is that the U.S. and participating Gulf nations share many of the same security concerns for the region.  "There is a shared assessment between the United States and the GCC of the threats that face us ... there's an alignment of the threat perception," Dana Stroul, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, said.  The members of the Gulf Cooperation Council are the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait. The council first met in 1981 to strengthen relations among the member states.  Chief among those threats, she said, are those posed by Iran. Included there is the proliferation of Iranian unmanned aerial vehicles to non-state actors across the region, which are threats to both civilians of Gulf nations and to U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria who are conducting the counter-ISIS mission.  Iranian aggression at sea also remains a serious concern, Stroul said.  "Needless to say, the work to bring partners together and the increased rate of maritime interdictions, I think, speaks both to the serious nature of the threats we face at sea and to how we can effectively address those threats through increased cooperation," she said.  Discussion within the working groups also turned to military cooperation between Iran and Russia, including the illicit transfer of Iranian weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine and the implications of that for stability and security in the Middle East, Stroul said.  A big takeaway from discussions on air and missile defense, Stroul said, was interest in increased integration between different systems currently used in the Gulf.  "There has been no other moment in time in which the prospect for meaningful integration is more real than today," she said. "It's both because of that alignment of threats that I just went through. And it is also because of emerging technology and the culture of innovation that Centcom [U.S. Central Command] is fostering together with its partners."  Stroul said discussions at the working group centered around the status of air and missile defense systems that are in place, the possibility for increased intelligence sharing and early warning in the future, and evaluation of partners' systems and capabilities to devising a more effective, layered air defense.  "When it comes to maritime security, [U.S. Naval Forces Central Command] is doing incredible work today, expanding maritime domain awareness and bringing together partners through its combined task forces to address threats that we hear from our partners are of tremendous concern," Stroul said.  DOD Aims to Boost Small Business Involvement in Nation's Defense [2023-02-23] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department's Office of Small Business Programs has several efforts underway to make it easier for the nation's small business community to become more involved in providing goods, services, technology and research in support of the nation's defense. Farooq A. Mitha, director of OSBP, spoke Wednesday at the Professional Services Council in Arlington, Virginia. He told representatives of small businesses about his office's most recent efforts including the Department's newly released Small Business Strategy. In the past few months, Mitha said, the department's Procurement Technical Assistance Centers, about 96 of them across the country, have been rebranded as APEX Accelerators. Those APEX Accelerators have an enhanced mission in helping existing and new businesses strengthen the defense industrial base by accelerating innovation, fostering ingenuity and establishing resilient and diverse supply chains. "We're going to be doing a lot of market research using these entities," Mitha said. "We're going to connect them closer to our other prime contractors that are looking for subcontractors to be part of their supply chains." The APEX Accelerators will also do more training with small businesses on issues related to cybersecurity and foreign ownership, control or influence that might affect their ability to work with the federal government, Mitha said. Efforts are also underway to reinvigorate the Rapid Innovation Fund, Mitha said. That program was designed to help small businesses get their technology from the prototype stage to the production stage -- a period of time when many businesses fail that's commonly called "the valley of death." The RIF hasn't been funded since 2019, and Mitha said he aims to change that. "We've gone four years without money into this program," he said. "That is a big, big problem at a time when we're spending more dollars doing prototyping. We need to support more companies to go into production and transition their technologies." Mitha said he brought the RIF back into his office to support streamlining entry points into the defense marketplace for small companies and to enable better long-term planning for small business programs. Recently, Mitha advocated for permanency of the Mentor Prot�g� Program (MPP), which was a pilot for over thirty years. This led to Congress making MPP permanent in the Fiscal Year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. Another effort, Mitha said, is the creation of what he said is called the "Small Business Integration Group." Not every effort aimed at small business development lies in his own office, he said, but the new group will tie together the efforts happening outside his office. "[It] will bring the services, the defense agencies, OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense], the industrial base and small business stakeholders to be part of an integrated integration group that I will oversee ... so we can collaborate better, work closer together, communicate with industry better, and really break down the silos between our programs," he said. The Defense Acquisition University trains the acquisition workforce from across the department, and Mitha said a new credential for working with small businesses has been established within DAU. "We've now established common courses, curriculum and training for all these professionals," he said. "But we've made it a credential not a career field. So, what that means is that anybody in the acquisition workforce can get the small business credential." Mitha said he expects more instructors and capacity will be needed to help the thousands of acquisition professionals across the department who may want to get the small business credential. For New Engineers, DOD Has Many Opportunities [2023-02-24] WASHINGTON -- During this year's National Engineers Week commemoration held at the Pentagon, the deputy undersecretary of defense for research and engineering explained some of the opportunities available to young engineers interested in supporting the nation's defense. "There is no more exciting or challenging place to work than in the Department of Defense," said David Honey during a keynote address Thursday afternoon. "DOD is one of the world's largest engineering organizations and employs more than 100,000 engineers. Here, engineers share a unique mission to advance cutting-edge engineering technology, systems and practices, and specializations that range from cyber and space to hypersonics and quantum science and more." For young engineers interested in working for the Defense Department, Honey said there are a variety of opportunities they can take advantage of. One of those is the Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation Scholarship, also called the "SMART Scholarship." "This offers scholarships for undergraduate, master's and doctoral students currently pursuing a degree in one of 21 key STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] disciplines," Honey said. "SMART scholars are selected, matched with a relevant DOD laboratory, and awarded a full-tuition scholarship." During the summer, Honey said, those students intern at that DOD lab, and after they graduate from school, they go to work at that same installation for a period of time that matches their scholarship. "Our SMART scholars get a paid education and a great engineering position right out of college, which is a pretty good deal," he said. Another way to get involved as an engineer or as a student pursuing a degree in a science, technology, engineering, or mathematics program, is through one of the department's University Affiliated Research Centers, or UARCs. A UARC is a DOD-supported non-profit research organization affiliated with a university that has a specific area of domain expertise or specialization and supports the long-term needs of the department. Up until last month, there'd been only 14 UARCs. But in January, the department announced the creation of a new UARC, to be associated with Howard University in Washington. "Just last month we were honored to help establish the department's 15th UARC. This new UARC is at Howard University, and it is our first UARC at a historically black college or university," Honey said. "This Air Force-sponsored UARC will focus on tactical autonomy, which will operate under a consortium model, with a number of other HBCUs supporting this effort." Also, an opportunity for young engineers to help support the nation's defense is through the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship. "This is the Department of Defense's most prestigious single-investigator award and supports basic research with the potential for transformative impact," Honey said. The five-year fellowship, with as much as $3 million in funding, "supports new, out-of-the-box ideas where researcher creativity intersects with the unknown," Honey said. In 2022, nine individuals were able to take advantage of the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship. Honey said they work in areas such as semiconductor technology, artificial intelligence and quantum theory. "I'd strongly encourage interested engineers to consider a career in the DOD," Honey said. "The need is great, and the work is very rewarding. The world is becoming a challenging place, and the DOD's need for sound, innovative engineering has never been greater. You'll not only do interesting and exciting engineering tasks, but you'll be a part of something important -- because the work we do truly matters." Allies, Partners Central to U.S. Integrated Deterrence Effort [2023-03-01] WASHINGTON -- Both Russia and China figure heavily into the content of the 2022 National Defense Strategy, which was released in October. Within the strategy, integrated deterrence -- including increased partnerships with American allies and partners -- plays a central role to defending against both the acute and strategic threats posed by those two nations. Mara Karlin, who performs the duties of the deputy undersecretary of defense for policy and who also serves as the assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities, spoke today at the Center for a New American Security to discuss how the department is enabling integrated deterrence in regards to both China and Russia. China, Karlin said, has both the intent and, increasingly, the capability to challenge the United States militarily, economically, technologically and diplomatically. While Russia doesn't pose the same long-term strategic threat, it does pose a more urgent short-term threat. Because of this, and as evidenced by the now yearlong Russian invasion of Ukraine, the department has identified Russia as an "acute threat." "We very much see Russian aggression threatening our interests and values and those of our allies and our partners," Karlin said. "Russia's reckless war of choice against Ukraine has made that very clear and very real for the entire world. And we can't help but watch the Russian alignment with the People's Republic of China. Both [nations] seem to favor a world in which they can trample over the sovereignty of their smaller neighbors and have a free hand in their self-declared spheres of influence." One example of how the U.S. has operationalized integrated deterrence as it relates to Russia, Karlin said, includes the U.S. response following the Feb. 24, 2022, Russian invasion of Ukraine. "We did a lot to surge U.S. forces to Europe as the conflict was kicking off and surge from 80,000 to 100,000 troops in Europe to reinforce our posture and frankly, that was doable because of our very close relationship with so many of those countries, because of preposition equipment," she said. As Russia continued to wage war against Ukraine, Karlin said, the U.S. and American allies and partners worked to defend their own interests in Eastern Europe by strengthening Ukraine's ability to defend itself. "We've been able to build Ukraine's military and asymmetric capabilities through robust security assistance," she said. NATO allies, Karlin said, have stepped up to enhance their presence in Eastern Europe, and as part of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group -- led by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III -- some 50 nations have banded together to help meet Ukraine's current and future defense needs. "I would also just note that ... the United States has worked really hard to ensure we can maintain our bedrock commitment to NATO's collective defense and we do that working hand-in-hand with our allies," she said. When it comes to China, Karlin said, the department is investing in a combat credible force and investing in critical capabilities across domains such as cyber and space. "You've seen this in terms of our construction of new ships, our modernization of the Army and the Marine Corps and the advancement of air power and key investments and in various aircraft," she said. In space, she said, the department is investing in the fielding of resilient satellite constellations and in boosting U.S. resilience in cyber. When it comes to partnerships, Karlin said the U.S. is working with key allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region to build and deepen security cooperation efforts. "We're forming new geometries for cooperation, such as AUKUS ... Australia, the U.K. and the United States," she said. "It's really a strategic partnership that's focused on enhancing regional stability and safeguarding a free and open Indo-Pacific, and it's going to provide Australia with a conventionally armed nuclear powered submarine capability." As part of AUKUS, she said, the three partnered nations develop and exercise joint, advanced military capabilities. "We're accelerating the advancement of a bunch of different capabilities across areas as wide-ranging as artificial intelligence and autonomy and cyber ... to ensure that our warfighters can retain and expand their competitive edge," she said. Also in the Pacific, Karlin said, the U.S. has worked to optimize its force posture there, including a more capable Marine Corps presence in Japan, increased rotational presence in Australia and better access in the Philippines. "That's all really meaningful when you look at our ability to project power," she said. The U.S. military is also expanding the number of exercises it holds with partners in the Indo-Pacific, Karlin said. "What we're really trying to do is change and enhance the size, scope, scale and character of these exercises," she said. "A great example would be Garuda Shield, which was an exercise of 14 nations that occurred a couple of months ago." All-Volunteer Force Proves Successful for U.S. Military [2023-03-02] WASHINGTON -- At the end of January 1973, then-Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird announced the U.S. military would, going forward, fill its ranks exclusively with volunteers rather than with draftees. A half-century later, the decision has been proven sound, said the deputy defense secretary. "After 50 years, the all-volunteer force remains the best model for the U.S. military," said Kathleen H. Hicks. "And that's why we celebrate -- it has delivered for us operationally and societally. It was the right decision for the U.S. military and the nation at the time. And over the last 50 years, in times of conflict and in times of peace, it has continued to be the right decision." Hicks spoke Tuesday during a conference titled "The All-Volunteer Force at 50: Civil-Military Challenges and Opportunities," which was hosted by Georgetown University's Center of Security Studies and the America in the World Consortium. Since the end of military conscription in the United States, Hicks said, more than 11 million have joined active-duty service. Today, she said, more than 1.5 million men and women serve in the uniform across the total force. While the all-volunteer force has proven successful, Hicks said, in recent years the military services have faced ever increasing challenges in recruiting volunteers to serve. She said there's a variety of reasons for this. Most recently, for instance, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down many schools, creating new barriers for recruiters to meet with enlistment-aged students. Low unemployment and increased competition for talent have also made it harder for the military to attract new service members, Hicks said. Additionally, over the past 40 years, the number of military veterans in the U.S. has dropped. In 1980, Hicks said, about 18% of Americans were veterans. Today, that number sits at about 7%. "[This is] further reducing Americans' familiarity with the military," she said. "This means fewer Americans have direct ties to a family member, friend or neighbor who has served. And without those direct ties, it is harder to observe the military way of life up close." Despite challenges in recruiting, Hicks said the U.S. military is doing well with retention -- that is, keeping people in service after they have initially signed up. "Even as recruiting is hard today, the U.S. military's retention numbers are outstanding, with every service exceeding 100% of their goals in 2022," she said. "The all-volunteer force is proving its value proposition to those who choose it. It creates long-term opportunities for military personnel while in uniform and thereafter--and in virtually every career field." The responsibility, leadership and skills men and women develop while in the service, Hicks said, provide benefit to service members, their families, their communities and the nation. "It is in our national interest to ensure that younger generations consider public service as a career option," she said. Hicks challenged attendees at the conference to foster a commitment to public service as a way to ensure the continued strength of U.S. democracy. "We cannot afford a future of disconnection, a future without the firefighters, nurses, teachers, public servants and service members we need to advance the common good," Hicks said. "We should all consider how we're going to leave the world a better place than we found it. That's my charge to you, and I need your help. We must amplify the importance of service and its relationship to the health of our democracy. And I am confident that this renewed call will be answered if it is heard." During Middle East Trip, Austin Touts Commitment to Partners, Security [2023-03-04] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III today embarked on a multiday trip to meet with civil and military leaders in the Middle East -- including those in Jordan, Egypt and Israel -- to reenforce the U.S. commitment to partnerships and security in the region. "Secretary Austin will convey enduring U.S. commitment to the Middle East and provide reassurance to our partners that the United States remains committed to supporting their defense and increasing and strengthening the strategic partnerships with each of these countries," said a senior defense official in advance of the trip. That same official said that while in talks in the Middle East, the secretary will convey his belief and that of the Defense Department that the best path for sustainable and effective security in the Middle East is through integration and multilateral security cooperation among partners. "Secretary Austin will talk about, with each partner, the tremendous opportunities that we have because of cutting-edge innovation, emerging technology, shared assessments of what the threats are facing our partners in the region, [and] that now is the time to improve collective and shared defense," the official said. Some areas for collaboration include integrated air and missile defense, maritime security, intelligence sharing and early warning systems. "This is important not only the for the security of the citizens of the region, the territory and the defense of our partners, but also obviously sends a strong strategic signal of our commitment to each other and to regional security and stability," the official said. Also central to discussion will be the "full constellation of Iran-associated threats," the official said. Those threats include Iran's arming, training and funding of violent proxy groups, aggression at sea, cyber threats, it's ballistic missile program and drone attacks. "Every partner [in] every capital you visit in the Middle East will talk about their concerns related to all of these threats," the official said, and Austin will consult with those partners on how those threats can be pushed back and undermined. The official also said that while in the Middle East, the secretary will discuss a topic he now discusses with every partner and ally: the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the Middle East, specifically, that includes the risks to regional security resulting from increased military cooperation between Iran and Russia, which is now using weapons provided by Iran to kill Ukrainian civilians. That cooperation, the official said, "eventually will come back with significant and negative security consequences for the Middle East." During the visit to Egypt and Jordan, the official said, Austin is expected to highlight those nations' leadership roles in facilitating integrated deterrence. "In Israel, he will reaffirm his ironclad commitment to Israel['s] security, and Israel's inherent right to self-defense," the official said. "He'll also be quite frank with Israeli leaders about his concerns regarding the cycle of violence in the West Bank and consult on what steps Israeli leaders can take to meaningfully restore calm before the upcoming holidays." On Middle East Tour, Austin Talks Partnerships With Jordanian King [2023-03-06] AMMAN, JORDAN -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III met Sunday with King Abdullah II of Jordan as part of a multiday tour of partner nations in the Middle East, emphasizing the continuing U.S. commitment to Middle Eastern partner nations as well as discussing ways to enhance existing relationships and strengthen security cooperation efforts. As part of the meeting, the two leaders discussed a range of shared concerns, including security in nearby Iraq, the flow of illegal narcotics in the region, Syria, the escalating tensions in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and working towards a lasting peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The secretary also reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to deepen economic and military cooperation between the two countries. That commitment is underpinned by the Memorandum of Understanding on Strategic Partnership between the United States and Jordan, which was signed in September 2022. As part of that agreement, the U.S. pledges to provide $1.45 billion per year in bilateral foreign assistance to Jordan for seven years. The primary focus of Austin's visit was to assure leaders such as Abdullah that while the U.S. has interests in other parts of the world -- including both Russia and China -- it remains a deeply committed partner not just to Jordan but to other nations in the Middle East and wants to help collaboratively solve shared security concerns. "[We want] to reassure our partners that we are here for the long-term. We are going to be by their side going forward, no matter what," Austin said. "We've seen great partnerships over the ... last several decades. And those partnerships have, in fact, created greater stability in our region." Already in the Middle East, Austin said, the U.S. military has more than 34,000 troops participating in shared security cooperation efforts. During his visit, he met with some of those troops who personify the ongoing U.S. commitment to partnership. "My view is the troops look pretty gosh darn good," Austin said. "And they're pretty excited about what they're doing on a daily basis." In addition to a troop presence in the Middle East, the U.S. military also has a sizable Air Force capability in the region, a capable naval fleet and air defense capacity. During his meeting with Abdullah, Austin also expressed gratitude for Jordan's contributions to regional security cooperation, including efforts to facilitate integrated maritime, air and missile defense cooperation with allies and partners. Interoperability of things like information sharing capabilities among Middle Eastern nations is something the secretary said he'd be discussing with every leader he meets and it's something the U.S. is committed to. "As we move forward and things evolve, the United States will continue to be a major player in making sure that we are working with partners to integrate capabilities and increase domain awareness and to continue to provide valuable intelligence resources to our allies and to our partners in the region," he said. Another concern among partner nations in the Middle East is the ongoing series of threats associated with Iran, including the arming, training and funding of violent proxy groups, aggression at sea, cyber threats, its ballistic missile program, drone attacks, and the growing military relationship with Russia. Iran has provided drones to Russia, which are now being used to kill civilians in Ukraine. How the Russians might, in turn, help the Iranians going forward is concerning, Austin said. "We also expect that Russia will provide technology back to Iran in return for some of the help that they've gotten," Austin said. "And of course, if you're a country in this region, you'd be very concerned about that. And they are -- all the countries are very concerned about that. So this relationship is very troubling, and one that we need to keep an eye on." During Middle East Tour, Austin Talks Daesh, Partnership With Iraqi Leaders [2023-03-08] BAGHDAD, IRAQ -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III visited Iraq yesterday for meetings with leaders in Baghdad and Irbil as part of a multiday trip through the Middle East to reaffirm U.S. commitments in the region. The trip includes stops in Jordan, Israel, Egypt and Iraq. In the morning, Austin met in Baghdad with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani and Iraqi Defense Minister Thabit Al-Abbasi. There, Austin reaffirmed the U.S.-Iraq strategic partnership and underscored the U.S. commitment to a secure, stable, and sovereign Iraq. The secretary also affirmed U.S. and coalition commitment to advising, assisting and enabling the Iraqi Security Forces at the invitation of the government of Iraq to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS -- also called Daesh. "We're deeply committed to ensuring that the Iraqi people can live in peace and dignity, with safety and security and with economic opportunity for all," Austin said following the meeting. "Our defense cooperation against Daesh is a key pillar of our bilateral relationship, and the United States remains committed to this fight in support of Iraq's security and the security of the entire region." Just a few years ago, Austin said, the group's members were spread across Iraq threatening both Iraqis and the stability of the entire region. The U.S., he said, convened a global coalition of 80 countries to defeat Daesh. "That coalition responded to the request of the sovereign government of Iraq to work alongside them to defeat this ruthless terrorist enemy," Austin said. As part of that coalition, Austin said more than 50,000 square kilometers of Iraq have been liberated from Daesh and more than 4.5 million Iraqis are no longer in fear of Daesh influence. "We will continue to listen to our partners and rally together with them in this fight," Austin said. "We will continue to harness the professionalism of the coalition's diplomats and assistance experts and warfighters, as well as the incredible professionals in the NATO mission here. We will continue to increase interoperability among our among our allies and partners and will continue working to accomplish this mission together. Austin said U.S. forces are ready to continue their work in Iraq with the continued agreement of the Iraqi government. "These forces are operating in a noncombat, advise, assist and enable role to support the Iraqi-led fight against terrorism," he said. "This is a critical mission, and we're proud to support our Iraqi partners." In addition to discussion of on-going operations, Austin said he also discussed with the Iraqi prime minister the importance of future partnerships -- not just between the U.S. and Iraq, but between Iraq and its partners in the region. "We continue to believe that Iraq's greater integration with its Arab partners in the region will deliver increased stability, security and prosperity," Austin said. "And it will pay dividends not only for Iraqi citizens, but for all people of the region. And so, I look forward to continuing to consult with our valued Iraqi partners and to advance our shared interests and to improve the lives of the Iraqi people." Later in the day, Austin flew north to meet with the president of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, Nechirvan Barzani. During that visit, Austin thanked the president for peshmerga, a Kurdish term for a fighting group, contributions to efforts to defeat Daesh. The two men also discussed, among other things, threats to the stability of the Iraqi Kurdistan region and the efforts underway to unify and professionalize its forces in partnership with the United States. Following the meeting, Austin publicly acknowledged peshmerga contributions to the defeat-ISIS mission. "Working together, the United States and Iraq, including the Iraqi Kurdistan region, have taken great strides to restore Iraqi sovereignty," Austin said. "Let me applaud the invaluable contributions to this fight made by the Kurdish peshmerga as part of Iraq's security forces." Austin again underscored the U.S. commitment to the defeat-ISIS mission, and to Iraq. "U.S. forces are ready to remain in Iraq at the invitation of the government of Iraq to support the Iraqi-led fight against Daesh," he said. "We're glad to be able to support your forces and defend the Iraqi people." Austin also condemned cross-border attacks by Iran, acknowledge the threat they pose to Iraqi sovereignty, and called for more cooperation between Irbil and Baghdad. "For the country of Iraq to realize its full potential, Irbil and Baghdad must work together for the good of all Iraqis, and Kurdish leaders must put aside their divisions and come together to build a secure and prosperous Iraqi Kurdistan region," Austin said. Following the meeting, Austin also visited with U.S. service members, as well as coalition partners, who are stationed in Irbil as part of the advise and assist mission there. U.S., Israeli Leaders Discuss Partnerships, Threats in Middle East [2023-03-09] TEL AVIV, ISRAEL -- During the final stop of a multiday tour of the Middle East, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III visited Tel Aviv to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant. The senior government and military leaders discussed, among other things, the U.S.-Israel defense partnership, threats posed by Iran in the region, and America's ironclad commitment to Israel's security. During a briefing following his meeting with the Israeli defense minister, Austin explained what is, perhaps, the No. 1 reason for his visit. "I wanted to be here to make something very clear," Austin said. "America's commitment to Israel's security is ironclad and it's going to stay that way. As President Biden said on his visit to Israel last year, the connection between the Israeli people and the American people is bone deep." When speaking with the prime minister, Austin also explained his commitment to Israel's right to self-defense and to U.S. security assistance to Israel. Part of that commitment involves the $38 billion Memorandum of Understanding between Israel and the U.S. "Our historic Memorandum of Understanding with Israel provides $3.3 billion annually for security assistance, as well as additional funding for cooperation on missile defense," Austin said. "I'm proud that President Biden reaffirmed his support for the Memorandum of Understanding and last year's historic Jerusalem Declaration. And that declaration again reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to Israel's security." As a part of that commitment, the U.S. and Israel in January participated in the Juniper Oak military exercise. The bilateral, live-fire exercise took place in both Israel and the Mediterranean Sea, involved some 6,400 U.S. troops and 1,500 Israeli troops, and was the largest and most significant exercise the two nations have participated in together. During Juniper Oak, the U.S. and Israel exercised command and control capabilities, air operations in maritime surface warfare, and combat search and rescue abilities. The two nations also worked together to enhance interoperability on electronic attack, suppression of enemy air defenses, strike coordination and reconnaissance, and air interdiction. "Juniper Oak underscored the depth of our security partnership," Austin said. "It was a key step forward in interoperability, helping us both to better address regional threats. And it showed our ability to swiftly flow in forces and respond to crisis, even while maintaining our commitments in other key theaters." A big focus of discussion between Austin and Israeli leaders were threats posed by Iran, including Iranian support for terrorism, support of proxy groups, aggression at sea, cyber threats, and proliferation of attack drones and advanced conventional weapons. Also, a concern is Iran's intent to pursue a nuclear weapon -- something Austin said must not happen. "We continue to believe that diplomacy is the best way to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon," Austin said. "As President Biden has repeatedly made clear, the United States will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon." Right now, tensions are high between Israelis and Palestinians, and this is also something Austin discussed with Israeli leaders. Austin offered condolences to the Prime Minister for the recent victims of terrorism and reaffirmed his commitment to Israel's right to defend itself against such attacks. But Austin also said there was "frank and candid discussion" about de-escalating tensions, especially before Passover and Ramadan. "The United States also remains firmly opposed to any acts that could trigger more insecurity, including settlement expansion and inflammatory rhetoric," Austin said. "And we're especially disturbed by violence by settlers against Palestinians. So, we'll continue to oppose actions that could push a two-state solution further out of reach. And we'll work to build on the February 26th agreement in Jordan, including the commitment by the parties to de-escalate on the ground and to prevent further violence and to fully implement the terms of the Aqaba Communique." Prior to his visit to Israel, Austin visited Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. In all four locations, the secretary emphasized the U.S. commitment to the Middle East and to increased security cooperation partnerships. Military Mentors, American Youth Return to Nation's Capital for 61st Senate Youth Program [2023-03-10] WASHINGTON -- In March, 104 high school students from around the nation will gather in Washington, D.C., to participate in the U.S. Senate Youth Program, now in its 61st year. This year also marks the first in-person participation in the program in three years due to the COVID--19 pandemic. Joining them in the nation's capital are 17 U.S. military officers who will act as advisors and mentors for the students as they travel throughout the capital learning about the inner workings of government and meeting with the leaders who make it happen. Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Strategic and Community Engagement, Melanie Fonder Kaye, oversees DOD's annual support of the USSYP, which includes the competitive selection of military officers to serve as mentors, hosting the participants at the Pentagon and providing ceremonial musical and color guard support. "The USSYP has long motivated the next generation of leaders on the importance of public service," she said. "And through our military mentors, participants learn firsthand about DOD's mission, the people who serve in and out of uniform and how national security works with our domestic institutions to deliver policy solutions at home and abroad." Army Capt. Joseph L. Puntoriero, who serves with Special Operations Command Central at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, was immediately drawn to volunteer after learning about the program. Having attended similar programs in his youth had left a lasting impression on him. Now, he said, he'll be able to do the same. "As a military mentor, during the program, I will be acting as both a bridge and compass for a small group of the students selected to attend the USSYP," he said. "This entails navigating the social etiquette of Capitol Hill to ensuring the students are prepared for their days of briefings [or] activities to simply answering the students' questions regarding the military." The USSYP began in 1962 with a Senate resolution "to increase young Americans' understanding of the interrelationships of the three branches of government, the caliber and responsibilities of federally elected and appointed officials, and the vital importance of democratic decision making not only for America but for people around the world." While in the nation's capital, the delegates are expected to visit a variety of locations, including Mount Vernon, the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Pentagon, the U.S. Senate, Arlington National Cemetery and the White House. Among the student participants -- 104 in all -- are two from each state, two from Washington, D.C., and two representing the Department of Defense Education Activity schools. While in the nation's capital, participants are expected to meet Senators, a justice of the Supreme Court and other senior leaders from the departments of State and Defense as well as other executive agencies. Puntoriero said he also hopes that as a military officer, he will also be able to help student participants learn about the U.S. military at the same time they learn about the rest of the government. "The military is more than occupations and wars," he said. "There are many pathways within military service. I had no idea I would join the military at their age -- I made that decision two months before graduating undergrad -- and I truly want to give them a holistic view about what their short-term future could hold." For Navy Lt. Lauren Hickey, a fleet intelligence watch officer with the U.S. Sixth Fleet in Naples, Italy, this will be the second time she has served as a mentor for the USSYP, having served virtually last year. One takeaway from her experience as a mentor last year, she said, is her impression of the student participants. "Not only are these the top students in the country, they are inquisitive, compassionate, respectful and supportive of each other, which are the qualities that are most admirable and will carry them through life," she said. "These students will go on to be leaders in their fields, whichever they choose." Hickey said that for some of the students she worked with last year, it had been the first time they'd met a person in the military. "Many students were surprised that the mentors didn't fit the 'typical mold' they expected of military members," she said. "I hope that the students learn that military members are as diverse as the nation we serve, and that even though we all wear a uniform, we are all unique individuals. I also hope they learn in this week of public service that the military provides many unique opportunities that many of them are interested in. Whether working overseas in embassies, flying a plane or serving as an attorney, the military has many education and career opportunities available." First-time military mentor to the USSYP, Air Force Maj. Scott Hollister, who serves as the assistant director of operations within the United States Air Force Reserve at Schriever Space Force Base in Colorado, said he was immediately interested in volunteering. "I have served in the Air Force for nearly 20 years and have quickly realized our greatest assets are our people," he said. "I have become passionate about growing those who care and are interested in creating a positive impact [on] the environment around them. USSYP gives me the opportunity to mentor the best assets of our nation's future -- I couldn't pass this up." Hollister said it's apparent to him why the USSYP is important for not just the students who participate, but for the nation as well. "In order for a member of any society to truly have an impact they must first have vested interest," he said. "This interest can come from many different avenues, but the most meaningful is to know one's history and the 'why' behind our decisions. I believe this program will further allow these young Americans to become more vested in the fabric of this country which can lead to more thoughtful and meaningful decisions in the future." Hollister said, he also expects to gain something from his involvement. "I know it will be a growing experience for me," he said. "I know I will learn a lot from these delegates, and I imagine I will walk away with confidence in the future leaders of our nation." Coast Guard Cmdr. Robert Concepcion, chief of response with U.S. Coast Guard Sector Maryland-National Capital Region and Marine Corps Lt. Col. Anja Loomis, a reservist who serves with the Marine Corps' military manpower branch, are acting this year as the senior military mentor officer and assistant senior military mentor officer to the USSYP. Both officers are experienced in the program. This is Concepcion's fourth year with the program and Loomis' third. As the senior military mentor, Concepcion said he thinks the pool of military officers selected as mentors this year are ideal candidates for shepherding USSYP participants around the nation's capital. "This amazing team of military mentors exemplifies the highest standards of decorum and protocol, facilitates inclusive and insightful debate and discussion among the students, and assists the USSYP staff with implementation of the program agenda," he said. Concepcion said he hopes the USSYP, and the interaction with military mentors, will inspire participants to consider public service. "We hope that we can instill within each student delegate, a more profound knowledge of all branches of our government, and why we need future leaders like them to look into opportunities in public service," he said. He also said he hopes student delegates will witness the diversity in both military service and government, and that this will make them better future leaders as well. "Some of our delegates may not have ever traveled outside of their state, may not have ever engaged with someone serving in the military, or anyone within a high-level position in our government," he said. "We hope that we can help them to gain a better understanding of diverse perspectives from other delegates and the high-level leaders they will engage with during Washington Week to help make them better leaders." Both Loomis and Concepcion say the USSYP benefits the 104 delegates and the nation. "I hope the youth participants will gain the wisdom to humbly use their unique talents to assume the highest responsibilities of compassionate public service," Loomis said. "And our nation benefits from having young Americans learn more about the government because it creates a broader pool for future civic leaders." Concepcion said he thinks participation in the USSYP will give delegates a different perspective of government than what they might already have. "I think our young Americans will learn that our government is not solely focused on division and conflict like they may often see or hear about from others," he said. "On a daily basis we have diverse people from different parties and parts of the country who are united by a dedication to serve our great nation." When the delegates see that -- after meeting with leaders in Washington -- Concepcion said he believes participants will take that back home with them and into their own futures, where they can be better equipped to serve as leaders in the future. "As a nation, young Americans learning more about how our government works will help our united nation make better decisions that affect our diverse population," he said. "The core principles of our American government are unifying, but they work better when people understand and apply them, so we have to get more youth involved in learning about how government works." Space Force Focuses on Partnerships, Spirit, Combat Readiness [2023-03-15] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Space Force's $30 billion budget request for Fiscal Year 2024 is about $3.9 billion over what was enacted for the service in FY2023. More than 60% of the Space Force budget, about $19.2 billion worth, is aimed at research, development, testing and evaluation. Testifying yesterday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman explained the challenges he sees in a contested space domain and how the Space Force aims to ready itself to meet those challenges. "When describing space threats, it is important to account for two kinds: first, threats from space assets and second, threats to space assets," Saltzman said. Threats from space, the general said, include both China's and Russia's robust space-based capabilities which allow them to find, target, and attack U.S. military forces on land, at sea and in the air. The U.S. also has assets in space -- satellites that it relies on for communications and navigation, for instance -- that are put at risk by the nation's adversaries. "Both China and Russia continue to develop, field and deploy a range of weapons aimed at U.S. space capabilities," the general said. "The spectrum of threats to U.S. space capabilities includes cyber warfare activities, electronic attack platforms, directed energy lasers designed to blind or damage satellite sensors, ground-to-orbit missiles to destroy satellites and space-to-space orbital engagement systems that can attack U.S. satellites in space." To meet the challenges posed by adversaries, Saltzman told lawmakers that Space Force efforts in FY2024 will focus on fielding combat-ready forces, amplifying the Guardian spirit and strengthening the partnerships the Space Force relies on to accomplish its mission. "My first priority is to build resilient, ready, combat-credible space forces," Saltzman told lawmakers. "To do this, we are accelerating the pivot towards resilient satellite constellations, ground stations, networks and data links." The general said the Space Development Agency's "Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture," or PWSA -- previously called the "National Defense Space Architecture" -- is a prime example of that effort. The PWSA includes hundreds of satellites, delivered in "tranches" every two years, with each tranche providing more capability than the last. That total system involves a "mesh network" of hundreds of optically interconnected satellites in orbit that make up its "transport" layer. The PWSA also includes six additional layers: tracking, custody, deterrence, navigation, battle management and support. Also part of building a resilient, ready and combat-credible force, Saltzman said, is emphasizing cybersecurity and preparing Space Force Guardians to detect and defeat cyber-attacks against networks, systems, ground stations, datalinks and satellites. The U.S. Space Force stood up in December 2019, just over 3 years ago. Developing talent to staff the new service is a priority, Saltzman said. "My second priority is to amplify the Guardian spirit by embracing a modern talent management process that recruits the best talent, develops and retains an elite workforce and empowers Guardians to succeed," he said. An example of that is the service's constructive service credit program which allows experienced professionals from key fields to directly commission into the Space Force at ranks appropriate to their civilian experience. "Over the last year we have also deployed space-centric curriculum for basic military training, Reserve Officer Training Corps and Officer Training School," the general said. The Space Force is also looking to a concept that allows personnel to more easily move between full-time and part-time military service -- without causing damage to their careers -- so that they can pursue enriching opportunities outside full-time military service. This concept is something Congress can help the service accomplish, Saltzman said. Since taking over as chief of space operations, just four months ago, Saltzman said he has visited multiple combatant commands and also met with space chiefs in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. "U.S. allies and international partners are eager for expanded collaboration with the Space Force, especially in areas that strengthen the effectiveness of coalition space operations and reinforce norms of responsible behavior," Saltzman said. Strengthen partnerships, he said, is the third priority for Space Force, Saltzman said. "The Space Force will strive to eliminate barriers to collaboration, including overclassification, so we can build enduring advantages with our partners," he said. "To date, personnel from over 50 countries have participated in training, education and exercise events hosted by the Space Force. We are also leveraging allies and partners to expand our warfighting capability." Saltzman also said that commercial partners and the technologies developed there, such as advanced power and propulsion, artificial intelligence and machine learning and in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing, are also a focus for increased partnerships for Space Force. "The Space Force is the preeminent military space organization in the world," Saltzman told senators. "Our adversaries seek to surpass the United States and challenge our advantage. We cannot and will not allow this to happen. Our Guardians will out work, out innovate and out compete our adversaries to ensure that we succeed." Austin Presses Ahead With Recommendations From Suicide Prevention Committee [2023-03-16] WASHINGTON -- Last year Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III established the Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee, or SPRIRC, to investigate ways to address and prevent suicide in the military. Today, the Defense Department announced that the secretary has implemented the first of the recommendations by the committee. "Secretary Austin is directing multiple, immediate actions following the Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee's recommendations and establishing a suicide prevention implementation working group," said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder during a briefing today. The SPRIRC was directed to provide to the secretary an initial report before the end of 2022. Now that the secretary has reviewed the report, he has directed the department to move ahead on a two-phase approach to implement some of the recommendations it contains. As part of the first phase, Austin has directed implementation of 10 of the SPRIRC's recommendations. Austin has directed, for instance, that the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness expedite the hiring process for behavioral health professionals. The secretary has also directed the Defense Health Agency, in coordination with the secretaries of the military departments, to expand the availability of behavioral health care and to also improve processes to enhance access to mental health care. As part of the second phase of implementation, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness will establish a Suicide Prevention Implementation Working Group. The working group will, among other things, assess the advisability and feasibility of implementing each of the remaining recommendations by the SPRIRC, identify specific policy and program changes needed to implement each of the remaining recommendations, and provide cost and manpower estimates required to implement each remaining recommendation. The initial SPRIRC recommendations the SECDEF has directed to be implemented, Ryder said, are those that can be done immediately by the department without any additional authorities. Implementation of additional recommendations will come after consideration by the working group. "While we recognize that suicide has no single cause, and that no single preventative action, treatment or cure will eliminate suicide altogether, we will exhaust every effort to promote the wellness, health and morale of our total force, be there for one another and save lives," Ryder said. Ukrainians to Get U.S. Tanks by Fall [2023-03-21] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department announced in January that 31 M1A2 Abrams tanks would be delivered to Ukraine, but officials had speculated it would take about a year to make that happen. Now, they say, the U.S. will instead send M1A1 Abrams tanks from refurbished hulls already in U.S. inventory, and the delivery will be in the fall -- faster than what was initially expected. "Since we've made this announcement, we've been committed to exploring options to deliver the armored capability as quickly as possible," Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said during a briefing today. "After further study and analysis on how best to do this, DOD, in close coordination with Ukraine, has made the decision to provide the M1A1 variant of the Abrams tank, which will enable us to significantly expedite delivery timelines, and deliver this important capability to Ukraine by the fall of this year." The M1A1 Abrams will have "a very similar capability" to the M1A2, Ryder said, including advanced armor and weapons systems, such as a 120 mm cannon and 50-caliber heavy machine gun. "This is about getting this important combat capability into the hands of the Ukrainians sooner rather than later," the general said. In January, the initial plan was that the United States would use funds from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative to procure new tanks from the manufacturer. Now, Ryder said, excess hulls already in U.S. inventory will instead be refurbished and refitted to create M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks that can be sent to Ukraine more quickly in order to meet their needs. "You've heard us talk in the past about trying to work with Ukraine to meet not only their near-term needs, but their medium-term needs," Ryder said. "Taking territory, retaking territory, you know, as part of any offensive will be important ... as will sustaining those gains at some point in the future, as well as being able to deter future Russian aggression. This is all part of ... our broader near-term and longer-term support to Ukraine and their defense requirements." Ryder also told reporters that training Ukrainians on the tanks is also in the works. "We will ensure that the Ukrainians receive the necessary training on these tanks in time for them to be delivered," he said. "We'll have more details to provide on that training in the future. But, again, that would be our intent -- and I'm confident that we will accomplish that." Yesterday, the Pentagon also announced the most recent round of security assistance to Ukraine. The latest round of security assistance, worth about $350 million, includes, among other things, ammunition for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System; high-speed, anti-radiation missiles; AT4 anti-armor weapon systems; grenade launchers, small arms and associated ammunition; and Riverine patrol boats. Since the beginning of Russia's invasion on Feb. 24. 2022, the U.S. has committed more than $32.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine. The United States also continues to work with allies and partners to provide Ukraine with additional capabilities to defend itself. Science, Technology Inform DOD Budget Request [2023-03-24] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department soon plans to release its National Defense Science and Technology Strategy, or NDSTS. But elements of that as yet unreleased strategy figured into the development of portions of the department's fiscal year 2024 budget request, said the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. "We are implementing this strategy in the president's FY 24 [fiscal year 2024] budget request, which continues historic levels of investment in research and development," said Heidi Shyu during testimony before the House Armed Services Committee Subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies and Information Systems on Thursday. "It prioritizes delivery of near-term capabilities at speed and scale; direct support to joint warfighting concepts; and building the science and technology foundation for tomorrow." Shyu told lawmakers that, in facing the strategic challenges posed by China, she believes the American people should be confident of two things: First, the Defense Department understands the challenges it faces and the need to move with speed and determination to meet them; second, the U.S. currently has "an undeniable advantage over any potential adversary." While China seeks to challenge the U.S. for superiority, it has not succeeded in that goal. "Our task in my office and in and the broader innovation enterprise is to ensure that we maintain our enduring advantage," Shyu told lawmakers. The National Defense Science and Technology Strategy, she said, lays out three lines of effort to help the department ensure the U.S. maintains its advantage. That includes: -- A focus on the joint mission. -- The creation and fielding of capabilities at speed and scale. -- The creation of an enduring advantage, which involves the cultivation of talent, the strengthening of infrastructure, the pursuit of basic research, and an increase in collaboration with U.S. partners and allies. "We are implementing this strategy in the president's FY 24 budget request, which continues historic levels of investment in research and development," she said. "It prioritizes delivery of near-term capabilities at speed and scale; direct support to joint warfighting concepts; and building the science and technology foundation for tomorrow." Last year, Shyu identified 14 areas of technology the Department will emphasize. Those technologies include things such as biotechnology, trusted artificial intelligence and renewable energy generation and storage. Shyu said the FY 2024 budget makes investments in each of those technology areas. New technologies mean nothing for the nation's defense, Shyu said, unless they can quickly be moved into the hands of warfighters. In submitted written testimony, Shyu said the department's efforts to accelerate critical capabilities into the hands of warfighters have resulted in directed energy systems being made available this year to both the Army and Navy. Also this year, she said, the department will launch hypersonic and ballistic tracking space sensors. To build an enduring advantage, Shyu said new university-affiliated research centers and programs -- like the Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation, or SMART, scholarship program -- strengthen America's science and engineering workforce. "The budget supports workforce programs, such as the SMART Scholarship," she said. "[And] with congressional support, earlier this year, we announced our first University Affiliated Research Center at a historically Black university, at Howard University, and have included significant funding in the FY 24 request to do more with minority institutions." Also a part of creating an enduring advantage, Shyu said, is closer collaboration with partners. "Our strong collaboration with allies and partners will enable accelerated capability delivery and interoperability in the contested battlespace," she said. "Together, we will be far stronger." DOD Increases Efforts to Bring Small Businesses Into Defense Industrial Base  [2023-03-24] WASHINGTON -- Over the past eight years, the Defense Department has met its small business prime contracting goals, but more can be done, said the director of the Defense Department's Office of Small Business Programs.  During testimony Wednesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee's subcommittee on readiness, Farooq A. Mitha and small business directors from the Army, Navy and Air Force told lawmakers about the barriers small businesses face when trying to work with the department, tools the department uses to increase small business participation, and DOD's recently released small business strategy.  "Small businesses make up 99% of all businesses in the United States and are a critical contributor to our national security," Mitha said. "Last fiscal year, the department spent $85.2 billion on small business prime contracts, and nearly 25% of the department's prime contracts go to small businesses."  While the department exceeded its goals last year for small, disadvantaged businesses and service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses, Mitha said, the total number of small businesses in the defense industrial base has declined over the last decade. And that's a problem for DOD and the nation's security, he said.  "This is an economic and national security risk for our nation," he said. "We risk losing mission-critical domestic capabilities, innovation and strong supply chains. To respond to this, the department is working to strengthen our small business supply chains, increase competition and attract new entrants."  Right now, DOD has several programs in place to help with that, Mitha told lawmakers. Included among those are the Mentor-Protege Program, the Rapid Innovation Fund Program, the APEX Accelerators and the Indian Incentive Program.  "The Mentor-Protege Program enables experienced companies to provide business developmental assistance to protege firms," Mitha said. The proteges are small businesses or new entrants. "The mentorship enables proteges to become suppliers, as prime and subcontractors, to the department and other federal agencies," he said. Within the Mentor-Protege Program, Mitha said, mentor firms provide assistance in a range of areas, including internal business management systems, engineering support and manufacturing support.  Over the past four years, Mitha said, protege firms performed an average of over $5 billion in contract work for the federal government annually.  The department also currently funds 96 APEX Accelerators across the United States, Mitha said, which help small businesses learn how to work with the federal government. The accelerators were previously branded Procurement Technical Assistance Centers, but their new incarnation -- with an expanded mission set -- will also do things like train small businesses on the cybersecurity requirements necessary to work today with the Defense Department.  The department's Rapid Innovation Fund supports small businesses in moving technologies from prototype to production, while the Indian Incentive Program, he said, provides a 5% rebate to a prime contractor on the total amount subcontracted to Native American-owned businesses.  Small businesses face challenges in working with the federal government, Mitha said. Included in those challenges are the complexities of working with DOD and the number of entry points available to get on board. Additionally, he said, are challenges faced by small businesses that threaten their ability to work with DOD even if they want to -- which include meeting cyber security requirements and staying clear of foreign ownership control and influence, or FOCI.  "[These] are arguably the most pressing issues faced by small businesses," Mitha said. "Our adversaries routinely target small businesses, thus building effective cybersecurity resilience into the defense industrial base for small businesses is a critical national security priority."  DOD's Project Spectrum Platform provides small businesses with both the knowledge and tools necessary to protect the nation's most critical assets in cyberspace, Mitha said, adding also that the department plans an expansion of that platform to include training related to foreign ownership, control or influence.  Mitha also told lawmakers that DOD's website https://business.defense.gov, will become a "one-stop shop" for small businesses that have never before done business with DOD to finally get involved.  "We'll have all the forecasting, all the different small business programs, all the resources that are available," he said. "A company won't have to go to 20 different websites to figure out how to do business with us."  In January, DOD released its new small business strategy. The strategy, Mitha said, focuses on three strategic objectives, which include implementing a unified management approach for small business programs and activities, strengthening the department's engagement and support of small businesses and ensuring the department's small business activities align with national security priorities.  "The goal of that strategy is to ensure small businesses entering the defense marketplace understand the contracting opportunities, resources available to them, and where to get support," Mitha said.  The strategy, he said, calls for, among other things, the establishment of a small business integration group, the implementation of a common training curriculum for small business professionals in the acquisition workforce, and streamlining points of entry into the defense marketplace.  Competition With China Drives FY 2024 Budget Request [2023-03-28] WASHINGTON -- The $842 billion fiscal year 2024 budget request for the Defense Department is driven in large part by strategic competition with China, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said. The budget also focuses, he said Tuesday, on furthering the department's three priorities: defending of the nation, taking care of service members and families and developing stronger relationships and cooperation with partners and allied nations. "This is a strategy-driven budget -- and one driven by the seriousness of our strategic competition with the People's Republic of China," Austin said during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. "At $842 billion, it's a 3.2 percent increase over [the] fiscal year 2023 enacted ... and it is 13.4 percent higher than [the] fiscal year 22 enacted. This budget will help us continue to implement our National Defense Strategy and the president's National Security Strategy." With China as a pacing challenge, Austin said, investment in the Indo-Pacific region is a big part of the FY 2024 budget. In the Pacific, he said, the department is investing in a more resilient force posture and is also increasing the size and complexity of exercises with partner nations there. The FY 2024 budget request also includes a 40% increase for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative. This year's $9.1 billion request for the PDI -- the largest ever -- funds a stronger force posture, better defenses for Hawaii and Guam, and deeper cooperation with allies and partners there, Austin said. Also in the Pacific, Austin said, the department is forward-stationing and deploying more forces, while also investing in airfields, logistics, domain awareness and resilience in places like Japan, Australia, Guam and the sovereign states involved in the Compact of Free Association. The FY 2024 budget request, Austin said, also marks the department's largest investment in research and development. This year, the request for R&D efforts stands at $145 billion. The department is also requesting some $170 billion for procurement to maintain the nation's air, sea and land dominance. About $61 billion funds things like the newly revealed B-21 Raider, for instance, while $48 billion supports construction of nine battle force ships for the U.S. Navy, he said. "We'll also continue to modernize all three legs of our nuclear triad ... and bolster our strategic deterrence," Austin told senators. The FY 2024 request includes $37.7 billion to fund the nuclear triad, along with nuclear command, control, and communications. Just six months ago, Austin signed a memorandum outlining plans to take better care of service member and their families. That memorandum discussed efforts to, among other things, make military moves easier, help military spouses find employment, and ease the burden associated with the cost of child care. The most recent budget request continues that effort to take care of military personnel and their families, Austin said. "We're going to remain the strongest military in the world," Austin said. "As we mark the 50th anniversary of our all-volunteer force, I'm enormously proud of the brave men and women who choose to wear the cloth of our nation. We owe it to them and to their families to take the best possible care of all of our people." This year's budget request funds an increase in housing allowances, improvements to military housing, continued efforts to make child care more affordable, and the launch of universal prekindergarten at Department of Defense Education Activity schools. The secretary also said the budget request supports the department's efforts to curb suicides and sexual assaults. "We're also pushing hard to help eliminate suicide in our ranks ... including immediate steps to hire more mental health professionals and improve access to mental health care," Austin said. "Meanwhile, we're working toward a military that's free of sexual assault. We worked with Congress to improve the response of sexual assault and related crimes under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And those reforms will be fully implemented by the end of this year. And the department is also investing in a specialized workforce to combat sexual assault, harassment, suicide and more." The U.S. military doesn't fight alone, so relationships with allied and partner nations are also a focus of the FY 2024 budget request, Austin said, highlighting efforts in both Asia and Europe. "In recent months, our friends in the Indo-Pacific have taken major steps forward," Austin said. "The Philippines has agreed to nearly double the number of sites where we cooperate together. Japan has committed to double its defense spending. And through the historic AUKUS [Australia, United Kingdom, United States] partnership, we'll work with our Australian and British allies to build game-changing defense advantages that will deter aggression and boost our defense industrial capacity." In Europe, as part of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Austin has rallied support of some 50 nations to help Ukraine. Already, partners there have committed nearly $20 billion in support. The U.S. itself has committed more than $32.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine. As a result of Russia's invasion or Ukraine, Austin said, the NATO alliance is stronger than ever. "Mr. Chairman, this is the budget that will meet this moment. And I'd respectfully ask for your support," Austin said. "The single most effective way that this committee can support the department and our outstanding troops is with an on-time, full-year appropriation. I look forward to working with you all so that we can continue to defend our democracy and support the forces of freedom in this hour of challenge." DOD Makes Headway on Cloud Computing [2023-03-29] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department is moving ahead quickly on the adoption of cloud computing and implementation of a "zero trust" computing environment, the Defense Department's chief information officer told lawmakers today on Capitol Hill. "At last, the department has access to enterprise cloud capabilities from four world-class U.S. vendors at all three security classification levels from the continental United States to the tactical edge," said John B. Sherman during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee's cybersecurity subcommittee. The enterprise cloud, Sherman told senators, will help the department advance its Joint All Domain Command and Control effort and will further enhance efforts involving artificial intelligence and machine learning efforts, software modernization and cybersecurity. In December, the Defense Department awarded contracts to four technology companies to provide services in support of its Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability. The four companies include Amazon Web Services Inc., Google Support Services LLC, Microsoft Corp and Oracle. The JWCC is a multiple-award contract vehicle that allows the department to acquire commercial cloud capabilities and services directly from commercial cloud service providers. "To help facilitate the rapid adoption of cloud, we've deployed several accelerators, which streamline the cloud adoption process from a normal 45-day timeline to within hours or minutes," Air Force Lt. Gen. Robert J. Skinner, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, said. "This is helping to accelerate our pace to the cloud to improve our overall user experience, while also increasing our cyber security." Sherman also discussed the DOD's shift away from perimeter security of its networks toward a "zero trust" environment. "[Zero trust] is predicated on the assumption that an adversary might already be on our network, and we must prevent them from moving laterally and gaining access to our most critical data," Sherman said. In October the department released its strategy on zero trust, Sherman said, and that strategy has since become a "North Star document" for the DOD and other federal agencies, as well. The DOD plans to implement zero trust by 2027, he said. The Zero Trust Strategy and Roadmap spells out how the department plans to move beyond traditional network security methods to achieve reduced-network attack surfaces, enable risk management and effective data-sharing in partnership environments, and contain and remediate adversary activities over the next five years. "We have made great strides on our zero trust journey. When the DOD released the zero trust strategy, we had already started our Thunderdome initiative, which brings modern and commercial zero trust technologies to the department," Skinner said. "We recently completed our successful prototype and are working with Honorable Sherman's team on the acquisition strategy and expansion of these capabilities across the enterprise." It's not just technology, but the people who run that technology who are critical to the department's network efforts. Sherman said the DOD is making strides as well in ensuring the right personnel are in place to implement and manage the department's ongoing network modernization efforts. "The best technology in the world means nothing without a trained, motivated and diverse workforce," Sherman said. "We recently released a cyber workforce strategy that will continue to drive us to new and more effective approaches to how we identify, recruit, retain and upskill our cyber digital personnel." Space Development Agency to Launch 10 Satellites [2023-03-29] WASHINGTON -- The first 10 of 28 satellites which make up Tranche 0 of the "Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture," are set to launch tomorrow morning out of Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The Space Development Agency is responsible for the launch and for development of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture. Tomorrow's group of satellites, which the SDA is also calling the "Warfighter Immersion Tranche," comes just four years after the SDA was stood up. "We're pretty excited about that because this is the first dedicated SDA launch," Derek Tournear, director of the Space Development Agency, said. "All of the satellites on the rocket tomorrow will be SDA satellites and it's the first launch of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture. We're right at two and a half years from order to orbit -- so we're pretty excited to show that the model actually does work to be able to do that, that proliferation, to get the capabilities to the warfighter at speed." The Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture system will eventually include hundreds of satellites, delivered in "tranches" every two years, with each tranche providing more capability than the last. The NDSA's network of hundreds of optically-connected satellites will deliver two primary capabilities to warfighters on the ground. The first is beyond line-of-sight targeting for ground and maritime time-sensitive targets, which includes mobile missiles and ships, for instance. The system will provide the ability to detect those targets, track them, calculate a fire control solution and then deliver that solution down to a weapons platform so that the target can be destroyed. The second capability is similar to the first, but for enemy missiles already in flight. Following tomorrow's launch, those first ten satellites -- eight of which are "transport layer" satellites and two of which are "tracking layer" satellites -- will undergo calibration and their efficacy will also be evaluated with a series of tests. "When they're first up there, they're going to go through a period of calibration and then after calibration, then they'll look for targets of opportunity ... launches that we're able to detect and track to help get calibration data," Tournear said. Actual tracking test events designed by the SDA, using U.S.-flown aircraft, will come in spring of '24, Tournear said. "On the transport side ... we have a lot of lower-level exercises that the warfighters are going to participate in to test everything out," Tournear said. "Most of those on the Link-16 side will start out with tests at Eglin Test and Training facility to demonstrate that, and really iron out all the bugs and figure out exactly how to do this connectivity with terrestrial Link-16 radios in space. And then we'll start to start to participate in some other exercises then in the Indo-Pacom region after that, primarily working with the Marines and some of their planned exercises." That warfighters will be involved in working out how the Tranche 0 satellites can be used is why it's also called the "Warfighter Immersion Tranche," Mike Eppolito, the Tranche 0 program director, said. "We are demonstrating the core architecture that will evolve in future tranches," Eppolito said. "The satellites that we have up there, the intent there is to get them in the warfighters hands so they can start developing their techniques to be able to use them, to give them the timeline to go through their training and to allow them to start thinking about how they would use the larger constellation once we have it an orbit. So ours is intended to be the demonstration tranche that allows them to sort of get their feet wet and start using the capabilities that we're putting on orbit." The other 18 satellites that make up the 28 satellites in Tranche 0 are expected to launch in June. The SDA plans to launch new tranches of satellites every two years. The Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture involves seven layers, which include a mesh network of hundreds of optically interconnected satellites in orbit that make up its "transport" layer. There will also be tracking, custody, deterrence, navigation, battle management and support layers. DOD Official Says Training for Ukrainians Is Ongoing [2023-03-30] WASHINGTON -- Since the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine just over a year ago, the U.S. has provided more than $32.5 billion of security assistance in the form of military hardware and ammunition. Allies and partners have also provided military hardware. But the U.S., its partners and allies have provided more than just gear, Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said during a briefing today. Also on offer has been substantial training to prepare Ukrainians to make good use of the equipment that's been supplied. "Since Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in 2022, U.S. European Command, U.S. Army Europe and Africa and Security Assistance Group Ukraine have trained more than 7,000 members of the Ukrainian armed forces," Ryder said. "Just this week, 65 Ukrainian air defenders completed Patriot training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and have now arrived back in Europe." Those newly trained Ukrainian soldiers will return to existing air defense units and are expected to share with fellow soldiers what they've learned about using the Patriot system. The United States, Germany and the Netherlands have all pledged Patriot systems to Ukraine, Ryder said. "Once in Ukraine, the Patriot air defense system will add to Ukraine's layered air defenses to provide protection and shield from Russia's wanton, brutal attacks on innocent civilians and civilian infrastructure," he said. Back in December, the Pentagon announced that the U.S. will also provide combined arms training to Ukrainian soldiers using U.S. ranges in Germany. That training has been underway, and some of it is now coming to a close. "At the close of this month, more than 4,000 Ukrainian soldiers in two brigades -- one equipped with M2 Bradleys and one equipped with Strykers -- will have completed combined arms training and have returned to Ukraine," Ryder said. More soldiers remain behind, he said, to get additional training at the Grafenwoehr and Hohenfels training areas. That includes two motorized infantry battalions with about 1,200 Ukrainian armed forces personnel. "Operator and maintenance training on donated platforms is also ongoing, with more than 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers having completed platform training in 40 different programs of instruction on more than 20 systems since April of 2022," Ryder said. Just as many nations are providing military hardware to the Ukrainians, training is also a multinational endeavor. Right now, Ryder said, more than 11,000 Ukrainian soldiers are receiving training in 26 different countries. "The U.S. will continue to provide training and work closely with our allies and partners to ensure the Ukrainian people have the security assistance they need to defend ... their country and repel Russian aggression," he said. "We remain committed to supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes." Black Hawk Accident Yesterday evening, nine soldiers with the Army's 101st Combat Aviation Brigade were killed as a result of a training accident involving two Black Hawk helicopters. The soldiers and helicopters were involved in a planned training exercise near Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Now, an aviation safety team from Fort Rucker, Alabama -- home of the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence -- has been deployed to investigate, Ryder said. "On behalf of [Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III] and the Department of Defense, I would like to offer our heartfelt condolences to the families, friends and colleagues of the nine U.S. Army soldiers assigned to the 101st Airborne Division who sadly lost their lives last night when two Black Hawk helicopters crashed outside of Fort Campbell, Kentucky," Ryder said. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the families, units and all those affected by this tragedy." Agency Director Discusses Multi-Pronged Approach to Resiliency in Space [2023-04-04] WASHINGTON -- The Space Development Agency launched ten satellites into orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, on Sunday. The ten are the first of 28 in Tranche 0 of the agency's Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture. In June, the final 18 satellites from Tranche 0, are expected to be launched, and satellites in Tranche 1 are expected to launch in just 18 months. Eventually, the SDA expects to launch hundreds of satellites, delivered in additional tranches every two years, with each tranche providing more capability than the last. Speaking Monday at Navy League's 2023 Sea Air Space Conference and Exposition in Washington, Derek Tournear, director of the SDA, discussed how his agency maintains resiliency in the space architecture it's now delivering to enable warfighters. "If you really think about resiliency in space, there's a couple [of] aspects to that," Tournear said. "The primary aspect that we're looking at from SDA's model is we want to make sure that we can provide those ships at sea the connectivity they need." There are several threats to that concept and SDA has worked out how to thwart them, Tournear said. One threat is that adversaries might simply shoot down SDA's satellites. But SDA's Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture concept undermines that on cost. "You can shoot down the satellites so they can't talk to the ships," Tournear said. "So now we'll put up hundreds and hundreds of satellites. Now ... our satellites are more affordable than the missiles that you need to shoot them down. So we've kind of taken that off the table. We made it to where ... it's really difficult to shoot those satellites down just by just by virtue of proliferation." Satellites reside in different parts of space -- different orbits at varying heights. The SDA's Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture satellites are being launched into low earth orbit. But Tournear said that's not the only place where American capabilities are located in space. "The Space Force is moving to this hybrid architecture," he said. "That is, you'll reside in multiple orbits. You get resiliency not only from hundreds and hundreds of satellites, but hundreds of satellites that are working in conjunction with dozens that are in different orbits. So now it's really difficult to actually take out the space layer." Tournear pointed to cyber and supply chain vulnerabilities as areas where SDA flexes resiliency to protect its investments. "You've got to make sure you don't have cyber vulnerabilities," Tournear said. "If there's a common mode failure that can take out all your satellites or your ground systems, then you can't proliferate your way out of that. So that's a major concern. We have a lot of protections in place, and that's something that we put a lot of resources on to make sure that we're hardened against cyber threats." Supply chain threats take two forms he said. The first, he said, are routine supply chain difficulties. "Working on our programs where we're trying to build a lot of satellites quickly, just to have the robustness in industry to be able to supply those components," he said. "That's kind of a benign supply chain threat." The other threat in the supply chain, he said, involves adversarial efforts to taint components in a way that could affect the end product. "That is if there are people that are putting in counterfeit parts or nefarious parts into your supply chain, you need to be able to detect those and protect yourself against those," he said. "We actually look at a lot of different methods of doing non-destructive testing to assure that that doesn't happen." The radio frequency spectrum -- critical to communications between the satellites SDA will put into space and warfighters on the ground -- is itself a contested, warfighting domain. It's something Tournear said he's concerned about and where work is being done to ensure continued resiliency in the SDA mission. "The RF spectrum, you can jam it, you can try to spoof different aspects of it," he said. "It's not a peaceful domain. And RF spectrum combat is something you're going to hear a lot more about ... We're continuing to work with different groups who are pushing the limit on different waveforms to be able to have anti-jam type systems and those kinds of things to be able to fight through those environments." Multinational Exercise Defender 23 Kicks Off This Month in Europe [2023-04-05] WASHINGTON -- Nearly 9,000 American troops are expected to participate in the Defender 23 exercise which kicks off April 22, the deputy Pentagon press secretary said today. "This annual, nearly two-month long exercise is focused on the strategic deployment of U.S.-based forces, employment of Army pre-positioned stocks and interoperability with European allies and partners," said Sabrina Singh, during a briefing today at the Pentagon. The Defender 23 exercise is led by U.S. Army Europe and Africa and has been planned since 2021. The exercise is designed to demonstrate the U.S. military's ability to rapidly deploy combat-credible troops and equipment to assure allies, deter those who would threaten the peace of Europe and defend the continent from aggression. The exercise also demonstrates the commitment of European nations to increase the scale, capability and interoperability of their own militaries. "Approximately 9,000 U.S. troops and about 17,000 troops from 26 allied and partner nations will participate and portions of the exercise will stretch across 10 different European countries," Singh said. Singh said equipment to support the exercise began arriving this week in Spain. About 7,000 pieces of equipment were shipped to the European theater from the U.S., she said. Additionally, about 13,000 pieces of equipment, drawn from pre-positioned stock, will be used during Defender 23. Regional Centers Central to Security Cooperation, Agency Director Says [2023-04-05] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Security Cooperation Agency might be best known as a key player in the U.S. military's foreign military sales program. But the agency also has a role as executive agent for six regional security centers which are important to national security, said DSCA's director. "We are happy to be working with the regional centers because ... in many ways we feel like the regional centers are actually doing intellectual security cooperation, talking to our allies and partners, sharing ideas, and building future leaders," said James Hursch, while speaking Monday at the Navy League's 2023 Sea-Air-Space Conference and Exposition in Washington. The six centers include the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, the Near East-South Asia Center for Strategic Studies and the newly created Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies. Leaders from three of those centers attended the conference in Washington. Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Randy Kee serves as the senior advisor for Arctic Security Affairs at the Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies, which stood up just last year in Anchorage, Alaska. The center focuses on Arctic defense education, research and collaboration with U.S. allies and partners in the Arctic. Strategically, Kee said, the center is part of the Defense Department's focus on integrated deterrence. "America has rising interest in the Arctic region," he said. "And we're honored to help contribute to the integrated deterrence of really protecting, defending and securing our national interests in the Arctic region and in complement to those of our allies and partners. The Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies, Kee said, has been charged by the Secretary of Defense to advance Arctic literacy and to enable collaboration and cooperation on common problem sets of mutual interest with Arctic allies and partners. Andrew Michta serves as dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, which was established in 1993 and is the oldest of the six regional centers. The center, which operates in partnership with the German Federal Ministry of Defense, addresses regional and transnational security issues in Europe. The center initially stood up in 1993 as a way to help potential new allies in Eastern Europe, following the fall of the Soviet Union, make the transition from Communism to Western standards, Michta said. Following the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, he said, the mission changed to one of counterterrorism on a global scale. Since 2014, he said, the focus has changed again to instead focus on one of great power competition. "We're now focusing essentially on the strategic dimension of that in terms of how our curriculum has been revised, and just completed the curriculum review," Michta said. "We're looking at the faculty skill set to make sure it matches and also we're looking at organizational optimization to make sure we can deliver on this Marshall Center 3.0." A big part of the Marshall Center Mission -- as is the case with the other centers -- is development of and maintenance of relationships with alumni who have attended courses at the center. At the Marshall Center, Michta said, a surprising number of those alumni are from Ukraine. "Some of the most senior Ukrainian military and government officials have gone through our programs and we've stayed in touch," he said. Ukraine isn't the only nation the center maintains partnerships with, Michta said. He said the center has reached out to other nations such as Georgia and Moldova, for instance, to assist in things like writing national security strategy. "This is about bringing allies and partners of the United States together," he said. At the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, Wade Turvold serves as dean of admissions and business operations. The center addresses regional and global security issues, inviting military and civilian representatives of the United States and Asia-Pacific nations to participate in its program of executive education and workshops. "The Indo-Pacific region is the region to which the United States rebalanced 12 years ago, contains most of the world's population, most of the world's maritime space and the competition that comes with that," he said. "It's the world's economic engine. Half of world trade passes through the South China Sea alone. It contains all of the world's largest militaries, five or six of the nine world's nuclear powers -- depending on how you count -- and five of six active U.S. treaty alliances." The same region, he said, is where some of the world's greatest challenges now lie, including issues involving the Taiwan Strait, North Korea, the South China Sea, the East China Sea, illegal fishing and other transnational crimes. "Our unique mission is to maintain our relationship with allies, partners and friends and to advance U.S. interests in the region," Turvold said. "We do so, as has already been articulated, through the use of soft power. We're the DOD's non-kinetic arm." Turvold said the center employs about 130 people and works yearly to connect with more alumni and build relationships and partner capacity through partner engagement, executive education and workshops. While the National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy are threat-based, Turvold said -- that's not how partners in the Indo-Pacific see the world. "The majority of our partners in the region see the world through the lens of partnership -- not through the lens of threat," Turvold said. "And it's there that regional centers, with a modest investment through our executive agent -- the Defense Security Cooperation Agency -- are able to advance U.S. interests, build partner capacity and maintain the peace in the region." Parallel Processes Can Speed Up Weapons Acquisition, Vice Chairman Says [2023-04-07] WASHINGTON -- Taking the parallel versus sequential route in the acquisition process, might speed up the way the Defense Department gets new systems into the hands of warfighters, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. "We're too slow. How do we go faster?" asked Navy Adm. Christopher W. Grady during a conversation Wednesday with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "First I think it starts with we have to be a good customer." The DOD could be a better customer, for instance, by doing a better job at writing requirements for the things it needs, Grady said. "We have to have a good understanding," he said. "We have to communicate that to ... industry. And I think the services are working really hard to do that." Another way to speed up acquisition, he said, is to look at how some of the steps in the acquisition process might be done at the same time, in parallel, rather than one after the other, in a serial fashion. "A lot of things that we have done in the past has been in-serial," he said. "We do this, then we do this, and then we come to the end -- we have achieved the end state that we're shooting for." An example of that, he said, is in how systems in the acquisition process are tested. But such testing could be done in parallel with acquisition. "We can do and embed the testing apparatus in the acquisition process as we work our way along, such that when we're ready at the very end, all we have to do is that final test, as opposed to then starting the whole testing process," he said. That kind of process change, he said, was used with the recently-unveiled B-21 Raider aircraft. "It worked really well there," he said. The DOD's Adaptive Acquisition Framework, Grady said, and the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve, which is an initiative to encourage prototyping and experimentation in pursuit of solutions to joint problems, are also techniques that can speed up acquisition and get capabilities more quickly to warfighters. The defense industrial base in the United States, which is the community of commercial companies that manufacture equipment, supplies and weapons for the department, is now more fragile than it has been in recent years. Grady said he sees three problems contributing to that. The first is that the base has gotten smaller. "There's this contraction of the industrial base that happened perhaps during the peace dividend years," he said. At one time, Grady said, the U.S. may have had as many as 25 shipyards to build vessels for the U.S. Navy, for instance. Now that number, he said, might be as low as six. Also, Grady said, is the complexity of the kinds of systems the U.S. military wants. During World War II, he said, U.S. shipyards were able to manufacture the relatively simple "Liberty" ship in days. That kind of speed isn't possible with today's modern ships, aircraft and ground combat systems. "So, to maintain an industrial base that has the right number of artisans to create these complex systems at speed is going to be a challenge," he said. Thirdly, he said, is the concept of "just-in-time" inventory management, used extensively in the private sector to keep costs down and increase efficiency. Under that concept, raw materials are not kept on hand as part of a company's regular inventory but are purchased and brought on board only as they are needed to meet manufacturing requirements. "If I'm in industry in the '90s, early 2000s, that made a lot of sense," Grady said. "There's a good profit margin that can be there. That's a Phase 0, peacetime mode. It's not necessarily, I think, as we're seeing now, going to pay off in a Phase 3 -- or the fight that we see now." As part of joint warfighting doctrine, "Phase 0" is known as the "shaping" phase -- which happens during peacetime; while "Phase 3" involves active combat, such as what is happening now in Ukraine. "I think the question will be how do we incentivize an industrial base that will allow us to find the right answer," he said. "It's going to be a hybrid, I think, in terms of how much [we need] to stockpile and what do we need from a hot production or a warm production line." The ideal industrial base to support the U.S. military, Grady said, has ample competition, allows private capital to flow freely back and forth and features robust, diversified and trusted supply chains. An ideal industrial base might also be larger than just the U.S., he said -- it might include allies and partners as well. "And in the end, it has to be one that can surge," he said. "The question then is, how do we incentivize to do that?" Grady said that kind of work is being done now by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks and William LaPlante, the under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. "The Defense Production Act, the Article III authorities are now in place -- some of the waivers that we need," Grady said. "That's a good step in the right direction." Interagency Effort Assessing Impact of Leaked Documents, Strategizing Way Forward [2023-04-11] WASHINGTON -- Inside the Defense Department, an effort is underway now to look at the scope and scale of the distribution on social media platforms of what appears to be classified Defense Department information. Last week, Defense Department officials briefed Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III about a collection of images found circulating on various social media websites that appear to be -- but are not yet confirmed to be -- of classified documents, some related to Ukraine- and Russia-related operations. "A Pentagon team continues to review and assess the veracity of the photographed documents that are circulating on social media sites, and that appear in some cases to contain sensitive and highly classified material," said Chris Meagher, the assistant to the secretary of defense for Public Affairs, during an online discussion with members of the media. The imagery shows documents that appear to be in a format similar to those which might be used to provide updates to senior defense officials regarding various military operations, Meagher told reporters. "Some of these images appear to have been altered," Meagher said. "We've been in close touch with the White House and with interagency partners on this issue. And an interagency effort has been stood up, with a focus on assessing the impact these photographed documents could potentially have on U.S. national security and on our allies and partners." Now the department is looking internally at what was distributed, how much was distributed and the impact of that distribution, Meagher said. "We're still investigating how this happened, as well as the scope of the issue," he said. "There have been steps to take a closer look at how this type of information is distributed and to whom. We're also still trying to assess what might be out there." Since the department became aware of the unauthorized disclosure of information, Meagher said officials have been talking with U.S. allies and partners about what happened. Officials have also informed national security committees and Congress. Additionally, he said, an effort is underway to determine who might have leaked the information, how they did it and why -- though that effort is not being undertaken by the department itself. Instead, the matter has been referred to the Department of Justice, which has opened a criminal investigation. "The Department of Defense's highest priority is the defense of our nation and our national security," Meagher said. "The secretary and Department of Defense and the United States government take this apparent unauthorized disclosure extremely seriously, and this is a top priority for us." Partnered Commitment to Ukraine Unlikely to be Deterred by Recent Intel Leaks [2023-04-17] WASHINGTON -- This Friday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III will again host a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. The meeting will come in the latter half of a four-day trip in Europe, which will also include Sweden. This is the eleventh meeting of the UDCG, and the first meeting of the group since the American public and international community became aware there'd been a leak of U.S. classified military information that, in part, involved operations in Ukraine. A U.S. senior defense official said today it's unlikely that public knowledge of the contents of those leaked classified documents will hamper the ongoing efforts of the UDCG to support Ukraine as it fights to maintain its sovereignty in the face of Russia's illegal invasion last year. "What we have heard from allies and partners is that ... they're determined -- and we welcome this -- not to allow any kind of negative information or spinning of negative information to undermine our unity and our focus and strength of purpose," the official said. As in past meetings of the UDCG, the official said discussions are likely to revolve around providing continued support to Ukraine both for now and for its future defense, while at the same time ensuring that nations involved in providing that support can backfill whatever they've sent to Ukraine so they can maintain their own defense. "Countries really are also doing both at the same time," the official said. "I expect it to be a very practical [discussion] based on a common understanding of the importance of unity and unity of purpose." The first meeting of the UDCG was in April 2022. Since then, as many as 50 nations have participated in the meetings to work together to provide security assistance to Ukraine. Prior to Thursday's UDCG meeting, Austin will visit with Swedish leaders to, in part, express America's support for Swedish accession into NATO, the official said. Austin will also participate in meetings to discuss the bilateral defense relationship between the U.S. and Sweden. "It's also going to be an opportunity for the secretary and for the delegation to view some of Sweden's extraordinary advanced military capabilities, which we regularly exercise in maritime and air domains with Sweden, bilaterally and multilaterally, and which, once Sweden is a member of NATO, will significantly enhance NATO's military capability -- particularly in the north and in the ... Baltic Sea region." During his trip to Sweden, Austin is expected to meet with the Swedish prime minister, the Swedish minister of defense and the Swedish chief of defense. DOD Seeks Increased Microelectronics Funding for FY 2024 [2023-04-18] WASHINGTON -- Microelectronics, integrated sensing and cyber, as well as integrated network systems-of-systems are prioritized in the DOD's fiscal year 2024 budget request for science and technology and prototyping sent to Congress last month by the president. Heidi Shyu, who serves as the undersecretary for research and engineering, spoke Thursday at the National Defense Industrial Association to discuss how the department's S&T and prototyping priorities fit into the president's FY2024 budget request. This year's budget request includes about $145 billion for research, development, testing and engineering. That request is 12% higher than in FY2023, and also represents the largest request in department history. Among the areas of focus within the RDT&E budget are 14 critical technology areas Shyu determined in early 2022 should be deemed critical for investment by the department. Among those technology areas are biotechnology; quantum science; future-generation wireless technology and advanced materials -- all noted to be "emerging opportunities." Technologies such as trusted artificial intelligence and autonomy; integrated network systems-of-systems; microelectronics; space technology; renewable energy generation and storage; advanced computing and software; and human-machine interfaces are also areas the department will need to focus on to help maintain U.S. national security, and where there currently exists vibrant activity in the commercial sector the department can rely on. And finally, critical technology areas such as directed energy; hypersonics; and integrated sensing and cyber remain relatively unique to the needs of the defense community. Within the FY2024 budget request, about $6.93 billion is aimed at S&T and prototyping funding -- and that's broken down by the department's 14 critical technology areas. "If you take a look at the split of the pie by critical technology areas, you'll see microelectronics is ... about a quarter of the pie," Shyu said. "The next piece that's under here is integrated sensing and cyber -- that's about 17% of the pie. The next biggest one is integrated network systems-of-systems. Combined, the three are about half of the pie." Microelectronics, Shyu said, gets about $1.7 billion in funding, while integrated sensing and cyber gets about $1.2 billion, and integrated network systems-of-systems gets about $763 million. Areas like trusted AI and autonomy, hypersonics and biotechnology are the next-largest areas of investment -- together accounting for about $1.6 billion in funding requests. Shyu also said the department's National Defense Science and Technology Strategy is due to come out shortly. While she didn't lay out specifics within the strategy, she did spell out its key focus areas. Among those, she said, are a focus on the joint mission, creating and fielding capabilities at speed and scale, and ensuring the department's foundations for research and development. As part of the focus on the joint mission, Shyu mentioned investments in physics-based modeling and simulation capability and tying that into campaign-level modeling and simulation capability. Austin: Sweden's Taken Steps Toward Enhancing U.S. Partnership [2023-04-19] STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Following a meeting today at the headquarters of the Swedish navy on Musko Naval Base near Stockholm, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III acknowledged the efforts taken by Sweden in the last year to enhance its already strong alliance with the United States. "The ties between Sweden and the United States run strong, and they run deep," Austin said during a news conference following the meeting. "And the partnership between our two democracies continues to flourish. During the turbulence of the past year, Sweden has taken two major steps to strengthen our relationship even further." The first of those steps, Austin said, is that Sweden has applied for membership in NATO. It's something its neighbor, Finland also did. Finland's membership in NATO became official earlier this month. Now, it's Sweden's turn to join the alliance, and it's something Austin said the United States supports wholly. "You have the full and firm support of the United States," Austin said. "We recently welcomed Finland as the 31st member of NATO, and we look forward to soon welcoming Sweden as the 32nd." Austin said he hopes that Sweden will have become a member of NATO before the July NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. The U.S. defense secretary also said U.S. support for Sweden's membership is demonstrated by the continued and ongoing security cooperation activities between the two nations. "To underscore our deep support, the department has increased the number of ship visits and bomber task force missions and high-level engagements with Sweden," Austin said. "We are doing all of this for a simple but important reason: Sweden's membership in NATO is going to mean a stronger alliance and a more secure Europe." The second thing Austin said Sweden has done to enhance its military relationship with the United States is embark on development of a U.S.-Sweden Defense Cooperation Agreement. "We're looking forward to completing the negotiation of our U.S.-Swedish defense cooperation agreement, and once that agreement is finalized, it will allow for closer and deeper defense cooperation between our democracies," Austin said. Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson thanked Austin for the support the U.S. has lent to Sweden's bid to join NATO and for the ongoing security partnership the two nations enjoy. "We are very grateful for the continued support from the United States for Sweden's application to NATO and the clear message from you on the importance of a quick ratification for Sweden's bid to join the alliance and become a full-fledged member of NATO," Jonson said. "Your visit to Stockholm today, together with the United States' very frequent military presence through training exercises and other activities in Sweden and in our neighborhood, is also very much appreciated." Jonson also thanked Austin for his leadership of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group. "I always say that supporting Ukraine is the right thing to do, but it's also the smart thing to do when it comes to the military support that we provide for Ukraine," Jonson said. "It is needed so that Ukraine can reclaim lost territory and regain its freedom. And by supporting Ukraine, we're also investing into our own security, as Ukraine is, of course, fighting for its freedom, but it's also fighting for a safer and more secure Europe. It's a top priority for the Swedish government to continue support for Ukraine ... for as long as needed." Later this week, Austin will host the 11th meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. Austin Hopes NATO Partnership for Sweden by Summer [2023-04-19] STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has told his Swedish counterpart he hopes that Sweden will get NATO membership before the summer. On the first day of a four-day trip to Sweden and Germany, Austin met with Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson for a Tuesday morning defense meeting at the headquarters of the Swedish navy on Musko Naval Base near Stockholm. "Mr. Minister, thanks for the tremendous hospitality. We're delighted to be here, and I really appreciate the warm welcome from your troops this morning," Austin told his counterpart. "We look forward to continuing to advocate for your swift admission to NATO, and we'll work hard to get that done before the summer. I think that's really, really important." Austin told Jonson that the admission of Sweden to NATO -- something that happened earlier this month for neighboring Finland -- will greatly enhance the NATO alliance. "You will ... add a lot of value to NATO, our overall effort," Austin said. "You have ... a highly professional military, and you have invested a lot in modernization over the last several years. As you know, our forces have done a lot together and, thereby, increased interoperability here over the last several years. We have one of the largest exercises in recent history ongoing as we speak, and I look forward to some good results coming out of that." Right now, Sweden, the U.S., and other European nations are participating in the Swedish military Exercise Aurora 23, which runs to May 11. It is the largest Swedish military exercise in decades and readies participants for responding to an attack on Sweden. The U.S, Sweden and multiple other European nations are also spinning up for Exercise Defender 23, which will demonstrate some of the interoperability Austin referenced. "You're a great partner," Austin told Jonson. "We look forward to, very soon, being able to call you an ally." During his four-day trip in Europe, Austin is expected to meet with the Swedish prime minister in Stockholm and to also travel south to Germany to host the 11th meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group. As in past meetings of the UDCG, discussions are likely to revolve around providing continued support to Ukraine, both now and for the future, while at the same time ensuring the nations involved can maintain their own defense. U.S.-Led Ukraine Defense Contact Group Convenes for 11th Discussion [2023-04-21] RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany -- This morning, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III met with Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov for a bilateral discussion in advance of the 11th meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. The first such meeting was held last April, also at Ramstein. "It's been nearly a year since this group first met, right here at Ramstein," Austin said. "And I hear that many of you refer to this as the 'Ramstein forum.' So, it feels right that we're back here to reaffirm our shared unity and resolve." During his opening remarks, Austin reminded attendees that their combined efforts in the past year to provide security assistance to Ukraine have greatly enhanced that country's ability to fight and to retain its sovereignty in the face of Russia's illegal invasion. "Our common efforts have made a huge difference to Ukraine's defenders on the battlefield," Austin said. "And they underscore just how badly the Kremlin miscalculated. Putin thought that he could easily topple Kyiv's democratically elected government. He thought that the wider world would let him get away with it. He thought that our unity would splinter. But he was wrong -- on each and every count." Plans for the day-long UDCG event include among other things, briefings by participating nations regarding the security assistance they plan to provide to Ukraine, and an update from Reznikov on Ukrainian battlefield progress. "Oleksii, we're looking forward to hearing directly from you and your team on the state of the battlefield and your most urgent requirements," Austin said. "I also want to thank each country joining us today. You've shown that nations of goodwill from all around the world reject Russia's cruelty and aggression." Austin said this most recent meeting of the UDCG would focus on air defense, ammunition and enablers. "Ukraine urgently needs our help to shield its citizens, infrastructure and forces from Russia's missile threat," he said. The secretary also noted a recent agreement among European nations to ramp up the production of ammunition to support Ukraine and said that other nations outside Europe are also boosting production of much-needed ammunition. Over the past months, Austin said, the UDCG has provided equipment and training that has allowed for an additional nine armored brigades in Ukraine. "That has already strengthened Ukraine's position on the battlefield," he said. Additionally, both European nations and the United States are donating tanks to the Ukrainians. The U.S. has committed a total of 31 Abrams tanks, for instance -- expected to be delivered before the end of the year. The UDCG has also continued to provide air-defense systems to help Ukrainian fighters defend their skies, citizens and critical infrastructure, Austin said. Included there are Patriot systems donated by the U.S., Germany and the Netherlands; National/Norwegian Advanced Surface to Air Missile Systems from both Canada and Norway; and SAMP/T systems from Italy and France. On Wednesday, the U.S. also announced $325 million in additional security assistance to Ukraine, using presidential drawdown authority, or PDA, which pulls hardware from existing U.S. military stocks. This latest PDA, which is the 36th of its kind, includes, among other things, additional ammunition for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems; 155mm and 105mm artillery rounds; tube-launched, optically-tracked, wire-guided missiles -- also called TOW missiles; AT-4 anti-armor weapon systems; anti-tank mines; and over nine million rounds of small arms ammunition. "For more than a year, Ukraine's forces have defended their country and their fellow citizens," Austin said. "But they've also defended the basic principle that autocrats don't just get to assault their smaller neighbors. And the valor and skill of Ukraine's troops have inspired the world. From the battle of Kyiv to the liberation of Kherson, Ukraine has shown again and again the power of a free people fighting to defend their rights." DOD Makes Climate Assessment Tool Available to Partner Nations [2023-04-21] WASHINGTON -- The Department of Defense is one of the largest owners and managers of land in the United States. And that land is likely to be affected by changes in the climate -- including the effects of flooding, extreme temperatures and drought. To prepare for those possibilities and to build resilience, the department has developed the DOD Climate Assessment Tool. DCAT, as it's called, is a web-based tool informed by volumes of data from global climate models, historical observations, and flood modeling that can help the department prepare for climate hazards at over 2,300 DOD locations around the world. Recently, the department expanded DCAT to include over 400 locations outside the United States. But also, the department has been developing a separate capability, the Climate Assessment Tool, or CAT, that will be provided to several partner nations to give those countries access to an assessment tool similar to DCAT to enable their own climate change exposure analyses. Giving partner nations access to CAT enhances national resilience against climate change by enabling the same quality in our partners and allies, said Ross E. Alter, a Research Meteorologist who helped develop both DCAT and CAT. Alter is on detail to the DOD Climate Action Team, and regularly works at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers -- Engineer Research and Development Center -- Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL). "Climate change is a global issue," Alter said. "Because of that, our national resilience is linked to global resilience." Customized versions of CAT will be provided to Australia, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the United Kingdom. The effort is part of a commitment Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III made to President Biden in 2021, Alter said, to provide this tool to several interested partner nations. "We feel that sharing such a tool with our partners and allies will be able to shore up their resilience against climate change, and by helping our partners and allies to be more resilient, it also, by extension, would increase our own resilience against climate change," Alter said. The main difference between DCAT and CAT, Alter said, is that CAT operates at a "watershed level," rather than an installation level. This allows users to perform an assessment anywhere within a country. CAT also uses globally available data sources to ensure coverage of partner nations. A "watershed" is the area of land associated with a river or body of water that drains into that river or body of water. Users of DCAT and CAT can range from installation-level engineers and planners to senior leaders who need to have information for more strategic decision-making. The strategic-level user is someone who is interested in evaluating climate exposure across a group of installations to make climate-informed decisions, said Brantley A. Thames. "If you had a question, such as what are the ten most exposed installations to drought, DCAT provides that capability. It's great for your senior leaders who need to make large-scale decisions." Like Alter, Thames is also employed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, as a hydraulic engineer, and he works with the DOD Climate Action Team. Thames said that in addition to strategic leaders, there are also site-specific users for CAT and DCAT. "That's really important as we plan training activities to understand what are going to be the threats to our soldiers, and what are going to be the threats to our equipment and facilities on installations," Thames said. Tricia Nelsen is a research physical scientist, also with CRREL, and has a background in geospatial mapping and data science. Currently, she's stationed at Fort Wainwright, Alaska, on detail to the DOD Climate Action Team. Nelsen said a user of DCAT might use the tool to plan where a new building might go, for instance, or see whether it makes sense to put money into modernizing an existing facility given projected changes in climate. "One really useful aspect of the tool is that we provide flood maps for riverine flooding and coastal flooding with sea level rise," Nelsen said. "We can go into the tool, look at a location that you're thinking about updating a building and see, depending on greenhouse gas emissions, if this building might be flooded due to sea level rise, and it doesn't make sense to invest our money into updating that building right now. Maybe it makes sense to move it or build a new building a mile away where it's not going to be in the floodplain. That's a really useful piece of information that this tool gives us." Nelsen, Alter and Thames all said working on the DOD Climate Action Team has been a great experience for them, and that they've been excited to contribute to the DCAT and CAT projects. "This has been a completely different experience for me," Nelsen said. "I've supported projects before, research projects, but I've never been responsible for one. And being responsible for CAT has been a tall order, but it's been incredibly rewarding. I've learned how to project manage, I've learned how to manage my time a lot better and learned how to reach out for different kinds of help from different people." Alter said his work so far on the DOD Climate Action Team has helped him better understand what he's capable of -- especially in a team environment. "It's been one of the biggest professional challenges of my career, but it's also been very rewarding because I really think that it's helped to expand my worldview," Alter said. "And it's also helped to make me more appreciative of what I'm actually capable of doing and handling: these kinds of larger projects, with the help of our teammates. It's been a really great process, and it's helped me to develop as a professional." Thames said the DOD Climate Action Team has been successful in its work because he sees that team members are committed to the effort. "Everyone on the team is committed to it, they are reliable, they are committed to figure it out, whether they know it or not," Thames said. "But the other really nice aspect of this team is, it's not just hydraulic engineers like [me]. It's meteorologists, planners, it's regulatory folks. We have all these different expertise areas, and we all kind of get to represent that on the team." Bringing all those areas of expertise together, Thames said, means not only is the team more successful, but everyone on the team becomes better by working with others who have experience in other areas. "We're gaining experience in their areas of expertise while they're gaining them in our own," he said. "It just makes us more well-rounded public servants at the end of the day." Following Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Austin Reminds Members of Their Impact [2023-04-21] RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany -- After a full day of discussion during the 11th meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III reminded participating nations of the significance of their commitments. "Over the past year, members of this contact group have provided tremendous capability to Ukraine," Austin said. "Right after Russia invaded, we surged in Javelins and Stingers. Then we provided Ukraine's defenders with howitzers ... HIMARS ... and other artillery. And we continue to rush in ground-based air-defense capabilities and munitions to help Ukraine control its sovereign skies ... and to help Ukraine defend its citizens from Russian cruise missiles and Iranian drones." Those contributions and efforts, Austin said, have made a big difference on the battlefield for Ukrainian soldiers. Most recently, he said, members of the UDCG have delivered to Ukraine more than 230 tanks and more than 1,550 armored vehicles, along with other equipment and materials that have allowed the Ukrainians to support more than nine new armored brigades. And just last month, the Defense Department announced it planned to expedite earlier plans to field 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. Under the expedited plans, the U.S. will send to Ukraine M1A1 Abrams tanks from refurbished hulls already in U.S. inventory, and those tanks will be delivered in the fall -- which is faster than what was originally expected. "And the M1s that the Ukrainians will use for training will arrive in Germany in the next few weeks," Austin said. The DOD plans now to make a different set of training tanks available so that Ukrainian troops can learn on those systems concurrent with the refurbishing of the tanks they will eventually use on the battlefield. It's expected that there will be training tracks for both Abrams operations and Abrams maintenance. "All of this is huge progress," Austin said. "And I'm confident that this equipment -- and the training to accompany it -- will put Ukraine's forces in a position to continue to succeed on the battlefield." During the daylong UDCG meeting, Austin said participating nations heard from U.S. European Command about progress toward building Ukraine's combat power and from Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov about battlefield dynamics and Ukraine's most urgent needs. "And we talked about key enablers that will help Ukraine repel Russian forces, such as heavy equipment and transport vehicles ... refuelers ... and mine rollers," Austin said. "I'd like to thank those here who announced donations of these important systems, including Germany and the Netherlands." And while Austin said Russia continues assaults on civilian targets in Ukraine -- targets that have no military value -- he also said UDCG members have stepped up with new air-defense systems and related munitions to help stave off those assaults. The secretary also pointed to recent efforts in the European Union to commit to speed up the production of much-needed ammunition for Ukraine. "And more countries are thinking about how they can increase industrial production -- not just for the near term but also for the medium term and the long term," he said. "And that is a powerful reminder that we stand with Ukraine's defenders for the long haul." The first meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group happened in late April 2022, also at Ramstein. After that meeting, Austin said a decision was made to extend the forum to a monthly meeting so that more work could be done. "The contact group will be a vehicle for nations of goodwill to intensify our efforts, coordinate our assistance, and focus on winning today's fight and the struggles to come," Austin said at the time. "The monthly meetings may be in-person, virtual or mixed. And they'll extend the transparency, the integration and the dialogue that we saw today." At the conclusion of today's UDCG meeting, Austin weighed in on Russia's decision to invade Ukraine -- a decision he characterized as a mistake. "Putin made a series of grave miscalculations when he ordered the invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago," Austin said. "He thought that Ukraine wouldn't dare to fight back. But Ukraine is standing strong, with the help of its partners. Putin thought that our unity would fracture. But Russia's cruel war of choice has only brought us closer together." In advance of chairing the most recent meeting of the UDCG, Austin visited with military and civilian leadership in Sweden, a nation that has applied for membership to NATO. During his visit, Austin expressed hopes that Sweden will have attained membership in the alliance before the July NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. Sweden's neighbor, Finland, became a NATO member earlier this month. Both nations' efforts to join the long-standing defensive alliance have come as a result of Russia's actions in Ukraine, Austin said. "Putin's war is not the result of NATO enlargement," Austin said. "Putin's war of choice is the cause of NATO enlargement. You know, when I first convened this contact group, I saw nations of goodwill that were eager to help Ukraine resist Russia's imperial aggression. I saw a coalition that stood united and firm. I saw countries determined to stand up for an open and secure world of rights and rules. And all of that was just as true at Ramstein today as it was a year ago." Control, Cooperation, Classification Remain Focuses of DOD's Space Policy [2023-05-03] WASHINGTON -- The assistant secretary of defense for space policy told senators yesterday that his office is "laser focused" on three priorities: space control, space cooperation and space classification. "On space control, the department will protect and defend our national security interests from the growing scope and scale of space and counterspace threats, and we will protect and defend our service men and women in harm's way from space enabled threats," said John F. Plumb in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, subcommittee on strategic forces. Also critical for success in space is breaking down the barriers that prevent the efficient sharing of critical intelligence gathered from space -- including within the DOD, within the U.S. intelligence community, and among partners and allies. "The department is working at the highest levels to remove barriers to sharing information with our allies and to strengthen our ability to communicate really with ourselves across the U.S. government," Plumb said. Plumb said challenges involving cooperation with allies often comes down to the ability to share classified information with them, and that this is something the department must work on more closely. "A lot of classified information is not actually DOD-originated; it often originates from different parts of the intelligence community," he said. "We need to be able to collaborate very closely with our partners in the IC to kind of break down these legacy barriers, that really are legacy systems not designed for fighting or for operationally-relevant speeds and find a way to be able to share those portions of those types of classified information that are needed for combined space operations." When it comes to space cooperation, he said, the U.S., partnerships and cooperation with like-minded nations will be necessary if space is to remain both free and open. "We are investing in relationships with allies, partners and commercial space," he said. "These partnerships are an enduring strength and an asymmetric advantage that our competitors cannot hope to match." An example of how the department is strengthening those partnerships is with the Combined Space Operations Initiative. That forum, hosted by Plumb, includes defense leaders from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In written testimony submitted to the Senate, Plumb said participants in that forum work together to identify ways to improve cooperation, coordination and interoperability in order to sustain freedom of action in space, optimize resources, enhance mission assurance and prevent conflict. The fiscal year 2024 presidential budget submission included some $33 billion for space operations, Plumb said. That includes, among other things, $5 billion missile warning systems; $1.3 billion to support position navigation timing and the Global Positioning System; and $3 billion to fund 15 launch vehicles and to provide for launch range upgrades. "Our competitors have watched us, they have learned from us, they have stolen from us, and they have developed capabilities to hold us at risk," Plumb told lawmakers. "But they are not ready for us .... and with Congressional support for the national security space investments in the president's budget, they will not be ready for us tomorrow." NATO Partners Prepare to Kick Off 'Formidable Shield' Exercise [2023-05-05] WASHINGTON -- Exercise Formidable Shield, which kicks off Monday, is expected to showcase the strength of the NATO alliance and its commitment to the defense of Europe, the deputy Pentagon press secretary said. "The U.S. 6th Fleet and Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO will kick off the biennial Exercise Formidable Shield 2023 next week," said Sabrina Singh during a briefing yesterday at the Pentagon. "This three-week exercise demonstrates the unprecedented cohesion of the NATO alliance, our unmatched capacity and capability, and our combined commitment to deterrence and defense of the Euro-Atlantic area and the High North." The exercise, which runs May 8-26, takes place on odd-numbered years. This year, the event will involve 13 NATO allied and partner nations, more than 20 ships, and 35 aircraft, including the F-35. "This long-planned exercise encompasses live-fire rehearsal events in a multidomain environment against subsonic, supersonic and ballistic targets," Singh said. About 4,000 personnel from across NATO are expected to participate. Formidable Shield demonstrates allied interoperability in a live-fire joint and combined integrated air and missile defense environment using NATO command and control structures. Singh also discussed the pending deployment of 1,500 U.S. military personnel to provide assistance at the U.S. border, which was requested by the Department of Homeland Security late last month and approved Tuesday by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III. "As you know, this is a 90-day, temporary deployment of our military personnel at the border," Singh said. "They will not be conducting any law enforcement activities. Their role and responsibility will really remain back-of-house, including data entry and helping with any [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] capability and monitoring." Right now, Singh said, the military services are notifying those units that will participate in border operations, and she said the department is expecting their arrival by May 10. She also emphasized that those military personnel are not expected to be interacting with migrants at the border. "The intention is not for them to be interacting with migrants, for that, that would be more of a DHS role," she said. While the deployment to the border is temporary and expected to last for just 90 days, Singh said if DHS were to ask for more assistance or for an extension of assistance already approved, the department would consider that. "We would certainly review that option and haven't ruled anything off the table," she said. "But for right now, that deployment is just for those 90 days." SACEUR Provides Update on Deterrence, Defense of Euro-Atlantic Area [2023-05-10] WASHINGTON -- At NATO Headquarters in Brussels today, members of the alliance's Military Committee met to discuss, among other things, Russia's war on Ukraine, planning for deterrence and defense, and development of regional plans. U.S. Army Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, who serves as both commander of U.S. European Command and supreme allied commander Europe spoke during a briefing that followed the meetings and provided an update on implementation of the Deterrence and Defense of the Euro-Atlantic Area concept, also called DDA. "The DDA family of plans is really the 'how' of how the alliance will operate in peace, crisis and war to provide for our collective defense," Cavoli said. "The plans that come out of DDA, the strategic plans as well as the regional plans -- these will drive our structure, our operations, our activities, and importantly ... our investments into the future." Cavoli said Allied Command Operations, which he heads and which is responsible for the planning and execution of all NATO military operations, has worked over the past several months to develop what he said are sound, objective defensive plans. "I can proudly say that we are on track," he said. "We are rapidly increasing the readiness and enablement of our forces, and we're making sure that they are ready to face current as well as future threats." The continued development of regional plans was a significant part of the meeting in Brussels. The geographically specific plans describe how NATO expects to defend key locations within the alliance against both Russia and terrorist groups. "Our regional plans ... blend national defense plans of our frontline nations into NATO plans," Cavoli said. "And this optimizes NATO's ability to move forces ... to the right place at the right time. This change will move us from an alliance that was optimized for out-of-area contingency operations, to an alliance fit for the purpose of large-scale operations to defend every edge of the alliance's territory." While planning for the future ensures the continued strength of the NATO alliance, Cavoli said the plans themselves are not NATO's best asset. "Our strongest and most enduring advantage ... will continue to be the unmatched unity of this alliance," he said. "The DDA strategy is a powerful demonstration of this cohesion and it's designed to ensure our alliances remain strong, our citizens safe and our values secure." Milley Reflects on 25th Secretary of Defense [2023-05-10] WASHINGTON -- Late last year, Ashton B. Carter, who served as the 25th secretary of defense, died at his home in Boston. In Washington yesterday, the Special Competitive Studies Project hosted the "Ash Carter Exchange on Innovation and National Security" -- a forum where a host of experts discussed ways to advance collaboration in the pursuit of national security. Closing out the day-long event was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, who offered his insight into Carter's influence on national security and the Defense Department. "I had the great privilege of working very closely with Secretary Carter on many, many occasions over the years, and I can attest to you that he was a great patriot, a real patriot, and a great American," Milley said. "The first thing I think of when I think of Ash Carter was his human touch. He was, of course, a physicist, a scientist -- but more than that, he was just a great human being. He was approachable and affable and got along with everyone. He was positive, he was upbeat, and he communicated especially well." More so, Austin said, Carter had been a committed public servant. "Ash Carter's decision-making was always motivated by the care and safety of the men and women in uniform," Milley said. "He was incredibly talented at cutting red tape and speeding up the bureaucracy in order to improve the lives of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines." One example, he said, was with the mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle -- a vehicle that was put to use in Afghanistan and Iraq. At the time, it was Secretary of Defense Robert Gates who conceived of the idea, but it was Carter -- then the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics -- who pushed it over the finish line. "I was witness to that," Milley said. "His action, the action of Ash Carter, saved American lives on the battlefield, to include my own." This year is the first time the "Ash Carter Exchange on Innovation and National Security" has been held. Carter's wife, Stephanie, helped organize the event. According to the event's website, the purpose of the exchange was to gather "pioneers and champions of innovation" to "advance collaboration in pursuit of national security." That type of effort, Milley said, was something Carter himself excelled at. "Perhaps his greatest legacy is a sense of urgency for the U.S. military to adopt new technology, to accept risks, and to think of creative solutions to our ... problems," Milley said. "Secretary Carter was forward-thinking, he was always talking about generative AI [artificial intelligence] ... he was the rare person who could understand and speak to both the science and the policy of new technology." Carter's vision and pursuit of innovation, Milley said, reshaped the direction of the U.S. military, making it more agile and nimble. "I believe ... that Ash Carter instinctively understood that we are in the middle of the largest fundamental change in the character of war throughout all of human recorded history," Milley said. "And he also understood that the stakes were enormously high. At the end of the day, it was about preventing great power war and preserving the rules-based international order that had maintained the great power peace for the last 80 years." Today, Milley said, both China and Russia are looking to disrupt that world order to advance their own interests, and that is something Carter understood more than most. "Both China and Russia have the means to threaten our interests and our way of life," Milley said. "But we must keep in mind that war with either is neither imminent nor inevitable. And we must continue to deter a great power war, which was the central purpose of Ash Carter's professional life. That is what drove Ash Carter." Today, Milley said, the U.S. will continue to deter great power war by being ready and demonstrating its readiness to the world. That is something was one of Carter's "first principles," he said. "It is readiness in the future, otherwise known as modernization, that Ash Carter recognized," Milley said. "And he understood that we were at an inflection point in human history where we are experiencing a fundamental change in the character of war." While the nature of war will always remain the same -- one nation's desire to impose its will on another nation, -- how wars are fought has changed and will change in the future. In World War II, for instance, Nazi Germany was the first to be able to successfully combine new technologies -- such as aircraft, wheeled and tracked vehicles, and radio -- and use that to their advantage. "They took these technologies and they combined them into a way of war -- the German way of war -- a way of war that allowed them ... to overrun Europe in 18 months," Milley said. The United States, the Soviet Union and allies against Nazi Germany eventually caught up, Milley said. But the Nazi's initial mastery of technology had given them an early advantage. "We are in a comparative moment today," Milley said. "And Ash Carter was one of the few who recognized it very early on. He knew that we might not have 18 months to ramp up production and build up the military when the next great power war breaks out. He knew that we must be ready now, and we must be ready in the future." The challenge now is figuring out the best combination of technologies, integrated with the right training, doctrine and organizational structure. Some of those technologies -- including assured communications, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, smart manufacturing and 3D printing -- were all highlighted by Carter early on, Milley said. "Your military was directed years ago by Secretary Ash Carter to develop those technologies," Milley said. "And those are coming to fruition today. You're seeing that in the Army with a multidomain task force and long-range fires. You're seeing that in the Marines with a littoral regiment. You're seeing that in the Navy with experiments in 5th Fleet in the Central Command area of operations with unmanned maritime surface and subsurface vessels. And you see it in the Air Force." All those concepts, Milley said, were initiated by Ash Carter. And the challenge today for the U.S. armed forces is to take new technologies and merge them into a way of war that gives the U.S. the tactical and strategic advantage over adversaries. "We do this to prevent war. And to achieve this, we must operate seamlessly in our joint force," he said. "On Day 1 of the next war, we must be fully integrated and able to maneuver through space and time in a fast-paced, high-tech, rapidly changing environment, [while] remaining invisible and in a constant state of movement. And [if we] do that, we might prevail. But, more importantly, to do that, if your enemy knows it, you'll deter." To advance that effort, Milley said, the DOD is initiating the third iteration of it's joint warfighting concept -- the first version was drafted by Carter. Milley also called on those in attendance at the event to recommit to Carter's vision for a military that includes the best of the best -- based on merit. "Everyone who is this room now, anyone who is watching this, and all of us that wear the uniform, we all must recommit ourselves to the vision of Ash Carter," Milley said. "We must always remember that we take our oath to the Constitution; Ash Carter never let us forget that." Carter, Milley said, understood that in America and for the U.S. military, differences like race, religion, gender or social status don't matter "What matters was your commitment, your talent," Milley said. "What matters is that you're an American. What Ash Carter cared about was your merit, your skills, your knowledge, your attributes. He understood it, and he lived it. And he knew that you'd be judged by the content of your character. He was committed to that idea of America. Ash Carter was someone that we all should try to emulate. All that he stood for is what we should recommit ourselves to -- the idea that is America. That is what Ash Carter had as his North Star, and that should always be our North Star." Austin Outlines What's Needed for Successful Competition With China [2023-05-16] WASHINGTON -- This year's budget request for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, or PDI, is a full 40% higher than last year's request, said Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, and that's part of a DOD-wide effort to outpace the People's Republic of China. "We're focusing the entire department on continuing to outpace the PRC as the President's National Security Strategy notes," Austin told members of the Senate Appropriations Committee during testimony Tuesday. "The PRC is our only competitor, with both the intent and increasingly the capacity to reshape the international system to suit its autocratic preferences." To counter that, Austin said, the Department of Defense is now investing more in its force posture in the Pacific, including $9.1 billion aimed at the PDI. That increase, he said funds more agile approaches to testing and acquisition and development of new operational concepts for how the joint force is employed. Also important for successful competition with China is teamwork across the federal government, including with both the State Department and the Commerce Department. The secretaries of both agencies testified alongside Austin. "We work with the Department of State to help prevent conflict from breaking out in the first place. We protect the free and open trade lanes that drive the world economy," Austin said. "And we're supporting the Department of Commerce's leading role in implementing the Chips and Science Act. And we work closely with Commerce to advance our technological advantages." Nations in the Indo-Pacific, Austin said, are as interested in keeping the region open for free trade as the United States. Austin also said those nations are viable partners in the endeavor. "Most countries in the region share a common vision of an open and inclusive Indo-Pacific, free of bullying and coercion," he said. "We're proud to stand together with them. So we'll continue to strengthen the rules-based international order by making clear the folly of aggression and maintaining open lines of communication." The U.S. depends on its network of allies and partners to further its interests -- including successfully competing with China. "The whole administration is working to deepen ties with our network of alliances," Austin said. "We're working with our friends around the Indo-Pacific and the world through security cooperation and assistance, and through combined operations and exercises. We're also working to develop innovative new capabilities and deepen integrated deterrence." One example of that, he said, is increased deployment of assets in Japan, including plans to deploy the 12th Marine Littoral Regiment. Another example is new force posture initiatives with Australia. And in the Philippines, he said, the U.S. will have access to new locations to rotate forces in and out. "Meanwhile, we're expanding our security cooperation with South Korea, India, Thailand, Singapore and many others," he said. "We're deepening our ties with [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] and the Quad [the United States, Australia, India and Japan.] And I'm pleased that the United States will soon provide significant additional security assistance to Taiwan through the Presidential drawdown authority that Congress authorized last year." Austin also said that successful competition with China means that the U.S. must pass an on-time budget to fund the efforts he discussed. "The best way that Congress can ensure our strategic advantage is with an on-time appropriation that supports the President's budget request," he said. "No amount of money can buy back the time that we lose when we're forced to operate on continuing resolutions." Without an on-time budget, Austin said, the department is hampered in its ability to start important new contracts which are important to its defense efforts. One example of that, he said, is with ship-building efforts, which would affect delivery of Columbia-class and Virginia-class submarines, for instance. "It will delay our ability to get the critical munitions that we need for ourselves and also to support our allies and partners as well," Austin said. Included among the kinds of munitions that a continuing resolution might affect the availability of are the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, Tomahawks, the Advanced Medium Range Air-To-Missile and MK 48 torpedoes "The list is pretty extensive," Austin said. Deputy Defense Secretary Departs This Weekend for Alaska [2023-05-18] WASHINGTON -- Due to rising global temperatures, ice in the Arctic is melting faster than it ever has. This change affects the security environment in the region. This weekend, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks will travel to multiple locations in Alaska to discuss quality of life issues with service members and meet with experts who are looking into how climate change will affect the Defense Department's ability to defend America's interests in the region. During her trip to Alaska, Hicks will visit Eielson Air Force Base, Fort Wainwright and Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh during a briefing today. "At each installation, the deputy secretary will hold roundtables with service members to discuss quality of life issues, access to mental health care and suicide prevention efforts," Singh said. "She will also meet with senior leaders and tour housing, barracks, childcare, commissaries, health care and recreational facilities to see firsthand how the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force are working to improve quality of life and making sure that we are taking care of our people serving in the Arctic." Singh said the deputy secretary's visit to Alaska will focus on security issues as well. Hicks will visit the Army's cold weather research facilities in Fairbanks and also the Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies in Anchorage to learn more about the effects of climate change on military readiness, as well as research programs focused on improving resilience in the Arctic. U.S., Czech Defense Leaders Sign Security Agreement [2023-05-23] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Jana Cernochova, defense minister of the Czech Republic, today signed a security cooperation agreement that is meant to further strengthen defense ties, enhance NATO operations, advance transatlantic security, and protect shared interests and values between the two nations. "I'm proud that we'll sign the defense cooperation agreement today," Austin said. "It will deepen our defense ties even further, enhance our interoperability, strengthen NATO, and increase stability in Europe." In advance of their talks, Austin said the relationship between the U.S. and the Czech Republic is stronger than it has ever been. "Our strategic partnership has never been stronger, and that's especially true after Russia's cruel and unprovoked assault on its peaceful neighbor, Ukraine," Austin said. "I know that your citizens hear the echoes of Moscow's invasion in 1968, so we are very glad that the Czech Republic has committed itself to supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes." Austin also thanked the Czech defense minister for contributions to defending NATO's eastern flank. "The Czech Republic is leading the way as a framework nation in the new NATO battlegroup in Slovakia," he said. "So, thank you, Madam Minister, for your contributions to the alliance and for being a strong, clear voice for NATO unity." The U.S. defense secretary also noted that July marks the 30th anniversary of the Czech Republic's partnership with Texas and Nebraska National Guard units as part of the National Guard's State Partnership Program. The security cooperation program is managed by the National Guard Bureau. It links a state's National Guard with the military of a partner nation. The relationship allows both the Guard unit and the partner nation's military to further their respective defense goals. Today, 88 such partnerships exist with 100 countries. Cernochova commented on how long the U.S. and the Czech Republic have been allies and how the new agreement would only continue to strengthen that relationship. "I'm glad that the United States is still deeply engaged in Europe's security and is our most important ally," she said. "The defense cooperation agreement will make our cooperation even stronger." F-16 Training, Aircraft, to Fill Ukraine's Mid-Term, Long-Term Defense Needs [2023-05-23] WASHINGTON -- Last week in Japan during a meeting of G7 leaders, including those from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom, President Joe Biden said the U.S. will support an effort with partners and allies to train Ukrainian fighter pilots on the F-16 aircraft. Today, Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder explained in further detail that the training, and any eventual transfer of F-16 aircraft to Ukraine is meant to support mid- and long-term defense needs, rather than defense in the short term for an expected counter-offensive against Russian forces. "F-16s for Ukraine is about the long-term commitment to Ukraine," Ryder said. "These F-16s will not be relevant to the upcoming counter offensive." Right now, no number of F-16s, any indication of where those aircraft will come from, or when they will be delivered, has been revealed. What has been revealed, however, is that the U.S. will participate with partners and allies in training Ukrainian pilots on how to use the aircraft. "That training will take place outside of Ukraine at sites in Europe," Ryder said. "But in terms of ... when that training will begin, how those jets will be provided, who will provide them, we're continuing to work with our international partners on that front." For some time, F-16s were not on the table for Ukraine. But recently, the U.S. agreed that partner nations can train Ukrainians on use of the aircraft. At the last Ukraine Defense Contact Group in April, Ryder said, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III received several requests from countries who wanted U.S. permission to train Ukrainians on the F-16. "He subsequently took that matter, introduced it into our national security council policy process as part of a conversation about how we support Ukraine in the mid- to long-term in terms of their defense needs, and there was unanimous agreement that this was something that we should and need to support," Ryder said. The F-16 aircraft is an American weapon system, and in the same way that nations who want the F-16 must work with the U.S. to acquire it, foreign military sales agreements also mean that those who own the F-16 must seek permission from the U.S. before they transfer those aircraft to other nations. Training on the F-16, Ryder said, might begin in the next few weeks or months, though he couldn't yet say exactly who would be doing the training, where -- besides in Europe -- that the training would happen, or where the aircraft required for training would come from. He did say the U.S. would be involved, however. "As a U.S.-built platform, clearly exportability aspects, technology transfer aspects, are things that we'll be looking at as well -- working with our allies and partners on that front," he said. "We'll have much more to follow in the days ahead." Since the very first meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in April 2022, the DOD has said the focus is not just on Ukraine's immediate defense needs -- but its long-term defense needs. The F-16 training and any eventual transfer of aircraft to Ukraine, will be part of that long-term support plan. "The fight right now is to ensure that they are able to successfully defend themselves while at the same time taking back sovereign territory," Ryder said. "But we look forward to a long-term relationship with Ukraine in terms of their security assistance needs, and again, with the idea here that they can secure their hard-won gains and deter future aggression by Russia." U.S. Partnership With U.K., Australia Enhances Security [2023-05-25] WASHINGTON -- In September 2021, the U.S., Australia and the U.K. announced a new partnership, AUKUS, meant to strengthen alliances and security, especially in the Indo-Pacific. In March, plans for moving forward on the first pillar of that new partnership were announced. This involves delivering a conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarine capability to Australia. On Capitol Hill yesterday, Mara Karlin, assistant secretary of defense for strategies, plans, and capabilities, discussed further implications of AUKUS -- including its second pillar, which involves enhancing joint capabilities and interoperability. On the Hill, Karlin touched on how AUKUS fits into the National Defense Strategy; how the Defense Department is seizing what Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III called the "generational opportunity" AUKUS presents; and why the U.S. must work to expand defense cooperation with its closest allies and partners. The 2022 National Defense Strategy describes China as the United States' most consequential strategic competitor, Karlin said. "The National Defense Strategy describes integrated deterrence as a holistic response to the strategies that our competitors are pursuing and directs the use of campaigning to gain military advantage," Karlin said. "It calls on the Department of Defense to build enduring advantages across the defense ecosystem to shore up our foundations for integrated deterrence and campaigning." Karlin told lawmakers that the strategy describes allies and partners as a "center of gravity" for its implementation. "What is needed now more than ever before is an approach that enhances our AUKUS partner's conventional military capabilities, opens support to a more integrated defense industrial base, increases information sharing, and implements cooperative policies that reflect the concepts laid out in the national security strategy," Karlin said. "What cannot be overstated is this: We cannot do this alone, and our AUKUS partners stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States, as they have for many decades." Development of new technologies, Karlin said, are critical to U.S. defense and to the defense of AUKUS partners. The AUKUS partnership will create opportunities for cooperation that will advance the development and availability of those new technologies. "As President Joe Biden and Secretary Austin have said, AUKUS is a generational opportunity," Karlin said. "Together with our AUKUS partners, we have identified several advanced capability opportunities in areas that range from artificial intelligence and quantum to hypersonics. Over time, the work we do will advance our own capabilities, as well as our partners', and will enable us to address the challenges that we will collectively face. Today more than ever, she said, there is a not only a benefit, but an imperative to expand defense technology-sharing practices, and AUKUS will be a part of that. The AUKUS partnership, Karlin said, also provides an opportunity to streamline defense cooperation and to identify sticking points that make information or technology sharing a challenge. "We need to widen the aperture; foster collaborative defense innovation; advance military interoperability with our allies and partners; and leverage our collective strengths as a force multiplier," Karlin said. "AUKUS has provided a lens into not only what military capabilities our closest allies need, but also what barriers exist that hamper pursuit of our integrated national security strategy and how we need to adapt our approach to meet our national security objectives." The administration, Karlin told lawmakers, plans to consult with Congress on legislative changes that will allow increased exemptions to licensing requirements for AUKUS partners and make easier the transfer of both unclassified and classified defense articles and services. "This bold approach is critical to ensuring the AUKUS partnership continues to innovate and to progress to meet the challenges of the global security environment," she said. Defense Official Says U.S. Remains Committed to Middle East [2023-06-05] WASHINGTON -- With over 30,000 troops in the Middle East at multiple locations, the United States' commitment to the Middle East hasn't changed -- despite the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and its significant drawdown in Iraq, said the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East. "The significant capabilities across our Navy, our Air Force, our Army and our Marines -- it's still in the region," Dana Stroul told the Jerusalem Post during an interview yesterday in New York City. "And they're still doing those important activities every day." Although the U.S. at one time had more than 100,000 troops in Afghanistan and more than 160,000 troops in Iraq, the military pulled out of Afghanistan completely in 2021. And, in Iraq, operations are limited now to just a handful of troops performing advise-and-assist missions only. But elsewhere in U.S. Central Command, the U.S. force presence hasn't changed, said Stroul. Despite a public focus on the Indo-Pacific region, the U.S. has maintained troop levels and a presence. "Our senior leaders talk about China as the pacing challenge and Russia as the acute threat," Stroul said. "What our friends and allies in the Middle East don't hear is ... how the United States racks and stacks the threats and how we're going to prepare for them. And people are nervous. They think it means that the United States and the U.S. government is deprioritizing the Middle East." The preeminent threat in the Middle East, Stroul said, is Iran, and Iran's efforts to have a nuclear weapon. That's something she said the U.S. doesn't want to happen. "President Joe Biden has been quite clear that on his watch Iran will never acquire a nuclear weapon, and he means it," Stroul said. The preferred method to ensure Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon, Stroul said, is the diplomatic course. But that has to be backed up with a willingness and a capability to use force, if necessary. "Secretary Lloyd J. Austin's job is to ensure that should President Biden ask for the military plans and options, he's ready to provide them," she said. "And my job as the deputy assistant secretary of defense is to make sure that we're on top of that." Part of ensuring a credible military option, Stroul said, is the strong U.S. relationship with Israel. "Our partnership in the Department of Defense with the Israeli ministry of defense and the Israeli Defense Forces is incredibly important," Stroul said. "In fact, it's critical. So, we are working every day to deepen and increase our military cooperation with Israel." The work includes, among other things, intelligence sharing and military exercises. In January, for instance, the U.S. and Israel concluded the largest military exercise the nations have held together: Juniper Oak 23.2. More than 7,000 personnel participated in the all-domain exercise, which was meant to ensure the U.S. and Israel are able to work together militarily in an emergency, Stroul said. "It's also to make sure that both our other friends and allies in the region and our adversaries are taking note of the critical work we're doing together to be prepared should military force be required," she said. Better Economic Opportunities for Military Spouses Focus of New Executive Order [2023-06-09] WASHINGTON -- The White House announced today a new executive order aimed at strengthening economic opportunities for military and veteran spouses, caregivers and survivors. President Biden will sign that order today at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, currently home to the largest number of military spouses in the U.S. military. The president will be accompanied to Fort Liberty by First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, who said the executive order is one of the "most consequential" executive actions the Biden administration has taken to support military spouses. "We're asking agencies to make it easier for spouses employed by the federal government to take administrative leave, telework and move offices," she said. "We're creating resources to support entrepreneurs. And the executive order helps agencies and companies retain military spouses through telework or when they move abroad." The new order doesn't just support the spouses of service members, Biden said. It also aims to support veterans' spouses, caregivers and survivors. "The ripple effects of service do not end when uniforms are put away," she said. "This will help so many families. The federal government can't solve these problems on its own. So we're asking employers everywhere to join us: recruit military and veteran spouses, caregivers and survivors. They're skilled and passionate. Offer them flexible and portable opportunities so you can retain their talent." The executive order, in the works now for more than a year, includes a variety of actions to improve hiring and retention of military and veterans' spouses in the federal government workforce, helping military and veteran spouses obtain employment outside of the federal government, and improving access to childcare for military families, said Cara Abercrombie, who serves as both deputy assistant to the president and the National Security Council's coordinator for defense policy and arms control. Among the primary actions in the EO is a directive by the president for development of a governmentwide strategic plan on the hiring and retention of military and veteran spouses, caregivers and survivors. The strategy must include plans for marketing the talent, experience and diversity of military and veteran spouses, caregivers and survivors to agencies and encourage agencies to set benchmarks to improve performance and accountability. The EO also directs federal agencies to list military spouse non-competitive appointment authority in federal job postings, Abercrombie said. This "will allow departments and agencies to more rapidly hire qualified military spouses when filling positions." Also, a key part of the EO is a focus on increased telework options for military spouses in order to retain a job in the United States, even while having been deployed overseas with their military spouse. "It directs agencies to set governmentwide standards for the agencies to make remote work options more accessible to military spouses residing with their service members stationed overseas," Abercrombie said. "It outlines telework and remote work flexibility for military spouses and caregivers, conveying the importance of retention efforts of this resilient community of federal employees." Childcare is also a key component of the EO, Abercrombie said. The EO directs the implementation of dependent care flexible saving accounts for service members, as well as expansion of pathways for military spouses to provide home-based childcare on military installations. Education for hiring managers is also a component of the EO, to ensure that those who do hiring understand the challenges faced by military and veterans' spouses, caregivers and survivors. "I want to underscore the importance of this last point, the training requirements," Abercrombie said. "My team and the Joining Forces team have heard from stakeholders that hiring managers and supervisors in both the federal government and the private sector may lack an understanding of the challenges faced by military families." Such challenges include why a military spouse might have gaps on a resume or why it might be a challenge to get childcare while a service member is deployed. "The goal ... of the training is to help civilians, especially those in the human resources or hiring roles, to understand this community, the needs of military spouses and caregivers, the diversity and adaptability of this population, and the skill that they bring to the workplace," Abercrombie said. Biden said the content of the executive order has been influenced by her own work within Joining Forces -- the White House initiative she spearheaded with former First Lady Michelle Obama in 2011 -- that focuses on providing support to military families, caregivers and survivors of the U.S. military. For the last two years, she said, Joining Forces has talked with military spouses across the country about what is needed to help them find a job, keep a job and support their families. That information was brought back to the White House and information gained there was used to develop the executive order. "[The order is] filled with solutions inspired directly by the conversations Joining Forces had with the military-connected spouses and children, because these families know what they need," Biden said. Biden Moves to Improve Opportunities for Military Spouses [2023-06-09] WASHINGTON -- At Fort Liberty, North Carolina, today, President Joe Biden signed an executive order designed to strengthen economic opportunities for military and veteran spouses, caregivers and survivors. "This new executive order establishes the most comprehensive set of administrative actions in our nation's history to support the economic security of military families, veterans, spouses, caregivers and survivors," Biden said at a large gathering of military personal and spouses at Fort Liberty. The actions of the executive order, he said, focus on three main goals: more flexibility, more support and more resources. "This executive order encourages all federal agencies to do more to retain military spouses through flexible policies, policies like granting leave when their partner has to PCS [permanent change of station], improving remote work opportunities for military spouses -- including when they're stationed overseas," he said. The executive order enables more support to military families, for instance, by enabling spouses to seek advice on overseas employment issues through military legal assistance officers. "You also need support to navigate challenges unique to military families, challenges like juggling child care and work while your partner's deployed or when you're caring for an injured loved one," he said. "Too often, the people you work with, they just don't know ... they don't know what you're going through." The executive order, he said, establishes new training for federal human resources and hiring personnel to ensure that those people fully understand the needs of military families. The president also said the executive order provides resources -- especially for things like affordable child care. "Today, we're accelerating the implementation of the dependent care flexible spending account, which will give military families the option to receive a pretax benefit for daycare, preschool and summer camps, and much more," Biden said. "This order also focuses on providing resources ... for military spouses who are entrepreneurs." Included there are new funding options, including grants and loans to help military spouses start and sustain businesses. The directions provided within the executive order, Biden said, are an important part of sustaining the all-volunteer force, which will next month turn 50 years old. "All of you who raised your hand, all of you who volunteered are the reason that our military today is the greatest fighting force in the history of the world, bar none -- that's the reason. And the reason we've been able to sustain that force year after year, decade after decade is because military spouses, caregivers and survivors have answered the call, as well." Today's executive order supports those military spouses, caregivers and survivors who currently -- or have in the past -- provided support to U.S. military personnel. The contents of the executive order were informed in large part by work done through Joining Forces -- the White House initiative spearheaded by First Lady Dr. Jill Biden and former First Lady Michelle Obama in 2011. That program focuses on providing support to military families, caregivers and survivors of the U.S. military. "This moment belongs to your community," Jill Biden told those in attendance. "I want to thank all the military spouses everywhere who made it possible. Thank you for sharing your stories. Thank you for trusting us to make this right." While the executive order will help many military and veteran spouses, caregivers and survivors find more meaningful work, it won't solve every problem, she acknowledged. She called on the private sector to also pitch in to augment what was done by the executive order. "We're calling on employers everywhere to do their part: Recruit military spouses [and] offer flexible work opportunities so that you can retain their talent no matter where in the world they are working. Yes, it's vital for the future of our nation, but it's also a great way to find the dynamic talent that your businesses need," said the first lady. Military spouses, Jill Biden said, bring experience and adaptability to the workforce that can't be learned anywhere else. "When they [military spouse] get the opportunities that they deserve, our service members can do their duty knowing that those they love most are able to thrive. We all benefit," she said. In 75 Years Since Women's Armed Services Integration Act, Female Service Members Have Excelled [2023-06-12] WASHINGTON -- Just 75 years ago today, President Harry S. Truman signed into law the Women's Armed Services Integration Act, which allowed, for the first time, women to serve as regular members of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. In the years since, women have made huge advances in the U.S. armed forces. And in doing so have proven that those who worked to put the act in front of the president were right. "Of course ... women have always stepped up to defend our country," said Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III during a commemorative event today in the Pentagon. "In our Revolutionary War, women operated behind enemy lines as spies. In the Civil War, some 3,000 women served as nurses for the Union Army. And during World War I, women were translators and accountants, and they operated switchboards." In the audience at the event were four women veterans from World War II, including Marine Corps veteran Norma Rambow, who served as a field cook and in Marine mess halls; Army veteran Marion Marques, who served as a cryptographer and later a dental hygienist; Navy veteran Corrine Robinson, who served as a corpsman in the U.S. Naval Woman's Reserve; and Army veteran Hilary Rosado, who served as an imagery analyst. "Let's thank all of these great Americans for their service once again," Austin said. Following the WWII service of those women, and others like them, Austin said, U.S. military leaders began to endorse making women full and permanent members of the U.S. armed forces. It was a challenge, he said. "At one hearing, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee questioned why women should serve in our military on the same basis as men," Austin said. "The first witness to respond was Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. And he said, simply, 'We need them.'" Austin said the U.S. military is the best fighting force in history, and that keeping it that way requires bringing the best warfighters on board in every domain of conflict. "The only way to make that happen is by drawing on the talents of all of our people, and not just men -- who happen to represent less than half of the U.S. population," he said. Even more, Austin said, the military must be accommodating of women in service -- and there is more work to be done, including the elimination of bias, sexual harassment and sexual assault. He also said military service must be made compatible with raising a family -- for both mothers and fathers. All those things, he said, are priorities for the Department of Defense. Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks said today's anniversary serves as an opportunity to celebrate the talent, tenacity and expertise women have brought to the DOD mission. Women in the U.S. military today, she said, can serve in combat roles, become army rangers, fighter pilots, and four-star generals. "Women in uniform continue to make history everyday, taking on roles and responsibilities that were not before possible or attainable," she said. "The full integration of women into our armed forces has only made our military stronger and our nation safer ... and more secure. And in addition to that, it moved the entire nation closer to the promise of full equality ... reinforced the power of unity around our shared values ... and underscored that we, as a nation, are more effective when we draw on the talents of qualified Americans willing to serve." Like Austin, Hicks said despite 75 years of woman in the military, more must be done. "It is our responsibility to break down even more barriers for all of us and for the generations to come," she said. "I, for one, am proud to help lead a department that continues to expand opportunities to women; one that is committed to advancing gender equity and equality; and one that acknowledges that the service and the sacrifice of all of those who serve in defense of this nation." Tiger Team Recommendations Aim to Optimize Foreign Military Sales [2023-06-13] WASHINGTON -- The process by which the United States sells military hardware and services to foreign nations has frequently been cited as a "pain point" by American partners and allies. But recommendations from a recently concluded tiger team aim to fix that and other issues with the foreign military sales process. Last year, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III tasked a tiger team to look into how to improve the FMS process, said Sasha Baker, the deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. Now that team has concluded its work and has delivered a variety of recommendations, which Baker said fall into six broad categories. Chief among those is improving the department's understanding of ally and partner requirements. "In other words," Baker said, "if we put good information into the system at the front, we know it's more likely to result in a positive outcome on the back end." Recommendations that fall into this category include changing the way DOD organizes, trains and equips for security cooperation. Here, Baker said, the department plans, for instance, to establish a Defense Security Cooperation Service which is on par with the Defense Attache Service. "One of the recommendations of the tiger team that the secretary has approved is that we are going to establish a defense security cooperation service," said Baker. "[It's] focused on security cooperation officers to make sure that they get the training and the professional development that they need to make good choices and decisions." Enabling more efficient reviews for the release of technology is another broad area where the tiger team found opportunities for improvement, Baker said. "There are oftentimes technology disclosure concerns that can hold up the process if we're not careful," she said. That effort involves, in part, reviewing and updating relevant department policies to create more effective, repeatable systems and processes for technology foreign disclosure and communications security release decisions. The department also needs to focus on providing allies and partners with "relevant priority capabilities," Baker said. This involves, among other things, developing a methodology to facilitate non-programs of record; developing enterprise standards and timelines for non-programs of record FMS cases; and the development of prioritization schedules for the delivery of high demand/low supply munitions for the U.S. and partner nations. Baker also said that what the tiger team recommends, and what is implemented, must be sustained -- and going forward, the FMS program must undergo continuous process improvement to keep it relevant and efficient. "We very much envision this process not as having been a sprint that then goes away, but that there will actually be a tail to this in terms of continuous process improvement and looking to ensure that the recommendations that we're making are implemented over time," she said. Part of that continuous process improvement involves establishment of an FMS "continuous process improvement board," which Baker said would act as an enduring governance structure within the department. The department will also establish clearer business processes and metrics for each stage of the FMS process. "We're committing ... to a continuous process improvement initiative," Baker said. "It will involve using modern technology to collect data to establish metrics. We are, I think, collectively committed to embracing a more data-driven approach to FMS, and we're establishing a governance board that [Radha Plumb, who has a doctorate in economics], and I will chair that regularly checks in on our priority cases to ensure that we're making progress and that looks at the recommendations from the tiger team to ensure that we're making progress there as well." Two additional areas tiger team recommendations focused on include accelerating acquisition, contracting support and expanding defense industrial base capacity. "To advance FMS acquisition prioritization and award timelines for allies and partners, the department's going to do a couple of things," said Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Radha Plumb. "The first is ... we need to establish contract award standards and metrics. That allows us to internally have accountability and track progress on the timelines and delivery, and then work with our partners in industry to meet those standards with clear data-driven acquisition processes." Plumb also said the department would develop process maps to monitor the FMS prioritization and award process, including for non-program of records cases. Finally, she said, the department is looking at how it can better enable and support exportability. "There's a part of this that is production and the part that we would do regardless of where it's going and the part that we need to look at in terms of how we transfer to allies and partners," she said. "We want to compress both sets of timelines." A big part of expanding defense industrial base capacity, Plumb said, involves incorporating ally and partner requirements into the demand signal for the industrial base, so that both can be considered together rather than separately. "We're also working to develop a comprehensive strategy to expand and incentivize defense industrial base investments in production capacity," she said. "That includes building surge capability for high-demand/low-supply platforms, systems and munitions and services. To do that we're making use of multi-year contracts and a range of special authorities that Congress has given us that allow us to accelerate acquisition pathways." Baker added that improvement of the FMS process is not just a DOD effort, because the department is not alone in implementing FMS. The State Department is also heavily involved in foreign military sales. "We are also planning to continue to partner with our Department of State colleagues, recognizing that we own a piece of the FMS system, but ultimately we work together with the State Department to execute the entirety of it," she said. "And I think we are well aligned in that we all want to deliver a faster and more efficient FMS system." DOD Plans Return to 'Defense Travel System' [2023-06-13] WASHINGTON -- In a memorandum released last month, the Defense Department announced that previous directions to begin using the new MyTravel system have been repealed, and agencies should instead return to using the existing Defense Travel System.  "DOD organizations currently using MyTravel are no longer required to use the system," wrote Gilbert R. Cisneros Jr., undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, in a memorandum dated May 24. "Additionally, DOD organizations may suspend the planning and implementation of future financial system integrations."  Both the Defense Travel System, or DTS, and MyTravel, are web-based applications that allow military and civilian personnel within the military services and DOD to plan official government travel.   The systems automate the booking of flights, lodging and rental cars and also produce official travel orders. When returning from a trip, the systems allow for the documenting of expenses and the generation of vouchers so travelers can be compensated for their expenses.  The Defense Travel System has been in use within the department for about 25 years. Before that, travel was planned using paper forms and telephones.  In August 2018, the department announced it had selected SAP Concur's software as a service product, later branded as MyTravel, to replace DTS.  And in an October 2022 memorandum, Cisneros directed DOD travelers to begin using MyTravel, when possible.   That direction has now been rescinded. Instead, travelers are instructed to use DTS for all new travel that ends after July 13, 2023.  Cisneros said DOD will cease MyTravel operations in September 2023.  Officials within the DOD's Defense Human Resources Activity said continued development of the MyTravel system is no longer in the best interests of the Department.  Reasons for that include decreases in travel due to COVID-19, increases in virtual meetings, and a shift in departmental focus to achieving a clean financial audit.  According to a DOD press release, the department spends about $9 billion annually on travel, with temporary duty travel comprising about 70 percent of all travel vouchers.  DOD: No Changes in Russian, U.S. Strategic Posture After Wagner Security Situation [2023-06-29] WASHINGTON -- Last weekend, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the chief of the Russian private military company the Wagner Group, made comments on a social media video that appeared to contradict the position of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Pentagon said earlier this week the matter remains one that is purely internal to Russia, and it's something Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder reiterated again during a briefing today. But the general also added that a primary concern for the U.S. in this matter has been the continued stability of Russia's nuclear arsenal. He said that, at least for the time being, stability appears to remain intact. "Certainly, our focus is on ensuring that we don't see anything that would portend strategic instability," Ryder said. "In other words, nothing to indicate that [there is] any concern regarding Russian nuclear forces. We have not seen anything [at] this stage that concerns us and certainly nothing that has required us to change our own force posture." Ryder said the U.S. would continue to monitor what's happening, but the focus of the U.S. and the Defense Department will be to provide continued support to Ukraine as it fights to defend its sovereignty from the Russian invasion. Ryder also highlighted today that the United States and DOD will soon recognize the 50th anniversary of the all-volunteer force, which was established July 1,1973. Rather than relying on a draft -- which was done in World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam -- the all-volunteer force relies on voluntary enlistment to fill the ranks of the military. "For the past 50 years, our nation's all-volunteer force has recruited and retained talented people from all walks of life, from across the country and beyond," Ryder said. "Since the elimination of the draft in July 1973, those who have joined the ranks of America's armed forces have done so out of conviction and not compulsion and to be a part of something bigger than themselves." Ryder said that Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the all-volunteer force next week with a public statement and a visit to Fort Meade, Maryland, where he will swear about 100 new recruits into the armed forces. Senate Nominations Hold Stalls Hundreds of Military Leader Appointments [2023-07-10] WASHINGTON -- With the current hold in the Senate on confirming general and flag officers, as many as 650 critical leadership positions might be vacant by year's end, said the deputy Pentagon press secretary during a briefing today. Military positions which should be filled with confirmed leaders, Sabrina Singh said, might instead need to be filled by men and women who are doing the job part time, while continuing to fill another role they've already been appointed to. Right now, Singh said, as many as 265 general and flag officer nominations have been delayed in the Senate, affecting the smooth transition of leadership. This morning, for instance, Marine Corps Gen. David H. Berger relinquished his position as the 38th Commandant of the Marine Corps. Taking his place is Marine Corps Gen. Eric M. Smith, who will serve in an acting capacity, until confirmed, while he continues to serve in his current role as the assistant commandant. The last time the Marine Corps had an acting commandant was when Col. William Biddle served as acting commandant from Dec. 1, 1910, to Feb. 2, 1911, when he was promoted to major general and confirmed as commandant. During the relinquishment of office ceremony at the Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C., today, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III used the opportunity to highlight the importance of smooth leadership transitions within the U.S. military. "As the secretary said in his speech today, smooth and timely transitions of confirmed leadership are critical to the defense of the United States and to the full strength of the most powerful fighting force in history," Singh said. "Stable and orderly leadership transitions are also vital to maintaining our unmatched network of alliances and partners; they are crucial for our military readiness." Continued holds on confirmations, Singh said, poses a risk that the department will experience knowledge and expertise gaps in critical and difficult-to-fill positions. She said this will impact the readiness of the force. Tomorrow, Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. goes before the Senate for a hearing regarding his nomination to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Brown currently serves as the chief of staff of the Air Force. Later this week, Army Gen. Randy A. George will also appear before the Senate regarding his nomination to be the next chief of staff of the Army. George currently serves as the vice chief of staff of the Army. Continued delay in confirming leadership positions in the department, Singh said, means some officers may be asked to delay retirements so they can stay in their current positions. Other leaders may be asked to take on a role with more responsibility, and in an acting capacity, but without the commensurate promotion and pay that goes with that role. "This is going to have a huge impact across the force," Singh said. "And ... it's not just our general and flag officers that are that are being impacted ... it is their families as well." Singh offered as an example two students who had disenrolled from their current school expecting to move with their military parent to a new assignment. However, due to delays in confirmation, they have now found that they can't enroll in their new school because they are not sure when they will be able to relocate. In a similar example, a schoolteacher ended her contract with her current employer, expecting to move to a new location, but now that's been put on hold due to delays in Senate confirmations. "This is having an incredible impact not just [on] our general and flag officers, but [on] our families," Singh said. DOD: Nominate Individuals, Teams for IT Excellence in CIO Community [2023-07-11] WASHINGTON -- In December, the Defense Department's chief information officer plans to recognize the best of the best teams and individuals within the CIO community. This will be the 23rd year the DOD CIO has recognized top talent as part of its awards program. This year, the office of the DOD CIO would like to expand the reach of the awards program and draw in a much larger number of award nominees than it has in the past, said Sam Kassem, program manager for the DOD CIO Awards program. "We know there are a lot of top performers out there in the community," Kassem said. "We want to recognize the best among them. But for that to happen, their agency leadership needs to nominate them and send packages up to us for consideration. There's still plenty of time to do that." The annual awards program recognizes individuals or teams for exceptional achievements in delivering capabilities and management practices that advance the strategic mission and objectives of the DOD CIO digital modernization strategy and support the National Defense Strategy priorities. Capabilities and functional areas covered by the program include: cybersecurity; information enterprise; electromagnetic spectrum superiority; command, control and communications; information technology and cyber budget and resourcing, cyber workforce, records management and IT accessibility; and special access IT programs. Eligibility for the DOD CIO awards includes those supporting the military departments and services; combatant commands and joint staff; principal staff assistants; and defense agencies and field activities. The performance period under consideration is July 2022 through June 2023, Kassem said. Awards package submissions must be turned in by Aug. 6, and winners will be announced in early October. The awards ceremony will be in held in December at the Pentagon and will feature a special guest speaker; DOD CIO John B. Sherman will present the awards. "For more than two decades now we've recognized the best performers in the CIO community with our annual awards program," Kassem said. "But this year, Mr. Sherman wants to open the aperture and see a lot of nominations come into the office for consideration. Really, the best way for top performers to be recognized is for their own leadership to promote them, and this is the avenue to do that." Agencies interested in submitting nominees for the 2023 CIO Awards program can find information and submission instructions at the program's SharePoint site. Visitors to the site will need a CAC and must request permission to view content. Finalized submission packages can be submitted to the CIO award program office at osd.mc-alex.dod-cio.mbx.dod-cio-awards@mail.mil. Army Chief Nominee Cites Warfighting, Recruiting as Top Priorities [2023-07-12] WASHINGTON -- Preparing the Army for future war fights and meeting recruiting challenges are among the top priorities for Army Gen. Randy A. George, who was nominated to serve as the 41st chief of staff of the U.S. Army. George, who now serves as the vice chief of staff of the Army, today testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee about what his priorities would be if he is confirmed. The general also said an area of focus, were he to be confirmed, will be to ensure the Army has the industrial and sustainment base -- along with the soldier and family support infrastructure needed -- to project forces across the globe. "Finally, I'll continue to strengthen the Army profession and build cohesive teams, which starts with fixing recruiting, so that we remain an army of the people and for the people -- a formidable team of all-volunteer warriors," he said. George said he believes that recruiting may be one of the top challenges for the Army that awaits him as chief of staff. "I think it's the No. 1 challenge that we face and the one thing that we have to be focused on," George said. "I will tell you that every leader in the Army, and I have been as the vice, is completely focused on this." Part of the Army's focus there, George told lawmakers, is on how the Army chooses recruiters; where it places recruiters; the command and control structure of the recruiting enterprise; and Army marketing. "We're reviewing every aspect of that," George said. The general also told senators that while the Army isn't going to lower standards, it is helping soldiers meet standards. Part of that involves the Future Soldier Prep Course, a pilot program underway at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. As part of that program, the Army helps some soldiers meet weight standards so they can move on to basic training. The program has a 95% success rate, he said. For other soldiers, the Army helps them improve scores on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. The Army is also facing a perception problem, George said, which means fewer young people want to enlist in the military. "I think that the big perception is [they're] putting their life on hold ...," George said. But he also said he thinks that service in the Army does just the opposite. "I remember that and was basically told ... [the Army is] going to accelerate your life," he said. "I still use that ... because it has. And I think we need to get that word out. And we're working very hard to do that." Lawmakers also asked George what lessons the Army has learned from Ukraine. He said one lesson is the importance of allies and partners. The general also mentioned the importance of long-range fires, logistics and counter-unmanned aerial systems. DOD Increases Military Presence Near Oman [2023-07-17] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department today announced an increased presence in the U.S. Central Command's area of responsibility, including an additional Navy destroyer along with fighter jets. "In response to a number of recent, alarming events in the Strait of Hormuz, the secretary of defense has ordered the deployment of the of the destroyer USS Thomas Hudner, F-35 fighters and F-16 fighters to the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility to defend U.S. interests and safeguard freedom of navigation in the region," said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh during a briefing. Earlier this month, Singh said, the Iranian navy attempted to illegally seize two merchant vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman. "One attempt included an Iranian navy ship firing upon the merchant vessel," Singh said. "In light of this continued threat and in coordination with our partners and allies, the department is increasing our presence and ability to monitor the strait and surrounding waters." According to a news report from U.S. Central Command, on July 5, U.S. forces already in Centcom's area of responsibility participated in preventing two commercial tanker ships from being seized by the Iranian military in international waters near the coast of Oman. One of those ships, the Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker TRF Moss, was approached by an Iranian naval vessel, but that naval vessel departed after the arrival of the U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS McFaul. Later that same day, the Bahamian-flagged oil tanker Richmond Voyager was also approached by an Iranian naval vessel. That Iranian naval vessel got within one mile of the tanker and fired on it using small arms and crew-served weapons. As happened with the TRF Moss, the Iranian vessel departed when the USS McFaul arrived on the scene. According to Centcom, Iran has attacked or seized about 20 merchant vessels since 2021. "We call upon Iran to immediately cease these destabilizing actions that threaten the free flow of commerce through this strategic waterway, of which the world depends on for more than 1/5 of the world's oil supply," Singh said. Singh also said Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark A. Milley tomorrow will host a virtual meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group from the Pentagon. "They will join ministers of defense and chiefs of defense from nearly 50 nations from around the world to discuss Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine and continue close coordination to provide Ukraine with the security assistance they need to protect their people and defend their country," she said. Pacom Commander Says U.S. Must Continue Modernization of Strategic Capabilities [2023-07-19] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. must continue to meet the pacing challenge presented by the Chinese government's buildup of its military capabilities, the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said yesterday. Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, Navy Adm. John C. Aquilino said he is concerned about of the buildup of China's army, including its nuclear capabilities, but also that he knows the U.S. remains focused on protecting the homeland and U.S. forces. "It's critical that the U.S. continues our modernization of our strategic capabilities," he said. "It is the bottom-line defense of this nation through strategic nuclear deterrence. That said, the Chinese are going very quickly ... what matters is that we modernize our force and we're ready to be able to respond if need be." In the Indo-Pacific area of responsibility, Aquilino said the U.S. is also working to strengthen security in the region by building relationships there with partners and between partners, including with South Korea and Japan. For instance, the USS Kentucky, a ballistic missile submarine, just yesterday made a port call in Busan, South Korea. It's the first time a submarine of its type has visited South Korean since the 1980s. "We have a mutual defense treaty alliance with both Japan and Korea and that means the entire ... United States Armed forces is ready to support [those] alliances," Aquilino said. "Demonstrating our willingness and our capabilities to our allies is reassuring." Last week, the general said, the U.S. also flew a B-52 bomber over the Korean peninsula. That flight was accompanied by South Korean and U.S. fighter aircraft as escorts. Before the bomber's arrival in Korea, he said, it had also been escorted by Japanese aircraft as well. "We assure our allies and partners often," he said. "This is just one of those demonstrations." Last week, he said, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley visited Hawaii for a trilateral meeting with Japanese and South Korean partners. "The uniformed members of Japan, [South] Korea and the United States are working together more frequently and more easily," the admiral said. "That trilateral relationship is important. It doesn't come without some long historical issues between [Japan and South Korea]... But the leadership in Japan and Korea right now -- very, very impressive for what they're doing to defend their nations." DOD: Biggest Concern is to Bring Private King Home [2023-07-20] WASHINGTON -- On Tuesday, Army Pvt. Travis T. King joined a tour group of the Joint Security Area at the demilitarized zone in Panmunjom, Korea. While on that tour, King crossed into North Korea and has not been heard from since. That same day, King had been escorted to the security area of an airport in South Korea and was scheduled to fly home. King had previously faced disciplinary action while stationed in South Korea and had served time in a correctional facility. It was expected that upon his return to the United States, he would face additional administrative action with the Army. "He wasn't in custody when he was going through the airport," Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters during a briefing today. "He was flying home." Now, DOD officials, the United Nations Command, the State Department, the National Security Council and others are working to find out where he is, what his condition is, and plans to bring him back to the United States. "Our biggest concern about Pvt. King is that we want to bring him home and we are doing whatever we can through the interagency, from DOD and other partners, to find a way that we could bring him home," said Singh. The Army has launched an investigation into what happened with King, Singh said, and that investigation will be led by Army counterintelligence personnel and done in conjunction with U.S. Forces Korea. "We don't know his motivations for why he did not board the plane, we don't know what he did in the hours between when he left the airport and when he crossed over into the [Democratic People's Republic of Korea]," Singh said. "We have snippets of time and understand from ... we've seen some of the publicly reported imagery of him taking the tour, of what time that was. But beyond that window of sort ... what he did during the time ... between when he left the airport and the tour, that's something that the investigation is going to have to look into." So far, Singh said, despite U.S. efforts to communicate with the North Koreans about the status of King, the North Koreans have not responded. "We haven't received any communication back from them," Singh said. "All we can do is continue to communicate both publicly and in private channels. It is of course concerning when you don't hear back but we've never also had engagement with the North Koreans, and they certainly have shut down military-to-military engagement with us at the senior level." On Tuesday, during a press conference that followed the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said the department is monitoring and investigating the situation. "In terms of my concerns, I'm absolutely foremost concerned about the welfare of our troop," Austin said. "We will remain focused on this, and again, this will develop in the next several days and hours and we'll keep you posted." King is a cavalry scout and enlisted in the Army in January 2021. He has never been deployed. During his rotation in Korea, he was originally assigned to 6th Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division. He is currently administratively attached to 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. Austin First Defense Secretary to Visit Papua New Guinea [2023-07-25] WASHINGTON -- This morning, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III departed Washington on a multiday trip to the Indo-Pacific region. The first stop is in Papua New Guinea. He'll be the first U.S. defense secretary to visit the island nation, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said during a press briefing today. Following his visit there, Austin will travel farther south to Australia. "He will ... join [Secretary of State Antony Blinken] to meet with their counterparts for the 33rd annual Australia/United States ministerial consultations," Singh said. "Then he'll meet with U.S. and Australian service members participating in the largest military exercise between the United States and Australia: Talisman Sabre." According to the Australian defense minister, this year's Talisman Sabre involves 13 nations and more than 30,000 military personnel; it will span about two weeks. Exercise operations will take place in Queensland, Western Australia, the Northern Territory, New South Wales and Norfolk Island. U.S. Continues Support for Ukraine Also today, the Defense Department announced the 43rd presidential drawdown of U.S. military equipment that will go to support Ukraine's efforts to defend its sovereignty against the illegal Russian invasion that began in February 2022. The $400 million package includes, among other things, additional munitions for Patriot air defense systems and National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems; Stinger antiaircraft systems; additional ammunition for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS; 32 Stryker armored personnel carriers; Javelin and other anti armor systems and rockets; and over 28 million rounds of small arms ammunition and grenades. Since the Russian invasion began, the U.S. has provided more than $43 billion in security assistance to Ukraine. "One of the things that the president continues to say and the secretary continues to say is that we are with Ukraine for the long haul," Singh said of the latest security assistance package. "We are going to ... continue to assess what we can flow to them without dropping below our own readiness level." Force Desegregation Tomorrow, Singh said, DOD will also commemorate the 75th anniversary of the desegregation of the U.S. armed forces. On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981, directing equal treatment and opportunity for all members of the U.S. armed forces without regard to race, color, religion or national origin. As part of the commemoration, Singh said, the department will host an event in the Pentagon courtyard that which features Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks and other DOD leaders as speakers. U.S. Military Integration Spawned Peerless Fighting Force [2023-07-26] WASHINGTON -- Seventy-five years ago today, President Harry S. Truman signed two executive orders that, for the first time, desegregated the U.S. military and the federal workforce. On July 26, 1948, Truman put his signature on Executive Order 9980, titled "Regulations Governing Fair Employment Practices Within the Federal Establishment." Following that, he signed Executive Order 9981, titled "Establishing the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services." Together, those executive orders opened doors within the federal workforce and the nation's military that had previously been closed to people of color. During a commemoration event at the Pentagon today, Defense Department leaders reflected on the opportunities those orders created for generations of Americans and how eliminating barriers benefited not only federal workers and service members, but the nation as a whole. "President Truman's actions have created progress well beyond this department," Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks said. "Any legal or moral justification for segregation crumbled in the wake of it. In the decades that followed, segregation in the nation's public schools and public spaces also came to an end. These decisions moved the entire nation closer to the promise of racial equality." Since 1948, Hicks said, service members of color have proven through their actions what Truman knew to be true when he signed Executive Order 9981. "Service members of color have risen through the ranks -- commanding destroyer squadrons and submarines at sea ... launching to space and returning back home again ... breaking the glass ceiling and leading as four-star generals and admirals ... and representing the United States of America overseas," she said. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III is traveling in the Indo-Pacific Command's theater of operations and was unable to attend the commemoration in person. However, his thoughts on the commemoration were made public on DOD's official website and were also read aloud at the event. "The U.S. military is the finest fighting force on Earth because of our strategic advantages: We can draw on the talents and the strengths of skilled and brave Americans of every color, creed and background," Austin said. "As we reflect on the tremendous progress that our country has made over the past 75 years, we recommit ourselves to continue the noble work of all those who broke down barriers, fought prejudice, and worked to ensure that America's peerless military embodies the democratic ideals that it so proudly defends." Executive Order Changes How Military Handles Sexual Assaults [2023-08-01] WASHINGTON -- The president on Friday signed an executive order that changes how some crimes -- including sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse and murder -- are handled within the military justice system. The executive order makes changes to the Manual for Courts-Martial. The changes, among other things, move responsibility for the handling of such crimes away from military commanders to independent military prosecutors, who are outside the military chain of command. Many of the changes in the executive order are related to recommendations made by the Independent Review Commission on Sexual Assault in the Military, which was created in early 2021 at the direction of Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III. The commission submitted its final recommendations to the president in June 2021. Following his personal review of the commission's recommendations, Austin said he had a "strong bias" toward accepting them and added that doing so was part of taking care of the military's most important asset: its people. "Our most critical asset as a department is our people, and our people and readiness are inextricably linked," Austin wrote in a June 2021 memorandum. "We will remain the preeminent fighting force in the world because we strive to better take care of our people. Our values and expectation remain at the core of addressing this problem, and I have every confidence that our force will get this right." According to a senior administration official, the executive order amends the Manual for Courts-Martial and its accompanying rules in several ways. First, the order establishes rules to govern the new special trial counsels, who will serve as the independent military prosecutors. They will decide, in place of military commanders, whether to prosecute allegations of sexual assault, domestic violence, and certain other serious offenses. The order also: -- Establishes that prosecutorial decisions made by the special trial counsel are binding and are fully independent from the military chain of command. -- Clearly delineates the relationship and authorized interactions between special trial counsel and commanders to protect the independence of the special trial counsel. -- Updates the procedures necessary to protect victims and the accused before, during and after court -martial proceedings. The administration official also said the executive order reforms the sentencing system to promote uniformity and fairness, as recommended by the commission to reduce disparities in sentencing in cases of rape and sexual assault. "Lastly, [it creates] a uniform, 'preponderance of the evidence' standard for the imposition of non-judicial punishment, which the IRC highlighted as critical to make consistent across the military services, given that most sexual misconduct cases are handled by non-judicial punishment, rather than courts-martial," the official said. Under the new rules, the official said, the special trial counsel has the "right of first refusal" when it comes to deciding whether to be involved in prosecuting some crimes committed by military personnel. "This is a shift in the way the military justice system does business fundamentally," the official said. "What was really important with the specific rules that are being changed through the order ... is effectively that the special trial counsel -- these independent prosecutors -- have the right of first refusal when cases come up that fall under any of the crimes or covered offenses." When a crime is reported, the official said, military police, for instance, will connect with the special trial counsel first, and the special trial counsel will assess if the case falls within its purview. If it doesn't, those crimes could be referred to commanders using the traditional military justice system, where commanders, with advice from judge advocates, will determine what to do. According to the official, the effective date for the changes, as directed by the National Defense Authorization Act, is Dec. 27, 2023, and will apply to offenses committed after that date. Austin Concludes Productive Trip in Indo-Pacific [2023-08-01] WASHINGTON -- Yesterday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III returned from a weeklong trip to the Indo-Pacific region, with "productive" stops in both Papua New Guinea and Australia, said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder. While Austin has made multiple trips to the Indo-Pacific region during his tenure, this trip was the first time a U.S. secretary of defense has ever visited Papua New Guinea. "The secretary and PNG leaders discussed the recently signed U.S./Papua New Guinea Defense Cooperation Agreement and agreed on the importance of continuing to deepen U.S. and Papua New Guinea defense ties to advance our bilateral cooperation and advance our shared goals in the Indo-Pacific region," Ryder said. Immediately following the trip to Papua New Guinea, Austin headed for Australia to participate in the 33rd Australia/U.S. ministerial consultations, also called AUSMIN. "I'm proud to say that the unbreakable alliance between the United States and Australia has never been stronger," Ryder said. "Coming out of the AUSMIN discussions are two nations committed to advance several key lines of shared effort to include enhanced force posture cooperation, capability development and defense industrial base cooperation, and regional security integration." As part of the AUSMIN meeting, Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken met July 29 with Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Penny Wong. Together, those four leaders made headway on a variety of topics, including enhanced force-posture cooperation, capability development and defense industrial base cooperation, and regional security integration. The leaders agreed, for instance, to conduct more regular and longer expeditionary visits of U.S. submarines to Australia starting this year, to continue with upgrades at key Australian bases in the north, and to an arrangement to collaborate on a flexible guided weapons production and maintenance capability in Australia. An initial focus there includes co-production of Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, or GMLRS, by 2025. While in Australia, the secretary also visited with American service members participating in the ongoing Talisman Sabre 2023 exercise, which involves more than 30,000 military personnel from 13 nations. That exercise is scheduled to end Friday. "[Austin] greatly appreciated the opportunity to speak to some of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, guardians and DOD civilians who are supporting the exercise, as well as troops representing international allies and partners," Ryder said. Austin, Morgan Freeman Discuss Upcoming Documentary [2023-08-02] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III met today at the Pentagon with actor and producer Morgan Freeman, who is featured in an upcoming documentary about the heroics of a segregated, all-Black Army tanker unit that fought in Europe during World War II. The two men discussed Freeman's motivation for making the documentary and what he learned in the process during a fireside chat held for an invited audience of service members. Austin said as the men of the 761st trained before they would finally deploy, they also were forced to contend with the racist restrictions of the Jim Crow South. "But they persisted," he said. "And in 1944 they finally saw combat when they took back a German-held town in France. As one of their commanders remembered, 'my men were tigers. They fought like seasoned veterans. We got our lumps, and we took that town.'" Freeman is featured in the film that documents the 761st and also served as executive producer. He said that the history the film serves up is not new, it's just that so very few people have ever heard it before. "The history of Blacks, in the military, [in] war, has always been ... heroic, from the Revolutionary War until today," Freeman told Austin. "The difference is who knows about it, what do you know about it?" Freeman said he experienced that lack of knowledge after his 1989 film "Glory," which told the story of Black soldiers who fought for their own freedom during the U.S. Civil War. He told Austin that people who had viewed the film told him they had wept because they never knew the story. Growing up, Freeman told Austin, he learned much about American history from watching movies. But the history in the films he watched never told the whole story, because those films often lacked the contributions of African Americans. "The only thing that was wrong with me learning history in the movies was I didn't see me," Freeman said. "That bothered me. It still bothers me. But if I want my story told, I have to tell it, don't I? That's my mantra: If you want your story told, you got to tell it." In a panel discussion that followed the fireside chat, Charles R. Bowery Jr., executive director of the U.S. Army Center of Military History, said what the 761st and other segregated units did in WWII was to prove wrong the prevailing wisdom at the time -- that Black men could not be trusted to perform in combat. "What the 761st and other units like it did was incredibly important because ... one of the core ideas of Jim Crow, of segregation, was that Black people could not perform in combat, that they could not take up a weapon and serve in harm's way," Bowery said. Studies done after World War I, he said, claimed Black soldiers could not be trusted to serve in combat units and that they didn't possess the mental or physical attributes to take on that responsibility. "What units like the 761st -- which is a combat arms unit, it's an armor battalion, a tank battalion -- what they did was demonstrate that this was nonsense," he said. During WWII, Bowery said, the men of the 761st earned a Presidential Unit Citation, a Medal of Honor, 11 Silver Stars and about 300 Purple Hearts. "Black Patriots: The 761st Battalion" premieres August 20 on the History Channel. Space Plays Larger Role in U.S. Southern Command's Mission [2023-08-04] WASHINGTON -- An increasing interest in space by partner nations in South America may prove beneficial to the U.S. Southern Command mission there, said its commander. Recently, Army Gen. Laura Richardson, Southcom's commander, spent time with Bill Nelson, NASA's administrator, during his trip though South America. According to NASA, Nelson visited Brazil, Argentina and Colombia. Four nations in Southcom are part of the NASA-led Artemis Accords -- Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador. Globally, nearly 30 nations are now involved in the program, which, in part, aims to again put humans on the moon and, later, on Mars. Argentina signed on to the Artemis Accords during Nelson's most-recent visit, Richardson said, and Colombia signed on last year. She said those nations have robust space programs, and the U.S. is glad to partner with them on their efforts. "All of these countries have huge space programs," Richardson said during a discussion Friday with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "And having our NASA administrator be able to come there and talk about more collaboration, what NASA is doing, what they are doing, how can we collaborate better together ... we are only limited by the ideas that we come up with of how we can collaborate better together." China already has space capabilities in South America. The Defense Department describes China as a "pacing challenge" and strategic competitor. China's presence so close to the U.S. is a risk to U.S. security, and it's something Richardson said new partnerships like those forged through Artemis can push back on. "That's how we out-compete our adversaries ... like-minded democracies working together on collaborative ideas to make things happen," Richardson said. In Colombia, Richardson said, one of the top priorities of President Gustavo Petro is climate change. Partnerships in space can help that nation and others advance efforts related to climate, she said. "Space has a number of different things that are going on to help countries identify problems from space -- with agriculture, for example," she said. "And, so, as you think of the drought corridor in this region -- a 1,000-mile drought corridor -- you're talking about food insecurity. How can we change that? How can we change disease in crops [and] identify it?" Deforestation is also impacting the Amazon rainforest, which she called "the lungs of the world." Those problems and others that present security challenges in Southcom -- including illegal mining and illegal logging operations -- can be identified from space, she said. And that information can be shared among partner nations in the region. Richardson also said that while in Colombia, Nelson offered to train a Colombian astronaut as part of NASA's international program, and, then, to put that astronaut into space. She said similar opportunities might also be available to other nations in Southcom that are part of the Artemis Accords program. U.S. Forces Arrive to Support Deterrence Efforts at Strait of Hormuz [2023-08-07] WASHINGTON -- Sailors and Marines with the Navy's Bataan Amphibious Ready Group and the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit arrived in the Middle East yesterday as part of a pre-announced deployment to support deterrence efforts in the Strait of Hormuz and elsewhere, said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder. "As we have been for a very long time, we're coordinating with our partners in the region when it comes to U.S. military presence because, again, it's not just the U.S. military that's out there patrolling commercial shipping lanes. We're working as part of a broader coalition ... on that effort," Ryder said told reporters. Sailors and Marines arrived in the region aboard the USS Bataan, an amphibious assault ship, and dock landing ship USS Carter Hall. Last month, the Iranian navy attempted to illegally seize two merchant vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman. According to a news report from U.S. Central Command, on July 5, U.S. forces already in Centcom's area of responsibility participated in preventing two commercial tanker ships from being seized by the Iranian military in international waters near the coast of Oman. One of those ships, the Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker TRF Moss, was approached by an Iranian naval vessel, but the naval vessel departed after the U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS McFaul arrived. Later the same day, the Bahamian-flagged oil tanker Richmond Voyager was also approached by an Iranian naval vessel. That Iranian naval vessel got within one mile of the tanker and fired on it using small arms and crew-served weapons. As happened with the TRF Moss, the Iranian vessel left when the USS McFaul arrived on the scene. According to Centcom, Iran has attacked or seized about 20 merchant vessels since 2021. Ryder said the increased U.S. presence in the Middle East is meant to help partners there keep open important shipping lanes such as at the Strait of Hormuz, which is a choke point between the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. It also contributes further to a long-standing goal of preserving security and stability in the region. "That's why we've deployed these additional assets, to give us additional options, to speed up timelines and, again, broadly, to ensure stability," Ryder said. According to a news release from U.S. Central Command, an amphibious assault ship, such as the USS Bataan, can carry more than two dozen rotary-wing and fixed-wing aircraft. That could include MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft and AV-8B Harrier attack jets, in addition to several amphibious landing craft. A dock landing ship, such as the USS Carter Hall, also supports operations for various rotary-wing aircraft, tactical vehicles, and amphibious landing craft. DOD Makes Tax-Free Dependent Care Spending Accounts Available to Service Members [2023-08-10] WASHINGTON -- Childcare is just one of the costly realities of raising a family. But the Defense Department has made a new tool available to help eligible military families meet that challenge. The Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account, or DCFSA, is a financial benefit that will be made available to eligible service members beginning in 2024. It will enable them to have money from their paychecks diverted to an account that can be used to pay for dependent care services such as preschool, summer day camp, before- or after-school programs, and child or adult daycare. Active-component service members along with Active Guard Reserve members on Title 10 orders are eligible to participate. Eligible service members can contribute as much as $5,000 a year from their paychecks, via allotment, to the account. That money comes out pretax, which means that a military family that typically reports $30,000 a year in taxable income, for instance, would instead be able to report $25,000 in taxable income if they took full advantage of the benefit. That means they will pay less in taxes each year, yielding greater take-home pay. The DOD is on track to implement DCFSA for eligible service members beginning January 1, 2024. Those who would like to participate can sign up during the annual Federal Benefits Open Season, which runs from mid-November to mid-December. Jennifer Walker, the executive director for the Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account initiative, said as many as 400,000 service members have eligible dependents and will be eligible to take advantage of the benefits provided by the DCFSA program. "That includes families who have children who are under the age of 13 or who have a spouse or other tax dependent, regardless of age, who is mentally or physically incapable of self-care," she said. The program is part of a larger DOD effort to take better care of military service members and their families. In March, the department released the "Strengthening Our Support to Service Members and Their Families" memorandum, which, among other important initiatives, discussed making DCFSAs available to service members. That memorandum was signed by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, who said taking care of service members and their families through efforts such as DCFSA is a top priority for the department. "In recent years, our military community has weathered a number of challenges, but our people have risen to every mission and done it all with extraordinary resilience," Austin wrote in the March 2023 memorandum. "But it is the department's ongoing moral duty to spare our outstanding people stress and struggle on the home front where we can and to show our service members and civilian employees how much they mean to us with tangible support that makes a genuine difference in their lives," he wrote "The department has, therefore, relentlessly focused on improving quality of life, and I am very proud of what we've achieved so far." The DCFSA, like other pretax flexible savings accounts, is a "use or lose" benefit. According to the DOD's Office of Financial Readiness, the DCFSA plan year mirrors the tax year, Jan. 1 through Dec. 31. After the plan year ends on Dec. 31, enrollees in a DCFSA have until March 15 of the following year to incur eligible expenses. Claims for expenses incurred must be submitted by April 30, the deadline for submitting claims from the previous plan year. Any funds remaining in the account after April 30 of the following year are forfeited. Military personnel interested in taking advantage of the DCFSA are advised to first talk with a personal financial counselor or tax professional before signing up to participate in the program. Prevention Assistance and Response Program Advances With Recent Training  [2023-08-11] WASHINGTON -- This week, more than two dozen prevention assistance and response professionals participated in training at Quantico, Virginia, to enhance their ability to prevent workplace violence at 17 military installations.  The 2009 active shooter event at Fort Hood, Texas -- now known as Fort Cavazos -- resulted in the deaths of 13 individuals. It was a devastating blow to the military community, and it raised questions about how better to prevent workplace violence and identify insider threats to military and national security.  Prompted in part by that event and others, the Defense Department last year stood up the Prevention Assistance and Response program, which falls under the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency headquartered at Quantico.  The PAR program puts trained professionals on military installations to assist commanders in preventing and addressing workplace violence and other types of insider threat concerns.  "On the prevention side, this ranges from military community briefings and outreach, education and training on reporting and indicators of violence to help individuals understand when problems may be arising," said Dave Paravecchia, chief of the DOD PAR division.  Paravecchia said, PAR professionals are expected to work closely with prevention and human resources experts to ensure military and civilian leaders are aware of various services, such as financial planning, marriage counseling, and other employee assistance programs. These programs address some of the issues that, if left unaddressed, might lead some employees to act out with violence, he said.  "With response, if the PAR coordinators learn that an individual is beginning to escalate further down the path of violence, they will work closely with law enforcement, security, and leadership to better understand the risk and help develop potential mitigation measures to stop the threat," Paravecchia said.  At the military installations where DOD has placed a PAR professional, Paravecchia said commanders can expect those individuals to be attuned to workplace violence issues within their organizations and communities.  "The PAR professional will also gather information, work with other stakeholders and members of the staff to develop a holistic assessment of what they know and make recommendations to raise awareness, assist with leader decision making, and help prevent and reduce risk," he said. "The end goal is help stop people from making career-ending decisions, from hurting their fellow military community members, maintain unit readiness and enhance unit cohesion."  The DOD currently has 29 PAR personnel hired who are now assigned to 12 joint military installations along with five service-specific installations. Paravecchia said the program expects to hire 13 more PAR professionals this fiscal year and an additional 10 next fiscal year.  The current PAR professionals, Paravecchia said, were hired from within the federal government both inside and outside DOD, state law enforcement, and the private sector. Many, he said, come from counterintelligence, law enforcement and security communities.  "People gravitate to these positions because in many ways it naturally lines up with their previous careers of addressing risk and expands their experiences," Paravecchia said. "The transition many will make in this position is to understand their greater role in the prevention and assistance portion of their mission versus just responding to danger."  During the recent training at Quantico, Paravecchia said, the PAR professionals gathered to learn about various prevention, assistance and response programs and about partner requirements so they can be better equipped to work collaboratively at the installation level.  "Specific to workplace violence, the PAR cadre are trained on indicators of violent behaviors, friction points in an individual's life which may be influencing their behaviors and actions, data aggregation, threat and risk assessment, subject professional judgement tools, coping mechanisms, available services and other mitigation measures that can be implemented by military and civilian leaders to help move someone off the path of violence," Paravecchia said.  The PAR program is relatively new, and Paravecchia said it will go through a yearlong assessment as it moves through the three phases of initial operating capability, implementing the tasks associated with each phase until it meets full operational capability in the first quarter of fiscal year 2025.  "From there, we will continue to look to mature the PAR program in collaboration with our stakeholders in prevention, law enforcement, security and insider threat to decrease prevalence on the different installations," Paravecchia said. "Over time, we will also shape various metrics that will not only help highlight the return on investment for this program, but also improve awareness for leaders where workplace violence issues may exist within different subordinate commands and organizations."  U.S. Open to Training Ukrainian F-16 Pilots if Needed [2023-08-21] WASHINGTON -- Last week, in a letter from Secretary of State Antony Blinken to counterparts in Europe, the U.S. signaled its willingness to approve the third-party transfer of U.S.-made F-16 aircraft to Ukraine. Both the Netherlands and Denmark have announced their intentions to make F-16 aircraft from their own fleets available to Ukraine. During a briefing Friday, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said U.S. approval for the transfer would come after consultation with Congress and after completion of training for Ukrainian pilots on the aircraft. During a discussion today with the Pentagon press corps, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh clarified some of what would need to happen for that approval to come. "In order for the third-party transfer to be completed, there are certain criteria that have to be met, including the English language training [and] other things like logistics on the ground," she said. "So once that criteria [are] met, we'll be in a position to authorize the transfer." The U.S. would be willing to participate in the training of Ukrainian pilots, Singh said, if there were more Ukrainian pilots in need of training than what the Europeans are able to handle. "[We're] open to training existing pilots if capacity is reached in Europe," Singh said. "That's the condition. So, if Denmark and the Netherlands are taking the lead on training, if they just do not have the capacity ... to train as many pilots as Ukraine wants to send or plans to send, then we will ... help train stateside." The Ukrainian pilots will need to go though "significant English-language training," to be ready to fly the F-16, and that will take some time, Singh said. Additionally, the total number of pilots who will need training will be determined by the Ukrainians. "Ukraine will be the one, and I think it is still putting together how many pilots they have that are going to be able to be trained," she said. "I don't have those numbers yet." Hawaii Wildfires Regarding ongoing efforts in Hawaii, Singh also said that Joint Task Force 5-0 is now at full operational capacity and is actively synchronizing DOD support of operations there. The task force's mission is to support and augment the efforts of county, state and federal authorities in Hawaii to ensure the people of Maui receive necessary aid and assistance. "As of this morning, altogether, more than 665 DOD personnel and 156 Coast Guardsmen are actively engaged in the coordinated response to the Western Maui wildfire," Singh said. The task force, she said, will continue to work closely with state officials, FEMA and other supporting agencies to support the people of Hawaii in response to the wildfires. Singh said the Army's 25th Infantry Division has Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks on site to conduct fuel distribution operations which are expected to begin later today. The HEMTT vehicles will provide approximately 1,500 gallons of fuel daily in support of 18 generators operating along the west coast. "In addition, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency has deployed six forensic anthropologists to assist in gathering and identifying human remains," she said. Military Response in Hawaii Has Been Quick, as Requested by Local Officials [2023-08-25] WASHINGTON -- Right now, Joint Task Force 5-0 has about 572 personnel assigned and operating in Hawaii. The task force's mission is to support and augment the efforts of county, state and federal authorities in Hawaii to ensure the people of Maui receive necessary aid and assistance. During a briefing yesterday afternoon, Army Col. David Fielder, who serves as the Joint Task Force 5-0 Title 10 deputy dual-status commander, said the military response there has been as quick as what's been called for. "It may seem slow from the outside," he said. "But ... it's been going very quickly, as needed, as requested by the local and state [officials], who are ultimately in charge of the entire operation." On the ground in Hawaii, Fielder said, there are National Guard, Reserve and active duty personnel who make up the task force. Also included in the task force are Army civilian personnel from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. "We have one in the forensic lab, who is helping out, and we've gotten multiple on the scene down there as they're doing the search for remains and they help with that every day," he said. Also, Fielder said, about 50 or more members of the U.S. Coast Guard are involved as well as more than 40 civilians from U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. A team of Navy divers is also getting started in Maui, and they will help with salvage operations as well as looking for remains. "They were requested [by] the Maui Fire Department, they've linked up with them," Fielder said. "They work with the fire department and they work with the Coast Guard, and they provide an expeditionary and deployable diving and salvage operation for the harbor here and the waterway." The divers will, in part, participate in mapping out where boats have sunk and also look for remains inside the harbor. Fielder said within 72 hours of his being notified about the need for the task force, the JTF stood up. He also said that the task force has, in some cases, moved faster than what the bureaucracy would typically allow. "We haven't been waiting for all of the paperwork to go -- as long as it's been a request that [we] could fulfill, we started," he said. "We just received Navy divers. Within 24 hours of that request, they were on the ground." National Guard and Reserve military personnel typically serve in the areas where they grew up. For many in the Hawaii National Guard, Hawaii is home. "At the end of the day, these are our neighbors and our families that have that have been affected by this and we're proud to be part of the response," he said. AIM-9M Missiles, $250 Million in Additional Security Assistance Headed for Ukraine [2023-08-29] WASHINGTON -- With the presidential drawdown authority package announced today, the U.S. has committed more than $43 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia's invasion in February 2022. "Today, the department also announced an additional security assistance [package] to meet Ukraine's critical security and defense needs," said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh during a briefing today. The aid package is the 45th of its kind and includes, among other things, air defense and artillery munitions, mine-clearing equipment and medical vehicles, Singh said. "The U.S. will continue to work with its allies and partners to provide Ukraine with the capabilities to meet its immediate battlefield needs and longer-term security systems requirements," Singh said. Most Recent Tranche of Equipment -- AIM-9M missiles for air defense -- Additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, also called HIMARS -- 155 mm and 105 mm artillery rounds -- Mine-clearing equipment -- Tube-launched, optically-tracked, wire-guided, or "TOW," missiles -- Javelin and other anti-armor systems and rockets -- Hydra-70 rockets -- Over 3 million rounds of small-arms ammunition -- Armored medical treatment vehicles and high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle, or Humvee, ambulances -- Demolitions munitions for obstacle clearing -- Spare parts, maintenance, and other field equipment Presidential drawdown authority, or PDA, allows the president to withdraw weapons, ammunitions and material from existing U.S. military stocks and provide that to other nations in certain circumstances. DOD Finance Chief Says Delayed Budgets Present a Challenge  [2023-08-31] WASHINGTON -- Last year, the Defense Department's financial management community demonstrated remarkable agility in developing four supplemental budgets -- an unprecedented feat -- in addition to DOD's regular, baseline budget.  Those supplemental budgets supported: Operation Allies Welcome, the federal government's efforts to resettle Afghans; work at the Red Hill fuel storage site in Hawaii; an array of natural disasters; and Ukraine defense. During DOD's recent financial management conference, Michael McCord, undersecretary of defense comptroller and chief financial officer, remarked that the effort demonstrated the ability of DOD's financial management community to meet the needs of the National Defense Strategy.  "The National Defense Strategy outlines our security priorities, defending the homeland, paced to the ... growing threat posed by the People's Republic of China across many domains -- from cyber to nuclear weapons," McCord said.  The NDS also paints Russia as an acute threat, McCord said, and asks the department to deter strategic attacks against the U.S., its allies and partners and to be prepared to prevail in conflict, especially in the Indo-Pacific theater. All of that, he said, demands a remarkable level of agility from agencies within the department, including those in the financial management community.  "Last year, as an example of that agility and responsiveness, we had four supplementals in one calendar year," McCord said. "I've never seen that before -- four [in] a year. All of them were done quickly and with broad support from Congress. It speaks to that broad support for what we're doing. And it also illustrates our need to be agile and our ability to be agile in our [financial management] community."  In the future, McCord said, it's likely there will continue to be more opportunities, such as with Ukraine, for the financial management community to step up to unexpected requirements. There will be more opportunities for the financial management community to continue to demonstrate its agility, he said.  "Ukraine is not going to be the last case of emerging national commitment demanding our assistance," he said. "In fact, we're seeing them all over the place ... we have to be in a position to move quickly at all times. Conflicts and wars and crises, humanitarian crises, remain common worldwide. Along with allies across the globe, we have to continue to support freedom and human rights as we've been doing."  McCord said that while the president and Congress have increased DOD funding by $100 billion over the past two years, the timing of each budget's delivery continues to pose problems.  "Support for the top line is great," McCord said. "Timing and timeliness of that support matter just as much. One thing that is not so great is this pattern of recurring, lengthy, persistent, continuing resolutions. These negatively impact our mission."  "It's more difficult to compete -- especially with China, who tends to move faster than we think [and] tends to deliver things faster than we thought they would," he said.  Part of a solution to that problem, McCord said, is increased communication with Congress -- and better listening, as well.  "It's also our job to continue to help remind people and enable our service chiefs and secretaries to remind people on the harm that this dynamic does for us," he said. "And speaking of communicating, we can't succeed if we're not communicating with Congress -- both our priorities and hearing their concerns, not just ... transmitting. We have to listen."  McCord said he spent several years working on Capitol Hill and is familiar with how committee work is done and of its importance.  "I have firsthand appreciation for what goes into their work and how seriously our oversight committees take their work," he said. "Open communication between the administration and the Hill is key to making our process work." Matching China Means Letting U.S. Industry Iterate, Develop Technologies [2023-09-07] WASHINGTON -- The best way for the U.S. to meet the pacing challenge posed by China is to let U.S. industry do what it does best: develop new technologies. The government's role there, said the deputy under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, is to create the best conditions possible to allow those technologies to scale. "To counter China's whole-of-nation approach, what we need to do is what only the American system can do, which is let industry iterate and develop while we in the government create the conditions to rapidly scale those key technologies -- that's the secret sauce," said Radha Iyengar Plumb during a discussion Wednesday with Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Plumb laid out three things the Defense Department is doing to advance its ability to deliver capabilities more quickly to warfighters and at scale. First, Plumb said, the department must do more to make use of the acquisition tools and authorities it already has. "The Adaptive Acquisition Framework, which folks might be familiar with, was a good step," she said. "And building on that at the individual program level, we're employing everything from [middle tier of acquisition] and other transaction authorities to the software acquisition pathway to create a range of hybrid strategies that enable scale." One approach the department is taking is with the Competitive Advantage Pathfinders initiative, or CAP, within acquisition and sustainment. The Competitive Advantage Pathfinders initiative demonstrates common challenges and solutions to barriers in capability fielding. By bringing together cross-department teams, each CAP identifies any disconnects among the three legs of delivering warfighter advantage: requirements, resourcing and program management. "We identify high-tech-ready capabilities that meet a warfighter['s] need, and then, we see where the sticking points are when we try to just rapidly push it to scale," Plumb said. "We develop a solution for that problem and keep going and solve the next issue and the next issue and the next issue." With CAP, Plumb said, the department can not only accelerate a specific technology, but it can also identify where improvements are needed to speed scale, more generally. Second, she said the department is working to figure out where it can reduce barriers to integration. "Inside of [acquisition and sustainment], we set up this acquisition integration interoperability team, and their job is to align service-specific systems acquisition to meet joint requirements," Plumb said. The office runs an "integrated acquisition portfolio review," she said, which takes a capability and a mission thread and looks at underlying service-specific programs, identifies gaps, seams and areas where investment for integration is needed, and focuses on identifying resources for that integration with a focus on year-of-execution funding. "The idea here is to establish faster, better processes to connect prototype contracts to production contracts to scale integration to ensure that our joint requirements are met," she said. Finally, Plumb said, there must be an increased focus on the acquisition workforce. "None of this happens without the right people in the right places," she said. "We're looking at expanding recruitment through programs like our Defense Civilian Training Course, on building more modular innovation-focused training -- that's work going on at DAU -- and how we can create the right kind of incentives to do that innovative work, encouraging the right kind of risk-taking." Austin Makes Call to New Counterpart in Ukraine [2023-09-11] WASHINGTON -- Today, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III telephoned newly appointed Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov to discuss Umerov's new role and ongoing U.S. support as Ukraine continues to fight against Russia's illegal invasion. "The secretary congratulated the minister on his new position and reiterated our steadfast support for Ukraine," said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder today during a media briefing. "[The secretary] provided an update on U.S. security assistance efforts and exchanged views with the minister on priorities to support Ukraine's immediate battlefield needs and capability requirements over the long term." Also part of the call was a discussion of the next meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, scheduled for Sept. 19 at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Austin will again host that meeting and plans to meet Umerov in person there, as well. "As you know, the contact group brings together nearly 50 nations to discuss Ukraine's most urgent battlefield needs, as well as the longer term support required to maintain their defense and security," Ryder said. The first meeting of the UDCG occurred in April 2022, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. At the meeting, Austin said plans were made to hold a monthly working group meeting. "The contact group will be a vehicle for nations of goodwill to intensify our efforts, coordinate our assistance, and focus on winning today's fight and the struggles to come," Austin said last year. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. has committed more than $43.7 billion in defense support to Ukraine through both the presidential drawdown authority and the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. Warfighting equipment provided under the president's drawdown authority is pulled directly from U.S. military stocks. Under USAI, the U.S. contracts with industry to have new weapons systems built that are then sent overseas. The last tranche of security assistance for Ukraine was announced last week and totaled $600 million. That package included, among other things, additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, 105 mm artillery rounds, mine-clearing equipment, and electronic warfare and counter-electronic warfare equipment. DOD's Cyber Strategy Emphasizes Building Partner Capacity [2023-09-12] WASHINGTON -- In May, the Defense Department released to Congress the classified version of the 2023 Cyber Strategy. Today, the department made public an unclassified summary of that strategy which reveals a new emphasis on helping U.S. partners and allies build their own cyber capacity. "Distinct from previous iterations of the DOD cyber strategy, this strategy commits to building the cyber capability of global allies and partners and to increase our collective resilience against cyber attack," said Mieke Eoyang, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, during a briefing today at the Pentagon. "Allies and partners are a strategic advantage that no competitor can match." According to the now publicly available summary of the 2023 Cyber Strategy, the department plans to prioritize efforts to increase the effectiveness of allies and partners in cyberspace. "In some cases, the department will work toward this goal by augmenting partner capacity, expanding partners' access to cybersecurity infrastructure and maturing their cyber workforce though combined training events and exercises," the summary reads. The summary further states the department has also committed, in some cases, to directly helping develop partner capability by enabling functions a partner needs but does not yet have. "The department will enhance our relationship with our most cyber-capable allies and partners at the strategic, operational and tactical levels," the policy reads. "We will expand the total number of partners with whom we engage and integrate these efforts with the wider security cooperation enterprise." More broadly, the summary reveals that the 2023 Cyber Strategy asks the department to address current and future cyber threats by pursuing four complementary lines of effort. These lines of effort include defending the nation, preparing to fight and win the nation's wars, protecting the cyber domain with allies and partners, and building enduring advantages in cyberspace. "[This] strategy builds upon the direction set by the 2018 DOD Cyber Strategy and is informed by years of real-world experience of significant DOD cyberspace operations," Eoyang said. "It's the department's fourth cyber strategy and represents the secretary's vision for operationalizing the 2022 National Defense Strategy in cyberspace." Like the National Defense Strategy, DOD's cyber strategy identifies China as a pacing threat and Russia as an acute threat, Eoyang said. She also said that the strategy has been informed by recent activities in Ukraine, following the illegal Russian invasion there. "I think prior to this conflict, there was a sense that cyber would have a much more decisive impact in warfare than what we experienced," she said. "What this conflict has shown us is the importance of integrated cyber capabilities in and alongside other warfighting capabilities. And that is consistent with the approach in the NDS on integrated deterrence and is an important lesson for us to think about -- that cyber is a capability that is best used in concert with those others and may be of limited utility when used all by itself." According to the strategy, cyber capabilities are most effective when used in concert with other instruments of national power. "In this way, cyberspace operations represent an indispensable element of U.S. and allied military strength and form a core component of integrated deterrence," the strategy reads. U.S. Resumes ISR Flight Operations in Niger [2023-09-14] WASHINGTON -- In Niger, the United States has resumed the flying of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions as part of its force protection efforts. "We can confirm that the U.S. forces in Niger commenced ISR flight ops to monitor for threats and for force protection," said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh during a briefing at the Pentagon today. "The U.S. ... always reserves the right to conduct operations to protect our forces and personnel if required." The U.S. has more than 1,000 troops in Niger who had been, at least up until July of this year, participating alongside Nigerien troops in counterterrorism operations and security force assistance training. Those efforts were paused and continue to be paused, following a coup that overthrew Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum on July 26. "The United States has not restarted counterterrorism operations, or any security force assistance training with Niger," Singh said. The U.S. has also been moving personnel in the country from Air Base 101 near the capital of Niamey, to Air Base 201 in Agadez, Singh said. "During that process, of course, we are wanting to make sure that our troops and our equipment is safe," she said. Next week, Singh said, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley will again participate in the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. The meeting commences Sept. 18. "This will be the 15th meeting of the UDCG since Secretary Austin formed the international group in April 2022," she said. "The secretary and chairman will join ministers of defense and senior military officials from nearly 50 nations to discuss the ongoing crisis in Ukraine and the continued close coordination by the international community to provide the Ukrainian people with the means necessary to defend their sovereign territory." DOD Won't Stop Looking Until All POW/MIAs Are Home [2023-09-15] WASHINGTON -- Nearly 81,000 American service members remain missing after having served in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and other conflicts involving the U.S. During an event at the Pentagon to commemorate National POW/MIA Recognition Day, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks today reassured the families of service members who never returned home that the Defense Department would never stop looking for them. "We know that enduring the grief and uncertainty throughout the years is difficult," Hicks said. "Please know that your missing family members are not forgotten. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency works tirelessly to find answers for you, year in and year out. And, each year, we gather on this National POW/MIA Recognition Day to assure you that we remember them and that we will not give up on our mission to account for them." According to DPAA, in fiscal year 2023, the agency recovered the remains of 127 service members: 88 from World War II, 35 from Korea, and four from Vietnam. Among those accounted for this year, Hicks said, is Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. Fred L. Brewer -- a member of the Tuskegee Airmen. His cousin was in attendance at the event. "More than seven decades ago, Brewer departed Ramitelli Air Base in Italy to support bombers to their targets in Germany," Hicks said. "On the way, his bomber group encountered heavy clouds. Lt. Brewer attempted a steep rise above them, but his engine stalled causing his plane to crash." Until last month, Hicks said, Brewer had been one of 26 Tuskegee Airmen whose whereabouts were unknown. Now that he has been recovered, she said, a rosette will be placed next to his name at the Florence American Cemetery in Italy to indicate that he has been accounted for. The DPAA can't do its work alone, Hicks said. Today, DPAA cooperates with 45 nations to locate missing service members around the world. In April 2021, one of those partners, South Korea, uncovered remains from a battle fought in 1951. "The remains were carefully exhumed and sent to a lab for testing," she said. "The following October, the ministry turned over those remains to DPAA. After DPAA sent the remains to its own lab for analysis, it was able to identify U.S. Army Sgt. Stanley Turba. Soon, his daughter, Sandra, will welcome him home -- more than 72 years after he went missing in the Korean War." Right now, more that 1,200 service members are still missing from the Vietnam War, and Hicks said Vietnam has also been a good partner in helping recover remains. "During the height of COVID-19, when restrictions prevented our DPAA team from traveling to Vietnam, [Vietnamese] teams -- trained by DPAA -- traveled to multiple sites looking for the remains of American personnel," Hicks said. In March 2021, she said, a team from Vietnam visited the crash site of a U.S. F-4 aircraft, and they recovered the remains of Air Force Col. Ernest DeSoto and Air Force Capt. Frederick Hall. "Col. DeSoto was given a dignified burial in June, and Capt. Hall will finally be laid to rest next month, on October 10," she said. "These are several of the many stories of those recovered and returned to their families -- stories of sacrifice, hope and resolve. For you families of the missing, please know your strength motivates us each day as we do this work and follow through on our solemn and unwavering commitment to achieve the fullest accounting possible of our missing personnel." Retired Air Force Col. Michael Brazelton, a pilot and four-time Silver Star recipient, was held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam for nearly seven years. He was captured after being shot down on August 7, 1966, and was finally released on March 4, 1973. Brazelton said that while the parents of those who have gone missing from the United States' wars have mostly passed on, most have other family members who still feel the pain of their loss. "Their brothers and sisters are my age, in their 70s and 80s," he said. "Their children are in their 50s and 60s. But, still, at the very least, they want to know what happened to their loved ones. I cannot think of a more noble mission to determine what happened to our missing compatriots than to bring the remains home, if possible, or to provide information on when, where, and how unrecoverable friends met their fate." Air Defense Remains Top Priority at Meeting on Ukraine Defense [2023-09-19] WASHINGTON -- During today's meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base Germany, continued air defense support to Ukraine was a top priority, said the secretary of defense. "At today's meeting, I urged allies and partners to dig deep and donate whatever air defense munitions they can, as Ukraine heads into another winter of war," said Lloyd J. Austin III at the meeting's conclusion. The fifteenth meeting of the group was also the first time that new Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov was in attendance, Austin said. "I want to thank him for being here." Air defense, Austin said, remains critical to the success Ukraine has already experienced on the battlefield. "Air defense will continue to be Ukraine's greatest need to protect the skies, its civilians, and its cities -- as well as innocent people far away from the battlefield," he said. So far, Austin said, the U.S. and partner nations have provided to Ukraine air defense systems, such as the Patriot; Hawk; IRIS-T; National/Norwegian Advanced Surface to Air Missile System, or NASAMS; and Gepards. "These air defense capabilities are protecting Ukraine's forces, its civilians, and its critical infrastructure," he said. Austin also highlighted other materiel support the U.S. and partners in the UDCG have provided to help Ukraine in its fight to reclaim its sovereignty over territory occupied by Russian forces since their illegal invasion in February 2022. U.S.-made M-1 tanks, he said, will soon arrive in Ukraine, and will likely operate alongside Germany-provided Leopard tanks already in country. Also, Austin said, collective training for Ukrainian pilots on the F-16 fighter jet is beginning. The Netherlands, Denmark and Norway have announced their intent to donate F-16 fighter aircraft to Ukraine. Poland, Austin said, has provided Ukraine with additional mine-clearing equipment and more than 100 armored personnel carriers, in addition to tens of thousands of munitions; Sweden last month announced a military aid package consisting of ammunition and spare parts worth more than $300 million. And yesterday, Austin said, Germany announced a $420 million package with ammunition and mine-clearing equipment and other critical capabilities. Denmark also recently announced an $833 million package including ammunition and armored capabilities, Austin said. "This coalition of like-minded countries continues to move heaven and earth to get Ukraine what it needs right now and over the long haul," Austin said. "We've also ramped up our industrial base to support the demand, and we won't let up." Austin said during the meeting that he challenged fellow UDCG ministers to look deeper into their stockpiles of 155 mm ammunition and key air defense systems and interceptors to ensure everything possible is being done to assist Ukraine. "Our long-term support for Ukraine will continue to evolve through dedicated capability coalitions like the ones that we started for armor and F-16 training and information technology," he said. "These important coalitions will help Ukraine continue to build up a combat-credible force for the future." Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark A. Milley also attended the meeting. It will be Milley's last contact group meeting before his retirement. "My tenure may be ending, but the mission for this group continues until the end-state of a free and sovereign Ukraine is attained," Milley said. "This group's success hinges not on any single individual, but on the unified commitment and the values of all of our collective nations. The end goal remains crystal clear: Support Ukraine until Putin's unwarranted, illegal and ruinous war of choice comes to an end. Our commitment to Ukraine as a free, independent and sovereign nation with its territory intact remains as ironclad as ever." DOD Names 8 Locations to Serve as New 'Microelectronics Commons' Hubs [2023-09-20] WASHINGTON -- Under the CHIPS and Science Act, the Defense Department today announced the award of nearly $240 million dollars to eight regional "innovation hubs" around the United States which will be a part of the Microelectronics Commons, and which will benefit both the department and the United States by spurring development of a domestic microelectronics manufacturing industry. "The Microelectronics Commons is focused on bridging and accelerating the 'lab-to-fab' transition, that infamous valley of death between research and development and production," said Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks during a briefing today at the Pentagon. "While America is a world leader in the innovative research and design of microelectronics, we've lagged in the ability to prototype, manufacture and produce them at scale. That's what the CHIPS Act is meant to supercharge." The eight regional hubs include: -- The Northeast Microelectronics Coalition Hub. This hub is led by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative in Massachusetts, has 90 hub members, and has been awarded $19.7 million. -- The Silicon Crossroads Microelectronics Commons Hub. This hub is led by the Applied Research Institute in Indiana, has 130 hub members, and has been awarded $32.9 million. -- The California Defense Ready Electronics and Microdevices Superhub Hub. This hub is led by the University of Southern California in California, has 16 hub members and has been awarded $26.9 million. -- The Commercial Leap Ahead for Wide Bandgap Semiconductors Hub. This hub is led by the North Carolina State University in North Carolina, has seven hub members and has been awarded $39.4 million. -- The Southwest Advanced Prototyping Hub. This hub is led by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of Arizona State University in Arizona, has 27 hub members and has been awarded $39.8 million. -- The Midwest Microelectronics Consortium Hub in Ohio. This hub has 65 hub members and has been awarded $24.3 million. -- The Northeast Regional Defense Technology Hub. This hub is led by the Research Foundation for the State University of New York in New York, has 51 hub members, and has been awarded $40 million. -- The California-Pacific-Northwest AI Hardware Hub. This hub is led by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University in California, has 44 hub members, and has been awarded $15.3 million. The eight hubs will focus on microelectronic development in areas like electromagnetic warfare; secure computing at the tactical edge and the internet of things; artificial intelligence hardware; 5G and 6G wireless; and quantum technology, Hicks said. "Consistent with our warfighter-centric approach, the Microelectronics Commons will get the most cutting-edge microchips into systems our troops use every day: ships, planes, tanks, long-range munitions, communications gear, sensors and much more ... including the kinds of all-domain, attritable autonomous systems that we'll be fielding through DOD's recently announced Replicator initiative," Hicks said. Today, the United States is responsible for only about 12% of microelectronics production globally, with most production now in Asia. The U.S. also lacks much of the capacity to confirm the viability and marketability of new microelectronics technologies in ways that might convince American industry to invest in them. The Defense Department-led Microelectronics Commons aims to close the gaps that exist now which prevent the best ideas in technology from reaching the market. With the Microelectronics Commons, novel technology developed domestically will have a better chance of making it from lab to market entirely inside the United States. The commons will ensure American ingenuity stays inside the U.S. and isn't stolen by adversaries and that the nation rebuilds the capacity to do on its own what it must now depend on foreign nations to do. "These hubs are not just vital to American scientific, manufacturing and economic competitiveness," Hicks said. "They will also directly contribute to this Department's national defense mission." Senate Confirms 3 Defense Leaders [2023-09-21] WASHINGTON -- The Senate has confirmed the appointment of three military leaders to positions within the Defense Department. Last night, the Senate voted to confirm Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, Jr. to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Today, the Senate voted to confirm Gen. Randy A. George as Army chief of staff and Gen. Eric M. Smith as Marine Corps commandant. "I want to congratulate Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr. on his confirmation as our nation's next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff," Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said following last night's confirmation vote. "He will be a tremendous leader of our joint force, and I look forward to working with him in his new capacity." Since August 2020, Brown had served as Air Force chief of staff. In his new role, he will replace outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, who retires at the end of this month. Brown will be sworn in later this month. Brown began his service as a pilot. He has served as both an instructor and commandant at the Air Force Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. He was also the commander of the 8th Fighter Wing, dubbed the Wolf Pack, in Kunsan, South Korea. Brown's nomination as the new chairman was announced in May. At the time, Austin voiced his approval of the choice when he said Brown "has developed the expertise, the vision and the warfighting acumen to help the president and senior DOD [Defense Department] leaders navigate today's toughest national security challenges. In his tenure leading the U.S. Air Force, he has been a model of strategic clarity and a powerful force for progress." Austin also offered congratulations to George and Smith following their confirmations. "I want to congratulate Gen. Randy A. George and Gen. Eric M. Smith on their confirmation as our nation's next chief of staff of the Army and commandant of the Marine Corps, respectively," Austin said. "They will each be incredible leaders of their service and will work to strengthen and modernize our military for the challenges ahead." During testimony in July, George said preparing for future conflicts would be among his top priorities as chief of staff of the Army. "My No. 1 focus will be on warfighting, so that our Army is always ready to respond when our nation calls," George said. "Second, I will work to ensure that we are continually improving to stay ahead of our potential adversaries. As the war in Ukraine has shown us, we are in a rapidly changing strategic environment. We can't afford not to evolve." Smith took over as acting commandant of the Marine Corps in July, following the departure of outgoing Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David H. Berger. Smith had served as deputy commandant for combat development and integration at Marine Corps headquarters and as commanding general of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia. Over the past several months, a hold in the Senate has prevented lawmakers from using traditional means to confirm military personnel who have been nominated to leadership positions in the Defense Department. The most recent confirmation votes used an alternative voting method to confirm those leaders. The current Senate hold has affected more than 300 general and flag-officer nominations and continues to affect the smooth transition of leadership within the department, defense leaders have said. "It is well past time to confirm the over 300 other military nominees," Austin said. "The brave men and women of the U.S. military deserve to be led by highly qualified general and flag officers at this critical moment for our national security. And their families, who also sacrifice so much every day on our behalf, deserve certainty and our nation's unwavering support. I will continue to personally engage with members of Congress in both parties until all of these well-qualified, apolitical officers are confirmed." Following the confirmation vote, George was sworn in by Secretary of the Army Christine E. Wormuth, who lauded him for his service. "Gen. George is a battle-tested soldier and seasoned leader who has been a critically important champion for the Army as vice chief of staff and as acting chief," said Wormuth. "Having first entered the force as an enlisted soldier 42 years ago, he understands the importance of service and leadership at every echelon. I deeply value the partnership we have already built and look forward to working with him to strengthen and transform the Army's warfighting capabilities and sustain our all-volunteer force." It is expected Smith will be sworn in as Marine Corps commandant in the coming days. With Government Shutdown, Troops Still Protect Nation, But Possibly Without Pay [2023-09-25] WASHINGTON -- With a possible government shutdown less than a week away, defense leaders say the nation will remain protected. But service members may end up doing that defense work without being paid. Elsewhere, training operations could be curtailed, which will affect long-term readiness. Efforts to support Ukraine may also be hampered. "A shutdown ... puts the government on a complete standstill," said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh during a discussion today with the Pentagon press corps. "[But] the U.S. military is going to continue to do its job and protect our national security interests and ... those of our allies and partners as well." While the nation will remain safe, there will be challenges to the young service members who provide that security, to their families, and to the long-term readiness that comes from the training that keeps them combat ready, Singh said. "A shutdown would be detrimental for the department," she said. "Troops would go without pay. Military families would be impacted, of course. For folks that are not getting paychecks, that impacts how and when [they] can buy groceries, child care, all of these things. ... So, we are still ... we're hoping that Congress can reach a deal to avert a shutdown. But we are planning for that or taking steps to plan for that, should a shutdown occur." While commissaries will be closed on most bases in the continental U.S., defense officials said they will remain open overseas and in certain remote U.S. locations where no other sources of food are reasonably available for military personnel. While national security will be maintained during a shutdown, Singh said, readiness will suffer as the training operations that keep service members sharp are curtailed. "When you don't have your full operating capacity, to be able to help with a mission, to be able to conduct an exercise or training, of course, that gets to our national security and readiness," she said. In Europe, efforts under "Operation Atlantic Resolve" provide increased troop rotations and equipment to the European theater to help maintain security there. Pentagon officials have said they expect to be able to maintain much of that effort through a government shutdown. But there will still be some effects felt, Singh said. "Things could be delayed when it comes to training," she said. "If any of our personnel are furloughed ... that could have impacts to the larger mission." When it comes to supporting Ukraine, Singh said already approved funding means the U.S. could still offer more equipment and support as needed. But a government shutdown could affect the department's ability to actually draw down that equipment from stocks and get it to Ukraine. "I don't know how this impacts how we roll out additional [presidential drawdown authority packages] with a government shutdown," she said. "It doesn't affect the funds that we have accessible to us, but like how, how we continue to do that -- I just don't have more on that." Released From North Korea, U.S. Soldier Now in Texas [2023-09-28] WASHINGTON -- This week, Army Pvt. Travis T. King was released from North Korean custody and returned to American authorities. King is now back in the U.S., in San Antonio, Texas, said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh. "Private King arrived ... early in the morning to San Antonio, where he will be going through a reintegration program," Singh said. "He'll be going through medical screenings, medical evaluations and then he'll be meeting with professionals to assess his emotional and mental health ... and he'll be meeting with counselors." King will also be getting debriefed by U.S. military officials about what occurred while he was in North Korea and what kinds of discussions he might have had while there, Singh said. Also part of the plan, Singh said, is for King to be reunited with his family. While serving in South Korea as a cavalry scout, King had faced disciplinary action. He was scheduled to fly back to the United States to face additional administrative action through the Army. Instead of boarding a plane to return to the United States, however, King left the airport on his own. On July 18, he joined a tour group of the Joint Security Area at the demilitarized zone in Panmunjom, Korea. While on that tour, King crossed into North Korea. He was held by North Korean authorities from July 18 through Sept. 27 -- just over 70 days. Singh said that right now there is no word from the Defense Department regarding what additional disciplinary actions King will face through the Army now that he has returned home. Instead, she said, the department is focused on his health and well-being. "Right now what we are focused on is making sure that he is healthy," Singh said. "I was told he was in good spirits when he was getting on the flight to return home. Going through the reintegration program is something that's going to take time. So we're really focused on his health [and] reuniting him with his family." Military Service Leaders Address Deficiencies in Barracks  [2023-09-29] WASHINGTON -- Recent reports in the private media have detailed conditions in the barracks which house single service members. Included in those reports are revelations of exposed raw sewage, extensive mold and other non-functioning systems such as HVAC and fire detection. On Capitol Hill Wednesday leaders of the military services responsible for maintaining those military barracks addressed concerns from lawmakers and discussed how the services plan to implement remedies. Carla Coulson, the deputy assistant secretary of the Army for installations, housing and partnerships told members of the House Armed Services Committee that the Army is aware of problems in its housing for unaccompanied servicemembers and that it's already working on a solution. "Our leadership, from our secretary, our chief of staff on down, are focusing very clearly on quality of life and barracks as a piece of that," she said. "We've done a lot of work already." In the next budget release, which will happen in February 2024, Coulson said she expects there will be a multi-year investment strategy that looks at providing additional sustainment dollars for things like military barracks. "We need to sustain the inventory we have," she said. "Just as an example, we've got in the Army, through our modeling efforts, we can see that we have 300 permanent party barracks buildings that are in poor and failing shape. Across our fiscal year defense program from [2024 to 2028], we can address 113 of those [barracks] buildings. But at the same time, if we don't fully sustain, we'll have 110 barracks, existing barracks buildings, that will move from good or adequate into the poor and failing category. So, we don't make much progress unless we can ensure that we are doing preventative maintenance and fully sustaining our inventory." Robert E. Thompson, the principal deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, installations and environment, said barracks have in the past been prioritized beneath other facilities that are deemed more critical -- but said that the barracks themselves are critical. "I think there needs to be a realization that we are approaching ... facility criticality maybe from the wrong angle in the department," he said. "In resource-constrained environments, the bias is to put resources towards the most critical installation facilities. The reality is the introduction of a single sailor ... into a facility makes it, by definition, mission critical. The fact that these are their homes makes it mission critical." The standards against which facilities like barracks are evaluated also need to change, Thompson said. "There needs to be a standard for livability," he said. "There needs to be a ... clear-eyed view of what the standard is for this place to be dignified, safe and comfortable." Robert E. Moriarty, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations said in the past the Air Force had done a good job on facility maintenance but has lost that focus in recent years. "We used to have a dorm focus fund," he said. "We went away from that. And when we centralized a lot of our installation management, when we put all the money together, we went to a worst first or then went to a condition-based thing and prioritized everything together, looking at the best." Now, he said, the Air Force has "gone back" to what it had done in the past. "We now have a focused fund, if you will, where we set aside the amount of funds, we think we need to keep the dorms good and accelerate that," he said. Elizabeth Field, the director of defense capabilities and management within the Government Accountability Office, also testified and discussed with lawmakers, findings revealed in a recently released GAO report related to military barracks. That report, released this month, was produced after visiting military barracks around the Defense Department and talking with those who live there. Field said the GAO found, among other things, that the military services can do a better job of assessing the most accurate conditions in military barracks by leaning more heavily on input from the servicemembers who live there. "What we learned ... is that these service members have a lot to say and are eager for someone to listen," she told lawmakers. The GAO, Field said, found that there were many complaints from servicemembers about mold in the barracks, inadequate maintenance, broken heating and air conditioning systems and a myriad of other problems that relate to health and sanitation. One contributing factor to the condition of military barracks has been funding. Field said the Defense Department tends to fund only about 80% of its sustainment needs, and that shortfall of funding means that military barracks often end up as a low priority. "The facilities that most often lose out are things like barracks," she said. "Eventually if you don't fund sustainment enough, you're going to need to build an entirely new barracks, which means you need new military construction funding." The GAO report made a series of 31 recommendations to the Defense Department and military services that can be used to improve barracks living conditions for servicemembers. "We believe that the recommendations in our report, if fully implemented, will put the department on a better footing to address this substantial challenge," she said. "But it will take years to reverse the chronic neglect and underfunding we uncovered." In a separate statement, Brendan Owens, the assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment and the DOD's chief housing officer, responded to the findings in the GAO report. "In return for the commitment and sacrifices that service members make when they volunteer to defend our nation, the Department of Defense has a moral obligation to ensure that the places they live and work dignify their service," Owens said. "The DOD has, in too many instances, failed to live up to our role in making sure housing for our soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen and Guardians honors their commitment and enables them to bring the best versions of themselves to their critical missions." Owens said he is committed to correcting deficiencies in unaccompanied housing across the Defense Department. "I will move out aggressively to increase oversight and accountability in government-owned unaccompanied housing and to address unacceptable living conditions impacting our service members," Owens said. "My office will work with the military departments to ensure that you have a safe and secure place to live. Collectively, we will improve our responsiveness to your concerns as we strive to ensure a living experience that enhances your wellbeing and readiness so that you can defend the citizens of the United States as part of the finest military in the history of the world." Continued Support to Ukraine, Replenishing Military Stocks: Priorities for Department [2023-10-03] WASHINGTON -- Although the U.S. has the funding to continue to support Ukraine's war efforts in the short term, Pentagon officials underscored today that more funds will be needed to continue to assist Ukraine in the long term. The Defense Department has remaining approval to send about $5.4 billion worth of military equipment to Ukraine through presidential drawdown authority, and also has about $1.6 billion on hand now to replenish its own stocks after sending those weapons and munitions. Continuing to support Ukraine and continuing to replace its own stocks remain top priorities for the Defense Department. Meeting those goals will require assistance from Congress, said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh during a briefing today at the Pentagon. "We have enough funding authorities to meet Ukraine's battlefield needs for just a little bit longer, but we need Congress to act to ensure there is no disruption in our support, especially as the department seeks to replenish our stocks," Singh said. "We have seen bipartisan support for Ukraine in Congress and we urge members of Congress to keep their commitment to the people of Ukraine and secure the passage of support needed to help Ukraine at this critical moment," she said. This past weekend Congress passed a continuing resolution -- in lieu of a full fiscal year 2024 funding bill -- which will keep the federal government open until mid-November. That stop-gap funding effort, however, includes no additional funds to assist in Ukraine's war effort. Singh said Pentagon officials continue to communicate with lawmakers on the Hill, to discuss ways to secure more funding for Ukraine. The U.S. has committed about $43.9 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia's unprovoked invasion in February 2022. That funding has come in two ways. Under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, for example, the U.S. contracts for new military hardware from defense contractors and then sends that equipment to Ukraine once it is ready. The U.S. has also sent a substantial amount of equipment to Ukraine through presidential drawdown authority. Under PDA, equipment that is already in U.S. military inventory is pulled from the inventory and sent overseas. Right now, Singh said, there is no more USAI funding available to contract for newly-manufactured military hardware. But there does remain authorization to pull as much as $5.4 billion worth of hardware from U.S. military inventory through PDA and send that to Ukraine. Once that equipment is gone, the DOD hopes to replace it with new gear, and the department has about $1.6 billion on hand to accomplish that. Singh said that the department is requesting more funding to help replenish stocks depleted due to PDA, but she also reiterated that the department has been careful in drawing down military hardware for Ukraine so that it does not put its own readiness at risk. "We've been very public here from the podium here saying that we're not going to drop below certain levels," she said. "But we do know that replenishing our stocks is a priority for this department, as we continue to send and flow aid to Ukraine." The DOD has so far sent 47 security assistance packages to Ukraine, and Singh said the department will continue to exercise it's authority to send support to Ukraine in the form of PDA. "We're still putting together packages," Singh said. "You're going see ... our regular cadence continue, which is usually weekly or every other week, give or take." After U.S. Downs Turkish Drone in Syria, Focus Remains on Defeat ISIS Mission [2023-10-05] WASHINGTON -- An American F-16 fighter aircraft shot down a Turkish unmanned aerial vehicle that had been observed conducting airstrikes in a U.S.-restricted operating zone about a kilometer from U.S. forces in Syria today. During a phone call between Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler, the two leaders discussed the incident and agreed that while it is regrettable, the focus must remain on the important mission to defeat ISIS in Syria, said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder during a media briefing today. "The secretary reaffirmed that the United States remains in Syria exclusively in support of the campaign to defeat ISIS," Ryder said. "The secretary also acknowledged Turkey's legitimate security concerns and underscored the importance of close coordination between the United States and Turkey to prevent any risk to U.S. forces or the global coalition's defeat-ISIS mission." At around 7:30 a.m. local time, U.S. forces observed UAVs conducting airstrikes in the vicinity of Hasakah, Syria, Ryder said. Some of the strikes were inside a declared U.S.-restricted operating zone. "At approximately 11:30 local time, a Turkish UAV reentered the ROZ on a heading toward where U.S. forces were located," Ryder said. "U.S. commanders assessed that the UAV, which was now less than a half a kilometer from U.S. forces, to be a potential threat, and U.S. F-16 fighters subsequently shot down the UAV in self-defense at approximately 11:40 local time." No U.S. forces were injured, Ryder said, also adding there is no indication that Turkey had intentionally been targeting U.S. forces. "It's a regrettable incident, but U.S. commanders on the ground did assess that there was a potential threat and so they took prudent action in this scenario," Ryder said. "But again, the secretary has talked to his counterpart. They had the opportunity to have a fruitful conversation and ... commit to one another that the U.S. and Turkey will continue to closely communicate and coordinate. And as I mentioned, Turkey does remain a very important and valuable NATO ally and partner to the United States." In addition to the phone call between Austin and Guler, newly sworn-in chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., also discussed the incident with his counterpart, Chief of the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces Gen. Metin Gurak. Those two leaders discussed the U.S. and Turkey's shared objective of defeating ISIS and the importance of following common deconfliction protocols. U.S. Says July Ouster of Niger's Government Was a Coup [2023-10-10] WASHINGTON -- The State Department today announced that the U.S. officially recognizes as a coup the illegal, July 26 overthrow of the government of Niger. With the official recognition of a coup, restrictions under section 7008 of the U.S. Department of State's annual appropriations dictate what the U.S. can provide to Niger in foreign assistance, as well as military training and equipment. However, the Defense Department had already curtailed operations in Niger. Shortly after the country's government was overthrown, the department confirmed suspension of both security cooperation and counterterrorism operations. DOD also consolidated its footprint there to locations in both Niamey and Agadez. U.S. military operations in Niger are now limited to flying intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft to ensure the continued safety of the U.S. personnel who remain in the country. During a background briefing today, an administration official said recognition of the coup has changed what the department can do in Niger. "Counterterrorism operations in Niger will remain paused in the interim," the official said. "Additionally, our activities to build the capacity of the Nigerien armed forces through security cooperation programs, subject to 7008, will be suspended." The official also said security cooperation efforts not specifically subject to section 7008 will also remain suspended until actions are taken in Niger to restore the democratically elected governance. On July 26, Niger's military removed democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum from office and replaced him with Gen. Abdourahamane Tchiani, who served as the commander of the Nigerien presidential guard. The group subsequently formed the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland military junta, also called the CNSP. The CNSP has held Bazoum captive since he was ousted. "The safety of U.S. personnel in Niger is our utmost priority," the administration official said. "We are coordinating with the CNSP to protect our personnel, facilities and assets, and advance shared security interests in West Africa during this political upheaval. We continue to call on the CNSP to take concrete steps to demonstrate their commitment to restoring civilian democratic order." Southcom Aims to Create Maintenance Partnerships With South American Nations [2023-10-16] WASHINGTON -- U.S. Southern Command has a plan to help partner nations in South America better maintain equipment they've bought from the U.S. through either the foreign military sales or excess defense articles programs. As part of its Theater Maintenance Partnership Initiative, or TMPI, Southcom will work with South American partner and allied nations to develop maintenance expertise, which runs the gamut from equipment-level maintenance all the way to life-cycle management, said Marine Corps Lt. Col. Gabriel Christianson, multinational logistics officer at U.S. Southern Command. "We are looking to provide a spectrum of support and engagement for our partners and allies," Christianson said. "This is more than just simple maintenance training on end items, although that is a tangible, very important aspect of the program." At the tactical level where maintainers actually put wrenches to hardware, Christianson said Southcom will work with host and attending countries to both educate and enable. But the aim of TMPI goes further than that. For more senior military and civilian leaders, a multinational logistics officer's course is expected to provide, among other things, an understanding of the six functions of logistics, NATO codification, lifecycle management and planning at the operational and strategic levels, Christianson said. "At the strategic level, we will look to support our partners with logistics professionals ... to advise the sustainment professionals within our partner and ally force components, joint commands, and ministry of defense offices to achieve their readiness goals," Christianson said, adding that courses will be available in multiple languages. The TMPI concept, Christianson said, was developed after partners and allies in Southcom expressed concerns regarding the maintenance challenges they have with their own equipment. Last week, Southcom Commander Army Gen. Laura Richardson spoke with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C., where she discussed development of the TMPI and its goals. Richardson said partner nations in South America together operate more than 50 C-130 Hercules aircraft, a cargo plane that's been in operation in the United States and other nations since the mid-1950s. Not all those C-130 aircraft in Southcom's area of responsibility are maintained to the same standard, however. Because of that, missions that might have happened in Southcom have not happened the way partner nations would have liked, Richardson said. "[During] the Haiti earthquake a couple of years ago, in 2021, there was some countries that wanted to participate in that recovery effort but couldn't get there," she said. "And we weren't able to fly them ... but they had forces on the ground. They were ready. They had the equipment. They were ready to go, and they couldn't get there." Through TMPI, aircraft owned by partner nations in the region could all be ready to fly and could all meet modern standards for interoperability -- meaning that if any mission from any nation required airlift, anybody could contribute or participate. "This fits right in line with ... how do we not just have individual countries doing internal things, but how do you bring that forward for the betterment of the hemisphere and partner nations working together," Richardson said. Christianson said that TMPI's focus will include more than just aircraft like the C-130, however. "It will not be only the large items like C-130s, but those end items in all domains that we want to ensure remain a prime asset for our partners to utilize," Christianson said. "If a truck isn't running, they can't get to the field. And if it is a U.S. truck, we want to support their efforts to ensure strong maintenance readiness. This goes for boats, helicopters, radios -- whatever they have acquired and have a desire to engage with us on. We want this to be a true partnership where we share requirements and provide solutions for the full spectrum of defense articles, from education to depot-level repair in some cases." The TMPI is expected to have nine "centers of excellence" to help maintainers and leaders in partner nations develop the skills needed to keep equipment they are responsible for operating and ready to participate in missions across Southcom's area of responsibility. Those centers of excellence will be hosted by partner nations in Southcom. Already, Richardson said, three locations for those centers of excellence have been selected. In Columbia, there will be both an aviation maintenance and electronic maintenance center of excellence. Meanwhile, Jamaica's Caribbean Military Academy will host a multi-domain center of excellence that involves maintenance of not just aircraft, but ground equipment and naval vessels, as well. "Jamaica [has] a well-respected defense capability in the Jamaican Defence Force and an excellent military school that trains the entire spectrum of their forces from initial entry to officers," Christianson said. "We would like to collaborate with the Caribbean Military Academy in Jamaica over the next several years to invest in facilities and materials to allow them to further their offerings in maintenance of articles in air, sea, and land." The Colombians, Christianson said, have a center in Tolemaida -- just outside the capital city of Bogota -- that already trains pilots from multiple nations and also trains some maintainers for the region. He said Southcom would like for the Colombians to expand the capacity of the facility. "We would like to move their goals a little further down the field and give some additional focus to the production of maintainers but also support their expansion of the Tolemaida depot-level repair facility from strictly a national capability to an organization that has expanded throughput sufficient to support other partners and allies in the region and with expanded capabilities, as well," he said. Southcom is also working with the Colombians to host a multinational course for logistics officers. "The multinational course will do for the leaders of tomorrow what the centers of excellence will do for the young solder, sailor or airman: arm them with the education and ideas that will support the complex systems of the future, while building relationships for our western hemisphere family of ally and partner nations," Christianson said. In addition to facilities in Colombia and Jamaica, Christianson said other nations in Southcom have also expressed interest in hosting maintenance training centers of excellence. The remaining centers of excellence will be rolled out during fiscal year 2026 and 2027. "Maintenance is hard for the U.S. military," Richardson said. "And if it's hard for us, I know it's hard for everybody else." Fortunately, she said, there's a lot of competence in Southcom partner nation militaries, and it's expected that TMPI will bring the best of what those nations have to offer to help every partner nation inside Southcom up their maintenance game. "Being a helicopter pilot, I know what it means to keep all your aircraft when you're in combat," she said. "You want as many that can fly in the air and [are] not broke on the ground. ... The countries are excited about this. Really excited. It'll touch on aviation maintenance, radio maintenance, vehicles, all of it. And I think it can really help in the hemisphere with our countries." Decade of Developments Changed DOD's Focus on Weapons of Mass Destruction [2023-10-19] WASHINGTON -- Back in 2014, the Defense Department's strategy for countering weapons of mass destruction was focused largely on places like Iran, North Korea and a variety of violent extremist organizations. In 2023, the focus has changed to address new realities, said the department's assistant secretary of defense for space policy. The Defense Department late last month released its 2023 Strategy for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction. In the same way last year's National Defense Strategy prioritizes China and Russia, the new WMD strategy does the same. "The defining WMD threats we faced [in 2014] were drastically different than they are today, just 10 years later," said John F. Plumb, who spoke Wednesday at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. Today, he said, "the challenges posed by China and Russia are front and center. So this is a new security environment and that demanded a new strategy." Weapons of mass destruction, or WMDs, include things like nuclear weapons, chemical and biological weapons and radiological weapons. Plumb said both China and Russia are making advances in at least some of these areas. "China is aggressively pursuing a rapid expansion and modernization of its nuclear forces," Plumb said. "The speed and scale has been nothing short of breathtaking. This effort includes the expansion of fissile material production, such as their fast breeder reactors ... and the development of more and more diverse nuclear weapons systems." Plumb said China could, at its current pace, field an arsenal of about 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035, adding that China's compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention is also a concern. "China regularly conducts research and activities with potential dual-use applications for bio threats, such as its military's [research and development] for toxins," he said. Like China, Russia is also expanding and modernizing its nuclear weapons program, Plumb said. "It continues to build non-strategic nuclear weapons and develop new and novel delivery systems," he said. "Russia has also engaged in irresponsible and troubling nuclear saber-rattling throughout its unprovoked and indefensible invasion of Ukraine." Russia has also violated its biological and its chemical weapons convention obligations, Plumb said. That the Russians used the Novichok nerve agent as part of attempted assassinations in both 2018 and 2020, he added, have erased doubts that Russia retains an undeclared chemical weapons program. "We also know they maintained an offensive biological war program," he said. While China and Russia have re-emerged as possible threats in regard to WMD, Plumb said that old threats have not gone away. North Korea and Iran continue to strengthen their own WMD programs, he said. "The department has not lost focus on the WMD threats posed by North Korea or Iran or [violent extremist organizations]," he said. Within the 2023 Strategy for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction, Plumb said, are four priorities. These include defending the homeland from WMD attacks; deterring WMD use against the United States and its allies and partners; enabling the joint force to prevail in a chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear environment; and preventing new WMD threats from emerging. While the 2023 strategy was developed by the Defense Department to guide its own efforts to counter the effects of WMD, Plumb said the U.S. will not be going it alone. "This is a team effort," he said. "Like in so many other things we are all in this together. All integrated deterrence efforts are made stronger by planning with allies and partners and by integrating their capabilities with our own. The United States network of allies and partners is an asymmetric advantage and a force multiplier that China, Russia, North Korea, Iran -- they could never hope to match. So we will continue to work closely with our allies and partners as we implement this strategy." Centcom-Bound Defense Systems Convey Deterrence Message [2023-10-23] WASHINGTON -- This weekend, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III directed an array of additional U.S. military capabilities to the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility in order to bolster the ability of American forces there to better defend themselves. "We are going to do everything we need to do to ensure that our forces are protected," Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said during a meeting today with the Pentagon press corps. "As always, we maintain the inherent right to self defense." Among the capabilities headed to the Middle East are the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier strike group, a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery, also called THAAD, and additional Patriot missile battalions. Additional U.S. troops were placed on "prepare to deploy orders," as well, Ryder said. He told reporters that Austin maintains continued communication with President Joe Biden and the national security team regarding the situation in Israel. Austin also talks regularly with his counterpart, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. "The focus of the department continues to be on supporting Israel's right to defend itself from terrorist attacks, deterring a broader conflict in the region, and then ensuring force protection of our troops," Ryder said. On Oct. 7, terror group Hamas attacked the sovereign state of Israel, killing hundreds -- including Americans. Fighting continues today between Hamas and the Israeli Defense Forces. Since the attack, the U.S. has reaffirmed its support for the Israeli Defense Forces and the Israeli people. At the same time, the U.S. forces in the Middle East, including in Syria and Iraq, uninvolved in the conflict in Israel. The department remains concerned that some parties might hope to escalate the conflict in Israel to a larger conflict in the Middle East or to also use the opportunity to attack American forces in the region. Ryder said the recent deployment of American military capabilities to the Centcom area of responsibility addresses those concerns. "This is meant to be a deterrence message to those who would want to escalate this conflict into a wider regional conflict," Ryder said. "We will do everything and take all necessary measures to protect U.S. forces and our interests overseas. No one wants to see a widening conflict, and that is our primary goal. But we will also never hesitate to protect our forces." F-16s Head to Middle East to Help Protect U.S. Troops [2023-10-24] WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon announced that a squadron of F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft has arrived in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility today. The aircraft will work alongside an array of capabilities the Defense Department has sent to the region in recent days to further enhance the ability of U.S. forces to defend themselves. Since Hamas attacked Israel Oct. 7, militia groups backed by Iran have, on more than a dozen occasions, attacked U.S. forces conducting counterterrorism missions in both Iraq and Syria. "We know that the groups conducting these attacks are supported by the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and the Iranian regime," Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said during a briefing today. "What we are seeing is the prospect for more significant escalation against U.S. forces and personnel across the region, in the very near term, coming from Iranian proxy forces and ultimately from Iran." In response, this past weekend, the department deployed the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier strike group to Centcom, and directed to the region a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery from Fort Bliss, Texas, and additional Patriot missile battalions from both Fort Liberty, North Carolina, and Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The aircraft movement announced today involves F-16s from the New Jersey Air National Guard's 119th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron. A variety of military units have been put on prepare-to-deploy orders, though none of those have yet been activated, he said. The effort to protect U.S. forces in the region is one of three primary objectives the department has focused on since the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. Ryder said the department is also focused on supporting Israel's right to defend itself from terrorist attacks and deterring a broader conflict in the region. To assist Israel in its defense he said the U.S. has rushed in security assistance to enable Israel Defense Forces to restore security and protect the Israeli people. "As we've highlighted, this includes capabilities requested by Israel, to include precision guided munitions, small diameter bombs, artillery, ammunition, Iron Dome interceptors and other critical equipment. We continue to stay in close contact with our Israeli partners on their defense needs and remain committed to the security of Israel," Ryder said. The department has also provided advisors to Israel to help officials there mitigate civilian casualties as they conduct their military planning. Those advisors, Ryder noted, have deep experience in urban combat. "Since [the] Hamas terrorist attack, we've also been crystal clear that we do not want to see the situation in Israel [widen] into a broader regional conflict," he said. " ... Our message to any country or group thinking about trying to take advantage of this situation to widen the conflict is: Don't." Defense Department Continues to Stress Law of War With Israel [2023-11-02] WASHINGTON -- As Israel defends itself against ongoing attacks by Hamas, defense officials continue to underscore the importance of following the law of war, said the Pentagon press secretary. "We're having conversations with them about the importance of taking the law of war into account and ... in our discussions with them, we believe that they are taking it into account," said Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder during a briefing today. The general also said that regular discussions between U.S. defense officials and Israeli leaders emphasize the importance of recognizing all innocent civilian lives and working to ensure the innocent are protected. "The secretary and other DOD officials are having conversations [daily] with our Israeli counterparts about the situation in Israel and again the importance of protecting innocent lives and taking Palestinians and others into account as they conduct their operations," Ryder said. "We truly want a scenario here where both innocent Palestinians and innocent Israelis can live together peacefully [and] securely." Nevertheless, he said, Hamas continues to put everybody into danger. As the conflict in the Middle East continues, challenges continue to be posed by Hamas, including how it has embedded itself into civilian populations in Gaza. "We know that Hamas is integrating its operations, whether it's command and control, operational centers, combat forces, putting rockets in Gaza, to include this complex and sprawling tunnel network underneath infrastructure throughout Gaza, in effect ... using civilians as human shields," he said. When Hamas attacked Israel Oct. 7, he said, 1,400 individuals were killed and more than 200 hostages were taken to be used as bargaining chips. "Hamas has said repeatedly that they will continue to do these type of Oct. 7 attacks until Israel is eliminated," Ryder said. "There's no question of the complexity of the challenge that is confronting the Israeli forces as they conduct operations in this urban environment. [But] we also expect Israel to take into account the law of war as they plan and conduct their operations. And we want them to distinguish between terrorists and civilians. And so we'll continue to have those conversations." Since the initial Hamas attack, Ryder said the department's focus continues to include protecting American forces and citizens in the region, flowing security assistance to Israel, coordinating with Israelis to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas and strengthening the force posture across the region in order to deter any escalation of the conflict beyond Gaza. "Secretary Austin and DOD leaders are actively engaged in frequent communication with our partners in the region to discuss the situation as we work to prevent this from broadening into a larger regional conflict," Ryder said. "In those discussions, the secretary has also reaffirmed the U.S. emphasis on the protection of civilians and unfettered access for the delivery of humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza." Even More General, Flag Officer Confirmations Hindered by Senate Hold [2023-11-07] WASHINGTON -- Since February, a blanket hold in the Senate on confirmations for senior military leaders has caused a challenge within the military as many key leader positions have been left without permanent leadership. As of Nov. 6, the number of affected positions increased to some 452 nominations for leadership roles across the armed forces, involving 448 general and flag officers. All are awaiting confirmation by the Senate. Without Senate confirmation, those important military positions might need to be filled by other officers in "acting" roles, who may lack both the needed rank and experience to perform in the role. "Some of the positions that are stalled for confirmation include the Fifth Fleet Commander, the deputy Fifth Fleet Commander, the defense attach� to Israel and the list goes on," said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh during a briefing today at the Pentagon. "As we've said before, these holds have a direct effect on our military readiness, our national security and our military families." The blanket hold on nominations in the Senate has prevented lawmakers from using the traditional "unanimous consent" process for confirming large numbers of military nominees en bloc. According to the Congressional Research Service, without using "unanimous consent," the Senate is still able to confirm nominees. But it must confirm each nominee individually using time-consuming voice or roll-call votes. In September, the Senate was able to use this method to confirm Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Randy A. George as Army chief of staff and Gen. Eric M. Smith as Marine Corps commandant. On Nov. 2, the Senate again used individual voting to confirm Adm. Lisa Franchetti as Chief of Naval Operations, Gen. David Allvin as Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and Lt. Gen. Chris Mahoney as Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps. While it is possible to continue to use voice votes to confirm military leaders, it might take several months to confirm the hundreds of nominees that have been sent forward by the president. "As we face a variety of urgent challenges, the most powerful fighting force in history must be at full-strength," said Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III in a statement released following last week's votes. "This unprecedented delay in confirming our military's top leaders has hurt our military's readiness and unnecessarily weighed down our military families, who already give up so much to support those who serve." Defense Official Said U.S. Won't Hesitate to Defend Its Troops in Middle East [2023-11-09] WASHINGTON -- Over the last three weeks, Iran-backed militia groups have attacked U.S. bases and facilities in Iraq and Syria 41 times. The U.S. has defended itself against those attacks and will continue to do so, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East said. "On October 26, at President Biden's direction, U.S. forces conducted precision, self-defense strikes on facilities in eastern Syria used and operated by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC, and its affiliates," said Dana Stroul during testimony yesterday before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "We will not hesitate to take further necessary measures to protect our people." Following the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by the terrorist group Hamas, Stroul said the department has organized efforts in the Middle East along four lines of effort, including protecting U.S. forces and interests in the region, supporting Israel's right to defend itself, coordinating with Israel on hostage recovery efforts, and containing the ongoing conflict to Gaza. U.S. force enhancements in the Middle East, include recently deployed Terminal High Altitude Area Defense and Patriot missile defense systems, additional fighter squadrons, two carrier strike groups, and an Ohio-class nuclear-powered guided missile submarine, Stroul said. "We also placed over 2,000 personnel and a range of units on a heightened state of readiness, some of which [were] subsequently deployed," Stroul said. "These deployments demonstrate our commitment to Israel's security, to regional stability, and to deterring those who seek to widen this conflict. It also bolsters the department's ability to respond quickly to the evolving security environment." The department's commitment to Israel's right to defend itself from terrorism is "ironclad," and the department is working daily to help Israel do that, Stroul told lawmakers. "We are working around-the-clock to determine which munitions and equipment from U.S. inventory can quickly be made available," Stroul said. "Air defense is a high priority, as are medical supplies, artillery, ammunition and precision-guided munitions. Deliveries are taking place on a near daily basis." Since the initial attack, Stroul said Hamas has been using civilians as human shields, has blocked the delivery of humanitarian aid, and continues to hold at least 200 civilians. "The Department of State designated Hamas a foreign terrorist organization in 1997," she said. "Hamas is responsible for the abhorrent terrorist attack in Israel. And Israel is executing military operations to ensure that Hamas is never again able to perpetuate a terrorist attack like it did in October." Defense Security Cooperation University Marks 4 Years of Growth, Change [2023-11-13] WASHINGTON -- Since it opened just four years ago under the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the Defense Security Cooperation University has made strides in achieving the initial goals it set for itself and has also expanded and improved on its ability to train the nation's security cooperation workforce. It is now in the process of evolving further, in order to respond to a rapidly changing strategic environment. Security cooperation is the effort to advance U.S. national security and foreign policy interests by building the capacity of foreign security forces to respond to shared challenges. That effort involves, among other things, building and maintaining military-to-military relationships, combined training efforts and the Foreign Military Sales program. In creating the university, officials with DSCA aimed to help train and certify security cooperation personnel across the defense enterprise and codify security cooperation work as a profession. Initially, DSCU was tasked with getting some 20,000 security cooperation personnel across DOD certified, at least at the most basic level, in one of five areas of concentration. The current security environment necessitated a re-look at the initial approach to certification, particularly as the enterprise learns valuable lessons from the conflict in Ukraine and other global hotspots. Security cooperation education, training and certification underwent a year-long reevaluation, which allowed for refinement of the DSCU curriculum and DOD certification requirements. This assessment resulted in a completely revamped program named certification 2.0. The new certification requirements are tailored to the security cooperation workforce's competency needs, the current strategic reality, and tasks set forth by Congress and the National Defense Strategy. Under the security cooperation certification 2.0, the five areas of concentration have been replaced with nine functional areas, said Celeste Gventer, President of DSCU. "Certification 2.0 allows us to get much more specific in the training and education that we provide," Gventer said. "There were parts of the enterprise for which we really needed to build focused curriculum. We wanted to make sure that we were identifying those people properly so we could develop the curriculum to really target what they need. The nine functional areas allow us to get much more specific." Those nine functional areas include policy and resourcing; FMS; security cooperation organization; support enablers; acquisition; building partner capacity/DOD training and equipping; advise, train and educate; the state partnership program; and assessment, monitoring and evaluation. Under a phased update starting Sept. 30, 2023, security cooperation professionals across DOD will become certified in one of those areas and attain one of three proficiency levels -- foundational, practitioner and expert -- primarily determined by rank/grade. Gventer said there's also an "executive level" for senior executive service, general officer and nominative E-9 personnel who serve as organizational leaders but don't need in-depth expertise. University Growth At the start of the program in 2019, DSCU had only one component, the School of Security Cooperation Studies in Dayton, Ohio, which is the former Defense Institute of Security Assistance Management. Since then, Gventer said, DSCU has grown in size and in the number of campuses. In 2021, for instance, DSCU added institutional capacity building implementers and international schoolhouses: the Institute for Security Governance, located in Monterey, Calif., and the Defense Institute for International Legal Studies in Newport, R.I. There's also the newly established College of Strategic Security Cooperation, in Arlington, Va. Most recently, DSCU grew again by absorbing the Defense Resources Management Institute, also in Monterey, and by beginning program offices for both the Security Cooperation Workforce Development Program and the Research, Analysis and Lessons Learned Institute. "We have now multiple institutes, multiple schoolhouses and a program office," Gventer said. "DSCU has grown by a lot. We're at more than 470 personnel now, government and contractors." Gventer also said DSCU is building a new course catalog, expanding the number of offerings available to help security cooperation personnel develop in their profession. "We have vastly expanded our course catalog, though not all of the courses are yet built," she said. "We've recruited faculty with more of an academic background, so they are in the process of building a whole new suite of engaging, competency-focused courses." In fiscal year 2022, she said, about 20,000 individuals took courses at DSCU to advance their own knowledge of security cooperation. Security Cooperation as a Profession "Title 10 U.S. Code Section 384 and the NDS direct DOD to ensure that those who represent the department to our allies and partners are a professionalized force with the training and support necessary to advance our national security objectives. To accomplish what lawmakers asked of DOD, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III approved a suite of initiatives aimed at improving the security cooperation workforce as part of NDS implementation," Gventer said. "Title 10, paragraph instructs DOD to ensure there are security cooperation career paths, make sure there are career fields, make sure you have the right people in the right numbers with the right backgrounds in the right organizations," she said. "This legislation was critical in initiating a suite of needed reforms, though we still have a ways to go." The first initiative, she said, involved establishment of the Security Cooperation Workforce Development Program Office, which is now working to ensure DOD personnel assigned to statutorily defined security cooperation workforce positions have the competency-based training and experience necessary to carry out assigned security cooperation responsibilities. The second recommendation was to establish a Defense Security Cooperation Service. "The DSCS will consolidate the support infrastructure of DOD's critical SCO personnel at U.S. embassies into a single organization to ensure appropriate allocation of limited personnel resources across a global demand. The DSCS will provide DOD with comprehensive oversight, management and analysis of global SCO staffing levels, personnel requirements and assignments while combatant commanders retain operation control and benefit from highly trained Security Cooperation specialists throughout their AOR," Gventer said. The Defense Security Cooperation Service, she noted, will have initial operating capability by fiscal year 2025, at which time DSCS will transition to a separate directorate reporting to the director of DSCA. The third NDS initiative was the creation of DSCU's Security Cooperation Research and Lessons Learned Institute at the DSCU headquarters. "The only way we can make sure we are a continuous learning enterprise is to make sure we have dedicated research, lessons learned, and analysis professionals. Their work provides the fodder for DSCU's curriculum," Gventer said. "You don't refresh curriculum if you don't have anybody actually looking out into the system .... You have to have somebody who's responsible for creating that intellectual capital that you can then use as part of curriculum and in improving the security cooperation enterprise more generally." Learning Lessons Now In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. On Oct. 7, Hamas attacked Israel. Both events have an impact on the U.S. security cooperation community, and DSCU officials are working to capture lessons from each for later -- or even immediate -- incorporation into the curriculum, Gventer said. Right now, she said, a team is documenting security cooperation lessons related to Ukraine, and those lessons learned will be reviewed by members of the security cooperation community and incorporated into a final report. "The DSCU lessons learned team has been working on this for approximately a year," Gventer said. " As an academic institution, it is essential we research, analyze, and adapt our curriculum to the current strategic realities." In the future, Gventer said she wants to expand the academic faculty at DSCU generally, and to expand expertise and curriculum at DSCU's Dayton, Ohio, schoolhouse, which will focus on training and education of FMS. "We want to expand our offerings on FMS across the board and establish a kind of center of excellence for FMS that will ensure continuous learning and improvement of the process," she said. "We need to continue to attract the kind of faculty that can really help us innovate," she said. "It can be challenging to find the unicorns out there that have the academic credentials and understand ... the work of an academic faculty, but also understand security cooperation." Looking forward, she said she wants DSCU to be the center of academic and intellectual life for the security cooperation community. That means security cooperation professionals might want to come to DSCU to take coursework that isn't required for their certifications but will enhance their careers. That also includes DSCU becoming a source of important reading material that the security cooperation community could rely on as a way to stay informed and help them make better decisions, she said. Service Members Can Now Sign up for Tax-Free Dependent Care Spending Accounts [2023-11-15] WASHINGTON -- With open season for federal benefits now underway, service members can for the first time take advantage of the Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account, or DCFSA. Federal benefits open season runs Nov. 13 though Dec. 11, and eligible service members and civilians who want to sign up for a DCFSA can do so at www.fsafeds.com. Signing up enables participants to have money from their paychecks diverted to an account that can be used to pay for dependent care services, such as preschool, summer day camp, before- or after-school programs, and child or adult daycare. Active-component service members along with Active Guard Reserve members on Title 10 orders are eligible to participate. Eligible service members can contribute as much as $5,000 a year from their paychecks, via allotment, to the account. That money comes out pretax, which means that a military family that typically reports $30,000 a year in taxable income, for instance, would instead be able to report $25,000 in taxable income if they took full advantage of the benefit. That means they will pay less in taxes each year, yielding greater take-home pay. The DOD is on track to implement DCFSA for eligible service members beginning January 1, 2024. Those who would like to participate can sign up during the annual Federal Benefits Open Season, which runs from mid-November to mid-December. Jennifer Walker, the executive director for the Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account initiative, said as many as 400,000 service members have eligible dependents and will be eligible to take advantage of the benefits provided by the DCFSA program. "That includes families who have children who are under the age of 13 or who have a spouse or other tax dependent, regardless of age, who is mentally or physically incapable of self-care," she said. The program is part of a larger DOD effort to take better care of military service members and their families. In March, the department released the "Strengthening Our Support to Service Members and Their Families" memorandum, which, among other important initiatives, discussed making DCFSAs available to service members. That memorandum was signed by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, who said taking care of service members and their families through efforts such as DCFSA is a top priority for the department. "In recent years, our military community has weathered a number of challenges, but our people have risen to every mission and done it all with extraordinary resilience," Austin wrote in the March 2023 memorandum. "But it is the department's ongoing moral duty to spare our outstanding people stress and struggle on the home front where we can and to show our service members and civilian employees how much they mean to us with tangible support that makes a genuine difference in their lives," he wrote "The department has, therefore, relentlessly focused on improving quality of life, and I am very proud of what we've achieved so far." The DCFSA, like other pretax flexible savings accounts, is a "use or lose" benefit. According to the DOD's Office of Financial Readiness, the DCFSA plan year mirrors the tax year, Jan. 1 through Dec. 31. After the plan year ends on Dec. 31, enrollees in a DCFSA have until March 15 of the following year to incur eligible expenses. Claims for expenses incurred must be submitted by April 30, the deadline for submitting claims from the previous plan year. Any funds remaining in the account after April 30 of the following year are forfeited. Military personnel interested in taking advantage of the DCFSA are advised to first talk with a personal financial counselor or tax professional before signing up to participate in the program. DOD Aims to Ensure Availability of Spare Parts to Sustain Ukraine-Bound F-16s [2023-11-16] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department is already participating in providing training to help ready Ukrainian pilots to fly the F-16 aircraft. The U.S. also expects to be ready to make sure spare parts are available for those aircraft. Earlier this year, the U.S. State Department indicated willingness to approve the third-party transfer of U.S.-made F-16 aircraft to Ukraine. The Netherlands, Denmark and Norway have all announced intentions to do just that, pulling aircraft from their own fleets. To ensure the Ukrainians are successful with those F-16s, Ukrainian pilots have been training in the U.S. and Europe on both flight operations and maintenance. Once those F-16s are in the hands of the Ukrainians, however, support will not stop. There will need to be spare parts to ensure they can be sustained and keep flying. The U.S. is prepared to do that as well, said William A. LaPlante, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, during a discussion Tuesday with Washington, D.C. news organization Politico. LaPlante said that with whatever is sent to the Ukrainians -- and the U.S. has committed $44.2 billion in hardware and ammunition since February 2022 -- it's important also that spare parts be made available to maintain that gear. "Whatever we all deliver to the Ukrainians, provide 90 days of spares, please, please, that's the rule of thumb -- 90 days of spares," he said. LaPlante said the F-16 aircraft Ukraine will receive, worth nearly a billion dollars, are no exception to that policy. Those aircraft will need the right spare parts and in the right numbers. "That's what we're going through right now ... to make sure it happens," he said. "They'll have enough when they get there. We want ... it to be sustained. And it's oftentimes the thing that is forgotten." Without spares, he said the F-16s the Ukrainians fly could be grounded in just a few months. "We're not going to let that happen," he said. "And just because other countries provide their airplanes, we have to make sure if they don't provide the spares that we find the spares and provide them." The department isn't alone in its efforts to ensure the Ukrainians will be able to keep their F-16s flying after they take custody of them or in concerns about Ukraine's long-term ability to defend itself. The U.S. and partners, especially though the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, are working together to ensure Ukraine has what it needs and is also able to provide for itself, over the long term. "We're working really hard with U.S. industry and actually with the Europeans and other countries around the world to begin to coordinate these industry days with the Ukrainians," LaPlante said, referring to daylong meetings where industry and military representatives meet to discuss procurement issues. "I think what you're going to see is this pivot for U.S. companies and companies around the world to help the Ukrainians build back what they have." With Continuing Resolution, Service Members to Get Paid Through Holidays [2023-11-16] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Senate today sent forward to the president a bill that funds the government -- including the Defense Department -- through early 2024. The bill will ensure that the department can continue operating, and that service members will continue to get paid through the holiday season, said the deputy Pentagon press secretary. "Congress [has] avoided a government shutdown by passing the bipartisan continuing resolution," said Sabrina Singh, during a briefing this afternoon at the Pentagon. "This short-term CR will ensure that our troops and civilian workforce will be paid through the holidays." While the additional funding is good news for service members in the short term, Singh said that what the department needs is the financial stability that comes with a full appropriation for fiscal year 2024. "The department continues to urge Congress to pass a full-year appropriations, which is the best thing that Congress can do for our national defense," she said. "As we have long made clear, operating under a short-term continuing resolution hamstrings the department's people and our programs and undermines both our national security and competitiveness." The DOD's budget request for fiscal year 2024 was sent by the president to Congress in March and has not yet been signed into law. Until a funding bill for FY 2024 is signed into law, the department is limited in how it operates. Singh also urged Congress to pass the department's supplemental funding requests which she said allow it to continue supporting Ukraine and Israel, which also provide humanitarian assistance across the globe, and which makes critical investments in the Indo-Pacific. "The supplemental [funding request] doesn't just meet today's urgent challenges, but also invests in our industrial base here at home," Singh said. "As we send munitions from our stockpiles, the money to replenish our supplies invests in American industry and American workers. These investments will mean greater prosperity at home and greater security abroad." AC-130 Strikes Iranian-Backed Militants Following Missile Attack [2023-11-21] WASHINGTON -- A U.S. military AC-130J Ghostrider attacked an Iran-backed militant group after the group used a ballistic missile to attack U.S. and coalition forces on Al-Asad Airbase, Iraq, the deputy pentagon press secretary said today. The ballistic missile attack resulted in non-serious injuries to U.S. and coalition forces, as well as minor damage to infrastructure on the installation, said Sabrina Singh during a briefing at the Pentagon. "Immediately following the attack, a U.S. military AC-130 aircraft in the area conducted a self-defense strike against an Iranian-backed militia vehicle and a number of Iranian-backed militia personnel involved in this attack," she said. "This self-defense strike resulted in some hostile fatalities." Singh said the AC-130 gunship was able to mount a response so quickly because it was already in the air at the time of the missile attack. "We were able to identify the point of origin of these attacks because an AC-130 was up already in the area and therefore was able to respond," Singh said. "They were able to take action because they saw the militants. They were able to keep an eye on the movement of these militants as they moved into their vehicles and that's why they were able to respond." Since Oct. 17, U.S. forces have been attacked 66 times in both Iraq and Syria, said Singh. She also said this is the first time a ballistic missile similar to the one used in this attack has been employed. Since the start of those attacks in October, the U.S. has mounted three other strikes, Singh said. But those strikes were pre-planned and targeted specific facilities and infrastructure known to be used by militias affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This most recent U.S. response was different in that it was unplanned. "These groups have targeted our forces [in] both Iraq and Syria," Singh said. "We feel right now that we've taken appropriate action to decimate some of their facilities and some of their weapons ... We always reserve the right to respond at a time and place of our choosing." U.S., Partner Nation Task Force Respond to Commercial Vessel Distress Call [2023-11-27] WASHINGTON -- This weekend, the USS Mason and partner nation naval vessels responded to a distress call from the commercial shipping vessel M/V Central Park, which had been boarded by five armed individuals while in transit in the Gulf of Aden near Yemen, said the Pentagon press secretary. "[The Central Park] was boarded by these five individuals. They attempted to access the crew cabin," Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said this morning during a meeting with the Pentagon press corps. "The crew, essentially, [was] able to lock themselves into a safe haven. These individuals attempted to access and take control of the ship." The crew of the Central Park issued the distress call on the evening of Nov. 26. The distress call was responded to by the USS Mason, allied ships and associated aircraft which are part of Combined Task Force 151. That task force conducts counter-piracy missions. After the arrival of the USS Mason and partners with CTF 151, task force personnel demanded the release of the Central Park, Ryder said. The five armed individuals then disembarked the vessel and fled in a small boat. "After the five individuals fled, the Mason sent out a visit, board, search and seizure team on the water that stopped the small boat. They detained the individuals, and then ... the VBSS team boarded the Central Park and cleared the vessel," Ryder said, adding that the Central Park crew was found to be safe following the incident. While the identity of the five armed attackers was not yet confirmed at the time of the morning news briefing, Ryder said initial indications are that the individuals are Somali. All five are currently being held aboard the USS Mason. Hours later, early in the morning of Nov. 27, Yemen time, two ballistic missiles were fired toward the general location of the Mason and the Central Park. "Initial indications were that two ballistic missiles were fired from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen, toward the general location of the Mason and the Central Park," Ryder said. "The missiles landed in the Gulf of Aden, approximately 10 nautical miles from the ships. It is not clear at this time what they were targeting." Ryder said that neither the USS Mason nor the Central Park were damaged by the missiles and that the Central Park is now back under power and on its way. Ukraine Security Assistance Strengthens Nation's Defense Industrial Base [2023-11-29] WASHINGTON -- Since Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine last year, the United States has remained committed to providing the Ukrainian armed forces with the equipment and security assistance needed to fight off Russian invaders and secure their nation's sovereignty.  In the U.S., support for Ukraine has mobilized the defense industrial base in ways that haven't been seen in decades. Industry partners across the DIB have stepped up to meet that mobilization by manufacturing the equipment and providing the capabilities needed to support U.S. commitments.  Since the Feb. 24, 2022, Russian invasion, the U.S. has committed approximately $44 billion in security assistance to Ukraine. Assistance has been provided through either presidential drawdown authority, where equipment is pulled from the military's inventory and sent overseas, or through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, where the government contracts directly with industry to send new equipment to Ukraine once it's ready.  When capability is pulled from existing U.S. inventory, it must be replaced to ensure U.S. military units maintain their own readiness. As of mid-November, the department has obligated nearly $17 billion toward purchasing replacements for the equipment that was sent to Ukraine from U.S. stocks.  At the same time defense contractors are busy building new equipment to replace what has been sent overseas, they're also manufacturing new capabilities to fulfill the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative orders. DOD has obligated more than $10 billion in funds though that initiative.  Coast-to-coast, the Defense Department's more than $27 billion in obligations for PDA replenishment and USAI orders are directly impacting prime vendors and critical suppliers in 37 states.  "Across the board, the response of our U.S. industrial base to meet Ukraine's defense needs has been truly historic," said William LaPlante, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. "It's been a nationwide effort that spans the full spectrum of our supply chains in nearly every capability area. While there's no question we still have significant work ahead of us to fully rebuild a modern defense industrial ecosystem, we should not lose sight of what we've been able to achieve together with our partners in industry over the past 21 months."  At the same time the department is purchasing equipment from the defense industrial base, it's also helping the DIB expand its capacity to produce the most important defense capabilities.  The department has committed some $3.3 billion in funding across 18 states to help defense contractors both expand and modernize existing production lines and add new lines entirely. Contractors are making, among other things, the 155 mm artillery round, the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, and Stinger and Javelin missiles.  This week, the department released details related to how the defense industrial base in more than 37 states is contributing to the U.S. security commitment to Ukraine. That information, and other data related to U.S. security assistance to Ukraine, can be found in an infographic on the Acquisition & Sustainment website. Search Continues in Japan for Downed Osprey Aircraft [2023-11-30] WASHINGTON -- On Tuesday, a CV-22A Osprey Aircraft assigned to the Air Force's 353rd Special Operations Wing was involved in an aviation mishap off the shore of Yakushima Island, Japan. There were eight airmen on board. Search and rescue operations are now underway to locate both the aircrew and their aircraft. The Osprey aircraft is based out of Yokota Air Base, Japan, in Tokyo, and was performing a routine training mission off the shore of Yakushima Island -- about 630 miles southwest of Tokyo. "Emergency personnel remain on scene conducting search and rescue operations," Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said during a press briefing today. "The cause of this incident is currently under investigation. Our thoughts are with the unit and their families. And we'd like to thank the government of Japan and the Japanese Coast Guard for all their assistance." Singh said that U.S-owned Ospreys in Japan continue to operate while search and rescue operations continue and an investigation into the mishap remains ongoing. "As of right now, we are still continuing to operate the Osprey aircraft," Singh said. "We have a commitment to safety. There is an investigation that is currently determining and looking into what exactly happened with this aircraft and the mishap. Should that investigation yield [any] results that require the department to change anything about the Osprey or to take additional steps, we will certainly do that." Right now, she said, the immediate focus of the department is on the rescue efforts for the eight missing airmen. In response to the aviation mishap, officials at Yokota Air Base have set up an "Emergency Family Assistance Center," to support families of Airmen who were on the aircraft and others at the installation who were affected by the aircraft mishap. The EFAC will, among other things, provide a central gathering point for those affected by the mishap to receive counseling, assistance and available information. Austin: In Troubling Times, World Needs U.S. Leadership [2023-12-02] WASHINGTON -- As the world considers the repercussions of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the brutal Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, an increasingly assertive China, and the disturbing aspirations of nations like Iran and North Korea, it considers also what the role of the United States will be--and what its role must be is leadership, said the U.S. secretary of defense. "We're living through challenging times," said Lloyd J. Austin III, who spoke today at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California. "That includes the major conflicts facing our fellow democracies, Israel and Ukraine; bullying and coercion from an increasingly assertive China; and a worldwide battle between democracy and autocracy." When the world appears to be in disarray, Austin said, U.S. allies and partners look to the United States to see what must be done. And the U.S. must not waiver in providing leadership and decision-making. "These are the times when both our friends and our rivals look to America," he said. "These are the times when the American people count on their leaders to come together. And these are the times when global security relies on American unity and American strength." Since the end of World War II, Austin said, the world has adhered to a rules-based international order, developed with U.S. leadership, that has provided not just the United States, but the entire world an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity. Neither that rules-based order nor U.S. leadership must be allowed to falter, he said. "The world built by American leadership can only be maintained by American leadership," Austin said. "American leadership rallies our allies and partners to uphold our shared security. And it inspires ordinary people around the world to work together toward a brighter future." Inside the United States, Austin said, some Americans have shied away from the country's role as a global leader and prefer instead that the U.S. move toward isolationism. Austin said that's been a mistake in the past and is a mistake today, as well. "If we forfeit our position of responsibility, our rivals and our foes will be glad to fill that vacuum," he said. "In every generation, some Americans prefer isolation to engagement -- and they try to pull up the drawbridge. They try to kick loose the cornerstone of American leadership. And they try to undermine the security architecture that has produced decades of prosperity without great-power war." Were the U.S. to shirk its leadership role, he said, America's enemies and the enemies of its allies would only be emboldened. And that failure to lead would put the security and wellbeing of the United States and its allies at risk. "The cost of abdication has always far outweighed the cost of leadership," Austin said. "The world will only become more dangerous if tyrants and terrorists believe that they can get away with wholesale aggression and mass slaughter. America will only become less secure if dictators believe they can wipe a democracy off the map. And the United States will only pay a higher price if autocrats and zealots believe that they can force free people to live in fear." The U.S. has not shied away from its leadership role, Austin said, and will not. Instead, he said the U.S. has responded where crises have occurred--such as Ukraine and Israel--and has also continued to strengthen partnerships globally as a way to help future crises from developing. Following the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, Austin said he made the trip to Israel to assure partners there that the U.S. is committed to their security. "I flew to Israel to underscore our solidarity and our resolve, and to make it crystal-clear that America's commitment to Israel's security is ironclad," Austin said. Since then, he said, the U.S. has provided security assistance to Israel and helped get hostages held by Hamas returned home. "We will continue to do everything that we can to help secure the release of every man, every woman and every child seized by Hamas -- including American citizens," Austin said. In the Middle East, Austin said, the U.S. has also increased its own security posture. That now includes two carrier strike groups, an amphibious ready group, a Marine expeditionary unit, a guided-missile submarine, integrated air-defense and missile-defense forces, and fighter aircraft and bombers. Austin also said that U.S. leadership with Israel includes reinforcing important values, such as those embodied in the law of war. And one of those values is that civilians must be protected. It's something Austin said he had experience with during his time as an Army general operating in Iraq, and it's something he said the U.S. continues to remind Israel of as it fights against Hamas. "In this kind of a fight, the center of gravity is the civilian population. And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat," Austin said. "I have repeatedly made clear to Israel's leaders that protecting Palestinian civilians in Gaza is both a moral responsibility and a strategic imperative." The U.S. hasn't just provided security assistance to Israel, Austin said. The U.S. has also provided humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza. This week, he said, the U.S. airlifted more than 54,000 pounds of U.N. medical supplies, clothing and food to those in Gaza. He said it won't be the last airlift of supplies. Going forward, Austin said, the U.S. remains committed also to peace in the Middle East. And that means, he said, there must be a two-state solution there. There must be a nation for the Jewish people, and there must be a nation for the Palestinians, as well. And those two nations must act as good neighbors. "We believe that Israelis and Palestinians must find a way to share the land that they both call home," Austin said. "And that means a path toward two states living side by side in mutual security ... a two-state solution remains the only viable way out of this tragic conflict that has ever been proposed." Following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the U.S. also stepped up to its leadership role. Last year, for instance, Austin spearheaded the creation of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a coalition of some 50 nations that meets monthly and is committed to the security of Ukraine now and into the future. Since the February 2022 Russian invasion, the U.S., allies and partners have worked to get important weapons to the Ukrainians to allow them to defend themselves. Included there are High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS; Patriot air defense systems; Abrams tanks; and more, Austin said. U.S.-led efforts have helped Ukrainian forces weaken the Russian military, and Austin said that U.S. leadership and partner efforts must not stop until Ukraine is again free. "The outcome of this struggle will define global security for decades to come," he said. "And we don't have the option of sitting it out. President Joe Biden has laid down a clear objective: The United States seeks a free and sovereign Ukraine that can defend itself today -- and deter more Russian aggression in the future. And, so, we are working together with our allies and partners to help Ukraine build a future force that can ward off more Russian malice in the years to come." If the U.S. and partners fail to stand up to Russian aggression, Austin said, Russia will only be emboldened to do more. "Russia's invasion of Ukraine offers a grim preview of a world of tyranny and turmoil that should make us all shudder," he said. In the Pacific, Austin said China is the only rival with the intent and potentially the capacity to reshape the international order. "The PRC [People's Republic of China] hopes that the United States will stumble and become isolated abroad and divided at home," he said. "But together, we can prevent that fate. And we have made extraordinary progress, along with our allies and partners, in meeting the China challenge and forging a more secure Indo-Pacific." Across the Indo-Pacific region, the U.S. is leading by strengthening partnerships there with other nations who value freedom and democracy. With the Philippines, for instance, Austin said the U.S. has embarked on an expansion of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement. That expansion will allow the U.S. access to four more Philippine military facilities. The U.S. and India last summer also unveiled a new direction defense industrial cooperation. "That strategy is already driving our work together on key defense platforms," he said. "We also rolled out a major deal to build aircraft engines in India. And when I was back in India last month, we announced our intent to co-produce armored vehicles with India -- our first time with any foreign partner." The U.S. has also been working closely with Japan, South Korea, Papua New Guinea, and Australia, as well. Through the AUKUS partnership -- which includes Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S. -- those three nations will help Australia acquire conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines, Austin said. In advance of the Reagan National Defense Forum, Austin said he met in California with British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps and Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, who also serves as defense minister, for the second meeting of AUKUS defense ministers. The United States is a world leader, and its military remains the most lethal fighting force in human history, Austin said. Neither of those will change. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are the United States of America," Austin said. "It's not enough just to pursue our national interests. We must also live our national values. As President Ronald Reagan said, 'Our foreign policy should be to show by example the greatness of our system and the strength of American ideals.' We must ensure, as President Biden has said, that America remains 'a beacon to the world.' We will not let that beacon flicker or fade. In this uncertain hour, at this time of testing, the world looks to America again. And we must not give our friends, our rivals, or our foes any reason to doubt America's resolve." Brown: Young People Consider Military Service if They Know Enough About It [2023-12-03] WASHINGTON -- Getting young people to choose a career in the military will require more people talking about what opportunities there are in the service, said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. During a discussion yesterday at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, Jr. said there's great opportunity in military service. To get young people to consider it for themselves, they just need to hear more about it. "I think about the opportunities and the things that young people will have the opportunity to do if they were to join our military," he said. "We've got to talk about that. And partly the reason I say that is because I believe young people only aspire to be what they see or know about. If you don't know about the opportunities of serving in the military, you may never pursue that career field." Brown said in his own life, he was encouraged by his parents to serve in the military and expected initially that he'd serve only a short amount of time. "My degree is in engineering," he said. "I was going to be an Air Force engineer for four years and get out." While in college, he said he got an opportunity to ride in a T-37 Tweet, an Air Force trainer aircraft. That experience, he said, changed his outlook on what his military service could be. "I became an F-16 pilot, and I still get to fly today. It's those kinds of opportunities, I think, that you just don't know until you have a chance to experience it," he said. "And whether you stay for just a handful of years or you stay in for a handful of decades, there are great opportunities serving in our military." Following the end of the Cold War, Brown said, the U.S. military contracted in size as military bases shut down, and there were fewer opportunities for young people to interact with service members. Educating young people about military service must be a nationwide effort now, he said. "One of the goals we have to do as a nation is to talk about our military and the opportunities," he said. "And I try to do that when I go out and travel -- because you don't know what you don't know." Warfighting Skills Are a Focus The 2023 Reagan National Defense Survey indicated that some Americans think the U.S. military is too focused on social issues at the expense of a focus on warfighting. But Brown said that isn't the case. "I would say honing our warfighting skills has primacy in everything we do," he said. "That's why we exist: to fight and win our nation's wars. We want to be so good at what we do that our adversaries [say], 'Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.' We do that because we bring in our nation's best from all backgrounds. And I'm extremely proud of our service members, every single one of them." As he travels around the U.S. military and meets with service members, Brown said he can see where their focus is. "I'm just so amazed by the young people that come into our military. And when I go out and talk to them, they are focused on warfighting. They are focused on getting the mission done, and they're just they're amazing young people, and I'm just proud to be able to work with them." More Osprey Crew Members Located in Japan [2023-12-04] WASHINGTON -- Last week a CV-22A Osprey aircraft was involved in an aviation mishap off the shore of Yakushima Island, Japan. Of the eight airmen on board, three have been recovered, the whereabouts of an additional three have been confirmed, and two remain unaccounted for. "Today, combined Japanese and United States teams were able to locate additional remains following the Osprey mishap in Japan," said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh during a meeting today with the Pentagon press corps. "Dive teams were able to confirm five additional crew members from the original crew of eight. Currently, two crew members of the five have been successfully recovered by the attending teams." This weekend, Air Force Special Operations Command released the name of one of the crew members whose remains have been recovered. He is 24-year-old Air Force Staff Sgt. Jacob M. Galliher, who was stationed at Kadena Air Base, Japan. Galliher is originally from Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He enlisted in the Air Force in 2017. "There is an ongoing, combined effort to recover the remaining crew members from the wreckage," Singh said. "As efforts persist for the location and recovery of the entire crew, the privacy of the families and loved ones impacted by this tragic incident remains a great concern." The identities of the additional members located today have yet to be determined, Singh said. Houthis Continue Attacks on Commercial Shipping Yesterday in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility there were multiple additional attacks on commercial shipping vessels in the southern Red Sea, all believed to have been launched from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen. The USS Carney responded to distress calls from those vessels, said Singh. According to a U.S. Central Command release, commercial vessels involved in the attacks include the M/V Unity Explorer, M/V Number 9 and the M/V Sophie II. Over the course of the day, each of the three commercial vessels were hit with a missile. Those attacks resulted in minor damage. A fourth missile impacted in the vicinity of the M/V Unity Explorer but did not hit it. The USS Carney also shot down three UAVs. "These attacks represent a direct threat to international commerce and maritime security," Singh said. "They have jeopardized the lives of international crews representing multiple countries around the world. And we also believe these attacks ... while launched by the Houthis in Yemen, are fully enabled by Iran. The United States will continue all appropriate responses in full coordination with its international allies and partners." Recovery Operations Begin Following Osprey Mishap in Japan [2023-12-05] WASHINGTON -- Following last week's CV-22A Osprey mishap off the shore of Yakushima Island, Japan, a search and rescue operation had been ongoing for any possible survivors. That operation has now transitioned to a search and recovery operation. At the same time, Air Force Special Operations Command has released the names of the eight deceased service members. A news release explained that a change in mission from rescue to recovery happens when it's determined that it is unlikely there are any survivors. "I am deeply saddened by the loss of eight American troops in a tragic aircraft crash off the coast of Japan," said Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III in a statement released today. "The entire Department of Defense mourns alongside the families and the loved ones of those who lost their lives today in the service of their country. My heart also goes out to those who were serving alongside these brave men and women in Japan." During a news briefing today Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said all families of those airmen have now been notified. "Our deepest condolences go out to the families, friends, and colleagues of these eight American airmen who are impacted by this tragic mishap and the immeasurable loss of life," said Ryder. "We want to thank the government of Japan for all of their assistance." The deceased airmen are: -- Air Force Maj. Jeffrey T. Hoernemann, 32, of Andover, Minnesota, was a CV-22 Osprey instructor pilot and officer in charge of training. He was assigned to the 21st Special Operations Squadron, 353rd Special Operations Wing at Yokota Air Base, Japan. -- Air Force Maj. Eric V. Spendlove, 36, of St. George, Utah, was a residency trained flight surgeon and medical operations flight commander. He was assigned to the 1st Special Operations Squadron, 353rd Special Operations Wing at Kadena Air Base, Japan. -- Air Force Maj. Luke A. Unrath, 34, of Riverside, California, was a CV-22 pilot and flight commander. He was assigned to the 21st Special Operations Squadron, 353rd Special Operations Wing, Yokota Air Base, Japan. -- Air Force Capt. Terrell K. Brayman, 32, of Pittsford, New York, was a CV-22 pilot and flight commander. He was assigned to the 21st Special Operations Squadron, 353rd Special Operations Wing at Yokota Air Base, Japan. -- Air Force Tech. Sgt. Zachary E. Lavoy, 33, of Oviedo, Florida, was a medical operations flight chief. He was assigned to the 1st Special Operations Squadron, 353rd Special Operations Wing at Kadena Air Base, Japan. -- Air Force Staff Sgt. Jake M. Turnage, 25, of Kennesaw, Georgia, was a flight engineer. He was assigned to the 21st Special Operations Squadron, 353rd Special Operations Wing at Yokota Air Base, Japan. -- Air Force Staff Sgt. Jacob M. Galliher, 24, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, was a direct support operator. He was assigned to the 43rd Intelligence Squadron, 363rd Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Wing at Yokota Air Base, Japan. -- Air Force Senior Airman Brian K. Johnson, 32, of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, was a flight engineer. He was assigned to the 21st Special Operations Squadron, 353rd Special Operations Wing at Yokota Air Base, Japan.​ Ryder said the remains of three of the eight have been recovered. The remains of another three airmen have been located and are in the process of being recovered. "The recovery operation will now focus on locating and recovering the remaining two airmen and aircraft debris," Ryder said. Austin Meets With Ukrainian Minister of Defense at Pentagon [2023-12-06] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III today hosted bilateral discussions at the Pentagon with Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov. The meeting comes on the heels of the Ukraine Defense Industrial Base Conference today in Washington, D.C., and also aligns with today's announcement of another security assistance package for Ukraine. The two leaders most recently met in November in Kyiv, where they discussed military operations as well as Umerov's near- and mid-term goals and objectives for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. Before closed-door discussions began, Austin publicly reiterated U.S. support for Ukraine. "As I said in Kyiv, the United States stands with Ukraine as you fight back against the Kremlin's aggression and cruelty," Austin said. "Ukraine has taken back more than half the territory grabbed by Russia since its unprovoked invasion began in February 2022. So we will stand with Ukraine for the long haul. I'm confident that our allies and partners will be there as well." Today's bilateral discussion built on conversations that occurred last month in Kyiv, and included Ukraine's strategic goals for the coming year and a long-term vision for a future force. "To support Ukraine's immediate needs, I am announcing our 52nd drawdown of equipment and services from U.S. stocks," Austin said. "The package includes additional munitions for your defense -- artillery and tank weapons, and small arms munitions." This most recent security assistance package, worth $175 million, includes, among other things, AIM-9M and AIM-7 missiles for air defense, ammunition for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, 155 mm and 105 mm artillery rounds and High-speed Anti-radiation missiles, also known as HARMs. The United States has committed more than $44.2 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Austin also discussed the significance of the Ukraine Defense Industrial Base Conference. The two-day conference, co-hosted by the White House, Commerce and Defense Departments, brings together U.S. and Ukrainian industry and government representatives to discuss ideas that could bolster Ukraine's defense industrial base. "We discussed ways to strengthen partnerships among Ukraine and the U.S. defense industry," Austin said. "This just underscores America's commitment to a free and sovereign Ukraine -- one that can defend itself today and deter further Russian aggression in the future." Umerov thanked Austin for hosting the bilateral discussions and for organizing the industrial base conference. "We consider this conference ... a significant breakthrough in the development of our military/technical cooperation," Umerov said. "It's one of our key elements of increasing self-sufficiency in Ukraine." DOD Recognizes Top Technology, Cyber Performers [2023-12-07] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department's chief information officer, John Sherman, today recognized more than a dozen individuals and teams who contributed in exceptional ways to the advancement of the DOD's information technology goals during 2023. Joining Sherman in recognizing top performers within the department's information technology enterprise was Anne Neuberger, the deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technologies. Neuberger provided important context that explained why those being recognized are critical to the nation's security. "I cheer the work that these awardees do," Neuberger said. "The president tracks national cybersecurity closely because he's aware of the capabilities of our adversaries. This is a group who knows better than anyone the sophistication of Chinese capabilities ... you know better than anyone that the data in our networks is ripe with intelligence value. So, the president tracks national cybersecurity, particularly the efforts of DOD, because of the need for the U.S. to project power around the world." Right now, Neuberger said, there are a number of conflicts going on around the world where the United States plays a role. She said that might involve a carrier in the Middle East or support to Ukraine in its battle against Russia's invasion. "The role of DOD is a global role," she said. "As a result, the president tracks the work you do each and every day defending DOD's networks, defending and protecting the people who put their lives at risk and the sacrifices both our civilian and our military personnel -- but particularly our military personnel and our families -- face every time military folks are on deployment." Neuberger said that in their day-to-day work, the DOD military and civilian personnel involved in optimizing and protecting DOD's cyber enterprise should know that their work is both being watched and appreciated. "Every day when you sit in your cubby, know the president is tracking your work; know the nation's security relies on your work; and know we are all deeply grateful for the work you do each and every day," she said. As part of the 2023 DOD Chief Information Officer Annual Awards for Information Technology and Cyber Excellence, both teams and individuals were either named recipients of awards or for honorable mentions. Those honored include: Individual Awards -- Patrick Light, Missile Defense Agency -- Navy Cmdr. Christopher Gregory, U. S. Navy -- Navy Lt. j.g. Scott Tollefson, Joint Staff Individual Honorable Mentions -- Navy Capt. Donna Poulin, Defense Health Agency -- James Evans, Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation -- Erica Thomas, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller) -- Marine Corps Capt. Alexander Parades, U. S. Marine Corps Team Awards -- Ship Repair Facility-Japan Regional Maintenance Center, Information Technology and Cybersecurity Department Team, Department of the Navy -- 22nd Communications Squadron, Cyberspace Operations Flight, United States Air Force Team Honorable Mentions -- Advanced Enterprise Capabilities Division Team, United States Air Force -- Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability Program Team, Defense Information Systems Agency -- Department of Defense Information Networks Inspection Analysis Tool Team, U. S. Cyber Command -- Joint Service Catalog Team, Defense Finance and Accounting Services -- 17th Test and Evaluation Squadron, Cybersecurity Team, U. S. Space Force -- MyPay Fraud Prevention Team, Defense Finance and Accounting Services -- Marine Corps Cyberspace Operations Group, Defense Cyberspace Operations Division Team, U. S. Marine Corps Congress Passes Fiscal 2024 Defense Spending Bill, Pay Raise for Service Members [2023-12-14] WASHINGTON -- Both the House and Senate have passed the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which is expected to be signed by the president. Among other things, the bill authorizes a pay raise for both service members and civilian defense employees. "This important legislation not only authorizes a 5.2% pay increase for service members and civilian employees ... but directly invests in America's national security and military power projection to meet the challenges of the 21st century," said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder during a briefing today. The most recent National Defense Authorization Act supports $841.4 billion in funding for the Defense Department. Included in the bill are provisions related to service members and their families. For instance, the bill increases family separation allowance to $400 per month. Also included is language that excludes basic allowance for housing from the calculation of gross household income used to determine eligibility for the Basic Needs Allowance. That allowance is provided to service members with dependents who have a gross household income less than or equal to 150% of the federal poverty guidelines. The FY24 NDAA also authorizes the Navy to enter into multiyear procurement contracts for up to 13 Virginia class submarines and authorizes the department to enter into multiyear procurement contracts for rare earth elements. Rare earth elements are used to manufacture the permanent magnets used in major U.S. military weapons systems and in the manufacture of rechargeable batteries. While Ryder said the department applauds passage of the FY24 NDAA, it also urges congress to pass its supplemental budget request as well, which funds continued support to American partner nations and funds needed investments in the U.S. defense industrial base. Austin Embarks on Multiday Trip to Middle East [2023-12-15] WASHINGTON -- This weekend, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III embarks on a multiday trip to the Middle East with stops in Israel, Qatar and Bahrain. The trip also includes a visit to the USS Gerald R. Ford, which is underway now in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. In Israel, Austin will underscore the unwavering U.S. commitment to Israel's right to defend itself in accordance with international humanitarian law, and he will also discuss steps Israel is taking to mitigate civilian harm. The secretary is also expected to discuss with Israeli military leaders what are to be the next steps in the conflict after an eventual cessation of high-intensity ground operations and airstrikes, said a senior defense official at the Pentagon today. "[Secretary Austin] has been having discussions with his Israeli counterparts the entire time about the different phases of their campaign, how they assess the different phases of their campaign, and what their operational milestones are in order to feel that their population can be secure enough given their stated objective of the military dismantlement of Hamas," the official said. "He wants to talk to them about how you move through those different phases." While the conflict between Israel and Hamas is an Israeli campaign and it will ultimately be Israeli's decision on how to move to the next phase of operations, Austin is interested in learning more about their plans going forward, the official said. "It's for [Israel] to determine when they assess that Hamas has been sufficiently degraded [so] that they can shift to the next phase of their campaign," the official said. "We, as the Department of Defense, and Secretary Austin in particular, I think, [have] incredibly valuable perspectives on this and that's what he wants to consult with them about." In Bahrain, Austin is expected to visit U.S. Naval Forces Central Command. Part of the discussions there between the U.S. and Bahrain will involve U.S. efforts to convene multilateral coalitions to respond to aggression at sea that threatens shipping and the global economy. "We will talk with them in a multinational framework about the work we're doing, particularly in light of increasing Houthi aggression in the Red Sea," the official said. Since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, the official said Qatar has played a critical role in helping the U.S. communicate with Hamas. That effort was critical in securing the agreement for the release of some hostages. Qatar was also recently named a "major non-NATO ally" of the U.S. and plays host to U.S. forces at Al Udeid Air Base. The secretary will visit that installation. "Secretary Austin will express our gratitude to Qatar's national leaders for their partnership and their work with us on a range of regional and global objectives," the official said. He will also discuss with Qataris the upgrades they're investing in at Al Udeid. Another part of this trip, the official said, is a visit to the Ford. "Secretary Austin wants to visit with the troops on that carrier," the official said. "They are missing the holidays with their families, and they have done an incredible service -- not only for our country, but for the region." The Ford, like the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, is in the Middle East now as part of the U.S. effort to make it clear that neither state or nonstate actors should hope to escalate the ongoing conflict beyond Gaza. "What this visit to the Ford is about is an acknowledgment that we demonstrated what the National Defense Strategy means," the official said. "The Department of Defense retains the capability to dynamically and expeditiously flow force into any theater in response to a crisis or contingency while maintaining our commitments in other theaters. And that is exactly what we've done." Self-Defense Strike in Iraq Kills Terrorist Leader [2024-01-04] WASHINGTON -- U.S. forces in Iraq today conducted a self-defense strike which killed Mushtaq Jawad Kazim Al-Jawari, a leader of the Iran-backed Harakat al-Nujaba terrorist group that is operating both in Iraq and Syria, said the Pentagon press secretary. Al-Jawari, also known as Abu Taqwa, was actively involved in planning and carrying out attacks against American personnel. Abu Taqwa, along with another member of Harakat al-Nujaba, were both killed in a strike that took place around noon, Jan. 4, in Iraq, said Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder during a briefing today. "It is important to note that the strike was taken in self-defense, that no civilians were harmed, and that no infrastructure or facilities were struck," Ryder said. The U.S. currently has a military presence in Iraq as part of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve. The CJTF-OIR mission is to advise, assist and enable partnered forces in the defeat of ISIS within designated areas of Iraq and Syria. Inside Iraq, the U.S. works in partnership with both the Iraqi Security Forces and the Kurdish Security Forces to carry out that mission. "U.S. forces are in Iraq at the invitation of the government of Iraq," Ryder said. "They're there for one reason, which is to support the defeat-ISIS mission. We'll continue to work very closely with our Iraqi partners when it comes to the safety and security of our forces. When those forces are threatened, just like we would anywhere else in the world, we will maintain the inherent right of self-defense to protect our forces." The mission to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria has been ongoing for nearly a decade, and Ryder said the successes of CJTF-OIR are worth maintaining. "It was 10 years ago this coming summer that ISIS was approximately 24 kilometers outside of Baghdad, when we kicked off the counter-ISIS mission after they had subsumed large swaths of Syria and Iraq," Ryder said. "No one wants to see a return of ISIS ... our focus is going to continue to remain on the defeat-ISIS mission. But again, we're not going to hesitate to protect our forces if they're threatened." U.S. Ready to Assist in Japan On Monday, a 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck eastern Japan, with an epicenter on the Noto Peninsula -- about 180 miles northwest of Tokyo. Ryder said the U.S. military is ready to help, if asked. "On behalf of Secretary Austin and the department, our hearts are with the Japanese people after their tragic earthquake earlier this week," Ryder said. "The United States and Japan share a deep bond of friendship that unites our people, and our Japanese ally graciously hosts thousands of U.S. service personnel and family members. As you've heard from the president and the U.S. ambassador, our military forces in Japan are ready to assist as needed." Austin Recovering, Making Progress After Surgery Complications [2024-01-09] WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon today announced that Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III remains at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland, while he recovers from complications related to a mid-December surgery to treat prostate cancer. According to doctors at Walter Reed, Austin underwent surgery Dec. 22 to treat prostate cancer, which had been detected earlier in the month following a regular screening. Dr. John Maddox, director of trauma medical, and Dr. Gregory Chesnut, director of the Center for Prostate Disease Research of the Murtha Cancer Center, both at Walter Reed, released a statement earlier today regarding Austin's response to that surgery. "Secretary Austin recovered uneventfully from his surgery and returned home the next morning," they wrote. "His prostate cancer was detected early, and his prognosis is excellent." On Monday of last week, Austin's doctors said, the secretary was admitted to Walter Reed with complications related to that earlier surgery. Those complications included nausea, along with abdominal, hip and leg pain. In response to those complications, Austin underwent additional treatment at Walter Reed, and he remains there recovering from those additional procedures. "He has progressed steadily throughout his stay," Maddox and Chesnut wrote in their statement. "His infection has cleared. He continues to make progress and we anticipate a full recovery, although this can be a slow process." As of Tuesday afternoon, Austin remains at Walter Reed and continues to perform his duties as the secretary of defense. "Secretary Austin continues to recover well and remains in good spirits," Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said during a briefing today. "He's in contact with his senior staff and has full access to required secure communications capabilities and continues to monitor DOD's day-to-day operations worldwide. At this time I do not have any information to provide in terms of when he might be released from the hospital." The department will continue to release daily status updates of Austin's condition, Ryder said. "We in the Department of Defense, of course, wish him a speedy recovery," Ryder said. DOD Transparency After Austin's admission to Walter Reed last week, the Defense Department failed to properly notify appropriate parties, including President Joe Biden, about the secretary's condition. Ryder said the department is now looking into that breakdown in communications so that it will not happen again. "The department recognizes the understandable concerns expressed by the public, Congress and the news media in terms of notification timelines and DOD transparency," Ryder said. "I want to underscore again that Secretary Austin has taken responsibility for the issues with transparency and the department is taking immediate steps to improve our notification procedures." Ryder said Austin's chief of staff directed the DOD's director of administration and management to conduct a 30-day review of the department's notification process for assumption of functions and duties of the secretary of defense. "While the review is underway and effective immediately, the chief of staff also directed several actions to ensure increased situational awareness about any transfer of authorities from the secretary of defense," Ryder said. Part of that, he said, includes ensuring that the DOD's general counsel, the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, combatant commanders, service secretaries, service chiefs of staff, the White House and senior staff of the secretary and deputy secretary of defense are all notified if the secretary is unable to perform his duties, and that related notification for transfer of authorities includes an explanation of the reason. "Nothing is more important to the secretary of defense and the Department of Defense than the trust and confidence of the American people and the public we serve and we'll continue to work hard every day to earn and deserve that trust," Ryder said. Inspector General Initiates Review of DOD Procedures Following Austin Hospitalization [2024-01-11] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department's inspector general yesterday sent a memorandum announcing a review examining the roles, processes, procedures, responsibilities and actions related to the secretary of defense's recent hospitalization. "[The review will] assess whether the DOD's policies and procedures are sufficient to ensure timely and appropriate notifications and the effective transition of authorities as may be warranted due to health-based or other unavailability of senior leadership," the memorandum said. During a briefing today, Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said the department welcomes the review and will cooperate with the IG to ensure its success. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland, in late December for surgery to treat prostate cancer. He returned home the following day. On Monday of last week, the secretary was again admitted to Walter Reed with complications related to that earlier surgery. Those complications included nausea, along with abdominal, hip and leg pain. In response to those complications, Austin underwent additional treatment at Walter Reed, and he remains there recovering from those additional procedures. After Austin's admission to Walter Reed last week, the Defense Department failed to properly notify appropriate parties, including President Joe Biden, about the secretary's condition. In addition to the inspector general review, the secretary's chief of staff directed the DOD's director of administration and management to conduct a 30-day review of the department's notification process for assumption of functions and duties of the secretary of defense. "While [there are] understandably many outstanding questions, it's also important to allow both of these reviews to run their course so that we can assure a full accounting of the facts and importantly to ensure that we can most effectively improve processes and procedures as necessary, as well as meet the standards of transparency expected by the American public, Congress and the news media," Ryder said. Ryder also told reporters that while certain notifications hadn't been made while Austin was in the hospital, the Defense Department's command and control was not at risk. "This is an important point, that during this situation at no time was there a gap in command and control for the Department of Defense," he said. "At all times, national security was in good hands and either the secretary or the deputy defense secretary were at the helm." DOD Expands Pilot Program to Renew USID Cards Online [2024-01-16] WASHINGTON -- As part of an expansion of a Defense Department pilot program that kicked off in February 2023, most Uniformed Services Identification, or USID, card holders can now renew their cards online and receive them in the mail, instead of having to schedule an appointment at an ID card office.  Before this expansion, only sponsors with a common access card could request online renewals, but now most retirees and non-CAC holders are eligible. The ongoing pilot program allows family members, retirees and others to avoid making appointments at a pass and ID card office. Instead, they can renew USID cards online via the ID Card Office online, or IDCO, website. It's important to note that the pilot program is for renewal of the USID card only -- not for the initial issue. Also, the pilot is limited to cardholders within the United States, though expansion to non-US addresses is in the works. Mike Zarlenga, with the Defense Manpower Data Center, said that DOD currently issues about 4.5 million ID cards each year. About 2.5 million of those are USID cards, and of those, roughly one million are renewals eligible for online renewal. The pilot program, Zarlenga said, is meant to make life easier for family members and retirees.  "We think modern capabilities like renewing a driver's license online make it easier for people to get what they need when they need it without burdening them with having to take a trip somewhere," Zarlenga said.  "We're excited about this, and it sounds like people see online renewal as making their lives easier, based on the feedback we're getting." The pilot program also enhances the DOD mission by freeing up appointment slots at pass and ID offices for active duty military personnel and civilian government employees who need to apply for or renew a CAC.  "We want to enable the ID card sites today to better service the CAC holders who are our mission enablers," Zarlenga said. "We want to make sure that people visiting that office can get an appointment when they need one, and they can get their CAC and resume their mission or duties with minimal impact to them or to the department."  More information about the online USID card renewal pilot program, including restrictions and requirements, is available on the cac.mil website.   Austin Leaves Hospital, Returns Home [2024-01-18] WASHINGTON -- After a two-week stay at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III returned home on Monday. The secretary said he expects in the short term to continue his recovery at home while also performing his duties as the defense secretary. "I'm grateful for the excellent care I received at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and want to thank the outstanding doctors and nursing staff for their professionalism and superb support," Austin said in a statement released earlier this week. "I also am thankful and appreciative for all the well wishes I received for a speedy recovery. Now, as I continue to recuperate and perform my duties from home, I'm eager to fully recover and return as quickly as possible to the Pentagon." According to doctors at Walter Reed, Austin underwent surgery Dec. 22 to treat prostate cancer, which had been detected earlier in the month following a routine screening. On Jan. 1, the secretary was re-admitted to Walter Reed with complications related to that earlier surgery. During a briefing yesterday, Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, said Austin's doctors have said the secretary is expected to make a full recovery. They also noted that in relation to the cancer, early diagnosis and treatment led to an excellent prognosis. Austin will continue to undergo physical therapy while at home. Houthis Degraded Last week, the U.S. and U.K., with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada and the Netherlands, conducted strikes against military targets in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen as part of an effort to disrupt and degrade Houthi ability to attack international shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, Ryder said. "The U.S. also conducted subsequent follow-up strikes against a radar site on Saturday ... that was part of the original target list, and four anti-ship ballistic missiles yesterday ... that were prepared to launch from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, [and] which presented an imminent threat to both merchant and U.S. Navy ships in the region." According to U.S. Central Command, the strike against the Houthi radar site was conducted by the USS Carney using Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles. Following the U.S. attacks on the Houthi site, Ryder said, the U.S. assessment is that Houthi capabilities have been degraded. "In our assessment, we hit what we intended to hit with good effects," the general said. "The objective here was to disrupt and degrade Houthi capabilities to conduct attacks. And we believe that overall, in terms of the scope and the number of strikes that we took, we have degraded their ability to attack." Ryder also said that while the department believes the strikes met their objectives, the Houthis still maintain capability and the U.S. military and its partners remain vigilant. "We're going to keep working alongside our international partners," he said. "And ... we're going to continue to do what we need to do to protect our forces, but also deter future attacks from the Houthis." According to U.S. Centcom, Iranian-backed Houthi militants have attempted to attack and harass vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden 28 times since Nov. 19. Search Continues for Lost Navy SEALs Last Thursday, Centcom naval forces, including U.S. Navy SEALs, seized Iranian-made ballistic missile and cruise missile components from a vessel operating in the Arabian Sea near the coast of Somalia. According to Centcom, this was the first seizure of lethal, Iranian-supplied advanced conventional weapons to the Houthis since the beginning of Houthi attacks November 2023. During that action, two U.S. Navy SEALs were lost at sea. Centcom continues to search for those lost SEALs, Ryder said. "On the search and rescue, Centcom continues to lead that effort," he said. "It is ongoing, certainly. We hope that we are able to recover our teammates. Our thoughts and prayers are clearly with their families at this time." For Service Members, Access to Mental Health Care Streamlined Under Brandon Act [2024-01-22] WASHINGTON -- Last year, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness signed policy implementing within the Defense Department and across the military services the requirements laid out under the Brandon Act.  Within the DOD and military services, the Brandon Act allows service members to request a mental health evaluation just by making the request to their supervisor.  Dr. Lester Martinez-Lopez, the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said the Brandon Act is now accomplishing two things within the DOD and military services.  First, he said, the act ensures that when a service member feels they need a mental health evaluation they need only ask their supervisor for that. Such a request can be made at any time and in any location. They also don't need to explain why they think they need a mental health evaluation. Their supervisor, in turn, will ensure that a mental health evaluation takes place as soon as possible and without any roadblocks.  "If you're in garrison and mental health care is readily available, then it might just be a few hours," Martinez-Lopez said. "If you're on a ship in the middle of nowhere and you need mental health care, it might take a day or two and happen by telemedicine or some other way. But it doesn't matter where you are. All you need to do is raise your hand and tell your supervisor and they will take care of that as soon as possible."  Privacy is also a key aspect of the Brandon Act, Martinez-Lopez said.  "The second part is to make it easy and make it confidential, to keep that information -- just like we keep any other medical information -- confidential," he said. "The intent of that is to lower the shield from the standpoint of stigma. There are a lot of issues around the stigma of seeking mental health care. But like the secretary of defense says, mental health is health."  Already there are a variety of avenues by which a servicemember can seek out mental health treatment, Martinez-Lopez said. But the Brandon Act has greatly simplified and sped up the process of helping service members get the treatment they need.  Implementation of the requirements under the Brandon Act, in part, requires new training for the force, Martinez-Lopez said. All members of the armed forces, for instance, will need to understand that there is a new venue through which they can seek mental health care. That kind of training provides awareness of what's available under the Brandon Act.  For supervisors who must respond to requests from their subordinates and follow through in ensuring that mental health care is made available, there will also need to be training.  "The supervisors need to know what their responsibilities are under the act," he said. "They need to take this very seriously and know they are not done until that service member is taken care of for their mental health concern."  Setting up and executing training so that service members and leaders know how to use and implement the Brandon Act is has been delegated to the individual services and is underway now.  If DOD is successful in implementing the Brandon Act, one effect will be that the stigma of seeking mental health assistance is diminished, Martinez-Lopez said.  "People will realize that if they think they need mental health treatment, they can just get it," he said. "From the standpoint of leadership, this is a critical part of leadership. Taking care of your people is part of leadership. And mental health is part of taking care of people. So if you're a leader, this is not just a medical issue. This is a leadership issue and a leader needs to take ownership."  Also, a sign of success under the Brandon Act will be better mental health outcomes, he said.  "From the mental health standpoint, people will be dealing with their issues, they will be fully functional, they will be ready," he said. "And then as a byproduct of that, there'll be fewer suicides. That's what we're aiming for."  The Brandon Act is named after Petty Officer 3rd Class Brandon Caserta who died by suicide in 2018. Caserta's inability to get the mental health care he needed was a big motivating factor in the passing of the Brandon Act legislation.  "He asked for help and the help was not forthcoming," Martinez-Lopez said.  Caserta's parents, Martinez-Lopez said, wanted to ensure that their son's death was not for nothing. They embarked on an effort to ensure better access to mental health care in the armed forces, which they hoped would mean fewer suicides. Their efforts spurred creation of the Brandon Act, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden on December 27, 2021, as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022.  "They could have easily grieved their son's death, but done nothing," Martinez-Lopez said. "They're really champions and I applaud them for their grit. It's not easy to navigate the waters in Washington, D.C., and keep pushing for an agenda like this. They're passionate people." U.S., Partners Continue Pushback Against Iranian-Backed Houthi Terrorist Group [2024-01-23] WASHINGTON -- Yesterday afternoon, the U.S. and U.K., with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada and the Netherlands, conducted strikes on eight Houthi targets in Iranian-backed Houthi terrorist-controlled areas of Yemen, the Pentagon press secretary said. Yesterday's strikes came "in response to the Iranian regime-backed Houthi's continued attacks against international and commercial shipping as well as naval vessels transiting the Red Sea," Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said during a briefing today. "The strikes were precise, proportionate and intended to further disrupt and degrade the capabilities the Houthis have been using to threaten global trade and the lives of innocent mariners." According to U.S. Central Command, the strike targets included missile systems and launchers, air defense systems, radars and underground weapons storage facilities. The strikes occurred near midnight, Jan. 22, Yemen time. Within 15 to 30 minutes following those initial strikes, Ryder said, the U.S. struck an additional Houthi target -- an anti-ship cruise missile -- which he said was, at the time, prepared to launch and which presented a threat to vessels operating in the region. "Our aim remains to de-escalate tensions and restore stability in the Red Sea," Ryder said. "We will not hesitate to defend the lives and the free flow of commerce in one of the world's most critical waterways in the face of continued threats." According to Ryder, the Defense Department assesses that since January 11, the U.S. and partners have destroyed or degraded over 25 Houthi missile launch and deployment facilities, more than 20 missiles and an additional number of unmanned aerial vehicles, coastal radar and air surveillance capabilities and weapons storage areas. "We have been very focused on targeting the kinds of things that they've been employing or using to conduct attacks against international shipping and mariners," he said. "That will continue to be our focus." Strikes in Iraq Centcom also announced that the U.S. had today conducted strikes in Iraq against the Iranian-backed militia group Kataib Hezbollah. That strike was in response to attacks made by the group this past weekend, including at al-Asad Airbase in western Iraq. According to Centcom, the strikes were against three facilities used by the Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia group and other Iran-affiliated groups in Iraq. "These strikes targeted KH headquarters, storage and training locations for rocket, missile and one-way attack UAV [unmanned aerial vehicles] capabilities," the Centcom release said. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said in a statement that the strikes had been authorized by President Joe Biden. "I am grateful for both the skill and professionalism with which our personnel planned and conducted these strikes and the continued efforts of our troops on the ground as they work with regional partners to further dismantle and degrade ISIS," Austin said. "The president and I will not hesitate to take necessary action to defend them and our interests. We do not seek to escalate conflict in the region. We are fully prepared to take further measures to protect our people and our facilities. We call on these groups and their Iranian sponsors to immediately cease these attacks." Change in ISIS Threat Means Evolution in Long-Term U.S.-Iraq Relationship [2024-01-25] WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon today underscored the mutual commitment by the United States and Iraq to strengthening the evolving security relationship between the two nations. Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said today that the two nations have, for a decade now, enjoyed a productive security relationship aimed at the shared goal of defeating the threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria terrorist group. The U.S. and Iraq will, in the coming days, begin discussions as part of the U.S.-Iraq Higher Military Commission, or HMC, to plan how the existing security relationship between the two partner nations is expected to evolve going forward. Discussions taking place as part of the HMC are expected to shape the role of U.S. forces in Iraq and the defeat-ISIS mission. How the U.S. role in that mission will change depends on three key factors, Singh said. Those three factors include the current nature of the threat from ISIS, operational and environmental requirements and Iraqi security forces capability levels. "Expert working groups of military and defense professionals will examine these three factors and advise the HMC on the most effective evolution of the D-ISIS coalition mission, ensuring that ISIS can never resurge, in consultation with coalition partners at all stages of the process," Singh said. The groundwork for the HMC discussions was laid last summer during the U.S.-Iraq Joint Security Cooperation Dialogue in Washington, D.C., Singh said. "During that August 2023 meeting, the U.S. and Iraq committed to start the HMC to discuss the coalition's mission to defeat ISIS," she said. The U.S. currently has a military presence in Iraq as part of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve. The CJTF OIR mission is to advise, assist and enable partnered forces in the defeat of ISIS within designated areas of Iraq and Syria. Inside Iraq, the U.S. works in partnership with both the Iraqi security forces and the Kurdish security forces to carry out that mission. Discussions on how that mission may evolve, Singh said, are relevant now because after 10 years the threat posed by ISIS may also be different. That's something the HMC will investigate as part of its discussions she said. "We want to make sure that the threat that we saw 10 years ago is not the same threat that we face today, which is why we have entered into this HMC working group to address what the future, what the partnership, what the bilateral relationship looks like," she said. "This is about the future and making sure that Iraq is set up for success in defending its own national security and sovereignty, and how the U.S. can support Iraq in doing that." One thing Singh said the HMC meetings will not involve is U.S. "withdrawal" from Iraq. "Let me be clear, the HMC meeting is not a negotiation about the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq," Singh said. "The United States and the coalition are in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government to fight ISIS. Our Iraqi partners have assured us of their commitment towards working together to shape this future on U.S. military presence and the enduring defeat of ISIS. The HMC will enable the transition to an enduring bilateral security partnership between the U.S. and Iraq, building on the successes of the D-ISIS campaign in partnership with the Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve." Singh said the U.S. and Iraq have for a decade now worked together in a productive and successful partnership that has put U.S. military and coalition forces alongside ISF and KSF in a mutual effort to eliminate the destructive influence of ISIS. While that partnership is expected to evolve going forward, neither nation wants to see it come to an end. "The start of the HMC process reflects the evolving U.S.-Iraq bilateral relationship, and it underscores our commitment to deepen our security cooperation to advance stability within Iraq and the region," Singh said. 3 U.S. Service Members Killed, Others Injured in Jordan Following Drone Attack [2024-01-29] WASHINGTON -- Three U.S. soldiers were killed yesterday in Jordan, while more than 40 other service members were injured following an uncrewed aerial system attack at a military base near the Syrian border. Those service members were in Jordan to support Operation Inherent Resolve, which is the U.S. and coalition mission to ensure the defeat of ISIS. The three soldiers killed are Sgt. William J. Rivers of Carrollton, Georgia; Spc. Kennedy L. Sanders of Waycross, Georgia; and Spc. Breonna A. Moffett of Savannah, Georgia. All three were assigned to the 718th Engineer Company, 926th Engineer Battalion, 926th Engineer Brigade, Fort Moore, Georgia. The attack occurred in the early morning at the logistics support base located at Tower 22 of the Jordanian Defense Network. Approximately 350 U.S. Army and Air Force personnel are deployed to the base. The three soldiers were killed when a one-way uncrewed aerial system impacted their container housing units. "I am outraged and deeply saddened by the deaths of three of our U.S. service members and the wounding of other American troops in an attack last night against U.S. and coalition forces, who were deployed to a site in northeastern Jordan near the Syrian border to work for the lasting defeat of ISIS," Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said in a statement released yesterday following the attack. "These brave Americans and their families are in my prayers, and the entire Department of Defense mourns their loss." During a briefing at the Pentagon today, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said that in addition to the three deaths, more than 40 service members were also injured in the attack. Of those, eight had to be evacuated. "Eight personnel who received injuries required medical evacuation from Jordan to the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center," she said. "Three of those patients are scheduled for imminent transport to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center for follow-on care. The other five have been assessed for mild TBIs and are expected to return to duty." Singh said DOD and Centcom are working now to investigate how the attack happened. "We are still assessing what happened and how a one-way attack drone was able to impact the facility," Singh said. "U.S. Central Command continues to investigate this attack." Right now, Singh said, it's still unclear who is responsible for the attack. "In terms of attribution for the attack, we know this is an [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps]-backed militia," she said. "It has the footprints of Kataib Hezbollah. But not making a final assessment on that, our teams here are continuing to do the analysis. We know that Iran is behind it. And certainly as we've said before ... Iran continues to arm and equip these groups to launch these attacks, and we will certainly hold them responsible." Over the weekend, Singh said, Austin received updates on the attack and also participated in a briefing with President Joe Biden and his national security team. Since October, U.S. service members and U.S. and coalition facilities have been attacked more than 150 times in both Iraq and Syria. This most recent attack is the first to kill U.S. service members and is also the first attack in Jordan. Singh reiterated that the U.S. does not seek wider conflict in the Middle East, or wider conflict or a war with Iran. She also said how the U.S. responds to this most recent attack will be decided by the president following consultation with his national security team and the secretary of defense. "That's ultimately a decision that the president is going to make," Singh said. "He's convened his national security team ... frequently within these past few days. I'm not going to get ahead of any decisions that the president and secretary make on this together. But certainly, as our statement said yesterday, we are committed to responding and we will do so at a time and place of our choosing." Sgt. William J. Rivers, 46, served in the Army Reserve as an interior electrician. Among his awards and decorations are the Army Achievement Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and the Army Service Ribbon. Spc. Kennedy L. Sanders, 24, served in the Army Reserve as a horizontal construction engineer. Her awards and decorations include the National Defense Service Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and the Army Service Ribbon. Spc. Breonna A. Moffett, 23, served in the Army Reserve as a horizontal construction engineer. Her awards include the National Defense Service Medal and the Army Service Ribbon. Austin to Call Families of Fallen Soldiers [2024-01-30] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III is expected to call the families of three soldiers who were killed over the weekend in an attack by an uncrewed aerial system, or UAS, at a military base in Jordan, a Defense Department official said. "I want to just express again our condolences to the family members and loved ones of the three U.S. soldiers who were killed in Jordan this weekend in the Iran proxy drone attack at Tower 22," said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder during a briefing today. "Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with them and Secretary Austin will be calling each of the families to personally relay his respects." It is also expected that on Friday Austin will attend the dignified transfer of remains at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware. It is during that event that the remains of the three soldiers will be returned to the United States. The three soldiers killed are: Sgt. William J. Rivers of Carrollton, Georgia; Kennedy L. Sanders of Waycross, Georgia, who was posthumously promoted to sergeant; and Breonna A. Moffett of Savannah, Georgia, who was also posthumously promoted to sergeant. The soldiers were assigned to the 718th Engineer Company, 926th Engineer Battalion, 926th Engineer Brigade at Fort Moore, Georgia, and were in Jordan to support Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S. and coalition mission to ensure the defeat of ISIS. Following the attack, U.S. Central Command continues to look for answers regarding how an attack drone might have penetrated the facility's air defenses, where it originated, and which Iranian proxy group is responsible. Ryder also said that any response to the attack in Jordan will be at the discretion of the president. "When it comes to the situation in Iraq and Syria and Jordan, our troops were attacked, and three U.S. service members were killed and over 40 wounded," Ryder said. "The president and the secretary have both said that we will respond at a time and place of our choosing. ... I'm not going to go into details of what that could look like, other than the fact that there will be consequences." U.S. Can Respond Decisively to Cyber Threat Posed by China [2024-02-01] WASHINGTON -- The cyber challenge posed by China is unlike any challenge ever faced by the U.S. and its allies, said the commander of United States Cyber Command.  Speaking yesterday before the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Army Gen. Paul M. Nakasone told lawmakers that cyber actors in China have used malware to hold at risk critical U.S. infrastructure such as systems that provide water, electricity and fuel to U.S. citizens. He said those efforts are meant to provide options for the Chinese in crisis or conflict.  "When we have discovered them in these critical infrastructures, the first thing that we need to do is to make sure that we get them out," Nakasone said. "The second thing is that we need to have a vigilance that continues onward. This is not an episodic threat that we're going to face. This is persistent ... we have to operate every day; we have to have a vigilance. We have to have offensive and defensive capabilities."  Despite those threats, Nakasone said U.S. cyber warriors are more than adequate defenders of the nation's infrastructure.  "The men and women of U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency continue to maintain our strategic advantage by contesting the threats posed by [China] in cyberspace by using the full scope of our authorities and the full spectrum of our capabilities to impose costs, deny benefits, and encourage restraint on the part of our adversary."  Nakasone also said the U.S. has its own offensive, cyber capability and making that capability well known serves as a deterrent against Chinese cyber aggression.  "We do have the capability, and we're very, very good--the best," Nakasone said. "And in terms of the way that we communicate it, we communicate it in many different ways--from our policymakers who have these discussions to the exercises that we conduct to the real-world examples that, that we do with a series of different partners."  While Nakasone told lawmakers he believed China is a "near-peer adversary," he also reassured those lawmakers that he believes the U.S. will maintain its supremacy in cyberspace.  Nakasone has served as the commander of U.S. Cyber Command and the director of the National Security Agency since May 2018. He relinquishes his position Friday. Austin: Americans Have a Right to Know if Leaders' Health Challenges May Affect Their Duties [2024-02-01] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III today addressed journalists at the Pentagon to discuss recent health issues that twice took him away from his official duties, the attacks that occurred in Jordan which resulted in the death of three soldiers, and the ongoing attacks against cargo ships transiting the Red Sea. Early last month, Pentagon officials revealed Austin had undergone surgery at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, in December, to treat prostate cancer. They also revealed that complications related to that surgery again put him in the hospital and took him away from his duties in early January. In neither instance had the secretary told President Joe Biden about those hospitalizations. Today, Austin said he regretted not having told the president about his condition. "We did not handle this right," he said. "I did not handle this right. I should have told the president about my cancer diagnosis. I should have also told my team and the American public. And I take full responsibility. I apologize to my teammates and to the American people." Austin said Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks assumed his responsibilities both times he was away. "I want to make it very clear that there were no gaps in authorities and no risk to the department's command and control," he said. "At every moment, either I or the deputy secretary was in full charge." He said the reason he failed to reveal his medical condition to the president, the rest of the Defense Department, or to the American people was his own sense of personal privacy. "I was being treated for prostate cancer," he said. "The news shook me. And I know that it shakes so many others, especially in the Black community. It was a gut punch. And, frankly, my first instinct was to keep it private. I don't think it's news that I'm a pretty private guy. I never like burdening others with my problems." Austin said he now realizes that since he accepted the role of secretary of defense, he no longer is entitled to the degree of privacy he was previously accustomed to. "Taking this kind of job means losing some of the privacy that most of us expect," he said. "The American people have a right to know if their leaders are facing health challenges that might affect their ability to perform their duties, even temporarily. So, a wider circle should have been notified, especially the president." Since his stay in the hospital, Austin said he has met with the president and discussed what happened. "I've apologized directly to President Biden, and I've told him that I'm deeply sorry for not letting him know immediately that I received a heavy diagnosis and was getting treatment," Austin said. "He has responded with a grace and warm heart that anyone who knows President Biden would expect. And I'm grateful for his full confidence in me." The secretary also said that his failure to notify the American people about his diagnosis, treatment and temporary departure from duty was a missed opportunity to discuss an important health issue. "I was diagnosed with a highly treatable form of cancer, a pretty common one," he said. "One in eight American men will get prostate cancer. One in six Black men will get it. I'm here with a clear message to other men, especially older men: Get screened. Get your regular checkups. Prostate cancer has a glass jaw. If your doctor can spot it, they can treat it and beat it." After it was revealed that Austin had been away from his duties, the Defense Department's inspector general sent a memorandum announcing a review to examine the roles, processes, procedures, responsibilities and actions related to the secretary of defense's hospitalization. "[The review will] assess whether the DOD's policies and procedures are sufficient to ensure timely and appropriate notifications and the effective transition of authorities as may be warranted due to health-based or other unavailability of senior leadership," the Jan. 10 memorandum said. In addition to the inspector general's review, the secretary's chief of staff directed the DOD's director of administration and management to conduct a 30-day review of the department's notification process for assumption of functions and duties of the secretary of defense. Three Service Members Killed in Jordan Last weekend, three U.S. soldiers were killed in Jordan, and more than 40 other service members were injured following an an attack by an uncrewed aerial system at a military base near the Syrian border. The service members were in Jordan to support Operation Inherent Resolve, which is the mission by U.S. and coalition members to ensure the defeat of ISIS. The three soldiers killed were Army Sgt. William J. Rivers of Carrollton, Georgia; Army Sgt. Kennedy L. Sanders of Waycross, Georgia; and Army Sgt. Breonna A. Moffett of Savannah, Georgia. They were assigned to the 718th Engineer Company, 926th Engineer Battalion, 926th Engineer Brigade at Fort Moore, Georgia. Sanders and Moffett were posthumously promoted to sergeant by the Army Reserve. "The entire department is united in our outrage and sorrow over the death of three U.S. service members," Austin said. "Our thoughts and prayers are with their families and their loved ones. And we know that this grief will never leave them. And we hope that they know that the department's love and support will never leave them, either." The secretary said those three soldiers, along with more than 40 others who were injured in the attack, played a vital role in supporting the mission to ensure the lasting defeat of the terrorist group ISIS. "They risked their lives and lost their lives to keep their fellow Americans safe from global terrorism," Austin said. "The president will not tolerate attacks on American troops, and neither will I." The attack in Jordan, Austin said, was perpetrated by an Iran-backed militia, and other Iran-backed militias -- including the Houthis -- continue to foment turmoil in the Middle East in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist assault on Israel. "We will continue to work to avoid a wider conflict in the region," Austin said. "But we will take all necessary actions to defend the United States, our interests and our people. And we will respond when we choose, where we choose, and how we choose." In the Red Sea, the Iran-backed Houthis have continued assaults on commercial vessels. Austin said those attacks are not just of concern for the U.S., but for the world. "The Houthis continue to do some things that are very irresponsible and illegal," Austin said. "Our goal is to make sure that we ... continue to take away capability from the Houthis to do what they've been doing. And this is not a, this is not a U.S. issue. This is an international issue ... this is about freedom of navigation. There are others in the world that are watching this to see how serious we are about this, and we are serious." 5 Months With No Base Budget Affects Department's Modernization Efforts [2024-02-06] WASHINGTON -- Soon, the fiscal year 2025 national defense budget is expected to be presented as part of the fiscal 2025 presidential budget request. At the same time, last year's budget has still not been passed, and the Defense Department is operating on a continuing resolution, said the deputy Pentagon press secretary. "The department continues to urge Congress to pass our base budget," said Sabrina Singh during a briefing today. "We still do not have an FY24 budget ... and the department will be getting ready to submit our FY25 budget. As the secretary has said, the one thing we cannot buy back is time, and we are losing critical time under a [continuing resolution] that we need to be spending modernizing our military to meet the pacing challenge. Continuously living under a [continuing resolution] is asking us to try and fight with one hand tied behind our back." Earlier this week, the Senate announced a supplemental bill to provide military aid to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression, Singh said. The bill means investment in the U.S. defense industrial base, the production of weapons and equipment that can be sent to Ukraine, and an ongoing and important show of support to Ukraine. "If the U.S. stops support to Ukraine, we should be clear-eyed about the repercussions," Singh said. "Putin is not going to stop in his quest for power and control beyond Ukraine's borders toward NATO. If Putin attacks a NATO ally, we will find ourselves in direct conflict as we are committed to defending every inch of NATO. So let's be clear. We can do the responsible thing and pay now to help Ukraine or we can pay much more later to counteract the gains we would hand Vladimir Putin and an emboldened Russia." Air Defenses in Middle East Largely Successful In late January, three U.S. soldiers were killed and 40 other service members were injured at Tower 22 of the Jordanian Defense Network, a military base in Jordan near the Syrian border, following an attack by an uncrewed aerial system. Those service members were in Jordan to support Operation Inherent Resolve, a U.S. combined mission working by, with and through regional partners to ensure the defeat of ISIS. Singh said the loss of lives at the base is tragic, and Centcom is assessing and reviewing the attack to find out what happened, why it happened, and how a drone was able to evade air defenses. She also noted that in the Middle East, following more than 160 similar attacks, U.S. air defenses in the region have been mostly successful. "For a majority, those attacks have been unsuccessful," she said. "We've seen a majority of those attacks have minor damage to infrastructure, incur minor casualties to our service members," she said. "For the most part, our air defenses have been able to catch or been able to destroy any impact or any incoming ... whether it be rockets or drones at bases." Centcom Kills Kataib Hezbollah Commander Responsible for Strikes Against U.S. Forces [2024-02-08] WASHINGTON -- Last night, U.S. Central Command announced it had conducted a strike in Iraq that killed a Kataib Hezbollah commander responsible for directly planning and participating in attacks on U.S. forces in the region, said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder. "There are no indications of collateral damage or civilian casualties at this time," said Ryder during a briefing today. "Additionally, initial assessments indicate that there were no additional militants injured or killed beyond the one Kataib Hezbollah commander who was targeted." Ryder said the department is confident in the process used to identify the individual and to hold him accountable. Department Mourns Marines Killed in Helicopter Crash On Tuesday, five U.S. Marines were killed in a helicopter crash in California. The crew had been participating in a training operation. In a statement earlier today, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said, "We mourn the tragic loss of five U.S. Marines earlier this week during a training flight enroute from Nevada to California. My prayers are with these brave Marines and their families, loved ones, and teammates. "As the Marine Corps investigates this deadly crash, it is yet another reminder that across our nation and the world our selfless service members put their lives on the line every day to keep our country safe. The entire Department of Defense honors these brave Marines' service and grieves their passing." During today's news conference, Ryder added that the five Marines were assigned to Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 361, Marine Aircraft Group 16, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing. Their names will be released once notifications have been made to next of kin. Air Force to Re-Introduce Warrant Officer Rank, Other Major Changes [2024-02-13] WASHINGTON -- To best optimize itself for great power competition, the Air Force plans to, among other things, bring back warrant officers within the cyber and information technology professions, said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin during a presentation Monday at the Air Force Association's 2024 Warfare Symposium. That change was among two dozen announced by senior Air Force officials. Each change is specifically designed to prepare the service for strategic power challenges from competitors like China and Russia. "Both China and Russia are actively developing and fielding more advanced capabilities designed to defeat U.S. power projection," said Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. "The need for modernization against capable, well-resourced strategic adversaries never stops. But modernization isn't the only thing we need to do to be competitive. Today we are announcing 24 key decisions we have made to improve both the readiness of the current force and our ability to stay competitive over time, to continuously generate enduring competitiveness." Those changes, Kendall said, focus on people, readiness, power projection and capability development and are implemented within the Department of the Air Force, the Air Force and the Space Force. Within the Air Force, Allvin explained, the service is looking to better attract and develop cutting-edge talent, specifically within information technology and cyber fields. The service plans to expand technical tracks for officers and create technical tracks for enlisted, and to also reintroduce the rank of warrant officer within the information technology and cyber fields as a way to maintain technical leadership with those skills. "We know there are people who want to serve. They just want to code for their country. They would like to be network attack people and do that business," Allvin said. "But everybody needs to see themselves into the future beyond just this assignment or the next. So, developing that warrant officer track for this narrow career field, we anticipate will drive that talent in and help us to keep that talent. There's something specific about this career field, why it's attractive and it's a nice match for a warrant officer program. The pace of change of the cyber world, the coding world, the software world -- it is so rapidly advancing, we need those airmen to be on the cutting edge and stay on the cutting edge." The Air Force had warrant officers when it was created in 1947, after being split off from the U.S. Army. But the service stopped appointing warrant officers in the late 1950s. Allvin also discussed changes in the way the Air Force will conduct exercises. The plan is for the service to implement large-scale exercises and mission-focused training which encompasses multiple operations plans to demonstrate and rehearse for complex, large-scale military operations, he said. "We're going to reorient ourselves to more large-scale exercises rather than a smaller scale that have been a product of the last two to three decades," Allvin said. "Large-scale means multiple weapons systems, multiple capabilities, coming together in a combat-simulated environment and showing our ability to execute the mission that's going to be expected of us in the high-end conflict." Exercises in recent years, he said, have already been getting bigger. But those enhancements have been driven at the local level, not from the top down. That will change. "Our Air Force needs to institutionalize this," he said. "And we're going to do that." He said the Air Force is looking at fiscal year 2025 for its first large-scale, multi-combatant command exercise targeted at Indo-Pacom. Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. B. Chance Saltzman said a change underway within the Space Force is to enhance readiness by implementing standards that reflect operations under contested conditions rather than those of a benign environment. "The legacy force that we had, our roots ... were built around efficiency, built around a benign environment," he said. "So, the standards for readiness that we kind of held our forces to was different. It wasn't built for the domains that we're facing, a contested domain." Now, Saltzman said, the Space Force must rewrite its standards for readiness centered around a contested domain, rather than an uncontested domain. That, he said, means in part having the right mix of officers, enlisted personnel and civilians in Space Force units. It also means training must be aimed at more than just procedural competency. "As soon as you put a red force in the mix, as soon as you put a threat in the mix, it radically changes your training," he said. "You have to have advanced training, you have to have tactics training, you have to understand how you work together, in-comms, out of comms, with other units, in order to continue to achieve the kinds of effects in a contested domain when an adversary, a capable adversary, is doing everything they can to stop you from being successful." Space Force, he said, will build a training infrastructure and a test infrastructure to validate its tactics so operators will know more than just how to operate equipment -- but will be successful against an adversary. Kristyn Jones, who is currently performing the duties of the undersecretary of the Air Force, also pointed to changes at Department of the Air Force level. There, she said, among those changes, the department expects to create an Air Force Integrated Capabilities Office to lead capability development and resource prioritization. The office is expected to drive Department of the Air Force modernization investments. "We'll be looking at capabilities across our services, not in stovepipes," she said. "We're enabling end-to-end creation of effects. This organization will help us to prioritize our investments and will be responsible for working with us to determine the next iteration of operational imperatives." Austin Released From Hospital Today [2024-02-13] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III was released today from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, after having been admitted over the weekend. Dr. John Maddox, trauma medical director, and Dr. Gregory Chesnut, Center for Prostate Disease Research of the Murtha Cancer Center director, said in a statement: "Secretary Austin was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Feb. 11 with discomfort and concern from a bladder issue related to his December 2023 prostate cancer surgery. His condition indicated a need for close monitoring by the critical care team and supportive care. His diagnostic evaluation identified the cause of his bladder issue and it was corrected with non-surgical procedures on Feb. 12." The doctors say the secretary remained in good condition throughout his stay at Walter Reed, and as of this morning, no longer needed critical care monitoring. The secretary progressed well and was discharged to his home today. He is anticipated to continue his full recovery. In December, Austin underwent surgery at Walter Reed related to a prostate cancer diagnosis. His doctors say his prognosis "remains excellent." It was Sunday night that the secretary had been admitted into the critical care unit at Walter Reed for "supportive care and close monitoring," his doctors said. At the time, Austin had transferred the functions and duties of the office of the secretary of defense to Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the White House and Congress were also notified. This week, the United States will participate in another meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group. The first meeting of the group was in April 2022, and was spearheaded by Austin. Since then, as many as 50 nations have participated regularly in the monthly meetings to work together to provide security assistance to Ukraine. It's expected that Austin will attend this most recent virtual iteration of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said during a briefing at the Pentagon today. "The secretary still intends to participate in the virtual Ukraine defense contact group tomorrow," she said. "This includes delivering opening remarks which will be livestreamed and available to view on the DOD website." Earlier today, the U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan national security supplemental request which authorizes the defense department to, among other things, provide military aid to help Ukraine defend itself against ongoing Russian aggression, deliver security assistance to Israel, and provide humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians, Singh said. "It is also an investment in our nation's defense industrial base," she added. "The United States has not provided a presidential drawdown package for Ukraine since December 27, and as the president said in his statement earlier today, the cost of inaction is rising every day." Singh said that if U.S. support to Ukraine wavers, Russia will not stop its war in Ukraine, and may also be emboldened to seek gains beyond Ukraine's borders. "If we do not stand against aggressors who invade ... another sovereign nation's territory, the consequences for our country's national security will be substantial," Singh said. "Our allies and our adversaries are watching. And so, we welcome this bipartisan supplemental agreement and ask that the House act urgently." Defense Department Releases Companion Video for CMMC Public Comment Period [2024-02-15] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department has released a detailed video that explains the nuances, complexities and importance of the recently published proposed rule for its Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program. The video is designed to better inform members of the defense industrial base and other interested parties about the proposed rule for the CMMC program and to help those stakeholders better prepare their own comments and input that will be reviewed before the CMMC program proposed rule is finalized. A 60-day public comment period on the proposed rule opened Dec. 26, 2023. The public comment period closes Feb. 26 at 11:59 p.m. Comments received during the public comment period will be reviewed and will inform the final rule. The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program gives the Defense Department a mechanism to verify the readiness of defense contractors both large and small to handle controlled unclassified information and federal contract information in accordance with federal regulations. A big part of this program is the use of authorized CMMC "third-party assessment organizations," or C3PAOs, to conduct CMMC Level 2 certification assessments for companies seeking that assessment level. CMMC Level 3 assessments will be conducted by the Department. The C3PAOs are not paid by the department but will instead be paid by defense industrial base companies seeking verification of compliance. The department does, however, play a role in setting the requirements for the C3PAOs. Gurpreet Bhatia, the DOD Chief Information Officer's principal director for cybersecurity, said that the CMMC program will play an important role in helping keep important DOD information within the department and out of the hands of adversaries. "Exfiltration from defense contractors is a problem that threatens our economic and national security," Bhatia said. "Malicious cyber actors continue to target defense contractors. Attacks focus both on large prime contractors and smaller subcontractors in lower tiers. Although DOD has had contract requirements that intended to address this for several years, the defense industrial base has been slow to implement." The CMMC program, Bhatia said, is designed to better help defense contractors be compliant with regulations related to cyber security and to also help the DOD keep track of who is and isn't compliant. "We're committed to implementing the CMMC Program," Bhatia said. "The added emphasis it will bring to protecting DOD's information is important." Bhatia also said that he hopes the defense industry and other stakeholders will take the opportunity to provide comment on the DOD's proposed CMMC rule so that their input can be considered when drafting the final rule. "It's important that we receive comments that clearly articulate your perspective so that the department can address those key concerns in the final rule," he said. "We must work together to enhance cybersecurity and protect DOD information from exfiltration." DOD's Spouse Employment Pilot Program Enters Second Year [2024-02-20] WASHINGTON -- In January 2023, the Defense Department kicked off the Military Spouse Career Accelerator Pilot program. As the program enters its second year, lessons learned from the first year will be used to make it even better going forward.  The three-year MSCAP program is designed to help military spouses find employment fellowships with participating companies. Following the conclusion of those fellowships, some military spouses may be offered full-time employment.  Eddy Mentzer, the program manager for spouse education and career opportunities in DOD's Military Community and Family Policy office, said military spouses often face a particular challenge finding employment because the military lifestyle means frequent moves that make it difficult to commit to a single employer or develop a career. That inability to find work makes life more difficult for families who may depend on having a dual-income household.  "No matter where you are, when you look at American society, the majority of families want to be dual employed -- that's the same for our military families," Mentzer said. "The financial challenges that arise when a military spouse is unable to earn an income to augment a military member's income often means those families will rethink their decision to stay with the military."  Spouse employment, Mentzer said, translates into readiness because it leads directly into retention and directly into the financial stability of military families.  "We know that all of those aspects are critical," he said. "And for too long, over a decade, we've had a challenge of a 20% unemployment rate for military spouses, which is huge for our families."  As of January, Mentzer said, some 250 companies have signed up to provide employment opportunities to miliary spouses through the MSCAP program, and more than 490 spouses have been placed into fellowships. In the program's first year, a substantial number of those spouses were ultimately offered permanent employment.  "The biggest success we saw in the MSCAP's first year was the conversion of military spouse fellows into full-time employment," Mentzer said. "We had more than 85% of our participants that were offered full-time employment with their employer hosts, which was just an astronomical result. And we're already seeing that continue into year two of the program."  Maria Allo, the spouse of a soldier in the Washington, D.C., area, applied to the program in April 2023 and has found success. Through MSCAP, she got a fellowship as a customer engineer with Equinix, a company that operates data centers. She has since accepted full-time employment with the program. Originally a petroleum engineer, Allo said having her own career is important to her.  "It allows me to pursue a path that fuels my passion, challenges me intellectually, and contributes something meaningful to the world," Allo said. "I enjoy providing solutions to issues, and this is what I do every day. It enables me to stay on top of the latest network trends and technologies, which will allow me to expand my knowledge."  Allo said not being born in the U.S. and being married to a military member has made finding professional work a challenge.  "Being a foreign-born spouse, I had to relocate to the U.S.," she said. "Securing a job had been challenging. Navigating through a new professional environment and rebuilding my entire professional network had been one challenging part of my career path. Though my spouse is not [on] active duty, his required training and mobilizations take him away frequently. It leaves me as the sole caretaker for our family. This means making major adjustments to my work schedule. The uncertainty around when my spouse might get mobilized or sent for training makes it hard for me to commit to big projects or career development milestones."  After many months of looking for work, Allo said, her husband shared with her that DOD had the spouse education and career opportunities program that might help her with her job search. It was the SECO office, she said, that pointed her toward the MSCAP program, and that is what ultimately led to her employment with Equinix.  Now, Allo said, she thinks MSCAP is a great opportunity -- not just for her, but for other spouses, as well.  "The MSCAP program doesn't just open doors, it blows the whole career wall down," Allo said. "Through the MSCAP, I have acquired an army of supportive, dedicated, hardworking military spouses like me, hungry to reclaim their professional identities. We have built incredible support, cheering each other on, sharing strategies, and wiping away tears. I have found mentors and program managers that have been there every step of the way, pushing me and helping me strategize my job-search journey."  Courtney Clyde, an Air Force spouse at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, was once a military officer herself. But she said with the birth of their first child, the couple agreed she should leave military service.  "We found out that we were having our daughter, so we made the choice that I would get out," she said. "Now, my career goal is kind of to explore marketing. I am currently a marketing manager at Frog Street because of the fellowship. And I intend on staying in marketing. I really enjoy it. I've learned quite a bit, and I'm really excited about this."  Through the MSCAP program, she said she found a fellowship with the company Frog Street as a field marketing manager. Like Allo and many others, that fellowship turned into full-time employment. Meaningful employment is something Clyde said is important to her.  "I definitely saw the challenges that come with being a spouse with my own mom and kind of having to take a backseat to my dad's career," she said. "It's really important for me and for my daughter to see that you can still pursue your dreams, that the sacrifices you make are worth it, and that you can make it happen."  At Frog Street, Clyde said she serves as a field marketing manager, and the experience there has been "absolutely incredible."  "I just walked into an amazing marketing team," she said. "They're very knowledgeable. My current boss, he was a veteran, as well. He was the one that advocated for Frog Street to work with this program, and I absolutely love that. I think one of the biggest and most amazing parts of our community is veterans and spouses really helping each other."  The MSCAP program has just cleared the first year of a three-year pilot. In the next two years, Mentzer said, there are going to be changes to make the program even better, based on what has been learned so far.  One thing Mentzer said he'd like to see is more employers involved in the program. Right now, 250 employers are participating in MSCAP. One way that might increase, he said, is to get more federal agencies involved.  "We have a lot of federal employers that are very interested in leveraging military spouse talent," he said. "How can we bring them into the fold as well as the private sector? There are definitely some challenges and some hurdles that we have to overcome within the federal sector."  Mentzer said MSCAP is working with federal employers to identify and break down those hurdles.  "That's one of our big goals for year two ... to open up to the federal sector, as well," he said. "We know that federal employment for many military spouses is the employment choice."  So far, the program had been focused on "career-ready" military spouses, Mentzer said. Those are spouses with a level of education and previous employment experience that make them career ready. But he said in the second year of the program, they are looking to open it up to a wider range of military spouses.  "What we've done moving into year two is we've begun to open that aperture with what we're calling 'skills-based fellowships,'" he said. "These fellowships ... are designed for spouses that may be a little bit more entry level, may not have that education, may not have the experience, but are still looking to find meaningful employment."  With the skills-based fellowship, he said, employers might bring in a spouse and provide more on-the-job training and skill development over the course of the fellowship.  "That might be in specific areas, maybe in taxes or insurance, where an employer can bring the spouse in for 12 weeks, provide that training, and then at the end of that, bring them into their full-time workforce," Mentzer said.  At the end of the three-year pilot, Mentzer said he hopes MSCAP will become a full-time program.  "The goal is, right now, that we turn this into a full-time program that becomes a regular part of everything we do to support military spouses through the department, through the Spouse Education and Career Opportunities program," he said. "Year one is definitely what we would call a huge success. Year two is already on its way to being a bigger success." Singh Makes Case for 'Sustained, Timely Funding' [2024-02-20] WASHINGTON -- In less than three weeks, on March 8, the continuing resolution currently funding the Defense Department will expire. "The department is still operating under a third extension of a continuing resolution, a stopgap funding measure that prevents any new starts and limits our ability to implement a fully resourced national defense strategy," said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh during a briefing today. "No amount of money can buy back the time we lose when we are forced to operate under continuing resolutions." A continuing resolution is temporary funding for federal agencies in lieu of an appropriations bill having been signed into law. For fiscal year 2024, that bill should have been signed into law before Oct 1, 2023. This isn't the first time the DOD has gone for a significant amount of time without an approved budget. Since 2011, the DOD has had appropriations at the start of the year for only one fiscal year -- FY2019. "If you add up the total time spent under a CR going back to 2011, we've spent nearly five years under CRs," Singh said. "That puts our national security at risk and prevents the department from modernizing as we continue to be constrained to existing funding levels and prevented from launching new programs." Continuing resolutions, such as the one DOD is currently operating under, are a short- term effort, and make it difficult for the department to do its job. Lacking a continuing resolution or a full appropriation, the government is also at risk of shutting down. "This brinkmanship creates uncertainty, increased costs and delays missions, and most importantly, it's a distraction for the force," Singh said. "We will continue to defend the nation and conduct ongoing military operations. But the impact of a government shutdown will be widespread and devastating to our service members, their families and DOD civilians who work every day in support of our national security." Singh said the Defense Department will continue to defend the nation, but that without an approved budget, it will be increasingly difficult to do what's being asked of it. "We must break this pattern of inaction," Singh said. "We can't out-compete the PRC with one hand tied behind our back [for] three, four, five or even six months of every fiscal year. The best way that Congress can support the department is to pass appropriations bills into law as soon as possible. We need predictable, adequate, sustained and timely funding." U.S. Committed to Stand With Ukraine 'For as Long as it Takes' [2024-02-22] WASHINGTON -- The president and the secretary of defense have committed to long-term, sustained support for Ukraine's fight against Russia, which invaded Ukraine two years ago this Saturday. But that commitment also requires a commitment by the U.S. Congress, said Deputy Pentagon Press SecretarySabrina Singh during a briefing today. "We can't stand by as an aggressor invades a sovereign neighbor," Singh said. "[Ukraine has] a commitment from the United States that we are going to be with you for as long as it takes ... We do need Congress to give us the funding in order to supply Ukraine with what it needs. We not only need the supplemental, we need a budget passed. And so, we're working with Congress and hopefully we'll be able to get something done." According to Singh, Ukraine's top priorities include air defense, artillery, and ammunition. She said whatever is contained in the next presidential drawdown authority package -- whenever that comes -- will reflect those priorities. "We're not taking anything off the table, but we certainly want to make sure that we're getting Ukraine what it needs," Singh said. "We can only do that when we have the supplemental passed in Congress. But of course, whatever we give Ukraine it will be to meet their urgent battlefield needs." In the same way the U.S. commitment to Ukraine requires a commitment from a large swath of the U.S. federal government -- Congress included -- commitments in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden as part of Operation Prosperity Guardian requires commitment from partners and allies as well. That operation, which kicked off in December, brings together multiple nations in order to address the challenges posed by Houthi attacks originating from Yemen which threaten the free flow of commerce in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. "The Houthis are, every single day, putting at risk innocent mariners transiting, putting at risk the freedom of navigation, and therefore, Operation Prosperity Guardian is there to protect against that alongside other allies and partners." Singh said the U.S. welcomes more partners to help join up with OPG or to create their own operations that can work alongside OPG. "We always welcome more nations to join that coalition. We have seen growth since December when it was first announced," Singh said. "We welcome more nations to join. Just recently you saw the EU announce a coalition as well, that will work alongside Operation Prosperity Guardian. We certainly are seeing an expansion of assets in the region, even if they're not under ... OPG ... they're still working alongside us and like-minded nations, with the same goal in mind." Two Years in, Russia's War on Ukraine Continues to Pose Threat to Global Security [2024-02-24] WASHINGTON -- Russia's invasion and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine is today not just an assault on Ukrainian freedom and liberty, but also a threat to global order, said U.S. officials. Two years ago today, on Feb. 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Since then, Russia has failed to capture Kyiv, take control of the Ukrainian government, or stifle the spirit of the Ukrainian people. "The scale of Putin's blunder is especially stark today," said Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III in a statement yesterday. "The Kremlin's forces failed to win the Battle of Kyiv, failed to topple Ukraine's democratically elected government, and failed to crush the will of the Ukrainian people. "Ukraine has retaken more than half of the sovereign territory that was grabbed by the Kremlin's forces in 2022," he continued. "And as a result of Putin's unprovoked war, Russia has suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties, lost significant equipment, and severely set back its military modernization program." Russia's war in Ukraine is not just a threat to Ukraine or the nations that share a border with it. Russia's war in Ukraine serves as a threat to all of Europe and the rest of the world, including the United States, President Joe Biden said. "The American people and people around the world understand that the stakes of this fight extend far beyond Ukraine," Biden said in a statement released yesterday. "Ten years ago, Putin occupied Crimea and created puppet regimes in Ukraine's Luhansk and Donetsk regions. Two years ago, he tried to wipe Ukraine off the map. If Putin does not pay the price for his death and destruction, he will keep going. And the costs to the United States -- along with our NATO allies and partners in Europe and around the world -- will rise." Today, as part of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, the United States continues to stand with Ukraine, along with international allies and partners, to provide what it needs for its defense now and in the future, Austin said. "Since 2022, I have regularly convened some 50 countries from around the world as part of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group," Austin said. "This global coalition works together to ensure that Ukraine has the capabilities that it needs to defend its people from Russian aggression and take back its sovereign territory." The first contact group meeting happened in April 2022 in Germany. At the time, Austin hosted nearly 40 nations to discuss current and future efforts to provide the support for Ukraine to maintain its sovereignty. Today, that monthly meeting has grown to some 50, like-minded nations that are united in their support of Ukraine's freedom. "I hosted the most recent meeting of this contact group just last week, and I was struck again by the steadiness of its members' collective resolve," Austin said. "This historic coalition has committed more than $87 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the start of Putin's war -- including 15 U.S. allies that, as a percentage of [gross domestic product], contribute more to Ukraine's capability needs than the United States." Since the start of the Russian invasion, the U.S. has provided, through presidential drawdown authority and the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, more than $44.2 billion in security assistance to Ukraine. Presidential drawdown authority allows the president in certain circumstances to withdraw weapons, ammunitions and materiel from existing U.S. military stocks and provide that to other nations. As part of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, DOD contracts for the purchase of materiel to be sent. Included in the materiel that has been sent to Ukraine are: air defense systems, radar systems, artillery systems, tanks, helicopters, ground-combat and support vehicles, unmanned aerial systems, missiles, rockets, and millions of rounds of small arms ammunition. It's not just equipment and weapons that is needed by Ukraine. Since the start of Russia's invasion, the U.S. and partner nations have also provided important training to Ukrainians to improve their combat skills and to help them learn to use the equipment that the U.S. and partners have provided. The U.S. and partners have trained more than 123,000 Ukrainians at more than 80 locations around the world. The U.S. alone has provided training to some 19,000 Ukrainian service members on combined arms, specific combat platforms, and staff and leadership skills. Also in the U.S., Ukrainian service members are being trained on the use of the F-16 aircraft. Other Ukrainian service members, both pilots and aircraft maintainers, are also in the United States to attend English-language classes as part of the F-16 training coalition led by Denmark and the Netherlands. Going forward, Austin said, the U.S. must continue to stand with Ukraine, not just for the sake of Ukraine's own freedom and security, but for that of the world, as well. "Today's grim milestone should spur us all to decide what kind of future we want for our children and grandchildren: an open, secure, and prosperous world of rules and rights or the violent and lawless world of aggression and chaos that Putin seeks," Austin said. "We support Ukraine's fight for freedom, both because it is the right thing to do and because doing so is central to America's continued security. After two years of Putin's reckless and lawless war, we salute Ukraine's brave defenders, and we wish Ukraine's unbowed citizens peace, security and freedom." Department Releases Unclassified Review Summary Following Austin's Hospitalization [2024-02-26] WASHINGTON -- The unclassified summary of a 30-day review into circumstances surrounding the hospitalization last month of Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III were released to the public today. In addition to the summary is a memorandum detailing actions to be taken that will ensure that Defense Department officials more clearly understand and are better prepared to handle an unexpected transfer of authority from the secretary to the deputy secretary or other official. Last month, Austin was unexpectedly admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland, for complications related to surgery in December to treat prostate cancer. During that hospitalization, the authorities of the secretary were transferred to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks. At the same time, the department failed to properly notify others, including President Joe Biden and Congress, about the secretary's condition or the transfer of authority. Following that oversight, Austin's chief of staff directed the DOD's director of administration and management to conduct a 30-day review of the department's notification process for assumption of functions and duties of the secretary of defense. An unclassified summary of that review was released today. "The review found that the deputy secretary was at all times positioned to perform all the functions and duties of the secretary of defense during the period of transfer from January 2-5, 2024," said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder during a briefing today. "It also identified several processes and procedural improvements that could be made." The review included eight specific recommendations that were forwarded to Austin for review. As of today, two of those recommendations have been implemented. Recommendations already in place include a reaffirmation of expectations around information sharing, staffing support, team relationships and understanding changes in process or staff support when the deputy secretary or other designated official assumes the functions and duties of the secretary. Additionally, the secretary's chief of staff and the deputy secretary's chief of staff, have jointly issued guidelines which standardize how information provided to the secretary could be shared with the deputy secretary so that the deputy secretary will be prepared and aware of the most important department issues in the event of an unforeseen transfer of authority. The other six recommendations, Austin wrote in today's memorandum, will be implemented within 90 days. "All of these actions demonstrate our deep commitment to strengthening our internal processes without delay," Austin wrote in the memorandum. "As I have repeatedly stated, we are a learning organization, and we will continue to strengthen our processes as we identify ways to improve upon our existing procedures." DOD Continues Work With Congress to Get Appropriation [2024-02-27] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department has operated under a continuing resolution for nearly 150 days. On March 9, the continuing resolution now funding the department will expire, opening the possibility of a partial or full government shutdown. During a media briefing today, Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder again stressed the importance having on-time, full-year appropriations and the damage a continuing resolution does to the department's ability to plan and modernize the force. "I'd like to ... underscore the urgent need for Congress to pass the department's request for a fiscal year 2024 base budget," Ryder said. "Continuing to operate under continuing resolutions is unsustainable and detrimental to our nation's national security interests." DOD, like other government entities, operates with funds budgeted for the fiscal year that must be approved by both houses of Congress and signed by the president. Fiscal year 2024 runs Oct. 1, 2023, through Sept. 30, 2024. For departments like DOD to be most effective, the budget for a fiscal year should be signed into law before the fiscal year actually begins. Congress has not yet passed the FY24 budget. Instead, the department has been funded through a stop-gap funding measure called a continuing resolution, or CR. While operations can continue under a continuing resolution, wider planning and modernization efforts cannot. "The absence of an appropriation bill for the fiscal year severely hampers the department's ability to plan effectively," Ryder said. "We are already well into the fiscal year -- now in our fifth month -- and, unfortunately, find ourselves again under a third continuing resolution. The fact is that this uncertainty undermines our military readiness and jeopardizes critical modernization efforts." Since Oct. 1, Congress has passed three separate CRs to fund the DOD and other parts of the government. The latest of those continuing resolutions expires in 11 days. If by then Congress fails to pass an additional continuing resolution or to pass a full appropriation for FY 2024, the government will shut down. In the 14 fiscal years since fiscal year 2011, the DOD has had only one, on-time, full appropriation. For 13 of those years, the department operated -- at least part of the time -- under a CR. "The cumulative effect of spending years under CRs, dating back to 2011, is deeply concerning," he said. "It amounts to nearly five years of constrained funding levels, impeding the DOD's capacity to adapt to evolving threats and innovate to maintain our competitive edge." Ryder said the failure to pass a base budget for DOD puts national security at risk and also means the department is unable to make investments in new technology, equipment and training for personnel. "In light of these pressing concerns, the department will continue to work closely with Congress and urge them to act now to pass a base budget for the Department of Defense for fiscal year 2024," Ryder said. "The bottom line is that a full-year appropriation is crucial for safeguarding our nation's security and ensuring our military remains prepared to meet the challenges of the 21st century." Austin Tells Congress There Was No Lapse in Authority, Command, Control During Hospital Stay [2024-02-29] WASHINGTON -- When the secretary of defense was admitted last month to the hospital for complications related to surgery in December, his authorities and responsibilities were temporarily transferred to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks. While the Defense Department didn't notify the White House and Congress about the transfer of authority, the U.S. military was never without leadership, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III today told members of Congress. "There was never any lapse in authorities or in command and control," Austin said during testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. "At all times, either I or the deputy secretary was in a position to conduct the duties of my office." Nevertheless, the secretary conceded, there was a breakdown in communications and in making appropriate notifications regarding the hospital visit in January, as well as his surgery in December. "Back in December, I should have promptly informed the president, my team and Congress, and the American people about my cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment," Austin said. "We did not handle this right, and I did not handle it right. As you know, I have apologized, including directly to the president. And I take full responsibility." In early December, Austin was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Later in the month, he underwent surgery at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to treat that condition. In early January, he returned to Walter Reed for complications related to his surgery. During both the initial surgery and the second hospitalization at Walter Reed, the secretary's authorities and responsibility for the U.S. military were temporarily transferred to Hicks. But during neither of those hospitalizations was the White House or Congress notified of that transfer of authority. Now, Austin said, changes have been implemented at the top levels of DOD to ensure that, in the future, the president and Congress will know when and why authorities are transferred to someone other than the secretary. "The system must be postured better to make the appropriate notifications when authorities are transferred. And my staff must be ready to carry all of this out," Austin said. "That's why we immediately instituted changes to the way that the authorities can be temporarily transferred to my deputy and to the way that notifications get made. That's also why we conducted a 30-day review of the entire process." When it was learned that the president and Congress had not been informed of Austin's hospital visits, his chief of staff directed DOD's director of administration and management to conduct a 30-day review of the department's notification process for assumption of functions and duties of the secretary of defense. The classified report from that review was delivered to Congress, and an unclassified summary of that report was publicly released earlier this week. The review made eight recommendations regarding processes and procedural improvements that could be made within the department. Already, two of those recommendations have been implemented, and the secretary said the other six will be implemented soon. "We've made clear that we expect full information-sharing when the deputy or another designated official assumes the functions and duties as acting secretary," Austin said. Also implemented are written guidelines for clear information-sharing between the secretary's staff and the deputy secretary's staff so that the deputy secretary will be prepared and aware of the most important department issues in the event of an unforeseen transfer of authority. "We'll ensure that department officials in the order of succession are familiar with and supported for the relevant processes," Austin said. "And we're moving quickly to develop a mandatory reporting protocol for personnel who support me or the deputy secretary in situations that might affect our ability to perform our duties and functions." Austin also told lawmakers that if ever again the deputy secretary must temporarily assume the duties of his office, the White House -- including the White House situation room and the White House chief of staff -- would be immediately notified. He also said that the reason for the assumption of duties will be included in writing. "At no time during my treatment or recovery were there any gaps in authorities. And there were no risks to the department's command and control," Austin said. "We're moving swiftly to put some helpful new procedures in place to prevent any lapses in notification. And I am confident that we will not experience the same issues in the future." U.S. Participates in Second Humanitarian Airdrop for Gaza [2024-03-05] WASHINGTON -- A combined effort by U.S. Central Command and the Royal Jordanian Air Force provided additional humanitarian aid to northern Gaza today. "Three U.S. C-130s dropped over 36,800 meals into northern Gaza to provide critical relief to civilians there," said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder during a briefing this afternoon. "This is the second combined airdrop to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza." The first such humanitarian mission occurred Saturday when the U.S. and Jordanian forces airdropped 38,000 meals along the coastline of Gaza, Ryder said. "These humanitarian airdrops contribute to ongoing U.S. government efforts to provide life-saving humanitarian assistance to people in Gaza and are part of a sustained effort to get more aid into Gaza, including by expanding the flow of aid through land corridors and routes," Ryder said. "We continue planning for potential follow-on airborne aid delivery missions." Also today at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III met with Minister Benny Gantz, a member of the Israeli war cabinet. Among topics of discussion during that bilateral meeting was humanitarian assistance in Gaza. "The secretary ... expressed strong concerns over the humanitarian situation in Gaza and requested Minister Gantz's support in enabling more humanitarian assistance and distribution into Gaza," Ryder said. One way Israel can assist in helping more aid to get to Gaza, Ryder said, is to ensure availability of a ground route, such as at the Kerem Shalom checkpoint in southern Gaza. "Not enough aid is getting into Gaza. And so, the Department of Defense is supporting that broader U.S. government effort to help contribute to that," Ryder said. "Certainly, we want to see more aid being delivered via ground routes. And again, this is part of the discussion that we're having with the Israelis in terms of how [they can] work to ensure that those routes are open, and that aid can get in quicker." While the U.S. has provided humanitarian assistance to Gaza via airdrop, Ryder said the U.S. is exploring other options -- including supporting delivery of assistance to Gaza by sea. "In coordination with the U.S. interagency and international partners, we are actively reviewing options for a maritime corridor for humanitarian assistance into Gaza," Ryder said, adding that this includes potential commercial and contracted options. A "maritime corridor" to provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza involves ensuring a secure and safe route through the Mediterranean. U.S. involvement in such an endeavor, Ryder said, would be in providing support to the effort, rather than having U.S. forces go ashore. "At this point in time, there are no plans to send any U.S. forces into Gaza," Ryder said. DOD Report Discounts Sightings of Extraterrestrial Technology [2024-03-08] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office today released a report detailing its review of nearly 80 years of reports on government offices and special access programs related to unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP--a new term for what was once referred to as unidentified flying objects. "AARO has found no verifiable evidence that any UAP sighting has represented extraterrestrial activity," said AARO acting Director Tim Phillips during a Wednesday briefing at the Pentagon. "AARO has found no verifiable evidence that the U.S. government or private industry has ever had access to extraterrestrial technology. AARO has found no indications that any information was illegally or inappropriately withheld from Congress." The 63-page "Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena" provides conclusions drawn following an examination of historical documents and conclusions drawn by U.S. government programs that did work related to UAP dating back to 1945. AARO's work also involved investigating claims that there were secret or hidden U.S. government programs related to UAP that might not have been reported to Congress. The AARO team looked into those claims to verify if such programs actually existed. "AARO assesses that alleged, hidden UAP programs either do not exist or were misidentified, authentic national security programs unrelated to extraterrestrial technology exploitation," Phillips said. "We assess that claims of such programs are largely the result of circular reporting in which a small group of individuals have repeated inaccurate claims they have heard from others over a period of several decades. Also, part of the report were assessments of claims made by about 30 individuals AARO interviewed, including former and current U.S. government employees who were allegedly involved in such programs or heard stories about those programs and subsequently misinterpreted what they saw or heard. "I wish to emphasize that we believe most of the individuals repeating these claims did so without malice or any effort to mislead the public," Phillips said. "Many have sincerely misinterpreted real events or mistaken sensitive U.S. programs, for which they were not cleared, as having been related to UAP or extraterrestrial exploitation." Phillips told reporters that while researching the AARO report, his team was given an unusual level of access to programs and information, which allowed them to more easily complete the work Congress had asked them to do. "AARO, as designed by Congress, had unprecedented access to classified programs," Phillips said. "Nobody blocked where we could go or the questions we asked. Nobody in the government influenced the findings in the report. As a career intelligence officer, I am just amazed at the access we had to some of our nation's most sensitive programs. Nobody said, 'No.'" Lawmakers directed AARO to produce the report as part of the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. Today's report is the first volume of AARO's findings and covers a period from 1945 through October 2023. A second volume, which will be released later this year, will cover findings from interviews and research completed between November 2023 and April 2024. DOD's 2025 Budget Request Provides 4.5% Raise for Service Members [2024-03-11] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department today laid out details of its $849.8 billion budget request, which is expected to fund operations during fiscal year 2025. Integrated deterrence and campaigning are big parts of the fiscal 2025 budget request. Another focus is building upon the U.S. military's enduring advantages, including its most important advantage: its people. "Our FY 25 budget request also upholds our commitment to our people, the service members, military families and civilians who work tirelessly to defend this nation day in and day out," said Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks during a briefing today at the Pentagon. "Our success in defending the nation and maintaining readiness is inextricably linked to their success." This budget request, Hicks said, includes a strong focus on the economic stability of service members, military families and civilians, as well as on military family support. "The budget funds must-pay items related to quality of life and quality of service, such as a 4.5% pay raise for our service members that builds on raises for the past three years in a row, including last year's 5.2% pay raise," she said. Going beyond base pay, Hicks said, this latest request increases the number of child development centers, for instance, and also increases the number of providers in those child development centers. Also, of concern is where service members and their families live, she said, including ships and barracks and creating healthy and resilient communities. "That's why the must-pay items in this budget also include basic housing allowance increases; facility investments in safe, quality family housing to enhance deterrence and improve critical operational infrastructure; making health care, healthy food and child care more accessible -- including increasing pay for child care providers; and building a safer workplace -- including efforts to combat sexual assault and to prevent suicide and eliminate barriers to care." All of those things, she said, are "must-haves," which allow service members to focus on the mission of defending the nation. Another enduring advantage is the U.S. defense industrial base -- the collection of tens of thousands of private sector companies that provide services and equipment to the Defense Department. The need to build up the industrial base has been one of the big lessons from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and it's a focus of the FY 2025 budget request. "Other key investments focus on strengthening our munitions and defense industrial base and improving the resilience of our supply chains so that we can deliver what our warfighters need when they need it," Hicks said. The FY 2025 request, for instance, makes "a historic investment" in the submarine industrial base to increase production and reduce backlogs, Hicks said. Defending the nation includes having the best equipment and being trained and ready to use that equipment to both deter conflict and ensure readiness to defend, if need be. This latest budget request also asks for $167 billion for procurement; $143 billion for research, development, testing and evaluation; and $339 billion for operations and maintenance -- which includes the training activities that keep service members ready for a war fight. Integrated deterrence is a centerpiece of the 2022 National Defense Strategy, which was used to develop the FY 2025 budget request. "For integrated deterrence, the FY 2025 budget requests funds critical to investments in our national nuclear enterprise and missile defense, along with space capabilities, which will allow the joint force to address key modernization priorities," said Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Navy Adm. Christopher Grady. The FY 2025 request also continues to invest in ways to enable the department to strengthen cyberspace and long-range fire capabilities, Grady said. This request, for instance, puts nearly $50 billion towards nuclear modernization, including both the Columbia-class submarine and the B-21 bomber. Over $28 billion is aimed at missile defeat and defense and more than $33 billion is directed at space capabilities. "To support campaigning, the department is investing in readiness initiatives for operations, training and maintenance, while also prioritizing exercises and experimentation that will allow the joint force to support our critical theaters, including Indo-Pacom and Europe." In campaigning, the FY 2025 budget directs nearly $10 billion at the Pacific Deterrence Initiative -- and including for the defense of Guam -- and $3.9 billion for the European Deterrence Initiative, to include support to NATO. "We must continue to adapt, advance and innovate at speed and at scale across all domains, prioritizing China as the pacing challenge and Russia as an acute threat," Grady said. "Our strategy-driven budget does exactly that. It recognizes the need to invest in key areas to translate the National Defense Strategy, the National Military Strategy and the Joint Warfighting Concept into operational capabilities required to deter our strategic competitors." Budget Challenges While the budget request was announced today, the overall budgeting process remains in a state of flux. At the same time the FY 2025 request is being presented to Congress, Congress continues to wrestle with the fiscal 2024 budget request and the supplemental budget to fund Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and more. The fiscal 2024 budget should have gone into effect on Oct. 1, 2023, but DOD has been funded under a continuing resolution since that date. A continuing resolution continues funding for departments at the level of the previous appropriations act. So, DOD is operating under the fiscal 2023 funding level. If there is no appropriation act and no continuing resolution, the government must shut down, something that has happened three times in the last decade. The fiscal 2025 request is also affected by the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023. That law limits discretionary spending for defense and nondefense programs in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling. This is why, for example, the FY 2025 pay raise for civilians -- set at 2% -- does not match that of service members, which is at 4.5%. It is also why the defense request does not keep up with inflation. The $850 billion request is a 1% increase in spending, but inflation rose at about 3%. (Jim Garamone contributed to this story.) DOD Able to Send Additional Assistance to Ukraine Using Unexpected Army Savings [2024-03-12] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department today announced additional security assistance for Ukraine. Included in this assistance are artillery rounds and rockets for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System. The package totals $300 million. This latest round of presidential drawdown authority, or PDA, is the first this year and was made possible after the Army negotiated a lower price for replacing supplies already sent to Ukraine. With that finding, additional funds became available. Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the U.S. has provided some $44.2 billion in security assistance to Ukraine. That assistance has come through either PDA, where with presidential approval equipment can be withdrawn from existing U.S. military inventory and then shipped to Ukraine, or through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, where the U.S. commits to buying new equipment for Ukraine from defense contractors. Funds for USAI have run out, and the U.S. can no longer buy equipment for Ukraine unless Congress provides more money. With PDA, equipment taken from U.S. inventory must eventually be replaced with new equipment paid for with replenishment funds that must also be authorized by Congress. While the Defense Department has been authorized by the president to pull even more equipment from its inventory for Ukraine, Congress has not agreed to provide additional funds to replace that equipment. Sending more equipment without the promise of funds to replace it would be risky for DOD and would affect national security. As a result of USAI funding running out and inadequate replenishment funding to replace equipment sent to Ukraine through PDA, DOD had stopped sending support to Ukraine. The latest round of PDA was made possible when the Army found additional funds after renegotiating contract costs to replace equipment that's already been sent to Ukraine. This PDA package is unique in that regard, and a senior defense official said Tuesday that the DOD can't expect to continue assisting Ukraine using cost savings. "We had savings come in that will allow us to offset the cost of a new drawdown package," said a senior defense official today. "The savings that have come in here are going to help square the circle of what the secretary said of needing to have new funding come in to be comfortable doing any more drawdown. We [did] have funds come in that can cover the cost of one more package. But this is a bit of an ad hoc or one-time shot. We don't know if or when future savings will come in. And we certainly can't count on this as a way of doing business." U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the security assistance announced today will provide much-needed ammunition to help the Ukrainians, but unless Congress acts to appropriate more funding, the U.S. will no longer be able to help. "This ammunition will keep Ukraine's guns firing for a period, but only a short period," Sullivan said. "This package does not displace and should not delay the critical need to pass the bipartisan national security bill." Without additional funding from Congress, Sullivan said, the U.S. cannot continue to support Ukraine's fight against Russia without impacting its own readiness. "Congress must act, the House of Representatives must pass the bipartisan national security supplemental as soon as possible," Sullivan said. "The House has got to pass the supplemental as soon as possible to allow us to continue the flow of vital security ... assistance to Ukraine, to replenish the U.S. military's munitions stocks, to invest in our industrial base, and to support jobs in 40 states across the United States. The world is watching, the clock is ticking, and we need to see action as rapidly as possible." Austin Returns to Global Travel With Next Week's Ukraine Defense Contact Group [2024-03-14] WASHINGTON -- On Monday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., will depart the United States for Germany, where they will participate in the 20th iteration of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group. It's the first international travel for Austin since his recent hospitalizations. "The secretary and the chairman will join ministers of defense and senior military officials from nearly 50 nations around the world to discuss the ongoing war in Ukraine and reiterate that the United States and this coalition continue to stand with the people of Ukraine, and that we will not let Ukraine fail in its war to defend themselves against Russian aggression," said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh during a briefing today. In December, Austin underwent surgery at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, related to a prostate cancer diagnosis. Following that surgery, Austin returned twice to Walter Reed as a result of complications related to the surgery. Austin is expected to return to Walter Reed tomorrow afternoon for a scheduled routine follow-up appointment with his doctors, Singh said. "The secretary continues to recover well from his medical treatment earlier this year," she said. "And you can expect that he'll be conducting these types of follow-on checkups from time to time." Monday's scheduled trip to Germany is the first international travel for the secretary since his surgery in December. The first meeting of the UDCG in April 2022 was spearheaded by Austin. Since then, as many as 50 nations have participated regularly in the monthly meetings to work together to provide security assistance to Ukraine. On Tuesday, the White House and the Defense Department announced the latest round of security assistance for Ukraine. Worth up to $300 million, the latest package was made possible through presidential drawdown authority. It includes, among other things, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, 155 mm artillery rounds, 105 mm artillery rounds, and AT-4 anti-armor systems. This latest round of PDA is the first this year and was made possible after the Army negotiated a lower price for replacing supplies already sent to Ukraine. With that finding, funds became available to support an additional PDA package. Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the U.S. has provided some $44.2 billion in security assistance to Ukraine. That assistance has come through either PDA, where with presidential approval equipment can be withdrawn from existing U.S. military inventory and then shipped to Ukraine, or through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, where the U.S. commits to buying new equipment for Ukraine from defense contractors. New Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer Also announced today is that Radha Plumb will assume the role of Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer, following the departure of current CDAO Craig Martell. "Dr. Plumb currently serves as the deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment and during her tenure has worked to address critical acquisition matters in defense of our nation, including maintaining and strengthening a robust national security industrial base and supply chains," Singh said. Singh also praised Martell for his service, over the past two years, as the DOD's first CDAO. "Dr. Martell and the CDAO team brought together diverse talents and cultures of four organizations to advance data, AI and analytics for America's national security, and delivered tangible results in a short period of time." Logistics Modernization Figures in Marine Corps' Future [2024-03-20] WASHINGTON -- New watercraft, including some that are autonomous, and new ways to work with partners figure into how the Marine Corps plans to improve the way it supplies itself through improved logistics. That logistics is the linchpin of any successful military operation is no surprise, but Gen. Christopher Mahoney, the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, made a point of it Tuesday when talking with Defense One digital media platform in Washington, D.C. "Logistics will stop you in your tracks if you haven't thought it through, if you don't have a system that is strong and functioning," Mahoney said. Command and control of supplies, which means ensuring that the Marine Corps has visibility of its supplies and commodities, is only part of the Marine Corps' plan to better supply Marines. "We've got a few initiatives that we're taking on board," he said. "One is GPN, the global positioning network, which has two main segments to it in my mind. You have a terrestrial segment, where you have agreements with host nations and countries where you can put stocks forward to destroy time and distance, and then a seaborne segment, which makes use of large cargo ships that are in the maritime prepositioning squadron that is able to maneuver across the sea domain to put your stocks where they're needed." Modernizing Marine Corps logistics -- the mechanism which brings necessary supplies and materials to the troops -- also involves new transportation equipment capable of doing more than what is possible now, Mahoney said. One of those options is the medium landing ship, or LSM. According to the Congressional Research Service, the amphibious LSMs are expected to be anywhere from 200 to 400 feet long, carry a crew of about 70 sailors, and have about 8,000 square feet of deck cargo space. They are also expected to be less expensive to procure and operate than the Navy's current amphibious ships. The Navy plans to purchase from 18 to 35 of those ships to support the Marine Corps. "It is a shore-to-shore logistics connect to get heavy things that we can't put on airplanes or don't want to have a big ship coming in to bring, get it from Point A to Point B to move; maneuver it from Point B to a more advantageous position at Point C; and then sustain that position," Mahoney said. The general also said the Marine Corps is interested in the "autonomous low-profile vessel," or ALPV, which he describes as an "extremely low-observable," autonomous, ocean-going ship. The general said looking into how drones can contribute to logistics is also part of the plan. "We also are interested in large autonomous drones and medium autonomous drones ... to get after movement, to get after maneuver and sustainment and in the logistics realm," he said. Mahoney said this will be a "big year" for testing and evaluation of drones and watercraft that can help the Marines do better logistically. DOD Develops STEM Talent Pool Through Scholarships, Internships [2024-03-21] WASHINGTON -- The most sophisticated weapons systems, computers and other technology are important to ensuring the U.S. military keeps its competitive edge. But also important is the talent pool -- both military and civilian -- that helps develop that technology and keeps it running. Heidi Shyu, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said DOD, like many businesses in the private sector, struggles to attract talent to fill science, technology, engineering and mathematics roles and has tools in place to help develop and recruit more STEM talent. "If you look at the number of STEM students that we have, we're short nationally," Shyu said Wednesday at the Reagan Institute's National Security Innovation Base Summit in Washington. "It's not just within DOD that we have a problem. Companies are also short of a talent base that we can draw from. We're competing for the same pool of talent." One tool to increase STEM talent, Shyu said, is DOD's Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation Scholarship Program, or SMART Scholarship. In 2023, DOD handed out 468 SMART scholarships for undergraduate, graduate and doctoral studies across 24 academic disciplines critical to national security and DOD's future. For each year of school DOD funds, recipients are obligated to do one year of work for the department. "We're trying to increase the number of SMART Scholarship that we have," Shyu said. "In the ... last 2 1/2 years, we have awarded 1,400 STEM scholarships, and the STEM scholarships help the students. It's a fee for service. I pay for four years of college; you owe me four years of time within the DOD laboratory." One scholarship recipient, Shyu said, benefitted from the SMART Scholarship when DOD paid for his master's degree and doctorate. "Now, he is doing underwater sonar research at the Naval Underwater Warfare Center," she said. "This is the power of having the SMART Scholarship so we can grow our talent pool." Recently, Shyu visited a handful of universities in Texas to meet with leaders to talk about challenges facing students as they pursue educations in STEM fields. "I really gained a much better understanding when talking to the professors, the deans, the presidents and the chancellors," she said. Shyu said she told those she met with about an internship that is part of the SMART Scholarship undergraduate program. She said she learned that some students might not be able to participate in that internship because they're needed at home to help their families due to financial hardships. Now, she said, the department has modified that internship to enable students to participate while continuing to help support their families. Shyu proposed letting interns spend the first week of their internships at their DOD lab to learn about their project and meet the people, then work from home for the rest of the five weeks. "And that was a huge benefit to some of the students, so that's one thing we've done," she said. Shyu said better understanding the challenges facing students has improved options for helping those students stay in and grow within STEM fields -- and that will ultimately increase the STEM talent pool. To Meet Security Challenges, DOD Makes Investments in Strategic Forces [2024-03-22] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department is making investments in strategic force capabilities in the fiscal 2025 budget in order to meet the security challenges posed by competitors, such as nuclear-capable China and Russia, as well as Iran and North Korea, a DOD official said. John Plumb, the assistant secretary of defense for space policy, on Thursday, told lawmakers at the House Armed Services Committee that the FY 2025 budget request includes investments to modernize the nuclear triad. This includes land, air and sea-based nuclear capabilities and investments to ensure continued access to space and defense against missile threats. "We have competitors who are modernizing and diversifying and expanding their nuclear arsenals," Plumb said. "They are also rapidly fielding space and counter-space capabilities and developing and fielding advanced missiles in ... greater numbers and greater diversity." Plumb told lawmakers that DOD, within the president's budget request, has asked for $49.2 billion to modernize the department's nuclear triad. Included in the request are investments for the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, the B-21 bomber and the Sentinel system, which is a modernization for the ground-based portion of the nuclear triad. Also in the FY 2025 budget request, Plumb said, is $33.7 billion for space capabilities and $28.4 billion for missile defeat and defense. "Across each of these portfolios, we're investing not only in capabilities but in our network of allies and partners, both of whom provide advantages that our adversaries or potential adversaries, like Russia and China, can never hope to match," Plumb said. "All of these capabilities -- nuclear, space and missile defense -- remain central to our ability to deter and also central to our ability to prevail in conflict if deterrence fails." Air Force Gen. Anthony Cotton, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, also reminded lawmakers that the U.S. is confronted by two nuclear peers: China and Russia, and that threat is compounded by missile developments in North Korea and the nuclear ambitions of Iran. With this threat, he said, it's imperative that the U.S. press on with modernization of the nuclear triad. "It is absolutely critical we continue at speed with modernization of our nuclear triad," he said. "This includes the land-based [intercontinental ballistic missiles], the B-21, the B-52J, the Columbia-class submarine, the nuclear sea-launched cruise missile, the long-range standoff weapon and numerous related systems." Also a focus, he said, is updating and modernizing the antiquated nuclear command, control and communications system, also called NC3. "The most important message I want to deliver is this: While modernization will continue to be the priority, U.S. Stratcom and its component forces are ready to deter our adversaries and respond decisively should deterrence fail," Cotton told lawmakers. Space Force Gen. Stephen N. Whiting, commander of U.S. Space Command, said the command has a moral responsibility to ensure space capabilities remain available to the joint force, the nation and allies. "The U.S. military services are sized with the assumption of always having access to space," Whiting said. "And this is why U.S. Space Command must protect and defend our critical space systems to ensure they are available in the face of the growing threats now arrayed against us." Part of that responsibility, Whiting said, involves expanding the existing U.S. competitive advantage by leveraging assets of the interagency, the joint force and U.S. allies and partners. Also an asset, he said, is the U.S. space industry. "I think one of our nation's principal advantages is our commercial space industry," he said. "It is moving at incredible speed with innovation, and it is outpacing commercial industry from the rest of the world. And so today, we partner with those companies in a number of ways." In testimony given earlier this year, Whiting discussed Space Command's Commercial Integration Center, for instance, where the command partners with 10 commercial mission partners to improve on the ability to defend satellite constellations. The joint commercial operations effort also includes eight commercial mission partners across the globe to provide space domain awareness information to the joint force, allies and partner nations "We're always looking at how we can better both share information and leverage the capabilities that commercial [companies] brings us because we believe that makes us more effective," Whiting said. Air Force Gen. Gregory M. Guillot took over as commander of United States Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command in February. He told lawmakers that, upon assuming the role, he directed a 90-day assessment of both organizations to execute their missions and to also make recommendations on where the commands can do more. "Once complete, I will share my findings and updated vision for how NORAD and Northcom will best execute the noble mission of homeland defense," Guillot said. "The challenges facing our nation are real, but there should be no doubt about NORAD and Northcom's resolve to deter aggression and if necessary, defeat threats to our nation and our citizens." DOD Releases Usage Numbers for Reproductive Health Care Travel [2024-03-26] WASHINGTON -- Under a policy implemented last year, service members and eligible dependents may be authorized travel and transportation allowances to access noncovered reproductive health care services when timely access to those services is not available near a member's permanent duty station. "For example, this could entail a service member traveling from their home station in one state or overseas location to a state where they can access noncovered reproductive health care services, and then returning home to that home station," said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh during a briefing today. Between June and December 2023, the policy was used 12 times across the military services, Singh said, adding that the total cost to the department during that time was about $45,000. Singh also noted that while the policy was used 12 times, this doesn't mean the policy was used by 12 individuals. Instead, she said, an individual may have used the policy more than once. Also implemented last year is a separate policy under which service members may be granted an administrative absence from their normal duty station, without being charged leave, for a period of up to 21 days, to receive or to accompany a dual-military spouse or dependent who receives noncovered reproductive health care. Such noncovered reproductive health care might include things such as egg retrieval, ovarian stimulations, intrauterine insemination, in vitro fertilization and noncovered abortion. While the department may pay travel costs to allow service members to access these kinds of noncovered reproductive health care services, the service members pay for the actual health care services themselves. "These policies ensure that service members and their families are afforded the time and flexibility to make private health care decisions, as well as supporting access to noncovered reproductive health care regardless of where they are stationed," Singh said. Proliferation Remains Best Deterrence Against Threats to U.S. Space Access [2024-03-27] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department relies heavily on space-based satellites for much of the work it does to defend the United States, and that reliance is expected to grow in coming years. While space assets such as satellites will always be at risk from U.S. adversaries, the best way to ensure continued access to space capabilities is proliferation, Derek Tournear, director of the Space Development Agency, said. "Proliferation is our biggest defense," Tournear said while speaking today during a panel discussion sponsored by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, a nonpartisan policy research institute based in Arlington, Va. "That's how we plan on really getting the resilience and the defense of our entire architecture." The SDA is responsible for orchestrating development and implementation of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture. The PWSA will include a mesh network of hundreds of satellites to provide space-based capabilities to the joint warfighter. The strength of that network of satellites, he said, is expected to come not from defensive capabilities that focus on individual satellites, but rather from the sheer number of satellites launched. Protecting individual satellites becomes less important, he said, when there are so many of them. "That's the way you have to look at it when you're talking about proliferated constellations," he said. "Each individual one you can't really care about. You have to care about the health of the whole herd, the health of the whole architecture. And so, we have everything in place to make sure that we can maintain that resiliency and maintain ... operations even if you start to lose [individual satellites]." Tournear also said that cybersecurity plays an important role in protecting the PWSA, however. "Obviously we have cyber protections in place to protect the entire architecture and the network, and we have a lot of the environmental sensing pieces that are in place to give us an idea of what's going on," he said. "We put GPS situational awareness sensors on our satellites for those kinds of things, to make sure that we can kind of sense the environment." The PWSA system will eventually include hundreds of satellites, delivered in tranches every two years, with each tranche providing more capability than the last. The network of hundreds of optically connected satellites will deliver two primary capabilities to warfighters on the ground. The first is beyond line-of-sight targeting for ground and maritime time-sensitive targets, which includes mobile missiles and ships, for instance. The system will provide the ability to detect those targets, track them, calculate a fire control solution and deliver that solution down to a weapons platform so the target can be destroyed. The second capability is similar to the first, but for enemy missiles already in flight. The PWSA involves seven layers, including a mesh network of hundreds of optically interconnected satellites in orbit that make up its transport layer. There will also be tracking, custody, deterrence, navigation, battle management and support layers. Austin Calls for 'Rapid Increase' of Aid Into Gaza Through All Crossings [2024-04-04] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III spoke yesterday with Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant. The two discussed the ongoing conflict in Gaza, Israeli efforts to ensure the defeat of Hamas and the need to secure the release of all hostages, said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder during a briefing today. Also part of the discussion was the need for an increase in humanitarian aid to Gaza, Ryder said. "Secretary Austin again raised the need for a rapid increase of aid coming through all crossings in the coming days, particularly to communities in northern Gaza that are at risk of famine," Ryder said. The Gaza Strip, which is about 25 miles long, lies entirely inside Israel and shares a border to the south with Egypt. There are three locations along its border where humanitarian supplies could move into Gaza from either Egypt or Israel. Those locations include the Erez crossing in northern Gaza and the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Gaza. Both of those crossings connect Gaza to Israel. The Rafah crossing is on the Gaza border with Egypt. Right now, all three crossings are either closed or have limited availability. The U.S. has continued to press the Israeli government to allow more aid to flow though all available land crossings. Meanwhile, the U.S. is planning a maritime route from the Mediterranean Sea onto the shore of Gaza using the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore capability, also called JLOTS. Using JLOTS, DOD will build a floating pier and then push it onto the shore of Gaza. Once that capability is in place and is fully operational, it's expected as many as 2 million humanitarian aid meals per day could be delivered into Gaza. The ships carrying the JLOTS equipment and the service members who will assemble it are now en route to the Mediterranean Sea. "We expect to achieve ... full operations capability by the end of the month [or] early May," Ryder said. "Of course, we are working to move as quickly as we can on that front. Once operational, ... the capability that that will provide is the ability to send upwards of 2 million meals per day into Gaza." Ryder said the department is "on track" for getting the JLOTS capability in place. The department, he said, is also working with partners in the region to discuss how aid delivered via the JLOTS pier will be offloaded in Gaza and distributed. Security is also a concern, he said. "Israel has committed to providing security on the shore for that effort," he said. "When it comes to the receiving and then onward distribution of that aid, we're working with USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development] and others to finalize those details." Since March 2, 2024, U.S. Central Command, sometimes in coordination with the Royal Jordanian Air Force, has conducted 23 humanitarian missions to airdrop aid into Gaza. Since that time, more than 680,000 meals or meal equivalents have been provided. DOD Has Seen 'Huge' Increase in Military Sales Since Ukraine Invasion [2024-04-09] WASHINGTON -- Last year, the Defense Department set a record for sales of military equipment and hardware, especially among European partners and allies, said the director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. "We've had a huge increase in demand from our European allies and partners over the last few years since the ... invasion by the Russians in Ukraine," James Hursch said yesterday during the 2024 Sea-Air-Space maritime exposition just outside of Washington. European nations -- including Sweden, Poland and the Netherlands, to name a few -- have become "huge customers" for U.S. military hardware, he said. In fiscal year 2023, the U.S. did more than $80 billion in business through the foreign military sales system, including grant assistance. "That is a record," Hursch said. The total authorized value of implemented arms transfers and Security Cooperation programs for FY2023 was $80.9 billion. This included $62.25 billion in arms sales funded by U.S. allies and partner nations and $3.97 billion under the Title 22 Foreign Military Financing program. An additional $14.68 billion was used for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and for Building Partner Capacity programs conducted by the Defense Department and also for programs under the Foreign Assistance Act. The Foreign Assistance Act has funded programs such as international narcotics control and law enforcement, nonproliferation, anti-terrorism, demining, and related programs. In both fiscal 2022 and fiscal 2023, Hursch said a substantial portion of sales came from NATO allies, including $20 billion in fiscal 2022 and $24 billion in fiscal 2023. "This is a huge increase," he said. "That's representative of the increased investment that our allies in Europe are making every day, which is a story that may not be as widely reported as it needs to be." Poland, Hursch said, has been particularly involved in increasing its defense though foreign military purchases. Foreign military sales to Poland in fiscal 2023 included AH-64E Apache helicopters; High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS; the Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System, and M1A1 Abrams Main Battle tanks. Hursch also said Poland is involved in a different kind of defense-related cooperation involving defense production. "We've recently undertaken some new cooperation with Poland in the joint co-production of some defense systems," he said. "We're looking at how to do that with other allies and partners, as well." While the U.S. made record sales of defense articles in fiscal 2023, co-production of defense systems, such as what Hursch said is happening with Poland, has become an increasingly important way for the U.S., allies and partners in Europe and around the globe to strengthen their own defense industrial bases. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, this has become increasingly important, Hursch said. "One of the principal lessons we have learned in the Ukraine crisis and looking at ourselves as we've gone through this is ... the health of our defense industrial base," he said. "I think we've discovered ... domestically, we need to pay more attention to that. We have a new National Defense Industrial Base Strategy, which has been published by [DOD's] acquisition and sustainment office. But I think it's also true that we're seeing in Europe an increased focus on the strength of the industrial base. And we're looking for ways in which we can cooperate across those industrial bases." SAVE Plan Helps Service Members, Civilians Alike With Student Loan Debt [2024-04-10] WASHINGTON -- The "Saving on a Valuable Education," or SAVE plan, announced in August 2023, is not just for civilians. Service members, family members and civil servants alike can also benefit from the program to help reduce or even eliminate student loan debt. The SAVE plan, managed by the Department of Education, is an income-driven repayment plan that calculates payments based on a borrower's income and family size -- not their loan balance -- and forgives remaining balances after a certain number of years. The SAVE plan will cut monthly payments for many borrowers to zero, will save other borrowers around $1,000 per year, will prevent balances from growing because of unpaid interest and will get more borrowers closer to forgiveness faster. For those who qualify, savings provided by the SAVE plan can help military families reduce monthly expenditures, which in turn reduces financial stress by making more money available to pay for expenses such as child care. "Anytime you can eliminate or reduce a financial burden, you then help to eliminate or reduce some of the financial stressors on a family," said Andy Cohen, the director of DOD's Office of Financial Readiness. "We know that for families that have financial stress, it affects the overall well-being of the family." Financial stress also affects a service member's ability to focus on their job and their propensity to reenlist, both of which affect military readiness. "People who are financially stressed are prone to other potential problems such as family stress and job dissatisfaction," said Stephanie Miller, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Military Personnel Policy. "That's why corporate America has financial well-being programs for their employees -- it's a return on investment. In DOD, we also take care of our people. The Department gets a return on investment when it comes to service members having a better focus on the mission, we see some readiness protection, and hopefully, we see less personnel turnover." In part, the SAVE plan cuts payments on undergraduate loans in half. Borrowers with undergraduate loans will have their payments reduced from 10% to 5% of their discretionary income. Those who have undergraduate and graduate loans will pay a weighted average between 5% and 10% of their income based on the original principal balances of their loans. The SAVE plan also ensures monthly payments for student loans is based on a borrower's discretionary income -- defined under the SAVE plan as the difference between their adjusted gross income and 225% of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Poverty Guideline amount for their family size. This part of the plan will reduce monthly loan repayments for many, and for some will mean they have no monthly payments. With reduced payments for many, interest charges will also go down, meaning that borrowers who pay what they owe as part of the plan will no longer see their loans grow due to unpaid interest. And finally, for some student loan borrowers, their balance may be completely eliminated. Under the SAVE plan, for instance, borrowers whose original principal balances were $12,000 or less will receive forgiveness on their loans after making 120 payments. Those interested can learn more about the program on the Federal Student Aid website. Service members and their families can also learn more about the SAVE program by talking with a military financial advisor, said Cohen. "The department has personal financial counselors that service members can reach out to, either at their installation, Family Readiness center, or online through Military OneSource," he said. "They can talk to a financial counselor about not only student loan debt, but managing any other debt they might have, and creating a spending plan." Financial counselors can also discuss with service members and their families two other programs to help with student loan debt repayment, Cohen said. One such program is the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. Under this program, he said, enrolled service members, civil service employees and employees of non-profit organizations may qualify for complete forgiveness of their loan if they have made 120 qualifying payments and are working full time for a qualifying public service employer. Another program, Cohen said, is the Zero Percent Student Loan Interest Relief program. Under this program, uniformed service members are exempt from paying student loan interest for up to 60 months on certain student loans while serving in an area that qualifies for hostile fire or imminent danger pay. U.S., Japan Military-to-Military Relationship Reaches 'New Heights' [2024-04-11] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III met at the White House with President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan yesterday to participate in discussions related to strengthening the U.S. and Japan relationship. "Our defense and security ties with Japan form the core of our alliances and are the cornerstone of regional peace and security in the Indo-Pacific," Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said during a briefing today at the Pentagon. "Recognizing that the alliance has reached new heights, we plan to further bolster our defense and security cooperation to allow for greater coordination and integration," he said. As part of the effort to enhance U.S. and Japan security cooperation, both nations agreed to, for instance, an upgrading of alliance command and control. Doing so would enable better integration of operations and capabilities, plus allow for greater interoperability as well as planning between U.S. and Japanese forces in peacetime and during contingencies. Also discussed were efforts at bolstering regional networked security. Both countries will cooperate on a networked air defense architecture, incorporating future capabilities with Australia. That includes looking at enhanced cooperation in missile defense information sharing. The U.S. and Japan also agreed to a deepening of defense industry cooperation, where both nations plan to leverage respective industrial bases to establish an alliance defense production capacity to meet the demand for critical capabilities over the long term. Ryder said there were dozens of deliverables that came out of the discussions but did not have a specific timeline to share. But he did say that the Defense Department stands ready to do what's asked of it to help the U.S. strengthen the partnership with its long-time ally in the Pacific. "We are working hard across all levels of the department to deliver on the agreements made by our national leaders and of course doing so in very close concert with our Japanese allies," he said. DOD Official: Defense Industrial Strategy Already Making Headway in Maritime Space [2024-04-11] WASHINGTON -- In January, the DOD released for the first time a National Defense Industrial Strategy, which, among other things, spells out how the department plans to strengthen the U.S. defense industrial base. Already, priorities outlined in that plan are having a positive impact on the nation's maritime space, the assistant secretary of defense for industrial base policy said. The DOD's NDIS is driven by four priorities, including building resilient supply chains, investing in workforce readiness, leveraging flexible acquisition strategies and enabling economic deterrence. On Wednesday, Laura Taylor-Kale discussed DOD efforts so far on three of those priorities during the 2024 Sea-Air-Space maritime exposition outside Washington. "Resilient supply chains seek to invest in and strengthen supply chains in order to be able to securely produce the products and services and technologies that we need now and in the future," Taylor-Kale said. Her office, she said, manages the Defense Production Act along with industrial base analysis and sustainment programs. "These programs make targeted investments in the industrial base and in critical areas in the supply chain," she said. That includes, for instance, solid rocket motors and chemicals and critical materials needed for weapons systems. "Through these programs, last year, we invested more than a billion dollars in critical minerals and materials, castings and forgings and microelectronics supply chains," she said. The recently signed and passed fiscal year 2024 defense appropriations and the FY2025 presidential budget request, Taylor-Kale said, billions of dollars for supply chain investments includes munitions, maritime strike capabilities, shipyard and submarine industrial base improvements and workforce development initiatives. "Another way to help build industrial base resilience is to engage with our allies and partners, especially our close ones, to expand global defense production and increase supply chain resilience," she said. The department is doing that now, she said, citing the AUKUS trilateral security partnership among the U.S., U.K. and Australia as an example. The AUKUS partnership, agreed to in 2021, is aimed at fostering technology exchanges among the three nations and also at helping to build Australia's nuclear-powered submarine force. "We've worked with Congress to make it easier for our defense industrial base to work closely and collaboratively with industry in Australia and the United Kingdom," she said. Australia is now working to manufacture munitions for the guided multiple launch rocket system, also called GMLRS, she said. And outside AUKUS, the DOD's relationships with partners and allies are yielding other positive outcomes as well. "Norway is expanding its capacity to produce 155 mm artillery rounds," she said. "And Germany's Rheinmetall is working to build a munitions factory in the Ukraine just to name a few examples." In the Indo-Pacific, Taylor-Kale pointed to recently announced agreements in place with India and Japan to coproduce and acquire advanced capabilities to strengthen deterrence across the Indo-Pacific and said there are efforts underway to implement major defense initiatives with South Korea and the Philippines as well. As part of an effort to invest in workforce readiness, Taylor-Kale pointed to a program run out of her office, the Metallurgical Engineering Trades Apprenticeship & Learning, or METAL program, which advances efforts to get more young people involved in casting and forging -- a critical skill needed to support maritime defense. "There is a global challenge for skilled workforce," she said. "I hear this all the time, not just from American industry and our colleagues here, but also from international industry as well as our international partners. Younger generations generally show less interest in pursuing manufacturing careers or lack the science, technology, engineering and math skills needed for industrial work." Casting and forging, Taylor-Kale said, plays an important role in the maritime environment, including construction of offshore platforms, ship hulls, propellers and rudders. "Through national workforce initiatives like the [METAL] program ... the DOD is introducing younger generations to careers in casting and forging, something that I actually think is really cool and fascinating that we're doing it and we're oftentimes using advanced technologies to help spur interest in these areas," she said. Supporting economic deterrence, Taylor-Kale pointed out that Congress has named Australia and the U.K. as domestic sources eligible for the Defense Production Act. "Companies in those countries, as well as in Canada, can apply for [Defense Production Act] grants," she said. "And ... our newly stood-up Defense Industrial Base Consortium ... also accepts proposals from international partners, from the U.K., Canada and Australia." Israel, U.S., Partners Neutralize Iranian Airborne Attacks [2024-04-16] WASHINGTON -- Last weekend, Iran and its proxy groups launched more than 300 airborne weapons at targets in Israel, but the U.S., Israeli and partner forces destroyed a significant portion of them before they reached their targets. Among the weapons launched from locations in Iran, Syria and Yemen were over 110 medium-range ballistic missiles, more then 30 land-attack cruise missiles, and over 150 uncrewed aerial vehicles. The attack began in Israel late Saturday evening and ended early in the morning on April 14. U.S. Central Command forces, supported by the U.S. Navy destroyers USS Arleigh Burke and USS Carney, destroyed more than 80 one-way attack UAVs and at least six of the ballistic missiles, said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder during a briefing yesterday. "As our actions demonstrated, the U.S. support for the defense of Israel is robust," Ryder said. "It also demonstrates the long-standing security cooperation relationship that the United States has -- not only with Israel, but with countries throughout the region -- when it comes to addressing regional threats. Those kinds of things don't happen overnight. Those kinds of relationships and the ability to work together, to interoperate together all played out and saved many lives." The general said that since the attack ended, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has discussed the situation with international partners, allies, Air Force Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., senior Defense Department leaders and U.S. European Command and Centcom commanders. The defense secretary has also been in contact with his counterpart, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Ryder said. "During their most recent call ... [Sunday], the two leaders reviewed the successful combined operation by the United States, Israel and their partners to defend Israel from these unprecedented attacks by Iran and its proxies," Ryder said. In a statement released following the attacks, Austin commended the efforts of U.S. forces and allies, condemned the attacks, and reiterated both the U.S. right to defend its forces in the Middle East and the U.S. commitment to Israel. "I am grateful for the professionalism and the skill of the brave U.S. troops who took part in today's actions and who continue to stand guard to prevent further conflict or escalation," Austin said. "We condemn these reckless and unprecedented attacks by Iran and its proxies, and we call on Iran to immediately halt any further attacks -- including from its proxy forces -- and to deescalate tensions. We do not seek conflict with Iran, but we will not hesitate to act to protect our forces and support the defense of Israel." Supplemental Bill Becomes Law, Provides Billions in Aid for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan [2024-04-24] WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden today signed into law a bill that provides much-needed security assistance to American partners, including Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. "It's going to make America safer. It's going to make the world safer. And it continues America's leadership in the world," Biden said during a briefing following the signing ceremony. "It gives vital support to America's partners so they can defend themselves against threats to their sovereignty and the lives and freedom of their citizens." The president said that the security supplemental, worth about $95 billion, is not just an investment in the security of U.S. partners around the world, but also in U.S. security at home and abroad. "This is directly in the United States' national security interest," Biden said. "If Putin triumphs in Ukraine, the next move of Russian forces could very well be a direct attack on a NATO ally." If that happened, Biden said, the U.S., as a NATO partner, would be bound to assist. "We'd have no choice but to come to their aid, just like our NATO allies came to our aid after the September 11 attacks," he said. "That's why we're supporting and surging support now to Ukraine, to stop Putin from drawing the United States into a war in Europe." Among expenditures in the security supplemental package is more than $60 billion for support to Ukraine. Biden said that assistance will begin to flow immediately, initially as part of a new package of security assistance through presidential drawdown authority, which involves military equipment pulled from existing U.S. inventory. "I'm making sure the shipments start right away," he said. "In the next few hours -- literally, a few hours -- we're going to begin sending in equipment to Ukraine for air defense munitions, for artillery, for rocket systems and armored vehicles." Shortly after the president spoke, the Defense Department released details of a $1 billion security assistance package for Ukraine which includes, among other things, RIM-7 and AIM-9M missiles; Stinger anti-aircraft missiles; tube-launched, optically-tracked, wire-guided, or TOW, missiles; ammunition for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System; 155 mm and 105 mm artillery shells; and a variety of combat vehicles. The bill also includes some $14.1 billion for funding to support Israel, Biden said. Earlier this month, on April 13, Iran and its proxy groups launched more than 300 airborne weapons at targets in Israel, but the U.S., Israeli and partner forces destroyed a significant portion of them before they reached their targets. The president said the U.S. remains committed to Israeli security. "My commitment to Israel, I want to make clear again, is ironclad," Biden said "The security of Israel is critical, and we'll always make sure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself against Iran and the terrorists it supports." The supplemental security bill, Biden said, helps Israel replenish its air defense capabilities and also provides for additional defense needs. The supplemental funding also provides $9.5 billion for humanitarian assistance for civilians in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine and other populations caught in conflict zones across the globe. "This bill includes $1 billion for additional humanitarian aid in Gaza," he said. "We're going to immediately secure that aid and surge it ... including food, medical supplies [and] clean water." Also included in the bill is funding for partners in the Indo-Pacific region, and humanitarian aid for Haiti, Biden said. "This [bill] is a reminder what America can do when we come together, despite our differences," he said. "I want to thank everyone in Congress who made it possible." Franchetti: Navy Has a Lot to Offer Young People [2024-04-24] WASHINGTON -- Recruiters across the military are challenged every day to bring young people into service. But the chief of naval operations said she thinks the Navy has what young people are looking for -- if only they knew more about it. "All the services are facing some challenges in recruiting, and it's really broader than that," said Navy Adm. Lisa Franchetti, who spoke yesterday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It's probably challenges in just propensity to serve, in general." One challenge the Navy has in recruiting, Franchetti said, is that so many young people are simply unaware of what it does. "If you don't live near a coast or you don't live near a base, you may not really know what your Navy does every day," she said. "So, talking a little bit about ... operations in the Red Sea, keeping commerce flowing [and] having your Amazon box get to your doorstep, there's a lot of stuff that people don't even recognize every day that your Navy is out there doing." Young people, part of Generation Z, are now of age to consider military service, and Franchetti said the Navy must consider what that generation values if they're going to be convinced to enlist in military service. "Thinking about what they value, what they're looking for ... in terms of wanting to understand why, wanting to understand the values of the organization, I think we have a really good story to tell, because we're all about honor, courage, commitment, democracy ... and the pursuit of all who threaten it," she said. "But also, it's about helping them become the best version of themselves ... we offer a lot of opportunity, we have 150 different career specialties that they can go into." The Navy offers careers in nuclear engineering, cyber and medical, for instance. And most recently, a new career field in robotics has opened up, she said. And every career field is available to both men and women. "You can really work in any field that you want to, so you can get some of your own skills, test out your own leadership abilities because we're all leaders in the Navy," Franchetti said. "I think those are good things for them to think about ... I'd really like to have our sailors sell themselves. That's the best way to do it." If the Navy can convince young people to enlist, Franchetti said, it's equally important to ensure the Navy remains a place they want to stay, that they aren't going to be disappointed with their choice to enlist. The admiral said the Navy is doing a lot to retain service members. "We are also focusing on a lot of things that we know some of the younger people are interested in: making sure that folks have access to internet, making sure they have access to the gym, making sure they have access to health care, good-paying compensation, making sure they have a place to live that isn't on the ship," she said. "... A good quality barracks room, good quality food ... that's some of the work that we're doing to make sure that we can be that world-class employer." Military OneSource Provides Options to Military Spouses, Family Entrepreneurs [2024-04-25] WASHINGTON -- The Department of Defense, in partnership with other federal agencies, has options available to help budding entrepreneurs within the military community start and maintain their businesses. Most families in the U.S. -- military families included -- want two breadwinners in the family to make ends meet. But given the unpredictable nature of military life, traditional employment might not be an option for some military spouses. For them, starting their own business as an entrepreneur could be the best way to provide a second income that can move with them from one duty assignment to another.  Military spouses, service members and veterans from the National Capital Region who have an eye for running their own business met Monday at the Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, Virginia, during the "Military Entrepreneurship Summit" to learn more about entrepreneurship.  Ronald Keohane, DOD's assistant secretary for manpower and reserve affairs, spoke on behalf of DOD and said that living a military life, as a service member or as a military spouse, requires many of the same character traits as being an entrepreneur.  "The title of the event today is 'From Service to Success'," Keohane said. "Your discipline to assess, mitigate, manage risks; your leadership and a desire to make your mark in the world are all hallmarks of both military service and entrepreneurship."  Military spouses also share key traits with successful business owners, he said.  "If you're a military spouse, your risk tolerance, problem solving and adaptability are well matched for entrepreneurship," he said.  Patricia Barron, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for military community and family policy said entrepreneurship is an ideal opportunity for military spouses as a way to ensure their families have a dual income.  "Just because you're married to someone that wears a uniform doesn't mean that you don't deserve a dual-income family environment, and that you shouldn't be a person that could use your talents and skills to bring extra resources to your family," Barron said. "The Department of Defense takes that very seriously. We want to support and empower military spouses to live out their career dreams and their employment options."  One way the DOD supports military entrepreneurs is through the Spouse Education and Career Opportunities program. Through SECO, the Defense Department offers an "entrepreneur coaching package" to military spouses.  "This is with professional, no-kidding career coaches that are really focused on that entrepreneur journey that you're going to take, and they walk you through it and they help you with creating a 90-day plan for your business," Barron said.  Also, part of the entrepreneur coaching package, Barron said, is an assessment to help would-be business owners gauge their own readiness.  "They're going to assess where you are. You're actually going to start by taking something called the Entrepreneur EDGE Assessment that kind of gives that coach the opportunity to see where you're at," she said. "And from [there], they'll start walking you through the process."  Career coaches, through the SECO program, also help spouses with a variety of business needs from developing a marketing plan and researching laws, regulations and permits to managing finances and taxes. They also help budding entrepreneurs get access to partner organizations such as the Small Business Administration, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and non-profits that serve the military-connected entrepreneur community.  The SBA and the USPTO were partners with DOD at the summit.  Interested spouses can access the program at the Military OneSource website.   Ashish S. Vazirani, who currently performs the duties of the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said on Friday, in advance of the summit, that opportunities for entrepreneurs like those available through Military OneSource, through the Small Business Administration or the Patent and Trademark Office are an important part of DOD's mission to take care of its most important asset: its people.  "Taking care of people is a priority for us at the Department of Defense and certainly ensuring that our service members, their spouses and their family members can achieve their professional goals as well as their financial goals, is critically important," he said. "We're just fortunate to have the opportunity to partner with our agency partners such as the [U.S. Patent and Trademark Office] and the Small Business Administration to make sure that service members and family members have the resources available to them to give them the tools that they need to find success, or ... continued success through entrepreneurship." 2-Year Anniversary of Ukraine Defense Contact Group Comes With Billions in New Aid [2024-04-26] WASHINGTON -- At the conclusion of the 21st meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group today, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said the $95 billion security supplemental bill signed into law Wednesday is already providing benefit to Ukraine, which has for two years now been fighting off an illegal invasion by Russia. "I'm ... pleased to announce today an additional commitment of $6 billion through our Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative that will allow us to procure new capabilities for Ukraine from U.S. industry," Austin said during a briefing at the Pentagon. "This is the largest security assistance package that we've committed to date." The secretary said the USAI package is expected to include counter-drone systems and support equipment, artillery ammunition, air-to-ground munitions, maintenance and sustainment support, and interceptors for Ukraine's Patriot system, as well as their National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, also known as NASAMS. Materiel support to Ukraine though the USAI involves the U.S. government contracting directly with the defense industrial base to buy, manufacture and deliver new warfighting equipment to Ukraine.  But this week, the Defense Department also announced a new security assistance package for Ukraine, which was provided though presidential drawdown authority. The PDA package is worth $1 billion and includes, among other things, RIM-7 and AIM-9M missiles; Stinger antiaircraft missiles; tube-launched, optically-tracked, wire-guided, or TOW, missiles; ammunition for the high mobility artillery rocket system; 155 mm and 105 mm artillery shells; and a variety of combat vehicles. Assistance provided through presidential drawdown authority is pulled directly from the existing U.S. military's inventory and can be quickly sent overseas. Funding provided in the $95 billion security supplemental bill will be used to purchase new equipment to backfill what was sent by military units to Ukraine. "The announcements this week underscore America's enduring commitment to Ukraine's defense," Austin said. The Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a coalition of about 50 nations that meets monthly to discuss Ukraine's security needs, first met in April 2022. Since its first meeting, participating UDCG nations have collectively provided more than $95 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, Austin said. "Our contact group partners have contributed most of the counter-UAS [unmanned aerial] systems provided to Ukraine and most of the 155 mm artillery systems, most of the tanks, most of the armored personnel carriers, most of the infantry fighting vehicles and more," Austin said. "Throughout [Vladimir] Putin's war of choice, these contributions have been crucial, and they've saved countless Ukrainian lives." The contact group, Austin said, continues to work on quickly providing to Ukraine the capabilities necessary to meet its battlefield needs. It is also helping Ukraine build its defense capabilities to protect itself in the future. "On that first track, we pushed especially hard today to rush in more air defense systems and interceptors," Austin said. "And on the second, this contact group is working with Ukraine to help it move ... toward a robust, efficient and self-reliant defense industry." Austin said much of the work related to Ukraine's future defense needs is now delegated to special "capability coalitions" within the contact group, each with a unique defense focus. "These coalitions are looking for ways to further strengthen Ukraine's capabilities, and they are identifying where and how to boost Ukraine's capabilities," Austin said. "I'm grateful to all the countries heading up the eight capability coalitions that are now up and running." Focus areas for those capability coalitions include areas such as air defense, air power, artillery, maritime security, armor, information technology, de-mining and unmanned aerial vehicles, Austin said. Austin said the UDCG's motivation is stronger today than it was two years ago. "This contact group stands strong, and this coalition stands together, and we will not falter, we will not flinch, and we will not fail," he said. With today's commitment of $6 billion in Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funding, Wednesday's announcement of $1 billion in PDA security assistance, and similar tranches of assistance that will come in the future, the United States' intent has been clear now for two years. "We've said from the very beginning ... that our goal is to see a democratic, independent and sovereign Ukraine that has a capability to defend itself and deter aggression going forward," Austin said. "You see us working towards that end with not only the capability that we're providing Ukraine in the current battle, but the kinds of things that [will help] Ukraine build for the future." DOD's FY 2025 Budget Focuses on Defense, People, Teamwork [2024-04-30] WASHINGTON -- Last month the Defense Department released its fiscal year 2025 budget request, about $849.8 billion in all, and now Congress has invited DOD leaders of all stripes to Capitol Hill to discuss what's in the budget and what the department's thoughts were when creating that budget. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, as the top Defense Department leader, told lawmakers today at the House Armed Services Committee that the DOD budget request centers, broadly, on defending the nation, taking care of service members and their families, and strengthening relationships with like-minded U.S. partners and allies. "Our budget request for fiscal year 2025 will advance all three of these priorities," Austin said during his testimony. Defending the nation is of course the No. 1 priority for the Defense Department. And the DOD budget for FY 2025 -- which runs Oct. 1, 2024 through Sept 30, 2025 -- has a lot to make sure the DOD can carry out that No. 1 mission. "The president's request will invest in cutting-edge capabilities across all domains," Austin said. "That includes $48.1 billion for naval and shipbuilding capabilities, $61.2 billion to reinforce U.S. air dominance, and $13 billion to bolster Army and Marine Corps combat capabilities." The department's efforts in space, the secretary said, get about $33.7 billion, while cybersecurity tools get about $14.5 billion. Also, a top priority is the modernization of America's nuclear triad, which involves ground-based missiles -- commonly referred to as intercontinental ballistic missiles -- submarine-launched ballistic missiles and air-launched cruise missiles, dropped from bomber aircraft. This year's budget directs about $49.1 billion towards recapitalization of all three legs of the nuclear triad. That includes a focus on both the Columbia-class submarine and the B-21 bomber. "This budget request will support our outstanding troops and their families," Austin said. "That includes raising base pay and housing allowances; investing in better housing; making childcare more affordable; and funding vital work to prevent sexual assault and suicide in the military." For service members, this year's budget request includes a 4.5% pay raise, the third such raise over the past three years. Austin has said America's long-term security and success requires teamwork, which includes working with Congress, other parts of the U.S. government, the defense industry and especially with American partners and allies. "This [budget] request will help the Department further deepen our teamwork worldwide," he said. "Our network of allies and partners remains a strategic advantage that no competitor can match. And you can see its power in our strengthening ties across the Indo-Pacific, in today's expanded and united NATO, and in the 50-country Ukraine Defense Contact Group that I convene." As the global security environment grows more complex, with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the pacing challenge posed by China, and ongoing threats posed by Iran and North Korea, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., said he's seen relationships between the U.S. and partners grow stronger. "What I have seen in the seven months ... I've been in the job, I've engaged about 170 times with counterparts, my counterparts from around the world," he said. "And what I've found is as the world's gotten more complex, our work with our allies and partners has strengthened." NATO, he said, has gotten stronger and larger. But partnerships are not Europe-centric, they are global. "As I engage with the nations in Europe, they're focused on the Indo-Pacific, and Indo-Pacific nations are also focused on Europe because all these [threats] are a global threat to all of us," he said. "And you know that dialogue is definitely increased." Brown said the partners he speaks with are interested in the health of the global defense industrial base, which is responsible for making the tools nations need to defend themselves. "They are concerned about our collective defense industrial base and bringing capability," he said. "One thing I do find as I engage around the world is that U.S. capability, U.S. equipment, is highly desired. We've got to be able to provide that capability and equipment and those are the things that they are keenly interested in. They're also interested in our ability to work and be able to interoperate even when they have their own defense industrial base that they're also trying to increase as well." One area the DOD is working on to help strengthen the defense industrial base is munitions production. "In order to maintain our competitive edge, we're going to have to continue to invest in mutations," he said. " We've done that, with your help. As you know, for FY 24, we asked you for a number of multi-year procurement authorities and you supported us with that request. And over the last three years or so we've invested north of $75 billion in munitions." Last week, the president signed into law a $95 billion security supplemental bill, which among other things, provides security assistance to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. But the money that bill provides will also help strengthen the ability of America's industrial base to produce munitions, said Austin. "In the supplemental that you just approved for us, there are resources in that supplemental that ... we apply to the industrial base and help them expand to increase our capacity to meet the current demand and the demand in the future," Austin said. "I want to thank all the members for that." In January, DOD released its first "Defense Industrial Strategy." The FY 2025 budget request leans on that strategy to shore up critical domestic and allied supply chains for sectors such as microelectronics, casting and forging, and batteries and energy storage. The budget request also includes investments to in the U.S. submarine industrial base. DOD Needs Competitive, Innovative, Robust Defense Industrial Base [2024-05-01] WASHINGTON -- In early 2022, the Defense Department released a report detailing the state of the defense industrial base, or DIB, which is the collection of private sector companies that produce the materials, hardware and weapons used by the U.S. military. It was no surprise the report concluded that the DIB had dramatically downsized from where it had been decades earlier. As an example, 90% of missiles now come from just three sources, the report says. That consolidation, along with other issues related to the DIB, continue to pose a challenge to DOD, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Navy Adm. Christopher W. Grady said today while speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Either the industrial base will need to change, he said, or the Defense Department will need to adapt. "I think there's at least three characteristics ... that characterize the defense industrial base right now that may have to change or at least that we have to understand and live with. The first is the contraction," he said. "From the mid-80s ... to where we are now, the industrial base has gotten much, much smaller." At the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the U.S. military needed fewer new weapons and munitions. As a result, companies that made up the defense industrial base underwent a great period of consolidation. The complexity of what the department is looking for today has also increased exponentially, he said, which challenges the DIB in ways different than what it was challenged during World War II, for instance. "If we were pumping out ... a Liberty Ship every three days during WWII, we're not going to do that with a Virginia Class [submarine] or a [guided-missile destroyer] or similarly, an F-35," he said. "That's just not going to happen." In recent decades, the DIB, like other industries, has found efficiencies and greater profit by implementing "just-in-time" manufacturing concepts, where only what has been ordered is produced. "Industry, for all the right reasons ... kind of went to this 'just-in-time' piece of sustainment and logistics as part of the industrial base," he said. "I certainly understand what that means from a profit motivation. But that's a Phase 0 world ... if we use that construct. It's not a Phase 3 world. So, we're going to have to fix that going forward." As part of DOD's "Joint Operations" publication, "Phase 0" refers, in general, to peacetime, while "Phase 3" refers to a wartime environment. DOD's recently published National Defense Industrial Strategy lays out four long-term strategic priorities to help build a modernized defense industrial ecosystem and to ensure that the DIB can meet today's challenging national security demands. Included among those priorities is the building of resilient supply chains; ensuring a ready workforce within the DIB; a focus on flexible acquisition; and, through economic deterrence, promotion of fair and effective market mechanisms to support a resilient defense industrial ecosystem within the U.S. as well as allied and partner nations. "I think what we want is a defense industrial base ... that's built on competition, where [there are] free flows of capital, that is built on ... strong innovation with a demand signal from us, that has supply chains that are robust and resilient," he said. "It's a defense industrial base that increasingly is going to have to be hardened. It's one that has to build on the larger, writ large industrial base ... what do allies and partners bring to it?" Grady also said there must be a strong, educated and diverse workforce that is able to run that industrial base. "Perhaps the most important ... is we must value and encourage the artisans to come to us," he said. "I don't call them workers anymore, because if you look at anything they build, they are artisans of the highest order. Encouraging a resilient workforce is absolutely critical. We talk about national service. That's a form of national service. And you can get paid pretty well doing it. And so, we undervalue that, and I think that's changing, and we need to value that more so that we have the workforce we need." Good Cyber Hygiene Can Impede Adversary Meddling in U.S. Infrastructure [2024-05-02] WASHINGTON -- Good cyber hygiene, which includes things like regularly changing passwords or applying software security patches, plays an outsized role in preventing America's adversaries from hacking into and crippling U.S. infrastructure systems, such as power, water or gas. On Capitol Hill today, Director of National Intelligence Avril D. Haines told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that in many cases where it's been evident that U.S. adversaries have demonstrated an ability to hack into U.S. infrastructure systems, good cyber hygiene would have prevented it. "This year, cyber actors are attacking U.S. industrial control systems, which are typically used to automate industrial processes, at record levels," Haines said. Critical infrastructure sectors -- including water, wastewater, food, agriculture, defense, energy and transportation --rely on these kinds of systems, she said. "Although the likelihood of any single attack having a widespread effect on interrupting critical services remains low, the increased number of attacks and the actors' willingness to access and manipulate these control systems increases the collective odds that at least one could have a more significant impact," Haines said. The owners and maintainers of these systems play a role in their vulnerability to cyberattack by American adversaries, Haines told lawmakers. "In virtually all the attacks we've seen against U.S. critical infrastructure, cyber actors took advantage of default or weak passwords; unpatched, known vulnerabilities; and poorly secured network connections to launch relatively simple attacks," she said. "And for this reason, it is crucial that all of us -- particularly critical infrastructure owners and operators -- improve our cybersecurity practices to reduce our vulnerability to such efforts." According to Haines, the number of ransomware attacks globally went up by as much as 74% in the last year. Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey A. Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told senators that the need to protect DIA networks from cyberattacks by a wide range of actors, including foreign intelligence entities and insider threats, remains a primary concern for DIA. "This includes not only the sophisticated capabilities of state actors, such as Russia and China, but also rogue cyber actors loosely aligned to governments," he said. "In addition to ... the growing threat to critical infrastructure in local governments, this threat directly endangers our defense industrial capabilities, our hard-won technological and military advantages, our allies and partners, and our future defense operations. We must partner, invest and integrate in new ways to secure what we value and safeguard: the assured resiliency of our networks, the data and the people." DOD Looks Outside Bureaucracy for Novel Talent Management Concepts [2024-05-02] WASHINGTON -- Across the globe, the Defense Department employs over three million people -- including civilians and uniformed military personnel. A challenge for the department has been both competing with the private sector for talent, but also finding the best way to manage the talent it has and that it brings on, in terms of ensuring the best people, with the right skills, are in the most appropriate jobs.  "From a talent management standpoint, we have a lot of things that we face as challenges," said Jeannette Haynie, director of the DOD Talent Management Innovation Challenge. "For example, hiring timelines, competing against private industry and reaching the breadth of the folks around America. We need to figure out how to, over time, [increase our] focus to be more human-centered." Late last year, the department embarked on a novel effort to meet the challenges of talent management by asking employees across the department for their best talent management ideas.  The inaugural "Talent Management: From the Ground Up Innovation Challenge" kicked off in August 2023 as a way to capture the diversity of thought, experience, background and capability offered by the department's total force, and to bring forward new ideas about how the DOD can improve its talent management.  The DOD's office of personnel and readiness received some 200 submissions as part of the challenge, and those were whittled down to 33 semifinalists. On April 24-25, teams and individuals representing the nine top-rated talent management ideas gathered at the Pentagon to present their ideas to DOD leadership in a final round. Presenters of those ideas will eventually work alongside various policy offices inside DOD to collaborate on how best to implement their ideas. For this year's talent management innovation challenge, participants were asked to submit ideas related to recruiting and accessions as well as promotion and retention. A third "wild card" category allowed submitters to be broader with their ideas.  The presentations, Haynie said, were impressive. She said she is optimistic about how what she and her team heard might benefit the Defense Department.  "These leaders know the problems they're seeing. They're living them, and they have solutions," Haynie said. "The overwhelming impression is there's a lot of creativity [and] we need to figure out how to effectively tap into a lot of energy that we can use. And I'm just thrilled that we have a template for something that could work for the future."  Based on what she saw, Haynie said it's clear that soliciting ideas from some of the innovative personnel from across the DOD is a great way to get new insights and ideas that might not have been otherwise considered. It's something she said she hopes might happen again.  "I hope that we continue doing these challenges at DOD and talent management," she said. "This one was pretty broad -- we had some really broad categories. I'd love to focus those and target ones for the future, to look just at maybe promotion, and retention in certain categories, or military occupational specialties."  Haynie also said that she hopes every idea she saw presented might, in some way, be useful to the DOD in the future.  "It really just depends on what the department sees as valuable from these nine, and how we think they can fit into existing plans or further support existing plans," she said.  Air Force Master Sgt. Chad Hardesty, an "innovation strategist" within the Air Force's talent management office, was one of the competitors in the talent management innovation challenge. Among those who presented ideas, he was also the only enlisted service member.  The issue Hardesty identified is that existing organizations and teams are challenged to bring the best new team members on board and are also challenged to understand how new team members communicate and are motivated so that the entire team can move quickly to high performance. A solution, he said, involves making use of a talent management assessment platform.  "It allows your organization, from top to bottom, to be able to conduct a number of assessments that can be customized and tailored to the commander or the organization's needs," he said, adding that this includes assessing personality, skills and strength, for instance.  "It then [uses] a ... kind of AI algorithm to give you a synopsis of how individuals will be able to work together based on their skills, their strengths [and] behavioral and personality assessments," he said.  Already, Hardesty said, his idea has been piloted within the Air Force with senior executive service personnel and general officers.  "Currently across the Air Force, during my research and analysis, I noticed that individuals ... are not hiring people, they're hiring paper," he said. "When you submit for a job, you submit your resume. But they don't know who you are. They don't know your personality characteristics. They don't necessarily know your skills and your strengths. They know what you're qualified in and whether you have a degree [or] certifications."  An analysis of skills, personality, strengths and weaknesses, he said, could allow teams to better know a candidate before they are hired and to be able to better integrate a new team member once they are on board.  His interaction with DOD's personnel and readiness team, and the support they have provided during the innovation challenge, he said, has been phenomenal.  "They've reached out to me, they've continued to, even before the finals, they were asking for more data, more feedback," Hardesty said. "They really wanted to make sure that they were getting everything they needed to make the right decisions. After the pitch yesterday talking to a couple of senior leaders, I really feel over the next couple of weeks I'll be able to have a good number of meetings and hear people's challenges and see how our idea, our solution, can be customized or even be pivoted to help them solve some of their challenges."  The Defense Department also struggles to attract top talent in technology and STEM fields, said Navy Reserve Lt. Cmdr. Steven Jaworski, one of the innovators selected to present his ideas to leaders at the Pentagon.  "My idea was to get left to the problem, get upstream of it. Source, recruit, engage and nurture potential candidates and DOD applicants with an advanced candidate relationship management tool," Jaworski said. "This means pooling applicants, pipelining -- very granular segmentation.  For candidates who apply for a DOD job but aren't selected, he said, those candidates shouldn't be forgotten, but instead the department should remember them and keep them in mind, based on what skills they have, for other jobs.  "Let's keep them in a talent pool, engage them with emails and SMS campaigns, and keep them in the pipeline to become an applicant," he said.  The artificial intelligence-driven candidate relationship management system, Jaworski said, can identify potential employment candidates based on their social media posts, and recommend jobs within the DOD.  Presenting his idea to DOD leadership was a good experience for him, Jaworski said.  "[I had a] great conversation ... with [Ashish S. Vazirani] and the panel," he said. "I know behind the scenes [everybody has] done so much work to make this possible. And not only the coordination of the panel and of the presentations, but the research that the panel obviously put into reading our ideas ... they really did their due diligence."  Matthew Correia, a military veteran and current civilian with the Air Force, has recommended using gaming software in conjunction with an existing competency assessment tool, to develop various competencies within military and civilian personnel.  The DOD and military services, he said, have competencies involving things like accountability, leadership, communications, decision-making and teamwork, for instance, that they would like service members and civilians to have.  "I thought, why don't we assess and develop those competencies within a commercial, off-the-shelf assessment tool, paired with a team-based activity," he said. "It could be an online game.  It could be a war game. It could be a project. And then once you've identified what their competencies are, develop them to the next proficiency level up. This way, you have a workforce that is very much adaptive to the 21st century warfighter."  Correia said he has been surprised with how easy it has been with talent management: innovation challenge for him to develop his idea and to then bring it to DOD level for consideration.  "A lot of folks have an idea that the Department of Defense is a rather static, sort of fixed environment, maybe not open to ideas," he said. "This just completely changed my mind about it. It really opened up a new door and a new opportunity to find out that there are people at the senior level of the Department of Defense who are looking for creative, innovative ways to develop the force, attract new people to the force, and retain the best talent within the Department of Defense." Floating Piers, Cargo Ship With Aid for Gaza Face Weather Delays [2024-05-07] WASHINGTON -- Construction of the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS, system on the Mediterranean Sea, which will streamline delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, is now complete, the deputy Pentagon press secretary said today. "The U.S. military has completed the offshore construction of the Trident pier section, or 'the causeway,' which is the component that will eventually be anchored to the Gaza shore," said Sabrina Singh during a briefing today. "As I mentioned last week, construction of the floating pier section has also been completed. So as of today, the construction of the two portions of the JLOTS -- the floating pier and the Trident pier -- are complete and awaiting final movement offshore." At the same time, she said, the cargo ship MV Sagamore is at port in Cyprus being loaded with humanitarian aid supplies bound for Gaza. "The Sagamore is a cargo vessel that will use the JLOTS system and will make trips between Cyprus and the offshore floating pier as USAID and other partners collect aid from around the world," she said. Singh explained that the Sagamore, a commercial ship registered in the U.S., will be loaded with humanitarian aid in Cyprus and will then travel from Cyprus to a temporary floating pier several miles off the coast of Gaza. There, at sea, cargo will be unloaded from the Sagamore onto trucks that are onboard Army-owned landing craft utility ships, or LCUs, and logistic support vessels, or LSVs. The Army ships will then travel toward Gaza where they will meet up with the Trident pier. There, the trucks onboard the LCUs and LSVs will drive onto the pier and onto the shore of Gaza where the humanitarian aid supplies can then be staged for delivery inside Gaza. It's expected that initially about 90 truckloads of supplies will transit the causeway each day and make their way into Gaza. When the operation reaches full capacity, as many as 150 trucks will make their way into Gaza daily. "I think what you're going to see at the very beginning is a 'crawl, walk, run' scenario," Singh said. "We're going to start with an additional small amount of aid trucks to flow in to make sure that the system works, that the distribution works, and then you'll see that increase ... when we get to full operational capacity." While the JLOTS system may eventually deliver substantial capacity, Singh said it's neither the only way nor the best way to get much-needed supplies into Gaza. "The best way [is] through those land routes, and we do want to see those opened up," she said. "We do want to see aid continue to flow in through those land crossings. This is just one [way.] It's meant to help augment, to help complement, other ways that aid can get in." The Gaza Strip, which is about 25 miles long, lies entirely inside Israel and shares a border to the south with Egypt. There are three locations along its border where humanitarian supplies could move into Gaza from either Egypt or Israel. Those locations include the Erez crossing in northern Gaza and the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Gaza. Both of those crossings connect Gaza to Israel. The Rafah crossing is on the Gaza border with Egypt. Since March 2, U.S. Central Command, in coordination with the Royal Jordanian Air Force, has carried out nearly 40 humanitarian missions to airdrop nearly 1,200 tons of humanitarian assistance into Gaza. While the JLOTS construction is now complete, that capability has not yet been deployed due to weather conditions, Singh said. Right now, the two piers are floating on the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Israel near the Port of Ashdod -- about 18 miles north of Gaza. Weather conditions, Singh said, prevent moving either of them to their final location. "Late last week, Centcom temporarily paused moving the floating pier and Trident pier toward the vicinity of Gaza due to sea state considerations," she said. "Today there are still forecasted high winds and high sea swells, which are causing unsafe conditions for the JLOTS components to be moved." Austin: FY 2025 Budget Includes 'Tough, But Responsible' Decisions [2024-05-08] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department's top official told Congress today that DOD's fiscal year 2025 budget request, about $849.8 billion in all, includes tradeoffs between capability in the future and readiness. "[Our budget request] is aligned to our strategy," Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said in testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee. "We made tough, but responsible decisions that prioritize near-term readiness, modernization of the joint force, and support for our troops and their families. Our approach dials back some near-term modernization for programs not set to come online until the 2030s." When asked, Austin said investments now in 5th- and 6th-generation aircraft have been delayed to, instead, invest funding in areas more important in the short-term, such as service members and their families. Nevertheless, he said, the department is still looking toward the future. "Our budget does include, as you heard me say earlier, $143.2 billion for [research, development, test and evaluations] and $167.5 billion for procurement," the secretary told senators. But Austin did tell lawmakers that the risk in modernization investments today will need to be addressed in future budgets. "Because we accepted some risk in modernization for the out years, we'll need to have a growth in the top line in the out years to ensure that we can recapture some of the things that we weren't able to get into this budget," he said. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., who testified alongside Austin, said he didn't expect that the FY 2025 budget would negatively impact defense operations, and also reinforced Austin's comments, saying that in future budgets there would need to be an increase in top-line funding to refocus on modernization. "For operational impacts for today, because of our focus on readiness, I don't see operational impacts," Brown said. "As the secretary highlighted, we had to defer some of our modernization. [When] you think about five, six years, a decade from now, there's potential challenges if we don't get the additional support in the top line in the out years." Brown said as chairman he's focused on both capability and capacity to support the joint force. And both will need to be addressed in coming years, he said. "We got to make sure we have capability that stays ahead of the threat, and then also have capacity to be able to operate in many of the areas around the world like we do today," Brown said. "And that's where we need to make sure we're working closely together on the out years to ensure that we can actually continue to modernize and make sure we stay ahead of the threat." U.S., German Defense Leaders Discuss Shared Interests in NATO, Ukraine, Indo-Pacific [2024-05-09] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III today hosted German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius at the Pentagon for a bilateral discussion on shared interests ranging from Ukraine to operations in the Indo-Pacific region. Austin commended Pistorius on Germany's commitment to providing support to Ukraine's self-defense, citing, among other things, the weapons systems Germany has supplied and the financial commitments it has made. "After the United States, Germany is the second-largest donor of military assistance to Ukraine, as it resists Putin's aggression," Austin said. "You earmarked $7.7 billion for Ukraine in 2024 alone. Germany has donated critical air defense systems and artillery. And we will continue our close partnership to ensure that Ukraine has the capabilities that it needs to succeed on the battlefield." Germany has also taken in the largest number of Ukrainian refugees in Europe, Austin said. "Thanks for everything that Germany is doing for Ukraine's self-defense," Austin said. When it comes to greater Europe-wide commitments to security, Austin said Germany is also contributing greatly. "Germany's plan for a permanent brigade in Lithuania is a historic commitment that will strengthen European security," he said. "And we commend Germany for reaching our shared NATO commitment to spend at least 2% of your GDP on defense this year. Germany remains one of our strongest and most reliable allies." The secretary also noted Germany's deployment of troops to support security and stability in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. "Whether deterring the Kremlin's aggression, or bolstering stability in the Indo-Pacific, our two proud democracies are in lockstep," Austin said. Pistorius thanked Austin for American leadership in supporting Ukraine, and acknowledged that the U.S. and Germany have interests outside Europe as well -- particularly in the Indo-Pacific region. "A free and peaceful Indo-Pacific is important to all of us, and we want to help promote peace and stability in that region," Pistorius said, adding that he looks forward to Germany's participation in the Rim of the Pacific exercise, which begins in June. The event, also known as Rimpac, is the world's largest maritime warfare exercise. "Germany is and remains a staunch ally of the United States," Pistorius said. "We both will continue to work closely as partners, as allies and as friends. This is more important than ever in this world, and I'm confident that we can achieve much together." DOD Uses Unfavorable Sea Conditions to Gain Efficiencies on Gaza Aid Mission [2024-05-09] WASHINGTON -- While unfavorable sea conditions have slowed deployment of two piers meant to deliver humanitarian aid into Gaza, the Defense Department has found a way to use the delay to its advantage and get ahead on the mission once it gets underway. Earlier this week the Defense Department announced completion of the construction of two floating piers, which will be used to deliver humanitarian aid into Gaza. Construction of the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS, system on the Mediterranean Sea was completed Tuesday. One floating pier will be deployed several miles offshore outside Gaza, while the other, called the Trident pier, or "causeway," will be pushed onto and attached to the Gazan shore. Together they will be used to move humanitarian aid into Gaza. Both of the floating piers, along with the MV Roy P. Benavidez -- a large, medium-speed, roll-on, roll-off ship -- are off the coast of Israel near the Port of Ashdod, about 18 miles north of Gaza. Unfavorable sea conditions prevent movement of the piers to their final location. In the meantime, the MV Sagamore -- a commercial cargo ship -- has been loaded with humanitarian aid in Cyprus and has made its way to Ashdod. Instead of waiting for the piers to be deployed, humanitarian aid on the Sagamore will be moved to the Benavidez so that the Sagamore can go back to Cyprus to get more aid supplies, said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder. "In this period of time that we have before the pier becomes operational, we're essentially using that time to get ahead," Ryder said during a briefing today. "Since the Sagamore has been loaded with humanitarian assistance, by transloading that on to the Benavidez, the Benavidez is essentially in position to immediately start loading that onto the floating pier for subsequent shipment to the causeway and delivery to the shore." Because the Benavidez will remain near Gaza when the humanitarian mission begins, Ryder said, the Sagamore is free to go back to Cyprus to get additional aid. Once the two floating piers are deployed, ships loaded with humanitarian aid will dock at the floating pier off the coast of Gaza and have their cargo unloaded onto trucks that are onboard Army-owned landing craft utility ships, or LCUs, and logistic support vessels, or LSVs. The Army ships will then travel toward Gaza where they will meet up with the Trident pier. There, the trucks onboard the LCUs and LSVs will drive onto the pier and onto the shore of Gaza where the humanitarian aid supplies can then be staged for delivery inside Gaza. Ryder said non-U.S. civilian contractors will be responsible for driving those vehicles. It's expected that initially about 90 truckloads of supplies will transit the causeway each day and make their way into Gaza. When the operation reaches full capacity, as many as 150 trucks will make their way into Gaza daily. "This is a complex operation which requires close coordination with many partners," said Ryder. "The United States is joining an international community-backed effort, led by [U.S. Agency for International Development] with support from the United Nations, the World Food Programme, the Republic of Cyprus, other partner nations and the [Israeli Defense Forces] to expand the delivery of humanitarian assistance via a maritime corridor to the people of Gaza." DOD Honors Sexual Assault Prevention, Response Professionals [2024-05-21] WASHINGTON -- At the Pentagon today, the Defense Department recognized the top-level performance of more than two dozen department and service employees who work in the sexual assault prevention and response community. "I am in awe of each of you who bring this work to life; you play a critical role in tackling one of the department's toughest challenges. ... This can be really difficult, draining work, often done with limited resources, and yet, you're getting it done," said Beth Foster, Executive Director, Office of Force Resiliency. Recognized were sexual assault response coordinators, or SARCs, who are personnel at an installation who provide confidential support and coordinate care for victims of sexual assault throughout the investigation and recovery process. Also recognized were sexual assault prevention and response victim advocates, or SAPR VAs, who provide one-on-one, confidential support, education and resources to a victim of sexual assault. Combating sexual assault in the armed forces has been a top priority for Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III since the first day he took office, Foster said, and the award recipients are on the front lines of furthering the secretary's goals. Since that time, Foster said, DOD's sexual assault and prevention programs have undergone a complete review by the Independent Review Commission on Sexual Assault in the Military. Following the release of the commission's report, the department has worked hard to implement its recommendations, Foster said. As an example of DOD's recent efforts, Foster said, the Offices of Special Trial Council reached its full operational capability in December. This means that prosecution of offenses, such as sexual assault, are now prosecuted by specially trained military attorneys who are outside the traditional chain of command. "This historic change, one of the biggest changes to the UCMJ [Uniform Code of Military Justice] in over 50 years, is intended to promote fairness and greater trust in our military justice system," she said. Most recently, DOD released the Fiscal Year 2023 Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military. For the first time in nearly a decade, the department saw a decrease in sexual assault prevalence, she said. "We wouldn't be seeing improvements on this without your critical work," Foster said. In 2023, there were 8,515 sexual assault reports handled by SARCs and SAPR VAs, said Nathan Galbreath, SAPRO acting director. Additionally, there were 3,324 SAPR-related inquiries, 736 expedited transfer requests for service members, and 695 submissions to the Catch a Serial Offender Program. "Every one of these actions represents assistance rendered by a dedicated response professional and, oftentimes, not during the hours of 9 to 5," Galbreath said. "Victim assistance is a calling, and we are so fortunate that the SARCs and VAs with us today answered that call." While the DOD has in the last year seen progress in its effort to combat sexual assault and to provide assistance to victims, the department has a lot of work to do, Foster said. She challenged SARCs and SAPR VAs to continue their work to aid victims while at the same time working to eliminate sexual assault and harassment from happening in the first place. "We have got to keep our foot on the gas," she said. "We've got to stay focused on this." DOD leadership, Foster said, is committed to combating sexual assault and to providing the resource investments needed to ensure the advancements being made are enduring. Recipients of the 2024 Liz Blanc Exceptional SARC of the Year Award include: -- Army recipient: Dr. Hai-Wen Chu, 8th Army SHARP, South Korea -- Marine Corps recipient: Latricia Kamins, Air Station Miramar, California -- Navy recipient: Alexander Arce, National Base San Diego & Naval Air Facility El Centro, California -- Air Force recipient: Capt. Samantha Van Vynck, Hill Air Force Base, Utah -- Space Force recipient: Carly Martinez, Vandenberg Space Force Base, California -- National Guard recipient: Erica Davidson, North Dakota National Guard -- Coast Guard recipient: Michael Jordy, U.S. Coast Guard Base New Orleans, Louisiana Recipients of the 2024 Liz Blanc Exceptional SAPR VA of the Year Award include: -- Army: Sgt. 1st Class Chelsea Wheelehan, 66th Military Intelligence Brigade -- Marine Corps: 1st Lt. Elizabeth Hosie, 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, Camp Pendelton, California -- Navy: Petty Officer 1st Class Wayne McGonigal, Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans, Louisiana -- Air Force: Sierra M. Elliott, 1st Special Operations Wing, Hurlburt Field, Florida -- National Guard: Senior Master Sgt. Joseph Horne, 132nd Wing, Des Moines, Iowa -- Coast Guard: Lt. j.g. Kirsten Carson, U.S. Coast Guard Sector Mobile, Alabama Recipients of the 2024 Promoting Excellence in Prevention Award include: -- Army: Dr. Corrine Wilsey; Retired Col. Mindy Kimball; Maj. Jessica Dawson; and Dr. Stephanie Marsh, U. S. Military Academy, West Point, New York -- Marine Corps: Morgan Humberger, Headquarters Battalion, 1st Marine Division, Camp Pendelton, California -- Air Force: Sierra Elliott and Lisa Wright, 1st Special Operations Wing, Hurlburt Field, Florida -- Space Force: Jessica Ditson, Nicholas Mowes, Jessica Schroeder, Katherine Hammer, Hugo Escobar and Melissa Dashner, Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado -- Coast Guard: Marta Wiecha-Swierczek, USCG Atlantic Area At Gulf Cooperation Council, U.S. Participates in Maritime, Missile Defense Working Groups [2024-05-22] WASHINGTON -- Defense Department representatives will sit down today with partners in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, during a Gulf Cooperation Council meeting to discuss ongoing and mutual security concerns in the Middle East, including those posed by Iran. "The region is experiencing one of its most challenging periods in recent years," said a senior defense official on Monday. "Threats from Iran and its proxies are pervasive, demonstrated by an unprecedented number of Iran-backed attacks since October, such as the 175 Iranian-aligned militia group attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, Syria and Jordan; more than 90 Houthi attacks against international shipping in the Red Sea; and more." Members of the Gulf Cooperation Council include the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait. The council first met in 1981 to strengthen relations among the member states.  The U.S. last participated in talks with the GCC in February 2023. During today's discussions, representatives from the Joint Staff, U.S. Central Command, Naval Forces Central Command, Air Forces Central Command, the Missile Defense Agency, and the Defense Security Cooperation Agency are participating in two working groups, including one on maritime security and the other on air and missile defense. "In the maritime security working group, we'll focus heavily on these Houthi terrorist attacks against international shipping, which have used an unprecedented array of anti-ship ballistic missiles, anti-ship cruise missiles, one-way attack UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles], unmanned surface vehicles, and unmanned underwater vehicles," the senior defense official said. "These attacks endanger freedom of navigation and the lives of innocent mariners." More than 24 nations are now participating in the U.S.-led "Prosperity Guardian" mission in the Red Sea to counter Iranian-backed, Houthi-led attacks on merchant and naval vessels. "[Those attacks] have resulted in the kidnapping and deaths of innocents, immense property destruction, and environmental despoliation and immense hardship for the peoples of the nations of the Red Sea," the official said. "These attacks are not just a U.S. problem. They impact the entirety of the region, and they have global ramifications. So, we look forward to discussing how we can expand cooperation with our Gulf partners to mitigate the Houthi threat to maritime security." Last month, on April 13, Iran and its proxy groups launched more than 300 airborne weapons at targets in Israel, but the U.S., Israeli and partner forces destroyed a significant portion of those before they reached their targets. Among the weapons launched from locations in Iran, Syria and Yemen were over 110 medium-range ballistic missiles, more then 30 land-attack cruise missiles, and more than 150 uncrewed aerial vehicles. During the meeting, the U.S. will also participate in the integrated air and missile defense working group, which the official said now takes on more significance in light of those Iranian missile launches at Israel. "This attack really was a watershed moment in the Middle East, the official said. "Together with our partners, we ... successfully defeated Iran's attack, and that's a stark testament to the value of integrated air and missile defense and its vital importance for regional stability." The official said the attack -- and the defeat of that attack by partners in the Middle East -- demonstrated what can be achieved by partnerships, such as the ones the U.S. has with some Middle East nations. "It really showcased what we're collectively capable of when we work together on defeating regional security threats," he said. "Ironically, ... April 13, which was really a proof-of-concept of integrated air and missile defense, was ultimately successful in sparking a deeper cooperation among our partners. Iran's destabilizing and dangerous behavior has given a newfound urgency and newfound energy to convene this working group and build out the elements of integrated air and missile defense." Discussions within the integrated air and missile defense working group will include, among other topics, multilateral efforts to counter existing threats, expansion of air and missile defense early warning systems, and the sharing of information to ensure a common air picture. "We'll focus on improving U.S. and GCC interoperability and integration to ensure that the region is postured to counter, to deter, and to defeat air and maritime threats and ultimately to advance peace and security in the region," the official said. "Our basic message as we head into these discussions is: 'We're stronger when we act together.'" U.S. Needs Sea-Based Nuclear Capability to Ensure Second-Strike Capability [2024-05-23] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. needs all three legs of its nuclear triad, including the land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and air-launched cruise missiles maintained by the Air Force, as well as the sea-based weapons that are the domain of the Navy. In a nuclear conflict where adversaries launch a first strike, it's possible they might render U.S. ground-based and air-launched systems unusable. But the U.S. still maintains deterrence though sea-based systems, which guarantee a second-strike capability-- the ability to strike back. "If you think about it from the adversary's perspective, anything that they may think they could do as an initial strike, that [ballistic missile submarine] force is always out there on alert, on patrol, unknown where they're at," said Navy Vice Adm. Johnny R. Wolfe Jr., director for strategic systems. "Certainly, if ever called upon, they are survivable and could ensure that a second-strike from our nation could be performed. That is absolutely critical, as you look at deterrence and what it means." Wolfe, along with Air Force Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere, commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, testified Wednesday before the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee. Since last year there have been some advancements on the Navy's efforts to modernize its own portion of the U.S. nuclear triad. "We have built on this remarkable history of deterrence, marking such milestones as the final demonstration and shakedown operation for our Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines [and] establishment of a new nuclear office for the sea-launched cruise missile, SLCM-N," Wolfe said. "Additionally, in coordination with our [National Nuclear Security Administration] partners, we are initiating a nuclear weapon project to adapt a nuclear warhead for this new capability." The sea-launched cruise missile, nuclear, or SLCM-N, can be launched from surface ships and also attack subs, rather than from traditional ballistic missile submarines. Wolfe told senators that the industrial base that would be most responsible for building the SLCM-N has atrophied and that it'll be a challenge to build it back. "Significant investments are required to build back capacity to handle multiple concurrent nuclear modernization programs," he told senators. The admiral also stressed to lawmakers that despite challenges such as an atrophied industrial base and supply chain challenges, the Navy must advance modernization of its part of the nuclear triad. "First and foremost, we must maintain the current [Trident II D5LE] missile inventory and provide the necessary operational support to sustain Ohio-class submarines through the end of their life in the early 2040s," he said. "Secondly ... we must continue to ensure a seamless transition between Ohio-class and Columbia-class submarines." The Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine is a replacement for the Ohio-class SSBN, which first saw duty in the 1980s. Part of that, Wolfe said, is transitioning the Trident II D5LE from the Ohio-class subs to the Columbia-class subs. Wolfe also said that the U.S. isn't alone in providing nuclear capability as a deterrent. He cited the British as a significant partner in that endeavor. "One of the greatest advantages the United States has is its alliances and partnerships," he said. "For decades, U.S. policy has recognized the contribution ... an independent British nuclear deterrent adds to NATO, and indeed global stability. [Strategic Systems Programs] will continue to support and sustain this most-important relationship." The admiral said nuclear modernization will take time and will require investments in people, infrastructure and the U.S. industrial base. "It is only through your continued support that the department's highest modernization priorities can be achieved, and the Navy can deliver a reliable sea-based strategic deterrent capability," he said. While the Navy operates one leg of the nuclear triad, the Air Force operates two legs, with both land-based siloed nuclear missiles and air-launched missiles. "The timely modernization of our nuclear triad ... remains the command's paramount focus," said Bussiere. Ongoing modernization efforts are aimed at GSC's land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, bomber force, nuclear command and control platforms, weapons generation facilities and associated nuclear weapons, Bussiere said. "This committee is keenly aware of the threats facing our nation today and in the foreseeable future," he said. "We currently face the challenge of deterring two major nuclear armed competitors, the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation, both armed with modern and diverse nuclear capabilities." Also a threat, he said, are North Korea and Iran. "Not only is the command leading the charge and sustaining current forces and deploying future long-range strike weapon systems, Global Strike Command is acutely aware that the nuclear deterrence mission is the bedrock of our national defense strategy, and foundational to our nation's defense and essential to that of our allies and partners," Bussiere said. The DOD's fiscal year 2025 budget request includes $49.2 billion to modernize the department's nuclear triad. Included in the request are investments for the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, the B-21 bomber and the Sentinel system, which is a modernization for the ground-based portion of the nuclear triad. DOD Kicks Off Improved Household Goods Shipment Program [2024-06-04] WASHINGTON -- Stressful station-to-station moves due to poor quality service and broken or delayed household goods could soon be a thing of the past. This summer, U.S. Transportation Command kicked off implementation of its new Global Household Goods contract, or GHC, which aims to make the movement of household goods a better experience all around for service members and their families. During the peak season for permanent change of station moves -- mid-May through Labor Day -- the Defense Department began moving some service members under the new GHC contract, which was awarded to HomeSafe Alliance. Those moves will be limited in number this summer -- no more than 50 moves per month -- will happen across only 15 military installations and be limited to local moves only. Feedback from those initial moves will be documented with an automated customer satisfaction survey process to evaluate how the moves went and to improve GHC going forward, said Andy Dawson, Defense Personal Property Management Office Director at Transcom. "We've spent a significant amount of time improving the customer satisfaction survey process and working with commercial industry to bring in best practices," he said. The existing program to move service members and their families has been around for almost two decades, Dawson said. But in recent years, DOD recognized it's no longer serving customers the way it should. Last year, for instance, only about 77% of service members reported satisfaction with their household goods move." That number translates to several thousand service members who were not satisfied with their move. Dawson's team is working to significantly reduce that number. "Around the late [2010s], in 2018 really, was the pivot point where we started to see cracks," Dawson said. "What service members started to see was poor communication with industry, poor customer service, frustrations with how their personal property was being handled, and a general lack of accountability of industry's performance." There was also a lack of satisfaction with how claims were being handled after a move was completed. Lawmakers stepped in, Dawson said, and asked DOD to make changes to better serve service members and their families. "Congress directed the department to address service member concerns, and that happened in early 2019," he said. Since then, he said, Transcom has worked hard to develop a new way to conduct a military move. There have been challenges along the way, but Dawson said he believes Transcom personnel have created a solution that meets the demands set by Congress and serves military members and their families by improving the military move process and making moves less stressful. "Permanent change of station moves and relocations are an integral part of the military lifestyle," Dawson said. "We owe it to our service members and families to do everything we can to reduce the stress and frustrations that come with moving, which I think most studies list as one of the top ten most stressful things you do in your life." A big change, he said, is that under GHC there will be vastly improved communication between service members and the contractor responsible for making their move happen. "There's one point of contact for service members to move," he said. "The contract requires a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week response to address and help service members and families with their move." New information technology components within GHC -- including mobile tools, DOD's MilMove software and HomeSafe Alliance's software known as HomeSafe Connect -- will also make moves easier for military families. MilMove is a DOD system that allows service members to request a move, Dawson said. That system also supports business operations for DOD employees who are involved in processing service member moves. MilMove communicates with and transfers data to HomeSafe Connect, the contractor's software for managing a service member's move. HomeSafe Connect offers modern, digital management capabilities, which make it easier to request, track and manage shipments. "The moving process today that service members are going through is still very much a manual process," Dawson said. "This technology automates that, including the entire inventory process." The GHC contractor, HomeSafe Alliance, will manage moves for military families by developing and making use of its own network of trusted and trained moving company subcontractors. To ensure those moves go well -- both with the initial phase-in effort this summer, and later, when the program's scope is widened -- HomeSafe Alliance provides training to its network of partner moving companies to ensure that every move for every service member looks the same and provides the same quality experience, Dawson said. "HomeSafe has stood up their own training academy to provide the necessary training to their subcontractors to make that concept come to life," he said. "It drives some standardization, which in turn drives expectations for what a service member should expect from their moves." Through training of subcontractors, Dawson said, the moving experience should be standardized. And when the moving experience is standardized, service members -- who may move a dozen or more times in their career -- will learn what to expect from a move and can then better evaluate each move against the last. "Under GHC, what should happen is when you move it should be a very similar if not exactly the same experience as your last move (under GHC), " he said. Also under GHC, there is a more streamlined process for filing and settling claims, including easy-to-read, electronic inventories with photos of customer's belongings. Military moves affect both service members and their families, and more than 300,000 moves happen each year. When developing GHC, Transcom consulted with a wide array of stakeholders to understand the challenges service members and their families may have had in the past while moving to gain insight into what an ideal move should look like. "We established a spouse advisory panel so that we could ensure we were addressing the perspective of the spouses and families internal to the department," Dawson said. Also part of the effort, he said, was a cross-functional team of representatives from each military service, including the Coast Guard. "It's a joint program," he said. "We had to bring them all to the table and come up with a collective plan to move forward, based on what we thought was the best way to get after some of these challenges." The DOD has been moving military families around the globe for a long time and there is ample data collected from post-move surveys. Development of GHC also involved reviewing that data, which includes both good and bad experiences from decades of moves. And finally, Dawson said, the department consulted with industry to get their input as well. "We considered all the stakeholders' input," he said. Changes to household goods movement are only part of what Transcom has been doing, Dawson said. Other changes are underway as well, including how DOD does long-term storage of household goods, and how the department goes about shipping a personally owned vehicle. "We're very excited about what we're doing to improve the holistic relocation process for our service members and families," he said. "The spotlight is on GHC right now, but there's a lot of work going on for all parts of the program." Customers at the 15 GHC-live phase-in locations will be notified in advance if they are going to be moved under the new contract. Locations where GHC is being phased in this summer include: -- Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia -- U.S. Coast Guard Base Portsmouth, Virginia -- Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina -- Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina -- Naval Base Kitsap, Washington -- Naval Station Everett, Washington -- Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Washington -- U.S. Coast Guard Base Seattle, Washington -- Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington -- Naval Base Ventura County-Port Hueneme, California -- Naval Air Station Lemoore, California -- Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California -- Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, California -- Naval Base San Diego, California -- Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida (shipments starting in July 2024) Veterans Have Options to Upgrade Discharge Characterization [2024-06-04] WASHINGTON -- Individuals who left the military with a discharge that's less than fully honorable retain the right to upgrade that discharge even years later through their own military department's Discharge Review Board or through their military department's Board for Correction of Military/Naval Records. "The department encourages all service members who believe they have suffered an error or injustice to request relief from their military department review boards," said Christa Specht, director of the office of legal policy for the office of the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. When a service member leaves the military, the discharge paperwork indicates not only the reason for the separation, but the character of the discharge on an official document called a DD Form 214. Most service members will leave service with an honorable discharge, but some service members might receive a less favorable characterization of their service, such as a discharge under other than honorable conditions. The characterization of a discharge can affect the types of benefits an individual is eligible for after military service -- including educational benefits -- and can also affect the kinds of jobs a former service member might be able to apply for when their military service concludes. There are many reasons a discharge characterization might warrant an upgrade. For example, an event that led to an other-than-honorable discharge characterization may have been driven, in part, by the presence of a traumatic brain injury or by posttraumatic stress disorder, which might not have been considered when a service member was initially discharged. There are two avenues former service members can use to pursue a change in the characterization of their discharge. First is the Discharge Review Board, also called a DRB. The military departments each have their own DRB. Second is the Board for Correction of Military or Naval Records, also called a BCMR or BCNR. Again, each of the military departments has its own BCMR or BCNR. Marines and sailors apply to the Department of the Navy boards; airmen and guardians apply to the Department of the Air Force boards; and soldiers apply to the Department of the Army boards. Specht said prior service members must make it clear when applying to either of these boards what it is they want to accomplish. "When completing an application, it's important not only to state what kind of change is desired but to include an explanation for why the military record is unjust or wrong and, if possible, provide documents that support that conclusion," she said. If a discharge occurred less than 15 years ago, the former service member can apply to the appropriate military department's Discharge Review Board and ask to have the basis for discharge, discharge characterization, or re-entry code changed. Applying to a Discharge Review Board begins with filing a DD Form 293, Application for the Review of Discharge from the Armed Forces of the United States. The form can be filed by mail or electronically. More information on how to successfully apply to a military department's DRB can be found on Military OneSource. For any other errors on military records, if a former service member's discharge occurred more than 15 years ago or if the DRB denied a request for a particular change, former service members can apply to their military department's BCMR or BCNR. In addition to correcting a service member's basis for discharge, discharge characterization, or re-entry code, BCMR and BCNRs can make many other changes, including modifying a performance evaluation or changing a military award received. Applying to a BCMR or BCNR involves completing and submitting a DD Form 149. More information on how to successfully apply to a military department's BCMR or BCNR can be found at Military OneSource. "It's also important to remember that review boards are allowed to consider post-service conduct and may correct records as a matter of clemency or leniency," Specht said. "An applicant can provide evidence of a positive reputation in the community, character references, educational degrees or certificates earned, or a positive job history to help support their claim for relief. If a former member's separation from the service was due to misconduct, an applicant can include expressions of remorse or, if pertinent, evidence of a drug-free lifestyle." New 'Overlays' Provide Guide on Path to Zero Trust [2024-06-04] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department's chief information officer today released the nearly 400-page "Zero Trust Overlays" document designed to serve as both a road map and guide for helping the department achieve goals set forth in a 2021 executive order signed by President Joe Biden. "The zero trust overlays are another tool in the department's toolbox supporting components' execution by providing clear guidance on which controls facilitate specific zero trust activities and outcomes," said Dave McKeown, DOD's deputy CIO for cybersecurity and chief information security officer. The overlays are expected to be a boon to those tasked with implementing zero trust across the department. "The overlays help our risk management practitioners achieve zero trust outcomes, ensuring our adversaries cannot move laterally within our networks," said Randy Resnick, DOD's chief zero trust officer. The zero trust concept redefines how data, networks and information systems are secured -- not just within DOD, but across industry and the entire federal government, said Will Schmitt, a division chief within DOD's Zero Trust Portfolio Management Office. "Zero trust is a modern cybersecurity approach requiring all users and devices, whether inside or outside an organization's network, to be authenticated and authorized before being granted access to data, assets, applications and services," he said. "Zero trust assumes that the adversary is already embedded in your infrastructure and, notwithstanding, implements cybersecurity rules, policies and techniques which have the effect of thwarting, constraining and frustrating an adversary's freedom of movement and ability to exploit data." Security today, Schmitt said, is focused on the network. Users authenticate -- prove that they are authorized to be on a network, with a CAC login, for instance -- and once on that network, they have free rein to look at and modify everything on the network. With zero trust, the user will still authenticate themselves onto a network, but they will also need to prove they are authorized to access every document, file and subsystem available on that network. What that means is that when an adversary hacks into a network, they won't have access to everything -- they'll be continuously challenged to provide additional credentials for everything they want to look at. "Zero trust is a data-centric strategy for security," Schmitt said. "You're protecting the data itself. You're moving that protection boundary from the perimeter right down to what's critical to be protected. And what that means is that everybody has to be authorized and authenticated to access that piece of information." A big assumption of zero trust, Schmitt said, is that the network is already breached by an adversary -- that the enemy is already in the network. "The idea is to make it very difficult for them to do any lateral movement," he said. "And if they do, we're able to identify it and block them." Zero trust is not yet in place across the department, but by fiscal year 2027 it's expected to reach "target level" implementation. That, Schmitt said, involves DOD having implemented 91 out of the 152 target activities identified in DOD's Zero Trust Strategy and Roadmap, which was released in November 2022. Implementing that across DOD and the military services' systems and workforce will be a challenge. But information contained in the newly released "Department of Defense Zero Trust Overlays" will help those most responsible for making it happen to meet the deadlines set by the department and the White House. Schmitt said the overlays will, for the first time, standardize how DOD implements zero trust across the defense enterprise, prescribe a phased approach to implementing zero trust controls, and develop a zero-trust gap analysis for system architects and authorization officials. Hicks: Every Qualified American Is Welcome at Recruiting Stations [2024-06-05] WASHINGTON -- As part of a Pride Month commemorative event today at the Pentagon, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks noted that now, more than ever before, anyone who is qualified to serve in America's military is welcome to apply. And, that everybody is also needed. "Maintaining a world-class force made up entirely of volunteers requires us to reach across the breadth of talent this country offers," Hicks told an audience gathered in the Pentagon courtyard. "That's true both because it yields the most capable military, and because our republic rests on the principle that a military should reflect the society it is called to defend. Every qualified American who desires to serve and will uphold their oath of office is welcome at our recruiting stations." In the past decades, she said, progress has been made to ensure that those who want to serve can do so. Efforts include, she said, President Truman signing the executive order to end segregation in the armed forces in 1948, the decision to allow women to serve in combat roles in 2013 and the end of the policy known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in 2011. "Each of these steps has only made us stronger and more effective," Hicks said. "No one today would seriously question the dominance of the military that we have built or trade it for any other in the world." Taking care of its people is a top priority of the department, Hicks said, and that includes ensuring all service members have the tools and resources they and their families need to thrive. "It means improving quality of service and quality of life," she said. "And it means we're working to ensure fairness and equality so that everyone has the means to reach their full potential. There is a stark difference between being allowed to exist in a space and being fully accepted and included there." Good examples of that, Hicks said, are DOD efforts in recent years to expand to service members' protections that ensure department policies prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity or an individual's identification as transgender. And following the 12th anniversary of the repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in September 2023, she said, the department embarked on a new effort to review military records of veterans discharged with an administrative separation that was the result of their sexual orientation, and who received a less than honorable conditions discharge. Those reviews will assess records to determine if an upgrade in discharge may be warranted. "It's our hope that this effort begins to restore some measure of dignity to those veterans who served honorably but received a less than fully honorable discharge under the policy," she said. Also in the last two years, Hicks said, the department has introduced military justice reforms, including those that better respond to sexual assault and related crimes. "All of these actions together strengthen trust among our ranks and with the society we defend," she said. "Trust is core to our military. Our service members must trust that their colleagues will have their backs, that they will protect one another from harm, and that their colleagues and commanders will not undermine or manipulate that trust." Hicks said the DOD is committed to expanding opportunities for all those who serve, as a civilian or in uniform. "It's our job to create those pathways and ensure that they not only remain open but are broadened," Hicks said. "That's a charge we take seriously. And during this Pride Month, we commit ourselves to fulfilling that promise." Ashish S. Vazirani, who is now performing the duties of the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said diversity and inclusion come as a result of finding the best the nation has to offer, and that talent isn't determined by things like sexual orientation or gender identity. "We need to recruit from the breadth and depth of our nation to find talented people like you with the skills, determination, perseverance and passion to serve our country," he said. "When you hear department leaders talk about the need for a diverse and inclusive workplace, it's about our need to recruit and retain the best talent America has to offer. Diversity is an outcome for the search for the best and brightest talent from our increasingly diverse nation." With a talented workforce in place, he said, it's important also to ensure that workforce is recognized, retained and promoted, as well as the department creates and maintains an environment where everyone is treated with dignity, respect and allowed to excel. "This month, we express in one voice, pride in all who serve, a place for all, a powerful message that reinforces the department's commitment to dignity, respect, civility and compassion for all those who are members of our DOD family," he said. "A total force with a diversity of thought and experience adds to America's strength. [And] building a place for all means building a place for each and every member of our community to share a true sense of belonging that allows them to flourish. There is a place for you here." President Recalls U.S. Military Heroism During WWII at French Ceremony [2024-06-07] WASHINGTON -- With the English Channel as a backdrop, President Joe Biden today addressed an international audience at Pointe du Hoc in Normandy, France, as part of a commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in 1944. On the morning of June 6, Biden said, 225 U.S. Army Rangers arrived by ship at Pointe du Hoc, jumped into the water and took to the beach, scaled the cliff, and against gunfire and grenades, eventually overcame German forces there. "They turned, in that one effort, the tide of the war and began to save the world," Biden said. Today, Biden said, those veterans are gone. But their voices still speak to those who remain behind and who benefit from their sacrifice eight decades later. "I'm here to tell you, with them gone, the wind we hear coming off this ocean will not fade, but will grow louder," he said. "As we gather here today, it's not just to honor those who showed such remarkable bravery on that day, June 6, 1944. It's to listen to the echoes of their voices, to hear them, because they are summoning us, and they are summoning us now. They ask us, what will we do?" Veterans don't ask Americans to do what they did, Biden said, but to do what's right. "They're not asking us to scale these cliffs, but they're asking us to stay true to what America stands for," he said. "They're not asking us to give or risk our lives, but they are asking us to care for others in our country more than ourselves. They're not asking us to do their job, they're asking us to do our job -- to protect freedom in our time, to defend democracy, to stand up to aggression abroad and at home, to be part of something bigger than ourselves." The United States and its warfighters gave a lot in World War II, Biden said. And the United States today still has a lot to give, he said. "I refuse to believe ... that America's greatness is a thing of the past," he said. "I still believe there's nothing beyond our capacity in America when we act together. We're the fortunate heirs of the legacy of these heroes, those who scaled the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc. We must also be the keepers of their mission ... the bearers of the flame of freedom that they kept burning bright. That is the truest testimonial to their lives. Our actions every day ensure that our democracy endures and the soul our nation endures." Following 2-Day Pier Closure, 1,000 Tons of Aid Are Delivered to Gaza's Shore [2024-06-12] WASHINGTON -- Yesterday and today, more than 1,000 metric tons of humanitarian aid were delivered over the U.S. military-provided Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore pier that is attached to the Gaza shore. The floating JLOTS pier, which reopened June 7 after repairs, temporarily shut down June 9-10, due to high seas. Aid delivery began again yesterday. "For two days, the temporary pier was not operational due to high sea states," said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh during a briefing today. "As of yesterday, June 11, U.S. Central Command resumed the delivery of humanitarian assistance into Gaza, with more than 500 metric tons of aid delivered to the marshaling area, and today, [Centcom] delivered another over 500 metric tons in, as well, to the marshaling area." Singh said that since May 17, Centcom has assisted in the delivery of more than 2,500 metric tons, or approximately 5.6 million pounds, of humanitarian aid to the Gaza shore for onward distribution. Aid delivered to the shore yesterday and today, Singh said, remains in a marshaling area for further distribution. She also highlighted the partnership DOD has with U.S. Agency for International Development for ensuring that aid is provided to Gaza. "We're working hand-in-glove with USAID, who has been a great partner in calling together different nations, different NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] to donate aid to a population that desperately needs it," Singh said. "We are the conduit for getting that aid to the people who need it the most, but USAID has been instrumental in making sure that we are getting those donations from other countries and NGOs, as well. We certainly value their partnership." According to USAID, the total humanitarian aid that the United States has announced for Palestinians since the beginning of the conflict comes to more than $674 million. "The United States continues to work around the clock to overcome diplomatic and operational hurdles for humanitarian access and significantly scale up the amount of assistance reaching vulnerable populations in Gaza and the West Bank," reads a USAID press release that was released today. Gaza Pier Expected to Reopen This Week [2024-06-18] WASHINGTON -- The temporary pier that's been used since May 17 to deliver humanitarian aid into Gaza was removed Friday and towed to Ashdod, Israel, as a way to avoid potential damage from high seas. It's expected the pier will be back in place on the Mediterranean Sea this week to once again facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza. "In terms of the [Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore pier], we expect it will go operational again this week," Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said during a briefing today. "As far as airdrops go, we do have the capability and do intend to continue conducting airdrops." While the Defense Department has said that the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore floating pier, referred to as the "Trident Pier" or "the causeway," is a temporary piece of infrastructure and that there are better ways to get aid into Gaza, Ryder said there is no indication right now that there are plans to stop using the pier to deliver aid. "We've said all along ... that the pier is a temporary measure," he said. "I don't have any dates to announce in terms of when it will cease operations ... we're looking forward to getting it operational again soon and to delivering aid." The pier was anchored to the Gaza shore on May 16 and since then, due to weather, has experienced both damage and temporary shutdowns. Nevertheless, the pier has delivered a substantial amount of aid into Gaza, Ryder said. "The big picture, whether it be by land, sea or air, [we're] employing all avenues to get assistance into Gaza," he said. "Since the pier was put in place about a month ago, we've been able to shuttle over 3,500 metric tons, or 7.7 million pounds of aid onto the shore in Gaza, via this temporary pier." The general added that the U.S would continue to work with aid groups, the United Nations, the Israelis and other partners to find ways to get additional aid into Gaza. Independent of the floating pier, U.S. Central Command has worked both on its own and in partnership with the Royal Jordanian Air Force, since March, to conduct humanitarian airdrops of aid into Gaza. Since that time, Centcom has been involved in nearly 40 such missions into Gaza to deliver, among other things, more than 1,050 metric tons of bulk food, water and prepared meals. The last such humanitarian air drop took place June 9, when a U.S. C-130 dropped more than 10 metric tons of "meals ready to eat" -- packaged meals -- into Northern Gaza. Brown Says 'Trust' at Center of Military Service, POW/MIA Recognition Day Poster [2024-06-20] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department today revealed the prisoner of war/missing in action commemorative poster which, leading up to POW/MIA Recognition Day later this year, will serve as a reminder of America's ongoing efforts to provide the fullest possible accounting of the soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen who are still missing from past conflicts. Today, nearly 82,000 service members and civilians remain unaccounted for from conflicts dating back to World War II. The role of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, or DPAA, is to provide the fullest possible accounting of missing personnel to their families and the nation. Each year, DPAA creates a poster in advance of POW/MIA Recognition Day, which will be commemorated this year on Sept. 20. This year's poster features a silhouette of a service member saluting both the American flag and the POW/MIA flag and bears the words "Honoring their sacrifice. Earnestly searching for those still missing." Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., who spoke at the event and who also participated in the unveiling of the poster, said that upon taking his role as chairman, one of his expectations of the joint force has also proven foundational when it comes to efforts by the DPAA and the DOD to bring home unaccounted-for service members. That expectation, he said, is "trust." "Trust is the foundation of our profession," Brown said. "The profession of arms is a noble one. And in our society, trust is a critical aspect of relationships." The general said the U.S. military must, for instance, ensure service members trust that their leaders will take care of them. There is also great trust that the department will provide the best capabilities, training and leadership possible so that service members are best positioned for success when called into combat. "Finally, our service members, their families and the American public trusts that we will do everything in our power to recover our missing service members and our prisoners of war," Brown said. "That's why it's especially important to be here today, to honor the work of DPAA, our Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency." Since 1973, DPAA has accounted for nearly 1,000 American service members from World War II, over 450 from the Korean War and more than 1,000 service members from Vietnam. Last fiscal year DPAA accounted for 158 missing service members. Kelly K. McKeague, director of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, said tens of thousands of service members are still unaccounted for around the world, and that it is the role of DPAA to bring them home. "They made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation and did not come home," McKeague said. "Their families, some of whom are here today, still grieve over their loss, which is exacerbated by inherent uncertainty. America's staunch commitment to its POWs and MIAs has spanned decades. It is manifested no more profoundly than by the extraordinary lengths that the Department of Defense takes to find, recover and identify missing heroes." The complex work of DPAA is demanding and involves risk, McKeague said. But the work is aided as well by cooperation with 45 host nations. Right now, he said, 205 DPAA personnel are operating in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Kuwait, the Philippines, South Korea, the United Kingdom and Vietnam. "The tremendous efforts of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency gives our service members and their families the gift of closure after decades of not knowing," Brown said. "Each identification is a testament to our dedication to bringing every missing hero home [and] ensuring sacrifices are never forgotten. As we unveil the 2024 National POW/MIA recognition poster, let us remember our duty to those brave individuals and their families." Africa Defense Chiefs, U.S. Slated to Meet Tomorrow in Botswana [2024-06-24] WASHINGTON -- Defense leaders from dozens of African nations will meet beginning tomorrow as part of the 2024 African Chiefs of Defense Conference in Botswana. The United States and Botswana will co-host the conference in the capital city Gaborone during the last week of June. The event brings together military leaders from across Africa to exchange knowledge, encourage partnerships and foster collaboration toward addressing shared security and stability challenges. "[In] every country, there are layered threats ... especially across the Sahel," said Marine Corps Gen. Michael Langley, commander of U.S. Africa Command. "Every country has their different type challenges [and] drivers of instability. That's ... what's going to be tabled for discussions." The U.S., Langley said, is known among African nations as an "enabler" that can be depended on to help partners achieve their own security goals -- not just by working through the military services, but with other U.S. government agencies, as well. "What we bring to the picture, that enduring solution, is a whole-of-government approach," Langley said. "We are a '3D' organization of diplomacy, defense and development. That's why in our headquarters we have [U.S. Agency for International Development], we have representatives of State Department, and we have the greater piece of the interagency. We know that that's the solution set for enduring-type solutions to all the levels of threats or layered threats that are resident here on the African continent." African nations in the west, north and across the Sahel have approached the U.S. for discussions on how to achieve their own security goals, Langley said, because they know the "intrinsic value" the U.S. brings. One such nation, he said, is Libya. "We're working through diplomatic means and also defense means with Libya," he said. "We'll have representation at this conference from both sides of the Libyan country. So, I say that [Libyan National Army] and [Government of National Unity] will be there. I met these representatives last year, and they know their clear end state; they want to get there, and they are asking America to engage with them so they can achieve those ends." This is the first year the U.S. has co-hosted the conference with an African nation. It is also the first time the conference will take place in Africa. At the same time the conference is underway, Langley said, the U.S. is on track to complete the orderly withdrawal from Niger it agreed to with Niger's government. "We are on pace and on plan," he said. "There's a joint statement out between the U.S. government and Niger on us being able to complete the movement of equipment and personnel by 15 September." The general said the U.S. is on target to get equipment and personnel out of Air Base 101, which is near the capital city of Niamey. It will conclude with the withdrawal from Air Base 201, in Agadez. "Heavy equipment, rolling stock, is always the biggest thing that we're getting out of there," he said. "I'd say that we're right on pace, if not ahead of the pace." Two New Nations Join Program to Provide SATCOM Support to NATO [2024-06-27] WASHINGTON -- Beginning next year, Spain and Luxembourg will join four other NATO nations that provide satellite communications services to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as part of a satellite services project that began in 2020. Earlier this month, leaders of the oversight agencies in the six countries met just outside of Washington, D.C., to review the satellite services already being provided by the project, called NATO SATCOM Services 6th Generation, or NSS6G. During their meeting, they also assessed the current performance of those services and any ongoing challenges. During these sessions, representatives of NATO's Communications and Information Agency and the six nations agreed on the final text of the amendment to the memorandum of understanding, which provides the framework via which satellite communications services are provided to NATO. The proposed amendment is crafted to enable Luxembourg and Spain to join the U.S., France, Italy and the U.K. as the providers of military satellite communications to NATO. Beginning in 2005, NATO ceased acquiring and operating its own satellites, some of which had been based on designs from the early 1970s. Instead, NATO opted to turn to member states France, Italy and the U.K. to provide NATO forces with the satellite communications they needed while conducting operations. In 2020, the U.S. joined the existing team. Under the arrangement, the U.S. provides support with its "extremely high frequency," or EHF, transport service for NATO nuclear command and control and "super-high frequency," or SHF, capacity from its national Wideband Global Satellite Communications System. France, the U.K. and Italy provide SHF and UHF capacity through their Syracuse, Skynet, and Sicral constellations. Spain and Luxembourg will bring additional SHF and UHF capacity to the consortium from their Spainsat Next Generation and GovSat satellite constellations, respectively. In total, about a dozen military satellites will provide capability to NATO. "These are at varying levels of protection," said Brian Hughes, the current NSS6G Joint Services management office leader in the international affairs office of the U.S. Space Systems Command. "It's all military satellite communications, which means that it has resistance to nuclear effects and has resistance to jamming capabilities that commercial services generally don't have." Hughes said satellite communications services are provided to NATO though a combination of what is called "allocate and commit" and managed services. "[Allocate and commit is] where this capacity is actually given to NATO and [NATO] can use it as it needs it," Hughes said. "And then, we have a managed access service where [NATO] makes a request at specific times that they need it, and we [the team of national providers] actually manage the service provided." It's not NATO nations who will directly use the capability provided by NSSG6, but rather NATO headquarters itself when it runs NATO-sanctioned operations. "NATO has, as an enterprise, its own requirements because it provides the headquarters functions, whether they're static or deployed," Hughes said. "That SATCOM [satellite communications] is critical because NATO is providing the command-and-control function through SATCOM, which is absolutely necessary." While the NSS6G consortium provides the space-based capability, NATO itself provides the tools its forces need on the ground, said Nusret Yilmaz, the SATCOM business unit owner within the NATO Communications and Information Agency. "NATO owns the ground equipment," Yilmaz said. "All the end-user equipment, including the tactical radios, including the terminals for, let's say, deployed communications and including the various sizes of transportable and deployable communication systems. These are owned by NATO. NATO is operating and maintaining [the ground systems]. These are organic capabilities of NATO. However, for the space segment, NATO doesn't have any organic capability." NATO's original move away from its organic space assets was both a cost-saving measure and an effort to allow NATO to be able to take advantage of the more modern space-based systems that NATO allies would field for their own use. The addition of Spain and Luxembourg to NSSG6 means increased resilience in satellite communications capability. "Since it is not only one nation, [but] multiple nations, there is also kind of resilience in the space segment," Yilmaz said. "There is recently a very high increase in demand for satellite communications. NATO has compensated for this increase in demand through various ground segment and user segment projects. Now through this MOU and amendment, NATO kind of makes sure this additional capacity is taken care of from the space segment perspective, as well." Mike Dean, who serves as the Defense Department's Chief Information Office SATCOM chief, served as the host for this month's conference. He said, so far, NSS6G has been a great example of collaboration and partnership among the four nations to provide satellite bandwidth and service to NATO, and the two additional partners will only enhance that cooperation. "The addition of Luxembourg and Spain will build upon existing working relationships and the ongoing interactions we have with our International partners," he said. Dean also commented on the benefits of U.S. participation to the DOD. "We are reimbursed for the services we provide to NATO," he explained. "We are then able to work with the U.S. Space Command and the services and use that money to help fund projects that will enhance the satellite communications services for our warfighters. It's an excellent example of how a small investment can make a significant improvement in capability." NSS6G is beginning 10 years of its fully operational period, which continues through the end of 2034. Agency Director Pledges to Get Government's Background Checking System on Track [2024-06-27] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, now responsible for conducting 95% of background investigations for the federal government, has struggled to get the National Background Investigation Services fully operational since taking over the role in 2020. On Capitol Hill yesterday, David Cattler, DCSA's director for just over 90 days, told members of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee's subcommittee on government operations and the federal workforce that he plans to get both DCSA and NBIS working to their full potential. "I'm committed to building a culture of accountability at DCSA that was lacking in the program," he said. "Simply and directly, the delay in fielding NBIS is unacceptable to everyone. Oversight from GAO [Government Accountability Office] and Congress are important parts of this ecosystem of accountability. As we move forward, we will be guided by what is in the best interest of national security and what is in the best interest of the taxpayer." The National Background Investigation Services is an information technology system meant to transform the process of conducting background investigations. It will eventually replace similar systems that no longer meet the needs of the U.S. government and will be a key component of what's billed as "Trusted Workforce 2.0," or TW 2.0, according to DCSA. "The NBIS program supports the TW 2.0 reform effort as a federal IT system for end-to-end personnel vetting," Cattler said. "When complete, NBIS will deliver robust data security, enhanced customer experience and integrate data access across the whole-of-government and cleared industry." TW 2.0 is a "whole-of-government" effort to reform the personnel security process and establish a single vetting system for the federal government. The NBIS will serve as the backbone of TW 2.0, and will coordinate and connect the systems, interfaces and databases that support "continuous vetting" of government personnel -- a process where the backgrounds of security cleared individuals are regularly reviewed to ensure they continue to meet security clearance requirements. The NBIS system was meant to deploy in 2019, but it has not yet done so, and the Government Accountability Office has outlined in a variety of reports a handful of key problems that DCSA must address to move forward successfully with NBIS. "The GAO identified areas where DCSA and the Department of Defense needed to improve," Cattler said. "Even before I became DCSA's director ... I closely studied these reports and noted GAO's concerns. These recommendations do guide my focus and my direction as the director of DCSA. I have directed that we renew our focus on these recommendations, and we close the action items presented within them as soon as we can." Over the next 18 months, Cattler said, DCSA will prioritize five actions to advance delivery of NBIS. These actions include modernizing and migrating NBIS applications; aligning acquisition and development actions; adapting the NBIS workforce; aligning program cost and service pricing; and strengthening cybersecurity protections. While NBIS continues in its development, Cattler said DCSA has upgraded and hardened legacy systems and continues to use and maintain them to deliver vetting services. Last year, Cattler said, DCSA's personnel vetting mission conducted 2.7 million investigations, or about 10,700 investigations per day; made 668,000 adjudicative decisions; and maintained continuous vetting of over 3.8 million people in the trusted workforce. Two Civil War Soldiers Receive Medal of Honor, Inducted Into Hall of Heroes [2024-07-04] WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden posthumously presented the Medal of Honor yesterday to two soldiers for their actions hijacking the Confederate railroad April 12, 1862. Today, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III inducted Pvts. Philip G. Shadrach and George D. Wilson into the Pentagon's Hall of Heroes -- where the names of all service members who receive the Medal of Honor are enshrined. "The very first recipients of the Medal of Honor were a small band known as Andrews' Raiders, named for a spy for the Union Army, James Andrews, who led one of the most daring operations in the entire Civil War," Biden said during the White House ceremony. "Two soldiers ... died because of that operation but never received this recognition. Today, we right that wrong. Today, they finally receive the recognition they deserve." During the Hall of Heroes ceremony, Austin described both men as being well-liked by their peers and eager to volunteer to help their nation. "One comrade remembered that Pvt. Shadrach was 'solidly built, merry and reckless, with an inexhaustible store of good nature.' Yet his brothers in arms could count on him, as one said, to 'sacrifice anything for a friend,'" Austin said. "Other soldiers said that Pvt. Wilson was 'tall and spare, with high cheekbones [and] sharp gray eyes.' His battle buddies felt from him 'a greatness of soul which sympathized intensely with our struggle for national life.'" In April 1862, Shadrach and Wilson, both part of the 2nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, agreed to join Andrews' Raiders. Led by Andrews, a civilian, the Raiders initially included 22 soldiers and two civilians. They planned to execute a mission that has come to be called The Great Locomotive Chase -- a clandestine mission to travel undercover through enemy territory into Georgia, steal a locomotive, and then use it to travel north to Chattanooga, Tennessee, a city Union soldiers planned to capture. Along the train journey, Biden said, "they would destroy enemy bridges, railroad tracks, telegraph lines, disrupting communication and vital supply lines, sabotaging the railroad that the Confederate army used to move troops. "All of that would make the Union capture of Chattanooga much more likely," he said. "And that would [also] cut off the Confederate army from both the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys. A huge ... strategic victory that could bring the war to a swift end." Beginning April 7, the group departed on foot from their location near Shelbyville, Tennessee, to travel to Chattanooga, where they planned to catch a train southbound to Marietta, Georgia. During this initial part of the mission, two soldiers were captured by Confederate forces, leaving only 20 soldiers and two civilians to continue on. By April 11, the Raiders reached Chattanooga and in the late afternoon boarded a southbound train headed for Georgia. By midnight they'd reached Marietta, where they spent the night. On the morning of April 12, the group awoke and boarded another train, this time northbound, back to Chattanooga. Two soldiers, however, didn't make it aboard and were left behind. During its trip northbound, the train paused at a stop called Big Shanty to allow passengers to eat breakfast. It was here the Raiders took control of the train's engine, called The General. "Quickly and quietly, they detached three boxcars and a locomotive, hopped in, and began moving at full speed north to Tennessee," Biden said. Biden said the weather made their task difficult, as did the presence of other trains on the track that they hadn't expected. All of this slowed down the pace of their mission. "By then, Confederate forces were in hot pursuit, but George and Philip and the rest of the Raiders didn't quit," Biden said. "They kept going nearly for seven hours, destroying as much track as they could along the way and cutting as many telegraph wires as they could." The Raiders did damage to Confederate communications -- destroying rail and telegraph lines. The engine ran out of steam just north of Ringgold, Georgia, about 18 miles south of Chattanooga. It was there the group was disbanded and given orders to evade capture. Eventually, however, Confederate forces captured every man who had been on the train, as well as the two soldiers left behind in Marietta. Eight of those men, including Shadrach, Wilson and both civilians, were executed as prisoners of war. "Pvt. Shadrach and Pvt. Wilson were among the first to be captured, and a Confederate military court sentenced them to hang," Austin said. Pvt. Shadrach told his fellow prisoners that he sought comfort in his faith," Austin recounted. Pvt. Wilson's thoughts also turned to his trust in God and to his belief in America. One account says that Wilson was surrounded by a scowling crowd, but he spoke to them while standing under the gallows. Pvt. Wilson told that angry crowd that they would yet see the time when the old union would be restored and when its flag would wave over them again -- and he was right. "Nearly a year after the Andrews Raid, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton welcomed the surviving Raiders to Washington, and he presented them with a newly created award for valor, making them the first U.S. service members to receive the Medal of Honor," Austin said. While the two civilians in the group were not eligible for the Medal of Honor, the soldiers were. Shadrach and Wilson, however, were never recommended for the medal. "Their heroic deeds went unacknowledged for over a century. But time did not erase their valor," Biden said during the White House ceremony. While inducting them into the Hall of Heroes, Austin said, "Today, more than 160 years later, we complete that arc of history, and we link the first recipients of the Medal of Honor to the newest recipients of the Medal of Honor." Austin said the names of Shadrach and Wilson would finally join those of their fellow Raiders. "The names of Pvt. Philip Shadrach and Pvt. George Wilson will be inscribed forever in the Hall of Heroes alongside their fellow Raiders," Austin said. "Their medals are new, yet their bravery is eternal. On this Independence Day, their story reminds us of the American patriots who risked everything for our freedom and for our union and for our future of liberty under law. Their story doesn't just inspire us, it challenges us. So we are not just here to honor their sacrifice, we are here to live up to their example." Descendants of the two soldiers were on hand at both the White House and Pentagon ceremonies to represent them. At the White House ceremony, Shadrach's great-great nephew Gerald Taylor received the medal on his behalf. Receiving the medal on behalf of Wilson was his great-great granddaughter Theresa Chandler. DOD Will Continue to Lead Support of Ukraine Through Contact Group [2024-07-09] WASHINGTON -- While NATO plans to implement more coordinated efforts to support Ukraine, the U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group will continue its own efforts to orchestrate worldwide support to the nation. This week, representatives of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are holding a summit in Washington, coinciding with the 75th anniversary of the alliance. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and how best to provide support to Ukraine will dominate many discussions at the summit. Included in those discussions will be a new NATO effort, announced last month in Brussels, regarding a more coordinated approach to provide support to Ukraine. Under that plan, which NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said would be launched this month at the summit, there will be a new NATO command located in Germany, with additional logistical nodes in the eastern part of Europe. Nearly 700 personnel are expected to be involved. The NATO plan involves, among other things, training of Ukrainian armed forces at facilities in NATO allied nations, supporting Ukraine through the planning and coordination of donations, managing the transfer and repair of equipment, and providing support to the long-term development of Ukraine's armed forces. While the new NATO-led effort is meant to support Ukraine's efforts to eject Russia from its sovereign territory, the U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group will continue to assist as well. "DOD will continue to lead [the UDCG] and support Ukraine's work to strengthen and modernize its forces for the long haul," Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said during a briefing today. "There [are] some 50 countries that are part of the UDCG, which extends far beyond our 32 valued NATO allies. So, we certainly will continue to welcome NATO's involvement. They play an important role in the UDCG's capability coalitions and [also] working to advance interoperability as Ukraine builds its forces." The UDCG, a coalition of about 50 nations that meets monthly to discuss Ukraine's security needs, first met in April 2022 through the efforts of Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III. During last month's meeting of the UDCG, which took place June 13 in Brussels, Austin explained the group's continued importance. "The outcome of the war in Ukraine will help set the trajectory for global security for decades to come," Austin said. "This contact group will continue to defend Ukraine's sovereignty and all of our security. So, we will continue to stand up to Putin's aggression and atrocities. We will continue to find new options to get Ukraine the air defenses that it needs to defend its skies and we will continue to move heaven and Earth to get Ukraine what it needs to live in freedom." Austin: As NATO Recognizes 75 Years of Strength, Focus Remains on Ukraine [2024-07-10] WASHINGTON -- The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed 75 years ago when the treaty that created the alliance was signed on April 4, 1949, in Washington. Just a dozen nations were signatories. Since then, the NATO alliance has grown to include 32 nations. During a summit this week in Washington, NATO member states are commemorating the alliance's longevity and growth. "It's a huge honor for the United States and President Biden to host this historic summit in Washington, just down the road from the site where the original 12 NATO allies signed the North Atlantic Treaty 75 years ago," Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said today at the summit. "Together, we're marking one of the [greatest] success stories that the world has ever known." Article 5 of the NATO treaty, Austin said, states that an armed attack against one NATO ally is considered an attack against all the allies. "It was the foundation of NATO, and it still is," he said. "On that bedrock we have built the strongest and most successful defensive alliance in human history." That alliance, Austin said, has protected Europe and North America's security and interests through the Cold War, conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. "NATO has always stood by us, and we're going to stand by NATO," Austin said. "Without NATO, the past 75 years would have been far different and far more dangerous." While attendees at the summit acknowledge the growth and success of NATO over the past 75 years, a larger issue looms: the conflict in Ukraine. In 2014, Russia illegally annexed the part of Ukraine known as the Crimean Peninsula. And in February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine with the hope of taking the capital city of Kyiv. Since then, the two nations have been at war. While Austin said the U.S. will not enter the war in Ukraine, it will support the country. "We will stand by Ukraine as it fights for its sovereignty and security," he said. "We will defend every inch of NATO, and we will continue to strengthen NATO's collective defense and deterrence." Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, NATO has grown larger, stronger and more ready, Austin said. "In the wake of [Vladimir Putin]'s imperial invasion of Ukraine, we've bolstered NATO's forward defense posture with more troops at high readiness, larger exercises, sharper vigilance and multinational battle groups in eight countries," he said. "NATO is now larger than ever." In 1949, just a dozen nations signed on to NATO. Today, with the addition of Finland in 2023 and Sweden this year, NATO's membership has grown to 32 nations. "Putin's war is not the result of NATO enlargement," Austin said. "Putin's war is the cause of NATO enlargement." Member states in NATO are also now spending more on their own defense, Austin said. This year, 23 NATO allies are meeting the 2% defense-spending target. Austin said the agenda for this week's summit includes implementation of new NATO plans to improve deterrence and defense and an expansion of industrial capacity across the alliance to scale up military production, among other things. Also on the agenda, he said, is support of Ukraine's self-defense. "We'll launch a new military effort to help coordinate some aspects of security assistance and training for Ukraine, and we're poised to agree on a new financial pledge to Ukraine," he said. One advancement of support to Ukraine is that President Joe Biden, along with both the Dutch and Danish prime ministers, announced today that Ukraine will receive the F-16 aircraft. Last year, the Netherlands and Denmark announced they intended to make available to Ukraine F-16 aircraft from their own fleets. With U.S. approval of the plan secured, that will now happen. "Ukraine will be flying [the] F-16 this summer," Austin said. Austin has served as secretary of defense for nearly four years. Prior to his role as the civilian leader of the U.S. military, he served in the Army for more than 40 years. Those years in uniform, he said, taught him the importance of partnerships. "I learned a lesson early on in my Army career, and that lesson is that, as a soldier, the last thing that you want to do is to fight alone," Austin said. "Here's the blunt military reality: America is stronger with our allies. America is safer with our allies, and America is more secure with our allies. And any attempt to undermine NATO only undermines American security. So, we are here this week to strengthen NATO and to strengthen American and allied security for the next 75 years." Sentinel Land-Based Nuclear Modernization Program Will Continue, With Changes [2024-07-10] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department has announced its decision to continue to modernize the land-based leg of the nuclear triad with a program called Sentinel. That decision comes after the Air Force notified Congress in January that the program had exceeded its baseline cost and triggered what is known as a Nunn-McCurdy breach. The Nunn-McCurdy Amendment was enacted in 1983 as part of the 1982 Defense Authorization Act to curtail cost growth in the U.S. weapons procurement programs. A breach occurs when the program acquisition unit cost or average unit procurement cost within a program increases by 25% or more over the program's current acquisition baseline. When a breach occurs, a program must be terminated unless the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment certifies to Congress that the program meets established criteria to continue. During the media event, William A. LaPlante, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said that during the past 120 days he has led a review to determine if the program meets the criteria to continue, and he has determined that it does. "Based on the results of the review, it is clear that a reasonably modified Sentinel program remains essential to U.S. national security and is the best option to meet the needs of our warfighters," LaPlante said. "As the milestone decision authority, today I am certifying that the Sentinel program meets the statutory criteria to continue." There are five criteria established by Congress that a program must meet in order to continue following a Nunn-McCurdy breach. Those criteria include: • Program continuation is essential to national security; • There are no alternatives to the program that will provide acceptable capability to meet the joint requirements at less cost; • The new estimates of the program acquisition unit cost or procurement unit cost have been determined by the director of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, or CAPE, to be reasonable; • The program is a higher priority than programs whose funding must be reduced to accommodate the growth in cost of the program; and • The management structure for the program is adequate to manage and control program acquisition unit cost or procurement unit cost. While LaPlante said the department would continue to pursue modernization of the land-based leg of the nuclear triad, he also said continuation of the program wouldn't be "business as usual." "The program will be restructured to address the root causes of the breach and ensure an appropriate management structure is in place to control costs," he said. "The total program acquisition costs for a reasonably modified program are estimated by the CAPE to be $140.9 billion, an increase of 81% compared to estimates at the program's previous Milestone B decision, in September of 2020." LaPlante said there are "reasons, but no excuses" for the cost growth, but also addressed the risk of not modernizing the land-based portion of the U.S. nuclear triad. "We fully appreciate the magnitude of the costs, but we also understand the risks of not modernizing our nuclear forces and of not addressing the very real threats we confront." Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Jim Slife addressed these threats and reinforced the role of the nuclear triad. "Each leg brings unique complementary attributes which are mutually supporting and key to signaling and establishing deterrence amidst an increasingly complex and dynamic security environment which, for the first time, includes the People's Republic of China as a major nuclear armed power and strategic competitor," he said. As part of the decision to continue with the Sentinel program, LaPlante said he has rescinded the program's "Milestone B" decision. This is the decision made in the lifecycle of an acquisition program where it is authorized to enter the engineering and manufacturing development phase. He said he has also directed the Air Force to develop a plan to restructure the Sentinel program. "Preserving schedule will be a key consideration during this restructuring, but a delay of several years is currently estimated," he said. "It's important to note that Sentinel is truly a historic program to modernize the land leg of the nuclear triad. And its scale, scope and complexity are something we haven't attempted as a nation for over 60 years." Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Andrew Hunter stated that over the coming months the Air Force will develop a comprehensive plan for how the program will be restructured. "Our goal is to ensure the long-term success and sustainability of the ICBM force as it continues to provide 24/7 strategic deterrence, standing ready to respond at a moment's notice as the most responsive leg of the nuclear triad," Hunter said. "We'll do what it takes to sustain Minuteman III to meet these warfighter requirements in the interim." The U.S. has about 400 silo-based Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, also called ICBMs. The U.S. military has been developing replacements for its ground-based nuclear missiles through the Sentinel program. The Minuteman III has been in place since 1970 and has been life-extended several times. LaPlante affirmed, "Across the department, we are committed to ensuring we are on the right path to defend our nation while protecting the sacred responsibility the American taxpayer has entrusted us with." Stoltenberg: Ukraine Can Count on NATO For Long Haul [2024-07-11] WASHINGTON -- Military and political leaders from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization today capped off a three-day summit in Washington with a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council. During the council meeting, participants renewed the alliance's commitment to Ukraine's self-defense and discussed in greater detail what that commitment would look like going forward. "At this summit, we are turning a corner and putting in place the foundations for Ukraine to prevail," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said following the conclusion of the council meeting. Part of that effort, Stoltenberg said, involves an agreement to launch NATO security assistance and training for Ukraine out of a command based in Germany, with logistic hubs located in the eastern part of the alliance. It's expected around 700 personnel will be involved in that effort. NATO allies also agreed to coordinate the training of Ukrainian forces at facilities in allied countries, Stoltenberg said, and will also manage the transfer and repair of equipment. Also agreed to by NATO allies is a minimum baseline funding of 40 billion Euro within the next year -- just over $43 billion. "We will review this level at forthcoming summits to ensure that our support continues to meet Ukraine's needs," Stoltenberg said. Also this week at the NATO summit, Stoltenberg said, NATO allies have announced their own independent efforts to assist Ukraine, including pledges of air defense systems. "More allies have signed bilateral security agreements with Ukraine, bringing the total to more than 20," he said. As part of the Comprehensive Assistance Package for Ukraine, NATO has advanced efforts to help Ukraine become more interoperable with NATO, and also help build Ukraine's defense industry, Stoltenberg said. The NATO-Ukraine Joint Analysis, Training, and Education Centre in Poland, agreed to by allies, will benefit Ukraine by identifying and applying lessons learned from Russia's war against Ukraine. "All of this support will make Ukraine stronger and more capable," Stoltenberg said. "This serves as a bridge [for Ukraine] to NATO. Allies have agreed that as Ukraine continues necessary reforms, we will support them on their irreversible path to membership. Today, we send a strong message of unity and resolve to Moscow that violence and intimidation do not pay, and that Ukraine can count on NATO now and for the long haul." In advance of the NATO-Ukraine Council meeting, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the support provided by NATO would go a long way toward helping Ukraine defend itself. "All this will help curb Putin's appetite for aggression," he said. Regarding NATO membership, Zelenskyy pledged to do what was necessary to become a partner. "We are doing, and will continue to do, everything to ensure that the day comes when Ukraine is invited and becomes a NATO member," he said. "I am confident we will achieve this." U.S. Announces Latest Security Package for Ukraine [2024-07-12] WASHINGTON -- As the NATO summit in Washington concluded yesterday, the U.S. announced its latest security package for Ukraine. "The [Defense Department] announced yesterday the 61st presidential drawdown authority package, which has an estimated value of $225 million," said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh during a briefing today. "This package will provide Ukraine additional capabilities to meet its most urgent needs and includes one Patriot battery, munitions for rocket systems, and artillery and antitank weapons." Also among the materials in the latest security assistance package are 155 mm and 105 mm artillery rounds; Javelin and AT-4 antiarmor systems; and small-arms ammunition. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, the United States has committed more than $53.7 billion in security assistance through both presidential drawdown authority and the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. Today, Singh said, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III spoke with his counterpart, Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov. "During the call, the secretary emphasized the importance of maintaining lines of communication amid Russia's ongoing war against Ukraine," Singh said, adding that the last time the two spoke was in late June. During this week's summit celebrating NATO's 75th anniversary, member states committed to continued support for Ukraine. Included in that support is an agreement to launch NATO's security assistance and training for Ukraine out of a command based in Germany and a commitment to a minimum baseline funding of 40 billion euros, or just over $43 billion, within the next year. NATO nations have also announced their own independent efforts to assist Ukraine, including pledges of air defense systems. Humanitarian Aid to Gaza In May, the department attached a floating, mobile pier -- part of its Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS, capability -- to the shore of Gaza to facilitate the transfer of humanitarian aid. "To date, more than 8,000 metric tons or nearly 20 million pounds of humanitarian aid have been delivered from the pier to the marshaling area where it can be collected by humanitarian organizations for onward delivery and distribution," Singh said. Due to conditions in the Mediterranean Sea, the floating pier has been taken offline several times since it was first put in place. Currently, it is at the Port of Ashdod, Israel, about 20 miles to the north of Gaza. Singh said a "re-anchoring date" for the pier has not yet been set. Department officials have said the pier is not a permanent solution for getting humanitarian aid into Gaza. Singh said it's expected that the pier will soon cease operations, and more details regarding that will be announced soon. "We're very proud of our service members and all those supporting this effort ... who have enabled vital humanitarian assistance to get into ... those in Gaza who need it most," she said. "As hundreds of thousands of people continue to face emergency levels of food insecurity across Gaza, the United States will continue to take all possible action to ensure increased aid flows are sustained at the scale needed to meet the needs on the ground." The humanitarian aid delivered into Gaza over the JLOTS pier began its journey in nearby Cyprus. While neither the U.S. nor the department is directly involved in operations there, Singh did say that the flow of aid spurred by the humanitarian mission in Gaza has resulted in enhanced capabilities at port facilities in Cyprus. "In addition to enabling the delivery of lifesaving aid, implementation of JLOTS has ... enabled the development of Cyprus as a port for inspections and deliveries directly into Gaza," she said. "Aid can now be inspected in Cyprus and delivered directly into Gaza through Israel's Ashdod Port and crossings in the north." Singh said deployment of the pier has also helped secure Israeli commitment to opening additional crossings into northern Gaza. "Since the opening of these crossings, we've seen more trucks moving from Jordan directly into northern Gaza to help alleviate the dire humanitarian conditions," she said. College Students Observe Government Service at Pentagon [2024-07-16] WASHINGTON -- More than a dozen college students visited the Pentagon today to get a glimpse of how the Defense Department works and to learn more about the federal government and public service. At the Pentagon, the Air Force hosted joint panel discussions for students participating in a leadership program, put on by the Center for Excellence in Public and Government Service, which is part of the Atlanta University Center Consortium. The students, all 16 of whom attend historically Black colleges and universities, had initially asked only for a tour of the Pentagon. But Air Force officials who fielded the request thought more could be offered. "We understood the importance of this group and wanting to come and just learn about the military through a tour," said Daphne Brooks, with Air Force Manpower and Reserve Affairs, Office of Force Integration. "We wanted to impart more information to them so that they know all that the Department of Defense has to offer throughout the services." What the Air Force provided, Brooks said, were two panel discussions with joint leadership representation from all the military services, including one panel on pathways to serving in the Defense Department; a tour of the building; a discussion with Alex Wagner, assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs; and a luncheon with a mentoring session by Gerald D. Curry, director of the Air Force Review Boards Agency. "We wanted to definitely expand their exposure to the Department of Defense, to the services ... to demystify some of the thoughts behind defense work," Brooks said. "And we want them to really understand, to the fullest extent -- by having that diverse panel, from diverse perspectives and career fields -- to understand what they do, how they got there and to help them navigate their own career paths." Brooks said the U.S. military, and U.S. government writ large, want to tap into a top-notch, diverse talent pool. Educating young Americans about the value of public service is one way to achieve that. "What we do, through outreach and engagement, is try to attract and to expose and to increase propensity to serve regardless of what the path, that's always important to be able to reach all walks of life," Brooks said. "For those that we don't normally know to reach and don't know to go to, we have to seek those out as well. [With] any opportunity to do that, we need to take advantage of it." Joshua Caldwell, a criminal justice major at Fort Valley State University in Fort Valley, Georgia, and Bria Witherspoon, a political science and pre-law major at Spelman College in Atlanta, both sophomores, attended the event. Witherspoon said she was impressed with the breadth of discussion by the leadership panel. "I liked how they touched on not just the hard skills you need to work within the Pentagon and the military, but the soft skills as well," she said. "You need to be emotionally intelligent. You have to have empathy for people, and you have to have compassion as well." After attaining her education, Witherspoon said she hopes to come into government service as a lawyer. "I have an interest in working for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, as an immigration services officer, because I want to be an immigration attorney and eventually go to work for the government sector to give a voice to underrepresented groups," she said. Caldwell said he was impressed by the stories told by panelists regarding how they came into government service. "Everybody has a story, and that story is going to do two things: either it's going to make you who you are, or it's going to break you," he said. "These people here, it made them. It encouraged them to be something better [than] from where they came from." After he graduates, Caldwell said he hopes to use his criminal justice degree to enroll in the police academy and work his way up to the federal level at the FBI. While JLOTS Mission Has Concluded, Several Million Pounds of Aid Remain to be Delivered [2024-07-19] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore system, or JLOTS, in use since May to deliver humanitarian aid into Gaza, has closed out its mission, U.S. Central Command announced yesterday. But Centcom remains committed to delivering several million pounds of aid originally destined for delivery using that system, said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh during a news briefing. "In the coming days, Centcom will work with USAID to deliver the remaining aid commodities, currently afloat, to the port of Ashdod, in Israel, for onward distribution to Gaza, and will provide coordination and liaison support for humanitarian aid delivery as a request of USAID when appropriate," Singh said. Due to sea states, the JLOTS pier has not been in operation in Gaza since late June. That pause in operations, coupled with the announced shuttering of the mission, will require about five million pounds of humanitarian aid once designated for delivery over the JLOTS pier to be delivered through the Israeli port of Ashdod. That aid, Singh said, is either in Cyprus, or "afloat," in that it is currently either on commercial shipping vessels or U.S. military vessels underway on the Mediterranean Sea. In early May, the Defense Department completed deployment of the JLOTS in the Mediterranean Sea. This included a floating pier several miles off the coast of Gaza as well an additional pier, referred to as the Trident Pier, anchored on the Gaza shore. The mission was then carried out in multiple steps. Commercial cargo ships loaded with humanitarian aid in Cyprus sailed to the floating pier. There, at sea, cargo was unloaded from the commercial ships and onto trucks that were aboard Army-owned logistic vessels. After leaving the floating pier, the Army vessels traveled to the Trident Pier. There, the trucks exited the Army vessels and moved aid over the pier to the shore, where the humanitarian aid supplies could then be staged for delivery inside Gaza. Singh said the mission was successful. "With collaboration from 12 nations, international partners, USAID, and the United Nations, the temporary pier successfully delivered nearly 20 million pounds of aid, which is the highest volume of humanitarian assistance the U.S. military has ever delivered into the Middle East," Singh said. "The temporary pier achieved its goal of providing an additive means of delivering high volumes of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza." Going forward, Singh said, the U.S. military will play an advisory role, at least for the short term, in the continued delivery of aid, which is expected to go through Ashdod and then over ground routes into Gaza. "In the immediate future, we're going to maintain some coordination elements that have been in place, such as the coordination cell ... in Cyprus and in Israel. We want to make sure that aid is going to continue to flow into Gaza," she said. "But this new route, that aid flows through Ashdod, will ultimately be managed by USAID and other humanitarian organizations ... I'd include the World Food Program in that as well." New DOD Strategy Calls for Enhancements, Engagements, Exercises in Arctic [2024-07-22] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department today released its 2024 Arctic Strategy. The strategy acknowledges how environmental changes are affecting the Arctic region, details the implications for U.S. security and spells out how the department plans to be ready to meet new challenges there. "The Arctic region of the United States is critical to the defense of our homeland, the protection of U.S. national sovereignty and the preservation of our defense treaty commitments," Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said today during a briefing at the Pentagon. "Our Arctic strategy will guide the department's efforts to ensure that the Arctic remains a secure and stable region." Eight nations have a presence in the Arctic, including Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the United States and Russia. All have interests there for both commerce and security. Climate changes have meant the melting of ice in the Arctic and the opening of new sea routes, which means new opportunities for commerce and resource exploitation, but also increased risk to nations whose borders were previously protected by the region's inaccessibility. "Climate change is fundamentally altering the Arctic, and with it, geopolitics and U.S. defense missions," Hicks said. "The readiness of our forces for those missions is always foremost on our minds, and that's why for decades, across Republican and Democratic administrations, the department has been seeking to ensure our military capabilities can meet the mark, even in the face of a changing climate." Climate change and the shifts in the operating environment, Hicks said, mean the U.S. must rethink how to protect warfighters and prevent conflict. The People's Republic of China, not an Arctic nation, is increasing its presence in the Arctic. The PRC operates three icebreakers in the Arctic, for instance, and has a military presence there as well. The Chinese military has also demonstrated its ability to operate in the Arctic by conducting operations with the Russian navy, for instance. "While not an Arctic state, the PRC seeks greater influence in the region, greater access to the region, and a greater say in its governance," Hicks said. "That's concerning given that it's the only strategic competitor with the will and increasingly the wherewithal to remake the international order." Russia's presence in the Arctic, including its military presence -- the largest of all Arctic nations -- can hold U.S. and allied territories at risk. At the same time, Russia is increasing its presence in the Arctic by reopening Soviet-era military installations. "Russia continues to pose an acute threat to security and stability in the region," Hicks said. "Russia has continued to build up its military infrastructure in the Arctic and assert excessive claims over Arctic waters." Russia is also partnering with China, Hicks said, and this presents additional concerns for U.S. defense. "We've seen growing cooperation between the PRC and Russia in the Arctic, commercially, with the PRC being a major funder of Russian energy exploitation in the Arctic, and increasingly militarily, with Russia and China conducting joint exercises off the coast of Alaska," Hicks said. "All of these challenges have been amplified because the effects of climate change are rapidly warming temperatures and thinning ice coverage, and it's enabling all of this activity." The DOD's 2024 Arctic Strategy addresses these concerns in the Arctic with three lines of effort, including enhancing the capabilities of the joint force, greater engagement with allies and partners and exercising U.S. presence in the Arctic. "Our Arctic strategy adopts a 'monitor and respond,' approach in the region," Hicks said. "It is underpinned by robust domain awareness and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, cooperation with our allies and partners and deterrent power enabled by the agility of the joint force. The strategy focuses on enhancing our domain awareness and Arctic capabilities, engaging with our allies and partners and exercising calibrated presence in the region." Iris Ferguson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for arctic and global resilience, said mission enhancement includes, among other things, a focus on domain awareness in the Arctic. "We must improve our domain awareness and enhance our ability to detect and respond with our Canadian allies to threats to the homeland," Ferguson said. "A key focus for my office is championing investments that will enhance our awareness of threats in the region. We want to make sure that we have the right sensing architecture and the right communications architecture for command and control." Also, a target for operational enhancements in the Arctic are enhancements to communications and data architecture; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities; infrastructure; and cold weather equipment and mobility. With seven of the eight Arctic nations also members of NATO, the U.S. has great partnership opportunities in the region. The strategy directs the U.S. to take advantage of those partnerships and others, as a way to strengthen U.S. security. "Our strong network of partners, including Arctic allies, federal, state, local and tribal partners, are key stakeholders in securing the Arctic and our homeland," Ferguson said. "From the communities that host our bases and troops in Alaska, to our colleagues in the U.S. Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security, we all have a role to play to maintain the stability of the Arctic Region." Finally, the 2024 Arctic Strategy directs the department to enhance U.S. security through increased presence in the Arctic, including increased operations and military exercises. "Exercising tactics and equipment is a prerequisite not only for success but for survival in the unique Arctic environment," Ferguson said. "To this end, one of my office's key implementation priorities will be ensuring that the joint force is equipped and prepared to operate there." The strategy calls for continued service-specific, joint, interagency and combined exercises as well as war games, simulations and tabletop exercises that focus on the Arctic. The strategy also calls for military services to conduct training in the Arctic to build experience operating there. Austin Discusses NATO, Ukraine, Military Cooperation With Estonian Counterpart [2024-07-23] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III today hosted Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur in discussions at the Pentagon, just a week and a half after the conclusion of the NATO summit in Washington. The two men discussed, among other things, strengthening NATO's deterrence and defense, continued joint exercises between the two nations, U.S. rotational presence in Estonia and other Baltic states, increased defense production and the continued illegal presence of Russia in Ukraine. "Putin's war of choice continues to threaten our shared security," Austin said. "The United States and Estonia, along with our allies and partners, continue to stand strong for a free and sovereign Ukraine. And you've shown outstanding support for Ukraine, including your security assistance contributions." Austin commended the minister for Estonia's military modernization and its investment in new military capabilities, which he said are critical for deterring attacks and building readiness. "I applaud Estonia's pledge to invest more than 3% ... of your GDP on your national defense," he said. "That just underscores Estonia's dedication to transatlantic security." The U.S. has some 600 troops in Estonia on a rotational basis, and Austin thanked Pevkur for supporting those troops. "The United States remains committed to maintaining our persistent rotational force presence in the Baltics, and our rotation of U.S. forces through Estonia shows how serious we are about Estonia's defense," he said. "I'm also pleased that our troops in Estonia enjoy such a rich, multinational training environment. And our civil-military interaction teams have been working together to strengthen our people-to-people ties." Continued U.S. military presence in Europe and Baltic states, Pevkur said, also remains critical to deterring further Russian aggression. "We are very, very grateful for this continued, persistent heel-to-toe U.S. presence in Estonia and in the other Baltic states," Pevkur said. "I would like to take this occasion to thank all the U.S. servicemen and women who have rotated to Estonia over the past year and a half and also their families and close ones for the support." The Estonian minister also said that today's security environment means that a 2% defense spending target for NATO allies is no longer enough, and he called for more. "We, therefore, need to discuss and agree to higher spending targets, such as 2.5% or 3%," Pevkur said. "And this could be a concrete deliverable for NATO's 2025 summit in The Hague [Netherlands]." Already, Estonia is spending 3% on defense, the Estonian defense minister said, but recent negotiations have resulted in a decision to spend even more. "We go above 4% in 2026, maybe even 4.4% [or] 4.5%, depending on the economy," he said. "But ... we will invest a lot. And 40% of that money we will invest directly to ammunition and fires [and] the new capabilities. We are doing our share to keep the alliance safe." In the coming years, Pevkur said, NATO allies must focus on scaling up the delivery of military capabilities, such as air defense and fires, and must also increase defense industrial capacity. Finally, Pevkur thanked Austin for his leadership on the combined effort to provide capabilities to Ukraine and for security cooperation in Estonia. He told Austin that Estonian President Alar Karis had agreed to award Austin with a national award, the Second Class of the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana. Pevkur bestowed the award on Austin following their discussions. Pentagon Visit Gives Ukrainian University Students Insight Into U.S. Support [2024-07-25] WASHINGTON -- A group of Ukrainian university students from their country's capital city, Kyiv, visited the Pentagon Tuesday to learn more about the Defense Department and gain insight into how the United States provides support for Ukraine's defense against Russia.  During the visit, the students toured the Pentagon, visited the 9/11 Memorial in the building, and met with Laura Cooper, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia.  The eleven students, all studying either business or information technology, are part of an internship program with a variety of private sector companies within the United States this summer.  "These are student interns from American University Kyiv [who] have come to the United States through sponsorships with corporate America," said Daniel Rice, president of American University Kyiv. "We have eight different companies that have given internships to these students. The companies pay for the flights, the hotels, the J-1 visa, and a salary for the summer. They're getting real work experience. It's really a great cultural exchange, both for the Americans that are receiving them and for the students."  The Pentagon visit, along with other stops in Washington, provides the students with a better understanding of how the United States government works. Rice said the students were particularly interested in their visit to the Pentagon.  "They're all excited about it -- it's kind of mystical, you know. They don't know what goes on in this five-sided building," Rice said.  At a briefing with the House Foreign Relations Committee, Rice said students learned more about how the U.S. is supporting the war effort in Ukraine and considerations for that, including military, political, economic, cultural and religious factors.  "They're interested here in all the same things: How is this building operating to support Ukraine?" Rice said. "I think they're all very grateful for American support."  Rice said he considers the students to be "informal ambassadors" from Ukraine.  During her time with the students, Cooper discussed, among other topics, the importance of equipping Ukraine to defend itself, the strength of the bilateral relationship with Ukraine that existed even before the war began, and how military assistance is provided to Ukraine through both presidential drawdown authority and the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.  Cooper also told the students that young Ukrainians can help their country by spreading the word about what is happening there. She said while much of the world is aware of Russia's invasion, messaging from young people actually in Ukraine is critical for generating international support.  Khrystyna Ivanchuk, a student at American University Kyiv, also serves as the school's manager of international internships. She said hearing from Cooper about how the U.S. develops its support plans for Ukraine provided encouragement, something she said is much needed by Ukrainians.  "Because living in wartime back in Ukraine is really difficult, I hear a lot that Ukrainians are tired because of the war. And I personally think that we don't have a choice," she said. Ukrainians can't afford to be tired, Ivanchuk added. She noted that she came to the U.S. to get some inspiration -- and found it. "I saw the whole room [full] of women," she said, including Cooper and Melanie Fonder Kaye, the deputy assistant to the secretary of defense for strategic engagement. Ivanchuk said in Ukraine it is presently difficult for women to advance in defense, but she's sure her generation will change this.  "I feel like a lot of people in Ukraine are thinking that our military system is awful, and we will never change it," she said. "That is one thing that that we need inspiration for, that it's possible to be changed."  Armies in post-Soviet countries are in dire need of modernization, Ivanchuk noted. The army should be a privileged place to work for the security of the country, she said, adding that she was confident that Ukraine will achieve this. Ivanchuk said she's grateful for all the hardware, financial and training support that partner nations have provided to Ukraine in its fight against Russia. But she said what she thinks is needed most now is more people. For example, she said if foreign troops were willing to guard the border between Ukraine and Belarus, it might free up any Ukrainian soldiers currently in those roles to go fight elsewhere. She also said Ukraine needs doctors and teachers.  Russia made a large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 when it tried to take Kyiv. But Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014 when it annexed Crimea, so Ukraine has been at war for a decade now. Ivanchuk remains optimistic, however.  "I'm really patriotic, a pro-Ukrainian young girl," she said. "What I personally want is to have a happy future in my country." U.S. Intends to Reconstitute U.S. Forces Japan as Joint Forces Headquarters [2024-07-28] WASHINGTON -- Through a phased approach, the U.S. plans to convert U.S. Forces Japan into a joint force headquarters which will report to the commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, the secretary of defense said today following the conclusion of a two-plus-two ministerial meeting in Tokyo. Included in the meeting were Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara and Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa. "We welcome an historic decision to modernize our alliance command and control to better meet the challenges of today and tomorrow," said Austin during a press briefing today that followed the high-level meetings. "The United States will upgrade the U.S. Forces Japan to a joint force headquarters with expanded missions and operational responsibilities." The new joint force headquarters will be under the command of a three-star officer and will serve as a counterpart to Japan's own Japan Self-Defense Forces Joint Operations Command, Austin said. "This will be the most significant change to U.S. Forces Japan since its creation, and one of the strongest improvements in our military ties with Japan in 70 years," he said. "Japan's new Joint Operations Command will further allow our forces to work together more closely than ever. And these new operational capabilities and responsibilities will advance our collective deterrence." Austin said the change is based on a desire to work more closely with Japan and enhance the effectiveness of the existing relationship. Also part of the discussions, Austin said, were ways to increase bilateral presence in Japan's southwest islands; a reaffirmation of the importance of cooperation on cybersecurity, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; cross-domain operations and bilateral exercises and training; and ideas for new areas for defense industrial cooperation. According to a joint statement by the Security Consultative Committee, meeting participants discussed co-production opportunities to expand production capacity of both advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles and Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement missiles. "Finally, we held a separate two-plus-two ministerial level meeting on extended deterrence, and that has never been done before," Austin said. "During that meeting, I reaffirmed our ironclad commitment to defend Japan with the full range of our capabilities, including our nuclear capabilities." As part of the extended deterrence meeting, participants discussed, among other topics, North Korea's destabilizing activities in the region, including its unlawful nuclear and ballistic missile programs; China's expansion of its nuclear arsenal; and Russia's unlawful arms transfers with North Korea. Austin said he considered each meeting in Tokyo to be a success. "We are reinforcing our combined ability to deter and respond to coercive behavior in the Indo-Pacific and beyond," he said. "We're reinforcing the rules-based international order that keeps us all safe. And the agreements that we've advanced today will ensure that the U.S.-Japan alliance remains a cornerstone of security and stability in the Indo-Pacific." Austin Concludes Indo-Pacific Trip With Subic Bay Visit [2024-07-31] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III today concluded a multiday visit to the Indo-Pacific region with a final trip to Subic Bay in the Philippines. During the visit, Austin toured a Philippine Navy facility and several defense industrial sites as a way to highlight opportunities there for defense industrial cooperation by the United States, the Philippines, and other regional allies and partners. "This is a really transformative time for our relationship, our alliance here," Austin told reporters. "You've seen us announce a number of key initiatives. Yesterday you heard us talk about the $500 million in [foreign military financing] opportunity here that we're going to provide to the Philippines. We're excited about that, and that's going to help them modernize their military a bit further. [And] today we saw some of our industrial base companies out here working together to create additional capability, and that's also very, very exciting." During a U.S.-Philippines 2+2 ministerial dialogue on Tuesday, Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with their counterparts in Manila to discuss opportunities to strengthen regional peace, stability and prosperity. As part of those discussions, the U.S. committed to $500 million in foreign military financing to help with modernization of the U.S.-Philippines alliance and, among other things, enhance the capabilities of the Philippine military and coast guard. Also, part of Austin's visit to Indo-Pacom was a similar 2+2 dialogue in Tokyo, with Japanese counterparts, where the U.S. announced it would transition U.S. Forces Japan, or USFJ, to a joint force headquarters. The new joint force headquarters will be commanded by a three-star officer and will serve as a counterpart to Japan's own Japan Self-Defense Forces Joint Operations Command. "We're at the very beginning of this evolution and we'll work with our Japanese counterparts to see how to evolve things as we go forward," Austin said. "The three-star command that we're standing up is focused on the command and control of U.S. forces. And the three-star command in the JJOC [JSDF Joint Operations Command] will be focused on Japanese forces. The fact that we're working together will give us a lot greater agility and get a lot more capability, quite frankly." Austin said the conversion of USFJ to a joint force headquarters will provide greater control over planning combined missions with Japanese forces. With the conversion, it is expected the headquarters will retain its name, USFJ, and will also retain its three-star leadership. Austin, Australian Counterpart Meet in Advance of AUSMIN Consultations [2024-08-05] WASHINGTON -- In advance of tomorrow's 34th Australia-U.S. Ministerial Consultations, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III met today at the Pentagon with Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles to discuss the historic military-to-military progress between the two nations. Austin just returned last week from a trip to the Indo-Pacific, his 11th visit to the region as secretary. He told Marles he was proud of what the two nations have accomplished in the last three years. "We share with Australia a vision for a free, open and secure Indo-Pacific," Austin said. "Together, our unbreakable alliance is helping to make that vision a reality. We're delivering on major force posture initiatives, deepening our defense industrial cooperation and expanding efforts with our regional allies and partners." Included in those efforts, Austin said, is the historic trilateral Australia, U.K. and U.S. partnership, called AUKUS. The partnership, announced in September 2021, involves two pillars. The first pillar aims to deliver a conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarine capability to Australia. The second pillar involves enhancing joint capabilities and interoperability. "Today and tomorrow, we'll keep building on the historic results that we've achieved together," Austin said. "[And] we'll chart our path to strengthen our alliance over the coming years." The secretary acknowledged his counterpart as a driving force behind the momentum and progress of the partnership between the U.S. and Australia. Since Austin has been the U.S. secretary of defense, Marles said, the partnership between the two nations has grown significantly. "So much has happened over the last few years," Marles said. "You mentioned AUKUS, which is transforming Australia's military capability. That can't happen but for the partnership that we have. We're seeing America's force posture in Australia grow really significantly, AUKUS is part of that, but it's not the only part of that. The marine rotation in Darwin is growing across all the domains. We're now seeing more activities, which has been really fantastic. We are doing more industrially and the breakthrough legislation that went through the Congress at the end of last year in terms of defense export controls is again a transformational change in terms of our relationship." Marles also thanked Austin for his leadership in other areas around the globe, including in Asia, the Middle East and Europe. As an example, Marles pointed to the important U.S.-led trilateral partnership developing with Japan and South Korea; and also, to the quadrilateral partnership between U.S., Japan, Australia and the Philippines, aimed at advancing a shared vision for a free, open, secure and prosperous Indo-Pacific. The world remains a challenging place, with a complex security environment, Marles said. "We're witnessing that literally play out by the day," Marles said. "Our relationship with the United States has always been important, but it's never been more important than now." Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong will be joining the two defense leaders in Annapolis, Maryland. A Year in, DOD Racks Up Wins for Foreign Military Sales [2024-08-08] WASHINGTON -- In 2022, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III directed the creation of a "tiger team" to look into ways the Defense Department could make the Foreign Military Sales system less foreboding for partner nations interested in purchasing U.S. military hardware. The team wrapped up operations in the spring and transitioned into a Continuous Process Improvement Board, or CPIB, meant to implement solutions recommended by the tiger team and to also be on the lookout going forward for new and novel ways of their own to improve the FMS system. Since then, the department scored wins by implementing four tiger team recommendations: establishment of the CPIB; creation of the Defense Security Cooperation Service; standing up of the Security Cooperation Execution Focus Forum; and the development of an acquisition and sustainment tool kit. Following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia, interest in purchasing U.S. military hardware has increased substantially, said Cara Abercrombie, who serves as the acting deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. According to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, in fiscal year 2021, sales through FMS clocked in at about $34.8 billion total. For fiscal year 2022, that number jumped to $49.7 billion. In fiscal year 2023, it jumped again to about $66.2 billion. And so far in fiscal year 2024, FMS sales are already above $80 billion, and may top $100 billion by year's end. Because of this growth in FMS, the areas for improvement identified by the FMS tiger team, and now being implemented by the follow-on CPIB, are more relevant than ever, she said. Those efforts, Abercrombie said, are some of the most robust to date aimed at helping to make the FMS system easier for American partners and allies interested in getting on board with U.S. military hardware. "We are very serious," Abercrombie said. "We have put our DOD governance bodies behind it, but we really institutionalized the fact that foreign military sales [are] important, and that meeting allied and partner capability requirements in a timely fashion, meeting their needs, and meeting them where they are continues to be a [Secretary of Defense] priority." The original tiger team stood up because the process through which a foreign nation goes about purchasing U.S. military hardware, fighter aircraft for instance, is exceedingly complex. "There's consensus that foreign military sales can often be a point of frustration for some of our allies and partners in that they are looking to the United States to provide the top-tier military capability, but it's a deliberative process that has many steps along the way," she said. "I think they wanted to see things go a little bit faster. I think they wanted to have a better understanding of how the system works and so this was an effort to shorten timelines on FMS, see where we can improve efficiencies, and just have a better understanding about where there were opportunities for improvement." To accomplish their effort of identifying pain points and potential solutions in the FMS system, the tiger team looked at a variety of FMS case studies -- ones that went well and ones that went bad -- and also case studies across various kinds of hardware, to ensure they had a representative view of how the FMS system is experienced by foreign partners. "They were able to derive lessons learned from each, and through that process came up with a number of recommendations," she said. After submitting their findings in the spring of 2023, the tiger team stood down and the CPIB stood up so it could begin the process of implementing those recommendations. Chief among them was establishment of the Defense Security Cooperation Service, or DSCS. "This involves taking all the security cooperation officers who work in our embassies around the world managing FMS cases and other security cooperation programs, and bringing them into a common service," Abercrombie said. Personnel who were identified as being part of this new community, about 1,500 in all, are mostly military officers, and are the personnel most closely involved in working with foreign partner nations and helping them navigate procurement of new military hardware from the U.S. What the DOD plans to do is ensure that those personnel are properly trained, equipped and organized specifically to shepherd partner nations through the complex FMS process and to ensure the greatest chance of success. And because those personnel will all be part of a single service, DOD will also be better able to ensure that they are placed where they are needed most. Right now, Abercrombie said, personnel doing FMS work in embassies might be assigned to different parts of the department, such as to a combatant command. And because of this, it's possible that in some places FMS offices are understaffed for local demand, while in other places, they might be overstaffed. "We'll now make sure we've got the right workforce numbers where we need them," she said. "They will have a more robust training program. And because we will centrally manage these assignments processes, we will build the training in. Right now, we try to get everyone trained, but we don't always. So, we'll be able to have more predictive training. The output is you've got a better-trained individual working hand-in-glove with a country to identify requirements." Also through the DSCS, Abercrombie said, the department will be able to increase the size of the staff to match growing demand. "Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the demand for foreign military sales has gone up exponentially," she said. "We've got to increase the workforce." One way the department might do that, she said, is to consider using more civilians. The SCEFF is a new effort to identify and rectify problems with an FMS case before those problems become insurmountable. "The SCEFF is a way for combatant commands to flag, with a regular frequency, high-profile FMS cases that are really critical for key partners in their area of responsibility," Abercrombie said. "If they see warning signs that something might be amiss -- it could be they're hearing there might be a supply chain issue, it could be something stuck in clearance -- it's a way to elevate quickly for senior-level attention something that could be stuck for any number of reasons." The SCEFF was stood up last year. "It's formed to highlight potential challenges before they become big problems," she said. "It's an early warning system." The acquisition and sustainment toolkit, another success championed by the CPIB, amounts to a list of best practices regarding contracting policy. "It just informs contracting officers about best practices when working with a partner," Abercrombie said. "You know, when you can use certain more rapid acquisition authorities or when you might be able to use different acquisition pathways." Within FMS, Abercrombie said, the acquisition part of the process is exactly the same as when the U.S. approaches defense contractors to buy things for itself. For instance, whether the department wants to help a foreign partner nation purchase a Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System or a U.S. military service wants the system for itself, in both cases the complex acquisition of that system will need to go through the Army's Program Executive Office for Missiles and Space. The acquisition process itself is already complex, even when U.S. military services buy equipment for themselves. Doing the same thing with a partner nation, through FMS, increases that complexity. The A&S toolkit is aimed at helping contracting personnel find better ways to do things when partner nations are involved. "Because our FMS system is built on our acquisition system, we always look through the lens of how we do acquisition," she said. "The A&S toolkit is saying let's layer on, for the first time, how to meet partner needs. There are a range of contracting options available to you as a contracting officer, which ones might work most expeditiously in an FMS context -- that's the type of things we provided them in this toolkit." Nations who want to be security partners with the U.S. must be compatible with the U.S. military, Abercrombie said. The U.S. and its partners must have compatible radios, for instance, but must also be able to share ammunition or exchange spare parts. This means those nations might need to purchase compatible U.S. military hardware through the FMS process. But for some nations, investing in U.S. military hardware can be out of reach due to cost. The U.S. wants more partners, Abercrombie said, and so finding ways to help willing nations become compatible is in the national interest. The department has a handful of competitive financing options to make attaining new hardware more manageable for nations who can't pay the total cost upfront. One of those options is the credit assured payment schedule, or CAPS. The official policy for this option was codified just last year, and it offers partner nations access to a payment schedule if they are able to secure a standby letter of credit from a qualified bank and pay an initial deposit of 25%. With CAPS, partners have the ability to have a payment schedule and spread the cost of their defense procurements over time. "Paying 100% of that up front could both be very costly, but also for a democracy, where you have annual budgets that you negotiate across your government or with your parliament, also very hard to get political support for," she said. "But by spreading it out over the lifecycle of the contract, which could be many years, that becomes more palatable." U.S. military hardware is more expensive, Abercrombie said, because the total cost for purchasing new fighter aircraft is more than just the cost of the hardware. The U.S. doesn't just sell the aircraft, for instance. It sells aircraft with a total package approach to include spare parts, training, and other support over time. Competitive financing options like CAPS mean more interested nations will be able to buy in to U.S. military hardware and the long-term support and partnership that comes with that hardware, Abercrombie said. "We want our partners to be able to operate with us," she said. "Interoperability is really important." And the long-term commitment that comes with FMS sales also enhances partnerships as well, she said. "We take a whole life-cycle approach to working with the partner," Abercrombie said. "We're doing the training with them, or we might be assisting with the maintaining or supporting. For instance, if you buy a fighter jet from the United States, we'll be flying with you, making sure you've got the latest, whether we're developing new maintenance plans, or we've got new capabilities coming online or upgrades. It's a 30-year relationship." Abercrombie said the CPIB maintains high-level attention on FMS and security cooperation now and will continue to do so into the future. "Every secretary of defense I've worked for in the past 20 years has inevitably spoken about capabilities with a foreign partner," she said. "It comes up because it's important. Countries are investing their dollars in buying from another country. This is important to them and it's something that they care about." DOD Needs Solutions for the Proliferation of Autonomous Vehicles, Defense Official Says [2024-08-09] WASHINGTON -- For several decades now, autonomous systems including aircraft, ground vehicles and waterborne craft have proliferated. While there hasn't been a direct assault on a U.S. military base yet, autonomous systems remain a threat and something the Defense Department is seeking solutions for. "If you look at the situation now, which is something easily predictable back in, I will say, two decades ago ... you're already seeing the increase in number of ... unmanned systems," said Heidi Shyu, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. "With that increasingly growing, exponentially worldwide, the obvious thing we have to think about is how are we going to counter that. Because we already have unmanned systems that are intruding into our installations." It's not just airborne autonomous systems that are growing in numbers. Autonomous systems exist across all domains, including air, land and sea, Shyu said, during a discussion today at the National Defense Industrial Association's 2024 Emerging Technologies for Defense Conference and Exhibition in Washington, D.C. But inside the U.S., there are rules for how the military services can engage with those systems if they are deemed a threat -- and defeating them will mean complying with those rules while at the same time working to protect both people and property. "What we're trying to do is figure out [the] different rules," she said. "We can't really shoot it down with a missile." Shyu said while there are solutions being worked now, the Defense Department is interested in having industry proffer even more options for it and the military services to consider. "We have to figure out solutions," she said. "I think counter-[unmanned aircraft system] is never going to die, because it's a cat and mouse game. As soon as you figure something out, your adversary will do something different. This is going to be a growing need and ... there isn't one solution that can counter every single scenario. Therefore, you need to have an integrated solution of multiple capabilities. This is one area, which is not even classified ... [where] if you have great ideas, this is a great opportunity." Another area where Shyu said the Defense Department needs ideas is in contested logistics, where adversaries attempt to disrupt, destroy or defeat friendly force logistics operations. "That means if I have to sustain your troops at the front and you have to carry food, fuel [and] everything else to the front [of] the battlefield," Shyu said. "How do you deliver your products there? Contested logistics is a big issue, and it is an issue we are trying to tackle." DOD Spells Out New Requirements to Counter Blast Overpressure Risks [2024-08-14] WASHINGTON -- Last week, the Defense Department released requirements meant to help manage the risks to brain health from blast overpressure, which can be generated by weapons systems such as howitzers, mortars and shoulder-mounted weapons. The policy memorandum, signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, aligns squarely with the department's warfighter brain health initiative and the secretary of defense's priority of Taking Care of Our People. Among other things, the memorandum spells out requirements related to standoff distances for specific weapons systems; proposed limits on expending excess rounds once training requirements are met; tracking personnel exposed to blast overpressure, also called BOP; and consideration of BOP risks to brain health when developing new weapons systems. "The department is committed to advancing combat readiness while reducing risks associated with blast overpressure," Hicks wrote in her memorandum. While the effort directs commanders to take reasonable steps to preserve the brain health of DOD personnel, it is not intended to undermine training efforts or combat effectiveness, Hicks said. "This policy is not meant to preclude or unreasonably restrict commanders from conducting mission-essential weapons training," she said. "Rather, this policy establishes requirements for practical risk management actions to mitigate and track BOP exposures across the DOD." Key elements of the new policy include requirements for the DOD components to: • Implement procedures and standards for training and operations that incorporate blast overpressure risk management, including weapon specific standoff distances; • Enhance training and education for civilian and military leaders and service members, to include procedures to seek medical evaluation when experiencing symptoms; • Identify and track all DOD personnel who are at the highest risk for exposures to hazardous BOP using the DOD's Defense Occupational and Environmental Health Readiness System-Industrial Hygiene, or DOEHRS-IH; • Integrate simulations into training strategies to reduce BOP exposure, when appropriate, and not expend excess rounds once training standards are achieved; • Consider BOP hazards within the acquisition life cycle of weapons systems; and • Establish procedures to track and maintain oversight of BOP exposure risk management actions, including processes to request, and provide justification in writing for any exceptions to the policy requirements. "Blast overpressure is the wave that's experienced after firing a weapon or munition," said Kathy Lee, director of the Department of Defense policy for warfighter brain health. "When this wave occurs, there can be impacts that affect cognition, balance changes and other potential brain health issues." The memorandum includes examples of systems commonly in use across the department that can cause BOP. Such systems include the shoulder-mounted M72 light anti-armor weapon and M136 light antitank weapon; indirect fire systems, including all platforms of both howitzers and mortars; and .50-caliber rifles such as the M107 sniper rifle, the M2A1 machine gun, and the MK15 sniper rifle. Lee said the weapons named in the memorandum were identified after consultation with the military services. "Symptoms that have been reported after use of these munitions in a low-level blast exposure environment have included complaints of headache, concentration problems, dizziness and irritability, memory problems and slower reaction time," Lee said. "So, these are some of the manifestations, some of the health and performance effects that were found while we performed some in-depth studies looking at those particular weapon systems." For such systems, one example of BOP mitigation includes defining an appropriate standoff distance from the blast source -- how far away an individual such as instructors or range safety officers must stand in order to minimize their exposures to BOP. For the M120 and M121 120 mm mortars, the recommended standoff distance is 13 feet, for instance, while for the M107 sniper rifle, the standoff is seven feet. The DOD Blast Overpressure Reference and Information Guide is a tool the department is using to better understand the level of BOP produced from high-risk weapons and operations, and the appropriate standoff distances, said Laura Macaluso, the director for force safety and occupational health. "This is a great tool for personnel in the field to use and we have already received positive feedback. It has easily understood illustrations about the blast overpressure generated from specific weapons, such as where to stand and body positioning," Macaluso said. The memorandum also directs that the services identify and track within DOEHRS-IH all personnel who are potentially exposed to BOP. A special emphasis should also be placed on occupational specialties that, by nature of operational activities, regularly place those personnel at increased risk of BOP exposure, the memorandum says. "The DOEHRS-IH system is expected to be used to enter information for tracking exposures ... identifying those personnel who are potentially exposed and then tracking those exposures ... so that we can link individual personnel to their level of exposure while performing their duties," said Macaluso. This memorandum also directs the acceleration of service members obtaining their first baseline cognitive assessment to support monitoring brain health throughout their time in service. In keeping with that, the memorandum requires DOD components to ensure all new active and reserve accessions undergo cognitive assessments as part of the entry process. The department already conducts cognitive assessments on military personnel in advance of deployments and has been doing so since 2008. The new policy expands this to the newly accessioned, and creates a requirement that service members in career fields at high risk for exposure to BOP are given cognitive assessments at regular intervals throughout their careers. "Monitoring will be regular and ongoing to identify and address any cognitive changes as soon as they are known," Lee said. "Expansion will include the entire force through phased implementation after conducting the first baseline test. Then follow-up testing will allow opportunities for cognitive enhancements or cognitive restoration if necessary." Also required under the policy is for BOP risk management to be integrated into weapons system acquisition life cycles, to include leveraging technology to reassess and manage risks from BOP hazards for legacy weapons systems. "We call it key performance parameters," said Lee. "There is a policy that mandates that future weapon development must consider brain health as a key performance parameter in weapon development and acquisition. Through the Warfighter Brain Health Initiative, there has been a new provision in the [Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System] manual that says there is now a key performance parameter which weapon developers and acquisition program managers will be looking at to ensure that effects on brain health were considered as you move through the stages of developing and acquiring weapons." While the new direction from the department aims to protect service member brain health by identifying BOP as a hazard, educating the force about the issue, and taking steps to mitigate exposure, it is not intended to prevent warfighters from doing their job, said Macaluso. "The policy establishes requirements for practical risk management actions to mitigate and track blast overpressure exposures across the department. In the safety community, everything we do is focused on risk management. We want to keep our personnel as safe as possible in every environment that we can control." Lee said that the new policy may actually improve combat readiness because it will ensure fewer service members are taken out of action due to the adverse health impacts from BOP exposure. "It will enhance training because you will have healthier warriors who know that they're being taken care of, and they're being protected from unnecessary blast exposures, which may put more people on the line in training scenarios to help them be ready to train as they fight and maximize our national defense strategy goals," Lee said. Families of Service Members Gone Missing in Action Get Answers at Annual Briefing [2024-08-15] WASHINGTON -- More than 400 family members, with relatives who served in the Korean War or the Cold War who never came home, are attending personalized briefings today and tomorrow in Arlington, Virginia, to get updates on how the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency is progressing on their cases. "We do this each year because this is part of DPAA's mission, which is to connect and communicate with families of the missing," said Kelly McKeague, director of the DPAA, during a press event Wednesday. "It's a chance for us to provide them updates on their loved one's case, particularly in the backdrop of the Korean War and the Cold War." The DPAA team was joined by their counterparts from South Korea, the Ministry of National Defense Agency for Killed in Action Recovery and Identification, also called MAKRI, which is a partner in helping DPAA recover remains of American service members. "I participate in [this] event every year to describe to the bereft family how we are doing, how we are making efforts to find, locate, recover and identify the U.S. servicemen who sacrificed their lives during the Korean War, and it is my great honor to participate in this year's [event]," said Keun-Won Lee, MAKRI's director. There are about 126 U.S. service members still unaccounted for from the Cold War, and 7,465 U.S. personnel still unaccounted for from the Korean War. McKeague said about 5,300 of those who remain missing from the Korean War are suspected of having been lost in North Korea. In 2018, 55 boxes of human remains, called "K55," were repatriated from North Korea. According to Kristen Grow, the DPAA Korean War Identification Project lead, about 250 individuals are represented within the K55 remains. "We have identified 93 U.S. service members from that assemblage to date," she said, adding that within the K55 remains, an additional 88 South Korean soldiers have also been repatriated to South Korea. "There are believed to be around 69 individuals remaining in the assemblage that we are currently analyzing," she said. Right now, McKeague said, the relationship with North Korea has diplomatically stalled regarding repatriation of remains from the Korean War. There's been no contact, he said, since 2019. "The United States government reaches out often to North Korea, on any number of levels, one of which is this particular mission," he said. "There has been no response at all, at all levels of the United States government, in their communications with North Korea." The U.S. and DPAA, McKeague said, remain ready to continue the mission in North Korea if the North Koreans are willing to cooperate. "We remain ready to go back to North Korea, as we did for 10 years. We remain ready to use this as a tool of diplomacy, as a humanitarian effort," he said. "But again, it's subject to an agreement by the North Koreans that this is something they would want to do." In fiscal year 2023, remains of nearly 40 American service members who had been lost during the Korean War were accounted for. The DPAA also continues to work in South Korea to find remains there as well. The DPAA is holding one-on-one meetings with families of service members lost in the Korean War and the Cold War. Of the more than 400 families expected to attend, more than 95% are families of Korean War service members, McKeague said. "What's interesting is that of the 434, there are 172 of them that are first-time attendees, which is an extraordinary number," McKeague said. "They're coming to a DOD family meeting update for the very first time. ... They come here, obviously, to receive a general update, but more importantly, they receive an individual case summary update. An analyst from DPAA, along with our service casualty office partner, will sit down with each family and provide them an update to their case." The primary mission of the DPAA, McKeague said, is to account for the missing. That mission includes repatriating more than 72,000 unaccounted for service members from World War II, more than 1,500 service members from the Vietnam War and more than 7,400 service members from the Korean War. But the DPAA has another mission as well -- and that is to keep the families of those service members informed about the agency's progress, McKeague said. "This is a national commitment, not only in the United States but also in the Republic of Korea, where we believe that we have an obligation and imperative to provide answers to families whose loved ones made the supreme sacrifice for our respective nations," he said. DOD, UDCG Continue to Look for Better Ways to Expedite Support to Ukraine [2024-08-20] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III today spoke with Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov to discuss ongoing war efforts in Ukraine and details of the next meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in September. "During their call, Minister Umerov provided an update on the impact of Russia's continued attacks in Ukraine," Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said during a briefing today. "Secretary Austin and the minister also discussed the next Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting, which will be held next month in support of Ukraine's urgent security assistance requirements." The UDCG, spearheaded by Austin, met for the first time in Germany in April 2022 and meets monthly. The group is a way for the more than 50 participating nations to coordinate their assistance to Ukraine and focus on Ukraine's future defense needs. Besides coordinating efforts to get much-needed military supplies to Ukraine, the UDCG also explores better ways to expedite the delivery of those materials. "We are always looking at ways that we can expedite delivery of capabilities to the Ukrainians," Ryder said. "The Ukraine Defense Contact Group provides an excellent forum in which to have discussions to look at processes [and] procedures as [they relate] to ensuring that the Ukrainians have what they need on the battlefield to defend themselves." Ryder said the U.S. has emphasized speedy delivery of systems to Ukraine from the start. In November 2022, for instance, the U.S. stood up the Security Assistance Group-Ukraine in Wiesbaden, Germany, to better coordinate training and equipping Ukrainian forces, and to help increase their situational awareness. With more than 50 nations participating in the UDCG, Ryder said, supporting Ukraine is a complex effort -- one the DOD will continue to uphold. "That is work that is constantly ongoing," he said. "As evidenced by the fact that you continue to see Russian forces conducting offensive action in the east of Ukraine, we also recognize the vital importance of moving as quickly as possible, so we'll stay after it." Climate Change Is Crisis for Entire Planet, Deputy Secretary Says [2024-08-26] WASHINGTON -- Climate change affects the entire planet, said Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, and no one nation can solve the problem on its own -- not even the United States. During the "Climate and Defense Summit of the Americas," held August 22-23 at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, civilian and military leaders, scientists, and emergency response experts from South America and North America -- including Central America and the Caribbean -- met to address the defense and security challenges that climate change poses and to enhance regional cooperation. The summit, co-hosted by the Office of Arctic and Global Resilience and the Office of Western Hemisphere Affairs within the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, brought together leaders from more than 26 nations to discuss the challenge of climate change. "Climate change is a global security issue. It knows no borders, nor boundaries. It respects no sovereignty, and it can't be reasoned with," Hicks said during the summit, adding that the United States has co-hosted several events in the past several months, including in Barbados, Peru and Honduras, to discuss how to integrate resilience into defense strategies and to conduct security cooperation efforts that focus on developing climate resilience. "One thing is clear," she said. "None of us can tackle the climate challenge alone. We have a better chance [of] tackling the threat when we find ways to confront it together." Within the defense community, Hicks said, a top concern for officials has been securing national interests in the face of climate change effects such as heat waves, flooding and storms. "The U.S. national security community has been clear-eyed about these challenges for decades," she said. "Earlier this year, the U.S. intelligence community released its annual assessment on the effects of climate change for our world, highlighting how it exacerbates risks in global health, deepens economic challenges, and could lead to global unrest. We have a responsibility to act on this knowledge, adapting with common purpose to the threat that climate change poses." At the Defense Department, she said, the readiness of America's military is of primary concern. "We've taken climate change into account in everything we do at every level," she said, pointing to the Department of Defense Climate Risk Analysis, published in 2021, as an example of the department's efforts to assess the strategic risks of climate change. "It describes how we will integrate climate considerations into our key processes, including strategy, planning and budget, and engagements with our allies and partners," she said. With partners from across the Americas in attendance, Hicks said continued forums provide an opportunity to address Pan-American environmental problems and to develop Pan-American solutions. "Through these regional convenings, we've confirmed that among the shared problems that our nations face, climate change is an existential threat for all of us," she said. "I know that each of you is concerned about climate resiliency, about building resilient forces, infrastructure and operations. You're concerned about disaster response and preparedness, and so are we. And we're committed to collaborating and finding common ground to address these issues with you." As part of the summit, Rebecca Zimmerman, the acting assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs, and Deanne Criswell, Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator, discussed how the two federal agencies work together when the nation is affected by disasters related to climate change. Both Zimmerman and Criswell praised the strong relationship between the two partner agencies, and Criswell highlighted the strong support FEMA gets from the U.S. military. But Zimmerman also discussed how the department and partner nation militaries can be stretched thin when helping other government agencies during climate-related disasters, and what can be done to strengthen those agencies to make them more robust and independent. During national emergencies that arise from climate-related crises, Zimmerman said, defense and security ministries such as the DOD, with their robust ability to develop strategy and to plan, are well-suited to step in and offer assistance to other federal agencies. To meet that challenge, Zimmerman said, the DOD and partner nation ministries must work to ensure civilian partner agencies are more robust and able to handle larger crises on their own. "I think a shared challenge is, how do we as communities make sure that ... [partner nation civilian agencies] have the funding they need and that they're able to build up the planning and operational capabilities that they need in order to be able to meet the response appropriately as civilians." Another challenge, she said, involves ensuring that civilian institutions can grow and change to meet new environmental challenges. One example, she said, involves those agencies that maintain and manage critical infrastructure, such as water and power, which militaries depend on but don't always own or maintain for themselves. "Our ability to stand sovereign and independent depends upon [critical infrastructure] being able to work when we need it," she said, adding that the challenge involves ensuring that critical infrastructure institutions are modernized, robust and able to keep water and power running so that militaries can continue to operate. DOD Will Provide Homeland With Support During Presidential Campaigns [2024-08-29] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department has approved a request by the Department of Homeland Security to provide assistance to the Secret Service for the presidential and vice-presidential candidates during the 2024 campaigns through Inauguration Day 2025, the deputy pentagon press secretary said today. "The secretary of defense approved the request and directed the commander of U.S. Northern Command to plan and provide and execute increased support to the United States Secret Service at various locations across the United States during the 2024 election campaigns," Sabrina Singh said during a briefing today at the Pentagon. According to Singh, the department's support will continue throughout the campaigns, the elections and the inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025. The department has a long history of providing support to the Secret Service when asked to assist. "The Department of Defense has supported Secret Service protective activities for the sitting president and vice president since Congress passed the Presidential Protection Assistance Act of 1976," said Anthony Guglielmi, chief of communications for the Secret Service. "As has been the case for many years, the U.S. Secret Service relies on federal, state and local partners to assist with protective operations." The Secret Service, Guglielmi said, has recently bolstered its protective operations in order to ensure higher levels of safety and security for those it protects. "As part of this effort, the Department of Defense is providing the U.S. Secret Service with additional assistance including logistics, transportation and communications, through the 2024 campaign season," Guglielmi said. "The U.S. Secret Service appreciates the invaluable commitment of our military partners and their continued support." Gaza Update Also of note is that the final aid bound for Gaza, which was initially meant for delivery over the now-shuttered floating pier, is slated to be delivered this week to the port of Ashdod in Israel. From there, the aid will be transported to Gaza. "Earlier this week, the Cape Trinity arrived from Cyprus to the port of Ashdod and has begun the process of unloading the remaining pallets of humanitarian aid," Singh said. "That's approximately six million pounds of aid to be distributed within Gaza. The offloading process is expected to take between four to six days." Singh said when the Cape Trinity has finished unloading aid, it will return to Greece to allow some of the crew to disembark and will then continue its return home to the United States. The MV Cape Trinity, a roll-on/roll-off cargo ship, is owned by the U.S. Department of Transportation. In May DOD deployed a Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore system, or JLOTS, on the Mediterranean Sea to facilitate delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza. The JLOTS system included a floating pier, called the "Trident Pier," which was attached to the Gaza shore. U.S. Central Command closed out the JLOTS mission in mid-July. While the pier was in operation, the U.S. and partners delivered nearly 20 million pounds of aid into Gaza. The six million pounds of aid being delivered now to the port of Ashdod by the MV Cape Trinity was initially meant to be delivered over the Trident Pier. U.S.-Iraq Higher Military Commission Continues Talks on Security Cooperation [2024-09-08] WASHINGTON -- Plans for the future of U.S. security cooperation with Iraq, including the role of U.S. service members on the ground there, are still being discussed by the U.S.-Iraq Higher Military Commission, or HMC, said the Pentagon press secretary. "The nature of these conversations are focused on transitioning from the global coalition for the enduring defeat of ISIS, the current structure, to what does a longer-term U.S-Iraqi bilateral security relationship look like," said Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder during a meeting today with members of the civilian news media. "We highly value Iraq as a partner," Ryder said. "They play a very important role in the region when it comes to security and stability, particularly on the counterterrorism front, and, so, we need to allow the HMC the time and space to have those conversations." The HMC began working group meetings earlier this year to plan how the existing security relationship between the partner nations will transition going forward. It was during the August 2023 U.S.-Iraq Joint Security Cooperation Dialogue that the U.S. and Iraq agreed to convene the HMC. "As part of the U.S.-Iraq Joint Security Cooperation Dialogue, we established the Higher Military Commission that will look at the transition of the global coalition into a long-term U.S.-Iraq bilateral security cooperation relationship," Ryder said. "Those conversations are ongoing." Discussions within the HMC are expected to shape the role of U.S. forces in Iraq and the defeat-ISIS mission. In determining how the U.S. role in that mission will change, the HMC will consider the current nature of the threat from ISIS, operational and environmental requirements, and Iraqi security forces' capability levels. The U.S. currently has a military presence of about 2,500 personnel in Iraq as part of the Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve effort. The mission is to advise, assist and enable partner forces in the defeat of ISIS in designated areas of Iraq and Syria. Inside Iraq, the U.S. works in partnership with both the Iraqi security forces and the Kurdish security forces to carry out that mission. Ryder also said Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III is involved in any discussions concerning U.S. force posture, and HMC outcomes are important in informing decisions by U.S. and Iraqi political leadership. "The secretary is certainly very engaged on anything when it comes to U.S. force posture around the world," Ryder said. "We value the work that's being done via the Higher Military Commission process. Those conversations inform senior leader decisions, ultimately, which rests at the seat of government ... the president and the Iraqi leadership." Iran Gives Russia Short-Range Missiles, While U.S., Partners Expect to Keep Bolstering Ukrainian Air Defense [2024-09-10] WASHINGTON -- The United States has confirmed that Iran has given a number of close-range ballistic missiles to Russia. But a U.S. official said from the beginning of the Russian invasion, support to Ukraine has focused on air defense, and that this will continue -- including with a focus on the threat posed by the new missiles. "The United States has confirmed reports that Iran has transferred shipments of Fath 360 close-range ballistic missiles to Russia, which we assess could employ them within weeks against Ukraine, leading to the deaths of even more Ukrainian civilians," said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder during a briefing today. He added that right now, the department can't say how many missiles are involved. The Fath 360 missiles, Ryder said, are believed to have a range of about 75 miles and would allow Russians to reserve more advanced missiles with longer ranges for other uses. "It is a short-range or close-range ballistic missile system," he said. "What this does is it would enable Russia to employ this capability while preserving its longer-range capabilities for use throughout the battlefield, thus deepening Russia's arsenal and also, again, giving it the ability to strike the kinds of targets that we've seen them striking, to include civilian targets." Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and since then, through a variety of security arrangements, including with the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, the U.S. and partner nations have provided military support to Ukraine. A large focus has been on air defense, which Ryder said would continue. "Air defense has been something that we've been very focused on for a long time now when it comes to Ukraine," he said. "That has been a priority for the Ukrainians, and therefore it's been a priority for us. I point you back to UDCG, almost a year and a half ago, where [Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III] highlighted how critical this was." Since that time, Ryder said, U.S. and partner nations have been working to provide the Ukrainians with a variety of air defense systems meant to address both short-range and long-range missile threats. "Building that integrated air defense capability for Ukraine has been going on for a while now, and so we're not going to let up," Ryder said. "And [with] these missiles, while they certainly are going to present a threat, we're going to work with Ukraine to ensure ... that they have the capabilities needed to defend against these missiles and other missiles that Russia is using, to include drones." The United States has committed more than $55.9 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia's invasion in February 2022. Air defense systems are featured heavily in that security assistance. Among the air defense systems provided are Patriot air defense batteries; National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, also called NASAMS; HAWK air defense systems; Stinger anti-aircraft missiles; and Avenger air defense systems. In the same way the U.S. and partner nations have been training Ukrainian service members on the use of equipment such as howitzers and the F-16 Falcon aircraft, the Iranians have trained Russians on the use of the Fath 360. Ryder said the department believes "dozens" of Russian military personnel were trained in Iran to use the missile system. While it's not known what the Iranians received in exchange for providing the missiles. Ryder said officials speculate intelligence information might have been part of the arrangement. "Without being able to go into specifics, we see them sharing information as it relates to nuclear programs, space and other technological capabilities that Russia has that countries like Iran want," he said. Ryder also said given Russia's growing relationships with other bad-faith actors on the global stage, including North Korea, there is a reasonable expectation that there will be continued delivery of missiles from Iran. "The concerning aspect of this ... is the developing relationship between Russia and Iran," he said. "And you also see Russia developing a relationship with [North Korea], where they become essentially a supplier of capability. So, one has to assume that if Iran is providing Russia with these types of missiles, that it's very likely it would not be a one-time good deal, that this would be a source of capability that Russia would seek to tap in the future." Department Announces Latest Efforts to Improve Quality of Life for Service Members [2024-09-13] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department today announced a new series of initiatives aimed at improving the welfare and well-being of service members and their families. In a memorandum published today, titled "Our Enduring Duty to America's Service Members and Their Families," Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III announced a new set of initiatives which are part of his ongoing "Taking Care of Our People" priority that began three years ago. The latest initiatives include: • Establishing Health Care Flexible Spending Accounts for service members • Providing greater access to free wireless internet in unaccompanied housing • Decreasing the cost burden associated permanent change of station moves • Lowering the cost of procuring uniforms for enlisted service members • Expanding spouse employment and professional development opportunities through the My Career Advancement Account, or MyCAA program • Increasing access to affordable quality childcare and early childhood education • Improving quality of life conditions at remote and isolated installations The new initiatives, along with initiatives over the past three years, were developed after assessing the experiences of service members. Taken together, the efforts are meant to ensure the well-being and success of Service members, enabling them to better focus on their part of the defense mission. "Early in my tenure as secretary of defense, I made taking care of our people a top priority," Austin said in the memorandum. "Doing right by our all-volunteer joint force and their families is a core readiness issue. Taking care of our people is fundamental to the department's ability to recruit and retain the most talented American patriots and to ensure that the U.S. military remains the most lethal fighting force on the planet -- and it is simply the right thing to do." As part of a focus on service member and military family health, the department plans to offer service members the ability to contribute up to $3,200 in pre-tax earnings to pay for eligible healthcare-related expenses through a Health Care Flexible Spending Account, or HCFSA. With the HCFSA, service members will be able to contribute up to $3,200 each year in pre-tax dollars to their accounts and spend that money on things such as insurance co-payments and cost shares, deductibles, braces and other orthodontia, glasses and contact lenses, prescription drugs, and wellness treatments such as acupuncture, massage, and chiropractic care. It's expected that the HCFSAs will be available to service members for the first time in March 2025. To keep junior, unaccompanied service members connected to the wider world while off duty, the department has directed the military departments to carry out a series of pilot projects to provide wireless internet connectivity to enlisted service members who reside in military barracks. While access to wireless internet will allow those junior service members access to personal email, banking and entertainment options, the department also expects access can be used to help service members connect with mandatory online training requirements and other health and life related resources such as telehealth appointments, Military OneSource, and military and family life counselors. According to department documents, the DOD has long-term plans to establish a "WiFi-connected force." For service members in unaccompanied housing, there is not expected to be any cost to access the provided internet services. Service members make frequent permanent change of station moves during their careers. To ease the burden of moving themselves and their families from one military base to another, the department is working with partners to adjust the number of days associated with both the Temporary Lodging Expense, or TLE, and the Temporary Lodging Allowance, or TLA. The new effort extends TLE from 14 days to 21 days for moves within the continental U.S. For moves that originate outside the continental U.S., TLA will be extended to as many as 60 days on the departure side to match the 60 days already authorized on the arrival side. Both the TLE and the TLA allow service members and their families to live in temporary quarters, such as in hotels, while looking for homes at their new duty station, or after they have checked out of their homes at their existing duty stations. To ensure enlisted service members are best able to maintain their uniforms, the department has directed a review of the quality of uniforms that are issued to and are available for purchase by service members. Additionally, the department has directed another review that will look at the annual clothing replacement allowance to determine not only if it is sufficient, but if there are better ways to provide that allowance to service members. The new initiatives also include efforts to improve the recruitment, retention and working environments of DOD child development professionals; expanding eligibility for participation in the My Career Advancement Account career development program to spouses of active duty service members serving in grades E-7, E-8, E-9, and W-3; and assessments of three remote and isolated installations via the "On-Site Installation Evaluation" process. Those three installations will be identified in the fall, with the evaluations taking place in 2025. This particular initiative advances efforts to understand capabilities and needs regarding the well-being of service members at remote and isolated installations. This latest salvo of efforts, the third in the department's effort to improve the lives of service members and their families, comes as part of an ongoing nearly three-year long effort which began in 2021. In November 2021, for instance, Austin addressed economic concerns faced by service members. Then, the department provided relief for the high cost of housing and housing shortages with a temporary increase to basic allowance for housing in some areas, and an extension of temporary lodging expenses where Service members had a difficult time finding housing due to shortages. At that same time the secretary also pushed to extend tour lengths for service members at both overseas and U.S. based assignments as a way to minimize hardships associated with permanent change of station moves. In September 2022, Austin continued that effort by directing a review of basic allowance for housing to ensure what was being paid to service members accurately reflected fluctuations in the housing market, and also directed increases in basic allowance for housing for active duty service members in 28 military housing areas that had experienced an average of more than 20 percent spike in rental housing costs. The September 2022 effort also included direction to fully fund DOD commissaries as a way to cut register prices with a goal of providing service members a 25% savings over private sector grocery stores, and also directed creation of a "Basic Needs Allowance," which began in January 2023, to supplement the incomes of qualifying service members. The cost of household moves was also addressed by Austin's September 2022 memorandum, which directed a permanent increase to standard TLE. Also included was an increase to the dislocation allowance for service members up to E-6 to offset the personal expenses associated with a permanent change of station move. In a memo from March 2022, Austin directed implementation of universal pre-kindergarten at Department of Defense Education Activity schools, and the creation of dependent care flexible spending accounts to enable service members with dependents to set aside up to $5,000 in pretax income through payroll deduction for eligible dependent care expenses such as child care, preschool, before or after school programs, and summer camp. The March effort also included additional support for those with exceptional family members. As part of that effort the department established a standard process to enroll and disenroll families from the program, require that support personnel make personal contact with each enrolled family at least once a year, better coordinate the way support personnel are assigned to families, and ease the transition between support personnel. The Department's March 2022 effort also addressed the challenges of ensuring military spouses can find meaningful employment. Through the My Career Advancement Account program, for instance, eligible military spouses became eligible for up to $4,000 in financial assistance to earn a license, certificate, or associate degree. Advancing military spouse employment efforts, the president in January 2023 signed into law an amendment to the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, which requires that professional licenses be portable, except for licenses to practice law, for service members and their spouses as they move between states. Austin, First Lady, Tour Pre-K Program at Maxwell Air Force Base [2024-09-15] Maxwell AFB, Alabama -- Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden met Friday morning at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, to witness how prekindergarten courses there are going at Maxwell Elementary and Middle School. In March 2023, Austin announced that the Defense Department would expand full-time, universal prekindergarten to all Department of Defense Education Activity schools both in the United States and abroad. The effort came as part of Austin's "Taking Care of Our People" effort, which kicked off in November 2021. At the school, Austin and Biden observed how children as young as four years old participated in a variety of activities that were part of the prekindergarten educational program. Lessons on alphabet familiarization and block-building were included. Some students also sang a song for the secretary and first lady. Following their visit with children at the school, Biden and Austin spoke to an audience of service members about both the prekindergarten program and the latest set of "Taking Care of Our People" efforts which were announced concurrent with their visit. "If we want kids to succeed in school and their careers, if we want to set them on a lifelong path for learning, we need to invest in them from the very beginning," Biden said. "We're here today to celebrate something big: military kids at Maxwell Air Force Base, and at 80 military schools across the country and abroad, now have access to full-day prekindergarten." Universal prekindergarten programs, Biden said, are a "defining issue" for the United States. "What's happening at Maxwell is part of the blueprint for making high quality preschool available to every three- and four-year-old in America," she said. Austin also detailed the latest "Taking Care of Our People" efforts, which are spelled out in detail in a memorandum titled "Our Enduring Duty to America's Service Members and Their Families." It is the fourth memorandum since November 2021 to detail efforts by the Defense Department to improve the quality of life for service members and their families. "We're setting up health care flexible spending accounts to help cover costs like deductibles, co-pays, prescription glasses, or braces," Austin said. "We're [also] investing even more in our childcare workforce, so that we can attract and retain the best professionals to care for your kids." Military spouses often face a particular challenge finding employment because the military lifestyle means frequent moves which make it difficult to commit to a single employer or to develop a career. That inability to find work makes life more difficult for families who may depend on having a dual-income household. This concern is also addressed in the latest set of initiatives. "For our military spouses, I'm expanding eligibility for the My Career Advancement Account program, which provides financial assistance to pursue a professional license or an associate's degree," Austin said. Frequent permanent change of station moves can be costly for military families, and Austin said expansions of the temporary lodging expense and the temporary lodging allowance are expected to help. "Finally, to help our people stay connected -- and to move toward a Wi-Fi-connected joint force -- we're rolling out access to free Wi-Fi in select barracks, starting with new pilot projects and building out." Also announced Friday were efforts to lower the cost of procuring uniforms for enlisted service members and to improve quality of life conditions at remote and isolated installations. These most recent efforts are part of an ongoing program Austin spearheaded early in his tenure as secretary of defense. "When I became [the] Secretary of Defense, I made taking care of our people one of my top priorities," he said. "My team and I started by just listening. And we asked, at all levels and across all services: What can we do better? What would make your lives easier?" To find the best answers to those questions, Austin said, the Defense Department solicited ideas and suggestions directly from service members and their families. "We heard an outpouring of ideas -- suggestions directly from service members and their families, just like you," he said. "And over the past three-and-a-half years, my team and I have listened to you. We've rolled up our sleeves and turned your ideas into real progress." While at Maxwell, Austin also met with several dozen airmen stationed there to talk with them about his efforts and to solicit from them their own ideas about how quality of life can be improved for service members. With Two Nuclear-Armed Strategic Competitors, U.S. Modernization Top Priority [2024-09-18] WASHINGTON -- With two nuclear-armed peer competitors -- Russia and China -- and with both advancing their nuclear capability, the U.S. now, more than ever, must move at full speed to modernize its nuclear deterrence capability. That effort is not just for U.S. national security, but as well for partners who depend on the U.S. "The security environment we face today is unprecedented," said Melissa Dalton, undersecretary of the Air Force. "We face for the first time in our nation's history, two strategic competitors that are nuclear states with large and growing nuclear arsenals. When we look at the [People's Republic of China] and its breathtaking modernization over the last two decades, we see today they have over 500 operational nuclear warheads, far exceeding prior projections." Speaking Wednesday at the Air & Space Forces Association's 2024 Air, Space & Cyber Conference just outside of Washington, Dalton said that in coming years, the U.S. expects China's warheads to exceed 1,000. At the same time, she said, Russia also remains a challenge. "We see Russia brandishing its nuclear weapons in the context of the Ukraine conflict and also possessing novel nuclear capabilities that are designed to challenge our escalation calculus," she said. "The stakes are incredibly high." During the Cold War, the U.S. maintained top-notch nuclear deterrence, and the domestic defense industry stood ready to provide whatever was needed. But since the fall of the Soviet Union, and with the U.S. focused on other parts of the world for the past 20-plus years, the U.S. must now up its game. "We mortgaged our nuclear modernization for 30 years, and for a lot of understandable reasons," Dalton said. "We had the post-Cold War peace dividend. We were fighting counterterrorism globally. But the fact is, the bills are now way past due, and in that time, our competitors went to school on us, and they caught up." With U.S. defense underpinned by its nuclear deterrent, modernization of that capability is a top priority for the Department of Defense. "The 2022 nuclear posture review reaffirmed our commitment to delivering a safe, secure and effective nuclear deterrent, and that security guarantee extends to our allies around the globe, and that can never be in question," she said. The department is now engaged in a recapitalization of its nuclear triad, which involves new submarines, such as the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines; new bomber aircraft, such as the B-21 Raider; and a new ground-based system, called Sentinel, to replace the 400 silo-based Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles. Air Force Gen. Anthony Cotton, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said that while two-thirds of the nuclear triad, the ground systems and the aircraft-based systems belong to the Air Force -- the submarine systems belong to the Navy -- modernization is not just an Air Force effort or even just a Navy effort. "It is imperative that we understand that it's not a Department [of Defense] imperative that we maintain the nuclear security and nuclear triad," he said. "It is a national imperative. It's national policy that the foundation of what we hold dear, the framework of that is nuclear deterrence. And to add to that, and I've seen this in the last 19 months of being in command, our allies and partners are counting on us more than ever." DOD Recognizes Eleven Installations, Commands for Suicide Prevention Success [2024-09-19] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department today recognized eleven United States' military installations and commands for suicide prevention programs and efforts conducted last year. It is at military installations and commands around the U.S. and the world where dedicated military and civilian personnel work to identify the root causes of suicide, identify those who may be at risk for suicide and apply suicide prevention efforts, said Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks during an event at the Pentagon's Hall of Heroes. "We want to recognize all of the installations here for the exemplary suicide prevention efforts," Hicks said. "Today's ceremony highlights all of your contributions. The honored teams reflect the wide-ranging and cutting-edge approaches that the department is taking to save lives and address root causes." Eleven military installations and commands were identified as having exemplary suicide prevention programs and efforts from September 2022 through August 2024. These include: • Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash. (Army); • Guam Army National Guard, Guam (National Guard); • Deployment Support Command, Birmingham, Ala. (Army Reserve); • Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, N.C. (Marine Corps); • USS Makin Island, Naval Base San Diego (Navy); • Naval Construction Battalion 18, Port Hueneme, Calif. (Navy Reserve); • MacDill Air Force Base, Fla. (Air Force); • The 175th Wing, Warfield Air National Guard Base, Md. (Air National Guard); • Air Force Reserve Command at Joint Base San Antonio, Texas (Air Force Reserve); • Space Systems Command at Los Angeles Air Force Base, Calif. (Space Force); and • Coast Guard Base Kodiak, Alaska (Coast Guard). "All of these programs and initiatives are making an impact, and they're reaching people before they are at a point in crisis," Hicks said. Suicide and suicide prevention are complex subjects, Hicks said, and it will take the expertise and efforts of everyone within the Defense Department and the military services to tackle it. "Suicide prevention isn't just about mental health," said Hicks. "There's no single cause that leads to suicide, and there is no single solution that will eliminate or reduce these tragedies. Suicide is a public health challenge, and the department is taking a comprehensive, integrated approach to decreasing suicide risk." At the Pentagon level, Hicks said, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has over the past four years furthered his own set of initiatives aimed squarely at improving the lives of service members and their families. Included there are efforts to improve access to mental health care. "Last Friday, Secretary Austin announced a new set of 'Taking Care of People' initiatives, his fourth in a series over the same number of years," she said. "And as he has in each of the years before, he made mental health and suicide prevention key features of his plan to ensure the success and well-being of service members." Hicks said she is proud of the work done at installation and command level to identify and address the factors that contribute to suicide and said the Defense Department remains committed to suicide prevention. "We remain squarely focused on suicide prevention, from the secretary of defense to division and squadron leaders, and from the E ring here in the Pentagon to every post beyond, on land and at sea," she said. "Suicide prevention needs the attention of every leader at every level throughout the department. We're committed to getting it right, and we're open to solutions generated by installation teams like we're recognizing here today." Hicks Named Sponsor of Newly Named Nuclear Submarine [2024-09-20] WASHINGTON -- The Navy today revealed that its next Virginia-class, nuclear-powered submarine, SSN-812, will be called the USS Baltimore. The service also announced that Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks would serve as the vessel's sponsor. During a naming ceremony today aboard the historic USS Constellation, a Navy warship built in 1854 that now serves as a museum ship in Baltimore Harbor, Carlos DelToro, the secretary of the Navy, announced the name of the new submarine and that Hicks would serve as sponsor once it was constructed. "The ship's sponsor fills a critical role throughout the life of a warship, serving as the bond between the ship, her crew and the nation they serve," Del Toro said. "I can think of no one more fitting to take on this vital role, no one with more resilience and grit and whose spirit embodies that of Baltimore than Deputy [Defense] Secretary Hicks." Growing up in a Navy family, Hicks was exposed to the world of submarines early on. Her father, retired Rear Adm. William J. Holland, was a submariner who served on a variety of nuclear-powered submarines. "Like all prospective nuclear submariners in those days, he was personally interviewed by [Navy] Adm. [Hyman G. Rickover], the father of the nuclear navy," Hicks said. "Throughout [his] career, the submarine community was more than just his professional home. It was a family support system; one in which my mother, Anne Holland, was a leader. One that played an important role for me and my six older brothers and sisters. It was the community I was born into." Hicks said her family history would play an important role in her responsibility as the USS Baltimore sponsor. "As sponsor of the future USS Baltimore, SSN-812, I will continue to carry on our family's legacy of service and commitment to the submarine force," she said. The USS Baltimore, not yet constructed, will be a Block V, Virginia-class, nuclear-powered submarine. So far, more than 20 Virginia-class submarines have been constructed and are now home-ported with the Navy in Hawaii, Connecticut, and Virginia. The new subs replace retiring Los Angeles-class submarines and include several innovations that enhance warfighting capabilities. According to a U.S. Navy fact sheet, the Virginia-class submarine has special features to support special operations forces, including a reconfigurable torpedo room that can accommodate a large number of personnel and their equipment. Also, in the Virginia-class, traditional periscopes have been replaced with photonics masts that host visible and infrared digital cameras atop telescoping arms. With this change, the submarine's control room has been moved and now provides more space and an improved layout. "When Baltimore joins the fleet with a world-class crew, it will be among the most agile, lethal, resilient and capable conventional nuclear-powered submarines we've ever made," Hicks said. "The Baltimore belongs to a continuously modernized class of attack submarines that are not only larger, more powerful, and more lethal, [but] they also run quieter, deeper and faster." Hicks described the new Virginia-class subs as a "Swiss Army knife of naval capabilities" and said they support anti-surface and strike missions, anti-submarine warfare and special operations capabilities. She also said they provide more inputs into multi-domain awareness, are interoperable with U.S. ally and partner forces, and are built to be upgraded with future technology and capability. The biggest asset of the USS Baltimore and other Virginia-class subs, she said, will be their deterrence capability. "Like all of our submarines, conventional and otherwise, we build them not to provoke war, but rather to prevent wars through deterrence," she said. "Whenever our would-be adversaries consider the risks of aggression, sometimes they will see the 'big stick' of U.S. and allied military assets, like the USS Theodore Roosevelt and our other aircraft carriers. They certainly send a signal and have the firepower to back it up." Other times, she said, it's not necessary to put that kind of capability on display; it's enough that adversaries know it exists. "[The] USS Baltimore -- with its stealth, endurance, lethality and speed -- will be just such an asset, part of our unseen advantage," Hicks said. "And the only thing the adversary will hear is the sound of silence." The USS Baltimore will be a Block V submarine equipped with the Virginia payload module. It will be 461 feet long, have a displacement of 10,200 tons, a speed of greater than 25 knots, and carry a crew of 132. With the Virginia payload module, the USS Baltimore will incorporate four additional large-diameter payload tubes, each capable of carrying seven Tomahawk cruise missiles. Senate Confirms More Than 6,000 Military Leaders for Promotions, New Positions [2024-09-25] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Senate has confirmed, via voice vote, the promotions of some 6,030 military officers across the Department of Defense to both new ranks and in some cases to new jobs. "Last night, the Senate confirmed more than 6,000 of our highly qualified military nominees in the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Space Force," said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh during a briefing today. Less than a year ago, hundreds of similar nominations were held up in the Senate due to a blanket hold on confirmations implemented in February 2023. "We're very glad that the Senate has confirmed these officers for critical positions during this time and for our national security," she said. Among those names submitted to and confirmed by the Senate were Air Force Lt. Gen. Steven S. Nordhaus, who was promoted to general and who will serve as chief of the National Guard Bureau; Navy Vice Adm. Alvin Holsey, promoted to admiral, who serve as commander of U.S. Southern Command; Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall Reed, to general, to serve as commander of U.S. Transportation Command; and Air Force Lt. Gen. Xavier T. Brunson, to general, to serve as commander of U.S. Forces Korea. Hurricane Helene Singh also said the department is monitoring the path of Hurricane Helene for what kind of impact it may have and what type of assistance will be needed. "Florida and Georgia have both declared states of emergency, and the governor of Florida has activated more than 3,300 National Guardsmen and 12 rotary wing aviation assets in state active duty status," Singh said. "These guardsmen are pre-positioned around the state to provide responsive state support, including high-wheeled vehicle rescues, aerial support, route clearance and commodities distribution." Singh also said that in the next 24 to 48 hours, Georgia, Alabama and North Carolina are expected to activate their National Guard units as well. According to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration public advisory released earlier today, Hurricane Helene is expected to make landfall Thursday evening along the Florida Big Bend coast. "After landfall, Helene is expected to slow down and turn toward the Northwest over the Southeastern United States Friday and Saturday," the advisory reads. "Data from an Air Force Reserve hurricane hunter aircraft indicate that maximum sustained winds remain near 80 mph with higher gusts. Strengthening is forecast, and Helene is expected to be a major hurricane when it reaches the Florida Big Bend coast Thursday evening." Latest Security Assistance for Ukraine Announced, White House Directs DOD to Allocate Remaining Appropriations [2024-09-26] WASHINGTON -- The Department of Defense announced yesterday the 66th round of security assistance for Ukraine, which includes some $375 million in presidential drawdown authority of equipment from the existing U.S. military inventory. Among other things, the PDA package includes air-to-ground munitions; ammunition for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System; 155 mm and 105 mm artillery ammunition; Javelin and AT4 anti-armor systems; and M1117 armored security vehicles. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the United States has committed approximately $56.3 billion in security assistance to Ukraine though both presidential drawdown authority and the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. Also, the White House announced it had directed the DOD to allocate all remaining security assistance funding appropriated for Ukraine by the end of the year. "As part of this effort, the Department of Defense will allocate the remaining Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funds by the end of this year," President Joe Biden said in a statement yesterday. "I also have authorized $5.5 billion in presidential drawdown authority to ensure this authority does not expire so that my administration can fully utilize the funding appropriated by Congress to support the drawdown of U.S. equipment for Ukraine and then replenish U.S. stockpiles." The White House also said the DOD will provide $2.4 billion in security assistance through USAI. That additional support through USAI will provide Ukraine with additional air defense, unmanned aerial systems and air-to-ground munitions. To enhance air defense, Biden said, he has directed the DOD to refurbish and provide Ukraine with an additional Patriot air defense battery and additional Patriot missiles. The president also said he has agreed to provide Ukraine with the Joint Standoff Weapon long-range munition. While the U.S. has not agreed to give Ukraine F-16 fighter aircraft, other nations have. The U.S. has assisted by providing training on the F-16 to Ukrainian pilots. The president said he has directed the DOD to expand that training, including by supporting the training of an additional 18 pilots next year. Pilot Program to Cover Certain Child Care Costs After Permanent Change of Station Move [2024-09-30] WASHINGTON -- This week the Department of Defense kicks off a three-year pilot program meant to reimburse service members up to $1,500 for travel-related expenses incurred for a temporary child care provider following a permanent change of station move.  When an active duty service member makes a permanent change of station move to a new duty location and finds that child care at the local child development center won't be available within 30 days of their report date, they can hire their own provider, typically a relative or family friend, and then later file for reimbursement of transportation-related expenses.  The process begins with a service member visiting the military child care website to apply for child care at their new duty location, said Christopher Woods, chief of the policy branch within the Defense Travel Management Office.  "If the scheduling shows that care could not be provided within 30 days of the member's report date, then the member would become eligible to bring a child care provider to their permanent duty station to look after the child while the member reports to work and their spouse begins to do all those things like unpacking or finding their next job," Woods said.  The military child care website is the DOD's official tool to sign up for child care. When the program begins in October, the website will provide instructions to affected service members and generate the necessary forms that allow service members to obtain the needed child care.   "What would happen at that point is the member takes that documentation that they have from MilitaryChildCare.com... and they begin to coordinate with their local travel office to treat that child care provider much like they would treat a dependent to begin to make the commercial travel reservations," he said.  Reimbursement is limited to commercial transportation expenses, including flights, rail tickets, transportation to or from an airport and an en route and departure rental car. Reimbursement for privately owned vehicle mileage is not authorized, while reimbursement for fuel used in a privately owned vehicle is.  For a permanent change of station move between locations within the continental United States, reimbursement is limited to $500. For a move to or from a duty station outside the continental United States, the reimbursement is limited to $1,500.  Typically, a child care provider in these situations would be a relative or family friend, Woods said. But it could also be an au pair, for instance. But Woods also said that reimbursement is for transportation only -- both at the start of the period needed for child care and at the end, to send the child care provider home. There is no reimbursement to pay a child care provider a salary or to provide for room and board.  As part of the program, only one child care provider is authorized per military family, and only one service member in a military-to-military couple can request reimbursement.  The pilot program, which lasts three years and runs Oct. 1, 2024, through Sept. 30, 2027, comes after direction by Congress in the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, Woods said.  While the program is active, said Heidi E. Welch, the associate director for child and youth programs operations, it's expected to relieve a burden on military families.  "Coming from the child care perspective, this is going to help families, so they have less strain," Welch said. "PCSing is a challenge and it's very difficult. I think this is going to relieve some of the strain and burden that families have as they're making those PCS transitions."  U.S. Assets in Mediterranean Again Helped Defend Israel Against Iranian Missiles [2024-10-01] WASHINGTON -- Iran attacked Israel earlier today with a barrage of approximately 200 ballistic missiles. While most of those missiles were destroyed before reaching their target, some did impact and cause minimal damage, said the Pentagon press secretary during a briefing today. "We condemn these reckless attacks by Iran, and we call on Iran to halt any further attacks, including from its proxy forces," said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder. "During the attack, the U.S. military coordinated closely with the Israeli Defense Forces to help defend Israel." Today's attack was nearly twice the scope of a similar attack April 13 and 14, said Ryder. And like in April, the U.S. again assisted in defending Israel. Two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, the USS Cole and USS Bulkeley, both deployed in the Eastern Mediterranean, fired a dozen interceptors at incoming Iranian ballistic missiles as part of defending Israel. At this time, Ryder said, it is unknown if those interceptors took down any of the missiles. Ryder also said initial assessments are that all the missiles fired were actually launched from Iran, not from proxy states, and Iran did indeed plan to cause a significant amount of harm in Israel. "You don't launch that many missiles at a target without the intent of hitting something," Ryder said. "Just like the last time, their intent is to cause destruction. And so, fortunately ... Israel has very significant air defense capabilities, and the U.S., of course, played a role in helping on that front as well." Initial indications, Ryder said, are that there was minimal damage on the ground and Israel was able to defend itself against the Iranian attack successfully. Ryder also said, no U.S. personnel were injured or harmed during the Iranian missile attack. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III communicated with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant at least twice today, both before the attack and during the attack, Ryder said. "He reaffirmed the United States ironclad commitment to the defense of Israel and underscored that the U.S. remains well-postured throughout the Middle East region to protect U.S. forces and defend Israel in the face of threats from Iran and Iran-backed terrorist organizations," Ryder said. National Guard Provides Support to Hurricane Stricken States [2024-10-03] WASHINGTON -- In the wake of Hurricane Helene, which made landfall last week and has since dissipated, National Guard units in the hardest-hit states across the American Southeast are still working alongside state emergency response agencies to get life back on track for communities affected by the storm. About 6,700 guardsmen from 16 states across the U.S. have been activated to provide assistance, as part of emergency management assistance compacts, in the states hit hardest by the hurricane. Guard members are engaged in operations such as highwater rescues, debris clearance, transportation and distribution of disaster relief supplies, search and rescue, and route clearance. How long National Guard members will need to stay activated is unclear now, said Army Maj. Gen. Win Burkett, director of operations at the National Guard Bureau. "The response is going to be a determination by the governors in each of these states when they can shift -- lifesaving, life sustaining, to recovery and that longer-term recovery," he said. "It's generally at that point that the National Guard has a smaller and smaller ... role to play. But the prediction ... by state or by area in each of these states is going to be dramatically different based on the conditions on the ground and where the governor thinks they can make that transition." Army Col. Paul Hollenack, commander of the North Carolina National Guard's 30th Armored Brigade Combat Team, said the guard in his state has no plans yet to shutter its activities. "We're here until the mission is done," he said. In North Carolina, Hollenack said, the National Guard has over 1,100 soldiers and airmen on active duty, and is making use of nearly 400 vehicles, including 26 aircraft. "We have support from 10 different states," he said. "[There is] a lot of appreciation to our other state partners who have provided equipment and people to help us." Hollenack said the Guard in North Carolina works out of "force packages," and 200 of those have been activated and are now working out of 20 locations across western North Carolina. "Yesterday, we passed the million-pounds-of-commodities-delivered threshold, with 600,000 pounds of that going by air -- food, water and supplies into western North Carolina," he said. "We've rescued ... over 500 people and 150 pets through the search and rescue operations. Working through clearing road obstacles is another major effort. [As is] trying to get access and then continue to get those ground supply routes established into western North Carolina." In South Carolina, more than 1,000 guard personnel are now on duty, said Army Col. Jason Turner, Director of Military Support with the South Carolina National Guard. "South Carolina is supporting South Carolina and North Carolina with aviation support," he said. "And from South Carolina's perspective, the rescued number, the last number I was given, was at 32." The state is also working with eight other states through emergency management assistance compact for support. Right now, Turner said, assistance is flowing in from Florida, Mississippi, New York and Michigan to support the South Carolina National Guard. "We will put them to work once they get here," he said. The biggest effort so far, he said, has been debris clearing. That includes clearing roads of trees, for instance, so that ground transportation can be reopened and agencies like power companies can get to work restoring power. "We've got aviation, we've got engineers, we've got logistics, we have drones, we have multiple engineer types [of] equipment that is on the road," he said. "We bring to bear the equipment we have to assist the citizens." In Tennessee, said Army Lt. Col. Meredith Richardson, commander of the Tennessee National Guard's Task Force 176, there are about 300 personnel on the ground working to provide assistance in the state. "From Friday, while aviation was simultaneously in the air ... we also had personnel on the ground in high-water vehicles, working with our emergency management crews, assisting with areas that we could get out to with search and rescue and welfare checks in our high-water vehicles," she said. "We are operating in six different counties. We have ... heavy engineer support, just like the other states, doing debris removal in order to open up that critical infrastructure." Richardson also said the Tennessee Guard is involved in distribution of supplies and commodities from 12 different points of distribution "We are also providing bulk water distribution at shelters and medical facilities as water has very quickly become a dire need across the communities," she said. The Tennessee National Guard has nine aircraft in operation across the state, along with 100 aviation personnel operating that equipment. "We have two medevac aircraft that are currently on immediate medical response [for] anything that pops up. They'll immediately be available. And then a bunch of lift assets that are doing water movement, supply movement. Any kind of equipment that is needed by these counties is currently being fulfilled by those," said Army Maj. Hulon Holmes, the commander of the Tennessee National Guard's Medevac Detachment. A concern also with the National Guard in all affected areas -- in addition to deploying and helping their communities recover -- is taking care of the guardsmen themselves, many of whom have also been affected by the storms. That's something that's on the minds of guard leaders, said Burkett. "In every event that we respond to, in addition to responding to the needs at the local levels, we're also checking on the status of our military families, and that's everybody. That's the civilians that support our team, as well as the airmen and the soldiers," Burkett said. Dual-Status Commander Role Paying Off in North Carolina Storm Relief [2024-10-07] WASHINGTON -- Nearly two weeks after Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida and caused devastation across the southeastern United States, National Guard and active duty troops in North Carolina are working as one team under a dual-status commander to bring relief to citizens of the state. "Today, the citizens of North Carolina have a joint task force that's made up of over 3,300, both active duty and National Guard military forces," said Army Brig. Gen. Charles Morrison, the dual-status commander of both Title 10 and Title 32 troops in North Carolina. During a briefing this morning at the airport in Asheville, North Carolina, Morrison said the military presence on the ground includes 918 vehicles and over 41 aircraft. The military presence includes not just Guard personnel from the North Carolina National Guard, but Guard personnel from other states and active duty personnel as well. "Just yesterday, we received two more engineering task forces from both Michigan and Virginia to add that critical need here to our relief efforts," he said. The general spoke highly of the partnership with active duty forces, under his own command as a dual-status commander. "The active Army integration ... has been seamless," he said. "Early communication between senior leaders allowed us to make sure that these active duty forces were equipped properly for the mission at hand. ... Task Force Castle, which came right out of Fort Liberty here in North Carolina, arrived in Marion, North Carolina, and with probably three or four hours of sleep, was conducting missions." Now, he said, that task force is on its third day in North Carolina, conducting route clearance missions and delivering commodities to citizens in need. A dual-status commander commands both active duty or "Title 10" forces, and National Guard forces who are under state control, or "Title 32" status. Right now, Morrison is commanding both in his state as part of the relief mission there. In North Carolina, Morrison said, "you have soldiers, both National Guard and active duty alike, helping organize the massive amount of donations from generous people from all across this nation," he said. "And at the same time providing relief as we continue to push humanitarian assistance relief." Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, commander of United States Northern Command, said the dual-status leadership role in North Carolina provides the right kind of leadership to get aid and troops where needed most. "As the commander of [Northcom] we're honored to support the state, FEMA and the dual-status commander, Brig. Gen. [Charles] Morrison, by providing active duty forces in a number of areas that can fall under his command and control, using the dual-status commander role ... which allows him, uniquely, to command and control both state and federal forces at the same time," he said. "That will bring the citizens of North Carolina a unity of effort and response, where we can provide the types of capabilities that are needed, that will fall side-by-side with the North Carolina National Guard troops under his able and forward-thinking leadership." Guillot said the active duty 18th Airborne Corps, based out of Fort Liberty, is providing the majority of the 1,500-person Title 10 response in North Carolina. He also said there are Navy helicopters supporting FEMA and aircraft from Tennessee conducting search and rescue missions in western North Carolina, providing basic medical care and wellness checks throughout the region. While Engaged in Helene Relief Efforts, DOD Prepares for Hurricane Milton [2024-10-08] WASHINGTON -- The National Guard and active duty forces have been engaged in relief efforts across the southeastern United States following Hurricane Helene, which made landfall late last month. In North Carolina, one of the areas hardest hit, the National Guard has more than 3,300 active duty and National Guard troops on duty under the leadership of a dual-status commander. More than 1,500 of those are active duty soldiers now helping with emergency roof clearance, rotary wing search and rescue and the delivery of food, water and other needed resources to residents, said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh during a briefing today. Across the southeastern United States, the National Guard, Singh said, has about 5,000 Guard members from 19 different states serving impacted communities. But at the same time that work is going on, Singh said, the Defense Department is readying itself for the next storm, Hurricane Milton. "In Florida, more than 5,000 members of the Florida National Guard have been mobilized to prepare for recovery efforts from the imminent arrival of Hurricane Milton," Singh said. Florida is where Hurricane Milton is expected to make landfall. Large areas of both Florida's west and east coasts are under storm surge warnings now by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in anticipation of Hurricane Milton. Singh said U.S. Army North is preparing high-water rescue vehicles, helicopters for search and rescue operations, force to support to FEMA search and rescue teams and medium-lift helicopters for moving personnel and equipment which can also provide command, control and sustainment support to DOD forces. Army North, she said, has also moved personnel and equipment to Fort Moore, Georgia, in preparation for providing support to requests from FEMA and state leadership. Army Announces Effort to Help Small Business Meet Cybersecurity Requirements [2024-10-16] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department is actively working on plans to build cybersecurity requirements for the defense industrial base into defense contracts as part of its Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program, or CMMC. The first contracts with those requirements built in are expected sometime in 2025. But for small businesses who might not have the resources to meet stringent cybersecurity requirements on their own, the Army is planning to launch a pilot program called the Next-Generation Commercial Operations in Defended Enclaves, or NCODE, said Undersecretary of the Army Gabe Camarillo, during a discussion Tuesday at the 2024 Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington. "This essentially provides a cyber-secure enclave in a secure environment for small businesses to participate in where they can collaborate, share information, [and] most importantly, do their own work that they need to that would otherwise present a threat vector for actors that we know are very active in the cybersecurity space," Camarillo said. "What's great about it is [that] it is compliant with CMMC, so all of the department's requirements would be met by operating in this environment." Camarillo said many of the small businesses the Army worked with last year were at least partially at risk to cybersecurity threat vectors. "Depending on how they're capitalized and how many resources they have, their ability to overcome [those risks], despite our efforts across the department, can be very, very challenging," he said. "So, we knew we had to do something." The Army is setting aside about $26 million in both fiscal year 2025 and fiscal year 2026 for the pilot NCODE program, Camarillo said. "[It] will be an initial foray in creating kind of a secure classified enclave where there will be collaboration tools, there'll be a workspace where these companies can kind of do what they need to do, and also kind of begin to do some software development efforts for those that are in that type of business," he said. How small businesses can apply to participate in NCODE and how many will be able to participate are details still being worked out within the office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, Camarillo said. "I think we will learn a lot in terms of its utilization and how effective it is with the initial kind of tranche of small businesses that we bring into it," he said. "And I think the goal is to learn from that and continue to evolve the program to make it even better." DOD Programs Helping small businesses find success in working with the Defense Department is one of the roles of the DOD Office of Small Business Programs, and the department has had success in that effort, said program director Farooq Mitha. One example of that is the DOD's APEX Accelerator program, which aims to teach small businesses what's needed for them to do business with the government. "Our APEX Accelerator Program, which used to be with [Defense Logistics Agency,] and we took it over about two years ago now, [includes] our 97 centers across the country that help companies learn how to do business with DOD," Mitha said. APEX Accelerators, Mitha said, are now focused on helping small businesses comply with things like CMMC and also helping them find more information on the programs and opportunities that exist within the DOD. The DOD's Mentor-Protege Program has been strengthened in recent years, Mitha said. The program is the oldest continuously operating federal mentor-protege program in existence. Under the program, small businesses are partnered with other companies to help them learn to expand their footprint within the defense industrial base. On the Mentor-Protege Program, he said, DOD has worked to get funding for the program back into the president's budget and has also worked with Congress in fiscal year 2023 to make the program permanent. There are also changes to the program to improve its performance, he said. For instance, the revenue requirement for companies who want to serve as mentors changed from $100 million to $25 million. "We believe strongly that sometimes, or often, small and medium-sized businesses can mentor small businesses better than a large company," he said. While firms who serve as mentors within the Mentor-Protege Program were already eligible to receive cost reimbursement for their role, a new pilot program, Mitha said, provides up to 25% reimbursement to protege firms for engineering, software development or manufacturing customization. Mitha also said as part of the Mentor-Protege Program, the timeline for developing partnership contracts has been sped up. "Contracting timelines used to take 12 to 18 months," he said. "We've now set up a new centralized contracting mechanism where we are now awarding better mentor/protege agreements in 60 days or less." DOD Simplifies Process for Defense Contractors to Comply With Cybersecurity Rules [2024-10-17] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department on Friday released for public inspection the final cybersecurity maturity model certification program rule. The rule includes changes which make it simpler for private sector companies to comply with the cybersecurity requirements which must be in place before they can bid on defense contracts.  The department's cybersecurity maturity model certification program, also called CMMC, ensures that private sector companies doing work for the Defense Department as part of the defense industrial base demonstrate that their computer networks and cybersecurity practices are up to the task of defending against intrusions by adversaries who may want access to information about government contracts and weapons systems development.  According to defense officials, the defense industrial base in the United States is the target of recurrent and progressively sophisticated cyberattacks, targeting the controlled unclassified information and federal contract information which is processed, stored or transmitted on nonfederal unclassified information systems. Those attacks threaten both the department mission and national security.  A big change in the new CMMC rule, which is included in Title 32 of the Code of Federal Regulations -- a section dedicated to national defense -- is a simplification of the assessment levels that were previously within the CMMC program. The new rule reduces the number of levels from five to just three.  "The decrease from five levels to three levels is part of the streamlining effort that we did as we went from the original program to the one that we just released," said Buddy Dees, director of the CMMC program management office.  The CMMC program asks private sector companies who do business with or hope to do business with the department to demonstrate compliance with cybersecurity requirements described in both the Federal Acquisition Regulation and publications from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.  Previously, the DOD's CMMC program included five levels of compliance, where levels two and four were designed specifically to help companies make transitions between the other levels.  "As part of the streamlining, we got rid of the transition levels," said Dees.  Now, Dees said, there are only three levels of compliance.  Within CMMC, he said, level one compliance asks contractors to self-assess their ability to provide basic protection of federal contract information. At level two, which deals with general protection of controlled unclassified information, companies will either self-assess or seek assessment by a CMMC third-party assessment organization depending on the nature of the information they will be expected to process.   For level three, the highest level, compliance requires companies to demonstrate an ability to protect higher levels of controlled unclassified information. Certification at this level must be completed with an assessment by DOD's own Defense Industrial Base Cybersecurity Assessment Center.  The CMMC has also been simplified in other ways to make it easier for private companies to demonstrate cybersecurity compliance and become eligible to contribute to national security, Dees said.  Under the original program, for instance, Dees said the department wasn't just interested in if companies in the defense industrial base met cybersecurity requirements. It was also interested in the processes used by defense industrial base companies to achieve compliance and if those processes were repeatable.  "When we went from the original to the current CMMC, we decided to get eliminate the assessment of that process piece, and we're strictly going to focus on assessing the cybersecurity requirements," he said.  An additional set of requirements were also removed from CMMC which DOD had put in place but were not aligned with the cybersecurity standards outlined by NIST.  "We [had] also included twenty cybersecurity requirements that were not previously required under NIST," Dees said. "When we went from the transition [CMMC] to the new one ... the decision was we're going to align ourselves directly with the NIST cybersecurity standards. And so, we got rid of those twenty ... 'CMMC-unique requirements.' We deleted them as part of that move from the original program to the revised program."  Development of CMMC has been underway, in various forms, for more than five years. Original plans for implementing CMMC, however, proved cumbersome and caused concern within the defense industrial base, especially within medium-sized and small companies which might not have the resources of larger, more established defense contractors.  "There was indication from small and medium businesses that it was going to be very difficult for them to achieve this," said Stacy Bostjanick, chief of defense industrial base cybersecurity.  With feedback from the business community a decision was made to look at how the CMMC, as originally planned, could be made simpler and less expensive for businesses, while still ensuring national security, she said.  "The new administration ... made the determination that we needed to relook the program and ensure that we were doing what it intended to do and [we were] not being overly arduous and onerous on the DIB community," Bostjanick said. "We wanted to ensure that we continued to have the support and participation of the industrial base."  The government, she said, put a "strategic pause" on the CMMC that had been developed, so that it could be re-evaluated.  The new CMMC is expected to be better accepted by the defense industrial base, while at the same time it ensures national security, she said.  "CMMC will protect our intellectual property and our innovation," she said. "We continuously have our data taken by advanced persistent threats. We have contractors that get targeted by malicious actors trying to extort money from them over the retention of their data, and that puts our men and women in service on the battlefield at risk, because they are impeding our ability to ensure that they have the best and highest capability weapons in their hands."  Through CMMC, Bostjanick said, the department will ensure that weapons systems developed by the defense industrial base, in partnership with the Defense Department, will stay in the hands of America's warfighters and allies only -- and not end up in the hands of adversaries.  The CMMC 32 Code of Federal Regulations final rule, about 450 pages long, describes the CMMC program in detail. Now that the rule has been made public, it awaits approval by Congress, a process that will take 60 days.  Additionally, the CMMC 48 Code of Federal Regulations proposed rule, DFARS Clause 252.204-7021, completed public comment on Oct. 15. This rule must also be finalized and approved by Congress before the department can insert CMMC compliance requirements into defense contracts. It's expected this won't happen until early to mid-2025. U.S. Strikes Underground Targets in Yemen [2024-10-17] WASHINGTON -- Late Wednesday evening, the Pentagon announced that the United States had deployed B-2 Spirit bombers to the Middle East to destroy targets in Yemen. The target sites, controlled by the Houthis, were buried deep underground, said the Pentagon press secretary during a briefing today. "U.S. military forces, including U.S. Air Force B-2 bombers, conducted precision strikes against five hardened underground weapons storage locations in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen," Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said. "U.S. forces targeted several of the Houthis' underground facilities housing various weapons components of the types the Houthis have used to target civilian and military vessels throughout the region." For more than a year now, the Houthis, backed by Iran, have conducted repeated attacks on U.S. and international vessels in the Red Sea, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden. The full impact of the bomber strike is not yet known, but U.S. Central Command is conducting an assessment. Ryder did say the mission was successful. "We struck exactly what we intended," he said, adding that the mission sent a message to the Houthis. "There will continue to be consequences for their illegal and reckless attacks which put innocent civilian lives and U.S. and partner force's lives at risk." In a statement last night, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said the U.S. will do what is needed to protect its forces in the Middle East. "The United States will not hesitate to take action to defend American lives and assets; to deter attacks against civilians and our regional partners; and to protect freedom of navigation and increase the safety and security in these waterways for U.S., coalition and merchant vessels," Austin said. "We will continue to make clear to the Houthis that there will be consequences for their illegal and reckless attacks." Hamas Leader Dead Today, Israel announced that it had killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. "The killing today of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the terrorist group Hamas, by Israeli forces is a major achievement in counterterrorism," said Austin. "Sinwar's death will not heal the wounds of the Oct. 7 atrocities that he plotted or the many deaths for which he is responsible, but I hope that it may bring some small measure of justice and solace to the families and the loved ones of the many victims of Sinwar's premeditated cruelty." The removal of Sinwar is significant, despite the likelihood that Hamas will not go long without selecting another leader, Ryder said. "I'm certain that's something that the Israelis will continue to keep an eye on, as will we," Ryder said. "I also don't think you can discount the significance, again, from a counterterrorism standpoint, the role that Sinwar has played in leading this organization, also as the architect, so to speak, of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack against Israel. It's significant that he's been taken off the battlefield." With the elimination of Sinwar, there is now greater opportunity for a cease-fire in Gaza, Austin said. "Sinwar's death ... provides an extraordinary opportunity to achieve a lasting ceasefire, end this terrible war, allow Israelis to return safely to their homes in southern Israel, rush in far more humanitarian assistance to ease the misery in Gaza and bring relief and hope to the Palestinians who have endured so much under Hamas's oppressive rule," he said. During a call today with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Austin discussed the killing of Sinwar. He also reaffirmed U.S. support for Israel's right to defend itself and the U.S. having provided the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD system to Israel. On Monday, an advanced team of U.S. military personnel, along with the initial components necessary to operate the THAAD, arrived in Israel. The THAAD is an anti--ballistic missile defense system. Ryder said at the time that additional U.S. military personnel and THAAD battery components would continue to arrive in Israel over the course of this week. "The battery will be fully operational [and] capable in the near future," he said, without specifying a date. Also, on the call today with Gallant, Austin said the arrival of the THAAD is another indicator of the U.S. commitment to Israel. "Secretary Austin ... reiterated that the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery represents the United States' unwavering, enduring and ironclad commitment to Israel's security," Ryder said. 'Maritime Big Play' in Pacific Demonstrates AUKUS Partner Compatibility [2024-10-24] WASHINGTON -- This month Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. -- all members of the AUKUS trilateral partnership -- participated in "Maritime Big Play," a series of integrated experiments and exercises held in the Indo-Pacific region, meant to enhance capability development and improve interoperability between the partners. As part of the experiments and exercises, the AUKUS partners tested and refined their ability to jointly operate uncrewed maritime systems, share and process naval data, and provide real-time maritime domain awareness in support of decision-making, said Madeline Mortelmans, who is performing the duties of the assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities. "These experiments address the need to expand the reach, capability and capacity of our forces in the maritime environment through the use of artificial intelligence and autonomous systems," Mortelmans said during a virtual discussion on Wednesday. "Over the past several weeks, we've been testing and refining the ability to jointly operate uncrewed maritime systems to share and process maritime data from all three nations and to provide real-time maritime domain awareness to support decision making." As part of Maritime Big Play, various private sector companies brought forth technologies and equipment that could be evaluated by all three nations as part of scenarios created for the event. Included were autonomous air, surface and sub-surface vessels, balloons and networking systems. "All the testing [and] experimentation was driven by specific scenarios," a defense official said on background. "Think of the need to use a mix of uncrewed and crewed assets to do very-large-area [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance], for example, and to maintain a common operating picture." That official also said an important aspect of the evaluation was ensuring interoperability. When partners bring in new equipment, it's impractical to wait for weeks or months to integrate that new capability into existing systems. Among other things, the Maritime Big Play event, Mortelmans said, allows AUKUS partner nations to practice fielding and maintaining uncrewed systems and gain experience operating in coalitions to solve operational problems such as improving undersea situational awareness. "Our work will inform AUKUS partners' understanding of how crewed and uncrewed capabilities can be integrated to get an operational advantage, and where we can achieve cost savings and improve efficiencies in acquisition, maintenance and sustainment activities," she said. As part of AUKUS, partner nations are investing in their own and in each other's industrial bases to make their supply chains more resilient, integrated and productive. In part, the Maritime Big Play event enhances those partner nation efforts. The experiments and exercises also allow AUKUS nations to improve interoperability of sensors and uncrewed systems and take advantage of the economies of scale expected to reduce capability acquisition costs, along with maintenance and training costs. The first pillar of the AUKUS partnership is aimed at delivering to Australia a conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarine capability to Australia. The second pillar of that partnership involves enhancing joint capabilities and interoperability. The Maritime Big Play series of integrated experiments and exercises was in part designed to enhance the second pillar of AUKUS. Soldiers Injured in Raid Earlier This Week Headed to Walter Reed [2024-10-24] WASHINGTON -- On Tuesday morning, Iraqi Security Forces, working with service members from Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, conducted strikes and follow-on raids on multiple ISIS locations in central Iraq. Two service members were injured during the raid and are now headed to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland, while a third service member is being evaluated for traumatic brain injury, said the deputy Pentagon press secretary during a briefing today. "During the operation, two U.S. military personnel were wounded by an explosion while assisting Iraqi forces with site exploitation," said Sabrina Singh. "While both service members sustained serious injuries, they are in stable condition and are currently en route to Walter Reed Medical Center for follow-on care. Additionally, we recently learned a third service member is being assessed for potential [traumatic brain injury.]" During the raid, Singh said ISF targeted several senior ISIS leaders and killed at least seven ISIS operatives. Today, Singh said Iraqi and U.S. forces partnered again as part of the Defeat-ISIS mission. "Earlier today, U.S. forces participated in an Iraqi-led operation against ISIS fighters in the Anbar province in Iraq," Singh said. "Our assessment of the operation is still ongoing, and to my knowledge, there were no U.S. personnel injured in the operation." Both raids were led by Iraqis, with the U.S. participating in an assistance role, Singh said. While Singh said there is no indication of an ISIS "resurgence," she did say ISIS continues to be a threat that warrants attention. "ISIS is not what it was from 10 years ago," she said. "I think we continue to see ISIS operate within Iraq and Syria, and their footprint has spread to other parts of the world. I don't think that demonstrates necessarily ... their resurgence in Iraq or Syria, but it represents that they still remain a threat, which is why we do these partner raids with the Iraqi Security Forces." Israeli Strike in Iran Should Mark End of Tit For Tat Between Two Nations [2024-10-28] WASHINGTON -- On Friday, Israel conducted a precision strike against military targets in Iran. The strike was a response to an Oct. 1 attack where Iran launched about 200 ballistic missiles into Israel. While most of the missiles from that attack against Israel were destroyed before reaching their target, some did impact and cause minimal damage. During a call this weekend with Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III reaffirmed the American ironclad commitment to Israel's security and support for its right to defend itself. He said Iran should not respond to Israel's strikes but should instead consider this the end of the two-nation exchange. "We believe that this should be the end of this tit-for-tat," said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh during a meeting today with reporters. "We don't think that Iran should or needs to respond. On Oct. 1, Iran launched the 200 ballistic missiles that were targeting civilian population centers. Israel's response was targeted at military targets. We see this as a way to off-ramp." Since the terrorist group Hamas attacked Israel Oct. 7, 2023, and during the ongoing Israeli response to that attack, the U.S. has continued to emphasize that it remains well-postured to defend its forces, facilities and partners in the region and remains determined to prevent any actor from exploiting tensions or expanding conflict in the region. "The secretary also discussed the opportunities that now exist to use diplomacy to dial down tensions in the region, including a hostage release and cease-fire deal in Gaza and an agreement in Lebanon that allows civilians on both sides of the blue line to return safely to their homes," Singh said. North Korean Soldiers Train in Russia The Russians have suffered some 500,000 casualties since their illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Now, said Singh, the Russians have turned to North Korea to get assistance in their ongoing war in Ukraine. "We have seen reports from over the weekend indicating that [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] soldiers have started arriving in western Russia," Singh said. "We believe that the DPRK has sent around 10,000 soldiers in total to train in eastern Russia that will probably augment Russian forces near Ukraine over the next several weeks." Some of those soldiers have already moved closer to Ukraine, and Singh said defense officials are concerned Russia intends to use those soldiers either in combat or to support combat operations against Ukrainian forces in Russia's Kursk Oblast. "Should DPRK soldiers be used on the battlefield, this would mark a further escalation and highlights President Putin's increasing desperation as Russia has suffered extraordinary casualties on the battlefield," Singh said. "[It's] an indication that Putin may be in more trouble than people realize." Later this week, Austin will host South Korean Minister of National Defense Kim Yong-hyun at the Pentagon for the 56th U.S./Republic of Korea Security Consultative Meeting, Singh said. The recent deployment of North Korean troops to Russia will likely be a topic of discussion at the meeting, Singh said. Barracks Wi-Fi 'Mission Essential,' Defense Leader Says [2024-10-31] WASHINGTON -- In September, the Department of Defense released a set of initiatives aimed at improving the welfare and well-being of service members and their families. The initiatives included, among other things, establishment of health care flexible spending accounts for service members, policy changes to lower the cost of permanent change of station moves, and efforts to improve the quality of life for service members at remote and isolated duty locations. Also among the initiatives is an effort to provide free wireless internet connectivity, or free Wi-Fi, to service members residing in military barracks. The department directed the military services to carry out a series of pilot projects to advance the effort. Providing that connectivity is about more than just allowing service members to watch movies or play games, however. Free Wi-Fi for single service members is an operational issue, explained Brendan Owens, assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment. While participating in a discussion at the Center for a New American Security in Washington on Wednesday, Owens said he spends time talking with service members and families. "Every time we go and we visit barracks ... one of the questions that I ask our soldiers, our airmen, our Marines, our guardians, whoever, in those barracks is, if you could have 10 more square feet in your barracks room or free Wi-Fi, what would it be?" Owens said. "No one is going to be surprised that a 19-year-old wants free Wi-Fi. And I think that that's one piece of the puzzle, is that there's a clear demand signal and a need there." While it's easy to assume young service members are interested only in the entertainment options that the internet provides, there is more to it than that, Owens said. "The other thing that I think is important is that as we sort of peel back what our service members, particularly our enlisted service members living in unaccompanied housing were doing with their Wi-Fi. They were doing things like accessing mental health services," he said. "They were doing things like connecting with their families when they're in remote locations." Many service members, particularly those in combat arms and equipment maintenance fields, don't have regular access to a computer with an internet connection as part of their military job. If those service members want to engage in activities that require a computer, such as enrolling in online education, making adjustments to their military benefits, paying bills or making changes to their insurance, [or] participating in online counseling, they will need to do those things on their own time and on their own computers. "From my perspective, and I think that this is certainly something that's supported down in other parts of the [Pentagon], certainly, [these are] mission essential requirements," Owens said. "We were able to get our legal teams aligned that [this] was actually a mission essential thing, and that's really kind of the jumping off point for how this is all coming together." Access to wireless internet will allow junior service members access to personal email, banking and entertainment options, but will also help service members connect with mandatory online training requirements and other health and life related resources such as telehealth appointments, Military OneSource, and military and family life counselors. According to department documents, DOD has long-term plans to establish a "Wi-Fi-connected force." For service members in unaccompanied housing, there is not expected to be any cost to access the provided internet services. "We got a lot more work to do on making sure that we are capable of providing the Wi-Fi services that are necessary to fully support what our service members need," Owens said. "But from an installations and an infrastructure perspective, it's landed with us because we're the people who are capable of creating the enhanced use leases and the deals that are necessary for ... us to be able to provide this to our service members in as expeditious a way as possible." Free Wi-Fi for service members in military barracks is just one effort underway by the Defense Department to take care of service members and their families. The September memorandum that announced both the Wi-Fi and six other initiatives is just the latest in a series of initiatives since 2021, to improve the lives of service members and their families. As Part of Cyber Workforce Development, DOD Lowers Time-to-Hire for Civilians  [2024-11-08] WASHINGTON -- The time it takes to bring on a new civilian employee within the Defense Department's cyber workforce has dropped below 80 days, which bodes well for the department's effort to better develop its cyber workforce.  "We have 79 days average time-to-hire in our civilian workforce," said Mark Gorak, principal director for resources and analysis within the DOD's office of the chief information officer, during a discussion with media earlier this week. "If we include our special hiring authorities under Cyber Excepted Service, which is a Title 10 authority, that comes down to about 73 days' time-to-hire, which beats the requirements of Office of Management and Budget, and that's well below the DOD average. So, we're doing much better in our hiring, reducing that time."  The Defense Department needs a strong, educated and stable cyber workforce capable of executing its complex and varied cyber missions. In early 2023, the department published its Cyber Workforce Strategy to spell out its goals for that cyber workforce. Later in 2023, the department released a plan for implementing its cyber workforce strategy.  Gorak, along with Chimia Carr-Nelson, branch chief for strategy implementation within the DOD's CIO, shared some of the successes the department has had this year in executing the Cyber Workforce Strategy Implementation Plan.  Reduction of the time-to-hire was just one success, Gorak said. Another has been growth of the cyber talent exchange program.  "We have exchange programs within the DOD. We have it with industry, and we have it with our federal ... partners," Gorak said. "We have expanded that program with some of our industry partners, including seven additional new industry partners."  Among those new partners are small and large technology-based organizations.  In 2024, vacancies in the DOD cyber workforce have gone down by 4.8%, Gorak said, demonstrating retention of cyber talent.  "The civilian vacancy rate is now down to 16.2%, that is a 4.8% decrease from last year," Gorak said, adding that the drop was better than they had predicted. "In order to get there, believe it or not, we had to hire about 14,000 additional civilians."  Gorak also said that while the department lost some 10,000 civilian and military cyber personnel, the net gain from the new hires into the DOD cyber workforce meant the vacancy rate went down. And those personnel who left, he said, still benefit the nation by supporting other cyber efforts in industry and other places in the federal government.  In 2024, Gorak said, the department also established the Cyber Academic Engagement Office which serves as the consolidated focal point for cyber-related activities carried out between the DOD and academia stakeholders. Gorak himself runs that office.  The DOD Cyber Workforce Strategy, signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, was published in March 2023. That strategy provides a roadmap for the advancement and unified management of the cyber workforce, which includes about 225,000 highly trained civilians, military and contractor personnel.  In August 2023, the DOD followed up with the DOD Cyber Workforce Strategy Implementation Plan. At the time, Gorak said the implementation plan was designed to set the foundation for how the department would execute the 22 objectives and 38 initiatives tied to the four goals in the Cyber Workforce Strategy.  The four goals within the Cyber Workforce Strategy include:  • Executing consistent capability assessment and analysis processes to stay ahead of force needs.  • Establishing an enterprise-wide talent management program to better align force capabilities with current and future requirements.  • Facilitating a cultural shift to optimize department-wide personnel management activities.  • Fostering collaboration and partnerships to enhance capability development, operational effectiveness and career broadening experiences.  Carr-Nelson said the Cyber Workforce Strategy Implementation Plan remains an ongoing effort that has already been successful in helping the department achieve its goals with its cyber workforce.  "Our offices of primary responsibility are working very diligently each fiscal year addressing the targets that they have identified with regards to the cyber workforce needs," Carr-Nelson said. "We do expect to see positive impact addressed with each of the initiatives to address whatever goal that is aligned to that initiative. So, we're working very hard, and you should definitely see more impact and more change with the cyber workforce within DOD in the coming years."  Centcom Conducts Strikes in Yemen, Syria [2024-11-12] WASHINGTON -- Since Friday, U.S. Central Command has conducted strikes against Iranian-backed Houthi targets in Yemen and against targets in Syria as part of the defeat-ISIS mission there. On Saturday and Sunday, Centcom forces executed airstrikes against multiple Houthi weapons storage facilities within Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder during a briefing today. "These facilities housed a variety of advanced conventional weapons used by the Iran-backed Houthis to target U.S. and international military and civilian vessels navigating international waters in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden," Ryder said. Both Air Force and Navy assets, including F-35C fighter aircraft, were involved in the strikes, which were in response to Houthi attacks on commercial, U.S. and coalition vessels in the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandab Strait and Gulf of Aden. "As you've heard us say before, we will continue to make clear to the Houthis that there will be consequences for their illegal and reckless attacks," Ryder said. Yesterday, Ryder said, Centcom also conducted strikes against nine targets in two locations associated with Iranian groups in Syria. The strikes, he said, were in response to two attacks on U.S. personnel in Syria that happened Nov. 10 at Mission Support Site Green Village in northeast Syria. One of those attacks involved a UAV, while the second attack involved an indirect fire incident with two rockets. There were no U.S. injuries involved with either attack. Ryder said the U.S. strikes will degrade the ability of Iranian-backed groups to plan and launch future attacks on U.S and coalition forces who are in the region to conduct the defeat-ISIS operations. Centcom commander Army Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla said the U.S. will do what's needed to defend its personnel in the Centcom area of responsibility. "Our message is clear. Attacks against U.S. and coalition partners in the region will not be tolerated," said Kurilla. "We will continue to take every step necessary to protect our personnel and coalition partners and respond to reckless attacks." DOD Will Work Quickly to Meet President's 'Surge' Commitment to Ukraine Support [2024-11-14] WASHINGTON -- In September, President Joe Biden announced he plans to "surge" security assistance to Ukraine. That surge includes plans to ensure all remaining congressionally authorized funding to support Ukraine, including $5.5 billion in presidential drawdown authority, should be transferred to Ukraine before the administration closes out activities in January. Executing that presidential drawdown authority, which means moving some $5.5 billion in gear from U.S. military inventory to Ukraine before Jan. 20, is a tall order. But Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said the Defense Department has demonstrated a remarkable ability to quickly get things done over the past three years. "It is a short time ... just under 70 days," Singh said during a briefing today. "This department can do incredible work in that amount of time. The president made clear that ... he wants to spend down the authority that Congress has allocated and authorized before he leaves office. We're going to work very hard to make sure that happens." Since Russia illegally invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the U.S. has provided about $60.4 billion in security assistance. On Nov. 1, for instance, the department initiated the 69th presidential drawdown authority package to Ukraine, worth some $425 million. "I expect that for the next coming months of this administration, you're going to continue to see those packages draw down from ... what's available in our stockpiles," Singh said. "Again, we're committed to ensuring that Ukraine has what it needs to be successful on the battlefield." Singh also said that the department has been, since the first transfer of military hardware to Ukraine though PDA, cognizant of what's being sent and of what the department needs for itself to ensure that readiness is maintained. That's something that's not going to change, she said. "We're constantly refilling our shelves and our stockpiles," she said. "The secretary is not going to allow the department to dip below readiness levels that he doesn't feel comfortable with. So, as we continue to refill our own shelves, you're going to see equipment, capabilities continue to flow out." DOD's 2024 Audit Shows Progress Toward 2028 Goals [2024-11-17] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department today released the results of its departmentwide fiscal year 2024 financial audit, the seventh such audit since 2018. For this most-recent effort, the department's inspector general provided an overall "disclaimer of opinion" on DOD financial statements, which means the department has not yet achieved a clean audit, said Mike McCord, the department's chief financial officer. Despite that result, McCord said the department has shown great improvement every year on departmentwide audits. "I believe the department has turned a corner in its understanding of its challenges, and more importantly in addressing them," said McCord. "Momentum is on our side, and throughout the department there is strong commitment -- and belief in our ability -- to achieve an unmodified audit opinion." In total, the FY2024 overall DOD audit involved 28 different reporting entities each undergoing their own stand-alone financial statement audits. Of those individual audits, nine entities achieved "unmodified audit opinions." Results from three additional entities are still pending, but McCord said its expected that two of those will, as they did last year, also achieve unmodified audit opinions. If that happens, it will mean that eleven audits come back clean -- one more than in fiscal year 2023. This year, for the first time, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency achieved an unmodified audit opinion. This is only the second year DTRA has undergone a stand-alone audit, McCord said. Also, as part of this year's departmentwide audit, McCord said, one entity received a qualified opinion, while 15 other entities received disclaimers. Of note, McCord said, are DOD's efforts in closing or "downgrading" material weaknesses that show up in audits. The term "material weakness" in regard to an audit, he said, "roughly translates as concerns you must resolve to succeed." In particular, he said, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and the department have put an emphasis on eliminating material weakness related to the department's fund balance with the Treasury. "Fund balance with [the] Treasury is, in layperson terms, like balancing your checkbook," McCord said. "Except I said we have 1,500 checkbooks with $850 billion in them. So, it's a little more complicated than it might sound, but that's basically what it is. It's reconciling your version of all the money you have with [the Treasury Department's] version of all the money you have in these 1,500 pots." In the FY2024 departmentwide audit, McCord said, eight DOD reporting entities closed or downgraded their fund balance with Treasury material weakness. Those include the Department of the Navy Working Capital Fund and the Department of the Air Force Working Capital Fund, both of which closed that material weakness. The Department of the Army General Fund, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Defense Information Systems Agency General Fund, DISA Working Capital Fund, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and DTRA all downgraded their FBWT material weakness. Congress has said the department must achieve an unmodified audit by fiscal year 2028, and McCord said the department has improved every year since the inception of the audit. "On behalf of department senior management, I assess that DOD continues to make progress toward the congressional mandate for achieving an unmodified audit opinion in FY2028," he said. "We were already halfway there last year in terms of assets under clean opinions. This year, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency ... achieved an unmodified audit opinion in only its second year of doing a stand-alone audit." While the department has made progress every year, McCord said the speed of that improvement must accelerate if the department is to meet the 2028 goal set by Congress. "We do have to ... keep getting faster and keep getting better," he said. "If you draw a trend line ... back from when we started, from year one to year seven, I don't think it's going to show you're getting there in time if you don't continue to pick up the pace ... and that's happens with a lot of programs ... there's learning curves in building airplanes and there needs to be a learning curve here, too." Substantial work remains, McCord said. But he also said the department is on the right track to meeting the demands of Congress. "[The] next couple of years will be critical time as the department works toward this 2028 mandate, which will require us to keep getting better and faster," he said. Link 16, Lasers Provide Top Comms on Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture [2024-11-19] WASHINGTON -- As the Space Development Agency continues to build out the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, the agency's director, Derek Tournear, said Link 16 will continue to be the top option for communications provided by that satellite constellation because it's the foundation that American soldiers and U.S. allies rely on the most. "One of our operating modes in SDA is that we do not require a lot of changes to user equipment," Tournear said. "I said ... we're going to field a few 100 satellites, [so] let's take the onus on ourselves to modify those satellites so they can go down to legacy radios, so we don't force the Army, Navy, Air Force, to field tens of thousands of new radios, because that's very difficult." The PWSA system will eventually include hundreds of satellites, delivered in tranches every two years, with each tranche providing more capability than the last. The network of hundreds of optically connected satellites will deliver two primary capabilities to warfighters on the ground. The first is beyond line-of-sight targeting for ground and maritime time-sensitive targets, which includes mobile missiles and ships, for instance. The system will provide the ability to detect those targets, track them, calculate a fire control solution and deliver that solution down to a weapons platform so the target can be destroyed. The second capability is similar to the first but for enemy missiles already in flight. Link 16 will be a big part of the PWSA, Tournear said. Link 16 is a radio system broadly used by the United States and its allies across the globe. "There are tens of thousands of these terminals already out there," he said. "Our uniform personnel are already [trained], already know how to use these systems. We designed our system to primarily go down to that tactical radio." But the U.S. military and its allies have need for greater bandwidth than what Link 16 provides, Tournear said, and that's where laser communications come in. "There's a lot of missions that need higher data rate than Link 16," he said. "In the future, you're going to want to have a lot of aircraft that want to move a lot of data. You're going to want to have ground systems that have this low latency connectivity, that want a lot of data connected, that you're not able to get with Link 16 or other systems. That's where the laser [communications] comes in. It's not ever going to be as prolific a user base as Link 16 ... but we do see it growing, and you'll have thousands of those laser comm terminals in the future." Early on in development of the PWSA, Tournear said, laser communications has been part of the plan. Demonstration satellites launched in 2021, he said, successfully demonstrated space-to-space laser communication, for instance. They also demonstrated the ability to do space-to-ground communications as well. "In Tranche 0 and then operational in Tranche 1, those laser comm systems are going to be used for space-to-space, space-to-ground and space-to-air," he said. Tournear said tradeoffs were made to optimized laser communications for both space-to-space and space-to-air communications. "We did that because we recognize that the spectrum is contested. ... The enemy gets a vote in contesting spectrum, as well as just getting spectrum approval -- much more difficult in the [radio frequency] realm than in the optical realm," he said. "We chose to go with that standard. And that's our future going forward." ROTC-Like Recruitment Program Helping Space Force Find Civilian 'Guardians' [2024-11-20] WASHINGTON -- Like its sister services, the Space Force has officer, enlisted and civilian members -- all called "guardians." But the Space Force is looking for new ways to recruit civilian employees, which right now make up about 50 percent of the service. On college campuses, the Space Force is part of a congressionally mandated pilot program, the Defense Civilian Training Corps, or DCTC, which has similarities to ROTC, but which instead aims to bring university graduates into the military as civilian employees rather than uniformed officers, said Katharine Kelley, the Space Force's deputy chief of space operations for human capital. "Basically, if the college student is interested in the Space Force ... they can volunteer to come and work with the Space Force on projects during their summer break," Kelley said Wednesday, while speaking at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. "When they do that, they get an exposure to what is a civilian job in the Space Force, and what does it mean to be a civilian employee, or a federal employee in the Space Force." Kelley said many Americans remain unaware that it's possible to work for one of the military services not as a uniformed member but as a skilled civilian. "There's still a lot of data out there that shows that a lot of the United States doesn't understand that you can be in the military but be a civilian and be supported and be supporting," she said. "This [program] exposes that talent population in some of these schools to those opportunities, and then they go back, they do their normal school year. When they graduate, we guarantee them a job. They join the Space Force, as a guardian, as a civilian, when they graduate college." Kelley said students participating in the program have expressed interest in Space Force's research and development work, problem-solving technologies for space and how weather conditions impact satellite architectures. "There's a whole host of scientific and problem-solving related questions that our initial students, who are civilians in this program, have both participated in on a summer rotation, and we anticipate we'll be able to bring students in on those types of work roles," she said. The DCTC program currently partners with four universities, including North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Purdue University, The University of Arizona and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Russians Launch New Missile at Dnipro, U.S. Provides Ukraine With New Tactical Weapons [2024-11-21] WASHINGTON -- The Russians today launched a new kind of missile at Ukraine, what the Defense Department is calling an "intermediate-range ballistic missile," or IRBM, said the deputy Pentagon press secretary. "I can confirm that Russia did launch an experimental intermediate range ballistic missile," said Sabrina Singh during a briefing today at the Pentagon. "This IRBM was based on Russia's RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile model. In terms of notifications to the United States, the United States was prenotified, briefly, before the launch, through nuclear risk reduction channels." The IRBM missile was launched at the city of Dnipro. While Singh said the missile carried a conventional warhead, she also said it's possible the missile could be fitted with other warheads as well. "It could be refitted to certainly carry different types of ... conventional or nuclear warheads," she said. The Defense Department has characterized the IRBM as "experimental" in that it's the first time a weapon of its kind has been used on the battlefield in Ukraine, Singh said. "This was a new type of lethal capability that was deployed on the battlefield," she said. "That's certainly [of] concern to us ... I don't have an assessment of its impacts right now, but it's something that, of course, we're concerned by." Singh also said an IRBM and an intercontinental ballistic missile have similar flight paths, high trajectories and can carry large payloads. "But the main difference lies in the range and the strategic purpose," she said. Also, this week, the Defense Department confirmed that the United States would provide to Ukraine antipersonnel landmines. Yesterday in Laos, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III explained why the U.S. would provide antipersonnel landmines to Ukraine and how what the U.S. would provide is different than the landmines the Ukrainians are currently producing for themselves. "What we've seen most recently is because the Russians have been so unsuccessful in the way that they have been fighting they've kind of changed their tactics a bit and they don't lead with their mechanized forces anymore," Austin said. "They lead with dismounted forces who are able to close in and do things to kind of pave the way for mechanized forces." In the face of that changing tactic, Austin said, the Ukrainians have been manufacturing their own landmines to slow down Russian advances. "They're fabricating their own antipersonnel landmines right now," he said. "The landmines that we would look to provide them would be landmines that are not persistent. You know, we can control when they would self-activate, self-detonate. And that makes it, you know, far more safe eventually than the things that they are creating on their own." Singh told reporters today that the Ukrainians have assured the U.S. that the landmines, when they arrive, will be used only inside Ukrainian space. "Absolutely they have committed that they're going to use these mines in their own territory," she said. "I should have added that they're not going to use them in populated areas." Defense Leaders Engage in Israel, United Arab Emirates [2024-11-25] WASHINGTON -- U.S. defense leaders last week engaged with counterparts and leaders in Israel and the United Arab Emirates to discuss both security partnerships and shared security challenges. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III capped off a weeklong trip through the Indo-Pacific, including visits to Australia, the Philippines, Laos and Fiji with a call on Saturday to Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, who was newly appointed this month. "Secretary Austin spoke to Israeli Minister of Defense Katz to review regional threats, discuss ongoing Israeli operations and reaffirm the United States' commitment to Israel's security," said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh during a discussion today with the Pentagon press corps. "Austin emphasized the importance of ensuring the safety and security of Lebanese armed forces and [United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.]" The secretary also discussed U.S. commitment to a diplomatic resolution in Lebanon which allows Israeli and Lebanese civilians to return safely to their homes on both sides of the border, Singh said. "The secretary also urged Israel to continue to take steps to improve the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza and emphasized the U.S. commitment to securing the release of all hostages, including U.S. citizens," Singh said. Meanwhile, Daniel B. Shapiro, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, visited defense officials in the UAE Nov. 21-22, to discuss enhancements to bilateral ties with the UAE. In September, President Joe Biden designated UAE a "major defense partner of the United States." That designation is shared only with India. According to the U.S. State Department, the new designation will allow for greater cooperation through joint training, exercises and military-to-military collaboration between the U.S., the UAE and India. Following his visit to UAE, Shapiro visited Israel Nov. 24-25, where he met in person with Katz and other Israeli security and intelligence officials to discuss U.S.-Israel security cooperation, regional security challenges and humanitarian assistance in Gaza. "This department continues to urge for a cease-fire, and that includes in Lebanon and in Gaza," Singh said. "And, of course, we want to see our hostages come home as well. In terms of ... the State Department, the [National Security Council,] has been engaging more on the cease-fire negotiations, but this department has a role ... whenever we engage with our counterparts urging for a cease-fire to be put into place." Uncertain World Needs Award-Winning IT, Cyber Professionals, DOD Official Says [2024-12-04] Washington -- The Defense Department's top leaders in information systems, yesterday, recognized more than a dozen individuals and teams who in 2024 have contributed in exceptional ways to the advancement of the department's information technology goals. The department's acting chief information officer, Leslie A. Beavers, along with Army Lt. Gen. Paul T. Stanton, who serves as the director of the Defense Information Systems Agency as well as the commander of the Joint Force Headquarters-DOD Information Network, presided over the 2024 DOD Chief Information Officer Annual Awards Ceremony at the Pentagon. The world today is an uncertain place, said Stanton, and defense of the nation relies on the secure, stable transmission of data and communications -- something all the award winners are responsible for ensuring. "The world is uncertain," Stanton said. "What is certain is that operations today and into the future require data. You can't war fight, you can't fight and win, if you don't have data. Our responsibilities within the DOD CIO are all about getting data to the right place at the right time to make a better and faster decision than our enemies." Stanton said the most basic lessons in warfighting involve developing a position of advantage to enable commanders to make better and faster decisions than the enemy, and the DOD's cyber professionals are involved every day in making that happen. "We can speed up our decision cycle, [and] we can slow down the enemy's decision cycle," Stanton said. "But ultimately, we have to empower our commanders with that position of advantage. That's what you do on a daily basis. You do it through cyber security, you do it through managing the electromagnetic spectrum, through developing engineering, operating our information technology, through thinking about the future [and] executing today, the policies and the resources to make it all happen." America's enemies, Stanton said, have many resources at their disposal and can bring "scale" to the war fight. But the United States, he said, has an even better tool. "What we have is talent," he said. "What we have is the freedom to execute through disciplined initiative. You don't get that in other war fighting communities. The United States of America has a monopoly on disciplined initiative, where we can give you a left and a right limit and unleash your talent. For those that are being recognized today: thank you. Thank you for exceeding the standard. Thank you for driving the innovation. Thank you for thinking about hard problems in unique ways and developing meaningful solutions." Beavers congratulated the award winners and also noted that this year's awards ceremony featured the largest roster of award recipients in the program's history. The DOD CIO Annual Awards Ceremony honors exceptional individuals and teams who further department goals in areas such as cybersecurity; cyber hygiene; command, control and communications; information enterprise and cloud technology; network and data center optimization; the advancement of 5G technology; and electromagnetic spectrum and public communications. As part of the 2024 DOD CIO Annual Awards Ceremony, both teams and individuals were either named recipients of awards or for honorable mentions. Those honored include: Individual Awards • Audra Brandt, National Air and Space Intelligence Center, Air Force. • Army Lt. Col. Christopher Braunstein, U.S. Army Network Enterprise Technology Command. • Air Force Maj. Terrance Dixon, U.S. Central Command. • Shawn Achziger, Army National Guard. Individual Honorable Mentions • Air Force Master Sgt. David Herrera. • Air Force Capt. Dylan Zimmer, Joint Staff Support Center, Defense Information Systems Agency. • Eric Gay, Marine Corps. • Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Dieter Wiesner, U.S. Special Operation Command. Team Awards • Japan Dark Horizon, Army. • Recruiter Services Network Workstation Management Team, Army. • Air Force Materiel Command, Advanced Academic Degree, Next Generation Air Dominance aircraft Software Factory, Air Force. • DISA Europe Defense Cyber Operations, DISA. • U.S. Transportation Command, J6-NA Audit and Analysis, Transcom. Team Honorable Mentions • Enterprise Business System Multi-Functional Capabilities Team, Business Process Reengineering Team, Army. • U.S. Military Entrance Processing Command, J6 Team, Army. • U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, J6 Team, Army. • Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, Cybersecurity Inspection Program Team, Defense Intelligence Agency. • Missile Defense Agency, Cybersecurity Service Provider, CSSP-Computer Emergency Response Team, MDA. • DISA, J-9, Outside the Continental U.S. Cloud Team, DISA. • Defense Department - Government Publishing Office, Online Uniformed Services Identification Card Renewal Team, Defense Manpower Data Center. • Cyber and Infrastructure Team, DMDC. • J6 Task Force 37-78 Team, Joint Chiefs of Staff. • Red Lightning Team, Marine Corps. Austin Signs New Strategy for Countering Effects of Unmanned Systems [2024-12-05] Washington -- The Defense Department today announced that Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has signed a new, classified strategy for countering the effects of unmanned systems, also called "drones." According to an unclassified fact sheet released by the department, unmanned systems are increasing in capability and are posing ever-increasing threats to the U.S. and its allies. "Enabled by growing commercial innovation and the increasing sophistication of artificial intelligence, autonomy and networking technology, unmanned systems are fundamentally changing how militaries of all sizes, capacities, and capabilities -- as well as non-state actors -- achieve their objectives," the fact sheet says. Countering the effects of those unmanned systems has been a priority for the secretary of defense since he took office in 2021, said the Pentagon press secretary during a briefing today. The new strategy strengthens efforts already underway by the department to deal with the growing threat. "Unmanned systems, more commonly known as drones, have the potential to pose both an urgent and enduring threat to U.S. personnel, facilities and assets overseas and increasingly in the U.S. homeland," said Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder. "The threats presented by these systems are changing how wars are fought. With this singular strategy for countering unmanned systems, in conjunction with other major DOD initiatives ... the DOD is orienting around a common understanding of the challenge and a comprehensive approach to addressing it." The new strategy builds on other major DOD initiatives, including the standup of the Joint Counter-Small UAS Office, the establishment of the Warfighter Senior Integration Group, and the launch of the Replicator 2 initiative meant to defend against threats posed by small aerial systems. The new strategy is classified, but the associated unclassified fact sheet reveals some of the efforts the department plans to take as part of that strategy. One effort involves gaining a better understanding of the threats posed by unmanned systems and improving the ability of American forces to detect, track and characterize those threats. Another aspect of the strategy is to build counter-unmanned system efforts and knowledge into existing U.S. military doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership, personnel, facilities and policy. Through the strategy, the department also commits to delivering adaptable counter-UAS solutions more quickly and at scale, including by working more closely with U.S. partners and allies. Of note also is that the department, within the strategy, recognizes the vast difference between the low cost of developing and deploying unmanned systems and the high cost the U.S. currently spends to defeat those systems. Here, in the strategy, the department commits to reducing the imbalance. Ryder said the strategy allows the department to approach the threat posed by UAS in a way that's "comprehensive, cohesive and holistic." To Stay on Path, Defense Space Programs Need Domestic Software Developers [2024-12-09] WASHINGTON -- During the COVID-19 pandemic, shortages of electronic components slowed down development of satellites headed to the Space Development Agency. But it's not only parts and subcomponents that affect the timeline of satellite delivery, said the agency's director. "Even though it takes a while to get the hardware and the supply chain built up to actually build the satellites, it doesn't matter what you see on the schedule on day one, I'll tell you right now ... software is always on your critical path, mostly because you can't start a lot of the software until you have some of the hardware," said Derek Tournear, speaking Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California. The SDA is building the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, which will eventually include hundreds of satellites, delivered in tranches every two years, with each tranche providing more capability than the last. The network of hundreds of optically connected satellites will deliver two primary capabilities to warfighters on the ground. The first is beyond line-of-sight targeting for ground and maritime time-sensitive targets, which includes mobile missiles and ships, for instance. The system will provide the ability to detect those targets, track them, calculate a fire control solution and deliver that solution down to a weapons platform so the target can be destroyed. The second capability is similar to the first but for enemy missiles already in flight. Right now, Tournear said, Tranche 0 of the PWSA is already in orbit. That includes about 27 satellites. Tranche 1 will come in a few months, he said, which means about 160 satellites in space by next year to provide operational capability to service members on the ground. The Tranche 0 satellites, he said, launched about seven months late due to supply chain issues that resulted from COVID-19, including, among other things, an inability to buy resistors. Tranche 1's launch will be delayed as well, he said, also due to supply chain issues. But now, he said, it's not resistors, but much more complex parts. "We can buy resistors all day long now, but there's a difference between being able to manufacture an optical terminal or a reaction wheel on the order of single digits versus being able to ramp that up to where I need 100 of them," he said. "And obviously people were a little optimistic in how long it would take them to ramp up their manufacturing lines. And we pushed them. We pushed them pretty strongly on that." Now, he said, the supply chain for parts needed to make satellites has caught up to what's needed by SDA. But it's not only parts that satellites need, Tournear said, its software as well. "Supply chain is not only supply chain in the hardware and being able to build things, but we also need a robust industrial base that can create software, test software, get the software ready to go, and build that capability up," he said. Right now, Tournear said, much of the industrial base relies on foreign entities to produce software. It's something he said he'd like to see change. "It's one of the things that we've kind of said we're worried about that at the Space Development Agency," he said. "We want our flight software on our satellites to be written in the U.S., because that's one of the supply chain interdiction things that I'm worried about. And so that's been a bottleneck." Tournear was also clear that he looks to America's "industrial base" to build the PWSA, not just the defense industrial base. "I want people to also ... stop thinking about the defense industrial base," he said. "We don't look at the defense industrial base. We look at the entire industrial base. And by the way, if you happen to do defense as part of that industrial base, more power to you. But we want to leverage the commercial side of that: hardware and software, because those are both critical." Commercial Tech at Heart of Future Defense Spectrum Management [2024-12-12] WASHINGTON -- The electromagnetic spectrum is required for nearly every aspect of space-based communications, from satellite-to-satellite to satellites-to-soldiers on the ground. Ensuring the spectrum needed for that communication is protected for use by the U.S. and its allies, increasingly means adopting technology developed in the commercial sector. Over the past few decades, the commercial sector has spent four times as much on research and development than the federal government, including in areas like spectrum management, said Air Force Maj. Gen. Steven J. Butow, the military deputy director of the Defense Innovation Unit, while speaking Wednesday at the Association of Old Crows International Symposium and Convention, just outside Washington. "During the time that we were not investing in electronic warfare capabilities as a fighting force, the commercial sector was taking off, digitizing, adopting communications capabilities -- 3G, 4G, 5G -- scaling up," Butow said. "You have companies like Qualcomm that were developing new methodologies to harness previously unusable parts of spectrum for economic advantage, and all kinds of different business models that we can learn from and then look at how we apply that today." Today's warfighters, Butow said, have more commercial capabilities at their disposal than they did in the past, when everything was military issued. "Now we have a plethora of different commercial capabilities that we can use throughout peacetime, contingency and even in war, and so do our allies," he said. "Commercial technology provides the best way for us to actually rapidly expand and integrate with our allies and partners." Working with the commercial sector to bring the best of what it has to offer into the Defense Department is part of what the DIU does, said Butow. "The Defense Innovation Unit was created in 2015 by then Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, with the sole purpose of trying to bring the commercial technology sector back in, in a way that we could really benefit from a lot of innovation happening outside of the Department of Defense," he said. Today, Butow said, much of technology development in spectrum management and in capabilities related to electronic warfare are being developed in the private sector. Integrating that into the department is a challenge that DIU is solving. "The DOD has the monopoly on wicked problems," he said. "If you really want to solve a tough problem, we probably own it. And the best talent ... in the commercial sector today, they really want to work on those kind of problem sets." Creating pathways for that to happen, he said, is what DIU does. In the last decade, he said, about 100 different organizations related to innovation have developed in the Defense Department, which do just that. "Let's create an opportunity for them to be able to work on our problems in a way that could be financially favorable to them," he said. Joint Staff Addresses Drones Over New Jersey Military Installations [2024-12-14] WASHINGTON -- In recent weeks, a number of drones have been sighted over New Jersey, prompting concern and thousands of telephone calls to report them. Some of those drones have even been sighted over Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle, both in New Jersey. During an on-background telephone call today, officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Aviation Administration and the Joint Staff provided comment and answered questions from reporters about the drone sightings. A spokesperson from the Joint Staff acknowledged that there had been sightings of drones over two military installations in New Jersey, but said such sightings are typical. "We have had confirmed sightings at Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle," the spokesperson said. "This is not a new issue for us. We've had to deal with drone incursions over our bases for quite a time now. It's something that we routinely respond to in each and every case when reporting is cited." The spokesperson said military installations have means to detect and respond to such drones, and that security personnel are trained to identify, categorize and employ those tools to keep drones from flying unauthorized over U.S. military bases. Right now, the FBI, DHS, FAA and DOD have been unable to determine who is responsible for flying the drones, and there's no indication that there are adversary nations involved. "To date, we have no intelligence or observations that would indicate that they were aligned with a foreign actor or that they had malicious intent," the spokesperson said. "But ... we don't know. We have not been able to locate or identify the operators or the points of origin." The spokesperson said that the military has "limited authorities" when it comes to conducting investigations off of military installations in the United States, and is also prohibited from conducting intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations in the United States which might be used to determine the origins of who might be flying the drones. But the spokesperson also said those military installations have good relations with local law enforcement, who can conduct investigations off the installation. "We have to coordinate with law enforcement to try to do that, which we are doing," the spokesperson said. "And we do that on a routine basis at nearly all of our locations. We have good relationships and excellent coordination, and we respond quickly to try to identify them." The spokesperson also said the department is frustrated with the appearance of the drones. "The main point is to deter the activity using some of our electronic means that can respond to most of these small commercial systems and deny them access to the airspace over our bases," the spokesperson said. "We don't know what the activity is. We don't know ... if it is criminal. But I will tell you that it is irresponsible. Here on the military side, we are just as frustrated with the irresponsible nature of this activity." DOD's 2023 Demographics Report Indicates More Women, Fewer Separations [2024-12-16] WASHINGTON -- The Department of Defense today released its newest demographics report, the "2023 Demographics Profile of the Military Community," which provides a wide range of information about the active duty, National Guard and Reserve enlisted and officer service members and families who make up the United States military. Key takeaways from the latest report include that the active-duty and selected reserve population in 2023 was 37,025 lower than in 2022, that over the same time period, the percentage of personnel separating from the active duty military decreased by 7.4% and 41.2% for the selected reserve, and that among the active duty force, the percentage of women serving in uniform has increased slightly from 17.5% in 2022 to 17.7% in 2023. The report also indicates that education levels of active-duty enlisted service members has increased compared to 2010. Similar profiles of the U.S. military have been released for decades, said Dr. Towanda Street, the program analyst for research within Military Community and Family Policy who served as the action officer for this year's report. "Military Community and Family Policy maintains hardcopy reports dating back to 1999," she said. "And in 2019, the first report was made available online in an interactive, user-friendly interface." This year's report and reports from 2017 can be found at the MilitaryOneSource website. The demographics report is produced with data provided through the Defense Manpower Data Center, and in its final version, the report is used across the department by the professionals who develop the policies and programs that affect military service members and their families, Street said. "The ... report is the only comprehensive, publicly released snapshot of the armed forces' demographics produced by the Department of Defense," Street said. "The report is released annually to ensure policymakers, research organizations and a host of other organizations that contribute to the military community have the quality data needed to understand and respond to the ever-changing needs of our service members and their families." The 2023 report includes information related to gender, race and ethnicity, age, paygrade and education for active duty, Reserve and National Guard personnel in all of the military services. It also includes information about the number of service members who are married and how many service members have children. The report also includes older information related to end strength, gender, pay grades and numbers of personnel who separate, for instance, to indicate trends in the U.S. military. For example, in 2005, there were 5.1 enlisted service members for each officer. In 2023, that ratio changed to 4.4 enlisted for each officer, which demonstrates a decrease in enlisted troops and an increase in officers over that time frame. Also in 2005, the ratio of female to male service members was 1 to 5.8. In 2023, that ratio decreased to 1 to 4.6, indicating an increase in female service members. In Fifth Year, Space Force Commander Details Service's Stellar Accomplishments [2024-12-17] WASHINGTON -- America's newest military service, the U.S. Space Force, stood up five years ago this Friday. In advance of an out-of-this world birthday celebration, the service's commander, Gen B. Chance Saltzman, reflected on half a decade of accomplishments. "From ... humble beginnings, we have laid the foundations of a space service that is dedicated and laser focused on achieving space superiority, a service that is unparalleled in its talent and capabilities in the domain, a service that every day is increasing our readiness to secure our nation's interests in, from and to space," Saltzman said today during an event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. In the past five years, Saltzman said, the Space Force has increased its budget, largely through the absorbing of other space-related agencies, and has grown considerably since it stood up. "Although still not where we need it, our budget has increased substantially with a number of mission aggregations and some new investments since activation," he said. "On average, we have tripled in size every year for the last five years in personnel, an astounding growth rate for any government organization. We have reimagined operations, redefined policies [and] reworked processes from the ground up to forge a service purpose-built for great power competition. All of this in just five years." More than anything, Saltzman said, the Space Force can now apply a service-level focus to the space domain in the same way the Army focuses on land, the Air Force focuses on the air and the Navy focuses on the sea. Space Force, like other services, has also fielded service components to combatant commands in the same way as other services. Already, there are Space Force components to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Central Command, European Command and Africa Command, with "more coming right behind it," Saltzman said. The Space Force has also redesigned its professional military education and officer training programs and is working to replicate that for its enlisted personnel as well, Saltzman said. With the help of Congress, Saltzman said, the Space Force has also found new ways to attract and manage talent. "We won the authority to create a part-time workforce inside our single active component," he said. "This unprecedented approach will be crucial for retaining talent [and] improving quality of life in a way never before seen in the Department of Defense." Right now, Saltzman said, the Space Force's personnel staff is working to develop the administrative mechanisms needed to take advantage of those authorities. "[It's] tremendously exciting, though, because it gives us so much latitude, so much career flexibility," he said. As a military service, Saltzman said, the Space Force has in the past five years supported an increase in the speed of space launches by nearly 500%, shared space situational awareness data with 34 foreign nations and provided position navigation and timing, or PNT services, to GPS users around the world. "We've connected over 100,000 active [satellite communications] users; we've deployed electronic warfare capabilities to 10 nations for a collective 2,551 days," he said. "In 2024 alone, we supported 45 exercises and tracked 226 successful space launches, [and] we cataloged 3,345 space objects." Over five years, Saltzman said, the Space Force has been guided by the service's six foundational principles, which he said form the core of what it means to be a guardian. First, he said, is that Space Force capabilities are critical to the joint force and the American way of life. "They underpin both our national security and our prosperity," he said. The second principle, he said, is that it is the Space Force's responsibility to defend American space capabilities. "Space is the backbone of the joint force," he said. "Without it, we cannot project military power. Unfortunately, we're not the only nation that's recognized the strategic value of space superiority. Adversaries have aggressively developed and fielded counter-space threats." The third principle demands that Space Force protect the joint and combined force from space-enabled attack, while the fourth declares space a warfighting domain. "Space Force cannot simply be a support element," he said. "It is our job to contest and control the domain through the application of military force." The fifth principle is that the Space Force is responsible for conducting warfighting operations as an integral part of the joint force. And finally, he said, it is Space Force guardians alone who are uniquely and specifically trained, educated and experienced for warfighting in, from and to the space domain. "No one else is better suited to lead a campaign in space," he said. "No one else has the tools required to achieve space superiority." Space Force will celebrate the fifth anniversary of its founding for only a moment. After, it will continue furthering its mission. In the coming year, Saltzman said, the Space Force plans to, among other things, finish implementation of the Space Force Personnel Management Act, further expand the launch support tempo, stand up its Futures Command and finish the establishment of its service components to the combatant commands. Saltzman also said the Space Force will accelerate the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, which will eventually include hundreds of satellites, delivered in tranches every two years, with each tranche providing more capability to the warfighter than the last. Everything done so far in Space Force, and what's to come, Saltzman said, can be attributed to the dedication of the guardians who protect America's space assets. "I'm proud to say, without question, that Space Force guardians are the preeminent space warfighters, armed and ready to protect and defend the future of our nation," Saltzman said. Space Force Marks Half-Decade of Service [2024-12-20] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Space Force, which stood up Dec. 20, 2019, is America's newest military service branch. Today, service leaders marked Space Force's 5th birthday with a small celebration in the Pentagon. "I'm very reflective on our 5th birthday of all the things that we've accomplished," said Chief of Space Operations, Gen. B. Chance Saltzman. "There's lots of work to be done, and 2025 is going to be exciting. We've accomplished a lot as a Space Force in our first five years, and everyone deserves to be proud of it." Since the Space Force stood up, it has been successful in increasing its budget, largely through absorbing other space-related agencies, and it has grown considerably, tripling the size of its personnel each year since 2019. The new service has also fielded service components to combatant commands in the same way as other services. Already, there are Space Force components to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Central Command, European Command and Africa Command. Additional combatant command components will be fielded in the future. The Space Force has also redesigned its professional military education and officer training programs and is working to replicate that for its enlisted personnel as well. Operationally, the Space Force has in the past five years supported an increase in the speed of space launches by nearly 500%, shared space situational awareness data with 34 foreign nations and provided position navigation and timing, or PNT services, to GPS users worldwide. The Space Force has also connected over 100,000 active satellite communications users, deployed electronic warfare capabilities to 10 nations for a collective 2,551 days, and already in 2024 guardians have supported 45 exercises, tracked 226 space launches and cataloged 3,345 space objects. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall assumed his current role in July 2021 and has presided over the Space Force for much of its existence. The U.S. Space Force falls under the Department of the Air Force. "It's been a great joy to work with the team and to help you move forward and create a combat force that the nation simply didn't have when the Space Force was formed," he said. Kendall admits that other issues have dominated his tenure as secretary since taking office. But the importance of space, he said, has never been lost on him. "I always come back to the need for a Space Force that has the warfighting capability to dominate in space and to enable the joint force to survive and to do its missions," he said. "And we're well underway in building that force, and I think that's a huge achievement." The secretary also said the Space Force continues develop its own unique culture, such as what its sister services have. "We're creating a new culture here for a new organization that has unique and special features, a unique combination of technologies and people who apply those technologies, and you're really well underway," he said. "You've accomplished a great, great deal, and you've got a lot more to do. And I'm very, very confident that this team of guardians and all the people that support them is going to do everything the nation calls upon it to do and be a decisive advantage for the United States in the future at deterring our adversaries and, if necessary, at defeating them." As part of the event, Saltzman, Space Force Spc. 3 Caden Dedenbach, Kendall and Space Force Chief Master Sgt. Amber Abramowski, senior enlisted leader to the deputy chief of space operations, cut a Space Force birthday cake. 7 Soldiers From Korean, Vietnam Wars Receive Medals of Honor [2025-01-03] WASHINGTON -- At a White House ceremony today, President Joe Biden presented Medals of Honor to seven soldiers who served in either the Korean War or the Vietnam War. Among the soldiers honored were Pvt. Bruno R. Orig, Pfc. Wataru Nakamura, Cpl. Fred B. McGee, Pfc. Charles R. Johnson, and Gen. Richard E. Cavazos. All served in the Korean War and received the medal posthumously. Family members accepted the decoration on their behalf. From the Vietnam War, both Capt. Hugh R. Nelson Jr. and Pfc. Kenneth J. David were decorated. Nelson received the medal posthumously, while David, the only living recipient, accepted the medal in person. "I'm deeply privileged to honor seven American heroes," Biden said. "That's not hyperbole. These are genuine, to their core, heroes. Heroes of different ranks, different positions, and even different generations. But heroes who all went above and beyond the call of duty. Heroes who all deserve our nation's highest and oldest military recognition, the Medal of Honor." Pvt. Bruno R. Orig Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1930, Orig enlisted in the Army in 1950. On February 15, 1951, while serving with Company G, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division in the vicinity of Chipyong-ni, Korea, Orig returned from a mission to find many of his fellow soldiers wounded in an ongoing enemy attack. Orig administered first aid to his fellow soldiers and remained exposed to enemy fire. With the assistance of other soldiers, Orig removed the wounded to a place of safety. When Orig noticed that all but one of a machine-gun crew had been wounded, he volunteered to man the weapon. Orig was so effective on the machine gun that a withdrawing friendly platoon was able to move back without a single casualty. Orig continued to inflict heavy casualties on the enemy until the company positions were overrun. Later, when the lost ground was recaptured, Orig was found dead beside his weapon, though the area in front of his gun was littered with enemy dead. He was 20 years old at the time. "Bruno saw his fellow soldiers were wounded and stranded under enemy fire," Biden said. "Without hesitation, he ran out to rescue them, giving his own life to save the lives of his brothers in arms. That's valor. That's the definition of valor. Pfc. Wataru Nakamura Nakamura was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1921. "After an attack on Pearl Harbor, he was forced to live in an internment camp, like so many other Japanese Americans," Biden said. "But still, he signed up to serve our nation during World War II and the Korean War. During his last mission in May of 1951, single handedly he defended his unit from enemy attack, fighting until he was killed by a grenade." While serving with Company I, 38th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division in the vicinity of P'ungch'on-ni, Korea on May 18, 1951, Nakamura volunteered to check and repair a communications line between his platoon and the command post. During that mission, he came under fire by an enemy force which had surrounded friendly positions and were threatening to break the company defense lines. Without waiting for help, Nakamura rushed the enemy with his bayonet engaged. He singlehandedly attacked and destroyed a hostile machine-gun nest and drove the enemy from several of the bunkers they had captured. When his ammunition was depleted, he withdrew while under enemy fire. Nakamura then met an ammunition party ascending the hill. After briefing the officer in charge, Nakamura rearmed himself and, covered by the fire of the officer and two fellow soldiers, returned to the attack. He killed three of the enemy in one bunker and killed and seriously wounded another in the last enemy-held bunker. Continuing to press the attack, he fell mortally wounded by an enemy grenade. He was 29 years old at the time. Cpl. Fred B. McGee McGee was born in Steubenville, Ohio, in 1930. He enlisted in the Army in 1951 and served in Korea from January to November 1952. "[He was] a Midwesterner, a steel worker and a gunner in one of the first integrated army units of the Korean War," Biden said. "Fred embodied the very best of our country. In June 1952, his unit was attacked. They took casualties. They were ordered to fall back. But Fred refused to leave until he helped every wounded soldier evacuate." While serving near Tang-Wan-Ni, Korea on June 16, 1952, as a gunner on a light machine gun in a weapons squad, McGee delivered a heavy volume of supporting fire from an exposed position despite intense enemy machine-gun and mortar fire directly on his location. Though forced to move his gun several times, McGee continued to support the assault and give covering fire to the assault elements of his platoon. When his squad leader was wounded, together with several other members of his squad, McGee assumed command and moved the squad even farther forward to a more exposed position in order to deliver fire on an enemy machine gun. When his own machine gunner was mortally wounded, McGee again took over the gun. He directed his squad to withdraw and voluntarily remained behind to help evacuate the wounded and dead. Though wounded in the face, McGee exposed himself to danger by standing straight up in enemy machine-gun and mortar fire while attempting to evacuate the body of the company runner. Forced to abandon the body, he aided a wounded man to be moved to the rear and safety through a huge volume of enemy mortar and artillery fire. At the time of his combat action, McGee was 22 years old. After the Korean War, McGee worked in the steel industry for more than four decades. He died in 2020, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pfc. Charles R. Johnson Johnson was born in Sharon, Connecticut, in 1932, and enlisted in the Army in 1952. "Growing up, in the words of Charlie's high school classmates, he was a heck of a football player," Biden said. "Well back in 1952, Charlie signed up to serve in Korea, trading his jersey for a uniform. During one battle, he gave his life to defend a bunker full of his wounded soldiers. His valor saved 10 men, including an old high school classmate." When Chinese forces attacked his unit at Outpost Harry in Korea, June 11-12, 1953, Johnson was serving as a rifleman with Company B, 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division. During the battle, an overwhelming number of Chinese troops assaulted the trenches and bunkers that were defended by Johnson and his squad. Johnson was wounded from a direct artillery hit on his bunker and subsequently from a hand grenade thrown inside the bunker. Even though he was injured, he administered first aid to those more seriously injured than himself. Johnson dragged a wounded soldier to the safety of a secure bunker while stopping intermittently to aid injured soldiers and kill several enemy troops in hand-to-hand combat. After departing the safety of the second bunker, he conducted a search for weapons and ammunition then returned to rearm everyone. After acknowledging the untenable situation, he and his fellow soldiers found themselves in, Johnson exited the bunker and placed himself between the enemy and his injured comrades. He told them he'd hold off the enemy forces as best as he could. He was killed by enemy forces while fighting to defend his position and to protect his wounded comrades. At the time of his combat action, Johnson was 19 years old. Gen. Richard E. Cavazos Born in Kingsville, Texas, in 1929, Cavazos earned his commission in 1951, after having served in the Reserve Officer Training Corps at Texas Tech University. "Richard led his men through a difficult and deadly mission in enemy territory," Biden said. "Eventually, he was ordered to retreat, but he stayed. He stayed rescuing wounded soldiers one by one, until every one of them was evacuated. Richard went on to serve for three decades in the army, becoming ... the country's first Hispanic four star general." At the time of the combat action which earned him the Medal of Honor, Cavazos was a first lieutenant serving as the company commander of Company E, 2nd Battalion, 65th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division in the vicinity of Sagimak, Korea. On the night of June 14, 1953, Cavazos led his company in a raid on an entrenched enemy outpost with the mission of destroying the personnel and installation there. During the initial attack, he led his men through enemy mortar and artillery fire. Upon entering the trenches, close combat ensued during which Cavazos directed heavy fire on the enemy and their positions. When an enemy mortar and artillery barrage hit his position, Cavazos withdrew the company and regrouped his men. Twice more he led his men through intense enemy fire in assaults on the enemy position, destroying vital enemy fortifications and personnel. When ordered to withdraw his company, Cavazos complied but remained alone on the enemy outpost to search for missing men. Although exposed to enemy fire, he located five battle casualties and evacuated each, one by one, to a point on the reverse slope of a nearby hill where they could be safely recovered by friendly forces. After, he returned to the battlefield where he found a small group of men who had become separated from the main assaulting force and personally led them to safety. When informed that there were still men missing, Cavazos again returned to the scene of the battle. There, he located and led another small group of men to safety. He then made two more unassisted trips to the battlefield searching for missing soldiers. It wasn't until he was satisfied that the battlefield was cleared on the morning of June 15, that he allowed treatment of his own combat wounds. Cavazos retired from the Army in 1984, after attaining the rank of general. At the time of his combat action, he was 24 years old. He died in 2017, in San Antonio, Texas. Capt. Hugh R. Nelson, Jr. Born in 1937, in Charlotte, North Carolina, Nelson entered the Army in 1963. "He was just 28 years old when he and his crew were shot down in Vietnam," Biden said. "Hugh freed his men who were trapped in the wreckage. Then as the enemy began to attack, he used his body as a shield to protect them. It cost him dearly. It cost him his life. Hugh's commanding officer called it the ultimate act of self-sacrifice, which it was." While serving with the 114th Aviation Company (Airmobile Light) on June 5, 1966 near Moc Hoa, Republic of Vietnam, Nelson was the acting aircraft commander of an armed UH-1 Iroquois helicopter on a search and destroy reconnaissance mission when it was struck by enemy fire that rendered the aircraft virtually uncontrollable. The pilot and Nelson were able to crash land the aircraft without lateral controls. At some point after the crash, Nelson exited the aircraft and went to the aid of his wounded comrades. Proceeding to the other side of the aircraft, Nelson found his dazed and wounded crew chief still trapped inside. After removing the specialist and placing him on the ground, he climbed into the severely damaged helicopter to assist the door gunner who was still strapped inside and unable to move. While Nelson tried to free his comrade, the insurgents engaged the aircraft with automatic rifle and small arms fire. Despite the enemy fire and being hit, he was able to free the trapped door gunner. Upon removing the wounded door gunner from the aircraft, he forced the specialist to the ground and used his own body as a shield to cover his comrade from the enemy fire. While shielding the door gunner, Nelson was hit several times by enemy fire and was killed in action while saving the life of his comrade. His sacrifice allowed the wounded door gunner to use a smoke grenade to signal for supporting aircraft. When those aircraft responded, they were able to prevent the insurgents from advancing on the downed aircraft. They also were able to rescue the three wounded crew members. At the time of his combat action, Nelson was 28 years old. Pfc. Kenneth J. David Born in 1950, David entered the Army in 1969. On May 7, 1970, David was serving as a radio-telephone operator with Company D, 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry, 101st Airborne Division, near Fire Support Base Maureen, Thua Thien Province, Republic of Vietnam. At that time, David's company came under an intense attack from a large hostile force. The enemy's initial assault mortally wounded the company's platoon leader and resulted in numerous other casualties. Upon the initial assault, David handed his radio to his platoon sergeant and moved forward to the defensive perimeter, where he unleashed a barrage of automatic weapons fire on the enemy. From this location, David resisted all enemy efforts to overrun his position. Realizing the impact of the enemy assault on the wounded who were being brought to the center ofthe perimeter, he moved to a position outside of the perimeter while continuing to engage the enemy. Each time the enemy attempted to concentrate its fire on the wounded inside the perimeter, David would jump from his position and yell to draw the enemy fire away from his injured comrades and back to himself. Refusing to withdraw in the face of the concentrated enemy fire now directed toward him, David continued to engage the enemy. Although wounded by an exploding satchel charge and running low on ammunition, he tossed hand grenades toward the attackers to counter their fire. The unit's medic, realizing that David had been injured, moved to his position to provide aid, but David assured him that he was okay and continued to fight on. David's actions continued to draw the enemy fire away from the incoming medevac helicopters, which allowed the wounded to be safely evacuated. After allied reinforcements fought their way to his company's position, David carried a wounded comrade to a sheltered position. He then returned to the contact area and continued to engage the enemy and provide covering fire for the wounded until the enemy broke contact and fled, at which point he too was medically evacuated. At the time of his combat actions, David was 20 years old. "[Ken] couldn't and wouldn't give up," Biden said. "Instead, he shouted and fired his weapon to attract attention to him, away from others and away from the wounded men. Imagine that courage. 'Come get me. Come get me. Don't get those folks.' That's selflessness. Ken, I want to say to you, and I wish I could say to every man we're honoring today: you're a hero, a genuine hero, a flat out, straight-up American hero. And we owe you. The families owe you." Since concluding his service in Vietnam, David has spent 39 years working for Disabled American Veterans in Ohio, where he now serves as the adjutant treasurer. "[At] our chapter back here, we just spent $3,000 in food for homeless veterans and veterans in need for the Christmas holidays," David said. "We get used scooters and wheelchairs .... donated to us, and we, in turn, give them out, no charge, [to] whoever needs them. We do what we have to do to help the veterans in our community ... because we have to help our brothers." David said he frequently remembers the men he knew who didn't come home alive from Vietnam, saying he thinks of them as friends. He said he keeps biographies of those men in a book in his truck. "That's my way of coping with my stress," he said. "They were my friends, a lot of times I call them kids, because we were all kids at that time. But we knew the way they walked, we knew the way they talked, their heartbeat, and we would do anything for each other in any situation." David is already the recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, which he received in 1971, for his service in Vietnam. But he said the Medal of Honor will help him be a better advocate for the needs of veterans like himself. "With the cross I was able to use the award to help more veterans, because people listen to me," he said. "Now that I'm receiving the Medal of Honor, I will have more power to help more veterans, in my opinion, because I think people will listen to me more because of the award." Serving veterans, he said, continues to be his duty. "I will never forget my friends and my veterans in my county up here," he said. "That's my goal for the rest of my life now." As Biden closes out his term as commander in chief, he said it's been the greatest honor of his life to lead the world's greatest military. "They're the finest military in the history of the world," he said. "Today we award these individuals a Medal of Honor. We can't stop here. Together as a nation, it's up to us to give this medal meaning, to keep fighting, to keep fighting for one another, for each other, to keep defending everything these heroes fought for and many of them died for: the ideals of America, the freedom we cherish, the democracy that has made our progress possible." The United States, Biden said, was built on an idea, rather than on geography, ethnicity or religion. "We are the only nation based on an idea," he said. "The idea is that we hold these truths to be self-evident, all men and women are created equal [and] deserve to be treated equally throughout their entire lives. We haven't always lived up to it, but we've never, ever, ever walked away from it. Today we must say clearly, we never, ever, ever will." After Receiving Medals of Honor at White House, 7 Soldiers Inducted Into Pentagon Hall of Heroes [2025-01-04] WASHINGTON -- Following a ceremony Friday at the White House where seven soldiers received the Medal of Honor, today those same soldiers were inducted into the Pentagon's Hall of Heroes during an off-site ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia. On Friday, President Joe Biden presented the Medal of Honor to Pvt. Bruno R. Orig, Pfc. Wataru Nakamura, Cpl. Fred B. McGee, Pfc. Charles R. Johnson and Gen. Richard E. Cavazos. All served in the Korean War and were posthumously presented the medal. Family members accepted the decoration on their behalf. From the Vietnam War, both Capt. Hugh R. Nelson Jr. and Pfc. Kenneth J. David were decorated. Nelson received the medal posthumously, while David, the only living recipient, accepted the medal in person. At JMB-HH, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth and Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Randy A. George inducted the soldiers into the Hall of Heroes, where the names of all service members who receive the Medal of Honor are enshrined. "It's incredibly powerful to hear these seven stories of sheer bravery and sacrifice," said Austin, who himself served in the Army for more than 40 years. "The soldiers whom we honor today came from different walks of life, from different communities and from different parts of our country." Austin said some of the soldiers honored could trace their roots in the United States back for generations. Some, he said, were children of immigrants. Others were descendants of slaves. "Some of these heroes were commissioned officers in the Army, and some of them fought in the enlisted ranks," Austin said. "Yet when each of these men faced terrible danger in battle, every one of them made the same choice: to put the mission first, to never quit, to never accept defeat and to never leave a fallen comrade." Orig, Nakamura and Johnson were all killed in action in while serving in Korea, while Nelson was killed in action serving in Vietnam. Following service in wartime, McGee spent more than 40 years working in the steel industry and also served in multiple civic organizations. He died in 2020, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Cavazos continued service in the Army until 1984 and retired as a four-star general. He died in 2017. David, the only living medal recipient, has spent the decades following the Vietnam War serving military veterans in his community, Austin said. "These heroes risked everything for their country, and often made the ultimate sacrifice," Austin said. "Their stories should be more than just a source of pride. They should be a source of inspiration. And they should be a spur to action." It sometimes takes decades, or longer, to finally recognize the gallant actions of service members in combat situations. Austin said it took the work of many to bring to light the actions of the seven inducted into the Hall of Heroes. "The recognition that we bestow on these heroes today is long overdue," he said. "But we got here. And we got here thanks to the loved ones and the advocates who kept pushing, year after year." Among those, he said, were the fellow soldiers who witnessed their actions and who wrote their commanding officers, families, civic groups, journalists, alumni chapters, members of Congress, congressional staffers and veterans. "You have all helped us to see the unmatched valor of these men's deeds -- and to forever set them in their rightful place of honor," Austin said. "Let us do more than honor the service and sacrifice of these American heroes. Let us strive to live up to their example. And let us protect and strengthen the republic that they loved so much." Austin Challenges Contact Group to Keep Supporting Ukraine [2025-01-09] WASHINGTON -- At the conclusion of the 25th meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, the last such meeting for Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, the outgoing secretary challenged group members to maintain the level of support to Ukraine they have built over the past three years. Today, at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, Austin concluded the last meeting of the group he spearheaded the development of in April 2022. As part of his departure, he asked the nearly 50 members nations who participate in providing support to Ukraine in its fight against Russia, to keep up that support and not falter in their commitment to Ukraine's sovereignty. "In my final hours at Ramstein as secretary of defense, I mourn for every Ukrainian man, woman and child killed in Putin's murderous war, and I salute the Ukrainian troops who are fighting so bravely for their country and for their freedom," Austin said. "And this coalition has had their backs for nearly three hard years of war, and we must not stop now. So, I'm leaving this contact group, not with a farewell, but with a challenge: The coalition to support Ukraine must not flinch. It must not falter, and it must not fail. Ukraine survival is on the line, but so is all of our security." When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, many nations stepped up to provide support, by delivering weapons and munitions. But Austin said he knew at the time that in order for Ukraine to succeed in preserving its sovereignty, that support must be coordinated. "I opened our hastily arranged first meeting by urging some 40 countries to build a common understanding of the situation in Ukraine," he said. "Today, this ... group provides more than a common understanding, it provides a common cause. And today, some 50 countries of conscience are coordinating closely with Ukraine to send vital, consistent and cutting-edge security assistance. And that has helped turn Ukraine's struggle into one of the great military success stories of our time." With the support of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Austin said, Ukraine has been getting the weapons and supplies it needs to defend itself from continued Russian aggression. At the same time, he said, America and partner nations who are providing support to Ukraine have made sure to maintain their own readiness as well. The secretary highlighted the stark difference between how Ukraine equipped itself at the start of the Russian invasion, with how it is equipped now. "Ukraine has started to fly fourth generation fighter jets," he said. "It now fields advanced Western air defense capabilities, and it produces and operates state of the art unmanned systems. All of this positions Ukraine to defeat Russian aggression today and to deter Russian aggression tomorrow. And so our work has changed the course of history." Altogether, Austin said, the UDCG members have contributed more than $126 billion in security assistance to Ukraine. That includes tanks, air defense systems, combat vehicles, munitions, F-16 aircraft and training for pilots. In providing that equipment, Austin said, the United States and other UDCG member nations have also increased support to their own defense industrial bases. "The Ukraine crisis exposed some shortcomings in our defense industrial base," he said. "We've still got a lot more work to do. But we have galvanized our own defense industry, investing nearly $70 billion at home to produce capabilities for Ukraine and replenish our own stocks." At his last meeting of the group he created, Austin said the group has accomplished a lot. But Russia still remains in Ukraine, and the work is not yet concluded. "We have come so far over the past ... 25 meetings of this contact group and the structure of this coalition is built to succeed, built to adapt, and built to last," he said. When the contact group stood up, Austin said, he said the group's creation reflected a galvanized world, and that Russia's war was both reckless and lawless. The secretary said he still believes those things. "I will always be proud that the Ukraine Defense Contact Group has held high the torch of security and freedom, and so I will keep saying it: free people must refuse to replace an open order of rules and rights with a violent world of force and fear." U.S. Military Already Fighting Fires in California, Ready to Do More [2025-01-10] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department now has 500 active-duty troops and a variety of equipment on standby to assist with the wildfires in California, said the deputy pentagon press secretary. "As announced by the president, 500 active-duty personnel currently stationed at Camp Pendleton, California, are preparing to support requests from federal and state authorities with route clearance, commodity distribution, search and rescue, rotary wing, airlift and general support, as requested," said Sabrina Singh during a briefing today. Those 500 active-duty personnel are from the Marine Corps, she said. March Air Reserve Base, about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, is also now serving as a staging base for efforts by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Singh also said that a defense coordinating officer and support element are being activated as well. The department is also preparing some 10 Navy-provided helicopters with water delivery buckets to assist with aerial fire suppression, Singh said. Those Navy helicopters, along with aircrew, are coming from California's Naval Station North Island, Marine Corps Air Station Camp Pendelton and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. "Under a long-standing memorandum of agreement with CAL FIRE, active-duty units in Naval Region Southwest are prepared to provide aircraft and aircrew to support the firefighting efforts," Singh said. "These units are trained and annually certified by CAL FIRE to provide supplemental firefighting capability when requested by the state of California and approved by the [secretary of defense.]" More than 800 National Guard personnel from California, Wyoming and Nevada are already on the ground or have been activated to provide assistance. The Guard is also operating 10 helicopters for firefighting and search and rescue operations. "This number is expected to increase over the next 24 hours," Singh said. Additionally, eight Modular Aerial Fire Fighting Systems, or MAFFS-equipped C-130 aircraft are being activated under state authorities. The first two, Singh said, are expected to begin operations today, while the remaining six are expected to be ready by Sunday. The firefighting operations in California are coordinated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in concert with CAL FIRE and the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services. The Defense Department, Singh said, is a supporting agency to the effort. "There's so many different fires raging in California," Singh said. "We have to work in coordination with the state and FEMA when it comes to how we address each single fire. And not just the fires; it's the road clearing, it's the management, it's how people get back to their homes. All of this knits together very carefully and in an intricate way that is going to take a little time, it's going to take some coordinating." Singh said DOD resources work best when there is a plan in place to make sure they are used the most efficiently. "You just don't want to surge a bunch of capability and resources into a region without a full plan," she said. "So that's what we're doing, and we're working very closely with the state to make sure that we're getting their needs met." Defense Innovation Board Recommendations Continue to Advance National Security Efforts [2025-01-14] WASHINGTON -- Over the past four years, the Defense Innovation Board has been a powerful advisory resource to advance innovation within the Defense Department, and to provide the secretary and deputy secretary of defense with independent, practical, and actionable advice and recommendations about how to make use of that innovation. "The Defense Innovation Board has played a pivotal role in driving innovation within the [Defense Department]," said Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III. "Over the past four years, the DIB's diverse expertise and practical recommendations have provided the department with valuable insights and actionable strategies to accelerate innovation at speed and scale, ensuring that the DOD remains at the forefront of technological advancements and prepared to meet the challenges of the future." The board originally stood up in February 2016. After a brief hiatus and subsequent reappointment in 2021, the insights and recommendations provided by the DIB have continued to strengthen department efforts to scale and adopt innovative technologies and systems. "Innovation is a never-ending imperative for DOD, and I'm deeply proud of the progress we've made over the last four years -- substantially lowering barriers to innovation across the DOD-enterprise, from the boardroom to the battlespace," said Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks. "There's no doubt about it: innovation adoption is fundamentally a change-management problem. That's why we've employed an effective theory of change -- building trust and confidence across the defense enterprise, demonstrating what's possible, rewarding game-changers, and promoting the best ideas and success through teamwork." Board Chairman Michael R. Bloomberg was nominated to lead the board in February 2022 by Austin. Since that time, he has guided board efforts related to artificial intelligence, software, data, digital transformation, culture change and workforce development. "Serving on the Defense Innovation Board has been an honor and a responsibility we committed to in support of our men and women in uniform," Bloomberg said. Since its reappointment, the DIB has delivered eight significant studies with more than 150 strategic and tactical recommendations meant to breach innovation barriers and furnish state-of-the-art capabilities to the warfighter more quickly and at scale. In July 2023 for instance, the DIB delivered a study titled "National Defense Science and Technology Strategy: An Innovation Strategy for the Decisive Decade," which focused on aligning the department to its first congressionally authorized NDSTS. A second study, titled "Strategic Investment Capital Task Force Study: Terraforming the Valley of Death," discussed the time it takes for a contractor within the industrial base to transition a prototype or commercially available product to a DOD contract. In January 2024, the study "Lowering Barriers to Innovation" examined key domains related to innovation, including leadership, security, enterprise license agreements and dual-use technologies, for instance. That report also outlined specific barriers to innovation, business outcomes that might result from the removal of those barriers and pragmatic steps for implementation. The "Building a DOD Data Economy" study, also made available in January 2024, focused on establishing reliable and scalable data access, and treating data as a product to support the warfighter. That study provided best practices adopted from industry and adapted to the DOD context in areas such as leadership, people, process, technology, incentives and implementation. From those four reports alone, nearly half of their 73 recommendations have since been implemented within the department. Last summer, the DIB published "Optimizing Innovation Cooperation with Allies and Partners," which responded to challenges such as supply chain issues, comparative technical weaknesses, and threats to sustainable and interoperable partnerships. By addressing these challenges, the DIB pointed to the imperative of innovation with key allies through NATO, the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, the Australia-U.K.-U.S. partnership, and the Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience. The report's recommendations ensure those partnerships remain enduring and scalable. The "Aligning Incentives to Drive Faster Tech Adoption" study, also published last summer, focuses on aligning incentives to drive faster technology adoption within the department. That report identified gaps between current DOD and industry incentive structures and developed a communication and rollout plan to disseminate and scale these aligned incentives centering on leadership providing top cover, embracing calculated risk and iterating to learn from failure. Since the publication of these two studies, a third of their 65 recommendations have been adopted for implementation. This month, the DIB published two new significant studies. The first of those, "Scaling Nontraditional Defense Innovation," focuses on using contracting to procure and field commercial and dual-use capabilities. A second report, "A Pathway to Scaling Unmanned Weapon Systems," examines the essential elements needed to achieve superiority in manufacturing, acquiring and fielding of unmanned systems. The DIB's work in areas across military innovation and emerging technology adoption has been instrumental in advancing the department's innovation agenda, Austin said. Additional information can be found on DIB reports and recommendations. Defense Department Bids Farewell to Outgoing Commander in Chief [2025-01-16] WASHINGTON -- At Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Virginia, today, the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff bid farewell to President Joe Biden, who has served as commander in chief of the U.S. military for four years. The leaders praised Biden's contributions to the military and support for service members. The president secured funds needed to support the department's mission, equipment and troops, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., said. He also ensured the U.S. military remains prepared for whatever challenges are on the horizon. "President Biden's work with Congress on bipartisan legislation has set our military on a course to confront the threats of tomorrow, to ensure our warfighters are ready when the nation calls," Brown said. "He supported significant investments in shipbuilding to modernize and expand our naval fleet. We are on track to increase the number and lethality of our fighters and bombers and to expand our space domain capabilities." Brown said DOD is now able to increase long-range fire capability, implement next-generation combat vehicles and improve air and missile defense. The department is also modernizing its nuclear triad. He attributed all of this to Biden's leadership. But Biden's impact can be felt on more than just improved equipment, the chairman said. "President Biden has worked tirelessly to care for our men and women in uniform and their families, improving the quality of military housing, providing historic pay raises and implementing new programs to expand the benefits available to all service members," he said. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said the president dramatically strengthened America's global network of allies and partners. "He rallied the free world to help Ukraine fight for its freedom after Putin's indefensible invasion [and] positioned America to succeed in strategic competition with the People's Republic of China," the secretary said. Under Biden, Austin said, NATO expanded with the inclusion of Sweden and Finland. And when Hamas attacked Israel, the president demonstrated America's commitment to Israel's security. "He helped defend Israel from outrageous direct attacks by Iran, and he's prevented the Middle East from erupting into an all-out regional war," Austin said. "And he has just secured a ceasefire that will stop the fighting in Gaza, surge more humanitarian aid to suffering Palestinian civilians and reunite the hostages with their families." Austin said he learned a lot from working with the president over the past four years. "Mr. President, it has been an honor to serve with you," the secretary told Biden. "I hope that future presidents and secretaries of defense will enjoy similar relationships of trust, candor and friendship. Our entire department stands together today. We salute your service to the republic that we defend, [and] we are deeply, deeply grateful for your love of our troops." Biden told the troops gathered at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall that serving as their commander in chief has been the greatest honor of his life. "While I'm deeply grateful for your thanks and affection," the president said, "I'm here to thank you for your service to our nation [and] for allowing me to bear witness to your courage, your commitment, your character." Biden thanked service members for, among other things, concluding the 20-year conflict in Afghanistan, the department's efforts to defend Ukraine against Russia and Israel against Hamas, for operations in the Red Sea to defend commerce there against Houthi attacks, and for their work in growing the strength and size of the NATO alliance. "Everything I and others have asked of you, you've done ... with honor, commitment, grit and guts," he said. "Let me close with a final request. I say it not as your president or commander in chief. I say it as a man who spent 50 years of his life serving his country in a different way: remember your oath." The president said the U.S. military is the strongest, best-trained, best-equipped fighting force in the world, but that is not what makes it the best military in the world. "It's our values -- American values -- our commitment to honor, to integrity, to unity, to protecting and defending not a person or a party or a place, but an idea," he said. That idea, Biden said, part of the Declaration of Independence, is that all Americans are created equal and are endowed with certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. "That's the idea that generations of service members have fought for, an idea you've sworn an oath to defend," the president said. "As a nation, we've never fully lived up to that idea, but we've never, ever, ever walked away from it. And our country is counting on you to ensure that that will always be true." Defense Secretary Directs Creation of Task Force to Restore America's Fighting Force [2025-01-29] WASHINGTON -- In a memorandum sent to leaders across the U.S. military today, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the creation of a task force to oversee the strengthening of a military based entirely on merit. "The Department of Defense has an obligation to the American public to ensure their sons and daughters serve under the best leadership we can provide them," said Hegseth. "Doing so is a national security imperative. A foundational tenet of the DOD must always be that the most qualified individuals are placed in positions of responsibility in accordance with merit-based, color-blind policies." The "Restoring America's Fighting Force" Task Force, the secretary said, will be established by the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness and is charged with overseeing department efforts to eliminate organizations, offices and policies that perpetrate non-merit factors such as sex, race or ethnicity over factors such as lethality, meritocracy, accountability, standards or readiness. "To ensure DOD focuses on its core mission of providing the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation's security, the department will ensure all decisions related to hiring, promotion and selection of personnel for assignments are based on merit, the needs of the department, and lastly, the individual's desires," Hegseth said in the memorandum. As part of its mission, the task force will oversee the standing down of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion offices across the department and military services along with the cessation of actions initiated by those offices which promote, among other things, ideologies related to systemic racism or gender fluidity. The secretary has set a March 1 deadline for an initial report from the task force regarding its activities and June 1 as the deadline for a final report. As part of the memorandum, Hegseth spelled out clearly an array of ideas the Defense Department will adhere to going forward, and which the task force will in part help it achieve. Among those is that DOD will no longer regard an individual's sex, race, or ethnicity when considering that person for promotion, command or special duty. At the same time, the department will eliminate sex, race or ethnicity-based goals for organizational composition, academic admission and career fields. When it comes to training the force, including within military service academies, the secretary said the department would no longer provide instruction on concepts such as Critical Race Theory, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or gender ideology. Finally, advisory boards, councils, and working groups related to gender ideology, DEI and CRT will stand down. On Monday, President Donald J. Trump released an executive order titled "Restoring America's Fighting Force," which prohibits any preference or disadvantage for an individual or a group within the armed forces on the basis of sex, race or ethnicity. The task force will ensure the department meets the goals set out by the president. "The DOD mission is to win the nation's wars," Hegseth said. "To do this, we must have a lethal fighting force that rewards individual initiative, excellence and hard work based on merit." U.S., DOD's Commitment to Israel Includes Munitions Previously Withheld [2025-02-05] WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today at the Pentagon for a discussion following last night's meeting between the prime minister and President Donald J. Trump at the White House. "We're honored to stand alongside you and stare down many of the same threats that you do, and under President Trump's leadership, just like you, we are totally committed to achieving peace through strength," Hegseth told Netanyahu. He noted that the relationship between the U.S. and Israel is longstanding, and he expects it to continue and grow as the U.S. steps up its commitment to the country. "We are going to continue to grow our defense industrial base, "Hegseth said. "We've supplied munitions that were previously not supplied [and] that are useful in eradicating radical enemies, and we are committed to continuing to do so." The U.S. authorized the release of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, Jan. 25, 2025, a munition that had previously been held back. The president told reporters at the time that those weapons had been paid for and that Israel had been waiting "a long time" for their delivery. Hegseth also highlighted the mission given to him by the president, which is to achieve peace for the United States by building a stronger military. "I hope you've noticed here at the Defense Department, under President Trump, we are laser-focused on reviving the warrior ethos, on rebuilding America's military and reestablishing deterrence, which is something you ... have done in your neighborhood in impressive, aggressive and important ways," Hegseth said. Peace through strength is a concept Israel shares with the United States, Netanyahu said. "The only way to get peace, and enduring peace, is by being very, very strong," he said. "And with our alliance and your support, including the decision ... of supplying Israel the much-needed tools for our defense, we are a lot stronger than we've ever been." First Flight of Illegal Aliens Arrives at Guantanamo [2025-02-05] WASHINGTON -- The first flight of high-threat illegal aliens out of the United States arrived at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, today. According to the Department of Homeland Security, all 10 of those illegal aliens are part of the transnational criminal organization "Tren de Aragua." Last month, the White House designated that group as a foreign terrorist organization. "Their campaigns of violence and terror in the United States and internationally are extraordinarily violent, vicious and similarly threaten the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere," the White House executive order reads. At Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, the 10 high-threat illegal aliens who arrived today are being housed in vacant detention facilities. They are not being held alongside war on terror detainees who also reside at the installation. Late last month, the White House announced in a memorandum for the defense secretary and the secretary of Homeland Security that facilities at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay should be used to house high-threat illegal aliens as they are moved from the United States back to their countries of origin. "I hereby direct [DOD] and [DHS] to take all appropriate actions to expand the migrant operations center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States," the memorandum said. Many of the criminal illegal aliens being deported from the U.S. are traveling directly to their countries of origin via U.S. military aircraft. The use of military aircraft, or "gray tails" for that purpose, is new, said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. In some cases, Hegseth said, where it may take longer to reach agreements or process those individuals' return to their nations of origin, DOD needs a place to house them before they return home. "We want somewhere else to hold them safely in the interim -- criminal illegals -- Guantanamo Bay ... is a perfect place," Hegseth said last week during an interview. He also noted that he served at that installation from 2004 to 2005. "It's folks who may be in transit to their home country or a safe, third harbor country, and it's taking a little time to move with that processing and with the paperwork," he said. "Better they be held at a safe location like Guantanamo Bay." Hegseth said the use of Naval Station Guantanamo Bay as a waypoint for moving high-threat illegal aliens is a "plan in movement." "We're ramping up for the possibility to expand mass deportations because President [Donald J. Trump] is dead serious about getting illegal criminals out of our country," he said. "And the DOD is not only willing to [but] is proud to partner with DHS to defend the sovereignty of our southern border and advance that mission." Shared Challenges, AUKUS Partnership Top Topics as U.S., Australian Defense Leaders Meet for First Time [2025-02-07] WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met today with his counterpart Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Richard Marles during a bilateral meeting at the Pentagon to discuss shared defense roles, security priorities, and the challenges and opportunities both nations see in the Indo-Pacific. It's the first such meeting Hegseth has had with one of his counterparts, though he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Feb. 5, 2025. A big part of their discussion involved progress on the Australia, U.K. and U.S. trilateral security agreement, known as AUKUS, which has been in place for just over three years. The first pillar of that agreement involves the delivery of a conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarine capability to Australia and also significant investments in the industrial bases of all three partner nations. As part of that plan, Australia will buy three Virginia-class submarines from the U.S. to be delivered in the 2030s. Together, all three partner nations will also develop a new platform called "SSN-AUKUS," which is expected to be ready for use by the U.K. in the 2030s and by Australia in the 2040s. The second AUKUS pillar involves enhancing joint capabilities and interoperability between the three nations. Hegseth said President Donald J. Trump is very familiar with the agreement and equally supportive of it. "The president ... recognizes the importance of the defense industrial base," Hegseth said. "It enhances our ability in the [subsurface] space, but also our allies and partners ... this is not a mission in the Indo-Pacific that America can undertake by itself. It has to [include] robust allies and partners. Technology sharing and subs are a huge part of it." A big part of AUKUS involves Australia investing heavily in the U.S. submarine industrial base. This week, in advance of Marles' visit with Hegseth, Australia made the first payment of $500 million toward a $3 billion promised investment. "AUKUS is a very powerful symbol of our two countries working together in the Indo-Pacific," Marles said. "It represents a very significant increase of the American footprint on the Australian continent, something that we very much welcome. It represents an increase in Australian capability through the acquisition of a nuclear-powered submarine capability. But what comes with that is it also represents an increase in Australian defense." He said Australia wants and is willing to pay for an increase in its defense. "We really understand the importance of building our capability, but [also] in paying our way," he said. "That is a very important principle that we bring to bear, and one of the aspects of that is the contribution that we're making to your industrial base." Defense Secretary Renames Fort Liberty as Fort Bragg, Honoring WWII Soldier [2025-02-11] WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth yesterday signed a memorandum directing that Fort Liberty, North Carolina, be renamed to Fort Bragg. The new name honors Army Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, a native of Sabattus, Maine, who enlisted in July 1943 at age 23. He served during World War II with the 513th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 17th Airborne Division, XVIII Airborne Corps. Bragg received the Silver Star for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity and a Purple Heart for wounds sustained during the Battle of the Bulge. As part of his actions, Bragg saved a fellow soldier's life by commandeering an enemy German ambulance so that he could transport a wounded service member 20 miles to an allied hospital in Belgium. The ambulance was under enemy fire the entire time. Following WWII, Bragg returned home to Maine and married. He owned an auto body shop and later a company that moved buildings. In 1984, he also ran a business that operated a portable sawmill. Bragg died in January 1999 and is buried in Nobleboro, Maine. The North Carolina installation, one of the largest in the U.S. Army, is home to the XVIII Airborne Corps and its 82nd Airborne Division, as well as the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. The installation was initially called Camp Bragg from 1918 until it was redesignated as Fort Bragg in September 1922. In 2023, the name was changed to Fort Liberty. With direction signed yesterday by Hegseth, the installation will again be called Bragg, but this time in honor of Army Pfc. Roland L. Bragg. "I was honored to be able to put my signature on that [memorandum,] by the way, with the support of the president of the United States, who set the tone on this and said 'I want Fort Bragg back,'" Hegseth told reporters during a briefing today in Stuttgart, Germany. "We're honored to support a private first class who received a Purple Heart and the Silver Star at the Battle of the Bulge." For nearly a century as Camp Bragg and subsequently as Fort Bragg, tens of thousands of soldiers trained and deployed to crises and conflicts around the world in defense of the nation, Hegseth wrote in his memorandum. "Fort Bragg has a long and proud history of equipping, training, and preparing our soldiers to fight and prevail in any operational environment," he said. Hegseth said the move to rename Fort Liberty to Fort Bragg was about restoring the legacy of the service members who trained and served there. "It's about that legacy; it's about the connection to the community, to those who've served," he said. The secretary also said that there are other installations being looked at which may undergo name changes as well. Hegseth Tells NATO Hard Power Provides Deterrence, Defense [2025-02-13] WASHINGTON -- Following a meeting today of NATO defense ministers, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that America's allies must do more to defend Europe. And that "doing more" means spending more money, contributing more guns, missiles, troops and hardware, and taking more leadership responsibility. NATO's European partners, Hegseth said, should take primary responsibility for defense of the continent, which means security ownership by all allies, guided by an understanding of the strategic realities. "Our expectation of our friends -- and we say this in solidarity -- is you have to spend more on your defense, for your country, on that continent, understanding that the American military and the American people stand beside you, as we have in NATO," he said. President Donald J. Trump set a target for NATO-nation defense spending at 5% of gross domestic product, Hegseth said. The defense secretary noted that NATO allies Estonia and Lithuania are already there. But money isn't enough. Increases in troop readiness, weapons production and force contributions are also included. "We can talk all we want about values. Values are important," Hegseth said. "But you can't shoot values, you can't shoot flags, and you can't shoot strong speeches. There is no replacement for hard power." Hard power includes demonstrating military readiness and equipping military forces with the right weapons and tools -- provided by a strong, functioning defense industrial base with adequate capacity. The secretary said every NATO ally must revive their defense industrial bases. "One of the self-evident conclusions of the war in Ukraine was ... the European continent and America'[s] underinvestment ... in [their] defense industrial base[s] -- the ability to produce munitions [and] emerging technologies rapidly and field them, was a blind spot exposed through the aggression against Ukraine," he said. The U.S., Ukraine and Europe are all expanding their industrial bases, but more must be done. "Deep and dramatic reforms are coming at the Defense Department with the leadership of President Trump to ensure that we're investing robustly in our defense industrial base," he said. "A great example is shipbuilding. We need to vastly increase our ability to build ships and submarines. Not just for ourselves, but to honor obligations to our allies as well, and we will do that." Hegseth said the Foreign Military Sales program -- the system by which American allies can purchase American-made ships, missiles and aircraft -- also needs reform to ensure the U.S. can provide weapons more quickly to partners, Hegseth said. "Part of being a good faith partner is we're going to invest in our defense industrial base, [and] we're going to make sure foreign military sales are as rapid as possible, which, again, is a force multiplier for American power, which is something we want to do in a contested world," he explained. The U.S. has been a NATO partner for more than 75 years now -- last year was the alliance's 75th anniversary. Hegseth promised the U.S. would continue to be a strong NATO partner in the years ahead. He also said that for NATO to continue to be as strong as it has been, every partner would need to commit more. "NATO is a great alliance, the most successful defense alliance in history," Hegseth said. "But to endure for the future, partners must do far more for Europe's defense. We must make NATO great again. It begins with defense spending. It must also include reviving the trans-Atlantic defense industrial base, rapidly fielding emerging technologies, prioritizing readiness and lethality and establishing real deterrence." DOD Prepares Invitation to Bring Back Troops Separated for Refusing COVID Vaccine [2025-02-14] WASHINGTON -- Over the course of 500 days, beginning in 2021, nearly 8,000 active duty and reserve service members were involuntarily separated from service for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Many others left voluntarily to avoid the vaccine mandate. Now, the Defense Department plans to invite those service members back into uniform at the same rank they held when they separated. President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 27, 2025, regarding reinstating service members discharged under the department's COVID-19 vaccine mandate. As part of the executive order, active duty and reserve service members who were discharged solely for refusing to receive the COVID-19 vaccine may request reinstatement to their former rank. The Defense Department rescinded the mandate to take the COVID-19 vaccine on Jan. 10, 2023. Last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness to provide guidance to the military departments on how to proceed. "This guidance will provide procedures to rapidly reinstate individuals who were involuntarily discharged or voluntarily left to avoid vaccination," Hegseth wrote. That guidance, now in the hands of the military departments, details the efforts the service branches must take. A large part of that effort involves records reviews: identifying service members who were involuntarily separated or voluntarily separated to avoid vaccination and then communicating with those service members to let them know they are invited back into service. Service members involuntarily discharged, solely for their refusal to take the vaccine, will be contacted directly by their respective services, according to the guidance. "The secretaries of the military departments will invite these service members to seek reinstatement by applying to have their records corrected to reflect continued service such that back pay, benefits, bonus payments, or other compensation, subject to required offsets, will be available," the guidance reads. To inform the service members who were involuntarily discharged of the option to return to uniform, the military departments will make direct contact with them by written letter, email, if possible, and a telephone call. The Board for Correction of Military/Naval Records will correct the military records of service members separated involuntarily. For those who voluntarily left the service or allowed their service to lapse due to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, the military services will reach out through broad communications, including social media, website content, or newsletter, to let them know about the process if they are interested in returning to service. That process includes, among other things, submitting a written statement attesting that they chose to leave the service or allowed their service to lapse rather than be vaccinated under the mandate. Service members who voluntarily separated will not receive back pay, bonuses, or other compensation. In both cases, whether service members were separated involuntarily or separated of their own will, rejoining the military will require them to accept a two-year commitment to continue military service and meet current military retention standards. When Hegseth took his role at the Pentagon last month, he promised to restore America's warrior ethos, rebuild the military and reestablish deterrence. Inviting service members back who refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine is firmly in line with those goals, he said. "We need to do everything we can to recruit and retain a force that meets the highest necessary standards," Hegseth said. "This effort will help us reach that goal." Brown: Build the Force by Being Seen [2025-02-18] WASHINGTON -- The military has no plans to bring back conscription as the all-volunteer force has served the United States well for decades, said Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. At the end of January 1973, then-Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird announced the military would, going forward, fill its ranks exclusively with volunteers rather than draftees. Since then, Brown said the military has found the decision to be a good one. There are challenges in building a force with volunteers only. The COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, shut down many schools, creating new barriers for recruiters to meet with enlistment-aged students. Competition with the private sector for talent has also made it harder for the military to attract new service members. A decline in the number of veterans -- about 18% of Americans in 1980 versus about 7% today -- has meant there are fewer former service members who are able to talk about the value of military service. During a Feb. 15, 2025, discussion at the Munich Security Forum in Germany, Brown said the military is meeting its recruiting numbers despite those challenges. However, to continue being successful, the military must make itself more well-known to the civilian community, as many Americans have no connection to it. "What we have to do is actually get out and be seen as a military," Brown said. "As I came in as the chairman, one of the things I laid out as one of my expectations is that trust is the foundation of our profession, and that trust starts with what we do to support our service members, but it's also how we engage with our communities." Service members come from across the nation, but there are pockets in the U.S. where military bases exist, for instance, that produce more new volunteers than other places. The department must work to encourage more young Americans from other parts of the country to volunteer, which means engagement and building trust. "The connection with the community is something we have to strive to do so we can actually engage with young people," he said. "But not just with young people, but their influencers. Whether it's their parents, their coaches, their scout leaders, their ... church leaders, that can point them in the direction. But we also have to talk about the opportunities that are available by serving." Being seen, Brown said, provides perhaps the biggest boost to knowledge of military service and its value. "We've got to be seen and engaged with our communities," he said. "When our community gets a chance to meet our service members, they're so impressed. We've got to make that opportunity happen. And so, part of that is making sure that our service members get off the base and engage in the communities so they can be seen as well." Military Spouses Exempted From Return-to-Work Mandate [2025-02-18] WASHINGTON -- While the president has ordered federal employees who have been working remotely and teleworking back to their offices, an exception is now in place for those federal employees who are spouses of military service members. The Office of Personnel Management released a memorandum titled "Guidance on Exempting Military Spouses and Foreign Service Spouses from Agency Return to Office Plans" on Feb. 12, 2025. The memo explains how federal civilian employees who are also military spouses are exempt from the return-to-work mandate. "Agencies should ... ensure that their return-to-office plans categorically exempt all military spouses authorized to engage in remote work," the memorandum explains. "This includes both military spouses appointed under the Military Spouse Employment Act authorities and those appointed under other hiring authorities." The memo also said agencies may continue hiring military spouses in remote work positions. According to the memorandum, the policy covers spouses of members of the armed forces on active duty, spouses of service members who retired with 100% disability, and spouses of service members who died while on active duty. Spouses of National Guard members on full-time guard duty are also included. The memo also covers spouses of U.S. foreign service members. "Agencies should ensure that all such military and foreign service spouses are permitted to continue with any applicable remote work arrangements," the memo says. Across the active-duty military, more than 48% of service members are married. Their spouses face challenges finding employment because the military lifestyle includes frequent moves, making it difficult to commit to a single employer or develop a career. That inability to find meaningful work makes life even more difficult for families who may depend on having a dual-income household.  According to DOD's "2023 Demographics Profile of the Military Community," approximately 64% of military spouses want to be employed. Of the spouses who want to be employed, about 79% have found work, while about 21% are unable to find work. The new policy memo from OPM will help keep many military spouses employed and serve as a critical recruitment and retention tool. "Rebuilding our military starts with recruiting and retaining the right people. Spouse employment is a key factor in that task, helping the department retain service members with hard-earned skills by easing the financial strain on their families," said Tim Dill, who is currently performing the duties of assistant secretary of defense for manpower and reserve affairs. Dill is an Army veteran and Green Beret who served as an infantry and Special Forces officer in the 82nd Airborne Division and 3rd Special Forces Group. He said his military service gave him a deep understanding of how military service affects family life. "I witnessed firsthand the challenges that military families face, including frequent moves, long hours and deployments," he said. "Helping military spouses find and keep jobs helps our military families thrive in challenging circumstances, making us a more focused and lethal force." Department Tells Gold Star Families: We'll Find Loved Ones, Bring Them Home [2025-02-22] WASHINGTON -- Today in Sacramento, California, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency held one of the largest-ever family member updates in its history. Some 380 Gold Star families attended to learn how the agency is proceeding in efforts to repatriate the remains of service members who never returned home from the Vietnam War, the Korean War or World War II. Around the nation, the DPAA holds several family updates each year so the families of service members who went missing in action can meet with officials one-on-one to discuss the details of their cases. Since 1995, DPAA has conducted these family updates, reaching more than 31,000 family members through face-to-face meetings. More than 81,000 service members still remain unaccounted for from conflicts dating back to World War II. According to DPAA, 71,981 service members are missing from World War II, 7,444 are missing from the Korean War, 1,573 are missing from the Vietnam War, and 126 are missing from the Cold War. Finding those service members and bringing them home is the sacred duty of the DPAA, said Fern Sumpter Winbush, the principal deputy director of DPAA. "Not only is this mission a sacred obligation, but it's a moral imperative," she told families. "The agency exists because there are unaccounted for ... there are men and women who gave their ultimate all. We serve the families because you are the ones that are still here. You are relying on us because we're the only ones that are doing this mission. We'll continue to put [the] mission first. We're not going to accept defeat. We'll never quit, and we're never going to leave a comrade behind." Winbush told family members that the DPAA mission would take recovery operations to 33 territories and countries this year. The ability to do that requires building relationships with nations around the world to earn the trust needed to gain access. It's something she said the agency will continue to work on. Right now, she said, there are 10 ongoing missions in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines. Winbush also stressed to families in attendance the importance of getting family member DNA on file. "We can't make an identification unless we have something to compare it to," she said. "For many of the unaccounted-for, we don't have the proper family reference samples on file. This is one way we work to collect them." Also, she noted the number of young people attending the family member update and stressed how important it is that families keep other family members aware that a family member who served overseas never returned home and that the DPAA is still looking for them. "We need third, fourth, and even fifth-generation families to stay on top of their loved one's loss," Winbush said. "We don't forget ... we have all of the records. But it's critically important that you stay on top of it so that the story can continue to be told." She said it's common for DPAA to call families with a notification that a loved one has been found, only to find that some families were unaware or don't believe what they are being told. "They don't know this mission exists," she said. "They don't believe that we're still searching for their great, great uncle [or] father ... from World War II," she said. "We've got to keep all of the families involved." As part of the family member update, the DPAA also unveiled its annual poster, which will be used later this year to commemorate National POW/MIA Recognition Day, Sept. 19, 2025. This year's poster was created by artist Jeanie Huffman, the daughter of Navy Cmdr. Edward James Jacobs Jr., a Vietnam War pilot who never came home. He went missing Aug. 25, 1967, while piloting an RA-3B Skywarrior aircraft over the Gulf of Tonkin in North Vietnam. When her father left for Vietnam, Huffman was only two weeks old. She was just five months old when her mother learned her father went missing. She said her father had been able to hold her as an infant before he deployed for the war, but there's no record of that for her to look at today. "One thing that kind of bothers me ... I have no photos of that," she said. "I wish I had a picture of him and me, and I don't." Back in 2018, Huffman attended her first DPAA family member update in Greensboro, North Carolina. There was not a lot of information then about recovery efforts for her father, and this was because her father had been put into a non-recoverable status. Huffman's husband, Dave, explained what had happened. "In 1993, when previous iterations of what's now the DPAA [were] charged with the mission, there was an order that came out to try to touch as many sites as possible," he said. "They got in a boat and went out to the grid coordinates of the last known location of the airplane and said there's no visible wreckage." That finding resulted in Jacobs and the crewmen he was with being deemed unrecoverable -- which stood until January 2024. However, the two did their own research and were later able to convince DPAA to begin anew in an effort to find Jeanie Huffman's father. "We had a meeting with the DPAA in Washington, D.C., and we presented our research and investigation to them in November of 2023, and they revisited his case, and now his case and the two crewmen that were with him have all been changed from non-recoverable to active pursuit," Dave Huffman said. This year's DPAA annual poster is not Jeanie Huffman's first for the agency. However, it is the first time one of her works will be used as part of the agency's official National POW/MIA Recognition Day commemoration. On the poster are five service members -- four men and one woman -- representing each service and the conflicts from which there remain service members who have not come home. "It was important to capture all the conflicts of the POW/MIAs," she said. Another aspect of the poster is that each individual photographed, representing each service and each conflict, is wearing period uniforms and gear. "I believe that each of our missing is still seeking their way home, and they expect that our nation's promise will be kept, which is to bring them home," she said. 'Zero Trust' Architecture Could Prevent Adversary Data Theft, Protect Warfighters [2025-02-26] WASHINGTON -- Without the right level and right kind of cybersecurity architecture in place, adversary nations will continue to infiltrate U.S. military and partner networks, including contractors within the defense industrial base, and steal important information, which may include details on weapons systems. The Defense Department's Zero Trust architecture, expected to reach "target level" implementation in fiscal year 2027, will protect military networks from adversaries. By that time, DOD anticipates having implemented 91 of the 152 target activities that were identified in the department's Zero Trust Strategy and Roadmap, which was released in 2022. A Zero Trust architecture is one that assumes no one who uses the network can be trusted. In such a setup, users might be allowed access only to information and applications they are authorized to use. Past network security might have put a wall around the whole network, and once inside, a user would have free rein within the system. In a Zero Trust environment, users must regularly prove they are authorized to see and interact with data, applications and resources. With just over 2.5 years left before fiscal year 2027, the department has made progress toward reaching its Zero Trust goals -- but more has to be done, said Marine Corps. Col. Gary Kipe, chief of staff of DOD's Zero Trust Portfolio Management Office. "We have 31 months until we hit FY27," Kipe said Feb. 19, 2025, during the Zero Trust Summit in Washington. "[According to] the latest analytical review of the implementation plans that we have received back from across the enterprise, we're doing well." The Zero Trust PMO said current data shows that across all 58 components, 14% of target level Zero Trust activities were completed by October 2024. Over the next 18 months, a non-linear acceleration of effort will put the department on the path to achieving target level Zero Trust before the end of FY27. Two areas where Kipe said the department needs to get ahead, and soon, involve implementation of a federated identity, credential and access management, or ICAM, solution as well as adoption of data tagging standards and their implementation. "If we don't have that, we're going to get all the way to the end and not have the final push across the finish line," he said. A data tagging and labeling standard is a structured framework that defines consistent metadata, classification and access-control attributes for actors across the enterprise. When data owners appropriately tag data, it becomes possible for appropriate data access controls to be put in place. A federated ICAM solution allows the identities of users to be centrally managed to ensure authorized and authenticated access across DOD platforms. According to the Zero Trust PMO, several funded efforts are underway to advance both a federated ICAM solution and a data tagging and labeling standard. While Zero Trust is meant to protect Defense Department networks, it's not just about protecting data. It's also about protecting those who use and depend on data, including warfighters. "Zero Trust ensures warfighters receive secure, real-time mission data while denying adversaries access to critical systems, even if networks are compromised," Kipe said. "By enforcing continuous authentication and microsegmentation, it prevents unauthorized access, insider threats and cyberattacks from disrupting operations. This means faster, more reliable intelligence, communications and logistics, directly enhancing combat effectiveness and survivability in contested environments." Deputy Defense Secretary Nominee Talks DOD Audit, Strengthening Industrial Base [2025-02-26] WASHINGTON -- A war room may serve as a nerve center for Defense Department efforts to pass an audit, said Stephen A. Feinberg, who testified yesterday before the Senate Armed Services Committee after he was nominated by President Donald J. Trump to the position of deputy defense secretary. If confirmed, Feinberg would be responsible for the Defense Department's day-to-day business and would have primary responsibility for managing the defense budget and executing the defense secretary's priorities. With current budget challenges threatening the ability of military services to meet current and future needs, Feinberg said he thinks there is a lot of room for improvement in how the department conducts business. "There is great opportunity to improve our cost structure, our efficiency, our operations [and] to really save a lot of money that could be plowed into [the] mission," he said. Noting that DOD does not currently have good financial accountability or financial metrics, Feinberg said it also has too many poor financial systems in place. "[There is an] awful lot of low-hanging fruit there, so we can improve our cost structure," he said. "This is in my wheelhouse ... I spent a career helping organizations improve." Lawmakers asked Feinberg, who has more than 40 years of experience in private sector financial markets, how he would go about helping the department pass an audit. He said those responsible for the Pentagon budget are often not as involved in the details as he thinks they should be, and he said he would change that. "In my humble opinion, at times, some of the people in the operational execution jobs are not involved in detail," Feinberg said. "We're going to set up a war room if I'm fortunate enough to be confirmed and we're going to go over every program, every cost, line by line, with an army of people, until it's done." In an effort to pass an audit, Feinberg said, there will be a focus on details that result in DOD knowing exactly where it spends its money. "We're going to understand where our costs are, why we don't have our audit, where the financial problems are, and everyone's [going to] come up with a plan to fix it," he said. For strengthening and growing the defense industrial base -- the American companies who build hardware for the nation's military -- Feinberg said there need to be people within DOD who are far more familiar with how private sector companies work and what needs to be done to make it easier to develop and manufacture weapons and munitions. "Our supply chain is definitely weak. Our workforce needs to be improved," he said. "A big piece of improving our supply chain is working more closely with our private sector. We need people inside of government [who] understand their issues, understand what drives their boards, [and understand] what drives the pressure they get from shareholders." He said that knowledge will enable the Defense Department to work with more companies willing to enter the defense industrial base. We certainly have the manufacturing capability to meet the shortages in our supply chain, and we've got to encourage those companies to do it, Feinberg said. Last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said DOD would refocus about 8% of its budget away from nonlethal programs and inefficiencies and put that money instead toward the president's "America First" priorities for national defense. Feinberg cited for lawmakers an inefficiency in DOD program requirements that drives up the cost of programs like aircraft, helicopters and ships. It's something he thinks needs to change. Our program requirements are very rigid and expensive, he said. "We can get the job done with the simplification of many of those requirements." DOD Offers Health Care Flexible Spending Account to Service Members [2025-02-27] WASHINGTON -- Enrollment for the new Health Care Flexible Spending Account benefit runs from March 3-31, 2025. Service members can sign up and put as much as $3,300 in pretax earnings into an account each year, which can be spent on qualifying health care expenses. "A Health Care Flexible Spending Account is an optional benefit that enables service members and their families to use pretax earnings to pay for eligible health, dental and vision care expenses," said Ronald T. Garner, the assistant director of military compensation policy within the Defense Department. Garner said that married service members who are both eligible for an HCFSA can maintain two separate accounts and contribute as much as $6,600 each year. Component service members, reservists and National Guardsmen on Active Guard Reserve duty and members of the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve on active duty for more than 180 days are all eligible to participate. The HCFSA is already available to federal civilian employees and to many in the private sector, but it's only now available to service members. Garner said it's something the department has been working on for a while. TRICARE, he said, is an extensive program, but can't cover everything, and in some cases, an HCFSA may help. "No health care, no health insurance program is going to cover every cost, and many costs are unforeseeable," he said. "For instance, if your child gets sick in the middle of the night, you're not going to wait until you can go see a doctor to get some cold medicine. You're going to run down to the local pharmacy and grab some cold medicine and bring it back so that you can take care of your child. That's a cost that will be covered by the HCFSA." Eligible service members should look closely at their own financial situation and how much they expect to spend each year on health care expenses before deciding to contribute, he said, adding that some service members are more likely to benefit from an HCFSA than others. "I would say that, in my experience, this is going to be really valuable to military families," he said. "For example, I think that there's going to be a lot of value to those who have family members who are part of the Exceptional Family Member Program. I think those families tend to incur a lot of expenses and often unforeseen expenses that others do not. I think a program like this is going to be particularly beneficial to that group of service members and their families." Typically, enrollment in programs like an HCFSA occurs only during Federal Benefits Open Season, which runs from mid-November through mid-December. With the announcement of the new HCFSA benefit for service members, a special enrollment period is available from March 3-31, 2025. At other times of the year, Garner said, an array of qualifying life events will also allow service members who are not already signed up for an HCFSA to enroll outside the typical open season. Some of those life-changing events include deployment, a permanent change of station, marriage, or the birth of a child, he said. According to DOD's "2023 Demographics Profile of the Military Community," about 46.7% of service members are married, and about 36.7% of service members have dependent children. For those members, making sure their families are taken care of and that their financial situation is squared away is something that contributes to military readiness, said Garner. "When families are more financially secure, the force is more ready and more lethal," he said. "When service members are having to worry less about the welfare of their families and their financial welfare, they are more focused on the mission. And I think that can only benefit the organization." Use of an HCFSA, for some service members, lowers overall taxable income, putting more money in their pockets to spend in other areas, Garner said. And that means those military families will be more confident that they are taken care of. "These men and women have given parts of their lives to serve their country and to serve their fellow citizens, and I think that certainly deserves recognition," Garner said. "We become better when we care about the welfare of our service members, not only because of its impact on the mission, but because of its impact on the nation and on those service members and their families." Before enrolling in the HCFSA, service members should talk with a military tax expert, DOD personal financial manager, or personal financial counselor to learn how to take advantage of the account and how it will benefit them. These services are available at no cost to service members. Eligible service members can sign up for an HCFSA at FSAFEDS.gov during this special enrollment period, which runs through March 31, 2025. They can also sign up during the annual federal benefits open season, which runs from mid-November to mid-December, or if they experience a qualifying life event. Hegseth Directs Civilians to Prepare 5 Bullet Points on Weekly Work [2025-03-02] WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday signed a memorandum to all Defense Department civilian employees directing them to prepare five bullet points detailing their work accomplishments from the prior week. On Monday, March 3, those same employees can expect an email from the Defense Department requesting that same information, he wrote. Within 48 hours they are expected to reply to that email, with their accomplishments included, and add their supervisors as recipients. The responses, Hegseth said in a video statement released today, will be consolidated internally within the department in order to satisfy related directives from the Office of Personnel Management. Last weekend, OPM sent a request for the same information, but the department's Office of Personnel and Readiness told employees to stand down on the request. Now that the department has worked with OPM to get more clear guidance on what is expected, Hegseth said employees can start writing their submissions. "The Department of Defense initially paused this directive ... but now requires all DOD civilian employees to submit five bullets on their previous week's achievements," Hegseth said in his memorandum. According to guidance from the secretary, it is an email from the Defense Department employees should respond to. That email will come Monday, and responses to it should not include classified or sensitive information. Additionally, Hegseth said in his memorandum, non-compliance may lead to further review. Civilian employees who will not have email access in the 48 hours following delivery of the email due to being on leave, shift work or other reasons, are to complete the request within 48 hours of regaining access, the secretary wrote. Additionally, civilian employees who do not typically have email access will work with their supervisors to meet the request. In his video statement to the civilian workforce, Hegseth said civilian employees are important to the department's mission, and that submitting five bullet points about their work will support that. "Our civilian patriots who dedicate themselves to defending this nation working for the Department of Defense are critical to our national security," he said in his video statement. "As we work to restore focus on DOD's core warfighting mission under President Trump's leadership, we recognize that we cannot accomplish that mission without the strong and important contributions of our civilian workforce." Initial DOGE Findings Reveal $80 Million in Wasteful Spending at DOD [2025-03-04] WASHINGTON -- A quick review of some of the initial findings within the Defense Department by the Department of Government Efficiency reveals some $80 million in funds wasted on programs that do not support DOD's core mission. In a social media video posted yesterday evening, Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell read off a few of the initial findings from DOGE, which revealed expenditures many service members would be hard-pressed to connect to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's focus on lethality, meritocracy, accountability, standards and readiness. "At the DOD, we've been working hand in hand with the DOGE team," Parnell said. "And as the secretary said, we welcome that process because that process will make us more lethal. And that means that our warfighters on the battlefield will be more successful." Among the DOGE findings, Parnell highlighted $1.9 million for holistic diversity, equity and inclusion transformation and training; $6 million to the University of Montana to "strengthen American democracy by bridging divides"; $3.5 million by the Defense Human Resources Activity to support DEI groups; and $1.6 million to the University of Florida to study the "social and institutional detriments of vulnerability and resilience to climate hazards in [the] African Sahel." Altogether, he said, the full set of initial findings of DOGE reveals about $80 million in wasteful spending that could be better spent on lethality and readiness. On the day he was sworn in, Hegseth released a message to the force spelling out his three top priorities. Those include reviving the warrior ethos and restoring trust in the military; rebuilding the military by matching threats to capabilities; and reestablishing deterrence by defending the homeland. Parnell said the DOGE team is just getting started rooting out department expenditures that are not aligned with the secretary's top priorities. "This stuff is not a core function of our military. This is not what we do. This is a distraction from our core mission," he said. "Today's actions are just the start; [there is] more to come this week. Again, we are working hand-in-glove with DOGE. So, stay tuned in the weeks ahead as we trim the fat, preserve the muscle, [and] make the DOD more mission-capable and more lethal." President Says Military Recruiting Up, So Too Will be American Shipbuilding, 'Golden Dome' [2025-03-05] WASHINGTON -- During his first address to a joint session of Congress, March 4, 2025, President Donald J. Trump said that the changes he's made since his inauguration in January have enhanced recruiting within the U.S. military in ways that haven't been seen in years. On his first day in office, the president signed an executive order ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the federal government. Less than a week later, newly sworn-in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth drafted a message to the force that mirrored the president's words, saying he would rebuild the U.S. military with a focus on lethality, meritocracy, accountability, standards and readiness. "Our service members won't be activists and ideologues," Trump said. "They will be fighters and warriors. They will fight for our country." The president said the result of his executive order has filtered down into the armed forces, putting a new focus on merit and spurring renewed interest in serving. "I am pleased to report that in January, the U.S. Army had its single best recruiting month in 15 years and that all armed services are having among the best recruiting results ever in the history of our services," Trump said. "What a tremendous turnaround. It's really a beautiful thing to see people love our country again ... they love our country, and they love being in our military again." The president also said the United States will pursue a "Golden Dome," similar to Israel's own "Iron Dome" defense system, which is designed to protect against inbound missile attacks. "My focus is on building the most powerful military of the future," Trump said. "As a first step, I'm asking Congress to fund a state-of-the-art, 'Golden Dome' missile defense shield to protect our homeland -- all made in the USA." The president said that President Ronald Reagan had wanted to build a similar system during his term, but the technology wasn't available at the time to bring that project to fruition. But now, he said, that technology exists. "Israel has it, other places have it, and the United States should have it, too," he said. "This is a very dangerous world. We should have it. We want to be protected. And we're going to protect our citizens like never before." Trump also promised an expansion of American shipbuilding in order to support both the U.S. military and the commercial sector. American shipbuilding is at a low point today, but the president promised new efforts to increase America's shipbuilding efforts. "We are also going to resurrect the American shipbuilding industry, including commercial shipbuilding and military shipbuilding," Trump said. "I am announcing tonight that we will create a new Office of Shipbuilding in the White House and offer special tax incentives to bring this industry home to America, where it belongs." The president said the U.S. once had a great domestic shipbuilding industry, which has largely died down now. That will change, he promised. "We used to make so many ships. We don't make them anymore, very much," he said. "But we're going to make them very fast, very soon." The president also said he planned to take action to expand domestic production of rare earth elements, which are critical to U.S. defense. "Later this week, I will also take historic action to dramatically expand production of critical minerals and rare earths here in the USA," he said. Rare earth permanent magnets, for instance, are not only essential components in a range of defense capabilities, including the F-35 Lightning II aircraft, Virginia and Columbia class submarines and unmanned aerial vehicles, but are also a critical part of commercial applications in the United States. They are also used to generate electricity for electronic systems in aircraft and focus microwave energy in radar systems. Finally, Trump said that the mastermind behind the terrorist attack at Abbey Gate during the August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan has been captured. Some 13 American service members were killed during that attack. "I am pleased to announce that we have just apprehended the top terrorist responsible for that atrocity, and he is right now on his way here to face the swift sword of American justice," Trump said. We'll Find You, Hold You Accountable: Exercise Proves U.S. Can Find Nuclear Event Perpetrators [2025-03-05] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department and a team of interagency partners led by the FBI engaged in an iteration of the Prominent Hunt exercise to validate the team's ability to gather evidence to support presidential decision-making during a nuclear attack scenario. "The Prominent Hunt exercise series not only tests the U.S. government's technical capabilities, it also serves as a mechanism to reinforce the soft skills of collaboration and teamwork among federal, state and local partners," said Susan Ferensic, assistant director of the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. Participants included the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, the FBI and DOD. In particular, from DOD was the Army's 20th CBRNE Command and the Air Force Technical Application Center. Together these agencies make up the National Technical Nuclear Forensics Ground Collection Task Force. Prominent Hunt took place Jan. 26-31, 2025, in the vicinity of Schenectady, New York, and in the surrounding counties of Albany and Saratoga. In the event of a nuclear detonation, the ground collection task force is responsible for collecting nuclear ground debris samples near the site of the detonation and transporting those samples to DOD laboratories for analysis, said Brian Kohler, the director of Nuclear Forensics, Energy and Survivability within DOD's Office of Nuclear Matters. The results of that analysis, coupled with input from the intelligence community, allows the U.S. government to discover who the responsible party for a detonation is. "These technical skills and tools deny potential perpetrators -- including state sponsors of terrorism -- anonymity and ensure they will be held fully accountable. Prominent Hunt exercises are key to demonstrating these capabilities," said Wendin Smith, NNSA associate administrator and deputy undersecretary for counterterrorism and counterproliferation. The U.S. publicly demonstrating its ability to uncover responsible parties to hold them accountable has a deterrent effect, Kohler said. It's not just about finding guilty parties after an attack; it's about letting adversaries know in advance they will be found out. "National technical nuclear forensics is absolutely a part of nuclear deterrence by messaging to our adversaries that the United States government has the capability, should there be a nuclear detonation," Kohler said. Explosions Nuclear forensics was mandated by Congress in the early 2000s as a response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. One of the goals was to enhance the ability to use forensic evidence from the nuclear debris to discover who was responsible for a nuclear detonation inside the contiguous U.S. But those explosions that Prominent Hunt focuses on are not from nuclear missiles like those that might come from a nuclear-armed adversary nation. When people think of nuclear detonations, their first thought is ballistic missiles and bomber aircraft, said Timothy Jacomb-Hood, the senior scientific advisor for the Office of Nuclear Matters. However, nuclear forensics is focused on deterring attacks by terrorists using an improvised nuclear device or by states who plan to deny responsibility for an attack. These types of attacks won't be traceable from a launch within a nation. If a nuclear detonation occurs in a city, the ground collection task force is going to be essential to understand where it came from and how it got there. Without on-the-ground evidence collection, it's more difficult to identify the perpetrator of those types of detonations, Jacomb-Hood said. "In those scenarios, you're less certain, and you need to know with total confidence who was responsible for this attack so that we can inform our senior leaders, and they can determine the appropriate response," he added. In addition to using forensics to uncover perpetrators of a nuclear detonation, nuclear forensics is also used to determine the origin of interdicted or recovered nuclear or radiological materials or devices that have been lost, stolen or smuggled. Radiological Fingerprints After such a detonation, the ground collection task force sets to work collecting evidence needed to help find those responsible. In particular, Jacomb-Hood said that what they are looking for is radioactive debris that can be analyzed. The unique signatures of the uranium or the plutonium can help determine what nation created it. "We're looking for those radiological fingerprints, those things that are unique to different countries, to be able to point back to where the nuclear weapon came from," he said. In some cases, he said, it's easier to identify that some radiological material could not have come from a particular nation. Even eliminating potential nations enables the intelligence community to be more successful in determining where radiological material did come from. To gather radiological evidence, the ground collection task force must know where to look for it. Part of the team's capability is predicting the best place to look for evidence. "When a nuclear detonation occurs, you see the traditional mushroom cloud. And in that cloud are the debris that we want to collect," Jacomb-Hood said. "But we need to do various models of the detonation and the local weather to determine where the best debris [is] going to fall." That effort involves gathering information about where the explosive device was when it was detonated, how big of a yield it was, and then comparing that with weather models to find wind direction and wind speed so that a determination can be made about the best place to collect debris, he said. "[The Air Force Technical Applications Center] is using that to know where to send the 20th CBRNE collectors," Jacomb-Hood said. "They're going to multiple locations to get a range of different samples that are then used, back at the labs, to determine through various scientific processes what the original device was." It's not just ground collection of radiological evidence that happens, there are other avenues as well, he said. In a real-world situation, the Air Force also collects airborne debris using aircraft, and there also is input from satellite data. "We're going to fuse all of that data together, all that scientific data and then combine that with intelligence data and put all of these different puzzle pieces together to give our senior leaders an assessment of [who] perpetrated this attack," he said. Success In this most recent iteration of Prominent Hunt, Drew Walter, deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear matters, said the ground collection task force accomplished their goal successfully and was validated. "The National Technical Nuclear Forensics program recently validated the ground collection task force during Prominent Hunt. Our DOD team demonstrated their readiness to collect forensics-quality debris samples, working with their FBI and NNSA partners. Our ability to gather post-detonation debris and perform nuclear forensics analysis is a key element of our nuclear deterrent. Through NTNF, our senior leaders are provided a confident assessment of the responsible actor, ensuring appropriate response options," Walter said. In the coming weeks, Kohler said, the department will also produce and publish an after-action review of the exercise. In August, Kohler said, there will be another iteration of Prominent Hunt. The exercise occurs about every six months so that the teams performing the ground collection stay sharp, and the interagency partnership is a well-oiled machine. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency's exercise division was brought on board to assist in exercise planning, Kohler said. Going forward, DTRA will have a larger role in this portion, which will allow the Office of Nuclear Matters to focus more on oversight and guidance. Space Force's Fundamental Role: Space Superiority [2025-03-05] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Space Force's primary function is to ensure control in, from and to the space domain. Speaking March 3, 2025, at the 2025 Air and Space Forces Association Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colorado, Space Force Gen. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations, didn't mince words about what the force is meant to do. "Domain control is the special province of warfighters, a unique responsibility that only military services hold," he said. "It is the thing that distinguishes the Navy from the merchant marine and the Air Force from Southwest Airlines. It is the purpose of the Space Force to achieve space superiority." The Space Force will achieve that through "space control," what Saltzman called the service's newest core function. "Put simply, space control encapsulates the mission areas required to contest, to control the space domain, employing kinetic and non-kinetic means to affect adversary capabilities by disruption and degradation, even destruction, if necessary," he said. Space control, Saltzman said, includes things like orbital warfare, electromagnetic warfare, and counterspace operations that can be employed for offensive and defensive purposes. Saltzman said the force has not always discussed space control openly, but now is the time to do that. "Why would you have a military space service if not to execute space control?" he asked. "If we're going to truly embrace our status as space warfighters, then we need to also embrace our fundamental responsibility for space control." There's not yet been a war in space, Saltzman said, which means there are no guardians with space combat experience. However, readiness for a future fight is still the top priority for space warfighters. "We need to sharpen every one of the components of readiness: personnel, training, equipment and sustainment. If any one of these elements is lacking, then our readiness as a whole is impacted," Saltzman said. While Space Force leadership is responsible for setting policy and advocating for more people and resources, guardians at the lowest levels must ready themselves for the next fight. "We know space superiority is an end goal [and] it's the headquarters' job to provide the means to achieve it, to create the environment, set the conditions for victory, but it's the job of the warfighters in the field to define the way to connect the two," Saltzman said. He added that the Space Force doesn't yet have all the best training tools available to those who need them. The service is still in the process of acquiring all the simulators and training capabilities it needs. "So, we have a disconnect between the plan and the operational reality, between the end and our means," he said. "That's where I need your help. I would love to wave a wand and give every crew [an] advanced virtual reality trainer that incorporates the latest and greatest threat data, but I can't. So, does that mean the solution is to shrug, mark it red, and move on? Absolutely not." Instead, Saltzman said, guardians must figure out the best way to give themselves the readiness they need until leaders can provide them with better tools. "You're going to have to figure it out because that's what you do; because that's what the nation needs you to do," he said. "If advanced training is nothing more than a whiteboard, whiteboard sessions, talking about tactics and threats, it's fine. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing." While headquarters works to get the best training tools available to guardians, Saltzman said, those service members will need to find other ways to make themselves ready. When it comes to equipment, he said, every squadron must be accurate and forthcoming with documenting what it needs. "Every squadron has an equipment table that lists the critical tools it needs to accomplish its mission," he said. "Are we confident that every table is accurate and complete? Does it include things like infrastructure, the power, [and] the cooling we need to actually employ our weapons systems? If not, why not?" Without having a complete picture of what units across the force need, Saltzman said, Space Force budgets will never be complete or accurate. "The headquarters can't fix problems it doesn't know about, and as much as I would like to, I'm not on the [operations] floor anymore to find out," he said. Saltzman said every guardian is a warfighter, no matter what they do. "Every guardian contributes to Space Force readiness," he said. "Whether you built the gun, pointed the gun, [or] pulled the trigger, you are a part of a combat capability. That's what it means to put on the uniform in a military organization, and we all need to take pride in our roles." While headquarters leaders advocate for more people, money and policy support, he said guardians across the Space Force must also do their part. "I need guardians in the field to find a way. This is a partnership. The headquarters will drive everything it can from the top down, but I need you to meet us from the bottom up," he said. "And I'm confident there will come a day [when] we finally put the institutions [and] processes in place to take the heroics out of our daily activities. But until then, I need your ideas. I need your effort." Transcom Asks Lawmakers for More Used Vessels [2025-03-06] WASHINGTON -- To bolster America's Ready Reserve Force fleet, U.S. Transportation Command wants to buy as many as 10 used shipping vessels. "We need to both build it here, and we actually need to buy used," Air Force Gen. Randall Reed, Transcom's commander, told the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday while testifying on Capitol Hill. The Ready Reserve Force fleet of ships is part of the U.S. military's strategic sealift capability that provides the ability to rapidly conduct initial resupply missions and to transport Army and Marine Corps equipment during critical surge periods. The government-owned RRF fleet is made up of commercial vessels crewed by civilian mariners and it is ageing. The median age of the 46 roll-on/roll-off ships in the fleet is 47 years. "These ships are really, really old," Reed said. "The reliability of them [is] sometimes in question because of that. I take my hat off to the crews that are actually on them to keep them warm. But to give an idea of the state of the ships, some of these ships are still run by steam." Reed said it is vital to recapitalize and modernize the RRF fleet to ensure continued credible global deterrence. "In the short term, we would need maximum flexibility to buy used foreign ships on the commercial market, obtain those ships, [refurbish] them here in the states, and then put those ships to sea," Reed told lawmakers. Already, Transcom has received permission from Congress to buy as many as 10 used ships. It's already bought seven and wants to buy two more this year, Reed said. The most immediate need is to secure two ships on the open market, get them into a shipyard, and then reflag them within nine to 14 months, he said. The last of the ships will be bought in fiscal year 2026, closing out the command's ability to procure used vessels. Reed told senators he'd like permission to get as many as 10 more used ships to fill out the ageing fleet. "I am asking for the limit to be raised beyond 10 to allow us to actually shop the market," he said. "Currently, there are 10 ships available for us to pursue." Permission for Transcom to recapitalize the fleet though the purchase of additional used ships needs to be written into the National Defense Authorization Act, Reed told lawmakers. "If we can get that change, ideally, what we would need to [recapitalize] the fleet [is] four ships a year, and if they're available on the market, we would pursue that," he said. "At a minimum, we would need two a year." Buying used ships to recapitalize the fleet is one option. Reed said buying new is also a possibility. During an address before a joint session of Congress, March 4, 2025, President Donald J. Trump promised an expansion of American shipbuilding. "We are also going to resurrect the American shipbuilding industry, including commercial shipbuilding and military shipbuilding," Trump said during his address. The president announced the creation of a new Office of Shipbuilding and made plans to create tax incentives to enhance and grow America's domestic shipbuilding industry. "We used to make so many ships," Trump said. "We don't make them anymore, very much. But we're going to make them very fast, very soon." This Week: Border Security, Base Renaming, Good Get for West Point, All Indicators of Thriving DOD [2025-03-07] WASHINGTON -- In North Carolina today, Fort Liberty was redesignated as Fort Bragg. That change follows a memorandum from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed in February. This week, the secretary signed a similar memorandum, which directs the redesignation of Fort Moore, Georgia, to Fort Benning. That installation will be named in honor of Army Cpl. Fred G. Benning, who served during World War I. "Cpl. Benning was the living embodiment of the Infantryman's Creed, as he never failed his country's trust and fought to the objective to triumph for his unit and his country," Hegseth wrote in Monday's memorandum, adding that the directive to rename the installation after Benning "recognizes the heroes who have trained for decades at the installation" and "honors the warfighter ethos." The secretary specified no date for the name change, but it took the Army just 25 days to comply with Hegseth's Feb. 10, 2025, memorandum directing the renaming of Fort Liberty. "Benning is back," said Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell during a weekly update video posted today to social media and DVIDS. Parnell also discussed this week's visit by the defense secretary to the U.S. southern border. "The secretary joined Vice President JD Vance, along with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, at the southwest border," Parnell said. Following his visit to the border, Hegseth noted an approximately 98% drop in illegal border crossings since the new administration took office; "the deterrent effect is there" when it comes to border security, he said. "President [Donald J. Trump] gave us a charge: 100% operational control of the southern border. Border security is national security," Hegseth said. He added that DOD plays a part in enforcing the new border policy, which differs from the previous border policies. "We're sending those [criminal illegal immigrants] home, and we're not letting more in," he said. Another big win this week, for both a young man from California and the U.S. military, happened March 4, 2025, in the U.S. Capitol during the president's first address to a joint session of Congress this year. "The president surprised Jason Hartley with a moment of a lifetime," Parnell said. "His application to West Point has officially been accepted." Hartley and his mother attended the president's speech as guests. His acceptance into the United States Military Academy at West Point is the culmination of years of dedication, a testament to his grit, and a tribute to the family legacy of service that shaped his path. "I'm still processing it," Hartley said during an interview the following day. "I've wanted this for so long, and to hear it from the president, in front of Congress -- it's unreal. I'm just so grateful." Hartley's father was an Army veteran who later served as a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy. He died in August 2018, a loss that only deepened the young man's resolve to honor his family's military legacy. "My dad had a huge impact on me wanting to join the Army," Hartley said. "He enlisted after high school in 2002 and got medically discharged in 2008. He didn't talk much about his service -- he was quiet about it -- but I could see how much he loved his country." Upon graduating from one of the most prestigious schools in the nation, Hartley will emerge as an Army officer and be ready to serve the nation as his father once did. Fort Liberty Becomes Fort Bragg, Renamed for Battle of Bulge Hero [2025-03-07] WASHINGTON -- Last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memorandum directing that Fort Liberty, North Carolina, be renamed as Fort Bragg. Today, that order was implemented. The new name for the largest installation in the Army honors Army Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, a native of Maine, who enlisted in July 1943 at age 23. During World War II, he served with the 513th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 17th Airborne Division, XVIII Airborne Corps, and completed his Army training at the installation that now bears his name. Following that training, he left for the European theater. "On a bitter cold January morning outside of Bastogne, Belgium, as the Battle of the Bulge raged, he would put that training to [the] test," said Army Lt. Gen. Gregory K. Anderson, commander of XVIII Airborne Corps. "The 17th Airborne, or the 'Golden Talons' division, was engaged in a fierce battle over a critical piece of terrain. During that fighting, Pfc. Bragg was wounded and taken prisoner along with four other paratroopers." At a German aid station, Anderson said, one of the paratroopers talked with the German guard. The two found commonality in that they were both Freemasons. "They somehow convinced the German guard to let the prisoners go, but only if Pfc. Bragg first knocked the German guard out with a rifle, so it looked like he struggled," Anderson said. "Wounded as he was, Pfc. Bragg was more than happy to oblige, as well as he took the German soldier's uniform, and then he commandeered a German ambulance nearby." With the wounded paratroopers loaded in the ambulance, Bragg drove back to the American lines while taking fierce enemy fire the entire time. The young soldier was sure enemy fire had killed all the wounded paratroopers he was hoping to save. Even after reaching an allied hospital, he remained unsure of the condition of his passengers and was never told if his actions saved their lives. "It was for this action that Pfc. Bragg earned the Silver Star, the third highest military decoration for valor in combat," Anderson said. "He was a hero, but we can only imagine the burden he carried for years believing he had let his fellow paratroopers down." Following the war, Bragg returned to Maine and married his wife Barbara in 1946. The couple raised three daughters, Linda, Diane and Deborah. Diane attended the base renaming ceremony. "Bragg rarely spoke of his service," Anderson said. "And for nearly 50 years, he continued to believe he was the sole survivor of the desperate flight from captivity in the Ardennes." In the early 1990s, as the 50th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge approached, John Martz, another member of the 17th Airborne Division who fought in the war, reflected on his own wartime experience. "John, too, had been wounded in battle near Bastogne and found himself in a barn 20 miles behind the German lines," Anderson said. "Someone, a nameless paratrooper, had loaded him and three others into an ambulance and drove them to safety." Martz wanted to know more about the man who saved him. So, he began a letter-writing campaign to the surviving members of his division, looking for information about what happened to him. One of those letters made its way to Roland Bragg. Bragg later told a reporter that upon reading the letter from Martz, "chills went up and down my spine." "Roland traveled to California and was reunited with the paratrooper whose life he had saved," Anderson said. "Two ordinary men, bound by an extraordinary moment, found each other across the decades. This reunion wasn't just a footnote in Roland's story. It was and stands as a testament to the bonds forged here in this place, bonds that many who have trained and served here would immediately recognize and feel." While Bragg's military history during WWII is now a matter of record, his personal life and the kind of man he was as a civilian are best known to his family. His granddaughter, Rebecca Amirpour, said he was a loving grandfather, devoted husband, father and grandfather, and a pillar of his community in Nobleboro, Maine. She also said he was shy about discussing his military service. "I never saw my granddad wear his military uniform," she said. "He was not one to go to a Memorial Day parade or a Veterans Day parade. Even one Memorial Day, when I was marching in a parade in our town, he was working." Amirpour said she remembers, in the mid-1990s, when her grandfather first heard from John Martz via the letter. "My grandfather had spent his entire life thinking everyone in the back of that ambulance had died, and I feel like it was a tremendous gift for him to learn that someone had survived," she said. "It was a true blessing." From her grandmother, Amirpour said, she learned something of her family history and a bit of her grandfather's time in the war. "My grandmother told me that she and my grandfather were dating before he left for the war, and she decided to send him a Parker pen and pencil set with metal caps for Christmas," Amirpour said. "When he got that set, he wore it over the pocket, over his heart." Amirpour said his strategic placement of that pen and pencil set later saved his life. "When he was hit in the chest with shrapnel, the metal pen and pencil prevented the shrapnel from entering his heart," she said. Amirpour recounted a passage from a letter Bragg wrote to his brother and sister-in-law while recovering in an Army hospital. "This war is no fun ... there is too much grief in it," she read from Bragg's letter. "I lost a lot of my buddies, but they all went down fighting. I learned one thing, and that is rank doesn't mean a thing when you're in a tight spot. It's the ones with a little common sense. All I can say is that I thank God that I'm still here today." Bragg died in January 1999 and is buried in Nobleboro. "I think my granddad, if he were here today, would encourage the folks here to use their common sense to work hard in school and beyond," she said. "And most certainly, he would want them to appreciate the importance of giving back and making an impact on your own communities when you're done with your service to your country." For his actions in WWII, Bragg was awarded the Silver Star for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity, and a Purple Heart for wounds sustained during the Battle of the Bulge. He was trained at both Fort Bragg and Camp Mackall, North Carolina, before deploying to Europe. He served as a toxic gas handler. Anderson said it's been 80 years since Bragg trained on the installation that bears his name and that Fort Bragg has since then served as the force generation platform where the best American soldiers are built and the place from which they deploy to every major conflict around the world. "It has been my experience that this place and our nation and our Army are chock full of people like Roland Bragg," Anderson said. "Fort Bragg is where soldiers transform, where the ordinary find the extraordinary, and where the call finds its answer; where a quiet man from Maine emerges a hero. In his honor and in the shared legacy of all who have called this place home, we answer the call. Welcome back to Bragg, [and] may this place continue to forge heroes for our nation." Mass Timber, 3D Printing May be Future of Military Construction for Army, Navy [2025-03-11] WASHINGTON -- Army and Navy barracks may one day be 3D printed or built using mass timber construction that involves large wooden structural beams manufactured from smaller lumber. Today on Capitol Hill, Dave Morrow, director of military programs for Army Corps of Engineers, and Keith Hamilton, chief engineer for Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command, met with lawmakers from the House appropriations committee, subcommittee on military construction, veterans affairs, and related agencies, to discuss the current and potential future uses of innovative construction techniques and technologies by the armed forces. Additive construction -- 3D printing buildings -- high performance cement and concrete mixes, geosynthetics, mass timber, composite materials, industrialized construction, tension fabric structures and carbon fiber reinforced polymers were all part of the discussion with lawmakers about how the Army and Navy can develop the most cost efficient and resilient military construction projects. "In an increasingly complex global security environment, our commitment to innovation in military construction is not just about building structures, it's about building the resilience and readiness our forces need to prevail," Morrow said. "By working with industry to leverage these advancements, we can deliver more durable, sustainable and cost-effective infrastructure for our military, ensuring taxpayer dollars are used efficiently, while equipping our troops with the best facilities in the world." The Army Corps of Engineers, Morrow said, has already piloted 3D printed construction at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, and Fort Bliss, Texas. At Fort Bliss, three new projects involving barracks were constructed using 3D printing technology. Morrow said this technology can be used in garrison or in expeditionary environments. "Additive construction has [the] potential to reduce costs, manpower, logistics and time, while opening the door for improved and new applications, such as unconventional countermeasures," he told lawmakers. The USACE's Engineer Research and Development Center has played a part in the development of unified facilities criteria, to allow additive construction in 80% of the United States, Morrow said. The criteria, developed jointly, sets basic technical requirements that must be followed to deliver code-compliant, complete and usable military facilities. In Hampton Roads, Virginia, the Navy is now piloting the use of mass timber, also called cross-laminated timber, for construction of a child development center, Hamilton said. In testimony submitted to the committee, Hamilton said the new facility will use a hybrid mass timber exterior envelope consisting of cross-laminated walls and diaphragms. "DOD has expressly acknowledged the applicability of CLT with the creation of a guide specification," Hamilton said. "As the CLT construction industry matures, CLT may prove more competitive and could be utilized more broadly in DOD construction." The USACE is also working with mass timber projects, Morrow said. "We recently designed the Army's first barracks made primarily with mass timber structural elements and are soliciting interest in construction of a project at Mountain Home Air Force Base, calling for the incorporations of mass timber design," he said, adding that mass timber construction in those projects may reduce construction timelines. At Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina, NAVFAC was involved in piloting the use of high-performance concrete to build a new F-35 Lighting II hanger, Hamilton told lawmakers. Advancements within HPC include durability, strength, and resistance to extreme environmental conditions, as well as improved thermal and acoustic properties. "HPC has been used extensively for our piers, runways and other critical infrastructure; and we are broadening its application," Hamilton wrote in submitted testimony. Like USACE, Hamilton said, NAVFAC is looking to newer technologies to provide better facilities and better capabilities to warfighters. "NAVFAC is actively testing and employing innovative technologies, materials and methods for design and construction today, and we are leaning forward to increase collaboration with industry, academia and other government partners to identify and leverage future opportunities," Hamilton said. Within the Navy, he told lawmakers, new guidance requires NAVFAC planners and engineers to evaluate if new military construction projects can use alternative construction methods to meet warfighting requirements, lower costs and accelerate project delivery. This Week: Defense Department Sharpens Standards, Flushes Climate Change Policies, Restarts Support of Ukraine [2025-03-14] WASHINGTON -- High standards, including physical fitness, body composition and grooming, will be central to a U.S. military that will only get stronger and more lethal. In a memo Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness to look across the military services and investigate current standards, how those standards may have changed over the past decade, and the impact of those changes. "High standards are what made the United States military the greatest fighting force on the planet," Hegseth told defense leaders. "The strength of our military is our unity and our shared purpose. We are made stronger and more disciplined with high, uncompromising and clear standards." A laser-like focus on standards has been a top priority for the new defense secretary since the day he was sworn into office. In a message to the entire Defense Department just hours after becoming secretary, he promised to revive the warrior ethos, in part, with high, uncompromising and clear standards. "Our troops will look sharp -- not sloppy; and the DOD will seek quality -- not quotas," said Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell during a weekly update video posted today. Parnell also said the department has altered its view on climate change efforts across the department and military services. "The Pentagon ... announced that we are eliminating woke climate change programs and initiatives inconsistent with our core warfighting mission," he said. For example, late last week, the DOD announced cuts to more than 90 studies within the portfolio of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. Those cuts are expected to provide the department with more than $30 million in cost savings in the first year. Among those studies were those related to global migration patterns, climate change impacts and social trends. But Hegseth has said from the start that the DOD's focus now is on improving lethality, warfighting and readiness, not climate change and other programs and initiatives inconsistent with its core warfighting function. In a social media post on Sunday, the secretary solidified the department's commitment to the new focus with a blunt assessment of what the department will and will not be doing going forward. Hegseth added that the DOD will be moving away from climate change discussions. Also, this week, Parnell said U.S. support for Ukraine is restored. The United States has committed billions of dollars in security assistance to Ukraine through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and by providing hardware and munitions pulled from the U.S. military inventory. For a short time, work related to existing commitments was stopped. Now it has started again. "Ukraine aid and intelligence sharing was reactivated in response to [Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's] acceptance of a 30-day ceasefire," Parnell said. "The president and the secretary of defense have been very, very clear: The U.S. wants to see peace in Ukraine. The killing must stop." U.S. Punches Back at Iran-Backed Houthi Terrorists in Yemen [2025-03-17] WASHINGTON -- In the Red Sea, Iran-backed Houthi terrorists have been for years attacking U.S. ships and other nations, disrupting legal commerce for all seafaring nations. Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said today during his first public briefing at the Pentagon that the U.S. Central Command, at the direction of President Donald J. Trump, launched a series of attacks at key terrorist Houthi targets in Yemen, March 15, 2025. "Over the weekend, U.S. Central Command forces initiated a series of operations consisting of precision strikes against Iran-backed Houthi targets across Yemen to restore freedom of navigation and re-establish American deterrence," Parnell said. The Houthis, he said, have been targeting U.S. military ships and aircraft as well as commercial ships and the ships of other nations. "They threaten our personnel overseas," he said. "Houthi terrorists have launched missiles and one-way attack drones at U.S. warships over 170 times and at commercial vessels 145 times since 2003." The U.S., Parnell said, will continue to use "overwhelming, lethal force" against the terrorist Houthi targets until the U.S. achieves its goals. "There is a very clear end-state to this operation, and that begins the moment that the Houthis pledge to stop attacking our ships and putting American lives at risk," he said. Right now, he added, it's not apparent the Houthis are interested in stopping attacks against U.S. targets. "Firing at U.S. military personnel in the region and shooting at our ships and ... drones and putting American lives at risk is not a good way to end this conflict," Parnell said. "The Houthis could stop this tomorrow if they [agree] to stop shooting at [our] people. But they've clearly chosen not to do that. And so, this campaign will be relentless to degrade their capability and to open up shipping lanes in the region and to defend our homeland." Air Force Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, director for operations for the Joint Staff, said that, under the president's direction, U.S. Central Command began precision strike operations against the Houthis to restore freedom of navigation and American deterrence. "The initial wave of strikes hit over 30 targets at multiple locations, degrading a variety of Houthi capabilities," he said. Included among those targets were terrorist training sites, unmanned aerial vehicle infrastructure, weapons manufacturing capabilities and weapons storage facilities. "It also included a number of command-and-control centers, including a terrorist compound where we know several senior Houthi unmanned aerial vehicle experts were located," Grynkewich said. He added that operations struck additional headquarters locations, March 16, 2025, as well as weapons storage facilities, and Houthi detection capabilities that were previously used to threaten maritime shipping. "The operation continues and will continue in the coming days until we achieve the president's objectives," Grynkewich added. In Yemen, he said, Houthi military casualties might be calculated in dozens, but those are initial estimates. Currently, there is no indication of civilian casualties from the U.S. attacks. The Houthis claim to have fired on the USS Harry S. Truman, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier based out of Norfolk, Virginia, but Grynkewich said that is hard to confirm. "Quite frankly, it's hard to tell because while we're executing precision strikes, they missed by over 100 miles," he said. "I would question anything that they claim to the press that they're doing or not doing. It's very hard to tell ... just based on the level of incompetence they've demonstrated." U.S., Ireland Both Suffer Impacts of Illegal Immigration [2025-03-17] WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Irish MMA fighter Conor McGregor today in the Pentagon. The two discussed, among other things, how the U.S. and Ireland are both struggling with the effects of illegal immigration. McGregor described the illegal immigration problem in Ireland as "a threat of destruction from within." "That's what we feel is happening in Ireland at present. There's no support for the people of Ireland," he said. "It's almost like we're witnessing the destruction of Ireland in real time. It's being harbored by our own government. The illegal immigration racket is the biggest money racket that has ever been in Irish history." McGregor said many rural towns in Ireland have become inundated with illegal immigrants, changing the character of those towns forever. With some 40 million Americans of Irish descent living in the U.S., he expressed concern those Americans would find their ancestral homes unrecognizable if they returned to Ireland for a visit. "They take great pride in their Irish heritage," McGregor said. "Sooner or later ... there will be no place for these Irish Americans to come home and visit their native country, where they are from." Hegseth highlighted U.S. efforts to get after the same problem. "Now you look at what this president is doing ... last night they sent 250 Tren de Aragua gang members out," Hegseth said. "There's no other way to handle it." "Breathtaking," McGregor said. "There are Americans all over the country, the length and breadth of this country, who are breathing a sigh of relief because of President [Donald J. Trump's] administration efforts." The U.S. has sent the military to the border to partner with the Department of Homeland Security to stop the flow of illegal immigration into the country, Hegseth said. "We've spent 20 years defending other people's borders all around the world," he added. "And we let the world come in through our southern border -- 20 million people, we have no idea who they are." Like in Ireland, Hegseth said, it's not just big cities in the U.S. impacted by illegal immigration. It's small towns and cities as well. "There are entire small towns that have been transformed by illegal immigration," he said. One of Hegseth's priorities is increasing the lethality of the force by making troops stronger, fitter and more suited for defending the nation. As a mixed martial artist, McGregor knows something about preparing for a fight. "You've got to train, you've got to train hard, you've got to be committed and dedicated every day," he said. "Mentorship every single day on defense and on security and on leadership." Prior to his meeting with Hegseth, McGregor visited the White House and participated in a press conference there in the briefing room. Following his visit to the Pentagon, he returned to the White House for a meeting with Trump in the Oval Office. Before leaving the Pentagon, McGregor recorded a message to service members across the military. "This is a message to the great troops of the United States of America," he said. "I'm here with your Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. You're in good hands. Men, women, keep fighting the good fight. Fight, fight, fight, as the big man says. Let's go, troops of America. God bless." DOD's Acquisition Community Already Working on Golden Dome, Big Team Effort Required [2025-03-19] WASHINGTON -- Earlier this month, President Donald J. Trump told Congress and Americans the U.S. would pursue a Golden Dome, similar to Israel's Iron Dome air defense system, designed to protect against inbound missile attacks. The Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment is working with partner agencies, including the Missile Defense Agency and the military services, to make that happen, said Steven J. Morani, currently performing the duties of undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment yesterday at the McAleese Defense Programs Conference in Washington. "Consistent with protecting the homeland and per President Trump's [executive order], we're working with the industrial base and [through] supply chain challenges associated with standing up the Golden Dome," Morani said. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan wanted to build such an air defense system, but technology wasn't available at the time to bring that project to fruition. Morani said the challenge would be formidable and require a lot of teamwork. "This is like the monster systems engineering problem. This is the monster integration problem," he said. "This is going to be layers of architecture working together at all group level elevations ... to protect the United States ... so we're going to need all the services and agencies that do this kind of work to step up." Morani said the acquisitions and sustainment community is focused on meeting the president's request for the Golden Dome while realigning also to meet Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's priorities. Among those priorities are reviving the warrior ethos, rebuilding the military by matching threats to capabilities and re-establishing deterrence to defend the homeland. "[We're] wasting no time in moving out and taking this new direction by the president and the secretary," he said. The office, Morani added, is also determining how to shift people, resources and priorities toward providing better support directly to the warfighter. "[We're] looking at ways to streamline and remove some red tape," he said. Part of that includes looking at the department's real estate portfolio and reducing or eliminating what is not needed. He said the A&S community is playing a key role in developing the department's FY2026 budget proposal, one that aligns with the president and secretary's priorities. "There is a rigorous analytic process underway taking a relook at [the budget]," Morani said. "This is standard practice for any new administration that takes office." Hegseth has said the department is examining the budget to refocus funding away from non-lethal programs and into programs that support the president's priorities for national defense; A&S is part of that process. "We're relooking at some of the things we did in the past before we are going to put more money against them, and perhaps [what] we're going to stop doing," Morani said, adding it will be the secretary who makes any final decisions about how funding requests are prioritized. Over the past eight weeks, A&S has focused on strengthening the defense industrial base and growing the department's ability to provide logistics and sustainment capability to the joint force. Sustainment, Morani said, enhances deterrence. "If a potential adversary knows that your logistics capabilities are robust ... and if you are in it for the long haul, they'll be less likely to engage in hostilities because they know that they'll not just be outgunned and outmaneuvered, but they're going to be out supplied," he said. Defense Department Reassesses Archived Content [2025-03-21] WASHINGTON -- Last month, Defense Department leadership directed administrators of U.S. military public media platforms to remove all content related to diversity, equity and inclusion. "Over the past few weeks, we've taken action to identify and archive DEI content from our websites and social media platforms," Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said in a video posted to social media yesterday. "Without question, this task was an arduous but incredibly important undertaking." As part of the effort, some content was removed from public view so department personnel could further review it before making a final decision on archiving. However, some content was archived that should not have been. Department personnel are reviewing archived content to determine if it was mistakenly removed or, in other cases, if it can be edited to make it eligible for reposting. "When content is either mistakenly removed or if it's maliciously removed, we continue to work quickly to restore it," Parnell said. The Defense Department website, defense.gov, contains thousands of articles about U.S. service members, their warrior ethos and the historic actions they have been involved in while serving the nation. That content is part of the department's history, Parnell said. "We are so proud of our nation's heroes and our heritage," he added. "We honor the accomplishments of our warfighters and the content of their character. Americans, past and present, are the greatest people the world has ever known, and we live in the greatest country the world has ever known, and our strength, now, and has always been, our unity and shared purpose." Defense Secretary Hosts Elon Musk at Pentagon [2025-03-21] WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth hosted industrialist and presidential advisor Elon Musk at the Pentagon today. Department officials said the meeting was not related to his efforts with the Department of Government Efficiency but was rather the result of a personal invitation by Hegseth for Musk to visit the department's headquarters. During a private meeting in the secretary's office, which lasted about an hour, defense officials said the two men discussed innovation, efficiency and smarter production, as they might apply to the Defense Department. In a message to the force days after taking office, Hegseth said rebuilding the U.S. military would rely on all three things he discussed with Musk. "We will rebuild our military by matching threats to capabilities," he said. "This means reviving our defense industrial base, reforming our acquisition process, passing a financial audit and rapidly fielding emerging technologies. We will remain the strongest and most lethal force in the world." Musk is best known for his companies, which span a range of industries, from electric vehicles and social media to technology and space exploration. The latter of which was recently involved in bringing back NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Suni Williams -- both retired U.S. Navy captains -- from the International Space Station. The two astronauts had been aboard the ISS since June 2024. The last time Musk visited the Pentagon was in 2016, when he met with then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter. Hegseth Gives Order to Enhance Military Mission at Southern Border [2025-03-25] WASHINGTON -- Service members assigned to Joint Task Force Southern Border have a new directive: conduct patrols. Until now, the U.S. military mission at the southern border has been static. Service members have been engaged mostly in stationary detection and monitoring activities. But no longer. On March 20, 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave an order allowing service members involved in the mission to do more and conduct their mission on foot or on board Stryker armored vehicles. "Conducting patrols, either on foot or mounted, creates a more proactive and adaptable posture compared to static posts," said Army Maj. Jennifer L. Staton, a Defense Department spokesperson. "The dynamic approach of patrolling allows service members to cover a larger area of the border, affording them dynamic observation across multiple angles and distances." Being mobile, Staton said, also adds an element of unpredictability for those considering illegal entry into the country. Knowing soldiers are on the move makes it harder to plan movements or cross locations. Staton said while troops involved in the border mission will now be more effective with monitoring and detection, they are still not participating in law enforcement activities. "Service members will not detain or apprehend individuals attempting illegal entry," she said. "Instead, they will relay all observations of illegal crossings directly to [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] for response and enforcement." Earlier this month, the Pentagon deployed a Stryker brigade combat team and a general support aviation battalion to the border. About 6,600 active-duty personnel are operating as part of JTF-SB, including 4,400 from the SBCT, 650 with the GSAB, and about 1,600 Marines and soldiers who deployed to the border in January 2025. "Their deployment underscores the department's unwavering dedication to working alongside the Department of Homeland Security to secure our southern border and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of the United States under President [Donald J. Trump]'s leadership," Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said earlier this month. As Tanker Fleet Modernizes, Time Is Now for Cargo Aircraft Recap [2025-03-26] WASHINGTON -- As a warfighting command responsible for projecting, maneuvering and sustaining the joint force, U.S. Transportation Command depends heavily on the U.S. tanker aircraft fleet, which includes both the aging KC-135 Stratotanker and the new KC-46 Pegasus. "We welcome the service-led recapitalization plans for the air refueling fleet, which must continue uninterrupted into the future," Air Force Gen. Randall Reed, Transcom commander, said yesterday on Capitol Hill. "Even after the Air Force accepts the final contracted KC-46, the average age of the remaining KC-135 fleet will be 67 years old." As the KC-46 replaces the KC-135, Transcom needs to start thinking about replacing the other aircraft it relies on, Reed said while testifying before a joint hearing of the House Armed Services Committee, which included lawmakers from both the subcommittee on seapower and projection forces and the subcommittee on readiness. "The start of a recapitalization plan is due for our airlift fleet because of the long lead time for platform development," he said. The U.S. military uses both the C-5 Galaxy aircraft, which was first manufactured in the late 1960s, and the C-17 Globemaster III aircraft, which was first manufactured in the early 1990s. "Both the C-5 and the C-17 are workhorses for us," Reed said. "They continue to perform when we need them to. Those airplanes also require investment to make sure that we can sustain them as well." Reed said the time is now to find a replacement for the C-17 because of the age of the platform and the time needed to field its replacement. Transcom is also responsible for surface transportation -- using ships to transport goods over waterways -- to move materials and personnel in support of the joint force. Transcom is currently looking to bolster America's Ready Reserve Force fleet by purchasing used shipping vessels. The command received permission from Congress to buy as many as 10 used ships to put into the fleet. It's already bought seven and wants to buy two more this year. On March 15, 2025, President Donald J. Trump signed a full-year continuing resolution to fund the government until the end of the fiscal year. That CR contains funding for Transcom to buy two more used ships. "I'd like to thank this committee for the support that you gave to make sure that we can ... procure two ships off the market," Reed said. He added that anything Congress can do to accelerate the procurement of additional used foreign ships would be helpful. The government-owned RRF fleet consists of commercial vessels crewed by civilian mariners, and it is aging. The median age of the 46 roll-on/roll-off ships in the fleet is 47 years. Defense Department Nominees Promise Better Warfighting Tools, Improved Medical Care [2025-03-27] WASHINGTON -- More efficient and faster acquisition, better technology and military hardware, and better medical care to keep service members healthy were among the commitments made on Capitol Hill today by three Defense Department nominees. Lawmakers from the Senate Armed Services Committee heard testimony from Michael P. Duffey, nominated for undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment; Emil G. Michael, nominated for undersecretary of defense for research and engineering; and Keith M. Bass, nominated for assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. "If confirmed, I would assume responsibility to implement President [Donald J. Trump's] mandate and [Defense] Secretary [Pete Hegseth's] priorities by providing the military with the capabilities and force structure necessary to deter our adversaries and, if necessary, prevail in conflict," Duffey said. DOD's acquisition and sustainment communities are primarily responsible for ensuring warfighters have the tools to fight and win in any conflict. Duffey said he would change how the department operates to achieve that goal. "This will require the department to modernize how it manages the integration of requirements, budgeting and acquisition processes, aligning incentives to deliver results," he said. "We must deepen our understanding of the strengths and vulnerabilities within our defense industrial base and seek to revitalize through reindustrialization, increased investment, flexible contracting, enhanced workforce recruitment and training and increased competition." If confirmed, Duffey told senators he'd focus on four priorities: 1) Accelerating the delivery of tools to warfighters. 2) Increasing the speed, performance and affordability of acquisition systems. 3) Strengthening the defense industrial base. 4) Bringing modern business systems and management practices to DOD. Michael told senators that China is a strong competitor, and the U.S. must adapt to remain stronger. "Time must be a factor in all of our decisions as we confront an increasingly sophisticated adversary in China, which not only has lower labor costs but is notorious for intellectual property theft, making its research and development costs even faster and less expensive than we could have imagined only a decade ago," he said. Michael said he'd work to rebuild the department's relationship with the defense technology sector if confirmed. "The DOD needs to foster a more robust and competitive defense industrial base by providing more realistic requirements, inviting [in] smaller and innovative companies with less burdensome processes, [and] becoming more agile in how and when we grant contracts," he said. It's not the first time Michael has worked for the Defense Department. He told lawmakers he worked for then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates and played a role in developing the mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle and Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization. "If confirmed, I'd bring my decades of experience in the technology industry and management of large, complex, global organizations to ensure that the United States has the most technologically sophisticated defense systems in history," he said. If confirmed, Bass would be responsible for executing DOD's medical mission and providing and maintaining readiness for medical services and support to service members. "The military health system is a global leader in delivering world-class care, unmatched in excellence and second to none," he said. "I'm excited about the future of military medicine and the opportunity to drive innovation and improve patient outcomes. By continuing to focus on modernization, technology, research, [and] care delivery, we can strengthen our operational readiness and set new standards." Bass said pressing issues in the military health care system include ensuring the readiness of American forces, recruiting and retaining medical personnel, and adapting to rapid technological advances. "If confirmed, my highest priority will be ensuring the medical readiness of our forces [and] stabilizing the military health system to provide [the most] advanced care possible both on and off the battlefield," he said. "A strong military health system is the cornerstone of our National Defense Strategy, and maintaining a medically ready force requires [an] integrated, innovative and adaptive health care system." At Vietnam Wall, Nation Honors Veterans on National Vietnam War Veterans Day [2025-03-29] WASHINGTON -- At the Vietnam Veterans Memorial today in Washington, the Defense Department and Veterans Affairs marked the ninth commemoration of National Vietnam War Veterans Day. The annual commemoration is held on March 29 to mark the day U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam was disestablished in 1975. That same day was when the last U.S. combat troops departed Vietnam. During his first term in office, President Donald J. Trump signed into law the Vietnam War Veterans Recognition Act of 2017, which established National Vietnam War Veterans Day as a day of recognition in the United States. "We're here to pay tribute to the 58,281 names who are engraved on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial behind me and also to solemnly honor their families," said retired Army Maj. Gen. Edward J. Chrystal, who leads the United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration. "We [also] pay tribute to the some 1,500 service members and families of those service members who are still unaccounted for. "Finally, we're here today to salute our Vietnam veterans, those still with us, those who have passed and also to their family members, some who are with us today," Chrystal said. "We thank and honor today all who served and sacrificed during the Vietnam War." The United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration, led by Chrystal, stood up in 2012 as a national commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War. The commemorative period officially ends this year, Nov. 11, 2025, on Veterans Day, to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the war. The commemoration was meant to recognize, thank and honor U.S. military veterans who served during the Vietnam War. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins recognized how America had initially failed its veterans when they returned home from Vietnam. He promised that would never happen again. "You did not come home to a nation that was thankful, but the nation has been reminded of that error," Collins said. "As we look forward today, you taught us that we should never again let the politics of war interfere with our duty and our honor that we give to our veterans. We can do better, and we will not fail you again." As part of the event, Chrystal, Collins and Fern Sumpter Winbush, the principal deputy director of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, laid a wreath together at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. That wreath was dedicated to National Vietnam War Veterans Day. A second wreath was laid at the memorial in honor of warfighters, and a third to honor their families. Wayne Reynolds, who serves as national treasurer of the Vietnam Veterans of America, said the recognition today of Vietnam veterans contrasts significantly with how things were when he returned home from the war. "It's poignant to me because ... I served in Vietnam, 1968-1969, I was a medic," he said. "When I came back, you just erased all that. There was no recognition, and you didn't even acknowledge it." At the event, Reynolds talked with Thomas Barrett, a retired Army officer who initially enlisted in 1982 but later went to officer candidate school to earn a commission. Barrett never served in Vietnam, but his father was a Vietnam War veteran -- one of those who never came home; Barrett is a Gold Star son. The two men didn't meet in Washington, however. They met in Columbus, Georgia, when Barrett was a young man in high school, and Reynolds was a school teacher there following the war. While the two interacted frequently as part of their involvement in the high school band, neither knew of the other's connection to the war -- Barrett having lost his father and Reynolds being a veteran. Back then, Barrett and Reynolds agreed, nobody talked about the war. "There was a lot of shame, a lot of shame around Vietnam," Barrett said. Today, Reynolds said, that has changed, though it took years for Vietnam veterans to be open about their service. "I'm 78 now. For us to be able to be public for what we've done," he said, is a welcome change. Defense Secretary Directs Services to Match Combat Arms Standards to Mission Requirements [2025-04-01] WASHINGTON -- The secretary of defense on Sunday directed military departments to build plans that define and identify the combat arms and noncombat arms occupations within their respective military services. Additionally, the departments are directed to develop mission-focused physical fitness standards for those combat arms roles to ensure service members can meet the physical demands of a combat environment. In a memorandum signed March 30, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave military departments 60 days to develop the plans and submit them to the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. An interim progress report on plan development must also be submitted within 30 days. Also, part of the directive is that the military services should implement their plans within the following six months -- around the end of November. "The United States military's strength is rooted in its unwavering commitment to high standards that foster discipline, unity and purpose," Hegseth wrote. "It is these principles that have made our fighting force the most formidable in the world. As the nature of warfare evolves and the demands on our service members grow more complex, it is imperative that we assess and refine the physical fitness standards that enable our readiness and lethality." Within ground combat occupations, Hegseth said standards must focus on things like the ability to carry heavy loads, endurance and operating in austere, hostile environments. "Service members in these roles must exhibit speed, strength, agility and endurance to navigate the demands of combat situations," Hegseth said. Standards for special operations forces personnel, he said, must look at advanced swimming, climbing and parachuting. "Sustained peak physical performance is essential to execute missions of the highest stakes across diverse and challenging terrains," he said. And for unique positions like Navy divers or explosive ordnance disposal technicians, there should be a focus on proficiency in those skills and endurance. A key feature of the secretary's directive is that for combat arms roles, there will be only one, sex-neutral standard for both entry into such fields and for continued participation in those fields. "All entry-level and sustained physical fitness requirements within combat arms positions must be sex-neutral, based solely on the operational demands of the occupation and the readiness needed to confront any adversary," Hegseth said. The secretary noted that in establishing new sex-neutral standards for combat arms roles, no existing standards can be lowered. "This initiative aligns with my broader directive to maintain uncompromising and clear standards that ensure the continued dominance of our military," Hegseth said. Nominee for Chairman: Military's Top Job is Creating Peace Through Strength [2025-04-01] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military must fight America's wars when needed. Still, the military's top priority is to prevent those wars by signaling to adversaries its readiness to fight and win in any scenario, said President Donald J. Trump's nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Our adversaries are advancing, global nuclear threats are on the rise and deterrence is paramount," said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan Caine, speaking today before the Senate Armed Services Committee. "Our national defense requires urgent action and reform across the board. We must go faster. We must move with a sense of urgency. We can never forget that our No. 1 job is to create peace through overwhelming strength and, if need be, fight and win our nation's wars." If confirmed, Caine will return to military service and be promoted to general, taking on the role of the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. military. As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Caine will serve as the chief advisor to the president on military matters. Pentagon reform, acquisition and modernization were all top priorities for lawmakers during Caine's hearing. As the Trump administration calls for reforms across the government, inside the Pentagon Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been busy implementing those reforms. Caine, who has a broad background in government and the private sector said he's on board with those changes, particularly in how the department can get after acquisitions so tools most needed by warfighters are delivered quickly to the battlefield. "For me, we have to stop admiring the problem, and we have to start executing," Caine said. "We have to take an ownership and an entrepreneurial mindset to all of these reforms that are in front of us. And we can't do this alone. We have to do it with you here in the Congress in order to actually make these changes." Caine comes from private sector work involving finance. Civilian leaders who have recently onboarded into the department share similar business backgrounds. Working with them to streamline the Pentagon, he said, is something he looks forward to. "I'm encouraged by the leaders who are coming into the department who have deep, substantive business backgrounds that are not known as people who admire problems," he said. "If confirmed, I look forward to working with the various leaders in order to actually move the ball, and, of course, working with the Congress to execute these things without continuing to admire these challenges in front of us." Speeding up acquisition so that the promise of new technology doesn't fade before it's finally delivered to the warfighter, sometimes years later, is also a priority. "Technology is evolving so quickly that every time we field capabilities, they're obsolete, oftentimes when they hit the force," Caine said. "And that's not acceptable." The department, he said, must have greater agility in developing requirements to take advantage of the latest technologies. "If confirmed, I'll work with the joint staff, the joint chiefs and, of course, [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] to pick up the speed, pace and tempo of fielding the capabilities that we need that are not obsolete," Caine said. New technology is in startup companies and small businesses, not just in existing prime defense contractors, Caine said. So, the department will need a mix of input from both. But when it comes to small businesses, it's long been a challenge to get on board with the government, and the department must work to ease that burden so the best technologies from the smallest and newest companies can end up in the hands of warfighters. "The ability to bring advanced technologies from new companies, the startups, into the joint force and make it easier for them to bring their products and services into the military is something that I'm passionate about, given my background and experience," Caine said. "If confirmed, I think that'll be an area where I spend some time." Maintaining America's strategic deterrent, the nuclear triad, is a top priority, Caine said, and he'll work with U.S. Strategic Command to make that happen. Additionally, continued partnerships with American allies remain important, including with NATO in Europe. "Allies and partners are a critical component to our ability to protect and defend our values and virtues around the world. NATO is a key component to that," he said. "For me in particular, I value our allies and partners, and if confirmed, that'll be a significant portion of the job that I have ahead of me." Caine has served in the Air Force and Air National Guard as an F-16 Fighting Falcon multirole fighter aircraft pilot, as an advisor at the Central Intelligence Agency, with the interagency at the White House, and as an entrepreneur and investor in the private sector. Taking on the role as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will bring new challenges, with the top concern, he said, making sure the joint force is always ready to fight and win. "[My] No. 1 concern is the passage of time and ensuring that the joint force is ready, properly armed, with the right capabilities out at the tactical edge, properly globally integrated with the services themselves, with the other elements of the interagency, with our allies and partners, and with the private sector, and ready to go tonight," Caine said. "And that means their families are ready, they're ready, [and] they're properly trained and equipped. So, we have much to do." Education Benefits Make Stronger Service Members, Better Military [2025-04-02] WASHINGTON -- Within the armed forces, a variety of educational benefits are available that allow service members to both improve themselves and make themselves more valuable to their service branch. One example is the Military Tuition Assistance Program. The program is available to enlisted personnel, officers and warrant officers in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Space Force and Coast Guard and is available only while personnel are still in service. "The Army's Tuition Assistance Program provides financial assistance for voluntary, off-duty civilian education programs in support of soldiers' professional and personal self-development goals," said Heather J. Hagan, an Army spokeswoman. Through tuition assistance, service members can fund their civilian education with up to $250 per credit hour, not exceeding $4,500 annually. The program covers tuition and lab fees. In order to take advantage of the program, service members should contact a service education counselor to discuss the application process. Tuition assistance can be used for accredited colleges and universities within the United States. Service Community Colleges The Air Force and Navy both offer their own community colleges, where enlisted service members can earn associate degrees at no cost during their off-duty time. Chief Petty Officer Stacy Atkinsricks, a spokesperson with the U.S. Naval Community College, said the school offers 16 fully accredited, 100% online, fully funded associate degrees to sailors. The school also offers 19 professional certificates by partnering with accredited universities and colleges. Coupled with the training the Navy already provides sailors, additional education makes for better service members and a stronger military, she said. "You [get] a more well-rounded enlisted leader," she said. "It's building on those 21st-century skills leaders want service members to have -- critical thinking, writing [and] researching." GI Bill The GI Bill, which includes educational benefits typically used after military service concludes, can also be used while still on active duty. Army Capt. Kristina Muller, an acquisition officer at the Army Test and Evaluation Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. While in uniform, she used GI Bill benefits to attend Texas A&M University, where she earned a Master of Science degree in engineering management. "When I originally applied to graduate schools, I found that I did not qualify for other forms of financial aid," Muller said. "However, after eight years of service, I received 100% of the Post-9/11 GI Bill. The GI Bill provided me the opportunity to pursue my degree without monumental sacrifices to pay for school, which totaled $30,000." Without that assistance from the GI Bill, Muller said, it would have taken much longer to complete her degree and would have also left her in debt. "The GI Bill also allowed me the flexibility in my career timeline to pursue a degree," she said. "And it allowed me to take an opportunity that I saw to really buckle down and complete my degree." Muller said that achieving her degree has led to her being a more valuable officer, which means she can better serve those who work for her, the leaders above her and the entire Army as well. "The Army is a profession, and as professionals, we are dedicated to continuously improving our units, our soldiers and ourselves," she said. "The GI Bill allows hardworking service members to follow their interests, invest in themselves, and bring the knowledge to the workplace -- whether during or after service -- strengthening our nation." Investing in yourself, she said, allows service members to invest in the others around them, making everyone better at what they do. "A hardworking, educated nation wins wars," she said. "The acquisitions projects that succeed -- the ones that are the best value to taxpayers and make our military more lethal -- do so because they are well planned, staffed and managed. I'm committed to equipping service members with the tools they need to create overmatch. I went to school, and I'm staying in the Army because I'm committed to winning." Going ROTC Students at civilian universities are the most typical applicants for attendance in a Reserve Officers' Training Corps program. The Army, Navy and Air Force all host such programs at schools across the country. The Navy runs ROTC for both the Navy and Marine Corps, while the Air Force runs it for the Air Force and Space Force. But it's not just college freshmen who pursue an ROTC education. Across all branches of the armed forces, there are programs that allow enlisted service members to leave the military and pursue a civilian college education on an ROTC scholarship and then return later to their service as commissioned officers. The Navy, for instance, offers the Seaman to Admiral-21 program, which allows sailors to leave the Navy for up to 36 months to attend college while still getting paid their enlisted salary. When they complete their degree, like other ROTC graduates, they earn a commission and return to the Navy as officers. While these programs allow service members to improve themselves, they also allow the military to benefit by having more educated personnel. "We understand that out in the ranks, out in the enlisted community, there are people with an immense amount of talent, an immense amount to offer, as far as leadership, as far as their academic power, their brain power, and we want to give them an opportunity to use that," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Mack Jamieson, Naval Service Training Command spokesman. Service Academies Some of the best institutions of higher learning in the United States are run by the military, including West Point, the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. All three schools are tough to get into, but the rewards they offer are often immeasurable. The academies are not just for recent high school graduates. Enlisted service members who qualify can attend, earn a degree, receive a commission and return to their service as officers. Army Capt. William White, part of the admissions team at West Point, is responsible for guiding enlisted soldiers into the school. At West Point, White said that about 5% of the students are prior enlisted. While not all those may be Army -- some might have served in other services -- West Point does reserve a total of 170 slots at the school each year for soldiers who have their commander's endorsement. Half of those slots are for active-duty members, and half are for the National Guard and Army Reserve. West Point has a long history of giving enlisted service members a chance to attend the school, White said. "There's an appetite since World War I to fill the Corps of Cadets with enlisted experience and to give enlisted personnel a path to commissioning," White said. "We really look for soldier experience. ... We're targeting soldier experience -- you've gone on a [National Training Center] rotation, you've gone on deployment, you've been in the Army for one or two years." That experience, along with an academic aptitude to pass the rigors of West Point and a chain-of-command endorsement indicating leadership potential, are the three things needed to get a shot at an enlisted slot. "If you kind of have all three of those things, you have good soldier experience, you have an academic aptitude ... and your chain of command is endorsing you, we want you," White said. At West Point, he said those soldiers will learn to be better leaders and officers, in addition to earning a degree. Their presence there also benefits the other cadets around them, who are largely young men and women straight out of high school with no military or life experience. "They bring the maturity, the ability to teach your peers, be a peer leader, be someone in the Corps of Cadets that understands the Army, understands what looks right in a leader, and what good leaders look like, and be able to kind of carry that as a banner for their classmates," White said. "Some of the best officers that are produced by West Point, not all, but some of the best, are the ones that have been enlisted." West Point is academically and physically tough for the cadets who make the initial cut. However, for White, the biggest challenge he faces is getting enough enlisted soldiers to come to the school and prove they can do it. "West Point struggles to get out to the enlisted force [about] what this opportunity is and that these slots are available," he said. "I struggle really hard to get and fill my slots, and that's a shame. West Point needs more soldiers. We need more soldiers in class." French Leaders Learn How U.S. Remembers WWII During Pentagon Visit [2025-04-03] WASHINGTON -- Seven French civilian leaders visited the Pentagon yesterday as part of an educational trip to the United States to learn more about how Americans remember World War II and commemorate veterans who fought in that war. The visitors were part of the State Department's long-standing International Visitor Leadership Program, which began in 1940 to advance U.S. national security strategy priorities and build long-term relationships between Americans and international leaders in government, business, academia and other fields. During their three-week iteration of IVLP, participants will visit Washington, New Orleans, Denver, Honolulu and Buffalo, New York, to meet with federal, state and local officials. They will also visit schools and talk with community organizations to cultivate an international community dedicated to innovating World War II history education and preservation. At the Pentagon, participants met with representatives from the National Cemetery Administration's Office of Engagement and Memorial Affairs, which is part of the Department of Veterans Affairs. They learned how VA cemeteries operate and about their educational outreach programs, such as the Veterans Legacy Program, which allows students and teachers nationwide at the university and K-12 levels to immerse themselves in the rich historical resources within the VA's national cemeteries and VA grant-funded cemeteries. The French IVLP participants also toured Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia and met with the American Battle Monument Commission to learn about their mission and work preserving American cemeteries in France. Lastly, the group met with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency to learn about the ongoing mission to locate missing service members. As part of the Honolulu portion of their trip, the group will visit the DPAA forensics lab and the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. Emmanuel Carroz, one of the participants, is the deputy mayor in charge of remembrance and international cooperation for Grenoble, France, one of five cities recognized for its role in France's liberation from Nazi occupation. He is also a teacher and school director at the Academy of Grenoble and an expert in World War II remembrance and commemoration. Remembering World War II history is important for two reasons, Carroz said. "The last survivors are going to die, and it's also very important to teach young people [about the things] they can't imagine, especially now when they talk about the Holocaust, and the Nazis, etc.," he said. "In Europe, now there's [also] a big problem with the increase in the nostalgia of Nazis ideas. So, it's very important to teach again." In France, Carroz said, he's focused on preparing a commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Grenoble, which he said was achieved by resistance fighters and the U.S. Army. "It's very important to be here today to exchange with American authorities about our common history," he said. So far on the trip, Carroz said he's been surprised by the difference in the way Americans and the French commemorate World War II and veterans. "The U.S. government spends a lot of money to preserve these memories," he said. "It's not the same thing in France. [Here,] you have a lot of organizations who will work with veterans, helping veterans, and about history, and how to work with young people, with students. And in France, it is very different. We don't have all this culture of remembrance. It's very impressive to be here because I see at the heart of your nation is this memory of veterans." Aissata Seck is the president and founder of the Association for the Memory and History of Senegalese Tirailleurs, which preserves the legacy of colonial troops who fought to defend France during the war. "[World War II history] is very important for me because I think understanding history helps us better approach contemporary issues and things that are going on today," Seck said. "Of course, these are tragic moments in our history, but it's very important for people today to understand our history." As the granddaughter of a Senegalese Tirailleur, she believes it's important to establish the facts of their history. Like Carroz, Seck said she is impressed with how Americans remember World War II and how it differs in France. "I've really learned a lot since I've been here," she said. "The most important thing that I've learned is that our approaches are quite different, and I've been very impressed about how, in the United States, World War II history seems to be so well anchored into the conception of history as a whole and of American history. It's really impressive to see how the war effort is respected and is seen as important." After learning how the United States works with students to create digital tools to better remember its World War II veterans, Seck said she'd like to see that happen at home. "For the examples that we saw today that involve not only students and the youth but also the use of digital tools, I think those are things that we should put into place in France as well," she said. This Week in DOD: Common Sense Combat Arms Standards, No Halt on Hammering Houthis, Navy's Midshipmen Impress Heck Out of Former Soldier [2025-04-04] WASHINGTON -- Last month, the Defense Department announced it had conducted a series of precision strikes against Iran-backed Houthi targets across Yemen in response to ongoing Houthi attacks on U.S. military and commercial shipping vessels in the region. At the time, Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said the U.S. would continue to use "overwhelming, lethal force" against terrorist Houthi targets until the U.S. achieved its goals. This week, Parnell confirmed that those strikes will continue -- with the blessing of President Donald J. Trump. "The commander-in-chief, President Trump, made clear to the world that the attacks against the Houthis will continue until they are no longer a threat to freedom of navigation," Parnell said during the Weekly Sitrep video, which highlights department activities weekly. Trump made clear his intentions for bringing the Houthis to heel on social media March 31, 2025. "The Iran-backed Houthi terrorists have been decimated by the relentless strikes over the past two weeks," Trump said. "Our attacks will continue until they are no longer a threat to freedom of navigation. The choice for the Houthis is clear: stop shooting at U.S. ships, and we will stop shooting at you. Otherwise, we have only just begun, and the real pain is yet to come for both the Houthis and their sponsors in Iran." Also this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth laid out efforts to provide common standards for entry into combat arms career fields across the American military, Parnell said. "Secretary Hegseth signed a memo to implement the same standards for men and women in combat roles," Parnell said. "Our standards at the DOD will be high, they'll be uniform, they'll be uncompromising, and they will be clear because this is common sense." In that memorandum, Hegseth asked the military service branches to identify the combat arms and noncombat arms occupations within their respective services and develop sex-neutral, mission-focused physical fitness standards for those combat arms roles to ensure all service members can meet the physical demands of a combat environment. "This initiative aligns with my broader directive to maintain uncompromising and clear standards that ensure the continued dominance of our military," Hegseth said. The secretary also took a trip to Annapolis, Maryland, April 1, 2025, to visit with the midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy who are training to be future Navy and Marine Corps leaders. Parnell said Hegseth, once an Army officer, was impressed with what he saw at the academy. "You should have seen how he was received there. It was amazing. The future of our naval and expeditionary forces is strong," Parnell said. At the academy's King Hall, Hegseth told midshipmen that American security and deterrence were on their shoulders. "When deterrence fails, other people take opportunity inside that space," Hegseth said. "In the years previous, we've had situations that have created the perception ... of American weakness. "Reestablishing deterrence is about declaring what you stand for ... and then you're willing to enforce it," he said. "You are the faces of American deterrence." Parnell said on Capitol Hill this week that Trump's nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff demonstrated his suitability for the role during a confirmation hearing with senators. "Air Force lieutenant general and nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Caine, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee this week," Parnell said. "Lt. Gen. Caine was instrumental in the complete annihilation of the ISIS caliphate, and he will make a fantastic chairman." During more than two hours of testimony, Caine provided the senators with examples to demonstrate his firm grasp of the security threats facing the U.S. and how he is the leader the joint force needs. "Our adversaries are advancing, global nuclear threats are on the rise and deterrence is paramount," Caine said. "Our national defense requires urgent action and reform across the board. We must go faster. We must move with a sense of urgency. We can never forget that our No. 1 job is to create peace through overwhelming strength and, if need be, fight and win our nation's wars." Also this week, the Defense Department took a moment to remember four soldiers assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, who initially went missing during a training mission in Lithuania. They were later found to be deceased and recovered. "We will never forget these four heroes -- and our prayers are with their entire families and the entire 3rd ID," Parnell said. Those four soldiers include Pfc. Dante D. Taitano, 21, of Dededo, Guam; Staff Sgt. Jose Duenez Jr., 25, of Joliet, Illinois; Staff Sgt. Edvin F. Franco, 25, of Glendale, California; and Staff Sgt. Troy S. Knutson-Collins, 28, of Battle Creek, Michigan. Socom: Changing Operational Demands Require Acquisition Changes [2025-04-09] WASHINGTON -- Worldwide threats put the U.S. at risk and sometimes demand attention from U.S. Special Operations Command. To best meet those challenges, U.S. military acquisition needs to change, said Army Gen. Bryan P. Fenton, Socom commander. "The character of war is changing faster than we've ever seen," he said today before the House Armed Services Committee's intelligence and special operations subcommittee. "The innovation cycle now turns in days and weeks, not months and years. Our adversaries use $10,000 one-way drones that we shoot down with $2 million missiles -- that cost-benefit curve is upside down," he said. Fenton noted that this is the most complex asymmetric and hybrid threat security environment he has seen during his 38 years of service. Contending with these challenges demands more from special operations forces. "[It] requires tough choices, forcing trade-offs, as we strive to balance an increase in operations readiness and the need for modernization," he said. Fenton explained that over the past two years, for example, demand for Socom capabilities by combatant commands has increased by more than 35%, while at the same time, Socom has dealt with years of flat budgets. To meet the demands of increased mission requirements and increasingly complex missions, he said Socom needs to improve its acquisition process. "Our current acquisition procurement system ... I would just offer, it's outdated," he said. "It's glacial. I think it works in years and decades." He added that the lessons learned from the conflict in Ukraine made it clear how the U.S. military acquisition process can be changed for the better. "What we're seeing through the lens of Ukraine needs to be an acquisition ... and procurement system that is hyper-speed, supersonic," he said. "Because over there, we're watching the changes in minutes, hours and days, and that is a very stark contrast" to what the U.S. does. Fenton said changes to the requirements process, including simplifying it, as well as changes to authorities, could help Socom quickly get what it needs. "If I could say it so bluntly, take more people out of that system, get less hands on the requirements process," he told lawmakers. "Go from operator to commander and then acquisition." Fenton also suggested how changes in funding could benefit acquisition within Socom. Funding for systems comes in the form of operations and maintenance funds; research, development, testing and engineering funds; and procurement funds. The Defense Department can't easily move money between those budget lines, and that could be simplified, he said. "I think there's a way to take a lot of that off, compress the multiple lines to just a couple, and really modernize there," Fenton said. The general also asked for greater flexibility in how the department contracts new systems, particularly the option to increase the length of multiyear procurements. "Give us an opportunity to think through multiyear processes," he said. "Two years might seem multiyear, I think, to all of us. Multiyear probably needs to be five to 10 years so we can move at the speed and evolution of what we're seeing out on the battlefield." Supply Chain, Workforce, Advanced Manufacturing Will Help Navy Get Ships Faster [2025-04-09] WASHINGTON -- The Navy wants to be able to build one Columbia-class and two Virginia-class submarines a year and eventually expand that to 2.33 Virginia-class subs a year. At the same time, the Navy is working on getting more Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers into the fleet. During a hearing yesterday before the Senate Armed Services Committee's seapower subcommittee, Navy leaders explained that the industrial base that manufactures those platforms will need a boost to begin production. "The maritime industrial base program is leading efforts to reinvigorate the industrial base in order to expand shipbuilding capacity," said Matthew D. Sermon, the direct reporting program manager for the Navy's maritime industrial base program. Sermon said getting things moving will include systematically expanding and reinforcing supply chain capacity, addressing workforce challenges and adopting advanced manufacturing capabilities. "To do all of this, the Navy is working closely with our industrial base partners and has launched nearly 1,200 supplier development, workforce and advanced manufacturing projects in 40 states ... all of them focused on supporting businesses, improving throughput, and updating antiquated tooling and production processes," Sermon said. Since 2018, the Navy has expanded parts delivery for submarines by more than 250%, but Sermon said this must double to meet the current needs of the nuclear Navy. He added that in 2024, the Navy also supported industry efforts to recruit, train and retain over 12,600 employees as part of an effort to address labor shortages in skilled trades and naval engineering fields. And when it comes to advanced manufacturing, he pointed to the Navy's Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence in Danville, Virginia. "[They've] already printed more than 270 parts, and this year, will partner with the advanced manufacturing industry to mitigate over 1,000 days of delay in parts availability," he told senators. "These efforts are on track to revolutionize critical parts procurement with the ability to print thousands of parts quickly and with unprecedented quality." Efforts to strengthen the industrial base will, in turn, strengthen the Navy, including delivery of the Columbia-class SSBN, which is the top priority for the Navy right now, said Navy Rear Adm. Todd S. Weeks, the Navy's program executive officer for strategic submarines. "The Columbia-class is the Navy's No. 1 acquisition priority and a critical once-in-a-generation recapitalization effort for this foundational leg of the nation's nuclear triad," he said. "The current Ohio-class SSBN force is reaching the end of its operational life and must be replaced to meet U.S. Strategic Command operational requirements." While delays are expected in the delivery of the USS District of Columbia, the lead ship for the Columbia-class, Weeks said the USS Wisconsin, the second ship in the class, is expected to deliver on time. "We have seen positive continued performance and productivity improvements over the lead ship," he said. "Wisconsin is approximately 5% ahead of where the lead ship was at the same point in time during her construction." Weeks also said early procurement and construction activities are underway for the next five Columbia-class SSBNs, the largest, most powerful and most advanced submarine the U.S. has ever designed. Navy Rear Adm. Jonathan E. Rucker, the Navy's program executive officer for attack submarines, told lawmakers the Navy has already taken delivery of 24 Virginia-class attack SSBNs, while an additional 14 are under construction now. He said the Navy took delivery of the USS New Jersey and USS Iowa last year, for instance, and it is tracking the delivery of the USS Massachusetts and USS Idaho this year. However, Rucker said delivery is not as fast as it needs to be. "Our 2024 annual production rate of Virginia-class submarines per year was 1.13 compared to our need of 2.0," he said. "The main causes for this are workforce challenges, material and supplier delays and shipbuilder facilities and infrastructure issues -- all of which are driving cost increases and schedule delays." The Navy and industry, he said, are working together to address those challenges. Navy Rear Adm. Casey J. Moton, the Navy's program executive officer for aircraft carriers, told lawmakers the USS Gerald R. Ford, the Navy's newest aircraft carrier, is getting ready to deploy on its second mission. It recently returned from its first mission, which included providing response support after the Hamas attack on Israel. "Our future Ford-class aircraft carriers are under construction at Newport News Shipbuilding [in Virginia], where we continue working closely with the shipbuilder to address challenges and improve performance," he said. Right now, the Ford remains the only ship in its class, but Moton said the next delivery will be the USS John F. Kennedy, which is 95% complete. However, he added that delivery is "pressurized by remaining critical path work," including work on advanced weapons elevators and aircraft launch and recovery equipment. Two other Ford-class ships under construction now include the USS Enterprise and the USS Doris Miller. Those vessels are benefitting from a shipyard innovation that allows them to be built concurrently in the same drydock. Military Met 2024 Recruit Contracting Goals, Plans for Repeat [2025-04-10] WASHINGTON -- The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Space Force met their contracting goals for new recruits last year and expect to do so again this year. At the same time, military personnel leaders said they are undergoing transformations with an eye toward lethality. "Our Army can provide combat power anywhere in the world to protect American and allied interests," said Army Lt. Gen. Brian S. Eifler, deputy chief of staff for personnel. "Our Army is lethal, cohesive and ready. We are proud, but we are not satisfied." During testimony yesterday before the Senate Armed Services Committee's military personnel subcommittee, Eifler said the Army is moving forward with a focus on warfighting, ready combat formations, continuous transformation and strengthening the Army profession. "Within these four pillars, our team of professionals will execute all human resource actions that directly support our most important asset: our people," the general told senators. Part of that effort, he said, is an overhaul and revamping of the Army's retention processes. "This will ensure quality over quantity and provide leaders the right skills for our formations," he said. Also on the Army's personnel docket, he said, is modernization of its centralized promotion board system, leveraging of artificial intelligence and an overhaul of its officer professional management system. Barracks renovations and updates to dining facilities, he said, will improve the quality of life for soldiers and ensure they remain focused on the mission of defending the nation. Eifler said the Army exceeded its recruiting goal by adding over 55,000 new soldiers in fiscal year 2024 and plans to add an additional 61,000 to the force this year. He said the Army is currently on a path to surpass its goal without lowering standards. At sea, Navy Vice Adm. Richard J. Cheeseman Jr., chief of naval personnel, told lawmakers the Navy had a "historic" recruiting year in 2024, exceeding its goal by the highest number of sailors on contract since 2003. It plans to do the same again in 2025. While the Navy exceeded the number of sailors it wanted to put on contract in 2024, some of those recruits were unable to immediately attend boot camp due to capacity. Cheeseman said he's making sure that this year, the Navy has slots in basic training to accept new recruits. "I remain focused on ensuring our schoolhouse supply chain is ready to receive this influx of motivated students, and we are ensuring every future sailor receives the training they need to be ready on day one in a fiscally responsible, efficient and effective manner," he said. With a newly established Recruiting Operations Center, implementation of the Future Sailor Preparatory Course to improve accession success, a streamlined medical waiver review process, an increase in recruiters, and improved marketing efforts, Cheeseman said the Navy will be successful in fiscal year 2025 with its goal to recruit 40,600 new sailors. The Navy also found success in its retention goals -- keeping good sailors in the service. Cheeseman said the Navy exceeded retention forecasts across all zones and expects to do the same in 2025. "Our sailors stand ready as a lethal fighting force to deter or confront any adversary," he said. "You and every American can be proud of your Navy and this team. " Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Michael J. Borgschulte, deputy commandant for manpower and reserve affairs, told lawmakers that Marine Corps recruiting efforts are focused on lethality. "The Marine Corps approaches the challenges of this critical manpower portfolio with a singular focus, and that is delivering combat-credible lethal forces to operational units wherever they are needed," he said. "Every decision we make, whether that's through recruiting, retention, assignment or policies, is evaluated through the lens of lethality." The Marine Corps met its recruiting goals in 2024, and Borgschulte said the Marines will do it again in 2025. "We've achieved these recruiting goals while exceeding all DOD quality standards, without lowering and without ever compromising those standards that define us," he told senators. "We believe our discipline, culture, our warfighting ethos and high standards attract the competitive, high-performing Americans that we need to fill our ranks with tough, smart and gritty Marines." Borgschulte also said the Marine Corps has exceeded its retention goals. "The retention of our Marines has also reached historic heights," he said. "This year, we've exceeded last year's unprecedented numbers, and just this last week, we surpassed 100% of the retention goals that we need, and we're not stopping. This year marks the highest number and highest quality we've retained of Marines in decades and proves that warriors that earn the title 'Marine' want to stay Marine and are proud to protect and defend the nation that we love." Last year, an increase in recruiter manning helped the Air Force achieve its fiscal year 2024 recruiting goals, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Caroline M. Miller, the deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel and services. "Fiscal year 2024 saw improvements in recruiting due to an increase in recruiter manning, changes to training processes and an increase in the delayed entry program to its highest level in 10 years," Miller said. "The department is also improving pilot retention through increased accessions and training throughput capacity, using monetary and nonmonetary authorities granted by Congress." She said the Air Force plans to succeed again in its recruiting goals this year. "We exist to fly, fight and win, none of which is possible without the dedication and talent of the men and women who volunteer to serve," said Miller. "This year, we continue to focus on recruiting, developing and retaining skilled and innovative individuals [and] ensuring they are equipped with essential operational skills and resources." Talent management, Miller said, remains a priority for the Air Force to build and develop the force needed to defend the nation. "Our talent management philosophy is based on high standards, accountability and meritocracy," she said. "Each airman record is evaluated on its own merit, specifically in terms of job performance, demonstrated skills and warfighting readiness." While the U.S. Space Force is the smallest service, its mission to secure the nation's interests in, from and to space is outsized. Katharine Kelley, the Space Force deputy chief of space operations for personnel, said last year that the service met its recruiting goals and will do so again this year. "Currently, we have more than 440 recruits awaiting entry into the Space Force, which will allow us a further pipeline for next year as well," she said. "[And] to ensure the long-term pipeline of guardians, we've established a recruiting squadron, which is the first time for the Space Force to have a guardian recruiting other potential guardians." Kelley said the service remains focused on developing guardians with the necessary skills and experience. In the past year, for instance, the Space Force launched an inaugural officer training course -- a 12-month course covering space operations, intelligence, cyber and acquisition. "As the space domain becomes increasingly contested, no longer a benign environment, we remain steadfast in our mission to secure our nation's interests," she said. This Week in DOD: Better Access to Panama Canal, Billions Saved by DOGE, Outreach Effort Begins [2025-04-11] WASHINGTON -- Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visited Panama to talk about, among other things, U.S. access to the Panama Canal and ridding the canal of China's influence. "Secretary Hegseth traveled to Panama this week and delivered huge wins for the Trump administration and the American people," said Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell during the Weekly Sitrep video, which highlights department activities each week. "The United States secured 'first and free' canal passage for U.S. military vessels and agreed to reestablish and enhance joint military training with Panama. We're taking back the Panama Canal from malign Chinese interests and making the Americas great again," Parnell said. During that visit, the United States and Panama signed both a memorandum of understanding on cooperative security activities and a joint declaration regarding the security and operation of the Panama Canal, which, in part, provides a framework allowing U.S. warships and auxiliary ships to sail first and free through the canal. "These documents reaffirm our historic ties and outline how we will deepen our relationship and strengthen bilateral canal security cooperation," Hegseth said April 9, 2025. The Panama Canal, built by the United States and completed in 1914, serves as a passageway between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Ships passing through the canal avoid a much longer route around the southern tip of South America. The canal reduces the time and cost of traveling by ship between the east and west coasts of the United States. "We're securing the Panama Canal and countering China's malign influence," Hegseth said. "The Panama Canal is key terrain that must be secured by Panama, with America, and not China." Both nations are also partnering in other areas of concern, including countering the influence of violent cartels and criminal enterprises, securing borders and stopping mass illegal migration. "What Panama has done in the Dari�n Gap is incredible; crossings [are] down 99% since a year ago," Hegseth said. Earlier in the week, Parnell said, Hegseth's focus was on the Middle East. During a briefing at the White House, which included President Donald J. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Hegseth updated the two world leaders on the Houthis. "It's been a bad three weeks for the Houthis, and it's about to get a lot worse," Hegseth said. "It's been a devastating campaign, whether it's underground facilities, weapons manufacturing, bunkers, troops in the open [or] air defense assets; we are not going to relent." Last month, the Defense Department announced it conducted a series of precision strikes against Iran-backed Houthi targets across Yemen in response to ongoing Houthi attacks on U.S. military and commercial shipping vessels in the region. That effort continues. "It's only [going] to get more unrelenting until the Houthis declare they will stop shooting at our ships," Hegseth said. "And we've been very clear with the Iranians as well. They should not continue to provide support to the Houthis ... We have a lot more options and a lot more pressure to apply." DOD launched an extensive effort to reconnect with roughly 8,700 service members who were involuntarily separated from service for refusing to comply with the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, enacted in August 2021 and repealed by Congress in 2022. The Defense Department has made plans to invite those service members back into uniform. "This week, the department began outreach to ensure service members who were separated solely for refusing the experimental COVID-19 vaccine received clear information on how to pursue reinstatement," Parnell said. The outreach effort includes letters of apology from the department, which also provide instructions on how former service members can pursue a return to service. In addition to letters, the effort includes emails, phone calls, website resources and social media posts, all to ensure every affected individual is informed of their opportunity to return to the military. Yesterday, Hegseth signed a directive furthering efforts to rebuild the military, restore accountability to the department and eliminate wasteful spending, Parnell said. "Secretary Hegseth signed a [Department of Government Efficiency] memo, and this time, we've saved the Department of Defense $5.1 billion," Parnell said. "That's 'billion' with a 'b' -- $5.1 billion. We are doing everything we can to be steadfast protectors of your taxpayer dollars." Within that memorandum, Hegseth directed the termination of several contracts for services he said the department could do on its own. "These contracts represent nonessential spending on third-party consultants to perform services more efficiently performed by the highly skilled members of our DOD workforce using existing resources," Hegseth wrote. The savings resulting from the contract cuts identified in the memo, which Hegseth said, can be reallocated to mission-critical priorities aimed at reviving the warrior ethos, rebuilding the military and reestablishing deterrence. Finally, this week, Parnell said that DOD brought on board a new civilian leader to guide department policy. "On Tuesday, Undersecretary [of Defense] for Policy Bridge Colby was confirmed by the Senate," Parnell said. "We very much look forward to his America First leadership at the Department of Defense." Colby was sworn in April 9, 2025, by Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg. Fatal Drug Overdoses in Service Members Significantly Below National Average [2025-04-14] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department released a new report to Congress showing the number of both fatal and nonfatal drug overdoses among service members dropped by more than 40% from 2021 to 2023. The report also shows that such overdoses are significantly lower within the military than among the broader civilian population. During the five years covered in the report -- calendar years 2019 through 2023 -- the fatal overdose rate for service members averaged about 4.4 out of 100,000 service members. Nationally, that number is about 29.2. The report notes that active-duty fatal drug overdoses reached an eight-year low in 2023, while fatal overdoses involving fentanyl reached a seven-year low. The department's report to Congress was mandated within the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2024. That act requires the department to provide a similar report to Congress for the next four years. The military community has much lower rates of fatal drug overdoses than the nation at large, the report shows. Any drug overdose or drug use remains unacceptable, as the Defense Department and the military services maintain a zero-tolerance policy regarding drug use. While fatal and nonfatal overdoses among a variety of drugs are the focus of the report, fentanyl, a synthetic opioid some 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, is highlighted specifically in the report and remains a top concern for the department. "The drug threat is ever-changing, and fentanyl, with its high risk for overdose and addiction, remains a concern both nationally and for the Department of Defense," the report reads. Overdoses involving fentanyl are now a leading cause of U.S. deaths in people 18-45 years of age, the report says. Those victims may have knowingly consumed fentanyl or may have unwittingly consumed it while using other drugs. The department and the military services have a variety of programs to combat drug use and overdoses among service members. On a larger scale, the Defense Department is now involved in actions at the southern border that are in part meant to stem the flow of drugs like fentanyl into the country. While China is commonly associated with fentanyl production, most fentanyl is made in Mexico using precursor chemicals sourced from China and comes into the U.S. through the southern border. On the first day of his second term, President Donald J. Trump directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to deliver a revised plan for how the department would "seal the borders and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of the United States by repelling forms of invasion including unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking, and other criminal activities." Since then, the number of military troops at the border has increased substantially to assist the Department of Homeland Security where needed. On January 22, 2025, the department announced the deployment of 1,500 active-duty troops to the border to augment the 2,500 reservists already in place. In March, the Pentagon increased that presence with a Stryker brigade combat team and a general support aviation battalion, totaling approximately 5,500 new troops. While visiting the border in Laredo, Texas, March 5, 2025, Hegseth said, "All options are on the table" for how the U.S. would deal with the criminal cartels responsible for bringing illegal drugs, such as fentanyl, into the country. "We will not accept them controlling that border [and] poisoning our people with fentanyl," he said. In February 2025, the State Department designated eight cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. The redesignation by the State Department means that, for the first time, the U.S. government regards those groups the same way it does ISIS or al-Qaida. With that consideration, the response can, where needed, be similar to how the U.S. deals with terrorist groups. The move by the State Department follows one of the president's many actions on Inauguration Day related to securing the border. "The cartels have engaged in a campaign of violence and terror throughout the Western Hemisphere that has not only destabilized countries with significant importance for our national interests but also flooded the United States with deadly drugs, violent criminals, and vicious gangs," Trump said. The president charged the military with sealing the border and maintaining the sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of the United States "by repelling forms of invasion, including unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking, and other criminal activities." Interagency Land Agreement Strengthens Military Border Mission [2025-04-16] WASHINGTON -- On April 11, 2025, a national security presidential memorandum directed the Defense Department to accept jurisdiction of certain federal lands along the southern border from other agencies. "Our southern border is under attack from a variety of threats," President Donald J. Trump said in the memorandum. "The complexity of the current situation requires that our military take a more direct role in securing our southern border than in the recent past." The change directed in the president's memorandum will enhance the ability of service members to conduct their mission at the border. The Defense Department, Interior Department and Department of Homeland Security already use land along the southern border. Included in that is the Roosevelt Reservation, a 60-foot strip of land lying parallel to the international boundary between the United States and Mexico. The memorandum notes that "Federal Indian reservations" are excluded. It directs DOI and DHS to cede jurisdiction for portions of their land to DOD. That noncontiguous land, about 170 square miles, runs along the border between New Mexico and Mexico. Once the Army accepts jurisdiction of that land, it will become part of a national defense area -- a specified piece of federal land over which DOD maintains administrative authority and jurisdiction and is permitted to establish and enforce a controlled perimeter and access. The area will be considered an extension of Fort Huachuca, Arizona. Service members stationed at the border and operating on that land will have greater authority to execute their mission. They will be governed by the same rules as when they are defending any other military installation, such as apprehending trespassers and passing them to appropriate civilian or federal law enforcement officials. Under the new arrangement, military personnel will continue to work together with U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel to establish and enforce a controlled perimeter and controlled access to the area as part of an effort to repel unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, migrant smuggling, human trafficking and other cross-border criminal activities. To deter unlawful entry, service members will construct and position temporary barriers, detect and monitor the use of routes across or adjacent to the area and apprehend individuals who breach the barriers. Service members will place signs and construct temporary barriers to visibly indicate the boundaries. Military operations at the southern border fall under the jurisdiction of U.S. Northern Command, which remains ready to adjust its operations in response to the memorandum. "U.S. Northern Command continues to plan and prepare to serve as the operational lead for the implementation of the national defense area," said Marine Corps Col. Kelly Frushour, Northcom director of public affairs. "Forces responsible for securing the national defense area will conduct any necessary training to perform their assigned tasks effectively." Defense Secretary Hosts Security Talks With French Counterpart [2025-04-17] WASHINGTON -- At the Pentagon today, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth hosted a discussion with French Armed Forces Minister S�bastien Lecornu. The two leaders discussed, among other things, increases in defense spending, NATO taking primary responsibility for Europe's conventional defense and efforts toward a durable peace in Ukraine. "[It was an] excellent meeting today with my French counterpart," Hegseth said. "We discussed the imperative need for Europeans to meet a 5% defense spending commitment to restore deterrence with ready, lethal conventional forces." Following a meeting with NATO defense ministers in Brussels in February, Hegseth's public comments foreshadowed themes that would permeate private follow-on discussions with his counterparts in the following months. He said European allies, including France, must do more to defend Europe and should take primary responsibility for the continent's defense, including security ownership by all allies. "Our expectation of our friends, and we say this in solidarity, is you have to spend more on your defense, for your country, on that continent," Hegseth said in February, also adding that there can't any longer be an expectation of the U.S. as the "permanent guarantor" of European security. On social media, Lecornu said his discussions with Hegseth today were productive. This Week in DOD: Bolstering Border Efforts, Hero Returns Home, Engaging With Allies [2025-04-18] WASHINGTON -- This week, the Defense Department got a boost in its ability to secure the southern border through an interagency land agreement enabled by the White House. As part of a National Security Presidential Memorandum signed by President Donald J. Trump, jurisdiction over about 170 square miles of federal land along the border between New Mexico and Mexico was transferred to the U.S. military. "This transfer will allow the DOD to assist border patrol's efforts to secure our southern border," said Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell during the Weekly Sitrep video, which highlights department activities each week. When the Army accepts jurisdiction over that land, it will become part of a national defense area -- a specified piece of federal land over which DOD maintains administrative authority and jurisdiction and is permitted to establish and enforce a controlled perimeter and access. Service members stationed at the border and operating on that land will have greater authority to execute their mission. They will be governed by the same rules as when they are defending any other military installation, such as apprehending trespassers and passing them to appropriate civilian or federal law enforcement officials. "Border security is national security," Parnell said. "You've heard us say it many, many times. We say it because we believe it." This week, Marine and Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer returned to service after hanging up his uniform 15 years ago. His oath of enlistment was administered in the Pentagon by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. "On Thursday, Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer reenlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserves," Parnell said. "Our nation's heroes are excited to serve again under President Trump and Secretary Hegseth's leadership, and the Marine Corps is lucky to have Dakota Meyer back in the ranks." Meyer received the Medal of Honor for his gallant actions during a 2009 battle in Kunar Province, Afghanistan. He said his decision to reenlist is the same as it was to enlist some 20 years ago. "I've got more to give, and it's just such an honor to be able to come stand shoulder--to-shoulder next to the men and women who are wearing the nation's cloth today," Meyer said. At the reenlistment ceremony, Hegseth told Meyer his willingness to return to uniform will inspire young people nationwide. "[We're doing] this as big as we can because I want the American people, I want your fellow Marines [and] I want other service members to look at [your] example and [know] you're never too old, you're never too experienced [and] you've never done too much to contribute, and I salute you," Hegseth said. Also this week, Hegseth held high-level military-to-military meetings with important American allies from two continents. "Secretary Hegseth hosted El Salvador's minister of defense and the French minister of defense at the Pentagon for bilateral discussions," Parnell said. "We're working with our partners and allies to make peace through strength a reality all around the world." Salvadoran Defense Minister Ren� Francis Merino Monroy visited the Pentagon, April 16, 2025. During that meeting, Hegseth praised El Salvador's crackdown on crime in recent years, describing the Salvadoran government's efforts as "nothing short of a miracle." "Your country's victories over violent cartels and criminal enterprises -- groups that terrorized your people and your communities -- are a model for all in our hemisphere," Hegseth said, adding that he and the president appreciate allies like El Salvador because they "punch above [their] weight." Yesterday, the secretary met with French Armed Forces Minister S�bastien Lecornu, where the two leaders discussed, among other things, increases in defense spending, NATO taking primary responsibility for Europe's conventional defense and efforts toward a durable peace in Ukraine. Hegseth said it was an excellent meeting with his French counterpart, adding, "We discussed the imperative need for Europeans to meet a 5% defense spending commitment to restore deterrence with ready, lethal conventional forces." Parnell also spoke about the tragedy that befell the Marine Corps and the Defense Department, April 15, 2025, when a vehicle accident during a convoy movement resulted in the deaths of two Marines and the injury of a third. All three Marines were supporting Joint Task Force Southern Border operations. "Secretary Hegseth and our entire DOD family were heartbroken to learn of the tragic accident near Santa Teresa, New Mexico, that took the lives of two of our nation's heroes and seriously injured another," Parnell said. "Our prayers are with them and their loved ones." Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Albert A. Aguilera, 22, of Riverside, California, and Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Marcelino M. Gamino, 28, of Fresno, California, both combat engineers with the 1st Combat Engineer Battalion, 1st Marine Division, were killed in the accident. A third Marine involved in the accident remains in critical condition and is being treated for injuries. Defense Secretary Orders Additional Remedies, More Clarity on COVID-19 Reinstatements [2025-04-23] WASHINGTON -- The defense secretary today signed a memorandum directing more clarity regarding the department's efforts to reinstate service members kicked out for not taking the COVID-19 vaccine, as well as additional remedies for those service members. "We're doing everything we can, as quickly as we can, to reinstate those who were affected by that policy," said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order, Jan. 27, 2025, regarding reinstating service members discharged under the department's COVID-19 vaccine mandate. In February, the department published implementation guidance on how to make that happen. The secretary acknowledged that there have been hiccups in that effort so far but that he and the department are working to correct them. "It hasn't been perfect, and we know that," Hegseth said. "We're having an ongoing conversation with you to get it right. [We're] working with the White House as well. We want anyone impacted by that vaccine mandate back into the military -- people of conscience, warriors of conscience -- back in our formations." The memorandum directs the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness to provide additional guidance to the boards responsible for reviewing the cases of service members discharged under DOD's now-rescinded COVID-19 vaccine mandate. "The guidance also will facilitate the removal of adverse actions on service members solely for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine, including discharge upgrades and less than fully honorable discharges for individuals separated from refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine," Hegseth said. "We're trying to scrub all that, clean all that up." The latest directive from the top levels of the Pentagon directs the removal of adverse actions that resulted solely from refusal to take the vaccine, upgrades to the discharge status for those service members whose service was characterized as less than fully honorable as a result of their refusal to take the vaccine, and additional and appropriate remedies for service members who suffered career setbacks as a result of their refusal to take the vaccine. Pentagon Opens Doors to the New Generation for 'Bring Your Child to Work Day' [2025-04-25] WASHINGTON -- The defense secretary welcomed more than 8,300 children of Pentagon employees yesterday during "Bring Your Child to Work Day." The event was designed to help children experience the workforce and showcase different roles within the Defense Department. During a mock press briefing in the afternoon where children had the chance to become reporters for the day, Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Sean Parnell talked with more than 60 of those children about what the Pentagon is and what their parents do there for the nation. "Their mission is to protect our country [and] ensure global security -- which involves a lot of crazy and complicated things -- but it's all about making your life better and ensuring that you live in a country that's free," Parnell said. "You see them go to work every single day, but today, you get a unique opportunity to see what goes on behind the scenes. The work they do requires incredible dedication and skill. It's something to really be proud of. You should all be very, very proud of your parents." Both Parnell and Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson hosted mock briefings and answered questions from children about the history of the Pentagon building, the department's mission and how Pentagon leaders work with capable allies and partners. Wilson reminded the children of the importance of their parent's work. "You might not think about it often, but your parents are involved in something really special here at the DOD," she said. "They work super hard every single day, long hours, to keep people safe and to protect our country. And they're part of a global team doing some awesome, amazing things." Pentagon tour guides provided tours to over 1,000 guests throughout the day. Wilson encouraged the little visitors to explore the building with their parents. "Walk throughout the hallway, see all of the awesome stuff we have to offer, learn something new, and use this opportunity firsthand to see what your parents do when they leave home and come to the office every day," she said. In the Pentagon courtyard, all five services within DOD, along with the Coast Guard, provided opportunities for children to learn more about the department. There were displays of robots used in explosive ordnance disposal, night vision equipment, drones, and various other displays involving STEM education. John Freeman and Isaac Peugh, both with Program Executive Office Soldier out of Fort Belvoir, Virginia, manned a booth in the Pentagon courtyard where they demonstrated an integrated visual augmentation system being developed for the Army. "What we're working with right here is a [helmet] system that has numerous arrays of sensors on a heads-up display that enables situational awareness and communications," Freeman said. "You're able to see where your teammates are within the battlefield. You're able to communicate and create mission packages and plan routes." Peugh said more than 400 kids came, though many seemed more interested in trying on the high-tech equipment than asking about it. "We didn't get too many questions, just there's a lot of oohs and aahs from the kids," he said. The PEO Soldier booth had a constant flow of kids -- considering most of the equipment was wearable. "I think it's safe to say that our station was one of the more popular ones," he said. "The kids were getting to put on augmented reality, night vision and thermal systems." New technology, like what was on display from the Army, might be more commonplace for the young people who marveled at it in the Pentagon than for some of the older soldiers in the Army right now, Peugh said. "The buttons that we have here, there's only a few buttons, to make sure that soldiers aren't overwhelmed with information, buttons or programs," he said. "It's all very simple, very intuitive. And by the time these kids are coming in the Army and joining the close-combat force and wearing these things, there will be no issues with the user interface." "Bring Your Child to Work Day" is an annual event designed to help children experience the workforce and showcase different roles within the Defense Department. This year's event theme was "For a New Generation," and the goal was to inspire children to explore future career paths, provide exposure to military and civilian roles, and teach them about the nation's defense community. This Week in DOD: 100 Days of Success, Accelerated Retention, Bringing Back Discharged Service Members [2025-04-25] WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told young military leaders, April 23, 2025, that since January, the Defense Department has focused entirely on restoring the warrior ethos, rebuilding the military and reestablishing deterrence. "This week at the Department of Defense, we got to work for our warfighters," said Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs and Senior Advisor Sean Parnell during the Weekly Sitrep video, which highlights department activities each week. "Secretary Hegseth visited Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to meet with emerging leaders at the United States Army War College and deliver remarks on President [Donald J. Trump's] historic first 100 days in office." At the school, Hegseth spoke with senior, field-grade officers and civilian equivalents who are in the final stretch of the school's 10-month strategic leadership resident program. Graduates of the course will be eligible for major command and civilian equivalent executive leadership positions. The secretary said over the past 100 days, the department has been working to restore the warrior ethos by refocusing the military on lethality, meritocracy, accountability, and standards and readiness. "To be lethal, you have to trust that the warrior alongside you in battle, or the troops fighting in the units that many of you will lead, are capable -- truly, physically capable -- of doing what is necessary under fire," Hegseth said, adding that such a standard is especially applicable to leaders. Back in Washington, Navy Secretary John Phelan contributed to the department's efforts by removing yet another program that distracts sailors from their warfighting mission. "Navy Secretary John Phelan announced this week that he's rescinding climate change initiatives established by the previous administration, which is fantastic," Parnell said. "President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have been very clear: less woke, more warfighting." Phelan signed a memorandum, April 22, 2025, rescinding the Navy's "Climate Action 2030" program, saying that action would free up the service to focus on a more lethal and ready naval force, with a goal of achieving "peace through strength." "Today, I'm focusing on warfighters first," Phelan said. "Our focus needs to be on lethality and our warfighters." Parnell said while the Navy was refocusing on lethality, the Army caught the spotlight with top-notch recruiting and retention efforts. "Some record-breaking news on the warfighter front. For the last seven years, the United States Army has met or exceeded its retention goal. However, this year, that accomplishment comes nearly six months ahead of schedule," he added. The Army revealed, April 22, 2025, that it had surpassed its fiscal year 2025 reenlistment goal by retaining 15,600 soldiers, 800 more than the target of 14,800. That feat was accomplished well before the end of the fiscal year in September. Incentives such as current station stabilization, specific training opportunities, overseas assignments, or choice of duty station within the continental United States partially contributed to the Army's success. "That is some great work [by] the United States Army," Parnell said. Also this week, the secretary signed a series of memos, each focused on strengthening the military. "Secretary Hegseth signed three memos this week, the first to restore good order and discipline through balanced accountability. In other words, we want to embolden our commanders to be able to lead fearlessly," Parnell said. "Second, a memo to eliminate the availability of ridiculous medical waivers. And finally, a memo to further clarify how we will bring back valuable service members discharged for their refusal to take the experimental COVID-19 vaccine and to ensure those service members are welcomed back with open arms." The department released a memorandum, April 23, 2025, directing more clarity regarding the department's efforts to bring back to the military service members who were involuntarily separated for not taking the COVID-19 vaccine, as well as providing additional remedies for those service members. "We're doing everything we can, as quickly as we can, to reinstate those who were affected by that policy," Hegseth said. In the memo signed, April 24, 2025, Hegseth directed the secretaries of each military department to conduct a comprehensive review of their Military Equal Opportunity and DOD civilian Equal Employment Opportunity programs to ensure prompt and impartial investigations, fair treatment to all parties involved, and timely and appropriate resolution of allegations of discrimination. "The DOD has equal opportunity programs for service members and civilians to report discrimination and harassment -- that's a good thing," he said. "But what's not good is when these programs are weaponized -- some individuals use these programs in bad faith to retaliate against superiors or peers." The secretary said the memorandum, titled "Restoring Good Order and Discipline Through Balanced Accountability," will address that problem and enable commanders to again lead with confidence. Finally, the department released a memorandum today, directing the undersecretary of defense for personal and readiness to conduct a review of existing medical waivers offered now by the department and to determine if those waivers should still be offered. Among them, Hegseth said, are those for medical conditions such as schizophrenia, paraphilic disorders, congestive heart failure and the chronic use of oxygen. "Applicants for military service ... must be physically and mentally able to perform their duties under the harshest of conditions without risk to themselves or others," Hegseth said. "That's why we need clear, high and uncompromising medical and mental standards for those who desire to serve." At Southern Border, Defense Secretary Visits Newly Created National Defense Area [2025-04-25] WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visited the newly created New Mexico National Defense Area today to meet with service members assigned to Joint Task Force Southern Border. "This is Department of Defense property," Hegseth said. "Any illegal [attempt] to enter that zone is entering a military base -- a federally protected area. You will be detained. You will be interdicted by U.S. troops and border patrol working together." Hegseth held a sign in English and Spanish indicating the property's protected status. The signs state that the area is under U.S. military jurisdiction and warn that trespassers will be detained. "You've got signs like this one all across the border wall facing into Mexico -- clear English, clear Spanish," he said. Millions of people crossed the U.S.-Mexico border over the past four years, Hegseth said. Since January, the department has stepped up efforts to curb illegal crossings. Initial deployments earlier this year included 1,600 active-duty Marines and soldiers joining the 2,500 reservists who had already been mobilized. In early March, the department sent a Stryker brigade combat team and a general support aviation battalion to the southwestern border to accelerate President Donald J. Trump's directive to bolster military support in securing the border. Those units were equipped with wheeled vehicles and aviation assets to support mobility and surveillance. In late March, service members assigned to JTF-SB were authorized to conduct patrols -- a shift from the previously static role of detection and monitoring. Last week, the Defense Department assumed jurisdiction from the Department of the Interior over 109,651 acres of federal land along the U.S.-Mexico border. The area was officially designated the "New Mexico National Defense Area," April 18, 2025, following a general order signed by the Secretary of the Army to make that NDA part of the existing Fort Huachuca, an Army installation in nearby Arizona. According to the DOI, the agreement for the land transfer is three years. The transfer of jurisdiction and the creation of the NMNDA was directed by the president as a way to strengthen the authority of service members already participating in border control efforts as part of JTF-SB. Troops have been working alongside Customs and Border Protection since January to seal the southern border. However, the kind of work they can do there has been limited by federal law. While service members could assist in identifying border crossers, for instance, only CBP personnel could apprehend them. But now, federal troops participating in JTF-SB, and who are operating on the NMNDA, can temporarily detain trespassers until an appropriate law enforcement entity can assume custody. Service members can now also conduct cursory searches of trespassers to ensure the safety of U.S. service members and DOD property, conduct crowd control measures as necessary, and provide emergency medical support to trespassers to prevent the loss of life, limb or eyesight. "Through these enhanced authorities, U.S. Northern Command will ensure those who illegally trespass in the New Mexico National Defense Area are handed over to Customs and Border Protection or our other law enforcement partners," said Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, Northcom commander. "Joint Task Force Southern Border will conduct enhanced detection and monitoring, which will include vehicle and foot patrols, rotary wing and fixed surveillance site operations." Getting control of the border was at the top of the president's to-do list on the day he took office. Hours after his inauguration, he signed a document declaring a national emergency at the southern border and said America's sovereignty was under attack. "Our southern border is overrun by cartels, criminal gangs, known terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers, unvetted military-age males from foreign adversaries, and illicit narcotics that harm Americans," the president wrote. In the same document, the president said the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. armed forces must seal the border. Within days of that order, U.S. troops were already heading down south to carry out the president's directives. Today, Northcom directed JTF-SB to carry out that mission alongside CBP. "For too long, our southern border was poorly equipped and understaffed, and our warfighters were restricted from doing their jobs," Hegseth said today via social media. "We will secure our southern border and have 100% operational control." DOD Better Now at Defending Domestically Against Unmanned Systems [2025-04-30] WASHINGTON -- In December 2023, a series of unmanned aerial systems of unknown origin were seen over and around Joint Base Langley-Eustis in southern Virginia. At the time, the Defense Department had little ability to detect, track, characterize, disrupt or defeat those unmanned aerial systems. While speaking before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's military and foreign affairs subcommittee in Washington yesterday, Mark Roosevelt Ditlevson, acting assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs, told lawmakers the department is in a better place now than it was in 2023 regarding dealing with the threat posed by unmanned systems to domestic military installations. "To some extent, those challenges from JBLE still exist," Ditlevson said. "However, we have worked since then to improve and refine our processes and coordination efforts, and we have seen improvements in subsequent responses. I'm confident that we are in a stronger position to defend DOD installations today than we were in December of 2023." Ditlevson said that internal process reviews within DOD, a generation of better domain awareness, and the clarification of authorities' commanders are all areas where the department will continue to improve its ability to respond to unwanted unmanned aerial systems. One example is a streamlined process for obtaining interagency coordination before counter-UAS action is taken, consistent with U.S. Code Section 130i. That effort is being formalized now, and Ditlevson said the first updated guidance will be released in the coming weeks. Section 130i describes the protection of certain facilities and assets from unmanned aircraft. Ditlevson said the department would like Congress's help in updating that section. "We continue to engage with members of Congress to seek modest but important refinements to do these counter-UAS authorities under Section 130i," he said. "Our legislative proposal is intended to allow the department to protect additional locations and missions, add greater stability for long-term planning and resource allocation within the department, and facilitate improved understanding and cooperation among the U.S. interagency and local partners." One area where Ditlevson said it could improve is to expand the number of locations where it applies. "Not all installations qualify as one of the nine mission areas under 130i," Ditlevson said. "We'd like to expand that to cover all installations. And then we'd also like to facilitate data sharing because right now, data sharing from the DOD side is limited only in the pursuit of a legal case against a particular individual or group. We're not able to share data with our interagency partners to improve our tactics, techniques or procedures." Navy Rear Adm. Paul Spedero Jr., vice director for operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the development, fielding, acquisition and distribution of domain awareness sensors are critical steps in helping DOD pursue unwanted UAS systems over domestic military installations. However, so is a system to provide command and control. "We need a method to exert command and control so that we can build a common operating picture," he said. "It will take layers of different sensors because one sensor may be better against certain [unmanned aerial vehicles] and certain flight profiles, and you may have to rely on different sensors to round out the picture. So, being able to fuse all that together to get the complete picture will be necessary." Spedero also told lawmakers about "fly-away" kits, which are mobile kits that contain counter-UAS technology that can be sent to installations that need them on request. Such kits would be used to bolster the defenses of military installations that don't have sufficient capabilities of their own. "We are addressing the shortfall right now with the fielding of fly-away kits," he said. "These will be kits that will be available for bases that have very limited capability to detect on their own and build domain awareness. And should they have an incursion that they're unable to resolve, they would solicit the help from the commander of U.S. Northern Command, and this fly-away kit, as well as expertise and additional resources that would be required would be immediately deployed to that location." Also contributing to the department's increased ability to defend against UAS is that the commander of Northcom has been designated as the C-UAS "operational synchronizer" for North America. The commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command was put in a similar role. "Within weeks of being assigned this role, [Air Force Gen. Greg Guillot], the commander of U.S. Northern Command, released a comprehensive commander's assessment that has served as a roadmap to building the necessary command and control and standard operating procedures to address the drone threat," Spedero said. 14 Winning Weeks at DOD: Border Security, Hitting Back at Houthis, Booming Recruiting [2025-05-02] WASHINGTON -- During the first 100 days of leadership under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth -- about 14 weeks in all -- the Defense Department has seen a wide range of successes. "Tuesday marked President Trump's 100th day in office," said Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs and Senior Advisor Sean Parnell during the Weekly Sitrep video, which highlights department activities each week. "At the Pentagon, our warfighters delivered historic victories for the American people in those first 100 days." To begin with, the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Space Force -- all the military services under the Defense Department -- have been outdoing themselves when it comes to both recruitment and retention. "Due to President Trump and Secretary Hegseth's leadership, the U.S. military has seen historic recruiting numbers in all branches of service, pretty amazing stuff," Parnell said. In February 2025, all five DOD military services met their recruiting goals -- which were higher than a year earlier. Additionally, four out of five of the services in February exceeded their goal to a greater extent than what they had done a year earlier in 2024. "It's been decades since we've seen this kind of recruiting in the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force. The men and women of America want to join the United States military," he said. "We can barely absorb the volume and retention as well, men and women in the military who don't want to get out." Hegseth had also committed to making the DOD more efficient. And with the help of the Department of Government Efficiency, Parnell said, that's been happening and will continue to happen as well. "In collaboration with DOGE, we've found nearly $6 billion in potential savings for reinvestment within the Department of Defense," Parnell said. The biggest DOGE find to date was addressed in April, when the secretary signed orders to cut $5.1 billion in wasteful DOD programs, including consulting contracts, information technology services and business process consulting. Parnell said Trump promised to secure the southern border, and the DOD has been on the job there since January. "We've ... deployed approximately 11,900 troops to protect our Southwest border from illegal alien invaders, and established a national defense area," he said. "As a result, border crossings are down 99.99% compared to the previous administration's first 100 days. Again, pretty great." Nearly 9,000 miles away, U.S. Central Command forces have been striking back against Iran-backed Houthi targets across Yemen since mid-March. The effort is in response to ongoing Houthi attacks on U.S. military and commercial shipping vessels in the region. "[Centcom] strikes have hit over 1,000 targets -- killing Houthi fighters and leaders and degrading their capabilities. The mission has been hugely successful thus far," Parnell said. Finally, at the direction of the president, the department has taken big steps to welcome back into uniform service members kicked out for not taking the COVID-19 vaccine, Parnell said. While the Defense Department has seen a successful first 100 days, Parnell said, the successes will keep coming. "We are laser-focused on results here at the Pentagon, and we are just getting started," he said. International Visitors Learn About National Guard Ops [2025-05-07] WASHINGTON -- International visitors involved in emergency preparedness and crisis response came to the Pentagon today to learn more about the National Guard. The visit was part of a larger trip to understand emergency preparedness, management, planning, funding and coordination among federal, state and local government organizations, as well as the private sector. The State Department's long-standing International Visitor Leadership Program began in 1940 as a way to advance national security strategy priorities and build long-term relationships between Americans and international leaders in government, business, academia and other fields. In Washington, participants in this IVLP trip -- which runs through May 24, 2025 -- met mostly with federal organizations. At the Pentagon, they learned how the National Guard provides support to their states, neighboring states, the federal government, and other nations as part of the State Partnership Program. During an hourlong briefing, the participants learned how the guard responds to hurricanes, floods, wildfires and tornadoes, as well as how, through the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, it provides assistance to other states. Part of the discussion involved the guard operations from 2024. Last year, more than 800,000 personnel days were used to support border missions, 927 personnel days were used for search and rescue missions, more than 5,000 personnel days were used for severe weather emergencies, and 154,000 personnel days were used for wildfire-related missions. The SPP was of special interest to about half the participants, whose own nations have program agreements with the guard units. Within the program, state National Guards partner with the militaries of U.S. partner allies -- about 115 total. The program supports the security cooperation objectives of the U. S. and geographic combatant commands by developing enduring relationships with partner countries and carrying out activities to build partner capacity, improve interoperability, and enhance relations, while increasing the readiness of the U.S. and partner forces to meet emerging challenges. Josephina Chan Ting, principal disaster risk reduction officer from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment in Samoa, was one of the participants. Samoa doesn't have a military of its own, but the nation partnered with the Nevada National Guard through the SPP, and Chan Ting said it's a valuable asset for the island nation. "I think for us specifically, from my experience, because we're so involved and engaged with the National Guard partnership program, it's quite beneficial for us," she said. "It's really getting that exposure to expertise. So, with the program currently, what we're doing is emphasizing that subject matter expert exchange, where we have the National Guard come over to Samoa and we share best practices." Previously, the guard in Nevada partnered only with Samoa's police force and fire and emergency services. However, that has expanded to include the disaster management office. After finishing this trip, Chan Ting said she's very interested in coordination, standard operating procedures and preplanning so everyone knows their role when an event occurs. "I want to take that back to Samoa," she said. "Ultimately, it's really important to have that discussion during the preparedness and prevention phase before we actually respond because once we respond, if we have everything aligned, the transition should be efficient, and the response should be efficient as well." Ahmed Mohammed serves as a police officer and branch manager of information on command and control systems with the Abu Dhabi Police General Headquarters in the United Arab Emirates. He said he was impressed with the independence of organizations like the guard. "Each organization knows its roles and responsibilities and ... which phases it comes [in at] regarding responding to an incident or an emergency," he said. "I was amazed by the National Guard, how independent they are, and how they know their specific roles and responsibilities." The UAE recently established its own concept, which is similar to the guard. "National Guard is a new concept for us in the UAE," he said. "But today I saw how smoothly National Guard here in the states works and how independent and authorized [they are] to go through any incident with the support of their governor, on the local phase, and on the federal level. The program is amazing, and it's fruitful." The independence of agencies like the guard, and how emergency response agencies coordinate with each other, are topics he said he'll take back with him to discuss with his own leadership. This Week in DOD: Refocusing Resources, Service Member Standards, Red Sea Ceasefire [2025-05-09] WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed a force-wide reduction in general officers May 5, 2025, as part of a larger effort within the Defense Department to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy that hinders mission effectiveness. "Secretary Hegseth signed a memorandum directing general officer and flag officer reductions throughout the services to cut bureaucratic bloat at the top and to empower our warfighters across the force to do their jobs," said Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs and Senior Advisor Sean Parnell during the Weekly Sitrep video, which highlights department activities each week. Parnell said the policy is expected to enhance operational effectiveness and empower warfighters throughout the ranks. The secretary's recommendation calls for an initial minimum 20% reduction of four-star general positions across the active component and a similar reduction of all general officers within the National Guard. Hegseth also wants to cut 10% of all general and flag officer positions in conjunction with a planned realignment of the unified command plan, which details the organization of combatant commands. That realignment, he said, "is going to be, we think, the most comprehensive review since the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. It's a generational change in combat command structures, planning, training, geographic areas of responsibility, mission and operational responsibilities." Hegseth noted that, similar to other reforms within the department, this change to the general officer ranks has been planned in detail. "This is not a slash-and-burn exercise meant to punish high-ranking officers," Hegseth said. "This has been a deliberative process, working with the Joint Chiefs of Staff with one goal: maximizing strategic readiness and operational effectiveness by making prudent reductions in the general and flag officer ranks." In the Red Sea, Iran-backed Houthi forces have been attacking U.S. ships and those of other nations for years, disrupting legal commerce. In mid-March, the U.S. finally took steps to put an end to those attacks. U.S. Central Command, at the direction of President Donald J. Trump, began a series of attacks on key terrorist Houthi targets in Yemen. "Freedom of navigation is ... a core national interest," Hegseth said. "The minute the Houthis say, 'we'll stop shooting at your ships [and] we'll stop shooting at your drones,' this campaign will end, but until then, it will be unrelenting." On May 5, 2025, the situation in the Red Sea changed. "President Trump announced that the Houthis, exhausted by our nearly daily operations, have capitulated and do not want to fight," Parnell said. "President Trump has been very clear from the beginning: freedom of navigation is the objective; whether the strikes continue is up to the Houthis." In a January 2025 executive order, Trump made it the policy of the federal government to recognize only two sexes: male and female. That order said that within the federal government, "sex" will refer to an individual's "immutable biological classification as either male or female." In an additional executive order, the president also classified gender dysphoria as incompatible with military service, stating, "Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DOD policy, expressing a false 'gender identity' divergent from an individual's sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service." In keeping with that direction, Hegseth signed a policy memorandum in February 2025, which detailed, among other things, that service members must serve in accordance with sex, that gender dysphoria is incompatible with military service and that service members diagnosed with gender dysphoria will be processed for separation by their respective services. Actions by the department regarding that memorandum had been paused due to legal challenges until this week. "On Wednesday, the Supreme Court allowed President Trump's ban on transgender military service to take effect," Parnell said. With the decision, the department will now move ahead with the president's and the secretary's direction. "Service members who have a current diagnosis or history of or exhibit symptoms with gender dysphoria may elect to separate voluntarily," Hegseth said. "There's a timeline here. And then eventually, involuntarily, if necessary." Finally this week, Hegseth attended the Special Operations Forces Week conference in Tampa, Florida, where he addressed operators in attendance. "He pledged to keep standards high and to leave wokeness and weakness behind," Parnell said. During the event, Hegseth thanked the SOF community for maintaining their own high physical standards and noted that standards must also be high throughout the military services. "The standards need to be high, and they need to be gender neutral," Hegseth said. "If you can do the job, you're in that formation. And if you can't, you're not. That is restoring the warrior ethos, and it's something we're seeing across all formations that the troops are responding to." Readiness, Shipbuilding Top Priorities for Navy [2025-05-15] WASHINGTON -- On Capitol Hill yesterday, Navy Secretary John Phelan told lawmakers that increasing shipbuilding to better outfit the Navy, developing an accountable and innovative warfighter culture and improving the welfare of the fighting force were his top priorities. Phelan, alongside Acting Chief of Naval Operations Adm. James W. Kilby, and Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Eric M. Smith, briefed the House Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee on current challenges and their plans to address them. "My North Star, or No. 1 priority as secretary, is the readiness of our sailors and Marines," Phelan said, adding that the priorities he outlined will guide his decision-making as he leads the department. After Phelan was sworn in as the Navy secretary in late March, he visited troops and facilities in the Indo-Pacific region, the southern border, the USS Gravely, several military installations, as well as public and private shipyards. "Rebuilding our hollowed-out maritime industrial base is a national security imperative, as outlined in the Restoring America's Maritime Dominance executive order signed by President [Donald J. Trump]," he said. "Over the past month, I visited ... eight shipyards across the nation's East Coast and the Indo-Pacific. I spoke directly with shipyard leaders and the hard-working tradesmen essential to our maritime operations. I now have a clear picture of where our shipbuilding dollars have been going, and [I] am developing a plan to fix what's broken." Phelan told lawmakers that submarine building challenges include the complexity of the ship, workforce experience, supply chain issues and, in some cases, a lack of modernization at shipbuilding facilities. During his meetings with shipyard workers and industry leaders, he discussed the state of shipbuilding and identified ways to improve workflow. "It was very interesting in some of [the leaders'] assessments of what they did not perceive to be as problems," Phelan said, adding that when he met with the workers, he received the opposite response. His visit to a shipyard in Japan showcased the difference in shipbuilding processes. There, he found workers get the same productivity in one shift that American shipyards might get in three shifts. "I believe that's for two reasons," Phelan said. "One, their average worker is 50 years old; it is a career ... they've been in that shipyard a very long time. Two, when I spoke to the welders in Japan, they ... spend zero time on paperwork. Our welders spend between 30% and 40% of their time filling out paperwork ... that is a problem." Phelan said he saw positive things at U.S. yards that might be implemented across the rest of the U.S. shipbuilding industry to speed up things like U.S. submarine production. "I do think we can get the calendar shifted left, but it's going to take a lot of hard work and a lot of effort," he said. Kilby told lawmakers the Navy faces three challenges, and it is working to solve them with congressional assistance. First, he said, is a shortage of approximately 23,000 sailors manning ships. "Thanks to process improvements and targeted investments, we are on plan to reduce that number significantly by the close of fiscal year 2026," Kilby said. "We're committed to attracting and developing Americans who can innovate, solve hard problems and dominate in combat." The Navy missed recruiting goals in fiscal year 2023 but raised its goals in fiscal year 2024 and then exceeded its target when it recruited more than 40,000 new sailors. "[That's] the most since 2003, and we are currently on pace to exceed our recruiting goal for fiscal year 2025," he said. Kilby said a second issue involves strain on the munitions industrial base. Ordinance expenditures in the Red Sea against the Houthis have highlighted challenges with manufacturing replacement munitions. "The Navy is working with both our traditional [prime contractors] and new entrants to close this gap, developing kinetic and non-kinetic weapons at speed and at scale," he said. In submitted testimony, Kilby said the Navy is investing in expanding capacity and adding new suppliers across its weapons portfolio, including rocket motors, warheads and engines. Finally, Kilby said, platform readiness is a priority for the Navy. "Our platforms are not as ready as they need to be," he said. "We set an ambitious goal to make 80% of our ships, submarines and aircraft combat surge ready by Jan. 1, 2027. To do that, we are reducing maintenance delays. We are improving manning, training, modernization and sustainment. In all of these efforts, consistent and predictable funding is foundational. We appreciate the continued support of this committee." Smith said as the commandant of the Marine Corps, his top priority is achieving a 3.0 amphibious ready group/marine expeditionary unit presence. He added that this would mean the Marines have one amphibious ready group constantly deployed off the East Coast, one deployed off the West Coast and one sporadically deployed out of the naval force in Japan. "The amphibious ready group with marine expeditionary unit embarked is the most versatile tool in our nation's arsenal," he said. "It is the Swiss Army knife of the joint force, and we're working closely with our Navy partners to maximize this capability." Smith said accelerating force design is another priority for the Marines, adding that the Marines are in the implementation phase -- integrating new technology, refining organizational structure and strengthening the joint force. "Force design is our righteous journey to adapt to the changing character of war. The nature of war remains the same, but the character changes," Smith said. Regarding quality of life, Smith said Marines want the basics. He told lawmakers, "Every Marine deserves a clean, safe place to lay their head at night. They don't ask for much, but they do ask for that." Smith called the Barracks 2030 program the most consequential infrastructure investment in Marine Corps history. He noted that it will provide every Marine with safe, modern living conditions. "And quality of life goes beyond our barracks," he added. "We're also investing in the well-being of Marine families, because retaining our Marines means supporting those who stand by them." This Week in DOD: Strengthening Middle East Ties, New Air Force Leadership, Powerful Poland Partnership [2025-05-16] WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spent time abroad this week with President Donald J. Trump, cementing already important relationships with allies. "Secretary Hegseth joined President Trump on his historic trip to the Middle East, where the secretary signed letters of intent on defense cooperation with Saudi Arabia and Qatar and addressed troops at Al Udeid Air Base, [Qatar]," said Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs and Senior Advisor Sean Parnell during the Weekly Sitrep video, which highlights department activities each week. "At the Pentagon, we are committed to President Trump's 'America First' agenda and to achieving a more stable and prosperous Middle East," he added. In Qatar, Hegseth told troops the president has their backs, and that both leaders are committed to rebuilding and strengthening the U.S. military. "We're restoring the warrior ethos," Hegseth said. "We're also rebuilding our military. President Trump has committed [to] a trillion-dollar defense budget, a historic budget unlike any before -- a generational rebuilding of our capabilities. We will have the best ships, the best subs, the best planes, the best fighters, the best drones, missiles, air defense, space defense, border security [and] 'Golden Dome' ... America will be stronger than ever before." The U.S. also worked to strengthen partnerships in Europe this week by hosting a visit with Polish defense leaders. Bridge Colby, the undersecretary of defense for policy, met with Poland's secretary of state in the Ministry of National Defense. "Poland is serious about its defense, and we are thankful for their leadership on the continent," Parnell said. Following his meeting, Colby praised Poland's commitment to partnership with the U.S. and to its own defense. "Great to get down to business with my Polish counterpart," Colby said. "Poland is serious about its defense, and its strategic thinking is grounded in common sense. That's rarer than it should be. We at DOD will prioritize working with allies like Poland that fit that bill." Earlier this year, Hegseth visited Poland. At the time, he also praised Poland's commitment to defense and its growing capabilities. "We see Poland as a model ally on the continent, willing to invest not just in their defense, but in our shared defense and defense of the continent," Hegseth said. This week, the department also filled out its roster of service secretaries. "The Senate voted to confirm Troy Meink as secretary of the Air Force, giving the Department of Defense a full slate of fantastic service secretaries," Parnell said. "Under their leadership, our military will get back to basics and get back to putting the warfighters first." Meink joins Secretary of the Army Daniel P. Driscoll and Secretary of the Navy John Phelan in leading America's military services. During his confirmation hearing in March, Meink spelled out the challenges facing the Air Force. "The department is building and operating some of the most complex systems ever fielded in both air and space," Meink said. "We need not only the right number of airmen and guardians, but [we] also need the right skills, training, support and focus to deliver and operate those systems." Meink said, as secretary, his goal is "to organize, train, and equip the Department of the Air Force to have the lethality needed to deter all potential aggressors and, if necessary, win in conflict." Finally this week, Parnell said the Navy marked an anniversary for a set of skilled medical professionals who serve both sailors and Marines. "The United States Navy Nurse Corps celebrated its 117th birthday this week," he said. "We are thankful for the generations of Navy nurses who have served and who've continued to serve with honor and dedication." In today's Navy, around 3,500 active-duty and reserve nurses serve across more than 20 specialized nursing fields. "For over a century, Navy nurses have stood strong, providing unwavering care, compassion, and expertise for our sailors and Marines and their families across the globe," said Navy Rear. Adm. Robert J. Hawkins, Nurse Corps chief. "You have consistently demonstrated commitment to service and excellence." DOD Issues Implementation Guidance on Separation of Service Members With Gender Dysphoria [2025-05-16] WASHINGTON -- Yesterday, military leaders across the force were issued guidance from the Defense Department on how to proceed with separating, voluntarily or involuntarily, service members with a diagnosis or history of, or exhibiting symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria. The department has halted accessions of individuals meeting these criteria and has now directed the services to prepare to separate individuals already serving who meet the criteria. "As [President Donald J. Trump] stated in his January executive order, expressing a false gender identity divergent from an individual's sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service," said a senior defense official yesterday during a background conversation to discuss the new guidance. "Therefore, the department is moving forward with implementing its guidance to separate individuals impacted by this policy, either through a voluntary or involuntary separation process." As part of the guidance by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, service members on active duty and with gender dysphoria have until June 6, 2025, and service members in one of the reserve components have until July 7, to self-identify. Once that happens, the official said, military services have 30 days to begin separation proceedings. According to the guidance, after the voluntary self-identification period, the military services will begin the process of involuntarily separating affected service members. The primary means of identification for the involuntary process will be through the Individual Medical Readiness Program and any military service-specific IMR guidance. "Individual medical readiness programs are long-standing programs and policies in the department; they are not new, [and] they are not tied specifically to the implementation of this policy," the official said. "In response to the need to ensure that service members remain qualified and fit for duty, [the department has long] used incremental medical evaluations that are done periodically -- traditionally in annual health screening and assessment." The department will continue to use the individual medical readiness programs to ensure troops are qualified for service, the official said, adding that in the future, part of the medical readiness review process will ensure service members do not have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Service members affected by the policy are eligible for an array of benefits, including separation pay, which will be higher for those who self-identify and agree to a voluntary separation. For example, the official said, an E-5 service member with 10 years of service might be eligible for as much as $101,000 of separation pay, while the same E-5 who is involuntarily separated would be eligible for only half of that amount. The official said separation pay is affected by rank, time in service and whether a service member voluntarily or involuntarily separated. "The department encourages currently serving service members that are impacted by the policy to elect to do the voluntary identification and voluntary separation process, which may afford certain benefits not available to those who go through the involuntary separation process," the official said. The department, citing an older study, estimates there were around 4,000 service members diagnosed with gender dysphoria at that time. However, the official said that the number may change due to accessions and departures since the report's publication. Additionally, the department estimated that about 1,000 service members across the department would voluntarily self-identify. DOD Uses Voluntary Reductions as Path to Civilian Workforce Goals [2025-05-16] WASHINGTON -- With two opportunities to apply for a deferred resignation and a hiring freeze in effect for the majority of its civilian career fields, the Defense Department is working toward successfully implementing its workforce acceleration and recapitalization initiative, primarily using voluntary reductions in force. The initiative, announced March 28, 2025, in a memorandum from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, is part of a larger plan to rebuild the U.S. military to meet current and future demands. "To deliver on my commitment to urgently rebuild our military, revive the warrior ethos and deliver maximum deterrence, we must aggressively refocus every available resource towards our core mission," Hegseth said. "We will realign the size of our civilian workforce and strategically restructure it to supercharge our American warfighters consistent with my interim National Defense Strategy guidance." With more than 900,000 civilian employees across the department, this initiative requires a deliberate, comprehensive approach to reshape and -- in some cases -- reduce the workforce. Tim Dill, performing the duties of the deputy under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said the department has achieved many of its workforce goals using voluntary or passive measures, particularly through two deferred resignation programs and a hiring freeze. "Reducing the size of the civilian workforce is not about hitting a threshold -- it's about doing what is best for the department, our warfighters and our mission." In his messages to the workforce, the defense secretary said he wants to make reduction decisions as voluntary as possible to minimize the need for involuntary separations. Dill said the department has not made a decision regarding a reduction in force, a process through which the department could involuntarily lay off civil servants. In late January 2025, the Office of Personnel Management offered a government-wide DRP, which was available for two weeks. Under that program, federal employees could volunteer to resign from their positions and enjoy paid leave through the end of September. The department also offered a second round of DRP, billed as "DRP 2.0," from April 7 through 14. Under both DRPs, eligible employees were offered the Voluntary Early Retirement Authority, which allowed those employees to begin collecting retirement pay earlier than scheduled. Dill said some employees combined the two, accepting DRP and early retirement. "It was a very attractive and generous offer for those who might have been thinking about leaving," he said. The department is now reviewing employee applications to participate in the second DRP. "A lot of analysis must be done in each of the military departments and components to identify concentrations of volunteers and make certain that we manage the impact of their departures on our mission and warfighters," Dill said. With both DRPs, the department and military services could deny an employee's request to take the offer if doing so was in the best interest of the department. "We want to maximize participation, but at the same time, we need to mitigate risk and ensure that we don't allow participation where doing so would harm the department's readiness or effectiveness," he said. Early on in his second administration, President Donald J. Trump directed executive departments and agencies to streamline the federal workforce. Hegseth acted swiftly to implement a civilian employee hiring freeze in support of this guidance and in an effort to streamline operations, bolster readiness and prioritize critical DOD missions. In the past, the department typically hired about 6,000 civilians each month to fill vacancies left by retirements and other employee attrition. With a hiring freeze in place, the gaps in civilian employment are growing, reducing the size of the civilian workforce across the department. That reduction in the workforce is not random, in part, because the hiring freeze is not universal. The DOD has exempted jobs it considers central to its core warfighting mission, such as those related to immigration enforcement, national security, public safety, shipyards, depots, cyber fields and medical treatment facilities. "We never stopped bringing in the new people needed to build a ready, lethal fighting force and help the department achieve its goals," Dill said. "And, hiring continues for our most essential positions. We're just bringing in fewer employees than we have in the past in support of a lean, efficient, disciplined and -- above all -- effective DOD." Last month, the secretary ordered the military departments, Joint Chiefs, directors of defense agencies and others to submit reorganization plans that include proposed future functional areas, consolidated management hierarchies, position titles and counts. Dill said those plans have since been submitted, and the department is now analyzing the requested input to further optimize and develop the workforce. The review will identify functions that are no longer needed or that are duplicative and can be eliminated. Dill said an effort will be made to retain personnel whose experience and expertise can be applied elsewhere to serve the department. "We want to make sure that talented employees who have chosen to remain with the department are placed where their skills can be used most effectively to meet the challenges that we face today and not on legacy requirements," he said. While the department continues to realign and reshape its civilian workforce, Dill said he appreciates those who remain focused on the mission and committed to supporting the warfighters. "These men and women have twice signaled their desire to stay in the department, even when they had an opportunity to take paid leave and depart," he said. "We're glad they are still here, and we're excited to match their skill sets against the most critical needs of the department." Overall, he said, the workforce acceleration and recapitalization initiative has enabled DOD to further align every part of the organization around its increasingly urgent national defense mission. USPS Recognizes 250 Years of Army, Navy, Marine Corps With New Stamps [2025-05-19] WASHINGTON -- To commemorate the 250th anniversaries of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps, the U.S. Postal Service released a set of three new commemorative stamps that recognize each service's long-standing dedication to defending the nation. The three stamps, each featuring the name of the military service, the service seal and the inscriptions "250 Years of Service," "Since 1775," and "Forever/USA," were revealed during a ceremony today at Freedom Plaza in Washington. Jeffery A. Adams, USPS corporate communications vice president and Army veteran, spoke about the importance of service during the event. "Service isn't about a uniform. It's about impact. It's about showing up. It's about standing up when it matters the most," he said. "As we honor 250 years of military service ... we also recognize those who are serving right now all over the world and keeping our freedoms alive. I know many of you here are veterans yourselves, and maybe you're still serving, and for that, we thank you." Adams said he hopes the new military-themed commemorative stamps will remind all Americans who use them of the importance of military service. "[They are] reminders for every American that freedom didn't come easy, and it doesn't stay unless we protect it," he said. "Let these stamps serve as a lasting symbol of courage, of commitment and of country." Army Lt. Gen. Gregory J. Brady, Army inspector general, said while the new stamps are a significant commemoration, the Postal Service itself has considerable value to troop morale overall. "Today's important commemoration should not close without recognizing the huge morale booster that the Postal Service has been to our military," he said. "Generations of military personnel serving in foreign lands, deployed -- I can attest to this ... firsthand -- they've always cherished those two words when [their] first sergeant is coming in with that big bag. Those two words are 'mail call!' [It's] the high point of their months and years away from home. Mr. Postmaster General, Team USPS, thank you." Navy Vice Adm. Michael Boyle, director of the Navy staff, pointed out the unique relationship between the Navy and the Postal Service -- considering how many sailors are not on land, but at sea. "I want to thank the United States Postal Service for honoring this legacy with the release of the Armed Forces 250th Anniversary Forever Stamps," Boyle said. "I would also like to thank the United States Postal Service for their partnership with the Navy, a partnership that has spanned nearly two-and-a-half centuries. You have well and faithfully delivered mail to ships on the far side of the world, always finding a way to keep people connected. No matter the distance. Letters and care packages from friends and family delivered to our deployed sailors at sea make an immense difference." Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Paul J. Rock Jr., director of the Marine Corps staff, told event guests how the relationship between the U.S. military and the Postal Service has enhanced his military service. "I still have letters that my wife wrote me when I was a young first lieutenant overseas on my first shipboard deployment, and I cherish the pictures that came through the mail from my children the first time I went to war -- precious memories made possible by the United States Postal Service," Rock said. "That connection remains strong to this day, and I thank the USPS for helping us share this great milestone with all Americans. These stamps will travel around the world and across our nation, carrying with them the message of patriotism, service and unwavering dedication." Antonio Alcal�, an art director for USPS, designed the stamps. As forever stamps, these three military-themed stamps can always be used to send a 1-ounce first-class letter, regardless of the current price of first-class postage. Military Spouse Survey Spurs DOD Review of Moving-Related Issues [2025-05-20] WASHINGTON -- On May 16, 2025, the Defense Department released to Congress the results of the 2024 Active-Duty Spouse Survey, a look at the opinions and attitudes of active-duty military spouses conducted roughly every two years. Survey participants are drawn from a representative sample and results are weighted for the entire active-duty spouse population, so findings are generalizable. The survey covers a range of topics including the availability of child care, spouse employment, family finances, availability of services, challenges posed by permanent change of station moves and overall satisfaction with the military lifestyle. This year's survey showed PCS moves are a challenge for military spouses. The biggest factor related to unhappiness with a PCS is the problem military spouses face in finding employment after the move. About 49% of military spouses who experienced a PCS move said finding employment proved to be a "large" or "very large" problem. Loss of income and nonreimbursable moving costs also topped the list. Tim Dill, performing the duties of the deputy undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said the department recognizes the challenges faced by military families as they relate to PCS and the department is looking at ways to make things better. "We pay a lot of attention to the spouses [who] share that they are dissatisfied with the military [and] would not support remaining," Dill said. "And one particular concern that I think highlights just [one of the] many of the challenges that military families face is the PCS move." Included in that, he said, is how it affects spouse employment and underemployment -- when spouses work in a job that doesn't make use of their qualifications. PCS moves also affect the availability of child care upon arriving at a new installation and present challenges in finding schools as well. "And then finally, something that's just been in the news recently, the out-of-pocket costs associated with the move," Dill said. "That has come to our attention on the policy level, and it is certainly not [Defense] Secretary [Pete] Hegseth's intent that any military family should be coming out of pocket to pay for a move that is due to the needs of the military." Dill said the department is looking at how it can, to the extent possible, prevent military families from having to pay those costs. "We're taking a very careful look at when PCS moves are truly needed for the military; and where a PCS move is not critical for the military, we need to be looking at whether or not that's a move that even needs to happen because we understand geographic stability is a big factor for the household satisfaction," he said. The survey results reveal that from 2021 to 2024, military spouse satisfaction remained steady with nearly half being satisfied with military life (49%). However, the survey found declining support from spouses for their military spouse to continue in service. Factors influencing that shift may include quality of life issues stemming from the mobility of military life, the impact on family stability, continuity of health care, job and child care loss with PCS moves, a lack of long-term career opportunities, and other financial costs associated with military life. Predictable Budgets, Readiness, Recapitalization Top Priorities for Reserve Components [2025-05-21] WASHINGTON -- Modernizing equipment, improving readiness and securing predictable funding for the next fight remain top priorities for the reserve components of the U.S. military, senior leaders told lawmakers yesterday. Appearing before the House Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee, the chief of the National Guard Bureau, along with the chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps Reserve, discussed service successes over the last year and budgeting challenges they face. Air Force Gen. Steven S. Nordhaus, chief of the National Guard Bureau, thanked Congress for the fiscal year 2025 continuing resolution, which included funding for the guard's State Partnership Program, full-time manning and the National Guard and Reserve Equipment Account. He said continued support is essential for mission readiness. "Every dollar you put in that [allows us to] put a mechanic out on the flight line to be able to get helicopters or the machines that we operate [ready] is critical," he said. "Weapon system sustainment as well, on parts. Those dollars matter. So, whatever [you] can do to increase that capability along those lines [will help.]" The NGREA helps bridge equipment capability gaps between the active and reserve components. It supports operational growth, unfunded requirements and shortfalls in equipment. Nordhaus also emphasized the importance of modernization to maintain interoperability across the joint force. "We must recapitalize concurrently with our services into advanced platforms of helicopters, infantry squad, vehicles, fighters, tankers and cyber," he said. "These modernization efforts will help advance our warfighting capabilities, deter adversaries and maximize the return on investment for our joint force and our taxpayers." Lt. Gen. Robert D. Harter, chief of the Army Reserve, said NGREA is vital to equipment procurement. "We only receive about 1% of the Army's procurement budget, so NGREA has an outsized impact on our ability to procure modernized equipment," Harter said. "Over the past three years, we've purchased 2,300 mission command systems, significantly improving our formations' ability to communicate effectively on the battlefield." Harter also called for stable funding. "Army Reserve soldiers balance civilian careers with military commitments and continuing resolutions force us to delay, curtail or cancel training events," he said. "Predictability is essential for our soldiers, their family members and their civilian employers." Vice Adm. Nancy S. Lacore, chief of the Navy Reserve, told lawmakers about the need to recapitalize its KC-130 Hercules fleet of refuellers to the KC-130J Super Hercules model. "Our C-130 fleet is aging and lacks the survivability necessary to operate in a contested environment," Lacore said. "Recapitalizing with the KC-130J is critical to ensuring that we can effectively and safely carry out the critical intra-theater logistics missions for the fleet." Lacore also stressed the importance of timely personnel funding. "I think the biggest issue for us, related to people, is the predictability and being able to get reservists on orders," she said. "It impacts not just morale, but it impacts readiness ... when they can't commit to their civilian employer, and they take time off from their civilian employer and then we can't come through with the orders. So, that is a big one." Lt. Gen. Leonard F. Anderson IV, commander of the Marine Corps Reserve, said NGREA funding allows reserve Marines to maintain equipment and maintain interoperability with the joint force. "I thank the subcommittee for its continued support, especially through the National Guard and Reserve Equipment Account," he said "For the Marine Corps Reserve, NGREA is not just a funding line, it's a warfighting requirement. These funds allow us to field and sustain the platforms, communication systems and equipment that Marines need to train as they fight. NGREA enables reserve forces to integrate with active forces by equipping them with modern capabilities at pace, and with a 99% execution rate across recent fiscal years, the Marine Corps Reserve has proven its ability to execute with discipline and speed while maintaining our service's clean audit." Lt. Gen. John P. Healy, chief of the Air Force Reserve, cited budget predictability as a challenge. "The predictability and stability of being able to pay our participants is one of the biggest factors," he said. "With the [operations and maintenance] accounts, we're going to be $26 million short of flying out our flying hours this year. So, we're working trying to figure that out. In addition, quarterly authority during a CR doesn't work well with weapon systems sustainment [such as] when you've got large ticket items like $62 million to put a B-52 [Stratofortress] into periodic depot maintenance. Those continue to be challenges as we go forward." Hegseth Directs Changes to Address Shortfalls in Household Movement System [2025-05-22] WASHINGTON -- In advance of this summer's peak permanent change of station moving season, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has directed the U.S. Transportation Command to change how the Global Household Goods contract is implemented in an effort to better serve military families. "We're heading into peak season of moving -- PCS moving -- and that process, I know, has been a mess, and we are addressing it," Hegseth said. "We have ... to take some aggressive action and fast." In a memorandum dated May 20, 2025, Hegseth directed Transcom to make various changes to the existing GHC program. He noted that, while the PCS process has "never been a great system," recent changes have made things worse. "We know it's not working, and it's only getting worse," he said. "We've heard your concerns about contractor performance, quality and accountability. We hear you loud and clear, and that's why we're taking decisive action immediately." In his memorandum, Hegseth directed that during the 2025 PCS moving season, Transcom should "fully leverage" capabilities under the new GHC and the legacy Tender of Service program, which GHC replaced. "We're going to split this year's peak moving season between our new and legacy systems," he said. "There's a new system we've been trying -- it's not working very well -- and then there's a legacy system that wasn't perfect ... those systems can talk to each other and work together, so we're going to use both in every way possible." Under GHC, fees paid to independent moving companies for conducting PCS moves may not be as high as they were under the legacy ToS system. Because of this, fewer independent moving companies, or vendors, are stepping up to offer their services. Hegseth has directed Transcom to develop and implement rates similar to the legacy ToS system within GHC to increase vendor capacity and ensure enough companies are willing to move military family household goods to the next duty station. Some military families opt to move themselves, either by purchasing packing materials and renting their own moving vehicle or by hiring a moving company to assist them. Such moves were once called do-it-yourself, or DITY, moves. The Defense Department now calls these moves personally procured moves, or PPM. Following a PPM, service members file for reimbursement. However, reimbursement amounts can vary significantly based on individual circumstances. Hegseth noted that those rates are too low, and some service members could be paying out of pocket to move their family. "We're increasing the government reimbursement rate to 130% instead of 100%, which will cover [the cost of a PPM], we believe, based on the math we're looking at, full compensation when you take that on as a responsibility of moving you or your family," he said. Hegseth also said that DOD is forming a task force to examine how PCS moves are conducted. "We're going to review the entire PCS process and recommend rapid actions inside the department for the best possible moving experience for our service members and their families," he said. He added that when a military family moves from one duty station to another to meet the needs of the Defense Department, more than the mechanics of the move are at stake. "Ultimately, this is not just about moving boxes. This is about moving families, husbands, wives, kids, valuables, memories, everything -- and you deserve that kind of respect across the board," he said. "We owe it to you to get it right. Everything's on the table. We're going to track this progress weekly. We're going to hold leaders accountable at every level, as we just did, and we will not tolerate poor performance." This Week in DOD: Golden Dome Defense, Prioritizing PCS Moves, Afghanistan Accountability [2025-05-23] WASHINGTON -- This week, the White House and Defense Department moved forward on a promise to protect the United States from missile threats with a system first proposed 40 years ago and made possible now with 21st-century technology. "On Tuesday, [Defense] Secretary [Pete Hegseth] joined [President Donald J. Trump] in the Oval Office to announce the Golden Dome missile defense shield," said Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs and Senior Advisor Sean Parnell during the Weekly Sitrep video. "This bold initiative represents a historic investment in American security and fulfills our duty to protect the homeland." The Golden Dome will be similar to Israel's Iron Dome defense system, which is designed to protect against inbound missile attacks. The president announced that an architecture has been selected for the system, which will use next-generation technologies across land, sea and space, including space-based sensors and interceptors. "The Golden Dome for America is a game changer. It's a generational investment in the security of America and Americans," Hegseth told the president. "It's an honor to be a part of this bold initiative. We're going to get to work on it." Trump said the Golden Dome should be complete in three to four years. With the summer permanent change of station season already underway, service members and their families are busy moving to their next duty stations. At the Pentagon, DOD leaders have taken steps to remedy complex and, in some cases, expensive issues that often accompany those moves. "We ... announced a complete overhaul of the permanent change of station process to make it easier on our service members and their families during moving season, which is happening right now," Parnell said. In a May 20, 2025, memorandum, Hegseth directed U.S. Transportation Command to make various changes related to the existing Global Household Goods contract, which was implemented recently and is responsible for facilitating the movement of household goods during military family moves. The secretary noted that the PCS process has "never been a great system." "We know it's not working, and it's only getting worse," he added. "We've heard your concerns about contractor performance, quality and accountability. We hear you loud and clear, and that's why we're taking decisive action immediately." Hegseth directed that during the 2025 PCS moving season, Transcom should fully leverage capabilities under the new GHC and the legacy Tender of Service program, which GHC replaced. He also directed Transcom to develop and implement rates similar to the legacy system within GHC to increase vendor capacity and ensure enough companies are willing to move military family household goods to the next duty station. In August 2021, the U.S. military withdrew its forces from Afghanistan after nearly two decades of conflict. While withdrawing, 13 U.S. service members were killed in Kabul, Afghanistan, during a terrorist attack, Aug. 26, 2021. During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Jan. 14, 2025, Hegseth spoke about a lack of accountability for what happened. "There's been no accountability for the disaster of the withdrawal in Afghanistan," he told senators. "Leadership has been unwilling to take accountability. It's the time to restore that to our most senior ranks." Just this week, Hegseth took steps to determine accountability, and Parnell is part of that effort. "I served in Afghanistan for 485 days," Parnell said. "My platoon took an 85% casualty rate. This is personal to me. America, the truth is coming, and I look forward to leading this very important effort in delivering accountability to you -- the American people who deserve it." And finally this week, the Defense Department announced a raise in jump pay for paratroopers. "Secretary Hegseth wrapped up the week with a visit to Fort Bragg, [North Carolina,] where he delivered remarks at the 82nd Airborne Division's All American Week, announcing an increase in jump pay for paratroopers, and for the first time in 25 years, an increase in jumpmaster pay," Parnell said. "It is a good day to be a paratrooper in the United States military." According to Hegseth, hazardous duty incentive pay -- commonly referred to as jump pay -- is set to increase from $150 per month to $200 for paratroopers. Jumpmasters -- the senior paratroopers responsible for training and teaching the techniques for parachuting from an aircraft -- will receive an additional $150 per month on top of the $150 in incentive pay they already earn. Vance Tells Midshipmen Their Service Will Not Be Squandered on Rudderless Missions [2025-05-23] WASHINGTON -- Future warfighters will always have a clear mission, with clear goals, before heading out to do the nation's business, Vice President JD Vance said today during his commencement address to the 2025 graduating class of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. During the ceremony, more than 1,000 uniformed young people graduated and are now bound for positions across the globe as either Navy ensigns or Marine Corps second lieutenants. Vance addressed them to let them know what they were getting into, what he and President Donald J. Trump expected of them during their careers, and how the president's vision of American diplomacy would change how their experience in uniform is expected to be different than the experiences of those who came before them. Referring back to the president's recent visit to the Middle East, Vance described what he considered the most significant takeaway from the trip. "It signified the end of a decades-long approach in foreign policy that I think was a break from the precedent set by our founding fathers," Vance told the midshipmen. "We had a long experiment in our foreign policy that traded national defense and the maintenance of our alliances for nation building and meddling in foreign countries' affairs, even when those foreign countries had very little to do with core American interests." Now, said Vance, foreign policy is changing -- and with it, so does what the United States expects to do with its military. "What we're seeing from President Trump is a generational shift in policy with profound implications for the job that each and every one of you will be asked to do," he said. "We're returning to a strategy grounded in realism and protecting our core national interests. Now, this doesn't mean that we ignore threats, but it means that we approach them with discipline and that when we send you to war, we do it with a very specific set of goals in mind." The vice president cited recent conflicts with the Houthis in Yemen as an example. In the Red Sea, Iran-backed Houthi terrorists had been for years attacking U.S. ships and other nations, disrupting legal commerce for seafaring nations. In March, the U.S. launched a series of attacks at key terrorist Houthi targets to put a stop to those attacks, with a clearly stated goal of securing safe shipping in the region. "We went in with a clear diplomatic goal, not to enmesh our service members in a prolonged conflict with a non-state actor, but to secure American freedom of navigation by forcing the Houthis to stop attacking American ships. And that's exactly what we did," Vance said. He noted that earlier this month, the Houthis agreed to stop attacking. "We were able to reach a ceasefire in a conflict that had been ongoing for nearly two years," Vance said. "Our adversaries now know when the United States sets a red line, it will be enforced. And when we engage, we do so with purpose, with superior force, with superior weapons and with the best people anywhere in the world." As vice president, Vance said his goal is to ensure that asking America's fighting men and women to engage will always be done judiciously and purposefully. "The Trump administration recognizes that our most valuable resources [are] you -- young people who are brave enough to put on the uniform and risk your life for this country," he said. "And we promise -- I promise -- to cultivate that resource, to protect it and to use it only when the national interest demands." The vice president also addressed the changing nature of warfare. "The era of American dominance of sea, air and space is over now," he said, adding that the United States and its military must adapt. "Innovation, increasingly, is happening on the very battlefields that you will lead troops on, so that you are not just recipients of innovation, you're not just users of tools, you will very often be developing tools in this new century," Vance said. "Our lawmakers and military brass alike must learn to adjust to a world where cheap drones, readily available cruise missiles and cyberattacks cause extraordinary damage to our military assets and our service members. And it will be you, the graduates gathered here today, who will lead the way for the rest of us." The vice president also reminded the graduates that on a day that is a milestone accomplishment for them, they should also remember it's an accomplishment for others as well, including parents, guardians, mentors and others who worked to get them where they are. "All of you are the product of an incredible legacy, people who worked hard to give you a good education, food on the table and a sense of possibility. People who took you to church, to practices, to tutoring sessions. People who prayed for you when you struggled and celebrated with you at moments just like today," he said. "Most of you are fortunate enough to have someone here to celebrate with you. Some of you don't. But whether they are here with you or not, the very best piece of advice I can give you is to begin your life in the fleet with the spirit of gratitude." Defense Secretary's First 100 Days of Delivering on Promises [2025-05-25] WASHINGTON -- Even before arriving at the Pentagon, Jan. 27, 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made clear his vision for reshaping the U.S. military. Just a day after being confirmed by the Senate, the new secretary released a message to the force outlining his plans. Charged by President Donald J. Trump to deliver "peace through strength," Hegseth said he'd accomplish that by restoring the warrior ethos, rebuilding the military and reestablishing deterrence. Over the last 100 days, the Defense Department, under Hegseth's direction, has engaged in a substantial number of engagements, visits and policy changes to build a military capable of deterring conflict, defending the nation and, if needed, fighting and winning wars. At the top of Hegseth's message to the force was a promise to restore the warrior ethos and trust in the military. "We are American warriors," he wrote. "We will defend our country. Our standards will be high, uncompromising and clear. The strength of our military is our unity and our shared purpose." In mid-March, Hegseth ordered a rapid force-wide review of military standards related to physical fitness, body composition and grooming. "High standards are what made the United States military the greatest fighting force on the planet," Hegseth said. "We are made stronger and more disciplined with high, uncompromising and clear standards." The secretary directed the military departments to compile their current standards and evaluate how they had changed over the last decade, including their impact. "We must remain vigilant in maintaining the standards that enable the men and women of our military to protect the American people and our homeland as the world's most lethal and effective fighting force," Hegseth said. "This review will illuminate how the department has maintained the level of standards required over the recent past and the trajectory of any change in those standards." The department also instructed the military services to identify combat arms and noncombat arms occupations and develop mission-focused, sex-neutral physical fitness standards for combat roles. "As the nature of warfare evolves and the demands on our service members grow more complex, it is imperative that we assess and refine the physical fitness standards that enable our readiness and lethality," Hegseth said. "All entry-level and sustained physical fitness requirements within combat arms positions must be sex-neutral, based solely on the operational demands of the occupation and the readiness needed to confront any adversary." Restoring Trust in the Force To build trust, the department addressed the effects of the since-rescinded 2021 COVID-19 vaccine mandate, following direction from the president. Over 500 days, nearly 8,000 active-duty and reserve service members were involuntarily separated for refusing to meet the mandate while others voluntarily left. Under Hegseth, those troops are being invited back to service. "We're doing everything we can, as quickly as we can, to reinstate those who were affected by that policy," Hegseth said. "We want anyone impacted by that vaccine mandate back into the military -- people of conscience, warriors of conscience -- back in our formations." Some previously discharged service members will be offered back pay and reinstated rank. The department will also remove adverse actions taken solely due to vaccine refusal. Hegseth also announced a shift away from what he called divisive initiatives, such as official commemorations of immutable characteristics. Instead, he urged a renewed focus on shared values. "Installations, units and offices are encouraged to celebrate the valor and success of military heroes of all races, genders and backgrounds as we restore our warrior culture and ethos," he said. "We are proud of our warriors and their history, but we will focus on the character of their service instead of their immutable characteristics. To support this, the secretary established the "Restoring America's Fighting Force" task force, aimed at eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion policies and replacing them with merit-based, colorblind initiatives. Led by Jules W. Hurst III, performing the duties of undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, the task force began visiting installations and service academies in February. "This is about the Department of Defense getting back to merit-based, colorblind policies," Hurst said. "Our responsibility is to make sure that we take the best people and put them in positions of responsibility to lead America's sons and daughters." Recruitment and Retention Surge The changes have also impacted recruitment and retention. In February 2025, all five military services met their recruiting goals -- which were higher than a year ago -- and four exceeded them beyond 2024 performance. During an April 30, 2025, Cabinet meeting, Hegseth described the growth as a "recruiting renaissance." "It's been decades since we've seen this kind of recruiting in the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps and the Air Force," he said. "We can barely absorb the volume and retention [is also up] -- men and women in the military don't want to get out." Among the notable returnees was 2009 Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer, who rejoined the Marine Corps Reserve in April after being out of the military for 15 years. Hegseth personally administered Meyer's oath of enlistment. "[We're doing] this as big as we can because I want the American people, I want your fellow Marines [and] I want other service members to look at [your] example and [know] you're never too old, you're never too experienced [and] you've never done too much to contribute; and I salute you," Hegseth told Meyer. Strengthening Alliances and Strategic Posture Since January, Hegseth has worked to establish deterrence by engaging more than a dozen international counterparts, reaffirming U.S. alliances and setting new expectations. Shortly after taking office, he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and authorized the release of 2,000-pound bombs -- previously withheld -- to Israel. The two met in person 10 days later at the Pentagon. In the following weeks, Hegseth held bilateral meetings with defense leaders from Australia, Japan, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, El Salvador and France. During a February visit to Brussels, the secretary reaffirmed the United States' commitment to NATO while encouraging European allies to shoulder more of their defense. In Belgium, Hegseth said NATO's European partners should take primary responsibility for the defense of the continent, which means security ownership by all allies, guided by an understanding of the strategic realities. "Our expectation of our friends -- and we say this in solidarity -- is you have to spend more on your defense," he said, adding that the American military and the American people stand beside them as it has with NATO. Following joint encouragement from Hegseth and Trump, the United Kingdom announced the most significant increase in U.K. defense spending since the end of the Cold War. Also in February, the U.K., not the U.S., led the Ukraine Defense Contact Group for the first time -- part of a broader shift toward European defense ownership. In April, Hegseth traveled to Panama to expand cooperation on canal security. The U.S. and Panama agreed to bolster training and grant "first and free" military canal passage to U.S. forces. The two nations also discussed expanding their existing partnership to secure the Panama Canal in order to counter China's influence in the region. "[China's] growing and adversarial control of strategic land and critical infrastructure in this hemisphere cannot and will not stand," Hegseth said. "The Panama Canal is key terrain that must be secured by Panama, with America, and not China." Efficiency and Reform The secretary also promised to reform how the department is organized and how it spends taxpayer dollars. The Department of Government Efficiency was a big part of that early on, and it found nearly $6 billion in potential savings for reinvestment within DOD. In early March, DOGE found $80 million wasted on non-core programs, including those related to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and climate studies. Later in the month, Hegseth terminated $580 million in unnecessary contracts. In April, he ordered another $5.1 billion in cuts from consulting and information technology services. "We need this money to spend on better health care for our warfighters and their families, instead of $500 an hour business process consultant," Hegseth said. "That's a lot of consulting." Operations at Home and Abroad The department's mission to protect the nation continues, with visible efforts on the southern border and in the Middle East. Since January, about 11,900 service members have been assigned to Joint Task Force Southern Border. In March, a Stryker brigade combat team and a general support aviation battalion were sent to support border security operations. By April 18, 2025, the Army took jurisdiction over 109,651 acres of federal land along the U.S.-Mexico border, designating it the New Mexico National Defense Area, part of Fort Huachuca, Arizona. Military personnel now have expanded authority, including the ability to detain trespassers until law enforcement arrives. The secretary noted that border crossings are down 99.99% compared to four years ago. "For too long, our southern border was poorly equipped and understaffed, and our warfighters were restricted from doing their jobs," Hegseth said. "We will secure our southern border and have 100% operational control." In the Middle East, U.S. troops are protecting American and global-shared interests with Operation Rough Rider to degrade the capabilities of the Iran-backed Houthi terrorist group. In March, the department announced it had conducted a series of precision strikes in Yemen in response to ongoing Houthi attacks on U.S. military and commercial shipping vessels in the region. Operations have since escalated, with DOD increasing its military presence in the Middle East and deploying of additional air assets and the Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group, augmenting existing fighter aircraft and the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group. Defense Department figures show since then, strikes by U.S. Central Command have hit over 1,000 targets -- killing Houthi fighters and leaders, as well as destroying underground weapons storage facilities, missile storage facilities, unmanned aerial systems, air defense systems, radars and a helicopter -- degrading their capabilities. "Freedom of navigation is basic; it's a core national interest," Hegseth said. "The minute the Houthis say, 'We'll stop shooting at your ships [and] we'll stop shooting at your drones,' this campaign will end, but until then, it will be unrelenting." When he was sworn in nearly four months ago, Hegseth said his new role as the 29th defense secretary would be "the most important deployment" of his life. He set goals of restoring the warrior ethos, rebuilding the military and reestablishing deterrence. The Minnesota native has been on the job for 100 days and has made progress in each of the areas outlined in his initial message to the force. "When President Trump chose me for this position, the primary charge he gave me was to bring the warrior culture back to the Department of Defense," Hegseth said during his Jan. 14, 2025, confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. "He, like me, wants a Pentagon laser-focused on lethality, meritocracy, warfighting, accountability and readiness." Hegseth Orders Review of Homeschool Support Efforts [2025-05-27] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department has initiated a review of the department's existing support for homeschooling by military-connected families. In a memorandum published today, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness to begin a departmentwide review of how the U.S. military supports families who homeschool. The review will also look at best practices, including the ability of DOD to provide facilities or access to other resources for military-connected homeschooled students. "Through these efforts, the department will uphold the directive to improve the education, well-being and future success of military-connected students, supporting parents in choosing the best educational options for their children," Hegseth wrote. "Ensuring that military-connected families receive strong educational support maintains morale and readiness, reinforcing the overall stability and effectiveness of our military communities. This is vital to the department and the quality of life of our service members, who deserve no less." The new directive aligns with the department's current review of options that support expanding educational choice for military-connected families. That review was initiated in January, within Executive Order 14191, in which President Donald J. Trump outlined the administration's focus on expanding educational freedom for American families. "The secretary of defense shall review any available mechanisms under which military-connected families may use funds from the Department of Defense to attend schools of their choice, including private, faith-based or public charter schools, and submit a plan to the president describing such mechanisms and the steps that would be necessary to implement them beginning in the 2025-26 school year," the president's executive order reads. In a statement today, Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs and Senior Advisor Sean Parnell said the effort will strengthen military families and enhance readiness. "The department recognizes the vital role parents play in the education of their children and remains committed to providing military families with the flexibility and support necessary to choose the educational path that best meets their needs," Parnell said. "Through this effort, the DOD will strengthen support for military-connected students and reinforce the readiness and quality of life of service members and their families." DOD Makes Plans to Reduce Discretionary PCS Budget by Half Over Next 5 Years [2025-05-30] WASHINGTON -- In a memorandum published Wednesday, the Defense Department directed the military departments to look at how their services could reduce their discretionary permanent change of station move budgets as a way to increase geographic stability to families, increase department efficiency and reduce costs for the department. Earlier this month, a survey of military spouses cited PCS moves as one of the biggest reasons for dissatisfaction with military life. "We understand how disruptive PCS moves can be," said Tim Dill, who is performing the duties of the deputy undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. "There are many aspects to that challenge and that disruption. One of the biggest ones is military spouses' employment -- when they often have the need to find a new job at their gaining location and sometimes, they end up underemployed at that location." Following a PCS move, Dill said, families also need to find new homes, new schools for their children and rebuild a life. "They're displaced from the community of support that they've developed over the years in their previous duty station," he said. "All of those concerns can be effectively addressed by examining when the department does not need to move a service member and their family to accomplish the mission." The department gave the military departments about four months to conduct a review of how they might go about reducing their PCS budgets, and how they also would modify career pathways for service members for whom some PCS moves are part of career development. "The memo directs the military departments to spend 120 days reviewing their PCS budgets and to consider how they would pursue future reductions to those budgets and develop holistic and comprehensive implementation plans for those proposed changes," Dill said. The memorandum asks military departments to propose a plan for reducing their discretionary PCS budgets by as much as 50% by fiscal year 2030, based on their fiscal year 2026 budget, Dill said. This means service members could be asked to move far less often. "There [are] certain functions where in order to continue on your career track, you must go obtain certain accreditation or additional training ... something that corresponds with your increase in rank," Dill said, offering scenarios that might qualify as a mandatory PCS like a career change that would require a move to a different duty station. In other cases, he said, there are critical missions that must be fully manned, and moving a service member to fill a role there would also be mandatory. But other moves might not need to happen, Dill said. "We estimate that about 80% of [military department] PCS moves are in a discretionary category, and 20% are mandatory," he said. "What we're directing the [military] departments to do is purely to examine potential reductions in things that would be defined as discretionary. So, if they see as mandatory for mission need, we're not even asking them to come back with a plan to reduce it. We want them to continue that course of action and do the mandatory moves." A big part of the direction from the secretary, Dill said, is that while reducing PCS moves and associated costs, the military departments must maintain mission readiness. "[We] have issued direction to the departments to come back with plans for how they think they could best achieve those reductions while ensuring that they continue to prioritize the mission and the development of service members," Dill said. Considerations there, Dill said, include how moves, if they happen, can be done more efficiently and also how to provide service members with career-broadening and leadership opportunities that do not require PCS. Right now, the department has directed the military departments to develop plans for their services to reduce their PCS budgets by half. But Dill said there will be ongoing discussions about what kind of cuts are appropriate for each military department. "On top of being efficient from a fiscal perspective, the other goal of this policy, as a people-driven policy, is to ensure that this works well for service members and their families," he said. "So that is one of our primary goals in the policy, to ensure it works well." Dill also said the DOD understands there needs to be discussions on how proposed cuts could negatively impact service members, their families and mission readiness. And when those concerns are expressed, the department will listen and adjust. "We haven't directed that any specific course of action must be implemented," Dill said. "We look forward to having that conversation and figuring out how we can do this best." Last Week in DOD: Additional DOGE Savings, Strengthening VA Partnership, Homeschool Review [2025-06-02] WASHINGTON -- Last week, the Defense Department announced the Department of Government Efficiency found additional savings, helping the department identify and eliminate waste. "On [May 28, 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth] highlighted DOGE's continued work at the Pentagon," said Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell during the Weekly Sitrep video. "Together with DOGE, the DOD found another $5 billion in savings, bringing our total savings to over $10 billion. All this money will be reinvested in readiness, capability, training and the troops." The biggest area of waste, Hegseth said, was found in places where the department is spending billions of dollars on contractors and consultants. "Part of what we've uncovered is that the Defense Department has become very much overreliant on management consultants and contractors," he said. "We found that we likely have more contractors than we have civilian employees." Hegseth said the Air Force, working alongside the DOGE team, cut the service's largest management consulting program. "This joint team conducted a line-by-line audit of over 50 contract vehicles, saving a billion dollars on the current program ... and canceling its $3.8 billion extension," Hegseth said. Those savings, along with others found over the last two weeks, amount to $5 billion in cost savings for the department. "We need to replace wasteful spending in favor of a culture focused on ... actual financial responsibility and stewardship so that our limited funds are spent better on ... things like health care and mission-related programs for our warfighters and their families," he explained. Hegseth signed three new memorandums directing changes within the department related to reducing the number of management consultants and contractors, reforming the department's use of executive assistants and restricting the department's Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation. Last week, Hegseth met with Veterans Affairs Secretary Douglas A. Collins to strengthen the relationship between the two departments as they work to improve services for military members and retirees. "Secretary Hegseth and Secretary Collins announced a joint effort to improve the transition process for separating service members and to increase collaboration between the DOD and the VA," Parnell said. "Our men and women in uniform are the best of us, and they deserve the best possible health care." The secretaries signed a memorandum of understanding between the two agencies that builds a stronger working relationship related to the sharing of health care resources, facilities and workforce. It also provides early health care enrollment prior to a service member's separation and increases the availability of mental health treatment. The agencies have not always worked together smoothly, Hegseth said, and that has made it challenging for some veterans to access the benefits they have earned. "We serve the same constituency of great Americans along the entire continuum," he added. "And it's a shame that ... for far too many years [in] that pipeline, there's been a disconnect, and there hasn't been full cooperation. So, we're changing that right here." Now, when a service member's time in uniform concludes, DOD will work hand in hand with the VA to ensure their transition to civilian life "happens properly, carefully, thoughtfully -- so that we follow through on the promise of what they deserve," Hegseth said. Also last week, the department signaled it recognizes the importance of homeschooling for military families. "The department ... announced that we are directing a comprehensive review of our current support for homeschooling among military-connected families," Parnell said. "We are absolutely committed to providing military families with the flexibility they need with regard to their schooling." In a memorandum published May 27, 2025, Hegseth directed the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness to begin a departmentwide review of how the U.S. military supports families who homeschool. The review will also look at best practices, including the ability of DOD to provide facilities or access to other resources for military-connected homeschooled students. "Through these efforts, the department will uphold the directive to improve the education, well-being and future success of military-connected students, supporting parents in choosing the best educational options for their children," Hegseth wrote. "Ensuring that military-connected families receive strong educational support maintains morale and readiness, reinforcing the overall stability and effectiveness of our military communities. This is vital to the department and the quality of life of our service members, who deserve no less." Closing out last week, Hegseth traveled to Singapore, May 29, 2025, where he participated in the Shangri-La Dialogue. "[He] delivered an historic weekend address clearly outlining ... President [Donald J.] Trump's common sense, 'peace through strength' approach for the U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific [region]," Parnell said. At the event, Hegseth told gathered defense leaders that the Indo-Pacific is America's priority theater and that the U.S. remains loyal to its allies and partners. "We will continue to wrap our arms around our friends and find new ways to work together -- not only our treaty allies here but also our key defense partners in [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations] and across the Indo-Pacific," he said. The secretary added that partnerships in the Pacific mean every nation contributes toward maintaining security against growing threats in the region. "We ask -- and indeed, we insist -- that our allies and partners do their part on defense," he said. "Sometimes, that means having uncomfortable and tough conversations. Partners owe it to each other to be honest and to be realistic -- as many of you have been with me in the past few days, and I with you. This is the essence of a pragmatic, common sense defense policy." The secretary left regional partners with a commitment to continued partnership. "You will also see that we are -- and will remain -- loyal to our allies and partners," Hegseth said. "The military-to-military relationship between many of our countries goes back decades and, in some cases, centuries. In fact, the only way to ensure lasting alliances and partnerships is to make sure that each side does its part and sees the benefit." Caine Calls on Industry: 'Focus on Fighting the Next War, Not Fighting the Last War' [2025-06-04] WASHINGTON -- The joint force alone can't defend against the threats the United States faces today; it's going to need help from the community of innovators responsible for driving America's efforts on artificial intelligence, said Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during the AI+ Expo in Washington today. "We cannot do this alone. We have to do this ... together. And frankly, my friends, the joint force needs your help," he said. Right now, Caine said, the U.S. is dealing with an array of threats on the global stage, including the growth and increased activity of China's military, events in the Middle East, the war between Russia and Ukraine, North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons and counterterrorism activities. He added that the country is facing an "axis of aligned powers" that have differing views from those of the U.S. "Our adversaries are working together, sharing technologies and intelligence at unprecedented levels -- decreasing the time required for them to field advanced technologies," he said, noting the U.S. must produce its technology faster while working with private industry. The general also acknowledged that working with the government can be a challenge for the private sector, and the federal government must make it easier for them to bring technology to the warfighter. "Together, we've got to be focused on fighting the next war, not fighting the last war," he said. "We need entrepreneurs, both in the private sector and in government." Caine said the joint force must continue to evolve to meet the needs of the president, the defense secretary and the nation, and noted that there are a handful of things it will need to do so. "We've got to be properly armed," he said. "We owe it to our nation's warfighters to have the right combat capability with the right capacity, at the time that commanders in the field are contemplating plans and activities -- not at the point of crisis or conflict." Accomplishing that, he said, means bringing in the right technology, including weapons, capabilities and decision-making tools. It also means having an acquisition process that allows the department to get those things. "We've got to do some work on the requirements process, and I acknowledge that there are times, oftentimes, that the [U.S. government] needs to be better buyers," he said. "I know this from my time in the private sector, where I tried to sell things to the government when I was an entrepreneur -- it's hard; it's not easy." Secondly, Caine said, the Defense Department must be globally integrated. Combatant commands, geographical and functional commands and military services must be connected with other agencies, allies and partners. The department must also integrate with technology innovators, he said. "[We must] scale that capability in order to meet the challenges that we need to. We're doing awesome, but we can do more." Finally, Caine said, the military must be ready for what comes next. "We've got to be clear-eyed that the joint force of the future needs to be organized, trained, equipped and rehearsed to be able to go not when we might want to, but to be able to go when we need to," he said. "Our systems need to be built for the war of the future, not the war of the past -- and this means using technology and innovation at the tactical edge." Caine called on the private sector for assistance. "Your nation needs you with a sense of urgency," he told industry partners. "We need your creative, innovative, patriotic and diabolical minds, 24/7, 365," he said. "Peace in our nation will not be won by the legacy systems that we've had or the legacy thinking. It will be determined by the entrepreneurs and innovators and leaders, both in government and out of government, that create overwhelming strength." Innovations in AI, cyber, autonomy, space, energy, advanced manufacturing, data and computing power are what the chairman outlined as the most needed. "We need your help with this," he said. "I need you inspired to help us. You've got the agility, the boldness, the culture and spirit to do these big things, and we welcome your ideas." This Week in DOD: USS Sampson Deploys to Southern Border; Army Meets Recruiting Goals; Hegseth Urges NATO Partners to Increase Defense Spending [2025-06-06] WASHINGTON -- The USS Sampson, one of the Navy's 74 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, joined the effort to secure the southern border this week. "On Tuesday, the USS Sampson deployed to the U.S. Northern Command area of responsibility to support the [Defense Department's] national security objectives along the U.S. southern border," said Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson during the Weekly Sitrep video. "Border security is national security. We are not going to stop until we have 100% operational control of our border." The destroyer departed Naval Base San Diego, June 3, 2025, and is conducting operations in direct support of Northcom's mission to protect the homeland by enhancing maritime domain awareness and deterring illicit activities with U.S. interagency and law enforcement coordination. Back on land, the Army, for the second time this year, demonstrated top-notch efforts in military recruiting and retention. "Young people are excited to serve again under President [Donald J. Trump] and [Defense] Secretary [Pete Hegseth]'s leadership," Wilson said. "We are happy to report that the U.S. Army surpassed its fiscal [year] 2025 recruiting goal four months ahead of schedule." The Army signed contracts with more than 61,000 future soldiers. This year's recruiting goal is 10% higher than the 55,000 recruits targeted in fiscal year 2024. "I'm incredibly proud of our U.S. Army recruiters and drill sergeants," said Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, adding that their "colossal efforts" and dedication to duty helped the U.S. Army accomplish its recruiting goals this year. Also this week, the defense secretary traveled to Brussels to attend a NATO defense ministerial meeting. "[He] urged our NATO allies to heed President Trump's call to spend 5% of their [gross domestic product] on defense," Wilson said. While at the meeting, Hegseth stated that he has made it his mission to ensure every NATO member contributes enough to the common defense. "The reason I'm here is to make sure every country in NATO understands every shoulder has to be to the plow; every country has to contribute -- at that level of 5% [of each country's GDP] -- as a recognition of the nature of the threat," he said. Today, June 6, marks the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings during World War II, part of the Allied efforts to liberate occupied France. "While in Europe, the secretary ... joined D-Day commemorations in Normandy, France, to honor the heroism of the men who gave their lives to secure a future for the free world," Wilson said. "Every day at the DOD, we remember their courage and strive to be worthy of their sacrifice." At the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, France, Hegseth recalled the history of the invasion and the men who helped free France from Nazi occupation as part of the largest amphibious assault in history. "Our men pushed through the waves and flung themselves upon the sand. The courage it took to do this is unfathomable," he said. "The first groups were decimated. Thousands of young men lost their lives, cut down by the barrage of machine guns and mortars. "They never let up. Our warriors never faltered, God at their backs. As they forced their way inland, the Atlantic Wall began to crumble. It is these men and their bravery whom we are here to celebrate and remember: a generation of farmhands and city kids, baseball players and shopkeepers, big towns, small towns, rich, poor, who were forged and hardened in the Great Depression -- hard men forged for hard times." More than 150,000 Allied troops landed on the shores of Normandy during the D-Day invasion, as did some 6,000 ships and landing craft, 50,000 vehicles and 11,000 aircraft. During the invasion, 8,230 American troops lost their lives. This year, the Army commemorates 250 years of defending the nation. "We are just a week away from the U.S. Army's 250th birthday celebration and parade right here in our nation's capital," Wilson said. "Make sure you sign up -- you won't want to miss celebrating the greatest Army the world has ever seen." On June 14, 2025, the Army Birthday Festival begins on the National Mall in Washington. The event will give Americans the opportunity to meet soldiers, watch military demonstrations and explore Army hardware on display. There will also be an Army birthday parade, which will include 6,600 soldiers in historic and present-day uniforms. Navy Secretary Advocates for Sailors' 'Right to Repair' Equipment [2025-06-10] WASHINGTON -- Navy Secretary John Phelan told senators during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill today that he believes sailors should be able to repair the hardware they are trained to operate without having to wait for contractors to do the work. The issue concerns contract agreements that often contain language preventing service members from performing repairs themselves because of intellectual property rights. In the private sector, the movement to allow owners of equipment to repair it themselves, rather than being forced to have the manufacturer perform the work, is known as the "right to repair." "I am a huge supporter of 'right to repair,'" Phelan said, explaining his support comes after observing the issue in the fleet. "I went on the [USS Gerald R. Ford] carrier; they had eight ovens -- this is a ship that serves 15,300 meals a day," Phelan said. "Only two were working. Six were out [for repair]." The secretary said he was surprised that on a ship with so many people and with so many mouths to feed, there wasn't someone on board with the ability to repair the broken ovens. It turns out, he said, the sailors could fix the ovens but weren't allowed to do so; instead, they had to wait for the contractor to do the work. Similarly, Phelan told lawmakers that when elevators stopped working aboard the ship, the manufacturer had to be called in. "They have to come out and diagnose the problem, and then they'll fix it," he said. "It is crazy. We should be able to fix this." Phelan said intellectual property issues related to military hardware are a concern. "We end up paying for a lot of things that we don't control, and we need to change that," he said. "And, so, contracting, in general, is something we're looking at very hard, and we need to really try to ensure going forward we control our IP, and we have the ability to fix things because if we're in a fight, how do we ... fix it then?" In April 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued guidance regarding the transformation of the Army. Part of that guidance included direction for the Army to attempt to include "right to repair" provisions in existing and future contracts, creating a potential roadmap for the Navy. On Capitol Hill, June 4, 2025, before the House Armed Services Committee, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll explained how the Army is addressing this challenge. "On a go-forward basis, we have been directed to not sign any contracts that don't give us a right to repair," Driscoll said. "On a go-back basis, we have been directed to go and do what we can to go get that right to repair. ... We hope that anyone listening to us who hopes to pitch us a contract going forward will look back at their previous agreements they've signed with us, and if they're unwilling to give us that right to repair, I think we're going to have a hard time negotiating with them." DOD Launches Child Care Expansion Initiative, Provides More Options to Military Families [2025-06-10] WASHINGTON -- Dependable and affordable child care is a big issue for military families, and it's a priority for the Defense Department, which has a number of programs underway to expand the available options. While the department runs the largest employer-sponsored child care program in the United States, military families and DOD civilians face challenges finding quality care -- especially for children under 5. It's a problem shared with families nationwide, said Chad E. Sheldon, DOD associate director for child and youth programs policy. "The child care issue is really a national issue," he said. "We just simply don't have enough child care capacity for the needs and demands of families in our communities and with our military members as well. So, we've started a number of initiatives to really get after that." The department operates child development centers on military installations; however, Sheldon said those facilities cannot meet the needs of military families alone. "We simply can't build fast enough," he said. "We're not going to be able to build enough child care facilities on our installations to meet the need." Also, he said, not everyone can access care on the installation, including geographically dispersed service members. "We have folks for whom it's just not feasible," he said. "In those cases, we rely on community-based child care programs, and we offer fee assistance through our program, Military Child Care in Your Neighborhood." To increase access to quality care, DOD continues to expand the MCCYN program and recently created MCCYN-PLUS to bridge the gap in locations where accredited care is unavailable. This initiative utilizes a state's Quality Rating and Improvement System as an indicator of quality, broadening the pool of child care providers. The Defense Department's Child Care Expansion Initiative is the most recent effort to alleviate the issue. Through it, DOD partners with nonprofit agencies to open new child care facilities exclusively for military and DOD civilian families in high-demand areas of the country. The first example of this effort is a new child care facility in the Norfolk, Virginia, area operated by the Armed Services YMCA. Plans include an additional facility in the Virginia Beach area, as well as a facility in Northern Virginia that would support DOD personnel working in the National Capital Region. The Norfolk area facility opened this month, the facility in Northern Virginia will open before the end of 2025, and the Virginia Beach area facility will open in 2026. Sheldon said the new facilities are an exciting addition as each will have the capacity to accommodate about 200 children. "So, it's going to make a pretty big difference. And that's a lot of children that will be able to get off the waitlist and head into some quality child care," he added. For military families eligible to use the newly opened Norfolk facility, the cost of child care will be based on total family income at the same rates charged by DOD-operated child development centers. Another program the department spearheaded involves buying slots in existing commercial child care facilities and offering them to military families. "One of the things that we've implemented recently is our child care buydown spaces," Sheldon said. "That's really targeting some very specific geographic areas where we've got a high unmet child care need, and our capacity isn't going to meet that need." That program is active in Jacksonville, Florida, and Colorado Springs, Colorado, with additional slots coming to San Diego, Norfolk and the National Capital Region in the coming months. "In those places, we reached out to community-based programs, and essentially, we secure some of those child care spaces specifically for our military service members," Sheldon said. "We know that they're going to need them, we know that they're going to use them, and so we just get into an agreement with those child care programs." The department also runs the Child Care in Your Home fee assistance program. Currently in its third year of a five-year pilot, the program allows military families to be reimbursed for between 30 and 60 hours of at-home child care provided by a babysitter or a nanny. The program is available in 13 locations with the highest demand and longest waitlists for child care, including the National Capital Region; Hawaii; San Diego; Norfolk; San Antonio; Colorado Springs; Seattle and Tacoma, Washington; Jacksonville, Mayport and Fort Walton Beach, Florida; Fayetteville, North Carolina; Las Vegas and Alaska. Through this program, Sheldon said families can hire in-home care, and the department will offset the cost at the same rates as the fee assistance program. He added that it is designed for families who are working nontraditional hours, such as shift workers, as well as families with a large number of children or who have children with special needs. Last year, the department kicked off a three-year pilot program that reimburses service members up to $1,500 for travel-related expenses incurred for a temporary child care provider following a permanent change of station move overseas and up to $500 for moves within the United States.  Under this program, when an active-duty service member moves to a new duty station and finds that child care will not be available within 30 days of reporting, they can hire their own provider, typically a relative or family friend, and then file for reimbursement of transportation-related expenses.  "Taking care of military families is a critical part of preserving the finest military in the world," said Tim Dill, performing the duties of the deputy undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. "A key part of that task is providing those families with access to quality and affordable child care, which is why the department continues to invest in child development program facilities and infrastructure. When our warfighters know all is well at home, they are free to focus on military readiness and more likely to continue to serve our country." Hegseth Says Shipbuilding, Golden Dome, Nuclear Deterrence Make Up DOD Budget Request for Billions in Funding [2025-06-11] WASHINGTON -- On Capitol Hill today, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, accompanied by Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with lawmakers on the Senate Appropriations Committee to discuss key points for the Defense Department in the president's recommendations for discretionary funding levels for fiscal year 2026. Earlier this month, the Office of Management and Budget released to Congress President Donald J. Trump's recommendations on FY26 discretionary funding levels. While a full presidential budget recommendation has not yet been released, the proposal includes an increase in DOD's budget to approximately $961.6 billion, about $113.3 billion higher than the enacted budget for the department in FY25. "The $961.6 billion budget request, which is over $1 trillion for national security total, will end four years of chronic underinvestment in our military," Hegseth said, adding that the department has been working since January to crystallize the president's agenda into a budget for the upcoming fiscal year. "This budget provides a historic level of funding for military readiness -- putting our warfighters and their needs first -- and young Americans are responding and signing up in droves," Hegseth said. "We are rebuilding our military; 25 years ago, our military was unchallenged, yet we squandered that advantage as China carried out an unprecedented military buildup." The secretary said the rebuilding plan involves reviving the defense industrial base, reforming DOD acquisition processes and rapidly fielding emerging technology and new weapons to warfighters. "This budget invests $25 billion in Golden Dome for America, a down payment on President Trump's priority to defend our homeland," he said. "It also commits more than $62 billion in total to modernize and sustain our nuclear forces as we face rising nuclear dangers." Hegseth told senators that the nuclear triad is the centerpiece of U.S. deterrence, and the recapitalization of it involves new submarines, such as the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, new intercontinental ballistic missiles as part of the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program and bomber aircraft, such as the B-21 Raider. "No doubt, our nuclear triad is the silent foundation of our entire deterrent effect, and that's why this budget fully funds all three legs of the triad and makes sure we're leaning forward and ensuring we have the most capable nuclear deterrent possible," he said. The budget also provides $3.5 billion for the F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance platform -- the world's first crewed sixth-generation fighter aircraft -- to help the department maintain air dominance. However, Hegseth noted that the department will also be investing significantly at sea, with a total of $47 billion for shipbuilding. "When you look at the totality of the $961 billion, or $1 trillion total over national security, that's 19 new ships," he said. "It's a historic investment in shipbuilding. [And] it's over $6 billion [for investments] in the shipbuilding defense industrial base." Lawmakers asked Hegseth about the National Defense Strategy, which he has stated is the single most important document to ensure the department operates in accordance with the president's and his own intent. "It drives almost all of our decision-making, certainly on a topic related to budget," he said, adding that the administration prepared an interim National Defense Strategy almost immediately upon arriving in Washington. The interim strategy, a classified document, was distributed in mid-March, and earlier this month, Hegseth directed the undersecretary of defense for policy to lead the development of a full NDS. "That interim National Defense Strategy focused on defending the homeland, a recognition that that is important, our pacing threat in the Indo-Pacific [region], and then burden sharing for our allies and partners, making sure that they're stepping up so that we can focus where we need to," he said. "I would anticipate that our National Defense Strategy will include a lot of those ingredients, but more fully developed." The secretary stated that he expected the full NDS to be released in late summer and added that the existing interim strategy had driven current department investments. Through SkillBridge, DOD Provides Boost to Southern Border Mission [2025-06-12] WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently signed a memorandum that provides additional assistance to the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection divisions through enhancements to the Defense Department's own SkillBridge program. SkillBridge gives retiring and separating service members the ability to conduct on-the-job training in the private and civil sectors so they can successfully transition on behalf of a grateful nation. "Recognizing the importance of leveraging talent and furthering our commitment to work with DHS, the department is expanding opportunities for transitioning service members to support southern border activities, particularly through the SkillBridge program, which provides real-world job experience during their final 180 days of service," Hegseth's May 28, 2025, memo reads. Under the secretary's direction, military departments will encourage service members considering participation in the SkillBridge program to seek internships, apprenticeships or on-the-job training with either ICE or CBP. While opportunities with ICE and CBP have existed for five years, the department's focused promotion of specifically ICE and CBP as SkillBridge opportunities is new, said Michael Miller, the director of DOD's military-civilian transition office. "Typically, the department does not recommend to service members any specific post-separation career field," he said. "Instead, we inform them. We provide them the skills to navigate the employment arena, and we then leave them to identify their post-separation career field independently." However, Miller said that as a result of the national emergency at the southern border in January, DOD is increasing its support to DHS, including through SkillBridge. In turn, SkillBridge gives America's best the opportunity to continue their selfless-service and continue to give back to the nation. "We will advertise and prioritize the opportunities to participate with the CBP and ICE," he said, adding that DOD is working with DHS to develop focused information highlighting those opportunities. The secretary has also told the military services that when service members choose to participate in SkillBridge with ICE or CBP, the services should approve those requests to the maximum extent possible. By encouraging participation in SkillBridge with ICE and CBP, the Defense Department provides those agencies with access to its most valuable asset -- its people. It also gives DHS the incredible opportunity to fill its ranks with the best and brightest personnel who may one day, after completing their SkillBridge training and separating from the military, find employment within DHS and be available to support the southern border mission. SkillBridge is a DOD effort to assist service members in transitioning more successfully from military life into the civilian workforce. After service members complete the Transition Assistance Program and before separating from the military, they can also apply to participate in SkillBridge as a way to gain skills and experience needed for civilian employment -- and they do it while still receiving pay from the military. As part of SkillBridge, service members can spend up to 180 days before their separation from service with one of approximately 6,900 partner businesses and agencies to learn job skills in nearly 10,000 areas to assist them in preparing for civilian employment. In many cases, the same business or agency may offer the service member a job upon completion of their participation in the program. "We have high rates of employment. With some programs, 90-95% go straight into employment," Miller said. "The rates we get are way above industry standard for almost any other type of training program." He said SkillBridge partners are well-vetted and have a variety of solid training plans in place to ensure that a service member's time with them is well spent. "We check the history of their company; we go through a vetting process," Miller said. "Once that's done, they will develop training plans for the different opportunities they want to offer, and we'll approve those training plans as well." DHS is not new to SkillBridge, he said, noting that it's been a validated SkillBridge partner for five years. There are 11 different DHS entities, including ICE and CBP, involved in SkillBridge. Service members who opt to participate in SkillBridge training with ICE or CBP may not necessarily end up at the southern border as part of their training. Instead, Miller said, participants are more likely to train for jobs ICE and CBP are currently prioritizing as part of the southern border mission. "These are training programs, so they could be offered at a centralized location based on that training package," he said. "There's a multitude of things currently in the portfolio that they're offering training packages on, from human resources jobs to legal jobs and other things as well. Those are all supporting the southern border [mission] if that's where they're planning to use those resources." As an example of what's possible, Miller said, ICE or CBP could hire a SkillBridge service member they trained in a non-border-related job, and that new employee could then replace a border-trained employee, freeing them to go down to the border. "That's the same effect," he said. "These are the strategic things that CBP and ICE will have to look at." Miller said typically, one year before separation, a service member should begin the Transition Assistance Program. It's within the TAP program that they learn more about SkillBridge. He added that the Defense Department is committed to assisting DHS in fulfilling both its mission at the border and helping service members secure civilian employment after leaving the service. "The department is proud to support our colleagues at the Department of Homeland Security through partnerships such as SkillBridge," said Tim Dill, who is performing the duties of deputy undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. "Our uniformed personnel receive world-class training that prepares them to adapt and succeed in any professional setting. We encourage transitioning service members considering SkillBridge to continue to contribute to the security and territorial integrity of the nation through DHS' critical operations." Apache Crew Ready for Army 250th Birthday Celebration [2025-06-13] WASHINGTON -- This weekend, the Army will host a large celebration on the National Mall in Washington in honor of its 250th anniversary as a military service. The celebration will include a parade, military flyovers and a large static display where visitors can view military hardware and engage with soldiers. Among those participating will be Army Chief Warrant Officer 4 James "Woody" Watkins Jr., Army Chief Warrant Officer 3 Darius T. Jenkins, Army Staff Sgt. Michael A. Frutchey and Army Sgt. Elijah C. Braddy, all assigned to the North Carolina Army National Guard. Watkins, Jenkins, Frutchey and Braddy will accompany the AH-64 Apache helicopter they fly and will be available for visitors to ask them questions about the aircraft, how it contributes to the joint mission and what it means to serve in America's oldest military service. As an Apache pilot, Jenkins said it's an honor to attend the event and represent the Army, the National Guard and the aviation community. "I'm not quite sure how I got chosen for this, but I think this is a reward for all of us [who] are here," he said. "We get a unique opportunity that no other Army aviator gets to have, pretty much for their entire career. So, it's an honor and a privilege to get to do this." Jenkins has served in the Army National Guard for more than two decades. He enlisted in 2002 and served as an armor crewman in the M1A1 Abrams tank. After 13 years as an enlisted soldier, he found a different way to serve -- not on the ground, but in the air. "I was in Kosovo in 2015 and went to a briefing about flying for the North Carolina National Guard, and I decided it would be a great opportunity," Jenkins said. After that, he applied to be an aviator warrant officer. Now he has 730 flight hours in the Apache and said it's a remarkable piece of equipment. "The role of the Apache is to support a ground force commander," Jenkins said. "We are the eyes, ears and close air support for Army ground forces. Our main job is to keep them secure, keep them informed and destroy armored targets. That's what it's built for; it's what we're designed to do." As a maintainer, Frutchey is responsible for keeping the Apache airworthy and ready to support the Army and the joint force. While he now serves as an Apache maintainer, when he enlisted in 2012, he served as a turbine engine mechanic and saw an even wider variety of combat equipment. "As a [mechanic], you're qualified on all airframes in the Army," he said. "I've worked on [CH-47] Chinooks, I've worked on [UH-60] Black Hawks, I've worked on the Apache, obviously. And then, when I reclassed, my role changed. So, I went specifically to maintainer on the AH-64E." Frutchey said he enlisted in the Army to serve his country but also because he has family who serve as well. "My sister-in-law is an officer in our unit, actually," he said. "And she kind of let me know what it was about back in the day. She's amazing, and I kind of looked up to her, and it was some motivation to do something different with my life and try something new." Also an Apache maintainer, Braddy joined the Army in 2018, following in the footsteps of his dad. "My father was in the active-duty [Army] for his whole entire 30 years," he said. "So, I grew up ... moving around and watching him serve. So, that was kind of a big inspiration." Braddy said he would like to become a pilot. Although he initially enlisted as a maintainer, his ultimate goal is to fly. "[I] also wanted just to be a pilot," he said. "The Army has the warrant officer program, which to me was more enticing than the officer side of things. So, that's why I chose the Army. That was my intention when I joined." Braddy said he's been accepted by the state but still must go through the federal recognition process to become a warrant officer. After that, he'll attend flight school. Jenkins said he and Watkins -- who has 3,000 flight hours in the Apache -- flew the aircraft from North Carolina up to Davidson Army Airfield at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, earlier in the week; the trip took about 90 minutes. The next day, they flew the Apache the remaining 14 miles to the National Mall and left it there in preparation for the June 14, 2025, Army Birthday event. Landing on the mall, with the Capitol on one side and the Washington Monument on the other, was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, Jenkins said. "Nobody ever gets to do that." The soldiers said they want visitors to know military service, and the Army, in particular, has been life-changing for them. "The Army National Guard has changed the direction of my life in nothing but positive ways and given [me] and my peers a lot of great opportunities to learn things that transfer to the civilian world and continue on a legacy of Army aviation," Frutchey said. For the helicopter he maintains, he said, it speaks for itself. "It's the most advanced attack helicopter in the world," he said. "And the fact that the North Carolina Army National Guard has as many of them as we do has been awesome; we take a lot of pride in maintaining them. Our communities see the aircraft flying, and I think people enjoy seeing it and knowing we're here when we need to be, keeping them safe and keeping the ground forces safe." Army Sgt. Daniel S. Browning Jr. and Army Sgt. Edgar Echeverria-Nolasco also participated in the Army birthday event alongside their AH-64 Apache teammates. This Week in DOD: Quelling Violence, Army's Birthday, DOD's Budget [2025-06-13] WASHINGTON -- President Donald J. Trump put California Army National Guard soldiers under Title 10 orders and U.S. Northern Command control to support the protection of federal personnel and property in Los Angeles, June 7, 2025. Two days later, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth mobilized 700 Marines and put an additional 2,000 California National Guard soldiers under federal command. The Marines arrived on mission in the last 24 hours, and the total number of troops now authorized is 4,700. During his Weekly Sitrep video, Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said the service members assigned to this mission are protecting federal property and personnel from a violent mob of rioters. "We have zero tolerance for that kind of reprehensible behavior, and we are so thankful to the brave U.S. service members who are in Los Angeles for restoring order and upholding the laws that Congress has passed," Parnell said. As part of the operation, Northcom stood up Task Force 51, under U.S. Army North, its land component command. The task force, led by a two-star general, serves as the ground command and control element over the Title 10 forces. Also this week, Hegseth and Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified several times on Capitol Hill to discuss the department's pending budget submission for fiscal year 2026. "It is absolutely critical that Congress pass President Trump's 'One Big, Beautiful Bill,'" Parnell said. "Its historic investments in upgrading ships, planes, icebreakers and $25 billion for the development of [the] Golden Dome will help achieve our 'peace through strength' agenda and protect the homeland against 21st-century threats." While a full presidential budget recommendation has not yet been released, it's expected the president will ask Congress for approximately $961.6 billion, about $113.3 billion higher than the enacted budget for the department in FY25. "This budget provides a historic level of funding for military readiness -- putting our warfighters and their needs first -- and young Americans are responding and signing up in droves," Hegseth said while testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee, June 11, 2025. The expected budget proposal includes, among other things, $25 billion for the Golden Dome missile defense shield, $62 billion for the modernization of the nuclear triad, $3.5 billion for the F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance Platform and $47 billion for shipbuilding. Finally, this week marks the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army. "Secretary Hegseth joined President Trump at Fort Bragg, [North Carolina], to kick off the United States Army's 250th birthday celebration, which will culminate in the military parade right here in the nation's capital on Saturday," Parnell said. "It's going to be a fantastic event." On June 14, 2025, the Army Birthday Festival begins on the National Mall in Washington. The event will give Americans the opportunity to meet soldiers, watch military demonstrations and explore Army hardware on display. There will also be an Army birthday parade, which will include 6,600 soldiers in historical and present-day uniforms. DARPA Calls on Industry to Assist With Improving, Strengthening DOD Cybersecurity [2025-06-18] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced a Resilient Software Systems Accelerator program to kick-start the widespread adoption of math-based software development practices to make military systems inherently more secure against cyberthreats. During the Resilient Software Systems Colloquium held in Arlington, Virginia, yesterday, leaders from the Defense Department, DARPA and industry spoke about aging IT infrastructure, security standards and software tools and techniques known as "formal methods," that have been proven to significantly improve the resiliency, security and functionality of military systems used within the defense community. Director of DARPA's Information Innovation Office Kathleen Fisher described formal methods as "mathematically based approaches" that allow the user to prove properties about software to obtain guarantees, adding that DARPA has been involved in developing tools related to formal methods for over a decade. Formal methods refer to techniques used to develop high-assurance, verified software, where mathematical proofs are employed to demonstrate that software on a system will behave as intended. The application of formal methods contributes to the stability and resistance of a software system to hacking. Fisher said DARPA is eager for industry partners to get involved, which is why the agency is launching the Resilient Software Systems Accelerator. The program will provide seed funding to formal methods tool developers who partner with defense companies to apply formal methods tools and measure their level of effort to implement them. "We are here to call you to action, to seize this opportunity and to ... motivate you to listen and to think about where you have systems at home that might benefit from formal methods," Fisher said. "DARPA is announcing today that we are going to ... offer funding to do a red team assessment of a system. You guys do this cyber retrofit and then do another red team to assess the difference, [and then] document what you did in the retrofit in a best practices standard format." As part of advancing formal methods within DOD, DARPA is also partnering with each of the military services on a capstone demonstration of formal methods application. Each capstone demonstration includes a red team assessment of its current state of cyber vulnerabilities followed by a formal methods retrofit, Fisher explained. Once the retrofit is completed, a follow-on red team assessment will be conducted to test system reliability. The Air Force is starting the capstone demonstration by retrofitting software on the MQ-9 Reaper aircraft. Fisher said other services are not far behind and will soon participate in their capstone demonstrations. During a recorded address shown at the event, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael said the Defense Department must now explore new ways to enhance cybersecurity. "Our adversaries are relentless," Michael said. "So, we need systems that are resilient for today's threats and ready and adaptable for tomorrow's conflicts. That's why we are taking decisive action alongside our partners in acquisition and sustainment and DARPA." Over the past decade, he said, DARPA and partners have worked to transform formal methods into more accessible and practical solutions than ever before. "These advancements enable us to scale secure software systems across all DOD from legacy platforms to cutting-edge [artificial intelligence] and hypersonic technologies -- defending our digital landscape," Michael said. "Yet, we have not fully harnessed this potential across the defense industrial base and DOD, leaving critical vulnerabilities unaddressed." The colloquium brought together more than 300 leaders from DOD, industry and academia, and Michael said it fostered the collaboration needed to address the critical software challenges facing the Defense Department. "Our goal today [is] ... to inspire widespread adoption of high-assurance formal methods, whether developed by DARPA or not," he said. "Through use cases, lessons learned and best practices, we've shown how this strengthens cyber resiliency, reduces costs and simplifies processes like securing authority to operate." DOD Will Pass Audit by 2028, Comptroller Confirms [2025-06-18] WASHINGTON -- The Marine Corps has already passed a financial audit, and the Defense Department has until 2028 to do the same, the department's comptroller said today during a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington. "The first day we came in, [the audit] was one of the first topics the secretary and I discussed, and he actually just put out a memo with guidance for milestones each fiscal year that the department is going to [meet in order] to achieve the financial audit by 2028 or sooner -- as he has challenged us to do," said Bryn Woollacott MacDonnell, who is currently performing the duties of the Defense Department comptroller. MacDonnell noted that in addition to the Marine Corps, two other DOD components have passed an audit. "Within the next three years, under the secretary's guidance, the remainder of the department will achieve the clean audit opinion," she said. MacDonnell was joined on Capitol Hill today by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The leaders testified regarding the department's fiscal year 2026 budget. Earlier this month, the Office of Management and Budget released to Congress President Donald J. Trump's recommendations on FY26 discretionary funding levels. While a full presidential budget recommendation has not yet been released, the proposal includes an increase in DOD's budget to approximately $961.6 billion, about $113.3 billion higher than the enacted budget for the department in FY25. "This budget makes historic investments in living conditions, in barracks, in base housing," Hegseth said. "This budget reforms the [permanent change of station] process to reduce the cost and stress of moves for families -- we've already seen changes there -- and we improve the quality of care provided by our defense health care system." Hegseth told lawmakers that since January, the department had identified nearly $30 billion in savings, which, along with the FY2026 budget, will be used to focus the department on his top priorities: restoring the warrior ethos, rebuilding the military and reestablishing deterrence. Included in the FY2026 budget is $25 billion for the Golden Dome missile defense shield for the United States, $62 billion to modernize and sustain America's nuclear forces and $3.5 billion for the F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance aircraft. The budget also places a significant focus on shipbuilding, with $6 billion in funding to help revitalize the American shipbuilding industry and $47 billion allocated for Navy ship construction. "The budget significantly increases funds to buy next-generation technology, including autonomous systems, long-range drones, long-range fires and hypersonics," he said. "We will put these capabilities in the hands of our warfighters, ensuring we remain the most lethal force in the world for generations to come." Caine told senators he believes one of the most important parts of the FY2026 budget is the support it provides to warfighters and their families. "The budget makes meaningful investments in our service members and their families, improving quality of life, for housing, medical care, and the ever-important moving process," he said. "As our most precious asset, we have to deliver for our people." This Week in DOD: New Recruiting Task Force, Greenland Shifts to Northcom, DOD Activates More Immigration Support [2025-06-20] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military has seen an increase in recruiting in the past few months, with the Army and Navy both achieving fiscal year recruiting goals ahead of schedule, while the Air Force is on track to do the same. Now, the Defense Department created a team to determine how to continue that recruiting success. "To build on this incredible momentum, [Defense] Secretary [Pete Hegseth] has directed the creation of a Military Recruitment Task Force within the Department of Defense," said Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson during the Weekly Sitrep video. "Being the most lethal force on the planet means continuing to attract the best possible recruits, and we are just getting started." The newly created task force will, among other things, ensure unified messaging across all service recruiting, develop strategies to expand eligibility, generate interest in serving and remove barriers that hinder recruitment and onboarding. "Given the recent positive momentum, the department seeks to capitalize on the gains made in recruiting since the election of President [Donald J. Trump] in November 2024," Hegseth wrote in the memorandum, which directed the creation of the task force. "By analyzing the current recruiting efforts and trends, the Military Service Recruitment Task Force will ensure that the department stands ready to consistently attract, prospect and retain talent to meet current and future force requirements." Also this week, during a hearing with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, June 18, 2025, Hegseth, along with Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Bryn Woollacott MacDonnell, performing the duties of the Defense Department comptroller, testified on the department's fiscal year 2026 budget request. "Fully resourcing the Department of Defense is a national security imperative," Wilson said. "By investing in new ships, planes, icebreakers, autonomous systems and Golden Dome -- our warfighters will be adequately prepared to face a myriad of 21st-century threats." Earlier this month, the Office of Management and Budget released the president's recommendations on FY26 discretionary funding levels to Congress. While a full presidential budget recommendation has not yet been released, the proposal includes an increase in DOD's budget to approximately $961.6 billion, about $113.3 billion higher than the enacted budget for the department this year. "This budget makes historic investments in living conditions, in barracks, in base housing," Hegseth said during the hearing. "This budget reforms the [permanent change of station] process to reduce the cost and stress of moves for families -- we've already seen changes there -- and we improve the quality of care provided by our defense health care system." The secretary told lawmakers DOD's FY26 budget includes, among other things, $25 billion for the Golden Dome missile defense shield, $62 billion to modernize and sustain America's nuclear forces and $3.5 billion for the F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance aircraft. Also included in the budget is $47 billion for Navy ship construction and support to military service members and their families. "The budget makes meaningful investments in our service members and their families, improving quality of life for housing, medical care and the ever-important moving process," Caine said. "As our most precious asset, we have to deliver for our people." The department also lent a hand to the Department of Homeland Security this week, Wilson said. The secretary authorized the mobilization of up to 700 military personnel to provide administrative support to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Florida, Louisiana and Texas. "From Los Angeles to the southern border, we are working alongside our interagency partners to protect federal agents [and] federal property and to secure our border," she said. Service members tapped to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement are drawn from all components and operate in a Title 10 duty status, said Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell. "[They] will provide logistical support and conduct administrative and clerical functions associated with the processing of illegal aliens at ICE detention facilities," Parnell said. "They will not directly participate in law enforcement activities." DOD's support frees up Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel to focus on their mission, he noted, adding, "The department remains committed to securing 100% operational control of the border." Finally this week, at the direction of the president, Greenland was shifted from the U.S. European Command's area of responsibility to the U.S. Northern Command's area of responsibility -- part of a change to the unified command plan, which details the organization of combatant commands around the globe. "This change reflects President Trump's focus on Arctic security and will strengthen our ability to defend the U.S. homeland," Wilson said. The department reviews the plan every two years to ensure each combatant command is structured correctly and has the right resources to carry out assigned missions and protect U.S. interests. 'Historically Successful' Strike on Iranian Nuclear Site Was 15 Years in the Making [2025-06-26] WASHINGTON -- This weekend's strike on Iran's Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant used 30,000-pound GBU-57 "massive ordnance penetrator" bombs. The design of those weapons and plans for attacking the site had been in the works for some 15 years, which resulted in the destruction of Iran's nuclear capabilities. "President Donald J. Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history, and it was a resounding success, resulting in a cease-fire agreement and the end of the 12-day war [between Iran and Israel]," said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a press briefing today at the Pentagon. "Because of decisive military action, President Trump created the conditions to end the war, [while also] decimating -- choose your word -- obliterating, destroying, Iran's nuclear capabilities." Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said two officers at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency had studied the site in Iran, which was built to enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Caine said, is the world's leading expert on underground targets -- such as the Fordow site, which is about 60 miles south of Tehran. "In 2009, a [DTRA] officer was brought into a vault at an undisclosed location and briefed on something going on in Iran," Caine said. "He was shown some photos and some highly classified intelligence of what looked like a major construction project in the mountains of Iran. He was tasked to study this facility, work with the intelligence community to understand it, and he was soon joined by an additional teammate." The two worked for 15 years to gain an understanding of the site, but came to realize, after studying the location, that the United States didn't have a weapon that could penetrate into its depths to destroy what was contained inside. "They began a journey to work with industry and other tacticians to develop the GBU-57," Caine said. "They tested it over and over again, tried different options, tried more after that -- they accomplished hundreds of test shots and dropped many full-scale weapons against extremely realistic targets for a single purpose: kill this target at the time and place of our nation's choosing." As part of Operation Midnight Hammer, directed by the president, on June 21, at 6:45 p.m., which is Sunday, June 22, at 2:15 a.m. in Iran, U.S. B-2 Spirit bombers out of Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, dropped 14 of those GBU-57 bombs onto Fordow and a second nuclear facility, destroying the facilities and setting back Iranian nuclear efforts by years. While Caine said the joint force doesn't do battle damage assessment -- the intelligence community does -- he was able to relay what's known so far. The weapons were built, tested and delivered properly; they were released on-speed and on-parameter; they were all guided to their intended targets; and the weapons all functioned as designed, he said. "We know that the trailing jets saw the first weapons function, and the pilot stated, 'This was the brightest explosion that I've ever seen. It literally looked like daylight,'" Caine said. It wasn't just hardware and experts at DTRA who made Midnight Hammer hit as hard as it did. The crews who flew non-stop for 36 hours and more than 13,000 miles round trip also played a huge role, Caine said. The B-2 teams included both active-duty and Missouri National Guard pilots, Caine said. "When the crews went to work on Friday, they kissed their loved ones goodbye -- not knowing when or if they'd be home," Caine said. "Late on Saturday night, their families became aware of what was happening, and on Sunday, when those jets returned [to] Whiteman, their families were there -- flags flying and tears flowing. I have chills literally talking about this." Operation Midnight Hammer was a success, Caine said, because of the bomber crews, experts at DTRA and thousands of scientists, airmen and maintainers working together. "[This] ... is what America's joint force does," Caine said. "We think, we develop, we train, we rehearse, we test, we evaluate, every single day. And when the call comes to deliver, we do so. I could not be more proud standing up here today of our joint force." At the conclusion of Operation Midnight Hammer, Caine said, the joint force did not stand down. Instead, it continues to defend the United States. Following the destruction of the Iranian uranium enrichment site, Caine said, Iranians attacked American forces at nearby Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. And there, the joint force defended as it was trained to do. On Monday morning, Caine said, the joint force saw indications that Iran meant to attack U.S. bases in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility. At Al Udeid, he said, most forces were moved off base to extend the security perimeter, but two Patriot missile batteries remained behind to defend the installation. "[That's] roughly 44 American soldiers responsible for defending the entire base, to include Centcom's forward headquarters in the Middle East, an entire air base and all the U.S. forces there," Caine said. "The oldest soldier was a 28-year-old captain. The youngest was a 21-year-old private who'd been in the military for less than two years." Around 12:30 p.m. Monday, or 7:30 p.m. in Qatar, Caine said, Iran attacked. "As the targets were detected, round after round of Patriot missiles are ejected from their canisters by an initial launch charge," he said. "Then the main solid rocket motor ignites -- you can feel this in your body if you've ever been around a Patriot taking a shot. And round after round goes out and guides against those missiles coming inbound. We believe that this is the largest single Patriot engagement in U.S. military history." Caine said the U.S. military was joined in protecting the installation by Qatari Patriot crews. While Caine wouldn't say how many Patriot missiles were launched, he did say there was "a lot of metal flying around." "Between attacking missiles being hit by Patriots, boosters from attacking missiles being hit by Patriots, the Patriots themselves flying around, and the debris from those Patriots hitting the ground, there was a lot of metal flying around," he said. "Our U.S. air defenders had only seconds to make complex decisions with strategic impact. These awesome humans, along with their Qatari brothers and sisters in arms, stood between a salvo of Iranian missiles and the safety of Al Udeid. They are the unsung heroes of the 21st century United States Army." Following the execution of Operation Midnight Hammer and its follow-on effects, Hegseth said the effects are worth remembering. "This was a historically successful attack, and we should celebrate it as Americans," the secretary said. "It gives us a chance to have peace, a chance to have a deal, an opportunity to prevent a nuclear Iran -- which is something President Trump talked about for 20 years." PCS Task Force Prioritizes Trust, Timeliness, Accountability [2025-06-27] WASHINGTON -- As Army Maj. Gen. Lance G. Curtis stood in line at the Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, commissary to order a sandwich for lunch, he couldn't help but notice something odd. "I'm standing next to an airman, and he's got his bike helmet, and he's got this huge backpack," Curtis said, adding that he asked the airman if he always carries everything with him. The Air Force technical sergeant told Curtis that he was new to the base and had filled his backpack with newly purchased items he needed because he was having trouble accessing his household goods, which were still in temporary storage. "As he explained, I'm literally writing his name and his phone number, his rank and his situation on the wrapper of my sandwich," Curtis said. "I got back to the operations center, and within 10 minutes, he got a phone call about his situation, and then I called him later that night to check up on him. We are now getting him the help that he needs." As the commander of the newly created Permanent Change of Station Joint Task Force, Curtis was in a unique position to help the airman. Not every service member will receive a call from a two-star general to advocate on their behalf and help unlock the predicament that can sometimes arise from the movement of household goods. However, Curtis said he'd like every service member, family member and DOD civilian to be able to call a real person who has the authority to resolve issues. But ideally, he'd like them to have no problems at all. The joint task force Curtis leads was established in May at the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to improve how the Defense Department moves service members from one assignment to the next. In the May 20, 2025, memorandum standing up the task force, Hegseth directed the U.S. Transportation Command to make various changes to the existing program that moves household goods. He noted that while the PCS process has "never been a great system," recent changes have made things worse. "We know it's not working, and it's only getting worse," he said. "We've heard your concerns about contractor performance, quality and accountability. We hear you loud and clear, and that's why we're taking decisive action immediately." The task force now has approximately 20 members and will grow to more than 50, Curtis said. The team also collaborates with members from the Transcom operations staff, representatives from each of the military services, including the Coast Guard, personnel from the Office of the Secretary of Defense and representatives from the commercial household goods moving industry. On June 18, 2025, the department canceled the existing mechanism for conducting PCS moves, the Global Household Goods contract, also known as GHC. Curtis said the secretary gave him the authority to terminate the contract for cause because the contractor was not "meeting the expectations that we have within DOD for household goods moves." At its inception, Curtis said, the concept of the GHC program had merit. It was part of a transformation initiative to redo how the department moved service members from one duty location to another. Curtis still stands behind the concept of GHC and what it aimed to accomplish, but the department was unhappy with the execution. "At the end of the day, there were a lot of good things about GHC as a transformation initiative that really made the system better," he said. "The problem was the contractor was not meeting our expectations." Before the GHC effort, which launched in April 2024, the department had been using a household goods shipment system called Tender of Service. The department had used the ToS process for a decade before GHC and reverted back to it after GHC was canceled. Under ToS, Transcom handled the massive volume of vendors participating in household goods movements across the globe, and that became overwhelming. GHC provided a single responsible party to meet the needs of service members involved in PCS moves and managed the vendors who conducted those moves. Despite GHC being canceled, the department still has a busy moving season ahead of it. Approximately 300,000 individuals and families relocate each year, with about 120,000 of those moves occurring during "peak PCS season," which runs from mid-May to the end of September and during which DOD sees an increase of about 8.2% in moves. Curtis said, despite these challenges, the department is confident it can move all those people using the ToS process it has used for years. "We have the capacity within commercial industry to handle the peak season," he said. "I met with industry because I wanted assurances that capacity was available for the peak season. When we made the decision to do the termination for cause, it was deliberate. We had a good plan in place, and we knew the commercial industry could handle the additional load." At the time the contract was canceled, Curtis said GHC was handling only about 20% of actual moves, with 80% still being managed through ToS. Not every service member will choose to use Transcom or their local joint personal property office to conduct a move. Some individuals will find a mover on their own and later seek reimbursement as part of a personally procured move. For those members, the department will now offer reimbursement up to 100% of the rate calculated for a move under the ToS system and up to 130% of the cost of a move as calculated by GHC, Curtis said. "That incentive for our service members is the right answer for them," he said. "It allows them to conduct the move if they want to do it on their own and to not lose money. That is a huge win for our service members." Right now, Curtis said, he has seen a drop-off in PPMs, but he thinks that will change now that service members know they won't lose money by conducting a move themselves. Curtis said DOD will work through this year's peak moving season, but the goal of the task force is to ensure the department provides the highest quality moving services for service members, civilian employees and their families. The task force, Curtis said, must build an efficient system to ensure service members will always, to the extent possible, have the best possible moving experience. "We're working on trust, timeliness and accountability," he said. Speaking on those topics, Curtis said individual and family possessions represent memories and mementos from their lives before and during military service, and the department must ensure those treasures are moved to their final destination safely and intact. He added that household pickups and deliveries must occur as scheduled. "All of us want the pickups and the deliveries to be high quality, and I'm holding the vendors accountable," he said. "Their pickup and delivery must be in accordance with the prearranged timelines. I'm not ignorant of the fact that every single move that we conduct is not going to go perfectly, but our mindset is we want to beat things down to zero." Curtis said the department aims to reach a point where bad moves are extremely rare. Finally, touching on accountability, Curtis said it will be a part of everything the task force does going forward as it works to improve the moving experience. "Our contracts have to have clearly defined standards," he said. "They have to have oversight responsibilities and there have to be consequences tied to the accountability." The general noted that to fully meet the secretary's intent, significant changes are needed in how the department conducts the movement of household goods. "We are operationalizing the way we [move] household goods," Curtis said. "We have a common operating picture each day that we are looking at to find out where the friction points are across the United States, and we are removing obstacles for the benefit of the service members, their families and our Department of Defense civilians." The task force is setting up a 24/7 call center that will enable service members to call whenever they encounter issues with their move. Curtis said the center is scheduled to open in July. "We want to ensure that they can talk to an actual person who can remove obstacles for them," he said, adding that the call center will be obligated to call the service member back with the way forward to resolve their problems. Curtis said he owes Hegseth options later this year for how the DOD will improve military moves in the future, but before that happens, he said, he'll be talking with the services, the personal property offices and with industry. However, he said he also wants to hear from the service members and families. "I would really appreciate getting feedback from the field -- from our family members, from our service members and from our DOD civilians -- on things that they know are problems and they would like to see us address," he said. "That helps us ensure that we are really meeting the needs of the people who matter the most." This Week in DOD: Hammer Drops on Iranian Nuclear Program, Allies Increase NATO Contribution, Navy Renames Ship for MOH Recipient [2025-06-28] WASHINGTON -- Earlier this week, the joint force struck Iran's Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant with 30,000-pound GBU-57 bombs, which resulted in the destruction of Iran's nuclear capabilities. "At President [Donald J. Trump]'s direction, the United States military successfully conducted Operation Midnight Hammer and completely obliterated Iran's nuclear capability, resulting in a ceasefire of the '12-day war,'" said Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell during the Weekly Sitrep video. As part of the operation, U.S. B-2 Spirit bombers out of Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, dropped 14 GBU-57 bombs onto Fordow -- about 60 miles south of Tehran -- and a second nuclear facility, destroying both and setting back Iranian nuclear efforts by years. "Our brave B-2 pilots flew nearly 40 hours through the night, under radar, dropping 14 30,000-pound 'massive ordnance penetrators' or MOBs, on Iran's secure nuclear enrichment sites. That is 420,000 pounds of bombs," Parnell said. "It's clear to everyone that Operation Midnight Hammer was a massive success. We are incredibly proud of the execution of this mission. So, well done to this nation's warfighters." Following the execution of the operation and its follow-on effects, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the mission is worth remembering. "This was a historically successful attack, and we should celebrate it as Americans," the secretary said. "It gives us a chance to have peace, a chance to have a deal, an opportunity to prevent a nuclear Iran -- which is something President Trump talked about for 20 years." On June 24, 2025, Trump, Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled to The Hague, Netherlands, to attend the final day of the NATO Summit. "While there, in a very historic milestone, our NATO allies committed to dramatically increasing their defense spending to 5% of their respective [gross domestic products,]" Parnell said. "American taxpayers will no longer have to foot the bill to protect Europe -- and that's a great thing. This investment strengthens our relationships and alliances with our neighbors overseas." The president asked allies to increase their contributions to NATO during his first term. Since the start of his second term, both the president and defense secretary have touted the 5% goal. While in Brussels in February, Hegseth laid out a future vision for NATO. "To endure for the future, our partners must do far more for Europe's defense," he said. "We must make NATO great again. It begins with defense spending but must also include reviving the transatlantic defense industrial base, rapidly fielding emerging technologies, prioritizing readiness and lethality, and establishing real deterrence." Also this week, the Navy rebranded a fleet replenishment oiler after a Navy Medal of Honor recipient. "The USNS Harvey Milk has officially been renamed the USNS Oscar V. Peterson," Parnell said. "The ship is named after Chief Petty Officer Oscar V. Peterson, who was badly burned trying to save his ship during the Battle of [the] Coral Sea in 1942. Peterson died of his injuries and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. We are so grateful for his heroic service." U.S., India Talk 10-Year Cooperative Framework, Defense Cooperation, Shared Priorities [2025-07-01] WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met today at the Pentagon with India's External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar to discuss the close cooperation between the two countries, weapons sales and the upcoming signing of the framework for the new defense partnership. "Almost right at the beginning of the administration, President [Donald J. Trump] and Prime Minister [Shri Narendra Modi ]set a strong foundation for our relationship, which we're building on here today: productive, pragmatic and realistic," Hegseth said. "And our nations boast a rich and growing history of cooperation driven by a shared commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific." The secretary said both the U.S. and India are mutually aware of the security concerns in the region, and both nations have the ability to counter that threat together. He also touched on U.S. efforts to provide India with the tools needed to counter threats in the Indo-Pacific region. "The United States is very pleased with the successful integration of many U.S. defense items into India's inventory," Hegseth said. "And building on this progress, we hope we can complete several major pending U.S. defense sales to India, expand our shared defense industrial cooperation and coproduction efforts, strengthen interoperability ... between our forces, and then formally sign a new 10-year Framework for the U.S.-India Major Defense Partnership ... which we hope to do very soon." During a meeting in February between Trump and Modi, the two leaders announced plans to pursue new procurements and coproduction arrangements for Javelin antitank guided missiles and Stryker armored vehicles. Also discussed was procurement for six additional P-8I maritime patrol aircraft. India has already integrated various weapons systems into its own military, such as the C‑130J Super Hercules, C‑17 Globemaster III and P‑8I Poseidon aircraft, as well as the CH‑47F Chinook, MH‑60R Sea Hawk and AH‑64E Apache. It also utilizes the Harpoon antiship missiles, M777 howitzers and MQ‑9B Sky Guardians. Also in February, the president and prime minister pledged to increase military cooperation with enhanced training, exercises and operations. Hegseth and Jaishankar discussed participation in the next India-U.S. Defense Acceleration Ecosystem Summit, where the two nations will continue to build on U.S.-India defense industrial cooperation and produce new innovations in technology and manufacturing. "We're eager to work alongside you to realize our shared goals," Hegseth said. "They're deep and ongoing." Jaishankar said India's relationship with the U.S. is already strong, but more can be done. "We believe that our defense partnership is today truly one of the most consequential pillars of the relationship. It's not built merely on shared interests, but we believe really deepening convergence and of capabilities, of responsibilities," Jaishankar said. "And what we do in the Indo-Pacific, we believe, is absolutely crucial to its strategic stability." DOD 'Capability Review' to Analyze Where Military Aid Goes, Ensure America Is First [2025-07-02] WASHINGTON -- Ever since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, the U.S. has provided Ukraine with nearly $66 billion in security assistance. Much of that assistance involved American military hardware and munitions pulled from U.S. inventory as part of presidential drawdown authority. Now, some assistance provided to Ukraine -- as well as assistance to other nations -- is on pause as the Defense Department reviews its own capabilities to ensure when it opts to provide aid to other nations, it never shortchanges itself in the process, said Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell during a briefing today at the Pentagon. "This capability review ... is being conducted to ensure U.S. military aid aligns with our defense priorities," he said. "We see this as a common-sense, pragmatic step towards having a framework to evaluate what munitions are sent and where." The evaluation, Parnell said, will better help the president and defense secretary make decisions about how and when military aid is provided. "What we've done here at the Department of Defense is create a framework to analyze what munitions we're sending [and] where," Parnell explained. "Ultimately, our job here at the Department of Defense is to pursue the president's 'America First' agenda and make sure that we achieve peace through strength throughout the world." While Parnell said the department will not provide updates regarding quantities or types of munitions provided to Ukraine, or timelines associated with that materiel, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth continues to make recommendations to President Donald J. Trump on military assistance to Ukraine. During the capability review, Parnell said, the U.S. military retains its ability to defend the nation. "We want to be very clear about this last point," he said. "Let it be known that our military has everything that it needs to conduct any mission, anywhere, anytime, all around the world. We have the most lethal fighting force in the world." Proof of that, Parnell said, was last month's Operation Midnight Hammer, during which the U.S. used massive ordnance penetrators to destroy multiple Iranian nuclear facilities. "Iran is much further away today from a nuclear weapon than they were before the president took bold action to fulfill his promise to the American people, and that promise was Iran will not have a nuclear weapon," he said. During the operation, June 21, 2025, at 6:45 p.m., which was June 22, at 2:15 a.m. in Iran, U.S. B-2 Spirit bombers out of Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, dropped 14 GBU-57 bombs onto three locations in Iran, including at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. "Our assessment of the battle damage ... remains unchanged," Parnell said. "We believe, and certainly all of the intelligence [reports] that we've seen have led us to believe that ... those facilities especially, have been completely obliterated." Parnell noted that intelligence assessments from allies around the world also reflect the U.S. assessment. "They share our sentiments about the degradation of Iran's nuclear program," he said, adding that the U.S. believes Iran's nuclear program has been set back by about two years as a result of the operation. "What we've seen ... universally among our allies was them congratulating the United States, the president and secretary of defense on that bold operation, and the idea that American action in Iran has set the conditions for global stability," Parnell said. "Iran has been a major exporter of terror all around the world, and ... nations the world over have been subject to their terror. I think that nations all around the world ... they know that when America is strong and speaks clearly, the world is a better and more stable place." This Week in DOD: Air Force, Space Force Meet Recruiting Goals Early; Strengthening Global Partnerships; Budget Bill Supports DOD Investments [2025-07-04] WASHINGTON -- The Air Force and Space Force reported this week that they've joined the Army and Navy in meeting their 2025 recruiting goals earlier than expected. "The U.S. Army hit its recruiting goals four months early. The Navy hit its recruiting goals three months early," said Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson, during the Weekly Sitrep video. "And this week, it was announced that the Air Force and the Space Force both hit their recruiting expectations three months early. Leadership matters, and under President [Donald J. Trump] and Secretary [Pete Hegseth], enthusiasm to serve our nation has never been higher." The department recently established a task force to sustain the recent spike in recruiting efforts well into the future. The 12-month effort, established by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, is cochaired by Chief Pentagon Spokesman and Senior Advisor Sean Parnell and Jules W. Hurst III, performing the duties of undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. The task force will translate this year's recruiting momentum into an enduring advantage. "One of the things that we're trying to achieve with this recruiting task force is answering the tough question about how do we set the conditions here, culturally, in this country, to have more kids want to serve the country, and see it as a viable career path," Parnell said during a press briefing at the Pentagon this week. Getting service members out into communities not typically exposed to the military could be a big help, he added. "One of the interesting things about that is the ... intersection between propensity and proximity and the idea that when people are exposed to and see somebody in uniform on a day-to-day basis, their desire to serve this country skyrockets," Parnell said. This week, Hegseth hosted leaders from two partner nations to further military cooperation and partnerships. On July 1, 2025, the secretary met with India's External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, and the next day, he hosted Argentine Defense Minister Luis Petri. "We are grateful for our partners and committed to our shared vision for a safe and secure free world," Wilson said. Hegseth stated that the U.S. and India share a mutual awareness of the security concerns in the Indo-Pacific region, and both nations have the ability to counter that threat together. He also touched on U.S. efforts to provide India with the tools needed to counter threats in the region. "The United States is very pleased with the successful integration of many U.S. defense items into India's inventory," Hegseth said. "And building on this progress, we hope we can complete several major pending U.S. defense sales to India, expand our shared defense industrial cooperation and coproduction efforts, [and] strengthen interoperability ... between our forces." With Argentina, the secretary acknowledged that China poses a threat to both nations and to Central America as a whole. "Regional peace demands the utmost will and tenacity, and I think we can face these shared security challenges together, and I know we will," Hegseth said. The defense secretary also applauded Argentina's efforts to bolster its defense relationship with the United States, noting its decision to acquire U.S. F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft, as well as Stryker fighting vehicles. The president today signed the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" into law, which, among other things, provides funding for the Defense Department. "The department wants to applaud the House [of Representatives] and the Senate on passing the president's 'One Big Beautiful Bill,'" Wilson said. "This bill's necessary investments in military ships, aircraft, icebreakers, unmanned systems, artificial intelligence and $25 billion for the development of 'Golden Dome' will directly help achieve the president's 'peace through strength' agenda and equip our warfighters to protect the homeland against 21st-century threats." Today also marks the 249th birthday of the United States. "It's our nation's 249th anniversary of independence," Wilson said. "Today, we celebrate our incredible heritage and are reminded that freedom is not free. We will never forget the sacrifice our forefathers made and that our warfighters and their families continue to make every day for our country." New USDA Program Ties Food Security to National Defense [2025-07-08] WASHINGTON -- The Department of Agriculture today announced a new governmentwide, multiprong effort focused on ensuring America's ability to secure its own food supply, in part by eliminating interference from adversarial nations. But the National Farm Security Action Plan isn't just about food or farms. The Defense Department benefits as well. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins explained the significance of the first action item in the National Farm Security Action Plan, which she said is likely the most important. "The first of the seven is securing and protecting American farmland ownership, actively engaging at every level of government to take swift legislative and executive action to ban the purchase of American farmland by Chinese nationals and other foreign adversaries," she said. Part of that, she said, also involves using presidential authorities to reclaim farmland in the U.S. that is now owned by foreign adversaries. While keeping farmland in the hands of American farmers rather than businesses affiliated with adversarial foreign governments secures the ability of the U.S. to always produce food to feed Americans, it serves a second purpose as well. In some cases, farmland purchased by investors associated with adversarial foreign governments is situated around U.S. military installations, which means foreign ownership of that land is both a threat to America's ability to ensure its own food supply and also a threat to broader American security because it puts those installations at risk. "As someone who's charged with leading the Defense Department, I want to know who owns the land around our bases and strategic bases, and getting an understanding of why foreign entities, foreign companies, foreign individuals, might be buying up land around those bases," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said. "That's something I should be paying attention to, on behalf of the American people, on behalf of my department and on behalf of the president." Food security, energy resilience and water resources, Hegseth said, are all part of national security, especially in contingency situations. "We would be asleep at the wheel if we were not fully a party to an effort like [the National Farm Security Action Plan] to ensure that our nation had the food supply it needs, but specifically our troops have what they need on our bases, so that in those moments, you can rely on us here in the United States to provide that security," Hegseth said. "No longer can foreign adversaries assume we're not watching and we're not paying attention and we're not doing something about it -- because we are." As part of the National Farm Security Action Plan, the USDA will work with state and congressional partners to take needed action to end direct or indirect purchase or control of American farmland by nationals from countries of concern -- including China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. "At the Department of Defense, we care about homeland security," Hegseth said. "Energy security, food security, [and] water security is national security. And so when you look at our bases here in the United States or around the world, we ought to know who owns that land around strategic bases. Where are they from? Are they Americans, and if not, why?" Hegseth told Rollins that the USDA's National Farm Security Action Plan will help DOD get better security for U.S. bases. "Your plan helps us address that," Hegseth said. "We're excited to partner with you. Thank you for your leadership. Anything we can do, let us know, and this is all part of securing America and American citizens and putting America first -- it's common sense for us." This Week in DOD: Department Unleashes Drone Development; USDA, DOD Partner on Security; U.S. Hosts Israel for Bilateral Talks [2025-07-11] WASHINGTON -- By eliminating unnecessary policies and bureaucracy, the Defense Department plans to put legions of small, inexpensive drones into the hands of warfighters who need them. "In line with President [Donald J. Trump]'s recent executive order to support the American drone industry, [Defense] Secretary [Pete Hegseth] signed a memo removing restrictive policies on drone innovation that hindered production and access to vital technologies," said Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell during the Weekly Sitrep video. "By leveraging our department's savings from [the Department of Government Efficiency], we will help power a technological leapfrog and bolster the U.S. drone industry by approving hundreds of made-in-America drone products for purchase by our military." According to Hegseth, the department's new focus on the use of drone technology involves three primary efforts. First is to strengthen the U.S. drone manufacturing base. "We will bolster the nascent U.S. drone manufacturing base by approving hundreds of American products for purchase by our military," Hegseth said. "Leveraging private capital flows that support this industry, our overt preference is to buy American." Second is to get the best tools America has to offer into the hands of the service members who need them most. "We will power a technological leapfrog, arming our combat units with a variety of low-cost drones made by America's world-leading engineers and [artificial intelligence] experts," Hegseth said. The department will also ensure those combat units don't just have drones available to them, but that they are also well-trained on how to use them. "We'll train as we expect to fight. To simulate the modern battlefield, senior officers must overcome the bureaucracy's instinctive risk-aversion on everything from budgeting to weaponizing and training," Hegseth said. "Next year, I expect to see this capability integrated into all relevant combat training, including force-on-force drone wars." Also this week, the Defense Department partnered with the Agriculture Department to better protect U.S. military installations. "The Department of Agriculture initiated a governmentwide focus to safeguard our farmlands and land around our military bases from being purchased by adversarial nations," Parnell said. "Food security is national security." Called the "National Farm Security Action Plan," the effort that was announced July 8, 2025, by USDA, affects the Defense Department as well. Part of the action plan involves government using both legislative and executive action to ban the purchase of American farmland by Chinese nationals or other foreign adversaries. In some cases, farmland purchased by investors associated with adversarial foreign governments is situated around U.S. military installations, putting those installations at risk. "As someone who's charged with leading the Defense Department, I want to know who owns the land around our bases and strategic bases, and getting an understanding of why foreign entities, foreign companies [and] foreign individuals might be buying up land around those bases," Hegseth said. "That's something I should be paying attention to, on behalf of the American people, on behalf of my department and on behalf of the president." On July 9, 2025, Hegseth welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the Pentagon to commemorate the successes of both nations in recent military operations. "The secretary held bilateral meetings with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu to honor the historic sacrifice and success of Operation Midnight Hammer and to celebrate Israel's special partnership with the United States," Parnell said. At the meeting, Hegseth and Netanyahu discussed the successes of Israel's Operation Rising Lion and Operation Midnight Hammer, which together resulted in significant damage inflicted on Iran's nuclear weapons program and that successfully brought an end to the 12-day war between Iran and Israel. "Thank you for being a friend, a model ally and showing leadership and strength," Hegseth told Netanyahu. "You can have a lot of allies and then you have allies with capabilities that actually execute on the frontlines and what you did was spectacular." Both Hegseth and Netanyahu credited the strong bond between the U.S. and Israel for their mutual success against Iran. "I think the entire world took note; I think Iran took note; [and] I think everybody in the Middle East took note of American resolve and of the strength of our alliance," Netanyahu said. "It was like the roar of two lions, and it was heard around the world." Hegseth Thanks German Counterpart for Stepping Up to Defense Challenges [2025-07-14] WASHINGTON -- Germany has committed to a permanent brigade in Lithuania, a sizable purchase of F-35 Lightning II fighter jets, an increase in defense spending and being a key nexus for providing support to Ukraine. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledged those efforts during a meeting today at the Pentagon with German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. "First, I want to recognize the incredible support the German government gives to our troops in your country [who are] stationed there," Hegseth said. "Thank you for many years of partnership and friendship in that regard." The secretary also called out Germany's forward momentum on providing support to NATO. Earlier today, President Donald J. Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Hegseth and other officials also met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at the White House, to discuss how the U.S. plans to support Ukraine going forward. That plan involves the U.S. providing weapons to Ukraine, which NATO will pay for. In the interim, the president said, Germany has agreed to provide some of its own missiles to Ukraine, which NATO will eventually replace. "I think we've seen incredible progress inside NATO and with Germany taking the leap on that upfront commitment to your spending, commitment to European leadership," Hegseth said. "I want to commend you, and thank you for that -- to include the contributions and the partnership that we'll continue to undertake, especially given the approach the president is taking, [that] we just talked about this morning at the White House." Germany, along with nearly every other NATO partner, has also recently committed to spending 5% of its gross domestic product on its defense, which greatly enhances NATO. And Rutte added that Germany has stepped up "massively" to help keep Ukraine strong and to increase defense industrial production. "I look forward to further partnership," Hegseth told his German counterpart, noting Germany's commitment to European security by putting a brigade in Lithuania, and its commitment to buy fifth generation fighter jets from the U.S. In 2022, Germany agreed to buy 35 F-35 aircraft. Through a long-standing partnership, Pistorius said, the U.S. and Germany have not only strengthened their own security, but also the security of other partners. "Germany and the United States share a long-standing, deep and trusted partnership -- a partnership that strengthens not only our two nations, but also benefits the entire transatlantic alliance," he said. "Time and again, this bond has proven its value and resilience in the face of unprecedented security challenges." Pistorius reiterated Germany's continued commitment not only to the partnership with the U.S., but to NATO and European security as well. "In response to the shift in security landscape, Germany and our European allies have taken significant steps to reinforce European contributions within NATO," he said. "We have committed to substantially increasing our defense investments, reaching 5% of our GDP by 2035." The defense minister said it's understood that Germany would reach 3.5% of its GDP in core defense spending by 2029. "We are determined to assume greater responsibility for Europe's deterrence and defense, while recognizing that the contribution of the United States of America remains indispensable to our collective security," he said. The German army plans to station some 4,800 military personnel in Lithuania, along with civilian personnel. That brigade will eventually include a mechanized infantry battalion, a tank battalion and the multinational "Enhanced Forward Presence Battlegroup Lithuania." Pistorius said the brigade will reach full operational capability by 2027. "Let me assure you once more, Germany will continue to play a strong role and a reliable role in the alliance," Pistorius told Hegseth. "We are firmly committed to fair burden sharing, and to building a more capable, more reliable, more resilient Europe with NATO." Army's Tropic Lightning Division Enhances Lethality in Pacific With HIMARS, Retrains Howitzer Troops [2025-07-16] WASHINGTON -- New High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems rolled off aircraft in Hawaii this week. The systems are bound for a new mission with the 25th Infantry Division, also called "Tropic Lightning," which expects to have a total of 16 HIMARS within weeks. As part of the Army Transformation Initiative, the 25th ID will replace eight existing 105 mm and six 155 mm howitzers with 16 HIMARS launchers that will enhance the division's long-range precision fires capability and strengthen its warfighting readiness that supports the Indo-Pacific area of responsibility. In late April, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the Army to implement a transformation and acquisition reform initiative meant to advance President Donald J. Trump's peace through strength agenda. "To build a leaner, more lethal force, the Army must transform at an accelerated pace by divesting outdated, redundant and inefficient programs, as well as restructuring headquarters and acquisition systems," Hegseth said. Part of that direction was to prioritize improvements to long-range precision fires and air and missile defense. The Army calls its effort to follow through on that direction the "Army Transformation Initiative." "As part of [the ATI] we are integrating in [High Mobility Artillery Rocket] systems," said Maj. Gen. Marcus Evans, commander, 25th ID. "What this means for the division ... is that we are integrating in long-range precision fires that increases the ability to extend our operational reach." The new systems make the division more lethal, he said. "And so now soldiers, instead of working behind a cannon system and towed artillery, they will work with a weapon system that [not only] has increased survivability, but increased operational reach with the range that [HIMARS] have," Evans said. The integration of HIMARS also allows the division to better protect itself. "We can shoot and then we can rapidly displace or move to an area that affords us better protection," Evans said. While the 25th ID has used HIMARS before, it will now for the first time have the capability organic to the division artillery brigade. A lot goes into making that happen, he said. "As an example [there is] the transition of personnel," Evans said. "There is a transition training course that has to go into effect." The first HIMARS arrived for the 25th ID on July 14, 2025, and fielding will continue for about six weeks, Evans said. At the same time the 25th ID is getting HIMARS, it's also getting other transformational enhancements. "We are also transforming our intelligence, information and electronic warfare battalion into a multi-domain fires battalion that increases their capability to see and sense further than what they've previously been able to do," he said. "All of that will be organic to the division artillery and supporting the division to be able to set conditions for the joint force." Within the 25th ID Artillery Brigade, about 73 soldiers who are already trained in indirect fires volunteered to transition from the 13B military occupational specialty -- soldiers who operate howitzers -- to the 13M MOS, which is soldiers who operate rocket platforms. Already, 27 of those 73 have trained with the National Guard as part of transitioning their MOS to learn how to operate the HIMARS. "We'll continue to complete that process," said Command Sgt. Maj. Sean E. Swint, senior enlisted advisor, 25th ID Artillery. "Just like [they were with the] 105 mm howitzers that ... we had at the Battle of Luzon, today our soldiers are now equipped with HIMARS, a combat-proven platform that just elevates our warfighting readiness in the Pacific." Those soldiers, said Command Sgt. Maj. Shaun Curry, senior enlisted advisor, 25th ID, are excited about the transformation of their indirect fires mission. "I think another note ... is the excitement inside of our formation to be a part of something new for our Army," Curry said. "There's been a large drive from these [noncommissioned officers] and junior enlisted service members -- they want to stay in the Pacific, they want to stay in Hawaii. But more importantly, they want to be a part of the cutting edge of warfighting for our nation." After learning to operate HIMARS, a three-week endeavor, the soldiers will go back to their units and begin training for a validation exercise in the fall at Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center. "As part of JPMRC in the fall, it will validate the DIVARTY formation in a division with HIMARS," Evans said. The fall exercise will also validate employment of infantry squad vehicles and the increased use of drones on the battlefield, some of which allow for conducting reconnaissance up to 25 miles, he said. "If you think [about] what is occurring over the last year as part of Army transformation, we have got technology into the hands of soldiers that allows them to see, sense and strike, protect and sustain at a faster rate, increased operational reach, and then now, the Army is aligning long-range fires capability with this technology to enhance the lethality and warfighting readiness of the division," Evans said. The 25th ID Artillery has two battalions with howitzers, including the 3rd Battalion, 7th Field Artillery Regiment, and the 2nd Battalion, 11th Field Artillery Regiment. The howitzers will be consolidated into one of those battalions while the HIMARS will move into the other. "We transformed and consolidated our cannon artillery systems into a battalion -- a single cannon battalion -- [with] two batteries of 105 mm howitzers, eight each, and one battery of M777 howitzers [which are] 155 mm. The 2nd Battalion will now become a two-by-eight HIMARS battalion," said Col. Daniel J. Von Benken, commander, 25th ID Artillery, which he expects will greatly enhance the unit's ability to support the joint force. Von Benken asks himself every morning if his formation is more ready and more lethal than the day before. "In this case, it's clear that the HIMARS weapon system will make us more lethal at the end of the day," he said. "It extends the range to long-range precision fires, while still retaining the capability to win in the close fight with the mobile brigades, with the cannon artillery." Of the existing howitzers within the 25th ID Artillery, eight of the M119, 105 mm guns and six of the M777, 155 mm guns are marked for divestiture. The Army received official direction in April to move on transformation initiatives and now, less than three months later, the 25th ID is fielding new capabilities that tick the lethality box so important to the defense secretary and president. "In terms of how we've been able to move quickly, we have been enabled by Army senior leaders and then ultimately good soldiers, noncommissioned officer leadership, that have been able to attack this problem set, outline a plan and be prepared to transition to receive this equipment," Evans said. Curry said he credits Army headquarters, U.S. Army Human Resources Command, leadership within the artillery brigade and the National Guard for making it possible to get the best soldiers from across the Army on board at 25th ID to make the transition to HIMARS, and to also train existing soldiers within the division. "We've used our high performers here in the 25th and used our National Guard partners to help us train. ... They're some of our most experienced rocketeers in the Army," Curry said. "By combination of those ... four entities, we've been able to move with the education process as rapidly as we have." DOD Launching New Authentication System to Replace DS Logon [2025-07-17] WASHINGTON -- Over the next 18 months, the Defense Department will replace the legacy DS Logon system, which authenticates users onto more than 200 DOD and Veterans Affairs websites, with a more modern and flexible system called myAuth. The new authentication system offers a range of features that will simplify the login process for approximately 20 million individuals who use it, including military personnel, DOD civilians, military and civilian retirees, family member beneficiaries, contractors and vendors. The myAuth system is based on a commercial product, rebranded for the Defense Department, which provides cloud-based "identity as a service" capabilities to the department. It is hosted on a secure DOD cloud and has been authorized by the Defense Information Systems Agency, said Zachary R. Gill, the branch chief of identity credential access management and partner services within the Defense Manpower Data Center. Gill said one of the significant advantages of myAuth is that it provides secure access for individuals, such as retirees and beneficiaries, who may not have a common access card and cannot authenticate into a system using certificates contained within a CAC. However, the system also provides access options for individuals who have a CAC but may not be able to utilize it in certain circumstances. For example, he presented a scenario in which a soldier or civilian employee might be traveling on orders booked through the Defense Travel System. At the airport, problems with the airline may mean the orders need to be changed, but since the traveler does not have access to a CAC-enabled computer, this poses a challenge. "With myAuth, you would be able to provide an alternative credential, and therefore, you'd be able to access DTS from your personal cellphone and update your travel orders or make changes," Gill said. He added that a CAC will no longer be the only way to access systems. Other methods, on a case-by-case basis, will provide the user with a variety of login options. The myAuth utilizes Okta Verify, which can be installed on a personal or government-issued cellphone and will serve as a means to provide CAC-free access. The app includes biometric capabilities for both face and fingerprint recognition. Gill said the methods of access allowed are set by the system owner, but myAuth can do it all. "For instance, if I'm accessing DTS, the DTS application may say it needs a higher-level assurance for people to be able to access it," he said. Gill described a CAC as authenticator assurance level three, the "gold standard" for authentication. However, lower levels of authentication could also be used if a system's administrators permit it. Not everybody in the community who will be served by myAuth has a CAC or a smartphone, Gill said. And the things they need to access might not require the highest levels of authentication. The myAuth system will flex to meet their needs. "In our community, we serve a lot of members that may not have access to smartphones and may not have access to technology," he added. The legacy DS Logon is not the only system being replaced by myAuth, though it is the largest. Gill said other systems in use throughout DOD will also be shuttered and replaced by myAuth. "There are multiple authentication systems across the department that each department is paying for individually, which means each department is paying for sustainment costs or licensing costs," he said. "myAuth will collapse those one-off systems, providing an enterprise solution." A key performance metric for myAuth is system availability, the assurance that the system will always be available to authenticate users into critical Defense Department systems. Gill said the target for system availability with myAuth is that it be available to serve users 99.99% of the time. Although the target for decommissioning the DS Logon is 18 months, Gill said users can log in to myAuth now and set up an account using their DS Logon credentials. If users wait until after DS Logon is gone, he said the process to create a new account will require reverifying the user's identity if they do not have a CAC. Active-duty service members and DOD civilians with a CAC will likely have no problem transitioning to myAuth, he said, adding that their daily use of systems that currently offer both DS Logon and myAuth as authentication methods will be a reminder to sign up for an account. However, for the significant portion of users who do not use DOD systems daily, such as retirees, family members and contractors, Gill said getting the word out is a top priority. "We've started executing our communications plan. We've already sent out several million emails to our community to let them know," he said, adding that the Defense Manpower Data Center has partnered with the Defense Health Agency to let users who access related Tricare-related systems know about the switch. Gill said the myAuth website also provides assistance. "If you hit the myAuth page, we have a new help section," he said. "And one of the cool features from myAuth that DS Logon did not have is the help feature. So, when you go to myAuth, there's a button that [is labeled] 'help.' And when you click that, it's going to break down everything about what myAuth is, how to log in, frequently asked questions and what creating a new account looks like." As of July 14, 2025, over 740,000 DOD-affiliated personnel have created myAuth accounts. Importantly, the success rate for self-service account creation exceeds 99%, minimizing the need for users to contact the call center. Supreme Allied Commander Europe Says NATO Looking to Innovate Like Ukrainians [2025-07-18] WASHINGTON -- Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Ukrainians have continuously innovated to find the kinds of equipment they need for defensive operations. The allies of NATO might study the work done there and find out how to do it themselves, said the supreme allied commander Europe. "All of us who've studied warfare know that there's nothing like combat operations to drive innovation; when your life depends on it, you change what you're doing," said Air Force Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich during a session yesterday at the 2025 LANDEURO symposium in Wiesbaden, Germany. Until recently, with the invasion of Ukraine, Grynkewich said, he'd not seen how that need to innovate in conflict would look in a digital age that includes unmanned capabilities and additive manufacturing technologies. "One of the lessons that I've taken away [from Ukraine] is we've got to figure out what mechanisms we can build in all of our militaries that allow that same pace of innovation that the Ukrainians have done so successfully," he said, while addressing an audience of NATO military leaders and defense industry experts. "Down at the brigade level, they're able to have a relationship with an industry partner that drives innovation -- not in a matter of years, but in a matter of days." What the Ukrainians have done while defending themselves, he said, is something NATO military leaders could study, reflect on and incorporate into their own formations. The general also spoke to military leaders and the defense industry, both in the U.S. and in Europe, letting them know NATO is now in the market for innovative technologies, that industry needs to step up and that defense leaders need to make it easier for industry to meet the needs of NATO military partners. "We have a shopping list; the shopping list comes from our plans, and we can tell industry exactly what it is that we need," Grynkewich said. "For all the leaders that are out there, it's our job, I think, to hold industry accountable to deliver quickly and to hold ourselves accountable for giving industry the ability to deliver quickly through our acquisition processes." Equipping NATO with what it needs must happen fast, Grynkewich said. "We need real capabilities, and we need them delivered as soon as possible," he said. "We can't afford to wait. Future pledges are no longer enough. We need things to start showing up in the armies and in the air forces and in the navies of the alliance as soon as they can." What that will require, Grynkewich said, is that the defense industry across the alliance, in both North America and Europe, will need to ramp up. "To do this, the defense industrial base on both sides of the Atlantic [Ocean are] going to have to become fully activated, in my view," he said. "There's plenty of work to go around, and it's a false choice to think that we can only invest in one or the other. It needs to be one seamless industrial base that can deliver capability and capacity for the alliance." What NATO needs to accomplish its goals, Grynkewich said, is investment -- and now it has that. Last month, Grynkewich said, NATO allies agreed to spend 5% of their gross domestic product on contributing to their own defense, a "historic accomplishment." "This demonstrates will across the alliance and every single nation backing the military requirements we have with a commitment to getting those requirements into the field," he said. This Week in DOD: Air Force Saves Taxpayer Dollars, Sets Common Fitness Standards; Department Teams With AI Innovators; Hosts Drone Expo [2025-07-18] WASHINGTON -- This week, the Air Force found success twice: first by saving billions of dollars for American taxpayers, and second by implementing new, sex-neutral fitness standards for explosive ordnance disposal technicians. "The Air Force has saved American taxpayers $10 billion through cutting wasteful contracts," said Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell during the Weekly Sitrep video. "Through the hard work of our Air Force secretary, Dr. Troy Meink, and our [Department of Government Efficiency] team, the Air Force holds the top two spots in total savings and contract cuts governmentwide." The Air Force, along with DOGE, has been conducting efficiency reviews to accelerate the Defense Department's pivot to a wartime posture and increase readiness. Coming out of those reviews, the Air Force took actions to achieve cost savings or avoidance on various contracts. Following an effort that reviewed over 500 contracts and 50 business systems, some $10.4 billion in savings and cost avoidance were realized. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth thanked Meink for leading the effort to root out inefficiencies and find savings within the Air Force. "This is huge; this is part of what we were sent here to do -- find those dollars to put them toward the president's mission to keep the country safe," Hegseth told Meink. "I appreciate you leading the way. A lot of hard work here, and thank you to DOGE for making it happen." Savings found resulted, in part, from terminating or downsizing the "Air Force Strategic Transformation Support Contract." That effort yielded approximately $4.8 billion in cost savings or avoidance. The Air Force says the work done under that contract will instead be completed by the DOD workforce. The Air Force also identified savings by terminating information technology service contracts and by eliminating unused software licenses. The review found, for instance, that the service had been paying for 16,000 licenses with only 300 of those being used. A renegotiation of the contract matched actual usage. The result was more than $19 million in immediate savings as well as long-term cost avoidance. The Air Force this week also announced it has raised fitness standards for explosive ordnance disposal technicians. "While we continue to cut spending, we're also raising standards across the board," Parnell said. "The Air Force no longer takes into account age or sex in fitness testing for our EOD techs, which is a great thing, because excellence doesn't care who you are. It demands results, and our standards will be high and unwavering." Beginning in August, airmen in the EOD career field will take a new fitness assessment that is the same for both sexes and all ages. That assessment includes evaluations of muscular strength and endurance, anaerobic capacity and cardiorespiratory endurance. This week, the department announced new contracts with four technology companies that are leading the way in the development of artificial intelligence. "The Department of Defense has ... partnered with the top four leading AI innovators to utilize this new technology to address key challenges our armed forces face today," Parnell said. "We must equip our warfighters with 21st-century technology in order to defeat 21st-century threats." According to DOD's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, the contracts will accelerate the department's adoption of advanced AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges. "The adoption of AI is transforming the department's ability to support our warfighters and maintain strategic advantage over our adversaries," said DOD Chief Digital and AI Officer Doug Matty. "Leveraging commercially available solutions into an integrated capabilities approach will accelerate the use of advanced AI as part of our joint mission essential tasks in our warfighting domain as well as intelligence, business and enterprise information systems." In the Pentagon courtyard this week, defense leaders got a look at another kind of technology, autonomous systems, when the department put 18 American-made drone prototypes on display. "This week, the Pentagon hosted an expo showcasing cutting-edge drone technology that will bring the Department of Defense into the future of warfighting and preparedness," Parnell said. During the event, Emil Michael, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said the prototypes on display went from concept to development in an average of 18 months, a process that typically takes up to six years. The department will continue to rapidly innovate and scale up production of drones and other systems, using cost, resilience, firepower and range as driving factors -- all areas DOD wants to improve upon, Michael said. Hegseth, Philippine President Meet to Advance Deterrence in Indo-Pacific [2025-07-21] WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth hosted Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. at the Pentagon today, where the two leaders reaffirmed their commitment to the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty and discussed shared security concerns in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as recent advances in the long-standing U.S.-Philippines alliance. "Our storied alliance has never been stronger or more essential than it is today," Hegseth said. "Together, we remain committed to the mutual defense treaty. And this pact extends to armed attacks on our armed forces, aircraft or public vessels, including our Coast Guard, anywhere in the Pacific, including the South China Sea." The United States has identified the Asia-Pacific region as its priority theater, and Hegseth said the U.S. would work with the Philippines and other like-minded nations there to advance President Donald J. Trump's peace through strength agenda. "The United States is committed to achieving peace through strength, and willing to work with all nations who share this desire in the region," he said. "We do not seek confrontation, but we are and will be ready and resolute." The Philippines has been a U.S. ally for seven decades now, and its position in the South China Sea makes it an ideal partner in the region. "We're proud to support our mutual economic vitality, including your efforts to ... modernize your armed forces and collective defense," Hegseth told Marcos. The secretary noted the success of the most recent iteration of the Balikatan military exercise, which involved the Philippines, the U.S. and more than 20 other nations. "We've made rapid progress enhancing real deterrence and upholding a free and open Asia-Pacific through deepening our interoperability and expanding joint exercises, including the largest and most sophisticated exercise -- Balikatan -- ever conducted," he said. Balikatan 2025, conducted April 21-May 9, was the 40th iteration of the annual exercise and involved more than 14,000 participants. The exercise assessed readiness across multiple domains, including air, land, sea, cyber, information and space. But Hegseth noted that the U.S. and the Philippines are doing even more together. "We're also deploying new cutting-edge missiles and ... unmanned systems, and revitalizing our defense industrial bases," he said. "Together, we must forge a strong shield of real deterrence for peace, ensuring the long-term security and prosperity for our nations." The recent Balikatan exercise, Marcos said, has proven valuable, as evidenced by feedback from personnel within the Philippines military. "When I see the officers who were involved, and I speak to the men and women who were involved, they say it was extremely useful," Marcos said. "Essentially, we've achieved our purpose, because they say they have learned a lot about how to operate together -- not only with American forces -- but also with ... forces around the Asia-Pacific and down to Australia and even to Canada and all of the other countries that have been involved." Marcos stated that he is pleased with how the U.S. and the Philippines are working together to modernize the Philippine military. "I believe that our alliance ... the United States and the Philippines, [has done a great deal] in terms of preserving the peace [and] in terms of preserving the stability of the South China Sea," he said. "But I would even go as far as to say in the entire Indo-Pacific region. And we are always very, very happy to continue to strengthen that relationship." Defense Secretary Reminds Young Leaders They Will One Day Lead Nation [2025-07-23] WASHINGTON -- Nearly 100 high schoolers from the American Legion's Boys Nation program visited the Pentagon today as part of a weeklong tour of Washington. As part of their visit to the Defense Department headquarters, they met with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who discussed with them his leadership role at the DOD and the importance of their own roles as future leaders. "One of the missions I've appreciated of the American Legion for a long time is the mission of Americanism, of love of God and country, of fostering that spirit amongst the next generation," Hegseth said. "I'm looking out at [an] incredible group of young men here who have a chance to be a part of shaping that next generation." In the Pentagon's Hall of Heroes, Hegseth addressed the teens who act as "senators" representing their states within the Boys Nation program, and who for a week in the nation's capital learn about how the federal government works, to include attending lectures and forums and making visits to federal agencies, national shrines, institutions, memorials and historical sites. On Capitol Hill, Boys Nation participants also met with elected officials from their home states. The defense secretary explained the role of the Defense Department within the greater context of the federal government and spoke about where those responsible for defending the nation come from and what commitment to military service requires. "We're in the business of wearing uniforms and making sure we're as strong and ready as possible to defend the United States of America," Hegseth said. "The precursor to that job is ensuring we have young people who understand what a special country we live in. The United States of America is the exception to the rule in human history." For much of history, and still today, Hegseth said, most people never experience the freedoms that exist in the United States. "Most men and women who've grown up, grew up under autocrats or kings or dictators or command and control economies," he said. "They didn't grow up with the kind of opportunities and freedom that we have in this country, where anybody from any background, regardless of where you grow up -- it doesn't matter -- you have an opportunity in America to achieve the American dream and succeed." What America provides to citizens and what the Defense Department protects, Hegseth said, is reflected within the U.S. military itself. "We don't care what your gender is, we don't care what your race is, we don't care what state you come from, we don't care what your background is," he said. "We just want the best possible Americans serving our country." Already, Hegseth said, the participants in Boys Nation are involved in public service, something he encouraged them to continue to expand on. "You're already on that path, in whatever path you take; and I hope it involves public service," he said. "At a minimum, it should involve service to God and to your family and to the country -- in whatever path you take." Hegseth referred to his own military service to put in a plug for recruiting. "I'm a little biased in believing that military service is a pretty damn good route to go. It is about the purest manifestation of selflessness, of testing yourself and of giving back to your country," he said. "I hope you'll think about the Army, the Air Force, the Marine Corps, the Space Force, or the Navy, any one of them ... they're all fantastic." Before taking questions, the secretary thanked the young men involved in Boys Nation for their commitment to service now, and for their future commitment to service to the nation. "Thank you for what you're doing," he said. "Thank you for the support you give us, that your communities give us, that your churches give us, that your prayers give us. We feel it and we believe it. We're right there alongside you. And thank you for taking the time to come to Washington and learn about our incredible country that is still leading the way for the world. And it's going to be your job when I'm long gone to continue to lead the way for us and keep us good and free and strong." Before meeting with the secretary, Boys Nation participants toured the Pentagon and laid a wreath at the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial. While Frank Diorio, a Boys Nation representative from California, said he doesn't plan on military service, he did say he plans to serve in other ways. "My plan to serve this country, in the nation that I live in, is to advocate and to speak up for those whose voice is too small, whose voice is too little to speak up for themselves," he said. "I think kindness comes a long way, and wherever I am 10 years from now ... I intend to fully be a kind person and truly have a kind heart ... and I feel like even if that's one person a day, that's a new heart I would have reached, and hopefully a new person that themselves will be kind in turn." Diorio's father is a Marine and the teen said his father's military service has influenced his own choices in life. "For me, the military is very near and dear to my heart," Diorio said. "My dad's a United States Marine ... he is my hero. He's a combat veteran ... he served all over the world. But more than that, he showed me what it means to be a leader and to be a young man, and what it means to respect others and to be kind to others." Cooper Castle, a Boys Nation representative from Tennessee, plans to apply to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. He said his family has a history of military service, and it's something he wants to pursue for himself. "My family has been living in this country since before it was a country, and we have fought in every major war that this nation's been in," Castle said. "My heritage is something I look up to, and I would like to continue that heritage. I'm trying my best to apply to West Point. That's my dream." After military service, Cooper said he plans to continue to serve the nation. "I would love to serve, whether it be in the local or federal House or Senate of my state," he said. "I believe that it's very important for us as Americans to maintain our American values and make sure that that's carried on to our children. And whatever I can do to defend that, whether it has to be in a fight or whether it has to be political or even just on a conversational basis, I want ... to make this nation the best that it possibly can be ... because I believe this is the greatest nation in the world and I want to do everything I can to preserve it." Growth in Participation, Contributing Toward Talisman Sabre 25 Success [2025-07-23] WASHINGTON -- The Talisman Sabre 25 multinational exercise kicked off July 13, 2025, with more than 35,000 participants from 19 nations, including the United States and Australia. During a discussion yesterday with the Defense Writers Group, Army Lt. Gen. Joel B. Vowell, deputy commanding general of U.S. Army Pacific, shared his observations about the exercise, which continues until Aug. 4 and has been held every two years since 2005. Talisman Sabre has grown significantly since its first iteration, Vowell said. This year, 19 nations are participating, with three more observing. "The growth and attendance of participation is a signal of how important regional stability and security is to everybody," he said. What started 20 years ago as a U.S.-Australia bilateral effort now includes Canada, Fiji, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Tonga and the United Kingdom. Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam are observing. Hostile actions and behaviors from China, along with aggregated threats from Russia and North Korea, are driving increased participation in Talisman Sabre, Vowell said. He added that early in his tenure, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth outlined his priorities for the department, which included working closely with allies and partners to deter aggression in the Indo-Pacific. Ensuring interoperability between those nations is a key part of that effort. At Talisman Sabre, Vowell said, a live-fire demonstration of the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System by the U.S., Australia and Singapore exemplified that cooperation. The U.S. regularly trains with the HIMARS, but Australia and Singapore now own the system as well. This year marked the first time those three nations worked together in a combined battery. "We had a live-fire event at Shoalwater Bay [on the coast of Queensland, Australia], where all three countries combined into a composite HIMARS battery, received fire direction -- a call for fire ... from an observer for a deep strike target," Vowell said. "You had an integrated fires solution with multiple different platforms from three different countries firing simultaneously on a deep target. That has not happened before. [It's a] big first: Singapore, Australia, U.S., a combined battery HIMARS live fire, with precision, at distances of about 60 kilometers." Also a first, he said, is the U.S. at Talisman Sabre demonstrating the use of its Typhon Missile system, which is a midrange capability that can fire the Standard Missile-6 or the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile. "We fired SM6 live, first time west of the international date line, from the land and hit a sea target ... at 166 kilometers," Vowell said. "That was emblematic of the requirement the joint forces levied on the Army to be able to have a capability to hold maritime targets at risk from the land." The Chinese military anti-access, area denial network already has thousands of missiles pointed at Western Pacific targets, Vowell said, noting that the network has not fully accounted for distributed land forces capable of using surface fires to hit land, maritime or air targets. "That's an asymmetric advantage the Army is developing. We show that in Talisman Sabre," he said. Deterrence is another key focus of the exercise because it demonstrates the capabilities and interoperability of the United States and its allies, potentially deterring adversaries' undesirable actions. "Our collective readiness, our signaling of what we're doing forward, provides what has to be inferred and interpreted as a deterrent effect," Vowell said. "The number of participants signals the resolve that we have in the region to work together." Talisman Sabre is not the only event in which the U.S. participates; Vowell said USARPAC is involved in approximately 45 different exercises. "Throughout the year, our Army formations move from country to country to country to country to do these events, different parts of the exercises, different training objectives, but they all seek interoperability as an outcome; they all seek a deterrent mechanism," he said. Interoperability and readiness, he said, mean the United States is ready if called upon to do whatever it's asked to do. But deterrence, he said, aims to prevent conflict from happening in the first place. "[Talisman Sabre is] part of a connected series to provide a deterrent optic across the region from land forces, so we have no war -- Priority One," Vowell said. "Priority Two, if the national command authority wants us, we are postured and ready to be able to respond in crisis if we have to." Former F-15 Pilot Confirmed by Senate as Air Force Undersecretary [2025-07-24] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department today gained a new leader as Matthew Lohmeier was confirmed by the Senate to be undersecretary of the Air Force. Nominated for the position by President Donald J. Trump, Lohmeier is a 2006 graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and served in both the United States Air Force and the United States Space Force. While in uniform, he racked up over 1,200 hours in both the T-38 Talon and F-15C Eagle aircraft and also commanded a space-based missile warning system squadron. "I'd like to welcome Matt to the team. His prior service makes him an excellent fit to help us strengthen the readiness and warrior ethos of the Air and Space Forces in order to defend our nation," said Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink. "I'm impressed by his dedication and focus on service culture and grateful for his advocacy for department resources and modernization, and I know he will be a great asset to our total force airmen, guardians and military families." Working alongside Meink, Lohmeier will be responsible for the day-to-day affairs of the Air Force Department. That role includes the organizing, training and equipping of some 700,000 military and civilian personnel, as well as overseeing more than $200 billion in assets. As the Air Force's chief management officer, Lohmeier will also oversee the department's budget and will be responsible for directing strategy and policy development, risk management, acquisitions, investments and the management of human resources. While testifying during his confirmation hearing before the Senate on May 1, Lohmeier told lawmakers he'd be an advocate for a larger and better-funded Air Force. "Every single national security option the president needs is underpinned by air and space power," Lohmeier said. "The president has nominated me for this important position with the trust that I will be a driving force behind a culture of integrity in the Department of the Air Force. This includes eliminating all unnecessary distractions and enabling military members to focus on their mission." The new Air Force undersecretary also testified that, in addition to aligning with the president's peace through strength agenda, he is also aligned with the goals of the defense secretary. "Secretary Pete Hegseth has said his priorities include restoring the warrior ethos and a focus on war fighting, rebuilding the military and re-establishing deterrence," Lohmeier said. "I am firmly aligned with those priorities, and there are unique ways in which they must be accomplished in the Air and Space Forces ... all of my efforts will be nested within that framework." The United States has identified China as a pacing threat, and Lohmeier told lawmakers he has a unique perspective on that threat, which was formed through his own experiences during his time at the Air Force Academy, and then later as a commissioned officer. He speaks Mandarin, and as part of his time at the Air Force Academy, he participated in an exchange program with the People's Liberation Army Air Force Academy in China. "I lived in the dorms with ... cadets, attended their classes -- even aeronautical engineering -- did [physical training] with those cadets in the snow, [and] ate in their chow hall," Lohmeier told senators in May during his nomination hearing. After graduating from the Air Force Academy in 2006, Lohmeier spent time as a T-38 Talon instructor pilot and then moved to an assignment at Kadena Air Base, Japan, where he flew the F-15C aircraft. "That assignment served as yet another reminder to me of the threat posed by the PRC to our allies and our strategic partners, as well as to our own economic prosperity and military interests at home and abroad," Lohmeier said. "I am keenly aware of that threat, and I understand the need for ready Air and Space Forces, well-trained and equipped to meet the China challenge, to deter any aggression and, if needed, to defeat that aggression." Following his time in the F-15C, Lohmeier transferred to Air Force Space Command. Then, when the U.S. Space Force was established in 2019, he took a command position leading a combined operation of U.S. and allied partners in control of $18 billion in space-based missile warning architecture. "I speak the language of both the Air Force and the Space Force," Lohmeier said. "I am air-minded and space-minded. I understand the necessity of the United States' superiority in both of those warfighting domains." This Week in DOD: New Leaders, Nascent Leaders, NASCAR at Navy, Nation-to-Nation Partnerships [2025-07-25] WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department this week brought on new leadership in both the Air Force and Navy and simultaneously hosted a group of high schoolers who may one day become future leaders. The Air Force filled its top leadership role when Matthew Lohmeier, who served as a commissioned officer in both the Air Force and Space Force, was confirmed by the Senate to serve as undersecretary. "Congratulations again to Undersecretary Lohmeier on his confirmation, and we are looking forward to seeing all the amazing things he accomplishes for our Air Force and for our country, right here in the Pentagon," said Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson during DOD's Weekly Sitrep video. Nominated for the position by President Donald J. Trump, Lohmeier is a 2006 graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, and, while in uniform, he racked up over 1,200 hours in both the T-38 Talon and F-15C Eagle aircraft and also commanded a space-based missile warning system squadron. "I'd like to welcome Matt to the team. His prior service makes him an excellent fit to help us strengthen the readiness and warrior ethos of the Air and Space Forces in order to defend our nation," said Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink. "I'm impressed by his dedication and focus on service culture and grateful for his advocacy for department resources and modernization, and I know he will be a great asset to our total force airmen, guardians and military families." While testifying during his nomination hearing before the Senate in May, Lohmeier told lawmakers he would advocate for a larger and better-funded Air Force, was on board with the president's peace through strength agenda and supported Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's plans for reshaping the Defense Department. "Secretary Hegseth has said his priorities include restoring the warrior ethos and a focus on warfighting, rebuilding the military and re-establishing deterrence," Lohmeier said. "I am firmly aligned with those priorities, and there are unique ways in which they must be accomplished in the Air and Space Forces ... all of my efforts will be nested within that framework." There is also new leadership inbound at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. "President Trump nominated Lt. Gen. Michael J. Borgschulte to be superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy -- this is the first time someone from the U.S. Marine Corps is overseeing the Naval Academy as superintendent, congratulations," Wilson said. Borgschulte, a 1991 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, most recently served as the Marine Corps deputy commandant for manpower and reserve affairs. He is an aviator who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Outgoing superintendent of the school, Navy Vice Adm. Yvette M. Davids, will take over the role of deputy chief of naval operations for operations, plans, strategy and warfighting development at the Pentagon. While the department announced new leaders to its ranks, the defense secretary took time to meet with some young Americans who may one day be leaders themselves. "One hundred bright young men from the great organization, Boys Nation, visited us at the Pentagon to hear words of advice from the secretary," Wilson said. "Freedom endures when leadership is passed to the next generation, and the future is looking bright!" High schoolers from the American Legion's Boys Nation program visited the Pentagon as part of a weeklong tour of Washington. They attended a meeting with Hegseth, who discussed with them his leadership role at the departmentand the importance of their own roles as future leaders. "One of the missions I've appreciated of the American Legion for a long time is the mission of Americanism, of love of God and country, of fostering that spirit amongst the next generation," Hegseth said. "I'm looking out at [an] incredible group of young men here who have a chance to be a part of shaping that next generation." Before meeting with the secretary, Boys Nation participants toured the Pentagon and laid a wreath at the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial. Also this week, Secretary of the Navy John Phelan announced that for the first time, NASCAR will host races at Naval Base Coronado in Southern California. "The Navy will be opening the gates of their iconic institution for the American people in June 2026; we are so excited," Wilson said. The "NASCAR San Diego Weekend" will include three events, June 19-21, 2026. "NASCAR embodies the very best of the American spirit through speed, precision and an unyielding pursuit of excellence," Phelan said. "Hosting a race aboard Naval Air Station North Island, [Coronado], the birthplace of naval aviation, it's not just a historic first, it's a powerful tribute to the values we share: grit, teamwork and love of country ... we're proud to open our gates to the American people, honor those who serve, and inspire the next generation to step forward and serve something greater than themselves." Also this week, Hegseth strengthened U.S. partnerships with allies in the Pacific and Europe. "He held a bilateral meeting with Philippines President Marcos and a quadrilateral meeting with his counterparts in the Baltics -- the ministers of defense from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania," Wilson said. Hegseth hosted Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. at the Pentagon, July 21, 2025, and the two leaders reaffirmed their commitment to the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty. They also discussed shared security concerns in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as recent advances in the long-standing U.S.-Philippines alliance. "Our storied alliance has never been stronger or more essential than it is today," Hegseth said. "Together, we remain committed to the mutual defense treaty. And this pact extends to armed attacks on our armed forces, aircraft or public vessels, including our Coast Guard, anywhere in the Pacific, including the South China Sea." Today, as part of a quadrilateral meeting, Hegseth welcomed to the Pentagon three of his NATO counterparts from Eastern Europe. Included were Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur, Latvian Defense Minister Andris Sprūds and Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovilė �akalienė. During that meeting, Baltic state leaders pledged to meet the target of 5% of their gross domestic product for defense spending, while Hegseth reaffirmed the American commitment to NATO. "The United States remains fully committed to NATO, and together, we're achieving peace through strength in Europe by setting the conditions for negotiated lasting peace in Ukraine, establishing sustainable deterrence and increasing ally capabilities and interoperability," he said. Army Chaplains Mark 250 Years of Ministering to Soldiers [2025-07-29] WASHINGTON -- The Army recently celebrated its 250th birthday -- two and a half centuries of defending the nation since standing up, June 14, 1775. Not long after, on July 29, 1775, the Army Chaplain Corps was established to provide ministerial support to those soldiers. "The members of today's Army Chaplain Corps are sustaining and enriching a sacred legacy, which our predecessors began building even before our nation was founded in 1776," said Army Chaplain (Maj. Gen.) William Green Jr., the 26th Army chief of chaplains. "Gen. George Washington requested that chaplains be added to the Army to meet soldiers' religious and spiritual needs, and to support good morals and morale." At the request of Washington, the Continental Congress authorized one chaplain for each regular regiment of the Continental Army, Green said, adding that many of the militia regiments that served alongside those in the Continental Army also had chaplains. Today, he said, the role of the Army Chaplain Corps remains as important as it was 250 years ago. The Chaplain Corps has evolved to include more than 3,000 chaplains, nearly 3,000 religious affairs specialists, more than 500 chaplain candidates and more than 50 directors of religious education across the regular Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard. They continue to provide important religious support and advice on spiritual matters to soldiers of all ranks. "Our U.S. Army Chaplain Corps is the most multifaceted and capable chaplaincy in history, and we will remain so, to support our Army's preparations to win during multidomain and large-scale combat operations in the years ahead," Green said. "Our corps is a unique branch of the total Army that remains a necessary, critical contributor to our nation's success on the battlefields of the future, just as it was on the battlefields during our nation's war for independence." Army Chaplain (Capt.) Bryce A. Wiltermood, a Protestant chaplain assigned to the 7th Special Forces Group at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, didn't start out as an Army chaplain. Back in 2005, he enlisted in the Army as an indirect fire infantryman serving in the 75th Ranger Regiment and the 101st Airborne Division. "It was a four-year enlistment," he said. "In those four years, I spent 18 months in combat zones as a mortarman. I went to Iraq ... multiple deployments, but a total of 18 months." Following his initial enlistment, Wiltermood left the regular Army, transferred into the Army Reserve and completed a degree in psychology. But by that time, he said, he was thinking about donning the uniform again. "I knew I wanted to continue serving, but I wanted to serve, I guess, in a different aspect," he said. "If I had to pinpoint it, it was from just really good chaplains that made a big impact on me. And so, after prayer and talking with my wife about it, this was a calling that I just pursued, kind of toward the end of getting my bachelor's degree ... [I] went from there and got my master's in divinity." After completing his master's degree, Wiltermood reenlisted in 2016 as an Army chaplain. He is back on the front lines, this time without a weapon but instead ministering to the soldiers who do the fighting. "I've had a few more deployments," he said. "I went into combat zones in Iraq, Syria and Jordan. The chaplain is there to provide for this free exercise of religion for the troops, but also to advise commanders. Some key responsibilities or roles for chaplains include conducting religious support, spiritual or emotional care to the troops ... advisement is a big one, crisis response, casualty care, taking casualties, and just general resilience and readiness to ... soldiers. [Through] spiritual fitness events or counseling or helping to prevent suicide ... the chaplain is a commander's tool to help ready the force." The best chaplains seek out soldiers, Wiltermood said; they don't wait for soldiers to come to them. "I think the chaplain should be out there and provide opportunities ... whether on a patrol or gate guard, the shooting range, or PT in the morning," he said. "Wherever soldiers are, the chaplain should be there building relationships of trust." Wiltermood said he plans to stay in the Army for as long as he can and continue to serve soldiers wherever the Army sends him. "I think ... after 20 years of Army service, I kind of see ... a little bit of myself in each [soldier]," he said. "I think what everybody needs is ... a nonjudgmental, listening ear, someone who shows up, someone who's willing to listen and to just be a calming presence and a reminder of the holy." While serving soldiers, Wiltermood is helping troops stay strong and contributing toward the Army's spiritual support of soldiers, which has been happening since before the United States became a country. "One of the best things about this country is the ability for people to practice according to the dictates of their own conscience," he said. "And the chaplain, no matter what faith or nonfaith, is there to perform or provide." Army's Project Flytrap Advances Defense Secretary's Drone Dominance Agenda [2025-07-30] WASHINGTON -- The U.S and British armies worked side by side to evaluate the effectiveness of systems meant to counter the effects of unmanned aerial systems on the battlefield this week. Soldiers assigned to 2nd Cavalry Regiment, under V Corps, and troops assigned to 1st Royal Yorkshire Regiment, British army, conducted the fourth iteration of the Project Flytrap exercise at the Hohenfels Training Area in Germany and the Bemowo Piskie Training Area, near Elk, Poland. The exercise aims to better prepare participating partners to counter the threats posed by unmanned aerial systems on the battlefield. "Project Flytrap is ... a series of training events that we've designed to test and refine some new counter-unmanned aerial systems ... and tactics to respond to the evolving threat of drone warfare," said Col. Matthew B. Davis, V Corps transformation chief, who also served as exercise director. "The lessons learned from ... recent conflicts highlighted this critical capability gap, and we're looking for Project Flytrap to directly address those through the training, which we conducted ... we're working to enhance our collective ability to deter potential adversaries and maintain a decisive edge." The Flytrap exercise involved U.S. military personnel, partner nation military and industry representatives, Davis said. During this exercise, personnel from participating militaries collaborated with industry experts in counter-UAS technology development to more quickly refine those technologies. "What we're doing here -- think of the convergence of industry, of Army agencies with counter-UAS things that have been around and some that are emerging, taking it out of the labs, putting it in the field with combat soldiers," said Col. Donald R. Neal, commander, 2nd Cavalry Regiment. "Think of a soldier operating a piece of equipment with the person from industry next to them. The soldier gives feedback on what would make it work smoother, they make that change, they test it out, and they iterate on it." That's exactly the kind of drone-related work Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pushed for earlier this month in his July 10 memorandum "Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance." Under that directive, the secretary intends to strengthen the U.S. drone manufacturing base, provide warfighters with the best tools and ensure they are trained to use them effectively. "One thing that I know [the secretary] is trying to get after from the memo that's been pushed down is he wants to see the use of drones incorporated in the training," Neal said. "That's exactly what Project Flytrap is doing. You've got troops that are fighting each other, force-on-force, that are incorporating small UAS and counter-UAS, all in the same battle drills that we've done for decades. So, I think we're nested, we're right within that intent on figuring this out and training with it now, so the first time we're encountering it isn't on the battlefield." Neal also said as a combat brigade, the role for 2nd Cavalry Regiment soldiers isn't just to evaluate equipment, but to take the new counter-UAS technology and learn how to incorporate it into what they already know how to do -- and report that back to the Army so it can be used elsewhere. "What we're tasked with doing is taking this technology that's counter-UAS focused, and the answer that we're trying to provide for the Army is, how do we take systems that have largely revolved around static defense, and put it in an offensive vehicle-centric organization that does combat tasks," he said. As part of this last iteration, eight different systems were evaluated by military participants from four different industry providers. "What we're trying to get after is we're taking the latest cutting-edge versions of existing technologies like radar, RF detect and jam, optical sensors and audio sensors, and then merging those into a system that our soldiers on the ground can employ in a tactical setting in order to enable them to do their jobs, despite having a growing threat in the air," said Command Sgt. Maj. Eric S. Bol, command sergeant major, 3rd Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Regiment. One takeaway from the Flytrap exercise, Neal said, involves managing the type and amount of information required to operate counter-UAS effectively. "Preliminarily, I think what we are finding ... once you start talking O-5 level command and above, there probably is a need for folks that understand how to manage data and how to how to manipulate software," he said. "It is going to require skill sets that maybe we don't have throughout our force in a very formal way. We owe that to the Army. We don't know what that looks like yet, but that's part of what we're finding out in this project, this exercise and feeding it back up." No matter what the Army does in the way of incorporating counter-UAS technology into ground combat units, one thing that won't change is combat basics. "The fundamentals of maneuver warfare still matter," said Lt. Col. Jeremy S. Medaris, commander, 3rd Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Regiment. "Things like dispersion, protection, fortification, selecting the correct routes and planning to an objective -- things like that. ... Maybe some components are changing, but those fundamental pieces are still there, and that is just as applicable to the counter-UAS fight as well." This Week in DOD: PCS Move Hotline Goes Live, Fort Hood Returns, AUKUS Deep Dive [2025-08-01] WASHINGTON -- In May, the Defense Department acknowledged challenges with how service members ship their household goods from one duty location to another during a permanent change of station move and promised new changes would ease the burden. Now, the department has delivered on another of those promises. "Starting today, the Department of Defense will have a fully operational hotline to assist service members with moving trouble during this PCS season," said Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson during the Weekly Sitrep video. "This effort was only made possible due to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's quick action, giving the joint task force the authority and resources to consolidate all the experts and military service representatives in one place to ease the burden that comes with a military move." Service members experiencing problems with their PCS moves should call 833-MIL-MOVE (833-645-6683) to get assistance. The hotline is the result of just one of the efforts of the Permanent Change of Station Joint Task Force, which stood up in May at the direction of Hegseth, to improve how the department moves service members from one assignment to the next. In a memorandum, released May 20, the defense secretary directed a variety of changes to make PCS moves easier for service members. "I take my responsibilities to our service members, civilians and their families seriously," Hegseth said at the time. "We will ensure we remain the most lethal fighting force in the world by ensuring that our warriors and their families receive the best PCS move available. The department owes them nothing less, and getting this right is part of restoring their trust in our military." Also, this week, one of the largest U.S. military installations got a new name. "The department is proud to share that this week, Fort Hood, named after World War I hero Col. Robert Benjamin Hood, was unveiled," Wilson said. "The ceremony took place at Fort Hood in Texas, and those in attendance paid respect to Hood's dedication to service and his extraordinary courage during his time in the Army." During the ceremony held July 28, 2025, III Armored Corps and Fort Hood Commanding General Army Lt. Gen. Kevin D. Admiral explained Hood's heroics. "Colonel Hood represents the ideal citizen soldier, a man who rose to the occasion when his nation needed him most and continued to give back long after the fighting had ceased," Admiral said. "In recognition of his service, Colonel Hood's name will live on as generations of soldiers who served and will serve here learn about his career and the impact he had on our Army." Fort Hood was established in 1942 to train soldiers on tank operations during World War II. Today, at more than 300 square miles, it is one of the Army's and the Defense Department's largest installations. Up north, changes came to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, as well. "Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll ordered West Point to restore the school's crest on the Bibles at the West Point Cadet Chapel," Wilson said. "He also directed the chair of the West Point board of visitors to conduct a full review of the academy's hiring practices and stopped outside groups from selecting academy employees or instructors." Driscoll announced July 28, 2025, that 1,800 new Bibles had been ordered for the academy's cadet chapel and they will bear the academy crest. Two days later, he directed changes related to how hiring is conducted at the school. Finally, this week, the department provided new insights into the ongoing review of the trilateral security partnership between the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. Known as AUKUS, the agreement enhances defense capabilities and promotes stability in the Indo-Pacific region. "DOD policy highlighted Secretary Hegseth's departmentwide review of the AUKUS initiative," Wilson said. "The department's assessment of this defense pact between the United States, United Kingdom and Australia will ensure it aligns with President Donald J. Trump's America First approach. The review is anticipated to be complete this fall." The office of the undersecretary of defense for policy revealed new details regarding the AUKUS review within a social media post. "As part of this process, the department looks forward to continuing regular engagements on this important matter with other parts of the U.S. government, the U.S. Congress, our allies Australia and the United Kingdom, and other key stakeholders," the department policy office wrote July 29, 2025. "The department anticipates completing the review in the fall. Its purpose will be to provide the president and his senior leadership team with a fact-based, rigorous assessment of the initiative." DOD's 'Beyond the Battlefield' Gives Students, Educators Inside Look at Defense Department [2025-08-06] WASHINGTON -- More than a dozen university students toured the Pentagon yesterday and got a rare chance to speak with Defense Department insiders about how DOD operates, all with an eye toward inspiring young Americans to pursue careers in public service. Their visit was part of the department's "Beyond the Battlefield" academic outreach initiative. "Beyond the Battlefield is an important element in the department's outreach with America's future leaders, showcasing the military's many roles in defending the nation while providing a deeper perspective into the defense policymaking process," said Jonathan Evenson, DOD community engagement specialist. About 16 students and staff with the Harold W. Rosenthal Fellowship in International Relations and the Future Leaders in Public Service Internship Program met for discussions on the department's mission, priorities and initiatives, and to talk with current DOD employees about foreign affairs and defense policy careers. "We hope to provide them with the opportunity to learn more about public service careers, [and] pathways to inform whether or not they'd like to go into federal or any type of public service in the future," said Stephanie Sonkin, program manager at the Partnership for Public Service. "And we do have a lot of interest within the Rosenthal Fellowship cohort, specifically on international affairs and national security." This summer, most of the program participants are interning with federal agencies or Congress, Sonkin said. "The hope is just to give them greater exposure to the [Washington,] D.C., area," Sonkin said. "A lot of them do not live in the [area], so this is just a great opportunity, as part of visiting Washington, D.C., as a whole." Program participant Mael-Sanh Perrier is interning at the Pentagon this summer within the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy, where he is assigned to the Office of Global Partnerships' strategy and resources team. "We focus on security cooperation efforts between the DOD and other militaries around the globe," Perrier said. "They're the policy side of security cooperation, [and] work closely with the Defense Security Cooperation Agency." His role, he said, is to support that team in their efforts. "I help develop guidance documents, which is actually what I'm doing right now, for the authorities the DOD uses to conduct some of those security cooperation activities," Perrier said. A native New Yorker, Perrier attends Syracuse University and is pursuing a master's degree in public administration and international relations. He said his work at the Pentagon aligns with what he's learning in school. "It bridges the gap between how government is administered, [and] ultimately the link between the actual operations that happen and the legislation that gets passed in Congress," he said. "It aligns very well." Working at the Pentagon over the summer, Perrier said, turned out to be different from what he thought it'd be. "I'd say working at DOD has actually been, honestly, a much better experience than I expected," he said. "I thought that [the] Pentagon would be more strict, more stuffy, in some ways. I found it to be a very fun place to work, even as a younger guy. The respect people have for each other and the respect they show you, even as an intern, especially in this office, has been very impressive." Perrier was unsure whether he'd enjoy working in policy before he started the internship, but it turned out to be something he might do in the future. "I had low expectations of a pure policy role. ... I felt like OSD policy and other policy positions were kind of a black box; you couldn't see into it much from the outside," he said. "To an extent, this [work] has reinforced my idea that I do love policy, and I do like this side of things ... actually working in the position you ... see all the processes that back it up, and all the research, all the time that is spent working in a very relational way with different offices, different teams. I found that to be much more engaging than I thought it would be." DPAA Provides Updates to Families of Missing in Action Personnel During Annual Briefing [2025-08-07] WASHINGTON -- More than 400 family members of service members who never returned home from the Korean War or who were lost during the Cold War met today with representatives from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency in Arlington, Virginia, during the agency's annual update to families of missing personnel. Nearly 7,500 Americans are still unaccounted for from the Korean War, with about 125 unaccounted for from missions conducted during the Cold War. Many of those families are looking for answers from the department, and the annual event allows that to happen. "Part of this is obviously ... us being able to connect and communicate with them, to provide them updates on their cases," said Kelly McKeague, director of the DPAA, during a press briefing yesterday. For many families, it's likely that the remains of their missing loved ones who served during the Korean War are in North Korea. And for now, North Korea is not cooperating with the United States to repatriate remains in the same way as other nations. "I think what they will come away with is consolation from the standpoint of being amongst their peers," McKeague said. "Many of them come back, despite knowing that things haven't changed, that North Korea isn't amenable to access; they come away knowing that they're not alone. And so, this is a family reunion for many of them, who come back repeatedly, year after year, simply to be amongst themselves and to reestablish friendships." As of 1973, more than 8,000 service members were missing from the Korean War. Since then, 753 have been accounted for, leaving nearly 7,500 still missing. Around the world, the DPAA works with dozens of nations to locate the remains of unaccounted-for service members and to bring them home, McKeague said. "The 46 countries we work in all cooperate, some being former enemies -- Japan, Germany, Vietnam -- and everybody looks at it as cooperation that is part of responsibility," he said. "It's part of strengthening people-to-people ties. But the North Koreans are the only country that doesn't see it as other countries do." Even while tensions exist between the U.S. and China, the Chinese cooperate with the United States on the DPAA mission, McKeague said. "We have a team in China that's been operating there for four weeks; they are, ironically, looking at three Korean War air losses," he added. "Despite the trade differences, the geopolitical differences between China and [the] United States, China looks at this as an opportunity to cooperate [and] further the bilateral relationship, as well as develop people-to-people ties." McKeague said the United States will continue to try to establish a dialogue with North Korea. "The Trump administration is very open to establishing communications with North Korea," he said. "It's something that could serve to build goodwill. It could serve to bring North Korea out of the dark and into the light of the world, to see that they are cooperating on a humanitarian mission." New Tool This year, the DPAA has added a new tool to its kit to help better identify the remains of service members. The single-nucleotide polymorphism assay, also called the SNP assay, has been in use since January 2024. The tool is used to evaluate DNA to determine ancestry. "In 2017, we started a long process of developing our own single-nucleotide polymorphism assay, or SNP assay," said Tim McMahon, director of Defense Department DNA Operations for the Armed Forces Medical Examiner Service. "It took us about nine years to develop the software and the method to be able to go after about 95,000 SNPs that talk about identity and ancestry. So, we specifically target those." The new process enables DPAA to significantly increase the likelihood of matching remains to a pool of DNA samples from family members, thereby aiding in individual identification. For many of the families with loved ones who are still missing from the Korean War, McKeague said, there is frustration. However, the DPAA is still working to provide them with the answers they need. "Here we are still decades later, searching, finding, recovering, identifying, and, more importantly, returning families answers that they've long sought," McKeague said. "It may not be as rosy of an outlook given the fact that 5,300 families are still waiting for us to restore access [and] cooperation with North Korea, it's still very hopeful." The DPAA laboratory, he said, recently identified the remains of the 750th Korean War service member since we started working on losses from that conflict. McKeague said, "750 families now have answers. That's something that we're very proud of. Secretary Pete Hegseth ... announced the 100th U.S. service member to be identified from the 55 boxes that North Korea turned over in 2018. That's historic." In March, Army 1st Lt. William H. Hott, a native of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, was identified by DPAA. He was reported missing in action Dec. 2, 1950, in the vicinity of Chosin Reservoir, North Korea and witnesses later reported that he was killed during a withdrawal on Dec. 1. When DPAA announced the identification of his remains, the secretary thanked the agency for the work they do in bringing missing service members home to their families. "Your unwavering dedication and passion to provide the fullest possible accounting for our missing personnel is more than a mission; it is our nation's sacred duty," Hegseth said, adding that every service member, DOD civilian and contractor who is missing from past wars deserves to be brought home and never forgotten. This Week in DOD: 200 Days of Impact, Fort Bliss Assumes New Role in Homeland Defense, SkillBridge Lets Service Members Keep Defending Nation [2025-08-08] WASHINGTON -- This week marks 200 days since President Donald J. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth assumed their roles as the top two leaders of the U.S. military. "In 200 days, the department has made an unprecedented impact not only for our warfighters, but in strengthening the United States military to be the most lethal fighting force in the world," said Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson during the department's Weekly Sitrep video. "Under the steadfast leadership of President Trump and Secretary Hegseth, recruitment is soaring, the department is prioritizing American drone dominance, we're refocused on standards and the United States military remains unmatched in its capabilities," Wilson said. Fort Bliss, home to more than 90,000 soldiers and family members across over 1,700 square miles in El Paso, Texas, will soon assume a new role in defending the homeland. "Secretary Hegseth approved [Department of Homeland Security] access and use of the land at Fort Bliss, Texas -- where DOD is focused on developing the detention center at Fort Bliss," Wilson said. "Once completed, this will be the largest federal detention center in history for this critical mission, the deportation of illegal aliens." Construction of the detention facility began in July. It is expected to have an initial capacity of 1,000 detainees, and Wilson stated that it would be expanded to accommodate about 5,000 at a later date. In Washington, the Reconciliation Monument, first erected in Arlington National Cemetery in 1917 and later removed in December 2023, will now return to its original location. "Secretary Hegseth ... announced that Moses Ezekiel's beautiful and historic sculpture ... will be rightfully returned to Arlington National Cemetery near his burial site," Wilson said. "Like the secretary said, 'We don't believe in erasing American history -- we honor it.'" Ezekiel, who died in 1921, was buried in Arlington National Cemetery near the monument he created. Earlier this week, Wilson referred to him as "a true artist and an incredible person." The Army expects to reinstall the sculpture in 2027 after it has undergone complete refurbishment. Service members who plan to leave the military but still feel compelled to serve their country have a new option for that service at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. "For service members transitioning out of the military, your mission to protect the homeland can continue," Wilson said. "We'd like to introduce you to DOD SkillBridge, which is a program for service members to continue serving through civilian work at ICE and CBP. Your skills are needed to carry out the president's vision to protect the border and protect Americans here at home." Under recent guidance from the secretary, military departments will encourage service members considering participation in the SkillBridge program to seek internships, apprenticeships or on-the-job training with either ICE or CBP. As part of SkillBridge, service members can spend up to 180 days before their separation from service to learn job skills in nearly 10,000 areas, helping them prepare for civilian employment. In many cases, the same business or agency may offer the service member a job upon completion of their participation in the program. By encouraging participation in SkillBridge with ICE and CBP, the Defense Department provides those agencies with access to its most valuable asset: its people. It also provides DHS with the opportunity to recruit the best and brightest personnel, who may one day, after completing their SkillBridge training and separating from the military, find employment within DHS and be available to support the southern border mission. Wilson said service members interested in SkillBridge can visit the program's website at skillbridge.osd.mil. This week, the nation and the Defense Department commemorated Purple Heart Day. "Here at the department, we honor the courage and sacrifice of all Purple Heart recipients," Wilson said. "The Purple Heart is the nation's oldest military award, and we reflect on the valor of the men and women who have given so much for our freedom. We continue to honor their legacy and extend our gratitude for their unwavering service." The Purple Heart is awarded to service members who were wounded or killed by an instrument of war in the hands of an enemy or while prisoners of war. More than 1.8 million service members have been recognized with a Purple Heart. "We are grateful for their selfless service," Hegseth said of those recipients. "We will never forget their heroism, and we strive to possess their courage." Finally, earlier this week, five soldiers were shot during an attack at Fort Stewart, Georgia. Further harm was prevented when other nearby soldiers acted selflessly to bring the attack to an end. "The department and Secretary Hegseth would like to extend our prayers to the five service members who were wounded in a cowardly shooting at Fort Stewart," Wilson said. "We are relieved that all five victims of the attack are in stable condition. We would also like to give our profound gratitude to the soldiers who charged into danger and subdued the shooter, potentially saving countless lives." Military Youth Honored in Nation's Capital [2025-08-08] WASHINGTON -- Last night in the nation's capital, five young Americans from across the Defense Department came together for the chance to be named the 2025 National Military Youth of the Year, and one walked away with the honor and the opportunity to be named the Boys & Girls Clubs of America National Youth of the Year. Stephen B. Simmons, deputy assistant secretary of defense for military community and family policy, explained the significance of the honor for those five DOD youth. "These extraordinary young people from our military communities that you see here before you ... represent the best of us, and ultimately they represent the sum of our endeavors -- the future," Simmons said. "At the Department of Defense, our No. 1 priority is to ensure America's military men and women are ready and able to fulfill our country's national security missions. The Boys & Girls Clubs of America helps us fulfill that charge by supporting the more than 1.6 million children who are members of our military family." Simmons said that the partnership between DOD and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America is more than 30 years old, and the relationship has proven fruitful in providing support to military youth. "Clubs and youth centers were there for military kids and teens as their parents returned from [Operation] Desert Storm, and they have been by their side for the challenging years of the long global war on terror," Simmons said. "Today, tens of thousands of military-connected youth benefit from the [programs] offered through youth centers in military communities." When military youth are challenged by permanent change of station moves and long deployments, the Boys & Girls Clubs of America provide a sense of stability and belonging, Simmons said. The clubs also mirror some of what the military itself deems to be important. "This program promotes many of the same values and areas of excellence embodied by those who serve in uniform, including strong character, mental and physical health, a lifelong commitment to service, and above all, that principle we hold so dear within the DOD: leadership," Simmons said. "You can't train leadership, but you learn it over time through the mentors and people around you. These young men and women sitting before you ... are the future leaders of this nation." Each year, five finalists are named to represent youth centers in five regions -- the Northeast, Southeast, Pacific, Midwest and Southwest United States. This year's nominees were Avaley M. out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Avonlea S., of U.S. Army Garrison Italy; Jacob R., of Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Georgia; Jaylyn K., of Naval Base Guam; and Summer H., of Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado. At the conclusion of the evening, Jacob R. was named recipient of the honor. He thanked his mother and grandmother, as well as mentors from the Kings Bay Youth Center. "I really just want to emphasize that my club has been such a great stepping stone to this," he said. "And I just want to thank [Boys & Girls Clubs of America] as well for giving me the opportunity to harness my skills and to use my passion of theater to be an advocate for change and just really invest in me and show me that what I want to do matters." Jacob R. plans to attend New York University and is interested in acting and theater. Each of the five nominees for National Military Youth of the Year received over $22,000 in scholarships, and as the winner, Jacob R. received an additional $20,000 scholarship. In September, he will compete for National Youth of the Year. Earlier this week, all five nominees for National Military Youth of the Year visited the Pentagon and met with representatives of their associated military services. National Guard Task Force Mobilizes to Restore Safety in Nation's Capital [2025-08-11] WASHINGTON -- President Donald J. Trump declared a crime emergency in the nation's capital today and vowed to make its streets safe again for both residents and visitors. "Washington, D.C., should be one of the safest, cleanest and most beautiful cities anywhere in the world, and we're going to make it that," Trump said during a press conference at the White House. "We're going to make it safe; we're going to make it smart; we're going to make it beautiful." The National Guard will play a role in that effort, said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after the president issued a memorandum to mobilize the D.C. National Guard. Hegseth said the mobilization will be operationalized by Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, and guard members will be deployed in the streets of Washington in the coming week. Approximately 800 soldiers were activated today as part of the D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force, with about 100-200 of them supporting law enforcement. Duties for those personnel include administrative and logistical roles, as well as providing a physical presence in support of law enforcement. Hegseth also stated that, beyond the D.C. National Guard, other guard units are ready to participate. "There are other units we are prepared to bring in; other National Guard units, other specialized units," Hegseth said. "They will be strong, they will be tough, and they will stand with their law enforcement partners." In recent months, the secretary said the National Guard has played similar roles, both at the border, where troops have worked alongside Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection to put a stop to illegal border crossings, and in Los Angeles, where they helped protect ICE and CBP agents from criminal attacks. Now, the D.C. National Guard will contribute by helping to stop violence on city streets in the nation's capital. "We will work alongside all D.C. police and federal law enforcement to ensure this city is safe [and] this city is beautiful," Hegseth said, adding, "As I always say about President Trump to the troops, 'He has their back.' And my message to the National Guard and federal law enforcement in Washington is, 'We have your back as well. Be tough. Be strong. We're right behind you.'" According to a White House fact sheet, two embassy staffers were murdered in Washington this May. A congressional intern was shot and killed near the White House in June, and on Aug. 3, 2025, a federal employee was beaten by a mob. A White House executive order reports that the 2024 murder rate in the District of Columbia was 27.54 per 100,000 residents, and the vehicle theft rate was at 842.4 thefts per 100,000 residents. "It's becoming a situation of complete and total lawlessness in Washington," the president said. "Caravans of ... youth rampage through city streets at all times of the day. They're on ATVs, motorbikes -- they travel pretty well. Entire neighborhoods are now under emergency curfews." Trump said that it will soon change. "We have people that love this country, and they love this ... really beautiful capital," he said. "I flew over it the other day and I said, 'What a beautiful place,' but if there's crime all over the streets when you get there, it doesn't look so beautiful ... We're going to fix [the] crime." The president also said that he aims to literally clean up the nation's capital in the way of repairs, specifically noting trash, graffiti and broken marble panels. "We're going to restore the city back to the gleaming capital that everybody wants it to be," Trump said. "It's going to be something very special." National Guard Mobilizes 800 Troops in D.C. to Support Federal, Local Law Enforcement [2025-08-14] WASHINGTON -- On Aug. 11, President Donald J. Trump declared a crime emergency in the nation's capital and vowed to make streets there safe again. The National Guard is now playing a big part in that effort, assisting both federal and local law enforcement personnel in enforcing existing laws and taking violent criminals off the streets. "I think there's no more important job for this department than to stand alongside federal law enforcement partners and local police in securing our nation's capital," said Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson during a meeting today with the Pentagon press corps. "As the White House and the president have said, it is disgraceful that we have allowed D.C. to become so incredibly dangerous." About 800 National Guard troops, both Army and Air National Guard, have been called up and activated on Title 32 status to participate in the Safe and Beautiful Task Force. For now, about 200 guardsmen at a time are on the streets providing support to federal law enforcement and the Metropolitan Police Department. "They will remain there until law and order has been restored in the district, as determined by the president -- standing as the gatekeepers of our great nation's capital," Wilson said. While guardsmen are not currently armed as part of their participation, Wilson said their role will be similar to what it was in Los Angeles. "The National Guardsmen on this mission will assist the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and federal law enforcement partners with monument security, community safety patrols, protecting federal facilities and offices, traffic control posts, and area beautification," Wilson said. Military personnel, Wilson said, are following the D.C. National Guard rules for the use of force. "They're all trained in de-escalation techniques, and of course, always retain the inherent right to self-defense," she said. "They will not be arresting people, but they may temporarily limit the movement of an individual who has entered a restricted or secured area without permission. So, this would be very similar to the LA mission, where we could temporarily [detain] someone and then turn them over to the proper law enforcement authorities." But even if guardsmen are not arresting offenders on the streets of the nation's capital, their mere presence has value, Wilson said. "I think another ... important point of having National Guardsmen all around D.C. is that it is also a deterrent," she said. "And it makes people feel safe, and it lets everyone know that D.C. is going to be a city in which we can be proud of, and we are standing alongside our federal partners to execute on the president's directive." According to a White House fact sheet, two embassy staffers were murdered in Washington this May. A congressional intern was shot and killed near the White House in June, and on Aug. 3, 2025, a federal employee was beaten by a mob. A White House executive order also reports that the 2024 murder rate in the District of Columbia was 27.54 per 100,000 residents, and the vehicle theft rate was at 842.4 thefts per 100,000 residents. Wilson said the department believes it will provide valuable support to both federal and local law enforcement as they follow the president's directive to make the streets of the nation's capital safe again. "We really think we're going to be a force multiplier ... we're going to allow law enforcement to better conduct the necessary operations that they need to conduct around the capital," she said. "And we're going to be there ... supporting them." This Week in DOD: More Women Enlisting; Drones Dominate in Hoosier State; Guard Supports Law Enforcement in D.C. [2025-08-15] WASHINGTON -- Earlier this year the Defense Department reported that every military service had met recruitment goals early. But what's also notable is that more women are joining the military now than in the past. "Citizens all across the country are enlisting to fight for this nation," said Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson during the department's Weekly Sitrep video. "We are excited to report the surging number of active-duty enlisted females across the service branches. Leadership matters, and women are excited to serve under the strong leadership of [Defense] Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Donald J. Trump." So far in fiscal year 2025, more than 115,000 recruits have shipped to basic training, with nearly 24,000 of those being female recruits. At the same time last year, about 16,700 women had opted to enlist. In Indiana, the DOD's Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering hosted a "technology readiness experimentation" event, also known as T-REX, at Camp Atterbury, to advance the development of drone technology for the department. "T-REX provides an operational environment that allows drones to be tested under war-like conditions," Wilson said. "The department is committed to preparing our warfighters with American-made, cutting-edge and lethal drone technology. T-REX is another stop on our way to complete American drone dominance." At the event, the department evaluated systems like Red Dragon, a one-way attack unmanned aerial system designed for high-threat, GPS-denied and communications-degraded environments; the Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System, which is another one-way attack UAS with an open architecture; and the WASP/HIVE system that includes 12 low-cost UAS paired with a "HIVE" launcher box. The total system cost is a fraction of traditional alternatives. Accelerating the development of autonomous systems is part of the department's larger plan to make historic investments in capabilities that will keep the homeland, Indo-Pacific and other global regions of interest safe and secure. The T-REX effort supports Hegseth's key priorities to rebuild the military and reestablish deterrence by identifying, developing and transitioning technology that improves lethality, warfighting and readiness. "You're looking at a hundred different systems at T-REX -- complex, simple, fast, high-payload, and can avoid detection," said Emil Michael, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. "This is some of the most innovative tech we've ever built at the DOD, and all of these systems have been developed in the last one to two years." This week, the president declared a crime emergency in the nation's capital and vowed to make streets there safe again. The District of Columbia National Guard is now playing a big part in that effort, assisting both federal and local law enforcement personnel in enforcing existing laws and taking violent criminals off the streets. "Washington, D.C., should be the gold standard of law and order and cleanliness, but for decades under poor leadership it has become a national shame," Wilson said. "The murder rate in D.C. is up -- people are dying, children are dying. Residents don't feel safe in the capital. So, President Trump is taking action to make D.C. safe again, and the Department of Defense stands ready for any additional orders." About 800 National Guard troops, both Army and Air National Guard, have been called up and activated on Title 32 orders to join the Safe and Beautiful Task Force. For now, about 200 guardsmen at a time are on the streets providing support to federal law enforcement and the Metropolitan Police Department. On the streets of Washington, the National Guardsmen assist federal and local law enforcement partners with monument security, community safety patrols, protecting federal facilities and offices, traffic control posts, and area beautification. Finally, this week, one of the Marine Corps' most dogged corporals got his due. "The secretary of the Navy awarded Cpl. Chesty the XVI, of the United States Marine Corps, with a medal for exemplary conduct," Wilson said. "Cpl. Chesty, the unofficial bulldog mascot of the Marine Corps, is known for his grit and warrior spirit. He is always inspection ready and serves as a true inspiration to all our Marines. Congratulations Cpl. Chesty!" Chesty XVI is an English bulldog and serves as the official mascot of the Marine Corps. He is named after revered Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Lewis Burwell "Chesty" Puller and lives at the Marine Corps' Washington Barracks. Trump, Zelenskyy, World Leaders Meet at White House to Negotiate Peace Deal [2025-08-18] WASHINGTON -- At the White House today, President Donald J. Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and a host of European leaders to discuss how the ongoing violent war between Russia and Ukraine might be resolved. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also attended those meetings. Two separate meetings were held at the White House: first, between Trump and Zelenskyy, and then a second meeting with Trump, Zelenskyy, NATO and European leaders, and the presidents of five NATO nations. Trump said if talks go well, a trilateral discussion between the U.S., Ukraine and Russia is a possibility. "I think if everything works out well today, we'll have a trilat and I think there will be a reasonable chance of ending the war when we do that," Trump said. "And we want to get it ended. And we want it to end [well] for everybody ... the people of Ukraine have suffered incredibly." Today's talks come on the heels of the Aug. 15 meeting in Alaska between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. "The Alaska summit reinforced my belief that while difficult, peace is within reach, and I believe that is a very significant step. President Putin agreed that Russia would accept security guarantees for Ukraine, and this is one of the key points that we need to consider, and we're going to be considering that at the table," Trump said. The president said he is optimistic that between the U.S. and European partners, there would be an agreement to deter future aggression against Ukraine. "I actually think there won't be [future aggression against Ukraine]," he said. "But we're going to find out, and I think that the European nations are going to take a lot of the burden. We're going to help them, and we're going to make it very secure." Trump also said that during the meetings, discussion topics would need to include what each nation is willing to give up to achieve peace. "We ... need to discuss the possible exchanges of territory, taking into consideration the current line of contact -- that means the war zone ... to look at them and negotiating positions," Trump said. A top priority for the president is that the peace agreement be durable. "We're going to make sure that if there's peace, the peace is going to stay long term," Trump said. "This is very long term. We're not talking about a two-year peace, and then we end up in this mess again. We're going to make sure that everything's good. We'll work with Russia. We're going to work with Ukraine. We're going to make sure it works. And I think if we can get to peace, it's going to work. I have no doubt about it." European leaders, Trump said, are interested in building a security protection deal for Ukraine, which the United States would assist with. "When it comes to security, there's going to be a lot of help ... they are the first line of defense, because they're there -- they're Europe," Trump said. "But we're going to help them out also. We'll be involved." In addition to the one-on-one discussion between Trump and Zelenskyy, the larger discussion included NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, European Commission President Ursula VonDerLeyen, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and French President Emmanuel Macron. The president said he'd spoken with Putin prior to today's meetings and said he would speak to him again following the meetings. "We're going to have a phone call right after these meetings today, and we may or may not have a trilat," Trump said. "If we don't have a trilat, then the fighting continues. And if we do, we have a good chance, I think if we have a trilat, there's a good chance of maybe ending [the war]." Trump said he cannot predict when the war between Russia and Ukraine will end. However, he added, there is an appetite on both sides for it to come to an end. "When it ends, I can't tell you," Trump said. "But the war is going to end. And this gentleman [Zelenskyy] wants it to end, and Vladimir Putin wants it to end. I think the whole world is tired of it, and we're going to get it ended." How the war ends and what is agreed upon will rest on the shoulders of Ukrainians and Russians, Trump said. "I have a feeling you [Zelenskyy] and President Putin are going to work something out," Trump said. "Ultimately, this is a decision that can only be made by President Zelenskyy and by the people of Ukraine working also together and in agreement with President Putin." The president said if the conditions are right and it's possible to set up a meeting between the two leaders -- which, he said, he is willing to attend -- that "very good things are going to come of it." This Week in DOD: Raid Takes Out Senior ISIS Member; 2 Weeks Into Safer D.C.; Interagency Fitness Challenge [2025-08-22] WASHINGTON -- This week, American military forces scored another win in the fight against ISIS. In northern Syria, U.S. Central Command forces conducted a successful raid that killed a senior ISIS member who planned attacks in Syria as well as Iraq and who was a key organization financier. "He had relationships throughout the ISIS network in the region, posing a direct threat to the U.S. and coalition forces and the new Syrian government," said Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson during the Weekly Sitrep video. "We will continue to pursue ISIS terrorists with unwavering determination throughout the region to ensure our lasting defeat of ISIS and the protection of the U.S. homeland." The United States and Centcom remain committed to the mission of defeating ISIS, said Navy Adm. Brad Cooper, Centcom commander. Last week, President Donald J. Trump declared a crime emergency in the nation's capital and vowed to make its streets safe again for both residents and visitors. Since that time, National Guard personnel have worked alongside federal and local law enforcement to help reduce crime. "Under President Trump and [Defense] Secretary Pete Hegseth's leadership, the DOD is dedicated to addressing the lawlessness and crime in our nation's capital," Wilson said. "We will restore the beauty, honor and greatness of Washington, D.C." On Aug. 20, Vice President JD Vance and the defense secretary visited some of those National Guard troops at Union Station to thank them for their work as part of the D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force, Joint Task Force District of Columbia. "[These guardsmen are] here because they're patriots who serve the country and believe we deserve a beautiful, safe capital," Hegseth said. "When I talk to all these people, they're proud of this mission [and] they're proud to be a part of making sure the rule of law is established. ... It's an honor to be here with you." Yesterday, the secretary also visited the D.C. Armory to meet with about 300 National Guard service members. "Thank you for what you're doing," Hegseth said. "I know you're away from your families, your spouses [and] your kids as a result [of the mobilization], but I think you're on the frontlines of safeguarding our nation and setting an example for the country." Today, about 2,000 guard personnel are mobilized as part of the mission in Washington. Included in those are guardsmen from West Virginia, South Carolina, Ohio, Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee. The D.C. National Guard makes up about 930 of those mobilized. "We are so grateful for their bravery and service alongside D.C. law enforcement," Wilson said. Since the National Guard mobilized in Washington, crime is down 87%, Trump said during a briefing today at the White House. "We've made a lot of progress. [Washington] was extremely unsafe, and now it's extremely safe. We have virtually no crime," he said. "The National Guard has been unbelievable. ... Washington, D.C., is a whole different place." Earlier this week, Trump met at the White House with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, along with NATO and European leaders, including the presidents of five NATO nations, to discuss ways to bring a close to the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia. "This week, the secretary of defense attended a meeting with European leaders at the White House and witnessed President Trump forge the peace process between Ukraine and Russia," Wilson said. "Our commander in chief is a tough and relentless peacemaker." That meeting came less than 48 hours after a meeting in Alaska between the president and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hegseth was a witness to that historic meeting as well. "What an honor it was to watch our president forge the peace process today," Hegseth said following those meetings. "No other leader on planet Earth could do what he did in Alaska, today at the White House or in the future." Finally, late last week, Hegseth hosted Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. at the Pentagon Athletic Center, where the two participated in something important to both of them -- physical fitness. "They introduced the 'Pete and Bobby Challenge' to help make America healthy again," Wilson said. "Their challenge: 100 pushups [and] 50 pullups in under 10 minutes. At the highest, level we are furthering our initiative with the DOD that we will be fit, not fat." Participating alongside Hegseth and Kennedy in that "fitness check" were service members from five military branches and Defense Department civilians. Hegseth told participants that the fitness check was part of an overall promotion by DOD to highlight the importance of physical fitness throughout the chain of command. "We've talked about [how] we're going to be fit, not fat; we've talked about how we're going to be ready -- it's a real thing," Hegseth told the group, adding that it matters what service members look like, how they carry themselves and whether or not they are capable of doing what the job requires of them on a physical level. Both secretaries said they'd like to expand their fitness check beyond the military to young Americans to encourage them to embrace fitness. DOD Civilians Can Volunteer for Details to Southern Border [2025-08-22] WASHINGTON -- Defense Department civilians can now apply for details of up to six months with the Department of Homeland Security to help support President Donald J. Trump's priority of securing the southern border. DOD civilians were notified of the opportunity via email Aug. 20. Civilians who would like to contribute to the southern border mission can do so by applying at the USAJOBS website. Following that action, DHS will review applications and initiate coordination with an employee's organization to get approval for a detail to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection or the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Already, nearly 500 DOD civilians have signed up to participate and bring their skill sets to the border security and immigration enforcement mission at the participating DHS agencies. Michael A. Cogar, the deputy assistant defense secretary for civilian personnel policy, said he hopes even more will volunteer to participate in the program. "I hope that we can get as many [general schedule] civilians as possible to volunteer for this critical mission," Cogar said. Participating in a detail to the participating DHS agencies requires supervisor approval, but Cogar encourages supervisors across the department to work hard to find ways to make it possible for their employees to volunteer. "I would ask the supervisors to take a hard look at what they can and can't accomplish with their employees," he said. "This mission is truly critical, not just for DHS, not just for DOD, but for the entire country. Any individual, any one person, can have a force multiplying effect for those DHS agents, allowing them to focus on what they do best, while we can provide that technical support that they need to be on target, on mission and out there every day focused on the safety of our nation." According to Cogar, all appropriated fund DOD civilian employees in good standing, who have served with their current agency for more than 90 days and who are not on a probationary period, are eligible to volunteer for the detail. Those assignments will be mostly in border states and require travel, though other duty locations are currently being identified by participating agencies, he said. The DHS agencies, Cogar said, are looking to tap into some of the skill sets that DOD civilians possess to help them with operations at the southern border and with internal immigration enforcement. "Department civilians are technical experts across multiple fields, and they are waiting to be called to support this absolutely critical and necessary mission," he said. Included among those skills, Cogar said, are those related to, among other things, transportation security, data input and analysis, targeting and intelligence analysis, firearms, corrections, detention and prisoner processing, linguistics, case processing and human resources. While on detail, he said, DOD civilians will be involved with data entry, operational planning support, processing and throughput logistics, and logistical support. Law enforcement functions will not be among the roles performed. Right now, the agreement between DOD and DHS lasts until Sept. 30, 2026, and DOD civilians can be detailed up to 180 days. During their time on detail to the participating agencies, they will continue to receive the same pay and benefits they earn during their regular DOD jobs. While with the participating agencies, they will also be eligible for overtime and premium pay. But DOD civilians who choose to participate in the detail will get more than just regular pay and benefits -- they will be able to enhance their careers, Cogar said. "This is an opportunity for them to receive additional training," he said. "They're going to get professional development and cross-functional expertise. Also, they're learning how to work with partner agencies. The experience gained from working in a multi-agency cross-country operation could be considered on their next performance evaluation." DOD civilians aren't the only ones who can now apply to assist DHS in protecting the nation's southern border. Since June, the department has also offered retiring and separating service members the opportunity to work for DHS through the SkillBridge program. As part of that effort, directed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, military departments are encouraging service members considering participation in the SkillBridge program to seek internships, apprenticeships or on-the-job training with DHS. Like civilian details, those SkillBridge opportunities last up to 180 days. Meeting the president's goals for the southern border will require a whole-of-government approach, and DOD civilians can be a part of that mission, Cogar said. "This is a national security problem, and our civilians have the critical skill sets to support DHS in their mission," Cogar said. "We're proud that our civilians are already willing to sign up." U.S., Singaporean Military Leaders Discuss Partnerships, Training, Shared Interests [2025-09-09] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of War Pete Hegseth today welcomed his counterpart from Singapore, Defense Minister Chan Chun Sing, to the Pentagon to discuss ongoing military-to-military cooperation and shared security interests in the Indo-Pacific region. "Singapore has been an anchor of U.S. friendship and presence in the region," Hegseth said. "Our relationship has been crucial to regional stability and maintaining deterrence in the Indo-Pacific." The U.S. and Singapore, Hegseth said, train together in a variety of exercises across multiple domains, including the naval Exercise Pacific Griffin, the annual Tiger Balm exercise held since 1980, Commando Sling, and Valiant Mark. This week, the U.S. and Singapore will also participate in Exercise Forging Sabre at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho. "The United States is proud that more than 1,000 of your warriors train in our country each year, and we look forward to welcoming Singapore's F-35 pilots in the years ahead," Hegseth said. Singapore has the second-largest permanent foreign military training presence in the continental United States, with almost 1,000 Singaporean armed forces personnel training at any one time. "That has allowed us to plant the seeds for generations of young men and women to work together, to grow up together, to build the trust that's so necessary for us to work together," Chan said. While in the U.S., Chan will visit troops participating in Forging Sabre in Idaho and the F-35 production facility in Fort Worth, Texas. Singapore has agreed to purchase 20 F-35 aircraft, including 12 F-35B, the vertical takeoff and landing version, and eight F-35A, the conventional version. The first of those should be delivered in 2026. "We look forward to Singapore flying this state-of-the-art aircraft very soon," Hegseth said. Singapore pilots will also train on the F-35 inside the United States at Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Arkansas, something Chan said he looks forward to. "We also want to thank you for allowing our new detachment to be based out [of] Ebbing, Arkansas, where our F-35 will be based, and then I'm sure that will start another journey, together, where a new generation of servicemen will train together," he said. "Thank you very much for your partnership, and we look forward to working closely with you and your team to advance our shared interests." This Week in DOW: Commemorating 9/11, Defending America Against Drug Traffickers, Remembering Charlie Kirk [2025-09-12] WASHINGTON -- At the beginning of the week, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth visited service members in the U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility and met with sailors aboard the USS Iwo Jima who are involved in defending the United States against the influence of criminal drug traffickers. "The secretary spoke to service members about their contribution [to] protecting the homeland from narco-terrorists who poison the American people," said Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell during the War Department's Weekly Sitrep video. Aboard the Iwo Jima, Hegseth told sailors how impressed he is with their work, and how important it is to keeping America safe. "What you're doing right now, it's not training," Hegseth told the sailors. "This is a real-world exercise, on behalf of the vital national interests of the United States of America, to end the poisoning of the American people." As part of the trip, Hegseth, along with Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Air National Guardsmen at Muniz Air National Guard Base, just outside of San Juan, Puerto Rico. "What you're doing here is critically important to American citizens, to American families [and] to communities that have been ravaged by violence ... ravaged by drugs and ravaged by violent gangs and criminality [due to] a porous Southwest border and drugs pouring into our country," Hegseth told the service members. President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order Jan. 20 designating cartels and other organizations as foreign terrorist organizations, which authorizes the military to engage any perceived threats from such entities. "Narco-terrorists will find no safe harbor in international waters or anywhere in our hemisphere," Parnell said. "If you traffic drugs toward our shores, the United States military will use every tool at our disposal to stop you cold." Yesterday, the War Department commemorated the 24th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which included an attack on the Pentagon. "Secretary Hegseth hosted President Trump at an observance ceremony at the Pentagon in honor of every single person killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on our nation," Parnell said. "We will never forget what happened that day." During the ceremony, Hegseth recalled what happened at the three attack locations. "Twenty-four years ago, Islamist terrorists massacred nearly 3,000 innocent American lives in New York City; Shanksville, Pennsylvania; and right here at the Pentagon," Hegseth said. "The building you see behind me -- the War Department -- was targeted in an act of savage evil. And today, on these hallowed grounds, we gather to honor those victims and heroes with the resolve to never forget." Between then and now, the U.S. engaged in 20 years of war in both Afghanistan and Iraq, to root out the perpetrators of those attacks. Now that those conflicts are over, Hegseth said, America must ensure future generations know the cost of freedom and why they must be ready to pay for it. "Our job now is to ensure that future generations inherit a strong and vigilant America," Hegseth said. "We must teach our children that the price of freedom, [which] we love, is eternal vigilance. [We must] instill in them the importance of upholding America's Constitution, holding tight to our freedom and our faith, and relentlessly pursuing our enemies. [We must] prepare them to defend this nation by the ballot, the wallet and when necessary, the cloth of our country." Finally, this week, Charlie Kirk, recently appointed by Trump to serve on the U.S. Air Force Academy Board of Visitors, was killed in Utah. "I would ... like to take this moment to honor the great Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated on [Sept. 10] while engaging in the free exchange of ideas on a college campus in Utah," Parnell said. "His work to revive patriotism among young people set off a movement that has secured him a place as a legend in American history." At War Department, Shaving Waivers Out, Clean-Shaven Faces In [2025-09-19] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of War Pete Hegseth signed a memorandum in August directing the military services to stringently enforce facial hair grooming standards across the force. "The grooming standard set by the U.S. military is to be clean-shaven and neat in presentation for a proper military appearance," said Hegseth in a memorandum dated Aug. 20, 2025. Service members with certain medical conditions, such as pseudofolliculitis barbae or eczema, for instance, are eligible to apply for medical waivers that allow them to abstain from shaving. Those medical conditions might have made daily shaving challenging for those service members. Some of those medical waivers were issued on a long-term basis, meaning that some service members could go for years without having to meet the standard of being clean-shaven. That is no longer the case. Now, service members who have medical waivers for shaving will have one year to address the underlying medical issues that keep them from meeting the standard. According to direction by Hegseth, when needed, medical officers will provide written recommendations concerning shaving waivers to a service member's commander; service members with approved waivers will participate in a medical treatment plan; and commanders will initiate separation of those who still require a shaving waiver after more than one year of undergoing medical treatment. Service members are not alone in seeking out medical treatments for conditions that prevent them from meeting departmentwide grooming standards. "There are various medical treatment plans that a provider can recommend to a service member that can allow them to get off a permanent shaving profile," said a Pentagon official, on background. "Each one of those treatment plans will be individualized." A shaving waiver for medical reasons, the official said, is just like any other medical condition that requires a temporary waiver from meeting standards. "Just like any type of injury or something else, which results in a service member being on a profile, service members are provided through their medical provider or military treatment facility ... options to get back within standards," the official said. Whether it be a broken leg, an illness, a condition that prevents shaving, or any other medical condition, the official said, there are treatment options available within the military medical community. "We have a very robust medical system that is constantly working with service members, regardless of what the specific limitation is, to get them back to medical readiness," the official said. The secretary's memorandum on grooming standards is "effective immediately," the official said. However, that doesn't mean service members who currently have shaving waivers will be separated in August 2026. "Each individual case will require an individual review by the service member's medical provider and commander before the initiation of separation takes place. Commanders are charged with determining if retention is appropriate based upon the service member's progress, or if separation is in the best interest of the service and the member," the official said. "Over the next year, we will see movement by individuals to come into compliance with the secretary of war's established standard for the department." The new direction from the secretary does not affect shaving waivers related to religious accommodations, nor does it impact growing mustaches if the military departments permit their service members to do so, the official said. This Week at DOW: Guard Making Memphis Safe, Tamping Down on Drug Traffickers, Department Remembers POW/MIAs [2025-09-19] WASHINGTON -- Today is National POW/MIA Recognition Day, and at the Pentagon, the War Department remembered those warriors who left home to fight the nation's wars but who never came home. "Today, [Secretary of War Pete Hegseth] hosted the Department of War's 2025 National POW/MIA Recognition Day ceremony to honor those who were held captive and returned, as well as those who remain unaccounted for from past conflicts," said Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson during the department's Weekly Sitrep video. "We will forever remember the sacrifice of these warriors and their families." Today, more than 80,000 service members remain unaccounted for from World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Cold War. The War Department's Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency currently works hand in hand with some 46 different nations to locate still unaccounted-for service members and to bring them home. Hegseth said the nation will continue to search for those service members until they all come home. "Our prisoners of war, those missing in action and their families, have borne the greatest sacrifices for our country that we can imagine," Hegseth said today on the Pentagon parade field. "We owe them an immeasurable debt. They gave the greatest possible sacrifice you could give on the altar of freedom. We will never leave them, and we will not forget them." In early August, President Donald J. Trump declared a crime emergency in Washington and deployed the National Guard there to deal with crime and violence on the streets. Now the president aims to do something similar in Memphis, Tennessee. "On Monday, President Trump, with Secretary Hegseth by his side in the Oval Office, declared the Tennessee National Guard will be sent to Memphis to help crack down on crime," Wilson said. "The department is ready to assist the White House and the Department of Homeland Security in any and every way possible to save our great American cities." As part of a memorandum published Sept. 15, the president has tasked the secretary of war to ask the governor of Tennessee to make National Guard units available to support public safety and law enforcement operations in Memphis. The same memorandum also directs the secretary to coordinate with governors of other states to mobilize their National Guard personnel to provide support as well. It won't be just the National Guard working to crack down on crime in Memphis. Other federal agencies, including the departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security, as well as the FBI, will be working together to get the violence and crime there under control. Hegseth said the War Department looks forward to being part of a team that accomplishes the president's goals in Memphis -- in the same way it's been a partner in other efforts. "From Day 1, the DOW ... has been proud to stand with our partners across the interagency, whether it's at the southwest border, whether it was LA -- getting ahead of that -- whether it's right here in Washington, D.C., where Secretary Daniel Driscoll and the Army and the National Guard have taken the lead in helping across all of these great folks to secure the city -- we are proud to be here, to stand strong alongside law enforcement," Hegseth said. On the high seas this week, the War Department dealt another blow to the criminals who hope to bring deadly drugs into the United States. "At President Trump's direction, U.S. military forces conducted another strike against confirmed narco-terrorists in the [U.S. Southern Command] area of responsibility," Wilson said. According to the president, three narco-terrorists from Venezuela were killed in the strike, which occurred in international waters. The strike was undertaken by forces from Southcom. "Narco-terrorists are enemies of the United States -- actively bringing death to our shores," Hegseth said. "We will stop at nothing to defend our homeland and our citizens. We will track them, kill them and dismantle their networks throughout our hemisphere -- at the times and places of our choosing." In April, the Army held a competition to determine the best of the best Army Rangers. The two winners of that competition came to Washington this week to meet with the secretary of war. "Secretary Hegseth hosted a pair of U.S. Army Rangers who won the 41st Annual David E. Grange Jr. Best Ranger Competition earlier this year to recognize their achievement and celebrate the warrior ethos they represent," Wilson said. In his office at the Pentagon, Hegseth met with Army Capt. Kevin Moore and Capt. Griffin Hokanson. He congratulated the two junior officers, saying the same things needed to win the Ranger competition are also what's needed to win the nation's wars. "I think how you prepare is indicative of how you might perform, and preparing by performing at the highest level is exactly what we would want everybody to aspire to," Hegseth told the Rangers. And finally this week, the U.S. Air Force marked its 78th anniversary. "In 1947, the Air Force separated from the U.S. Army to create its own branch of service," Wilson said. "The Air Force continues to fly, fight and win into the wild blue yonder, providing unmatched air dominance across the globe." Hegseth Hosts Canadian Counterpart at Pentagon for Bilateral Discussion [2025-09-22] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of War Pete Hegseth today hosted Canada's National Defense Minister David McGuinty for a bilateral discussion at the Pentagon. Canada is one of the United States' closest defense partners as both nations share responsibility for defense of North America through the North American Aerospace Defense Command. "Our great nations have served together in many wars. ... And today our warfighters continue that, serving together through joint exercises, defending the homeland and really the only binational command of its kind, which is NORAD," Hegseth said. The secretary said the work at North American Aerospace Defense Command is important for the defense of North America, but also that there's much that can be done between the U.S. and Canada to modernize its operations. "The threats to North America require a strong U.S.-Canada defense relationship -- there's no doubt," Hegseth said. "And I know Canada has committed at the [NATO] summit to increasing defense spending to 5% of [gross domestic product] by 2035, which is incredible to see. A very strong step." Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney announced in June an additional $9.3 billion in defense investments, McGuinty said. These investments bring Canada's commitment to defense to 2% of its GDP, five years ahead of schedule. McGuinty said the increase in spending is not just about budgets. "It's a game changer," he said. "These investments are building combat-ready forces, recruiting and retaining the best, modernizing critical infrastructure on 33 bases, upgrading our cyber [and] our digital defense, [and] sharpening our ability to fight shoulder to shoulder with folks like you." Canada, like the U.S., is also working to strengthen its defense industrial base, McGuinty said. "We're launching a major defense industrial strategy for the country; cutting through red tape to deliver faster, improving resilience, securing access to vital resources, like critical minerals -- turns out, we have lots of those," he said. "These hard power capabilities are going to ensure we're ready to strike back and defend whenever and wherever we need." While Canada is stepping up its defense involvement in both the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions, McGuinty said homeland defense in North America, in partnership with the U.S., is the focus. "Defending North America remains our top priority," McGuinty said. "That starts in the Arctic -- our shared front line. Canada is locked in to protect the north, its people, its environment and its strategic advantage. It's where our sovereignty, our national security and our partnership with the U.S. comes together strongest. So, from NORAD modernization to Arctic surveillance and infrastructure, we're taking major and fast, bold, decisive action to shore up our collective defense." This Week in DOW: Exceeding Guard Recruiting Goals, Breaking Social Media Engagement Records, Strengthening Ties With Northern Neighbor [2025-09-26] WASHINGTON -- This year, all five military services maxed out their recruiting goals early, and now, the National Guard has also achieved a victory by surpassing its own recruiting goals for 2025. "The United States National Guard announced that it has exceeded its 2025 recruitment goals, reflecting an extraordinary trend of robust enlistment across the entire U.S. military," said Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson during the War Department's Weekly Sitrep video. Wilson said both the Army and Air National Guard have enlisted nearly 50,000 new members in fiscal year 2025, bringing the total end strength of the guard to more than 433,000. "Young Americans are eager to serve," said Air Force Gen. Steve Nordhaus, National Guard Bureau chief. "Today's recruits are seeking long-term value, and the National Guard delivers through career training and hands-on, practical experience in more than 200 career specialties." Secretary of War Pete Hegseth met with his Canadian counterpart, National Defense Minister David McGuinty, for a bilateral discussion at the Pentagon, Sept. 22. "Canada is one of the United States' closest defense partners as both nations share responsibility for defense of North America through NORAD," Wilson said. During the bilateral meeting, Hegseth said the shared work at the North American Aerospace Defense Command is important for the defense of North America, but also that there's much that can be done between the U.S. and Canada to modernize its operations. "The threats to North America require a strong U.S.-Canada defense relationship -- there's no doubt," Hegseth said. "And I know Canada has committed at the [NATO] summit to increasing defense spending to 5% of [gross domestic product] by 2035, which is incredible to see. A very strong step." As part of a push toward transparency, the War Department has embarked on an extensive social media campaign to ensure Americans always know what's going on inside the department. Over the last eight months, that effort has proven to be successful, Wilson said. "The Department of War has put the previous administration's social media strategy to shame," she said. "We've surpassed every social media benchmark set by the previous administration. We're breaking records, setting a new standard for engagement, and we've only just begun." According to numbers from the War Department's digital media office, total social media engagements for the Secretary of War's page are 987% higher in 2025 than they were a year ago, and total impressions are 993% higher than a year ago. Also this week, Hegseth disbanded the Defense Advisory Committee for Women in the Services. Wilson said the committee's work had become a distraction from readiness. While some critics said eliminating the committee could discourage women from joining the military, she said the opposite has been the case, citing recent increases in female recruitment. She added that disbanding the committee aligns with Hegseth's priority of restoring the warrior ethos and maintaining a gender-neutral force. Last week, outside Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, an MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crashed, killing four soldiers. "We here at the War Department are devastated to share that four of our brave warriors perished last week while conducting routine flight training near Joint Base Lewis-McChord," Wilson said. "Our hearts are with our fallen service members, their families, and the entire JBLM community." The four soldiers killed in the helicopter crash were Chief Warrant Officer 3 Andrew Cully, 35, from Sparta, Missouri; Chief Warrant Officer 3 Andrew Kraus, 39, from Sanibel, Florida; Sgt. Donavon Scott, 24, from Tacoma, Washington; and Sgt. Jadalyn Good, 23, from Mount Vernon, Washington. "They were elite warriors who embodied the highest values of the Army and the Army Special Operations, and their sacrifice will never be forgotten," said Army Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command. Trump: Military Will Protect Nation With Focus on Merit, Reawakened Warrior Spirit [2025-09-30] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military, said President Donald J. Trump, is strong again, with a focus on merit and a warrior spirit. This morning at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, hundreds of general and flag officers from around the War Department sat shoulder to shoulder in an auditorium to listen to two of the very few collection of people who still outrank them: the secretary of war and the president of the United States. Trump spoke after Secretary of War Pete Hegseth discussed 10 new directives meant to strengthen the military, including a laser focus on standards. The United States, Trump said, was built on merit, but the focus later shifted. "We got away from it for a long time," the president said. But now merit is back -- within the federal government and within the War Department. "We're going to be greater than we ever were before," Trump told the generals. "We're bringing back a focus on fitness, ability, character and strength -- and that's because the purpose of [the] American military is not to protect anyone's feelings -- it's to protect our republic. And it's the republic that we dearly love. It's to protect our country. We will not be politically correct when it comes to defending American freedom, and we will be a fighting and winning machine." A stronger, more lethal military, Trump said, comes not just from inside the armed forces with training and adherence to standards. It also requires the support of the civilian leadership above it. "Together, we're reawakening the warrior spirit, and this is a spirit that won and built this nation: from the cavalry that tamed the Great Plains to the ferocious, unyielding power of [Army Gen. George] Patton, [Army Gen. Omar] Bradley and the great [Army] Gen. Douglas MacArthur," Trump said. "In this effort, we're a team. And so, my message to you is very simple: I am with you, I support you, and as president, I have your backs 100%. You'll never see me even waver a little bit." "Together over the next few years, we're going to make our military stronger, tougher, faster, fiercer and more powerful than it has ever been before," he continued. A stronger military doesn't just mean stronger troops, who are trained and who follow standards, Trump said. It also means having a military that has the best equipment with which to carry out both offensive and defensive operations, including an improved nuclear deterrent, better aircraft and more surface warfare ships and submarines. "We're investing tens of billions of dollars in modernizing our nuclear deterrence capabilities like never before," the president said. "And we've begun construction on what we call the 'Golden Dome' missile defense shield. It'll be the most sophisticated in the world." For the Navy, he said, more ships are on the way. "Under my budget, we will be expanding the U.S. Navy by at least 19 ships next year, including submarines, destroyers, assault ships and more," Trump told the officers. "History has shown that military supremacy has never been simply a matter of money or manpower. At the end of the day, it is the culture, the spirit of our military that truly sets us apart from any other nation," he said. "Our ultimate strength will always come from the fierce people, those brilliant people with such pride and the unbending will and the traditions of excellence that have made us the most unstoppable force ever to walk the face of the earth, and that's what we are." It was just over three weeks ago that the Defense Department became the War Department, a name change that the president said is more than cosmetic. Instead, he said, the return to an older name harkens back to a time when he thought the department did a lot more of the thing it should be best at: winning wars. "We won the first world war; we won the second world war -- we won everything in between and everything before that. We only won," Trump said. Now the department name from that era is back. "In the coming months, we'll be making even more historic announcements to fully embrace the identity of the Department of War," Trump said. "I love the name. I think it's so great. I think it stops wars. The Department of War is going to stop wars." Department of War Name Set in Bronze at Pentagon Entrances [2025-11-13] WASHINGTON -- At the Pentagon today, facilities personnel took down outdated bronze plaques at two of the building's entrances and replaced them with recently minted plaques bearing the new name of the federal agency that leads America's fighting force: "Department of War." One of those new plaques was put up at the River Entrance, which faces the Potomac River and serves as the Pentagon's grand entrance. It's where Secretary of War Pete Hegseth greets counterparts from partner and allied nations, as well as other dignitaries and distinguished visitors. The Mall Entrance, which faces north toward the National Mall in Washington, also got a new sign. Outside that entrance are the Pentagon's helicopter landing pads. "We wanted to replace [the old signs] because we want everybody who comes through this door to know that we are deadly serious about the name change of this organization," Hegseth said. In early September, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order changing the name of the Defense Department back to the War Department -- a name the department held for more than 150 years, from 1789 to 1947. Construction on the Pentagon began in 1941 and was completed in 1943. When the building opened that year, it housed the Department of War. In fact, the dedication stone on the Pentagon -- located outside the Mall Entrance -- has "War Department" engraved at the top, along with the names of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was president at the time, and Henry L. Stimson, who served as Secretary of War from 1940 to 1945. Now, the Pentagon again houses the War Department. "We love everything that the Department of Defense represented," Hegseth said. "But this is a new era of the Department of War that is focused on winning wars ... and making sure that we know exactly what the mission is and that the troops are sent there to succeed and win." The name "Department of War," Hegseth said, harkens back to America's founding. "[We are] reestablishing [the department] back to Henry Knox and George Washington and the founding of our nation -- to fight and win our nation's wars if called upon," he said. "And of course, the whole goal is to deter wars in the first place ... to establish peace." The new name also reflects a new ethos for the department, Hegseth said, after he personally fastened the last screw on the new River Entrance plaque. "We are rebuilding it; we are reestablishing deterrence -- it's based on America first, peace through strength and common sense," he said. "And now everybody that enters this building, whether it's generals or civilians or foreign leaders, is going to see: this is not just on paper. This is not just a title. This is exactly who we are." The new bronze plaques are each roughly 30 by 20 inches and weigh about 60 pounds. The old plaques, which say "Department of Defense," had been on the building for more than 70 years, Hegseth said. This Week in DOW: Combating Drug Traffickers; Growing Partnerships in Indo-Pacom; Navy, Marines Mark 250th [2025-11-14] WASHINGTON -- While the federal government was closed for all of October and the first week of November, service members kept working, and the defense of the nation never stopped. Despite the 43-day shutdown, service members didn't miss a paycheck. "President Donald J. Trump kept his promise to take care of the troops," said Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson during the War Department's Weekly Sitrep video. "Our department ensured our brave warfighters received a paycheck." In the U.S. Southern Command's area of responsibility, the U.S. military was hard at work keeping dangerous illegal drugs from entering the country, Wilson said. "At the direction of President Trump, the department has taken the fight directly to the narco-terrorists that are bringing drugs to our shores to poison the American people," she said. "This week, the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group entered the Southcom area of responsibility from European waters to help with the ongoing campaign against the narco-terrorists in the region." Over the last two months, Wilson said, the department conducted multiple strikes on vessels smuggling illicit narcotics, ensuring the drugs they carried never entered the United States. On Nov. 9, for instance, two lethal kinetic strikes were conducted on two vessels operated by designated terrorist organizations. "These vessels were known by our intelligence to be associated with illicit narcotics smuggling, were carrying narcotics and were transiting along a known narco-trafficking transit route in the Eastern Pacific," Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said in a social media post. "Under President Trump, we are protecting the homeland and killing these cartel terrorists who wish to harm our country and its people." In late October, Hegseth toured multiple countries in the Indo-Pacific region to meet with his defense minister counterparts, Wilson said. "At the annual [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] Defense Ministers' Meeting in Malaysia, Secretary Hegseth held numerous bilateral meetings with defense ministers from China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Australia, and signed a 10-year defense framework with India," she said. Hegseth said the security agreement with India advances the U.S.-India defense partnership, which serves as a cornerstone for both regional stability and deterrence. "We're enhancing our coordination, info sharing and tech cooperation," he said. "Our defense ties have never been stronger." Also in October, the secretary traveled to the NATO defense ministers' meeting in Brussels, where he met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and other defense ministers, Wilson said. Prior to the meeting, Hegseth commended NATO leaders for stepping up defense efforts. "If there's anything we've learned under President Trump, it's the active application of peace through strength," Hegseth said. "You get peace when you are strong, not when you use strong words or wag your finger. You get it when you have strong and real capabilities that adversaries respect. And I believe that's what NATO is doing." Finally, during the more than 43-day government shutdown, both the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps celebrated their 250th anniversaries, Wilson said. "Aboard the USS George Washington, President Trump, and our Marines and sailors reflected on the two and a half centuries of strength, tenacity and unwavering courage by the greatest fighting force in the world," Wilson said. "Our military is the first in war, the first in peace and the first in spirit and the first in freedom. Happy birthday to the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps." Hegseth: DARPA at Heart of America's Strategic Advantage [2025-11-17] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of War Pete Hegseth visited the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Arlington, Virginia, Nov. 14 -- just a short drive from the Pentagon. DARPA and industry experts put the secretary in front of two large television screens: one showing a live feed of a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter sitting on a runway more than 250 miles away in Stratford, Connecticut, and the other, a touch screen, displaying a map and controls for the helicopter. The Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System, developed by DARPA and a commercial partner, allowed the secretary to plot a flight path and parameters for the helicopter and fly it remotely. It will eventually enable non-pilots to fly similarly equipped aviation platforms, both rotary and fixed-wing, without having to be on board or attend flight school. The ALIAS system is just one of hundreds of advanced technology projects DARPA is spearheading now to deliver breakthrough technologies to the department and the warfighter, strengthening national security. After meeting with DARPA Director Stephen Winchell and program managers to learn how programs underway are aligned with his priorities for the department, including restoring the warrior ethos, rebuilding the military and re-establishing deterrence, Hegseth said he was impressed with what he saw. "This kind of stuff is the heart of our advantage," Hegseth said. "The best and brightest ... come here and choose to serve their country, and just push the envelope ... to solve big problems. They give the boss more options -- that's the idea: more options that hopefully keep us out of conflict, deter our adversaries and keep the American people safe. And what I saw today was the bleeding edge of new options and of new capabilities." The secretary thanked both the DARPA director and the program managers who briefed him on the status and capabilities of ongoing projects for bringing the best and most sophisticated capabilities to warfighters. "As a taxpayer, as a citizen, as an American, I'm grateful that such an institution exists; that patriotic men and women sign up to do it, to solve hard problems and apply the amazing ingenuity that America does better than anybody else," he said. The secretary added that one of the roles of his office in the Pentagon, and the role of Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael, is to ensure agencies like DARPA always have the necessary resources to provide warfighters with the advanced tools they need to fight and win wars. "Whatever we can do for you, we're going to keep doing ... we serve you, and we open the aperture for you," he said. War Department Narrows Technology Development Focus to Half Dozen Areas [2025-11-19] WASHINGTON -- Directed energy, hypersonics and artificial intelligence are among the six technology focus areas for the War Department meant to ensure America's warfighters will quickly have what's needed to fight and win on the battlefield. "Our adversaries are moving fast, but we will move faster," said Emil Michael, undersecretary of war for research and engineering. "The warfighter is not asking for results tomorrow; they need them today. These six critical technology areas are not just priorities; they are imperatives. The American warfighter will wield the most advanced technology to maximize lethality." Among those technology areas are applied AI, biomanufacturing, contested logistics technology, quantum battlefield information dominance, scaled directed energy, and scaled hypersonics. President Donald J. Trump's Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan, released July 23, directed the War Department to aggressively adopt AI to maintain global military preeminence and ensure it is both secure and reliable. "When adopted rapidly, AI will fundamentally transform the department from the enterprise level to intelligence synthesis and to warfighting," Michael said. Biomanufacturing uses specially designed genetically modified living organisms, such as bacteria, to manufacture needed materials. "[Biomanufacturing] harnesses living systems to produce capabilities at scale," Michael said. "[This effort] will accelerate the development and deployment of biomanufacturing solutions to support critical missions of the department." With biomanufacturing, he said, the department can expect development of bio-based alternatives for critical chemicals, minerals and energetics for use in warfighting systems. A focus on directed energy, Michael said, will enable the department to rapidly scale high-energy lasers and high-power microwave systems with widely accessible, low-cost-per-shot response options. And with scaled hypersonics, the department will focus on scaling production, lowering costs and widely fielding hypersonic weapons to the force. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said the new, more narrowly defined technology focus areas will give America and its warfighters a battlefield advantage and secure the future of American technological dominance. "Our nation's military has always been the tip of the spear," Hegseth said. "Undersecretary Emil Michael's six critical technology areas will ensure that our warriors never enter a fair fight and have the best systems in their hands for maximum lethality. The War Department is committed to remaining the most deadly fighting force on planet Earth." This Week in DOW: Sharpened Tech Focus; Marines Train in Puerto Rico; DARPA Dominance [2025-11-21] WASHINGTON -- In the last week, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency impressed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth with a demonstration of new technology and the promise of even more, when he visited the agency's headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. "[The secretary] visited ... DARPA, to meet with executives and industry experts," said Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson during the War Department's Weekly Sitrep video. "He also remotely flew a [UH-60] Black Hawk helicopter, which was sitting on a runway more than 250 miles away." The secretary was able to remotely pilot the helicopter using the Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System, or "ALIAS," developed by DARPA and a commercial partner. The system will eventually enable nonpilots to fly similarly equipped aviation platforms, both rotary and fixed wing, without having to be on board or attend flight school. The secretary also met with DARPA Director Stephen Winchell and program managers to learn how agency efforts underway now are aligned with his priorities for the department. "This kind of stuff is the heart of our advantage," Hegseth said. "The best and brightest ... come [to DARPA] and choose to serve their country and just push the envelope ... to solve big problems. They give the boss more options -- that's the idea: more options that hopefully keep us out of conflict, deter our adversaries and keep the American people safe. And what I saw today was the bleeding edge of new options and of new capabilities." Also, this week on the technology front, Undersecretary of War for Research and Engineering Emil Michael unveiled six critical technology areas expected to define the future of American military superiority, Wilson said. "These areas represent the cutting edge of research and engineering, designed to deliver immediate and tangible results to the warfighter and to ensure the United States remains the most lethal fighting force in the world," she said. Among those areas are applied artificial intelligence, biomanufacturing, contested logistics technology, quantum battlefield information dominance, scaled directed energy and scaled hypersonic weapons. "Our nation's military has always been the tip of the spear," Hegseth said. "Undersecretary Emil Michael's six critical technology areas will ensure that our warriors never enter a fair fight and have the best systems in their hands for maximum lethality. The War Department is committed to remaining the most deadly fighting force on planet Earth." In the U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility, Wilson said the Marine Corps is actively training to be ready for any kind of conflict that comes its way. "Our Marines, assigned to the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, conducted a reconnaissance and surveillance exercise in Puerto Rico while deployed in the Caribbean in support of Southcom, to stay ready and dominate in any terrain," Wilson said. The secretary this week also sat for a one-on-one television interview in the Pentagon to provide more details on the culture shift at the department and U.S. military actions underway to stymie narcotics terrorists in the Southcom area of responsibility, in particular efforts related to Venezuela's state-embedded criminal network Cartel de los Soles. The cartel, whose name translates to "Cartel of the Suns" and is alleged to be headed by Venezuelan President Nicol�s Maduro, is set to be designated as a terror organization by the State Department Nov. 24. "[The terror designation] gives more tools to our [War] Department to give options to [President Donald J. Trump] to ultimately say our hemisphere will not be controlled by narco-terrorists, it will not be controlled by cartels, [and] it will not be controlled by what illegitimate regimes try to push toward the American people. So, it's just about options, and we plan better than any organization in the world here," Hegseth said. Finally this week, the War Department took a moment to recognize fallen Marine veteran and coal miner Steve Lipscomb. "[He] lost his life earlier this month while looking after the safety of his crew at the Rolling Thunder coal mine in West Virginia," Wilson said. "Lipscomb joined the Marines shortly after the September 11th attack and was part of the first wave of Marines to take part in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Lipscomb was also a Purple Heart recipient. He is a hero, and we will never forget him." As a Marine, Lipscomb participated in the First Battle of Fallujah in Iraq, which began April 4, 2004. He was wounded in Iraq seven days later, when his Humvee hit a roadside bomb. He was medically discharged May 2005 and returned home to Elkview, West Virginia. Back home, he began a mining career in 2006. "Retired Marine Steve Lipscomb represents the best of our American military and embodies the hero spirit," Hegseth said. "This Purple Heart recipient and Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran protected his nation and community until the very last day." Happy Thanksgiving, Thanks for Serving the Nation, Hegseth Tells Troops During Morale Calls [2025-11-26] WASHINGTON -- Earlier this week, in advance of Thanksgiving, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth called troops around the world to give them a warm holiday greeting from the Pentagon. Sailors aboard the USS Shoup, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, were among the first to hear from the secretary, though the video option wasn't working. The secretary compensated for that failure. "I can hear you loud and clear. In my mind's eye, captain, you are a staggeringly handsome individual, as are all two dozen of the incredible sailors behind you," Hegseth joked with the ship's captain. "You are on a [destroyer] in and around Japan, on behalf of the American people, on Thanksgiving, away from your families, doing the duty of the nation ... and the point of these calls is just to ... share ... how grateful we are for what you do." The secretary also wished a happy Thanksgiving to troops with the 612th Air Operations Center at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, which provides command and control of air and space power in U.S. Southern Command's area of responsibility. "Thank you all very much ... happy Thanksgiving," he said, before asking for a mission brief on what the unit does, and to also hear from some of the airmen there to learn how each contributes to the mission. The Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 162 is currently deployed to Djibouti. Besides holiday greetings, the secretary apologized that the call might have kept the Marines up late, as they are a full eight time zones away. "This is a morale call, but it's like midnight in Djibouti, so morale is probably low while you're on this call with me in the middle of the night," he said. "But we appreciate you all very much." The Marines in the tiltrotor squadron provide assault support of combat troops supplies and equipment using the MV-22 Osprey transport aircraft. Guardians assigned to U.S. Space Forces Central Combat Detachment 3-1 are located at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar. "Thanks for leading the charge out there ... all you guardians ... Al Udeid is a pretty busy place now and not that long ago," Hegseth said, offering both holiday greetings to those guardians and acknowledgment of the attack on Al Udeid this summer following the success of Operation Midnight Hammer, which resulted in the destruction of Iran's nuclear capabilities. Following the destruction of the uranium enrichment site, Iranians attacked American forces at Al Udeid, but the joint force there successfully defended their installation, as they were trained to do. Down at the southern border in Texas, the Arkansas National Guard's 1st Battalion, 114th Aviation Regiment, is conducting the border mission. "Happy Thanksgiving to you and all your troops there," Hegseth told them. "It's great to see you all and it's an honor having a chance to talk to you ... thanks for everything you're doing, and it means a lot. It's cool to see the faces of the folks locking down that border for us and defending the American people." And finally, the secretary greeted soldiers with the Army's 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, who are on deployment to South Korea. "Happy Thanksgiving. It's awesome to see all of you," he said. "It means a lot that you are where you are." The secretary asked for an update on the brigade's mission, and also to hear a bit from some of the 20 soldiers who participated in the call. The brigade, normally based at Fort Carson, Colorado, deployed to South Korea in June as part of regular nine-month rotations there to support the 2nd Infantry Division. Dozens of Federal Agencies Initiate Counter-UAS Collaboration [2025-11-26] WASHINGTON -- Over 180 experts from the War Department and other agencies in the federal government met yesterday for a summit to begin a planned three-year effort to deliver counter-small unmanned aircraft system capabilities to warfighters and keep the skies over America safe from dangerous drones. In August, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth launched the Joint Interagency Task Force 401. Just two weeks ago, senior leaders from the department and partner agencies, including Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, met at the White House to discuss how to best leverage the new task force and defend the homeland. "My priorities for transformation and acquisition reform include improving [counter-small unmanned aircraft systems] mobility and affordability and integrating capabilities into warfighter formations," Hegseth wrote in the August memo, which directed Driscoll to stand up the task force. "[The department] must focus on speed over process by ... establishing JIATF 401 with expanded authorities to execute capability development and delivery timelines that outpace the threat." Launching the task force, which Hegseth said will maintain operational capabilities for 36 months, is fully in line with the president's direction to reestablish air sovereignty over the U.S. "[The department] must enhance its [counter-small UAS] capabilities to protect personnel, equipment and facilities at home and abroad," Hegseth said. Representatives from the War Department, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, Transportation Department, Federal Aviation Administration and other agencies -- about 50 total -- met for the first time at the Mark Center in Alexandria, Virginia, as part of an introductory summit for task force partners. "This was an opportunity to bring together all of the services, all of our interagency partners that have shared interests and equities with countering small UAS threats, because no one agency can solve this on their own," said Army Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, joint task force commander. "What we're really trying to do is expand the community of interest into a community of action and make sure we're taking tangible steps to defeat the UAS threat we face on a daily basis." The threat from small UAS is growing, Ross told task force members. "Unmanned systems are a defining threat for our time, and I say that because they're prolific, they're evolving quickly, and they're no longer confined to combat," he said. "The [changing landscape] of drones is putting exquisite surveillance and precision strike capability into the hands of individuals and small groups that used to be reserved for our state adversaries." Ross emphasized the task force's three lines of effort to defeat the counter-small UAS threats: defending the homeland, supporting warfighter lethality and joint force training. In the short term, according to Ross, homeland defense will focus on the area around Washington; the southern border; and supporting the FIFA World Cup event in June 2026, which is a national special security event. U.S. Northern Command and Joint Task Force Southern Border personnel have reported some 3,000 drone incursions over the border in the past year and have seen over 60,000 drones just south of the border looking into the U.S., according to Ross. Ross affirmed his belief that addressing threats from drones at the border isn't about a hardware solution; it involves communications and data sharing. "We need a common air picture that includes drones," he said. "In some cases, we need cross-domain solutions that will allow us to see data that's picked up on a secret radar and an unclassed sensor. We need to proliferate active and passive sensors that provide air situational awareness along the southern border." That kind of integration is what JIATF 401 is all about, and it's what the task force is expected to bring to bear on the small UAS issue, according to Ross. In the National Capital Region, the task force will monitor how sensors from various agencies are able to track threats as they move through the sky, how that information can be passed to decision-makers and how those with the ability to take those threats out of the sky can be given the authority to do so. "We're not there yet, but we're making progress," Ross said. Because the 2026 World Cup is a national special security event, it is a priority. One focus JIATF 401 has during the World Cup is to ensure security personnel have access through the Defense Logistics Agency to purchase counter-UAS capabilities that have been rigorously tested by the War Department. Keeping the drone threat at bay and protecting the U.S. homeland -- including people and infrastructure -- will take a whole-of-government approach, Ross emphasized. "It's important that this is a joint and interagency effort because nobody can solve this problem alone," Ross said. "[JIATF 401] is a whole-of-government effort to be able to protect our critical infrastructure against the threat of unmanned systems. We've got to partner closely with our local law enforcement and other federal, state, local, tribal and territorial law enforcement to be able to counter this threat, see it before it starts to manifest and then to defeat it before an attack is successful." Daniel Tamburello, the undersecretary of science and technology for the Department of Homeland Security, acknowledged that working together across the federal government will be crucial to mission success. Both Northcom and DHS are responsible for protecting the homeland, including from drones. "There's a lot of overlap in those missions," Tamburello said. "Jointness and interagency cooperation is actually extremely essential with this." The threat from drones will only continue to grow. "The unmanned aerial system threat is one that has become prolific and widespread, and it's only going to get bigger and more complicated as more people adopt these systems and learn how to use them," Tamburello said. "They've become [accessible], they've become crowd sourced, ubiquitous and available pretty much anywhere. Any bad actor who wants to do something has a chance to do it, and we have to stop them." The goals for the task force, Tamburello said, include coordinating with every U.S. agency that deals with the threat posed by counter-UAS to enable interoperability and open communication. "That is really going to be the best value for the taxpayer to make sure that we're acquiring not only the best systems, but we're not wasting money in the process," he said. Micheal Torphy, unit chief of the FBI's UAS and counter-UAS programs within their Critical Incident Response Group, attended the summit. He said the task force's interagency focus will empower the FBI. "We're exceptionally excited about this initiative, and we do believe it will enhance our ability to work with our partners to disrupt threats," he said. One of the things the FBI is bringing to the table is the National Counter-UAS Training Center, which recently opened in Huntsville, Alabama. "Its purpose is to train state, local, tribal and territorial law enforcement officers on counter-UAS, getting them ready for the World Cup, America 250 [celebration] and ultimately the Olympics and other events," he said. Torphy also said he thinks the interoperability inside the task force is going to make it easier for the FBI to work hand in hand with other partners to contribute to the mission of keeping the skies over America safe. "The way this has been rolled out has been extraordinary," he said. "Gen. Ross and his team have been fantastic in getting us involved very, very early. We're really excited about the future." During D.C. Guard Visit, Secretary Acknowledges Tragedy, Conveys Gratitude [2025-11-28] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of War Pete Hegseth met with National Guard troops today at the D.C. Armory to both express gratitude for the work they have done to curb violent crimes in the nation's capital and to also acknowledge the tragic loss of one of their own, following a shooting in the city, Nov. 26. Army National Guard Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, of Summersville, West Virginia, died yesterday after being shot the day before while on duty near Farragut Square, a small park, in Washington. She served as a military police soldier with the 863rd Military Police Company. Also wounded in the shooting was Air National Guard Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, of Martinsburg, West Virginia. He is currently hospitalized. "Obviously our hearts are heavy right now for the loss of Spc. Sarah Beckstrom," Hegseth said. "Some of you may have known her, obviously a beautiful human being and a great American willing to serve her country. [She was] brutally targeted, ambushed, on the street. [There are] no words for the sadness we have for her family. We pray for them. We also pray for Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe with the Air National Guard, [in a] fight for his life right now." The secretary led troops in a prayer for Beckstrom's family, Wolfe's recovery and for the safety of American service members who are now spread across the nation's capital and the world. During the event, the secretary also met privately with the two individuals who helped subdue Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who was subsequently arrested as the suspect in the shooting. More than 2,200 National Guard personnel are assigned to Joint Task Force District of Columbia. About 925 of those are from the D.C. National Guard, with more than 1,300 coming from Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, West Virginia, Ohio and South Carolina. Hegseth told the troops gathered that he, other leaders in the Pentagon, and President Donald J. Trump himself are grateful for what they are doing in Washington and are impressed with what they have achieved so far. "We are nothing but grateful for everything that you do every single day and every single night, and for every single risk that you're willing to take, and the vigilance that you maintain on our behalf," Hegseth said. "President Trump believes that we should have a safe, secure and beautiful capital of the United States of America ... and you have [delivered] just that." At the Pentagon, the secretary said that War Department leaders are paying attention to what the National Guard is doing in Washington, that what they see is passed up to the White House and that everybody in the chain of command is impressed. "You have delivered historic safety, security and beauty to this capital," he said. "And not just for the residents that live here that deserve a better life, that deserve to live safe; but also for all the Americans who visit this great capital, visitors who come and want to see the monuments, and want to see the beauty, and want to see the history." Where those residents and visitors might have in the past seen danger, violence and crime, Hegseth said, that has now changed. "You've delivered safety, and you've done it selflessly, and you've done it courageously," he said. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller also addressed the troops, relaying to them the gratitude of the president and the nation. "On behalf of President Trump, on behalf of the White House, on behalf of the United States government, I want to express to each and every one of you, our unyielding loyalty, devotion, gratitude, admiration; our eternal brotherhood with you, and your service, your contribution, your sacrifice," Miller said. "Please know that not only is the city of Washington, D.C., grateful, not only is this administration grateful, but tens of millions of Americans all across this nation look up to you with gratitude, affection, loyalty, friendship and pride ... thank you for your service. You have my unwavering commitment and dedication, as you do from [the secretary] and every member of this administration," he added. On Nov. 26, Hegseth was traveling in the Dominican Republic to meet with senior leaders there to discuss continued cooperation in countering narco-terrorists. Shortly after the shooting in Washington, the secretary announced his intent to increase troop presence in the nation's capital. "President Trump has asked me, and I will ask the secretary of the Army to [tell] the National Guard to add 500 additional troops -- National Guardsmen -- to Washington, D.C.," he said, speaking to members of the press during his visit to the Dominican Republic's National Palace in Santo Domingo. After addressing the guardsmen, the secretary and his wife, Jennifer; along with Miller and his wife, Katie; and other department and administration senior leaders, participated in serving a Thanksgiving dinner to uniformed personnel. Secretary Hegseth and his wife also sat down for dinner with the service members. War Department Asks Industry to Make More Than 300K Drones, Quickly, Cheaply [2025-12-02] WASHINGTON -- The War Department requested information earlier this week to gauge industry's willingness and ability to make some 300,000 drones quickly and inexpensively -- a concrete effort by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to directly meet the "drone dominance" goals laid out by the president. On June 6, President Donald J. Trump signed the "Unleashing American Drone Dominance" executive order outlining how the United States would up its drone game in both the commercial and military sectors, including how it would deliver massive amounts of inexpensive, American-made, lethal drones to U.S. military units to amplify their combat capabilities. Hegseth followed up in July with the "Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance" memorandum, in which he laid out his plan for how the department would meet the president's intent. Part of the secretary's plan included participating with other parts of government in building up the nascent U.S. drone manufacturing base by approving hundreds of American products for purchase by the department, powering a "technological leapfrog" by arming combat units with the very best of low-cost American-made drones, and finally, training as the department expects to fight. "Next year I expect to see [drone] capability integrated into all relevant combat training, including force-on-force drone wars," the secretary said. At that time, Hegseth said, he had already advanced American drone dominance by stripping away regulations that hindered the military's adoption of small drones and shifting the necessary authorities away from the department's bureaucracy and into the hands of unit commanders. "This was the first step in the urgent effort to boost lethality across the force," Hegseth said in a video posted today to social media. Now the War Department is moving out in a new way on the drone dominance initiative, Hegseth said. "The second step is to kickstart U.S. industrial capacity and reduce prices, so our military can adequately budget for unmanned weapons," the secretary said. He noted that, with help from Congress, the department will initially focus on small attack drones. "Drone dominance is a billion-dollar program funded by President Trump's Big Beautiful Bill," Hegseth said. "It is purpose-built on the pillars of the War Department's new acquisition philosophy: a stable demand signal to expand the U.S. drone industrial base by leveraging private capital, paired with flexible contracting built for commercial companies, founded by our best engineers and entrepreneurs." A stable demand signal means the War Department will make concrete plans to buy lots of drones, on a regular schedule, over a long period of time. When that happens, American industry will step up to the plate to satisfy the department's needs, including by investing in and building out its own capacity to produce in the long term. The request for information released to industry this week spells out a plan that'll begin early next year, when the department will, over the course of two years, and within four phases, offer $1 billion to industry to build a large number of small unmanned aerial systems capable of conducting one-way attack missions. The first of those four phases, called "gauntlets," runs from February to July 2026. During that time, 12 vendors will be asked to collectively produce 30,000 drones at a cost of $5,000 per unit, for a total of $150 million in department outlays. Over the course of the next three gauntlets, the number of vendors will go down from 12 to five, the number of drones ordered will increase from 30,000 to 150,000, and the price per drone will drop from $5,000 to $2,300. "Drone dominance will do two things: drive costs down and capabilities up," Hegseth said. "We will deliver tens of thousands of small drones to our force in 2026, and hundreds of thousands of them by 2027." Through the drone dominance program, $1 billion from the Big Beautiful Bill will fund the manufacture of approximately 340,000 small UASs for combat units over the course of two years. After that, it's expected that American industry's interest in building drones as a result of the program will have strengthened supply chains and manufacturing capacity to the point that the military will be able to afford to buy the drones it wants, in the quantity it wants, at a price it wants, through regular budgeting. Equipment is only part of the game, the secretary said. Doctrine -- how the warfighter fights -- is also critical. "I will soon be meeting with the military services to discuss transformational changes in warfighting doctrine," Hegseth said. "We need to outfit our combat units with unmanned systems at scale. We cannot wait. The funding provided by the Big Beautiful Bill is ready to be used to mount an effective sprint to build combat power. At the Department of War, we are adopting new technologies with a 'fight tonight' philosophy -- so that our warfighters have the cutting-edge tools they need to prevail." Following the end of the Cold War, Hegseth said, U.S. defense spending dropped precipitously, and as a result, there was also a consolidation of defense contractors from hundreds to just dozens. The department, he said, budgeted for quality rather than quantity -- and for 30 years got what it needed. "However, we now find ourselves in a new era," he said. "An era of cheap, disposable battlefield drones. We cannot be left behind -- we must invest in inexpensive, unmanned platforms that have proved so effective." Drone dominance, he said, is how the U.S. will meet the drone challenge posed by other nations. "One of my priorities is rebuilding our military," Hegseth said. "We can't do that by doing business the same way we have in the past. We cannot afford to shoot down cheap drones with $2 million missiles. And we ourselves must be able to field large quantities of capable attack drones." War Department Welcomes New Pentagon Press Corps [2025-12-03] WASHINGTON -- Nearly 20 War Department officials, both civilian and military, met today with more than two dozen members of the newly appointed Pentagon Press Corps during a series of more than 150 round-robin style one-on-one interviews. The event capped off three days of onboarding for new members of the Pentagon Press Corps, which includes more than 70 independent journalists, bloggers and social media influencers who entered the Pentagon for the first time this week to start their reporting on the War Department. Most of the newly appointed members of the Pentagon Press Corps are not associated with legacy media outlets, including print media such as newspapers and magazines, and broadcast media, such as cable television news. This "new media" operates differently than traditional media, and Pentagon leadership believes it is better equipped to inform a broader swath of the American public about what goes on inside the department, said Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson. "We really have seen a shift in the way people consume media," Wilson said. "It's not always through the mainstream outlets anymore. A lot of people are cutting the cord, and they don't have cable news subscriptions. And a lot of young people are increasingly using social media and following their favorite influencers on YouTube, X and Instagram. It's important for us to reach them too -- to let them know about all the incredible things our warfighters are doing." Independent media outlets, such as those represented in this new Pentagon Press Corps, Wilson said, are growing in influence and reach. "We want to make sure that we're reaching as many Americans as possible," she said. Unlike other federal agencies, the War Department has had members of the press "resident" in its headquarters -- the Pentagon -- for decades. Credentialed members of the press corps have badges that allow them unescorted access to the building at any time of day. And some members choose to take up residence with a desk space. In October, Pentagon leadership asked members of the press corps to sign an agreement, which Wilson said was both "common sense [and] very standard." Most press corps members at the time chose not to sign the agreement, so they lost access to the building. In their place now is a new press corps that signed the new agreement. It is this new press corps that will now be responsible for the important job of learning what is happening within the War Department and reporting on that to the American people. "We are excited to welcome people who were willing to sign the agreement here so we can continue that tradition of having resident media here in the building to hold us accountable and to help with our commitment to transparency," Wilson said. New members of the Pentagon Press Corps entered the building for the first time Dec. 1, kicking off a whirlwind of activity for Pentagon public affairs staff. "A lot of planning went into these three days," Wilson said. Press corps members were issued building passes and press passes and given a tour of the building. And for those who will operate out of the building full time, they also got to see their new office space, Wilson said. The following day, the press corps attended its first press briefing, during which Wilson provided an update on War Department activities. Public affairs staff also provided press corps members with an unclassified briefing on U.S. Southern Command and a primer on combatant commands. Today, the press filled the Pentagon Briefing Room to meet with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. Based on the questions she heard during the Dec. 2 press briefing, Wilson said she believes this new press corps is the right one to keep the American people informed about what its military is doing and to keep the department honest about its operations. "I think great questions were asked yesterday in the briefing, a lot of tough questions; they definitely didn't hold back," Wilson said. "We're going to continue to make sure that we're transparent with them, and I know in turn, they will hold us accountable. They absolutely have said as much to me many times, and I'm glad to hear it, because our job in government is to be transparent and to make sure that we're keeping everybody up to date on all the incredible things that this department and our warfighters are doing across the world." U.S., Australian Cooperation on Land, Air, Sea, Industrial Base Top Topics at 40th AUSMIN [2025-12-08] WASHINGTON -- The U.S. and longtime ally Australia met at the State Department in Washington today for the 40th annual Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations. "This is an incredibly strong alliance," said Secretary of State Marco A. Rubio during remarks in advance of the talks. "In fact, as we were discussing a few moments ago, [Australia] is our only ally that has fought with us in every war over the last -- certainly over the last four or five decades -- and we're very grateful to them for that. And this is a very strong partnership. It's a strong alliance, and what we want to do is continue to build on it." As part of the meeting, Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth met with their Australian counterparts, Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong. Hegseth noted work being done on enhanced force posture, which will benefit both nations, as a growing military-to-military partnership is central to maintaining the strong relationship between the U.S. and Australia. "We're upgrading the infrastructure on airbases in Queensland and the Northern Territory," Hegseth said. "That allows for additional U.S. bomber rotations. We're upgrading logistics and infrastructure in Darwin so more U.S. Marines can do rotational deployments and pre-positioning MV-22 Ospreys. This establishes new and resilient logistics networks across Australia." Another big issue for the U.S. and Australia is strengthening the defense industrial base, the collection of private-sector companies that design and manufacture hardware and supplies for militaries, including aircraft, ships, submarines, missiles, bombs, ammunition, firearms and combat vehicles. "We're deepening our cooperation on the defense industrial base -- cooperation on guided weapons production and lethal capabilities, two-year roadmaps on Australia's guided weapons and explosive ordinance enterprise, groundbreaking cooperative actions on things like [the Guided Missile Launch Rocket Systems] -- and precision strike missiles," Hegseth said. "And we're working towards coproduction and co-sustainment of hypersonic attack cruise missiles -- co-sustainment air-to-air missiles cooperative programs across the board, including Mark 54 torpedoes." A key part of building weapons systems for both the U.S. and Australia is access to rare Earth and other critical minerals. In October, both nations signed a framework to support the supply of raw and processed critical minerals and rare earths, which are important to the commercial and defense industries of both countries. "Critical minerals and rare earths are a huge part of ensuring both countries can operate the way we need to in that region and around the world," Hegseth said. The discussion also focused on the Australia, U.K. and U.S. trilateral security agreement, known as AUKUS, which has been in place for just over three years. The War Department recently concluded a review of the AUKUS agreement meant to identify opportunities to strengthen it and ensure its long-term success, in alignment with the president's "America First" agenda. In October, President Donald J. Trump confirmed the U.S. is going "full steam ahead" on the AUKUS deal. "As we move ... full steam ahead on AUKUS, we applaud Australia's upcoming delivery of an additional $1 billion to help expand U.S. submarine production capacity," Hegseth said. "We're strengthening AUKUS so that it works for America, for Australia and for the U.K." The AUKUS agreement includes two pillars. The first pillar involves the delivery of a conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarine capability to Australia, as well as significant investments in the industrial bases of all three partner nations. As part of that plan, Australia will buy three Virginia-class submarines from the U.S. to be delivered in the 2030s. Together, all three partner nations will also develop a new platform called "SSN-AUKUS," which is expected to be ready for use by the U.K. in the 2030s and by Australia in the 2040s. The second AUKUS pillar involves enhancing joint capabilities and interoperability between the three nations. Hegseth Introduces Department to New AI Tool [2025-12-09] WASHINGTON -- Yesterday, several employees at the Pentagon got a pop-up on their computers inviting them to use a new artificial intelligence tool developed for the War Department. Some were skeptical, wondering if the invitation was part of a cybersecurity test. But by this morning, those concerns were gone -- posters around the Pentagon and an email from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth assured everyone that the new tool is not only legit, but that he wants everybody to start using it. "I am pleased to introduce GenAI.mil, a secure generative AI platform for every member of the Department of War," Hegseth wrote in the email. "It is live today and available on the desktops of all military personnel, civilians and contractors. With this launch, we are taking a giant step toward mass AI adoption across the department. This tool marks the beginning of a new era, where every member of our workforce can be more efficient and impactful." Visitors to the site will find that what's available now is a specialized version of the Google AI tool Gemini, Gemini for Government. This version is approved to handle controlled unclassified information. A green banner at the top of the page reminds users of what can and can't be shared on the site. In addition to Gemini for Government, the site indicates that other American-made frontier AI capabilities will be available soon. "There is no prize for second place in the global race for AI dominance," said Emil Michael, undersecretary of war for research and engineering. "We are moving rapidly to deploy powerful AI capabilities like Gemini for Government directly to our workforce. AI is America's next manifest destiny, and we're ensuring that we dominate this new frontier." Access to the site is available only to personnel with a common access card and who are on the War Department's nonclassified network. When GenAI was asked, "How will you help the Department of War achieve its mission," through a user prompt, it replied with a list of capabilities, including, among other things, creating and refining documents, analyzing information, processing and analyzing satellite images, and even auditing computer code for security purposes. "I can support the DOW's mission by providing a range of capabilities designed for a secure, high-impact environment," GenAI replied. "I am ready to support your mission requirements." The tool reminds users to double-check everything it provides to ensure accuracy. The highest authority within the War Department, Hegseth himself, provided that validation. "The first GenAI platform capability ... can help you write documents, ask questions, conduct deep research, format content and unlock new possibilities across your daily workflows," he wrote. "I expect every member of the department to log in, learn it and incorporate it into your workflows immediately. AI should be in your battle rhythm every single day; it should be your teammate. By mastering this tool, we will outpace our adversaries." For those unfamiliar with how to use AI, online training is available at https://genai.mil/resources/training. This Week in DOW: Unleashing AI, Growing Australian Partnership, Breaking Ground for Future Spacecom Home [2025-12-12] WASHINGTON -- In July, President Donald J. Trump released his plan for how the U.S. will become the dominant player in the global artificial intelligence race. The War Department is now playing a big role in that effort. Earlier this week, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth unveiled the department's own AI tool, GenAI.mil. "The future of American warfare is AI, and the U.S. military will not be behind," Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson said today during the department's Weekly Sitrep video. "We are revolutionizing the way we win, and we are innovating our operations on every level. This new platform is now at the fingertips of our warfighters and our civilian personnel to expedite efforts and give the services an advantage over the enemy." Visitors to the department's new AI platform will find a specialized version of the Google AI tool Gemini, known as Gemini for Government. This version is approved to handle controlled unclassified information. A green banner at the top of the page reminds users of what kinds of information can and can't be processed. Other tools from additional American companies will also be available soon. The new tool, Hegseth said, can help write documents, answer questions, conduct deep research and format content. "I expect every member of the department to log in, learn it and incorporate it into your workflows immediately," he said. "AI should be in your battle rhythm every single day; it should be your teammate. By mastering this tool, we will outpace our adversaries." The department this week also spent significant time with longtime ally, Australia, at both the State Department building and the Pentagon. On Dec. 8, Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with their Australian counterparts as part of the 40th Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations. As part of the gathering, Hegseth and Rubio met with Australia's Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong to discuss issues such as enhanced force posture, strengthening of the U.S. and Australian defense industrial bases, and access to rare earth and other critical minerals important to the defense industry. Later in the week, the secretary hosted a defense minister trilateral meeting at the Pentagon with Marles and United Kingdom Defense Secretary John Healey. "In line with the shared intent to move 'full steam ahead' on [the Australia, U.K. and U.S. trilateral security agreement], the principals recognized the work underway to deliver priority infrastructure and workforce uplift in support of an enhanced trilateral submarine industrial base," Wilson said. The AUKUS agreement includes two pillars. The first pillar involves the delivery of a conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarine capability to Australia, as well as significant investments in the industrial bases of all three partner nations. As part of that plan, Australia will buy three Virginia-class submarines from the U.S. to be delivered in the 2030s. Together, all three partner nations will also develop a new platform called SSN-AUKUS, which is expected to be ready for use by the U.K. in the 2030s and by Australia in the 2040s. The War Department recently concluded a review of the AUKUS agreement meant to identify opportunities to strengthen it and ensure its long-term success, in alignment with the president's America First agenda. In October, President Donald J. Trump confirmed the U.S. is going "full steam ahead" on the AUKUS deal. "You see through AUKUS, and the review that we conducted, a continued commitment to a pragmatic, practical application of hard power between our countries that reflects peace through strength, and also hard power -- real capabilities -- that demonstrate a deterrent effect that we all want," Hegseth explained. At the southern border, the Interior Department and the War Department partnered again to strengthen border security. "This week, the Interior Department will transfer jurisdiction of roughly 760 acres of public land in California to the Department of the Navy for a three-year period in order for the Navy to establish the fifth national defense area to support our ongoing border security operations," Wilson said. According to DOI, the land area being transferred stretches from the western boundary of the Otay Mountain Wilderness area to about 1 mile west of the California-Arizona state line. That corridor of land is one of the highest-traffic regions for unlawful crossings along the southern border. Once the Navy accepts jurisdiction of that land, it will become part of a national defense area -- a specified piece of federal land over which DOW maintains administrative authority and jurisdiction and is permitted to establish and enforce a controlled perimeter and access. Service members stationed at the border and operating on that land will have greater authority to execute their mission. They will be governed by the same rules as when they are defending any other military installation, such as apprehending trespassers and passing them to appropriate civilian or federal law enforcement officials. Finally this week, Hegseth and the department moved forward with relocating the headquarters of U.S. Space Command from Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. "Secretary Hegseth is in Rocket City, Alabama, to break ground on our rightfully relocated Space Command headquarters and to meet with defense industry leaders," Wilson said. "Secretary Hegseth is committed to rebuilding our defense industrial base -- the arsenal of freedom. A strong defense industrial base that's American-made means a strong economy and a strong America." In September, Trump and Hegseth announced the decision to move Spacecom to Alabama. At the time, the president said the move would result in more than 30,000 jobs for the state of Alabama, as well as hundreds of billions of dollars in investments. He also said Spacecom would play a key role in building the planned Golden Dome for America missile defense system. At the groundbreaking, Hegseth said the president has a deep understanding of the importance of space to America's defense. "President Trump has understood the importance of the space domain from the beginning -- from his first term," Hegseth said. "From recognizing the importance of the need for Space Force, to the recognition of reestablishing Spacecom ... to choosing this place. "It is common sense that this is precisely where Space Command should be," he said. "It is common sense that we need to move rapidly and expeditiously, and we will." The groundbreaking for Spacecom is just one of the many bricks the department is laying to help America achieve the president's peace through strength initiative. "When you look at what we're doing at the Department of War ... we are defending the homeland in the hemisphere, we're deterring adversaries, we're working with our allies to burden share and shift those burdens, we're looking at rebuilding the defense industrial base -- which is what we are doing here -- we're reviving the warrior ethos, rebuilding the military and reestablishing deterrence," he said. War Department Reevaluates Discharge Characterizations for COVID Vaccine Refusal [2025-12-16] WASHINGTON -- For service members involuntarily discharged solely for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine, the War Department has ordered a reevaluation of their discharge status to see who might be eligible for an upgrade to an honorable discharge. Between Aug. 24, 2021, and Jan. 10, 2023, over 8,000 service members were involuntarily discharged from the military for refusing to take the vaccine. Most of those service members received an honorable discharge, but over 4,000 had their service characterized as general (under honorable conditions). That's one step below honorable, and that discharge characterization meant they were ineligible to use GI Bill educational benefits for themselves or a family member. While nearly 900 veterans have already had their discharge characterizations upgraded, over 3,000 remain to be reviewed. In a Dec. 6 memorandum, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth ordered the military services to provide relief to those service members who received a general discharge but might have deserved an honorable one. "It is unconscionable that thousands of former service members who held true to their personal and religious convictions were not just separated, but separated with general [discharges], rather than honorable discharge characterizations," Hegseth wrote. "While many have applied for and received relief from our military department review boards, I believe the onus is on us to make this right." Now, Hegseth said, the services will uncover all those who received a general discharge rather than an honorable one -- and fix them, where appropriate. Former service members won't need to do anything; the department will look into the potential upgrades on its own. "I hereby direct a proactive review of personnel records to identify individuals who were involuntarily discharged solely for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine and facilitate appropriate discharge upgrades," Hegseth wrote. The secretary directed each of the military services to identify individuals who were discharged and eligible to have their records reviewed. Those eligible are former service members who were involuntarily separated solely for refusing to be vaccinated under the department's COVID-19 vaccine mandate and who received a general discharge characterization. After those service members are identified, their records will be reviewed by each service member's respective discharge review board. Part of the review process will be to determine if service members were given a general discharge, rather than an honorable discharge, solely for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine. In some cases, boards may find that a service member's discharge was characterized as general due to other issues, such as having misconduct in their records. While these service members may not receive relief through the proactive review, the department encourages them to apply to the review boards directly and provide any new evidence that may support a discharge upgrade. Finally, every former service member whose record is upgraded will be notified by U.S. postal mail. Some service members have already asked for an upgrade. Those applications will continue and be expedited to ensure that they are completed alongside the new cases considered as part of the proactive review. "Together, we will continue to right the wrongs of the past and restore confidence in, and honor to, our fighting force," Hegseth said. Prior to this latest departmental effort, discharge characterizations for about 900 service members were upgraded from general to honorable. Hegseth Hosts Special Guests During Pentagon Christmas Worship Service [2025-12-17] WASHINGTON -- Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and his wife, Jennifer Hegseth, hosted the Rev. Franklin Graham, president and CEO of Samaritan's Purse, a humanitarian aid charity, along with prominent Christian musical artists Matthew West and Anne Wilson, for an afternoon Christmas Worship Service. A man in a suit stands behind a lectern. Behind him are out of focus Christmas trees. Hundreds of War Department employees, both military and civilian, gathered in the Pentagon courtyard to attend the event. West and Wilson provided entertainment during the service, while Graham led the congregation in prayer. The secretary's arrival at the event was delayed until the very end, because he had been at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, alongside President Donald J. Trump, to participate in the dignified transfer of the remains of two service members and one American civilian who were killed earlier this week in Syria. Those fallen Americans are Army Sgts. William Nathaniel Howard and Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, both part of the Iowa Army National Guard, and Ayad Mansoor Sakat, who was working as an interpreter. "They served our nation, they put on the cloth of our uniform -- served all of us," Hegseth said. "We're honored to gather on their behalf to remember them and their families and all those around the world this Christmas season." The importance of the prayer service, Hegseth said, mirrors that of early Americans, in particular George Washington, who, like the secretary, was religious. "I want to thank you all for sharing in this first Christmas Worship Service here at the Pentagon," Hegseth said. "It's the least we could do in this season. We do it monthly as well -- a prayer service -- which we will continue to do, because, as George Washington did that first year, he went on bended knee for providence in impossible tasks." Looking out across the audience at hundreds of men and women, service members, civilians and contractors who make the War Department run, Hegseth acknowledged the incredible things they are asked to do and the sources of strength they summon to complete their work. "You each day are asked to do impossible things, work impossible hours, at impossible odds, which mere men and women could not do," he said. "And that's why we bend the knee, because we know where our strength comes from, and we need that wisdom and that guidance, that providential guide in our own lives as we try to act on behalf of our nation." The secretary, like his wife had done earlier, thanked the audience for attending, thanked those who serve the nation, and also thanked Graham for leading the service, and West and Wilson for providing music. Earlier in the day, following an event where service members were able to meet with the three Pentagon visitors, Graham said it was an honor to be invited to participate in the prayer service, and said he's been impressed by the welcome embrace of faith by the administration. "It's not just the [War] Department's top leader, but it's our president -- his support of faith and supporting Christmas and supporting our military the way he does," Graham said. "It's an honor to be here and to be at the Pentagon with these men and women who defend our nation and who put their life on the line." Since taking the helm at the Pentagon in January, Hegseth has led the department with his faith on display. It's something Graham said he is impressed by and thinks is important. "It's extremely beneficial and important, because the faith runs through every community of our country," he said. "[In] every community, faith is there. And to have a man of faith in this position represents our nation. I'm just so proud of him and the stand he takes ... he's representing millions and millions of people of faith across this country." Religious belief is nothing new in America's military -- it's been there since the beginning. Since the military first stood up 250 years ago, there have been chaplains to tend to the needs of service members and Graham said what chaplains do for them is as important today as it was then. "It's extremely important, and I appreciate the stand that the secretary of war has taken in supporting the chaplains," he said. "I don't know if any administration has been as outspoken and as strong supporting our chaplains. ... The Chaplain Corps is extremely important, and it's really the bedrock of our armed forces." As a reverend, Graham has his own flock to tend to -- and has been doing so for decades now. But for the American military's chaplains -- in particular the Christian chaplaincy -- Graham said there is one thing that remains most important. "It's staying focused on the word of God," he said. "That's what chaplains -- and of course I'm speaking from a Christian view -- need to be focused on: the word of God. People want to know what God has to say, not what man has to say, not what philosophy is. They want to know what God has to say." Earlier in the week, Hegseth's own words seemed to mirror those of Graham, when he said there are plans within the department to strengthen the role of the military chaplain. As part of an initial effort in that regard, the secretary directed the Army to discontinue use of an existing "spiritual fitness guide," and also said the department would simplify its "faith and belief coding system." "More reforms will be coming in the days and weeks ahead," Hegseth said in a video posted to social media. "There will be a top-down cultural shift putting spiritual well-being on the same footing as mental and physical health, as a first step toward creating a supportive environment for our warriors and their souls. We're going to restore the esteemed position of chaplains as moral anchors for our fighting force." Just In Time For Christmas, Nation Gifts Service Members $1,776 'Warrior Dividend' [2025-12-18] WASHINGTON -- President Donald J. Trump announced last night that nearly 1.5 million service members would receive a $1,776 bonus to both thank them for their military service and to commemorate the 250 years the U.S. military has been defending the nation. The one-time pay bump is billed as the "Warrior Dividend." "Tonight, I am ... proud to announce that ... 1,450,000 military service members will receive a special, we call, 'Warrior Dividend' before Christmas," Trump said during a White House speech to the nation. "In honor of our nation's founding in 1776, we are sending every [service member] $1,776." And service members will not wait long to see that dividend, the president said. "The checks are already on the way," he said. "Nobody deserves it more than our military, and I say, 'congratulations' to everybody." The president also told the nation that, now more than ever, Americans are interested in joining the military. "We now have record enlistment [numbers] in our military," he said. "Last year, we had among the worst recruitment numbers in our military's history -- a lot of difference a year makes." Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said the dividend represents the upcoming 250th anniversary of the United States and the history of the service military members have given in defense of the nation, even before its creation. "1776; as you know, our great nation was founded in the crucible of revolution in that year," Hegseth said in a video posted to social media. "Now, as we enter the Christmas season, some 250 years later, we are proud to provide '1776' with a whole new modern meeting for our joint force. As he announced to the nation last night, thanks to President Trump's unwavering commitment to our warriors and the provisions provided in the One Big, Beautiful Bill, more than 1.45 million service members will, in the coming days, receive a one-time tax-free bonus of $1,776." The dividend, he said, also illustrates the nation's commitment to military service members. "This Warrior Dividend serves as yet another example of how the War Department is working to improve the quality of life for our military personnel and their families," Hegseth said. "All elements of what we're doing are to rebuild our military." Money to pay for the Warrior Dividend came earlier this year as part of the president's One Big Beautiful Bill. Approximately 1.28 million active-duty and 174,000 reserve component military members will receive the dividend as a nontaxable supplement to their regular monthly housing allowance. "We are grateful to President Trump, Chairman Roger Wicker, Chairman Mike Rogers and the other members of Congress who have made this Warrior Dividend possible through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act," said Jules W. Hurst III, who is performing the duties of comptroller for the War Department. "This payment is a 'thank you' from President Trump, the American people and Congress. The Department of War deeply appreciates the service of our military members and the sacrifices of their families." Active-duty service members in the pay grades of O-6 and below as of Nov. 30, as well as reserve component service members on active-duty orders of 31 days or more as of Nov. 30, are eligible for this one-time payment. Service members can expect to see the payment before Dec. 20. "To every American warrior, President Trump and I, and the War Department, have your back," Hegseth said. "Enjoy the Warrior Dividend. You've earned it. Thank you for your service, and we thank you for your sacrifice, and we wish you and your family a very merry Christmas." War Department Ensures Valuable Wage Grade Employees Earn Prevailing Wages [2025-12-19] WASHINGTON -- The War Department released updated pay tables for Federal Wage System employees nationwide to ensure that skilled and talented workers earn the prevailing wages they deserve, no matter where they serve. "FWS employees are essential to our operations, our readiness and our mission. They are key to U.S. dominance around the globe. With the support of President [Donald J.] Trump and Secretary [of War Pete] Hegseth, we are taking action to recognize and retain this high-demand, low-density talent within the department, and build our pipeline for the future," said Undersecretary of War for Personnel and Readiness Anthony J. Tata. About 140,000 FWS employees will see pay increases as a result of the updated pay tables, approved by the wage committee on Nov. 25, a senior War Department official said. Additionally, because for a short time the wage committee was unable to update the pay tables to reflect prevailing wages, those employees will also receive back pay. The department's FWS employees include men and women with the skills to repair or overhaul submarines, ships, airplanes and other military hardware, and to also do other kinds of skilled labor. The senior official said those pipefitters, welders, plumbers, electrical and sheet metal workers, for instance -- about 210 trade, craft and labor occupational fields in all -- are in high demand in both the private and public sector, and they are critical to maintaining the readiness and lethality of America's combat systems. "Our wage grade employees are on the line building the ships, building submarines, and making sure that the Department of War has the equipment it needs to win wars," the senior official said. "They're irreplaceable; they're highly essential to our mission and ... we need to make sure that they're properly paid for their invaluable contributions." A man wearing casual attire and a visor stands atop a metal surface inside an aircraft hangar and uses a handheld vacuum inside an aircraft's opening. The senior official said ensuring FWS employees get prevailing wages is important for two reasons. First, it's one way the department retains the talent that keeps its warfighting equipment in top shape. And second, it's how the department attracts new talent. "For potential applicants, it is important that they know that we are constantly meeting the mark to recruit them and that if they come to work for the Department of War, we will pay them a prevailing rate. We will pay them for their hard work and dedication to this mission that is so important to our nation." When newly minted welders, plumbers or electricians, for instance, begin looking for work, they could go anywhere. The senior official said that when the government offers prevailing wages, it becomes an even more attractive option for work, especially when coupled with the War Department's mission. "You get to see the results of your work being used to defend the nation, sailing the seas, flying the skies and protecting not only your family but the families of those around you. There is a great sense of accomplishment in that." The new pay tables for FWS employees can be found at https://wageandsalary.dcpas.osd.mil. This Week in DOW: Border Defense Medal; Warrior Dividend; Reforming Chaplain Corps [2025-12-20] WASHINGTON -- This week, military families got a welcome surprise when the president told the nation that service members would receive a special pay bonus as a gift from the nation, just in time for Christmas. "President Donald J. Trump announced the 'Warrior Dividend,' a special one-time bonus for over 1.4 million warfighters that is currently on the way and will be in their bank accounts before Christmas," Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson said today during the department's Weekly Sitrep video. "In honor of our nation's founding in 1776, our warfighters will be receiving $1,776. The Warrior Dividend proves, once again, President Trump and Secretary Pete Hegseth's complete and total commitment to the troops." Hegseth said the dividend represents the upcoming 250th anniversary of the United States and the history of the service military members have given in defense of the nation, even before its creation. "Our great nation was founded in the crucible of revolution in [1776]," Hegseth said in a video posted earlier this week to social media. "Now, as we enter the Christmas season, some 250 years later, we are proud to provide 1776 with a whole new modern meaning for our joint force. ... Thanks to President Trump's unwavering commitment to our warriors and the provisions provided in the One Big, Beautiful Bill, more than 1.45 million service members will, in the coming days, receive a one-time, tax-free bonus of $1,776." Also, this week, the president and Hegseth teamed up at the White House to recognize service members who have been defending the U.S.-Mexico border. "On Monday, Secretary Hegseth joined President Trump at the White House to honor the warfighters securing our border with the Mexican Border Defense Medal," she said. The medal recognizes service members who deployed as part of Joint Task Force Southern Border to the U.S.-Mexico border to provide military support for the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. "Since January 2025, Joint Task Force Southern Border has deployed over 8,500 personnel, intercepting cartel operations, stopping fentanyl flows and securing our border once again," Wilson said. The secretary said border security is a core mission of the military and is about defending the U.S. in its own hemisphere. "It's getting down to that border and getting control of it; and whether it's hanging concertina wire and reinforcing fencing or patrolling ... you guys have jumped at the mission, gotten after it, and I think it's been six months of effectively zero crossings on the southern border, which [was] the goal," the secretary told medal recipients during the White House ceremony. The secretary this week also kicked off an effort to reform the Chaplain Corps within the military -- those uniformed men and women who tend to the spiritual needs of their fellow soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and guardians. "Secretary Hegseth made a major announcement this week: the reformation of the Chaplain Corps," Wilson said. "For decades, the degradation of the Chaplain Corps has persisted with little to no pushback due to political correctness and secular humanism." As part of the initial reform effort, the secretary directed the Army to discontinue use of an existing "spiritual fitness guide," and also said the department would simplify its "faith and belief coding system." "More reforms will be coming in the days and weeks ahead," Hegseth said in a video posted to social media. "There will be a top-down cultural shift putting spiritual well-being on the same footing as mental and physical health, as a first step toward creating a supportive environment for our warriors and their souls. We're going to restore the esteemed position of chaplains as moral anchors for our fighting force." In advance of Christmas, the secretary and his wife, Jennifer, hosted a special Christmas Worship Service in the Pentagon Courtyard, with the Rev. Franklin Graham leading prayers. "Both the secretary and [Rev. Graham] spoke about the reason for the season, celebrating the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, prayed for our warfighters defending our freedoms across the globe and sang in worship along with many of our colleagues here at the Department of War," Wilson said. During the worship service, Hegseth acknowledged the War Department workforce. "You, each day, are asked to do impossible things, work impossible hours, at impossible odds, which mere men and women could not do," he said. "And that's why we bend the knee, because we know where our strength comes from, and we need that wisdom and that guidance, that providential guide in our own lives as we try to act on behalf of our nation." Graham said it was an honor to be invited to participate in the worship service, adding that he's been impressed by the welcome embrace of faith by the administration. "It's not just the [War] Department's top leader, but it's our president -- his support of faith and supporting Christmas and supporting our military the way he does," Graham said. "It's an honor to be here and to be at the Pentagon with these men and women who defend our nation and who put their [lives] on the line." Finally, over the weekend, the Army announced the loss of two soldiers and an American civilian. Those fallen Americans are Army Sgts. William Nathaniel Howard and Edgar Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, both part of the Iowa Army National Guard, and Ayad Mansoor Sakat, who was working as an interpreter. The three men were part of an ongoing counter-ISIS, counterterrorism operation. "[They] were ambushed and killed in Syria by Islamic terrorists," Wilson said. Hegseth and the president were at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, to participate in the dignified transfer of the remains, Dec. 17. "Our hearts go out to their families and colleagues, and we lift them up in prayer for strength and comfort during this time of grief," Wilson said.

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